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May 31, 2006
Bernard Lewis On Islamic Law And The Danish Cartoons
Bernard Lewis gave an illuminating talk in which he turns his scholar's eye upon the Danish Muslim cartoon controversy. (Hat tip to Dr. Sanity). Lewis painstakingly describes the stipulations of Islamic sharia law regarding those who insult Mohammed, and comes to a rather surprising conclusion:
If a non-Muslim subject of a Muslim state says or does something offensive to the Prophet, he is to be tried — accused, tried, and if necessary, punished. The jurists on the whole tend to take a rather mild view of this offense. They say, well, he is not a Muslim; he doesn't accept Mohammed as the Prophet; we know that. So saying that Mohammed is no prophet does not constitute this offense. It has to be more specifically insulting than that. And, as I say, there is an elaborate juridical literature and case law on this subject.What is never discussed at all — it is never considered — is an offense committed by a non-Muslim in a non-Muslim country. That, according to the unanimous opinion of all of the doctors of the holy law is no concern of Islamic law, which brings us back to the case of Denmark. Does this mean that Denmark, along with the rest of Europe is now considered part of the Islamic lands, and that the Danes, like the rest, are therefore dhimmis, non-Muslim subjects of the Muslim state? I think this is an interesting question, which can lead to several possible lines of inquiry.
It is good to have knowledge of one's enemies. I think Dr. Lewis's talk is well worth your time.
And don't miss Dr. Sanity's reference to Stephen Hick's book Explaining Postmodernism, which I also mentioned here.
May 29, 2006
Will The US Attorney General Enforce The Law? "Of Course Not."
George Will notes (emphases mine):
''Of course not." That was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' answer last Sunday on ABC's This Week when asked whether he would favor prohibiting bilingual ballots."Of course not"? Did he mean, "This is not something about which decent people differ"?
To understand why millions of conservatives do not trust Washington to think clearly or act reasonably about immigration, consider bilingual ballots. These conservatives, already worried that both the rule of law and national identity are becoming attenuated because of illegal immigration, now have another worry: The federal government's chief law enforcement official might need a refresher course on federal law pertaining to legal immigrants.
In 1906 [...] Congress passed and President Theodore Roosevelt signed legislation requiring people seeking to become naturalized citizens to demonstrate oral English literacy. In 1950, the requirement was strengthened to require people to "demonstrate an understanding of the English language, including an ability to read, write and speak words in ordinary usage in the English language."
Hence, if someone needs a ballot written in a language other than English, that need proves the person obtained citizenship only because the law was not enforced when he or she sought citizenship. So one reason for ending ballots in languages other than English is that continuing them makes a mockery of the rule of law, including even the prospective McCain-Kennedy law that pro-immigration groups favor.
It contains several requirements that those aspiring to citizenship demonstrate "a knowledge of the English language" or "English fluency" in order "to promote the patriotic integration of prospective citizens into the American way of life" and into "American common values and traditions." How can legislators support both language like that and ballots in multiple languages?
Well, at least AG Gonzales won't be called a "racist" by Harry Reid.
As I've said before, it appears the House is our only hope.
Posted at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)May 28, 2006
Duly Noted...
Happy fourth birthday to Power Line. John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson and Paul Mirengoff have demonstrated time and again the power of a well-written blog.
Thanks to Mark at Decision '08 for the link.
Posted at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)May 25, 2006
Hillary: Please Don't Read This
Kathryn Jean Lopez notes a press release from "La Casa Blanca":
I commend the Senate for passing bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform before the Memorial Day deadline set by its Leaders. I appreciate the hard work of the Leadership and Senators on both sides of the aisle. An effective immigration reform bill will protect our borders, hold employers to account for the workers they hire, create a temporary worker program to take pressure off our border and meet the needs of our growing economy, address the issue of the millions of illegal immigrants already in our country, and honor America’s great tradition of the melting pot. The House of Representatives began a national dialogue by passing an immigration bill last year. Now that the Senate has acted, I look forward to working together with both the House of Representatives and the Senate to produce a bill for me to sign into law.
Emphasis most definitely mine. With respect, what in the bloody hell is the President getting at? "[A] temporary worker program [will] take pressure off our border..." Is he even thinking about the words he is saying? He has an MBA; is the concept of supply and demand foreign to him? Who's writing this stuff for him?
Since my readership is tiny, I'll go out on a limb and throw out a can't miss strategy for Democratic control of Congress and the presidency. All you candidates repeat after me: "I advocate hiring thousands of new agents who will actively patrol the 2000 miles of our new border fence. Yes, it is expensive but I believe this is the only way to control illegal immigration, and we owe this effort to relieve the pressure on and provide opportunity for the legal working poor already in our country. Once we have control of our borders we can deal humanely with the problem of the millions of illegals already here."
Any candidate, Democrat or Republican, who advocates this simple message will win in a landslide.
May 24, 2006
Mary Queen Of Fakes...
...meets MacBeth.
From Michelle Malkin's column today:
Meet "Jessie MacBeth." He's the latest cause celebre of the anti-war Left — a "former Army Ranger and Iraq war veteran" who accuses his fellow troops of committing a litany of atrocities against innocent civilians. [...]There's just one problem: According to Department of the Army spokesman Paul Boyce, there is no record of "Jessie MacBeth," a.k.a. Jesse Adam MacBeth, having served in either the Rangers or the Special Forces — or in any part of the Army at all. [...]
Anti-war zealots initially defended the bogus soldier's tale, but are now moving quickly to cover up the MacBeth stain. The video was yanked Tuesday afternoon. But not to worry.
I hear former CBS producer Mary Mapes, champion of "fake but accurate" journalism, is interested in publicizing Jessie MacBeth's tall tales.
Well, there's one Peabody award already wrapped up.
May 23, 2006
On The Evil Of The US, And The 9/11 "Attacks"
Charles Johnson at LGF has done his best to ruin my evening glass of wine by pointing up a staggeringly stupid and repellent article in the Times Online. Martin Samuel has a problem with scrap steel from the wreckage of the World Trade Center being used in the new warship USS New York.
No sooner had work begun on the New York when the Secretary of the Navy announced that sister ships were to be built called the USS Arlington, after the Pentagon site that was hit by terrorists, and the USS Somerset, the Pennsylvania county in which Flight 93 came down. The ships would commemorate the attacks, if that is the right word, which it is plainly not. Exactly what is being commemorated anyway? [...]In essence what is being commemorated here is failure; the failure of American foreign policy to protect fully the interests of its citizens or make their world a safer place. America came under attack because the actions of successive governments have made it the enemy to large swaths of humanity. Anti-Americanism is growing alarmingly because, since September 11, the world’s most powerful nation has continued to alienate and divide even its allies. While not excusing wicked acts committed by terrorists, it would be foolish to view the behaviour of terrorists as motiveless. If we regard terrorism as the work of madmen and unrelated to our relationship with their world, we learn nothing from history.
Emphases mine. Samuel's glib arrogance in questioning the use of the word "attacks" calls to mind a seven-year-old whose parents have emotionally abandoned him--such a child will often produce the most outrageous behavior solely for the purpose of provoking a reaction. Maybe in Samuel's world of insular European utopianism, the 9/11 attacks were merely protest performance art.
"Anti-Americanism is growing alarmingly..." Really? Examples, please. Just don't look in the "Arab street". Maybe Samuel's drinking buddies constitute an adequate sample size for a Times columnist.
"...because, since September 11, the world’s most powerful nation has continued to alienate and divide even its allies."
Once again, with feeling: moral correctness is not determined by popularity. If Samuel desires to kiss the arses of the jihadists who would destroy his freedom and his culture, then he is no ally of mine.
The sooner we alienate and divide ourselves from the likes of Martin Samuel, the better.
Posted at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)A Poke In The Eye To Saddam's Apologists
Those that defend Saddam Hussein's regime--either directly (Ramsey Clark), or indirectly (by asserting that Iraq is no better off now than under Saddam)--have clearly abandoned any semblance of moral or intellectual honesty. The evidence of Hussein's murderous treatment of the citizens of Iraq has been publicized for years; the contorted rhetoric that somehow equates premeditated mass murder of men, women and children with collateral casualties caused by the US and its allies is still repeated far too often.
The Weekly Standard is highlighting a new book (link via Arts & Letters Daily) that details exactly who we are dealing with. Entitled Le Livre noir de Saddam Hussein ("The Black Book of Saddam Hussein"), this collaborative effort presents a tsunami of damning evidence.
IN A BRIGHT ROOM IN Baghdad, Saddam Hussein is on trial. In the din of America's public square, so is the invasion that overthrew him. An international stable of writers argue that the only evidence that matters, in both trials, is of Saddam's horrifying human rights violations. Nine years after the acclaimed Black Book of Communism appeared, another French publisher has issued a 701-page "black book of Saddam Hussein" that pushes to the background all talk of WMDs, skewed intelligence, terrorism, and democratization, and focuses our attention on the atrocities of a tyrant of historic proportions.The book's editor, veteran French journalist Chris Kutschera, concludes that while "the American war may not have been the ideal way to put an end to Saddam Hussein's dictatorship," there was no better one, because overthrow was simply no longer possible from within a savagely repressed society. So: No invasion, more Saddam. And that was an outcome these authors--an array of Middle Eastern, European, and American journalists, academics, and activists--could not bear.
This hefty volume includes almost three dozen substantive chapters chronicling the rise and record of Iraq's Baath party, the operations of Saddam's secret police, his cult of personality, his sanguinary wars against Iran and Kuwait, and his international suppliers of arms and diplomatic support. They show that Saddam's quarter-century in power was a virtually uninterrupted exercise in bloodletting in nearly every direction.
It's unclear whether The Black Book of Saddam Hussein is available in English yet--Amazon doesn't list it. The book has evidently, and predictably, been snubbed by the French press, a fate it will no doubt encounter once it appears over here. We wouldn't want to disturb the wolkenkuckuksheim--cloud-cuckoo-land--inhabited by Saddam's miserable apologists, now would we?
May 21, 2006
With Friends Like These...
This is not encouraging. From the Sunday's Houston Chronicle:
U.S. envoy to Mexico blasts fence planAUSTIN - U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza described building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border as un-American in a speech to the University of Texas at Austin graduating class Saturday night.
"Simply building walls does not speak America to me," said Garza, a former Texas railroad commissioner and a close friend to President Bush. "I know we can be both a welcoming society and a secure and lawful one." [...]
"America didn't get where we are today off the sweat of just one race, one religion or one culture," Garza said.
"And if you ever need a reminder of all that we have, simply ask any of the hardworking immigrants here why they endured days in a scorching desert or why they crossed an ocean in a crowded boat to get to the United States," Garza said.
Emphases mine. This close friend of the president should realize that a miserably crowded boat crossing was merely the last of many ordeals endured by those immigrants--ordeals endured precisely because they wanted to make sure they were legal immigrants.
This fact the United States needs to build a barrier doesn't reflect badly upon us. It reflects badly upon Mexico.
Civil War And Civil Progress
Members of Iraq's parliament approved its first government formed under their new, permanent constitution--a mere three years after Saddam's ouster. As Ed Morrissey notes:
Considering that and the religious and ethnic tensions that exist in Iraq, along with the bitterness of the past few decades under Saddam Hussein's brutal rule, the marvel is that it only took three years to get to this stage. After Washington beat Cornwallis at Yorktown, it took an ethnically and religiously monolithic populace over seven years to agree on a permanent form of government, during which they got it wrong once. In contrast, the Iraqi people marched to polling stations under dangerous conditions not once but three times within a year in order to create the temporary government that drew up their charter, to approve it, and then to elect representatives to form the permanent government.From a historical perspective, that is quite impressive.
It certainly is, so where's the celebration? I guess the MSM doesn't do historical perspective.
Meanwhile, AJStrata observes:
The media won’t say it, but a true civil war is erupting in Palestine (not Iraq).
A parliamentary success in a hall in Baghdad is relatively easy to sweep under the rug; a hot shooting war in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah will be much harder to ignore. It will be interesting to see how the MSM and the Left spin it.
Posted at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)May 20, 2006
What Are The President's True Feelings On Border Enforcement?
In his recent speech on immigration, the President proposed sending troops to the border (not for any direct duty, mind you) to relieve border patrol officers of administrative duties, which would presumably result in more officers patrolling the border. But Charles Krauthammer writes that National-Guard-to-the-border idea is foolish for several reasons:
The critical element -- border enforcement -- is farcical. President Bush promises to increase the number of border agents. That was promised in the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty legislation in 1986. The result was 11 million new illegals.
The president himself boasted about having already increased the number of border guards by one-third under his administration. Yet he acknowledges in the same speech that we do not have the border under control -- "full control,'' as he comically put it. The president's new solution? Increase the number of border guards again, by half this time. Everyone knows that anything short of enough border guards to do Hands Across America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean won't do a thing to eliminate illegal immigration.
The only thing that might work is a physical barrier. The president offhandedly dismisses a wall as something that could never stop the "enormous pressure on our border.''
By what logic? Opponents pretend that these barriers can always be circumvented by, say, tunnels or clandestine entry by sea. Such arguments are transparently unserious. You're hardly going to get 500,000 illegals lining up outside a tunnel or on a pier. Such choke points are exactly how you would turn the current river of illegals into narrow streams -- which is all we need to turn the illegal immigration problem from out of control to eminently manageable.
Both emphases are mine. On the second point: It is transparently obvious that Krauthammer is correct on this--no one would be silly enough to claim that a barrier would stop all illegals, but of course that is not the point. Increasing the difficulty by an order of magnitude or so would do wonders to reconfigure the risk/reward equation that each potential illegal immigrant must initially consider.
On the first point (GWB's dismissal of the effectiveness of a barrier): There was an interesting discussion recently in The Corner of the President's core motivations--or lack thereof--in pursuing truly effective border enforcement. In response to a column by Peggy Noonan in which she speculated on the influences driving Bush's immigration ideas, Mark Krikorian wrote
I get asked this question all the time and the conclusion I've come to is this: The president is morally and emotionally opposed to immigration enforcement, especially on the Mexican border. He sees it as uncompassionate and un-Christian, at best a necessary evil that must be entered into with the greatest reluctance and abandoned as soon as is practical. And this is especially true with regard to Mexico because he sees it as a "cousin" nation, like Britain or Israel, and thus enforcing immigration laws against Mexicans is even worse than doing so against Chinese or Pakistanis.
There's more here in The Corner on this question.
I have, at least so far, dismissed as nonsense the repetitious characterizations of Bush by Leftists to the effect that he is a religious zealot taking his marching orders straight from God. And I still hold that that caricature by extremists is bogus; but Krikorian's post brought me up short--I wonder if he's not come close to a real insight here. It's awfully depressing to think that GWB's attitude toward enforcing our existing immigration laws might actually be warped by his personal religious beliefs. Robert Robb of the Arizona Republic also thinks Bush's heart is not in it:
The reason that Bush failed to provide reassurance about enforcement is, in part, because he is clearly among those who do not think that it will work. He said as much in his speech: "(T)o secure our border, we must create a temporary-worker program."The implication of this position is profound. The president of the United States believes that this country does not have the ability to determine an immigration policy that best serves the national interest and make it stick. Instead, there is a level of unskilled immigration from Mexico that the country has no choice but to somehow accommodate.
There's no objective basis for this defeatist attitude. The country has the ability to pick an immigration number in our best interest and make it stick.
The United States can reduce illegal immigration across the border to a trickle, through fencing, technology, surveillance and manpower. The country can be aggressive about tracking down and deporting those who overstay legal visas. The country can dry up employment opportunities for illegal workers through universal verification procedures and employer enforcement.
A comprehensive enforcement regimen hasn't failed. It hasn't been tried. And Bush doesn't really propose to put one in place.
Robb goes on to note that the Bush's vaunted proposal of sending 6,000 National Guard troops to the border will free up only about 500 border patrol agents for actual enforcement duties. 500 agents might have an effect--in maybe one or two of the vast counties in west Texas.
And one of Bush's right-hand men is echoing the same sentiment. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was here in Houston yesterday, and he continued the defeatist rhetoric. From the Houston Chronicle:
As he sought to drum up support among local officials for more coordinated immigration enforcement, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales warned Friday that a measure championed by conservatives to build a wall across the U.S.-Mexican border would be counterproductive."This notion of building a wall across the entire southern border I just think sends the wrong message," Gonzales said in an editorial board meeting with the Houston Chronicle. [...]
While the administration has signed off on building a limited fence along part of the border, Gonzales said a more extended wall, as some GOP House members have advocated, would inhibit trade and legal immigration with Mexico.
"To completely seal off America from our friend Mexico would be a mistake," said Gonzales, who also met with civic leaders and law enforcement officials to discuss immigration enforcement.
A wall would inhibit trade and legal immigration? How, exactly?
I fear our only hope is the House.
May 19, 2006
Must Read: Totten Reports From The West Bank
Lazy blogging by me, perhaps...but here's its antithesis: Michael Totten's post from the West Bank (hat tip Instapundit). The following is an excerpt in which he interviews a member of the Palestinian Parliament, Abu Laila of the Marxist-Leninist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
“Do you feel the Arab countries have betrayed the Palestinians?” I said. “They are treated like animals in Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “I wouldn’t say Arab governments are innocent. They are not doing what they should do. It is below the capacities that they have. Still, Israelis are the main enemy and the main source of suffering.”
“But Palestinians are treated worse by Lebanese than they are by Israelis,” I said. “Do you know about the conditions in refugee camps like Ein El Helwe?”
“They are not treated worse in Lebanon,” he said. “That is not possible.”
I blinked at him.
“I have seen these places myself,” I said. “The conditions there are vastly worse than they are here in Ramallah. It’s impossible to even compare them.”
“Here a pregnant woman cannot get to a hospital because of the checkpoints,” he said.
It’s possible the Palestinians in the West Bank have no idea how bad the refugee camps in other countries really are. Or they are so consumed with their own problems that they just don’t care. I do not know.
I’ll say this, though: Those refugee camps in Lebanon have been there for more than 50 years. The hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon are not allowed to live anywhere else unless they are Christian. (They aren’t really “camps,” by the way. They are urban, and they are sub-Dickensian slums.) And until last year, vehicles entering the camps were searched by the Lebanese army. Building materials were confiscated. The Lebanese didn’t want the Palestinians to get, you know, the wrong idea. If you want to know what those places are like, just imagine the worst slums you’ve ever seen. Then subtract all the modern building materials. Unspeakable doesn’t even begin to describe them.
Totten is combining impressive photo-blogging with some pretty fearless reporting. The whole post is well worth your time--it's the blogosphere at its best.
Posted at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)May 18, 2006
Talk About Your Moving Goalposts!
John Podhoretz at The Corner notes how Lexis-Nexis can be hell:
"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time." (New York Times, 11/30/03)"What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war." (CBS's Face the Nation, 10/3/04)
"Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won't be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile." (New York Times, 11/28/04)
"I think we're in the end game now…. I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one." (NBC's Meet the Press, 9/25/05)
"We've teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together."(CBS's Face the Nation, 12/18/05)
"We're at the beginning of I think the decisive I would say six months in Iraq, OK, because I feel like this election—you know, I felt from the beginning Iraq was going to be ultimately, Charlie, what Iraqis make of it." (PBS's Charlie Rose Show, 12/20/05)
"The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it—and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful." (New York Times, 12/21/05)
"I think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool's errand." (Oprah Winfrey Show, 1/23/06)
"I think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We've got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they're going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they're not, in which case I think the bottom's going to fall out." (CBS, 1/31/06)
"I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq." (NBC's Today, 3/2/06)
"Can Iraqis get this government together? If they do, I think the American public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable Iraq. But if they don't, then I think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole Iraq endeavor. So one way or another, I think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an Iraq there worth investing in. And that is something only Iraqis can tell us." (CNN, 4/23/06)
"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out." (MSNBC's Hardball, 5/11/06)
Emphases mine. There are certainly writers around who are more intellectually dishonest than Friedman, but you'd think that a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times start could do a little better.
Posted at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)May 17, 2006
Iran And Syria: Zero Tolerance For Interference In Iraq
Omar at Iraq the Model reports that Iran is providing shoulder-fired SAMs to the anti-Iraq insurgents, prompting Michael Ledeen to ask some very good questions:
How long are we going to watch the mullahs kill Americans and our Iraqi allies without reacting? Isn't 27 years long enough? Why are we not attacking the terrorist training camps in Syria and Iran? Why are we not going after the IED assembly lines in Iran? Why are we so totally distracted by the nuclear issue, when our people are being killed by bombs, rockets and guns?
Very good questions, indeed. Iranian and Syrian interference in Iraq should be quashed by the US with extreme prejudice.
Posted at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)May 16, 2006
Ward Churchill's House Of Cards Goes Tumbling
A University of Colorado at Boulder committee has released a report on its investigation into whether Ward Churchill committed academic fraud. Eugene Volokh notes that the committee found that Churchill's methods were quite elaborate (via Instapundit):
Here's an interesting item that I haven't seen much discussed: Churchill is found guilty of passing off others' work as his own (plagiarism), but also of passing off his own work as others'. The latter is faulted as a general departure from "established standards regarding author names on publications" (p. 89); but it's also more specifically, and more seriously, faulted because Churchill then used the work published under another's name "as apparently independent authority for claims that he makes in his own later scholarship" (p. 89). This "permits the author to create the false appearance that his claims are supported by other scholars when, in fact, he is the only source for such claims" (p. 90).
I'm sure Ward will claim that this is just another example of the Man keeping him down. In any event the report will probably only serve to drive up his appearance fees.
But here's something else that's interesting: Volokh quotes a passage from the actual report that notes how Churchill cited as references the two different essays by authors Jaimes and Robbins:
Since both essays do contain statements of the type that Professor Churchill claims, that might have put an end to the matter of research misconduct regarding this allegation, except for the fact that [...] Professor Churchill said in Submission E that he had in fact ghostwritten both the Robbins and the Jaimes essays, in full....
Emphases mine. So except for the fact that Churchill actually confessed to ghostwriting the essays he then cited, the committee would have suspected notthing and accepted Churchill's bogus citations?
I wonder how much more of this is happening throughout academia? There are surely a lot of professors who are much more clever than the bumbling Churchill--and when there's only a small degree of intellectual diversity between hiring committees and their hires; dissertation directors and their candidates; and tenure committees and their applicants, a person has to wonder what "scholarship" really entails.
Posted at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)Assimilation...Yes. Guest Workers...NO!
I missed the President's speech last night (I'll try to watch it online today), but one thing he mentioned bothers me greatly: the continued insistance on a guest worker program. As Victor Davis Hanson and others have pointed out, a clear example exists in Europe of the failure of such programs. From a roundup of reaction at The Corner:
But my own chief worry is that guest-workers will only perpetuate the problem by supplying a continual unassimilated, low-paid, and ultimately volatile underclass. And such a helot program (a cultural and social catastrophe in Europe) is, in fact, antithetical to many of the president's own proposals. Cheap labor will undermine the wages of the very illegal aliens that are granted residence while they apply for citizenship; it will continually provide the fuel for La Raza and Aztlan romance; and keep fresh the tired ethnic sloganeering and tribal activists who hate assimilation and would die on the vine without fresh victims of "exploitation"—while ensuring that Mexico gets its remittances and avoids reform by exporting its unwanted.Second, there was nothing specific offered to match the rhetoric of assimilation. Why not introduce court-proof, English-only legislation that would return our federal documents to one language? Or at least proposals in our schools to emphasize the melting pot? Or new patriotic citizenship applications that emphasize English and knowledge and appreciation of American culture?
And I imagine that the "federal documents" that VDH mentions would include English-only ballots.
Posted at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)May 15, 2006
Mr. President: No Publicity Stunts, Please
Andrew Stuttaford asks:
Will deploying the National Guard on the border be the equivalent of Senator Frist's $100 oil rebate, a piece of political theater that ends up annoying everybody, and satisfying nobody?
In light of President Bush's weak-spined response to Vicente Fox, I'd say the answer to Stuttaford's question is clear:
Yep.
Posted at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)May 12, 2006
A Chance For Action?
Today in The Corner John Podhoretz writes:
This is total arrant speculation, but it strikes me that the president would not be giving a major speech on immigration at this point, given the general meltdown in the GOP polling numbers on the subject, without offering a primary focus on border security. And that means...he's got to switch gears and offer support for the idea of the border fence. If not, the speech is a spectacularly ill-considered political move
Emphasis mine.
As I scanned the newspaper this morning I saw a headline that mention Congress' work on an immigration bill. I didn't read it; instead I just imagined a predictable snippet: "The bill contains provisions for increased border security."
Such watered-down (and that may be too strong a term) gestures will be worse than useless. As Podhoretz notes, correctly I think, in this unmistakable climate of conservative near-rebellion, anything less than very assertive action could be the final nail in Republicans' chances in 2006.
May 11, 2006
Cause And Effect
Today's Wall Street Journal has an article that examines why conservative judge Michael Luttig resigned his US Circuit court position to join the private sector (via Jonah at The Corner). According to the Journal, a telling moment for Luttig occurred when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that suspected terrorist Jose Padilla would be charged in federal court, and thus be inserted into the US criminal justice system. Exhibit A:
The judge was stunned. Two months earlier, he had written a landmark opinion saying the government could hold Mr. Padilla without charge in a military brig. The decision validated President Bush's claim that he could set aside Mr. Padilla's constitutional rights in the name of national security. The judge assumed the government had a compelling reason to consider the suspect an extraordinary threat. Now Mr. Gonzales wanted the courts to forget the whole case.
Memo to Messrs. Bush and Gonzales: many Americans have no trouble distinguishing between an act of war against the sovereign US and the act of a common criminal.
The United States agreed under pressure yesterday to the creation of a system to transfer funds for salaries and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians -- a softening of its unbending effort to isolate Hamas. [...]"The thrust of this is the international community is still trying to respond to the needs of the Palestinian people," said Miss Rice, who hours earlier had urged the world to maintain a hard line against Hamas.
It is tragic that Palestinian children are suffering; it is unfortunate that a majority of their parents voted Hamas into official power. The only way to end the suffering of those children is through a lasting peace, but it's clear that Hamas' idea of peace requires the destruction of the state of Israel. Why is the administration enabling violence-worshipping Islamo-fascists?
Exhibit C, as presented by Ed Morrissey:
The Washington Post draws the correct conclusion of the low approval ratings for George Bush and his administration by reporting on the discontent among conservatives that have sunk his presidency to near-historic lows.
Any questions?
Democrats: Left Wing Fiddles While The Middle Class Burns
Former Democratic congressman from Texas Martin Frost notes in an article for Fox News that the current Democratic party line is out of touch with middle class voters (hat tip to Clarice at The American Thinker). Frost cites a centrist Democratic think tank's recent study on this subject:
The study faults Democrats for always attacking the wealthy, noting “the middle-class aspires to wealth and doesn’t see big business or the wealthy as enemies.” [...]The study then goes on to categorize a number of proposals that Democrats think help the middle class but which really help primarily the poor: raising the minimum wage, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, increasing the size of Pell grants for college, making the child care tax credit refundable and fully funding Head Start.
These ideas “are worthy progressive initiatives, but they have virtually no impact on the middle class.”
Emphases mine. I was thinking just this afternoon: if I could pose just one question to Hillary Clinton, I'd ask, "Does the Democratic elite really believe their own rhetoric that 'tax cuts aid only the rich'?" Surely they must know how reality stands, so do they really think it's a viable strategy to trumpet such an obviously false assertion? Likewise, congressman John Conyers has reintroduced his annual bill that would establish a commission to investigate reparations to African-Americans for the supposed continuing injustices of slavery.
Do the Democrats realize how repugnant the core values held by their current leadership are to most middle-class Americans?
I've heard Martin Frost before, and he sounds like the kind of common sense Democrat that ought to scare the hell out of Republicans. If he had defeated Howard Dean for chairman of the Democratic party, Republican prospects in the fall elections would be more grim than they already are.
Posted at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)May 10, 2006
Scrapping The "War On Terror" Terminology
In his Townhall.com column today, Dennis Prager makes a very important point: "The war we are fighting needs a more accurate name." When I read Dennis' title, the correctness of his statement struck me immediately--the near-ubiquitous use of the word "terror" (especially by the President) reinforces an inaccurate view of the threat facing us. Prager:
We are no more fighting a "War on Terror" than we fought a "War on Kamikazes" in World War II. Of course we had to stop Kamikaze attacks, the suicide crashing by Japanese pilots of airplanes into American war ships. But we were fighting Japanese fascism and imperialism.The same holds true today. We are fighting Islamic fascism and imperialism (though surely not all Muslims).
The jihadists are following a set of principles--unjustified by the Koran as they may be--whose genesis can be found in the writings of Islamic radicals stretching back hundreds of years. To focus on "terror" is to lose sight of the essence of the threat. Moreover, there are terrorist acts committed every year in the world that are not even related to Islamo-fascism.
I'm hereby banning all personal usage of the phrase "war on terror". It's "war against Islamo-fascism" or something similar from here on out.
May 09, 2006
Hate Mail Swarm: A Specialty Of The Irrational Left
Washington Post opinion columnist Richard Cohen writes about the deluge of deranged emails he received in response to his recent article (hat tip Captain's Quarters). And what did he write that generated such condemnation? Did he come out in favor of the war? Did he propose a Constitutional amendment so that GWB could be elected to a third term?
Nothing of the sort. Cohen's sin was to assert that comedian Stephen Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents' dinner was...not funny.
This is the second time in the last four months that a Post columnist has endured the concentrated vitriol of the deranged Left: recall if you will Post ombudsman Deborah Howell and the minor mistake she made in a January column concerning the Abramhoff scandal. She wrote that Abramhoff gave campaign money to both Republicans and Democrats; in reality, as she noted later, he directed his clients to give money to both parties.
At least Howell made a factual error, albeit a relatively insignificant one that she corrected. Cohen committed no error whatsoever--he merely stated his opinion, on an extremely minor sideshow to boot.
Both Howell and Cohen addressed the sheer irrationality that characterized most of the deluge. Howell kept it party-neutral :
[I]t is profoundly distressing if political discourse has sunk to a level where abusive name-calling and the crudest of sexual language are the norm, where facts have no place in an argument. This unbounded, unreasoning rage is not going to help this newspaper, this country or democracy.
But Cohen sees a bad moon rising for the Democrats:
[T]he message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.
Cohen's assertion that the haters hurt the middle is nothing new; in fact it's already been proven in the most convincing manner possible. I think Joe Lieberman would have beaten GWB in the last election, but Lieberman would never survived the Democratic primaries, which tilt toward the lunatic side of the liberal spectrum.
As the deranged Left becomes more organized, active and net-rooted, so grows the negative leverage on the chances for their own success.
May 08, 2006
Bush's Evil Tax Cuts
Tax Cut Blog notices a Congression Budget Office report on the effects of the evil Bush tax cuts (via Instapundit). From the CBO:
I'd say that was "robust" growth by anyone's definition, wouldn't you? And don't forget that close to 97% of those individual receipts came from the top fity percent of the wage earners.
Posted at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)May 07, 2006
A New Front In The Radio Wars
I've often engaged in discussions with a friend of mine (who's a pro musician and successful recording engineer) about the past, present and future of the music industry--and more specifically the venerable triangle of artist, record company, and broadcast radio.
We've both railed at the long time status quo in which bean-counting record company accountants hold sway over artistic decisions; and we've waxed malicious over the vise-grip that play list consultants have on commercial radio. For the last several years, though, we've wondered and hoped that perhaps the internet might serve as a crowbar to pry the status quo loose from its moorings. We'd begun to wonder if our hope was in vain.
But the internet has finally begun to change the paradigm: more and more artists are marketing their CDs directly through the web. And now Terry Teachout highlights a new internet service that could very well challenge both broadcast and satellite radio, and it brings some very unique features to the table. From Terry's blog About Last Night:
I’ve been playing with Pandora, the new Web-based streaming-audio "music discovery service." Based on a week’s worth of hands-on experience, I’ve decided that (A) it works and (B) it’s going to be a Very Big Thing.To use Pandora, you start by inputting the name of a pop artist or song that you like. This creates a “station” that you can “tune in” on your computer at will. The station then plays a record by that artist, followed by similar-sounding songs by different artists. You respond in turn by telling Pandora whether or not you like each song it plays. At any time you can input additional artists or song titles, which automatically increases the size of your station's play list. The more information you supply about your tastes, the more accurately Pandora can analyze them and select new songs you’re likely to enjoy.
I've tried it, and it's fascinating--very, very fascinating. Don't give it a go unless you have at least an hour to spend.
Have at you, FM radio!
May 05, 2006
Can Minorities Be Racist?
Ryan James notes a daft Leftist's all-too-familiar cant on the immigration issue. James:
I don’t know if I should be offended, or feel sorry for this bit of high-class rhetoric coming from a lawyer.She added that it is not possible for minorities to be racist against white people.
I share Ryan's reaction, but there's more to the woman's statement than mere wordplay. Her assertion arises from a well-developed facet of modern Marxist theory: that racism is essentially grounded in power relations between groups, and since minorities historically have never been ascendant in these relationships they, by definition, cannot be racist. I found an interesting discussion of this topic by David Schraub at his blog The Debate Link:
[T]he argument [made by most Leftists] is that racism is a power relation--it is not just the thought but the effect of subordinating someone due to their race. Furthermore, [the argument goes], racism cannot be separated from racist histories--that is, racism draws upon past inequalities to justify and reify present ones. Since blacks are not and were not in a position of power in America's racial scheme, they cannot cause racially disparate effects and thus cannot be racist.
But as Schraub (who is clearly left-of-center himself) goes on to point out, the established Leftist argument hinges on accepting their definition of racism as correct. And Schraub, while sympathetic to the liberal viewpoint, displays considerable intellectual honesty by making the observation--obvious to most conservatives--that groups are not monolithic entities that operate in unison.
I think most non-academics would say that minorities can be racist, and that they would define racism as an irrational prejudice held by an individual against another person or group that is based solely on skin color or culture. I would imagine that those same non-academics would be pretty dumbfounded to discover exactly how entrenched in the academy the ideas of hegemony of groups really are, along with the attendant usurpation by the Left of the term "racist".
I bet statements like the one made by the "Xicana activist" in Ryan's post would not raise an eyebrow at any faculty meeting at any major university in this country.
May 04, 2006
How Many Warnings Will The Republicans Ignore?
Christopher G. Adamo at The American Thinker writes about the evident appeal a third-party candidate would enjoy in the 2008 presidential race.
Ultimately, the Rasmussen poll shows that it is conservatism, hated by the Democrat insiders and abandoned by fearful Republicans, that is missing in Washington. Moreover, a truly conservative agenda would most certainly attract grassroots Democrats as it did in the 1980 and 1984 elections of Ronald Reagan. [...]Reagan benefited from “crossover” voters, not by presenting himself a cheap imitation of Democrats, but by offering a real alternative to the “business as usual” climate in Washington. Even the presence of John Anderson, the “moderate” third party alternative in the 1980 race, did not take votes from Reagan, but from the perennially insipid incumbent, Jimmy Carter.
Americans are [...] aware that those inside the Beltway are fixated on achieving the best looking posture, but have no intention of making the difficult decisions necessary to truly address each situation. [...]
Alarmingly, the two issues that best illustrate this recognition are reaching critical mass at virtually the same time. In the past few weeks, Americans have tasted the bitter fruit of both the negligence in protecting the nation’s borders and the lack of a worthwhile energy policy, and the consequent skyrocketing of gasoline prices.
Emphases mine. In the past I have ridiculed the Democrats, and especially Bill Clinton, for their spineless tactic of letting poll results drive their policy agenda. And yet now, when the energy and immigration crises have indeed reached "critical mass" with the voters (and the poll results are so one sided that their import begins to transcend a statement of mere personal opinion) there is no one in the Republican party who will seize this golden opportunity to display some real leadership.
This would be an excellent time for the next Reagan to make his (or her) appearance.
Posted at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)May 03, 2006
What's Up With Immigration Reality
I don't know much about Peter Brimelow or the VDare website, but he did speak at Vanderbilt recently and noted some very interesting immigration policies of other countries (hat tip to John Derbyshire at The Corner):
You often hear people say that we’re moving toward a "borderless world." But this is only true in the First World. When I wrote Alien Nation, I went to the trouble of calling up a lot of the countries that send immigrants to the U.S. I called the Japanese Consulate in New York and asked the official, how could I go about immigrating to Japan? And we have a quote, we taped him. He expressed complete surprise and astonishment. He said: "Why do you want to immigrate to Japan?" He said there might be three people a year who become Japanese, and even they don’t stay long, they try to immigrate somewhere else, like the U.S.Well, of course, the Japanese reluctance to accept immigrants is quite well known. And they’re not about to change it.
My favorite was India.. When we called them up, the first official we got said, "Are you of Indian origin?" When we said no, he said "Submit your question in writing to the Embassy" and then he hung up!
The second official said "Are you of Indian origin?" and when we asked if it was important, he said yes, and he transferred the call. We finally got to a third official who said "Since you are not of Indian origin"—now remember, he meant race here, we’d already specified we were American citizens—"since you’re not of Indian origin, it’s a very difficult and complex process to immigrate to India. Among other things, it will require obtaining clearances from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Home Affairs. This is a very long process."
In other words, India is running a Brown India program—sort of like the old White Australia policy. And they have probably very good reasons for that. There a quite enough communal problems right now in India, without introducing other divergent elements.
All of this is again meant to reinforce my previous point: that the US has the same absolute right as any other country to regulate immigration in any way it sees fit.
This appears so obvious to me that the continued assertions by the pro-illegal lobby of a God-given right to cross the border at their convenience seem to place them firmly on a path to utter defeat.
Along similar lines, an cycling acquaintance today wrote that he'd had several hispanic truck drivers call him "immigrant" today--as in, "Hey, immigrant, what's up?"
His attitude, and mine, is: keep up the good work and you'll find out exactly what's up.
Posted at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)First Things First
From the Encarta dictionary:
sov·er·eign adj1. independent: self-governing and not ruled by any other state
Once again, when discussing the immigration crisis the first question that must be posed is: does a self-governing (i.e. sovereign) country have the right to regulate its own borders?
Control of our borders--by exercising the unchallenged rights granted to every other sovereign state in the world--is the absolute prerequisite to any further steps in solving the immigration problem.
Today, in commenting on the backlash generated by the ANSWER-instigated immigration protests, Ed Morrissey says:
In truth, the only solution to this problem has to blend approaches from both sides. Border security has to come first, if for no other reason than any reform program has to rely on enforcement to attract people to register rather than opt out. After the border gets secured, then we can negotiate the status of those still left.We cannot possibly forcibly deport 12 million people, and they won't leave the US voluntarily unless we make America a worse place in which to live even without a job than Mexico ... and who among us would want to turn our country into that kind of misery? People aren't going to self-deport; even starving in the US beats starving in Mexico. Guest worker programs promise only to create a French solution where a permanent underclass exists with no hope of assimilation or equality. The only real option is normalization for those who have conducted themselves lawfully except for their entry, and a long path to citizenship marked by the payment of back taxes, fluency in English, and a fine for crossing our borders illegally.
Emphasis mine. Ed goes on to state that the backlash against the separatist reconquista groups' protests will make this last option impossible. I'm not so sure. I think that if the border could be secured to a degree of integrity that most Americans could trust, than any number of solutions would be acceptable to the majority of US citizens.
There is a tipping point at which the unified common sense of most Americans--on the liberal and conservative; Democrat, Republican, Liberatarian--kicks in, and the recent protests have nudged a lot of us over that tipping point.
Control the border, then I'll consider anything.
May 01, 2006
Flex Fuels: Let's Unleash The Free Market
Cliff May points out, as have others, that alternative fuels should get more attention:
For a long time, oil products have enjoyed a monopoly because oil has been cheap and easy. But it's getting less cheap and Americans ought to be growing uneasy about sending billions of dollars to corners of the Earth where terrorism is both preached and practiced.To solve this dilemma, we could invest in a new Manhattan project. If we gathered the smartest scientists and gave them a ton of money, might they develop an automobile that would run not just on gasoline but also on non-petroleum-based fuels?
News bulletin: The technology to run cars on alternative fuels already exists. The cost: less than $150 per vehicle. If the government would provide tax incentives – for manufacturers, motorists, maybe both – millions of Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFV) could be on the roads in short order.
There are a lot of flex fuel naysayers who can throw around a lot of pretty persuasive arguments that are grounded in good science. This is all the more reason the "Manhattan project" label is well-chosen: the odds of success at the beginning of the real Manhattan project were a lot longer than those faced by the flex fuel industry, and the challenges faced by Oppenheimer and company were also grounded in good hard science. Yet against all the odds the seemingly insurmountable problems were solved. The certainty of hindsight and the passage of time has dulled the magnitude of the challenge those scientists and engineers faced.
We just aren't serious enough yet, and make no mistake--the bomb project was very expensive, as would be a serious flex fuels initiative. It's a classic design triangle: if you want speed and innovation in a difficult field, costs will go big.
But I think May is also right on target with his proposal to harness free market forces. The use of gasoline is so ubiquitous and indispensable that anyone who gains a market edge in selling flex fuels stands to get very wealthy indeed.
What we need is a free-market champion with a bully pulpit. Anyone have any ideas?
