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Mark Steyn reacts to Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick’s description of the “mean and nasty and bitter” attacks of 9/11.
… At some point in the future, some of us will find ourselves on a flight with a chap like Richard Reid, the thwarted shoe-bomber. On that day we’d better hope the guy sitting next to him isn’t Gov. Patrick, who sees him bending down to light his sock and responds with a chorus of “All You Need Is Love,” but a fellow who “understands” enough to wallop the bejesus out of him before he can strike the match. It was the failure of one group of human beings to understand that the second group of human beings was determined to kill them that led the crew and passengers of those Boston flights to stick with the obsolescent 1970s hijack procedures until it was too late.
Unfortunately, the obsolescent 1970s multiculti love-groove inclinations of society at large are harder to dislodge. If you’ll forgive such judgmental categorizations, this isn’t about “them,” it’s about “us.” The long-term survival of any society depends on what proportion of its citizens thinks as Gov. Patrick does. Islamism is an opportunist enemy but you can’t blame them for seeing the opportunity: In that sense, they understand us far more clearly than Gov. Patrick understands them. …
Gerard Baker with today’s history lesson.
The ethnic origins of General David Petraeus are apparently Dutch, which is a shame because there’s something sonorously classical about the family name of the commander of the US forces in Iraq. When you discover that his father was christened Sixtus, the fantasy really takes flight. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain, where memory mingles hazily with imagination, I fancy I can recall toiling through a schoolboy Latin textbook that documented the progress of one Petraeus Sixtus as he triumphantly extended the imperium romanum across some dusty plain in Asia Minor.
The fantasy is not wholly inapt, of course. General Petraeus was the star turn in Washington this week, testifying before Congress about the progress of the surge by US forces in Iraq. Some evidently see America’s wearying detention in the quagmire of Mesopotamia as a classic example of imperial overreach of the kind that is thought to have doomed Rome. Who knows? Perhaps 1,500 years ago one of the forebears of General Petraeus was hauled before the Senate to explain the progress of some surge of Roman forces to defeat the insurgents in Germania. …
… It is helpful to think about Iraq this way. Imagine if the US had never been there; and that this sectarian strife had broken out in any case – as, one day it surely would, given the hatreds engendered by a thousand years of Muslim history and the efforts of Saddam Hussein.
What would we in the West think about it? What would we think of as our responsibilities? There would be some who would want to wash their hands of it. There would be others who would think that UN resolutions and diplomatic initiatives would be enough to salve our consciences if not to stop the slaughter.
But many of us surely would think we should do something about it – as we did in the Balkans more than a decade ago – and as, infamously, we failed to do in Africa at the same time. And we would know that, for all our high ideals and our soaring rhetoric, there would be only one country with the historical commitment to make massive sacrifices in the defence of the lives and liberty of others, the leadership to mobilise efforts to relieve the suffering and, above all, the economic and military wherewithal to make it happen.
That’s the only really workable analogy between the US and Rome. When Rome fell, the world went dark for the best part of a millennium. America may not be an empire. But whatever it is, for the sake of humanity, pray it lasts at least as long as Rome.
Gordon Chang in Contentions with more on the Israeli strike in Syria’s desert.
… Yet the Times seems to suggest that the raid targeted a Syrian nuclear weapons program linked to Pyongyang. “The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left,†an unidentified Bush administration official, referring to fissile material, is quoted as saying. Thursday’s Washington Post states that an unidentified former Israeli official had been told that the attack on Syria was intended to take out a facility that could make unconventional weapons. The paper also reported that satellite imagery has revealed a Syrian facility that could be part of a nuclear weapons program. North Korea, known to merchandise any dangerous item it possesses, has been doing its best to appear guilty. Departing from its usual practice of not commenting on world affairs, Pyongyang on Tuesday denounced Israel’s raid. …
WSJ reporters get an early look at Greenspan’s book.
In a withering critique of his fellow Republicans, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his memoir that the party to which he has belonged all his life deserved to lose power last year for forsaking its small-government principles.
In “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” published by Penguin Press, Mr. Greenspan criticizes both congressional Republicans and President George W. Bush for abandoning fiscal discipline.
The book is scheduled for public release Monday. The Wall Street Journal bought a copy at a bookstore in the New York area.
Mr. Greenspan, who calls himself a “lifelong libertarian Republican,” writes that he advised the White House to veto some bills to curb “out-of-control” spending while the Republicans controlled Congress. He says President Bush’s failure to do so “was a major mistake.” Republicans in Congress, he writes, “swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.” …
John Fund with interesting Reagan background.
American Spectator says NY Times is very selective when accepting “special advocacy” ads.
The New York Times in the past has rejected “advocacy” ads from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as well as from the National Right to Life Committee, despite the fact that both would have qualified for the same “special advocacy, stand by” rates that the radical, left-wing organization MoveOn.org was given for its smear ad of Gen. David Petraeus. …
James Taranto wonders if the Times has given a political contribution with the discount.
Thursday we wondered if the New York Times had made an illegal campaign contribution to the MoveOn.org political action committee. The Times, you’ll recall, published a full-page ad Monday in which it attacked Gen. David Petraeus in McCarthyite terms. The New York Post reported that the Times had given MoveOn.org a $102,000 discount from its usual $167,000 rate–which, if true, would be an illegal in-kind contribution under campaign finance laws.
The Times offers this explanation in a news story today: …
Debra Saunders argues for environmental common sense rather than radical measures for a faux problem.
… America’s sacrifices could be for naught, as long as China — which is or is about to be the world’s greatest generator of greenhouse gases — is exempt from any global warming pact.
To go the distance supported by global warming alarmists requires big changes.
If the alarmists are right, the whole world will have to change and it will be onerous. If the global warming alarmists are wrong, much of the sacrifices they demand will have been for nothing.
WSJ Op-Ed illustrates the cancer care available in the US.
Last week the American Cancer Society announced it will no longer run ads about the dangers of smoking and other cancer-causing behaviors and the benefits of regular screenings. Instead, the Society will devote this year’s entire advertising budget to a campaign for universal health coverage. John Seffrin, the Society’s chief executive, said, “[I]f we don’t fix the health-care system . . . lack of access will be a bigger cancer killer than tobacco.” …
… International comparisons establish that the current method of financing health care in the U.S. is not a bigger killer than tobacco. What is deadly are delays in treatment and lack of access to the most effective drugs, problems encountered by some uninsured cancer patients in the U.S. but by a far larger proportion of cancer patients in the U.K. and Europe. Cancer patients do well in a few small countries with national health insurance, such as Sweden and Finland, but they do better in the U.S. than anywhere else on the globe.
With a track record like that, the American Cancer Society should continue its lifesaving messages about prevention and screening instead of switching to a political agenda. The goal should be to ensure that all cancer patients receive the timely care our current system provides, not to radically overhaul the system.
American Thinker tracking the continued collapse of NY Times stock.
… This represents a 60%+ loss in shareholder value since the peak in 2002.
Arnold Kling in Tech Central has a go at explaining Hayek’s concept of “spontaneous order.”
One of the most important ideas of the late Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek was the concept of “spontaneous order.” This can be a difficult concept to explain.
When spontaneous order exists, we take it for granted and make little effort to understand it. If your body is healthy, you do not need to think about how your muscles work, how your heart and brain function, or how your metabolic processes operate. You only notice it when order breaks down, and you are sick or in pain.
Similarly, when the economy is functioning properly, we do not notice all the behaviors that are required to make it work. We go to the supermarket and find grapes available, and we do not wonder why or how.
In theory a central grape distributor could be at work. …
In practice, there is no grape-distribution czar. …
… In The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier points out that countries with a lot of wealth concentrated in a natural resource, such as oil, tend to function poorly. When people have to work to earn wealth, there is order. When wealth is there for the taking, then people focus on exactly that–taking. The rewards go to those who know how to use violence and power. Ironically, countries that are rich in resources are “cursed,” because the disorder caused by the fight over ownership undermines the wealth of the resources themselves.
Foreign aid can have the same impact as a resource. It can foster disorder by creating a climate in which ambitious people, instead of engaging in productive activity, fight for control over the distribution of aid. …