THE GOOD NEWS is that when Earth Day is celebrated a year from now, the most environmentally destructive president in history will no longer be in office. Senator Hillary Clinton criticizes Senator Barack Obama for saying that even a President McCain would be an improvement over President Bush. But when it comes to concern for the environment, Obama is right.
Bush's record is a low bar, however - too low. Yes, the country needs a president who will reverse Bush administration rules allowing coal miners to destroy Appalachian mountaintops and oil companies to drill in protected lands. But even more, the United States and the world need a president with the vision to make this nation an international leader in confronting climate change, which is already thought to be a factor in the droughts that are one cause of worldwide food shortages and price increases.
So far, candidates Clinton, Obama, and McCain have all promised some form of mandatory cap and trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions. This is a step Bush always shrank from, even though a study released yesterday by the Environmental Defense Fund says that capping carbon dioxide would cost US households less than 1 percent of their income over the next 20 years.
But when both Democratic candidates pledged in last week's debate not to increase taxes on the broadly defined middle class, they seemed to rule out, for instance, any hike in the gasoline tax as a way to reduce consumption and fund conservation or research in renewables. McCain would go so far as to encourage more driving - and more emissions - by suspending 18 cents of the gas tax in the summer.
While none of the three candidates would snigger at energy conservation, as Vice President Cheney did, as a "sign of personal virtue," they also do little to press Americans to reduce their carbon footprint beyond asking them to use different light bulbs.
Fast-growing countries like China and India, which have the potential to send climate change into overdrive, will not alter their course if the United States maintains a wasteful and heavily polluting lifestyle while preaching conservation to others. The cap and trade system is not enough. At some point, a candidate should step forward and tell home truths about climate change, just as Obama did about race. The way the campaign is going now, next Earth Day will see a president with a better environmental record, but not necessarily a president with a mandate to forestall the turn toward a "different planet" feared by scientists.
At the end of The Pickwick Papers, Samuel Pickwick decides to retire. He had founded the Pickwick Club in order to mix with different varieties and shades of human character Nearly the whole of my previous life having been devoted to business and the pursuit of wealth. His curiosity satisfied at last, he declares the club dissolved. The Pickwick Club then ceases to exist.
This is an unusual turn of events in human affairs. Clubs, societies, organizations, leagues, and alliances, once born, rarely die other than by violence.
...Big international organizations are not exempt from this principle. Long after the purpose for which they were founded has, as the founder of National Review would have said, lapsed into desuetude, there they still are, busily meeting and deliberating and budgeting, all in pursuit of nobody quite knows what.
(Since every principle needs a name, I shall, honoring the late WFB Jr., christen this one the Principle of Desuetudinal Persistence.)
...And so to NATO, than which a plainer instance of the Principle of Desuetudinal Persistence could hardly be found in international affairs. NATO was founded in 1949 to provide for collective defense against the USSR, which was at that time consolidating its little empire in eastern Europe. NATO gained a formal adversary with the founding of the mirror-image Warsaw Pact in 1955. The two leagues stared menacingly at each other across the Iron Curtain for a generation and a half.
The Warsaw Pact dissolved itself in July 1991; the USSR followed suit a few months later. NATOs reason for existence melted away with them. The notion that the drunken, ragged, and demoralized army of Boris Yeltsins starving, depopulating Russia might sweep victoriously across western Europe to the Atlantic was plainly absurd. Nobody even pretended to believe it. So what did NATO do? Why, the organization set about expanding itself! The process of expansion continues today. From twelve original members in 1949, NATO has now reached 26, with formal invitations to two more nations, Albania and Croatia, issued just last week.
Nobody can tell me what purpose NATO serves, other than the unnecessary annoying of Russia, the only European nation with big fossil-fuel reserves. Nor can anyone explain to me the reason for maintaining, as of a year and a half ago, 64,319 active duty U.S. military personnel in Germany, 33,453 in Japan, 29,086 in South Korea, 10,449 in Italy, 10,331 in Britain, 1,810 in Turkey (a NATO member surely youve noticed how helpful they have been to us in our Iraq project?), and 1,361 in Belgium. What exactly are we protecting ourselves against here? A world-threatening resurgence of Belgian fascism?
As a less ineffective corrupt alternative to the UN. Fewer ThugsRUs in the assemblage, means to actually do something as oppose to absolutely nothing, and less traffic in NYC. Gives a means to slip out of Turtle Bay and move every decreasing funding options to [very] relatively better option. The whiners have less of an argument about leaving the UN if we have someplace else to go to.
#2
I agree with Derb on this one. We'd have been better serverd to create a new alliance based in Eastern Europe (that did not include the US except as an associate). Such an alliance would be less provocative to the Russians and would serve as a buffer between Western Europe and Russia and could also serve as a beachhead (and troops) for the liberation of Eurabia when the time comes.
I know you are all saying we won't liberate them, but you know we will We're fools that way.
#4
The main concern about the ad is that it links a modern political ideology with a religion, which has been around for over 1,400 years. As time has shown, this religion is rich with heritage and culture, and is too superior to waste our time trying to refute such allegations.
Nicely written. However, one of the tenets of Islam is there is no difference between political ideology and religion - a distinction that has helped make the West successful. And while Islam is certainly rich with heritage and culture, judging by the backwardness, ignorance and oppression which marks the lives of those who live under its domain, I am willing to argue that Islam is the least superior religion on the planet. The fact that the author had to come to America, the Great Satan itself, to study biochemistry is testimony to that.
#7
The Muslim Students Association and the Jihad Network
As revealed in documents seized by the FBI and entered as evidence in a Texas court, the Muslim Students Association is a legacy project of the Muslim Brotherhood.[1]
...
A formal plan for targeting America was devised three years after the Iranian revolution, in 1982.[6]. The plan was summarized in a 1991 memorandum written by Mohamed Akram, an operative of the Muslim Brotherhood. The process of settlement of Muslims in America, Akram explained, is a Civilization-Jihadist Process. This means that members of the Brotherhood must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Gods religion is made victorious over all other religions.[7]
...
Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, MSA was named in Mohammed Akrams 1991 memorandum as one of the Brotherhoods likeminded organizations of our friends who shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation. These friends were described by the Brotherhood as groups that could help teach Muslims that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... Gods religion Islam is made victorious over all other religions.[13]
Posted by: ed ||
04/22/2008 14:26 Comments ||
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Speaking of Hardships for Muslims, what is the latest on the Minneapolis Airport taxi drivers not taking fares w/ booze and or dogs situation? that kind of fell off the screen; of did the airport authority roll over and give in????
First, you have to wonder why ABC News thought it was a good idea to have George Stephanopoulos, who was one of President Bill Clinton's highest-ranking aides, serve up questions at a debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Because weve been told that members of the network media are above partisan concerns?
Second, you have to wonder why Stephanopoulos, who has been resurrected as a television commentator, thought to ask Obama about . . . Bill Ayers.
Because of Mr. Ayers illustrious past as a domestic bomb-planter, perhaps. Strange as it may seem some people have a few questions.
Obama knows Ayers, a former radical and member of the Weather Underground who is now an academic in Chicago. They met years ago. They served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which provides money for anti-poverty efforts.
These are magic words, meant to inoculate: Academic. Anti-poverty efforts. You may believe that an academic is someone devoted to a disinterested pursuit of truth bravely following logic down the harrowing corridors where ideology is the first casualty; you may also be a freshman in college with your tuition paid by your parents. Theres a touching naïvete about the description of Ayers as a college professor, as if that means he has entered a realm of pipe-smoking rumination about Truth and Beauty. Doesnt that make him an Authority? Arent we supposed to question Authority? Note to Dick Cheney: get yourself to the Department of Political Science at the U of Wyoming, and watch those calls for war-crime prosecutions melt away. The editorial also notes that it's difficult to move in Chicago academic circles and not encounter Ayers, and no doubt truck drivers and housewives and guys heading to the office on the train nodded in agreement: boy, true dat.
The editorial continues:
So we're going to side with Mayor Richard Daley on this one. "There are a lot of reasons that Americans are angry about Washington politics. And one more example is the way Sen. Obama's opponents are playing guilt by association, tarring him because he happens to know Bill Ayers."
Actually, I think this is an example of Chicago politics, but were not supposed to be angry about that. At least its good to know that guilt by association is off the table, and McCain neednt fear any photos of him in the same room with Trent Lott. The mayor continues:
"I don't condone what he did 40 years ago but I remember that period well. It was a difficult time, but those days are long over."
It was a difficult time. What a wonderful absolution. Oh, we all went a little mad. Some of us listened to Steppenwolf, some of us bombed government buildings and plotted robberies that killed people, some of us were rotting in Vietnamese prisons having our teeth bashed out by torture experts. Those days are behind us now, best forgotten. (Unlike the McCarthy era, which will be the subject of 163 movies about the blacklist next year, bringing the total to 45,203.)
You know, it may be hard to find a candidate who doesnt belong to a church whose leader delivers eyebrow-singing speeches on the evils of America and also built a house Jim Bakker would approve, and it may be hard to find a candidate who doesnt move with ease in the same social circles as some people who bombed the Pentagon, but it cant be that hard to find one who doesnt do both.
If these positions serial killers shouldnt be fat or given holiday parties; religiously-inflected science is empirically suspect; religious identity should not trump national identity automatically in a news story; one ought not shrug at an association with previously romantic terrorists who did naughty things in a difficult time because theyre academics now if these positions are dismissed as right wing positions, well, I thought the same thing when I voted for Carter. Of course, I could have been insane then, unable to grasp the delicate nuances of a complex world. The ground ever moves beneath our feet, doesnt it.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/22/2008 06:37 ||
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A year ago, the Clinton's got all the slack. Now it's Adlai Stevenson's commie clone.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/22/2008 7:11 Comments ||
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#2
The funny thing about the left is that the message doesn't matter it is the messenger and the perceived intent. Doesn't matter if the message or question is valid and accurate it will be challenged and if not the messenger or timing will be challenged.
#2
Crap, earth day has just got started and I already have to change my culture from 'goebbel warming' to 'goebbel climate change' - but bwack tells me change is good - soo confused.
by Omar Fadhil
The latest three messages from al-Qaeda addressing the Sunni community uncover the depth of the crisis that al-Qaeda is facing in its former host community.
The threatening tone of the missives from the alleged Abu Omar Baghdadi and Aby Ayyub, and the insulting tone of the second by Zawahiri, reflect mistrust, anxiety and a dire need to retrieve what was lost.
Death threats do not represent a serious call for cooperation on an achievable objective. This work-for-me-or-I-kill-you tone is completely different from the usual recruiting slogans that have focused on the ideology of fighting for absolute truth against absolute evil.
Those slogans have failed, which is why they have been discarded and replaced by threats and an effort to seek out third parties to render verdicts on disagreements, which is what Baghdadi alluded to when he proposed that some (not all!) Sunni clerics come forward to mediate between al-Qaeda and the public.
This call for mediation indicates first, that al-Qaeda has lost direct contact with the public and second, that there are still some clerics involved with al-Qaeda.
This is the main reason why people have abandoned the Association of Muslim scholars and its also the reason that moderate Sunni clerics declare war on the organization.
This is also a reason for the conflict between some tribes with some members of the Islamic party. One suspects that a group of the partys members are essentially stuck with al-Qaeda: they cant walk away because of the incriminating evidence al-Qaeda has against them and could threaten to expose.
Of course the threatening messages had to be backed with action in order to be taken seriously; the bombings in Mosul, Anbar and Diyala served as the actual bloody part of the message.
Here we can note, however, that the act didnt match the threat. Instead of killing security forces and awakening fighters only (whom al-Qaeda calls collaborators) the murderous crimes reached civilians who had nothing to do with the whole conflict. Although one attack targeted a funeral of two awakening members, the actual victims were noncombatant mourners.
These crimes demonstrate that the principles and values that al-Qaeda touted are false and that the old ways have failed. Otherwise al-Qaeda wouldnt have switched to terrorizing fellow Sunnis instead of promising mansions in heaven and dozens of virgins. More at the link...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/22/2008 00:00 ||
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OSAMA + Radical Islam have up to 2010 or 2012/13 > ITS WHAT HIDDEN-IMAMS/MAHDIS, BATTLEFIELD LEADERSHIP, + PLANET X's ARE FOR, CORRECT?
Still plenty of time to win or lose a WOT, both for the USA + Islamists.
The global food crisis, which the World Food Program's Josette Sheeran calls "a silent tsunami," is devastating for the world's poor. But its more subtle impact on the world's rich nations such as Britain has powerful political consequences.
Take bacon, mainstay of the classic British breakfast of bacon and eggs. The country's herd of breeding pigs has halved in the past 10 years, and it fell by another 8 percent in the first three months of this year alone.
The reason is simple, according to Barney Kay, general manager of the National Pig Association, who said last week that with feed costs jumping 70 percent in the past 18 months, "on average pig producers are now losing about 26 pounds ($50) on every pig they produce. This equates to an industry loss of $390 million. That is not sustainable."
Britain has not been self-sufficient in food for nearly 20 years. Last year it imported about one-third of its food, with an import bill of $40 billion. Most of this, just over two-thirds, came from its partners in the European Union.
Britain's Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs paints a rosy overall picture in its annual report, claiming that overall farm incomes have risen by 34 percent since 2000. It points out that Britain was the EU's third-largest producer of wheat and milk, its fourth-largest producer of beef and veal, and its top producer of lamb and mutton.
Like the United States and its European partners, British farming is highly efficient. DEFRA says that since 1973 the productivity of the British agriculture industry has increased by 52 percent and labor productivity has grown five-fold. Britain has the good rural roads and storage facilities that mean little of the crop is lost or wasted, and its use of inputs like water, fertilizer and pesticide has been dropping steadily even as output grows. DEFRA says that since 1973 the volume of production has grown by 20 percent while the amount of inputs used to produce the crops has fallen by 22 percent.
Britain does not suffer the problems faced by poor farmers in poor countries, but inflation in food prices still hurts the voters, and this worries the government. Its new chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, warned this month that food security and the rapid rise in food prices make up the "elephant in the room" that politicians must address urgently.
Prices of staple foods like rice, maize and wheat would continue to rise because of increased demand caused by population growth and increasing wealth in developing nations, he went on. Moreover, climate change would intensify the pressure on food supplies because of decreased rainfall in many areas and crop failures related to climate.
"The agriculture industry needs to double its food production, using less water than today," he told a government conference on sustainable development. "There is progress on climate change. But out there is another major problem. It is very hard to imagine how we can see a world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous increase in the demand for food which is quite properly going to happen as we alleviate poverty."
There are three main reasons for the food crisis. The first is the old rule of supply and demand. There is more demand, not just from more mouths to feed but from the way that diets improve as people clamber out of poverty, and hundreds of millions of Chinese start wanting pork chops and hamburgers as well as rice. But while it takes 2 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of chicken, 7 pounds of grain are needed to make 1 pound of beef. In 1962 there was just 8 pounds of meat in the average annual Chinese diet; by 2005 that figure was 80 pounds and rising. (The average Brit eats 160 pounds of meat a year, and the average American gets through 250 pounds a year.)
There is shrinking supply, not just from the steady erosion of arable land as new cities and factories are built in India and China, but also because of the soaring oil price. Oil is a key ingredient in food production, because it is one of the main sources of fertilizer and it powers the tractors that plow and seed and harvest the crops and take them to market.
The second main reason for the food crisis is ill-considered government action, from the $300 billion in subsidies paid to North American, European and Japanese farmers to the EU bans on genetically modified crops and the latest outbreak of food export bans and taxes imposed across the world as governments panic at the thought of food riots. The recent fashion for subsidizing biofuels in Europe and the United States has also distorted markets as farmers changed their crop plans in repose to the new price signals.
The third main reason is related to the biofuel problem. As a planet and as a human race, we simply do not run agriculture logically. Vast swathes of well-watered and fertile land, like Africa's Congo River basin, are woefully under-used. Huge regions whose crop yields are pathetically low, like East Africa and Central America, could become the world's breadbaskets if intelligent modern irrigation systems, like the drip systems the Israelis developed to make the Negev desert bloom, were installed.
This is not rocket science or something only rich countries can afford. India feeds 17 percent of the world population on 5 percent of the world's freshwater supply and 3 percent of its arable land, Lennart Bage of the U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development likes to stress. The global food crisis is fixable, and with intelligent land management even the great British bacon-and-egg breakfast should be safe -- unless doctors apply health warnings to what has been called "a heart attack on a plate."
Posted by: john frum ||
04/22/2008 17:55 ||
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HMMMMMM, "not providing the required/necessary intelligence" + lying to cohorts and superiors + other coverups, corruptions, etc. > NOT a good artic for US INTEL or MI6.
OTOH, MAY ALSO EXPLAIN WHY US-WORLD PERTS ARE MOSTLY BEATING AROUND THE BUSH ON PROF ANSWERING THE QUESTION "IS THE SUN OAKY" AS PER GLOBAL -PLANETARY WARMING???
The state of the liberal mind is on display on this week's cover of Time magazine.
The already notorious cover takes the iconic photograph of U.S. Marines planting the American flag on Iwo Jima and substitutes a tree for the flag. Why Time's editors did this explains much about contemporary liberalism.
The first thing it explains is that liberals, not to mention the left as a whole, stopped fighting evil during the Vietnam War. As I wrote in my last column, whereas liberals had led the fight against Nazism before and during World War II, and against Communism after the War, the liberal will to fight Communism, the greatest organized evil of the post-War world, collapsed during the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War did to American liberals what World War I did to most Europeans -- it rendered them anti-war rather than anti-evil.
That is why liberals have gone AWOL in the fight against Islamic totalitarianism. As during the post-Vietnam Cold War, when liberals fought anti-Communists much more than they fought Communists, they fight anti-Islamists much more than they fight Islamists. Thus, Democrats routinely dismiss the Bush administration's talk about the threat of Islamic terror as "scare tactics."
But -- and this is a primary reason for Time's cover -- liberals know that they have largely opted out of the fight against Islamists; their only passion on this matter is abandoning the war against Islamists in Iraq. But like nearly all people who believe in a cause, they know that they have to fight some evil -- after all, the world really seems threatened by something. So they have channeled their desire to fight threats to the world to fighting an enemy that will not hurt them or their loved ones -- man-made carbon dioxide emissions.
It is much easier to fight global warming than to fight human evil. You will be celebrated at Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, the BBC and throughout the media world, no one will threaten your life, there are huge grants available to scientists and others who fight real or exaggerated environmental problems, and you may even receive an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize. Individuals who fight Islamists get fatwas.
The Time cover is cheap heroism. It is a liberal attempt to depict as equally heroic those who fight carbon emissions and those who fought Japanese fascists and Nazis.
Second, for much of the left, the cover reflects the primacy of environmental concerns over moral concerns. For example, the left seemed never to care about the millions of Africans who continued to die from malaria largely because of the environmentalists' worldwide ban on the use of DDT as pesticide. The same holds true for another leftwing environmentalist fantasy. Changing corn into biofuels is causing a surge in food prices throughout the world. The European Union continues this policy despite warnings even from some environmentalists that food shortages, starvation and food riots are imminent. But human suffering is not as significant as environmental degradation.
Third, the left is far more internationalist -- global, if you will -- in its orientation than national. As the Time article states, "Going green: What could be redder, whiter and bluer than that?" Whereas, for most Americans patriotism remains red, white and blue, for much of the left it is green.
Fourth, the further left you go, the more inclined you are to hysteria. From the threat of DDT to the threat of heterosexual AIDS in America to that mass killer secondhand smoke, the left believes and spreads threats that, unlike the threat of Islamic terror, really are "scare tactics."
Years from now, Time's cover will be regarded as another silly media-induced fear. But, as with Time's 1974 article warning its readers about "another ice age" and its many articles on the threat of heterosexual AIDS in America, Time will just let public amnesia deal with credibility problems. Until then, however, one fact remains: Today, conservatives fight evil and liberals fight carbon emissions. That's what this week's cover of Time is about.
In words that he has come to regret, Barack Obama opined as to why he was having a hard time winning over many blue-collar voters: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
It was a throwaway line to a private audience at a San Francisco fund-raiser. And it was made public on a liberal Internet blog, not by right-wing commentators. But Mr. Obama's opponents seized on the quote. It was evidence, they claimed, that he is "elitist," caricaturing middle Americans as gun-toting, immigrant-despising, religious rednecks who are also deeply unhappy people. And as a contrite Mr. Obama admitted, "I am the first to admit that some of the words I chose, I chose badly."
The comment may or may not be an indication of Mr. Obama's real views about those ordinary Americans who've not enjoyed the full fruits of economic growth over the past decades. Yet his casual portrayal no doubt had heads nodding vigorously in assent among his supporters, and probably among many others.
That anybody would find this portrayal realistic illustrates how little some Americans know about their neighbors. And nothing reveals the truth better than the data on guns.
According to the 2006 General Social Survey, which has tracked gun ownership since 1973, 34% of American homes have guns in them. This statistic is sure to surprise many people in cities like San Francisco as it did me when I first encountered it. (Growing up in Seattle, I knew nobody who owned a gun.)
Who are all these gun owners? Are they the uneducated poor, left behind? It turns out they have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.
Nor are they "bitter." In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were "very happy," while 9% were "not too happy." Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy.
In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling "outraged at something somebody had done." It's easy enough in certain precincts to caricature armed Americans as an angry and miserable fringe group. But it just isn't true. The data say that the people in the approximately 40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don't have guns.
The gun-owning happiness gap exists on both sides of the political aisle. Gun-owning Republicans are more likely than nonowning Republicans to be very happy (46% to 37%). Democrats with guns are slightly likelier than Democrats without guns to be very happy as well (32% to 29%). Similarly, holding income constant, one still finds that gun owners are happiest.
Why are gun owners so happy? One plausible reason is a sense of self-reliance, in terms of self-defense or even in terms of the ability to hunt their own dinner.
Many studies over the years have shown that a belief in one's control over the environment dramatically adds to happiness. Example: a famous study of elderly nursing home patients in the 1970s. It showed dramatic improvements in life satisfaction from elements of control as seemingly insignificant as being able to care for one's plants.
A bit of evidence that self-reliance is at work among gun owners comes from the General Social Survey. It asked whether one agrees with the statement, "Those in need have to take care of themselves." In 2004, gun owners were 10 percentage points more likely than nonowners to agree (60% to 50%).
That response is not evidence that gun owners only care about themselves, however. In 2002, they were more likely to give money to charity than people without guns (83% to 75%). This charity gap doesn't reflect their somewhat higher incomes. Gun owners were also more likely to give in other ways, such as donating blood. Are gun owners unsentimental? In 2004, they were more likely than those without guns to strongly agree that they would "endure all things" for the one they loved (45% to 37%).
None of this is to dictate what gun policy should be in our nation and its communities, let alone whether gun owners deserve to be happier than those of us without firearms. Guns are an important area of debate about freedom and security, not to mention constitutionality. What we do know, however, is that contrary to the implication of Mr. Obama's comments, for many Americans, happiness often does indeed involve a warm gun.
Mr. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of the just-published "Gross National Happiness" (Basic Books).
#1
I recall #2 son taking the .22 out to the woods several Thanksgivings ago, potting a squirrel on his second shot, then insisting on his momma cooking it so he could eat it. He only ate a little, since momma can't cook wild game worth a damn, but I noticed an immediate improvement in his posture and manner that reflected more inner confidence in himself.
Thomas jefferson himself commented on the good that accrues to a man who can handle firearms well and safely.
#3
I'd rather think that a civilized country is a polite society; I doubt US gangbangers are very polite, and I don't think that the african traditional societies that IIUC have been turned upside-down by the arrival of fast repeating firearms (allowing to settle disputes much more efficiently than say with spears) are very polite and ordered, just look at somalia.
Look again at the USA, increasing crime over the 60's onward was certainly not due to weapons, it was more probably linked to a general breakdown of civility (thanks to liberalism). The NRA slogan is just that, a slogan, but I really believe it's 100% accurate, guns don't kill people, people kill people. And bad/dysfunctional societies breed bad/dysfunctional people.
I like Heinlein, though.
#4
Agreed, anonymous5089. While Mr. Heinlein did say that, certainly the highly armed societies Mr. Heinlein described were not more polite than the post-Trouble Times societies in which many of his stories are set, merely more violent.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Bush's record is a low bar, however - too low. Yes, the country needs a president who will reverse Bush administration rules allowing coal miners to destroy Appalachian mountaintops and oil companies to drill in protected lands. But even more, the United States and the world need a president with the vision to make this nation an international leader in confronting climate change, which is already thought to be a factor in the droughts that are one cause of worldwide food shortages and price increases.
The state of the liberal mind is on display on this week's cover of Time magazine.
By ARTHUR C. BROOKS
