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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Tuesday, March 16, 2004
   
   

"Rotten Europe"

Thanks to Margaret for directing my attention to David Warren's latest:

.... Analysis and homily must converge in what I have to say today. There is no ambiguity in what has happened in Spain. The rotten heart of Europe has been exposed. The best comparison one can make is to Europe in 1940, when the entire continent had capitulated to Nazism and fascism, leaving Britain alone to fight. It thus came to be known as "Churchill's war", rather than "Hitler's war", only to revert when the Allies had won it, and a generation of Europeans, who had not lifted a finger, decided retrospectively that they had been in the Resistance.
The position of Tony Blair's government in Britain today is further undermined by the Spanish vote, so that it is quite possible that the British, too, may soon abandon what the Europeans now choose to call "Bush's war", rather than "Osama's war".
A good question might be asked of the Bush administration, in light of the Spanish election. It was articulated by an American friend yesterday: "Before we waste another drop of blood trying to create democracies in the Middle East, shouldn't we reflect a bit on how easily democracy in Spain was subverted by terrorists?"
One must not, under the present circumstances, sound an uncertain trumpet. All men of goodwill, regardless of nation, are fighting the Jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq, as we fought the Nazis in Italy and France; and if the Americans must fight them alone, so be it. Then as now we made a lot of blather about "democracy". But screw democracy, we are fighting an enemy of civilization, an embodiment of real evil. There is no compromise with such an enemy, no capitulation to him, no way to avoid casualties, no easy way out. We defeat him, or he defeats us.
We do not retreat because our allies are cowards. We continue to fight, for ourselves, for our children, and for their children.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/16/04 07:10:45 PM
Categorized as International.


   
   

"Save Marriage? It's Too Late"

OpinionJournal catches up, again, with The Blog from the Core.

The Blogosphere's own Donald Sensing writes at OpinionJournal, yesterday:

.... Society's stake in marriage as an institution is nothing less than the perpetuation of the society itself, a matter of much greater than merely private concern. Yet society cannot compel men and women to bring forth their replacements. Marriage as conventionally defined is still the ordinary practice in Europe, yet the birthrate in most of Europe is now less than the replacement rate, which will have all sorts of dire consequences for its future.
Today, though, sexual intercourse is delinked from procreation. Since the invention of the Pill some 40 years ago, human beings have for the first time been able to control reproduction with a very high degree of assurance. That led to what our grandparents would have called rampant promiscuity. The causal relationships between sex, pregnancy and marriage were severed in a fundamental way. The impulse toward premarital chastity for women was always the fear of bearing a child alone. The Pill removed this fear. Along with it went the need of men to commit themselves exclusively to one woman in order to enjoy sexual relations at all. Over the past four decades, women have trained men that marriage is no longer necessary for sex. But women have also sadly discovered that they can't reliably gain men's sexual and emotional commitment to them by giving them sex before marriage.
Nationwide, the marriage rate has plunged 43% since 1960. Instead of getting married, men and women are just living together, cohabitation having increased tenfold in the same period. According to a University of Chicago study, cohabitation has become the norm. More than half the men and women who do get married have already lived together.
The widespread social acceptance of these changes is impelling the move toward homosexual marriage. Men and women living together and having sexual relations "without benefit of clergy," as the old phrasing goes, became not merely an accepted lifestyle, but the dominant lifestyle in the under-30 demographic within the past few years. Because they are able to control their reproductive abilities — that is, have sex without sex's results — the arguments against homosexual consanguinity began to wilt.
When society decided — and we have decided, this fight is over — that society would no longer decide the legitimacy of sexual relations between particular men and women, weddings became basically symbolic rather than substantive, and have come for most couples the shortcut way to make the legal compact regarding property rights, inheritance and certain other regulatory benefits. But what weddings do not do any longer is give to a man and a woman society's permission to have sex and procreate....

See my Mainstreaming Perversity: First, homosexuality; next, pedophilia:

.... I would like to add that our society was set on this course when it became widely accepted that (1) sex is not properly related to procreation, (2) sex is not properly related to marriage, and (3) marriage is not really a life-long exclusive commitment. IOW, when immoral behavior among heterosexual adults became widely accepted....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/16/04 06:31:24 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.


   
   

"Saddam's Useful Idiots"

OpinionJournal catches up with The Blog from the Core.

Robert Pollock wonders, yesterday, if Saddam's largesse would account for some anti-war pro-Saddam stances in the USA last year:

A year ago John Kerry described the nations that would liberate Iraq as a "coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted." It turns out that may be a better description of his own antiwar camp. From Jacques Chirac's and Vladimir Putin's political cronies to Tony Blair's own Labour Party, many of the most vocal opponents of enforcing U.N. resolutions turn out to have been on the take.
Were some of the most vehement and prominent American critics of the war similarly bought and paid for? There's no hard evidence to support such a conclusion, but it's a possibility worthy of investigation following the appearance of a politically connected Detroit-area businessman on a recently published list of individuals receiving oil money from Saddam Hussein....

See my Absolutely No Americans Were on Saddam's Payola List:

How do we know that? Well... actually... we don't know that. Saddam Hussein: "Compared to tanks, journalists are cheap — and you get more for your money." ....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/16/04 06:18:18 AM
Categorized as International.


   
   

Britain Next?

A reader writes, yesterday:

The Spanish people just guaranteed that Britian will be devastated by their own terrorist attack. Not that it wouldn't have happened, but it is guaranteed now. The swift Spanish capitulation tells al-Queda how to defeat our allies and then us.
Are the Anglo-Saxon-derived nations the only ones with guts?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/16/04 06:08:21 AM
Categorized as International.


   
   

"Kerry's Stances on Cuba Open to Attack"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXXIX

A candid and informative article in the Miami Herald, Mar. 14.

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John Kerry had just pumped up a huge crowd in downtown West Palm Beach, promising to make the state a battleground for his quest to oust President Bush, when a local television journalist posed the question that any candidate with Florida ambitions should expect:

What will you do about Cuba?

As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kerry was ready with the bravado appropriate for a challenger who knows that every answer carries magnified importance in the state that put President Bush into office by just 537 votes.

"I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he's running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world," Kerry told WPLG-ABC 10 reporter Michael Putney in an interview to be aired at 11:30 this morning.

Then, reaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: "And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him."

It seemed the correct answer in a year in which Democratic strategists think they can make a play for at least a portion of the important Cuban-American vote — as they did in 1996 when more than three in 10 backed President Clinton's reelection after he signed the sanctions measure written by Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton.

There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it.

Asked Friday to explain the discrepancy, Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form -- and voted for it months earlier.

The confusion illustrates a persistent problem for Kerry as Republicans exploit his 19-year voting history to paint the Massachusetts senator as a waffler on major foreign-affairs questions such as the Iraq war, Israel's security barrier and intelligence funding.

Cuba policy is particularly treacherous for Kerry because Florida's nearly half-million Cuban-American voters could be pivotal in awarding the state's 27 electoral votes. And Republicans are preparing to unleash a wave of publicity designed to portray Kerry's new toughness as an election-year conversion from a career of liberal positions on Cuba.

Speaking to reporters Saturday after a meeting of senior Florida Republicans about increasing Hispanic turnout this year, Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings predicted that Kerry's voting record on Cuba would "haunt" him in the coming months.

OTHER VULNERABILITIES

Kerry will also rue past votes supporting loosened restrictions on travel and cash "remittances" that Cubans are allowed to send back to the island, Republicans said. They point to a 2000 Boston Globe interview in which Kerry called a reevaluation of the trade embargo "way overdue" and said that the only reason the United States treated Cuba differently from China and Russia was the "politics of Florida."

Republicans say they can increase Hispanic voter turnout in Florida from the 2000 levels, when outrage over the Clinton administration's decision to return Elián Gonzalez to his father in Cuba helped Bush crush then-Vice President Al Gore among Cuban Americans.

"Kerry is much softer on Castro than Al Gore was," Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, said in an interview.

Saturday's meeting came as GOP strategists worry about Bush's vulnerability on Cuba after months of criticism from some exile leaders who say Bush has failed to deliver on campaign promises to crack down on Castro.

One recent poll showed that three in four Cuban Americans planned to vote for Bush again -- but that a substantial number are concerned about his handling of Cuba policy.

Democratic strategists hope that such skepticism of Bush gives Kerry a foothold. But they acknowledge that a Democrat with Kerry's record is not likely to score points on Cuba policy among single-issue voters.

Some Cuban Americans, however, may be more flexible if they are equally skeptical of Bush and Kerry on the promise to foster reforms in Cuba. Strategists think they could be convinced by Democratic arguments on domestic matters such as jobs, healthcare and education.

"If they don't believe Bush on Cuba, then they certainly aren't going to believe someone who is new on the scene like Kerry," said Democratic pollster Sergio Bendixen, who is advising the centrist New Democrat Network on a new ad campaign targeting Hispanic voters. "Cuban Americans don't believe anybody on Cuba policy, not Democrats or Republicans."

Nevertheless, as Kerry fought for his party's nomination and began eyeing a Florida strategy, his language on Cuba morphed.

The first shift was evident in August, when Kerry told NBC's Tim Russert that he was not in favor of lifting sanctions. "Not now," he said. "No."

Days later, in an interview with The Herald, Kerry offered a more textured explanation of his position, embracing "humanitarian" travel and other exchanges with the island to curb "the isolation that in my judgment helps Castro."

HE STRUGGLES

But there are also constant reminders that Kerry struggles with the complexities of Cuba. Asked in the Herald interview last year about sending Elián back to Cuba, Kerry was blunt: "I didn't agree with that."

But when he was asked to elaborate, Kerry acknowledged that he agreed the boy should have been with his father.

So what didn't he agree with?

"I didn't like the way they did it. I thought the process was butchered," he said.

And when he was asked last week during a town hall meeting in Broward County about immigration policies that allow Cuban migrants to remain if they reach land but do not give the same rights to Haitians and others who travel to Florida, he appeared to grasp for an answer.

First, he said all migrants have a right to make their case for asylum. Then, as if anticipating his weaknesses, Kerry turned the conversation back to the embargo, pledging that he would not support lifting sanctions.

"I haven't resolved what to do," he said, seeming to reflect on the full scope of Cuba concerns. "I'm going to talk to a lot of people in Florida."

Herald staff writer Lesley Clark and researcher Gay Nemeti contributed to this report.

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The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

There is more to this story than meets the eye, Faithful Reader. Hopefully, I'll be able to write about it this week.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/16/04 06:06:38 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry.


   
   

Like James Taranto Says: The Name Means Intelligent as a Post

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXXVIII

A house editorial in yesterday's Seattle Past Intelligence Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Hold on to your breakfast.

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The numbers are eerie. We say, "9/11." In most of the world that same number is known as "11/9" — and now burned into memory is the companion, "11/3." Simple dates. Numbers on a calendar, a mark when terrorists have attacked on a mass scale. This is what war looks like in the 21st century.

As we look back on the year since the United States invaded Iraq, it's important to consider what that battle has meant to the larger campaign against terrorism. We have to ask, are we safer? Or, better, will we be safer soon?

America must ask careful questions about our past and future — something Vice President Dick Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August 2002. After ticking off a list of the sins of Saddam Hussein, Cheney said, "In the face of such a threat, we must proceed with care, deliberation and consultation with our allies."

Indeed. President Bush deserves credit for his initial response to the challenges of terrorism. He built support, he got support and help from such countries as Iran. But then the focus shifted to Iraq and it was as if the war on terror was isolated to a far-off front. If nothing else, consider how much money the United States is spending "fighting terrorism" versus how much has been spent on the Iraq invasion and rebuilding efforts.

The Iraq war has not made us safer. It's been a diversion from the real war, a war that continues. Last week's terrorism in Spain is one more reminder that only a concerted global effort will make us all safer one day.

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The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/16/04 05:41:30 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Media.


   

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