Get your own Free Home PageI just finished visiting merry old England to see if it was still merry. It is, more or less, about the same as us.
What struck me, though, is that all the grand monuments and engineering feats stem from the politically incorrect days of the British Empire.
So I wonder what monuments the British welfare state will leave? Perhaps graffiti, litter, nose rings, Elton John's eyeglasses. It is as difficult to imagine anyone in the future wishing to read Prime Minister Tony Blair's speeches as it is anyone wishing to read Bill Clinton's. Blair, though, is a better leader and a better man than Clinton.
To cite just one example, while Clinton is scared to make even the mildest criticism of Israel's government, Blair has said plainly, ``I hope that Israel will also take action on the settlements in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. The continued building of new settlements is illegal and in direct conflict with the principle of land for peace on which the whole peace process is built. It damages the confidence of ordinary Palestinians in the process and undermines Israel's credibility as a negotiating partner.``
But that aside, I think that we and our British cousins face the same problem. We, too, are a welfare state. What will our monuments be? Graffiti, litter, nose rings, some rock star's house? And how can we inspire our children to aspire to more than being fans of sports and entertainment figures?
Generations of American -- and, I suspect, British -- children are being taught to despise their own country's history and their own ancestors as racists, oppressors and imperialists. How does anyone expect that people believing that will make the sacrifices necessary to maintain a great nation?
You can already see the effect. If you had to single out one problem common to nearly all American politicians, it would be their unwillingness to do or say anything that may jeopardize their personal interests. That's why there are no real political leaders in America today. No one can lead and follow the polls at the same time. No one can lead and be deathly afraid of offending big contributors.
We have a situation in which government education, run by egalitarians, preaches self-hatred, thus destroying any hope of patriotism. Religion has been reduced largely to a bland feel-goodism, as if the only duty a believer has is to support the welfare state and to avoid offending anyone.
This is cultural rot, and no nation can survive cultural rot. The only institution in which people are still willing to sacrifice for the common good is the military, and how long can that be sustained if it must draw people from a government education system that teaches self-hate? Eventually, we will be reduced to hiring mercenaries who will kill and brutalize anyone they are paid to kill.
I'm not optimistic, but if there is a solution to the problem of social gangrene, the first step must be to shoot the television set. It's difficult for any parent to compete with a multibillion-dollar persuasion industry employing some of the best creative talent in the world. Never underestimate the influence of this pervasive form of communication. It is very good at what it does. It can sell toothpaste, and it can sell cultural rot.
The second step is to get the children out of the government educational system. It will never be reformed. Control of it will never be returned to local parents. It is an instrument of the state -- state-financed, state-staffed, state-controlled. It preaches the state religion, which at the time is secular egalitarianism.
That will not make for a merry England or a merry America.
Too often, Americans don't ask the right questions. The question should not be what can we do about the situation in Kosovo? The correct question is why should we do anything at all?
Don't tell me that it's the humanitarian needs. There are humanitarian crises all over the world, many worse than that in Kosovo, and nobody in the U.S. government suggests that somebody needs bombing. Another correct question is why did the discovery of 12 or so Kosovo civilian bodies prompt governmental outrage and threat of bombing when 100 Palestinian bodies of women and children killed by Israelis in Lebanon or the half-million Tutsi bodies in Rwanda prompt nothing more than a minimal diplomatic notice? I can give you a long list of atrocities, even cases of mass killing, in which the United States either did nothing at all or ended up playing palsy-walsy with the perpetrators.
Here are undisputed facts. Kosovo is Serbian territory and has been for centuries. Armed Albanian extremists are demanding that it become Albanian territory. Before the recent fighting, the Serbs offered to talk. The Albanians refused to show up.
Since when does a government not have the right to defend its own territory? And what gives the United States the right to tell a sovereign nation how it must react to armed insurrection? The U.S. government has put itself into the absurd position of dictating to both parties: No, Albanians, you can't have independence, and, Serbians, you must grant the Albanians autonomy.
(From a practical point of view, when a major power takes one side of a dispute, it makes itself subject to manipulation by the side it favors. It's not impossible that Albanians massacred the Albanians in order to provoke an airstrike. The cruel logic of war and its attendant propaganda often dictate such decisions.)
Americans ought to be wary of government brainwashing. Citizens must be more than puppets on a string. Here's your enemy for this week, the government says. And some gullible Americans click their heels and salute -- often without knowing who or even where the enemy of the week is. That may be the case because many Americans seem to have a lot more faith in government than in God.
Americans ought to think carefully about what is unfolding. In the Balkans and in Iraq, both small places with small populations, the United States seems to be trying to establish precedent for international control of sovereign nations. Americans who value their own national independence had better respect the independence of other countries. If the United Nations has the right to control the internal affairs of Serbia, why not the internal affairs of the United States?
The policeman-of-the-world role, which is the current fad, has no legitimate arguments in its favor. It costs billions of dollars. It risks American lives. It involves us in quarrels that don't threaten our interests and, therefore, should not concern us. The billions of dollars -- taken right out of the pockets of the American people -- to meddle in foreign affairs that don't concern us would be better spent on the genuine needs of the American people.
Furthermore, it is hypocritical, which causes a loss of American prestige. As I have already pointed out, the American government is highly selective about which "humanitarian crises" it becomes incensed. The Serbians have killed far fewer Albanian civilians than we have killed Iraqi civilians. And the only country that probably can legitimately be accused of genocide is China, as a result of what it has done to the Tibetans. And you all know how tough the United States is on China.
I think that Western civilization, culturally and intellectually, has collapsed. If you are young and opportunistic, you probably ought to be studying Chinese.
For some odd reason, homosexuals have become the new pets of American journalism.
When a young man named Matthew Shepard was killed, allegedly by two thugs in Wyoming, he joined about 20,000 other Americans -- by far most of them heterosexuals -- who are homicide victims each year.
Yet, because the young man was a homosexual, journalists and some politicians have made a routine crime into a national issue. Some liberals are plying their usual trade of assigning guilt to every human being who does not approve of homosexuality.
Well, does that mean that all homosexuals must share the guilt when a homosexual commits murder? Are all homosexuals responsible for homosexual serial killers? Must they share the guilt when homosexual pedophiles murder children?
Bill Clinton, that pillar of morality, even wants to expand hate-crime legislation, which is nonsense to begin with. The whole flap is nonsense.
Shepard was a human being, and that is reason enough to mourn his death and to punish his killers. If it's true that he made a pass at one of the men who killed him, it doesn't matter. Sometimes women are killed by heterosexual men they meet in bars or vice versa. Bad luck and bad judgment have no sexual orientation.
Most liberal commentators are as dishonest on this issue as Bill Clinton.
In the first place, they refuse to acknowledge that homosexual organizations have a distinct political agenda, though one not all homosexuals agree with. They refuse to acknowledge that some homosexuals are not only militant but as vicious and malicious as any true hater of homosexuals. Liberals seem to believe that if you oppose someone's political agenda, you hate that person. I suppose they think that because that's what they do. But more sane and enlightened people, such as conservatives and traditionalists, know how to disagree on political issues without hating the people they disagree with.
But when journalists pick a pet, they always abandon their duty to report truth and present their pets as peerless innocents and all who disagree with their choice of pets as evil personified.
In the second place, both the Christian and Jewish Bibles explicitly condemn homosexual behavior as a sin. Thus believers have no choice but to accept God's judgment on the matter. That, however, does not translate into hate, and the big sin of liberal journalists is the illogical assertion that those who do not approve of homosexuality hate homosexuals.
There are, of course, some individuals who have a pathological hatred of homosexuals. They are often latent homosexuals themselves. But their condition has nothing whatsoever to do with morality or religion. Such people are relatively few in number. And journalists ought to have more sense, and more integrity, than to lump normal people who disapprove morally of homosexual acts with pathological people who need psychiatric help and with criminals.
But, alas for the republic, common sense and integrity are in short supply among liberals whose principal political arguments are argumentum ad hominem and guilt by association. That, naturally, is a sign of a deficient brain and an indefensible political position.
Would anything be different if Matthew Shepard had been a heterosexual? No. He would still be robbed and dead. The only difference would be that liberal journalists and politicians wouldn't have given a rat dropping that he was. They seem to reserve their compassion for politically correct victims.
Shepard's death is deplorable, but it is not as disgusting as the political use being made of it. Human beings deserve protection from criminals because they are human beings, and no unjust death is more lamentable than another just because of the person's group identity.
We won't solve many social problems until we return to a situation in which, to the maximum extent possible, children have the benefit of a father who provides and protects and a mother who stays home to teach and nurture.
Unfortunately, that conflicts with agendas of many post-modern forces -- feminism, the child-care industry and its lobbyists, and those cultists who worship government and think that it should replace both church and parents in the rearing of children.
Nevertheless, reality always wins, and the reality is that strong societies can be built only out of strong, two-parent families with children who aren't institutionalized before they can even walk or talk.
Feminist ideology, which has strayed so far from reality it's hardly worth a comment, is a variation of extreme individualism. This philosophy holds that the primary, number-one goal of each individual must be personal happiness and fulfillment. And it equates motherhood with slavery.
What's wrong with that? Well, two or more people whose number-one priority is their own personal happiness at all costs, will not last long as a unit, family or otherwise. Conflicts are inevitable. If you have a father, mother and three children, you will have five different individuals. What makes a family thrive is each member realizing that the whole is more important than its parts. When they don't, the family unit flies apart. Lasting human relationships are always built on morality, compromise and a set of priorities that place the relationship ahead of the individual egos.
As for motherhood, it's a hell of a lot more difficult to be a good mother than it is to run a corporation. Furthermore, it's not an either/or situation. Children don't stay children forever. A woman can be both a mother and have a career -- but not at the same time. From birth to age 6 or 7, especially, children need a mother at home.
It's interesting that in our society, the elites spend no time at all discussing the conditions that would allow two-parent families to flourish. Instead, they spend all their time arguing that two-parent families aren't necessary; that if there are two-parent families, it's better to put the kids into day care and grab the extra paycheck; that families can be any grouping, married or unmarried, heterosexual or homosexual. Hogwash.
What we ought to be talking about is a stable currency that holds its value and an economy that pays decent wages so a family could survive on one paycheck. That, however, would involve abolishing or seriously revamping the central bank and abandoning the insane notion of so-called free trade. The central bank inflates the currency, and the free-trade policies drive down wages. That also would involve reducing the size of government so that it would not take nearly half the fruits of labor.
Between the hammer of taxes and the anvil of accumulated inflation, most families are beaten to pieces.
Making real changes would be difficult. People would have to realize that you don't effect change by changing political faces. There is virtually no significant difference in the beliefs of liberals and neo-conservatives, between Republicans and Democrats. They simulate differences by arguing about marginal issues.
So to effect real change, people will have to force the pols and the news media to talk about a different set of issues. People still have two important political tools -- their votes and their money. But first, they have to decide what they want before they can set out to get it.
Someone asked Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, just what the lost cause was. He answered immediately, ``The rule of law.''
I thought about that when I saw that the leftist government of Great Britain had arrested Gen. Augusto Pinochet in disregard of diplomatic immunity on the basis of a warrant issued by a power-mad Spanish judge. The judge has decided that the deaths of four or five Spanish citizens, probably communists, in Chile constitutes ``genocide.''
And where is the rule of law in all of this?
Diplomatic immunity for its officials (Pinochet is a senator) is something that Chile decides, not foreigners. And Pinochet, who saved Chile from a communist coup, is answerable only to the Chilean people, not to some secular Torquemada perched behind a desk in Spain. Nor does it speak well of a British government that would, after admitting Gen. Pinochet on his diplomatic passport, presume to revoke the passport unilaterally. That 82-year-old man, by the way, was one of Britain's few South American allies in its war with Argentina.
But, of course, the world is sinking in the slime of leftist politics. Ten of the 15 European Union countries are now in the hands of leftist governments, some allied with communists. The United States has a leftist government. And if there is one thing that leftist governments have little use for, it is the rule of law. They are driven, it seems, by their secular ideology, which seems to infect them with a Godlike complex.
Pinochet, by the way, is accused by his enemies of about 4,000 deaths or disappearances -- during a 17-year reign. That averages about 250 a year. So, statistically, it was safer being a leftist in Chile under Pinochet than it is to be a resident of any of several American cities.
And, of course, all 4,000 are presumed by their leftist buddies to be have been angels. Not a one was a communist bent on his destructive goals; not a one was a traitor to Chile; not a one was a thug or a killer or a supporter of thugs and killers. No, all angels.
Bull.
According to two Frenchmen in a new book not yet available in the United States, the human toll of communism in this sorry century is about 100 million people. That's 100 million victims of the left. But what leftist keeps score on leftist dictators? How many Cubans has Fidel Castro killed? How many of their own people the Chinese? How many Cambodia's Pol Pot? How many Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, another hero of American leftists?
The U.S. government, so self-righteous, openly celebrated when Pol Pot's government, which killed half the Cambodian population, took its seat in the United Nations. And although the U.S. government is hot to trot to put people on trial for so-called war crimes in Bosnia or Rwanda, it has never once sought to try for war crimes those Vietnamese and at least one Cuban communist who tortured and killed American prisoners of war. It never sought to try Pol Pot, who died in his bed of natural causes.
No, one leftist loves another. It's only people who frustrate leftist drives for power who are hated. Men such as Pinochet. The Argentines who gave leftist terrorists a dose of their own medicine in what leftists call ``the dirty war.'' (All murderous attempts to seize power by leftists are, of course, clean wars.) The South Vietnamese who resisted communism. The Cubans who resist Castro. The Nicaraguans who opposed the Sandinistas. The Salvadorans who resisted the communists.
Great Britain insulted Chile and disgraced itself, probably not for the last time with such a smarmy Labor government.
A new book out should dispel any doubts about using firearms for self-defense. It's The Best Defense by Robert A. Waters, and it is published by Cumberland House in Nashville.
Waters, who is a former director of adult programs for an association of retarded adults and a former counselor in vocational rehabilitation, interviewed extensively people who were forced to defend their lives with a firearm.
The 14 stories are well-told. Some read like a suspense story, and they put the reader into the shoes of people whose normal, peaceful lives suffered the sudden, horrifying shock of a criminal attack. You also will see clearly that neither police nor the courts offer much protection.
One story is about the Stanton family in Ohio. A man with a grudge against the world set out on a killing spree. His first three victims included a small child. Then he tried to kill a former supervisor, but the supervisor, though wounded, managed to retrieve a rifle from under his bed, and the killer fled.
Doug Stanton's family got a call, informing them that the man, who once, long ago, had stalked Mrs. Stanton, could be on the way. Stanton immediately gathered his four children and wife to flee. He kept them in the kitchen and went outside to make sure it was safe. There was the killer in the driveway, holding a pistol and wearing a bullet-proof vest.
Stanton hustled his family back into the kitchen, instructing the children to lie flat. The killer came to back door, fired through it and then kicked it open, spraying bullets into the kitchen. Stanton took careful aim with his .45 automatic and fired. The first shot missed, but the second one struck the killer, and, despite his vest, he staggered backward, fell off the porch and fled.
Later, bruised and bleeding beneath the vest, he was arrested by the police. Convicted of four murders, he was sentenced to death. Doug Stanton said it best in an interview after the incident: "People are quick to espouse the virtues of gun restrictions. They say if it saves one life, it will be worth it. Because the Stanton family had a gun, six lives were saved. Had there been restrictions on gun ownership, the Stantons would be dead. This is a fact, not a hypothetical situation."
The story of a 100-pound divorcee who had to fight for her life against a 200-pound home invader in broad daylight inside her own home in an upper-middle-income neighborhood will raise the hairs on your neck. He slashed her face with a box cutter, knocked out four teeth and shattered her face so that one eye was knocked out of its socket. The only thing that saved her was a .25-caliber pistol. She managed to pump four bullets into the guy, and he finally bled to death before he could kill her.
Her assailant had been arrested 30 times, sent to prison and released three times.
So much for the protection of the law.
Perhaps the scariest of the stories is that of a family whose members found themselves at the mercy of a serial killer who tied up the husband in the garage and bound the wife to a bed. He alternated between the two, torturing them with a knife. He had bashed the husband in the head and stabbed him in the chest.
The assailant -- who, the family would later learn, had already killed 10 people -- worked in the same store that the wife did. The husband, though severely wounded, managed to free himself and shoot the guy with one bullet from an antique rifle. Then he beat the guy with the barrel and the stock, finally killing him.
Trust me: This book is an exciting read, and the 14 stories are true. It'll make a believer in the Second Amendment out of any sensible person.
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