Toys "R" Us and the PC Baby

When Yuki Li was born in New York City at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, she was judged the first American born baby of the year. Toys "R" Us had sponsored a contest in which the first baby born of legal resident parents would win a $25,000 bond for the baby's future. Other and similar contests had like rules, but when news slipped out that Yuki's parents were illegal aliens, Toys "R" Us declared little Yuki ineligible and awarded the prize to another baby who had been born 19 seconds later. The Chinese-American community was predictably outraged and shouted that Toys "R" Us had unfairly discriminated against a Chinese-American family. The fact that they were ineligible was lost in the hoopla. Equally predictable, Toys "R" Us caved in to the pressure and restored the bond to little Yuki. All this suggests that the tyranny of political correctness is alive and well. Truth and fidelity to rules that Yuki's parents ought to have heeded disappeared when the magic words of "discrimination" were bandied about. Toys "R" Us ought to be ashamed to be seen as yet another willing victim to the poison of PC that may well still be around when little Yuki is old enough to cash in her bond.

Rabbis Who Support Tehran

On the television news today I saw an interview with a Rabbi Weiss, who, with like minded rabbis, made the trek to Tehran to take part in the Iranian denial of the Holocaust. It was difficult for me to decide who was the bigger fool, Weiss for his presence or Ahmadinejad who smilingly embraced a man who belongs to a race that he declares sprang from pigs and dogs. Rabbi Weiss explained that Radical Islam was quite capable of distinguishing Zionism as a religion from Zionism as a political movement. If only Jews were to leave Israel, Weiss explained, then Radical Islam would cease persecuting all Jews worldwide. Such a naivete was breathtaking. Weiss claimed that he spoke for hundreds of thousands of Jews worldwide. I can assume only that Ahmadinejad hoped the same. This was the first time that I have ever heard anti-Semitic remarks come from Jews. I hope it is the last.

Islam as Tolerant: Three Dissenting Views

It has become fashionable for the American left to view Islam through the same lens by which the madrassas want all of America to share. Islam, these Moslem Imams preach, is a religion based on submission to Allah. All religions and races are equally respected. And anyone who says otherwise is a racist and an Islamophobe. There are three Islamic women who now say otherwise. Ayaan Hirsi in The Caged Virgin, Brigitte Gabriel in Because They Hate, and Nonie Darwish in Now They Call Me Infidel all detail what it was like to grow up in an Arabic culture and to be taught a philo of life that is markedly different from what most Americans hear on college campuses and from the major media. Each one admits that she is lucky to tell the tale of how she managed to escape the burning cauldron of feminine oppression tha marked her country of origin. Their tales intersect on telling points. They all assert that from childhood they were exposed to a virulent anti-semitism that had not been seen since Nazi Germany. Jews, they report, were born of pigs and dogs. Fiendish Jewish rabbis kidnap helpless Moslem babies to drink their blood in unholy rituals. Finally, the state of Israel does not exist on Arabic maps. This hatred for Jews is but the tip of the Islamic iceberg. Included in the Moslem frenzy of anti-semitism is a fierce hatred of America, all western countries, women in general, and anything and everything that is not in the Islamic fold. Brigitte Gabriel writes that the Islamic hatred of the west is not extremist as its American apologists would suggest. The filth that spews from American mosques is loud, clear and direct and must be seen as mainstream. Nonie Darwish spends much time touring American colleges to warn those female American-born head scarf wearing recent converts to Islam that had they been born in a Moslem country they would not have been in a college campus in the first place. They would have been forceably circumsised before having to marry a man of their parents' choice. And Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who now resides in Denmark, writes of the utter misery that faces Moslem women who are captives in a country that is not their own but from which they cannot escape. All three implore the west to look beyond the deceptive words of peace that the left blindly accepts as mainstream Islamic thought. All three suggest that we in the United States might wish to listen to the hate and vileness that pours out daily from every mosque in America before we discover too late that the purveyors of hate mean exactly what they say.

U. S. Deaths in Iraq: The Numbers Game Continues

Since the United States invasion of Iraq, the major media press has posted the daily death toll of American soldiers killed in action. The first milestone was one thousand. For weeks, the press anticipated with almost a ghastly glee on which day that number would emerge. One would have thought the press had a football over and under pool going. Then the next milestone was two thousand, then three thousand, with the same ghoulish fascination. There is a tragedy behind each death to be sure, with a grieving family in a world of pain. When anyone like me dares to criticize those who bandy about those numbers as a reason to redeploy our troops elsewhere, there is a tendency to look at those numbers not in historical context. During the Second World War, American casualties were often in the thousands every day. If it is true that huge numbers desensitize one's ability to see beyond each death that a grieving family has incurred a devastating loss, then it is also true that individual deaths reported in isolation bring those figures into grievously sharp contrast. Those in the media who seek only to portray the Iraq War solely as a bad thing use these deaths to shamelessly suggest that the very few deaths of this war are more to be felt than the infinitely higher death tolls of the two world wars and the Korean War. If critics of the War in Iraq want to make their case to end the war, then they ought not to parade a pie chart of American dead just to make their point.

Imperial Rome and America: PC is the Connection

Rome fell because it tried oh so hard to be politically correct. We like to think it fell because of economic decline, or population reduction, or barbarian invasion. All of these do factor into Rome's demise but the unifying glue amongst them all was a term that they would hardly recognize that was killing them: political correctness. They would not have called it that of course, but we in the 20th century have the advantage of historical hindsight. When Rome's economy went into the tank, there was a concommitant decline in the number of Roman citizens who used to make up the core legions of its armies. There was a hue and a cry for Rome to open its borders to the Vandals, the Goths, and other assorted barbarians so that all might bask in the glory of being a Roman citizen. And in they came, by the millions. They settled in Rome's best land, took over its economy, and began to fill the ranks of its legions with those who may have worn the tunic of the legionnaire but did not adhere to its inner core of Roman beliefs. When there were more of the barbarians in the ranks of the legions than in the ranks of the opposing hordes of invaders, that was the end of Rome right there. Today in the United States, we see much the same. Those who in ancient Rome who dared to speak out against what they saw as madness were silenced with calls of insults by the egalitarian press that we today call the liberal media. Little has changed in 2,000 years.

Donald Vs Rosie: Round I

When Donald Trump announced that the current Miss USA Tara Connor would not be fired, there was the usual controversy as to motive. Some hailed Trump as one who humanely gave an erring woman a second chance. Others suggested his cynically manipulating the media for much needed publicity for an ailing beauty contest. This two-pronged approach was expected. What was not expected was Rosie O'Donnel, who chose to take on Trump in a verbal street fight by basically calling him names. She referred to his hair, his divorces, his affairs, and his lack of moral authority. Trump predictably responded with a crunching avalanche of wrath that Rosie would have been well to heed. Instead, she counterattacked with further spleen on the View. Now this sort of catfighting brings to mind Linda Evans and Joan Collins scratching each other's eyes from DYNASTY. It is interesting in a train wreck sort of way. Rosie will probably continue to tweak Trump's hair bob until she finds out the hard way that Trump is one of the media's very select company that one ought not to provoke.

Teachers Carrying Guns in School: A Really Bad Idea

State senator Bob Beers of Nevada has proposed legislation that would allow teachers in his state to carry concealed firearms in class. He adds that such teachers would be required to undergo a thorough training program as a prerequisite. His rationale is that if potential terrorists are aware that teachers are armed, then a Beslan massacre simply could not happen. The lists of opposing reasons is convincingly long and logical. Teachers are not physical specimens and could easily be subdued by determined and trained terrorists. Further, in the event of a teacher-student confrontation, do we really want teachers to command order only by the sanctioned guns they wear? While it may be feasible to teach teachers the mechanics of gunplay, the safe and proper use of handguns is far more mental then manual. I fear that most teachers who pack heat will either not use them as intended as in a crisis situation, or what is worse, will use them inappropriately and thus tragically. Teachers ought to focus on the essentials of their craft and leave the safeguarding of it to trained professionals.