Category Archives: Morality

Send Us Your Con Men and Women

Christianity, Europe, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Morality

What do you know, a day after The Decider (Bush’s nickname for himself) praised millions of illegal immigrants for heroically forging documents and lying to employers about their status in the country, The American Enterprise Institute has opened its arms to a prominent Dutch counterfeiter, and is, evidently, sponsoring her immigration to the United States.

She’s the Somali-born Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom I’ve mentioned—favorably—before. Ali’s an outspoken and brave critic of Islam. She assisted Theo van Gogh, the slain Dutch filmmaker, in exposing the enslavement of women in Muslim countries. It goes without saying that followers of the religion of peace want to kill her.

Little did I know that she is liberal only with respect to views she endorses. According to Lawrence Auster, Ali has sought to ban conservative, Christian, and immigration restrictionist parties in Europe. Writes Auster:

She was also among the 12 signers of a leftist anti-Islam manifesto in March 2006 that said, ‘It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.’ The clear implication is that Christian ‘theocrats’—which by contemporary standards means anyone who actually believes in Christianity—are Ali’s enemy as much as jihadists are.

Ali, moreover, lied on her Dutch asylum application. Duly, after being a Dutch citizen for 14 years, and a member of that parliament, to boot, immigration minister Rita Verdonk has revoked her citizenship.

I’m not saying I support this ruling. The details are sketchy, and Ali claims to have “admitted lying to win asylum in the Netherlands when she was vetted as a candidate for parliament in 2002.” What makes me even more suspicious is that “a Dutch court ruled that she must leave her home in The Hague because neighbours felt she was a security risk.” That’s preposterous! What right has the court to evict her from her home because thugs have threatened her life? Let the court banish the thugs from the country!

I’d say that Ali is a candidate for asylum in the United States, although I’m not sure she’d be better protected here than in Europe. What I question is her candidacy for a fellowship with an American think tank.

Wait a sec, what am I thinking? Having no coherent political philosophy or lacking veracity—even talent—are not always impediments to being hired by such places. For example, Rachel Marsden, a convicted Canadian stalker, worked for Paul Weyrich’s D.C. think tank, the Free Congress Foundation, which is dedicated to fighting America’s “long slide into cultural and moral decay.” I’m sure there are other examples—of lack of talent, at least, if not of out-and-out wrongdoing.

* Image courtesy Point Of Inquiry.

Hang the Hangmen

Britain, History, Islam, Justice, Morality, Religion, The West

With reference to Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan who narrowly averted death for apostasy: I pointed out that the “Afghani judiciary is criminal, not—conservative,” as it had been characterized in our multicultural media. By natural law standards, to kill someone for his beliefs is a crime.

Mark Steyn dredges a delightful anecdote from a time when Englishmen were real men and knew what was naturally just. A doff of the hat to George Reisman for sending along this relic from a proud past:

“In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of `suttee’ – the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: `You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.'”

Updated: Manners As Virtue

Ethics, Etiquette, Media, Morality, Pop-Culture

George Will once wrote that “manners are the practice of a virtue. The virtue is called civility, a word related—as a foundation is related to a house—to the word civilization.”

Will’s column, “Manners and virtue in a modern world, suggests that the ability to be courteous, kind, and mindful of etiquette in dealing with others is a reflection of something far more meaningful: one’s mettle.

Maybe this is why, other than hate mail, I respond to all letters I receive—to each and every one. Due to time constraints, my replies are laconic. But if someone bothers to read and comment on what I have to say, then it’s only decent to acknowledge the gesture. I haven’t always been firm in this resolve, but I try my best. If colleagues write, I always reply, whether I like them and their stuff or not.

Most pundits, however, don’t reply to their mail. That smacks of hubris and pride, almost always unwarranted. The younger sorts are plain punks. Since most are so uninspiring and mediocre, one wonders what they’re playing at, and why they’re not more modest.

Golda Meir’s zinger, “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great,” is a relic from a time when false humility was at least still practiced. We’ll have to settle for something less clever. Can’t be bothered to answer your mail? “Don’t be so arrogant, you suck.”

P.S. The very popular and busy Dr. Daniel Pipes is polite. If you write to him, he’ll find the time to answer your questions. If I think of anyone else who rates a mention, I’ll update the post.

P.P.S. Pipes, ever the gentleman, sent this note: “What a nice refuge from the usual vulgarity! I completely agree with you that correspondents deserve a reply, even if a short one. And the quote from Golda Meir is beautifully apt.”

Update: I promised above to remind myself, as a “refuge from the usual vulgarity,” to use Dr. Pipes’s words, of the fine—and refined—individuals I do encounter along the way. Television ensures that the brainless, loud, airheads, whose intellectual output is as significant as a foghorn’s, loom large. They should not. So here’s a low-key shout-out to the brilliant and nice people I’ve had the pleasure to e-meet since I penned this post: Robert Spencer, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades),” Andrew Bostom, author of the Legacy of Jihad, and historian Bat Y’eor of the Eurabia fame. And yes, on the entertainment side, the irrepressible Michael Musto of the Village Voice. Nice people all.

On Flakes And Fetuses

Bush, Constitution, Ethics, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Morality, The Courts

It’s on the White House’s website for the world to witness: “The President Discusses Embryo Adoption at a gathering (or coven, rather) that honored representatives of the “Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Agency.
But let the POTUS explain: “I have just met with 21 remarkable families … The families here today have either adopted or given up for adoption frozen embryos that remained after fertility treatments. Rather than discard these embryos created during in vitro fertilization, or turn them over for research that destroys them, these families have chosen a life-affirming alternative. Twenty-one children here today found a chance for life with loving parents.”
The Adopt an Embryo spectacle was the White House’s display of displeasure at a vote in the House to ease restrictions on federal financing for embryonic stem cell research. These undifferentiated embryonic cells can grow into any kind of cell —heart, brain, etc., —hence their therapeutic potential. The proposed bill would allow under federal auspices the use of stem cells derived from “unadopted” embryos. Explained the president: “Research on stem cells derived from human embryos may offer great promise, but the way those cells are derived today destroys the embryo.”
Would that the ferment over fetuses —and “the culture of life’ —extended to the many, fully formed, innocent human beings dying daily in Iraq. (I can’t imagine why the land of chaos and carnage comes to mind as a synonym for the administration’s contempt for life.)
The bill is historic, if only because it’ll occasion the president’s first ever veto. Finally a spending bill he can’t get behind. But don’t rejoice; it’s premature. The president is pushing a similar, $79-million bill, one that’ll be spent on harvesting the less versatile umbilical cord stem cells.
As is the case with a Congress and Executive that operate outside the Constitution (the judiciary is a partner in this knavish confederacy), the debate is framed deceptively. Over to the hysterical Carolyn B. Maloney, a New-York Democrat: “How many more lives must be ended or ravaged? How much more unimaginable suffering must be endured until government gives researchers the wherewithal to simply do their jobs?”
Silly me, I guess government-giving-researchers-the-wherewithal-to-do-their-jobs was what the Founders had in mind when they bequeathed a central government of delegated and enumerated powers. Intellectual property laws are the only constitutional means at Congress’s disposal with which to “promote the Progress of Science. (About their merit Thomas Jefferson, himself an inventor, was unconvinced). Research and development (R&D) spending is nowhere among Congress’s constitutional legislative powers.
(A word about the Constitution is in order here, considering the tendentious criticism it receives from libertarians: to the extent the Constitution is compatible with the natural law, it’s good; to the extent it isn’t, it’s not good. Murray Rothbard’s preference for the Articles of Confederation, usurped in favor of the Constitution at the Philadelphia convention, is well taken. Still, the case for liberty is better made with reference to the American Revolutionaries, the followers of John Locke, than with reference to tribal Africans (who’ve always existed in a murderous state of nature), or Medieval, Viking-Age, Icelandic people. Why adopt a stark, un-American —and in that sense, ahistoric —philosophical framework? I thought that was the neoconservatives’ bailiwick.)
In any case, there is no warrant in the Constitution for most of what the Federal Frankenstein does. Social Security, (“Today’s senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much “free stuff as the political system will permit them to extract, said Justice Janice Rogers Brown), civil rights, predicated as they are on grotesque violations of property rights, Medicare, Medicaid, elaborate public works sprung from the general welfare and Interstate Commerce Clauses —you name it, it’s likely unconstitutional.
Implied, moreover, in Maloney’s petit mal is that if the House didn’t mulct taxpayers of R&D money, there’d be no R&D. Not according to the United States Department of Health & Human Services:
“Based on 2002 data, one study reports that private sector research and development in stem cells was being conducted by approximately 1000 scientists in over 30 firms. Aggregate spending was estimated at $208 million. Geron Corporation alone reported that it spent more than $70 million on stem cell research by September 2003. In the Stem Cell Business News Guide to Stem Cell Companies (Feb 2003), 61 U.S. and international companies are listed as pursuing some form of research or therapeutic product development involving stem cells.
What do you know? The private sector has already been beavering away, for some time now, exploring the promise —or lack thereof —of stem cells.