Gee, maybe there really are some actual men left in Britain!

From the Guardian:

Dear Mr President,

Today you arrive in my country for the first state visit by an American president for many decades, and I bid you welcome.

You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world's most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable.

I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second.

Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left's idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il... and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time.
Frederick Forsyth
Novelist

America as Israel

Natan Sharansky has connected Zionism and America-bashing in a particularly convincing column in Commentary (via RealClearPolitics).

No candy today, kids

Gee, what do you know? Al Qaeda attacks Arabs too! But the secretary of the "Organization of the Islamic Conference" said the attacks in Riyadh on the living quarters of foreign workers from Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan and other Arab countries "harmed the image of Muslims and Islam. " Right. Image for whom? The American Street? You guys blew that so long ago it isn't funny. So for whom are these apologists for murderers performing now? Better get those Bush t-shirts while you can!!

Good one
Never thought I'd say this in my days of fanatic military-hating during Vietnam, but I now do understand and appreciate everything the US soldiers are doing over there in Iraq. As usual, Mark Steyn says it best:

In our time, mass slaughter occurs only in places where the West refuses to act - in the Sudan or North Korea - or acts only under the contemptible and corrupting rules of UN "peacekeeping", as at Srebrenica. In Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, technological advantage changes the moral calculus: it makes war the least worst option, the moral choice. At the 11th hour of the 11th day, we should remember those who died in the Great War, but recognise that it could never be "the war to end all wars" and never should.

Huh?
Here it is 12:30 in the morning Wednesday after the polls have closed in Kentucky and Mississippi - OK, they're on Central Time and Tallahassee's on Eastern Time - and I can't get anyone to admit that Haley Barbour has actually won the MS governor's race. Not CNN, not ABC, not even Fox, which isn't as conservative as it's portrayed. It's weird. It's like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Hey, you don't think he's hiding out in the PBS studio in Tallahassee, do you?? Nah. The Dems gave up on KY pretty early, and they were ecstatic about the black beating the Jew in Philly, but do you think they had any idea that George W and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz might have helped Haley Barbour become Governor of Mississippi? When neither Clinton nor McAuliffe nor Dean nor, God help us, Kucinich, can go south of the Mason-Dixon line at the risk of their political lives and those that they're trying to help? The Dems better consider if they can win the 2004 presidential race with Philadelphia and Vermont. 'Cause that's all they've got.

Gasp!
Looks like the San Francisco Chronicle actually has a (gulp!) conservative writing for it! This guy Adam Sparks actually quotes Rush - in a Frisco paper!! Gee, maybe the Bay Area does like to be on the cutting edge! His take on the apparent shift to Republicanism in California could have come right out of the pages of the National Review. Or maybe Reason. It's becoming clear to me that Arnold is not just any old Republican. He may steal all the lifestyle issues from the Dems, leaving them with hardscrabble Hillary- and Nader-style neo-Puritanism. That doesn't win elections. The true right wing - from Buchanan to Pat Robertson - won't like it one bit, but that's also OK with me. Welcome to the rational world of Adam Sparks, Frisco!

Laser hellos
Looks like laser weapons are going to happen, and not that far in the future. Now if they can get them to the point where they can stop an RPG in mid-flight, before the soldier even knows one's been fired, and he can wear it on his helmet without knowing it's there, we've got something.

Pour (de)courager les autres
IF this proves to be true, Khalid not-so-chic should be publicly executed, with as much mercy shown as he showed to Daniel Pearl. Several recent stories have rattled on about how Al Qaeda members have been killed or captured because of information given by Khalid. Perhaps now we see why he's been so cooperative. He's trying to weasel out of the electric chair. I don't care how much information he's given us, he still needs to die as publicly as possible, with his death connected directly to Daniel Pearl's. There will be other hostages taken in this war. The hostage takers need to have a lot to think about before they resolve to kill any more Americans.

Loud Austrians
Interesting article about the German reaction to Schwarzenegger's victory:

"simple remedies from loud Austrians who enthrall the masses"

Case in point
Why do I bother to blog, when articles like this say what I was meaning to say, but better? Well, maybe they don't get every nuance of meaning. Well, maybe actually they just reinforce the importance of me writing to clarify and expand on what they are saying. Hey, that's why I blog! So I had to add a lavalicious comment:

The fact that Arnold didn't have to go through a primary may have allowed us a look beneath the ossified structures of politics as usual to see what's percolating down there. We didn't have to wait for the every-four-years programmed volcano to erupt. The recall exposed the tectonic forces deep underground. To carry the metaphor to ridiculous lengths, two possibilities emerge: 1) the pressure has been relieved and the next primary season will reinforce the existing order or 2) the rift in the rocky shield has loosed a demon from far within the earth that will change everything forever. I know which one I hope it is.

Nostradamus had nothing on me!
Gee, did I call it or what? The blogosphere is alive with the sound of hoo-hoo hooing. Victory is sweet, sweeter than defeat. And I'm a sworn-in lawyer now too, all ready to go to work bringing in immigrants or keeping them out, whichever pays more. Say, you don't think the Governator needs a lawyer or two? Do they have any in Kali-furnia? Had a great feast with my family yesterday. Escargots and duck and chocolate. That's it, I can die now. There's still champagne, of course. Maybe I'll wait until New Year's to really celebrate.

I've noticed some comment here and there that Arnie means more than just more (R)s in 2004. Perhaps this is the start of a true sea change. Maybe Ventura was the John the Baptist (Isn't Ventura in Kali-furnia?) and the Savior who throws the money-changers out of the temple will be a true barbarian, beholden to no civilized party, who destroys, Samson-like, the pillars of the fossilized two-party structure we've all been voting for like good little lemmings for our whole lives. Er, not me. Haven't voted since Carter didn't carry through with zero-based budgeting. This speculation is not ripe enough for Conundrumization yet. I'll wait until the day before final victory.

Put a fork in him, vater!
A conundrum prediction - Schwarzenegger for Fuhrer! er, Governor! It doesn't look like the LA Times blowing its cover completely, visits from BJ and the support of labor is going to keep Gray-out in power. Is this a major development or what? Imagine if a recall had been possible in 1998 and the Repubs had gone all out to root BJ out of the White House? It wouldn't have worked. But of course Ahnold wouldn't have been running on the replacement ballot. That's a question I haven't seen answered. If (R)nold hadn't been running on the replacement ballot, would support for the recall stand up? Ah, I anticipate. We'll address that tomorrow, probably, after I get sworn in as a supporter of the Florida and Federal Constitutions.

Puzzled
I've been wondering for a while now why in the world Bush has announced his intention to go to the UN to seek some sort of resolution about the reconstruction of Iraq. The answer may have just come to me. Last week, the members of the Arab League, in a move hardly reported at all, accepted the delegate from the new Iraqi "occupation" government to attend a meeting in Cairo. When you think of it, that was a sign of astonishing progress, when everyone from the Guardian to the New York Times to Howard Dean is trying to paint Bush's Iraq after-effort as a "'quagmire" and a "miserable failure". Now maybe going to the UN is a prelude to asking the UN to accept a delegate from the new government to sit in Saddam's government's chair at the General Assembly. What a demonstration that would be to the whole world that things have changed in Baghdad for good and all. Would France and Germany and the other knee-jerk anti-American forces accept such a thing? How could they not, when the Arabs themselves have acknowledged the reality of the new government? At least it wouldn't be a fraud and a preposterous insult to have THIS Iraqi government sit on the Human Rights subcommittee.

Still Waiting
For my bar certification, that is. I assume if there were a problem, Florida would have notified me. Sigh. Maybe next week I'll hear something. New Hampshire hasn't got back to me yet, either. But they will. The good news today is that a whole week has gone by with no US military deaths in Iraq. Still think this is Vietnam, anyone? I can't hear you!? I don't think there was a week without a death in Nam for ten years. Just hope it continues for a while. After this is all over, we'll have quite a cadre of fighters trained in overturning and modernizing Arab and other Islamic cultures. Could come in handy. Darn, I hope I can find the URL to that Berlusconi interview the other day. What a guy! Who would think a European could have an actual brain AND guts! The Qaddafi quote is worth tracking it down. Off I go a-Googling.

Update

Got it. And there's another, more impressionistic piece in the same Spectator. Che uomo!! OK, so they go a bit far: "Balding, beaming, bouncing multi-billionaire"?? Somebody's forgetting he's a reporter, not a novelist. Fizzy dog, indeed.

Came back from California on Wednesday night. Still trying to digest impressions. Are impressions edible? Still, they need to be chewed over, tasted slowly and carefully. Saw Bush's speech tonight. Looks like he's staying the course in World War Four, as they're calling it.

Heh.

ILK

Yes, indeed, the Saddamites and the Assadites and the Nasserites and the Mubarakites for that matter are of the same ILK as AlQaeda. They are indeed ilkalicious. That's as much as we need to know. For being of the same ilk, they will act and think and be as one with the enemies of freedom and capitalism and science and thought itself. And they are all enemies of America. Which for me just happens to be my home and my identity and the one ideology which, needing perfection, is worth the effort. So tremble, those of the ilk. Your days are numbered and the number is not large.

This excellent article properly identifies Islam as a Christian heresy. (!) It also raises Ayn Rand's point that everything is guided by philosophy. And it points out that all cultures are based on religions. Multiculturalism as practiced in America today, then, is shown to be based on wrong perceptions. The new idea that everyone should come to America and keep the culture they had at home just doesn't work. For America is itself a culture, the greatest and most liberating in the history of man. To expect an Arab Muslim to come to America, to keep all the tenets of his original culture, based on Islam, and to subscribe to the philosophical tenets of American life is to expect something as impossible as that he should be a devout Muslim and a practicing Communist at the same time. Multiculturalism is the denial of America and capitalism as a new and real and worthwhile philosophy. It is therefore an attack on America as surely as the 9/11/2001 attacks were.

The realization of this basic opposition between other cultures and America's way of life requires realization that some cultures, some philosophies, even some religions, are wrong. I'll wait for the horrified gasps to die down and repeat that in another way: America's way of life has been shown to be appropriate for American circumstances. Any changes to our way of life have to prove themselves in the same way our existing cultural philosophy has: by making life better and more free. This is not always a clear standard, I admit. A fervent Islamist may say that he doesn't need or want three VCRs, a car and whisky on tap. He's satisfied with a prayer rug, a copy of the Koran and a crust of bread every day or so. Fine. He can have those things. But he cannot come to America and demand that we should all accept that standard of living, on pain of death. If he insists, violently, I cannot put it better than a lieutenant colonel in the Army put it when talking to Iraqi whiners: Obey your country's laws or we will hunt you down and we will kill you.

Finally
Boy, am I glad that Rachel Lucas finally made it out of undergraduate school and bought a house. Now if she would only get married already and have a few kids, she could join Lileks in kid hell and learn what never sleeping is really like. What was she doing all those years that made it so hard to get a BA at thirty-one or whatever she is? I shouldn't ask. I was a few years late myself, but at least I don't have any dogs. Now my kids are older and I can do interesting things like get behind Arnold. I'm taking the kids out to California for my nephew's wedding - supposedly - right in the middle of the recall campaign. As a confirmed political junkie, I'm looking forward to attending an Arnold rally in Frisco. I was walking through Goodwill looking, as I always do, for books, and what should fall off the shelves into my hands but "Arnold, the Education of a Bodybuilder", from 1975 or so, giving all the details, with many pictures, of Schwarzenegger's incredibly driven and disciplined march to fame and glory. This guy never does anything unless he thinks he can win. He's been like that since the age of 15. You know what else is weird? The last time I went on a trip anywhere was December of 2000, when I went to the Middle East. And that was right in the middle of the last interesting election campaign, the Bush-Gore idiocy. I found out the results on the steps of the Egyptian Museum just off Midan al-Tahrir in Cairo. Some of the locals, realizing I was American, asked me, "Are you for Al-Gore or Al-Bush??" So, trying not to laugh, I said Bush and this guy said, "He won, sir!", pointing to a newspaper that had just come out. Made my day. Little did I realize how important it would turn out to be. Heck, I didn't even vote. Shame on me. Gee, if I had voted, Bush would have won outright? Right? Right! But for Arnold I might actually vote.

Ayn Rand, Victor Hugo and gay marriage
In her introduction to "93", Ayn Rand says:

Have you ever wondered what they felt, those first men of the Renaissance, when - emerging from the long nightmare of the Middle Ages, having seen nothing but the deformed monstrosities and gargoyles of Medieval art as the only reflection of man's soul - they took a new, free, unobstructed look at the world and rediscovered the statues of Greek gods, forgotten under piles of rubble?

Well, if you have, you know what it was like to be 21 in 1969, as I was. Everything old was passé. Everything new was either sanpaku or groovy. And I really thought I knew which was which. But now I'm 55. And there's too much new stuff, darn it. Gary Coleman and Schwarzenegger are running for governor of California. And I can't figure out if that's groovy or plain nuts. And gay "marriage" is just plain nuts. Oh, I know. I've bantered back and forth with Andrew Sullivan about this. He thinks two men are the same as a man and a woman. OK. Or, rather, what are you talking about? Sometimes I think the difference between those who think obviously that two men have the "right" to set up housekeeping with the full sanction of the state and the support of the taxpayers, with the IRS pointing a gun at working men to get them to contribute to these two freaks who think one of them is a woman or close enough so it doesn't matter. And I start to wonder. Am I nuts? Is there really after all no difference at all between men and women? Between two men who want health insurance and a man and a woman who want to join the line of descent from Adam and Caesar and Alexander and DaVinci and Buonarotti and produce descendants to enrich the history of man on earth? Is that an ignoble ambition, to contribute to the legend of humanity? Is it just the same as two men or two women who want to spend their lives having counterfeit sex and deluding themselves into thinking they're ENTITLED to other people's money?
A thousand years from now who will remember the gay marriages? But a descendant of 3003 can follow the records back, can see who gave birth to whom, who nurtured whom, whether they did a good or lousy job. How? By whether their descendants survived and prospered. And every "couple" who rejected history and the future will be rejected by them.