Jonathan Rauch, in National Journal, discusses James Bowman’s recent book Honor: A History in relation to the current conflict between civilizations.

The West’s history is rich with traditions of honor, and equally rich with examples of its dangers and follies, among them the duel that killed the most brilliant of America’s Founders. Singularly, however, the West has backed away from honor. Under admonitions from Christianity to turn the other cheek and from the Enlightenment to favor reason over emotion, the West first channeled honor into the arcane rituals of chivalry, then folded it into a code of manly but magnanimous Victorian gentlemanliness — and then, in the 20th century, drove it into disrepute. World War I and the Vietnam War were seen as needless butcheries brought on by archaic obsessions with national honor; feminism and the therapeutic culture taught that a higher manly strength acknowledges weakness.

“Yet we are, in global terms, the odd ones out,” Bowman writes. Outside the West, traditional honor codes remain strong, and nowhere is that more true than in the Muslim world. In the modern Islamic world, few share the West’s view of honor as outdated and unnecessary. “The honor culture of the Islamic world predates its conversion to Islam in the seventh century,” writes Bowman.

Islam overlaid itself above honor and, unlike Christianity in the West, did not challenge it. Today’s militant jihadism takes the ethic of honor to extremes, fixating on manly ferocity and glorious vengeance.

Thus, Bowman writes, “America and its allies are engaged in a battle against an Islamist enemy that is the product of one of the world’s great unreconstructed and unreformed honor cultures.” Jihadism wages not only a religious war but a cultural one, aiming to redeem, through deeds of bravery and defiance, the honor of an Islam whose glory has shamefully faded. It aims, further, to uphold a masculine honor code that the West’s decadent, feminizing influence threatens to undermine.

He’s perfectly right. I’m not (as may have been noticed by readers) typically an admirer of Islamic culture, but there is a definitely admirable element in a culture which emphasizes honor over mere utility.

In a poem I particularly admire, Ahmad ibn al-Hussein al-Muttanabi (915-965) writes:

اÙu201eسÙu0160٠اصدÙu201a اÙu2020باءا Ùu2026Ùu2020 اÙu201eÙu0192تب
ÙÙu0160 حدÙu2021 اÙu201eحد بÙu0160Ùu2020 اÙu201eجد Ùu02c6اÙu201eÙu201eعب

The sword is truer in tidings than the books,
On its edge lies the border between gravity and sport.
Blades in their whiteness, not pages in their blackness,
Array to sweep away uncertainty and doubt.
Knowledge is in the fire of spears,
Shining between two hosts, not in the seven spheres.

Hat tip to Victor Davis Hanson.

Koochiching County (population 13,907) is located at the center of the northern end of Minnesota, bordering the wilderness of Northern Ontario. Its principal claim to fame is probably that county’s leading metropolis International Falls (population 6703) having been fictionalized in 1959 on television as “Frostbite Falls,” home of cartoon characters Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Indus Elementary & Secondary School, located 30 miles west of International Falls, has 194 pupils (79 elementary – 115 secondary) attending grades K through 12 from families residing in western Koochiching County.

I mention all this just to make clear the rural character of the setting of today’s headline news item.

The Associated Press yesterday evening ran the alarming headline: Principal quits after shooting kittens at school, followed by this lead:

A school principal has resigned and could face felony firearm charges after he shot and killed two orphaned kittens on school property last month.

That sounds absolutely terrible, of course. But the reality was rather different.

Principal Wade Pilloud, who resided weekdays in a mobile home on school property, had placed one or more traps underneath the trailer “to catch pests,” WCCO‘s version of the story reports.

Since the trap was large enough to kill an adult cat, Principal Pillaud was almost certainly using a conibear trap, rather than a leghold trap. Conibear traps are designed to kill the animal. A conibear trap large enough to kill a cat would have to have been set for something larger than a rat or a squirrel. Chances are that a skunk took up residence under Mr. Pillaud’s trailer, and he was taking action to remove a rather drastic problem.

Unfortunately, Mr. Pillaud discovered he had trapped a (presumably feral) female cat, whose death left orphaned a pair of young kittens. A cat-owner himself, Mr. Pillaud did not want the kittens to starve to death; so, after school, one night last month when all this happened, he took his shotgun, and “put them out of their misery,” as people say in the country.

But several children on the schoolgrounds for after hours activities heard the shooting, and went home and told their parents all about it.

This being the day and age it is, even in rural Northern Minnesota, you have nincompoops.

There were parents who felt, apparently some rather strongly, that there were concerns about the safety of their children,” said Joseph Flynn, an attorney for the South Koochiching/Rainy River School District. “The district’s position is that safety was not compromised.”

John Mastin, acting sheriff in Koochiching County, said Pilloud could be charged with felony possession of a firearm on school property and reckless discharge of a firearm, a misdemeanor.

County Attorney Jennifer Hasbargen said Friday that the case was under review.

Mastin said the shooting put no one in danger but said Pilloud used “poor discretion and poor timing,” especially amid the growing fear of gun violence in schools.

The district put Pilloud on administrative leave after the incident. Flynn said Pilloud agreed to an undisclosed settlement and resigned.

This type of incident demonstrates that nowhere in America is non-suburban enough today to assure the safety of gun-owners from the ritualized hoplophobia of journalists, politicians, and anti-weapons bigots. The NRA and other gun rights litigation centers need to intervene and contest every such case of the marginalizing of gun ownership and the stigmatization of the legitimate use of firearms. Otherwise, ultimately, a gun ban British and Australian-style is inevitable.

Militant muslims planned a coordinated hacking attack last week on the Pope’s web-site, as yet another expression of Islamic indignation at the Pope’s recent speech arguing that religious faith cannot be legitimately coerced.

Not altogether surprisingly, in this technological battle between a reactionary Western institution embodying the outlook of the Scholastic Middle Ages and adherents of the backward cult clingng to the moral and cultural values of the Middle Eastern Dark Ages, the former won. As at Tours in 732, as at Jerusalem in 1099, as at Lepanto in 1571 and Vienna in 1683, the green crescent flag went down in confusion and defeat before the Cross.

Daily Mail

Chad Vader Episode 3

Chad Vader Episode 4

EARLIER POSTINGS

EPISODE 2

EPISODE 1

They have it coming.

GAME

A 5 year old girl from Gwalior India (with very flexible joints) skates under 40 cars.

video

As a much-predicted democrat electoral victory looms, Glenn Reynolds discovers a response by businesses and the media to new priorities is already underway.

The Middle East’s largest, this 400 meter long 20 meter high billboard on Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, is promoting a development project named “The Lagoons” to more than 250,000 motorists passing by daily.

Via Billy T.

Kevin D. Denee, of the Restored Church of God, lays down the law… on that church’s blog.

So what have we learned? Recall that a blog provider stated, with blogs “there are no rules.” This is obviously not true with God. He does have rules and guidelines, but not everything is spelled out in the Bible. We must take principles and consider the overall big picture.

Should teenagers and others in the Church express themselves to the world through blogs? Because of the obvious dangers; the clear biblical principles that apply; the fact that it gives one a voice; that it is almost always idle words; that teens often do not think before they do; that it is acting out of boredom; and it is filled with appearances of evil—blogging is simply not to be done in the Church. It should be clear that it is unnecessary and in fact dangerous on many levels.

Let me emphasize that no one—including adults—should have a blog or personal website (unless it is for legitimate business purposes)…

Blogging has become a socially accepted practice—just as are dating seriously too young, underage drinking and general misbehaving. But just because someone else “jumps off the cliff” does not mean you should do the same.

Yes, that’s the kind of religion we all know and detest, alright.

Hat tip to fellow scoffer and mocker Mark Frauenfelder.

The Anchoress notes that Harry Reid isn’t getting the same kind of attention that Mark Foley got, and concludes that for some reason, in the eyes of the mainstream media, not every political scandal is equally worthy of attention.

Honestly. Let’s be truthful, here. If Sandy Berger (D – PaperSox) worked for anyone with an R after his name, and destroyed documents spirited out of the National Archives via his pants…do you really think the press would have immediately yawned and put that story to bed?

There are many good people working in the mainstream media. But let’s not kid ourselves that we have a free and unencumbered press in this country. The press is not free and they are very encumbered…and they have sadly caged themselves by choice.

Sam Heller is only a junior at Yale, but he wrote this colorful, but politically non-commital column, which was actually posted on Free Republic.

Goodbye, boys, I die a true American.” So went the apocryphal last words of Bill “The Butcher” Poole as he died on March 8, 1855. He’d been fatally shot in the heart, but he’d hung on for another 11 days, presumably to think of something totally metal to say…

Thing is, though, here at Yale, we have a political climate maybe an inch or two to the left of center – not sure if you’ve heard… My political views hover on the right-most end of Yale’s political discourse, and I’m not even that conservative.

Worth a read. You’ll be seeing this kid in the future. Who knows? Maybe he’ll become conservative after all.

Amazing work, complete with how-to guide.

Hat tip to John Murrell.