Debating Leftistanis on Radio

Before I presented on my radio show the essay entitled: “Journey Into Leftistan,” also available on this blog, a man I stage in the essay contacted me through Facebook. John Wolfe offered to debate me on my radio show. ( “Facts Matter” comes on on Sunday on KSCO Santa Cruz, 1080 AM. It’s from 11 am to 1 pm. You can catch it on-line while it’s going on.)

Mr Wolfe’s offer was serious and I treated it lightly at first. I shouldn’t have done that. It happened because whenever I converse with someone who calls himself a “progressive,” I can’t control the devil in my that pushes me to toy with with his mind and try to make him cry. I shouldn’t. I will try to not do it in the future. Of course, I can’t promise anything, because of the same devil, obviously. In spite of all, I had most of the day to consider Mr Wolfe’s offer. I have decided to decline it. The reasons are listed below.

1     My radio station, KSCO, is right in the middle of Santa Cruz, one of the worst sixties time warps in the world. I am guessing my listeners don’t need more left-wing exposure. I am guessing they cannot avoid leftist viewpoints if they try. Why, we have the University of California at Santa Cruz on our hill! Angela Davis is a (quiet) full Professor of “The History of American Consciousness”there (o rretired from it). If you don’t know who she is, that means you are wonderfully young and possibly innocent. Look her up. It will be fun, I promise.

If a handful of my listeners tell me that my perception is mistaken, that they would like me to debate Mr Wolfe on air (if nothing else, for the sport), I will retract my decision.

2   Mr Wolfe and I almost certainly have irreconcilable differences with respect to basic values. I believe that the best way to avoid incipient violence is to threaten the would-be aggressor with overwhelming force, with much greater violence. I and the police forces of all civilized nations are on the same page about this. Mr Wolfe has shown on his Facebook that he is in favor of “proportionate response” to aggression. It means that if someone throws a stone through your window, you are only allowed to throw one stone through his window, if that.

If I debated Mr Wolfe on my show, I am pretty sure that our value differences would quickly bleed into the debate. That would be a waste of time for all, especially for the listeners. Values come from experience filtered through judgment. They never change through discussion.

3  Mr Wolfe has shown on his Facebook that he has access to a multitude of facts that have never reached my ears. This, although I confess to listening to National Public Radio several hours each day. That’s in addition to reading the WSJ, and Le Figaro every day, plus the Weekly Standard, plus Atlantic Monthly, and watching tons of American cable network television, and watching the French-language network TV5, also every day. And, of course, I rush to Al Jazeera in English on-line every time something new happens in the Arab world.

Given all this, I would have to ask Mr Wolfe to name his mysterious sources for his facts, and then, I would have to check them out. I am technically and intellectually incapable of doing this while on the air. Not doing so would be taking the serious moral risk of helping Mr Wolfe spread false rumors. Of course, I believe that facts matter, not a little, a whole lot. Incidentally, I am not calling Mr Wolfe a liar. I just know that many people, especially reformers, find whatever facts they need wherever because their bullshit detector is permanently on the “off” position.

4     If none of the above had any validity, I would still have to wonder whether it’s appropriate to give a tribune to someone with Mr Wolfe’s inexplicable emphasis. Here is what I mean: Mr Wolfe is obsessed with Israel and its misdeeds, real and invented. Even if everything Mr Wolfe and his friends alleged about Israeli atrocities were true, even if he they had left some out, even if there were twice more real killings by Israelis than they allege, the fact would remain that Israel in its whole existence would have killed fewer Arabs than Saddam Hussein in one average year. I am completely sure, Mr Wolfe never lifted a little finger to denounce Saddam Hussein’s massacre of Arabs. Mr Wolfe’s obsession is in itself objectionable even if he is right on everything. He would have to give me a legitimate reason for his obsession with Israel before I would give him the mike.

He might surprise me and do just that. I would enjoy making a tight U-turn on this one. In the meantime, no, I don’t want to give special airtime to “progressive” Mr Wolfe. If he bothers to call my show, as he could have done today, I will certainly bring him right to the head of the line, if nothing as a courtesy to someone who calls from far-away Tennessee. And, of course, he can use as much space as he wishes in a comment on this blog to this posting and to the one that preceded it.

Atrocities: Municipal, State, and Zionist

The City Council of Santa Cruz, California is going to spend $200,000 to decorate, embellish, create a planned turnabout in an important touristy location. I am not sure we need a turnabout at all. It confuses Americans. If we need one, I don’t know why it has to have artistic qualities as judged by the philistines on the city council. The location itself is quite beautiful. Is the council determined to compete with Mother Nature? I guess there is no economic crisis after all. (The council is dominated by leftists.)

To make things worse, the commission goes to an artist from Rhode Island, clear across the continent. The local paper, an objective ally of the council, does not say how the awardee was selected. Santa Cruz has thousands of artists. Sometimes, it seems that everyone who is not a therapist, an acupuncturist, a herbalist, or a teacher is an artist. Some residents combine two or more of the above avocations, as you might expect. The fiscal irresponsibility has reached the point where I am going to say “no” to any expenditure, I don’t care how justified the cause would seem to me if I understood it. I don’t want to know. It’s “No.” In the current context, this expenditure is an obscenity and a small atrocity.

I listened to the debate yesterday between the two California candidates for the beleaguered office of governor of this failing state. I am going to vote for Meg Whitman, of course, the former CEO of E-Bay. The main reason is that she is not Jerry Brown, a charlatan I have known all my adult life and a proven failure at every political office he has tried. He has tried most of them, incidentally, including Governor, twice, in the late seventies and early eighties.

It’s not that I am passionate about Whitman. She sounds like somebody’s mom. Mostly, she does not go far enough. Mildly challenged by Tom Brokaw during the debate about how to fix the State of California’s broken financial situation, she responds the usual way: Chase down fraud and waste. Given the financial condition of the state, that’s a kind of intellectual atrocity although a small one, I would agree.

As I have said before on this blog, that’s not good enough. Every politician promises to solve every fiscal problem by reducing fraud and waste. Whatever can be done has probably been done in this respect. What’s left is not worth doing or not sufficient to make a difference. Or else, it cannot be done. I wanted the Republican candidate to say:

Those are tough times for everyone. We have to reduce expenditures everywhere, no exception, We will have to cut all services, yes including fire and police. And of course, we will have to reduce educational expenditures since education eats more than half of the state budget.

As a start, as a way of limbering up for things to come. Whitman could call for across- the-board cuts of 5%, everywhere, no exception. Think about it: How many of you could not reduce their expenditures by 5% without suffering much? Think of turning off the lights, denying yourself that cookie that’s not good for you anyway, drinking (tap) water with dinner once a week, switching from double latte (that did not exist for your parents anyway). And some of you ladies: How about foregoing this absurdly expensive pair of shoes you were probably going to crumble for. (Sorry for the stereotype but there is a reason they exist at all.)

After such a cut, we would be in a better mental frame of mind to begin real cutting. Here is a mental experiment: How badly off do you think we would be if 1/3 of all state employees not directly engaged with the public were laid off suddenly? Think of the instantaneous savings.

As for the next-to-near future, it’s simple: Any politician who does not announce big spending cuts clearly and loudly is going to raise taxes and further discourage economic growth. Thus, Whitman may be a political stepping stone to a more radical retrenchment. Or, she may surprise me and do what’s right and brave. One thing is sure: Brown will not.

The most astounding news for today come from the French Le Figaro, a reasonably good centrist newspaper. It put up an article on-line about Israel’s contingency plans in the unlikely case there is a peace treaty with the Palestinian authority. As you might guess, the Israeli civil authorities expect that some Jewish West Bank settlers will riot on the news that they have to move. And, of course, Hamas will try a coup to seize the West Bank from the Palestinian Authority because Hamas wants war with Israel, not peace. (It’s in the Hamas Charter, linked to this blog.)

The real news, is that Israel also anticipates massive riots from its Arab citizens in case of a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority. It’s easy to guess that such a accord would lead to an exchange of territories. Israel would insist on retaining large segments of the West Bank it has annexed, for practical purposes, currently occupied by hundreds of thousands of Jews. In return, it would agree to give the PA probably a thin corridor linking the West Bank to Gaza. That would not be enough, however. Israel would also cede some of its current territory, squarely within the borders of Israel proper for fifty years. Areas heavily populated by Arabs would be natural candidates for a cession as such an operation would minimize the displacement of Jewish citizens.

Now, pay attention because you may have missed the irony: The people who would be affected are Palestinians by any definition. You can bet there has not been any immigration into Israel of Arabic-speaking Muslims or Christians. Anyone currently living within the 1949 borders of Israel who is a native speaker of Arabic and not Jewish is a Palestinian. So, Israel is predicting that Palestinian Muslims (with a sprinkling of Palestinian Christians) will riot to avoid having to live under the rule of Palestinian Muslims. If that is not the final verdict on comparative humanity and civilization, what is?

If the preparations for the riots are all Israeli propaganda, it’s masterful propaganda. I don’t think so because, in the past, when right-wing Israeli politicians spoke of expelling Arabs with Israeli citizenship, there were loud protests immediately. And by the way, the Israeli government’s recent trial balloon about an oath of loyalty is probably related. Prime Minister Netanyahu proposed that all Israeli citizens should swear an oath to Israel “as a Jewish state.” Such an oath would enrage the surprisingly large number of Orthodox Jewish Israeli citizens who insist that Israel has not right to exist (for scriptural reasons), it’s true. It would also serve the purpose of sorting the goats from the sheep among Arab citizens. Interesting; worth following.

Of course, I am expecting comments about the feared Israeli Arabs’ riots from several quarters. I can’t wait to hear what the Arab Leagues has to say about this problem. And I am looking forward to the expressions of commiseration of countless, Western, “humanitarian” anti-Zionist organizations. They may have to deal with yet another Zionist atrocity: The merciless clubbing by the brutal Israeli police of Arab demonstrators demanding to be left within the reach of Zionist atrocities.

I am not holding my breath about comments. As I keep telling you: Pay attention to what does not happen. It says a lot about reality.

You may have noticed I don’t blog much about the Obama administration anymore. I think it would be unsporting. It’s a rout, economic, political and moral. The President now looks pathetic. I might cover him again if I find anything at all he has done right. I don’t mean right by my lights only. I mean anything he has accomplished according to any constituency.

Zionist Agents Blow Up Muslim Sacred Site, Again!

We have become inured to Islamist atrocities, especially when they take place in far-away places, especially when the victims are Muslims. Just imagine the following headline:

“Two Calvinists Blow Up Catholic Shrine in France, Killing Themselves.”

Difficult to imagine, right?

Two young men blow themselves up in southern Pakistan. They blow up a Sufi shrine at the same time. The Sufis are one brand of Muslims. The homicidal bombers were either another kind of Muslims or they were from the Christian minority amounting to 0,0000001 % of the population. That’s unless they were half of the four Jews still living there, of course.

It’s all George Bush’s fault, naturally, if you look into it carefully. Or maybe,even probably, the bombers were Zionist agents.

I have to speculate like this because everyone knows that Islam is a religion of peace. When are American Muslims ever going to come out of the closet?