Jonah Goldberg on Liberal Books Worth Reading

"As I've written a bunch of times, I think liberals have cut themselves off from their own intellectual tradition, to the point where the giants of the true liberal tradition — Locke, Smith, the Founders, etc. — are vastly more celebrated on the right than on the left. But even the founders of "modern liberalism" (i.e. Progressivism), which means almost the exact opposite of traditional liberalism, are very rarely celebrated by self-described liberals today. Don't take my word for it — E. J. Dionne admits as much in his book Stand Up Fight Back: "Liberals and Democrats tend not to view themselves as the inheritors of a grand tradition. Almost on principle, they are suspicious of such traditions, of too much theorizing, of linking themselves too much to the past." Modern liberalism has lots of intellectual giants, but liberal totem poles tend to feature activists more than thinkers and writers. Indeed, of the intellectual giants who formed (or deformed) modern liberalism — Herbert Croly, John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr, et al. — "not one of them is routinely celebrated by today's liberals," according to Dionne. (Meanwhile, the avatar of movement liberalism these days — that Daily Kos guy — admits he doesn't really read books much at all)."

John Derbyshire on the life force and death

"In Stay of Execution, his memoir of the inoperable cancer than at last killed him, the political journalist Stewart Alsop wrote of waking in his hospital room late one night with the conviction, induced by chemotherapy drugs, that he was in a railroad carriage. He got out of bed and walked to the door of his room, steadying himself against the swaying of the "carriage" floor. When he reached the door, the swaying suddenly stopped, and all went still. He peered out into the dark, empty corridor. The train, he somehow knew, had reached Baltimore, and he should get out at Baltimore. However, he did not want to get out at Baltimore. The thought took him with great force: He did not want to get out at Baltimore. He turned from the door and went back to bed."

Goldberg on Kennedy

Ted Kennedy is going to quit an organization he's been a member of for five decades -- and to which he still pays dues -- because he's just discovered that it discriminates against women. When Kennedy tried to smear Alito as a sexist, critics noted the Senator belongs to an all-male group called the Owl Club. In 1984 Harvard cut ties to the group because of legislation Kennedy sponsored but he remained a member nonetheless.

But here's the best part. He says he will quit, “as fast as I can.”

Because, you know, the Owl Club is like one of those LA gangs where you gotta walk the line of a beat down by other members before you can leave and so it takes a while to get in good enough shape to quit.

Oh, he also says that he "probably" couldn't pass muster on the Judiciary Committee himself.

Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.

POPE SAYS ISLAM CAN'T REFORM reports Rod Dreher

"The Asia Times Online columnist Spengler notes that Pope Benedict XVI is recently reported to have observed that Islam cannot reform itself along the lines the West is depending on. The reason is very simple: unlike Judaism and Christianity, which take the Bible to be the inspired word of God, mediated through humans and therefore subject to interpretation, Islam believes the Koran is the literal and direct word of God, dictated to the Prophet. If you believe this, then it's easy to see why diverging too far from the plain text of the Koran is blasphemous (and we know what happens to those deemed to have blasphemed against Islam). Spengler is amazed by the silence from the Western media over this remarkable statement attributed to the current Pope -- a statement Spengler endorses -- and he suggests that we shrink from acknowledging it because the consequences of the Pope being right about this is too horrible to contemplate."

Bradford William Short on Bioethics and Dead Presidents

Many bioethicists are striving to create a grim future for America, one in which such outrages as infanticide are tolerated. But disfiguring the future isn't enough for some of them. They're doing the same thing to the past.

Pro-assisted-suicide bioethicists have time and again made false and often preposterous claims about the history of suicide and assisted suicide in Western (and especially Anglo-American) thought. Further evidence of this fiction can be found in the just published Ending Life: Ethics and the Way We Die, written by the influential University of Utah bioethicist Margaret Pabst Battin. (She was one of the signatories to the bioethicists' March 2004 letter protesting President Bush's appointment of new members to the Kass Commission.) In this book, Battin advances arguments in favor of legalizing and legitimating assisted suicide. One of them is that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who uncannily both died on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1826, may have both deliberately killed themselves.

Goldberg on an Unlikely Firebrand

Among the proud recipients of Time magazine's fluffy end-of-year "People Who Mattered" feature is Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here's how his blurb begins: "He is an unlikely firebrand: the soft-spoken son of a blacksmith who still sometimes drives a 30-year-old Peugeot. But Iran's new President doesn't shrink from controversy. After winning a disputed election, he said . . ." Now, before I finish that sentence, let's at least note that so far Time is using the same tone it might use to talk about John McCain, Joe Wilson, George Clooney, or some other "soft-spoken" "unlikely firebrand" beloved by the media. (Time has referred to both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sen. Joe Lieberman as "unlikely firebrands"as well. To date neither has proposed genocide.)

So, does Ahmadinejad have a wacky blog? Did he admit on Larry King Live that he voted for Ralph Nader in 2000? What makes him such a charming rogue?