View 743 Thursday, September 27, 2012

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

So Romney says he was joking about opening a jetplane window? Mad Magazine made a similar joke, long ago, in their parody of "Lost In Space". In the first panel the family was choking from lack of air; the robot droned, "why-don’t-you-open-a-window?" They did this, and it worked!

That joke worked for Mad because it’s a satire magazine; you read it knowing that nothing in it is meant as a factual statement. Is Romney running a satire campaign? Perhaps he should leave clowning to the professionals.

But seriously… one of the burdens of power is that the office does not permit joking. Or mistakes. Or spontaneity. All masters are slaves.

One of the privileges of power is to surround yourself with intelligent people so that if you say something that turns out to be wrong, someone will correct you. Of course there are politicians who do not choose to have intelligent people around them, and who intimidate their advisors so that they are not corrected; but the best do not operate that way. There may be people so intelligent that they never think or say anything egregiously incorrect, but I don’t know any of them. All of the competent leaders I have known – Reagan, Newt Gingrich, General Graham, Max Hunter, Possony – have expected their friends to speak up if they disagreed, and surrounded themselves with intelligent friends and advisors. As I have said often, one of the advantages of being me is that I have intelligent readers who will tell me if I say something silly, whether it was a simple mistake or due to incorrect information or just a slip of the mind.

I don’t know Romney, but having seen his accomplishments, particularly the reconstruction of the Olympic Games session, I would bet a lot that he likes to have smart people around him. As it happens I was on one of the advisory committees to Mr. Uberoff when he headed the LA 1984 Olympics (having been minorly involved in the LA bid made by Mayor Yorty). My involvement was mostly inconsequential but I was close enough to management to see just how complicated the task was, and how easy it would be to lose a lot of money without trying very hard.

As to windows on airplanes, the ventilation problem in the event of smoke in the cabin is not trivial.

For anyone interested in cabin smoke:

Jerry,

Many airliners still retain the option to open a window in the cockpit, at least on the ground. That’s because the pilot may have no way to exit the aircraft in the event of a fire preventing the pilot from reaching another exit. Smoke in the cockpit is one of the worst airborne emergencies for 2 reasons. First, the smoke may be so toxic that onset of neurological deficit or blood-oxygen transport problems may be only a matter of seconds. Second, the first indication of an aircraft fire or smoke/fumes in the cockpit is usually someone on board saying “hey do you smell something?”, at which point everyone around immediately takes a deep breath or two, inhaling quite a bit of whatever is in the air, delaying starting the emergency procedure procedures while everyone sits around going “I dunno it smells like a bad air filter, what do you think?”

In military aviation we try to beat these considerations into the brains of our student pilots, but over time a little complacency often sets in.

When airborne depending on the aircraft type, there may be an option to depressurize and “ram-dump” the environmental system, which opens ram air ducts to force outside air into the cockpit/cabin. I’m sure every aircraft will have variations in how this works but the basic idea that there is a switch that immediately shuts off conditioned pressurized air circulation and opens up ram-air from the outside is pretty much standard. It isn’t much different from opening a window.

I do know that my one major smoke/fume in the cockpit incident dropped my blood oxygen level to around 85% in a matter of minutes and resulted in an overnight hospital stay, from only 2 or 3 breaths of the smoke-filled air before I got on 100% oxygen.

Sean

I have limited experience with cabin smoke but the one I had went much as described: “Hey do you smell something funny?” Followed by discussion followed by “Let’s get this bird down fast!” Fortunately it was minor, although at 38,000 feet nothing involving blue smoke is really minor.

This isn’t really a mail bag, and I do have a lot of interesting mail. I’ve been subject to allergies this week, and Roberta has been gone East to see the grandkids. She’ll be home tomorrow and with luck things will go back to something like normal.

I have several messages pointing to http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/organ_ghouls_of_doom_suit_LxCZMP5uRGgI6yn3ywMN9J 

It is not unexpected – indeed the point of Niven’s story was that this was inevitable – but it’s still a bit scary.

View 742 Friday, September 21, 2012

   IMPORTANT SECURITY ANNOUNCEMENT:  UPDATE your Windows 7 OS now.

Close Explorer and manually update Windows and restart. It will take about ten minutes. Do it now. More below.

The Middle East continues to burn, and America continues to apologize for supporting free speech. One suspects the next move will be to redefine hate crimes to include any graphic depiction of Mohammed, and any publication about him that is less than fulsome praise. Next will come a purge of many history books. So it goes.

On the limits of Chinese languages:

In a previous entry http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=9642) I mentioned Sprague de Camp’s observation that the structure of the classical Chinese language limited it to fewer than 14,000 words, which would have severe limits on scientific development; idly speculated that the Whorfian Hypothesis, once important in American anthropology of the Boaz-Mead school, would have generated some conclusions from this but I hadn’t heard it applied to Chinese, and even more idly wondered if this had any influence over Mao’s decision to implement the Great Cultural Revolution.

Last night’s mail http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=9713) had a number of reader comments on how modern China is dealing with the linguistic limitations of the language (one symbol per word, not phonetic; only 412 possible syllables meaning that with tones a total of under 1300 vocables; and an ideographic language in which the written symbols did not correspond to the sounded words. As De Camp said, this places heavy limits on science development. Today I have

Chinese language

Spoke to [my daughters’] Chinese teacher last night. When new concepts arise, they tend to use phonetic equivalents of the actual word or Chinese phonetic equivalents if Chinese root words exist. So when you do end up with a new set of symbols, for example the symbols for Google, they phonetically sound like google, but the symbols have nothing to do with the meaning. She also agreed Chinese are very rooted in tradition and change slowly if at all.

Phil

which is no surprise.

This implies the widespread use of phonetic writing, which is a fundamental change in the very character of the Chinese language. Phonetic languages can be learned by nearly anyone by the end of the equivalent of first grade, after which the reading vocabulary and the speaking vocabulary are essentially the same, while words never heard before can still be read. Ideographic languages can be learned only after years of intensive study. I can recall that in 1950 almost all of the children of the black tenant farmers I knew when growing up could read, but when I got to Japan many of the adult male workers on the US base where I went to school were illiterate in Japanese. I could read from the phrase book and be understood (doubtless I had a terrible accent, but they were too polite to visibly notice), but showing them the phrase printed in Japanese was futile.

Japan at that time had both ideographic and phonetic (syllabic) character sets, and also used “romanji”, which in 1950 used what amounted to standard American English characters to spell out Japanese words (our phrase book showed both, kana characters which of course I couldn’t read as well as the same phrase in romanji which I could). I was young enough and so preoccupied with my Army training that I didn’t keep a proper journal of my experiences at the time. That’s a pity because it was a unique opportunity to observe the complete transition of a culture from a technically proficient ‘modernized’ Imperialism to something else – and at the same time there was a transition in linguistics and literacy. Alas, all I have is some memories from Japan, and of course my experience with China is confined essentially to what I have read.

It did seem to me that up into the 60’s, when I did have some responsibilities in assessing Chinese and Japanese political developments, that there were some fundamental cultural differences, and I wondered at the time if the ideographic Chinese language (which severely limited literacy) had much effect on that; but the Cultural Revolution happened about the time I got into another line of work, and it is pretty clear that whatever Mao did, it had a profound effect on China.

We’re still seeing some of the results of that. Much of what my generation studied about Chinese culture and history was greatly changed by that, and I confess I haven’t kept up; Some years ago, after the Cultural Revolution was done, I was approached by a Peking University professor about two years older than me – we had both been in Korea, obviously on different sides – about spending a year teaching as a visiting professor. I’d been warned by colleagues that this wouldn’t be easy; they expected hard work. It seemed like a great opportunity, and I was seriously considering it, but the discussions were interrupted by the Tiananmen Square events and were never renewed (and I didn’t pursue any renewal). At the time I thought I had some understanding of Chinese history and culture, but it was clear then that things were changing rapidly.

Sprague’s linguistic observation triggered an old curiosity, which resulted in this discussion. I’m not sure there are any conclusions, but it has generated a few interesting questions. I would gather that literacy in Chine is rising rapidly, which would indicate that the conversion from an ideographic to a phonetic language has been effective. Interestingly, the United States, and particularly California, attempted the opposite: the conversion of English from a phonetic language to “look-say” or “whole word” which is to say ideographic, sparking a wave of illiteracy. (In 1950, the number of illiterate conscripts was below 10%, and of those the vast majority had never been to school through 4^th grade; the notion of an adult with an 8^th grade education was absurd).

The US education establishment’s war against phonics was vigorous and has had long term effects. One of those effects has been a complacency about low literacy rates. Actual literacy rates have been hard to establish because of the concept of “reading at grade level”, which is nonsense: with a phonetic language you can either read or you can’t. My wife’s literacy program The Literacy Connection http://www.readingtlc.com/ (note that she didn’t trademark the name, alas, and others are using it now) works: in about 70 lessons of less than an hour each, students learn to read, and by read I mean read essentially any English word including “big words” like Constantinople and Timbuktu as well as polyethylene and dimorphictrinitrotoluene. They won’t necessarily know what the words mean – indeed some ‘words’ won’t have a meaning and thus aren’t ‘real’ words – but they can read them. The effect is that the speaking vocabulary is the reading vocabulary, and the notion of ‘reading at grade level’ is abolished. (Some Google links lead to an older home page touting a Mac version: her program works with all versions of Windows. She still sells it and it still works. Her web site isn’t well maintained.)

‘Reading at grade level’ actually means that a child is learning to read ideographs and has made some progress at it; but that’s disastrous, and is why there are so many illiterates in countries with ideographic languages. In the United States a number of those who ‘read at grade level’ are in fact illiterate. The tenure system in both the schools and the Colleges of Education have tended to conceal this, and thus some Education Departments continue to turn out teachers who simply don’t have any notion of how to teach reading. Worse, some are ‘expert’ who are fundamentally opposed to teaching phonics and to this day insist on ‘whole word’ nonsense. All this is based on the obvious fact that most people who read do not ‘sound out’ words: they see the word and they read it. You and I do it that way. But we didn’t always do it, and if we encounter binitrotoluene and polytrinitrotoluene we can at least pronounce the words and wonder if they are nonsense.

Enough. But illiteracy has been a big problem for China and it is one that they appear to be solving. It has become a large problem for the US, and the trends are ambiguous, with many public schools continuing to have illiterate children reach middle and high school. Most of those drop out, of course. I suspect that Chinese illiteracy will vanish. It is not so clear that American illiteracy will follow the same course.

Any reader who wonders if his child can read should abandon the notion of ‘grade level’ and ask the child to read a normal book aloud. English is about 90% phonetic and the most common exceptions are quickly learned. Though the rough cough plough me through is a good example of a lot of the exceptions.

And I am out of time. Roberta’s program is old, hokey, is essentially a DOS program with DOS level illustrations, but it runs on any machine that runs Windows Explorer, and it has enough self rewards in it that it works. You can find more about it at http://www.readingtlc.com/ . One of the major problems with US schools is that some of them – perhaps many of them – don’t really know how to teach children to read, and many will accept ‘reading at grade level’ for first and second graders. In fact by the end of second grade (and for most by the end of first grade) children should be able to read Transylvania, Salafist, Wahabbi, Wittenberg, resurgence, fundamentalism, and other such words encountered in a typical Wall Street Journal editorial. They probably will not understand what they are reading, but that can produce surprises. One thing is certain, although they can read a word they don’t understand, they won’t understand a word they can’t read.

Many children do learn to read phonetic languages no matter what method is used to teach them, or without any instruction at all. The classic story of that was Macaulay whose father read from the Book of Common Prayer to the assembled family and servants each evening. He laid the book on a table and followed the text with his finger as he read. Five year old Thomas stood on the other side of the table, and soon was able to read, but at first could do so only upside down.

It is better to have systematic instruction with some attention paid to the exceptions. Mrs. Pournelle’s The Literacy Connection does that. Doubtless there are more modern looking programs that do so as well, but we know hers works. http://www.readingtlc.com/

I heard the Endeavor go through the Valley but I was not able to see it from here. It’s now down at LAX. In the old days I’d have been out at Edwards to see it take off. An era has ended. We can hope that it is being renewed.

Windows Update: there is a zero day Internet Explorer attack that has gone wild. Open Windows Explorer, go to Windows Update, tell Windows Update to search for updates, and install the urgent update you will then get.

Do this NOW. The IE vulnerability is apparently loose, and the update released by Microsoft is needed for all computers. Don’t join the Zombie Army. Go do this now.

From our security expert:

Dr. Pournelle: for consideration for the next mail/view:

Important computer security updates should be applied to all computers. There are Internet Explorer updates (all versions), Operating System updates, and application updates (Adobe, Java, and more.

Many of these updates are critical to protecting your computer and data (pictures, files, personal data), so should not be ignored.

My best advice:

1) Set up Windows Update to update automatically. Then check your Windows Update status at least monthly to apply any optional updates. Recommended.

2) Make sure your application programs are kept current. The best (and free) tool for this is Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector. It will check all of your programs and install updates. Available at http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/ . I have used this for over a year, and install it on all of my family computers. Recommended.

3) Make sure your anti-virus program is current. Do a full scan monthly. If your anti-virus program has expired, a good alternative is Microsoft Security Essentials (free). Go to http://microsoft.com/protect (there’s also some good info about computer and family security, including videos). Recommended.

4) Be careful about what you open (email, email attachments, etc). If it is not from somebody you know, or is not expected, then be wary. Even email that purports to be from major companies can be dangerous, like an email from "Amazon" telling you that your order is ready, and click on a link to see the details. If you didn’t order something, be wary. Recommended.

5) Be careful about the sites you visit, and any breathless ‘pop-up’ warnings ("You have a virus!"). Double-check before clicking on links in popups. Recommended.

Regards, Rick Hellewell (Security Dweeb and Web Guy)

View 742 Thursday, September 20, 2012

The story of the terror attack on our Consulate in Benghazi continues. The President continues to refer to the silly video although it is now clear that it had nothing to do with the planned attack other than some fortuitous cover story. The attack employed heavy weapons and was clearly planned long in advance; the date September 11 was of course significant. It is still known why there was essentially no security provided for the Ambassador or why he was sent unprotected to an undefended consulate in an area considered volatile and dangerous. Clearly there was a significant failure of the intelligence community, but whether that was at the information interpretation level is another matter. Intelligence communities did not make the decision to send the Ambassador to an undefended compound. There may be an intelligence fault in protecting the existence and location of the ‘safe’ house where the Ambassador was killed, but the very fact that the consulate was so vulnerable that a ‘safe’ house was needed is probably significant.

It is not clear what the United States policy on the Middle East is, or has been since the President’s Cairo speech.

I am no Middle East expert, but I will continue to defend the general principle that American interests are better protected by expenditures on our Navy and on the development of domestic energy resources, than on military operations in that area. As to the Benghazi operation, had we had a helicopter assault vessel – even an elderly Iwo Jima class such as the Tripoli – in the region the outcome might have been different; and the need for some kind of mobile security intervention force in Benghazi was completely predicable and in fact was predicted.

And the story continues to develop.

I can recommend Holman Jenkins Wall Street Journal article “How 1950’s Eyes Would See the Election” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443816804578004370724409206.html I do not accept his conclusion that entitlement reform is extremely unlikely, but he makes this point:

To cut to the chase, tax reform is the only serious reform we’d hold out hope for today. Entitlement reform, for a lot of reasons, is a political mirage in consensus America. But tax reform can still go a long way to restarting growth, righting the fiscal ship and preparing young people to save for their own old age and health care.

A corollary to consensus theory is an element of chaotic unpredictability in our politics, as parties and leaders, in maneuvering around the center, raid each other’s voters, steal each other’s clothes, pre-empt each other’s winning ideas.

Does that make tax reform more likely under Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama? Literally, it may be impossible to say from current rhetoric and the alignment of political interests.

That leaves only the character of the candidates themselves—Mr. Romney, who delivers transactions, and Mr. Obama, who delivers speeches. Hmm . . .

His conclusion is that the election is important because one of the candidates is more likely to do what he has said he would do than is the other. Reminds me a bit of Newt’s Contract with America.

Yesterday I commented on Thomas Sowell’s essay on tax cuts and the “trickle down” theory so beloved by derivative economists. As Sowell noted, there is no such theory; there is a caricature of a theory, coupled with a deliberate distortion of the reasoning of Treasury Secretary Mellon, that somehow became accepted as an economic theory although no one can find any trace of anyone who actually presented or believed it. Sowell’s essay presents an interesting critique of the “peer review” process that tends to govern modern intellectual life. That was not the ostensible purpose of his economic essay on taxes and revenues, but it may be more important than his original purpose. We find ourselves in a world in which a caricature of a theory is presented in major economics textbooks as if it were real and actually held by someone; it is then criticized as if the refutation of this straw man were a valid intellectual exercise.

This goes on in intellectual disciplines other than economics, and is one of the major threats to the rule of rational thought.

Sowell’s essay may be found at http://www.tsowell.com/images/Hoover%20Proof.pdf Recommended.

View 742 Tuesday, September 18, 2012

I first heard of this when I got a breathlessly worded note from a liberal friend:

Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters | Mother Jones

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser

You are the one who called them "the stupid party". I am now forced to agree. How could they think this wouldn’t get out?

Mildly curious, I followed the link to find that the Awful Truth was that Romney had said

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

It seemed to me a bit pessimistic, but given the context – a fund raiser with an audience that certainly didn’t include anyone who doesn’t pay income tax – it wasn’t particularly sensational to me. Why shouldn’t it “get out”? I can hope it’s not a true statement, and I suspect that Mr. Romney would agree with me on that, but painting dark pictures at a fund raiser is hardly political stupidity. Have you heard some of the things Mr. Obama has said in similar contexts?

I find it pessimistic because I have a better opinion of many of the welfare recipients than the statement implies.

We have for many years discussed the principle that ‘democracies endure until the people discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.” Snopes came up with some hoohaw about how this was a false quote, but since I can’t remember who was supposedly quoted, or for that matter who is now supposed to have said it, I have forgotten the hoohaw. The question is, is it true?

The notion has been discussed among political philosophers from the time of Aristotle. A major concern of the Framers at the Convention of 1787 was how to form a constitutional republic which would prevent democracy, because a pure democracy would always opt to use government to ‘equalize’ the wealth. The sentiment that “there never was a democracy that did not commit suicide” was pretty well prevalent in Philadelphia during that hot summer when the Constitution was agreed to.

In those days everyone who thought much about the subject agreed that freedom is not free, free men are not equal, and equal men are not free; that establishing a democracy would be to set foot on a path to disaster.

Disraeli had this to say during the Parliamentary Reform debates in England:

If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of the public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of the public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete. http://www.isegoria.net/2012/05/benjamin-disraeli-on-establishing-democracies/

I have published that observation from Disraeli before. Doubtless I will do so again. I have no great fondness for democracy and neither should the United States, nor, until recently, have we had.

Romney has said nothing that has not been said by thoughtful people through the life of this Republic. I disagree with this particular statement, but only because I do not think we are that far gone: I believe that we are near the point at which there is no return, but we have not quite reached it yet. I believe that of that near majority which receives entitlements, many do not so much think of themselves as victims, but as unfortunate; who would gladly seize an opportunity to get out of dependency and back to work, to a productive life, if only they had a chance, and many of them would agree that the election of Mr. Romney is in fact their best chance. I think others can be persuaded so.

California radio recently has featured advertisements – I would guess public service rather than paid, but perhaps paid – for CalFresh, which is the new California name for the Food Stamps program. A visit to its web site might be instructive: http://www.calfresh.ca.gov/. The United States pays for this program. According to the Huffington Post the number of people on food stamps struck a record high in November of 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/03/number-of-americans-on-snap_n_1074344.html and other sources indicate that another (later) new high was reached in July of this year. Eligibility for this kind of general assistance has been broadened repeatedly. One can cheer at this national generosity, but it is not mean spirited to point out that this is paid with tax money – worse, with borrowed money which must be repaid in future. One may presume that the Keynesians would approve, since the money is paid directly to people who will almost certainly spend it immediately, generally on necessities, but the evidence seems to indicate that this particular Keynesian spending program has not lifted the economy back on its feet – and it was hardly startling to find that Mr. Romney says that this can’t go on. We can’t continue spending more than we’ve got, no matter how noble the cause. It’s hardly startling that he would say that at a Florida fund raising dinner.

The number of persons receiving aid from the food stamp program is about 45 million. Add about 8 million on disability, and the total number receiving welfare benefits is about 50 million. The total number of Americans working is about 142 million. And the total number voting in the 2008 election was 132 million or about 57% of a 231 million voting age population.

We have no way to estimate what proportion of the welfare recipients vote. If they all did, they would amount to about a quarter of the voting age population. The working population amounts to a bit less than 2/3 the voting population. If they all voted, they would amount to about 1/5 of the voting population or something less than 40% of the number actually voting (in 2008). A sizable number, and one would assume that a majority of them will not vote for Mr. Romney, but that’s not assured: I know of at least two Food Stamp beneficiaries who have always voted Republican.

I am not sure what we can conclude from all this, but I do not assume that Mr. Romney’s remarks will change the results of the election. I do note the triumphalist tone to the liberal announcements and commentaries, but I think I detect a note of desperation in with the triumphalism. That could be due to rumors of a late poll showing that more Americans now consider themselves Republicans than did so in 2998; and 2008 did not turn out well for the Democrats.

I also have other mail on this subject, and perhaps this is more typical:

Tell the Truth and Get Raked Over the Coals

Jerry,

Mitt Romney is now being raked over the coals by a biased press for telling the truth.

There does not seem to be anything that is not true in what Romney said in the surreptitiously recorded video. It seems to me to be a good strategy to not concentrate your on that sector of the electorate since almost all of them are not likely to vote for Romney.

It has been obvious since the days of Neville Chamberlin, to anyone that has been attention, that a strategy of appeasement leads to grief. The Obama Administration has not been paying attention and is not going to start now.

Bob Holmes

But then anything Mr. Romney says will get him raked over the coals. This is September in a Presidential election year. Mr. Romney knew it was going to be hot before he went into the kitchen, and I doubt he is astonished at this development. So far as I can tell he intends to remain presidential, and were I he I would have little to say about this. Since I’m not him, I can comment. I’m not running for anything.

It is hardly a confession of a secret hatred for the Constitution to state the obvious about entitlements. Romney’s observations were not much different from those of the Framers in 1787, or of Cicero, or of Disraeli in 1832, and I doubt many voters will change their minds as a result.

The key to this election will be turnout, and unfortunately this may have some effect on that, but not much: the Democratic organizers will do their best to get their clients to the polls whatever the politicians say. The question is, can the Republicans play as good a ground game? They did in 2008. This year it will be even more important. Fund raising and ground game, and the history of the world may rest on the outcome. We do live in interesting times.

Arab Spring, Continued

I continue to think about the Middle East, but I have nothing important to add to the discussion. My policy would be disengagement from foreign entanglements, and particularly entanglements in the Middle East, and using some of the savings to invest in development of North American energy resources. I’d rather we had spent the money we spent in Iraq and Afghanistan since 1990 on a national equivalent of the TVA than how we did spend it – and yes I am very much aware that there are better ways to develop energy resources than to fund even a competent bureaucracy. But I’d rather do that than bleed it out into desert sands and wild mountains.

I can recommend http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/obamas-middle-east-delusions/?singlepage=true by Victor Davis Hanson. I did not say I endorse his views; only that you will be better off from having read them if you haven’t already.

Excerpts:

In that regard, each time we castigate a Rushdie, a Danish cartoonist, a U.S. soldier, or a nut like Terry Jones, we simply play into the hands of the Islamists. The latter are thrilled when American grandees look weak, desperate, and only too eager to fall over themselves in undermining their own singular Constitution and distancing themselves from their own values. Far better it would be to say, one time — and only one time: “We cherish and protect freedom of expression and abhor censorship and violence; if that bothers you, it bothers you.” End of story.

4. What Must Muslims Do?

It is not brain surgery to enter the modern world. Follow some South Koreans or Chileans around for a week with a video camera. Grow up and stop blaming those on whom you depend for everything from drilling bits to laptops. Adopt the now seemingly impossible: consensual government, a bill of rights, secular tolerance for religious diversity, gender equality, meritocracy, respect for science and empiricism, a free market, and a free press. In other words, join the 21^st century.

Otherwise, Westerners must make themselves as immune from Middle East passions as is possible. In that context, not tapping vast new domestic finds of gas and oil on public lands is suicidal, given that such potential income and independence would soon make the Gulf irrelevant to our survival.  Let the Kuwaitis or the Iranians deal with the Chinese. Of course, elites warn us not to “overreact.” But overreacting, compared to the present radical appeasement, is the moderate, rational course.

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/obamas-middle-east-delusions/?singlepage=true

As I said, worth your time.