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Intellectual Conservative PoliticsIowa.com Weekly Weblog No Runny Eggs
This is the personal weblog of Aakash Raut, established Sept. 2002. It will cover current affairs, worldwide & national topics, local & university events, and provide insight and commentary on contemporary issues and the news from his perspective. Enjoy! --------------- ARCHIVES Sept 2002 - Now -------------
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Thursday, October 23, 2003
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Save the Chief! -------------------------------------------- A modified version of this message was written on Friday, November 7th, and posted as a comment at a couple blogs. It is now being posted here: Hello everyone, this is A. J., a friend of the blogger's. The day before yesterday, Aakash was actually just released from captivity... He had been very unexpectedly held hostage for a week - mostly by Plato and Socrates... but also some by Aristotle, Hobbes, and Locke.
Update (11/13/03): Speaking of works of literature, isn't it great how - with the information superhighway - there are so many great books (as well as some not-so-great ones) available online, in their entirety? There are a lot of sites [see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or several other places on the web] where you can find the full text of great books. It is great that there are so many works of literature, as well as literature-related sources, available for free on the internet. Here are some selections of books that you may find interesting: The Harvard Classics & the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction - Edited by Charles W. Eliot The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - by Mark Twain [related resources] The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - by Mark Twain [Also see here] Hamlet - by Shakespeare The Canterbury Tales - by Chaucer A Tale of Two Cities - by Charles Dickens The Jungle - by Upton Sinclair Hillary Rodham Clinton: What Every American Should Know - by Christian Josi of the American Conservative Union Offensive in the Balkans - by Yossef Bodansky What Has Government Done to Our Money? - by Dr. Murray N. Rothbard Human Action - by Ludwig Von Mises The Art of War - by Sun Tzu Wow! - I was surprised to find that these two were fully available online: John T. Flynn's The Roosevelt Myth Murray N. Rothbard's For a New Liberty Update (11/18/03): I just found these additional Old Right classics: - John T. Flynn's The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor - Garet Garret's The Revolution Was And here is something kind of neat - Hayek's The Road to Serfdom - in cartoons! A Ton of Work... By early next week, I have a dialectical journal due (if you don't know what that is, you don't want to know...) - on a book on Clinton and leadership, a Sipe test (if you don't know what that is, you don't want to know...), and an exam for my constitutional law class. I won't be adding new entries until late next week, by the earliest. I have, however, very recently added a lot of new entries and material here, and have also updated my past posts - Please look through the material below, and also see the weblogs and websites on the sidebar. I have received many great e-mails from people who've visited this site. Thanks so much too all of you - it is wonderful to receive positive feedback and correspondence from people across the country. And I am very sorry that I have not responded to many of the e-mails - I have been busy, but I could still have found the time to respond to the questions and comments that I have received. I will make an effort to respond to the questions and inquiries that I have gotten from readers soon (hopefully, I'll do that after this tough stuff is over next week). Thanks once again for those of you who've sent me e-mail. And thanks also to those of you who've been gracious enough to blogroll this site in recent days. In an earlier entry, I listed most of those blogs which had added this site to their links listings within the past few months, but since then, several more bloggers have been nice enough to do this as well. Thanks to previously-plugged Hoosier Paul Musgrave, sports writer Eric McErlain, Josh McClain's Bush Blog, the great 'paleoconservatarian' commentator Lee R. Shelton, libertarian Tim Swanson, fellow conservative Springfieldian & IL Policy Insitute founder Greg Blankenship, fellow conservative collegians HokiePundit and Kyle Still, the popular Wizbang! blog, the Belligerent Bunny Blog, the Antiwar.com blog, and all others who have blogrolled my site within recent weeks, and thanks also to everyone else who has this blog on their sites' links listings. Updates: I just found, via the great Paul Cella, the website of Kevin Michael Grace, who is apparently a traditionalist conservative journalist and blogger. I wish that I had come across his site sooner. And now it appears that his site - along with other things - are in jeopardy, as he is having financial difficulties. From this entry of Jeremy Lott's, I see that Mr. Grace and his family are facing eviction, and they are in need of help - and fast. Please visit Kevin's site - from there, you can donate to him via PayPal, or through regular mail as well. And speaking of the Paul Cella, the great conservative blog Cella's Review has been the 'Weblog of the Week' featured at the top part of my blog's side bar for some time (a lot longer than a week ;-). Now, the new featured weblog is Marcus Tullius Cicero's Conservative Observer. Marcus has a great blog, which is regularly updated, with insightful commentary, news, and analysis from a conservative perspective. The Conservative Observer has recently become one of my favorite sites in the Blogosphere. Check it out, along with the other weblogs and websites to your left. (Most of them are on the 'Right,' though... ;-) Today is Mole Day. (Though by the time this is published, it will have passed... Oh well.) Here is my Mole Day entry from last year: Posted in my October 28, 2002 entry, for October 23, 2002: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 Happy Mole Day!! For those who have never had chemistry, or who never had a high school science teacher like mine (Hi Mr. Szabo!), you've probably never heard the Mole Song. (Mr. Szabo used to come to school dressed up as a mole every 10/23... He probably still does.) A mole is a unit, or have you heard? Containing 6 x 10 to the 23rd. That's 6 with 23 zeros at the end, Much too big a number to comprehend. You can see the full Mole Song, and listen to the above part of it here. And click here for the website of the National Mole Day Foundation. Updates: Here are the latest news items for Mole Day. And I just found something at my high school website's calendar page. Sunday, October 19, 2003
The following entries were posted a few days ago, but were published tonight - on Thursday, Oct. 23rd. I will be posting something for Mole Day in an entry dated for today (10/23). (Those who've had chemistry might know what that means; I posted something for that around this time last year too.) I also posted an update to the bottom of my Mon., Sept. 29th entry (scroll down, or here's the permalink) regarding Major Harry Schmidt, and his case. Please take a look at that, and if you can, I'm sure that Harry and his family would appreciate your help and support during this time. The entry below that one, also dated for Mon., Sept. 29th, was also recently updated; it now features some of the work of Jacob Swain, the 17-year-old Republican precinct committeeman from Marion, IL. I also wrote some in that entry about the GOP Establishment, and about the perennial issue of compromising for "moderate" and liberal candidates rather than focusing on our party's conservative base. Update: I do not yet have anything up here about Rush Limbaugh, Paul Wolfowitz, Terry Schiavo, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, Janice Rogers Brown, the greatest president of our time, or the Rumsfeld memo. Lo Siento. "Think of the children...!" From my recent guest blog entry at 'Deux Ego': More 'Bleeding Heart' B.S. Few things in current politics frustrate or anger me more than seeing a certain dishonest, flawed, left-wing, statist argument being used to provide 'bait and switch' justification for the recent war with Iraq.... In related news... Citizen Smash, in his blog post featured two entries below, is actually claiming that the 'humanitarian' justification was part of the administration's case for war. But as I have pointed out in my previous writings on this subject - they are linked to in that above-mentioned entry, as well as the one mentioned below - the administration gave us only one pivotal reason for war. As National Review's Kate O'Beirne (a strong war supporter at a very pro-war magazine) pointed out (see this here in one of my pertinent past blog entries), there is a difference between a positive result of something, and the rationale cited for it. And as I pointed out in my commentaries on this topic (see above and below), President Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Powell all made clear, in the months prior to the war, that the war was not inevitable, and that it could be avoided if a certain condition was met. This was a conditional war, waged for one pivotal reason (at least, according to the administration). Well, I am not going to reiterate what I've stated several times before. Please take a look at that entry linked to above, and see my previous 'Deux Ego' guest blog entry on this topic from a few months ago: Bleeding Hearts vs. Rational Minds A previous guest blog entry with a critique of the 'Jesse Jackson'-type interventionists, and why they're doing our country, and our citizenry, a great disservice. ------------- Update (11/11/03): Smash, in his responses to comments left at his recent entries, seems to liberally fling around terms like "Buchananite isolationist" to describe people who disagree with his views regarding military intervention. The way he does that is reminiscient of the claims and statements of Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright during the last presidential administration (and of those of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore). However, as I pointed out in a past blog entry (which was a follow up to my first post on this topic - both of these entries, and two other pieces of mine on this issue, are linked to in those 'Deux Ego' guest blog entries listed above), only a small minority of Americans subscribe to the leftist logic to justify the war (only 10%, according to the July poll that I cited). Considering that, there must be - if we believe that type of rhetoric - a whole lot of "Buchananite isolationists" in this country... The overwhelming majority, in fact. But really, those who think that a national interest foreign policy is "isolationist" probably did not study political philosophy, or contemporary political theory. The fact that the type of statist, 'Jesse Jackson'-type logic to justify intervention is liberal, and runs contrary to the conservative, 'republican' school of political thought, is common knowledge, and has been generally accepted - by many conservatives and liberals, war supporters and war opponents - alike, for years. I don't have time to expand on this more now (I may do so some time later), but here is some good background information on this: Key conservative documents: - The Sharon Statement This set of principles forms the basis for the modern grassroots conservative movement. See here and here how this relates to military intervention and foreign policy. - Official Texas Republican Party Platform The GOP platform for President Bush's home state's party is one of the most conservative of all the Republican platforms. [Following that link causes to the pertinent portion to be highlighted.] From the American Conservative Union (oldest major conservative organization in the U.S.): A Post-Cold War Conservative Foreign Policy, by Dr. Donald J. Devine & David A. Keene, October 25, 2000 Revitalizing the Right - "National Greatness" interventionism is not conservatism, Dr. Donald Devine, May 13, 2003 From the Heritage Foundation (leading American conservative organization): American Military Intervention: A User's Guide, by John Hillen, May 2, 1996 Gunpoint Democracy: Intervention when their are no vital U.S. interests, Foundation President Dr. Edwin J. Feulner, August 5, 1999 Issues '98: The Candidate's Briefing Book, Chap. 16: Understanding the Limits of Globalism: International Peacekeeping From the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (leading pro-war think tank): Administration Reverts to Liberal Rationale for Iraq War (article posted from the Washington Post) From National Review Online (leading pro-war publication): Rules for Intervention, NR Editor-at-Large John O'Sullivan, July 15, 2003 Liberal Democrats Support War & Imperialism When There is No National Interest, NR Editor Rich Lowry Why Liberals Should Want to Topple Saddam, NR Editor Rich Lowry, Dec. 20, 2001 From Front Page Magazine (leading pro-war web publication): A Liberal's Case for a War with Iraq, by Michael Totten, Jan. 8, 2003 The Liberal Case for War, by Michael Totten, Sept. 16, 2002 From The American Prospect (liberal publication): Moral Imperative: Any Self-Respecting Liberal Should Support the Iraq War, Bob Just, Nov. 13, 2002 From The New Republic (neoliberal, pro-war publication): The Liberal Case for War: False Alarm: The Iraq war is defensible explicitly on liberal grounds, Jonathan Chait, Oct. 21, 2002 Slave State: Where are all the liberal humanitarian interventionists now?, Robert D. Kaplan, Oct. 21, 2002 From Charles Krauthammer: [Mr. Krauthammer supported the war in Iraq, but not for the liberal reasons...] Liberal Democrats' Perverse Foreign Policy, July 11, 2003 U.S. Troops Should Not Be Used for 'Peacekeeping', Dec. 17, 2001 The Phony Battle Against "Isolationism", Oct. 29, 1999 From Former U.S. Rep. John Kasich (R-OH) - Chairman, New Century Project: Feb. 15, 1999 - "Kasich [says]... that troops should only be sent in only when it is the national interest, when there is a specific mission and when there is a timetable to get them out." From U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX): A Foreign Policy Vision For The Next American Century, June 28, 1999 - Speech at the Heritage Foundation America's Engagement in the World at a New Century's Dawn: Legal and Ethical Implications for the Use of Force, Nov. 16, 1999 - Speech at SMU School of Law That is all that I am going to put here right now, but there is a ton of other pertinent information available. Note (11/17/03): I have added some items above since I first did this update (on 11/11). However, those are items from months or years ago. Just a few days ago, however, I received in my mailbox the e-mail newsletter of the Prairie State Report, containing the daily items from that conservative online publication. One of those items was this page featuring one of the latest columns by everyone's favorite neoconservative, Jonah Goldberg. In that piece, Goldberg basically acknowledges that liberals and Democrats should be supporting the administration's current Iraq policy; it is part of the liberal foreign policy agenda. He refers to "the noble tradition of assertive liberal internationalism in the Democratic party..." If you take a look at one of the columns above by National Review Editor Rich Lowry (the one from December 2001), you will see that he also makes clear that the policies of nation-building and humanitarian intervention regarding Iraq are leftist in nature, or at least that they are very worthy of liberal support. Update (11/21/03): As I've said before, it is sad (and actually, somewhat scary as well), how so many people who claim to be 'conservative' are playing the liberal cards in order to retrospectively justify this war. From today's post at the "Watcher of Weasels" Council, one can see that, in their voting, this entry (about how the war was justified because the people of Iraq are better off) was one of the winning entries for this week. (Although, it should be said that the "Watcher of Weasels" council is not a group of only conservatives... The majority of those who participate, though, are probably regarded as being from the Right.) The author of that winning entry uses the [previously-discussed] tired Clintonian tactic of making comparisons to Hitler (he actually also mentions Stalin; perhaps he thinks that we with should have gone to war with them too), and actually states: "To say that we should not have liberated Iraq is like saying that we should never have intervened in World War II, and that the Holocaust was ok." Wow. Even most pro-war bloggers don't go that far... I think this may be the first time I've seen someone be this explicit in their use of the aforemention flawed comparisons, and faulty, left-wing logic. More Updates: Other bloggers to jump aboard the "Jesse Jackson" logic train include this blogger, this one, this blogger, and perhaps even VodkaPundit. For a couple of those bloggers, they have totally crossed the line from "Jesse Jackson" logic to classic Clinton absurdity and obfuscation. Their statist, Clintonian misuse of the "Never Again" phrase (related to the above-mentioned and previously-discussed tired tactic of "reductio ad Hitlerum") has obfuscated the facts so greatly, and has especially left out one glaring ommission... Note: I have removed the bottom part of this entry update, and done a new guest blog entry about this matter... see it here. And also: While I have pointed out many war supporters in the Blogosphere who have chosen to promote the flawed, liberal, 'bleeding heart' justification for this war, I have not included here very much about the pro-war bloggers who have honestly chosen not to revert to that type of rationale for this war. Especially important is for conservatives in the Blogosphere to avoid that type of statist, "Jesse Jackson"-type rhetoric. Aside from the bloggers who were mentioned in one of my past entries (such as Josh Claybourn, Mark Shea, and Bobby A-G), other conservative or Republican supporters of the Iraq war who have stayed true to our 'republican' principles, and have not reverted to that type of reasoning include: the official George W. Bush weblog, Dr. James Joyner, Blaster, Paul Cella, Paul Musgrave, Sean Hackbarth, John Hawkins, Andrew Olmsted, Rev. Mike Murdock, Frederick Norman, Dustin Frelich, Matthew Edgar, and John Moore. It is very refreshing to see that there appear to be many rational minds in the Blogosphere... A hearty thanks to all pro-war bloggers who have chosen to stick to principle. Please keep it up. Stars and Stripes surveys our soldiers... I recently came across this Washington Post report about the military newspaper's survey of our soldiers deployed in Iraq. There was recently an important survey done by Stars and Stripes to ascertain the thoughts of our brave servicemen and women deployed in this operation. Already, some pro-war bloggers are alleging bias in the Post's coverage of this survey. See some news and opinion items on the survey here, here, here, here, here, here, here. I found the reports somewhat surprising - About 49 percent of those questioned said it was "very unlikely" or "not likely" that they would stay in the military after their current obligation. This related news item is also troubling. The news reports say that some of our soldiers in Iraq have even taken their own lives; this is so tragic. And I just noticed this editorial, which mentions that, but also contains some other very troubling information, regarding our nation's veterans. Many people don't realize the impact that perpetual warfare and interventions can have on our heroes still suffering from the previous ones. Some government officials publicly disagreed with the implications of the recent news on the issue of military morale. But in the quest to give the impression that things are not going badly in Iraq, some people may have gone too far. This report from the conservative web publication Capitol Hill Blue is disturbing. Yesterday, in my weekend class (I have that same class today), before we broke for lunch, I spoke to a U.S. Army officer about the situation regarding our soldiers deployed in Iraq. The particular soldier who I spoke to is in a special position to know about this, since he works in the area of managing personnel issues regarding the deployments of soldiers in this operation. He mentioned Stars and Stripes as being the newspaper that is received by our military personnel overseas (along with several other forms of media). I asked him if he had heard about this survey of our soldiers by this military paper, and he was not aware of it. But when I mentioned the survey, he did inquire about the results; before I told him though, he already assumed that the results would yield negative reactions from our troops. We left and came back, and as class was about to resume following our break, some of the other students also began talking about the situation regarding our soldiers in Iraq. One student who works in a Republican state senator's office mentioned that they have been deluged with calls from the families of our servicemen and women overseas, demanding that they be brought home. Other persons in the class also had personal accounts of the frustrations and adverse situations currently facing our deployed and not-yet-deployed soldiers. There is a lot of anger and confusion regarding what soldiers were told about the length and nature of their deployments, in contrast to what is really happening. Morale right now, by most accounts, is at a rock-bottom level. Lt. (I mean, Citizen) Smash linked to the strongly-worded entry by Mrs. Chrome Dome, with a *request* for the President. [Note: It's lower on the page now - See the entry for Sept. 30th.] This is related to an issue that was widely-discussed in the news and the Blogosphere a couple of months ago. Check out the updates to one of my entries for July 3rd (scroll down below, or go here) - the one on the conditions of our military forces. Two of my fellow conservative youth bloggers, Josh Claybourn and Pieter Friedrich, blogged on this as well. Please see the links at the top section of the left side bar, or my previous blog entries below, for some good military support sites and resources. Please do all that you can to help our brave men and women as they serve our nation overseas.  Lt. Smash (now "Citizen Smash," since he has returned from Iraq) had a recent blog entry in which he expresses surprise at how so many people back here are still questioning whether the decision to go to war in Iraq was the right thing to do. Now that the decision has been made (one that he obviously adamantly agrees with), he states that it is time to "move on." He writes the that: "...the war was, by all accounts, an unprecendented success." He then cites certain evidence that he claims supports the war (he does, quite unfortunately, also mention the liberal, 'Jesse Jackson'-type argument, which I discuss two entries above), and he points to some statist government spending and public works programs that further expand Washington's bloated bureacracy and liberal tax-and-spend policies all the way to Iraq. (Woodrow Wilson and FDR would be proud; they could only dream of this type of nation-building and unconstitutional 'welfare-warfare' spending.) From what we've seen and heard on television, online publications, and other observations, even strong supporters of the war (including Republicans, Democrats, and independents) have criticized the administration's handling of post-war Iraq, as have some of our senior military officers. This has been all over the news (and not just the liberal media - many moderates and conservatives have been saying this too), and so many people have acknowledged this. Even some administration officials have admitted that they misjudged the security aspect of post-war Iraq, and that the plans for that aspect of rebuilding Iraq were significantly flawed. (A lot more than that was misjudged as well; the planning for the aftermath of the war was very much inadequate - Even staunch war hawks like Billy Kristol have blasted the Defense Department's post-war planning.) President Bush himself has reportedly begun questioning the war hawks' hard-line policies (even Rumsfeld is expressing strong concerns about the mess they've gotten us into) and it is rumored that Karl Rove, recognizing the political fallout and variety of other aspects regarding the situation in Iraq, may have declared a moratorium on new wars for the rest of Bush's term ("No Wars in '04"), much to the lament of the war hawks. As I've said before, many of our military leaders and senior Pentagon officials, along with many current and former U.S. generals, were warning against this war, at the same time that many of the civilians were clamoring for it. President Bush's own father, the former President Bush, was likely advising his son against rushing into a war like this (along with some members of his past administration and other top Republicans). It is very possible that, if George Herbert Walker Bush were in office right now, rather than his son, this war would not have taken place. Bush 41 has a strong military background, and he did take a somewhat more conservative approach to foreign policy than his son has been misled into taking. It would have been much better, at a time like this, to have had someone such as former President Bush or former Republican Party VP/Presidential candidate Jack Kemp in office right now. Even W. could have been acceptable, if he had not taken the advice of the wrong people within his administration - Based upon his previous statements, it is possible that if President Bush had known what he does now, he would not have made the decision that he did. "...But I will tell you no one is satisfied with the state of affairs of the post-combat phase plan, and certainly four months into this thing I don’t think anybody is satisfied with the progress that’s been made." - Former U.S. Army Secretary Thomas White, MSNBC's 'Buchanan and Press,' Sept. 4th "...Nobody in America thought we would have the trouble in post-war Iraq that we are having here. Nobody said hey, if we go in there, there's going to be a well organized guerrilla campaign. They're going to be knocking out two or three of our soldiers every day. Saddam isn't going to be caught. Nobody said that..." - Commentator & Author Bill O'Reilly, Fox News' 'The O'Reilly Factor', Oct. 24th "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys..." - P. J. O'Rourke "If you give a man a fish, he eats for one day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime." - Anonymous Pro-War Statists In early June, I posted a few comments at this entry of Josh Claybourn's (see them at the bottom of that web page). There was a very good comment [Posted by: No WMD Yet on June 6, 2003 03:08 PM] written in response to one of my two comment posts there: Whoah! Thanks for that ultra-long comment, Aakash! Government should deliver the mail, guard the borders, and get out of the way; babysitting, liberating, and intervening in the world was not the Founders' plan for America. I call the neocon's foreign policy "international socialism," and it's funny how those who oppose socialism here at home so gladly welcome spreading aid abroad. That is a very good point. The Wilsonian foreign policy of liberal interventionism, bureaucratic government expansion abroad, and nation-building is very left-wing, very unconstitutional, and very un-American. What is our federal government now doing with our taxpayer dollars overseas? I will update this entry (or do a new one) with a few answers to this question, and with information about the very liberal policies that Washington is unconstitutionally engaging in within a foreign country. Please stand by. "...And frankly, part of the problem is when President Bush ran for office, he talked about nation building in very contemptuous terms. He did not believe that the government of the United States ought to be engaged in nation building. And now we find ourselves in Iraq having to be involved in nation building..." - Conservative commentator Linda Chavez, Fox News: 'The O'Reilly Factor' - Oct. 24 Related article: Nation-Building? Peacekeeping? Bush is starting to look a lot like Clinton Updates: From a recent entry by one of Mr. Balko's guest bloggers at The Agitator: Cost of 1.5 million school kits for Iraqi children: $8 millionI guess that there are some things money can't buy... For everything else, there's the pork of war. The Democratic general's al-Qaeda connections... Wesley Clark's Ties to Muslim Terrorists I had actually already thought of this topic (see my two comments at an Andrew Northrup entry from late August, in which I talk about General Clark, and also explain what I've referred to as the "Party Reversal Phenomenon.") Many people have alleged that significant ties exist between the Ba'athist government of Iraq and Osama bin Laden. I have written before on this matter. See my comment post from one of Patrick Ruffini's past blog entries. (The discussion at that entry is very good; another antiwar conservative successfully takes down the naive idealistic vision of Patrick and other war supporters.) If you scroll down past the first 10 paragraphs of my initial comment there (that's the same comment that I posted at that entry, though I've modified it from the original some), you can see information on possible ties between the Clinton/Gore administration and al-Qaeda. While I'm not alleging this, it is possible that the Clinton administration might have had a stronger relationship with Osama bin Laden than the Hussein administration did. Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Wow! It looks like the Cubs are about to lose. To find out how I feel about that, see my recent guest blog entry at Pieter's 'Deux Ego' - P.S. - Sorry, Jason, and others... Monday, October 13, 2003
Happy Columbus Day!! When we were younger, we used to get a day off in honor of Cristobal Colon (sorry, I wish I knew how to do accent marks), and his great deeds. In college though, they don't do that (at least not at my university). In fact, I have a mid-term this evening, so I need to be studying (actually, cramming) right now. But here's a thought for today: Let it be said... (I hope I don't get arrested by the PC police for this entry... ;-) |
