Category: Current Affairs

. . . or dying, anyway.

Thus says Martin Peretz, editor of liberal think-mag The New Republic.

Among many other interesting things, he writes:

Liberals like to blame their political consultants. But then, if you depend on consultants for your motivating ideas, you are nowhere. So let’s admit it: The liberals are themselves uninspired by a vision of the good society–a problem we didn’t have 30 years ago. For several years, the liberal agenda has looked and sounded like little more than a bookkeeping exercise. We want to spend more, they less. In the end, the numbers do not clarify; they confuse. Almost no one can explain any principle behind the cost differences.

It’s much easier, more comfortable, to do the old refrains. You can easily rouse a crowd when you get it to sing, "We Shall Overcome." One of the tropes that trips off the tongues of American liberals is the civil rights theme of the ’60s. Another is that U.S. power is dangerous to others and dangerous to us. This is also a reprise from the ’60s, the late ’60s. Virtue returns, it seems, merely by mouthing the words.

For months, liberals have been peddling one disaster scenario after another, one contradictory fact somehow reinforcing another, hoping now against hope that their gloomy visions will come true.

I happen to believe that they won’t. This will not curb the liberal complaint. That complaint is not a matter of circumstance. It is a permanent affliction of the liberal mind. It is not a symptom; it is a condition. And it is a condition related to the desperate hopes liberals have vested in the United Nations. That is their lodestone. But the lodestone does not perform. It is not a magnet for the good. It performs the magic of the wicked. It is corrupt, it is pompous, it is shackled to tyrants and cynics. It does not recognize a genocide when the genocide is seen and understood by all. Liberalism now needs to be liberated from many of its own illusions and delusions. Let’s hope we still have the strength.

GET THE STORY.

Another supergenius, Charles Krauthammer, is concerned about the nigh-imminent social security crisis.

Yes, that’s right: Not only does he believe that there is a crisis, he believes it’s coming far sooner than President Bush suggested in his State of the Union address.

GET THE (FRIGHTENING) STORY.

TKS blogger Jim Geraghty is going to be moving to Turkey soon because his wife’s job is taking her there.

As a result, he’s been studying up on NATO-member Turkey, learning Turkish, etc.

In the course of his studies, he came across an interesting Wall Street Journal piece about anti-Americanism in Turkey.

Here are a few excerpts:

Among the paper’s "scoops" have been the 1,000 Israeli soldiers deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq, and that U.S. forces have been harvesting the innards of dead Iraqis for sale on the U.S. "organ market."

It’s not much better in the secular press. The mainstream Hurriyet has accused Israeli hit squads of assassinating Turkish security personnel in Mosul, and the U.S. of starting an occupation of Indonesia under the guise of humanitarian assistance. At Sabah, a columnist last fall accused the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman, of letting his "ethnic origins" — guess what, he’s Jewish — determine his behavior. Mr. Edelman is indeed the all-too-rare foreign-service officer who takes seriously his obligation to defend America’s image and interests abroad. The intellectual climate in which he’s operating has gone so mad that he actually felt compelled to organize a conference call with scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey to explain that secret U.S. nuclear testing did not cause the recent tsunami.

Never in an ostensibly friendly country have I had the impression of embassy staff so besieged. Mr. Erdogan’s office recently forbade Turkish officials from attending a reception at the ambassador’s residence in honor of the "Ecumenical" Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, who resides in Istanbul. Why? Because "ecumenical" means universal, which somehow makes it all part of a plot to carve up Turkey.

Perhaps the most bizarre anti-American story au courant in the Turkish capital is the "eighth planet" theory, which holds not only that the U.S. knows of an impending asteroid strike, but that we know it’s going to hit North America. Hence our desire to colonize the Middle East.

It all sounds loony, I know. But such stories are told in all seriousness at the most powerful dinner tables in Ankara. The common thread is that almost everything the U.S. is doing in the world — even tsunami relief — has malevolent motivations, usually with the implication that we’re acting as muscle for the Jews.

In the face of such slanders Turkish politicians have been utterly silent. In fact, Turkish parliamentarians themselves have accused the U.S. of "genocide" in Iraq, while Mr. Erdogan (who we once hoped would set for the Muslim world an example of democracy) was among the few world leaders to question the legitimacy of the Iraqi elections. When confronted, Turkish pols claim they can’t risk going against "public opinion."

GET THE STORY.

Have fun in Turkey, Jim!

REST IN PEACE, SR. LUCIA.

Based on Portugese press reports, the Scotsman is reporting that Sr. Lucia, the last surviving visionary of Fatima, has died at age 97.

Excerpts:

Sister Lucia Marto, the last of three children who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in a series of 1917 apparitions, has died, Portuguese media reported today. She was 97.

Sister Lucia, a Roman Catholic nun, had been ill for the past three months and died at the Convent of Carmelitas in Coimbra, north of Lisbon, TSF radio reported, citing family sources.

A funeral was scheduled for Tuesday, TSF reported.

GET THE (SAD) STORY.

READ MY ARTICLE ON THE THIRD SECRET OF FATIMA.

READ THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA (VATICAN DOC).

(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent this.)

UPDATE: Welcome Michelle Malkin readers. Sorry the occasion is such a sad one.

UPDATE: CATHOLIC WORLD NEWS HAS A GOOD PIECE ON SR. LUCIA AND HER PASSING.

Among other things, it mentions something I had been wondering about: the exact date of Sr. Lucia’s death. CWN is reporting that she passed on Feb. 13. The thirteenth of the month is significant for the Fatima apparitions. They first began on May 13 and recurred on the thirteenth of subsequent months. The assassination attempt on John Paul II also occurred on May 13.

Okay, there’s still too many drawbacks to Sweden for me to want to move there, but at least there’s

THIS SIGN OF HOPE.

A piece back, a Swedish pastor of a Pentecostal church made inflammatory remarks about homosexuals (among other things, he called them a cancer on society) and got slapped with Sweden’s hate-crimes law.

I would distance myself very far from the language the pastor used. It does not treat persons with homosexual temptations with the respect and compassion they deserve.

I do, however, (a) value freedom of speech–even offensive speech, (b) value freedom of religion, and (c) oppose hate crimes legislation as counterproductive and a cause of balkanizing harm to society by its special protection of some classes and not others (i.e., it’s a violation of equal justice under law).

Therefore, I am heartened to learn, though, that an appeals court overturned the conviction. It may get reinstated by the Swedish supreme court, but it’s still a hopeful sign.

GET THE STORY.

(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent this in!)

NOTE: Two points to whoever can identify the two commedians the title of this post references!

Okay, there’s still too many drawbacks to Sweden for me to want to move there, but at least there’s

THIS SIGN OF HOPE.

A piece back, a Swedish pastor of a Pentecostal church made inflammatory remarks about homosexuals (among other things, he called them a cancer on society) and got slapped with Sweden’s hate-crimes law.

I would distance myself very far from the language the pastor used. It does not treat persons with homosexual temptations with the respect and compassion they deserve.

I do, however, (a) value freedom of speech–even offensive speech, (b) value freedom of religion, and (c) oppose hate crimes legislation as counterproductive and a cause of balkanizing harm to society by its special protection of some classes and not others (i.e., it’s a violation of equal justice under law).

Therefore, I am heartened to learn, though, that an appeals court overturned the conviction. It may get reinstated by the Swedish supreme court, but it’s still a hopeful sign.

GET THE STORY.

(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent this in!)

NOTE: Two points to whoever can identify the two commedians the title of this post references!

HERE’S AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ABOUT THE PROBLEMS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS CURRENTLY FACING.

One of the interesting things about it is how much Sen. Kerry seems to disagree with what others in his party think is the problem.

He comes across as almost defiant.

RUSSIAN MOB CONTAMINATES MONEY WITH STAPH TOXIN.

(Though staph is a kind of bacterium, not a virus, as the article suggests.)

RUSSIAN MOB CONTAMINATES MONEY WITH STAPH TOXIN.

(Though staph is a kind of bacterium, not a virus, as the article suggests.)