| Thursday,
February 9, 2006 I'll be away for a couple of days, although
I'll be able to check in in the evenings.
Tried to get a Viewsonic 19" flat panel at Fry's yesterday. Took them a
long time to find it although it was advertised, then the checkout clerk
could not find any rebate, then she couldn't find a supervisor, and I said
to hell with it.
Is Fry's into bait and switch? They sure advertised something that I
couldn't buy. I wanted the darned thing for a trip.
=============
I guess one gets the ratings by how many link to your site? But in my
case it's generally linking to either View or Mail, not the main page;
which, I suspect, costs me in the Google "ratings". Perhaps it is time to
reorganize but I am not sure how to do that. Of course I am not all that
sure I need the ratings to begin with...
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Liberalism and Truth
Liberalism is a
philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide. By
liberalism I specifically include the “diversity” and political correctness
memes that liberalism has sprouted. One wonders just how many reminders we
need of this basic truth, and just when those not entirely enthralled with
these imbecilities will wake up and do something about it?
And perhaps we never
will recover. It is difficult to see how England can recover, given how far
gone is that land of hope and glory. Mark Steyn, on the back page essay in
the February 15 edition of National Review, gives two examples. One is
merely upsetting. The other shows we are well past the beginning of the end.
The upsetting
example is the trial of Finsbury Park Mosque Imam Hanza, known to his
detractors as “Hooky Hanza” because he lost his hands in an unfortunate
accident that seems to have involved incendiary devices, on nine counts of
soliciting to murder. Hanza’s defense, presented by the eminent barrister
Edward Fitzgerald, QC, is that Hanza is merely following the Koran. “It is
said he was preaching murder, but he was actually preaching from the Koran
itself.” If that’s the best Fitzgerald can do for the defense, it’s
astonishing that he took the case. What’s upsetting is that apparently he
believes it will work: so far are we into diversity now that preaching
murder, provided only that the preaching is true to the Koran, is no crime.
I would take it as
evidence that being a Muslim makes one a dangerous and suspicious character,
someone to be put under surveillance since the presumption is that a good
Muslim believes that there is no peace with the House of War, only truce,
and a good Muslim must be committed to jihad: to eternal war for the Faith
against the infidels. If those propositions are not true, then Sheik Hamza
has no defense at all. You can’t have it both ways, since he certainly was
preaching jihad. He says he was advocating “fighting”, not murder. His
barrister tells the court why he was advocating “fighting” for Islam. It is
nowhere explained why fighting with weapons is not murder.
But that is merely
irritating, not an unmistakable sign of a civilization in an unrecoverable
attitude.
The more startling
case is also in trial at the Old Bailey, where Nick Griffin, leader of, as
Steyn put it, the “highly non-multicultural British National Party,” is on
trial for “using words or behavior likely to stir up racial hatred.” A
speech crime: but the hooker is that the jury has been instructed that it is
not to consider the truth of Griffin’s remarks. The criminality of the
statement is not mitigated by factual accuracy.
This isn’t as new
as you think. There was a prosecution in the 1950’s in Illinois over an
article in a scholarly journal that claimed that the average IQ of Negroes
is lower than that of whites. Truth of the assertion was not allowed as a
defense, because the statement is derogatory to a race, therefore a hate
crime (although in 1956 I do not think the term “hate crime” had been
invented). Those of us in experimental psychology graduate schools in those
times were a bit concerned about this case. As I recall it was dismissed on
technical grounds having to do with the wording of the indictment, and the
prosecution didn’t pursue the matter further, while the team that published
the article made haste to issue apologies. The implications were clear then,
and have been getting clearer ever since.
“You shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free.” When BYTE was owned by McGraw
Hill, every now and then I would get a call from McGraw Hill legal pointing
out that if I said certain things in the column, we might be sued. In every
case the legal staff added, “We just want to be sure you can prove it’s
true. If it’s true and you can prove it, we’ll handle it from there.” Indeed
they seemed eager to take on someone threatening libel when we could prove
truth. One such threat came from a New England contractor over remarks I
made about the inadequacy of the computers in the then prevalent NASA space
suits. They even asked McGraw Hill to fire me in apology to them. Instead,
legal advised me on just what I’d need to prove the truth of what I’d said,
I said I had all that, and that was the end of it. No law suit. I could
prove what I said was true.
What Nick Griffin
said, a year before the July 7 bombings, was that “We all know that sooner
or later there’s going to be Islamic terrorists letting off bombs in major
cities, and it might not be London, it could as easily be the White Rose
Center” [which is located in Leeds, where Griffin was speaking at the time].
He added that the bombers would prove to be asylum seekers or second
generation Pakistanis.” And lo! Three of the four July 7 bombers were second
generation Pakistanis from Leeds.
But since the jury
is explicitly not allowed to consider the truth of the statements, that is
no defense.
And that, I put it
to you, is a sign that the land of the mother of parliaments is far gone
indeed; and that if it can happen in England, it can happen here.
================
And see Fred on religion over in
mail. Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it
commits suicide.
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