Comments on politics, the culture, economics, and sports by Paul Tuns. I am editor-in-chief of "The Interim," Canada's life and family newspaper, and author of "Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal" (2004) and "The Dauphin: The Truth about Justin Trudeau" (2015). I am some combination of conservative/libertarian, standing athwart history yelling "bullshit!" You can follow me on Twitter (@ptuns).

 
What New Orleans needs now is ... abortions and contraception

The Dawn Patrol reports that Planned Parenthood is there to "help" the people of the hurricane-ravaged South.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:58 PM

 
Quotidian

"The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings."
-- G.K. Chesterton, "The New House" Alarms and Discursions
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:56 PM

 
Court forces child to apologize for trying to give dehydrating woman a glass of water

On Easter weekend, 10-year-old Joshua Heldreth was arrested for tresspassing when he approached the hospice where Terri Schiavo-Schindler was murdered when he husband won the "right" to refuse her food and water. A court sentenced him to 25 hours of community service and forced him to apologize. In his letter the boy said:

"I was arrested on Good Friday for trespassing on the hospice center's property ... Not giving Mrs. Shiavo (sic) food or water was wrong. The reason I had to go on your property was because Jesus would do the same thing. It made me sad that she was so thirsty and it made Jesus sad too. I knew she would die without water and I am called by Jesus to be a defender of the defenceless. So I had to go on your property to try to bring her a drink ... I am sorry that you didn't like that and wouldn't allow me to help save her life and one day you will have to tell God why. I won't be able to help you then like I tried to help her. I will pray for you every day."

His hand-written note can be read here.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:56 PM

 
Free market leaders

NRO has a story on "Germany's Arthur Laffer," Paul Kirchoff, an economic advisor to Germany's CDU leader and likely next chancellor Angela Merkel. William P. Kucewicz says:

"In Germany, the name Kirchhof, like Laffer, is synonymous with pro-growth tax reform. It began when Kirchhof was still sitting on the Federal Constitutional Court, the nation’s highest court. From 1987 to 1999, he made a series of decisions mandating changes in tax policy. After leaving the bench, he developed what’s been dubbed the 'Kirchhof model' — a flat-tax plan that he’s popularized in numerous newspaper op-eds.

Kirchhof would replace Germany’s steeply progressive income tax with a flat-rate tax of no more than 25 percent and at the same time eliminate myriad tax loopholes and fiscal subsidies — an astonishing 163 taxpayer subsidies, to be exact. The new flat tax would extend to all manner of income, including individual, corporate, and interest income, thereby curtailing the separate tax treatment of corporate and partnership earnings.

His plan would provide a basic allowance of €8,000 for every household member, including minors, plus an additional €2,000 allowance to offset wage earners’ working expenses. The tax would be phased in, applying to only 60 percent of the first €5,000 in taxable income and 80 percent of the next €5,000 up to €18,000, wherein the 25 percent flat tax would fully apply."

It is unclear what, if any, role Kirchoff will play in a Merkel government but the fact that he has her ear right now is a positive step for Germany.

At TCS, James Glassman remembers Jude Wanniski, of whom he says: "one of America's great contrarians and polemicists and the man who turned me -- and thousands more -- on to free-market economics."

Glassman says of Wanniski's revolutionary approach to economics:

"I had taken economics courses at Harvard that solely stressed the Keynesian view that the well-being of citizens was shaped by government interventions to increase or lower demand. I had voted for McGovern and Carter, but, as a young entrepreneur, I was troubled by a model that held that, if the feds extracted more money from business owners and spent it on government projects, the beneficial economic effect would be multiplied many-fold.

Wanniski painted a different picture. By lowering taxes, government could get out of the way of people's normal propensity to create, work hard, and produce -- that is, boost the supply of goods and services. This idea is at the heart of classical economics, which Wanniski resurrected when he and economist Alan Reynolds coined the term 'supply-side fiscalism' (later revised to supply-side economics) and popularized the notion as an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:39 PM

 
NR interview with Jesse Helms

If it doesn't sound too corny to have a favourite senator, my favourite senator is Jesse Helms. Since I became a conservative in 1988, he was brave voice for conservative causes -- a small government, pro-life Cold Warrior. Does it get any better? Yes, it does. He also openly challenged the media. (In 1990 when he addressed his supporters after beating Democrat Harvey Gantt he said he was late because he was watching Dan Rather squirm while announcing the evening's results in which the GOP was doing much better than anyone expected; Helms, too, was expected (read: the media had hoped) to lose.)

National Review's Jay Nordlinger interviewed the former North Carolina senator. Here are some of the best excerpts:

On whether he is "anti-black":

"I have always been opposed to violence from any quarter; to unconstitutional quotas; and to politicians who try to rob people of their ability to dream their own dreams and reach their own goals through their own efforts by selling them the lie that they can’t succeed without the government running their lives. I have always believed that the American Dream is the birthright of every American and that the free-enterprise system is the route to secure that dream."

On whether he regreted the "crumpled paper" ad from the 1990 election campaign that showed a white man crumpling a letter informing him that he had been denied a job, because of race preferences:

"The outcry was just one more attempt to change the subject from the issues to race. I chose to run on the issues."

His favourite colleagues:

"I’d include Hubert Humphrey and Jim Allen and Joe Biden and Orrin Hatch and Pat Moynihan and so many others retired or currently serving, or sadly no longer with us."

On senatorial relationships:

"Senators do indeed form solid friendships built on our mutual commitment to serve our Country ... The less favorite colleagues provided challenges of their own. Sometimes, like in the case of Paul Wellstone, who came to Congress determined to dislike me, we became personal friends even if we still disagreed on the issues. Other times, we didn’t, but we could still respect the fact that we were there because the people of our home state elected us and we could respect their choice by our civility to one another."

One of his greatest senatorial achievements:

"I can tell you that my wife thinks that one of the most important changes we helped bring about was to make roll-call votes a routine. When senators had a voting record that the voters back home could examine, they could no longer talk one way during the campaign and vote another in Washington. Those voting records helped send a lot of liberals into early retirement."

On being called "Senator No":

"I enjoyed being known as Senator No because it summed up my purpose in helping to stop a lot of bad government policies and proposed laws."

On winning the War on Terror:

"We will win if we do not give in to those who would try to appease the enemy."

On the idea that his foreign policy views were what they were because he was not well-travelled:

"The people who made these comments didn’t know the facts. I’ve traveled extensively to Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East, and Europe throughout my life and my Senate career ... What I did not do is make these trips at government expense or to make a big publicity show, so it was assumed by people who didn’t bother about knowing the truth that I did not have firsthand knowledge of world issues. In addition I had trusted staff members who served as my eyes and ears around the world and close friendships with world leaders and foreign nationals who made sure I had the best information available about the issues in their countries. Far from being hampered, my approach to fact-gathering made sure I wasn’t getting the spin version of those issues that is too often a part of those well-known political junkets."

Asked about "participating in politics," Helms said he didn't like campaigning and didn't consider himself a great orator but:

"I was always happy to set out conservative ideas in a way folks could understand and appreciate."

On what Senator Helms would like Americans to know about him:

"I suppose what I would like people to know about me is what I would like them to know about themselves. We are blessed to live in the greatest country in the history of the world. We live in a nation founded on the belief that all of us are created equal, that all of us have God-given gifts and all of us have the opportunity to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That opportunity often comes disguised as hard work, but that hard work has rewards that are worth far more than money in building character and setting priorities."

There is still lots of interview left, because a career and mind such as Helms' is not reduced to mere snippets; you might even want to buy his memiors, released this week, Here's Where I Stand.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:23 PM

 
Clarke officially in

The Guardian reports that Ken Clarke hopes that the third time will be the charm. Ladbrokes changed their odds on Clarke winning the Tory leadership race from 8-1 to 11-2. David Davis remains the favourite at 1-2 odds, followed by David Cameron at 11-4 and
Liam Fox at 16-1.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:25 AM

 
Owen explains his move to Newcastle United

Michael Owen, England's best forward, explains in the Times why he left Real Madrid even though his final destination was not Liverpool and a chance to help that team win a second Champion's League Cup. I'm not sure this was a great idea, though. Owen seems to be saying that Newcastle was not his first choice, not a great way to become a local fan favourite:

"People will point out that, only a week or so ago, I listed Newcastle as the last of my options but circumstances change very quickly, as I have discovered.

... It was a very long day on Monday but, as I went through the same circle of late-night calls with the three clubs involved in my dilemma, I felt that to return to Madrid would be the wrong decision. I want to play regularly and, if I am honest, part of me had missed the passion of the Premiership.

I was uncertain that a Liverpool bid would be accepted in time and I wanted to play for a club who really wanted me."

What remains unclear is how much Owen wanted Newcastle United.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:20 AM

 
WS at 10 deserves better than WaPo treatment

This Fall, the Weekly Standard turns 10 year old. Peter Carlson's article in the Washington Post about the occasion is absolutely horrible, leaving the impression that William Kristol's magazine is a terribly unserious publication that nonetheless convinced President George W. Bush to prosecute a miserable war in Iraq.

If you haven't been getting the magazine since its inaugural issue, well, then, shame on you. But to make up for that, you can always buy The Weekly Standard: A Reader, 1995-2005.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:04 AM

 
Quotidian

"There are no uneducated people. Everybody in England is educated; only most people are educated wrongly."
-- G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:55 PM

 
What Israel does not need right now

AP reports:

"Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his candidacy Tuesday for leader of the ruling Likud Party, issuing a direct challenge to the current party head, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Internal Likud polls show the hawkish Mr. Netanyahu beating Mr. Sharon among Likud members in a matchup for party leader, though Mr. Sharon is far more popular among the general Israeli population."

While I have serious reservations about the abandonment of Gaza (and oppose abandonment of the West Bank), Israel needs political stability right now and the kind of forward-looking leadeship Ariel Sharon is providing. Internal party bickering is quite unhelpful, if not counter-productive.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:52 PM

 
Belarus-China relations

This is a little old (July 18) but still worth reading. Writing over at In the National Interest, Frederick W. Stakelbeck, Jr., explores the developing relations between Red China and Europe's last communist regime, Belarus. The relationship includes closer economic ties as well as the development of "military and intelligence synergies." This could be a major problem:

"Belarus does possess one important asset that China desperately seeks - a location in the heart of Europe. With a boarder that includes Russia on the east, Ukraine in the south, Poland in the west, Lithuania in the northwest, and Latvia in the north, Belarus offers China the perfect European incubator for government sponsored activities that include spying, espionage and intelligence gathering."

That China has such interests in Europe is in itself a problem but Stakelbeck raises another issue: is Russia willing to "share" Belarus. How Russia reacts to China deepening its involvement on its western border will be important. It could increase regional instability and deepen Russian distrust of its Oriental neighbour. The United States and (presumably) Europe justly wonder why Beijing is poking around in Europe's backyard: no European state nor the EU threatens Chinese economic, political or military interests elsewhere in the world yet China seems to have an aggressive, some might say imperialist, undertone to its foreign policy. This will be necessary to keep watching. As Stakelbeck concludes: "Belarus is not a typical Chinese ally. For that reason, Western analysts should closely monitor this developing relationship."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:35 PM

 
Defending the war

Converts are often more passionate than long-time believers so it is not surprising that Christopher Hitchens writes so energetically and persuasively defending the liberation of Iraq as part of the War on Terror. From this the current Weekly Standard:

"The subsequent liberation of Pakistan's theocratic colony in Afghanistan, and the so-far decisive eviction and defeat of its bin Ladenist guests, was only a reprisal. It took care of the last attack. But what about the next one? For anyone with eyes to see, there was only one other state that combined the latent and the blatant definitions of both 'rogue' and 'failed.' This state--Saddam's ruined and tortured and collapsing Iraq--had also met all the conditions under which a country may be deemed to have sacrificed its own legal sovereignty. To recapitulate: It had invaded its neighbors, committed genocide on its own soil, harbored and nurtured international thugs and killers, and flouted every provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United Nations, in this crisis, faced with regular insult to its own resolutions and its own character, had managed to set up a system of sanctions-based mutual corruption. In May 2003, had things gone on as they had been going, Saddam Hussein would have been due to fill Iraq's slot as chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, every species of gangster from the hero of the Achille Lauro hijacking to Abu Musab al Zarqawi was finding hospitality under Saddam's crumbling roof."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:30 PM

 
Great poll

Classical Values has a poll up (on the right-hand side) that asks: "What ancient form of execution would you LEAST prefer?" Here are the choices:

Buried alive
Crucifixion
Flayed alive
Scourged to death
Stung/bitten to death by insects
Slow disembowelment
Roasted on grill
Dragged from chariot
Torn apart by wild beasts
Rolled downhill inside spiked barrel
Death of a thousand cuts

Last I checked, slow disembowelment is edging out buried alive.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:18 PM

 
(Mostly) good news from Syria

The Baathist hold on power seems to be slipping. Reuters reports that Lebanese police arrested three former top pro-Syrian security officials and that the three, which include Jamil al-Sayyed, former chief of the General Security Directorate, and Ali Hajj, ex-head of police. They may have played a role in the February 14 assassination of ex-prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. According to Syrian Comment Plus this is mostly good news:

"Major arrests of Baathist henchmen that a year ago would have been unthinkable have just been made hours ago. Could this be the signs of the first crack in the Baath facade that Assad II is attempting to keep intact? This is a major blow to Baath regional prestige and one cannot underestimate how threatening these moves will be perceived by the Baath regime. Reprisals will surely follow. Bashar is losing his grip on events and the more impotent he is perceived the more the native opposition is likely to be emboldened. Ironically, it is that same impotence in the face of overwhelming local and international pressure that will likely drive figures like Intelligence chief Assef Shawkat and his wife to attempt to take the reigns of power in the hopes of restoring the Old Order of things..."

If Major General Assef Shawkat were successful in taking the reigns of power, that would be very bad news indeed.

(HT: Gatewaypundit)
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:49 PM

 
Brazil's nuclear program

It's over now but it wasn't over when Brazil said it was over. The Associated Press reports:

"Brazil's military continued work on an atomic bomb after it was ordered to scrap the program in 1985 and by 1990 had nearly finished building one, a leading nuclear scientist said.

Jose Luiz Santana, the former president of Brazil's nuclear energy commission, known by its Portuguese acronym CNEN, said the military was preparing a test explosion when the program was ultimately dismantled in August 1990.

Earlier this month, former President Jose Sarney, who led Brazil's first civilian government after a 1964-85 military dictatorship, told Globo TV that he scrapped a program to build an atomic bomb when he came to power. The ruling generals were long suspected of seeking nuclear weapons, but Sarney's comments were the first confirmation of the secret program.

... Military officials had even obtained the enriched uranium needed to fuel the bomb, Santana told Globo TV in an interview televised late Sunday.

Santana said it took him and his team seven months to dismantle the program."

Recall, as the story notes, that just last year Brazil renewed its work to enrich uranium and refused to let the Iternational Atomic Energy Agency inspect its nuclear facilities in Resende, near Rio de Janeiro. Eventually, Brazil relented and let the IEAA inspect their centrifuges, but considering Brazil's socialist government and the possibility of socialist Hugo Chavez using the allure of cheap Venezuelan oil to buy friends, this insight about the country's past nuclear weapon untruths raises serious concerns.
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:25 PM

 
Jude Wanniski, RIP

I was shocked to learn that Jude Wanniski, the man who did more than anyone else to popularize supply-side economics, has passed away. The words of Robert Novak, from the introduction to the fourth edition of Wanniski's The Way The World Works, are so very true: "Nobody else, I believe has accomplished what Jude Wanniski has without institutional sponsorship, without formal political or financial power, and with merely will and brainpower...he has not only described but also changed the way the world works. If the doors of power are locked, his ideas have penetrated nevertheless." The Club for Growth blog has more and some other links.
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:18 PM

 
Nordlinger's back

Jay Nordlinger's much-missed Impromptus column returned today to NRO. He begins with Cindy Sheehan and her ranting about her son Casey being "killed for lies and for a PNAC neocon agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel." Nordlinger says:

"No, someone had to teach Cindy to say that — 'You've got to be carefully taught,' as Oscar Hammerstein said. Who are the culprits? Who are these nasty and heartless exploiters? I think of the kids I went to college with. They'd arrive from Muskegon or wherever, perfectly sane, and within a month they'd be in the grip of nonsense. They'd met some smelly hippie at some stall — or, more likely, a teaching assistant in a classroom — and lost their marbles. Some recovered them relatively soon; others suffered lasting damage."
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:56 PM

 
Good news from Iraq

Arthur Ckrenkoff has the last two weeks of good news from Iraq.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:23 AM

 
Five things I would do now if I were president right now

Probably, like Reflections in D Minor, I'd panic. But assuming I didn't, here it goes:

1. The first thing I would do is clearly commit the United States to the War on Terror and the democratization of Iraq. I would give a prime-time speech explaining the mission in Iraq in the context of the War on Terror and the connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. I would explain how life is better for the average Iraqi now that it was under Hussein. I would also announce the resumption of the MX "Peacekeeper" missile program.

2. Pull the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court of the United States and name Judge Michael McConnell to the bench.

3. Announce that I will fight for a flat tax, name Steve Forbes as my special advisor on the issue and identify key Congressional leaders that will help implement the program by July 4, 2006.

4. Call upon Congress to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

5. Commit America to a multi-faceted attempt to reform the United Nations: I would suspend American payments to the United Nations; call Kofi Annan and explain a comprehensive plan for immediate reforms that include overhaul of the human rights committee, urge that the Security Council be enlarged by just three members including one Permanent Member (Japan), demand full co-operation between the office of the Secretary General and the Congressional investigation of the oil-for-food scam and demand that the Secretary General himself resign; make it clear that if there is not progress on all these items before September 2006, the United States will withdraw from the United Nations; outline the long-term goal of the United States is the development of a voting system at the UN based on the population and size of the economy of each nation and full rights at the UN being dependent upon respect for democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:00 AM

 
The hurricane will be blogged

Terry Teachout and OGIC have an extensive list of links to Hurricane Katrina smacking into New Orleans.

In another post, Teachout reflects on writing the post with dozens of links to the biggest issue of the past two days:

"Don't get me wrong. I love newspapers. If I didn't, I wouldn't pour so much of my energy into them. I hope I spend the rest of my life writing for them. But what happened to this blog two days ago is a dramatic demonstration of the two most important properties of the new media: independence and immediacy. I doubt that any print-media editor, however savvy or enlightened, would have let me do what I did with “About Last Night” on Sunday afternoon. I would have had to talk a half-dozen suits into letting me tear up my job description for a day, and by the time I'd finally talked them around (assuming I succeeded in doing so, which probably wouldn't have happened), it would have been too late to bother. But as a blogger, I didn't have to talk anyone into letting me do what I wanted—I just did it."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:52 PM

 
The flat tax is coming to Britain?

The Daily Telegraph's George Trefgarne says it is (almost) inevitable that the United Kingdom will get a flat tax. According to Trefgarne, there is a wave of flat taxes moving from east to west:

"A flat tax regime has been adopted in 11 countries and counting. As each citadel falls, another is forced to respond to the new-found vigour of its neighbour. Next up is Greece, where the prime minister could announce one in a few weeks' time. Greece has unbelievably rickety public finances and the hope is that a flat tax rate of 25 per cent will revive the moribund economy, reduce evasion, attract high earners and send revenues pouring into the coffers of Athens."

He then predicts that Germany could be next if it elects Angela Merkel in September (she appointed German flat tax proponent Paul Kirchhof as her economic adviser) before suggesting:

"... there is a curious inevitability to the idea, just as Ken Clarke and his friends used to claim there was to the euro. Only, unlike the single currency, the flat tax is a triumph for democracy and keeps winning elections - in Poland, Greece, Russia and elsewhere."

Not only is it electorally successful, it helps attract investment and reduces compliance costs for taxpayers. So what will Gordon Brown do? Oppose it, of course. But Mr. Brown will not be Chancellor of the Exchequer forever.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:38 PM

 
What country are you?

According to the country quiz (HT: Irish Elk) I'm Ireland: "... You also like a good night at the pub, though many are just as worried that you will blow up the pub as drink your beverage of choice. You're good with words, remarkably lucky, and know and enjoy at least fifteen ways of eating a potato. You really don't like snakes."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:32 PM

 
Quotidian

"When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget but as an ideal we begin to breed that that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority."
-- C.S. Lewis, "Equality," Compelling Reason
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:25 PM

 
It's the regulation, too

Conservatives are worried about the cost of government and they should be. But regulation is another measure of the size and scope of government. At TCS, Susan E. Dudley writes about America's over-regulation and near the beginning relates this astonishing fact: "Every year, over 60 federal departments, agencies, and commissions employ a combined staff of roughly 242,000 full-time employees to write and enforce federal regulations." And here's why:

"The federal tax code occupies 2 volumes, each thicker than the Bible. But, the Code of Federal Regulations is much larger; it now occupies over 20 feet of shelf space. And it is growing. In 2004, the federal government printed 78,851 pages of new rules and announcements in the daily Federal Register. At 4 minutes per page that would require 2.5 people reading 8 hours per day for a year, just to keep up with the new rules and pronouncements (to say nothing of actually complying with them)."

Furthermore, for fiscal year 2006, Congress allocated 41.4 billion for regulatory activities. That's a lot of regulations -- and their costs add up to much more than that reserved in the budget for "regulatory activities." Regulations:

"...impose social costs on individuals and businesses beyond the direct tax dollars expended to write and enforce them, and Federal Register pages, agency staffing, and these on-budget costs merely provide insights into the trends in magnitude of the hidden tax. According to the Small Business Administration, the cost of federal regulation on American businesses, workers and consumers is close to $1 trillion per year."

That price is paid by large and small businesses alike, as well as consumers.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:55 PM

 
July Interim is up

Better late than never, the July issue of The Interim is now online. Several noteworthy stories: Tony Gosgnach on the Globe and Mail's anti-Christian and pro-abortion bias and editorials on Western bestowing an honourary doctorate on Morgentaler and recognizing Pat O'Brien's departure from the Liberal Party. You can subscribe online here or call Dan Di Rocco at 416.204.1687 and ask for the new subscriber's rate.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:45 PM

 
Comments

Send them to paul_tuns [AT] yahoo.com
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:06 AM

 
Fund on the flat tax

Opinion Journal columnist John Fund laments the nearly non-existent (at least in political circles)discussion of flat taxes. He concludes:

"Alvin Rabushka, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, believes it's only a matter of time before one an emerging economic superpower like China or India goes the flat-tax route. His book on the subject has just been published in Chinese, with a preface by Lou Jiwei, the vice minister of finance. If China adopted a flat tax, more than a quarter of the world's population would be filling out tax returns on the back of a postcard. That would leave them a lot of time and money to eat our economic lunch."
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:04 AM

 
Yardley on Roth

Washington Post book critic and cultural commentator Jonathan Yardley devastates the two-volume Library of America release of Philip Roth's first six novels. Yardley recalls liking the first few books Roth published in the 1960s before "Roth's star dim[med] for me" with Our Gang and The Breast. I would agree; every post-Portnoy's Complaint Roth novel is more atrocious than the previous one. Yardley says of Our Gang, a satire on Richard Nixon written before Watergate: "It takes its epigraphs from Jonathan Swift and George Orwell, but the only resemblance it bears to the work of these writers is that it, too, is written in English." Very nice.

The review begins:

"Re-reading them [the two volumes] was not, I am sorry to report, a happy experience. These two volumes are the first of eight, a 'definitive edition, published by special arrangement with the author.' One wonders whether Roth or his representatives may have struck an all-or-nothing bargain with the editors of the Library; otherwise, it's hard to account for the decision to republish all six of the books herein collected. To be sure, those editors have placed their imprimatur on other books of dubious value -- William Faulkner's A Fable , James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan , Carson McCullers's Clock Without Hands -- but nothing so demonstrably wretched as Letting Go , When She Was Good , Our Gang and The Breast."

After writing briefly about Goodbye, Columbus, which Yardley likes (and I've never read), the review concludes:

"Wonderful stuff. It's lost a good deal of its pop today thanks to its familiarity, but it was a watershed in American literature and deserves to be in a series of books "dedicated to preserving America's best and most significant writing." But Our Gang ? The Breast ? Eight volumes of Roth when Faulkner gets only four, Nabokov three, Wharton four, Twain six? That's nuts."

Indeed.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:46 AM

 
Taking on an abortion cliche

Polyscopique examines the suitability of the lyrics of Ariane Moffat's Poussière d'ange, a song about abortion, as representative of abortion-minded women. Here are some of the lyrics:

"Just at the wrong moment
Angel dust fell inside you
You'd be a super mom
But not now, no not now"

Such words directed at a teen may be one thing, but considering that the average age for women getting an abortion (in Quebec) is 26, perhaps the lyrics bear greater scrutiny. Putting aside the moral questions, one wonders at what point should women say "now"? For the ambitious or selfish woman it is not the "now" -- education, career, freedom -- it is the child, the child they do not want.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:36 AM

 
Weekend list

Thomas Sowell's ten best books

10. Knowledge and Decisions (1980) -- The application of Hayek's observation that the utilization of knowledge, not the division of labour, is the most important characteristic of markets.

9. Marxism: Philosophy and Economics (1985) -- The best primer on Karl Marx's thought, it demonstrates that there is a difference between Marxism and Marxian -- and that neither one matches reality.

8. Migrations and Cultures: A World View (1996) -- A historical and global look at migration patterns, it delves into both the cultural traits of various ethnic groups and those traits affect their assimilation (or not) into their new countries.

7. Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (1987) -- Sowell's best collection of columns includes such gems as "Compassion versus Guilt," "Green bigots," "Chicken Little and Carcinogens," "Third World-ism," "Who are the Poor," and "An 'Epidemic' of Irresponsibility."

6. Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality (1984) -- Examines the progress that blacks have made in America and concludes that blacks having won the battle for civil rights; furthermore, he finds that liberals continue to use racism as an excuse for various negative social phenomenon among blacks.

5. Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy - Revised and Expanded Edition (2004) -- The best introduction to economics since Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

4. The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999) -- Examines the social consequences of the policies enacted by liberals seeking utopia, which often exacerbate the problems they seek to solve.

3. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (1995) -- A devastating critique of the un-self critical, liberal and utopian ideology of the elite, and its consequences.

2. Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (1990) -- The title sums it up perfectly.

1. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (1987) -- Demonstrates that ideas much more than interests ignite the great, perennial political battles.

(This was no easy task. I have 24 Thomas Sowell books on my shelves and I've read two that I don't have (yet).)
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:31 AM

 
Quotidian

"In our happy, blind existence, we picture condemned men as a few ill-fated, solitary individuals. We instinctively believe that we could never end up on death row, that it would take an outstanding career if not heinous guilt for that to happen. A great deal has still to be shaken up inside our heads for us to get the real picture: a mass of the most ordinary, average, gray people have languished in death cells for the most ordinary, everyday misdemeanors, and, although some were lucky and had their death sentences commuted, which was purely a matter of chance, they very often got the super (which is what the prisoners called the 'supreme measure,' since they hate lofty words and manage somehow to give everything a nickname that is both crude and short.)"
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:39 PM

 
Quotes from George F. Will

Washington Post columnist George F. Will wades into the intelligent design discussion today and provides two great quotes:

"... bear cubs killed by mature male bears so the mother will stop lactating and be sexually available. Call that the Summer of Love, Alaska-style."

And:

Grizzly bear fanatic and "protector" Timothy, "Treadwell was not far from mental illness, or from a social stance -- nature is sweet, civilization is nasty -- not easily distinguished from mental illness. Call it '60s Envy."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:35 PM

 
UK Tory leadership politics

The Guardian reports that Tim Yeo, one of the Tory MPs with a modernization fetish, is dropping out of the Conservative Party leadership race and endorsing the all-but-official leadership bid of two-time leadership loser Ken Clarke. The paper also reports that Liam Fox, the party's foreign affairs critic, likely has the necessary support (10 MPs) to get nominated for the leadership contest. While Fox is interested in getting involved in the leadership race, he is focused on his job for the moment:

"It's still my intention to be part of that leadership contest, whenever it comes, but we have got such a long wait for it that the opposition should be concentrating on opposing the government rather than involving themselves in endless speculation."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:27 PM

 
University light bulb jokes

Gods of the Copybook Headings has a pretty thorough list of university light bulb jokes. It starts off pretty good:

How many Ryerson students does it take to change a lightbulb?
*Trick question; Ryerson isn't a real university.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:24 PM

 
The Idiot Hall of Fame

It's been a while since I inducted someone into the Idiot Hall of Fame and this latest entrant is no stranger to idiocy; indeed, he probably deserves a lifetime achievement award.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson did come out in defense of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, criticizing Rev. Pat Robertson's call for assassination of Chavez and calling for diplomatic talks and
to address American problems with Venezuela. Jackson called on the Federal Communication Commission to do something about Robertson making "threats" over American airwaves. Fine, that's what Jackson does: make outrageous demands and then call it outrageous that no one listened. But more importantly, Jackson was quoted saying, "We must choose a civilized policy of rational conversation." That comment was directed only at the United States and not Chavez, who is suspected of fomenting revolution in Latin America.

Jesse Jackson is a bona fide idiot.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:15 PM

 
Opening day Serie A

Juve and Inter win (Adriano gets a hat trick), along with Udinese and Roma, but AC Milan held to a 1-1 draw by promoted Ascoli. Overview of the day's games can be found here.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:10 PM

 
Why not incest?

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby says the law, after the 2003 Lawrence decision prohibiting states from prohibiting sodomy, cannot outlaw incestuous relationships:

"There is simply no principled escape from the logic of Lawrence: If the Constitution forbids the states to criminalize private sexual conduct between consenting adults, lovers who happen to be siblings can no more be sent to prison than lovers who happen to be men.

Dissenting in Lawrence, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that the decision 'effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation.' It was a prediction the majority made no effort to refute."

So where, Jacoby asks, are the homosexual activists who paraded out the notion that the state has no compelling reason to proscribe the sexual relations of consenting adults?
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:05 PM

 
The Iraqi constitution

Two articles, then a few questions.

The first, the news, as reported by the Washington Post, that an Iraqi National Assembly committee has now completed a draft of a constitution ready for discussion:

"Iraqi leaders completed a draft of a permanent constitution Sunday after three months of negotiations that left Sunni Arabs unsatisfied, setting up a potentially divisive nationwide referendum on the document to be held by Oct. 15.

... In recent days, Shiites and Kurds made what they said was a final compromise offer. It retained the principle of federalism and enshrined the Kurds' long-held autonomy in the north, but deferred decisions about how and when new federal states could be formed to the next legislature. It also removed the ban on the Baath Party, while prohibiting the party's "Saddamist" branch and symbols.

... If the [October ratificatoin] referendum succeeds, the document will become the new Iraq's founding charter. If two-thirds majorities in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against it, a new parliament, to be elected in December, will begin the drafting process anew."

The second, from Mark Steyn's Chicago Sun-Times column:

"Iraqi nation-building coverage is like one almighty cable-news Hurricane Ahmed. The network correspondents climb into their oilskins and waders and wrap themselves round a lamppost on the boardwalk and insist that civil war's about to make landfall any minute now, devastating the handover/elections/constitution. But it never does. Hurricane Ahmed is simply the breezy back and forth of healthy politicking."

Doesn't discussion and the working out of differences take time? And isn't the fact that the three major factions -- Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites -- working together on a constitution progress in itself? And if the three largest factions in Canada or the United States got together to draft a new constitution, could they do it in three months and without major differences of opinion about the best way to order their society? And, lastly, isn't it obvious that not everyone will be 100% happy with the outcome perfectly natural, and that the goal is not perfection but a workable solution that involves trade-offs by everyone?
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:43 PM

 
The 'Catholic' Shakespeare

Along with all reasonable people -- that is, people who are open to facts rather than those who mindlessly recall the disinformation taught by their high school English teachers -- I've long thought that the real William Shakespeare was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. I recently noticed that there was another book on this topic (Mark Anderson's Shakespeare By Another Name: The Life Of Edward De Vere, Earl Of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare), making the case that de Vere was really The Bard, but it was different book on the topic of Shakespeare that caught my eye: Clare Asquith's Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare (written about here, in The Observer.) It looks good and it may force me to reconsider my view that de Vere had to write the plays and sonnets while the man from Stratford was merely an actor. I will have to see whether or not the evidence is there that a Catholic worldview better explains some of Shakespeare's ideas than did de Vere's view of the world from a position of (relative) power and a man who came into contact with more of the world than did a provincial English actor. I am prepared to be persuaded but still doubt I will be. What this book is more likely to do instead is lessen my hostility to the fools who still insist that the actor was also the writer.

I'll note one part of the Observer story about Asquith's book:

"As a result the Catholic resistance, which had been going for 70 years by the time Shakespeare was writing, had already developed its own secret code words; a subversive communication system which the playwright developed further in his work.

'They inevitably had a hidden language, and Shakespeare used it rather like the composer Shostakovich used political codes in the 20th century,' she said."

This is not a promising comparison; I've never bought that Shostakovich employed political code and certainly don't believe he is innocent of singing the Soviet regime's praises. I am, however, convinced that neither a 16th century actor nor a English Earl wrote the symphonies which we credit Shostakovich with now.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:56 AM

 
Necessary book for conservatives

In her column on Friday, Mona Charen notes two books that shouldn't be missed. One is Priscilla Buckley's Living It Up at National Review. I've recieved my review copy but I won't get to it 'til closer to NR's 50th anniversary this November. I've glanced at it and have enjoyed several wonderful anecdotes and may put a few up in the coming weeks. For anyone interested in National Review, this appears to be a lively mini bio of American conservatism's most magazine.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:22 AM

 
When the good news isn't being reported

An excellent editorial from the Telegraph on the BBC's coverage of the writing of Iraq's constitution -- the same of which could be said most media outlets' coverage. It begins:

"To listen to the BBC's coverage of Iraq's tentative steps towards a constitution is to become deeply depressed. The BBC creates the impression that the talks about the constitution are bound to fail. The country is heading towards civil war between the Shias, the Sunnis, and the Kurds: three irredeemably opposed groups itching to kill each other.

The reality is, in fact, considerably more hopeful than that."

After briefly outlining the challenge of writing a workable constitution, it notes: "Iraq's native, democratic politicians are in fact making significant progress towards agreeing a document that will provide a framework for a peaceful and democratic future." Furthermore, most in the media do not give some Shia leaders for refraining from calling for all law to be based on Islamic law. The obsession with scoring points against the hated George Bush prevents even the mention of small but significant achievements made by the Iraqi people and their representatives. But rather than give Iraqis any credit, the media, and in particular the BBC, would rather cast aspersions on what they see as an American, not Iraqi story. Yet the United States, "has made democracy possible in a situation where the only other options are the nightmares of tyranny and civil war. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis are desperately eager to make democracy in their country real. We should applaud them for their zeal." So instead of reporting on the hard work of making a functional democracy, the BBC and others focus on a non-story: the potential (but it is merely that: potential) of ethnic conflict and civil war.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:09 AM

 
Dropping the ball

The Ottawa Citizen editorializes that the Tories could use private healthcare, or at least dissatisfaction with Canada's dysfunctional healthcare system, to win votes. The editorial concludes:

"The doctors got in on the act last week, when the Canadian Medical Association endorsed private health-care insurance, in defiance of a plea not to do so by none other than Liberal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh.

Interestingly, the governing Liberals, usually adept to the point of clairvoyance at reading the public mood and modifying policies accordingly, have instead been struggling mightily to hold back the tide.

This gives the Conservatives an extraordinarily rare opportunity to take a leadership position on the most important issue facing Canadians today."

While I agree that Canada's intractable healthcare woes are a potential electoral windfall for Conservatives, I have no confidence the Tories will be able to pull it off. In recent weeks, I've talked to at least 20 Tory MPs, MP staffers or Conservative advisors and everyone of them but one used the phrase "single-payer system" or "single-payer healthcare." Admittedly, this is not the same as universal, state-run, socialist medicine but it does betray a reticence on the part of the Conservatives to call for bold and necessary reforms. When I asked questions about what single-payer meant, it was clear that they had memorized well their talking points and the substance of their position was nothing more than mere tinkering with the current system. I doubt this sort of platform will be enough to energize Canadians over this issue.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:56 PM

 
Quotidian

"When I am tempted, on occasion, to ask myself why we should, after all, so much as talk about the Novel, the wanton fable, against which, in so many ways, so showy an indictment may be drawn, I seem to see that the simplest plea is not to be sought in any attempted philosophy, in any abstract reason for our perversity or our levity. The real gloss upon these things is reflected from some great practitioner, some concrete instance of the art, some ample cloak under which we may gratefully crawl."
-- Henry James, "The lesson of Balzac," The Future of the Novel
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:36 PM

 
A deserving Nobel Peace Prize candidate

... who will never be nominated. Reacting to news that Germany's anti-American Chancellor Gerhard Schroder was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to the liberatoin of Iraq -- an opposition that included using its position on the Security Council in 2003 to, with France, block endorsement of the use of force against Saddam Hussein -- EU Referendum blog suggests that the US Marine Corps be nominated.

(HT: Iain Murray in The Corner)
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:25 PM

 
New York Times column eschews political correctness

Of course, the column was not by a staffer. The freelance contribution, by Jim Shore, a member of the Seminole Tribe in Florida, examines the relationship between the University of Florida and the tribe and provides some interesting information about benefits the tribe recieves from the university's use of their name. Shore concludes that concerns over tomahawk chops and team names misses the point, but rather what universities are doing to help Native Americans that counts.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:19 PM

 
Voted early, vote again

Calgary Grit is allowing, essentially, a second round of voting in the first round of Prime Minister madness. Thus far Joe Clark is leading Pierre Trudeau which might be the reason why CG is changing the rules for this competition. While I couldn't bring myself to cast a vote for either, I'm glad to see Trudeau losing by 16 points (58-42).

I'm somewhat surprised to see Louis St. Laurent losing by such a large margin to John Diefenbaker (71%-29%). St. Laurent was a man of vision and action whereas Diefenbaker was a blowhard, a man of fiery rhetoric but little action. Indeed, some of the journalism at the time alluded to his "dithering." Furthermore, despite the image of being a populist conservative, the conservatives within caucus deeply distrusted Diefenbaker. Indeed, the fractures within the party -- the fractures that would lead, eventually, to the creation of the Reform Party, the divided right of the 1990s, and the internal party squabbling today -- became painfully evident under his leadership. While I disagreed with St. Laurent's interference in the economy, I admire his visionary leadership and achievements. Coupled with my disappointment with the willingness of Canadian Conservatives (and conservatives) to over-rate The Dief, I ended up voting for St. Laurent.

My other votes: Brian Mulroney over R.B. Bennett; Robert Borden over Lester Pearson; Jean Chretien over Martin (I know!); Arthur Meighen over Wilfrid Laurier; Mackenzie King over John Turner; John A. MacDonald over Kim Campbell. Trudeau versus Clark -- abstain.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:02 PM

 
Here's a poor endorsement

Surprise, surprise. In a London Times guest column Michael Portillo backs Ken Clarke for the Tory party leadership. Portillo correctly notes that in term of experience, it's Clarke hands down: "He has served longer in high office than any member of the present government. Having been both home secretary and chancellor of the exchequer trumps even Sir Malcolm Rifkind’s record as defence and then foreign secretary." But a great resume does not a leader make. He says that, "The man the Tories will shortly elect as leader will not enter Downing Street. The party’s recent electoral performance was too dismal to offer any hope of returning to government next time." That is suppose to reassure Conservatives and Brits that the damage (read: begin erasing the English Channel) Clarke can do is minimal because he isn't going to be prime minister, which is hardly a selling point. Neither is Portillo's recognition that "Clarke talks too much" or "we know the man if not the policies." Yet, after examining the weaknesses Portillo detects in the other leadership hopefuls he concludes:

"I feel fortunate no longer to be a Tory MP because the choice is not easy. The case for Clarke grows as the other candidates fail to impress. I disagree with him on many things and he lacks some important ingredients to be a good leader. Maybe he is the worst candidate — except for all the others."
posted by Paul Tuns at 8:08 PM

 
Classic Liberal strategy

When there is nothing else, run against the United States. The Toronto Star reports:

"At the end of this week's Liberal caucus retreat in Regina, as the cars were pulling up to the hotel to take MPs and ministers to the airport, suddenly it became clear what hadn't been discussed over nearly four days of meetings and media encounters.

Not once had anyone mentioned the Conservatives or Leader Stephen Harper, except maybe in passing.

There are many possible reasons that the official Opposition has suddenly become an afterthought in the minds of Liberals. But perhaps it's because the governing party is seeing a bigger foe on the radar screen these days: the United States."

Of course, the Star misses the story: to the Liberals Conservatives and Americans are almost the same thing so that by demonizing the United States, the the Liberal Party is setting the stage for attacks on the Conservative Party. Usually the Star is attuned to such things, but perhaps, this time, they didn't get the memo.
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:11 PM

 
Job opening on Parliament Hill

This notice was passed onto me:

Doug Cryer will be leaving my office prior to the commencement of the fall session and I will require either a Parliamentary Assistant or front desk Administrative Assistance depending on internal arrangements that are made. If you or your office is aware of anyone that might be interested please have them submit a resume at komare1@parl.gc.ca or by fax at 1-306-634-4835. I can be reached by telephone at 306-634-3000 or 306-421-6128. I would like to know date of availability and salary expectations. Thank you for your consideration and any assistance you may be able to provide.
Ed Komarnicki, MP
Souris-Moose Mountain
posted by Paul Tuns at 7:08 PM

 
Blogstravaganza

Last night's event -- read here for a discussion about why no other name is especially satisfying -- at The Bishop and The Belcher, was great. Finally get to put faces to names. I've already met Bob Tarantino and Kathy Shaidle but its always fun to talk to them again. Greg Staples is as nice in person as I expected him to be. Damian Brooks is exactly as you would expect. So is the anarchist Ian Scott. Brian Merten of Free Advice was there. So was Girl on the Right, whom I didn't get to talk to until she was leaving, and V for Victory's Jason Hickman. Mike Brock was there and was the first person to buy one of my books, Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal. I met the man, Nicholas Russon, behind Quotulatiousness. I've avoided his blog because, from links from the Gods, I thoght that it would be a great site. After talking to him, I'll go to it because I know it will be a great site. (Addicts to blogs and blogging know what I'm talking about.) There were also some non-bloggers including the Conservative sacrificial lamb, er, candidate, for a downtown Toronto riding and a regular dead tree journalist. The advantage of the dead tree journalist is that he spoke in full paragraphs rather than single sentences. The night was a lot of fun and after selling four books, I actually made money on it. Not as much as The Bishop and the Belcher -- bloggers apparently drink in quantities similar to journalists.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:14 AM

 
UEFA Champion's League

The groupings and schedule can be found here and reaction from a representative of each teams can be found at the UEFA website here and here. There is some controversy (see also here) about defending champion Liverpool being grouped with fellow English squad Chelsea. I know there are rules that typically prevent teams from the same country facing each other in the group stage of the Champion's League but Liverpool got into the competition after a special waiver after not finishing in the top four in the Premier League. And while Liverpool did win the Champion's League last year, they were not one of the eight seeded teams. Too bad. Anyway, the English rivals -- Liverpool knocked Chelsea of Europe last season -- will make group play even more exciting.

Here's my quick analysis.

Group A - Juventas (Italy) wins the division easily and Bayern Munich (Germany) captures second without much effort. Rapid Wien (Austria) and Club Brugge (Belgium) just cannot contend.

Group B - My eldest son is happy -- Arsenal (England) will be joined by Ajax (Netherlands) in a division with two incredibly weak teams: "Cinderalla story" Thun (Switzerland) and AC Sparta Praha (Czech Republic). The final Group B game could be important -- Arsenal at Ajax on December 7. But considering Ajax's poor start, perhaps Arsenal runs away with it and Ajax wins second by default. Anyway you look at it, Arsenal is safe.

Group C - A most intriguing division -- Although powerhouse Barcelona (Spain) is likely to win this grouping easily, the competition to finish second and thus into the Round of 16 will be fierce: Udinese (Italy), Panathinaikos (Greece), Werder Bremen (Germany). Although the Greek side is not especially strong, with Udinese a weaker squad than last year and Werder Bremen a mediocre European competitor, the race for second is wide open.

Group D - Another close division. I think Manchester United (England) is one of the five teams most likely to win the Champion's League this year if Sir Alex Ferguson's team can stay healthy. I don't think any other non-Spanish team is as capable of explosive offense as Man U. The battle for second will be tight and everyone is a legitimate contender; indeed, if Man U. stumbles (read: loses Ruud van Nistelrooy for any period of time). Despite an unimpressive start to the French season, Lille (France) will compete with Villarreal (Spain) and Benfica (Portugal) for second. It should be great soccer with Villarreal trying to prove they can compete with Real Madrid and Barca.

Group E - AC Milan (Italy) and PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands) should easily make the Round of 16 again, with Milan winning the division. FC Schalke 04 (Germany) and Fenerbahce (Turkey) don't really measure up. Perhaps it is the hope being father to the thought, but AC Milan, despite their poor final months last season, should be one of those five teams with a good chance to win it all.

Group F - Best race for first between Real Madrid (Spain) and Olympique Lyonnais (France). Two great teams and each with a chance to win the Champion's League.
Rosenborg (Norway) and Olympiacos (Greece) must take solace in the fact that they are one of the top 32 in Europe.

Group G - The two English clubs, Chelsea and Liverpool should finish one, two respectively, but Real Betis (Spain) could make it interesting. RSC Anderlecht (Belgium) might accrue a point or two in draws. Chelsea is considered by most of soccerdom to be the favourite to win the whole thing. I think they are formidable but not unbeatable and predict they won't make the final.

Group H - Could potentially be a three way race, although I think Internazionale Milan (Italy) and the Rangers (Scotland) are superior clubs compared to Porto (Portugal). Inter and Rangers face each other at the end of group play on December 6. That game could determine who finishes first and who exits European competition, with Porto sneaking into second place unless both can escape loses against the Portuguese team. If Artmedia Bratislava (Slovakia), which has never made it this far in European competition, should consider itself luckly if one of the other teams rest some stars in a game against the weaker squad and provide a sliver of hope for a point from a draw. (That said, Artmedia did bounce Rangers' rival Celtic from the competition in the second round of European play.)
posted by Paul Tuns at 2:43 AM

 
Apparently Sailer didn't like Hitch's column

Steve Sailer's reaction to Christopher Hitchens' Slate column on intelligent design:

"C'mon, Hitch, I realize you are under contract to churn out copy so fast for so many outlets that you don't have time to do anything other than regurgitate conventional wisdom in service of your obsessive prejudices, but this is a ridiculous summation of what actually happened."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:27 AM

 
Job opening at Globalization Institute

It's looking for a recent graduate for a management position in early 2006. Responsibilities to include overseeing fundraising and helping to develop the strategic plan of the institute. Work will involve researching mostly U.S.-based potential donors and developing grant proposals for foundations although the position will be based in London. Candidates do not need to be British citizens. For more information, see here.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:15 AM

 
How to follow the UN

Look at which direction its finger is pointing and go the other way. Or as Perry de Havilland says:

"If the UN says something should or should not be done, it is a safe bet that doing the opposite is most likely the correct course of action. Thus when the UN says Britain must not expel Muslim clerics who incite terrorism, clearly this is indeed the best policy.

It does not matter if a compass always points south, as long as you know that you can use it to find your way just as effectively as with one which always points north."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:07 AM

 
Cool new blog

Laissez Faire Books has a blog.

(HT: Samizdata)
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:03 AM

 
How liberals created al-Qaeda

Many people believe that Ronald Reagan (helpig the mujahedin in Afghanistan in the 1980s) or the American neocons (with their wars of liberation in Afghanistan and Iraq) created al-Qaeda, but Brendan O'Neill writes in The Spectator that liberals made al-Qaeda the global terrorist threat that it is today. I'm not entirely convinced but it is an intriguing argument. (To be clear, I don't think Reagan or the necons are responsible for al-Qaeda either.) Here's the gist of O'Neill's argument:

"In a nutshell, in the 1990s al-Qa’eda became the armed wing of Western liberal opinion. The mujahedin may have been set up, supported and armed to the hilt by the right in the 1980s, but they fought alongside the Left in the early to mid-1990s. This was the period of the mujahedin’s second outing, when hundreds of them moved from Afghanistan following the final withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1992 to Bosnia, to fight alongside the Bosnian Muslims in a holy war against the Serbs. They moved there under the approving eye of the Clinton administration and were armed and trained by Clinton’s allies in the region, the Army of Bosnia Herzegovina (ABiH). Some of the mujahedin, especially those from Europe, including from Britain, were inspired to fight in Bosnia after watching or reading news reports in the Western media — especially the liberal media — which presented the civil war in Bosnia as a simplistic battle between good (the Muslims) and evil (the Serbs).

Though underdiscussed, the mujahedin’s movement to Bosnia had a transformative effect on the holy warriors and was key to the development of al-Qa’eda. In moving to Bosnia, Islamic fighters were transported from the ghettos of Afghanistan into Europe, from being yesterday’s men in a has-been Cold War clash to fighting alongside the West’s favoured side in the Balkans. As Evan Kohlmann argues in his Al-Qa’eda’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network, by 1995 Bosnia had become a ‘strategic foothold for Osama bin Laden and his fanatical allies to infiltrate Europe and the Western world’. Indeed, virtually every major al-Qa’eda attack of recent years has links back to Bosnia. If right-wing intervention in Afghanistan created the mujahedin, then left-liberal intervention in Bosnia globalised it."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:53 PM

 
Quotidian

"When Charlie Parker had been dead less than a year, they still spoke of him often, but it became more and more unusual for anyone to discuss his music. They were beginning to speak of him as a god, perhaps because it saved them the trouble of reflecting either on his playing or on his life. Some prayed to him as a saint, but surely a saint must have a clear self-knowledge and acceptance of his destiny. Some said, in non sequiturs, that passed for insight, that he was destroyed by big business and advertising. An uptown barkeep muttered, ' I got no use for a man who abuses his talent.' They proclaimed, 'He never practiced.' (But he did practice, of course, and in his youth he practiced day and night.) They said of the more careless performances and the reed speaks, 'He was a man in a hurry.' Perhaps he once said it better: 'I was always in a panic.' His friends said, 'You had to pay your dues just to know him.' In a sense you have to pay them even to listen to him. Perhaps that is as it should be."
-- Martin Williams, The Jazz Tradition
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:50 PM

 
Ohio's saviour

At NRO, W. James Atlee III has a pretty good analysis of the GOP gubernatorial race in Ohio between Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell, Attorney General Jim Petro and Auditor Betty Montgomery, making the point that 1) Blackwell is the genuine conservative among them, 2) he breaks with the GOP only to side with the conservative base, and 3) criticizes his opponents as insufficiently conservative because it has the added advantage of distancing himself with the state's unpopular Republican governor Bob Taft. At Atlee says, "the eventual Republican nominee may discover that the biggest obstacle to victory isn’t the Democratic candidate — it’s Bob Taft," and Blackwell is already running against the scandal-ridden, centrist Republican. This will be the most important gubernatorial race in the country in 2006.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:38 PM

 
Increasingly out-of-touch Dems

George F. Will has a great column in the Washington Post on the Michael Moorization and Cindy Sheehanizing of the Democratic Party, an unusually "shrill" national party on its way to losing its sixth presidential race in eight elections.

The first part deals with Sheehan herself and its golden:

"Many warmhearted and mildly attentive Americans say the president should have invited Sheehan to his kitchen table in Crawford for a cup of coffee and a serving of that low-calorie staple of democratic sentimentality -- 'dialogue.' Well.

Since her first meeting with the president, she has called him a 'lying bastard,' 'filth spewer,' 'evil maniac,' 'fuehrer' and the world's 'biggest terrorist' who is committing 'blatant genocide' and 'waging a nuclear war' in Iraq. Even leaving aside her not entirely persuasive contention that someone else concocted the obviously anti-Israel and inferentially anti-Semitic elements of one of her recent e-mails -- elements of a sort nowadays often found woven into ferocious left-wing rhetoric -- it is difficult to imagine how the dialogue would get going.

He: 'Cream and sugar?'

She: 'Yes, please, filth-spewer'."

Will makes an excellent point: what good can come from this dialgoue. That the Democrats have rallied around Sheehan demonstrates that they have lost touch with reality.

The second part of the column deals with the radical wing of the party: MoveOn.org and Michael Moore and Howard Dean -- the "tone-setting tail that wags the Democratic Party dog -- a dog that is mostly such tails." The intemperate rhetoric of Dean, Moore and Sheehan present a challenge to the Democratic Party: their numbers may be few but they are the most powerful tail wagging the Democrat right now:

"If Hillary Clinton has half the political sense her enthusiasts ascribe to her, she must be deeply anxious lest all her ongoing attempts to adopt moderation as her brand will be nullified by the increasing inclination of her party's base to succumb to siren songs sung by the likes of Sheehan. But, then, a rapidly growing portion of the base is not just succumbing to those songs, it is singing them."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:25 PM

 
Sad news

Walter Reed hospital is closing after getting the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission endorsed the Pentagon's plans for military restructuring today.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:46 PM

 
It's our country, too

Here's the lead editorial from the June issue of The Interim:

It’s our country, too

In recent years, we have witnessed the abuse of power by both Jean Chretien and Paul Martin’s Liberal governments in Ottawa. They have used that power to entrench themselves as the 'Natural Governing Party,' reward their friends and foist upon this nation their own radical views. The scandal of Adscam and the scandal of redefining marriage are part of the same problem: the Liberal government views Canada as its own private property, to do with it whatever it wants.

In recent months, their tawdry behaviour has only gotten worse. In the aftermath of damning revelations from the Gomery Commission that Liberal friends received public money, and that judicial appointments were handed out like party favours, Martin became determined to hold onto power at all costs.

At first, the Martin Liberals - a government led by a former finance minister who practised severe fiscal restraint in the 1990s - got into bed with the socialist NDP and capitulated to Jack Layton’s demands for nearly $5 billion in new spending. The only purpose this served was to make it less likely the government would fall on a budget vote. Martin then went on a three-week, $22-billion spending spree, divvying out goodies to every special interest group within reach. This was not simply a shameless attempt to curry favour, because along with the pledges was the implied threat that the targeted spending would be lost if the Liberal government fell.

When it appeared that the deal with Jack Layton - a political same-sex marriage - was not enough to maintain a hold on power, Martin tried to gain the support of former Liberal MP David Kilgour by promising both money and manpower to deal with the genocide and humanitarian disaster in Darfur, Sudan. Martin was willing to send Canadian troops and treasure halfway around the world, not because the policy was a good one, but because it might bring him one more vote on budget day.

And when it appeared that Kilgour could not be bought with this posturing, Martin made a deal with Belinda Stronach, a socially liberal Tory MP who had, just 14 months earlier, almost captured the leadership of the new Conservative party. For her troubles, Martin rewarded Stronach with a cabinet post - Human Resources and Skills Development – and in return, was assured one more vote on budget day. While no other MPs switched parties, Ottawa was a buzz of rumours that several other Tories had been propositioned with offers of various patronage appointments.

Two days after Stronach crossed the floor, the budget passed with the Speaker of the House casting the tie-breaking vote, and the government survived. It seemed that the prime minister did exactly what he had to – gave away cabinet posts and offered Canadian troops and treasure to Sudan - in order to maintain his hold on power. As testimony before the Gomery inquiry has made clear, the Liberals, under Chretien, offered perks and payouts to their allies in order to maintain their hold on just enough seats in Quebec to maintain a parliamentary majority. Martin has learned well.

For (at least) 13 years, those in power have treated Canada as their own private property, to do with it as they have wished. From patronage and kickbacks to attacking the foundational institution of our society, the Chretien and Martin governments have signalled to the rest of us that this is not our country, but rather, it is theirs. They grudgingly will hear from us every few years on election day, but even then, it is on their terms. With the Liberals’ media allies and Canadians’ natural deference to authority, even our elections seem skewed in favour of the party in power.

But, for all this, Canada is not the property of one party. It belongs to us. Not only do we have a say, we have the final say. We need not grudgingly accept the Liberals’ radical agenda, nor live with their corrupt governance forever.

Canadians need to elect more MPs of integrity. They need not necessarily be Liberals or even Conservatives, but MPs who will represent our values in Ottawa, instead of Ottawa’s values in the Canadian heartland.

Restoring good government – which is a Canadian value, too – is imperative now and it can be done. People of faith and other people of goodwill who are concerned about the moral trajectory of this nation must put aside partisan priorities and make abortion and marriage the priority on election day. The Interim sincerely believes that elected officials who are willing to stand up for the unborn and defend marriage are the kind of people who will restore honesty and decency to Canadian politics. Honesty and decency are not partisan virtues – there are many members on both sides of the House of Commons who display such traits. Recall that 35 Liberal MPs had the courage to do the right thing and stand against their government at second reading of Bill C-38.

Since the time of Trudeau, too many Liberals have equated Canadian values with Liberal values; the good of the Liberal party with the good of the country. This effectively labels those who do not support abortion-on-demand and gay 'marriage' (including many within the Liberal party itself) as un-Canadian.

Look at your MP (not the party) and ask yourself whether he or she represents your values in Ottawa, or whether he is defending the government’s values to you. If it is the latter, whenever the election is called, that MP deserves to be defeated. If it is the former, that MP deserves to be returned to Ottawa.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:31 AM

 
Soccer and the absurd

Inter Milan, Ajax and Manchester United are among the teams that have qualified for the group leg of the Champions League competition. Inter played Shakhtar Donestsk and overcame a 3-1 deficit to advance. It was the first game of four European level matches in which they played in front of no fans. Inter coach Roberto Mancini said, "You can't play soccer like this. It's unbelievable ... The team was very tense having to play without fans. It's really absurd." No, what is absurd is this, as reported by AP: "Fans were allowed in before the match to place banners in the stands, but then had to watch the game on a giant video screen outside the stadium."
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:17 AM

 
Ontario a 'have not' province?

My thoughts on the Ontario Chamber of Commerce prediction that Ontario, the sow to which nearly all the other provinces suckle on, might become a have-not province by 2010 are here, at The Shotgun.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:15 AM

 
Israeli abandonment of Gaza

I was quite moved by Hillel Halkin's New York Sun column yesterday and am posting the second half here because it is quite compelling and a stunning piece of journalism (it's not often you see a pundit exhibit any doubt about the positions he has publicly aligned himself to):

"It might be asked why the trauma this time should have been so much greater than in 1981, when Israel evacuated the Sinai as part of its peace agreement with Egypt, and with it roughly the same number of settlers as the number that left the Gaza Strip this past week. 1981 left relatively few scars. Why should 2005 leave more?

But the evacuees from Sinai had lived there a relatively short time, few even as many as 10 years. Many of the Gaza settlements were 25 or 30 years old. Thirty years is nearly half a lifetime; for the many children and grandchildren born in these villages, it was a whole one.

The Sinai evacuees were indeed only evacuees. The Gaza ones are refugees. They are no less refugees than the Palestinian Arabs who were made to leave their homes in 1948. For someone born and raised in a place, what difference does it make if his ancestors settled there 30 years ago or 300? (In fact, many of the '48 refugees belonged to Arab families that had only been in Palestine a generation or two themselves.)

Jewish history is of course full of refugees. Sometimes, to those who read about it, it seems to be nothing more than one long tale of columns of Jews leaving the homes they have lived in, with their infants and Torah scrolls in their arms. What many pro-disengagement Israelis suddenly realized this week with a kind of growing horror as they watched events unfold in the around-the-clock coverage on their TV screens was that, as cogent as the reasons for disengagement were, once again Jews had been turned into refugees for no other reason than that they were Jews. This time, however, they had been turned into them by a Jewish state.

I cannot speak at this point for other Israelis. It will take time, as I say, for us to sort out our reactions to the events of this past week and for us to communicate them to one another. At the moment, I can only speak for myself. And doing that I must say that - to my shocked surprise - I found these events emotionally intolerable. Although I was a supporter of disengagement in Gaza, I cannot imagine wanting to see Israel go through such a trauma again, much less one many times greater if not 8,000 Jews, but five or 10 times that number, have to be forcibly evacuated from the West Bank.

And yet a unilateral Israeli disengagement from Gaza, as I myself have argued in the pages of this newspaper, made sense only in the context of an eventual unilateral disengagement from most of the West Bank as well. If Israel cannot do the second of these things, what was the point of all the anguish of the first?

This is not a rhetorical question. I ask it because this past week has changed me, too."

(If you do not yet subscribe to the Sun, you can do so here.)
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:59 PM

 
Why we always think there is less oil than there really is

Thomas Sowell has the answer:

"Soaring oil prices have revived the old bogeyman that the world is running out of oil. Economics is a great field for nostalgia buffs because the same old fallacies keep coming back, like golden oldies in music.

Back in 1960, a best-selling book titled 'The Waste Makers' by Vance Packard showed that the known reserves of petroleum in the United States were only enough to last another 13 years at the current rate of usage. Yet, 13 years later, the United States had larger known reserves of petroleum than in 1960.

This has been a worldwide phenomenon. At the end of the 20th century, the known reserves of petroleum in the world were more than ten times what they were in the middle of the 20th century -- despite an ever-growing use of oil.

... No matter how many centuries' supply of oil there is on the planet, the high cost of oil exploration ensures that only the most minute fraction of that oil will be known at any given time. Thus there have long been recurring false predictions that we were running out of petroleum, as well as other natural resources."
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:54 PM

 
English striker heading home

If Michael Owen, one of Britain's best strikers and 2001 European Player of the Year, agrees to the transfer, it looks like he'll be leaving Real Madrid, who under-utilized him, to Newcastle. Great news for both Newcastle who gets a player who can immediately make a difference to their fortunes and Owen who'll now get the playing time he deserves.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:51 PM

 
Quotidian

"Now and again I marvel that our schools still contrive to teach anything to anybody, what with the handicaps imposed upon them. Were it not for the survival of some sincere and talented teachers, the schools would be custodial institutions merely."
-- Russell Kirk, The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things are Written on the Sky
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:44 PM

 
Free Khodorkovsky

MosNews.com reports that about 100 people attended a silent rally supporting Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former Yukos tycoon, who certainly was prosecuted for political reasons. There were no speeches, only one sign. Khodorkovsky is rumoured to be on a dry hunger strike due to the mistreatment (solitary confinement) of his business partner, Platon Lebedev, who is also imprisoned.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:35 PM

 
Crime as a cultural problem

Burkean Canuck makes an excellent point about the recent spate of murders in Toronto:

"But the cheapness of human life surely has to do with culture as well. While Toronto's police to residents ratio needs to be improved -- more front-line police officers, there were hundreds of Toronto police at Dundas Square in Toronto during 'Caribana' when a young man shot and killed another in clear view of the police on foot and on horseback!

What does a young man's shooting another in a very public place in clear view of law enforcement say about his respect for human life, for the law, and for the safety of others?"

All the policies that we traditionally think of when we think of combating crime -- gun control, punishment, more police, etc.. -- will be insufficient as long human life is not truly valued in and by society.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:26 PM

 
Martin's obsession with power

This article appears in the September issue of Catholic Insight (story not yet available online).

How Martin held on to power
By Paul Tuns

With the passing of C-38, the government's same-sex "marriage" bill, in the House of Commons on June 28, 2005, so, too, ended a political session that saw Prime Minister Paul Martin do everything possible to maintain his hold on power.

While minority governments are often unstable, the year 2005 began with the Liberals safely ensconced in government. In January, Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert predicted that 2005 would be a politically uneventful year. But then explosive testimony during the second phase of the Gomery Commission examining the sponsorship scandal in Montreal revealed widespread political corruption. Advertising firms serving as sponsorship middlemen were found to have been paid exorbitant fees by the government in Ottawa and some of those companies would then donate money and services back to the ruling Liberal Party.

As a consequence, the Liberals' hold on power appeared tenuous. The Conservatives were pulling up close in the polls. Conservative leader Stephen Harper began to talk about bringing the government down. And so the political manoeuvering began.

On April 21, Martin addressed the nation pleading for time. He looked into the camera and said that the revelations of the Gomery Commission were serious, that he was upset about them, and that he would act upon Judge John Gomery's recommendations, expected to be released in December. He said there should not be an election until Gomery released his report in order to give the Liberal government time to rectify the systemic problems inherent in the scandal, but he would call one within 30 days of the final report.

Days later, the Prime Minister made a deal with NDP leader Jack Layton. Martin, who cruised to the Liberal leadership on the strength of his prudent handling of the finance portfolio under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, now promised an additional $4.6 billion in new spending on NDP priorities such as childcare, the environment and municipal infrastructure, without blinking an eye.

The Liberal-NDP deal was made after the Conservatives hinted that from here on in they would oppose the original budget. The Bloc and NDP had already stated their opposition to the budget introduced in February. After cynically buying NDP support, Martin defended the additional billions saying they were needed to avoid an expensive, unnecessary and unwanted election. One wag noted that the two leaders were not willing to spend $200 million on an election but were willing to spend $4.6 billion to avoid one.

In addition to the deal with Layton, Paul Martin and his cabinet ministers then announced over a three-week period 122 projects totaling $22.3 billion. Purpose: to buy public support and distract Canadians from Adscam.

Treating the public purse as the Liberals' own piggy bank was not the only trick in Martin's bag. In a disgraceful week over the next few weeks the Liberals postponed key votes that might go against them. Using procedural tactics, they delayed the reading of the budget while stripping the Conservatives of their opposition days so they could not introduce confidence motions. On May 10, the Conservatives broke through, but after their winning a non-confidence vote, 153-150, with Bloc support, the Liberals ignored it. Twice over the next two days the government again lost non-confidence votes but refused to resign. This clinging to power was a constitutional novelty. Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren called it "the most disgraceful [week] in our Parliamentary history." The National Post's Andrew Coyne had even stronger words: "The bottom has fallen out of Canadian politics. There are, quite literally, no rules any more, no boundaries, no limits. We are staring into an abyss, where everything is permissible."

During the third week of May, the Liberals went into overdrive to change the 153-150 vote division against them. With several Conservative MPs sick with cancer, the Liberals began offering deals to others. They approached independent MP Chuck Cadman with an offer of a Senate appointment. Cadman voted with the government on the budget, but if he had been given a deal he did not live to collect the reward. He died in July.

Conservative MPs Gurmant and Nina Grewal were offered various patronage appointments to switch parties but the negotiations lingered. Meanwhile the Liberals caught a bigger fish with the buying of Tory MP and former leadership hopeful Belinda Stronach. On May 17, two days before the budget vote, Stronach, a vocal critic of the government on fiscal matters during the previous year, abandoned her party for the Liberals, landing a spot in the cabinet as a reward. And so, on May 18, with Stronach and Cadman voting for the budget at second reading, the vote was tied, whereupon the Speaker of the House, Peter Miliken (a Liberal), cast the decisive tie-breaking vote in favour of the Liberals.

Not all was done, though. The Conservatives mused about further confidence votes and Martin faced pressure from within his party to hold off on the vote on same-sex "marriage." Several Liberals were rumoured to be considering leaving the party and voting against the budget on third reading scheduled for late June, in order to bring down the government and defeat C-38. By now, the fate of C-38 and the budget were intimately connected. If the remainder of the budget passed, so would same-sex "marriage." If it were defeated, C-38 would die on the House floor with the fall of the government and new elections. In late June the Conservatives were readying for both a budget and marriage battle; and London-Fanshawe MP Pat O'Brien left the Liberals to sit as an independent and vote against Bill C-38 and the budget.

On June 24 there came another ruse: the government passed a motion to extend debate on the budget to the following week. Then just before midnight after they had tallied the number of Conservatives who had left the House of Commons, they called another vote on the budget and won. Prior to it, they had bought off the 52 members of the Bloc after Quebec public service unions began to put pressure on the party to approve the budget, the unions being among the beneficiaries of the new spending Martin. The budget passed and, on June 28, so did C-38. The House recessed and the Liberal government survived the tumultuous session.

While Harper understandably criticized the Martin Liberals as a party that "will make any deal with anybody" to hold on to power, the Conservative leader himself shares some blame. This party had been outsmarted on June 24 -- a sign that however corrupt the Liberals might be they had smarter tacticians calling the shots in the House. In addition, the Tories had failed to strike against the government when it was most vulnerable, that is, right after the damning testimony at the Gomery commission. Instead of moving to defeat the Liberals then, Harper vacillated, unsure of whether it was in his electoral interests to face the voters sooner than his own game plan had anticipated. This provided Martin with the time to make deals, plot strategy and, ultimately, snatch victory from the jaws of seeming defeat.

Canada will pay a price for Martin's power-play: billions in new spending and, more importantly, the weakening of Parliament's procedures; but, above all that, the country will regret the attack on the foundational institution of society, marriage. That's the real scandal.

* Paul Tuns is the editor of the monthly pro-life newspaper The Interim and author of Jean Chrétien: A Legacy of Scandal.
posted by Paul Tuns at 8:33 PM

 
Greatest prime minister

Calgary Grit has a contest to determine the best Canadian prime minister -- all the 20th century PMs are there along with John A. MacDonald and Paul Martin -- in a March Madness format. Most intriguing first round matchup is Jean Chretien and Martin followed, I think, by The Dief and St. Laurent.

(HT: Political Staples)
posted by Paul Tuns at 5:16 PM