Yesterday was the first day of classes here at UD, and that means it was also the first day of what I call 'White Male Hunting Season." Even though males are a minority on campus (UD is about 60% female), women are still a 'minority' group, and treated as such. Perhaps this is why educational "gender gap" seems to be growing, as I noted last year. (I promise a future post on the early 21st century college-age male and masculinity)

Where does "White Male Hunting Season" come in? Last October, under the leadership of President Roselle, the University implemented a new Zero Tolerance policy on hate crimes. The policy can be viewed at http://www.udel.edu/stophate. That site also collects all the 'Hate News,' so you can see what has been done with it before.

As a white male with unorthodox conservative views (not at all mainstream in the university setting), I live in constant fear of this policy being used against me. Here is how the FBI defines a 'hate' or 'bias' crime (the university links to this page):

A hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.

From that. it would seem that as long as I don't commit any actual crimes, and my motivation isn't interpreted as 'biased,' I should be OK. How you determine someone's motive for a crime on that level is beyond me.

In any case, this is such a loose definition that it could be stretched to involve anything that could be offensive. The only people who aren't allowed to be offended are white male Christians (though Jews are not treated as a 'real minority' in the way that blacks, Muslims, atheists, gays, etc. are). We cannot stand as a group without being treated as an oppressor, where in this enviroment, we are the oppressed. Equality will never come by brining others down.

For example: What would happen if I put a pro-Christian message on my door, someone got offended, called it a 'hate crime,' and I got tagged with 'defacing University property,' plus whatever the Inquisition wants to throw down? Not only would I have been persecuted for my beliefs, but my public image could have me branded as a bigot. Not something I would consider a plus for my future.

The Zero Tolerance Page links '10 Ways to Fight Hate on Campus,' which proves that hate crimes are part of the anti-white male, anti-West agenda. Check out number 7, called 'Know Your Campus':

Consider the areas where you might find institutional racism and bigotry on your campus, and then consider what you can do to reduce or eliminate it.

· Academic coursework
What requirements exist for multicultural coursework? Can a student at your school obtain a degree having studied little other than white-Western thought and culture?

Are minority-written texts and materials used in mainstream classes or relegated strictly to minority-studies courses?[Emphasis Mine]

This is an outrage! I am not against students having the option to study other cultures, but universities exist primary to advance a civilization, not to undermine it. Students who are forced to 'appreciate' other cultures do so usually at the expense of their own. For white males, becoming 'tolerant' of others usually involves looking down on youself. This is what the West faces, death by 'tolerance.'

Posted by Ryan S. at 10:27 PM | Permalink | |

From WaPo:

If only the Muslims in Europe -- with their hearts focused on the Islamic world and their carry-on liquids poised for destruction in the West -- could behave like the well-educated, secular and Americanizing Muslims in the United States, no one would have to worry.

So runs the comforting media narrative that has developed around the approximately 6 million Muslims in the United States, who are often portrayed as well-assimilated and willing to leave their religion and culture behind in pursuit of American values and lifestyle. But over the past two years, I have traveled the country, visiting mosques, interviewing Muslim leaders and speaking to Muslim youths in universities and Islamic centers from New York to Michigan to California -- and I have encountered a different truth. I found few signs of London-style radicalism among Muslims in the United States. At the same time, the real story of American Muslims is one of accelerating alienation from the mainstream of U.S. life, with Muslims in this country choosing their Islamic identity over their American one.

A new generation of American Muslims -- living in the shadow of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- is becoming more religious. They are more likely to take comfort in their own communities, and less likely to embrace the nation's fabled melting pot of shared values and common culture.

America faces the same Islamic threat that Europe does, it is just more hidden.

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:30 PM | Permalink | |

Prayers for the Assissin, is a word, chilling. Here's the official summary:

Enormous in scope and vividly imagined, this sensational thriller set in a futuristic America delivers a powerhouse read filled with violence, betrayal, and intrigue.

Not just high-concept, but highly entertaining, Prayers for the Assassin is set thirty-five years from now, after a civil war in which most of the United States has become a moderate Islamic republic and the Bible Belt has broken away to become a Christian nation. This political shift was precipitated by simultaneous suitcase-nuke detonations in New York, Washington, D.C. and Mecca, a sneak attack blamed on Israel, known as the Zionist Betrayal. Within this tense world, the beautiful and intrepid young historian Sarah Dougan uncovers shocking evidence that he Zionist Betrayal was not linked to Israel at all, but was a plot carried out by a messianic a radical Muslim billionaire now poised ot overtake the entire nation.

So there you go. Not exaclty easy to explain. It is certainly not an impossible future, as Ferringo has imagined it:

I certainly hope I'm writing fiction, rather than prophecy, but I think the possibility of such events transpiring only adds to the power of the book. I make it clear in the book that the U.S. was never defeated militarily, but bled white by a conflict without end, weakened internally by dissent, economic malaise, and a consumer culture hostile to people's genuine thirst for meaning in their lives.

This is not far off from what some are predicting for Europe. The West is not replacing itself, and the Muslim hordes could move in and conquer Europe by outbreeding.

From the main villian:

"While the West wallowed in greed and vice and vanity...I prayed. And paid the politicians. When the West banished religion...I prayed. And paid the ex-diplomats and journalists, people for whom everything has a price....The nuclear attack merely toppled a rotten tree."

This is really the mindset we're up against in the Global War On Terror.

In any case, Prayers for the Assassin is an excellent thriller, and the characters are fairly vivid. According to the Amazon page, it is now part one of a trilogy. It makes a very good read, fats paced and chilling. Highly recommended.

Paperback release is October 31.

Posted by Ryan S. at 4:55 PM | Permalink | |

NEW YORK An interview in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine with C.C. Goldwater reveals that her HBO film to be aired Sept. 18 paints her late grandfather, Sen. Barry Goldwater, "as a kind of liberal," with testimonials from Al Franken, Sen. Ted Kennedy, James Carville and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In fact, Hillary campaigned for Goldwater in 1964 in his race for president against Lyndon Johnson. "Hillary was a Goldwater girl," says the filmmaker, interviewed by Deborah Solomon. "She passed out cookies and lemonade at his campaign functions."

Solomon calls Goldwater "a half-Jewish cowboy from Phoenix."

The film -- made on a budget of $800,000 -- will note that the straight-talking Sen. Goldwater, author of the classic "The Conscience of a Conservative" (soon to be reissued by Princeton University Press) favored abortion rights and allowing gays in the military, and refused to attend President Nixon's funeral because he "cheated" the country.

In the film, former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradley calls Sen. Goldwater "an unsung hero of Watergate" for helping convince Nixon to resign.

Wonder what that makes me...

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:57 PM | Permalink | |

RIVERSIDE, New Jersey (Reuters) - Opponents of a local law cracking down on illegal immigrants clashed on Sunday with residents chanting "go home" as both sides proclaimed their loyalty to the United States.

An estimated 300 to 400 people gathered outside the town hall to protest a recently passed ordinance that bans hiring or renting to illegal immigrants, who are accused of overburdening local services such as schools and hospitals without paying taxes.

The protesters, representing the largely Brazilian immigrant community of Riverside, were heckled by about 500 counter-demonstrators kept at bay by police on the other side of the town's main intersection.

As immigration supporters accused the town's council of racism, opponents chanted "USA, USA" and waved placards saying "Scram" and "Stop Illegal Immigration." A passing pickup truck drew loud cheers by flying a Confederate flag with the motto "The South Will Rise Again."

Riverside, with a population of about 8,000, is the latest community to pass local regulations on illegal immigration in the absence of a federal law that would address the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States.

Posted by Ryan S. at 8:15 PM | Permalink | |

According to James Pinkerton at TCSDaily, world politics has moved to the right:

Third, the world has moved to the right, politically, during the same period. We can start with the US, dominated during the last quarter-century by starboard-leaning leaders such as Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush. Here in Canada, the Prime Minister is Stephen Harper, a conservative who refused even to come to this conference. And to the south, Mexico just elected another conservative. Meanwhile, in Europe, such dominant figures as Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, Jacques Chirac, and Silvio Berlusconi were on the right. And even their more liberal successors, many of them, were not exactly leftists, e.g. Tony Blair. Continuing our political survey, let's look elsewhere -- to, say, Russia. Say what you want about Vladimir Putin, he's no liberal.

And how about elsewhere around the world? In Asia, India is run these days by Hindu nationalists. China is run by Chinese nationalists, and Japan -- we know about Japanese leaders visiting their glory-days World War Two shrines. And Australia? John Howard, George W. Bush's good friend, has been in power for a decade and seems likely to stay for at least another term. And how about the Muslim world? There, the anti-liberal backlash has been, shall we say, pronounced, as ayatollahs and imams with beards reshape politics from Indonesia to Egypt to London. To be sure, there are counter-indicators, such as much of Latin America, which is voting left these days; yet even there, many leftists, including Brazil's Lula, aren't so left. Parenthetically, we might observe that the popular culture in many countries is libertarian, even libertine -- although it's probably only a matter of time before the political culture exerts its conservatizing influence.

When you add Poland to that list, as well, I think the case could be made that world politics have shifted in that direction. Pinkerton links this to AIDS + AIDS-activism, which is at the very least, an interesting thing to consider.

Posted by Ryan S. at 6:27 PM | Permalink | |

Most of East Asia is not pro-Japan in the least. One of the other interns from the summer was from South Korea, and from her experience, this is a real problem not often felt in the United States, probably because we beat Japan, and two atom bombs were adequate retriubution, I guess.

The Washington Post:

Essentially, the problem is that Japan has not been able to eliminate the suspicions and grievances that still linger in China and Korea about Japan's militarist past. While postwar Germany has somehow been able to put the "history issue" to rest, postwar Japan has not. The result is that Japan -- 61 years after its surrender and the inauguration of its long, peaceful return to the international community -- remains isolated and incapable of providing leadership in a region that is quickly transforming in the shadow of a rising China.

The most visible manifestation of Japan's history problem is the controversy that erupts each year when the Japanese prime minister visits the Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo -- the Shinto memorial where the names of 14 World War II-era Class A war criminals are listed among the honored dead. In China and Korea these visits evoke the memory of Japanese war and imperial aggression, trigger popular protests and official condemnation, and provide a readily available tool to push Japan on the defensive and shrink its regional influence and appeal.

The problem manifests itself in American policy when US policy makers want Japan to be "a Great Britain of the East," according to Ikenberry, especially when dealing with N. Korea and China. However, America can never hope to have the same "special relationship" that the US-UK, first because Japan is not anglospheric, and second because they aren't sufficently Western.

The US and the UK come from the same cultural traditions, an intrinsic value that runs deep through history. Japanese culture is vastly different from our own, as different as when the "Black Ships" arrived. This will hamper how well the interests of the United States and Japan line up, which will hinder the kind of long-term informal alliance the US and UK have.

Posted by Ryan S. at 8:02 PM | Permalink | |

Clinton was the youngest US president to leave office, although he was not the youngest to enter the White House. That distinction belongs to his hero, John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963.

Actually, TR was the youngest man to become President. Way to go, Big Media.

Posted by Ryan S. at 3:56 PM | Permalink | |

This is one of those common-sense policies that we have been PC-ed into not adpoting here, but the British government may be showing some guts:

THE Government is discussing with airport operators plans to introduce a screening system that allows security staff to focus on those passengers who pose the greatest risk.

The passenger-profiling technique involves selecting people who are behaving suspiciously, have an unusual travel pattern or, most controversially, have a certain ethnic or religious background.

The system would be much more sophisticated than simply picking out young men of Asian appearance. But it would cause outrage in the Muslim community because its members would be far more likely to be selected for extra checks.

Officials at the Department for Transport (DfT) have discussed the practicalities of introducing such a system with airport operators, including BAA. They believe that it would be more effective at identifying potential terrorists than the existing random searches.

So do most people with an ounce of common sense.

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:04 PM | Permalink | |

The Telegraph:

The recruitment of Muslim students at British universities to take part in terrorist attacks is at the heart of the alleged plot to blow up passenger jets, it is feared.

A dossier of extremist Islamic literature has been uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph on the campus of a north London university, one of whose students has suspected links to the alleged terrorist attack.

Waheed Zaman, 22, a bio-chemistry student and the president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University, was one of 24 people arrested last week. Material found at two portable buildings used by the society includes documents advocating jihad and a pamphlet on how to deal with approaches from the security services.

Prof Anthony Glees, the director of Brunel University's centre for intelligence and security studies, criticised university authorities for ignoring the threat to national security in their midst. "Institutions have not sought to address the problem: they have instead sought to undermine those who have raised the issue," he told this newspaper. [Emphasis Added]

It is time for the people of Britain to take action against this Islamic threat. Hopefully the BNP (British National Party) gain some ground, and Western Europe can begin to make headway against the Islamic threat.

Posted by Ryan S. at 8:20 PM | Permalink | |

While some neocons seem genuinely happy he lost, others are happy that he lost because they are netroots-Kos-wannabes. I am neither, and as such, I really don't care about Lieberman other than that he may prop up the Bush majority for another cycle because of a destracted and in-fighting Democratic Party and national press corp:

Although most Democrats will almost certainly rally behind Lamont, the dynamics of the general election will keep reporters busy from now until Election Day. Democrats who want to make this election all about Republicans will now be forced to deal with a Lieberman-Lamont battle that will serve as an unnecessary distraction for a party that can't settle on a winning message.

As HUMAN EVENTS editorialized today, Joe Lieberman is a rare Democrat who has stood by his vote to support the war in Iraq. In his concession speech tonight, Lieberman showed no sign of abandoning that view, meaning that others like him (Hillary Clinton, for instance) will be forced to engage in a debate about the war they'd rather not be having.

This may be good for the RNC, which right now seems bad for conservatives everywhere.

BONUS- See how many times you can insert the following into Lieberman's concession speech: "Israel" "the Middle East" or "Iraq"

Example:

Tomorrow is a brand new day [for Israel] and tomorrow we launch a new campaign to unite the people of Connecticut - Team Connecticut - Democrats, Republicans and Independents [behind Israel] so we can go forward together to solve our most serious problems together [especially those in the Middle East]. That is what this campaign will be about. [Israel.]

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:13 AM | Permalink | |

The Weekly Standard has an article this week on illegal immigration in Delaware (I think it is a cover story).

Delaware's reported immigrant population has nearly doubled since 2000--to 67,000--and 9 percent of births in the state are to illegal immigrant mothers. There are around 3,000 Chinese in the northern part of the state, most of them students or high-tech workers around Wilmington and Philadelphia. There are mosques up there, too. There are a handful of Haitians in some agricultural towns. Pretty Czech and Polish girls dominate the cash-register and waitressing jobs in the coastal resorts from about May to September. That, of course, is small potatoes compared with the past two decades' mass migration elsewhere in the country. But it has been sufficient to bring about an unprecedented transformation of many towns in the bucolic and historically poor south of the state.

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:41 PM | Permalink | |

Now I am not sure about this. I consdier Israel a West-leaning country at the very least, but I am not sure that Israel's interests always line up with the interests of the United States. While I deplore radical Islam and wish to see Hezbollah destroyed, I wonder how much these "rougue states" are really tied together.

Gordon Cucullu sees things a little differently, that Israel and Hezbollah are surrogates for the two powers, like the Cold War. He also says that North Korea falls in to this as well.

Posted by Ryan S. at 11:14 AM | Permalink | |

Paul, here I go:

1. One book that changed your life:
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. The best argument for Christianity I have ever come across. Step one on how I recovered my faith.

2. One book that you've read more than once:
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I think this is the only book I have read more than once since I got to high school. It is just that good.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
Churchill's The Second World War. That may be the only way I get to read all of it.

4. One book that made you laugh:
Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley, he's got a great pedigree, and writes great satire. Still haven't seen the movie though.

5. One book that made you cry:
None. Hard to cry and read at the same time.

6. One book that you wish had been written:
State of Fear by Michael Crichton, a thriller that impacts public policy? Sweet.


7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Paul's answer of the Qur'an is good, but I think anything by Maximillian Robespierre that helped along the French Revolution, or Martin Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies.

8. One book you’re currently reading:
Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton is great, and I just finished The Man Who Was Thursday.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
How about these?

10. Tag five others.
Nah. Not gonna do it.

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:20 AM | Permalink | |

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Snow fell on South Africa's biggest city Johannesburg for the first time in 25 years as icy temperatures gripped vast swathes of the country, the weather office said.

"They are very excited," said the resort's chief snow-maker, Johan Smuts. "It is not every day that you get to see snow fall in Africa."

Posted by Ryan S. at 10:59 AM | Permalink | |

Rick J. of DelaVision is the newest member of the Delaware Conservative Blogger Alliance. Welcome aboard, Rick!

Posted by Ryan S. at 8:57 AM | Permalink | |