Mexican Standoff
I hate to say it, but how typical of a leftist party: Uno. Mexico is supposed to be a state governed by the rule of law. According to Mexico's laws, the same laws that Mr. Lopez Obrador would have been obligated to uphold had he been elected presient of the United Mexican States and the same laws under which Mr. Lopez Obrador ran for the presidency, President-elect Calderon won July's election. Mexico's electoral laws may not be perfect, but that is a mater to be settled by the drafting of new laws in the congress, not by disrupting the traditional celebrations of the nation's independence day. By Lucifer's beard, the President of Mexico couldn't even mark his country's valiant struggle for freedom in the national capital. Imagine if President Bush was run out of Washington, D.C., on the Fourth of July. If there is one day that should bring all Mexicans together, it is September 16. Yet at precisely that moment the leftists declared their own will more important the then rule of law. Bog knows the law is an oft-flawed instrument of justice and good governance, but in the final analysis the law is all we have. Any system of raises one man's judgments and whims above the law, no matter how well-intentioned, leads inevitably to tyranny.

Example: the Union during the Civil War. President Lincoln is our national martyr and rightly honored as the greatest of all Americans, but his administration was also our most tyrannical. The military occupation of Maryland and the restrictions placed on free speech throughout the North would have been intolerable had we not been facing the gravest crisis in the Republic's history. Fortunately, when the crisis was past and the Union was secure again, the veil of righteous tyranny lifted and the rule of law reigned supreme again. (Though it must be said that the military occupation of the South, a.k.a. Reconstruction, should have continued for many decades, probably into the early twentieth century. The sufferance of Jim Crow was a complete betrayal of both our national ideal and the sacrifices made during the Civil War.)

It does not matter how good the Mexican left's intentions may be. Mr. Calderon was elected by a majority of the electorate, a razor-thin majority but a majority nonetheless. Mr. Calderon was elected in accordance with the law. The law must reign supreme if the future of the Mexican people is to be as bright as they deserve. I do not know how to resolve this crisis, how to make Mr. Lopez Obrador and his followers recongnize the necessity of the rule of law; so, to our friends south of the border I say "Bueno suerte" and "Vaya con Dios."

Deutschland Uber Alles
I fully support cracking down on far-right neo-Nazis. Lord knows the German people have proven themselves easily seduced by evil; so, the world cannot afford to allow them the same freedom of speech, no matter how ignorant and vile, we enjoy here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Zwei und Drei. But why is it that while Berlin is warily eyeing neo-Nazis and skinheads, German Muslims are allowed to openly call for the annihilation of Israel and violence against Jews all around the world and no one bats an eye? It is the worst kind of "soft" racism to hold white, native-born Europeans to one standard of behavior and immigrant and/or minority populations to another, lower standard. The essense of democracy is that all men are equal before the law. Radical anti-Semitism from a neo-Nazi white lunatic is just as monstrous as radical anti-Semitism from a Hezbollah-adoring Arab lunatic. The Federal Republic of Germany should not crack down on only the former, it must crack down on both.