Mark Steyn and National Review’s State of the Union

Mark Steyn on the state of our “sclerotic republic”:

. . . the Empire State Building was finished in 18 months during a depression, but in the 21st century the global superpower cannot put up two replacement skyscrapers within a decade.

Dead-hand Control

Mark Steyn offers even more melancholy reflections than usual, as the soldiers of a thousand-year-old dead man draw the circle ever tighter on free expression in the West.

Why Not Make American Immigration Policy Pro-tolerance and Pro-America?

From Donald Trump’s big speech yesterday:

A Trump Administration will establish a clear principle that will govern all decisions pertaining to immigration: we should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people.

In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today.

In addition to screening out all members or sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles – or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law.

C. S. Lewis: Soldier, Scholar, Poet, and Secret Agent

Fascinating new information, reported directly by the person who discovered it:

“C.S. Lewis Was a Secret Government Agent: A recent discovery unveils an unknown chapter in the life the famous Oxford Don.”
Harry Lee Poe, Christianity Today, December 10th, 2015

He happened to see an old phonograph record on Ebay, which turned out to be of a lecture that Lewis scholars never knew he had given—until now.

Muslims Mock Daesh

Speaking of helping delegitimize the terrorists, did you know that our Muslim allies and non-allies alike, as well as Israelis, are making fun of Daesh (ISIS) through sketch comedy and songs?  Check out these, from Kurds on TV in Iraq, Palestinians, and Israelis (warning, some rude content):

Call the Islamic State ‘Daesh’, Help Delegitimate the Terrorists

“The state of donkeys in Iraq and Syria”

Did you know that the term for ISIS or the Islamic State preferred by many of its Arabic-speaking victims is “Daesh” (pronounced “die-EESH”)? The reasons for this are complex, as explored at length by Alice Guthrie at Free Word, but the short version is that thanks to various connotations and cultural context in the Arabic-speaking world, calling the terrorist group “Daesh” delegitimates them by making them sound “little, silly, and powerless,” but also “implies they are monsters, and that they are made-up.”

What Progressivism Looks Like: Terrorists’ Murders Are Your Fault for ‘Insulting’ Them

Truly bizarre.

In light of the Charlie Hebdo shootings last winter and the terrorist attacks this week in Paris and elsewhere, I posted on Facebook, without comment, a link to where people can buy a T-shirt with the drawing of Mohammed from the contest in Texas earlier this year.  It drew several responses from a person who is intelligent and well educated, who works in one of the cultural centers of our country, and who is also a relative, my own flesh and blood.  Nevertheless, because he is also of the left, he said that I shouldn’t be “insulting” Muslims by spreading others’ drawings of Mohammed, and seemed to blame the artists and people like me for the murderers’ actions.  I pushed back—surely he didn’t really mean that?—but he reiterated that it’s our own fault—“those who generalize and insult religious groups serve to fan long-burning flames”.

(Insert Joke about ‘Hybrid Vigor’ and Inbred Nazis Here)

Hot Air headline: “German thought leaders move to legalize incest”

The German national Ethics Council has taken a vote and is suggesting that it should be legal for brothers and sisters to marry. (From Metro UK)

No, the South Isn’t Awful, It’s Awesome

The Big Charter, in Brief

Happy 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta!

Environmentalists Literally Pee on Themselves

(And proselytize others to pee on themselves.)

(If it’s that important, wouldn’t you accomplish the same thing by just not flushing the toilet?)

No, I am not making this up.  Yes, I triple-checked to see whether this was a piece of satire or I was missing something.  Yes, I encourage you to triple-check for yourself rather than take my word for it.

This is from the BBC: “UEA students urged to urinate in shower”.

The Go with the Flow campaign is the brainchild of students Debs Torr and Chris Dobson, from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich.

Islamists Beheading Civilians in—America?

You know that Islamic State terrorists beheaded American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff several weeks ago, but did you know that Muslims were beheading Americans in America?

From local ABC affiliate WABC in New York, February 11th, 2013:

GRUESOME DOUBLE MURDER, MEN DECAPITATED

. . .

The victims are reportedly from Jersey City, but their remains were found buried in a town southwest of Philadelphia.

Happy Independence Day!

In honor of the Founding Fathers and our other forbears, consider Calvin Coolidge’s “Speech on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence”.

Although a century and a half measured in comparison with the length of human experience is but a short time, yet measured in the life of governments and nations it ranks as a very respectable period. Certainly enough time has elapsed to demonstrate with a great deal of thoroughness the value of our institutions and their dependability as rules for the regulation of human conduct and the advancement of civilization. . . .

Trending

Mark Steyn, as usual, is must-read material.

In the Nineties, in his famous and controversial book Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, V. S. Naipaul wrote of the eastern lands conquered by Islam that “converted peoples have to strip themselves of their past.” In the West, in the nation states that built the modern world, that process is well under way. And Islam is Europe’s future. Which is to say, for Europe, there is no future.

Obama Passively Watched while Americans Died

Mark Steyn and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Bing West review the timeline of September 11th, 2012.  Like so many couch potatoes, the Obama administration sat back and watched the attack live on TV; they could have sent help, but did nothing.

West:

Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack and for falsely attributing the assault to a mob. But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.

Mark Steyn on Benghazi

Mark Steyn, as usual, is must-read material.  I recommend his last three weekly columns, about Benghazi and what has happened since.

Did you know that since Benghazi, the Islamists have also destroyed six of our Harrier jets and killed two of our Marines?  (More.)  Neither does anyone else.  See also pro-Obama media bias.

Steyn:

• September 15th
  Disgrace in Benghazi
  And a dying superpower’s blundering response.
  (National Review Online, Orange County Register)

Muslim Culture Still Not Compatible with Liberty, West: U. S. Embassy and Consulate in Egypt and Libya Attacked

Yesterday, on the 11th anniversary of September 11th, “Egyptian protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy . . . , tore down the American flag and burned it” (Reuters) and “U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed when Libyan militants stormed the U.S. consulate” (ABC News).  (Apparently three others were also killed.)  The first, and perhaps the second, was apparently prompted by the making of an independent film about Mohammed.  ABC:

The attack on the consulate in Benghazi came shortly after protesters in Cairo, Egypt, scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy and tore down the American flag in an angry demonstration against a movie about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, depicting the founder of Islam as a fraud and a womanizer.

Chick-fil-A Employee an Example of Love in the Face of Hostility from Weird Liberal

China Kills Children, Sells Them as Food

More sensitive readers should perhaps skip this one.

‘One reason the western world is sliding off the cliff is because of an excess of “conventional wisdom”’

Great line from Mark Steyn:

One reason the western world is sliding off the cliff is because of an excess of “conventional wisdom” on everything from unsustainable welfare programs to climate change to Islam. Yet, at precisely the moment when we need to be broadening the bounds of public discourse, in Britain, Canada, Australia, Europe and elsewhere the same ideologically insecure political class that got us into this mess is growing ever more comfortable in regulating what the citizenry is allowed to say, read, listen to — and, indeed, think. I say nuts to that.