On CNN.com today, I read an interview with Jimmy Carter:

People around the world perceive the United States as “too arrogant” and “too self-centered” because the country doesn’t do enough to alleviate poverty and other social ills in the developing world, former President Jimmy Carter said in an interview to air Friday.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was asked by CNN’s Larry King why he believes so many people in the rest of the world hate the country he once led.

The United States is in an interesting situation. We have to solve two problems at the same time.
On one hand, we live in a world full of people who are pissed off at us. Many of them have made their hatred the center of their lives, and they have demonstrated their willingness to act on that hate.
On the other hand, the things which we can and probably should do to defend ourselves may defend us in the short run … and very possibly create more people who are pissed off at us.
But if we don’t do them, we will continue to be attacked in ways that we will find it very hard to defend against.
So what’s the answer? Carter believes that we need to give more away:

Carter, who will receive a the Nobel prize on December 10 in Oslo, Norway, also noted that the United States gives only one one-thousandth of its gross national product for international assistance, while the average European country gives four times as much.
“For every time an American gives a dollar, a citizen of Norway gives $17,” he said. “Foreign aid in this country has a bad name, but in other countries, it’s a right thing for the government to do. And that’s where we at the Carter Center quite often have to turn.”

In the intermediate and long run, something has to be done to help the rest of the world out of the downward spiral. But first, we have to find a way to give aid that isn’t recycled into Swiss bank accounts, or sold in Europe, like discount AIDS drugs.
And we have to find a way to combine helping the rest of the world with defending ourselves.

Lots to blog about, no time to do it.
Think good thoughts about the brave kids demonstrating over in Iran today. They have to worry about being arrested and killed, not just pepper-sprayed and dragged out of the streets. They are brave as hell, and I hope we’re smart enough to figure out how to get them on our side.
Note these articles about the UK, where self-defense was made illegal, crime went up, and so the government now has to abolish some basic rights.
I’m off to Las Vegas; I assume there will be Internet connectivity at Comdex, so I’ll be doing some light bloggage from there.
Try not to kill each other or blow shit up while I‘m away.

I’ve had some correspondence with Instapundit over the whole Burk thing; as noted below, I think he’s off-base, and that he’s not acknowledging a whole history of right-wing satire of leftists (which I don’t have time to research just now, dammit). In my view, that makes his points on Burk kinda meretricious, and as I told him privately, he’s not a moron so he can’t just wave that stuff off.
Now he’s comparing the controversial ‘suicide-bomber self-portrait’ with the Burk article, and here I’ll go back to the point above, which is that the painting is romanticizing violence and death, while the article was satirizing reproductive politics. One != the other.
But there’s another point (surprise!!) that’s more urgent. I think Lileks (scroll to the bottom) and Reynolds are missing the more serious issue, which is the connection the painting makes between romanticism, Romanticism (as I’ve talked about endlessly) and cathartic violence.
I think that the Beltway shooters may have had an ideological framework that made their violence OK, or a plan to bury an act of domestic violence in a mass murder. But I also think they were acting out of an impulse to cathartic violence which is legitimized by modern philosophers, in the modern arts world, and in the mass media.
One issue (unfair satire) is a cold. The other (romantic violence) is the plague. Let’s not get distracted by sniffles.

From Field & Stream; an article on the nature of meat and our relationship to it.
Tenacious G points out that Frazz disagrees:

Ann writes:

I have some things to clear up with Armed Liberal that I’d prefer to do behind the scenes because I think once we actually get a chance to talk, we’ll end up on the same page.

‘Tora, Tora, Tora’ will be shown at the Warner Grand in San Pedro on Dec. 7th, it was announced today. I wonder why…
I’m going, and I’d like to suggest that the rest of the L.A. Blogger community ought to come out as well.
What do you think??

One of my best friends spent years as a community organizer for parks in New York City. She is a fountain of funny stories and ‘on-the-ground’ political wisdom, and one of her truisms is: dog doo ends all meetings.
That is to say, much like Godwin’s Law, as soon as dog waste is brought up, the meeting is effectively over. The room divides, the tempers get hot, and constructive discussion flies out the window.
I’ll suggest a corollary of this, which is: race ends all Democratic politics.
In the discussion of the ‘Veterans Day’ post below, the thread immediate turned into a race politics thread…who were the racists, and what political power did they have in which party. And constructive discussion sort of petered out.
Now, race is a real issue in American life today.
Yesterday, I had dinner with a friend. I was dropping off a character reference letter for him to give to the sentencing judge next week. He got talked into something stupid, got set up, and got arrested. Another casualty of the drug wars (to his credit, he blames no one but himself…one reason he’s the kind of guy I’d write judge letters for). There’s a chance…a narrow chance…that he will just get probation, which means he’ll get to keep the job he’s had for twelve years.
We were talking about it and he said something that rang my bells pretty hard.
“Now,” he said quietly, “when I get pulled over and they ask me if I’m on probation, I’ll have to say ‘yes’.” I looked at him.
“Damn,” I said, “they never ask me that…” and then the unspoken acknowledgment. He’s black, I’m not.
Now I’ve ridden along with cops a fair amount (I also have good cop friends). Without going into a lot of detail about my friend, there are things that would make me look at him twice (things I learned to look for from cops, and which I saw and remarked on when he and I first met…part of how we became friends).
But his matter of fact comment is no less heartbreaking to me because I know that if I was a cop, I’d be asking him the same question. And there, in a nutshell, is the American Tragedy of race.
But…it isn’t the only problem or the only tragedy we face. And the fact that it stops us in our tracks…that it stopped Janice Hahn…that it stops discussion…is a bigger problem. I won’t pretend to lecture anyone on this subject tonight.
But the lecture’s coming.

Check out Joe Klein in Slate. A key quote:

The Democrats have to stop being so goddamned negative and pessimistic. No piece about the party should omit Dick Gephardt’s famous retort to Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” ads: “It’s getting closer and closer to midnight.” (For that reason alone, Gephardt should be barred from further national political activity.) Reich, this is your specialty: Why are Democrats always so downbeat and mopey about the most dynamic economy in the history of the world? Why are your friends at the American Prospect so perpetually dour, dark, and humorless? Why can’t they be as funny as you are?
The most important qualities that Newer Democrats need to enlist are optimism and an inspirational, idealistic American patriotism. This is particularly true if they want to appeal to young people. I would guess that those who watch Saturday Night Live and MTV adhere to only three bedrock political principles: tolerance, environmentalism, and entertainment value. (I would guess, for example, that they intuit the difference between Eminem’s—and, yeah, mea culpa, Sister Souljah’s—scathing social realism and true intolerance.)

Read the whole thing.
I’m busy, serious bloggage later tonight.

I can’t believe I forgot this one:
Sartre’s play: Dirty Hands. An excellent examination of ideology, purity and praxis.