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Six months ago today, Muslim
terrorists massacred 3,000 innocent, unsuspecting civilians, from
around the world, in New York City. Lest we forget:
Whooping
It Up: In Beirut, even Christians celebrated the atrocity (Italian
journalist Elisabetta Burba)
“Where were you on Sept. 11, when terrorists changed the world?
I was at the National Museum here [in Beirut], enjoying the wonders
of the ancient Phoenicians with my husband. This tour of past splendor
only magnified the shock I received later when I heard the news
and saw the reactions all around me. Walking downtown, I realized
that the offspring of this great civilization were celebrating a
terrorist outrage. And I am not talking about destitute people.
Those who were cheering belonged to the elite of the Paris of Middle
East: professionals wearing double-breasted suits, charming blond
ladies, pretty teenagers in tailored jeans. Trying to find our bearings,
my husband and I went into an American-style cafe in the Hamra district,
near Rue Verdun, rated as one of the most expensive shopping streets
in the world. Here the cognitive dissonance was immediate, and direct.
The cafe’s sophisticated clientele was celebrating, laughing,
cheering and making jokes, as waiters served hamburgers and Diet
Pepsi. Nobody looked shocked, or moved. They were excited, very
excited.... Back in Italy, I received a phone call from my friend
Gilberto Bazoli, a journalist in Cremona. He told me he witnessed
the same reactions among Muslims in the local mosque of that small
Lombard city. ‘They were all on Osama bin Laden’s side,’
he said. ‘One of them told me that they were not even worthy
to kiss his toes.’”
Anti-Americanism
blamed on college teachers (WT)
“Professors and administrators are to blame for anti-American
sentiment on college campuses today, according to a report by the
American Council of Trustees and Alumni. More than 140 college campuses
in 36 states have held anti-war rallies denouncing the country’s
military actions in Afghanistan, the report says. The document —
‘Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America
and What Can Be Done About It’ — concludes that many professors
and administrators are quick to clamp down on acts of patriotism,
such as flying the American flag, and look down on students who
question professors’ ‘politically correct’ ideas
in class.”
In
war, grownups can’t play silly games (Mark Steyn)
“But the six-month suspension of normal politics is taking
its toll on Democrats. ‘We seem to be good at developing entrance
strategies,’ Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia’s porkmeister
par excellence, whined the other day, ‘and not so good at developing
exit strategies.’ Well spotted, senator. Here’s something
else that will shock you: Churchill didn’t have an ‘exit
strategy’ for World War II.... You don’t have exit strategies
when your national territory’s been attacked; you have a responsibility
to see the war through to the end.... The headline on Jules Witcover’s
column in the Baltimore Sun read, ‘Democrats Ask Tough Questions
On War.’ In fact, tough questions would be welcome. But Byrd’s
and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s criticisms are pathetic:
They’re about spin, posturing, about how it’ll play on
TV. In war, grownups don’t have time for silly games in the
congressional schoolyard.”
A series on Environmentalism
@ NewsMax by Diane Alden:
The
Green Matrix (Part One)
“The people who rule the green matrix seek to centrally plan
our lives. They have adopted the same philosophy as those who drove
the peasants off the land in Russia. They are of the same mind as
the Red Guard in China. They are willing to sacrifice science, the
truth and freedom, as well as the well-being of humans and the environment,
in order to promote their utopian vision for the world — a
vision that considers man a cancer on the land. Strangely, the term
‘green matrix’ comes up in many of their studies, claims
and policy papers. But this isn’t a movie. It is the new totalitarian
vision.”
The
Green Matrix (Part Two): They Blinded Us With Science
“The more serious problem, however, is that over the years
agencies have been co-opted by those with a much larger agenda in
mind. It is not just about listing one species and shutting down
one or two forests for public use, i.e., ‘managing federal
lands.’ As the greens say, ‘Think globally and act locally.’
That mantra is at the core and heart of U.S. environmental policy.
It is fair to say that in the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife
Service ‘science’ got dumped years ago. It was a process
that began in the ’70s but received official imprimatur under
Bill Clinton in 1993. At that time, philosophy replaced ‘science.’
Conservation biology became the ‘science,’ and ‘ecosystem
management’ and ‘precautionary principle’ the tools.
The end game was to reconnect ‘ecosystems’ from the Yukon
to Mexico.”
Being
reasonable about faith when we all ignore God (Hanna Clark)
“This fact versus faith dichotomy relies on a gendered and
racialized conception of the human mind and soul (or are they even
separate?). White people are seen as rational and logical, living
in the world of logic and ideas. People of color are seen as more
spiritual, irrational and emotional. The same can be said of men
(they’re rational) and women (they’re irrational). And
the same can be said of Macalester atheists (rational) and the rest
of us (irrational). The problem is that Atheism is just as based
on faith as any other religion. At Macalester, religion is often
seen only as an institution that tries to exert control. There’s
a knee-jerk reaction to the imposition of rules and social mores,
and all religion and spirituality is thereby ridiculed. It’s
ironic that so many people use a patriarchal and racist ideology
to critique what they think is an engine of oppressive authority.”
The
Pristine Myth (Katie Bacon interviews Charles Mann)
“For years the standard view of North America before Columbus’s
arrival was as a vast, grassy expanse teeming with game and all
but empty of people. Those who did live here were nomads who left
few marks on the land. South America, too, or at least the Amazon
rain forest, was thought of as almost an untouched Eden, now suffering
from modern depredations. But a growing number of anthropologists
and archaeologists now believe that this picture is almost completely
false. According to this school of thought, the Western Hemisphere
before Columbus’s arrival was well-populated and dotted with
impressive cities and towns — one scholar estimated that it
held ninety to 112 million people, more than lived in Europe at
the time — and Indians had transformed vast swaths of landscape
to meet their agricultural needs. They used fire to create the Midwestern
prairie, perfect for herds of buffalo. They also cultivated at least
part of the rain forest, living on crops of fruits and nuts.”
Diagnosis:
Delusional (Drs. Michael A. Glueck & Robert J. Cihak)
“People need to feel right about themselves. Not just good
— right. Morally right. For some people, hating America provides
an inexhaustible source of unearned moral stature. They can’t
be right unless their country is wrong, always and forever wrong:
an attitude empowered by the quaint notion that dissent is somehow
automatically morally superior to consent, and refusal to participate
a greater good than support. Sadly, there is much in this country
to criticize. We’re far from perfect, and in many ways the
intensity of our self-scrutiny stands as a badge of our virtue.
But there comes a time when some overweening emergency takes precedence.”
A three-part article in The Atlantic:
What
is the Koran? (Part 1)
“Some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to
date back to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., or Islam’s
first two centuries — they were fragments, in other words,
of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence. What’s more, some
of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from
the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising
to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox
Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite
simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God.”
What
is the Koran? (Part 2)
“Deviating from the orthodox interpretation of the Koran, says
the Algerian Mohammed Arkoun, a professor emeritus of Islamic thought
at the University of Paris, is ‘a very sensitive business’with
major implications. ‘Millions and millions of people refer
to the Koran daily to explain their actions and to justify their
aspirations,’ Arkoun says. ‘This scale of reference is
much larger than it has ever been before.’”
What
is the Koran? (Part 3)
“Gerd-R. Puin speaks with disdain about the traditional willingness,
on the part of Muslim and Western scholars, to accept the conventional
understanding of the Koran. ‘The Koran claims for itself that
it is “mubeen,” or “clear,”’ he
says. ‘But if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth
sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims —
and Orientalists — will tell you otherwise, of course, but
the fact is that a fifth of the Koranic text is just incomprehensible.
This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation.
If the Koran is not comprehensible — if it can’t even
be understood in Arabic — then it’s not translatable.
People fear that. And since the Koran claims repeatedly to be clear
but obviously is not — as even speakers of Arabic will tell
you — there is a contradiction. Something else must be going
on.’”
Response
to Terror (Austin American Stateman)
“This is an eight-part series by The Washington Post describing
the response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at the highest levels
of government.” (The original WP series,
Ten Days in September, is posted below. ELC)
Correctness
Crack-Up (Stephen Goode and Christopher Jolma)
“But the response to Sept. 11 at U.S. colleges and universities
might be bringing about a bigger, more profound transformation that’s
now in its earliest stages. It’s change that challenges and
may undermine — the gospel of political correctness, which
has ravaged U.S. schools for nearly two decades. It’s a transformation,
too, that may bring an end to the power held at American universities
and colleges by the left-wing 1960s activists — many of whom
long have held senior and tenured positions at American schools
and have used those positions to preach the same tired left-wing
politics and anti-Americanism they began so loudly advocating 40
years ago.”
Campus
Capers (David Horowitz)
“In any case, the media blackout of my book makes my current
campus speaking tour something of a necessity. I have one additional
agenda, moreover, which is to cast a spotlight on the rampant political
bias in the hiring of faculty at American universities. This repression
of conservative viewpoints — an academic McCarthyism that puts
McCarthy’s puny efforts to shame — is blatant, unconstitutional
and illegal, but ubiquitous nonetheless.”
What
will it take to persuade? (Balint Vazsonyi)
“The brutal murder of journalist Daniel Pearl has shaken even
our own television news analysts. That is significant, since some
of our most highly visible — and highly paid — commentators
had never known a foreign terrorist they didn’t like. Well,
that might be a bit harsh. Let us say instead, they had never seen
a foreign terrorist whose ‘cause’ they didn’t respect.
But this was too much, even for them. Are we mad enough yet?”
How
The Left Undermined America’s Security (David Horowitz)
“Underlying the Clinton security failure was the fact that
the Administration was made up of people who for twenty-five years
had discounted or minimized the totalitarian threat, opposed America’s
armed presence abroad, and consistently resisted the deployment
of America’s military forces to halt Communist expansion. National
Security Advisor Sandy Berger was himself a veteran of the Sixties
‘anti-war’ movement, which abetted the Communist victories
in Vietnam and Cambodia, and created the ‘Vietnam War syndrome’
that made it so difficult afterwards for American presidents to
deploy the nation’s military forces.”
The
cost of academic integrity (Walter Williams)
“College budgets depend on admitting warm bodies. That means
we can’t expect college administrators to do anything to stop
unprepared students from being admitted, courses dumbed-down and
fraudulent grades given. Boards of Trustees tend to be yes-men and
women for the president, so we can’t expect anything from them.
The money spigot needs to be turned off.
Alumni, foundations and other charitable donors — not to mention
taxpayers — should be made aware of fraudulent practices and
academic dishonesty.”
The
Plains vs. The Atlantic: Is Middle America a backwater, or a reservoir?
(Blake Hurst)
“The combination of progressive taxation and urban real-estate
prices ensures that almost nobody on the coasts has more spendable
income than the highest paid people in Franklin County or the rest
of rural Red America. People here in Missouri’s small towns
can buy a beautiful older home for less than $100,000. Brooks makes
much of the fact that he literally could not spend more than $20
for a meal in Franklin County. The fare in Red America is a bit
limited. You can’t buy one of those meals with a dime-sized
entrée in the middle of a huge plate, with some sort of sauce
artfully squirted about. But you can buy a pound of prime rib for
ten bucks. Class-consciousness isn’t a problem in Red America,
because most people can afford to buy everything that’s for
sale.”
Proof
that the classics speak to everyone (Katherine Kersten)
“For 35 years now, we’ve been hearing that ‘the classics’
— the great books of the Western world — are largely irrelevant
in today’s classrooms. Why? Most were written by dead white
males. Obviously, then, they can hold little meaning for females
or for black or Hispanic kids. Everyone knows that if young people
are to be moved or inspired, they need books whose authors ‘look
like them.’ Try telling that to the students at Wilbur Wright
College, a two-year community college in a working-class neighborhood
in Chicago. Students at Wright are predominantly black, Hispanic
or from immigrant families. Wright is for kids who aren’t ready
for four-year colleges. Yet students there are flocking to a Great
Books program and lining up to read authors like Plato, Cicero and
Dante.”
Why
the Muslims Misjudged Us (Victor Hanson)
“Two striking themes — one overt, one implied — characterize
most Arab invective: first, there is some sort of equivalence —
political, cultural, and military — between the West and the
Muslim world; and second, America has been exceptionally unkind
toward the Middle East. Both premises are false and reveal that
the temple of anti-Americanism is supported by pillars of utter
ignorance.”
Parsing
out grammar (Linda Chavez)
“I learned how to diagram sentences in elementary school —
or what we used to call, appropriately, grammar school.... Progressive
teachers and their professional associations, especially the National
Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), believe diagramming sentences
is make-work that bores students and turns them off to writing.
So they banished diagramming from the classroom years ago, along
with most grammar instruction. ”
Slouching
Toward Bias: A Neo-Conservative Critiques the Media (Poynter)
“‘The media, notably certain powerful big city dailies
and the network news divisions that generally follow their lead,
reflect a worldview that is not only distinctly liberal in character,
but hostile to those who hold alternative views.”
The
Education of Abraham Lincoln (Eric Foner)
“He read incessantly, beginning as a youth with the Bible and
Shakespeare. During his single term in the House of Representatives,
his colleagues considered it humorous that Lincoln spent his spare
time poring over books in the Library of Congress. The result of
this ‘stunning work of self-education’ was the ‘intellectual
power’ revealed in Lincoln’s writings and speeches.”
Ten
Days in September (WP)
“This series is based on interviews with President Bush, Vice
President Cheney and many other key officials inside the administration
and out. The interviews were supplemented by notes of National Security
Council meetings made available to The Washington Post, along with
notes taken by several participants.”
Lost
Boys (Amy Benfer)
“Suddenly, the debate among researchers is focused on the boys:
Are they behind because of the girl empowerment movement? Are they
being shortchanged in the classroom simply because they are boys?”
Skewed
News: Fair and balanced coverage requires diversity of opinion (Cathy
Young)
“Neither Goldberg nor McGowan allege a deliberate vast left-wing
conspiracy to distort the news. Rather, they convincingly argue
that news coverage is often influenced by a knee-jerk bias stemming
from the journalists’ own views on political and social issues.”
Why
We Don’t Marry (James Q. Wilson)
“Marriage was once a sacrament, then it became a contract, and
now it is an arrangement. Once religion provided the sacrament,
then the law enforced the contract, and now personal preferences
define the arrangement.”
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