Category: Legal Insurrection

Pacifism and Historical Ignorance

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“For a therapeutically inclined generation raised on Oprah and Dr. Phil — and not on the letters of William Tecumseh Sherman and William Shirer’s Berlin Diary — problems between states, like those in our personal lives, should be argued about by equally civilized and peaceful rivals, and so solved without resorting to violence.”
— Victor Davis Hanson, “Why Study War?” City Journal

When I was a kid, we often sang the old spiritual “Down by the Riverside,” the refrain of which ended, “Ain’t gonna study war no more.”

Of course, this lyric was a reference to “the last days” as prophesied by Micah, when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Some 2,700 years later, war is still as relevant a topic of study as ever, especially for the nation to whom Micah prophesied. Yet the modern sensibility — with its heaven-on-earth dreams of secular salvation — condemns all things military as a violation of the doctrine of non-violence, as though Israel might defend herself by adopting the pacifism of Thoreau and Gandhi, against enemies fanatically devoted to bloody creeds of Arab nationalism and Islamic jihad.

This pacifist utopianism has long prevailed among the elite in Europe, and was a proximate cause of World War II, as Neville Chamberlain and his cronies could no more believe Hitler meant what he said in Mein Kampf than today’s deluded dreamers of Mideast peace can believe that Hamas and Hezbollah mean what they have said about the destruction of Israel.

Professor William Jacobson is not among the deluded, and I am obligated to his Legal Insurrection blog not only for calling attention to Hanson’s City Journal article, but also for reminding us of the infamous U.N. Resolution 3379: “[T]he Palestinian agenda always has been about denying Israel’s legitimacy, and the U.N. has been the primary forum.” Professor Jacobson also provides this powerful video of Daniel Patrick Moyihan’s condemnation of Resolution 3379:

Trump Certainly Heightens The
Dramatic Tension

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by Smitty

I, for one, am thankful that the birth certificate release proved to be pure anti-climax. Let this be a lesson to everyone to avoid investing energy in distractions. Try not to notice the amount of Obama Exceptionalism that was brought to bear.
The blog seems to have its comb-over in place today. Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection thinks that the ongoing Trump assault on the President is doing damage.
A few points:

  • It’s still a distraction to fret about a sworn President’s bona fides in the face of the diplomatic, military, and economic challenges besetting the country. Thanks, Trump, for sucking up valuable bandwidth. Oh, and your hairstyle is a joke.
  • The media has abetted this. The two-edged sword of the birth certificate as a news cycle management device seemed to be a Lefty Lure. Now, with new books on the subject being published and seeming to sell well, the ability to flip the switch on the topic may have been lost. Did the cabal of producers and editors know this, and push Trump anyway?

  • Trump seems a joker. Having attained a foothold with Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate, Trump appears to be branching out into lower-hanging fruit like, oh, college transcripts. Even Ace of Spades is applauding:

Ah well, I want to see his grades and which courses he managed his A’s in, even still, and I want to know there was no special non-grade-based track for magna at Harvard.Impress me, buddy.

I want to know. I’m tired of every Republican’s SAT scores and grades being leaked while the frigging colleges clamp down on Democrats’ records like they’re blueprints for hydrogen warheads.

 

What’s interesting here is that Trump started out with the tinfoil hat problem of the long form birth certificate and then walked back to the low hanging fruit of the college records. Whether that was the strategy from the outset, or an adroit shift on Trump’s part when he felt he’d maximized the LFBC issue is beside the point. It was well done.
Whether Trump leverages that into a GOP standard level of biographic disclosure for the good President remains to be seen. Possibilities:

  • Trump will gets a phone call from a plutocrat telling Trump to lay by his dish. He would then be a tool.
  • Trump gets the desired TV ratings and lays off of BHO willingly. He would then be a dilettante.
  • Trump presses the advantage and reveals BHO in his intellectually mediocre glory.

I still see Sarah Palin as a more rounded politician than Trump. Trump and BHO appear similar in that there seems to be more interest in the idea of being President than the crushing actuality of the job. Sarah is relatively more mature.
If Trump’s hijinks end up doing any good, it will be mostly in passing.

Update: Linked at Amused Cynic.
Update II: Also linked at The Camp of the Saints, who has a good roundup going.

Professor William Jacobson Given the Treatment by Fecal Matters

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by Smitty

Media Matters went after Legal Insurrection, reports Prof. Jacobson:

Doesn’t Media Matters, with all its new Soros money, have anything better to do than take my posts out of context?

That is who they are; that is what they do.
The crucial point that all moderate and conservative Americans need to realize is how thoroughly illiberal the Left is. And then focus on NOT becoming that.
Props to Prof J. on being among the most worth-my-time reads going.
As for the post title, while I treat peoples’ names as inviolate, trademarks are fair game to me. Media Matters: mostly merde, merits mockery.

For The Left, The Tenth Commandment Is As Meaningful As The Tenth Amendment

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by Smitty

Professor Jacobson:

Growing the pie is a concept the Democratic Party doesn’t understand. Instead, it is focused on slicing the pie we have. Which is why the Democratic Party and the Michael Moores of the world hold no promise for our future, they dwell on the past.

As Upton Sinclair noted:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

We can vary that to note the Tenth Commandment:

Exodus 20:17 “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”

The genius of Marx and every disciple following him was to note political power inherent in fueling the class warfare that starts when the 10th Commandment is ignored.
For this and a few other reasons like abortion, the fact that so many on the Left in America today label themselves Christian is a source of fascination to me. Or maybe they just use the Christian label for power, too. Temporal power.