A mind is a difficult thing to change: (Part 7B: the Vietnam photos revisited)

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part 7A can be found here. The rest of the series is located by clicking on the category “A mind is a difficult thing to change: my story” on the right sidebar.]

The last thing I was thinking about during the buildup to the Iraq War were those two Vietnam-era photos. I was busy reading online about Iraq, trying to understand the situation there and to predict what might happen if we invaded or what might happen if we didn’t invade.

I no longer remember where, how, or why I came across the two Vietnam photos again. It was probably a random thing. Perhaps I found a link to them on a blog, perhaps somewhere else.

No matter. I saw something that caught my attention and clicked on a link that led to a piece about them. Just one of many articles I saw every evening as part of my online reading.

Here were the familiar images—the field execution, the napalmed girl. I hadn’t seen them in decades, but I remembered them well. I felt the shock and sadness again seeing them once more, even after all these years.

loan3.jpg

napalmgirl.jpg

But the story told by the article accompanying them was different. Continue reading →

A mind is a difficult thing to change: (Part 7A: Jenin, Jenin)

The New Neo Posted on by

[After a long hiatus, I have resumed my “change” series. This is the first part of a two-parter, the second half of which should be appearing tomorrow. You can find earlier posts by clicking on the “A mind is a difficult thing to change: my journey” category on the right sidebar. The post immediately preceding this one is here.]

In the most recent segment of this series, I wrote:

…the process [of change] was like doing a jigsaw puzzle. At first I only had a few pieces in my hands, and no real way to tell what the picture was going to look like. But bit by bit I started assembling it, and began to discern the outline of a new form as it was slowly being revealed. In the end, events that were happening in the present merged with a reassessment of the past, enabling the picture to emerge ever more clearly, piece by piece.

After the Afghan war was over, I felt a sense of relief that it had gone as well as it had, and a bit of puzzlement as to why the original predictions had been so different from events as they had actually transpired. I wanted things to calm down now, but my sense was that they wouldn’t be doing that for a long time, although I didn’t yet know where the next eruption would occur.

If you had asked me what my politics were at that time—spring of 2002—I wouldn’t have perceived that any change whatsoever had occurred.

I was still a liberal Democrat, just as I’d always been. Continue reading →

Sanity Squad tonight: Canada’s war on freedom of speech

The New Neo Posted on by

Tune in tonight live at 8PM Eastern Time (or click on the link later to hear the recording) for what promises to be an interesting Sanity Squad podcast on Canada’s PC assault on the freedom of speech of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. And send not to ask for whom the bell tolls, Canadians, it tolls for thee.

If you’re not familiar with what’s happening to Steyn and Levant, go here and here. To listen to the articulate, courageous, and outraged testimony of Levant for yourself, watch You Tube’s tapes of his testimony before the Alberta Human Rights Commission—and learn just how Orwellian that title is.

Sarkozy recherche la femme

The New Neo Posted on by

And I thought the French were supposed to be “sophisticated” about this sort of thing.

Talk about rebounds!

[ADDENDUM: I couldn’t resist adding the following tidbit on Ms. Bruni, found at Wikipedia:

“I’m monogamous from time to time, but I prefer polygamy and polyandry…”

While living with Jean-Paul Enthoven, Bruni fell in love and started an affair with his son, philosophy professor Raphaé«l Enthoven, which caused Raphaé«l to divorce novelist Justine Lévy, daughter of philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. The affair and the subsequent ending of her marriage were the inspiration for Justine Lévy’s best-selling book Rien de grave (“Nothing serious”), published in 2004. In the book, Lévy paints a vitriolic portrait of “Paula”, the female who steals the protagonist’s husband, as “a praying mantis” with “a Terminator smile”…

Bruni has also dated Donald Trump and Mick Jagger. Jagger’s wife acknowledged his affair with Bruni was one of the reasons for the separation.

Here’s one of the more sedate online photos of Carla, future (or perhaps even present, if this news can be believed) First Lady of France:

carlab.jpg

It appears that Sarkozy will have his work cut out for him.]

Most underreported big story of the week: Iraq alliance

The New Neo Posted on by

Michael Hirsh reports on the fact that events in Iraq are moving along in such a way as to make it more difficult for a subsequent Democratic administration to undo them.

Oh, I have little doubt that where there’s a will, there’s a way; if the next administration—Obama as President, for example, and a strongly Democratic Congress—is utterly determined to leave Iraq ASAP, I assume it can be accomplished. But time appears to be making that prospect far more difficult even as Bush-haters continue their countdown to the Big Day.

This must seem to be the longest administration on earth to those who think it’s also been the most disastrous. Those who believe Bush won the election by thievery might also believe he’s somehow managed to stop time, so slowly have the last couple of years gone for them. And, in fact, although it’s hard to believe, Bush’s leavetaking is still slightly over a year away.

A year. A lot can happen in a year. A year ago the surge was just beginning, and took months to really get going, but now it is widely considered a success beyond even the most sanguine of expectations. Continue reading →

Ah, those clever literary intellectuals!

The New Neo Posted on by

For quite a while now I’ve been impressed by the fact that leading literary lights, for all their creativity and art, can be very dim bulbs indeed when dealing with certain other aspects of human endeavor.

I suppose that shouldn’t be so hard to understand. After all, there’s no reason to presume that, just because people can write well, they are also especially savvy about practical matters in the real world. On the other hand, good writers of fiction—and, to a lesser extent, poetry—need to be keen observers of the human mind and heart. As for literary criticism, that’s an endeavor that ought to require a discerning and perceptive intellect.

One would think so. But there’s a long history of literary “useful idiots,” people whose critical faculties seem to stop where their art ends. For every Emile Zola, there’s a Harold Pinter.

I was reminded of all of this recently when reading the book Partisans by David Laskin. It’s mostly a glorified gossip sheet about the group of writers who were connected to the influential journal Partisan Review during its formative decades, the 30s and 40s. Partisans follows their closely intertwined lives from then through the 60s and beyond; they were an especially active group, however, in their earlier years (and yes, that activity included playing an almost endless game of musical beds). Continue reading →

Whither the polls?

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the biggest stories of the NH primary is the failure of the polls to have accurately predicted the results. It’s not that it’s so unusual for polls to be incorrect, but for so many to be incorrect in exactly the same way—predicting about an 8% Obama victory and getting a result of Clinton by 3%, off by a factor of approximately 11%—is highly unusual.

There have been a host of attempts to explain; see this, this, and this, for example.

My own reflection is that Hillary’s emphasis on reaching the women of NH probably paid off, but perhaps late in the game. Her ads in NH were a media blitz on the female voters of the state, simplistic but relentless appeals in female voices only (young and old), stating how Hillary would help family and children and education. Just how she would be doing this as president was not specified, but apparently it did not need to be. “She’s a woman, we’re women, she understands”—that was the continual message, repeated ad nauseam on every radio station.

It didn’t reach the women I know, who uniformly seemed to like Obama and are disappointed in the primary results. And from my small and decidedly unrepresentative sample (I’m turning in my pollster badge), I still think Hillary is in a bit of trouble, because I know far too many loyal lifelong liberal Democrats who simply cannot stand her.

It’s not nice to change Mother Nature

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems that a well-intentioned attempt to protect a certain kind of African acacia tree from the large beasts who would munch on it has had the opposite effect. In a complex interaction of insect, plant, and animal, the trees ended up losing nectar and the ants that ordinarily feed on it and by their presence scare off wood-boring beetles, which then invade and weaken the plant terribly.

This sort of finding is one of the reasons intervening to change nature in a particular direction (such as, for example, to stop global warming) is often a dicey proposition. Systems are way too complex for us to understand either the causes or the effects of what we do well enough to be able to correctly predict the consequences of our actions.

In nature, be careful what you wish for, and be careful how you intervene.

[And I’ll wager this was actually Bush’s fault.]

Cultural and moral relativism (Part II)

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I]

Moral relativism is the idea that there is no absolute good and evil, but that all customs and practices of mankind must be evaluated in terms of their function in the society where they are found. Any attempt to make moral judgments about other cultures merely reflects our own cultural prejudices.

Some tolerance, doubt, and perspective is good. But this is the notion of tolerance taken to its ultimate—and ultimately, absurd and destructive—conclusion. Not only does it handicap our ability to make moral judgments within our own culture by weakening our convictions, but it handicaps our ability to see true evil as well as our ability to fight against it, and paradoxically can lead to the triumph of a very intolerant society.

The principle of moral relativism is often confused with cultural relativism, grounded in anthropology and discussed in Part I, here. But it turns out that moral relativism not only goes against traditional concepts of good and evil, but against the teachings of some anthropologists as well. Continue reading →

Yon’s moment of truth

The New Neo Posted on by

Michael Yon has another fine essay up about progress in Iraq. I think you’ll find it not only informative but encouraging without whitewashing the difficulties that still remain.

[NOTE: I plan to post Part II of “Cultural and moral relativism” tomorrow. Some of you may be pleased to learn I’m also working hard on the next installment in my “change” series, after a lengthy hiatus. It should be up some time in the next week or so—I hope.]