The reason why climate science is controversial is that it is both a science and a religion; Belief is strong, even when scientific evidence is weak

The physicist, mathematician and author, most recently, of “Dreams of Earth and Sky” says the best books he knows about mathematics and physics are nearly a hundred years old. 

Earlier this year, Freeman Dyson was asked a few questions in the New York Times Sunday Book Review.

Whom do you consider the best contemporary writers on science and mathematics?

On science, my favorite is Edward Wilson. In “The Ants” (with Bert Hölldobler) and “On Human Nature,” he describes ants and humans with equal insight. On mathematics, my favorite is Robert Kanigel, who wrote “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” a biography of the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. It is impossible to write a readable book about real mathematics for nonmathematical readers. The best anybody can do is to write about a real mathematician.

What are the best books about mathematics for the lay reader? The best books about physics?

The best books that I know about mathematics and physics are almost a hundred years old: “Men of Mathematics,” by Eric Bell, published in 1937, and “Space, Time and Gravitation,” by Arthur Eddington, published in 1920. Bell’s book seduced a large number of kids of my generation, including me, into becoming mathematicians. Eddington’s book was the main reason why Einstein was better understood and admired by the general public in Britain and America than he was in Germany. No comparably clear account of Einstein’s ideas existed in German.

On to controversial topics: What books would you recommend on climate science? On the relationship between science and religion?

On climate science, I recommend “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming,” by Bjorn Lomborg. On science and religion, “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” by William James. Lomborg is an economist, and James was a psychologist. Both books were written by skeptics, with understanding and respect for the beliefs that they were questioning. The reason why climate science is controversial is that it is both a science and a religion. Belief is strong, even when scientific evidence is weak.

 … What books do you find yourself returning to again and again?

I return again and again to “Dreams of Earth and Sky,” by the Russian space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. It was published in 1895 and gave us the first accurate account of the problems of moving life from Earth into space. He understood, long before anyone else, that the engineering problems of space travel are simple compared with the biological problems of living in space. This year I borrowed his title for a book of my own.

More here: The Civil Heretic (thanks to Larry Elder)

Bureaucrats should not be allowed to get away with creative (mis)interpretations that clearly depart from the spirit and the letter of the law

Township High School District 211 in suburban Chicago settled its ongoing dispute last week with the federal Department of Education (DoE)

writes Benny Huang regarding the biologically male student who (in a story similar to the Lila Perry melodrama) wants to use the girls’ changing room because he thinks he’s a she.

Though the school district had already substantially indulged the boy’s delusions it was until recently insisting that the boy use a “privacy curtain” when disrobing, a compromise which the student and the federal government found unconscionable.

The recent agreement reached between the school district and the feds stipulates that “the school district will provide multiple changing areas with privacy curtains, for the student and any others who want privacy.” So now everyone gets a privacy curtain and it’s up to each student whether to use it.

It should come as no surprise that the student and the ACLU still aren’t happy with the resolution. Though the school district can now claim that it’s providing all the “girls”—both real and imagined—equal access to private changing areas, the transgender “girl’s” mere presence in the locker room has precipitated a policy change that falls short of full victory for transgender “rights.” Clearly, the school district is still treating him as a different kind of girl—which he is, of course. He’s a “girl” with a penis—a make-believe girl. “Girls” with penises tend to be treated differently than girls without them and that makes “girls” with penises feel marginalized. Boo hoo.

Just how did we reach this crescendo of madness? We “interpreted” ourselves here, of course! There is no law on the books that requires any school district to allow a boy access to the girls’ locker room no matter how he “identifies.” The Obama Administration has nonetheless conjured up a novel interpretation from an old and undeservedly venerated law to achieve his policy goal.

 … Separate locker rooms are in and of themselves sex discriminatory—further proof that discrimination is not always bad and that we all do it every day. Unless it’s the DoEt’s position that male and female locker rooms should be integrated, they’re also supportive of sex discrimination. But that’s not their position, nor is it the student’s position or that of the ACLU. They support keeping boys out of the girls’ room but they insist that the student in question is a girl like any other and deserves to be treated as such. Anything less is a violation of “her” rights under Title IX, they argue.

Except it isn’t. Title IX was never intended to shield gender dysphoric people from reality. It addresses discrimination based on sex. Even today, “sex” is understood to be assigned at birth as either male or female, with “gender”—a much more fluid concept—being used to describe how one feels about that reality.

 … Nondiscrimination laws lend themselves to this kind of abuse. As I have written in previous columns, I stand in opposition to all private sector nondiscrimination laws. Granted, the aforementioned locker room controversy is found completely within the realm of government so I will also add that even public sector nondiscrimination laws should be carefully considered, narrowly focused, and strictly adhered to. Bureaucrats should not be allowed to get away with creative (mis)interpretations that clearly depart from the spirit and the letter of the law.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 offers an excellent example of a law that was twisted after its passage into something very different than what Americans were sold on.

 … In the wrong person’s hands, nondiscrimination laws can be “interpreted” to mean almost anything. They nearly always become leviathans of big government—and probably not by accident.

T'is easy to tout the success of gun control laws in the rest of the Western world when you ignore certain pertinent facts from Europe

Today, the International New York Times published my response to the Gray Lady's

front-page editorial, End the Gun Epidemic in America. (Are their any readers in the Big Apple who can confirm whether it was published in the domestic version of the newspaper?)

It is easy to tout the success of gun control laws in the rest of the Western world and to say that "this just doesn’t happen in other countries” when you ignore : the 1996 massacre of 16 children at a Scottish primary school; the 2000 killing of eight kids in Japan; the 2002 deaths of eight people in Nanterre, France; the 2002 killing of 16 kids in Erfurt, Germany; the 2007 shootings to death of eight people in Tuusula, Finland; the killing of 10 people at a Finnish university less than a year later; the 2009 killing of 15 people in Winnenden, Germany; and, needless to say, Anders Breivik's 2011 mass murder of 77 Norwegians, most of them teenagers.

Is it unrealistic to wonder whether the tolls would have been lesser had a few of the adults in each place — as well as in Paris's Bataclan a couple of weeks ago — carried a weapon and tried to shoot back at the respective killers?

FYI, that couple of sentences is a tiny outtake from my in-depth (and dispassionate) study on the issue of gun control. (Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the Instapundit link.)

Related: Jon Gabriel's version of the editorial (End the Islamist Epidemic in America)

Republicans Called "Reptilian" Again, Just Like They Were Some… Uh, Years Ago

Will Ferrell’s FunnyOrDie.com site isn’t just a repository of comedy clips

writes Hollywood in Toto (thanks to Ed Driscoll).

It doubles as a political weapon, a cudgel meant to smite Obama’s enemies.

As a recipient of a similar service, About.com's Political Humor emails, I can testify that for months, for years, I believe, after the 2008 election, the service's top meme in their every email was "Sarah Palin Jokes." Don't you think that after the election was over, that would drop down, if not drop out entirely, in favor of, I don't know, say, uh, the Man in the White House Jokes, i.e., Barack Obama Jokes?!

Recently, About.com had a(n only slightly tongue-in-cheek) pictorial of (I kid you not) Photos of Obama Being Awesome (Funny, Playful and Cool Photos of President Barack Obama)!

Christian Toto goes on:

The worst part of the FunnyOrDie.com propaganda? The clips are rarely funny. The same holds true here, particularly when [Jeff Goldblum] describes EPA critics as “some of the worst, most execrable, selfish, reptilian nincompoops with whom I’ve ever had the distinct displeasure of working.”

"Reptilian"?! They've also been called lizards, haven't they? Plus ça change… Regarding "schmucko supremos", and to recap from a No Pasarán post of five years ago, James Taranto then pointed out (thanks to Instapundit) that

former Clinton aide James Carville, raising money for the Democratic National Campaign Committee, put his name to an email titled "reptiles," which insults Republicans in a way some see as invidious:

First there was Sarah Palin. Now we can add another Republican reptile from the past trying to help the GOP win House races this year--former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.

Not much has changed since a few, uh, years before that, when a Republican politician complained, to the Democrat castigators he was trying to address, that

when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans]. In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of [Republicanism] as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

How many years ago was that?

And who was the politician?

Abraham Lincoln…

One hundred and fifty-five years ago…

"The terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase" says POTUS; Uh no, Obama, "less complicated acts of violence" started… way back, on Sept 12, 2001

The terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase

said Barack Obama from the West Wing, as reported by Washington Post's Chico Harlan, Elise Viebeck, and Katie Zezima (thanks to Instapundit), explaining that

As we’ve become better at preventing complex multifaceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turn to less complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society.

Uh, no, Mr. Obama, those less complicated acts of violence were — of necessity — turned to way back, as long ago, in fact, as September 12, 2001, to be precise (i.e, before Dubya had even completed his first year in the White House). Just about every attempted act of terrorism (sorry, of work-related violence) since then, both in America and abroad, has — again, of necessity — been carried out in exactly that relatively "low-key" fashion.

In other words, "a new phase" is suggesting that all Obama's actions until now were fine and appropriate with the old(er) phase allegedly in existence until December 2015.

But there's more: with "the mass shootings that are all too common in our society", Obama gets to direct his attacks away from foreigners and towards America and the country's inhabitants.

Here are the additional messages from the Oval Office:

• I am (as usual) doing everything possible as Commander-in-Chief. Too bad that the Republicans in Congress are holding me — are holding us — back.

• We must not let Americans' racism get out of control.

Hardly anything out of the ordinary, huh?

Harkin has more:

His main objective in this speech appeared to be disassociate Islam entirely from ISIS/ISIL and make sure that people on a list that included Ted Kennedy were prevented from buying a gun.

He contradicted himself on the SB shooters. First he said there was no evidence they had been directed by others and 10 minutes later he cautioned that they were radicalized by others.

And oh btw - he very slyly admitted that Ft Hood was a terrorist attack after six years of calling it workplace violence.

Also - it only took him seven years to ask Muslims to help police.

And claiming he's the man to protect America and never once mentioning illegals coming in droves over an uncontrolled border......lol

The clown has no shame.

In the comments, Eagle Soars asks:

Did you catch it? The shooters were 'victims'.

And even as we work to prevent attacks, all of us—government, law enforcement, communities, faith leaders—need to work together to prevent people from falling victim to these hateful ideologies.

I think to some extent the speech was directed to the next election, telling whatever is left of his base what they want to hear.

 

As the FN Wins Big in the France's Regional Elections, the Question Arises: Is the Le Pen Party Extreme Rightist or Is It Actually a Reincarnation of the Communist Party?

As the Le Pen family's National Front emerges victorious from the first ballot in France's regional elections (check out Anne-Elisabeth Moutet's report in The Daily Telegraph), the head of a libertarian think tank warns that the Front National is not extreme right, as commonly depicted, but actually the direct opposite, i.e., nothing less than a modernized rehash of the Communist Party (merci à Carine). (Needless to say, outside of the United States, the word "liberal" retains its original meaning…)

GenerationLibre's Gaspard Koenig in Les Échos:

If one is to believe the polls, the Communist Party is poised this weekend to surpass its historic high-water score of 28% reached in the parliamentary elections of October 1946. Seventy years after "Red Autumn", here she comes again, up to the gates of power, even if by a trick hardly novel to the course history, it is slipping in under a borrowed skin: that of the National Front.

I am one of those candid voters who actually reads the programs of political parties. The one that can be read on the website of the Front National, rejecting "ultra-liberal globalization" as well as "the dictatorship of the market" or "the dogma of competition", could be signed Maurice Thorez [leader of the French Communist Party for 34 years]. Beyond the occasional promises on keeping the 35-hour workweek, returning the retirement age to 60, or the alignment of taxation of capital and labor, beyond rhetorical outbursts against big capital for not sharing profits, what the FN is proposing, in a coherent and detailed manner, is nothing less than a total nationalization of France.

 … Spearheading this takeover will be the civil servants, whose numbers will be stabilized, and whose status will be preserved — provided, however, that they follow the party line: Thus the ENA civil servant school will see to the "recruitment of bureaucrats who are highly patriotic" (sic). Finally, in a tragicomic wink to history, the FN promises to reorient French foreign policy in order to work towards an "in-depth strategic alliance" with… Russia!

 … The tragedy is that all of France's major parries, left as well as right, remain marked by a faint nostalgia for the planned economy, and are careful not to criticize the FN on this matter. One can find all sorts of explanations. In his book, La Grande Parade, Jean-François Revel considers that the vocabulary derived from socialism held by the ruling élites has been the fertile ground that has given birth to the "illiberal single-thought narrative". More radical still, the historian Robert Paxton, in pages from his book on Vichy that were not studied enough, sees in the Pétain government the birth of le dirigisme à la française, which has continued to permeate all governments since the war. Whatever the case, it seems that the FN is doing little but saying out loud what other members of the élite think in secret: that everything in life would be rosier under the sunshine of the State.

Marine Le Pen, 4 Years Ago: France Should Leave NATO, "Turn Its Back" on the American "Hyper-Power", and "Turn Towards Russia"

Related: “Obama is way to the right of us”

Dukakis at 82: Heart-Warming Holiday Story About a Retired Democrat Politician Unwittingly Reveals Unsavory Details

Even a funny, and rather heart-warming, story about a retired Democrat politician leads to unintended information of a slightly less savory and definitely far from uncommon type (which makes it even more unsavory), as the Boston Globe's Matt Viser (via James Taranto) writes about Michael Dukakis and his love for… turkey carcasses.

First, the fun, cutesy part:

In his tidy Brookline kitchen, the state’s former governor and onetime Democratic presidential nominee has had a quirky but endearing tradition legendary among family and friends. He collects Thanksgiving turkey carcasses to make soup for his extended family for the year to come.

 … “Throwing out a turkey carcass is sinful. Absolutely sinful,” Dukakis says, in all seriousness. “It’s a terrible thing to do. There’s so much richness and goodness in a turkey carcass, God.”

So eager is Dukakis to gather turkey carcasses that he offers his home address (see below) for anyone who wants to drop one off.

Besides the recipe for Dukakis turkey soup, we are then treated to the cute reaction of the 82-year-old ex-governor's grand-children.

“For some reason my grandkids just love this,’’ he says. “They eat bowls and bowls of it.”

The grandkids confirm part of this.

“We roll our eyes and laugh,” says Ali Dukakis, who is one of a dozen grandchildren. “Any wincing that we have is not reflected on him. He could not care less. That’s why he’s a special person.”

So you think that Ali is a little kid, right, running around the house?

That's where you are wrong.

(Okay, so she's older, an adult? So what's the big deal?! Wait a second.)

Two years ago, Dukakis went to Washington, where Ali works at ABC News, and insisted on buying a turkey to carve up in her studio apartment. 

Okay, sure, the turkey story is cute and family-friendly, and so on. But hold on a minute — There you go again: once more, a family member of a Democrat politician has been hired to work for an outlet of the mainstream media (and that in the nation's capital, no less), and, just as typically, Democrats and the media alike (but I repeat myself) see so little of a problem with this that it doesn't even register when it's mentioned in a news story.

And with that there is not much more to say, and that brings this post to an end.

However… if you were thinking of chucking your Thanksgiving remains, read on:

And just as it has become a Dukakis tradition to preserve turkey carcasses, it has become a tradition for some of his friends to drop off their picked-over turkeys at his house.

“I’m collecting if you know anybody. People throw this thing out — it’s crazy!” he says.

“Tell your readers under no circumstances should they do that,” he adds. “They should use the carcass. And if they don’t want to, tell them to come to 85 Perry Street in Brookline. We’ll make full use of it, believe me.”

Thank God

for the 22nd Amendment

In 2015 alone, France suffered more casualties from gun violence than the U.S. has suffered during Obama's entire presidency

What we basically get — from sources as diverse as The Washington Post (The Volokh Conspiracy's David Kopel), as The Wall Street Journal (Joe Palazzolo and Alexis Flynn on the forthcoming book, “Mass Shootings: Media, Myths, and Realities), as PolitiFact (Keely Herring and Louis Jacobson), and as Fox News and IBD (the same piece by John R. Lott) — is the shooting down of Barack Obama's wishful thinking regarding "these mass shootings", i.e., that this type of thing "just doesn’t happen in other countries.”

This statement, in Paris of all places (!), only two or three weeks after Islamist killers murdered 130 people over the course of not much more than a couple of hours. (No wonder French called him un connard et un trouduc (an a**hole); to which I can do little more than make the, rather unhelpful, remark, Congratulations Europeans! You got the U.S. president that you had been pining for!)

As I wrote in my in-depth examination of the gun control issue [slightly redacted],

it is easy for leftists, American as well as foreign, to tout the success of the gun control laws in the rest of the western world and to say that "this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries” when you ignore:
• the 1996 massacre of 16 children at a Scottish primary school;
• the 2000 killing of eight kids in Japan;
• the 2002 deaths of eight people in Nanterre, France;
• the 2002 killing of 16 kids in Erfurt, Germany;
• the 2007 fatal shootings of eight people in Tuusula, Finland;
• the killing of 10 people at a Finnish university less than a year later;
• the 2009 killing of 15 people in Winnenden, Germany;
• and, needless to say, Anders Breivik's 2011 mass murder of 77 Norwegians, most of them teenagers.

Is it unrealistic to wonder whether the tolls would have been lesser had a few of the adults in each place — as well as in Paris's Bataclan a couple of weeks ago — carried a weapon and tried to shoot back at the respective killers?

(Update: a slightly revised version of the above argument was published in the New York Times.)

Listen some more to John R. Lott:
(John R. Lott, Jr. is a columnist for FoxNews.com. He is an economist and was formerly chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission. Lott is also a leading expert on guns and op-eds on that issue are done in conjunction with the Crime Prevention Research Center. He is the author of eight books including "More Guns, Less Crime." His latest book is "Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench" Bascom Hill Publishing Group (September 17, 2013). Follow him on Twitter@johnrlottjr.)

In just 2015, France suffered more casualties – killings and injuries – from mass public shootings than the U.S. has suffered during Obama’s entire presidency (508 to 424). This number includes the San Bernandino massacre on Wednesday.

Obama also overlooks Norway, where Anders Behring Breivik used a gun to kill 67 people and wound 110 others. Still others were killed by bombs that Breivik detonated.  Of the four worst K-12 school shootings, three have occurred in Europe. Germany had two of these — one in 2002 at Erfut and another in 2009 at Winnenden, with a total death toll of 34.

Obama isn’t correct even if he meant the frequency of fatalities or attacks. Many European countries actually have higher rates of death from public shootings that resulted in four or more murders. It’s simply a matter of adjusting for America’s much larger population.

 … In terms of the frequency of attacks, the United States ranks ninth, with 0.09 attacks per million people.  Macedonia, Serbia, Switzerland, Norway, Slovakia, Finland, Belgium, and the Czech Republic all had higher rates.

 … It takes a lot of time and effort to find all the cases, but if you get all the attacks in the U.S. and miss those in other countries, it makes the U.S. look a lot worse.

 … The president’s statement was also limited in another sense.  He was referring only to shootings in his statement, but bombs are frequently used elsewhere in the world.

The Boston Marathon bombing was a rare exception these days in the United States. But countries such as Russia have frequently suffered bombings. Indeed, since 2009, the nation has seen 1.31 deaths per million from bombings that caused four or more fatalities.

 … Obama keeps using these attacks to advocate requiring background checks on private transfers of guns. Such a requirement, however, already exists in France and almost all of Europe.

The background checks failed. So too did France and Belgium's complete bans on the weapons used in those attacks. The terrorists who attacked those countries still got the weapons that they wanted.

 … There is another common factor between mass public shootings.  Virtually all of the attacks in America and Europe are taking place where general citizens can’t carry guns for protection. At some point, it has to become apparent to gun control advocates that gun-free zones only protect the killers.

But as The Volokh Conspiracy's David Kopel points out in the Washington Post,

Obama explained to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in March 2012, “After my election I have more flexibility.” This was an accurate prediction, and not just about foreign relations. After winning reelection in November 2012, President Obama in December 2012 used the Newtown, Conn., murders as the basis to make gun control the primary focus of his political efforts through April 2013. He has promised that gun control will be his top priority during his final year in office. When commenting on mass murders in the United States, President Obama has repeatedly claimed that such crimes do not occur in other countries.

Gun Free Zone points out (obrigado per Sarah Hoyt) that the way the élitish liberals look at this issue, as with all others, is as human beings as part of a herd:

As Mark Twain famously wrote:  “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  I don’t know if the “shoot and kill about 30 U.S. citizens every day” statement is accurate, but the way [Brett Arends] approaches it is not.  Assuming the number is accurate, those shootings are not evenly distributed across all law abiding gun owners.  It’s not as though 30 random law abiding gun owners a day decide to kill someone.  The overwhelming majority of shootings are concentrated in certain areas and socioeconomic groups (criminals be committing crimes).  This video breaks the numbers down much better than I can do a write up here.  The point is, the vast majority of law abiding gun owners will never shoot anybody, ever.

In the U.S. prosecutors win virtually all of their cases, nearly all of them without a trial

Conrad Black responds to an article in The Economist:

You included me in a gallery of apparently larcenous peers in Britain’s House of Lords (“The rotters’ club”, August 1st). The article’s graphic suggests that America’s criminal-justice system accords an accused what a citizen of Britain would consider due process. It does not. In the United States prosecutors win virtually all of their cases, nearly all of them without a trial, so severe is the distortion of the plea-bargain system in which inculpatory testimony is extorted from witnesses in exchange for immunity, including from charges of perjury.

I also believe I am ineligible for membership of your rotters’ club, because every count against me was abandoned, rejected by jurors, or vacated by America’s Supreme Court. Two spurious counts were self-servingly retrieved by a lower court that the Supreme Court had criticised and which had sent the two charges back to the lower court to assess its errors. The whole prosecution was nonsense and I achieved by far the largest libel settlement in Canadian history from my original accusers.

I would be happy to have the question of whether I am a rotter determined in a cursory review by an impartial ethics committee of Their Lordships’ House.
CONRAD (LORD) BLACK
Toronto

Blast from the Past: Conrad Black Gives Us a Lesson on How a Conservative Should Interact with the MSM

Nej Tak: A Clear No Vote in Denmark's Referendum on Further EU Integration

No thanks: As counting continues in Denmark, results of the nation-wide referendum show a clear Nej (No) towards further EU integration, reports Berlingske (link in Danish). At this time, the Ja to Nej vote stands at about 47 to 53%.

UPDATE: Denmark's most libertarian-leaning party, Liberal Alliance (outside of the United States, of course, "liberal" has retained its original meaning), claims to have been instrumental in defeating the government's initiative.

The BBC's Gavin Lee notes that the

vote comes three weeks after the deadly attacks in Paris [and was] seen as a test of whether the Danes will accept or reject greater integration within a 28-member bloc that is being tested more than ever by the migrant crisis

This has led a German newspaper to despair that the Danes are moving the country towards becoming a Hungary Light.

Incidentally, in Denmark as in the rest of the Western world (and indeed the world at large), you need to show some form of ID — if only a voter's registration (sent to your home) accompanied by a correct answer to a query regarding your date of birth (below is the picture of a French equivalent) — before you are allowed to vote.

From the Archives: On Voting Fraud:

…/… The last I heard, one needs some sort of poll card to cast a ballot in Britain, as indeed one does in every other democracy on this planet. Due to the Democrats' hysterical race-baiting, we have been subjected to the (absurd) spectacle of being the only country where having this (common-sense) requirement can only be viewed as vile, outrageous prejudice. Well, if it is racist to require voter ID in America, then Britain and every other democracy on the planet (including, of course, in Africa) can only qualify as racist as well …/…

By laying the Crusades at the feet of Christianity, Obama was unwittingly laying ISIL's atrocities at Islam’s feet—at least rhetorically

In Planned Parenthood and those villainous Christians, Jonah Goldberg asks If we can't condemn Islam for Muslim terrorists, why do we condemn Christians? (Instapundit's answer? "Because it’s politically useful, of course.")

We’ve spent years hearing how associating Islam with terrorism is outrageous and bigoted. President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton have all made the case that Islamic terrorism has “nothing whatsoever” — Clinton’s words — to do with Islam. President Obama insists the Islamic State “is not Islamic.”

Even phrases such as “Muslim terrorism” are forbidden because they imply that Islam itself has something to do with terrorism. Better to talk about “death cults,” “violent extremism” and criminals. And if you have to mention religion, make sure you adorn the word with lots of specific adjectives such as “radical” and “extremist,” or deploy euphemisms such as “jihadist.”

Whether any of that is convincing is a topic for another time. Liberals insist they believe it to be true, and at least for argument’s sake, I’m happy to take them at their word.

So where is the condemnation of the phrase “Christian terrorism” (or, for that matter, “white terrorism”)? By all means, Christian leaders should denounce violent attacks on Planned Parenthood. But shouldn’t progressive leaders condemn any effort to tie Christianity with terrorism?

Apparently not. It seems taking sides against Christianity is the progressive thing to do.

In a famous speech at the National Prayer Breakfast this year, President Obama lectured Christian clergy not to get on their “high horse” about the atrocities committed by ISIL, given that Christians committed (allegedly) similar atrocities during the Crusades.

It’s difficult to catalog all the flaws with this comparison, but one problem stands above all of the rest. By laying the Crusades at the feet of Christianity, Obama was unwittingly laying ISIL's atrocities at Islam’s feet, at least rhetorically.

Consider that modern-day Council of Nicea, ABC’s The View. Joy Behar recently insisted concern over Muslim refugees was overblown. After all, Oklahoma City bomber "Timothy McVeigh was a Christian,” Behar said. “Just sayin’.”

Whoopi Goldberg (no relation) concurred. “There have been a lot of monster Christians,” she said. “Hitler was a Christian.”

Just for the record, Hitler detested Christianity, and McVeigh was an avowed agnostic who never cited Jesus as the inspiration for his crimes.

Personally, I’m opposed to all such forms of guilt by association, but it seems obvious to me that contemporary Christianity is not struggling with a Crusades problem, while Islam is certainly struggling with a jihad problem.

Related:
• Adolf Hitler in Religious Surroundings: Is There Really Evidence That the Führer Was a Christian?

• Worshipping Little Else But the Aryan Race, Hitler Abhorred the Christian Faith and Wanted to Replace Christmas with the Pagans' Yuletide

Rhetoric doesn’t kill people—people kill people

CFP’s role in stirring [up Robert Dear's red-hot anger] was limited to peeling back the veil of secrecy that Planned Parenthood very much wanted to keep in place

says Benny Huang

“No more baby parts!” is what investigators say Robert Dear, the alleged Planned Parenthood spree killer, said after surrendering to police. It isn’t difficult to deduce his motives in shooting up a “women’s health clinic.” He was revolted by Planned Parenthood’s trade in baby parts—er, I mean fetal tissue—and he decided to pick up a gun to avenge the injustice.

Predictably, abortion supporters are using the incident to maximum political advantage. From now on, anyone who references Planned Parenthood’s lucrative side business in baby parts will be dismissed as a terrorist sympathizer. Planned Parenthood can also blame pro-lifers generally, and the Center for Medical Progress (CFP) specifically, for inspiring the shooting. Never mind the fact that CFP condemned the attack on its website, they still have blood on their hands.

The idea that Dear took his inspiration from this summer’s undercover CFP videos is unfair though not entirely untrue. I’ll depart here from a lot of pro-lifers and say that the videos are linked to the shooting, though not quite in the way that Planned Parenthood would have you believe. Robert Dear was likely driven into a fit of rage after seeing CFP-produced videos but it wasn’t the videos that angered him so much as their content. That’s a substantial distinction.

In any case, CFP cannot be held responsible for the actions of an unstable third party. Leftists, I believe, would understand this principle a little better if the shoe were on the other foot.

 … There is no doubt, however, that their rhetoric amplifies the vitriol against our military. These are people who cavalierly toss around terms such as “war criminal” and “genocide” until they become meaningless noise. They claim that the Bush-era War on Terror was in fact a religious crusade to kill or convert all Muslims.

 … But Code Pink and International A.N.S.W.E.R. don’t think that their rhetoric makes them responsible for terrorism against military recruiters. And they’re right. Blaming them would only let the guys who actually did it off the hook. Rhetoric doesn’t kill people—people kill people.

What about CBS News? Surely it put our soldiers at risk, if only because their program 60 Minutes II broke the Abu Ghraib prison scandal? No, CBS News isn’t culpable either. It isn’t the media’s job to collude in silence just because the story might make someone angry enough to go off the edge and kill someone. The same principle applies to the baby parts videos—CFP was only the messenger, and for that we should be grateful.

Robert Dear did indeed act from a red-hot anger, though CFP’s role in stirring it up was limited to peeling back the veil of secrecy that Planned Parenthood very much wanted to keep in place. Their role in Baby Parts-gate was identical that of 60 Minutes II in the Abu Ghraib scandal—namely, as the messenger.

Through the use of undercover videos, CFP exposed Planned Parenthood’s harvesting and selling of baby parts—eyes, liver, brains, and more. Perhaps you’ve heard that the videos were deceptively edited. Wrong. A study by Coalfire, a digital forensic analysis company, found that the videos were “authentic and show no evidence of manipulation.” Yes, all the videos were “edited”—just like nearly everything else seen on TV, because they are hours long and viewers generally like to see the highlight reel. Anyone who wants to see the uncut videos can find those on CFP’s website as well. …

Had you noticed how leftists have falsified the debate? If no one else has, Benny Huang points it out in stark terms:

 As the drip-drip-drip release of videos continued, the debate descended into abject silliness with Planned Parenthood defending its baby chop shops by falsely claiming that they operate on a strictly nonprofit basis. True to form, progressives implied that there is nothing morally suspect about killing children or divvying their organs. The real evil is profit. As long as no one gets rich off the deal they’re as pure as the driven snow.

Except Planned Parenthood did make a profit and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. One video features abortionist Mary Gatter haggling with prospective “buyers” over the price of organs. When Gatter is asked how much she would charge for “intact tissue,” she responds by saying, “Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re used to paying?” Odd. Why should that matter? If Planned Parenthood only wants to be reimbursed for expenses then it should have one non-negotiable price.

… Yet no one has gone to jail. There were meaningless congressional hearings of course, and a few states tried to turn off the spigots of cash to this reprehensible organization but no one at Planned Parenthood is wearing an orange jumpsuit. So Robert Dear decided to exercise some vigilante justice. That makes him a(n alleged) murderer and he will likely be convicted and jailed for the rest of his life, unlike the Planned Parenthood execs who have thus far been allowed to skate.

Mark my words—in the coming weeks there will be an intense media campaign to marginalize anyone who dares to mention the fact that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts. That’s wing-nutty terrorist talk! …

Oh, Lord, No! No More! Please! No More Hope'n'Change

Whether this is far from relevant or whether it bodes ill waits to be seen:

In Danish, the title of Jimmy Burns's Francis, Pope of Good Promise has been translated to Pave Frans - Forandring og håb, or, re-translated back to English: Pope Francis: Hope and Change (to be 100% accurate, Pope Francis: Change and Hope)!
 

Is Apple Losing It? With the Relinquishment of iPhoto, It Sure Seems to Be the Case

One of the worst "innovations" over the past years
was the decision to "improve" the Mac computer's iPhoto
feature,
I wrote on Instapundit in response to Don Norman and
Bruce Tognazzini's How Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name,
indeed to have it replaced by an app called,
simply, Photos (to coincide with the iPhone's Photos
app, which actually had that straight-forward name
because it was/is really little more a simple straight-forward
description of results of the in-built camera).

iPhoto was already as near perfection as can be, and
making it "better" got rid of some of its best features.

• You used to be able to write captions for a batch of
photos at a time, from 2 photos to 20 to 200, if need be;
this feature is gone, and now you have (if indeed you have
the courage to go ahead with such onerous a task) to write
(or copy and paste) every caption one photo at a time.

• The above-mentioned caption used to be immediately
visible when you clicked on the photo, and appear right
next to it, along with the technical information on the
photo (lighting, lens aperture, etc…) and the (GPS) place
where it was taken;
now it is only visible when and if you press the
information command (CMD + I) and it appears in a
separate window, one that hovers over and therefore
sometimes hides part of the photo. (Nothing drastic,
I know, but, again, still something that hardly needed
"improvement" in the first place.)

• Apple used to have an iPhoto feature called Events, which
allowed people to put photos related to a certain (wait for
it)… event into the same file.  Gone (in order to make the
Mac computer compatible with the iPhone's photo app,
something that hardly seemed called for or necessary).
Events seems to be replaced by a feature that most of
us have no use whatsoever for, the ability to file photos
by days, weeks, months, and years.

(If you go on a trip from the middle of one week to the middle of the
next, for business or pleasure, you hardly want that vacation or business
trip in two files, along with photos in each from your home town before
and after the trip; you want them together, with the home photos in two
(before and after) separate files (or, if you so wish, in one separate file).)

So what Apple has done is get rid of options.

But the greatest option that Apple got rid of was iPhotos itself.
Once you have upgraded to the first non-Feline operating system (OS),
i.e., to the first California landmark (as I learned to my great displeasure
when I upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks),
the option to use iPhoto vanishes. If a user likes Photos, fine.
But why should he not be able to retain iPhotos if he prefers that?!
In other words, why can't, why couldn't, Apple retain both?!

Judgment Is Always Bad (Except for Certain Exceptions…)

Jim Davis rarely, if ever, takes political sides in his Garfield cartoon, but in this instance he seems to have captured the liberal mindset fairly well.

Related (on a more serious note): a post discussing Martin Luther King Jr:
It isn’t judging that perturbs liberals so much;
it’s other people judging according to criteria that liberals don’t like

Thanksgiving: What to Be Greatful For in the 21st Century (Yes, Greatful)

At this time of Thanksgiving, I just think we should all take the time to think about what to be happy about and greatful (not grateful) for.

We should be grateful because we are the most intelligent people in history.

We should be grateful because we are more humane than anybody who preceded us.

We should be grateful because we are the most compassionate people who have ever lived.

We should be grateful because we are the most tolerant people who ever lived.

Never has anyone been as open to debate, never has anyone been so open to discussion, as we are.

We may be no more than a nose-pickin' high-schooler or a victimized college student, but we are so wonderful, so much more avant-garde than all the clueless morons who have preceded us.

George Washington? Abraham Lincoln? Christian IX? Montesquieu?

They were all racists.

Shakespeare? Voltaire? Hans Christian Andersen? Alexander the Great?

They were all sexists.

Cicero? Benjamin Franklin? Kierkegaard? Leonardo da Vinci?

They were all homophobes. (Okay, Leonardo was not.)

Hateful beings! The lot of 'em! Haters!

And in the White House, we finally have the most intelligent person to ever occupy the Oval Office. (Think about it: this compassionate being figured out that "the Russians love their children too", his secretary of state set the Reset button with the Kremlin in 2009, and Vladimir Putin has — hardly — bothered anyone since then; the humane leftist who replaced the dumb cowboy Bush understood that violence was always wrong, the pacifist refrained from carrying out his threats towards Assad, and Syria and its citizens have — hardly — been in the news cycle since.)

This is why I am so grateful.

I think of my father.
I think of my mother.
I think of my grand-fathers.
I think of my grand-mothers.

Think about it!!

I am more intelligent than my parents,
I am more humane than my grand-parents,
I am compassionate than all the ancestors who have preceded me.
I am much more tolerant than those… those… those filthy Christian swine!

Can you somehow imagine meeting all of your ancestors? Or one of them (those morons!)? (Allegedly, the Christian religion promises this in some way, but let us ignore that for the time being, due to those haters' ridiculous superstition.)

• One of your ancestors: God in heaven, my great-great-great-grand-son!!! It's a miracle! How are you, dear great-great-great-grand-son?!?! Speak! Speak to me!!

• You (or Me): Hi there, gramps. Uh… you shouldn't, er, open your mouth too much.

• One of them: What are you saying, dear child?!

• You: You are a Christian, right? You are religious, at least? Right?
Then (how to put this?)… you should… shut up.

• One of them: But why, dear child?! Why?!

• You: Because, thank God (so to speak), the likes of you are looked down upon these days. They can even get arrested.

• One of them: For what reason?!

• You: For being hateful, of course. And arrogant.

You see, great-great-great-grand-father, I am far more intelligent than you are (than you ever were).

I am far more humane than you are.

I am far more compassionate than you are.

I am far more tolerant than you are.

And… (last but not least)…
I am far more open to debate and discussion than you are.

• One of them: But—

• You: Enough!! SHUT THE @##%^&&& UP!!!

How Does the—Totally Unbiased—French Media Describe Nigel Farage and His UKIP Party Members? Le Monde Compares Them to Teenagers and to Clowns

Wondering how Le Monde's Marion Van Renterghem describes the UKIP leader (or how the MSM outlet did so last year, at least)?

Accompanying a picture where the "ultra-conservative" "ultra-capitalist" ("l'ultraconservateur" "ultralibéral") looks like a demented fundamentalist Sunday preacher and referring to the party's alleged "racist meanderings" ("les dérapages racistes du UKIP"), she compares him and his entourage to teenagers:

Between Farage and his aides, talking ill of Brussels is part of the big jokes that they get as little tired of as adolescents do of dirty stories.

Entre Farage et ses assistants, dire du mal de Bruxelles fait partie des grosses blagues dont on se lasse aussi peu que les adolescents des histoires de fesses.

Then, borrowing from Goscinny and Uderzo's (Asterix and) Obelix, she concludes that

Nigel Farage is the populist Italian clown Beppe Grillo who's fell into a Tea Party à l'américaine with the posh accent of an English conservative. 

That's right. Very objective. And very unbiased.

Nigel Farage, c'est le clown populiste italien Beppe Grillo tombé dans un Tea-Party à l'américaine avec l'accent posh d'un conservateur anglais.

Jedi Mind Tricks and Two Sides to the Delusional Coin: On the one hand liberals embrace lies as truth, while on the other they reject truth as lies

Where does Bobby Jindal go to get his reputation back?

asks Benny Huang.

The Louisiana governor and former presidential candidate took some heat following last January’s Charlie Hebdo attack when he spoke about Muslim no-go zones in Europe. No-go zones are Muslim enclaves, completely separate from civil law and authority, run according to street justice and Muslim tradition.

Jindal was quickly rebuked by political commentators and even the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who insisted that “no-go zones” are fictional. “Jindal condemns imaginary no-go zones” wrote Steve Benen on Rachel Maddow’s MaddowBlog. A Washington Post headline mused, “Bobby Jindal Won’t Back Down on no-go Zones. Why?” Geez, I don’t know—because he was right?

 … Ten months later, after an even more horrific terror attack in Paris, we learned that in fact some of the perpetrators had emerged from exactly the no-go zones whose existence Jindal’s detractors had denied in January. When investigators followed the terrorists’ trail to Brussels, they raided homes in the Molenbeek neighborhood, which the New York Times describes as “working class.” That’s Times-speak for non-working class and, of course, Muslim. The Times tweeted: “Belgian Minister Says Government Lacks Control Over Neighborhood Linked to Terror Plots” That’s as good a definition as any for a “no-go zone.” Days later, French police laid siege to an apartment in Saint Denis, a heavily Muslim suburb of Paris known for its high crime and wide availability of guns. Saint Denis is by all accounts a no-go zone.

But don’t worry—there’s no such thing as a no-go zone. Never has been, never will be.

This habit of denying the existence of very real threats seems to be a distinguishing characteristic of the Left. Even more enigmatic is the fact that they simultaneously believe in a lot of things that happen to be pure fiction. Until recently I considered liberals’ primary malfeasance to be in stirring up hysteria through the fabrication of incidents that never happened.

Rape hoaxes are a favorite. These are the people who brought us the Rolling Stone rape hoax—not to mention the Lena Dunham rape hoax, the Duke lacrosse team rape hoax, the mattress girl rape hoax, and the Tawana Brawley rape hoax. Liberals recently experienced a mass hallucination at the University of Missouri, claiming that the KKK was roaming the campus. Some went as far as to claim that the klansmen were receiving police protection as they tossed bricks through dormitory windows. None of this actually happened. Liberals stage hate crimes, invent appalling statistics, and plant racist signs at Tea Party rallies. They subscribe to all sorts of unproven and unprovable theories such as the “gay” gene. They inhabit a world of utter fakeness—and that’s just the way they like it.

This delusional coin of theirs has two sides. On the one hand liberals embrace lies as truth, while on the other they reject truth as lies.

Nor is it enough to simply deny the existence of very real things; they have to defame others, like Bobby Jindal, who refuse to play along. It didn’t suffice to say that he was wrong about no-go zones in Europe—which he wasn’t wrong, by the way—they had to accuse him of far worse.

Be sure to read Benny Huang's list of "a few things that liberals refuse to allow to exist", from False Rape Accusers to Black-on-Black Crime through Islamic terrorism and
Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq:

Some eleven years after the invasion of Iraq, the New York Times finally got around to publishing a story about the five thousand chemical munitions discovered since 2003. Yet the myth of “no WMD” persists to the present day. Even the author of the Times article, CJ Chivers, tried to perpetuate the falsehood that the weapons don’t count because they were left over from the 1980s and were thus not the weapons used to justify the war. He must have been expecting his readers not to read UN Resolution 1441, which laid out in explicit detail the rationale or the war. It essentially demanded that Saddam account for all WMD known to be in its possession at the time of his 1991 surrender, which would of course include 1980s weapons. 

Benny Huang, who might also have mentioned that Fox News felt compelled to apologize to Paris after the mayor (pre-November 13) harshly criticized its report on the French capital's no-go zones, concludes:

Liberals are like Ben Kenobi employing Jedi mind tricks to convince the rest of us that “These are not the drones you’re looking for.” With a wave of the hand they can make people disbelieve their very eyes. How a person can believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Matthew Shepard was killed for his sexuality is truly astounding, though not nearly as astounding as the idea that these people deny the very existence of ex-gays! They’ve invented this thing called the War on Women™, but vehemently deny that there’s any such thing as a war on Christmas. They deny the existence of voter fraud, non-citizens on the welfare rolls, and disease-carrying illegal aliens. How on earth could one group of people be so out of touch with reality? That’s liberals for you.

Spare me the Saddam nostalgia: Saddam's Iraq was a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave beneath it

In the wake of the Paris attacks, the executive director of the Human Security Centre, Julie Lenarz, writes that

I'm hearing a lot of "if it hadn't been for the Iraq war, we wouldn't be in this mess". The Kurds right now are digging out Yezidi mass graves. Not so long ago it was us digging out Kurdish mass graves.

By all means, let's discuss what went wrong, but spare me the Saddam nostalgia by the historically illiterate. I can't eat as much as I want to vomit.

Jalal Talabani captured it beautifully when he said:

"Saddam's Iraq was a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave beneath it."

In France, the immigrant’s life means dealing with the country’s bureaucratic maze

After I moved just over the Paris city limit to Pantin 

wrote the New York Times' Mira Kamdar a few months prior to the November attacks,

I realized my status as a foreigner in France had changed. In leaving Paris for the banlieue, I had ceased to be an American expatriate, and became just another immigrant in France.

 … The immigrant’s life also means dealing with France’s bureaucratic maze. Police prefectures handle immigration matters here. In Paris, Americans — and foreigners from a few other countries — are sent to a room upstairs. There, I had taken a number and within a half-hour was sitting before an administrator’s desk. Downstairs, a room crowded with people, most of whom appeared to be from sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb, waited for their turn at a stand-up window. I now have some idea what they went through.

 … Many of the foreigners at the Bobigny prefecture are from former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb. In seeking legal residency, they are asking for official recognition of their existence in France.

Most foreigners begin with a one-year permit. In principle, you are eligible for a 10-year permit after five years, and may also be eligible to apply for citizenship. In practice, many people must renew their residency permit every year, a humiliating exercise that makes it nearly impossible to do things that would actually help them integrate into French society, like getting a permanent job or applying for credit.

The real problem is France’s attitude toward immigrants. …