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Mark Steyn, in Macleans, makes the point we have laws because we are civilized. Laws didn’t create our civilization.

One of my all-time favourite observations on Canada’s brave new Trudeaupia came from the great George Jonas, apropos the good old days when the Mounties’ livelier lads were illegally burning down the barns of Quebec separatists. With his usual glibness Pierre Trudeau blithely responded that if people were upset by the RCMP’s illegal barn-burning, perhaps he’d make it legal for the RCMP to burn barns. As Jonas observed, M. Trudeau had missed the point: barn-burning wasn’t wrong because it was illegal; it was illegal because it was wrong. …

… “A society’s first line of defence is not the law but customs, traditions and moral values,” wrote Walter Williams of George Mason University recently. “They include important thou-shalt-nots such as shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat, but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct. Policemen and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct.”

“Restraint” is an unfashionable concept these days. I was lunching with an elderly chap in the early stages of dementia recently. He’s someone who in all the years I’ve known him has never used any vulgar language in public or private, but the waitress’s generous embonpoint caught his eye and he said to me (and half the restaurant) with all the blithe insouciance with which one might remark on the weather or the traffic, “I like big tits, don’t you?” Dementia removes inhibition, and so your private thoughts are now publicly expressed. Society at large has lost its inhibitions: whether that is a symptom of civilizational dementia will be for future generations to judge.

Corner post illustrates the above. It is Steyn again writing about the value of the first amendment which makes it difficult for mischievous laws to be written.

Speaking of laws, Jan Crawford Greenburg posts on Gitmo.

When I was getting ready for a trip to Guantanamo Bay last week, I read an article written last year by a young interpreter (and now lawyer) who was working with some of the attorneys for the detainees. Titled “My Guantanamo Diary,” it was a vivid and urgent piece that painted a grim portrait of a place where evil flourishes amid the scrub of the Cuban coastline.

In the article, the interpreter describes the anguish and helplessness she feels after meeting the detainees, most of whom she believes to be innocent. But initially she was conflicted: She admits to one of the lawyers for the detainees that the guards had seemed so friendly.

“Yeah, they’re nice,” the lawyer, Tom Wilner, a partner in the Washington office of Shearman & Sterling LLP, shoots back. “But this whole place is evil — and the face of evil often appears friendly.”

That perfectly captures Guantanamo: The face of evil often appears friendly.

It’s a sentiment shared by almost everyone you talk to, those on both sides of the debate. Soldiers and lawyers, military officers and human rights activists—everyone sees evil at Guantanamo.

They just believe the evil lies within different people. …

John Bolton writes for WaPo on the NIE.

The Captain compares Bolton’s and Cheney’s NIE thoughts.

… Between the two, I’d trust Cheney on this question. He has seen the data and received the briefing; Bolton is out of the loop now. Cheney has no reason to go easy on the ODNI or CIA, especially since the NIE contradicts what he has stated for the last few years on Iran. Cheney has more motivation to go on the attack than Bolton, and yet he seems content to let the NIE analysis stand. That should speak to its credibility.

Both men, however, make the same point about the limit of the intel that formed the basis of this analysis. As Donald Rumsfeld once said, there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Until Iran fully complies with the IAEA and the UN Security Council, we know that we cannot verify their intentions or actions. We have no firm knowledge that Iran — which lied about this program for years until 2003 — has not moved its efforts elsewhere in the country to continue its weapons program. …

And the Captain posts on the problems of the Clinton campaign.

Once seen as an inevitability, Hillary Clinton may not win the first two contests in the primaries — and that may change the entire Democratic race. Having fallen into no better than a tie with Barack Obama in Iowa, Clinton now has lost significant ground in New Hampshire. She now leads by only six points, and her momentum has completely dissipated: …

Couple of good columns on free trade.

Tony Blankley thinks the country needs to have a good debate about free trade.

Other than the fight against radical Islam, the efficacy of free trade may be the most important issue pending before the American people and our government. Since the end of World War II, the principle of free trade has defined U.S. economic policy — and thus, to a large extent, the world’s economy. Globalization is the product of a long half-century of American free-trade policy.

Steve Chapman thinks there’s no debate.

Democrats yearn for the bounteous days of Bill Clinton’s presidency, when the economy was flourishing, there were good jobs at good wages, and poverty was on the wane. So it’s a puzzle that on one of his signature achievements — the North American Free Trade Agreement — the party’s presidential candidates are sprinting away from his record as fast as they can. It’s as though Republicans were calling for defense cuts while invoking Ronald Reagan.

Even Hillary Clinton can’t bring herself to defend the deal her husband pushed through. Asked during a recent debate if she thought it was a mistake, she did everything but deny she’d ever met the man.

“All I can remember from that is a bunch of charts,” she chortled, in possibly the least believable statement of the 2008 campaign. “That, sort of, is a vague memory.” In the end, though, Clinton declared that “NAFTA was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would.” …

Allen Barra points out why Heisman candidates rarely succeed in the NFL.

University of Florida sophomore quarterback Tim Tebow is the odds-on favorite to win the 2007 Heisman Trophy this Saturday as the nation’s outstanding college football player. Since the colleges serve as a farm system for the National Football League and Mr. Tebow is the best player in college, he should be a cinch to make it in the pros, right?

Not according to history. In the modern era of the NFL, only a handful of Heisman Trophy winners have enjoyed genuine success in the pro ranks. …