Tag Archives: Culture

“Torture” & Rhetorical One-Up-Manship

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Thomas Sowell calls “childish” and “fatuous” the positions taken on “torture,” inorder to appear to be morally one-up on the other side.  Regardless of what they say, these people would actually act quite differently if their butts were at stake. According to Sowell:

There is a big difference between being ponderous and being serious. It is scary when the President of the United States is not being serious about matters of life and death, saying that there are “other ways” of getting information from terrorists.

Maybe this is a step up from the previous talking point that “torture” had not gotten any important information out of terrorists. Only after this had been shown to be a flat-out lie did Barack Obama shift his rhetoric to the lame assertion that unspecified “other ways” could have been used.

For a man whose whole life has been based on style rather than substance, on rhetoric rather than reality, perhaps nothing better could have been expected. But that the media and the public would have become so mesmerized by the Obama cult that they could not see through this to think of their own survival, or that of this nation, is truly a chilling thought.

When we look back at history, it is amazing what foolish and even childish things people said and did on the eve of a catastrophe about to consume them. In 1938, with Hitler preparing to unleash a war in which tens of millions of men, women and children would be slaughtered, the play that was the biggest hit on the Paris stage was a play about French and German reconciliation, and a French pacifist that year dedicated his book to Adolf Hitler.

If we could fight and win wars with words, our writers and poets would man the front lines with notepads and computers, however flesh and blood heroes are still our first defense and President’s are still compelled to command soldiers and protect citizen with more than words and lofty thoughts.

Thomas Sowell like Obama speaks of Winston Churchill. Sowell notes that the reason Churchill didn’t torture prisioners of war while bombs were falling on London was that these men were ordinary soldiers captured in war and covered by the Geneva convention. They also didn’t know anything that would have kept London from being bombed. Terrorists with life-saving information is another category entirely.  Sowell concludes:

The left has long confused physical parallels with moral parallels. But when a criminal shoots at a policeman and the policeman shoots back, physical equivalence is not moral equivalence. And what American intelligence agents have done to captured terrorists is not even physical equivalence.

If we have reached the point where we cannot be bothered to think beyond rhetoric or to make moral distinctions, then we have reached the point where our own survival in an increasingly dangerous world of nuclear proliferation can no longer be taken for granted.

Read Thomas Sowell here and here.

Yad Vashem – God Remembers Their Names

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“I will give, in my house and within my walls, a  monument and a name. I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off.” With this passage from the Book of Isaiah, Pope Benedict XVI began a recollection of those slain in the Holocaust and memorialized at Yad Vashem. This passage furnished two words: Yad meaning “memorial” and shem “name.” The Pope recalled how each person remembered there bears a name. Though robbed of their life they could never be robbed of the name God had given them.   The Pope said that he can only imagine the joyful expectation of their parents as they anxiously awaited the birth of their children; “What name shall we give this child?  What is to become of him or her?” He said, that they could never have imagined that they would be condemned to such a degradable fate. Their cries still echos in our hearts.  the Pope said that it is the cry of Able rising from the earth to the Almighty.  Pope Benedict prayed from the Book of Lamentations proclaiming that the favors of the Almighty are never exhausted and His mercies are not spent.They are renewed each morning. So great is His faithfulness.

A Land Held Holy – Benedict & Israel

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Whispers in the Loggia shares the Papal Address at Ben Gurion Airport.  Here is a part of Pope Benedict’s words at the beginning of this holy mission to Israel:

The just ordering of social relationships presupposes and requires a respect for the freedom and dignity of every human being, whom Christians, Muslims and Jews alike believe to be created by a loving God and destined for eternal life. When the religious dimension of the human person is denied or marginalized, the very foundation for a proper understanding of inalienable human rights is placed in jeopardy.

Tragically, the Jewish people have experienced the terrible consequences of ideologies that deny the fundamental dignity of every human person. It is right and fitting that, during my stay in Israel, I will have the opportunity to honor the memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah, and to pray that humanity will never again witness a crime of such magnitude. Sadly, anti-Semitism continues to rear its ugly head in many parts of the world. This is totally unacceptable. Every effort must be made to combat anti-Semitism wherever it is found, and to promote respect and esteem for the members of every people, tribe, language and nation across the globe.

During my stay in Jerusalem, I will have the pleasure of meeting many of this country’s distinguished religious leaders. One thing that the three great monotheistic religions have in common is a special veneration for that holy city. It is my earnest hope that all pilgrims to the holy places will be able to access them freely and without restraint, to take part in religious ceremonies and to promote the worthy upkeep of places of worship on sacred sites. May the words of Isaiah’s prophecy be fulfilled, that many nations shall flow to the mountain of the house of the Lord, that he may teach them his ways, that they may walk in his paths – paths of peace and justice, paths that lead to reconciliation and harmony (cf. Is 2:2-5).

Even though the name Jerusalem means “city of peace”, it is all too evident that, for decades, peace has tragically eluded the inhabitants of this holy land. The eyes of the world are upon the peoples of this region as they struggle to achieve a just and lasting solution to conflicts that have caused so much suffering. The hopes of countless men, women and children for a more secure and stable future depend on the outcome of negotiations for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In union with people of good will everywhere, I plead with all those responsible to explore every possible avenue in the search for a just resolution of the outstanding difficulties, so that both peoples may live in peace in a homeland of their own, within secure and internationally recognized borders. In this regard, I hope and pray that a climate of greater trust can soon be created that will enable the parties to make real progress along the road to peace and stability.

Race to Digitize Ancient Manuscripts

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Wall St. Journal writes,

Improved technology is allowing researchers to scan ancient texts that were once unreadable — blackened in fires or by chemical erosion, painted over or simply too fragile to unroll. Now, scholars are studying these works with X-ray fluorescence, multispectral imaging used by NASA to photograph Mars and CAT scans used by medical technicians.

One of the most ambitious digital preservation projects is being led, fittingly, by a Benedictine monk. Father Columba Stewart, executive director of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at St. John’s Abbey and University in Minnesota, cites his monastic order’s long tradition of copying texts to ensure their survival as inspiration.

His mission: digitizing some 30,000 endangered manuscripts within the Eastern Christian traditions, a canon that includes liturgical texts, Biblical commentaries and historical accounts in half a dozen languages, including Arabic, Coptic and Syriac, the written form of Aramaic. Rev. Stewart has expanded the library’s work to 23 sites, including collections in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, up from two in 2003. He has overseen the digital preservation of some 16,500 manuscripts, some of which date to the 10th and 11th centuries. Some works photographed by the monastery have since turned up on the black market or eBay, he says.

Read full story here.

Gangster Government-The Strong Man Using Strong Arm

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Gangster government on the prowl?

Michelle Malkin writes of the abusive treatment the hedge fund industry is receiving at the strong arm tactics of  Barack Obama. “He keeps taking their money. They keep getting publicly tongue-lashed.”

This week, AQR Capital Management LLC hedge fund manager Cliff Asness — at considerable risk to himself and his business — issued a striking manifesto responding to the president’s self-serving demagoguery and flagrant disregard for the rule of law. You can find Cliff’s essay and his other invaluable work at Stumbling on Truth.

Asness writes in this manifesto:

Let’s be clear, it is the job and obligation of all investment managers, including hedge fund managers, to get their clients the most return they can.  They are allowed to be charitable with their own money, and many are spectacularly so, but if they give away their clients’ money to share in the “sacrifice”, they are stealing.  Clients of hedge funds include, among others, pension funds of all kinds of workers, unionized and not.  The managers have a fiduciary obligation to look after their clients’ money as best they can, not to support the President, nor to oppose him, nor otherwise advance their personal political views.  That’s how the system works.  If you hired an investment professional and he could preserve more of your money in a financial disaster, but instead he decided to spend it on the UAW so you could “share in the sacrifice”, you would not be happy.

….. This is America.  We have a free enterprise system that has worked spectacularly for us for two hundred plus years.  When it fails it fixes itself.  Most importantly, it is not an owned lackey of the oval office to be scolded for disobedience by the President.

I am ready for my “personalized” tax rate now.

Michelle further writes:

Asness minced no words: “The President’s attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him…Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power.”

Business as usual in the Era of Hope and Change. Perhaps demonized entrepreneurs will finally learn that when the dog you feed bites your hand, you don’t roll up your sleeve and give him your arm. You get a new dog.

Is the power grab over?  I hardly think so, nor does Examiner Editorial (Washington Examiner.) writing of another in your pocket action of the President giving UAW something they never earned nor could earn for themselves, effectively ownership of Chrysler:

True, the union doesn’t get an explicit controlling majority of the board of directors, but who needs that when you’ve got the White House guaranteeing your work and the U.S. Treasury Department making sure you never have to worry about the bottom line. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger’s place in Big Labor’s Hall of Fame is now secure. He found a sugar daddy with an endless supply of cash. So UAW members and retirees can keep right on drawing those pay and benefits so excessively generous they made it impossible for the old Chrysler to compete with Toyota and Honda.

Hans Bader of OpenMarket.org writes:

Obama effectively gave ownership of Chrysler to the United Auto Workers Union (which spent millions electing Obama), rather than taxpayers (who have spent billions to bail out Chrysler) or the institutions that lent money to Chrysler based on the legal right and expectation that they would receive its assets before the UAW union would. Veteran political commentator Michael Barone also calls it “gangster government.” The UAW will also retain “lucrative” pension and health benefits, courtesy of the taxpayer.

Fr. Corapi – Notre Dame Video Message

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Fr. John Corapi thanks signers to the petition at NotreDameScandal.com and urges Catholics to continue the fight for Catholic campuses. For more information on this scandal and to sign the petition visit http://www.notredamescandal.com/Signt…

“A picture is worth a thousand words.  Which thousand words will be articulated to an already morally relativistic culture by the  picture of Mr. Obama receiving such honors from a  Catholic university. Metaphorically and morally it like shooting yourself in the foot but Notre Dame lives on.” Fr. Corapi