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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Thursday, August 10, 2006
Law Enforcement vs. Warfare Approaches to Terrorism Lawyers, Guns and Money is arguing that the arrests in Britain are a vindication of the liberal model of how to deal with terrorists--as primarily a police problem. (I can't quote it exactly, because I don't use that sort of language.) There are a number of problems with this argument, of which the two most obvious are this: 1. Liberals claim to support the law enforcement model--but object to most of the techniques that would actually be required to use the law enforcement model to stop terrorists (such as telephone traffic analysis, wiretaps done so rapidly that there may not be time for FISA warrants). This is perhaps a surprise to many liberals, but law enforcement seldom prevents crimes from happening; they don't have psychics floating in big water tanks, forseeing future criminal acts. The police arrest people after the fact, and rely on the threat of serious punishment to deter people from committing crimes. With what serious punishment can you threaten someone who is quite prepared to die as part of his terrorist act? 2. The law enforcement model that liberals claim to support is necessarily a defensive posture. It means that we have to wait for a plot to be hatched, and hope that we know about it soon enough to intervene. As I think President Bush or one of his officials pointed out a couple of years ago, "We have to be successful everytime; they only have to be successful once." Now, I think that the law enforcement model could be made to work reliably to prevent terrorist attacks--but it would require a level of civil liberties violations so severe that it would not just be liberals who would be upset. Trying to use the law enforcement model with even a conservative's notion of appropriate civil liberties would mean that at least some of the terrorist attacks would be successful. How long would the American public tolerate an average of 500 dead a year? This is a recipe for a police state--and now that I think about it, that may be the reason why al-Qaeda is pursuing what I have previously called irrational attacks such as the one uncovered today--to force us into a police state. We would lose much of the freedom that helps to distinguish us from almost any Muslim society. The law enforcement model can be likened to dealing with a termite problem in your house by killing individual termites--and hoping that you find all or most of them in the walls. The military model can be likened to finding the termite's colony and queen, and destroying it. It is certainly more work to do that search and destroy mission--but in the long run, killing individual termites is very inefficient. 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists I've mentioned in the past that the biggest problem with the 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists is that if Bush had actually arranged the 9/11 attacks to justify the Iraq War (for all that oil!), then they suddenly turned incredibly stupid the next day. If these people were so evil as to arrange 9/11, intentionally lying about WMDs in Iraq, then why didn't they find some WMDs in Iraq, anyway? It would have been very easy to "find," say, a metric ton of sarin in a remote Iraqi base, show it to the reporters, and then dispose of it in the interests of public safety. The number of people that would have to be in on this hoax would have been much smaller than the 9/11 conspiracy. Here's a new observation about what's wrong with these conspiracy theories: My argument against a 9/11 conspiracy (at least carried out by the Bush clan) is the reaction of Bush and other high ranking officials that day. If they carried out this elaborate plan for the attack, why did Bush sit around dazed and confused in the classroom for 10 minutes after it started and then fly around to various unnamed military bases all day? Why not have Bush spring to action immediately and order the shooting down of a jet just before it plunged into the Capitol? Wouldn't that make him a hero for life? Interesting Benefits of the Breathe Right Strips I've lost three pounds since Sunday morning. This is consistent with the improved quality of sleep that I have been experiencing. I still have a few weeks before the CPAP titration study, so I can keep seeing if this makes the progress I need. If I can manage three pounds a week between now and the CPAP titration study (a definite optimistic assumption--I know that keeping a linear progression on this is difficult), I will be down twelve pounds--enough progress that in combination with the Breathe Right strips, I should get increasing improvements in sleep quality. Another benefit is that I have regained a sense of smell. I have had limited abilities to smell anything but the strongest aromas for a long time, because of sinus congestion--and now, all sorts of subtle smells are readily available! It isn't quite like regaining eyesight--smell just isn't that critical of a sense, and at times, it's actually an advantage! Labels: sinuses What, Exactly, Is The Purpose Of Blowing Up A Bunch of Airliners? I can at least understand why someone might attack the Pentagon if they are at war with us. It is a military target. In a sense, it is the military target, if you are attacking the U.S. It has no practical possibility of impairing the U.S. military, because it is only a headquarters. I can understand attacking the World Trade Center. It was a center of international finance, and destroying it would be not just symbolically but economically very damaging. But blowing up airliners, killing thousands of people? If the goal of al-Qaeda is to make us withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, this would not do it. If anything, it would harden our resolve to root out Islamofascism everywhere. If it is to inflict pain and suffering on the U.S., yes, it can do that. But that doesn't stop the U.S. from continuing to pursue al-Qaeda. Someone, somewhere, please explain the purpose of this. As near as I can tell, it is simply that there is a movement within Islam that just loves to kill innocent people. They don't get any benefit from it, except to make Americans angrier, and more prepared to make sacrifices. This clearly won't persuade Americans to become Muslims--if anything, it would make Americans less sympathetic to Islam. I suppose that if this keeps up, we could eventually see a nasty anti-Muslim backlash in the United States. There's a Star Trek episode about a life form that beams a bunch of Klingons onto the Enterprise, and arms both sides with swords, so that they cause each other a lot of injury, but it will take enormous skill to kill anyone. Why? Because this life form lives on hatred. Islamofascists are beginning to remind me of that life form. Staging the News There's been some question for some time as to whether "Green Helmet" (a "rescue worker" who seems to be present at an enormous number of Israeli atrocity rescue efforts in Lebanon) is actually a Hezbollah propaganda officer. This video from one of the German news shows seems to be outtakes--and shows him staging the recovery of the body of a dead boy--and when the filming didn't produce quite the right result, they took him out of the ambulance, and did it again. You can be sure that U.S. mainstream media aren't going to show us this. Wow! And I Thought Senator Lieberman Represented Connecticut! Headline from the Oregonian: Lieberman loses the Iraq primary 21 Arrested In UK Airliner Bomb Plot I keep waiting for the left to wake up, and realize that Islamofascism has been at war with the West for decades now--and this latest plot, to blow up six to ten airliners in transit to the U.S. (rather like the 1995 plot by al Qaeda over the Pacific), is part of that war. Withdrawing from Iraq won't stop things like this--it will only embolden them, and allow them to redeploy terrorists from Iraq to Europe. Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Next Book Well, I had a chat with my editor at Nelson Current about what to write next. He wanted me to start thinking about another popular history book--but my idea of writing a book about the Framers and the establishment clause didn't fly because they already have such a book under contract. So we talked a bit about the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill--and he had me put together a quick proposal for a book that regular readers of my blog (or my books) won't find startling: a mix of personal memoir and legal history. I've started working my way through the available secondary sources about the history of mental illness in America. The particular topic that I am interested in is the history of civil commitment laws. I'm just about done with Albert Deutsch's The Mentally Ill in America (Columbia University Press, 1949). There has been a bit of criticism of Deutsch's treatment of Colonial America and its treatment of the mentally ill, arguing that the circumstances were not generally quite as dark as he portrays them. I find, however, that much of what he has to say on the subject matches what I have gathered from reading through primary sources: until pretty late in the Colonial era, there were so few mentally ill people that many families managed to keep their relatives at home. As long as a mentally ill person wasn't violent, the small towns were tolerant and caring. There's mention of a couple of pastors in New England who suffer breakdowns that largely prevent them from preaching--one who could no longer speak anything intelligible on Sunday morning--and how long the congregation accepted this. Even when they replaced him, it was with an "assistant," presumably to avoid hurting his feelings. To my surprise (although I guess it shouldn't be a surprise) there are some interesting parallels--and divergences--between the nineteenth century and now. There was a brief burst of irrational enthusiasm in the 1830s by psychiatrists (or "alienists" as physicians who treated the mentally ill were then called) claiming that 90% of all mental patients who had been sick less than a year were curable. In retrospect (and even to a few very honest alienists then), it is clear that what started out as an unlikely and probably statistically scrambled claim for one mental hospital became a competitive race by other state mental hospitals to show that they, too, were just as good as their colleagues. It was also terribly depressing to realize that most of the severe forms of mental illness were just not going to get well, at least with what they had available at the time. The parallel to the 1950s wild enthusiasm for how chlorpromazine was going to empty out mental hospitals is obvious. Another surprise is that while Colonial law followed English common law in providing a fairly relaxed civil commitment procedure, after the Civil War, there was a brief burst of concern about making the process too easy, and a few states decided to put more due process into the mix. Anyway, Deutsch's is the first book that I've read so far, and I expect to learn a lot more about the history of civil commitment over the next few months. One startling (and perhaps it also should not have been) aspect is Deutsch's discussion of mental retardation and eugenics. The first edition of Deutsch's book was published in 1937; the second edition in 1949. One would have thought that the entire National Socialist campaign to create a master race would have caused more than a little discomfort. Now, remember, Deutsch is, in most respects, as good a New Deal type liberal as you can imagine with respect governmental authority to help the poor, the suffering, and the needy. Yet the entire World War II eugenics madness only caused him to suggest that mandatory sterilization of the defective might have to wait a while. Labels: deinstitutionalization Ubuntu Linux As An Alternative To Windows I mentioned a few days ago that there was a crying need for a reliable, secure operating system for PCs--and yet, simple enough that you don't need to be a computer geek (like me) to install and use it. SuSE Linux 9.0 was pretty close on the "ease of use" but still not quite there, and installation was still a bit more than I would expect my wife and any other non-Techie to feel comfortable doing. (They could do it, but they would be afraid.) A couple of readers suggested Ubuntu release of Linux as meeting my requirements. Now, I had requested Ubuntu some months back, largely because it was free, and I couldn't find my SuSE Linux disks at the time, but I never installed Ubuntu. Two nice aspects of Ubuntu: it comes with both an install CD, and a "Live CD," which you can use to run Ubuntu Linux without installing it on your hard disk. It runs much more slowly from the Live CD, because CD-ROM drives are definitely much slower than a hard disk, but you can see what it is going to be like, before you commit yourself to it. Very nice. I went ahead and wiped the SuSE Linux that was installed on my Linux test bed, and installed Ubuntu there instead. I'll be playing with it over the next few days, trying to decide if this is a realistic alternative to Windows XP for my wife. UPDATE: The more I use, the more I like. I'm blogging this update from the Ubuntu box. There are a few little quirks to things that most people won't ever need to use (like Samba, for sharing files and directories with Windows boxes on the same local area network), but overall, this is no harder to set up and use than Windows--and it seems to be pretty snappy on performance. Lieberman's Loss First of all, as much as I am disappointed to see a spoiled rich kid like Ned Lamont (a fourth generation trust fund baby whose wealth came from robber barons--hence the left-wing politics and support from the multimillionaires of MoveOn) get the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, let's not forget that Lieberman is not a conservative. Don Surber has a list of Lieberman's votes. Lieberman got his start in politics in Connecticut pursuing gun control, and he hasn't changed on that. Even his supposed concern about the way that the entertainment industry has cheapened and coarsened our culture turned out, during the 2000 campaign, to just be a "please stop producing trash" request. Asking Hollywood nicely to stop producing trash is like asking drug dealers to stop selling drugs. Still, Lieberman was part of the adult supervision of the Democratic Party--the crowd that recognized that whatever there disagreements were with George Bush, there is a war going on, and pretending otherwise is irresponsible. It appears that the lunatic fringe is taking over the Democratic Party. Real Clear Politics describes it as: just about the worst result possible for the Democratic Party. First, it almost guarantees that Lieberman will run as an independent and given the arc of the public polling it is very possible that Lamont peaked about two weeks ago. Lieberman's 48% makes him the clear favorite in the three-way. Republicans Chris Shays and Rob Simmons have received a boost in holding on in their vulnerable districts, two seats the Dems have to win if they hope to capture the House.My question: if Lieberman runs as an independent, creating a three way race with the Republican--is it possible for the Republican to win the general election? I saw a Connecticut Republican interviewed last night, and she was saying that while Republican registration is only about 20% of the Connecticut electorate, Republicans have a base of about 37% of the votes. (I suspect that a lot of independents consistently vote Republican, and Republicans are better at turning out their voters.) Bush received 44% of the Connecticut vote in the 2004 election, so I don't find the 37% base implausible. If Lieberman and Lamong split the remaining 63% of the vote the way that they did in the primary, it could be a Republican victory. I can think of nothing more appropriate to do to the spoiled rich kid faction of the Democratic Party than for them to have defeated a liberal Democratic incumbent--and end up causing a Republican to get elected instead. UPDATE: Brendan Loy has a pretty strong point about how the moonbats of the Democratic Party are taking over--and pushing him out of the tent: I’ve been calling myself a Democrat since I was ten years old, when I marched around the schoolyard in fifth grade chanting “Jerry Brown! Jerry Brown!” and, later, played the part of Bill Clinton in a sixth-grade mock debate. At the age of 13, I threw my hands up in dismay when the GOP took over Congress. When I turned 18, I registered without hesitation as a Democrat. I proudly cast my ballot for Al Gore in 2000, and — somewhat less proudly — for John Kerry in 2004. In recent years, I’ve seen the “base” of the Democratic Party drifting away from sense and sanity, and at the same time, I’ve felt my own ideological compass pulled somewhat to the right by world events. Yet I remain profoundly uncomfortable with the Republican Party for a variety of reasons, and I’ve never much liked the idea of being an “independent,” considering it — with all due respect to those who wear the label proudly — something of a cop-out in many cases. Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Ready To Make Your Own Telescope? Why Start Small? This ad on astromart.com is definitely not recommended for the beginning amateur telescope maker: 50" Fused Silica Mirror BlankOh yes, they are looking to get $70,000 for it. Why Can't I Find This Section of the Iraq Penal Code? Along with the Reuters photographs that they have now withdrawn because of PhotoShop "improvements," and the recent example that I have mentioned of a journalist quoting unnamed an "law enforcement official" for information that is clearly impossible, Classical Values is pointing to a disturbing article that quotes a section of the Iraqi criminal code that doesn't seem to exist. The claim being made by a journalist in the Guardian is that the Iraqi government is allowing Islamic fundamentalists to murder homosexuals: Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an 'honour killing' to murder someone who is gay - and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq's penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam.Now, this is a very serious matter. The Islamic "honor killing" aspect of Islam has become a serious problem in many European countries, and isn't unknown in the U.S. But when Classical Values tried to find the details about section 111, what he found was paragraph 111 (there is no section 111): Paragraph 111 - Prevention from acting as guardian, executor or trustee precludes the convicted party from exercising this authority over others unless it concerns life or property.I went searching as well, and found the same text here. This State Department report says: Article 1 of the Iraqi Penal Code No. 111 of 1969, however, mandates that criminal penalties can only be imposed by law.This State Department report seems to refer to something else with 111 in it: In 1990, Saddam Hussein introduced Article 111 into the Iraqi Penal Code in a calculated effort to strengthen tribal support for his regime. This law exempts men who kill their female relatives in defense of their family's honor from prosecution and punishment.This at least matches the description the journalist used--but why doesn't it appear in any Iraq Penal Code copies online? Why Islam Can't Destroy Israel, In Spite of The Overwhelming Numbers This reminds me of Will Rogers' famous saying, "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat." Osama bin Laden's teacher is condemning Hezbollah: A senior Saudi religious figure, Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, published a fatwa establishing that "Hizbullah is not the 'Party of God' (the meaning of Hizbullah in Arabic), but the 'Party of Satan.'" Migraine Headaches: New Theory of Causation I've had migraine headaches since I was about 12. Starting in my 20s, perhaps because of drinking a "natural" tea that contained ephedra (promoted by my hippie older sister), I started to have visual disturbances along with the pain. The visual disturbances are severe enough that if I have a full-blown migraine, I can't safely drive. I have found that if I throw 600 mg of ibuprofen at the migraine as the first visual disturbances appear, it subsides, without any pain. This article from the New York Times (free registration required) reports that the traditional theories of what causes migraine headaches are now being discarded--and it appears that a lot of what are characterized as "sinus headaches" are actually migraines: Everything you thought you knew about migraine headaches — except that they are among the worst nonfatal afflictions of humankind — may be wrong. At least that’s what headache researchers now maintain. From long-maligned dietary triggers to the underlying cause of the headaches themselves, longstanding beliefs have been brought into question by recent studies. I'm Sure The ACLU Will Call This Racial Profiling From the New York Post: August 8, 2006 -- Eleven Egyptian students who were supposed to travel to a Montana university after flying to JFK airport late last month disappeared in New York, spurring federal authorities to issue a nationwide alert, officials said yesterday.Oh no, not at all! Hmmm, the last time a bunch of single young Arab men showed up in the U.S. and didn't conform to their visa requirements... What happened? I recall some little difficulties that a few of you may still remember. House Project: Concrete Color Fixed; Fiberglass Screens Being Eaten After much struggle, the builder came up here with a representative from Brickform, the makers of the colored stamped concrete that we had done around the house. As regular readers will know, this was a disaster. The builder didn't put in drainage when we first discussed it, and some of the concrete on the rear garage apron cracked. When the concrete guys came in and re-poured it, it was the wrong color. Then they put on the finish that was supposed to be shiny and rose colored--and it didn't hide the gray concrete, and the finish was inconsistent and dark brown. At this point, we gave up getting the color the one that we had been promised--we would have been happy with a consistent color and finish. Anyway, the first attempt to correct this problem didn't work so well, but by experimentation, the representative from Brickform and our builder found that a combination of the sealer (which makes it shiny and repel water) and xylene would dissolve the existing sealant layer, and produce a fairly consistent color and sheen. It still isn't quite what we had expected from looking at other work, but it's not too bad. Here are a couple of pictures--and let me point out that we've tracked a bit of dirt across it, which hoses right off because of the finish.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge I mentioned a few months back that we had a problem with woodpeckers punching big holes in the screens on the south side of the house. We have noticed a gradually increasing problem with little holes in the screens mostly on the north side of the house, but a little bit everywhere. It turns out that the screen material is made of fiberglass--not metal. The builder was a little surprised by this, and suggested that we could rescreen them pretty easily. (Of course, he wasn't suggesting that he do it or pay for it.) Had the problem been birds, I would have cringed at the cost of having it done, or the labor of doing it ourselves, but we finally caught a grasshopper eating the screen. What is the purpose of window screens? To keep out bugs. If the bugs can, and do, eat through the screens, they aren't performing their only function, are they? As far as I am concerned, this is a warranty issue.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge Of course, it might be easier to do just rescreen them ourselves. I bought some aluminum mesh at Home Depot, and two hours later, we discovered why Valley Glass charges about $28 to rescreen--this is a difficult job, and the results (if you don't do this regularly) aren't terribly pretty. There are enough screens involved here that we have told the builder to take care of this. If he delays too long, we'll have Valley Glass do it, and we'll deduct it out of the final check we still owe him for various work that has been done since we closed in December (about $5200). And yes, I expect to write that check only after all warranty work has been done, and I will issue that check about as rapidly as he has responded to warranty claims. He may see it this year. Last house project entry. Labels: house project Monday, August 07, 2006
I Am Shocked, Shocked, To Discover That Journalists Are Making Things Up And once again, it was bloggers, not the mainstream media, that found and exposed that Reuters was distributing doctored pictures of the war in Lebanon: LONDON (Reuters) - Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah. VoIP Doesn't Work Over Wireless Internet At least, not well enough for my wife to be willing to use. There's a lot of static and dropped syllables because even a 1% packet loss rate over wireless is too much, so I have had to return the ViaTalk VoIP phone. Any alternatives? I can't find any long distance carrier that can provide me service, except for Frontier Telephone (who provides my local service as well) and they are hideously expensive. Three Nights of Breathe Right Strips First of all, there are two sizes of Breathe Right strips: one for small/medium noses, and one for large noses. I originally bought the small/medium size; I have a large nose, although on the small end of the large strip size. At this point, I have used these for three nights, the first of which was with the small/medium size. There's no question that I am sleeping better with these. I either have not woken up at all during the night, or perhaps once (last night). Ordinarily, I wake up two or three times a night. I usually go right back to sleep, but waking is almost certainly a result of the obstructive sleep apnea, and thus a sign of impaired sleep. I am definitely feeling more energetic when I am awake. When I first wake up, I do not bounce right out of bed (as I usually do) but since I feel so much better when I am finally up, this is a reasonable trade-off. It may be that I am coming out of deeper sleep using the Breathe Right strips, and thus it takes longer me to get fully awake. My sinuses are definitely clearing more during the night, which may be a big part of the improvement in sleep quality. The appointment for the CPAP titration study isn't until early September, so I may wait another week or two to cancel that. Labels: sinuses Hezbollah's "Social Programs" There's been quite a bit of discussion of how Hezbollah made friends by transforming itself from a terrorist group in Lebanon into a social welfare organization. This letter from a Lebanese immigrant to Germany in the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, however, tells a somewhat different story--and explains some of the loss of life going on in Lebanon right now (translation follows): ch wohnte bis 2002 in einem kleinen Dorf im Süden nahe Mardschajun, das mehrheitlich von Schiiten wie mir bewohnt ist. Nach Israels Verlassen des Libanon dauerte es nicht lange, bis die Hisbollah bei uns und in allen anderen Ortschaften das Sagen hatte. Als erfolgreiche Widerstandskämpfer begrüßt, erschienen sie waffenstarrend und legten auch bei uns Raketenlager in Bunkern an. Die Sozialarbeit der Partei Gottes bestand darin, auf diesen Bunkern eine Schule und ein Wohnhaus zu bauen! Ein lokaler Scheich erklärte mir lachend, dass die Juden in jedem Fall verlieren, entweder weil die Raketen auf sie geschossen werden oder weil sie, wenn sie die Lager angriffen, von der Weltöffentlichkeit verurteilt werden ob der dann zivilen Toten. Die libanesische Bevölkerung interessiert diese Leute überhaupt nicht, sie benutzen sie als Schilder und wenn tot als Propaganda. Solange sie dort existieren, wird es keine Ruhe und Frieden geben.Here's the translation, which within my somewhat limited German, seems to be correct: I lived until 2002 in a small southern village near Mardshajun that is inhabited by a majority of Shias like me. After Israel left Lebanon, it did not take long for Hezbollah to have the say in our town and all other towns. Received as successful resistance fighters, they appeared armed to the teeth and dug rocket depots in bunkers in our town as well. The social work of the Party of God consisted in building a school and a residence over these bunkers! A local sheikh explained to me laughing that the Jews would lose in any event because the rockets would either be fired at them or if they attacked the rocket depots, they would be condemned by world opinion on account of the dead civilians. These people do not care about the Lebanese population, they use them as shields, and, once dead, as propaganda. As long as they continue existing there, there will be no tranquility and peace.Thanks to Power and Control for the links. It is all monstrous, not just that terrorists are purposely constructing civilian targets on top of legitimate military targets, but how intellectuals throughout the world are constructing rationalizations for why this is okay, or for ignoring the nature of the fight that is now going on. Victor Davis Hanson, an historian who I greatly respect, points out: When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism.The parallel is quite striking. Yes, the U.S. isn't perfect, but the Western democracies had their serious flaws in the 1930s such as imperialism and racism. Yet intellectuals in large numbers managed to rationalize doing nothing when far greater evils were strutting on the world stage. We are fighting World War III against Islamofascism--and as much as it is ill-advised for national leaders to admit it, we are fighting a battle of civilizations as well: all against Islam. The left (which for practical purposes includes the vast majority of intellectuals) is so filled with hatred for the U.S. and the broad values of the West--capitalism, individual freedoms, and the remnants of the Christian tradition--that they are actively seeking our defeat. |
