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Regarding Belief

For all the problems associated with belief in G-d, the death of G-d leads to far more of them.

    - Dennis Prager

Capitalism

“Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude. People ask, ‘Why is there poverty in the world?’ It’s a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition... The interesting question isn’t ‘Why is there poverty?’ It’s ‘Why is there wealth?’ Or: ‘Why is there prosperity here but not there?’ At the end of the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own... In large measure our wealth isn’t the product of capitalism, it is capitalism. And yet we hate it. Leaving religion out of it, no idea has given more to humanity. The average working-class person today is richer, in real terms, than the average prince or potentate of 300 years ago. His food is better, his life longer, his health better, his menu of entertainments vastly more diverse, his toilette infinitely more civilized. And yet we constantly hear how cruel capitalism is while this collectivism or that is more loving because, unlike capitalism, collectivism is about the group, not the individual... Meanwhile, billions have ridden capitalism out of poverty. And yet the children of capitalism still whine.”

 - Jonah Goldberg

Many have argued that capitalism does not offer a satisfactory moral message. But that is like saying that calculus does not contain carbohydrates, amino acids, or other essential nutrients. Everything fails by irrevelant standards.

- Thomas Sowell

A Word of Advice for Kuntar

...a small word of advice for Samir Kuntar. Ask your comrades in the PLO and Hizbullah what was the ultimate fate of various killers of Israelis and Jews years after they thought their actions were forgotten; for example, what happened to the killers of our athletes in Munich and their masterminds – the last of them died in unnatural circumstances 24 years after that horrific massacre. So learn from the past and draw your conclusions. - Ron Ben-Yishai

Whose Fault?

Self-Made Nakba
It has become fashionable to match the celebration of Israel's founding with Palestinians' marking of their 1948 "nakba," or catastrophe. Yet whose fault is it that they didn't use those six decades constructively? And who killed the independent Palestinian state alongside Israel that was part of the partition plan? Answer: The Arab states and Palestinian leadership themselves. In rejecting partition, in demanding everything and starting a war it could not win, the Arab side ensured endless conflict, the Palestinian refugee issue, and no Palestine. Yet 60 years later, the Arab side has the hutzpa to complain - and a good part of the Western media echo - that they were Israel's victims in 1948. - Barry Rubin(Jerusalem Post)

He Had Me at "Tired Argument"

"Some people suggest that if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away," Bush said in his prepared address. "This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of our enemies, and America rejects it utterly. Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you."

"The killers claim the mantle of Islam, but they are not religious men," Bush said. "No one who prays to the God of Abraham could strap a suicide vest to an innocent child, or blow up guiltless guests at a Passover Seder, or fly planes into office buildings filled with unsuspecting workers."

Bush said that those who carry out such violent acts are serving only their own desire for power.

"They accept no God before themselves. And they reserve a special hatred for the most ardent defenders of liberty, including Americans and Israelis," Bush said. "That is why the founding charter of Hamas calls for the `elimination' of Israel. That is why the followers of Hezbollah chant `Death to Israel, Death to America!' That is why Osama bin Laden teaches that `the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the biggest duties.' And that is why the president of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map."

- President George W. Bush

You Tell Em, Mister

I will be Hamas’ worst nightmare.

                - Senator John McCain

A Question

Democrats should...ask themselves how a party of supposed racial transcendence inevitably ended up with primaries predicated along hardening racial lines, and a unity, trans-racial candidate who for twenty years was intimate with a pastor and spiritual advisor who seems to have derided almost everyone and everything, from America, to Italians, to Jews and Israel, to whites and moderate blacks, with serial slurs worthy of a Don Imus or Michael Richards. - Victor Davis Hanson 

Asymmetric Warfare

Call me naive, and I’m certainly not trying to be flip, but I’ve never quite understood all the fuss about asymmetric warfare. We have a state of affairs today in which two countries, Iran and Syria, wage war against their western enemies not through the legitimate use of uniformed armies, but through the funding, arming, and organizing of proxy militias and terrorist networks. What obviously engendered this strategy was the knowledge in Tehran and Damascus that conventional armies would be incapable of confronting western powers on the battlefield; and the obvious reason why the asymmetric strategy works so effectively is because it strikes at the heart of western ambivalence about the use of military power, especially against enemies who operate in defiance of the tactics that our foreign policy and military doctrines — and our moral sensibilities — have been adapted over centuries to confront. - Noah Pollak

Husband had some work to do, and I was able to access the internet. Looks like he's finishing up - back later.

She can’t club Bambi now or else she’ll look desperate, but she couldn’t club Bambi last year when she was ahead or else she would have looked mean and … Hillary-ish. This is why I fear Obama so much more than her in the general: There’s never a good time to club Bambi. - - Allahpundit

Disengaging from the Middle East would leave in place the dynamic in which Islam is seen as the alternative to corruption and oppression, and in which the US is blamed for not promoting democracy in an even-handed manner.  Energy independence could accelerate the rise of politicized Islam, and US withdrawal would increase the risk of conflict between other nations destabilizing the global economy.

Once the alternatives are considered, the Bush Doctrine looks like neo-Realism.  Old school US foreign policy Realism is one reason we face the risky situation in the Middle East...  Dealing with that world requires realism in facing up to that fact, and recognizing what it means in a world with a global economy and increasingly global infosphere.  Realism requires a recognition that we cannot run away from the problem, even when doing something about it may be very difficult.

- Karl

Obama is completely and utterly wrong about Iraq. He is completely and utterly wrong in his conciliatory approach to Iran. He gives me no confidence that he would ever be able to handle the responsibilities of Head of State, during these dangerous times. In fact he gives me great cause for concern, even fear, that he is exactly the opposite of the type of Head of State that the US needs for these troubling times.

Change is not a platform. Hope is not security. It may make you feel good, it may allow your imagination to cure all that ails you, but it’s not good for the country. - Oceanguy

You have heard me say before that for all my reputation as a maverick, I have only found true happiness in serving a cause greater than my self-interest. For me, that cause has always been our country, and the ideals that have made us great. I have been her imperfect servant for many years, and I have made many mistakes. You can attest to that, but need not. For I know them well myself. But I love her deeply and I will never, never tire of the honor of serving her. I cannot do that without your counsel and support. And I am grateful, very grateful, that you have given me this opportunity to ask for it.

                          - Senator John McCain

Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all. - John Bolton

In the 72 hours prior to yesterday's Annapolis conference, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired six Kassam rockets and over a dozen mortar shells at Israeli towns and cities throughout the Negev.

Jerusalem was placed on high alert on Sunday, with roadblocks and checkpoints set up at the various entrances to the city, after intelligence reports indicated that two terrorists were on their way to the capital to carry out a mass attack.

And in Hebron, a young Palestinian armed with a knife was caught at the Tomb of the Patriarchs planning to stab the first Jew he could find.

Phew -- after all those decades of bloodshed, it sure sounds like reconciliation is finally at hand.

...If our Arab foes won't shake hands with us and won't even recognize us, then what are the chances that they will truly wish to live in peace with us? Or, as Alice herself put it, "It's the stupidest tea party I ever was at in all my life!"  -Michael Freund

The Perils of Engagement - Jeff Robbins (Wall Street Journal)

• If history is any guide, next week's meeting in Annapolis will yield unsatisfactory results, Israel will be blamed for failing to make the requisite concessions, and the Bush administration will be criticized for its "failure to engage." The problem is that all too often, those who blame the U.S. for failing to deliver Mideast peace are some of the world's most culpable enablers of Mideast violence - and those who are themselves actually responsible for erecting the fundamental roadblocks to a resolution of the conflict.
• It was the Arab bloc, including the Palestinian leadership, that decided to reject the UN's 1947 partition of Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, living side by side. Instead it invaded the nascent Jewish state rather than coexist with it, spawning the conflict that has so burdened the world for the last 60 years.
• We are also not responsible for the Arab world's choice not to create a Palestinian Arab state in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, when it easily could have done so - before there were any Jewish settlements there to serve as the public object of Arab grievance.
• Nor can the U.S. government under President Clinton be criticized for failing to pursue Yasser Arafat with sufficient solicitude between 1993 and late 2000. The Clinton administration was, after all, the most ardent of suitors of the Palestinian leader - only to be forced to watch Arafat reject an independent Palestinian state in all of Gaza and virtually all of the West Bank.
• It was the Palestinian leadership, not the U.S., that decided in the fall of 2000 that, rather than accept an independent Palestinian state, its wiser course was to launch a four-year bombing campaign against Israel's civilian population. The result was not merely over 1,100 Israeli civilians killed, but several thousand Palestinians dead, as well as a shattered Palestinian economy and the decision by Israel to begin construction of a security barrier in July 2002.
• When Israel withdrew from all of Gaza in 2005, the Arab world had the opportunity for a fresh start there - to create a measure of hope for a population whose suffering long predated any Israeli presence. Instead, the Hamas-dominated Palestinian leadership opted to begin and then intensify an aggressive missile-launching campaign against Israeli civilian centers.
• Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, whose treasuries overflow with petrodollars, are in a position to invest heavily in Gaza, create economic opportunities for its destitute population, and dilute the toxin-filled atmosphere there. They have not done so. The Egyptians are in a position to act decisively to stop the flow of rockets, bombs and other arms from Egypt into Gaza, where they are used to attack Israeli civilians. They have not done so.

  The writer was a U.S. Delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission during the Clinton administration.

Show me one text of Palestinian history, or any book on their literature, their politics, their sports, their customs, their dress, their recipes, their jokes, etc, written before the 1970s. Where is there a book on the poetry of Palestine, on their legends, their children’s fables, their songs? Is it possible for a unique people to exist who do not leave a record of themselves in some such way? But in fact, that record only came into being after 1967 when Israel conquered the territories. Only then did the Arabs of the area first begin to speak of themselves as Palestinians, as a unique people deprived of their nation. - A comment on a must-read post

The key to Arab-Israeli peace is not Palestinian statehood. It is to compel the Arab world to abandon its dream of liquidating Israel. As a matter of national self-respect, Olmert should repeat his demand that the Palestinians acknowledge Israel's Jewish identity - and make it nonnegotiable. If Israel cannot insist even on so fundamental a point of honor, it has already lost more than it knows. - Jeff Jacoby

A wartime public illiterate about the conflicts of the past can easily find itself paralyzed in the acrimony of the present. Without standards of historical comparison, it will prove ill equipped to make informed judgments. Neither our politicians nor most of our citizens seem to recall the incompetence and terrible decisions that, in December 1777, December 1941, and November 1950, led to massive American casualties and, for a time, public despair. So it’s no surprise that today so many seem to think that the violence in Iraq is unprecedented in our history. Roughly 3,000 combat dead in Iraq in some four years of fighting is, of course, a terrible thing. And it has provoked national outrage to the point of considering withdrawal and defeat, as we still bicker over up-armored Humvees and proper troop levels. But a previous generation considered Okinawa a stunning American victory, and prepared to follow it with an invasion of the Japanese mainland itself—despite losing, in a little over two months, four times as many Americans as we have lost in Iraq, casualties of faulty intelligence, poor generalship, and suicidal head-on assaults against fortified positions. - Victor Davis Hanson

Is Europe Giving in (yet again) to Fascism?

...civilizations collapse not because the barbarians are so strong, but because they themselves are so morally enfeebled. - Theodore Dalrymple

I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think and a tragedy to those that feel... - Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Oxford

Whether or not America should have a moral war policy, self-absorbed boomers could at least stop deluding themselves that they have a moral peace policy.  - Mark Steyn

Regarding the Clintons Making Goo-Goo Eyes

I so agree that the Clinton's current cooing is such a turn-off.   Can you imagine Margaret Thatcher and Dennis making goo-goo eyes at each other?  Of course not  Hillary either plays it girl-y when she is with Big Bill or school marmish when she is being a self-righteous policy wonk, and both can hit the wrong note.   What I  think is the best stance for female politicians who want to be leaders is to be lady-like and dignified.  That certainly was good enough for Thatcher.   - Myrna Blyth

Myths and Realities of the George W. Bush Presidency

I think that President Bush has got one thing very much right, which is that Arab-Islamic terrorism is a symptom that something is rotten in the Middle East. If anything, his failures in Iraq and Palestine are due to underestimating the degree of rot. For all the allegations of his lack of intellect, George Bush is a brainiac compared to people who want to see terrorism as a symptom of something rotten in the United States or Israel. - Arnold Kling

You hire Presidents, at a minimum, to run the country well enough that you don’t have to think about it, and, at a maximum, to draw the country together to meet great challenges you can’t avoid thinking about.” - Newt Gingrich, criticizing President Bush

Create your own Scratch Ticket

The 6-Day War

The world will soon be awash with 40th-anniversary retrospectives on the war — and on the peace of the ages that awaits if Israel would only return to June 4, 1967. But Israelis are cautious. They remember the terror of that unbearable May when, with Israel possessing no occupied territories whatsoever, the entire Arab world was furiously preparing Israel’s imminent extinction. And the world did nothing.
- Charles Krauthammer

Click the Link and Read the Whole Thing

We in The West try very hard to keep from thinking about conquering anything. Some of us are even ashamed that our culture is so successful and powerful that most of the conquest we do these days is of the non-violent, social and cultural kind. There are any number of leftists who speak of western “cultural hegemony” as if it were a bad thing. They bemoan the loss of native cultures and the metastasization of Hollywood product around the globe while ignoring that fact that the reason why it is happening is that our culture is dominant for good reasons- it offers better protection for the less powerful and it provides better economic opportunity than any other. It is fine for leftists and progressives to bemoan the spread of democracy and capitalism but precious few of them would want to live under any of the alternatives. It is, still, a conquer or be conquered world but we are so used to having our own way and becoming dominant wherever in the world we happen to be that we have forgotten how hard the fight for survival can be and how quickly it can turn desperate. We really need to keep reminding ourselves that just because we no longer have the urge to conquer that no one else does. - Yaacov Ben Moshe

Quote of the Day

“I got beat up by girls all the time [when I was a kid]. They literally posted a sign-up sheet and would take turns. I think that’s why I’ve always been such a fan of Mencken’s line, ‘Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.’ I’ve been afflicted.” —MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann **“It’s been said that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. Apparently a liberal is someone who’s been mugged by little girls.” —James Taranto

Perhaps voters next year, chastened by Mr. Bush's dangerous boldness, will opt for someone more risk-averse. But if a crisis arises and the president proves unable to lead, they may find themselves longing for Mr. Bush's steadfastness. An excess of caution is itself a form of recklessness.

-James Taranto

The lie is a specific evil which man has introduced into nature.  All our deeds of violence and our misdeeds are only as it were a highly-bred development of what this and that creature of nature is able to achieve in its own way.  But the lie is our very own invention, different in kind from every deceit that the animals can produce.  A lie was possible only after a creature, man, was capable of conceiving the being of truth.  It was possible only as directed against the conceived truth.  In a lie the spirit practices treason against itself.
- Martin Buber, Good and Evil, pg. 7

According to the U.N. Charter, the secretary general is the institution's "chief administrative officer" -- not its chief moralizer...[Kofi] Annan's proclivities were not ultimately helpful to the world body. If he had spent less time moralizing and more time doing his day job, the United Nations may have been spared the oil-for-food scandal, procurement fraud and widespread sexual exploitation and abuse by its peacekeepers. - John Bolton

Click here for the source of the quote above, as well as Bolton's initial opinion regarding the new UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon.

Great Writing

AndyJ says, "Does time have a beginning and end (with corresponding religious concerns) or is it a large albeit convoluted loop?

Jeez, AndyJ, I don't smoke pot any more, so how do you expect me to answer a question like that?

I do know that lots of reactions only work in one direction, so you're not going to run time backwards, as fun as that would be: worms gather bits of dirt into their anus, run it through their stomachs and assemble it into decayed flesh, and then slowly build a person in a box underground. A crowd of sad people gather, weeping, and raise the box out of the ground. The box is taken to a mortuary where the poor craftmenship of the worms is removed, and then the body is sent to a hospital for reanimation by a doctor.

And so you are born, full of memories must be unlearned, events that must be undone. You grow younger, into the prime of your life, stronger and fuller as your wrinkles dissolve away....and then the slide into darkness begins: you shrink in size, and when you are finally small enough to fit, you are placed back into your mother's womb to be reabsorbed by her flesh. All life spirals back into the past, growing less complex, more closely related, until all life disappears forever. The universe shrinks, grows hotter, until all of everything is compressed out of existence, leaving no time, no space.

I know it sounds great, but I don't think it works that way.

- Draftervoi

What is Judaism?  It is one continuous sacred text, founded on the written Torah (or Bible) and the spoken Torah (or Talmud), continuing through several millennia's worth of discussion and commentary laid in translucent leaves over the foundation.  One generation's work of study and understanding never obscures, only colors, the previous generation's.  Israel developed its religion by successive glazes. You are always catching glimpses - as if you were a scuba diver gazing downward at submerged ancient cities - of older worlds beneath the surface. 

-David Gelernter, Commentary, May 2002

No One to Blame But Ourselves

Truth:

America is the world's hyperpower. No other nation or group of nations can challenge us militarily or economically. Unlike sickly Europe, we are growing, not contracting. But we are about to be defeated in Iraq by a few thousand cutthroats.

How did this happen? It's simple: The only thing powerful enough to defeat us is ourselves, and we've done it.
- Mona Charen

Aged 18, I came to Terezin in February 1943, number CV 306. Before that, I had been retained in Prague by 'treuhandstelle' - a Nazi front company for the organised robbery of Jewish house-holds - to repair furniture, pianos and other stolen objects. In the winter of 1943, I was sent with 247 men from Terezin to an 'aussenarbeitskommando' near Wulkow, about 100 km east of Berlin, for building work. As the front grew closer, the group was transported back to Terezin for the last months of the war.

The conditions in the ghetto are well known and documented. What deserves further study is the story of the cultural, intellectual and artistic life which existed there, in spite of the population being constantly in transit.

Through Terezin passed top scientists, artists, architects, composers, writers, poets from many parts of Nazi-conquered Europe. In the dust-laden lofts of the barracks, one could hear lectures ranging from the script of Sumer (Professor Woskin-Nahartabi), to the history of art (Gustav Schwarzkopf), to language courses of French, Hebrew and Spanish. There was chamber music, choir and opera (Gideon Klein, Rafael Schachter, Karel Ancerl), the first performance of the children’s opera ‘Brundibar’ (Hans Krasa, Frantisek Zelenka),even a satirical cabaret (Svenk). Among the painters were Ungar, Fritta, Petr Kien, Leo Haas, Karel Fleischmann, and among the writers Norbert Fryd and Karel Polacek.

Few of these survived. But the beauty of their work, and the fact that they were able to carry it out at all, should never be forgotten.

- Bertold Hornung

I understand that there’s a gentleman’s agreement among national leaders not to knock each other off. That’s fine for them, but it’s not so great for the rest of us. Eventually, after all, it’s everybody else who dies when wars break out, even though it’s people like Kim Jong-Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Bashar Al-Assad, who leave the world a far better place simply by leaving it.
- Bert Prelutsky