Jonah Goldberg: What’s Wrong with Extremism?

A good piece about how the mugwump way of governing is simply stupid. Some snips:

Almost by definition, illegal immigrants don’t create a paper trail when they come into the country. Hence, proving how long they’ve resided here presents a real challenge. It also creates massive opportunities for fraud and opens the door to a truly extreme bureaucratic expansion where immigration officials will have to study everything from ATM receipts to soccer team photos to figure out how long each immigrant has been here. The extreme liberal position of blanket amnesty and the extreme conservative position of blanket enforcement both make a lot more sense intellectually and practically.

This sort of thing is typical across the political landscape. Personally, I believe the radical remedy of privatizing health care in this country makes a lot of sense. But, I’m also inclined to believe that the Left’s extreme solution of government-run health care—or “single-payer”—has a lot more going for it intellectually than the crazy quilt of regulations and grotesquely distorted markets we have today.

On issue after issue, the Left and Right get into a tug-of-war over their preferred policy solutions. And politicians, extreme people-pleasers that they are, try to split the difference. The journalists who cover politicians are cynics and assume that true believers are by their very nature suspicious. Moreover, because politicians and mainstream journalists alike get the most grief from “partisans” of the Left and the Right, they both assume that the middle is the most enlightened place to be, since they think that’s where they are. But compromise is not always the smartest way to go. Leaping a canyon in one jump may or may not be stupidly extreme, but it’s a hell of lot smarter than the more moderate approach of trying to leap it in two jumps.

[snip]

Paladins of bipartisan moderation may not realize how responsible they are for today’s polarized climate. In America, it is impossible to gain traction on an idea unless you first assure everyone that it’s not “extreme” or “radical.”

Assurances that “this is a moderate, centrist reform,” and that “this is mainstream,” proliferate whenever a policy is put forward. There’s a deep cynicism in the assumption that Americans will only agree to things that aren’t too inconvenient. But, more important, there’s a profound dishonesty to such assurances, which inevitably cause people with opposing views to get very, very angry.

For example, legalizing gay marriage may or may not be a moral imperative. But when you tell opponents that doing so is not only no big deal, but also that those who disagree are extremists for disagreeing, it’s insulting. And, when pro-legalization activists refer to gay marriage as “landmark,” “revolutionary” and “historic” to their own side while selling it to the rest of America as a modest reform, it’s hard not to assume some bad faith.

One of the most effective means of controlling people is to use the fear of ostracism against them. "If you believe this, that means you're a meanyhead and no one will like you and you'll be alone. If you don't buy this product, you'll be left out of the reindeer games and be an outcast freak. Follow. Accept. And be accepted and loved. Disagree and be shunned and vilified."

Keep this in mind whenever you hear aristrocratic hypocrites like Al Gore call Team Dubya a "renegade band of rightwing extremists" before destroying the atmosphere with his private jet from which he hunts ManBearPig.

Penn & Teller on 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Hot Air has an excerpt from Penn & Teller's "Bullsh*t" about the kooky whack jobs that insist that Dubya knew about/staged 9/11, the WTC was demolished by charges, United 93 was a sham, etc. While I've criticized P&T for cheating on their anti-death penalty show, they're generally spot-on and are so here.

I've encountered these conspiracists first-hand and they gave me the first glimpses of what full-blown Bush Derangement Syndrome looks like. When one asstackler posted that this was a result of the "coup by the Supreme Court" that put Dubya into office barely a half-hour after the towers fell, I knew that it was a special kind of insanity at work. While the nation looked on in shocked horror at the unknown thouands of innocents being killed, the unhinged's first thoughts were to spew their political grievances in typically selfish fashion.

In case you've bought the lie that only poor black soldiers are dying in Iraq...

...here's your chance to learn the truth about one of those "facts" that so many believe without evidence.

For those too frightened to click, here's the takeaway:

Total deaths (as of 5/18/06): 2447
Black: 244 (9.97%)
Hispanic: 274 (11.2%)
White: 1804 (73.72%)

Remember this the next time you hear someone peddling this lie.

Eric In Wonderland

Today's reading is Eric Alterman's screed in The Nation, Time Is on Their Side in which he regurgitates the insane notion that the fascist Left holds that the Treason Media is too right-wing and that they need to balance the mean words of the non-fascists with more truthiness.

Translation: Silence voices of freedom and replace them with true believers in the Left's Divine Right.

Note that he bases his charges in the assumptions that animate the Left - Dubya lied, global warming is real, chickens make good pets, consensual heterosexual sex is rape, etc. - and thus believes that any opposing viewpoint is a sign of conservative hate and must be silenced.

That's the difference between freedom-loving conservatives and the fascist liberals: We are willing to argue the issues and back up our positions with facts; they scream like babies and won't even consider the basis for their rigid dogmas - they think it and that's the end of it. Period. Talk to the hand.

F*cking babies. Too bad the Stupid Party and Team Dubya have mutated into them with this America-destroying amnesty scheme. Pray that the conservatives in the House can derail this train to oblivion.

The 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs.

John J. Miller at National Review Online has assembled a sometimes surpising list of songs that Time magazine covergirls, The Dixie Twits, wouldn't appreciate while they whore for free publicity with their faux bravery. A sample:

27. “Obvious Song,” by Joe Jackson.
For property rights and economic development, and against liberal hypocrisy: “There was a man in the jungle / Trying to make ends meet / Found himself one day with an axe in his hand / When a voice said ‘Buddy can you spare that tree / We gotta save the world — starting with your land’ / It was a rock ’n’ roll millionaire from the USA / Doing three to the gallon in a big white car / And he sang and he sang ’til he polluted the air / And he blew a lot of smoke from a Cuban cigar.”

Check it out.

Inconvenient Truths Indeed

Al "No controlling legal authority" Gore has been getting the full Monica treatment from the Treason Media over his sci-fi-horror film - whoops, I guess they're calling it a "documentary" - "An Inconvenient Truth", in which the Inventor of the Internet, the formerly pro-life, more conservative Senator, who's wife was allowed to attempt to censor music, yet now is A-OK after switching to the Party of Death's platform, says we're doomed, DOOMED!, by ManBearPig...er...Global Warming.

Anyhoo, as anyone with a no globally-warmed IQ above room temperature surely knows, he's lying and this TCS Daily article runs down the duplicity in this Moore-esque fraud:

Throughout the film Gore displays his passion for the global warming issue, and it is obvious that he has dedicated a substantial amount of time to learning about climate change and the greenhouse effect. This leads to an obvious question. The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in December of 1997 giving the Clinton-Gore administration more than three years to present the Protocol to the United States Senate for ratification. Given Gore's position in the senate and his knowledge and passion for global warming, one must wonder why then Vice President Gore did not seize on what appears to have been an opportunity of a lifetime?

Note to commenters: Don't bother with the ad hominems about TCS, which, like slagging the Washington Times for being owned by the Moonies, are just your way of playing straw man when outflanked by the facts. Thank you.

Revisionist History: Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked.

I've barely had time to drink my morning coffee, much less post it, but here's a quick hit for the nutcases who keep yelping "BUSH LIED!!! PEOPLE DIED!!!", not that these folks have any interest in facts and Truth.

Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations--the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so--and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn:

School yourselves in what the Left is still lying about. You're welcome.

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

Too busy to write, but not too busy to post the funniest movie trailer recut/mashup I've seen in ages!

Monday Morning Coffee

Jeez, I'm a busybusybusy man! Sorry for the scarcity of posts, but that's why it's a good idea to subscribe via the links at the right - so you'll know when my latest wit and wisdom is posted. Here's a few items to tide you over:

• DUBYA TO PRETEND HE CARES: Tonight, Dubya is gonna screw up everyone's Tivos who want to watch the "Jack Bauer Power Hour" by making a speech intended to calm down those you are fed up with his feckless surrender of the Southern border to invaders fleeing his pal Vincente Fox's corrupt incompetence. Michelle Malkin drop the bomb on this charade. Go read her post and despair for our nation's future.

John Derbyshire at The Corner said last Friday morning when this pooch screw was announced:

I shall run screaming from the room if the President utters any of the following words or phrases:

jobs Americans won't do
nation of immigrants
compassionate
family values don't stop at the Rio Grande
good-hearted people
path to citizenship
my good friend Vicente Fox
this is not amnesty

Make a checklist and cross them out as Dubya says them. (I will.)

The Stupid Party is going to lose their asses over this. Unfortunately, the Dems see illegals as voters to bribe with the wealth of the producers and have rubber-stamped citizenships of felons in order to secure the votes they can't win with their terrible ideas. This leaves voters with two parties who pay lip service to border security only to then ignore it for their own petty, cynical partisan reasons.

• THE LATEST ATTACK OF THE TREASON MEDIA against the NSA and the data-mining of call records shows that they only fear police states when someone other than Dems are poking into our lives. I was walking thru a warehouse last Friday and some poor fools were listening to Air AmeriKKKa's Jerry Springer and he was lying that the gub'ment was monitoring, as in listening, to our calls, which they aren't, but why should facts get in the way of the Big Lies of the fascist Left?

When people trip over their privacy concerns, I wonder how many are worried about political dissent being crushed and how many are guys who are calling their mistresses or junkies paging their dealers who are afraid of getting busted? Think about it.

• MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III: Caught it yesterday and liked it a lot. Surprisingly intense in spots and great action, but by making it more about the team, it renders it all a bit generic. If Tom Cruise is a drag on the B.O., they could drop him for another, cheaper and less crazy, lead. 8/10.

• THE PRODUCERS: I can see why it was a big Broadway smash, but it's a lousy movie. 4/10.

• FRIDAY FIVER: Yeah, it's late. Sue me.

1. How many siblings do you have?

None.

2. Do you get along with your family?

Not really.

3. Think you look like anyone in your family?

No. (Thank God.)

4. Do you want / do you have any children of your own?

No and not that I know of. ;-)

5. Special plans for Mother's Day?

None. Gave Mom a brief call, but that's it.

(Yeesh. I could've skipped this one, couldn't I?)

• DIRK'S DISH DU JOUR: Since she was one of the few things that didn't stink up "The Producers", here's that lovely Swedish dish, Uma Thurman.

The Illegal Alien-Loving Stupid Party Alienates Sane Americans

Man, this is depressing stuff to read and report, but Team Dubya seem to be on a self-destructive course to alienate any remaining diehard supporters they may still have. It's not depressing from a personal political angle - I gave up on these losers ages ago - but if their remaining base comes to the conclusion that the Stupid Party is no longer interested in doing their jobs, they'll stay home in November and the fascist Democrats will seize power and proceed to destroy this country.

As disastrous as that would be for America, the Stupid Party has become too odious to support, even as an anti-fascist-Dem vote. Nice going, dumbasses. When a rock-ribbed conservative as John Derbyshire is saying:

This thing about our govt. colluding with Narcistan — sorry, I mean Mexico — to keep the flow of illegal immigrants coming, is the last straw. Either our govt. is criminally incompetent, or else it is maliciously hostile to ordinary American citizens. Or both.

I kept my mouth pretty well shut when the splendid whack-'em'upside-the-head assault on Iraq turned into a ludicrous and apologetic "nation-building" exercise. I bellyached in a restrained fashion at the Harriet Miers farce. I kept my grumbling over Medicaid, the budget bloat, and border security at a decently low volume. This one, though, I can't take.

I can't think of a single thing to say in favor of the national Republican party, its senators, representatives, governors, and administration. I can't think of a single reason why, right now, I should vote for any of them.

I could never vote for the liberal mob; but if a conservative third party comes up between now and 2008, they'll have my full attention — likely my money and my vote, too. We are on the last page of Animal Farm here; I can no longer tell the men from the pigs.

Michelle Malkin slices and dices the DHS explanation, saying that DHS stands for "deny, hedge, spin":

This White House has another burgeoning debacle on its hands. And it's not the Daily Bulletin or conservative bloggers' fault. I would highly recommend that blind Bush supporters not attack the reporter as some sort of NYTimes liberal ideologue. Those who have followed their excellent journalism over the years know that the Daily Bulletin and its reporters in the trenches have been at the forefront of border and immigration enforcement reporting.

Message to apologists: Stop blaming the messengers. It's only going to make those poll numbers you worry so much about worse.

Message to the White House: Stop blaming the messengers. Do us all a favor by ending this travesty and apologizing. And please don't fire Mario Martinez for telling the reporter the truth.

Coincidentally, the Cato Institute's Daily Commentary says "Where There Is No Vision, the People Perish", looking at the collapse of the Stupid Party from the libertarian persepective:

Last week I turned on NPR and heard some crazy woman ranting "We have two oilmen in the White House. The logical follow-up from that is $3 a gallon gasoline. It is no accident; it is a cause and effect, a cause and effect." Then the next morning I watched CNN and discovered that the ranting woman was Nancy Pelosi.

So it's hard to summon up hope that libertarians might find common cause with the Democratic party.

But the Republican party doesn't seem very inviting lately, either.

As one astute commentator said recently: "The Republican Party in Washington is in trouble not because it's overrun by crooks, but because . . . it has degenerated into a caricature of the party that swept to power 11 years ago promising to take on the federal bureaucracy and liberate the creative genius of American society."

And Tony Snow was right.

Along with all the snowballing fiscal problems that David Frum cites, I would add the very discouraging rise of nanny-statism on both right and left. This takes many forms—Clinton was famous for "I feel your pain and I have a program for it." Bush II responded with "compassionate conservatism" and "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." Both conceptions offer a sweeping mandate for the federal government, one never envisioned by the Founders nor even by FDR. They combine Progressivism with Prozac.

Make sure to read the parts were Al Gore and Andy Card speak of government as a caring parent or grandparent, the yutzes. [mad face]

All in all, the people are screwed royally. The GOP used to be semi-useful as, at minimum, a bulwark against Democratic fascism, but they no longer provide even that utilitarian function. The only reason talkers like Rush and Hannity - and to a lesser degree, Ingraham and Bennett - aren't calling for a top-to-bottom purge of Congress and the White House is because the alternative - fascist Democrat rule - is so much worse.

If you think it can't get worse under the Dems, you haven't been paying attention or are ignoring reality. Unfortunately, the Stupid Party has become so pathetic that to cast a vote for them, even in an anti-Dem move, is no longer a viable option because given a choice between these losers and the 1994 version of the Republicans, today's pander bears are unacceptable.

Now that we're all depressed, here's a token to cheer you up and to make up for the lack of DDDJ's for the past few days. Since the Treason Media keeps lying about "immigration reform", it bears repeating that the Minutemen aren't trying to keep LEGAL immigrants out, just the invaders that Team Dubya is now providing aid and comfort to.

An example of a legal Mexican immigrant?

Digital Lynch Mob

I posted a link and excerpt from Richard Cohen's column criticizing Steven Colbert as unfunny at the WHCD. Today he writes about the seething hate mail he's received from the unhinged moonbats which comprise the Left and reaches the same conclusions anyone who's still sane would reach:

The Colbert messages began with Patrick Manley ("You wouldn't know funny if it slapped you in the face") and ended with Ron ("Colbert ROCKS, you MURDER") who was so proud of his thought that he copied countless others. Ron, you're a genius.

Truth to tell, I peeked into only a few of the e-mails. I did this because I would sometimes recognize a name I thought I knew, which was almost always a mistake. When I guilelessly clicked on the name, I would get a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden verbal sewage right in the face.

But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations. I can appreciate some of it. Institution after institution failed America -- the presidency, Congress and the press. They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it did not have. Now, though, that gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy and, by so doing, aiding their enemies. If that's going to be the case, then Iraq is a war its critics will lose twice -- once because they couldn't stop it and once more at the polls.

I finally figured out what is behind the violent conduct of the modern fascist Left these days and I'll share that in a future post. Stay tuned.

The Killing of Atwar Bahjat (UPDATED: It's Sort of a Hoax)

***** THE FOLLOWING STORY HAS BEEN PROVEN TO BE UNTRUE AS INITIALLY POSTED. SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATES. *****

The Mudville Gazette has the details of yet another victim of Dubya's "religion of peace", a Muslim woman journalist who, well, here's a snip:

First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from men other than her father and brother.

Then her arms were bound behind her back...the condemned woman has been blindfolded with a white bandage...It is stained with blood that trickles from a wound on the left side of her head. She is moaning, although whether from the pain of what has already been done to her or from the fear of what is about to be inflicted is unclear.

A large man dressed in military fatigues, boots and cap approaches from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand. In his right hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8in blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from side to side.

Her cries — “Ah, ah, ah” — can be heard above the “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) intoned by the holder of the mobile phone.

Even then, there is no quick release for Bahjat. Her executioner suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in a dark T-shirt and camouflage trousers places his right khaki boot on her abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood from her wounds as she moves her head from right to left.

Only now does the executioner return to finish the task. He hacks off her head and drops it to the ground, then picks it up again and perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the film-maker in a grotesque parody of one of her pieces to camera.

The voice of one of the Arab world’s most highly regarded and outspoken journalists has been silenced. She was 30.

With so many examples of this sort of barbarism available, why is it that the Catholic Church is bashed as being the most repressive religion to women simply because they don't ordain women as priests? Why are the fascist Democrats already planning to investigate and impeach Dubya when the Islamofascist's global jihad against modernity rages on, sending Europe scurrying for dhimmitude? After the jihad succeeds, won't the Left be wistful for the days when gays and women were merely discriminated against and not murdered?

Probably not. :(

***** UPDATE *****

A reader's comment calls into question the above story and a check back to the Mudville Gazette shows that they updated the story after this post went up, adding:

Update 8 May 1550 UTC:: Questions have been raised concerning the identity of the victim in the video described in this story. According to this wikipedia entry photos of Atwar Bahjat's body prove she was not decapitated. The photos linked from the entry, while gruesome, are not conclusive.

What's known at this time: Atwar Bahjat was kidnapped and murdered while covering the Samarra bombing. The author of the London Times' story has been with the paper for some time, and is self-identified as "a friend of Bahjat who had worked with her on a variety of tough assignments". According to that Times story, the paper received a video of an execution that concludes with a close-up of the victim's face. The author has seen the video. The video is "cell phone" quality. The author says the victim is Atwar Bahjat.

While the particulars of this story are still not 100% certain, what isn't in dispute is that this woman was killed and Dubya didn't pull the trigger or cut her throat, not that the fascist Left cares about the distinction.

This is also why the blogosphere and new media are supplanting the Treason Media: It's responsiveness to reasonable challenges and self-correcting nature. As readers sent in their contests, both MG and Dirkworld have endeavored to get the facts straight and posted them where all could see. Compare that to Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, both of whom are still peddling the line that they didn't do anything wrong and that their fake documents were still valid, 18 months after their careers were claimed by their failed suicide bombing attempt to sway the 2004 Election to the candidate they were in collaboration with.

(Attempted to post @ 14:15 EST but Blogger is having a glitch.)

=================

***** SECOND UPDATE - IT'S A HOAX!!! ******

The rapid, self-correcting nature of the Blogosphere is doubly reinforced by this update at The Jawa Report:

The Jawa Report can reveal that the Times and Halal Jabar, the author of the article, are victims of a hoax. The video actually shows the gruesome murder of a Nepalese man by the Army of Ansar al-Sunna in Iraq from August of 2004. The man was one of 12 victims executed by the terrorist organization--the other 11 were shot (original story, video, and images of 12 Nepalese murdered in Iraq here).

The Times describes the Nepalese murder video precisely. However, the video delivered to the Times was actually a low-quality version of a much higher quality film originally made by Ansar al-Sunnah. The Times video also is edited to exclude the murder of the other 11 hostages.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna has murdered dozens of civilians in Iraq. The organization is an offshoot of the Army of Ansar al-Islam--a Kurdish Islamist organization. The group routinely murders those suspected of collaborating with the U.S. and Iraqi governments. Before the group murders their hostages they accuse them of 'apostasy', a crime punishable by death under Islamic law. They therefore justify their murders as 'executions' for 'crimes' committed against Islam.

I expect the usual moonbat Kool-Aid chugger catcalls about how untrustworthy the Blogosphere is in posting these sorts of stories, but keep in mind that...

1. Atwar Bahjat was killed by Islamofascist warriors, albeit by bullet, not beheading.

B. Practitioners of Dubya's "religion of peace" murdered TWELVE people for "apostasy", including the man who's death video was turned into this hoax.

3. The folks duped were the Sunday Times in London. The bloggers just posted what this supposedly legit media outlet posted, but when questions were raised, the Blogosphere was able to ferret out the Truth in less than 24 hours. Readers of the paper know less than the readers of Dirkworld and other blogs.

The Bottom Line: Islamofscism is the greatest threat to the civilized world today. NOT Dubya. NOT global warming. NOT high gas prices and a soft opening for "M:I-3". Stark raving liberals won't take away the lessons from this incident, but sane and rational people mustn't forget them.

Monday Morning Coffee

I'm sleepy, my allergies are bugging me and I've got other stuff that needs to be written, so no rants or raves this morning, just a picture of Maggie Q, who's in "Mission: Impossible 3" (which I haven't seen yet):

The Blue Shirt Invasion of Beast Buy!

Instead of humoring the liberals who are still trying to peddle the myth that Steven Colbert is some sort of comedic oracle, why not check out this prank pulled some crew called Improv Everywhere that I saw mentioned at Slashdot. Here's the teaser:



Clever, funny and no one got hurt and there were no hard feelings. (Unless you count the tightass managers of the store.)

RoboBjork?

Doesn't this Korean android look like Icelandic weirdo singer Bjork?

"But we are looking further ahead - we are working on upgrading the android with the aim of making it move its legs by the end of this year. It will be able to sit down and stand up by then," he expects.

Get your dollar bills ready, fellas!

He Would've Been Better Than Tony Snow.

Check out WuzzaDem's "Scott McClellan's Out - Mr. Stick Figure's In", which ran six months ago. It's killer!

Monday Thru Friday Morning Coffees

Jeez, I've been making little notes about what needed to be covered all week and been to busy to post them up, so here's the pile with the super-important ones up top and the rest in somewhat reverse order of freshness.

• THE MUST-READ COLUMN OF THE YEAR!!! - I've always wondered why we were pussy-footing around about the war and why the Left is always bringing up bad behavior by America that happened a century ago to excuse their current opposition to our policies and the answers to both can be found in this monumental column "White Guilt and the Western Past". A snip:

Certainly since Vietnam, America has increasingly practiced a policy of minimalism and restraint in war. And now this unacknowledged policy, which always makes a space for the enemy, has us in another long and rather passionless war against a weak enemy.

Why this new minimalism in war?

It began, I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty. This idea had organized the entire world, divided up its resources, imposed the nation-state system across the globe, and delivered the majority of the world's population into servitude and oppression. After World War II, revolutions across the globe, from India to Algeria and from Indonesia to the American civil rights revolution, defeated the authority inherent in white supremacy, if not the idea itself. And this defeat exacted a price: the West was left stigmatized by its sins. Today, the white West--like Germany after the Nazi defeat--lives in a kind of secular penitence in which the slightest echo of past sins brings down withering condemnation. There is now a cloud over white skin where there once was unquestioned authority.

I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes--here racism and imperialism--lack moral authority and so act guiltily whether they feel guilt or not.

They struggle, above all else, to dissociate themselves from the past sins they are stigmatized with. When they behave in ways that invoke the memory of those sins, they must labor to prove that they have not relapsed into their group's former sinfulness. So when America--the greatest embodiment of Western power--goes to war in Third World Iraq, it must also labor to dissociate that action from the great Western sin of imperialism. Thus, in Iraq we are in two wars, one against an insurgency and another against the past--two fronts, two victories to win, one military, the other a victory of dissociation.

The collapse of white supremacy--and the resulting white guilt--introduced a new mechanism of power into the world: stigmatization with the evil of the Western past.

GO! READ! IT! ALL!!!

• WHY LIBERALS ARE LIKE THE TALIBAN - This week's other must-read is this Time magazine column by a bona fide hard-Left ultra-liberal who found herself being pilloried by her own fellow travelers because she wrote a book praising the virtues of traditional marriage. Liberals are rigid, inflexible people so up their own asses with superiority that they crap themselves when someone actually tries to express a differing opinion. Remember that when they attack non-liberals as intolerant and remember the psychological term "projection".

• IF THE STUPID PARTY SOLICITS MONEY, send them this:



Freaking brilliant!

• STEVEN COLBERT: HERO OR ASSHOLE? - Last Saturday night was the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner which was hosted by comedian Steven Colbert of Comedhimmi Central's "The Colbert Report". While you may've seen a clip of Dubya doing shtick with the impersonator who Jay Leno uses, what got less play was Colbert's trash-talking Dubya and the press. Many fans of Colbert thought it was a poor performance, but what bugged me was that it was yet another example of liberal smugness and a belief that their superiority exempted them from basic politeness.

In one forum I post - where 99.44% of the members are rigid ultra-liberals - they thought it was the greatest thing and were braying about how Colbert was "speaking truthiness to power" - gah, that tired phrase again! - and thought that the Treason Media was selling out to Dubya (yeah, right) by not airing it all over the place.

I tried to point out the rudeness aspect, but they reacted so (typically) badly to this contrary opinion that the moderators had to delete the thread because the stench of all those filled diapers became unbearable. However, it's not just people who don't hate Dubya enough for these fascists you thought it was rude, Richard Cohen, himself a high-ranking leader in the Treason Media priesthood, thought so too in a piece entitled "Not So Funny". A snip:

Colbert was not just a failure as a comedian but rude. Rude is not the same as brash. It is not the same as brassy. It is not the same as gutsy or thinking outside the box. Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person's sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. The other night, that person was George W. Bush.

Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders -- and they are all over the blogosphere -- will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences -- maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or -- if you're at work -- take away your office.

But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in. He also knew that Bush would have to sit there and pretend to laugh at Colbert's lame and insulting jokes. Bush himself plays off his reputation as a dunce and his penchant for mangling English. Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.

On television, Colbert is often funny. But on his own show he appeals to a self-selected audience that reminds him often of his greatness. In Washington he was playing to a different crowd, and he failed dismally in the funny person's most solemn obligation: to use absurdity or contrast or hyperbole to elucidate -- to make people see things a little bit differently. He had a chance to tell the president and much of important (and self-important) Washington things it would have been good for them to hear. But he was, like much of the blogosphere itself, telling like-minded people what they already know and alienating all the others. In this sense, he was a man for our times.

He also wasn't funny.

I guess Cohen can look forward to being thrown under the bus by his fellow travellers, too. NOTHING must stop the "Get Dubya" jihad!!!

For an interesting profile of the Dubya impersonator, here's a story from today's McNewspaper. I didn't realize this guy used so many prosthetics. I just figured he was riding a fortuitous moment of dopplegangerdom.

• RECONQUISTAS ON PARADE - The big illegal immigrant amnesty rallies were on May Day and I caught on O'Reilly's show, Geraldo Rivera spew stupidity and reveal the inherent racism of liberalism by saying that the alternative to securing the border is $20 bananas and a $10 avocado. He was saying that we should exploit the brown people in exchange for cheap produce. Isn't it immoral to exploit people for low prices - that's what they Lefties say about Nike, yet it's OK to explot Mexicans? What are the benefits of economic apartheid and why is the Left trying to enshrine racist slavery?

• LIONIZING A MURDERER - On eastbound I-94 in Detroit is a billboard that Eminem's Shady Records uses which now reads "BIG PROOF FOREVER". While I understand Proof's significance to the Detroit rap scene, the truth remains that he killed an unarmed man over a pool game. The family of Keith Bender is suing the estate of this murderer, who was buried in a $44,000 coffin around the corner from Rosa Parks. Good for them! The Detroit alternative weeklies are still lionizing this killer. Pathetic.

• AMERICA'S ROYAL FAMILY SKATES AGAIN - 3rd-string Kennedy loser, Patrick Kennedy (D-RI, or should that be D-UI?), crashed his car and the cops who were right there said he looked and smelled drunk. Instead of being hauled off like us peasants, the Capital Police brass rushed to the scene, didn't give him a Breathalizer test and swept it under the rug. The Treason Media is actually reporting on this, proving that while they'll go all out to commit crimes against America, they aren't such whores that they'll dive for the political equivalent of Nicole Richie.

• THOSE ADS FOR TAG AND AXE BODY SPRAYS seem to promise that guys who use them will be constantly assaulted by hordes of smoking hot babes, pawing at their clothes and basically trying to get a baloney pony ride. If it was that simple, rock stars and rich guys would be getting left alone in favor of po' boys wearing Axe, ya dig?

• GUYS GONE WILD - What is the market for these discs: Women or gay men? What's scary about the ads is that they use the same language as the "Girls Gone Wild" ads, including the bit about "wait till you see what happens when the lights go out." Yeep!!! Is it Brokeback Spring Break?!?

• GANG MEMBERS IN THE MILITARY? - That's what it looks like and it's not a good thing.

Egads! I've still got a ton more to include, but it's already lunchtime! The rest will (hopefully) go up for dessert tonight. Stay tuned...it's not as if there isn't already plenty to chew on here. Two more quickies....

• FRIDAY FIVER:

1. Have you ever been to Mexico?

No. And if I snuck in, I doubt they'd be receptive to my demands for rights and free stuff.

2. Do you know anyone who is currently in the military?

I did, but most have already cashed out their stints.

3. What is the last party you attended?

I can't remember.

4. What do you think about President Bush saying that the United States' National Anthem should only be sung in English?

Considering he was having it played in Spanish and singing along during his campaigns, it's another one of his bonehead comments. Forget worrying about the anthem and start moving toward making English the official tongue of the US government and stop all this bi-tri-quad-lingual garbage. Learn the language or get the f*ck back to wherever everyone else can understand you!

5. French fries or freedom fries?

DIRK® Fries, bitch!

• DIRK'S DISH DU JOUR: I know I posted her recently, but I'm in the mood for some more Scarlett Johanson. (Like you're complaining.)