Canadian Cincinnatus

Reason: the economy is in much better shape than most people think

This article in Reason repeats two themes that I have tried to stress in these pages about the current economic woes:

1. The economy is in a much better state than all the chicken-littles in the press would have us believe. Not only have there not been two quarters of negative growth yet - the definition of a recession (the US economy has grown in both quarters of 2008), but the rate of growth has been increasing; 0.6% in the first quarter (at an annualized rate) and 1.9% in the second. In other words, growth in the US economy is accelerating!

Of course, this is not to deny that there are many things currently wrong. Oil prices are punishing high and the US housing sector is a disaster. But compared to any previous recession, the current unpleasantness is a cakewalk.

2. The second is that people are far too eager to look to the government to solve their problems for them. If you are bankrupt because you bought a house with zero down on a variable rate mortgage and no wiggle room in your personal finances, that should be your problem, not the government’s. And if you work in GM of Oshawa, you shouldn’t sit around and wait for the bitter end. You should take the $100,000 buyout they are now offering and go to Alberta and work on the tar stands. There is a desperate shortage of workers out there and all the jobs are high paying.

Why gun owners win (at least in the US) – they aren’t afraid to debate!

See here.

I think gun owners have a lesson to teach the conservative movement at large. When issues are debated – and you have facts on your side – you make forward progress.

Even in Canada, gun owners make progress. When Alan Rock introduced Bill C-68 (the gun registry – among many other things), gun owners said that most illegal guns were smuggled in from the US. At the time, this notion was subject to ridicule and scorn, but we kept it up. The result: the conventional wisdom now is that most illegal guns come up from the States. Everybody except Mayor David Miller knows this now, and his assertions to the contrary only make him look ridiculous.

The problem is that conservatives don’t draw a line in the sand about other issues. On issue after issue - global warming, gay marriage, the bankruptcy of the government pension plans, immigration policy, the evils of regulation – we hand over the initiative to the enemy because we are afraid to be seen advocating our own policies.

Ever wonder why the left makes increasing use of the racism charge? – expanding the definition of what is a racist, from the original definition (i.e. that you hate a different race or religion), to include practically everybody who disagrees with the left on an ever-expanding array of issues? It’s because we don’t call them on it. The left counterattacked when Joe McCarty used these same tactics against communists. The result: charge anybody with being a communist sympathizer, no matter how much proof you have and how blatant the person is, and it is you who are suspect. Fighting back works!

Our politicians think too much in terms of short-term expediency and too little on the long-term struggle. This causes them to take the ‘moderate stance’, In other words, they adopt a watered-down version of the enemy’s principles as their own. A pertinent example is Ontario Conservative leader John Tory, who compromised on everything in order to expedite victory and ended up getting shellacked so bad that he didn’t even win his own seat.

To end this post on a positive note, lets talk about a non-gun issue where the right fought back and won. Before Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn were brought before the so-called ‘Human Rights Commission’, the Human Rights Commissions were the motherhood issue of Canadian politics. Everybody was for them. Nobody had a bad thing to say about them. However, that changed suddenly when Ezra Levant went before the Alberta Human Right’s Commission. Ezra’s videotaped denunciation of the entire process went around the world on youtube. The more Ezra and Mark fought back, the more dirt was uncovered about these kangaroo courts. In a short space of time, what was once a sainted institution, is now more discredited than the gun registry.

One of the themes of this blog is that principles are necessary for the success of conservatism (electoral and otherwise) and that, conversely, hiding from conservative principles usually leads to defeat. Ezra Levant and John Tory are two data points backing up this thesis.

Dick Morris to McCain: Hit Obama hard!

Dick Morris has good advice for McCain here and here. McCain should hit Obama much harder than he is currently doing, especially on Obama’s dangerously naïve policies.

In giving this advice, Morris is channeling Machiavelli. Machiavelli thought that, in action, one must be bold. Moderate action is always to be avoided. Go for the extreme solution for that is where power lies. To illustrate the point, consider yourself walking down the street as a 300 lb biker walks in the other direction towards you. There are two proper courses of action: Either say, “Good morning Mr. Biker! Great weather we’re having,” and keep walking; the other is to cut him in half with a machinegun. Both actions are correct because you come out on top in both case (or at least you don’t lose anything in the encounter). The incorrect action is to poke him with a sharp stick. This can only result in a certain beating.

Given that McCain is locked in a zero-sum game with Obama called a presidential election, the friendly course of action is out of the question. He has to land a haymaker on Obama.

McCain gains nothing by pulling his punches. Obama’s policies on the economy are socialistic and will lead to disaster. Increasing taxes at the top end while at he same time multiplying capital gains taxes is a virtual guarantee that the current slowdown in the economy – its not even a recession yet! – will turn into a full-blown depression. He is just as dangerously naïve with regard to America’s foreign enemies. The only reason Al Quaida has not struck again in the US after 9/11 is because George W Bush didn’t let them. But drop your guard, and they certainly will strike.

For those not in the know, Dick Morris was Bill Clinton’s Republican strategist. While I do not always agree with his assessments, I always find him an interesting read. With regard to political strategy, he is probably the smartest guy on the net. It is a good a practice to read everything he writes.

Backgrounder to the Russian Invasion of Georgia

What transpired is complicated. It is also a story of subterfuge by Russia. To properly understand the events, we need to go back to the spring of 1918.

THE SETTING

Georgia was briefly free, following its declaration of independence from Russia on May 26, 1918. On May 7, 1920 Soviet Russia signed a Peace Treaty with the young democratic republic of Georgia – The Treaty of Moscow (1920) – which explicitly recognized its sovereignity and promised to forego any and all territorial ambitions. In short, Russia promised to respect Georgia's territorial integrity forever. It should be noted that Georgia’s independence was also recognised by the international community of the time.

Within months, Russia started to foment anti-governmental riots in various regions of the country, especially among ethnic minorities such as the Abkhazians and Ossetians. They also provoked numerous border incidents along the frontier of the Azerbaijan SSR.

Less than a year after signing this treaty, the Russian Army invaded Georgia on the pretext of "saving minority peoples (Abkhazians & Ossetians) and the peasants.” This was in February 1921 and Georgia was destined to remain under Russian rule for the following 70 years.

Come 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and Georgia quickly declared independence. International recognition and acceptance followed for this easternmost of the world’s Christian nations. Internationally Georgia’s historic territory was recognized as including the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Putin’s Russia attempted to regain control by destabilizing Georgia (as well as the whole Caucasus). The 1920’s scenario described above was once again being knowingly played out: foment separatism among Abkhazians and Ossetians in Georgia, provoke crises, when the time is ripe and the situation right, invade, conquer, and annex.

The ethnic composition of Abkhazia in 1989 was about 46% (240,000) Georgian, 18% (93,000) Abkhazian, 15% (77,000) Armenian, 14% (75,000) Russian and the rest a hodgepodge, which included Estonians.

During the Russian fomented, funded and otherwise aided civil war, the minority Abkhazians drove out all other ethnicities except the Russians. They accomplished this via massive massacres and terror. This was ethnic cleansing. Abkhazia is today a depopulated region.

South Ossetia population was about 70,000 a year or two ago after having undergone a similar Russian sponsored and abetted ethnic cleansing. Most Canadian towns have larger populations than this region.

Significantly, the Russians decided to give Russian citizenship to the remaining local population.

THE TRAP

A number of months ago, the Russians moved a large number of troops and tanks just outside of Georgia’s borders. Close to 1,000 tanks were deployed just outside of South Ossetia. (Note that in 2007, Russia also introduced large numbers of tanks and troops, including the crack 76th Airborne Brigade, near the borders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.)

Thereafter, a number of border incidents occurred with South Ossetian “Rebels” shelling Georgian villages near the border. This harassment steadily increased until in early August the casualties in Georgia became significant and Georgia decided to militarily deal with the “rebels”... they crossed the Ossetian border.

The Russians immediately attacked Georgia with the full might of their amassed troops under the pretext of offering protection to the (recently created) Russian citizens living there.

This was Russia's plan and that is how the Georgians fell into the trap.

Tom M

The West is being tested by Putin

Anybody who thinks what is happening right now in Georgia has anything to do with South Ossetia can’t see the forest through the trees.

What Vladimir Putin – probably the most skilled Machiavellian head of state today – is engaged in is a classic probing strategy. First skirmish at the periphery. See how the opponent responds. If they show signs of weakness, then probe some more, this time closer to the vital center. Take notes. Adjust your strategy while engaging in diplomatic delaying tactics.

Hitler used these same tactics before World War II. First the Rhineland. After that went swimmingly, then Austria. After that the Sudetenland to be followed shortly by the Czech Republic.

Putin is doing that today. First Estonia, last year – over the Bronze Soldier statue. Why else would the Kremlin care about an obscure statue in a foreign country that, until a couple of years ago, was seldom visited? Today, Georgia. Tomorrow? – indications are that they are planning on strong-arming the Ukraine.

Dick Morris thinks that this will all backfire on Putin. God, I hope so.

The Georgian invasion is all Russia’s fault

The West’s Russian appeasers are working overtime as can be seen here, here, here, here and here. Their new line is that the invasion is Georgia’s fault because they provoked the Russians by crossing over the border into South Ossetia and attacking the Ossetian rebels. Russia is merely responding to Georgia’s threat and, in any event, Georgia should have known better than to attack an enemy so much bigger than it. They were no doubt encouraged into doing this, so goes the thinking, by the fact that the West in general, and the US in particular, encouraged Georgia too much by, among other things, encouraging Georgia to apply to NATO (and the EU). Therefore, it is America’s fault. Everybody’s fault, it seems, except the Russian’s, at least according to the appeasers.

That this line of thinking is rubbish can be demonstrated by examining these facts:

First, South Ossetia is within the internationally recognized borders of Georgia. If Georgia chooses to attack a separatist army encamped within its borders is none of Russia’s business. Name a country on this planet that would tolerate a separatist army within its borders. I think it is fairly safe to say that Russia wouldn’t.

Of course, it can be argued that Russia’s intervention was because of a moral obligation on their part to assist the Ossetians against Georgian excess and cruelty. Perhaps there is something to this. Of course, we have no way of knowing for sure at this point because the only people asserting this are the Russians and they have a long history of justifying their own excesses on the thinnest of pretexts.

But for the sake of argument, lets assume this to be true. Wouldn’t the best thing Russia could do to help the Ossetians is to assist the Ossetians in founding a unified Ossetian Republic? One composed on not just the 60,000 people in South Ossetia but also the 445,000 Ossetians in North Ossetia. They are uniquely well positioned to pursue this course of action given that North Ossetia exists within the borders of the Russian Federation. Personally, I’m not holding my breath waiting for this will happen.

Third, any military invasion of this size would require at minimum of a month of preparation before it could be launched. Units had to be repositioned, stockpiles of supplies and ammunition brought well forward, plans made and rehearsed, etc. This means that if this invasion really were a counter-attack, there would have been a delay of a month between Georgia’s move and Russia’s. It is simply physically impossible for Russia to counter-attack on the same day. That, coupled with the suspicious timing of the event (the same day as the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics), leads one to the inescapable conclusion that the invasion was deliberate and that Georgia was only guilty of unwittingly providing Putin a pretext for doing so.

Demand that Putin be fired!

In calling a cease-fire, the Russians made a number of demands. One was that the Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili, be fired. Imagine the chutzpah? You invade a country and then, as a concession to stop invading and bombing it, you demand that its democratically elected leader be removed from office.

It would do this outrageous demand injustice to receive it with seriousness. It as if a thief came to your house, robbed you blind and then, when caught in the act, said that it is your fault because your prosperity tempted him so that the only right course of action is for you to pay for his rehabilitation. If you were to seriously negotiate from that basis you would only be validating his crimes.

The only antidote to this tactic is to counter it with an equally outrageous demand of our own: Vladimir Putin must be fired!

God knows, there would be ample justification for it. The Alexander Litvinenko affair should be enough to send him to the gas chamber, not to mention his barbaric war of conquest against the Chechens (or his possible role in the Moscow apartment-house bombings).

Of course, Putin will not lose his job because such a demand is presented, but it would put the Kremlin on notice that outrageous demands on their part will no longer be tolerated.

Russia attacks Georgia

Read about it here and here.

While the world was being distracted by the lavish opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, Russia invaded the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia with tanks. Simultaneously they launched air attacks against other parts of Georgia. Georgia claims to have shot down six Russian fighter-bombers. The Russians claim that they were only reacting to Georgian military incursions into that region.

To put things in perspective, South Ossetia has been a de-facto independent republic since 1992, after a war between South Ossetian separatists and the Georgian government ended inconclusively and resulted in a cease-fire and truce. However, the UN, EU, OSCE and NATO do not recognize South Ossetian independence, recognizing, rather, that South Ossetia is an integral part of Georgia. Since that time, a peacekeeping force of sorts - made up of Ossetians, the Russian Army and the Georgian Army - has governed South Ossetia. In 2006, South Ossetia held a referendum where they declared themselves independent of Georgia. Interestingly enough, several years ago Russia fast-tracked South Ossetians who wanted to get Russian passports. In other words, create as many Russian citizens as possible in South Ossetia so that, later on, you can say that you are invading the country in order to protect them.

Regardless of the internal politics of South Ossetia, it is obvious that Russia intends to use South Ossetia the way Germany used the Sudetenland. In other words, in the guise of ‘helping out’ the Ossetians against the bad Georgians, they incrementally regain control of some former Soviet territory. And if it works out well, then look for Russia to come to the aid of other ‘oppressed’ minority group in other former Soviet countries.

Fortunately, this time the European countries do not appear to be as gullible as they were in 1936. For instance, Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bilt, has already compared Russia’s action to that of the Third Reich. Needless to say, countries that used to be part of the Soviet imperium are even more acutely sensitive to the threat that the Russian action poses, and for this reason, Poland and the three Baltic states issued a joint statement condemning Russia’s action and urging the EU and NATO to take serious action to assist Georgia and combat Russia’s revisionist history. As if to complete the analogy, Washington Post correspondent Anne Applebaum, has been channeling Neville Chamberlain. In the classic manner of past appeasers she blames the weaker party for starting this war. In the same manner that Anne Applebaum blames Georgia, many world leaders blamed Czechoslovakia for their intransigence against the reasonable demands of Adolph Hitler, who said he only wanted guarantees for the Sudetenland Germans. Of course, the appeasers back then didn’t really believe what they were saying back then – any more than Anne Applebaum likely does today, but they convinced themselves enough to say things like this because they are cowards. It is easier to side with the stronger party against the weaker. Reading the history of the period makes for depressing reading. There were a lot of Anne Applebaums back then, and in powerful positions.

Of course, if the Russians were really interested in helping out Ossetians, they would free North Ossetia North Ossetia from the Russian Federation. There are 445,000 Ossetians living in North Ossetia. There are only 65,200 Ossetians living South Ossetia. Given that the Ossetians are a separate people who are as distinct from Russians as they are from Georgians, it would make sense for there to be one Ossetian Republic, united from both halves, the Georgian half and the Russian half. I am sure that the prospect of a buffer state between themselves and Russia would do wonders to convince Georgia to come to terms with loosing South Ossetia. Long live the Ossetian Republic!

Another interesting fact is that the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Moscow with Georgia in 1920, in the brief period when Georgia was then free. Among other things the Treaty says: “Article I: Proceeding from the right, proclaimed by the RSFSR, of all peoples to free self-determination up to and including separation from the State of which they constitute a part, Russia unreservedly recognizes the independence and sovereignty of the Georgian State and voluntarily renounces all the sovereign rights which had appertained to Russia with regard to the People and Territory of Georgia. Article II: Proceeding from the principles proclaimed in Article I above of the present Treaty, Russia undertakes to refrain from any kind of interference in the affairs of Georgia.” Nine months later, the Soviets invaded Georgia and took it over. Is history repeating itself now?

In the mean time, there are many reasons why the West should support Georgia. First of all, Georgia is a pro-West democracy that is currently building a free-market economy. They are actively trying to get into both NATO and the EU. The current President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, is very pro-west. In other words, a new western democracy is blooming. It is in the interest of all established western democracies to ensure that this nation survives. There are far too many dismal authoritarian dictatorships around – including – increasingly - Putin’s Russia.

For the United States, they have a unique moral obligation to Georgia. Georgia has been a loyal ally of the United States in the War on Terror. They currently have 2,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq. They are not just fair-weather coalition members. They are walking the talk, and as a result, they should be helped.

And third - and most importantly - if Russia gets away with its heavy-handed actions in South Ossetia, a deadly precedent will be established that can be used by the Russian federation to threaten any number of its neighbours. Russia has purposely left many ethnic Russian behind in its former republics and you can bet that Vladimir Putin will be more than willing to play the Sudetenland card again to increase Russian power further.

The secret cabal of Hollywood conservatives

This article was prompted by an Andrew Briebart article in the Washington Times, “Mr. Spielberg, tear down this wall,” where he discusses politics in Hollywood. While the pervasive socialist bias of Hollywood should not be news to any reader of this blog, what I found interesting was to what extent an undercurrent of closet conservatives exists there.

We have all heard of the prominent big name conservatives – Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, Arnold, Joel Surnow (creator of the TV show “24”) and “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker (who are both card carrying libertarians, who regularly bash liberal pieties on “South Park” and who made the pro-war-on-terror film “Team America”). These are people who have become too big in show business to be squashed. As a result they are free to publicize with their politically incorrect leanings. However there are other conservatives who are not so fortunate and who are forced to live out their political lives in the shadows. And there are more of them than we think. This gibes with a personal observation I have made, which is that many times, recent Hollywood films contain subtle right-wing messages.

For instance, take the recent Will Smith film, “I Am Legend”. This is a remake of the Charlton Heston film, “Omega Man”, which itself was a remake of “The Last Man on Earth” with Vincent Price, and based on the book “I Am Legend.” While I have not seen the Vincent Price version or read the book, a comparison between the Charlton Heston and the Will Smith versions is instructive. For those who have not seen the Will Smith film, I don’t want to spoil the movie because many of the right-wing themes only come to the fore near the end. In both films, Charlton Heston and Will Smith think they are alone in the world. In “Omega Man,” mankind has been killed off by biological weapons that had killed everybody off except for a few people who are left in a vampirish state. Charlton Heston, a scientist researching a cure, is the only uninfected person left alive. In “I am Legend,” the weaponized virus has been replaced by a runaway cancer cure. In both films, the protagonist unexpectedly runs into other immune people. The difference is that, in “Omega Man” (made in 1971), the other immune people belong to a hippie commune and spew out standard counterculture clichés of the era. In “I Am Legend”, Will Smith runs into people with a decidedly different attitude. As a result, “Omega Man” presents an overt counterculture message presented. In “I Am Legend”, it is a covert conservative message.

An example of a Hollywood crypto-conservative is the “Sopranos” creator, David Chase. According to the James Bowman’s book, “Honor”, Chase says, “I am nostalgic by nature.” Nostalgic by nature – what could that mean? Could it be that he is signaling that he is a conservative, but in such a way that it wouldn’t be flagged by the Hollywood gatekeepers? The show offers many clues to suggest that the answer to this question is yes. For instance, as James Bowman observes, the “Sopranos” deals primarily with the intersection of the honour culture (as represented by the mafia) and the therapy culture (as represented by Dr. Melfi). While this, in and of itself, does not make Chase a conservative; consider how Dr. Melfi and other white liberals are portrayed in the show. Dr. Melfi is repeatedly shown to be self-indulgent, weak and morally relativistic. For example, she has a drinking problem at one point; her motivation for treating Tony is at least partially sexual; she herself sees a shrink (who is a pretentious intellectual stuffed shirt); she constantly emphasizes that therapy is a ‘morally neutral’ and ‘non-judgmental’ activity; her ex-husband is a PC prig; and Tony often gets the better of her in their sessions because he sees things more clearly.

The most politically revealing scene occurs in the episode, “Second Opinion,” where Carmella seeks a second opinion after seeing Dr. Melfi herself. It turns out that Dr. Krakower is the anti-Melfi. While Dr. Melfi makes great pains to embrace moral relativism in the show (“The purpose of therapy is to help you, not to judge you”), and was always looking out for root causes of Tony’s behaviour in his childhood, Dr. Krackower tells Carmella that she must leave Tony immediately because he is evil; she should refuse to accept any money in the divorce settlement because it is ‘blood money,’ and refuses to accept any payment from Carmella for the same reason. He also believes that therapy without morality is a sham and that it is often used by people to find excuses for their anti-social behaviour. Compared to the morally confused Dr. Melfi, Krakower has clear values and lives by them. There are many other examples in the series where the stereotypical liberal elite comes off poorly, but the contrast between Dr’s Melfi and Krackower is, I believe, the best indication of where Chases’ heart lies.

Another crypto-conservative, I suspect, is director Martin Scorsese. Enough of his movies have deep, conservative themes running though them – albeit surrounded by liberal camouflage – that I can’t help but think that this is not by accident. For instance take the movie “Casino” – a straightforward, non-political crime caper. Except that it is based fairly tightly on actual events. There is one character in it, a ‘state senator’, who is played by Dick Smothers. He is a freebie-grubbing, prostitute using, pill popping, influence peddler who only falls out with the mob because Robert DeNiro’s character fires a politically connected incompetent from his casino. Given that most of the characters correspond to real life people, who is the Dick Smother’s character in real life? It turns out that he is none other than current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - a Democrat. Hmmm.

Another conservative Scorsese moment occurs in the film, “The Aviator”, where Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) meets Katherine Hepburn’s family. They are portrayed as eccentric, free-spirited intellectuals – just the kind of people who are usually given a sympathetic portrayal in Hollywood. At dinner, Katherine Hepburn’s mother announces, “We are all socialists here.” Howard Hughes responds, “That’s because you have money. You can afford to be socialists,” and then leaves the dinner party.

To me, the Scorsese film that seemed to me to have the clearest conservative themes running though it is 1991’s “Cape Fear”. In it, a modern family (father: Nick Nolte, mother: Jessica Lange, daughter: Juliette Lewis) is stalked by an ex-con (Robert DeNiro). Nick Nolte was his defense lawyer before he got sent away for 14 years. Why is DeNiro angry? Because Nolte had covered up a report stating that the girl he had brutally raped was promiscuous. In other words, Nolte’s humanity led him to sabotage DeNiro’s defense. This sets up two liberal pet causes – criminal rights and feminism – against each other. And why is DeNiro able to prey so effectively on Nick Nolte’s family? Because the members of his family are in conflict with each other because they are all self-centered narcissists – conflicts that DeNiro exploits. For instance, Nolte’s womanizing has estranged him from his wife. In order to beat DeNiro, the family has to pull together by putting family values ahead of their own selfish interests. Their distracted hedonism is repeatedly contrasted negatively with DeNiro’s single-minded dedication to his goal of vengeance.

And don’t let the fact that DeNiro is portrayed as a Pentecostal cracker fool you. This is just camouflage. It is the same strategy used by atheists in the middle ages who wanted to get their message out without suffering from the Inquisition. What they did was to put the real message into the mouth of their ‘villain’ and the received wisdom into the mouth of the ‘protagonist’, making it clear to those who ‘got it’ that the villain and protagonist’s roles were actually reverse. Take the case of the sixteenth century monk Tommaso Campanella. Though a Dominican monk, he was also an Epicurean philosopher who thought miracles, heaven and hell were myths used by the Vatican to control the masses. In the middle of the Counter-Reformation he actually said that publicly! Needless to say he ran afoul of the Inquisition, who tossed him into jail. As part of a deal to get out, he wrote “Atheism Conquered,” a dialogue between the protagonist - a Catholic, and an atheist, where the Catholic wins. This was written ostensibly to make amends for his previous heresy. While it did that, he wrote it such a way that the atheist presented fresh, new, exciting arguments and the Believer’s arguments were tired and hidebound. Anybody who had atheistic tendencies could read between the lines to see what Campanella was really saying. The best part was that the Church couldn’t complain - after all the ostensible protagonist wins by presenting the Church’s standard arguments. To criticize it would be to criticize themselves. One should keep this story in back of your mind when watching a recent film.

Scorsese used this tactic a second time in his film, “The Gangs of New York”. While this movie was not one of his best, it did have one of the most memorable movie villains of all time – Bill the Butcher, played by Daniel Day-Lewis. While everybody else in the film is forgettable, the film shines every time Daniel Day-Lewis appears on screen. Bill the Butcher is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant leader of the Nativist anti-immigrant gang, as well as a Republican. About as much of a villain for the Hollywood left as it is possible to make somebody. Since, the film takes place in New York City during the Civil War, I was interested to see how he would portray the anti-draft riots. I.e. would Scorsese whitewash the fact that the riots were perpetrated primarily by a Democratic mob who prominently targetted blacks for lynchings. The protagonist, Leonardo DiCaprio, was affiliated with that prominent Democratic institution, Tammany Hall. I was pleased to see that Scorsese didn’t flinch at all about presenting the true character of the riots. Nor the corrupt character of the Tammany Hall political machine either.

Another conservative, this time not so much in Hollywood, and not so much in the closet, is Frank Miller, the creator of the films “Sin City” and “300”. "300” in particular has been criticized by the left as being a piece of pro-Iraq-war jingoistic propaganda. Lets see what Frank Miller himself thinks: on an NPR radio interview he states his views on the War on Terror: "Mostly I hear people say, 'Why did we attack Iraq?' for instance. Well, we're taking on an idea. Nobody questions why after Pearl Harbor we attacked Nazi Germany. It was because we were taking on a form of global fascism, we're doing the same thing now….It seems to me quite obvious that our country and the entire Western World is up against an existential foe that knows exactly what it wants... and we're behaving like a collapsing empire. Mighty cultures are almost never conquered, they crumble from within. And frankly, I think that a lot of Americans are acting like spoiled brats. … For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we’re up against, and the sixth century barbarism that they actually represent. These people saw people’s heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate their daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are sensible to us. I’m speaking into a microphone that never could have been a product of their culture, and I’m living in a city where three thousand of my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built.”

According to wikipedia, “In 2006, Miller announced that his next Batman book would be called “Holy Terror, Batman!”. In it, Batman defends Gotham City against attacks by real-life terrorist group Al-Qaeda. Miller proudly announced the title of his next Batman book, which he will write, draw and ink; Holy Terror, Batman! is no joke. And Miller doesn't hold back on the true purpose of the book, calling it ‘a piece of propaganda,’ where ‘Batman kicks Al Qaeda's ass.’” Interestingly enough, just after I downloaded this quote, the following piece appeared in the Wall Street Journal, comparing George W Bush in his fight against islamofascists to Batman of the Dark Knight series. Frank Miller originally authored the Dark Knight comic book.

I had planned on posting this essay last week, but every time I came close to doing so, I came across yet another article about secret conservatives in Hollywood that needed to be incorporated into the article. For instance, The Washington Times ran an article about a loose-knit group of Hollywood conservatives called “Friends of Abe” that is organized by actor Gary Sinese. The National Review Online ran a very informative article on Hollywood conservatives. Among other things, writer Mark Hemmingway states that while there are more conservatives in Hollywood than you think (for instance, actor Robert Downey Jr. apparently became a conservative thanks to his experiences with drugs and a federal penitentiary), the resistance to conservatives in Hollywood is ferocious. I also found out that apparently Kevin Costner (of all people – “Dances With the Wolves”!) is a crypto-conservative as well. His new film “Swing Vote” is not the typical election season fare in that it is not thinly disguised propaganda for whoever the Democrat candidate is. One of the themes in it is that people have to assume responsibility for their own lives and shouldn’t rely on politicians to fix their problems for them.

The Weekly Standard ran an article on the upcoming film by David Zucker film “An American Carol”. Loosly based on the Charles Dickens classic, the holiday in question is not Christmas by the Fourth of July. Ebeneezer Scrooge is a Michael Moore parody, Michael Malone, and the three ghosts who visit him are George Washington, Gen. George Patton and JFK. Interstingly enough, David Zucker did not start out as a conservative. He used to be a standard run-of-the-mill Hollywood Liberal but 9/11 (or more precisely Hollywood’s anti-American reaction to 9/11) converted him to conservatism.

Another article by Andrew Briebart states that actor Jon Voight is now on the Hollywood blacklist thanks an op-ed piece he penned for the conservative Washington Times where he stated that he thought he had been misled by Marxists when he was an anti-Vietnam war activist. He said: “I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Did they stop the war, or did they bring the war to those innocent people? In the end, they turned their backs on all the horror and suffering they helped create and walked away.
Those same leaders who were in the streets in the '60s are very powerful today in their work to bring down the Iraq war and to attack our president, and they have found their way into our schools.”

As a result of this avalanche of stories, I finished writing this article with a great deal more hope than I had when I began it two weeks ago. Perhaps something ice is beginning to shift in Hollywood right now. Who knows, maybe Hollywood is on the cusp of a conservative revolt. In the meantime I can’t wait to see “An American Carol”.

Knife attack on bus near Winnipeg

Several days ago a man with no criminal record, riding on a greyhound bus attacked, without provocation, a fellow passenger with a knife. Not only did he kill the poor fellow, he decapitated him and waved his severed head around.

What to do?

Given that he has no prior criminal record (according to this Canada.com article he “never hurt a fly”), and because he used a knife, instead of a gun, the options for legislators appear to be limited.

As his life was apparently perfectly innocuous prior to this point, it is difficult to suggest what preventative restriction the law could apply to him prior to the event. His weapon was a knife – Knife Acquisition Certificates anyone? There has been talk of putting into place the same annoying security measures at bus stops that are currently have in place at airports – the ones that make airline travel such a pain today. Considering the misgivings people have about airport security, I doubt there is much appetite for this. And what about roadside rest-stops – do you now set up metal detectors at truck stops? It seems the potential for preventative legislation is limited in this case. Not a scenario that regular readers of this blog would find surprising, but certainly a condition that today’s bleeding-heart liberals find uncomfortable (“You mean we can’t pass a law to prevent this in the future? Gasp!”)

However, I have two suggestions on how such a crime can, if not be completely prevented, be made harder to carry out.

The first proscription is suggested by the fact, reported by the papers that there were 36 other people on board the bus when the assault occurred. Thirty six other people! Granted the assault occurred without warning, but if our society had an active honour culture in place – the kind that once existed in Dodge City, Kansas a century ago, the murderer would have never made it out alive. Knowing that you will be ripped apart by your fellow citizens the moment after you carry out the deed is a strong deterrent to doing the deed. The reason the men on the bus would have immediately risked their lives to confront the assailant would be because, doing any less would have meant a loss of personal honour. Joseph Bruce Ismay was branded a coward and ostracized from polite society for the rest of his life after the Titanic disaster because he failed to go down with his ship. In contrast, able-bodied men who rode that bus felt no shame in relating what happened - accounts which contained the implication that they stood by and did nothing.

Liberals would object that it is the job of specialists with badges to sort this sort of thing out. Bus as a friend of mine who was a 26-year veteran of the Toronto Police Force once told me, “the police are not there to protect you, they are there to catch your murderer.” Bad things rarely happen outside a police station at shift change.

The one legislative proscription that might have a deterrent effect on future attacks of this sort is shall-issue concealed carry permits. This would have certainly facilitated a counter-attack by the citizenry. It no doubt would be objected at this point that this would mean that the killer could have also obtained a concealed carry permit, given the fact that he had no prior criminal record. But what of it? He was already resigned to committing murder. If he wanted to use a gun he could get one on the black market today. What’s a bureaucratic gun crime tacked onto murder?

And contrary to popular opinion, Alan Rock’s gun law explicitly allows for this possibility. You wouldn’t even have to go to parliament. An order-in-council would suffice to implement the program.