House Sitting – On Planet Basu

At first I thought that Rekha was sharing a bad “come home from vacation” experience in her April 27th piece.

My friend Uma Sherman came to stay in my house while I was away. She promised to look after the pets. She left the front door open, and the place was looted and ransacked. Priceless family heirlooms and antiques were robbed and smashed.

Whoa dude… so this is really about the US in Iraq, not something that happened in Rekha’s house when her friend Uma watched it. Cool, it’s an analogy… or a parable… or a steaming heap of…

Oh my goodness… Rekha is sooooo bright. “Uma Sherman”… how witty and urbane. You see, it’s a play on “Uma Thurman”, but the initials are “US” for… United States. Incredible! And… I get it now… she’s comparing the liberation of Iraq with Sherman’s march to the sea during the Civil War. Yep, in Iraq we burned down every building in sight, rustled their women, and raped their cattle.

And then she’s referring to the looting of the Iraqi museum, yeah… okay.

"Bummer," said Uma as I agonized over the losses. "Rough neighborhood you live in."

I think those were Tommy Frank’s exact words.

"But you were responsible for protecting my things!" I cried.

No, we were liberating the people of Iraq from a megalomanical dictator.

"I protected the pets, didn't I?" said Uma. "OK, we lost a few goldfish. But you're gonna be thanking me! I got rid of those dreaded neighbors who were getting ready to commit mass destruction. Plus, I rearranged the furniture to make the feng shui right. Injured my back doing it."

“I got rid of those dreaded neighbors…” ???!!!

Okay Rekha, step away from the satire with your hands in plain sight. You could hurt yourself.

On the bright side, this makes your regular work look good. And it goes on and on and on. And I could as well. But I will not. This drivel is not even worth a “Fisking”.

Read it for yourself and you will discover that conducting a war of liberation is really like being a destructive house sitter… that is… on Planet Basu.

Sanctus Santorum

Last week Rick Santorum, Republican Senator of Pennsylvania got a lovely taste of his own shoe leather while giving an interview to the Associated Press. What a nincompoop. These are the things that keep me a card carrying Libertarian and alienated by the Republican Party. Rick, boyo what were you thinking? Have you been hanging out a bit too much with John Ashcroft or maybe secretly hired Dan Quayle as your image consultant?

Okay, where to begin? Homosexuality = incest = bestiality = (and here’s where it gets interesting) heterosexual sodomy (that would include blowjobs, boys…) = adultery = basically any non-procreative sex not blessed by the covenant of marriage. The “right to privacy” does not exist and your government, for the “good of society” and the maintenance of the status quo, belongs in your bedroom. It's a (and I hate to use this term in an article regarding sex...) a "slippery slope" argument of the first order.

The only slippery slopes that I fear are the ones that lead to the government having more power to regulate personal behavior. Sexuality, drug use, guns... all of these things, if untepered have the potential to damage and destroy individual lives. However, even the best intended govenment attempts to regulate these behaviors has the potential to slip into something very sinister, very quickly. And when government steps in, it affects millions of people.

As long as the activity is between consenting adults and does not directly do harm to anyone else, the government should KEEP OUT. Don’t approve of oral sex… then don’t have it. Think that sex is only okay when performed in the “missionary” position in a marriage between a man and a woman without the benefit of birth control. Fine, then you have the right to confine your sexual activity to that venue. Just stay out of my sex life, okay? And I don’t have a personal ax to grind here. I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with my wife for 22 years. The details of which are none of your f&%#ing business.

All of this hoohaw is ostensibly intended to “protect marriage”. If the institution of marriage is so powerful, so… holy, why does it need the protection of government? Why does marriage need the various states to regulate not only alternative contractual covenants, but the sexual behavior that underlies them?

Newsflash: Rick does not approve of bigamy. Okay Rick, I’m with you on this one. Bigamy presumes that a man has two or more wives who are not aware of each other… it’s a breach of contract. Then he goes after gay unions/marriage, polygamy and (presumably) polyandry (which I do not have a problem with because these family “arrangements” would be voluntary contracts between adults).

Whoa boy...

As long as a family configuration works for the people involved (especially the children who are a product of that family), what is all of the fuss about? What is so great about the nuclear family that is deserves to be the only state sanctioned life partnership? If a man wants to have more than one wife (other than being an unfathomable masochist for wanting to answer to more than one woman…), and the wives in question are adults and willing to participate in the relationship, what business is it of ours?

As long as someone is not compelled to have sex against their will and/or is not a minor, the state should STAY THE HELL OUT. It’s just that simple.

As for alternative family units, be they same sex, polygamy, polyandry, group marriage… why shouldn’t the state recognize them if they are economically viable and can promote long term relationships?

The Mormons were driven to Utah and then persecuted because their religious beliefs included polygamy. The Federal Government then chased them down and forced them to abandon the practice. So much for the freedom of religion.

As Andrew Sullivan suggests in this article, The Republican Party better not get too high and mighty after the victory in Iraq. First... the battle has not been won. There is a lengthy reconstruction process yet to be weathered. Second… there are many fiscally conservative/socially liberal voters out here that don’t take kindly to this crap.

GOP organizers like to talk about inclusion and the “big tent”. Unfortunately, Mr. Santorum and much of the GOP seem to believe that it’s a revival tent.

Victor Davis Hanson Interview

Naval Institute Proceedings has a facinating interview of Mr. Hanson. Via LGF.

Here's a sample.

If the United States has singular military power, then a lot of forces in the world vie to use that power for some particular agenda. When it's used in such a way, the United States is considered part of the global community. When it's not, they call it unilateralism. One concrete example is when nearly 200,000 Europeans were butchered in the heart of Europe, and no European power did much of anything. Some 57 days later, the U.S. Air Force removed [Yugoslavia President] Slobodan Milosevic. Before we intervened, they were calling us isolationists. After we intervened, they were calling us interventionists. But while we were intervening, they more or less approved.

Go read the whole thing.