I mean, The Telegraph is a British MSM newspaper, right? So natural law says it ought to be filled with all kinds of barking moonbat drivel. Yet two of its recent editorials have been disturbingly . . . sane.
HERE’S AN EDITORIAL THAT ARGUES THAT CALLS A NUCLEAR-ARMED IRAN "THE SCARIEST PROSPECT OF ALL."
It goes on to point out that Iranaian leaders have been bragging about how they would use nukes to wipe out Israel and that they would have the ability to project nuclear force to European capitals, and so concludes:
The truth is that nuclear- armed ayatollahs are unacceptable in Europe, America and Israel.
It also says:
When the Israelis bombed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear
research centre at Osirak in 1981, they were universally condemned. The
Americans showed their displeasure by cancelling arms sales. But the
raid on Osirak prevented Saddam from acquiring a nuclear arsenal, a
fact that the Americans and the world fully recognised when weapons
inspectors went into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf war. If Saddam had had
nuclear weapons in 1991, it would have been impossible to dislodge him
from Kuwait. Able to intimidate Saudi Arabia, he would have had
decisive power over Middle East oil. That propsect persuaded America,
and most of the world, that Israel had done the right thing in bombing
Osirak in 1981.Unless European diplomacy
obtains real guarantees [backed up by unannounced inspections] from Iran, President Bush will soon have to
decide to do to Iran what the Israelis did to Iraq. If he decides to
attack, he will not announce it in advance: just a television broadcast
the following morning announcing a job done. The "international
community" will denounce the raid hysterically in public while
approving of it whole-heartedly in private.
Now, if that’s not amazing enough, at the bottom of the page is a link to an editorial called
THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO PROTECT OURSELVES–AND HERE’S THE PROOF (WARNING: Evil registration requirement).
What is the one way for Brits to protect themselves? Surrender to France? Disband their army as a show of good faith to the world? Give sanctions more time? Start broadcasting the Teletubbies 24 hours a day in every country in the Muslim world?
No, you’d think that these would be the kind of recommendations a British newspaper today would be making, but you’d never guess what this editorial recommends: Start letting ordinary Brits tote guns!
Yes, y’see: The idealistic 1984 society that George Orwell painted in such glowing terms for Britian has been slightly delayed (expect it in a decade or two), and so there’s not yet a security officer hiding in every closet over there. As a result, if someone attacks you–say, with an illegal weapon–then you can’t simply ask Officer Omnipresent to step out of the closet and defend you. It therefore might make sense for the ordinary people to . . . . well . . . have the ability to defend themselves. If fact, if the illegally-armed hooligans knew that even a fraction of the ordinary citizens were legally-armed then they might think twice about accosting them. In other words, violent crime might go down.
That gets to the proof alluded to in the editorial’s title: Back in 1909, ordinary Brits thwarted a terrorist attack in Tottenham because back then the populace was armed. (The police even needed to borrow pistols from passers by because they’d mislaid the key to their gun cabinet.) The article notes:
We should not fool ourselves, however, that such
things were possible then because society was more peaceful. Those
years were ones of much more social and political turbulence than our
own: with violent and incendiary suffrage protests, massive industrial
strikes where the Army was called in and people were killed, where
there was the menace of a revolutionary General Strike, and where the
country was riven by the imminent prospect of a civil war in Ireland.In such
troubled times, why did the commonplace carrying of firearms not result
in mayhem? How could it be that in the years before the First World
War, armed crime in London amounted to less than 2 per cent of what we
see today? One answer that might have been taken as self-evident then,
but which has become political anathema now, is that the prevalence of
firearms had a stabilising influence and a deterrent effect upon crime.
It also notes:
For a long time it has been possible to draw a map of
the United States showing the inverse relationship between liberal gun
laws and violent crime. At one end of the scale are the "murder
capitals" of Washington, Chicago and New York, with their gun bans (New
York City has had a theoretical general prohibition of handguns since
1911); at the other extreme, the state of Vermont, without gun laws,
and with the lowest rate of violent crime in the Union (a 13th that of
Britain). From the late Eighties, however, the relative proportions on
the map have changed radically. Prior to that time it was illegal in
much of the United States to bear arms away from the home or workplace,
but Florida set a new legislative trend in 1987, with the introduction
of "right-to-carry" permits for concealed firearms.Issue
of the new permits to law-abiding citizens was non-discretionary, and
of course aroused a furore among gun control advocates, who predicted
that blood would flow in the streets. The prediction proved false;
Florida’s homicide rate dropped, and firearms abuse by permit holders
was virtually non-existent. State after state followed Florida’s suit,
and mandatory right-to-carry policies are now in place in 35 of the
United States.Over the last 25 years the number of firearms in private hands in the
United States has more than doubled. At the same time the violent crime
rate has dropped dramatically, with the significant downswing following
the spread of right-to-carry legislation. The US Bureau of Justice
observes that "firearms-related crime has plummeted since 1993", and it
has declined also as a proportion of overall violent offences. Violent
crime in total has declined so much since 1994 that it has now reached,
the bureau states, "the lowest level ever recorded". While American
"gun culture" is still regularly the sensational subject of media
demonisation in Britain, the grim fact is that in this country we now
suffer three times the level of violent crime committed in the United
States.
So, what’s up with The Telegraph? Is it a mouthpiece for the Tory party or something? Or is it that they’re having an outbreak of the sanies over the pond?
Speaking of England, the next time someone tells you that the “Europeans” are all opposed to the death penalty, point out that if it were put to a popular vote in the UK, it would probably pass. Of course, these sophisticated Europeans are less democratic than we are, so it will never happen.
What’s a “British MSM paper?”
Mr. Akin, your observations are suprising accurate…not that I wish to infer that they ordinarily are not, just that I only recently discovered your site, so i’m ‘pleasantly’ suprised that you have the whole ‘police borrowing gun’s issue’ hilariously nailed. From what i can tell (my brother is a Police Inspector)there are many police officers that do not want to carry arms…though there are many British citizens that would be more than willing (and quite pleased that they could legally defend their property when attacked in their own homes)..but that is a whole other issue entirely!
God Bless.
Eileen: MSM = mainstream media.
ukok: Thanks!
I never could figure out why anyone was upset at Israel for doing what needed to be done in making a hole out of the nuclear plant in Iraq in ’81. As I recall the UN was complaining about nuclear proliferation as was the US and other of the western “allies”. But then I guess what they say is not necessarily what they mean, is it?
I remember that personally, I raised my fist and said “Yeah, go get ’em. Way to go.”when I heard about it.
Whit
Yes, let’s all praise one country with a nuclear program which is being conducted contrary to international treaty for having bombed another country for attempting to initiate a nuclear program which would be contrary to international treaties.
Meanwhile, let’s all sit around and wonder why the the Arab world hates us.
Mary,
They hate us because we’re infidels and think we are the root cause of all they’re problems.
The Telegraph is a Tory paper and has been so for a long time. Unfortuntately, it is not all clear whether the Tories are still a conservative party. I wonder sometimes why, in comparison to the USA, the conservative side of British life has made so little headway, given that in the 80s we had Margaret Thatcher to go with your Ronald Reagan. Part of the answer is Mrs Thatcher’s view that ‘there is no such thing as society’. But without an understanding that politics is rooted in culture, what in the end happened was that we ended up with Mr Blair and the slow destruction of the British constitution.
Another key reason for the failure of British conservatism is, I think, its failure to really take a stand against abortion. This is exemplified by the recent tragic events here when we had the married editor of ‘The Spectator’ magazine (the house journal of conservatism) involved in an affair with his deputy editor, and the result of that affair being aborted. And hardly a word has been said about the child that died as a result of these two people’s actions. With such attitudes widespread at the higher levels of British conservatism, is it any wonder it’s in a mess. Abortion corrupts whatever it touches.
“They hate us because we’re infidels and think we are the root cause of all they’re [sic]problems.”
Why is it that so many conservatives engage in the delusion that America is an innocent victim in the world. The delusion of victimhood is a trait that they usually condemn in liberals when used to advance the liberal agenda.
When a America or any other nation considers itself innocent, and denies the bad it has done, it generally projects that badness onto other countries. Such citizens only want to see the good that their nation has done and see all evils in other nations or peoples.
Then, when certain other countries are considered evil, we move into paranoia, conspiracies and scapegoating, which only leads us further down the path of delusion.
Marv, no one is saying that America is a pure and blameless nation. But to excuse the terrorists by essentially saying that we deserved it is bull. Furthermore, they hate our institutions. Zarqawi recently stated that he was fighting against democracy. Now, I’m not a fan of democracy as a means of national goverment (I prefer monarchy), but that doesn’t mean that I have the right to go blow up civilians. When we are targeted simply because of institutions like that, we are indeed the victims.
Hi Mary Wood!
The quote that you cite is not exactly illustrative of conservatives engaging in victimology. There may be instances of it, but I do not think that this is one of them. The quote is a simple statement of fact. Anyone who has watched Fahrenheit 9/11 would be hard pressed to deny that there are vast populations of people who do indeed believe that “we are the root cause of all they’re [sic] problems.” In other words the others are wallowing in their own victimhood. Pointing this out does not mean conservatives are feeling sorry for themselves.
The article reads, “The Americans showed their displeasure by cancelling arms sales.”
The American response was essentially a wink and a nod. President Reagan condemned the action publically and did delay the shipment of some fighter planes. Reagan is reported to have said, “But what a terrific piece of bombing!” I don’t think it had any long-term negative impact on U.S.-Israeli actions. The problems in Lebanon severely strained Reagan’s relationship with Israel, but that was later.
Vice President Cheney’s recent comments on Don Imus’s radio show seems to indicate that the US government is willing to wink and nod once more if Israel wants to take out Iranian nuclear programs.
I don’t agree that the bombing or the harm of civilians is justified either. However, that has not stopped US leaders from doing it when they believe it is in the US’s interest: Sherman’s March; the bombing of Dresden; and, Hiroshema & Nagasaki. In addition, our treatment of prisoners at Abu Grabe and Guantanamo, no matter how hard we try to justify it, shows that we can be just as savage as those we condemn.
Why should Iran or the Arab world trust us. We have shown ourselves to be extremely untrustworthy.
Worse than China and N. Korea?
Thanks to the Clinton DNC, China now has some 1600 warheads aimed at us, many of which can hit our cities with accuracy.
Those were Chinese who are being sought for the radiological bomb plot against Boston. And the dictator of N. Korea really is mad as a hatter.
i like how u express ur views ur a great writer!
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