Birds, Stones

Imad Mughniyeh is dead (See Fausta’s overview of the avowed terrorist).

Here are a few realities:

If the Israel’s Mossad got him, they killed a number of birds with one stone.

They sent a message to Nasrallah and Fadlallah, reminding them that they too can be fertilize, be they in Lebanon or Syria.

There is another message sent to Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and every other two bit corrupt terrorist who mourned the death of their beastly comrade- ‘you are in no position to threaten us with rockets or the killing of Gilad Shalit. We can get you, your little dog Toto and everyone around you.’

There is yet another message to Damascus: ‘We can come and go as we please and we will come and go as we please and there is nothing you can do to change that. If you want to play with Tehran, you will pay the price. Imad Mughniyeh was killed in your back yard and on your watch, on the anniversary of Hariri’s assassination in Beirut.

Tehran too is put on notice yet again- it may not take a bombing run to effect some kind of change in that nation. A few well placed assassinations might do the trick, or at least shake up the game board. Glenn Reynolds was prescient when he said

This has been obvious for a long time anyway, and I don’t understand why the Bush Administration has been so slow to respond. Nor do I think that high-profile diplomacy, or an invasion, is an appropriate response. We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs’ expat business interests out of business, etc. Basically, stepping on the Iranians’ toes hard enough to make them reconsider their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq. And we should have been doing this since the summer 2003. But as far as I can tell, we’ve done nothing along these lines.

The Israelis may have sent a clarion message to the Iranians on our behalf.

We noted in Foresight that a former Mossad chief championed the idea of assassinating Ahmadenijad:

Western countries must unite in an effort to assassinate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former head of Mossad Meir Amit said on Wednesday night.

“Even though in the past I have been opposed to assassinating Arab leaders, this case is different because it alone is the center of the nuclear issue,” Amit told the weekly Kfar Chabad magazine set be published on Thursday.

Amit said he did not perceive an existential danger to Israel following Iran’s nuclear development – “but that is only on condition that we do something about it.”

It just might be the Israelis are starting to “do something about it.”

The assassination of Imad Mughniyeh serves as a reminder to the dysfunctional and failed leaders of the region that sooner or later we and the Israelis will respond to their ever escalating threats and bellowing.

Beirut’s broken infrastructure and the south of Lebanon turned into cement dust ought to remind the Arab world that the Israelis will happily ‘lose’ another war with the similar results throughout the region.

“Conservatives want you to believe they have better ideas. Leftists want you to believe they are better people.”

Recently, James Wolcott of Vanity Fair took umbrage with our characterization of much of the left. In McCain In Vain, he attempts to sound credible as he discusses conservative supporters

Pop into the comments sections of some of the more conservative blogs (be sure to get your vaccination shots first though before delving into such fetid waters) and you’ll find a sporadic but persistent barrage of references to “John McLame” “John McAmnesty” “John McPain” and similar Algonquin Roundtable witticisms.They’re quite happy to cut off their noses to spite their faces because spite is what they live for and on.

For some reason, the ersatz erudite and piquant Wolcott has no problem with the ever popular ‘BushHitler’ mantra favored by so many in his neighborhood or the terms ‘uppity nigger‘ or ‘house nigger‘ in referring to Condaleeza Rice or Clarence Thomas when used by the very people he holds as superior.

Wolcott goes on to discuss right wing pundits in psychological terms.

…They have too much invested in their own self-righteous posturing to get with the program now. I haven’t listened to much rightwing talk radio in recent years and what struck me from monitoring Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and such on Sirius’ Patriot channel is that their animosity toward McCain is topped only by their own grandiosity

He points to our post, Crosses To Wear, Crosses To Bear, The Left And The Nacrcissism That Defines Them, as an example of conservative ’slop.’

The sort of hacky quacks whose psychotherapeutic blogs appear at Pajamas Media are always drivelling on about liberal Democrats being afflicted with toxic narcissism (this sort of slop)…

Wolcott is oblivious to a number of realities, not the least of which is that he, like Hannity, et al,  is a media pundit- no more, no less. His own narcissism leads him believe that he is different from them and and that he is superior and can therefore opine on an equal basis with the likes of Dr Sanity, Shrinkwrapped, Neo, GM Roper, Dr Helen, Assistant Village Idiot and countless other professionals in the field. The reality is that Mr Wolcott will never know what any one of these professionals has forgotten.

Where did you get your degree in the psychological arts, Mr Wolcott? Where did you do your internship and residency? How many years have you spent in the psychological trenches, Mr Wolcott? Exactly what kind of experience do you have?

Sorry for the reality check, Mr Wolcott.

Of course, Wolcott doesn’t really opine with any sort of credibility. He, like so many others of his ilk (from both sides of the political fence) believes that his saying so, makes it so- and if he can say so wittily, his remarks take on the weight of Gospel.

Of course, there is a difference between liberals and conservatives and that difference plays itself every day on our political playing field and Wolcott highlights the divide.

Conservatives want you to believe they have better ideas. Leftists want you to believe they are better people. 

Liberals want you to believe they are ubermenschen, the highest and most elevated form of humanity. They want you to believe that anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs are handicapped untermenschen at best and evil at worst.

The ubermensch cannot exist without creating an untermensch.

From Create The Ubermensch, Create The Untermensch:

One of the great legacies of the Nazi’s Third Reich was the idea that modern, educated man, could create an ubermensch, a kind of best man or superman. That baton was picked up by the Soviets and later, by many western leftists…

…The Aryan ubermenschen were to be the world’s leaders for one thousand years. They and they alone, knew what was best for mankind, and they would reshape the world and mankind with their values- and woe unto anyone or group that saw things differently or provided even a perceived threat.

There are a few truths shared by many of today’s leftists and the Nazis, Soviets and others that seek to create the ubermensch. There is an unassailable truth that to create an ubermensch, you have to first have to embrace the notion of the totalitarian state, where behavior and thoughts are controlled by the state…

Only the ubermensch could venerate the likes of Mao, Stalin, Che and Castro today. The blood on those hands can only be washed clean if the killings were done to ‘better mankind.’ The ubermenschen were better people, killing off the untermenschen whose ideas and whose very existence they feared.

Many leftists, too, now desperately seek the credibility of that academic imprimatur, before their biases and lies are realized. Universities are filled with leftist professors for whom ideology is more important than the truth. Like their German and Soviet predecessors, leftist ideologues do little to hide their agenda- or contempt…

They are after all, ubermenschen, right?

Leftist ideologues are threatened by any kind of standard of measurement- because they fear they might be measured and found wanting…The fear of measurement- and comparison- is real.

Leftist ideologues fear and despise capitalism and democracy because capitalism allows for the freedom and self expression of each individual- ideas that are anathema to leftist ideologues. Like the Nazis and Soviet communists before them, it is their vision and their vision only that is acceptable. Deviate even a bit and you become an ‘enemy of the state.’ Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman are now ‘traitors.’

The Nazis, Soviets and today’s leftists have a whole lot in common. In their goal to create and be ubermenschen, and to create the ubermensch utopia, they had to become the very untermenschen they claimed to abhor. They have adopted the same bigoted, repressive and oppressive ideologies as the regimes they are so attracted to. An example of that is the left’s support and worship of some of the most failed and racist regimes on the planet. James Wolcott may sound ‘reasonable’ at times, but let’s face it- when you defending and identifying with ideologues for whom hate is daily fare, you can’t hide the hood. It matters little if what what you wear under the sheets is a tuxedo or robes.

It is also true that the leftists do not see themselves as the inheritors of the ugliness and evil of the Nazi and Soviet untermenschen. They wrap themselves in the words of documents of higher calling and the most noble of causes. That said, what they do not see or acknowledge are the repercussions of their support for failed ideologies, beautiful documents and proclaimed statements notwithstanding. There are the unmarked graves of the tens of millions of the forgotten dead, killed because they were in the way as the caring ‘progressives’ marched on. There are tens of millions more, still suffering under the boot of ‘progressive’ oppression.

Today’s leftists want to destroy the evils of capitalism and American and democratic successes. Those who are uncomfortable with that idea pretend that isn’t the agenda they have- you know, like a lot of the German volk and the Nazis.

From Dr Sanity’s response to Wolcott:

If Wolcott really wants to understand the “drivel” we psychological professionals put out on this topic, he should consider the devastation and innumerable deaths brought about by all those wonderful leftist utopian ideologies of the 20th century. Now there was pathological narcissism in the native raw on a grand scale, the kind the political left can get behind.

The Anchoress addressed the naivete (and some would say phoniness and hypocrisy) of the left when it comes to the world in which we live. From Lamb And Dragon: Counter Terrorism With Love, she wryly notes,

…I take Nate’s point, and “love, love, love” is certainly the perfect solution to any problem, but it is never an expedient one; we’re living in a reality that involves nuclear weapons, so expediency (at least in clearing away the underbrush of incessant Jihad so we can get to that “love” part) has some value, here…

No sane person wants war. But sometimes war comes.

Dr Sanity says it with great clarity in Come For The Egalitarianism, Stay For The Bestiality And Tyranny,

So, many times in politics, programs that originate with the “best of intentions” end up doing exactly the opposite of what was intended. Yet, the political left is so ideologically committed to the utopian ideal of egalitarianism which, in the real world simply makes everyone equally poor and miserable (except for the lucky elites who control the social system) that they reflexly keep pouring money into programs that can be shown to actively harm the people they are meant to help; and reinforce the stereotypes they are meant to end.

The politically correct left heaps scorn on business, capitalism, free trade, and globalization; and instead glorify and praise the most primitive and barbaric of cultures and cultural practices. As Bob suggests, they come for the egalitarianism, but stay for the bestiality and tyranny they unleash with their “progressive” ways.

If they really cared about helping the poor; if they really cared about social “justice”–then they would shut the hell up and get out of the way of those evil, greedy capitalistic bastards, who, while pursuing their own selfish, profit-making agendas, in the long run effortlessly manage to increase the standard of living and improve the lives of everyone around them.

It is an unequivocal truth that Utopias cannot be created without imposing tyranny, death and darkness.

Wolcott is a hypocrite, an ape in a tuxedo. As we have noted many times, you can teach apes to dance and entertain, maybe even use a knife and fork. In the end, the only ones who believe tuxedos are effective camouflage, are the apes themselves.

So much for the leftist ubermenschen.

Dr Sanity follows up today with a look at uberbacteria.

Try telling your immune system to be reasonable, to sit down and talk it out with the viruses that want to invade you. Tell your white blood cells to hold conferences to try to understand the root causes of bacterial motivations…