What
the Titanic teaches (Stephen Cox) new
Investigation revealed that the Titanic had been following normal
navigational practices and that she was equipped with more than normal
safety features including 200 more lifeboat spaces than government
regulations required. In fact, more than 400 of the Titanics lifeboat
spaces were never used. A very large ship, like a very large plane, is
hard to evacuate completely; even if the Titanic had provided lifeboat
spaces equal to the number of passengers, there would not have been enough
time to use them all. No plans or regulations can guarantee that any vessel
or any human enterprise is completely safe. Every action,
even the apparently obvious action of turning a ship to evade an iceberg,
carries with it an incalculable risk. And our moral decisions are just
as risky as our practical decisions. The Titanic continues to fascinate
the world because it raised this essential fact to the highest pitch of
dramatic intensity. The Titanic sank [Apr. 14-15, 1912] in two hours
and forty minutes the length of a classic play. During that time,
everyone involved in the disaster had to ask the most basic questions
about what life is worth and what means may be used to save it. People
had time to think, observe, reflect; but they finally had to decide, irrevocably,
what they ought to do. Their decisions were as various as the individuals
themselves.
Its
a war, not a grudge match (George Jonas) new
In his Rose Garden speech on April 4 announcing Mr. Powells
mission, the President struck a lyrical note: America itself counts
former adversaries as trusted friends Germany and Japan and now
Russia, Mr. Bush said. Conflict is not inevitable. Distrust
need not be permanent. Peace is possible when we break free of old patterns
and habits of hatred. What Mr. Bush failed to mention was that Germany
was flattened and de-Nazified before it became Americas trusted
friend; imperial Japan was nuked, and Soviet Russia had imploded. The
friendship of these nations was preceded by a complete collapse and fundamental
restructuring of their respective societies. One wishes the Mideast conflict
were just a grudge match between two old men. Unfortunately, it isnt.
Its a war between the Jewish state and those who have been trying
to reject it for the past 54 years. Despite Mr. Bushs uplifting
speech, Mr. Powell probably lacks the illusions of Neville Chamberlain.
He isnt going to Ramallah as Chamberlain went to Munich in 1938,
with the lofty hope for peace in our time. Mr. Powell is hoping
only for a licence from the Arab world to wage his own war in peace. He
wants to finish a job in Iraq he left unfinished a decade ago.
Evils
triumph over conscience (Norman Doidge) new
Spooked, America is unwilling to let Israel end Arafats reign
of terror. Washington has retreated into approaching him with a kind of
primitive behaviour-therapy that says, If he renounces terror
or If he controls terror, then we will talk to him. It is
as though all that matters is to get him to say the right words, never
mind his intentions; as if no distinction need be drawn between his strategic
goal the destruction of Israel and a tactical willingness
to say he opposes terror (when a lie serves his strategy). Arafat has
discovered, as Shakespeare understood, that the more brazen and relentless
ones acts of brutality, the more likely it is that one will be allowed
a second chance, and find even powerful men of conscience coming to ones
door offering to forget, to forgive and to give forgiveness a bad name.
How
white liberals destroyed black families (Anthony Covington) new
It would be nice to put the blame for inequality of incomes between
African, Euro- and Asian Americans squarely where it belongs. Not on white
racism, the legacy of slavery and other dead or dying
nebulae, but on poor old Dad wherever he is. Even he is not the
real villain. Rather, the most blame falls on American Democratic politicians
between 1949-1999, including Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter
and Bill Clinton. Their allies in the American left-wing devised the welfare
state, an institution that wrecked the African-American family better
than slavery or racism ever did. Hold on, I hear you say,
that sounds upside down? However, consider this; it is not
colour, religion or your education in the USA that makes you more likely
to end up in poverty, unemployed, on drugs and in crime. It is not having
a father. Fatherless families of whatever colour in the USA make up 70
per cent of criminals, drifters, unemployed and failures. Parenting and
not race is the major factor undeniably so. Study after study confirms
it.
The
death of socialism (Roger Kimball) new
It is one of the great ironies of modern history that socialism,
which promises a more humane, caring, and equitable society, has consistently
delivered a more oppressive and mismanaged one. Socialisms motto
Muravchik optimistically offers it to us as socialism’s epitaph
turns out to be: If you build it, they will leave.
If, one must add, they are allowed to leave. As Muravchik reminds us in
this excellent survey of socialist personalities and socialist experiments,
encouraging dissent is never high on a socialists agenda. The socialist
pretends to have glimpsed paradise on earth. Those who decline the invitation
to embrace the vision are not just ungrateful: they are traitors to the
cause of human perfection. Dissent is therefore not mere disagreement
but treachery. Treachery is properly met not with arguments but (as circumstances
permit) the guillotine, the concentration camp, the purge.
Understanding
history (Balint Vazsonyi) new
At last, reparations for slavery have taken center-stage. It has
been like waiting for the other shoe to drop, ever since the United States
decided to compensate persons of Japanese ancestry for their treatment
following Pearl Harbor. Once we accepted the proposition whereby the attitudes
of the present, though no less transitory than those of the past, should
nonetheless be applied to the past, we mortgaged the future. We can no
more relive the past than foretell the future. The appropriate expression
of disagreement with the ways of the past is to change those ways in the
present, for what we believe will be a better future. Attempts at rectifying
the past are bound to fail because, owing to obvious limitations, they
have to be selective. Unavoidably, what we see as old injustices will
result in new injustices.
The
Mau-Mauing at Harvard (John McWhorter) new
The campus race game has largely prevented any sustained investigation
into what if anything Afro-American studies programs actually
accomplish academically. The assumption in the mainstream press during
the West-Summers contretemps was that the intellectual quality of Harvards
Afro-American studies was unassailable. Unfortunately, thats far
from true. Survey the departments undergraduate curriculum, and
you find that most of the courses express the pernicious belief that victimhood
defines what it means to be African-American that to be black in
America has always been a story of betrayal, disappointment, passivity,
and tragedy, and that when things seem to be improving, its only
an illusion.
Hunt
the Boeing! (Urban Legends Reference Pages) new
The notion that the Pentagon was not damaged by terrorists who hijacked
American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and crashed it into the military
office complex, but that the whole affair was staged by the U.S. government,
has been promulgated by French author Thierry Meyssan in his book, The
Frightening Fraud. Meyssan offers no real explanation for what
did cause the extensive damage to the Pentagon, asserting only that Flight
77 did not exist, no plane crashed into the Pengaton, and that the
American government is lying. Unfortunately, the appeal of conspiracy
theories has resulted in widespread dissemination of Meyssans theory
in France and the USA, particularly in web sites that mirror his work.
As Le Nouvel Observateur noted: This theory suits everyone
there are no Islamic extremists and everyone is happy. It eliminates
reality. The text cited in the example above comes from a
Hunt the Boeing! And test your perceptions! web site, one of
the English-language mirrors of Meyssans claims, where readers are
invited to ponder a series of questions about why photographs of the damaged
Pentagon seemingly show no evidence of a crashed airplane. The answers
to the questions are....
Are
Michael Bellesiless Critics Afraid to Say What They Really Think?
(Jerome Sternstein) new
Has the time come to ask if Michael Bellesiless Arming
America is an example of scholarly deceit? Some defenders of Bellesiless
work have insisted in various forums that Bellesiless critics have
yet to bring forth any evidence to suggest scholarly fraud. Recently,
in making his case, one apologist pointed to the searching examinations
of Bellesiless book in the January 2002 issue of the William
and Mary Quarterly (WMQ), which, although severely critical,
eschews charges of fraud or misrepresentation. To be sure, charges
of fraud do not appear in the Quarterlys forum on Bellesiles.
But what is truly remarkable about that forum is what does appear there:
scathing appraisals of his books misuse of sources and evidence
which some might regard as consistent with academic fraud, such as repeatedly
misquoting, distorting, falsifying, or perhaps even deliberately inventing
evidence to support ones thesis.
The
slavery reparations hustle (Jeff Jacoby) new
Dont bother telling the plaintiffs who sued last month to
collect reparations for slavery from three US corporations that they dont
have a legal leg to stand on. They already know it. After all, you dont
need a law degree to recognize that FleetBoston, CSX, and Aetna bear no
legal culpability today because of lawful activities their corporate ancestors
may have engaged in two centuries ago. Even unlawful activities were long
ago mooted by statutes of limitations. And in any case, none of the companies
being sued and none of their living shareholders has ever owned or trafficked
in slaves, just as none of the plaintiffs and none of the 36 million black
Americans whose interests they claim to represent has ever been held in
bondage. These specious lawsuits will never win. But then, they were never
expected to. The plaintiffs and their lawyers make no secret of the fact
that their goal is not to win a legal verdict but to pressure the companies
into making lucrative out-of-court settlements. If they balk, the lawyers
PR machine will generate ugly publicity about the companies insensitivity
to African-Americans. Set up pickets outside their corporate headquarters.
Threaten a national boycott. Maybe arrange a public denunciation by Al
Sharpton or the Congressional Black Caucus. It isnt hard to mau-mau
corporate America if you know how to play the race card.
Big
earners hit hard by income tax (Houston Chronicle) new
Another way the rich are different: They pay the lions share
of the nations income tax bill. The wealthiest 5 percent pay more
than half the taxes, while people in the bottom half pay 4 percent. The
annual federal tax deadline for most of America is next Monday. Two-income
households are increasing, putting more families in the top slice of taxpayers.
Millions of small businesses and partnerships are up there, too, paying
personal instead of corporate income taxes. Many other people were boosted
by the 1990s stock market boom. President Bushs big tax cut will
prevent the wealthy from paying an even greater share in coming years.
But key provisions, such as the doubling of the child tax credit, will
cut or eliminate income taxes for many middle-income people, while the
rich wont qualify.
Congress
Sets Record for Pork Spending (FOXNews) new
A war and a recession did not stop Congress from doling out the
pork for special hometown projects, a government watchdog is reporting
Tuesday. Citizens Against Government Waste is releasing its annual Pig
Book, a listing of what it calls the most egregious examples of
special interest spending. The results are grim, but not surprising, group
officials said. Taxpayers will be disappointed, said Thomas
Schatz, president of CAGW. Here they are, sitting around doing their
taxes a good time to be thinking what theyre getting for
their money, and in this case its a pretty bad deal. According
to the group, members of Congress seem to be the only ones not tightening
their belts since the economy took a downturn and the country started
fighting a war against terrorism. Pork that is, excessive spending
for members pet projects, which usually grease the skids for special
interest and hometown support increased 9 percent in fiscal year
2002 to $20 billion. The number of pork projects increased 32 percent
to a total of 8,341.
Safe
House: High-end Panic Room hideouts becoming more common (SFC)
Paula Milani bought a home with three bedrooms, two baths and one
Batcave. Her secret hideout is behind a seamless wall in her one-story
ranch house in rural Livermore. A robber could break in, check every room
and never know shes a few feet away, calling authorities as she
loads a handgun. Milani is one of the hundreds of Bay Area residents who
have a real-life panic room, which real estate insiders used
to call safe rooms before the hit movie starring Jodie Foster came out.
Some are converted closets with doors that bolt shut from the inside.
Others are like Milanis with secret entrances that are impossible
to detect unless you know where they are. And a few are similar to Fosters
fortresslike hideout in Panic Room, or even more intricate,
with heat-sensing cameras, multiple ventilation systems and chemical washbasins
for scrubbing away biohazards. In Los Angeles, most A-list celebrities
and entertainment executives have safe rooms, said Bill Rigdon, who is
a vice president of Building Consensus, a Los Angeles company that builds
the hideaways. He said Bay Area safe-room owners are a little less conspicuous.
Its the guy who owns the grocery store chain, software people,
an owner of several hundred business franchises, said Rigdon, who
has built more than a dozen safe rooms from San Jose to Marin County.
During the next fiasco, where do you want to be?
Among
the Bourgeoisophobes: Why the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way,
hate America and Israel. (David Brooks)
Around 1830, a group of French artists and intellectuals looked
around and noticed that people who were their spiritual inferiors were
running the world.... Hatred of the bourgeoisie became the official emotion
of the French intelligentsia.... Of all the great creeds of the 19th century,
pretty much the only one still thriving is this one, bourgeoisophobia....
Since September 11, there has been a great deal of analysis of the roots
of Muslim rage. But to anybody familiar with the history of bourgeoisophobia,
it is striking how comfortably Muslim rage meshes with traditional rage
against meritocratic capitalism. The Islamist fanatic and the bourgeoisophobe
hate the same things. They use the same words, they utter the same protests.
In an essay in the New York Review of Books called Occidentalism,
Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma listed the traits that enrage al Qaeda
and other Third World anti-Americans and anti-Westerners. First, they
hate the city. Cities stand for commerce, mixed populations, artistic
freedom, and sexual license. Second, they hate the mass media: advertising,
television, pop music, and videos. Third, they hate science and technology
the progress of technical reason, mechanical efficiency, and material
know-how. Fourth, they hate prudence, the desire to live safely rather
than court death and heroically flirt with violence. Fifth, they hate
liberty, the freedom extended even to mediocre people. Sixth, they despise
the emancipation of women. As Margalit and Buruma note, Female emancipation
leads to bourgeois decadence. Women are supposed to stay home and
breed heroic men. When women go out into the world, they deprive men of
their manhood and weaken their virility. If you put these six traits together,
you have pretty much the pillars of meritocratic capitalist society, practiced
most assertively in countries like America and Israel.
Myths
of the Crusades hard to kill (Vincent Carroll)
You look at the latest U.S. News & World Report
cover story, on the Crusades, and you figure theyve got to be kidding.
You know they cant be serious in proclaiming the Crusades the
first major clash between Islam and Western Christendom, or in headlining
the Crusades in both print and in the version at USNews.com
as The First Holy War. No sober journalist or historian could
claim that During the Crusades, East and West first met on
the battlefield, and expect any reader even casually familiar with
world history not to leap out of the chair in exasperated shock. Its
a gag, almost certainly, when U.S. News quotes the chair
of Islamic studies at American University as solemnly maintaining that
The impact of the Crusades created a historical memory which is
with us today the memory of a long European onslaught. No
serious news journal would let such a statement stand without some mention
of what happened before 1099 and the sack of Jerusalem by the
likes of Tancred and Godfrey of Bouillon.... Like so many articles on
the Crusades since the attacks of Sept. 11, U.S. News takes
for granted the idea that the Crusades constitute a looming grievance
against the West that rightly resonates to this day. And it would be funny,
this journalistic malpractice, if it didnt buttress the convictions
of the fanatics who are still seeking revenge.
Chinas
Economic Facade (Arthur Waldron)
Officially, China has for some time been claiming growth rates of
7 percent or more. But information casting doubt on those figures has
long been available. Visitors see lots of rural people camped out at urban
railroad stations or on sidewalks: Clearly they have nothing to do where
they come from, or where they have arrived. Block after block of abandoned
construction projects in cities suggest someone has run out of money (as
does the recent proposal that money be raised for the Three Gorges Dam
by selling stock). Almost daily protests by workers, many violent, are
also a clue that all is not well. Moreover, even the official figures
dont make sense: How can it be that energy use is falling in a booming
economy? And unemployment rising (as the official statistics show)? This
is unprecedented in economic history. Finally, the state borrowing for
pump priming to which Premier Zhu refers has always been public knowledge.
Why, if the economy is burning up the track, has stimulus been necessary?
Once again Chinese officialdom has put one over on Western observerdom.
The shining exception is Prof. Thomas Rawski of the University of Pittsburgh,
who over the past year or so has been making thoroughly empirical and
highly persuasive presentations across the United States on Chinas
economy, based entirely on open Chinese sources, comparisons with other
fast-growing economies and some solid economic analysis. He argues that
Chinas economy may actually have been contracting since 1998.
They
are the product of institutionally indoctrinated hatred of the West or
of Jews (Howard Gerson and Harold Waller)
The myth that suicide bombers are necessarily produced by desperate
or inhumane conditions should have been fully dispelled by
the suicide attacks of Sept. 11, which were carried out by highly indoctrinated
and motivated individuals who were neither economically deprived nor oppressed.
Rather, they had been living freely in the United States for years. For
many of us, this lack of desperation or of any apparent oppression was
one of the most intellectually indigestible facts to emerge from the investigation
post-Sept. 11. Perhaps there is a powerful need in Western culture to
ascribe something other than simple hatred to explain a phenomenon as
extreme as a suicide attack. Similarly, the idea that such attacks are
the result of an institutionally indoctrinated hatred of the West or of
Jews is repugnant to our rational and liberal approach. The Western psyche
demands a reason to make sense out of the act: The homicidal
terrorist must suffer from desperation, humiliation,
or "hopelessness." There must be another side or
a missing link to the story. Yet the evidence that the recent
suicide attacks in Israel are the result of indoctrinated hatred actively
carried out or condoned by Yasser Arafats Palestinian Authority,
and by the Arab states, is overwhelming.
Bush
must face truth about Arab terror against Israel (Norman Podhoretz)
A linguistic child of the concept of moral equivalence, the words
cycle of violence allow of no distinction between terrorist
attacks and retaliation against them. They allow of no distinction between
the deliberate murder of civilians and the inadvertent harm done to civilians
in a military action. And in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict
(itself a deceptive label for what should actually be called the
Arab war against Israel), to speak of a cycle of violence
is to conjure up a Hatfield-McCoy type of feud between equally irrational
parties. This maneuver is calculated to conceal the crucial fact that
Palestinian terrorism is neither a random nor an uncontrollable nor a
senseless phenomenon. On the contrary: it is a tactic carefully
designed to advance a precise objective. And that objective is to wipe
the Jewish state physically off the map, just as Israel is erased from
the maps of the region printed in the textbooks given to Palestinian and
other Arab schoolchildren.
Journal
Editors Disavow Article on Biotech Corn (WP)
The science journal Nature has concluded that a controversial article
it published last year on the discovery of genetically engineered corn
growing in Mexico was not well researched enough and should not have been
published. In a highly unusual editorial note in this weeks
edition of the journal, the editors said that based on criticisms of the
article and assessments by outside referees, Nature has concluded
that the evidence available is not sufficient to justify the publication
of the original paper. .... The initial study had been embraced
by anti-biotechnology activists, who said it confirmed worries that the
technology was spreading in uncontrolled and unapproved ways. But Natures
near-retraction of the article was welcomed by advocates for the technology.
Say
goodbye, Yasser Arafat (Mark Steyn)
Its very difficult to negotiate a two-state solution
when one side sees the two-state solution as an intermediate stage
to a one-state solution: ending the Israeli occupation
of the West Bank is a tactical prelude to ending the Israeli occupation
of Israel. The divide among the Palestinians isnt between
those who want to make peace with Israel and those who want to destroy
her, but between those who want to destroy Israel one suicide bomb
at a time and those who want to destroy her through artful peace
processes.... As for the Palestinians, theyre a wrecked
people. Its tragic, and, if you want to argue about whos
to blame, we can bat dates around back to the Great War. But it
doesnt matter. It doesnt even matter whether you regard,
as the Europeans appear to, the Palestinians descent into
depravity as confirmation of their victim status: as Palestinian
Authority spokesman Hasan Abdul Rahman said on CNN after a new pile
of Jewish corpses, its the fault of Israel for turning
our children into suicide bombers. Might be true, might be
rubbish. Makes no difference. They cant be allowed to succeed,
because otherwise the next generation of suicide bombers will be
in Bloomingdales and Macys. Thats why Arafat will
never be president of a Palestinian state, and has begun his countdown
to oblivion. The unravelling of the Middle East has just begun.
Fawning
Critics Dont Say Book Was Fraud (Glenn Harlan Reynolds)
In the fall of 2000, professor Michael Bellesiles of Emory
University published his book Arming America, which
purported to establish that the core historical argument behind
the Second Amendment was a fraud. The brave minuteman armed with
his trusty rifle, Bellesiles told us, was mostly a myth Americans
at the time of the Revolution, and for many decades afterward, seldom
owned guns, but instead relied on the government for protection.
Bellesiles received glowing reviews in the New York Times
Book Review, the New York Review of Books, the
Atlantic Monthly, and many other publications, from
reviewers who were often visibly pleased that he was sticking it
to the National Rifle Association. As it turns out, the fraud was
on Bellesiles end. At least, thats the conclusion of
those who have examined his work from journalists, to historians,
to law professors and found it wanting. Bellesiles turns
out to have quoted sources out of context, to have falsely reported
data, and to have claimed to have used documents that have not existed
since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. One historian familiar
with Bellesiles work called it a case of bona fide academic
fraud. Emory University is investigating.... Yet despite all
these problems with Bellesiles work, many of the publications
that afforded his book so much laudatory attention when it came
out have remained silent.
Crusade
Propaganda: The abuse of Christianitys holy wars. (Thomas Madden)
The crusades are quite possibly the most misunderstood event
in European history.... The crusades were in every way a defensive
war. They were the Wests belated response to the Muslim
conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world. While the Arabs
were busy in the seventh through the tenth centuries winning an
opulent and sophisticated empire, Europe was defending itself against
outside invaders and then digging out from the mess they left behind.
Only in the eleventh century were Europeans able to take much notice
of the East. The event that led to the crusades was the Turkish
conquest of most of Christian Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The Christian
emperor in Constantinople, faced with the loss of half of his empire,
appealed for help to the rude but energetic Europeans. He got it.
More than he wanted, in fact.... Despite modern laments about medieval
colonialism, the crusades real purpose was to turn back Muslim
conquests and restore formerly Christian lands to Christian control.
The entire history of the crusades is one of Western reaction to
Muslim advances. The crusades were no more offensive than was the
American invasion of Normandy.
Understanding
America (Owen Harries)
The great sympathy felt for America immediately after September
11 has quickly evaporated and been replaced by suspicion and hostility.
Rosemary Righter, chief leader write of the London Times, has observed
recently that America-bashing is in fashion as it has not
been since Vietnam and she is talking, not of Asia
and the Middle East, but of London and Paris and Berlin. Moreover
she asserts that it is not just a case of the usual suspects on
the Left, but that a resurgent anti-Americanism exists
across the political spectrum. As she says, America is never
less loved in Europe than when... it is angry, determined, and certain
that it is in the right. Let me be clear: After the outrage
of September 11, I do not believe that the United States could have
reacted in any way other than as she did. But doing so will carry
a cost. The long term significance of what happened some months
ago may be that it forced American decisively along a course of
action that by emphasising her military dominance, by requiring
her to use her vast power conspicuously, by making restraint and
moderation virtually impossible, and by making unilateralism an
increasing feature of American behavior is bound to generate
widespread and increased criticism and hostility towards her. That
may turn out to be the real tragedy of September 11.
Religion
of Peace Update (Rod Dreher)
On the way to work [NYC] this morning [Apr. 3], I stopped
into an Arab-owned convenience store to buy a newspaper. A wiry Arab man,
about my age and looking like a tightly coiled spring, stood by the counter
holding a clipboard. You should not buy that one, he said
to me in a thick accent, as I picked up a New York Post.
You should buy this one. Its more fair about this story,
he said, holding up a Daily News which, like the Post,
reports the Bethlehem siege on its front page. The mans eyes were
hot, and I didnt want to argue with him. I told him I prefer the
Post. But they print lies about Palestine! he
said, his voice rising (the Post's editorial policy is strongly
pro-Israel). Hitler, he knew what the those people were about. He
knew that if you give them freedom, they will take over your country,
just like they have done here. And Im not just saying that because
Im a Muslim. I pointed out to the man, as calmly as I could,
that Hitler killed six million Jews. Not true! he shot back,
sticking his finger in my face. Its a lie! I turned
and walked out without saying a word more. Because there is nothing left
to say to such fanatics.
Quiet
time campaign muzzle (Jacob Sullum)
No one disputes that the First Amendment applies to opinions
about who should run the government and what the government should
do. Yet in the topsy-turvy world of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform
Act, the closer speech gets to the sort of political expression
the Framers clearly meant to protect, the more restricted it is.
An organization may criticize a politician, so long as the message
is timed so its not likely to change anyones vote. Or
it may discuss an issue, so long as it does not mention a particular
officials position on it. What it may not do is engage in
electioneering communication speech that might
actually have a political impact. These restrictions do not apply
to news organizations, which helps explain why so many of them looked
favorably on campaign finance reform. (For newspapers and magazines,
as Reasons Jeff Taylor has noted, there was also the possibility
of attracting ad revenue that would otherwise go to TV and radio
stations.) Unlike environmentalists and anti-abortion activists,
journalists remain free to discuss the merits of candidates at any
time and in any terms they choose.
Area
man says father shot Martin Luther King Jr. (Gainesville Sun)
Claiming he wanted to get a 34-year-old secret off his chest,
an Alachua County man said Tuesday that his father was the triggerman
in the April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. And,
the Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson said, portions of the murder plot
were hatched in Gainesville.... My dad was the one who shot
Dr. King, he said. He said his father, Henry Clay Wilson,
died in 1990 at age 68 and is buried in Gainesville. His fathers
two co-conspirators, R.D. Wilson said, also are dead. Wilson, who
lives near Keystone Heights, and several other family members and
ministry associates gathered at the Gainesville Community Plaza
to reveal what they said was the truth about the King assassination.
Wilson and his sister, Velma Roark of Waldo, said their father told
them many times over the years that he shot King.
Why
Do They Hate Us? (John Perazzo)
Since September 11, the uniquely introspective, self-critical
people known as Americans have asked this question countless times.
What elusive logic, we want to know, lies behind much of the Muslim
worlds overt hatred of our nation? Not surprisingly, our progressive
social critics, ever eager to explain the logical underpinnings
of anti-Americanism, have dutifully provided numerous answers to
these questions.... Considering the amount of time Americans have
devoted to analyzing the aforementioned questions, it is utterly
remarkable that the opposite questions are never raised: What have
Muslim societies done to convince us that we should not hate them?
Have they demonstrated an ability to resist engaging in meddlesome,
cruel, decadent, or arrogant
behavior? These would be reasonable queries coming from a citizen
of the mostly-Christian United States, given that his or her fellow
Christians are treated abominably in much of the Islamic world.
Suicidal
Lies (Thomas Friedman)
The world must understand that the Palestinians have not chosen
suicide bombing out of desperation stemming from the
Israeli occupation. That is a huge lie. Why? To begin with, a lot
of other people in the world are desperate, yet they have not gone
around strapping dynamite to themselves. More important, President
Clinton offered the Palestinians a peace plan that could have ended
their desperate occupation, and Yasir Arafat walked
away. Still more important, the Palestinians have long had a tactical
alternative to suicide: nonviolent resistance, à la Gandhi.
A nonviolent Palestinian movement appealing to the conscience of
the Israeli silent majority would have delivered a Palestinian state
30 years ago, but they have rejected that strategy, too.... Lets
be very clear: Palestinians have adopted suicide bombing as a strategic
choice, not out of desperation. This threatens all civilization
because if suicide bombing is allowed to work in Israel, then, like
hijacking and airplane bombing, it will be copied and will eventually
lead to a bomber strapped with a nuclear device threatening entire
nations. That is why the whole world must see this Palestinian suicide
strategy defeated.
We
shall not fear (David Warren)
We hang not on the Cross, but on Christs Resurrection.
At the centre of all Christian doctrine and according to
Christians, at the centre of everything is this one moment.
It is not understood as a miracle, but as the miracle at the heart,
explaining all miracles before and after. It was, or rather it is,
the grand intersection between the eternal and our own transitory
world of space and time. Everything in nature and in ourselves was
is transformed by it. It casts backwards through history
as well as forwards, it gathers together every strand of meaning,
into one knot, into one flame, and is of the moment with the Creation.
And in prayer, and contemplation, the Christian apprehends, through
the fact of the Cross, and shining through the Cross, the Resurrection.
It is the lifting of the burden, the weight of sin, of mortality,
of fate. Christ, according to the Gospels, came into the world to
abolish death. To abolish the tyranny over us, to free us from our
greatest fear. In the moment of contemplating Christs Resurrection,
we know the truth, and the truth has set us free.
Bogus
bias at MIT (John Leo)
The sad truth is that MIT, one of the world's great centers
of scientific education, has now produced and accepted two astonishingly
unscientific studies of its own administrative behavior. In response
to these studies, nobody on campus has spoken out. The people
on the gender committees control the airwaves on this story, and
nobody will speak up, Steiger says. And with good reason.
If they speak, they will be branded as misogynists, and their careers
will be in jeopardy. Worse, the culture of MIT is being changed.
Gender equity has replaced scientific merit as the value administrators
will be judged by. And as always in preference schemes, women on
the faculty will now come under suspicion as people who wouldnt
be there except for politics. And all without any real discussion
or open debate. Amazing.
Listening
for the Voices of Women (NYT)
In the two decades since she wrote In a Different Voice
and went on to identify a crisis of confidence in adolescent girls
a phenomenon Ms. Gilligan famously dubbed losing voice
her work has attained the status of public gospel, inspiring
pop psychology books, feminist lobbies and op-ed columnists, and
galvanizing policy makers. Ms. Gilligan is often cited as an impetus
behind the 1994 Gender Equity in Education Act, which, with an eye
toward improving girls test scores, banned sex-role stereotyping
and gender discrimination in the classroom.... Meanwhile, social
scientists were busy challenging her research. In a Different
Voice was attacked almost as soon as it appeared. Some researchers
rejected Ms. Gilligans claim that women were more likely to
consider their obligations to others (what she called an ethics
of care) in making moral decisions, while men were more
likely to rely on abstract principles of fairness (what she called
an ethics of justice). Ms. Gilligan was accused of using
unorthodox interview methods, of lacking control groups and of failing
to publish her data in peer-reviewed journals. In a 1983 article
in the journal Social Research, Debra Nails, now a philosophy professor
at Michigan State University, dismissed In a Different Voice
as social science at sea without anchor. Since then,
trying to replicate Ms. Gilligans findings has become a virtual
social-science subfield, employing a small army of researchers
with little success.
What
You Say Reveals How You Think (David Stolinsky)
The same paper, like most papers, takes great care to refer
to anyone who has not yet been convicted of a crime as an alleged
or accused murderer or rapist. This wording avoids lawsuits,
and more importantly, it follows the American tradition that one
is presumed innocent until proven guilty. So why is it that this
paper began a story about child abuse in the Catholic Church with
the front-page headline Mahony Wont Name Abusers.
Not one of these priests had been charged with a crime, much less
convicted, or their names would already be a matter of public record.
But those Cardinal Mahony didnt name were not referred to
as alleged abusers. Somehow the fear of lawsuits, and
the devotion to civil liberties, were forgotten in the rush to condemn
the Catholic Church and, by extension, Christianity in general.
Accused murderers and rapists in jail awaiting trial are alleged,
but priests not formally charged with anything are abusers.
How inconsistent. But how revealing.
The
slyer virus: The Wests anti-westernism (Mark Steyn)
The Arabs say America is to blame for the Middle East. And
Britain and America dont disagree, not really. The Durban
Syndrome the vague sense that the Wests success must
somehow be responsible for the rests failure is a far
slyer virus than the toxic effusions of the Chomsky-Sontag set,
and it has seeped far deeper into the cultural bloodstream. At its
most benign, Durban Syndrome manifests itself in a desire not to
offend others if one can offend ones own instead. We saw this
after September 11 in the incessant exhortations from government,
public service announcements, the nations pastors and vicars,
etc., that the American people should resist their natural appetite
for pogroms and refrain from brutalizing Muslims. Ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine
percent of Americans had no intention of brutalizing Muslims but
they were sporting enough to put up with being characterized as
a bunch of knuckledragging swamp-dwellers, understanding that diversity
means not just being sensitive to other peoples but also not being
too sensitive about yourself. Similarly, at airports across the
continent, eighty-seven-year-old grannies waited patiently as their
hairpins were confiscated and their bloomers emptied out on the
conveyor belt, implicitly accepting this as a ritual of the multicultural
society: to demonstrate that we eschew racial profiling,
we go out of our way to look for people who dont look anything
like the people were looking for.... I am woman, hear me roar!
Say it loud, Im black and proud! Were here, were
queer, get used to it! The one identity were not encouraged
to trumpet is the one that enables us to trumpet all the others:
our identity as citizens of a very particular kind of society, built
on the rule of law, property rights, freedom of expression, and
the universal franchise. I am Western, hear me apologize!
A
Turn from Tolerance (WP)
Long before Sept. 11, many white Europeans had deep-running
concerns that their countries were involuntarily becoming multicultural
as guest workers and refugees, mostly Muslim, established themselves
in residence. There are about 15 million Muslims in Europe, making
Islam the the continents largest non-Christian religion. The
post-Sept. 11 concerns underscored a paradox that has cycled through
European politics for years: The continent needs foreign workers
to gird an aging workforce but is queasy about accepting them, especially
if they are Muslim. There is this fear for national identity
combined with a fear of Muslims that has fueled this debate on immigration,
said Jan Niessen, director of the Migration Policy Group, a research
organization in Brussels.
As
the Web Matures, Fun Is Hard to Find (NYT)
Just 11 years after it was born and about 6 years after it
became popular, the Web has lost its luster. Many who once raved
about surfing from address to address on the Web now lump site-seeing
with other online chores, like checking the In box. What attracted
many people to the Web in the mid-1990s were the bizarre and
idiosyncratic sites that began as private obsessions and swiftly
grew into popular attractions: the Coffee Cam, a live image of a
coffee maker at the University of Cambridge; the Fish Tank Cam from
an engineer at Netscape; The Spot, the first online soap opera;
the Jennicam, the first popular Internet peephole; the Telegarden,
which allowed viewers to have remote control of a robot gardener;
and the World Wide Ouija, where viewers could question the Fates
with the computer mouse. The Web was like a chest of toys, and each
day brought a new treasure.... The problem facing the Web is not
that some of these particular sites have come and gone there
are, after all, only so many times anyone can look at a coffeepot,
even online but that no new sites have come along to captivate
the casual surfer.
Whats
news for the experts is common knowledge to most (Kay Hymowitz)
Not so long ago, everyone knew that children boys and
girls were cruel, aggressive, Darwinian creatures who needed
adults around to teach them self-restraint. William Goldings
classic 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, a disturbing
story of English private school students deserted on an island after
an airplane crash, illustrated the point most dramatically. It was
common knowledge that, while girls didnt often resort to fisticuffs,
they were prone to back-stabbing, manipulation and scheming, a fact
known to everyone from William Thackeray, who created the infamous
Becky Sharpe in the novel Vanity Fair to Charles Schultz,
inventor of Charlie Browns nemesis, Lucy. But in the late
1960s, development experts began revising the commensense view of
childrens natural ethical state. This was partly because of
the influence of the liberation movements of the time, partly to
address changes in the family such as divorce and working mothers
that made autonomous children a necessity.... But after a dramatic
rise in juvenile crime and bullying, a slew of suburban school shootings,
and just the daily grind of adult-child warfare, this theory was
bound to disappoint.
U.S.
maintains the upper hand (David Warren)
As I reported in this newspaper on Friday, the jailing,
or rather probationing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been
taken over from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, by U.S. Vice-President
Dick Cheney. It is an extremely significant step, not because it
disempowers the Israelis, but because it puts the United
States forward directly in the role of Israel's protector, negotiating
on Israels behalf. While lost on the western media, the point
has been taken in several capitals of the Arab world: Mr. Arafat
and his terrorist groups are no longer simply confronting Israel.
They are now confronting a United States that is increasingly aware
of their international connections. Mr. Cheney set the conditions
for a meeting between himself and Mr. Arafat in Cairo yesterday,
which did not take place because Mr. Arafat did not meet them. The
essential, verifiable condition was that Mr. Arafat would deliver
a public address, to his people, in unambiguous Arabic, demanding
an immediate end to all terrorist strikes against Israel, and be
seen delivering like orders to all the Palestinian militias under
his ultimate command. Instead, he appeared on Palestinian TV looking
as if he were a hostage reading a prepared statement by his kidnapper.
He condemned, after the fact, only one particular suicide bombing
in Jerusalem. This was 11 eggs short of a dozen.
Stranglehold
on Speech (Robert Samuelson)
Free speech is not selective speech, respectable speech or
popular speech. Free speech does not exist unless it can include
speech that you and perhaps most people despise. People
must have, as individuals and as groups, the routine right to express
themselves, even if their expressions offend. Somehow these truths
escape the supporters of campaign finance reform, whose
crusade threatens free speech.... In the final 60 days before the
2000 election, more than 135,000 political advertisements were run
by sponsors who werent candidates or the political committees
of candidates, reports the Brennan Center for Justice at New York
University. The new campaign finance legislation known variously
as McCain-Feingold and Shays-Meehan after its main Senate and House
sponsors aims to remove many (if not most) of these ads by
non-candidates from the air. Unless political advertisements arent
speech, this represents a massive suppression of free
speech.... Free speech must be a concept that ordinary people can
grasp in most ordinary circumstances. It must not become a lawyerly
collection of qualifications, footnotes and regulations, and that
is where the campaign finance crusade is leading.
Bleak
future looms if you dont take a stand (Dan Gillmor)
This is a quiz about your future. Its about how you
view some basic elements of the emerging Digital Age. 1. Do you
care if a few giant companies control virtually all entertainment
and information? 2. Do you care if they decide what kinds of technological
innovations will reach the marketplace? 3. Would you be concerned
if they used their power to compile detailed dossiers on everything
you read, listen to, view and buy? 4. Would you find it acceptable
if they could decide whether what you write and say could be seen
and heard by others? Those are no longer theoretical questions.
They are the direction in which America is hurtling. Media conglomerates
are in a merger frenzy. Telecommunications monopolies are creating
a cozy cartel, dividing up access to the online world. The entertainment
industry is pushing for Draconian controls on the use and dissemination
of digital information.
The
Great Terror (Jeffrey Goldberg)
Gosden believes it is quite possible that the countries of
the West will soon experience chemical- and biological-weapons attacks
far more serious and of greater lasting effect than the anthrax
incidents of last autumn and the nerve-agent attack on the Tokyo
subway system several years ago that what happened in Kurdistan
was only the beginning. For Saddams scientists, the
Kurds were a test population, she said. They were the
human guinea pigs. It was a way of identifying the most effective
chemical agents for use on civilian populations, and the most effective
means of delivery. The charge is supported by others. An Iraqi
defector, Khidhir Hamza, who is the former director of Saddams
nuclear-weapons program, told me earlier this year that before the
attack on Halabja military doctors had mapped the city, and that
afterward they entered it wearing protective clothing, in order
to study the dispersal of the dead. These were field tests,
an experiment on a town, Hamza told me. He said that he had
direct knowledge of the Armys procedures that day in Halabja.
The doctors were given sheets with grids on them, and they
had to answer questions such as How far are the dead from
the cannisters? Gosden said that she cannot understand
why the West has not been more eager to investigate the chemical
attacks in Kurdistan. It seems a matter of enlightened self-interest
that the West would want to study the long-term effects of chemical
weapons on civilians, on the DNA, she told me. Ive
seen Europes worst cancers, but, believe me, I have never
seen cancers like the ones I saw in Kurdistan.
The
good, the bad and the Gallic shrug (Mark Steyn)
Countries A and B may be at war, but there is no good side
and no bad side, just two parties trapped in a mindless
cycle of violence that threatens the peace process.
The peace process tends to be no peace and lotsa process,
in which Western panjandrums have invested considerable amounts
of their prestige. Thats why in Paris this weekend most of
my dining companions were outraged not by the deaths of Palestinians
or Israelis but by the shelling of Palestinian Authority buildings.
These buildings, one indignant Frenchman told me, were
built with money direct from the Union! i.e., the European
Union. We have given billions, and now it is rubble.
Oh, your money's perfectly safe, I said. Its sitting
in the Hamas bigshots numbered bank accounts in Zurich.
.... Forget the cycle of violence and the peace
process. History teaches us that the most lasting peace is
achieved when one side preferably the worst side is
decisively defeated and the regimes diseased organs are comprehensively
cleansed. Thats why National Socialism, Fascism and Japanese
militarism have not troubled us of late.
Households
Divided (Jean Bethke Elshtain)
Wilson argues that the destructive features of a world without
fathers are by now so well documented that they are beyond challenge.
No responsible person wants to see that world expand, given its
clear and present dangers. But how did it come about, and how are
we to bring the second nation closer to the standard of the first
in order to ensure that, in the parlance of the moment, no child
is left behind? Wilson reminds us that when Sen. Daniel Patrick
Moynihan first alerted the country in 1960 to the troubles looming
on the horizon as the world of fatherlessness and rising out-of-wedlock
birth was coming into view, he was denounced, accused of everything
from racism to sexism to cultural imperialism, even as many people
within the black community were saying the same thing that
a leap in fatherlessness was a pathology. But that made
no difference to the mainstream media or scholarship. As a result,
it was easy for the first nation, irresponsibly, to ignore the problem
of the second. Forty years later, facing an epidemic in teenage
motherhood by 1995, three out of every four births
to all teenagers were to unmarried girls; for black girls, it was
nine out of ten the alarm bells finally went off as
politicians and social analysts converged on the same point: This
trend cannot continue, as too much measurable harm is being done
to children. As the evidence piled up, even those most resistant
to the notion that fatherlessness as an independent factor generated
risk factors for children, whatever the familys socio-economic
status, were forced to acknowledge the data. Children in one-parent
families, compared to those in two-parent ones, are twice as likely
to drop out of school. Boys in one-parent families are much more
likely than those in two-parent ones to be both out of school and
out of work. Girls in one-parent families are twice as likely as
those in two-parent ones to have an out-of-wedlock birth.
How
Oscar Ghettoized Poitier (John Podhoretz)
The spin on the evening was that it made history because two
black performers won Best Actor and Best Actress on the same night
that the first black movie star, Sidney Poitier, received an honorary
Oscar. But there was something terribly retrogressive about the
way all this was treated. The Oscar show worked overtime to make
us think of Denzel Washington, Halle Berry and Poitier not as unique
and remarkable talents but rather as tokens. Why were only black
actors and actresses given a chance to speak in the three-minute
film tribute to Sidney Poitier? Did Poitiers career really
have meaning only to black performers? Of course not. His extraordinary
dignity and power gave the lie to the racist idea that white audiences
could only respond to white performers and white stories. In a magnificent
speech that was the highlight of the otherwise-unspeakable ceremony,
Poitier himself paid a powerful and modest tribute to the directors,
producers and studio heads who made history by casting him in the
films that made him a star. They were all white. So is Poitiers
wife Joanna. Poitier had two daughters with Joanna, who are therefore
both black and white. He is an integrationist not only professionally,
but personally. For him to be seen as an inspiration only
to black people is to ghettoize an extraordinary man who simply
refused to accept the limits of race.
Dumbing
Down the SAT: The very existence of intelligence differences in
America is about to become a forbidden truth. (Stanley Kurtz)
There was a time when Americans believed that finding and
training the countrys finest minds was in the national interest.
Certainly, all American children ought to have access to quality
education. But, ultimately, it is to our collective advantage as
a nation to have a way of identifying students of high aptitude.
And it is fairer to students themselves especially those
from lesser schools to have a way of recognizing intellectual
potential that has not yet come to the surface. The irony is that
support for destruction of the SAT test comes from a liberal elite
that is itself the product of our educational meritocracy. Guilt
about success combines here with a hidden craving for moral superiority
over the benighted middle classes. Those in the middle and
many minorities as well still believe in the principles of
liberty and equality that created the meritocracy in the first place.
But once again, the liberal elite, in a conversation amongst itself,
is managing to turn our most basic values and practices inside out
with nary a peep from a public that would fight these changes
if they were honestly told what is happening.
Of
conscience & cowardice (Robert Going)
I happen to believe in the sanctity of human life from conception
to natural death. While perhaps a minority view, it is generally
not considered an extreme position except by those who take delight
in yanking babies feet first three quarters of the way out of their
mothers wombs, sticking a needle in the head and sucking the
brains out. Those people would doubtless find my views radical.
Still, if I had written what Ive just written, or said it
aloud in a public place at any time from 1985 when I first became
a candidate for judicial office until I left the bench in 2001,
I would have been subject to discipline, even removal, by the Commission
on Judicial Conduct. Some members of that commission and its staff
have even gone so far as to state that accepting the nomination
of the Right to Life Party is judicial misconduct.... After I became
a county-level judge, the death penalty was restored in this state.
As a cross-assigned judge I was offered the opportunity to take
special training that would allow me to sit on capital cases. I
declined, and wondered what I would do if such assignments became
mandatory. Most of us dont give a lot of thought to the death
penalty. I never did, truthfully. But when faced with the real possibility
that you might someday decide who lives and who dies, youd
sure better start thinking about it. I likely would have ended up
as one of those who should have resigned rather than follow the
law. But would I have? I believe in the sanctity of human life from
birth to natural death. Its such an easy thing to say. Now.
But
Seriously, Folks (Larry Miller)
But, you see in all of American life there has, for a long
time, been a battle of sorts to define what is serious and what
is not, and all the wrong people are consistently winning. No matter
how stupid, wrongheaded, or immoral some of our leaders and representatives
have been over the years, if they can affect an appearance of troubled
thoughtfulness when they address our problems, if they speak in
a measured way, if they look around and nod with gravity, and if
they use coy, calculated gestures biting a lower lip, say
they will always be considered serious people,
and theres no telling how far they can go. And I just dont
get it. P.J. ORourke has created some of the most immensely
funny things in the history of immensely funny things, and I consider
his work to be wise, large, insightful, and practical; in short,
serious. The problem for me, you see, is that I dont know
what to call the serious people of today, because I
dont think they are. When Mr. Daschle holds forth on our war
effort, everyone thinks hes serious, he certainly thinks hes
serious, but all I see behind those unblinking blue eyes is a man
thinking, Boy, I sure would look good stepping off that big,
green helicopter and saluting. The support Messrs.
Daschle, Leahy, Biden, et al. have given to our war effort has the
same sincerity of the wrestling bad guy who spends two minutes gouging
the face of his opponent with an awl and then, when confronted by
the referee, slips the iron into his shorts and holds up his hands
like a Vegas dealer going on his break.
The
1930s, Again: A hard rain is going to fall. (Victor Davis Hanson)
And so we Americans, like those 70 years ago who so wanted
a perpetual peace, pray for a return of sanity in the Middle East.
We chose to ignore horrific stories of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia
the embryo of 9/11. We are more amused than shocked that
madrassas have taught a generation to hate us. When mullahs
in Iran speak of destroying Israel we wince, but also shrug. We
want to see no real connection between madmen blowing themselves
up to kill us in New York and the like-minded doing the same in
Tel-Aviv. We put our trust in peace with a killer like Mr. Arafat,
who packs a gun and whips up volatile crowds in Arabic. All the
while, no American statesman has the guts to tell the Arab leadership
that statism, tribalism, fundamentalism, gender apartheid, and autocracy
not America, not Israel make their people poor, angry,
and dangerous.... I dont listen any more to the apologies
and prevarications of our whiney university Arabists, our equivocators
in the state department, and the really tawdry assortment of oil
men, D.C. insiders, bought and paid for PR suits, and weapons hucksters.
The truth is that a large minority of the Middle Eastern world wishes
a war with America that it cannot win and much of the rest
is apparently either indifferent or amused. So we should stop apologizing,
prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and accept this animosity
just as our forefathers once did when faced by similar autocrats
and their captive peoples who threatened us in 1941.
New
Analysis Says Womens Studies Prism Emits a Distinctly Feminist
Coloring (FOXNews)
The modern woman is plagued by stereotypes imposed by a male-dominated
society, which keeps her relegated to rearing children, keeping
home and working in low-paying, menial jobs. That is the universal
claim found in womens studies textbooks on college campuses
today, according to a critical analysis by the Independent Womens
Forum, a womens group that has often tangled with the traditional
feminist establishment. The treatise, set forth by Christine Stolba,
a senior fellow at IWF, has already drawn fire from scholars who
see Stolba as an ultra-conservative with an ax to grind
against traditional feminists.... She said many of the textbooks
ignore the advances women have made in order to push an anti-male,
liberal agenda that is rooted more in the stone age of gender relations
than in 21st-century culture. It is a truth universally acknowledged
in womens studies textbooks that women have been and continue
to be the victims of oppression, wrote Stolba. Womens
studies textbooks support a large number of factual inaccuracies.
Many of these are deliberately misleading sisterly sophistries.
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