Author: VD

Or at least, what Dear Jorge assures the American people is impossible:

There’s a great number of happy people in France today as a result of the news that the upper house of the French parliament has passed a tough new immigration bill. The bill was passed by an overwhelming number of votes weeks after it was adopted by members of the lower chamber of parliament.

The French immigration reform bill makes it more difficult for unskilled immigrants to settle in France, which in the past has created discord among French citizens who work menial jobs. The new bill, expected to be signed into law very soon, adds a number of tough measures to France’s immigration policy….

One significant provision is a requirement for immigrants to sign a contract agreeing to learn French and to respect the principles of the French Republic. In addition it makes it more difficult for them to bring their families over to join them. It also offers no provision for so-called anchor babies who are afforded citizenship as a result of being born in the country.

According to the French government, the following new rules will be part of the immigration law:

Only the qualified immigrants will be granted “skills and talents” residency permits.

Foreigners are only allowed into France to work, and not live off benefits such as welfare and free healthcare.

Foreign spouses of immigrants allowed to remain in France must wait longer before being granted residence cards.

Migrants must agree to learn French.

Migrants must sign a ‘contract’ stipulating they must respect the French way of life.

The new law also scraps the old one regarding workers receiving automatic citizenship after living and working 10 years in the country.

This is a very positive development for Europe, as it indicates that the French are electing the slow and civilized means of ending their migration problem rather than the fast and brutal one that I feared was in the cards. Americans may despise the French, but they have historically demonstrated a deepset national ruthlessness that belies their image as cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

One need only compare Algeria to Vietnam to see the difference. It will be interesting to see if the French follow through on their new laws, and how that will affect the American immigration debate. It’s interesting, too, to see how the Bush administration’s pro-immigration positions and arguments are so similar to those of the French socialist party.

While I was pleased to see the USA restore its reputation somewhat, it was very disappointing to see the first truly bad refereeing of this World Cup. In the past, I’ve often wondered if FIFA instructs its referees to do any homework about the teams involved in the games they will be working, I particularly remember a Turkey-Italy game wherein Pippo Inzaghi dove to draw an absurd penalty and the commentator speculated that the referee had obviously never seen Inzaghi and his award-winning dramas before.

The red card shown to Mastroenni was absurd. The tackle was rough and it was a foul, but it was a yellow at most. I told Spacebunny that I wouldn’t be surprised to see a make-up red given to Italy after the break; the last thing I expected was for the US to pick up another red.

As always, the Italians were both skilled and shady. Pope’s second yellow was deserved, but his first was a textbook example of the quality that the Italians call “furbo”. It means “cunning” and Gilardino showed it in spades as he grabbed Pope by the jersey and dropped to the ground, drawing both the foul and the yellow card. FIFA has done an excellent job in cutting down on the diving, now it’s time for them to start handing out yellows for grabbing jerseys, there’s simply no good explanation for ever having a fistful of an opponent’s shirt in your grasp.

It was infuriating, but it was also a compliment of sorts that the Italians felt the need to resort to the customary international practices against the USA. And while it pains me to say it, the offsides call against McBride was correct, as McBride was definitely potentially involved in the play. Had he thrown himself to the side or even held still, the linesman might have held his flag, but that little reverse stab he made at the ball as it went by assured the foul call.

Kasey Keller was fantastic in stopping Del Piero twice, Beasely was tremendously improved over the Czech game, as was Landon Donovan, the only real disappointment besides Eddie Pope’s temporary insanity was Claudio Reyna. I would have exchanged him for Josh Wolff earlier on, there’s not much call for a midfielder who won’t make that last critical pass to the strikers in the area and can’t come within five meters of the goal when he shoots either. He also stood and watched Gilardino head the ball in for Italy’s goal rather than mark him, all in all, a shoddy performance by the USA’s overrated captain.

As for the Italians, it’s amazing to see how Totti simply cannot replicate his club form with the national side. At this rate, Lippi will be sitting him after the group stages. Italy’s problem is that while they have scorers, Lippi leaves his much-needed fox-in-the-box, Inzaghi, on the bench. Since moving to Milan from Juventus, he’s reduced the play-acting and is the perfect compliment to more proactive forwards such as Tino and Iaquinta.

While I don’t see them getting out of the real Group of Death, the USA can play with Ghana. If a victory is unlikely, at least the team will likely claim some of the respect that looked so unlikely after the Czech debacle. Drawing with Italy while down a man is a significant accomplishment and should provide the squad with genuine confidence going into the final group game.

Jonah Goldberg rightly castigates Democrats who are attempting to have it both ways on the Iraqi Occupation, but in doing so, he lets his rhetoric run away with him:

The details are obviously complicated. The normal rules of war don’t fully apply, since the insurgents use terror tactics, don’t wear uniforms, etc. But, we didn’t ask that every German be put on trial who had American blood on his hands after World War II and we didn’t ask that every North Vietnamese soldier face a tribunal.

Oh wait, that’s because we bugged out, just like the Democrats want to now.

We didn’t put every German on trial, but it obviously had nothing to do with bugging out since we are still occupying Germany. Or defending them against the Soviet Union, whatever.

Perhaps that’s the line we need to take to convince the American people that the Iraqi Occupation is necessary and proper. We’re defending the Iraqi people against a revival of Abbasid expansionism.

It’s not that winning isn’t an option, it’s that winning, as defined by the Bush administration, isn’t a possibility.

Podhoretz the Younger actually thinks this is a serious refutation of Derbyshire’s assertion of mission creep in Iraq:

What has occurred in the Iraq war has occurred in countless wars—the enemy gets a vote and events do not transpire according to some neat plan. Stubborn resistance and the need for greater exertions are not the same as mission creep. Our mission in Iraq has never changed; the nature of the enemy and therefore of the war on the ground has—that is not mission creep. President Lincoln requested 75,000 90-day volunteers to subdue the rebellion of Southern states in one or two Napoleonic battles. What we got was a grinding four year struggle to restore the Union and end slavery that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. That was not mission creep, even with the added goal of full emancipation since both restoration of the Union and freeing the slaves required the same outcome—a Northern victory. One could also say that, to paraphrase Mr. Derbyshire, no one on December 8, 1941, expected to bring the Axis powers to unconditional surrender (an “end state” announced more than a year after Pearl Harbor) only to embark on that other “long war,” the Cold War, following VE and VJ day. Was it therefore purely “mission creep” to remain in Europe and Asia as occupiers simply because we didn’t envision that in the days following Pearl Harbor? Did we expend all that blood and treasure merely to see Soviet dominance established over half of Europe? Did the American people sign on to the Berlin Airlift or to halting the North Koreans in 1945? Was the formation of NATO and other Cold War-era alliances (entangling alliances, one might say) a form of mission creep that Americans need not support? I could go on, but you get my point. Moreover, if we alter the “mission” in order to defend our principles, freedoms and way of life because the nature of the enemy has changed, does that reduce the legitimacy of that mission? The evolution of the Cold War fits the definition of mission creep far better than the war in Iraq does but that didn’t mean the Cold War was not worth fighting.

There’s a larger point here, though, one beyond the notion of mission creep. When things got rough and the sacrifices exceeded our pre-war expectations, we could have cut deals and declared “victory” in 1863, 1943 or 1963. Even though, again to paraphrase Mr. Derbyshire, during these earlier conflicts our leaders got us into situations we never wished to be in and were never asked whether we would wish to be in, we recognized our moral obligation, “as citizens of a democratic polity,” was to fight and win, not cut and run.

How does any of this deny the demonstrable fact that no one – no one – was told that the primary reason we were going to “war” was to create a stable and unitary democracy in Iraq and that we would stay there until Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds lay down and play nice with each other. In fact, the sole reference to democracy in Iraq in the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq is this:

Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;

So, the American people were supposed to somehow understand that supporting “efforts… to promote the emergence of a democratic government” was actually aa commitment to endless occupation in pursuit of world demokratic revolution? That wouldn’t be credible to future historians, much less those of us who are capable of remember the events of four years ago, especially given that this one reference, buried deep within the measure, came well after scary references to 9/11, nuclear and biological weapons and “Iraq’s demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction”.

Again, Podhoretz the Younger demonstrates a weird grasp of logic, to say nothing of recent history. Post-facto cheerleading for past mission creep is no justification for presently unpopular mission creep, still less is it proof that no such mission creep exists.

Finally, that “moral obligation” cited by Professor Conversino no more exists and binds the American people than Rousseau’s mythical, unsigned “social contract”.

Malkin(s) Watch doesn’t seem to think the issue through:

Vox Day’s column this week laments the shift of the conservative movement to (and its subsequent dry-humping of) The Left, and he finally does what none of us have had the courage to do: Peg down Michelle’s politics with a single label based on a single controversial stance on a nonexistent issue.

Indeed, what with Michelle Malkin pushing FDR’s internment program, Ben Shapiro, Sean Hannity and numerous others pushing Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy, Larry Kudlow pushing Richard Nixon’s monetary policies and the editors of National Review harboring a Harry Truman-style crush on the United Nations, one has to wonder if a liberal media is redundant these days.

There you have it. Michelle is a New Deal Democrat because she wants to lock up the undesirables. If this seems a bit farfetched to you (as it does to me), take solace in the fact that you are not a genius like VD. We’ll never get to hang at those hot MENSA orgies. American politics is, like, totally hard to understand.

So, did I miss it when Me So abandoned her pro-war stance and cheerleading for the Wilsonian World Demokratic Revolutia? Has she come out strongly for shutting down Social Security or returning to a gold standard? Does she promote pulling out of the United Nations or does she instead concern herself with who represents us there?

Correct me if I’m wrong, as I don’t read the woman these days, but I’m pretty sure that every single faux conservative stance I cited in this week’s column applies as well to Malkin as it does to Shapiro, Kudlow or NRO’s Lopez.

A liberal is an individual who is upset by the idea that someone, somewhere, might be doing what they want:

And while we’re at it, how dumb does Pennsylvania look for not making helmets mandatory? I heard a state legislator on the radio this morning say that this accident wouldn’t cause him to change his mind. It’s about human rights, he said. Riders should not be forced to wear a helmet.

I’ve got one for you, Mr. Politician. Let’s repeal seat-belt laws, and gun laws, and minimum drinking ages, and let’s just let America be the Wild, Wild West. Do what you want, when you want.

You mean, let’s just let America be free? By all means, I say. And if it is appropriate for politicians passing laws against things that are bad, they should certainly pass a law to forbid the porcine Mr. King from eating what he wants.

Where is the good news? That’s been the constant whine of war cheerleaders practically since the absurd, staged-for-the-cameras toppling of the Hussein statue. I cracked up when I listened to the Fox News anchors rambling on about the historic moment and how they had goosebumps watching approximately 35 Iraqi people performing a very bad reenactment of the Berlin Wall coming down.

Every time the camera pulled back, you could see that there was hardly anyone there; it wasn’t exactly the spontaneous mass movement of the sort that was seen in Berlin.

Anyhow, to ask the question is to completely miss the point. People have been making the same complaint about the local and national news for decades. News is, by functional definition, bad things happening to other people. We may think that Zarqawi getting killed is good news, but in truth, the only reason it is newsworthy is that it gives the media a chance to put another corpse on the cover.

There really isn’t any other practical definition of news, otherwise, we wouldn’t see coverage of a murder in Houston, a flood killing 20 in the Philippines and 20,000 dying in a train wreck in Bangladesh. None of these have any relation to our lives, except, of course, the ghoulish appeal of bad things happening to other people.

This is why it doesn’t matter how many Iraqi kids happily receive candy or how many hospitals and schools are built. No one cares and you can’t sell newspaper or television space by surrounding it with “good news”. There is no such thing as “good news” in the modern media, and the sooner you get that through your head the sooner you can begin to put the news in its proper perspective. Which is to say, ignoring most of it.

Between fiction and real life:

A little over a year ago, we conducted a survey of women readers to find a “watershed” women’s novel – the book which, above all others, had sustained individual women through key moments of transition or crisis in their lives. We began by polling women who were prominent in the arts and the media, then moved on to women journalists, academics, university students, schoolteachers and sixth formers. By the end we were polling every woman reader who crossed our paths; in total, 400 women responded to our inquiry.

Absolutely every woman we spoke to had her favourite. The top titles that emerged were surprisingly varied. They ranged from The Lord of the Rings and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to Catch 22, Gone With The Wind, Rebecca, Heart of Darkness and The Golden Notebook. This was alongside such perennial favourites as Jane Eyre (our way- out-in-front eventual winner), Mrs Dalloway, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch and Anna Karenina. Jeanette Winterson’s Passion and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale had bands of loyal followers.

This year, we tackled the obvious next question: what do men read to get them through life? If polling women’s reading habits had thrown up such an astonishing variety of reading, surely men’s reading would be equally revealing. After all, as two female researchers, we might have been prepared for women’s reading choices; in the case of men, we admitted we really hadn’t a clue.

Our sample of reading men was selected on exactly the same principles as the women – that way, we felt the results could be directly compared. The first thing we found, unexpectedly, was that the men were more reluctant than the women to discuss the influence reading might have had on them. Or, perhaps it might be more accurate to say, they seemed suspicious of the question. Women had responded to our questionnaire without hesitation, producing a number of key moments in their life at which they unselfconsciously acknowledged that fiction had offered them guidance or solace. Many men we approached really did not seem to associate reading fiction with life choices.

Because it’s a ridiculous question! What sort of moron associates imaginary characters with life choices? I’ve read thousands of novels, I’m an avid reader and not one ever “sustained me through a transition or crisis”. I couldn’t name one such book, let alone five, nor could any other sane human being. Can you? Anyhow, if you don’t manufacture imaginary crises for yourself every other month you probably won’t find yourself requiring fictional solace.

What this study actually reveals is two things. First, it shows that people lie about books they claim to have read or found significant. They might as well have asked the question: “name five books that will make people think you are an intelligent and educated individual.” I’d bet more than half the people who claimed that Jane Eyre or The Outsider were the most significant book in their lives have never read more than a chapter or two.

(The correct answer to the question, of course, is American Psycho or maybe the Executioner series. “Because, you know, The Executioner really consoled me when I hit this confused period in my life, I was sort of wandering and just fell into this rut of tracking down and killing Mafia hit men.” Another quality answer would be: “Watership Down, because I honestly feel that I’m a rodent trapped in a man’s body.”)

Second, it demonstrates that the average women’s grasp on reality can be more than a little shaky. If a man told you, in all seriousness, that reading an HP Lovecraft novel had changed his life, you’d surely back away slowly and attempt to avoid making any sudden movements.

Catkiller! poses the question:

If the conservative movement survived the New Deal, it will survive George W. Bush and Bill Frist.

It’s interesting that you set yourself apart from a movement that would be more than a little thrilled to see most of your agenda implemented. Moreover, is libertarianism really a “progressive” or “innovating” political movement? I’ve never seen it as such. The difference I see in conservative thought (books, not radio hosts) is that we want the right to live in communities whose uniformity goes no further than the local level. To me, that is the only road to diversity and liberty. I honestly don’t see how either conservatism or libertarianism seek to improve the human condition through government policy.

I have no doubt that most conservatives would be delighted if I were king for a day, or at least they would be once they got over the shock of seeing what I had in mind and saw the results of removing sovereign power from the central government and returning it to individuals and the states.

The reason I separate myself from conservatives is threefold. First, I have little in common with most of the politicians and commentators who call themselves conservatives. Second, I reject the popular conservative concept of using government to impose moral, communal and business standards on individuals and organizations. For example, conservatives want to use government to protect marriage – like that will work – whereas I want to see the separation of marriage and state.

Third, there is little about American society that I want to conserve. I believe it was Josh that described conservatives as those who see yesterday’s defeats as tomorrow’s victories; I think that is a cogent summation. Of course, as I pointed out in my column today, the word “conservative” has become rather nebulous, so perhaps we had better define the term more precisely before discussing whether or not it applies to various individuals.

As for survival, I’m not so sure. Conservativism itself will surely survive, but the movement in which it supposedly resides today may not.