Sometimes reality seems at odds with perceived wisdom. Yet these disconnects rarely seem to enter public discussion. Here are a few examples, big and small.
The Axis of Evil and Unending Wars
The Korean mess reminds us again of who was and who was not in the ill-famed “axis of evil” as articulated in January 2002. Germany, Japan, and Vietnam were not, all once bitter foes of the United States. The former two were defeated and their hostility ended in reformed, postwar democratic governments. The latter won a political victory over the United States, and the question whether there would be a South Vietnam analogous to an independent South Korea was answered in the negative.
By the same token, the triad of evil all had ongoing but unresolved wars with the United States. Saddam Hussein at the time had lost the Gulf War but survived, and that fact in turn had led to an unending no-fly zone war. (Note that today Iraq would not be in the axis, given that Saddam is no more). An armistice in 1953 did not settle the question of whether an aggressive communist North Korea would leave South Korea alone. And our war that had de facto started with Iran in 1979, and which waxed and waned over the next thirty years through terrorist surrogates and American counter-measures, continues today.
Perhaps peace ensues when clear-cut defeat or victory decides a war. In contrast, an ongoing, on/off conflict is the legacy of truces and temporary armistices, as we pass the unresolved war on to our children.
The present strategy in Korea? Who knows? But I think a prosperous South Korea is between the rock of hoping for the relatively nonviolent implosion of the failed state of North Korea in some sort of East German fashion, and the hard place of a communist thugocracy in the bunker lashing out in “we will take you down with us” fashion.
Note well that in the supposed age of counter-insurgency, we still have assets like carrier battle groups, armored divisions, bombers, and high-tech fighters. War is cyclical, and while some thought the U.S. would only fight in messy, dirty Vietnam-like wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan, we should remember that even that scenario was not always the recent norm — remember Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I, and the Balkans.
Military history reminds us that wars of all sorts — insurgencies, terrorism, conventional land invasions, high-tech aerial combat, missile exchanges — can in theory break out anytime. It was always the great strength of the postwar U.S. army, nursed on the experience of World War II from the jungles of Guadalcanal to the B-17 missions over Germany, that it was multifaceted and ready for any challenge.
Some ask: “Why do we have any F-22s given the realities of an Afghanistan?” Others would counter: “Why do we not have more given the realities of an even more important Korean peninsula?”
Fewer or More Terrorist Plots?
The latest foiled terrorist attempt in Portland comes on the heels of the Times Square bombing plot, the New York subway plot, the unsuccessful Mutallab Christmas bombing, the Fort Hood shootings, and the increasing high alerts in Europe and the U.S. of new terrorist attempts to come.
All that raises questions about why radical Islamic terrorists are either increasing their efforts to kill Westerners, or at least not abating them — despite the reset/outreach efforts of the new administration. Have these wannabe killers forgotten the widely reported al-Arabiya interview, the Cairo speech, the bowing to the Saudi royal family, the promised civilian trial of KSM and closing of Guantanamo, the declarations from the head of NASA, and the euphemisms of “man-caused disasters” and “overseas contingency operations”? Did not the radical Islamists understand the message of outreach of the new American administration, the end of the dark days of “smoke ‘em out” and “dead or alive,” and the de facto confession that our policies were unnecessarily provocative during the eight years between 2001 to 2009? Thereby will they not at least mitigate their efforts to murder Americans, given our newfound decision to seek compromise rather than confrontation? And if not, why not? Why treat our magnanimity with contempt?
Less or More Terrorist Plots?
I suspect most of our elites have never played on the schoolyard. Asking the bully to negotiate or rethink his position never seemed to have worked for me when I was the smallest of the small kids. But when I decided to stand up for myself, I may have gotten smacked around, but the bully moved on to easier targets. Now if I could have convinced the other small ones to join forces, the bully may have run away and left us all alone.
Our enemies do not run away, unfortunately, thus they need to be defeated. We apparently have forgotten how we fought the Japanese Imperial Army when they controlled innocent populations. We need to relearn how to fight without one hand behind our back, like the “Amber” status where we sent men out on patrol in Afghanistan by officers under Gen. McChrystal’s leadership. “Amber” status requires weapons to have a loaded magazine, but the safety on and no round chambered. Michael Yon, an independent journalist, reported that information about the ROE order. Thus, I suppose the logic was if the enemy attacked, our men could not automatically and immediately react to return fire that could kill innocents. So some of our leadership was apparently willing to potentially trade the lives of our men for the lives of terrorists, or militants as the media portrays them, and the innocents they intentionally placed in harms way.
Unlike the schoolyard, we are fighting for our survival whether we want to admit it or not, and one fighting to survive doesn’t play nice, especially when the other side has no rules.
I wonder how many Americans actually understand what is going on in our world. I hear and speak to people everyday that could not care less about politics, what is happening with China, currency etc.
“well there is nothing I can do about it. I’ll just have to worry if it happens”, “just so I get my paycheck, let ‘em kill each other”..:o frightening.
The problem is it’s the USIsrael that are the bullies. We have been trying to get a foothold in the East since before the Boxer Rebellion in China 100 years ago, and we have had a foothold in the Middle East since we shoehorned the Jews out of Europe and back to Palestine in the 40s. Along the way we have invaded, occupied, raped and pillaged more parts of the world than anyone else (not because Russia and China didn’t try, we were just better at it), so naturally we are identified as bullies. And when facing a bully, just like David and Goliath, you have to resort to whatever you can. Terrorists have to maximize the impact of their small resources because they can’t afford to make conventional war.
If someone had invaded your land, killed and raped your family, destroyed your home and put the remaining survivors into a camp for 50 years, would you just sit idly by and accept the “rules” of war laid down by those who did this to you? Of course not.
Why is this so hard to understand? The US has made enemies by being bullies, and we are sowing what we have reaped.
You give drivel a good name.
This list of paradoxes is confounding. A plausible explanation is that there’s been an en masse shift lower of moral standards. Couple that with an abdication of accountability for oneself, as well as with others in one’s community, and perhaps some of these bizarre trends are explained.
Consider the inflation of grades in high schools and universities. This trend has undermined the education standards for decades now. I wonder just how significant this issue is towards some of the attitudes you mention, which are highly counterproductive.
yeh, a massive shift in moral standards is what they’ve been doing for decades. The list is endless. 70% out-of-wedlock rate for blacks, also high for other races. Pornograpy is by far the most successful online business. Homosexuality is now celebrated in the pop culture. Rap music, enough said. Businesses simply accept shoplifting percentages of 15% or more. The NY Times advocates that people walk on their mortgages. School grades are now meaningless. Drug abuse no longer considered a crime. Drug addiction, Alcoholism, obesity, gambling addiction, sex addiction, aids and other venereal diseases…not your fault….just viruses you picked up on the street. Porn actors appear on normal tv as celebreties. Secularism is exalted, religious people are held up to ridicule. When was the last time you heard anybody over 8 call an adult Mr. or Mrs? That’s just a cursory list.
It isn’t a galactic congruence of random events. It’s been a key part of the strategy to bring down America for at least 60 years.
I hear you proreason. Integrity and discipline are two values that have been eroded.
On a personal note, my 15 year old nephew has decided he’s agnostic because he doesn’t like going to church, and is going to develop his own moral code.
His 13 year old brother called him lazy, and that he just wanted to sleep in on Sunday morning. When the older boy was asked who will hold up and stand for values necessary in a functioning and prosperous society, such as to love your neighbour, and treat others as you’d want to be treated, he had no answer.
Good for the younger brother! And the older one will not be let off the hook.
It was a healthy, and positive conversation, and one about life questions, as both of these young boys go through their teenage journey. I’m confident in both of my nephews to continue to develop into contributing members of all they participate in, and really hope more of this kind of dialogue can happen in a constructive and respectful manner.
There’s nothing wrong with questions and curiousity – even if it’s to gain a sleep in on Sunday morning ;-) so long as we all are making decisions that are sound, and that help rather than hurt. Let’s hope more discussions can happen about making better decisions, and dialogue that gets us on track personally, and as a population. I still have hope for that, and do believe in the individuals of our countries.
Humans live in social groups. Those groups are of related individuals, but the society is maintained and defined by rules. Usually these rules are part religious, part tradition, and part etiquette. It doesn’t particularly matter what the rules are, as long as they are generally respected, the group survives. Because the group’s survival depends upon these rules, transgressions are punished by expulsion, and direct attacks on the rules will be met with deadly force (it’s social self-preservation). As Kipling put it, there are those within the law and without the law. For those without the law, it’s always a free-fire zone. I guess it’s nice that VDH doesn’t believe that blood is thicker than water, but I bet he’s in the small minority on that question. I felt much more at home visiting Frankenmuth, MI, or living in Germany, than I did living in Detroit. ‘They’ are most emphatically not my people.
I am constantly barraged with requests for MOAR MUNNEE to ‘save the children’, perform surgery on that one; ‘for a few pennies a month you can feed this family, educate, house and clothe that one, appeals coming from U.S. despising third world nations already getting billions in aid from American taxpayers…just who is pocketing the bucks and their citizens be damned?
Greed crouches behind these unfortunate kids, using them as living tin cups held out to sympathetic Westerners.
There shouldn’t be an empty stomach or unclothed body or cleft pallette left on the entire planet…oh, wait…that would be what’s in store for us bitter clingers…
I’m waiting for these new cables, as released by Wikileaks, to show how our “passive aggressive, lawyer trained federal government employees really think. Time for them to come to the front of the class where we citizens live, work and die…to tell us the truth of what’s what in their worlds.
Meanwhile, Obama-Mao’s fat ‘n stitched lip just might be the symbolism I’ve been seeking.
Mexico may bring in drugs to the USA, but California and other states are the leaders in great pot and all those efforts to make smoking weed legal…I’ve got a real headache thinking how our media carries the radical left’s agenda!
Hanson needs to get on FOX News for more exposure, which would help us all!
Where’s my matches, amigo?
As much as I’d be delighted to see those in government exposed that deserve to be admonished, wiki leaks will impair candour in diplomacy.
For example, would Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II have succeeded in toppling the Berlin Wall, if they couldn’t have spoken openly and with confidence about the issues of combating oppression amongst former Eastern European dictatorships? It was worthwhile to have risked some possible inane dialogue to achieve this objective. Undoubtedly there were comments about some former dictators that would have been colourful to say the least.
It’s the very difficult trust factor, that is necessary for government to achieve anything useful. And yes, even if we have countless reasons not to trust them, wiki leaks will only make a lame situation worse. It’s just not worth the cost, for the opportunity to read about Prince Andrew’s bad behaviour or to compromise security concerns towards Iran for example.
DBS: You don’t see what I see, it’s just that simple.
Recall the outrage over those pictures of that Iraq prison our “enlisted” personnel offered up. Now we have the “thinkers” getting their laundry presented for all to see!
How do you think your “medical” records will be handled by these enlightened few? Privacy for some, not for you and me pal!
Throw the bums out!
Keep low and five yards apart…
Korea: We did ourselves and the South Koreans a great disservice by using our troops as tripwires for decades. South Korea is one of the wealthiest nations in the world and has 15-times the Gross Domestic Product per capita as North Korea and twice the population (thus having a GDP almost 30-times that of North Korea). If South Korea spend 4% of its GDP on military defense, the military budget would be greater than entire economic output of North Korea. Without our presence, North Korea would have invaded years ago, and South Korea could have broken the invading armies, counterattacked, overthrown the dictatorship, and reunited Korea.
Bureau of Indian Affairs: The income gap between the Native Americans on reservations that do not offer gambling and those on reservations that do is enormous. Since poverty in the USA now is relative, more money is needed to raise the standards of living of those on non-gambling reservations.
Victor: “Had there not been such a multibillion-dollar private industry on Indian lands would the federal Indian Affairs budget have been smaller or larger?”
Gee, you ask good questions. There is nothing better to clear the head of foggy sentimentality and recalled propaganda than a good question. I shall assay to formulate another one. Since the Dept. of Agriculture has a large banking arm, lending[read giving away in some cases] money to supposed farmers and farming corporations, why shouldn’t the Bureau of Indian Affirs be shut down and their mission be transferred to the Dept of Agri., thus saving overhead and initiating an employee buyout program?
If it was just the Koreas involved, you would be correct. Unfortunately, there is that entity called ‘The People’s Republic of China’ with a billion plus and a very large standing army that would have intervened and could crush S. Korea. The US is there because of China, not Kim Jung Il.
DD
Agreed.
Still, I would think that after the Korean War we were probably looking for MORE footholds in Southeast Asia. Maybe not a bright idea today, but made sense to those who were in the KNOW (if they were at all) in 1953/4.
I grew up next door (literally) to a an American Indian Reservation in Nebraska. I don’t live there anymore, but I know a lot about what goes on from people I grew up with. I suspect there is a certain amount of racism in their thoughts as they have seen the tribes do some pretty bizarre stuff (incidently with no disrepect, so did I in my youth until the age of 21 when I left. Yes I had Indian friends. Yes I witnessed some sad goings on on the reservation).
Casinos don’t always work if certain ‘elders’ and ‘headmen/women’ in the tribe decide to make the casino their personal fiefdom. Yes it happens.
Still I would hope that we can help out Native Americans as they have had a bad time of it with the European invaders (then again as I always say “we Danes didn’t decide to freeze our ass off in Denmark on the Jutland Peninnsula when we left the Riviera in southern France, SOMEBODY pushed us there” and so it goes).
The Cherokee in Eastern Oklahoma seem to be doing well. As are the tribes in many sectors also. I think the upper midwest tribes are struggling ie. Nebraska, Dakotas in particular. Southwest tribes seem to be strong and living the way they want, but don’t know for sure. Go ‘Casino Land’ if you can make it work.
Just passing thoughts,
Larsky
“Perhaps peace ensues when clear-cut defeat or victory decides a war. In contrast, an ongoing, on/off conflict is the legacy of truces and temporary armistices, as we pass the unresolved war on to our children.”
Exactly my point. Stalemates and endless yakking has never ensured peace, but an unwavering United States victory has. Bottom line: If war is declared against you or if you declare war against another FINISH THE WAR. Otherwise, if you have no intention of finishing the war then you should never have went to war in the first place.
Regarding “Amber Status”…
According to those who would have known, during the VN war, it was generally the case amongst GIs that except for the man walking point, everybody else would have had a full mag inserted but no round chambered in their M-16s. The same was more or less true for the guys armed with M-79, 40mm grenade launchers, which were usually carried with a round chambered (they were single shot weapons), but with the receiver wide open, shotgun style. It was far more dangerous to our own people to go around hair-triggered, than to take a half second to lock and load when the sh*t actually hit the fan. Which, in fact, was rarely.
What was your MOS?
The difference from today and yesteryear is we were once a melting pot yet all “Americans”, today we are taught to be different cultures and that the American culture is the worst worthy only of demonizing, so there is little glue to hold us to gather, just like in the past your family, then Church and finally local community took care of their own (down trodden) the “State” was avoided and no one ever went to Uncle Sam for personal help now it’s the State and Uncle Sam first and keep your standards and morals to yourself just give me my food stamps and credit card… The stigma of shame has been removed so that now it’s a right to get as much as possible and game the system for as much as you can, while cheating the IRS out of as much as you can…. We will not survive this… there will be blood, there may not be a whole United States afterwards.
Moslems keep on trying to kill us. They’re celebrated by their own. They’re coddled by too many of us.
Lamar Alexander put it well: “We don’t do comprehensive very well.”
What is not “comprehensive” about our present immigration laws?
What is not “comprehensive” about their enforcement, and the history of bureaucratic failures (a.k.a. “Government Failure”) to at least track visa overstays, erroneous visa issuances, share data from the Sate department, etc., etc.?
We don’t need “comprehensive;” we need COMPETENCE – where is it?
Exactly.
So, I see a new article by VDH, so I open it, and the first sentence reads: Sometimes realty seems at odds with perceived wisdom.
Yes, yes it does.
From the land of the underwater mortgage!
I can’t help it, I’m laughing helplessly. It’s an intersection of silliness and personal situation. The world of realty is, indeed, at odds with perceived wisdom. Or even just wisdom.
When these things are inexplicable, the most likely answer is that they are all red herrings, whose intent is to confuse and to mislead the electorate. When we are focused on fluff, then we aren’t concentrating on what’s important.
Korea is the prototypical noh play, being performed in its 20th return to Broadway. Power comes from the barrel of a gun, and it isn’t being orchestrated in Pyongyang…look a little further North for the answer.
Black Friday is just normal human behavior…driven in extremis. Sorry if my Latin is rusty professor. If you don’t believe me, I’ll introduce you to my wife.
Rangle, AmerIndians, and Cartels are both symptoms of DC corruption. If you want to end them, then the voters will have to wise up. That may take awhile, but a real crisis could speed up the process a great deal. For example, if that Chinese general who has threatened to nuke LA three times now actually did it, then California’s Hispanic political class might feel that the enemy of my enemy is my friend…ditto if Al Qaeda does it. Everyone’s children’s safety may trump tribal instincts on the issue of troops on the border. Either way it would instantly be shoot-on-sight.
wGraves: It will be interesting to see how Portland, Oregon’s political elite interprets “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
We have proceeded timidly against this Islamic Jihad. Iran murdered our soldiers in Iraq and paid no price. In Afghanistan, our soldiers have absurd restrictions placed on them in order to win the hearts and minds of the villagers. Meanwhile, our enormous firepower is mostly off limits.
We need to start by admitting the obvious: a lot more Muslims are symapethic to Jihad and imposing Shiria law on the West than our government has said. We then need to stop worrying about nation-building and start unleashing the dogs of war that would anniliate the enemy.
I would start by confiscating the Saudi oil fields and destroying the Iranian regime. And those would be just the table stakes.
All true and well said except on one point: I am reasonably sure that most of the marijuana consumed in these parts DOES in fact come down from Canada. While I do not partake myself, I know that no serious marijuana enthusiast in the northwest would touch anything that came out of Mexico.
“I would hope that should 1 million Swedes decide to come into California en masse, overstay their visas, or have no visas, and then demand amnesty, I would demand that they would comply with the law and face the consequences of their violations.”
Not every group rally around their criminals. What does that tell you about Mexicans?
Heja Sverige!
“Military history reminds us that wars of all sorts — insurgencies, terrorism, conventional land invasions, high-tech aerial combat, missile exchanges — can in theory break out anytime. It was always the great strength of the postwar U.S. army, nursed on the experience of World War II from the jungles of Guadalcanal to the B-17 missions over Germany, that it was multifaceted and ready for any challenge.”
Which is why a large and well-balanced military will enable us to maintain our superpower status for years to come. In its day, Great Britain had an enormous Army and Navy during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries and remained the world’s dominant power because of that large well-balanced force. It was only after Britain lost this capability, shortly after World War II, that Britain was eclipsed as the world’s great power and was surpassed by the United States.
Superpower status is never a bargain. You have to pay for it in one way or another. You need a large military force and you have to be able to project power all over the world if you want to maintain that status. If you cannot do this, then you slip into obscurity and have to do whatever the other world’s superpower wants you to do. Do nuclear weapons level the playing field? Only partly, because if you’re not willing to use them, then your enemy will simply ignore them. And most of the bad guys around the world today, like Iran and North Korea, are banking on the fact that all of the nuclear powers in the west (like Britain, France, and the United States), will never use them. The only thing keeping rogue countries like Iran and North Korea from going totally insane is the conventional military power of the United States, and our enemies know it.
So it’s really up to us. If we want to remain the world’s only superpower, then we have to work for it by maintaining a large and well-balanced military force. If not, if we heed the cries of those isolationists who only want us to spend money on social-welfare programs and on domestic issues, then we will slip into insignificance like Great Britain. The choice really is up to us.
I think you will find that we had a small army and a big navy. Until we allied ourselves with the French in 1905; it soon went tango uniform.
Because it’s the aftermath of Thanksgiving and I’m feeling uncharacteristically generous –
Re the terror plots, I doubt if the President’s Cairo thing and those like it were directed at terrorists themselves. Rather it was aimed at the people in the Middle East, part of the hearts and minds campaign to prove to them that, you know, we’re a nice country and all that and we therefore deserve their support more than al-Qaeda does.
To which I would argue that if the President’s worried about winning their support, he should watch, of all things, that episode of The West Wing in which one of the characters goes off on a rant about how the Middle East will never like us and ends “they’ll like us when we win!”
Dianna, my wife and I have been fortunate all of our lives to own homes, raise a family, pay our bills etc.
I started a business six years ago that was doing well and needed only a couple of years of reasonable success to pay off the debt etc. Then the slowdown of 2007 hit followed by you know what.
Most of our personal wealth was in 401K’s and real estate. Our real estate, except for one rental property, which is paid off, is now completely underwater and worth less than is owed. I called our mortgage holder to see if we could get a refinance since our mortgage is at 6.0%. the holder said the property probably does not have a positive equity and that we now don’t qualify because of my lack of income because of the business though my wife works hard and has a strong income. Of course, we have paid the mortgage on time for seven years with them and have good credit.
My response to you is as follows: If you are poor, you can get help.
If you are struggling and can’t make your payments, you can get help.
If you want to do a short sale because you are tired of making payments, you can probably get help.
But…if you are making it on your own without a handout and still have assets they can eventually accumulate, you will get nothing until they have sucked up every last part of your income and savings. Once they have it all, then they will show mercy (or realize they can’t get blood from a turnip.)
I don’t ask for help, or ignore the mistakes of our investments. However, there is a game being played above our heads that most of us don’t understand, or can’t even believe.
We have a new reality, and our wisdom is being newly gained everyday. I now understand why they hate the Tea Party and Sarah Palin and jim DeMint. These are the people who are not of the ruling class and won’t play the game with the rules of the CFR, Wall Street and the world bankers.
We have been conned and we are just now waking up.
Thanks, I’m doing the slog onwards. I just found out that the same sort of house I have just sold for about $250 K less than I owe. It was quite a kick in the gut. But I won’t give up or cheat. Fortunately, I can still laugh.
“As an American, I feel far more affinity with a fellow Mexican-American citizen than with a citizen of Sweden. I hope it is so with others as well, and trust that in time it is so.”
This article had great logical momentum until it reached the last paragraph. At that time Dr. Hanson became as confused and lost from reality as everything he described.
The Mexican; aka illegal Hispanic problem will never be solved without separating emotion from chaos with some sort of an unknown; albeit favorable destiny couched in the flimsiness of faith and trust.
That kind of thinking produced and perpetuates the mess enough so that is mathematically reliable and worth continual political investment.
The BIA verses Indian Gambling . . . although I can not say how the tribes outside of Oklahoma distribute income I can say something about inside the state. Basically that NOT one penny, zero, nada of the income from the casinos in Oklahoma is actually distributed to the individual tribal citizens on a “profit sharing” basis. Most of the casinos, especially the largest ones, are managed by “large corporations” . . . such as the “Cherokee Hardrock Casino” in Tulsa. A significant percentage of the income from the casinos is funneled back to the State of Oklahoma just to keep the judicial and other branches of the State Government from creating various litigated court scenarios. Recently a huge expansion of Interstate 44, near the Cherokee Hardrock was totally rebuilt by funds provided by the Cherokee Nation. There are many, many such “Road & Infrastructure” projects that are also paid for by tribal funds. The end result, a very, very small percentage of the gambling produced money is actually seen at the Native Citizen level.
There was a time, years ago, when the tribes were looking at “high technology” business ventures. Every, and I mean every attempt of the Native Nations in Oklahoma to do such activities was met on every front by legal wrangling, regulatory delays, permits being witheld and in some cases the influence of the “good ole boys” clubs. Many of these attemtps by the tribes to do something other than gamble and sell tobacco ended up being litigated all the way to the Supreme Court an expensive and very time consuming process. Ultimatetly, the tribes chose business ventures that were “legal by precedent” . . . thus avoiding all the BS that goes with ANY other more moralistic business. Thus the corruption of the tribal business ventures continues and it will NEVER STOP.
So the answer to Dr Hanson’s question is “less.” As tribes gain money they lobby and litigate more. They can leverage their inherent sovereignty to obtain more power and privlige, but to the deteriment of equal protection and free markets.
Laughter here is not the best medicine. It’s a a gesture of helplessness and evasion. Get out the vote.
Votes, Votes, Votes. Immigration reform is nothing more than a power grab by the Dems. Divide the Caucasian vote, win the majority of minorities votes, and you will win every election.
Did not the radical Islamists understand the message of outreach of the new American administration…will they not at least mitigate their efforts to murder Americans, given our newfound decision to seek compromise rather than confrontation? And if not, why not? Why treat our magnanimity with contempt?
They laugh at that stuff, see such proclamations as evidence that they are succeeding in their agenda of Islam’s worldwide domination.
Allahu Akbar, baby.
I always remember the observation of Jean Francoise Revel who asked “progressives” about the most interesting paradox of all in modern astronomy – “Why is the dark night of facism forever descending in the United States yet always landing in Europe?”
AND THE REALITY IS:
Main stream media, the Democrat Party, ivy league educators, the United States Congress, the President of the United States, ARE ALL GLORIFYING IGNORANCE.
The MSM and Congress are relishing in their victory to put a ‘boy’ in the White House. A boy that has no idea how to gain respect from anyone for the position that America has given HIM the opportunity to achieve such status.
And since he has no knowledge how to gain respect, he uses his popsition to demean and demoralize the populace in order to bring it to his level of character.
Like a pre-schooler that throws a fit in class because no one is paying them any attention.
America is in serious trouble as indicated by the victories of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, whom hold deep malice toward the citizens of this country.
We have two quarters of this vicious game left, with these ‘domestic terrorists’, and we need more ‘defense’.
God help us.
VDH
I have an equation. It looks like this I < T < NI = C
Intolerance, is a hammer that leftists have used, quite effectively. The accusation that leftists pour upon non-leftists …is, at its core, the charge of intolerance of any and all others "not like them".
This allows them to take the moral high ground in each and every debate. Moreover, the reality of today is not the issue. Yesterday works just as well, a year ago, a decade ago, a century ago, no matter.
When and where we cross the moralist's sensibility line, depends not one whit upon the facts on the ground, but upon the facts on the air. The publicity stunt has replaced moral outrage, march for justice with the parade for manufactured grievance.
It matters not one whit that nearly a half-million men died or had limbs blown off fighting for the rights of someone who did not look like them, but stared down brother against brother, father against son because of a moral righteousness that trumped identity. How often in the history of mankind has that happened? Where else is it more evident than here?
Yet, it counts for nothing in today's New Intolerance.
In fact, leftists continue to try to find ways to build a House Divided. Wedge issues are formulated out of whole cloth and hurled into us like so many grenades.
The citizen patriot is the least among us, constantly belittled and berated. Called stupid with impunity. Scorned and unbidden to the new fete of "others", who are to replace him.
The New Intolerance is a "us" vs. "them" game…and we are permanently "them". The Muslim terrorist needs coddling, the objects of his fanatical rage…do not. The border crasher deserves amnesty from his sins, the citizen patriot has "original sin" of religion/color and may not.
It's a simple equation. Leftists view you and me as the enemy. Charlie Rangel and Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton could get away with anything, they are always more innocent than guilty, you and I are permanently guilty by proxy.
I have an equation too. It looks like this:
cybergeezer #24 + “The MSM and Congress are relishing in their victory to put a ‘boy’ in the White House.” < "Intolerance, is a hammer that leftists have used" = racism X hypocrisy / the Tea Party
“In fact, leftists continue to try to find ways to build a House Divided. Wedge issues are formulated out of whole cloth and hurled into us like so many grenades.”
Oh, please! Conservatives seem to be looking for wedge issues all the time. Karl Rove was a master.
you have clearly shown what is happening in your post.
…but how is it left to stand? I know that it does, you are correct. Still it defies my logic. It doesn’t make sense. Is it just envy? A genetic dissonance in humans?
I mean it is easily mapped out as parasite or producer. Are there more parasites? Has society just become a mob?
From a strictly logical or common sense approach this should not have been able to happen. Sadly it has.
GPM
It is left to stand, because we will not call it out by name.
We have been beaten and bullied for so long that we will stammer and stutter when we see with our very eyes what is there to be seen. We will be halting and hesitant.
If one reads Stanley Kurtz’s book, “Radical-In-Chief” from cover to cover, one would come away with some very specific conclusions. Combined with other things that we know, one would say the following:
1)Van Jones is a communist
2)The New Party is socialist
3)ACORN/SEIU are stealth socialist
4)Bill Ayers, at a minimum is a small c communist
5)Jan Schakowsky is a de facto socialist
6)The NYTimes has a history or socialist/communist leanings
7)Most of the lapdog media is nothing more than a front group for the Democratic Party, in which they will take polar opposite positions yesterday from today, depending upon whether it helps a leftist Democrat or hurts either a conservative, centrist or Republican
8)Our very language is a subliminal attempt to advance the stealth, unchecked, rampant leftism within our society, where we use watered down words and phrases to describe things wholly and utterly different from what they are: “progressive”, “mainstream”, “liberal”, “elite”.
We are deathly afraid of being called McCarthy-ist. We are subliminally infused with a language that advances the cause of rampant, unchecked leftism.
Western Civilization in general is under siege. On two fronts. Islam has adopted the strategy and tactics of leftism to undermine it and it is a race to the finish line to see which tears it down first.
America and Israel are the prime targets. John Kerry seeks Israel to give up its very seat of government, the place of the Knesset, the home of the Prime Minister and President, the seat of its Supreme Court.
And, we fiddle like Nero. We, GPM…are deathly afraid to say out loud what we see. We fear the insult more than the result.
We have been bullied and beaten into submission. And we are submissive. We use the language of those who mean to tear down the system. We are halting, hesitant, unsure.
It has been brilliant in strategy and tactics. They have lit the fires all around us and we choose to play our fiddle, GPM. We choose to play our fiddle.
It’s a good point.
They start with a conclusion; some variation of I’m right, you’re wrong or you are ruining something so I have to fix it.
Then they find some data. Not facts, just data points; in most cases totally isolated data points. Whites killed Indians. Bad. Totally isolated from the facts that Indians also killed whites, that Indians were primative and ruthless, that people have been replacing others from time immorial, that America became a paradise, that Indians are now wealthy, that……. The only chosen data points are the ones they intend to club you with.
And as you say, the data points can be current, last year, a decade ago, centuries ago. Doesn’t matter. Whites killed Indians.
Then they hammer you with it with inexhaustable energy. That’s all you will hear on the matter, possibly forever.
After awhile, the expectation is that you will give in and they will get what they want.
But they don’t reckon with the fact that even adults have limits on their patience.
Military history reminds us that wars of all sorts — insurgencies, terrorism, conventional land invasions, high-tech aerial combat, missile exchanges — can in theory break out anytime. It was always the great strength of the postwar U.S. army, nursed on the experience of World War II from the jungles of Guadalcanal to the B-17 missions over Germany, that it was multifaceted and ready for any challenge.
Some ask: “Why do we have any F-22s given the realities of an Afghanistan?” Others would counter: “Why do we not have more given the realities of an even more important Korean peninsula?”
One of the great failures of military planning is assuming the next war will be like the last one (“planning to fight the last war”). After the invasion of Panama in 1989 by light infantry troops, there were calls to disband heavy armored units because they were no longer necessary. About 13 months later, those heavy armored units bore the bulk of fighting in the Gulf War’s land phase.
The tactics and equipment best suited for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan would likely be unsuited for combat in Korea or against a well equipped adversary like China. Between WWI and WWII, the US military was pitiful and ranked about 14th in the world. When war came to us, we suffered heavy losses of personnel and equipment in 1942 while getting the pipeline of personnel and equipment up to speed and learning the lessons of a new war. Following the end of that war, the military drew down to a shell of its former self. By 1950 when the Korean War broke out, our military was poorly equipped and trained. As a result, we bore heavy losses. After Korea, we vowed to keep the military strong but they still were poorly trained and equipped for the jungle fighting in Vietnam. I joined the military after high school graduation in 1975 (11B2P) and most of our equipment was worn out with a shortage of spare parts and ammo. Carter’s abortive attempt to rescue the hostages from Iran in 1980 showed how weak we were. It wasn’t until Reagan took office in 1981 that things began to turn around. Even then, they found out during the Grenada invasion that interoperability between the services was weak with Army radios being unable to communicate with Navy/Marine radios.
Going to war isn’t always a choice you get to make. Sometimes, other people make the choice for you. When that happens, you go to war with the military you have. You can’t always count on having a year or more to spin up production of new equipment to fight the new opponent and some equipment takes over 10 years to get through the design phase and out to the field. Realistically, the best we can do is determine what potential threats we may face and prepare to fight any of them. It’s expensive in money but failure to do so is even more expensive in blood.
Maybe there’s a difference in that news gets written in cities, by city- dwellers. Lives in America get lived in the suburbs, a far more private place. Last time I checked, the books that kids actually read are fairly normal- peanuts cartoons, garfield cartoons, D’aulaire’s mythology, the rick riordan mythologies- stories about what is good and true and heroic and funny. what gets assigned by the young teachers is twisted dystopian and humorless. ?population control?dead kids?only heroic girls? For that matter, Great Illustrated Classics- which are sold in craft stores, or grocery stores, are still selling briskly. They are hardbounds on cheap paper, with pen and ink drawings. And boys love them.
Or morality. I don’t know any impolite kids. I might see kids that the teachers have written off, or parents who are teaching some odd notions, but kids are desperate to fit in and be good. They say thank you, and yes, sir and yes, ma’am, if that’s what their parents teach, or “Yes Miss X” or “Yes, first name” depending on what their parents teach. I will say I find the health and body lessons taught at school are exactly the ones that we decry, and I’m not sure what to do about it. But they are not wild animals- they are the children we have raised.
Black Friday- how’s about both? I worked as a cashier this weekend. I saw people spending hundreds of dollars on fake flowers to decorate their houses. I saw a mom asking her mother to buy a 49 cent piece of poster-board for a school assignment. Her husband had gone to Iraq in one piece, and come home in several. They were both at the same store, one standing in line behind the other. I know the mom, which is why I know her story. She wasn’t caterwauling her needs. Her kids thought this financial carefulness was normal, and that grandma loved them and believed in their ability as future scientists.
Do the tribes take care of each other, as an “all-indians together” or well, are they tribal? I wouldn’t wish the childhood of any Indian adult I’ve met, on anyone else. I think I’d rather wish an audit on the BIA, rather than an increase. 100 years of foolish management and wretched misery is a bit much.
The single largest sale was to a “staging guy” buying for a computer millionaire- who had grown up the poorest kid in town. I would like to think that the poor kids surrounded by love, and taking the evidence of his grandmother’s shopping as belief in him, would grow up to be rich, too.
I miss GWB. He at least gave the terrorists the courtesy of believing them to be dangerous and effective men. As far as I can tell, the worst part of Guatanamo is that they aren’t allowed to affect their part of the world, anymore. Why not take this as a stage of development? Really learn to pray? Or read? Or study American law? Why hang yourself since today is the only important day? We had centuries of monasteries, where men grew in wisdom, and they transformed europe, decisively. Why not have the mosque of Gitmo? Why must a mosque only be built on smoking ruins?
The military budget could be cut by one-half if they would stop doing Social Work and start winning wars. Have you noticed that “smart bombs” have the effect of extending conflict where as “real bombs” bring a speedy end to things.
Domestic spending on security could also be cut by at least one-half if profiling was employed. How many Mexicans and Sweeds have attempted terrorism ?
Obama’s fat lip received immediate treatment. How long do the rest of us have to wait in line ? Perhaps if he had gone to a regular inner city ER it would have been his best photo op yet.
Obama knows nothing about running a business and has surrounded himself with equally inept , inexperienced college grads. His understanding of history began with Rev. Wright and he appears to have no interest in furthering his knowledge. This little fake needs to go.
Ari,
Your questions resound with me. A “mosque of Gitmo?” Heavy, and bracing. Where’re CNN’s cultural correspondents when we need them? An analysis of where mosques aren’t might give MSNBC’s correspondents pause.
Recently I graduated one of America’s state’s fire fighting schools. Our course was interrupted by several 9/11 reminiscences, all moving, and all totally unnecessary to this long-memory’d citizen. But the week’s news was surmounted by the Twin-Towers Mosque debate and NYC’s mayor’s memorable part in the debate… And so, when I shook the NYPD rep’s hand after the graduation commemoration I said, “Fire Bloomberg.”
Silence ensued. No single urban politico, other than say, Obama or Hillary, has paid more lip service to first responder unions since 9/11 than NYC Mayor Bloomberg.
Just goes to show that our urban republicans are just as vested in the establishment unions’ game as are big city Democrats. These guys, coddled by Clintonian coos and social scolds like Bloomberg, are as much a part of the problem as a Chuck Schumer, a Barney Franks or a Jamie Gorelick are.
Palin = Lysol to these guys. Makes the media hype o’er a wittle Wassila girl make sense, huh?
The Islamic Threat –or- Makkah Delenda Est
================================
Last week, Germany was put on “red alert” and so was France. The talk was that some Islamist groups were hell bent on instigating an attack sometime in December similar to the now nearly forgotten Mumbai “hotel” attacks.
Also last week, some British retired general or someone like that, flat out stated that the West could not win out against the jihadists and that we will be “fighting” them in one form or another in one field of combat or another for the next 30 years.
Given this scenario, one would think that deportation on a massive scale would be the order of the day. That would seem to be the rational course of action to take care of the problem.
In addition, such tactics as not allowing Moslems to fly within the USA should become the law of the land, period. Nor should they be allowed entry into our universities (where do you think the Iranian nuclear scientists were trained? The Holy City of Qom?
But all this is and similar preventative actions are not going to happen, for reasons too well known and too numerous to list here.
That means that within the next 30 years or so, countless thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Westerners, both civilians and military, can expect to be killed in the line of duty (the Middle East) or in the line of fire (Portland).
Why is this being allowed to happen? Unpalatable as it may sound, I think the answer is rather clear.
I believe that for at least the last 10 years or so, Western leaders have been working within the boundaries of a “world-historical” policy decision they have all quietly made and to which they all adhere. This policy is not written down anywhere on paper: it’s simply “understood”.
This policy indeed recognizes the existential threat the Islamist movement poses for Western civilization.. It also realizes that to get rid of this threat, tens, perhaps hundreds of millions would have to be liquidated or rendered utterly powerless. Borders would have to be redrawn, heinous Islamic practices would have to be outlawed, whole populations would have to be relocated and so on.
In other words, the entire Islamic project would be forced to come to a total standstill. Which is to say, Islamic civilization itself would be rendered null and void.
This is too awful a picture for Westerners to contemplate. It could be done, of course, but it won’t be. Not a chance.
Instead, Western leaders have agreed that it is better to have “a few” Westerners killed or slaughtered every now and then. This “acceptable” slaughter would be a sacrifice Western leaders are willing to have their societies endure in order to avoid having to rearrange the world and the havoc that would cause.
After all, the USA has a population of 300 million. Ditto with Europe. What’s a few thousand killed every year or so given these numbers? Nothing. A drop in the bucket, if that.
This sacrifice will hardly be noticed, eventually. In fact, this attitude is already underway and becoming “acceptable” in polite society and society at large.
It’s martyrdom in reverse. Rather than kill like a suicide bomber, be killed as a sacrifice for the greater good. You too will be granted entry into Paradise with all kinds of dancing virgins at your beck and call.
The hope, of course, is that “eventually” the Islamist threat would peter out and die of it’s own accord. In the meantime, we’ll just have to grin and bear it.
Islamic attacks will become as commonplace as abortions and will in time enter “mainstream” society as simply one more unpleasant fact of life we “have to live with”.
This is the only explanation that makes sense to me given the lukewarm and unenthusiastic responses the West has made against the Saracen threat. We should have 5 million soldiers in Afghanistan, for instance, not a puny hundred thousand or so.
But it’s not going to happen. Our hearts and souls are just not up for that kind of fight, or so our leaders believe.
Therefore, prepare yourself and your loved ones for the unstable and threatening world that will be your legacy and your chidren’s inheritance.
Pax Vobiscum
A large enough attack, on the order of 9/11 or greater could trigger national survival instincts. A hawk might then be elected to bring out the hammer. Let us pray that it never comes to that.
I’m not as convinced as you are that our leadership cannot be pushed into a more assertive stance in the meantime.
If our long term goal is to ‘pacify’ Islam, that is to say, to force some sort of reformation upon Islam, so that its warlike and imperialistic teachings are discredited or reinterpreted, then we should try to avoid punishing the innocent. (This logic however can easily be carried too far). At the same time we must make the guilty feel the pain of their own deeds. They aren’t afraid to die, but there are other means.
Deporting all Muslims may not be necessary. Perhaps deporting only those who are members of radical mosques, and other hardline Islamic groups along with their families would be enough for the many moderates to realize that they must actively distance themselves from the Jihadis. This may pierce the veil of silence. Many Muslims have secret doubts about their religion, but are afraid to voice them.
And there are other subtle ways one could launch a cultural counter-attack. Sometimes when dealing with very large groups, only very slight pressures at the right point can trigger very large effects, as time and numbers act as amplifiers. The left knows this lesson well, but they got impatient with the advent of The One. The result is that they’ve triggered a counter-revolution which will sweep them away in two years. At least their current incarnation.
Of course, as you say, it requires the right leadership. But there is an opportunity here too. It is up to us to keep the momentum going as the country continues its swing back to center-right. If we keep the pressure our new hybrid GOP, push them to open their ranks wide to the new influence of our Tea Party representatives, we may force them to pierce through the constraining web of Political Correctness that has been spun by the left for the last 40 years. Things will likely get worse before it gets better, but we are well beyond the stage where any quick fixes will work. We need to go straight for the rot that has infected our political system. Some of it is on the right and takes the form of an old boys network. We need their wisdom and experience to keep things focused and unified. But we need to start driving this thing with Tea Party fuel. Make it clear that if the old GOP stands in our way, they too will be blasted out during the next round of primaries. Make our common cause to smash the bonds of constraining leftist Paradigms! This is our one narrow window of hope, but it is a very powerful one. If we can thread the needle, we will prevail against all comers. If not….
Vae Victis
There’s another explanation. You misunderstand the mission of Western elites. Their mission isn’t to protect their own populations; their mission is to conquer their own populations. The pressing problem they see isn’t Islam. They know they can erase it in a few months, whenever they feel like it.
But their own populations are tougher nuts to crack, particularly in the US, where the unruly serfs are well armed.
So they have effectively allied with Islam. Muslim fanatics are a convenient weapon to break down the will of the armed population. That and everything else is directed toward a multi-decade war to return the world to its classic structure: a tiny, all-powerful aristocracy that controls and exploits a huge mass of peasants that has no chance of rising up.
Islam knows it as well. Muslim leaders hope that the Ruling Class / Country Class struggle goes on long enough and is exhausting enough to give the Islamic world time to catch up technologically and destroy the west.
For the moment, it’s an alliance of convenience.
I love Hanson. Right on as usual. And now I love Ari. Great post.
Come back and write again.
Weakness, whether real or perceived, is the greatest provocation of them all.
Obama proves this every day.