Jefferson’s Dream

A world-class American wine industry. And it’s here:

Jefferson died without seeing his vision of an American winemaking industry mature. But today, the third president would be astounded that wine is made commercially in every state in the continental U.S., including at Monticello and elsewhere in Virginia, and that some of our West Coast wines stand up well in the international marketplace. Indeed, the so-called Judgment of Paris, a blind tasting on July 4, 1976 in which the best California wines outperformed their top French counterparts, would probably have brought Jefferson no end of satisfaction.

The Problem With “Peace Studies”

They’re an ideology masquerading as scholarship. Bruce Bawer puts his finger on something:

We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it’s opposed to every value that the West stands for — liberty, free markets, individualism — and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values. Second, we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations. It is also waging an aggressive, under-the-media-radar campaign for a cabinet-level Peace Department in the United States.

The New Criterion concurs:

"Peace Department"? Where is George Orwell when you need him? Why not just call it the "Ministry of Peace" (right next door to the Ministry of Love and down the street from the Ministry of Truth) and be done with it?

… For our part, we think Rudyard Kipling came closer to the truth in "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919):

When the Cambrian measures were forming,
They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons,
that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us
and delivered us bound to our foe …

Somehow, we rather doubt that the works of Kipling feature on the syllabus of the peace studies racket.

Giuliani vs Hauer

The latest attack YouTube on Giuliani is rough for him. It’s not great to be accused of being a liar by your former director of emergency management. And by targeting his central and, so far, sole campaign advantage – 9/11 – the realrudy.org is not an attempt to wound. See what you think. Rudy is more vulnerable than many might think. Money quote from Hauer:

"If you were not with him 100 percent, and didn’t support him 100 percent, they would basically cut your throat."

No wonder he’s running as Bush’s successor.

Wiki At 2 Million

Wikipedia is now as much a part of online discourse as the weather is for sailors. We can complain about it, but there’s not much we can do about it. For my part, I’ve always loved it. Surfing Wiki is one of life’s true intellectual pleasures. This Sunday, it’s set to include its 2 millionth entry, as Crooked Timber notes. Conservapedia, with its tree-dwelling octopi, also continues to grow. But isn’t it sad that American conservatism is now the repository of ideology as opposed to empiricism? Wiki, on the other hand, is the product of a genuinely conservative constitution – self-doubting, self-correcting, open-sourced.

Americans and the Surge

The latest Pew survey finds an excruciating middle ground:

While a majority of the public wants out of Iraq, most do not want a rush for the exit … Pew’s recent polling shows the public is sensitive to possible consequences for the Iraqi people if America packs up and makes for the borders. Nearly six-in-ten (58%) see the chances of a civil war in Iraq increasing (only 6% foresee a decrease) while 55% think it more likely that al Qaeda would establish terror bases there. Moreover, in an April poll, 45% of Americans said that if the U.S. withdraws its troops while the situation in Iraq is still unstable, a terrorist attack on the U.S. would become more likely.

On the other hand, nearly as many among the public — 41% — felt that a terrorist attack on America would become more likely if U.S. troops remained in Iraq for many years. Moreover, by July, roughly half of the public (49%) had reached the conclusion that, come what may, the United States will probably (32%) or definitely (17%) fail to achieve its goals in Iraq, compared with 43% who felt it would definitely (9%) and or probably (34%) win out in the end.

As it happens, I think the American people are seeing reality in this. The truth is: leaving or staying are both unpredictable options in the awfulness of the likely consequences. My own judgment is that we are better off quitting sooner rather than later, with the proviso that we protect Kurdistan from Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish aggression. And the deeper question is whether the Arab world should be occupied by the West indefinitely. I say no. The logic of the pro-surgers is yes: the new empire begins in Baghdad. At least I have yet to hear from them an argument as to how their policy isn’t endless, how the arguments against withdrawal now won’t be valid five months or five years from now. If they want a decades-long occupation, they need to say so. If they don’t, they need to tell us how they expect us to leave, and in what time frame. I see no reason for optimism as far as the eye and mind can see. Which means we already have a new colony – in the hell-hole of Mesopotamia.

Islamism In Britain’s Universities

The attempt to infiltrate the citadels of Western freedom in order to foment Muslim totalitarianism is well under way. The British magazine, New Humanist, has been investigating. Money quote:

As a political ideology Islamism should be debated like any other but, as the testimonies of those who have emerged from the inside suggest, this is not something groups like the Hizb are really interested in. According to Ed Husain, far from looking to debate their ideas in the open, Hizb ut-Tahrir seek to infiltrate Muslim communities through the use of surreptitious front organisations. Speaking in July on the Today programme, Husain said he had come across the Hizb operating at his own university, London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), under the guise of the Open Mind Society. This is reinforced by a 2005 Sunday Times investigation which found that Hizb ut-Tahrir had been recruiting under the name Stop Islamophobia at universities across the London area. These groups are not looking to engage in intellectual debate with their opponents on campus, but rather to recruit Muslim students while they are young, impressionable and open to radical ideas.