The Bookworm Beat 2-19-15 — A few links for your reading pleasure

Woman writingI’m still away from my blog, so I’m not blogging in real time, but in un-real time. I lined up this post several days ago and, for all I know, world events shifted so dramatically, everything here is entirely obsolete. Still, FWIW, you may enjoy these stories:

Roger L. Simon has been on fire lately. I’ve always liked his writing, but lately I’ve loved his writing. His riff on the murders in Cophenhagen is a fine bit of snark aimed at people at home and abroad who deny Islam’s role in terrorism, not to mention antisemitism’s role in Islam.

Speaking of Islam deniers, you should read David Frum on the subject. I know that lots of us haven’t recovered from his going to the dark side when Obama appeared on the scene, but it doesn’t mean he went all over stupid. Indeed, his analysis about the foolish, dangerous policy implications revealed by Obama’s verbal gymnastics is something that should be read and shared.

By the way, I like that expression: Islam deniers. I think we should all use it, and use it in its proper sense, as a disdainful pejorative for people who are functionally stupid, historically illiterate, and morally blind.

The British military is facing up to what ISIS is. It’s told its SAS troops something that sounds as if it comes out of a Victorian Boys’ Life novel about war and chivalry: Don’t let them take you alive. I also believe that those SAS troops, who most certainly have been watching the news, are taking this warning with the utmost seriousness. Infinitely better to put your own bullet clean into your head than to be tortured for weeks before having your head sawed off or to be set alight in a cage. I hope that our American troops have been told the same thing.

And finally, the inimitable Mark Steyn, who’s been sounding the “Islam is out to get us” tocsin for a long, long time. He’s written a scathing indictment of the intellectually and morally bereft leaders in Europe who opened their doors to this bloodshed, and now seem inclined to believe that, through vague and meaningless language, they can make it magically vanish.