Tag Archives: violence

The Thin Veneer of Civilization

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Originally published on October 16, 2002, 13 months after the 9/11 attacks.

The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary defines the word “civilization” thus: An ideal state of human culture characterized by complete absence of barbarism and non-rational behavior.

In the United States, we pretend to live our entire lives in a constant “State of Positive Assumptions.” The central assumption is we DO live in a country “characterized by complete absence of barbarism and non-rational behavior.” Continue reading →

Plenty of Blame to Go Around

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

There is nothing good about the Newtown, Connecticut shootings. President Obama said what I thought my President should have said and the way I wanted my president to have said it in his remarks there last night.

I am no longer worried about my son. But my son is worried about his two little girls. They are not yet old enough for school, but sending a seven-year-old to school should not be a cause to worry all day that he or she will come home safely. Continue reading →

Costas-Gate

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I like Bob Costas. I like how he presents himself. I actually got a chance to meet him on the set of a show we did together, and he came across as a very reasonable, slightly conservative, well put-together guy. He is also a sports nut, who could tell you the lineup of the 1964 Cardinals.

I like sports, but I couldn’t remember the lineup of my favorite team of all time, the South Side Hit Men, who almost won the pennant in 1977. I could get a few of them, but my memory is not good enough to recite the whole line-up.

Bob Costas stepped in it the other day when he talked about gun control at half time of the Sunday Night Football game. He pissed off a lot of conservatives, who found it completely inappropriate to mix politics and sports. Continue reading →

Congress Shall Make No Law…

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

This is the full text of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; the first of the Bill of Rights. Note the first clause, of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I wanted to get the specific language of what we generally refer to as the “Freedom of Religion” on the table, because it appears that we may be on the brink of the worst sectarian violence since the end of the Third Crusade, over 800 years ago. Continue reading →

Middle East Violence Spontaneous?

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“I’ve come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutal interest and mutal respect and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.”  — President Barak Obama in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009

In the last two weeks, three years after that speech, militant Islamists have been engaging in violent, lethal protests against the United States in Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Tunisia, Indonesia, and Guinea. In Afghanistan, the U.S. is also facing violence from within, from Afghan police we have trained and work alongside.

Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, distanced her boss from the protests in a whirlwind weekend tour of Sunday talk shows. Continue reading →