The End of War

I ran across this article this week by a guy named Tony Long about the nature of war given the brutal effectiveness of today's weapons. After quoting Churchill about the squalor of modern war and noting that there's no going back to ancient times with less powerful weaponry, the author gives us the only solution: eliminate war itself:

...going forward there is only one solution. War itself must be made obsolete and that means eliminating the reasons men wage war: nationalism, religion, greed. But it will never happen, not in my lifetime or in yours, because that means 1.) abandoning the concept of the nation-state 2.) abolishing all religion 3.) replacing stock-market, corporate capitalism with universal socialism. It requires nothing less than a reinvention of the human condition. Imagine.

This is a line of thought that is simply amazing to me. This guy actually believes that the solution to man's geopolitical problems is an empire that destroys/absorbs all nation-states, abolished all religions, and brings socialism to all. Oh wait, we've already seen that--it was called the Soviet Union! I'll go out on a limb and say that veterans of that 70-year experiment wouldn't describe it as any kind of nirvana. Of course war is a terrible thing, but even the horrific toll Nazi Germany exacted on the USSR in World War II pales in comparison to the millions of lives taken in internal purges of its own people by various Soviet leaders.

I guess I can't expect anything different; this is the same deep thinker who inspired a post on this blog last year with his article about how the solution to the problems with the press is have the government license and pay all media outlets.

Ah, socialism. It works so well until you actually see it in action.

Treating You Dead or Alive

It seems that a publicly-funded hospital in Ireland certified a disabled man in his 30s as dead, but when the morticians arrived to pick up his body he was still occupying it, apparently awake and alert. The hospital suffers from chronic overcrowding and recently from nurse strikes which seek more pay for less hours. But, never fear--a committee has been formed to investigate which will probably fix everything.

If you are think that the US needs to provide health care for all, this is yet another example of the horrors of free medical care. And if you're upset about rich Americans getting better care than than the poor, consider this: do you think that wealthy Irish patients go to this hospital which is accidentally not killing people? I'll bet there are more expensive places you can be treated, and if not you can fly to another country if you've got that kind of money. The US system definitely needs work, but sending it down this path is the wrong idea.

I Scratch My Head in Salute

The link above features a letter to the editor from Arkansas that attacks Congress for exacerbating global warming by starting Daylight Savings Time early, thus adding an hour of daylight for an extra month. It kind of makes sense if you take it at face value as the worst attack EVER on global-warming theorists. Maybe the author thinks that Miss America is actually bringing us world peace, as well. However, perhaps it is sarcastically attacking conservative global-warming-doubters by making light of their alleged position and simultaneously labeling them as loose-screw right-wing conspiracy theorists.

Maybe I'm just tired, but the more I try to think about what the author was actually thinking the closer my head gets to actually exploding. I have decided that this may be the most confusing three paragraphs ever written by someone other than a lawyer, poet, or addict.

Plus, there's a typo by the editor in the headline.

Enjoy!

Racism and Hypocrisy by Reverends

In the light of Don Imus' racist "jokes" and subsequent firing, racism is on the front pages again. Not coincidentally, America's racial reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are on the front pages again.

The blog post above (here or click on the title bar) brings up some history on Sharpton and Jackson that you might not know, including their documented antisemitism. That's right, both alleged purveyors of racial harmony have some special nicknames for Jewish people, and Sharpton in particular seems to have incited antisemitic riots that have led to the deaths of eight innocent people. Another quote from the entry has interesting echoes of the recent Duke lacrosse scandal (in which Sharpton also had plenty to say):

The good “reverend” Al Sharpton has a history of using racial attacks to further his cause. As noted in the 2003 column by Jeff Jacoby, in 1987 Sharpton spread a hoax that a 15-year-old black girl was “abducted, raped, and smeared with feces by a group of white men.” Sharpton singled out one particular white man, saying, “If we’re lying, sue us, so we can . . . prove you did it.” The man does sue and wins $345,000.

Hopefully you weren't taking either of these guys too seriously before--when you start fathering illegitimate children (as Jackson has) nobody should call you "Reverend"--but this puts their self-serving racial ambulance-chasing in a new light.

If you think I'm being too harsh, check out this dead-on column by Jason Whitlock. Whitlock is a black sports columnist whose take on racial issues I don't always appreciate, but he provides some much-needed perspective on the damage Imus did versus the ongoing work of gangsta rappers. He says this:

Rather than confront this heinous enemy [hip hop that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture] from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

Let me say that I join everyone on the planet in condemning Imus' comments. I think misogyny and mocking of a person's natural physical traits (whether or not those traits are shared by an entire racial group) are asinine and symptomatic of a tiny mind. However, I completely agree with Whitlock that Imus' comments aren't even in the neighborhood of the worst commentary of that type today. As Whitlock says:

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset.

Al Sharpton has been all over Imus, but if he really cares about the problems facing black people today he should mount a campaign against the poison infecting todays hop-hop culture.

Hitler, Time's Man of the Year

I had a discussion yesterday with Friend of the Brink Travis, who informed me that Adolf Hitler was Time magazine's Man of the Year before World War II. I was incredulous, so I had to track it down, and it seems that Adolf was the Man in 1938.

However, it seems that the Man of the Year was given in respect of Hitler's ascension to power and subsequent importance in Europe, but certainly not as glowing praise. Hitler was viewed with deep suspicion and was viewed as a monster on the rise. Time devoted most of the article to a recap of recent events in Germany and on the world stage, and closed with this ominous and prescient quote:

To those who watched the closing events of the year it seemed more than probable that the Man of 1938 may make 1939 a year to be remembered.

click the headline above to read the Time cover story...