Euro-weenie backlash
Yeah, so some people apparently didn't appreciate one of my earlier posts, in which I used the word "Euro-weenie" and displayed a condescending attitude of American superiority. This earned me the appellation of "ignorant fuckwit", which is sufficiently creative to elicit a smirk from me. But I stick to my moral highground; the Europeans are hypocrites when it comes to international justice. Victor Davis Hanson sums up the situation quite well. As if that wasn't enough, Dave Shiflett goes on to speak about the Europeans' "Pipsqueak Syndrome", and brings up some interesting points originally expounded by Robert Kagan in Policy Review:

"The author begins by observing the wide gulf between American and European views. 'Europeans assert that American policy relies too much on force — that President George Bush is a cowboy — while Americans respond that Europeans are far too quick to appease dictators.' Both views are true, the fair-minded Kagan counsels, as he kicks the Europeans in the teeth. 'America does rely on strength, because it is strong — and because it is the only power capable of projecting itself into troubled areas of the world. Europe tolerates dictators because it is weak and basically has no other choice.'

"For those who do not grasp the point, a nice metaphor is employed. 'A man armed only with a knife may decide that a bear prowling the forest is a tolerable danger, inasmuch as the alternative — hunting the bear armed only with a knife — is actually riskier than lying low and hoping the bear never attacks. The same man armed with a rifle, however, will likely make a different calculation of what constitutes a tolerable risk. Why should he risk being mauled to death if he doesn't need to?'

"No sensible person can doubt this analysis. In addition, all must agree that the Europeans can adopt any policy they desire, because at the end of the day, as at the beginning, it doesn't much matter. This is especially true regarding Saddam Hussein. 'The task of containing Saddam belongs primarily to the United States, not to Europe,' says our learned guide, 'and everyone agrees on this — including Saddam, which is why he considers the United States, not Europe, his principal adversary.' And his principal target as well. Europe can reasonably say Saddam is no threat — at least to them. They're hardly worth attacking.

"They also know the true source of their security. 'Europeans generally believe, whether or not they admit it to themselves, that were Iraq ever to emerge as a real and present danger to Europe, as opposed to merely a potential danger, then the United States would do something about it, as it did in 1991.' Europe has enjoyed similar security for some 60 years, and its resentment is showing."

Hanson adds a similar observation:

"Yet the United States in some ways by its very Constitution and Bill of Rights is above such laws enacted by international councils; its vast military ensures that it is not one among equals, but possesses might far above the collective resources of both its enemies and friends. It is rare for lethal military to be coupled with humane government, but such is the case with the United States — and its unusual position in historical terms should be so acknowledged. Europe, which collectively has a population and economy as great as America's, has chosen not to field a commensurately powerful military — a choice in and of itself rife with moral implications, and explicatory as well of its strenuous efforts to place American soldiers abroad under international control."

So am I being smug and dismissive? Probably. The ICC and the Europeans who support them can go to hell for all I care. They are immense hypocrites who will gladly run around and harp on the US for its treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay or lambast us for an errant bomb that kills innocent civilians attending a wedding party, or they'll go after a barely-breathing Pinochet or an impossible-to-detain-but-easy-to-criticize-and-indict-from-afar Ariel Sharon, but they won't touch the ex-Nazis, current anti-Semites, or former Soviet gulag administrators in their midst. There are plenty of war criminals wandering around Europe, but they're more interested in criticizing the one country that saves their ass every time someone raises a finger at them. Well, here's a finger back:

*flips the Old World the bird*

So Euro-whiners, there's a simple solution to all of this: you can quit giving us grief and leave us alone and let us do our peacekeeping without interference or any prospect of ICC intervention and be grateful that we fight the bad guys for you; or you can raise your taxes, quit sending welfare checks to your Muslim immigrants so they can beat up Jews, stop funding slimy, ass-kissing, corrupt, two-faced, terrorist-sponsoring dictators like Arafat, and use the money to build your own superpower-status-worthy military. Then you can walk the walk and do the peacekeeping--and ICC self-prosecuting--yourselves. Meanwhile, we'll be glad to vacation on the French Riviera, keep our boys at home guarding the border from illegal immigrants, and critique your ass-savvy peacekeeping and nation-building operations from afar.

On some islands, size doesn't matter
I got this story from Bizarre News:

Extra Large Condoms Not Needed in Britain
Britain - The Condomi condom company has officially declared its XXL condom a flop in Britain. They claim sales are low because British men are too shy to purchase the larger-sized condoms. Apparently, though, men in Germany, France and Italy aren't that bashful because the XXLs sell well in those countries. Researchers believe British men are just modest: "Research shows that most men rate their penis as smaller than average, which of course is not true," Dr. Glenn Wilson said. Oddly enough, it's only the British men that have this ailment. Victoria Wells, a Condomi rep, said, "Unfortunately, UK retailers aren't as convinced as we are that British men are well-endowed, but we hope that our research, coupled with Dr. Wilson's research, will help convince them to now start selling the XXL product."

More on religion and the state
This guy covers some of the same ground as what I tried to say here--only he does it much better.

Potatoe and single mothers
Dan Quayle may have lost the media battle ten years ago, but he's won the war. Turns out Candice Bergen agreed with the veep all along.

Who's afraid of the ICC?
So the Euro-weenies are exceptionally upset with us over our refusal to endorse the ICC. Well, guess what? Half the world's population is on our side, which I suppose gives us the democratic-populist highground. Quit pushing your elitist, condescending politico-morality on us; we don't want it.

EU baffoons
How are we supposed to take the European Court of Human Rights seriously when it convenes in this building? (The accompanying story helps illustrate why they are a bunch of boneheads.)

Invasive airport security measures?
Well, a Frenchman found a unique way to deal with the annoyance. The authorities didn't appreciate it, but I can salute his Gaulle (bad, bad, baaaaad pun).

Loved the new photo essay
In fact, I can't believe I haven't linked to any of Tony Pierce's stuff before. I keep reading him more and more, he's quite interesting. Freaky. Weird. Wrong. But cool. A new addition to the pantheon.

Putting game violence to good use
The Army is distributing a free computer game with the intent to gain the interest of potential recruits. I'll be very interested to see the data down the road that proves how successful a venture this idea is.

Euro-bashing is fun
It's also way too easy.

More Jonah
Goldberg raises another solid point: are the Democrats going to attack Bush for being in Kenneth Lay's pocket even as all these other companies are getting nailed for accounting sins? Can they have their cake and eat it, too?

Jonah, Jonah, Jonah
Alright, that column was just plain mean. Seriously, don't be so logical and reasonable. It's not fair to the other guys.

Imaginary misdeeds
Byron York lays out the facts on Bush and Harken. There's no impropriety. None whatsoever. Keep swinging away, though, Democrats. Not that you were gonna give up after being refuted anyway.

McCain hypocrisy
I'm used to reading stories accusing John McCain of being a hypocrite or worse, but this seems especially damning. Of course, it's not causing much of a ruckus because now that McCain-Feingold is passed, the Arizona Senator is mostly irrelevant. That's what happens when you make yourself a one-issue crusader--once the issue dies politically, so do you.

Progress in Russia
Russia may be coming around economically, but it's reversing progress democratically.

Islam versus France
I finally got around to reading Christopher Caldwell's piece d'resistance in The Weekly Standard, and is it ever money. Caldwell uncovers a slew of problems associated with underclass Muslims in French suburbs--most commentators seem to be zeroing in on the welfare connection--but as usual, the key issue raised by Caldwell is an intellectual/ideological problem:

"Viewed in this light, September 11 has made quite clear why certain of France's Muslims, or at least their political representatives, have refused to be drawn into the existing French order: They believe they have the stronger hand. Against 'Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful,' France proposes to pit its own national ethic, which has now shrunk into little more than tolerance. Let's not laugh at France for this--it is merely the country where a problem belonging to the West in general has become most clearly visible. It is in France that, under the pressure of Islam, the secular state is most in danger of being exposed as contentless, and therefore not worth fighting for--and where fears should be arising that, if secularism cannot be fought for as religions are fought for, it will not last long."

In other words, the girls going to school veiled, the youths attacking Jews and demanding "woospeh," and the imams preaching radical Islam on the Saudi's dime all represent a deeper problem than just welfare payments possibly funding terrorists. No, the welfare problem is just added irony--a state that is experiencing ideological rebellion by 10% of its population is subsidizing that population's rebellion. Of course, this isn't unusual for socialist policy-weaned governments and highlights yet another absurdity of left-wing ideology, but I digress. The main point that needs to be focused on is the fact that the Muslim problem in France is quickly exposing the hollowness of secularism.

In our own country, the Religious Right has been harping on this issue for over two decades, and one can argue that their force in politics peaked in '94. But their argument still exists, and just because right-wing Christians don't resort to violence quite the same way as right-wing Muslims do, doesn't mean that their intellectual rebuttal to the secular state has been snuffed out. On the contrary, the furor over the recent Pledge of Allegiance case revealed just how far off the deep end we've come with our public policies dealing with religious issues, and I expect conservative Christians to incorporate this issue into their attack on the leftward drift of society qua religion. Even near my home, a church is fighting a city to keep its property because the city wants to zone the land, confiscate it, and give it to Costco or some other giant chain so that it can reap more sales tax revenue.

The question I'm getting at here is, is secularism an independent value worth prioritizing over, say, the ability of people to practice their religion freely? I don't believe our Founding Fathers viewed secularism and religion that way, but its obvious that a great number of academics, jurists, and politicians now do. I suspect that this is mainly because, like Justice Stevens (I believe) let slip in his dissent to the majority opinion in the recent case upholding school vouchers, liberals tend to view religion as indoctrination and a barely tolerable evil that, hopefully, can be countered by exposure to reason in secular, public schools (call it the Bertrand Russell take on religion, if you will).

Yet looking at France--a society that Caldwell says erected its separation of church and state laws so as to keep religion out of the public sphere, and not the other way around as in America--we see that this more militant secularism rings hollow. The welfare state offers no real solutions to fix the social problems of drugs, crime, teen sex, et al, and that's because secularism offers no credible explanation for why individuals should seek to live according to any sort of moral code. I'm not saying, mind you, that an atheist can't be moral, or that religious practice is necessary to be a "good person." What I am merely saying is that the state offers nothing substantive to hold on to--in lieu of religious explanations--for why a young man should impose discipline upon himself and be a lawful, productive citizen. It can merely offer rewards and punishments, and obviously these are insufficient. And so, a society where it's virtually impossible for a strict Roman Catholic to take his religion seriously (let alone a pious Muslim) without offending the public order is predestined to retain all the negative aspects of modern civilization without any of the positive influences that religion might bring into the picture.

The Muslims in France know this, and that's why they have no problem standing by Allah--they know the national ethos of France is hollow and nobody will stand and fight for it. What would the rallying cry be? The social imperative? Will any Frenchman fight so that his 14 year-old daughter can receive condoms and have access to abortion, or so he can watch porn on TV, or go to the local pub and get drunk after work? I'm not saying these sort of things should be eradicated from society by government fiat, merely that they don't constitute a substantive core that one might idealize and fight for. I mean, really, if it comes down to it, in the battle between promiscuity and Allah, who is actively going to fight on the side of promiscuity? Here in America, we can talk about the "cultural wars," but I don't think it will ever escalate to bloodshed. With the radical Muslims, I think it's almost a promise that there will be bloodshed if things aren't resolved.

So, among other things, I think Caldwell raises a vital point: that we can't defeat Islamo-fascism without reforming ourselves a bit, too. And one of those key reforms is not to change this into a holy war of Christianity vs. Islam, but to change it away from secularism vs. Islam because secularism is not a powerful enough meme to eradicate radical Islam. What is needed is a real societal acceptance of the place of religion in public life--and of this France is in dire need. Secularism must be one aspect of civilization, but one that can accommodate those who believe strongly in their faith and wish to take their religion seriously. Religion is not just a private matter as much as we'd like it to be. This does not mean the state must coerce people into being religious; on the contrary, that is what the radical Islamists want and what we will refuse to allow. It is what we are fighting against, in one sense. What we must allow more freely is the interfacing of religious practice and public experience; we need to create a society and culture that allows religion to be discussed in the classrooms, allows kids to gather and pray and read their Bibles in between classes if they so wish, for parents to use vouchers to send their kids to parochial schools, and for the government to begin looking at religion as an asset in the fight against social ills. Let the wall between church and state come down, and let the two institutions work together in any manner short of literal Establishment (Obviously I am taking a Rehnquist-Scalia-Thomas view of the Establishment Clause). In France and Europe in general, things are more dire, and I really don't think secularism will be able to hold. There needs to be a simultaneous tolerance for religious practice and a more strenuous opposition and crackdown on radical, rebellious influences.

And dismantling the bloated, soft-on-crime welfare state wouldn't hurt, either.

Update--Just read Stankley Kurtz' article from yesterday's NRO. I think his documentation and analysis of Lind's book review back my position up pretty well. We're supposed to be nonsectarian, not secular.

Old news, relevant news
Check out this article from 1999 that talks about how air rage is almost completely an invention of the media and airlines to cover up the "series of underlying problems with the industry as a whole"--the same problems that eventually led to more than one airline threatening bankruptcy and demanding cash infusions from the government to keep afloat.

Insta-wisdom
Glenn Reynolds cuts through the bull and points out the real lesson of the LAX shooting:

"Instead of crafting ever-narrower definitions of terrorism, or looking for easy solutions that won't work, both government officials and pundits should consider how we might mobilize the most potent anti-terror weapon of all: the citizenry."

Self-fulfilling prophecy
Vodkapundit has the scoop on where the real population and environmental problems are, and why they will only get worse if the sanctimonious leftist Greenie-weenies have their way in implementing measures like Kyoto on the West industrial powers.

When peace is a synonym for war
Check out the ultimate goals of this Palestinian peace activist. Just reinforces my skepticism that peace will never happen in the Holy Land.