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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (51805)	10/14/2002 1:46:54 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

We have been chatting about Bloomberg. Here is a column from a guy who voted for him. From "Reason." October 11, 2002 Regrets: Too Many to Mention A Mike Bloomberg voter looks back in sorrow. By James Morrow Yesterday's City Council testimony by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, part of the mayor's "Smoke-Free Workplace" campaign, which would impose a a California-style ban on smoking in both restaurants and bars, may have raised emotions on all sides of the issue. But for one New York voter, the strongest emotion of all was remorse. I'm not really sure what I expected when I pulled the lever for Mike Bloomberg in the New York City mayoral elections nearly a year ago. Looking back on it, I'm not even sure I expected him to win, considering his 16-point deficit in the polls just a week before the election. More than anything else, I wanted to at least register my distaste for the opportunistic, weasely Mark Green, whose desperation to live in Gracie Mansion was even more off-putting than Al Gore's lust for the White House. But Bloomberg did win, thanks in no small part to a last-minute push made possible by his $50 million campaign war chest. Following in the footsteps of a man notorious for his much-maligned quality-of-life campaigns, Bloomberg?an alleged Republican in a Democrat town?was set to run the country's biggest city, and try to turn it into a nanny state more tightly controlled than anything his predecessor, or his state's U.S. Senator, Hillary Clinton, could ever imagine. Ultimately, Mike Bloomberg's problem is that he hasn't spent enough time in the real world. Even though, or perhaps because, he is fantastically wealthy (ranking 29 on the 2002 Forbes 400 list of richest Americans) Bloomberg is able to entertain a worldview not dissimilar to that of an "earnest young person" who sets out to change the world by hanging out at subway stations collecting signature to save the snail-darter or traveling the world with papier-mache puppets to protest capitalism. When he talks about smoking, "Mayor Mike" sounds like a 7th-grader who's just gotten his first in-school lecture about the dangers of tobacco and decided to rush home and warn his Pall Mall-sucking mom. "I think anyone who smokes is crazy," Bloomberg has been heard to declare. He essentially accuses City Council members who vote against him of murder, or something pretty damn close. Indeed, his morals are so outraged by the thought of anyone smoking tobacco that it's even clouded the business sense that made him wealthy. (Bloomberg's thoughts on marijuana, though, are a different story.) Testifying yesterday before the City Council, Bloomberg actually said, "If I owned a bar I would love to have this legislation passed because I would be making money based on how much alcohol is consumed, and if people are not smoking they will probably be drinking more." Well, yes, people would be drinking more. At home, where they can fire up a Camel without being hassled. But it's not just his ludicrous campaign to ban smoking in bars and restaurants that makes me regret my vote. Time after time, Bloomberg seems determined to out-Rudy Rudy, a man who took an out-of-control city and made it a beacon of urban management. Bloomberg, on the other hand, just wants to make New York a beacon of micro-management. Take his noise crusade. Almost any civilized human being will agree that the inventor of car alarms should be run over by an ice cream truck. But just as Bloomberg's desire to stamp out smoking in bars misses one of the fundamental natures of the business, so too does his so-called Operation Silent Night (which could theoretically let cops ticket people for talking too loudly) fail to grasp part of the charm of New York City?namely, that it's a loud place. This when the city's subways regularly blast through what the strap-hanging mayor considers acceptable noise levels. And it's not just the infringement of personal liberty issues, like the right to smoke in a bar or hoot a little too loudly upon exiting it, that make Bloomberg's management of the city disturbing. Bloomberg has made clear his intention to use taxpayer money not only to finance abortions but also to force doctors in public hospitals to learn the procedure even if they are ethically opposed to it. This plan would "make pro-life taxpayers finance what they believe to be the slaughter of innocents," as feminist writer Wendy McElroy noted, and even more disurbingly, would violate doctors' long-recognized rights to their own ethical positions on the matter. I guess I was a fool to believe that Bloomberg?a former Democrat who changed party affiliations to run for office?would become anything but what he is today. After all, the signs were there; The New Republic reported long before election day on the future mayor's penchant for micromanagement, and employees at his media empire have long had to cope with filtering software more sensitive and politically correct than a Smith College undergrad. I can't take back my vote, and I sure as hell (er, heck, as the Bloomberg computers would make me put it) wouldn't want to have given it to Green. But considering that he is in charge of a city that took a hit of 3,000 lives and $100 billion last September, doesn't Bloomberg have more important things to worry about than how his city's citizens choose to blow off steam? James Morrow is a writer and New York voter semi-permanently relocated to Sydney, Australia.

To: JohnM who wrote (51805)	10/14/2002 2:20:14 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Article about, and interview with, the Owner of a Book Publisher called "Feral House." From "Reason." I have excerpted part of the interview that is on their book, "Extreme Islam," a collection of articles from Islam sources attacking the west. >>>>Among the most recent things to be upset about was radical Islam's explosive arrival on the domestic scene with the 9/11 assaults. This inspired Parfrey to assemble his latest collection, Extreme Islam, which reprints primary documents and commentaries from a wide variety of Islamic figures and organizations. The book explores the dark and disturbing sides of pan-Islamism, the Palestinian cause, the Khomeini revolution in Iran, and the Taliban. It paints a picture of an often violent and radically anti-American worldview that -- though not necessarily representative of Islam as a whole -- is frightening, fascinating, and vitally relevant to Americans.<<<< >>>>Reason: How did you become interested in the Islamic fundamentalism you explore in your new book Extreme Islam? Adam Parfrey: Ever since the Khomeini revolution, I've been intrigued by Islamic text and graphics. When the Iranian revolution started, I began to see things that came over from the Middle East -- strange collages, the Echo of Islam magazine, and then a book collection of those magazines that came out in English. It featured things like amazing posters of Jimmy Carter as a satanic figure murdering young women -- not what people in the U.S. would expect or think Jimmy Carter capable of. That's where my interest started. After 9/11, I brought out old Echo of Islam magazines and went on the Internet and found there were many jihad, basically terrorist, Web sites that were shut down shortly thereafter. Even Google cache files disappeared. I'd noticed in the U.S. press that the old Chamber of Commerce idea of the world still dominated: Everybody's a nice guy. Everybody means well. Even if the Koran is really, truly a book about destroying the enemy, you'd hear the media say, "They don't mean total destruction of the enemy. If the enemy goes along with their religion and converts or pays a poll tax, a humiliation tax, then that's OK, they won't kill them." I found it astonishing that those aspects of radical Islam were ignored by the major newspapers and even the alternative weeklies. I thought I could use [the Islamic extremists?] own propaganda to reveal the substance of their thought, and that should be a troubling thing. And I found it was. Not all Muslims are as extreme or as interested in jihad, but let?s say only 10 percent are. That's 120 million people worldwide -- a significant number of people. Reason: What can we learn from the material in Extreme Islam? Parfrey: One lesson is that we need to ask, what are the consequences of putting American troops in Saudi Arabia and keeping them there? Some Americans might think we should be able to put troops anywhere we want. But it's arrogant to believe there are no consequences to those actions. Or, if there are consequences, that we should just knock anyone who objects senseless. Extreme Islam was produced primarily to get across an idea that wasn't disseminated widely in American culture -- to show how strong the [fundamentalist Muslim] belief system is and how unmanageable it is, considering there are tens or possibly hundreds of millions of people sharing these ideas. America has to come to grips with the intensity of their beliefs. Any conflict with them will not be resolved by simply saying we're great guys, we believe in democracy. I believe Osama bin Laden, if you examine the Koran, is closer to the Koran and the prophet Mohammed's beliefs than the hope that Islam can be democratic. It's not a very democratic belief system. To say that it is comes out of a wish that has nothing to do with Islam. It comes from the idea that everything good has to do with democracy or democratic ideals. Well, there are different ideals at work in the world, and we need to come to grips with that. Reason: People sometimes make comparisons between fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity. Maybe the ideas in Extreme Islam are no more representative of Islam than fundamentalist Christians are of Western culture. Parfrey: There is something to that, I think. You?re talking about three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There is a belief by some Christians and Jews that Islam is "undeveloped." That's what they say when they are being nice about it. They say that Christianity and Judaism have had many more years to "progress." I do think that all fundamentalisms have something in common. Each one believes in the deficiency of other beliefs and the ascendancy of their own beliefs over everyone else's. The situation in east Jerusalem, at the Al Aqsa shrine, indicates this. The Al Aqsa shrine in east Jerusalem is thought by Jews and some Christians to be the site of the Temple of Solomon. Let's say the Orthodox Jews and Zionist Christians actually do what they wish and destroy the Islamic shrine and then rebuild the Temple of Solomon. You're talking about a world war situation these people are fooling around with. But they would wish for it to happen. That's what's scary. It's not like they don't care -- they want it! I discussed that with a Time magazine writer, who ended up writing a story that discusses that specific problem. It's watered down a bit from what I had said to the writer, but nonetheless it's a very disturbing situation in the Middle East regarding the Temple Mount, and these democratic well-wishers just refuse to talk about it.<<<< reason.com

To: JohnM who wrote (51805)	10/14/2002 4:58:31 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

students across the nation believe they "have a constitutional right not to be offended." Sound familiar, John? You "Poo, Poo" it from me, maybe you will give is some consideration when Nat Hentoff of the "Village Voice" says it. I added the "Bold" to one sentence. The twilight of free speech at colleges Nat Hentoff Published 10/14/2002 Originally, only the federal government was bound by the First Amendment. But Justice Hugo Black extended it to state and local governments. Annually, Wesleyan University presents the Hugo Black Lecture on Free Expression. This year I was the speaker. Part of my lecture concerned the dismaying attacks on freedom of expression for more than a decade by students at many college campuses. Student newspapers, usually of a conservative bent, have been stolen in large quantities, sometimes burned. And students with dissenting viewpoints have told me they have learned to censor themselves in and out of class. Wesleyan is a justly well-regarded university. One of my sons went there in the 1980s and was editor of the student paper, the Argus. He has fond memories of the place and had resisted this plague of political correctness on campuses that was just starting then. The extent that expressions of independent views, in public, have diminished since the 1980s at Wesleyan and other colleges was illustrated in an editorial in the Argus soon after my last lecture. The newspaper surveyed students about the campus culture of Wesleyan. Most troubling, the editorial said, was that 32 percent of the students "feel uncomfortable speaking their opinion . . . Debate is limited to a dialogue between liberal and progressive, which has the effect of silencing any and all conservative views. When the rare conservative stance is taken, a shouting match usually results, making impossible the dialogue, which the university claims to value so highly." In my experience ? buttressed by reports from the Student Press Law Center and The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education ? a similar survey administered at other college campuses would result in an even higher percentage of students intimidated by the chilling climate of political correctness. I was quoted in the editorial as saying (in my Hugo Black lecture) that too many students across the nation believe they "have a constitutional right not to be offended." The Argus editorial ended: "In our attempts to foster discussion and wrestle with issues, we have forgotten the basic liberal tenet of promoting freedom of expression. The booming voice of the left has almost completely drowned out a considerable portion of the campus's population." But "when liberals and progressives are silenced, they decry it as ignorant and unjust." The editor of the Argus, Bobby Zeliger ? a true upholder of the spirit of Hugo Black ? sent me a copy of the survey. Freddye Hill, the dean of the college, was quoted saying that she thinks "we need to provide more spaces where people can be honest with each other." Michelle Rabinowitz, the chair of the American Civil Liberties Union on campus, noted, "Wesleyan and most Wesleyan students think that Wesleyan is a lot more open than it really is. I'm not sure that the students are open to diverse viewpoints other than saying that they are." "Diversity" is a much-valued goal at colleges and universities, but its meaning is too often limited to ensuring sufficient representation of race and gender in the student body. The concept of diversity of IDEAS, however, is often far less valued. Miss Hill understands the wider and deeper definition of diversity, "As a community [we] need to support groups that have diverse viewpoints, viewpoints that are not commonly heard on campus, and encourage new organizations with new voices." Maybe a Hugo Black Club. The need for that kind of diversity was inadvertently revealed in the survey by Elizabeth King of the Wesleyan Democrats. "The question is how tolerant we are of intolerance," she says. "Personally, I'm not very supportive of homophobic, racist and xenophobic opinions. Nor do I feel necessarily inclined to provide those people with a venue for their opinions." In the Argus editorial, I was quoted as having said in my lecture that "the ultimate test of a belief in free speech should be whether it can be extended to people you hate." I, in turn, was quoting Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who also said that this principle of the First Amendment "calls for attachment more than any other." And if freedom of thought is not honored at college campuses, how devoted to this source of all our other freedoms will graduates be as they become influential in America's future? At Wesleyan, however, voices are rising to keep the spirit of Hugo Black alive. washingtontimes.com