A Diet Of D’Souza’s Rah-Rah

Democrats, Education, History, Neoconservatism, Republicans

How much do Republicans love freedom? Not very much. Or at least as much as Democrats, which is not at all. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

A Florida state senator plans to introduce a bill that would make Dinesh D’Souza’s docudrama, America, required viewing for most teenagers in the state, The Hollywood Reporter learned on Friday.
Republican Alan Hays said he’ll introduce in November his one-page bill that simply states that students in the 1,700 Florida public high schools and middle schools are to be shown the film unless their parents object.

In a free market in education, politicians and their preferred propaganda would have no sway on curricula. In case my statement is ambiguous, yes, this means no educational vouchers and charter schools. These are a species of the publicly funded system.

The centralization of education has allowed public “intellectuals” and “experts” to mold and manacle young minds. Start a conversation with almost anyone on the street. Provided he speaks English, you’ll hear within a whisker the same opinions repeated on capitalism (plain evil or a necessary evil), the environment (near destruction) and racism (rife). This uniformity of opinion is almost scarier than its uninformed nature. (From “NEEDED: A LEAVE THE CHILDREN BEHIND ACT!”)

As to substance of “America: Imagine a World Without Her,” read “D’Souza’s America” by Jack Kerwick. Added comments later.

UPDATED: Masada on Mount Sinjar (ISIS Crisis Continued)

Ancient History, Europe, History, Iraq, Israel, Jihad, Media, States' Rights

“Masada on Mount Sinjar” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Purportedly, forty thousand refugees, among them 25,000 children, were said to be stranded on the parched terrains of the Sinjar, in scorching heat, without sustenance. That is until Barack Obama broke up the gathering. Overnight. “That’s enough, Yazidis. Go home, now. The crisis is over.” Yes, the president and his minions have pronounced the catastrophe on the Sinjar Mountains over. However, just because the Obama machine declares it so, does not make it so. I would point BHO believers to Channel 4 veteran reporter Jonathan Rugman, who questions—even mocks—the administration’s rapid, fact-finding methodology:

Crisis, what crisis? The Americans have ruled out a military airlift of Yazidis stranded on Mount Sinjar on the grounds that the situation is not as bad as previously thought. … Are the Americans saying that the refugees are not spread out any more but have either been shepherded or moved into a concentrated area where they can be counted?

Let us, then, stick with Mr. Rugman’s findings, shall we? As the courageous correspondent has discovered, the Kurd-coordinated airdrops are executed by only four helicopters (one has since crashed), allotted by Baghdad. Emergency supplies are available in abundance at various nodal points; not so the means to deliver them. Priorities set by the central government do not include “rescuing a little known Yazidi minority in Kurdistan, a region which wants to break away from Iraq and become its own country.”

The Kurds assisting those marooned on the mountains would like to secede from the morass that is Iraq. Alas, the master puppeteers in Washington have hitherto been wedded to a unified (at the point of a gun) Iraq, dominated by a strong (sectarian and corrupt) central authority. This White House, and the one before it, fetishizes Iraqi national unity. It believes that to succeed, Iraqis should be like Americans, forever imprisoned in an arranged, unhappy political marriage. …

… Read the complete column. “Masada on Mount Sinjar” is now on WND.

UPDATE (8/15): If there is one constant you can trust it is that he lies. They all lie. “Break it up, Yazidis. Go home, now. The crisis is over,” Obama announced to the world, Thursday. I guess the president was attempting to will a new reality with words. The American media bought it and scattered. I was quite comfortable that “Masada on Mount Sinjar” was closer to the truth than Obama’s agitprop, even though it was submitted before his “Yazidis disperse” injunction.

Indeed, the ISIS crisis continues. Thirty miles from Sinjar, on Friday afternoon, reports BBCNews, “Militants in northern Iraq … massacred at least 80 men from the Yazidi faith in a village and abducted women and children.”

MORE.

UPDATED: Had Robin Williams Been Hopelessly Boxed In? (My Bad)

Celebrity, Film, Hollywood, Human Accomplishment

To be sure, Robin Williams was an enormous talent. This is reflected in the myriad interviews and standup routines playing on TV since his suicide. Although I’ve always enjoyed these impromptu exchanges when I caught them—I’m familiar only with the handful of dramas and thrillers in which Williams starred. And superbly so. As someone who despises silly slapstick like “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “The Birdcage,” I have to wonder why a talent like Williams was typecast as the eternal clown. Perhaps this deadening dead-end made him so very sad.

The Williams of “One Hour Photo” was hypnotic in the depth of his portrayal of a lonely misfit’s unraveling. His role in “Insomnia” was less memorable, but nevertheless chilling, as it ought to have been. Roger Ebert panned “The World According to Garp,” but I loved Williams in it. I saw “The Night Listener,” too.

That’s as far as the Robin Williams oeuvre available to me goes. Sad that. Had Robin Williams of blessed memory been hopelessly boxed in? I suspect so.

Williams seemed a gentle soul. He had a sad, intelligent, twinkle in the eyes, and he always looked as if he was about to start bawling, for real.

UPDATE (8/16): My Bad. “Awakenings”: A doff of the hat to my young friend Kerry Crowel, who reminded me that “‘Awakenings’ starred Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro in a really heavy drama about a doctor caring for patients that have awoken from long comas, or something like that. I remember the critics loving it.” I loved it too. I saw it. Both actors were brilliant.

UPDATED: Way To Go, Bros (Clarification)

Barack Obama, Criminal Injustice, Race

The black community’s resistance to a police force with a militarized mindset and arms to match is to be commended. Were Michael Brown a white boy slain for no reason—his “community” of submissives would be slobbering on TV, rather than protesting on the streets. Go bros. (Yes, I know my ghetto is contrived.)

The brown Brown was “an unarmed black teenager, … killed by a police officer in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri.” According to Vox.com,

Brown was shot multiple times and killed by a Ferguson police officer in the early afternoon of Saturday, August 9, outside an apartment complex. Brown was unarmed. All shell casings found at the scene were from the police officer’s gun.

Barack Obama is the annoyance in this sad incident, insisting on meddling, as he did for Trayvon Martin.

UPDATE (8/13): It appears from the Facebook thread that I had not made myself clear: The post is in praise of the spirit of the protest, but certainly not of any destruction of private property.