Download Full Content – Printable Pickings
Mark Steyn tells us why we should miss Australia’s John Howard.
… What mattered to the world was the strategic clarity Howard’s ministry demonstrated on the critical issues facing (if you’ll forgive the expression) Western civilisation.
First, the prime minister grasped the particular challenge posed by Islam. “I’ve heard those very silly remarks made about immigrants to this country since I was a child,” said the Democrats’ Lyn Allison. “If it wasn’t the Greeks, it was the Italians … or it was the Vietnamese.” But those are races and nationalities. Islam is a religion, and a political project, and a globalised ideology. Unlike the birthplace of your grandfather, it’s not something you leave behind in the old country.
Indeed, the pan-Islamic identity embraced by many second and third-generation Muslims in the West has very little to do with where their mums and dads happen to hail from. “You can’t find any equivalent in Italian or Greek or Lebanese or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad,” said Howard, stating the obvious in a way most of his fellow Western leaders could never quite bring themselves to do.
“Raving on about jihad” is a splendid line which meets what English law used to regard as the reasonable-man test. If you’re a reasonable bloke slumped in front of the telly watching jihadists threatening to behead the Pope or Muslim members of Britain’s National Health Service ploughing a blazing automobile through the check-in desk at Glasgow airport, “raving on about jihad” fits in a way that President George W. Bush’s religion-of-peace pabulum doesn’t. Bush and Tony Blair can be accused of the very opposite of the traditional politician’s failing: they walked the walk but they didn’t talk the talk. That’s to say neither leader found a rhetoric for the present struggle that resonated. Howard did. …
Claudia Rosett keeps us up to date on the UN climate conference in Bali.
… Life’s much too short to read all the documents assembled already (especially when you could be making much better use of your time watching a superb film that did NOT get a Nobel Prize: “The Great Global Warming Swindleâ€). But just to provide a sample, here’s one of my favorites, found while browsing through so far. It’s an agenda item discussing the ways to ensure UN-style “Privileges and Immunities for individuals serving on constituted bodies under the Kyoto Protocol… .†Translation: They’re looking for a way to ensure that no matter what they do to the rest of us, we can’t do anything about it.
Lotsa election stuff today. George Will is first. He’s spotted a few candidates he doesn’t like at all in “None of the Below.”
… Huckabee combines pure moralism with incoherent populism: He wants Washington to impose a nationwide ban on smoking in public, show more solicitude for Americans of modest means and impose more protectionism, thereby raising the cost of living for Americans of modest means.
Although Huckabee is considered affable, two subliminal but clear enough premises of his Iowa attack on Mitt Romney are unpleasant: The almost 6 million American Mormons who consider themselves Christians are mistaken about that. And — 55 million non-Christian Americans should take note — America must have a Christian president.
Another pious populist who was annoyed by Darwin — William Jennings Bryan — argued that William Howard Taft, his opponent in the 1908 presidential election, was unfit to be president because he was a Unitarian, a persuasion sometimes defined as the belief that there is at most one God. The electorate chose to run the risk of entrusting the presidency to someone skeptical about the doctrine of the Trinity.
If Huckabee succeeds in derailing Romney’s campaign by raising a religious test for presidential eligibility, that will be clarifying: In one particular, America was more enlightened a century ago.
Lee Harris in Tech Central thinks Rudy was too rough and should listen to the boos.
… We don’t want our President to lose his head while all about are losing theirs, to paraphrase Kipling.
We don’t want them acting mean either. That is why I suggest that Mayor Giuliani, who has so much to commend him, should pay attention to the boos he received in the last debate. They may have been the best advice that he could have possibly receive at this point in his campaign: stay tough, but don’t play too rough. Many of us like the guy, and we don’t want him to give us reason not to.
Michael Barone with an Iowa overview.
Every so often, I page through my copy of the Constitution, searching for the section that says Iowa and New Hampshire vote first. I’ve yet to find it. But Iowa and New Hampshire are set to lead off the presidential voting on January 3 and 8. Right now, Iowa, where about 200,000 people–around 10 percent of registered voters–are expected to attend the party caucuses, is producing great ruction in both parties’ races. …
Now, as to the tactics Clinton learned in kindergarten. “I know you are, but what am I?”
As Democratic primary voters experience pre-emptive buyer’s remorse–that is, second thoughts about Hillary Clinton’s “inevitability”–a desperate Mrs. Clinton stands on the brink of losing all dignity. This is from a press release she put out last night: …
Captain comments.
… I can see where Hillary might be offended by someone with overactive ambition. Imagine what it would be like to have someone stick with a philandering husband/politician, accuse political opponents of vast partisan conspiracies, carpetbag into another state to win a walkover Senate election, all just to maintain one’s political viability for a Presidential run! My goodness, we wouldn’t want that kind of overwhelming, avaricious desire for power succeeding in grabbing the White House, would we? …
Couple of Corner posts.
Extraordinary. She’s lost some altitude nationally, and a little ground in Iowa where it’s always been a pretty close race, so nothing seems to suggest a need to break the glass—as in “break the glass in case of emergency.” But there’s broken glass scattered over the place and she’s taking the fire ax to Obama’s campaign. What does the Clinton campaign know about this race that we don’t? …
Writing in The Freeman, Walter Williams reminds us of the morality of free markets.
All too often defenders of free-market capitalism base their defense on the demonstration that free markets allocate resources more efficiently and hence lead to greater wealth than socialism and other forms of statism. While that is true, as Professor Milton Friedman frequently pointed out, economic efficiency and greater wealth should be seen and praised as simply a side benefit of free markets. The intellectual defense should focus on its moral superiority. Even if free markets were not more efficient and not engines for growth, they are morally superior to other forms of human organization because they are rooted in voluntary peaceable relationships rather than force and coercion. They respect the sanctity of the individual. …
It’s Getting Better All the Time says humpback whales are making a comeback.