I recently saw " The Illusionist", which I found well acted, entertaining, and disturbing for its political undercurrent. Now I may be accused of being someone who sees Liberal monsters under every [media] bed, but in this case, you didn't have to peek under a piece of furniture to see the Liberal bias rearing its ugly head; it was right there at center stage.

Now if you haven't seen the movie, be aware that I may give away some of the story, which is basically a period [turn of the last century Vienna] love story, though not the final twist. Having said that, my problem is the blatantly secular philosophy which is espoused. Now the interesting point is that the main character, who the audience will identify and empathize with, and cheer on, admittedly uses spirituality to manipulate the poor, ignorant masses [who seem actually to be the middle class based on his audiences], with the result that [literally] from altars the cry goes up that Austria is a spiritual republic. The Prince  who everyone should find detestable, is thwarted in his plans to bring democracy and modernity to the empire. Thus the good guy uses a thinly veiled stand in for religion to accomplish his admittedly selfish goal, while the bad guy, who seems to have no redeeming characteristics, is stopped from enlightening his people, and given the time the movie is set in, probably prevent an eventual world war. So I, probably like many, found myself walking out of the theater a little perplexed as to whether or not we had rooted for the wrong guy. Since love conquers all, the doubt quickly subsided, but what lingers is the obvious Liberal intentions behind the movie. Throw in the fact that the Illusionist also turns out to be Jewish [we learn this when he is arrested and his name is called out] for no obvious reason, and you therefore begin to wonder about the possible Anti -Semitic tone, which may or not be intentional, but I thought about,and therefore so will others. And so on the ride home, as I discussed this with my wife, a seemingly light diversion on a Saturday night was revealed to be a diatribe against the forces of religion that the Liberal establishment are so vehemently against, though they acknowledge the pathos of the fact that the folks will look upon them as evil even though they are only trying to do good. For me, they can start by keeping their prejudices out of my entertainment.

I was watching the newly released journalists from Palestinian captivity on television, and noticed how they are being acclaimed as heroes, and it bothers me. Now I, along with most Americans I would think, had been hoping and praying for their safe return , and when it happened I breathed a sigh of relief for them, their families, the field of journalism and human decency, but are they heroes? This is a question which I have found myself asking more and more in recent years, as a variety of folks have been acclaimed and feted for their heroism. My question is , what did they do that was heroic? Looking at these two journalists, they were doing their job when they were abducted, held for about two weeks in conditions that supposedly were not too bad, and then through political machinations probably, they were released. To me, that makes them victims, and they deserved our sympathy, concern,  and attention. Why are they not heroes for what they went through? Because they had no control over it, they were passive players [hence victims] and really didn't affect the outcome. A hero is someone who goes above and beyond what is expected of them to perform a good or decent act. An example is John McCain who, when he was being held as a POW was offered his early release because of his father's status in the US military, refused to leave his comrades. Or the firefighters and other first responders at the World Trade Center on 9/11 who risked their lives saving others. This is heroism. Unfortunately today we suffer from value inflation, and have come to equate heroism with anyone who has suffered, or been inconvenienced, or sometimes just been chosen by the media [celebrity as heroism is the saddest manifestation of this phenomenon].  Thus the very meaning of heroism is muddied and lost in the swamp of political correctness and moral relativism. Since any society is defined by what they consider important and worthy of emulation, when victims are hailed as heroes, victimhood becomes something to strive for, and true heroism will ride off into the sunset, leaving us the poorer for it.

 Democracy is a hybrid of consumerism, or the market, and spectator sport applied to government, with all the associated inefficiencies, drawbacks and, unfortunately, absurdities this implies. Thus, you have competing vendors [political parties] hawking their wares to the consumers [voters] while at the same time disparaging their competitors products. Their reward is not wealth [the Cunninghams and Jeffersons being, hopefully, the exceptions] but power. However, because even when you win you have to cohabitate and [occasionally] cooperate with your competition, while he is seeking to usurp your position, and there is, essentially, only one buyer [the majority], this leads to a very messy, cantankerous, partisan driven affair which, when you throw in the added complexity of separation of powers, results in a very inefficient process. If you want the trains to run on time, this is not the governing model for you. Or, to quote Churchill, it is the worst form of government except for all the others.

Whatever its drawbacks and limitations, under peaceful, stable conditions it functions well enough because the important things in the life of our country are handled by the citizens themselves through the famous invisible hand of the marketplace, and the civilian and social structures amongst which they live their lives. Even a concern as important as immigration reform can be drawn out [and out and out…] and while some may be annoyed, the majority of people just go about their business. Don’t get me wrong, the government performs valuable [maybe a better word would be affecting, since their value may be debatable] services, but because there are usually no life and death emergencies, it can work its way through its tedious procedures and finally come to a conclusion which will probably offend just about everyone. In the meantime, ask people what they think about the government, and unless you happen to hit upon a politics junkie, chances are they will say “who cares”.

The exception is the life and death emergency, the most dire of which is warfare.

It has become almost a mantra that democracies don’t war against one another, and this is one of the strongest appeals of this form of government. In truth, democracies don’t like to war against any form of government, and with good reason. It’s inefficiencies put it at a great disadvantage. War cannot be waged by committee, or with its strategies and tactics held to the standard of transparency that Democracies [selectively] hold sacred. And when its soldiers are also the foundation of the government, as voters, well it isn’t difficult to see why war is a last, regretted option for a Democratic government. If all societies were democratic, war might very well wither away. Unfortunately all societies are not democracies. They are not even necessarily nation states anymore.

So when a Democracy is faced with a determined totalitarian, autocratic or fanatical opponent, whether it be Nazi Germany or IslamoFascism, it has the choice of diplomacy, which usually devolves into outright appeasement [ Neville Chamberlain and Germany], or a close facsimile [Clinton and North Korea] or war. And here is where it gets ugly. That cumbersome, overweight, ponderous , internally conflicted butterball suddenly has to become a lean, mean fighting machine. Or not.

It would be nice to believe that, faced with a major security threat such as 911, the political establishment could rally pasts its mundane concerns for one up manship and lead the country forward to victory. Indeed, that is almost a natural first impulse, as the first months after the terrorist attack looked like it was not business us usual for the political parties. But Americans have short memories and deep competitive drives, and soon the political parties were at each others throats, partially on principle, and partially on opportunism, and so democracy evinced the dynamic which makes war so difficult for it: two enemies must be faced, the external threat, and the internal opposition. For those who say this is only the case in unjust wars, and that the opposition serves a valuable moral purpose, remember that the Democratic Copperheads during the Civil War tried to force Lincoln’s hand and end the war, which would have dissolved the U.S. Thus they believed a war to preserve the Union and end slavery was an unjust war! And in both England and The U.S. there were those who opposed war with Nazi Germany, a war which , with hindsight, it is almost impossible to find fault with today. The point is, there will always be opponents to war, but in a democracy this is also a possible path to power, the morality of the position not withstanding. Therefore any war becomes a two front battle, which any military historian will tell you is extremely tough to wage.

So what is the answer, assuming that wars are not yet ready to fade into the dustpan of history, and that there are powers out there trying to destroy us? This is not a new question. In fact, the ancient Romans, when faced with a situation of deadly seriousness, and realizing the politics of the Forum were unacceptable, chose a Dictator for a limited time to lead them, and he essentially put democracy on hold. In our own country, Lincoln was forced to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, one of the fundamental principles of our judicial system, an action more traumatic that anything in the Patriot Act to our democratic system. Thus the tradeoff between security and liberty, always present in a democratic society, must favor security in war times if we are to have those liberties during peacetime. This is something most people understand, based on their voting patterns and polls, but the Liberal institutions remain adamant in denying this truism, as the recent NY Times revelations shows. To hide behind freedom of the press may be legally, but not morally or practically, justified. And the American people will pay the price.

Evolution is a hot bottom item for liberals for a number of reasons, but historically its importance was that it allowed the movement which had begun with the Encyclopedists and the Enlightenment and blossomed with the French Revolution and its condemnation of Religion to finally remove God from the last area in which His Presence had seemed to be needed, Creation. The question of how the multitude of living things had come into existence had finally been answered: random chance! Let the Church Bells [oops...old habits die hard] ring! 

However, aside from the fact that Darwin was never unequivocal in advocating this view of his theory, which really was an explanation of why animals change to fit their environment [because the changes that take are good for their survival, something which seems kind of self obvious today], the real question is: how do you prove all the changes are random? You can observe from now until the end of time, and you will never be able to say definitely that all you have seen was just random, non directed, a spin of the dice. How do you prove randomness? Its like trying to prove a negative, which a logician will tell you is impossible. In fact, Liberal belief in the randomness of change, as opposed to a belief in evolution, or the gradual change of living things to suit their environment, is a matter of FAITH [I can hear the proclamations of shock and protestations from the Left as they read this]. Evolution can be observed, and proved , but the ultimate WHY  behind it is, like all fundamental questions, impossible for science to answer. As Aristotle realized  in the area of Knowledge which came to be called Metaphysics, there are things science cannot answer, because they are not subject to observation and measurement and cause and effect. Why is there gravity, and how come it works inversely to distance and proportional to mass? How come atoms can share electrons and form new substances  [compounds] with brand new properties? How come the Big Bang produced  a Universe with exactly those substances [Hydrogen and Helium] and the force needed [Gravity] to create stars which could then create both the energy and heavier elements which were required for life? These are questions which a scientists will tell you are unanswerable  through his discipline, and which we can only answer with theories in which we have Faith.  Yes, Science does answer superficial questions of "why" which really turn out to be "how", but there exists fundamental truths which will never be discovered by observation and experiment. For these, faith is the faculty nature has imbued us with to seek the answers.  There is a famous law named Godel's Incompleteness Theorem which says all self contained logical systems have to contain axioms. That is, certain facts which are given, and non provable by use of the logical system itself. In other words, they are taken at faith. Thus, in geometry, parallel lines never meet- this is a basis for everything that follows, but it cannot be proven by geometry. Life is just such a system- there is much that our brains can prove with observation and reason, but there are certain things, some would say the really important things, that are outside the scope of empirical proof. For these "why's", faith is the only answer.

It is a truism in sports that the best defense is a good offense. This is also a concept that holds true in warfare. At no time is history has a general preferred to be fighting on his own terrority as opposed to the enemies.  That doesn't mean there hasn' t been guerrilla wars fought like the Spanish against Napoleon, and the Iraqis today, but given the choice, any knowledgeable general would prefer to be on the offensive. This is a direct result of the basic underlying theory of battle. which is, as Stonewall Jackson so nicely put it, to mystify, mislead and surprise. When you are on defense, especially on your home terroritory, you are the one waiting for the surprise, and that is not a good place to be.  Defense entails making contingencies for all possible eventualities, while the attacker only has to have one good plan. As they say, on defense you can be right 99 out of 100 times and you lose. On offense,  all you need is that one time, and you're going home in triumph.

The war on IslamoFascism is an extreme example of this verity. We can sit here, as the Democrats advocate, and try to plan for every possible attack, but in the real world there are limits to resources, and , in truth,  even if they were infinite, the possibilty that we can anticipate and rebuff evey possible plan of the enemy is miniscule. Eventually we would fail , and another 9/11 , or worse , would result . It is horrifying to contemplate, but inevitable if we retreat and try to create fortress America.

Our only recourse is to take the fight to the enemy and let them scramble and play defense against us. Iraq and Afghanistan are not wasted efforts, but the only real option we have. The Islamic jihadists do not have unlimited resources either, and I much prefer the idea of them sitting in a cave somewhere, or cowering is a hovel in the desert looking over their shoulders for incoming to us waiting for them to commit another heinous act in our country. It is always better to give than to receive, especially when it comes to offensive surprises.

War has become politically correct, at least for the Western democracies, including Israel.  Thus, it is not waged against the poor people of Lebanon, but rather against those insidious terrorists, and when there is collateral damage, everyone grieves, and condemns the barbarians responsible. For God's sake, its not like the Lebanese have voted Hezbollah into office [well, maybe they did, but only a little], and they don't support them, or let them live amongst them [welllllll..maybe more than a little]. Alright, enough sarcasm, you get the point. The essence of a democracy is that the people ARE responsible for their governments and their governing. When they accept the presence of terrorists,  they should be held accountable. I have read a lot of histories of WWII and never, ever did I see a distinction made between the poor German people, and their government. If it weren't for the people, there would have been no Nazi movement, and that was understood. IF the people of Lebanon didn't accept Hezbollah, they wouldn't be firing missiles into Israel right now. And the Palestinians clearly voted for Hamas, so if that fanatical party commits acts of war, the people are just as responsible. Funny how the Terrorists never say they are anti-Likud, but rather they are anti-Israelis. It's time for the West to stop agonizing over this issue, and instead to fight to survive against an enemy which has no similar compulsions, and indeed  sees them as weaknesses to be exploited. Death is a horrible thing to inflict, but the Israelis were attacked, and have every right to protect themselves from their enemies. While it is noble for them to try to spare civilians,  this may actually prolong the war. Vietnam proved that war cannot be waged as a politically correct affair. It is brutal, it is pain inflicting, and it should be frightening to contemplate, and perhaps if it was waged as a no holds barred exercise, the Arab "street" would not be so eager to tempt it.  

I was reading an article about recent experiments at UCLA which had determined that male and female mice display significant differences at the most basic molecular genetic levels in almost all their major organs, including the brain, a finding that the researchers felt probably is applicable to humans as well [there is probably something worth writing about the close relationship between rodents and humans, but I will leave that for someone else] and it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, Lawrence Summer, the ex-president of Harvard, and object of scorn and ridicule because he had the temerity to suggest that perhaps men and women had different aptitudes for math and science, may be feeling a little vindication today. After having been essentially run out of Boston by the liberal faculty and Feminists, based on their dogmatic beliefs in the equality of the sexes in all matters [well not all matters. They have no problem proclaiming the fact that women are more nurturing, caring, non confrontational, yada, yada yada....but that is all good stuff, so its ok!], that foundation of liberalism [at least when it suits them] Science, comes forth and says that men and women are different! Wow, what a shock. Of course, the fact that genes work differently in the genders will be glossed over as a minimal aberration by the Liberals, not really affecting the important stuff, but the point is, for the party of Darwin and natural selection, this should be a very troubling development indeed. I always felt that Summer's comment was worth considering as a possibility, which is how he framed it, but the Left jumped all over him for daring to disparage an article of faith for them: Women have to be, they just HAVE to be, equal to men. I mean, that is a basic tenet of Political Correctness. But on what is it based? If you look at the historical record, men have obviously been the leaders in science and math through all cultures and civilizations. Liberals will say that is just a reflection of cultural bias, and that maybe true, but the better question maybe why cultures developed that bias. Could it possibly be because men were better at all this stuff?   Now, hard, biochemical science comes forth to announce basic, physiological differences in the sexes. Will this shake the faith, and there is no other word for it, of the Liberals? I really doubt it. But what this should do is make obvious that their beliefs are as faith based as a religious conservatives, as much as they like to present themselves as the party of reason, rationality and science.  And like all articles of  faith, others do not have to agree with them, and they should not be tarred and feathered if they don't, nor forced out of the presidency of a University. But the high Priests of Political Correctness will never see it that way.