It's simple, really, and the writers at Mad Men are by a long shot not the first to put it to words. War can't go on forever, and neither can peace, and the great balancing act is a peace that doesn't soften too much, but has mellowed well enough -- ripened -- so as to be round and full, not bitter and hard. Because this is still a show (at least in part) about men, I can't resist putting the paradox of peace into masculine terms. How does a man fight well? What does it mean to fight well? Not in a battle or even an army, but as a man who must earn a living, a man who is (or was, at least) a head of household? What is the peace dividend? Retirement? That can't be right.

It isn't the same question as happiness, which is a state of mind. Peace is I suppose something susceptible of being called a state of mind, too, but peace is physical in a way happiness isn't. Peace is not the absence of war, but if the absence of war or violence and turmoil isn't sufficient for peace, it sure seems necessary. One can be happy at war or at peace. One can be bored at war or at peace. The paradox of peace is that you want your peace to outlast you, even though, when it becomes someone else's, it has to stop being yours alone. Historical memory -- the Alamo, the Maine, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, 9/11, on and on -- is a great and powerful thing. But the physical facts of peace make the gravity of war unreal. Last year I walked down a hallway by the food court in Georgetown and Undergrad A said to Undergrad B "I don't even know why we celebrate Armistice Day. World War One was like a million years ago." (+1 for knowing what Armistice Day means, -1 for saying 'celebrate'.) It's like macaroni salad: how long can it keep in the sun? How can a catastrophe live on in a culture as a potted plant?

Teaching the facts is important, but teaching the facts won't do. There must be a deep, deep fabric woven from wartime past out and into peacetime, person to person, generation to generation, even when those who knew firsthand and so didn't have to remember feel very much like not sharing. But maybe above all a culture has to reserve in peaceful times a poetic sense of war. Eyes must light up when these things are told, even in spite of the horror. The imagination must be seized. Tonight, as the rival exec spontaneously performed the motorcycle ad he pitched his colleagues, we saw the way advertising had come to seize imaginations: commerce became our muse, and products our window onto poetry. How can a peace be a -- well, manly peace, if war stories fail to catch that same sparkle and gleam?

Yet we don't want to be bloodthirsty, and we're not a nation of aggressors. And man by man we still incline more toward fatherhood as the house of manliness than combative bachelorhood. Which is why fighting for freedom helps, a bit, to unravel the paradox of peace. What keeps the gleam in the American eye is not that we fight but why.

If your state is like mine, local National Educational Association apparatchiks frame every public school discussion in terms of inputs: the amount of tax money being doled out for public school instruction on a per pupil basis. Everyone outside of New York – the funding “winner” at $17,173 per head in 2008 – is lectured endlessly about how underfunded the local schools are relative to, well, New York.

But where does the money actually go?

Tonight, Matt Drudge is highlighting one project soaking up some of the educational loose change rattling around my bankrupt state: Next month’s opening in LA of the nation’s costliest school, a $578 million state-of-the-art structure housing 1,700 K through 12 students.

Let’s analyze the economics using the NEA’s preferred formula. $578 million divided by 1,700 students yields a cool $340,000 per student. Ah, but I’m being unfair since many students will use the facility over time. Fine. Let’s assume that the structure survives twenty years of wear-and-tear without a dime of taxpayer-funded repair or renovation. The adjusted cost per pupil per year drops to a New York-style $17,000. But this “investment” covers only the empty building. Anything educational is extra.

And the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools isn't exactly a one-off for the teacher-firing, class-size-increasing LA Unified School District.

The RFK complex follows on the heels of two other LA schools among the nation's costliest — the $377 million Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, which opened in 2008, and the $232 million Visual and Performing Arts High School that debuted in 2009.

The pricey schools have come during a sensitive period for the nation's second-largest school system: Nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years, the academic year and programs have been slashed. The district also faces a $640 million shortfall and some schools persistently rank among the nation's lowest performing.

It is evident that public school outputs in California are poor -- only 63 percent of high school students graduate, despite the gold-plated buildings. Nevertheless, the NEA argues that $9,863 per pupil per year is too little to afford more than a Zimbabwe-level education.

Basic arithmetic points to a serious flaw in the "aren't we stingy" argument. Twenty students carry $197,000 in annual spending into an average California classroom. Since their teacher earned approximately $64,424 in 2007, this leaves only $133,000 for rent, supplies and administrative support. You’ve gotta love a business that can’t get by on a 66 percent overhead rate.

Why can't school officials eschew real estate development, cut overhead, fund academic programs and hire great teachers? Why can't most of the line items in California's monstrous education budget be zeroed out in favor of per pupil block grants to principals and local school boards?

My head hurts.

Yesterday the high school football team held its first scrimmage. I sat in the stands with friends—right next to Pitch and just in front of Ellie, and all three of our boys had been in school together since kindergarten. The sky was cloudless, with that particular look of pale, glowing luminescence specific, in my experience, to California. My son? After a summer during which he had worked out twice a day, dropping ten pounds, taking an eighth of a second off his time in the forty, and adding five inches to his vertical jump, my son was looking pretty good out there. I don’t know why—maybe because I’d overheard someone describe the weather as “paradise”—but for a moment my mind engaged in a brief speculation about heaven. And do you know what I discovered? That I couldn’t imagine—literally, I simply could not imagine—any way in which heaven could improve on that very moment.

The thought has no bearing on politics, history, or culture. I know. But every so often—and particularly on the last real summer weekend (school starts on Tuesday) there’s no harm in pausing to note the sweetness of American life.

A moment ago, come to think of it, Bill McGurn and I exchanged emails. Returning by train to New Jersey after a family vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Bill was in much the same mood I’m in. “Very old-fashioned,” Bill wrote. “Hardly spent any money, save for a game of putt-putt one day and a few ice creams. Just a lot of beach time….I do like going out at the end of the day and enjoying the waning sun.”

If anyone else is in the mood to offer a postcard, so to speak, from the summer of 2010, I'm sure in the mood to read it.

So I’m watching Aftermath: Population Zero on the National Geographic Channel Sunday afternoon (okay, so my life isn’t all that exciting), which asks the question: what would happen if the entire human race simply vanished one day? Well, it turns out things would be pretty rough on domesticated animals and on the ecosystem as a whole, primarily as the result of nuclear plants around the world exploding and releasing radiation without man to, uh, man them.

Happily, though, the earth would heal quickly, plantlife would flourish without the pollution we nasty humans create, and there would be a heaven on earth. So there we have the problem. It’s us. The sooner we leave the better. I commend the good folks at the National Geographic Channel for their willingness to celebrate a world in which their ratings would take a severe hit.

More from Pat Sajak

Today the Presidency - Tomorrow the World!

Ground Zero Posturing

The Bill of Rights, 2010 Style

The taxi's coming to take me to the airport in about three hours. I just woke up with a start, thinking that I'd overslept, and now I'm afraid to go back to sleep for fear that I will. I'm all packed, and it's the middle of the night, so Ricochet buddies, would you please help keep me awake for the next few hours?

I'll give you something to start with. This reminded me of our earlier conversation about the critical things we just don't notice when we're focussing on something else.

I posted a link to our conversation about whether Islam itself is the enemy to my Facebook page. Some of my friends here in Istanbul (who are Moslems, and, as the word "friend" suggests, not my enemy) weighed in with responses that I think confirm my assertion that the Islamic world is not monolithic. In particular, my friend Babür left a long, thoughtful response, which I'll reproduce in full. (I've told my Facebook friends that anything they say on my page is on-the-record, and I've told Babür this in particular, so I'm sure he won't mind):

As a practicing muslim, and as somebody who's undertaken some Islamic studies, I might have a say for the closing remarks of this article:

-To decide whether Islam INSTITUTIONALLY embraces terrorism or not, the exact description and scope of “GENUINE” Islamic beliefs should be concretized first of all,

-I agree with the fact that, implementations of Islam are, unfortunately, as many as the number of muslims,

-Such differentiation upon "personal perceptions" is the misfortune of any mainstream & globalised religion,

-However, this differentiation occurs only in the practical level: the limits of Islamic beliefs - the theory, is all well defined,

-There is only one genuine, unique and clear-cut definition of Islamic beliefs, which is established back in 632 A.D., preserved with a sound application of METHODOLOGY (centuries before the European version of methodology was developed), and has survived so far,

-This set of beliefs is called "Sunnah", and its followers "Sunnis",

-In terms of daily religious activities, the Sunnah have several sub-categories, the practical sects / "MEZHEB"s; which provide Sunnis with a somehow wide range of options to choose from,

-The practical mezhebs are not at conflict with one another at all; one can pray according to "hanafi" mezheb, fast according to "shafi" mezheb, and yet, make his/her donations according to "maliki" mezheb, etc.: the Prophet (sav) has fulfilled his daily actions compatibly with all mezhebs,

-BUT THEN.. where do we locate the "Shia" concept?

-Clearly speaking, the modern Islamic world is divided into some 75 THEORETICAL mezhebs, most of which fall under the "Shia" category,

-The word "Shia" has its roots in the expression "Gulat-i Shia li Ali b. Ebi Talib", meaning "helpers of Ali b. Ebi Talib",

-Ali, the beloved cousin of Prophet and one of the capital masters of muslims - either Shia or Sunnis, has experienced a major political chaos near the end of his life, and naturally, a circle of helpers / political suppliers formed around him,

-The historical development, and thus, main BELIEF categories of these helpers, the Shia, has 4 main phases:

(1) those who favor Ali over Osman as a caliph (ONLY a political distinction),

(2) those who favor Ali over Abu Bakr and Omar as well (a FAR-FETCHED, but still political distinction),

(3) those who favor Ali over Prophet (sav) (the beginning point of BLASPHEMY),

(4) those who favor Ali over God (an EXTREME point of blasphemy).

-The last two phases emerged nearly a century after the death of the Prophet (sav); SO, DURING THE FIRST CENTURY OF ISLAM, THERE WAS NO DISTINCTION OF BELIEFS, BUT ONLY POLITICAL VIEWS,

-Apart from the Shia, some extremist sects also arose throughout the history, like Batinis, Ismailis, Durzis, etc., who are definitely non-muslims,

-So, in terms of beliefs, the modern Islamic world can be divided into three parts: (1) Sunnis, the unique believers, (2) non-Sunnis, but believers, (3) non-Sunnis and non-believers,

-Haven said all this..

How does genuine Islam, the Sunnah, approach terrorism?

Islam ABSOLUTELY forbids even the slightest offense against individuals (either women or men, the young or the old, etc.) who has not attacked Islam and/or muslims in a military fashion; even, military personnel figthing against Islam and/or muslims who ask for mercy during a full scale battle, should not be touched.

-This rule is very, very clear:

The first two warfare of Islamic history, The Battle of Badr and The Battle of Uhud, were of vital importance for the survival of the early Islamic society and thus, the entire religion.

EVEN DURING THOSE WARFARE, the Prophet (sav) applied the above principle with utmost certainty..

-A similar example is The Conquer of Mecca, where, the Prophet (sav) showed TOTAL mercy (involving the entire enemy army), after being oppressed, humiliated, and even subject to genocide for two decades..

-This is the REAL Islamic approach. Any sincere muslim IS OBLIGED TO oppose terrorism, suicide bombing, 9/11 attacks, El Qaeda, etc.

-The knowledge requirement standards enough to make a decree, or “ICTIHAD” were stated by the Prophet (sav) himself. Those fulfilling the standards, the “MUCTEHID”s can alone authorize the Islamic approach to any situation.

-Real muslims do not care about Imam Whatsoever, etc. has said, unless those so-called, often self-declared Imams measure up to be a muctehid..

I later left this comment:

I've just walked down a street filled literally with thousands of Moslems of exactly the kind many people are seriously arguing do not exist. I saw them with my own eyes, as I have every day for the past five years. With so many other questions in the world, why waste time debating this? Book a ticket to Istanbul, spend an afternoon here, have a lovely time, drink some tea, meet friendly, tolerant, warm, welcoming Moslems (mostly), and see for yourself. They exist! They're my neighbors and my friends! Babür, is there anyone at our gym, for example, who would not describe himself as a Moslem? Would any member of our gym endorse terrorism, honor killing, forcing me to wear the hijab, or subjecting me to a dhimmi tax? The idea is so absurd it's beyond discussion -- and yet we're discussing it.

Theo Spark found the conversation sufficiently interesting to link to it in his blog. He described the discussion as a "raging debate." I notice that his post has been picked up at Right Wing News. So now this chat among my friends is a raging and somewhat public debate, I guess.

The odd thing is that the "raging debate" is about whether moderate Moslems exist. That they do is a proposition so easily verifiable that I don't even have to leave my apartment to do it. I can just look out the window.

But no one even noticed the snake pit of controversy embedded in Babür's claim that Shi'a Islam is a heresy.

Now, as people who know the Islamic world well will tell you, that is--what is it Andrew Sullivan calls it?--the money quote. You just watch and see how much more blood is yet to be spilled over that claim.

And no one even noticed it--their attention was elsewhere.

More from Claire Berlinski

Don't Be Depressed By the GZM Debate

Moderate Islam: A Definition

Arguments Good and Bad: the GZM, Zoning Law, and the Bush Doctrine

Let's Not Convince the World's Muslims We're Out to Destroy Islam

In reading this account, I do not have the benefit of the full decisions, but I did go back to read the provisions of the Criminal Code that should be relevant to the matter of the charged Somali pirates. I set them out below. The materials quoted make reference to section § 1651 which tracks the constitutional authorization given to Congress, which under Article I has the power “To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations.” Reading that section, however does not seem to exhaust the scope of criminality for which punishment could be authorized. It would be odd in the extreme if the Constitutional provision were read in such a fashion to make it impossible to declare attempted piracy a crime, when attempted murder surely is a crime. And so too with making criminal aiding and abetting, or conspiracy to commit piracy and the like. Indeed, a further look at the code contains section 1653, which makes “cruising against the vessels and property” of the United States a crime, and if so, it is odd, to say the least that criminal charges were not put forward on those grounds in this case, or if put forward did not prevail. “Cruising around” seems to describe the behavior of these pirates to a tee.

The larger question in one sense, however, is whether the only sanctions that can be brought against pirates are those of the criminal law. I am no expert on the subject, but my understanding is similar to John’s, which is that pirates can be rooted out at any time and any place that they can be caught. They are regarded as universal outlaws who enjoy the protection of no sovereign. The United States is not bound to so treat them, but may. The question is whether that course of conduct is wise, which it may well be given the havoc that these pirates wreak in the shipping lanes.

That I have little confidence in my own judgment about what should have been done is neither here nor there. That I have little confidence in the judgment of President Obama is much more of a concern. The problem is simple. He cannot be the reflective philosopher sitting on top of some distant tree and the President of the United States at the same time. He has to think of American interests first, and not act as an advocate of the enemies of this nation. All this is not to say that he, or any other president should ignore arguments that others could make against the United States. It is that in making his calculations, he cannot think of himself as a detached and disinterested observer. That is a job for professors like myself. As against enemies of the United States, and indeed all civilized peoples, he should use all his lawful powers to the maximum and not make excuses for those who do not deserve benefit of the doubt.

§ 1651. Piracy under law of nations

Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life.

§ 1653. Aliens as pirates

Whoever, being a citizen or subject of any foreign state, is found and taken on the sea making war upon the United States, or cruising against the vessels and property thereof, or of the citizens of the same, contrary to the provisions of any treaty existing between the United States and the state of which the offender is a citizen or subject, when by such treaty such acts are declared to be piracy, is a pirate, and shall be imprisoned for life.

Presidential administrations aren't brought low by the actions of their enemies. Usually, it's the people inside.

They leak and spin and talk out of school. They try to get their story out first. They'll call a friendly media toady and speak on deep background: "No, no. I told the president...." and the piece will read something like, "Sources close to the president say that it was Chief of Staff About To Be Fired who made the call...." Or: "Close presidential associates say that the White House knows it has a big problem...."

We've all read these pieces. Every administration experiences it, eventually.

Here's the first one I've spotted for the Obama crowd. It's about -- what else? -- the political stupidity of wading into the Ground Zero Mosque business. From Politico:

The president’s decision — made with the support of senior advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, his two closest friends in the West Wing — reflected Obama’s forcefulness on issues closest to his heart, a willingness to jettison calculation when core beliefs are in play.

Right, okay. You can skip over the sloppy French kiss the reporter gives to his beloved president. He's too good for us. Got it. Moving on.
The point is, it's Axelrod and Jarrett who are fingered for this blunder. And whoever "helped" the reporter with his piece knew it was a blunder, delivering this nugget of office gossip:

For several days leading up to the Ramadan speech, Obama and his inner circle had been discussing how or whether to publicly address the issue, which seemed to be dying down in the New York tabloids.

Someone was arguing that the story had run its course. Someone was arguing that injecting Presidential prestige into the discussion was a loser idea. Who was that someone? Well, who do you think?

Prior to the decision, Emanuel and Obama’s communications staff vividly — and presciently — predicted that Obama would be handing Republicans a weapon to batter Democrats as weak-kneed on terrorism three months before the midterms, according to several people familiar with the situation.

More to come. This is going to be fun.

Federal judge Raymond A. Jackson has dismissed piracy charges against six Somali men who are alleged to have fired on U.S. naval warships on the Indian Ocean. Why? Because the attacks failed to ravage our vessels — indeed, the Somalis were captured and brought to Judge Jackson’s civilian court in Virginia. According to Judge Jackson (appointed to the bench by President Clinton in 1993), to be prosecuted for piracy (under Section 1651 of the federal penal code), pirates have to succeed in carrying out a robbery on the high seas. If they try but we capture them, they can’t be charged. -- Andy McCarthy

The rejection of the piracy charges shows yet again how the Obama administration confuses the nature of war with crime. Compare President Obama with President Teddy Roosevelt.

In 1904, New Jersey native Ion Perdicaris was taken hostage by Moroccan bandits. They were led by Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli, who was known as the "Last of the Barbary Pirates." President Roosevelt's response to the news: "This government wants Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!"

The president ordered seven battleships and a contingent of Marines to Morocco. That is how American presidents used to respond to pirates.

Likewise with Jefferson. In 1801, Thomas Jefferson ended the payment of tribute to the Barbary pirates, who preyed on American shipping in the Mediterranean and enslaved U.S. sailors. He sent a naval squadron against the pirates with orders to "chastise their insolence" by "sinking, burning, or destroying their ships & vessels wherever you shall find them." That August, the USS Enterprise fought a three-hour duel with a pirate corsair, killing half its crew, cutting down its masts, throwing its guns overboard, and setting it adrift.

The Obama administration's legal and policy confusion over terrorism and piracy has contributed to the very problem at hand. Under the Left's theory of the war against al-Qaeda, terrorism is really a crime, not an act of war. Terrorists are not illegal combatants (a category recognized by the Supreme Court in past wars and by other nations since Roman times to distinguish between proper soldiers of an enemy state and those who fight outside the laws of war), but just garden-variety criminals.

The Obama administration seems to think of pirates as criminals, who are to be arrested and hauled back to the United States for trial. When Somali pirates took Captain James Phillips of the Maersk Alabama hostage in spring of last year, President Obama sent the FBI to conduct hostage negotiations, and only authorized the use of force -- in this case, allowing Navy snipers to shoot at the pirates -- if Captain Phillips' life was in imminent danger.

We should treat the pirates as they have consistently been since Roman times, as hostis humani generis, the enemy of all mankind. SEAL sharpshooters should be able to fire whenever they have a clear shot at them, regardless of whether a hostage is threatened with imminent harm or death. The same goes for pirate vessels. Rather than let pirates approach peaceful commercial shipping and only then seek to make arrests, our powerful Navy could simply hunt and destroy pirate ships and their land-based support networks "wherever" a commander "shall find them," in Jefferson's words.

But this would require the Obama administration to follow the Bush counterterrorism example by applying the rules of warfare to piracy. This does not mean that the United States cannot resort to its criminal laws, only that conflict with pirates can rise to the level of war and justify the use of military measures, too.

Rod Blagojevich was the headline act today on Fox News Sunday, and he filled that role gloriously.

Comparing himself at various moments to Batman, Robin and Winston Churchill, Blago dissembled, dodged, and ignored Chris Wallace’s questions with aplomb, even in the face of infamous “[expletive] golden” phone conversation clips.

Blago made big news, however (and Wallace did his best to press him) when he suggested that his legal team might call Washington stalwarts like Rahm Emanuel, Sen. Harry Reid, and Sen. Robert Menendez for defense testimony in a second trial, and insisted that he was guilty of nothing more than standard political horse-trading. Wallace asked Blago if he thought he was no more guilty than Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel, or Bob Menendez, and Blago said: “That is exactly right…they are not guilty either…we are going to try to call them up…and President Obama too.”

He also said that he's not ruling out a return to politics. Remarking on Blago's self-comparison to Winston Churchill and his vow to break back into the arena, Wallace said, “You can’t be serious.”

Blago’s last words? “No, I’m not serious—I don’t smoke cigars [like Churchill], I don’t drink as much scotch …and I run faster than him…and no I’m not ruling myself out for coming back politically.”

----

The Ground Zero Mosque was another hot story on FNS, This Week, and Meet the Press.

On FNS, by way of introduction, the panel discussed Obama's religious beliefs. A White House spokesman, responding to the belief among some Americans that Obama is a Muslim, noted that Obama is a Christian and prays daily. In part because of Obama’s support for the Ground Zero Mosque, 18% of Americans believe he’s Muslim (while 12% did last November, at election time). To Juan Williams, there have been concerted maligning efforts among conservatives to bring into question Obama’s religious beliefs. Williams noted that it doesn’t help that Rush Limbaugh calls the president “Imam Obama.”

I was surprised to see that the panel did not discuss at all the source of funding of the mosque itself, since there was an article in The Daily Beast just this weekend that questions the claims that the mosque is receiving funding from countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, or radical Muslim groups.

In recent days, critics of the proposal to build a mosque and Islamic center near ground zero have linked the plan to everyone from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Islamist organizations Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. But the plan's real fundraising effort, thus far, is much more innocuous: a PayPal account with less than $9,000 in it, mostly from New Yorkers, raised by a group of Muslim moms in Manhattan whose original aim was to host a peace march.

Daisy Khan, the wife of Feisal Abdul Rauf, appeared on This Week today with Christiane Amanpour and one topic of discussion was funding. Khan said that the funding plans are a long time off (as The Daily Beast article attests--they've only raised $9,000 dollars). First, the organization needs to establish a board, and then that board needs to establish a financial arm. Once it does, Khan said that in their fundraising, the center would adhere to the strictest dictates of the Treasury Department.

I think it's becoming clearer and clearer at the GZM will not be the bastion of radicalism that some people have claimed it would be. Add the seemingly harmless sources of the mosque's funding to Imam Rauf's moving speech at a service for Daniel Pearl where he said "I am a Jew, I have always been one," to the fact that Rauf is a Sufi, and I think that Americans will find an ally, not an adversary, in this center and its leader.

For instance, the idea that the center would have Saudi funding, or funding from other Wahhabist or jihadist groups, is misguided. In Saudi Arabia, Sufism can be a capital offense. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have a history of attacking Sufis and Sufi shrines. Rauf's center near Ground Zero is not so much an affront to Americans as it is to the jihadists that we all abhor.

For those who may not know, Sufism is a mystical arm of Islam--the flower-children of Islam, diametrically opposed to the radicalism of the jihadists. I grew up in a Sufi meeting house in Montreal. Twice a week, a mix of Western and Middle Eastern Sufis met, meditated, drank black tea, and smoked cigarettes. They spoke with love about the ecstatic poetry of Rumi. Many of them being Iranian expats, they despised the theocratic regime in Iran. They, in short, are the type of Muslims that Americans would want as partners in their efforts of combat radical Islam.

Regardless, on Meet the Press today, Rick Lazio said, "There are millions of peace-loving Muslims in America…this Imam, Abdul Rauf, is not one of them." Lazio is running for governor of New York.

One point that Daisy Khan made on This Week, which struck me, was that the opposition to the "mosque"--which isn't really a mosque, but a community and athletic center that will also have a prayer room--is shocking to her. It is like "metastasized anti-semitism. It's not even Islamophobia, it's a hate of Muslims. We are deeply concerned." Is that a fair characterization?

---

Christiane Ammanpour had President Hamid Karzai on this morning's This Week, and she tossed him a few softball questions before getting into some meatier ones, first about Karzai's recent order requiring the disbandment of private security contracts within Afghanistan within the year.

A little bit of news was made when Ammanpour asked about the recent arrest of a close Karzai associate, Mohammad Zia Salehi, who is charged with taking bribes and providing luxury cars to presidential allies. Immediately after his arrest, Salehi was released, prompting serious concerns among American officials about the seriousness of Karzai's commitment to anti-corruption initiatives.

Earlier this week, Karzai's people denied that Karzai had any role in securing Salehi's release. But on questioning from Ammanpour today, Karzai proudly announced that he had secured Salehi's release, likening the nature of the arrest to Soviet-style political persecution. Karzai did himself no favors with his American audience, looking by turns weak, vacillating, and aloof.

Diane's sad post, earlier today, prompted a surprising number of comments about childhood memories of similar, hugely traumatic events. It made me wonder: If this group of people were speaking in person, would such a conversation be at all likely?

This has long interested me, the curious relationships people develop on the Internet. They're often at once much more intimate and vastly less intimate than ones that take place face-to-face. I wrote Lion Eyes in part just to explore this strange phenomenon. It's not just true of romance on the Internet, it's true of many relationships.

This old article about the psychology of cyberspace (remember that term?) offers some useful thoughts about why this is so.

I'll be meeting at least a few of you in person in the coming weeks; it will be interesting to see how similar or different you are from the way I imagine you.

I'm delighted to welcome this week's Guest Contributor: veteran journalist and intrepid blogger Robert Stacy McCain. A frequent contributor to The American Spectator and the co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of Donkey Cons (2006), McCain spent 11 years writing and editing at The Washington Times before hanging up his bloggy shingle at The Other McCain.

A native of Atlanta and graduate of Jacksonville (Ala.) State University, McCain was awarded the George Washington Medal by the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge in 1996 for his series of columns in the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune about the National Standards for U.S. History. He lives in western Maryland with his wife and six children.

The consummate insider's consummate outsider, McCain is equally at home in the deserts of the Sudan and the wilds of the Georgetown cocktail circuit. I'm sure he'll fit right in. Help him feel at home anyway, won't you?

Ricochet member Tom Lindholtz was kind enough to suggest a topic a few weeks ago when our James Poulos solicited them with his Assignment Desk post. Tom wrote, in part:

I would like to see some thoughtful discussion on the nexus between religion/morality/ethics and politics/jurisprudence/economics/policy. Is it possible to be great -- which I take for granted we all want America to be -- without being good? Is there a fundamental, unwritten (?) assumption on the part of the Founders that demands freedom of religion for religions that are antithetical to religious freedom?Commentators? Anyone, but especially Dave and Victor and Mark (if he's ever around anymore.)

My apologies to Tom. I haven‘t forgotten his request, but it was a pretty tall order. Then again, no one else has taken a stab at it, so I might as well put some thoughts on the table for discussion, or dispute, or slaughter, as the case may be.

Is it possible for America to be great without being good? I don’t think so. I think it is possible for individuals to be great without being good, depending of course on your definitions of goodness and greatness. It is generally believed, outside of the White House these days, that Winston Churchill was a great leader. He was also an insatiable boozer. There was a story that a group of ladies met with the Prime Minister to voice their concerns over his alcohol consumption during WWII. If all the liquor he had consumed during the war to that point were poured into the room, they told him, the level would go up to his waist. Churchill reportedly looked at the ground, then at his waist, and then up to the ceiling before replying, “So much already done. So much left to do.” Some would argue that this made Churchill less than a good man. I disagree, but the case can be made. His greatness as a leader, however, is beyond reasonable dispute.

In the case of America, I think that we invite trouble precisely to the extent that we cease to be a good country. Our Constitution is based on “self evident” truths championed in the Declaration of Independence, and those truths are tethered to the Judeo-Christian experience. When we cease to think of our rights as having been authored by the Creator, we leave them vulnerable to the avaricious designs of dangerous men. That is when our right to property, self defense, free speech, the fruits of our labor, etc., cease to be self evident or divine in nature, becoming instead the playthings of utopians. In fact, a convincing case can be made that our current maladies are exactly the result of severing the ties between “religion/morality/ethics” on one hand, and “politics/jurisprudence/economics/policy” on the other.

As to the question about a, “...fundamental, unwritten (?) assumption on the part of the Founders that demands freedom of religion for religions that are antithetical to religious freedom,” I think Claire Berlinski has made a compelling argument in this regard. As regards Islam and its practice in the West (if I goof this up, Claire, please correct me), we already have laws on the books that if properly enforced, would deal effectively with any religious (or non-religious) practice that infringed on the rights of other people. This would necessarily foreclose the practice of sharia in America, as that savage code embodies the unconstitutional denial of human rights, but would permit Muslims, Buddhists, and even Alabama football fans, to believe as they wish and practice their faith so long as it doesn’t infringe on our rights and laws.

President Obama’s singular lack of courage led him to announce the obvious, namely that Islamic leaders in the US have a right to build a mosque in lower Manhattan at Ground Zero (assuming the funding and logistical mechanisms are legal). What he didn’t have the fortitude, or leadership, or understanding to say was that the American people have a corresponding right to make their voices heard on the subject, and that there is a critical difference between permitting an action and granting our approval of that action (especially when it is of such a provocative nature).

Thomas Jefferson’s willingness to tolerate even the voices of those who advocated the repeal of our system of government was, essentially, a testament to the good judgment of the American people to discern between sound and unsound ideas and boldly identify them as one or the other. While people in the US enjoy the right to believe and speak as they wish (within the law), Americans do not have a commensurate obligation to quietly and sublimely endure intolerant hostility to our Constitution, our rights, or our traditions whether in the name of religion or political correctness.

On Thursday evening I attended the Swell Season concert at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga with my boyfriend. The venue is stunningly beautiful: the band plays in front of a large, church-like stone building atop a mountain peak that offers breathtaking views of the Bay Area.

As the end of the concert approached, I saw a man jump onto the rear corner of the roof, then sprint toward the tip of the gable and dive off the roof. He fell about 30 feet onto the stage, just feet away from lead singer Glen Hansard and died in a pool of blood before the eyes of 1,900 concert attendees. It was one of the most shocking and traumatic events I have ever witnessed, and the incident has played and replayed in my mind constantly over the past two days.

There are always big questions revolving around suicide. It’s never easy to process how a fellow human being could be so determined to end his own life. But the questions I’m struggling with as I process my own trauma aren’t about suicide, but rather about the nature of facts. I struggle to understand why I’m so angry at misinformation in news reports about the incident. I’m angry when I read eyewitness accounts recounting the man falling from the lighting fixture when I clearly saw him fall from the roof. I’m angry when I read someone write that he performed flips as he fell, when I saw him fall like a bag of cement.

Yet as I read reports that differ from what I myself saw, I start to doubt if the way I remember things happening is the way they really happened. I feel tempted to conform my memory to the details I read. And I can’t stop myself from coloring in the missing details -- the expression on the lead singer’s face or the pool of blood surrounding the dead man. These are things I rationalize that I really must not have seen because of my distance from the stage, but the memory of these details seems flush with the rest of the memory. I am frustrated that I find myself unable to differentiate what I saw from what I imagine I saw.

Ultimately, the minutiae of the incident that I’m struggling with don’t matter. But I’m suffering from a severe crisis of faith in eyewitness accounts, including my own.

This past week at Ricochet, Ed Driscoll did the collapse with the once-hot left, shed a tear for Europe, disapprovingly quoted Harry Reid, blamed bad acting and bad writing for the letdown of CGI, watched progressives turn back the clocks, approvingly quoted Chuck Todd (on Obama!), and asked us all what we're likely to remember this November. Join us all in a tip of the hat as Mr. Driscoll rides on back to his Pajamas Media homestead. Happy Trails, Ed!

Clayton Christensen, the brilliant author of The Innovator's Dilemma -- for my money one of the most revolutionary and electric books about business and entrepreneurship every written -- coined the term "disruptive technology" to describe an innovation that takes the market by surprise, by either creating a new and unexpected market, or by delivering something at a radically lower cost.

He's also, it turns out, an eloquent thinker about life in general.

In his recent article, How Will You Measure Your Life?, in the Harvard Business Review, he applies his business ideas to life, and describes a class lecture he delivers at Harvard Business School:

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.

And he gets deep:

For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I understood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra year’s worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford t o take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.

Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest techniques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day.

Why are you on the planet? What's your purpose? Those are great questions -- and a little irritating, too, I know. But worth thinking about. And worth asking, I think, not just of ourselves but of the people we're about to elect, or toss out, or re-elect, into office.

On Thursday, blogger Ace of Spades wrote a memorable "Get out the troops" speech, which will likely get plenty of re-quotes in the Blogosphere as November approaches. Here's a sample:

Henry Waxman is already enjoying that Democrats are going to lose -- he says they're going to lose the "difficult" Democrats anyway, so in effect the party will be usefully purged and the progressive caucus stronger and more pure.

He's already finding a silver lining in their losses.

That won't do: We need these losses to be unacceptable and brutal [...].

Second, someone said I was writing like Kos in '08. That is correct.

And what did Kos say? He said he wanted to crush our spirits and leave us heartbroken.

And you know what? They did.

Think back to your mental state in November '08 to say February '09, before the Tea Party, before we got up off our backs and decided we were so angry we were going to fight.

I remember a lot of people being heartbroken. A lot of people just stopped reading about politics-- they couldn't bear it.

Glenn Beck's "We Are Not Alone" campaign became popular because people really needed and craved the reassurance they weren't alone, because they feared they were.

We at AoSHQ started organizing local meet-ups and cheer-ups for people to get out of the house and have an uplifting drink with fellow conservatives. And people kept writing to me how much they loved those things, and how they needed them.

Why? Because we were heartbroken, we were crushed in spirit.

They won. They did: They broke us.

But we came back.

But the point is that it is quite possible that if Barack Obama and the Democrats had been a little more cautious and hadn't been so hatefully dismissive of majority opinion, our anger never would have turned to fire and we might have remained meekly on the floor, defeated, beaten, dead.

We need to do the same thing to them, we need to crush their spirits and break their hearts into a million jagged pieces. And we need to do such a fine job of it they never heal up. Never.

So, as my tenure as guest contributor comes to a close (and thanks for responding to my posts this past week with such good cheer!), a few last questions for the Ricochetista:

How realistic is Ace's scenario? And then what happens? As I wrote earlier this month at PJM, you can find examples of every prominent American ideology being pronounced DOA by their opponents over the past ten years. As Ace himself notes, the legacy media gleefully wrote a near-endless number of obits for conservatism in early 2009. Does this mean that we can expect super-ginormous spendaholic command and control Ruling Class "liberalism" to come roaring back with a vengeance in 2012 or 2014?

In any case, any predictions for the American economy and/or America's freedom post-November?

Mark Finkelstein of Newsbusters spots Chuck Todd of MSNBC (who had worked for the 1992 campaign of phony Vietnam vet Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) before becoming a journalist) defending President Obama's infamous "bitter clingers" speech from 2008 in a recent interview with Andrea Mitchell:

CHUCK TODD: I would say the real danger for the president on issues like this, is less about this, and more about -- Paul Begala one time said this to me -- he said, you know, the guy really is his mother's son sometimes when it comes to studying society. He's anthropoligcal about it. Remember that time when he was studying people in Pennsylvania, and he said to that fundraiser in Pennsylvania, you know they cling to their guns. He wasn't meaning it as demeaning in his mind, but it came across that way.

ANDREA MITCHELL: It's intellectualized.

TODD: He's the son of an anthropologist, and I think sometimes he goes about religion that way, almost in this, as I said because he's very well studied on, not just Christianity but on a lot of religions, but in that, frankly, anthropological way, and that can come across as distant.

As the gang here at Ricochet noted in their podcast Thursday, funny how a candidate sold to the public as "Spock-like" in 2008 turns out to be a president who's cool, distant, aloof, and views half of the country as some sort of weird alien group to make First Contact with -- when he isn't insulting them of course. (For a guy sold as being "post-partisan," he's arguably the most openly partisan president since Harry Truman and FDR were explicitly comparing their ideological opponents to Nazis.)

But then, the far left viewing Middle America from a distant anthropological perspective is nothing new. Back in 2002, Jonah Goldberg described this anthropological mindset as an ongoing media theme of "Conservatives in the Mist." As he wrote, "whenever I read liberals reporting about the goings-on of conservatives I always get the nature-documentary vibe:"

A liberal reporter puts on his or her Dian Fossey hat in order to attempt to write another installment of Conservatives in the Mist. I've followed this particular brand of reporting for years, it's almost a fetish of mine. Most attempts fail. Of these lesser varieties, there's fear ("Troglodytes!"), mockery ("Irrelevant troglodytes!"), condescension ("I had to explain to them they're troglodytes."), bewilderment ("Why don't they understand they're troglodytes?"), astonishment (Dear God, they're not all troglodytes!"), and a few combinations of all the above. But sometimes they even succeed, to a point. Thus, like the real Dian Fossey, they manage to saunter into the leafy thickets of conservatism, and are welcomed into a band of gorillas. They hold out the equivalent of a banana or maybe a fistful of grubs for long enough and eventually we come sniffing around. We're intrigued by the creature lavishing attention on us. And the reporter eventually begins to feel as though he has been accepted into the band. Eventually, we conservatives grow comfortable enough around them to return to our old patterns. We scratch and fight and do our gorilla things and the chronicler dutifully takes notes. The notes eventually make their way into an article for the New York Times or The New Yorker or Vanity Fair.

"Who knew?" the readers will say over their morning bagels and coffee in Southampton or Fire Island, "I had no idea conservatives were such intelligent creatures. Why they even have the capacity for emotion and even some rudimentary forms of kindness."

Okay, this metaphor has gone on too long already. But there are a couple of points worth making before we abandon it. No matter how hard Dian Fossey tried, she was never actually a gorilla. Second, no matter how much attention she paid, it's doubtful she understood what the gorillas were doing the way the gorillas themselves did. She may have gotten it right that BoBo was trying to woo Sally (or whatever the apes names were). But she probably could never understand the quality of the affection BoBo felt for Sally, in much the same way that an anthropologist or biologist can assert that you got married out of a natural human instinct to procreate but can't tell you how you feel about your wife.

Oh, and one last thing: Conservatives aren't gorillas, damnit!

Is it any wonder that wide swatches of the American public have tuned out on the president, and why the New York Times, which previously, had never met a religion it didn't want to bash (well, until it found a religion that bashes back hard, of course) is forced to write damage control material such this:

The White House says Mr. Obama prays daily, sometimes in person or over the telephone with a small circle of Christian pastors. One of them, the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, who was also a spiritual adviser to former President George W. Bush, telephoned a reporter on Wednesday, at the White House’s behest. He said he was surprised that the number of Americans who say Mr. Obama is Muslim is growing.

“I must say,” Mr. Caldwell said, “never in the history of modern-day presidential politics has a president confessed his faith in the Lord, and folks basically call him a liar.”

(As Frank Ross of Big Journalism quips, "Now where would anybody get that idea?")

Whatever else their flaws, I can't think of any other president, from either party, who viewed the American public not from the perspective of a fellow citizen, but as Chuck Todd of MSNBC noted at the start of this post, a research anthropologist. Am I wrong? And if so, which earlier president(s) would qualify?

There's also another possible drawback to Obama's seeming anthropological distance with the American public.

Canadian Blogger Kathy Shaidle once quipped that "Conspiracy theories are History for stupid people." All American presidents eventually become the victims of wacky theories of one sort or another. There are those who think FDR deliberately caused Pearl Harbor, and/or that Dubya caused 9/11. Dubya and Bill Clinton have at times witnessed masses of conspiracy theorists spontaneously pop up that nearly rival the perpetual JFK assassination conspiracy machine. (See also: Stone, Oliver, of course.) But does that distance from the American people that Obama seems to displays also make him particularly susceptible to the most recent formation of a conspiracy theory cottage industry?

In Ricochet's-Own-Gov.-Haley-Barbour news, The Week has your rundown of this round of buzz: Is Haley Barbour the Republican to Beat in 2012?

I'll be in Manhattan the evening of the 25th, and I'm pretty sure I've got a commitment from Ricochet member Jonathan Gilbert to take me to a really good place to do Muay Thai. (You still on, Jonathan? Sorry for the late notice about the date; this has all been kind of last-minute.) If it happens, you're all invited. I'll still be really jetlagged, so you'll all be at an advantage, too.

For the past six days, I haven't had voicemail on my iPhone. Well, I've had it, apparently. If you call me and leave a message, it's recorded.

It's just that I have no way of knowing that it's been recorded. My visual voicemail isn't working. This has meant several long calls to AT&T customer service, during which I've been treated politely and with a robotic commitment to the language of the customer service industry."

It's my intention to deliver excellent service today," said one person on the end of the line. "I understand how frustrating your problem can be and I do apologize for the inconvenience," said another, before launching into the same speech the first one did, about how we can "go ahead and perform some troubleshooting actions to better determine the source of the problem."

I've been thanked for my years of being an AT&T customer. I've been surveyed and questionnaire'd and thanked again. I've been placed momentarily on hold, asked if I'll allow the customer service representative to call me "Robert," apologized to for asking for the last four digits of my social security number again, thanked for being patient, told that AT&T values my loyalty, educated on the benefits of an international data plan, and asked if I have "received excellent service today."

What hasn't happened, what seems unlikely ever to happen, is getting visual voicemail back. Actually providing customer service isn't part of the customer service training, apparently.

When pressed, near the end of the fourth call, and half-way between one of the thank-you's and one of the customer satisfaction surveys, I was told this, about my voicemail problem:

"It's a known issue."

A known issue. It's a problem, it's network-wide, it's random, and they know about it. Being a "known issue," I guess, means never having to stop saying sorry long enough to fix the problem. I'll take rude and effective over polite and impotent any day of the week.

Claire will be in San Francisco on Thursday, September 2, so we thought it might be fun to get a few of us together for drinks after work. I'd expect a handful of local contributors to show up -- e.g., Peter, Rob, James, George, and Diane, along with Claire -- and we'd hope that some our local members will be able to join them.

We haven't locked in the specifics, but it will probably convene right after work (5:30ish) in the financial district or along the Embarcadero. And yes, that is Nancy Pelosi's district, in case the Speaker wants to commence her investigation right then and there.

Details to follow.

Frankly, I was just waiting for her to apologize. As celebrities go, Jennifer Aniston is one of the more polished. Surely she is surrounded by the best PR people that money can buy. I expected she’d ask for forgiveness, explaining she was jet-lagged, nervous, and momentarily insensitive. Then, maybe, she’d give a hefty donation to the National Down Syndrome Society or promise to appear at some fundraiser or benefit. But it doesn’t seem to be happening. Where’s the apology? I mean, even Rahm Emanuel apologized.

Jennifer Aniston compared herself to a "retard" on 'Regis & Kelly' Thursday morning ..."So you got to play dress up?" Regis asked of her Barbra Streisand-inspired shoot.

"Yeah, I got to play dress up," Jen said. "I do it for a living, like a retard."

Can someone explain why words beginning with “N”, “F”, “C”, and “S”—legitimately insulting to, respectively, African Americans, homosexuals, Chinese Americans, and Hispanics—have been (very appropriately) washed from our collective mouths, but the “R-word,” casually used to disparage people with intellectual disabilities, hasn’t been?

In too many places, people like me—people who are deeply offended by use of this word—are accused of lacking a sense of humor. If we’d just “lighten up,” the thinking goes, we wouldn’t get our knickers in such a twist.

Listen, no one likes to laugh more than I do. My husband is a very funny guy. Trust me, I have a sense of humor. My daughter with Down syndrome? A born comedian. But I find it hard to “lighten up” about certain things; rape, Holocaust victims, and disability fall into that category. (I know, I know. I’m such a drip).

In recent weeks, each of these has come up. The actress Kristen Stewart compared the attention of photographers along the red carpet at movie premieres to “rape.” Claire pointed out how certain Swedish mountain climbers are naming peaks after Third Reich horrors. And, now, Jennifer Aniston drops the “R” word to some laughs on Live with Regis and Kelly. I was equally offended by each of these, yet I don’t think I’m part of a group of “oversensitive PC thugs,” as I saw it labeled in a comment below a posted article in the Daily Mail.

If you have 10 minutes (and I understand if you don’t; I rarely do) please take the time to watch this speech by Soeren Palumbo, a young man, now a college student at the University of Notre Dame, who has something to say about this.

I really enjoyed this revealing little article at the New York Times. What a concept -- wander out in the street and ask a few local Muslims what they think about the controversy.

Malik Nadeem Abid [...] said he was “not a big fan” of the decision by the Cordoba Initiative, a Muslim group that promotes interfaith cooperation, to build the center near ground zero. “It was not a politically smart move, from my perspective,” said Mr. Abid, 45. “No one wants a center in downtown Manhattan that stands as a permanent fixture of this terrible tension.” Yet the decision has been made, he said, “and we can’t let the loudest voices dictate what happens.” Still, he added, if the center were built 5 or 10 blocks away, as some people have proposed, “I don’t think it would matter very much.” That kind of ambivalence over the downtown project, some said, was partly the point: Muslims in America embody the same diversity as everyone else.

No evidence that the Times interviewer seized Mr. Abid by the lapels and screamed "Why are you capitulating to bigots?!?!"

You all just waking up? Then you may not yet have heard. He says it's a dirty op, of course. If he's right, it's somehow exquisitely just, as covert ops go. Much more elegant than whacking the guy. As a spy novelist--as a novelist, period--I approve of the perfect matching of punishment to crime.

So, I'm out trying to do a few last-minute errands before I leave when I see the riot police out in their Robocop gear with the batons and the plastic shields, and I know I've been thwarted for at least an hour, because whoever they're waiting for must be coming down the street in pretty big numbers.

Now, some very small percentage of the human population is immune to pepper spray; it's genetic, it just doesn't affect them, and I happen to be one of the lucky minority. (I usually don't explain this to my friends if we get sprayed, though; I prefer to cultivate the legend that I'm terrifyingly immune to pain.) So I don't worry about that, I just worry about which way the coughing crowds are going to run if this ends up, as so often it does, in tear gas, and whether that's going to stand between me and the discount shoe store. After I figure that they'll go up the street, not down, I decide I'm curious about what kind of protest this is. Pro-AKP? Anti-AKP? Anti-Israel? Then I see them coming. Trade unionists, apparently, against constitutional reform. Well, fair enough. Nothing particularly newsworthy about that.

But the protest against animal rape was really one of those only-in-Istanbul sights.

Thank you, Confucius the OEV, for pointing out this lucid piece by Ron Radosh. He sums up the key question prompted by the GZM debate:

An important issue is now emerging in the conservative constituency. It boils down to the following: Is Islam itself our enemy, and should Americans work to oppose Islam throughout the world; or, is it only radical Islam, what Christopher Hitchens calls Islamofascism and others call Islamism, the enemy we must oppose?

He provides a tour of the opinions, overt or implied, of politicians and prominent observers who have weighed in on the issue since September 11. He notes:

One must also heed what Daniel Pipes wrote some years back, that the real problem is identifying correctly who is and who is not a moderate Muslim. Imam Rauf may not turn out to be one—but that does not mean that moderate Muslims who actively seek influence are not real moderates. “With time,” Pipes wrote, individual Muslims are finding their voice to condemn Islamist connections to terrorism.” He presents many examples which must not be overlooked; yet he too warns that “There are lots of fake-moderates parading about, and they can be difficult to identify, even for someone like me who devotes much attention to this to this topic.” If it is difficult for Pipes, imagine how difficult it is for those of us attempting to make sense of all this from the outside.

I don't agree with every word Radosh writes in this piece, but I agree with almost all of it. His discussion of the Imam Feisal debate is particularly worthwhile. On one point, as I've mentioned here, I disagree--Radosh thinks the plans for the GZM have led to a "divisive and dangerous" debate. Divisive, yes; dangerous, probably not: It is giving rise to pieces like Radosh's, and many others, that are the essence of necessary and useful debate.

A last point--Confucius the OEV noted to me that those less inclined to see Islam as monolithic are often those who have had a lot of exposure to the Islamic world. There are exceptions (Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes to mind), but generally, I think that's true: Someone like me, who lives in Turkey, just can't be persuaded that everyone who calls himself a Moslem believes the word means the same thing--no more than you could be persuaded that everyone who calls himself an American understands that word the same way.

I heard on the car radio that yesterday was the day when we stopped working to pay our taxes and now we get to keep whatever we earn from now until the end of the year. (That is if you actually earn a weekly paycheck in today's Obamanomics.) Really? The end of August?! I almost tossed my cookies in the cupholder. Then I realized that in California we still have a few more months to go.