Free Tibet! But Not Really!

"Every so often, I find myself, for the umpteenth time, driving behind a Vermont granolamobile whose bumper not only proclaims the driver’s enduring post-2004 support for Kerry/Edwards but also bears the slogan 'FREE TIBET.'
It must be great to be the guy with the printing contract for the 'FREE TIBET' stickers. Not so good to be the guy back in Tibet wondering when the freeing thereof will actually get under way. Are you in favor of a Free Tibet? It’s hard to find anyone who isn’t. […]"

"Everyone’s for a free Tibet, but no one’s for freeing Tibet. So Tibet will stay unfree—as unfree now as it was when the first Free Tibet campaigner slapped the very first 'FREE TIBET' sticker onto the back of his Edsel. Idealism as inertia is the hallmark of the movement. Well, not entirely inertia: it must be a pain in the neck when you trade in the Volvo for a Subaru and have to bend down and paste on a new 'FREE TIBET' sticker. For a while, my otherwise not terribly political wife got extremely irritated by the Free Tibet schtick, demanding to know at a pancake breakfast at the local church what precisely some harmless hippy-dippy old neighbor of ours meant by the sticker he’d been proudly displaying decade in, decade out: 'But what exactly are you doing to free Tibet?' she insisted. 'You’re not doing anything, are you?'"

"'Give the guy a break,' I said when we got back home. 'He’s advertising his moral superiority, not calling for action. If Rumsfeld were to say, ‘Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division goes in on Thursday,’ the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast. They’d have to bend down and peel off the ‘FREE TIBET’ stickers and replace them with ‘WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER.’”

"But there’ll never be a Free Tibet—because, through all the decades Americans were riding around with the bumper stickers, the Chinese were moving populations, torturing Tibetans, imposing inter-marriage until Tibet was altered beyond recognition. By the time the guys with the Free Tibet stickers get around to freeing Tibet there’ll be no Tibet left to free."

--Mark Steyn, America Alone, pp.131-132.

I'm Your Huckleberry

"He also said you shaved your beard and now have a curled up HANDLEBAR moustache!!!! Now, I am going to weigh in.....I'm your mom and I like to see my son looking his best................not a freak from Tombstone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
My humble opinion...............you look so handsome with short stubble on the head and a days stubble on the face or shaved face.................seriously, I'm telling you the complete truth and nothing but the truth....so help me God."

Spot the Nut

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government"
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good"
-- George Washington

[W]hat country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787

“I’ll tell you what, if that is his baby, he needs help. I think he just made an admission against self-interest. I don’t know that he is mentally qualified to own that gun. I’m being serious."
--Senator Joe Biden, in response to a question on gun control at the CNN/YouTube debate

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
-- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
-- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188

"As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives [only] moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion to your walks."
-- Thomas Jefferson, writing to his teenaged nephew.

Save Darfur! But Not Yet!

Watching the Democratic CNN/YouTube Presidential debate tonight, I can't help but get the distinct impression that these candidates get all hot and bothered by talking about thinking about starting to draft plans to begin conversations to solve the pressing issues of our day, but God forbid something actually gets done for a change.

Take Darfur as a case in point. One of them-- I think it was Senator Dodd-- went so far as to actually classify the atrocities correctly as genocide, but then he immediately followed this grotesque reality with lightweight niceties like "sanctions" being the solution. Yep, nothing coaxes murderous gangs out of their evil like a little economic hardship. This and all the other high and brave rhetoric about getting the U.N. and China involved and restoring America's "moral superiority" in the world such that Africa "wants us" to come help sounds so perfectly like the ineffectual rubbish that's being presently pitched as pop-solutions by the American Idol set.

Indeed, Green Day saw it as a grand display of activism to play some absurd John Lennon song on Idol that would rouse the masses to stand in solidarity against the carnage; well, not to actually stand, but to at least sign a statement at InstantKarma.org that says "My Name is ___, and as a citizen of the world I demand an end to the killing and mass atrocities in Darfur, Sudan," but in all caps to communicate just how strongly this online petition disapproves of such unenlightened behavior. But like Mark Steyn said somewhere regarding the U.N.'s "grave concern" about Darfur-- "That and $4.95 will get you a decaf latte. Ask the folks in Darfur what they've got to show for years of the U.N.'s "grave concerns" -- heavy on the graves, less so on the concern."

Michael Ledeen gets all of this exactly right:

On a hot sabbath, I am prompted to say that Darfur is a catastrophe that could and should be solved in an hour or so. The killers largely operate from helicopters and small fixed wing aircraft. We could destroy them all in an hour or so. But that would be "wrong," because it would violate the current hymnal.
Go tell the victims. Explain why sanctions are better, because it makes the Western politicians feel pious. Even though black Africans are being slaughtered. And while you're at it, tell the starving people of Zimbabwe why their killer and oppressor, Robert Mugabe, is left untouched by the entire outside world. Explain why St Nelson Mandela doesn't give a damn, while you're at it.
The Middle East is tough. These African horrors are relatively easy to fix. But nobody does a damn thing except talk about sanctions...and then largely fail to enact and/or enforce them.
When did Western leaders become vulgar Marxists? These evils do not have economic causes and are unlikely to be defeated by economic means (remember the Iraqi sanctions?). They have political causes and can be defeated by superior fire power.
Somebody? Anybody?

And Steyn, in response to this observation, also bemoans the impotent-yet-culturally-aware inanities being proffered:

Michael Ledeen's Darfur post from yesterday has stuck in my mind all day. It's one of the saddest things I've read on this site, and it's entirely correct: the killers largely operate from helicopters and small fixed wing aircraft. We could destroy them all in an hour or so. But that would be "wrong," because it would violate the current hymnal.
Go tell the victims. Explain why sanctions are better, because it makes the Western politicians feel pious. Recently I interviewed Don Cheadle, who starred in that marvelous film Hotel Rwanda a year or two back. He's now written a book about Darfur. Very nice fellow. But he doesn't seem to appreciate that the big lesson of Rwanda is that the thugs understand very clearly that whenever the west starts working through the UN it sends the message: We're not serious.
Indeed, we're so unserious we're going to "solve" this problem through a process which gives mass murderers the one thing you need if you want to kill hundreds of thousands of people - time.
So Cheadle's book proposes all kinds of things you the citizen can do for Darfur - write your Congressman, send a letter to the local paper, etc. There's a lot of it about. A week or two back, the following caught my eye:
On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe.
Very nice. But wouldn't it make more sense to try the Ledeen solution and save the Sudanese dance troupe for the post-victory party? "Salt Lake Saves Darfur" looks like doing wonders for "the greater Salt Lake community of compassion" but rather less for the people of Darfur. There is a grotesque narcissism in the determination of the Save Darfur campaign to embrace every strategy except the one that would actually save Darfur while there's anyone still left to save. The reality seems to be that these groups prefer to go the ineffectual dance-troupe route because it makes them - the "community of compassion" - the focus of things.

In any event, I'm still curious as to how exactly it's so easily assumed to be an unequivocally good and self-evident moral imperative for the U.S. to "get involved" in Darfur when to do so elsewhere is breathlessly decried as "imperialism" and "blood for oil" and whatnot. Why, for example, is Christopher Hitchens shouted down as a neocon for making a moral argument for intervention in Iraq when to make the same argument in favor of the Darfuris is de rigeur?

Who Has More Fun than the Japanese?

Hello Yes

The Deepest Offense

I was recently accused of being a hippie.

A couple weeks ago as we were driving back from my family reunion down South, we found ourselves in the thick of post-hippy-fest traffic. Pulling up to the drive-through window at a Starbucks on I-81 North, the attendant saw my beard and thought she could peg me- "Ya'll coming back from Bonaroo?"

"No," I said flatly, but with a gentle smile that admitted fault for giving such an appearance of evil.

I Am In Constant Pain

I am in constant pain; I am always hungry; I am never clean; I can never have whatever it is I want; the wind is always against me; I am in constant pain. Now you’re expecting me to do the X-treme Gen-X thing and end with “…and I love it!”, but I can’t. I don’t “love” this. There are very senses in which I am “enjoying” this, and virtually none in which I’m having “fun.” But it is a challenge and doubtless a life experience, so I will continue to drag myself uphill and North along this white-blazed straight and narrow until torn ligaments send me home.

I must not dishonor the family name.

Gosh,.. here I am getting all cute and quasi-positive when I really just wanted to complain. I felt like rubbish at the end of a girlie 20 miler, and mentally I was out of it even though it was a right pretty day. And it still feels like there’s no end to this thing. Well there is, but it’s all the way in Maine.

See What Living Like This Does To You?

… I had the Bo Jackson hip flexor thing going on with my left side today, which interests me. My right shin only hurt a little though. I guess at this point it’s not if you’re in pain but how much and where. So it was good to remember the words of [local legend skater] Craig Cassell-- “I don’t like the idea of my body telling me what I can or can’t do.”

I say that my stay in Kent [CT] was only “fair” because it was not without its disappointment. I did 30 [miles] yesterday and got there at 5pm, and I went to the hostel straightway to see what the deal was but I could find noone. Seeing that my knocks on the various doors were finding no purchase, a man looking not unlike G. Gordon Liddy came to help. It turns out that he goes there [it’s a church], though he says things like “I was thanking the Lord that I got the damn thing started.” It is an Episcopal church. So he wants to hike the trail when he retires in a couple years, and since he liked talking to us he invited Ranger Rick and me to shower and launder at his place and then go out to eat. This is all well and good, but you have to understand that heretofore it had been a crappy day and all I wanted in town was to get Oreos and milk and to sit down and read. That and that alone was my reason to keep moving, keep taking that next step.

You’ve already figured out what happened.

By the time we got done with all those things everything was closed and I couldn’t get my Oreos and milk. It put me in such a bad mood that I didn’t even call home. See what living like this does to you? It makes you want and crave the simplest things, and it makes you inordinately upset if you don’t get them-- so upset that you don’t even want to call home.