Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
When I read that the Obama administration is good with having the Muslim Brotherhood on board in Egypt, because it’s really not such a bad organization, I keep thinking of 1930’s rationalizations about Mussolini: He made the trains run on time. Surely our standards of decency are higher than that?
Continue reading1. Faced with a popular revolt of the type we’re seeing in Egypt, can an American president make a difference? My sense is that, while we’re certainly not going to drop bombs, the American president (any president, not just Obama) is such a vast presence that both his silence and
Continue readingThe Enlightenment was born in Europe and, clearly, will die there too: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEkelAsmcf4[/youtube] Hat tip: Small Dead Animals
Continue readingMy husband has, for years, castigated me for refusing to listening to Cat Stevens’ music. He makes two points, the first of which is valid, the second of which is not. First, he says, the music predates Stevens’ conversion. If I hear it on the radio, Stevens isn’t getting any
Continue readingAndrew McCarthy hits the nail on the head in these paragraphs: Obama sought the presidency as the candidate who would turn the clock back to the 1990s. He idealized the Clinton years, when terrorism was treated only as a crime, when preventing it was decidedly secondary to prosecuting it and
Continue readingWorking on deadline, so I can’t blog right now. (Anyway, I couldn’t say anything better than Danny did, in the post immediately preceding this one.) I did, however, want to bring two posts to your attention, ’cause I think you’ll find them interesting. The first is the Rosh Hashanah sermon
Continue readingI admit it — I didn’t read the whole thing, because the obscene relativism permeating Nicholas Kristof’s first couple of paragraphs so disgusted me, my brain shut down. Anyway, because of fair use concerns, I don’t want to quote more than the first two paragraphs, which more than adequately make
Continue readingOn my personal Facebook account, I linked to a report about the cartoonist who suggested “Everyone Draw Mohammed” day. It turns out that this little moment of satire occasioned death threats so serious that she has now been forced into a life of hiding: An American cartoonist whose satirical work
Continue readingThe MSM is bewildered. How is it that nine years after 9/11, people are more hostile to Muslims than they were the day of 9/11, when 20 Muslims murdered thousands of Americans, and sought to decapitate the American government? This article from the San Francisco Chronicle nicely presents the liberal
Continue readingClifford May beautifully explains the fact that Jihadis, who use violence, and Islamists, who use more subtle means, are both threats to the West — and he manages to mention, too, why reform isn’t happening: Terrorism is not the core of the problem. It is merely the weapon of choice
Continue readingIt took almost two years for this video to come to my attention (it was originally posted in September 2008), but I believe “better late than never,” so I’m bringing it to your attention. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjcfoD2mzeQ[/youtube]
Continue readingIn a comment to an earlier post, a reader raised a good issue: Let’s accept as absolutely true that the proposed Ground Zero mosque is emotionally offensive, and that, for Islamists, a mosque at the site of a battleground is the sign of conquest. Do those two factors justify refusing
Continue readingI was thinking of headlines to rival the one I saw this morning: Landmark vote opens door to Ground Zero mosque For true parallelism, you can’t have as the new occupier the same person or entity that caused the deaths at the site. Instead, you have to have the fellow-travelers,
Continue readingAlthough it’s been open for more than a year now, I went for the first time today to the newly rebuilt California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. My visit there was an interesting contrast to my first visit, some years ago, to the newly rebuilt De Young Museum
Continue readingOn July 14, the French parliament voted to ban the burqa in public places, causing much anguish amongst Muslims, Leftists, and even some conservatives, especially libertarians. Regardless of the political filter through which they viewed the new law, its detractors all claimed that a free society cannot ban clothes without
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