Atlas Shrugged’s Film Director

Congratulations to the late Ayn Rand on the 50th Anniversary of the publication of her masterpiece, "Atlas Shrugged." It is still selling well and influencing the thinking of more people than ever.

I finally saw the movie, "House of Sand and Fog," directed by Vadim Perelman. He has been selected to rewrite the screenplay by Randall Wallace (who was hired to rewrite the screenplay by Jim V. Hart), and to direct the movie version of "Atlas Shrugged" starring Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart.

Since I learned that instead of the trilogy that the producers initially planned, the movie is just going to be a single standard-length feature, I gave up all hope of it being even remotely representative of the 1,084-page novel. Remember, a screenplay for a two hour movie is about 100 pages long, with wide margins on both sides of the page whenever there is any dialogue.
I believe that Angelina Jolie is a talented actress who is capable of, and likely dedicated to, doing justice to the role of Dagny, despite any political differences she may have from Ayn Rand, so her casting did not have any impact on my pessimism.

But now that I've seen the director's previous movie, I have even less hope for "Atlas Shrugged" to convey even the sense of life or essence of the novel.

This is the central conflict in "House of Sand and Fog":

The government evicts a woman from her home unjustly, causing her to becoming homeless and determined to reclaim her house, when an immigrant purchases it at a government auction as a major step in his effort to use real estate to begin to raise his family's standard of living in the United States. Both are flawed but good people, and the film details the choices each one makes that result in a downward spiral.

"House of Sand and Fog" is the poster child for the "malevolent universe premise," which Ayn Rand called the view that man cannot achieve his values; it is the idea that successes are the exception, and that the rule of human life is failure and misery. This premise is antithetical to her philosophy, which holds that the universe is auspicious to human life if a man adheres to reality.

The movie shows human beings' ordinary self-interested actions to cause conflicts that result in tragedy due to tragic flaws in the characters, or on a more simple level, because of miscommunication and a government property-tax error.

"House of Sand and Fog" also suggests a mystical "determinism" philosophy. As Ben Kingsley stated in an interview with Charlie Rose, the film represents the Ancient Greek or Roman view that the Gods enjoy placing mortals together with precisely those others who would cause the maximum conflict and harm, just for the sport of watching the events play out.

I can find some good things to say about this movie and its director, however. First, the movie can be viewed as a critique of property taxes and of government auctions of unpaid-tax-based foreclosed real estate. In this way the film supports the idea of an individual's right to his own property. Certainly the bureaucrats in government are essential to causing the central problem in the movie.

But this message would have been clearer if the eviction was not the result of a mistake, but rather the result of standard state policy.
Another positive value in the movie is the way Ben Kingsley's immigrant character is portrayed. His is one of the most dignified, self-respecting, noble characterizations I have seen in any movie.

Additionally, Vadim Perelman has an excellent ability to give proper weight to the emotional value of a scene by staying with it, rather than cutting away quickly. His unhurried pacing of the film gives the audience time to think and feel, unlike so many films today.

Another quality I appreciated is that there is no sarcastic or ironic humor in the dialogue. Perelman doesn't randomly throw in modern slang or cynical attitudes the way so many other filmmakers do these days. The characters say what they mean, eloquently, at times with beautiful language, and without irony. (That is not to say that the film has no "swear" words.)

Artistically, the film is sound. It is an almost perfect representation of the malevolent universe premise. The seriousness of the story is given its proper weight. It is emotionally harrowing. You grow to care about the characters and see them as real people. (That is, as long as you believe they have volition and are not the playthings of the Gods). Vadim Perelman is a good director, based on this film.

Can Perelman switch his sense of life from dark to light? If so, and if the "Atlas Shrugged" script grows to 4 hours or more, perhaps there is hope.

She Moved Through The Fair

Many of you will know that the title of this post is also the title of a traditional Irish ballad. Just about every singer who you suspect might consider singing this song has done so plus some you never would have expected. I discovered I owned so many versions among my tapes and CDs, without even trying to collect them, that I once made a tape for myself of seven different versions in a row.

As you may have gathered, I like this ballad very much. And when I played a recording of it for my fiancee about ten years ago, my eyes started to well up, and she decided it should be made a part of our wedding. My coworker D.L. Shroder, who is an actor (see him at http://www.imdb.com/), graciously agreed to recite the lyrics of the ballad at one point during the ceremony. As he read it, he himself choked up.

Well, years later, when listening to yet another version on yet another album, I noticed a verse I had not heard or seen before. In this verse, it seemed that the singer’s lover is actually a ghost, and the wedding anticipated in the song never takes place at all. The song, which was a song of innocence and utter romantic ecstacy and anticipation, suddenly became a tragic, malevolent-universe type of song, the opposite of what I wanted recited at my wedding.

I decided that since that verse was never recited, my wedding was not actually tarnished.

However, I am happy to report that the version with the ghost is possibly inaccurate. Last Sunday I saw a concert by British folk guitarist Bert Jansch at the Bowery Ballroom in New York. He performed this ballad. But in his introduction, he revealed that when his old band Pentangle had recorded the song, they had made an error in the transcription of the lyrics. One word had been misrepresented. Instead of “My dear love came to me” they had sung “My dead love came to me”. He said his old band mate Jacqui McShee thinks it’s about a ghost to this day.

What a relief to learn the true lyrics are as I had hoped. I suppose I could have searched the Francis Child Ballads or other sources to find out for myself, but certainly Bert Jansch is as good a source as one can have.

However, now I read at Wikipedia that the ballad is in fact tragic and has two versions, one with “dead” and one with “dear”. Who can you trust?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_Child

Here is the version I had recited at my wedding:

“She Moved Through the Fair”

My young love said to me,
“My mother won’t mind
And my father won’t slight you
For your lack of kind.”
And she stepped away from me
and this she did say,
“It will not be long now
‘Til our wedding day,”

As she stepped away from me,
And she moved through the fair,
And fondly I watched her
Move here and move there.
And then she turned homeward,
With one star awake,
Like the swan in the evening
Moves over the lake.

Last night she came to me,
My dear love came in
So softly she came that
Her feet made no din
And she laid her hand on me
And this she did say,
“It will not be long, love,
’til our wedding day.”

Tony Awards and My Disney Podcast

The important post to read is my previous one called California Restrains Free Speech. This post is just for a couple of lighter topics.

The Tony Awards are handed out on Sunday June 10. I only saw one Broadway show last year, Mary Poppins, and on that basis I am rooting for Gavin Lee to win a Tony. He played Bert believably and brightly, and he connected with the audience, drawing you in. He also danced in very difficult circumstances (such as inverted).

Jane Carr, the actress who played the cook Mrs. Brill, was also amazing, in being such a vividly real personality.

Ashley Brown, however, the actress playing Mary Poppins, did not act so much as vogue her role. Where Julie Andrews in the movie kept you guessing, "What is her angle? Where is she coming from? What is she really thinking?", Ashley Brown was purely superficial, except for a few better moments toward the end. However, she was competent, adequate and professional enough for me to say, as Walt Disney is famous for saying to his staff when not displeased, "That'll do."

For more of my opinions on the show Mary Poppins, see my March 2007 post called "I'm Still Here."

Speaking of Walt Disney, I just recorded the first episode of my new internet radio show, "Inside Walt's World." I discuss my memories from 1989 when I worked as a telephone operator at Walt Disney World. It is now on rotation at the Disney-themed Extinct Attractions Radio station at http://www.live365.com/stations/extinctattractions or more simply at www.extinctattractionsradio.com. You may hear it on any day throughout the month of June 2007 at 1:00 pm Pacific Time or 4:00 pm Eastern Time (USA Time).

California Restrains Free Speech

The California Supreme Court has recently ruled that certain prior restraints on free speech are permissible.

The case involves a woman who lives near a restaurant. She would publicly rant against it, shouting falsehoods to potential customers, such as that the restaurant is involved with prostitution, drug dealing and the Mafia, and not only that, but it serves tainted food, too. She was found to have committed slander. However, there was an added injunction against her.

The majority opinion in the case captioned Balboa Island Village v. Lemen stated:

"Defendant [Lemen] ...objects to ...an injunction prohibiting her from repeating [in the future] statements the trial court determined were slanderous, asserting the injunction constitutes an impermissible prior restraint. We disagree."

According to Howard Bashman in his blog "How Appealing":

"Two justices dissented, and they reasoned that the injunction constituted an impermissible prior restraint on speech and that the plaintiff had failed to demonstrate that damages were insufficient to compensate the plaintiff for any harm that resulted from further repetition of the defamation."

http://howappealing.law.com/042607.html#024669

I am alarmed at this decision and precedent. Ms. Lemen, the defendant, argued that "a statement that was once false may become true later in time." I agree, and I believe one cannot morally or constitutionally prohibit speech before the fact. The Court rejected that argument concluding that further legal motions could be made by either party if things change. I disagree, and believe if she is punished for slander, that is motivation enough for her to cease. If she slanders again, then another suit or motion could be made for that new event, and eventually she will cease. But taking prohibition of speech as the status quo and then requiring motions to modify or dissolve the injunction if things change strikes me as backwards-thinking, a presumption of future guilt, and a violation of rights. I'm not an expert and I would welcome any informed opinions.

An easy-to-read and thoughtful commentary on this case by Vikram David Amar is at this site:

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/amar/20070511.html

Film on Eminent Domain

I recently attended a screening of a not-yet-released documentary film about the impact of eminent domain laws on individual citizens. It is called “Greetings from Asbury Park.”

The movie focuses on eminent domain’s impact on one woman, the 91-year-old Angie, who had spent half her life in her small home in Asbury Park, since arriving as an immigrant. We see her making phone calls, hiring a lawyer and "storming city hall" to fight for her rights.

Asbury is my old home town and the filmmaker, Christina Eliopoulos, also grew up there. It's a formerly vibrant beach resort town that has deteriorated over the last 40 years due to race riots, corrupt politicians and extreme welfare-statism which moved in large numbers of the mentally ill and of welfare-dependent people. This combined with high property taxes and high crime rates sent most, but not all, of the remaining sane, working, law-abiding residents packing.

As a result, irreplaceable buildings like the gorgeous Mayfair Theatre, which could no longer draw an audience and pay the high property taxes, were torn down. My own brief home movies of its demolition are shown in the documentary.

However, the film is primarily about the current government's use of eminent domain laws to drive out the remaining residents by force, and demolish their homes and businesses, to make way for condominiums.

I was surprised and delighted to see that Dana Berliner, of the pro-property rights Institute for Justice, is featured in the film. (She is the daughter of former Ayn Rand Institute Executive Director, Michael Berliner). Although there are some comments by individuals criticizing the city’s redevelopment plan as “Trickle Down Reaganomics” and someone calls for government-funded low-income housing, overall the movie is clearly focused on the injustice of a government taking over private property, in a moving way.

If you’d like to screen the film or donate money to assist in the film’s final editing, distribution and promotion, please contact Kerry Margaret Butch by emailing her at kerrymbutch@yahoo.com. You may also email Christina Eliopoulos at celiop99@mac.com. Say Greg Zeigerson sent you!

There will be a screening hosted by the Institute for Justice's Castle Coalition featuring guest speaker Dana Berliner at Jersey Shore Arts Center in Ocean Grove, NJ on June 22nd, 2007.

Racism, Freedom of Speech and Mikko Ellila

Prodos has posted on his blog the English translation of Mikko Ellila’s essay. See http://prodos.thinkertothinker.com/?p=325.

Mikko’s essay has some racist notions. While I totally disagree with those notions, I still uphold his right to freedom of speech. Speech isn’t force. If individual rights are to be respected, everyone must be permitted to express any ideas, no matter how false or unpleasant. In a free marketplace of ideas, the best and truest ideas win out in the culture eventually. Once some types of speech are prohibited, any other type of speech can be next. I uphold the right to freedom of speech for Mikko, as well as Don Imus and Howard Stern, as well as Nazis and Klansmen and even Al Gore and John Kerry, despite the degree to which they all offend me. Every dictatorship controls speech because the dictator knows it is in trouble once the people learn the truth.

For a vision of a world without freedom of speech, see Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451″. (Incidentally, Ray Bradbury has expressed anger at Michael Moore for stealing and distorting his title without permission, for Moore’s so-called documentary film with a similar title).
Having defended Mikko’s right to write anything he wants, I will now comment on why I disagree with his essay. Mikko’s essay suggests that members of a race share the same traits. Even if some members of the same race share certain traits, it is virtually never true that all members do, unless it is a meaningless and irrelevant physical trait that defines the race such as skin color.

In life, one deals with one person at a time, not all members of a race. (Even when addressing a group, you are addressing each individual in the group.) Each person creates his own personality, and achieves what he is able to or wishes to, based on the choices he makes and actions he takes within the context of his level of freedom, knowledge and ability, and the limitations imposed on him by his circumstances. Each person is an individual and his race is irrelevant. What he shares or doesn’t share with other members of his race has no bearing on how you interact with him.

If you recognize reality, you treat each person as an original, unique, irreplaceable self-created individual. There is no collective mind, only individual minds. (There is a Collective Soul, but that’s just a rock group, who has admitted to taking its name from a line in Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.”)

Individualism is the only way to fight and end racism. Taking each person as unique and respecting each person’s rights equally leaves no room for considering other members of his group. Capitalism is the only system that rewards individual effort and allows anyone to achieve what he can on his own initiative, regardless of any facts about any other members of his race or group. Individualism and Capitalism are the means to end racism.

For a more eloquent discussion of these issues, please see Ayn Rand’s essay “Racism” in her book “The Virtue of Selfishness” excerpted at http://freedomkeys.com/ar-racism.htm ..

See also George Reisman’s Essay “Capitalism: The Cure for Racism” excerpted at http://www.capitalism.net/excerpts/1-931089-07-8.pdf and available at http://www.capitalism.net/gr_pamph.htm .

See also Peter Schwartz’s essay “The Racism of Diversity” at http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3399

Free Speech Threatened; Blogger Persecuted

One of my fellow http://ThinkertoThinker.com bloggers, named Mikko Ellila, is having his right to freedom of speech threatened by Finnish authorities. Although I cannot read Finnish, I completely support Mikko’s right to express any opinions and present any facts. Moreover, all indications suggest that his writings tell the truth.

His blog is at http://mikkoellila.thinkertothinker.com/

Prodos’ May 3, 2007 blog post details the issue: http://prodos.thinkertothinker.com/

Mikkos wrote to Prodos the following:

“I am writing to you because I received a letter from the municipalpolice department saying they want to interrogate me because of theanti-Muslim, pro-Israeli, pro-European, pro-American posts in myblog. According to the letter, I am suspected of hate speech merelybecause I have pointed out that Islam is a fascist ideology thatadvocates killing Jews, atheists, homosexuals etc. …

This is a very important symbolic case, the first of its kind inFinland. Noone has ever been interrogated before in this country forblog posts criticising Islam. Probably thousands of people will be following this case already before I will visit the police station for the interrogation next Monday, because I have told about theongoing police investigation to several other bloggers whose pagesget thousands of visitors per day.”

Some action that you can take on behalf of freedom of speech and Mikkos Ellila, action that blogger Baron Bodissey recommends, includes:

Contact the Finnish authorities. The Finnish embassy has a handy US map with state-by-state contact information here: http://www.finland.org/en/

Here’s the main contact info for their embassy in Washington:

Embassy of Finland
3301 Massachusetts Avenue
N.W.Washington D.C. 20008
U.S.A

Tel. +1-202-298 5800Fax: +1-202-298 6030
E-mail: sanomat.was@formin.fi
Homepage: www.finland.org

Per Baron Bodissey: “Don’t be shy: remind the Finnish authorities how highly-regarded free speech is in their country. It seems that they may have forgotten that.”

More on Rudy Giuliani

I remember economist/Objectivist Richard Salsman during the 1996 Presidential primaries suggesting during a Q and A that it is so important to weaken the religionists’ impact on the Republican Party, to return the GOP to its more secular identity of the pre-Reagan past, that it is essential to vote for any secular, nontheocratic Republican in the primaries, even if he is a big-government liberal. At the time, he recommended voting for Arlen Specter.

This is another reason why, if we are to have any hope for the Republican Party, which is still the less Marxist/statist/collectivist of the two parties, Rudy Giuliani is the best choice of GOP candidates running now, and even any expected to consider running within the year (e.g., Newt Gingrich). Giuliani is not very religious and strongly supports the separation of church and state.

Yes, as New York Mayor, in the negative column, he welcomed terrorist Gerry Adams, and yes, at times he got government too involved in areas that are not part of its proper function, and yes, he persecuted and prosecuted Michael Milken many years ago. However, in the positive column, he also has been very strong in defending illegal immigrants from deportation, protecting women’s right to have an abortion, he justly and boldly threw terrorist Yasser Arafat out of a concert to which he hadn’t been invited, and according to Wikipedia:

“When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal suggested that the [9/11] attacks were an indication that the United States ’should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause’, Giuliani asserted,
There is no moral equivalent for this [terrorist] act. There is no justification for it… And one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism. So I think not only are those statements wrong, they’re part of the problem.

Giuliani subsequently rejected the prince’s $10 million donation to disaster relief in the aftermath of the attack.”

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani#_note-62
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/10/11/rec.giuliani.prince/

How many other politicians do you imagine would reject a Saudi’s ten million dollars and give a Palestinian leader like Yasser Arafat the boot? These are very strong indications that Giuliani understands the principle of justice and will act in a non-appeasing manner as President. His positive treatment of Gerry Adams conflicts with these other actions and does trouble me, however.

Steve Forbes, who is usually pro-capitalism in his economics and who is, like Giuliani, very conversant with history, has signed on as a consultant to Giuliani. I think this is a good sign, as Giuliani has not in the past supported Forbes’ Flat Tax idea, but is now embracing it, according to the New York Times. The “FairTax” or National Sales Tax replacing the income tax is probably a better idea, but Forbes’ Flat Tax is the next best thing and a step in the right direction. Overall Forbes is an excellent choice for economics advisor.

By the way, did you know that there is an openly atheist Congressman? It’s Pete Stark, Democrat of California.

See: http://www.secular.org/news/pete_stark_070312.html

I'm Still Here

I haven’t been blogging for awhile but I will be doing so again.

I am taking a TV writing class taught by a professional TV writer, and I will end up with a pilot script by the end of it. It’s loosely based on my first screenplay which I had put aside as needing more thought and improvement. I suddenly realized that a TV series format could be perfect for the content of the first half of my feature. Stay tuned for more on that. So far I’m thrilled with the response to my work in the class. Of course it’s “impossible” to sell a pilot but one has to try.

Some of the many topics I have thought of blogging about are the Presidential candidates for USA Election 2008 (So far I don’t see any better candidates running or likely to run than Rudy Giuliani, despite his shortcomings–he understands and knows the facts of history, and I believe he would implement a foreign policy of self-defense; he firmly stood up against Arafat and a Saudi royal in his mayoral career–and I think it’s important that he gets early and consistent support so he has a chance to win), the Broadway show Mary Poppins (I would give it a mixed review; the storyline makes less sense compared to the movie, Mary leaves the household in the middle–that’s not what I came to see–yet Mr. Banks blames her anyway for causing all the trouble, some of the songs have lost their oomph and rhythmic pacing, the orchestra is too small, the wife has become a victim instead of a confident suffragette, and there’s an overall psychotherapy-session feeling, but it has lovely and thrilling moments nonetheless and is very entertaining), and the movie Breach (I liked it–how strange that a man can compartmentalize his knowledge to such an extent, evading the results of his misdeeds, disconnecting his religious beliefs from his actions, etc. Great acting by Chris Cooper, and adequate acting by Ryan Phillippe. The book on Robert Hanssen surveyed his entire career but the film just portrays its last days, an effective choice).

Well, I guess I don’t have to blog on those topics any more. But feel free to reply with comments and I’ll clarify anything too sketchy above.

Meanwhile, I have to get my tax materials to my accountant before he gets overburdened by last-minute submissions, and I am trying to get a lot of computer-related technical stuff done (I always procrastinate on that, I’m just not a computer-oriented person although I am glad they were invented).

Updates From Zigory

Here’s my brief comment regarding the report in The New York Times on January 14, 2007, that Randall Wallace is writing a two-hour screenplay for the Atlas Shrugged movie:
A two-hour movie cannot convey anything substantial about the 1084-page novel’s plot, drama, and ideas. It would be like reading an outline for a proposed movie. It would be less fulfilling than Cliff’s Notes. A better idea would be to take a 100-page segment of the novel and dramatize it, without pretending to represent the whole novel. My hope is that Randall Wallace will be greedy enough to want three paydays instead of one, and write a trilogy after all.

About The Zigory Show with Hugh Fink: The Solid Vox web site (http://solidvox.com) and all of the Prodosphere sites are changing servers and Prodos is going through toil and trouble to make them all work correctly.

When that is taken care of, my very enjoyable, funny and informative interview with comedian/producer/writer Hugh Fink will go online at http://zigory.solidvox.com. After that, more Zigory Shows are on their way. I’m keeping with the Performing Arts/Show Business theme as it is one of my main areas of interest and expertise. I am currently planning interviews with people known for their work in Old Time Radio and in animation.

Emmy-Winner Hugh Fink on The Zigory Show

In another Zigory Show about the art and business of entertainment, I recently interviewed Hugh Fink, a stand-up comedian, television writer and producer who has won an Emmy for NBC’s Saturday Night Live. He has also taught comedy at UCLA. This new episode of The Zigory Show will soon be available for listening and downloading on www.zigory.solidvox.com.

He was the subject of an article in the New York Times on October 17, 2006 about his plan to perform at his alma mater that went awry due to an attempt by authorities to alter his routine. We discuss this incident in the Zigory Show interview.

An article about David Spade’s Showbiz Show, with quotes from Hugh, its creator and producer, appeared in the New York Times on September 15, 2005 (reprinted in its entirety elsewhere on September 28, 2005) and Hugh is also quoted in a Times article about Saturday Night Live on January 2, 2005.

I have known Hugh since our college years at New York University. It was great fun catching up with him and fascinating to hear his views on what makes something funny, what is the most important element in writing good comedy, the different types of humor, what one motivation he believes all comedians have in common, and the steps of his career so far from class clown to stand-up comic to writer-producer. We discuss today’s edgy humor and what value it can have, what are its disvalues when mishandled, and compare it to softer, lighter comedy such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Whether you agree with his opinions or not, he is a knowledgeable, experienced professional in comedy whose comments are of interest to anyone with a curiosity about entertainment and humor.

(To contact Zigory please email me at zigory@comcast.net.)

Kingdom of New York City

King Bloomberg and his Merry Board of Health Fascists now dictate restaurant recipes in all of New York City’s 24,000 food establishments.

What’s next, a gendarme in every home’s kitchen making sure at the point of a gun that you don’t cook with trans fats?

See http://www.nysun.com/article/44691 . Also see excellent comment by Dr. Mark A. Hurt at http://www.nysun.com/comments/3902 .

George Reisman wrote a good blog post on the topic of food-choice freedom at http://georgereisman.com/blog/2006/12/you-cant-have-trans-fats-because.html#links (although his request that libertarians become more like Objectivists is at best futile). He paints a vivid and believable picture of where this trend toward violating freedom of choice is headed — a snapshot of what life may be like one day soon — and what principles must be upheld as inviolable, in order to prevent it.

On my previous blog post topic, did you know that Rudy Giuliani had stepped down from the Baker-Hamilton commission (Iraq Study Group) early on? Here’s a good editorial about Baker vs. Giuliani: http://www.nysun.com/article/44790 . I continue to support Giuliani for President in 2008 unless an even stronger candidate comes along.

Iraq Study Group's Terrible Idea

Today’s bipartisan report by The Iraq Study Group regarding the Iraq War makes the exactly wrong recommendation: Talk to and negotiate with Iran and Syria. In other words, give them credibility.

See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16068589/ .

Iran and Syria’s actions have been purely evil, consistently. Why pretend they will change now? Just “hope” they suddenly turn sane after being psychopaths? They are not simply psychopaths, but psychopaths on principle due to their beliefs! This hoping and wishing for the best is not a good plan if you want to live — or live free.

What could account for such illogical wrong-headedness on the part of supposedly intelligent, wise, accomplished men? It is the influence of their own religious beliefs, specifically its focus on altruism and forgiveness. It is also a long trend of intellectuals teaching moral relativism or equivalence, or the doctrine of diversity, which denies one’s right to make distinctions between cultures, including distinctions between good and evil! We are taught to put blinders on rather than see the full picture with utter clarity.

What To Do In Iraq? Ralph Peters' New View

I haven’t followed Ralph Peters’ columns closely, but I understand he has in the past supported the Iraq war in part because overthrowing a dictator and establishing “rule-of-law democracy” is “noble” (not because it could be in America’s defensive self-interest). On November 2 in USA Today he wrote, “I supported the removal of Saddam Hussein. I believed that Arabs deserved a chance to build a rule-of-law democracy in the Middle East.”

Recently Peters seems to have had a change of heart, and has realized that American self-interest is the priority. In his most recent editorial, he even emphasizes the importance of well-defined terms to aid in thinking logically, and the importance of a well-defined, self-defensive purpose in war.

In his November 30 column in The New York Post, he writes regarding the inaccuracy of calling the Iraq situation a civil war, “In a civil war, you have clearly defined sides struggling for political power, with organized military formations and parallel governments.”

He writes that instead, “the violence in Iraq comes from overlapping groups of terrorists, militias, insurgents, death squads, gangsters, foreign agents and factionalized government security forces engaging in layers of savage religious, ethnic, political and economic struggles - with an all-too-human lust for revenge spicing the mix….No military lexicon offers a useful term to describe the situation in Iraq.

“This matters. We not only speak, but think, in language. To communicate effectively, we must describe things efficiently. Agreeing upon its name is essential to a deeper understanding of any phenomenon. Nouns are the handles with which we grip reality.”

This of course is true. But the words I think he’s searching for are “anarchy” and “altruism” (as in American self-sacrifice). Anarchy results in part from an ineffective government with no Constitutional commitment to defending liberty, and no philosophical basis in the culture for defending individual rights.

So what do we do now in Iraq? To his credit, he does not support Bush’s altruistic idea of staying there, taking no aggressive actions, allowing our soldiers to die or get wounded day after day, until the Iraqi government says they don’t need us anymore.

Peters writes, “The administration and Congress have to face a fundamental question: Which result is more important - preserving Iraq as a unified state with a facade of democratic government, or protecting our own national-security interests?

“The two priorities now conflict. Really taking on our enemies - not least Moqtada al-Sadr and his legion of thugs - would require us to defy the elected Baghdad government we sponsored. To kill those who need killing to pacify Iraq and re-establish our ascendancy would mean that we would again become an outright occupying power.

“Not that it really matters, but doing what it would take to win would also tear up our permission slip from the United Nations.

“On the other hand, the prospect of endlessly shoring up a corrupt, divided Iraqi government unwilling to protect its own citizens, and to do so at a cost in American blood, would be a far more immoral course than ordering our troops to kill the butchers who’ve been assassinating them and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.”

Note that he uses the term “immoral” correctly; he is saying that altruism and the sacrifice of Americans to a corrupt Iraqi government is immoral. He is calling for our troops to actually take action against the “butchers,” saying it is the more moral course. (It is hard to believe–but plainly true–that our troops are literally prevented from taking such action! They are just supposed to stand there and be targets, apparently.)

Peters begins his conclusion with these words:

“A fundamental problem is that the mission in Iraq remains vague. And vague mission statements are not conducive to military success.

“Generalities won’t do. Let’s tell our troops precisely what we expect of them: Are they there to defeat our enemies, or just to buy time with their lives in the forlorn hope that something will go right?”

In fact, according to President Bush, our troops are there to altruistically assist the democratically elected Iraqi government (that includes Communists and Islamic Theocrats) in any way they want, for as long as they want, because democracy (i.e., unlimited majority rule) is some kind of holy thing, the same holy thing that put into power Hitler in the 1930s and Hamas in 2006.

Peters ends with these sensible words: “And let’s not lose sight of the incontestable fact that, while being liked in the Middle East would be nice, being feared by our enemies is essential…we need to remember that, whatever else our government does or fails to do, its ultimate reason for being is to protect Americans and American interests.

“Saving the dubious Maliki government is a secondary concern, at most. The uncompromising defeat of our enemies is what matters.”

What are the best solutions to the Iraq situation? There are probably a few. One is Peters’ idea of becoming an “occupying power,” and unleashing our military to smash the enemy within Iraq, but also (my own addition) imposing a constitutionally limited government.

Another idea is to juxtapose two actions nearly simultaneously: Withdraw our troops from Iraq and the next day launch massive attacks on Iran, including nuclear facilities, government sites, Islamic fundamentalist schools and terrorist training sites. Overwhelm the totalitarian Islamists. Warn the other nations to shape up or we’ll strike them. Then when the dust settles, give moral and intellectual support–not military support–to a promising group trying to establish an individual rights-respecting government in Iran.

Well worth viewing or listening to is Yaron Brook’s “Democracy vs. Victory” on the Registered Users Page of http://www.aynrand.org/. First register, then see http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=events_ari_events and go to the right side and click on Free Online Video Selections, Registered Users Page.

Brook shows that victory and defending America is not President Bush’s plan at all. As hard as this once may have been to believe, it is made chillingly obvious by Brook.

Chuck McCann on The Zigory Show

My latest interview on The Zigory Show was a delight to conduct, and recommended to you if you have an interest in the entertainment business and especially the history of comedy and the early days of children’s television. My guest was Chuck McCann, and you can hear the interview online at www.zigory.solidvox.com right now!

Chuck McCann is a veteran Hollywood comedian and actor, who created many children’s television shows primarily in the New York area in the 1950s and 1960s, where I first encountered him.

I watched him probably from my birth until he went off the air when I was about 6, as he performed with puppets, played The Great Bombo (an inept magician and escape artist), portrayed a large Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, and many other characters. He was a student and friend of Stan Laurel and has often portrayed Oliver Hardy on television.

A highlight of my conversation with Chuck McCann is his commentary about Stan Laurel the man, and the influence of Laurel and Hardy on later comedians.

He is the voice of numerous cartoon characters including Duckworth on “DuckTales” and The Thing on “The Fantastic Four.”

He directed and performed in a feature animated film called “The World of Hans Christian Anderson” and he played W. C. Fields in the 1982 TV movie biography of Mae West.

He starred in “The Projectionist,” appeared in “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” and several Mel Brooks films, and added his spark to numerous TV commercials. It was a great pleasure to speak with Chuck, and to thank him for being part of my happy childhood memories.

Here is the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) filmography on Chuck McCann: CLICK HERE (over 100 listings!): http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0564841/ .

My interview with Chuck McCann is at http://zigory.solidvox.com .