We tend to assign labels to the flotsam the tide of our time deposits at our feet. Often these tags help us to put up with a stinking reality under a PC wrapper. Alternatively, they serve as an “only add water” condemnation or excuse of whatever might be distorted to fit the term. “Racism” and “Fascism,” also “solidarity” are some of the many magical words that supposedly classify marked items. In truth, these terms warp reality. This does not intend to insinuate that racism, xenophobia and destructive egoism do not exist. However, such terms should not be allowed to function as verbal clubs. Assuredly, labels should not override the facts. Therefore, they must not justify whatever is intolerable. Example: the fear of being branded a “racist” should not keep the cop from apprehending a lawbreaker because the impostor claims membership in a group that enjoys (protected) victim status.

It is proper for writers to put on the table their subject-related prejudices. Reacting to the Economist’s (November 22) piece “The Trouble With Migrants – Europe is fretting about too much immigration when it needs even more” raises issues that require personal revelations.

A quote from Scotland on Sunday, 30 December 2007
 
Sex education lessons should be given to schoolchildren as young as five as part of a bid to combat soaring levels of teenage pregnancy and sexual disease, Scotland’s most senior public health doctor said last night. Dr Charles Saunders, chairman of the British Medical Association’s Scottish consultants’ committee, warned that schools were leaving the safe-sex message so late that many teenagers were already exposing themselves to avoidable risk. […]

Relatively speaking, the 2005 referenda ‘No’ votes of France and The Netherlands on the EU Constitution have proved to be as mosquito bites to a dinosaur. As the Treaty of Lisbon, which legally replicates the Constitutional Treaty, is railroaded through, it is clear the insects have been swatted away.
 
Just as some of the European politicians are incautious when bruiting the greatness and cleverness of their achievement in reviving the corpse of the Constitution, so others amongst them from time to time reveal their utter terror of the people of Europe and the remote possibility that any one of the member nations of the EU might suddenly turn around and actually consult their voters about the Treaty.

A quote from John O’Sullivan in The Daily Telegraph, 29 December 2007

[James C.] Bennett calls the English-speaking network civilisation "the Anglosphere". […] Its academic foundations are rooted in work demonstrating that England always had a more individualist culture than continental Europe, that the "civil society" tools of this culture were transmitted to the colonies settled from England, and that those countries have since not only prospered unusually, but also established a world civilisation rooted in liberalism. Bennett in The Anglosphere Challenge makes unmistakably clear that it is English cultural traits – individualism, rule of law, honouring contracts, and the elevation of freedom – rather than English genes that explain this success. […]

A quote from Sky News, 29 December 2007

The French president [Nicolas Sarkozy] has been enjoying a holiday [in Egypt] with Italian-born [Carla] Bruni ahead of an official visit which starts this weekend. But his romantic break – which has been followed by the world's media – has come in for criticism in the Islamic country. [...]

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A quote from The Sun, 28 December 2007

Spain has been one of the great democratic and economic success stories of the last three decades. But there is now some reason to fear for its future. Here is why:

Spain was one of the first nation-states, having completed the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Islamic Moors in 1492 (the same year as the first Columbus voyage). Imperial Spain was Europe's leading power during the 16th and much of the 17th century. The Spanish empire included all of central America, most of South America, the Philippines, and parts of modern Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and elsewhere.

The news that Denmark is to hold a second referendum on whether or not to adopt the euro confirms the truth of what Nicolas Sarkozy said about the way things work in the EU: “Nous n’avons pas le droit de dire non.” If Denmark votes Yes in the forthcoming referendum, there will be no future vote reviewing the decision: it will be irrevocable. Second referendums are held only when the “right” answer is not given the first time around.

A quote from John Zmirak at Takimag.com, 23 December 2007

[T]he pansexual hedonists of the Netherlands are now in a panic over their nation’s Islamic future. Even the blasé Parisians have begun to wonder whether their nation’s bureaucratically atheist state is acid enough to dissolve the faith of burgeoning immigrants – before the Arabs outbreed, outvote, and expel the residual Frenchmen. The Germans who a generation ago worshiped their race as a pagan god now look on lackadaisically, and welcome the Turk into Europe. To read their children’s future, they may look to the fate of the Christians in Lebanon, or Kosovo – two other lands where the cradle has had its revenge.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the 52-year old President of France, has a new girlfriend – Carla Bruni, a 39-year old Italian-born model turned singer. Having been linked romantically with his minister of justice Rachida Dati (through hints – it was never openly stated), with journalist Laurence Ferrari, and with a blond Bosnian bombshell named Tinka Milinovic, it looks like this is the real thing for the Prez.