Music of the Day: Chick Corea Quartet, Time Warp

Not long ago here in the ol’ blog, I made reference to the Former Peanut-Farmer in Chief, Mr. Jimmy Carter and his recent visit to the Middle East to confer with members of Hamas, that jolly band of homicide bombers and Holocaust-deniers (when they aren’t actively seeking to finish the uncompleted work of the Nazis—the Holocaust). Mr. Carter has returned, damnit!, to the United States and is now making the rounds of various television shows hosted by the clueless and the cadaverous (think Larry King—but how long before an extended “interview” with Mr. Bill Moyers, scion of the blame-America first crowd, funded with YOUR TAX DOLLARS) and Mr. Carter is responding to the softball questions lobbed his way with his usual mushy-headed peanut butter answers. No matter how much things change, they always stay the same.

Sadly, his return to CONUS also means that the State Department ignored my trenchant advice to revoke Mr. Carter’s passport, despite the 957 e-mail messages I sent to them encouraging them to take this palliative measure.

But back to the point of today’s post; one of the comments I received for The Peanut Farmer Fails Again reads, in part, this way: “. . .I’ll bet the average Palestinian considers the Jews as thugs, dictators, and totalitarian [sic]. There are [sic] always more than one perspective to a problem.” Where to begin?

How ‘bout with some facts, or as my old friend Dr. GDA, Jr., used to say, some “true facts.” Israel is a parliamentary democracy that has at least thirteen active political parties; 23% of the Israeli population is comprised of non-Jewish, mostly Arab, folks. Sixteen percent of Israelis identify themselves as Muslims. The population of Israel is about 7 million human beings, 97% of whom are literate. Israel receives about $240 million in economic aid from the United States.

Egypt calls itself a “republic,” but only four political parties are “approved” by the government; Egypt is also home to the Muslim Brotherhood, universally recognized as a terrorist organization. The population of Egypt is about 81 million human beings, with 98% Egyptian ethnicity. Jews comprise 0% of the Egyptian population and Christians comprise a mere1% of the Egyptian population. Ah, diversity. Seventy one percent of Egyptians are literate, but only 59% of Egyptian females are literate and 20% of the Egyptian population lives below its poverty line in spite of the fact Egypt exports more oil and electricity than it uses and it receives somewhere in the neighborhood of $925 million in economic aid from various sources.

Syria, too, calls itself a “republic,” but it is a republic in name only because it is an authoritarian military-dominated regime with seven “legal” political parties and many other “illegal” political parties. Syria has a population of almost 20 million human beings, 90% of which are Muslim, 10% of which are Christian, with only “tiny” communities of Jews. Seventy three percent of women are literate and 86% of men are literate in Syria, but 12% of all Syrians live below the poverty line. Syria receives about $213 million in economic aid from various sources.

Iran, too calls itself a “republic,” although it is really a theocracy; political parties as we know them here in the West are rare and new in Iran—mostly Iranian “political parties” are coalitions formed by various factions, none of which, not even opposition groups, pose a legitimate or viable challenge to the theocracy. Nearly 69 million human beings populate Iran and 98% are Muslim. Ah, diversity. The literacy rate amongst women is 70% and 83% amongst men and 11% of all Iranians are unemployed, while 18% of all Iranians live below the poverty line. Iran exports electricity, oil, and natural gas and receives about $104 million in economic aid from various sources—Iran would doubtless receive more economic aid but for its richly deserved reputation as an international rogue state.

Lebanon is a republic with seventeen political parties, including our old friends Hezbollah and Amal, both of which are universally recognized as terrorist organizations. Lebanon has a population of almost 4 million human beings, 95% of which are Arabs, 4% of which are Armenian. Lebanon has some religious pluralism, with 59% of its population identifying as Muslim and 39% identifying as Christian. Twenty percent of the Lebanese population is unemployed and 28% live below the poverty line. Lebanon receives an astounding $4 billion in economic aid from various sources.

I suppose I could go on, you know with more information about Jordan and Saudi Arabia and sundry other Middle Eastern garden spots, but I’m tired now—we’ve been staying up late watching Carrier on PBS and thus I am not as rested as I ought to be. Let’s just sum up a bit and review a bit, too.

Israel is a democracy—its Arab neighbors are not in any way, shape, or form democratic, although Lebanon at least approaches something like democracy. Israel is a representative democracy—not so its neighbors. Calling Israeli Jews “dictators and totalitarian” [sic, again] is today’s moral equivalence. This small nation, in both geography and population, was attacked by its Arab neighbors almost instantly after its formation in 1948—and if you have forgotten, please let me remind you that Israel was formed by a mandate from the United Nations, an organization usually praised by the loony left (especially, these days, when it condemns Israel mostly for just existing). Israelis practice political, ethnic, and religious diversity—Israel’s neighbors, for the most part, do not. Israelis treat their women as human beings; for the most part, their neighbors do not. Israel has a dynamic economy; for the most part, its neighbors do not, despite the obvious disparity in economic aid received by Israel’s neighbors. Israelis, like most Americans, would prefer to live in peace and to be left alone to grow crops and raise kids and advance medicine and write music and buy stuff like big screen TeeVees. Israelis respond to attacks and do not seek to annihilate their Arab or Muslim or Christian neighbors or to “wipe them off the map.” Not so their neighbors. And while I must agree with the person who commented on my last piece that “Jews are not blameless,” I don’t recall making the argument that Jews or Israelis were “blameless,” only that they were constantly threatened, and frequently attacked, by terrorist states, terrorist thugs, and other not-so-nice people.

Finally, beware when someone uses the word “perspective” in an argument; it usually means that one is unable to discriminate between right and wrong or the better and the worse. Yes, we all make mistakes and we all can take some blame for this, that or the other, but some mistakes are worse than others—and one of those mistakes is thinking that “Jews. . .are thugs, dictators and totalitarian” [sic, for the third time]. If the “average Palestinian” thinks those thoughts, it is because he has been taught that the problem is not his own “leadership” and his fellow-Arabs and co-religionist Muslims, but the “vermin” Jews; for anyone living here to think those thoughts admits of either a profound ignorance or a willful mendacity.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND

P.S.: Public thanks to RB for telling us about the television-series entitled Carrier—it’s worth watching.

Music of the Day: Marcus Strickland, Cherokee

My earlier prediction, that Ben Stein’s new movie Expelled, would not make it to our fine mountain burg until sometime later this year was wrong, wrong, wrong—although judging by the puny crowd it attracted on a Sunday evening, perhaps the movie was getting little or no local publicity. In any case, MLB and I made the big drive to town to see the film; this was a big deal because it was the first such cinematic-outing for MLB since her run-in with physical illness and her slow but steady recovery. Unfortunately, we were both disappointed by the film, probably for different reasons. I won’t attempt to articulate MLB’s disappointment—that would be putting words in her mouth, which is neither fair nor sanitary. . . .

For me the film lacked a certain seriousness that I hoped I would find given the subject matter; in my view there were too many cuts to old film footage of various sorts that were meant to be funny—but most weren’t. They were just cute—not particularly funny, not particularly edifying, not particularly enlightening, not particularly important to the central theme of the film.

The central theme of the film, that non-Darwinian scientists are not taken seriously by Darwinian scientists, and that non-Darwinian scientists are in a kind of intellectual GULAG run by the Darwinians, is a serious issue and one that deserves, at least, serious consideration and serious conversation. If Mr. Stein’s movie leads to that, that is a good thing; but if the intent of the film was to fire up the audience to get out and campaign for more openness within the scientific and academic communities, I think the film fell far short of that goal. I was not inspired to picket or write to my local university president or any such thing.

There were some very interesting and important moments and ideas in the film, not the least of which was Mr. Stein’s interview with Dr. Richard Dawkins—I won’t spoil the gist of the interview, but it was interesting to watch the good doctor squirm when asked to hypothesize about the origin of the very first one-celled creature which, as scientists are now discovering, is infinitely more complex than anyone previously thought, including Mr. Darwin, who lacked the current level of scientific understanding of the simplest living creatures. So, while the film was on some levels disappointing, it is worth seeing (once) and I’d welcome any of your comments about it here in the comments portion of the ol’ blog.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.

Music of the Day: Stereo Mutants, What Do I Do Now?

Interesting choice for the Music of the Day and it seems strangely apropos for the former Peanut Farmer in Chief, Mr. Jimmy Carter. What should he do now? The terrorist thugs he visited in the MIddle East have declared his visit a failure and, believe me, when those guys say you've failed, you have failed. Those guys know failure when they see it--their societies are testaments to abject failure. Mr. Carter, as an ex-president, has achieved pretty much what he achieved as president--failure in the Middle East. If there's one enduring theme to Mr. Carter's public policy legacy, it's failure. What next for Mr. Carter? What should he do now? How about a nice, long, tax-payer-funded quiet retirement, complete with Secret Service protection? That sounds good to me and I'm sure Condi Rice would love to have Mr. Carter sit on his front porch, in a rocking chair, and read some good books, or spend some time dashing off letters to the editor about this, that, and the other. Does Amy have kids yet? Mr. Carter might make a good grampa, don't ya' think? Maybe he could investigate those strange lights in the sky in Florida--the case in Arizona seems to have been solved. . . .

He'll be home soon, I'm sure, but I just hope the media-types ignore whatever Carter-Babble emerges from this most recent trip and listens this one time to the Palestinians, who have openly declared what people within our own Democratic party seem to have never noticed--that Mr. Carter is a failure.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM'S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND

Music of the Day: Theo Bishop, Off the Cuff

Some people are spooked in Arizona and Florida because of strange lights in the sky. Folks in both Phoenix and St. Augustine reported seeing lights in the sky that appeared to be in “formation” and this is not the first time in either city, apparently. I didn’t have time to look at the videos posted but because they were shot at night, I imagine they lacked the kind of clarity one sees in military night vision videos. But the possibilities are limitless—some new kind of classified stealth aircraft that has its lights on (not likely), gas balloons let loose from a nearby wedding party (one explanation for the Florida sightings) and the most likely of all, the return of the extra-terrestrial Dennis Kucinich to the Democratic race for president, although the voting in both states is now over.

Speaking of aliens, Ben Stein’s new movie has hit theatres in the more civilized areas of our great nation, which means our little mountain town will get it sometime in July, so I haven’t seen the film. But the film is causing folks to again discuss, in perhaps a different way, the ideas behind the theory of evolution and what is known as “intelligent design,” which sounds nicer and more thoughtful, but less divine, than “creationism.” The discussion includes reference to Francis Crick’s declaration that DNA evidence didn’t really support many aspects of evolutionary theory, so the only other explanation was, you guessed it, aliens. Yep. They brought stuff here to make us grow. That was nice. I’m glad they did that, the aliens, not God. Is this a really wacky idea, or am I seeing this the wrong way?

If they do return, and present themselves to us in some more intelligent and intelligible way other than formations of blurry lights in the night sky, I wish they’d take some of their offspring back with them to whatever distant place they’re from—here’s a partial list of folks I wouldn’t mind seeing whisked off to someplace about 9 billion light years from here: Jimmy Carter (you knew that was coming); Jane Fonda; James Carville; both Clintons (Chelsea can stay—she seems nice); Noam Chomsky; Alex Trebek (Jeopardy needs a new host—Trebek acts as if he knows all the answers, which he does because he’s got the answers right in front of him on those cards!); Shirley MacLaine (it’s time for her to go home now); and. . .oh hell, you know, the usual cast of loony-left characters.

No unexplained blurry lights in our night sky; no aliens up here in the mountains, just a whole bunch of stars and some brisk temperatures. That will do. . . .

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND

Music of the Day: Ultrablue, Indiscretions

Earlier this week I saw a column by Dennis Prager that really resonated with me, so I wanted to share some of what he wrote with you and I wanted to comment upon his piece with some personal observations of my own.

The title of the Prager piece is “How Liberals Lost a Liberal” and you can find it on the April 15 issue of Townhall.com; by the way, Townhall.com is one of my favorite links, but I have to warn you that sometimes in the past the site has driven me to distraction with its many ads and the slowness of its availability.

Okay, back to Dennis Prager. One of his fundamental problems with modern-day liberalism, he writes, was its transformation from what might be called “classical” liberalism to what he calls “leftism.” He writes, “In a word, liberalism became leftism. Or to put it another way—since my [Prager’s] frame of reference is moral values—liberalism’s moral compass broke.”

He goes on to write the following: “The issue that began the emotionally difficult task of getting this liberal [Prager] to identify with conservatives and become an active Republican was Communism. I had always identified the Democratic Party and liberalism with anti-Communism. Indeed, the labor movement and the Democratic party actually led American opposition to Communism. . . Then Vietnam occurred, and Democrats and liberals (in academia, labor and the media) abandoned the war and abandoned millions of Asians to totalitarianism and death, defamed America’s military, became anti-war instead of anti-evil, became anti-anti-Communist instead of anti-Communist, and embraced isolationism, a doctrine I and other previously had always associated with conservatives and the Republican party.”

This sounds very familiar to me; as I have noted on this space more than once previously, my own parents were FDR-Democrats, New Deal Democrats, and my father, in particular, was a union organizer and a staunch anti-Communist who thought the war in Vietnam was not only right but that it ought to be prosecuted so violently as to ensure victory and to lessen American casualties—he was, in the parlance of the day, a “bomb ‘em back to the Stone Age hawk.” If my Dad were still around today, he likely would not recognize the current crop of Democrats nor would he be welcome in their party chiefly because he believed that the United States of America was the absolute best place on planet earth, despite the country’s faults, despite the government’s faults, despite the faults of its people. This is the political environment which I grew up in and I remember quite vividly feeling very ill at ease one evening shortly after I came back from Vietnam. Some of us, recently returned Vietnam vets who were still in the military, became enamored with the rhetoric and shenanigans of Vietnam war protestors and one evening I found myself sitting around in someone’s living room, listening to a bunch of card-carrying members of the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) talk about what had to be done. These guys sought to enlist us as members of the group and, further, they sought to enlist us in engaging in anti-military acts such as blowing up aircraft and facilities on the airbase where we were stationed.

Afterwards I remember thinking to myself how nuts that sounded, how it would do absolutely no good, and how bizarre it was for American veterans to suggest that attacking military facilities in this country could somehow bring the war in Vietnam to a close or how that would be beneficial to the South Vietnamese. That was my first, and last, encounter with the Vietnam Veterans of America (although I still have the pin I received that evening). Even though it took me a few more years to sever my affiliation with the Democratic party, I think this was the beginning of the end. In Prager’s words, the men I met that evening had rejected liberalism and instead embraced a radical leftism that I could not understand.

Not long after being discharged from the military, I returned to college and started reading again, but in a serious way, and in particular I started reading the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, specifically The Gulag Archipelago (which, of course, led me to his other writings). Solzhenitsyn directly identified and attacked the evil in Soviet society and by reading about the effects of institutionalized evil on individual human beings, I began to see how degrading and morally bankrupt Communist societies were (and are) regardless of time or place. As Prager writes, “Identifying and confronting evil remains the Achilles’ heel of liberals, progressives, and the rest of the left. . . Nothing quite compares with liberal and progressive abandonment of the war against evil, the most important venture the human race must engage in every generation. I can understand why a leftist would vote for the party not one of whose contenders for the presidency uttered the words ‘Islamic terror’ in a single presidential debate. But I still cannot understand why a true liberal would.”

I left the left a long time ago when the left had left the values I had learned at home; I cannot imagine going back to the Democratic party, which now seems bent on ignoring the current greatest threat to America’s peace and security and future.

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND