The American Culture

Mike D'Virgilio makes some good points in his comment on my post outlining "A Classical Liberal View of the Iraq War." Mike writes,

I believe we were absolutely right to oust Saddam. I think most who call themselves classical liberals agreed. Once we were rid of the man, were we supposed to pack up and leave and say "Good luck"? No nation building for us.

This is certainly not a conclusion that I entertain lightly. I concede that a case can be made that toppling Saddam was justified by his offenses against us, although I cannot see it as very convincing. Some well-placed bombs in Libya caused the formerly bellicose Col. Khadaffi to stop supporting terrorism, and although Saddam Hussein seems to have had greater ambitions, a few more well-placed bombs would probably have accomplished the same there.

Moreover, even if we concede that ejecting Saddam Hussein from power was justified, limitations on engagement should have been clear. After a decent period of staying on to get a new government in power and on its feet, any possibly justifiable military involvement for us there was surely finished.

Our government's job is to protect the American people from imminent or at least truly plausible threats. That means nothing more nor less than destroying our opponents or intimidating them into inaction. Toppling Saddam surely accomplished that, if he was truly a threat to us.

Yes, once "rid of the man" we should indeed have packed up and said "Good luck." That is all that we could rightly do. And that is what the American people expected the Bush administration to do, which is why his poll ratings fell so swiftly and stubbornly. The idea was that we would get rid of Saddam Hussein, hand the keys to a new government, and then let the country work out its future according to its own desires. We would help them set things in place, but then we would go. It would be their country and their problems, not ours.

That was what I understood Bush to be suggesting in his initial justification of this venture, and I strongly believe that that is what most Americans thought he meant. And if that is so, the Bush administration is responsible for either not being clear about its true aims or changing its plan after it got the people of the United States committed to intervention. Neither of those options reflects well on our government or the people who elected it.

I understand that leaving Iraq at this point could make us seem weak. However, we are going to have to leave at some time, and whenever we do, that country is probably going to be a mess. Our concern must be our own national interest, and our interest is surely best served by taking a principled approach to foreign affairs and tending to our own very significant problems.

In addition, going hard after Al Qaeda (which most certainly is justified) would mitigate any impression of weakness, and a strong and appropriate response against the next nation or extranational group that harmed us would prove that we are willing to stand behind our principles and use our great power when we are wronged, while also showing that we respect other nations' sovereignty just as we expect and indeed require them to respect ours.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Citing public opinion polls and Congress's vote to require a timetable for the United States to leave Iraq, conservative stalwart commentator William F. Buckley suggests that the very existence of the Republican Party is at state.

This seems a real stretch, given that the Democratic Party not only survived Vietnam but in fact routed the Republicans just one presidency later.

But the situation for the Republicans is indeed dire, as Buckley argues in referring to the chances of a positive outcome for the United States in Iraq:

General Petraeus is a wonderfully commanding figure. But if the enemy is in the nature of a disease, he cannot win against it. Students of politics ask then the derivative question: How can the Republican party, headed by a president determined on a war he can’t see an end to, attract the support of a majority of the voters? General Petraeus, in his Pentagon briefing on April 26, reported persuasively that there has been progress, but cautioned, “I want to be very clear that there is vastly more work to be done across the board and in many areas, and again I note that we are really just getting started with the new effort.”

The general makes it a point to steer away from the political implications of the struggle, but this cannot be done in the wider arena. There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.

The problem for the Republicans is simple, actually. The appeal of their party is mainly to classical liberals (which is the political position to which Buckley has most often adhered), and their conduct in Iraq has entirely contradicted the classical liberal worldview. Nation-building is simply not a proper function for government, according to classical liberal thinking.

Here is why. 

Classical liberalism holds that government should not intervene in voluntary agreements, and that its proper role is in fact to help enforce them. A government should intervene in human actions only when they harm others. Then, and only then, does government have a reason for action.

• Every nation is sovereign.
  
• Every nation is entitled to conduct its own affairs as it chooses unless its actions affect other nations.
• When actions affect other nations, those nations have a right and indeed a responsibility to their own citizens to remedy the situation. The obligation on the part of the reacting nation is to conform its response to redress the offense and ensure that there will be no imminent repetition of it.
• An affected nation responding to a wrong has no right to impose major consequences on a nation, even if the intended effect it so ensure that the offender will not resume the offending activities beyond the immediate future.
  

That is clearly a principled position that provides a definite guide for action against foreign aggressors while upholding the principle of national sovereignty that is crucial to the protection of any people and their government.

Just as obviously, this is not what the United States has done in Iraq.

But is there anything we can do now, now that we're in Iraq and have no way of getting out without that very unhappy place very likely descending into even greater chaos and madness?

It appears to me the only logical and justifiable course for the United States is to leave Iraq and to let the Iraqis work out their problems themselves.

If that results in imminent or real harm to the United States and its citizens, appropriate intervention will then be justified—but only then.

If it results in violence within Iraq, that is unfortunately the nature of that place at this time, and will differ only as a matter of degree from what is now happening there and what was going on while the previous government, the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, was in power.

Will the United States bear some responsibility for any ensuing problems there? Certainly. Will Iraq have some reason to call upon us for help? Yes. Should the United States respond with help? Yes, in the form of money and humanitarian aid. But nothing else. We have no right to impose a new government on them, and any military activity would only be a means of doing so.

Yes, of course.

But it would still be the right thing to do.

After taking the wrong course, going farther in the wrong direction will not bring one closer to one's correct destination. Only a return to the right course will do that.

Upon leaving Iraq, eradicating Al Qaeda is the international action on which the United States should concentrate.

Leaving Iraq, however embarrassing it would temporarily be, would put the United States on a principled course in international affairs. That is far more important than any immediate political considerations, either national or international.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Federal Communications Commission, created by Congress and administered by the President, seems to think that this does not apply any more.

To wit, as The New York Times reports:

Concerned about an increase in violence on television, the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday urged lawmakers to consider regulations that would restrict violent programs to late evening, when most children would not be watching.

The commission, in a long-awaited report, concluded that the program ratings system and technology intended to help parents block offensive programs — like the V-chip — had failed to protect children from being regularly exposed to violence.

As a result, the commission recommended that Congress move to limit violence on entertainment programs by giving the agency the authority to define such content and restrict it to late evening television.

I, too, am concerned about an "increase in violence on television," as well as the increase in sexual content, vulgar and obscene language, and general stupidity. However, Congress has no right to regulate such things.

That right is reserved to the states and the people.

Congress does have the right to regulate indecency, and this could be construed as being such an instance, but the measures being contemplated—requiring broadcasters to limit such programming to particular times, forcing programming distributors to offer channels a la carte, and most importantly, defining the problem as depictions of violence and leaving sexual content and obscene language alone—suggest that getting rid of indency is not the object, but the point instead is to ensure the availabilty of indecent programming by restricting it to those adult individuals who want it.

The requirements could be seen as falling under Congress's authority to regulate interstate commerce, but that is false, given that such authority was in the Constitution when the First Amendment was passed, and hence is overridden by the Amendment. Thus, Congress has no authority to abridge the freedom of speech under any prior constitutional grant.

The Times quotes FCC Chairman Kevin Martin as saying, "Clearly, steps should be taken to protect children from excessively violent programming. Some might say such action is long overdue. Parents need more tools to protect children from excessively violent programming."

Perhaps, but this is a matter for the states. Period.

I doubt that the telecom industry wants to be regulated by 51 different local entities, but that's their problem, not ours. Congress and its creations have no business regulating TV programming.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A student in a Chicago suburb has been arrested for writing an essay that allegedly frightened his teacher.

No, it was not the grammar or word choices; it was the content. 

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Told to express emotion for a creative-writing class, high school senior Allen Lee penned an essay so disturbing to his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct, officials said Wednesday.

Lee, 18, a straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with the misdemeanor for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.

Neither police nor the school would release a copy of the essay written Monday. School officials declined to say whether Lee had any previous disciplinary problems, but said he was an excellent student. Authorities said Lee had never been in trouble with the police.

The charge against Lee comes as schools in the Chicago area and across the country wrestle with how to react in the wake of the massacre at Virginia Tech. . . .

"The teacher was alarmed and disturbed by the content," [Cary Police Chief Ron Delelio] said.

The teen's father said he understood concerns about violence but not why a creative-writing exercise resulted in charges against his son.

"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said Albert Lee. But he added, "I don't see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions.

The teacher should be fired for giving such a lame writing assignment, as well as for ratting the kid out to the cops.

This is always the way of things in our society in recent years. Let everything go wild, and then lurch in precisely the opposite direction. Let a seriously disturbed young man roams the streets and buy guns and then kill a bunch of people, then arrest a boy for writing a class essay.

And then start the process over.

This is what happens in a society that does not have an agreed-upon set of shared values and a moral code based on them. 

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The networks' top evening TV programs suffered serious viewership ratings losses in the past few weeks, with several shows reaching record lows, USA Today reports.

However, there is more to the story. . . .

First, the losses. The Nielsen ratings showed that programs such as Lost, Desperate Housewives, ER, My Name Is Earl, The Simpsons, Two and a Half Men, CSI: Miami and Heroes had their worst ratings ever. "Still others," USA Today notes, "such as 24, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and American Idol, had their worst ratings in two years or more."

Although ratings are down, viewership has held fairly steady. What is happening is that increasing numbers of people are watching the programs later on DVRs. USA Today reports:

"If you look at live plus seven-day viewing, those declines for several shows start to vanish," says Fox's Preston Beckman. Lost lost 14% of its live viewing this season, but when time-shifting is factored in, the show is down only 1%. The Office, down 10%, is actually up 2% with delayed viewing included.

In any case, although it is incorrect to cite the ratings numbers as suggesting that the appeal of these popular programs has fallen, they do indeed indicate that the revenue structure if commercial television is crumbling rapidly.

Like most such trends, this will probably result in short-term misfortune for both producers and consumers of televised entertainment, but will probably bring long-term benefits for both.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

ABC Television has announced that Rosie O'Donnell, controversial host of the daytime show The View, will be leaving the program, as her contract has not been renewed.

O'Donnell said on her show today that ABC wanted her to stay on for three years, but she wanted to commit to only one.

The tenure of the pathologically unbridled O'Donnell as host of the program proved that a big mouth and penchant for irresponsible statements offered with intense sincerity and regular bouts of uncontrolled rage can make for a lucrative career in television.

O'Donnell frequently brought much attention to herself—and higher ratings for her show—by her bizarre and paranoid claims about various U.S. policies and her continued championing of an out-of-control, thoroughly demented, and corrosive entertainment culture.

Her behavior was thoroughly egregious, but the fact that she used politically correct language and represented modern liberalism enabled her to avoid the fate of Don Imus, which she certainly deserved.

Indeed, one would enjoy seeing the other many relentless blowhards now on national television fail to "have their contracts renewed."

It would be a happy thing indeed, but it is not going to happen.

In a society with widely distributed access to media and no set of shared values, what I call the Omniculture, there is a mad din of voices at all times, and the loudest ones will typically gain the most attention.

For a time, that is.

Eventually we tire of those particular nitwits and move on to other asinine loudmouths—usually even louder ones. This is what passes for a culture today. 

O'Donnell's departure from The View may indeed be, as she suggests, entirely of her own volition, or it may not. Regardless, there will surely be a place for her on some other ratings-starved outlet such as MSNBC or CNBC.

The fact that being loud and stupid is a moneymaking proposition in America today means that more Rosies and the like are in our future.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you ever doubt the power of popular culture to affect events, just consider Britain's mid-century film comedies. A movie I had never seen until yesterday illustrates this well.

In Penny Princess, a fizzy 1953 comedy from the Rank Organization (shown early this past Sunday morning on Turner Classic Movies), the tiny, fictional European country of Lampidorra has based its economy on smuggling for hundreds of years. They produce nothing of value, and economic innovation is nil. In addition, their concept of civil rights is hazy at best.

When the country decides to go legit, exporting a cheese called Schneeze (it becomes wildly popular because it contains schnapps and makes people tipsy), the surrounding nations of France, Switzerland, and Italy impose crushing tariffs.

The country's sovereign—a young American female (Yolande Donlan); this is a comedy, all right—decides to make it state policy to smuggle the schneeze into those countries, to avoid the protectionist tariffs and enable the country's economic innovation to thrive. As a result, Lampidorra becomes the only fiscally solvent country in Europe. It's a delicious lesson in the superiority of market competition over government fiat and corporate rent-seeking.

Originating from several different studios and a multitude of directors and writers, numerous film comedies produced between the late 1930s and early 1960s swam strongly against the leftist cultural tides of the time. These films illustrated and indeed openly expounded the values of free markets, individual initiative, low taxes, social mobility, individual generosity, the rule of law, the value of religion and sound moral values, and the humble joys of bourgeois life. They roundly satirized government interference and incompetence, and they ridiculed the nation's complacent, sclerotic cultural institutions.

The Ealing studio sent out a stream of excellent comedies, several of which starred Alec Guinness as an English Everyman who battles corrupt government, business, and labor union interests. The Man in the White Suit and All at Sea are among the studio's finest and most overtly economically liberal films (in the classical sense), and Whiskey Galore, Passport to Pimlico, and The Titfield Thunderbolt stand out in their support of local political sovereignty as well as the importance of economic freedom and the unleashing of individual initiative. Films such as Hue and Cry,  An Inspector Calls, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers, The Lavender Hill Mob, and others upheld the rule of law and showed that both goodness and evil are found in profusion among all social classes.

The Boulting Brothers produced a splendid run of satirical comedies mocking Britain's sclerotic mid-century socialist state and promoting classical liberalism. I'm All Right, Jack, starring Peter Sellers and the also brilliant Ian Carmichael, is at the peak of their achievements and a true film classic. In fact, I'd say it's one of the essentials.

The Rank Organization put out numerous films of the same sort during the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, including Penny Princess. And numerous other small producers did likewise.

This flowering of culture supporting classical liberal ideas—free markets, individual initiative, local sovereignty, and solid middle-class values—was the world in which Maggie Thatcher and those who elected her spent their formative years.

We could certainly benefit from a turn toward such principles among our current cultural artisans.

In the meantime, we have these fine old movies to keep us laughing and start us thinking.

Highly recommended.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

[I ran across a DVD of the movie Batman Begins recently and was reminded of how representative it is of much of today's movie culture. So, for your enlightement and delectation, the following is reprinted from my review for Crux.]

What Batman Begins says most powerfully is how bad the earlier films in the series were—and how crippled by stylistic cliches today's Hollywood action films have become.

The best way to experience Batman is still to read the original DC comic books from years ago and watch the TV cartoon series. This one ain't bad, but they're the real thing.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The first episode of the new season of Hustle, the excellent British-American co-production about a group of confidence tricksters with interesting moral codes, premiered Wednesday night and was not quite as good as the previous seasons but was still much better than nearly everything else on TV.

The episode marks the transition from previous leader Mickey "Bricks" Stone, played by the now-departed Adrian Lester, to Danny Blue, played by Marc Warren. Warren does a good job of characterizing Danny's interesting combination of ambition and lack of confidence, and the other performers do nice work as well.

Robert Wagner provides an excellent villain, a vulgar, greedy, corrupt businessman from Los Angeles whom the gang decide to fleece in order to teach him a lesson (after deciding to fleece him just to get the money). The weakness of the episode is in the contrast between Danny's freewheeling, improvisatory approach and that of the previous leader, Mickey, who thought things through meticulously before proceeding on a con.

Either way can be fun to watch, but this new approach definitely changes the dynamic of the series. In the previous episodes, the viewer had a chance to try to guess what Mickey's plan was. In the present case, without a concrete plan to start with, the viewer is really just along for the ride. And once a plan does coalesce, in the last ten minutes of the episode, it is easy to guess what the team is going to do.

And if it's easy for us to guess, it should be easy for the mark to figure out. Still, things turn out well in the end as the wicked Wagner (who is finally beginning to show his age, alas) gets his comeuppance.

The moral complexity of the show also seems to have suffered a bit as we lose the tension between Danny's and Mickey's approaches to the con and their interesting discussions of motives and values. It seems possible that this tension will return when new team member Billy Bond (Ashley Walters), a former delinquent youth, joins the gang. He did not appear in the season's initial episode.

The new dynamics of the show may take some getting used to, but Hustle is still very entertaining and well worth watching.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson aptly characterized the two minds of modernity: liberalism and statism, in an excellent artice on the Virginia Tech killings, reprinted on National Review Online.

Discussing the Virginia Tech authorities' opposition to a proposal to remove the campus exception to the state's concealed carry laws—which would have allowed qualified adult citizens to carry firearms on campus, and which could certainly have prevented many of the deaths in the VT killer's rampage—Thompson writes:

The logic behind this attitude baffles me, but I suspect it has to do with a basic difference in worldviews. Some people think that power should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on "the authorities" for protection.

Exactly. These are the two mentalities of modernity: statism and classical liberalism, respectively.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An interesting article from the Associated Press indicates what was going on in the VT killer's mind.

It  was hatred, pure hatred.

AP reports:

He delivered a snarling, profanity-laced tirade about rich ''brats'' and their ''hedonistic needs.'' . . .

'Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats,'' says Cho, a South Korean immigrant whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington. ''Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.'' . . .

Cho repeatedly suggests he was picked on or otherwise hurt.

''You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience,'' he says, apparently reading from his manifesto. ''You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.''

As I noted in my earlier item on this situation, this is pure egomania. Comparing himself to Christ!

The AP story and other sources make it clear that numerous people observed that this man was dangerously disturbed—what any sensible person would call evil—and urged him to "get help."

That was an entirely ill-conceived reaction.

A person consumed with hatred does not believe that he needs help. He believes that others need to change. When they do not, he reacts with violence. He believes his reaction to be entirely justified.

This is precisely what the VT killer expressed in the videotapes made between his two bouts of murders. In addition, it is precisely what he expressed in the months beforehand.

The suggestion that he needed "help" is something to which such a person would never voluntarily submit. It is a delusion of our theraputic culture, the notion that people do what they do entirely because of a string of causal events and experiences, and that finding the key will reverse the conditions that led to the "pathology."

But hatred is real. We late moderns seem to believe that there is no such thing. But there is. People who have been brought up in "bad" environments know this all too well, and the fact that our media increasingly consist of individuals who have come from relatively privileged backgrounds and not risen from the streets and farms (as was common in the first half of the last century) means that the reality of hatred is entirely beyond their understanding.

They are under the Rousseauian delusion that everybody is good at heart and corrupted only by the rules of society. In fact, as we Christians know, the very opposite is true.

Hatred is real. It is not a generalized feeling toward some abstract "class," as political correctness codes and the delusional claims of media "experts" and social activists suggest. It is a powerful, personal antipathy toward others that seems to the individual to require corrective action. When society does not take action, the individual does.

The VT killer saw his prosperous, happy neighbors as enemies who deserved punishment and whom society was unjustly allowing to go about unscathed and in fact rewarding for their iniquity. This, in his mind, had to be rectified.

Hatred is a choice, not an unfortunate illness. No pill will cure it, and no amount of talk will send it away. People filled with hatred mean it, and they mean to do something about it.

We must understand that and be prepared to respond wisely and judiciously when it manifests itself—before it results in horrors such as the VT murders.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

AOL announced yesterday that it is introducing a slate of programs positioning it as a broadband television network.

That seems a very generous description of the venture, given the nature of the programming AOL is presenting. It consists largely of horrible-sounding "reality" shows and commercial tie-in projects.

The AOL slate sounds awful even in comparison with the current debased condition of the broadcast TV networks and the ghastly inanity of much cable/satellite TV today. (Networks such as Current, Fuse, and Fox Reality have taken narrowcasting to the extreme of presenting programs virtually no sane person can bear watching.)

Regarding AOL's announcement, Variety reports:

Slate will include projects from reality giant Endemol USA, production shingle Telepictures and a continued relationship with Mark Burnett Prods., which produced AOL's "Gold Rush" skein.

Company also announced a competition initiative with DreamWorks Animation for upcoming "Shrek the Third," in which AOL will unspool a number of movie-related games that will be produced by Burnett along with AOL and DWA.

Many of the programs skirt the line between interactive gaming and nonscripted programming; they can be categorized as either reality television with consumer participation or an online game with video components.

One of the most ambitious TV-style programs is "iLand," an online community in which players compete for dominance of a group.

Series, which is produced by Endemol USA and set to air in the second quarter of 2008, will eventually spill into the real world as contestants move to an island and try to assert power there; those competitions, hosted by thesp Brooke Burns, will be broadcast online.

AOL also is teaming with sister Time Warner production shingle Telepictures, which supplies Warners distribution with content, for a tie-in to "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." Online programming will draw from user-generated content about viewers' hometowns; some content will make its way to the syndie show.

And it will continue its Burnett collaboration with a new edition of "Gold Rush," titled "Gold Rush Goes Hollywood," focusing on industry and celebrity trivia. Series is set to bow in the summer.

That sounds truly horrifying.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The excellent AMC/BBC-TV series Hustle returns tonight at 10 EST. Tonight's episode commences the fourth annual series of six episodes of the British-American co-production about a group of confidence tricksters with interesting moral codes.

Team leader Mickey "Bricks" Stone will not appear in this installment of shows, as the actor who portrayed him so well, Adrian Lester, could not fit the show into his busy schedule, a direct result, one suspects, of his excellent portrayal of this interestingly complex character. Stepping up to become the new team leader will be Danny Blue, a cocky Cockney played by Marc Warren.

The other team members will return as well, and a new character will join: energetic, hotheaded Billy Bonds, played by Ashley Walters (Get Rich or Die Tryin').

Hustle, created by Tony Jordan, who wrote several of the episodes, is a laudable addition to the long line of popular fictions about confidence tricksters who are on the wrong side of the law but the right side of morality. Erle Stanley Gardner specialized in this type of writing before embarking on his hyperpopular Perry Mason novels (and Mason, too, can be seen as one of these characters, especially in the first decade's worth of novels about him).

The stories of Gardner's con-man series characters Lester Leith, Ed Jenkins the Phantom Crook, and Paul Pry are well worth reading, although mostly difficult to come by today. The mystery-fiction publisher Crippen and Landru is reportedly planning to release a volume of Lester Leith stories, but no date has been set yet.

In the meantime, you can obtain used copies of an earlier anthology, The Amazing Adventures of Lester Leith, which I highly recommend. Used copies of the only Paul Pry anthology released so far, The Adventures of Paul Pry, are also available, here. Finally, an excellent collection of Ed Jenkins stories, Dead Men's Letters, can also be found in used copies, here. I recommend both the Pry and Jenkins books in addition to highly recommending any Lester Leith stories you can find.

And watch Hustle.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The latest animated movie, Meet the Robinsons, released by Disney, marks a return to the Disney studio's wholesome past.

That is meant as a compliment.

Most recent animated films, including those from the Disney studio, have adopted a deliberately "cheeky" attitude and attempted to send messages of the "be yourself" variety.

Of course, the admonition to be oneself, though it sounds good (and sounds much better when expressed by Shakespeare: "to thine own self be true."), is no advice at all for a child. (In Shakespeare's play it is addressed not to a child but to a young woman.)

After all, young children are naturally egocentric and respond more to rewards and punishments rather than internalized moral rules. That is why we have to teach them the difference between right and wrong.

In Meet the Robinsons the filmmakers give kids two solid lessons: family is central to a happy life, and what you do matters.

Both of these messages are sent strongly in the narrative, and the latter is also conveyed by the repeated admonition that the protagonist should "keep moving forward."

The narrative is rather complex, and appealingly so, dealing with time travel and some interesting questions of identity. Parents should be able to explain it all to their children as necessary. In addition, the film includes vividly imagined characters (especially the comically exaggerated villain, the Bowler Hat Guy), many zany visual images, and funny dialogue.

The repeated phrase, "I'm not sure how well this plan was thought through," is both funny in context and sends a good message about the importance of considering the possible consequences of one's actions, a prerequisite for all moral thinking.

The film upholds values such as perseverance, compassion, benevolence, and diligence. 

It's a fun movie, and a good one, a return to the values of Disney's pre-1970s animated films while taking advantage of modern stylistic and technological devices.

Recommended.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An editorial in today's New York Sun nicely outlines the way in which bans on gun possession actually act to make mass murders more likely:

Only weeks before the shooting, Virginia's legislature "shot down," according to a January 31 report on the Web site of the Roanoke Times, a bill that, as the paper put it, "would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus." The story reported that a spokesman for Virginia Tech, Larry Hincker, was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure," the paper quoted Mr. Hincker as saying, "the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

Today, however, the question hanging over this tragedy is whether the legislature acted wisely or whether, in fact, the campus would have been safer had the students and others been permitted to keep and bear arms in the dorms and on the greenswards. It's not a theoretical question. In 2002, according to a report on CNSNews.com, a disgruntled student at the Appalachian Law School, Peter Odighizuwa, allegedly shot and killed the school's dean, a professor, and a student on campus. He was subdued, CNSNews.comreported, only when two students reportedly ran to their cars to fetch their own guns and returned to confront the killer, who surrendered.

This led the president of the Second Amendment group at another school, George Mason University, to start looking into reforming bans on weapons on campus. That issue, already alive on campuses across the country, will grow only larger in the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. It will be an important debate. We don't believe any public policy will be able to expunge from society the kind of insanity or evil that leads to the kinds of acts witnessed yesterday. But we do believe that Americans have the capacity to reason out their own choices about how to defend themselves. And to reach out in their thoughts and prayers to the families who lost loved ones on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Look at the last sentence in paragraph one of the quote and note that there is a big difference between feeling safe and being safe.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The mass shooting at Virginia Tech University will certainly bring a long and laborious discussion of causes and suggestions for averting such incidents in the future. That is necessary and good, but if history is any guide, most of the suggestions will be thoroughly ineffectual.

What is most important to bear in mind is that America has a long history of violence. It is our way. Yet in the past, the violence was largely political in nature—unions rioting, anarchists setting off bombs to terrorize the population, fights among racial groups, and the like.

Such violence, while wrong, at least makes some sense. Those who engage in it—such as early twentieth-century anarchists and Timothy McVey and his helpers in the Oklahoma City bombings—at least believe that their activities are meant to result in some ultimate good, however repugnant and evil their chosen means of achieving it.

What is new in the past half-century is the rise of mass violence caused by personal problems. The deadliest such rampage previous to yesterday's was that of Charles Whitman at the University of Texas at Austin, in which he killed sixteen people by shooting at them with a sniper rifle from a campus clock tower.

Like many such subsequent events, this was an act of personal violence toward strangers. Whitman had no real agenda other than a desire to kill a lot of other people before taking his own life.

One suspects that yesterday's rampage will turn out to have similar origins.

How, then, to prevent such incidents?

Reducing the number of guns in circulation will not accomplish this. Madmen will always be able to get guns—or make bombs, or use poisons, or spread diseases, or use other, more inventive means—to kill others if they wish.

In fact, a greater presence of guns in the hands of law-abiding people would prevent or at least greatly reduce the number of innocents killed in situations such as yesterday's.

But of course no one is going to offer that as a simple, common-sense solution.

No, guns will be blamed, and the psychological causes of this sort of violence will be wrongly indentified and dissected endlessly, resulting in even greater confusion and inanity.

What, then, is at the root of such mad acts as yesterday's?

Only a powerful egomania, in which the destruction of oneself represents the destruction of the entire world, can explain it.

The question then becomes, is there something about the past half-century of American society and culture that fosters an increase of such egomania?

I believe that there is, and that it is a natural outcome of the Omniculture, the devaluation of all values. Such killings are occurring in increasing frequency in other nations as well, most of which have developed similarly individualistic, self-regarding cultures in the past half-century—Scotland, Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Japan, Italy, etc.

The self-esteem movement and its roots in the hyperindividualism of post-World War II America, particularly the decline of family closeness, are clear contributors to the kind of egomania that leads to such killings and multitudes of other unhappy things about modern America.

Those values must be replaced by ones that work to create real communities and a greater sense of voluntary commitment to one another. And the voluntary nature of such commitments must be a point of emphasis.

The only real way to reduce the number of such incidents both large and small will be for the society to agree on a common set of values that place the individual in his or her proper context as a member of society, and for those values to be taught in the schools and reinforced throughout the culture.

That proper place can only be found in the Judeo-Christian roots of our society.

Until our schools and culture teach those values, we will continue, as a society, to have to resort to force, instead of consent, in keeping such order as is possible among a people of increasing self-regard and disregard for others.

This is evident in the recent case of radio host Don Imus, whose incessant verbal cruelty ultimately resulted in widespread public disapprobation and dismissal from his job.  Imus was only doing what is increasingly common in American society today, and shouldn't be.

A society cannot be held together by force. It must cohere by consent of the governed, and that consent is possible only if people accept the premise that their behavior should be governed. 

Until we get to the roots of the problem, in what our schools teach our children, conditions will not impove.

This is a good time to have that discussion and make that choice.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Rutgers University ladies' basketball team has accepted Don Imus's apology, AP reports.

Coach Vivian Stringer read from a prepared statement, and after noting the team's acceptance of Imus's apology, said that they are "in the process of forgiving."

Stinger went on to reiterate her and her team's original complaint. "We still find his statements to be unacceptable, and this is an experience that we will never forget," she said.

She then expressed why this thing had become so intensely important to the mainstream media: "These comments are indicative of greater ills in our culture. It is not just Mr. Imus, and we hope that this will be and serve as a catalyst for change. Let us continue to work hard together to make this world a better place."

As I noted earlier on this site, the reason Imus's words drew such attention was the belief among the media and among all fashionable individuals that American society is rife with unabashed hatred of certain groups of people, and I don't mean Christians or Republicans.

Stringer's statement confirms and exemplifies this reality.

Finally, it is interesting that the team did not accept his apology until he was fired by both his radio and TV outlets. Apparently they had a good deal to think about before doing the right thing....

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As you've heard, Don Imus's radio show has now been canceled. And so this sorry saga ocmes to an end.

What can an analyst say about it all?

One thing jumps to mind:

Nobody, but nobody, involved in this affair came out looking good.

Nobody.

That is how depraved, self-serving, and foul our mainstream media have become.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Syndicated columnist Mona Charen unearthed a brilliant gem of insight from the great philosopher Snoop Dogg, in his reaction to the Don Imus controversy. Mr. Dogg says that some people can use some words, and others can't, because some people are real and others are not.

If Mr. Dogg's line of thinking sounds familiar, it's because it is. It's from George Orwell's Animal Farm. It is articulated, you'll recall, by the villains: the pigs.

A more telling example of the phony cult of authenticity and the arrogance of modern-day celebrities could hardly be imagined. Charen writes: 

Snoop Dogg has helpfully explained that his use of the term “ho” differs from that of Mr. Imus: “First of all, we ain’t no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them [expletive] say we in the same league with them. . . . [Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We’re talking about ho’s that’s in the ‘hood that ain’t doing [expletive], that’s trying to get a [expletive] for his money. These are two separate things.”

Someone, ideally his father, should have told that degenerate that just because something comes out of his mind and soul does not make it legitimate or edifying. In fact, his principal job in life is to see to the hygiene of his soul. But no one tells the young that anymore. We’re too busy pushing wads of cash into their hands for being “as nasty as they want to be,” to quote a now-passe rap album.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As stated here two days ago (see below), radio host Don Imus's characterization of the Rutgers ladies' basketball team was odious and entirely unacceptable. He should certainly be punished for it, and I believe that a suspension is appropriate.

Bowing to advertisers' pressure, MSNBC has announced that it is dropping its TV simulcast of Imus's program. That is entirely their prerogative, although I should have thought good business sense would have told the channel's executives simply to wait it out and see whether Imus and the show can recover from the troubles of the past few days.

It is not as if MSNBC has a lot of great, audience-grabbing programs waiting in the wings, or else they'd have replaced much of their other unwatched lineup of boring , inane chatter.

The cultural issue at hand, however, remains an interesting one. The reigning double standard regarding offensiveness is peculiarly evident in the present case.

Whenever people complain about there being too much sex and vulgar talk on television or radio in general, the nearly universal reaction among commentators afforded access to mainstream media outlets is this:

You don't have to watch or listen to it. Just change the channel.

In the present case, however, as with the Tim Hardaway controversy (covered in detail on this site), just not listening is not an acceptable solution.

The difference, of course, is that in cases in which rude, offensive, and insensitive behavior (as TV and radio vulgarity most certainly are) explicitly undermine Judeo-Christian values, they are applauded by the vast claque of new age weirdos that have infested the media for the past half-century and have become increasingly distant from the vast majority of people in this country.

The reason, then, that characters such as Imus and Hardaway are singled out for destruction is that they do not openly oppose Judeo-Christian values. Imus, for example, may undermine these values every day with his vulgarity and frivolousness, and his characterization of a group of female basketball players as undistinguished prostitutes is certainly un-Christian in the extreme, but what makes his vulgarity in this instance most distinctive is that it can be easily characterized as derogation of two accredited victim groups.

This characterization is entirely false, of course, unless it is to be suggested that all people with very curly hair are ugly and all women are prostitutes. To anyone who does not think such repulsive thoughts, and who does not believe that a great number of other people think such thoughts, Imus's statement is just another instance of idiotic blather from a big-mouthed clown.

That, of course, is the point. The clever folk in the media do believe that most Americans generally look with disdain on blacks, women, and many other groups of people. And that is what the mainstream media are working so hard to prevent by attacking people such as Imus and Hardaway.

It is not harsh words that they are trying to prevent, but ideas that they dislike. The fact that in Imus's case the ideas are ones that virtually nobody holds and that have in fact been made illegal by the federal and state governments is of no moment.

And the fact that in Hardaway's case the ideas are ones that have been held by nearly every human being throughout human history is likewise no obstacle to their effort to make reality conform to their dreams.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It has been announced that the Rutgers University ladies' basketball team will appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show today. This is an excellent opportunity for these young ladies to show precisely what they're made of and thereby knock Imus's characterization of them aside for all time.

The way to do that, of course, is publicly to accept Imus's apology, without reservations, and forgive him fully.

In addition, they can show magnanimity by asking others to forgive Imus and forget about this thoroughly regrettable incident.

This would change these young ladies instantly from victims to heroines.

And it would of course be the Christian thing to do.

Today we'll find out whether they prefer to be seen as victims or as heroines.

It will be an interesting test, one even more challenging than participatiion in the NCAA finals game.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

AP reports that North Carolina officials have decided to drop the remaining charges against the three Duke lacrosse players who were falsely accused of rape, kidnapping, and sexual offense and indicted by prosecutor Thomas Nifong in an obvious bid to garner votes from a certain class of persons in his reelection campaign:

State prosecutors have decided to drop all charges against three Duke lacrosse players accused of sexual assaulting a stripper at a team party, a person close to the case told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The North Carolina Attorney General's office, which took over the case in January after the local district attorney was accused of ethics violations, said it would have an announcement on the case at 2:30 p.m.

That's the right thing to do, but there's much more work to be done. Nifong must be brought to account for his despicable misdeeds in the Duke false prosecution scandal.

All appropriate civil and criminal charges should be filed against him as soon as possible. In addition, the accuser should be brought under criminal charges.

Nifong and the accuser must be held accountable for the anguish, humiliation, and huge legal expenses they imposed on these young men who were entirely innocent of the wrongdoings of which they were so obviously falsely charged, and for the effect on these men's families.

The actions of which the North Carolina bar has correctly accused Nifong—making misleading and inflammatory comments about the Duke players charged in the case, withholding evidence from defense attorneys, and lying to the court and state bar investigators—are criminal offenses and should be prosecuted to the full extent that North Carolina law allows.

This case, then, is far from over. The true criminals must be brought to justice.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

A commenter asked for our thoughts on the Don Imus affair, and we shall be happy to oblige. As you probably know, Imus, who has a syndicated radio program which is simulcast on MSNBC, last Wednesday referred to the Rutgers University ladies' basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." The predictable cries of racism and sexism were sent through all the land, and Imus has been condemned by all and sundry. Imus apologized, and his bosses have suspended him for two weeks.

That, of course, is not nearly enough for professional grievance-mongers and moral superiors such as Al Sharpton, who have demanded that Imus be fired altogether. Whether a return to use of the stocks or the lash is soon to be called for, one can only wonder.

What Imus called those young ladies is stupid and insulting, and I cannot think how he could possibly have imagined, even for a moment, that they merited such scornful treatment on national radio and tv (not that anyone actually watches MSNBC).

Even worse, Imus's choice of words was neither clever nor amusing. Like Ann Coulter's backhanded reference to Sen. John Edwards as a faggot, Imus just shot his mouth off without giving a moment's attention to his wording so as to make it interesting and amusing.

That is a misdeed not to be forgiven.

I mean that. 

I can think of a myriad of witty ways to describe a group of basketball players whom I don't like, but I shall keep them to myself at present, this being neither the t nor the p.

The real insult here is the insult Imus and other such jabbering tomcats offer day after day: the insult to our intelligence and taste.

Disrespectful and ignorant descriptions of the sort he blurted out last Wednesday have long been his stock in trade. His show is vulgar and stupid on a regular basis, and always has been so.

He should have been canned long ago for being a bore and a philistine. 

To fire him now, however, would send a bad message to everyone. The message is, it's OK to insult anyone in any way you want, except for two classes of people.

To do so would designate these two groups of people as too weak to defend themselves in a fair duel of wits.

That is an outrageous characterization and is antithetical to a just society.

It is, in fact, just as bad as anything Imus can be thought to have suggested in his epithet.

Hence, this is not the right time to fire him. 

The right course should be to wait for the next outrageous statement he makes on the air, and then fire him.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 08:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)