Wednesday, September 28, 2005

 

About Lies and Damned Lies!




Frustration Multiplies


The absolute worst frustration I think I have ever had is to know the truth about a national or international situation, but not to be able to get the story out into the MSM correctly. In fact, the last time I was in the news, they got my name wrong right up front, and it went downhill from there. If our media is supposed to be a bastion of objective reporting that keeps our nation on the straight and narrow path we expect it to be on, they have failed miserably.

Every newspaper I have read lately has substantial error of fact and tons of supposition in it, to the point that it is a standing joke at our table to find the worst of them daily and to have a laugh at their expense. I have said repeatedly that about all the papers get right these days are the ball game scores, and I have my doubts there too at times. The talking heads are becoming extinct, thank goodness, because they somehow garnered the impression that they were objective, too, and a real benefit to the nation every night. They were not. By turn of phrase, innuendo, and outright lies the media greats biased our absorption of the day's news, subtly, but definitely, like the drip, drip of Chinese water torture.

My subscription to the New York Times has lapsed, never to be resurrected again. My subscription to the Washington Post will continue, simply because it is the hallowed paper of my upbringing, even if it is far too leftist and biased. Besides, they do report on the Redskins, and it is mostly well done.

We said a farewell to Peter Jennings the other night; Tom Brokow is gone, and Dan Rather imploded before our eyes for his sins. All in all, a good thing to shake up the heads, and perhaps return to more honest and unbiased reporting. I won't hold my breath! There was a time when reporters, analysts and commentators were carefully separated and labeled, but no more. So I pine for the "good old days" when I thought I was getting a fair shake from the MSM.


Saturday, September 24, 2005

 

Opinions About the USA Worldwide




We are looked upon as bad guys.


I am told that the US is regarded as a very bad nation, with a very bad President. While no one likes to be thought of as bad, nor our Leader to be bad also, I find myself in the position of simply not caring what the world thinks now. Let them moan and groan. In fact let them NOT come to the US if that is how they feel. We do not need subversives flooding the country anyway.

We have taken the moral high ground with the Iraqi situation, with Islamic Jihadists, and with the useless United Nations as well. The only country that tries to set things right in the world is the US, and I hope we continue to pursue our moral goals.

In fact, I see no need to address the accusations against us. Our actions will speak for us most eloquently. We are in a fight to the death with the Jihadists, and I intend that we win, regardless of the yells of the opposition. I say to hell with them! When in war, you need to concentrate on the enemy, for it is your mission to kill them. Yes, kill them; there is no possibility for reconciliation between the US and the Jihadists. In fact, we should keep a very wary eye on all Muslims, in the US or elsewhere because they are all potential Jihadists -- it only takes a little persuasion from their imams.

Bush had it right: you are either with us -- or you are against us.
Take whichever side you like! Just remember: if you take the wrong side you are our enemy!
Are we the enemy you want to have?


Thursday, September 22, 2005

 

On Free Will, The Good and The Bad


We have Free Wills, But We Freely Assign Some of That Freedom For The Sake of Security

Through the bloody clash of free wills over centuries men have forged guidelines and rules of behavior amongst themselves that delimit the exercise of their individual free wills in order to live more securely together. Thus there have arisen pragmatic guidelines and rules for acceptable conduct between men and women, families, tribes, and nations.


Such rules are known and practiced within nations, and between some nations, but not necessarily by all nations, or all peoples for that matter. Rules, big and small, are broken all the time. Fortunately, the incidence of rule-breaking appears to be fairly low, or else we would live in complete chaos.


Guidelines for behavior that are not necessarily codified into law can be said to be morals or ethics, and they are meant to instill moral or ethical behavior among men even in the absence of the means of enforcement. When there is clear intent to enforce behavior, laws are created, most often codifying the guidelines that have been accepted by the people concerned over a period of time.


Moral or ethical behavior, and the rule of law (and consistently following precedents) is the basis for a sound society. Such behavior can be directly or indirectly guided by several mechanisms, including: religious precepts covering the ideas of good and evil; social etiquette covering “polite society”; business ethics governing proper practices; the personal morals or ethics of individuals who adopt the rules because that is how they want to be treated by others; and, of course, the ever-present law enforcement methods.


Underlying this rule-setting are the historical facts of many egregious violations of accepted behavior by individuals or groups that do not respect the rule of law or morality. We call such individuals bad, criminal, evil or worse. We also call those who do respect the law and morality of a society to be good. We can also call the bad acts wrong, and the good acts right. When we want to form a government that brings the most good to the people, we are usually referring to a government that promotes the good and punishes the bad or evil. There is no question in my mind that both good and evil exist in our world. There is no solipsist or relativistic evasion of identifying good acts and good men, or bad acts and bad men. Or, naturally, an admixture of good and bad in the same person. This is another way of asserting moral absolutism, and of opposing moral relativism.


In most societies there are religious sects that set forth codes of conduct for their adherents. These codes are helpful to the extent that they promote the good and deter the bad in men. They are unhelpful to the extent that they create irresolvable conflicts with other religions ( and what might be termed non-religious religions as well, such as atheism.) and other people.


To deny that there is good and evil in the world, and that only acts of nature can be committed, is to deny the basis of our hard-won civilization and civilized behavior. One must also point out that such a view is irrational in the extreme, as history attests to over and over in every recorded period. To assert that morality is relative and not absolute is to readmit the Devil into human affairs. This must not be allowed to happen.




Monday, September 19, 2005

 

The Media, Calamities, and Perspective


Don’t believe all you read in the newspapers or hear on TV

There is an old adage: Don’t believe anything you read in the newspapers or half what you hear bandied about, and be especially careful of what you think you saw with your own eyes. That is more true today than ever. The Media are in the business of selling news, and to sell large quantities of papers or garner large audiences they must have news that attracts customers. Unfortunately, for the most part they hipe the events as far as they can, to the point of making up stories and predicting awful casualties to pull in the gullible.


Case in point: the New Orleans flood. We heard for days how there would be 10,000 dead floating around. There were, at last count, less than a thousand. We heard about rapes and shootings, but there have been no authentications of all this. This is not to belittle the real tragedy of so many people who lost all they own, and for those who lost their lives. It is, however, a condemnation of the Media for their exploitative tactics and reporting, in particular when the video images shown belied what they were saying.


Case in point: Iraq. Many in the Media have used the number of civilian casualties in the fighting to be about 100,000. this was done using false aggregations of counts and sleazy statistics as many have carefully pointed out. The more accurate number is 28,000, and most were caused by the insurgency, not by our forces.
The two main reasons for such distortions of the truth are that the Media needs to sell sensationalism to their public audience and the Media are woefully biased to the Left, or at least their editors are biased, even if the run-of-the-mill reporters are trying to record the truth and nothing but the truth. Their hatred of George W. Bush far and away supercedes their obligation to the public to tell the truth. This fact has been demonstrated thousands of times in the last five or six years. While slanted news is nothing new in the world, I believe today’s Media has gone way past rationality to where one reads papers to find out the game scores, and little else. For some mysterious reason, they don’t foul up the scores like they do important situations.


One must thank God for a few cool heads that maintain their perspective in the face of this Media onslaught, and manage to get published despite their direct challenge to mainstream biases. One person I must commend for his perspective is Victor Davis Hanson. He is consistently publishing the best analyses of events to be had. Another columnist I heartily recommend is Mark Steyn. Read them and you will come away informed and ready to do battle with the Moonbats of the Left. A blogger that I admire as well is John Hawkins at Right Wing News. I have seldom disagreed with his positions on just about anything and everything! I also appreciate Wrechard over at The Belmont Club.



Saturday, September 17, 2005

 

Nuclear Energy: Clean and Safe

We Need A Hundred New Nuclear Energy Plants Now!


Modern nuclear energy plants are both clean and safe. So says the EPA and a host of physicists and engineers. Our 101 plants currently in operation provide about 20% of our electricity needs in the nation. Newer methods of construction, new materials and newer processes will make modern facilities even safer, and enormously less polluting than any coal-fired, oil or natural gas generating plant. They do take 10 to 15 years to construct and test, because of the rediculously complex paperwork needed, but this could well be streamlined if the desire is there to do it. This I am all for! Let's go!


Friday, September 16, 2005

 

The Good Prevails!




So much good in life it is hard to list it all!

Love
Wife
Children (Grown and Gone Now, and Doing Well!)
Family
Friends
A Wonderful Neighborhood
Our Lovely Home (but it takes a lot of care to keep it that way!)
Financial Security
A Strong City
A Strong State
Surviving Illnesses
America the Beautiful
Christianity, A Religion of Hope
Conservatism on the Rise
Republicanism on the Rise
The Fading Allure of Liberalism
Fighting the Good Fight
Fixing Nature’s Ravages
Fixing Islam’s Ravages
Making Over the UN
Anti-Americanism on the Wane
A Strong Economy
Good Books
Good Music
Good Wine
Good Food
The Internet
Physical Security Improvements
Learning to Live With the Unfixable, The False Friends, and Nations
And So Much More....





Thursday, September 15, 2005

 

So Many Bad Things I Don't Know Where to Begin


Really Bad Things
(Often Redundant!)

It has been frustrating to think about all of the bad things in our lives lately, and one simply has no conception of where to begin to correct the bad into good. Many of the bad things feed on each other, creating a whole plethora of badness. One can trace the badness of Leftist thinking through many of the things I point out. One can trace the badness of Islam through some as well.


War on Terrorism (any war is a bad thing; we didn't start it)
Islam and Islamacists, Jihadists
Leftist Dogma and Ideology
Leftist People on My List
MSM Bias
Bush Blamers
Elitism and So-Called Elites
Christianity Bashers
Celebrity Activists on the Left
Activist Judges
Democrats (many of them!) and Democratic Congressmen
Political Correctness
Bias in the Universities
Abortion and Abortionists
Gay Marriage
Leftwing Talking Heads
Communism and Communists
Marxism and Marxists
Socialism and Socialists
Humanism and Humanists
Pacifism and Pacifists
The United Nations
International Criminal Court
Dictators, Tyrants, Kings, Emperors
Royalty
North Korea
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Egypt
Lebanon
Jordan
Iran
Russia
China
Indonesia
Africa
The Economic Union

France

Germany
America Haters, Both Citizens and Non-Citizens
Atheists Who Attack Other’s Religions and religious symbols
Liars, Distortionists and Biased Storytellers
Pure Democracy, as opposed to Republican Democracy
Thieves, Gangsters, Murderers, Con-men
Racism and Racists
Uncouth Louts and Loutesses
Stupid People
Intelligent Idiots (many Mensa acquaintances, for example!)
Rap Music and Lyrics
Drunks, Dopeheads, and Potheads
Pornography
Licentious Behavior
Teenage Pregnancies
Fatherless Families
Anti-Family Ideas
The Clintons
John Kerry
Teddy Kennedy
Joe Biden

Michael Moore

Far Christian Right and Rightists, Dominionists

Hurricanes and Tornados, Floods

















Monday, September 12, 2005

 

Disaster and Subsidiarity

The Left Has it Reversed


The basic principle of subsidiarity is that government functions must be performed at the lowest level in the chain of governance possible. That principle is built into our Constitution.
I have observed that many Leftists, most notably Michael Moore in his recent pronouncements on New Orleans and Katrina, are assuming the exact reverse of subsidiarity.

Their chain goes as follows:

Federal Government -- total responsibility for everything that can happen.

State Government -- responsible only to call an emergency and ask for Federal government help.

Local Government -- only responsible to ask for help to the State and Federal governments.

Individuals -- wait for help from someone. Take no personal responsibility.

This is a recipe for disaster, as we have seen in New Orleans. Reverse the chain, and you get:

Individuals -- responsible for their own safety and that of their family. Must heed the warnings of government to evacuate. Most citizens could have WALKED out of the city before the levees broke. Few heeded the warnings, and fewer still walked out.

Local government -- responsible for the safety of their citizens, for planning for disasters, and for providing leadership in the event of a catastrophe. The NOPD was ineffective, all 1300 of them, in stopping looting and shooting. The Mayor not only did not strongly call for evacuation early, he didn't impose martial law, which would have dampened the looting quickly. Further, he didn't even follow his own plan for emergencies such as Katrina, and all he could do is scream for Federal help when it isn't his role to do so.

State government -- responsible for the safety of all citizens in the State, and for supplying aid and disaster relief, including calling out the Louisiana National Guard, which had the troops available to respond, but were not called out until way late. Responsible to call for Federal Help when State resources are inadequate to the emergency. This call came far too late, even after the President pleaded with the governor to do so.

Federal government -- responsible to the people of the US for their safety and defense, subject to the posse comitatus rules and the sovereignty of the individual States. When called and help was clearly requested, they Federal government responded and brought the situation under control, although by that time, lives were lost due to the delays. The President had to order the State governor and the city Mayor to declare the emergency and begin the evacuation. Such a fool's game!

It became obvious that Mr. Brown from FEMA was not seen as effective in his job, and he was replaced by an Admiral, who had the command and logistics experience to handle the situation.
I believe the Left has politicized the disaster in order to blame Bush for it all. How asinine!


Sunday, September 11, 2005

 

The Blame Game -- Locals

Look to the Real Culprits

Regardless of what the President was doing at the time, besides trying to convince the Local and State authorities to allow Federal Intervention in a sovereign state, as is required by law, the "locals" were doing precious little, when much was well within their power. I find it nauseus in the extreme that the Federal Government, especially the President, should be vilified for something that was not in their power to do until later on, when they were finally invited in by the Governor of Louisiana. Linda Chavez states it plainly:

The Trouble at the Local Level

Linda Chavez
September 7, 2005
"You and your family (yes, your children, too) should be dropped right in the middle of New Orleans and be forced to live there for three days, and maybe then your tight grip on the GOP might be loosened and you'll be awakened to the failures of the incompetent man sitting in the White House." Such is the vitriol spewing forth in the aftermath of Katrina from those who believe George W. Bush is responsible for all of life's misfortunes. I received this hateful e-mail after commenting on television that while the federal response to the crisis has shouldered most of the criticism, state and local officials bore major responsibility for the chaos that enveloped New Orleans in the immediate wake of the hurricane.
As it happened, my youngest son, Rudy, was in New Orleans as the storm approached the Gulf Coast, so I was acutely focused on what actions were being taken to evacuate the city. On Aug. 27, with the hurricane gaining force in the Gulf, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin called for a voluntary evacuation of the city. But even after he ordered a mandatory evacuation the next day, he made no plans to transport the elderly, the infirm, or those too poor to get themselves out, much less thousands of tourists stranded without cars. On the afternoon of Aug. 27, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco held a press briefing in which she answered a question about what could be done to avert disaster: "We can pray very hard that the intensity will weaken. We don't know what it's going to be yet, but we're all watching the weather service. I believe that's the best we can do right now." It was at that point that I knew my son was in real trouble.
The governor had the power to call out the National Guard in advance of the storm. Indeed, it was imperative that she do so if troops were to be available in the immediate hours after the hurricane hit since it takes 72 hours to fully mobilize. Gov. Blanco delayed taking crucial actions -- in fact, it was the president who called her to plead that she declare an emergency. "Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding," the Associated Press reported Aug. 28.
The city had hundreds of vehicles at its disposal: school buses, city buses, garbage trucks, and city cars. But the mayor failed to mobilize these or to set up procedures for all city employees to be available to assist in keeping order and organizing evacuation. For those unlucky enough to end up at the Superdome, no plans were in place to get thousands of desperate people out of there once the winds died down. My son was able to get out on Sunday before the storm hit. Thanks to quick thinking, lots of determination and a measure of good fortune, he managed to get a rental car at New Orleans airport and drove to Baton Rouge with four friends. But others were not so lucky.
In our federal system of government, the national government does not step in -- even in dire emergency -- until state officials request that help. But what do you do when those officials are dysfunctional, as they clearly were in Louisiana? According to The Washington Post, federal officials have asked the governor for "unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law." And, the Post reported, "Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said." (italics mine-M)
No doubt, the federal response to this crisis was far from flawless, but at the end of the day, it was federal troops that restored order, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that plugged breaches in the levees, and federal forces that ultimately evacuated thousands of those trapped. Instead of blaming federal authorities, the country ought to be giving thanks.



Thursday, September 08, 2005

 

Whither Warblogging and TraitorsDawn?

These two poisoned leftist sites have disappeared from view. The authors, GeorgePaine and MK, have provided the general blogosphere no rationale or forwarding address. since most of the posts in these sites were of the "I hate Bush" or "Here's why I hate Bush"; or "Here is yet another thing we can blame on Bush" ; they were decidedly one-sided and ultra-left-partisan.

Several of us conservatives posted there to attempt to set the record straight, but it was hopeless from the start, as we knew it would be. Rabid Socialists and assorted atheists were dedicated to bringing Bush down by any means possible. The main thrust was the Iraqi war, which they saw as totally unjustified and a human disaster caused by Bush. (See the article below here in Rightwords.)

In a way, I am sorry to see them disappear. They provided a lot of fun countering their poisonous attitudes where they stepped over the line. And I personally managed to catalog their evasions when they were trapped without an answer in an argument, which is useful in recognizing the forms of evasion when they appear elsewhere.

I cannot imagine that they have actually gone off the blogosphere. I suspect they were tired of being held to task for their stupidities and conspiracy thinking, and so they opened up new sites whose addresses are not generally available, especially not to conservatives! This will allow them to congregate and commiserate with each other, and to reenforce their loony ideas without the balloon-puncturing that conservatives regularly gave them.

It is all Bush'es fault! (I can hear it still!)


 

Islamic Jihadism

I have seldom seen this subject more cogently expressed, so I posted the entire interview. Thanks to Frontpage:

The War of Jihadism September 8, 2005

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Jack Wheeler, the publisher and editor of To The Point, a geopolitical intelligence subscription website at http://www.tothepointnews.com/.

He has been called the “Indiana Jones of the Right” by the Washington Post, the “creator of the Reagan Doctrine” which dismantled the Soviet Union by the Wall Street Journal, and he holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Southern California with a specialty in Aristotle. He is the owner of Wheeler Expeditions, leading numerous expeditions to Tibet, Mongolia, the Sahara, Himalayas, the Amazon, 21 expeditions to the North Pole, and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the first free fall parachute jump onto the North Pole.


FP: Mr. Wheeler, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Wheeler: It is a pleasure to be with you, Jamie.
FP: We are in a war against Islamic Jihadism. Define your view of the enemy. Who are the jihadists and what do they really want? Do you see Islamism as being a cousin of Fascism and Communism?
Wheeler: You just made the right start. We are not in a war on “terrorism” and the enemy is not “terrorists,” but as you say, Islamic Jihadism. We should call this The War on Jihadism. The crux understanding of Jihadism, or Moslem Terrorism, is that it is a form of envious rage.
All three of the great barbarisms of modern times have been pathologies of envy. Nazism, preaching race-envy toward “rich exploitative Jews”; Communism preaching class-envy toward “rich exploitative capitalists”; Jihadism preaching culture-envy toward “rich exploitative America/Israel/the West.”
A clear example is the Nazi-type hatred Arabs have for Israel. The root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict is envy. The Jews created a civilization out of the wilderness and a garden out of the desert, while the Arabs – even with their centibillions of petrodollars -- continued to mire themselves in medieval tyranny and poverty. Israel is a fount of creativity and achievement, a bastion of Western Civilization built by scratch out of a desiccated wasteland, sparsely populated by Arab nomads herding sheep, goats, and camels. And that is why the descendants of those nomads hate and envy it so much. It is also why they hate America so much. Jihadis do not hate America for its vices but for its virtues, for its freedom, its prosperity, for its cultural success. Just as Nazis hate Jews for their success, just as Marxists hate capitalists for their success, so Jihadis hate America, Western Civilization, Judaism and Christianity for their success.
Jihadism, Nazism, and Communism are all totalitarian ideologies masochistically obsessed with destroying what they are envious of. Jihadists may claim their goal is a Salafist Caliphate, just as the Nazis claimed about a 1,000 year Reich, and the Communists a New Socialist Man. These are utopian pretexts to hide the fundamental goal of annihilating the object of their hate.
That’s always the pathology of envy: the willingness to destroy yourself as long as who you are envious of is destroyed as well. The suicide bomber is an ultimate expression of envy.


FP: In terms of this expression of envy, it appears to make sense why the suicide bomber is its ultimate expression. And it begins to make sense why the Left today embraces the suicide bomber. The Left and Islamic terror are both inspired by the same impulse. Can you discuss this a bit – the common ground of the radical Left and Islamism?
Wheeler: They are both expressions of apocalyptic totalitarianism. Marx and Mohammed are ideological brothers. More than that, they are metaphysical brothers. Their fundamental bond is a denial of the Law of Non-Contradiction. [As defined by Aristotle: “It is impossible for the same attribute at once to belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same relation.” Met. 1005b20]
That reality is contradictory is the basic tenet of Dialectical Materialism – the philosophy of Marx, Engels, and Lenin – and of philosophical Islam, for which it is blasphemous to claim Allah is subject to the Law of Non-Contradiction as that would limit and bind him in the chains of logic.
If reality is contradictory and logic is an illusion, then you are left with only one way to resolve conflicts and disagreements: violently. For Moslems and Marxists, change in the world consists of contradictory opposing forces – exploiters and exploited, believers and infidels – overcoming or being overcome.
Thus Marx claimed that “revolutionary terrorism” was “the only means of shortening the lethal death agony of the old society and the bloody birth of the new,” and Mohammed commanded his followers to spread Islam by the sword.
The fanatical followers of Marx and Mohammed, like those of Hitler, dream of the purifying fire of revolutionary justice, that once the evil scum of the world – the infidel, the heretic, the Jew, the rich, the bourgeois, the exploiter, the follower of Satan – are blown up by martyrs, burned at the stake, put to the sword, gassed in ovens, starved to death in the Gulag, or shot and heaped in mass graves, the world will be saved and there will be heaven on earth for all those who believe and obey.
FP: It is clear you do not think the Liberal-Left is equipped to defeat our enemy. Tell us the flaws and weaknesses you see in the left-liberal vision of our conflict.
Wheeler: Just as the totalitarian left is motivated by envy, the liberal left is motivated by the fear of being envied. It is a very ancient and primitive fear, exactly the same as a primitive tribesman’s fear of envious Black Magic or a peasant villager’s fear of the envious Evil Eye.
People in our society who are susceptible to this fear – such as heirs who inherited rather than earning their wealth and Hollywood celebrities who do so little to earn their millions – become liberals as a psychological strategy to avoid being envied. Liberalism is a not a political philosophy. It is the politicalization of envy-appeasement.
Thus liberals are masochists as well – for the more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy appeasement. Liberals have a compulsion to apologize to those that envy them, apologize for being white, for being male, for being successful, for the success of their country, their culture, their civilization. This renders liberals incapable of passionately defending America.
FP: What will it take to win this war?


Wheeler: The same way we won the Cold War, a Reagan Doctrine strategy that identifies the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the enemy, then attacks those vulnerabilities every which way you can.
When the Reagan Doctrine was launched in the early 1980s, it seemed inconceivable that the Soviet Union would ever collapse, much less quickly, within 8 short years.
But our analysis showed that the structure of the Soviet Empire, including the Soviet Union itself, was brittle. A brittle physical structure, like a water glass, can be unchanging and unyielding -- but if the right stress is placed upon it, it doesn’t slowly give or crumble, it shatters. One minute it looks like it always has, the next moment it’s in pieces. Social structures can be brittle in the same way -- which is why the result of the stress placed upon it by the Reagan Doctrine was that the Soviet Union shattered virtually overnight. The phenomenon of Jihadism is not a social structure -- it is a psychological structure; it is not located in any physical or geographical space, but in certain people’s minds. It is thus not a political or social or economic event, it is a mental event. If we want to get rid of it, we must understand and dissect it as such. Moslem Terrorism or Jihadism is something which the 19th century British scholar Charles Mackay would have recognized as a “moral epidemic.” In 1841, he wrote a history of such epidemics entitled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. What all such mass delusions have in common is an incredibly intense psychological energy that is impervious to reason, reality, and morality. That is the strength of these mass frenzies. Their weakness is that the energy, however intense, is inherently unstable -- in fact, the more intense, the more unstable. There is thus a fragility to them. They spring into a roaring existence, wreak their havoc, then vanish. They are ephemeral. What feeds their energy is irrational hope, hope oblivious to danger and fact, hope that drives the absolute conviction that prices of tulips and South Sea islands and dotcom stocks will forever rise, that driving a plane into a building will cause the disintegration of the richest economy the world has ever known, that blowing yourself up to kill a few soldiers will defeat the most powerful military force in history. Appeals to reason and morality or attempts to negotiate are useless in dealing with a delusionary frenzy. There is only one way to reach the frenzy’s tipping point, where its unstable energy tips over and rapidly dissipates and dissolves. That way is: The loss of hope. This loss will come with the rejection of Moslem envy. Such rejection then enables us to target their numerous Achilles Heels. One, for example, is women’s rights. It needs to be stated publicly by public figures for consumption in Moslem media: We just don’t care that men having more rights than women is sanctioned by Allah in the Koran, any more than we care that slavery is so sanctioned. If slavery and lack of women’s rights is sanctioned by Allah in the Koran, then too bad for Allah.
We need to go on the moral offensive. The moral currency of Islam is debased. It is infected with a moral virus that has rendered it a morally inferior religion. It no longer deserves our respect and if Moslems want our respect back they must earn it by disinfecting their religion of moral poison.
We also need to target Saudi Wahhabism as the financial locus of world Jihadism. This means shutting down by whatever methods necessary Saudi funding of Wahhabi mosques, madressahs, and terrorist training centers all over the world (80% of all mosques in the US, for example, are Wahhabi). It also means portraying in every possible public forum Wahhabism as an Islamic heresy, a blasphemous perversion of Islam that calls all non-Wahhabi Moslems infidels. It’s the Saudis who’ve got to change, not us.
And of course a necessary condition for winning this war is regime change in Iran. As my friend Michael Ledeen says, peace in Iraq requires regime change in Iran. If the CIA had any competence at all, it would have fomented a democratic revolution in Iran years ago.
It is completely unimportant that Jihadists or their Moslem sympathizers and apologists “understand” us. What is important is that they be afraid of us. That they have a conviction that if they attack us we will hunt them down and kill them dead. That they know we are the folks that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden with no regrets and we will do the same to Mecca and Medina if necessary. That we have nothing but contempt for them and they have no hope of defeating us.
Jihadism is an unstable, fragile frenzy. Once the Jihadis lose hope, the frenzy destabilizes, and this war is quickly won.


FP: Mr. Wheeler, of course your analysis is very shrewd and appropriate but I think it is important to stress that we did have regrets about what happened in Hiroshima and Nagazaki and Dresden. Those were the lesser of two evils; they were decisions we had to make, but we still regretted them because, as a moral civilization, we always regret the loss of civilian life. It is disingenuous and counterproductive talk about doing similar things to Mecca and Medina. With all due respect, Mr. Wheeler, we are at war with radical Islam, not with all Muslims. Talk like this gives bin Laden and al Zarqawi exactly what they want: a war between civilizations. The terror masters want us to alienate ourselves from all Muslims and to make them see us as their enemies. We must be shrewd and prudent and understand that millions of Muslims are also our allies in this terror war. We do not need to insult and alienate potential Muslim allies and Muslim victims of Islamism by threatening their sacred places.
In any case, in reaction to the reports of Al Qaeda’s nukes being buried secretly in the U.S., you have discussed that the U.S. has a nuke buried secretly in Mecca. This sounds a little strange to me. What exactly are you talking about?
Wheeler: No pro-American thought it weird during the Cold War that we had nukes aimed at Moscow in response to the Soviets aiming them at us. It’s what prevented the Cold War from becoming nuclear hot. The threat to nuke Mecca may be the one reason we haven’t had another 9/11 or worse.
As Mecca is of ultimate value to the Jihadis, targeting Mecca is an ultimate deterrent for us. Whether the story that some Pentagon friends of mine hinted at -- that a W-80 warhead is already buried in Mecca equipped to recognize a unique signal generator from a satellite for detonation – is true or if it’s Psy-Ops, I don’t know. The important thing is that the Jihadis don’t know either. There’s a discussion of this with a picture of a W-80 in the "http://www.tothepointnews.com/article.php?id=461&i=428c69342c0265e6008842aee54adf6e" article (October 5, 2004) in "http://www.tothepointnews.com/".
FP: Well, what can I say. First, again, I do not think that targeting Mecca and all the innocent Muslims there is a smart or humane way for us to fight Islamist terror – to say the least. Again, if anything, it will demonize us in the eyes of all Muslims and engender what bin Laden and al Zarwai really want. Also, what would make us think that the Jihadists care about Mecca and their sacred places anyway? These are not people influenced by mutually assured destruction like the Soviets were. These are people that seek death. They long for the other world, their happiest thought is this entire world blowing up and them going out right along with it.
Wheeler: The problem is that Jihadism is hard-wired into Islam’s founding document, the Koran – and so is anything else you want. The Koran is the most incoherent religious text ever put down on paper. That’s because it is not a book – it is a chant. It is not meant to be pondered and thought about. It is not meant to be read at all. It is meant to be chanted in a language – Classical Arabic – un-understood by most of the world’s Moslems as is Latin by almost all Christians, in order to put believers into an unthinking, unreflective trance.
The Koran was composed haphazardly at the end of the seventh century (two to three generations after Mohammed supposedly lived), as was the entire religion of Islam, to provide a religious rationale for the Arab Conquest and the continued rule of Arabs over conquered non-Arabs. The only way to forestall argument over the Koran’s innumerable obscurities and contradictions was to claim every word was that of God Himself, so to question any of it was blasphemy.
Thus “moderate” Moslems cite Suras that state, “Let there be no compulsion in religion” (2:256), while the jihadis cite Suras commanding, “When you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads” (47:4). The crux problem is that both are true since Islamic reality is contradictory. The moderates stress their suras and ignore the jihadis’ but can’t say Allah is wrong when he preaches violence.
Resolution of this problem is the Moslems’ job, not ours. Transforming Islam into an actual “religion of peace” has been achieved philosophically by Sufi imams such as Shaykh Hishan Kabbani. Sufism interprets the Koran metaphorically, and teaches that the path to Islamic enlightenment is not through compulsion of any kind, but through a personal ecstatic experience of the Divine.
We often hear calls for an Islamic Reformation. This was attempted 100 years ago by the Young Turks in Central Asia, who called it Jadidism, advocating a new (jadid in Turkic), flexible, and dynamic Islam.
Instead of treating the words of Mohammed as sacred petrified fossils, the Jadidists considered them as guides to the future, asking themselves not what Mohammed said centuries ago in the context of his day, but what he would say now if Allah brought him back to earth today. The Jadidists wanted Islam to embrace and flourish in the modern world. Tragically, the Jadidists were crushed by the Soviets in the 1920s, and their revival is to be encouraged.
But neither the Sufis and Jadidists can be encouraged unless something is done about the Wahhabis, the financiers of radical Islam.
The Wahhabis revile both the Sufis and Jadidists as heretics who should be killed – and they have the Saudi billions to spread what we should be calling a perversion of Islam. You are certainly right, Jamie, to point out that most Moslems are not radical crazies, that we are at war with the latter not the former, whom we need not demonize.
Most Moslems are human beings first. However much they see their personal identity suffused with Islam, they want the same things as everyone else: a peaceful and productive life, safety and happiness for their children. Were most Germans under Hitler, Japanese under Tojo, Russians under Stalin? Probably – and irrelevantly. It was not our job to “reach out to them.” It was our job to defeat their rulers and true believers, to render them no longer capable of being a threat to us.
This is why shutting down Wahhabi financing of radical Islam is a necessary condition to winning the War of Jihadism. The Sufis, Jadidists, and moderate Moslems in general cannot compete with Saudi Wahhabi billions which is washing over world Islam like last December’s tsunami over Phuket.
But until this is done, we have to buy time, and that is what the threat to nuke Mecca is doing. The Jihadis may think it is glorious to die for their religion, but not at the cost of the extinction of their religion, or rather its physical focus and center.
I personally suspect that the claim of a W-80 nuke buried at Mecca is Psy-Ops, that it’s a “useful fiction” which has in fact caused the Jihadis to hold off on another 9/11-type attack on America. I also have no doubt – and the Jihadis have no doubt either – that should another attack of this magnitude or worse – such as the nuking of an American city – take place, Americans will overwhelmingly demand and support making Mecca a radioactive hole in the ground.
And they won’t feel sorry about doing so, any more than over Hiroshima. Every action-adventure movie always ends with the audience applauding when the bad guys are wasted. Only liberals in the audience later feel guilty over their doing so.
It’s always regrettable when horrific violence is required to defend yourself from aggression. You always wish there might have been a better and more peaceful way. But there wasn’t with the Imperial Japanese nor with the Nazis and there may not be with the Jihadis.
It turns out there was with the Soviets. The Cold War ended peacefully with the implosion of Soviet Communism. Let’s all hope we effect a similar implosion of Moslem Jihadism.


FP: Yes, let’s hope for that. Mr. Wheeler much of what you say is wise and profound. We live in a very frightening age with a very frightening and evil enemy. I have no easy answers here and yes, we may have to take very drastic measures to try to stop a WMD attack on us by Jihadists.
But, once again, I would just like to reiterate that the talk of attacking Islamic holy sites is extremely counter-productive, as it alienates so many innocent people, many of whom are our allies. It also doesn’t necessarily do any good with fanatics running a death-cult ideology. Moreover, as "http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18926", actually doing it would suffice in what the abolition of the caliphate accomplished: the opposite of what was intended in the first place. In other words, it will simply give the Jihadists a greater grievance and cause to rally around and breath more life into their agendas.
Wheeler: I of course disagree with Spencer, who's a good guy, but has a problem claiming Attaturk's abolishment of the caliphate (which is only relevant to the Sunnis anyway) is the cause of jihadism -- namely, the half-century gap between the two.
FP: Well, this is a whole new debate and perhaps we can continue it in another forum.
Jack Wheeler, it was a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you for joining Frontpage and we hope to see you again soon.
Wheeler: Thanks Jamie, I'm looking forward to continuing, as this was a genuine pleasure for me.



Wednesday, September 07, 2005

 

Katrina Disaster Blame Game

Hip-Shooters Grab Microphones

It was a field day for Bush-haters as the blame game began the other day. The blamers zeroed in on Mike Brown, the Undersecretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response at DHS, and cited his lack of experience for such a job; thus blaming Bush for hiring him. Others have pointed fingers at the poor job done by the New Orleans Mayor, the Police, and Firemen. Still others have begun to focus on Governer Kathleen Blanco for her seeming lack of definitive contribution.

Level-headed people are telling everyone in hearing distance to forget about assessing blame for now, and to get on with the rescue, recovery of bodies, and cleanup operations. There will be time later to assess blame. What I think we will find out later is that Mother Nature won out over 35 years of poor planning for disaster in the area, and misuse was made of available funds for beefing up levees and other facilities needed to survive a Cat 5 hurricane ( instead of a Cat 3 as most plans used!) over the same period. There will be enough blame to go around to all parties.

I was impressed by the Police Superintendent's defense of his Department, which went through a toxic wading ordeal for five days -- on foot, for the most part, since cruisers were inundated-- without food or drinking water. Apparently, there were a lot more snipers and pitched battles than have been reported in the MSM. Many officers ran out of ammunition, and there was no place they could go to get more -- all was under ten feet of water.

However, I am withholding my own judgement until more facts are made available. I suggest that others do also.


Monday, September 05, 2005

 

Robert E. Lee


General Robert E. Lee on his horse Trigger. This monument is a few blocks away here in Richmond. You might know that he is facing South, not North, because he had the duty to surrender to U. S. Grant. Here was a leader in the best tradition of our U.S. Army, but he felt it his duty to offer his services to the South in the Civil War.


Sunday, September 04, 2005

 

Left and Right Mentalities

Fear Factor


There seems to be a prediliction or a predetermination for an individual to accept and make his own a group of ideas originating from either the left or the right sides of the political spectrum. One is apparently born with the leanings one way or another, and one's life experiences , more often than not, reenforce the side one is born with. Obviously, this is not a perfect prediliction, and to try to predict which side a person is on can fail miserably, but on the average, I believe our leanings are inborn and will show up as we mature.

This is most obvious between men and women. The man/warrior/hunter is instinctively ever ready to take hard action, and can only be tempered by older warriors they respect who can council a better way at the moment. The woman/nurturing/mothering person is highly tuned to security of the family, making a nest and raising children in a peaceful environment. This aggressive versus passive tendency is a common conflict in today's families.

It would appear that the recent Presidential election results tend to bear this out, where more men than women voted for Bush, and more women than men voted for Kerry. But the more interesting result would be how many men (and women) out of the total number of men (or women) voted for Bush over Kerry. If I remember correctly the breakdown I saw, 58% of men voted for Bush, and only 42% of the men voted for Kerry.

It is also obvious that many other factors enter into the situation, so I speak only of tendencies. A set of major additional factors over and above prediliction would include: intelligence; education; environment; influence of others; psychological makeup and defining events. These factors would be very difficult to sort out accurately as to their relative influence on each individual.

But I propose that psychological makeup has a dominant role to play in forming a prediliction to adhere to the right or left in an individual's thinking. In particular, I would select fear as the driving motivation, and even more specifically, an unreasonably high fear of death; fear of the great unknown; fear of suddenly not being. Death is the demarkation line between the life we know and the non-life we will know so soon from now. How each man or woman deals with this innermost fear of death and its projection into the life they live has much to do with how they lean politically. The atheist, the agnostic, the Communist and the Socialist do not believe in an afterlife. To them, there is only the here and now, except after midnight in their beds, when the dark fears of death overcome them.

This leads to two broad generalizations. The party that offers more comfort, higher security, greater certainty, inclusiveness, expanding benefits and minimal risks will attract the overly fearful, intellectual and inhibited types of people. The opposing party that offers leadership, direct action against threats; use of power to solve problems; a view of man as self-standing; as well as offering progress towards greater security and comfort will attract the less fearful, the more shrewd, aggressive, and self-confident types of people.

Of course, very few people would be able to trace their leanings to their own inner fears, and then to voice them in a public way. The tendency would be to externalize their fears onto others, or in behalf of others. Perhaps they would adopt a radicalized belief in the sanctity of life that goes beyond reason and rational conduct, mainly because that is how they want their life to be protected also, as they are always living in fear of death.


Friday, September 02, 2005

 

Last Year In New Orleans

We Thoroughly Enjoyed the Town!

The state of the Big Easy is so very sad. Lives lost and lives totally disrupted. Properties inundated and their contents lost. So many in misery. We cry with them.

We were there last year, and saw it as it was then -- vibrant, and partyful on Bourbon Street, jazz everywhere, the antiques on Royal street, the Casino, and the Steamboat up and down the Mississipi. I hope it can be restored to a semblance of what it was!

May God look after the homeless and destitute.


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