Updated: Ilana In the Shower Sean Built

Aesthetics, Ancient History, Ilana Mercer, Israel

Here I am in the guest shower Sean built from scratch. (The link can be followed from the “Mercer Images” page.)
My choice of tiles was inspired by the ancient city of Caesarea in Israel, adjacent to the small village in which I grew up. Caesarea is a Roman city. It was built by Herod. Dusty blues, faded golds, luminescent whites—these are all colors one can find in the mosaics and marbles of this magnificent place.
You can read more about my inspiration here, and here. Or search the Internet for better visuals. The modern development is sheer luxury.
Click on the right-hand of the jpeg to enlarge.
This is Sean’s first tiling job (he thinks it’s his last, but I have news for him). It’s immaculate. (Is there anything this guy can’t achieve?!)
Have a Happy New Year.

Update #I: Due to the interest generated, here’s a wider angle on Sean’s handiwork.

Hillary Blabbers About Bhutto

Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Islam

“Hillary Clinton is demanding answers about the death of Benazir Bhutto.” She is also demanding that the fracas in Pakistan be internationalized—call in the UN, says she. And above all, put pressure on the already impotent President Pervez Musharraf to usher in democracy. Or hold “free and fair elections,” as she puts it. As though Musharraf alone is what stands between the people of Pakistan—who apparently yearn to breathe free—and democratic institutions and the rule of law.

The harridan Hillary differs very little from Bush: she announced her belief that America is obligated to shore-up civil society in Pakistan and address the “root causes” of the restive, ever-seething Muslim Street in that country. (To quote Clinton: “I’ve talked to President Musharraf about the necessity for us to raise the literacy rate, to reach out with healthcare and education that would help the Pakistani people to really concentrate on civil society.”) Can you say Nation Building?!

This is a meddler with paws stickier than Bush’s.

Above all, in her reaction to Bhutto’s assassination, Hillary has demonstrated that she is a deeply silly woman, having learned nothing from the adventure in Iraq. Forcing democracy down Iraqi gullets—now that worked out really well, didn’t? How about in the Palestinian Authority? At our insistence, democratic elections were held in the PA, and voila! The freedom loving Palestinians voted for Hamas, which the US then promptly boycotted. Egypt anybody? Think the Muslim Brotherhood, which would likely gain a majority if American idiots got the better of a recalcitrant Mubarak and forced him to democratize.

Be careful what you wish for in Pakistan, Hillary! They say about 50 percent of Pakistanis support the al Qaeda Islamist elements and the resurgent Taliban.

As for Bhutto whom the liberal media has hurried to canonize: No doubt, her death is tragic. But you have to admit that she was utterly reckless, bobbing up and down from sun roofs in unarmored, unprotected, rickety vehicles. Musharraf ought to have kept her under house arrest for her own good.

Nor was Bhutto such a saint; her niece certainly disputes her sainted status. Nor was she much of a “democrat”—for what it’s worth in that part of the world—during her time in office. Had she come to share power with Musharraf, she’d have supported an ongoing American presence in Pakistan. That might have also raised some of her countrymen’s hackles.

The Authentic Right Vs. The Neocons (Part 2)

Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy

Professor Gottfried and I continue the conversation we began last week. In The Authentic Right Vs. Neocons (Part 2),” the sequel to “The Authentic Right Vs. The Neocons (Part 1), professor Gottfried, once again, helps us understand how the American Right fell into the clutches of “minicon scribblers.”

I describe the “propositional nation” neoconservatives are dreaming up for us (the Left, naturally, loves the idea too): “No longer will communities comprise individuals bound by a shared language, literature, culture, faith, history, habits and heroes. Rather, what we’re being fashioned into is a disparate people, forced together by an abstract, highly manipulable, coercive, state-sanctioned ideology.”

And Paul elaborates on “The farce of democracy that we now have—which is a pluralistic society spinning into a multicultural one, run by meddlesome bureaucrats, inventive judges, and a multitude of social engineers—has nothing to do with serious self-government. It is a social experiment that is spinning out of control.”

Read on.

Update: In reply to the reader in the Comments Section: Paul is not anti-Semitic; he is anti-foreign aid to Israel—as well as to all her Arab enemies.

His position is similar to the one I expressed here:

“Those of us who want the U.S. to stay solvent – and out of the affairs of others – recognize that sovereign nation-states that resist, not enable, our imperial impulses, are the best hindrance to hegemonic overreach. Patriots for a sane U.S. foreign policy ought to encourage all America’s friends, Israel included, to push back and do what is in their national interest, not ours.”

I was asked to write a piece for the Paul Campaign encapsulating his position vis-à-vis Israel. I did weeks ago, but they have yet to publish it. I continue to receive many letters expressing the misconception our reader voices. I’m surprised the campaign has not made use of a useful op-ed that refuted the accusations very effectively.

Updated: Ron Wrong on Islam, Right on Foreign Policy

Elections 2008, Islam, libertarianism, Ron Paul

Does it follow that because Ron Paul is wrong about the threat of Islam, and about the cause of Islamic terrorism, that he is also wrong about foreign policy? Not at all.
I cannot stress enough that I depart from Rep. Paul on quite a few issues, chief of which is the cause of Islamic terrorism. True, our foreign policy doesn’t help matters.
Still, irrespective of where one’s sympathies lie; regardless of how one views the cause of Muslim insurrections the world over, one must surely recognize that—for whatever reason—Muslims are at the center of practically every bloody conflict in the world today.
Is it possible that Muslims are right and that the “infidels” of Lebanon, Israel, India, Russia, Sudan, Indonesia, The Ivory Coast, Kenya and Nigeria all deserve to be visited by Islamic violence? Not if you live on terra firma.
Scholars such as Efraim and Inari Karsh, for example, have shown that “Middle Eastern history is essentially the culmination of long-standing indigenous trends, passions, and patterns of behavior rather than an externally imposed dictate.”
It’s a great shame Paul has adopted the received wisdom of the far-left, according to which the Arabs were (and remain) hapless and helpless victims of the West.
Strategically, moreover, it’s unwise for a presidential candidate to keep sounding as though he blames America first. That gets people’s backs up and is not conducive to his sensible message with respect to foreign policy.

Update: New participants on the blog are always welcome. However, I am getting tired of the odd individual who stumbles on my blog and website, and post facetious, rude csious comments withough familiarizing himself with hbut can we ask politely that before you post about Islam and Dr. Paul’s perspective, that you familiarize yourself with your host’s perspective first. I think you will find a far more comprehensive analysis of what is at stake vis-à-vis the West and Islam here than in Dr. Paul’s writings.

So if our foreign policy is just the minor player what is the major cause of Islamic “terrorism”. Our freedoms? I am interested…