Author: Mark Noonan

Out and About on a Saturday

Mark Noonan8 Comments

I had written an article on the 21 Martyrs in Libya – but I couldn’t get it right. Then I tried dipping my toes into the “Does Obama Love America” debate, and that didn’t come out right, either (spoiler: I don’t think he really does). I’m kind of at a loss – but I also feel we are in a great change in America…and it has to do with the combination of the 21 Martyrs and Obama being someone who isn’t over fond of America. I don’t think that America in 2017 will be quite what Obama hopes it will be.

That said, just a few things:

Want a name for your residential high-rise? Stay away from “Torch“.

The State Department, fresh off of hash-tagging our enemies into submission (I mean, Boko Haram brought back the girls, right?), has now put out a snappy website designed to get on top of “violent extremism”. Violent Extremism is bad – but only really, really bad – and politically useful – when it can be assigned to straight, white, Christian, American males who live in fly-over country. A lot of people are upset about this, but really it’s been the liberal MO for a while now – to soft-peddle the really bad actors while massively exaggerating the involvement of their particular, political opponents with the tiny, tiny number of home-grown bad actors in the United States. But, I’m sure that State Department presentation will get the whole problem licked in no time…

Greece and the EU come to a sort-of agreement on continued bail outs. Why? Because for all their white-hot rhetoric, the new, leftwing government of Greece is peas as a pod to the rest of the European Ruling Class. Some day a genuinely populist movement might gain power in an European country and tell the Eurocrats to pound sand, but that day isn’t today.

ObamaCare continues to be the complete nightmare of a worthless program we all said it would be.

Condi Rice leads a crowded field to replace out-going Senator (and numbskull) Barbara Boxer. Rice might be a very good fit for California – a bit socially liberal, fiscally conservative…smarter than all the Democrats in California combined. We’ll see if this comes to be.

Shocking News! Brazil’s experiment in socialism isn’t ushering in peace and prosperity.

Plurality of Democrats think Obama should just ignore the law – a very solid majority of Obama thinks he should, too.

Very widespread global warming activity going on. We here in Vegas are sitting at about 72 degrees and we’re just laughing and laughing and laughing…

Only Believers Can Beat the Islamists

Mark Noonan23 Comments

Quite a long time ago, Hilaire Belloc wrote, “the Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith”. To be sure, what Belloc specifically meant by “Faith” was the Roman Catholic Church, but it can be expanded to mean Christianity in a more general sense. While many streams of civilization flowed into the continent of Europe to help make it into Europe, the crucial thing about it was it’s Christian faith. Europe was not a mere development out of the Greco-Roman civilization which, in any case, never extended to Germany, Poland, the Baltic nations, Russia, Ireland and Scandinavia.

It was the Catholic Church – or Christianity if using the word “Catholic” causes discomfort – which welded the flotsam of barbarian invaders and the ruins of Greece and Rome into a completely new civilization. It was Christianity which stamped Europe in a particular manner and got it thinking in a certain way. It was because of Christianity that there was a decline and eventual termination of human slavery. It was because of Christianity that people starting thinking of the world as a rational place which human reason could come to understand (the Greeks did make a start at this, but failed to develop the scientific method…it took Christians to make that step). It was because of Christianity that the worth of a human being ceased to be a mere expression of his social position. It was because of Christianity that things were rendered to Caesar, but not all things. You can look endlessly through human history and you won’t find anywhere but in Christendom (though pre-figured strongly in Judaism) that mix of the worth of the individual, the limitation of the State and the rational approach to the world which we have come to think the normal state of human existence. It did not come into being of its own accord – it was created and fostered over a thousand years by Christians. And, now, it is nearly gone.

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Time For a New Political Party?

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Joy Cost makes a strong case that if you’re conservative, the GOP is not really your friend. I do recommend reading the whole thing. Cost points out that the GOP while being the political home of conservatism is not a truly conservative party. He’s right about that – and also right that the part of the GOP which is loyal to big business is not actually in tune with conservative principals.

This is something I’ve been yammering on about for a while – that big business and big government are actually quite in tune with each other. This is especially true as the sort of people who rise to the top in both areas are alike as peas in a pod. They mostly go to the same schools, have the same social backgrounds – they marry each other, attend each other’s events and, in the end, have the same world view, which is almost entirely liberal, save that big business types are often in favor of lower taxes, at least for big business. This is why the GOP leadership – which is often beholden to big business – infuriates us so often. There isn’t in big business – and thus there isn’t in a lot of the GOP leadership – the real will to reduce government, to end subsidies, to reduce regulation…because big business profits off the system as much as liberals who man the government system do. Think about it: if we really reduced regulation, then a lot of small time operators would be able to enter the market and start competing with the established companies…that means that profits would shrink! Can’t have that…

On the social issues side of the ledger, those who inhabit the world of big business are almost entirely on the side of legalized abortion, endless immigration, affirmative action and same-sex marriage. Why? Because it would be uncool to be otherwise – it really does go to that shallow a level. If you’re working at some large investment firm in New York City, do you want to go to the Manhattan party and admit that you think marriage should be between one man and one woman? For goodness sakes, everyone would think you entirely out of it…you might not get invited to the next party! Most, if they started with conservative social morals, will drop them like a bad habit once they reach the upper echelons…because that is just the way things are, and most people lack courage to stand against what is fashionable (and this condition is even more pronounced among those who rise high up in the bureaucracy or government or business).

For years now I’ve stuck with the GOP because I believe it is the party most likely to be taken over by conservatism – and I do believe that this is still the case. But suppose we work hard and battle our way to victory in 2016? We get even someone like Walker as President and we have a GOP controlled Congress. All that would be good – but suppose we get to 2019 and there’s still no ban on abortion after 20 weeks? Suppose the Department of Energy still exists? Suppose government spending is higher than it was in 2016? What have we really accomplished? Even supposing we’ve got taxes cut, our defense rebuilt and the economy is humming along? We’ve got nothing, as conservatives – we’ve neither reduced the size of government as more libertarian-minded conservatives demand nor have we even made a start at reviving American morality as social conservatives demand. All we’ve done it tinker around the edges and left in place the government monster built up by liberalism – and eventually to be reconquered by liberalism in a future election.

I have been wondering of late if it is time for a new party? Maybe even two new parties? To be sure, we have to be careful – we don’t want to spit the non-liberal vote and thus merely ensure endless liberal political dominance…but we do need some mechanism to ensure that what we, the base of the GOP, demands actually gets done.

What I wonder is if we split off, only for Congressional purposes, from the GOP about 100 Representatives and 10 Senators and formed, say, a Christian Democrat Party…without those Representatives and Senators, the GOP cannot control either house of Congress. Democrats can’t, either. In fact, no one can – absolute gridlock…unless certain demands are met. Boehner wants to be Speaker? Then there are certain actions which must be taken. You get the picture. Such a thing would become even more crucial if there is a Republican President because that is when actual laws which can be enacted can be sent up…if Congress does so; but the GOP as currently constituted might not really want to send up the sort of laws the base wants. Holding them to ransom (ie, do as we bid or you’re no longer Speaker) would be a convincing argument to actually move conservative legislation along. And if some on the right don’t want to be part of a Christian Democrat Party, they can form a Liberal Party (taking back a word which the Progressives have co-opted) to pretty much do the same thing…withhold support to the GOP unless, say, the GOP agrees to, for instance, reign in the power of government to spy on the American people.

I’m not at all sure this would work – but as you can see, what has happened here is that the three main elements of the GOP (business, social conservative, libertarian) are broken up for Congressional purposes into three different parties, and no one on the right gets anything unless everyone gets something. There is a risk that one party will join with the Democrats to form a Congressional majority, of course, but I think it pretty small as Democrats won’t openly embrace business and can’t embrace social conservatism…the libertarians might from time to time be swayed by Democrats, but such would never last long because, well, Democrats are just increasingly fascist. The best way for the new parties of the right to work is that they all nominate the same person for President…but if a real lousy GOP candidate emerges, then the Liberals and Christian Democrats nominate someone more acceptable and the GOP goes down to flaming defeat…which would make the GOP more likely to seek a candidate who can appeal to both Christian Democrats and Liberals. And there’s always that chance that a Liberal or Christian Democrat in a three or four way race could win the White House with a plurality…which works even better for the right.

This is all just an idea – for now, I’m still back in the GOP, especially in the White House, for 2016. But I think it something worth thinking about.

We’re Going to Semi-War Against ISIS

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Which means, of course, that we will Total-Lose:

President Barack Obama will soon give Congress his proposal for a new authorization for the use of military force against Islamic State fighters, and it will place strict limits on the types of U.S. ground forces that can be deployed, according to congressional sources.

Almost six months after the president began using force against the Islamic State advance in Iraq and then in Syria, the White House is ready to ask Congress for formal permission to continue the effort. Until now, the administration has maintained it has enough authority to wage war through the 2001 AUMF on al-Qaeda, the 2002 AUMF regarding Iraq and Article II of the Constitution. But under pressure from Capitol Hill, the White House has now completed the text of a new authorization and could send it to lawmakers as early as Wednesday.

If enacted, the president’s AUMF could effectively constrain the next president from waging a ground war against the Islamic State group until at least 2018. Aides warned that the White House may tweak the final details before releasing the document publicly…

It must be kept in mind that Obama’s policies are based upon the theory that the Middle East is screwed up largely because of American power – that if we hadn’t been messing things up for the last 60 years, things would be fine. ISIS, in Obama’s view, is the natural outgrowth of all the nasty things we’ve done (and Israel has done, as well). The best outcome that Obama can see is that by currying favor with nations like Iran while distancing ourselves from Israel, the people of the Middle East will see that we’re on their side and will start to moderate their views about us. ISIS, though, is a problem – as it gets all head-choppy, pressure comes on Obama to do something. The pressure, to Obama, is stupid – it comes from people who don’t appear to realize that from the Crusades until now, we’ve done the Middle East wrong. But, it has to be dealt with – and what better way to deal with it than to pretend to fight ISIS while the real action is in making a deal with Iran?

So, we’ll get this new authorization to use force and we’ll get a bit of bombing and such…and Obama and minions will keep up the happy talk that ISIS is being degraded, etc. but, meanwhile, nothing which will actually destroy ISIS is going to be done. Which means that no matter how much we hit them – and there will be a lot of battering of ISIS going on – we won’t get rid of them. In fact, what we’re likely to do is make heroes out of them…to them, it will appear that they are manfully and successfully standing up to the most powerful nation on earth. If they survive, at all, then it is a sublime victory. And survive they will, unless an army goes into ISIS territory and roots out the ISIS fanatics step by step. This is not what Obama proposes to do – and it appears he wants to prevent his successor from doing, as well.

Are you ready for the next two years people? It is just going to get worse and worse…

Evil Religion?

Mark Noonan1 Comment

A Salon article about the evils of religion – the usual sophomoric yammering, but this passage caught my eye:

…The Second World War is no better, perhaps in respects far worse, although more complex. Two thousand years of anti-Semitism by the Catholic Church and four hundred years by Protestants had to have an effect and be a causal factor in the persecution and killing of the Jews…

And yet, for all that 2,000 years of Catholicism and 400 years of Protestantism, no one had quite got around to lining up the Jews and massacring them until none were left. I hate to break it to you, atheists, but the only sort of person who could build an Auschwitz is someone alienated from God. You see, while Hitler was, indeed, baptized a Catholic, the best historical analysis of his life indicates that he probably stopped going to Mass shortly after he was confirmed at the age of 15 – and that he only did the confirmation to please his mother. Hitler turned 15 in 1904. He started oppressing Jews 29 years later – that is a bit of water under the bridge. During that 29 year period, Hitler became convinced of a lot of very stupid things, all of which were in direct contravention of Christian dogma. To some how say that the Christian dogma he rejected was the foundation for his un-Christian beliefs and actions is absurd.

The reason progressives, atheists and the like are often on about how Christian anti-Semitism was the precursor to the Final Solution is because they dare not face the truth: Hitler was a product of the Enlightenment. The whole concept of tearing down religious dogma and setting in its place an appeal to science and the complete autonomy of the individual in determining morality is the bedrock of modern thought. But what if the science being appealed to is nonsense? And what if the autonomous individual decides that something horrific is morally licit? Where does the progressive atheist turn to for redress? No where. He’s rejected the only thing which can keep things on an even keel: religious Authority.

I can hear atheists getting mad – Hitler believed nonsense such as Social Darwinism and in eugenics. Yeah? So, what? When Hitler was developing, those ideas were Settled Science. They were rejected by the Church, but no progressive back then paid any mind to what the Church had to say. In fact, in my view, the only reason things like eugenics have gone by the wayside is because of Hitler – when he tore the lid off and showed what can be done by a man who rejects all religious authority, the result was so clearly bad that people had to change their tune, at least to some extent. Here in the 21st century we are getting back on the eugenics bandwagon with some advanced thinkers holding that we should kill “defective” children after they are born.

To get away from Hitler on this – Lenin and Stalin were also people who rejected religious dogma and were determined to act upon science. Seriously, folks: when Lenin and Stalin were butchering people in great, big, bloody batches they were convinced that rock-solid, indisputable science demanded it. And plenty of people agreed with them – and I’m not talking just about communists, I’m talking about supposedly wise and kind progressives in the rest of the world. To be sure, such people weren’t writing articles saying that poor peasants should be sent to slave labor camps to be worked to death – but they were writing articles saying that poor peasants were backwards and needed to be brought into the modern world. Can’t just leave them alone – and don’t appeal to some worn out, religious dogma about the sanctity of human life. We’re building a new society here, folks! Sure, its sad that some have to suffer – but think of the benefits future generations will reap! Talk like that was common on the left while Stalin was murdering 2 to 7 million people in Ukraine (for comparison – in the 300 odd years of the Inquisition, about 400 people were done in…Stalin murdered those Ukrainians in just a few years; some how or another, those who reject religious dogma seem capable of killing far more people, far more quickly, then even the wost religious bigot who ever lived).

Anti-religious folks are often on about how bad Christians are. I plead guilty. Here I am, a baptized Catholic who goes to Mass and confession on a regular basis and I’m often greedy, mean, dishonest and foolish. That’s me with the lid on – the lid of Catholic dogma. I can only shudder about how I’d be without it. And that’s the thing – Christian people aren’t perfect they are just, on average, better than they’d be without Christianity riding herd over them. Another thing our non-religious brothers like to say is that they are fine and decent people without religion. Well, you might not be as good as you think you are. You see, if I’m in good health and have sufficient wealth and no one is irritating me at the moment and I then say a kind word to someone, then I really haven’t exemplified moral excellence. In fact, I’ve done nothing of note, at all: there was nothing else I could possibly do in such circumstances. But if I’m ill and poor and I’m being very much irritated by my brother and I say something nasty – what, then? Well, a lot of people would excuse that in themselves. Trouble is, there’s still no excuse for it. My job, as a fellow human being, is to be kind to everyone – no matter how lousy they are – even when I’m in the very worst condition. Unless you are doing that, you really aren’t being all that swell a person. I’ve a long history of interacting atheists and progressive types who reject religious dogma: I have not found among such people a lot of love of fellow man. In fact, I often find a cross, bitter person who can’t put up with any opposition. This is not to say I’ve never found such a person who wasn’t nice – I’m just saying that I haven’t found that such people are paragons of virtue. Meanwhile, more times than I can count a Christian has done me a good turn simply because Christ commanded that it be done. You can take your chances on the atheist is having a good day, or you can work on the assumption that the Christian can be called to his duty. I take the latter as more likely.

My main point here is that without an absolute, indisputable standard of right and wrong, things will be messed up very badly. And an absolute standard requires belief in God. The crucial things must be either right or wrong because God says so – if you try to work it out any other way then no matter how well you construct your argument, it is as flimsy as straw in a hurricane. No one has to agree to it – and anyone is free to construct a different argument to justify whatever it is they want to do. I say we must not massacre people – and I say that because God has forbidden us to murder; that God uniquely created each of us for a purpose and it is not for us to decide when a person shall die. An atheist can say we must not massacre people – and another atheist can say, “why not?”, and the first atheist really has nothing to say. The second atheist can get his Science out (with charts, graphs, computer models and a consensus that 90% of scientists agree) and say that human beings are destroying the earth and we need two billion less people in order to have a sustainable environment and so two billion people have to die so the other five billion can live. What’s the argument against it? There is none – except to say that killing two billion people is wrong and must not be allowed; but that is an appeal to supernatural morality.

Errors there will be. People will get things wrong. For instance, many of our Muslim brothers are getting things wrong. ISIS is especially getting it wrong – but only a Christian, Jew or a Muslim who has got it right can really oppose what they are doing. What is the atheist argument against ISIS? That because ISIS does it in the name of religion that they have got it wrong? Suppose ISIS started saying they were chopping off people’s heads in order to reduce population pressure on the environment in the Middle East? Once again, only an appeal to God’s law allows us to firmly and without equivocation say that ISIS is wrong and must be stopped – and as we see, those most convinced of the existence of God and His laws are most firm in desiring ISIS be destroyed. Our more progressive, non-believing people are less convinced that there’s anything to be done – more likely to find excuses for their actions rather than craft plans to get them to stop.

Our progressives and atheists will keep working for the day when religion is no more. They will lawsuit and regulate and insult in the hopes that on one, fine morning in the future no one wakes up and says a prayer for the day. The trouble is, if they ever get to that happy event, they’ll find that some people have come up with rather interesting ideas, and they’ll have no defense against them.

Hey, Obama: About Those Crusades

Mark Noonan16 Comments

If there’s one thing which irritates me about the left – in general – it is their rank ignorance of history. It is hard to get someone on the left to properly understand what happened even a few years ago – when they were alive and presumptively noticing things happening – let alone anything which happened more than a few decades ago. Now, to be sure, there are a few historical events that the left has latched on to in order to justify their world view…one of them is the Crusades.

To the left, the Crusades were just wanton cruelty – hordes of Christian bigots went into Muslim lands to kill, steal and destroy everything in their path. This was done in the name of religion and, so, religion is bad. This isn’t even a childish view of history – this is a view of history entirely divorced from historical fact. Bring up to a liberal the fact that, for instance, Egypt was once entirely Christian and only became Muslim after the Muslims conquered Egypt in an imperialist war – and then forced, over time, the population to become Muslim, or suffer – and you’ll get a blank stare, or immediate reference to one of the other things liberals heard about: the Inquisition (we’ll deal with that issue some other time). There is just no knowledge on the left of what happened – nor any desire to know what happened because the facts just get in the way of the Narrative.

But, still, I just want to enter into the record, as it were, that the Crusades were a defensive war against a rapacious, cruel enemy who attacked Christian civilization without reason. To give an idea of the flavor of the Muslim way of war, here’s a passage from The Hapsburgs: Portrait of a Dynasty by Edward Crankshaw:

The Turks were not nice fighters. They burned and massacred for the love of it, not in the heat of battle or victory, not in drunken rioting, but in cold blood and under precise instructions from their command. In Perchtoldsdorf, for instance, just outside Vienna, the townspeople and refugees from the surrounding countryside had taken refuge in the church and barricaded it. The Turks first burned down the little town, then sent an envoy to the church to promise safe-conduct to all inside on payment of a certain sum. The pasha in command sat himself down on a red carpet in the ruins of the village square and demanded that the keys of the church and the ransom money be brought to him by a fair-haired virgin who should carry a flag of truce and wear a crown of flowers. The village bailiff’s seventeen-year-old daughter was chosen to lead the way. As the villagers emerged into the light of day they were disarmed and seized. The men were slaughtered on the spot. The pasha reserved to himself the pleasure of killing the unfortunate young girl. The rest of the women and children were sent back to Turkey to be sold as slaves…

That was in 1683, quite a long time after the Crusades – but conquering Muslim armies were like that from the start. Just read up a bit on the captures of Constantinople or Famagusta. At Famagusta, after enduring a siege of 13 months, the Christians were offered terms – surrender and be allowed to leave. And so, in good faith, they surrendered. Nothing doing. Marco Antonio Bragadin, the commander, was flayed alive and his skin stuffed with straw and then sent on to the Turkish Sultan as a trophy; the rest of the Christian population was massacred. It is small wonder that when faced with enemies like this, Christian armies were often ungentle with Muslims when they defeated them.

The Crusades, themselves, were a counter-attack. For four hundred years the Christians had been attacked and forced ever back. One Muslim army made it to central France before being turned back. Muslims were continually boasting of their desire to conquer all of the Christian west – and often making good on their boast as one Christian nation after another fell to Muslim arms. The immediate spur to the Crusades was the Muslim victory over the Christian Greek Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071…with that defeat, the Byzantine Empire was rocked on its heels and no one could say that the Greeks, who had barred the door to Muslim conquest in Europe for 400 years, would be able to stem the tide. An army was needed to redress the balance – and an army was provided: the Crusaders.

In the end, the stated purpose of the Crusades – the recovery of the Holy Land – was a failure. But by projecting power into the heart of Islam and fighting them there, Europe received some breathing room. Time to continue the reconquest of Spain and time for Europe’s nations to become powerful enough to repel the Muslim onslaught when, at long last, the Muslims finally conquered the Byzantines in the middle of the 15th century. They still made the running for a while – conquering Greece, Serbia and Hungary before running up against the rock of resistance known as Vienna. In 1683 they made their last try, as described in that quote above. Only the timely arrival at Vienna of a Polish army commanded by the hero-King Jan Sobieski saved the day, and in the nick of time – Vienna’s defenses were breached the day before the Poles rode in to battle and scattered the Muslim army.

All of that was a long time ago. Let no one say that what happened in the 11th century justifies any action taken in the 21st century. The Muslims have their gripes, but the graves of Europeans in Austria and France attest to the fact that non-Muslims also have their gripes.

May We Please Fight ISIS, Now?

Mark Noonan8 Comments

How about it? And I’m mostly looking at you, liberals – from Obama on down. And especially, at the moment, all you liberals who were outraged by American Sniper…somehow getting mad that an American soldier was killing these sorts of people in battle. Can we fight them, now? Or is the burning of a Jordanian pilot just all Bush’s fault and so we should get on to discussions about micro-aggressions and man-spreading?

Getting back to American Sniper for a moment, a lot of liberals didn’t like the fact that Chris Kyle referred to our enemies as “savages”. Well, boys and girls, Chris Kyle was clearly undiplomatic, but he was just as clearly telling the truth. I don’t care what Israel has done. I don’t care what the United States has done. I don’t care what anyone has done since the beginning of time which was wrong, nothing justifies putting a man in a cage and burning him alive. Or throwing a gay man off a building (and then stoning him to death when the fall from the building doesn’t kill him). Or strapping a bomb on a ten year old girl and sending her into a market. Or enslaving girls and women. Nothing justifies that. That isn’t blowback for anything. That is just savagery. That is brutality. That is inhumanity – and the only thing anyone with a spine and a heart wants is that it be stopped…and with not too many questions asked about just how stopping it is accomplished.

Jordan has reportedly executed two jihadists who had been held for unrelated crimes. Technically, this is an injustice. But what in heck else are they to do? ISIS considers everyone non-ISIS to be lower than filth – one thing everyone has learned now is that you can’t be taken prisoner by ISIS. At best you’ll be enslaved. Anyone fighting ISIS now has just one rule – fight until dead.

As of right now, we can probably make short work of ISIS without too great an expenditure of effort. This isn’t about rebuilding Iraq or Syria, or fostering democracy in the area. This is nothing but the elimination of a force dedicated to carrying out evil deeds. A couple regiments of Marines and/or Airborne troops, backed up with air power and Special Forces combined with fully armed Kurdish troops (the Kurds do seem pretty decent – they ain’t perfect, but better by far than ISIS) should be able to crush these savages. Once done, we don’t stick around. Let those there post-ISIS work it out – or fight it out – amongst themselves. We’d just be lending a hand to destroy something that needs to be destroyed…and the sooner the better. And while doing it, let no one get too finicky about things. I’d fully expect the Kurds – and others – to take a pound of flesh out of any ISIS fighters they capture. I wouldn’t agonize greatly over any particular actions our troops do. The enemy is not very nice and will do nasty things which would inevitably place our troops in a position where bad things would happen. War against savages is like that.

Or, we can just ignore it. It’ll get worse, of course. But at least it won’t disturb us. Right?

Tax Liberalism!

Mark Noonan8 Comments

Muhahahahaha!!!!

I don’t know whether this is demonic, inspired, or both: “A sweeping proposal to cut taxes for Maine families and businesses could upend one of the most widely accepted practices in the country: the property-tax exemption for nonprofit organizations… A recent budget plan by Republican Gov. Paul LePage calling for an overhaul of individual, corporate and sales taxes also would make Maine the first state in the nation to require colleges, hospitals and other large charities to go on the property-tax rolls in their municipalities.” This proposal – which specifically exempts “churches and government-owned entities” – would be the first of its kind in the country, and will probably not pass without a bloody brawl in the state legislature.

I’ll go with “inspired”, even if Governor LePage wasn’t thinking about crushing the left – because it is steps like these which will destroy the left. Another strong tactic is what Governor Walker did in Wisconsin – even if he didn’t intend his reform of government-sector unions as an anti-left measure, that is what it has worked out to be, and one of the best developments in American government since the misbegotten “Progressive Era” started in the early 20th century.

It is my view that the left retains political power by gift of government – which means, at bottom, by gift of the American taxpayer, 70%+ of which disagree with the left (yes, even when someone of the left like Obama gets 51% of the vote, it still stands – if people prior to voting for Obama knew precisely what he was up to, they’d have voted for a guy serving 10-20 for armed robbery before they would have voted for him…you have to be pretty darned kooky to agree with what Obama actually does, as opposed to what his spin-meisters say he does…if Obama had run on what he was actually going to do, he wouldn’t have cracked 30% of the vote). Via direct subsidy from the Treasury or via various tax gimmicks, the left is awash in funds provided by people who disagree with the left, and the left then uses this vast wealth to purchase the influence necessary to get their views enacted – by law or by extra-legal action, whatever works best for the moment. If we were to de-fund the left – kick them off the taxpayer’s dime – then the left would dry up and blow away. Going after the public sector unions – and the tax-free institutions that are the bedrock of the left – is the way to do it. Though I’d add that my wealth tax is also geared precisely towards crushing the left…I know a lot of conservatives are opposed to any such thing, but that is because most conservatives don’t understand that the filthy rich, even when they are Republican, are functional Progressives…they grow up with Progressives, go to school with Progressives, work with Progressives..they might have a different idea of defense policy and be more in favor of lower taxes than Progressives, but when push comes to shove (ie, when it is time to put, say, reasonable restrictions on abortion or actually eliminate a government program) the rich by and large come down on the side of the Progressives. The wealth tax I propose would hit hard at the money such rich people tend to use for buying support…which more often than not means providing funds for Progressive causes.

The main thing, though, is to take away the left’s money – Enact the Equal Income Fairness Act of 2015 and take every dime for it from liberal organizations…use the money to help poor and middle class people start up businesses. Its a win/win – we’re destroying the left and helping to create more middle class people to vote against them.

HAT TIP: Moe Lane.

Make a Deal With Assad?

Mark Noonan

So opines Leslie Gelb over at the Daily Beast – also noting that we’d have to do some sort of deal with Iran, while also keeping Saudi Arabia and Turkey on-side. Which is, well, a rather muddleheaded thing to try because, just as one for-instance, Iran and Saudi Arabia are not going to see eye to eye as long as their respective government’s are in power.

Now, as far as rat-bastards go in the Middle East, Assad is certainly not the worst, though he is pretty darned bad. In choosing what to do in that area, any where we turn we’re going to be dealing with nefarious characters. The question is which nefarious characters do we want to deal with, supposing we want a deal?

You see, we don’t actually have to be deeply involved at the moment in the area. To be sure, leaving it to fester in it’s own nastiness will carry the risk that some of the nastiness will be directed our way – vast numbers of people over there live for the day when they can kill lots of Americans. I’m sure ISIS has already got at least some preliminary plans to hit us – though being tied down in head-chopping, slave-dealing and attempted conquest, they probably can’t spare the time for us at the moment. We can pull back right now – and, in fact, under Obama it is probably better that we do so, given his complete incomprehension of the realities of power politics in the global arena. But even a hard-headed realist can make the argument that a U.S. withdrawal is a good course of action for the moment.

That argument goes like this: the American people don’t want to fight over there right now. The various factions fighting for power and influence all have, at best, grave doubts about us and, at worst, bitter enmity. For a variety of reasons, our post-9/11 campaign in the Middle East has failed and our prestige is at rock bottom in the Middle East. Getting our people out of there takes the immediate pressure off us – and by getting out of there, I mean all of us…troops, aid workers, diplomats, etc. If we really feel the desperate need to keep some sort of U.S. presence in a particular Middle Eastern nation (say, in places like Turkey, Jordan, Egypt), then it should be as small as possible. Essentially, don’t leave many American targets for the Islamists to attack. As we have recently proved, we’ve got enough oil and natural gas here at home so that even a complete collapse of oil production in the area can be endured…we’d be up to $5 a gallon gas, but as we recently paid $4 a gallon, we’d survive (and, of course, no one who attains any power over there is really going to cut off the oil spigot completely). As we are no longer involved, the blame for what happens there will less and less accrue to us and if there is an attack on us from the Middle East, the political will for war will swiftly return to the American body politic.

But we’re going to stay, of course, because inertia in politics is like that – we’ve been there, we are there, and so we’re going to keep on being there. And suppose Obama came down with a case of the ‘flu and had to spend a week in bed and during that time someone slipped him a copy of, say, Churchill’s The World Crisis or Hanson’s The Father of Us All and so Obama finally learned a thing or two about how the world works? We then might be able to proceed to a policy of U.S. engagement which isn’t stupid. And in an engagement policy which isn’t stupid, what is the best course of action?

Quite simply, it is to find a power player who can be purchased by us – and that does indicate Assad more than anyone else. His Iranian allies have not been able to restore his fortunes in Syria and he might be in the market for a new friend who can help out. Of course, he’d have to change his tune on a few things. We can’t expect him to do something enormous like make peace with Israel – but there is much he can do.

First off, no longer allow his territory to be a conduit of aid to the Iran-backed Islamists in Lebanon. Also, no longer keep any of his troops in Lebanon, thus freeing up that nation to be at least neutral in the various conflicts in the region…demilitarized, Jihadist sent packing or into the hereafter. Still a Muslim nation making rote denunciations of Israel and the United States, but no longer a subsidiary of Tehran and Islamism.

Secondly, part of Syria is going to have to become autonomous Christian areas…with Christian militias ostensibly under Syrian command, but really existing to keep Islamists out of Christian territory. It isn’t going to be much territory, but it has to be enough for Christians to live on in peace and security…and as they’ll be set up to lack heavy weapons, they’ll never constitute a threat to the existence of the Syrian government. Think of it as being akin to the Kurdish area of Iraq before everything fell apart in that nation.

Third, he’d have to amnesty those parts of the rebels who are not the full on, head-choppy Islamist fanatics…and incorporate them into his army and offer them a genuine seat at the power table in Syria. Not a full democracy – such is not really possible – but with veto power over government proposals which directly effect their lives. This new Syrian army – no longer being just the personal following of the Assad family – could then, with US air and some ground support (mostly special forces types), probably make short work of the biggest problem in Syria – the ISIS goons. Once the are taken care of, Assad gets U.S. aid to rebuild Syria and lines up with us against Iran in the regional balance of power.

Carried out with vigor and a keen eye to realities, such a policy could bring immense security relief to Israel (we might even be able to get Israel to give back a symbolic portion of the Golan: they can’t give it all back for security reasons, of course), free up Lebanon and turn Syria from long-term enemy to at least temporary friend – friend at least during the impending crisis of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons and attempting to make Iraq a satrapy of Tehran…and if the deal can also be worked that the Kurdish areas of Syria are joined to those of Iraq in a new Republic of Kurdistan, then we’ve picked up three dominoes in the area and are in a much better position to confront Iran as well as an increasingly hostile Turkey. We’d also be less strategically dependent on Saudi Arabia and so we could start to systemically detach ourselves from the Saudis…until such time as they really feel the pressure from Iran and are willing to, well, not be quite so stoning-people, owning-slaves, flogging-bloggers sorts of people.

Of course, we’ll end up doing neither – we won’t get out, we won’t go in sensibly. So, get prepared for the worst of all worlds in the Middle East.

France’s Go Ahead and Go (If You’re Brave) Zones

Mark Noonan9 Comments

I was working the Worst President Twitter account and I came across a tweet by National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke, regarding an article he’s written about Paris. In the article he discusses, among other things, the now-infamous Fox News report about Paris’ no-go zones:

Outside the periphique, it’s dangerous, ugly, tense—often lawless. If you’re Jewish you’re in trouble. There’s little sense of “Frenchness.”

To which I responded, in Twitter form, that if it isn’t French; if Jews better watch out and it is rather lawless then that would fit the definition of a no-go zone, if you ask me. Cooke took exception to that, asserting vigorously that the concept of a no-go zone is untrue. I promised to read his National Review article. Proving definitively that National Review is not part of Obama’s America, I had to pay twenty five cents for the privilege of reading it – and it was well worth the two bits (actually, it is worth quite a bit more than that). If you’ve got a quarter and a little time to spare, I highly recommend it – and you can read it here.

Getting down to no-go brass tacks, the article includes this:

Approximately 80 percent of those who live in Aulnay’s cités are Muslim, I am told. “So,” I ask, “is this one of those sharia-bound no-go areas that we always hear about?”

To my surprise, the question provokes laughter. “That’s a myth,” my hosts exclaim. “It’s impossible.” There are certainly serious “tensions” between the police and the locals, one guide says. “Police won’t go and interfere with women illegally wearing niqabs because they don’t want to prompt retaliation. Definitely, there’s tolerance toward this stuff.” Recently, I learn, a veiled woman who was stopped by police refused to hand over her ID. Instead, she called for help. Quickly, the police in the area were surrounded, and, hoping to defuse the situation, the local commissioner let her go. Angry at the intrusion, a gang came back and burned a copy of the civil code.

This, it seems, is fairly typical. But sharia, as we understand it? “No.”

I have immense respect for Mr. Cooke and enjoy his writing on a regular basis – but, for crying out loud, the wearing of the niqab is required by Sharia law and forbidden by French law…and the French authorities allowed the lady in question to adhere to Sharia law.

I get the point that what is in the public mind when they think “no-go” is an exaggeration; the concept that there are places under French jurisdiction where the police and other authorities never go. If that is what is claimed as a myth, then I concede the point. The French police and military are fully capable of entering any place under French jurisdiction any time they wish and I’m sure that when something the authorities can’t ignore happens, they go in. But, as it actually made pretty clear in Cooke’s article, there is massive criminal activity going on in parts of Paris and the authorities aren’t doing much about it. Cooke’s story of pretty open drug dealing out in front of a Mosque means, to me, that the police know full well that if they try to interfere with this then Muslim radicals in the area will kick up a fuss and lots of elite voices in France will start making accusations of racism…and so they just don’t go. The area is, for practical purposes, a no-go zone for the French authorities. Not because they can’t go, but because they won’t go – and they won’t go because they believe the political costs of going outweigh the benefits of not going.

Don’t be too down on the French about this: there are no-go zones in the United States, as well. Why do you think in places like Chicago there are neighborhoods horrifically crime-ridden while the neighborhood just down the street is nearly crime-free? I can’t think of any other reason than that the police are protecting one area very well, but not too interested in what is going on in the other. Take a look at the crime stats for the Hyde Park and Washington Park areas of Chicago – Hyde Park ranks 44th of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods in violent crime; Washington Park ranks 5th. They are right next to each other. Seriously – you can cross the street from Hyde Park to Washington Park. Criminals can’t cross the street? Of course they can – but for some reason they don’t. In fact, why don’t criminals routinely head to the richest areas of town to rob and burglarize? Its not like criminals don’t have cars – why beat someone for $50 when you can beat someone else ten miles away for $500? One area is protected, another area isn’t. One area is under the laws of the City of Chicago, one area not quite so much. As to why these two neighborhoods are different I’ll leave that to someone with the time for more in-depth research…but, to me, Washington Park is a no-go zone. I won’t go there. Certainly not after dark. So are those neighborhoods of Paris where Mr. Cooke recently toured. They aren’t entirely part of France – I can’t expect a friendly and polite French police officer to protect me in some areas. I can’t even be very certain that if I were killed in one of those areas that an in-depth investigation would be done…after all, it might lead to someone of a certain faith being the prime suspect and arresting him could cause a riot. Better just to send the American stiff back home and close the case as “unsolved”.

As a citizen of the United States, there should be no part of the United States where it is unsafe for me to travel – any time, day or night. And if I got myself a visa to visit France, I should be able to wander aimlessly about France with never a worry for my safety. That is what government’s which are doing their job ensure. Indeed, it is the prime reason to have a government. Most of the rest of what government does is dross. But, that is not the case. Of course, it has always been like that: there have always been bad neighborhoods that are best to stay out of. But the difference we have today with the past is that a bad neighborhood in the past might have been that way for a multitude of reasons, but some of the bad neighborhoods in Paris (and elsewhere in the Western world) are to be stayed out of simply because of the faith of a majority of the people living there. Safely defended by a craven fear among our elite leadership, areas of the West are being sutured off from our laws and customs. To be sure, a great deal of run-of-the-mill criminal activity is going on in these areas, but the defense of the run-of-the-mill criminals is the fact that they operate out of primarily Muslim areas.

There are various kinds of injustice in the world but one of the worst is when average folks are not afforded protection. In our elite’s desire to not deal with real problems, they have essentially thrown a large number of people to the wolves. In the Muslim neighborhoods of Paris – as Cooke points out – you don’t see a lot of women on the streets and those you do would fit nicely into Mecca. But is that what they really want? Do all Muslim women in those Paris neighborhoods want to wear the niqab? I doubt it. Human nature being what it is, there are certainly some who would prefer to dress like French women – but they dare not, because French law and customs don’t matter and while in theory a Muslim French woman in those areas could appeal to the police for protection, the reality is that she’s at the mercy of those who actually rule the neighborhood. We do it, too, you know? Just for one example we throw people to the criminal wolves on our border because we refuse to enforce our laws – and if we won’t enforce our laws, then someone will enforce their laws. In the case of our border the laws are those of various criminal gangs. If what it would take to ensure the enforcement of French law is an armed French policeman on every corner in the Muslim neighborhoods, then that is what France’s government is morally bound to provide. But, they don’t. Too difficult. Might get called a racist.

It is a paradox of the modern West that as our governments have asserted increasing power over our lives, they have less able to actually protect our lives. This is a sign of civilizational collapse. I’m not at all certain how this is all going to come out in the long run, other than a solid assurance that it can’t go on too much longer, and when the final smash comes, it will be quite astonishing. Whether the remains of western civilization will emerge to rebuild – or be buried forever – remains to be seen. But if we do want our western civilization to survive, then it is a requirement that we look at the facts with a clear eye. Needlessly causing offense is wrong – that is why I asserted a few days ago that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons were wrong – but if telling the truth is offensive, then offend away.

Muslims living in the West have an absolute right to the same freedoms that the rest of us enjoy and if we don’t guarantee them their rights, then we have failed in our duties. Among these rights are, of course, the right to be as devoutly Muslim as they wish to be – but they also have a right to be as slipshod and/or heretical as they wish to be, just as the rest of us have the right to be devout about our beliefs, or ignore them nine days out of ten. Just as, say, a Jew must be in no danger if he doesn’t adhere to Judaism, so much a Muslim be in no danger – no matter where the Muslim lives in the West – for not adhering to Islam. And whatever amount of law enforcement activity is necessary – guided, of course, by a strong sense of justice tempered by mercy – to ensure this state of affairs, that is what must be done. Say, if you wish, that there aren’t any no-go zones in Paris or other Western cities. Fine. Granted. But what are we going to do about those non-no-go zones where a person steps away from the ruling orthodoxy at the peril of their life?