THIS MODERN WORLD

Via atrios, I see that CNN has hired the man who once “jokingly” said:

“Hang on, let me just tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out — is this wrong?”

You can let CNN know what you think here. Be polite.

Something else in that fake-future-history piece from a few posts back caught my eye:

This tendency was especially pronounced in Iran, where the social conservatism of the 1979 Revolution – which had lowered the age of marriage and prohibited contraception – combined with the high mortality of the Iran-Iraq War and the subsequent baby boom to produce, by the first decade of the new century, a quite extraordinary surplus of young men. More than two fifths of the population of Iran in 1995 had been aged 14 or younger. This was the generation that was ready to fight in 2007.

This not only gave Islamic societies a youthful energy that contrasted markedly with the slothful senescence of Europe. It also signified a profound shift in the balance of world population. In 1950, there had three times as many people in Britain as in Iran. By 1995, the population of Iran had overtaken that of Britain and was forecast to be 50 per cent higher by 2050.

You see this theme popping up a lot on right these days — the fear of an exploding Muslim population outstripping a declining Western birth rate. I wonder if the writers even realize the extent to which they are echoing century-old fears that the “advanced” races would be outbred:

AT THE TURN of the 20th century, infertility became an obsession for the eugenics movement. The growing scientific field of genetics led some political leaders to embrace the notion of controlled breeding to favor “advanced” races. White Americans feared an “infertility crisis” in their neighborhoods. President Theodore Roosevelt warned in 1903 that immigrants and minorities were too fertile, and that Anglo-Saxons risked committing “race suicide” by using birth control and failing to keep up baby-for-baby.

In one speech, Roosevelt said: “The chief of blessings for any nation is that it shall leave its seed to inherit the land. The greatest of all curses is sterility, and the severest of all condemnations should be that visited upon willful sterility.”

The notion of breeding as an act of national service would reappear during World War II.

Andrew Sullivan, over at his new paid perch as a Time Magazine blogger, links to that peculiar “America We Stand as One” video that was making the blog rounds, oh gosh, almost a year ago.

I guess that’s why Andrew makes the big bucks.

Tip jar’s over to your left, folks.

In his widely-quoted speech yesterday*, Al Gore ripped into the bedwetter’s fantasy that the dangers we face today are worse than any human being in history has ever faced before:

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment’s notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

I’m glad to see this idea gaining currency. It’s something I’ve been trying to point out for quite awhile, as in this cartoon from early last year:

*Widely quoted on the blogs, that is. The news media pretty much ignored the fact of a former vice president accusing the sitting president of impeachable offenses. Go figure.

The cycle begins anew:

The devastating nuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy, it marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq’s Shi’ite population overran the remaining American bases in their country and the Chinese threatened to intervene on the side of Teheran.

Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-2011 war was to vindicate the Bush administration’s original principle of pre-emption. For, if that principle had been adhered to in 2006, Iran’s nuclear bid might have been thwarted at minimal cost. And the Great Gulf War might never have happened.

And this nonsense from a Harvard professor, no less. Kevin Drum is right. We’re going to hear a lot more of this crap as this one starts to ratchet up.. The clusterfuck that is Iraq has not in the least diminished these people’s capacity for wishful thinking.

Related: Jonathan points to the best comment section post ever, here. Brief excerpt to whet your appetite:

Speaking as a Canadian who is fond of judicious language, I feel that this situation deserves careful and measured thought. So let me just open with:

Is your entire f*cking country on crack??? Are all you Americans out of your cotton picking minds??? Are you completely freaking delusional? Homicidal? Psychotic? Have you lost any shred of a moral compass? WHAT IN THE NAME OF JESUS H. CHRIST ON A CRUTCH IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!!!!!