Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - L.A.R.K Program

The L.A.R.K. Program

A lady libertarian wrote many letters to the White House complaining about the treatment of a captive insurgent (terrorist) being held in Guantanamo Bay. She received the following reply from Donald Rumsfeld:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D. C. 20016

Dear Concerned Citizen,

Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Quaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Our administration takes these matters seriously and your opinions were heard loud and clear here in Washington. You will be pleased to learn, thanks to the concerns of citizens like yourself; we are creating a new division of the Terrorists Retraining Program, to be called "Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers" program, or L.A.R.K. for short.

In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care. Your personal detainee has been selected and is scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence next Monday. Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud (you can just call him Ahmed) is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of complaint. It will likely be necessary for you to hire some assistant caretakers. We will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for Ahmed are commensurate with those you so strongly recommend in your letter.

Although Ahmed is a sociopath and extremely violent, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his "attitudinal problem" will help him overcome these character flaws. Perhaps you are correct in describing these problems as mere cultural differences. We understand that you plan to offer counseling and home schooling.

Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. We advise that you do not ask him to demonstrate these skills at your next yoga group. He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless (in your opinion) this might offend him.

Ahmed will not wish to interact with you or your daughters (except sexually) since he views females as a subhuman form of property. This is a particularly sensitive subject for him and he has been known to show violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the new dress code that he will recommend as a more appropriate attire. I'm sure you will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the burka over time. Just remember that it is all part of "respecting his culture and religious beliefs" as described in your letter.

Thanks again for your concern. We truly appreciate it when folks like you keep us informed of the proper way to do our job and care for our fellow man. You take good care of Ahmed and remember . . . we'll be watching.

Good luck and God bless you.

Cordially,
Don Rumsfeld


I picked this up from an unknown source, so can't give reference credit due. It is my earnest hope that our Secretary of Defense at least has pleasant dreams of writing such letters. The United States would be the better for it if Mr. Rumsfeld and more like him actually had the moxy to hit their critics between the eyes with poignant rhetorical humor like this. Better yet, why not just do what this letter proposes? Maybe the critics would then "get it".

Milton Friedman - Our Economy is Strong

I frequently argue to my associates and friends that we live in the best of times economically, historically speaking, and that the Depression was historically avoidable, had the government not acted improperly.  They look at me skeptically because they are brainwashed by the information sources they listen to (aka mainstream media, aka drive-by media), who have them convinced that the economy is persistently in the tank, and that the government has helped the economy historically.  So I was thrilled to recently read the confirming words of the world's best economist    -  Milton Friedman.  Because his comments are so eloquent, concise, and needed,  I quote excerpts at length, from a May 22, 2006 conversation with Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn.  The discussion occurred during a Hillsdale National Leadership Seminar celebrating the 25th anniversary of Milton and Rose Friedman's book, Free to Choose: a Personal Statement. 

 

Larry Arnn:  What do you think are the major factors behind the economic growth we have experienced since the publication of Free to Choose?

 

Milton Friedman:  Economic growth since that time has been phenomenal, which has very little to do with most of what we've been talking about in terms of the conflict between government and private enterprise.  It has much more to do with the technical problem of establishing sound monetary policy.  The economic situation during the past 20 years has been unprecedented in the history of the world.  You will find no other 20-year period in which prices have been as stable - relatively speaking - in which there has been as little variability in price levels, in which inflation has been so well controlled, and in which output has gone up as regularly.  You hear all this talk about economic difficulties, when the fact is we are at the absolute peak of prosperity in the history of the world.  Never before have so many people had as much as they do today.  I believe a large part of that is to be attributed to better monetary policy.  The improved policy is a result of the acceptance of the view that inflation is a monetary phenomenon, rot a real phenomenon.  We  have accepted the view that the central banks are primarily responsible for maintaining stable prices and nothing else.

 

Larry Arnn:  Do you think the Great Depression was triggered by bad monetary policy at a crucial moment?

 

Milton Friedman:  Absolutely.  Unfortunately, it is still the case that if you ask people what caused the Great Depression, nine out of ten will probably tell you it was a failure of business. But it's absolutely clear that the Depression was a failure of government and not a failure of business. 

 

Larry Arnn:  Your don't think the Smoot-Hawley tariff caused the Depression?

 

Milton Friedman:  No. I think the Smoot-Hawley tariff was a bad law.  I think it did harm. but the Smoot-Hawley tariff by itself would not have made one quarter of the labor force unemployed.  However, reducing the quantity of money by one third did make a quarter of the labor force unemployed.

 

I hope this spreads the word. 

 

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu.

Facing Let Downs

Even good people don't handle shame or difficult circumstances very well, especially if they're unaccustomed to it.  For them, it's easier to just act like nothing's wrong, and disassociate from those who remind them of the difficulty.  It's disappointing, but there's little one can do to change them.  What you can do is rise above it, and resolve that you will not allow it to eat you alive.  Stay focused on you and your future with resolve and determination.  Don't let their folly and tacky behavior bring you down.  If you do, it's your fault.

Judgment

We regrettably live in a postmodern multicultural society where we are admonished to never judge others, where one set of moral standards is no better than any other and moral relativism reigns.  But how can this be real?

 

Truth is -- To judge is the essence of purposeful self-governance.  We judge, discern, and discriminate countless times every day.  It is called making choices.  It is also the essence of the process of observing what works and what doesn't, and why. Which means that it is the essence of science and learning.  Judging, and moral discernment, are therefore required to sustain our very existence.  Our choices matter because they have differing consequences.  If we choose poorly, we suffer.  If we choose wisely, we prosper.  If we make any choice, we learn, and our judgment next time is improved for it.  If we make no choices at all (which is what we do when we permit unmitigated tolerance) we are not living independently, but are instead victims of chance and cultural whimsy.