Why Diplomacy Is Doomed

(Fourth essay of a series.) In Mirror, Mirror: Why Americans Don’t Understand the Threat of Jihadism, What al-Qaeda Wants and The Mirage of Moderate Islam, I have described Islam as a warlike and bloody religion subject to periodic fits of violent fundamentalist revival. I have analyzed the roots of Islamic terror in the Koranic duty… Continue reading Why Diplomacy Is Doomed

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Mirror, Mirror — why Americans Don’t Understand the Threat of Jihadism

(Third in a series.) In What al-Qaeda Wants and the first essay in this series, The Mirage of Moderate Islam, I have described Islam as a warlike and bloody religion subject to periodic fits of violent fundamentalist revival. I have analyzed the roots of Islamic terror in the Koranic duty of jihad, and elucidated Osama… Continue reading Mirror, Mirror — why Americans Don’t Understand the Threat of Jihadism

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What Al-Qaeda wants

(Second in a series.) In a The Mirage of Moderate Islam, I have described the Koranic roots of Islamic fanaticism, and observed that Osama bin Laden’s terror war on the west is part of a recurring pattern of fundamentalist revival associated with jihad in Islamic history. In this essay, I’ll get more specific about what… Continue reading What Al-Qaeda wants

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Beating software version fatigue

In his latest Tech Central Station column, Glenn Reynolds complains of `version fatigue’, his accumulating angst over the fact that since the emid-1980s he’s had to migrate through three word processors and several different versions of Windows. I can’t fix the sad fact that every new VCR and remote control you get has a different… Continue reading Beating software version fatigue

The Mirage of Moderate Islam

Diplomatic lies notwithstanding, Islam is anything but a `religion of peace’. Any honest scholar will tell you that Islam is a religion of violence, martyrdom, and conversion by the sword. The duty to wage war for the propagation of the faith is plainly written in the Koran; Osama bin Laden’s suicide bombers are part of… Continue reading The Mirage of Moderate Islam

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The Elephant in the Bath-House

Mary Eberstadt’s Weekly Standard article The Elephant in the Sacristy shines a strong light on facts that will discomfit many of the politically correct. I don’t completely agree with her analysis; as Amy Welborn argues, Ms. Eberstadt is too quick to dismiss the role of the doctrine of celibacy in creating an ingrown, perfervid, and… Continue reading The Elephant in the Bath-House

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Bad porn reprise

Many people wrote me with comments on my essay Why Does Porn Got To Hurt So Bad?. For all of those who sent praise, thank you. It’s actually nice to know there are so many people who would like to reject the bad-porn aesthetic. For all of those who refrained from calling down fire and… Continue reading Bad porn reprise

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Why does porn got to hurt so bad?

A couple days ago I chased a link over to unablogger and found myself unexpectedly confronted by pictures of naked women. This picture, in particular. And I noticed something unusual — which was that I liked it. Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m a functioning heterosexual male; I enjoy looking at naked women. It’s most… Continue reading Why does porn got to hurt so bad?

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We are all Jews now

This afternoon I was reading a quote from a woman who had left a comment on Tim Blair’s weblog. She wrote: rld, I feel it’s my duty as a woman to wear clingier clothing, flirt more outrageously, have more orgasms, and get on top more often. In short, anything that’s taboo to the islamofascists.” Boo-yah,… Continue reading We are all Jews now

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Arm the Passengers

The recent controversy over arming airline pilots against a possible repetition of the 9/11 atrocity misses a crucial problem that makes arming pilots relatively ineffective: terrorists would know in advance where the guns are, and be able to game against that. Let’s say you are a terrorist executing a hijacking. You know the pilots are… Continue reading Arm the Passengers

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