Month: February 2007

Another one.

Most Americans think atheists have no place in the public office as well. Whatever you say about Romney, he’s done the polling. And the polling alone will tell you what his positions are. I know he’s being trashed at the moment – but a man with these few principles, capable at management and adept at pandering? He’s got a golden future in politics.

The New York Sun piece that argued that military casualties in the Clinton years compared unfavorably with military deaths in Iraq under president Bush is based on data that can be found here (PDF). As I suspected, almost all the deaths are either from illness, accident, suicide, or homicide. A total of 59 were caused by enemy action from 1993 – 1999. It is perfectly possible to make an intellectually honest case that the media pay too much attention to military deaths in wartime. Alicia Colon didn’t manage it.

Glasgow, Scotland, noon.

Michael Medved sees the good side of the basketball player:

Recent comments by retired basketball star Tim (‘I hate gay people’) Hardaway did serious damage to his image and career but also unwittingly raised serious cultural issues about sexuality and gender. Hardaway appropriately apologized for his harsh remarks, but many (if not most) Americans no doubt share his instinctive reluctance to share showers and locker rooms with open homosexuals…

When Hardaway says ‘I hate gay people’ what he suggests at the deepest level is that he feels revolted by the very notion of same-sex eroticism and that he’d prefer not to face the distraction of such thoughts in the locker room or on the court. In this sense, the reluctance to team (in athletics or the military) with announced homosexuals isn’t bigotry, it’s common sense.

I notice that nowhere in his column does Medved criticize an expression of hatred for homosexuals. It was the harshness of its expression he objected to.

A group of Persian intellectuals in the country and in exile have published an open letter taking the Tehran regime to task for its disgusting conference on the Jewish Holocaust. It’s an encouraging read. Money quote:

Forgotten amongst all the sensationalism in the Iranian media accompanying the conference, was the bitter reality that the undermining or denial of human suffering for the sake of making political points – whatever they might be – will inevitably lead to moral degeneration: a moral degeneration that makes any judgment on the wrongfulness of the murder of the innocent dependent upon its political reverberations; a moral degeneration where by questioning the number of the victims, it fails to realize that "whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind".

Underneath the poisonous regime, there is hope in Persia.

A reader reprimands:

I may be wrong, but my understanding of ‘bigotry’ was an out-and-out hatred of a group of people. I don’t sense this in Romney’s quote. I sense ridiculousness, studipidity, and a certain amount of religious chauvinism, but not bigotry. I worry about semantic leak. Strong words should be reserved for the strong situations/people/sentiments to which they apply. Romney’s opinion on this matter is silly and tiresome, but it is a far cry from bigotry.

My online dictionary defines "bigotry" as "intolerance toward those who hold different opinions than oneself." "Chauvinism" is defined as "excessive or prejudiced loyalty for one’s own group, cause or gender." Maybe bigotry is what the victim of chauvinism thinks of the chauvinist. Or maybe we need a word that can somehow bridge the gap between the two. But, on reflection, I think the reader is closer to the truth than my first stab: Romney is attempting vicarious chauvinism on the part of a religion, evangelical Christianity, he doesn’t share. I’m not sure we have a word in English for that, except shameless.

It’s a scoop from ABC News’ Jon Karl:

Karl: You probably heard John McCain again come out and say that your friend Donald Rumsfeld is perhaps the worst Secretary of Defense ever.  What do you make of that?

Cheney: I just fundamentally disagree with John. John said some nasty things about me the other day, and then next time he saw me, ran over to me and apologized. Maybe he’ll apologize to Rumsfeld.

Karl: So what’s your take on where Secretary Rumsfeld fits in?

Cheney: I think Don’s a great secretary. I know a little bit about the job. I’ve watched what he’s done over there for six years. I think he did a superb job in terms of managing the Pentagon under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. He and John McCain had a number of dust-ups over policy, didn’t have anything to do with Iraq — other issues that were involved. John’s entitled to his opinion. I just think he’s wrong.

Karl: I know we’re just about out of time, but I wanted to clarify: Senator McCain had said that the problem with President Bush is he listened to you too much. So this is what he was apologizing to you for?

Cheney: Yes, yes.

Karl: What did he say?

Cheney: Well, he came up to me on the floor a couple of days later, the next time I was on the floor of the Senate, said he’d been quoted out of context, and then basically offered an apology which I was happy to accept.

Is the good senator going to take that lying down? And what were these "other issues"? Torture, maybe – a subject John McCain who, unlike Cheney, served in combat and was tortured, knows something about.

I’m sorry but I missed Mark Steyn’s response to Mark Kleiman’s concern that Steyn may be endorsing genocide of European Muslims thus:

My book isn’t about what I want to happen but what I think will happen.

Steyn says I accused him of supporting genocide. I plainly didn’t. In fact, I said that he "clearly rejects it." I merely noted his cool indifference to the possibility. Elsewhere, Steyn has considered the chance of an anti-Muslim final solution and writes:

Even if you’re hot for a new Holocaust, demography tells. There are no Hitlers to hand.

Am I wrong to detect a certain tone of regret in this? Again, this isn’t an endorsement of genocide. It’s an argument that it’s not feasible in Europe – no new Hitlers, dammit – and would destroy the character of America to become genocidal. Glenn Reynolds is in the same camp. He has predicted genocide, but doesn’t actually endorse it. In this post, he lays his view out with clarity:

Civilized societies have always won against barbarians ever since the industrial revolution made making things a greater source of power than breaking them.

Civilized societies have found it harder, though, to beat the barbarians without killing all, or nearly all, of them. Were it really to become all-out war of the sort that Osama and his ilk want, the likely result would be genocide — unavoidable, and provoked, perhaps, but genocide nonetheless, akin to what Rome did to Carthage, or to what Americans did to American Indians. That’s what happens when two societies can’t live together, and the weaker one won’t stop fighting — especially when the weaker one targets the civilians and children of the stronger. This is why I think it’s important to pursue a vigorous military strategy now. Because if we don’t, the military strategy we’ll have to follow in five or ten years will be light-years beyond "vigorous."

Again, Reynolds isn’t urging genocide. He’s predicting it. With a little relish for flavor, wouldn’t you say?

I should add, I guess, that I don’t mean to get into a fight with my new Atlantic colleague, Mr Steyn. He is one of the funniest, sharpest writers in America today. Up there in humorous writing, in my book, with Kinsley, Hitchens, Barry, Chait. I share his disgust at Islamist fundamentalism and admire his willingness to tackle it head on. His wildly successful book, alas, is an intellectually vulgar diatribe based on the crudest demographic reductionism (and many very good jokes at the expense of the idiot left). I think the right is currently divided between those who hate the American left more than the Islamist right and those who take the opposite view. I’m afraid my dislike of anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman is not as intense as my dislike of religious terrorism. Which is why it’s getting lonely out here.

P.S. On this whole meme, Matt Yglesias has a good post.