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Minimum Wage Folly

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Perfect kind of obnoxious rock. The post The greatest songs to listen to on a motorbike, according to Josh Homme first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

It seems to strange to talk about laws of war. As William T. Sherman declared, war is hell. On the other hand, the story of the misuse of law reaches into antiquity as well. And as we see today, distorted ideas of law are used in the prosecution and support of a war that is as hellish and ugly as any in history — Hamas’ orgy of rape, torture, kidnap and murder against every Jew they could find, and which they fully intend to continue whenever they are able. In war, two opposing governments employ organized armed forces to establish their will. Neither side recognizes the law of the other side. Israel… has done more to protect civilians than any nation in the history of urban warfare. In modern times, we have evolved laws of war. These laws are understood to bind anyone who is warring. Breaking them can expose the violator to reactions ranging from nothing at all to censure, sanctions, and, as in the aftermath of World War II, trial for war crimes resulting in penalties of imprisonment or death. The enforcement is spotty and inconsistent, largely because the laws of war are not the result of a single government’s legal processes and are not tried by a judiciary that commands constitutional respect. Countries are leery of ceding their sovereignty to an international organization that may not reflect their own commitments to law and liberty. One only need think of the spectacle in the past of a United Nations commission on human rights being chaired by Iran and a majority of whose members were other anti-democratic states. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: Welcome to Venezuela, America) One could say much the same about the United Nations as a whole as well as the ICJ and the ICC. Their corruption and posturing reflect a degree of decadence with which we are not yet comfortable, despite all the hard work put in by the Squad and like-minded poseurs in academia, the legacy media, and the current State Department. Nonetheless, the idea of limiting war’s barbarity seems necessary, and laws encoded in such places as the Geneva Conventions commend most people’s assent. Among its many aims is the protection of civilian life from being targeted for terror and death as part of a war strategy. For law to work, it must command wide respect. In democratic countries, the rule of the majority and the protection of minority rights under any policy are the keystones. They hold up the structure that command the assent and respect, and sometimes the affection, of the vast majority of its citizens. In war, where there are no bonds of citizenship but rather, violent hostility, the laws depend on a wary mutuality. War has long respected the truce flag to allow people to approach to parley without fear. It was usually observed even in as violent a conflict as World War II.  Another such agreement has been, after World War I, the refraining from the use of poison gas. Churchill had commanded large stocks of it to be acquired in 1940, expecting that the Germans would use it freely as they had the time before. But the Germans used it only to exterminate Jews and other civilian prisoners, and by mutual consent, it stayed off the battlefield. World War II featured indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations. This grisly practice was begun on a large scale by Japan in China, then used in the Spanish Civil War, then on a massive scale by the Germans in Poland and Holland and in the Blitz in England.  Once one side in a war employs such an illegal weapon, the other side, as long as it does not wish to lose, will not grant its enemy an unfair advantage. When the Kaiser’s armies began gas warfare in Belgium in 1915, the Allies soon followed suit. The Nazi bombings of Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, and Coventry were matched and exceeded by the fire-bombings of Hamburg and Dresden and the leveling of other German cities. The Japanese bombings of Wuhan and Manila were matched and doubled by the bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. No country that does not wish defeat can allow the other side to break the laws of war while itself remaining bound.  The war in Gaza has proven a remarkable exception to this rule. Hamas’ initial attack violated a remarkable number of the laws of war as encoded in the 1949 Geneva Convention. It deliberately attacked the civilian population. It used murderous force. It employed torture. It used rape. It took hostages. It took hostages into sexual slavery. It denied them food and safe shelter.  Other abuses had been present already. It uses hospitals, mosques, schools, and UN institutions to shelter its military personnel, equipment, and structures from legal attack. It has for years randomly attacked Israel’s civilian population with rockets that cannot be directed with accuracy, and whose only reliable use is to create terror. It used its civilians to spy and map out the Israeli villages across its border in order to know how to be able to take over its civilians and murder, rape, or kidnap them. (READ MORE: Tyrants Don’t Get Humor) In the face of all this, Israel has bound itself to observing the same laws Hamas regularly violates. The model seems to be that of Rush Limbaugh, using, as he used to say, only half his brain just to make it fair. What has it done?  By any objective standard, there has never been a lower ratio of civilian to military deaths in any urban war in history. Ignoring the pure fantasy of Hamas’ casualty figures, as anyone not naïve or malevolent must do, West Point urban warfare expert John Spencer says the ratio for the war in Gaza is either 1.5 civilian deaths per military death, or perhaps an even one-to one. Spencer compared that to others in a Newsweek article: The UN, EU and other sources estimate that civilians usually account for 80 percent to 90 percent of casualties, or a 1:9 ratio, in modern war (though this does mix all types of wars). In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a battle supervised by the U.S. that used the world’s most powerful airpower resources, some 10,000 civilians were killed compared to roughly 4,000 ISIS terrorists. Israel has accomplished 90 percent evacuations of military targets, having made more than 100,000 phone calls, dropped leaflets, incredibly giving out maps that their enemy would certainly benefit from. It has done more to protect civilians than any nation in the history of urban warfare, even with all the evidence of popular enthusiasm for Hamas’ war and the participation of hundreds and perhaps thousands in the rape, murder, pillage, and hiding and abusing of hostages. Strangely — but it shouldn’t be strange knowing the hostility of Obama to Israel and his enduring influence in the Biden Administration — the U.S. government does not tout this but joins in the malicious and only rarely merely ignorant carping of those seeking to toady to Iran and its various proxies in Western countries and throughout the world. It is a nihilistic enterprise which our government only opposes fitfully and incoherently. Its aim is to have us see ourselves as the mullahs see us — utterly bereft of any morality or purpose, sitting ducks for their militant and exclusive version of religion, which now quite openly embraces genocide. (READ MORE: All Are Bound by the Law) That is not the truth of who we are. America knows it and is ready to ditch the incoherence. It’s time to get back on the path of peace. First step — end the possibility of the orgiastic butchers of Hamas ever holding power again. The post Israel Abides by Rules of War Its Enemies Would Never Dream Of appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Catholic Bishop Robert Barron has, over the past decade or so, become one of the best-known high-profile figures in American Catholic circles. His book and, later, television series Catholicism have elucidated and clarified the history and teachings of the Catholic Church for thousands. His Word on Fire ministry has played a part in keeping alive the Catholic tradition of public intellectualism. His podcast has facilitated earnest and even thought-provoking debate amongst Catholics and between Catholics and those of other faiths. But his latest published work is, at best, naïve — and, at worst, downright stupid. This way of thinking, championed by Maher and his ilk, destroys objectivity in reasoning and morality. In an op-ed piece for CNN — of all places — published last week, Barron hailed the pot-smoking, atheistic liberal talk show host and sometime-comedian Bill Maher as an “ally.” Barron begins by lamenting Maher’s staunchly-held atheism, glossing the godless pundit’s decades of ranting against God. The bishop then notes that Maher has seemingly pivoted of late to “articulating his opposition to the ‘woke’ ways of thinking that have managed to capture the allegiance of most of the major institutions of our country.” “As he has done so, I have found myself, time and again, nodding my head in agreement,” Barron writes of Maher’s grimly humorous tirades against the woke ideology. “To my surprise, the nemesis had become an ally.” The bishop proceeds to gush over Maher’s commitment to “classical liberalism” and fostering “fraternity across ideologies,” concluding, “Three cheers for Bill Maher!” Like Maher, Barron was born in the latter half of the 1950s. Both men grew up in an American society that no longer exists. In his op-ed, Barron joins Maher in lamenting that those on opposing ends of the political spectrum today tend to view one another as an “existential threat,” instead pining for the days “when Republican President Ronald Reagan and former House Speaker Tip O’Neill, a Massachusetts Democrat, could sit down for a friendly drink at the end of a workday.” The fact of the matter is that the opposite ends of the political spectrum are an existential threat to one another. One side clamors that the wanton slaughter of unborn children in a moral imperative, that transing children and horrifically mutilating their genitals is laudably compassionate, that order and authority are meaningless, that morality is determined by emotion, and that God has no place in the public consciousness. The other side argues that human dignity is a gift worth treasuring, that children — born and unborn — should be protected, that order is necessary for society to thrive, that morality transcends mere legal letters, and that all rights and goods are derived from God. The America that both Barron and Maher grew up in is dead — and Maher is among those who contributed to its death. While Barron says that the narcissistic brand of atheism Maher and so many others rabidly promoted and preached over the past several decades “annoyed” him, it did far more than just “annoy” the social fabric of America and the West: it normalized the notion that the human mind reigns supreme over all, including God. It was, in fact, a type of naturalism — the sin of Satan, the declaration that nature can replace Supernature, that the creature can replace the Creator, that man can replace God. This way of thinking, championed by Maher and his ilk, destroys objectivity in reasoning and morality. If there is no God, no eternal Entity who is Truth Himself, then who is man to say what is true? If there is no God, no eternal Entity who is Authority, then by what authority does any man say that this is morally right or that is morally wrong? By man’s own authority, of course, but which man’s authority? Since, without God, man has no authority to appeal to higher than himself, he must appeal to the masses. Enter mob rule and morality by consensus: whatever the largest (or loudest) group of people say is right must be accepted as right. But again, without God, there is no objective imperative, there is nothing compelling man to reason over appetite. Thus, the largest group will more often than not determine morality based on appetite, on emotion, on what “feels” good, since there is no standard to measure what is good. Consensus-based morality, then, becomes not just mob rule but animal mob rule. Worse still, appetites and emotions are easier to manipulate and easier to appeal to than reason. Want to score easy political points? Promise people something that feels good. Sex carries a resulting responsibility — a new human life — so just get rid of that responsibility via abortion. Money is nice to have, so promise that the mob can keep more because you’ve “forgiven” debts that they owe. Getting high is a quick way to forget about pain and misery, so let everyone buy pot, put a cannabis dispensary on every street corner. Just as the bloodthirsty French revolutionaries enthroned a whore in Notre Dame de Paris, so Maher and the ideology he has championed deposed human reasoning and morality and enthroned nothing more than appetite. Despite his clever jabs at transing children, Maher’s own statements bear this out. Discussing abortion, the talk show host did push back against the left-wing narrative that pro-lifers want to oppress women or do away with women’s rights and rightly insisted that pro-lifers genuinely believe abortion is the killing of an unborn child. “They think it’s murder — and it kind of is,” he said. Then the other shoe dropped: “I’m just okay with that. I am. I mean, there’s eight billion people in the world. I’m sorry, we won’t miss you.” Maher and his narcissistic, egocentric philosophy are not deserving of “three cheers.” Barron’s impulse is that of a society that died decades ago. There is no making peace with evil, there is no reconciling the tenets of leftism with those of conservatism, there is not now any common ground to be found. Maher’s ideology saw to that. “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: The Holy Eucharist and the Hint of an Explanation The Pernicious Persecution of Traditional Catholics The Bogeyman: The Leftists’ Hatred of the Catholic Church The post Bishop Robert Barron Praises Atheist Bill Maher. Why? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.