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The
Suicide of the Palestinians (David Gelernter) new
“We ought to face squarely the origins of the Palestinian descent
into barbarism. In July 2000, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak
made a peace offer that stunned Israel and the world: Israel would
re-divide Jerusalem — would turn over large pieces of its ancient
capital to the same people who had destroyed its synagogues, desecrated
its cemeteries, and banned Jews from entering when they last ran
the show. Arafat rejected the offer. Then in September 2000 the
new wave of murderous violence began, supposedly triggered by Ariel
Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount.... Everyone knows about
Munich, September 1938: Britain and France generously donate a big
slice of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, in exchange for ‘peace with
honor,’ ‘peace in our time,’ and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Many people know about the Kristallnacht pogrom, November 1938:
Germany’s approach to the Jews turns from mere oppression to
bloodthirsty violence. Kristallnacht was ‘triggered’ by
the murder of a German diplomat by a deranged Jew. But some (not
all) historians point out the obvious: A leading cause of Kristallnacht
was Munich itself. Hitler read the Munich agreements as a proclamation
by England and France stating: ‘We are weak; you have nothing
to fear; do what you like.’ The analogy is not close, just
close enough. Israel is no Czechoslovakia and was not sold down
the river. Barak made his offer freely and in good faith. But to
a significant number of Palestinians, the offer obviously said:
‘We are weak; you have nothing to fear; attack.’ Appeasement
doesn’t merely fail to prevent catastrophe, it provokes catastrophe.”
A
Peace of My Mind (Dave Shiflett) new
“Have you slapped a pacifist today? If not, get to it. It’s
one thing to protest a war undertaken in some remote jungle you
have to take a long flight to, and whose purposes may be a bit gauzy.
It’s quite another when the enemy is dive-bombing New York
and Washington. The fact that our enemies are determined to return
the world to the seventh century and force our women to dress in
sacks makes the anti-war position all the more controversial. There
seems little choice but to douse these people with the hot oil of
ridicule. At the outset, it should be pointed out that these contemporary
pacifists are not cut from the same cloth as history’s grand
Mahatmas, whose neutrality may have sometimes been in error but
who were people of large and often courageous spirit.... Not so
the new breed, which appears to be largely made up of self-absorbed
snots. When the heat shows up, they run. If they get jugged, they
get someone to post bail, preferably on Daddy’s AmEx card.
Some do a bit of car-burning and looting on the side. They blossom
most brilliantly in the spotlight, which they are forever seeking,
and they hail from the expected provinces: Hollywood, the Ivy League,
the Ivory Tower, Trust Fund City. Many hold dual citizenship.”
Study:
Death penalty deters scores of killings (Paul Rubin) new
“Executions are always controversial, and there are always
debates about whether states should use the death penalty. But this
debate cannot proceed rationally unless we fully understand the
advantages and disadvantages of execution.... One conservative version
of our model finds that each execution deters an average of 18 homicides,
with a range of between 8 and 28 murders deterred by each execution.
Other variants find even larger numbers of prevented murders....
We as a society might decide that we want to eliminate capital punishment.
But this should be an informed decision, and should consider both
the costs and benefits of executions. Our evidence is that there
are substantial benefits from executions and, thus, substantial
costs of changing this policy.”
Minoritarianism:
A dangerous obsession (John Derbyshire) new
“In a civilized liberal democracy, majorities owe certain things
to harmless minorities: tolerance, civility, and the rights granted
in the Constitution — freedom of speech, assembly, etc. However,
it seems to me that minorities owe something to the majority in
return: mainly, a proper respect for their tastes, beliefs, and
sensibilities, and a decent restraint in challenging them, if there
are some reasonable grounds for challenging them. This contract
imposes some costs on minorities, of course, but I think they should
look on those costs as the price of the tolerance they enjoy. Is
that patronizing? Well, then add ‘being patronized’ to
the list of costs — none of which, in any case I can think
of in American society today, is much more arduous or oppressive
than that. There are, after all, reciprocal costs on the majority
when they make those accommodations.... I don’t see any danger
at all that majorities will ride roughshod over minorities unless
restrained by wise, omniscient elites. I do, though, see the opposite
danger: That by allowing themselves to be browbeaten by those elites
into yielding on every single point of accommodation demanded by
every loud minority, the majority will find at last that they have
no institutions, no traditions, no moral landmarks, no common understandings
left, and will be adrift in a wasteland of moral relativism, naked
to the cold, heartless winds of intellectual fashion.”
Can
There Be a Decent Left? (Michael Walzer) new
“A few left academics have tried to figure out how many civilians
actually died in Afghanistan, aiming at as high a figure as possible,
on the assumption, apparently, that if the number is greater than
the number of people killed in the Towers, the war is unjust. At
the moment, most of the numbers are propaganda; there is no reliable
accounting. But the claim that the numbers matter in just this way,
that the 3120th death determines the injustice of the war, is in
any case wrong. It denies one of the most basic and best understood
moral distinctions: between premeditated murder and unintended killing.
And the denial isn’t accidental, as if the people making it
just forgot about, or didn’t know about, the everyday moral
world. The denial is willful: unintended killing by Americans in
Afghanistan counts as murder. This can’t be true anywhere else,
for anybody else.”
The
man who knows too much (Jonathan Tobin) new
“CNN reporter Steve Emerson was stuck in Oklahoma City on Christmas
1992 with nothing to do and wandered by the city’s Convention
Center, where a gathering of the Muslim Arab Youth Association was
taking place. Inside, he found ‘books preaching Islamic Jihad,
books calling for the extermination of Jews and Christians, even
coloring books instructing children on subjects, such as How
to Kill the Infidel.’ Later, after listening to speeches
urging jihad against the Jews and the West from luminaries such
as the head of the Hamas terrorist group, Emerson called his contacts
in the FBI to inquire whether they were aware of this bizarre meeting
in the American heartland. They were not. A year later, Emerson
attended a similar Muslim conference in Detroit that included representatives
from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terror groups. It
also included an appearance from a befuddled senior FBI agent. When
a member of the hostile audience asked the agent for advice on how
to ship weapons overseas, Emerson relates that the G-man said, matter-of-factly,
that he ‘hoped any such efforts would be done in conformance
with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms guidelines.’
Apparently, the FBI official had attended the radical conference
under the mistaken impression that it was ‘some kind of Rotary
Club.’”
The
Core of Muslim Rage (Thomas Friedman) new
“It has to do with the contrast between Islam’s self-perception
as the most ideal and complete expression of the three great monotheistic
religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — and the
conditions of poverty, repression and underdevelopment in which
most Muslims live today. As a U.S. diplomat in the Middle East said
to me, Israel — not Iraq, not India — is ‘a constant
reminder to Muslims of their own powerlessness.’ How could
a tiny Jewish state amass so much military and economic power if
the Islamic way of life — not Christianity or Judaism —
is God’s most ideal religious path? When Hindus kill Muslims
it’s not a story, because there are a billion Hindus and they
aren’t part of the Muslim narrative. When Saddam murders his
own people it’s not a story, because it’s in the Arab-Muslim
family. But when a small band of Israeli Jews kills Muslims it sparks
rage — a rage that must come from Muslims having to confront
the gap between their self-perception as Muslims and the reality
of the Muslim world.”
From our friends (?) the Saudis:
Special
Dispatch No. 354: Saudi Government Daily: Jews Use Teenagers’
Blood for “Purim” Pastries (MEMRI) new
“In an article published by the Saudi government daily Al-Riyadh,
columnist Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faysal University
in Al-Dammam, wrote on ‘The Jewish Holiday of Purim.’
Following are excerpts of the article: ‘This
holiday has some dangerous customs that will, no doubt, horrify
you, and I apologize if any reader is harmed because of this....
For this holiday, the Jewish people must obtain human blood so that
their clerics can prepare the holiday pastries. In other words,
the practice cannot be carried out as required if human blood is
not spilled!!.... For this holiday, the victim must be a mature
adolescent who is, of course, a non-Jew — that is, a Christian
or a Muslim. His blood is taken and dried into granules. The cleric
blends these granules into the pastry dough; they can also be saved
for the next holiday. In contrast, for the Passover slaughtering,
about which I intend to write one of these days, the blood of Christian
and Muslim children under the age of 10 must be used, and the cleric
can mix the blood [into the dough] before or after dehydration....’”
The
Crescent and the Gun (Brian Saint-Paul) new
“The problem, then, is not in the Koran itself but in those
who are free to twist it. Because there’s no one to interpret
the book authoritatively, it’s vulnerable to any charismatic
leader willing to abuse it to justify his personal hatred. The sad
result is clear for all to see: The Koran’s command not to
harm civilians is ignored; its prohibition against suicide is interpreted
away by suicide bombers; its call for freedom in worship is cast
aside in many Islamic states; its order to stand up for the oppressed
is ignored by those too afraid to speak out against the persecution
of non-Muslims. Islam has the Koran, but the Koran has no interpreter.
An analogous situation is in Protestant Christianity, where the
inheritors of the Reformation gather around the call of sola scriptura
(Scripture alone). Different Protestant denominations read the Bible
in different ways, with no single, authoritative interpreter. Why
then don’t we see fringe Protestants strapping bombs around
their waists and walking into crowded malls? The answer brings us
back to the different concepts of justice. In Islam, following the
Old Testament model, the attacker can be justly destroyed. In Christianity,
following the just-war theory, the attacker must be repelled —
but only in proportion to the attack. Ultimately, the violence perpetrated
by Muslim fringe groups has two roots: first, the Koran’s command
to fight the oppressor, and second, the lack of a single voice to
identify who that oppressor is. Without that authority, any group
— any people, any nation — can be considered an oppressor
by those who feel they’ve been wronged. The result, too often,
is bloodshed.”
Spying:
The American Way of Life? (Wired News) new
“In the six months since the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans may
not have exactly embraced a surveillance society, but they appear
to have grown to accept portions of it. A Zogby poll conducted last
December says that 80 percent of respondents favored video monitoring
on public places such as street corners. Especially in the dark
days after the Pentagon was hit, the White House targeted, the Capitol
anthraxed, and the World Trade Center leveled, that public reaction
was predictable. In national emergencies, the uneasy relationship
between freedom and order edges toward greater restrictions on individual
liberty. But Bush’s war on terror is not a traditional military
conflict with a clear end that can be met after, say, U.S. soldiers
capture a city, eliminate a Taliban command post — or even
snare Osama bin Laden himself. Bush and other top administration
officials repeatedly have warned that the attempt to exterminate
al-Qaida dens may continue for years, even decades. It conceivably
could succeed the Cold War as the most important political struggle
of the 21st century. If that happens, new surveillance powers that
police receive today likely will become permanent.”
Profs
Do Better on Shorter Leash, Study Concludes (NewsMax) new
“Tenured college professors might be bad teachers and even
worse scholars, but their institutions and peers have little ability
to influence their conduct, according to a recent study by The Fraser
Institute, a libertarian think tank in Vancouver, British Columbia.
To improve the quality of their teaching, professors need incentives,
something radically nonexistent in the individualistic culture of
the North American university, write Rodney Clifton and Hymie Rubenstein
in ‘Collegial Models for Enhancing the Performance of University
Professors.’ Often when professors receive tenure they neglect
their students and focus on research or outside assignments like
consulting businesses, Clifton and Rubenstein write. The sheer number
of extraneous commitments may cause professors to view students
as nuisances rather than the paying consumers they are, according
to the authors.”
Whooping
It Up: In Beirut, even Christians celebrated the atrocity (Italian
journalist Elisabetta Burba)
“Where were you on Sept. 11, when terrorists changed the world?
I was at the National Museum here [in Beirut], enjoying the wonders
of the ancient Phoenicians with my husband. This tour of past splendor
only magnified the shock I received later when I heard the news
and saw the reactions all around me. Walking downtown, I realized
that the offspring of this great civilization were celebrating a
terrorist outrage. And I am not talking about destitute people.
Those who were cheering belonged to the elite of the Paris of Middle
East: professionals wearing double-breasted suits, charming blond
ladies, pretty teenagers in tailored jeans. Trying to find our bearings,
my husband and I went into an American-style cafe in the Hamra district,
near Rue Verdun, rated as one of the most expensive shopping streets
in the world. Here the cognitive dissonance was immediate, and direct.
The cafe’s sophisticated clientele was celebrating, laughing,
cheering and making jokes, as waiters served hamburgers and Diet
Pepsi. Nobody looked shocked, or moved. They were excited, very
excited.... Back in Italy, I received a phone call from my friend
Gilberto Bazoli, a journalist in Cremona. He told me he witnessed
the same reactions among Muslims in the local mosque of that small
Lombard city. ‘They were all on Osama bin Laden’s side,’
he said. ‘One of them told me that they were not even worthy
to kiss his toes.’”
Anti-Americanism
blamed on college teachers (WT)
“Professors and administrators are to blame for anti-American
sentiment on college campuses today, according to a report by the
American Council of Trustees and Alumni. More than 140 college campuses
in 36 states have held anti-war rallies denouncing the country’s
military actions in Afghanistan, the report says. The document —
‘Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America
and What Can Be Done About It’ — concludes that many professors
and administrators are quick to clamp down on acts of patriotism,
such as flying the American flag, and look down on students who
question professors’ ‘politically correct’ ideas
in class.”
In
war, grownups can’t play silly games (Mark Steyn)
“But the six-month suspension of normal politics is taking
its toll on Democrats. ‘We seem to be good at developing entrance
strategies,’ Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia’s porkmeister
par excellence, whined the other day, ‘and not so good at developing
exit strategies.’ Well spotted, senator. Here’s something
else that will shock you: Churchill didn’t have an ‘exit
strategy’ for World War II.... You don’t have exit strategies
when your national territory’s been attacked; you have a responsibility
to see the war through to the end.... The headline on Jules Witcover’s
column in the Baltimore Sun read, ‘Democrats Ask Tough Questions
On War.’ In fact, tough questions would be welcome. But Byrd’s
and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s criticisms are pathetic:
They’re about spin, posturing, about how it’ll play on
TV. In war, grownups don’t have time for silly games in the
congressional schoolyard.”
Being
reasonable about faith when we all ignore God (Hanna Clark)
“This fact versus faith dichotomy relies on a gendered and
racialized conception of the human mind and soul (or are they even
separate?). White people are seen as rational and logical, living
in the world of logic and ideas. People of color are seen as more
spiritual, irrational and emotional. The same can be said of men
(they’re rational) and women (they’re irrational). And
the same can be said of Macalester atheists (rational) and the rest
of us (irrational). The problem is that Atheism is just as based
on faith as any other religion. At Macalester, religion is often
seen only as an institution that tries to exert control. There’s
a knee-jerk reaction to the imposition of rules and social mores,
and all religion and spirituality is thereby ridiculed. It’s
ironic that so many people use a patriarchal and racist ideology
to critique what they think is an engine of oppressive authority.”
The
Pristine Myth (Katie Bacon interviews Charles Mann)
“For years the standard view of North America before Columbus’s
arrival was as a vast, grassy expanse teeming with game and all
but empty of people. Those who did live here were nomads who left
few marks on the land. South America, too, or at least the Amazon
rain forest, was thought of as almost an untouched Eden, now suffering
from modern depredations. But a growing number of anthropologists
and archaeologists now believe that this picture is almost completely
false. According to this school of thought, the Western Hemisphere
before Columbus’s arrival was well-populated and dotted with
impressive cities and towns — one scholar estimated that it
held ninety to 112 million people, more than lived in Europe at
the time — and Indians had transformed vast swaths of landscape
to meet their agricultural needs. They used fire to create the Midwestern
prairie, perfect for herds of buffalo. They also cultivated at least
part of the rain forest, living on crops of fruits and nuts.”
Diagnosis:
Delusional (Drs. Michael A. Glueck & Robert J. Cihak)
“People need to feel right about themselves. Not just good
— right. Morally right. For some people, hating America provides
an inexhaustible source of unearned moral stature. They can’t
be right unless their country is wrong, always and forever wrong:
an attitude empowered by the quaint notion that dissent is somehow
automatically morally superior to consent, and refusal to participate
a greater good than support. Sadly, there is much in this country
to criticize. We’re far from perfect, and in many ways the
intensity of our self-scrutiny stands as a badge of our virtue.
But there comes a time when some overweening emergency takes precedence.”
Correctness
Crack-Up (Stephen Goode and Christopher Jolma)
“But the response to Sept. 11 at U.S. colleges and universities
might be bringing about a bigger, more profound transformation that’s
now in its earliest stages. It’s change that challenges and
may undermine — the gospel of political correctness, which
has ravaged U.S. schools for nearly two decades. It’s a transformation,
too, that may bring an end to the power held at American universities
and colleges by the left-wing 1960s activists — many of whom
long have held senior and tenured positions at American schools
and have used those positions to preach the same tired left-wing
politics and anti-Americanism they began so loudly advocating 40
years ago.”
Campus
Capers (David Horowitz)
“In any case, the media blackout of my book makes my current
campus speaking tour something of a necessity. I have one additional
agenda, moreover, which is to cast a spotlight on the rampant political
bias in the hiring of faculty at American universities. This repression
of conservative viewpoints — an academic McCarthyism that puts
McCarthy’s puny efforts to shame — is blatant, unconstitutional
and illegal, but ubiquitous nonetheless.”
What
will it take to persuade? (Balint Vazsonyi)
“The brutal murder of journalist Daniel Pearl has shaken even
our own television news analysts. That is significant, since some
of our most highly visible — and highly paid — commentators
had never known a foreign terrorist they didn’t like. Well,
that might be a bit harsh. Let us say instead, they had never seen
a foreign terrorist whose ‘cause’ they didn’t respect.
But this was too much, even for them. Are we mad enough yet?”
How
The Left Undermined America’s Security (David Horowitz)
“Underlying the Clinton security failure was the fact that
the Administration was made up of people who for twenty-five years
had discounted or minimized the totalitarian threat, opposed America’s
armed presence abroad, and consistently resisted the deployment
of America’s military forces to halt Communist expansion. National
Security Advisor Sandy Berger was himself a veteran of the Sixties
‘anti-war’ movement, which abetted the Communist victories
in Vietnam and Cambodia, and created the ‘Vietnam War syndrome’
that made it so difficult afterwards for American presidents to
deploy the nation’s military forces.”
The
cost of academic integrity (Walter Williams)
“College budgets depend on admitting warm bodies. That means
we can’t expect college administrators to do anything to stop
unprepared students from being admitted, courses dumbed-down and
fraudulent grades given. Boards of Trustees tend to be yes-men and
women for the president, so we can’t expect anything from them.
The money spigot needs to be turned off.
Alumni, foundations and other charitable donors — not to mention
taxpayers — should be made aware of fraudulent practices and
academic dishonesty.”
The
Plains vs. The Atlantic: Is Middle America a backwater, or a reservoir?
(Blake Hurst)
“The combination of progressive taxation and urban real-estate
prices ensures that almost nobody on the coasts has more spendable
income than the highest paid people in Franklin County or the rest
of rural Red America. People here in Missouri’s small towns
can buy a beautiful older home for less than $100,000. Brooks makes
much of the fact that he literally could not spend more than $20
for a meal in Franklin County. The fare in Red America is a bit
limited. You can’t buy one of those meals with a dime-sized
entrée in the middle of a huge plate, with some sort of sauce
artfully squirted about. But you can buy a pound of prime rib for
ten bucks. Class-consciousness isn’t a problem in Red America,
because most people can afford to buy everything that’s for
sale.”
Proof
that the classics speak to everyone (Katherine Kersten)
“For 35 years now, we’ve been hearing that ‘the classics’
— the great books of the Western world — are largely irrelevant
in today’s classrooms. Why? Most were written by dead white
males. Obviously, then, they can hold little meaning for females
or for black or Hispanic kids. Everyone knows that if young people
are to be moved or inspired, they need books whose authors ‘look
like them.’ Try telling that to the students at Wilbur Wright
College, a two-year community college in a working-class neighborhood
in Chicago. Students at Wright are predominantly black, Hispanic
or from immigrant families. Wright is for kids who aren’t ready
for four-year colleges. Yet students there are flocking to a Great
Books program and lining up to read authors like Plato, Cicero and
Dante.”
Why
the Muslims Misjudged Us (Victor Hanson)
“Two striking themes — one overt, one implied — characterize
most Arab invective: first, there is some sort of equivalence —
political, cultural, and military — between the West and the
Muslim world; and second, America has been exceptionally unkind
toward the Middle East. Both premises are false and reveal that
the temple of anti-Americanism is supported by pillars of utter
ignorance.”
Parsing
out grammar (Linda Chavez)
“I learned how to diagram sentences in elementary school —
or what we used to call, appropriately, grammar school.... Progressive
teachers and their professional associations, especially the National
Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), believe diagramming sentences
is make-work that bores students and turns them off to writing.
So they banished diagramming from the classroom years ago, along
with most grammar instruction. ”
Slouching
Toward Bias: A Neo-Conservative Critiques the Media (Poynter)
“‘The media, notably certain powerful big city dailies
and the network news divisions that generally follow their lead,
reflect a worldview that is not only distinctly liberal in character,
but hostile to those who hold alternative views.”
The
Education of Abraham Lincoln (Eric Foner)
“He read incessantly, beginning as a youth with the Bible and
Shakespeare. During his single term in the House of Representatives,
his colleagues considered it humorous that Lincoln spent his spare
time poring over books in the Library of Congress. The result of
this ‘stunning work of self-education’ was the ‘intellectual
power’ revealed in Lincoln’s writings and speeches.”
Lost
Boys (Amy Benfer)
“Suddenly, the debate among researchers is focused on the boys:
Are they behind because of the girl empowerment movement? Are they
being shortchanged in the classroom simply because they are boys?”
Skewed
News: Fair and balanced coverage requires diversity of opinion (Cathy
Young)
“Neither Goldberg nor McGowan allege a deliberate vast left-wing
conspiracy to distort the news. Rather, they convincingly argue
that news coverage is often influenced by a knee-jerk bias stemming
from the journalists’ own views on political and social issues.”
Why
We Don’t Marry (James Q. Wilson)
“Marriage was once a sacrament, then it became a contract, and
now it is an arrangement. Once religion provided the sacrament,
then the law enforced the contract, and now personal preferences
define the arrangement.”
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