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My understanding is that the amount of federal funds PBS and similar groups get is a fairly small percentage of their budget. To that extent, pulling the funding probably won't hurt them much and might give them the opportunity to feel all smug and self-righteous.

I have heard calls for defunding several times over the years and it never seems to go anywhere. I agree that we should oppose government funding to information sources on (eg PBS, NEA and public schools) on principle, but I am not holding my breath. Especially with the skyrocketing spending the Bush administration has been doing. I just don't think anyone in Washington has the courage to take a principled and unpopular stand on such matters.

Well, maybe not evil, but his problem is certainly moral not psychological. I think he is just taking what the relativists have been saying for years to its logical conclusion. After all, he asked and got the guy's permission before he killed and ate him, right? As long as you don't coerce anyone, consenting adults have the right to do anything they want, don't they?

I don't know what Germany's laws are about right-to-die issues, but I'm guessing they are fairly liberal and don't mention anything about eating people after they have exercised it. The only argument I could make against this, (that isn't religiously based), would be that society has a longstanding revulsion against cannibalism and has the right not to have its prejudices offended.

And we all know how successful that sort of argument is these days, don't we? In fact substitute "homosexuality" for "cannibalism" and "marriage" for "lunch" and you could have a whole new class of victim's rights stewing. (You should pardon the pun.)

---------------- I am not sure if this is encouraging or not. But notice the similarity of Satarifar's comment to the language of the Declaration of Independence: "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

It sort of depends on how you define success. Iraq may not look like America any time soon, but it will certainly look better than it has in the past (and better than any of the Arab dictatorships in the region currently do). We have to bear in mind that the US took nearly 100 years after the Revolution before it freed its slaves. And even the Revolution was a development in the history of democracy that can be traced back through the Magna Carta all the way to the Old Testament.

Iraq may be a late starter, but there are plenty of intellectual resources available, if they are willing to make use of them.

I couldn't find the article Krugman cites, either. It may have been in a print-only version, of course...

Your points are all very good. I would especially like to see the correlation between economic stratification and illegitimacy.

Another interesting issue would be the decline in the work ethic due to self-esteem oriented education and general leftist defeatism. How many of those people stuck in the lower "classes" are Democrats do you think? And which direction does the cause-effect arrow go?

Apart from the ouch factor and the eeww factor, I have only one comment: Jews and Muslims both circumcise their kids. It hasn't promoted racial harmony in the Middle-East. Any questions?

The problem with the crusades was not so much that it targeted "innocent" muslims, who were really the aggressors as the article points out. The real problem was that the crusaders often were indiscriminate in who they attacked. Thus the destruction of Jerusalem (which got mentioned) and the sacking of Constantinople (which didn't). That whole period was one of political chaos and generally gave Europe a bad name.

But, of course, most people condemn the crusades just because they want to attack Christianity, so I agree with the author's general point.

I think the suggestion was that a light bulb would be a form of birth control.

I agree that these charges are invalid, but I think there is something more sinister about them than mere nonsense. From the article it sounds as if the girl actually remembers something that didn't happen. Clearly these memories were induced somehow by the "therapist", probably through hypnotic suggestion or some similar mechanism, which suggests an actual malicious intent.

Of course, there are people who would argue that it is possible that the "therapist" could be honestly deluded into believing that he/she is helping the "victim" to remember an imaginary past based wholly on conjecture and faulty methodology. In which case the fault lies with the subjectivity of the entire process. But even so, I don't think this is mere quackery.