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Looking at Israel, Mark Steyn, who never ceases to surprise, turns up a particularly poignant Eric Hoffer thought about the future of Israel.
.. Arabs will soon be demanding one democratic state – Jews and Muslims – from Jordan to the sea. And even those Western leaders who understand that this will mean the death of Israel will find themselves so confounded by the multicultural pieties of their own lands they’ll be unable to argue against it. Contemporary Europeans are not exactly known for their moral courage: The reports one hears of schools quietly dropping the Holocaust from their classrooms because it offends their growing numbers of Muslim students suggest that even the pretense of “evenhandedness” in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” will be long gone a decade hence.
The joke, of course, is that Israel, despite its demographic challenge, still enjoys a birth rate twice that of the European average. All the reasons for Israel’s doom apply to Europe with bells on. And, unlike much of the rest of the West, Israel has the advantage of living on the front line of the existential challenge. “I have a premonition that will not leave me,” wrote Eric Hoffer, America’s great longshoreman philosopher, after the 1967 war. “As it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us.”
Indeed. So, happy 60th birthday. And here’s to many more.
Weekly Standard says the problems in Burma didn’t come out of nowhere and the UN is complicit.
IF THERE IS A DEFINING mood about the catastrophe that has engulfed Burma, it is the sense of denial. When a devastating cyclone ripped through the country over the weekend, the military regime reported that the storm had killed 351 people. While residents of Rangoon, the largest city, scrambled for food and shelter, state television broadcast an opera. At least a million people have been made homeless in the storm’s wake–and none of them will be going to the opera. As of this writing, the death toll is expected to reach as high as 100,000.
Yet the air of self-delusion which the Burmese regime breathes so freely is shared by others, particularly those in the cloistered confines of the United Nations. For years, as the military junta has brutalized and impoverished its population, U.N. officials either have ignored its atrocities or imagined they could be negotiated away.
Indeed, the same U.N. institutions that have accommodated and “engaged” the Burmese government are stupefied by how sluggishly the regime has responded to this disaster. …
A month and a half ago, Pickings suggested if Bill Gates wanted to do some good for Africa, he ought to form the ultimate NGO – an army to overthrow Mugabe. Contentions suggest the same for Burma.
Writing in the WSJ, Karl Rove says it’s Obama for the Dems, warts and all.
… The primary has created a deep fissure in Democratic ranks: blue collar, less affluent, less educated voters versus the white wine crowd of academics and upscale professionals (along with blacks and young people). Mr. Obama runs behind Mrs. Clinton’s numbers when matched against Mr. McCain in key industrial battleground states. Less than half of Mrs. Clinton’s backers in Indiana and North Carolina say they would support Mr. Obama if he were the nominee. In the most recent Fox News poll, two-and-a-half times as many Democrats break for Mr. McCain (15%) as Republicans defect to Mrs. Clinton (6%) and nearly twice as many Democrats support Mr. McCain (22%) as Republicans back Mr. Obama (13%). These “McCainocrat” defections could hurt badly.
State and local Democrats are realizing the toxicity of their probable national ticket. Democrats running in special congressional races recently in Louisiana and Mississippi positioned themselves as pro-life, pro-gun social conservatives and disavowed Mr. Obama. The Louisiana Democrat won his race on Saturday and said he “has not endorsed any national politician.” The Mississippi Democrat is facing a runoff on May 13 and specifically denied that Mr. Obama had endorsed his campaign. Not exactly profiles in unity. …
Don Campbell, a former reporter and present journalism prof wants to know why it took so long for Jeremiah Wright to get the coverage he deserved.
… In this election, alas, most of the bloodhounds have lost their sense of smell. For the most part, they’ve relinquished that space to bloggers and radio talkers who have an ideological agenda, not an obligation to root out the facts and present them fairly.
Thus, the coverage of Obama’s spiritual relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ is disturbing. True, Wright sounded so unhinged on his recent ego tour in Washington that it might generate sympathy for Obama. But the issue still hanging is how a man who played such an important role in Obama’s life for more than two decades drew so little scrutiny from reporters covering the Obama campaign. And since Obama himself has said the Wright controversy is a legitimate issue, I’ll take that as an invitation to weigh in.
First, it took much too long for major news media outlets to appreciate the importance of the Wright connection. (Not that they all do yet; the pummeling of ABC News by commentators for raising this and similar issues in the Pennsylvania debate further illustrated how out of touch some commentators are.) …
Andy McCarthy, in the Corner, says it’s nice to see McCain push back against Obama smears.
And an excellent, spirited response it is, from Mark Salter:
First, let us be clear about the nature of Senator Obama’s attack today: He used the words ‘losing his bearings’ intentionally, a not particularly clever way of raising John McCain’s age as an issue. This is typical of the Obama style of campaigning.
We have all become familiar with Senator Obama’s new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy, and it is the oldest kind of politics there is. …
Jim Taranto says Obama doesn’t handle criticism well.
Byron York has been listening to Michelle Obama.
Couple of shorts from John Fund.
David Warren writes on the “human rights commissions” in Canada.
… The basic strategy of the enemies of freedom in Canada has been to tie freedom’s defenders up in courts — kangaroo courts by preference. They may or may not have erred, tactically, in creating the headline cases I have mentioned above, which have helped rally many against them who are not among the usual friends of Messieurs Steyn and Levant. It is a high-risk enterprise for the HRCs, but the rewards if they succeed are substantial: for they will have eliminated the very possibility of dissent against the various fanatic leftist, feminist, gay activist, and Islamist agendas with which they openly ally themselves.
This is a battle that absolutely must be won, if Canada is to remain a free country. But it is only one battle in the long war that will be necessary to roll back the front line against the ideologues. Getting rid of Section 13 is a crucial short-term objective. But we must follow it up by finding ways to demolish the whole apparatus of the “human rights” industry, which has been infecting the Canadian legal system for decades.
It will be a task not of an hour, but of several generations, to reclaim our country