The usual idiots at the National Educational Association (aka the teacher’s union) say that we shouldn’t blame anybody for what happened last September 11. It was, you know, like an accident, or some kind of natural occurrence. No harm, no foul.

What’s worse, they recommend that this nonsense be included in teaching guides.

Here is an excerpt that contains one of the many myths of modern society, and one of my pet peeves.

“Blaming is especially difficult in terrorist situations because someone is at fault. In this country, we still believe that all people are innocent until solid, reliable evidence from our legal authorities proves otherwise.”

Yeah, it’s really tough to teach this “don’t blame anybody” silliness when someone is obviously at fault. What to do, what to do…?

[scratching head, a noggin filled with various useless molding detritus from some school of education, slightly verdant, musty dust poofing out of the ears with each finger tap…)

Oh, that’s right. Here’s the answer. In America, no one is guilty until proven guilty, in a court of law. We haven’t had a trial yet, so we should consider bin Laden and his buds innocent until we have.

Right. And we should consider OJ innocent because twelve men (and women) noble and true (and extremely confused, and bigoted, and utterly innocent of logic, science and the law) couldn’t find it in their hearts to call him guilty.

Repeat after me, everybody.

Innocent until proven guilty applies only in a court of law. It only means that he can’t be deprived of liberty or life by the state for the crime. It does not mean that we are not entitled to have an informed opinion about the matter.

And it’s not meant to apply to the court of public opinion. And certainly not to our public education system, particularly when teaching history (which last fall’s events have become). By their standards, Hitler would be innocent of gassing Jews, since no trial was held.

This sort of mealy-mouthed mush, in which no one is ever responsible for anything, and forgiveness should be granted by everyone (even by those against whom no trespass has occurred) to everyone (even those who don’t admit that they’ve done anything wrong, or express regret for it), is making us into a nation of milquetoast moral midgets, unable to pass judgement on anything or anybody.

Except, of course, those evil people who would have the temerity to judge anyone else’s behavior.

Sigh.

Oh, but wait! What a relief. Phew.

In the very next paragraph, it turns out that they didn’t really mean it. It is someone’s fault.

But another of the suggested NEA lesson plans ? compiled together under the title “Remember September 11” and appearing on the teachers union health information network Web site ? takes a decidedly blame- America approach, urging educators to “discuss historical instances of American intolerance,” so that the American public avoids “repeating terrible mistakes.”

“Internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and the backlash against Arab Americans during the Gulf War are obvious examples,” the plan says. “Teachers can do lessons in class, but parents can also discuss the consequences of these events and encourage their children to suggest better choices that Americans can make this time.”

That’s right, children. It’s our fault. If we only hadn’t been so mean to those terrorists, and put those Japanese people into camps during World War II, they wouldn’t have had to destroy our skyscrapers, and kill all those people. We made them do it.

This is an argument fit for a playground, but it’s being taught as serious curriculum by supposed adults. I think it’s past time for a time out for the NEA.

A permanent one.

[via Charles Johnson]

Williams and Connolly, the law firm that handled much of Bill and Hill’s legal defense, has reportedly written off their nine-million dollar legal debt, claiming that they got value just from the publicity.

If that’s true, won’t the Clintons have to report it as income?

I’m not going to hold my breath.

Abu Nidal was found dead, reportedly by his own hand, in Baghdad. Hard to know for sure what the cause truly is, given the location and sources (PLO) reporting it, but it’s even harder to care.

It’s pretty easy to be glad about it, though.

Abu Nidal was found dead, reportedly by his own hand, in Baghdad. Hard to know for sure what the cause truly is, given the location and sources (PLO) reporting it, but it’s even harder to care.

It’s pretty easy to be glad about it, though.

Abu Nidal was found dead, reportedly by his own hand, in Baghdad. Hard to know for sure what the cause truly is, given the location and sources (PLO) reporting it, but it’s even harder to care.

It’s pretty easy to be glad about it, though.

When Qwest wouldn’t provide broadband service to a rural Colorado community, they set up a cooperative and did it themselves.

Richard Cohen has a little screed against Ann Coulter in the WaPo.

May I say something about Ann Coulter? She is a half-wit, a termagant, a dimwit, a blowhard, a worthless silicone nothing, physically ugly and could be likened to Eva Braun, who was Hitler’s mistress. As it happens, these are all descriptions or characterizations Coulter uses for others in her book, “Slander.” It ought to be called “Mirror.”

The book is now the No. 1 bestseller in the nation. If I were writing this column as she has written the book, everything I wrote above would be footnoted. For instance, the deft Eva Braun crack was aimed at Katie Couric. Coulter calls the “Today” host “the affable Eva Braun of morning TV.” You can, as they say, look it up (p. 181).

Well, Richard, that’s the point, isn’t it? When she makes those charges, she at least attempts to back them up. You may say it, but don’t expect anyone to take you seriously, because you offer no evidence for them. “A worthless silicone nothing”? On what basis would you make such an accusation?

Whatever you think of Ms. Coulter’s stuff, this is just playground tactics, e.g. “I know you are, but what am I?”

He goes on, in his blind way, to once again laughably attempt to put up a defense against the notion that he and his colleagues are overwhelmingly left liberal.

Is it time for an intervention? I ask this because such anger, such intolerance, such rage, such a compulsion to denigrate and to distort is hardly based on any reality. If, as Coulter says, liberals control the media and much of the animal and plant kingdoms, then how is it that the president du jour and others of recent times — Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush the Elder — happen to be conservatives? I must be missing something here.

Yes, Richard, you are. You’re missing the fact that there’s a difference between a Republican and a conservative.

Eisenhower a conservative? He who cautioned us against the military-industrial complex?

Nixon a conservative? He of wage and price controls, and fifty-five mile-per-hour speed limits? He of “we’re all Keynesians now”?

Pro-choice Gerald Ford a conservative?

Bush the Elder a conservative? He of the broken tax pledge?

Bush the Younger a conservative? He of the increasing federal takeover of education, of steel tariffs, of disarmament in the cockpits, of huge government growth?

There’s only one conservative in that list–Ronald Reagan. But when you’re steeped in a leftist stew, you see anyone to the right of yourself (who you of course view as a reasonable, middle-of-the-road type) to be conservative.

Yes, Ann can be quite caustic, but she’s also often funny and clever, unlike this lackwit column by Mr. Cohen.

Everyone’s been talking about John Ponte’s recent essay on the global ideological battle in which we are engaged with what he calls “transnational progressivists.” It’s a very interesting thesis, and one that resonates with me, but I do have a nit to pick.

I’m not sure why he chose “trans”national as his descriptor, other than that they describe themselves that way. If so, then we shouldn’t allow them to get away with it, any more than we should have allowed people to call themselves Bolsheviks when they weren’t truly a majority, or to appropriate words like “progressive” or “liberal,” when their views were in fact often exactly the opposite, and a throwback.

The prefix “trans” means (if I recall my eleventh-grade Latin correctly) “across.” So transnational would mean across nations. But the people that he describes are, in fact, extremely antipathetic to the very concept of nation. It seems more appropriate, and accurate, to call them postnationalists (after nationalism), or praetornationalists (beyond nationalism), or even, to be most accurate, antinationalists, assuming he wants to stick to his Latin roots.

Alan Boyle has a useful set of links over at his MSNBC blog.

The Lance Bass yoyo continues. He’s back in training. The Russians have given him one more chance to come up with the money by the end of the week.