Roger Cohen says something you’re going to hear a lot over the coming weeks.
The Paris slaughter claimed by the Islamic State constitutes, as President François Hollande of France declared, an “act of war.” As such, it demands of all NATO states a collective response under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. This says that, “An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” …
The only adequate measure, after the killing of at least 129 people in Paris, is military, and the only objective commensurate with the ongoing threat is the crushing of ISISand the elimination of its stronghold in Syria and Iraq. The barbaric terrorists exulting on social media at the blood they have spilled cannot be allowed any longer to control territory on which they are able to organize, finance, direct and plan their savagery
Naturally, ISIS claimed credit for the attacks in Paris. Just as naturally our first desire is to punch back, and to do so by finding a opponent deserving of retribution. But, here’s a bit of a cautionary tale.
On June 2, eight large bombs detonated simultaneously in eight US cities. The bombs contained sizable amounts of high explosives and were jacketed with shrapnel intended to increase the number of victims. The bombs were accompanied by flyers that said “There will have to be murder: we will kill, because it is necessary; there will have to be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.” Just a month earlier, 36 bombs were sent by mail to congressmen, judges, members of the cabinet, and state officials. A year later, a large bomb went off outside a Wall Street bank, killing 38 and wounding over 140.
How can these things have happened without dominating our headlines? They happened in 1919 and 1920.
The culprits in the US bombing were “Galleanists,” a small group of anarchists—perhaps no more than a few dozen in total, perhaps even less—who followed Italian activist, Luigi Galleani. How could a small group, with extremely limited funding, launch simultaneous attacks on multiple targets in different cities? Answer: they had watches.
Attacks like those that happened in 1919—or this week in Paris—don’t require extensive planning, deep pockets, or a dark genius worthy of a James Bond film. They just require a small number of pissed off young men who want to hurt people. Even the watches are optional.
Am I saying “don’t bomb ISIS?” Nope. They’re awful people doing awful things. Bomb away. Just don’t get it in your head that it either takes some massive organization to plan this sort of assault, or that going after guys who control a few towns along a stretch of road on the border of Syria and Iraq, will resolve a problem among disaffected and unemployed young men half a world away.
The New York Times in their own reaction to the Paris bombings, notes something that made me love Paris more than any monument or museum.
The coldblooded depravity with which the terrorists gunned down people seated at restaurant tables and picked off hostages in the Bataclan concert hall where more than 80 were killed was horrifying. But Parisians have remained defiant and united. Last night, as the carnage unfolded, Parisians took to social media, using the hashtag #porteouverte, or “open door,” to offer sanctuary in their homes to people fleeing the mayhem. By morning, hundreds of Paris residents were lining up to donate blood and looking for other ways to help.
The sign of a great people is that they maintain their beliefs, not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard. How did the United States react in 1919? Look up the Palmer Raids and Red Scare. Not exactly our finest hour.
Then come on in. I’ve rambled on the front porch too long.
Frank Bruni on how people want to use what happened in Paris.
Can’t we wait until we’ve resolved the body count? Until the identities of all of the victims have been determined and their families informed? Until the sirens stop wailing? Until the blood is dry? ...
First news of the gunfire there on Friday didn’t dribble out until about 4 p.m. Eastern time in the United States.
Within four hours, Ann Coulter tweeted:
Too bad there were no concealed carry permits ... anywhere in Europe ... since 1818.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) Nov. 14, 2015
Hasty?
Hardly.
An hour earlier, Judith Miller tweeted:
Now maybe the whining adolescents at our universities can concentrate on something other than their need for "safe" spaces…
— Judith Miller (@JMfreespeech) Nov. 13, 2015
…
I’d like not to be told, fewer than 18 hours after the shots rang out, how they demonstrate that Americans must crack down on illegal immigration to our own country. I read that and was galled, and not because of my feelings about immigration, but because of my feelings about the automatic, indiscriminate politicization of tragedy.
There’s less separating those trying to take advantage of what happened in Paris, and those who instigated it, than either side would like to think.
Tara Zahra has a little note from history about the relationship between immigrants and America.
One of the great myths Americans have about their country is that everyone wants to come here. Advocates and enemies of immigration share this assumption, which dates at least as far back as the turn of the 20th century. As reports of “American fever” circulated in Eastern Europe, one Polish economist, Leopold Caro, claimed that entire villages were becoming ghost towns. “Many houses stood empty, and in many others only old women and small children remained behind. In some villages the entire young generation left home.” …
On the surface, it might appear that we have returned to a world in which America represents a promised land of freedom and social mobility. This view has certainly been a powerful incitement to many migrants. But the reality — then and now — has typically been far bleaker. Contrary to popular imagination, 30 to 40 percent of immigrants from Europe before the First World War ultimately returned home. For many this was always the plan. But others returned disappointed and disillusioned. They found little reward for their hard work, lack of support in times of illness and old age and questionable moral values in an ego-driven society.
It’s hard to point to any of those problems and say “yeah, we fixed that one.”
Ross Douthat hates universities. Hates them, he does.
Between the 19th century and the 1950s, the American university was gradually transformed from an institution intended to transmit knowledge into an institution designed to serve technocracy. The religious premises fell away, the classical curriculums were displaced by specialized majors, the humanities ceded pride of place to technical disciplines, and the professor’s role became more and more about research rather than instruction.
Over this period the university system became increasingly rich and powerful, a center of scientific progress and economic development. But it slowly lost the traditional sense of community, mission, and moral purpose. …
At which point the student radicalism of the 1960s entered the picture.
And… yeah. You don’t have to read Douthat long to run into this thesis. Like a guy who constantly dreams he’s walking the halls of his high school without pants, Douthat can’t seem to escape his disappointment that his time at Harvard was shockingly short of heretics being stoned. He’d really, really, like to remedy that.
Roxane Gay on the desire for a safe space.
… the students at Mizzou wanted a safe space to commune as they protested. They wanted sanctuary but had the nerve to demand this sanctuary in plain sight, in a public space. Rather than examine why the activists needed safe space, most people wrapped themselves in the Constitution, the path of less resistance. The students are framed as coddled infants, as if perhaps we should educate college students in a more spartan manner — placing classrooms in lions’ dens. ...
All good ideas can be exploited. There are some extreme, ill-advised and simply absurd manifestations of the idea of safe space. And there are and should be limits to the boundaries of safe space. Safe space is not a place where dissent is discouraged, where dissent is seen as harmful. …
There is also this. Those who mock the idea of safe space are most likely the same people who are able to take safety for granted.
I’ve heard multiple stories already that pinned some ridiculous happening at a “safe space.” All those stories have come from people who don’t need the space.
The New York Times revisits St. Louis County’s corrupt policing for dollars system and finds…
“Policing for profit” acquired sinister overtones when a Justice Department investigation into the shooting and racial unrest in Ferguson, Mo., drew attention to the fact that some towns in St. Louis County derived 40 percent or more of their revenue by repeatedly nailing citizens with traffic fines and fees for petty violations.
It turned out that just about anyone in authority — cops, judges, city leaders — was in on the game. The losers were disproportionately African-Americans, who either paid the fines or lost their licenses or went to jail. That, in turn, could lead to job loss, eviction and destitution.
The Missouri Legislature has since set limits on how much of a city’s revenue can come from traffic fines.
Which fixed everything and now the… oh, er, ummm.
Municipal creativity, at least in St. Louis County, seems boundless. An investigation by The St. Louis Post Dispatch this spring warned that towns in the county might start looking for cash in violations of building codes and neatness ordinances. …
Pagedale has increased the number of nontraffic tickets handed out to citizens by nearly 500 percent since 2010 and routinely threatens actions against people for offenses that are not even listed in the municipal code.
The city can fine or jail people for not walking on the right side of crosswalks; barbecuing in the front yard, except on national holidays; playing in the street; wearing one’s pants below the waist in public; and failing to have a screen on every door. The city can even issue a ticket if it does not like the look of a homeowner’s drapes or if the window blinds are not “neatly hung.”
I’ve gone on a bit long on this one, go read the rest if you want to see the unbelievable lengths Pagedale goes to in order to generate nearly two court cases per citizen per year.
Frank Bruni (yep, he get’s two this morning) actually has something to say about a politician.
In its earliest stages, a presidential campaign is more like a costume ball.
And right now, perhaps no candidate wears a mask as thick as Ted Cruz’s.
He had it on during last week’s debate, when he lashed out at any Republican who gave any ground on illegal immigration.
“The politics of it would be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande,” he thundered, and there was no mistaking the contempt he meant to communicate for those elite, out-of-touch professionals.
But where does that contempt leave him?
He’s a lawyer, with a degree from Harvard, which was his steppingstone to a conventionally ambitious Supreme Court clerkship.
Where does that contempt leave his wife, Heidi?
She’s a banker, on leave from a job with Goldman Sachs in Houston, where she ran the wealth management unit, which focuses on clients with an average net worth of $40 million.
Whaaa! Harvard lawyer married to an investment banker for the wealthy? You can’t insult Ted Cruz that way! Look, over here, there’s some footage of a pickup truck full of bacon.
Ruth Marcus on that vast and yawning gulf…
The more fundamental question — the scarier question — about Carson isn’t whether the retired neurosurgeon is a fabulist, and therefore whether he has the right character to be president. It’s whether he has the knowledge and understanding to be president. The evidence is rather conclusive that he doesn’t.
Why single out Carson? This is a fair question in a Republican race whose other front-runner is Donald Trump. But Trump’s brand of blustery unpreparedness is more self-evident, more accessible, than Carson’s. Trump will build a tremendous wall. He’ll stop making stupid deals. If voters are credulous enough to be seduced by his supposed managerial skills and convinced by his grandiose promises — well, that’s on them, though woe to the rest of us.
Marcus’ article is worth a read for the hilarious list of Q & A in which not one of Carson’s A is related to the Q he was given.
Kathleen Parker announces Trump’s meltdown. Again.
Thursday night, in a riff expressing his puzzlement over Carson’s growing popularity, Trump insinuated that Iowans — and perhaps even some in his audience — are of limited intelligence.
“How stupid are the people of Iowa?” he thundered to about 1,500 Iowans. “How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?”
Trump sprinkled “crap” elsewhere in his 95-minute tirade, saying the word at least three times. He also promised to “bomb the s---” out of oil fields in Iraq and Syria. And he insisted that the crowd take his word that he knows more about the Islamic State than our generals do.
It’s hard to find more in Parker’s column than her offense at scatological euphemisms and the umpteenth fingers-crossed for sure this time iteration that Trump’s time is over. But it’s not as if her take on Carson is all that different than Trump’s…
You can’t drive far in these parts without seeing Ben Carson on a billboard, looking more like a man of the cloth than of the operating room.
here’s something vaguely beatific in that face and beaming smile. “Run Ben Run!” reads the text on one sign. The moviegoer’s mind can’t escape the immediate association.
“Run, Forrest, Run!” the little girl cried out to her mentally challenged friend, Forrest Gump, as a group of mean boys taunted and pursued him.
Uhhh,,,, she said it.