Squaring the Culture

“The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his own creation.” CS Lewis, Christian Reflections

This explains a lot of the history of our political liberty.

It explains why liberty was the necessary result of the Magna Carta, which first articulated the idea that the King, himself, is under the law.

It explains why liberty flourished in an era where Natural Law was revered, and our historical documents spoke of the inviolability of “the Laws of Nature, and Nature’s God.”*

And it explains why the rebellion of the 1960s, with its attempt to redefine “good” and “evil” according to practical, modern principles has produced a movement so very totalitarian, and so fond of saying “Do as we say, not as we do.”

Liberty is never safe among a people filled with subjectivist thoughts and enamoured of “situation ethics.”

Footnote:

* Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776. “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…”

Read this article. It explains Arab reactions to Hezbollah’s declaration of victory in Lebanon.

Short version: Hezbollah lost a lot of support from Lebanese Muslims, especially Shiites (whom Hezbollah claims to represent), because as puppets of Iran, they started a war that destroyed Lebanon without consulting the Lebanese. Lebanese Muslims are becoming affluent, and want to enjoy their affluence in peace, not engage in military adventures driven by fanatics.

The truly astonishing thing is that while the Lebanese Muslims see right through Hezbollah’s “victory,” the press in the West does not. Hezbollah won the Public Relations war because the Western press wanted them to; but they lost everything else.

I got a dose last night of why I don’t bother with mainstream TV investigative journalism anymore.

Bored with a “Without A Trace” episode I’d already seen, banished from the computer by my youngest son, I turned my attention to Primetime’s report, “Out of Control: AIDS in Black America.” Apparently more than 50% of new AIDS cases in the US occur among blacks, and 70% of the new AIDS cases among women are black women. This disturbing phenomenon was the project on which Peter Jennings was working when he died (of cancer).

When I tuned in, I was hearing narrator Terry Moran list and explain the reasons why the epidemic is out of control among blacks. When I heard the first reason, I threw the remote across the room and rolled my eyes so far I got a glimpse of the inside of my skull. He said the reason was “Ignorance,” and then they showed Vice President Dick Cheney strolling across a stage. The point was that neither Cheney nor John Edwards (who joined Cheney on that stage) knew AIDS was so rampant among blacks. I listened for a few moments then surfed away, but came back in time for the SECOND reason AIDS is out of control among blacks: “Government Failure.” The remote took another flying lesson.

Now, I’ve not studied AIDS among blacks at any length, and I don’t work for the Centers for Disease Control. I’m reasonably well-educated, though, and I know that when a government bureaucrat expresses ignorance, some random, previously healthy city-dwelling African American doesn’t grab his abdomen, scream “I’ve got AIDS!”, and fall over dead. Diseases are not caused by government ignorance or government failure. They’re caused by germs and/or viruses, and the conditions that permit those to spread. In the particular case of AIDS, the culprit is a virus spread by contact with bodily fluids, usually either sexual contact or shared hypodermic needles.

So, my remote rested unmoving on the couch as Moran cited reason number 3 as “the Sexual Behavior of Blacks.” Finally, I thought, he was going to say something about behavior choices. After discussing the frequency of sexual contact in the black community, Moran informed us that the fact that there are only 85 men for every 100 women among American blacks creates an environment where it’s more likely for men to have multiple sex partners at the same time. The remote made yet another airmail delivery run.

Here’s what the program needed to say but never said: blacks are spreading AIDS faster than whites because their culture encourages more casual f***ing. Black men and women swap partners more, so they swap diseases more. It’s that simple. And if they want to stop catching the disease in such alarming numbers, the best way to do it would be to teach young black men and women to find somebody to love and stick with them. Monogamy would wipe out AIDS in a single generation — and if you don’t believe it, then explain why whites, with their more conservative sexual behavior, have AIDS rates that are so much lower than those of blacks. Trust me, it’s not because aware, Washington bureaucrats are hovering over us with free condoms and clean needles at just the right moment.

Can anybody tell me why the political Left in this country, aided by the popular media, is so dead-set on making sure nobody interferes with their casual f***ing? It’s fun, I know, but you’d think it was the most important thing in the world to be able to do it whenever you want, with whomever you want, like animals in the zoo. Whole generations of human beings have thrived without engaging in random sexual wantonness, and to be candid, sex is actually BETTER when you’re committed. Besides, you’d think that if black men are dying of AIDS by the jillions, they’d develop a healthier, safer relationship with their right hand? Maybe?

These guys don’t give a rip about the black community. If they did, they wouldn’t spend an hour of prime TV time making lame rationalizations to avoid telling black men to stop f***ing every hot babe that swishes by, and black women to demand a ring and a blood test (rather than a condom) before allowing access to their intimate spaces.

By the way, I did not recognize Terry Moran, the man presenting the 1-hour documentary, but his eyes were so scary that I’d run the other way if I met him in an alley. You can tell lots about people by their eyes, and my subjective evaluation is that Terry Moran (the owner of these eyes) is a very bad man. Let’s hope I’m mistaken.

The above photograph is part of a growing scandal over a report that Israeli gunships or airplanes deliberately targeted Lebanese ambulances, in this case firing a missile directly through the center of the Red Cross and causing severe wounds to the rescue workers and injured civilians inside.

The problem is, it probably never happened.

The original attack was reported July 24, 2006, and echoed around the world. Watch this BBC report on YouTube to get a feel for how the story played out in the world press.

Today, the blogosphere is reporting they have evidence that the attack never took place and that the incident was fabricated for the press. The most complete summary appears at zombietime, the professional photographer whom we met a few weeks ago providing an analysis of fake photojournalism from the Israeli-Hezbollah war. Michelle Malkin, as usual, provides a pretty good sample of blogulation about the incident.

It turns out that some ambulances used in southern Lebanon have air vents in the centers of their crosses on their roofs. And sure enough, when you examine the hole in the roof’s center, you can see unpainted flanges indicating that the hole is deliberate and manufacturered, not an irregular hole punched by a missile; the vent has been removed. You can also see rust all over the roof of the vehicle wherever the paint is scraped away. That would be unremarkable, except that the photo was allegedly taken only a week after the attack. Southern Lebanon is a desert. Things rust slowly there. Judging by the rust, the ambulance had been wrecked for months at the time this picture was taken, not just a few days. Finally, note irregular shrapnel holes in the roof, all bent inward; if an Israeli missile had exploded inside the vehicle, at least some of the shrapnel holes should be bent outward, not inward.

Israel claims they never deliberately target civilians or ambulances. Given the trouble to which Hezbollah has gone to manufacture evidence of Israeli “war crimes,” I’m inclined to believe Israel; why would Hezbollah manufacture incidents if they had real ones to report?

I can’t resist: below is a little crowing from the blogosphere over how we’ve got the Fauxtographers’ number. They can’t get away with manufacturing the news anymore.

Fadhils’ blog, Iraq the Model, is among a number of English-language dispatches written by Iraqis, posted on the Web and read worldwide. Ali Fadhil started blogging to counter the pessimistic view he sees in American news reports. “The picture you get is that most Iraqis want you out, but that’s not what most Iraqis want,” he said in a telephone interview from Baghdad. “Most Iraqis are happy they are free and they look forward to their future.”From “Web Logs Offer Unvarnished View of Events In Iraq” by Marge Wylie, Newhouse News Service, 2004,

http://michaelyon-online.com/media/pdf/FPS/ITM/Newhouse.pdf

Just to try to understand why Americans are so pessimistic about Iraq, I watched CBS’ news reports for two days a couple of weeks ago. I won’t do it again; if I had to listen to that negativity every day, I’d slit my wrists. If your source of information about the Iraq war is primarily the American press, you’re against the war; that’s inevitable. But you’re also misinformed.

Because I’ve been aware since 2003, when the Iraq war began, that the American press regarded its role as that of ending the war, reproducing their success in driving America out of Vietnam in the 1970s, I found alternate sources for my view of the war. I’ve been reading military blogs for the past year or so, including my favorite, www.michaelyon-online.com. But today, I discovered Iraqi blogs.

For those of you who actually want to understand what’s going on in the minds of Iraqis, what’s happening in the war there, and what we’re fighting for, this article has a list of Iraqi blog sites that are active and available. Read them; it’s a decent dose of truth. It’s not all pleasant or complimentary, but it’s what is really going on in Iraqi minds, and that makes it worth reading.

I also recommend this op-ed that appeared in the Philly Inquirer on Friday, Aug 4, 2006. Omar Fadhil, one of the authors of the blog site Iraq The Model, explains the religious significance of Iran’s current war with Israel to many Shiite Muslims. I’d reproduce it here, but that would probably violate copyright laws.

The deep dishonesty of the American press is something we all have to live with for a while longer. Fortunately, their fortunes are sinking, and Internet sites are providing more reliable sources of political news.

The recent flood of Hezbollah-rehabilitation stories from mainstream press, highlighting Hezbollah generosity toward the Lebanese victims of the recent war, included some shots of a Lebanese woman receiving cash. It triggered this reminder of Hezbollah’s involvement in the counterfeiting of American money, supported by Iran.

Photo from Hot Air; not sure where they got them from. Bloggers more vigilant than me are analyzing the bills in this and similar pictures to try to determine whether they’re counterfeit or real. The woman in the picture could possibly be the same woman who has appeared several times in the staged photojournalism (”fauxtography”) of the Hezbollah war.

Thursday the US District Court of Michigan filed an injunction against the NSA’s wiretaps of calls between suspected foreign terrorists and citizens inside the US. This practice, which has the full support of the public, was declared by the District Court to be in violation of the 1st and 4th Amendments to the US Constitution, in violation of the FISA statute, and to have caused tangible damage to the plaintiff’s abilities to do their jobs.

This is no surprise. What we’re watching is the result of what lawyers call “Venue Shopping.” The ACLU has a point it wants to make; they shop around for a judge who will give them exactly what they want. When they find such a judge, they drum up some plaintiff within that judge’s jurisdiction to file a lawsuit, bring the case before their picked judge, and have the judge summarily declare their political points from the bench. Usually it gets overturned when the defendant appeals, but not always, and the ACLU thereafter has a case they can cite for their position. This is how the political Left has been passing legislation for 50 years, without ever having to get legislators to vote on their measures (it’s how Roe v Wade became law, for instance). It’s an evasion of the democratic process.

This is why the decision, ACLU v. NSA in the Eastern District of Michigan, reads remarkably like the DNC’s talking points about the President’s NSA wiretaps program. The judge simply ignored all the relevant precedent (discussed here, here, and here), slammed her gavel, and attempted to make the ACLU’s position the law of the land. And this, Democrats call “defending the Constitution.” One wishes they would read Article I and follow it.

The blogosphere has plenty of chatter about the ideologue judge and her decision (here, here, and here ). It’s not complimentary to Judge Taylor. Obfuscation warning: plenty of legalese at those links.

My own comment is this: if we remember the recent case about the Guantanamo detainee, Hamdan v Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court agreed that the US is at war with al Qaeda, and that the Authorization to Use Military Force passed by Congress amounts to a declaration of war. Here, in ACLU v NSA, the plaintiffs had to give instances of specific people they contact who are suspected of terrorism against the US, in order to prove they’ve been hurt by the wiretaps; if they had not, they would have not had standing to sue in the first place.

So, Judge Taylor has decided here that the US Constitution guarantees citizens the right to contact the enemy in a time of war, if it’s necessary for their jobs, and not be bothered by surveillance.

That’s insane on the face of it. An 8-year-old can see it.

The NSA’s immediate appeal of the ruling put the injunction on hold, so the NSA can continue to monitor our nation’s enemies (both outside and within our borders) until the appeal is heard. This ruling will be overturned so quickly that Judge Taylor will get motion sickness from the turbo-inversion. Nothing has been accomplished — except the Left has, once again, manufactured a headline that they will repeat as fact for the next 50 years.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert must be insane.

Because of the cease-fire between Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel negotiated by the UN, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) did not finish the job of dismantling Hezbollah’s ability to fight a war. The performance of Hezbollah against the IDF, with the fact that Hezbollah was not demolished, is being trumpeted around the Arab world as a great victory for Hezbollah, and for Arab armies everywhere. The result will be a new, much larger wave of anti-Israeli violence throughout the region.

Here is Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claiming victory, and here is the reaction of Arabs in the streets — they’re naming their children after Nasrallah.

Responding to the perceived Hezbollah victory, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are negotiating a merger to become a single entity. Consider why:

Emboldened by what they perceive as the Hizbullah “victory” over Israel, several writers and commentators in the Arab world have begun openly discussing the possibility of destroying Israel. In a series of articles in the Palestinian and Arab media, many of them said that the poor performance of the IDF in the war proved that the elimination of Israel is no longer unattainable.

Pretty much spells it out, doesn’t it? The Palestinian and Arabic “cooperation” with efforts to bring peace to the region were never anything but an admission that “We CAN’T destroy Israel, so we have to stop trying.” They never gave up wanting to, and now that they think destroying Israel might not be impossible after all, they’re back to “let’s push them into the sea.”

This is the “peace” Olmert negotiated. He must be insane.

Oh, by the way — both UNIFIL and the Lebanese government have stated that they don’t intend to disarm Hezbollah. What a surprise.

Expect LOTS of attacks against Israel in the coming years, and lots of attacks against American interests as well; thanks to Olmert, violent Arab loonies now believe themselves invincible. Also, don’t be too surprised if Olmert gets removed from office shortly. The Israelis perceive him as having betrayed their sacrifices, here.

This November, Connecticut’s ballot for the Senate seat currently held by Joe Lieberman (D, Ct) will pit Democrat newcomer Ned Lamont against Republican challenger Alan Schlesinger, with Senator Lieberman running as an Independent. Lieberman lost the Democrat primary.

Many Democrats are exultant. Lamont ran against the war in Iraq, you see. They see his victory as indication that the entire nation will vote against Bush’s policy this November; we’ll all lynch our Republican Senators and Congressmen and vote for Democrats instead, because we’re all so disgusted with Bush’s War in Iraq. They repeatedly cite Bush’s negative approval ratings (just over 40% approve of the way he’s handling his job), the general disapproval of his conduct of the Iraq war (60% say they disapprove), and Lamont’s victory as harbingers of a MASSIVE shift toward Democrats.

Democrats are good at blowing smoke up their own skirts, the required contortions for which I leave to your imaginations.

First, there’s the electoral math: In Connecticut, only about 35% of voters register Democrat. But isn’t Connecticut a “blue state,” you ask? It is; but nearly half the voters register “Unaffiliated.” The breakdown is roughly 45% unaffiliated, 35% Democrat, 20% Republican (according to Ct State Secretary Susan Bysiewicz, quoted in the Hartford Courant). There was a rush of independents registering Democrat to vote in the primary, adding maybe another 3 percentage points to the “D” slice of the pie. Lamont won in the primary by 52% to Lieberman’s 48%. So, 52% of 38% of Connecticut’s voters were angry enough about the war to throw out their influential Senator and vote for Ned Nobody — or roughly 20% of the voters. In a Very Blue State.

Yes, I think the Democrats can easily rally 20% of the nation’s electorate to chant anti-Bush slogans with gusto; but that’s not a major electoral shift. It’s not even a surprise. They were able to do that on November 7, 2000, and again on November 9, 2004; see what it bought them.

Then, there’s the question of what the numbers mean, and the fact is, they don’t mean much at all. Most non-Presidential elections are local, and turn on local issues and local reputations. Voters vote for who they think will protect the local military base, maintain the federal highways that run through the state, fund the waterfront reclamation project, and be their lackey in Washington. Sometimes a major national issue intrudes, but not often.

60% of Americans disapprove of a 4-year-long war; that’s as shocking as 80-degree-temperatures in summer. That 60% includes some who think our mistake was not nuking Baghdad, and many who are tired of the war but not of their Representative. Activists read the numbers to mean 60% of the nation feels like the activists do, which is hilariously wrong; they’ll be lucky if it’s really 20%.

The real indicator is how the politicians vote when the public is watching. You see, Reuters, CBS, and AP publish polls for the public, but politicians don’t trust those numbers; they know they’re biased crap. Politicians hire their own professionals to get accurate reads. And when Congress votes whether the US should withdraw immediately from Iraq, or even set a final date for withdrawal, barely 10% vote for it. It’s happened twice, now. That’s not an accident. Our representatives know that the hard-line anti-war bunch isn’t big enough to threaten their seats.

The other indicator is Chameleon Hillary. Hillary Clinton never positions herself according to principle, because she has none, but that makes her a great predictor of what political insiders are saying. If you see Hillary abandoning her new, “Centrist” persona, you can bet that focus groups are showing hard support for anti-war candidates. She hasn’t yet.

Even Lieberman won’t lose his seat. The same Quinnipiac University poll that accurately predicted the 52-48 margin in the primary, predicted that a three-way race between Lieberman, Lamont, and Schesinger would be won by Lieberman: Lieberman 51%, Lamont 27%, Schlesinger 9%. A lot can change in the next three months ’till the election, but don’t expect that one to change much. Lieberman should win.

The Democrats are actually skonking themselves.  Some Representatives might take harder anti-war positions to firm up their Democrat bases; to the extent that they do, they’ll solidify the Peacenik image the Democrats have fought so hard to escape. This won’t hurt them much in November — the elections are mostly local, after all — but will kill them when the nation selects its next President in 2008, in light of the Islamo-Fascists who will still be threatening.

My prediction for this November: expect the Democrats to gain a dozen or so seats in the House, and maybe three in the Senate. Neither house of Congress will have a Democrat majority. And don’t be too horribly shocked if the Republicans actually GAIN a few seats; if I’m off, it’s in that direction.

My other prediction is, the Democrats will congratulate themselves a LOT, until after the voting. And then they’ll cry “Fraud!” Democrats are predictable.

The following brief film footage reprises “Green Helmet Man,” who has figured in a couple of the staged footage capers, this time giving film direction to the camera crew and moving the body of a dead child in and out of an ambulence to facilitate multiple takes of the film. (The above photograph was taken from “Qana: The Director’s Cut” on EUReferendum.)

Thanks go to PowerlineBlog, EUReferendum, one of Power Line’s readers named Peter Hallbourg, and Germany’s NDR, who made the film.

Mr. Green Helmet apparently has objected that he’s “no Hezbollah-guy” to a German newspaper. EUReferendum notes his claim, here, but you should scroll through several of EU’s blog entries, as they’ve been following him for several days, and he shows up whenever there’s a photo-op.

Again, for the record: nobody is saying bombs did not hit civilians in Qana. The civilian deaths, though unintended, are real and regrettable. However, there has been a pattern of deception and propaganda surrounding the incident; the press has played down the number of adult males killed (arguably Hezbollah fighters), and staged photo ops to highlight the children killed there, part of the propaganda war Hezbollah is waging in the Western press.