Finally, A Contemporary Answer

…to the question posed in the title of an earlier post. And it’s in the first full paragraph on page 4 (which is the second page of the Introduction) of Party of Defeat, by David Horowitz and Ben Johnson:

The warriors of the jihad are promised salvation for slaughtering innocents; their highest honor is to sacrifice themselves for Allah by murdering infidels; their goal is to restore an Islamic empire that once stretched into the heart of Europe, until it was defeated in the battle of Vienna on September 11, 1683. Three hundred years later, Osama bin Laden turned this date of humiliation into a day of vengeance—and revival. Striking America’s homeland on September 11, 2001, jihadists murdered thousands of unsuspecting civilians, and came within a terrorist attack or two of destabilizing the American economy and unleashing chaos.

And the book as a whole serves as a very lucid answer, also, to the question of how the war in Iraq fits into the overall Global War on Terror—or, more precisely, the global war on Islamic jihadists.

Disuniter

Why does President Obama insist on arrogantly nurturing divisions among us? Wasn’t he supposed to be post-partisan or something?

Al Sharpton is an Idiot and a Traitor

Why is Al Sharpton so vocally in support of illegal aliens who take jobs away from average American citizens?

Natural Consequences

If men “ ‘experience their sexuality free of consequence’ ” it’s because women let them.

If women would insist that men wait until marriage for sex then men would not experience their sexuality free of consequence. Duh.

First Pitch

So when Sarah Palin is elected President, how will she throw out the first pitch? Fastpitch softball style?

At least she’d have a valid reason to throw like a girl.

Why Public Sector Unions Suck

I’m willing to concede that unions may have their place in the private sector when they work to balance the power of management. All too often, though, even private-sector unions can work to force companies into agreements that are detrimental to both sides in the long term.

Unions do not belong in the public sector at all, though, and here’s why: While private-sector companies have to consider the impact of union agreements on profitability, public-sector entities do not have to worry about making a profit and can agree to anything the union demands. If union demands result in increased costs, all that a public-sector body has to do is to raise taxes; private-sector companies, on the other hand, cannot necessarily just raise prices.

From The Housing Boom and Bust, by Thomas Sowell, p. 97.

“However irrelevant the empirical validity of claims of racial discrimination may be to those who use such claims to advance their own political or financial interests, the truth or falsity of these claims is crucial for the society as a whole.”