[Peace] Tracinski statements!

[msimon at uiuc.edu]

Dear All, 

Below are excerpts from 10 articles (titles in caps) written 
by Robert Tracinski, the distinguished Neo-Con columnist 
scheduled to grace 151 Loomis Lab (corner of Green St. and 
Goodwin) with his presence on April 24 at 7:30 PM.  I know 
this is a rather long post, but it’s worth the time.  These 
statements range from nauseating to extremely (and 
unintentionally) comic.  People actually think like this guy!
-Mike Simon  

*BLOOD FOR OIL (Media Link, The Ayn Rand Institute)

“Saudi universities, for example, produce more graduates in 
Islamic theology than in any other field; the Muslim world as 
a whole has produced fewer than 1 percent of the world’s 
scientists; students in the Saudi-funded religious schools in 
Pakistan cannot do elementary arithmetic and do not know that 
man has walked on the moon.”

“The Saudis did not create their oil fields.  The oil was 
discovered and drilled for by American, British and French 
oil companies.  These firms were the rightful owners of the 
oil, and until the 1950s, their rights were mostly respected.
“The Arab chieftains who ruled the region had no idea the oil 
was there and no idea what to use it for; THEY WERE STILL 
RIDING CAMELS [caps added].  But once the West discovered the 
oil and put it to use – running our factories and 
automobiles – the chieftains began to tax the oil.  When that 
wasn’t enough, they simply stole the oil fields, beginning 
with the de facto nationalization of the Saudi oil fields in 
1950.”


*WHY ISRAEL MUST NOT WITHDRAW (Media Link, Ayn Rand Institute)

“What Israeli is doing now – arresting militants, destroying 
suicide bomb factories, seizing weapons caches – is 
necessary, but it is not enough.  These operations only 
eliminate, for the moment, the products of a terrorist 
culture.  But if Israelis want to be able to live in peace, 
the terrorist culture itself must be uprooted.  Only an 
Israeli occupation can achieve that goal.
“There has been a lot of talk about the ‘legitimate 
aspirations’ of the Palestinian people for an independent 
state.  But people who embrace suicide bombings and choose 
career killers as their leaders – as the Palestinians have 
done – have no legitimate political aspirations.  They will 
be ‘ready for democracy’ only when they stop worshipping 
murderers.
“ISRAEL NEEDS TO REPLACE THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY WITH A 
PERMANENT OCCUPATION, AN ISRAELI COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 
CHARGED WITH THE TASK OF CIVILIZING A PEOPLE MADE BARBAROUS 
BY DECADES OF TERRORIST LEADERSHIP.  THIS OCCUPATION SHOULD 
REMOVE TERROR INDOCTRINATION FROM PALESTINIAN SCHOOLS, MAKE 
LIFE SAFER FOR CIVILIZED PALESTINIAN LEADERS, AND MAKE 
TERRORISM A ROAD TO PRISON OR DEATH, NOT POPULAR ADULATION 
[caps added].
“Most important, the occupation must seal off Palestinian 
territories from the real instigators of terrorism.  The 
claim that terrorism is primarily a response to Israeli 
actions is terrorist propaganda.  In reality, terrorism is 
fed and driven by outside sponsors: by Iran, whose theocrats 
provide money, weapons, and training; by Iraq, whose dictator 
offers bounties to suicide bombers; by Syria, the base for 
terror groups like Hezbollah.  If Israel withdraws, these 
forces will flow back in to rebuild the culture of terrorism.
“These are the lessons we thought we had learned after 
September 11: that terrorists have no right to gain a hearing 
for their cause; that we must answer them with destruction, 
not negotiation; that we must uproot them by striking at 
their organizations and sponsors.  The crisis in Israel is a 
test of whether there is anything left of that vision.”


*WHY DO THEY HATE US? (Capitalism Magazine: In Defense of 
Individual Rights)

“They condemn us for the ‘arrogant imperialism’ of our 
foreign policy.  They claim America is motivated by a 
predatory greed to plunder the world’s natural resources.  
They say that we are the real terrorists and that we deserved 
Black Tuesday’s attacks.  Why do these people hate us?  No, I 
am not referring to militant Islamic terrorists.  The America-
haters I am concerned about are professors on America’s own 
university campuses.”

“It is the job of university intellectuals to understand, to 
transmit and to defend the intellectual achievements of 2500 
years of Western civilization.  We can now see clearly that 
today’s academics have betrayed that sacred trust.  We must 
seek out better guardians of reason and progress.”


*ISLAM’S UGLY ASSAULT ON BEAUTY (Media Link, Ayn Rand 
Institute)

“The collapse of the Miss World pageant in Nigeria is an 
important case study in the menace posed by Islamic 
fundamentalism – and the craven appeasement of Islam by the 
West.” 

“But the most revealing element of this Islamic attack was a 
slogan chanted by rioters: ‘Down with Beauty.’  This is the 
key to the whole outlook of Islam: an attack on any enjoyment 
of life in this world, even the aesthetic enjoyment of 
contemplating beauty.  If you want young men to die for 
Allah – the explicit goal of the fanatics – then you can’t 
let them catch even a glimpse of the values they are leaving 
behind.”


 *REMARKS OF ROBERT W. TRACINSKI AT THE EARTH DAY 2000 
COUNTERMARCH PRESS CONFERENCE 

“We think the environmentalists are opposed to industrialism, 
not because they care about any real or imagined harms to 
human life, but for precisely the opposite reason.  They are 
opposed to industry because they do not care about human 
life.  Instead, they want to sacrifice human life and 
happiness for the sake of a kind of primitive nature-worship.”


*APOLOGY FOR SLAVERY WILL PERPETUATE RACISM (Diversity & 
Multiculturalism: The New Racism, Ayn Rand Institute)

“An apology for slavery on behalf of the nation presumes that 
whites today, who predominantly oppose racism, and never 
owned slaves, and who bear no personal responsibility for 
slavery, still bear a collective responsibility – a guilt 
they bear simply by belonging to the same race as the slave-
holders of the Old South.  Such an apology promotes the very 
idea at the root of slavery: racial collectivism.”


*ELIA KAZAN: MORAL HERO – KAZAN SHOULD BE APPLAUDED FOR 
DEFENDING INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS BY TESTIFYING AGAINST HOLLYWOOD’S 
COMMUNISTS.

“But Kazan does deserve to be honored, not despite his 
testimony [before the House Un-American Activities 
Committee], but because of it – not because we should 
separate his politics from his art, but because his politics 
helped preserve artistic freedom for everyone in America.  
Kazan was the one defending freedom – while it was the 
Hollywood communists who were betraying 'the lives and 
futures' of their fellow man.  The search for Hollywood 
communists was not a hysterical witch-hunt.  There were real 
communists in Hollywood.”


*BAD ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON (Media Link, Ayn Rand Institute)

“On Tuesday, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-
leaning Washington think tank, published a full-page ad in 
The New York Times condemning the proposed Bush tax cuts.  
This pro-tax statement is signed by more than 400 economists, 
including 10 Nobel laureates – for what that’s worth.
“Apparently, it’s not worth very much, because the 
economists’ statement is a classic lesson in bad economics.”


*NATIONS UNITED AGAINST RIGHTS (Media Link, Ayn Rand 
Institute)

“Note, however, the reaction of so-called human rights 
activists.  When Congress threatened to withhold UN dues, 
these activists urged America instead to increase its support 
for the UN […] Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch 
declared: “Instead of writing off the commission, the United 
States should take the process of multilateral diplomacy more 
seriously.”  In other words, if we just appease the UN, maybe 
they will be a little nicer to us and not quite so nice to 
Sudan.  What an inspiring vision for the future of individual 
rights.”


And finally, Tracinski on the true meaning of Christmas:

*PEACE ON EARTH – AND ITS PRICE (Media Link, Ayn Rand 
Institute)

“But no foreign policy Santa is going to come to disarm 
America’s enemies.  Peace on Earth will come only through 
dangerous action to secure it, and good will toward men can 
only rule once we have defeated the forces whose malice – as 
recent events demonstrate – cannot be mollified or negotiated 
away.
“That’s why we should take a few moments to remind ourselves 
that the joy of this holiday season is earned by the courage 
and foresight we show the rest of the year.  We should take a 
moment, especially, to thank the soldiers who man the front 
lines of our freedom and security – many of whom will not 
have the luxury of a Christmas at home.”