UPDATE II: Japan Won’t Be Needing Sean Penn

Asia, Crime, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Multiculturalism, Technology, Uncategorized

The rude Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Ichiro Fujisaki, the Japanese ambassador to the united states, reminded me of the time the regal (Akio) Toyoda went up against the proverbial Torquemada, his tormentors on the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. (Here) No words of condolence did Blitzer offer to the Japanese gentleman for the calamity his country and people have endured. Instead, Wolf hammered Fujisaki about the possibility of “another Chernobyl,” a meltdown, at one of the Fukushima’s Daiichi nuclear power reactors.

The March 11, magnitude 8.9 earthquake had damaged the Fukushima 1 power station. BBC reports more reliably and with greater detail that a big explosion on Saturday had caused “the cooling system to fail at the No 3 reactor and the fuel rods inside had been exposed.” (HERE) Wolf finally explained that the “tsunami had put that whole power plant basically under water, and killed its coolant capabilities.” (Transcripts) Fujisaki reiterated that, “We do not see evidence of a meltdown at this time,” and that his government had already evacuated the people, First from a three kilometer radius, then 10, and finally 20 kilometers radius. “We are taking as most cautious measures and we’re trying to evacuate people so that accident will not really affect people,” Fujisaki explained.

CNN further reported, via the Kyoto News Agency (the official Japanese news agency), that “9,500 people are unaccounted for. We cannot confirm that they are all deaths but know for a fact that 9,500 are missing.” A far smaller, magnitude 7.0. seismic event in Haiti, which CNN keeps invoking, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the place is still in ruins, despite the rescue efforts of Hollywood actor Sean Penn. (And it’s not just the building codes, as our media’s analysis would have it.) Blitzer wanted to know if Japan could cope with its reactors without the US! The Chutzpah! How many working reactors does the US have?

Fujisaki assured him with the utmost politeness that “we are now coping with this issue ourselves. But, of course, there could be some consultation with other countries. But for the moment, because it’s just happening now, we are doing — working on ourselves.”

Wolf seemed shocked that a tremor and attendant tsunami that generated 30- to 50 foot tall walls of water that crashed onto Japan’s north-east coast had left some 6 million households without electricity. The ambassador assured Wolf that the number was down to 2.5 million. If that is correct, it is remarkable. Wolf and CNN hardly breathed a word about the biggest windstorm to have hit Washington and Oregon in decades. In 2006, “at least a million residents in the Pacific Northwest were stranded without power for days, in primitive conditions, befitting a Third World country.” Is Wolf unaware that, with Katrina, the US had established the gold standard for government ineptitude in a disaster? We in the Pacific North West are due for what Japan has just endured. We call it “The Big One.” The Japanese have responded calmly. I’d feel far safer in a disaster if at the helm were people who were driven by national and personal pride to put their best foot forward, and to stay stoical and soldier on.

Japan will be okay. It’s a highly civilized, advanced society.

When Wolf repeated, incredulously, “No looting? No looting; are you sure?”, one of CNN’s foreign correspondents, a Japanese woman (you guessed, her story is nowhere to be found on CNN’s website), proudly recounted how crime-free Japan is; how people pull together, yet are propelled forward by individual agency and initiative; how honest the average individual is; how, if you lose your wallet, you’ll likely find it at the nearest police station.

My husband, who traveled there recently, found the Japanese he collaborated with remarkably polite, refined, and respectful of experience and skill (whereas here in the US we idolize the average hubristic Millennial).

Japan is not a very “diverse” society, you know. Actually, it’s a homogeneous country. And as Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam discovered, but tried his best not to divulge, “In diverse communities, people ‘hunker down’: they withdraw, have fewer ‘friends and confidants,’ distrust their neighbors regardless of the color of their skin, expect the worst from local leaders, volunteer and carpool less, give less to charity, and ‘agitate for social reform more,’ with little hope of success. They also huddle in front of the television. Activism alternates with escapism, unhappiness with ennui.” …

UPDATE I: I have just posted this comment on Facebook, where the blog post seems to have struck a chord: “You all seem to have picked up on the incredible chauvinism with which our elites treat The Other—unless this Other is an illegal immigrant criminal, or some knuckles-dragging atavist. Do you think this has to do with the comfort those who have little awareness of their own motivation derive from patronizing lesser individuals? Underachievers make us feel good about ourselves. The latter are easier to ‘help.'”

UPDATE II: With respect to “individual agency” and the attempt to do your best—values Japanese society upholds— Sean related the following: exiting the train station that takes you from Tokyo airport to the down down area, he flagged a taxicab. The driver could not speak a word of English, which makes him not that different from the cabdrivers you hail on American soil. With two exceptions: the first being that the driver was in his own, Japanese-speaking country. The second was the way he proceeded. This gentleman overcame the language barrier thus: Unable to decipher the note my husband had handed him in English as to his destination, Sean’s Japanese cabby existed his vehicle, leaving Sean in it ALONE, and stopped a near by policeman. The latter explained to the cabby where the client (Sean) was headed. A confident cabby got into the cab he had abandoned to look for a cop, and drove my husband to his destination. This kind of experience was repeated throughout his trip: agency, efficiency, occupational pride, politeness.

In a word: a traditional society, the kind this American historian believes thwarts progress.

UPDATED: Liberty Vs. Libertinism

Classical Liberalism, Founding Fathers, Hebrew Testament, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Morality, Political Philosophy

Is there a name for the error of viewing history through the prism of contemporary moral standards (or sub-standards)? I had hoped that John Stossel would prod his guest, the progressive historian Thaddeus Russell, with his Socratic method of questioning, to tell us why it is that he, Russell, conflates libertinisim with liberty.

Russel’s banal history-from-below has it that we owe our freedoms less to the Founders’ political philosophy, than to the “saloons and speakeasies, brothels and gambling halls, to antiheroes such as drunken workers who created the weekend; prostitutes who set the precedent for women’s liberation, madams who owned land and used guns, and provided cutting-edge of fashion, … criminals who pioneered racial integration, unassimilated immigrants who gave us birth control, and brazen homosexuals who broke open America’s sexual culture.” (HERE.)

Yes, to listen to this progressive historian, the unions, and not the Hebrews, “created” the Sabbath. Actually, the Founders had quite the affinity for the Hebrew Bible—some of them even spoke Hebrew. (Horrors, that would have required a lot of that Puritanical mindset and discipline Russell bashed as regressive on the Stossel segment—as Hebrew is HARD.) They would not have needed “drunken workers” to teach them about the spiritual and ethical significance of some sort of Sabbath.

Walter Block makes clear in “Libertarianism And Libertinism,” that “as a political philosophy, libertarianism says nothing about culture, mores, morality, or ethics. To repeat: It asks only one question, and gives only one answer. It asks, ‘Does the act necessarily involve initiatory invasive violence?’ Libertarianism doesn’t have a position toward “pimping, prostituting, drugging, and other such degenerate behavior,” writes Block.

What then is the precise relationship between the libertarian, qua libertarian, and the libertine? It is simply this. The libertarian is someone who thinks that the libertine should not be incarcerated. He may bitterly oppose libertinism, he can speak out against it, he can organize boycotts to reduce the incidence of such acts. There is only one thing he cannot do, and still remain a libertarian: He cannot advocate, or participate in, the use of force against these people. Why? Because whatever one thinks of their actions, they do not initiate physical force.

Walter attests that he came to regret his earlier “enthusiasm about the virtues of these callings.” “Marriage, children, the passage of two decades, and not a little reflection,” he writes endearingly, “have dramatically changed my views on some of the troublesome issues addressed in this book. My present view with regard to ‘social and sexual perversions’ is that while none should be prohibited by law, I counsel strongly against engaging in any of them.”

Myself, I’m not so much a social conservative as my friend Prof. Block is. Rather, I believe in the paramountcy of privacy. If “civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy,” in Rand’s magnificent words, then sexual exhibitionism – homosexual or heterosexual – is anathema. The heroic and creative inner struggle is what brings out the best in man. My heroes are in the Greek tradition: Silent, stoic, principled yet private. Which means the Founders, and not Russell’s philanderers.

On the Fox Business website, Stossel promised that Russell would tell him “why his beloved founders actually wanted to keep the people docile and timid,” and why “Americans owe really overdue thanks to the libertines – the prostitutes, drunkards, and musicians.” Russel failed to deliver.

It is hardly surprising, or cutting edge history, as Russell would have you believe, that the American Founding Fathers did not favor prostitution, homosexuality, and infidelity. But it is worse than stupid for this progressive historian to cast these men, with their traditional mores, as enemies of progress. It demonstrates why we are losing liberty: Most people don’t even know to what they owe the peace, plenty and prosperity this country was blessed with and now risks losing.

UPDATE (MARCH 12): Robert Glisson, as penance for wasting your money on this progressive’s piss-poor output, you will have to buy a few copies of my new book for handing out (it’s due out on May 10).

You Can Lead a Filly to Water But …

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Sarah Palin, War

On Freedom Watch tonight, Judge Napolitano tried his best to encourage Sarah Palin to gracefully bow out of her interventionist foreign affairs stand, and concede that Libya is best left to the Libyans. After all, the governor had just been discussing the dire need to scale back government activities and reach. Nevertheless, eight minutes or so into the conversation, Palin said “yes” to the question, “Do we have any business inserting ourselves into yet a third Muslim country’s’ affairs.” (HERE)

You can lead a filly to water but you can’t make her drink (or is it think?).

“Arab nations,” admits Patrick Buchanan, “have never produced freedom, prosperity or progress on a large scale.. They will not [succeed now]. The great Arab revolution will likely fail. And when it does, those other passions coursing through the region will rise to dominance. And what are they but ethnonationalism, tribalism and Islamic fundamentalism?” (HERE)

Perhaps if the Judge had put it Pat’s way, Sarah might have reconsidered urging more sacrifices to Moloch.

Not A Dime for NPR From This Little Piggy

Constitution, Ilana On Radio & TV, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Regulation, Taxation, The State

The following is from my new, WND.COM column, “Not a Dime From NPR From This Little Piggy”:

“A classmate of mine, an Israeli Arab, taught me a phrase I will paraphrase here, as it was indelicate in the original: There is nothing wrong with carving a little something for yourself out of the hind end of a pig. Translated: If you hold the person you’re scheming on robbing in contempt — by all means, rob him blind. (My friend was the recipient of a scholarship courtesy of the Israeli taxpayer whom he despised — you can see where our disagreement lay.)

For today’s purposes, the justified robber is the Public Broadcaster in all its offshoots — NPR (National Public Radio), PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), and, in my case, ‘KCTS 9 Connects,’ of Washington State. The hind end belongs to the American taxpayer. The propagandists hate their meal ticket, but feed off its flesh all the same.

To his credit, the recently fired Ron Schiller, President of the NPR Foundation and Senior VP for Development at NPR, has agreed with fiscal conservatives on the need to eliminate federal funding for his organization, which gets $90 million annually off the backs of some “seriously racist, racist” taxpayers.” (Schiller’s words.) Scrap that: doing away with taxpayer subsidies for public broadcasting was a point of agreement between this NPR functionary and a few fictitious Muslim philanthropists.

Members of the so-called Muslim Education Action Center Trust had lured Schiller to lunch. Amir Malik and Ibrahim Kasaam were really associates of gonzo journalist James O’Keefe, who played the pimp in the ACORN undercover operation. The luncheon was a trap. The bait: breaking bread with two blokes who boasted about their ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. … Boy, does O’Keefe know how to whet appetites at NPR!” ….

The complete column is “Not a Dime From NPR From This Little Piggy,” now on WND.COM.

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