By Brent Bozell
Friday, October 22, 2010
Rocco Landesman is the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Boy, does he know how to spin the official line on offensive art. In a recent interview in Cincinnati, he was asked vaguely about controversy. "The best art taps into deep feelings, sometimes to comfort and sometimes to confront. Art can be very uncomfortable," Landesman said. "That can lead to strong reactions. For some of us, it draws us into the arts over our lifetimes and careers. For others, it creates strong negative feelings."
Landesman wasn't being asked specifically about negative feelings over the Loveland Museum Gallery in Loveland, Colo., a taxpayer-funded art space that recently featured a controversial painting with Jesus Christ receiving oral sex from a man. He's certainly not used to critical questions about just how this blasphemy-by-numbers seems like a tiresome rerun -- Jesus in urine, Jesus in chocolate, Jesus in (homo)sexual ecstasy.
You know -- he wasn't asked, but you just know -- that he never would defend as "the best art" the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad or the Dalai Lama receiving oral sex. He'd be offended if it were a secular figure, such as, oh, President Barack Obama. But this is Christ, whom every taxpayer-funded artist always wants to crucify. This is "the best art."
The artist in this case is a Stanford professor named Enrique Chagoya, and he called his art outrage "The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals." Typically, Chagoya was raised Catholic and claims the work isn't hostile at all, that it's about "faith and belief," that Christ was "about love and about sharing." Blah, blah. For good measure, gallery officials denied the image is sexual, as if men usually put their faces in other men's laps for other reasons.
There's more religious imagery in the multi-panel piece, including what appears to be the head of the Virgin Mary on a scantily clad cocktail waitress and another picture placing the head of Jesus on an obese female body in a one-piece bathing suit, riding a bicycle. The piece also contains written vulgarities (in English and Spanish).
Some might yawn. Here we go again. But what makes this story different is that Kathleen Folden, bless her heart, entered the gallery, broke into the artwork with a crowbar and ripped it to pieces. She didn't really destroy the art, because it was one of several prints, but she did express a rebuttal of sorts to the constant artistic besmirching of Jesus. Someone offended back.
Folden will be prosecuted for "criminal mischief" in the case. Chagoya is now the outraged one: "Should we as artists -- or any freethinking people -- have to be subjected to fear of violent attacks for expressing our sincere concerns?" Seeing as he's obviously free of shame, the Jesus-insulting artist added, "Let's exchange ideas, not insults." This is too rich.
Our media easily blame the offended Christian and not the artist. But make the image a Muhammad cartoon and our media would blame and shame the artist for being needlessly provocative and not the offended Muslim who would take action in response. Someone should ask Chagoya whether he's heard of Molly Norris, who merely proposed (and quickly retracted) "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" and then had to vanish from public view (along with her art) and change her name on the recommendation of the FBI.
The vast majority of the art community's shocking, or "transgressive," work is aimed at celebrating sin and the sexually "liberated." The National Endowment for the Arts recently announced that it would expend $12,500 to translate into English a novel by the Marquis de Sade, the libertine icon whose appetite for sexual violence inspired the word "sadism." The federally honored translator, John Galbraith Simmons, told CNSNews.com that this particular novel ("Aline and Valcour") is not pornographic and that "Sade is a figure who belongs with Shakespeare, with the greatest of authors."
The NEA also seems to find supporting art most exciting in the most "sexually liberated" cities. As part of the Obama "stimulus" package, CNS also found, the NEA distributed $1.4 million in special "stimulus" grants to 37 private arts nonprofits in the city of San Francisco, most of which is represented by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That was more than the total number of NEA stimulus grants handed out to arts organizations in any other state except New York.
The artistic elites like to pretend that they're the sophisticates and that their opponents are the uneducated brutes. But looking at weird and junky cartooning like Chagoya's just makes you think the vandalism here wasn't committed by the woman with the crowbar, but by the guy with the paints.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Fools Rush in Where Europe Rushes Out
By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, October 22, 2010
As of this writing, France is paralyzed. By the time you read this, it might be in flames.
In Britain, where politics is more polite but the problems are perhaps just as dire, the government is proposing budget cuts on a scale not seen for nearly a century.
In Greece, well, the less said about Greece the better.
All of these countries -- and many more -- are going through painful retrenchments because they spent too much money, made too many promises and expected too little from their own citizens. The era of European austerity is upon us, because the Europeans -- or at least those in charge -- understand the mess they've made of their economies.
This should present a real problem for Barack Obama and the vast (though shrinking) chorus of experts, editorialists and activists who support his agenda. In broad terms, all of the policies Obama and the Democrats have pushed are the sorts of policies the British, the French and other Europeans had for years, even decades.
As far as I am aware, no one has asked President Obama a simple question: If your philosophy is so great, how come the countries that have embraced it for generations are so much poorer than us?
Nor have they asked: If guaranteed health care for everyone will make us so much more "competitive," how come we've been doing so much better than our "competitors" who already have socialized medicine, high tax rates and lavish pensions?
Nor has the president been queried about the incongruity of saying his policies have laid a "new foundation" for economic growth and job creation when the countries he's trying to emulate are trying to dismantle the very same foundations in order to survive.
If you want evidence for all this, you don't need to look to Europe. You need only look to America. We've had the weakest recovery from a recession in memory. In Gerald Ford's first year as president, the country rebounded at a rate of 6.2 percent. Under Reagan it was 7.7 percent. Even Clinton's recovery rate was over 4 percent from 1993 to 1994 (and grew from there). Obama's recovery has not only been anemic and sputtering at around 3 percent, it hasn't made a dent in the unemployment rate because employers have no confidence that we'll have reliable growth or that Obama isn't waiting to bring the hammer down with more Euro-style policies and taxes.
Obama supporters will respond that he has, in fact, "created" jobs, but just not enough to climb out of the massive hole created by the financial crisis and former President Bush's evil policies. The White House insists that it's not remotely responsible for the 3.2 millions jobs (2.9 million in the private sector) that have disappeared on Obama's watch, but is completely responsible for every single new job that has been created or "saved" since then.
Forget the "saved" part since that has always been so much Bidenesque frippery. (Though for the record, I drink scotch because it keeps away vampires and ensures the moon doesn't catch fire. You can thank me later).
But consider this about the relatively few new net jobs the economy has created under Obama. As my National Review colleague Rich Lowry recently noted, half of all the new net jobs created in the United States (from August 2009 to August 2010) were created in Texas. According to White House logic, Obama must simply love Texas, since he's the one creating all of those jobs. You have to wonder what he has against New York or California -- you know, the states that actually share Obama's economic vision and are descending into an economic abyss as we speak. Why reward low-tax, pro-growth Texas with all of these jobs?
The contrast with Europe is stunning. The streets there are clogging with protestors who desperately want to keep perks and pensions that are driving their countries into insolvency, while responsible leaders do everything they can to impose fiscal sanity before everything comes crashing down. In America, protestors (aka the Tea Parties) have taken to the streets to keep our irresponsible leaders from going in the same direction. In response, Obama says America's irrational fear has made voters stupid.
But what's irrational about saying that we shouldn't be rushing into a condemned building everyone else in the developed world is rushing out of?
Friday, October 22, 2010
As of this writing, France is paralyzed. By the time you read this, it might be in flames.
In Britain, where politics is more polite but the problems are perhaps just as dire, the government is proposing budget cuts on a scale not seen for nearly a century.
In Greece, well, the less said about Greece the better.
All of these countries -- and many more -- are going through painful retrenchments because they spent too much money, made too many promises and expected too little from their own citizens. The era of European austerity is upon us, because the Europeans -- or at least those in charge -- understand the mess they've made of their economies.
This should present a real problem for Barack Obama and the vast (though shrinking) chorus of experts, editorialists and activists who support his agenda. In broad terms, all of the policies Obama and the Democrats have pushed are the sorts of policies the British, the French and other Europeans had for years, even decades.
As far as I am aware, no one has asked President Obama a simple question: If your philosophy is so great, how come the countries that have embraced it for generations are so much poorer than us?
Nor have they asked: If guaranteed health care for everyone will make us so much more "competitive," how come we've been doing so much better than our "competitors" who already have socialized medicine, high tax rates and lavish pensions?
Nor has the president been queried about the incongruity of saying his policies have laid a "new foundation" for economic growth and job creation when the countries he's trying to emulate are trying to dismantle the very same foundations in order to survive.
If you want evidence for all this, you don't need to look to Europe. You need only look to America. We've had the weakest recovery from a recession in memory. In Gerald Ford's first year as president, the country rebounded at a rate of 6.2 percent. Under Reagan it was 7.7 percent. Even Clinton's recovery rate was over 4 percent from 1993 to 1994 (and grew from there). Obama's recovery has not only been anemic and sputtering at around 3 percent, it hasn't made a dent in the unemployment rate because employers have no confidence that we'll have reliable growth or that Obama isn't waiting to bring the hammer down with more Euro-style policies and taxes.
Obama supporters will respond that he has, in fact, "created" jobs, but just not enough to climb out of the massive hole created by the financial crisis and former President Bush's evil policies. The White House insists that it's not remotely responsible for the 3.2 millions jobs (2.9 million in the private sector) that have disappeared on Obama's watch, but is completely responsible for every single new job that has been created or "saved" since then.
Forget the "saved" part since that has always been so much Bidenesque frippery. (Though for the record, I drink scotch because it keeps away vampires and ensures the moon doesn't catch fire. You can thank me later).
But consider this about the relatively few new net jobs the economy has created under Obama. As my National Review colleague Rich Lowry recently noted, half of all the new net jobs created in the United States (from August 2009 to August 2010) were created in Texas. According to White House logic, Obama must simply love Texas, since he's the one creating all of those jobs. You have to wonder what he has against New York or California -- you know, the states that actually share Obama's economic vision and are descending into an economic abyss as we speak. Why reward low-tax, pro-growth Texas with all of these jobs?
The contrast with Europe is stunning. The streets there are clogging with protestors who desperately want to keep perks and pensions that are driving their countries into insolvency, while responsible leaders do everything they can to impose fiscal sanity before everything comes crashing down. In America, protestors (aka the Tea Parties) have taken to the streets to keep our irresponsible leaders from going in the same direction. In response, Obama says America's irrational fear has made voters stupid.
But what's irrational about saying that we shouldn't be rushing into a condemned building everyone else in the developed world is rushing out of?
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Democrats Are the French Party
Europeans are struggling to reverse their leftward lurch; Democrats are accelerating ours.
Mona Charen
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Only in France could a labor action sound like a tasty appetizer. They call it “escargot,” but they’re not referring to snails in a buttery garlic sauce. No, this escargot refers to the practice of truckers who work in teams to snarl traffic by driving at a snail’s pace. Infuriated drivers cannot get around them.
Those were among the milder tactics on display in France during the past week as more than a million Frenchmen (according to Interior Ministry estimates) engaged in strikes, demonstrations, and protests that often turned violent. The streets have been thronged with the apparently always-summonable union workers and students. Fuel depots have been blockaded, leaving a third of the nation’s gas stations empty. Motorcycles and cars have been torched, bus shelters smashed, and stores looted around the country (protesters presumably don’t want to let a crisis go to waste). More than 1,400 arrests have been made over the past week, and 62 police have been injured. Trucks have blocked tunnels, and 69 ships sit at anchor in Marseilles harbor unable to dock due to the strike at oil terminals. Those on board a ship may be better off though, because the sanitation workers’ strike has caused stinking piles of trash to push skyward on Marseilles’s streets.
This spectacle of French petulance is in response to the government’s proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. Life expectancy in France is 81 years. But that modest proposal (too modest, actually, as it will buy France only eight years before the pension system again plunges into insolvency) is enough to spark millions of cries de coeur. Work an extra two years? C’est insupportable! (Across the channel, the British are imposing deep benefit cuts without, so far, eliciting tantrums.)
Democrats in the United States must be wishing that their French brothers would pipe down, at least until after November 2, because American voters may notice that everything the Democrats want for America is what France already has.
Years of socialist legislation have shackled France’s economy and depressed growth. Between 1980 and 2000, only Greece and Germany grew more slowly (in Germany’s case, reunification took its toll). French law mandates a “livable” minimum wage, with the result that jobs are comfortable for those who have them but often unobtainable for those who don’t. Because the French also make it extremely difficult to fire people, employers are reluctant to hire. The unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent. But for the young, the rate is closer to 25 percent. And for African and Arab immigrants, 50 percent is the norm.
The French government has an active “industrial policy,” guiding “investment” in favored companies and industries. Employment is highly regulated. Until 2008, the government required that workers be asked to toil no more than 35 hours per week and guaranteed a month of paid vacation each year. The health-care delivery system is public. And taxes are high — a marginal rate of 50 percent — among the highest in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
But France is deeply in debt and faces an aging population. In order to maintain its AAA bond rating, the French government is frantic to find economies. Thirty-five years of uninterrupted deficits have driven France’s gross debt to 1.4 trillion euros, equivalent to about 86 percent of GDP, according to Bloomberg news. (We are not far behind, with debt equivalent to 67 percent of GDP.)
But all of those goodies distributed by the state — all those free lunches — have significantly corrupted France’s civic culture to the point where any cut in benefits, even a trifling change in the retirement age, is violently resisted. One protester, Reuters reports, carried a sign reading “To hell with the national debt! We’ll give them nothing and we don’t give a damn about their AAA.” These are socialism’s spoiled brats.
What Democrats have most to fear is that American voters will perceive that, indignant denials notwithstanding, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Patty Murray, Joe Sestak, Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown, and the Democratic party in general, are indistinguishable from the socialist parties of Europe — with this difference: Where the Europeans are struggling to reverse their leftward lurch, the Democrats are accelerating ours.
Mona Charen
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Only in France could a labor action sound like a tasty appetizer. They call it “escargot,” but they’re not referring to snails in a buttery garlic sauce. No, this escargot refers to the practice of truckers who work in teams to snarl traffic by driving at a snail’s pace. Infuriated drivers cannot get around them.
Those were among the milder tactics on display in France during the past week as more than a million Frenchmen (according to Interior Ministry estimates) engaged in strikes, demonstrations, and protests that often turned violent. The streets have been thronged with the apparently always-summonable union workers and students. Fuel depots have been blockaded, leaving a third of the nation’s gas stations empty. Motorcycles and cars have been torched, bus shelters smashed, and stores looted around the country (protesters presumably don’t want to let a crisis go to waste). More than 1,400 arrests have been made over the past week, and 62 police have been injured. Trucks have blocked tunnels, and 69 ships sit at anchor in Marseilles harbor unable to dock due to the strike at oil terminals. Those on board a ship may be better off though, because the sanitation workers’ strike has caused stinking piles of trash to push skyward on Marseilles’s streets.
This spectacle of French petulance is in response to the government’s proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. Life expectancy in France is 81 years. But that modest proposal (too modest, actually, as it will buy France only eight years before the pension system again plunges into insolvency) is enough to spark millions of cries de coeur. Work an extra two years? C’est insupportable! (Across the channel, the British are imposing deep benefit cuts without, so far, eliciting tantrums.)
Democrats in the United States must be wishing that their French brothers would pipe down, at least until after November 2, because American voters may notice that everything the Democrats want for America is what France already has.
Years of socialist legislation have shackled France’s economy and depressed growth. Between 1980 and 2000, only Greece and Germany grew more slowly (in Germany’s case, reunification took its toll). French law mandates a “livable” minimum wage, with the result that jobs are comfortable for those who have them but often unobtainable for those who don’t. Because the French also make it extremely difficult to fire people, employers are reluctant to hire. The unemployment rate hovers around 10 percent. But for the young, the rate is closer to 25 percent. And for African and Arab immigrants, 50 percent is the norm.
The French government has an active “industrial policy,” guiding “investment” in favored companies and industries. Employment is highly regulated. Until 2008, the government required that workers be asked to toil no more than 35 hours per week and guaranteed a month of paid vacation each year. The health-care delivery system is public. And taxes are high — a marginal rate of 50 percent — among the highest in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
But France is deeply in debt and faces an aging population. In order to maintain its AAA bond rating, the French government is frantic to find economies. Thirty-five years of uninterrupted deficits have driven France’s gross debt to 1.4 trillion euros, equivalent to about 86 percent of GDP, according to Bloomberg news. (We are not far behind, with debt equivalent to 67 percent of GDP.)
But all of those goodies distributed by the state — all those free lunches — have significantly corrupted France’s civic culture to the point where any cut in benefits, even a trifling change in the retirement age, is violently resisted. One protester, Reuters reports, carried a sign reading “To hell with the national debt! We’ll give them nothing and we don’t give a damn about their AAA.” These are socialism’s spoiled brats.
What Democrats have most to fear is that American voters will perceive that, indignant denials notwithstanding, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Patty Murray, Joe Sestak, Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown, and the Democratic party in general, are indistinguishable from the socialist parties of Europe — with this difference: Where the Europeans are struggling to reverse their leftward lurch, the Democrats are accelerating ours.
Obstructed 'View'
By Cliff May
Thursday, 21 October 2010
An African-American woman who affects a Jewish-sounding surname as a running joke storms off the stage in response to what she regards as the slander of Muslims. Only in America.
But let me back up, in case you missed it: Last week, Fox anchor Bill O’Reilly appeared on ABC’s “The View” and argued against building an Islamic center adjacent to the consecrated ground where the World Trade Center once stood. When asked why he objects, he blurted out: “Because Muslims killed us on 9/11!”
At that point Whoopi (the nickname derives from “whoopee cushion”) Goldberg (see above) and co-host Joy Behar exited stage left in righteous outrage. Put aside for a moment whether O’Reilly is right or wrong about the Islamic center. Put aside, too, whether, by failing to put an adjective – e.g. “radical” or “extremist” – in front of “Muslims” he implied that all Muslims bear responsibility for the atrocities of 9/11. Consider simply this: how difficult it has become to discuss such questions.
By walking off the set, talk show hosts Goldberg and Behar were saying they will not tolerate talk about possible links between Islamic belief and terrorism. Co-panelist and producer Barbara Walters, to her credit, immediately said they were wrong.
But quick to support Goldberg and Behar was none other than John L. Esposito, Founding Director of Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding – an institution that has accepted $20 million from a Saudi prince, an adherent of Wahhabism which is among the more extreme interpretations of Islam. Writing in the Huffington Post, Esposito presented no scholarly or even serious argument. Instead, he attempted to shut down debate by calling O’Reilly’s remark “baseless anti-Muslim rhetoric” reflecting the “anti-Islam hysteria sweeping over the U.S.”
To substantiate that claim, Esposito noted that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has called for a "federal law that says Sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States." He added that, “nobody is calling for Islamic Law…”
Among the obvious facts that ignores: Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris has gone into hiding after an American-born imam called for her to be killed for the “crime” of suggesting that an “Everyone Draw Mohammad Day” would bolster freedom of speech. In Europe, Theo van Gogh was murdered for the “crime” of making a film critical of the treatment of women under Islam. Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders is on trial right now, for the “crime” of expressing opinions offensive to Muslims. He is hardly the first European to face such legal consequences as Nina Shea recently made clear.
Meanwhile, a number of major American businesses are instituting Sharia financing – which requires that they hire an imam to vet investments and award a percentage of profits to favored Islamic “charities.” And the Obama administration has supported efforts by the Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to have the UN pass a resolution that would bar “negative stereotyping” of religions. If you think that will apply equally to all religions, there’s a bridge in Riyadh I want to sell you.
None of this is meant to suggest that O’Reilly should be beyond criticism. Peter Wehner, a conservative commentator, wrote that what O’Reilly said was wrong – that his remarks were not akin to saying, “the Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor” -- which everyone knows (1) to be true, but (2) not a condemnation of all Japanese. Rather, they were like saying, “Catholics are child molesters” which appears to assign guilt not only to deviant priests but to all Roman Catholics.
I think Wehner makes a good point but misses this: No Catholics are molesting children because they believe that’s what they are commanded by Jesus, the Bible or the Pope. No Catholics are denouncing as apostates fellow Christians who oppose the molestation of children.
By contrast, thousands of acts of terrorism are being carried out under Islam’s banner. Muslim reformers grapple with this: Irshad Manji titled her book “The Trouble With Islam Today.” Of course, having written that, she, too, lives under threat from Muslim militants. It’s worth reminding ourselves: It’s not just that most terrorists are Muslims; most victims of terrorism are Muslims, too.
Wehner added that to “be an American means, at least in part, to avoid creating unnecessary divisions over matters of faith.” The possibility that a faith can be the basis for a totalitarian ideology does not fit within the neat boxes of Western thinking. Yet that is exactly what Muslim intellectuals such as Sayd Qutb proposed in the mid-20th century in such books as “Social Justice in Islam,” “Milestones,” (a manifesto of political Islam) and his 30-volume commentary on the Koran. These writings had a profound influence on such Islamist organizations as the Muslim Brotherhood and such jihadi organizations as al-Qaeda. Qutb was translated into Farsi by none other than Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
As I write this, terrorist hit teams – believing Muslims acting on religious conviction -- are being sought in Europe and America. Iran’s theocrats -- whose proxies have for years slaughtered Americans and Israelis -- are in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons. More than ever we need to discuss Islam, Islamism and jihadism – where they connect and where they diverge.
But it’s hard to have such discussions, particularly in the mainstream news and entertainment media, so long as comedians like Whoopi Goldberg and academics like John Esposito are – wittingly or unwittingly – conspiring with extremists to narrow the parameters of free speech.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
An African-American woman who affects a Jewish-sounding surname as a running joke storms off the stage in response to what she regards as the slander of Muslims. Only in America.
But let me back up, in case you missed it: Last week, Fox anchor Bill O’Reilly appeared on ABC’s “The View” and argued against building an Islamic center adjacent to the consecrated ground where the World Trade Center once stood. When asked why he objects, he blurted out: “Because Muslims killed us on 9/11!”
At that point Whoopi (the nickname derives from “whoopee cushion”) Goldberg (see above) and co-host Joy Behar exited stage left in righteous outrage. Put aside for a moment whether O’Reilly is right or wrong about the Islamic center. Put aside, too, whether, by failing to put an adjective – e.g. “radical” or “extremist” – in front of “Muslims” he implied that all Muslims bear responsibility for the atrocities of 9/11. Consider simply this: how difficult it has become to discuss such questions.
By walking off the set, talk show hosts Goldberg and Behar were saying they will not tolerate talk about possible links between Islamic belief and terrorism. Co-panelist and producer Barbara Walters, to her credit, immediately said they were wrong.
But quick to support Goldberg and Behar was none other than John L. Esposito, Founding Director of Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding – an institution that has accepted $20 million from a Saudi prince, an adherent of Wahhabism which is among the more extreme interpretations of Islam. Writing in the Huffington Post, Esposito presented no scholarly or even serious argument. Instead, he attempted to shut down debate by calling O’Reilly’s remark “baseless anti-Muslim rhetoric” reflecting the “anti-Islam hysteria sweeping over the U.S.”
To substantiate that claim, Esposito noted that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has called for a "federal law that says Sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States." He added that, “nobody is calling for Islamic Law…”
Among the obvious facts that ignores: Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris has gone into hiding after an American-born imam called for her to be killed for the “crime” of suggesting that an “Everyone Draw Mohammad Day” would bolster freedom of speech. In Europe, Theo van Gogh was murdered for the “crime” of making a film critical of the treatment of women under Islam. Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders is on trial right now, for the “crime” of expressing opinions offensive to Muslims. He is hardly the first European to face such legal consequences as Nina Shea recently made clear.
Meanwhile, a number of major American businesses are instituting Sharia financing – which requires that they hire an imam to vet investments and award a percentage of profits to favored Islamic “charities.” And the Obama administration has supported efforts by the Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to have the UN pass a resolution that would bar “negative stereotyping” of religions. If you think that will apply equally to all religions, there’s a bridge in Riyadh I want to sell you.
None of this is meant to suggest that O’Reilly should be beyond criticism. Peter Wehner, a conservative commentator, wrote that what O’Reilly said was wrong – that his remarks were not akin to saying, “the Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor” -- which everyone knows (1) to be true, but (2) not a condemnation of all Japanese. Rather, they were like saying, “Catholics are child molesters” which appears to assign guilt not only to deviant priests but to all Roman Catholics.
I think Wehner makes a good point but misses this: No Catholics are molesting children because they believe that’s what they are commanded by Jesus, the Bible or the Pope. No Catholics are denouncing as apostates fellow Christians who oppose the molestation of children.
By contrast, thousands of acts of terrorism are being carried out under Islam’s banner. Muslim reformers grapple with this: Irshad Manji titled her book “The Trouble With Islam Today.” Of course, having written that, she, too, lives under threat from Muslim militants. It’s worth reminding ourselves: It’s not just that most terrorists are Muslims; most victims of terrorism are Muslims, too.
Wehner added that to “be an American means, at least in part, to avoid creating unnecessary divisions over matters of faith.” The possibility that a faith can be the basis for a totalitarian ideology does not fit within the neat boxes of Western thinking. Yet that is exactly what Muslim intellectuals such as Sayd Qutb proposed in the mid-20th century in such books as “Social Justice in Islam,” “Milestones,” (a manifesto of political Islam) and his 30-volume commentary on the Koran. These writings had a profound influence on such Islamist organizations as the Muslim Brotherhood and such jihadi organizations as al-Qaeda. Qutb was translated into Farsi by none other than Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
As I write this, terrorist hit teams – believing Muslims acting on religious conviction -- are being sought in Europe and America. Iran’s theocrats -- whose proxies have for years slaughtered Americans and Israelis -- are in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons. More than ever we need to discuss Islam, Islamism and jihadism – where they connect and where they diverge.
But it’s hard to have such discussions, particularly in the mainstream news and entertainment media, so long as comedians like Whoopi Goldberg and academics like John Esposito are – wittingly or unwittingly – conspiring with extremists to narrow the parameters of free speech.
Obama: Wrong, Not Evil -- That's Why He's So Dangerous
By Larry Elder
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Is President Obama evil or "just" wrong? A Rasputin or a Chamberlain?
Here's a letter I recently received:
"Tuesday morning I happened upon your show. You were so good and I had never heard you before. But alas, you began to extol Obama's recognition that there are certain things he knows he should have done differently. It was a nice hour or so while it lasted.
"Obama deserves no credit for anything. The man is a liar, a manipulator, a narcissist, a psychopath, a control freak, a Marxist, has no depth of knowledge about anything, etc., etc. But there you were, giving him the benefit of the doubt. 'Aw, shucks, he's not so bad after all.' He spewed this garbage right before the election and yet you believed him?! Obama has to have a change of heart, not a change of mind."
Point of clarification: I said and wrote that he would be the most radical, left-wing president in the history of this country -- and that the guilt-ridden post-racialists who put him there would rue the day. Unfortunately, Obama has lived down to my expectations.
But calling the President a Hitler without the mustache is an unserious position and one that does nothing to dissuade Obama supporters, many of whom now suffer nearly terminal buyer's remorse. It's as obtuse as saying "Bush Lied, People Died," or that George W. Bush ran for president so he could fabricate the intel to unjustifiably take the country to war to avenge his father and enrich his military contractor friends. And Obama doesn't act alone. Every Democratic senator voted for the "stimulus" and for ObamaCare. Obama's leftism is mainstream to his party. If Obama is evil, what does this make those who support his agenda?
It's more than enough to say that Obama is an inexperienced, naive, wrongheaded ideologue who, even now, doesn't recognize the harm he is doing to the country.
But with crucial elections looming, Obama has already retreated on his promise to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" and now says it's Congress' responsibility to change the law. Meanwhile, his Justice Department defends DADT in court.
He hasn't even raised the issue of another bank bailout or a government-forced cessation of foreclosures -- despite the banks' recent admissions of negligence in processing home foreclosures. The Obama of two years ago would have used this as a pretext to intrude, if not take over the banks. What happened to his outgoing chief of staff's admonition to "never allow a crisis to go to waste"?
Obama no longer uses the word "stimulus."
He has exempted a number of businesses and organizations from some ObamaCare regulations.
He no longer talks about cap and trade or union card check.
When was the last time we heard about shutting down Gitmo?
When was the last time we heard about a New York trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
Outreach failed. Islamofascists are still determined to kill us. The Arab and Muslim world has an even lower opinion of America than during the Bush administration. Obama's foolish attack on Israel for building "settlements" in east Jerusalem has made the Palestinians even more intransigent about the "peace process."
To paraphrase Joe Biden, no more "big f---ing deals." It's now small ball. But left-wing small ball is still left-wing.
But come November, things will change.
The next two -- or, after he is dragged reluctantly to the center, even six -- years of the Obama presidency will be spent trying to keep ObamaCare from unraveling, as opposed to the march toward a Canadian-style single-payer socialized health care system that he truly wants.
The President is an arrogant man with a racial chip on his shoulder. He is a wealth redistributionist who thinks of America as an imperialist power that needs to apologize to the world for its past sins.
But Obama is not evil. He's simply wrong, which in many ways makes him harder to deal with -- and even more dangerous. Obama has already made America a weaker nation -- both domestically and as a foreign power. That he's not out to intentionally destroy America makes him a larger menace. Good intentions make it difficult to persuade people to fight against his policies, and to focus not on intentions but rather on consequences and results.
Here's what C.S. Lewis said about people like Obama:
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Over the next two years, Obama's inevitable retreat toward the middle will be a tactical one, not reflective of a change of heart. It doesn't matter. He will either check himself or be checked.
America, however, will bear the scars for decades.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Is President Obama evil or "just" wrong? A Rasputin or a Chamberlain?
Here's a letter I recently received:
"Tuesday morning I happened upon your show. You were so good and I had never heard you before. But alas, you began to extol Obama's recognition that there are certain things he knows he should have done differently. It was a nice hour or so while it lasted.
"Obama deserves no credit for anything. The man is a liar, a manipulator, a narcissist, a psychopath, a control freak, a Marxist, has no depth of knowledge about anything, etc., etc. But there you were, giving him the benefit of the doubt. 'Aw, shucks, he's not so bad after all.' He spewed this garbage right before the election and yet you believed him?! Obama has to have a change of heart, not a change of mind."
Point of clarification: I said and wrote that he would be the most radical, left-wing president in the history of this country -- and that the guilt-ridden post-racialists who put him there would rue the day. Unfortunately, Obama has lived down to my expectations.
But calling the President a Hitler without the mustache is an unserious position and one that does nothing to dissuade Obama supporters, many of whom now suffer nearly terminal buyer's remorse. It's as obtuse as saying "Bush Lied, People Died," or that George W. Bush ran for president so he could fabricate the intel to unjustifiably take the country to war to avenge his father and enrich his military contractor friends. And Obama doesn't act alone. Every Democratic senator voted for the "stimulus" and for ObamaCare. Obama's leftism is mainstream to his party. If Obama is evil, what does this make those who support his agenda?
It's more than enough to say that Obama is an inexperienced, naive, wrongheaded ideologue who, even now, doesn't recognize the harm he is doing to the country.
But with crucial elections looming, Obama has already retreated on his promise to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" and now says it's Congress' responsibility to change the law. Meanwhile, his Justice Department defends DADT in court.
He hasn't even raised the issue of another bank bailout or a government-forced cessation of foreclosures -- despite the banks' recent admissions of negligence in processing home foreclosures. The Obama of two years ago would have used this as a pretext to intrude, if not take over the banks. What happened to his outgoing chief of staff's admonition to "never allow a crisis to go to waste"?
Obama no longer uses the word "stimulus."
He has exempted a number of businesses and organizations from some ObamaCare regulations.
He no longer talks about cap and trade or union card check.
When was the last time we heard about shutting down Gitmo?
When was the last time we heard about a New York trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
Outreach failed. Islamofascists are still determined to kill us. The Arab and Muslim world has an even lower opinion of America than during the Bush administration. Obama's foolish attack on Israel for building "settlements" in east Jerusalem has made the Palestinians even more intransigent about the "peace process."
To paraphrase Joe Biden, no more "big f---ing deals." It's now small ball. But left-wing small ball is still left-wing.
But come November, things will change.
The next two -- or, after he is dragged reluctantly to the center, even six -- years of the Obama presidency will be spent trying to keep ObamaCare from unraveling, as opposed to the march toward a Canadian-style single-payer socialized health care system that he truly wants.
The President is an arrogant man with a racial chip on his shoulder. He is a wealth redistributionist who thinks of America as an imperialist power that needs to apologize to the world for its past sins.
But Obama is not evil. He's simply wrong, which in many ways makes him harder to deal with -- and even more dangerous. Obama has already made America a weaker nation -- both domestically and as a foreign power. That he's not out to intentionally destroy America makes him a larger menace. Good intentions make it difficult to persuade people to fight against his policies, and to focus not on intentions but rather on consequences and results.
Here's what C.S. Lewis said about people like Obama:
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Over the next two years, Obama's inevitable retreat toward the middle will be a tactical one, not reflective of a change of heart. It doesn't matter. He will either check himself or be checked.
America, however, will bear the scars for decades.
It Is Over, Liberals
By Emmett Tyrrell
Thursday, 21 October 2010
The Democrats are about to be beaten by something that they do not in their heart of hearts think exists, a huge national majority. At this late hour, with the storm clouds gathering and the livestock getting restless, they see only sunshine. Yes, there is "foreign money" out there. Yes, the media have bungled broadcasting the purity of the Democratic message. And naturally, angry voices can be heard. Yet surely there is no majority gathering to unseat the party of decency and good deeds. Well, there is, and it is nothing like how the Democrats describe it.
That majority is amiable and sensible and believes in limited government. It is convinced that we face a catastrophic budget crisis and that measures must be taken against the spending and on behalf of growth. Furthermore, many of these friendly Americans would be delighted to give our president a ride home if they found him on a street corner, though they would be a lot happier if he did not live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. They doubt he would ask them in for a drink. After all, to him they do not exist.
Many of these people are tea partyers. Now, they certainly do exist. Yet they are nothing like what the Democrats believe them to be. They are not angry and warlike. They are concerned about what the Democrats have done these past months, but they will retire them the old-fashioned way, through the ballot box.
Our president has a difficult time conceiving of this growing majority that opposes him. Apparently, in May, President Obama asked a group of presidential historians over to the White House to discuss history and to inform him of any historical movements comparable to the tea party movement in all of American history. The historians told him what he wanted to hear. As Peter Baker wrote in The New York Times Magazine, the president wanted to know whether there are "precedents for this sort of backlash against the establishment." If so, "what sparked them and how did they shape American politics?" Reportedly, the historians spoke of the "Know-Nothings" of the 1850s, the Populists of the 1890s and the Coughlinites of the 1930s. Thus, our president was reassured. They were racists and fruitcakes. He heard nothing to challenge his smug sense of history.
Yet once again, he was misinformed by his experts. Michael Barone speaks more accurately of the historical precursors to the tea party movement. He says voters concerned about limited government and federal spending were forming a prodigious movement toward the end of the 1930s. The movement, in his mind, might have successfully challenged President Franklin D. Roosevelt by 1940, but the rising threat of Nazism intervened. Doubtless there have been other precursors to the tea party movement, for instance, the Tea Partyers back in Colonial Boston. The truth is there has been a tug between big centralized government and local government since the founding of our republic.
Reading the piece by Baker was an odd experience. It was talking about a president who, in less than two years, has lost the trust of the American people, especially independents. It quoted soaring rhetoric from Obama in June 2008, when he said, "We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet (the whole planet!) began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth." After that, there will be nothing to do, so we all can play golf or read a good book.
There was also this: "Obama's team takes pride that he has fulfilled three of the five major promises he laid out as pillars of his 'new foundation' ... health care, education reform and financial reregulation." So what? Education reform is a nullity. Ten years from now, test scores still will be in the drink. As for the other monstrosities, they are a large part of the Obama disaster. The growing majority that is about to retire Obama's Democratic majority in the House and possibly in the Senate knows this. The ruling class, including Baker, seems to be oblivious of it, but the rest of the nation knows it.
Socialism is another of the gods that have failed. If you balk at my use of the word socialism, how about if I say liberalism is another of the gods that have failed? What is astonishing is precisely how extreme the liberalism practiced by Obama and the Democrats has been. Well, it has failed. The liberals show no hint that they realize this, but the American majority does. Now that majority has to deal with the mess we are in. As for the liberals, they have to explain why they are summarily leaving office.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
The Democrats are about to be beaten by something that they do not in their heart of hearts think exists, a huge national majority. At this late hour, with the storm clouds gathering and the livestock getting restless, they see only sunshine. Yes, there is "foreign money" out there. Yes, the media have bungled broadcasting the purity of the Democratic message. And naturally, angry voices can be heard. Yet surely there is no majority gathering to unseat the party of decency and good deeds. Well, there is, and it is nothing like how the Democrats describe it.
That majority is amiable and sensible and believes in limited government. It is convinced that we face a catastrophic budget crisis and that measures must be taken against the spending and on behalf of growth. Furthermore, many of these friendly Americans would be delighted to give our president a ride home if they found him on a street corner, though they would be a lot happier if he did not live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. They doubt he would ask them in for a drink. After all, to him they do not exist.
Many of these people are tea partyers. Now, they certainly do exist. Yet they are nothing like what the Democrats believe them to be. They are not angry and warlike. They are concerned about what the Democrats have done these past months, but they will retire them the old-fashioned way, through the ballot box.
Our president has a difficult time conceiving of this growing majority that opposes him. Apparently, in May, President Obama asked a group of presidential historians over to the White House to discuss history and to inform him of any historical movements comparable to the tea party movement in all of American history. The historians told him what he wanted to hear. As Peter Baker wrote in The New York Times Magazine, the president wanted to know whether there are "precedents for this sort of backlash against the establishment." If so, "what sparked them and how did they shape American politics?" Reportedly, the historians spoke of the "Know-Nothings" of the 1850s, the Populists of the 1890s and the Coughlinites of the 1930s. Thus, our president was reassured. They were racists and fruitcakes. He heard nothing to challenge his smug sense of history.
Yet once again, he was misinformed by his experts. Michael Barone speaks more accurately of the historical precursors to the tea party movement. He says voters concerned about limited government and federal spending were forming a prodigious movement toward the end of the 1930s. The movement, in his mind, might have successfully challenged President Franklin D. Roosevelt by 1940, but the rising threat of Nazism intervened. Doubtless there have been other precursors to the tea party movement, for instance, the Tea Partyers back in Colonial Boston. The truth is there has been a tug between big centralized government and local government since the founding of our republic.
Reading the piece by Baker was an odd experience. It was talking about a president who, in less than two years, has lost the trust of the American people, especially independents. It quoted soaring rhetoric from Obama in June 2008, when he said, "We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet (the whole planet!) began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth." After that, there will be nothing to do, so we all can play golf or read a good book.
There was also this: "Obama's team takes pride that he has fulfilled three of the five major promises he laid out as pillars of his 'new foundation' ... health care, education reform and financial reregulation." So what? Education reform is a nullity. Ten years from now, test scores still will be in the drink. As for the other monstrosities, they are a large part of the Obama disaster. The growing majority that is about to retire Obama's Democratic majority in the House and possibly in the Senate knows this. The ruling class, including Baker, seems to be oblivious of it, but the rest of the nation knows it.
Socialism is another of the gods that have failed. If you balk at my use of the word socialism, how about if I say liberalism is another of the gods that have failed? What is astonishing is precisely how extreme the liberalism practiced by Obama and the Democrats has been. Well, it has failed. The liberals show no hint that they realize this, but the American majority does. Now that majority has to deal with the mess we are in. As for the liberals, they have to explain why they are summarily leaving office.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
The Multicultural Cult: Part II
By Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
There was a reason why employers in the middle of the 19th century had signs that said, "No Irish need apply" -- and why employers in the middle of the 20th century no longer had such signs. It was not that employers had changed. The Irish had changed.
The Catholic Church for years worked to bring about such changes among the Irish immigrants and their offspring, just as various religious and secular organizations among the Jews, among blacks and among other groups worked to bring about changes within their respective groups. By and large these efforts paid off. All these groups were advancing, long before there were civil rights laws.
Yet today, attempts to get black or Hispanic youngsters to speak the language of the society around them are decried by multiculturalists. And any attempt to get them to behave according to the cultural norms of the larger society is denounced as "cultural imperialism," if not racism.
The multicultural dogma is that we are to "celebrate" all cultures, not change them. In other words, people who lag educationally or economically are to keep on doing what they have been doing -- but somehow have better results in the future than in the past. And, if they don't have better results in the future, it is society's fault.
Such notions have been tried, and failed, in other countries and times, long before they became a fashionable dogma called multiculturalism.
In 19th century Latvia and Bohemia, among other places in Eastern Europe, the great majority of Germans were literate, while most of the indigenous peoples around them were not. Not surprisingly, Germans had more education and skills, and enjoyed a higher standard of living.
In both Latvia and Bohemia, the German minority held most of the jobs requiring education and skills. But, in both places, the indigenous people -- Latvians and Czechs -- could rise by acquiring the German language and culture, and many did.
But, for the newly rising Latvian and Czech intelligentsia, that was not enough. They wanted to be able to rise without having to learn a different language and culture.
Nor were Latvians and Czechs unique. Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, Malays in Malaysia and Maoris in New Zealand are just some of the others who have wanted the same thing -- namely, to cling to their own culture and yet achieve the same success as people with a different culture.
Many of these efforts have failed and few have succeeded. But what is truly painful is how often the polarization created by these efforts led to tragedies, such as civil war in Sri Lanka and brutal mass expulsions of millions of Germans from Czechoslovakia, to the detriment of both the Germans and the Czech economy.
The history of blacks in the United States has been more complicated. By the end of the 19th century, the small numbers of blacks living in northern cities had, over the generations, assimilated the culture of the surrounding society to the point where they lived and worked among the white population more fully than they would in most of the 20th century.
In New York, Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia and other Northern cities, black ghettos became a 20th century phenomenon. It was after the massive migration of far less acculturated blacks out of the South in the early 20th century when a massive retrogression in black-white relations took place in the Northern cites to which the migrants moved.
The blacks who moved to these cities were of the same race as those who were already there, but they were not the same in their culture, values and behavior. No one complained of this more bitterly than the blacks already living in these cities, who saw the newcomers as harbingers of a worse life for all blacks.
This same process occurred on the west coast decades later, largely during World War II, when the same influx of less acculturated blacks from the South marked a retrogression in race relations in places like San Francisco and Portland.
Cultural differences matter. They have always mattered, however much that may be denied today by the multicultural cult.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
There was a reason why employers in the middle of the 19th century had signs that said, "No Irish need apply" -- and why employers in the middle of the 20th century no longer had such signs. It was not that employers had changed. The Irish had changed.
The Catholic Church for years worked to bring about such changes among the Irish immigrants and their offspring, just as various religious and secular organizations among the Jews, among blacks and among other groups worked to bring about changes within their respective groups. By and large these efforts paid off. All these groups were advancing, long before there were civil rights laws.
Yet today, attempts to get black or Hispanic youngsters to speak the language of the society around them are decried by multiculturalists. And any attempt to get them to behave according to the cultural norms of the larger society is denounced as "cultural imperialism," if not racism.
The multicultural dogma is that we are to "celebrate" all cultures, not change them. In other words, people who lag educationally or economically are to keep on doing what they have been doing -- but somehow have better results in the future than in the past. And, if they don't have better results in the future, it is society's fault.
Such notions have been tried, and failed, in other countries and times, long before they became a fashionable dogma called multiculturalism.
In 19th century Latvia and Bohemia, among other places in Eastern Europe, the great majority of Germans were literate, while most of the indigenous peoples around them were not. Not surprisingly, Germans had more education and skills, and enjoyed a higher standard of living.
In both Latvia and Bohemia, the German minority held most of the jobs requiring education and skills. But, in both places, the indigenous people -- Latvians and Czechs -- could rise by acquiring the German language and culture, and many did.
But, for the newly rising Latvian and Czech intelligentsia, that was not enough. They wanted to be able to rise without having to learn a different language and culture.
Nor were Latvians and Czechs unique. Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, Malays in Malaysia and Maoris in New Zealand are just some of the others who have wanted the same thing -- namely, to cling to their own culture and yet achieve the same success as people with a different culture.
Many of these efforts have failed and few have succeeded. But what is truly painful is how often the polarization created by these efforts led to tragedies, such as civil war in Sri Lanka and brutal mass expulsions of millions of Germans from Czechoslovakia, to the detriment of both the Germans and the Czech economy.
The history of blacks in the United States has been more complicated. By the end of the 19th century, the small numbers of blacks living in northern cities had, over the generations, assimilated the culture of the surrounding society to the point where they lived and worked among the white population more fully than they would in most of the 20th century.
In New York, Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia and other Northern cities, black ghettos became a 20th century phenomenon. It was after the massive migration of far less acculturated blacks out of the South in the early 20th century when a massive retrogression in black-white relations took place in the Northern cites to which the migrants moved.
The blacks who moved to these cities were of the same race as those who were already there, but they were not the same in their culture, values and behavior. No one complained of this more bitterly than the blacks already living in these cities, who saw the newcomers as harbingers of a worse life for all blacks.
This same process occurred on the west coast decades later, largely during World War II, when the same influx of less acculturated blacks from the South marked a retrogression in race relations in places like San Francisco and Portland.
Cultural differences matter. They have always mattered, however much that may be denied today by the multicultural cult.
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