Is The Wisconsion Union Self-Aware Enough To Grasp That It Is Behaving In The Taliban Fashion?

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by Smitty (h/t Protein Wisdom)

Here in Afghanistan, the various terrorist networks use night letters to intimidate the populace. It seems that word of this approach has reached Wisconsin and somehow been deemed acceptable:

The missive concludes by noting that, “With that we’d ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community. Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do [sic] a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means ‘no’ to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members.”

Go, America! I’m so glad to hear that the very policies the US is trying to help discourage in the Hindu Kush are taking root back home. Woo hoo!
So, after unions and entitlements have reduced the Progressive States of America to an Afghanistan-like state, here is the sort of flat toilet you can expect:

Housing may move in the direction of this adobe ruin:

Closer in, with a red brick in the picture for scale:

These walls are great insulation in the winter, and hold the cool in the summer. You can do an awful lot of cheap modifications, too. I image that some sort of sealant, which the Afghans don’t use, would keep down on the overall dirtiness of the approach.
So, if you enjoy having weekends and and we get to the point of an utterly wrecked economy, don’t forget to thank a union!

Feminism: What They Said

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“The so-called women’s movement has never been about equal rights for women. It’s about power for the female left. . . .
“Feminists think they’re fighting a society that has wronged them. In reality, they are fighting human nature.”
— Susan Venker and Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say

Trust me, I get the “what men can’t say” part: I’ve been saying the same thing and getting nothing but grief. Because if feminism means anything, it means, MEN WHO DISAGREE WITH WOMEN ARE WRONG.

So now I’m agreeing with women: Buy their book now!

Did You Say ‘Cynicism’?

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Referencing a UCLA professor fired because he blew the whistle on fraud in environmental research, Professor Glenn Reynolds writes:

A cynic might suggest, of course, that notions of academic freedom were developed in the first half of the 20th century largely in order to protect communists from being fired, and that since Enstrom isn’t a communist, academic freedom shouldn’t apply . . .

The “superstition of academic freedom” was a primary subject of William F. Buckley Jr.’s 1951 book God and Man at Yale and, indeed, the biggest fights over academic freedom at that time involved the protection of communists.

Nowadays, American universities are run almost entirely by communists, so the meaning of “academic freedom” has necessarily changed.

Sully: ‘We Are Damn Lucky to Have Him at This Fraught Moment in History’

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“Him” of course being President Obama, who still moves Andrew Sullivan to paeans of gratitude, no matter how un-constitutionally Bush-like or wrong-headed Obama’s actual policies might be.

Did you say “Battered Wife Syndrome“?

Yeah. Everybody sees it, except the victim who refuses to take responsibility for enabling his own abuse. Meanwhile, with our brilliant European “allies” in charge of the air war, things are going just dandy for the Libyan rebels:

At least 13 people are reported to have been killed when a coalition plane flying over Libya fired on a rebel convoy between Brega and Ajdabiya on Friday, the rebels say. . . .
A doctor in the town of Ajdabiya, Suleiman Refardi, told the BBC that on Wednesday the coalition air strike on Zawia el Argobe targeted a government convoy that included tanks, artillery and lorries carrying ammunition.
A direct hit on an ammunition truck and trailer sent a hail of shrapnel into nearby houses, he said.
Four of the dead were female, including three children from the same family, aged between 12 and 16. Three boys, aged between 14 and 20, were also killed.

Here’s a video report:

Because there are no lefties marching around shouting “Obama lied, Libyans died,” Sullivan can pretend that President Awesomeness is a blessing to humanity “at this fraught moment in history.”

But this pretense cannot be maintained forever, if failures continue being heaped one upon another.

Facts Are Stubborn Things

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Following up on this morning’s radio debate with Little Miss Attila, I found myself interrogated in the comments by Attila’s ally, Darleen Click of Protein Wisdom, who now wants to debate women in the military. This endless appetite for argument — the women’s point being that any man who criticizes feminism qua feminism must be wrong — compelled me to make this point:

Again, you see that my view of these issues is informed by a study of the feminist movement’s actual history, as opposed to a generalized sentimental commitment to “equality” as an ideal.

And this, I say again, is the real ground of the dispute. Feminism has an actual history, bound up in specific ideas and events and people, and the attempt to hijack the term “feminism” as some part of the conservative agenda is misguided, because it requires us to embrace a narrative of feminism that is counterfactual.

(And, no, I don’t care what Christina Hoff Sommers says about it.)

The problem lies in our society’s obsession with “equality,” a liberal fetish that seems to have been smuggled into the conservative tent, so that seemingly we are all egalitarians now. But as I tried to point out in our go-’round over women in the military: Is the job of the U.S. military to kill our nation’s enemies, or is its purpose to provide “equal opportunity” for women?

If you say the latter, then you are on the side of Patricia Schroeder and all the left-wing anti-military Democrats who don’t give a damn about American national security. Continue reading Facts Are Stubborn Things →

Showing Any Public Figure Crucified Is As Tasteless As Burning The Qur’an

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by Smitty

An interesting discussion came up today regarding the idiot in Florida who burned the Qur’an, and the resulting deaths in MeS, just north of me by a couple of hours.
Burning anyone’s scripture is deplorable. Double deplorable for anyone nominally a follower of the Christ. Do you really think He’d do such? Really?
And so then you have horrid depictions of other sacred objects, connected to public figures.  The image is far enough out there that I don’t care to embed it in this blog post.
The discussion went in the direction of the Florida pastor being held responsible for the Afghan deaths. While not defending the goofball pastor in the slightest, I cited the 2005 Newseek story about Qur’an flushing, which fiction cost 17 Pakistani lives. The causality gets to be challenging. The Florida pastor and the LA artist both merit public derision for tastelessness. But is the threat of a Heckler’s Veto by citizens willing to undertake violence sufficient justification for government restrictions on freedom of speech?
My counterpart in the discussion felt that the Pastor had behaved immorally. Now, from a Christian standpoint, you can build that argument, but what about a secular legal vantage? Playing the slippery slope card, I told him that we could equally decide alcohol is immoral, and outlaw beer. He said “Fine by me, I hate beer.” Great, we can outlaw all alcoholic beverages, then.
The argument concludes around the notion that we all have things we don’t like, but which others cherish. The least-worst answers here are:

  • Never actively offend others’ faith.
  • Strive to minimize passive offense of others’ faith.
  • When someone of your own stripe runs amok, regulate them.
  • Ensure the regulation is kept at the social level; attempts at codifying good taste as secular law are doomed to failure.

And may God have mercy on the creep in LA who depicted Sarah Palin getting spiked. Not asking him to like the lady; just for a modicum of decency. As art, the style isn’t completely without merit. The subject matter is the problem. Also, I’d put forward the same objection if BHO was enjoying the nine inch nail. If the artist had gone that route, the media would probably call the artist a raaaaacist.

Ed Driscoll has more, as does M. Joseph Sheppard