Memorial Day afternoon round-up and Open Thread

Victorian posy of pansiesMark Steyn writes movingly about something that American Jews, who seem have eyes, still resolutely refuse to see: the growing violent antisemitism sweeping across Europe. It’s a toxic combination of Islam, Leftism, and the antisemitism that seems hardwired into Europe’s genes. (And as always when I cite to Steyn, do think about contributing to his legal aid fund. He’s fighting the good fight on behalf of the First Amendment and he needs support. Even though, last I heard, he’s representing himself, the costs of suit, even without attorney’s fees, add up quickly.)

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While I’m on the subject of European Jewry, you’ll notice I haven’t said anything about Britain’s and Europe’s elections.  I’m biding my time.  They’re definitely a blow against the EU’s bureaucratic rule and the dangerously porous borders between Europe and Islam, but I’m in wait-and-see mode.  

While the American “right wing” is focused upon individual liberty, market freedom, and respect for human rights, Europe’s right wing has the disturbing tendency to be the ugly mirror image of its left wing, complete with total government control and antisemitism.  Both are statist; both are ugly.  They differ only in their labels, and favored and disfavored groups (although both sides always hate the Jews).

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Tom Rogan explains that MSNBC talking horse’s patootie Touré didn’t just sound like a one-trick pony when he contended that “white privilege” enabled Holocaust survivors to thrive in America. Instead, Touré showed profound disrespect to the Holocaust and to each person who suffered and died in that statist horror show. Touré would benefit from a visit to Auschwitz, except that there’s a good chance that he would reduce the entire experience to a tweet: “Auschwitz = sad, but blacks also died.”

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In the mid-17th century, the English people, distressed by their king’s increasingly tyrannical rule, fought a bloody civil war, and then embarked upon an 11 year experiment with Puritanical rule. They discovered two things: (1) the Puritans were every bit as tyrannical as the king and (2) the Puritans were much less fun than the king. When Oliver Cromwell died, not only did the British embrace King Charles II, they embraced a return to life’s pleasures.

History may be repeating itself.  Michael Ledeen thinks that Muslims suffering under Islam’s increasingly repressive lash are seeing the absence of pleasure as the straw that’s slowly breaking the sharia camel’s back. The fact that Iran’s women are taking the terrible risk of taking their head scarfs off to feel the sun and wind on their heads suggests that he’s correct.  Of course, in England, the transition back to government that recognizes the human capacity for joy was made easier by Cromwell’s death and his son’s abdication.  In the Muslim Middle East, none of the powers in charge will yield gracefully.

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It’s not too late to check out Jake Tapper’s twitter feed today. He’s dedicating it entirely to Memorial Day updates, honoring both the living and dead who serve and have served our country. Tapper keeps showing himself to be a class act. He’d always stand out as a journalist, but in a field peopled by party hacks, he’s truly exceptional.

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Google, of course, is not covering itself in Tapper-esque glory. It’s chosen to ignore Memorial Day entirely, apparently considering it less important than Cesar Chavez day and other obscure, minor, or Leftist occasions. Bing has honored Memorial Day, which goes a long way to explaining why it, not Google, is my search engine of choice.

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Keith Koffler makes an excellent point about those who died serving our country:

We can be cheered that their lives were not wasted. Many lives lived much longer are wasted. But dying for the greatest nation in history, for the hope of mankind – for the last hope of mankind – is not a waste.

But it is a tragedy. And it is awfully sad.

Until Obama leaves office, there’s little we can do to ensure that American military deaths, even as they cut short young lives, continue to be in a greater cause.  In 2016, however, if we don’t step up and reaffirm at the ballot box everything that America stands for, we will have wasted every American death from 1773 through the present day.

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It’s also up to us to keep the pressure on this administration and on subsequent administrations to serve our veterans after they leave the battlefield. Perhaps when/if we dump Obamacare and go back to the open market, we should dismantle the VA and instead give vets an annual sum of money that they can apply to the best insurance the market has to offer, with extra money flowing to veterans who have suffered extraordinary injuries. After all, anything has to be better than the VA as it is currently configured.

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This is the kind of thing you think must be a joke until you realize that it’s not; and then you realize it’s a tragedy in the making: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will no longer review employee performance because it’s possible that such reviewed might be discriminatory.

Even Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks was a more sensible government agency. With regard to the CFPB’s sinking into parody, does it matter at all to know that it’s Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s baby?

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I don’t think I need to add any more today about the Elliot Rodger’s shooting spree. The Diplomad and Jack Cashill have said all that I would have.

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On my liberal Facebook page, my liberal friends are being entirely predictable: the worst winter in living memory, they say, came about because of global warming, blah, blah, blah. Sadly, there’s no way I’ll be able to get them to watch this video. (Hat tip: Earl)

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Sultan Knish makes a funny, sad point: For the last forty years, Leftism has successfully advanced itself by turning favored classes into victims, thereby using American’s basic niceness to change fundamental policies and attitudes in this nation. “Poor [fill in the blank, e.g., blacks, gays, women, Hispanics, etc.]. White people/America/dead white men/climate/nature/etc. have been so unfair to them. It’s up to us to spend lets of money, set up vast programs, and stifle speech to help them out.”  I actually can’t fault this appeal to decency insofar as it made us remember that the Bill of Rights extends equal protections and access to civil society to all, not just men, not just heterosexuals, and not just whites.

Now, though, these formerly dispossessed classes are in the driver’s seat, heading government and industry and what do they do? They still whine about how victimized they are. That’s funny, or it would be if they weren’t still intent upon dismantling all the best things about our country: her freedom loving attitudes, her citizens’ innate kindness, her social mobility, her vital marketplaces of both merchandise and ideas, and her self-reliant citizens.

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And finally, while I’m on the subject of the good things in America, the following video is wonderful for two reasons. The first will be obvious to you as you watch it: it’s a lovely story about a faithful human heart. I’ll mention the second reason after you’ve watched the video:

The Amrines were married in 1954. Back in the mid-1950s, Little Rock wasn’t a very nice place to be. It was a deeply segregated city, with the local and state government leaders (all Democrats) doing anything they could to deny blacks their basic civil rights. That segregation took, a human face — ugly on the white side; brave and dignified on the black — in 1957 when the Little Rock Nine, thanks to President Eisenhower’s (Republican) intervention, walked through jeering crowds to the city’s first desegregated high school:

Little Rock Nine

Now think back to the above feel-good story about the Amrines: white man, Asian wife, black cops, all in Little Rock and all coming together in a spirit of love and charity. That’s pretty darn special, and something about which all Americans should feel very proud.