In America older people tend to vote more conservatively than the rest of the population. Apparently, the French are no different. According to this article in the in The Independent (h/t tompeters! and the Brussels’s Journal) Sarkozy would not have won the recent election in France if it were not for the over 60 crowd. Click Here to continue reading.

This week’s poem of the week is East Coker. With this week’s essay and rant as well as other things I have been reading this week, it just seemed appropriate to continue working through Eliot’s Four Quartets.

This week’s rant of the week comes from my favorite British police officer who calls himself Inspector Gadget. He captures the feelings that I have when my path crosses with those lost souls that I can’t really do anything to help.

It is a shame that the works and life of Vaclav Havel are not better known. We are so use to what politicians are that we are unprepared for Havel. A politician who can actually think and has principles seems like something out of a fairy tale. We find it hard to believe even as we are face to face with the evidence.

This week’s essay of the week is short speech that Havel gave on what he thought were the deficiencies in the modern western political consensus. I don’t agree with him in every respect (you can see some of my thoughts on the same issue here and here) but I have to admire the evident thought he put into the problem.

If you want an idea of how well Havel’s philosophical thought translated into his politics you can read this piece from Reason Magazine.

First off, the Dutch are basically going to do away with prison sentences…

Most criminals in the Netherlands should be able to serve their sentence at home in the future. Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin is to introduce house arrest as a new main punishment. Criminals can then also visit friends or a mosque for two hours a day.

Now I am not a big fan of prison sentences. I think there are lot better ways of handling criminals. But letting people sit at home and paying them welfare checks does not strike me as being better then prison. This from the same article…

Those under house arrest will receive welfare payments. Only if they run a company from their living-room or do other work that yields sufficient money will they receive no financial support from the minister. They can also do a home course.

“House arrest is experienced as a real punishment,” according to a spokesman for Hirsch Ballin. “At the same time, social networks remain in place.”

But the Dutch have their priorities straight at least. They fined a dude for calling an animal rights group terrorists….

Leeuwarden appeal court has sentenced a vet, J. Plantema, to pay damages of 200,000 euros to animal rights group WakkerDier. He called them terrorists. It is unique for abuse of freedom of speech to lead to such a high fine.

And who runs WakkerDier?

Wakker Dier is headed by Sjoerd van de Wouw. At another action group, VMO, he was the right-hand man of Volkert van der Graaf, who assassinated politician Pim Fortuyn with gunshots in 2002. Currently, Van de Wouw is assistant to the Party for Animals (PvdD), which has two seats in the Lower House.

h/t The Brussels Journal

From time to time I read blogs such as The Gates of Vienna and The Brussels Journal that are devoted to the “coming culture clash between Moslems and the West.” I go to these blogs because sometimes they alert me to interesting stories and issues that I would otherwise miss. Yet they always leave Click Here to continue reading.

One of the reasons that I highlight an essay every week is that you learn very little by reading news stories, short blog posts, and the other typically short pieces that we read on a daily basis. I think that this is true even if all those short pieces cumulatively contain the same information that we might find in a long piece. A coherent whole just has a bigger impact than disparate pieces scattered throughout time.

I bring this up because I think most people who keep up with the news have a vague awareness of most of the facts in this week’s essay. But I think that those facts get lost in all the stories about China’s growing commercial clout. Thus, I think that Guy Sorman’s indictment of China is well worth reading because it forces you to confront what would otherwise get lost in the shuffle.

I should note that for some reason they stuck a sidebar on Hong Kong right in the middle of the essay. I find that highly annoying. Just scroll right past it and the essay will resume.

I want to make it clear that I am not one of those who think that an armed populace is a guarantee of freedom. Moreover, I believe that an unarmed people can be free. But I do not believe that America can be made free of guns with out giving up any pretense of being a free country. A gun control advocate makes that point better then I ever could…

The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.

Clearly, since such sweeps could not take place all across the country at the same time. But fairly quickly there would begin to be gun-swept, gun-free areas where there should be no firearms. If there were, those carrying them would be subject to quick confiscation and prosecution. On the streets it would be a question of stop-and-search of anyone, even grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for “carrying.”

The “gun lobby” would no doubt try to head off in the courts the new laws and the actions to implement them. They might succeed in doing so, although the new approach would undoubtedly prompt new, vigorous debate on the subject. In any case, some jurisdictions would undoubtedly take the opportunity of the chronic slowness of the courts to begin implementing the new approach.

You can read the rest here. The man is a member of the editorial boards of the The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (h/t Pierre Legrand)

Let us see how long this lasts. But at least the family is back together for now….

ERLANGEN, Germany, April 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – German homeschooler Melissa Busekros finally returned home early this morning on her 16th birthday after having been forcibly separated from her family by the government 3 months ago.

Back in February, Melissa was seized from her family home in a dramatic police raid for the crime of home schooling – illegal since 1937 by edict of Nazi Chancellor Adolf Hitler – and placed with a foster home in a location unknown to her family.

Read this article for the rest of the story. You will also find links that describe the back story. (h/t The Brussels Journal)