Friday, November 25, 2016

The Greatest Threat to World Peace

Re: Bangladesh Arrests Over 3,000 to Halt Attacks

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The greatest threat to civilization and world peace in 2016 is not totalitarianism. It is ineffective governance, official corruption and a breakdown of civil society. We see it in anarchic Pakistan, awash in firearms. We see it in Mexico, with its corrupt police and thousands of unsolved murders. Venezuela. Guatemala. The kleptocracies of the former USSR. This nightmare in Bangladesh.

Since 2013, bloggers, freethinkers, religious minorities, foreigners, gay activists, followers of more liberal strains of Islam and others have been killed in attacks carried out mostly by groups of young men wielding machetes.

We see it here today in the U.S., in desert precincts where militiamen and Libertarians take shots (literally) at underfunded federales, and strut their stuff under the protection of Leviathan, whom they rely on every day to protect their families, their jobs and their health.

If you are an American who teds to hate secularists, religious minorities, gay activists and "followers of more liberal strains," you are of this ilk.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Princeton Professors Get Intellectually Mushy Over Abortion, Hillary

In an article this week in the Princetonian, “Key issues of the 2016 presidential election: Faculty members' perspectives,” two political scholars at the Ivy League university reveal themselves as anti-choice extremists.

Robert George, an American legal scholar, political philosopher and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, shared that “[Hillary] Clinton has never, to my knowledge, been able to think of a circumstance in which she believes that the right to life of a child in the womb should meaningfully be protected.”

Similarly, Bradford Wilson, executive Director of the James Madison Program in the Department of Politics, told the paper that “Secretary Clinton has declared in favor of an unlimited right to abort, presumably up until the day before birth.”

In fact, by expressing support for Roe v Wade, Hillary Clinton has affirmed her belief in circumstances when the life of a child in the womb should be protected. Roe v Wade’s “trimester framework” codifies the right of the state to protect a fetus later in a pregnancy (with exceptions for the life and health of the mother).

These two legal scholars seem to understand Roe v Wade less well than one might expect.

Hillary Clinton said in 2008, “I think abortion should remain legal, but it needs to be safe and rare. And I have spent many years now, as a private citizen, as first lady, and now as senator, trying to make it rare, trying to create the conditions where women had other choices.

“I have supported adoption, foster care. I helped to create the campaign against teenage pregnancy, which fulfilled our original goal 10 years ago of reducing teenage pregnancies by about a third. And I am committed to do even more.”

West’s Weird Words


A raspberry also goes to fellow Princetonian Cornel West, who according to George, believes Hillary is not “a candidate who meets the threshold to be acceptable as the leader of our nation.”

Really? Because she was Secretary of State when four people died in Benghazi? Because she used a private email server? Because she is a lawyer? What is Mr. West’s criteria for placing an individual outside the range of acceptability for high office?

Perhaps he prefers individuals who, before running for president, had not dirtied themselves in the international political arena. Who were never subject to Congressional scrutiny or investigation before seeking office. Someone with a faith-centered political approach and a pro-life stance. Someone outside the Washington bubble.

Well, based on these criteria, I have the perfect candidate for him: George W. Bush in 2000.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

The Breitbart Filter

I was curious how two stories in the news this week are being reported on Breitbart.Com, so I hopped on over to the alt-right romper room where news categories range from "big government" to "big journalism" (no "big religion" as yet).

Breitbart's chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, also runs Donald Trump's campaign. 

First I searched for Scott M. Greene, accused of assassinating two police officers in Des Moines and Urbandale, Ill.

Nothing on the home page. A search for "Greene" turned up a cursory article with very little text and two embedded videos, as well as a (broken) link to a story in a local paper. Nowhere was it mentioned that he was a Trump supporter thrown out of a football game a few days ago for waving a Confederate flag around in front of a bunch of black students. 

I then searched for news about the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Jackson, Miss., which was nearly burned to the ground Tuesday by arsonists who wrote "Vote Trump" on an outside wall.

Nothing on the home page. A search for "Jackson" turned up articles about Andrew Jackson and the $20 bill. A search for "Hopewell" brings up news about vandals breaking the window of a home flying a Confederate flag in Hopewell, Va.

There is nothing on the site about the destruction of the church.