Rad Geek People's Daily

Well, maybe not as geeky as It’s a Gandalf hat! But it’s up there, and it involves more work. Here’s today’s FoxTrot:

Here’s the spoiler, for those who want instant gratification. Code the short taps as dots and the long taps as dashes. You get the following sequence:

... --- -- . -.. .- -.-- .. .-- .. .-.. .-.. .-. ..- .-.. . -.-- --- ..- .- .-.. .-..

Using International Morse Code, with word breaks inserted at the appropriate points, the taps actually do spell out:

SOME DAY I WILL RULE YOU ALL

And that’s why I love FoxTrot.

Here’s the rules:

1. Pick a quote of one or more paragraphs from something you’ve read, in print, over the course of the past week. (It should be something you’ve actually read, and not something that you’ve read a page of just in order to be able to post your favorite quote.)

2. Avoid commentary above and beyond a couple sentences, more as context-setting or a sort of caption for the text than as a discussion.

3. Quoting a passage doesn’t entail endorsement of what’s said in it. You may agree or you may not. Whether you do isn’t really the point of the exercise anyway.

Here’s the quote. This is from Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex (1970), one of the first published books of second wave radical feminist theory. It’s wrong on many counts; right on many others. It also features one of the most breathtaking opening paragraphs in political writing:

Sex class is so deep as to be invisible. Or it may appear as a superficial inequality, one that can be solved by merely a few reforms, or perhaps by the full integration of women into the labor force. But the reaction of the common man, woman, and child–That? Why you can’t change that! You must be out of your mind!–is the closest to the truth. We are talking about something every bit as deep as that. This gut reaction–the assumption that, even when they don’t know it, feminists are talking about changing a fundamental biological condition–is an honest one. That so profound a change cannot be easily fit into traditional categories of thought, e.g. political, is not because these categories do not apply but because they are not big enough: radical feminism bursts through them. If there were another word more all-embracing than revolution we would use it.

–Shulamith Firestone (1970), The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (ISBN 0374527873), p. 1.

Are we about to turn a corner in Iraq, or should we just cut our losses and get out now? How much longer should we let things play out before we take a decisive step towards disengagement? Let’s ask Tom Friedman, the New York Times’s resident Sensible Liberal and global brain. Apparently, we need to let this play out for a while before we do anything rash. The next six months are critical. Give it until November or December of 2006. Then we’ll know:

Well, I think that we’re going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months–probably sooner–whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we’re going to have to just let this play out.

–Thomas L. Friedman, Hardball, MSNBC (May 11, 2006)

How much longer should we let things play out before we take a decisive step towards disengagement? Let’s ask Tom Friedman, the New York Times’s resident Sensible Liberal and global brain. Apparently, we need to let this play out for a while before we do anything rash. The next six months are critical. Give it until March or April of 2004. Then we’ll know:

The next six months in Iraq–which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there–are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time.

–Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times (November 30, 2003)

We should let this play out for a while before we do anything rash. The next six months are critical. Give it until December of 2004 or January of 2005. Then we’ll know:

What I absolutely don’t understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of–I know a lot of these guys–reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it’s over. I don’t get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what’s the rush? Can we let this play out, please?

–Thomas L. Friedman, Fresh Air, NPR (June 3, 2004)

The next six months are critical. Give it until April or May of 2005. Then we’ll know:

What we’re gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war.

–Thomas L. Friedman, Face the Nation, CBS (October 3, 2004)

Give it until June or July of 2005:

Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won’t be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile.

–Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times (November 28, 2004)

We’re in the end game now. Give it until March or April of 2006:

I think we’re in the end game now…. I think we’re in a six-month window here where it’s going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election–that’s my own feeling–let alone the presidential one.

–Thomas L. Friedman, Meet the Press (September 25, 2005)

Give it until March or April of 2006:

Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won’t, then we are wasting our time.

–Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times (September 28, 2005)

June or July of 2006:

We’ve teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it’s going to come together.

–Thomas L. Friedman, Face the Nation (December 18, 2005)

July to October of 2006:

I think that we’re going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool’s errand.

–Thomas L. Friedman, Oprah Winfrey Show (January 23, 2006)

We’re in the end game now. We’ll see by sometime around May to July of 2006:

I think we’re in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We’ve got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they’re going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they’re not, in which case I think the bottom’s going to fall out.

–Thomas L. Friedman, CBS (January 31, 2006)

We’re in the end game now. We’ll see by sometime around September to December of 2006:

I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq. –Thomas L. Friedman, Today, NBC (March 2, 2006)

We need to let this play out for a while before we do anything rash. The next six months are critical. Give it until November or December of 2006. Then we’ll know:

Well, I think that we’re going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months–probably sooner–whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we’re going to have to just let this play out.

–Thomas L. Friedman, Hardball, MSNBC (May 11, 2006)

Next month: Tom Friedman thinks that we’re going to find out whether it’s time to leave Iraq in the next six months! Give it until January 2007…

Be sure to bear in mind, in case you are confused, that there are always more corners to turn when you are lost in an endless maze.

(Quotes thanks to FAIR 2006-05-16. Link thanks to Dominion Weblog 2006-05-16.)

Here are some highlights from our Prince President’s recent remarks on immigration policy

1. Existing immigration policy is deeply flawed and in need of comprehensive, liberalizing reform. So our first priority should be to immediately increase the resources devoted to enforcing an admittedly unreasonable policy.

2. The United States is not going to militarize the southern border. The Feds are just going to deploy 6,000 soldiers to to the southern border, with high-tech barricades and air support, in order to secure and enforce their full control of it.

3. The government currently has trouble identifying and deporting undocumented immigrants because they often carry forged identification documents. In order to combat this problem, the government should introduce a new identification document.

4. We must always remember that real lives will be affected by our debates and decisions and that every human being has dignity and value, no matter what their citizenship papers say. On the other hand, Americans are bound together by our shared ideals, an appreciation of our history, respect for the flag we fly, and an ability to speak and write the English language, so those with real lives who aren’t so sure about those ideals, that history, the flag, or who don’t see any reason to learn a foreign language, will still be thrown into newly-expanded detention camps, have their livelihoods destroyed, and will be exiled from the country as expeditiously as possible.

Thank you, and good night.

Further reading:

• GT 2006-03-31: Libertarians Against Property Rights: You Will Be Assimilated edition
• No Treason (2006-05-15): Bush calls for biometric ID
• Majiksthise (2006-05-16): Rejecting mass deportation is the middle ground

From Vox Day, anti-feminist knuckle-dragger, regular WorldNetDaily columnist, and self-proclaimed Christian libertarian:

Dear Jorge plans to address the nation tonight, a speech wherein he will almost surely attempt to deceive citizens into believing that he does not wish the mass migration from Mexico to continue unabated. He will likely offer some negligible resources for law enforcement and border security — resources which will never materialize — in return for an amnesty program that will grant American citizenship to the Mexican nationals who have helped lower America’s wage rates by 16 percent over the last 32 years.

And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic — it’s just not going to work.

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.

— Vox Day, WorldNetDaily column (2006-05-16): Against a fence

Well, at least you can’t accuse him of weaseling about his position, or about the kind of instrumental means that he’s willing to consider.

Some days From the Horror File just isn’t enough to describe it.

Update 2006-05-17: WorldNetDaily has silently edited Vox Day’s column this morning to remove the reference to the Holocaust from the third paragraph, without any notice either of the content of the change, or even that a change has been made. Here are the edits:

May 16th

May 17th

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society. In fact, the hysterical response to the post-rally enforcement rumors tends to indicate that the mere announcement of a massive deportation program would probably cause a third of that 12 million to depart for points south within a week.

It couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society. In fact, the hysterical response to the post-rally enforcement rumors tends to indicate that the mere announcement of a massive deportation program would probably cause a third of that 12 million to depart for points south within a week.

You can compare and contrast for yourself by consulting Vox Day’s unedited archival copy of the column.

Meanwhile, Vox cites the following as a reasonable question about his choice of examples:

Why exactly did you go with Nazi Germany, when Slobodan Milosevic’s tactics toward Kosovar Albanians seems more in line with what you’re proposing?

Well, then. That clears it all up, doesn’t it?