US Democratic Party and Iraq--A Pyrrhic Victory?

“If America pulls out of Iraq, they will fail in Afghanistan,” Mam Rostam said.

Hardly anyone in Congress seems to consider that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan might become much more severe if similar tactics are proven effective in Iraq.

“And they will fail with Iran,” he continued. “They will fail everywhere with all Eastern countries. The war between America and the terrorists will move from Iraq and Afghanistan to America itself. Do you think America will do that? The terrorists gather their agents in Afghanistan and Iraq and fight the Americans here. If you pull back, the terrorists will follow you there. They will try, at least. Then Iran will be the power in the Middle East. Iran is the biggest supporter of terrorism. They support Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Al Islam. You know what Iran will do with those elements if America goes away.”
Michael Totten's Journal

The US Democratic Party controls the US Congress, and is determined to use that control to destroy George W. Bush politically, beyond any hope of "rehabilitation." Apparently, the Bush Hatred goes so deep in the Democratic Party and its financial backers, that the Party leaders are willing to trigger a series of much greater catastrophes than the Iraq war, in order to destroy Bush.

The Democrats would like to see Bush impeached, but they are in no position to accomplish that feat. If they were honest, they would admit that only an assassination of the US President would make them happy. What they are left with in the end, is a strong personal and political need to destroy the legacy of Bush so completely, that even if in 20 or 30 years it is seen that much of Bush's overall strategy was sound, no one will ever know. Controlling history in order to control the future. It is the way despotic political cabals work.

Very sad to see a major political party in the United States placing itself in that position willingly.

Refuge from Perpetual Incompetence #1: Military Option

Regular readers of Al Fin blog are familiar with the concept of psychological neoteny. The societies of western developed nations and particularly North American societies, have adopted a method of child-rearing that results in the perpetual incompetence of an idle adolescence. By age-segregating children in classrooms of indoctrination, by removing children from all responsibility and exposure to the adult world of work, western societies are creating entire generations of incompetent and narcissistic know-nothings and do-nothings.

But there are notable refuges from the world of perpetual incompetence and irrelevance--one of which is the military. In the military there is no escape from responsibility, and no excuse for not developing the competencies of your current rating and assignment. You are thrown in with persons of all ages, backgrounds, religions, ethnicities, and experiences. You are expected to learn how to do your job, and to do it professionally.

The modern military is as much about disaster relief, and providing order for rebuilding a devastated region, as it is about fighting and killing an enemy. Military members are encouraged to improve themselves, and many gain degrees while in the service, through online courses.

Joel, who is stationed in Baghdad with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Stryker Brigade Combat Team, earned his degree through online courses and hopes to be able to watch the ceremony through an online link-up.

"A lot of it has involved slipping in homework in between missions and rest time. But there's always the unforeseen, though," Joel, 36, said Wednesday in a phone interview from Iraq. "Taking courses online gives me a sense of normalcy. ... As one class completes, I'm that much closer to being home."

According to military publications, more than 40,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq have enrolled in online college courses.

Denver Post

By acquiring real world skills in a genuine world atmosphere, while still being able to earn credits and degrees online, members of the military are able to bypass the academic lobotomy that millions of on-campus university students receive every year.

While their home societies are preparing their civilian cohorts for perpetual incompetence, military members are seeing much of the world firsthand, and working side by side with people from other cultures for both peacekeeping, disaster relief, and making war.

Military members who do not make a career of the military often join reserve units or national guard units, to combine their civilian lives with continued service to their country. Career military members often retire by age 38, at which time many of them join city, county, state, or federal agencies of law enforcement or other active civil service agencies that require competent workers.

Competence is rare in a neotenous society. You have to look for it.

Brain Drain: Iran--Death of A Nation

When a nation's brightest lights choose to pack up and leave, those left behind lost a little more hope for the future.

Everyone in the class wants to go abroad.

"The main point for going out of Iran is we have no job security here and there is economic tension," says 32-year-old travel agent, Nazaneen.

The number of educated young Iranians trying to leave the country appears to have increased in the last year since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office judging by the numbers sitting the IELTS exam.

The figures have increased two-and-a-half times this year over the same period last year, according to the Australian administrators of the test.

A year ago, the International Monetary Fund said Iran had the highest rate of brain drain of 90 countries it measured.

BBC

Ahmadinejad and the prancing mad monkey mullahs have led Iran down a disastrous path, which can only result in ruin for Iran. But then, that was their whole aim, nicht wahr? Anyone who knows anything about the legend of the 12th imam, understands that it is the goal of devout Iranian Shias to bring about the apocalypse. Ahmadinejad and the other monkeys are on schedule, if not just a bit ahead.

US Democratic Party--Party of the People, Party of the Environment

All politicians are corrupt and hypocritical. That is a definite given, an axiom for the ages. But some parties exude particular impressions--of being the party for the common person, for example, or the party of the environment.

We know that if a member of the US Democratic Party were US President at this time, that everything would be right with the environment, that the people would know that they were being served, . . .

A flock of small jets took flight from Washington Thursday, each carrying a Democratic presidential candidate to South Carolina for the first debate of the political season.

For Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, it was wheels up shortly after they voted in favor of legislation requiring that U.S. troops begin returning home from Iraq in the fall.

No one jet pooled, no one took commercial flights to save money, fuel or emissions.

All but Biden, who flew on a private jet, chartered their flights -- a campaign expense of between $7,500 and $9,000.

Source

Is it possible that the general impression of the US Democratic Party could be wrong?

The enemy kills entire families including small children

People talk of an Army breaking under the strain, but while there remains a sliver of hope that Iraq might avoid conflagration into full-scale genocide, out here, where bones splinter and flesh really does burn, there is a kind of clarity. And on these empty streets, a practiced eye regards the slivers of hope that are strewn among all the chards of broken glass.

The latest group of professional soldiers I had the honor of accompanying was the 1-4 Cavalry from Fort Riley, Kansas. They opened their doors in Baghdad and wanted me to tell the people at home the good, the bad and the ugly. They didn’t hold back; they provided plenty of all three. In one neighborhood where residents have been subject to a methodical slaughter, our people found an abandoned Christian college that had already proved itself the proverbial island in the storm.

Source

US forces in Iraq appear not to be broken, or even breaking. Instead, the US military service members who brave death every day appear to be far better ambassadors for American goodwill than all the US diplomats, congressmen, and administration officials combined.

It doesn’t matter how skeptical of the war a journalist might be, according to an Army public affairs officer (PAO) who spoke with me about it on condition of anonymity. “So often, they come out of that experience and – even if their opinion of the war hasn’t changed – they’re completely won over by the troops.”

“I was one of those,” admitted Beriain, speaking broken English and blinking away tears. “No matter what you think of the war, or what has happened here, you cannot be around the soldiers and not be completely affected. They are amazing people, and they represent themselves and the Army better than anyone could ever imagine.” A retired Army officer concurred, telling me that “young troops are some of the best good will ambassadors we've ever produced. It would never occur to one to not tell you what he's really thinking, and they are so earnest” that it is almost impossible not to be won over by them if given enough time.

The biggest recent case of a journalist with an anti-war mindset being completely overwhelmed into a change of heart by American soldiers, according to the PAO, was a Greek reporter who had been embedded with a cavalry unit that became entrenched in a 45-minute firefight with insurgents. Taking cover and fearing for his life for the almost hour-long duration of the battle, the journalist had the best view possible of American soldiers in action against an armed and murderous enemy, and credits his having lived to tell the tale directly to those young troops.

“He had tears in his eyes as he talked about it,” said the PAO. “He just kept saying, “they saved my life, they saved my life...these are great men; they are heroes.” He couldn’t get through the story without choking up – and this was a man who had arrived here with all of the disdain for the Iraq mission and for the American soldiers who he saw as the bad guys in this fight.”

Source

Of course, the contrast could not be starker, between the narrative of western civilisation, and the ugly narrative of Islamism that western forces are attempting to hold back.

The objective of the Decidophobic is to make one major decision, and only one major decision, so one does not have to make another major decision in his or her life ever again. One strategy is to join a religion or a movement. One that has a set of finely prescribed behaviors that circumscribe one’s actions and offers an earthly or heavenly reward for the true believer. If a person is adrift without personal bearings and can not function in a chaotic ethical and moral environment that is perceived to have no absolutes – much like we have today – he or she will seek a belief system that offers a safe haven in this storm of relativism.

Islam fills that void

It is a strict religion that offers paradise and a sense of meaning in life to those who adhere to the simple pillars of its faith. Islam also presents to its followers a person whose life can be imitated and acts as a blue print to achieve the promise of paradise. But there is another form of ‘religion’ that is just as powerful and offers the reward of paradise here on earth. That is the belief in a strong secular ideology also led by a man to emulate – and even worship - and follow in his footsteps. Examples of these ideologies are Nazism with Hitler and Maoism with Mao Zedong.

Both of these belief systems are the answer to one suffering with Decidophobia. There is even an instruction manual for the Decidophobic that relieves him or her of any future personal decisions. The beliefs revealed and the instructions are clear in their ‘bibles’. Mein Kampf, Mao’s Little Red Book, and the Koran. These belief systems are now the Decidophobic’s community, their country that they dwell within surrounded by fellow citizens of their little nation.

Source

Of course, Iran is the source of most Islamist terrorism currently. Even some European officials are beginning to understand the starkness of the situation regarding Iran.

Although US Democratic Party congressmen and women are taking a particularly cynical and cowardly stance toward the world struggle against jihadist terrorism, coming from Iran but manifested by Iraq, it is unlikely that their disingenuous tactics will stand at the end of the season.

These are issues of life and death that most journalists and some bloggers are very eager to deny--just as the US Democratic Party congressmen and women do.

Speaking of Iran, How are your Nuclear War Survival Skills?

As Iran and North Korea continue to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons technology--with the tacit approval of China and Russia--the probability of a nuclear engagement between the "warlord governments" and the developed western world is increasing.

When the USSR fell of its own centrally-planned ineptitude, most people believed they would never need to worry about nuclear war again. Scholar Francis Fukuyama even went so far as to predict "the end of history." Who can blame all of those naive optimists for believing that it would be downhill coasting from then on?

Well, they were wrong, and history is working overtime to create another world war and perhaps a nuclear world war. So what is a prudent, intelligent, and informed person to do? I barely have the heart to tell you that you need to brush up on your nuclear war survival skills.

I suggest that you begin with Chaper 1, and take your time with it. Most people believe that a nuclear war between the great powers would mean the end of humans on earth--or at least the end of civilisation. On the Beach by Nevil Schute was pivotal in shaping popular beliefs about the consequences of a world nuclear war. Several other post- apocalyptipc novels helped to round out this bleak outlook.

Make no mistake--a large scale nuclear war would the worst event in human history up until now. The huge nuclear arsenals possessed by Russia and the US, and the huge arsenal being rapidly built up by China, would guarantee a human and environmental disaster unprecedented in history.

Still, if you knew that you could survive a nuclear war--given a little luck--would you be willing to take the trouble to learn how? Many people would not. Many people feel that if such a disastrous cataclysm were to occur, with the horrific loss of life, that they themselves would not want to live.

I understand that. Any survivors of a large scale disaster of that magnitude would have to work like hell to have any kind of decent life at all. In other words, any survivor of a large scale disaster has to have personal competence, and hopefully good health and personal integrity. Because who would want to live in a world that was run by Pol Pot characters or Hell's Angels?

The personal integrity and good health are up to you, as is the general life competence that comes in so handy when the unexpected happens. But specific knowledge and skills that could help you and your family survive a nuclear war, is something that you just have to work at, to learn. Either you want to survive or you don't, should such an unspeakable horror occur.

Update: Also see this Al Fin posting, with links to motivational videos.

Doesn't Look Lost--Objections from Iraq

An independent movie-maker, reporter, and blogger, embedded with the marines in Anbar, objects to US Senator Harry Reid's statement of surrender last week. Here are his words:

The Sheiks, the arbiters of power in Anbar for centuries, are loath to give up their power to a professional police force based on merit, a police force beholden to civil law instead of tribal patronage.

But the Sheiks are also tired of the capriciousness of the Jihadists and of appearing powerless before their tactics of terror. While many of the Sheiks doubtlessly supported elements of the insurgency, they saw their power would be cut off by the Sharia courts.

For people used to being courted for their political sway, the approach of the jihadists was dead end. The Americans, even the units doing Hammer and Anvil, were a better alternative.

....Are the militias rag tag looking? Yes. Are they professionally operated? No. Do they conform to Western standards? No. Are they effective against the jihadists? Yes.

So effective that the Marines who actually work the patrol bases and combat outposts say everything is really boring and their main job is as QRF for the neighborhood watch.

As for my time in Husabayh Jawal and Khalidiyah, it was really boring, but boring is good. ....

Source

The coalition action in Iraq will probably not have the ending that anyone would have predicted, or even preferred. But if the people of Iraq are able to resist the world wide tide of jihadism, and take concrete steps toward a representative rule of law--although not western style democracy--the state of the world will be better. Certainly if the Kurds can develop a modern Kurdistan based mostly on "rule-of-law" principles, they may demonstrate something about what muslims are capable of.

The theocratic style of government you see in Iran, and the quasi-theocracy of Saudi Arabia, may be justifiably thrown on the dustbin of history, if the people of Iraq can find it in themselves to rise above their medieval traditions, customs, and religion.

Islam and Democracy

The question is: can Islam be compatible with democracy? The excellent essayist Fjordman, provides another installment in this series at the indispensable Gates of Vienna blog.

Occasionally I get annoyed over the fact that I am compelled to spend significant amounts of my time refuting Islam, an ideology that is flawed to the core and should be totally irrelevant in the 21st century. But then I try to see it from a positive angle: The good part about our confrontation with Islam is that it forces us to deal with flaws in our own civilization. It has already exposed a massive failure in our education system and our media, both filled with anti-Western sentiments and ideological nonsense. These legacies from the Western Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s have left us unable to recognize the Islamic threat for what it is. Thus, when we are confronted now with the question of whether or not Islam is compatible with democracy, we also have to ask under what conditions a democratic system is able to function.

....Although the potential for abuse of power and tyranny is indeed there in the democratic model, this potential exists in other forms of government, too. What Plato failed to see was that it could be possible to institute constraints on democracy that would limit some of its potential downsides, although not eliminate them completely. The American Founding Fathers, too, were skeptical of “democracy” in the meaning of unconstrained direct democracy, which they, like Plato, perceived could quickly disintegrate into mob rule. They outlined a constitutional Republic with indirect, representative democracy defined by a constitution. Citizens would be governed by the rule of law, thus protecting the minority from abuse and the potential tyranny of the majority. John Adams defined this as “a government of laws, and not of men.”

The Constitution of the United States was inspired by the French Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu, famous for his theory of the separation of powers into branches: The executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, with checks and balances among them. The USA has strong separation of powers, whereas many European countries typically have parliamentary democracies with weaker separation, since the executive branch, the government, is dependent on the legislature. Democracy strengthened by such constraints and individual rights has worked reasonably well, but like all other human inventions it isn’t perfect.

....It is obviously easier to establish democracy in a small and transparent nation state than in a larger one. However, Sweden - the Western country where people pay the highest tax rates - is also arguably the most politically repressed nation and has the least real freedom of speech. Sweden’s problem is not its geographical size, but the bloated state apparatus. Perhaps limitations on bureaucracy, government influence and intrusion are crucial for a functioning democracy, too. In a traditional pre-modern state, the ruler might not always have ruled with your consent, but he largely left you alone as long as you paid your taxes. Not so in our modern democratic nations. Our schools are increasingly filled with courses disparaging our own indigenous cultural heritage while they praise Islamic “tolerance.” We are barred from bringing up our own children and instilling in them our values. Is this liberty?

....There is a crucial reason why the European Union isn’t democratic: There is no European demos. Most people in Europe identify themselves as Italian, Spanish, Dutch or Polish. The notion of being a European is at best a very distant second. In contrast, United States citizens consider themselves Americans, although Multiculturalism encourages dual identities, in which individuals are African-American, Asian-American etc. This tribalization represents a critical long-term challenge to the continued quality of American democracy. It is conceivable that the backlash could cause the country to fall apart if the white majority, too, decides to view itself as a tribal group of European-Americans.

....For this democratic process to work there has to be a loyalty and identity that precedes political allegiance. We must have a community that has primary common interests. This has no real counterpart in Islamic countries, where the ideal is the global Ummah and the Caliphate. Concepts such as the nation state or territorial integrity have no equivalent in Islamic jurisprudence, which helps explain why democracy is so hard to establish in Muslim countries.

....Two central concepts in sharia are the notions of “blasphemy” and “apostasy,” both incurring the death penalty. These laws are incompatible with the ancient Western ideas of freedom of conscience and of speech. Thus, sharia is anathema to the goals of democracy. Sharia is also hostile to equality before the law, since Islamic law is based on the fundamental inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims, men and women, free men and slaves. Moreover, it does not provide any protection for minorities, since non-Muslims are supposed to be unarmed and their lives and property subject to the whims of Muslims at any given moment. Although Islam does contain the vague Koranic notion of shura, consultation, this has never been formalized or concretized, which means that there are no formal constraints on the power of the ruler under sharia. The only thing an Islamic ruler may not do is openly to reject Islam.

....One great obstacle to establishing democracy in this cultural sense in Muslim countries is that Muslims have been taught from birth that non-Muslims can’t be expected to enjoy the same kind of rights as Muslims do.

....In Pakistan’s Sindh province there is an alarming trend: Muslims kidnap Pakistani Hindu girls and force them to convert to Islam. The worried resident Hindu community has resorted to marrying off their daughters as soon as they are of age. Alternatively, they migrate to India, Canada or other nations. Recently, at least 19 such abductions have occurred in Karachi alone.

....Underlying this Muslim supremacist mentality, there is also the idea of Arab supremacy. Again according to Qutb, “What are the Arabs without Islam? What is the ideology that they gave, or they can give to humanity if they abandon Islam? The only ideology the Arabs advanced for mankind was the Islamic faith which raised them to the position of human leadership. If they forsake it they will no longer have any function or role to play in human history.”

....Politiken, a left-leaning, intellectual newspaper championing multiculturalism in Denmark, argued that the principle of blood money might be worth considering. Luckily, they were met by an outcry from angry citizens. There are at least two major problems with this Islamic “justice.” The first is that it is settled between families, tribes or clans, not in a justice system administered by the authorities where it is a matter concerning the individuals involved, not the entire clan. We had similar tribal vendettas in the West at one time, but we left this practice behind a long time ago, as Muslims should have done. The biggest problem will come if this tribal system were to undermine the Western justice system to the extent that Westerners, too, would revert to tribal law in order to protect themselves.

Many commentators in Denmark failed to understand the worst part of the blood money concept. Not only is it pre-modern and anti-individualistic, but the compensation to be paid is fundamentally inegalitarian. Muslim men are the only full members of the Islamic community. All others have fewer rights due to their religion, their sex or their slave status.

....The largest student group on campus, the Muslim Students’ Association, has monopolized use of the multifaith room. Eric Da Silva, president of the Catholic Student Association, said the group looked into using the room for mass but was told by RSU front desk staff that the room was “permanently booked” by Muslim students. “No one is trying to take away the space from the Muslims, we just don’t want to be stepping on their toes,” said Da Silva. He stressed that the group found another space to hold mass and the conflict was quickly resolved. The space, which was divided to separate males from females, had rows taped on the floor for prayer and Islamic decorations adorning the walls, was only accommodating to Muslims. A Canadian Federation of Students task force tackling cultural and religious discrimination was brought to campus by members of the MSA, but it only addressed the problem of Islamophobia.

....The reason why many former Muslims such as Ali Sina and Ibn Warraq write under pseudonyms is that in a religion that is so hostile to both individuality and freedom of speech, there is no worse crime for a Muslim than to exercise both by criticizing and leaving Islam. Apostasy bears the penalty of death. In the book Leaving Islam - Apostates Speak Out, a unique anthology by former Muslims, Ibn Warraq writes that (p. 31):

“However, apostasy is a matter of treason and ideological treachery, which originates from hostility and hypocrisy. The destiny of a person who has an inborn handicap is different from the destiny of one whose hand should be cut off due to the development of a dangerous and infectious disease. The apostasy of a Muslim individual whose parents have also been Muslim is a very infectious, dangerous and incurable disease that appears in the body of an ummah (people) and threatens people’s lives, and that is why this rotten limb should be severed.”

The death penalty for apostasy from Islam is firmly rooted in Islamic texts - certainly in the hadith, but arguably also in the Koran.

....Islam’s hostility towards freedom of speech does not apply only to Muslims, but to anybody saying anything remotely critical of Islam, including non-Muslims. Muslims are already busy trying to shut down freedom of speech in Western nations through legal harassment and, increasingly, physical intimidation.

The body of Theo Van GoghMohammed Bouyeri, born in Amsterdam of Moroccan Berber parents, murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who had recently made a film critical of Islam together with the Dutch-Somali former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, on the morning of Nov. 2, 2004. As Mr. van Gogh cycled to work in Amsterdam, the bearded young man in a long Middle-Eastern-style shirt fired at him with a handgun, chased him, shot him once more, slit his throat from ear to ear and plunged two knives, one with a five-page letter attached, into the body. “I did what I did purely out my beliefs,” Bouyeri told judges while clutching a Koran, because he believed van Gogh insulted Islam.

....According to Adonis, the underlying structure of Arab societies is a structure of slavery, not of liberty: “Some human beings are afraid of freedom. When you are free, you have to face reality, the world in its entirety. You have to deal with the world’s problems, with everything. On the other hand, if we are slaves, we can be content and not have to deal with anything. Just as Allah solves all our problems, the dictator will solve all our problems.”

....Freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental of all freedoms; it is necessary for a functioning democratic society. The Islamic world will never know true liberty until Muslim individuals may openly criticize their religion and even leave it without having to fear for their lives. This freedom must be established not just in Switzerland or the United States, but in Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. That vision of liberty so far remains a mirage in the distance.

....Perhaps the greatest idea of the Leftist factions after the Cold War was to re-invent themselves as Multicultural parties and begin to import voters from abroad. There is nothing new about buying “clients” by promising them access to other people’s money. However, this defect becomes more dangerous when combined with massive immigration. In Europe, Muslim immigration may turn democracy into a self-defeating system that will eventually break down because native Europeans no longer believe that it serves their interests.

....Certain observers mistakenly claim that “once Muslims become a majority, we will get sharia through elections.” On the contrary, sharia will arrive much sooner. Observe that relatively small percentages of Muslims can squeeze concessions out of democracies. Sharia has already been partially implemented in India, Thailand, the Philippines, and Britain. Islam’s inherent aggressiveness elicits appeasement from non-Muslims in order to avoid bringing down the democratic system through civil war.

....“The jihadists are not interested in winning in our sense of the word. They can succeed simply by making the present world order unworkable, by creating conditions in which politics-as-usual is no longer an option, forcing upon the West the option either of giving in to their demands or descending into anarchy and chaos. It is tempting to call this approach the crash of civilization.”

.... it is now a criminal act in several Western nations to tell the truth about the dangers posed by Muslim immigration. Hate speech laws amount to “sharia lite”: they are used to silence infidels such as Harding for criticizing Islam, which again corresponds to the workings of sharia. The sharia lite of political correctness is thus paving the way for the gradual implementation of full sharia in the West.

....Islam has always valued individual life inequitably. But now there is a creeping tendency within the West toward the same view. In the case of assault or murder, an additional sentence is added if the act is viewed as a “hate crime.”

Murder is murder, and all human life is to be valued equally. However, according to Multiculturalism we are required to treat all cultures and religions as equally valid, which they obviously are not. This perversion of reality indicates that the Western system of justice is regressing. As it does so, justice becomes vulnerable to exploitation and infiltration by Islamic law.

Source

I have excerpted perhaps 5% of Fjordman's excellent essay, available in its entirety at the link above.

Suffice it to say that Islam is a total system of living, including civil and religious laws and observances, and prohibitions that penetrate into every area of life. In other words, Islam is not compatible with any other way of life--secular nor religious. Islam is a world unto itself. It recognizes no equals, and enforces inequality in its judgments.

The Angry Left? No, That Would Be Redundant

If using the term, "nappy headed hos" can get a person fired, vilified, demonised, and castrated, imagine the aftermath. Courageous athletes and head coach of an excellent athletic team reduced to wallowing in self-pity. A governor lying in an intensive care unit on a ventilator. A presidential candidate attempting to use the team as a springboard in her presidential ambitions.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton finally dropped by Rutgers to meet with the school's women's basketball coach -- but the players themselves skipped the half-hour meeting, citing their studies and Imus fatigue.

Perhaps they grew tired of wallowing.

Ms. Clinton could have used some more wallowing from the players, particularly since she is vying for the endorsement of Al Sharpton--master wallower--against Barak Obama in the 2008 US presidential election.

And how about the Duke university "gang of 88", and their ho-like refusal to apologize to the Duke players they had libeled, defamed, and attempted to bury. I like to call them monkeys, rather than professors, as their behaviour warrants.

Fortunately for the monkeys of Duke, universities across North America are controlled by the angry left.

Houston Baker, the Duke faculty member who wrote the appalling letter about the alleged rape, got rewarded with a job offer at Vanderbilt where he is now distinguished professor. He has never apologized or retracted his Salem-witch trial like rantings.

Being a member of the angry left, like being an islamist, means never having to say you are sorry.

Why won’t the Duke president or the culpable faculty apologize?

Because deeply entrenched among the Left is a notion of moral justice that transcends the law and is now to be adjudicated by elites versed in race/class/gender theories. In this way of thinking the “rape” is just a matter of semantics, the law an obstruction to the larger question still unresolved: a poor black woman performed sexually for white rich males.

De facto this is an indictment of our entire male-dominated capitalist system that put the poor, the female, the person of color in bondage to the white, male and wealthy.

In that prism, technicalities of law don’t matter and surely don’t address these larger pathologies so endemic in the United States, against which the university nearly alone exists to combat. That the “victim” lied under oath, ruined the reputations of innocents, was on drugs, was engaged in promiscuous sexual activity, and had a criminal record is simply proof of her victim status.

[Leftists] are endlessly tolerant of rude behavior, as long as the ox being gored isn’t one of their own. You see Imus committed the ultimate Liberal sin; he lampooned one of the Liberal media’s “sacred cows.”

Now, was Imus a young, angry, black “artist,” his use of the terms “nappy headed ho’s” and “jiggaboo wannabe’s” his comments most probably have gone unmarked. If he had used similar racially charged language about a white football team, or say a…um…I don’t know…a…white, Southern lacrosse team, for instance, this entire event would not even have warranted a page 7 paragraph in the New York Lies…uh…Times or the Washington Pest…err…Post (sorry, I just keep making that mistake), but Imus is white, male, and he crossed the sacred line. He exercised his Constitutional right to free speech against the wrong group.

The point of this screed is that there is no “reserve of decency” in today’s [Leftist] Paleo-media, there are only sacred cows (or cattle, I’m not sure which).

Source

Leftists are angry, which today is only to say that leftists are leftists. Condemned to ally themselves with islamists in seeking to overthrow western civilisation and its legacy, leftists can only seek to destroy. Expect to see a lot of that.

Who Is Your Scapegoat?

Scapegoating has a very long and illustrious history.

The term scapegoat, however, has evolved to refer to individuals or peoples who are symbolically or concretely made to bear responsibility for the faults or problems of others. For individuals, scapegoating is a psychological defense mechanism of denial through projecting responsibility and blame on others.[2] It allows the perpetrator to eliminate negative feelings about him or herself and provides a sense of gratification. Furthermore, it justifies the self-righteous discharge of aggression. For the perpetrator, it can provide a firm separation between good and bad.[3] Others describe scapegoaters as insecure, motivated to raise their own status, particularly relative to the target.[4] Having firmly convinced oneself that the other is responsible, it seems only logical to displace punishment as well.

Source

Scapegoating is a hostile social - psychological discrediting routine by which people move blame and responsibility away from themselves and towards a target person or group. It is also a practice by which angry feelings and feelings of hostility may be projected, via inappropriate accusation, towards others. The target feels wrongly persecuted and receives misplaced vilification, blame and criticism; he is likely to suffer rejection from those who the perpetrator seeks to influence. Scapegoating has a wide range of focus: from "approved" enemies of very large groups of people down to the scapegoating of individuals by other individuals. Distortion is always a feature.

Source

More on the psychodynamics of scapegoating here.

The most popular scapegoat for most journalists, bloggers, and interior dialogue legends in their own minds, is of course George W. Bush. Bush hatred is epidemic, and not to participate in Bush hatred is considered the mark of a neocon, another popular scapegoat. If there is any scapegoat more popular than the above, it would be the private oil and coal companies of the western world.

Creative individuals do not waste time on conformist scapegoats such as Bush and the neocons, but then most people are not creative, and are instead compleat conformists. Thus the mob-like nature of Bush hatred. Given the fact that the average world IQ is 90, and declining to 84 by mid-century--this is not a surprise.

Many otherwise intelligent persons indulge in projecting their inner shadows upon political figures such as Bush, with a near complete absence of insight into their own thought processes.

I am reminded of the "joke club" where the members sat in a group, with one occasionally shouting out a number, eg "84!". Everyone would laugh, because they had all heard the jokes so many times there was no need to repeat them. Just refer to them by number. The same type of automaticity is at work in political propaganda, which is what that most political journalism is.

In propaganda, words have magical powers. Imbuing words with a deeper meaning than they deserve, is the job of a propagandist. If he is successful, his audience no longer thinks--it reacts.

Time for Arabs to Grow Up?

These are remarkable words from an Iraqi politician. What would prompt this man who lives with daily threats to his life, to speak these words that will surely bring more religious assassins to his door?

If the Kurds succeed in building a civilised society in Kurdistan, what will that say about the arabs? Iraqi arabs have an opportunity that no other arabs have had--the opportunity to master their own fate through a representative government, and a modern system of laws.

If Iraqi arabs behave as arabs typically behave, they will throw the chance away, and descend into a bloody chaos of clan/tribal/ethnic/sectarian violence. But if Iraqi arabs do decide to join the civilised world--what an amazing thing that would be!

There is not a lot of time left for the arabs to decide. It is time for them to grow up.

New Arab Design for Baby Car Seat--Air Bag Built In

Hat tip Daily Kross blog

Riding a Tsunami of Narcissism and Psychological Neoteny All The Way to the White House!

A good politician in the US knows how to gear his pitch to his audience. If you're speaking to a college group, you had better be good dealing with narcissism and psychological neoteny.

from a town-hall meeting John and Elizabeth Edwards held at the University of New Hampshire Monday. They were questioned by an undergraduate named Jenny Ballantine, who had this to say:

I need to be able to look to my leader and see words of encouragement, words of hope. I need to be able to trust that person. I need to be able to know that I'm going to be grow [sic in transcript] in a world that's not going to be full of hate and prejudice and racism and to know that I matter, that I wasn't just dumped in this world for no particular reason whatsoever.

I'm busting my ass in school, I work 25 to 30 hours a week, and it's just me and my dog. So what can you do for the people that are in my situation, that are trying their damnedest in school, wanting to go to grad school, is going to be hit with the loans--and, uh, I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up. I don't know what I want to be when I'm an adult. But I'm 22 right now, so people are like, "Honey, you are an adult." You know what? It's about me. It's about me voting for you or supporting somebody who's going to be the next president. So it's all about me right now. Just give me something.

Here is how the Edwardses responded:

Mr. Edwards: God bless you. If I were choosing a president, uh, that's what I'd be doing. I'd be looking for the specifics of what they want to do, because that matters, but I would also be judging them personally, because we need to trust our president.

Mrs. Edwards: I want to say something, too. I was really impressed with you, Jenny Ballantine, and I think probably everybody in this room was, and I want everybody in this room who believes that Jenny Ballantine is going to be able to do it to give her a round of applause.

According to Foster's Daily Democrat of Dover, N.H., the audience gave Miss Ballantine not only a round of applause but a standing ovation.

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