A Field Guide for Fighting Evil- First Principles

As many of you already know, my second youngest son was born with Neurofibromatosis. NF is the perfect paradigm of evil. It is a tumor disorder in which the tumors grow along nerve fibers. Because nerve fibers are uniformly arrayed throughout the body, the tumors may appear anywhere and are usually so inextricably interwoven with the tissues of skin, organs and bone that removing them completely is impossible. That is how I see evil. It is inextricable in the fabric of humanity. What is truly important is how we try to deal with it.

Thoreau observed, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.” Ask anyone- they will tell you that they are opposed to evil but few understand that (as I pointed out in my post of 9/2) that evil is part of the universe and especially present in the human soul. There are three main political remedies that claim to hack away at the branches in The West, lets look at which of these might have the best shot at the root.

Progressives, Communists and Solcialists
The emotional lability of Socialism and the allied “Progressive” leftist extremism stems from their belief that it is evil for any one individual to be any better off (regardless that they may be more intelligent, or better educated or even just luckier) than anybody else- The inevitable exception, of course, being those who will run the Stalinist bureaucracy that will be required to compel everyone to accept and participate in this fantastic perversion of reality. When the revolution comes, they-or at least the ones that survive the purges and infighting that always accompanies the success of socialism- will become deities. To see the corrosive effects of the creep of this ideology into the mainstream of Western thought, simply look at the havoc created in Canada by the actions of the Human Rights Commissions. In Canada, now, if you say anything of substance about the national discourse it is considered (I borrow and paraphrase from the title of the new book by Kathy Shaidle and Peter Vere) “Not Nice” and you are fair game to be persecuted for expressing a mere thought. It is inevitable. Socialism (especially the kind that regards itself as Progressive) does not match up with the reality of human nature- so it does not stand up to reason- so the more leverage you give it the more it will attempt to stifle discussion and, ultimately, thinking. (note: for really insightful blow by blow coverage of the CHRC mess you can’t beat Blazing Catfur )

Liberals
Liberals don’t necessarily agree with socialist principals they are just slowly submitting to the emotional blackmail of the extreme left. At heart, they only want to prevent suffering and because they will not understand the nature, unavoidability and source of suffering they are drawn to the emotional appeal of socialism and its phony egalitarianism. So committed are they to this pious goal of preventing suffering, it doesn’t even occur to them that they actually end by causing much more suffering by their efforts- they are satisfied knowing that they are “doing something for change”. Few will take the trouble to deny that welfare had a great hand in destroying the African American family and that Affirmative action has cast a shadow on the reputations of two generations of black, university-educated professionals- but they support those programs and others like them out of reflex and the soft racism inherent in the inability to imagine that many black professionals could make it on their own if allowed.

Conservatives
Conservatives want only to preserve, restore and enhance the system that has proven to be the world’s most successful at espousing and enabling the individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They do this out of a love of liberty first but they do it in the conviction that there will always be evil and suffering and the best yet devised on earth to ensure that there will be as little evil and suffering as possible, is to leave free people in charge of themselves and give them sufficient checks and balances so that as they govern themselves, the interference of the government will be minimized, the rule of law will be paramount and (all of) the people (through their ballots) will always be in control.

So today, it appears even worse than in Thoreau's time. There are millions whose ill-conceived notions of fairness and openness are actually feeding the roots of evil rather than striking at them.

Through dealing with David’s disease we have had to become conservatives. We know that we cannot just declare the disease “Not Nice” and make it disappear. We know that we cannot prevent him from suffering with it. We can only do the things that will give him his best shot at living and being a productive and competent person. Those things do not include not talking about the problems or letting him sink into a despairing, undisciplined lack of expectations. There is no special Sharia court system, welfare or even affirmative action here. Perhaps we are very fortunate that he has the courage and intelligence to have faith in his doctors, in us and in his future but I am inclined to think that the better you understand and confront evil the more you strike at its root.

John McCain Accepts: America Makes the History Around Here, Mr. Obama!

With John McCain’s stirring acceptance speech last night he made it official. This is a contest for the very soul of America- the most basic and vital campaign waged in modern American History. It is a contest between the country that was created by the framers of the constitution and the country that we have slowly been becoming.

Maybe its just that I have been reading between the lines for so long, but I am sensing things- I heard a refreshing tone in McCain’s speech last night that I have been longing for since Ronald Reagan left office.
I am talking about the promise of America. When the Jefferson, Adams, et al laid the plans for the country they even more concerned with creating safeguards against new ruling classes arising as they were about getting rid of the old ruling class. They wanted to leave behind the dead hand of aristocracy and plutocracy that made the old world of Europe stagnant and devoid of real opportunity.

They knew that success and power accumulate in groups at the top and lead to abuses after a while. The contest between Democrats and Republicans is so often a duel of special interests and agendas that we loose sight of the reason why we have elections in the first place. Elections are part of the process because they are the most efficient way to insure that ruling elites cannot become entrenched and can be changed without blood when a majority of the people thinks its necessary.

The continuing danger in our two party system is that those two parties are sometimes more interested in cooperating on their own business than they are on the people’s business. The government in Washington is always in danger of becoming more of an insider’s club than an instrument of the will of the people. Change, which is a theme for both Presidential campaigns, is a reflection of the public’s sense that things have gotten too cozy again.
It is not a question of whether we want change. Change always happens. The question is: : What kind of change do we need?”

I would submit that the first thing on the list of things to change ought to be that sense that the current elite is becoming more like a ruling class. I’m not just talking about the current administration and its corporate connections, I am talking about the political machines, the entrenched bureaucracies and the vested interests that, together, make up “business as usual”. It is not a Republican or a Democrat ruling class, it is worse than that. Elections are designed to fix that. I am talking about folks who have climbed inside the power structure, rolled up the windows, locked the doors, turned on the A/C and tuned the radio to the Insider Network. Elections don’t fix that because there are a great many Democrats and Republicans who broker positions and power, for their own comfort and gain- not for the good of the republic. It is a way the have of trying to insulate themselves from the restorative powers of elections.

The first thing I liked about McCain’s speech is that he reminded us that he is a maverick and a reformer. That he has always been the guy who blows whistles on the cozy and the bureaucratic. He served notice on this when he acknowledged his own party’s short comings. When he said, “We were elected to change Washington and we let it change us. We’re going to change that!” It was not a personal mea culpa, it was a signal that he is an American first and a Republican by affiliation only- that he sees the problem and intends to do something about it. “We're going to change that.” He pledged, “We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.”

“Back to basics”, this leads me to the most important thing about John McCain’s speech. Beyond the party, there is the underlying philosophy. The most accurate summation ever written of the American political milieu was these two sentences by Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

America has always had a basic culture of self-reliance, responsibility, enterprise and liberty. There have been many changes enforced on America by liberal activism, some have been beneficial but many have eroded the liberty and self-reliance of our people. It is the conservative impulse to let culture shine through, combined with his combative reformism that makes John McCain’s speech important and inspiring.

This guy has always been a pain in the ass for all his colleagues in the Senate. He does not toe the party line nor does he respect the trans-party structures of power. He, like his VP choice has Character. Put a bunch of people with character together in one country and your have a republic, a powerhouse of ideas and achievements. If you have a bunch of people with no character, you wind up with a totalitarian state with a stagnant economy because without people willing to stand up for something, you get fascism. McCain says, “I am going to say what I think is right.”

Obama, as Sarah Palin pointed out, “…says one thing about you when he is in Scranton and another thing altogether at a wine and cheese reception in San Fransisco.”

For McCain, it is not about his personal glory or success. He has been there and done that he is about repaying a debt on a different level. Here is something his opponent could never say:
“I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.” John McCain is about America and her promise and Obama is about Obama and his chance to “make history.”

Can you picture John McCain standing in front of a massive rally in Germany, a country that forced us to destroy her cities and kill her people in order to prevent her from subjugating the world to Nazi brutality, and uttering this, “I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.” Then his next words are, “But I also know how much I love America…” as if THAT, the love of Obama, is what is important. You men out there, try going home tonight and telling your wife, “Honey, you may be a little homely and sorta boring but you mean well and I love you.”
John McCain knows that nobody’s perfect. Nothing in this world is perfect. He, better than anybody, knows America is a work in progress. But he knows there is no excuse to be made. America is the best.

To keep us focused and working on helping her to continue to grow into the dream of the founding patriots, we need to have a leader who can call on us with a more confident voice than that, a voice that inspires and encourages, a voice with Chuchillian echoes of determination and pride- like the end of John McCain’s speech last night. How about the call he made at the end of his speech. Here it is:

“I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach.
Fight with me. Fight with me. 


Fight for what's right for our country. 


Fight for the ideals and character of a free people. 


Fight for our children's future. 


Fight for justice and opportunity for all. 


Stand up to defend our country from its enemies. 


Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America. 


Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history. 


Thank you, and God bless you."

Yes indeed, America and whole hearted Americans make the history around here Mr Obama.

Are Liberals Less Liberal As Media Consumers?

Here’s something we need to investigate further. While researching a major post on Political Correctness, I have run across a study on the web site of the Pew Research for the People and the Press. This study, “sorts voters into homogeneous groups based on values, political beliefs, and party affiliation.” It then looks at various aspects of their behavior and, using survey results. presents statistical evidence and analysis. It’s a big study with a lot of interesting ideas threaded through it. I was enjoying reading through it and was thoroughly sidetracked for a day or so as I read it. One thing jumped out at me and I wanted to pass it on. Second Draft needs to take a hard look at this.

It is not specifically referred to in the written analysis of the article but there is a glaring (and I do mean red, purple and throbbing) anomaly in the data presented. On page 73 of the report, there is a table entitled “Typology Groups and Media Use”. This chart looks at the kinds of media that each political type relies on for their information. It immediately jumped out at me that the largest single political type had the smallest average use of television as an information source. This was no small artifact. The Liberal typology was almost 40% (37.54, to be exact) larger than the next largest group (Conservative Democrats) and their television usage was nearly 20 % (17.55%) lower than the next lowest group (Upbeats).

I decided to drill down into the numbers. Now, this is a little suspect because the numbers are already averaged out and it is not clear how some of them were derived from the research (for example it is not clear whether the break down of the television numbers into categories like network, local, CNN, etc…, reflect some sort of break down of anwers that were asked independently or is the television average was derived from aggregated usage numbers for all categories). But if the numbers are good to begin with, then my manipulations should not be too far out on a statistical limb.

I totaled up the percentages for each of the media cited as main sources of information by each political type. This should give a rough measure of how broad a range of information sources the average subject in each group is accustomed to using.

Here are the numbers I came up with:

Social Conservatives 269
Pro-Government Conservatives 264
Conservative Democrats 262
Upbeats 256
Disadvantaged Democrats 256
Enterprisers 253
Bystanders 242
Disaffecteds 239
Liberals 230

It may have meaning or not (certainly there are methodological questions that would have to be addressed) but the numbers are tantalizing. According to these numbers, Liberals are at the very bottom of the scale for media variety. This implies that, as a group, they tend to draw on a thinner variety of information sources.

On the other hand, the largest conservative typology (Social Conservatives) has a media variety index that is almost 20% (16.955) higher than that of the liberals.

It is also interesting that Liberals rank highest for Internet usage. Anyone reading this post knows very well that, between search engines and link sharing with friends and colleagues, when you read and explore on the internet you are mainly pursuing sources that you agree with.

So, it makes me wonder if what many of us think might be provable; that conservatives tend to look at more possibilities before making up their minds and liberals tend to stick their index fingers into their ears and shout “La, La, La, La” when they come up against information that does not confirm their preconceived ideas.

The Parable of The Dogs- Where Politics is Going

Here is a parable for you. It is a tale of four dogs- or more accurately, two pairs of dogs. One pair of dogs I own today and one pair I owned a long time ago. This is a true story of hardships survived, pampered lives and the courage to face danger for the things and people you love. It is also an object lesson in how your philosophy affects your ability to survive.

Recently I had an experience that mirrored one of the most dangerous and formative events of my life. I relived that memory while I was walking my current dogs, Harry and Jake.

Jake is a very sweet, yellow Labrador Retriever. He is also a Liberal. He is handsome, smart and wants everyone to love him. We bought him from a family on Cape Cod almost a dozen years ago. He was the runt of his litter and had been coddled accordingly. He can be irritatingly dependant at times but, then, he is so endearing you can’t help forgiving that. One night, when he was barely more than a puppy, some neighborhood kids decided to work through their changing identities, assert their newfound strength and maturity and express their uniqueness in this wondrous universe by hauling up one of the landscape timbers that we had just installed in our flower beds and throwing it through our living room window at two o’clock in the morning. We were all asleep when the window shattered and before I realized what was going on I found myself stalking barefoot around the front lawn with an aluminum baseball bat, wearing nothing but jockey shorts and a tee shirt. My wife called the police and as she was dragging me back in the house, I wondered aloud, "Where is the dog?"

Jake, who was pretty well house trained by then, was pretending that he was locked up inside his training crate. The door was wide open but Jake was lying down in there doing his best to look like he didn’t know that something had happened. Even when the police arrived, the usually gregarious Jake stayed in the crate and watched the action from there, clearly he wasn't much of a watchdog. From that moment on, we knew that Jake would always be a peaceful and compliant companion who would never intentionally hurt anyone or anything. For Jake, War is Not the Answer- ever.

Harry, on the other hand, is a Progressive. He was supposed to be a miniature poodle- that’s what the folks at the big breeding kennel told us. He never grew up. He is now six years old and the size of a smallish cat. He is a lap dog. If you have never owned or known a poodle (especially the smaller varieties) you simply can have no idea how entitled, amusing, imperious, adorable, irritating and lovable they can be. Harry struts around the house with the brisk assurance of ownership, always appearing to be on some important errand. If he doesn’t get his way he becomes petulant, often using the odd, strategically placed pile of feces and/or puddle of urine to express his displeasure when he feels slighted. Its not that he doesn’t know the rules, he just holds them in contempt- and he does it with an insolent flair. Ever since I described the argumentative strategies of the modern left as “antic nihilism” in my post about the obfuscatory style of the left, I have been unable to look at Harry without thinking of that phrase. Of course, one of the reasons Harry seems amusing and adorable in spite of the other characteristics is that he is less than a foot long and weighs less than eight pounds. He ordinarily has no real ability to cause pain or disorder. When a human progressive leaves one of their verbal piles of excrement on the floor (oh, say, “no blood for oil”, or “BusHitler” or “Israel is apartheid” for example) it is not adorable, not just because it is untrue but because it causes liberals to become upset and encourages them to behave in ways that endanger everybody.

Harry often plagues Jake. He will push between Jake and his food bowl when a treat is dropped in. When Jake is being patted or getting his belly rubbed, Harry either puts himself between the patter’s hand and Jake or harasses Jake, nipping at his ears and jumping up and down and pawing his face until Jake can’t stand it any longer and retreats from the scene. Most dogs ten times larger than Harry would maul him out of sheer irritation but Harry knows Jake too well; Jake is too sweet and gentle to hurt him. So Harry takes advantage. Worst of all, Harry’s sheer energy and willfulness leads Jake astray and drives him to get into situations he wouldn’t dream of putting himself into otherwise.

The other day I was walking the two of them in the park. We met up with another dog walking with its owner along the way and what happened next made it necessary for me to write this post.

I live in the beautiful city of Newton, Massachusetts, a densely populated but still suburban place on the western margin of the Boston urban core. It was evening and we were headed, in the dusky light, down one of the paths in the park next to my house. There was a big dog and its owner coming toward us from the other direction. I know from experience what to expect in situations like this. Harry is excitable and at the sight of the other dog approaching he began yapping, lunging and dodging hysterically. I pulled him back with the leash and switched hands, putting Jake’s leash closer to the oncoming dog and Harry on the opposite side. Jake, the craven love puppy, had already begun wagging his tail and lunging toward the other dog to make friends.

Now, I had both of them on retractable leashes that have spring loaded reels in the handles. When the reels are released the dogs can have as much as fifteen feet of line to play around with. When you want to bring the dog close to you, you can work them back by alternately pulling and letting the spring take up the slack. The problem is that when they are pulling hysterically and you are trying to get both of them back at the same time it is very difficult to make much progress. So as we approached each other I was yanking on both leashes, trying to get the dogs close enough to control.

The other dog was confused, here was Jake threatening to disjoint every vertebra in his spine in submissive wriggling and on the other side was Harry, a squirrel-sized blur of noisy aggression. The other dog seemed to be a good egg and looked to be inclined to ignore Harry and go for the friendly mutual heinie sniff with Jake; but as the two bigger dogs approached each other, Harry darted in between yipping loudly and repeatedly darting forward right in the stranger’s face. Harry has clearly been spoiled by Jake’s tolerance; he had no idea that a bigger dog could do anything other than bear his ignorant rantings politely. The other dog was not so inclined, however and he was quite overwhelmed by the variety of different stimuli that were being sent his way. He drew back and saw Jake’s bulk rushing toward him; he clearly felt the irritation of Harry’s acoustical assault and reacted out of instinct.

He nipped at Harry. In a lightning move, he grabbed Harry and gave him a quick squeeze with his teeth. It was not a serious bite; he clearly could have bitten Harry in half and had held back. He had merely squeezed with enough force and intent to warn a reasonable dog off.

I understood the strange dog’s reaction completely, what I didn’t understand at all was the reaction of my two dogs to this. Harry, scared but unreformed, ran in a wide circle, crossing his leash with Jake’s leash, tying up Jake’s legs and wrapping me in into one big loop of confusion. When he got around behind me he resumed his insane yapping and the infuriating lunging and dodging dance, thereby weaving a very complicated tangle of leash in very short order. Jake, who you might have thought would come to his little friend’s defense or at least have a moment’s pause over the violence, didn’t even seem to register it. The reserve of the other dog and the racket created by Harry just made him more anxious and spurred him to try even harder to “make friends”. He just redoubled his vigorous and subservient greeting. The other dog glanced at him and wasn’t buying it. Struggling as I was to untangle and subdue Harry, I was unable to stop Jake. The other dog growled, barked and then lunged at Jake. Just in time, I took up the slack on Jake’s leash and between the tug I got on him and the effort other dog’s owner, Jake didn’t get hurt.

That’s the best that can be said about it. No one got hurt. On the way home from that encounter I walked through the dusky sunset with these two silly, purebred dogs and recalled an encounter that I had experienced with two very different dogs a long time ago. Looking back on it, It seems a different lifetime really, it was before my divorce, watershed in anyone’s life, and it was before I became aware of The Beast. I was lucky on that day to have been with dogs of a very different political stripe.

Sammy was an odd sort of Libertarian. He was a cheerful, independent mutt who came to us from a rescue agency. He had, roughly, the look of a golden retriever but with shorter legs, a wirier coat and the stout heart of a terrier. Friendly and energetic, Sammy had had a pretty difficult puppy-hood. The story that the shelter people told us was that he had been owned by a local college student who had failed to take proper care of him. She had apparently allowed him to run freely around the campus at night had not neutered, or registered him. He had not even had any of the usual vaccinations. A little less than a year old when he arrived at the shelter, he was clearly used to shifting for himself and he had a jaunty self-assured attitude. If he didn’t get what he wanted from his people, he’d help himself.

We were actually shopping that day for a dog to be a companion for Morgan (more about her later). We found Sammy in the shelter and thought his jolly, independent but friendly personality would be a good match for Morgan and took him home that day. The very night we brought him home, we began to notice that he had become lethargic. He felt warm, and soon began to sneeze and cough. His eyes and nose were running copiously. Within a few hours we knew we had to get him to the veterinarian. It was distemper. Although they had given him the shot against distemper at the shelter, he contracted the disease there before the vaccines had had a chance to establish complete immunity.

We worried over him for three days but he was strong and the partial immunity he had gained from the belated vaccination prevailed. Morgan, our other dog hovered tenderly over him much of the time, often checking on him by pressing her nose against his neck. On the fourth day he began to recover.

Sammy was a true individual, perhaps it was the unstructured environment of his youth or maybe it was just that he was simply a true independent but he was full of quirks and odd-ball traits. Some of his quirks were funny. For instance, somewhere along the way he had conceived a liking for cigarettes. Not lit ones (at least, that we knew of) but stale butts that he would find on the street. You would be walking him down the street and look down to see him stepping nonchalantly along beside you with a butt that he had snagged on the fly sticking rakishly out of his mouth. He also had an extremely odd way of “talking to you”. He would utter a series of gasps, half barks, stifled howls and voiced panting that made it seem as if he were “speaking in tongues”. I have never heard anything like it in a dog. It was so unusual that a researcher at a local University once asked us if she could record it. Some of his quirks were profoundly touching too, as was the way, when anyone in the family was sad or ill, he would find a way of climbing up next to you in bed or on the couch and putting his cold nose against you in quiet, comforting commiseration. Perhaps he learned that one from Morgan.

Morgan was a Conservative. If we could have bred Morgan with another dog of her exact physical type and psychological makeup we would have established a new and sensationally popular breed. Morgan was a pound puppy of mixed ancestry but the mixture was a noble one. She was big. You immediately saw in her the bone structure and regal bearing of a Great Dane, the coloring, soulful eyes and rippling musculature of a Rottweiler and the handsome, broad, floppy-eared, head of a Labrador. The combination was one of impressive size, heart-catching grace and sensitive intelligence.

Her early life had been harder than Sammy’s. The shelter people intimated that Morgan might have been abused to some degree. By the time we met her she was almost two years old and fully grown. She became the most beloved dog I have ever owned. Perhaps because of her earlier deprivations, it was clear that once in our home she was determined to show us that she was grateful and deserving. She did this with dignity and strength in a thousand little ways. She kept watch on us gently, but with a dedication that surpassed instinct. Large enough to stand on all four paws and still look directly out the window, anytime there was the least noise or movement outside on the street or the back yard, she would get up, walk to the window, look out and give a deep, breathy, barely audible, “woof”. That woof said “Morgan is on guard, this is my family and I will shoulder any burden to protect it.”

Many protective dogs are unpredictable but Morgan was smart and under control. She would never hurt anything that did not threaten to hurt her or her family. I recall one day that I was sitting with my wife and kids at the kitchen table. We were waiting for a sales person to arrive for an appointment. Morgan, as she always did when we gathered as a family, was lying on the floor close by. We were talking- involved in conversation when Morgan got up and trotted briskly into the next room. This was odd. Unlike other dogs she never had that “places to go, people to see” walk when there wasn’t something of note happening. My wife and I looked at each other and I got up and followed Morgan into the other room. When I came around the corner I froze. The salesperson was a small, slightly built woman. She had come in through the side door of the house without knocking or ringing the bell. None of us humans had heard the door open, but Morgan had. She had trotted to the side door, reared up on her hind legs and placed one huge paw squarely at the neckline of the woman’s dress. The two of them were standing, motionless in the doorway a statue of homeland security twenty tears before the term came into use. Morgan, was content to wait for me to tell her what to do and the visitor was terrified beyond speech or flight. Many protective dogs would, I think have attacked and hurt an uninvited intruder. Most would certainly have made a terrifying, noisy spectacle out of it barking and snarling menacingly. Morgan didn’t need to make all that noise and she didn’t want to hurt anyone she just wanted to see to it that we were secure. As soon as I came to my senses and said, “OK, Morgan, down!” she dropped her paw, and trotted calmly away.

Then there was the time that I had a violent stomach bug. My first wife had gotten tired of me keeping her awake with my tossing and turning so she went downstairs to get some sleep on the couch. Sometime in the wee hours, I got up and went to the bathroom. I was seized with violent retching for some time. After a few minutes my wife came upstairs and into the bathroom with a look of surprise on her face. She told me how Morgan had gone downstairs to the couch, insinuated her great head under her back and lifted her to a sitting position. Then, when the woman stood up, the dog put her head into the middle of her back and pushed her gently but firmly up the stairs to the bathroom where I was in agony.

Morgan was a perfect walking dog. She adapted to the personality and purpose of the person walking her. When my first wife, who only weighed ninety-five pounds, walked her she was gentle and cooperative. When my oldest son took her out wearing his roller blades, she would pull him down the street at a wild gallop with him whooping his delight and encouragement. When I walked her she was alert, steady and serious on the leash. Walking with her through the woods or fields, even a domesticated suburbanite like me could feel the protective, reassuring, almost primal bond that evolves between a great dog and a man.

Back then I lived in Holliston, MA a much more rural place than Newton. Our regular morning walk took us out across the main road, past the small pond at the top of a hill, out along the margin of an old sand pit that had grown up in scrubby meadow, skirting a horse farm and then back through the lower end of the Sand pit where construction was starting up on a development of luxury homes. We walked at 5:30 every morning. Here in New England that means walking in darkness four months of the year and in the earliest light of dawn for another four months.

One unusually warm March morning, we were walking in the half-light when we encountered a beast of a different kind.

As we passed the horse farm, that morning, both Sammy and Morgan began to behave oddly. Sammy began to emit some of his patented yips, whines and grunts. Morgan was stepping a little faster and both of them turned their heads to look behind us. We had seen deer out there many times so I thought, perhaps they had spotted one.

But the backward glances continued and I began to notice that their demeanor was more like anxiety than the excited alertness they usually exhibited over deer. It didn’t take long for me to realize that something very unusual and threatening was happening. Something was following us. The dogs were now trying to wheel around and face whatever it was. I tightened my grip on their leashes and allowed them to turn me. There, on the trail, not more than ten feet behind us was a coyote. Not your average urban-suburban sized coyote either but one of those that some wildlife observers theorize might be the product of coyotes that have interbred with wolves. The result of that interbreeding is a strain of eastern coyotes that are much larger than normal. I was standing there with Morgan, surely one of the bigger dogs in Massachusetts, on a leash and this thing was taller than her at the shoulder by two or three inches. From that distance it could, I guessed, be on top of us in one leap.

I stared at it for a moment, long enough to realize it wasn’t gong to attack immediately. I thought that our best chance to avoid trouble was to turn slowly and walk, as calmly as possible, away. I went to turn the dogs and as I looked down I saw that Morgan was looking fixedly in that direction already. I followed her gaze and felt every hair on my body stand on end. Another coyote, larger even than the first, had used the few moments I had spent staring at the first coyote to circle around us, cutting off our line of retreat.

Now that I was facing front again, Morgan switched her gaze back to the threat in the rear. She stood with her shoulder up against my hip, a great boulder of reassurance and courage, not making a sound or moving a muscle. Sammy was with me too, on my other side, shifting a little on his paws, but clearly aware of the threat and equal to doing his part. I knew I had to take some action. I had read somewhere that yelling, throwing stones and behaving in an aggressive manner are helpful in these kinds of situations. With my heart racing, I reached down to the bottom of my vocal register and bellowed the first thing that came to my mind, "Get out of here! Get out of the way! Go on, Scram!" The coyote in front of me reacted only with a slight shift of its posture, half a question, half a fidget. I switched both leashes to my left hand and bent down to pick up a rock. I now knew that if the dogs panicked and started to move around I could be tied in a knot instantly by the leashes. I had committed to the rock in one hand but what should I do with it? Would the coyote understand the threat as a dog would? If I threw the rock, would it provoke an immediate attack or prevent it? I knew that the worst thing I could do was to stand still and let the coyotes retain the initiative. The last thing I wanted was to have a wild animal making the decisions. I took aim and threw to rock. The Coyote dodged, moving slightly to the left of the trail. In the same instant I had to make another decision: Pick up another rock or press the advantage that we had gained by putting the coyote on the defensive and making him move? I opted for the latter. Grabbing Sammy’s leash back with my now free throwing hand I started forward slowly but deliberately, continuing to yell at the top of my lungs. The dogs moved with me, both of them understanding the strategy and complying precisely. Morgan trotted sideways, watching behind and Sammy walked stiff-legged with his head down and his tail pointed up and over his head. We advanced down the trail and the coyote, having begun to move off the trail, continued to give us room as we went by. Soon they were both behind us and the tension was broken.

Now, I am going to tell you- and ask you to believe me- that I am as wary as anyone can be about ascribing human thoughts and emotions to other animals. I spent much of my undergraduate and graduate schooling reading about and doing behavioral research with primates so I have the taboo against that deeply ingrained in me. On the other hand the parallels between animals chemically, biologically and behaviorally are manifest in reality. Used with the proper judgment and qualification they are powerful and accurate tools for understanding humans in all of those dimensions. It is with this caveat that I offer the following observations.

How thankful should I be that, on that morning when I confronted those coyotes, I had a libertarian and a conservative with me? What would have happened had I had Harry dodging around me making his infernal racket and Jake doing his fawning dance of submission instead of those two rock-solid warriors?

After recalling my experience with Morgan, Sammy and the Coyotes, I began to realize that the alternate tale of Harry and Jake in the park can be seen as a nearly perfect allegory for the idiocy of much of what the left wing does. Take Nancy Pelosi’s late trip to Syria for instance. I know I’ve written about this before but its such a perfect illustration of this point…

Pelosi, like Jake, is a liberal. Modern Liberals (it wasn’t always this way, e.g. JFK) have, as one of their guiding principals, War is Not the Answer”. It doesn’t matter to them what the question is, they somehow know that warfare is never the solution. Their operational assumption is that if war is being threatened, you are simply not negotiating (talking) enough. Does a terrorist organization based in another country kill 3,000 of your people on your own soil? Oh well, let’s brew up another pot of mint tea and have a nice sit-down. It would, perhaps, be a nicer world if all that was needed was conversation- but history has proven this to be a delusion. Bloody despots like Assad, Ahmadinijad and Saddam are a reality and, like reality, they have to be dealt with- or they deal with you. Ideological pacifism is a sham, a camouflage- meant either to disguise and to excuse the spinelessness of those who refuse to stand up to an aggressor or to hide the naked political calculation of “leaders” like Pelosi who exploit the fear of confrontation to create and manipulate their power base.

As a professional politician, Pelosi’s first objective is always “popularity”. She has a liberal core constituency that she caters too. Liberals, like Jake, are sweet, friendly people but are not known for their ability to discriminate between friends and enemies. Actually most of them feel that discrimination is a bad word. In fact, one of the deepest problems of the liberal core in the United States is that they have fallen prey to the hyperemotional rhetoric of the far left. Progressives and socialists have always been very adept at “emotionalizing” key words and concepts in political discourse with phrases like “bush lied people died” and “No blood for oil” and “I care about all of the victims of Middle East violence”- and if there is one thing liberals are powerless to resist, it is an emotional appeal. This works especially well if it makes them seem (God forbid!) as though they are unfriendly or chauvinistic if they resist it. The liberals and their leaders have been so agitated and distressed by the rhetoric of the Progressive Left that they have begun to slide further to the left themselves. Liberals who used to stand up for freedom, democracy and the obvious benefits of the open and tolerant Western Tradition are now sunk in the dismal and hopeless swamp of multiculturalism and the attempt to placate and be friends with people who despise them and want to kill us all.

Lest anyone misunderstand, I want to be clear about one point. I love my dogs. That is to say, I am in no way saying that Jake is as spineless as most liberals. He, at least, reacted defensively (if somewhat hysterically- and from the safety of our enclosed porch) by barking loudly and even growling when a raccoon family was treed by a coyote here in Newton. Nor am I saying that Harry is as detestable as Pelosi and the rest of the liberal leadership. At least Harry serves a valuable function in our family. We can laugh at his antics and even I like it when he jumps up into my lap and insists that I pat his head for an hour or so. I do not intend to equate Pelosi’s power and approval hungry motives to Jake and Harry. In my experience, a dog’s motives are always above reproach. They are just doing their best to be the dogs that they are. Politician’s motives are often below contempt- and they are always mixed to some degree. I make the comparison because Jake’s sweet harmlessness is a perfect metaphor for the sadly craven liberal lust to be loved at any cost and Harry’s imperiousness mimics the far left’s antic nihilism to a “T”.

Besides, the political template of my dog’s behavior has no power to kill and enslave people. Whereas, even such a frivolous and silly exercises in tail wagging, tongue lolling and slobbering on the hand of evil as the one Pelosi indulged in Syria has serious implications. As Farid Ghadry, president of the Reform Party of Syria wrote in the Washington Times:

Pelosi's ill-timing undercuts substantive efforts by the opposition within and outside Syria to develop a meaningful democratic alternative to a hateful regime that in the end neither benefits U.S. interests nor those of the Syrian people.
It is a matter of knowing who the enemy is and what they stand for; and as Mrs. Pelosi's colleagues in Congress announced their intention to ban the term "global war on terror," it may come as little surprise that such myopic disdain for this regime's serious ill will against stability and democracy in the region seems to dominate certain policy quarters within the U.S. government.

My only disagreement with Mr. Ghadry is that where he sees “myopic disdain” I see a solid formation of tail-wagging idiots accompanied by a chorus of self-serving, yapping lapdogs. There can be no gainsaying him on one point however, this trip, “…will have serious negative repercussions for U.S. interests down the line.” We are seeing this already in Lebanon and, especially, in Iraq where jihadists and equipment flow in steadily from Assad’s Syria and her mad patron Ahmadinijad’s Iran.

Our cultural enemies are fond of calling us dogs (as well as pigs and monkeys). Well, there are dogs and there are dogs. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about Morgan. She was the finest dog I have ever known and was far too good to have been a human. I think of America in the same terms that I do that dog. Lord Byron said it best so I’ll let him close for me with this description which fits Morgan, America, our armed services, Israel, and it also embodies our hopes for our next president whomever we happen to support in the race:

“…one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man, without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog.” ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog"

Indian Guilt and the American View of Islam Part II

There is not a square acre of habitable land on the face of the earth that has not been inhabited by an earlier human population than the one that lives on it today. When the white man came to “The New World” he was not, as some (Lawrence’s “highbrows”) would have it, invading a pair of continents that had been under the stewardship of a single people, living peacefully and in harmony with nature for thousands of years. He was stepping onto a perpetual battlefield where the inhabitants had arrived in successive waves of occupation, conquered and re-conquered each other, committed repeated savagery upon each other and permanently changed the character of the environment. Human sacrifice, slavery and constant low-intensity warfare were universal across both North and South America before the Europeans arrived. The Europeans who trickled in for the first three hundred years and then poured in in immense numbers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to escape religious persecution, political domination and limited economic prospects in their home countries. They came here and founded the greatest experiment in liberty, prosperity and self-government ever seen on earth. Without their descendants and The United States of America, the national socialist and communist monsters of the twentieth century could not have been defeated and would have dominated the earth. You can, as I do, feel compassion and even nostalgia for the American Indians but you can only lament their replacement as the dominant culture in the Americas if you believe that life on earth would be better had they not been conquered.

Did I say “conquer”? Yes, I know that the word “conquer” is out of fashion these days. It makes most people very uncomfortable because it is redolent of violence, greed, slavery and colonialism. In this post colonial age The West has a very guilty conscience about all of that and its not that we don’t deserve it. Conquest is a messy and spontaneous process and it gets exceedingly ugly at times. Conquest by force is bloody, and even conquest by cultural conversion can look very harsh. The fact remains, to paraphrase D.H. Lawrence, when cultures that are as different as Western Civilization and the American Indians meet, one must prove fatal to the other.

We in The West try very hard to keep from thinking about conquering anything. Some of us are even ashamed that our culture is so successful and powerful that most of the conquest we do these days is of the non-violent, social and cultural kind. There are any number of leftists who speak of western “cultural hegemony” as if it were a bad thing. They bemoan the loss of native cultures and the metastasization of Hollywood product around the globe while ignoring that fact that the reason why it is happening is that our culture is dominant for good reasons- it offers better protection for the less powerful and it provides better economic opportunity than any other. It is fine for leftists and progressives to bemoan the spread of democracy and capitalism but precious few of them would want to live under any of the alternatives. It is, still, a conquer or be conquered world but we are so used to having our own way and becoming dominant wherever in the world we happen to be that we have forgotten how hard the fight for survival can be and how quickly it can turn desperate. We really need to keep reminding ourselves that just because we no longer have the urge to conquer that no one else does.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali arrived in Europe along with the current wave of Immigrants from Islamic countries but she arrived not as an economic refugee trying to find a way to survive but as a refugee of conscience and belief. Most of the refugees from the failed economies of the Islamic world have not come with her open-minded intent to learn western ways.

Ironically, the guilt and loss of confidence in The West has allowed the Islamic immigrants in Europe to begin the process of degrading European culture. By shear weight of numbers and inert recalcitrance they have been insisting that their traditional and legal practices be accepted by their new home countries even when they are counter to existing law. In an attempt to pacify and integrate their new citizens Germany, Belgium, France, Britain and others have been allowing more and more exceptions in their legal and social fabric, exceptions that will make those countries more like the poverty stricken and depressed countries from which the immigrants fled and less like the productive, welcoming democracies they thought they were moving to. Europe, typified by the French, has been arrogant and complacent enough to believe that what they imagine to be the grandeur of their culture would turn all of their Muslim immigrants into Western European citizens. Now their streets and Metros are plagued by chaos and violence.

In Holland, Hirsi Ali found the Dutch (who have been as conscientiously open-minded and egalitarian as any other country in Europe) to be under siege as well. They have suffered two traumatic assassinations. One was the murder of the prominent politician, Pim Fortyun. The other was of the well-known film-maker Theo van Gogh who was the director and producer of “Submission” the film, written by Hirsi Ali. Submission, only ten minutes long, touched on one of the great vulnerabilities of Islam in the modern world- the repression of and discrimination against women.

No more volatile subject exists for Muslims. The subjugation of Muslim women and their possible liberation by continued contact with The West is the one subject, other than the dignity of The Prophet himself that is absolutely guaranteed to roil Caliphate Muslims to unreasoning savagery.

Hirsi Ali, under threat of death herself has since taken refuge in the United States and recently published a wonderful autobiography, Infidel. Reading Infidel, I am vividly reminded of the lesson I learned in that lecture hall almost forty years ago. In the first two chapters of her book it becomes clear that this extraordinary woman grew up in a family that, in the span of two generations was dislocated from its nomadic tribal roots and thrust into the turbulence that occurs when ancient cultures come into contact with the modern world. The clarity with which she describes the drama of the conflicts that arise when t simple culture that is specifically adapted to meet the demands of a narrow band of ecological and social conditions is confronted by radical changes in both the natural and social environment is striking.

Her father’s father was, she tells us, a feared nomadic raider and petty feudal lord. His name was Magan and was known by the title: The Protector of all He Conquered. As ironic as that name may sound to us, it speaks volumes about the world in which her parents grew up. That title is a holographic representation of Caliphate society. It can be used as an entry point into a more complete understanding of the nature of the proto-feudal strain of Islam that has interbred with modern fascist movements and evolved into a monster. His “might” made Magan “right”, for the people he conquered, it was a matter of good luck that he protected them. The title does not even imply that he was just or fair- only that he kept them under his protection kept them from the additional trauma of being conquered by others. Conquering and being conquered is the story of the human race and whether the conquest is violent or cultural, we ignore this at our own risk.

This brings us back to Lawrence’s idea that. “The Indian way of consciousness is different from and fatal to our way of consciousness. Our way of consciousness is different from and fatal to the Indian. The two ways, the two streams are never to be united. They are not even to be reconciled.” If the two ways of consciousness are fatal to the other, then it must be obvious that there is a contest for survival going on whether the contestants wish this to be the case or not.

So, now we are ready to answer the question, posed above, “Has the western conquest of the Americas has made the world a better place? Is it lamentable?”

The left finds a way to lament. They claim to see no difference between the moral authority of the American experiment (even as they are sheltered under its protective mantle) as compared with Caliphatist Islam. Moral imbeciles like Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and a host of others promote relativistic absurdities that equate the actions of America and Israel to those of al Qeada and Ahmadinejad and find ways to excuse the violence of those thugs and bullies.. Their arguments are based on that same fulsome emotion, dressed up to look like real discourse.

They do this by establishing certain constructs of “received knowledge” that they try to convince us cannot be challenged. This un challengability is an emotional barrier to free speech and intellectually honest debate. When you ignore the emotional prohibition they are challenged with ease and found to be nothing more than emotional absurdities.

Multiculturalism is chief among these absurdities. Originally conceived as an expression of the bland but laudable liberal impulse to “honor differences” and acknowledge the diversity of cultural influences, multiculturalism has become an overbearing burden to never offend or even “judge” the views and behaviors of other cultures. If rejecting the moral relativism of Multiculturalism seems “insensitive” to us today it is because we have been badgered into buying the premise that all cultures are equally deserving and good. This is absurd.
People like Hirsi Ali, for instance, who have lived in some of these other cultures, know how absurd it is. Hrisi Ali knows first hand the horror of being a woman in Somalia and Saudia Arabia. I have used this quote before but it bears repeating here.

“This is gender inequality: an inequality most obscene, expressed through acts such as mutilation, beatings, rape and murder--and almost all this aggression is justified in the name of culture and creed. Atrocities committed against girls and women in the most intimate setting of all: in the home; by dad or mom; by a brother or a sister; by a husband or his mother. The sort of persecution I talk about is one in which the religious leaders, the politicians, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers, all share the staunch belief that girls--that women--are born of a lesser god.”

So why can’t we stand up as a civilization for women everywhere? Why do the feminists in The West prefer to quibble about salary differentials in the upper echelons of corporate leadership to campaigning to end the rape, torture and murder of Islamic women? Can they really be that morally blind? Is multiculturalism such an important idea that we have to sacrifice our moral souls and another generation of women and children? Why?

Part of it is that we are genuinely touched by the pathos of cultures like those of the American Indian which we have defeated and incorporated into our own. This melancholy reluctance to effect any change in the culture of others is illogical and misguided. It is driven by the guilt that we can’t stand to talk about, acknowledge or even think about. The guilt of knowing that our great standard of living humiliates other people who don’t live as well is the silly, racist core of the multiculturalist urge. We dearly want to be able to tell them that they are not really humiliated so they won’t be angry with us anymore but we know that this is a lie. In doing so we perform the worst act of humiliation of all, we let them off the hook. In not helping to them to see their position truly, we commit a much worse act of racism- we admit that we don’t think they are up to meeting the truth head on.

We have bought into multiculturalism because we no longer have the fortitude, the honesty or the intelligence to look someone in the eye and tell them, “Look, you are humiliated because you do not have the culture or political leaders or the education to be otherwise. You really need to stop making such a big deal about feeling humiliated. Why not try some of these simple steps toward civilization instead:
1. Specifically outlaw honor killing
2. Stop beating your wife and/or kids.
3. Send your kids to a decent school where they won’t waste their time memorizing an entire “holy book” to the exclusion of learning critical thinking skills and studying arithmetic, science and geography.
4. Forget using Israel, Jews and America as the excuse for being a looser.
5. Understand that your leader (fill in one: Ahmadinejad, Assad, Kadafy, Mubarak, Abdullah etc…) is a tyrant of the worst sort and is actually working hard to keep you ignorant and filled with rage, that’s how your feudal system works.
6. For God’s sake stop thinking of anyone who believes (or doesn’t believe in him) in him (God that is) in a different way than you do as less than human. That only makes you feel worse when you see that those “unbelievers” live better than you do.
If you take care of all that, there would be no need for you to feel humiliated anymore.”

David Yeagley, a Comanche Indian is one who poignantly understands the culture clash from the inside. His work is proof that the valiant Indian traditions of his culture can, if victimhood is refused and intellectual honesty is applied, be part of a modern western world view. Yeagley has written at length about the comparison between the Indian and the Palestinian Arab world. His writing offers the Arabs hope for dignity if they will only drop their humiliation speeches and stop pretending that they are better than the rest of the world. They would be much better off if they learned to follow his lead into the twenty-first century. Yeagley writes,

“Arabs weren’t even in Palestine until the mid-7th century AD, over a thousand years later, after Palestine’s 1,300-year Jewish history. Arabs later living in Palestine never developed themselves or the land, but remained nomadic and quasi-primitive during their 1,200-year stay.
Then a stronger people modern Jews who’d been expelled from their homes in Europe and in Arab countries came in and conquered (without annihilating) the Palestinian Arabs.
As a Comanche Indian, I’m sensitive to this history. I believe the conqueror has a right to what he has conquered. No one owns the land. Only he who is strong enough to possess it will control it and the people living on it. That’s the law of war…,”

He also quotes Theodore Roosevelt:

“Teddy Roosevelt once said, "Let sentimentalists say what they will, the man who puts the soil to use must of right dispossess the man who does not, or the world will come to a standstill." (W. T. Hagan, Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indians, 1997). In the end his final telling comment echoes out theme of culture succession, “The land developers, the agrarians, have become stronger than the hunters.”

When D.H. Lawrence wrote “The common, healthy, vulgar white usually feels a certain native dislike of those drumming aboriginals.” He was expressing, albeit in a dated and innocent way, the view that when you live in a world that has more than one culture, there are often “others” who are “unsuited” for life in that culture. At the border lines between cultures the differences as so much more apparent We can’t admit to that feeling anymore- we are too sophisticated and sensitive, too multicultural. But we have to understand that Western Civilization is (at least for the time being) the dominant culture and we have to turn that coarse dislike and revulsion into a realization that the reasons that we find those people either dislikable or adorable come out of the same basic elitism. If we are to treat them as true equals we need to level with them and tell them that the reason for their humiliation is in their culture and their leadership. We also have to take the prudent steps to protect ourselves.

We do need to protect ourselves. We may be blinded to the danger because we are so sure of our safety and our ability to manage social change. We are so confident that we have created a culture that is immune to relapse into tyranny and intolerance that we have felt free to indulge multiculturalism. This is not the case for the other side however. They are not multicultural. The Caliphate Muslims can see the fatal nature of the confrontation so much more clearly because they are the ones who are threatened most immediately by it. Since the end of World War II the influx of oil money, the amazing revolution in globe-shrinking communication technology and the creation and phenomenal success of Israel right on their door step have combined to expose the Arab world to Western culture in a way threatens every dark secret abuse and humiliation. When communication was primitive and Israel was not turning fetid swamps and arid desert into fertile farmland using Arab labor right next door the Arab "leaders" could deny to themselves and hide from their people how lame and infantile they are. Without the artificially maintained veneer of rage and "humiliation speak" that they have paid so dearly to foster, the Arab leadership would be exposed, alone in the spotlight, as the incompetent, despotic ignorant rabble that they are. The Arab Street we hear so much about is the tool of the Arab leadership. They know only too well that the rage, anti-Semitism, anti-American and humiliation idiocy that the drill into their followers is their only screen against being so exposed.

Meanwhile, under the influence of multiculturalism the Left looks at the Palestinians and, as Lawrence might have said, “…performs the mental trick, and fools themselves and others into believing that the “head scarfed”, Kalashnikov toting darling is nearer to the true ideal gods than we are.” That, of course, is mind numbing nonsense- “fatal to our way of consciousness” as Lawrence had it. But to the left it is irresistible; it is full of guilt, pity and bathos – “fulsome emotion”. If The West will commit suicide – the unwillingness to give up both the ugly side and the maudlin of that racism will surely will be the weapon.

One of the two cultures, Islam or The West, must conquer the other and if the end of the conquest is to be humane, there must be a clear winner. Someone has to admit they have been conquered. At the end of the Indian wars there were many moments of despair, bitterness and regret which still haunt America. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe gave voice to the Indian defeat in a speech that is both dignified and noble:
"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

It took several generations and much bloodshed to force that speech out of an Indian. It took another one hundred and forty years for an intelligent and realistic spokesman like Yeagley to put into words the brutal truth that will allow him and his people to go forward as full citizens of the new world of which they are now a full part.If we cannot get the Arab world to make that same transition peacefully, we will have to reduce them by force the way we did with Chief Joseph.

We have to ask ourselves how dedicated we are to this struggle, how hard are we willing to fight to insure that our children do not have to live through a (not yet inevitable) slide into a new dark age- for an ascendant world-wide Caliphate would bring on a very dark age indeed. Anyone who doubts that need only see how the Shia and Sunni are savaging each other for dominance in Iraq. How willing are we to fight for freedom and do we have the courage to see what is required of us - and to do it.

If we cannot find a way to free ourslelves from the dogma of the left and drop multiculturalism so that we can fight with our whole minds, media, hearts and intellects we will have to continue to fight with tanks and bombs. Ultimately, we have to find both the intelligence and mental agility for the cultural approach and the will and strength for the forceful one. If we do not start soon then we might as well avoid the apocalyptic rush and start shopping for turbans and bhurkas now.

Update, Friend Eric Odessit posted this article which has a very promising resemblance to what a an Arab equivalent to Cheif Joseph's speech. It is dignified, realistic and forward-looking.