Western civilisation part 3? Definitely not redux, certainly a lot of reflux ...

Usually the pond would spend Friday with the Speccie mob, but alas and alack, the crusade for Western Civilisation continues apace, sundry snowflakes are out and about, deeply hurt, and the pond must pay continued attention.

First up is the valiant Henry "hole in the bucket" Ergas, though everything he says has to be discounted because the reptiles didn't see fit to honour him with a Lobbecke illustration …and because the pond is keen on graphics, that means we must bring our own …

Phew, that's better, that's indicated the strength of our Henry's arguments and lightened the mood for the arduous duty ahead ...

Oh steady on JR, talk of useless liberal arts degrees was yesterday's routine at the lizard Oz. Today there's a new day dawning, and our Henry is there to greet the rising sun …

By golly, Henry is on rhetorical fire, but soon enough he's going to get on to more interesting ground ...

Now some might ask how Stalin gets dragged into a conversation about the ANU.

Pedants might also wonder how Henry managed to drag in Göring, when Greg Hunters have already raced off here to read ...

Hanns Johst (8 July 1890 – 23 November 1978) was a German poet and playwright, directly aligned with Nazi philosophy, as a member of the officially approved writers’ organisations in the Third Reich. The statement “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun”, variously misattributed to Himmler, Goebbels and Göring, was in fact a corrupted version of a line in his play Schlageter.

Hmmm, is it time for our Henry to do a refresher course in the glories of Western Civilisation, including Adolf and the Nazi party …

But the pond hasn't got time to argue with Henry, because as anyone with half a clue about Godwin's Law will know that a sub-section notes that a mention of Stalin loses the argument, while resorting to Göring involved the pond ordering a larger swear jar …

And so to the next bit, and here the pond must admire the way that the reptiles selected a very flattering photo of that VC with a funny sounding name …

The reptiles loved the snap so much that as well as tweeting it, they put it at the top of Sam the man's short piece …

Poor old Schmidty was forced into strategic retreat of the "we luvs ya, Western Civilisation" kind, "we luvs ya to death" … though in reality it was just another thinly veiled excuse for Sam the man to run through the litany of outraged reptile complaints ...

Oh fucketty fuck, they had to drag Craig "climate science is a fraud" Kelly into the discussion, as if he had the first clue about science or Western Civilisation, being something of a foaming knuckle-dragger always willing to explain how academically trained scientists were a waste of time…

Oops, perhaps that's going a bit too far, comparing Kelly to knuckle-draggers. Come on pond, leave decent law-abiding knuckle draggers alone …

Meanwhile, the snowflakes were also out and about, shrieking with pain.

Come on down bromancer, get outraged ...

The bromaner was up in arms about the Norwegian Breivik being dragged into the conversation.

Yes, you can cite your Stalins or your Görings, but that's just going too far …

That's alright dearie, you're excused.

You see, the Anders Breivik comparison is totally wrong.

Sheridan should be compared to the classic war-mongering mass murderers - or at least the forelock-tugging, lick-spittle pandering war mongers who urged them on to their mass murder ...

"The Iraq war was the right war against the right enemy at the right time, and waged for broadly the right reasons. There is no need to apologise about it. Notwithstanding many mistakes in execution in the peace-keeping phase, provided the coalition of the willing retains its nerve there is every chance of achieving a reasonable outcome still ... the decision to go to war was the right one. George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard deserve praise for their courage." – Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor, The Australian, March 22, 2006. (quoted here at Fairfax, but fortuitously preserved at length here).

Thousands dead, millions displaced, Iraq still a mess, and the rest of the region plunged into chaos? Yep, Breivik entirely misses the point …

The news from Iraq? Apart from the manual recount of all the votes to try to "fix" things? How about Iraq arms cache explosions destroy Baghdad mosque …

That's the mosque being used by supporters of Sadr.

Way back when he was justifying the Iraq mess, the bromancer even managed to sound like an acolyte of Adolf …

Success is not guaranteed. Nothing is guaranteed except blood and toil and trouble. Aspects of the operation after the conventional fighting have been spectacularly incompetent. But the decision to go to war was the right one. George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard deserve praise for their courage. The coalition soldiers, overall, have performed magnificently.

Blood and toil and trouble from the comfort of a chair in the reptile club of loungers?

We're not dealing with Winston Churchill here.

Forget your Breivik comparison, we're dealing with a latter-day Lord Haw-Haw … and they hanged him.

Oh gosh darn it, just as well the pond ordered a new swear jar … and so to the rest of the snowflake's precioussss ...

Sadly, whatever the good prof has or hasn't read, over the years,  the pond has uploaded a gutful of Catholic fundamentalism, monarchist worship, climate science denialism, Bill Leak worship, Anglo-celtic worship, a yearning for the old days of the British empire, sundry bouts of sexism, racism, anti-SSM-isms, and all the rest of the crap for which the lizard Oz is famous, and which incidentally, might well have been adopted as worthy clippings for Breivik to include in his folder collection of war criminal ideological and theological rantings and ravings …

With the pond's mind utterly ruined by this barrage of nonsense, is there a single sane person left in the house?

How wise to ask that question, because the immortal Pope delivered a ripper today, with more ripper papal follies here ...