To follow up on John’s post below, let me ask a question: of these three, which is the worst crime?
1. A guy burns down a warehouse, destroying millions of dollars of computers.
2. A guy sabotages Internet lines, causing millions of dollars in damage.
3. A guy releases a small program that disrupts hundreds of thousands of computers, causing millions of dollars in lost labor and lost data.
Answer: #1 is the worst, because it could involve physical harm to human beings, but #2 and #3 do not. That being said, the other two are still very bad. The day after they caught the 18-year-old miscreant who released the Blaster worm, I saw some guy from MSNBC saying that he was only a kid and that authorities shouldn’t be too hard on him. I don’t care if he was celebrating his 18th birthday the day he released the worm. He’s a felonious vandal and he should go to jail.
I’m guessing the reason people aren’t more outraged is because his damage was intangible — how do you figure the monetary value of the time and data the guy destroyed throughout the world? That, and because he’s a fat, nerdy white kid instead of a muscular black youth. People don’t feel as threatened by the former.
Still not convinced that this kid committed a serious crime? Then let’s acquit the corporate criminals at Enron. After all, their crimes were (mostly) intangible, turning on things like accounting mirages, false statements, and stock price drops.
I’m guessing that American virus and worm production would drop dramatically if more of these guys ended up in the federal pen.
[/rant]
Author: Eric Johnson
Stopping the Holocaust
Mark Shea made a comment about the irony of blaming the Pope for the Holocaust when he had few material tools to end it — or even interfere. Point well taken. I love Mark and his blessed blog, but he’s incorrect in one respect. Here’s the full passage:
“It is one of the weird twists of history that so many in both the Catholic and Jewish communities should survey the wreckage of WWII, a wreckage in Allied Leaders like Roosevelt and Churchill refused to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz and in which Stalin did nothing as the Warsaw Ghetto was annihilated, and look past this to a man who had not a single gun to defend himself, and yet who was responsible for the rescue of more Jews than any other man in Europe–and condemn him as practically being the architect of the Holocaust.”
America bombed lots of German rail lines (and railheads and railway yards), but the Germans were very clever about fixing them. It doesn’t take any skill to fill a bomb crater, and it doesn’t take hardly any skill to mend a rail. Bombing the lines only caused a few hours’ delay, or a day at most. Given the horribly inaccurate bombs of the day (it took a squadron of planes dropping hundreds of bombs to destroy a single target), it would have been impossible to destroy the rails altogether.
The Germans, as everyone knows, are organizational geniuses. Their wartime production kept humming along until the Allies started conquering Germany proper; a big part of their industrial prowess was dedicated to killing human beings. Since we couldn’t stopped industrial processes such as tank production or oil refinement, saying we could have destroyed the killing process is inaccurate.
10,000 French die, nobody cares
It pales in comparison to the one million Jews they obligingly shipped to Nazi prison camps and gas chambers. And it only equates to a few hours’ casualties at Ypres or the Somme. But still, one would think that the French would protest against 10,000 people dying from Europe’s hot summer.
I couldn’t believe it either, but the French regime has admitted that thousands of people died from the excessive heat in the last few months. Not to worry, though: they were mostly old pensioners, and therefore useless. That would explain the lack of coverage in the American press.
Still, one would think it might attract a little attention. I mean, these are white Western Europeans we’re talking about — it’s not like we’re talking about thousands of dead Slavs or Africans.
From news accounts, you can see the concerns of the French people, or at least the portion of the French people that make their voices heard:
1-5. Opposition to American “hegemony.”
6. Stifling genetically modified foods.
7. The truffle shortage.
8. Increasing the number of years government employees must work to get their pensions, from 37 to 40. (This caused riots.)
9. Too many American movies in French theaters.
10. Declining baguette sales (that’s not a joke — the government ran ads encouraging its citizens to buy more bread.)
.
.
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43. Ensuring that old people don’t die from unseasonable heat.
This is socialist France, cradle-to-grave-nanny-state-protection France. They aren’t supposed to have Third-World death tolls in civilized, tolerant Europe. That’s the continent to which we always compare backward, violent America, and France is Europeanness incarnate.
Western European Man ceased to believe in God, so he shifted his faith to the State. The State’s idea of egalité is that everyone is an equal chattel of the State. Useless poor women are given the chance to abort their future useless children; useless old people are tacitly encouraged to die and spare the State any further expense.
Socialism is not a cure for the culture of death. Socialism is an engine of the culture of death.
Al Franken is a big fat liar
Last June, noted moralist Al “What Am I Famous For, Exactly?” Franken sent a letter to Attorney General John “Hotpants” Ashcroft, asking him for the story of how he abstained from sex when he (Ashcroft) was young. Using Harvard stationery, Franken wrote that he had already received similar stories from other prominent Republicans.
Needless to say, Franken wasn’t telling the truth, and he’s issued an apology for his lame attempt at humor. He also misused the stationery, because he has no connection with the Harvard center on the letterhead, though he was a fellow last spring in the Kennedy School of Government. (Savor that fact for a moment: a mediocre comedian was a fellow at the Kennedy School. I’d love to know when it will bestow the honor upon P.J. O’Rourke.)
Aside: why do liberals hate John Ashcroft so intensely? At this point in her tenure, Janet Reno had already killed half as many Americans as Saddam Hussein did in the whole Gulf War, yet they defended her. Their accusations boil down to his preference for a flavor of religion they don’t like, evangelical Christianity, and prosecuting laws they don’t like, such as the Patriot Act. I checked, and it’s still legal to practice any religion you like in the U.S. (this ain’t Canada yet), and the Patriot Act was passed by 98 out of 100 Senators, including dangerous right-wing extremists such as Kennedy, Daschle, and the late Paul Wellstone. This obsession with Ashcroft says more about his critics than it does about him.
One senses that Al Franken’s own teenage abstinence story has less to do with self-restraint than with the good taste of the girls where he grew up. His own abstinence was thus thrust upon him, so to speak, unless I’m wrong and the girls he hung around with were mentally unstable and/or acutely nearsighted.
The truest statement in the original letter to Ashcroft: “Kids can sense a phony a mile away.” Adults can too, Al!
UPDATE: The Washington Post‘s Howard Kurtz wrote a story about Franken’s tome. Kurtz, who covers the journalism beat and is one of the Post‘s best writers, calls it “a bit of a screed,” and “strident.” Franken comes off as a nasty jerk, a slightly slimmer Michael Moore.
I didn’t know that he challenged Rich Lowry to a fistfight, and that Lowry turned him down. The next time Al comes to Washington, I’m going to see if I can get him to challenge me — please, Al, please! I’m just as conservative as Rich! And I work for a conservative publication that you hate, just like him!
The clinching line at the end: “First of all, I’m funny….And I don’t lie.” But you admitted you lied, buddy, and to the United States attorney general…which Al Franken are we supposed to believe?
Movies you won’t see anytime soon
Here are some movie plot elements that you won’t see very often on the big screen:
1. After working really hard to win a sports competition, the underachieving underdog loses big time. Seeing how much he has embarrassed himself and his family, he realizes that hard work is much more important than raw talent.
2. The handsome rich guy in a romantic comedy turns out to be a well-read, sensitive man, and the poorer guy is a jerk who doesn’t deserve the girl.
3. Braving the catcalls of people who say she can’t succeed, the spunky girl tries to beat the boys in _____, but she can’t hack it. She realizes that each sex has unique, unchanging strengths and weaknesses.
4. The (only) prominent black character is soft-spoken and reserved, and never offers any sassy comments or homespun wisdom. He neither dances nor sings. He likes harp music.
5. The fundamentalist Bible-thumping preacher is someone who truly cares about his congregation and community, not a skirt-chasing hypocrite. (Exception: John Lithgow in “Footloose.”)
6. The wife of a good yet slightly boring husband rejects her would-be lover, because she thinks that “boring” doesn’t justify betraying her spouse. Realizing that even the best sex in the universe won’t make her feel any less unfulfilled, she dedicates her life to serving others. (Contra “Bridges of Madison County,” “English Patient,” ad nauseum.)
7. The setting: Suburbia USA, where underneath the facade of well-kept lawns and red-brick houses lurks a deep spiritual satisfaction, as well as familial bliss.