IN HIS SPEECH to parliament today on the British riots, David Cameron said this:
On repairing the damages, I can confirm that any individual, homeowner or business that has suffered damage to or loss of their buildings or property as a result of rioting, can seek compensation under the Riot Damages Act, even if uninsured. (more…)
HERE’S a great comment from John Dempsey at VFR on the British riots:
It seems to me that the British elite have lost their authority to rule. This means that Britain can now be considered a lawless society. Authority is a two part equation that legitimately grants rights to people, but also claims the moral right to direct their conduct through laws. This is the basis of all law; defining rights and fixing duties. When the only part of their authority they care to claim and exercise is that part which grants never-ending rights without any imposition of obligations, can they really claim any authority at all?
Aside from that, in the Max Hastings article, he writes [of the looters]: (more…)
AUSTRALIAN Finance Minister Penny Wong announced this week that her lesbian partner is pregnant. New South Wales MP Fred Nile said precisely the right words in response: I'm totally against a baby being brought up by two mothers - the baby has human rights. It's a very poor example for the rest of the Australian population. She needn't have made it public - it just promotes their lesbian lifestyle and trying to make it natural where it's unnatural. The only reason she's made it public is to make a statement to the Australian people. What is unusual about this statement, assuming that it was reported in whole, is that Nile feels no need to cower before the prospect of homosexual belligerence by saying how wonderful homosexuals are and how he wants them to be treated fairly.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has sounded the alarm in recent months. The state of infant nutrition in America is in disrepair. A number of reports have been issued, including a “call for action” in January from Surgeon General Regina Benjamin and one just last week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
An army of facts and numbers has been gathered on the plains of bureaucratic warfare to document a serious public health problem: The vast majority of mothers are not breastfeeding their babies enough.
That this is a public health problem is indisputable. Even to the public health geek, who sees all through the lens of statistics, human milk is irreplaceable. Children are seldom dying without it (the mortality rate attributable to formula feeding involves about 1,000 cases a year), but their well-being in many instances is seriously undermined and the effects have been documented. Ironically, though manufactured formula is costly, low-income parents are much more likely to use it.
What is also indisputable is that the federal government is a major cause of the problem and is seemingly hell bent on keeping it that way.
For all the expense and effort that has gone into the call for action, one would think officials really wanted to see more infants healthy and well-fed. In their heart of hearts they do, but their minds and intentions are clouded by self-interest, political orthodoxy and misguided liberal paternalism. The public effort to encourage better infant nutrition is a window onto the welfare state and its inner workings, a case study in the inability of our federal bureaucracy to overlook its own interests, commercial pressures and ideology on behalf of children.
For the most important and necessary step to improving the incidence of breastfeeding is never mentioned by the Surgeon General or the CDC: The federal government should get out of the business of supplying millions of mothers with free infant formula.
ALAN ROEBUCK, in a “A Nation That Honors Sin,” an essay at Intellectual Conservative, argues that neither political action nor Christian evangelism are enough to counter the overwhelming success of liberalism in America. No society in history has institutionalized the approval of sin to the extent the modern West has. He argues that a focus on individual virtue at the expense of the proper ordering of society has rendered Christians ineffective.
Roebuck writes: (more…)
WHEN ASKED whether police should resort to water cannons to control looters and rioters in London and elsewhere, Home Secretary Theresa May replied:
I don’t think anybody wants to see water cannon used on the streets of Britain because we have a different attitude to the culture of policing here. We police by consent and it depends on that trust between the police and the public. (more…)
THE PHOTOGRAPHER Amy Weston described this scene in The Guardian:
I was told there were fires in the Church Street area, near Surrey Street Market.
By the time I drove towards it, I could already see the fires from my windscreen. (more…)
I CAME across this 2008 homemade video by an anonymous young black woman and, though I don't agree with her understanding of the 60s, I was charmed by her simple and direct honesty. She is responding to a call by the radical Kamau Kabon for the extermination of white people. She thinks anti-white racism is a great evil and is enraged by it. To the general idea that blacks are morally superior to whites, she says, “Hate does exist in every race, not just the white man. Angels never sung across the floor as we walked by." "I pity you," she says to Kabon, whom she calles "Hitler with [dread]locks." “Spreading all that hate. You need help. You need counseling." By the way, Youtube does have policies on hate speech, but has not removed the version linked above of the Kamau Kabon speech.
GREG JINKERSON writes:
In his novel Perelandra, C.S. Lewis provides a splendid retelling of the Eden story, transferring that mythos to the planet Venus. The hero Ransom has been sent there by angelic beings to perform an unknown task related to the fate of mankind. On Perelandra, the true name of Venus, Ransom encounters an inhabitant known to him simply as The Lady, who is evidently both superhumanly intelligent and entirely morally innocent, with no knowledge of either death or evil.
Their new friendship is threatened by the evil Weston, an English scientist who has followed Ransom to this unknown world, and who is on a contrary quest there of his own. (Ransom takes to referring to Weston mentally as the Un-man.) Among the usual stunning truths in Lewis’ story is an implicit critique of feminism, an ideology that Lewis casts as being decidedly Satanic. (more…)
JANE writes:
As reported by the Philadelphia Independent Media: (more…)
ALEX writes from England:
The disproportionate number of criminals in the ‘black communities’ is something that the gutless and dishonest British media never discusses or even admits in principle. But if there are degrees of dishonesty about the menace of hostile blacks, the Daily Mail is the most dishonest newspaper in Britain. It suppresses the truth and suggests falsehoods about race relations – especially in London – on a routine basis. (more…)
MANY remarkable photos and videos of the aftermath of the riots in London can be found here. Residents of Tottenham began lighting cars on fire, tossing Molotov cocktails and looting stores after a policeman killed a black man who shot at them. This is the hero (below) for whom the black rioters were seeking justice. He is described simply by the New York Times as a “father of four.”
Police were seen running away from the rioters. The Daily Mail describes the aftermath:
One police officer, asked by an elderly resident why more had not been done to stop the rioters, replied: ‘The way we look at it, we’re damned if we do, we’re damned if don’t.’ (more…)
JEREMY writes:
I recently read several posts and commentary about sexual harmony in marriage on your website and I thought that my experiences might provide some insights.
My wife and I are in our late twenties and have been married for nearly five years. (more…)
I HAVE BEEN away for two days and without Internet access. I will be posting comments that I received during that time shortly.
LARRY B. writes:
Of all the conditions that Republicans put on their conservatism, I can’t think of one as maddening or outrageous as the caveat: “I am against abortion except in cases of rape or incest.”
Since 1976 both parties have allowed federal funding of abortions in cases of rape or incest, and then the recent Hyde Amendment was also dropped by the Republicans, which would have curtailed such funding (not even ended it entirely).
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MARIA writes:
I feel there are parallels between the situation of your reader who no longer finds her husband desirable and my own. I am also in my late twenties and married five years.
My husband, two months after our second child was born, confessed to twice, on separate occasions while I was visiting relatives, arranging a rendezvous with someone else. (Once he kept his engagement, but left upon arrival; the second time he never went.) I forgave him immediately, but it took a long time for me to trust him again. I felt horrible doing it, especially since I had forgiven him, but I “checked” his email for months. I knew he knew and I’m thankful he was patient and understood that he needed to gain my trust again, and never said anything to me about it. (more…)
JEFF W. writes: Your recent discussion on day care brought this quote to mind: Pair marriage is monopolistic. It produces an exclusive family, and nourishes family pride and ambition...Pair marriage is also individualistic. It is the barrier against which all socialism breaks into dust. As the cost of a family increases, the connection between family and capital becomes more close and vital. Every socialist who can think is forced to go on to a war on marriage and the family, because he finds that in marriage and the family lie the strongholds of the 'individualistic vices' which he cannot overcome. He has to mask this battery, however, because he dare not openly put it forward. From Folkways by William Graham Sumner (1906).