www.thornwalker.com/ditch/donor_sample.htm
Donor update
for October 10, 2007
Dear Friend of TLD: Here is the latest update notice for donors to The Last Ditch -- and today it's quite a big and meaty one.Please mail your donation to:
WTM Enterprises
P.O. Box 224
Roanoke, IN 46783Please make your check or m.o. payable (in U.S. dollars) to WTM Enterprises.
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STOP AND THINK
"GOING TO WAR is the most important decision the president can make," Rudy Giuliani proclaimed during the October 9 debate among Republican presidential candidates. And now the Giuliani campaign is ridiculing Mitt Romney for stipulating that the president should consult "attorneys" before launching a war. It appears that among the attorneys whom it is ridiculous to consult, in the opinion of Il Duce, are the ones who helped write a certain document at a Convention in Philadelphia, back in 1787.
For benefit of our foreign readers, under the Constitution that all these pols pretend to cherish, and that a president must swear to preserve, protect, and defend, only Congress can make the decision to go to war; the president is restricted to asking for war. As the moribund republic transformed itself into an empire, that provision became ever less enforceable (it's funny, isn't it, how the Constitution can't enforce itself?), but if Il Duce seizes power, it seems as though it will become as much of a dead letter as the three-fifths clause. Or the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. [HENRY GALLAGHER FIELDS]
"ARE GIRLS BECOMING MEANER AND MORE VICIOUS?"
MSNBC posed that question on October 10, under some startling footage it was airing. Unfortunately, the only answer I can offer -- employing the modern parlance -- is "Duh!"As an Old American, I naturally shuddered when the deculturizing forces began producing movies and TV shows that showed little 120-pound women cartwheeling through the air and smacking down 250-pound musclemen. I shuddered, too, when a few years later the same forces upped the ante by mainstreaming atrocities such as female boxing.
My initial fears were twofold: first, that young girls would start believing that they, too, could magically defeat huge male bruisers without the aid of either honorable male defenders or (in default of those) a .45-caliber pistol; and second, that the rising generations of boys would lose whatever restraint they otherwise might have had in respect to roughing up girls: after all, the entertainment industry was telling those boys that the girls "can take it." As we know, and as I mentioned recently in this space, the culture no longer discourages public and casual physical contact of the hugging variety between boys and girls; the slope downward to casual contact of a less-affectionate nature seems awfully slippery.
What I didn't foresee -- despite the bright red flag represented by female boxing -- was that girls would begin attacking and beating down each other, doing their best to imitate brutally violent males. But as it happens, that is yet another evil that we are not to be spared, as we submerge to the lightless depths.
Such battles go far beyond the "catfights" that we see in some of the old movies, choreographed typically for comic relief and consisting mostly of pushing, nail-scratching, and hair-pulling. A good example of the new style of amateur female combat has now been captured, thanks to the video site YouTube.com. The videotaped encounter, picked up by MSNBC, took place on September 20 in a girls' locker room at a middle school in Norwood, Ohio, an old industrial suburb of Cincinnati.
It's just awful. Cleverer words elude me, and the words of this brief account at WLWT.com don't convey it, either: "Online Video Shows Girl Attacked at Area School." However, the WLWT page also includes a link to the video. (YouTube itself has apparently pulled the video from its site.) The attack did indeed involve hair-pulling, but even that transcended the typical catfight featured in a comic western of the 1960s. Imagine instead a female version of "Clockwork Orange."
(The WLWT story:
http://www.wlwt.com/news/14295313/detail.html)According to MSNBC, the girl attacked, Katelind Lewis, was 12 years old. Her attacker was 14. MSNBC's print story reports, "Katelind's family said the attack was planned, and a group of girls encouraged the attack and prevented the teen from fleeing." That it was planned is likely indeed, as a crony of the attacker (also 14) stood ready with her video camera. (She can be heard egging on Katelind's attacker.)
(The MSNBC story:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21213092/MSNBC)From the standpoint of civilizational analysis, the new style of catfight graphically illustrates how far a sufficiently rotten culture can override not only hundreds of years of behavioral tradition but also biologically conditioned traits and temperament. I have to wonder whether even cavewomen behaved so savagely.
Oh -- did I mention that both combatants were white? [NICHOLAS STRAKON]
SMALL COMFORT. At least the girls weren't shooting at each other. But just wait a year or so.
[MODINE HERBEY](Miss Herbey is alluding to this story, breaking today: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21224357/.)
THE NOOSE NEWS NEVER STOPS. I stayed tuned to MSNBC on October 10 and was rewarded with a story about a "noose incident" occurring at the Columbia University Teachers College in New York. MSNBC reports that the victim is a female professor who "happens to be black" and who "teaches a class on racial justice." According to Times Online, the prof "discovered a hangman's noose hanging on her office door, in the latest in a series of copycat racist incidents across the United States."
(The story at Times Online:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2629185.ece)Now there's some objective reporting for you. Yes, this could be the real deal, but what the British newsies may not know is that racist hoaxes are endemic on American college campuses. If this does turn out to be a hoax, we should expect to hear that it was just an example of "unconventional teaching," confected in order to "raise awareness" among Columbia students. Let's stay on top of this one.
Something else we should stay on top of is the fact that "police are investigating the incident as a hate crime" (MSNBC), even though no violence or destruction of property is being reported. What actual charge are the cops and prosecutors contemplating, should they manage to identify a (white) perpetrator? Inciting to riot? Trespassing? Disorderly conduct? Or is it really possible now, in the state of New York, to jug someone -- European style -- for a stand-alone "hate crime"? [NS]
LATE-BREAKING. In a follow-up interview on MSNBC, an agent of the Southern Poverty Law Center imagined a charge of "criminal intimidation."
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NEW WRITINGS
In July, a reader of RONN NEFF's 1998 article "Realism does not equal defeatism" posed a question to Mr. Neff in a letter to the editor. I am grateful to that reader for prompting our senior editor to produce one of his most penetrating and magnificent essays, which I am proud to publish today.
I have placed the letter and the essay on separate pages, but I have of course interlinked them.
-- The letter
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/neff_realism_lte.htm-- Mr. Neff's reply: "Think globally, act individually"
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/neff_realism_reply.htmAs editor and publisher of TLD, I'm going to have to go out and buy a larger cap. I keep collecting these big feathers for it.
---
But Mr. Neff is not finished. A certain congressional vote has inspired him to prepare an addendum to a 2002 exchange with Mr. Jacob Hornberger, head of The Future of Freedom Foundation, concerning libertarian activism.
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/hornberger_exchange.htm#addendum
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COMING SOON
A new column by DOUGLAS OLSON
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OFF-SITE LINKS
--- Sheldon Richman has penned another winner at FEE: "The Goal Is Freedom: Government Failure." Richman demolishes the always-lurking utopianism of our statist adversaries -- their fantastic assumption that government can or will do better than the market. I recommend this one most highly.
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1619
--- INTELLECTUAL AMMUNITION DEPT. Antiwar.com has posted a long but illuminating excerpt from Grant F. Smith's FOREIGN AGENTS: THE AMERICAN ISRAEL PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE FROM THE 1963 FULBRIGHT HEARINGS TO THE 2005 ESPIONAGE SCANDAL:
"Where Did AIPAC Come From?" [article title]
A sample: "It took millions of dollars of Israeli government and overseas funds and decades of effort to create the public relations, lobbying, and political juggernaut that now dominates in America."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/gsmith.php?articleid=11727
--- One of the usual suspects has been heard from, and in no uncertain terms, according to this dispatch in the Telegraph by Toby Harnden: "U.S. 'must break Iran and Syria regimes.'" The veteran warmonger, whose name may be familiar to TLD readers, is David Wurmser, "a leading neoconservative who has played a pivotal role in the Bush administration since the September 11th attacks," and who recently resigned as Dick Cheney's advisor on wrecking the Muslim Middle East and murdering its inhabitants.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/05/wiran105.xml
(You may have to reassemble long URLs.)
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Regards,
Nicholas Strakon
Editor-in-chief, TLD
October 10, 2007