Hither and Yon, July 23: “the last Marxist in the world will probably be an American nun”

Yes, that quote is in one of the links sent in by readers. No, you don’t have to click on anything to find out who said it and why. The words are in plain view in one of the tip blurbs…umm, somewhere.

Do I agree with it? Only if you’re talking about the Maryknoll nuns. Those are some very far-left women, even as they have been killed by death squads in Central America.

Unfortunately, Liberation Theology, injected at the right moment, can be a permanent vaccination against reality.

And so, on to today’s tips…

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Bin Laden’s former driver on trial in Gitmo

…Soufan also said Hamdan told him about a conversation he overheard when he was driving bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, after the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

The two men were looking at a magazine which described the flight routes of the Sept. 11 hijacked planes, Soufan said.

“If they didn’t shoot that fourth plane it would have hit the dome,” Soufan said bin Laden told Zawahiri, according to Hamdan’s account.

“I assumed (‘the dome’ meant) either Congress or the White House,” Soufan said. “Hamdan said he did not know what they mean by the dome.”

That plane didn’t get shot down, despite the claims of bin Laden’s cronies and American truthers. A bunch of US citizens brought down that aircraft in Pennsylvania.


Telling Tales Out of School

Three MPs of Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) secretly informed the National Anti-terrorism Coordinator (NCTb) of the contents of Wilders’ anti-Islam film Fitna prior to its publication. Wilders did not know this, Elsevier weekly magazine reports.

On 4 March, NCTb chief Tjibbe Joustra and the National Coordinator of Guarding and Security, Arjen Jonge Vos, had a meeting on Fitna with Wilders and his PVV MPs. At it, the MPs were warned about the consequences of the film for their personal safety, even though Joustra and Jonge Vos at that moment did not know what Fitna would show.

Three PVV MPs were so disquieted by that meeting that they afterwards asked for personal protection. To give their request some clout, they spilled the beans about the contents of Fitna, according to Elsevier.

Elsevier bases its report on a “source close to the top of the security services”. According to the source, the three PVV MPs went to NCTb chief Tjibbe Joustra independently of one another with the message that the contents of Fitna would be explosive.

Buncha weenies, those MPs. Like everyone else, I keep asking “what in the world is wrong with the Dutch?”
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Turkey allows Iraqi oil export restart

In other words, the turkeys are throwing their weight around again.


Our tipster calls this one “the outrage of the day”

Audit finds that Michigan let hundreds of criminals provide child care

Michigan’s oversight of child care providers was so ridden with deficiencies that state regulators licensed hundreds of convicted sex offenders, child abusers and criminals during a three-year period ending in 2006, according to an audit released today by the state auditor general.

The Department of Human Services authorized 1,900 unsuitable day care providers during the period placing 4,600 children at risk, auditors found.

“Daycare” is a disaster, especially for boys. I used to have to “certify” daycare homes for a county social service agency. It was so depressing, I quit.


The Sweet Illusion Of Socialism

The underlying issue of the 2008 election makes this a watershed moment in American history, too important to shrink from full and frank debate or allow emotional appeal to cloak party platform DNA.

In 2004, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., said: “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” She could have easily quoted Karl Marx, who said: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

[…]

We’ve come far from promises of “a chicken in every pot” to Barack Obama’s June 3 declaration that “the chance to get a college education is the birthright of every American.” When did it become a birthright?

In his 1982 book, “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism,” Michael Novak noted that many who have lived under socialism would find it hard to believe “that other human beings would fall for the same bundle of lies, half-truths and distortions. Sadly, however, illusion is often sweeter to human taste than reality. The last Marxist in the world will probably be an American nun.”

Guns, Foreign Courts, and the Moral Consensus of the International Community

Th[e] [Supreme Court’s] tendency to invoke foreign jurisprudence is becoming more troubling as it becomes clearer that the moral consensus that once united Western nations has almost entirely broken down. A few years ago a pastor I know, as part of his duties as a representative of the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC), took part in an inter-church dialogue with a member of the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN), a grouping of Reformed congregations in the Netherlands. The GKN sent what they considered to be a moderate pastor to participate in this conversation about moral issues. In the course of the discussion, the GKN moderate asserted that it was more evil to own a gun than to have an abortion.

At this, the CRC representative was only able to respond that their discussion was effectively over…As any rhetorician knows, argument can only proceed where there is some basic level of agreement, and the ethical opinion expressed by the GKN pastor was so far removed from the sensibilities of the CRC that there was effectively no point of contact for continuing dialogue.

While this is a relatively minor anecdote, it serves well to illustrate the conflicting moral values placed on issues of life by the mainstream culture in Europe and the United States…

…If part of what characterizes a civilization is a consensus on moral issues, then the idea of a unified Western civilization encompassing Europe and the United States is an illusion. A consensus that diverges on such fundamental questions of the right to life and responsibilities of self-defense is simply no consensus at all.

It's amazing how we still keep trying to talk to one another, though. Hope springs eternal...