I had an exchange online with an old friend and a few people he knows. I am posting the text of it, anonymized with a couple minor edits, because the debate and what happened after is such a great snapshot of the left.
Old Friend:
Westerners are not taught that the hoarding of wealth is an act [...]
While I have a certain amount of sympathy for people who get tear gassed (I know from personal experience what it’s like), I can’t help but note a certain irony.
These are not libertarians demanding to be left alone. These are people demanding bigger, stronger government. They failed to understand the longstanding conservative warning that “a [...]
Apparently, before he was sent to a watery grave, Osama bin Laden complained that Al Qaeda had an image problem: it didn’t appear religious enough. So, Bin Laden proposed renaming Al Qaeda to “Restoration of the Caliphate Group.”
This is buried in the middle of an AP piece but it is, I think, quite significant. The [...]
There has ben a lot of discussion by the academic left about whether the killing of Osama Bin Laden was justified. The people questioning the OBL killing don’t seem to question that a nation has a right to defend itself from a direct attack, but are raising the question of whether that is applicable here.
I’m [...]
The media have long ignored the epic wrongness of Joe Biden, probably because they agree with him and he sounds authoritative. His latest blunder was saying that Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak wasn’t a dictator.
It was reported matter-of-factly here and there without fanfare. But ask yourself this: what if Sarah Palin said that? We’d be hearing [...]
The left has utterly lost its grounding in reality. They seem to be suffering from a kind of mass psychosis in accusing conservatives of being in any way responsible for the mass shooting in Arizona. The guy seems to be stone-cold crazy. Nothing more, nothing less. To the extent that he appears to have any [...]
Jonathan Chait, referencing a Washington Post article, is accusing conservatives of epistemic closure in their treatment of Obama’s comments on American Exceptionalism. Please.
First of all, the description of of American Exceptionalism as “the idea that the United States is inherently superior to the world’s other nations” is wrong. It would better be described as “the [...]
I just read Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address for the first time. Despite having studied history, I had never actually read it. I think I have a good idea why it was omitted from the curriculum: it’s totally inconvenient to the left’s world view. Lincoln lays out an ingenious case for why the Founders are not, [...]
Well wouldn’t you know it. The first civilian trial a Gitmo detainee ended disastrously for the Justice Department. Ahmed Ghailani was acquitted on 280 or so counts. The only conviction was on a conspiracy charge.
So despite all the promises from Obama, Holder and the left that there would be no problem with civilian trials, there [...]
Oklahoma voters approved an amendment to their constitution that bans the use of Sharia law (as well as international law) in its state courts. A federal judge promptly put issued a temporary restraining order. I find the left’s reaction to it informative.
Politico has a nice concentrated dose of leftwing thought by people who are supposed [...]
So, it seems there’s an artist who as a very political piece that involves Jesus having sex. A lot of people are understandably offended. It’s worth noting, however, that they are expressing their annoyance without riots, deaths and violence throughout Christendom. The artist has not gone into hiding. He is not under 24 armed guard. [...]
I’m always amused when the left falsely accuses conservatives of engaging in the very behavior that the left actually indulges in. A nice example was in today’s (still bankrupt) Inquirer.
At the lefty wanna-be-Glenn-Beck rally, one Peggy Brown gave us this piece of analysis:
“Fox News, that’s about as bad as you can get” and…conservative personalities Beck, [...]
There’s a video that has to be seen to believed. It’s posted on National Review at the moment. I think it’s supposed to be a humorous (maybe) attempt by some left wing environmentalists to get people to commit to reducing their carbon footprint. It involves, though, killing people who don’t sign on (including school kids). [...]
You may recall that a few months ago a Malaysian court ruled that Christians had the right to use the word “Allah” in their publications. The response, predictably, was outrage and violence by Muslims. Well it turns out that the Ground Zero mosque imam, Faisal Rauf, had something to say about this.
I’m sure you’re thinking [...]
The Inquirer did a charming hit job on its editorial page today. I’ll give them a little credit for creativity since this one is a visual trick. Here’s a screenshot and a link to the editorial.
That’s a picture of Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett next to a headline that says “Enabling prostitution”. The editorial is [...]
You know. The one Obama likes so much.
Would it be okay for the Sons of Confederate America to build a facility next to where Martin Luther King was assassinated?
Would it be okay for the Mormons to build a church near where Matthew Shepherd was murdered?
Would it be okay for the Klan to sponsor the upkeep [...]
Did you ever get the feeling the legacy media coordinates the coverage (and non-coverage)? Did you ever sense they weren’t very neutral but were actively taking sides? Did you ever feel like they were making things up that were patently untrue? Or that they were attacking certain people for having politically incorrect views?
Well, you were [...]
The Inquirer had a piece today that was a pretty obvious attempt to paint the Tea Parties as being similar to neo-nazis: The Tea Partiers are against illegal immigration. There is a neo-nazi group patrolling the border region (like the Minutemen). So, the Tea Partiers must actually be nazis or at least nazi sympathizers. The [...]
I had a letter to the editor published in the Inquirer in response to their anti-McDonald editorial. It’s not the most exciting piece of writing but it works.
When Rep. Kanjorski (D-PA) made his recent comments about how a program he was supporting wasn’t for “minorities” or “defectives”, my reaction was “queue the silence”. Sure enough, there’s been a whole lot of nothing made of it.
So, I’m just going to make a simple observation. Isn’t it amazing how you can say some remarkably [...]