Politics

What the Sultan Saw

Wall Street Opinion Journal Matthew Kaminski April 11, 2006

Practicing a tolerant strain of Islam, the Ottomans clashed with fundamentalists.

The Ottoman Empire passed into history in 1922, a mere lifetime ago. Yet in a certain way it feels as distant as ancient Athens or Rome, known to us mostly through architectural relics, a few striking events and a mythical aura. Kemal Atatürk’s secular Turkish republic, the empire’s successor state, consciously rejected much of the Ottoman heritage and most of its traditions, while the empire’s colonial outposts have reverted to the imperatives of their local identities.

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Europe’s utopian hangover

Jewish World Review Paul Johnson

The EU is built on fantasy.

One thing history teaches, over and over again, is that there are no shortcuts. Human societies advance the hard way; there is no alternative. Communism promised Utopia on Earth. After three-quarters of a century of unparalleled sufferings, the Soviet Union collapsed in privation and misery, leaving massive Russia with an economy no bigger than tiny Holland’s. We are now watching the spectacle of another experiment in hedonism, the European Union, as it learns the grim facts of life.

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Divided We Stand

Wall Street Opinion Journal JAMES Q. WILSON Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Can a polarized nation win a protracted war?

The 2004 election left our country deeply divided over whether our country is deeply divided. For some, America is indeed a polarized nation, perhaps more so today than at any time in living memory. In this view, yesterday’s split over Bill Clinton has given way to today’s even more acrimonious split between Americans who detest George Bush and Americans who detest John Kerry, and similar divisions will persist as long as angry liberals and angry conservatives continue to confront each other across the political abyss. Others, however, believe that most Americans are moderate centrists, who, although disagreeing over partisan issues in 2004, harbor no deep ideological hostility. I take the former view.

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Clash of Civilization

Wall Street Journal February 11, 2006; Page A8

As a way of addressing the Islamist threat to civil liberties in Europe, the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad were hardly ideal. The right to mock a religion may be absolute, but so is the right to publish most forms of pornography: Neither is appropriate in a serious publication. That applies whether the religion is Islam, Christianity or any other, and whether the cartoons are being published for the first time or reprinted elsewhere as acts of solidarity in the face of an implied threat.

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Dissolving Marriage

If everything is marriage, then nothing is.

Canada, you don’t know the half of it. In mid-January, Canada was rocked by news that a Justice Department study had called for the decriminalization and regulation of polygamy. Actually, two government studies recommended decriminalizing polygamy. (Only one has been reported on.) And even that is only part of the story. Canadians, let me be brutally frank. You are being played for a bunch of fools by your legal-political elite. Your elites mumble a confusing jargon to your face to keep you from understanding what they really have in mind.

Language Exam

Let’s try a little test. Translate the following phrases into English:

  1. Canada needs to move “beyond conjugality.”
  2. Canada needs to “reconsider the continuing legal privileging of marriage and other conjugal relationships.”
  3. Once gay marriage is legalized, Canada will be able to “consider whether the legal privileges and burdens now assigned to marriage and other conjugal relationships can be justified.”
  4. Canada needs to question “whether conjugality is an appropriate marker for determining legal rights and obligations.”

[Answers: The English translation of #1,# 2, and #4 is: “Canada should abolish marriage.” The translation of #3 is: “Once we legalize gay marriage, we can move on to the task of abolishing marriage itself.”]

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Episode where “Will and Grace” demean Christianity dropped

From the Family Research Council

Look at the Contrast

Liberal columnists are constantly trying to link conservative Christians with Muslim fundamentalists, suggesting that we are engaged in a jihad against their enlightened ideas. The Rev. Don Wildmon of the American Family Association is denounced as a mullah whenever he leads a protest against some liberal outrage on television . . . They had originally planned to have Britney Spears as a Christian conservative with a cooking show billed as “Cruci-fixin’s.” NBC has now stated that that storyline will not be present in the Spears’ episode.

Notice, though, what Don Wildmon has not done. He hasn’t burned NBC executives’ homes, threatened them with death, or strapped explosives to a bicycle messenger. Look at Europe. There, Muslim protesters against an offensive Danish cartoon portrayal of Mohammed have burned flags, set fire to a Danish Embassy, praised mass murderers, and yelled “Freedom Go To H_ll!” Four people have died in the rioting. We will continue to speak out against the media’s constant attempts to insult and degrade Christians and Christianity. But we will continue to use the means and methods of freedom – freedom that rests upon the foundation of Christianity.

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Google sells its soul, and ours

Sidney Morning Herald February 4, 2006

The search engine’s subservience to China puts its users everywhere at risk, writes Frida Ghitis.

A FEW years ago, I walked into an internet room in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa. There were no Chinese soldiers in the room and no visible government censors nearby. A sign on the wall, however, reminded users that China’s all-seeing eye had not disappeared. “Do not use internet,” the warning instructed, “for any political or other unintelligent purposes.”

Since then, China’s ruling regime has perfected the science of controlling what the Chinese can read or write on the internet to such a degree it has become the envy of tyrants the world over. We might have expected that from a regime that has proved it will do whatever it takes to stay in power. What we never expected was to see Google, the company whose motto is “Don’t be evil”, helping in the effort.
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