Oikophobia Defined

"Oikophobia" was coined by Roger Scruton:

Oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' "

Considerably more here, and, more derivatively, here.

Example: Modern liberal elites suffer from intense oikophobia, condescending to any, especially those who live in the red states, who do not revere their values.

Lebanon: A Civilian In A Civil War Zone

A few weeks ago The Survivalist Blog published a story of mine about my experiences in the village of Jouar El Haouz, Lebanon, during the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.

The readers are interested in preparing for various emergency situations, including relatively short term ones like hurricanes and earthquakes, but also for far longer term collapses such as might be triggered by a major EMP attack, or a catastrophe akin to a sudden fall of the Roman Empire. I wrote with my primary audience in mind, of course.

The comments received were quite gratifying, finally amounting to 82, including my own responses. It won second place for the best article for two months, and the prize money has now been converted into an extra bag of cat food and an extra bucket of kitty litter with which to care for Sweetie and Calvin in the event of a hurricane.

If you are interested, you can read it here.

If you are interested in preparing for routine problems, the Red Cross has information. This is the page for hurricane prep.

I think the site used to be easier to navigate, certainly easier to find a list of recommended supplies. It is now far too complex for my liking. What is so difficult with having a nice big prominent icon for "Disaster Supplies"? For some unfathomable reason, at least to me, they now have a very brief list of supplies which one should have on hand before a hurricane, under a label called "Respond During". Why would anyone think to look for a prep list under what one should do DURING a hurricane?

They have a supplies calculator here, but so far as I can see no mention that one might want some way of actually cooking one's food supplies.

Here is their list for a family home kit. Still no cook stove; flashlights, but no lanterns.

FEMA has a better site but they don't seem to think a camp stove or a lantern are worth considering, either.

The Benghazi Killings

James Rosen, at The Wall Street Journal:

Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb, who oversees diplomatic security, testified before the House on Oct. 10...Ms. Lamb, in her congressional testimony, said that from her command center in Washington she was able to track the lethal events of Benghazi in something akin to real time. She was in constant communication with the agent on the consulate grounds who first notified Washington that an assault—"attack, attack," the agent said—was under way. Ms. Lamb also said that the State Department was receiving a steady stream of data on the afternoon of Sept. 11 indicating that terrorism was afoot. Such admissions are what have given rise to charges of a coverup.

"Everyone had the same intelligence," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Fox News last week. But that also appears untrue. How information immediately made known to an assistant secretary of state could somehow be withheld for eight days from the secretary of state herself—and from our U.N. ambassador, from the director of national intelligence, from the analytic corps at the Central Intelligence Agency, from the president's chief spokesman, and from the president himself—now forms the central question in the Benghazi affair.

So how could this have been played as a protest which got out of hand?

How could anyone have thought that so few guards on a compound 100 yards by 300 yards would be adequate to protect it from an attack? They didn't even have enough people to have a guard at the gate- the first security knew there was a problem was when they heard the gate blown, and by the time they looked over at their monitor, people were already coming through.

Andrew McCarthy on Islam & Freedom

Seems to me they are mutually contradictory. Islam, after all, means "Submission".

McCarthy:

To borrow again from Cardinal Ratzinger, by exhibiting their trademark “indifference as to the content of what is believed or not believed,” Islam’s Western apologists depict sharia as gnomic and aspirational. It is not a regulatory code, they assure us, but a mystic, private compass by which the believer comes uniquely to experience the divine. Of course, when a woman who has been sexually assaulted is sentenced by a sharia tribunal to death for extramarital fornication, or a homosexual is similarly condemned for consensual relations, or an apostate for renouncing Islam, the executioners don’t hurl aspirations; they hurl stones.

Islamists hurl stones at rape victims, or shoot 14 year old girls in the face for daring to advocate for education of girls, or throw acid in the girls' faces, because they respect women.

Sharia...eschews our fundamental premises that the people are sovereign; that they may control their own destiny irrespective of any predetermined code; and that, while civil society may be profoundly influenced by spirituality, it is governed by secular laws.

Equal protection under those laws is the glue of a free, pluralistic society — but sharia rejects it.... Our basic liberties fare no better — sharia rejects freedom of conscience (apostasy from Islam is not merely a crime but a capital offense), freedom of speech (expression that casts Islam in an unfavorable light or sows discord among Muslims is a transgression as grave as apostasy), freedom of association, privacy, economic freedom, humane punishments, and the social commitment to tolerate and even appreciate most of our differences — not extinguish them by violence and coercion.

As we saw in Iraq, devotees also explicitly reject democracy, as people might well vote for un-Islamic laws. Voting allows people to defy the god's will, and defiance is most certainly not the god's will. Submission is.

More here.

Sacrilegious Ferrari

A Ferrari with four seats? Immoral. Obscene. Self-contradictory.

Although, if it had a sunroof, one could install a pintle mount on the trailing edge and be prepared for speed traps.

Still, what's next? a Ferrari station wagon?