I agree with PETA?
So I’m torn on this Mitt Romney thing. When I say “thing”, I’m referring to the Romney family vacation with dog strapped to roof thing. Not with respect to the thing itself. I think it was a stupid and inhumane thing to do. But I’m concerned that I suddenly find myself on the same side of an argument as PETA. There’s a quote in the article from Ingrid Newkirk, a co-founder and current president of PETA with which I basically agree and that scared me.
Thankfully, however, just a little extra digging has reestablished my certainty that she is insane and that we’re not so alike. If you go to the PETA blog (tucked among posts about riveting topics like fish empathy quilts) you can read the extended quote by Ms. Newkirk, where she says that Romney must be lacking a mirror neuron (whatever in the hell that is) and that “(i)f you wouldn’t strap your child to the roof of your car, you have no business doing that to the family dog!” A ridiculous statement that attempts (as many PETA members and animal zealots do) to remove any distinction between a child and an animal.
So while I may share the same opinion as Ms. Newkirk on this matter, the method by which we arrived at that opinion is different enough to allow me to sleep at night.
On a side note, if you’d like a good laugh, check out Ms. Newkirk’s myspace page.
Eric adds: At first, I had this hilarious image of Fido roaring down the road somehow tied to the roof of the car with ropes, his ears flapping in the wind, and everyone else driving by their mouths agape. That would be hilarious, if perverse. Instead, I find that the dog was in a carrier, with a special windshield for his comfort. The other drivers would have missed the show entirely. But as my wife, Cheri, pointed out, this was 1983, and in those days no one wore seat belts. I remember adventures in our family’s motor home about that time, cooking dinner, sleeping on beds, taking bath in the bathtub, while roaring across the U.S. at 70 MPH. We were all nuts in those days.
Britain’s bombscare: the real lesson
Reading Infidel, watching the immigration debate and seeing the bomb scare in London this morning brought into focus disturbing connections among the three.
Ali was driven out of her adopted home in Holland because the “open” culture there refused to assimilate, sift and control the waves of immigrants who recreated the culture of hate and violence of their homeland. In the end, the open-minded Dutch people refused to and could not protect her.
Britain faces the same problem, and is apparently not serious about securing its border and assimilating [i.e., defusing the explosive cultural baggage of] its immigrant and natural born Muslim population. So instead of removing fuel and matches, it keeps firefighters scrambling.
The question is, are we any different? Fortunately, our illegal immigrant invasion is not Islamic. But it is very foreign, and the culture it brings with it has strengths, but also very distinct weaknesses, i.e., Mexico’s manifest failure to build a strong economy, subdue official corruption, establish rule of law, or create a stable democracy, despite enormous natural resources.
When you refuse to control the immigrant inflow and fail to insist on assimilation to basic Western values, you will be at the mercy of the imported cultures. Our adventures here are only beginning.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on mindless misogynist multicultural mush
Here’s Hirsi Ali’s take on Dutch multiculturalism, which allows Muslim immigrants to bring their cultural pathologies with them, and recreate them in all their glory. This perverse open mindedness has caused the legendary Dutch tolerance to turn on itself and swallow its tail:
This compassion for immigrants and their struggles in a new country resulted in attitudes and policies that perpetuated cruelty. Thousands of Muslim women and children in Holland were being systematically abused, and there was no escaping this fact. Little children were excised [genital mutilation] on kitchen tables–I knew this from Somalis for whom I translated. Girls who chose their own boyfriends and lovers were beaten half to death or even killed; many more were regularly slapped around. The suffering of all these women was unspeakable. And while the Dutch were generously contributing money to international aid organizations, they were also ignoring the silent suffering of Muslim women and children in their own backyard.
Holland’s multiculturalism–its respect forMuslim’s way of doing things–wasn’t working. It was depriving many women and children of their rights. Holland was trying to be tolerant for the sake of consensus, but the consensus was empty. The immigrants’ culture was being preserved at the expense of their women and children and to the detriment of the immigrants’ integration into Holland. Many Muslims never learned Dutch and rejected Dutch values of tolerance and personal liberty. They married relatives from their home villages and stayed, inside Holland, in their tiny bubble of Morocco or Mogadishu.
My new hero
Finally picked up and inhaled Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book, Infidel. She is a brilliant thinker, a remarkable survivor and an outstanding prose stylist. I’ll be making several comments based on her book, but you should get it and read it. It’s a page-turner. I literally stayed up till the wee hours finishing it.
As someone who endured and witnessed horrific abuse at the hands of ignorant and dogmatic Islam, she understands and articulates the Defense of the West better than just about anyone I have seen. I differ with her conclusion that atheism is the preferred alternative to religious madness, but given her background, I find her conclusion fully understandable.
Not the epiphany they had in mind, Part II
Watching the Wall Street Journal do its thing on immigration–and watching the big business, agribusiness, developer and construction industry lackeys in the Senate feigning interest in the poor immigrants, but just as often signaling that their real concern was a steady supply of highly exploitable cheap labor, I had another weird epiphany.
I’ve been a pro-free market, pro-business economic libertarian all my life. I love Walmart, love what it stands for: cheap goods for the middle and lower classes, and jobs for the otherwise unemployable.
But watching this charade on immigration, I saw for the first time an argument I never really had grasped. I saw that tightening the labor market would allow those at the lower end of the scale to earn a decent living, while shifting some of that cost to the middle class consumers and the upper class stock holders. And I realized that, within reason, such a shift seemed fair and just.
So tightening the labor market by enforcing our frickin immigration laws actually helps the millions of poor immigrants–including millions if Latinos who are here legally. When the powerful businessmen and bought-off senators who control the WSJ editorial page tell us the economy would collapse without a steady supply of dirt-cheap labor, they protest too much. What they really mean is that they would have to forgo that third vacation home. What they really mean is that they will have to pay their gardeners and nannies a living wage.
And now, I stop and pinch myself. Bush & his industry lackeys have not only alienated me on immigration, they have also made me see favorably an argument I had heard for years, but never allowed myself to understand.
Remarkable. Being called a bigot by your putative allies is a gift that keeps on giving.
Not the epiphany they had in mind
The Bush immigration disaster goes far beyond peevishness on the part of those of us who won. I quickly began to wonder if I was suckered on Iraq. I don’t think I’m alone here. Mickey Kaus, for one, has also been touting this link.
Once again, we’ve watched the dance of certainty and resolve from Bush, but now I am on the other side, taking the brunt of the charmless offensive. Once again, we have seen him look into a Putin’s soul and assure us all was well. And once again, his certainty was a load of BS.
So when Dean Barnett wonders if the base will be there to defend Bush on Iraq, and suspects not, the problem runs deeper than simply feeling miffed or burned. I suspect that I am not the only one who now has reinforced doubts about the good will, savvy and instinct of the Administration, and these doubts make it difficult to be good soldiers and believers on other areas where Bush must persuade. As Barnett puts it,
I’ve admired this president for a long time, but I’ve reached a point where I’ve had it up to here (my hand is at my forehead) with this administration’s chronic obtuseness and arrogance. The top priority right now for the administration should be the war. And yet the president spent what little political capital he had trying to shove this atrocious immigration bill down the country’s throat.
President Bush is going to need a united base come September if he wants to stay the course in Iraq. Given that consideration, calling 90% of that base bigots probably wasn’t a very good idea.
Court allows a little naughty speech
We political free speech Neanderthals are supposed to be thrilled that five justices felt the First Amendment means no law when it says no law, or that political speech deserves at the least the level of protection child porn and nude dancing get. I still remember Sandra Day O’Connor’s graphic and unintentionally hilarious discussion of what nude dancers were trying to express with their first amendment protections. But where pornography is now under the sacred light of free speech, political speech–which many of us assumed all along was the purpose of the first amendment–has lately had to scurry along in the penumbra. Under McCain-Feingold, criticizing a candidate for federal office on the airwaves in the blackout period somehow landed outside first amendment protection. With George Will, I’m cautiously optimistic about the 5-4 vote to strike down this provision, but I remained stunned at its razor margin.
Mass immigration, culture, assimilation and social fabric
John Leo is citing Robert Putnam’s new dicey research on the impact mass immigration on social fabric. It’s awfully touchy to point this out, but a little frankness once in awhile is a salutary thing in public affairs.
I’ll take it a step further. Many American immigrants have come from more or less dysfunctional cultures over the years–escaped them and then absorbed into American society. Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world have contributed immigrants to the U.S. who have left the dysfunctional elements behind, without completely losing their identities. But never before have we had such a huge percentage of immigrants from one culture. The Mexican mass migration to the U.S. years ago reached the tipping point, and incentives to leave the old behind to blend with the new have long since evaporated.
So we are importing a different culture wholesale. What is this culture? Well, by one simple measure, it is grounds for concern. Mexico has enormous problems with criminality, corruption and the absence of rule of law. Huge sections of Mexico are misgoverned and corrupt.
On a related measure, despite enormous natural resources and a climate that should make it the equal of California, Arizona or Spain, it remains deeply mired in third world poverty. Something is wrong there. People naturally want to escape it, as well they should.
But when any pretense of our ability to choose the most promising immigrants is dropped, and any pretense of blending the best they bring with them and refining out the dysfunctional is abandoned, do we really think that this massive social experiment bodes well?
There, I’ve said it. And many will call me a bigot, I’m sure. It might help to point out that I have two Vietnamese foster brothers and two Chinese foster sisters. It might also help to point out that my father is an immigrant, and I have long advocated a generous immigration policy. The concern here is not about immigration, it’s about the ability of the social fabric to withstand the sudden pressure and wrenching being imposed on it.
Straighten up and fly right
A great old standard, covered by numerous artists including Nat King Cole, is “Straighten up and Fly Right.” I can’t help but think of this story as Republican senators (the crafty buzzards) try to get the monkey (the rest of us) off their necks by smooth-talking and shaming:
A buzzard took a monkey for a ride in the air
The monkey thought that everything was on the squareThe buzzard tried to toss the monkey of of his back
But the monkey grabbed his neck and said now listen jackStraighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down papa don’t you blow your topAin’t no use in diving
What’s the use of diving?
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down papa don’t you blow your topThe buzzard told the monkey you are choking me
Release your hold and I will set you free
The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye
And said your story’s so touching, it’s sounds just like a lie
Want to get yourself, your career, your party and the country on the ground in one piece, Senator? Then straighten up and fly right.
For Darfur: Boycott China’s Olympics
If China continues to drag its feet over meaningful action on Darfur, why shouldn’t an Olympic boycott be on the table? The Chinese economy is not-so-indirectly bankrolling the Janjaweed militias that continue to murder and rape like it’s either their job, their hobby, or both. So actually- it is their job. And it may well be their hobby. And China is there to get them whatever they need to do it well.
So to hell with the Olympics, yeah?
I can’t quite work the calculus that has the Summer Games mattering more than the thousands of lives brutalized every week while the U.N. whistles, the EU works out another limp declaration and the Bush admin holds back, shy of the lashes it will receive for any more ‘unilateral’ actions. And anyway- the Olympics has become a carnival melange of midget-throwing, synchronized typing and the like. I wouldn’t miss most of it.
Isn’t this how ’soft power’ works?
Concrete steps lacking (as usual)
If we are to enjoy peace again, if we are to win our struggle against radical Muslim militancy, we - the Western world, the Muslim world, the entire world - must recognize that Muslim radicalism is most devastating to Muslim communities and societies. We must help Muslim societies correctly identify, fight and eradicate the cancer that attacks their people. Muslim societies can and must do it, and we need to help them.
I think we can all agree on the objective here. Give Ian Wendt props for having the guts to ID the problem. But, as is always the case with such analyses, his prescriptions for concrete steps are lacking.
Baboons, bureaucrats and Oscar nominees …
As diverse as these groups appear on the surface, I wonder if Mr. Marmot ~ pictured below left [okay, okay, the picture is fake, but the name is real] and cited here in The Economist ~ has a point. Maybe there is a deeper connection here:
According to Mr Marmot, who cites research on groups as diverse as baboons in captivity, British civil servants and Oscar nominees, the higher rates of ill health among those in more modest walks of life can be attributed to what he calls the “status syndrome”.
The possibilities are endless
Poland has a novel idea, which has tremendous potential in foreign, financial, and personal affairs:
Jaroslaw Kaczynski offered his country’s terrible suffering in the second world war as a moral argument for giving Poland the weight of a much more populous country in Europe’s voting system.
… and speaking of linkage
Stuart directs my attention to this:
… every year, there are more women killed in Pakistan for allegedly violating their family’s honour than there are detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Ouch.
Linking Libby and Berger
In my last post, I noted the anticipatory glee evinced by an Edwards hack named “Mudcat” at the prospect of linking a Libby pardon to Paris Hilton. I have a better idea: pardon Libby & Sandy Berger.
Here’s linkage for you:
Libby gets railroaded as collateral damage in a malicious investigation, where the prosecutor already knew that Richard Armitage was the man. And whatever Armitage did was apparently not a crime, since he was never charged. Instead, Libby gets hard time.
Meanwhile, Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger steals classified national security documents from the national archives, carefully hides them, and then dismembers them in to tiny pieces. We don’t know what was in those marginal notes that concerned him, as he destroyed the evidence. But we assume the motive must have justified the seriousness of the crime. An unprovoked, indisputable felony. Yet he pleas to a wrist slap.
Pardon Berger and Libby in one blow. Link them indelibly in the news accounts. Spin that, Mudcat.
Deep thinking in the Edwards camp
Should Scooter Libby have his sentence commuted? According to one Edward’s adviser, we need look no further Paris Hilton’s adventure in Beverly Hills for the answer:
And Democrats are poised to pounce if Bush gives Libby a break. Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, an adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, said the brouhaha over heiress Paris Hilton would make it easier to get traction for charges that Libby was getting special privileges.
“Scooter Libby is in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Saunders said. “If Paris had to go to the slammer, Scooter should get his pajammers.”
With nearly disarming frankness ~ and a very weak sense of rhythm ~ Saunders admits that he would have this weighty matter decided based on superficial linkage to salacious tabloids. If there were no other reason to pardon Libby, giving this punk a knee in the groin might be enough.
Pot v. kettle in the pork barrel
A chief-anti pork agitator gets caught with his hand in the barrel.
When asked about the earmark, McHenry doesn’t like to use the word pork. The North Carolina Republican prefers the term “directed spending,” and he said this request is perfectly defensible, even though Democrats have been quietly chuckling about it since it was unveiled as part of the Financial Services spending bill earlier today.
“Look, the important thing is transparency and openness,” McHenry said when asked about the earmark, which he confirmed that he had inserted into the bill. “I have never been opposed to directed spending.”
This is what makes pork possible. How can you tell those poor people in rural N.C., who lost all those jobs to foreign competition, that a measly $129K is too much to give them to salve their wounds? Every case in isolate is touching, while the aggregate is putrid. Ah, democracy.
Boring and Predictable
Nader considers another run at 2% of the vote. “He is interesting (but) unpredictable,” Nader said of Bloomberg. Which makes him the polar opposite of Nader on both counts. This is going to be fun.
Blair on the feral beast
I’ve always liked Blair, in part because he has gut-level commitment to principle and in part because he can articulate his views and is, thus, the un-Bush. WSJ today has posted his instant classic takedown of the mass media.
Hutchison to vote against immigration cloture
A good sign, in my opinion. I’m pro-legal immigrant, and think we should expand work visas. I’d even support amnesty if it followed genuine workplace and border controls. But I don’t think anyone thinks that is was this bill is really about. The widespread concern on this point is well-founded.
