Bookworm Room

Tweet The mosque debate in America has been instructive when it comes to Leftist rhetorical tactics.  Ordinary Americans make an argument — “the mosque is inappropriate on secular sacred ground.”  The Left then responds, not substantively, but with personal attacks — “you’re racist, Islamophobic, xenophobic and stupid.” If you think this approach to debate is [...]

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Tweet So often, there are what I call “matched sets” of stories in newspapers.  This happens when one article makes a point, and another article perfectly illustrates that point.  Today, Spiegel provided the perfect pairing of the way in which the modern Western (that is, Leftist) world refuses to learn lessons, but insists on repeating [...]

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Tweet This month marks the third anniversary of Gilad Shalit’s long imprisonment with the Palestinians who kidnapped him.  Although it doesn’t seem to show up in American press, German and Israeli outlets are reporting that the Germans (!?) have brokered a deal for his release.  Here’s Der Spiegel: Three years ago he was kidnapped by [...]

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Tweet Michael Knox has an absolutely fascinating bio of the amazingly decadent and recently deceased Count Gottfried von Bismarck, great-great-grandson of Otto von Bismarck, the man who took fractured German duchies and, for better or worse, united them into a single country.  In a relatively short essay, he manages to walk us through the amazingly [...]

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Tweet The reason people are disgusted with politicians, politics and committees is because of the time they waste on things like this: Berlin’s first major international airport may be far from finished — opening day is at least four years off — but politicians have already started squabbling over its name. Should it be the [...]

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Tweet Truther madness has invaded Germany at the highest levels: one of the government-run TV stations ran an “investigative” show that examined whether it was OBL or the US government that took down the Twin Towers and tried to destroy the Pentagon and other buildings in D.C.: Have you heard this one before? Jupp says [...]

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Tweet Debate will always rage about the purpose of imprisonment and the reasonable length for prison sentences. Some people think prison exists solely to punish people, while others believe that we need to use prisons to rehabilitate people, and stop being so gosh darn punitive. I tend to fall in a mushy middle that is [...]

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