Gabrielle Giffords' Remarkable Recovery

From last night's World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer, a video here.

And Representative Giffords' book is coming out November 15, "Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope."

And at Los Angeles Times, "In new book, Gabrielle Giffords vows to return to Congress."

'Burying the Hatchet': James Q. Wilson Reviews Steven Pinker's 'Better Angels of Our Nature'

This is interesting, at Wall Street Journal, "The long, arduous and incomplete process of civilizing humankind and suppressing its most violent impulses." (Via Small Dead Animals.)

SIDE NOTE: James Q. Wilson is an eminent political scientist and past president of the American Political Science Association. If the profession cultivated more scholars like him I'd express more hope for the discipline.

And check the book at Amazon: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Mark Melvin, Alabama Inmate, Sues Prison Officials Over Right to Read History of Black Convict Leasing in the South

Well, I wouldn't be able to make it without my books.

See NYT, "Alabama Inmate Sues to Read Southern History Book."

The book is Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. I'm gonna check that out:

The book chronicles the vast and brutal convict leasing system, which became nearly indistinguishable from antebellum slavery as it grew. In this system, people, in almost all cases black, were arrested by local law enforcement, often on the flimsiest of charges, and forced to labor on the cotton farms of wealthy planters or in the coal mines of corporations to pay off their criminal penalties. Though convict leasing occurred across the South, the book focuses on Alabama.

Jeez, it's only a book. No doubt prison officials aren't thrilled by the idea of inmates getting an inside look on things. That said, this Melvin guy doesn't look like the most savory of characters. He was sent down for helping his brother commit two murders.

Deterring Enemies in a Shaken World

Daniel Byman reviews Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda, by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, at New York Times:

As they relate this new direction [in counter-terrorism after 9/11], Mr. Schmitt and Mr. Shanker put flesh on approaches and operations that in the past were largely in the realm of specialists. The book is sprinkled with small, vivid anecdotes that bring day-to-day counterterrorism work to life. Take the Horse Blanket, a “graduating series of contingencies that each federal agency could take in response to a potential or actual terrorist attack” beginning in 2007.

Much like a playbook, the Horse Blanket (whose intriguing name goes unexplained here) detailed the cost of each option, its level of disruption and its impact on foreign policy. A report of terrorist efforts to cross from Canada might lead to an increase in border security. Should intelligence agencies gather credible reports of the ultimate nightmare, a nuclear weapon being moved to attack an American city, the border would be shut. Policy makers can now ratchet counterterrorism up or down to match the perceived threat.

Technology has made a revolutionary difference. The authors explain how the contents of cellphones belonging to captured terrorists are cloned in seconds, with computers scanning the numbers to match those of other known terrorists. Such information can tie a suspect to an enemy network and its locations, which in turn helps interrogators ask smarter questions and enables them to direct military forces better. More bad guys die or are taken off the streets, and fewer innocents suffer.

Other efforts are aimed at the hearts and minds of those who have not yet taken sides. To discredit Al Qaeda with the Muslim public, officials sought “to create a constant drumbeat of anti-Al Qaeda information that was factual, directly quoted and heavily sourced,” as one White House official described it. So when the Taliban kill a schoolteacher or terrorists blind schoolgirls in an acid attack, the horrors are trumpeted in local and international media, countering Al Qaeda’s narrative that its fearless warriors fight only heavily armed United States soldiers.

Today, the authors write, American counterterrorism policy embraces “the new deterrence.” By imposing costs on terrorists’ reputations, chances for success, material assets — whatever they hold dear — you “alter the behavior and thinking of your adversary.” In contrast to deterrence strategies during the cold war, deterrence today does not involve a state actor, like the Soviet Union, with nuclear-tipped missiles but rather more nebulous networks that include not only fanatic suicide bombers but also more rational financiers, recruiters, arms runners and others who can be dissuaded by the threat of death or arrest. The new deterrence involves “kinetic” instruments, to use the military parlance for killing people, but also innovative information operations that might discredit a cause and scare away providers of funds.

Sounds like a great book.

The New Britannia

From Mark Steyn, at National Review:

The trick in this business is not to be right too early. A week ago I released my new book — the usual doom’n’gloom stuff — and, just as the sensible prudent moderate chaps were about to dismiss it as hysterical and alarmist, Standard & Poor’s went and downgraded the United States from its AAA rating for the first time in history. Obligingly enough they downgraded it to AA+, which happens to be the initials of my book: After America. Okay, there’s not a lot of “+” in that, but you can’t have everything.



But the news cycle moves on, and a day or two later, the news shows were filled with scenes of London ablaze, as gangs of feral youths trashed and looted their own neighborhoods. Several readers wrote to taunt me for not having anything to say on the London riots. As it happens, Chapter Five of my book is called “The New Britannia: The Depraved City.” You have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat me to Western civilization’s descent into barbarism. Anyone who’s read it will fully understand what’s happening on the streets of London. The downgrade and the riots are part of the same story: Big Government debauches not only a nation’s finances but its human capital, too.

Keep reading.



It's really astounding, the prophecy in that book. Don't miss it.

Ezra Levant and Kathy Shaidle on Mark Steyn's 'After America'

At Blazing Cat Fur:

And more at Pundette's, "Steyn Mania!"

Amazon to Battle Apple iPad With Tablet

At Wall Street Journal:

Amazon.com Inc. has battled Apple Inc. over digital books, digital music and mobile applications. Now the two companies are taking their clash to another front: the tablet market.

Amazon plans to release a tablet computer by October, people familiar with the matter said, intensifying its rivalry with Apple's iPad

While Amazon has long offered digital content on its website, it has lacked much of the hardware to go with it. Now the Seattle company hopes customers will use its tablet to buy and rent that content, said people familiar with its thinking.
An Amazon spokesman didn't respond to requests for comment.

Amazon's looming entry into the tablet market, which Chief Executive Jeff Bezos has hinted at in his appearances this year, is the latest example of how technology companies, once focused on a particular segment of the industry, are increasingly jostling one another on multiple fronts.

Amazon's sure becoming a major player all around. RTWT.

Amazon Wants Voter Referendum to Decide Online Sales Tax

At Los Angeles Times, "Amazon aims to have voters decide on sales-tax law."

I hate government by ballot box, although this one's a referendum rather than initiative, so what the heck? Besides, I miss running Amazon at the blog, and Governor Brown's a blithering idiot.

Ann Coulter on 'Piers Morgan Tonight'

More talk about her book. Are you reading it? Her same very dry wit fills the pages. I laughed out loud a couple of times: Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.

There's a Part 2 and Part 3 as well.

Ann Coulter Looks Fabulous!

On the back cover of her new book, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.

Started reading last night. It's great!

Man's Rights

Well, with all the recent talk about "Atlas Shrugged," I've been skimming back over some of her writings. The novel is almost 1,100 pages, and I have no plans to re-read it (although I'm considering The Fountainhead for another round). I have been reading some of Rand's essays, for example, "Man's Rights", which is featured in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness. A sample:

The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system—as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history.

All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man’s life is his by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.

A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self- sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action-which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.

More at the link.

Andrew Breitbart Saves the World (Or at Least Your Sanity)

I'm reading it now, and loving it. It's hard to put down, and I don't say that about many books these days.

A review from Derek Hunter at Daily Caller, "Righteous Indignation: Andrew Breitbart is out to save the world( and he just might)" (via Big Government):

Of all the things Righteous Indignation does, perhaps its most important function is to pull back the curtain on the unholy alliance between all the cultural and media institutions and the left-wing industrial complex and expose how they fit together like puzzle pieces to advance an agenda. If you trusted the media or the entertainment industry before reading this book, your eyes will be opened. If you didn’t, you will know you are not alone.

Breitbart might not save the world with his book, but he might just save your sanity. Or he might inspire readers to stand up and say “no more!” and take action to defend liberty. Come to think of it, if that happens, he might just save the world.

She's Hot. She's Sexy ... Ayn Rand's Bigger Than Ever

From Matt Welch at Hit and Run, "How Ayn Rand 'was loathed by the mainstream conservative movement'."

Following the links takes to Donald Luskin's piece at WSJ, "Remembering the Real Ayn Rand: The author of "Atlas Shrugged" was an individualist, not a conservative, and she knew big business was as much a threat to capitalism as government bureaucrats."

Welch notes that Luskin's got a new book coming out, "I Am John Galt: Today's Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It." And he also points us to Reason's 2009 cover story, "She’s Back! Ayn Rand is bigger than ever. But are her new fans radical enough for capitalism?" It's a little dated (nobody's "going Galt," for example), although there's an important message there, revived again this week by President Obama's speech on the budget:

For Rand’s popularity to achieve political traction, Randism will have to move beyond the strange preoccupation of a few politicians and the full-time passion of two specialist think tanks. Her ideas will need to become the guiding principle for a significant voting bloc or politically active movement. And that is a difficult problem for Objectivism, which as an organized movement never managed to convert the millions of cash-paying Rand customers into active “radicals for capitalism,” to use the author’s own self-description.

I love the celebration of the individual, but I'm no atheist and some of Rand's individualist abandon leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But Rep. Paul Ryan is cited at the piece. Ryan's Catholic, so he's not going in whole hog for Rand's vision in the moral sphere. But he does endorse the emphasis on liberty in the market (narrowly defined), and the threat from the bureaucratic Leviathan that's more real than ever under the current Democrat regime. I think these points indicate an adaptable Randism for people who aren't that radical. Frankly, it's pretty rad just to go Rand on economic individualism, so folks can sort out Objectivist ethics in others moral realms after that point.

Borders Bankruptcy

Or near-bankruptcy.

See LAT, "Is Borders heading for its final chapter?"

I used to think about how much the big-box bookstores improved my quality of life. When I was in graduate school (UCSB) I used hang out at Borders on State Street all the time. Especially memorable were the times I met Dr. Michael Gordon, my dissertation advisor, for bread and coffee. It was a lot of fun. Of course I should add that I'm not necessarily crying about this. Both Barnes and Noble and Borders savaged local booksellers, so among a lot of Bohemians (including my mom), they won few friends. Still, there's something in the convenience of always being able to find a good quality bookstore at the neighborhood mall. Strange, in any case. Markets working, and all that.

More at Pat Austin's, "The End of Dead Tree Books Is Nigh."

Eva Gabrielsson to Complete Fourth 'Millennium' Novel

Following my weeks-long gender feminist blogging episode, I went ahead and started reading The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo, the first of the Stieg Larsson novels featuring the punky heroine Lisbeth Salander.

The story's at CBC News, "Millennium Writer's Partner Wants to Finish Series, " and Daily Caller, "Stieg Larsson's Partner to Complete Final Millennium Novel."

Stieg Larsson’s partner Eva Gabrielsson plans to finish the fourth novel he left uncompleted on his death. According to early details culled from Gabrielsson’s memoir of her life with Larsson, Millennium, Stieg and Me, which is set for publication in France and Scandinavia next week,Larsson had written 200 pages of a fourth novel in his internationally successful Millennium series before he died. Gabrielsson wants to complete it because, she says, “Stieg and I often wrote together”.

Larsson’s partner has refused to reveal details of the partially completed novel’s plot, but promised that its charismatic but damaged protagonist Lisbeth Salander “little by little frees herself from her ghosts and her enemies”. And, she said, she will only finish the book when she gets undisputed rights to Larsson’s work from his family, who inherited the author’s assets when he died intestate.

Swedish journalist Larsson died in 2004, aged 50, before any of his three completed Millennium titles – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – were published. The crime novels featuring crusading journalist Blomkvist and punk hacker Salander have gone on to become a publishing phenomenon, with approaching 50m copies sold worldwide. But Gabrielsson is involved in an extended dispute with the author’s father and brother over the proceeds from the books because the couple remained unmarried, despite being together for more than 30 years, leaving her with no rights to his assets under Swedish law. Reports of an uncompleted fourth novel, left on Larsson’s computer and in Gabrielsson’s hands, have been circulating for several months ...

Photo Credit: E!, "Rooney Mara Takes Lisbeth Salander Look Public — Plus the Latest on Dragon Tattoo."

Gabrielle Giffords is Model of Deliberative Democracy

During my first few days of the semester this week I was afforded an unusual opportunity to engage in a discussion on "deliberative democracy," the theme of my textbook, from Joseph Bessette and John Pitney, American Government and Politics: Deliberation, Democracy, and Citizenship. And as announced by the publisher, a key element of the the text is the focus on "thoughtful, selfless consideration of issues and on civic participation as essential components of good citizenship."

And it strikes me that while the "deliberative democracy" model outlined there is often quite idealistic, we do have many role models for the kind of elevated politics to which the model aspires. And while I'm about as partisan as they come, I noticed immediately that Gabrielle Giffords was a different kind of Democrat, a moderate "Blue Dog" with strong credentials on security and border control. So it's interesting that today's Los Angeles Times features a background report on Congresswoman Giffords stressing these key points, "Arizonans Praise Giffords as Politician Who Tried to Remain Above the Democrat-Republican Divide":

Outside the Tucson office of gravely wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the well-wishers bearing crumpled notes and pink roses are emblematic of the breadth of her support.

They are tattooed college students and flannel-clad construction workers. They are retirees who clutch their canes and weep. Giffords is Jewish, yet many leave candles depicting the Virgin Mary. Giffords is a Democrat, yet many are Republicans.

"I saw her as a voice of reason. In Arizona, they're real hard to find," said Sharon Baker, a 63-year-old Republican whose face fell at the sight of the cluster of red and blue balloons, greeting cards and stuffed animals.

In a state known for rhetoric gone wild, Arizonans are mourning more than Saturday's shooting, which killed six people and left Giffords battling a traumatic brain injury. The gunman's actions have, for the moment, silenced a rare voice of calm amid the political cacophony.

"She appealed to everyone and that's what we need. We need to elect more Gabby Giffordses," said Laura Walls, 47, a personal trainer who visited the roadside tribute this week. She voted for Giffords' "tea party" rival in November.

There's more at the link.

And I don't want to downplay partisan differences too much here. Rep. Giffords supported progressives on both ObamaCare and cap-and-trade (the one-time hot Democrat prioriorty item), but she certainly appeared as genuinely interested the process of governing itself --- and she has served as an especially dedicated representative of her constituents. And I admit to having a soft spot for her, given that she voted against Nancy Pelosi as the House Minority Leader.

I'll have more on Gabrielle Giffords in the days and weeks ahead. God bless her.

(The interview above is from January 7th, the day before she was shot --- i.e., her most recent television appearance.)

Why Do People Love Stieg Larsson's Novels?

A great piece from Joan Acocella, at The New Yorker, "Man of Mystery."

I'm getting up to speed on Stieg Larsson. Moe Tkacik's last essay at WCP cites the Lisbeth Salander novels, "Julian Assange, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the Swedish Approach to Sex Crimes." She was fired shortly thereafter for breaking from the extreme gender-feminist pack. (My Twitter exchange with her is here.)

Anyway, here's this from the Acocella essay:

It is clear what people like in these movies, but what accounts for the success of the novels, despite their almost comical faults? Larsson may have had a weakness for extraneous detail, but at the same time, paradoxically, he is a very good storyteller. (Mario Vargas Llosa, in an article on the trilogy, compared Larsson to Dumas père.) As for cheap thrills, there’s dirt aplenty and considerable mayhem.

Early in the trilogy, we find out that when Lisbeth was a child her mother was regularly beaten senseless by her mate, Alexander Zalachenko, a Russian spy who had defected to Sweden, where a secret branch of the security police put him on the payroll, thinking that he could tell them useful secrets. Lisbeth told the police about Zalachenko’s assaults on her mother, only to be put away for two years in a sta

te psychiatric hospital. This is the main source of what, in the novel’s present, is Lisbeth’s utter distrust of any government institution, down to the local police. At the end of “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” she has a showdown with Zalachenko. This is a brilliantly orchestrated scene, if you can stand it. Zalachenko shoots Lisbeth in the head. (She runs her fingers over her skull. She finds the hole, feels her wet brain.) Zalachenko and his sidekick, Ronald Niedermann, bury her hastily, failing to notice—they’re in a dark wood—that she is still alive. Once they’re gone, she digs herself out, returns to Zalachenko’s hideout, and sinks an axe in his face.

Near the end of the last book, Niedermann holes up in a brickworks that Zalachenko once owned. When he arrives, he finds two Russian girls, a brunette and a blonde, who have been deposited there by sex traffickers. They are afraid to go outside, and are starving. Niedermann brings them some soup. Then he grabs the brunette and breaks her neck with a single twist. The other watches, and puts up no resistance when it is her turn. You don’t forget such episodes—the truly innocent at the mercy of the truly evil—and they lead directly into the absolutist morals of Larsson’s books, which may also be a powerful selling point. Lisbeth believes that people are responsible for what they do, no matter what was done to them, and plenty was done to her. The trilogy is, to some extent, a revenge story—a popular genre. (Think of “Death Wish” or “True Grit.”) Lisbeth not only cleaves Zalachenko’s skull; she beats up two large bikers simultaneously and, with a Taser, delivers fifty thousand volts to Niedermann’s crotch. The woman warrior has become a beloved feature of the movies, from Nikita to Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft, and beyond. It is also, reportedly, a sexual fantasy popular with men—something else that may have helped to sell the books.

According to certain researchers, another sexual fantasy common among men is rape. Larsson’s campaign against the abuse of power eventually became focussed on one victimized group: women. A friend of Larsson’s tells the story that, at the age of fifteen, Larsson watched as several boys he knew gang-raped a girl. Later, ashamed, he telephoned the girl and asked her to forgive him. She refused. He is said never to have forgotten this episode. In these three violent novels, no species of assault is more highly featured than the rape of women by men. Furthermore, you can’t go twelve pages without being almost screamed at on the subject of feminism. Larsson’s original title for his trilogy was “Men Who Hate Women.” (This remained the title of the first book in the Swedish edition. Gedin says that he absolutely insisted.) All the sections of the first book are prefaced with statistics on crimes against women. The epigraphs in the third book all have to do with female warriors—the Amazons, and so on.

Yet some critics have accused Larsson of having his feminism and eating it, too. They say that, under cover of condemning violence against women, he has supplied, for the reader’s enjoyment, quite a few riveting scenes of violence against women. There are indeed many such scenes, the most vile being the sex murders in the first book. It should be noted, however, that we never see those crimes. They are in the past—they are told to Mikael and Lisbeth, and hence to us. Other crimes against women get curiously brief coverage. Niedermann’s murder of the two Russian girls takes only four lines.

In terms of the plot, the most important crime in the novel’s present time is the rape of Lisbeth by her state-appointed guardian, Nils Bjurman, but, while we’re told that her clothes are torn off and that something is then rammed up her anus, we don’t hear much more. The episode occupies only one page. By contrast, when Lisbeth returns to Bjurman’s apartment to rape him, in the same way, this is given more than six pages, and the assault acquires significant embellishment. On Bjurman’s torso, from his nipples to just above his crotch, Lisbeth tattoos, in big letters, “I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.” Some of the people who accuse Larsson of double-dealing may be thinking more of the film “Dragon Tattoo,” where the two scenes are more equal in length, and where everything is more horrible just by virtue of being there, on the screen, for us to look at.

Another consideration that would seem to deflect charges of misogyny is simply the character of Lisbeth. She is a complicated person, alienating and poignant at the same time. Many critics have stressed her apparent coldness. In the scene of her revenge against Bjurman, her face never betrays hatred or fear. When the rape is over, she sits in a chair, smokes a cigarette, and stubs it out on his rug. (He is tied up.) Accordingly, some writers have called her a sociopath. Larsson, too, said that once, but elsewhere he described her as a grownup version of Pippi Longstocking, the badly behaved and happy nine-year-old heroine of a series of books, by Astrid Lindgren, beloved of Swedish children. Pippi, Lindgren wrote unsentimentally, “had no mother and no father, and that was of course very nice because there was no one to tell her to go to bed.” Lisbeth wears leather and studs. She has a ring implanted in her left labium. She doesn’t particularly like to be around people. But she is not a sociopath. The primary diagnostic feature of sociopathy is callousness—lack of feeling—toward others. Lisbeth falls in love with Mikael. She brings gifts—cake and perfume—to her mother, who is in a home for the mentally impaired. (Zalachenko’s beatings finally caused brain damage.) She operates outside society but not outside morality. She is an outlaw, or a sprite—a punk fairy.

George W. Bush: A Letter of Holiday Greetings

At Amazon's Kindle Post blog (via Glenn Reynolds).

Review of Jamie Glazov's Showdown With Evil

By David Solway, at Pajamas Media, "The 'Unholy Alliance' Between Islamic Jihad and Utopian Socialism."

We recall that old parlor game: if you could take ten books with you to a desert island, what would they be? Obviously, the list is something of a “moveable feast” and may be modified as our tastes and intellectual needs change over the years, but this is a time in which certain books have become essential to our understanding of the tumultuous era we live in. Jamie’s Glazov’s Showdown With Evil, a selection of FrontPage interviews that he has conducted for the site over the last eight years, is one of those “desert island” books, meant to illumine and accompany us in discretionary solitude.

And the forward by Richard Perle is at Frontpage Mag.

And the book is here: Showdown With Evil: Our Struggle Against Tyranny and Terror.

Melanie Phillips on Michael Coren

Via Blazing Cat Fur: