British park rangers ordered to stop and quiz adults spotted without children



They are one of the few remaining refuges from the hustle and bustle of urban life - the perfect spot for a sandwich away from the office or a gentle stroll in the fresh air. Except, it appears in Telford, Shropshire, where park staff have been ordered to stop and quiz people using the town's park who are not accompanied by a child. They face having to explain what they are doing in the park and could be thrown out by park wardens or reported to police if they remained unconvinced.

The local council - which manages the 170 hectare Telford Town Park - says the policy is a 'common sense approach' aimed at safeguarding children using the park and follows similar guidance to staff at its leisure centres and libraries. A spokesman said only those deemed to be 'acting suspiciously' would be stopped and questioned. But park users accused it of 'authoritarian madness' and said the ruling risked panicking parents about the dangers children faced from potential paedophiles.

The policy came to light after two environmental campaigners dressed as penguins were thrown out of the park last month when caught handing out leaflets on climate change. Telford & Wrekin Council said Rachel Whittaker and Neil Donaldson were ejected because they had not undergone Criminal Records Bureau checks or risk assessments before entering the park - a requirement under the Child Protection Act.

David Ottley, Telford & Wrekin's sports and recreation manager, said in a letter to a member of the public over that issue: 'Our Town Park staff approach adults that are not associated with any children in the Town Park and request the reason for them being there. 'In particular, this applies to those areas where children or more vulnerable groups gather, such as play facilities and the entrances to play areas. This is a child safety precautionary measure which members of staff will continue to undertake as and when necessary.'

Miss Whittaker, 34, from Wellington, near Telford, said the policy carried a 'dangerous implication that if you have a child with you than everything is okay and you won't be questioned.' She added: 'It is dangerous as well as frightening people, it could start a hysterical society and punishes people who have done nothing wrong while giving an outlet for those with sinister motives a way of getting around it.'

Park user Edna Pearson, 70, part-time pub worker, yesterday said the policy was 'over the top'. Mrs Pearson said: 'It's the men you feel sorry for - unless you have got a dog with you, you cannot go for a walk anywhere on your own any more. 'Kids shouldn't be left by themselves anyway and some paedophiles have children with them.'

Former childcare social worker John Evans said: 'It is authoritarian madness which can only be based on ignorance. It is absurd, it is insulting and what's more it is dangerous as it panics people about the dangers their children face.' Adrian Voce, director of Play England, a lottery-funded branch of the National Children's Bureau which advises local authorities on child play provision, said the policy appeared 'odd' and the authority's guidance to park wardens may have been 'excessively cautious'.

The park, situated close to the town centre, is the only staffed park in the borough and is well used by office workers in their lunch hours. It also has a popular children's play area, woodland walks and a mini road train for families to enjoy. Ron Odunayia, Director of Community Services at the council, said: 'We are not talking about a blanket policy covering everybody who enjoys our Town Park. 'However, if someone is acting in a suspicious manner or acting in an inappropriate way then, of course, our staff reserve the right to asks questions. 'Our approach is in certain circumstances where an individual's behaviour is deemed strange or suspicious rather than as a general rule.'

Councillor Denis Allen, cabinet member for community services, added that as landowner of the park, the Tory-run authority had child protection responsibilities and a duty of care. He said anyone approached would be treated 'sensitively, and in a fair and even-handed manner', but confirmed that the police or child protection services would be informed, if appropriate.

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The Death of Shame

There was once a day in America when a convicted child molester might find that his life was ruined, dogged forever by the shame of his evil deeds. Today, though, one might be a child molester on one hand, but a celebrated member of the community for being a great kid's little league umpire on the other. Such a skunk might even find that he is given awards for his efforts behind the plate despite his serving behind bars. For this is a day when shame has been killed.

Can anyone imagine a lower human being than someone who would force themselves upon a child, physically and mentally raping them, forcing them to deal with the shame and fear of it for the rest of their lives? Unfortunately, the folks of the little league umpire association in Torrington, Connecticut can't seem to imagine why anyone would find a child molester such a bad fellow. Because, instead of heaping shame on one that is in their midst, they've raised him up to celebrate his life's deeds.

The Torrington Board of Approved Baseball Umpires, at least, feels that convicted child molester Tom Barbero is a fine example of the umpire's art. They think so much of him that they've given him an award for his umpiring because he "deserves" such recognition. Oh, sure Barbero was convicted and sentenced to four years behind bars and 35 years probation for sexually molesting three teenaged boys in 1994 and 1995. But, hey, he was a great ump, nonetheless.

Even after this creep was convicted in 2000 for the molestation, the Umpires Board gave him this award anyway. Then, three weeks later they tried to revoke it after pressure from the public came to bear. Certainly it was the right thing to do to revoke this rapist's award. But that they gave it at all knowing what he did was a perfect example that too many in our society today suffer from the disease of "relativity." All things are "relative," morality is meaningless. They've allowed the concept of shame to die a whimpering death.

At first the Umps rejoinder to those shocked at their initial decision to honor this cretin was that despite his crimes, he was a great umpire. You see, they had separated Barbero's work as an umpire from his crimes as a rapist of children. And, if morality is removed from the picture, this might seem a sensible action. Chances are, he really was a great umpire. But his crimes should make void his work, the shame of his child rape should tarnish his entire life and make even mention of his name summon a feeling of scorn.

We cannot separate great evil from the perpetrator. It would be like claiming that Hitler was a great fellow except for all that "Holocaust stuff." Hitler should never be separated from his crimes. His name should be anathema for all eternity by all people. That is the proper use for shame.

Who can doubt after his conviction why Tom Barbero wanted to be an umpire of kids' baseball in the first place? Was it not to eventually misuse his position as a figure of authority among children in order to sate his diseased desires to rape a child? Was his desire to help kids or exploit and harm them? So, even if he were a good umpire, his ultimate purpose for being an umpire is tainted with his disgusting lusts.

Of course, Tom Barbero is no Hitler and I am not saying he is. But that the umpires of Torrington cast morality and shame aside to honor a man who's sole desire was not to help kids but to harm them, well that should cast shame on all of them.

In their defense the Umps also claimed that Barbero had served his time and should be given another chance. Certainly if he were convicted of say drunk driving, few people would be against giving him a second chance in life. But, no one would think it a good idea to make him a school bus driver! But even that comparison does not fully highlight the issue here.

Tom Barbero wasn't just a jaywalker or a drunk driver. He was a rapist of children. His crimes are not forgivable, his evil not forgettable. We cannot just let bygones be bygones. He is a destroyer of lives, not a petty criminal. Sometimes evil should not just be allowed to be forgotten. Instead of being celebrated, Tom Barbero should have had his name ceremonially removed from the rolls of the Torrington Board of Approved Baseball Umpires and then been drummed out of the association in a public manner for all to see. His name should have shame forever heaped upon it. Let this reptile slink off into a hole, never to be seen again.

That would be the proper use of shame. Who cares what it does to Barbero? It is what it does for everyone else that matters. It stiffens the spines of the righteous, soothes the souls of the wronged and serves as a warning to others who might follow in the criminal's footsteps. THAT is the proper use of shame. It's something we seem to have forgotten in this society. So, let's not give a child molester the honor of an award, shall we? Let him taste shame.

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"Peaceful" Protests of the Uncivilized Far Left at the RNC

Every four years the political parties of this great land have their official convention to nominate and promote their candidate of choice for that political season. Of course, protests on both sides happen. That's normal. Protests have been around as long as humanity has been around. However, there are protests, and there are anarchists who pretend to be protesters.

At the Democratic National Convention there were a host of speakers who spoke well of Barack Obama and his plan for "change". Abortion and gay marriage was mention a few times, but with no specificity of any sort. That's okay. They have that right to free speech. Global warming was made aware several times, even though it is not manmade and 32,000 signatures of prominent scientists have made clear thatfact. Nevertheless, that is irrelevant in this column.

What is relevant is the differences of the two opposing sides and their behavior. About 150 protesters were arrested at the Democratic convention. Most of them were anti-abortion protestors or anti-gay marriage protestors.

At the Republican National Convention, anarchy took place with far left violent and uncivilized scoundrels who intimidated and attacked delegates, smashed windows, vandalized cars, flattened tires, threw flaming garbage cans at policemen in riot gear, gave the finger to onlookers, and continued with their "peaceful" protests.

Theanarchy of these uncivilized heathen just goes to show how violent and hypocritical the far left really is. These people on the extreme far left condemn conservatives for being "warmongers"and then turn around and become violent criminals themselves.286 violent protesters were teargassed and arrested at the Republican convention. 130 of them face felony charges and get this- four of them are news reporters that represent that good ole unbiased media. One in particular was an Associated Press reporter. So much for unbiased news. I'll just bet this story won't make it onto the front pages!

Also there is another difference between our candidates. People say Barack Obama is not dangerous but some of his colleagues and associates are extremely dangerous individuals indeed. Rev. Wright was controversial in his thundering condemnation of God (took his name in Vain) and America in the house of God, but he is not dangerous.

People like Louis Farrakhan perhaps, could potentially be, but may not be.Mr. Farrakhan has the most anti-white and anti-American sentiment in this nation. His sermons and papers resemble those that might come from the mosques of Saudi Arabia and the like. However, he is not a real threat, but mostly just words. A man by the name of Bill Ayers, a former 1960s terrosist and advocate of anarchy is a confidant of Obama. See wikipedia for Ayers' full anti-American biography and his association with the Democratic Party. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers

The real threat comes with the fact that Obama's campaign has been related on two separate occasions with HAMAS, and Palestinian terrorist organization. On one occasion the Obama campaign (with or without his consent) accepted a $25,000 donation from a group linked to members of HAMAS.

Next a man linked to HAMAS actually spoke at the Democratic Nation Convention. That man was Ingrid Mattson of the Islamic Society of North America - an organization with admitted ties to HAMAS and the Holy Land Foundation which claims to be a charitable outfit. Probably just a disguise like HAMAS's charitable excuse. Other Islamic ties have been mad as well. Iranian TV has been cheering for Obama and so have other Arabs in the Middle East. Now, it's getting interesting right?

I am not calling Obama a Muslim because I have no evidence of that, but from all accounts Islamic extremism has been on his side of the political fence. Perhaps Bush gave them such a blow that they now fear conservative Republicans? I doubt it. However, terrorists do understand that they have a better chance of prospering under a Democrat who will not seek themout and destroy them, but only ignore them.

Barack Obama promises to bring "change", but will that change come in the form of a great American dream or a Pro-Islamic nightmare? Do the research and decide for yourself. Now, that's something worth protesting!

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How to Manage Savagery

"Islam has bloody borders." So wrote Samuel Huntington in "The Clash of Civilizations?," his 1993 Foreign Affairs article later expanded (minus the question mark) into a best-selling book. Huntington argued that, eclipsing past eras of national and ideological conflict, "the battle lines of the future" would be drawn along the "fault lines between civilizations." Here, according to Huntington, was where current and coming generations would define the all-important "us" versus "them."

At the time of its writing, "The Clash of Civilizations?" had, beyond the virtues of pithiness and historical sweep, something to recommend it on purely empirical grounds. It seemed especially plausible as applied to the "crescent-shaped Islamic bloc" from the Maghreb to the East Indies. In the Balkans, for example, Orthodox Serbs were at the throats of Bosnian and later Kosovar Muslims. In Africa, Muslims were either skirmishing or at war with Christians in Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia. In the Caucasus, there was all-out war between Orthodox Russia and Muslim Chechnya, all-out war between Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan, and violent skirmishes between Orthodox Ossetia and Muslim Ingushetia.....

As predictions go, Huntington's landmark thesis seemed in many ways to have been borne out by subsequent events. Long before 9/11, and long before George W. Bush came to office, anti-American hostility within the Muslim-and, particularly, the Arab-world was plainly on the rise. So was terrorist activity directed at U.S. targets. Meanwhile, the advent of satellite TV brought channels like al-Jazeera and Hizballah's al-Manar to millions of Muslim homes and public places, offering their audience a robust diet of anti-American, anti-Israel, and often anti-Semitic "news," propaganda, and Islamist indoctrination.

It should have come as no surprise, then, that Muslim reaction to the attacks of September 11, 2001 tended toward the euphoric-in striking confirmation, it would seem, of Huntington's bold thesis. And that thesis would seem to be no less firmly established today, when opinion polls show America's "favorability ratings" plummeting even in Muslim countries once relatively well-disposed toward us: in Turkey, for example, descending from 52 percent in 1999 to 12 percent in 2008, and in Indonesia from 75 percent to 37 percent in the same period (according to the Pew Global Survey). These findings are all the more depressing in light of the massive humanitarian assistance provided to Indonesia by the U.S. after the 2004 tsunami. The same might be said of Pakistan where, despite similarly critical U.S. assistance after the 2005 earthquake, already low opinions of the U.S. have sunk still further.

Nor is the phenomenon of "Muslim rage" directed against America alone. In Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France and Germany-countries with widely varying foreign policies toward, and colonial histories in, the Muslim world-terrorist plots, terrorist attacks, spectacular murders, and mass rioting have made vivid the gulf that separates embittered and often radicalized Muslim minorities from the societies around them. Even in tiny, inoffensive Belgium, whose government was among the most vocal in opposing the war in Iraq and has bent over backward to respect the sensitivities of the Muslim community, the entire Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, according to the Flemish newspaper Het Volk, has been turned into a "breeding ground for thousands of jihad candidates." ....

Remarkably, however, the wars that chiefly roil the Islamic world today are no longer at its periphery. They are at the center, and they pit Muslims against other Muslims. The genocide in Darfur is being perpetrated by a regime that is every bit as Muslim-and black-as its victims. The Palestinians went from intifada to civil war: in 2006 and 2007, nearly as many Palestinians died violently at the hands of other Palestinians as at the hands of Israelis. In Lebanon, there have been bloody clashes this year among Shiites, Sunnis, and Druze. Last year, the Lebanese government had to send troops into Palestinian refugee camps to suppress an insurrectionary attempt by a Syrian-sponsored terrorist group.

It does not end there. Saudi Arabia has been under attack by al Qaeda since 2003. In November 2005, Jordan suffered devastating suicide bombings at three Amman hotels in which nearly all the victims were, like their murderers, Sunni Muslims. In Afghanistan, a Muslim government led by Hamid Karzai-a Pashtun-fights an Islamist rebellion by Taliban remnants and their allies, also mostly Pashtun. In Pakistan, the axis of conflict has shifted from the east to the west, where sizable areas are under the control of Islamist militants; in 2007 alone, some 1,500 Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto notably among them.

Then there is Iraq. Though Americans naturally focus on the more than 4,000 U.S. servicemen killed so far since the country was liberated in April 2003, that figure pales in comparison with the number of Iraqis killed in inter- and intra-sectarian violence: Sunnis against Shiites and Kurds, Sunnis against Sunnis, Shiites against Sunnis, Shiites against Shiites. Cumulatively, the number of civilian deaths since early 2006, when sectarian fighting got under way in earnest, now stands at just over 100,000 (according to the Brookings Institution).

All this serves as a useful reminder of another significant fact. In the years immediately prior to 9/11, non-Muslims tended to be the likeliest targets of terrorism. In recent years, Muslims themselves have overwhelmingly been their co-religionists' primary victims. In 2007, of the nearly 8,000 deaths due to terrorism in the Middle East, only a handful were Israeli. Similarly, of the roughly 270 suicide bombings in 2007, some 240 took place in predominantly Muslim countries. Nearly 100 mosques were also the targets of terrorist attack, many at the hands of Muslims.

Taking the long view, one might note that intra-Islamic feuding is as old as the religion itself. Of Muhammad's immediate successors-the "righteous caliphs," according to Sunni tradition-the first, Abu Bakr, may have been poisoned; the next three are all known to have been assassinated, with the murder of the third caliph (Othman) resulting in the schism from which the Shiite branch of Islam emerged. The Abassid revolt destroyed the Umayyad caliphate in the 8th century; the early 9th century was marked by civil war between the sons of the fifth Abassid caliph, Haroun al-Rashid. Al Qaeda itself has ancient Islamic antecedents: the 8th-century Kharajites, for instance, were notorious for their extreme puritanism, frequent recourse to violence, and the belief that they could declare their Muslim opponents to be infidels and treat them accordingly.

To be sure, endless feuding is hardly unique to Islamic civilization: the history of the West is also one of intense competition, bitter conflict, and outbursts of religious fanaticism. On the whole, though, these conflicts have dissipated and evanesced as the West has almost universally adopted democratic forms of governance. By contrast, Islam's foundational patterns not only persist into the present day but in many ways have intensified.

There have been devastating civil wars in Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, and an even more terrible war between Iran and Iraq. Even a partial list of prominent political assassinations in the Muslim world since World War II runs to over 100 names. It includes two prime ministers and a president of Egypt; two presidents and a prime minister of Bangladesh; three prime ministers and a president of Iran; a king and two prime ministers of Jordan; two presidents, a president-elect, a prime minister, and a former prime minister of Lebanon; a president of Syria; a king and two prime ministers of Jordan; a king and a former prime minister of Iraq; a president, a prime minister, and former prime minister of Pakistan; a king of Saudi Arabia. And these are just the successful attempts. The list of coups in the Muslim world is about as long. In Syria alone there have been no fewer than nine since 1949.

Several explanations have been offered for this history of violence. There is the absence of democracy, which forecloses opportunities for non-violent political change and pushes most forms of dissent into the mosque. There is the oil curse, which allows states like Saddam Hussein's Iraq to finance expensive wars, buy political support, sustain huge sclerotic bureaucracies, and prevent the diversification and modernization of their economies. There is the endemic tribalism of Muslim, and particularly Arab, societies, and the values that go with it: the claims of kinship, the premium on familial honor, the submission to established hierarchies, suspicion of those outside the clan. There is the moral abdication of the Muslim intellectual class, which, with some notable exceptions, fell prey to nearly every bad idea that came its way, from fascism to socialism to third-worldism. And there is the history of Islam itself, which has made a virtue of military conquest, dealt sharply with heretics, and, until the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 by Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, typically combined political with religious authority.

Should this have been more apparent to Huntington when he wrote "The Clash of Civilizations?" Perhaps. It may have been obscured, in part, by what later turned out to be the Muslim world's own version of a holiday from history. The Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in the following year seemed to cool Iran's revolutionary ardor. Civil wars in Lebanon and Yemen were brought to an end, leaving most existing Arab regimes as entrenched as ever. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the Middle East was no longer a cold-war battleground. Socialism lost favor, and some Middle Eastern regimes began expressing an interest in reforming their economies. From the outside, at least, one could almost begin imagining a "New Middle East," as Israel's Shimon Peres did with consummate naivete in a 1993 book.....

In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration and other governments had been quick to brand Osama bin Laden as an outcast among Muslims. But the overwhelming weight of evidence suggested differently. There were large public demonstrations of support for bin Laden in the Philippines and Indonesia. In the Muslim areas of Thailand, the name "Osama" became suddenly popular among newborn boys and girls, according to an October 2001 report in the Hindustan Times. Portraits of bin Laden were hot-selling items from Bangladesh to Nigeria. A poll found that fully 42 percent of Kuwaitis, whose country the U.S. had liberated only a decade earlier, considered bin Laden a "freedom fighter." Among Palestinians, 9/11 made bin Laden "the most popular figure in the West Bank and Gaza, second only to Arafat," according to a Fatah leader in Nablus....

In late 2007, the U.S. military captured letters from two of al Qaeda's "emirs" in Iraq. One of them appraised his situation thus: There were almost 600 fighters in our sector before the [Sunni] tribes changed course 360 [sic] degrees. . . . Many of our fighters quit and some of them joined the deserters. . . . As a result of that the number of fighters dropped down to 20 or less. We were mistreated, cheated, and betrayed by some of our brothers who used to be part of the jihadi movement, therefore we must not have mercy on those traitors until they come back to the right side or get eliminated completely. The second emir offered similar testimony...

In short, al Qaeda's star has dimmed considerably, and it is important to consider the reasons why. Though there can be little question that the surge accounts for a large part of the explanation, it is equally true that the surge would not have succeeded without the support of the very Sunnis who, until 2007, had provided sanctuary and support to men like Zarqawi and his minions. This switch is in turn explained by al Qaeda's barbaric treatment of ordinary Sunnis and their tribal leaders during the period of the "Anbar caliphate."

And that raises a question: why did al Qaeda put itself "in a state of war with the masses in the region" (in Naji's words) rather than using those masses as allies or pawns in their war against America and the so-called apostate governments? The answer, it turns out, is inscribed in the very nature of the jihadist movement.

"All existing so-called Muslim societies are also Jahili societies," wrote Sayyid Qutb, al Qaeda's intellectual godfather, in his 1964 book Milestones. By "Jahili societies," Qutb was referring to the pre-Islamic, pagan world of Arabia that lived in "ignorance of divine guidance." Put simply, Qutb, his fellow travelers, and his spiritual heirs were, and are, not merely at war with the modern world, as defined by liberal democratic government and Western social mores. They are also murderously inclined toward "heretical Muslims," particularly Shiites. They object violently to Muslim attempts to fashion a kind of compromise modernity between Western and Islamic norms. They seek to overthrow secular Muslim regimes like Indonesia and Jordan, and religious Muslim regimes like Saudi Arabia that maintain relations with the West.

They are also-crucially-at war with the pre-modern world: traditional tribal societies in which authority is handed down from father to son and in which Islam is a religion and not a binding legal code or political ideology. Typically, Muslim regimes have been careful to accommodate their tribes, plying them with money, government jobs, small arms, and other tokens of honor, and above all by allowing them to govern their internal affairs. This was (generally) true even in Saddam's Iraq. To the jihadists, however, tribal structures represent a twofold political challenge: first, they instill a powerful sense of local identity as opposed to a strictly pan-Islamic one; second, their systems of patronage and charity get in the way of the jihadists' agenda of radical social change.

It was this anti-tribalist attitude, combined with the utter savagery with which the jihadists put it into practice, that proved to be al Qaeda's undoing in Iraq. And that was not the only manner of its undoing. Precisely because of the post-9/11 transformation from a group to a movement, al Qaeda's leadership lost control of what in the West would be called message discipline....

Still, al Qaeda's decline offers a kind of portrait-in-miniature of a civilization that seems perpetually to be collapsing in on itself. Here is a movement in which suicide-that is, self-destruction-is treated as the ultimate act of self-assertion. A movement that sees itself as an Islamic vanguard, leading the way toward a genuine Muslim umma, but is permanently at war with the Muslim communities it inhabits. A movement whose attacks beyond the Islamic world have mainly had the effect of accelerating the very forces by which it is sealing its own fate. To use an inexact astronomical analogy, this is a movement with the quality of a supernova: even as an envelope of superheated gas rapidly expands outward, its core is compressing and ultimately implodes.

A similar pattern played out with the pan-Arabist regimes of the 1950's and 60's. And the same forces are at work today in Iran, where the regime's outward-directed, "revolutionary" activities-from supporting Hamas to engineering Hizballah's de-facto takeover of Lebanon to developing nuclear weapons-seem almost purposely designed to counterbalance the weight of the regime's manifold domestic discontents.

As for how the United States and its allies should attempt to deal with this new reality, one temptation is simply to stay away, on the theory that no good can come from putting our hands in such a mess. This is roughly the view of the libertarian and paleoconservative Right, and perhaps a majority of the Left. But the view hardly bears discussion: all mention of Israel aside, access to Middle Eastern energy resources is a vital American interest and will almost certainly remain so for decades. The Muslim world is also inextricably a part of the Western one, particularly in Europe. Nor is the global terrorist threat likely to go away even if al Qaeda does. The possibility that a regime that sponsors or supports terrorists might be in a position to supply them with weapons of mass destruction is a direct threat to us.

A second option, associated with the so-called realist school, contends that with rare exceptions, the U.S. should deal with the Muslim world more or less as it is, without seeking to change it.2 This is a view that has much to recommend it-at least in the hands of a master diplomatic practitioner. But Metternichs are hard to come by, and in the hands of lesser statesmen, realism easily slides into passive acquiescence in an intolerable status quo-or into intolerable changes to it. Witness the readiness of Colin Powell, as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff during the first Bush administration, to accept Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 as a fait accompli.

A third view, shared to varying degrees by neoconservatives and liberal internationalists, is that the U.S. and the West have no choice but actively to seek domestic reforms in Muslim countries. Needless to say, such a course is fraught with risks and often prone to mishandling, overreaching, and failure. But some version of it is the only approach that can, if not heal the pathologies of the Muslim world, then at least ameliorate and contain them so that they do not end up arriving unbidden on our doorstep, as they did one morning in September 2001.....

More here

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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