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North Koreans to be blamed for sinking South Korean warship

This bears watching. If it turns out to be from a NK sub, this will be just the third sinking of a warship by a submarine since World War II. The others were an Indian frigate in 1971 and an Argentine cruiser in 1982.

The only thing wrong was that more of them weren't shot

"The only thing that went wrong ... is that so many of the weren't shot"

A quote by a British loyalist about the Boston Massacre? No, not quite. Actually a partial quote by an American commenter on this site.


The full quote:
"The only thing that went wrong at Kent is that so many of them WEREN'T shot. "

Yep, the only thing wrong is that more U.S. citizens exersing their First Amendment rights were not shot. Oh, and I suppose that extended to the bystanders such as ROTC student William Schoeder who was walking to class. It's a pity more people like him were not shot too, according to these people. Or so they say.

There's an amazing number of people who will hold these two thoughts in their minds at the same time: The government will have to pry my weapons from my cold dead hand AND it's OK for the government to shoot down unarmed protesters because they were DFH and deserved it.

Racial profiling

A Native American professor recounts an unpleasant encounter with a police officer while driving.


http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2009/06/home-for-awhile-racial-profiling.html

A simple and powerful reminder of what war costs

If you have a moment and some tissues nearby, check this out.

The Great War of Yankee Aggression

"The Great War of Yankee Aggression."

How, exactly, is someone supposed to interpret this. The congressmen let slip a slight smirk, so perhaps he was making a joke -- but it really makes you wonder what sort of philosophy is behind this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXT9ZDAbK_o

Ballon Juice makes this excellent point while discussing the controversy over a French TV show where ordinary people are induced to torture people to death. Some foolish people on Fox News and elsewhere are apparently under the impression that Americans would never do such a thing (despite ample evidence to the contrary).

It's pointed out that American story-telling in movies and TV likes to reduce everything to simple good vs evil story lines.

"The problem is that this attitude of good-self versus bad-other is not just a great opiate for those nagging feelings of doubt, it’s also an essential prerequisite for acts of incredible evil."

This is, of course, the point of the argument against torture, at the end of the day. We shouldn't torture people not merely because of what it does to them, but ultimately what it will do to us.

A similar dynamic was at work with slavery. Many contemporary and subsequent observers were of the opinion that slavery, while obviously detrimental to the slaves, was also detrimental to the slave owner over the long term. Indeed, I think one could make an argument that the persistent, nearly intractable social and economic laggardness of most of the Old South is a legacy of the "peculair institution."