James R. Rummel

I am a self defense instructor who lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Moral Dissonance

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Europeans insist that they’re morally superior to Americans. They say that they’re the peacemakers, we’re the warmongers. Our invasion of Iraq is used as the latest talking point they use to try and shore up their sagging self esteem.

Differences in foreign policy aside, the Euros also say that they inhabit the moral high ground on a personal level. If Americans really cared about their fellow man, they say, then we’d vote for local and state politicians that vow to abolish the death penalty. They’re not shy in condemning the practice as barbaric and brutal.

The BBC has published this news article, which details how American forensic experts are uncovering mass graves in Iraq with depressing regularity. Their latest find is a trench that contains the remains of hundreds of children and their mothers, some of whom were pregnant when they were tossed in the hole and the dirt shovelled on top.

The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said. (snip)

The body of one woman was found still clutching a baby. The infant had been shot in the back of the head and the woman in the face. “The youngest foetus we have was 18 to 20 foetal weeks,” said US investigating anthropologist P Willey. “Tiny bones, femurs – thighbones the size of a matchstick.”

The remains of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims are being uncovered, evidence that can be used against Saddam in court. But the work is going slow because the European investigators have refused to participate. They’re afraid that the evidence they supply will be used to eventually put Saddam to death.

So the Americans are wrong to have invaded Iraq, which was the only way to end the slaughter and keep more children from being killed. And now the Americans are wrong to investigate the crimes since the dictator who’s responsible might have to face justice for them.

I’m having trouble seeing the moral superiority of the European position here.

(Big hat tip to blog goddess Natalie Solent.)

Canada: Trying to Make Friends Without Losing The Arrogance

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Whine and Jeez has given us the heads up to an excellent blog, The Diplomad.

The authors claim that they’re US State Department employees that have to keep their identities secret in order to protect their jobs. I don’t know if that’s true, but they certainly sound like disgruntled members of the Diplomatic Corps.

My favorite post is this one. An excerpt……

As the evening wore on, the Canadians put on a slide show of “Famous People You Didn’t Know Were Canadian.” The usual suspects were there: Lorne Greene, John Kenneth Galbraith, Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox, William Shatner, Howie Mandel, Pamela Anderson, and others we can’t remember. (snip)

It proved an odd event, one which seemed to give Canadians great joy. Diplomad asked a Canadian host what the point was of this show and got, “We want people to know Canada’s contributions. We don’t want them to think that only Americans have talent.” Diplomad, of course, noted to himself that the show should have been titled, “Smart and Talented People Who Had to Flee Canada to Employ Their Brains and Talent.” He, unfortunately, failed to mention that the vast majority of the people whose faces were flashing by had given up their Canadian nationality and become Americans. All he said was, “I guess it would have been a pretty short show if it had been about people known to be Canadian and still in Canada.”

There’s more good stuff, and I strongly urge you to go and read the post. But there’s one point that The Diplomad makes that illustrates, in my opinion, Canada’s decline.

On one thing, however, the Canadian diplomats are “manly-girl” rock solid: detesting the United States. And while Hollywood considers Canada a cheap backlot copy of the USA — and a place where the likes of Martin Sheen get a respectful hearing — Canada is not at all like the USA, to Canada’s detriment.

Canada has become for all intents and purposes a Third World country: Egypt with snow. It whines; it cries; it takes the UN seriously; it hopes that the terrorists will leave them alone, in other words that Moloch will eat them last. All symptoms of a country torn apart by insecurity and not really sure that 10-15 years from now Canada will still exist.

No one says that a country has to follow the example set by the United States to become a success. It does seem that the course Canada has chosen, to reject everything if it’s tainted by America even if it’s a good idea, is madness of the highest order.

Fix Bayonets

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In this post fellow Chicago Boy ken expresses his dismay that the authorities are still insisting on disarming airline passengers, even though 9/11 has shown that a few armed passengers would be a force for good.

In this post newest Chicago Boy Shannon Love disagrees, saying that allowing passengers to carry any weapon at all would lead to a fatal accident.

So far as this subject is concerned, I have to agree more with Shannon’s arguement than with ken’s. But neither one earns my full support.

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