Thought processing plant

I’ve got a lot of inchoate thoughts wandering around in my brain this morning, so I thought I’d share with you the links that fascinate me — and you shouldn’t be surprised if some of them morph into full blown posts later.

Many, many years ago, when Holland had just legalized euthanasia and there was a heavy duty debate about the subject going on in America, I heard a Dutch doctor on the radio.  I can’t quote him precisely, but he said something along the lines of “I would never allow euthanasia in a country that doesn’t have socialized medicine and elder care, because there would be too much incentive for family members to get rid of someone old, ill and expensive.”  He was right, of course.  What he didn’t realize is that, in socialized countries, precisely the same incentive exists — it’s just that the incentive exists in the mind of a state that doesn’t make even the pretense of loving that old, ill and costly person.  And sometimes, the incentive simply lies in the hands of those with the power to kill, as happened in socialized Belgium.

Y’all know how I love “matched set” stories.  Today’s matched set comes from Britain’s Daily Mail, a total rag that’s usually 24 hours ahead of every other news outlet when it comes to real stories.  It was the Daily Mail that first reported on Prince Charles’ asinine statement that the world’s true environmentalists are the Islamists.  (By the way, it’s statements such as this one that lend credence to long-standing rumors that Charles is a convert to Islam.)  Charles’ doctrinal idiocy doesn’t deserve much consideration, but he is right as a practical matter that many of the desert Muslim kingdoms don’t put much industrial pressure on their environments.  This isn’t because they’re Gaia worshipers.  Instead, it happens because their religion ensures that their people live lives right out of the pre-Industrialized medieval era.

But I promised you a match set, didn’t I?  So, speaking of the medieval mindset of the Islamists, here’s an appalling story about the Taliban executing a 7 year old boy (let me repeat:  they executed a 7 year old boy) for being a spy.  Hamid Karzai was very appropriately outraged, but I wonder how many other citizens in that Muslim land were.  In other words, while Charles is bloviating about Muslims respecting the environment, he might turn his attention to the fact that they have very little respect for their fellow man (or child).

Let me wrap up with a couple more depressing links, and then I’ll leave you with something a bit more uplifting.  Depressing link Number One is a post that nicely explains what we all know:  Helen Thomas’ loathsome antisemitic outbreak is all of a piece with American Progressivism.  As my mother might say, “these are not nice people.”  (Although, thankfully, some people on the American Left are figuring it out.)  Depressing link Number Two is Zombie’s astute take on the California elections.  I really love where I live.  I have a wonderful house, in a wonderful neighborhood, in a wonderful town, but my state as a whole is dying, a victim of slow suicide.

Okay, enough of the depressing stuff.  Here’s something lovely:  a Steve Schippert essay about his home town, a small town in Illinois.  Steve commented in an email that he’s not sure the post really has a place on his blog, Threats Watch, but I think he’s dead wrong.  His post is a reminder that we guard against threats precisely to preserve the essence that is America.  If we don’t understand what we’re protecting, why should we bother?

If you’d like to post here, consider this an open thread, while I organize my thoughts.