World's Shortest Horror Flick

You read that right folks, just check out the link HERE and you'll get a chance to see the shortest horror movie in history. Seriously, it lasts just over a minute. The basic plot: a woman is at home by herself and discovers that an intruder is about to break in, the police can't get there in time, how will she save herself???

And once you're done watching that classic flick, remember the following:

"A gun in the hands of a good person is no danger to anyone except the bad guys."
~ Charlton Heston

Nazis, Holocaust Deniers, and the Slippery Slope of Relativism and Multiculturalism

For the last few weeks in my World War II class, we have been reading up on one of the War's most prominent aspects: the Holocaust. The book I am currently in the middle of is Deborah Lipstadt's Denying The Holocaust, and it was preceded by selections from The Good Old Days, which gave perpetrator's and bystander's accounts of the Holocaust. While reading both, I was provided with interesting insight into the world of Multiculturalism and Moral Relativism, and offered further proof as to why these two ideas are unrealistic and wrong.

Allow me to start with one of the most startling quotes from The Good Old Days. In the early stages of the Holocaust, extermination consisted entirely of mass shootings, as the gas chambers had not yet been implemented. One of the soldiers who participated in these shootings justified his actions by saying that he "only" shot men and women, but refused to shoot children because that would have been "immoral." Then there is the German officer who thought the world would end if his mistress left him, never mind his wife and children or the thousands of Jews he killed a day. As you can probably tell, both of these Germans have re-drawn their moral lines. To the one, killing "Jews and Jewesses" is perfectly acceptable, but killing children, well, that's wrong. But, hey, who are we to say he's wrong - it's all relative to his Nazi culture. Or how about the, highly distressed, officer? It's not his wife leaving him, or the continuation of the mass murder, that would spell the end of the world, but his mistress leaving him that would - but hey, once again, that's just part of the Nazi culture. And how can we deem Nazi culture 'wrong'? We're supposed to show more compassion and refrain from making harmful judgements.

My most recent reading, Denying The Holocaust, has been interesting for the overt manner in which Lipstadt directly calls out relativism, postmodernism and multiculturalism as being responsible for the acceptance of Holocaust Denial as "the other side" of an argument. While noting that they do have right to say what they like, she points out that they are not 'one side' of the argument or in any way on equal footing with other intellectuals; they are simply lunatics who ignore all facts to promote an agenda. And the reason Holocaust Denial is often seen in this improper way is because of Multiculturalism. Multiculturalism teaches students to treat all ideas 'fairly', equally and to give everyone an opportunity to speak. Naturally, this sort of openness and acceptance leads to the slow acceptance of ideas like Holocaust Denial as something other than complete idiocy.

Additionally, Lipstadt correctly points out that relativism also leads to acceptance of these wacky ideas. In the aftermath of World War II we began hearing about how the bombing of Dresden and the crimes of the Allies were 'equal if not worse' than those of the Nazis. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking persists today amongst Neo-Nazis and Relativist leftists. Of course, Holocaust Deniers have a symbiotic relationship with the aforementioned notion. Denying the Holocaust certainly diminishes Nazi War Crimes and claiming: 'the Allies were evil too,' trivializes the meaning and horror of the Holocaust.

After reading all these things it becomes even clearer that Moral Relativism and Multiculturalism are utterly ridiculous. Multiculturalism, unfortunately, must be applied to all cultures, even that of the Nazis - and Nazism hardly deserves fair or equal standing amongst world cultures. Further it provides an intellectual atmosphere in which anything and everything is accepted; even intellectual fraud and sheer stupidity. Relativism, too, helps foster the 'anything goes' mindset; and it furthers the problem by making it impossible to implicate people for obviously evil and immoral deeds. If all Moral codes are equivalent, how can you convict the man who feels killing Jews and Jewesses is ok, provided he doesn't slaughter children? How can you implicate a people who treat women as property, stamp out all semblance of freedom, and cheer on civilian-targeting suicide bombers? The answer, if you are a relativist, is that you can't; because, once again, that's just their 'culture' and their particular 'worldview'.

Right and Wrong exist and aren't variable from person to person or culture to culture. Cultures and ideas don't all deserve the same treatment and respect. And sure, different peoples, such as Nazis and Americans, may have disagreements about what's right; but disagreements don't mean there's no right answer: they just mean somebody's wrong.

Survey of Cancer Patients Says: 'Private Health Care Works'

Once again, it seems statistics are putting a massive hole in the armor of socialized medicine. Check out This article from the CATO Institute. It simply compares the survival rate of American Cancer Patients versus the survival rate of British, German, French and Canadian cancer patients. And would you believe it, the survival rate of American Cancer patients is, in many cases, over twice as high as that for Patients in the socialized paradises. Just to list a few examples: "less than one out of five American men with prostate cancer will die from it, but 57% of British men and nearly half of French and German men will," not to mention that "just 30% of U.S. citizens diagnosed with colon cancer die from it, compared to 74% in Britain, 62% in New Zealand, 58% in France, 57% in Germany, 53% in Australia, and 36% in Canada."

The numbers for Canada are significantly better than those for the other socialized nations; however this is in no way a positive reflection on the Canadian Healthcare system. What that indicates is that Canadians diagnosed with cancer, who have the means, come to the United States to receive treatment. (Many on the recommendation of Canadian Doctors, as is pointed out in the article)

It's quite simple really: if you want a healthcare system that actually cures patients and helps make their illnesses better, in short one that works, you need Private Healthcare. Socialized medicine merely degrades the quality of the services you, as a patient, receive. Further, it destroys any incentive to develop new Medical technology or new cures. (For evidence of this phenomenon see the 2nd to last paragraph of the article.) American 'Capitalist' Healthcare has better treatments and is able to successfully help more patients in less time than European Socialized care can. And that is not by accident.

Liberals, Frenchmen, and all other socialism lovers can have their crappy healthcare; but if I get old and develop a tumor, I know where I'll be going for treatment.

The Idiot Manifesto

I had the great, er, 'pleasure' of reading Marx and Engel's infamous Communist Manifesto for history class today, and boy was it everything I thought it would be. Stupid, unrealistic, laughable, and hopelessly illogic would perhaps be the most appropriate words.

I must say I truly enjoyed how Marx planned this 'revolution'. Everyone would, voluntarily, just throw away everything, start over and create the real Utopia. Forget old family traditions, any religious values, anything and everything you ever believed or stood for (It's all a slick plan by the Bourgeoisie anyways) and "UNITE." Um, reality check, anyone? Yea that's just going to happen, everyone is just going to throw away the religion and values they've had for hundreds of years because, you swear, in your little 25 page paper, that it's all just a big conspiracy? A wise man once said "You can fool some people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time," too bad he became President 12 years after Marx wrote the Manifesto - Karl could've used the advice.

I also loved how he talks about freeing the oppressed, but at the same time wants to take everything away from the Bourgeoisie. Equality for everyone, except those who used to be in charge: screw them. What ever happened, in this little document, to the rights of the Upper-class? Marx may not like them, but they're people too.

I also was intrigued at how Marx never states what he feels are the rights of individuals. Through reading him, one gets the picture that he believes people have a right to a good job, but that seems to be about it. In fact, he arbitrarily decides that people don't have the right to private property, but he never even attempts to refute the rationale of Locke. This is a crucial point in Marx's 'rationale,' because the right to Private Property in Capitalistic societies is clearly derived from the philosophy of Locke and others like him; thus in order to prove that Capitalistic Private Property is incorrect, Marx would need to disprove the reasoning of Locke.

Next, I was shocked by how completely counter-intuitive his conclusion was. He spends pages and pages telling the reader how selfish, individualistic, etc. man has become through Capitalism. In essence, he proves that mankind can be naturally selfish. So logically, the best system would be one that ignored this observation altogether and had man simply put aside his selfishness for the good and betterment of all. What?? The reason communism has failed, and always will fail, is that it totally ignores the nature of human beings. All it takes to disrupt a communistic system is one person, who wants to achieve more; because that person then works harder or does some other thing to gain an advantage over all the rest. Then all the rest become envious and struggle to themselves achieve the same advantage. Surely Marx isn't stupid enough to believe that everyone in the world will just willingly remain egalitarian. But then again......

Finally, of course, is how magnificently unrealistic Marx's theories are, as we are able to see through the implementation of communism in various places. Russia was able to murder more innocent people than the civilized world ever thought possible, thanks to communism. They were able to produce one of the most backward, underachieving and oppressive economies of all time. Furthermore, communism allowed the peoples of Eastern Europe and the USSR to be deprived of human liberties for over 70 years. In China, communism allowed Mao to weasel his way into the history books as one of the most ruthless dictators of all time, bar perhaps Stalin and Hitler. And in Vietnam, as well as in modern China, communism has been so successful that both Nations find their economies becoming more and more capitalistic every day. And let's not forget that communism has produced super-nice-guy Fidel Castro too.

Indeed, it seems that Ronald Reagan was, as usual, dead on when he dissected the difference between communists and non-communists. As per the Great Communicator: "How do you tell a communist? It's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. How do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

What's Wrong With Bush?

I like George W Bush. When all is said and done I think that his forigen policy will rate as best of any President. Domestically, he has at ther very least revived a stagnant economy in the wake of 9/11 and managed to make it the most effecient one in American history, and for this he deserves credit. However, in this second term, thus far, the Oval Office has been devoid of the strong leadership and great ideas that came from it during the first term. The recent speech in support of the ongoing War on Terror was perhaps Bush's best move since being re-elected.

But on a different note, he has abandoned all thought of fiscal restraint in domestic spending in the aftermath of Katrina. He has abandoned the much-needed Social Security Privatization reform he sought not to long ago. He has, as of yet, failed to create a strong stance against illegal immigration. And now, he has absolutely boggled a chance to put a true, deserving justice on the Supreme Court with the nomination of Harriet Miers. While some of the criticism he has received this term is not deserved (see Hurricane Katrina), much of it is, and the President knows how to respond. He just has to do it.

With 9/11, a strong economy, the War on Terror, 2 (and possibly 3) Supreme Court nominations, not to mention an unwanted excess of natural disasters(both national and international) Bush is quickly becoming the most influential person in the post-Reagan era. Thus far he has done well and shown strong leadership. Now is not the time to stop.

Responsabilidad

Will Mexico ever stop complaining about US immigration policy? Seriously, it seems unless we were to declare an open border, the Mexican Foreign Ministry would take issue. Take this new proposition that is coming out of Georgia (and apparently Arizona too). The idea is to tax any money being wired back to Mexico, unless the migrants can produce proof of their legal status. But, noooo, the Mexican Government has to whine like babies about it. It's unfair to the Mexican economy.

Well maybe, just maybe, the Mexican government wouldn't have such a bad economy if they actually, you know, did something about it. There's a novel idea. Instead of spending all their time complaining about the U.S or making brochures to help their citizens illegally immigrate into the States, maybe they could actually, you know, work on comprehensive domestic policy reforms to improve their own economy. In fact, I think we should go ahead and say that any country with an economy as bad as Mexico's needs to scrap their 'Foreign Ministry' altogether. C'mon, if your economy is in such bad shape that you have to help your people leave your country illegally, diplomatic relations shouldn't be high on your priority list.

Furthermore, shouldn't it be some kind of a law that if 1/3 of your citizens live below the poverty line, you loose your right to criticize other Countries' domestic policies? I mean clearly the Mexicans can't exactly be considered experts on the subject, so why do they think the world's most successful economy will take advice from them on how to make things more 'just' and less 'discriminatory'?

As for the bill, I think it's a great idea, because it is a realistic way to slowly eat away at illegal immigration; and it does so by making it less desirable for Mexicans to come here in the first place. Additionally, the laws are hardly unfair or discriminatory because they're taking levying taxes on these folks in an attempt to make them pay for all the education, health care, and welfare services they receive, for free, from the American government. In short, if Mexicans are going to illegally take advantage of the system, we will legally take advantage of them.

BusHitler, and Other Liberal Myths

I was planning on writing about Colorado 'teacher' Jay Bennish as soon as I heard his rather interesting story. Unfortunately, I was able to listen to the audio of his 'lecture' and was unable to stop laughing until just now. In short, Mr Bennish gave an anti-Bush, anti-Capitalist, Postmodernist rant to his geography class, and was unfortunate enough to have it recorded by one of his students. He was suspended, but his students took up his banner by staging a walkout in support of thier rastafarian teacher.

I mention the walkout only because it humors me as much as the rant itself. Like it made a difference? They're just high school kids, stupid ones at that. Most could have cared less about their teacher; they just wanted to get out of class. I know if I was still in high school and someone came up to me and said, "We're leaving class in protest." My only question would have been "For how long? " or "Will it get me out of my Calculus test next block?" But what about the few who actually were sincere? Fight on, brothers! I mean seriously, anyone who has been in high school for longer than, oh say, 2 days, knows that picking a fight with High School administrators is just plain idiotic. (And fruitless, I might add).

But onto a select few portions of Mr Bennish's high-on-emotion, short-on-logic commentary:

First up: the Drug War. After delineating how cruel the United States is to third-world farmers etc, etc, Mr Bennish suggests that China and Iran have as much right to "invade America and drop chemical weapons on North Carolina," to destroy cigarette companies, as we do to destroy cocaine and marijuana crops in Bolivia. The first problem with this argument is that we are not invading South American countries and that we drop plant killing chemicals, not chemical weapons, so his idea seems a bit overboard. Further, as someone who has been, and will be, living literally less than a mile from the R.J Reynolds company headquarters (and who attends a University that gave serious consideration to calling itself 'Reynolds College' instead of Wake Forest) I can't say I'm much a fan of this idea.

The most important difference is that the rest of the world WANTS our cigarettes, we don't want Columbia's cocaine; thus, we have to try to halt the importation of it, and this often means getting to the (physical and theoretical) root of the problem.

Next up: Capitalism. The system that is "at odds" with "caring and compassion" and "Human Rights." Wow, this is where I really started to just die laughing. Was Soviet Communism more 'compassionate'?? Or perhaps he'd prefer the self-destructing French Socialism?? Perhaps, he wants a system that incoporates the 'Workers' more, so that the evil rich people have to show more compassion towards the common guys?? But no, that can't be true, because Hitler tried that (he was originally a member of the 'German Worker's Party') and, as you'll see, Mr. Bennish doesn't much like Hitler. (In fact, he thinks he's almost as bad as George W. Bush)

Most interesting is how Mr. Bennish neglects to mention that the two most generous nations in the world (the ones who donate the most governmental cash) are Japan and the United States: the two most capitalistic societies in the world. And he probably doesn't want me to mention that the massive amount donated by the American government doesn't include all the private donations that Americans make every year through the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, their Churches, etc. How uncaring and uncompassionate of us nasty Capitalist pigs!!

And last, but certainly not least: BusHitler!! On this ludicrous comparison, I will say very little. I have just finished reading Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz (detailing how he managed to live for over a year at the most infamous Concentration Camp). When the American Auschwitz opens Mr. Bennish can try this argument with me. (And no, the 3 square meals a day given at Gitmo or the grand total of zero deaths at Abu Ghraib do not count.)

The bottom line, Mr. Bennish epitomizes why most American's can't locate Iraq on the map: in class they get liberal indoctrination instead of, say, geography.

***I would however like to congratulate Mr. Bennish for completing this expansive and lengthy rant without once screaming: "HALIBURTON!!!!!!! "***