I’m writing this several days ahead of time. By the time you read it, the two-day Counterjihad Summit in Brussels will have concluded, and all the participants will be on their way home.

The summit was sponsored by the Center for Vigilant Freedom, and took place at a location in Brussels which included plenty of space, and provided video- and audio-conferencing capabilities.

Participants came from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA. Virtual attendance by video was also available, and at least one blogger from Australia took part in the conference this way.

The purpose of the event was to provide liaison and interconnection among various European anti-Islamization groups and their counterparts in the United States, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. We also hope to connect interested activists with groups anywhere in the world who share common goals and a mission that is worthy of attention.

Our groups are a network of networks. CVF’s goal is to create and strengthen a web of contacts, relationships, and interlinked organizations in order to roll back Islamization and the encroachment of sharia within our countries. We want to build a robust and flexible means of communication among ourselves.

We intend to build up a coalition of people who track Islamization-related legislation in different countries. Their efforts will include actions to prevent terrorism, block the legal encroachment of Sharia, and encourage the passage of laws that protect national constitutions, limit immigration and roll back Islamization.
– – – – – – – – –
The first day was taken up with our featured speakers, all of them prominent writers and opponents of sharia and Islamization. A speaker for each country represented at the meeting gave a report on the status of dhimmitude in his or her country, and the progress of efforts to counter it.

During the second day we broke up into working groups for further discussion and networking.

Among those present were:

• Aeneas, a member of CVF who blogs at Beer n Sandwiches
• Jens Anfindsen, formerly the editor of HonestThinking and now a political analyst
• Paul Belien
• Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs
• Rolf Krake, a Gates of Vienna correspondent and resident of Brussels
• Yorkshire Miner, a blogger in the Netherlands
• Nidra Poller, a blogger and writer for Pajamas Media
• KGS of Tundra Tabloids
• Skjoldungen of Hodjas Blog
• Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch
• Paul Weston, a British writer
• Zonka, a blogger in Denmark

Robert Spencer spoke earlier, on Tuesday evening, to large gathering in Antwerp.

Utterly amazing.

Ricardo Franco Levi, Prodi’s right hand man , undersecretary to the President of the Council, has written the text to put a stopper in the mouth of the Internet. The draft law was approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 October. No Minister dissociated themselves from it. On gagging information, very quietly, these are all in agreement.

The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money.

Blogs are being born every second, anyone can start one without a problem and they can write their thoughts, publish photos and videos.

In fact, the route proposed by Levi limits access to the Internet.

What young person is going to submit to all these hoops to do a blog? The Levi-Prodi law obliges anyone who has a website or a blog to get a publishing company and to have a journalist who is on the register of professionals as the responsible director.

99% would close down.

The lucky 1% still surviving on the Internet according to the Levi-Prodi law would have to respond in the case of the lack of control on defamatory content in accordance with articles 57 and 57 bis of the penal code. Basically almost sure to be in prison.

Please go over to Beppe Grillo’s blog and use the email at the botttom of the post to register your complaint. Maybe you can use some short phrase of disapproval and put it through one the language translators.

Or perhaps our Italian readers can come up with a few polite words of dissent for Ricardo Levi.

What’s the Italian word for TYRANNY?

[basta!]

Here’s a story from Reuters I missed in August, a tale about Progressive Insurance’s questionable methods for collecting information on their customers:

The head of one of the leading insurers in non-standard, high-risk personal auto insurance apologized on Thursday for some substandard behavior – spying in church on people who had the sued the company.

Progressive Corp Chief Executive Glenn Renwick apologized for the use of private detectives, who went undercover to join an Atlanta church group in order to discredit a couple suing the insurer.

“What the investigators and Progressive people did was wrong – period,” Renwick, head of the third-largest U.S. auto insurer, said in a statement. “I personally want to apologize to anyone who was affected by this.”

The statement was issued a day after the story appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The newspaper reported that a pair of detectives hired by Progressive became members of the Southside Christian Fellowship Church in August 2005 in order to get damaging information on two church members involved in a 2004 traffic accident.

The detectives talked their way into a private support group where members discussed abortions, sexual orientation and drug addiction, and taped the sessions, the newspaper said.

Note the dates: the accident happened in 2004, the private detectives were hired in 2005. The story appeared in the Atlanta paper in 2007 – and it was only then that the CEO of Progressive apologized.

Here’s what one shocked investigator said:
– – – – – – – – –

I have over a decade in this business, including as an adjuster and handling “questionable” or fraudulent SIU claims. I have sat in parking lots and watched people who were limping suddenly stop limping. I have watched people fake injuries. I have watched people turn in receipts for stolen property dated AFTER they claimed the item was stolen. However, not once have I ever joined a church to investigate someone. Not once have I recorded private sessions with people.

This is absolutely disgusting. There should be immediate and strong condemnation of this action from the insurance industry. Oh, and Glenn Renwick and the people in charge of the claims operations at Progressive should resign immediately.

What can you do? Cancel your Progressive policy. Want more of an incentive? I am going to donate $1 to my wife’s breast cancer walk for every person who emails me or leaves a comment here cancelling their Progressive policy.

Well, I was going to switch anyway…but don’t hold your breath on Renwick resigning. He’s just walking in the shoes of a former CEO of Progressive…

In an interview with Michael Moynihan of Reason magazine, Flemming Rose explains his thinking about the cartoon crisis.

First, here’s a part of Mr. Moynihan’s introduction:

…To get a sense of how this diminutive socialist country (previously famous for pork products, liberal views on pornography and Jante’s Law) was tranformed into a main front in Europe’s culture war, I sat down with the man responsible for printing the offending cartoons, Jyllands-Posten’s culture and arts editor Flemming Rose. In a wide-ranging discussion, Rose expounded on his years in the Soviet Union, free speech versus “responsible speech” and his Muslim supporters.

I spoke with Rose in September at Jyllands-Posten’s Copenhagen office.

What follows is just part of the conversation. Flemming Rose is quite formidable. I hadn’t seen the connections he is making here:

reason: Did your time in Russia and as Berlingske Tidende correspondent in the Soviet Union inform your ideas of free speech and political freedom?

Flemming Rose: Yes. I am going to write a book about the cartoon crisis and I am going to compare the experience of the dissidents in the Soviet Union to what has happened to people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji… I am very much informed by my contact with [Soviet dissidents] and I’m close to the Sakharov camp-people like Natan Sharansky and Sergei Kovalev… The dissidents were split between what I would I would call the nationalist camp and the human rights movement. And I would say that I identified more with the human rights movement, although I am a big admirer of Solzhenitsyn, of course, because of what he accomplished. But today he is, in fact, supporting Putin and he believes that he’s conducting a very wise foreign policy program. I don’t think Sakharov would have subscribed to this view.

reason: Were you surprised by the reaction of those who argued not for unfettered free speech, but “responsible speech?”

Rose: Well, no. I think many people betrayed their own ideals. The history of the left, for instance, is a history of confronting authority-be it religious or political authority-and always challenging religious symbols and figures. In this case, they failed miserably. I think the left is in a deep crisis in Europe because of their lack of willingness to confront the racist ideology of Islamism. They somehow view the Koran as a new version of Das Kapital and are willing to ignore everything else, as long of they continue to see the Muslims of Europe as a new proletariat.

Like during the Cold War, there is a willingness to establish a false equivalence between democracy and oppression-between a totalitarian ideology and a liberal ideology. When I look back at my own behavior during the “cartoon crisis,” it was very much informed by my experience with Soviet Union because I saw the same kind of behavior both inside the Soviet Union and those dealing with the Soviet Union in the West.

The whole interview is enlightening; I’ve only excerpted part of it.

For a video (posted yesterday) with further comments from Mr. Rose, go here. And, yes, he speaks English very well.

Someone hat tipped me on this, but I can’t remember who it was. Please take credit in the comments!

Mohammed, Lars Vilks’ new body guard, is said to be a better image of a dog than the ones Mr. Vilks has been drawing.

From Vilks.net, someone translated the following for Charles at LGF:

The artist Vilks has gotten himself a specially trained guard dog, the dog Muhammed is watching each and every movement 24 hours a day.

When you first get to know Muhammad she sure is likeable, yes it is a she, but the genus perspective is just a mark. For those who does not know Muhammad, getting close should only be done taking a lot of precaution.

Seems as she is like every other dog with the bone on its favourite carpet. But nothing is as it appears.

With Lars Vilks, nothing is ever as it appears.

Hat tip: PG, from Little Green Footballs

For previous posts on Lars Vilks and the Roundabout Dogs, see the Modoggie Archives.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to live in a cell to stay alive but evidently Martin Amis can say what he wants with impunity.

From the Daily Mail:

The author Martin Amis has claimed he feels ‘morally superior’ to Muslim states which are not as ‘evolved’ as the Western world.

Responding to long-running accusations that he is Islamophobic, Amis launched a fresh invective against the Muslim faith and many of its followers.

He admitted his late father and grandfather had been racist but then claimed radical Muslims were the real racists, misogynists and homophobes.

The 58-year-old defended a proposal he made last year that Muslims be deported and strip-searched in a crackdown on terrorism.

His latest comments came in a TV news interview last night and during the Cheltenham Literature Festival last week.

The Muslim Council of Britain branded them racist and ‘shameful’.

In an interview with Jon Snow on Channel Four News, Amis declared: ‘I feel morally superior to Islamists, by some distance. I feel an intellectual distance to Islam.

‘There are great problems with Islam. The Koran recommends the beating of women.

‘The anti-Semites, the psychotic misogynists and the homophobes are the Islamists.’

Days earlier, Amis shocked festivalgoer’s in Cheltenham with claims that Muslim states are less ‘civilised’ than Western society.

‘Some societies are just more evolved than others,’ he said. ‘I am not saying these people are genetically incapable of not being terrorists.

‘These societies are arming themselves with weapons like the AK47 and blowing people up on buses and Tubes.’

When one member of his audience suggested not all Muslims were terrorists he retorted: ‘No one else is doing it.’

So why isn’t he dead? I see no sign that British Muslims are particularly pacifist. What am I missing in this translation?

But he’s not done digging this hole yet…
– – – – – – – – –
Amis goes on:

‘I blame Islamists, the ideology within a religion,’ he said.

‘All the perpetrators, with a few exceptions, are young men from Pakistan.

‘Islamism will be a sink for every Walter Mitty of murder, every functioning schizophrenic, every rampant anti-Semite.

‘There is a rage which has been building for the past century which is hoping to rebuild its (Islam’s) superiority through violence.’

Well, that’s pretty clear. He’s picking and choosing whom to denigrate. But the imams and spokespeople for British Muslims are, as usual, deaf to the nuances. Here’s one huff-and-puff:

…a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said: ‘Amis clearly seems to believe many Muslim communities are primitive.

But just because some extremists have committed terrorist acts does not give him licence to denigrate an entire faith community.

‘He should be ashamed of himself.’

I thought Amis made it clear he was talking about “the ideology within the religion,” not the faith itself. But maybe the Muslim Council of Britain has some Pavlovian conditioning to particular words and this renders them immune to the finer details.

I guess we’ll just have to watch them line up to sue ol’ Martin for defamation. Should be interesting. Surely there’s a phalanx of British CAIR-type lawyers working on their briefs even now.

[Resist the temptation to snigger about the last noun in the previous sentence. And no remarks about ‘snigger’ either]

I did a post earlier today on the La Paz ghetto parents’ uprising, and have since found a good link at Fausta’s blog re Bolivia’s problems. Scroll down, past Hugo’s picture.

The New Republic, of all places, has a solid report on Bolivia. Fausta excerpts from Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s article in TNR to explain a country I know too little about — and am planning to remedy.

When you’re just beginning to learn, might as well start with the myths about a place and get those out of the way. Alvaro Vargas Llosa says:

After talking to Bolivians from all walks of life in areas ranging from the rural outskirts of Santa Cruz, in the east, to Cochabamba, in the highlands, and from the jungles of Chapare to Tiwanaku, the site of an ancient citadel peopled by indigenous Bolivians, I am persuaded that Morales’ government is ruling based on myths. Those myths need to be exposed before other Andean countries where ethnic and social divisions are also abrasive follow suit…

Then Fausta sums up those myths. Here’s the first one:

• The greatest myth is that Bolivia’s population is alien to Western culture imposed by 300 years of colonial rule and two centuries of republican life.

She proceeds to list some other myths garnered from the piece. And she also links to the New Republic issue which ran it. Go here for a fuller story.

I asked Fausta to recommend books by this writer, Alvaro Vargas Llosa. Here are two she suggested:
– – – – – – – – –
1. Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot, and

2.The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty

In the comments on the first book, some reviewer calls Llosa a “neo-liberal.” Can someone explain to me what that term means? The person using it obviously thought it pejorative, since he gives the book one star.

I’ve just begun reading “Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors,” by Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. I’ll have a review up in a few days, but after delving into the stories, I was struck by the synchronicity of this Reuters report from Bolivia:

Hundreds of Bolivians fed up with underage drinking and crime stormed a neighborhood of bars and brothels in the impoverished El Alto slum outside La Paz on Wednesday, setting beds, television sets and chairs on fire.

Vigilantes have stormed the red-light district three days running, complaining it is a haven for criminals and that the bars there serve alcohol to minors.

They want local authorities to shut them down.

“There is a lot of violence here because of the bars… We want them out. The authorities aren’t doing anything so we have to burn them down,” said Lucy Quispe, a 45-year-old mother of three who lives near the problem area.

“The police are accomplices … we are throwing stones at them as well,” she told Reuters.

According to local media reports as many as 50 drinking establishments have been destroyed since the protests started on Monday.

Hundreds of students joined in the demonstrations on Wednesday, pelting store fronts with stones and shouting “the bars are destroying our lives”.

El Alto, just north of Bolivia’s administrative capital La Paz, is one of the largest urban areas in Bolivia, with nearly 1 million inhabitants, mostly Aymara and Quechua Indians.

Lynch-mob attacks against suspected criminals are commonplace in El Alto. People in this urban area of unpaved streets and mud-brick houses have long complained that police do not do enough to fight rampant crime.

There is also a short video of the bar-stool burnings – these are some angry parents. The voice over narrative says children as young as twelve are served alcohol and show up at school drunk.

Mr. Cosby, who has a PhD in education (not honorary — he earned it the hard way at the University of Massachusetts back in the late ‘60’s or early 70’s) has long been interested in changing the conversation about African American “victims” to a dialogue about what it takes to become a victor instead…

I say hurrah for those Bolivian parents. And I hope the parents of African American children who are stuck in the mire of what passes for public school education in this country will take Dr. Cosby’s and Dr. Poussaint’s suggestions to heart.

So far, their book resonates with Walter Williams’ ideas about how to change things: get an education (that is *not* a plug for public schools); get legitimate employment, never leaving one job before you’ve secured another; and most important, don’t participate in bringing more illegitimate children into the world.

These are not the solutions suggested by the nanny state, ever ready to offer “entitlements” to victims. But things are changing…indeed they are.

[post ends here]

UPDATE: From Papa Ray, age 231 (and a half), who has put paid to the question about using old soldiers. Here is the definitive answer:

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Iraq – A 72-year-old man stopped a suspected suicide bomber from detonating himself at a checkpoint in Arab Jabour Oct. 14.

The man approached a checkpoint where Mudhehr Fayadh Baresh was standing guard, but did not make it very far.

Baresh, a tribal commissioner and member of the Arab Jabour Concerned Citizens program, said he ordered the man to lift his shirt – using training received from Coalition Forces – when he did not recognize him as a local villager.

The suspect refused to lift his shirt. Baresh repeated the command again, and the suspect exposed his suicide vest, running toward the checkpoint.

Baresh opened fire which caused the vest to detonate, killing the suspect.

“I did it for the honor of my family and the honor of my country,” said Baresh, when he met with Col. Terry Ferrell, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division.

Lt. Col. Kenneth Adgie, commander of the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment presented Mudher with a battalion coin for his valor Oct. 16.

A few weeks ago Sergeant Bellavia’s book, “House to House,” finally made its way to the first person who took me up on my offer to give it away. My only proviso was that he, in turn, pass it on to someone else, someone who would be likely to do the same. The idea of Sergeant Bellavia’s book making its way across the country has great appeal.

The Baron and I reviewed the book separately; even though we went in different directions and paid attention to different elements in the story, we were both moved by this soldier’s part in Fallujah II.

As promised (though late as usual) I sent the Sergeant’s book to the person who’d asked first. In fact, his response was almost immediate -I’d hardly put the post up when he made his request. Now, having read his own take on the story, and his background in the military, I see why he was so prompt in asking for it.

Here’s O.W.’s response to Sergeant Bellavia’s tale. I am sure it is one many of our ex-military readers will understand:

Finished it tonight. I wasn’t able to read any of it Saturday night because I am taking an on-line course that I need to keep my flight instructor rating active. I actually have until the end of November to complete it, but… I just like finishing things way ahead of time if possible.

Anyway. That book was great. It will set the bar pretty high for non-fiction coming out of the war in Iraq.

As for the war itself, I am in complete agreement with the outlook expressed in Gates of Vienna, that we are in for a long run and Iraq is just another stage in the first phase. I do wonder if the West has the determination needed for this. It seems as if far too many people accept the surface manifestation of the struggle, but want someone else to bear the burden of actually moving to the sound of the guns. I believe that this is like no struggle that we’ve seen in a long time. The closest thing that I can compare it to is the Israeli fight for survival.

In 2002 when recruitment seemed to be way down, I attempted to join the active Army. After being turned away there (age), I tried the reserve and the National Guard in Texas and New Mexico. It was of no use really. I am just too old to be taken seriously. That is unfortunate in a way since I would likely be a better soldier now than I was before.

As for qualifications, before, all I had to offer was youth and a high school degree….

– – – – – – – – –

Now, I am a licensed commercial pilot, a flight instructor, an architect with a master’s degree, an NRA ranked high master in highpower rifle and long range marksmanship. Plus, for a geezer, I have staggeringly good health (luck of the draw and clean living). I have always maintained a fairly high level of physical fitness and would likely max the physical fitness test for the Army.

The only reason that I mention this is that even the military hasn’t recognized the long term seriousness of this war much more than have the politicians. If they had, they might understand that older soldiers who can perform certain functions can free up younger soldiers for other duties. By the time that they do realize this, the well may have dried up in terms of young enlistees.

Back to the book, I have already decided who to forward it to and will emphasize that it is to be passed on when it has been finished.

They say old soldiers never die, they just fade away. Now I understand that – their experience and expertise is wasted. Surely in Fourth Generation warfare we are wantonly disregarding the pool of men who could be of great use to their country.

Well, as I said to OW, should the time come when the war comes to the home front, men such as he will no longer be sidelined. They will be desperately needed.

And there are a lot of such men spread through this country. On a recent comment thread to this post on Hillary, I facetiously asked people where they were planning to emigrate should Miz Rodham be elected. Several such men stepped forth to say their oath to serve was a permanent state of affairs, one that did not end with their discharge. Thus, they weren’t going anywhere, thankyouverymuch.

If we can use old generals taking up room in the Pentagon, why do we squander older men who would willingly serve in the ranks?

What a terrible waste of perfectly good soldiers.

Well, this one was no suprise…a counselor once asked me, “so when did you discover that reading was a neurotic escape?”

Answer: “When I found out that I could get out of doing the dishes if I looked studious.”

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You’re probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people’s grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Hat tip: Flares Into Darkness

[ends here]

I should have had my thoughts in order a long time ago on the subject of abortion. After all, I spent a semester doing a thesis on the subject for my undergrad philosophy degree.

What stands out for me about the assignment is that I didn’t want to do it. Back then, in 1976, I knew what I thought: abortion was a “right” – why was I being made to tread that rutted track just to come up with the same old arguments?

My Ethics professor tut-tutted my disinclination, reminding me that we don’t really know what we know until we can cogently defend our arguments. Thus, my assignment was to explore what to me was the non-issue of abortion.

That paper took months. It was back in the days before computers so I laboriously typed it out and kept a copy. Where it vanished in the several moves between then and now I have no idea. But I do remember being surprised by my conclusion, which I came to so reluctantly. Like Luther, I was stuck: in order to be true to my own ethical standards, I had to take a position that didn’t fit with my self-image as a feminist.

Then today, I read Jonah Goldberg’s essay on the issue. He brought it all back, as fresh as the day I put the final period to my conclusions:

In death-penalty cases, “reasonable doubt” goes to the accused because unless we’re certain, we must not risk an innocent’s life. This logic goes out the window when it comes to abortion, unless you are 100-percent sure that babies only become human beings after the umbilical cord is cut. I don’t see how you can be that sure, which is why I’m pro-life – not because I’m certain, but because I’m not. [emphasis mine – D ]

As I remember, I spelled it out in my thesis on these grounds: since we have no idea when human life becomes actually “human” we would do better to err on the side of caution. Once all those millions of fetuses – if they are actually human beings – are gone; there is no bringing them back to life. And the harm done by our casual disposal of what turned out to be human life after all, accrues not to them but to us, those who are privileged and burdened with the responsibility of choice.

Now that’s an easy philosophical conclusion for Jonah Goldberg and me. We’re not in the position of having to decide…or least I’m not anymore, though maybe he’s got some family planning crossroads he’s yet to come to. The most I’ll have to deal with are grandchildren born inconveniently or out-of-wedlock. So all I can do is offer support and sympathy when a teenage granddaughter, frightened out of her wits, gives birth to a child with congenital anomalies – without ever telling anyone she was pregnant. Yes, it’s true: if you’re somewhat zaftig, you can hide a pregnancy when it ends two months prematurely.

Mr. Goldberg is wrestling with his own questions as the presidential race heats up on the Republican side. On the Democrats’ side, it’s a settled issue – or, as they like to say about controversial moral arguments, “consensus has been reached. End of conversation.” But for Republicans, who speak in various voices on this issue of abortion, women’s rights, and what we owe the unborn, there is no consensus across the spectrum of the right. That is not to say that that Left doesn’t paint us in one fundamental grey color, bound and determined to strip women of their freedom. For them, we have no nuance; we speak with the voice of repression, driving women to unwilling servitude as mothers.

But it’s not that simple. Goldberg says:
– – – – – – – – –

As for souls, I believe we have them, but I don’t know how they work. Indeed, ensoulment – the process by which God puts a soul in our bodies – is a controversial topic among religious scholars, people who know a lot more about such things than I do. And I’m not sure any of them are right anyway.

If “life” simply means that fetuses are something more than inanimate objects, I’m with you. But that hardly seals the deal for me on the issue of abortion. After all, the world is filled with organisms that do not deserve any special consideration, let alone a claim on a human being’s life or liberty.

In short, while I have great sympathy for “culture of life” arguments, if you tallied most of the above views on abortion, they’d appear to add up to my being pro-choice. And yet, when I get right down to it, I’m not. Why?

All those years ago, struggling through my thesis on abortion I came to this same place, and I arrived there most reluctantly. I began my paper definitely, blithely pro-abortion. No problem. Too many unwanted children in the world, too many women forced to raise kids who had no business being parents to begin with. And children conceived by rape? No way. Besides, children were expensive and time-consuming for those who could afford neither the money or the time.

Yet as I wrestled philosophically with the ethics of abortion, it was as though a kaleidoscope turned, and I saw something different than when I’d started.

I began to see that women had bought the male principle that babies are a burden. They don’t belong in the workplace, and they certainly don’t belong in the boardroom where all those important decisions are made. I asked myself who had made these places so sacrosanct? Why couldn’t children play in the corner, or cry during a meeting, or make the workplace a messier, less efficient place? Who made Efficiency into God, and why had they done so?

Work clothes on the fast track are not designed for burping babies. There goes drool down that hundred dollar tie. Again, I ask why this should be the case? Why are children and babies segregated from the rest of humanity? Why is there not room made for them where we spend most of the day?

Women have tricked themselves into attempting to become more like men. More efficient, more “rational” (whatever that is – one of my most sadistic, irrational bosses was a man), more attuned to the bottom line. When we talk about the difficulties of pregnancy and early motherhood we are really discussing a society that does not make room for the next generation until that cohort is grown up – and the growing up is to be done offstage, away from the busy, oh-so-important movers and shakers.

It is our culture which drives abortion. If a woman had the opportunity to really choose freely – if her pregnancy did not impact her work life so drastically – then there’d be fewer abortions because there would be less painful financial sacrifice and emotional isolation to face.

If we truly celebrated life, then we would encourage women who did not feel able to parent to allow those who wanted to do so to take their children to raise in their stead. It would not be shameful, it would be celebratory.

For these reasons – looking at our preformed attitudes about the bothersome brats that children can be and the needs women have to participate in the world – we have encouraged women to abort so they can compete on a level playing field. We have told ourselves that fetal tissue is nothing more than that, and expelling it is a simple matter that has nothing to do with the culture at large. It’s just a private decision between the woman and her aborter.

We may be several generations from discovering the harm we have done ourselves by swallowing this line. By then, of course, we won’t be able to bring back the children, nor can we make up for the loss we have caused ourselves individually and as a society. When moral decisions dwell in a cloud of unknowing and they cannot be undone, then it is best for us as moral, reasoning beings, to err on the side of caution.

At the very least we could admit that our culture pushes women to abort inconveniences. We do not support them financially, emotionally, or socially when they are pregnant. We do not give the deserved preference for close maternal care that each new being deserves. We refuse to see the web of relationships involved in each decision: the two parents, the extended family, the community at large. No, we just pretend it’s a “private” decision to be made by one person and gotten past as quickly as possible.

In the name of success and position and convenience, we impoverish ourselves. Every time a woman reluctantly decides to abort because she can’t afford a child, because she knows she cannot raise it by herself, because…because so few people are for her and her child, we know that women still live by men’s rules, no matter how “free” they think Roe vs. Wade has made them.

Women have been sold a bill of goods. In order to “make it” they have to become some twisted form of man…men don’t ever have to have babies, so why should we? It’s not fair. And more and more often, when they do provide the necessary sperm, they don’t provide much else. Nor does our culture in general penalize them much for their moral turpitude.

Meanwhile, in Russia, they are sunk in desperation as the birth rate plummets. They are devising crude methods to make women willing to bear children. The latest are sex camps for young people. As though that will give the country the morally robust future it needs to survive. These “camps” are simply the other side of the coin of abortion as a convenience.

Welcome to a world free of ethical reasoning.

The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society are co-sponsoring Justice Clarence Thomas’ book tour.

Here are the scheduled speeches, which will be available online at heritage.org:

• Atlanta-Oct. 18, 7:00 p.m. Eastern
• Omaha-Oct. 19, 8:00 p.m. Eastern
• Chicago-Oct. 21, 8:00 p.m. Eastern
• Dallas-Oct. 23, 1:40 p.m. Eastern

The tour is to promote Thomas’ book, My Grandfather’s Son, which is currently #16 on Amazon and #1 on the New York Times listing.

This book dovetails nicely with Fjordman’s ideas in his recent post about fatherless children, because Justice Thomas had a “father” of biblical proportions: his maternal grandfather, Myers Anderson. His biological father, referred to as “C” in the book, never supported his children and it is obvious that Justice Thomas does not think he deserves much mention (though C was permitted to attend the festivities surrounding Clarence Thomas’ investiture into the U.S. Supreme Court).

Thomas’ mother, whom he called Pigeon, raised him and his brother Myers in Pinpoint, Georgia, after their father abandoned his family, leaving for Philadelphia. Eventually, seeking work, Pigeon moved to Savannah – the Negro section of Savannah, of course – and after the idyllic days of his early childhood, Clarence found Savannah lonely and cold. He often went hungry and had little supervision while his mother worked.

Pigeon must have asked her father and stepmother, Christine, to take the boys in though Clarence was never privy to that conversation. The grandparents agreed to do so with the provision that it would be a permanent move. As his grandfather explained to him later, he could not have borne it had the boys been taken away after they settled in.

Grandfather Anderson was a proud, hard-working man who owned his own business delivering fuel, and owned his own home, which seemed incredibly rich to the young Clarence and Myers after their life in Pinpoint and the cold apartment in Savannah.

However, Grandfather was not something out of “Father Knows Best.” He was tough, demanding, and sometimes physically abusive in his effort to make something of his grandsons. Nonetheless Clarence loved him and pined to be loved in return. Years later, when his grandfather would play with Clarence’s own son, Jamal, Clarence would ask why his Grandfather could never show that kind of tenderness to him and his brother Myers. His grandfather explained what many grandparents have said down the ages: I can do this because I don’t have the responsibility for raising him like I did you.

Justice Thomas never says so, but one gets the impression that his grandfather was afraid his grandsons would turn out as shiftless and irresponsible as had their father, C.

Myers Anderson had converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1940’s and his grandsons attended the parish school, Saint Benedict the Moor. [I must say here that I was unusually motivated to buy Thomas’ book – not to hear his side of the Anita Hill imbroglio (though I did discover what a sleaze ball Joe Biden was) – but because I had known the sisters who taught him at St. Benedict’s and I remembered how they suffered through the hearings and then triumphed when he was finally passed by the Senate].

The nuns (as Thomas says, mostly Irish immigrants) were the Missionary Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. He particularly mentions Sister Virgilius, who was my aunt’s friend and colleague in the Franciscans. In the North, they wore the brown habits of Franciscans everywhere, but in the brutally hot South, their habits were white, though I doubt they were much cooler. Don’t forget, those days in the early fifties had no air-conditioning.

In addition to teaching, Virgilius was also the principal. In the book, you can see her standing proudly with his graduating class. I have countless such pictures of my aunt, Sister Celine, standing with “her” children, and some photos of her and Virgilius and Angelica, and all those other young women who left the cool climate of Ireland to dwell in the hell that is Georgia in the summer. I often wondered how they did it. Aunt Celine was plagued with heat rashes from the weather. Even on Tybee Island, where she was the principal, the ocean breeze was not enough…

If his overbearing grandfather, whom he calls “the brooding omnipresence of my childhood and youth,” formed his character then the Franciscan nuns of Saint Benedict sealed it. From them he learned in no uncertain terms that all people are equal, black and white alike. Since he lived in a sea of black faces, it was easy to believe at the time. Further south, being taught the same lesson by the Sisters of Saint Joseph, and living in a sea of white faces, I believed that message, too, with my whole Catholic heart.

Both of us had many hard lessons to learn on the way to reality, but Clarence Thomas’ education was much tougher and more full of the subtle hatred of cloaked racism directed at him than I ever knew. I was only called “Nigger-lover.” He got to experience the whole thing.
– – – – – – – – –
After St. Benedict’s, Justice Thomas attended Pius X High School, and in 1964, he attended a vocation weekend put on by the diocese. He tentatively decided he wanted to try for the priesthood. With Grandfather Anderson, though, you didn’t “try.” You finished the job. It proved to be Daniel in the lion’s den for Clarence.

His tutoring in the ways of the white world begins in the seminary, where he labored over Latin in order to catch up with the other boys. He was initially one of two Negro seminarians, though the other boy did not return the following year. Here Clarence learns for the first time what it is to be alone.

By way of a preface, he relates:

It may have been a blessing in disguise that I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for by going to a white school. Blacks in Savannah rarely came into contact with whites, and when we did, the encounters were usually brief and not too unpleasant, since our second class status was so firmly accepted that no unpleasantness was needed to enforce it…

[…]

I had no notion of what would happen if I dared to leave the comfort zone of segregation and test the uncharted waters of the larger world.

This is the turning point in the book. Everything that follows after – his education at the seminary (where white kids kept breaking the head off his Saint Jude statue and he kept gluing it back on – it eventually was permitted to retain its head and followed Thomas all the way to his chambers in the Supreme Court. As any Catholic knows, there is irony in that story, for St. Jude is the patron of hopeless cases), his undergraduate years at Holy Cross after he left the seminary, his law school days at Yale – a school he grew to hate – all of this is based on those fateful years at St John Vianney. After the lessons of Sister Virgilius, et al, who assured the children that all of us were created equal, Justice Thomas was not prepared for the white waters of higher education in America. It was a long, dangerous ride.

If for no other reason, read the book to discover Justice Thomas’ journey from radical liberal to moderate conservative. That is another lonely journey for a Negro in America. Even his grandfather, with his belief in the good intentions of the Democrats who would guard the fate of the Negro, couldn’t follow Clarence into the outer reaches of darkness where Thomas Sowell dwelled.

The biographical content of this book makes it a good story, very hard to put down. But the intellectual journey is the heart of the book and I wish he had spent more time there. However, it must have been difficult enough to gather together the threads of his life and weave them into a coherent tapestry. One can’t have everything, though I hope there is a sequel to this tale, one that puts his spiritual journey from the depths of his solitary drinking through the rebirth of his Christian faith as he went through his ordeal in the Senate hearings – what he correctly termed “a high tech lynching” – into a deservedly larger perspective.

Now, as his grandfather did for him, he and his wife are raising his great-nephew. Justice Thomas gets to do for him what he so longed to receive from his Grandfather: reassurance that he was loved and welcome. May that experience heal his heart.

For Americans of that generation (Thomas was born in 1948) his life will echo the sounds of their own experience. Some will hear it as music, some as betrayal. But whatever else it is, Clarence Thomas’ voice is a clear recollection of a life lived as well as he could – always through a glass darkly, but struggling for a vision of something better.

As for my dear Sister Virgilius, the last address I had for her was the Franciscan retirement home in Newton, Massachusetts. There is a picture in the book of her hugging Justice Thomas at the reception, but we see only her back. All those good Irish women are gone now. I miss them very much. They sure knew how to laugh and the laughter made you join in.

A story remains to be told of the Roman Catholic nuns who taught Negro children throughout the South. Their quiet voices, repeating the idea of equality, were more formative than all the marches of the ‘60’s. In fact, without their tutelage, the fight for civil rights would have been much less sure than it was.

I hope some historian even now is collecting the archives the old nuns have preserved for future generations.

The Telegraph has another horror story about Britain’s National Health Service:

People with toothache are resorting to pulling their own teeth because they cannot find a NHS dentist, a study out today says.

Almost a fifth of those questioned in the biggest patient survey of its kind said that they had missed out on dental work because of the cost.

The research, involving more than 5,000 patients in England, also found that as many as six per cent had treated themselves because they could not find a dentist.

Some said they took out their own teeth or fixed broken crowns with glue. One person in Lancashire had carried out 14 separate extractions with pliers.

A researcher at a shopping centre in Liverpool met three separate people in one morning who had pulled out teeth themselves.

Almost three fifths (58 per cent) of dentists said new contracts brought in last year had made the quality of care worse and 84 per cent thought the changes had failed to make it easier for patients to get an appointment.

[…]

Sharon Grant, chair of the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health, which set up the forums, said the results from patients and doctors indicated “serious failings” in the NHS dental system.

“It appears many patients are being forced to go private because they don’t want to lose their current trusted and respected dentist or because they just can’t find a local NHS dentist,” she said.

“There are real policy issues here that have been fudged for too long. Is NHS dentistry just for those who can’t afford anything else – or can it revert to a universal, affordable, service to which people have entitlement as citizens and tax- payers?

In the U.S., many people have dental insurance, but a great number do not. And the price of dental care here is quite high, though many dentists are willing to work out a payment plan for those without insurance.

Part of the problem here is a difference in attitude between socio-economic groups regarding the definitions of luxuries and necessities. I have helped poor people get emergency dental care because they were in pain with abscessed teeth. On the other hand, the economic choices I see many people make often preclude dental care.

They buy expensive cars, for example. One person I helped (because she was in pain) has a 2006 car and her payments cost $250.00 a month – not to mention the tax bill on such a new car, or the insurance premiums. She lost her job unexpectedly and is now stuck with this albatross – and then a few weeks ago was struck with a badly abscessed tooth. There is no room now in her life for any emergencies. And just when she thought things were at their worst, she hit a deer with her car and can’t afford the deductible it will require to have the car fixed even when her insurance company does pay up.

I have seen poor parents pay over $100.00 or more for sneakers for their children, yet would balk at the $85.00 it would take to have the same child’s teeth cleaned. For that matter, so would the child balk at parents making such a choice. The shame of wearing no-name shoes simply can’t be borne but dental care is a “luxury.”
– – – – – – – – –
The homes of those among the urban poor whose income would be considered “poverty level” always have expensive media equipment. Big TVs, DVD players and the DVDs to go with them, games, cameras, etc., are often in evidence. They also spend a great deal of money on fast food and pizza delivery. These people don’t have dentists on the radar until the pain starts, and then it is simply to get rid of the offending tooth rather than having regularly scheduled appointments for prevention and treatment.

In the end, it comes down to what we consider important. Will it be bread and circuses now or regular dental care and savings for old age? The statement from the bureaucrat quoted above – i.e., is dental care “a universal, affordable, service to which people have entitlement as citizens and tax- payers?” – strikes me as the epitome of what’s wrong with socialized medicine. Entitlements of any sort ruin what is best about human beings: their strivings for liberty. Entitlements breed resentment and envy. They are never enough and no government could raise enough taxes to offset the death of enterprise and striving that comes with making one’s own way in the world.

In fact, I would hazard a guess that the number of dentists per capita in Britain has probably declined since the onset of the systemic illness known as the NHS.

I pray that the US can avoid that particularly rabid affliction, one which the Democrats are anxious to bestow upon us, using our money — while they studiously avoid discussing the damage and side-effects such a disease would impose upon the body politic.

And if we do get socialized medicine imposed on us, where ever will the Canadians go for high risk premature babies?

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing the whole of this report at Brussels Journal
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.

Fjordman sends a clip from his new post at Brussels Journal, where you can read the whole essay. The work draws from Diana West’s book, “The Death of the Grownup.”

The Fatherless Civilization

“I sometimes wonder whether the modern West, and Western Europe in particular, should be dubbed the Fatherless Civilization. Fathers have been turned into a caricature and there is a striking demonization of traditional male values. Any person attempting to enforce rules and authority, a traditional male preserve, is seen as a Fascist and ridiculed, starting with God the Father. We end up with a society of vague fathers who can be replaced at the whim of the mothers at any given moment. Even the mothers have largely abdicated, leaving the upbringing of children to schools, kindergartens and television. In fashion and lifestyle, mothers imitate their daughters, not vice versa.

The elaborate welfare state model in Western Europe is frequently labelled “the nanny state,” but perhaps it could also be named “the husband state.” Why? Well, in a traditional society, the role of men was to physically protect and financially provide for their women. In our modern society, part of this task has been “outsourced” to the state, which helps explain why women in general give disproportionate support to high taxation and pro-welfare state parties. According to anthropologist Lionel Tiger, the ancient unit of a mother, a child and a father has morphed from monogamy into “bureaugamy,” a mother, a child and a bureaucrat. The state has become a substitute husband. In fact, it doesn’t replace just the husband, it replaces the entire nuclear and extended family, raises the children and cares for the elderly…”

The rest is here.

For another aspect of West’s book, see this Hot Air video interview of Diana West by Michelle Malkin.

Part Two of the Hot Air interview is here.

[nothing further]