21 October 2004

THIS JUST IN: Michael Moore is against democracy

[source, source]

if Bush wins, Moore said, “I and others will call for mass nonviolent civil disobedience. I will not allow our White House to be taken from us again. The right to vote, and the right to have all the votes counted, is a precious right. It is the cornerstone of a democracy. We will not sit back this time, and I regret we did the last time.”

Because to Moore, there is only one acceptable outcome. I’m not sure why he thinks we should have the election at all.

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You don't win wars by dieing for your country, but by dieing for the UN

[source, source]

Kerry’s belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, “If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no.”

Because, of course, being mere Americans we have no hope of affecting the outcome. That is for our betters in the UN.

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Beyond the Pale

David Bernstein discusses the issue of why so many American Jews have a visceral distaste for Republicans. Frankly, none of the reasons are very interesting or compelling, so in my view it remains a mystery, other than the strong Jewish preference for Leftish politics. But that just pushes the issue back one layer without resolving anything.

What’s interesting is Bernstein’s final paragraph:

Meanwhile, this article from the Duke student newspaper (Update: the author is one of Duke’s purported best and brightest, a recipient of a four-year, full tuition scholarship; update: and, get this, winner of Duke’s annual journalism award) reveals an increasingly prevalent view on the far left: we will only be tolerant of Jews so long as they toe the left-wing line, including on Middle East policy. If they abandon us for the right, we will stir up anti-Semitism, especially among blacks, by pointing out how successful Jews are in the United States (and attributing this success to their ability to claim “white privilege” while also claiming victim status via the “holocaust industry”), by arguing that their claims of victimization are phony or exaggerated (and without victim status, you are held in contempt by the far left), and via claims of dual loyalty to Israel. This sort of blackmail used to be subtle, but with even left-wing Jews generally refusing to join the anti-Iraq War movement because of its anti-Israel and often anti-Semitic subtext, the subtlety is gradually diminishing. (Update: And the fact that a few Jews had the temerity to join the Bush Administration as foreign policy advisors has already unleashed a flood of left-wing anti-Semitism related to the alleged Jewish cabal that led America to war with Iraq and wants to do the same with Iran.) The good news is that this sort of thing is likely to push Jews away from the far left (as has already happened in much of the rest of the world), and without a substantial Jewish intellectual and financial presence in the next generation, the American far left, which has long had a very substantial Jewish presence, will have lost much of its power.

Ah yes, the Spainish problem. Spain never really recovered from kicking out the Jews after the Reconquista. We can only hope the same fate befalls the Left.

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European Court of Justice – an insult to human dignity

[source, source]

On Oct. 14, the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice upheld a ban on the Bonn “Laserdrome”, where participants simulated killing each other with lasers.

The court said nothing about whether the lasers can actually inflict physical pain. Instead, it found that the game operated by the Bonn-based company, Omega Spielhallen-und-Automatenaufstellungs-GmbH, is an affront to human dignity.

“The prohibition on the commercial exploitation of games involving the simulation of acts of violence against persons, in particular the representation of acts of homicide, corresponds to the level of protection of human dignity which the national constitution seeks to guarantee” in Germany, reads the seven-page judgment.

I wonder what will be banned next — multiplayer violent video games or military exercises?

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