It’s Just too Easy

Cox & Forkum on the USS Jimmy Carter:

Of course, it’s Carter who’s earned this scorn, not the brave sailors who will serve aboard.

Bill Maher’s Inverted View

A recent survey found that high school kids believe that the government should be censoring the press. Bill Maher is upset:

Lemme tell you little darlings something: This is my livelihood you’re messing with, so either learn the Bill of Rights or you don’t deserve Social Security.

Predictably, it’s all President Bush’s fault:

And what’s so frightening is that we’re seeing the beginnings of the first post-9/11 generation — the kids who first became aware of the news under an “Americans need to watch what they say” administration, the kids who’ve been told that dissent is un-American and therefore justifiably punished by a fine, imprisonment — or the loss of your show on ABC.

Nonsense. Bill Maher may in fact be the only person in the country unaware that our public school system is run by the hard-core Left, one of the last bedrock constituencies of the Democratic party. What he has there is proof-positive that our teachers are indoctrinating, not educating. Maher is upset and thinks that this behavior is somehow new. Obviously he’s never read this book.

Paul Johnson on Democracy

It’s been fairly obvious that many on the Left both at home and abroad wished fervently (even if silently) for the recent Iraqi elections to fail. They simply couldn’t abide the idea that George Bush might get the credit. Meanwhile, much of Europe continues to drag their heels even as the President (again) extends the olive branch. Some feel that we should pay more attention to the opinions of the rest of the world but that ROW always seems to boil down to a handful of European nations. Paul Johnson takes a brief look at their record:

France and Germany have remained on the sidelines, greeting America’s costly efforts to bring democracy to the Arab world with a mixture of vicious criticism, sneers and obstructive tactics. But then, neither nation has much of a democratic record.

The Germans have had democracy imposed on them twice by the victorious Allies, each time after a world war Germany started. German democracy is a superficial growth, and if the Socialists there continue to mismanage the economy and impoverish the people, who can say whether freedom in Germany will survive?

The French have had 12 written constitutions since 1789. None has given ordinary French people the feeling that they are really in charge of their affairs. If they have a real grievance they take to the streets and block the roads and ports, knowing from bitter experience that force is more likely to get results than arguments or votes.

The French mirage draws Leftist admiration like the moth is drawn to the flame – with the same results. The French revolution invented mass murder, the Napoleonic revolution invented dictatorship, and don’t even get me started on the Paris Commune poisoned progeny. The cheese is simply not worth that (I’ve switched to Wisconsin).

Johnson gets it too:

As for European intellectuals, who command so much power in the media, universities and opinion-forming circles, they have done everything they possibly could to abuse America’s initiative in Iraq and to prevent the installation of freedom. Some make it clear that they would much prefer Iraq to be run by men like Saddam than by American-backed democrats. Of course, intellectuals pay lip service to free elections but in practice have a profound (if secret) hatred of democracy. They cannot believe that their votes should count for no more than the votes of “uneducated” people who run small businesses, work on farms and in factories and have never read Proust.

Proust. Snooze.