Category: World

Mad Maxine

I had been vaguely aware of the social problems plaguing France for some time. Off-hand remarks that there were areas of Paris the police didn’t dare venture into, for instance, and the concern over Islamic militancy in immigrant populations. Given the past week’s riots, I think this deserves more attention. Via Lileks comes some background on the situation, written 3 years ago by Theodore Dalrymple.

So Fundamentally Bad

The National Review has an interview with one Peter Schweizer, who has a new book coming out called Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy. In the book he details case after case of prominent liberals who live precisely the opposite of what they preach. Barbara Streisand, who campaigns for reducing consumption, pays $20,000 a year to water her lawn. Michael Moore, who villifies capitalism and the stock market, has a portfolio that includes Halliburton, Boeing and HMO’s. Nanci Pelosi, who champions unions, will have none of them in her vineyards and hotels. Noam Chomsky, who rails against the rich’s tax shelters and the military-industrial complex, has his own Pentagon-funded tax shelter. Al Franken, who declaims vigourously on the bigotry of whites, has a worse hiring record with respect to minorities than Bob Jones University.

Yes, we are all hypocrites and I talk about that in the book. But liberal hypocrisy and conservative hypocrisy are quite different on two accounts. First, you hear about conservative hypocrisy all the time. A pro-family congressman caught in an extramarital affair, a minister caught in the same. This stuff is exposed by the media all the time. The leaders of the liberal-Left get a complete pass on their hypocrisy. Second, and this is even more important, the consequences of liberal hypocrisy are different than for the conservative variety. When conservatives abandon their principles and become hypocrites, they end up hurting themselves and their families. Conservative principles are like guard rails on a winding road. They are irritating but fundamentally good for you. Liberal hypocrisy is the opposite. When the liberal-left abandon their principles and become hypocrites, they actually improve their lives. Their kids end up in better schools, they have more money, and their families are more content. Their ideas are truly that bad.

Hat tip: Transterrestrial Musings.

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

Even now that Iraqis have voted overwhelmingly to get on with recreating their nation, “progressives” can’t bring themselves to think well of 30 million people struggling for peace and freedom after being under a tyrant’s bootheel.

People who opposed the war in Iraq will find it hard to stomach attempts to present the referendum as a triumph.
—The Guardian

Mark Steyn has some characteristically trenchent words for them:

Sixteen out of Iraq’s 18 provinces – including Sunni-majority ones – voted for the most liberal, democratic, federal and pluralist constitution in the Middle East. Sorry to make the Guardian throw up, but that is indeed a “triumph”.

Whatever the Americans got wrong, they got one big thing right – that, if you persevered, Iraq had the potential to function as a free society in a part of the world where no such thing has ever existed.

That was a long shot, and much sneered at, not least by British “conservatives”. But Washington judged correctly: given the radicalisation of the Arab world, and the Arabification of the Islamic world, and the Islamification of much of the rest of the world, in the end you have to fix the problem at source.