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Meldisse
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Name: Carissa
Country: United States
State: Arizona
Metro: Phoenix
Birthday: 6/10/1984
Interests: God/Church, Reading, LoTR, animals (especially the Frou), music, Politics, eating (unfortunately!), gardening, history, discussing and writing about ideas, especially in regards to politics and religion, hanging out with my friends (perhaps a short list, but they're all stupendous!), dreaming up new stories to write, cooking, driving the Z, watching British TV series!
Expertise: Nothing really... I'm an unfortunately middle of the road person in such matters...
Occupation: Student
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  Meldisse
Yahoo:  cbmulder32
Member Since:
8/2/2004
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| I'm Never Flying Delta Again!So, I was not looking forward to today's flight back to the Bend. A five hour flight never really excites me. Unfortunately, this flight plummeted beneath my expectations. First of all, after everyone was on the plane in Phoenix, they discovered that the plane had a flat tire. Great. Now, I'm happy they found it before we took off, but nevertheless, why didn't they notice it before? I had a window seat, and I began to feel nervous when I noticed the mechanics staring in the direction of the wheel and shaking their heads doubtfully. So we sat there for a while, and then the pilot announced that they had to CHANGE the tire. So we sat there still longer, and the pilot announced that now we had to wait for a landing time from Atlanta. Great. So we sat some more. Finally, we took off over an hour late. Please also remember that I got up at 5 A.M. for these shenanigans.
Well, when we were first delayed I began to worry about making my connecting flight in Atlanta, since I only had a 43 minute layover. Once we took off, I figured that I could pretty much kiss that flight goodbye, but I held out hope that since weather in Atlanta wasn't that good - according to reports - that the flight to SB would be delayed as well. Fortunately for me, my seatmates were very nice - the girl next to me was a 30-year old internist, and very nice, and then an older lady who was a retired teacher was next to her. They also had to make connecting flights, so we were all in the same boat. Once we were about 70 miles out of Atlanta, we had to to into a holding pattern. So we actually disembarked around 4:30, when we were supposed to get in at 2:30. Let it also be known that I did not budge from my seat once during this fun trip.
Naturally, I had missed my connecting flight. Fortunately, Delta was able to put me on standby for the next flight to SB, which was going to leave at 8:42. So I camped out here to wait. I wouldn't know for sure until at least 45 minutes before the flight. I went to TGI Fridays and got a big dinner, since I hadn't had a real meal all day. I dragged it out as long as I could, which even with a large sandwich, fries and a salad was only about 45 minutes. Since then I've been alternately sitting here and wandering around.
In case you didn't guess, my flight to SB has been pushed back three times so far. I should have alreay taken off, but now I'm looking at 10:30, if I'm lucky. As I said, I'm never flying Delta again. | | |
| Demographics and the WestDo you ever get extremely frustrated with society and government? This is a normal state of mind for me, and probably for a lot of you. My latest frustration? Well, it's the same one I've had for a while - basically, the complete refusal of Wetern governments and societies to take the Islamist threat seriously. This problem is never far from my mind, but it's bubbling up again with the releasr of Mark Steyn's new book tomorrow (America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It). I recommend checking it out over Christmas break.
Steyn lays out (I haven't yet read the book, but I'm familiar with his argument and have read reviews of the book) the most crucial problem facing the West in the war against terror: demographics. Essentially, most Westerners have embraced a blissfully child-free existence, to the point that they are no longer replacing themselves and have to rely on immigration to prop up their populations. (Even when immigration is factored in, European nations have birthrates that are below replacement levels. The U.S. has a level birthrate of 2.1, but that is the result of lare-scale immigration.) Unfortunately, since all Western nations have a birth dearth, they have to look to places that have dramatically different cultures in order to import immigrants - places like Pakistan and Algeria, for example. These immigrants have very high birth rates. So the ethnic makeup of these nations is changing very rapidly.
So, you say, who cares? We look past the color of skin in the West, don't we? Yes, but these immigrants have a religion that comes with them - to wit, Islam. It is fashionable to pretend that this does not make a difference. After all, we have freedom of religion, don't we? But have we taken into account the fact that religion makes a vital difference in a person's worldview? Not to mention the great differences between the traditional religion of the West - Christianity - and Islam? Even Westerners that are not practicing Christians have absorbed some of the Christian worldview, because our civilization was formed by devout Christians. Thus, the average Westerner believes to some extent in the dignity of all people, just by virtue of their human-ness (though originally we believed in their dignity because they were made in the image of God.) Thus, we believe that each person has free will and autonomy, and we do not force them to choose a particular religion, because we will each face God one day and answer for our own actions. In contrast, in traditional Islam non-Muslims (dhimmis) are relegated to second-class status. (I would recommend reading Robert Spencer's "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam" for more information.) In some Muslim countries - all right, almost every Middle Eastern Muslim country - leaving Islam is a crime punishable by death. In Saudi Arabia, non-Muslims are not even allowed to hold private worship services. Seeing as polls show that many Muslims in Western countries - including immigrants and second and third generation citizens (see michellemalkin.com for more details - still hold to a form of Islam that would be quite comfortable in Saudi, what potential repercussions does this have for Western society? This is an especially pertinent question since the traditional citizens of these countries are not reproducing themselves, as mentioned above, and therefore the Muslim population is becoming a larger and larger percentage of the population?
These are not idle questions. There are already suburbs of Paris that are not even really French anymore - they are third-world Islamic countries inside France. Professsor Rougeau at Notre Dame mentioned that he lived in Paris twenty years ago, and he recently visited again. He said that it is no longer a French city. It's a North African and sub-Saharan African city. Why is this important? Because extremism festers in these places. I remember reading about the Muslim ghettoes in the noted conservative magazine Esquire a few years ago. The article was examining what happens to the young women who live in these ghettoes, women who see freedom that their mothers never experienced, only a few miles away. What happens to these young women when they try to break out of the traditional society? Honor killings. Bodies dumped in dumpsters. And do the French police do anything? No. Even if they wanted to, as we've seen in the riots last year and this year, they can't go into these neighborhoods without fearing for their lives.
But are Westerners concerned? Not really. We're prosperous. We really don't want to offend anyone, and really, children are such a bore anyway. So why don't we all just drink of Lethe and slip into oblivion... | | |
| DIVERSITY!!!!Nothing is as exciting as a diversity training seminar. I highly recommend it to all of you. It just shows you how much all your fellow students love you - "Everyone born in America, stand up!" *applause* "Everyone born outside the U.S., stand up!" *applause* "Everyone who speaks more than one language, stand up!" *applause* "English-only speakers, stand up!" *applause*
You get the idea. I mean, it was an innocent enough thing, just ridiculous. And I was getting very tired of up, down, up and down. | | |
| Hamdan v. RumsfeldYesterday, the Federalist Society here sponsored a panel discussion on the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case. That's the case that came down from the Supreme Court in late July regarding Geneva Convention protections for Guantanamo detainees. The mdoerator was Professor Gurule, who is the former Treasury Under-Secretary for Enforcement. Basically, he specialized in tracking terrorists' financial dealings and following their money trails. He served in the Bush Administration in that capacity. The other two panelists were Prof. Tricia Bellia, who is a constitutional law specialist who clerked for O'Connor, and Prof. Mary Ellen O'Connell, who specializes in international law.
To make a long story short, the whole thing made me so mad. O'Connell kept going over how we hadn't actually ratified this part of the Geneva Convention, but Stevens in his infinite wisdom said that we were bound by it anyway. The decision also said - to O'Connell's great relief - that the President does not have the right to establish these military tribunals. Also, we should not use coerced testimony. And we're in violation of the Geneva Convention. yada, yada, yada. She went on and on and on. And then, after sitting through a very painful hour and a half, in which she basically said that as a humane society and in order to comply with international law, America must sit here and do nothing when terrorists are plotting to kill us, she ended with a rousing declamation of, "We must always remember that every person is created in the image of God, and as such deserves humane treatment!" I wanted to gag.
That night, as I was trying to go to bed, I had a thought. O'Connell and people like her think that they are being wonderful and noble by standing up for the rights of a bunch of poor detainees. According to them, after all, this is the Christian thing to do. But in her analysis, when she discussed Hamdan (who was Osama's chauffer and bodyguard), she didn't really seem all that concerned about what he has done. All her ire was saved for President Bush, who's trampling on his human rights, and for the CIA interrogators who are "torturing" people. And I thought, you know, I don't see how a Christian can get their vision so skewed that they don't see the difference between these people. In O'Connell's analysis, there's really no difference between the President and the terrorists. That's not what she said, but she did not have a kind word to say for the President or the Administration, and was brimming with sympathy for the plight of this poor freedom fighter. What a perversion! She takes the doctrine that we are created in the image of God and uses it to make these people innocent. Seriously, she was arguing that the government doesn't have a case against Hamdan, because they charged him with conspiracy, and conspiracy doesn't exist in international law. She didn't offer a solution - it sounded like she thought we should just let the man go. We can't just let him go! He wants to kill us!
And to treat him as though he's an innocent little lamb is disgusting. Though he is, of course, created in the image of God, the image is marred, first through original sin, and then through the appalling evil of this man. He's evil, O'Connell! What don't you get about that? He was complicit in murdering 3,000 Americans and who knows how many other people! It is disgusting - it is a perversion - to invoke God as a protection for this man, as though God is blind and cannot tell the difference between the innocents this man tries to kill, the people who try, within parameters of humanity, to induce this man to talk in order to save innocent lives, and to lock him up so he can't kill again, and this evil, monstrous, man! There is something terribly, terribly wrong with that way of thinking. The Bible warns us not to call evil good, and good evil. O'Connell would probably argue that by supporting the President's policies I'm calling evil good. I regret to inform her that the laws of warfare practiced in the Bible don't exactly conform to her postmodern viewpoint, and that I do regret that such tactics have to be employed. However, when the choice is causing one person some temporary discomfort, or losing thousands of people to a terrorist attack, the former is necessary. But O'Connell is making a moral judgment that is profoundly flawed, and that is where my disgust for her position turns to absolute horror. To suggest that there is a moral equivalence between this man and a normal, peace-loving human being, based on her understanding of God, suggests terrible things about her conception of God. I wish I could articulate better what I'm thinking - it's right there, but I can't quite get at it. | | |
| UpdatesI don't really have a lot to report. Basically, I just study, and then I go hang out with people once in a while. I did go to the first quarter of the football game today, but then I left because I had a lot of work to do, and I was in the undergrad section, which was lousy. Very lousy. It was kind of disappointing, actually, because I don't know how exactly I wound up there.
Other than that, everything is going well. I wish I had something fun and exciting to report, but I don't. I am going to Chicago tomorrow, so that's nice, but that's pretty much it. Hopefully I don't get too terribly lost and I find a dress. :) (I'm going to an Americans United for Life gala in Chicago next Monday, and it's semi-formal. So I need a dress, but you can't so much find one in South Bend. Becca concurs with this gloomy assessment.) I'm going to see Maylea, so that'll be awesome. :) | | |
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