Click for Main Weblog

   
The Weblog at The View from the Core - Saturday, March 22, 2003
   
   

"Coming Out of the Grave"

Beautiful.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 03/22/03 11:09:40 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.


   
   

Warm and Toasty?

I merely note this blog, and the one immediately succeeding, at Minute Particulars. I do nothing more because neither rises to the level of being worthy of further response, giving no indication whatever of incorporating any learning from numerous responses, out of various quarters, to previous blogs there. Perhaps, though, somebody else will have the fortitude required to make another attempt. God speed!

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 03/22/03 10:23:24 PM
Categorized as Religious.


   
   

"What I Saw at the Walkout: The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Harvard's Peaceniks"

A Harvard senior (who must be a brave man, by the by) writes in today's NRO about the anti-war anti-American, anti-Republican, anti-capitalist, anti-George-Bush rally at Harvard the other day:

.... Endless venom was spat at George W. Bush, as though to insult the man was to discredit his policies. What if President Bush were stupid, or did steal the election, or really wanted to gain access to Iraq's oil? The war is not being justified on those terms, but on grounds of national security and humanitarian concern. The sufficiency of those justifications doesn't rest on claims about Bush's intelligence, political activities, and personal motivations, and you don't need a background in formal logic to understand this.
The utter irrelevance of these arguments only exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of the antiwar movement. Any serious criticism of the war must rely on one or both of two claims: First, that it is not in the security interests of the United States forcibly to remove Saddam from power; or, second, that a war to rid the Iraqi people of a psychopathic dictator is worse for that people, in humanitarian terms, than letting them continue to suffer under him.
Rather than make these claims, Harvard's high-minded intellectuals recite their usual litany of complaints about capitalism, about globalization, and above all, about George W. Bush. Yesterday's protest was an exercise in many things: vanity, condescension, evasion, arrogance, and smug self-righteousness. But it failed miserably as an effort at persuasion. This should come as no surprise to those of us who recognize that war is tragic, but who also know that life under tyranny, or life overshadowed by the danger of apocalyptic slaughter, is more tragic still.

(Thanks, Bill.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 03/22/03 03:36:46 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.


   
   

"The Church Pathetic"

Patrick Sweeney has posted a guest essay, by an anonymous Catholic priest, at extreme Catholic. I think he speaks for a lot of us Catholics in the pews:

.... Tonight, on Saint Patrick’s Day, we heard from the President of the United States in his address to the American people on the eve of a potential war with Iraq. How I wish we had bishops in the Church with the collective fortitude of this non-Catholic president.
Just as Saint Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland and brought forth a land ruled by order and law, our President prepares to drive the snakes of Baghdad from their palace bunkers into the light that exposes the serpent’s sins. The breastplate of our President is not only the strength of the American Army but the spirit of the American soldier who by his noble service embodies the glorious virtues that have brought generations of freedom loving people to our shores.
Why is it that our American president is more in tune with the practicing Catholic than the bishops of my Catholic faith? How has it come to this that I find myself easily taking the position of supporting my President over the confused prelates who lead the people of God? Why am I at a lost to explain this disconnect between the Successor to Saint Peter and the Successor to George Washington? Why can’t my Church grant its imprimatur to our Christian President and this resolute cause to liberate the oppressed? Why do I, a Catholic man whose forefathers escaped famine and religious bigotry, whose great-great-grandfather fought in a Civil War wearing Yankee blue to save the Union, feel so Un-American!...

This reminds me to remark that I have noticed a tendency towards platitudes when Catholic bishops, and even popes, speak of war and peace: "With peace, we lose nothing; with war, we may lose everything". Or ideas to that effect. That's not just a platitude; it's a singularly ignorant and thoughtless platitude.

Alright, I suppose it may be true among men of good will. But when one is dealing with tyrants, it seems to me that the very reverse is more likely to be the case: "With peace, we gain nothing; with war, we may gain everything worth gaining — and not without it".

P.S. Read this for a description of The Church Worse Than Pathetic.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 03/22/03 03:08:22 PM
Categorized as Religious.


   
   

Rachel "Stupid" Corrie

Susanna has the story about the "Stupid" Rachel Corrie cartoon in The Diamondback. From what I can tell, calling that Terrorism-supporting, America-hating woman "stupid" is being kind. (Or didn't you see the AP photo of Rachel Corrie burning a mock American flag amidst a crowd of Palestinian children?)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 03/22/03 02:36:21 PM
Categorized as Media.


   
   

"Fifty Years of Pride in Canada Disappears"

A blistering jeremiad from Michael Walker in today's (Canadian) National Post:

.... For more than 50 years I have been proud to be a Canadian. I was proud to be a Canadian when Canadian diplomats helped settle the Suez Crisis. I was proud to be a Canadian when collective action had to be taken the last time an expansionist megalomaniac decided to march down the Korean Peninsula. I was proud to be a Canadian when Canadian peacekeepers moderated Cyprus. I was proud on the infrequent occasions Canadian leaders took a tough stance during the Cold War. I was proud when Canadian troops played their role in the liberation of Kuwait, and more recently Afghanistan.
Today, I am embarrassed to be a Canadian. I am embarrassed to be represented by a Prime Minister who is so detached from reality and a sense of Canada's true interests. I am embarrassed by a political system which is impotent in the face of a Prime Minister descending into perfidy. I am embarrassed that the Prime Minister was accorded a standing ovation in Parliament by his party for having decided to let others take up Canada's cudgel in the war against terror.
I am embarrassed by the ignorance of history and the evil possibilities of human nature that are revealed in the fact that six out of 10 Canadians are against the United States taking action against Iraq without the United Nations' support in spite of the fact that a clear majority believed that the United Nations should have authorized the war. I am embarrassed that my countrymen evidently believe more in the preservation of the UN than they do in the values the UN was created to preserve.
I am embarrassed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which wears its antipathy for the war effort as a badge of honour....

(Thanks, Jonah.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 03/22/03 01:57:45 PM
Categorized as Political.


   
   

"Antiwar Shame: Facing Liberation"

And a reiteration of predictions of mine.

A powerful column by Jonah Goldberg at NRO yesterday:

.... Last time, we refused to topple Saddam ourselves — as Major Gurfein himself noted. "We stopped in Kuwait that time," he said. "We were all ready to come up there then, and we never did." Afterwards we told the Shiites of the south to rebel against Saddam, and they did. Then we did nothing as Saddam slaughtered the Shia, forcing some to lie down in the road and be paved over, alive, with asphalt.
There are two immediate lessons to be drawn from this. First, the slaughter, torture, and terror hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of Iraqis faced was the consequence of not war, but the lack of it. If we had toppled Saddam in 1991, we would have improved both the lives of Iraqis and the security of the United States. It was the premature peace that prolonged the suffering. "Peace" was the moral horror these last twelve years. Giving peace a chance for the last twelve years cost more lives and caused more suffering — by a wide margin — than this war is likely to. Giving peace a chance by playing games in the U.N. and by dickering around with "proportionate responses," emboldened and enraged Osama bin Laden and his cadres. Giving peace a chance made it necessary for the United States to shlep its way back to Iraq one more time. Giving peace a chance is what made the people of Safwan hungry and grateful and suspicious of American charity all at once.
The second lesson is even more painful. The alleviation of Iraqi suffering, the liberation of the people of Safwan and of all of Iraq, makes many puke. Some, quite literally. Antiwar protesters in San Francisco organized a "vomit-in" yesterday to show how the war "made them sick." They regurgitated on cue, their bellies full of milk dyed red, on the steps of federal buildings in downtown San Francisco. Meanwhile other, merely metaphorically nauseous protesters snarled traffic and generally made asses of themselves in the name of ensuring that the people of Iraq were never liberated. Similar protests were held all over America and the world by people who can most charitably be described as Saddam's useful idiots....

As you know, Faithful Reader, I have already predicted that the anti-war crowd will not care that the Iraqis have been liberated from horrific repression: they won't care that the Iraqis will have been freed from it, because they don't care that the Iraqis have lived under it. Also, I have already predicted that mainstream media will, eventually, go out of its way to avoid showing to mainstream America that the Iraqis have been freed from brutal tyranny and are happy that the Coalition went to war against the Iraqis' real enemy, Saddam Hussein; MM will, instead, go out of their way to show mainstream America the accidental, unintentional, and otherwise unavoidable death, destruction, and hardship that were wrought by warfare. (Okay. If I haven't already written about that, I should have.) Not that they shouldn't show us the latter; certainly, they should. But they should not emphasize the latter over the former; and that, they will do.

I reiterate these, my predictions. I hope I'll be shown wrong. But I don't think I will be. When the Blogosphere lights up with livid denunciations of MM's active and deliberate attempt to keep the truth from getting through to mainstream America for very long, remember: you heard it here first.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 03/22/03 08:56:57 AM
Categorized as Media & Most Notable & Social/Cultural.


   

The Blog from the Core © 2002-2008 E. L. Core. All rights reserved.