Howard,

Pretty cogent stuff.

There is much hypocrisy displayed by all when it comes to “Who, whom”.

In this case, a defenseless person (reportedly a 16 year old girl) was hung for having a “sharp tongue”. Here we see what Hayek referred to as the difference between the “Rule of Law” and the tyranny of “legality” when coercive and used by the totalitarian State.

And more to the point, this episode should (but will not) serve as yet another “wake-up call” to all those in this country and the EU who march along side the Islamists decrying US “hegemony, barbarity, and imperialism.”

Back to Hayek, his thesis of economic control (“Planned Economies, ie Socialism”) leading to totalitarianism, is directly paralled (and in fact, proves this axiom more powerfully) by the example of State religious control and planning leading to totalitarianism.

Whether or not to raze the shrine (or all of Fallujah and Najaf for that matter) I will leave to our military experts.

But I concede that you are right on this point, political correctness, in all its forms and ways, seems to be blind to real suffering when it is warranted, and fixated on minutae when it is both illogical and meaningless to do so.

Sigh.

Unlike you though, I’m sorry for that girl.

It doesn’t make me better, or you worse that I do, just different.