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- Pickings :: May 16, 2007 (Word)
Bernard Lewis gives another Middle East history lesson.
Jonathan Gurwitz lists the lessons of Fort Dix.
In Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens writes on changes to his neighborhood in London.
It’s impossible to exaggerate how far and how fast this situation has deteriorated. Even at the time of the Satanic Verses affair, as long ago as 1989, Muslim demonstrations may have demanded Rushdie’s death, but they did so, if you like, peacefully. And they confined their lurid rhetorical attacks to Muslims who had become apostate. But at least since the time of the Danish-cartoon furor, threats have been made against non-Muslims as well as ex-Muslims (see photograph above), the killing of Shiite Muslim heretics has been applauded and justified, and the general resort to indiscriminate violence has been rationalized in the name of god.
Traditional Islamic law says that Muslims who live in non-Muslim societies must obey the law of the majority. But this does not restrain those who now believe that they can proselytize Islam by force, and need not obey kuffar law in the meantime. I find myself haunted by a challenge that was offered on the BBC by a Muslim activist named Anjem Choudary: a man who has praised the 9/11 murders as “magnificent” and proclaimed that “Britain belongs to Allah.” When asked if he might prefer to move to a country which practices Shari’a, he replied: “Who says you own Britain anyway?” A question that will have to be answered one way or another.
Great Posts from Power Line;
John posts on senate defeat of Iraq funds cut-off and on the standoff in the house. Then he posts on the debate which will serve as our segue to the Captain and his debate thoughts.
Good debate take from the Captain.
While London’s changing for the worse the left in the US is going “round the bend.” First example is from Jonah Goldberg.
And Thomas Sowell writes on their anger.
That people on the political left have a certain set of opinions, just as people do in other parts of the ideological spectrum, is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is how often the opinions of those on the left are accompanied by hostility and even hatred.
Particular issues can arouse passions here and there for anyone with any political views. But, for many on the left, indignation is not a sometime thing. It is a way of life.
How often have you seen conservatives or libertarians take to the streets, shouting angry slogans? How often have conservative students on campus shouted down a visiting speaker or rioted to prevent the visitor from speaking at all?
The source of the anger of liberals, “progressives” or radicals is by no means readily apparent. The targets of their anger have included people who are non-confrontational or even genial, such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Sowell then follows with a column trying to understand why the left’s so sure it’s right.
… Elites are all too prone to over-estimate the importance of the fact that they average more knowledge per person than the rest of the population — and under-estimate the fact that their total knowledge is so much less than that of the rest of the population.
They overestimate what can be known in advance in elite circles and under-estimate what is discovered in the process of mutual accommodations among millions of ordinary people.
Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed.
The ignorance of people with Ph.D.s is still ignorance, the prejudices of educated elites are still prejudices, and for those with one percent of a society’s knowledge to be dictating to those with the other 99 percent is still an absurdity.
You know the old saw that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality? Plain Dealer has a story.
John Stossel on the tax-cut myth.
According to Cafe Hayek, the village idiots in Montgomery County MD are on the loose again.