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March 1, 2007 by mr_flood.
These days, conventional wisdom states that as a society we are becoming more and more isolated and that this is a problem. I agree with both points. But the reasons that are offered up as to why this is happening are mostly bunk.
Here’s my reason why: What is isolating us is the losing of our national and local identities. These identities give us a sense of community, that we belong to something larger than ourselves that includes everyone around us, each striving for a common purpose: the success of our community and with it our nation. We are no longer taught to think of ourselves as Americans or New Yorkers, instead we are taught to think of ourselves as separate entities divided by race or class or politics, at odds with those different than us. Isolation is the fruit of multiculturalism, class consciousness, and blind partisanship.
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February 14, 2007 by mr_flood.
Reading todays NY Times I came across an article describing a new crackdown in Baghdad initiated by Iraqis. The author, Marc Santora, provides us with a fairly good description of what the new plan entails. Of course, in the vein of all modern journalism, he feels the need to balance the article (at least in his mind) by giving voice to those who may feel the plan is ill advised. My problem is with how these journalists provide these opposing voices, read on…
On Tuesday, senior American officers expressed surprise about the plan to resettle people who had moved from their homes amid sectarian cleansing. But they declined to be identified, saying they did not want to contradict the Iraqi general.
General Qanbar indicated that the plan would be carried out evenly across Baghdad. But critics said Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has come under intense criticism for pursuing a sectarian Shiite agenda, might be trying to appease his detractors and may not actually carry out the plan. Some feared that his government might not apply the same pressure to residents of Shiite areas.
Notice the slight of hand, the ginning up of opposition? No? Look at these statements:
senior American officers
But critics said
Some feared
You probably read those two paragraphs and thought nothing amiss, so used to this technique we have become. This isn’t reporting, it’s theater. It’s an agenda looking for a script writer. Who are the ’some’, who are the ‘critics’? Your neighbor’s 13 year old son? A disgruntled former government employee? Or perhaps they’re made up from whole cloth, ghosts in his head? With this kind of faux news, one will never know.
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January 23, 2007 by mr_flood.
Check out Goldstein for a great hypothetical on how long a leash we should give the Maliki government. His article touches on something I’ve often thought about: what societies are and what are the fundamentals of their existance? Webster describes a society as
2 : a voluntary association of individuals for common ends; especially : an organized group working together or periodically meeting because of common interests, beliefs, or profession.
Individuals for common ends. What happens when a geographical location, what may be a nation, contains two distinct groups of individuals with opposing interests? Can you still call it a society? Can you call Iraq a society?
The Thirteen Colonies, in the beginning, were a society of Brits. As time passed a group of individuals decided that they disliked being British and decided to form a new society, an American one. Remember though, it wasn’t all of them that decided this, just the more passionate, the one’s willing to take up arms. Was it wrong for these impassioned rebels to force their will upon those who would chose to stay British? Was it wrong to force them to conform or leave? To force them to live by new laws that they didn’t necessarily agree with? To quash their voices? To label them traitors? I don’t think so.
I don’t think it would be wrong for the advocates of democracy to completely and utterly quash the voices of those who oppose them. To declare even the slightest affront to the current government as treason. To say to them ‘We wish to form the bonds of a new society, if you don’t like it, leave or die’. To make a bill of rights that only applies to those who wish to be members of the new way and to strip away the rights of those who stand against it. Are you evil or have you lost your way if you choose to protect your people, your society, without regard for the rights of your enemies? I don’t think so.
Isn’t it a bit insane that we condone the killing of those that fire lead bullets at government forces but consider those who fire liturgical bullets to be untouchable?
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January 15, 2007 by mr_flood.
I thought it might be appropriate, on MLK day, to highlight the impact that MLK has had on our nation’s liberal academic community.
First, from the Man himself:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Then we turn our eyes to Duke University, from the Group of 88:
“Regardless of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism.”
What we learn from 88 professors is that:
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December 14, 2006 by mr_flood.
I suppose the vast majority of Americans would describe the amount of money the ultra-wealthy make compared to them isn’t ‘fair’. Guaranteed all of those interested in wealth redistribution would characterize it as such. I certainly do not describe it as such. But let’s go from here with the given that having that much wealth is somehow unfair. If it is unfair, how do we go about making it fair? For those that believe it is unfair it seems their only solution is higher taxes, and this is the point I want to address.
Where does one get the idea that fairness in the distribution of wealth can only be achieved by lowering the wealth of one group of people and increasing the tax revenue brought in by the government? Notice the bait and switch. The problem that is described to us begins with an unfairness in the level of wealth between the ultra-rich and the middle to lower classes but their solution doesn’t involve one half of that equation. What they want you to assume is that the giving of the money to government is the same as giving it to the less wealthy, something akin to Robin Hood. This assumption is completely bogus. The money that is taken from the wealthy is not redistributed to the rest of us. As a matter of fact, it is oftentimes given right back to the wealthy in the form of government pork projects. But most of it, of course, goes to funding the bureaucracy.
And this is the true nature of the problem. The first priority of government, like any entity, is to reproduce, and the first priority of those who believe in so-called income redistribution is to feed government because they are socialists at heart. Getting the money into the hands of the less-wealthy isn’t really a concern of theirs. If it was, their solution wouldn’t involve taking from the rich to balance things out but rather increasing the wealth generation of the less rich.
Don’t believe me? Ask them if they would be in favor of implementing their redistribution plan but in a different way, doing it by bypassing government altogether. Instead of the government collecting a percentage as taxes, rather take a percentage of their wealth and just split it up into direct checks to people. They’ll hem and haw and claim that would never work.
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December 11, 2006 by mr_flood.
“I am here to defend the right to offend” - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Of course there’s no ‘right to offend’ in the constitution but it doesn’t take much to equate the right to free speech to mean the right to say that which offends. Is the converse also true? Is there a right not to be offended? In short, no. One sure-fire way to determine if you live in a truly free society is whether or or not you can be offended without recourse.
We all know that free speech is under attack, the examples are legion. There are facists among us and when they are given power they are quick to impose their version of Big Brother upon us. Group-think is their friend, hyperbole their weapon of choice and facts are the unspeakable enemy.
And we submit.
It makes me angry to no end that loud-mouthed Brown Shirts so easily impose their facist agenda on huge swaths of the country under the approving eyes of the similarly minded media with not a peep from the elected ‘protectors’ of such rights. If anything, the so-called defenders of the Constitution applause as the Brown Shirts go marching by.
The famous quote says “This is how the Republic dies, to thundering applause.” Wrong. It dies the death of a million cuts under the indifferent gaze of the contented masses.
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