[WSJ] 'What you're seeing is how a civilization commits suicide," says Camille Paglia. This self-described "notorious Amazon feminist" isn't telling anyone to Lean In or asking Why Women Still Can't Have It All. No, her indictment may be as surprising as it is wide-ranging: The military is out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women, and sexiness is dead. And that's just 20 minutes of our three-hour conversation. 'Surprising' to some perhaps.
When Ms. Paglia, now 66, burst onto the national stage in 1990 with the publishing of "Sexual Personae," she immediately established herself as a feminist who was the scourge of the movement's establishment, a heretic to its orthodoxy. Pick up the 700-page tome, subtitled "Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, " and it's easy to see why. "If civilization had been left in female hands," she wrote, "we would still be living in grass huts." Under the Champ, we'll soon all be living in huts and smoking the grass.
The fact that the acclaimed bookthe first of six; her latest, "Glittering Images," is a survey of Western artwas rejected by seven publishers and five agents before being printed by Yale University Press only added to Ms. Paglia's sense of herself as a provocateur in a class with Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. But unlike those radio jocks, Ms. Paglia has scholarly chops: Her dissertation adviser at Yale was Harold Bloom, and she is as likely to discuss Freud, Oscar Wilde or early Native American art as to talk about Miley Cyrus. "Talk about Miley Cyrus"....now there's an intelligent concept.
Ms. Paglia relishes her outsider persona, having previously described herself as an egomaniac and "abrasive, strident and obnoxious." Talking to her is like a mental CrossFit workout. One moment she's praising pop star Rihanna ("a true artist"), then blasting ObamaCare ("a monstrosity," though she voted for the president), global warming ("a religious dogma"), and the idea that all gay people are born gay ("the biggest canard," yet she herself is a lesbian). An "abrasive, strident and obnoxious" lesbian, quite rare. Quite rare indeed.
#2
The first big attempt at suicide was in August 1914. America forked over a lot of resources to help. With the death of the ancient regimes (Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, Romanov, et al) the new European malaise of socialism moved to the forefront as means of suicide with another big attempt in 1939 (National Socialist joining with Communists socialists to divide Poland). Again after another great expenditure of resources the death was delayed, but the whole cancer of 'redistribution' and 'social justice' from its European origin took hold in the New World, particularly among the Europhiles who had a particular revulsion to populist Americana. It's been a slow degenerative disease that has metastasized through the culture. Unfortunately, if history is any indication, either the decline will continue or a lot of blood has to be spilled to remove it. The latter is not just a point of internal strife but also the inability or unwillingness by the body to defend itself from external agents.
The author is president of the pro gun control astroturf group, Independent Firearm Owners Association Inc. According to the Gun Rights Examiner he was the guy who signed off on requring gun locks on gun sales contrary to the wishes of the National Rifle Association in 1997.
A year ago, in the days after 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., it seemed something had changed in America's long-running debate on guns. Some consensus seemed possible. He actually meant a stampede was underway and gun control fascists were leading the charge.
But that was then. Today the voices on both sides are back to being as shrill as ever. Actually only one side is shrill, the gun control side.
Still, behind the heated rhetoric, there are areas of agreement. While polls show Americans almost evenly divided on whether they want more gun control, they overwhelmingly support expanded gun-buyer background checks and overwhelmingly oppose bans on handguns. "Overwhelmingly", even if it means 99 percent, they don't get a vote on my rights, ever.
Those two positions suggest potential for crafting a grander bargain on guns, a new set of policies premised on two complementary goals: protecting the rights of responsible, law-abiding gun owners and gun sellers, while giving law enforcement better tools to deter and prosecute criminal access to guns. What might such a grand bargain look like? "responsible, law-abiding" are leftist buzzwords which means serf. To fascists like this guy, "responsible, law-abiding" is the best you can be, subject to the political whims of your political opponents.
For starters, it would clearly set out the rights and responsibilities of gun retailers. Advocates for stronger gun laws argue that there are a handful of bad-apple gun stores that, through incompetence, negligence and nefarious intent, lose track of tens or hundreds of guns in inventory. True. I wouldn't know. Gun store owners, in my estimation are part of the problem, but are regarded by facsists as tools for gun confiscation.
Gun-rights advocates point out that most retail firearm dealers are mom-and-pop businesses and that, on some occasions, they have been shut down by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for mere paperwork errors. Also true.
The ATF shuts down these small dealers because doing so is the only civil tool it has to encourage compliance with its rules. Puleez. Shutting them down is the lightest penalty the ATF has been known to impose.
The solution isn't that complicated. Congress should enact a law that would allow the ATF to assess sliding fines or brief suspensions. A provision that would do this is included in a bill introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and endorsed by the National Rifle Association. Nothing stops the ATF from writing the regulation. Where the problem is is when Congress gets involved. we the people edge ever closer to prison time, every time. And Mark Rubio sold his soul to La Santana. His views are like Hillery's.
Another element would involve redefining who is prohibited from owning a gun. Under federal law, all convicted felons, domestic abusers, adjudicated mentally ill people and certain other narrow categories of people are barred, typically for life, from purchasing, borrowing or possessing guns. Narrow categories my ass. The way the law is implemented now, any misdemeanor crime is cause for denial of the purchase of a firearm. The way the law is implemented is way too broad, and so far even groups like the NRA and republicans act like this is not a problem, and refuse to deal with this injustice. Permanent ban because of a mistake? Where's the justice in that? It was wrong when the law was passed. It is wrong now.
This federal ban is both too expansive and not expansive enough. A law should be passed that makes people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses and financial crimes eligible to possess guns again after a period of years. Again, very little stops the ATF from writing the regulation.
At the same time, certain dangerous criminals are slipping through the cracks of the federal laws. While 39 states prohibit gun possession or gun carrying by certain violent misdemeanants, federal law is silent. We should update the federal law to bar gun possession by people sentenced to jail terms for violent misdemeanor crimes, such as stalking or assault, for a period of years. More laws mean more constraints and more government. Less rights and less freedom will be the result of more laws passed.
A third component of better gun laws would include expanded background checks and expanded rights for those who have qualified for permits to carry concealed weapons. In the wake of Newtown, 55 senators voted to support expanded background checks. That same day, 57 senators voted for a provision to allow permit holders from one state to carry concealed guns into any other state. Both measures failed ? to meet the 60-vote threshold. Once a national concealed weapons data base is passed into law, I promise you confiscation is just around the corner.
Gun-rights advocates argue that a federal law to allow interstate concealed carry should be likened to the way states honor driver's licenses from every other state. On the other side, gun-control advocates argue that, because some states have more stringent standards for gun-carry permits, they should have the right to keep out people with permits from more lenient states.
Meanwhile, on background checks, polls consistently show that more than three-quarters of Americans, including clear majorities of gun owners, support expanding background checks. But some gun owners worry about regulating transfers among family members, friends, co-workers and other people they know well.
So let's come up with a system that requires checks for all gun sales but exempts transfers among family members, temporary transfers and a small set of other transactions. And let's devise a uniform set of intelligent standards, including training and clean criminal records, for a national concealed-carry system. The author wants a special class of individuals to be exempt of gun regulations, like law enforcement. The rest of us can just go unarmed.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
12/29/2013 8:12 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Like flushing all the toilets on campus at the same time, one wonders what would happen to society if every lib who wets his / her / its drawers upon seeing a gun were to all be shown one at exactly the same time...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/29/2013 8:38 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Baby steps, girls and boys. Remember how we did it with the media and the schools.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/29/2013 11:49 Comments ||
Top||
#9
For starters, it would clearly set out the rights and responsibilities of gun retailers. Advocates for stronger gun laws argue that there are a handful of bad-apple gun stores that, through incompetence, negligence and nefarious intent, lose track of tens or hundreds of guns in inventory. True.
I didn't see the part where the BATF/Federal Government/DOJ Policy was arming Mexican gangsters. Maybe Marcus wasn't so far off, except it wasn't the NRA giving weapons to the black community...
Another element would involve redefining who is prohibited from owning a gun. Under federal law, all convicted felons, domestic abusers, adjudicated mentally ill people and certain other narrow categories of people are barred, typically for life, from purchasing, borrowing or possessing guns.
What I understand is the CT nutcase was, in fact, a nutcase who killed his own mother then stole a weapon then killed those kids. I think that is already against the law.
An agency which cold calls for donations for retired LEOs, most likely a 3rd hand party, used to use the line "Well its not Mayberry anymore" well, it never was Mayberry. In fact the only places I have been to which anything resembles the fictional Hollywood storyline do not exist without heavy patrol, walls and gates, and alarms. My small town of Mayberry had my neighbor get their door handle broken off on Christmas Eve, the lock to my business jimmey'd, and x shipments of meth trafficed from Mexico pass within a horse's ride.
Anti-Semitism is the sign of profound mental and social failure -- and a harbinger of more failures and errors to come.
Key bits:
When Jon Stewart visited Egypt in the summer, he made an appearance on "Al Bernameg," a (suspended) satirical show sometimes compared to Stewart's own "The Daily Show." He dropped a joke early in the gig when Bassem Yousseff, the host of the show, asked him what he was doing with his time (Stewart was on sabbatical): "As you know, my people like to wander in the desert. It's been two weeks, I've got 50 weeks and 38 years left."
Nothing alarming, right? Well, earlier this month, Egyptian writer Amr Ammar, in a remarkable leap into the realm of tinfoil hatted hate thought, took the joke as an effort by American leaders like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stewart to conquer Egypt. The Middle East Media Research Institute translated Ammar's comments on Tahrir TV:
If you recall, when Jon Stewart visited here in Egypt, he was a guest on Bassem Youssef's show. Note what Jon Stewart said as a joke. He said: 'I am sorry I am late. I wandered in the desert, but now I've found my homeland.' That's what he said word for word -- a Jew who wandered in the desert, but, thank God, found his homeland. This man says, in the heart of Egypt and on an Egyptian media outlet, that Egypt belongs to them, that it is his homeland.
First of all, that's not what Stewart said, not even close. Second of all, it's worth underlining the point, as Jeff Goldberg hints at over at Bloomberg, that the most important thing to understand about the heated, over the top (or under the bottom) conspiracy rhetoric so prevalent in Egypt and elsewhere in the region isn't the evil and hatred behind it, sad as that is. Rather, what the prevalence of this kind of crazy thinking tells us is that Egypt isn't going to get better soon. Anti-Semitism, attributing global events to the machinations of an all-conquering Jewish conspiracy, is the sign of profound mental and social failure--and a harbinger of more failures and errors to come.
The prevalence of delusional conspiracy thinking at all levels of Egyptian intellectual and political life is a "tell" that points to important limits on Egypt's potential for political, social and economic progress. Societies in thrall to this kind of darkness are unlikely to develop the vigorous, forward looking and competent civil societies that can promote true democracy. Societies whose intellectual leaders cannot understand how power works in the modern world are unlikely to adopt policies that bring rapid economic progress. Given the power of these ideas among prominent Moslem Brüderbund officials and leaders, it should have been clear to the B.O. regime that whatever it was observing in Egypt, it was unlikely to be a "transition to democracy." At best, the Egyptian revolution was always likely to be an interregnum between despotisms; at worst there is still a chance (hopefully small) that the country could fall into the kind of chaos and violence that has become much too common across the Middle East.
You remember Caligula. John Hurt played him with creepy malignity in the old BBC production of I, Claudius. Caligula was the third emperor of Rome on a strict count (which doesn't include Julius Caesar), the fourth of the Twelve Caesars written up by the historian Suetonius.
At age 24 Caligula succeeded his great-uncle Tiberius, the second emperor. "Some are of the opinion," says Suetonius (ut quidam opinantur) that Caligula poisoned his great-uncle, then held a pillow over his face to make sure of the deed.
Whether or not this is true, Caligula made a grisly show of being emperor during his four years on the throne. He killed his adopted son, his brother, two cousins, and possibly also his grandmother. He banished his wife, boinked his sisters, and tried to make his horse a consul. Suetonius:
Continued on Page 49
[Pak Daily Times] Bilawal Baby Bhutto Zardari ...Pak dynastic politician, son of Benazir Bhutto and grandon of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. As far as is known, Bilawal has no particular talents other than being pretty and being able to memorize political slogans, but he had the good luck to be born into the right family and he hasn't been assassinated yet... kicked off what appears to be the opening shot of his active entry into the rough and tumble of Pak politics through his speech at Garhi Khuda Bukhsh on Friday at the sixth death anniversary of his mother, Benazir Bhutto ... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in... (BB).
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
12/29/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[Pak Daily Times] Ostensibly adopting a humanitarian approach to Musharraf's legal predicament that does not allow him to leave the country, the government has offered to make arrangements to bring his ailing mother to Pakistain to live with her son and be treated here. Musharraf is facing high treason charges under Article 6 of the constitution for imposing an emergency on November 3, 2007. The inclusion of his name on the Exit Control List prevents him from leaving the country. His appeal to get his name removed from the list was rejected by the Sindh High Court, which advised him to approach the government in this regard. His subsequent appeals, objecting to the creation of a special court, the selection of judges and the decision to appoint as its special prosecutor Akram Sheikh were all rejected by the Islamabad High Court. Unable to reach the special court on his first hearing due to threats to his life, Musharraf will now face the court on January 1, 2014. With the government's offer to bring his mother to Pakistain, rumours about the government's covert desire to give Musharraf a safe passage have come to a halt, at least for the moment.
In a news report, Musharraf's lawyers have been quoted as saying that the PML-N government had sent Musharraf a message asking him to leave the country quietly soon after assuming office. The offer, according to Musharraf's lawyer, was rejected by the former general. Musharraf's mother's illness was being considered the opportunity that would give Musharraf a chance to leave and live a life of exile and safety. With this new development it seems that the government has decided to allow the judicial process to take its course. The army's silence on the issue may have given the government the confidence to let things run their course.
The argument whether Musharraf is being indicted for the right reasons is still open to debate. Trying Musharraf only for the constitutional crisis that he created on November 3, 2007 is controversial. His original sin when he sent a democratically elected government packing in 1999 has been conveniently brushed under the carpet since that suits all those who had been hand-in-glove with the general to sabotage democracy. This includes the politicians, the judiciary, the army and the intelligentsia. This travesty of justice should be looked into. Musharraf's trial, if it does go on unhindered, is poised to make history and redefine the civil-military relationship.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/29/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
I managed to watch 10 torturous minutes of "Duck Dynasty" so as to catch up on the controversy.
In the tradition of American pop-theology--light on doctrine; heavy on hellfire and damnation--the ostensibly devout and "educated" Dynastic patriarch, Phil Robertson, phrased his abhorrence of homosexuality thus: Aggg, Evita Bezuidenhout speaks.
The gentleman in question has a Masters degree in education. He taught in public schools for years before his duck hunting stuff business took off. By any standard his mind ought to be considered educated without the scare quotes. As for his piety, isn't that for God to judge?
'It seems like, to me, a vagina--as a man--would be more desirable than a man's anus. 'That's just me. I'm just thinking: There's more there! She's got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I'm saying?
Continued on Page 49
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.
[Pak Daily Times] Ostensibly adopting a humanitarian approach to Musharraf's legal predicament that does not allow him to leave the country, the government has offered to make arrangements to bring his ailing mother to Pakistain to live with her son and be treated here. Musharraf is facing high treason charges under Article 6 of the constitution for imposing an emergency on November 3, 2007. The inclusion of his name on the Exit Control List prevents him from leaving the country. His appeal to get his name removed from the list was rejected by the Sindh High Court, which advised him to approach the government in this regard. His subsequent appeals, objecting to the creation of a special court, the selection of judges and the decision to appoint as its special prosecutor Akram Sheikh were all rejected by the Islamabad High Court. Unable to reach the special court on his first hearing due to threats to his life, Musharraf will now face the court on January 1, 2014. With the government's offer to bring his mother to Pakistain, rumours about the government's covert desire to give Musharraf a safe passage have come to a halt, at least for the moment.
