Archive for September 2004
Theft by Proxy
Billy Beck points to something that has long troubled me. It’s like this. It’s becoming easier and easier to just play along, to pull up around the fire and join in the Cannibal Pot Hysteria (as Beck calls it) along with everyone else. Just look at everything Uncle Sam has stolen from others for your benefit in terms of money, time, and diverted attentions? Most of you would never in your whole lives think of taking something from someone else through an explicit act of coercion. You would not dream of making other men your slaves, to serve your values instead of their own. Yet, each and every one of you, every day, benefits to some extent from the spoils of government coercion and theft. Some of you have positioned yourselves such that you essentially can’t live with out it, anymore. I suppose it will continue like this until there’s nothing left to steal.
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Sand Castles
All of which makes it imperative that civilizations be willing to robustly defend themselves. Rome didn’t collapse because the barbarians were too strong for Roman legions to defeat. Rome collapsed because its citizens no longer regarded the defense of Rome as either a duty or an honor, and entrusted it to mercenaries who, being mainly barbarians themselves, were unwilling to defend it against barbarism. Today’s overcivilization, however, is even more dangerous than the type that leveled Rome. Today, the overcivilized portion of the citizenry shies away from any defense of civilization at all. They worry that our use of force will be illegal unless we can get the UN to sign on. They quail at the thought of quagmires. They deride the goal of democratization as arrogance. They refuse to "judge" other cultures for fear of seeming bigoted. Nor will they ever attempt to assert the superiority of our civilization, despite the fact that it eliminated chattel slavery throughout the world, healed a multitude of diseases, and put men on the moon. No doubt such moral vanity makes the overcivilized think well of themselves. That’s Dale Franks of QandO, adding commentary to this article by John O’ Sullivan in the...
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Lion Wanna Cracker?
Ever listen to kids playing, creating their own rules for some particular game? It can be a riot. They’ll pose to one another some series of lofty and complex rules with all sorts of exceptions, then, beginning to realize some of the consequences for their own stakes in the game, abandon everything and just go about having fun. Couldn’t help but have that vision in my head as I read this load of silly crap.
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No Escape
I'm glad to be seeing more and more of this, around, since I've been saying and writing it since 9/11. It has taken awhile, but it appears that many are finally coming to the realization that this is a battle between our civilization and their anti-civilization. Here, there is no synthesis possible. Both their will and spirit must be broken, or they must be utterly destroyed. In conventional conflicts, such as the wars of history, there is always common ground upon which to build an eventual truce. Here, there is next to none. Not only do they desire your death, they have no love of life themselves. Observe that even the kamikazes of Japan in WWII were rational in the context of war. That is, they did not resort to this tactic until the war was essentially lost. It was a defensive tactic, to protect the homeland from the eventual American invasion. In the case of the practitioners of the “Religion of Peace,” their suicidal missions are offensive. They are willing to kill themselves—not to obtain or defend the freedom of their countrymen—but to destroy your freedom and countrymen. This would be like setting fire to your own home in...
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Ignorance of Youth
I still recall with clarity a day driving in the car with my dad during the years I was being educated at an institution of higher learning. We were talking politics, and then I said it, the singular most ignorant thing to ever cross my lips in the field of political philosophy. I think that everyone should be guaranteed to have their most fundamental needs met: food and healthcare. Of course, I had no idea of the philosophical premises one would have to hold in order to logically arrive at such a mandate, what those premises would represent in a wider context, how those premises would contradict everything crucial and fundamental about being an individual, and the human disaster that must necessarily follow from exercising them to their logical conclusions. That all came later. This new film about Che Guevara titled The Motorcycle Diaries, Robert Redford, the Sundance Film Festival, and all the people who cheer such an evil tool of human injustice reminds me of my youthful ignorance. (Link via Billy Beck, who has an apt analogy on the matter.)
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Let’s Get Something Straight
As the intellectually honest, liberal-but-complex Christopher Hitchens aptly pointed out in a Fox News interview I saw the other night, the Dan Rather Documents everyone has been talking about are fabrications, not forgeries. Most precisely, they are fabrications with a forged signature. Calling them forgeries lends credence to the story, for which there is no credible evidence.
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Sent Items
Not a lot of blogging lately, but the inspiration comes and goes. Also, I've been quite busy and have been doing more flying in the last few months than in the previous two years. Anyway, here’s a few snippets from my email Sent Items folder in the last few days: On Bush My only support for Bush is based on his ability to act steadfastly in this ghastly business of killing the hundreds of thousands of practitioners of Islam who need killing until they finally get the idea and pacify themselves. It's a dirty job that the leftist pacifists and appeasers are not up to, but needs doing nonetheless. History provides a good a lesson here. Oh, the left's wringing of hands that we not do anything to aggravate or upset the Soviet Communists as they infiltrated country after country and supported communist revolution on communist revolution. We know who was right on that score. The hawks (who are the real peacemakers, not the doves) were right. And they're right again, only this time, we're not fighting against a political and economic system that's rather thinly disguised as an ideology. I mean, face it, half the crap you hear spewed...
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Dan Rather’s Blather
Former friend, colleague, and fellow lefty Bernard Goldberg has some insight on the whole affair. By the way: the documents are fake. If you think there's any question about that, you're either too uniformed to have an opinion on the matter (i.e., so shut up), or, you're a completely hopeless idiot and should just, uh,...shut up.
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You Go, Ann
I'm normally not able to sit through an entire interview of or read a whole column by any of the unabashed shills for either party. Ann Coulter usually counts among those. Nonetheless, she's got one here that's worth a read. It's quite funny to boot. (link via Burgess-Jackson)
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Clear Thinking
I’ve yet to hear or read very much of it during the whole Swift Boat Vet and Texas Air National Guard controversy. So, allow me to lay down some proper perspectives in clarity, here. First, I have no doubt of the approximate accuracy of the following assertions of fact: 1. George W. Bush used influence or had help in obtaining a post with the Guard, and that his purpose in doing so was to avoid Vietnam. 2. George W. Bush, at one point or several, failed to live up to all of his duties and commitments involving his service in the Guard. 3. John Kerry knew about the 3-purple-hearts-and-you-can-transfer rule ahead of time. 4. John Kerry grossly overstated minor flesh-wound injuries in order to rack up 3 purple hearts in 3 months of combat duty. He himself lobbied for these awards, which is very unusual in itself. 5. John Kerry came back to the U.S. and publicly and falsely accused his fellow soldiers of being war criminals. 6. John Kerry, in a show of meaningful symbolism, tossed away his ribbons/medals (there is zero distinction to be made in the context of what the act symbolizes). I, unlike most people, make...
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Whatever it Takes, Man
Via Lynette Warren.
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Air Ballet
My wife and I spent the Labor Day weekend in Indian Valley on a hang gliding trip. Bea & I reconnected with friends and acquaintances we had not seen in months and years. Running a growing company, flying has been a rare luxury over the last few years. I’m trying to change that through recognition of the fact that I’m at my best when taking the time to do some of the things that most touch my spirit. Hang gliding is near the top of that list. Nothing so terrifies and delights me at the same time than taking a 70 lb. structure (1/3 of my own weight) of aluminum and Dacron, launching it by foot, and sniffing out rising air currents to heights thousands of feet over my point of launch. Some people take advantage of those climbs to travel cross country, often over hundreds of miles: climb, glide; climb, glide; etc. It’s the Holy Grail of hang gliding, and though I’ve had a few short cross country fights and I yearn for the satisfaction that surely must come from accomplishing something that only a handful of billions could accomplish in their lifetimes in this particular regard, the all-consuming...
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Figuring Out Zell Miller
I enjoyed the democrat governor of Georgia and current democrat US Sentator Zell Miller’s speech last evening at the Republican National Convention—as I enjoyed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s and even Rudy Giuliani’s on previous nights. I enjoyed all three because all were deeply spiritual speeches. Contrast that to the Democrat National Convention where what you heard was a cornucopia of deeply emotional speeches. Do you grasp the difference? Spirituality is emotion that’s reflective of an individual’s most cherished rational values. A speech that’s merely emotional has no necessary connection to top values or whether they’re rational. That’s why at Democrat Conventions, you more often see people getting all choked up or fired up about stealing stuff from people who are better off than they are. After last evening’s festivities, most frustrating was watching the various pundits trying to figure out Zell’s ‘angle’ in doing what he did. Isn’t it obvious? He stated his angle right straight up front at the beginning. He values his family more than his party. I’d venture to say that there’s a whole litany of things on Zell Miller’s list that he values more than politics or his party. Does anyone doubt that Zell Miller values integrity above...
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