Afterlife

A man of none-too-exemplary character passed on, and was met cordially on the other side by a creature with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. He was surprised by the gentility of his host, and happily allowed himself to be shown around.

"Just as with my counterpart above," the creature told him, "there are many rooms in my home. And, as in His house, you will be allowed to choose for yourself which one of those rooms will be yours for the rest of eternity. The only difference is, here, you have to make your choice without first seeing what's behind the door."

The man nodded and indicated he was ready to consider his future more thoroughly. As they approached each door, though, the screams and lamentations behind it seemed to be more pained and horrified than from the door before. After hearing hundreds of options of this sort, though, they finally came to a place where, beyond the closed portal, only a calm murmur could be heard. The man sighed with relief, and announced that this was the room for him.

"Done!" cried the creature as he opened the door. In the room was nothing but a pit filled with stinking manure, and every person was in the manure up to the edge of his lower lip, whispering, "Don't make waves... don't make waves... don't make waves...."

So, now we have press and politicians who seem to think that this is our current position, especially as it applies to Islamists. If we speak out against the building of a mosque in an inappropriate location, if a jackass preacher in a piss-ant church threatens to burn Qurans, if a cartoonist proposes everybody draw anything and call it Mohammad, that person is making waves, and everybody else is going to get... well, you can see where that will go.

We may be in deep organic waste matter, but it isn't that deep, yet. We still have a Constitutional right not merely to have, but to express our opinions. We still have freedom, at least in the West, to choose our own path of Faith (or not, as the case may be), and to express both privately and publicly that belief. As long as we continue to stand for our principles, we will keep that manure pit from filling. But, every time government and press insist that we self-censor out of fear that somebody might be hurt, and we comply, they empty another septic tank into the pit.

So, let me get this straight...

Am I to understand that it's okay for the government to tell me what I should and shouldn't eat (sody-pop, Big Mag, or whatever), even though it really affects only my own comfort; and the government can tell us what medical treatments are appropriate for hospice care (disallowing heroin, e.g. to those with pain which can only be treated with opiates and opioids); and the government can force private companies to fire employees, redistribute the proceeds from shares -- taking them from honest shareholders (many of them pensioners whose shares are part of their 401(k) ) and handing the money and controls to democrat pals in the unions; and the federal government thinks it can require private doctors and hospitals to perform operations which are, in their view, immoral, indecent and homicidal, and require private insurance companies to pay for the same; and the federal government thinks it can tell us what, where, and how to teach our children; and the federal government thinks it can put a knee-jerk ban on exploring and drilling for much-needed fossil fuels in the Gulf of Mexico, regardless of the safety records of those other companies whose drilling rights had already been federally- and state-approved; and the federal government is attempting to tell us what and how we can communicate via electronic media; and the local government has denied permission for a Greek Orthodox church which had stood near Ground Zero and was forced to move due to 9/11-related damage, to return to their original site, and we're told that's an appropriate decision; but when a bunch of in-your-face anti-U.S.-Constitution asshats who support terrorism and terrorists (and has the support of terrorist groups like Hamas) wants to build a middle-finger-flipped-at-decency, dance-on-the-graves-of-3000-murder-victims, "victory"-advertising mosque on hallowed ground in NYC while giving political lip-service to "tolerance", the administration says it's none of their business, or, more importantly, none of ours?

Tell me I'm just confused.

A Ms. is as good as a mole

It seems that some very silly people have gone and undermined the whole foundation of feminism, by putting limits on whose empowerment one might celebrate:

The magazine co-founded by Gloria Steinem doesn’t seem to like Jews when they’re Israeli Jews. Or at least, that’s the impression they’re giving after rejecting an ad for Israel that the AJC wanted to place.

The magazine has turned down an AJCongress advertisement that did nothing more controversial than call attention to the fact that women currently occupy three of the most significant positions of power in Israeli public life. The proposed ad (The Ad Ms. Didn’t Want You To See) included a text that merely said, “This is Israel,” under photographs of President of the Supreme Court Dorit Beinish, Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik.

“What other conclusion can we reach,” asked Richard Gordon, President of AJCongress, “except that the publishers − and if the publishers are right, a significant number of Ms. Magazine readers − are so hostile to Israel that they do not even want to see an ad that says something positive about Israel?”

So much for joining the noble movement of worldwide feminism.

Not that I missed anything. Today, "feminism" has fallen into a state of disrepute, by virtue of narrow-mindedness among the so-called elite of the movement. A bigot is a bigot, whether she calls herself a feminist or not. And, wherever two or more of them are gathered in the name of this actual, righteous cause, they encourage freedom and equality in the same way that gophers and moles help stabilize levees.

I once called myself an ardent feminist. When I was a little girl, I dreamed of the day I would grow up to make great and grand gestures for the cause... of course, I also dreamed I could become a cowboy. (Darned tricky, that chromosomal restriction on being any kind of boy other than a tomboy.) Times do change. I'm older, more brittle, and less inclined to want to lie beneath the stars on a frigid winter night, with nothing but a harmonica for entertainment and nobody but cattle for conversation. I fear I would miss my internet.

Great and grand gestures aside, though, I still believe I can call myself a feminist: as far as I'm concerned, we still have a few more miles to go before women and men are equal in the eyes of each other. This doesn't mean we're all interchangeable -- heaven knows, not even all sisters are the same, so why would we expect identical skills and talents from one sex to the other? Some of us are simply waiting for society as a whole to recognize that each individual has his or her own worth, and expectations will be that we, as a people, gain (as the Marxist line goes, with sexist language disregarded) from each according to his abilities.

When that day of balance and sanity arrives, maybe I will fetch hat, boots and saddle, and ride the range, a cowhand prepared to do a job. Meanwhile, some are still more equal than others...


Later thought: In the original article:

When Director of AJCongress’ Commission for Women’s Empowerment Harriet Kurlander tried to place the ad, she was told that publishing the ad “will set off a firestorm” and that “there are very strong opinions” on the subject − the subject presumably being whether or not one can say anything positive about Israel.

Consider the ramifications of anybody at Ms. Magazine worrying about creating -- or feeding -- a controversy.

Feh.

Iranian leader visits NYC

There is already quite a bit of noise going on, about Ahmadinejad's proposed visit to the UN, his speech at Columbia U, and his proposed tour (now canceled -- and yet, he still threatens to visit there without permission from the city) of Ground Zero.

Personally, I would encourage the city to allow him a visit to the site of the destroyed WTC. Not only should they allow him to visit, they should require that, out of respect for all the victims of terrorism, he stay a while at the site -- at least 444 days.

UN demands Israel open its borders

Open your house wide, we don't care what it will do to you.


Some of the commenters at lgf suggest that Israel say, "We'll think about opening our borders when you make all your finances transparent." I don't honestly think that would get the point across. If, on the other hand, we suggested that the UN no longer have security officers and forces on the premises of their headquarters, maybe they'd get a clue.

Then again, maybe not. Those UN guys are dangerously, criminally stupid.

Kipling answers modern pacifists, too

With all the "get out now" folks -- like Keith Olbermann, in particular -- ranting and raving for peace, I thought it might be time to bring out something from 89 years ago, by one of my favorite doggerel authors, Rudyard Kipling*, from Russia to the Pacifists:

God rest you, thoughtful gentlemen, and send your sleep is light!
Remains of this dominion no shadow, sound, or sight,
Except the sound of weeping and the sight of burning fire,
And the shadow of a people that is trampled into mire.
Singing:--Break bread for a starving folk
That perish in the field.
Give them their food as they take the yoke . . .
And who shall be next to yield, good sirs,
For such a bribe to yield?


Don't just stop at this, though. The whole poem is worth reading.



*which brings to mind one of my favorite old cartoons, which was featured in a collection my folks have owned, where a man asks a woman "Miss, do you like Kipling?" She responds, "I don't know, you naughty boy, I've never kippled!"

Democrats in Congress hope we'll die

One way or another, it seems that the aim of Democrats in Congress is to kill Americans. It doesn't matter that you might have voted for them, at one time. All that matters is that they appear to be looking out for the interests of the little guy... as he's being blown up.

Think I'm kidding? Try this on for size: they're cutting an amendment to the most recent homeland security bill. The amendment protects any "John Doe" from lawsuits, should he report what appears to be suspicious activity. This is a response to the "Flying Imams" lawsuit, in which CAIR filed suit against the airline and a group of anonymous passengers on a flight from Minneapolis, for being genuinely concerned by genuinely suspicious activity.

The purpose behind the amendment is to protect those who would be Good Samaritans from being bullied, by such aggressive organizations as CAIR, into silence. This is not only bad for national security, it's just generally a bad policy for local and regional protection. It intimidates people in much the same way other bullies' threats do, into allowing dangerous activities to take hold and develop.

If a citizen makes a good faith call to police or FBI about something, there should be NO repercussions. This amendment would protect such good faith callers. If you haven't already done so, contact your congresscritter and give him what for, on this (if not on every other damned stunt they're pulling, this summer). Let the jackasses on Capitol Hill know you don't appreciate being told to sit down and shut up when your life -- or the lives of those you love -- is on the line.

More about free speech case in Finland

Baron Bodissey has posted an update or five on the Mikko Ellilä case as it comes up before the long arm of the law...

The one thing to point out is that few, so far, actually like the sort of thing that Ellilä says -- it is silly, offensive, even racist. What this is about is a person's right to speak (or blog) his mind.

How do simple statements of belief suddenly morph into a threat to the public? There is no evidence that, in his blog -- anywhere -- Ellilä did anything more than say some things which many rational people would deem impolite. There seems to be no call to rise up in violence against others, there is no finger-pointing or crying "fire" in a crowded theater.

If the decision goes against people like Mikko Ellilä, when will they start globally tracking down and arresting those who truly do incite people to violence?

As a free, educated American, I do not understand the drive of a portion of any nation -- especially those whose histories are chock-full of liberties -- to limit freedoms. Do the people who press for speech codes, who press for "hate crimes" laws, who press for special treatment for certain categories of citizens not understand that, eventually, the legislation will backfire on them? Do they not understand these laws as genuinely hypocritical, as well as, over the long run, indefensible and unenforceable?

How does plain, ordinary, brutal violence become something "special" when it comes accompanied by a racial or sexist slur? How does one gauge whether a savage "spree" killer is worse because he was motivated by racial hatred or by a perceived social slight? Don't results count for anything, these days?

And where is it written that free people have the right to be protected, by law, from having their feelings hurt by some arrogant or spiteful nonsense? I guess we're approaching the day and age when, in the freest nations, sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will get you twenty years in Marion.

Free speech threatened in Finland

Finland has long had a reputation as one of the freest states in Europe. That's why it comes as a surprise to many of us that some long-standing codes codes against "hate speech" are being used to prosecute one citizen-blogger this week. Gates of Vienna has the whole story, and will continue to update everybody. Keep checking back with them.

So, a free nation is threatening to jail a blogger for speaking his politically incorrect mind. There seems to be no indication that he has incited people to go out and riot, or attack and kill anybody... there seems to be nothing more than a sense of his telling his readers "dude, these people are dangerous, and here's why." And, yet, the government is working against his free speech. How come this sounds so familiar?

I can't read Finnish, so I can't be certain Mikko Ellilä is genuinely "merely... point[ing] out that Islam is a fascist ideology that advocates killing Jews, atheists, homosexuals etc." or using stronger terms. Nevertheless, Finland just got over investigating with initial intent to prosecute a publisher who made available in print the "dread cartoons of Muhammad." The Finnish government, like the Danes only a few weeks earlier, were a hair's breadth away from fining, jailing, silencing people for printing news. They're still only that distance from it, in Finland, it seems.

This is one of the reasons I've long mistrusted speech codes. Seldom (never?) are they applied in a balanced and just fashion, for the good of all. Far too often, they're used to silence -- instead of protect -- the public.

The other hate crime

Scary. Somebody left a ham sandwich at a lunch table.

I think I may have just committed the same crime, myself. Sat there, downing a ham, Swiss cheese, Boetje's mustard & sweet onion on sourdough, right out on my folks' front porch. Take that, you sissies!

Everybody should be afear'd. I didn't have my lactase tablets to counter the effects of the cheese. Does that count as simple hate crime, as terrorism, or as a war crime for gassing the enemy?


Update: Charles Johnson has added a second post on the subject, with further details of the incident and the Orwellian quote du jour:

If people think insulting Muslims with ham is OK, “More degrading acts will follow, until at some point we’ll end up having violence,” [executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence, Stephen] Wessler said.

Oh, no, ham cruelly offered to schoolboys last week is the cause of the bombing of the Beirut barracks, the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the WTC in 1993. Yesterday's bacon caused 9/11/01!

But for me, the kicker isn't that we have 1984 all over again (that's been a given for years), but that people are acting as though this incident were somehow atypical of junior high school. Well, technically, it is atypical, because it's not nearly as cruel as the normal stunts kids that age pull. Every kid in the modern world is traumatized by experiences in middle school/junior high school. Body hair starts to grow, and all of a sudden you're a pack of wolves. It's the rare ones who keep some semblance of civility amid the raging hormones.

Resisting Falsehood: a reply to "Resisting Apartheid"

Hooray! John Palmer has, as promised, posted Menachem Kellner's Resisting Falsehood and Protecting Integrity, in its entirety, at EclectEcon! It's a rather lengthy post, but well worth the attention. The essay is a response to Omar Barghouti's "Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Why the Academic and Cultural Boycott?", a call for just such a boycott. Kellner responds:

Mr. Barghouti seeks to convince his readers that Israeli Jews are inveterate racists, and that Israel is an apartheid state. In the space allotted to me, I cannot possibly correct all of the deceptive falsehoods he uses — as the Hebrew expression has it, it is easier to throw mud than clean it up. By characterizing more accurately than Mr.
Barghouti the true nature and history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and then addressing his two main charges, racism and apartheid, I will undermine his call for a boycott.

Central, of course, to the cries for boycott, are the arguments that Israel is racist, cruel and inhumane toward the Palestinians... putting up a wall, and all that, so that suicide bombers just can't get in to play. The double standard is blatant and lethal. As Kellner points out

Israel is held to standards of behavior to which no other country in the world is held, and when it fails to live up to those standards, it is condemned in absolutist, Manichean terms as thoroughly depraved and corrupted. In the eyes of its enemies,[xi] the Israeli cup must be brimming over with goodness; otherwise it is empty of all redeeming value. Palestinians, on the other hand, are consistently forgiven their excesses. Often this forgiveness is on the grounds that the Palestinians, being militarily inferior, have no choice but to use means which, if used by any other group in the world, would be condemned (and rightly so) as uncivilized war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Kellner's essay continues to quite effectively shoot down the primary "logic" behind the current propositions for boycott. (I had a sneak peek at Kellner's piece, when John e-mailed it to me several days ago, & I'd been waiting for him to post it so we could share it around). Please, go read the whole thing. Share it with friends. It's worth it.

There are no more journalistic ethics

At least, they haven't been taught to Gavin King, reporter for Aussie paper Cairns Post. This low-life-with-a-press-pass contacted blogger Sheik Yer'mami (who contributes heavily to the anti-jihad site Winds of Jihad) for comments on a proposal for building a local mosque, promising Sheik that his anonymity would not be broken. King subsequently not only published the actual name of the blogger, but his home address and telephone number, among other private data. From the letter (posted at Dhimmi Watch) Sheik sent to the Australian press council in complaint (with emphasis added by me):

Islamic terrorism is a scourge on humanity. Gavin King, the Cairns Post reporter who focused his article on me, ad hominem, my family, age, business, even listing my property holdings including where I live, is totally out of line. My identity was never a matter for the public record. Because of death-threats to anyone who opposes the spread of Islam I certainly see myself and anyone else in that regard entitled to anonymity. That should be common sense.

It would seem that common sense still isn't terribly common. At least among the news people.

(Full confession: I write a weekly column for a small-town paper. I even took a few courses in journalism in my feckless youth. But I do not want to be associated with those sorts of people who risk the lives of private individuals for their own agendas.)

King has not only endangered the blogsite by labeling it a "hate site" sight unseen, but he has endangered the lives of Sheik and his entire family, plus anybody else who is seen publicly as his friend and supporter.

As one commenter pointed out, this isn't the first time a journalist has endangered the life/lives of private citizens for no good reason. Earlier this month, a Virginia newspaper published the names and addresses of all its local citizens who had concealed carry gun permits -- without regard for the possibility that some of those people were (a) hiding from violent exes or (b) not actually carrying guns, only carrying permits, and (c) perfectly within their legal rights to own and carry guns for their own protection. The paper essentially printed a shopping plan for gun thieves.

And another case is cited of a paper which published the address of a battered women's shelter. Nice.

I hope Sheik and his family can find some satisfaction from the Cairns Post. I hope King gets his hindquarters tossed to the wolves in much the same way he has tried to do to Sheik. Not that I think anybody but the jihadis are likely to do anybody any physical harm. It's just that, when violence arises (and it will. There is jihad in this world, and people are really dying because they choose to think and live freely) I'd just like to see it come to the right people: the ones who would call it down innocents.