Quick Notes Illustrated

It's Thursday already, the week beginning to pass by in its customary blur of work tasks. No time today for Big Thoughts, so it's Quick Notes:

-- Reading the British blogs, the huge consensus over there that no progress in the War on Terror (or whatever you want to call it) is even remotely possible without addressing the Palenstinian question. This central grievance simply must be addressed if we are to have any hope of diffusing the inpetus to jihad.

But what of Thailand? Why the violent jihad in Thailand? Why the bombing of police stations and the execution of elementary school students and teachers by Islamists there? Is it the illegal Thai occupation of Thailand? Aggressive Thai settlement building? The disproportionate use of Thai military force?

Thai'baa Farms?

-- A friend emails me to tell me that one of my pet issues, uniform change in the U.S. armed services, just got kicked up a notch in the U.S. Navy. It appears the CNO is going to approve the "Task Force Uniform" recommendations after a series of working tests in the field.

Here is the proposed service uniform (replacing various others with one standard model):


And here is the proposed working uniform (replacing coveralls/dungarees):


I gotta say, I like them. Mark? What do you think?

-- Speaking of Mark and all things US Navy, I also recently ran across this picture. Name that ship!



-- Okay, this is some real inside baseball and chances are good that very few people (if any at all) will get these, but they are too darn good to miss the chance. The good, old-school gamers over at RPG Codex ran a contest to see who could photoshop old Communist propaganda posters into use by today's lightweight game designers, who have done for gaming what modern directors have done for film. Here are some of the winners:







-- From Expatica News:

AMSTERDAM - Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner has provoked an angry response by stating it has to be possible for Sharia Law to be introduced in the Netherlands via democratic means.
The Christian Democrat (CDA) minister made the suggestion during an interview for the book 'Het land van haat en nijd' (the land of hate and malice) which was published on Wednesday.

Donner indicated he was not happy with the tone of the integration debate in the Netherlands.

Muslims, he said, just like Protestants and Roman Catholics, have a right to the perceptions of their religion, even if that included dissenting rules of behaviour such as imams refusing to shake hands with women.

He went on to say: "It must be possible for Muslim groups to come to power [in the Netherlands] via democratic means. Every citizen may argue why the law should be changed, as long as he sticks to the law.

"It is a sure certainty for me: if two thirds of all Netherlanders tomorrow would want to introduce Sharia, then this possibility must exist. Could you block this legally? It would also be a scandal to say 'this isn't allowed!

"The majority counts. That is the essence of democracy."

Sigh. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by this. After all, the US is also on a "majority rules" mindset. It seems, despite our heritage and our most basic law, that people now think that democracy means that whatever 50% plus one says, goes.

One of the great things about law school (and there are many) is watching the students become aware of the anti-majoritarianism built into our system of Constitutional law and republican government. For some, it's confirmation of what they already knew, but for others you could tell it was a real awakening, a real moment of understanding. An understanding apparently not shared by "conservative" ministers in the Dutch government.

Only Hitch

When I was a raging leftie, my favorite essayist was Christopher Hitchens. Now that I'm a morose righty, guess who my favorite essayist is now?

That's right. My favorite essayist is Mark Steyn.

Still, Hitchens is easily in the top five and who'da thunk that as being possible? I'm quite sure Hitchens is the only one on both lists. The thing that is great about Hitch is that when he is on, he is ON.

And, courtesy of Tim Blair, we find that Hitch was most definitely on last night while appearing on the ABC (that is, the Aussie one):

HITCHENS: Mr Clarke, I should add, since this is apparently the 'Richard Clarke Show', was the leading ornament of the Clinton Administration that utterly failed to confront bin Laden at all. Mr Clarke was also the man who said when his government, his president, ordered the bombing of Sudan without even calling for an inspection of the relevant sites, or consulting the UN in the least, probably hitting the wrong factory, chemical factory, but the pretext for that, if you remember, is that Osama bin Laden owned that factory and that it was mixing chemical weaponry for Saddam Hussein. So Mr Clarke made the Saddam-bin Laden connection before anybody else did. I'm afraid to say, since you keep asking my opinion of him, I think what he says now is the result of partisanship. He would not be making these criticisms if he was on the inside and I think it's shabby that people will put their party first on these occasions. But Mr Clarke is the source of a lot of useful information. And if what he says, or alleges, is true about the Saddam-al-Qaeda connection then it would be impeachably delinquent of any government attacked on American soil with such massive force, not to ask is there a Saddam Hussein role in this? Because the likelihood that there could be would have to be very high? To say let's not think about Saddam, which is the only alternative, would be absolutely pathetic.

JONES: Alright, let's go beyond Richard Clarke and ...

HITCHENS: Are you sure you want to do this?

TONY JONES: Yes, of course. And we'll go to the ...

HITCHENS: It's like letting go of your blanket.

My Nation

Once again, as he does so often, Lileks gets us to the heart of the matter. Writing in a symposium over at NRO on the question of whether 9/11 changed us, Lileks writes:

If 9/11 had really changed us, there'd be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there's a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don't. And we don't seem interested in asking why.

There is the key, hiding, like our enemies, in plain sight. There it is, in all its glory and horror. We could do what needs to be done, but we do not. We used to be able to do what needs to be done, but today we cannot. We used to be able to roll up our sleeves and get to work, today we must not.

My nation lives there, almost suffocated, on the other side of this historical wall. People I love know nothing of it and think I'm mad for pledging it my loyalty. It can no longer be seen, but I can glimpse its corpse in the faded stars and eagles of the old Federal Courthouse in Portland. It's empty, standing embarrassed, near its new steel and glass counter-part.

The best of my nation gives itself while its replacement nation hardly notices. I cannot honestly ask such people for such a sacrifice. What good SPQR on the forearm if neither exists?

My nation would have accomplished in a month what the Bush "Administration" has in six years. My nation provided the capital on which we all live, built the streets in which we all walk, provided the infrastructure we are all now busily tearing down in joyful, adolescent, unthinking destructiveness.

Our leaders do not lead. Our lawmakers do not debate. Our journalists do not tell the truth. Our artists are wed to an avant-garde that was getting obsolete in 1961. I no longer feel the need to pretend. I will not give these people the time of day.

Scene: The tram stops in the rain and the doors open. Standing at the bottom of the short stairway leading into the train is an old woman, bent with age, wet with rain, straining with the weight of a shopping bag full of groceries for one. Five young men, talking, laughing, enjoying life, file out of the train and past her. As they are talking, they stop to exchange final words with their friends who are remaining on the train. The old woman, thinking they are done, not expecting anymore any young man to make way for her or help her, starts up the steps. But the young men are not done. They start descending the staircase again. The old woman withdraws her first step, two more young men brush past her. She puts a shaky leg back on the first step. One more young man decides this is his stop. He pushes past her. The old lady was too slow. She was in the way. She is HISTORY. She is of my nation.

My nation recedes when it should be striding confidently forward. Its replacement is wounded, perhaps mortally so, by self-inflicted wounds. The ironic cynicism. The adoration of sexuality above all else. The revolutionary power of the unhinged market. The lobotomization of historical knowledge. The mockery of honest labor. The importation of a laboring race. The easy grace of lifestyle.

I live in my nation, and yet do not. I find it harder to find every day.

Scene: An old woman writes a doctor I know. She is British. She asks if the doctor can be of any help. Her husband is ill and is in hospital. He survived World War II, was wounded twice, received medals and the thanks of a grateful nation. But he is old now and cannot get out of bed. The old woman finds it difficult to move, but tries to visit her husband at least once a week. She is despondent. She went to see him and discovered that he hadn't been moved all week, nor properly cleaned nor fed. He had huge gaping bedsores. She went to the nurse's station to plead for help, but none spoke English. She found the supervisor on duty. She was on the Internet, eating a Pizza Hut Pan Pizza. The old woman begs for help.

I used to tell myself that when my nation awoke shrugged off the sluggishness of slumber the world would gape.

But what I took for a sleeping giant was a hollowed-out husk.

Of a government, and a people, who have no pride.

Scene: After 9/11 an NFL player resigns his high-paying job and joins the Army. Fighting theocractic fascists in a foreign land, he is killed by his own side, one of the horrific, inevitable "friendly fire" casualties. The smart sets mocks: what a waste. Killed by his own people. What for? He had it made.

You might say that I am dispirited, but you would be only partly correct. I will no longer have anything to do with the replacement nation. Its deathsong is so wrapped in its founding sinews it will not last nor give comfort.

But it gives plasma screens, hot wet teens and all the civil liberties you can eat.

And how happy a people we are.

Scene: It's just past quitting time in Seattle. At a bus stop, a man with a long record of substance abuse and petty crime appears to exchange words with a middle-aged woman going home after work. After a while, it becomes obvious to bystanders that they are arguing. There is some pushing. The thirty-year-old man grabs the forty-six-year-old woman by her collar, shaking, and turns his head to the right, looking into the oncoming one-way traffic. Here comes the bus. He stops shaking. She falls. She is crushed to death under the front wheels of the bus. After a five hour inconvenience, a Washington judge releases the "suspect" on his own recognizance. He gets on his bike and rides off. The police say there might not be enough evidence to charge. City workers clean Betty Jean Simon's unsightly blood from the curb.

There have always been wolves among the sheep. At any time they could separate one from the herd and do what comes natural to wolves. But the sheep organized and fought back. They even had their own wolf-hounds, as vicious as the wolves in their own way but to entirely different effect.

But never have I seen such an adoration for the criminal as among the people of the replacement nation now. The thug's tatoos now adorn the arms of our young women, the pop charts populated by real and imagined gangsters, the fashion set to mimic those who kill, who brutalize, who cheapen. The lower class worships Eminem, genius masquerade marketing at its finest. (Who was it in Black Flag that said that you'd never go broke overestimating the number of fucked up teenagers out there?). The chardonnay sippers never miss The Sopranos. Same shit, re-packaged for taste.

I do not feel what these people feel. I do not see what they see. I do not share their hopes. I despise their dreams.

I dissent.

I object.

I secede.