The Bookworm Beat 1/15/15 — The ides of January edition and Open Thread
Somewhat unusually for me, I didn’t come across that many articles today that excited in me the desire to share them with you. Nevertheless, what I have is good.
And on your Left, you can see the famous “Rats Leaving A Sinking Ship”
An old high school friend of mine, once a centrist, now a Leftist (although always civil and respectful) is really miffed at the way everyone is making such a big deal out of Obama’s non-appearance at the Paris march. I have a few thoughts about the march, ending with the fact that I agree with my friend that, at least as to Obama, it’s not such a big deal, although it’s certainly interesting.
First, of course, any “peace” march that has Abbas and Erdogan has nothing to do with peace. It’s a sham, meant to pacify the masses. If Obama were a principled man, one might think he avoided the march for that reason — although if he were a principled man, he would have added a little speech about freedom of speech and the necessity of actively defending our culture against the barbarian. But he isn’t so he didn’t.
Second, I’ve enjoyed all the theories about Obama’s non-appearance. In no particular order, the ones I’ve read are anti-free speech, pro-Islam, arrogance (not going to be one of the crowd), checking out of politics, checking in to football playoffs, security concerns (although the Secret Service quickly put the lie to that one), and a tin ear that saw him fail to realize this would be a big deal.
Third, I strongly agree with Andrew McCarthy, who says that anything that Obama does that reveals the real Leftist and Islamophile behind that slick facade is a good thing. Americans need to see what he really is.
What’s really fascinating, though, is that it’s not just ordinary, apolitical, apathetic people who are getting an unnerving glimpse into the real Obama thanks to his decision to trade world leadership for football playoffs and beer. Suddenly, Leftists are looking East, to Europe and the Middle East, and then home, to Washington, D.C., and getting frightened by what they’re seeing.
For a good example of looking East, I offer you Allen Clifton’s essay at Forward Progressive, about as Progressive a site as you can find. Clifton is realizing that platitudes about “Islam is a religion of peace,” and “make love, not war,” are crumbling before the reality of Islam’s millions upon millions of totalitarian strict constructionists. (You see, that “small minority” of violent Muslims we’re always told it ignore isn’t so small when you do the math. Ten percent of 1.6 billion is 160,000,000, which is a plenty big number, especially if its guns are all aimed at you.)
Anyway, Clifton is fighting his way through the fog of cognitive dissonance:
I’ll be honest, as badly as I want to stand in the face of some right-wing radical who’s proclaiming that Islam is a violent, hateful religion and tell them that they’re an idiot and nothing but an ignorant jackass – I don’t know if I can say that and still honestly mean it.
Just let the reality sink in for a moment of what really happened. A newspaper experienced its second terrorist attack in just over three years because it dared to poke fun at Islam. What other group of ideological individuals on this planet would do that? Say what you want about right-wing Christian radicals, they might throw a hissy fit when someone makes fun of Christianity or Jesus Christ, but Christian fundamentalists didn’t violently attack Seth MacFarlane or his team of writers when Family Guy aired their Christmas episode last month where the subject was trying to get Jesus laid.
Clifton goes on in this vein, talking about other violent Islamic attacks on free speech, including Theo van Gogh’s murder, and noting that Saudi Arabia’s pro forma statement against the Charlie Hebdo massacre was unimpressive considering Islamist conditions within Saudi Arabia itself. From there, Clifton picks up a full head of steam, and really gets going about repression in Muslim nations and the bizarre Progressive habit of siding with those nations.
But for the heartache expressed, Clifton’s summation could come from just about any conservative writer:
But something has to change. Publicly opposing terrorism is easy, but condemning horrific acts being carried out by religious fanatics isn’t going to bring about the fundamental change that’s needed to get at the root of much of this violence. That change is only going to come from Muslims fighting every single day against oppressive Islamic states. These people have to want, and demand, actual democracy. They have to build nations not ruled by the Quran, but by basic human decency toward everyone regardless of gender, religion or sexual orientation.
Theocratic governments have always, and will always, breed violence and oppression.
And as long as Muslims continue to flock toward nations founded, built and driven by Islamic rule – none of this is going to stop. And sadly, far too many Muslims continue to do just that.
So please, don’t take this as an “attack on Muslims,” because that’s not at all what I mean here. I just really, truly don’t know what to say anymore.
When I see videos of hostages being beheaded by ISIL, hear about 145 people killed (including 132 children) in a Pakistan school suicide bombing, learn of hostages being murdered in Australia and now satire newspaper writers brutally gunned down because of a couple of cartoons – all in the name of the same religion – how can I keep defending it from those who spew hatred toward it?
I want to, I really do. But I’m just not sure if I know how to do it anymore.
You go, Allen! The process of separating yourself from a corrupt belief system is painful, but amazingly liberating. Moreover, newly liberated Allen is just the type of guy to react with despair when his president refuses to acknowledge the uncomfortable reality that Allen is finally addressing.
It’s not just the Progressive fever swamps, though, that are beginning to realize that there’s trouble in Washington, D.C., as well as areas to the East of us. Leslie Gelb, as establishment a Democrat Progressive as you will ever find, has issued his own cri de couer. He too is finally waking up to the fact that Islam is not willing to play well with others. At the Daily Beast, using Obama’s failure to appear in Paris as his starting point, Gelb has written a rather harsh essay decrying the administration’s failure to address head-on Islam’s deadly ways:
Here’s why America’s failure to be represented at the Paris unity march was so profoundly disturbing. It wasn’t just because President Obama’s or Vice President Biden’s absence was a horrendous gaffe. More than this, it demonstrated beyond argument that the Obama team lacks the basic instincts and judgment necessary to conduct U.S. national security policy in the next two years. It’s simply too dangerous to let Mr. Obama continue as is—with his current team and his way of making decisions. America, its allies, and friends could be heading into one of the most dangerous periods since the height of the Cold War.
Gelb can’t make himself disavow Obama, but he’s willing to throw everyone else in the Obama administration under the bus for what he sees as a staggering failure to address an existential threat:
Mr. Obama will have to excuse most of his inner core, especially in the White House. He will have to replace them with strong and strategic people of proven foreign policy experience. He’ll also need to seed the Defense and State Departments with new top people serving directly as senior advisers to the secretaries. And he also will need to set up regular consultations—not the usual phony ones—with the two key Senate leaders in this field, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, two people who can really improve his decisions and bolster his credibility. Many will be tempted to dismiss these crash solutions as several bridges too far, as simply unrealistic. But hear me out. It can be made much more plausible than it seems at first blush. What’s more, if Mr. Obama doesn’t do something along the lines of what’s proposed here, he and we are in for unmanageable trouble.
You can read the rest here.
With radical Islam unchained, the Left is running into something we conservatives figured out years ago: Peaceful protest works only if your foe is essentially peaceful too, making violence a sporadic anomaly, rather than business as usual. Failing a basically peaceful enemy, there are only two paths to peace: The first is the one the Roman way, which is to make a desert and call it peace. This is what ISIS and al Qaeda and Boko Haram seek to do. When half the world’s survivors are enslaved and the other half firmly under Mohamed’s jackboot, there will be peace of a kind.
The second path to peace is the American way — which starts with the Roman way. You must destroy totalitarianism root and branch. It cannot be allowed to survive, even a little bit. And then you do what the Romans didn’t do: you provide a pathway to freedom and prosperity where before there was the silence of the totalitarian grave. For the fanatics, the only thing that will swerve them from their path is total defeat, and for the ordinary people, the only thing that will save them is the helping hand we offer after destroying their tyrants.
Ann Coulter lets loose against American colleges
You all know how hostile I am to American colleges, which teach neither knowledge nor reason but, instead, for upwards of $100,000 a year, offer to indoctrinate your kids into the finer points of statism, with side journeys into victimhood and the terrors of microaggression. Barack Obama wants to extend this indoctrination to community colleges, paid for by the same middle class whose values are getting destroyed in those college classrooms. Obama’s plan triggered a wonderful Coulter column:
The cost of a college education has increased by more than 1,000 percent only since 1978. Nothing else has gone up that much — not health care, consumer goods or home prices. The explosion in college tuition bears no relation to anything happening in the economy.
Would anyone argue that colleges are providing a better education today than in 1978? I promise you: People coming out of college in the ’50s knew more than any recent Yale graduate — unless we’re only counting knowledge of sexual practices once considered verboten.
They’re teaching gender studies, ethnic studies, moral equivalence and hatred of America. Did the Japanese Really Start World War II or Did We? It’s worse than not reading Shakespeare. They’re reading Shakespeare for homosexual imagery. As Yale professor Daniel Gelernter says, colleges are “threatening to become an elaborate, extremely expensive practical joke.”
The fact that 80 percent of Weathermen — the violent ’60s radicals — are full college professors tells you all you need to know about the state of higher education today.
The cost of college spirals continuously upward not because the product has gotten better — it’s gotten much, much worse — but because college loans are backed by the taxpayer.
Read the whole thing here.
Jews should be armed, even though it won’t always help
There are two news stories that I think should be read and discussed together. The first is that Rabbi Menachem Margolin, director general of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe and the European Jewish Association, is seeking permission from European governments — which are notoriously hostile to gun rights — asking for leave to arm all Jews. The second is that The Truth About Guns ran some experiments and discovered that a single armed person can’t do much against a targeted, heavily-armed, military style attack. It happens too fast and the fire power is overwhelming.
Does the second story mean that the Rabbi’s request should be dismissed? Most emphatically not.
The reality is that most attacks against Jews (and Christians) in Europe — whether by Muslims or the proliferating numbers of ordinary criminals — are not military-style raids. They are muggings, rapes, violent assaults, and other rather spontaneous or marginally coordinated attacks. These types of attacks can be done away with by an armed citizenry.
Indeed, the more people in Europe to carry arms, the better. I say that operating on the principle that, even in France, despite their large absolute numbers, Muslims make up, at most, 10% of the population. Assuming that at least 50% of the other citizens are people of good will, arming them would create an effective citizen militia against Muslim depredations.
Also, and this is very subtle and it’s guess work on my part, but I have to believe that, if you’re going to die, it’s better to die fighting. I don’t know if this is true, but I’d like to think it is. And if you have a gun in your hand, you’re fighting.
Islamists imbue Jews with magical power
When your scapegoat refuses to cooperate with the facts, you have to imbue your scapegoat with magical (and, of course, evil) powers. So it is that the Muslims are blaming shapeshifting Jews for the Charlie Hebdo attack.
England will now have the first truly Secret Police
Think of the phrase Secret Police and you think of the Stasi or the KGB. England, however, is bringing new meaning to that tired Cold War phrase. Henceforth, Secret Police in England will mean police who keep their identity completely secret for fear of getting offed by Muslims.
I’m about to advance here what I know is an unthinkable idea for the British police, but here goes: It seems to me that, because British criminals are no longer colorful cockneys armed with coshes and missing their aitches but are, instead, sword and gun wielding murderous fanatics, guns might actually be a useful part of the British cops’ standard issue equipment.
And two illustrations
