Fragile Dictator: Handle with care

I remember the day when it was reported in the news that a 1500 pound great white female shark had wandered into Cape Cod’s shallow waters. Conservation environmentalists figured they were morally obligated to find a way to gently steer the lovable predator away from the shallow waters so that it would continue to thrive.

I admit I was somewhat bewildered at what the parties concerned had decided would be the best strategy for addressing this unusual event. But this is a typical approach by animal rights activists who firmly believe in the supremacy of animals and the parasitic influence of humans upon their natural habitat. I wonder if they made sure to get rid of the burdensome vacationers who were creating an imbalance in the poor creature’s ecosystem before they nudged it to a safer location.

I know animal rights advocates will probably recoil at my insensitivity but if I hear that a great white shark is marooned anywhere near the same waters where I am swimming I will probably get a harpoon and take care of it the old fashioned way. Which incidentally, is the same approach I would recommend to international authorities in dealing with terrorists. (In the old fashioned way I mean, and not the harpoon.)

That is probably why I was equally mystified when I read that a group called Human Rights Watch had listed the names of several senior Al-Qaeda suspects that were held by the CIA in secret locations overseas, where some had reportedly been tortured. This is the same group which recently issued an admonition to the civilized world not to allow Saddam’s trial to be perceived as “vengeful justice”.

I had been unaware that such painstaking attention to decorum in the bristly province of international diplomacy and proper etiquette as far as the rights of barbaric despots are concerned had become so significant. Personally I think that being overly concerned about the human rights of people whose favorite pastime is making home videos of decapitations is akin to making sure that a serial murderer is fully satisfied with the assortment of cuisine choices offered in the jail menu. Which brings me back to Saddam Hussein’s trial.

One group which seems to be dealing with tremendous mental anguish in trying to ensure that proper diplomatic intercourse is adhered to during this historical trial is the aforementioned group Human Rights Watch.

They have charitably condescended to note that the Iraqi Governing Council may be permitted to establish a tribunal to try Saddam for crimes against humanity, yet in the same breath they have also expressed grave skepticism at the tribunal law key provisions’ ability to ensure a legitimate and credible trial. This is a sentiment which the jovial ex-ruler of Iraq himself has made clearly evident by his unruly behavior during his recent court proceedings.

I would inquire, what exactly constitutes reasonable doubt under the most general provisions of international law, for such a prolific murderer like Saddam Hussein?

Were the thousands of Kurds which he personally ordered to be gassed simply staging a sleepover on the streets of Halabjah? Are those souls who survived his torture chambers simply people who lacked adequate training on how to slice a frozen bagel? Was the assassination, imprisonment, and execution strategies followed by Saddam’s regime in dealing with Iraqi people just the norm in countries with peculiar governments that the United States should not interfere with?

Gone are the good old days when tyrants were condemned for the atrocities they had perpetrated against their fellow human beings. Today’s liberal and hence more “tolerant” international legal entities are more concerned with catering to a genocidal ex-potentate’s basic human rights such as providing a court appointed attorney and an unlimited supply of Cheetos.

This moral discomposure is but one of the legion illegitimate children of liberalism which has finally come of age.

The high priests of today’s liberal fringe will strain the gnat of nebulous and fragmentary transgressions by political opponents, (as we have recently witnessed in the politically motivated indictment of Tom Delay and the Karl Rove legal fiasco) and then swallow the camel of pursuing extraordinary caveats to protect the civil rights of one dubbed the Butcher of Baghdad. They are indeed in the details.

I can understand why this leaves them utterly perplexed as to how it is that one is supposed to properly treat a barbarian. Or a 1500 pound vicious aquatic predator for that matter.

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Supreme Conversion

It seems that the most strident voices of opposition to the president’s Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers are emanating from the right side of the house and senate. This unprecedented resistance among ideological cronies is indeed cause for some reflection.

As far as the man on the street can gather, the seemingly paltry yet potentially explosive tidbit which has been disclosed about Ms. Miers is that she is an evangelical Christian.

By all accounts, the unuttered suspicion of the media is that her religious affectations may be woven from the same cloth of traditional American Evangelicalism which terminally smote our beloved president The conspicuous silence from liberals on the matter is positively deafening.

At the risk of being labeled a cynic, I must infer from past performance that the most likely reason for what appears to be just a calm before the storm is that one of the foundational credos from the liberal manifesto is the notion that nothing beats letting someone else do your own dirty work. Whether it involves receiving a fixed stipend yielded from taxpayers’ harvest in order to fund their subsistence, or maligning a political opponent such as happens to be the case in this instance, Democrats will never forego an opportunity to let some one else do the work while they merely sit and enjoy the fruits thereof. That is one of the pillars which support the whole entitlement society that Democrats often flaunt as one of their greatest social achievements.

Hence they are faced with a question which is at the forefront of the this fortuitous predicament: Should they resist the temptation to start throwing mud at the president’s nominee while the Republicans are busily engaging in earnest efforts to discredit her or would it be a more advantageous strategy to wait in the trenches before they launch their own signature character assassination offensive, once they can assess the damage done by Republicans after they are done cannibalizing one of their own ?

These are complex questions for a partly whose most recent challenge was to determine if Louis Farrakhan’s allegations that the New Orleans levees were intentionally blown up by the government were factually true.
As for Harriet Miers, no one can read what is in a person’s mind. Except of course for Mrs. John Edwards, who apparently, was able to read Lynn Cheney’s mind and declare decisively that she obviously suffered from a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter’s sexual preferences. That is, as we all learned from the last election, the advantage Democrats have over Republicans. Not only can they decipher other people’s innermost thoughts, they can also make quadriplegics sprint and previously hostile countries join hand in hand with the US just by being elected. But I digress.

If Ms. Miers is a truly authentic Evangelical convert, then one should expect her to be a person who seeks to firmly adhere to fundamental principles of ethics such as truth, justice and fairness, as is the standard response of one who is eternally grateful for the gift of grace which he or she has received from the one they call the savior. And we certainly would not want anyone in the Supreme Court who pays homage to such archaic values. Or would we?

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Politically Incorrect Fairy Tales

The default function of any good story is to be the transmitter of moral
principles. And the moral principles incarnated in every good story have
the capacity of steering young impressionable minds, for better of worse,
onto eventually unalterable directions in life.

For industries, whose mission is to tell and re-tell these stories to a
world which has a natural appetite for narratives, acknowledgement of this
fact has seldom (if ever) been at variance with the combined goal of
yielding a profit . And it is invariably the narratives which are a shadow of the
greatest story ever told, the story of redemption, victory over evil and
self-sacrifice, which always seem to best satiate this appetite.

As a parent, I am afforded the compulsive luxury of viewing an assortment
of animated movies with my children several times over. Thankfully, many of
these stories carry within them imagery borrowed from that paramount story
of redemption.

But in today’s animated productions, decidedly Christian rooted themes are
overwhelmed by the more contemporary neurosis-laden conditions of the lead
characters of the story.

The poignancy of the self-sacrificial love of the Little Mermaid’s father
is overshadowed by the nuance of a rebellious young teenager’s quest for
self-autonomy. The virtue of searching beauty, beyond mere appearances, is
set aside to devote more attention to the slapstick gimmicks of charming
furniture characters and their catchy songs. And so it goes.

But some of the older animated movies contain symbols which are so
conspicuously Christian they would make the most hardened A.C.L.U. card
carrying member squirm with revulsion.

It is no surprise that these masterpieces of animation were produced at a
time when Hollywood was not obligated to cater to the lowest moral common
denominator as it is the case in our modern times.

Take for instance, the Story of Sleeping Beauty.

Throughout this story, an older production which stirs up echoes of a more
innocent time, I was struck by the plethora of Christian symbols which
saturate this story. Imagery which is drawn from the timeless story of
Christmas virtually permeates the entire narrative.

The evil sorceress shows up unannounced at the birth of the King’s long
awaited offspring, and tenders the unwelcome gift of death as a spiteful
reply for not having been invited to the celebration; a death she foretells
shall beckon the Princess through the sting of the needle in a spinning
wheel when she comes of age. One hears a faint whisper of the sting of
death which the apostle Paul talks about in his letters.

This killjoy is a source of great dismay for the three fairies (a faint
allusion to the mysterious Trinitarian theme of Christianity). But by a
fortuitous stroke of providence, the last fairy which has yet to bestow her
gift, redeems the sorceress’ terrible offering and transforms it into the
benign curse of a quiescent sleep, from which spell the princess can only
be awakened by true love’s kiss.

There are even more direct allusions to Christian imagery, such as the
prince going to battle the evil sorceress who has turned herself into a
fearful dragon, after the fairies endow him with the sword of truth and the
shield of righteousness; spiritual images which are drawn verbatim from the
New Testament.

But, by far, the most beautiful image is that of the fairies, who are
stricken by sorrow upon learning that the princess has suffered the fateful
consequences of the curse and are driven by compassion to lull the entire
kingdom into an indefinite state of dormancy, lest they suffer the agony of
sentience under the bitter specter of lost hope.

And finally the most haunting allegory of this wonderful story is that much
like the princess, even those of us who fancy ourselves fully awake, are by
the grace and mercy of God, in a profound state of sleep.

Yet when the prince of peace has finally defeated the enemy, in a fierce
battle from which we shall all be spared, he shall come and awaken us with
true love’s kiss, borne of unmatched sacrifice.

Then we will truly live, and it shall all seem to us as if no time has
passed, and we are finally awakened and fully understand his parting words
when he last promised to return: behold, I come quickly.

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Bill’s Excellent Adventure

What better protagonist for a liberal drama production than the editor
of the Book of Virtues, Bill Bennett, who had the audacity of thrusting a
plethora of hot potato issues such as race, crime and abortion into the
ongoing cultural dialogue, in a mere 33 word statement. This was done
without the written consent of his liberal counterparts no less. There you
have the one effective way to incur the wrath (mixed, no doubt, with some
measure of glee) from progressives who trade daily in the marketplace of
hate conspiracy theories.

Conversely, what greater villains than liberal pundits to extract from Mr.
Bennett’s pronouncement enough fuel for the indictment that he is only a
symptom of the greater issue of conservative racism, and brush aside any
nuances of the pro-choice movement’s eugenic heritage, which has been that
illustrious movement’s dirty little secret for decades.

No doubt it must irk Mr. Bennett to have Howard Dean demand an apology
from him for his alleged racist remarks. This is the man who said that the only
way Republicans could get a room full of minorities would be if the hotel
staff decided to show up. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black (no
pun intended).

Just when did liberals become the champions of morality?

If liberals are truly eager to bring the issue of race to the table,
then--by all means--let’s have an open and honest discussion on the matter.

Let’s talk about how Democrats have historically aided poor black families
in becoming generational dependents of ill-fated social programs; or how
pro-choice liberals have forgotten the fact that the majority of abortions
are performed on uneducated young black women who fall in the lowest rank
of the economic totem-pole. Or how the inheritors of the civil rights
movement have all but failed to constructively address the deplorable fact
that black youth represent the majority of this country’s prison
population.

But unfortunately, the media, which is supposedly where the action is, has
little to gain from facilitating a national conversation or even providing
any type of serious coverage on these issues.

Yet this is not all about the opportunistic tendencies of liberals to latch
onto potentially incendiary statements by conservative talking heads in
order to augment their political bottom line. There is also some blame to
be ascribed to Mr. Bennett.

Mr. Bennett’s cardinal sin was to briefly forget that liberals live and die
by sound bites, and virtually any statement a conservative makes can be
easily divorced from its original context and transformed into the most
despicable pronouncement.

Only the fairly well informed progressives, who are few and far between,
will take the time to read an entire ten minute transcript in order to
understand the proper context of an isolated statement. But that takes much
more work than simply catering to mediocrity by pulling out a disjointed
utterance and morphing it into something it was never intended to mean.

As Homer Simpson would say, “anything that takes too much effort is really
not worth doing”.

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