Why Margaret Wente didn't join the Wimmin's March

Ed. here. Walt left on Wednesday to go to the nation's capital for the inauguration of President Donald Trump. (Dontcha love that phrase? We do!) But when he got to Richmond he found it strangely quiet, almost empty. I hope to set him straight over the weekend, and hope for some comments on Monday. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from "Don't set your hair on fire. It won't help", by Margaret Wente, an American ex-pat now living in Canada. If you read the whole thing, you'll learn that Ms Wente doesn't like President Trump, but is not joining the Wimmin's March on Washington because, IHHO, there's no point to it, or any of the other hysterical reaction we're hearing and seeing this weekend.

Why are we so irrational about Donald Trump? Well, we’re tribal, and we’ve decided he is Moloch. (By “we,” I mean the usual left-liberal-academic-media-urban professional crowd who don’t own pickup trucks.) Also, we have no sense of perspective. Most of us who live in North America have no idea what bad leaders or bad times are truly like. We don’t know any history, either. Populist backlashes are nothing new. According to the historian Niall Ferguson, the five ingredients for a backlash are a rise in immigration, a rise in inequality, a perception of corruption at the top, a major financial crisis, and a demagogue to light the spark. The U.S. scores a Bingo. Populism, he points out, is usually part of a global phenomenon. Its targets are typically immigration, free trade and high finance. Populists are more interested in trade wars than shooting wars. So Mr. Trump is nothing new in history. What’s new is his unequalled power to shake the global order.

No WiFi, no maid service: African "refugees" trash Italian hotel

As I've said before, sometimes it takes months for news to reach Walt's cabin in the pines. And sometimes there are so many similar items that Ed. just loses track of them, particularly in the holiday season when he's into the jellied gin. Here's a story from last Christmas that will grind your gears, followed by an update and commentary as fresh as today.

See these guys, loitering in the entrance of a hotel in northern Italy? They're "refugees" from darkest Africa -- housed (in the hotel), fed and clothed on the Italian taxpayers' lira. [They use "euros" now. Ed.] They were pissed because they weren't getting free WiFi and maids to clean up their mess. So what did they do? Read on!

Why sure! Even if you come from a peaceful country [in Africa? Ed.] and have no right whatever to asylum in Europe, and you're not getting everything you think you're "entitled" to, you riot! Just before Christmas MilanoToday reported that scores of these bogus refugee claimants had taken to the streets demanding free WiFi and a maid to clean up the villa in which they were being accommodated. One wonder where they think a maid might come from. An Italian girl from Milan, perhaps?

La Repubblica reported that the "refugees" were upset over the lack of WiFi "because they cannot make Skype calls to their relatives back home." When free internet service and a maid were not immediately produced, the coloured gentlemen stormed into the streets and started shouting at and abusing passersby. When the Carabinieri were called, the Africans responded by throwing trashcans into the streets and emptying their contents in the road. Finally the cops were forced to draw batons and physically push the parasites back into their residence, arresting one 25-year-old in the process.

That was just before Christmas of 2015. Fast forward to last week, when 13,000 -- thirteen thousand -- more "refugees" were rescued from the sea and delivered to Italian shores. According to a press release from the International Organization for Migration, from January 1st to May 25th, an "estimated" 194,611 "migrants" -- "refugee" is a loaded word now, it seems -- entered Europe by sea in 2016, arriving in Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Spain. According to the IOM, at least 37,363 non-whites arrived in Italy. That's not including this weekend's boatloads.

What's going on? And what's to be done? Can anything be done? Here are the key points from "The African surge into Europe", by one of Walt's favourite columnists, Margaret Wente. The emphasis is mine.

Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi kept a lid on the people-smuggling trade. But after Hillary Clinton and her European allies knocked him out in a burst of do-gooder interventionism, no one could stop the smugglers. Now that the Balkan route is shut, Libya has become the main migration route to Europe. Just last week, 13,000 people were rescued and delivered to Italian shores. Last year, Italy saw more than 150,000 migrants arrive by sea, according to the UN refugee agency. Three hundred thousand or more could arrive this year, according to some estimates.

This is a different kind of migration than the one that shocked the conscience of the world last year. These people aren’t fleeing for their lives, as were refugees from the Syrian war or conflict in Afghanistan. Almost all are Africans, from Gambia, Eritrea, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria. The vast majority are young men.... European leaders have no idea how to cope with the latest surge. Their response has been the usual combination of blame shifting, buck passing, and refusal to face the facts.

The African migrants are allowed to apply for refugee status in Italy, but few will succeed. Most will be sent to overflowing "reception centres", where they will be fed and housed for at least a year while their claims are processed. Some will be summarily rejected and ordered to leave the country right away. But no one enforces the deportation orders, and no one keeps track of the failed claimants. Most head north in search of better opportunities. Until recently, many of them left the country to become someone else’s problem.

Meanwhile, the population of Africa is exploding. By 2050, it is expected to double to 2.4 billion people, roughly four times the size of Europe. Europe’s current migrant problem, in other words, is just a taste of things to come.

PC police fail to control German backlash against immigrants

North America's oh-so-PC lamestream media are underplaying reports from Germany that real ethnic Germans, infuriated by the wave of sex and criminal attacks on white women and girls in Cologne and the surrounding area, have started to strike back with coordinated attacks on the non-white, Muslim invaders.

A spokesthingy for Cologne police told reporters that four separate attacks on asylum-seekers took place this past Sunday evening. Six of them were injured, Inspektor Katzenjammer said, and at least two had to be hospitalized. In an earlier press statement, the Polizei said they had "received information that there were groups of people who were deliberately seeking confrontations in the city centre."

The police immediately deployed in large numbers "to ensure the safety of visitors to the old town" area. In the course of the evening, more than 150 German men -- meaning ethnic Germans -- were stopped and checked. Four were taken into custody and 199 restraining orders were issued. Nevertheless, six Pakistanis were attacked by a group of about twenty men. They were all beaten, and two of them were taken to a nearby hospital where they were discharged after treatment. Later, another group attacked a 39-year-old Syrian, who was injured, but did not require treatment.

That's the news from Germany. Why are we on this side of the pond not hearing and reading more about the anti-immigrant backlash? Because drawing attention to the fact that refugees and asylum-seekers from the Middle East and North Africa are really not welcome in Europe and North America would cast doubt on the wisdom of our governments' pro-immigration, pro-multiculturalism, be-kind-to-the-refugees policies.

Maragaret Wente, often quoted here, has a good piece on the subject in today's Globe and Mail, headed "Germany's brutal immigrant awakening". For those who can't get through the Glob's stupid paywall, Walt presents the highlights from Ms Wente's excellent analysis.

After Cologne, the ugly truth can no longer be ignored. The assailants, described by a senior German official, Ralf Jaeger, as being mainly Arab and North African men, including asylum seekers who arrived in the past year, come from cultures that are deeply misogynistic. Their attitudes toward women are the worst possible fit with Europe’s tolerant, sexually egalitarian liberal norms.

The Cologne police media department initially described the celebration as “peaceful.” As disturbing details began to emerge, police were reluctant to identify the origin of the alleged attackers because of its “politically awkward nature,” as one leading German broadcaster put it. The main German TV station took a pass on the story. Henriette Reker, the pro-refugee mayor of Cologne, said there was no evidence that the assailants were “refugees.”

Until now, sensitivity to anti-immigrant backlash has prevented honest talk about sexual misconduct among immigrant men; such talk has been condemned as racist in the past.... But what happened in Cologne was too big to cover up. News has now emerged of similar New Year’s Eve assaults in Austria, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden, as well as other German cities.

The Viennese police chief has warned women not to go out alone at night. Sweden is now dealing with its own cover-up at a music festival last summer, where young girls were assaulted by hundreds of mostly Afghan men. As the official in charge of the festival’s policing told a local news source, “We sometimes dare not to say how it is because we think it might play into the hands of the [right-wing] Sweden Democrats.”

Yet even now, some of Europe’s liberal humanitarians are still in deep denial. In an interview with Der Spiegel, Cologne’s mayor expressed genuine shock that so many immigrant men do not act like German men. What’s needed, Ms. Reker said, is more language and integration courses, to give them a better grasp of German culture (which begs the question of whether they are interested in grasping it). As for how to behave at public festivals, she thinks pictograms might help.

There are other solutions, but they might be more difficult. Refuse asylum to single men (as Canada has done). Deport the ones who’ve already arrived. Choose who comes. Don’t choose people who can’t tell the difference between a kiss and rape.

As for avoiding a right-wing backlash, it’s way too late. After years of official lies and cover-ups, it’s already here.

Further reading: "Trump warns Germans after asylum-seekers' sex and crime spree", WWW 6/1/16.

UPDATE: Oopsie! Not all the lamestream media are ignoring the backlash. Canada's National Post has just, errr, reposted "Angela Merkel says Germany has lost control of the refugee crisis amid public anger over Cologne sex attacks", a report from the London Telegraph. Here's a key quote: "[Ms Merkel's] comments came after authorities in Cologne confirmed for the first time that the attacks were "almost exclusively" carried out by men "of an immigrant background".

German "Willkommenskultur" worn thin by ill-fitting "refugees"

Looks like German Chancellor Angela Merkel won't be winning the Nobel Peace Prize after all. Just last month she was rumored to be a strong contender for having opened the Fatherland's doors to a tsunami of Arab and African "refugees". "Asylum has no upper limit", she told the Herrenvolk. Besides, she argued, even if they're not all real refugees, Germany needs immigrants to work and pay taxes and support the aging native-born population.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? It's the same line being pushed throughout western Europe and North America by politically correct politicians and the liberal mainstream media. The stone truth is that "immigration is good for the host countries" is the veriest bullshit -- one of the greatest lies being of the last half-century.

Just today, the Toronto Red Star -- the official organ of the Canadian immigration and multicult lobbies -- has a lengthy article headed "Toronto holds onto its shameful title: Child poverty capital of Canada". The article is chock-full of statistics which prove, inter alia, that the "pockets of poverty" in Toronto the good coincide geographically with the ghettos which are home to tens of thousands of immigrants from Somali, Jamaica and other third-world shitholes. Here's one of them now...

Meet Hawo Ali, aged 53, who immigrated from Somalia in 1992. She had five children when she came to Canada, and has added another six since -- total 11. It might have been more, but her husband left her in 1999, leaving her to raise all those kids alone. She sells samosas and does a bit of sewing to raise a bit of income, and Walt says good for her. Any additional money to needed to keep a roof over her family's heads and food in their bellies, and pay for her and their education and health care, comes from Canadian taxpayers. Net benefit to Canada? Negative!

As many as 10,000 migrants like Ms Ali are arriving in Germany every day, according to Margaret Wente's article in today's Globe and Mail. She tells us that "Smugglers are bringing in underage children and dropping them off by the side of the highways in the middle of the night. Public services are overwhelmed. School authorities say they need 25,000 new teachers for the kids. Local officials are scrounging for places to house people. They say they’ve reached the limit."

Ms Wente refutes the claim of the liberal elites that Germany needs migrants "to subsidize their pensions, replenish their aging population and address a growing shortage of skilled workers. That would make sense [she writes] if the migrants were a lot like Germans. But they’re not. Only a small number of the newcomers are well-educated professionals. Many more are illiterate, traumatized, children, or old. The majority are young men, with few skills and nothing to do. Almost none speak German. They are a poor fit with Germany’s highly skilled, rigidly structured labour market.

"Their cultural values are a poor fit, too. As one editorial writer commented, 'Ultra-religious Muslims – and Christians – are coming face to face with a society that is indifferent to religion. Newcomers with rigid moral codes must learn to deal with the fact that in Germany gay people can openly kiss each other.'

"The refugees are also a poor fit with one another. There are Muslims and Christians, Sunnis and Shiites, Kurds, Albanians and Kosovars. They bring their ethnic tensions with them. Clashes are common in the overcrowded refugee shelters. Police say that the task of reconciling refugee factions and protecting immigrants from right-wing German groups has pushed them to their limits."

"Leaders across Europe are discovering [Ms Wente concludes] that high-minded ideals and lofty sentiments aren’t enough to persuade the public that open doors and porous borders are a good thing. And even people who admire Ms. Merkel are wondering if she has made the biggest blunder of her career."

Canuck pols censor selves, avoid further debate of niqab ban

Yesterday, Walt concluded "Niqab ban becomes hot Canuck election issue" by saying that it would be amazing if the issue of whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear then niqab didn't come up again in the election debate scheduled for that evening. Within 13 seconds of the debate's end, Agent 3 was on the horn to tell me to be amazed because the word was never mentioned.

Perhaps the omission is not such a surprise after all. Walt is not a believer in conspiracy theories -- except when it comes to MH370 -- but can envision a secret pre-debate meeting in which the minions of all three parties prepared 10-foot polls with which not to touch, ever again, the question of whether immigrants should be or can be required to adapt themselves to the customs and values of their new home.

As Chantal Hébert pointed out on "At Issue" -- see video in yesterday's post -- the vast majority of Canadians think the Harper government's proposal that people should show their faces when giving or receiving any public service, including taking the oath of citizenship, is reasonable. But, the powers that be in the editorial boardrooms of Toronto deem the subject politically incorrect.

The English-language Canadian media, and the politicians chasing the large immigrant vote -- particularly in Toronto, which has the largest Muslim population of any North American city -- are so afraid of offending the Muslims, or being accused of stoking the fires of Islamophobia already burning across Canada, that they have colluded to ban any further discussion of the topic. So when the Groan and Wail headlines its lead story "Federal leaders clash over Canadian values, security in lively debate", they overlook -- deliberately -- the one glaring omission.

Not so Walt's favourite Globe and Mail columnist, Margaret Wente. In today's piece, headed "Why the niqab matters, now and in future", she writes:

If there is one issue that strikes a nerve with Canadians, this is it. Public opposition to the niqab is deep, and wide. A recently released Leger poll, commissioned by the government and conducted in March, found that more than four out of five people – 82 per cent – supported the Conservatives’ position that there is no place for niqabs in citizenship court. In Quebec, the figure was 93 per cent.

As the magnificent Chantal Hébert reminded Mr. Coyne on CBC the other night, the niqab debate is anything but trivial – despite what pundits in Toronto think. The debate about accommodation and values will last far beyond this election. It will be among the biggest issues of our future.

I'm torn. I believe that Canada is strong and confident enough to tolerate a few women in face coverings. I also believe that the niqab has no place in Canada, and that women who wear them should be strongly discouraged (but not, under most circumstances, barred) from doing so. Symbols matter. And this one matters more than most.

Footnote: Another debate, in French only, is scheduled for Friday night. The Big Three leaders -- MM Trudeau, Harper and Mulcair -- will be joined by Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québécois, who has vowed to legislate a ban on all religious head coverings in the (unlikely) event his party is elected. At the risk of repeating myself [and being wrong two days in a row. Ed.], it will be amazing if the niqab question isn't raised, politically incorrect or not.

Poll shows most Canadians DON'T want to take more refugees

The Canadian meeja -- a generally leftish lot -- have been rabbiting on for three weeks now about the terrible plight of all those poor "refugees" from Syria (and, errr, other places) trying to make their way to Greece, Italy and on to Germany, where the streets are paved with gelt and milk, honey and money are provided by the guilt-ridden herrenvolk.

Canuck political pundits have been falling all over themselves to castigate Prime Minister Steve Harper for not doing more to assist the asylum-seekers to cross the Atlantic and settle in Canada. This is going to be the ballot issue in the upcoming federal election, they say, and Mr. Harpoon's apparent indifference will cost him his job.

That's what they say. But many Canadians, including some of Walt's agents, beg to differ. One of my minions has sent me a copy of an e-mail he wrote to John Ivison, a normally sound columnist for the Notional Pest and regular panelist on CTV's Question Period. He cautioned Mr. Ivison that the breadth and depth of support for the idea of bringing in tens of thousands of asylum-seekers whose bona fides has not been established was not so great as the PC press might think. Answer came there none.

However, our agent's suspicions are now confirmed by two major public opinion polls, reported by the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente today in "What Canadians really think about the refugee crisis". Ms Wente warns political soothsayers against paying much attention to those who say the Canadian government "is cold, callous and indifferent. Perhaps it is. But it seems that many Canadians wouldn’t have it any other way."

Ms Wente passes on the results of an Ipsos poll, taken over the weekend, which found that despite all the bad publicity, 38% of Canadians still think the Harper Conservatives would "make the best decision for Canada on the Syrian refugee situation." 32% named the NDP, and 30% the Liberals. The Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, has proposed bringing in 25,000 of the new boat people by the end of the year. 61% of those polled think that's a bad idea.

The other poll cited in Ms Wente's column was taken by EKOS, on the 4th through 8th of this month. Only 36% of respondents thought Canada should be taking in more refugees. 25% said too many are already being brought in. 34% the number being admitted is about right. Do that math! Nearly 60% of Canadians don't want to take in more refugees!

Further reading:
"Conservatives’ refugee crisis response far from fatal for Harper", also in today's Globe and Mail.
"Swedish experience shows folly of welcoming unassimilable immigrants" (WWW 13/9/15)

Swedish experience shows folly of welcoming unassimilable immigrants

Today's theme is the "refugee crisis" faced by Europe, into which the USA and Canada are now being drawn by the do-good frenzy being whipped up by the usual gang of one-worlders, "progressive thinkers" and the lamestream media. Oh, those poor oppressed refugees! We have a duty to help them because we are our brothers' (and sisters') keepers. Never mind that the majority of them are bogus asylum-seekers coming not just from Syria but from anywhere from Bangladesh to Nigeria to suck off European and American teats.

After posting "What happens when your city can't handle any more refugees", Walt learned that Germany is "temporarily" reinstituting border controls, which goes against the "open borders" principle of the Schengen agreement. (The agreement does, however, allow for temporary suspensions of its rules.) Why? Because they're expecting eight hundred thousand (800,000!) "refugees" before the end of 2015, and, according to Germany's Vice-Chancellor, is "at the limit of its capabilities".

Perhaps the German cabinet has heard about the problems faced by Sweden in welcoming hordes of refugees and other immigrants from the Third World who cannot or will not be assimilated into Swedish society. As the Globe and Mail's Margaret Went wrote this weekend in "Sweden’s ugly immigration problem", Sweden has the most welcoming asylum policies and most generous welfare programs in the European Union. How is that working out? Some sobering statistics are to be found in these excerpts from Ms Wente's article.

In Migrants Who Survived Shipwreck Are Grateful, but Disillusioned, a typical refugee, Natanael Haile, [tells how he] barely escaped drowning in the Mediterranean in 2013. But the folks back home in Eritrea don’t want to know about the perils of his journey.... They want to know about "his secondhand car, the government allowances he receives and his plans to find work as a welder once he finishes a two year language course." As a registered refugee, he receives a monthly living allowance of more than $700.

Sweden takes in more refugees per capita than any other European country, and immigrants – mainly from the Middle East and Africa – now make up about 16 per cent of the population. The main political parties, as well as the mainstream media, support the status quo. Questioning the consensus is regarded as xenophobic and hateful. [No kidding. Walt] Now all of Europe is being urged to be as generous as Sweden.

Ms Wente quotes at length from her interview with Tino Sanandaji, a Kurdish-Swedish economist who was born in Iran and moved to Sweden when he was 10. He has a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago and specializes in immigration issues.

"There has been a lack of integration among non-European refugees," [he told her]. "48 per cent of immigrants of working age don’t work, he said. Even after 15 years in Sweden, their employment rates reach only about 60 per cent. Sweden has the biggest employment gap in Europe between natives and non-natives."

In Sweden, where equality is revered, inequality is now entrenched. 42 per cent of the long-term unemployed are immigrants, Mr. Sanandaji said. 58 per cent of welfare payments go to immigrants. 45 per cent of children with low test scores are immigrants. Immigrants on average earn less than 40 per cent of Swedes. The majority of people charged with murder, rape and robbery are either first- or second-generation immigrants. "Since the 1980s, Sweden has had the largest increase in inequality of any country in the OECD," Mr. Sanandaji said.

Sweden’s generosity costs a fortune, at a time when economic growth is stagnant. The country now spends about $4-billion a year on settling new refugees – up from $1-billion a few years ago, Mr. Sanandaji said.

Yet Sweden’s acute immigration problems scarcely feature in the mainstream media. Journalists see their mission as stopping racism, so they don’t report the bad news. Despite – or perhaps because of – this self-censorship, the gap between the opinion elites and the voters on immigration issues is now a chasm.

According to a recent opinion poll, 58 per cent of Swedes believe there is too much immigration, Mr. Sanandaji noted. The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party is now polling at between 20 per cent and 25 per cent.

Sweden is a cautionary tale for anyone who believes that Europe is capable of assimilating the hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants who are besieging the continent, or the millions more who are desperately poised to follow in their wake. The argument that these people are vital to boost the economy – that they will magically create economic growth and bail the Europeans out of their demographic decline – is a fantasy.

It’s really very simple, Mr. Sanandaji explained. You can’t combine open borders with a welfare state. “If you’re offering generous welfare benefits to every citizen, and anyone can come and use these benefits, then a very large number of people will try to do that. And it’s just mathematically impossible for a small country like Sweden to fund those benefits.”

Things will get worse before they get better. As Judy Dempsey, a senior analyst at a Berlin think tank, told The Wall Street Journal, [in Migrant Wave Inspires Others to Attempt Trek to Europe. Walt] "Europe hasn’t seen anything yet in terms of the numbers or the backlash."

Politically correct footnote: Just noticed that the uber-liberal Toronto Red Star has stopped talking about the "refugee crisis". Now it's a "migrant crisis". Guess the term "refugee" has acquired a certain taint. [Duly noted. Ed.]

UPDATED 19/6: Choosing one's identity

I'm old. [How old are you? Ed.] I'm so old that I can remember when the doctor or midwife said either "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!" and so it was. The baby didn't have any choice about its "sex" (as it was quaintly called back then) or "gender" (the politically correct term nowadays).

So also with race. Whether it was recorded on the birth certificate or not, it was generally accepted that a baby would be whatever his/her parents were (assuming they were of the same race) or "mixed" or "coloured", whatever, if the parents were of different races.

Now, thanks to the meeja hype about Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal, we know that times have changed... really changed!

Behold this pair of celebrities! The one on the left is not a male. The one on the right is not white. Whoda thunk it to look at them?! But hey, this is the 21st century. It's not about what God or nature intended, or who your parents were, or what the doctor said when you popped out. It's about who you think you are and who you want to be! Thus endeth the lesson.

UPDATE: Further reading: "Race and gender: I feel therefore I am", by one of Walt's favourites, Margaret Wente, in the Globe and Mail 19/6/2015.

UPDATED 19/6: Answer to "What's wrong with this picture?"

Walt apologizes for being so discombobulated by the ramifications of the wall-to-wall coverage of the Jenner non-story that he forgot to answer the question posed in the headline of the previous post.

Rather than just say "everything", let me quote a couple of sentences from "the Murphy Brown speech" given on 19 May 1992 by Dan Quayle. Remember him? Mr. Quayle was Vice President under Bush I. The lamestream media enjoyed teasing him about being unable to spell potatoes [potatos? Ed.] and other things. They suggested that he was somewhat shallow, that there wasn't a whole lot between his ears, and that he was incapable of uttering a coherent thought that wasn't written for him by someone else.

Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Vice President Quayle (as he then was) criticized the Murphy Brown character for "ignoring the importance of fathers by birthing a child alone". I don't think it matters who wrote the speech. It contains a lot of wisdom about the weakening of the American family, and consequently American society. Check this out excerpt.

When family fails, society fails. The anarchy and lack of structure in our inner cities are a testament to how quickly civilization falls apart when the family foundation crashes. Children need love and discipline; they need mothers and fathers. A welfare check is not a husband, the state is not a father. It is from parents that children learn how to behave in society. It is from parents, above all, that children come to understand values and themselves as men and women, mothers and fathers. And for those who are concerned about children growing up in poverty, we should know this - marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program of all.

Three months later, at the Republican convention -- the one at which Pat Buchanan made his celebrated speech (see previous post) -- Vice President Quayle took up the theme again. He said:

Americans try to raise their children to understand right and wrong, only to be told that every so-called "lifestyle alternative" is morally acceptable. That is wrong. The gap between us and our opponents is a cultural divide. It is not just a difference between being conservative and liberal; it is a difference between fighting for what's right and refusing to see what's wrong.

And that, gentle reader, is what's wrong with the picture of "Caitlyn" Jenner. God created men and women. From that time until the day before yesterday -- figuratively speaking -- you didn't have a choice. You were one or the other. Period. A man couldn't suddenly decide he'd like to be a woman and have his "lifestyle alternative choice" validated, even applauded by right-thinking people. Changing your sex is wrong. Period.

Footnote and further reading: It must be hard for Dan Quayle not to say "I told you so." It took twenty years, but pundits analyzing what's wrong with America finally started to admit that the Veep nailed it. See:
"Washington Post Admits Dan Quayle was Right about Murphy Brown and Unmarried Moms" (Western Journalism, 29/5/12) and
"Obama Should Admit That Dan Quayle Had It Right" (Investors.com, 22/2/13)

UPDATE: Further reading: "Race and gender: I feel therefore I am", by one of Walt's favourites, Margaret Wente, in the Globe and Mail 19/6/2015.

UPDATED 19/6: What's wrong with this picture?

Walt has been trying desperately to ignore this "story", as well as that of the Dirty Duggar, because to me, these things are not "news", not of the slightest importance to the future of our country, our world or anything else that really matters. They are yet another example of the lamestream media's pandering to the bizarre American fascination with "celebrities" -- people like the Kardashians who are famous for being famous.

Yet I keep seeing "stories" and even op-ed pieces with titles like "Caitlyn Jenner is a woman and deserves to be described as such" (posted by the Groan and Wail's Pubic Editor). This, we're told, is the most important and newsworthy issue of a week in which more 1000s of "refugees" crossed the Med in leaky boats, Russia threatened war against the Ukraine, and [Ed., please fill in some more news stories here.]

Because I refuse to read or listen to any of this rubbish about the poster-boy -- poster-girl? -- for the sex-change-is-normal movement, I don't know if Bruce or Caitlyn has actually had the operation, or is still in the pre-op stage which we used to call cross-dressing. And you know what? I don't care! Really!!!

The point is argued by Andrew O'Hehir in "The Duggars and Caitlyn Jenner are the “real news”: The reality that the Hillary Clinton media spectacle wishes desperately that you’d ignore", from which the photo above was ripped. He writes:

Caitlyn Jenner and the Duggar family speak to America’s changing sense of itself, and to the shifting fronts in the “cultural war” that Pat Buchanan invoked in his famous speech in the Houston Astrodome, 23 years ago. They are in fact the substance of our national conversation, the central narrative of American political and cultural life in our time. What happens inside the Beltway is a footnote, if that.

If Mr. O'Hehir is right, as I fear, God save the United States of America!

Final word to Mark Steyn: "In the future there will be no men whatsoever. There will be girls with vaginas and girls with penises."

Footnote and book recommendation: If you're not sure what Pat Buchanan said at the Republican convention in Houston and why it shifted the focus of American conservatism from economics and finance (where it belongs) to the culture wars, read David Frum's Dead Right, "a witty and opinionated tour through the chaos of post-Reagan conservatism".

UPDATE: Further reading: "Race and gender: I feel therefore I am", by one of Walt's favourites, Margaret Wente, in the Globe and Mail 19/6/2015.

Political correctness trumps justice! The Rotherham child abuse story

The horrendous story (see "Political correctness foils detection and punishment of 1400 sex abuse cases in English city") about systematic child abuse -- rape, trafficking and so on -- in Rotherham, England, has not received a lot of play in the lamestream media. The American media, in particular, don't give a lot of space or time to things that don't happen in the continental 48. Even a story like the ISIS terror in Syria and Iraq has to have an American slant -- like the beheading of a "journalist" or two -- or it barely gets mentioned.

Due to limitations of space, Walt was only able to give you the bare bones of the Rotherham story. To nutshell it again, more than 1400 minors, some pre-pubescent, were molested, abused, and passed around as sex toys by numerous men of Pakistani origin and "heritage". This went on for most of this century, and may be continuing even now. Three official enquiries were done, in 2002, 2003 and 2006. Their results were disbelieved or ignored by the "authorities" -- police, municipal council and child welfare agencies. So far only five of the Paki paedophiles have been charged and convicted.

According to the reports, most of the abused children were white. It is now suggested that hundreds of Pakistani girls may have been victims as well, with the crimes against them going unreported because of the culture of the male-dominated Muslim community, which doesn't take the mistreatment of women and children very seriously.

The latest report, by Dr. Alexis Jay, a former "chief social work advisor" to the government of Scotland", concluded that the Rotherham council "failed to engage" with the town's Pakistani community, despite the fact that victims described the perpetrators as "Asian".

"Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away" said the good doctor. "Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so." See "Rotherham: In the face of such evil, who is the racist now?" Political correctness once again trumps justice!

Further reading: "The unspeakable truth about Rotherham", by Margaret Wente, in today's Globe and Mail. Here's the penultimate paragraph.
"No amount of liberal angst will make this story go away. Current Home Secretary Theresa May has acknowledged that “institutionalized political correctness” has inflicted appalling damage on the innocent. And the broader failures of Muslim integration are now too obvious to ignore. It’s not just all the young men who run off to join the caliphate and saw off people’s heads. It’s the Birmingham school scandal, where it was discovered that dozens of secular schools had been targeted for Islamization by Muslim radicals. It’s the imported culture of violence and misogyny." [The emphasis is mine. Walt]

What's wrong with Sweden? Could it be "the I-word"?

In the latter half of the 20th century, Sweden was, by most accounts, a prosperous and successful country. Its nanny state society and social harmony were admired, even envied by most other nations. With the exception of the owner of Ikea, almost no-one was really rich, and no-one was really poor. All the blonde, blue-eyed people lived harmoniously in a land of plenty.

But was that good enough for the social democrats and secular humanists who dominated Sweden's politics and public discourse? Certainly not. How can you be a do-gooder if there are no poor and downtrodden people to uplift? What Sweden lacked was an underclass, of the type America has in spades. [Careful there... Ed.]

Having no native-born underclass of its own, the Swedes did the next-best thing, and imported one. Sweden was one of the first European countries to put out the welcome mat for immigrants from the Third World. Underlying their open-door policy is a broad humanitarian desire to do good, combined with the belief that the right kind of social policies – education, welfare, job training – can transform newcomers into Swedes faster than you can say "Sven Svensen".

Unfortunately for them, the Swedes didn't pay attention to the warnings of Charles De Gaulle and Enoch Powell. Why would they? After all, Swedes have never been imperialists, colonialists or racists like those awful British and French. But now their peaceful social democracy is experiencing a reality check!

As a footnote to "Geert Wilders warns USA: Muslims taking over Europe -- you're next!", Walt called attention to last week's riots in Stockholm and other Swedish cities. Who were the rioters? No prizes for guessing they were unemployed "persons of colour" who immigrated from the sandpits of northern Africa and the Middle East.

Why did they do it? In an insightful piece in yesterday's Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente quotes a Social Democratic politician as saying, "This is not a question about immigration, it is a class question." Others blame a lack of jobs, social exclusion, bad schools, poor living conditions, growing inequality, police brutality and racism, and the erosion of the welfare state -- everything but the country's unrealistic immigration policy, about which Sweden's liberal elite is still in denial.

There is an obvious explanation for the recent unrest (Ms Wente continues) but in Sweden, it's almost impossible to discuss. The country has opened its doors to a flood of people from some of the most troubled parts of the world – especially the Muslim-majority countries of Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands have arrived in the past decade alone. Many will not be able to succeed in Swedish society. They are destined to become permanent wards of the state.

...semi-literate people from the tribal cultures of the Middle East or Africa are not the same as the Western middle-class Chileans who fled Pinochet. The culture clash extends from the importance of religion, the rights of women and the proper way to raise children to the benefits of exercise.... To put it mildly, assimilation is a challenge.

...frank discussions of the country's immigration problems are virtually taboo. Anyone who brings them up is likely to be labelled as a xenophobic racist. When the immigration minister, Tobias Billström, mildly suggested that "we need to discuss the volume" of immigration, his own party nearly disowned him. What accounts for this excruciating excess of political correctness?

The best explanation I have heard comes from Jonathan Friedman, an American anthropologist who is married to a Swedish woman, and lived in Sweden for several years before moving back to California. He blames a "politics of submission by Swedish elites." Continued large-scale immigration...is untenable in a situation of economic decline. But Sweden's elite "refuses to see what is really happening and instead holds on to absurd ideologies of immigration as enrichment." [My emphasis. Walt]

In other words, such outbreaks are bound to happen. And they are bound to create big cracks in Sweden's famous tradition of social cohesion. As Swedes redistribute more and more of their wealth to people whose habits are culturally alien, and who are permanently dependent on the state, the immigration consensus is bound to crack.

Memo to the political "leaders" of the USA and Canada: If you won't learn from the mistakes of the British, the French, be warned by the example of Sweden. If policies of multiculturalism and assimilation don't work there, they won't work anywhere!

A reading guide to the lamestream newspapers

Regular readers of WWW will know that Walt is... or was... a regular reader of the Globe and Mail, [aka the Groan and Wail. Ed.] which claims to be "Canada's national newspaper". This was so because the Mop and Pail, not being American, usually has a more balanced, middle-of-the-road view of American politics plus international news and analysis. In this respect it is much like the Economist, which is the one medium Walt really trusts. As a plus, the Mope and Flail has Canadian news and some good columnists, like Margaret Wente.

Which is too bad, because the Glom and Maul today inaugurated a paywall. By so doing, editor John Stackhouse evidently intends to stem the tide of red ink which threatens to engulf the publication. Like a Canadian King Canute. Good luck to him. It'll be a frosty Friday in Hades before Walt parts with 20 Canuckbucks [How much is that in real money? Ed.] to read the G&M's daily paean of praise for Steve Harpoon and leftie drivel from the likes of Gerry Caplan.

Hundreds of assiduous readers have posted comments to the same effect on the Globe's website. Among them, I found the following, which I first saw years ago but didn't keep on file.

A Guide to Your Reading

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however like the smog statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave L.A. to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country, and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

And for the Canucks...

9. The Globe & Mail is read by people who aren't sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they agree with all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped, minority, feminist, atheist dwarves, who also happen to be illegal aliens from any country or galaxy as long as they are Conservatives and Harper-Card-Carrying types.

So... which newspaper do you read?

It's not "the film", stupid! It's just anti-Americanism, is all

With her usual unerring aim, Margaret Wente hits the nail squarely on the head in "It's too easy to lay all the blame on a crude video", in today's Globe and Mail. She exposes the Democratic party line, as expressed on Sunday by Susan Rice (US ambassador to the Disunited Nations) that "what sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world".

Ms Rice's characterization of the video is quite correct, but, as anyone who's seen even a snippet of it realizes, "Innocence of Muslims" is no big deal. It looks and sounds like a Grade 8 school play, and in no way deserves to be taken as seriously as would appear from the ferocity of the demonstrations against it.

But -- and this is Ms Wente's point -- the near-riots in the streets of cities throughout the Muslim world are not against the film so much as against America itself. She writes, "The line...that the protests were directed against the video, not the U.S. ...might come as a surprise to the folks who were burning American flags and chanting, 'Obama, Obama, we love Osama.'"

The Muslims hate America. That has been the case for decades, long before American soldiers burnt copies of the Qu'ran, long before they pissed on dead Afghan prisoners and long before this stupid little film appeared on YouTube. "Innocence of Muslims" is just this week's catalyst for a deep and longlasting hatred of America's culture, America's religion [Wozzat? Ed.] and America's version of democracy.

Ms Wente reminds us that Al O'Bama -- a Muslim sympathizer if not a Muslim himself -- was supposed to fix all that.

Back in 2009, President Barack Obama went to Cairo and promised to reset the U.S. relationship with the Arab world. Unlike his predecessor, he sympathized with Muslim aspirations. Muslims were anti-American because of bad American policies, and he would fix that. Things didn’t quite work out as planned. Back then, 70 per cent of Egyptians had an unfavourable opinion of the U.S. Today, 79 per cent do.

What conclusion are we to draw? Too many liberal intellectuals – and now, unbelievably, the U.S. administration – seem to think it’s partly our fault when Western insults to Islam lead to riots in the streets. But maybe there’s a bigger cause. Although it’s deeply unfashionable to say so, maybe what we have here is a clash of civilizations. Indeed.

Hope and change? One Americanuck's view

Walt is waiting with baited breath [He's been eating cheese. Ed.] to see what Hussein Obama is going to say in his own defence when he accepts the Democractic nomination tonight. This would be a good time for some straight talk, an admission that all those promises of change remain largely unfulfilled.

Should we expect the Prez to say he failed? No. Should we expect him to admit he lied? Oh hahahahahaha... What we should expect is not "Repeat after me: yes we can!" but "Repeat after me: we did the best we could under the circumstances." (I admit I didn't make that up; it's the text of the editorial cartoon in the current Economist.)

Unfortunately for Obama, the excuse that he was just a captive of events isn’t much of a campaign platform. I didn't make that up either. It's taken from an excellent column by American-turned-Canadian columnist Margaret Wente: "Hope and change won't cut it now", in today's Globe and Mail. (The drawing above is the work of the Glob's Anthony Jenkins; credit where credit is due.)

Ms Wente says she was a big fan of Obama's back in the day, the day being about four years ago.
"He was attractive, he was smart, he was young and, best of all, he wasn’t George Bush. The United States was in an awful mess, and the world economy was teetering. The old order was finished, and everyone was desperate for change. I was ecstatic when he won. I had faith that he was smart enough to get it (whatever it turned out to be). I knew his halo would be tarnished soon enough. But I figured he could scarcely make things worse than they were."

"Today," Ms Wente continues, "the love affair is over. If I were voting in this election, I don’t know what I’d do. The main thing Mr. Obama has going for him is that he’s not Mitt Romney, who strikes me as a decent enough man who’s been taken hostage by a bunch of lunatics. Unfortunately, the fact that you’re not the other guy is not the most inspiring argument for re-election." Indeed.

Reading on... "[Obama's] greatest problem is that he doesn’t seem to know the old order is finished. He seems to think that all he needs to do is tax the rich, wait it out and soon the good times will return. That’s not a vision, or a plan. It’s a fantasy.

"Mr. Obama doesn’t seem to know there’s a problem. If only he could bring himself to say, as he did in 2009, that it’s time for 'a new era of responsibility'. That hopey changey stuff won’t cut it any more. Americans are still in crisis, and they’ll need more than happy talk to fix it."

Those are the highlights of Ms Wente's able argument. Click here to read the column in its entirety.

Liberals keep polishing the turd, says Big Bad Jim

"What liberals can learn from conservatives" -- Margaret Wente's review of Jonathan Heidt's The Righteous Mind (see previous post) drew a lot of comment, both pro and con. [Geddit? Ed.] Walt liked a screed by a poster calling himself Big Bad Jim.

I don't know if liberals are capable of learning in the accepted sense. So many of their policies have clearly failed, but they keep polishing the turd, pushing self-destructive polices, and seperating actions and consequences in a way that goes from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Here is my scholarly theory. Liberals live in a bubble. Most of them live in concrete urban jungles where friendly policemen guard them from harm the way a sheep dog guards his flock. They don't grow their own food, most of them don't make anything of value, most work and live in artificial markets and workplaces, and the sum effect of all these influences is 'devolution'. These people are reverting back to savage, tool-using super-apes.

Consider your affluent rich Tranna Libs. [Those are the ones I call "Volvo liberals". Walt] They would be dead meat in any rural or productive society. They are unpopular, socially incompetent, and divisive. They are not the kind of people you want to make friends with or help out because they will not do the same for you. In any society that does not nanny stupid people -- as ours does -- Darwin would take them out.

In the liberal slums, drugs and gang activity are going through the roof. The only people that do well in those environments are the fittest and strongest. As drugs and illegitimacy and illiteracy ravage their families and communities, they become ever more dehumanized by crime and violence and start to resemble our feral ape-like evolutionary predecessors.

It is pretty much apparent to anyone that doesn't live in a leftist stupidity chamber that the great Liberal Social Experiment has failed. And now -- it's time to clean up the mess.

Is your mind righteous?

Regular readers of WW's World will know that Walt is a regular reader of Margaret Wente's column in the Globe and Mail. Ms Wente was born in Chicago, but now makes her home in "an affluent downtown Toronto postal code". She looks with a jaundiced eye [perhaps TWO such eyes. Ed.] on her neighbours, whom she regards as what I call "Volvo liberals".

Today, Ms Wente has another "label for these people. They are WEIRD. That is, they belong to a tiny subculture of the human population that is Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. They are the secular liberal baby boomers who dominate the opinion elite."

She says this in the context of a review of The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt. According to the author's website, the book is about one of the hottest topics in the sciences — morality. It’s about how we evolved to live in moral “matrices,” which bind us together around sacred values and then blind us to the truth. It’s about righteousness, moral diversity, politics and religion.

According to Margaret Wente's review, Mr Haidt is talking about the WEIRD culture of which he is an admitted member. She sees The Righteous Mind as a must-read for anyone who’s dumbfounded that Steve Harpoon got elected prime minister of Canada. Or that anyone could oppose the re-election of Al O'Bama.

Or that the voters of Alberta are about to elect a party "full of bigots and climate-change deniers". (More on this, and why it should matter to Americans, next week. For now... lifetime pct .983.)

Mr. Haidt argues that conservatives and liberals operate with two quite different moral systems. Liberals are almost exclusively concerned with harm and fairness. They see society as composed of autonomous individuals who should be free to satisfy their wants and needs as they see fit.

Conservatives have a wider moral palate. They are also concerned with loyalty, authority and sanctity – values that are deeply rooted in human nature and all societies throughout history. They see society as composed of people in relation to community, who have a set of roles, responsibilities and obligations to God and their neighbours. They believe there is much more to the moral domain than harm and fairness.

Haidt's thesis is that conservative politicians on the right have a built-in advantage, because they understand human nature better than liberals do. Most people’s moral frameworks are far broader – and far less rational and systematic – than liberals believe, says Ms Wente. Nonetheless, liberal psychologists (and politicians) have spent most of the past 40 years trying to explain why conservatives are so misguided. Why don’t they embrace equality, diversity and change, like normal people? Obviously, they’re repressed and afraid of difference.

Mr. Haidt believes that as long as liberals continue to pathologize conservatism, they’re doomed. Instead, they need to understand why the reaction of many ordinary people to the issues in the news is so different from their own. The simple answer is that these people are less concerned with individual rights and universal justice than they are with things such as loyalty, authority and people getting what they deserve, not what their ethnicity or sexual orientation "entitle" them to.

Ms Wente uses the example of the Harper government’s tough crime-and-punishment agenda -- the policies that drive Canadian liberals craziest.

To liberals, [the government's] law-and-order agenda is nothing more than base pandering to an ignorant electorate. But many Canadians have a sharply different view. They don’t care that crime stats are at record lows, or that mandatory minimum sentences don’t work.

What they care about is the Vancouver bus driver who was off work for more than a year after a young thug bashed his face in. The thug got 18 months to be served at a rehab residence. They care about the stupidly light sentence imposed on Graham James for sexually abusing teenage hockey players and about shopkeepers who get charged by the police for trying to protect themselves from thieves.

They think these things are profoundly wrong. And despite the enlightened views of liberals, an alarming number of them continue to support the death penalty.

Perhaps if these Canadians were better educated they wouldn’t think this way. Or perhaps, if liberals were better educated in moral psychology, they’d be able to understand why conservative policies are so appealing. My advice is to begin by listening to Jonathan Haidt.

Walt can hardly wait to read The Righteous Mind, and will pick up a copy at the Library of Congress next week*, if the librarian isn't looking.

* Indeed, Walt will be in the capital city of the Excited States of America from now until Wednesday. Why??? Visit WW's World on Thursday and all will be revealed. Or maybe not.

Shafia son to appeal honour killing conviction

Young Hamed Shafia, unlike his father and mother, didn't take the stand in his own defence on charges of killing his three sisters and his father's first wife. It appeared to Agent 3 that Hamed was being set up to take the fall. If so, it didn't work, as all three were convicted for four counts -- each -- of first-degree murder.

Now his lawyer says Hamed has filed an "inmate's notice" to the Ontario Court of Appeal, the first step in appealing his conviction.

His trial lawyer says the main grounds of the appeal relate to admissibility of what he calls “hearsay evidence” from the victims and of the expert evidence on “honour killing.” He says it will likely be at least a year before the appeal is heard.

The father and mother are also expected to be appealing... but not very. [I bet Walt has waited years to use that line. Ed.]

Many column inches of print and minutes of airtime have been devoted to this story, not just by the Canadian media but by newspapers and broadcast media around the world. the usual liberal voices have been harrumphing that only racists and bigots could say this has anything to do with immigrants or Muslims. One of the rare voices of common sense at the oh-so-PC Globe and Mail is Margaret Wente, whom Walt reads regularly. Here's a snippet from her column.

It’s impossible to understand this crime without the culture. And it’s important to understand honour crimes for exactly what they are. They are not ordinary acts of domestic violence carried out in a fit of rage. Instead, they are carefully premeditated acts that are designed to remove the stain of a wife or daughter’s sexual misconduct (real or imagined) from the family name.

They are often approved or tolerated by the community. Wives often condone these crimes against their daughters, or even help commit them. And the perpetrators are invariably convinced of the rightness of their deeds.

Click here to read the rest of the piece.

Comment from Ed.: Walt and I have discussed the possibility that some of you may be getting tired of the honour crimes issue. We anticipate having something else to talk about when the results of the Florida primary are known.

What to do with the dregs? Another opinion

I've been more than a little preoccupied with the riots in the UK. [Do you think readers have noticed? Ed.] That's my excuse for having failed to say anything until today about similar riots closer to home, viz. Philadelphia USA. In the City of Brotherly Love, roving gangs of black teenagers have taken to beating up ordinary citizens on the streets. To stem the wave of terror, the mayor has imposed curfews and authorized harsher police measures.

Mayor Michael Nutter -- yes, that's his real name -- blames the mayhem on moral collapse. When he speaks of family breakdown and failed communities, Hizzoner runs no risk of being called a racist, for he is black himself, unlike Daniel Moynihan, author of The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, better known as The Moynihan Report.

The sociologist who later became a US senator asserted that the structure of family life in the black community constituted a "tangle of pathology...capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world," and that "at the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time."

Moynihan adds: "The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States".

That was in 1965, before some of the worst US race riots of the 20th century. In the nearly half-century since, things have actually gotten worse. Now we have -- in American as well as British cities -- packs of aimless, unschooled, almost feral youths, who loot, riot, rob, and beat people up just for fun.

Fact is, the problems of Britain’s inner cities are virtually the same as the problems of America’s inner cities. In both places, the disintegration of the family is intimately linked with social and moral decay. In the US, two-thirds of black kids are born to single mothers and unmarried couples. In parts of Britain the rate is already that high. Nationally 46 per cent of children are born to unmarried mothers, according to Britain’s Centre for Social Justice.

The Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente -- one of Walt's favourite columnists -- cites those statistics in "Unskilled, unmarried, unwanted..." Ms Wente goes on to say, "Both Britain and America have developed a large, permanent underclass whose numbers are growing. Rootless, unmoored young men with no stake in society are a major threat to social order." [My emphasis. Walt.]

Sadly, but understandably, Ms Wente offers no solution. "The fix," she says, "isn’t nearly as obvious as the problem. It will require much more than insisting that parents set clearer boundaries for their children. More social programs aren’t the answer either. We’ve been there, done that, for the past four decades of the welfare state. If there’s one thing we should have learned, it’s that the state is totally unable to compensate for broken families."

Indeed. So what's left? As I argued in my previous post, if the carrot doesn't work, perhaps it's time to try the stick -- and a good stout one too. Ms Wente says that 19th-century society had different ways of dealing with the problem. "Many of these [miscreants] would go to war as cannon fodder. Some would go to sea, or be transported to Australia. The more ambitious ones would strike out for the new world.

"Today we need another way," she concludes, "But no one has a clue what it might be." Not so. Walt knows. See "Three sentences the rioters will understand". My ideas are old, but worth trying again. If anyone has better suggestions, let's hear them!

Humanitarian imperialism

Writing in today's Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente makes the connection between the West's latest invasion of an Arab country -- Libya -- and the doctrine of "responsibility to protect" (R2P) which is at the heart of the UN resolution. R2P is, as Ms Wente says, all the fashion these days among foreign policy liberals such as Hellery Clinton.

Two excerpts from Ms Wente's column are worth repeating here.

The war in Libya is a creation of the liberal intellectuals – just as the war in Iraq was a creation of the neo-conservatives.... Both groups are serenely convinced of their own moral rightness. Yet, the delusions of the R2P crowd aren’t all that different from the delusions of the neo-cons, who thought they could march into Iraq, decapitate the dictator, and help the cheering throngs embrace democracy. Has the past decade taught these people nothing? Evidently not.

Well said. But the one that really caught Walt's eye comes right at the end.

We have entered a new age – the age of humanitarian imperialism. Humanitarian imperialists are besotted with fantasies of the West’s inherent goodness. As American writer David Rieff puts it, they have promised that, from now on, all wars will be “noble wars of altruism.” To them, the facts on the ground don’t matter much. What really matters is their good intentions.

"Humanitarian imperialism". What a wonderfully descriptive oxymoron. And what a concept! This bears further discussion...