The Fantasy of Equality Part II

The game is rigged and it’s up to the good liberals to set it straight. The liberal heart pines for equality and there is but one way to achieve it: Get power and start meddling.  Of course, it’s all hokum.

 

 

1. People move up and down income brackets. According to a 2007 report from the U.S. Treasury Department, over half of individuals from 1996-2005, little changed since 1987, moved at least one quintile up or down. Perhaps most importantly, over half in the bottom income quintile in 1996 moved to a higher income group by 2005. The drop from the top quintile was even more dramatic. Other studies confirm:

 

 

 

Overall, income for everyone has risen, most dramatically for the lowest. The rich get richer and the poor get richer too. There is a false and destructive notion portrayed in everything from movies like “Wall Street” to the highest levels of academia and journalism: The notion that wealth is static. It is not. Look at the state of the nation just 100 years ago. By just about every measure—health, leisure time, food security, home size, transportation—things have improved substantially. The richest have gained the most in the last 20 years but if relative mobility is little changed and the median income has increased an inflation-adjusted 24%, why does that even matter?

 

And who are the rich? Trust fund babies? No. Largely, the rich are people who work for a living. One survey shows 86 percent of millionaires are self-made. Only about 14% of the top 1% work in finance. Most of the rest are doctors, lawyers, etc.  

 

       2. The increase in income inequality is about one thing: Marriage. The Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, drops drastically when marriage is accounted for. It does so regardless of race. Fewer people are getting married these days. Too bad, because it is the key to building wealth. “Can Marriage Cure Poverty?”. The New York Times says yes.

 

Mona Charen notes that, according to the National Marriage Project, in the 1980’s, only 13% of children of mothers with a high school diploma or some college were born out of wedlock. Today it is 44%. W. Bradford Wilcox states that cohabitating couples “have a much higher break up rate, lower levels of household income, and a higher level of child abuse and domestic violence”. Marriage is becoming more correlated with education. The liberal elite instinctively grasps this yet they refuse to preach their own values to the poor. Charen writes, “Without the basics of permanence and security in their lives, people find it much more difficult to rise out of poverty or maintain middle class lifestyles. They are also far less happy. If you care about the poor and the middle class, you ought to worry about marriage”. The atrophy of traditional family is devastating for the long-term health of this nation. This is Mitt Romney’s fault.

 

3. The idea of poverty itself in this country is dubious. In America, the poor are obese from an abundance of cheap, tasty food. The notion that obesity is caused by “food deserts” is suspect at best. The American underclass is comparable in material standards to the middle class in places like France and Britain. According to a 2007 Heritage Foundation study taken from Census Data, 80% have air conditioning compared to 36% in 1970. Only 6% of poor households are over-crowded. Nearly 75% own a car and 62% have cable or satellite programming. Perhaps most shockingly, 43% of the poor own their own homes, typically a 3-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath, with a garage and a patio.

 

This is not to say that living in a bad area with bad schools, high crime, and little spending money is paradise. It is not. But “poor” in America does not mean dirty water, starvation, and malaria. “Poor” is a label, an almost arbitrary number. If you make $34,000/year, you are in the top 1% globally.

 

4. The left’s ideas for fixing inequality are bankrupt. Nancy Pelosi stated that three words prove her party is not out of ideas: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But even most liberal economists believe his policies prolonged the depression. FDR’s treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. famously stated, "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work”.

 

The current big idea is to raise the minimum wage. Many are claiming most studies say this will not hurt employment. Even if this were true, only 5% of minimum wage earners are below the poverty line. However, a 2007 Federal Reserve/UC Irvine meta analysis showed that almost all of the studies show raising the minimum wage kills jobs. The philosophical fathers of modern day liberals such as Woodrow Wilson’s Commisioner of Labor, Royal Meeker understood this. They devised the minimum wage as a  scheme to prevent black laborers from competing with whites. They believed that a whole underclass of inferior “germplasm” really shouldn’t be expected (or allowed) to work thereby, hopefully, decreasing their numbers. Meeker stated, “… better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed…” You see, before the Holocaust happened, eugenics was really popular among liberals.

 

Wages are not the problem. Jeffrey Dorman in Forbes states, “The entire bottom 20%…averages only 0.42 earners per household. People are not in poverty because the minimum wage is too low. People are in poverty because they are not working or not working enough. They need jobs, not an increase in the minimum wage”.

 

What about simply taxing the rich to redistribute wealth? Even France’s socialist president Francois Hollande is reversing course after seeing capital flee his country like rats on a sinking ship.

 

So yes, inequality in America exists. But is that a surprise when some work harder, are more ambitious, talented, beautiful or even lucky? Rather than artificially closing a meaningless gap, we should focus on increasing opportunity. In that, there is much the two parties could agree on. Unfortunately, many succumb to the tempting lie that they have less because the rich have more. Indeed, society seems to be built around temptation. For gluttony, there is McDonald’s. For lust, there is free internet porn. And for envy we have the Democrats.

The Fantasy of Equality Part 1

Conservatives love liberty. Liberals love equality. You cannot have both. Alexis De Toquesville in “Democracy in America”, probably one of the best political philosophy books ever, describes the tension between the two. When there is pressure towards equality, whether by culture or law, greatness is diminished. He writes that we can either have a society with many flaws but with robust examples of creativity, innovation, and brilliance, or we can have a more equal but stagnant and milquetoast society, a society with fewer spectacular failures but fewer bright spots.  Thomas Sowell, a black conservative economist (There are two! I’ll quote the other one another time.), says, “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs”.

Just as liberals claim to love freedom, conservatives believe in equality too, but their idea of equality is very different. In Sowell’s book “The Conflict of Visions”, (good but a little boring) he explains that conservatives focus on process while liberals focus on outcome. Conservative “fairness” dictates that everyone should have the same rules. A dogma of liberal “fairness” dictates that rules and standards be modified for some because the starting points of opportunity are different. Liberalism is about handicapping society.

By focusing on outcomes, government must forcibly take from others. So what, you say? Ok, but it’s hard to argue you believe in freedom if you are willing to take what’s earned legally to give to somebody deemed deserving just for existing and having less. The problem with focusing on income or other forms of inequality is that there must be judges of who deserves subsidy. Who judges? The good, enlightened liberals, of course. And government. When government sets out to confer blessing, usually in the form of a check or a tax break, it is a process ripe for corruption and influence. So who is deserving? Should we go by income? Ok, but what about those who work hard and those who won’t? What about those who really want a job versus those simply enjoying their unemployment? What about one who works 40 hours a week at $8/hour and one who works 20 hours a week at $16/hour. Is one more deserving of supplementation? How much to give to one and not the other? Wouldn’t that violate the law of equal outcomes? What about an honest, loving, single mother and a drug addicted, child abusing, kleptomaniac, or a hard working but poor man versus a wife-beating gang member? Should the government guarantee the same income? What about an immigrant who takes English classes and tries to assimilate and one who does not? A legal immigrant and an illegal one?

Let’s take this further. Why should rich nations keep their wealth at all? There are many in the world who are poor through no fault of their own. If you make about $34,000/yr., you are in the top 1% globally. The “poor” in the U.S. have microwaves and cell phones and flat screen TV’s. Maybe they should send some money to the real poor people in Bangladesh.

Who truly is more disadvantaged?  The hair splitting can be infinite. Liberals focus mainly on income and race but would you say Barack Obama’s children are disadvantaged? (I would but for completely different reasons.) What about white kids with poor, single mothers from a trailer park? What about Will Smith’s children? They disadvantaged? Among African Americans, light skinned blacks often discriminate against darker skinned blacks. Maybe we could have a color chart or cards like paint chips that we could match to faces. Cocoa? 6 points. Espresso? 9. What about African immigrants who never had a history of oppression through slavery? What about a white kid who grows up in a black neighborhood and says things like, “A’ite?”

You might argue that it’s not outcome per se that must be equalized but opportunity. Advantages must be conferred to those who had it rough. Change the starting line instead of the finish line. That makes sense until you actually think about how to achieve that. Equality of income or opportunity or most things as liberals define it is a destructive fantasy. But really, there are a million forms of disadvantage in life. People discriminate based on attractiveness. Do we give affirmative action points for ugliness? People discriminate against fat people. How much weight should we give that (He he)? Do we give extra disadvantage points for people with bad skin? Short people? Surely government should give them a leg up. Squeaky voices? Lower intelligence? Mild ADHD? Bad taste in music? Color blindness? Bad fashion sense? Baldness? Bad breath? Give them mouthwash tax breaks. Certain geographic areas are poorer than others. Should we give extra income to those in rural areas, bad urban areas, the South versus the Northwest and Northeast? What about that rich kid who drove drunk and killed people? He had terrible parents and his lawyer argued he suffered from “Affluenza”. He got probation. Yet, rich or poor, having bad parents truly is a terrible handicap. These are all real disadvantages in life. To focus only on race and income is incredibly arbitrary.

There are some with a sickness who would try to parse these differences. Kurt Vonnegut in his novel “Harrison Bergeron” describes a government with a Handicapper General who does exactly that. In America’s quest for equality, the good looking wear masks, the intelligent must listen to earsplitting noises that impede their ability to think, and the graceful and strong must wear weights around their necks. The gifted are murdered by the government. America becomes weak, stupid, and anesthetized.

The truth is that weaknesses can be as much a catalyst for greatness as a hindrance to success. Great people have come from deeply flawed backgrounds. Winston Churchill’s father was terribly cruel and unloving. Churchill drank a lot but he saved his country. Abraham Lincoln’s mother died when he was young and his father was abusive. Racked with debilitating depression throughout his life, he had to contend with the death of his favorite son Willie and the mental deterioration of his crazy wife while saving the nation. It has been argued by some that the flaws, more so than the talents of great men are often what drive them. How to reconcile that with the notion that disadvantage itself should be eradicated? Read here about Scott Stossel who edits the Atlantic. A successful man by anybody’s standards, he suffers from phobias of small spaces, heights, fainting, germs, cheese (What???), flying, vomiting, and other things.

We don’t know enough why some disadvantaged people succeed and others who have everything throw it all away. Life is hard for everyone, even rich, white women and smug bloggers.

JFK: CAN WE GET OVER THIS GUY ALREADY?

This week on my DVR were “50 Years of Questions: The JFK Assassination”, “JFK: 50 Questions Answered”, “Killing Kennedy”, and NOVA’s “Cold Case JFK”. 50 years after his assassination, we still think about it. We’re obsessed. My question is: Why?

Omnipotentblog is biased against conspiracy theories. The notion that many people across different groups and agencies could keep a secret about anything nefarious is spectacularly wrong. Omnipotentblog works for government and at one time, was in the military. Not only that, I was in…MILITARY INTELLIGENCE. (The first to say, “Isn’t that an oxymoron?” was clever. The next ten million were not. Leave it.) Most in the field are patriots. If a large group of them is told to do something evil and corrupt, you can bet $20 that somebody will spill the beans. See Edward Snowden and the other NSA whistle blowers. The very notion of some grand conspiracy about JFK’s assassination doesn’t pass the smell test. Apparently, 59% of us disagree.

Omnipotentblog works with a very diverse population. It has led to one indisputable conclusion: People are idiots. Not all, of course, but humanity at large is not brilliant. In my “What we can learn from a Devil Worshiper” blog, I outlined research showing the vast majority of us are somewhat closed minded. No one, government, military, and Omnipotentblog included, are totally immune from this curse.

Indisputable fact #1: Oswald was a wife beating, deranged communist. He was hospitalized as a young teenager for trying to kill his family. When asked by an American Embassy worker why he was renouncing his citizenship, he stated, “I’m a Marxist”. If only they all were so honest. He lived in the USSR for a while before being disillusioned by breadlines and the cold. Documents reveal that the KGB thought he was a moron and not of much use. He returned to the U.S. annoyed with Russia but still enamored with tin pot dictators like Castro. Hope springs eternal.

Indisputable fact #2: Kennedy was a virulent anti-communist.

Indisputable fact #3: Oswald already had one assassination attempt under his belt. He tried to kill right wing General Edwin Walker on 4/10/63.

Years ago, I watched a documentary featuring Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed”. He was compelling, demolishing seemingly every theory peddled. Jeffrey Toobin of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “Unlike many of the 2,000 other books that have been written about the Kennedy assassination, (it) is a resolutely sane piece of work…utterly convincing…I started 'Case Closed' as a skeptic…but this fascinating and important book won me over.” Pollster Larry Sabato started a skeptic but as he wrote “The Kennedy Half Century”, became convinced Oswald was the lone gunman. The only person to personally know both men, Priscilla Johnson McMillan worked as a researcher for JFK and interviewed Oswald for six hours in Russia. What she saw was a delusional, unbalanced renegade. She is convinced he alone was responsible. She befriended Oswald’s wife and wrote a book about their tortured relationship. Likewise, Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson (Who might be engaged now. Yay! Congratulations!) wrote an exhaustive, 1600 pages debunking the conspiracy theories. Nobody cares. We will have our conspiracy.

 

Star crossed lovers met on Prison-is-for-lovers.matchmakers.com.

To be fair, there are some interesting questions, notably, Jack Ruby’s connection with the mafia, a major suspect, and the government’s fear that a connection to Russia would lead to nuclear war. More interesting, however, is not the debate over a magic bullet but the sociological implications of our ongoing obsession. If we were honest, we would admit, as Dylan Matthews argues, JFK wasn’t that great. Many experts say JFK, misunderstanding Kruschev’s intentions, escalated the Cuban Missile crisis and almost brought about nuclear war. JFK himself eventually admitted the missiles in Cuba were analogous to those he had just put in Turkey. Matthews also notes the Bay of Pigs invasion. Even JFK thought it was a bad idea but he went ahead anyway. He argues that Kennedy likely would have taken us to war in Viet Nam. JFK also helped overthrow an Iraqi dictator, which brought Saddam Hussein’s Baath party to power. D’oh!

Matthews also argues convincingly that JFK moved very slowly on Civil Rights. He did send troops to protect the Freedom Riders but, according to Jackie Robinson, who had backed Nixon in 1960, JFK had to be heavily pressured by civil rights leaders to back the Civil Rights Act. Matthews states, “It's hard to say if Nixon would have been better on civil rights — though it's worth remembering that he was friends with Martin Luther King Jr., was an NAACP member, and expressed to King his frustration with the tepid pace at which civil rights was moving — but Hubert Humphrey, who made his name in politics with a 1948 stand for civil rights at the Democratic convention, certainly would have been. In any case, Kennedy's record is nothing to write home about”.

Kennedy also passed no domestic legislation of any consequence. He tried to pass MediCare but it was sabotaged by his own bumbling criticism of Congressional Democrats. It took the negotiating skills of LBJ to get it done.

Liberals lionize JFK but the president who quoted him most was Ronald Reagan. Realizing JFK was not quite so liberal, he used him to turn Kennedy Democrats into Reagan Democrats. Some credit Reagan’s supply side economics and the “Laffer Curve” with JFK/LBJ’s 20% tax cut, which increased revenues substantially between 1961 and 1968. JFK once said, “A rising tide lifts all boats”. Sounds very “trickle down” to me.

Some liberals, like the degenerate Oliver Stone, believe JFK would have avoided Vietnam. How so?? He tried to overthrow Castro and he did overthrow Vietnam’s Ngo Diem, showing great eagerness to get involved. His famous “Ich bin ein Berlinner” speech was a warning to East Germany not to encroach. Unlike Stone, JFK hated commies.

What to make of all this? Apparently, we need our heroes. He almost called fire and brimstone down on the east coast and we now know he was bringing prostitutes into the White House. No matter. We need someone to venerate. We idealize and replace what is vague with what is lovely and romantic. We ascribe royalty and create fantastical language like “Camelot” to describe his reign. With Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Great Society, and the War on Poverty, LBJ was much more consequential. He was hated for the war in Vietnam but he was a great and powerful liberal. Too bad he’s ugly. And has a Texas drawl, which, if you’re on the left, is where all jerks are from. What cemented Kennedy’s fame were a devastating smile, a fashionable and pretty wife, and the fact that he died before he could screw up. Had he lived, he would have been seen as mediocre. But, like Princess Di, it’s inconceivable someone so special can be cut down by a drunken chauffer or that Obama, our first messiah, can fail simply because he sucks. It must be racism. An American royal killed by a single confused, angry loser? It’s just too terrible.

We like to believe.

THE LIBERALS IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (IT’S NOT WHO YOU THINK.)

Ah, here we go again. The government shutdown went so well for Republicans in 1995. Newt and others have tried to spin it in a more positive direction lately but even he admitted at the time that it was a disaster that helped reelect Bill Clinton.

 

Democrats are getting a lot of mileage from this and why shouldn’t they? They’re making political gains because the Republicans are the party that hates government. Simplistic? Wrong, maybe? Yes but anybody who has ever seen a man-on-the-street interview knows we are not a well-informed nation of geniuses. No nation is.

 

Charles Krauthammer says this whole thing is “nuts” and has called these stubborn ones, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul, the Kamikaze Caucus. (Three of them are likely presidential candidates for 2016. How interesting.) Many call them the Suicide caucus. How about just “The Stupid Caucus”? Jonah Goldberg said it seems like Cruz’ strategy is: Step 1: Shut down the government. Step 2: Question mark. Question mark. Question mark. Step 3: Total victory. In a closed door meeting with Senate Republicans, it was leaked that Cruz and the rest were savaged by the other Senators. He admitted in interviews on talk radio that he virtually had no support. In contrast to the confident bloviating of his 21 hour filibuster, he seemed quiet and chastised. Humbled even? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Is he stupid like a fox? Maybe. This seemingly amateur move may be designed to cement his nomination for president and it could work.

 

Shut downs are neither recent, nor rare. There have been 18 total, 17 of them since the ‘70’s. There is much hand wringing lately as to what the rest of the world thinks of this circus. Is it a sign that our system doesn’t work? No, it’s a symptom of divided government. We have checks and balances and guess what? One branch is checking the other. Things are working just fine. Don’t like shutdowns? Don’t live in a democracy.

 

Nevertheless, this whole thing is an unnecessary conflagration brought about by people willing to bring the whole temple down on our heads. It is a purely political move. There is no chance Obamacare will be defeated or that it will be weakened in any substantial way. Slightly modified? Mmmm….. possibly. But most don’t know that many of the offers from Republicans were actually reasonable. The almost feckless Republican message machine can’t beat the mainstream press who won’t report these details and the low-info voter that we need remains solidly convinced Republicans are obstinate. FAIL. Omnipotentblog has no problem with purely political moves. You need power to make change. What makes this a farce is that the inevitability of failure is staring us in the face. A substantial majority agrees that Obamacare is bad but also disagrees with shutting down the government over it. When even a Republican majority disagrees with the strategy, how on earth does that compute to victory? For a hot second, I thought Cruz, the Ivy League lawyer who has argued before the Supreme Court eight times, might be a genius. His filibuster was manly and heroic and it looked like Republicans would be responsible after making some effective noise. Nope. They cut the brakes on the Crazy Train and hit the throttle.

 

Democrats are the party of the unhappy, a bunch of utopians who think they can master the universe through feminizing bumper sticker platitudes like “No human is illegal”. Good one. Republicans are the party of masculinity. But conservatism is supposed to be pragmatic and realistic. Liberals do what feels good. Conservatives embrace the tried and true. Yes, Cruz is fighting for a conservative value: smaller government. What makes him and his followers liberal, in a sense, is the tactic. Driven by emotion, they seem to be co-opting the liberals’ reactionary do-something-ism instead of asking the quintessential conservative question: “Will it work”?

 

The chance to retake the Senate in 2014 is realistic and would be devastating to Obama’s legacy. It may be vanishing. An image comes to mind: Republicans are in concrete bunkers on top of a steep hill with machine guns and artillery. In the valley, slogging through the mud are exhausted Democrats. Rather than wait for them to come into range and blow them to pieces (metaphorically speaking, of course), we throw our weapons down, strip down to our underwear, pick up sticks and rubber hoses and sprint down the mountain screaming like mental patients high on PCP to engage the enemy.  Why? It’s the manly thing to do. Thomas Sowell noted that, “There is a United States of America today only because George Washington understood that his army was not able to fight the British troops everywhere, but had to choose carefully when and where to fight. Futile symbolic confrontations were a luxury that could not be afforded then and cannot be afforded now”. The Republicans have a huge strategic advantage because of the common mistrust of Obamacare. Even Mike Tyson would duck punches. So should Republicans.  

 

 

The coming fight over the debt limit is another story and popular sympathies may…may suggest a shutdown could yield some fruit. But Sowell writes, “By making a futile and foredoomed attempt to defund ObamaCare, Congressional Republicans (and Cruz) have created the distraction that Obama so much needs”. If you are still not convinced, take note of this: Richard Nixon proposed federally run daycare, universal health care and a guaranteed minimum income for the poor. These programs were sunk by Ted Kennedy and other Democrats because they didn’t go far enough. Theygot greedy and missed a historic opportunity to permanently expand the welfare state. We should not miss ours to dismantle it, even if it’s just by taking a nibble here and there. Big fights and grand gestures might be sexy but isn’t discretion the better part of valor? Apparently not.

 

So much for 2014.

YOU CAN'T BE SYRIAS!

With the Devil, er, Vladimir Putin whispering in his ear, Assad The Good Hearted is now promising to get rid of his chemistry set. It may, in fact, get us out of this mess. One writer remarked that by getting his head stuck in the bowling ball return, Obama brilliantly tricked Putin into pantsing him.

 

 

Prior to this, the most “anti-war” president in U.S. history wanted to bomb another country and his Democrat cheerleaders were John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi. And France. We are now living in Bizarro World.

 

Lessons Obama has learned about foreign policy:

 

1. Foreign policy is hard.
2. Some people just aren’t nice.
3. No, Putin didn’t just need a hug.

 

Putin looks like a statesman and Obama might as well have rolled up to the G20 summit in a clown car. True, there was never a good option on Syria but now the options are bad and really bad. At least he seems skeptical about the new plan and bombing may still be on the table. While the always sober and reasonable (crazy and paranoid) Glen Beck says that even a person coming out of surgery with a drip bag of heroin coursing through their veins would know that attacking Syria is a bad idea, it’s not that simple.

 

Below are some arguments for and against bombing.

 

Against:

1. Bombing Assad helps Al Qaeda: Influential Israeli blogger Yoni Tidi is a cheerleader for Assad. He quotes Salafist rebels saying that once Damascus is taken, it is on to Jerusalem. Assad is safer and more predictable. Better the devil you know…

2. Chaos will ensue. Remember Iraq?: 1. Assad gets desperate and attacks Israel. Israel responds. WWIII. 2. Assad loses. Terrorists take over. All hell breaks loose. WWIII. 3. Bombing builds sympathy for Assad and Iran gains influence. 4. Assad doesn’t care and uses more chemical weapons. 5. Bombing radicalizes more against the U.S. (I know. Does anything we do matter?) 6. Terrorists retaliate months or even years down the line. 7. Terrorists get ahold of chemicals weapons. Oops. 8. Who the heck knows?

4. Americans don't want it: A recent poll: 58% against attacking, 33 for.

5. Not in our national security interest: What do we get out of this? They’re weak militarily. It’s not going to make us any friends. They don’t even have much oil.

6. An “unbelievably small” strike won't do anything. Assad has already moved his planes and equipment and moved civilians into target areas, providing a real opportunity for dead child propaganda, a Mid East staple. 

7. Saving credibility isn't a reason to attack. Meh, so we lied. Doesn’t everybody? 

8. We can’t save the world: A variation is the “To Hell with Them” doctrine. We’ve spent much blood and treasure defending Muslims in 5 recent wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Somalia) and they still hate us. Let the ingrates blow each other to bits.

9. Evidence is weak: Well, we didn’t have video of OJ either but….

Fence Sitters:

10. We bomb and then what? It seemed fun and easy when Saddam statues were being toppled. Then everything turned to camel dung. Better have a good plan this time or…see #2.

11. The resolution needs to be narrowed. Don’t want to give Obama a blank check. “No ground troops. Truuuust us.”

For:

12. What are we waiting for?  Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead. A good bombing keeps the rust off the trigger finger.

13. OK, but make it small: I guess we have to but we don’t want to make anybody mad.

14. Ok, but make it big: What’s the use of bombing if it doesn’t have a major impact? Take out Assad or weaken him enough for the rebels to do it. 

15. Don't want to embolden Iran: Iran is the real target. Bombing slows their spreading influence. 

16. U.S. credibility at stake: We’ll look weak if we don’t. A weak America is bad for international stability. We scared Khadafi into giving up his WMD program. Other dictators are watching.

17. It's the American thing to do: Do it for the children! The video of foaming, writhing, kindergarteners is hard to watch.

18. Must maintain norms against chemical weapons use: Rightly banned a century ago, they’re just too terrible. If we don’t stop this, we’ll get more of the same.

Omnipotentblog was FOR bombing before he was against it. (A crack at John Kerry, ha ha.) Why? #18. Want more gassed children? Do nothing. Simple as that. If nobody responds, we should stop pretending chemical weapons are banned. Take Assad out? No, but respond nonetheless. Syria’s plan to give up WMD’s, even if it’s fake, may be enough for us to save face without bombing. Also, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, all Shi’ite terrorists, are now fighting Al Qaeda Sunni terrorists, a dream come true. But there are other considerations, notably a set of unbelievably complicated geopolitical factors. K.T. McFarland believes Putin’s rout of Obama is a terrible development. Russia’s foreign policy goals are: 1. How do we screw the U.S. 2. How can we make some money out of this, and 3. How do we take over the world. Russian/Iranian dominance of a region that still provides most the world’s oil would be a nightmare. Allied with every bad actor on the planet,  Russia needs a port in the Mediterranean to project power and avoid having to go through the narrow Bosphorus where Turkish teenagers could sink their fleet with sling shots. But it’s even more complicated. Though Syria doesn’t have much oil, they do have plans for a giant pipeline. They chose one out of Iran and Iraq versus Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Maybe that’s why the Saudis and other Gulf states have sent big money and arms to the rebels and have even offered to pay the U.S for a strike. Out of the goodness of their hearts, of course. Lately Sunni nations have been directly asking the U.S. to overtly support them against Iran. Sounds tricky.

Foreign policy is not for kids. Obama has muddled from one debacle to another. When you are so naïve to think that the world’s problems stem from colonialism and American bullying, there could not be another outcome. Omnipotentblog thinks Obama never wanted to bomb Syria in the first place. If so, he slipped on a banana peel and landed on his feet. Right now we have Iran, a country with nuclear ambitions aching to reincarnate the Persian empire and Russia, a country with nuclear weapons aching to recreate a Stalinist Soviet empire. What could possibly go wrong?

POL POT, NICOLAE CEAUSESCU, AND MUHAMMED MORSI WALK INTO A BAR, Part 2

Egyptians are putting on a graduate level course in rioting. They get what they want. Morsi’s constitution, first written on a napkin in a bar as detailed in Part1 (true story, of course) will surely end up burned or shredded or used to wipe their hineys or whatever it is they do when they want to insult a document.

 

The Arab Spring will probably take a generation or more to work itself out. Some believe there will be a dramatic rise in terrorism and unrest as Islam faces a painful, gut-wrenching move towards modernity.

 

Is Islam a utopian vision like Pol Pot’s and Ceausescu’s communism? Yes and no. A Muslim may romanticize the golden age of the past but the true focus is always on heaven. Even Islamofascists understand that Sharia will not be heaven on earth. The seventy virgins come only in death.

 

Religion is two things: It is both revelation and it is simply what its followers do. For coreligionists to debate is nothing new. Jesus exploited differences between Pharisees and Sadducees. But the question of “what is Islam” is particularly confusing. Turkish Prime Minister Tayip Erdogan once said, “There are no interpretations; Islam is Islam”. But take the Koran's famous injunction (2:256) that "there be no compulsion in religion." Is it a call for universal religious tolerance? Does it apply only to various denominations within Islam? Was it limited to non-Muslims in seventh-century Arabia? Does it protect only non-Muslims who agree to live under Muslim rule? Was it overridden by a subsequent Koranic verse? Is it purely symbolic? Apparently, it is all of the above.

 

An Egyptian Coptic Christian once told Omnipotentblog that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. There are only radicals and apostates. Given that the Muslim Brotherhood were recently burning and beheading Copts by the truckload, I can’t argue. Yet, we hear again and again about the “Religion of Peace”. Can it be? Islam expert Daniel Pipes thinks so. He writes that when he entered the field in 1969, Islamic extremism was virtually unheard of. “If things can get worse, they can also get better…If Islamism (wanting to institute universal Sharia law) can thus grow, it can also decline”.

 

Pipes is no apologist but he does seem to engage in wishful thinking when he rattles off a list of “untenable” requirements in Sharia such as “perpetual jihad against non-Muslims”, implying that surely Muslims will one day realize the requirements of Sharia just can’t be met and they should therefore flush it down a squat toilet. Dubious. However, he does cite examples where this already happens. Hiyal or “tricks” are used by jurists to get around things like not charging interest and never going to war against other Muslims. He cites studies of Islamic courts that make relatively flexible and reasonable rulings in apparent contradiction to the harshly patriarchal texts.

 

However, as Pipes himself admits, this “medieval synthesis” is perpetually prone to attack by purists because the texts themselves are considered holy and perfect. When pressed, it is a losing argument.

 

Can Islam be tolerant and modern? Neo-conservatives believed the ballot box had almost magical powers to transform. Then the Palestinians voted in Hamas. It was magical indeed. Emboldened, they took Gaza by gunpoint. Worried about Jewish cooties, they burned millions of dollars in grow houses left by the Israelis. What have other Islamists done? Morsi immediately began packing his government with cronies, enshrining Sharia and codifying discrimination against Christians. Still jailed, word on the street is that he is now reaching out to Mubarak and others to start a support group. Erdogan once said, “Democracy is like a train. Once you get where you’re going, you get off”. He initially governed well but slowly eroded press and other freedoms until the Turks finally had enough and started rioting. He and his Islamist party may not last. Some caution that if Islamists are courted to participate in democracy only to be deposed, they will return to terrorism and subverting democracy. Meh, six and one half dozen the other.

 

Can infidels live in peace with Islam? Maybe, but how do we discern between honest overtures and deceit? Several Islamic principals are troubling. Taqiyya and Kitman are deception and lying to infidels. It is ok to lie about one’s beliefs if one fears persecution. Since followers of the Religion Of Perpetual Outrage still seek revenge for the Crusades, the criteria is not exactly strict. One example is the existence of certain English versions of the Quran in which some of the more violent passages have been removed. Hudna is the establishment of a temporary truce, usually for ten years, for the purpose of rearming to defeat the enemy. Too weak at the time, Muhammed made a treaty with the Quraysh whom he later defeated. In another example of Taqiyya a New York times Op-Ed explains that Hudna’s goal is permanent peace. There is controversy over who broke the truce but Quran 9:5 says, “And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists…capture them and besiege them…” Perhaps most disconcerting is the doctrine of abrogation or Naskh. It is the preeminence of later passages of the Quran over earlier ones. This is frightening because in the earlier passages, Muhammed promoted peace and tolerance. What do some of these later passages say about infidels? Quran(2:191-193) says- "And kill them wherever you find them…And Al-Fitnah [disbelief] is worse than killing...but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah]…”. As Muhammed gained strength, he became bold, bloody, and intolerant.

 

Francis Fukuyama, a pinhead’s pinhead, believes that humanity is on an inevitable path towards progress and democracy. Indeed, Steven Pinker showed that violence over the centuries has decreased tremendously. But democracy is a rare gem in history. From the Greek city-states and Roman senate to the resurgent leftism in Latin America and the creeping totalitarianism of Russia, liberty can die.

 

David Brooks wrote, “There are large populations across the Middle East who feel intense rage and comprehensive dissatisfaction with the status quo but who have no practical idea how to make things better. The modern thinkers who might be able to tell them have been put in jail or forced into exile…It’s not that Egypt doesn’t have a recipe for a democratic transition. It seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients.”

 

Egypt tried once before to modernize and failed. ­­­­­­­­­­­­In the early 1800’s, Muhammad Ali tried to make Egypt a cotton powerhouse. He made European rivals nervous but the nascent vines of industrialization withered under the hot desert sun and the culture’s lack of ambition and innovation. Egypt and the Middle East may yet join the 21^st century but it might take a while and it might be ugly. And bloody.