I’M HEADING OFF TO THE LAKE this afternoon. But don’t miss PunditWatch, which I expect will be up later.

IN RESPONSE TO MY POST BELOW on Europe, Martin Pratt remarks that the United States is losing support because “Countries don’t have friends, they have allies, allies only remain so when there is something in it for them.”

Perhaps what many other countries perceive as “unilateralism” is just the result of the United States finally figuring out, and acting upon, what those other countries have always known and acted upon.

ACCORDING TO THIS REPORT, the Johannesburg summit is turning out to be much better than expected. Well, even a flatworm is smart enough to avoid pain, so maybe the UN is capable of learning, eventually.

BLOGCRITICS RULES: The Supreme Beings of Leisure are quoting the BlogCritics review of their forthcoming CD “Divine Operating System” on their site. (Scroll down in the “news” window.) Somebody is paying attention!

But where the hell is my review copy?

TIMES VS. TIMES — it never stops at Kausfiles.

GEITNER SIMMONS writes about the NEA’s cries of racism over criticism of its 9/11 curriculum. Excerpt:

Remarkable. Teachers, she claims, can’t talk about the Islamic hatred and evil that fueled the 9/11 attacks because hatred and evil once manifested themselves, undeniably, in this country through the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow.

On the contrary, this situation presents teachers with an opportunity to make vital distinctions.

American society, students should be told, now openly acknowledges the injustices and horrors of slavery and Jim Crow. Indeed, powerful legal mechanisms, embedded in the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, have been put in place to prevent their reappearance. America, in other words, have striven mightily, after a civil war in the 19th century and social tumult in the 20th, to move beyond the moral blindness of the past. . . .

These are the real nuances that teachers ought to sharing with their students. How revealing that the NEA and like-minded thinkers want to pre-empt such needed discussions in the nation’s classrooms.

Indeed. I suppose it’s also worth noting that the NEA’s response (which Simmons calls “demagogic”) to criticisms of the 9/11 curriculum gives the lie to claims that the curriculum did not really reflect the views of the NEA.

HERE’S ANOTHER ARTICLE ON WEBLOGS, this one by Gregory Boyd Bell in the Hamilton Spectator.

ROLLING BACK RADICAL ISLAM: Here’s an essay by Ralph Peters. I’ve just skimmed it. I’ll look at it more closely later, and I’ve sent the link to one of InstaPundit’s scholarly consultants on Islam for comments.

UPDATE: The indefatigable Howard Owens has already posted some comments.

ROD DREHER IS MAD about the “Beverly Hillbillies” reality show, and Andrew Cline tends to agree with him. But David Kreitman isn’t so sure it’s bad:

I know that what Dreher and Jeff are saying about the attitudes among the Hollywood elite and others toward Southern culture is indisputable. I know how parochial and embarrassingly narrow minded these people can be when discussing American subcultures outside of the bubbles they inhabit in LA or New York. I also know how many Americans use the caricature of the Southern yokel as the mental template for High Ignorance and Stupidity. But that does not overrule certain unavoidable facts about Southern rednecks, hicks, hillbillies, yokels, yahoos, hayseeds, rubes, or whatever you want to call them, that will never fail to make them fascinating, extremely compelling, hilarious and attractive objects for examination by those living in the South as well as on the outside.

You simply do not have, remaining in the land, a more real group of people who don’t really give a damn what others think. The true Southerner knows well how others view him, and yet he never sets about looking for “leaders” and apologists to run onto TV and shame everyone for their mean-spiritedness. It has always been a sign of confidence and pride, or so I’ve taken it, that the Southerner lets the Northerner, or other elite types, pummel him repeatedly without recourse to the tiresome props of the victim. And thank God for that.

Jed Clampett was the true hero of the original Beverly Hillbillies. Will CBS have the guts to follow his example?

TRAFFIC: 662,688 unique visitors to the main page in August as of now, according to Extreme Tracker. That’s about a 30% increase over July. Thanks for visiting.

JOHN ASHCROFT ISN’T MAKING KIM DU TOIT HAPPY:

The more I read about the FBI’s behavior in this matter, the more I want to kick AG John Ashcroft in the balls. Their bullying, truculent behavior towards both Hatfill and his fiancée make me absolutely sick– why are the Janet Reno goons still there, after they had their pee-pees whacked over the mishanding of the Richard Jewell matter? (You remember Richard Jewell– he was the suspect/non-suspect/”person of interest” in the Atlanta Olympics bombing case– later found to be completely innocent despite the FBI’s intimidation and hectoring tactics towards him and his family.)

This crap has got to stop. Right now. If the FBI has enough evidence to go to the grand jury, then that’s what they should do. If they don’t then they’d better quit this bullshit about leaking to the Press the list of their suspects, and letting the suspects/non-suspects/”persons of interest” be tried by the Press and public opinion. And applying pressure through the person’s family is a foul thing to do– hey, why not just put a gun to his mother’s head and tell him to “confess, or she dies”? That’s what the KGB or Chinese would have done.

It remains to be established whether Hatfill is guilty, but it’s clear that the FBI has botched the investigation in ways that won’t be redeemed even if Hatfill turns out to be guilty as sin. The leaks, as I’ve mentioned before, are either a deliberate effort to put pressure on him (illegally), or just evidence that the FBI is so inept and unprofessional that its employees can’t keep their mouths shut even on an important investigation relating to national security. (Or worse yet, it’s just a cynical move to take the press heat off the anthrax investigation by making it look like it’s doing something. Regardless, it’s a botch, and I don’t see another explanation that makes them look any better.

NELSON ASCHER HAS SOME MORE THOUGHTS that are worth posting:

If we can call the Eurocratic order a kind of New Enlightened Despotism, the Church’s role would be fulfilled by the NGO. In a way they actually resemble the medieval militant monastic orders. They begin as reformers, then are slowly incorporated to the system as their propagandists and missionaries. Besides, they too are unelected bodies composed of “inspired” and dedicated militants (and good old Lev Davidovitch Bronstein once compared the Bolsheviks to the Jesuits).

Most of the main European powers have some kind of official cultural agency (Alliance Française, British Council, Goethe Institut, Casa di Dante) the branches of which are scattered all over the world. They are not accused of being an arm of their own CIAs and, though their primary role is apparently some form of cultural/linguistic diffusion, their real function is ideological (defined in a generous way) propaganda. The Goethe Institutes, for instance, are responsible for the moderate success of German cinematography in the 70s and 80s. The Alliance Française fights for the “francophonie” and so on.

Have you ever considered that basically all the important international literary/cultural prizes, scholarships etc., from the Nobel prize down, are granted by Europe. Third world intellectuals simply love them, and why shouldn’t they? Latin Americans, Africans, Arabs, Asians etc. feel that Europe takes them seriously and respects them, while the US ignores and/or disdains them. Their books are regulary published in German, French, Italian, Swedish and so on, usually with the help of generous state subsidies. When it comes to any kind of conflict who do you think they are rooting for, America? And their written words, in ways most Americans cannot begin to imagine, carry a lot of weight in their poor semi-literate societies, mainly when they return to them as homegrown cultural heroes who managed to spread their country’s name and language in Europe and elsewhere.

But it is also true that the European elites take adequate care of keeping their own writers, intellectuals, academics and artists happy and on a short leash. Maybe this goes a long way explain why there are no French Noam Chomskys criticizing the Quai d’ Orsay’s politics. Talk about manufacturing consent.

Interesting. This makes sense to me, though I’m not an international artist like Nelson.

THE EUROPEAN UNION CORRUPTION SCANDAL CONTINUES with paybacks to a whistleblower.

THE PREMISE OF THIS ARTICLE BY GLENN KESSLER from tomorrow’s Washington Post just seems wrong to me. The article says that the U.S. has squandered the flood of support that it received from other countries after 9/11.

But let’s be honest here. What support?

We got a lot of sympathy, leavened with a certain amount of schadenfreude. And we got a couple of German AWACS. But when it came time to actually deliver support, as opposed to talk, what did we get? Not much. We got nontrivial numbers of British and Canadian (and Australian) troops for Afghanistan, and trivial numbers of troops from elsewhere. We got a lot of carping and warnings of quagmires. But not much where the rubber meets the road.

And that’s why Bush doesn’t “give a shit what the Europeans think.” Which makes stories like Kessler’s a bit, well, beside the point.

UPDATE: Donald Sensing has some thoughts on this, too. And here are some words of wisdom from a surprising source.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Correction — I’m informed that they were NATO AWACS, not German, which is correct, of course. Follow the link for a cool picture of one over Niagara falls.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Steven Chapman has this to say about Bush’s remark:

I don’t blame him. The day the sheepdog consults the sheep over ways to combat the wolf will be a sorry day indeed.

Chapman also thinks that the Britain/Europe distinction is important.

THE SWEDES ARE TRYING TO DOWNPLAY THE AL QAEDA CONNECTIONS of a man who tried to hijack an airplane last week. But Charles Johnson has the scoop.

UPDATE: Hmm. The guy had flunked out of flight school, (coincidentally, the one my brother-in-law graduated) in South Carolina.

MORE EVIDENCE that smallpox vaccinations may offer longlasting immunity. (Via Faisal.com).

MAYBE COLIN POWELL IS EARNING HIS PAY: At least, somebody is doing a good job on the diplomatic front. First France gives up on criticizing U.S. moves against Iraq. Now this:

Britain and Italy have broken ranks with EU colleagues, saying they are willing to negotiate bilateral accords with the United States in a row over a new war crimes court, diplomats said.

“Some countries are ready to negotiate. Others are not. In public, the only two countries which have expressed a different position are Italy and the United Kingdom,” said one European diplomat.

“Berlusconi is trying to position himself as the best friend of the Americans, along with the British,” said a diplomat source in the sidelines of informal talks between EU foreign ministers in Elsinore, Denmark.

Note the catty tone. . . .

OKAY, THERE’S NO POINT MY EVER WRITING ANOTHER WORD. Not when I’ve written a law review article that has, apparently, induced fits of teen ecstasy. . . .

Well, with a little help.

MICHAEL BELLESILES IS WRITING on the proper use of history in constitutional analysis.

That’s like having Joe Biden lecturing people on the evil of copying. Oh, wait. . .

UPDATE: History News Network is observing that the James Lindgren article on Michael Bellesiles’ errors has gotten a lot of downloads from this site:

On Friday August 16 blogger Glenn Reynolds published an Acrobat copy of the article–“Fall From Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal”–on his heavily-trafficked website, instapundit.com. By the following Wednesday the article, which features 237 footnotes, had been downloaded 55,853 times. As of August 26 the article had “racked up an impressive 82,843 downloads.” Notes Reynolds: “By way of comparison, the dead-tree circulation of the Yale Law Journal, where Lindgren’s piece appears, is just over 3,300.” Has there ever been a scholarly article that received a higher circulation? It may just be that Lindgren’s article is the world champ.

The figure as of yesterday afternoon was 87,482. Since Lindgren’s article is now also available for download on HNN, and on Lindgren’s own page, there’s a good chance that it’s broken the 100,000-download mark overall. I’d say Lindgren’s “world champ” status looks pretty good.

ANOTHER UPDATE: There’s more on Bellesiles here.

JOHANNESBURG UPDATE: Reader Kevin Connors has noticed something:

It seems the Johannesburg summit generated 400 tons of trash, used 5 million sheets of paper and dumped 30,000 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Yes, and each participant used 53 gallons of water a day, while lecturing us on American wastefulness. The global ruling class will always live at least as well as ordinary Americans do today, however many calls for sacrifice it issues. Count on it.

In a similar vein, reader Arthur Hellyer wasn’t impressed by the Bill Moyers commentary I referenced below:

He ends his commentary, after basically saying human kind isn’t fit for life on earth, by saying we “owe” his daughter a better world. You would think with such pessimism he wouldn’t burden the world with another child. That’s liberalism though. He really likes things as they are, he just doesn’t want the rest of us around.

Yep. That’s typical. That’s why I prefer my version of sustainability to the sacrifice-for-the-little-people version being peddled by the UN apparat.

DALE AMON writes that race doesn’t matter much anymore, except to people trying to make political hay out of it. I think that “miscenegating like rabbits” has something to do with this change.

WHY THEY HATE US: The answer may be found here:

Recently, one British visitor was chatting to CIA Director George Tenet about the Europeans’ role. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what the President said the other day on that very subject,’ said Mr Tenet. ‘He said, “I don’t give a shit what the Europeans think.”

Note that the British are not included as “Europeans” in the President’s mind.

DOES TOM FRIEDMAN THINK THAT The ACLU is like Al Qaeda?

MANY BLOG READERS have probably never heard of a “foot washing,” though most will presumably recognize the Biblical derivation.

PORPHYROGENITUS says that Big Media “anonymous sources” are much less trustworthy than pseudonymous bloggers. You know the track record of bloggers, even if you don’t know their True Names. But you don’t know if this week’s “senior official” is the same as the one who said something idiotic last week, or not.