Dennis Prager
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
If one had to read one columnist to appreciate the state of contemporary left-wing commentary, my nomination would be Frank Rich of the Sunday New York Times.
No well-known leftist columnist better exemplifies the worst aspects of today's left. Virtually every piece is filled with anger, filled with ad hominem responses to arguments, filled with insults of opponents and at the same time devoid of intellectual arguments. A Frank Rich column is essentially a weekly tantrum meant to make his readers nod in agreement and reinforce their contempt for those who differ with them.
I offer this past Sunday's column as an example.
The subject was the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding gays in the military.
Not a single serious argument of proponents of DADT was cited, nor did Rich did offer a single argument on behalf of repealing it. Instead, the article was a smear of all supporters of that policy or of retaining the male-female definition of marriage. The article contains 71 sentences. Twelve sentences contained an insult. I suspect that Times readers who love his columns -- this was listed as the second most e-mailed piece in the New York Times -- are generally people who read Frank Rich so as to have their hatreds reinforced, not for cogent arguments.
The article's title is, appropriately, an insult: "Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet."
It is commonplace for liberals and leftists to avoid refuting conservative arguments and just dismiss the conservative with one of seven epithets: "Racist," "Bigoted," "Sexist," "Intolerant," and the three phobias: "Homophobic," Xenophobic," "Islamaphobic."
Such ad hominem dismissals of conservatives and their arguments testify to the shallowness of those using these terms, meaning, unfortunately, most mainstream commentators and spokesmen on the left. The fact is that epithets substitute for thought -- and at the same time render it easy to write a left-wing column. It is the Frank Rich Formula: make believe the other side has no thoughtful argument, offer no argument of your own and debase your opponents.
Some examples from just this one column:
RICH: "... there is now little political advantage to spewing homophobia."
RICH: (CNN allowed conservative spokesmen to express) "old homophobic cliches."
RICH: "Such arguments ... are mere fig leaves to disguise the phobia that can no longer dare speak its name. ... (T)he flimsy rhetorical camouflage must be stripped away to expose the prejudice that lies beneath."
RICH: "Those opposing same-sex marriage are just as eager to mask their bigotry."
RICH: "The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see ..."
RICH: "... the deep prejudice at the root of their (Republicans') arguments."
Here are the usual charges of "homophobia," "prejudice," and "bigotry."
But also note "spewing" because Rich almost never describes conservatives as speaking normally: In this column alone, they "spew," Sen. Orrin Hatch "vamped" and John McCain "huffed," "fulminated" and was "yapping." No conservative "says," or "claims" or "argues." Conservatives spew, vamp, huff, fulminate and yap. Do Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Thomas Sowell or any other conservative commentators meant to be taken as seriously as the left takes Rich use such verbs to describe the speech of prominent liberals? I doubt it. The gulf in depth of thought and sophistication of expression between Frank Rich and virtually every mainstream conservative columnist is enormous.
(I did a 30-day search of the words "spew" and "spewed" on the Washington Post and New York Times websites, and every single time they were used, it was by a liberal writer talking about conservatives.)
RICH: (Conservatives who oppose repeal of DADT are) "attack dogs."
RICH: (McCain is) "the crazy man in Washington's attic."
Rich also called McCain "unpatriotic" in his previous column -- a particularly ugly charge given McCain's heroic sacrifices for America.
RICH: "Karl Rove and George W. Bush ran a national campaign (in 2004) exploiting fear of gay people ..."
Rich provided no example. For good reason. Bush did not run "a national campaign exploiting fear of gay people" in 2004 (or any other year). What Bush called for in 2004 was a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. In fact, Bush took his own party to task for not supporting civil unions for same-sex couples. It is mendacity -- indeed it is a smear -- to label what Bush advocated "a national campaign exploiting fear of gay people." But to Rich and his supporters anyone -- anyone -- who thinks marriage should be defined as the union of a man and a woman is a fear-mongering bigot.
RICH: "Now that explicit anti-gay animus is an albatross, those who oppose gay civil rights are driven to invent ever loopier rationales for denying those rights, whether in the military or in marriage."
RICH: "The arguments for preserving 'don't ask' have long been blatantly groundless."
Where is this mainstream conservative "explicit anti-gay animus?" And why are the arguments that gays in a military unit may fall in love with one another (or with a straight person) or that for the same reason -- sexual tension -- that we do not have men and women in the same units, showering and sleeping together, we might not deem it a good idea to have sexual tension in an all-men's unit -- why are these arguments "loopy" and "groundless"? This conservative columnist and talk show host does not find liberal arguments for admitting open gays into the military either loopy or groundless. But contrary to the left's self-image, conservatives are far more likely to acknowledge two sides to this and so many other issues.
The truth is that it is Frank Rich who spews, fulminates, yaps and huffs. Every Sunday in the New York Times. His column is idea-free, but his readers want catharsis, not ideas.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Lashing Out Beats Accountability
David Limbaugh
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Conservatives understand that liberals often demonize their opponents rather than debate the merits of the issues because the tactic works. But you have to wonder whether another reason they lash out is that they are angry that reality doesn't cooperate with their ideologically driven solutions and it's easier to blame others than to face up to the unpleasant truth of their failed ideas.
It's not just the tirades of liberal talk show host Ed Schultz, who said he would cheat to keep Scott Brown from winning his Senate election, or Chris Matthews, who said Republicans indoctrinate their members in the same way Cambodian communists re-educated their subjects, or the nasty outbursts of presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel.
I was also reminded of this, on a subtler level, when reading a Washington Post piece on David Plouffe, Barack Obama's presidential campaign manager, who recently returned to the Obama camp to quarterback the Democrats' election efforts in 2010 and beyond.
Plouffe said: "Politics is a comparative exercise. This isn't just a referendum on Democrats. ... It's a choice. ... Republicans right now are just sitting back and slinging arrows. We need to ... shine some light over their side of the fence."
Plouffe said he would remind voters that Democrats have spent two years trying to fix problems, whereas Republicans want to wheel a "Trojan horse" into Washington and spill out bankers and health insurance executives. Sure, why not vilify bankers and insurers when it helps your guy avoid accountability for his policies?
It's shamelessly Machiavellian of Democrats to accuse the GOP of going negative, when Democrats use Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" (e.g., "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it") as an instruction manual. But hey, they're out of fresh ideas, so what other choice do they have?
Notice how liberal Democrats frame almost any issue: stressing their supposedly good intentions and the Republicans' alleged lack of compassion to avoid a genuine debate and scrutiny of their policies. Consider:
On welfare, Democrats insist on ever-greater redistributionist programs with the ostensible goal of "ending" poverty. Nearly a half-century and $5 trillion since the war on poverty was initiated, we've barely made a dent in poverty. In fact, prior to the Republicans' Contract with America in 1994, we were losing ground in all relevant categories -- with black families, particularly black children, being the hardest hit.
Despite the evidence, Bill Clinton had to be dragged kicking and screaming into signing the welfare reform bill, for which, of course, he claimed full credit. But sadly, the manifest successes of the reforms -- which saw significant improvements in poverty and the rate of illegitimacy, especially among blacks -- didn't keep uber-liberal Barack Obama from rolling them back with a vengeance, something the public has barely noticed. These liberals cannot afford to allow success to stand, lest they be with fewer victims to exploit and conservatives to demonize.
On tax policy, the overwhelming successes of supply-side economics at improving the lots of all income groups without a loss in tax revenues didn't prevent liberals from falsely depicting the policies as sops for the rich and blaming them for the spending-induced deficits. More revealing was Obama's damning revelation that he favors capital gains tax increases as "a matter of fairness" despite admitting they result in decreases in revenue. Here he can't even credibly claim noble intentions. Instead of helping the poor, he's willing to hurt them, as long as everyone else is hurt, too. Class envy trumps results, which is really twisted when you think about it.
On education, liberals refuse to support school vouchers, the result being that many poor people, especially minorities, remain locked in inner-city schools without a key. Otherwise, liberals wouldn't be able to demand endless tax dollars for public education, which only they can "deliver."
On homosexual "marriage" and "don't ask, don't tell" policies for the military, liberals absurdly impugn conservatives as "homophobes" instead of addressing their valid interest in protecting traditional marriage as one of society's pillars and preserving the cohesiveness of the military unit, respectively.
On abortion, liberals refuse to consider mounting scientific evidence that the unborn are live human beings (as if further evidence were needed to confirm what we already know), because it forces them into moral accountability. Instead, they falsely declare the matter unknowable and, worse, try to co-opt the moral high ground as champions of women's rights while condemning their life-advocating opponents as bigots.
On man-made global warming, they cling to their flat-earth alarmism while refusing to discuss the evidence and accusing their opponents of willful blindness. Surreal on stilts!
On health care, they demand socialist solutions to achieve "universal coverage," when such solutions have failed everywhere they've been tried and will, studies show, leave millions uninsured.
But they're still superior because they care. Or do they?
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Conservatives understand that liberals often demonize their opponents rather than debate the merits of the issues because the tactic works. But you have to wonder whether another reason they lash out is that they are angry that reality doesn't cooperate with their ideologically driven solutions and it's easier to blame others than to face up to the unpleasant truth of their failed ideas.
It's not just the tirades of liberal talk show host Ed Schultz, who said he would cheat to keep Scott Brown from winning his Senate election, or Chris Matthews, who said Republicans indoctrinate their members in the same way Cambodian communists re-educated their subjects, or the nasty outbursts of presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel.
I was also reminded of this, on a subtler level, when reading a Washington Post piece on David Plouffe, Barack Obama's presidential campaign manager, who recently returned to the Obama camp to quarterback the Democrats' election efforts in 2010 and beyond.
Plouffe said: "Politics is a comparative exercise. This isn't just a referendum on Democrats. ... It's a choice. ... Republicans right now are just sitting back and slinging arrows. We need to ... shine some light over their side of the fence."
Plouffe said he would remind voters that Democrats have spent two years trying to fix problems, whereas Republicans want to wheel a "Trojan horse" into Washington and spill out bankers and health insurance executives. Sure, why not vilify bankers and insurers when it helps your guy avoid accountability for his policies?
It's shamelessly Machiavellian of Democrats to accuse the GOP of going negative, when Democrats use Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" (e.g., "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it") as an instruction manual. But hey, they're out of fresh ideas, so what other choice do they have?
Notice how liberal Democrats frame almost any issue: stressing their supposedly good intentions and the Republicans' alleged lack of compassion to avoid a genuine debate and scrutiny of their policies. Consider:
On welfare, Democrats insist on ever-greater redistributionist programs with the ostensible goal of "ending" poverty. Nearly a half-century and $5 trillion since the war on poverty was initiated, we've barely made a dent in poverty. In fact, prior to the Republicans' Contract with America in 1994, we were losing ground in all relevant categories -- with black families, particularly black children, being the hardest hit.
Despite the evidence, Bill Clinton had to be dragged kicking and screaming into signing the welfare reform bill, for which, of course, he claimed full credit. But sadly, the manifest successes of the reforms -- which saw significant improvements in poverty and the rate of illegitimacy, especially among blacks -- didn't keep uber-liberal Barack Obama from rolling them back with a vengeance, something the public has barely noticed. These liberals cannot afford to allow success to stand, lest they be with fewer victims to exploit and conservatives to demonize.
On tax policy, the overwhelming successes of supply-side economics at improving the lots of all income groups without a loss in tax revenues didn't prevent liberals from falsely depicting the policies as sops for the rich and blaming them for the spending-induced deficits. More revealing was Obama's damning revelation that he favors capital gains tax increases as "a matter of fairness" despite admitting they result in decreases in revenue. Here he can't even credibly claim noble intentions. Instead of helping the poor, he's willing to hurt them, as long as everyone else is hurt, too. Class envy trumps results, which is really twisted when you think about it.
On education, liberals refuse to support school vouchers, the result being that many poor people, especially minorities, remain locked in inner-city schools without a key. Otherwise, liberals wouldn't be able to demand endless tax dollars for public education, which only they can "deliver."
On homosexual "marriage" and "don't ask, don't tell" policies for the military, liberals absurdly impugn conservatives as "homophobes" instead of addressing their valid interest in protecting traditional marriage as one of society's pillars and preserving the cohesiveness of the military unit, respectively.
On abortion, liberals refuse to consider mounting scientific evidence that the unborn are live human beings (as if further evidence were needed to confirm what we already know), because it forces them into moral accountability. Instead, they falsely declare the matter unknowable and, worse, try to co-opt the moral high ground as champions of women's rights while condemning their life-advocating opponents as bigots.
On man-made global warming, they cling to their flat-earth alarmism while refusing to discuss the evidence and accusing their opponents of willful blindness. Surreal on stilts!
On health care, they demand socialist solutions to achieve "universal coverage," when such solutions have failed everywhere they've been tried and will, studies show, leave millions uninsured.
But they're still superior because they care. Or do they?
Why the Media Ignored a Scandal
Byron York
Monday, February 08, 2010
Two weeks before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, the National Enquirer published a detailed story reporting that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had had an affair, and that the woman involved -- campaign videographer Rielle Hunter -- was pregnant, and that Edwards had arranged for an aide to falsely claim to be the father, and that Hunter and the aide and the aide's family were being taken care of financially by a wealthy Edwards supporter.
It was, to say the least, explosive.
At the time, Edwards was a serious contender in the Democratic presidential race, so when the story was published, his aides prepared for what some believed would be an onslaught of media scrutiny.
But it didn't happen. Although Edwards could not have known it at the time, it turned out that many journalists just didn't want to report the news and didn't try very hard to uncover the facts.
The tale is told in the new book "The Politician" by former Edwards aide and confidant Andrew Young, the man who, at Edwards' insistence, claimed that he, and not the candidate, was the father of Hunter's child.
By mid-December 2007, Edwards knew the Enquirer story was coming. With Iowa fast approaching, he came up with an I'm-not-the-father cover-up scheme, believing that having Young claim paternity would deflect blame away from the candidate himself. "It's going to be a one-day story, Andrew," Edwards told Young, according to Young's account. "No offense, but the press doesn't give a s--t about you."
So the statement was drafted. In addition to claiming paternity, Young wrote that Edwards "knew nothing" about the relationship.
It was a preposterous lie, but Edwards went ahead, offering the one-paragraph explanation to any reporters who asked. The candidate and his top advisers, Young wrote, "expected the (media) onslaught" to begin as soon as the Enquirer posted its story online. Young sent his family out of town to spare them the firestorm.
But then ... nothing. "To our relief, no serious newspaper or TV network picked up the story because they couldn't find a source to confirm it," Young wrote. The damage was confined to a few Web sites. "We began to think that perhaps our strategy had worked," Young said.
What followed was a bizarre series of events in which Fred Baron, the wealthy Edwards supporter, paid enormous sums of money to fly Hunter and the Youngs around the country to keep them out of sight until after the Iowa caucuses, and then the New Hampshire primary, and then, when the campaign fizzled but Edwards still had hopes of making it onto the Democratic presidential ticket, until after Hunter had the baby.
Still no word of it in the press. But the Enquirer was not finished. In July 2008, the tabloid published a detailed account of Edwards' visit with Hunter and the baby at a Los Angeles hotel.
"Andrew, they caught me," a tearful Edwards is quoted as telling Young in a phone conversation. "It's all over."
Surely now, Young thought, the media would jump on the story. But it didn't happen. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the broadcast networks and the cable-news outlets -- none reported the story. This time, though, it finally bubbled up, from the blogs to talk radio to late-night television. By the second week of August, Edwards appeared on ABC News to semi-confess.
An explosive scandal had been kept out of the press for months at a time when the man at the center was an important player in national politics. Why?
Young thought it was because the Edwards camp so tightly controlled information that journalists weren't able to find sources to corroborate the Enquirer's reporting. While that may have been part of it, the fact was, many editors and reporters just didn't want to tell the story.
Maybe they admired Edwards' cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth. Maybe they saw no good in exposing Edwards' sordid acts. Maybe they looked down on the National Enquirer. Or maybe they were just biased. "In the case of John Edwards," said Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, "even though it was clearly out there -- everybody in America knew about this well before CNN and the New York Times and the Washington Post got into this game -- there was still a great reluctance."
Of course, in the end the story came out anyway -- but only after the sheer weight of Edwards' corruption made the facts impossible to ignore, even for sympathetic journalists.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Two weeks before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, the National Enquirer published a detailed story reporting that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had had an affair, and that the woman involved -- campaign videographer Rielle Hunter -- was pregnant, and that Edwards had arranged for an aide to falsely claim to be the father, and that Hunter and the aide and the aide's family were being taken care of financially by a wealthy Edwards supporter.
It was, to say the least, explosive.
At the time, Edwards was a serious contender in the Democratic presidential race, so when the story was published, his aides prepared for what some believed would be an onslaught of media scrutiny.
But it didn't happen. Although Edwards could not have known it at the time, it turned out that many journalists just didn't want to report the news and didn't try very hard to uncover the facts.
The tale is told in the new book "The Politician" by former Edwards aide and confidant Andrew Young, the man who, at Edwards' insistence, claimed that he, and not the candidate, was the father of Hunter's child.
By mid-December 2007, Edwards knew the Enquirer story was coming. With Iowa fast approaching, he came up with an I'm-not-the-father cover-up scheme, believing that having Young claim paternity would deflect blame away from the candidate himself. "It's going to be a one-day story, Andrew," Edwards told Young, according to Young's account. "No offense, but the press doesn't give a s--t about you."
So the statement was drafted. In addition to claiming paternity, Young wrote that Edwards "knew nothing" about the relationship.
It was a preposterous lie, but Edwards went ahead, offering the one-paragraph explanation to any reporters who asked. The candidate and his top advisers, Young wrote, "expected the (media) onslaught" to begin as soon as the Enquirer posted its story online. Young sent his family out of town to spare them the firestorm.
But then ... nothing. "To our relief, no serious newspaper or TV network picked up the story because they couldn't find a source to confirm it," Young wrote. The damage was confined to a few Web sites. "We began to think that perhaps our strategy had worked," Young said.
What followed was a bizarre series of events in which Fred Baron, the wealthy Edwards supporter, paid enormous sums of money to fly Hunter and the Youngs around the country to keep them out of sight until after the Iowa caucuses, and then the New Hampshire primary, and then, when the campaign fizzled but Edwards still had hopes of making it onto the Democratic presidential ticket, until after Hunter had the baby.
Still no word of it in the press. But the Enquirer was not finished. In July 2008, the tabloid published a detailed account of Edwards' visit with Hunter and the baby at a Los Angeles hotel.
"Andrew, they caught me," a tearful Edwards is quoted as telling Young in a phone conversation. "It's all over."
Surely now, Young thought, the media would jump on the story. But it didn't happen. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the broadcast networks and the cable-news outlets -- none reported the story. This time, though, it finally bubbled up, from the blogs to talk radio to late-night television. By the second week of August, Edwards appeared on ABC News to semi-confess.
An explosive scandal had been kept out of the press for months at a time when the man at the center was an important player in national politics. Why?
Young thought it was because the Edwards camp so tightly controlled information that journalists weren't able to find sources to corroborate the Enquirer's reporting. While that may have been part of it, the fact was, many editors and reporters just didn't want to tell the story.
Maybe they admired Edwards' cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth. Maybe they saw no good in exposing Edwards' sordid acts. Maybe they looked down on the National Enquirer. Or maybe they were just biased. "In the case of John Edwards," said Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, "even though it was clearly out there -- everybody in America knew about this well before CNN and the New York Times and the Washington Post got into this game -- there was still a great reluctance."
Of course, in the end the story came out anyway -- but only after the sheer weight of Edwards' corruption made the facts impossible to ignore, even for sympathetic journalists.
Unfair and Unbalanced: The Washington Post
Harry R. Jackson, Jr.
Monday, February 08, 2010
I was not surprised that a recent Washington Post article gleefully asserted, “DC’s left leanings confirmed in poll.” I was surprised at the seeming air of objectivity that the writers attempted to project. I was skeptical of the article and its conclusions for several reasons. First, it was commissioned and paid for by the Post (not to impugn the work of SRBI, Inc of New York). Second, a poll could yield very skewed results by focusing on selected wards. Third, private polling obtained by Stand For Marriage DC shows very different results.
The writers asserted that their telephone survey of just over 1,135 participants showed that the majority of the city’s citizens were pro same-sex marriage, for the legalization of medical marijuana, and desired the creation of an elected attorney general’s post. Surprisingly, in order to lend credence to their poll, Post writers acknowledged that 60 percent of DC residents would like to vote on the issue of same-sex marriage.
Before I take a moment to explain my skepticism about the Washington Post’s poll, I would like to make a brief statement about other marriage battles. In California, Florida, and Maine opponents of traditional marriage boasted that they would achieve their first wins. Ironically, support for traditional marriage is historically under polled as the vote against same-sex marriage in these states has shown.
I wish the Post would stop writing sophisticated trash talk and encourage the DC City Council, the US Congress, and the Courts to let the people vote. Since their own polls suggest that most Washingtonians would like to vote on this issue, we should let the people vote.
Let’s return for a moment to the incredibly slanted article. The writers boast that the average voter is in synch with the city’s “progressive, activist social agenda.” Although it is no secret that the Post has generally supported this liberal political direction, I would at least like to see a semblance of objectivity. Objectivity simply means that news is reported without bias. Further, objectivity would call opinion or advocacy pieces exactly what they are.
Yes, the paper is considered one of the most liberal or “Left leaning” papers in the nation. Nonetheless, that’s no excuse for yellow journalism. Many of the residents of the District, like myself, would like to see the Post report the news instead of creating the news. This article, which appeared in the “style section” of the paper, seems to be much more editorial than objectively news-based on a reportedly impartial poll. The article was a “tissue paper thin’’ attempt to defend the city council’s actions on a number of issues and to promote its own “Left-leaning” worldview.
From every conceivable vantage point, the Post seems to be committed to spending barrels of ink attempting to sell the citizens that a host of other issues are “their” ideas. The newspaper has been especially biased with regard to same-sex marriage. I could point to any number of instances in which this pro same-sex marriage bias has reared its manipulative head. Let me cite just one example.
DC metro residents noted the vitriol exchanged in the last Virginia election. Most of us will not fail to remember an unsigned editorial that called Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli a “bigot” because of his traditional views on marriage. The editorial, which appeared just days before last November’s election, was a clear “swift boating” attempt by the paper.
Why did the Post commission the poll and place the article in one of the most prominent locations in the paper? First, these and other Washington Post writers want to sell the average citizen of the District on the liberal agenda of the city council and other power brokers in the region. Despite the council and Eleanor Holmes Norton’s wheeling and dealing behind the scenes, the cry, “Let the People Vote!” has reached the ears of many on the Hill.
The second reason for the article seems to be the Post’s need to announce to representatives on the Hill (both the Congress and the Senate) that they should not exercise their oversight responsibility concerning DC laws. As much as most DC residents want home rule, Congress still has say in the city’s affairs until statehood or another governing arrangement is reached.
Every DC resident should be outraged by the paternalistic attitude of the Washington Post. They act like they know us better than we know ourselves. Their writers repeatedly allude to the race and wealth divides in the city without building racial bridges. For the Post, it would be more prudent if they would follow President Obama’s recent example of reaching across the aisle. Instead the writers make this revealing statement, “When the GOP was in control, Congress prevented the District from setting drug laws, blocked taxpayer-financed abortions for low income women, and would not allow the city’s needle exchange program to proceed...the Democratic-controlled Congress lifted those restrictions.”
Articles like these attempt to pit the people of the District against the GOP and encourage them to align with the Left. The result is unfair and unbalanced articles and reporting. Instead ideological battles, all citizens should be actively involved in creative problem solving.
All over the nation there is a growing sentiment that people want to be given proper attention by lawmakers. Whether in Massachusetts or with the Tea Party Movement in Nashville this past weekend, citizens are demanding their voices be heard. Washington, DC is no different than any other region. Last Tuesday Senator Robert Bennett took a bold step towards Senatorial intervention on the matter of same-sex marriage. He and eight co-sponsors introduced a bill that would stop same-sex marriages from becoming legal in the city unless approved by a referendum or vote by citizens of the District. Bennett’s stand for marriage mirrors the work of GOP Congressmen Jason Chaffetz of Utah, and Jim Jordan of Ohio. These congressmen are boldly declaring the same message as their counterparts in the Senate…Let the people vote!
No matter where you live in America, you can ensure the right of District citizens to voice their opinions through the vote. Contact your Senator and say, “I am with Senator Bennett! Let the people of DC vote on marriage.”
Also, let biased media sources know that they are not representing the issues fairly. Letters to the Editor, blogs, and opinion postings are all easy ways to promote democracy within the District and around the country.
Make your voice heard today!
Monday, February 08, 2010
I was not surprised that a recent Washington Post article gleefully asserted, “DC’s left leanings confirmed in poll.” I was surprised at the seeming air of objectivity that the writers attempted to project. I was skeptical of the article and its conclusions for several reasons. First, it was commissioned and paid for by the Post (not to impugn the work of SRBI, Inc of New York). Second, a poll could yield very skewed results by focusing on selected wards. Third, private polling obtained by Stand For Marriage DC shows very different results.
The writers asserted that their telephone survey of just over 1,135 participants showed that the majority of the city’s citizens were pro same-sex marriage, for the legalization of medical marijuana, and desired the creation of an elected attorney general’s post. Surprisingly, in order to lend credence to their poll, Post writers acknowledged that 60 percent of DC residents would like to vote on the issue of same-sex marriage.
Before I take a moment to explain my skepticism about the Washington Post’s poll, I would like to make a brief statement about other marriage battles. In California, Florida, and Maine opponents of traditional marriage boasted that they would achieve their first wins. Ironically, support for traditional marriage is historically under polled as the vote against same-sex marriage in these states has shown.
I wish the Post would stop writing sophisticated trash talk and encourage the DC City Council, the US Congress, and the Courts to let the people vote. Since their own polls suggest that most Washingtonians would like to vote on this issue, we should let the people vote.
Let’s return for a moment to the incredibly slanted article. The writers boast that the average voter is in synch with the city’s “progressive, activist social agenda.” Although it is no secret that the Post has generally supported this liberal political direction, I would at least like to see a semblance of objectivity. Objectivity simply means that news is reported without bias. Further, objectivity would call opinion or advocacy pieces exactly what they are.
Yes, the paper is considered one of the most liberal or “Left leaning” papers in the nation. Nonetheless, that’s no excuse for yellow journalism. Many of the residents of the District, like myself, would like to see the Post report the news instead of creating the news. This article, which appeared in the “style section” of the paper, seems to be much more editorial than objectively news-based on a reportedly impartial poll. The article was a “tissue paper thin’’ attempt to defend the city council’s actions on a number of issues and to promote its own “Left-leaning” worldview.
From every conceivable vantage point, the Post seems to be committed to spending barrels of ink attempting to sell the citizens that a host of other issues are “their” ideas. The newspaper has been especially biased with regard to same-sex marriage. I could point to any number of instances in which this pro same-sex marriage bias has reared its manipulative head. Let me cite just one example.
DC metro residents noted the vitriol exchanged in the last Virginia election. Most of us will not fail to remember an unsigned editorial that called Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli a “bigot” because of his traditional views on marriage. The editorial, which appeared just days before last November’s election, was a clear “swift boating” attempt by the paper.
Why did the Post commission the poll and place the article in one of the most prominent locations in the paper? First, these and other Washington Post writers want to sell the average citizen of the District on the liberal agenda of the city council and other power brokers in the region. Despite the council and Eleanor Holmes Norton’s wheeling and dealing behind the scenes, the cry, “Let the People Vote!” has reached the ears of many on the Hill.
The second reason for the article seems to be the Post’s need to announce to representatives on the Hill (both the Congress and the Senate) that they should not exercise their oversight responsibility concerning DC laws. As much as most DC residents want home rule, Congress still has say in the city’s affairs until statehood or another governing arrangement is reached.
Every DC resident should be outraged by the paternalistic attitude of the Washington Post. They act like they know us better than we know ourselves. Their writers repeatedly allude to the race and wealth divides in the city without building racial bridges. For the Post, it would be more prudent if they would follow President Obama’s recent example of reaching across the aisle. Instead the writers make this revealing statement, “When the GOP was in control, Congress prevented the District from setting drug laws, blocked taxpayer-financed abortions for low income women, and would not allow the city’s needle exchange program to proceed...the Democratic-controlled Congress lifted those restrictions.”
Articles like these attempt to pit the people of the District against the GOP and encourage them to align with the Left. The result is unfair and unbalanced articles and reporting. Instead ideological battles, all citizens should be actively involved in creative problem solving.
All over the nation there is a growing sentiment that people want to be given proper attention by lawmakers. Whether in Massachusetts or with the Tea Party Movement in Nashville this past weekend, citizens are demanding their voices be heard. Washington, DC is no different than any other region. Last Tuesday Senator Robert Bennett took a bold step towards Senatorial intervention on the matter of same-sex marriage. He and eight co-sponsors introduced a bill that would stop same-sex marriages from becoming legal in the city unless approved by a referendum or vote by citizens of the District. Bennett’s stand for marriage mirrors the work of GOP Congressmen Jason Chaffetz of Utah, and Jim Jordan of Ohio. These congressmen are boldly declaring the same message as their counterparts in the Senate…Let the people vote!
No matter where you live in America, you can ensure the right of District citizens to voice their opinions through the vote. Contact your Senator and say, “I am with Senator Bennett! Let the people of DC vote on marriage.”
Also, let biased media sources know that they are not representing the issues fairly. Letters to the Editor, blogs, and opinion postings are all easy ways to promote democracy within the District and around the country.
Make your voice heard today!
Monday, February 8, 2010
Stealth Stimulus
National Review Online
Monday, February 08, 2010
With the prospects for their transformative health-care bill looking dimmer by the day, Democrats have retreated to familiar ground: Stimulus! The $787 billion stimulus passed last winter is working, Democrats contend, but not fast enough. We need another $100 billion or so to spend our way out of this recession. If this is the first you’re hearing of this new stimulus bill, don’t be alarmed. The word “stimulus” has disappeared from the Democrats’ vocabulary, perhaps because a large majority of Americans correctly believe most of the money in the first stimulus bill was wasted. They’re calling the new package a “jobs bill,” as if renaming the same policies will yield different results.
Our arguments against these policies have not changed. What has changed is the amount of empirical evidence that has accumulated in favor of our position. Both this stimulus bill and the last one can be divided into roughly four parts: unemployment relief, aid to state governments, public-works projects, and tax gimmicks. None of these has contributed significantly to the recovery, and the enormous deficits required to pay for them put future growth in jeopardy.
Extending the duration of subsidies to the unemployed is sometimes justified, depending on the severity of the recession. However, all aid comes with trade-offs, and continuous extensions of unemployment aid encourage some job-seekers to hold out as long as they qualify for such relief, waiting for better jobs than the ones they’re offered. Such workers are undoubtedly contributing to the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed or quitting the job hunt altogether, and one reason the unemployment rate is dropping is that the population of active job-seekers is shrinking. The good news is that this de facto permanent unemployment entitlement is not being paid for with borrowed money; the bad news is that it’s being paid for through an increase in the unemployment-insurance payroll tax — a tax hike on hiring, in other words, one that the Obama administration’s latest budget would make permanent.
When the administration says that the previous stimulus bill “saved or created” nearly 2 million jobs, it is mostly talking about state-government employees it claims would have been laid off absent a massive transfer of federal dollars. These estimates are wildly overblown, assuming in some cases that state university systems would have laid off their entire work forces or that entire prison systems would have been shut down. The more likely scenario would have been the long-overdue right-sizing of state governments in places such as California and New York, where public-sector unions have a stranglehold on the fisc and no tolerance for budget cuts.
The public-works spending from the previous stimulus bill accounts for a much smaller share of the administration’s “jobs created or saved” tally (which, incidentally, it has abandoned in favor of “jobs funded,” in order to cut down on embarrassing headlines about stimulus recipients’ counting raises as “jobs saved”). There’s a reason for that: Public-works spending, particularly on transportation, is not a terribly efficient way to create jobs. A transportation project must clear numerous hurdles before it can proceed, and contractors must pay a “prevailing” union wage, limiting the number of workers they can hire. Unsurprisingly, the Associated Press concluded that the transportation spending from the previous stimulus “had no effect” on unemployment rates.
The tax rebates in the first stimulus bill mostly took the form of checks cut to taxpayers and at least had the effect of putting money in people’s pockets. For the new stimulus, however, the Democrats have seized upon a sillier tax gimmick: giving businesses a tax credit for every new worker they hire. Doing it that way leaves room for businesses to game the system to qualify for the credit without actually increasing their labor forces. Cutting payroll-tax rates would straightforwardly reduce the cost of each new worker, but, as we mentioned before, the administration is moving in the opposite direction on that front.
There are a few things that the administration could do right away to make the economic climate more conducive to hiring. It could drop its push for a national health-care system that would impose new taxes and higher premium costs on employers. It could announce that it will stop seeking to increase the cost of energy, either through cap-and-trade legislation or independent EPA action. And it could assuage fears of runaway deficits and price instability by announcing a serious plan to control spending. (The new stimulus bill would be exempt from the president’s vaunted “spending freeze,” which tells you all you need to know about the seriousness of that plan.)
Instead, Obama hopes the public will not notice that his new “jobs bill” is composed of the same policies that were in the old “stimulus package.” Senate Republicans should have better sense: They should unite in opposition to this folly, pointing out that it’s been tried, and that it’s time to try something else.
Monday, February 08, 2010
With the prospects for their transformative health-care bill looking dimmer by the day, Democrats have retreated to familiar ground: Stimulus! The $787 billion stimulus passed last winter is working, Democrats contend, but not fast enough. We need another $100 billion or so to spend our way out of this recession. If this is the first you’re hearing of this new stimulus bill, don’t be alarmed. The word “stimulus” has disappeared from the Democrats’ vocabulary, perhaps because a large majority of Americans correctly believe most of the money in the first stimulus bill was wasted. They’re calling the new package a “jobs bill,” as if renaming the same policies will yield different results.
Our arguments against these policies have not changed. What has changed is the amount of empirical evidence that has accumulated in favor of our position. Both this stimulus bill and the last one can be divided into roughly four parts: unemployment relief, aid to state governments, public-works projects, and tax gimmicks. None of these has contributed significantly to the recovery, and the enormous deficits required to pay for them put future growth in jeopardy.
Extending the duration of subsidies to the unemployed is sometimes justified, depending on the severity of the recession. However, all aid comes with trade-offs, and continuous extensions of unemployment aid encourage some job-seekers to hold out as long as they qualify for such relief, waiting for better jobs than the ones they’re offered. Such workers are undoubtedly contributing to the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed or quitting the job hunt altogether, and one reason the unemployment rate is dropping is that the population of active job-seekers is shrinking. The good news is that this de facto permanent unemployment entitlement is not being paid for with borrowed money; the bad news is that it’s being paid for through an increase in the unemployment-insurance payroll tax — a tax hike on hiring, in other words, one that the Obama administration’s latest budget would make permanent.
When the administration says that the previous stimulus bill “saved or created” nearly 2 million jobs, it is mostly talking about state-government employees it claims would have been laid off absent a massive transfer of federal dollars. These estimates are wildly overblown, assuming in some cases that state university systems would have laid off their entire work forces or that entire prison systems would have been shut down. The more likely scenario would have been the long-overdue right-sizing of state governments in places such as California and New York, where public-sector unions have a stranglehold on the fisc and no tolerance for budget cuts.
The public-works spending from the previous stimulus bill accounts for a much smaller share of the administration’s “jobs created or saved” tally (which, incidentally, it has abandoned in favor of “jobs funded,” in order to cut down on embarrassing headlines about stimulus recipients’ counting raises as “jobs saved”). There’s a reason for that: Public-works spending, particularly on transportation, is not a terribly efficient way to create jobs. A transportation project must clear numerous hurdles before it can proceed, and contractors must pay a “prevailing” union wage, limiting the number of workers they can hire. Unsurprisingly, the Associated Press concluded that the transportation spending from the previous stimulus “had no effect” on unemployment rates.
The tax rebates in the first stimulus bill mostly took the form of checks cut to taxpayers and at least had the effect of putting money in people’s pockets. For the new stimulus, however, the Democrats have seized upon a sillier tax gimmick: giving businesses a tax credit for every new worker they hire. Doing it that way leaves room for businesses to game the system to qualify for the credit without actually increasing their labor forces. Cutting payroll-tax rates would straightforwardly reduce the cost of each new worker, but, as we mentioned before, the administration is moving in the opposite direction on that front.
There are a few things that the administration could do right away to make the economic climate more conducive to hiring. It could drop its push for a national health-care system that would impose new taxes and higher premium costs on employers. It could announce that it will stop seeking to increase the cost of energy, either through cap-and-trade legislation or independent EPA action. And it could assuage fears of runaway deficits and price instability by announcing a serious plan to control spending. (The new stimulus bill would be exempt from the president’s vaunted “spending freeze,” which tells you all you need to know about the seriousness of that plan.)
Instead, Obama hopes the public will not notice that his new “jobs bill” is composed of the same policies that were in the old “stimulus package.” Senate Republicans should have better sense: They should unite in opposition to this folly, pointing out that it’s been tried, and that it’s time to try something else.
Western Civilization on Trial
Why we should be watching Geert Wilders.
National Review Online Symposium
Monday, February 08, 2010
As the Geert Wilders case goes into pre-trial, National Review Online asked our experts: Is there any legitimate reason he’s in court? What are the implications of such a trial being held, nevermind its outcome?
BAT YE’OR
Geert Wilders is a hero for those countless Europeans who cherish a free and democratic Europe — a Europe proud of its Judeo-Christian and humanistic values, its civilization, and its achievements in the field of human rights. But this is not today’s Europe. In today’s Europe, synagogues, Jewish schools, clubs, and cemeteries need to be guarded — as if going to a Jewish school or praying in a synagogue were a crime punishable by death as in Nazi-occupied Europe. Intellectuals, scholars, and those who protest the creeping Eurabization of culture and society are threatened, boycotted by their colleagues, thrown out of their jobs, forced to leave their families and go into hiding, or obliged to live with bodyguards. Wilders has devoted his life to freeing Europe from Eurabia’s clutches. To this titanic struggle he has sacrificed the security of his life and the joys of family. Threatened by a desert whirlwind blowing hatred upon Europe from the south, spending days and nights shielded by bodyguards, persecuted and tormented by his feckless Eurabian opponents, Geert Wilders incarnates the free soul of an unbending Europe.
— Bat Ye’or is author, most recently, of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.
PAUL MARSHALL
The American media’s silence about the Geert Wilders trial is puzzling — the trial is explosive, much more so than most of America’s perennial “trials of the century.” Wilders, leader of the Freedom party, is arguably the Netherlands’s most popular politician, but for years he has had to live in safe houses, including on military bases. He now faces the possibility of imprisonment on charges of “group insult” and “incitement to hatred,” as defined by articles 137 (c) and (d) of the Dutch penal code, for his public speeches and op-eds criticizing Islam.
Apart from its direct and immediate threat to free speech, the trial exposes the growth of political violence and repression in the Netherlands, long lauded as the most tolerant country in Europe, if not the world. Thirty years ago, I interviewed then–prime minister Dries van Agt simply by strolling into his unguarded parliamentary office and asking his secretary if he could spare me a couple of minutes. Now it is a country where politicians and artists are targeted by vigilantes and the state.
In 2002, popular Dutch politician and gay activist Pim Fortuyn was murdered by an environmentalist who took offense at Fortuyn’s criticism of Islam. In 2004, one of the country’s leading documentarians, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered, and almost beheaded, on the streets of Amsterdam in retaliation for a film he made about Islam (Submission). In 2006, a gathering of scholars and commentators critical of Islam and Islamism led the Dutch security service to invoke an alert level just short of “national emergency.” In 2008, the prospective release of Wilders’s film Fitna led to special sessions of the Dutch cabinet. The country’s best-known member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for many years had to live in hiding, and even briefly fled the country. This is the situation in the heart of liberal Europe.
The media’s silence is also disturbing since it indicates their reluctance, even fear, when it comes to grappling with the West’s increasing censorship of anything that might be deemed offensive to some Muslims. So far, the effects in the U.S. are small — such as the Yale University Press’s removing the famous Danish cartoons from a book about those same cartoons — but they betray a mindset common to much of Europe: preemptive self-censorship. Media outlets that defended and lauded Salman Rushdie two decades ago, when the Ayatollah Khomeini called for him to be killed over The Satanic Verses, now cringe and shy away from those facing similar threats.
Within much of the Muslim world, political and religious debate, especially amongst Muslims, is shut down in the name of preventing anything that could “insult Islam.” Unless we strenuously defend Wilders’s right — and our own right — to speak, especially to criticize and offend, we will stumble down the same path.
— Paul Marshall is senior fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.
CLIFFORD D. MAY
I used to think of the Netherlands as a land of tulips, windmills, Anne Frank, and a little boy with his finger in the dike. Increasingly, I think of it as the place where Theo van Gogh was murdered in broad daylight, Aayan Hirsi Ali was betrayed, and free speech is on trial.
Pretty much all you need to know about the prosecution of the controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders was summed up in a single (if run-on) sentence attributed to the “Openbaar Ministerie,” which is not, as the name might suggest, a place that serves free whiskey to pastors. It is the prosecution service of the Dutch Ministry of Justice.
In response to Wilders’s request to bring in witnesses to establish the veracity of the opinions that got him in trouble with the law, that body issued this statement on January 17: “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.”
In other words, the prosecutors believe that the truth is not a defense in the Netherlands, nor perhaps elsewhere in Europe — a continent that appears no longer to have the will to defend its values, culture, and civilization. Very sad.
— Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and militant Islamism.
DANIEL PIPES
Wilders is in court because the Netherlands has no First Amendment, and so endlessly tries to figure out what speech to permit and what to prohibit. Wilders is hardly the only victim of this predicament; the arrest and jailing in 2008 of a cartoonist who goes by “Gregorius Nekschot” notoriously symbolized the state’s incoherence.
U.S. media should cover the Wilders proceedings because Wilders’s career has implications beyond one man, one party, or one country. It potentially affects all of Europe as the continent works out its response to the Islamic challenge. The U.S. media does an adequate job of informing its audience about this topic, so the near-silence about Wilders comes as a bit of a surprise.
The Islamic challenge forces Europeans to take stock of themselves in an unprecedented way. Colorful examples include the British ICONS project, which features 120 “national treasures” that help define English culture; the Dutch government’s film for potential immigrants that features a topless woman on the beach and two men kissing; and the French prime minister’s decision to expel a man from France for compelling his wife to wear a burqa.
Europe’s future is in play. Wilders’s time in court affects the outcome.
— Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
NINA SHEA
In 1989, Iran’s supreme leader issued a blasphemy fatwa against Salman Rushdie in London. It was the opening volley in a new Muslim push — later taken up by the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference — to force the West to adopt Islamic-blasphemy strictures within its borders. Intimidated, the West has begun to comply. It does so mostly through self-censorship and by prosecuting those who do speak out under religious-hate-speech laws such as those invoked in the Netherlands against Wilders. These laws are the West’s proxy for blasphemy bans.
The danger has not been mass imprisonment — actual convictions have been few — but the creation of a general deterrent to criticism of Islam or anything Islamic. Europe’s leaders likely believe that banning religious hate speech is a small price to pay for greater security; if so, they are wrong. The premise that religion can be easily compartmentalized, relegated to an autonomous sphere separate from politics and culture, is a misconception. Europe’s present path has profound implications for scholarship, political progress, social and economic development, and national security. This chilling of speech, aggravated by Muslim violence, erodes fundamental freedoms of speech and religion and threatens the West’s very identity.
Such laws will not bring social harmony. Anti-blasphemy pushes in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan, and elsewhere are often driven by implacable ideologues and political opportunists. Muslims who protest the radicals’ agenda are the first to be silenced. As Malaysia’s former finance minister observed, religious hate-speech laws all depend on the “elastic goo” of public sentiment. A nation that entertains such cases will be forced to go from issue to issue, “hostage to the brinkmanship of sensitivities.”
— Nina Shea is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.
ROBERT SPENCER
The Geert Wilders trial ought to be an international media event; seldom has any court case anywhere had such enormous implications for the future of the free world. The case against him, which has all the legitimacy of a Stalinist-era Moscow show trial, is a manifestation of the global assault on free speech sponsored chiefly at the U.N. by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). If Wilders loses, the freedom of speech will be threatened everywhere in the West.
Even if he wins, a dangerous precedent has been set by the fact of the trial itself: It is a sad day for the freedom of speech when a man can be put on trial for causing another man offense. If offending someone were really a crime warranting prosecution by the civil authorities, the legal system would be opened up to absurdities even greater than the Wilders trial.
But of course what Dutch authorities, Muslim groups in the Netherlands, and the OIC really want to accomplish is to silence Wilders’s truth-telling about jihad and Islamic supremacism. The court’s railroading of Wilders was clear from that fact that 15 of his 18 requested witnesses were disallowed, including Mohammed Bouyeri, the Koran-inspired murderer of Theo Van Gogh who would have proven Wilders’s point immediately. As Wilders himself put it Wednesday: “This court is not interested in the truth. This court doesn’t want me to have a fair trial.” The darkness descending over Europe, as indicated by this trial, may ensure that there is no fair trial there again for a long, long time.
— Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran.
National Review Online Symposium
Monday, February 08, 2010
As the Geert Wilders case goes into pre-trial, National Review Online asked our experts: Is there any legitimate reason he’s in court? What are the implications of such a trial being held, nevermind its outcome?
BAT YE’OR
Geert Wilders is a hero for those countless Europeans who cherish a free and democratic Europe — a Europe proud of its Judeo-Christian and humanistic values, its civilization, and its achievements in the field of human rights. But this is not today’s Europe. In today’s Europe, synagogues, Jewish schools, clubs, and cemeteries need to be guarded — as if going to a Jewish school or praying in a synagogue were a crime punishable by death as in Nazi-occupied Europe. Intellectuals, scholars, and those who protest the creeping Eurabization of culture and society are threatened, boycotted by their colleagues, thrown out of their jobs, forced to leave their families and go into hiding, or obliged to live with bodyguards. Wilders has devoted his life to freeing Europe from Eurabia’s clutches. To this titanic struggle he has sacrificed the security of his life and the joys of family. Threatened by a desert whirlwind blowing hatred upon Europe from the south, spending days and nights shielded by bodyguards, persecuted and tormented by his feckless Eurabian opponents, Geert Wilders incarnates the free soul of an unbending Europe.
— Bat Ye’or is author, most recently, of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.
PAUL MARSHALL
The American media’s silence about the Geert Wilders trial is puzzling — the trial is explosive, much more so than most of America’s perennial “trials of the century.” Wilders, leader of the Freedom party, is arguably the Netherlands’s most popular politician, but for years he has had to live in safe houses, including on military bases. He now faces the possibility of imprisonment on charges of “group insult” and “incitement to hatred,” as defined by articles 137 (c) and (d) of the Dutch penal code, for his public speeches and op-eds criticizing Islam.
Apart from its direct and immediate threat to free speech, the trial exposes the growth of political violence and repression in the Netherlands, long lauded as the most tolerant country in Europe, if not the world. Thirty years ago, I interviewed then–prime minister Dries van Agt simply by strolling into his unguarded parliamentary office and asking his secretary if he could spare me a couple of minutes. Now it is a country where politicians and artists are targeted by vigilantes and the state.
In 2002, popular Dutch politician and gay activist Pim Fortuyn was murdered by an environmentalist who took offense at Fortuyn’s criticism of Islam. In 2004, one of the country’s leading documentarians, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered, and almost beheaded, on the streets of Amsterdam in retaliation for a film he made about Islam (Submission). In 2006, a gathering of scholars and commentators critical of Islam and Islamism led the Dutch security service to invoke an alert level just short of “national emergency.” In 2008, the prospective release of Wilders’s film Fitna led to special sessions of the Dutch cabinet. The country’s best-known member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for many years had to live in hiding, and even briefly fled the country. This is the situation in the heart of liberal Europe.
The media’s silence is also disturbing since it indicates their reluctance, even fear, when it comes to grappling with the West’s increasing censorship of anything that might be deemed offensive to some Muslims. So far, the effects in the U.S. are small — such as the Yale University Press’s removing the famous Danish cartoons from a book about those same cartoons — but they betray a mindset common to much of Europe: preemptive self-censorship. Media outlets that defended and lauded Salman Rushdie two decades ago, when the Ayatollah Khomeini called for him to be killed over The Satanic Verses, now cringe and shy away from those facing similar threats.
Within much of the Muslim world, political and religious debate, especially amongst Muslims, is shut down in the name of preventing anything that could “insult Islam.” Unless we strenuously defend Wilders’s right — and our own right — to speak, especially to criticize and offend, we will stumble down the same path.
— Paul Marshall is senior fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.
CLIFFORD D. MAY
I used to think of the Netherlands as a land of tulips, windmills, Anne Frank, and a little boy with his finger in the dike. Increasingly, I think of it as the place where Theo van Gogh was murdered in broad daylight, Aayan Hirsi Ali was betrayed, and free speech is on trial.
Pretty much all you need to know about the prosecution of the controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders was summed up in a single (if run-on) sentence attributed to the “Openbaar Ministerie,” which is not, as the name might suggest, a place that serves free whiskey to pastors. It is the prosecution service of the Dutch Ministry of Justice.
In response to Wilders’s request to bring in witnesses to establish the veracity of the opinions that got him in trouble with the law, that body issued this statement on January 17: “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.”
In other words, the prosecutors believe that the truth is not a defense in the Netherlands, nor perhaps elsewhere in Europe — a continent that appears no longer to have the will to defend its values, culture, and civilization. Very sad.
— Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and militant Islamism.
DANIEL PIPES
Wilders is in court because the Netherlands has no First Amendment, and so endlessly tries to figure out what speech to permit and what to prohibit. Wilders is hardly the only victim of this predicament; the arrest and jailing in 2008 of a cartoonist who goes by “Gregorius Nekschot” notoriously symbolized the state’s incoherence.
U.S. media should cover the Wilders proceedings because Wilders’s career has implications beyond one man, one party, or one country. It potentially affects all of Europe as the continent works out its response to the Islamic challenge. The U.S. media does an adequate job of informing its audience about this topic, so the near-silence about Wilders comes as a bit of a surprise.
The Islamic challenge forces Europeans to take stock of themselves in an unprecedented way. Colorful examples include the British ICONS project, which features 120 “national treasures” that help define English culture; the Dutch government’s film for potential immigrants that features a topless woman on the beach and two men kissing; and the French prime minister’s decision to expel a man from France for compelling his wife to wear a burqa.
Europe’s future is in play. Wilders’s time in court affects the outcome.
— Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
NINA SHEA
In 1989, Iran’s supreme leader issued a blasphemy fatwa against Salman Rushdie in London. It was the opening volley in a new Muslim push — later taken up by the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference — to force the West to adopt Islamic-blasphemy strictures within its borders. Intimidated, the West has begun to comply. It does so mostly through self-censorship and by prosecuting those who do speak out under religious-hate-speech laws such as those invoked in the Netherlands against Wilders. These laws are the West’s proxy for blasphemy bans.
The danger has not been mass imprisonment — actual convictions have been few — but the creation of a general deterrent to criticism of Islam or anything Islamic. Europe’s leaders likely believe that banning religious hate speech is a small price to pay for greater security; if so, they are wrong. The premise that religion can be easily compartmentalized, relegated to an autonomous sphere separate from politics and culture, is a misconception. Europe’s present path has profound implications for scholarship, political progress, social and economic development, and national security. This chilling of speech, aggravated by Muslim violence, erodes fundamental freedoms of speech and religion and threatens the West’s very identity.
Such laws will not bring social harmony. Anti-blasphemy pushes in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan, and elsewhere are often driven by implacable ideologues and political opportunists. Muslims who protest the radicals’ agenda are the first to be silenced. As Malaysia’s former finance minister observed, religious hate-speech laws all depend on the “elastic goo” of public sentiment. A nation that entertains such cases will be forced to go from issue to issue, “hostage to the brinkmanship of sensitivities.”
— Nina Shea is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.
ROBERT SPENCER
The Geert Wilders trial ought to be an international media event; seldom has any court case anywhere had such enormous implications for the future of the free world. The case against him, which has all the legitimacy of a Stalinist-era Moscow show trial, is a manifestation of the global assault on free speech sponsored chiefly at the U.N. by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). If Wilders loses, the freedom of speech will be threatened everywhere in the West.
Even if he wins, a dangerous precedent has been set by the fact of the trial itself: It is a sad day for the freedom of speech when a man can be put on trial for causing another man offense. If offending someone were really a crime warranting prosecution by the civil authorities, the legal system would be opened up to absurdities even greater than the Wilders trial.
But of course what Dutch authorities, Muslim groups in the Netherlands, and the OIC really want to accomplish is to silence Wilders’s truth-telling about jihad and Islamic supremacism. The court’s railroading of Wilders was clear from that fact that 15 of his 18 requested witnesses were disallowed, including Mohammed Bouyeri, the Koran-inspired murderer of Theo Van Gogh who would have proven Wilders’s point immediately. As Wilders himself put it Wednesday: “This court is not interested in the truth. This court doesn’t want me to have a fair trial.” The darkness descending over Europe, as indicated by this trial, may ensure that there is no fair trial there again for a long, long time.
— Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran.
Real Healthcare Reform: Kill the Lawyers
Bruce Bialosky
Monday, February 08, 2010
Now that a stake has been driven through the heart of the omnibus healthcare bill proposed and drafted by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Axis (with an assist from Henry Waxman), we can get down to real reform. The President has stated that he wants to work with Republicans. Then let’s start with the most obvious cost control factor – malpractice/tort reform.
There is some truth to Democratic claims that several of the proposed reforms are interlocking and thus to address one specific issue might be difficult to accomplish. However, this in no way justifies their ridiculous proposal, including its huge growth in the federal government and its invasive government panels.
Unfortunately, the Democrats ignored the biggest opportunity for cost reduction: eliminating spurious lawsuits and getting ambulance-chasing lawyers out of the medical malpractice business. It is also clear that this reform is not interdependent on other reforms.
Doctors spend an enormous amount of time and effort protecting themselves from lawyers and avoiding lawsuits. They order extensive, expensive tests whose only purpose is to protect themselves from lawyers, and pay outrageous malpractice insurance fees just to rid themselves of these predators. Once lawyers get involved, a doctor’s world is always turned upside down.
Consider what happens in these situations. A lawyer takes on a case for someone who has real or imagined harm. The lawyer has no medical training except for the knowledge they have gained from working on other lawsuits. They run up significant costs that they front for the client, and then pursue a legal remedy. Frequently the insurance company settles (makes payment) to the litigant to minimize outlays. If not, the case goes to court in front of a judge (i.e., a lawyer) or jury, neither of whom typically has any medical training. Either way, the lawyer is reimbursed all the up-front costs plus 33-40% of the remaining funds. The person filing the case is often left with less than half of the proceeds.
We need to stop entrusting these issues to unqualified people through a legal system established mostly to enrich the participants as opposed to the truly harmed. Lawyers have no special knowledge or expertise to determine harm in these situations and neither do judges. We have allowed this system to get out of control and we, the American people, must insist that if any change is made to our medical system it starts right here.
Toward that end, I have a proposal. We need to establish a separate forum to handle claims of medical malpractice. We must accept that as dedicated as our medical personnel may be, mistakes are occasionally made due to stress, confusion or just human error, and the people who are harmed should be justly compensated for those mistakes. In addition, there is occasionally a bad apple in the medical field whose care and concern for patients does not meet established standards. Those patients should be compensated for any harm done to them.
The proposal that I suggest is to establish a five-person panel. The panel would consist of two retired judges, two retired doctors and one retired, respected businessperson. There would also be a Medical Advocate’s office – skilled in the issues of medical procedures due to their exclusive focus on medical claims and disputes – that would represent the patient. The advocates would be salaried employees, much like a public defender or district attorney, with no direct financial benefit from winning the case. The accused, be it a doctor or medical facility, would be able to have their own representative to defend themselves against any charges.
Any outcome would be decided by the five-person panel. The panel would not only understand the law, but would actually be able to examine the charges made against the accused and provide an educated medical analysis of any harm done. The businessperson would be able to judge credibility of the business practices used and weigh the economic effects of the decisions being made. The result would be a balanced decision made with analysis of all the ramifications – medical, legal and economic. No longer would lawyers be profiteering on the backs of the medical system and the American people.
I realize that this proposal has little chance of being adopted. After all, the trial lawyers have their hands so deep in the pockets of the Democrats you might assume they were Siamese twins. Despite “reforming” almost all aspects of the medical system in a bill rumored to have ballooned to over 2,600 pages, the Democrats managed to merely “suggest” that the nation might consider a pilot program for malpractice reform.
The Democrats have to decide whether they care more about American people or American lawyers. They have to decide whether they want to truly control the costs of our healthcare system or just launch platitudes. Ultimately the American people will have to choose between their doctors and their attorneys. The two just do not mix, and the national interest is clearly not being served. If they decide for the medical professionals – as they should – the Democrats will need to make real change, or have real change forced upon them: retirement.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Now that a stake has been driven through the heart of the omnibus healthcare bill proposed and drafted by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Axis (with an assist from Henry Waxman), we can get down to real reform. The President has stated that he wants to work with Republicans. Then let’s start with the most obvious cost control factor – malpractice/tort reform.
There is some truth to Democratic claims that several of the proposed reforms are interlocking and thus to address one specific issue might be difficult to accomplish. However, this in no way justifies their ridiculous proposal, including its huge growth in the federal government and its invasive government panels.
Unfortunately, the Democrats ignored the biggest opportunity for cost reduction: eliminating spurious lawsuits and getting ambulance-chasing lawyers out of the medical malpractice business. It is also clear that this reform is not interdependent on other reforms.
Doctors spend an enormous amount of time and effort protecting themselves from lawyers and avoiding lawsuits. They order extensive, expensive tests whose only purpose is to protect themselves from lawyers, and pay outrageous malpractice insurance fees just to rid themselves of these predators. Once lawyers get involved, a doctor’s world is always turned upside down.
Consider what happens in these situations. A lawyer takes on a case for someone who has real or imagined harm. The lawyer has no medical training except for the knowledge they have gained from working on other lawsuits. They run up significant costs that they front for the client, and then pursue a legal remedy. Frequently the insurance company settles (makes payment) to the litigant to minimize outlays. If not, the case goes to court in front of a judge (i.e., a lawyer) or jury, neither of whom typically has any medical training. Either way, the lawyer is reimbursed all the up-front costs plus 33-40% of the remaining funds. The person filing the case is often left with less than half of the proceeds.
We need to stop entrusting these issues to unqualified people through a legal system established mostly to enrich the participants as opposed to the truly harmed. Lawyers have no special knowledge or expertise to determine harm in these situations and neither do judges. We have allowed this system to get out of control and we, the American people, must insist that if any change is made to our medical system it starts right here.
Toward that end, I have a proposal. We need to establish a separate forum to handle claims of medical malpractice. We must accept that as dedicated as our medical personnel may be, mistakes are occasionally made due to stress, confusion or just human error, and the people who are harmed should be justly compensated for those mistakes. In addition, there is occasionally a bad apple in the medical field whose care and concern for patients does not meet established standards. Those patients should be compensated for any harm done to them.
The proposal that I suggest is to establish a five-person panel. The panel would consist of two retired judges, two retired doctors and one retired, respected businessperson. There would also be a Medical Advocate’s office – skilled in the issues of medical procedures due to their exclusive focus on medical claims and disputes – that would represent the patient. The advocates would be salaried employees, much like a public defender or district attorney, with no direct financial benefit from winning the case. The accused, be it a doctor or medical facility, would be able to have their own representative to defend themselves against any charges.
Any outcome would be decided by the five-person panel. The panel would not only understand the law, but would actually be able to examine the charges made against the accused and provide an educated medical analysis of any harm done. The businessperson would be able to judge credibility of the business practices used and weigh the economic effects of the decisions being made. The result would be a balanced decision made with analysis of all the ramifications – medical, legal and economic. No longer would lawyers be profiteering on the backs of the medical system and the American people.
I realize that this proposal has little chance of being adopted. After all, the trial lawyers have their hands so deep in the pockets of the Democrats you might assume they were Siamese twins. Despite “reforming” almost all aspects of the medical system in a bill rumored to have ballooned to over 2,600 pages, the Democrats managed to merely “suggest” that the nation might consider a pilot program for malpractice reform.
The Democrats have to decide whether they care more about American people or American lawyers. They have to decide whether they want to truly control the costs of our healthcare system or just launch platitudes. Ultimately the American people will have to choose between their doctors and their attorneys. The two just do not mix, and the national interest is clearly not being served. If they decide for the medical professionals – as they should – the Democrats will need to make real change, or have real change forced upon them: retirement.
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