Category → Government Of the People…
Herman Cain is my kind of candidate
Herman Cain, an experienced businessman who does not run away from a tough debate, is looking more and more like my man to be my next American President.
Smart, articulate, quick-witted, creative, Cain brings the fight to the other corner of the boxing ring.
And he would be America’s first African-American president. Obama is America’s first African president. Cain is the real-deal, a real descendant of slaves brought from Africa to America 300 years ago. As an American, that means a lot to me. Cain demonstrates the possibility that awaits anyone who wants to take risks and succeed.
Cain inspires and motivates me, and I’m weighing my next steps with his campaign. Won’t you please join me?
Happy 11-11-11! My beloved city is about to declare bankruptcy and get taken over by the State
By Josh First
It’s an unusual alignment of numbers today, 11-11-11, and one wonders if it’s an ill omen or good.
After all, Harrisburg City Council voted tonight to declare bankruptcy, a move that Pennsylvania law says is illegal without prior good faith negotiations. Next week, Pennsylvania legislators will vote on a bill allowing the governor to take over the city and run it until it becomes solvent.
The only good faith efforts displayed yet by local officials have been by our mayor, Linda Thompson, who has been constantly stymied by her political foes for the flimsiest of causes. Thompson has been criticized from all sides for years, and of course she has her flaws. But among elected officials here she is also the only apparent cheerleader for Harrisburg City, so dissing her is dissing the city.
Not one opposing member of city council has yet articulated a good reason for his or her opposition. Councilman Brad Koplinski, the Great White Hope of Harrisburg’s moderate Democrats, has never articulated what he is thinking, or why. Many other members are simply inarticulate. Common-sense members like Patty Kim are steamrolled by the majority.
My family has lived here in Harrisburg continuously since the early 1700s, and I am the last Mohican of our clan to remain in the city itself. Is this the kind of place that any American would want to live, regardless of their family history? Our homes’ values are low as a result of the political infighting and lack of problem solving.
As today’s date numbers have aligned in an unusual formation, so we can only hope for an alignment of the political actors here, as well.
Racing fast to the next red light: where not to buy used cars
New York City would be the last place on earth I’d want to buy a used car, because drivers there universally rip from one red light to the next. Stragglers like me drift up behind them or up next to them in the adjoining lane about fifteen seconds later. Same red light, but they got there first. What they got out of arriving at a red light first, before anyone else, it’s closely held knowledge. I don’t understand it.
Call me Grandma, whatever; the need to accelerate my vehicle in that environment seems unnecessary. It’s not like I am going to get somewhere faster by going faster and arriving at one red light after another before most other drivers. The lights are timed to turn red in a row. Unless a driver can do 0-60 in half a second, by the time he arrives at the next light, he’s pretty much guaranteed it’ll be red.
Ultimately, aggressively accelerating just burns more gas and stresses the engine more than driving slowly and deliberately.
Perhaps it’s a mindset thing. Beating everyone to the next light gives the impression of being ahead, even if you’re all even. Well, that’s weird.
New Yorkers apparently have it in for their vehicles, because they beat the heck out of them with this intense driving business. A New York car may look shiny on the outside, but under the hood, look out. It’s gonna be an ugly mess.
I’d rather buy a vehicle from Amish country.
Josh
Ode to Apple’s Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs influenced my life greatly, even though we did not meet or communicate directly. He will be missed in my own mind, where he long occupied a far-off, small, funky niche in my brain.
His innovative, intuitive, “user-friendly” products appealed to me as a kid and as an adult, and they vastly improved my high school, college, and graduate school experiences. Obviously now, a “professional” isn’t a professional unless he or she has an iPhone or clone firmly grasped in hand.
Learning to program in Basic on an Apple II in high school introduced me to the usefulness of math, a boring as hell subject that I otherwise could not ever grasp from the droning mouth of a boring as hell teacher. Why are math teachers so universally so uninspiring, anyhow?
Apple’s computers were simple, useable, and increasingly intuitive. In grad school, I had a Mac, you know, the big clunky 25-pound thing in its own carry case. Really. Shoulder strap and all. By the day’s standards, it was indeed portable. I refuse to throw it away. There’s Steve Jobs again, in my attic.
In 2005, Jobs gave an unbelievable commencement speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc) that is so overwhelmingly inspiring that you can watch it and gain much whether you are 18, 28, or 48. Probably a lot of retirees would benefit from it, too, as they look at their second life, you know, life after “work.”
Jobs is a true American in every sense. Self-made, despite being a college drop-out. He didn’t stand on form in person, but his fusions of form and function are now iconic and trend-setting around our planet. It says much about what America offers to those who want it, and his story also is testimony to the importance of family in rearing us, instilling values in us, and supporting us as we grow and take risks. Jobs was adopted at birth, and loved the family that gave him love, not just the family that gave him life.
Steve, I didn’t know you in person, and I never watched one of your famous presentations. But you have been in my mind and my life in different ways and times throughout my adult life, from age 14 to now, at 46. Thank you, Steve, for all you gave me.
Many other people feel the same way.
And as a social entrepreneur myself, I love what I do, and I refuse to settle for doing less than what I love. Although I do not aspire to have a large company or make hundreds of millions of dollars, because those require trade-offs in my personal life that I am unwilling to make, I remain inspired by your work.
Thank you, Steve. Good-bye, old friend.
Josh
The Amanda Knox Case: Italy’s Great, Really Great, Flaws on Parade
by Josh First
October 5, 2011
This week, Amanda Knox took the witness stand in her own defense, a highly unusual move for the truly guilty.
Her desperate, earnest, tearful plea for justice moved the Italian jury to vacate the bizarre judgment against her. Italian prosecutors had accused Knox of wild sexual behavior that, in most people’s minds, exists only among Italy’s most liberated citizens.
Italy is famous for its beautiful country, high-minded art, and also infamous for corruption and a perennially weak military whose inadequacies reflect the deepest failings of Italian society.
Italy’s pervasive culture of corruption, at least by Western standards, has been on vivid parade this past year with constant reporting about prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s sexcapades on the public dime, and financial misdeeds. As a man, I gotta recognize impressive performance when I see it, and Silvio, old buddy, you are both a total stud and a terrible public servant. At least by my American values.
Earlier this year, PBS ran a three-part series called “Zen,” a cool-sounding Bhuddist name, but which according to the show’s producers is actually an old Venetian (Venice) name. Venice…the romantic, mysterious city of love. Intriguing, right?
In this TV show, Zen is an Italian police detective known for being honest and an unlikely survivor of Italy’s rampant official corruption. Viewers enjoy a voluptuous tour of Italy’s women, architecture, wine, cars, rural countryside, and, yes, the beautiful Machiavellian art of public corruption.
PBS is not in the business of damaging relationships with liberals, so if there is any truth to “Zen,” Italy is one screwed up country. Everyone is obsessed with sex, money, power, and using power to get women and money. The women are depicted as seductive, manipulative, and obsessed with money and capturing men. Especially married men. So, I admit to watching “Zen” to great entertainment. Especially with my wife. It’s pretty hot. At least by my American standards.
Is “Zen” a fair description of Italy? Are press reports about Berlusconi representative of Italy-at-large?
A popular Italian joke I have lifted from my old friend Trish at mozzarellamamma.com answers this question, and goes like this:
A husband and a wife are at an expensive restaurant. While seated at the table, a beautiful, leggy, buxom blond in a low-cut dress comes up and kisses the husband. “Ciao, Amore,” she says, before waltzing off.
“Who was that?” demands the wife.
“My lover,” answers the husband nonchalantly.
“WHAT?” the wife nearly screams. “How dare you take a lover!”
The husband leans across the table and says, “I will give you five minutes to think about it, and if you do not like it, you can get up and leave.”
The wife is silent. She looks around at the elegant restaurant, her jewel-laden fingers, and her mink coat, all a product of her marriage, and she thinks.
While she is thinking over his proposition, Giovanni, a colleague of her husband, comes up to their table to greet them. At his side is a young, buxom brunette, pretty but not quite as tall and leggy as the blond lover. They chat for a minute and the couple leaves.
“Who was that woman?” the wife asks.
“She is Giovanni’s lover,” the husband responds.
“Well, our lover is prettier than their lover,” the wife answers, making her final choice and her loyalty evident.
This uniquely Italian joke illuminates how cheating on your spouse is acceptable in Italy. Although legal since 1970, divorce is far less acceptable. According to mozzarellamamma.com, this arrangement “is part of the Catholic culture that men and women may be forgiven for taking lovers, but not for divorcing and breaking up a family. The family is sacred. For many reasons, it has therefore become acceptable to take lovers.”
Back to Amanda Knox, alone in a fantastic society whose values are upside down from the ones she grew up with in America. She is in a beautiful, screwed up society that she does not understand. And her misunderstanding nearly lands her in jail for life.
Italian prosecutors are used to dealing with perversion, wild and kinky sex, and the passionate violence that seems to ever accompany those practices. It was easy for the Italian prosecutors to fabricate a fantastic case, and to accuse delicate Amanda of being something other than she appears. After all, it’s totally Italian to be what they claimed she was, and anyone as sweet as Amanda must actually be the opposite of what she appears. That is the Italian way, apparently. Their claim was believable enough to Italian judges and the first jury, who wrongly convicted Amanda on those titillating, exciting, mental images alone.
But Amanda is not Italian; she is a product of American culture, which remains Puritanical at its core, Thank God.
During her appeal, when the light of day was focused on the prosecution’s insane house of cards that summed up the totality of the evidence against Amanda, good-hearted Italian jurors could not help but shake their heads in disbelief and let Amanda go home to her boring country. Amanda was clearly out of her league, but she was not a murderer or sex-crazed dominatrix, either. Italians know their business and recognized a fake when they saw one. Amanda, you are not one of us and you do not deserve to be punished, the jury must have concluded.
And Amanda came home to Wonderful Perfect Amazing America.
Welcome back to old fuddy-duddy America, Amanda, back to the land of Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead. Back to the land of The Rule of Law. Yes, we are boring. Yes, we are not extravagant. Yes, we are simple. Yes, we are not pseudo-sophisticated. And aren’t you glad of those facts?
America, love it or leave it! And if you leave it, be ready for the ride of your life.
NPR Goes for Broke on “Palestine”
National Public Radio Goes for Broke on “Palestine”
October 3rd, 2011
by Josh First
American tax dollars continue to fund National Public Radio’s left-wing agenda, one aspect of which is NPR’s aggressively anti-Israel, pro-Arab imperialism messaging.
April 22nd, 2011, saw NPR’s reporters across the board go for broke on the upcoming application for the creation of a second “Palestinian” state, this one planned for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The original and primary state that is 78% of the original Palestine Mandate is the current Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, ruled by the carpetbagging family of King Abdullah. In the 1920s, his family was chased out of the Arabian Peninsula by the al-Saud clan, now known as the Saudis. Approximately 80% of the Arabs living in Jordan identify as “Palestinians.”
NPR is no stranger to controversy over the issue of Arab imperialism and colonialism in the Holy Land. Last year Harrisburg’s local NPR affiliate, WITF, interviewed NPR’s ombudsman, who disclaimed any anti-Israel agenda.
“Critics call NPR ‘National Palestine Radio’, and we reject that, it’s ridiculous,” the ombudsman said in that 2010 interview.
Just months later, NPR’s president Mr. Ron Schiller was filmed making a pitch to supposed Arab donors, during which he bragged that NPR is known for its Leftist bias and known as “National Palestine Radio.” His fundraising ploy was that Arabs should naturally donate to NPR because it is a mouthpiece for their views. He was believable because his assertions about NPR’s Leftist activism have been widely observed and documented for decades.
Schiller promptly resigned from NPR after that film went public, and NPR promptly dropped heavy Israel reporting. Israel had been enormously disproportionately featured in NPR’s reporting for decades, and none of it was positive. After Schiller’s resignation, and the subsequent firing of the NPR vice president (Vivian Schiller, said to be no relation to Ron Schiller) who had been behind much of NPR’s political strong-arming of its reporters, NPR laid low and hid from scrutiny, knowing that it had finally been outed, all on the heels of NPR’s Ellen Weiss being dismissed for firing reporter Juan Williams in 2009. NPR is no stranger to political correctness, well, actually NPR is in the vanguard of it, but with so many firings and scandalous resignations associated with PC, the opinion service quieted down for a while.
Now, months later, NPR sees a unique opportunity to create pressure for the advancement of Islamic imperialism and Arab colonialism through the creation of another “Palestinian” state outside of Jordan, both of which NPR has long, long supported in the Holy Land.
In a September 22nd interview with Susan Rice, the Obama Administration’s United Nations representative, NPR’s interviewer asked question after question that revealed her support for Islamic imperialism and her anti-Israel bias. Even NPR’s late report on finance and the economy that same day featured a story on the supposed “Palestinian” economy.
That fawning report highlighted Arab business people supposedly working in quiet but successful obscurity, and failed to mention any of the enormous challenges facing Arabs in Judea and Samaria who wish to create a new Arab state there. In other words, it was just one more NPR propaganda piece, the kind that NPR executives used for fundraising among anti-Israel donors.
On October 3rd, 2011, incoming NPR CEO Gary Knell called for NPR to be fully funded by U.S. taxpayers and for elected officials to “depoliticize” NPR.
So, according to Knell, NPR is supposed to continue with business as usual, where every single molecule of the daily news is heavily politicized to the Left by NPR staff, but the American taxpayers who subsidize it are supposed to now ignore that and let NPR off the hook. Politicization-as-usual by NPR, but Heaven forefend that Americans raise that lack of balance to a political level where their tax money can be accounted for.
Like his predecessors, Knell either does not understand the problem, or, more likely, he wants to pretend the issues facing NPR are some sort of hoax. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, folks, is the message.
If there was ever a time to apply the Fairness Doctrine, this would be it. It’s a deeply flawed policy that undermines free speech, but when it comes to public money used to spread messages and promote policies that are directly opposed to American interests and policies, NPR is the poster child for its implementation.
Or better yet, disband NPR and return the savings to the taxpayers. There’s no compelling need or reason for NPR to exist any longer. Its inability to maintain journalistic balance is the constant proof of that.
Obama’s gaffes are fun. Jewish janitors? Intercontinental railroad? More, more!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/09/obama-congressional-black-caucus-video-gaffe.html
Flood of 2011 Experiences In a Nutshell
Ladies and gentlemen, like many families along the Susquehanna Valley, our clan experienced a lot of displacement, loss, and discomfort as a result of the five feet of water in our basement.
But challenges like the flood are just a test, a test of our abilities, our faith, our ability to be a good neighbor, and our friendships.
It also tests whether or not businesses are willing to be good neighbors, or if they try to take advantage of people who are vulnerable and needy.
Here are some kudos that came out of our experience, turning the lemons into lemonade:
***Big thank you-s to Ed, Dominic, and Devon, friends who over-rode my last-minute living-in-denial mentality and simply showed up, despite my protests, and helped our family carry hundreds of pounds of things out of the basement and up to the first floor, and then from the first floor to the second, as the flood warnings changed hourly. Just in time. Without their muscle and hard work, our personal and financial losses would have been much higher.
***Big thank you to long-time friend Mark Brodsky, who selflessly dropped off a huge generator on my front porch on Friday morning, which kept the sump pumps going long after the electricity had been turned off in our city.
***Big thank you to Mark Woodland, an amazing friend and neighbor, who helped me set up sump pump after sump pump in our basement, despite the late hours, the gross water, and the hard work. Mark is a gifted technician of anything involving mechanics. Without Mark, I likely would have ended up with the pump hoses circling back into the house.
***Thanks to Rabbi Ron Muroff who descended like an angel to help out himself and then with other volunteers (thanks, Judge Solomon et. al.) when we needed help most. We are not members of his house of worship, but we will be making a donation to it.
***Thanks to neighbors Steve and Dick for helping with the sump pumps and generator when I was running helter-skelter.
***Thanks to the Harrisburg City Police for putting in long hours chasing down would-be looters in our neighborhood, putting up with ridiculous answers from these guys, and for bringing comfort to me when our neighborhood was dark, abandoned, and completely vulnerable to break-ins and looting. Officer Bobby Yost, call any time for a BBQ in our back yard. You earned it, buddy.
***Thanks to the two very likeable Allstate adjustors, Tim and Paul, for treating us fairly and kindly. These two suuthin good ol’ boys from Louisiana are hunters, fishermen, even-keeled, and really all-American in all respects. We enjoyed their company as well as their hard work to ensure that we were treated fairly. Hey, fellow Central Pennsylvanians, these guys from the bayous are our kind of people. If you desire a vacation in a very different part of the nation but still want to feel at home, I think we can safely recommend coastal Louisiana.
***Thanks to FEMA for helping so many of our communities. We pay our taxes for this kind of service, and it’s nice to see our government provide service with alacrity and a smile. James Ferguson, our guest FEMA employee (well, a contractor) all the way from Tacoma, had an easy, caring way, and a hard work ethic.
***Thanks big time to our US Mail carrier, John, who stopped briefly to talk with me on Friday, September 9th, to strategize about the best paths for him to take to various neighborhood homes under feet of muddy water. Yeah, we know that the US Mail folks are under the gun in so many ways, but John delivered our mail despite encountering conditions that he could have easily walked away from.
***Thanks to Todd at Rainbow Cleaning. Although he made money, Todd also helped us above and beyond the call of duty. Without his dozen airplane-prop – sized fans and two industrial dehumidifiers for almost two weeks, our basement would have never really dried out. Todd provided good advice, too.
***Thanks to my parents and to the Family Boss, Viv, for keeping us all on the straight and narrow despite the strong urges I often felt to run screaming in circles.
Josh
My Flight 93 Crash Site Experience, In a Nutshell
Why We Must Protect Flight 93’s Landscape
September 6, 2011
By Josh First
From October 2001 through October 2003, I led the effort to conserve the Flight 93 crash site for an eventual national memorial. At that crucial time in its development, I was working for a national non-profit land protection group, and the National Park Service asked me to help out, just weeks after September 11, 2001.
During that formative two years, I took a lot of criticism for targeting a relatively large area that needed to be protected. It’s nice now to see the Flight 93 memorial taking shape around those boundaries, not just because I feel personally vindicated, but because it’s unquestionable that the American public expects our national monuments and memorials to be fully representative of greatness, including that of Flight 93.
People have asked me why the memorial needed to be such a large area, roughly 2,200 acres, and my response used to be “Go to Gettysburg battlefield and see what kind of an experience you would have there, standing on just six acres.”
In other words, can the importance and mechanics of something that occurred on a large scale be boiled down to its essence in a physically small area? My answer is No, it cannot, and I think that anyone who is interested in what happened at Gettysburg or at any other famous American battlefield will agree. At each location, the local story unfolded across a landscape, and in each landscape certain facts occurred. These places become important to the public because the interplay between the facts and the landscape are important. They tell a story that represents heroism, determination, American grit, qualities that we all want to recognize and immortalize. These qualities and symbols make us quintessentially American, and we are proud of them.
At Gettysburg, Antietam, Yorktown, Pearl Harbor, and Flight 93, heroes defended America. What took hours, days, or weeks at some took only seconds at Flight 93’s final resting place. Having interviewed all of the landowners at Flight 93, each one offered me a different recollection of the plane’s final seconds. We all know now that those final seconds were a frenzied battle for control of the cockpit, led by Americans who knew that their nation was under attack and who were determined not to let their plane become a missile to hit the Capitol or the White House. Phone records and the recollections of family members who spoke with their loved ones point to a truly heroic effort that the passengers knew was likely to be suicidal. Nevertheless, they broke into the cockpit and duked it out, American style.
Flight 93 landed upside down after yawing and veering wildly across the landscape. It nearly clipped a large oxygen tank that fueled hand-held torches used to dismantle junk metal, and the workers below involuntarily fell to their knees as the enormous plane roared by, just feet above their heads. We all know that the last living views of our heroic passengers was Pennsylvania’s green countryside, the bowl-shaped landscape that surrounds the crash site. That area is now mostly protected, and it gives current and future visitors the opportunity to visualize and memorialize for themselves what happened on Flight 93. No homes, motels, or theme parks will ever press against this hallowed ground.
Again, if you’ve ever been to Gettysburg battlefield, and you’ve looked from Little Round Top across to Devil’s Den, and visualized the brave soldiers who fought there, then you know why the immediate landscape around Flight 93’s resting place must be conserved. Future generations of Americans deserve the same inspiration that we now take for granted. Just as past generations protected Gettysburg’s landscape for us, long before it became a pressured commercial area, so we must also do in Shanksville for generations of Americans to come.
Something Is Rotten in Scotland
Scotland: Western Civilization’s Poster Child for Politically Correct Rot
© Josh First
August 30, 2011
Western Civilization is crumbling from within, rotting from decades of increasingly demanding sentimentalism that pushes out laws based on equal justice before the law, and replaces them with laws based on redistribution of wealth and the rewarding of purported victims, whose sole claim to victim status is that some people feel badly for them. Of all possible places, the remote, scenic, and otherwise pretty much unimportant Scotland is the ugly poster child for this rot.
Political correctness has long been antagonistic towards America’s essential institutions, core beliefs, and justice system. It has made increasing headway here, but its roots run deep in Europe, where it has removed former greatness and replaced it with enforced apathy. Recall that England was nearly destroyed by Nazi Germany because English pacifism ran so deep. Pacifism is a core element of political correctness. Pained by World War I, “The War to End All Wars,” the English were blinded by a messianic belief that all wars were wrong, and that evil must be appeased, instead of confronted. By the 1930s, England had emasculated its Imperial self beyond recognition right when Hitler’s un-emasculated and newly imperialistic Germans nearly stormed its gates.
Decades later, pacifist England rejected the lesson of World War II, and Her Majesty’s subjects in its furthest occupied territories, including Scotland, casually absorbed Britain’s forced gentility. As one of those people opposed to the forced notion of a “United Kingdom,” as the English blithely claim to be, it’s always been difficult for me to admit that England truly influenced its once-great and long independent neighbors, including Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Based on their best qualities, they should be above it.
All three nations have long histories of unique cultures and languages, inspired and fierce warriors, and proud identities. All three nations represent the high-water mark and stone wall rejection of Roman conquest, with London ironically the site of Rome’s regional capital, a kind of Quisling-English monument. England’s long, cruel tyranny over the three nations, still alive with the English occupation of Northern Ireland, eroded to bare nubbins those great characteristics of yore. One must now admit that enforced imperial unity has caused these three nations to learn the very worst that England has to offer. One nation stands above the rest in its willingness to prove it: Scotland. Sadly, “Make the world England” worked in Scotland.
True it is that peat-flavored whisky, bright Tartan cloth, Nessie, wool sweaters, and ubiquitous sheep upon scenic vales distinguish Scotland. And Scotland still provides mirth in Irish pubs enthralled by players of the Uilleann pipes, who gave the bagpipes to the Scots, who never got the joke. But fast forward six hundred and seventy five years after the Battle of Bannockburn, and Scotland became the location of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, where Pan Am flight 103 was remotely blown up in flight by Libyan Mohamed al-Megrahi, who was subsequently convicted and imprisoned in Scotland. Lockerbie is the place in Scotland where most of the bombed plane’s parts and 270 people fell to earth. It should be hallowed ground, an inspiring symbol.
Although 270 innocents were killed, in 2009 Scotland released Megrahi from a Scottish prison cell on “humanitarian grounds.” All levels of the Scots government participated in the decision to release Megrahi, who was subsequently received and feted as a hero in Libya. Megrahi remains quite alive today, and Scottish politicians remain defiant about their decision.
Despite evidence that Megrahi’s release was a decision based on falsified medical advice and appears calculated to gain favor with Libya and access for British Petroleum to Libya’s oil and gas fields, Scottish officials refuse to admit that it was un-just to release a mass-murderer from prison because he did not feel well. They were, after all, appealing to the highest of politically correct causes, “humanitarianism.”
Humanitarianism is the sentimental basis for much of the politically correct thinking now permeating western nations. It is responsible for the false notions of fairness that result in injustices like Megrahi’s release, the calls to dismantle America’s borders, the blocking and then banning of the death penalty, and the release of recidivist violent criminals from U.S. jails. Under humanitarianism, the rule of law is being up-ended.
On August 20th, 2011, Susan Cohen, mother of 20-year-old Lockerbie victim Theo, was quoted in The Scotsman News as saying “The Scottish legal system is an absolute joke. In the US, we would not be able to have one man come out with the foolish line of ‘compassionate release’ and then let him go. I want there to be more trials over this – I hope there will be – but I wouldn’t trust them to be held in Scotland after what has happened. This is going to go down in history as a terrible black mark against Scotland. You are given your new-found freedom, and these are the kinds of decisions that are made.”
CNN reported that Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am 103 support group, wrote an email to CNN on August 29th, 2011, that “blasted the report that al Megrahi was near death, saying he didn’t believe it or that the convicted felon merited any reprieve.” ‘His family is trying to make a sympathetic character out of an unrepentant, murderous monster,’ Duggan wrote.
Said English politician Iain Gray, “The sight of Megrahi last month acting as a cheerleader for a dictator indicted for war crimes [Moamar Gadafi] turned the stomach.” And yet, the Scots remain defiant. They believe that their decision making is unassailable, because they were making nice. Under it all simmers the other politically correct notion that all Muslims are automatically victims in western nations, and despite being a murderer, Megrahi is a member of that untouchable victim group. Free he must be.
Scotland’s official behavior is important because, as a former bastion of the Protestant ethic that gave us western civilization and the foundation of American democracy, what happens in Scotland indicates what might be happening elsewhere in the broader body politic of western civilization. If rotten politics are happening there, then rotten politics might be happening here. Official injustices carried out in Scotland can form the foundation for un-just decisions in America. Former U.S. senator Arlen Specter quoted Scottish law when he acquitted impeached president Bill Clinton during his trial in the Senate, so it’s not that far away.
Megrahi’s release is a painful example of how western civilization is under assault, from deep within. Greatness once infused Scotland, a greatness that created the two-handed Claymore sword, once swung by tough men defending their liberty and culture. That greatness has been frittered away, lost in its misty isles and replaced by misty thinking. If Scotland’s decision to release Megrahi is not repudiated, then the politically correct assault advances on western culture and institutions, and justice retreats.