Archive for July 1st, 2003

Fox Hunting and the Politics of Compromise

Tuesday, July 1st, 2003

The House of Commons has just voted for a total ban on fox hunting in England. One might be tempted to dismiss this as another sign of the loony leftists in Europe but the failure of the "pro-hunt" lobby holds a number of important lessons for conservatives in America. The primary causes for the failure of the hunting lobby to defend their rights were their willingness to compromise and a failure to offer a moral defense of their rights.Two weeks ago, Andrew Linzey, a prominent British "expert" on morality and "animal rights" compared fox-hunting to rape. To quote, "’Causing suffering for sport is intrinsically evil. Hunting, therefore, belongs to that class of always morally impermissible acts along with rape, child …

Posted in Politics | 14 Comments »

Here we go again…

Tuesday, July 1st, 2003

The NYT has an interesting story on the internal power struggle among the various Palestinian terrorist organizations. It makes a number of interesting points, such as that Arafat has refused to halt the terrorist attacks because he prefers using the threat of violence to get concessions from Israel, and that he remains a powerful influence despite having officially stepped down. The article also mentions that Abbas and his allies do want a more moderate (i.e. less barbaric) policy that represents a threat to the groups that maintain their power by terrorist activities.As the article mentions in passing, the recent "truce" seems to have two motivations: first, the terrorist organizations are feeling the heat from Israel and want a chance to …

Posted in General | No Comments »

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