My too often nonsensical and forever unenlightened reflections on people and life and everything else I understand as well as I understand everything else. Not well at all, in other words. Love thy neighbor, is my motto. Unless something better comes along. Make sure to say so when you find it.
Red Skelton reminds us what it means to be an American.
And Michelle Malkin, with whom I generally find more diagreement than agreement, posts this really beautiful video of Ray Charles' God Bless America.
Red gets to the heart of it, I think. To be an American means to be pledged to one anothers' freedom. Not to power over one another or even power over other nations.
It means to be pledged to freedom. Mine and yours. For all of us.
It'll be nice to live in an America, some day, where that is more true than not.
Geert Wilders has opened up a shitstorm. And good for him.
This is one of the more serious places where the glorification of pressure and leverage is going to break down. As Muslim and Arab "moderates" try to leverage the most cherished freedoms in liberal democracies, namely, in this case, the freedom of speech. The inside/outside game of so many radicals and collaborating moderates, here and abroad, is a fascinating, dishonest, and ugly spectacle, let me tell you. I'd admire it's cleverness more if so many people didn't get manipulated, hurt, and killed in its name. It is the rationale for radical Islam and its associated terrorism, after all. It's the rationale of every bully with too weak of arguments to persuade others of their better reasoning.
As Stephen Brown from my favorite far right publication (I think sarcasm just literally dripped from my keyboard), Frontpage Magazine, writes:
"In a brazen attempt to stifle free speech in the West, a Jordanian court recently summoned twelve European citizens to answer criminal charges of blasphemy and inciting hatred.
Among those sought by the court is Geert Wilders, the Dutch liberal politician who made the anti-Islamist film, Fitna. Released last March, the Dutch MP’s production caused an uproar in Islamic countries, since it equated Islam with violence. Now a Middle Eastern court would like to prosecute Wilders for the 'crime.' (Ironically, a Dutch court dropped charges against him for inciting hatred against Muslims with his film the day before the Jordanian court issued its subpoena.)
The Jordanian court’s move is only the most ambitious attempt to silence debate about Islam. Until now, the preferred strategy has been to file civil lawsuits in western courts to intimidate critics. The latest version of what may be called the legal jihad is even more disturbing.
In one subpoena, issued in early June, the Jordanian court ordered ten Danish newspaper editors to travel to Jordan for the 'crime' of having republished the “Mohammad cartoons” last February. The cartoons, first published in 2005, were also greeted with disturbances in Muslim lands. Seventeen Danish newspapers republished the controversial cartoons as a response to the discovery of an Islamist plot to murder Kurt Westergaard. Westergaard, a caricaturist, drew the most famous of those cartoons in the form of Mohammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, for which he is also included in the summons.
This new campaign of intimidation against the West is being mounted by a Jordanian organization calling itself 'Messenger of Allah Unite Us', which is made up of '...media outlets, professional associations, parliamentarians and thousands of volunteers.' This organization, according to one account, arose as a 'civilized response' to the Mohammad cartoons’ republication in 17 Danish papers last winter, after which it took the matter to a Jordanian court and successfully had charges pressed against the Danes, and later against Wilders...
Citizens of western countries who criticize Islam, and are even willing to face lawsuits in civil courts their own countries for doing so, may now exercise restraint if they risk facing criminal charges in a Muslim country. Especially if the charge is blasphemy and it is being tried by a sharia court, which can impose a death sentence (The Danes and Wilders, a Jordanian lawyer said, are facing a maximum of three years in jail).
As well, critics of Islam who have outstanding warrants against them from courts in Muslim countries will have their freedom of movement restricted, since travel abroad will now be problematic. Wilders expressed this sentiment, saying he will be careful when he travels now. Such targeted individuals, like Wilders, will obviously have reservations travelling to a third country where Jordan could file an extradition application or may already have an extradition treaty in place.
But what is most disturbing is that an Islamic country would dare subpoena citizens of another state for an action not committed within its borders but in a land where no laws were broken. Besides being meant as a weapon of intimidation, this tactic also represents a frightening extension of Islamic law into the heart of western countries.
But perhaps most ominously, this incredibly brazen measure shows that even a small Islamic country like Jordan has no fear of Europe. And, indeed, no retaliatory response met the Jordanian court’s action against European citizens.
Europe’s appeasement is also evident in the second part of Messenger For Allah group’s anti-blasphemy campaign. This part calls for a commercial boycott of all Danish and Dutch products in Jordan and of anything associated with the two countries, such as airlines and shipping companies. The boycott campaign actually began late last February but was suspended due to the losses Jordanian importers were incurring that had large stocks of unsold Danish and Dutch products.
The boycott, however, was resumed June 10. One million posters containing the logos of banned Dutch and Danish products will eventually hang in Jordanian businesses under the title 'Living Without It.' The boycott will also be spread by television and radio ads, t-shirts, and bumper stickers.
Dutch and Danish companies were instructed they could get their products off the boycott list if they, essentially, betrayed their nations’ values and their countrymen. The affected companies, according to The Jordan Times, were told to denounce the Dutch film and the Danish cartoons in the media both in Jordan and in at least one publication in their own country, support the Jordanian legal action taken against Wilders and the Danish newspaper people as well as the creation of an international anti-blasphemy law.
Several companies have already complied. When informed of the stipulation that requires a denunciation be published in a Dutch newspaper, a spokesman for a Dutch food company that exports to Jordan said his company '…would print it if needed.'
But such groveling will only buy these companies a little time, as another Dutch company discovered. It had immediately distanced itself from Wilders and Fitna after the film’s release last March but still had products placed on the boycott posters.
The Dutch government did not fare much better in its appeasement efforts. One Dutch embassy official in Jordan said he was surprised his country was included in the boycott in the first place since his government had already printed statements in the Jordanian press distancing itself from Wilders’ film.
And, naturally, the Jordanian blackmailers’ demands have not stopped. Only last week, Dutch and Danish companies were told to put the boycott posters up in their own countries if they did not want their products blacklisted.
Perhaps to further intimidate Holland’s and Denmark’s populations, the Jordanians are also claiming their boycott campaign is causing these countries huge financial losses of over four billion Euros in four months. A Danish official, however, says that is ridiculous since his country only exported about $50 million worth of goods to Jordan in 2007.
The overall goal of the Messenger of Allah group’s legal and commercial campaign against the two European states, it says, is the enactment of 'a universal law that prohibits the defamation of any prophet or religion', especially of the Prophet Mohammad. Islamic countries are already pushing for such a law at the United Nations.
'The boycott is a means but not an end,' said Zakaria Sheikh, a spokesperson for Messenger of Allah Unite Us. 'We are not aiming at collective punishment, but when the Danish and Dutch people put pressure on their governments to support the creation of an international law, we are achieving our goal.'"
This is what is at stake, for those who romanticize pressure and repression as a governing philosophy.
The beauty is that it undermines itself, long term. Hence the passionate defense of principles like free speech in liberal democratic countries (those who advocate pressure and repression have to wonder, how, exactly, did repression of free speech for thousands of years fall apart if pressure and repression work so well? The answer is that brave people like Voltaire, the Baron de Montequieu, and the like happened, made stronger arguments, and inspired generations to embrace a liberty that had, till that point, been regularly abrogated).
Embracing and defending freedom and liberal values, as the British on-line video website, Liveleak, does in its airing of videos that openly debate this matter, is exactly what best embodies those liberal values.
Those values and the free speech that people like Voltaire and Montesquieu, Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison, and all of our liberal forefunners risked their lives and their liberty to guarantee for us, today, mean that films like Fitna, the Geert Wilders' movie that has attracted so much attention and derision, Wilders' critics, and all of those who enter the marketplace of ideas should have the freedom to air their views.
What is at stake is, "Are we going to look more like the radical Islamists, the Zimbabwe government, the North Korea's Communist leadership, and other repressive forces we are rightly opposed to? Or are we going to look more like Americans and embrace the freedoms we say we love."
During this political period, liberal democracies have chosen a direction closer to radical Islam and repression as a governing philosophy. This article makes clear what a dangerous trend that could be.
I hope, for our sake, we choose freedom. Because freedom is why I love America and the Western world, not something to fear.
Fearing freedom should be left to radical Islam.
The rest of us have an honest democracy to tend to.
"For what America's voters, and the world's fascinated spectators, have not had so far is much of a policy debate. Yes, there were bone-aching arguments between Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton as to whose plan for health care would work best. And yes, Mr Obama refused to endorse Mrs Clinton's bad plan for a gas-tax holiday. But on the whole, it has been a policy-light contest for the simple reason that there was very little to choose between the two Democrats either on domestic or on foreign policy. Small wonder, then, that the Democratic race focused on character more than content.
All that has now changed. With his victory speech in Minneapolis on June 3rd, Mr Obama took the fight to Mr McCain. Though there are a fair number of things on which Mr Obama and Mr McCain, admirably, agree (a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, the immediate closure of Guantánamo and a more multilateral approach to diplomacy, to name just three), there is a lot more that they disagree over.
The choice will be starkest over Iraq. Mr McCain backed the war in the first place, and he proposes to stay the course there no matter how long it takes. Mr Obama opposed the “dumb” war from the start and has pledged to withdraw all combat troops within 16 months, though he has lately wriggled a little on this commitment. Although most Americans now think the war was a mistake, polls suggest that Mr McCain's determination to see it through may stand him in better stead with voters than Mr Obama's determination to pull out whatever the consequences, especially since the tide of war seems at last to have shifted firmly in America's favour. In general, Mr McCain will offer a much more robust approach to security issues than Mr Obama—and that may help him.
That said, the war is clearly receding as a political issue, just as concerns about recession are growing. America no longer has a Hummer economy (General Motors is considering selling off the gas guzzler). And there are clear choices about how to fix it. Mr McCain offers orthodox supply-side solutions, stressing deregulation, free trade, competitiveness and the use of market mechanisms to cure the problems in everything from health care to education to pensions. The trouble for him is that America is already a pretty deregulated place, and many voters feel that globalisation has brought them much less than was promised (and bankers a lot more). Mr Obama offers a very different vision: more spending on education and training, an expensive expansion of health care to (almost) all Americans and better benefits for the unemployed. His problem will be convincing sceptics that his sums add up, though it may well be that voters, battered by falling house prices and rising oil prices prefer not to worry too much about that.
Both candidates have their flaws and their admirable points; the doughty but sometimes cranky old warrior makes a fine contrast with the inspirational but sometimes vaporous young visionary. Voters now have those five months to study them before making up their minds (and The Economist will be doing the same). But, on the face of it, this is the most impressive choice America has had for a very long time."
I'm not, at all, convinced that these two candidates are the most impressive choices America has had for a very long time. Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt, among others, are tough competition for strong Presidential leadership. Plenty of candidates who didn't win their parties' nominations or general elections, like Bobby Kennedy and Barry Goldwater, to name just two, who were fairly impressive choices in the rear view of history.
But these two candidates were the strongest two choices, I thought at the beginning of this race, if only for the most important fact of politics: they were the two most likely to have an honest and open-ended policy debate and discussion. Every other candidate Democrats and Republicans had to offer were either too power-obsessed, one of the most serious problems for political leaders and observers to bring to the table in a liberal democracy, or too full of sanctimony and self-righteousness to be genuinely capable of an honest, open-ended, pragmatic policy discussion. When your whole modus operandi in politics and in life is to prove how right you are all the time and never be open to your mistakes or failures, you are no use to anyone, not even to your own ego. Because you have become incapable of learning from your own mistakes and not just the mistakes of others. And far too many in both packs, in 2008, suffered this folly.
The strength that these two candidates bring, amidst this power-obsessed and all-too-mindless electoral season, is a more honest and open-minded and open-hearted commitment to the welfare of their fellow citizens than any of their competitors.
Now the question is: will they put those open minds and hearts to good use and have an honest debate?
And it is the candidates, and not the various advocates, who will have to bring leadership on this question. And the candidate who can both bring better policy ideas - John McCain, on balance, at least in regards to the war in Iraq, the economy, and health care, to my mind, at this point; Barack Obama's better proposals around diplomacy are an important strength that weigh heavily in my mind to his advantage - and greater leadership to the matter of engaging an honest and sober debate and discussion and bucking the pressure from all quarters to engage more dishonestly, with strong-arming rather than debate, will win my vote.
If both candidates cave to the pressure from both their own wings and various circles that they must work with on critical issues, especially the war and matters of international security and diplomacy, we will all be the poorer for it. And not least because Presidential candidates caving to pressure is hardly leadership. Leadership is having a strong and largely accurate vision and being willing to tell activists to go to hell as you make the really important calls. Candidates who do what they are told are not leaders. They are puppets.
And America is worthy of more than puppets to run her government. She deserves leadership.
