WHAT IF CONSERVATIVES BEHAVED LIKE MOSLEMS?
Last month, the student newspaper of Australia's National University, Woroni, was banned from publishing a satire of Islam. It was clear why school authorities did so: to avoid, as reported by the Canberra Times, "the potential for violent backlash." We could go on forever citing examples of people capitulating to Moslem threats of violence. You'll get death threats for saying Islam is a religion of violence. It is sickeningly, disgustingly immoral - and true. Islam really in fact and undeniably is a religion of threats, violence, and murder. It is an established tradition in Islam that an apostate (a Moslem who renounces Islam and converts to another religion) should and must be put to death in the name of Allah. Here's what's also true. The threats work, the violence works. People are intimidated, from university administrators to politicians to intellectuals to newspaper and magazine editors. Instead of rising up and beating Moslems issuing threats over their head with a baseball bat, or telling them to STFU and stick their fascist Koran up their nose, they cringe and capitulate. Violence works. Threats work. Intimidation works. It works so well that it could get conservatives to wondering if it would work for them.
WALLS WORK
Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal is a journalist for whose judgment and integrity I have great respect. So I was embarrassed for him when he wrote June 19 that building a fence along our border with Mexico "would be America's Berlin Wall-a historic embarrassment." The Berlin Wall was built to keep East Germans from getting out, not to keep West Germans from coming in. But the more fundamental problem with Mr. Henninger's grossly offensive analogy is that the Berlin Wall worked. Walls work. The Romans figured that out 2,000 years ago and the Israelis have today. Here's how and why they'd work for us.
I DISSENT
[Note: Yesterday, June 26, the Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Windsor, ruling 5-4 that DOMA, The Defense of Marriage Act, is unconstitutional. Justice Kennedy provided the decisive vote, siding with the Court's four dependably liberal justices, Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia dissented. The link above is to the Pdf file of the entire decision, which is where the Scalia dissent is to be found. TTP here presents, as a public service, the extraordinary dissent of Justice Scalia in its entirety, of over 8,000 words, in easily readable form. It is quite possibly the most blistering, scathing moral denunciation of a majority opinion by a dissenting justice in Supreme Court history. He condemns the Court majority for "formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency," for accusing "the Congress that enacted this (Defense of Marriage) law and the President who signed it of... act(ing) with malice - with the ‘purpose to disparage and injure' same-sex couples." Scalia is stunned by the majority's vitriol at "simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence-indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race." This is a brilliant exercise in judicial, constitutional, and moral reasoning. It is worth reading entire. -JW] This case is about power in several respects. It is about the power of our people to govern themselves, and the power of this Court to pronounce the law. Today's opinion aggrandizes the latter, with the predictable consequence of diminishing the former. We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. The Court's errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America.
THE SENATE REPUBLICANS’ GANG OF IDIOTS
If you want to know what's wrong with the Republican Party wrapped up in one pretty package, all you have to do is look at the latest amnesty disaster that was created by a gang of Republican idiots in the Senate. Marco Rubio, John McCain, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, Bob Corker, John Hoeven, Kelly Ayotte, Dean Heller and the rest of the braindead Senate Republican buffoons who have supported this bill are the living personification of the words, "Stuck on Stupid." They picked the wrong issue, at the wrong time, did it the wrong way, and set it up so that no matter what happens, the Republican Party is doomed to get kicked in the teeth. Why does the Republican Party lose elections? Because they do things like this:
MAYBE WE WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF NATURAL GAS
Coal, oil and natural gas are "fossil" fuels, right? They are derived from ancient life-forms and are nonrenewable, stored energy, extracted from prehistoric sunlight. In the case of coal and most oil, this is obviously true: You can find fossil tree trunks and leaves in coal seams and chemicals in oil that come from plankton. But there's increasing doubt about whether all natural gas (which is 90% methane) comes from fermented fossil microbes. Some of it may be made by chemical processes deep within the earth. If so, the implications could be profound for the climate and energy debates. It may be that we will never run out of natural gas. There may be a literally inexhaustible supply of it. Who needs "renewable" energy any more?
FLEAS, BUGS, AND ULTIMATE PARASITES
San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands. It is odd to be on a small volcanic island on the equator in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles west of Ecuador, for a meeting of economists and a few other academics and think-tank types. One of the lesser purposes of the meeting is to discuss what we can learn from natural selection and animal behavior that might have relevance for the world economy and modern societies. And no, this is not a government boondoggle. We are a bunch of limited-government, free-market types, here on our own tab and not burdening any taxpayer with our eccentricities. When Charles Darwin first landed here back in 1835, he was struck by the many indigenous animal and plant species, and specialization of the animals in order to best prosper. The variations in rainfall, from island to island and within an island, determine what plants grow where, which, in turn, determine which animals use them for food and shelter. Even the tortoises vary from one island to another, depending on the food source. The animals have had hundreds, if not thousands, of generations to evolve and exploit the food and terrain available. Humans, more specifically Americans, have had only three generations to adapt to the Internal Revenue Service. We need to adapt evolutionary defenses against it.
THE INSANITY OF AMNESTY AT ALL COSTS
Just like they did with Obamacare, some in Congress intend to "Pelosi" the amnesty bill. They'll pass it in order to find out what's in it. And just like the unpopular, unaffordable Obamacare disaster, this pandering, rewarding-the-rule-breakers, still-no-border-security, special-interests-ridden, 24-lb disaster of a bill is not supported by informed Americans. I am an ardent supporter of legal immigration. I'm proud that our country is so desirable that it has been a melting pot making a diverse people united as the most exceptional nation on earth for over two centuries. But I join every American with an ounce of common sense insisting that any discussion about immigration must center on a secure border. The amnesty bill before the Senate is completely toothless on border security. If this bill was genuinely concerned with border security, it might include practical solutions for those states that live with the problem every single day. Pass-through grants could be given to border states to actually build a fence. Free up more federal lands along the border to be privatized. There are plenty of other commonsense solutions, but this bill isn't about fixing problems; it's about amnesty at all costs. What's more, passing this bill with an unsecured border and within a growing welfare state under Barack Obama is economic insanity.
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/21/13
Tweet, tweet! As of yesterday (6/20), thanks to Miko, TTP is on Twitter: @2thepointnews. Or click on the Twitter icon in the right side bar. Now you can tweet your favorite quotes from or link to any TTP article to any of your followers. Tweet and Retweet away! There is so much to Tweet about this week. Marco Rubio morphing into Charlie Crist. Zero stepping deep in two cowpies. Sarah Palin is back! Dems defeating their precious trillion dollar Food Stamp bill. Dems crying over their prospects all the way to 2022. Technology protecting us from the Surveillance State. The EPA failing to fault fracking. And there's more. We'll end with a story appropriate to today: June 21st, the Summer Solstice (in the northern hemisphere). No, it's not about flower-bewreathed New Agers communing with the Druids at Stonehenge. It's about one of the most extraordinary geniuses in history you may have never heard of.
THE GLOBAL THREAT OF OUR TIME
"Peace with justice means refusing to condemn our children to a harsher, less hospitable planet. The effort to slow climate change requires bold action... With a global middle class consuming more energy every day, this must now be an effort of all nations, not just some. For the grim alternative affects all nations -- more severe storms, more famine and floods, new waves of refugees, coastlines that vanish, oceans that rise. This is the future we must avert. This is the global threat of our time. And for the sake of future generations, our generation must move toward a global compact to confront a changing climate before it is too late. That is our job. That is our task. We have to get to work." --President Zero, Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Germany, June 19, 2013There is a great deal of sniggering about Zero's pathetic Brandenburg Gate speech yesterday (6/19). The headline in the British London Telegraph summed it up: "Barack Obama Bombs in Berlin - A Weak, Underwhelming Address from a Floundering President." Or, as the New York Post more pithily and succinctly described it: "Mush from the Wimp." Chrissie Tingle-leg Matthews blamed it on the sun shining on the TOTUS. The above quote from the speech does, however, serve a vital purpose: it focuses our attention on "the global threat of our time." Which is...
THE BETRAYAL OF TRUST
Trust is at the same time a fundamental necessity and by-product of a free society. A free society requires trust to function, and there are incentives to act in trustworthy ways in a free society. Without trust our way of life would be impossible. The breakdown of trust is the most troublesome effect of the continual growth and intrusion of our government into our businesses, our beliefs, and our personal lives. There are always corrupt politicians and rotten people in government. And there is an acceptance of a certain degree of waste and abuse of power - it's just inevitable with government. But up until now, there has been a basic human trust that has been a part of America's moral fabric, that includes all people - even those in government. Today we are losing it, and fast. Is there any way to get it -- a government we can trust -- back?