Aug
29
2006

URLs du Jour

2006-08-29

  • If you'd like to know exactly how plugged into the local political scene Pun Salad is: while I was taking a Saturday afternoon nap at Pun Salad Manor in Rollinsford, Shawn Macomber was approximately 3.4 miles away partying down with NY Governor George Pataki and the Strafford County Republicans. (But, frankly, reading Shawn's article is as good as, if not better than, being there.)

  • Depressing Story du Jour: One of the major points in James Fallows' widely-hyped Atlantic Monthly article "Declaring Victory" was that Muslims in America were infertile ground for launching terror plots, since the US was a lot better at assimilation than Europe and Britain. Unfortunately, a recent WaPo article says, in essence: not so fast, Jim:
    If only the Muslims in Europe -- with their hearts focused on the Islamic world and their carry-on liquids poised for destruction in the West -- could behave like the well-educated, secular and Americanizing Muslims in the United States, no one would have to worry.

    So runs the comforting media narrative that has developed around the approximately 6 million Muslims in the United States, who are often portrayed as well-assimilated and willing to leave their religion and culture behind in pursuit of American values and lifestyle. But over the past two years, I have traveled the country, visiting mosques, interviewing Muslim leaders and speaking to Muslim youths in universities and Islamic centers from New York to Michigan to California -- and I have encountered a different truth. I found few signs of London-style radicalism among Muslims in the United States. At the same time, the real story of American Muslims is one of accelerating alienation from the mainstream of U.S. life, with Muslims in this country choosing their Islamic identity over their American one.

    So good news about the "few signs" of "radicalism", bad news about the increasing alienation; that's not the way it's supposed to work. (Via LGF.)

    You might (however) want to check out Aziz for a contrary take. (Via Instapundit.)

  • Manatees: not as dumb as they look. An inspiration to all of us who aspire to that status.

  • Quote du Jour: via Thomas Sowell:
    Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

    —T. S. Eliot