What Price Peace in our Time?

As discussions over the options available to the United States in preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons occur, almost all commentators opine that a strong blockade of vital supplies (the principal being gasoline) would be treated by Iran as an act of war, as it traditionally has been.

These same commentators regularly refer to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a madman, yet never extend that psychoanalytical assessment to the underlying genesis of their summary judgment—his subscription to Mahdiism (see Iran's President and the Politics of the Twelfth Imam).

It seems to me that the alternatives are to engage Iran in a shooting war without their having the benefit of a nuclear arsenal or to wait until they do have that option, with the full expectation that they are prepared to use it, indeed may look forward to the opportunity.   The specter of United States naval vessels being fried by a nuclear blast makes Exocet missiles and bomb-laden speedboats pale in comparison.

McCain Pain?

Glenn Beck has stirred the pot with his statement that John McCain would have been even worse for America, had he been elected, than how bad it is, having elected Barack Obama.

In thinking about this hypothesis, I am taken back to a conversation I had one evening early last year after dinner with the estimable Herb Meyer.  Herb employed Socratic dialog to evince from me the answer as to who, among those vying for the Republican nomination, could best perform their duties in the existential fight for Western Civilization (see The Siege of Western Civilization) versus Islamic Fascism.  We instantly agreed on the person—Senator John McCain.  I have seen and heard nothing that would change that assessment, but that’s only half the story.  Herb’s thesis is that the enemy within (radical secular humanism) is as much a threat to Western Civilization as is the Mohammedan external threat.  On that front, I must agree with Mister Beck.  Senator McCain would have, by the evidence of his record, would have been the next notch up on the burner of this multi-generational frog boil that finds us where we are in American culture today.  Beck’s theatrical fake frog boiling on his show last night made a valid point that President Obama’s extremes have produced a valuable wakeup to the conservative mainstream of America.  That would have never happened with a President McCain, even though Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid would still have had the exact same majorities in both chambers, with the same radical committee chairmen, leading to much of the same legislative agenda, but without the specter of a radical Democrat President to galvanize wavering Republicans.

It can be argued that the same results will come about in either case, but that just says that McCain would have been no worse, which sounds like damning with faint praise.

Racism? So What?!

The assertion that racism is behind criticism of the President is as irrelevant as is the concept behind “hate” crimes legislation—that it matters why somebody does something, rather than whether that something is good or bad. It is not right to do something bad for a supposed good reason, just as it is not wrong to do something right for a supposed bad reason. If some of the people opposing the President’s flawed direction are doing so with hatred in their hearts for him because of his race, it’s sad but irrelevant.