Words to Consider....

As I was doing some reading today, I encountered the following prayer. It was written by Sir William Stephenson, a Canadian who worked for British Intelligence here in the US. It is thought to have been carried around by Elanor Roosevelt in her purse during the War. It goes like this:

Dear Lord,
Lest I continue my complacent way
Help me to remember, somewhere out there,
A man died for me today.
As long as there be war
I then must ask and answer:
Am I worth dying for?

As soon as I read it, I was reminded of the line from the end of Saving Private Ryan: "Earn this." In any case, remember this prayer not only when you think of the War today, but when you think of World War II as well.

Just something to ponder as you go about your day.

The Great Beacon of Academia: Postmodernism

As you can perhaps tell by the title, I have once again had the great pleasure of running into one of the great fallacies of modern liberalism: the philosophy of postmodernism. This idea flourishes on college campuses due mainly to the fact that a college campus is one of the few places were a group of people can be far enough removed from reality, for an extended period of time, to not see the absurdity inherent with it.

Many people buy into this idea believing that it represents honest questioning and research; i.e that we are trying to truly evaluate and understand both sides and be as reasonable as possible. Unfortunately, the true problem with this philosophy lies in the fact that, in an attempt to refrain from 'bias' or 'prejudice,' it omits judging and opinion-forming altogether. Furthermore, it also comes with the inevitable invoking of multiculturalism, and the standard lines that 'we don't really know right and wrong,' or that there are 'several' truths.

Today, I encountered it in history class where the discussion concerned various philosophies of and teaching methods of history. The postmodern idea of history contends that we can never 'know' historical truth because our viewpoint from the present is so diluted. Many in the class, indeed, gave responses that sounded like they were taken directly from Michael Moore or someone of the like. I even heard the contention that there probably were multiple historical truths.

So apparently, when I say that "on July 4th, 1776 the Declaration of Independence was signed" I'm not stating a historical truth. What? Was it signed again on the 8th? I mean come on, of course there's only one historical truth, a day or a moment only happens once, so two different things aren't happening at once. The founders didn't sign and not sign the Declaration on July 4th. They couldn't. Not unless they had a secret, evil time machine to go back and live through the day twice.

Look, I'm not saying it's not a good thing to look at evidence, and study an issue from all sides, walk a mile in someone else's shoes, if you will, but that doesn’t mean when you've walked that mile that you can't say their road just sucks. Making judgments is a good and necessary thing to do. That is where postmodernism falls apart in the real world. You can't just walk around saying I think that's wrong but that's just my opinion. What if, for instance, in my culture it's 'right' to pull out a shotgun and shoot postmodernists? Under those circumstances a postmodernist has no moral argument to prevent me from killing them. In fact, if they allowed themselves to live, based on their rules, they would be demonstrating 'intolerance' of my culture. The bottom line, however, is that if my culture pulls shotguns on postmodernists for no reason; my culture is just plain wrong.

Of course, as far as a history class is concerned, postmodernism is directly aimed at the old 'Eurocentric' model of teaching history. You know, the one where we teach kids American History and focus on the Western World. Postmodernists dislike this because it makes a judgment, a judgment that western culture is, by and large, better and superior to everyone else's. And that is, by and large, a true assessment. It was the Greeks, Romans and then Americans who first adopted this idea of a 'Republic'. It was out of the Enlightenment that we got this concept of 'unalienable' human rights. Heck, it was America that really began the total elimination of slavery. These, and many more, are the reasons why we teach from this perspective; because in the real world, it makes more sense for Americans to know a bit more about the history of Republicanism (in case they ever decide to vote) than of African tribal cultures.

Certainly, we should include lessons about the rest of the world, perhaps a mandatory 'World History' class would be a good idea, but let's not forget to emphasize Eurocentricity. We should not be afraid to draw the conclusion that Eurocentric values, traditions, etc are not just better, but right. After all, that's why we've stuck with them for so long and, interestingly enough, why the postmodernists, or the postmodernist's ancestors, came here in the first place.

The French Come To Iraq!

*Sigh* It seems that us Conservatives can no longer make fun of the French Army. After 2 strong years of holding out, they have finally decided to come support the War in Iraq, and display to the world the true might of their Armed Forces. In fact, you can see live video footage of their landings on Iraqi beaches HERE!

The N.A.I.S?

Yesterday, I was shown a rather interesting article; it seems that the animal rights activists are up to their old tricks again. Unbeknownst to me, and probably most people, many months ago the US Department of Agriculture instituted a National Animal Identification System (NAIS). At this point, the system is voluntary, but you can bet the goal is to make it mandatory in the future. The basics of the system are simple: you, as an animal owner, register your pet, farm animal etc, and then the governemnt can monitor the health of the animals, any potential diseases they carry, the breeding of the animals, do 'recordkeeping' on the animals, and probably some other things as well.

The main point of this is to help monitor diseases spread by animals here in the US (or at least that seems to be the main selling point). Of course, this hardly makes any sense because first of all the logistics of managing a system that can monitor all of the livestock in this country are mind-boggling and would render the system extremely inefficient; and second because the system does not deal with wild animals, which are, in fact, more deadly to humans.

Furthermore, the system is a complete waste of money (14.5 million was granted last summer), and a completely needless invasion of privacy. That the governemnt should be able to keep tabs on my dog or a farmer's chickens makes no sense. I mean, imagine the hassle that it would take for a farmer to have to throw in a bunch of NAIS paperwork, in order that the government might know every detail about his cattle.

Indeed, a better question would seem to be why the government would really want to keep tabs on these sorts of things, especially since the 'disease' reason makes no sense. Now, this is purely speculation, but I'm guessing it might be the desires of animal rights activists to have a legal 'gottcha' available. Imagine, if this NAIS gets passed into law, PETA can now go to a farm and instead of just yelling like idiots at how 'mean' the farmer is being to the cows, they can prosecute him under the new laws that will complement this system. So basically, this could be a way to get stricter animal cruelty laws on the books under the guise of something else.

*******Update*******

For anyone interested in finding out more about the fallacy of the NAIS, or in trying to stop the program, please check out Walter Jeffries' site: noNAIS.org

An Iranian Nutjob

Iran's new President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, really is off-the-charts insane. Just to give you an idea, so far, although at this point he is still only the President-elect, he has described the Holocaust as a "myth," threatened to "[wipe Israel] off the map", decided that the state of Israel should be in Europe not the Middle East, and, most recently, openly hoped that the "criminal" Ariel Sharon will "[join] his ancestors" (a.k.a die) as a result of his illness.

Honestly, this guy must really have mental health issues. But that aside, he is also incredibly dangerous. He leads a Nation that is developing nuclear weapons, and that has some 68 million people, many of whom are either gullible or stupid (or maybe both) enough to believe and agree with each of the above quotations.

Interestingly enough, the potentially dangerous nature of the latest President of Iran, makes our our work in Iraq all the more important. The presence of a stable Republic of Iraq will make negotiating with Iran easier. One way that Iraq's rise will help us with Iran is simply by voiding the need for Iranian oil. The combination of Saudi Arabia and a stable Iraq in the Middle East will make it easy for us to simply place an embargo on Iran, which could be deadly to their economy. Additionally, having another steadying presence in the Middle East besides just Israel will facilitate economic, political and other operations in the region; a tremendous benefit when trying to deal with Rogue States, such as Iran.

The problem of course is the fact that Iran seems to be fairly close to building a nuclear weapon. The question then becomes, what would they do with a nuke? Well, since they are developing a nuclear weapon and not an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile, hitting the US, Japan, or continental Europe won't be possible. That, of course, leaves the Middle East and the tiny little Nation that Iran feels should be "wiped off the map": Israel. Just one small problem, Israel also has the bomb (more than one bomb, I might add), and they are certainly not afraid to use them if Iran presses the right buttons.

So, am I saying that a nuclear war resulting (most likely) in the destruction of Iran will occur within 15 years? No. Or at least I hope not. But this complete moron who is now President in Iran is all the more reason to quickly move the Iranian issue into our playing field. The EU has tried and failed, and they will gladly continue to try and fail (over and over again), unless the United States steps in. Does this mean troops? Extremely unlikely (and not very plausible at this point), although threatening to use them might be the place for Bush to start.

The question of what to do with Iran, as you can perhaps tell from this post, is at the very least a murky one, but it is one of great concern. It needs to be addressed not only for our own sake but for the sake of our Middle Eastern ally Israel, and for the sake of the newly emerging Iraq.