UPDATE II: Two Birds In Green

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Family, Ilana Mercer

As some readers already know, this scribe is owned by an Un-Cape Parrot (a genetic relative to the wild Cape Parrot). I’ve had the privilege of experiencing first-hand the intense brilliance of these precious Pois (mine is Poicephalus fuscicollis; the Cape Parrot is Poicephalus robustus). We rescued Oscar-Wood from a cage in a store, where he had languished for 4 years, plucking his feathers down to the pink skin beneath. Oscar-Wood still plucks: Once acquired—and it is only acquired by captive parrots—this neurotic habit, borne of depression and boredom, is hard to extinguish. This is the best the little guy has ever looked.

“Busy Eating. Can’t Talk.” With Oscar-Wood, Nov., 2013

“Kiss Away. This Walnut Needs All My Attention.” Puckering With The Precious Poi, Nov., 2013

UPDATE I: From the thread on Facebook:

Oscar-Wood is very smart. The hallmark of intelligence—one of them—is play and exploration. And a plan. Parrots always have a plan. It may not be long term (“time preference,” as Austrian thinkers would term it), but there’s a plan. The other night he decided to attempt to evict wine bottles from the wine rack, for the purpose of playing at nesting where wine is placed. The next morning he rose, and flew straight back to what he was doing before he was put to bed. You can understand why an animal like this constantly caged is a very sad one indeed. Parrots beat dogs many times in smarts. And crows, yes the common crow, is one of the most brilliant animals around, able to use one implement to manipulate another to retrieve treats from a tube.

UPDATE II: Favorite charities: Bob’s Macaw Rescue & Sanctuary & Zazu’s House Parrot Sanctuary.

Ordinary Iranians Deserve Relief

Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, Trade

Isreali Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a patriot. About that there can be no doubt. Unlike American pols, whose policies vis-a-vis the American people border on treason, Netanyahu generally acts in the interests of his countrymen. As the patriot he is, one expects Netanyahu to disapprove of the deal Western powers are hammering out with Iran.

“I told them that according to the information reaching Israel, the deal that appears to be in the offing is bad and dangerous,” said Netanyahu. “Not just for us but also for them. I suggested that they wait and give it serious consideration, and it’s good that that is indeed what was decided. We will do everything we can to convince the leaders not to reach a bad agreement.”

The truth, of course, is that the “deal” is not dangerous to the U.S.

Israel’s concerns notwithstanding, pursuing negotiations that ease sanctions on Iran are good for the U.S. and indubitably fair to the Iranian people. Detailed in “The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us” are the costs to Americans—as opposed to their overseers in Washington—of sanctions:

Not to be overlooked are the costs to Americans of sanction enforcement, avers Harmer. In addition to the opportunity costs—the missed business aforementioned—there are “direct costs.” The Office of Foreign Asset Control in the U.S. Treasury Department squanders around $1 billion a year in developing lists of “financial institutions that are subject to sanctions,” and then infringing on the rights of individuals and companies to freely exchange privately owned property.

“Indirect costs” are incurred in the course of cultivating a massive U.S. intelligent infrastructure—a veritable alphabet soup of agencies—upon which the Treasury draws in enforcing a regimen of sanctions.

So, too, are the “deterrent costs” borne by the American taxpayer who pays for patrolling the Persian Gulf, the Northern Arabian Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. …

The toll on ordinary Iranians is orders of magnitude greater. Especially pressing: “the disbursement to Iran in installments of up to about $50 billion of Iranian funds blocked in foreign accounts for years.”

Ultimately, trade, not democracy, is the best antidote to war with Iran. The more economically intertwined countries become, the less likely they are to go to war. More than boycotts, barter with Iran is bound to promote good will and reduce belligerence on both sides. As a general rule, state-enforced boycotts harm honest, hard-working Americans who use the economic means to earn their keep. They benefit servants of Uncle Sam—the political class and its media and think-tank hangers-on. For they deploy the political means to advance their ends and grow their sphere of influence. As libertarian economist Murray Rothbard once observed, these “are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth”—the economic means is honest and productive, the political means is dishonest and predatory.

Definitive Text On Democratic South Africa Reviewed @ Townhall.com

Conservatism, Democracy, Republicans, South-Africa

Why is Jack Kerwick’s review of “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” at Townhall.com, so extraordinary? Here’s why (excerpted from the book under review):

South Africa was just one more issue on which Republicans had slipped between the sheets with the fashionable left. Members of America’s delinquent duopoly stood against the gradualism of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, vis-à-vis South Africa. Pushing revolutionary radicalism on the Old South Africa was the goal not only in high diplomatic circles, but among most Republicans. With a few exceptions. As is documented in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot”:

“For advocating ‘constructive engagement’ with South Africa, members of his Republican Party issued a coruscating attack on Ronald Reagan. … Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr., in particular, stated: ‘For this moment, at least, President Reagan has become an irrelevancy to the ideals, heartfelt and spoken, of America.'”

AND, who other than the extraordinary Jack Kerwick could pull off such a review? Jack is not only brilliant; he actually cares—this deep thinker cares deeply about the fate of the imperiled minority of South Africa and about the implications for his country and countrymen. Writes Dr. Kerwick:

“… But it would be a grave mistake to think that Cannibal is only about South Africa. It is not. As its author describes it, and as its subtitle makes clear, it is a ‘labor of love’ to her homelands old and new. Mercer is determined to spare America the same fate that befell South Africa. Furthermore, it would be as equally egregious a mistake to think that Cannibal is only, or even primarily, about race. There are larger issues to which Mercer speaks, issues with which conservatives have grappled from at least the time that their ‘patron saint,’ Edmund Burke, first articulated them.

“Though Mercer insists that she is no conservative, there are similarities, striking similarities, between her and Burke. The latter made an impassioned defense of his 18th century England against the radicalism of the French Revolution that he feared would soon enough ravage his country. It was in response to these ideological excesses that conservatism first emerged as a distinctive tradition of thought. Mercer carries on this estimable tradition inasmuch as she seeks to defend her new country, America, against the ravenous radicalisms that threaten it.”

“The forces that imperiled France and England in Burke’s day are the same forces that consumed South Africa and that imperil America in our own. These forces boil down to a lust, an insatiable lust, for revolutionary change and the ideological abstractions that inspire it. …”

“… However, it isn’t just the usual suspects—leftists or Democrats—who have an ardent affection for radical change and abstract ideals. The GOP and ‘the conservative press’ have had more than their share of true believers as well.”

“It was, after all, ‘conservatives’—or, more accurately, neoconservatives—that most rigorously supported George W. Bush’s campaign to ‘fundamentally transform’ the Middle East into an oasis of ‘Democracy.’ Noting that abstract ideals like Democracy are not timeless principles written in ‘human nature’ but the hard-earned gains of a civilization that has been millennia in the making, Mercer was among those who argued mightily against this fool’s errand from the outset. Though she fell out of favor with some notable ‘conservative’ media personalities for doing so, time has vindicated her while indicting her critics.”

“Like Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, Ilana Mercer’s “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” is at once timeless and all so timely. …”

Read on. “The Future of the Conservative Movement” is on Townhall.com.

(“The Cannibal” is available from Amazon. More editorial reviews are here. Please Like “The Cannibal”—and further its cause—on Facebook.)

UPDATED: Some Things Are Unforgivable (No-Fault Forgiveness Folly)

Barack Obama, Christianity, Healthcare, Judaism & Jews, Justice

What is with Christians that they hunger to forgive evil, usually without any evidence of expiation?

It’s hard to tell what’s more obscene: The idea that one can apologize for the hubris and deceit that is Obama and his health care, or the actual need some have for an apology from an entity so evil that he would toy with the lives of millions as though they were insects and he God.

Some things are unforgivable.

For what it’s worth, here’s Hussein’s “apology” for the pox he has unleashed on the land:

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me. Obviously we didn’t do a good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law … And, you know, that’s something I regret. That’s something we’re gonna do everything we can to get fixed … We’re looking at a range of options.”

UPDATE (11/8): “No-Fault Forgiveness Can Be Fatal”:

[The] all-too familiar spasms of no-fault forgiveness …are more a distillation of the mass culture than a reflection of any real religious sensibility. If anything, they are a sign of people adrift in a moral twilight zone.
If punishment is a declaration of those values we wish to uphold, then pardoning [someone] before he has made amends and paid for his crime perverts and subverts those values. Redemption can be achieved only when the consequences of one’s actions are faced. …
In the Jewish perspective, justice always precedes and is a prerequisite for mercy. A Jew is not obliged to forgive a transgressor unless he has ceased his harmful actions, compensated the victim for the harm done, and asked forgiveness. Even then, he can but is not obligated to forgive. This is both ethically elegant and psychologically prudent. It upholds the notion of right and wrong and lends meaning and force to the process of asking for and extending forgiveness. And it doesn’t mandate the incongruous emotion of compassion for someone who has … committed other unforgivable crimes.

MORE.