There’s a scene about two-thirds of the way through in which pirate representatives of various nations meet to elect a king, that resembles the late Star Wars movies with their endless council discussions and legislative wrangling. ~Dana Stevens

You don’t vote for kings. ~King Arthur

Somehow I think I will manage to miss this Pirates epic as easily as I have missed the first two.  Haven’t the movie execs realised that the reason why the concurrent filming of Lord of the Rings worked out so well was that the complete story had already been written out and been wildly popular for decades?  Then there is the small matter that the story of the trilogy was actually interesting and engaging, unlike the heinous wastes of time that were the Matrix sequels.  Then again, they’re the ones pulling in hundreds of millions in revenues and I am writing on this blog, so why should they care whether they turn out the most appalling garbage?

Daniel Larison, whose ever-present aura of gloom is powerful enough to drive a Care Bear to suicide… ~Dave Weigel

That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said about me in weeks.

Just compare those three simple declarative sentences to the stereotype of Iraqi Arabs as unbeknighted, ignorant barbarians who could not possibly govern themselves [bold mine-DL]. ~Michael Ledeen

Unbeknighted?  Were the Iraqis all given honorary knighthoods at some point, and then had them taken away?  The word that the great thinker is looking for is probably “benighted.”  It never ceases to amaze me how passionate warmongers can be when it comes to emphasising the equality and value of Arabs only when it serves their very narrow ideological purposes.  They are furious at the suggestion that Arabs might be different from Americans in any significant way (because this would suggest that democratisation is a crazy or pointless exercise), except when it is necessary to bomb them or torture them, in which case they are treated as just so much disposable trash. 

Ledeen is referring above to a report that there are Iraqis who own and value books, as if this were some shocking and unknown thing.  Apparently reading is the sole qualification for self-government these days, which happily means that most Americans still qualify.  Perhaps this news is shocking to some of Ledeen’s pro-war confreres, who are of the view that the only thing “those people” understand is force, which presumably means that “those people” are not well-known for their love of reading.  While some might think it strange that someone can be an advocate of routinely throwing “some crappy little country against the wall” and be deeply outraged at suggestions that the cultures of some nations are profoundly ill-suited to the cultivation of representative government, it all fits together rather well.  If you are a mad, militant revolutionary who believes that democracy is universal and human cultures are irrelevant, the two go together very nicely.  With defenders like Ledeen, Bernard Lewis doesn’t need any critics.

I really like the WSJ’s editorial page — I don’t know what we’d do without them. ~Andy McCarthy

We might have an honest debate about foreign policy in the Near East?

McCarthy continues:

But they have a nasty, condescending streak when they get on their high horse, as they do with their signature position on immigration.

As opposed to the folks at NR when it comes to discussing the war, since they are never nasty or condescending in the least.  Of course, the other problem is that the WSJ editorial page is always on its high horse about this or that, which makes it rather rich when contributors to that page claim to be engaged in something like dispassionate, hyperean contemplation and find the “aggressive” methods of bloggers unpleasant.  That is an important part of what I was saying in this post, the irony of which was apparently lost on everybody.

Meanwhile, here is Ponnuru channeling Buchanan:

It may also be that the assimilation of those earlier immigrants was aided by the cutoff in immigration from 1924 to 1965. I think that was almost certainly the case.

Who would have expected it? At its outset, Paul’s campaign promised to be a curiosity. The nominee of the Libertarian Party in his previous run for the presidency (in 1988), Paul seemed likely to play a predictable gadfly role–using his stage time to press hoary libertarian bugaboos like the abolition of Social Security, the legalization of drugs and prostitution, and–Paul’s special obsession–a return to the gold standard. Instead, thanks mainly to his adamant opposition to the Iraq war, he has assumed a far more serious role. In a Republican field that has marched in lockstep with George W. Bush on the war, Paul’s libertarian isolationism has exposed an intraparty fissure over foreign policy that is far wider than has been acknowledged, encompassing not only disgruntled libertarians but some paleocons and social conservatives, as well as such GOP lions as William F. Buckley, George Will, and Bob Novak. As populist-isolationist Pat Buchanan wrote in an op-ed last week, Paul was “speaking intolerable truths. Understandably, Republicans do not want him back, telling the country how the party blundered into this misbegotten war.”

Paul, for his part, thinks his view is commonsensical. “This is a very Republican position,” he told me. “I just think the Republicans can’t win unless they change their policy on Iraq.” ~Michael Crowley

As usual, Rep. Paul is right about this.  There is a fissure over foreign policy, and probably one-third of Republicans is fed up with the war, but I have to wonder whether it is enough.  As I noted yesterday, over half of Iowa Republicans want out of Iraq within six months, but they don’t rally around the one Republican candidate who would actually embrace this goal.  Part of this is a function of voters not knowing anything about Paul and being inundated by Romney’s advertisements.  Another reason why Republican opponents of the war haven’t really rallied around the only antiwar Republican in the race is that their opposition to the war may not derive from a opposition to much of the rest of U.S. foreign policy.  It’s one thing to be against staying in Iraq and quite another to endorse a policy vision that dictates that we should get out of Korea and Germany and most other places around the world as well. 

Nonetheless, Rep. Paul is having an impact on the race and a more serious one than Chuck Hagel could have had.  Paul distinguished himself by offering a clear, sharp contrast with the standard pro-war message of the party.  If Hagel could be bothered to run, he would have had something to say about selling insulated shoes, or some other hot air that he sends out for the media’s enjoyment.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to support any Turkish military incursion in Iraq against Kurdish rebel bases there after a deadly suicide bombing in Ankara blamed on the militants.  

Upping the pressure on its southern neighbour, Ankara urged Baghdad Thursday to act against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) holed up in in northern Iraq.

“We expect urgent and resolute measures,” foreign ministry spokesman Levent Bilman told reporters shortly after reports of more violence with a landmine explosion attributed to the PKK killing six soldiers in the southeast.

Erdogan said late Wednesday his government would secure parliamentary authorisation if the army sought to conduct a cross-border operation targeting PKK bases.

“It is out of the question for us to disagree on this issue with our… soldiers,” he told the private ATV network. “When the time comes, we will take the necessary step, there will be no delay.” ~AFP

During the war in Lebanon last summer, I and others had remarked on the rather stark contradiction between the standard pro-Israel propaganda about opposition to “a state within a state” in Lebanon and the complete indifference of Washington and pundits to the “state within a state” in northern Iraq.  These “states within a state” both promote and shelter insurgent groups that commit acts of terrorism against U.S.-allied states, but apparently some terrorists are less objectionable than others.

Young Zeitlin has some interesting thoughts on liberaltarianism.  He is also wise beyond his years.

Do you think any cool Trade Fair girl would give you the time of day if she knew the pathetic Bible-dancing goody-goody that you are? ~Fred (Chris Eigemann), Barcelona

Quasi-religious people attend services, but they’re bored much of the time. They read the Bible, but find large parts of it odd and irrelevant. They find themselves inextricably bound to their faith, but think some of the people who define it are nuts. ~David Brooks

While reading this, I was reminded of Barcelona and Ted’s “Bible-dancing” (in which he dances to the tune of Pennsylvania 6-5000 while reading the Bible) because late in the film one of the Trade Fair girls (Ted’s future wife) describes herself as quasi-religious.  For his part, Ted has something of a quasi-religious respect for the cult of management.  Cosa de gringos.

Today I was working on a couple new Sayat Nova poems, Khmetsoor dzerit tasemen (Give me a drink from the cup of your hand) and Ari indz angach kal divana sirt (Come, listen to me, mad heart), and another one of these Persian loanword links between Armenia and India appeared.  This is not very surprising anymore, since there are so many mutual borrowings, but it is always interesting to see which words make their way into other languages.  In this case, it is divana/deewana, which means “mad” or “crazy,” usually referring in poetry and song to the madness of love.

Passing strange, but perhaps a sign of which face of libertarianism has the broader appeal these days. ~Ross Douthat

That would be the non-libertarian face of Giuliani.  This pretty much confirms what many of the naysayers of the “libertarian vote” thesis have been saying all along.  My version of this criticism can be put this way: libertarians who actually begin to approach something recognisably like a libertarian view of politics (which might involve some reduction in the size and power of the state) are exceedingly few in number, while those who would like to unite the worst instincts of the parties of greed, sex and death are rather more numerous.