Evan Coyne Maloney’s critically important movie is finally available on-line. The mp4 file is under $10, and at 735 Megs takes a while to download.
It is a tour-de-force essential critique of American colleges.
lawfare
Published 1/15/2008 1:08:45 AM
Award-winning author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian Human Rights Commissions on vague allegations of “subject[ing] Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt” and being “flagrantly Islamophobic” after Maclean’s magazine published an excerpt from his book, America Alone.The public inquisition of Steyn has triggered outrage among Canadians and Americans who value free speech, but it should not come as a surprise. Steyn’s predicament is just the latest salvo in a campaign of legal actions designed to punish and silence the voices of anyone who speaks out against Islamism, Islamic terrorism, or its sources of financing. [Read more…]
Modern Memorials
Monuments to Wimpdom
What do these modern memorials to heroism and sacrifice have in common?
* The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial. Designed by college student Maya Lin, it was unveiled in Washington, D.C. on Veterans’ Day 25 years ago. It’s a black granite thingy-a long, plain wall that lines a big hole dug 10 feet into the ground. It lists the names of the war’s 58,000 fallen Americans and . . . nothing else.
In her first proposal to build the memorial, Miss Lin explained its purpose: “We, the living, are brought to a concrete realization of these deaths.” That’s it. Not to honor what they did. Just a reminder that they’re dead. Thanks.
* The Flight 93 National Memorial. The National Park Service has decided to erect the “Bowl of Embrace,” in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed to earth on September 11, 2001. Here’s the plan: For their heroism in overpowering four Islamic hijackers and foiling their attempt to destroy the White House or the Capitol, the passengers are to be honored with . . . an empty field. It’s little comfort that the field is surrounded by a stand of red maple trees planted in an arc that eerily resembles the crescent of Islam. The design’s original name: “The Crescent of Embrace.”
Like the Vietnam memorial, the monument itself has no inscription honoring anyone’s actions-just 1970s-style wind chimes and the names of dead people inscribed on glass cubes.
* The National September 11 Memorial. On the spot where New York’s mighty World Trade Center stood, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.’s anointed designer, Michael Arad, decrees that there be . . . an American eagle? How about a statue of the three firemen raising the American flag over the rubble? Heck no. Just two huge, square, “reflecting” pools. Maybe you can gaze at your navel through them. In a complex slated to cost $1 billion, this urban swamp is called “Reflecting Absence.”
Absence, indeed. What these modern war memorials have in common with each other is nothing. They portray nothingness. They have no people in them, never mind men carrying guns or swords, statues of Winged Victory, or even doves of peace. Just death and names — grief without glory. [Read more…]
ignoble Nobel
Peace Prize Committee Disbands By William S. Smith : 19 Oct 2007 http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=101907A
“I always thought the peace prize was a bunch of crap given to whiney, self-aggrandizing, busybodies by a bunch of self-important, narcissistic gullible, retired, left-wing, Norwegian, gasbag politicos.” Senator Inouye
reason interview
“The Western mind-set—that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away—is delusional. The problem is not going to go away. Confront it [Islam], or it’s only going to get bigger.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali v. Congress
” I think that the prophet was wrong to have placed himself and his ideas above critical thought. I think that the prophet Muhammad was wrong to have subordinated women to men. I think that the prophet Muhammad was wrong to have decreed that gays be murdered. I think that the prophet Muhammad was wrong to have said that apostates must be killed. He was wrong in saying that adulterers should be flogged and stoned, and the hands of thieves should be cut off. He was wrong in saying that those who die in the cause of Allah will be rewarded with paradise. He was wrong in claiming that a proper society could be built only on his ideas. “
[T]he Islamic faith [i]s one of the great religions of the world[.]
Close The U.N.
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 24, 2007 4:20 PM PT
The World Stage: Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, sponsors terrorism and colludes in the murder of American troops. So why is he given the honor of addressing the United Nations on U.S. soil? To us, the answer is clear. The U.N. is as corrupt, brutal and morally compromised as Ahmadinejad himself. In its many affronts to civilization and decency, the U.N. has long since outlived its usefulness and reason for being. Time to shut it down. [Read more…]
atheism unknown there
“The almost general mediocrity of fortune that prevails in America obliging its people to follow some business for subsistence, those vices, that arise usually from idleness, are in a great measure prevented. Industry and constant employment are great preservatives of the morals and virtue of a nation. Hence bad examples to youth are more rare in America, which must be a comfortable consideration to parents. To this may be truly added, that serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practised. Atheism is unknown there; infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great age in that country, without having their piety shocked by meeting with either an atheist or an infidel. And the Divine Being seems to have manifested his approbation of the mutual forbearance and kindness with which the different sects treat each other, by the remarkable property with which He has been pleased to favor the whole country.”
From: Information To Those Who Would Remove To America, Benjamin Franklin, 1794
Note the date –1794, well after the 1st Am “Establishment Clause” was argued and ratified by the States along with the Constitution. Jefferson’s notion of a “Wall of Separation” between church and state came about almost a decade later, yet it is that expression to which revisionists refer to make the erroneous point that the Constitution contemplated the protection of beliefs repugnant to Christianity. The “different sects” Franklin refers to were all Christian, and that’s the context in which the Establishment Clause was ratified. The modern context of tolerance toward atheism and “infidel” non-Christian religions would have offended the Founding Fathers. Under an originalist constitutional interpretation, the Establishment Clause would not protect, for example, the practice of Islam. Protections the Court has found over the years in the cascade of constitutional interpretation, can, with the stroke of a pen, be taken away. In effect, what some claim as a fundamental right, is little more than a revocable license.
