Reasons for Optimism

A series at ShrinkWrapped:

In response to some posts which seemed unduly pessimistic, a reader and frequent commenter on my site suggested that there are actually many reasons to believe we are currently winning the War against Islamic fascism (though he doesn't particularly like that appellation.) He volunteered to put together his thoughts on the matter and succeeded far beyond my expectations. Owen Johnson is a retired career intelligence analyst and knows how to construct a position. His note to me is long and I am going to present it in several parts.

I am blessed with the ability to read fast and to retain a great deal of what I read and I have not seen, in the almost 5 years since 9/11 "changed everything", such a clear exposition of who we are fighting, what we are fighting, and how we are fighting, as what Owen so cogently put together. This is as good a summary as I have seen of the various issues involved in the war.

• Reasons for Optimism, Part I
• Reasons for Optimism, Part II
• Reasons for Optimism, Part III
• Reasons for Optimism, Part IV
• Reasons for Optimism, Part V

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 09/09/06 10:41:00 AM
Categorized as International & Political.

Ten Arguments for Sanity

Most people believe that the principal objections, or even the only objections, to the drive to legalize homosexual “marriage” spring from religious faith. But that is simply not true. Beginning with this post I'll offer ten objections that have nothing to do with any religion at all, except insofar as the great religions of the world happen to reflect the nature of mankind. These objections spring from three sources. The first is a commonsense observation of man — his needs, his shortcomings, and his aspirations. The second is a consideration of history: our own recent history, and the history of those who once committed the mistakes we are committing now. The last is logic, that relentlessly honest instrument of thought. The objections are such as should make everyone in our world uncomfortable, both those who call themselves conservative and are busy destroying the heritage of western civilization, and those who call themselves liberal and are busy curtailing and denying every freedom but that of the zipper.

• Ten Arguments for Sanity, 1-2
• Ten Arguments for Sanity, 3-4
• Ten Arguments for Sanity, 5-6
• Ten Arguments for Sanity, 7-8
• Ten Arguments for Sanity, 9-10

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 09/09/06 10:22:43 AM
Categorized as Political & Social/Cultural.

"The New Juristocracy"

By Andrew C. McCarthy at The New Criterion:

.... However patently central it is to a good society, the judicial function remains largely irrelevant to the international order. For all the blather about our “international community,” it is an ersatz community, lying beyond our laws and democratic choices. Unlike dreamy modern internationalists, the Framers well understood that broad swaths of this “community” — enemies of the United States — would always pose threats, some existential, to the body politic.

Such threats are not legal problems. They do not principally involve Americans being deprived of their legal entitlements by their government — the cases and controversies judicial power was designed to resolve. They are clashes between the American national community and the outside world. They are the stuff of political power — diplomacy, force, and all the intermediate measures wielded by the political branches. The judicial power has no place because American courts are part and parcel of the American national community; they do not exist outside or above it.

In our system, rising to external threats from alien forces with no claim on the protections of American law would be the domain of the political branches. In times of crisis and war, it would be uniquely the province of an energetic executive. All the immense might the United States could muster for its self-preservation would be concentrated in one set of hands, able to act swiftly and decisively to quell enemies endlessly variant in size, strength, and method of attack....

(Thanks, Matthew.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 09/09/06 10:13:18 AM
Categorized as More Than Readworthy.