I peruse upwards of 50 blogs a day and find innumerable posts that are interesting, thought-provoking, well written, and worth commenting upon. On average, I find 5-10 posts a day which deserve links and commentary, but since "real life" precludes me from writing 5-10 posts a day (and I have been told that one is quite sufficient, thank you) that leaves many excellent posts unremarked and unlinked.
As a service to my readers, I thought it would be useful to spend one day a week linking to no more than 10 of the best posts that I read during the prior week. I hope, especially, to be able to link to posts that might not have received tremendous amounts of attention. I also hope to supply enough information about the post to enable you to decide if you want to spend the time and energy to read it in full. In all cases I will link to the particular blog and to the specific article.
Herewith, my first weekly round-up of SW's Top 10!
1) Dinocrat has an absolute must read, How does the modern world look when you have done nothing to help create it, and innovation is a threat to cherished beliefs?, which goes a long way toward answering the question, "Is Mutli-Culturism merely foolish, or is it actively dangerous?" Dinocrat offers a targeted metric by which to determine if one culture offers any advantages to its people than another.
2) EU Referendum wonders Why do we appease these people? Writing from their vantage point in England, they point out further differences between the two warring sides in the Cartoon War and marvel at the power of appeasement.
3) Along similar lines, an unseen room, with the best blog post title of the week (courtesy of one of her commenters), helps Hamas explain themselves in words that even our MSM should be able to understand, in Hamas Sings: "Dear Officer Krupke, We're Misunderstood".
4) At the Strata-Sphere, AJ Strata's post, Are We Losing America’s Greatness? is a somewhat counter-intuitive response to all the hysteria about an Arab company taking over port security in America. (The true situation is much more complex than that, but that is the short-hand meme being bruited about in the MSM and the blogosphere.) He says:
We WANT a modern, peaceful Middle East as an economic partner. We cannot live in fear of every Arab or Muslim or we will fulfill Al Qaeda’s dream and WE will be the ones that divide the world into ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. We do not target groups and punish them for sharing blood or religion with our enemies. We identify individuals and prosecute them (or kill them) if they are working with our enemies.
5) Continuing the theme, Charlie Munn at The Officers' Club writes In Defense of the Muslim World. He makes a powerful argument in support of his thesis that:
... the bad guys win if they convince us their world isn’t worth saving. Pick up a rifle, and follow me.
6) Fortuitously, Robert Avrech at Seraphic Secret has a three part series which could easily be a follow-up to AJ's and Charlie's arguments. Robert explores the mind and the thinking of a man who is without question one of the greatest military minds of our time, perhaps of any time. Part I and Part II of What Was Sharon Thinking? are important, but Part III is crucial to understanding one possible future that we may face.
7) Dean's World attempts to do something I have tried, and failed, to do in the past. In Left Vs. Right Discussions he tries to find ways to bridge the gap between what often appear to be two polar camps. Dean offers excellent advice:
All of this is why I try hard not to call anyone a liberal or a conservative anymore. Especially when I'm talking to, or about, individuals. It's why I try to talk about ideas rather than ideology.
Excellent advice (and his point about the liberals and conservatives switching sides over the recent past is particularly germane); of course, the problem with Dean's prescription is that we still need a way to talk about that group who generally support the war and various other policies typically referred to in our political discourse as conservative and those who seem to reflexively oppose anything that emanates from the Bush administration. I still have not found any better definition of "liberal" than what I have arrived at phenomenologically: When the New York Times supports a position it is "liberal" whether or not it is inherently grounded in liberal political philosophy and when they oppose a position it is conservative. That's my working definition and I'll stick with it until something better comes along.
8) Pedro, at The Quietist, points out that the hypocrisy of certain members of our polity would be breath-taking if it were better known. In his post, A big glass of hypocrisy all around! Put it on my tab, he writes:
Amazingly, of all the politicians and journalists in this huge, incoherent, disjointed story, the only agency that can reasonably claim to be honest is the State Department! Impressive!
Considering the breadth and depth of the hypocrisy Pedro writes about, the most remarkable thing is that his statement about the State Department ends up making perfect sense.
9) Minh-Duc at State Of Flux posts on a man who lived from 1332-1406 and was the first sociologist and the first economist. Whatever your position on taxation, after you read Taxation and the reason for low and high tax revenues (from Ibn Khaldun), agree or disagree, you will have a new appreciation for his closing statement:
... we still have people who believe in big government, in high taxation, who still refuse to see the aggregate benefit to society when individual is given economic incentive.
10) Finally, Watching America is an invaluable site. Here is their self-description:
WatchingAmerica makes available in English articles written about the U.S. by foreigners, often for foreign audiences, and often in other languages. Since WatchingAmerica offers its own translations, regular users of our site will enjoy articles not available in English anywhere else. We are a unique window into world opinion.
One example of their work which I found enlightening, about the gulf between my view of the world and the view from a very different place, was an article from Pakistan's Pak Tribune, If The Boss [Bush] Is Right, and Iran Has the Bomb ...
The article does not offer much hope that we can solve our differences through dialog but is useful, perhaps especially for that reason.
I hope you will glean something useful and interesting from this effort. I will try to do a Top 10 once a week, though the day of the week may vary. Enjoy!
[If you have a blog and would like to have one of your posts considered for a future Top 10 list, please send me the the title, a brief recap, and the link and I will take a look.]
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