podpolia

Finally, Congress has decided to do something substantial about the problems at the UN. I’m greatly in favor of doing whatever is necessary to make the money we spend on the UN actually do something beneficial — which is certainly more than it has been doing recently.

Video of a violent protest in China has made it out into the outside world. There are reports of this type of thing quite frequently, but this is the first time in a while that a video has made it out. It seems suprising that the communist government has held on as long as it has with all of this going on, although they seem to have better control over the cities. Unfortunately, while the communists hold power, there is unlikely to be a democratic revolution in China. With the economy growing as strongly as it is, there is still hope that economic reforms will lead to social reforms, although that road is likely to be long and slow.

It’s good to see a detailed analysis of the Patriot Act, even if it’s only part of it. Power Line has a good one on Section 215 here, and explains why the hype about it is completely overblown.

If the government tried to pull this one in the US, the ACLU would be whining about the ‘separation of church and state.’ It seems to be quite an effective plan, though. It’s probably because I’m not Catholic, but I’m not sure I could get some of the questions right, although that would be more the naming all the sacrements type things.

There’s an interesting piece here about family ties in the military. I’m quite impressed with how it is written — quite often the media shows a complete lack of understanding of the motivation for becoming a soldier. This article tries to explain some of them, and does fairly well.
I really wish I could join the military, but I can’t. So, like many others around me, I’ll do what I can to support our soldiers on the home front.

There are a number of things about this story that are disturbing. Probably the most disturbing part, however, is the fact that Russia appears in this piece to be a police state more than a democracy. When Protestants (quite an appropriate name, considering the circumstances) are accused with fomenting a democratic revolution, there is definitely something wrong.

I can’t say I’m overly suprised at this. Kerry is probably cleaning out his closet now — long enough after the election that people won’t be overly interested, but also quite a long time before the 2008 election, so all of this (if brought up again) could be dismissed as “old news” by the Kerry campaign and the media (who doubtless will do nothing to make Kerry look bad). It would be interesting to see more of the military file that this was a part of.

I couldn’t decide which category to put this under — ‘Politics’ or ‘Philosophy and Religion,’ because it could be placed under either.
Anyhow, the Pope has put out his stance on gay marriage and many other related issues. The article doesn’t go into much detail on the basis of Benedict’s argument, but the last paragraph mentions that he calls such things symptoms of the “banalization of the human body.” I quite agree with that, and I wish the news outlets would provide the full story instead of just the “inflammatory” bit about the Pope condemning something that only a small percentage of people (in America, at any rate) support.

I think that more and more of the differences between right and left in this country today is composed of the dichotomy between idealism and realism. Neither side is purely in one camp or in the other — many of Bush’s plans for the future of the Middle East are idealistic, for example — but the left seems to be more and more interested in putting their fairly arbitrary ideals into action. An excellent example of this is the report discussed in this article about Harvard (which appeared on Power Line the other day. The completely random and arbitrary attempt to enforce an ideal in a completely strict and unyielding manner, while completely ignoring outside factors that contribute to fluctuations in the system being regulated would be amusing, if it weren’t so completely sad.
And people wonder why tuition costs keep climbing.