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August 24, 2006 - August 17, 2006

Friday, November 04, 2005

If there were escalating riots night after night in 20 American cities, it would be the ONLY story in media outlets around the world. And given France's arrogant habit of lecturing America about all sorts of relevant issues -- mideast politics, racism, the superiority of the European welfare states, proper conduct of the war on terror -- the irony of a meltdown of civil order in the capital city of France would seem to cry out for extensive reporting and analysis. But that's precisely the problem, isn't it?

The real linchpin of American liberal opposition to the foreign policy of the Bush administration is actually little more than an image, scrupulously maintained, of the sleek European diplomats who gravely prefer negotiated fig leafs to confrontations with Islamofascism. It's fairly easy to promote their superior manner, couched carefully in the representation of Europe as the older, wiser, more measured voice of western civilization. I use the term "image" because that's all it is and all it has been in living memory. The equally repressed details of the oil-for-food scandal demonstrate beyond doubt that European diplomats and "statesmen" would be quite at home in the Tammany Hall of America's 19th century. The toleration, particularly in France, for antisemitic outrages, also downplayed by the MSM, must remind us that the character flaws which produced two world wars in 30 years haven't been fixed. Europeans are still the pampered problem children of the world. It is they who continue to evade adult responsibilities at every turn, who manipulate all and sundry to their own advantage while insisting that everything which doesn't go their way is wrong because it's, well, not fair.

Rioting muslims in Paris is a huge problem for the American left. It suggests that the Europacifists don't have all the answers -- about the efficacy of socialist welfare programs, about the nature of Islamic militants, about the very definition of the social justice they pretend to revere above all other things. In fact, riots in your capital make it dramatically obvious that something important is broken in your nation.

The only picture gallery I've been able to find is this one, posted by the Times of London. Here is the accompanying story:


Bad Hair Blog (h/t Instapundit) has been monitoring other British news organizations, including the BBC and the Economist, and reports they seem less interested in the story than the Times:


I had forgotten about the Joseph Wilson story. I'm glad to be reminded. That's obviously the real reason the riots haven't gotten more attention here. After all, a dirty internecine squabble between the administration and the CIA about one still ambiguous item of Saddam's WMD activities proves that the French and Germans were dead right to oppose the Iraq War as reckless American adventurism; the right way to deal with middle eastern fascists is to smother them with flattering old world charm. That always works. Right?


Except when it doesn't. But what are a few trivial exceptions among the liberal elites who really should be ruling the world? In this case, it's better to wait for the French to get a handle on the situation and congratulate them after the fact for saving the Elysee Palace from unidentified arsonists.

That should be soon now. It better be soon. Are you listening, M. Chirac?

UPDATE. Michelle Malkin has also picked up on the item referenced above about the disabled woman who was set on fire in a bus. Her other coverage of the Paris riots is extensive and includes a link to another photo gallery.

UPDATE. Just for fun, here's Google's ham-handed mechanical translation of this page into French. Much more civilized, no?

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Her newest entry on the abortion debate is worth reading in light of our own recent post, including all the comments from men and miscellaneous other inferior sexes. We do wonder, though, whether her views on female superiority amount to a preference or just an acceptable unintended consequence.

Perhaps she'll deign to inform us directly.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

SIMPLE. Every so often, we feel obligated to bang on the empty drumhead that calls itself Neal Boortz. We see by the clock that it's the first of November, which means that magic time has come round once more.

Today, the semi-literate legal eagle from Atlanta is explaining -- yet again -- why conservatives should forget all about where the latest Supreme Court nominee stands on Roe v. Wade. We're already abundantly on record as saying Roe v. Wade is highly problematic as a conservative litmus test because it's impossible to know how any justice will vote until he's on the court, so we're not carrying any right wing water here. What we're compelled to do instead is challenge Boortz's airy assertion that he knows exactly where Americans stand on the abortion issue. Here's his flat-out declaration:


This is a prime example of Boortz's usual sloppy and (deliberately?) misleading thinking, which we have documented before, here , here, and here, without rebuttal. He makes an illogical argument that depends upon a mischaracterization of fact. We'll deal with the putative fact first -- that the vast majority of Americans are pro-choice. The evidence he'd cite comes from a survey like the one published by SurveyAmerica, which presents a state by state percentage breakdown and a U.S. breakdown weighted by population to arrive at the following totals: 38 percent pro-life and 56 percent pro-choice.

Convincing? Only if you ignore the self-evident fact that this is an enormously complicated and emotionally charged issue in which the easy labels are certain to create distortions by being mentioned at all. The actual question asked of the respondents to this survey was, "On abortion, are you pro-life? Or pro-choice?" Either-or. Black or white. Nothing in between. (No wonder this would sound like music to the space between Neal's ears.)

Anyone who looks, though, will find evidence that Boortz's "vast majority" is in question. According to an article in the Washington Times earlier this year:


Even some pro-abortion groups have gotten poll results they didn't expect;


What's going on here? Are the liberal pollsters skewing their questions? Are the right-to-lifers making statistics up? No. The fact is that the results vary significantly from 1) poll to poll, based upon what specific questions are asked about abortion, and 2) from time period to time period even on identical questions about abortion.

Here is an excellent site containing the results of numerous polls taken by news and political organizations representing left, right, and center political views. It's well worth the time it takes to read all the way through it. We don't pretend to have the statistical expertise to unravel all the mysteries of the frequently contradictory responses, but we will make a few observations that are pertinent to Roe v. Wade and the customary view of the topic as a war between pro-lifers and pro-choicers.

Perhaps the clearest trend in the results is that a majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal under some circumstances, especially in cases of rape and incest. A substantial minority believe abortion should always be legal. But the corollary of both these results is that a wavering majority of Americans also believe that abortion should be illegal in certain circumstances. It seems a fair inference, for example, that Americans lose tolerance for abortion the longer a pregnancy lasts and the more it is employed as a convenience by those who are too lazy to use contraceptives. A huge majority wishes to see fewer abortions and more parental involvement in decision making. The exact percentage breakdowns on all these positions move significantly up and down through time. Interestingly, the difference between the sexes on most questions seems slight or nonexistent. Apparently, the abortion issue is not about a male conspiracy to control women.

[Note that we invite -- even insist that --  you (to) examine the various studies for yourselves. We are not trying to put words in the mouths of the American people.]

One obvious bottom-line is that however the media and politicians speak about abortion, the terms pro-life and pro-choice do not apply to the fat part of the Bell Curve. An enormous number of Americans are somewhere in between, confused, struggling to navigate a sensible course through the hyperbolic rhetoric that prevents calm discussion of the complexities in public. There are those who believe it's a moral issue but should not be controlled by government or law. There are those who believe the government and the law must play a role because moral issues are involved. And there are those who believe the government and law must be involved because there are no moral issues involved. Almost no one is happy with the current state of affairs, but a majority do not believe that the issue is so critical it must be considered more important than all other issues before the country and its political parties. In other words, they can walk and chew gum at the same time; they are able to evaluate a public figure's position on abortion issues in the context of his position on other important matters. Presumably, they could also tolerate a period of legal confusion without losing their minds if Roe should one day be struck down.

In this context, Boortz's simplistic statement that a vast majority are pro-choice is disingenuous at best. Saying it enables him to make his specious case that Roe v. Wade is irrelevant. When he says, "If Roe vs. Wade were overturned tomorrow, all 50 states would immediately take over with their own laws," he thinks he is concluding the discussion. In fact, he is papering over the very serious relevance of Roe v. Wade, which is the federal law that thus far has been interpreted to mean that all abortions, in all circumstances, are beyond the reach of law. This is not what a vast majority of Americans want. For example, approximately 80 percent of Americans believe that the parents of minors seeking abortions should be notified. Unfortunately, the bizarre concept of privacy written into the constitution to justify Roe v. Wade also eliminates any possibility to do the will of the American people on this point.

It is the existence of an over-arching blanket license like Roe v. Wade which prevents people on all sides from coming to grips with the specifics of their own convictions. Boortz is correct in saying that overturning Roe would throw the question back to the states. That, by the way, is a step closer to where it can be dealt with meaningfully. There is a very clear difference in poll results from state to state. If Roe were overturned, Massachusetts might pass a state law identical to Roe, while Utah might pass a law banning abortion altogether. Other states might legalize abortion but require notification and/or consent by parents and spouses. Under our federal system, people unhappy with the laws in their own states would still have access, though the threshhold would be higher. In every state, however, the door would finally be open for individual communities, political districts and states to make the difficult distinctions, exceptions, and regulations preferred by the local majority, which no one is permitted to do today.

At a simple-minded level, Boortz is right to predict that abortion will never be entirely illegal. Yet it's equally true to say that if Roe were struck down, abortion will never again be universally legal and wholly unrestricted. Further, it's true to say that the various state laws governing abortion will come much closer to reflecting the complexities of the moral and ethical principles involved. Bad laws can be corrected. Unless the one unbreakable commandment is that there be no law. Note, too, that it is the existence of this one unbreakable commandment which holds this important issue hostage to our fading ability to determine how one nominee (at a time) feels about one supreme court case. To what definition of democratic rule does this state of affairs conform? Is it really superior to the messy give-and-take of people interacting with legislatures in individual states to pass, enforce, and refine laws that directly affect their lives?

Roe v. Wade is relevant. How Supreme Court nominees stand on Roe is relevant. Overturning this decision is in the interest of the vast majority of the American people, whether they know it or not. But sadly, another consistent by-product of the many polls is that they mimic the dunce logic of idiots like Boortz, reflecting an incorrect assumption that the abortion issue begins and ends with this one nightmarishly flawed supreme court opinion.

The clock ticks on. How many monolithic pro-choicers will there be when every woman can observe 4D ultrasound movies of her brand new fetus?

Not a rhetorical question. See for yourself what's coming.

See also The Doorway.

To read the whole story, follow the link.

Monday, October 31, 2005

SACRED TRUTHS. Maureen Dowd is still baffled by the fact that life involves tradeoffs, from which she, apparently, should be an exception:


Since Maureen is always writing about Maureen, it's clear that she's hankering for a husband and a child. Instead, what does she get? Matt Drudge running a caption contest making fun of her.

It's all so unfair. That's why her new book is called "Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide." I suppose her preferred line of attack is that men aren't necessary, that the world would be better off if women -- especially smart women -- were artificially inseminated like dairy cows and free to bring up their smart female-only progeny in a one-sex society. That way, female IQs could keep going up while the male population dwindled away to nothing. But what does this mean in terms of one of Dowd's favorite talking points?


In the dairy cow model, women will still be disappointed. There won't be any smart, powerful men to pursue. There will be millions of female geniuses, all desperately seeking some nonexistent male to show off to. The frustration will be immense. And what happens when powerful, brainy women get frustrated? You work out the answer for yourselves, but it's a good bet the answer rhymes with schmarmageddon.

Rather than a total reengineering of society, the right way out of this crisis might be for the smart, powerful men in Washington, DC, to get together and draw straws. The one who draws the short straw will arrange to be caught by Maureen Dowd, marry her, and spend the rest of his life making her feel beautiful, sexy, wanted, and indispensably brilliant. A tough assignment for somebody, to be sure, but it could save civilization as we know it. Isn't that worth the sacrifice of one heroic man? You decide.

 

Friday, October 28, 2005

RERUN. A man with gray hair should never be called Scooter. You're supposed to leave that crap behind on the playing fields of Groton or Choate or wherever. That was his first mistake. The second was cooperating with the investigation of a special prosecutor. As the Martha Stewart case demonstrated, there is no longer any fifth amendment protection against self incrimination when the feds are involved. If you refuse to incriminate yourself, you are indicted for perjury. Never mind that the crime for which you failed to incriminate yourself was not a crime at all, which is why, of course, a nonpartisan special prosecutor who has wasted two years chasing a wisp of political gossip is absolutely compelled to indict somebody for lying about whatever he said or did after not committing a crime.

This would all be mildly amusing if it weren't so laughably ludicrous. Now the libs have what they want (or part of it), and just watch them salivate and slobber and stammer with indignation about the vileness of a crime that used to be committed on a daily basis by the President they revere so much they're determined to put his perjurer wife in the Oval Office.

We'll stand by what we've already said about this fictitious outrage: it's not even plausible enough to make a bad TV series (NSFW).

Fitzgerald is nonpartisan. In a pig's eye.

Then again, the defendant's name is Scooter. Sounds like an impasse to us.

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