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Thomas Sowell wonders if we are gripped in moral paralysis.
“Moral paralysis” is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them.
It is a term that may be painfully relevant to our own times.
Back in the 1930s, the governments of the democratic countries knew what Hitler was doing — and they knew that they had enough military superiority at that point to stop his military buildup in its tracks. But they did nothing to stop him.
Instead, they turned to what is still the magic mantra today — “negotiations.” …
Daniel Johnson in Contentions posts on Gordon Brown’s upcoming visit to the U.S. Prime Minister Brown has some work to do.
… He can expect a polite but cool reception from Bush. The appointment of former United Nations deputy secretary general Mark Malloch Brown as Foreign Office minister for Africa, Asia and the UN has predictably exasperated the Bush administration.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the Sunday Times of London: “If Gordon Brown knew what he was doing when he appointed Mark Malloch Brown, it was a major signal that he wants a different relationship with the United States. If he didn’t know what he was doing, that is not a good sign either.†…
Max Boot, also in Contentions looks at current attitudes towards the war.
The latest New York Times/CBS News poll brings moderately positive news about public attitudes toward the war in Iraq. For the raw results, click here. For the Times write-up, click here.
The percentage of the public saying that invading Iraq was the correct decision has risen slightly. Forty-two percent now say it was the right thing to do, while 51 percent say we should have stayed out. That’s a shift from the May poll that had found only 35 percent in support of the invasion and 61 percent claiming it was a mistake.
Christopher Hitchens enjoys the Galloway dénouement.
… Just look at the gang that strove to prevent the United Nations from enforcing its library of resolutions on Saddam Hussein. Where are they now? Gerhard Schroeder, ex-chancellor of Germany, has gone straight to work for a Russian oil-and-gas consortium. Vladimir Putin, master of such consortia and their manipulation, is undisguised in his thirst to re-establish a one-party state. Jacques Chirac, who only avoided prosecution for corruption by getting himself immunized by re-election (and who had Saddam’s sons as his personal guests while in office, and built Saddam Hussein a nuclear reactor while knowing what he wanted it for), is now undergoing some unpleasant interviews with the Paris police. So is his cynical understudy Dominique de Villepin, once the glamour-boy of the “European” school of diplomacy without force. What a crew! Galloway is the most sordid of this group because he managed to be a pimp for, as well as a prostitute of, one of the foulest dictatorships of modern times. But the taint of collusion and corruption extends much further than his pathetic figure, and one day, slowly but surely, we shall find out the whole disgusting thing.
Jack Kelly with two stories of main stream media bias.
Jennifer Hunter is married to Chicago Sun-Times publisher John Cruickshank, which explains why Ms. Hunter writes a column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Here is why she should not.
On July 16, Ms. Hunter wrote a column which began: “After watching the top five Democratic candidates for president speak before a trial lawyers’ group Sunday, attorney Jim Ronca of Philadelphia, a staunch Republican, became certain of one thing: He is not going to vote for a Republican in the 2008 presidential election.”
A suspicious reader checked out Mr. Ronca’s political contributions. Mr. Ronca had made 14 since 1994 — 12 to Democrats. The Democratic candidates received $7,000; the GOP candidates $750.
Mr. Ronca’s contribution record was posted on several Web sites, whose readers flooded Ms. Hunter with demands for a correction.
If Ms. Hunter had fessed up, I wouldn’t be writing about her. But she responded by attacking Web loggers for doing the research she should have done, and blaming her error on her editor. …
Power Line posts on Stephen Hayes’ Cheney bio.
The Captain with a couple of good posts. First on the activities of someone sprung from Gitmo, and then on voter fraud in Milwaukee.
Paul Johnson thinks we should prefer greedy folks to those who are power hungry.
Able, industrious, imaginative and creative people— the top 5% of mankind—divide into two broad categories: those who make money and those who make trouble.
It is striking that the hugely wicked are quite innocent of avarice. Hitler never showed any interest in money. Stalin left his salary envelopes unopened: When Stalin died, the little old desk in his modest office was found stuffed with them. Mao Zedong, over the course of his career, killed 70 million people, but toward the end of his life Mao failed to recognize a current banknote. These three monsters weren’t obsessed with wealth; they were obsessed with power.
Then there are the troublemakers, whose activities take endless forms. …
Carpe Diem posts on a David Brooks piece with the real numbers on income distribution. A column we will have tomorrow.
Myths: The rich are getting richer, especially CEOs, while the average American suffers, the middle class is disappearing, globalization only benefits the top 1% and not the average American, etc. etc.
Realities (from today’s column by David Brooks in the NY Times):
1. Real average wages rose in 2006 at the second fastest rate in 30 years.
2. The poor are getting richer. Between 1991 and 2005, the bottom fifth increased its earnings by 80%, compared with 50% for the highest-income group and around 20% for each of the other three groups.
LA Times has on op-ed on the farm bill.
… On the first point, producers of just five crops — wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans and rice — receive nearly all farm subsidies. In fact, only one-third of the $240 billion in annual farm production is targeted for subsidies. All other farmers — including growers of fruits, vegetables, livestock and poultry — receive nearly nothing.
This raises the question: If farm subsidies are necessary to produce an adequate food supply with stable prices and thriving farmers, why haven’t the growers of nonsubsidized crops experienced these problems?
Walk into any supermarket and you will quickly find yourself surrounded by farm products, from apples to oranges, beef to chicken, that are produced and distributed without farm subsidies. Yet their prices and supplies are relatively stable, and the farmers’ incomes are just as high as those of subsidized farmers. The free market works for all other farm production, and it can surely work for producers of wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans and rice. …
WaPo editorializes on the farm bill.
WSJ story says Germans might be tired of following orders.
A lawyer, three civil servants and a policeman stopped their van to ponder the “No Passing” sign on a narrow residential street.
The sign should be taken down because there’s no room to pass anyway, said the lawyer. It could use a cleaning, said a civil servant. “It’s a nice day,” said the policeman, keeping the peace as he moved the van a few yards down the road to inspect the next sign.
For nearly a decade, Germany’s 15 million-member ADAC automobile association has been curb-crawling the nation’s streets with municipal officials in an effort to persuade them to get rid of as much as half the country’s estimated 20 million traffic signs. Many Germans believe the country’s signage has become so dense that it’s a safety hazard. A recent study concluded that the distracting signs keep drivers from watching the road.
Germans have coined a term for the phenomenon — Schilderwald, or sign forest. But as the van-load of officials touring Troisdorf for surplus signs discovered on a recent morning, parting with them isn’t proving easy.
“Germans like clear rules,” said Joachim Adam, one of the three civil servants in the van.