Regular commenter Sharon responded to my Gloom post below, and spurred some more thoughts.

Living overseas has made me much less optimistic about “the march of democracy/liberty.” I’m less certain that, as the Bush administration said quite a bit over the last few years, that liberty is a universal impulse.

I think there are several, equally strong, if not stronger impulses – perhaps none more corrosive than the desire to be told that the problems in one’s life are not one’s own fault, they’re somebody else’s.I may have mentioned this before, maybe not – so, around December 2001, I’m working at a tiny Washington wire service, my paychecks are bouncing, my career is going nowhere, thousands are dead in New York, anthrax is in the mail, I’m flabby, and I just have no idea what the hell I want out of life.

Depressed, frustrated, needing something to pick me up, I went to the “self-help” section of Borders, and looked for the most insanely optimistic believe-and-achieve nonsense I could find, because I yearned for a naïve confidence, rather than the “what’s the point?” gloom I was in. I picked out Tony Robbins.

It worked for me – I know there are folks out there for whom he’s not their cup of tea. I’ll spare you the sales pitch, but Robbins’ work is very big on positive thinking, but even more, on personal responsibility – “your life is what you make of it.” “You will never succeed if you accept excuses, or if you wait for someone else to give you what you want.” “The difference between the successful and the not successful is that the successful people just keep trying, when everything says they ought to give up.” And so on.

I changed my attitude, and my life changed quite a bit in a short period of time. Some of it was luck, but a lot of it was looking at my life and demanding better of myself, and refusing to accept excuses or look for scapegoats. Started working out, started freelancing more, started networking more… I stopped waiting for life to give me what I wanted.

(This isn’t to say Robbins or his book is necessary; it dawned on me after reading it that a lot of his messages are part of some people’s mental software. Some people never have to be taught any of this; some just inherently have this striving, I-can-do-it attitude. I suspect that the vast majority of supremely successful people have this stuff hard-wired into their personalities.)

I now sadly realize how rare this attitude is. I think the vast majority of people still have the attitude of sitting back, waiting and taking what life gives them, or believing that their problems are so big and difficult that they have no chance to overcome them.

Also, the attitude that “there’s nothing I can do about my problems because of X” – X being some outside force, real or imagined – is extremely common overseas. It may very well be the biggest distinction between the “American” attitude and those of other countries’.

Now I see that for a lot of people around the world, they’re deeply invested in the belief that there’s nothing that they can do to improve their lives, that all of their problems come from outside forces, that the deck is just inevitably stacked against them. Changing this worldview would force them to recognize their own failures, their own flaws, the opportunities missed and the hard work that’s required. It’s like those dealing with addicts say, “you can’t help them until they want to help themselves.”

And this goes to the root of a lot of things.

Why do people become jihadists? Probably a lot of reasons, but a big one is that your average Ahmed feels like his life has no meaning, no purpose; he has no direction, no prospects, no hope of a better future. Then some jihadist imam gives his life meaning – he was created for a purpose: to kill infidels, and to enjoy 72 virgins in Paradise.

Obviously, a huge divide in our political system is between those who say, “I can achieve my dreams, I just want government to get out of the way,” and those who say, “I have no hope of achieving my dreams without the government coming in and helping me.” And, conversely, those saying to others, “You cannot achieve your dreams without the government helping you.”

How much racial tension stems from the sense that, “I can’t get ahead because The Man will always keep me down?” or, conversely, “I can’t get ahead because the company will always promote some Affirmative Action hire instead of me”?

If you think about it, the mentality that “I’m helpless, there’s nothing I can do about my problems” might be the single biggest impediment to human progress.

On a related note, I was intrigued by a comment by “Pollster” on this blog:

At this year’s American Association for Public Opinion Research conference, data was presented on perceptions not of how the economy is doing, but whether it is getting worse or better. Republicans sometimes say it is getting worse, sometimes better, and that balances out over several years. Democrats consistently say it is getting worse every single month and have been saying so for several years.

>
(We can speculate that Democrats will never believe that the economy is getting better until there is a Democrat in the White House.) Think about what it’s like, to be somebody who ALWAYS thinks things are getting worse, regardless of what you see around you. Talk about a mentality of “learned helplessness.”

The desire for a scapegoat is a powerful one; it is also probably the impulse that is the most significant obstacle between us and our dreams.

Cam: The world needs to get married. I’m always my wife’s scapegoat.

I can say that because my wife rarely reads this blog.

On a more serious note, what you’re describing with the Democrats and the economy isn’t scapegoat-ism, it’s delusion. They’re saying Republicans are to blame for a horrible economy… but the economy isn’t horrible at all.

Scapegoating would be me blaming Netflix for my lack of blogging because I’m constantly having to watch the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes I’ve ordered.

Sorry to put a screed on top of Jim’s thoughtful and important post just below. But I just travelled through the Miami airport for the first time, and I have to say it’s about the worst I’ve ever seen. A terminal with 15 gates and only two restaurants, no newstand and one bar? Ummm. Insanity. It looked like bread day at a Soviet grocery store. And a newspaper? Fuggitaboutit.

But not to worry, it wasn’t just the facility that blew didn’t measure up. It was the security, too. As I boarded my flight, I was selected for additional screening. That meant two TSA guys were going to go through my bags. Fine. I assume they’re on the lookout for rogue toothpaste. But what they did could barely be described as a search. One of the guys opened my roller bag and lifted up some stuff on corner. The other lifted the flap on my messenger back and looked inside the outer pocket, but didn’t even both to unzip the main pouch. I mean, seriously. If someone thinks it’s necessary to that sort of search, fine. Do it for real. Otherwise, go back to the checkpoint and let me board my flight in peace. I actually said to the TSA guy when he was done, “Thanks for the feel-good search.” Ugh.

UPDATE: Thanks to Danno, I have repaired my egregious typo.

UPDATE 2: Thanks to Pat, I have repaired a second egregious typo.

(Sorry that this post rambles – it will give you a sense of how my mind works.) So – in no less than three ways, in three days, I’ve encountered a strange and alien gloom. A bright, funny Turkish woman I spoke to recently told me she is filled with great fear for the future of her country. She sees the party currently in power, AKP, as Islamists set upon remaking this secular democratic republic into Saudi Arabia, or , or Iran, or some combination of both. (I am not a fan of AKP, but I find some of their critics tend to paint with too broad a brush. Unlike the Iranian revolutionaries or Hezbollah or other folks who they’ve been compared to, they are patient, have a lot of internal division and rivalries, have a lot of powerful enemies, and have at least some agenda items that don’t quite fit the Islamist vision – getting into the EU and bringing the country’s human rights policies into line with Europe.) What’s more, she doesn’t see any opposition party as a significant improvement; they all to her look like various corrupt, unethical power-hungry factions.

Ace of Spades analyzes the situation with Iran, and finds the most likely scenario is Iran wiping out New York, Washington, Boston and Los Angeles in simultaneous nuclear blasts before the American people are stirred to take action against that nation. And I’m sure we’re familiar with the gloom amongst our friends on the left regarding Iraq. One of my favorite lefty readers regularly points to bad news from Iraq and concludes, there’s no point in staying, the situation will never get better, we had better cut our losses and get out. I’m tempted to agree – as I suspect anyone who hears the bad news – and yet pulling out would immediately bring about a) bin Laden and Zawahiri citing this as an example that Americans are weak, beatable, and that Allah is on their side; b) Iraq becoming a sectarian bloodbath that makes the current violence look like a tea party; c) Turkey invading northern Iraq; d) Islamists turning their focus and resources to driving us out of Afghanistan, and/or a coup in Pakistan to seize that country’s nuclear arsenal. Oh yeah, and oil would hit $225 a barrel.

Anyway – the common theme is gloom – the problems are intractable, there is no hope or light at the end of the tunnel; we are powerless in the face of this problem. I even admit succumbing to it a bit. I have a letter to the editor in Commentary magazine, noting that I increasingly suspect “public diplomacy” efforts to combat anti-Americanism are futile.

Anti-Americanism is, to me, something of a “pathetically impotent whiny loser” detector. I’ve encountered plenty of it in my travels here, in Europe and the Middle East. We Americans are the universal scapegoat. Not making enough money? Blame American corporations. Lack of opportunities? America, working with the Jews. Your military’s weak? Sabotage from the Mossad. Hit by a tsunami? Must have been triggered by an American underwater nuclear test. Bad weather? American pollution is causing global warming. Stub your toe? Cheney and the neocons moved the table into your way. The world is divided into two kinds of people: Those who believe they control their destinies, and take responsibility accordingly; and those who believe that it’s in the hands of fate, chance, or somebody else. There are plenty of the latter, both in America and abroad. Few of us want to acknowledge that the reason we’re not happy is because we’re lazy, or have made bad choices, or we drink too much, or don’t plan ahead, or that, in one way or another, we fail ourselves. We would much rather have some sinister external force to blame – be it blaming Mommy and Daddy, or society at large, or powerful conspiracies holding us back.

For many people around the world, America is their bogey man – except he doesn’t scare them, he reassures them. Their problems aren’t their fault. They can sit in the tea house all day in Egypt and bitch, complain, and spin conspiracy theories, or enjoy their 35 hour work week in France. Anyway – I find it tough to deal with this gloom. If I’m not quite an optimist, I always think that a solution can be achieved. (Certainly, the surest way to ensure a solution won’t be found is to deem the problem is unsolvable). Hell, if you want an example of incurable optimism, let’s talk football. I’m a Jets fan, and even in the face of what everyone predicts is a crappy season, I’m thinking, “If Pennington’s shoulder holds up, and he’s as good as people say he’s been this year in camp, and if Barlow can keep his mouth shut with the Hitler comments and just find holes and run through them, and if the new guys on the offensive line live up to the hype, and if Jerricho Cotchery is the rising star that he sounds like at WR, and if Laverneus Coles remains solid, and if they find somebody to just take up a lot of space at NT, and if they find a good fourth linebacker, and if the small army of talented young guys in the defensive backfield play smart… then we might just have a good year.”

I wonder if the American public is reaching this “we throw up our hands, the problem is intractable, we give up” stage, or whether this attitude is just more common on the blogs.

I have generally believed for a while that the news judgment of today’s editors and producers is pretty abysmal. The media obsession with the JonBenet Ramsey case, even from normally respectable publications, dramatically proves the point.

Josh Marshall passes on an observation from a reader that illustrates that obsession perfectly:

Number of reporters contributing to Friday’s front page New York Times story on the JonBenet Ramsey case: 13

Number of reporters contributing to Friday’s front page New York Times story on the federal court ruling that the NSA warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional: 2

(HT: James Joyner)

There is no definition under which this story qualifies as news. Covering it with the kind of resources normally dedicated to a major war or presidential campaign is a ridiculous mis-allocation of increasingly scarce reporting resources, and that makes it a huge disservice to readers and viewers.

Cam says: Marshall, it’s clear that one story here has worldwide implications on matters affecting each and every one of us, and it’s not some silly little story about wiretapping. C’mon now. A confession in a brutal murder ten years ago take precedence. Besides, you saw those creepy child beauty pageant photos. How could you not be obsessed with the case?

This is a prime example of the media catering to what it thinks its audience wants. It’s interesting to me that the NYTimes did this, but I can’t say I’m surprised. But while we’re on the subject of news judgement, what do you think of the WaPo’s attempt to keep the George Allen story alive for a week? How many front page stories on this have their been since the Senator aplogized?

Note to the WaPo: it’s getting pretty shameless now, fellas.

Marshall: Funny you mention the George Allen story. There’s another story today. Front page, above the fold of the Metro section. Yet another piece attacking the Senator. Okay, guys. We all know you hate George Allen. Time to let it go.

But your point is right on — I call it the USA Today effect. Editors and producers have given up making decisions about what news is significant. Instead, they rely on focus groups and market research to tell them what stories their readers and viewers want. But on some level, we rely on the media to know what’s going on around the world and help identify what’s important. To be sure, the Internet has made it easier for us to be our own editors, but not all the way. The traditional media still has the resources spread around the world to inform us about things we wouldn’t discover on our own. But they’re not interested. They just want to do one more story on JonBennet.

Jim: I mostly concur with the takes above. The guy’s confession, and the question of whether he’s the killer or just some nut trying to take credit for the heinous deed, is a story. It’s intriguing, a mystery, and the public is a sucker for gruesome true crime tales.

I don’t begrudge the media paying some attention to the mind candy - whether it’s the monthly “trials of the century” - Scott Peterson, Andrea Yates, Robert Blake, etc., or the latest exploits of Brangelina, Bennifer, the slow-motion car crash that is Lindsey Lohan’s life, etc.

I do begrudge them when this stuff gets in the way of the important stuff. (And as we all know, in the 1990s, news organizations decided their readers didn’t care about news internationally, and drastically cut their foreign bureaus and overseas coverage. “I mean, it’s not like a bunch of guys overseas are going to blow up the World Trade Center or something.”) News agencies don’t have unlimited news holes. A half-hour newscast can only do so many stories; a newspaper or magazine only has so many pages. I do find it moderately rediculous that to the cable news networks, the biggest story to come out of Turkey in the past year and a half was the guy who fell off the cruise ship — not AKP and the fight between secularists and Islamists, the PKK and Turkey’s threatened invasion of Iraq (I saw NO coverage of that!), bird flu, Valley of the Wolves Iraq, the Danish cartoons…

I find the Washington Post to be generally one of the most consistent and solid newspapers in the country, must reading for everyone in the political world, but I agree with the assessment that they’ve let their true views show with their all-Macaca-all-the-time coverage of the Virginia Senate race. Having said that, I think that the Post is big enough that it will see few if any consequences for slanted, disproportionate, or just all-out bad coverage of any particular race. The Times and the Examiner are fine papers, but they’re a long ways from replacing the Post.

(Full disclosure: In the past year, I’ve appeared in all three Washington papers, and would like to stay on good terms with all of them.)

Lo and behold, I return to the blog with an interesting story. It comes from the Salt Lake Tribune sports pages:

Pony League Baseball and the human condition collided at home plate during a recent championship game, leaving defeat and doubt in one dugout, maybe disgust, too, and imperfect victory, at some cost, in the other.
Standing in the vortex, in the batter’s box, was 9-year-old Romney Oaks, a survivor of brain cancer who played little league baseball, in part, because he wanted to be a regular kid who did regular things. What he became, after that single at-bat, though, was anything but regular.
He was transformed into the explosive centerpiece - “a powder keg,” as the league president put it - of a discussion about what junior sports should teach children who participate, what the value of that participation is, whether adults mess up the kids’ fun, and at what price winning should come. Clear-cut answers are about as easy as knocking a heavy split-fingered fastball out of the yard.
Romney struck out.
And ignited an uproar.
Here’s the setup: The two best teams in Bountiful’s 10-and-under Mueller Park Mustang League - the Yankees and Red Sox - met in a championship game, played the last Friday night in June. The undefeated Yanks were in the field, up by one run in the bottom of the last inning. With the tying run on third, two outs in the books, and the Red Sox’ best hitter, Jordan Bleak, coming to the plate, Yankees coaches huddled and decided to do something they hadn’t done all season: They told their pitcher to intentionally walk a hitter. An absolute anomaly in a low-key recreational league in which regular-season games were governed by competitive limitations, such as a maximum of four runs allowed in an inning. Those limits had been suspended for the championship game.
Bleak already had nailed a three-run homer and a triple.
“It was a baseball move,” says Shaun Farr, one of the Yankees’ coaches. “These kids wanted to win.”
Romney was the only thing that stood in their way.
The undersized youngster, who had been diagnosed with the brain tumor five years earlier, who had battled valiantly through a mighty survivor’s fight via traditional treatments, including surgery and chemotherapy, had been restricted, thereafter, in his baseball skills. When manning his position in center field, he wore a batter’s helmet as a precaution to guard the shunt in his head. When he swung the bat, it looked like a drag bunt.
Red Sox coach Keith Gulbransen, who was coaching first base, says he overheard the Yankees coaches discussing their strategy: “They said, ‘. . . This is the kid who hit it out. And look who’s up next.’ They knew who was on-deck. It was heartbreaking. It was sound baseball strategy. But, at this level, was it fair? Romney knew what was going on.”
After two strikes, Romney already had tears in his eyes. It was merely a matter of seconds before the kid who wanted to be regular became a special K. After the third whiff, the plumbing fully clogged and backed up, spilling down his face.
There may ordinarily be no crying in baseball, but, on this night, there was.
Anger, too.
Gulbransen heatedly demanded an apology from Yankees coaches Bob Farley and Farr: “Apologize,” he said. “Romney didn’t deserve that.”
“This wasn’t about Romney,” says Farr. “It wasn’t about picking on a cancer survivor. It was about taking the bat out of their best hitter’s hands in order to win. Our kids had worked hard. We played within the rules. We were trying to win.”

So I ask you gentlemen (and ladies, if you’d like to chime in as well)… what would you do in that situation?

My short answer (I’ll elaborate in a bit) is that I would do exactly what the winning team did. I would play fundamental baseball and walk the good player to get to Romney.

Marshall: Well, this is an easy one for me. I’d have walked the home run-hitting kid in a wink of gnat’s eye to get to the kid I knew was likely going to strike out. It’s an easy choice. The game is on the line. And the idea of the game is to win.

Obviously, the can of worms here is why this is even a question. The other team should have pitched to the good hitter so that the other kid could feel good about himself? That’s going out of your way to create a false impression. Where I come from, we call that a lie.

Jim: Fascinating story, guys. I’m still mulling it over.

But it reminded me of a similar example from a few years back. You’ll have to forgive me for not remembering the specific teams, but the story goes like this - a legendary high school girls basketball player is in the next-to-last game of her career, approaching the school or league career scoring record. She gets within two points of breaking the record… and gets injured. Blows out a knee, I think. Out for the year. With one game remaining, and two points away from rewriting the record book.

The team, and the coach, and everyone else lamented how sad this is, and came up with an idea that is either brilliant or just plain wrong, depending on your perspective. They decided that in the final game of the year, the injured girl would take the court (on crutches), and the other team would permit her to make a two-point shot. Then her team will let the opposition score two points, and with the game 2-2, the injured player will go to the bench and a substitute will come in, and the real game will begin.

I thought the proposed solution was just plain wrong. The reason we love sports is because it is unpredictable. Sometimes, even often, you fall short of your goal, whether it’s a championship or breaking the scoring record. If your knee gets injured, it gets injured. You don’t interrupt the game for some charity points because reality is so sad. If I recall correctly, there was a big gender gap in how people reacted to that story. Women thought it was perfectly appropriate for the opposing team to “give” the injured player two points so she could have the storybook ending she had been working for so long; Men thought it was rediculous, was a dishonest way of breaking the record, and went against the concept of competitive sport. (I wondered how it felt to be the non-injured player on the opposing team who got to score the two points unimpeded.)

Looking at the story of Romney Oaks, there’s a part of me that laments that he was in the game in the first place. Either the team as a whole is playing to win with its best players, or it isn’t. It’s very noble to want to give Oaks the chance to play with the team as a regular kid. But at the end of the day, he isn’t a regular kid. Get together and play an exhibition, a scrimmage, whatever. But if the game counts, and the rest of the team wants to win, then put your best players on the field. And walk the home run hitter.

Scarlett: I’m confused. I thought Romney wanted to be treated like a normal kid? Well, he was. He wasn’t given a pass because he was sick.

I love the parent who complained about teaching the kids there are short cuts to winning. Uh, yeah. Welcome to real life lady.

Sports at that age help teach kids life lessons, and this game seems full of them. 1) You don’t get a pass because something bad happened to you. You think Romney’s boss is going to go easy on him because he had cancer when he was younger? Not a chance. 2) There are winners and losers. Winners do what they can to win, and the best do what they can within the boundaries and rules. Last time I checked, intentional walks were in the rules of baseball. 3) There are sore losers. And in this case, it’s the parents. Sad to say the adults here are acting like crybabies. I venture to say that some parents are probably using Romney as an excuse to bitch about losing.

Hey, at least they kept score. We should be happy for that, right?

Jim, again: Ennuipundit has a comment or two, and reminds me that the basketball player I was trying to think of was Nykesha Sales from UConn.

On a business trip this week, I started reading Bill Bryson’s fantastic book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. The book is a series of short accounts of key scientific discoveries that begins, literally, with the formation of the universe. In a later chapter, Bryson spends more than a few pages with Sir Isaac Newton, he of Newton’s laws, gravity and all that fun physics stuff. For this post, I’m specifically interested in his third law of motion. Here’s a nice summary:

All forces in the universe occur in equal but oppositely directed pairs. There are no isolated forces; for every external force that acts on an object there is a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction which acts back on the object which exerted that external force.

In fifth grade science, you probably learned Newton’s third law of motion this way: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Remember now? Excellent. Hold on to it. We’ll get back to Newton in a moment.

Yesterday, in the airport on the way home from my business trip, I stood in a book shop while a colleague bought a magazine. A television attracted my attention. There on the screen, a newscaster was discussing the health of Fidel Castro with an expert commentator. Castro, of course, led the socialist revolution in Cuba in 1959. Over the next thirty years, the world came to understand that communism and socialism were just alternative forms of totalitarianism that failed to deliver on their promises of peace, equality and freedom and instead, rendered only hardship and oppression. Happily, freedom prevailed, the wall came down, and communism in Europe was overthrown. As a result, Castro became a living fossil — a breathing museum exhibit of a time past and a political philosophy that had utterly failed. The expert on the screen speculated that Castro might soon breathe his last.

Once the discussion of Castro was over, the coverage shifted to the current fighting in southern Lebanon between Israel and the terrorist organization, Hezbollah. It got me thinking about terrorism (just about anything does these days), and a question popped into my head.

Does Newton’s Third Law apply to politics?

I don’t mean literally, of course. Newton wrote his law to help explain the dynamics of the motion of objects. Obviously, that isn’t what we’re talking about here.

But in a figurative sense, will freedom always have some force in opposition?

Consider history for a moment. (I’m going to focus on European and American because it’s what I know, but I have no doubt that the same sorts of events happened, or are happening, elsewhere.)

For centuries, monarchies and religious totalitarianism dominated Europe. Only after the enlightenment did the idea emerge that men ought to be free — that governments ought to be empowered by inherently free people; not kings by God. But it took two revolutions — one in America and one in France — to really get the ball rolling. And the one in France wound up not going so well. Slowly, however, freedom spread. Thank the British parliament and the Royal Navy for that. Until 1938, when freedom came head to head with totalitarianism once more. Another war.

Then a confrontation with communism. And another war — this one lasting more than forty years — before freedom prevailed. (If blogs had footnotes, I’d insert one here and write something witty about how I’m not a dolt — I realize that China is still practicing its form of socialism. I would probably write something about how China seems to be retreating from socialism and transforming itself slowly, the same way Great Britain moved from monarchy to a parliamentary system. But (a) I don’t really believe that and (b) China is still a totalitarian state. So I recognize that my line of historical argument is imperfect. Nevertheless, the China exception doesn’t really impact the question I’m trying to pose.)

Now, we’re fighting a new war. This one against terrorism, which is just another form of religious totalitarianism.

So, will freedom ever prevail? Or, when freedom overcomes each new opposing force, will some new force emerge?

Newton’s Third Law posits a balance of forces. But the laws of motion don’t apply to politics. Is it possible that freedom’s unstoppable march might be turned back?

I don’t think for a second I know the answer. I do know that I’m an optimist. And I would like to believe that left to their own devices, every human being would prefer to be free than not.

Yet there is considerable evidence to the contrary. My friend Jeff Harrell argues that the absence of popular revolution in totalitarian states is among that evidence. I disagree with him, but it’s a compelling argument. So is the argument that a billion people, willingly surrendering themselves to a religion that encourages violence and glorifies murder and death, demonstrates that not everyone wants to be free.

I hope someone smarter than me will contemplate the question. Because the answer is important. If you believe that freedom’s march is inexorable and that every human being is born with the inherent right and, critically, desire to be free, then there is real merit to the argument that as free people, we have a responsibility to help others become free. If, however, you believe that there will always be a force to oppose freedom, it’s harder to make the argument that we have any such responsibility.

Jim: A great post, Marshall. I’ve been asking similar questions myself.

If you had asked me the same questions a year ago, or two years ago, I probably would have given a different answer. But now I increasingly suspect that the Bush administration’s overall foreign policy vision is based on a flawed assumption – that all human beings, no matter their race, culture, or nation, yearn to live in freedom.

I’m sure that many human beings want to be free. The problem is, human beings have other desires. And sometimes people want other things more than they want to be free.

They want to be safe. They want order. That was the sales pitch for the Taliban – after years of civil war, many Afghans were willing to give the long-bearded guys in black a chance to keep order. Apparently the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia is making a similar pledge to the war-exhausted residents of Mogadishu.

People want justice. The sales pitch of Islamists in many countries – Egypt, Iraq and Turkey among them – is that such devout and religious men will not be corrupt, and will not abuse their authority to line their pockets and live well at the people’s expense.

Sometimes people want to kill their neighbors over injustices and crimes that occurred generations ago. Look at the Balkans, or the divide between Shia and Sunni.

I know a lovely old woman who was a young woman in the Soviet Union in the 1950s. She cried when Stalin died, like everyone else around her. They saw the legendarily cruel tyrant as the great father of the country; “who will take care of us now?” was the cry among the people.

Today, in the Ukraine, the Orange Revolution has been nearly overturned because so many Ukrainians look back fondly on Communism. They miss the security of lifetime employment. A capitalist economy frightens them.

And why does anyone commit a crime, an action which risks their freedom? Because they seek the upside of that action – money, a thrill, a sense of power – more than they fear the loss of their freedom.

Living overseas has illustrated to me that there are certain traits among Americans that are unique. The American concept of freedom, in all its various forms, is really, quite rare in the community of nations. Even among the political democracies of Europe, there are some traits that are alien to America – a level of government regulation of the economy that comes much closer to socialism, and a faith, and demand, that the government will take care of everyone with social welfare benefits that are unimaginably generous by American standards. Similarly, when you look closely at European political elites, you see something akin to the old aristocracy. All of their political, media, and business elites have been chummy since prep school. Americans would chafe at this, seeing it as elitism, snobbery, an insulated ruling class. To a lot of Europeans, it’s standard operating procedure and a long-tested and trusted way to insulate the system from the tyranny and the passions of the majority.

I’ve also seen that other nations can come up with systems of government that while seeming alien and strange to us, work for them. Turkey has a messy, argumentative secular democracy (where the military periodically steps in to ensure the rule of constitutional law). Jordan’s monarch probably does more to ensure the well-being of its subjects than any elected leader would. Singapore has restrictions on personal freedoms that Americans find hard to imagine – I’m sure you remember the kid who got caned for graffiti, or the punishments for littering – but it works for them.

It is foolish to look at a system like the Taliban and say, “who are we to judge?”; but it is equally foolish to look at different systems of government, societies that have even dramatically different ideas of individual rights and freedom and to conclude that our mission in life is to change them to be more like us.

I’ve spent the last few minutes playing with the new RedState and the new ConfirmThem (where I contribute from time to time).

My friends Clayton, Mike, Erick, Ben and the rest of the RedState team have done an excellent job. The new site launched on time and seems largely glitch-free.

Make sure to visit and hang around. The redesign takes the community aspect of RedState to a whole new level.

Frequent On Tap commenter Jeff Harrell has done some fine work examining and breaking down the photo of smoke over Beirut that Reuters had to pull. Michelle Malkin, the LGF gang, and the Powerline guys have all also written about this, but Jeff breaks this story down the way the ESPN crew break down Xs and Os on game day.

I had figured after all the controversy over the CBS memos, that no member of a news organization would pull that kind of a stunt again. I figured wrong.

Marshall: Nellie. Those things are as fake as those old photos of the Loch Ness monster. Indeed, they might have been more credible if the photographer had just painted in big foot as well. Seems like to me this is an easy decision. Reuters needs to fire this guy. It’s no different than Jason Blair faking news stories of the dozens of columnists who have been caught plagarizing material.