Combs Spouts Off

The Watcher of Weasels is always a good source of links to worthwhile, quality blog posts. Every week, the Watcher’s Council nominates and votes on posts by Council members and non-members to pick the best pieces of writing around. The latest voting results are up (the original list of nominees is here), and this time, I want to do more than casually recommend that you check them out. 

For one thing, vanity compels me to point out that my post, Touchdown Dance, finished fourth among non-Council entries. Now, in most competitions, a fourth-place finish is not exactly a big deal. But look at the company I’m in — I’m tied with Col. Austin Bay, for Pete’s sake! I like to think this blog is worth an occasional visit and that I at times amuse or enlighten. But, Col. Bay’s every posted word is worth reading, and this post is no exception. I’m both honored and humbled to be in such company.

More importantly, I strongly recommend that you read both this week’s winners — Council and non-Council. They’re two long, thoughtful, and truly important posts that you shouldn’t miss.

The winning Council post is Dr. Sanity’s must-read, THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL BANKRUPTCY OF TODAY’S LEFT. Here’s a taste:

Where once they stood for freedom; they now enable dictatorships and apologize for tyrants. Where once they sought to bring justice to the world; they now defend horrific acts of mass murder and enslavement. Where once they rightly demanded equal opportunity, they have embraced all kinds of racial quotas and discriminatory practices and demand equality of outcome. Where once they sought to empower the weak; they are now instrumental in maintaining and expanding their victimhood.

After all, how can you be a “champion of the oppressed” unless you maintain and nurture an oppressed class that will always require your services to help them?

Read the whole thing. Then read the winning non-Council post, Stephen Green’s The Arm of Decision. This is a genuinely important piece of writing. It answers a critical question that few have even bothered to ask: what’s the arm of decision — the most important element — for victory in the Terror War? In WWI, it was the number of bodies in uniform; in WWII, it was the quantity of stuff — planes, ships, tanks; in the Cold War, according to Greene, it became the quality of stuff.

Today, we face an enemy with no tanks, planes, ships, or divisions, and we have a mere 10 divisions (compared to NATO’s 100 divisions at the end of the Cold War or the 150 divisions the U.S. alone had in WWII). Our Air Force is half the size it was in the early 90s, and the Navy has shrunk similarly. So what does matter in this postmodern war? (emphasis in original)

Previously, I wrote that in order to win the Terror War, we must "prove the enemy ideology to be ineffective," just as we did in the Cold War. … I argued that similar methods would win the Terror War. We’d have to fight, we’d have to maintain our freedoms, but the primary key to victory in the Current Mess is taking the initiative.

What I didn’t see then – but what I do see today – is what "taking the initiative" really means.

It means, fighting a media war. It means, turning the enemy’s one great strength into our own. Broadcast words, sounds, and images are the arm of decision in today’s world.

And if that assessment is correct, then we’re losing this war and badly.

This is important stuff. Please go read it.

The voting results and nominee lists contain several other entries that I just have to read — who can resist a title like A Week of Riots and They Still Won’t Tell Us Who’s Rioting or Moron #7 Revealed? But they’ll have to wait for the weekend. 

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