Political Commentary

Thoughts On Tiananmen Square

3 Comments

…on the twentieth anniversary:

George Orwell said, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” He’s all too right. Last century, an estimated 262 million people were murdered by their own government . That doesn’t include the hundreds of millions more killed by opposing governments during war.

Today ought to be a day to celebrate and promote human liberty, and to remember the abuses governments have heaped upon their subjects over the centuries.

So go find your own metaphor for the government tank pictured above.

Then put yourself in front of it.

You know, I can’t think of a single corporation that could claim even a tiny fraction of such a death toll.

[Update a few minutes later]

Sadly predictable behavior by the left — using the anniversary of Chinese government brutality against those seeking liberty, to smear Walmart.

Media Criticism, Space

“Hate” Speech

38 Comments

Mark Whittington seems to suffer from an almost autistic inability to properly gauge the emotions of others — the same malady as many self-described liberals seem to suffer, when they describe as “hate speech” or “racist” words with which they simply disagree. He often irrationally refers to my posts as “rants,” or “seething,” or “filled with rage,” though in each and every case I was perfectly calm when composing them, and no one else ever sees the supposed anger. And when called on it, he can never justify it, or point to the exact words that he finds so rage filled (and indeed, ignores requests to do so, usually simply repeating the slander).

Here’s an example (not of me, this time, fortunately):

Some interesting words of wisdom from Mike Griffin along with, sadly, words of hate in the comments section.

Well, I read those comments (only two of them at the time of this posting — I can’t speak for what might appear there in the future), and I saw nothing “hateful” about them. They simply pointed out inconsistencies in the former administrator’s words, and between words and deeds. One need not “hate” someone to point out flaws in their arguments. I wonder why Mark views the world in such emotional extremes?

[Thursday morning update]

Amazing. He’s still at it.

Mind, there are a few things about which one can criticize Dr. Griffin’s tenure at NASA, mainly by using 20 20 hindsight. But really, some of the posts I have read makes one wonder if he drinks the blood of virgins and eats the flesh of the young, so filled with rage they are.

Note that (as always) he can’t point to any particular “rage-filled” post or comment, and show us the “hateful” words. Just like his imaginary friends at the “Internet Rocketeers Club,” we are simply supposed to accept that such things exist in reality, and not just in Mark’s mind.

And of course, there, as he did here, he says that I accused him of being a liberal, once again indicating his apparent inability to comprehend written English. And no, Mark, there is nothing “hateful” about pointing out either that, or your apparent inability to properly gauge others’ emotional states. It is purely an unemotional, clinical observation.

[Bumped]

History, Social Commentary, Space, Space History

Well, He Meant “…A Man…”

1 Comment

…but he didn’t quite say it:

Riley and Olsson…concluded that Commander Armstrong and his family members do pronounce the word “a” in a discernible way.

And based on broadcasts from Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the surface of the Moon, it is clear that the word “a” was easily transmitted to Earth without being obliterated.

But their analysis of the intonation of the phrase strongly suggests Commander Armstrong had intended to say “a man”. There is a rising pitch in the word “man” and a falling pitch when he says “mankind”.

According to Mr Olsson: “This indicates that he’s doing what we all do in our speech, he was contrasting using speech – indicating that he knows the difference between man and mankind and that he meant man as in ‘a man’ not ‘humanity’.”

I think it’s safe to say that this has been analyzed to death at this point. It’s only been forty years.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

You Don’t Say

3 Comments

Lee Smith says that Obama is playing to Iran’s strength:

It is a given that anything Obama says or does will be an improvement over the Bush administration’s inept efforts at Muslim outreach. And yet it is worth recalling that the Bush administration also sought to appeal directly to Muslims. Bush’s freedom agenda, after all, was intended to give Muslims a democratic voice in their own governance. Nonetheless, Paul Wolfowitz, Bush’s one-time point man for Middle East democracy, is one among many across the political spectrum who are concerned that by choosing an authoritarian police state for his podium, Obama may be signaling that the United States is ditching democracy promotion. But the real problem is that Obama has not learned from Bush’s errors. In seeking to speak to the Muslim masses over the heads of their rulers, Obama, as columnist David Goldman (who usually writes under the name Spengler) explains, is undermining an important U.S. ally on his home turf.

Note that (for the trolls) I don’t claim that he’s a traitor. But he’s frighteningly naive. It’s Jimmy Carter II.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Yes, There’s A Large Population In Each Of The Fifty-Seven States

16 Comments

I’m not sure which is more disturbing — that the president believes that the US is a Muslim nation at all (let alone one of the largest ones, and while denying that we are Judeo-Christian), or that the Times is so uncritical in reporting such a belief. Kuwait probably has more Muslims (over three million) than the US does, and it’s a tiny Muslim country. We know what would be the press response had George Bush made such an egregiously nonsensical and innumerate statement.

[Update a few minutes later]

Respecting the faithful versus respecting the faith. Yes, the two can, and should be separated. And it applies to all religions, not just Islam. We can respect the right to believe something without respecting the belief itself. I for one respect no religion, other than my own, but I will defend the right to believe in any of them, at least until acting on such beliefs violates my own natural rights.

[3 PM update]

More thoughts from the Belmont Club:

By choosing to give his speech in Egypt, an authoritarian Middle Eastern country, instead of a more moderate country like Indonesia, he runs the risk of accidentally conveying the sense that democracy is on the back burner. What message does President Obama wish to project when he says “Les Etats-Unis sont “l’un des plus grands pays musulmans de la planète”? Is it of Islam as the future of America or America as the future of Islam? The President’s speech seems innocent enough, but emphasis is important. Didn’t he say, “don’t tell me that words don’t matter?”

In the interview, President Obama says one of the goals his trip is to foster dialogue between the West and the Muslim world. Maybe some communications strategist or public diplomacy consultant has advised “rebranding America” as the sort of place Muslims can identify with. That way it will be an easy sell. What better way to do it than by saying, ‘America is one of the biggest Muslim countries on the planet’. Ich bin ein Mussulman, or however you say it. That won’t necessarily fly; it doesn’t seem to work too well for India, which has a genuinely huge Muslim population. But there’s a hidden danger. His audience can say right: just look at how advanced and rich America is, and it’s one of the largest Muslim countries on the planet. See nothing is broken in Islam. America is proof. There comes a point when rebranding may become misleading packaging.

But hey, “misleading packaging” is the man’s forte, after all.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!