In a way, both the U.S. media and those wacky rioters in the Afghan-Pakistani hinterlands are very similar, two highly parochial and monumentally self-absorbed tribes living in isolation from the rest of the world and prone to fanatical irrational indestructible beliefs — not least the notion that you can flush a 950-page book down one of Al Gore's eco-crazed federally mandated low-flush toilets, a claim no editorial bigfoot thought to test for himself in Newsweek's executive washroom.

How ridiculous! You're going to have the first black president apologize for slavery?

Question: How much do you have to invest in the future before you've spent it and no longer have one?

Hollywood gave us far more Muslim terrorists in the Eighties and Nineties than it has since 9/11.

For Al Gore and Paul Ehrlich and Co., whatever the problem, the solution is always the same. Whether it's global cooling, global warming, or overpopulation, we need bigger government, more regulation, higher taxes, and a massive transfer of power from the citizens to some unelected self-perpetuating crisis lobby.

To expect the government to save you is to be a bystander in your own fate.

Once you accept you're a child in the government nursery, why shouldn't Nanny tell you what to do?