"Immoral
equivalency"
"It might be called moral obtuseness, or even moral racism. The assumption appears to be that Africans or Asians can't be held to our own elevated standards. They are more like wild animals, whose savagery should not be provoked by our foolishness. When we do provoke them, the consequences are entirely our fault." (Ian Buruma)
News and commentary on moral equivalence and moral relativism.
Part 1: 2001/09/12 - 2001/12/24
Part 2: 2002/01/18 - 2002/06/28
Part 3: 2002/07/08 - 2002/08/28
Part 4: 2002/09/04 - 2002/10/31
Part 5: 2002/11/06 -
December 2002
"The Osama bin Laden Day-Care Center" (James Taranto, "The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/12/20)
"Canada's confusion" (Ed Morgan, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/12/17)
"The Trouble With Amnesty" (The Wall Street Journal, 2002/12/08)
"No More Idealism on the Left" (David Skinner, The Weekly Standard, 2002/12/05)
"A Philosopher in the Trenches: Interview with Ted Honderich" (Paul de Rooij, The Palestine Chronicle, 2002/12/04)
"Let's hear it for bad taste" (Ian Buruma, The Guardian, 2002/12/03)
"Morally neutral reporting is dishonest reporting" (Dennis Prager, Town Hall, 2002/12/03)
"Saddam's useful idiots pollute the British Left" (Michael Gove, The Times, 2002/12/03)
"Citadels of reason and responsibility?" (Bruce Fein, The Washington Times, 2002/12/03)
"The mother of all package tours" (Johann Hari, The Guardian, 2002/12/03)
"Al Qaeda, the McGovernite Vanguard?" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/12/02)
"Blaming the victim of terrorism" (Cathy Young, The Boston Globe, 2002/12/02)November 2002
"Beautiful girls" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/11/29)
"Blaming the victim" (Andrew Sullivan, The Washington Times, 2002/11/29)
"Miss World war" (Jennie Bristow, spiked, 2002/11/28)
"Down with beauty? Only when it's ugly" (Russell Smith, The Globe and Mail, 2002/11/27)
"Beauties and the Beasts" (Andrew Sullivan, Salon.com/andrewsullivan.com, 2002/11/27)
"Self-loathing in the West (ctd)" (Andrew Stuttaford, National Review/The Corner, 2002/11/26)
"Double Standard" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/11/15)
"Terrorists, liberals, and the EU" (Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/11/15)
"When a 'Terrorist' Is a 'Militant' and Why" (Steven Plaut, Newsday.com, 2002/11/13)
"The Great Depression" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/11/12)
"Protocols of Elder Named Gore Vidal: Wacko 9/11 Piece" (Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer, from the 2002/11/11 issue)
"The End of An Era" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/11/08)
"'Your Aggressive Baby Killing Tactics'" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/11/07)
"So-called liberals need to address the facts about terrorism" (Bala Ambati, The Chronicle Online, 2002/11/06)"The Osama bin Laden Day-Care Center" (James Taranto, "The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/12/20)
"The notion of a U.S. senator singing the praises of Osama bin Laden is too far-fetched to take seriously, right? Wrong. Here's the Columbian of Vancouver, Wash., describing a speech by Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) to a group of southern Washington state high-school students: ...
"'We've got to ask, why is this man (Osama bin Laden) so popular around the world?,' said Murray, who faces re-election in 2004. "Why are people so supportive of him in many countries . . . that are riddled with poverty? He's been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that. How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?"
Coming next: Patty Murray describes how Hitler built the Autobahn. Actually, it's true that bin Laden financed some road construction in Sudan, back when that was the headquarters of his terror network, but Murray must have a screw loose if she thinks al Qaeda has been building "day care facilities." What, to cater to all the fundamentalist Muslim families in which the husband and all four wives have to work?" (See also: "U.S. Sen. Patty Murray - Senator asks students to ponder" (Gregg Herrington, The Columbian, 2002/12/19))"Canada's confusion" (Ed Morgan, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/12/17)
Canada's confusion sounds almost exactly like its Swedish equivalent. But then it is an example of the moral relativism inherent in "the ethic of multiculturalism" and thus rather a Western confusion. In Canada, anti-Semitic neo-nazi violence is appropriately condemned, while Hizbullah partly has been seen as a "social-welfare network": "Testifying at the deportation hearing of an immigrant found to be a member of the Egyptian al-Jihad movement, an officer in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service disclosed last year that "there are more international terrorist groups here [in Canada] than in any other country in the world." ... The country's solicitor-general has defended the weak anti-terrorism policy in a way that romanticizes multiculturalism and political pluralism. Some violent groups, he has explained, offer an independent political and social-welfare network for their people, and are therefore different than strictly religious zealots like al-Qaida. It is as if the government perceived Hizbullah, the Tamil Tigers, the Basque ETA and other similar organizations as alternative voices that need to be heard in the multicultural symphony that Canadians have composed. ... For a country that has always been dispassionate about patriotism and cultural identity, the ethic of multiculturalism has caught on and grown into a surprising national passion. The cultural core, in other words, has been hollowed out in favor of the ethnic periphery. And while this has been beneficial for Jews and other minority groups, nowhere is the down side of this phenomenon more apparent than in security matters.""The Trouble With Amnesty" (The Wall Street Journal, 2002/12/08)
"The London-based organization does not dispute the contents of the dossier, "Saddam Hussein: Crimes and Human Rights Abuses." In fact, the British Foreign Office relied on human rights groups to put together this report. But according to an Amnesty spokesman, "human rights should not be used as an excuse to go to war." This has been Amnesty's line pretty consistently. Its secretary general, Irene Khan, wrote recently that "this selective attention to human rights is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists. Let us not forget that these same governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International's reports of widespread human rights violations in Iraq before the Gulf War." This raises several questions. An immediate one is, shouldn't human rights be the best cause for starting a war? Shouldn't conscientious governments care when human beings are being mistreated, and do something about it? ... The group has raised a fuss about al Qaeda and Taliban operatives being held in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. But why? Despite their crimes, they are not being tortured, they get three square meals a day, a shower and time to pray. It has also practically put the entire blame for the Middle Eastern conflict on the Israelis, absolving the Palestinians of almost all responsibility. Now it goes soft on Saddam, because the U.S. is finally getting tough with him. This is human rights work?" (See also: "UK unveils Iraq 'torture' dossier" (BBC News, 2002/12/02))"No More Idealism on the Left" (David Skinner, The Weekly Standard, 2002/12/05)
"Recent events - September 11, the war in Afghanistan, and the coming war in Iraq - have rigorously tested one of the perennial cliches of politics: that the Left is for idealists. Dreamers. People longing to change the world - and make it better. It's no longer true. Idealism has become a property of the Right, while the Left has been taken over by low partisan enmity. ... Clearly, the Left has given up principled opposition for the sake of mere opposition - or something that amounts to the same. "Let us find a way to resist fundamentalism that leads to violence," Hollywood actor Tim Robbins told an antiwar crowd in Central Park at a recent rally, "fundamentalism of all kinds, in al Qaeda and within our government." Yes, you heard him right. Robbins equated the Islamist terrorists responsible for the deaths of thousands to (need it even be said?) democratically elected officials of the freest country in history. ... Indeed, why can't a Left that built its domestic agenda on equal rights for women and minorities oppose a dictator who licenses the procedural rape of dissident females and kills minorities? Why can't a Left that supports an absolute separation of church and state find the strength to oppose religious dictatorships abroad? Ditto for economic opportunity, the freedom of speech, and the right to vote. Why can't the Left be passionate about these ideals when it comes to the most pressing political events of the day?""A Philosopher in the Trenches: Interview with Ted Honderich" (Paul de Rooij, The Palestine Chronicle, 2002/12/04)
Ted Honderich is a philosopher who teaches at University College London and perhaps is most noteworthy as an apologist for Palestinian terrorism. Imagine that Islamist terrorists only referred to the Palestinian cause in their fatwas and statements - wouldn't that force Honderich to applaud 9/11, and in fact all Islamist terrorism?: "Claiming that the Palestinians have a moral right to their terrorism, which I do, can hardly be old hat given the reaction to the claim. If some people readily accept it, some of them out of anti-Semitism, many are shocked or disturbed by it. The moral feelings of people at Oxfam GB were shocked by it, as their public statements clearly show. ...
Amnesty equates the nature of the violence perpetrated against Israelis and Palestinians. That is, it will condemn to the same degree when an Israeli is killed, and when a Palestinian is killed. It also calls on "both parties to respect human rights, and to make human rights central to their agenda." Is AI's stance valid?
Everyone should object to the terrible "even-handedness" of such statements as the Amnesty one. Everyone should choke on such attempts at "balance". In an ordinary sense of the words, there is no place at all for even-handedness and balance in actually dealing with the rapist engaged in the rape of the woman with a knife at her throat. The rapist has no rights that bear significantly on the question of whether he should stop or be stopped. The analogy with Israel is not a wild one, but exact." (Note: Found via Little Green Footballs. See also: "Hating Israel is part of campus culture" (Jonathan Kay, National Post/Campus Watch, 2002/09/25))"Let's hear it for bad taste" (Ian Buruma, The Guardian, 2002/12/03)
Buruma on reactions to the Miss World massacre: "Staging the contest in Nigeria might not have been wise, and the journalist may have been courting danger. But some of the reactions in London suggest that the killers may have had a point. There is an odd convergence between fashionable political correctitude and religious bigotry, as though people who have the bad taste to enjoy beauty parades are criminally culpable. Rod Liddle, for example, found it difficult to disagree with the Muslim lynch mob, "from a theoretical point of view", that Miss World represents everything that is horrible about "western culture". ... It might be called moral obtuseness, or even moral racism. The assumption appears to be that Africans or Asians can't be held to our own elevated standards. They are more like wild animals, whose savagery should not be provoked by our foolishness. When we do provoke them, the consequences are entirely our fault. It would be as misplaced to apply our moral standards to their behaviour, as it would be to expect tigers to talk. The murder of Nigerians or Indian Muslims, or Iraqi Kurds, is par for the course, unless we did it, or Americans, or Israelis. ... What is certainly not all right is to diminish the responsibility of clerics, who incited the violence, by frivolously concurring with their views on western culture. That is no way to defend the freedom of others or, for that matter, our own." (See also: "Down with beauty? Only when it's ugly" (Russell Smith, The Globe and Mail, 2002/11/27))"Morally neutral reporting is dishonest reporting" (Dennis Prager, Town Hall, 2002/12/03)
"Under the guise of "objectivity," virtually every major news agency, newspaper and television news network in the West is feeding its readers and viewers a morally neutral view of world events that is so distorted as to verge on mendacity. Take this article from The New York Times, which describes the recent Muslim rioting in Nigeria over one sentence written by a Nigerian reporter in an article defending the Miss World pageant ("Muhammad would probably have taken one of the contestants for a wife."): First, the headline: "Fiery Zealotry Leaves Nigeria in Ashes Again." Notice that no group is identified as responsible. ... The article then begins: "KADUNA, Nigeria, Nov. 28 - The beauty queens are gone now, chased from Nigeria by the chaos in Kaduna." If this is not a direct lie, it surely is an indirect one. The beauty queens were not chased out of Nigeria by "chaos," but by Muslim rioters. One might as well say that between 1939 and 1945, tens of millions of Europeans were killed by chaos, rather than by Nazis. Lest the reader miss the point that no group is morally responsible, the article's next sentence develops this idea: "But there are no celebrations in this deeply troubled town, which has become a symbol of the difficulty in Nigeria - and throughout Africa - of reconciling people who worship separately." Aha! The problem, dear Times reader, is not Islamic intolerance and violence in Nigeria, nor is it Nigerian Muslims attempting to violently spread Islamic religious law (as in sentencing a non-Muslim Nigerian woman to be stoned to death for giving birth to a child out of wedlock). No, the Times assures us, what happened in Kaduna is merely another example of Africa's 'difficulty in reconciling people who worship separately.'" (See also: "Fiery Zealotry Leaves Nigeria in Ashes Again" (Marc Lacey, The New York Times, 2002/11/29))"Saddam's useful idiots pollute the British Left" (Michael Gove, The Times, 2002/12/03)
"You can vaccinate key military personnel against smallpox. But you can't inoculate the British Left against its own strain of wilful stupidity. The Government yesterday chose to highlight the grotesque campaign of torture and brutalisation which President Saddam Hussein has been inflicting on his own people. ... Ms Khan is the Secretary-General of Amnesty International and, as of yesterday, number one pin-up girl in Baghdad's presidential palaces. For her reaction to the publication of the British Government's dossier on Saddam's human rights abuses was not satisfaction that one of the world’s most evil men was facing the scrutiny he deserved, but anger that something might be done about him. "This selective attention to human rights," Ms Khan pronounced, "is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists." Why is Ms Khan's reaction to this dossier condemnation for the British Government rather than the Iraqi? You would have thought that if Amnesty International were objecting to anyone's cold and calculated manipulation, it would be the Iraqi regime's wrenching of innocent civilians' arms out of their sockets. ... Why is it that so many of those whose political creed should be driven by a desire to emancipate those who are suffering choose to object to a course of action which would deliver millions from misery? ... The only thing left puzzling me is why those who claim to believe in human rights are not willing to see something worthwhile done to uphold them." (See also: "UK unveils Iraq 'torture' dossier" (BBC News, 2002/12/02))"Citadels of reason and responsibility?" (Bruce Fein, The Washington Times, 2002/12/03)
"Are Harvard University and Stanford Law School citadels of reason that strengthen our democratic dispensation? Or are the elite academies saboteurs by granting respectability to the likes of poet Tom Paulin and indicted radical lawyer Lynn Stewart, both notorious for celebrating violence, terrorism, and repression against their opponents? ... Mr. Paulin's chilling views include likening the Israeli Defense Force to Hitler's SS; recommending death for Brooklyn-born Jewish settlers on the West Bank, whom he demonizes as Nazis; and, denying the nation of Israel a right of self-preservation. Attorney Lynn Stewart matches Mr. Paulin syllable for ugly syllable. She avidly defended Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, found guilty of complicity in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She was indicted last spring for providing material assistance to a foreign terrorist organization and for relaying a directive from the terrorist sheik to renew Muslim extremist warfare against the government of Egypt. ... The irresponsibility of Harvard, Stanford, or any other elite institution in playing host to celebrants of violence and terrorism is the irresponsibility of neutrality between the firefighter and the fire. The fire should be aggressively opposed and extinguished as a social imperative. ... Wickedness should be denounced in all its moods and tenses, not given an honored seat next to virtue." (See also: "Welcome Voice?" (Tom Gross, National Review, 2002/11/12))"The mother of all package tours" (Johann Hari, The Guardian, 2002/12/03)
From moral equivalence to moral inversion. Hari reports from a package tour to Iraq: "The group had a handful of people like Phil, risk-takers craving a change from Marbella and some amusing dinner-party anecdotes. Sean, a 36-year-old New York restaurateur and multimillionaire, was clearly in this category. He lives a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero and witnessed the attack on the Twin Towers, but he appeared to be America's biggest peacenik. "If I was going to Iraq to shoot a bunch of people, everyone back home would say I was a hero. But because I'm coming to hang out with the people and see what they're like, they think I'm a suspect character." He believes that the US and Iraq are morally equivalent: "You can't say the US is any better than Iraq. We have no right to lecture anyone, ever," he insisted, chewing his gum. ... Then there was Hannah. How to explain her? A frightfully well-spoken Englishwoman in her early 50s. When we first met, she dispensed with the small talk to say: "I think Saddam is a great man and the USA is a great big global bully. My theory is that he should be given Kuwait. It's perfectly logical if you look at the map." "I think he's rather handsome too," she went on. "Every woman does really. I'd rather like to inspect his weapon of mass destruction myself." Sorry, what was that you said about ... 'Oh, people say how can you say that, but I say, how can you support Bush when he is about to murder so many Iraqis? Hmmm? We must show our solidarity with Saddam.'""Al Qaeda, the McGovernite Vanguard?" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/12/02)
"In an otherwise forgettable Harper's essay called "The Case for Liberalism" (which this "progressive" magazine is too technologically backward to make available online), George McGovern makes this astonishing statement: "President Bush has said repeatedly that the terrorists hate us because of our freedom. I don't believe that. The world's people have always admired our freedom. What they don't like is the arrogance and indifference to world opinion inherent in so much of our international policy." ... Yet even if you believe McGovern's assertion about the views of "the world's people," it's no refutation of the president's claim that the terrorists hate us because of our freedom. McGovern, however, pointedly does not distinguish between the terrorists and the world's people. Osama bin Laden, he seems to be saying, is (or was) a McGovernite too. Does McGovern really believe that al Qaeda is the party of acid, amnesty and abortion? Don't laugh; some people do. "Radical Muslim leaders like Osama bin Laden, Yasser Arafat and yes, even Saddam Hussein strive for an ideal that Americans can endorse: social justice," opines one Ana McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News." (See also: "Shared beliefs are at the heart of peaceful and lasting solutions" (Ana McDonald, San Antonio Express-News, 2002/12/01))"Blaming the victim of terrorism" (Cathy Young, The Boston Globe, 2002/12/02)
Young on the "disturbing tendency on the left to blame America first and to promote the notion of moral equivalency between Western democracies and their enemies.": "The other day, for instance, I came across an article about a just-published book called ''Snowball's Chance'' by American novelist John Reed, a satirical sequel/rejoinder to George Orwell's famous ''Animal Farm.'' In ''Animal Farm,'' an allegory of the Russian revolution, a group of farm animals rebel and drive away their human masters but end up under the brutal dictatorship of a Stalinesque pig. In ''Snowball's Chance,'' the farm embraces capitalism; the animals' living standards improve, but environmental degradation follows. Not content to leave it at that, Reed ends his anticapitalist fable with a transparent reference to Sept. 11: Forest animals angered by the destruction of their habitat, led by a group of beavers, attack the twin windmills (get it?) that supply power to the farm. The book ends with the irate farm animals planning their revenge and chanting, ''Kill the beavers!'' There are certain flaws in this charming allegory. The twin towers, for instance, were not just machines but buildings full of people, and protection of the environment does not rank high on Al Qaeda's agenda. But these are apparently minor details to Reed, a New Yorker who described his reaction to the attack on America as follows: ''I thought, 'Why would they do this to us?' ... The twin towers attack showed us that something is wrong with our system, too.'' In other words: What did the victim do to deserve it?""Beautiful girls" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/11/29)
Beauty and the beast XX: "'It is completely despicable that we have agreed to host this travesty,' British writer Muriel Gray said of the move. "These girls will be wearing swimwear dripping in blood." Added The Observer's Ros Coward: "It is almost impossible to retain the idea that an annual parade of female flesh is just an innocent quest for universal beauty acceptable to all reasonable people." Remarkable here isn't the view of Ms. Gray and her cohort. Rather, it's the coincidence of her views with those of Muslim fundamentalists who elsewhere in Nigeria condemn rape victims as "adulterers" and sentence them to death by stoning. "It's all about commercial sex trading," says Nigerian Muslim cleric Hussein Zakaria of the pageant, sounding a lot like Gloria Steinem (or is it Jerry Falwell?). "It's about nudity, it's about immorality, it's about exposing the youngsters to a sex hazard." As Muslim rioters went to town, many of them held aloft placards reading, "Down with Beauty," as if they, too, were readers of contemporary academic journals in post-feminist inquiry. ... Now usually, when someone points out that your views are shared by, say, neo-Nazis, it means the time has come to rethink those views. Not so with our beauty-contest critics. Taking note of the "Down with Beauty" banners, Russell Smith of Canada's Globe and Mail writes that the slogan "makes a strange kind of sense, if you interpret it to mean 'Down with this sort of incongruous, disrespectful cultural invasion.'" (See also: "Down with beauty? Only when it's ugly" (Russell Smith, The Globe and Mail, 2002/11/27))"Blaming the victim" (Andrew Sullivan, The Washington Times, 2002/11/29)
Beauty and the beast XIX: "After the horror of Nigeria, you'd think allowing a free beauty pageant to take place in a free city would be a no-brainer. But the loony-left's favorite London Mayor Ken Livingstone pronounced Miss World unwelcome. He said the notion of holding the contest now was "obscene." "After the violence and terrible loss of life in Nigeria, the staging of a Miss World event in this city is not welcome. It defies belief that after Miss World has brought tragedy and strife to Africa its organizers should think it appropriate to carry on with the razzamataz as if nothing had happened." This is exactly the wrong way round. Miss World did nothing to provoke such violence. Nor did the newspaper columnist who is now living under a Salman Rushdie-like fatwa. The people responsible are Islamic extremists who view freedom of speech and association anathema to their religious convictions. Mr. Livingstone should be proud to offer them refuge. Or does he believe that journalists deserve to be killed for their opinions and innocents murdered in their hundreds merely because of their religious faith?" (See also: "Livingstone says Miss World is not welcome" (Simon Jeffery, The Guardian, 2002/11/26))"Miss World war" (Jennie Bristow, spiked, 2002/11/28)
Bristow on Western reactions to the Miss World massacre: "'Is there no end to the wilful, decadent tactlessness of the West?' asks Libby Purves, writing in The Times (London) about the Miss World debacle. Rod Liddle, in the Guardian, claims that '[f]or the predominantly Muslim population of northern Nigeria, the whole thing was, clearly, an affront'. Liddle continues: 'It would have appeared, to the imams and the fervently faithful, as a quintessential example of everything that is rancid and grotesque about the hated, godless Western culture. And although we might draw the line at killing people over it all, it is hard, from a theoretical point of view, to disagree with them about this.' Both these articles were published on the same day, have almost the same title (plays on 'Miss World' and 'ugliness'), and make pretty much the same point: that the dark underbelly of the Nigerian riots lies not in Nigeria, but in the Western-created Miss World. ... So obsessed are we becoming with the shortcomings of what we have made of consumer society that we forget about the massive industrial, technological, scientific and cultural advances that freed us up to be obsessed with sex and shopping. Two hundred years of history is presented as being as inconsequential as 50 years of Miss World - and beneath the discussion about protecting Nigeria from beauty pageants lies the prejudice that such countries should be protected from modernising influences, even those as naff as this." (See also: "Third World reveals Miss World ugliness" (Libby Purves, The Times, 2002/11/26) and "The ugly side of Miss World" (Rod Liddle, The Guardian, 2002/11/26))"Down with beauty? Only when it's ugly" (Russell Smith, The Globe and Mail, 2002/11/27)
Beauty and the beast XVIII. An extra-ordinary stupid anti-Western column, finding "a strange kind of sense" in the Miss World 2002 massacre. But thankfully Smith himself wouldn't "kill anyone over it": "A sign held up in the initial stages of the demonstrations in Kaduna, Nigeria, read "Down with beauty." ... Beauty itself is obviously not the issue here: It's a particularly Western kind of beauty, which many don't find beautiful at all. ... It's also not beautiful. Beauty must contain some element of the extraordinary, of the singular. It must be startling. Jean Anouilh said that real beauty had to be grave; Albert Camus said that beauty was unbearable; Lautreamont declared that beauty must be convulsive. Whatever they all meant, it is clear that none of those adjectives applies to the blow-dried suburban niceness of the Miss World pageant. And this is why the "Down with beauty" banner of the Nigerian protestors makes a strange kind of sense, if you interpret it to mean "Down with this sort of incongruous, disrespectful cultural invasion." It doesn't mean "Down with beauty." It means "Down with ugliness." (Of course, I wouldn't kill anyone over it.)" (Note: In a Guardian-article Rod Liddle also expresses sympathy with the sentiments of the rioters, although, he adds, "we might draw the line at killing people over it all" ("The ugly side of Miss World" (Rod Liddle, The Guardian, 2002/11/26)): "For the predominantly Muslim population of northern Nigeria, the whole thing was, clearly, an affront - and for reasons not a million miles removed from those that make most of us think it an affront, too. It would have appeared, to the imams and the fervently faithful, as a quintessential example of everything that is rancid and grotesque about the hated, godless western culture. And although we might draw the line at killing people over it all, it is hard, from a theoretical point of view, to disagree with them about this.")"Beauties and the Beasts" (Andrew Sullivan, Salon.com/andrewsullivan.com, 2002/11/27)
"The act of putting on a beauty pageant or writing a column are now subject to the approval of radical religious fanatics. Those who do not please these fanatics will not be criticized or campaigned against or smeared or railed at. They will be killed. ... In the aftermath of horror, the Washington Post reported early on that "after plans to stage the show in Nigeria sparked Christian-Muslim riots that killed at least 175 people, the organizers moved it to Britain but flew into a storm of protest at home too." "Christian-Muslim riots"? Those are weasel words, obscuring the real responsibility for the murders. The organizers of the Miss World contest also managed to blur the issue. "A journalist made this problem and we hope journalists can put it right," said Julia Morley, Miss World's CEO. Excuse me? The journalist was doing her job. The "problem" - a rather glib description of the murder of hundreds - was caused by extreme Islam. And by singling out the journalist, Morley gives a patina of credibility to the disgusting fatwa now lodged against her. ... Paleo-feminists also blamed the victim. ... Jill Nelson summed up this bizarre moral equivalence on MSNBC: "As far as I'm concerned it's equally disrespectful and abusive to have women prancing around a stage in bathing suits for cash or walking the streets shrouded in burkas in order to survive." I can't think of a more fatuous statement after a bloodbath, orchestrated by fanatics who won't allow women the slightest autonomy in their lives. ... This is what cultural relativism, p.c. journalism and decadent feminism amounts to: a failure to grasp that freedom is under attack." (See also: "Ugliness of a beauty contest" (Jill Nelson, MSNBC, 2002/11/25))"Self-loathing in the West (ctd)" (Andrew Stuttaford, National Review/The Corner, 2002/11/26)
Beauty and the beast XI: "There's a bizarre piece on the Miss World saga in, naturally, Monday's Guardian. The key extract is as follows: "As contestants flee to London, and Nigeria counts its dead, it is almost impossible to retain the idea that an annual parade of female flesh is just an innocent quest for universal beauty acceptable to all reasonable people." Eh? This doesn't make much sense unless one believes that the murderous rioters in Nigeria were in some way "reasonable people". Well, here's an update: they weren't." (See also: "The beauty myth" (Ros Coward, The Guardian, 2002/11/26))"Double Standard" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/11/15)
"Maan, a Mideast city of 70,000, is under military siege as part of a "crackdown on Islamic militants," the Christian Science Monitor reports: "Spotlights blazing, a vanguard of armored cars topped with loudspeakers and machine guns cruised the streets ordering residents back to their homes. Convoys of tanks chugged behind. ... Security sources said six soldiers and policemen and four residents were killed in the fighting. ... A series of checkpoints across the town prevented access to the heart of the fighting." If you're wondering why this is the first you've heard of this - and why we haven't heard the usual cries about the brutality of the Israeli military and "humiliation" of being subjected to Israeli checkpoints - it's because Israel has nothing to do with this. Maan is in Jordan, and Amman is directing the crackdown. Where's the outrage? Nowhere, as usual when an Arab government is involved." (See also: "Jordanian attack on militants reveals a national rift" (Nicolas Pelham, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/11/15))"Terrorists, liberals, and the EU" (Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/11/15)
"Given Egypt's leading role as an inciter of hatred against Israel and the Jewish people, it was also not surprising that Cairo hosted this week's Palestinian terror conference between Fatah and Hamas. ... Slightly more surprising is that the European Union sponsored the conference. Alistair Crook, EU Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos's security adviser, was in Cairo. According to Javier Sancho, Moratinos's spokesman, the EU's role was "to facilitate" the dialogue as "part of its ongoing efforts to stop terrorism." Also as part of the EU's efforts to stop Palestinian terrorism or at least some Palestinian terrorism this week it was reported that the EU recently held talks with one Muhammed Naifa in an effort to persuade him to limit Fatah terror attacks to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. ... Naifa, of course was the mastermind of the Kibbutz Metzer massacre, as well as the massacre at the French Hill junction in Jerusalem this past June in which seven people, including five-year-old Gal Eisenman and her grandmother, Noa Alon, were murdered. ... It is a puzzle how people of reasonable intelligence and of purported liberal values can fund, meet with, and even sponsor conferences for known murderers in the name of saving lives." (See also: "Mastermind of Kibbutz Metzer attack captured" (Margot Dudkevitch, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/11/15))"When a 'Terrorist' Is a 'Militant' and Why" (Steven Plaut, Newsday.com, 2002/11/13)
"Ever since 9/11, much of the world has adopted a "good terrorist - bad terrorist" shtick, based on the old "good cop - bad cop" routine familiar from every bad police drama on television. According to this, those people who blow up innocent civilians are regarded as terrorists and barbarians, except where they target and murder Jews. In that case they are "activists," "militants," people with legitimate grievances, people whose demands must be met and with whom a deal must be struck. Much of the world's media, and especially CNN and the BBC, evidently have ironclad policies whereby Arabs who commit mass murder against Jews must never be described as terrorists. Instead, they are "activists," as if they are raising money for dolphins, or "militants," like people marching in gay pride parades. ... The world understands when the United States routs the Taliban, and I suspect it will understand when the Russians attack their Chechen tormentors, or when the perpetrators of the Bali bombing are killed. But somehow the same rules never seem to apply to Israel. For it, the only permissible response to Islamist terrorism is submission, turning the other cheek, and appeasement.""The Great Depression" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/11/12)
A sample of responses from some Democrats and liberals to last week's Republican election victories: "Bill Moyers, PBS: "For the first time in the memory of anyone alive, the entire federal government - the Congress, the Executive, the Judiciary - is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That mandate includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to give up control over their own lives. It includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. ... It is a heady time in Washington - a heady time for piety, profits, and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money." ...
Darlene Weesner, an unsuccessful candidate for county office in Florida: "Marion County is now under siege by the Gestapo, and the Fuhrer is the leader of the Republican Party. All I can tell you is the community is missing out on the wonderful plans I had in store for all of us."
Ira Hozinsky, in a published e-mail to bilious blogger Eric Alterman: "The reason for the Republican triumph is simple: the American people are stupid. The ineptitude and corruption of the Bush Administration are radiantly obvious to anyone with half a brain, and it should not have been necessary for the Democrats to make any case at all. It should be abundantly clear to anyone with principles and intelligence that trying to bring about meaningful change through electoral politics is a waste of time. The American people don't want it. They want to have their pockets picked and their sons sent to their deaths in Iraq, as long as these things are done by a frat brother." (See also: "Bill Moyers on Election 2002" (PBS, 2002/11/08), "Blaming the Victim: The Rapist Mentality" (Monica Friedlander, Democrats.com, November 2002) and Altercation (MSNBC, November 2002))"Protocols of Elder Named Gore Vidal: Wacko 9/11 Piece" (Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer, from the 2002/11/11 issue)
Rosenbaum on Gore Vidal's "The Enemy Within", in which he attempts to "prove - well, insinuate in a Nixonian way - that a secret cabal (the Bush/oil "junta") instigated the 9/11 mass murders in order to increase their profit margins": "But all of this previous silliness doesn't rise to the stupendous heights Mr. Vidal reserves for his final few thousand words. A finale that begins when he invokes Hitler: "Many commentators of a certain age have noted how Hitlerian our junta sounds as it threatens first one country for harbouring terrorists and then another." Our sage finds some merit in this wisdom: "It is true that Hitler liked to pretend to be the injured - or threatened - party before he struck." He seems to be saying that somehow the W.T.C. mass murder was an example of the U.S. "pretending" to be injured. This will be somewhat hard to sell to the survivors of the W.T.C. attacks, who, I guess, are "pretending" to have lost their children, fathers and mothers. Clearly our sage has lost track, in his frenzy, of one slight difference between the U.S. and Hitler's Reich: Hitler did pretend injury; he dressed up prisoners in Polish uniforms to stage an attack on a German radio station in order to provide a fig leaf for his 1939 attack on Poland, for instance. But we didn't pretend to be attacked by others on 9/11, although implicitly, metaphorically, sleazily, that is what our sage implies with his Hitler analogy. But it turns out we're actually a little worse than Hitler: " … something new has been added since the classic Roman Hitlerian mantra, 'they are threatening us, we must attack first.'" The new addition that makes us worse than Hitler: We are more open about it than Hitler - at least to the penetrating gaze of our seer - thus a little worse, in our shamelessness, than Hitler." (See also:"The Enemy Within" (Gore Vidal, The Observer/UQ Wire, 2002/10/27) and "Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11" (Sunder Katwala, The Observer, 2002/10/27))"The End of An Era" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/11/08)
Hanson on the "bankruptcy of the anti-Americanists": "So we have at last arrived at Cloudcuckooland: A hierarchal United States military is more tolerant of liberals in its ranks than liberal universities are of their critics on campus. Republicans support dangerous interventions abroad to remove dictators and free oppressed peoples, as leftist dissidents agitate for hands-off mass murderers and medieval theocrats. A democratic Israel is slandered as imperialistic and fascistic while an authoritarian Palestinian regime is given a pass for theft, murder, and torture. And liberals, women, and homosexuals are saved in Afghanistan thanks to the work of Air Force pilots and special forces, as reactionary fundamentalists and thugs seek to hold onto their autocracy in part by finding solace with anti-American leftists. Who would have ever thought that democratic Iraqis would seek our military's help, while agents of Saddam Hussein would line up to find solidarity with those now marching? Face it: Slobodan Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Yasser Arafat, and Saddam Hussein - not the ghosts of the thousands of their innocent dead - all prefer Ramsey Clark to George Bush. We are seeing nothing less than quite literally the end of an era - witnessed by the intellectual suicide of an entire generation, who in their last gasps are proving they have been not very moral people all along.""'Your Aggressive Baby Killing Tactics'" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/11/07)
A glimpse into a violently non-violent mind: "Atlanta radio host Neal Boortz reports (sixth item) on another campus dustup, this one at Chicago's St. Xavier University. It seems that Robert Kurpiel, an Air Force Academy cadet, sent an inoffensive e-mail seeking help in making college students around the country aware of the annual Academy Assembly, which discusses "very important issues dealing with politics." One Peter Kirstein, a professor of history at SXU, received a copy of the message and went ballistic, sending the cadet the following reply: "You are a disgrace to this country and I am furious you would even think I would support you and your aggressive baby killing tactics of collateral damage. Help you recruit. Who, top guns to reign death and destruction upon nonwhite peoples throughout the world? Are you serious sir? Resign your commission and serve your country with honour. No war, no air force cowards who bomb countries with AAA, without possibility of retaliation. You are worse than the snipers. You are imperialists who are turning the whole damn world against us. September 11 can be blamed in part for what you and your cohorts have done to Palestinians, the VC, the Serbs, a retreating army at Basra. You are unworthy of my support." Kirstein, whose university Web site includes a virtual shrine to Karl Marx, ended up issuing a halfhearted apology: "As one who believes in non-violence and the avoidance of conflict, I could have been more circumspect and creative in my communication with [Kurpiel]," he writes." (See also: "The Hate-filled Leftist Professor" (Neal Boortz, Neals Nuze, 2002/11/06) and "Hateful Letters to a Soldier - From a Leftist Professor" (FrontPageMagazine, 2002/11/08), which contains this appropriate quote: "'It is the soldier, not the reporter who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.' - Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, Sergeant, USMC")
"So-called liberals need to address the facts about terrorism" (Bala Ambati, The Chronicle Online, 2002/11/06)
Found via Little Green Footballs: "American attacks on al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts continue to be met with loathing and outrage that the U.S. government would take action to meet its primary responsibility - protecting its citizens. Any U.S. military action now is tarred with accusations of imperialism. ... When liberals denounce the United States for the regrettable but minimized and unavoidable civilian casualties of U.S. action in Afghanistan, do they consider the consequences of the Taliban regime to Afghans, let alone Americans? The Taliban slaughtered 1.5 million Afghans in their reign's 5 years; US action stopped an annual murder of 300,000 Afghans, and allowed girls to go to school without being beaten! Why do liberals now defend one of the world's most repressive regimes, Iraq, which has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shiites, used chemical and biological weapons on its own people and seeks nuclear weapons to expand a reign of terror? ... It takes true courage to be a dove, but no honor accrues to being an ostrich. The Procrustean logic of blaming all the world's ills on the United States blinds these liberals to real evil. Shredding facts to fit pet notions is a poor alibi for the cowardice of willful ignorance of reality."
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"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)
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"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)
"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)
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"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)
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