The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Stay or Leave?

10.25.06 @ 12:01AM

(Page 2 of 5)

Doug Bandow's suggestion is the smartest idea I've seen in quite a while. Get out of South Korea and let the rest of the region deal with Kim Jong Il while releasing needed assets to be used to better advantage elsewhere. It certainly makes more sense than getting out of Iraq and letting the rest of THAT region deal with Muqtada al-Sadr and his ilk -- although that's getting to be more attractive as time-and-a-half goes on.

Stealing a page from Ivan Osorio's "Rules of Ridicule" I suggest that all the American troops leaving South Korea line up along the DMZ, face south, bend over, and drop their pants. That ought to give "The Dear Leader" something to think about!
-- Bob Johnson

THE PRODUCERS
Re: Ivan Osorio's Rules of Ridicule:

It is interesting that Ivan Osorio's article was posted today. Just last evening TCM (Turner Classic Movies) showed a recent interview by Dick Cavett of Mel Brooks.

It reminded me of previous interviews of Brooks when asked why he always makes fun of various groups (Nazis, The Klan, Racists, Anti-Semites, etc.) in his movies, his reply was that it was the best way to minimize who they are and for what they stand. Basically, he was saying, "Make fun of them and laugh at them. You'll enjoy it while making their idiotic beliefs and them look stupid."

Let us all now bow at the genius of comedy.
-- Rick Osial
Montclair, Virginia

The KKK was a potent, honored southern tradition until one man got every kid in the Klan to shame his dad into leaving. He had infiltrated the Klan, mapped their organization, found out all their secret passwords, signs, recognition signals and handshakes. He approached state and national authorities who said they could do nothing.

So he went guerilla. He contacted the writers of the Superman radio show. They had just about worn out the idea of fighting Nazis and Communists. They thought the idea of fighting the KKK was a great idea.

The first week after Superman started fighting the Klan, the meetings were packed. "My kids are going around giving out our passwords and secret handshakes. They want to be Superman and fight us. I feel like an idiot," was the theme.

So they changed the passwords and the day after the meeting, Superman was using the new passwords. Afraid their kids would find their robes, the vast majority of KKK members left within 3 months. The organization has been basically powerless ever since.

The question we have to ask is, "What would embarrass the jihadists so much they would be embarrassed in front of their families?"
-- Bryan Dilts
Enola, Pennsylvania

Bravo. Both the left and the terrorists are very vulnerable to ridicule.

One man that has been working in that vein for years is Rush Limbaugh. His "illustrating absurdity by being absurd" and musical parodies always amuse me and seem to infuriate those on the left.
-- Geoff Bowden
Battle Creek, Michigan

BURKEAN REFLECTIONS
Re: Tom Bethell's Christian Fall, Muslim Rise:

While scholars have been unable to find the quotation attributed to Chesterton that when men no longer believe in God they believe not in nothing but in anything, Edmund Burke, whom Chesterton admired in many ways, said much the same thing in the late 18th century in Reflections on the Revolution in France:

We know, and what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and all comfort....We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts, and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium of the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of Hell, in which France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilization amongst us, and amongst many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might take place of it.

-- Hal G.P. Colebatch
Nedlands, Western Australia

Letter to the Editor

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