Bruce Bialosky
Monday, May 31, 2010
I recently was able to get my hands on a letter that President Obama wrote to the President of Mexico after his recent visit here. I want to share it with you.
Dear Felipe:
The American people appreciate your recent visit to our country and your speech to our Congress. Our countries share a long history of friendly and warm relations. In the interest of furthering our strong relationship, however, I must correct some of the statements you made while you were here.
First, your analysis of the law recently passed in your neighboring state of Arizona was completely incorrect. The law is actually much stronger than our federal law in protecting the rights of Mexican citizens visiting our country, whether legally or not. We sympathize with your confusion, since you may not have read the law -- even though it’s only about ten pages long. But no American would expect you to have read it before you commented on it – after all, neither did our Attorney General nor our Homeland Security Secretary before publicly disparaging the statute, nor did most of the members of Congress who applauded when you mentioned it in your speech. Unfortunately, none of you seems to know our federal law either.
More importantly, you really should not be criticizing our laws when the Mexican immigration system is far more draconian. While it was just two years ago that your country abolished criminal prosecutions of illegal immigrants, the current Mexican law states that law enforcement officials are "required to demand that foreigners prove their legal presence in the country before attending to any issues." This policy is beyond anything required here in the United States.
You may be familiar with the expression about someone protesting too much. The real reason for your disapproval is that your government is quite happy dumping your poorest citizens on us. Not that we are unhappy with Mexicans who come here legally, who have proven to be some of our finest citizens. They have strong family values, volunteer for our military, and have added a tremendous amount to the American Mosaic. The targets of American objections are the ones who continue to pour over the border without following our immigration laws.
You might take a look at why so many Mexicans want to leave their homeland. Your government has been a wreck for decades. Your laws discourage entrepreneurship and foreign investment into your country. You cannot provide nearly enough jobs, so your hard-working citizens have to look elsewhere to be able to feed their families. Your government has been corrupt for decades, with few people having confidence that your police are more interested in protecting the people rather than lining their own pockets. The absence of the rule of law has caused your government to break down in many ways, principally resulting in drug wars throughout the country. This has greatly harmed your tourism industry, scaring away both Americans and Europeans from visiting your beautiful resort areas – thereby killing even more jobs for your citizens.
Your drug lords are out of control. There have been 23,000 drug-related murders in the past four years; tragically, your rampant lawlessness has spilled over into our country. In just one state, California, illegal immigrants constitute 11% of the prison population or about 19,000 inmates. It would seem to some that your principal export to our country is crime. One of our major cities, Phoenix, has become the number two city in the world for kidnapping. This is not acceptable to our people, yet you continue to blame the situation on the United States by saying it all has to do with the flow of guns to your country.
Unfortunately, my friend Felipe, this is your government’s problem and our people are at their wits’ end. We wish to be good neighbors, but we have some of our own challenges here also. The American people want to be safe and they want their laws enforced. They want Mexicans to be able to come here, but they want them to follow our laws. They want them to be able to work here, but not by stealing jobs from people in Thailand or Bulgaria or Botswana who also wish to come here, but follow our immigration laws and then are pushed out by your citizens flowing over the border to take their jobs illegally.
Next time you are a guest in our country, please be a little more gracious. I know criticism of the U.S. is very much in vogue. God knows I am guilty of it myself. You may have just thought you are following my example, but the American people do not take kindly to visitors attacking our country, especially when you are so blatantly wrong and self-serving.
We look forward to your next trip here when hopefully you will express your gratitude for having as your neighbor the greatest country in the world.
Adios mi amigo,
Barack
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
The California Penal Code
I was cleaning out my RSS feed earlier and noticed that I had somehow overlooked this gem. In the midst of CA boycotts of AZ for its immigration law, I had the California law pointed out to me (original link here):
California Penal Code Section 834b
(a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully
cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization
Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is
suspected of being present in the United States in violation of
federal immigration laws.
(b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected
of being present in the United States in violation of federal
immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the
following:
(1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen
of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent
resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time
or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of
immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not
be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and
place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding
documentation to indicate his or her legal status.
(2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien
who is present in the United States in violation of federal
immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal
justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or
leave the United States.
(3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal
status and provide any additional information that may be requested
by any other public entity.
(c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city,
county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with
jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent
or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly
prohibited.
California Penal Code Section 834b
(a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully
cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization
Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is
suspected of being present in the United States in violation of
federal immigration laws.
(b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected
of being present in the United States in violation of federal
immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the
following:
(1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen
of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent
resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time
or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of
immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not
be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and
place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding
documentation to indicate his or her legal status.
(2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien
who is present in the United States in violation of federal
immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal
justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or
leave the United States.
(3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal
status and provide any additional information that may be requested
by any other public entity.
(c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city,
county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with
jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent
or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly
prohibited.
The Political Manipulation of Selective Memory
David Stokes
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Barack Obama recently referred to the time since his election as President of the United States as, “the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s.”
Ponder that curious, if not revealing observation for a moment.
The Memorial Day Weekend before us is an annual reminder of sacrifice and service—the kind that makes all the rest possible—from the family gatherings to the very freedoms we cherish. Originally called Decoration Day, it is a time to remember those who have died in our nation’s service—many of them, actually, since the 1930s.
My father, Dr. Gerald Stokes, now retired and living in Florida, served our nation during the Korean War. He recently wrote some thoughts about remembrance for his local newspaper:
“America must continue to remember if it is to continue to be blessed. Memorial Day must be more then picnics, time off from work, and fireworks. Schools must spend time refreshing the memories of all students of our heritage including those who are currently serving on two foreign fronts, and the Media must put ‘Remembrance’ on the top of the list of articles and stories they print and present. We must remember! We owe it to all who have given their all for the freedoms we enjoy.
At The Korean Memorial in Washington D.C., a Memorial the dedication of which I was please to be present in 1995, being a veteran of that war, has these words engraved above the 53,000 American and 650,000 Koreans and others who died in that horrendous conflict, ‘Freedom is not Free.’ Poignant words, and so true.”
To what my Dad has said I would only add that we not only have a problem with remembering in America these days, but also the tendency toward selective remembrance.
We are constantly reminded these days about remembering the 1930s—that’s the decade that inspires a new generation of ideological technocrats. It was a time of crisis and the danger was met and mastered by reputedly heroic people who offered a New Deal and saved everything. Anything that doesn’t fit neatly into that narrative becomes a nuisance and is ridiculed as mere nonsense.
The past 18 months have been the 1930s all over again—this is what we are being told. The problem is that the facts in no way support the story. Ignored is that fact that the 1930s were much tougher than anything any of us have had to experience recently. To suggest that what we have gone through in the past year and half even rises to such a standard of misery is an insult to the memory of those who endured so much hardship against the backdrop of false political hope, potent demagoguery, and broken promises.
The only way the “this is like that” card can be played is if “this” bears at least some resemblance to “that.” Can anyone seriously suggest that what our nation has been experiencing since around November of 2008 at all compares to bread lines, soup kitchens, unemployment rates fixed for years around 20%, and more than 9,000 banks failing? A little more than 200 banks have failed since the beginning of 2009, a rate on pace to better resemble the situation during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s—when 747 institutions went under—than the tsunami of failures during the 1930s.
The First World War, where so many died, now all-too-forgotten nearly a century later, was originally known as The Great War. Then came another global conflict and soon the idea of calling the forerunner “Great” was dropped. Admittedly, there are a few today, who in the spirit of perpetuating a “crisis mindset” want to refer to our current financial struggles as “The Second Great Depression,” but I have heard no one suggest the dropping of “Great” from the disaster of the 1930s. The Great Depression was a much bigger deal than anything ever since.
Now back to Mr. Obama’s comment about how bad it has been. It is hard to figure out what he was specifically referring to, but let’s give it a try.
First, if by “the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s” he means the geopolitical situation, I would encourage him to read any good history of World War Two—or watch the classic World At War videos narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier. All that happened before my time, but it looked pretty bad to me—worse than anything we have seen in the last year and a half.
He should also look at the mess Mr. Truman inherited and what he had to deal with, from the decision to drop the atomic bomb, to the birth of the Cold War, to massive labor unrest, and the need to somehow help defeated nations rebuild. Mr. Obama might also note that the Man from Missouri was virtually incapable of self-pity, even in low moments of cultural ridicule and political renouncement.
Maybe the President was talking about our economic struggles. If so, he might want to place a call to Plains, Georgia and talk to a certain former peanut farmer who happened to preside over an economy where people could only buy gasoline every other day and interest rates were upwards of 18 per cent. Possibly, Mr. Carter could give some advice on how ill-advised it is for a president to complain about how bad he has it—and to make sure his speech writers have the word “malaise” blocked on their grammar-checkers.
Oh—Oh—I’ve got it! Maybe Mr. Obama was talking about the political problems he’s having. Possibly that’s what set him off. The problem with that, though, is that he has had a pretty good run for the past year and a half with a largely complicit and complimentary press. Sure, his approval ratings are down—but not like the last “year and a half” of Harry Truman’s presidency, nor those of Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, not to mention the afore alluded to Jimmy Carter.
And some of his predecessors actually had to serve in the Oval Office with the other party in control of some or all of Congress. Mr. Obama’s bummer of a year and a half has played out with his party in control of virtually everything. In fact, the past year and a half has been one long power play. If his team can’t find the goal while the other team is short-handed, is it really history’s fault?
Or is it just possible that the reason comparisons are made between now and how bad it was in America 80 years ago help to lessen expectations? Well, that has been tried before. And when that president attempted to blame systemic political and administrative failure on this, that, or the other thing, instead of taking responsibility, he found himself a one-term chief executive. And in rode a man on a white horse, someone dismissed by the intelligentsia –a man who knew that what the nation needed was not someone to tell them how bad it was, but how good it could be.
In a way, President Obama’s problem is that he wants to be a charismatic leader—and that, as sociologist Max Weber wrote a century ago, requires the “milieu” of a chronic crisis. Such leaders capture the imagination of many when things are going bad. That’s why they have to keep them going bad—or at least appearing to do so.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Barack Obama recently referred to the time since his election as President of the United States as, “the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s.”
Ponder that curious, if not revealing observation for a moment.
The Memorial Day Weekend before us is an annual reminder of sacrifice and service—the kind that makes all the rest possible—from the family gatherings to the very freedoms we cherish. Originally called Decoration Day, it is a time to remember those who have died in our nation’s service—many of them, actually, since the 1930s.
My father, Dr. Gerald Stokes, now retired and living in Florida, served our nation during the Korean War. He recently wrote some thoughts about remembrance for his local newspaper:
“America must continue to remember if it is to continue to be blessed. Memorial Day must be more then picnics, time off from work, and fireworks. Schools must spend time refreshing the memories of all students of our heritage including those who are currently serving on two foreign fronts, and the Media must put ‘Remembrance’ on the top of the list of articles and stories they print and present. We must remember! We owe it to all who have given their all for the freedoms we enjoy.
At The Korean Memorial in Washington D.C., a Memorial the dedication of which I was please to be present in 1995, being a veteran of that war, has these words engraved above the 53,000 American and 650,000 Koreans and others who died in that horrendous conflict, ‘Freedom is not Free.’ Poignant words, and so true.”
To what my Dad has said I would only add that we not only have a problem with remembering in America these days, but also the tendency toward selective remembrance.
We are constantly reminded these days about remembering the 1930s—that’s the decade that inspires a new generation of ideological technocrats. It was a time of crisis and the danger was met and mastered by reputedly heroic people who offered a New Deal and saved everything. Anything that doesn’t fit neatly into that narrative becomes a nuisance and is ridiculed as mere nonsense.
The past 18 months have been the 1930s all over again—this is what we are being told. The problem is that the facts in no way support the story. Ignored is that fact that the 1930s were much tougher than anything any of us have had to experience recently. To suggest that what we have gone through in the past year and half even rises to such a standard of misery is an insult to the memory of those who endured so much hardship against the backdrop of false political hope, potent demagoguery, and broken promises.
The only way the “this is like that” card can be played is if “this” bears at least some resemblance to “that.” Can anyone seriously suggest that what our nation has been experiencing since around November of 2008 at all compares to bread lines, soup kitchens, unemployment rates fixed for years around 20%, and more than 9,000 banks failing? A little more than 200 banks have failed since the beginning of 2009, a rate on pace to better resemble the situation during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s—when 747 institutions went under—than the tsunami of failures during the 1930s.
The First World War, where so many died, now all-too-forgotten nearly a century later, was originally known as The Great War. Then came another global conflict and soon the idea of calling the forerunner “Great” was dropped. Admittedly, there are a few today, who in the spirit of perpetuating a “crisis mindset” want to refer to our current financial struggles as “The Second Great Depression,” but I have heard no one suggest the dropping of “Great” from the disaster of the 1930s. The Great Depression was a much bigger deal than anything ever since.
Now back to Mr. Obama’s comment about how bad it has been. It is hard to figure out what he was specifically referring to, but let’s give it a try.
First, if by “the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s” he means the geopolitical situation, I would encourage him to read any good history of World War Two—or watch the classic World At War videos narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier. All that happened before my time, but it looked pretty bad to me—worse than anything we have seen in the last year and a half.
He should also look at the mess Mr. Truman inherited and what he had to deal with, from the decision to drop the atomic bomb, to the birth of the Cold War, to massive labor unrest, and the need to somehow help defeated nations rebuild. Mr. Obama might also note that the Man from Missouri was virtually incapable of self-pity, even in low moments of cultural ridicule and political renouncement.
Maybe the President was talking about our economic struggles. If so, he might want to place a call to Plains, Georgia and talk to a certain former peanut farmer who happened to preside over an economy where people could only buy gasoline every other day and interest rates were upwards of 18 per cent. Possibly, Mr. Carter could give some advice on how ill-advised it is for a president to complain about how bad he has it—and to make sure his speech writers have the word “malaise” blocked on their grammar-checkers.
Oh—Oh—I’ve got it! Maybe Mr. Obama was talking about the political problems he’s having. Possibly that’s what set him off. The problem with that, though, is that he has had a pretty good run for the past year and a half with a largely complicit and complimentary press. Sure, his approval ratings are down—but not like the last “year and a half” of Harry Truman’s presidency, nor those of Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, not to mention the afore alluded to Jimmy Carter.
And some of his predecessors actually had to serve in the Oval Office with the other party in control of some or all of Congress. Mr. Obama’s bummer of a year and a half has played out with his party in control of virtually everything. In fact, the past year and a half has been one long power play. If his team can’t find the goal while the other team is short-handed, is it really history’s fault?
Or is it just possible that the reason comparisons are made between now and how bad it was in America 80 years ago help to lessen expectations? Well, that has been tried before. And when that president attempted to blame systemic political and administrative failure on this, that, or the other thing, instead of taking responsibility, he found himself a one-term chief executive. And in rode a man on a white horse, someone dismissed by the intelligentsia –a man who knew that what the nation needed was not someone to tell them how bad it was, but how good it could be.
In a way, President Obama’s problem is that he wants to be a charismatic leader—and that, as sociologist Max Weber wrote a century ago, requires the “milieu” of a chronic crisis. Such leaders capture the imagination of many when things are going bad. That’s why they have to keep them going bad—or at least appearing to do so.
Has Obama "Stimulated" the Economy Yet?
Austin Hill
Sunday, May 30, 2010
President Obama has a need to further stimulate the economy.
But does the economy really need more Obama-styled stimulation?
Speaking in Paris, France this past week, Christina Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers noted that "It would be wrong to tighten fiscal policy immediately, as that would nip the nascent economic recovery in the bud.” During a week when President Obama was busy raising campaign cash for Senator Barbara Boxer in San Francisco, taking photos with the Duke University basketball team at the White House, lunching with Bill Clinton, and – yes – holding his first press conference in ten months to talk about the gulf oil spill, Ms. Romer traveled to Europe as the President’s representative to the annual meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a 31-nation watchdog that includes the world's richest economies.
While there, Ms. Romer astutely observed that “unemployment is still painfully high,” and that "nothing would be more damaging than a protracted recession that brought about permanent high unemployment.” She further noted that the President was planning “further targeted fiscal actions” to stimulate the U.S. economy, after the President’s current economic stimulus plan “winds down” next year.
Ms. Romer’s remarks, innocuous and non-substantive as they were, nonetheless were consistent with the Obama Administration’s overall public posture on the economy. Yet her comments also serve as an additional reminder of two extremely important truths – truths that at times seem all but forgotten, in the midst of the ongoing economic hardship.
For one, President Obama’s “need” to stimulate the economy, and the genuine needs of the economy itself, are not the same thing. Elected politicians like the U.S. President generally always have an immediate need to appear as though they’re doing something constructive, and to make people feel good about the economy (or at least as good as they possibly can) right here, and right now.
In the past sixteen months, Mr. Obama’s immediate, short-term political need has produced a lot of public policy that positions the President to appear as though he’s rescuing people – rescuing them from the economic downturn, from “greedy bankers” and “rich executives,” from the threat of home foreclosure, from credit card debt, and so forth. And part of the political calculus involved with this kind of policy is the assumption that as long as the President gives away enough “things” to the American electorate, and appears as though he’s doing enough to “protect” them, the electorate will continue to vote for him and his party, regardless of what the economy does. This is a big gamble, to be sure, but we don’t know yet if the President’s approach will produce either political or economic success (he could up with both, neither, or one without the other).
Yet, another important truth in the midst of the murkiness is that far too much of this type of economic policy is built upon the “false assumption of government goodness.” The “false assumption of government goodness” stipulates that greed, scandal, and injustice only happen in the private sector economy at the hands of “rich people,” while those in the public sector – elected politicians and bureaucrats alike – always “do the right thing,” always manage economic resources to their best possible ends, and always act selflessly in the interests of the common good.
Thus, it is presumed, everything that President Obama seeks to do with our nation’s economic resources is for the good of everybody, done out of the benevolence of his heart. A government take-over of General Motors and Chrysler? That was done only for the sake of “saving American jobs,” right? Except that the President violated U.S. bankruptcy laws with the ways in which his Administration forced Chrysler’s secured creditors to accept pennies on the dollar as a bankruptcy “settlement” (among the secured creditors were a retirement fund for school teachers and police officers in the “red state” of Indiana), and our tax dollars are continuing to subsidize both companies even when they’re not selling adequate numbers of cars to make ends meet.
But yes, Obama “saved American jobs.” In particular he “saved” jobs occupied by members of the United Auto Workers Union, a major political supporter of President Obama and the Democratic Party. Indeed the assumption of “government goodness” is clearly false with the “government motors” scenario.
And nationalized healthcare was all about Obama blessing us with goodness, right? Well, Obamacare is so good that over half the states in our union are suing the federal government to prevent the implementation of the President’s “plan,” and nearly 70% of the American electorate now wants it repealed.
It probably doesn’t even cross Christina Romer’s mind (or Barack Obama’s, for that matter) that the constant extension of federal unemployment benefits (that have now been “extended” in some states for over two years), the likes of which she was advocating in Paris last week, might actually be giving people a dis-incentive to get back to work. But that leads us back to “truth number one,” which I’ll state here in a slightly different way: good politics does not always amount to good economic policy.
May America elect to “stop the stimulus” – before it kills us all.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
President Obama has a need to further stimulate the economy.
But does the economy really need more Obama-styled stimulation?
Speaking in Paris, France this past week, Christina Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers noted that "It would be wrong to tighten fiscal policy immediately, as that would nip the nascent economic recovery in the bud.” During a week when President Obama was busy raising campaign cash for Senator Barbara Boxer in San Francisco, taking photos with the Duke University basketball team at the White House, lunching with Bill Clinton, and – yes – holding his first press conference in ten months to talk about the gulf oil spill, Ms. Romer traveled to Europe as the President’s representative to the annual meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a 31-nation watchdog that includes the world's richest economies.
While there, Ms. Romer astutely observed that “unemployment is still painfully high,” and that "nothing would be more damaging than a protracted recession that brought about permanent high unemployment.” She further noted that the President was planning “further targeted fiscal actions” to stimulate the U.S. economy, after the President’s current economic stimulus plan “winds down” next year.
Ms. Romer’s remarks, innocuous and non-substantive as they were, nonetheless were consistent with the Obama Administration’s overall public posture on the economy. Yet her comments also serve as an additional reminder of two extremely important truths – truths that at times seem all but forgotten, in the midst of the ongoing economic hardship.
For one, President Obama’s “need” to stimulate the economy, and the genuine needs of the economy itself, are not the same thing. Elected politicians like the U.S. President generally always have an immediate need to appear as though they’re doing something constructive, and to make people feel good about the economy (or at least as good as they possibly can) right here, and right now.
In the past sixteen months, Mr. Obama’s immediate, short-term political need has produced a lot of public policy that positions the President to appear as though he’s rescuing people – rescuing them from the economic downturn, from “greedy bankers” and “rich executives,” from the threat of home foreclosure, from credit card debt, and so forth. And part of the political calculus involved with this kind of policy is the assumption that as long as the President gives away enough “things” to the American electorate, and appears as though he’s doing enough to “protect” them, the electorate will continue to vote for him and his party, regardless of what the economy does. This is a big gamble, to be sure, but we don’t know yet if the President’s approach will produce either political or economic success (he could up with both, neither, or one without the other).
Yet, another important truth in the midst of the murkiness is that far too much of this type of economic policy is built upon the “false assumption of government goodness.” The “false assumption of government goodness” stipulates that greed, scandal, and injustice only happen in the private sector economy at the hands of “rich people,” while those in the public sector – elected politicians and bureaucrats alike – always “do the right thing,” always manage economic resources to their best possible ends, and always act selflessly in the interests of the common good.
Thus, it is presumed, everything that President Obama seeks to do with our nation’s economic resources is for the good of everybody, done out of the benevolence of his heart. A government take-over of General Motors and Chrysler? That was done only for the sake of “saving American jobs,” right? Except that the President violated U.S. bankruptcy laws with the ways in which his Administration forced Chrysler’s secured creditors to accept pennies on the dollar as a bankruptcy “settlement” (among the secured creditors were a retirement fund for school teachers and police officers in the “red state” of Indiana), and our tax dollars are continuing to subsidize both companies even when they’re not selling adequate numbers of cars to make ends meet.
But yes, Obama “saved American jobs.” In particular he “saved” jobs occupied by members of the United Auto Workers Union, a major political supporter of President Obama and the Democratic Party. Indeed the assumption of “government goodness” is clearly false with the “government motors” scenario.
And nationalized healthcare was all about Obama blessing us with goodness, right? Well, Obamacare is so good that over half the states in our union are suing the federal government to prevent the implementation of the President’s “plan,” and nearly 70% of the American electorate now wants it repealed.
It probably doesn’t even cross Christina Romer’s mind (or Barack Obama’s, for that matter) that the constant extension of federal unemployment benefits (that have now been “extended” in some states for over two years), the likes of which she was advocating in Paris last week, might actually be giving people a dis-incentive to get back to work. But that leads us back to “truth number one,” which I’ll state here in a slightly different way: good politics does not always amount to good economic policy.
May America elect to “stop the stimulus” – before it kills us all.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
King Barack the Verbose
He is less accountable than the older kind of royalty.
Mark Steyn
Saturday, May 29, 2010
One of the chief characteristics of Barack Obama’s speechifying is its contempt for words as anything other than props of self-puffery. Consider, for example, his recent remarks to the graduating class of the United States Military Academy:
“America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation — we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice.”
“Steering those currents”? How could even a member of the president’s insulated, self-regarding speechwriting team be so tin-eared as to write that line? How could the president be so tone-deaf as to deliver it in May of 2010? Hey, genius, if you’re so damn good at “steering currents,” why not try doing it in the Gulf of Mexico?
As for many great “thinkers,” for Barack Obama and his coterie words seem to exist mostly in the realm of metaphor rather than as descriptors of actual action actually occurring in anything so humdrum as reality. And so it is that, even as his bungling administration flounders in the turbulent waters of the Gulf, on the speaker’s podium the president still confidently sails forth deftly steering the ship through the narrow ribbon of sludge between the Scylla of sonorous banality and the Charybdis of gaseous uplift.
Two years ago this week, then-Senator Obama declared that his very nomination as Democratic-party presidential candidate (never mind his election, or inauguration) marked the moment when “our planet began to heal” and “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” “Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute,” remarked Charles Krauthammer the other day, “you mustn’t be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.”
Poor old Canute has been traduced by posterity. He was the Viking king of Denmark, England, Norway, and bits of Sweden, which, as Joe Biden would say, was a big (expletive) deal back in the 11th century. And, like Good King Barack, he had a court full of oleaginous sycophants who were forever telling him, as Newsweek editor Evan Thomas said of Obama, that he’s “sort of God.” So one day, weary of being surrounded by Chris Matthews types with the legs a-tingling 24/7, Canute ordered the footmen to take his throne down to the shore and he’d command the incoming waves to stay the hell out. Just like Obama, he would steer the very currents. Next thing you know, Canute’s got seaweed in his wingtips and is back at the palace wringing out his Argyll socks. “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings,” he said, “for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”
In other words, he was teaching his courtiers a lesson in the limits of kingly power. I’m a child of the British Empire and, back in my kindergarten days, almost all the stories we were taught about kings went more or less the same way. Generations of English children learned of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex back in the 9th century. Another A-list bigshot: Winston Churchill called him “the greatest Englishman that ever lived.” One day, during a tumultuous time in the affairs of his kingdom, he passed a remote cottage and called in on the local peasant woman to rest a while. Unaware of who he was, she went off to milk the cow and told him to mind the cakes she’d left on the hearth. He was a big-picture guy preoccupied with geopolitical macro-trends and he absentmindedly let the cakes burn. She took him to task (“You’re happy to eat the cakes but too lazy to keep an eye on them”) but, upon realizing he was the king, begged a thousand pardons. “No, no,” he said. “Entirely my fault.” And there in the rude hovel he humbly turned the woman’s loaves for her.
In the age of kings, we were taught that kings were human, with human failings. Now, in the age of citizen-presidents, we are taught that government has unlimited powers over “heaven, earth, and sea.” Unlike Canute and Alfred, the vanity of Big Government knows no bounds. Tim Flannery, the Aussie global warm-monger who chaired the Copenhagen climate circus a few months back, announces with a straight face that “we’re trying to act as a species to regulate the atmosphere.” Never mind anything so footling as the incoming tides, but the very atmosphere! How do you do that? Well, first, take one extremely large check. Next, add several extra zeroes to it. Then, toss it out the window. “He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws”? Hah! That’s chickenfeed compared to the way things are gonna be once heaven, earth, and sea are forced to submit to a transnational micro-regulatory regime.
Almost every problem we face today arises from the vanity of Big Government. Why has BP got oil wells 5,000 feet underwater in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? Because government regulated them off-land, off-coast, and ever deeper into the briny. True, BP went along. Its initials stand for “British Petroleum.” You may not be aware of that if you’ve seen any of their commercials in recent years: “BP — Beyond Petroleum.” They were an oil company ashamed of their product, and advertising only how anxious they were to get with the environmental program. And a fat lot of good that did them. BP, not to mention its customers, would have been better to push back against government policies that drive energy suppliers into ever more unpredictable terrain in order to protect the Alaskan breeding grounds of the world’s largest mosquito herd. Instead, we’ll do the opposite. There’ll be even more government protection of “the environment,” and even more government regulation of the oil industry, and BP will be drilling for oil in that Icelandic volcano.
It’s the same in Europe. Greece’s problem isn’t so very difficult to diagnose. Like many Western nations, its government has spent tomorrow today. As in New York and California, public-sector unions have looted the future. This is the entirely foreseeable consequence of government policy.
So what’s the solution? The international bailout (including a hefty contribution by U.S. taxpayers) is a massive subsidy to the Greeks to carry on doing all the stuff that’s got ’em into their present mess. The European motive for doing this is to “save the euro” — a currency whose very existence is a monument to the unbounded narcissism of government. The euro notes are decorated by scenic views of handsome Renaissance, Gothic, and classical edifices — just like the White House on U.S. currency. The only difference is that the European buildings do not exist in what we used to call the real world. They’re entirely fictional. That’s Big Government: Even if you don’t build it, they’ll still come. If you invent a currency for a united Europe, a united Europe is sure to follow.
The princelings of the new ruling class rarely have to live with the consequences of their narcissism. Nancy Pelosi can monkey with your health care, but hers will still be grand. Greek bureaucrats can regulate your business into the ground, but they’ll still have their pensions and benefits. And, when the cakes are burning to a crisp, King Barack the Verbose won’t be in the peasant hovel with you but off giving a critically acclaimed speech about how the world works best when we all get an equal slice of the pie.
Mark Steyn
Saturday, May 29, 2010
One of the chief characteristics of Barack Obama’s speechifying is its contempt for words as anything other than props of self-puffery. Consider, for example, his recent remarks to the graduating class of the United States Military Academy:
“America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation — we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice.”
“Steering those currents”? How could even a member of the president’s insulated, self-regarding speechwriting team be so tin-eared as to write that line? How could the president be so tone-deaf as to deliver it in May of 2010? Hey, genius, if you’re so damn good at “steering currents,” why not try doing it in the Gulf of Mexico?
As for many great “thinkers,” for Barack Obama and his coterie words seem to exist mostly in the realm of metaphor rather than as descriptors of actual action actually occurring in anything so humdrum as reality. And so it is that, even as his bungling administration flounders in the turbulent waters of the Gulf, on the speaker’s podium the president still confidently sails forth deftly steering the ship through the narrow ribbon of sludge between the Scylla of sonorous banality and the Charybdis of gaseous uplift.
Two years ago this week, then-Senator Obama declared that his very nomination as Democratic-party presidential candidate (never mind his election, or inauguration) marked the moment when “our planet began to heal” and “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” “Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute,” remarked Charles Krauthammer the other day, “you mustn’t be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.”
Poor old Canute has been traduced by posterity. He was the Viking king of Denmark, England, Norway, and bits of Sweden, which, as Joe Biden would say, was a big (expletive) deal back in the 11th century. And, like Good King Barack, he had a court full of oleaginous sycophants who were forever telling him, as Newsweek editor Evan Thomas said of Obama, that he’s “sort of God.” So one day, weary of being surrounded by Chris Matthews types with the legs a-tingling 24/7, Canute ordered the footmen to take his throne down to the shore and he’d command the incoming waves to stay the hell out. Just like Obama, he would steer the very currents. Next thing you know, Canute’s got seaweed in his wingtips and is back at the palace wringing out his Argyll socks. “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings,” he said, “for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”
In other words, he was teaching his courtiers a lesson in the limits of kingly power. I’m a child of the British Empire and, back in my kindergarten days, almost all the stories we were taught about kings went more or less the same way. Generations of English children learned of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex back in the 9th century. Another A-list bigshot: Winston Churchill called him “the greatest Englishman that ever lived.” One day, during a tumultuous time in the affairs of his kingdom, he passed a remote cottage and called in on the local peasant woman to rest a while. Unaware of who he was, she went off to milk the cow and told him to mind the cakes she’d left on the hearth. He was a big-picture guy preoccupied with geopolitical macro-trends and he absentmindedly let the cakes burn. She took him to task (“You’re happy to eat the cakes but too lazy to keep an eye on them”) but, upon realizing he was the king, begged a thousand pardons. “No, no,” he said. “Entirely my fault.” And there in the rude hovel he humbly turned the woman’s loaves for her.
In the age of kings, we were taught that kings were human, with human failings. Now, in the age of citizen-presidents, we are taught that government has unlimited powers over “heaven, earth, and sea.” Unlike Canute and Alfred, the vanity of Big Government knows no bounds. Tim Flannery, the Aussie global warm-monger who chaired the Copenhagen climate circus a few months back, announces with a straight face that “we’re trying to act as a species to regulate the atmosphere.” Never mind anything so footling as the incoming tides, but the very atmosphere! How do you do that? Well, first, take one extremely large check. Next, add several extra zeroes to it. Then, toss it out the window. “He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws”? Hah! That’s chickenfeed compared to the way things are gonna be once heaven, earth, and sea are forced to submit to a transnational micro-regulatory regime.
Almost every problem we face today arises from the vanity of Big Government. Why has BP got oil wells 5,000 feet underwater in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? Because government regulated them off-land, off-coast, and ever deeper into the briny. True, BP went along. Its initials stand for “British Petroleum.” You may not be aware of that if you’ve seen any of their commercials in recent years: “BP — Beyond Petroleum.” They were an oil company ashamed of their product, and advertising only how anxious they were to get with the environmental program. And a fat lot of good that did them. BP, not to mention its customers, would have been better to push back against government policies that drive energy suppliers into ever more unpredictable terrain in order to protect the Alaskan breeding grounds of the world’s largest mosquito herd. Instead, we’ll do the opposite. There’ll be even more government protection of “the environment,” and even more government regulation of the oil industry, and BP will be drilling for oil in that Icelandic volcano.
It’s the same in Europe. Greece’s problem isn’t so very difficult to diagnose. Like many Western nations, its government has spent tomorrow today. As in New York and California, public-sector unions have looted the future. This is the entirely foreseeable consequence of government policy.
So what’s the solution? The international bailout (including a hefty contribution by U.S. taxpayers) is a massive subsidy to the Greeks to carry on doing all the stuff that’s got ’em into their present mess. The European motive for doing this is to “save the euro” — a currency whose very existence is a monument to the unbounded narcissism of government. The euro notes are decorated by scenic views of handsome Renaissance, Gothic, and classical edifices — just like the White House on U.S. currency. The only difference is that the European buildings do not exist in what we used to call the real world. They’re entirely fictional. That’s Big Government: Even if you don’t build it, they’ll still come. If you invent a currency for a united Europe, a united Europe is sure to follow.
The princelings of the new ruling class rarely have to live with the consequences of their narcissism. Nancy Pelosi can monkey with your health care, but hers will still be grand. Greek bureaucrats can regulate your business into the ground, but they’ll still have their pensions and benefits. And, when the cakes are burning to a crisp, King Barack the Verbose won’t be in the peasant hovel with you but off giving a critically acclaimed speech about how the world works best when we all get an equal slice of the pie.
Ken Cuccinelli v. 810 academics
Paul Driessen
Saturday, May 29, 2010
“Scientific debates should be played out in the academic arena,” insists University of Virginia environmental sciences professor David Carr. “If Michael Mann’s conclusions are unsupported by his data, his scientific critics will eventually demonstrate this.”
Carr and 809 other Virginia scientists and academics signed a petition launched by the activist Union of Concerned Scientists, protesting Commonwealth Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s investigation of former University of Virginia professor Michael Mann. The American Association of University Professors likewise opposes Cuccinelli, who is seeking documents from UVA, to determine whether there are grounds to prosecute Mann for violating the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, by presenting false or misleading information in support of applications for state-funded research.
Carr claims Cuccinelli is attempting to “drown out” scientific debate.” Others have accused the AG of conducting a “witch hunt,” engaging in “McCarthyite” tactics, and “restricting academic freedom.”
It’s time to clear a few things up.
Mann is the former UVA professor, whose “hockey stick” temperature chart was used to promote claims that “sudden” and “unprecedented” manmade global warming “threatens” human civilization and Earth itself. The hockey stick was first broken by climatologists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, who demonstrated that a Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were clearly reflected in historic data across the globe, but redacted by Mann. Analysts Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick later showed that Mann’s computer program generated hockey-stick patterns regardless of what numbers were fed into it – even random telephone numbers; that explained why the global warming and cooling of the last millennium magically disappeared in Mann’s “temperature reconstruction.”
The Climategate emails revealed another deliberate “trick” that Mann used to generate a late twentieth-century temperature jump: he replaced tree ring data with thermometer measurements at the point in his timeline when the tree data no longer fit his climate disaster thesis. During his UVA tenure, he employed other sly statistical tricks to generate a purported, and truly unprecedented, CO2-driven warming of 2-4.5 degrees F per decade (1-2.5 degrees C). That extrapolates to as much as 45 degrees F per century!
Not surprisingly, he refused to share his data, computer codes and methodologies with skeptical scientists. Perhaps worse, Climategate emails indicate that Mann and others conspired to co-opt and corrupt the very scientific process that Carr asserts will ultimately condemn or vindicate them.
This behavior certainly gives Cuccinelli “probable cause” for launching an investigation. As the AG notes, “The same legal standards for fraud apply to the academic setting that apply elsewhere. The same rule of law, the same objective fact-finding process, will take place.” Some witch hunt.
There is simply no room in science, academia or public policy for manipulation, falsification or fraud. Academic freedom does not confer a right to engage in such practices, and both attorneys general and research institutions have a duty to root them out, especially in the case of climate change research.
Work by Mann and other alarmist scientists is not merely some theoretical exercise that can be permitted to “play itself out” over many years, if and when the “academic arena” gets around to it. These assertions of climate crisis are being used right now by Congress, states, courts and the Environmental Protection Agency to justify draconian restrictions on energy use and greenhouse emissions. They would shackle our freedoms and civil rights and hammer our jobs, economy, health, welfare and living standards.
If the science is wrong – or far worse, if it is manipulated, fabricated, fraudulent and covered up – then grave damage will be done to our nation, liberties and families, before the truth gets its boots on.
As to “scientific debate” over global warming, there has been virtually none in the academic arena. The science is viewed as “settled,” debate has been squelched, and those who seek to initiate debate are attacked, vilified, harassed and shipped off to academic Siberia.
Dr. Patrick Michaels, another former UVA climate researcher, was fired as Virginia State Climatologist by then-Governor Tim Kaine for raising inconvenient questions and facts on climate science. When Greenpeace demanded access to Michaels’ emails, UVA promptly acceded – before contesting AG Cuccinelli’s request for Mann’s.
The 810 protesters and their UCS and AAUP consorts were silent. Their principles and objections do not seem to apply to shrill activist groups infringing on the academic and scientific freedom of “politically incorrect” researchers, even when there is no suggestion of dishonesty. Other “skeptical” climate researchers have met with similar fates. The pungent scent of hypocrisy fills the air.
No surprise there. The massive US government climate change research gravy train alone totaled some $9 billion in grants during 2009, courtesy of hardworking taxpayers. IPCC, EU & Company climate grants – plus billions more for renewable energy research – fatten the larder still further. Now that money, prestige and power are threatened.
Climategate and other revelations about the lack of evidence for the “manmade climate disaster” thesis have sent belief in AlGorean gloom and doom plummeting. Global warming consistently comes in dead last on any list of environmental concerns. Three-fourths of Americans are unwilling to spend more than $100 a year to prevent climate change. China, India and other developing nations properly refuse to sign a carbon-cutting economic suicide pact.
The public is rightly concerned that in-house investigations by Penn State University (Mann’s current institution), East Anglia University (home of Phil Jones and the Climategate emails) and the IPCC have the patina of a Tom Sawyer whitewash. Independent investigations like Cuccinelli’s are absolutely essential, to ferret out fraud and misconduct – which may be rare but must be dealt with when it happens.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield falsified studies to create a connection between autism and trace mercury in vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella. Britain stripped him of his right to practice medicine. But meanwhile, a lingering stench remains over double standards; World Wildlife Fund press releases and rank speculation masquerading as peer-reviewed science; computer models enshrined as “proof” of looming climate disasters; and billions being squandered on research purporting to link global warming to nearly every malady and phenomenon known to man.
We the taxpayers are paying for this work. We the people will pay the price – in soaring energy bills, fewer jobs, lower living standards and lost freedoms – for draconian energy and emission laws enacted in the name of saving the planet.
We have a right to insist that the research be honest and aboveboard. That the work products stay in the public domain, available for scrutiny. That researchers share their data, computer codes and analytical methodologies, and engage in robust debate with skeptics and critics. That those who violate these fundamental precepts forfeit their access to future grants. And that our tax dollars no longer fund bogus acne-and-climate-change studies and alarmist propaganda. (Talk about budget cutting opportunities!)
It’s certainly understandable that scientists, academics, eco-activists and the AAUP and UVA would line up behind Mann and against Cuccinelli. There’s a lot of power, prestige and cash on the line. But it is essential that the attorney general and law-abiding citizens insist on transparency, integrity, credibility and accountability in the climate change arena.
We should support what Ken Cuccinelli is doing – and demand that Eric Holder and other state AGs take similar action.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
“Scientific debates should be played out in the academic arena,” insists University of Virginia environmental sciences professor David Carr. “If Michael Mann’s conclusions are unsupported by his data, his scientific critics will eventually demonstrate this.”
Carr and 809 other Virginia scientists and academics signed a petition launched by the activist Union of Concerned Scientists, protesting Commonwealth Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s investigation of former University of Virginia professor Michael Mann. The American Association of University Professors likewise opposes Cuccinelli, who is seeking documents from UVA, to determine whether there are grounds to prosecute Mann for violating the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, by presenting false or misleading information in support of applications for state-funded research.
Carr claims Cuccinelli is attempting to “drown out” scientific debate.” Others have accused the AG of conducting a “witch hunt,” engaging in “McCarthyite” tactics, and “restricting academic freedom.”
It’s time to clear a few things up.
Mann is the former UVA professor, whose “hockey stick” temperature chart was used to promote claims that “sudden” and “unprecedented” manmade global warming “threatens” human civilization and Earth itself. The hockey stick was first broken by climatologists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, who demonstrated that a Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were clearly reflected in historic data across the globe, but redacted by Mann. Analysts Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick later showed that Mann’s computer program generated hockey-stick patterns regardless of what numbers were fed into it – even random telephone numbers; that explained why the global warming and cooling of the last millennium magically disappeared in Mann’s “temperature reconstruction.”
The Climategate emails revealed another deliberate “trick” that Mann used to generate a late twentieth-century temperature jump: he replaced tree ring data with thermometer measurements at the point in his timeline when the tree data no longer fit his climate disaster thesis. During his UVA tenure, he employed other sly statistical tricks to generate a purported, and truly unprecedented, CO2-driven warming of 2-4.5 degrees F per decade (1-2.5 degrees C). That extrapolates to as much as 45 degrees F per century!
Not surprisingly, he refused to share his data, computer codes and methodologies with skeptical scientists. Perhaps worse, Climategate emails indicate that Mann and others conspired to co-opt and corrupt the very scientific process that Carr asserts will ultimately condemn or vindicate them.
This behavior certainly gives Cuccinelli “probable cause” for launching an investigation. As the AG notes, “The same legal standards for fraud apply to the academic setting that apply elsewhere. The same rule of law, the same objective fact-finding process, will take place.” Some witch hunt.
There is simply no room in science, academia or public policy for manipulation, falsification or fraud. Academic freedom does not confer a right to engage in such practices, and both attorneys general and research institutions have a duty to root them out, especially in the case of climate change research.
Work by Mann and other alarmist scientists is not merely some theoretical exercise that can be permitted to “play itself out” over many years, if and when the “academic arena” gets around to it. These assertions of climate crisis are being used right now by Congress, states, courts and the Environmental Protection Agency to justify draconian restrictions on energy use and greenhouse emissions. They would shackle our freedoms and civil rights and hammer our jobs, economy, health, welfare and living standards.
If the science is wrong – or far worse, if it is manipulated, fabricated, fraudulent and covered up – then grave damage will be done to our nation, liberties and families, before the truth gets its boots on.
As to “scientific debate” over global warming, there has been virtually none in the academic arena. The science is viewed as “settled,” debate has been squelched, and those who seek to initiate debate are attacked, vilified, harassed and shipped off to academic Siberia.
Dr. Patrick Michaels, another former UVA climate researcher, was fired as Virginia State Climatologist by then-Governor Tim Kaine for raising inconvenient questions and facts on climate science. When Greenpeace demanded access to Michaels’ emails, UVA promptly acceded – before contesting AG Cuccinelli’s request for Mann’s.
The 810 protesters and their UCS and AAUP consorts were silent. Their principles and objections do not seem to apply to shrill activist groups infringing on the academic and scientific freedom of “politically incorrect” researchers, even when there is no suggestion of dishonesty. Other “skeptical” climate researchers have met with similar fates. The pungent scent of hypocrisy fills the air.
No surprise there. The massive US government climate change research gravy train alone totaled some $9 billion in grants during 2009, courtesy of hardworking taxpayers. IPCC, EU & Company climate grants – plus billions more for renewable energy research – fatten the larder still further. Now that money, prestige and power are threatened.
Climategate and other revelations about the lack of evidence for the “manmade climate disaster” thesis have sent belief in AlGorean gloom and doom plummeting. Global warming consistently comes in dead last on any list of environmental concerns. Three-fourths of Americans are unwilling to spend more than $100 a year to prevent climate change. China, India and other developing nations properly refuse to sign a carbon-cutting economic suicide pact.
The public is rightly concerned that in-house investigations by Penn State University (Mann’s current institution), East Anglia University (home of Phil Jones and the Climategate emails) and the IPCC have the patina of a Tom Sawyer whitewash. Independent investigations like Cuccinelli’s are absolutely essential, to ferret out fraud and misconduct – which may be rare but must be dealt with when it happens.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield falsified studies to create a connection between autism and trace mercury in vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella. Britain stripped him of his right to practice medicine. But meanwhile, a lingering stench remains over double standards; World Wildlife Fund press releases and rank speculation masquerading as peer-reviewed science; computer models enshrined as “proof” of looming climate disasters; and billions being squandered on research purporting to link global warming to nearly every malady and phenomenon known to man.
We the taxpayers are paying for this work. We the people will pay the price – in soaring energy bills, fewer jobs, lower living standards and lost freedoms – for draconian energy and emission laws enacted in the name of saving the planet.
We have a right to insist that the research be honest and aboveboard. That the work products stay in the public domain, available for scrutiny. That researchers share their data, computer codes and analytical methodologies, and engage in robust debate with skeptics and critics. That those who violate these fundamental precepts forfeit their access to future grants. And that our tax dollars no longer fund bogus acne-and-climate-change studies and alarmist propaganda. (Talk about budget cutting opportunities!)
It’s certainly understandable that scientists, academics, eco-activists and the AAUP and UVA would line up behind Mann and against Cuccinelli. There’s a lot of power, prestige and cash on the line. But it is essential that the attorney general and law-abiding citizens insist on transparency, integrity, credibility and accountability in the climate change arena.
We should support what Ken Cuccinelli is doing – and demand that Eric Holder and other state AGs take similar action.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Joe Biden’s Brussels Spout
Brussels doesn’t stand for freedom, it sits for its own self-aggrandizement, social engineering, the tyranny of legalisms, and diplomatic argy-bargy.
Jonah Goldberg
Friday, May 28, 2010
‘Joe Biden.” With the exception of “broken teleprompter,” these are the scariest two words in the White House communications shop.
One advantage Biden has over Obama is he can always claim he was “just being Joe” whenever he says something controversial. In this way, Biden reminds me a bit of the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who would say “nice” things in English and evil things in Arabic. The press would largely ignore the Arabic and take him at his word in English.
Biden gets away with a similar technique, only it’s all in English. It’s just that when he’s “just being Joe,” he gets a pass.
It would be one thing if all Biden did was offer the occasional Washington gaffe (i.e., accidentally telling the truth), or if he merely talked as if he learned history from Monty Python skits, as when he claimed that FDR went on TV to reassure Americans after the 1929 stock market crash. (FDR wasn’t president. No one had TV). But that’s not how he rolls.
Earlier this month, Biden spoke to the European Parliament in Brussels. “As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, D.C., as the ‘capital of the free world.’ But it seems to me that this great city, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title.”
Now, as Biden said after the passage of Obamacare, this is a big (expletive deleted) deal. Sure, you can downgrade it to mere diplo-flattery, but that’s just the geopolitical equivalent of giving Biden the same free pass he always gets.
Still, I’d give him a pass, too, if this was crazy Joe talking. We’d all just roll our eyes if he came in there reciting Irish limericks in Klingon and claiming that we can switch from fossil fuels to Grape Nuts cereal.
But this wasn’t Joe just being Joe. How do we know? Because these were prepared remarks, and they fit perfectly with the White House’s approach to foreign policy.
In speeches around the world, Obama has offered apologies, confessions, and indictments of his own country. Save for the Afghanistan surge, Obama’s foreign policy has pointed toward the idea that America needs to downgrade its sense of exceptionalism. What better way to do that than to concede the title of leader of the free world, without a fight, to a Belgian backwater known for its absurd European regulations, urinating statues, and excellent beer?
In 2003, Don Rumsfeld’s talk of “old Europe” ignited an international firestorm. But when Biden suggests that the lamplight of liberty shines most brightly from Brussels, the collective response is either quiet nodding from the Left or “there he goes again” from the Right.
How about we take Biden seriously instead?
Let’s look at Biden’s case for Brussels as Freedom Command Alpha. It’s 1,000 years old! Okay. But for most (all) of that time, Brussels was hardly synonymous with “freedom.” Beijing is twice as old as Brussels, Cairo older still. Does that burnish their liberty-loving street cred?
Aha, but Biden adds that Brussels is the capital of Belgium! While I’m sure that’s a huge matter of pride in high-school ping-pong competitions against Antwerp, does anyone else care?
It’s true that Brussels is the headquarters for NATO, but NATO takes its orders from a different capital — Washington, D.C.
Then there’s the fact that the EU has set up shop in Brussels. Surely this was really Biden’s only point. He was telling the unaccountable Lilliputians of the Eurocracy that Gulliver sees them as equals now.
We’ve gone through the looking glass. Brussels has no love for freedom as we define it in the American sense, and it has little to no power to promote it in any sense. The pencil pushers in Brussels have almost as much contempt for democratic sovereignty and free enterprise as they do for common sense. Indeed, in the endless quest to ratify the EU’s constitution, the leaders of the effort insisted that the voters’ opinion didn’t matter.
Brussels doesn’t stand for freedom, it sits for its own self-aggrandizement, social engineering, the tyranny of legalisms, and diplomatic argy-bargy.
It’s not just offensive that Biden thinks Brussels might deserve the title over Washington, it’s terrifying that he might actually think Brussels is in the freedom business at all.
Jonah Goldberg
Friday, May 28, 2010
‘Joe Biden.” With the exception of “broken teleprompter,” these are the scariest two words in the White House communications shop.
One advantage Biden has over Obama is he can always claim he was “just being Joe” whenever he says something controversial. In this way, Biden reminds me a bit of the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who would say “nice” things in English and evil things in Arabic. The press would largely ignore the Arabic and take him at his word in English.
Biden gets away with a similar technique, only it’s all in English. It’s just that when he’s “just being Joe,” he gets a pass.
It would be one thing if all Biden did was offer the occasional Washington gaffe (i.e., accidentally telling the truth), or if he merely talked as if he learned history from Monty Python skits, as when he claimed that FDR went on TV to reassure Americans after the 1929 stock market crash. (FDR wasn’t president. No one had TV). But that’s not how he rolls.
Earlier this month, Biden spoke to the European Parliament in Brussels. “As you probably know, some American politicians and American journalists refer to Washington, D.C., as the ‘capital of the free world.’ But it seems to me that this great city, which boasts 1,000 years of history and which serves as the capital of Belgium, the home of the European Union and the headquarters for NATO, this city has its own legitimate claim to that title.”
Now, as Biden said after the passage of Obamacare, this is a big (expletive deleted) deal. Sure, you can downgrade it to mere diplo-flattery, but that’s just the geopolitical equivalent of giving Biden the same free pass he always gets.
Still, I’d give him a pass, too, if this was crazy Joe talking. We’d all just roll our eyes if he came in there reciting Irish limericks in Klingon and claiming that we can switch from fossil fuels to Grape Nuts cereal.
But this wasn’t Joe just being Joe. How do we know? Because these were prepared remarks, and they fit perfectly with the White House’s approach to foreign policy.
In speeches around the world, Obama has offered apologies, confessions, and indictments of his own country. Save for the Afghanistan surge, Obama’s foreign policy has pointed toward the idea that America needs to downgrade its sense of exceptionalism. What better way to do that than to concede the title of leader of the free world, without a fight, to a Belgian backwater known for its absurd European regulations, urinating statues, and excellent beer?
In 2003, Don Rumsfeld’s talk of “old Europe” ignited an international firestorm. But when Biden suggests that the lamplight of liberty shines most brightly from Brussels, the collective response is either quiet nodding from the Left or “there he goes again” from the Right.
How about we take Biden seriously instead?
Let’s look at Biden’s case for Brussels as Freedom Command Alpha. It’s 1,000 years old! Okay. But for most (all) of that time, Brussels was hardly synonymous with “freedom.” Beijing is twice as old as Brussels, Cairo older still. Does that burnish their liberty-loving street cred?
Aha, but Biden adds that Brussels is the capital of Belgium! While I’m sure that’s a huge matter of pride in high-school ping-pong competitions against Antwerp, does anyone else care?
It’s true that Brussels is the headquarters for NATO, but NATO takes its orders from a different capital — Washington, D.C.
Then there’s the fact that the EU has set up shop in Brussels. Surely this was really Biden’s only point. He was telling the unaccountable Lilliputians of the Eurocracy that Gulliver sees them as equals now.
We’ve gone through the looking glass. Brussels has no love for freedom as we define it in the American sense, and it has little to no power to promote it in any sense. The pencil pushers in Brussels have almost as much contempt for democratic sovereignty and free enterprise as they do for common sense. Indeed, in the endless quest to ratify the EU’s constitution, the leaders of the effort insisted that the voters’ opinion didn’t matter.
Brussels doesn’t stand for freedom, it sits for its own self-aggrandizement, social engineering, the tyranny of legalisms, and diplomatic argy-bargy.
It’s not just offensive that Biden thinks Brussels might deserve the title over Washington, it’s terrifying that he might actually think Brussels is in the freedom business at all.
Turning Against Israel
Suzanne Fields
Friday, May 28, 2010
Iran is just short of becoming a nuclear power, and nearly every nation on earth is worried. Israel worries most of all. Nuclear weapons will afford Iran the means to deliver on its threat to "wipe Israel off the map," as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad so cheerfully puts it.
Children throughout the Middle East already study maps with a hole in them where Israel used to be. Some are tempted to dismiss Ahmadinejad as a blowhard and a clown, but he's a credible and loud voice to the millions of angry Muslims surrounding the only democracy in the Middle East.
Israel is the "Little Satan," secure from the rage of its enemies so long as the "Big Satan" guarantees it, and the guarantee is safe so long as Jews remain strong in Israel's behalf. But there's an angry buzz in the media and in certain academic covens that Jewish support for Israel is declining -- and may be on the way to collapse.
The strength and depth of the buzz is traced in an essay by Peter Beinart in the New York Review of Books, headlined, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment." Beinart attends an Orthodox synagogue, though he is not an Orthodox Jew himself, and he draws his conclusions from surveys of opinions of young American Jews, many of them on the campuses of our most prestigious colleges.
The surveys demonstrate that young secular leftist Jews, who can't remember a Middle East without a strong Israeli state, have separated themselves from the sympathetic attitudes of their parents and grandparents. They're two generations removed from the Holocaust and from knowing American Jews who fled to America to escape the Nazis or who left close relatives behind. They feel no exhilaration in the accounts of how President Truman ordered the recognition of Israel 11 minutes after it declared itself a nation in 1948. They never felt the fear for the future of the Jewish nation when Arab armies went to war against the new nation the very next day.
These young secular Jews grew up reading the "Diary of Anne Frank" -- but as literature, not history. But it occurs to few of them to say "there but for the grace of God go I." Ann Frank, tragic though her story is, was long ago and far away.
Two years ago, the student Senate at Brandeis University, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored university in America, refused even to observe the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. My mother-in-law, for whom Israel and Brandeis were among her favorite charities, is spinning beneath the sod: How could this happen?
Beinart focuses on the views of privileged Jews in America who are far from their origins. Few have heard relatives speak English with Yiddish accents. These young Jews, who grew up in comfortable suburbs, surrounded by luxury and ease, hold scant empathy for the Israeli settlers saving to add a room or two to their houses to accommodate expanding families.
The new generation is eager to blame Israel first, much as young liberals are eager to blame the United States for the tension and violence in the Middle East. They can't criticize the Palestinians for refusing the generous terms to settle their argument with Israel, offered a decade ago by President Clinton at Camp David, nor do they credit the Israelis for withdrawing from Gaza settlements at considerable sacrifice. When Hamas sent its thanks via deadly rockets, there was no outrage.
Jeffrey Goldberg describes in Atlantic magazine the absence of proportionality in popular blogger attacks on Israel: "The (leftist) rejectionist front facing down Israel has seen every Israeli pullback as a victory not for the principle of compromise, but a victory in their campaign to eradicate Israel."
Reality in the Middle East never remains static, and every generation must forge its response from both experience and history. Aaron David Miller, who was actively engaged in the "peace process" in both Bush administrations and the Clinton administration, now thinks the process should be on hold because big decisions require strong leaders, and there is no Anwar Sadat or Menachim Begin to seize opportunity today. U.S. power is real, but defying and mocking the United States takes no particular courage today. Barack Obama, ever ready with an apology to troublemakers, has already won his Peace Prize.
But hope is not dead. This week, lots of Americans -- young and old, Orthodox, Christian and secular, black, white and other -- celebrated with the Israelis the 62nd birthday of an independent Israel with parades and marching bands. As far as we know, Satan made no appearance, but a helluva good time was had by all.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Iran is just short of becoming a nuclear power, and nearly every nation on earth is worried. Israel worries most of all. Nuclear weapons will afford Iran the means to deliver on its threat to "wipe Israel off the map," as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad so cheerfully puts it.
Children throughout the Middle East already study maps with a hole in them where Israel used to be. Some are tempted to dismiss Ahmadinejad as a blowhard and a clown, but he's a credible and loud voice to the millions of angry Muslims surrounding the only democracy in the Middle East.
Israel is the "Little Satan," secure from the rage of its enemies so long as the "Big Satan" guarantees it, and the guarantee is safe so long as Jews remain strong in Israel's behalf. But there's an angry buzz in the media and in certain academic covens that Jewish support for Israel is declining -- and may be on the way to collapse.
The strength and depth of the buzz is traced in an essay by Peter Beinart in the New York Review of Books, headlined, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment." Beinart attends an Orthodox synagogue, though he is not an Orthodox Jew himself, and he draws his conclusions from surveys of opinions of young American Jews, many of them on the campuses of our most prestigious colleges.
The surveys demonstrate that young secular leftist Jews, who can't remember a Middle East without a strong Israeli state, have separated themselves from the sympathetic attitudes of their parents and grandparents. They're two generations removed from the Holocaust and from knowing American Jews who fled to America to escape the Nazis or who left close relatives behind. They feel no exhilaration in the accounts of how President Truman ordered the recognition of Israel 11 minutes after it declared itself a nation in 1948. They never felt the fear for the future of the Jewish nation when Arab armies went to war against the new nation the very next day.
These young secular Jews grew up reading the "Diary of Anne Frank" -- but as literature, not history. But it occurs to few of them to say "there but for the grace of God go I." Ann Frank, tragic though her story is, was long ago and far away.
Two years ago, the student Senate at Brandeis University, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored university in America, refused even to observe the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state. My mother-in-law, for whom Israel and Brandeis were among her favorite charities, is spinning beneath the sod: How could this happen?
Beinart focuses on the views of privileged Jews in America who are far from their origins. Few have heard relatives speak English with Yiddish accents. These young Jews, who grew up in comfortable suburbs, surrounded by luxury and ease, hold scant empathy for the Israeli settlers saving to add a room or two to their houses to accommodate expanding families.
The new generation is eager to blame Israel first, much as young liberals are eager to blame the United States for the tension and violence in the Middle East. They can't criticize the Palestinians for refusing the generous terms to settle their argument with Israel, offered a decade ago by President Clinton at Camp David, nor do they credit the Israelis for withdrawing from Gaza settlements at considerable sacrifice. When Hamas sent its thanks via deadly rockets, there was no outrage.
Jeffrey Goldberg describes in Atlantic magazine the absence of proportionality in popular blogger attacks on Israel: "The (leftist) rejectionist front facing down Israel has seen every Israeli pullback as a victory not for the principle of compromise, but a victory in their campaign to eradicate Israel."
Reality in the Middle East never remains static, and every generation must forge its response from both experience and history. Aaron David Miller, who was actively engaged in the "peace process" in both Bush administrations and the Clinton administration, now thinks the process should be on hold because big decisions require strong leaders, and there is no Anwar Sadat or Menachim Begin to seize opportunity today. U.S. power is real, but defying and mocking the United States takes no particular courage today. Barack Obama, ever ready with an apology to troublemakers, has already won his Peace Prize.
But hope is not dead. This week, lots of Americans -- young and old, Orthodox, Christian and secular, black, white and other -- celebrated with the Israelis the 62nd birthday of an independent Israel with parades and marching bands. As far as we know, Satan made no appearance, but a helluva good time was had by all.
Little Greece
Mona Charen
Friday, May 28, 2010
At a New Jersey town meeting, Gov. Chris Christie, the newest YouTube star for the limited government set, was reproached by an unhappy teacher. The governor, facing a budget shortfall of $11 billion, has proposed, among other economies, a one-year salary freeze for New Jersey teachers. Her voice raised in anger (that's a normal speaking voice in my home state), Rita Wilson protested that she should be paid $83,000, the only reasonable compensation in light of her "education and experience." Christie's reply got an ovation: "Well, you know what? Then you don't have to do it."
Meet the newest conservative hero: The Trenton Truth-Teller!
That exchange with the teacher, along with other greatest hits available on YouTube of the blunt yet friendly governor's first five months, highlight a political opportunity for Republicans.
First, the problem: How can smaller-government Republicans win elections when more and more Americans are receiving government benefits while fewer and fewer are paying taxes? In 2010, 47 percent of Americans paid no income taxes at all. Among those who do pay taxes, most pay comparatively little. Both parties have agreed to make the tax code more steeply progressive in the past two decades, to the point where the top 20 percent of earners, those with incomes above $100,000, pay 70 percent of all taxes. Accordingly, the tax issue has lost some of its political purchase.
But as Christie is demonstrating, voters are open to a new fairness argument. Whereas Barack Obama and his party invoke "fairness" as a license to take property from productive people and transfer it to the unproductive, Christie is inviting voters to consider the unfairness of our current arrangement in which government employees enjoy better salaries and benefits than private-sector employees. Economic historian John Steele Gordon points out that, "Federal workers now earn, in wages and benefits, about twice what their private-sector equivalents get paid. State workers often have Cadillac health plans and retirement benefits far above the private sector average: 80 percent of public-sector workers have pension benefits, only 50 percent in the private sector. Many can retire at age 50."
Christie spelled it out:
A retired teacher paid $62,000 towards her pension and nothing -- yes, nothing -- for full family medical, dental, and vision coverage over her entire career. What will we pay her? $1.4 million in pension benefits and another $215,000 in health care benefit premiums over her lifetime. Is it 'fair' for all of us and our children to have to pay for this excess? (Is it) fair to have New Jersey taxpayers foot the bill for 100 percent of the health insurance costs of teachers and their families from the day they are hired until the day they die? Is it fair that teachers have a better, richer health plan than even state workers and pay absolutely nothing for it?
New Jersey has been overspending for decades -- when the state had the funds and when it didn't. "Even as we speak," Christie told the town hall crowd, "it continues in New Jersey at the local level, despite the economic downturn. Consider this fact: In 2009, we lost 121,000 private-sector jobs in New Jersey, while the municipal and school board payrolls grew by 11,300 jobs. The private sector shrank ... while the government grew. That's exactly backwards from how it's supposed to be."
That, from a northeast governor! New Jersey's unfunded pension liability is officially estimated at $32 billion. But Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute warns that this figure is based on flawed measures. The true number, he says, is closer to $145 billion. The state of New Jersey, in other words, is a little Greece.
Christie's proposed economies -- in addition to the one-year salary freeze, he wants teachers and administrators to contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries to the cost of their medical coverage -- have provoked thousands of teachers to take to the streets, Athens style. They've started a Facebook page that excoriates the governor to the delight of its 68,000 fans. And the NJEA has spent $1.8 million on an anti-Christie ad campaign since January.
Still, when the question was submitted to voters in April, 60 percent backed Christie's reforms. His popularity ratings are in dispute (Rasmussen pegs him at 53 percent approval, whereas a Fairleigh Dickenson University poll has him at 43 percent), but he is gaining traction in a state with a 700,000 Democratic registration advantage.
This is one to watch.
Friday, May 28, 2010
At a New Jersey town meeting, Gov. Chris Christie, the newest YouTube star for the limited government set, was reproached by an unhappy teacher. The governor, facing a budget shortfall of $11 billion, has proposed, among other economies, a one-year salary freeze for New Jersey teachers. Her voice raised in anger (that's a normal speaking voice in my home state), Rita Wilson protested that she should be paid $83,000, the only reasonable compensation in light of her "education and experience." Christie's reply got an ovation: "Well, you know what? Then you don't have to do it."
Meet the newest conservative hero: The Trenton Truth-Teller!
That exchange with the teacher, along with other greatest hits available on YouTube of the blunt yet friendly governor's first five months, highlight a political opportunity for Republicans.
First, the problem: How can smaller-government Republicans win elections when more and more Americans are receiving government benefits while fewer and fewer are paying taxes? In 2010, 47 percent of Americans paid no income taxes at all. Among those who do pay taxes, most pay comparatively little. Both parties have agreed to make the tax code more steeply progressive in the past two decades, to the point where the top 20 percent of earners, those with incomes above $100,000, pay 70 percent of all taxes. Accordingly, the tax issue has lost some of its political purchase.
But as Christie is demonstrating, voters are open to a new fairness argument. Whereas Barack Obama and his party invoke "fairness" as a license to take property from productive people and transfer it to the unproductive, Christie is inviting voters to consider the unfairness of our current arrangement in which government employees enjoy better salaries and benefits than private-sector employees. Economic historian John Steele Gordon points out that, "Federal workers now earn, in wages and benefits, about twice what their private-sector equivalents get paid. State workers often have Cadillac health plans and retirement benefits far above the private sector average: 80 percent of public-sector workers have pension benefits, only 50 percent in the private sector. Many can retire at age 50."
Christie spelled it out:
A retired teacher paid $62,000 towards her pension and nothing -- yes, nothing -- for full family medical, dental, and vision coverage over her entire career. What will we pay her? $1.4 million in pension benefits and another $215,000 in health care benefit premiums over her lifetime. Is it 'fair' for all of us and our children to have to pay for this excess? (Is it) fair to have New Jersey taxpayers foot the bill for 100 percent of the health insurance costs of teachers and their families from the day they are hired until the day they die? Is it fair that teachers have a better, richer health plan than even state workers and pay absolutely nothing for it?
New Jersey has been overspending for decades -- when the state had the funds and when it didn't. "Even as we speak," Christie told the town hall crowd, "it continues in New Jersey at the local level, despite the economic downturn. Consider this fact: In 2009, we lost 121,000 private-sector jobs in New Jersey, while the municipal and school board payrolls grew by 11,300 jobs. The private sector shrank ... while the government grew. That's exactly backwards from how it's supposed to be."
That, from a northeast governor! New Jersey's unfunded pension liability is officially estimated at $32 billion. But Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute warns that this figure is based on flawed measures. The true number, he says, is closer to $145 billion. The state of New Jersey, in other words, is a little Greece.
Christie's proposed economies -- in addition to the one-year salary freeze, he wants teachers and administrators to contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries to the cost of their medical coverage -- have provoked thousands of teachers to take to the streets, Athens style. They've started a Facebook page that excoriates the governor to the delight of its 68,000 fans. And the NJEA has spent $1.8 million on an anti-Christie ad campaign since January.
Still, when the question was submitted to voters in April, 60 percent backed Christie's reforms. His popularity ratings are in dispute (Rasmussen pegs him at 53 percent approval, whereas a Fairleigh Dickenson University poll has him at 43 percent), but he is gaining traction in a state with a 700,000 Democratic registration advantage.
This is one to watch.
Clemency for the Enemy, But Not for Our Soldiers?
Diana West
Thursday, May 27, 2010
This Memorial Day Weekend, Americans remember not only our fallen soldiers, but also soldiers currently fighting in hostile lands under atrocious conditions. But there's another duty upon us as Americans with a debt of gratitude to our armed forces.
We must recognize the travesties of U.S. military justice that have tried, convicted, jailed and repeatedly denied clemency to all too many brave Americans, the same brave Americans who have fought our wars only to be unfairly charged with "murder" in the war zone.
Readers of this column will recall the crushing conviction of Sgt. Evan Vela, a young Ranger-trained sniper and father of two from Idaho, for executing his superior's order to kill an Iraqi man who, at the time, had been compromising his squad's hiding place in pre-"surge" Iraq. Ten years in Fort Leavenworth, ordered not-so-blind justice. (There is evidence that Evan's harsh sentence was a blatant political sop to Iraq's government.) One reason behind my intense dislike for George W. Bush -- my own personal Bush Derangement Syndrome -- is the former president's callousness toward such Americans as Sgt. Vela, who served their commander in chief well in these difficult times. As the Bush administration drew to an end in January 2009, talk of a presidential pardon for Vela leaked to the media, no doubt elating the Vela family, but, cruelly, nothing came of it.
It never does. And Evan Vela has all too many brothers-in-arms at Fort Leavenworth prison. There serve Vela (10 years), Michael Behenna (20 years), Corey Claggett (18 years), William Hunsaker (18 years), John Hatley (40 years), Larry Hutchins (11 years), Michael Leahy (20 years), Joseph Mayo (20 years), Michael Williams (25 years). Google their names, read their cases and, before recoiling in PC shudders deeper into the hammock, try to imagine the particular hell of war as they and others like them experienced it on our behalf.
If this exercise dampens the barbecue-season kickoff, good. Maybe it will help Americans see the urgent need for clemency in these cases. And particularly given the mind-boggling fact that the United States has released and granted clemency in Iraq to tens of thousands of insurgents, including some of the most dangerous fighters our soldiers were sent to fight in the first place.
Now, the British newspaper The Guardian has reported that Iraq's military is blaming the sharp rise in violence this year on American-released detainees. Maj. Gen. Ahmed Obeidi al-Saedi claims as many as 80 percent of former detainees have joined or rejoined militant groups, adding that 86 former inmates of U.S prisons have been rearrested since March 10 alone.
"We ask them, did they finish their time in prison rehabilitated psychologically and they say, 'No, it was the perfect environment to reorganize al-Qaida,'" the Iraqi general said.
Obviously, our men in Fort Leavenworth prison pose no such risks. But they continue to rot behind bars, with neither former President Bush nor President Obama troubled by the injustice of it all, even as clemency spreads across the map to Taliban Afghanistan.
Last week, the New York Times reported that American commanders are informally releasing Taliban fighters on their own recognizance after they "promise" not to fight jihad in the path of Allah again - or PC words to that effect. "This letter right here is a sworn pledge from all of your elders that they're vouching for you and that you will never support the Taliban or fight for the Taliban ever again," one commander told a 23-year-old Taliban seized after Marines found a bomb trigger, ammunition and opium buried on his property.
But no such clemency for our own.
McClatchy Newspapers recently reported that since January of this year, 200 alleged Taliban insurgents had been more released from Bagram prison, including 11 this month. After actually being dressed down by one of these newly freed prisoners, Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, No. 2 man at U.S. Central Command in Florida, "delivered a contrite speech as Afghan leaders and former prisoners munched on fresh fruit and chocolate cake."
"If we detained you unfairly, I am sorry," Allen told the men. "I hope this is a great day for you to return to your families."
Those are the words the general should say to his own men, now prisoners at Fort Leavenworth.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
This Memorial Day Weekend, Americans remember not only our fallen soldiers, but also soldiers currently fighting in hostile lands under atrocious conditions. But there's another duty upon us as Americans with a debt of gratitude to our armed forces.
We must recognize the travesties of U.S. military justice that have tried, convicted, jailed and repeatedly denied clemency to all too many brave Americans, the same brave Americans who have fought our wars only to be unfairly charged with "murder" in the war zone.
Readers of this column will recall the crushing conviction of Sgt. Evan Vela, a young Ranger-trained sniper and father of two from Idaho, for executing his superior's order to kill an Iraqi man who, at the time, had been compromising his squad's hiding place in pre-"surge" Iraq. Ten years in Fort Leavenworth, ordered not-so-blind justice. (There is evidence that Evan's harsh sentence was a blatant political sop to Iraq's government.) One reason behind my intense dislike for George W. Bush -- my own personal Bush Derangement Syndrome -- is the former president's callousness toward such Americans as Sgt. Vela, who served their commander in chief well in these difficult times. As the Bush administration drew to an end in January 2009, talk of a presidential pardon for Vela leaked to the media, no doubt elating the Vela family, but, cruelly, nothing came of it.
It never does. And Evan Vela has all too many brothers-in-arms at Fort Leavenworth prison. There serve Vela (10 years), Michael Behenna (20 years), Corey Claggett (18 years), William Hunsaker (18 years), John Hatley (40 years), Larry Hutchins (11 years), Michael Leahy (20 years), Joseph Mayo (20 years), Michael Williams (25 years). Google their names, read their cases and, before recoiling in PC shudders deeper into the hammock, try to imagine the particular hell of war as they and others like them experienced it on our behalf.
If this exercise dampens the barbecue-season kickoff, good. Maybe it will help Americans see the urgent need for clemency in these cases. And particularly given the mind-boggling fact that the United States has released and granted clemency in Iraq to tens of thousands of insurgents, including some of the most dangerous fighters our soldiers were sent to fight in the first place.
Now, the British newspaper The Guardian has reported that Iraq's military is blaming the sharp rise in violence this year on American-released detainees. Maj. Gen. Ahmed Obeidi al-Saedi claims as many as 80 percent of former detainees have joined or rejoined militant groups, adding that 86 former inmates of U.S prisons have been rearrested since March 10 alone.
"We ask them, did they finish their time in prison rehabilitated psychologically and they say, 'No, it was the perfect environment to reorganize al-Qaida,'" the Iraqi general said.
Obviously, our men in Fort Leavenworth prison pose no such risks. But they continue to rot behind bars, with neither former President Bush nor President Obama troubled by the injustice of it all, even as clemency spreads across the map to Taliban Afghanistan.
Last week, the New York Times reported that American commanders are informally releasing Taliban fighters on their own recognizance after they "promise" not to fight jihad in the path of Allah again - or PC words to that effect. "This letter right here is a sworn pledge from all of your elders that they're vouching for you and that you will never support the Taliban or fight for the Taliban ever again," one commander told a 23-year-old Taliban seized after Marines found a bomb trigger, ammunition and opium buried on his property.
But no such clemency for our own.
McClatchy Newspapers recently reported that since January of this year, 200 alleged Taliban insurgents had been more released from Bagram prison, including 11 this month. After actually being dressed down by one of these newly freed prisoners, Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, No. 2 man at U.S. Central Command in Florida, "delivered a contrite speech as Afghan leaders and former prisoners munched on fresh fruit and chocolate cake."
"If we detained you unfairly, I am sorry," Allen told the men. "I hope this is a great day for you to return to your families."
Those are the words the general should say to his own men, now prisoners at Fort Leavenworth.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
South Korea, North Korea, Israel and Iran
Caroline Glick
Monday, May 24, 2010
On Thursday the South Korean government did something important. It told the truth about North Korean aggression. On March 26, a North Korean submarine attacked a South Korean naval corvette with a torpedo. Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed in the unprovoked attack. And on May 20, the South Koreans ended all ambiguity about the nature of the attack and placed the blame where it belongs.
In its write-up of South Korea's statement, The Los Angeles Times assessed that South Korea's acknowledgment of North Korea's murderous aggression will return the region to the days of the Cold War. The paper quoted Prof. Kim Keun-sik from Kyungnam University outside Seoul claiming that in the period to come, North Korea and China will face off against South Korea and the US.
Sadly for South Korea, while China can be depended upon to block the passage of effective sanctions against North Korea in the UN Security Council and to take any other necessary action to protect the North Korean regime, South Korea cannot expect the US to take action to rein in North Korean aggression. For while the South Korean government acknowledged reality on Thursday morning, the US under President Barack Obama remains in reality denial mode.
It is true that on Thursday Obama released a statement saying that the "act of aggression is one more instance of North Korea's unacceptable behavior and defiance of international law." And it is true that the international media is pointing to the White House announcement as an indication that the US will stand with South Korea.
But the Obama administration's relations with China on the one hand, and its emasculation of the US Navy on the other demonstrate that the US will not defend South Korea against North Korean aggression. The administration's actions in the days leading up to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak announcement make this clear.
Lee reportedly told Obama on Tuesday that his government's investigation of the attack proved beyond a shred of doubt that North Korea had attacked the ship. Wednesday the State Department announced that next week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be making a weeklong visit to Asia.
Clinton's trip includes one day in Japan, one day in South Korea and five days in China. Clinton's trip to China will center on advancing the US's aim of ensuring that China continues to finance the US's national debt. Given the US's priorities, it is impossible to imagine the White House taking any forthright action against Pyongyang.
IN A related matter, the Obama administration spent the better part of the week congratulating itself for convincing China and Russia to back another sanctions resolution against North Korea's ally Iran. In what the administration is presenting as a great diplomatic victory, Beijing and Moscow agreed to back a sanctions resolution against Iran in the UN Security Council for its refusal to end its illicit uranium enrichment.
Unfortunately, Obama's great achievement will have no impact on Iran. If they are even passed the sanctions outlined in the draft resolution include little in the way of binding provisions. If they are passed, they will have a negligible impact on Iran's economy and no impact on its nuclear weapons program.
Moreover, Brazil's and Turkey's deal to enrich uranium for Iran wrecks any chance that the US will gain its sought-for unanimity in the Security Council against Iran. Even if the sanctions resolution passes, it will be Pyrrhic victory for the US which will have destroyed its credibility as a negotiator with its allies and its enemies alike.
Beyond all that, Thursday we learned that as a payoff for China's support for its toothless sanctions resolution, the Obama administration has made a deal that enables nuclear proliferation. According to the Washington Post, in exchange for China's support for the resolution, the Obama administration has turned a blind eye to Beijing's continued nuclear proliferation activities to Pakistan.
Pakistan has been a major source of nuclear and ballistic missile technologies to Iran and North Korea. Yet the administration has reportedly opted not to oppose China's decision to build two more nuclear reactors in Pakistan.
In its frenetic bid to court China whose dollars it needs to finance its massive increase in federal spending, the Obama administration has downplayed not only China's nuclear proliferation but North Korea's nuclear proliferation as well. Last week North Korea announced that it conducted a successful fusion experiment. That is, it announced that it is developing a hydrogen bomb. Rather than condemn the move, the administration dismissed the danger claiming that North Korea was lying.
And just as it makes light of the threat emanating from North Korea, so the US has continued to downplay the threat Iran's nuclear program poses to US and global security. Due to the US's failure to end Iran's uranium enrichment, according to the most optimistic Western assessments, Iran will have enough enriched uranium to produce atomic bombs at will in a matter of months.
If the Turkish-Brazilian uranium enrichment deal with Iran goes through, the timeline will be cut by half. Given the new deal's similarity to the offer Obama made the Iranians last year, the administration will have great difficulty discrediting it or even providing a coherent explanation for its opposition to the deal.
AS FOREIGN Minister Avigdor Lieberman noted in his trip to Japan earlier in the month, North Korea does not only threaten its immediate neighbors. Through its proliferation activities, and particularly through its close ties to Iran and its Syrian, Hizbullah and Hamas clients, North Korea constitutes a threat to the Middle East and indeed to global security as a whole. It is important for the US's spurned allies in Tokyo, Seoul and beyond to join forces with Israel to contend with the threats we share - threats which the Obama administration's diplomatic bungling has only exacerbated.
But while it is true that North Korea's proliferation activities threaten global security, it is also true that there is a qualitative difference between the regimes in Pyongyang and Teheran. The regime in Pyongyang is evil, but it is mainly motivated by its desire to survive. In contrast, Iran's regime is openly revolutionary. Its stated aim is to destroy the global order, annihilate Israel and the US and usher in a Shiite messianic era in which Iran will rule the world in the name of Islam.
Depressingly, just as the Iranian threat is greater than the North Korean threat, so the Obama administration's denial of the nature of the Iranian threat is greater than its denial of the North Korean threat. Quite simply, the Obama administration refuses to believe the ideology which informs the actions of Iran's rulers is what they say it is.
In its latest demonstration of its deep denial of the nature of the threat it faces, this week John Brennan, Obama's chief advisor for counterterrorism and homeland security said that the US must court what he referred to as "moderate elements," in Hizbullah.
Brennan argued that since in addition to its Iranian commanded and supplied military organization and its Iranian commanded and trained international terror network, Hizbullah also has members in the Lebanese government and parliament, it is a group that the Obama administration can do business with.
To the extent that Brennan's statement echoes the Obama administration's analysis of Hizbullah, it is simply terrifying.
Hizbullah was established by Iran in 1981. It has a dual mission of serving as the advance guard of Iran's global Islamic revolution and of spreading the Iranian revolution to Lebanon. Hizbullah's participation in Lebanese politics is consonant with this mission. It does not in any way indicate a moderation of the organization. Had Brennan looked, he would not have found a single statement by Hizbullah parliamentarians or government ministers that in any way contradicts Hizbullah's Iranian-dictated missions.
But then, Brennan's asinine position on Hizbullah is part and parcel of his overall denial of the threat radical Islam poses to the US and to the rest of the world. In a speech at New York University last August, Brennan gave a stirring defense of Islam as a religion of peace. He eschewed any connection between the likes of al Qaida and the Iranian mullahs and Islam and claimed that jihad is a great and good thing.
In his words, "Using the legitimate term jihad, which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal [to describe the cause for which Islamic terrorists fight], risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve."
What Brennan's statements show is that Obama, who picked Brennan to serve as his chief counterterrorism advisor, is ideologically committed to the notion that Iran and its fellow jihadists are not an inherent threat to the US and its allies. That is, Obama is ideologically committed to the notion that there is no reason to take any action against Iran that could actually prevent the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah from developing and deploying nuclear weapons.
SINCE OBAMA took office nearly a year and a half ago, Israel has agreed to Obama's demand that it allow him to take the lead on international efforts to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Israel stood back as he wasted a year trying to woo Ahmadinejad often at Israel's own expense as he linked Iran's nuclear weapons program to the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Israel has stood back since then as he pushed forward UN sanctions.
And now, a year and a half later, Obama's sanctions gambit is revealed as a dangerous joke. Iran is months away from the bomb. Hizbullah has an arsenal of guided missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv and beyond. Iran's diplomatic stature has soared to unprecedented heights as it runs diplomatic circles around Obama and his advisors. And Brennan wants to make a deal with Hizbullah.
South Korea's acknowledgment of North Korea's aggression places it on a collision course with the Obama administration which prefers to court Beijing for dollars than deal effectively with Pyongyang's aggression. Israel has been on a collision course with Washington for a year and a half now as it insists in the face of US opposition that Iran's nuclear program is the greatest threat to global security today.
Sadly, the US's ridiculous sanctions resolution and its general diplomatic incompetence make clear is that it is time for Israel to risk escalating its crisis with Obama still further. It is time for Israel to take the lead in the international campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Monday, May 24, 2010
On Thursday the South Korean government did something important. It told the truth about North Korean aggression. On March 26, a North Korean submarine attacked a South Korean naval corvette with a torpedo. Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed in the unprovoked attack. And on May 20, the South Koreans ended all ambiguity about the nature of the attack and placed the blame where it belongs.
In its write-up of South Korea's statement, The Los Angeles Times assessed that South Korea's acknowledgment of North Korea's murderous aggression will return the region to the days of the Cold War. The paper quoted Prof. Kim Keun-sik from Kyungnam University outside Seoul claiming that in the period to come, North Korea and China will face off against South Korea and the US.
Sadly for South Korea, while China can be depended upon to block the passage of effective sanctions against North Korea in the UN Security Council and to take any other necessary action to protect the North Korean regime, South Korea cannot expect the US to take action to rein in North Korean aggression. For while the South Korean government acknowledged reality on Thursday morning, the US under President Barack Obama remains in reality denial mode.
It is true that on Thursday Obama released a statement saying that the "act of aggression is one more instance of North Korea's unacceptable behavior and defiance of international law." And it is true that the international media is pointing to the White House announcement as an indication that the US will stand with South Korea.
But the Obama administration's relations with China on the one hand, and its emasculation of the US Navy on the other demonstrate that the US will not defend South Korea against North Korean aggression. The administration's actions in the days leading up to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak announcement make this clear.
Lee reportedly told Obama on Tuesday that his government's investigation of the attack proved beyond a shred of doubt that North Korea had attacked the ship. Wednesday the State Department announced that next week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be making a weeklong visit to Asia.
Clinton's trip includes one day in Japan, one day in South Korea and five days in China. Clinton's trip to China will center on advancing the US's aim of ensuring that China continues to finance the US's national debt. Given the US's priorities, it is impossible to imagine the White House taking any forthright action against Pyongyang.
IN A related matter, the Obama administration spent the better part of the week congratulating itself for convincing China and Russia to back another sanctions resolution against North Korea's ally Iran. In what the administration is presenting as a great diplomatic victory, Beijing and Moscow agreed to back a sanctions resolution against Iran in the UN Security Council for its refusal to end its illicit uranium enrichment.
Unfortunately, Obama's great achievement will have no impact on Iran. If they are even passed the sanctions outlined in the draft resolution include little in the way of binding provisions. If they are passed, they will have a negligible impact on Iran's economy and no impact on its nuclear weapons program.
Moreover, Brazil's and Turkey's deal to enrich uranium for Iran wrecks any chance that the US will gain its sought-for unanimity in the Security Council against Iran. Even if the sanctions resolution passes, it will be Pyrrhic victory for the US which will have destroyed its credibility as a negotiator with its allies and its enemies alike.
Beyond all that, Thursday we learned that as a payoff for China's support for its toothless sanctions resolution, the Obama administration has made a deal that enables nuclear proliferation. According to the Washington Post, in exchange for China's support for the resolution, the Obama administration has turned a blind eye to Beijing's continued nuclear proliferation activities to Pakistan.
Pakistan has been a major source of nuclear and ballistic missile technologies to Iran and North Korea. Yet the administration has reportedly opted not to oppose China's decision to build two more nuclear reactors in Pakistan.
In its frenetic bid to court China whose dollars it needs to finance its massive increase in federal spending, the Obama administration has downplayed not only China's nuclear proliferation but North Korea's nuclear proliferation as well. Last week North Korea announced that it conducted a successful fusion experiment. That is, it announced that it is developing a hydrogen bomb. Rather than condemn the move, the administration dismissed the danger claiming that North Korea was lying.
And just as it makes light of the threat emanating from North Korea, so the US has continued to downplay the threat Iran's nuclear program poses to US and global security. Due to the US's failure to end Iran's uranium enrichment, according to the most optimistic Western assessments, Iran will have enough enriched uranium to produce atomic bombs at will in a matter of months.
If the Turkish-Brazilian uranium enrichment deal with Iran goes through, the timeline will be cut by half. Given the new deal's similarity to the offer Obama made the Iranians last year, the administration will have great difficulty discrediting it or even providing a coherent explanation for its opposition to the deal.
AS FOREIGN Minister Avigdor Lieberman noted in his trip to Japan earlier in the month, North Korea does not only threaten its immediate neighbors. Through its proliferation activities, and particularly through its close ties to Iran and its Syrian, Hizbullah and Hamas clients, North Korea constitutes a threat to the Middle East and indeed to global security as a whole. It is important for the US's spurned allies in Tokyo, Seoul and beyond to join forces with Israel to contend with the threats we share - threats which the Obama administration's diplomatic bungling has only exacerbated.
But while it is true that North Korea's proliferation activities threaten global security, it is also true that there is a qualitative difference between the regimes in Pyongyang and Teheran. The regime in Pyongyang is evil, but it is mainly motivated by its desire to survive. In contrast, Iran's regime is openly revolutionary. Its stated aim is to destroy the global order, annihilate Israel and the US and usher in a Shiite messianic era in which Iran will rule the world in the name of Islam.
Depressingly, just as the Iranian threat is greater than the North Korean threat, so the Obama administration's denial of the nature of the Iranian threat is greater than its denial of the North Korean threat. Quite simply, the Obama administration refuses to believe the ideology which informs the actions of Iran's rulers is what they say it is.
In its latest demonstration of its deep denial of the nature of the threat it faces, this week John Brennan, Obama's chief advisor for counterterrorism and homeland security said that the US must court what he referred to as "moderate elements," in Hizbullah.
Brennan argued that since in addition to its Iranian commanded and supplied military organization and its Iranian commanded and trained international terror network, Hizbullah also has members in the Lebanese government and parliament, it is a group that the Obama administration can do business with.
To the extent that Brennan's statement echoes the Obama administration's analysis of Hizbullah, it is simply terrifying.
Hizbullah was established by Iran in 1981. It has a dual mission of serving as the advance guard of Iran's global Islamic revolution and of spreading the Iranian revolution to Lebanon. Hizbullah's participation in Lebanese politics is consonant with this mission. It does not in any way indicate a moderation of the organization. Had Brennan looked, he would not have found a single statement by Hizbullah parliamentarians or government ministers that in any way contradicts Hizbullah's Iranian-dictated missions.
But then, Brennan's asinine position on Hizbullah is part and parcel of his overall denial of the threat radical Islam poses to the US and to the rest of the world. In a speech at New York University last August, Brennan gave a stirring defense of Islam as a religion of peace. He eschewed any connection between the likes of al Qaida and the Iranian mullahs and Islam and claimed that jihad is a great and good thing.
In his words, "Using the legitimate term jihad, which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal [to describe the cause for which Islamic terrorists fight], risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve."
What Brennan's statements show is that Obama, who picked Brennan to serve as his chief counterterrorism advisor, is ideologically committed to the notion that Iran and its fellow jihadists are not an inherent threat to the US and its allies. That is, Obama is ideologically committed to the notion that there is no reason to take any action against Iran that could actually prevent the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah from developing and deploying nuclear weapons.
SINCE OBAMA took office nearly a year and a half ago, Israel has agreed to Obama's demand that it allow him to take the lead on international efforts to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Israel stood back as he wasted a year trying to woo Ahmadinejad often at Israel's own expense as he linked Iran's nuclear weapons program to the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Israel has stood back since then as he pushed forward UN sanctions.
And now, a year and a half later, Obama's sanctions gambit is revealed as a dangerous joke. Iran is months away from the bomb. Hizbullah has an arsenal of guided missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv and beyond. Iran's diplomatic stature has soared to unprecedented heights as it runs diplomatic circles around Obama and his advisors. And Brennan wants to make a deal with Hizbullah.
South Korea's acknowledgment of North Korea's aggression places it on a collision course with the Obama administration which prefers to court Beijing for dollars than deal effectively with Pyongyang's aggression. Israel has been on a collision course with Washington for a year and a half now as it insists in the face of US opposition that Iran's nuclear program is the greatest threat to global security today.
Sadly, the US's ridiculous sanctions resolution and its general diplomatic incompetence make clear is that it is time for Israel to risk escalating its crisis with Obama still further. It is time for Israel to take the lead in the international campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Hypocrisy in the Liberal Establishment
Armstrong Williams
Saturday, May 22, 2010
The Tea Party movement has been front and center in the news lately. Stories abound of how they are pushing hard against establishment Democrats and Republicans alike. As the media would have you believe it, these tea party members are strong, both in will and physical stature, and virtually untouchable. But what is often not reported is the ridicule and constant assaulting these patriots receive, and how the Left’s media operation allows the perpetrators to get away with it.
One story is particularly alarming. Attending a tea party-led assembly in St. Louis last August, Mr. Kenneth Gladney was protesting a health care forum hosted by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO), handing out Don’t Tread on Me flags and voicing his opposition. Then out of the blue, Gladney was attacked and horrifically beaten by members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). These thugs didn’t like what Gladney had to say nor why he was protesting a provision their Bosses deemed was worthy, so they hunted him down and taught him a lesson he won’t soon forget.
Was Gladney a white, redneck racist as some commentators such as MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann have characterized all tea party members? Hardly. Gladney is African American. And the SEIU thugs reminded him of his color as they beat him to a pulp, using the N word repeatedly.
Two members of the SEIU are under indictment and 4 others are under investigation. Why didn't the main stream media bother to tell this story? They certainly profess to speak out against civil rights violations, no matter where. Are we to believe that because Gladney aligns himself with the Tea Party movement, he forfeits his rights to not be referred to as an N-word or beaten? Are American blacks prohibited from enjoying their free speech by the Liberal establishment, if it does not agree with the plantation views of the Democratic party?
It is absolutely clear that in 2010 conservative and Republican American blacks can't express their views without fear of reprisal and retaliation. Is this the intent of the Civil Rights movement that blacks can only be free if they agree with the Democratic Party way of thinking?
The troubling aspect of this case is that the MSM give trade Unions a pass when their behavior is outside the accepted bounds of public civility. It is not coincidental that the SEIU was Obama's largest financial supporter and continues to supply both substantial money and workers to the Democratic party machine.
Contrast this with the adverse publicity received by the Tea Party when unconfirmed allegations of the use of the N word surfaced at a recent rally in Washington, DC that involved members of Congress. No one attending such events from the other side reported saying or even hearing such terrible language, but when Democrats play the victim card, all bets are off – they can say whatever they want and you can bet the MSM will be there to drink it all in with a microphone in their faces.
Imagine if the shoe, as we've seen in the past, was on the other foot? Where is Al Sharpton when black conservatives need him? Where is Jesse Jackson, especially when these black individuals’ civil rights are violated? Is it because the Liberal elite feel they don't know their place and take the liberty to use the N word and then proceed to try and beat them to death?
There’s no excuse for this behavior, and when the media fails to seek out stories like these and call them for the racist, hate-based behavior that they are, then they undermine their own credibility as legitimate filters of today’s occurrences and why they matter.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
The Tea Party movement has been front and center in the news lately. Stories abound of how they are pushing hard against establishment Democrats and Republicans alike. As the media would have you believe it, these tea party members are strong, both in will and physical stature, and virtually untouchable. But what is often not reported is the ridicule and constant assaulting these patriots receive, and how the Left’s media operation allows the perpetrators to get away with it.
One story is particularly alarming. Attending a tea party-led assembly in St. Louis last August, Mr. Kenneth Gladney was protesting a health care forum hosted by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO), handing out Don’t Tread on Me flags and voicing his opposition. Then out of the blue, Gladney was attacked and horrifically beaten by members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). These thugs didn’t like what Gladney had to say nor why he was protesting a provision their Bosses deemed was worthy, so they hunted him down and taught him a lesson he won’t soon forget.
Was Gladney a white, redneck racist as some commentators such as MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann have characterized all tea party members? Hardly. Gladney is African American. And the SEIU thugs reminded him of his color as they beat him to a pulp, using the N word repeatedly.
Two members of the SEIU are under indictment and 4 others are under investigation. Why didn't the main stream media bother to tell this story? They certainly profess to speak out against civil rights violations, no matter where. Are we to believe that because Gladney aligns himself with the Tea Party movement, he forfeits his rights to not be referred to as an N-word or beaten? Are American blacks prohibited from enjoying their free speech by the Liberal establishment, if it does not agree with the plantation views of the Democratic party?
It is absolutely clear that in 2010 conservative and Republican American blacks can't express their views without fear of reprisal and retaliation. Is this the intent of the Civil Rights movement that blacks can only be free if they agree with the Democratic Party way of thinking?
The troubling aspect of this case is that the MSM give trade Unions a pass when their behavior is outside the accepted bounds of public civility. It is not coincidental that the SEIU was Obama's largest financial supporter and continues to supply both substantial money and workers to the Democratic party machine.
Contrast this with the adverse publicity received by the Tea Party when unconfirmed allegations of the use of the N word surfaced at a recent rally in Washington, DC that involved members of Congress. No one attending such events from the other side reported saying or even hearing such terrible language, but when Democrats play the victim card, all bets are off – they can say whatever they want and you can bet the MSM will be there to drink it all in with a microphone in their faces.
Imagine if the shoe, as we've seen in the past, was on the other foot? Where is Al Sharpton when black conservatives need him? Where is Jesse Jackson, especially when these black individuals’ civil rights are violated? Is it because the Liberal elite feel they don't know their place and take the liberty to use the N word and then proceed to try and beat them to death?
There’s no excuse for this behavior, and when the media fails to seek out stories like these and call them for the racist, hate-based behavior that they are, then they undermine their own credibility as legitimate filters of today’s occurrences and why they matter.
Bullying Arizona
Maggie Gallagher
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
It's open season on Arizona.
A Kennedy compared Arizona's law to the slave trade. Boycotts of Arizona by governments, convention-goers and girls basketball teams have been declared.
A former Phoenix Suns basketball star who is now the mayor of Sacramento put the repulsive logic of the Arizona boycott in shocking clarity. "I still have many friends in Arizona, and know the state is not a land filled with hatred. But sometimes Arizonans need a reminder of their foolishness. If we shun them, maybe they will get it."
If we shun them, maybe they will get it. Or maybe not.
The boycott will cost Arizona $90 million in hotel business, the mayor of Phoenix predicted. He opposes the law and the boycott, which will hurt all Arizonans including illegal aliens.
Why is the president of the United States and his party acting this way? To jack up the Democratic vote.
Let's be clear about one thing: The attempt to humiliate Arizona is not about solving the immigration issue. If anyone wanted to actually solve the problem, they would not begin by bullying Arizona. Sixty percent of Americans support Arizona.
People who were serious about actually reforming immigration would begin by defusing, not inflaming, the racial issues. Americans are pro-immigration. It is part of our DNA. We are also pro-rule-of-law, and pro-powerful-leaders who care what we think. We believe racial understanding is a two-way street.
I cannot speak for all Americans, but I can tell you about this American: I am sick and tired of the way working-class folks are treated as objects beneath contempt when they react the way any normal human being would react to uncontrolled immigration. (Imagine dumping 1,000 hardworking, law-abiding, illegally immigrating Iowans in a small Mexican village -- how would the locals react?) This is a generous country. Millions of Latinos are not rushing to our borders because we are such a racist society.
Serious immigration reform must begin by refusing to play the race card, by attempting to conciliate the legitimate concerns about immigration's sometimes serious local costs.
It is not that racism doesn't exist -- of course it does. But when ordinary Americans have normal concerns -- when they object to their children being bussed an hour across town in order to pursue cultural elites' visions of statistical racial harmony, or to a border so porous that the rule of law appears a joke -- they get told in no uncertain terms by powerful culture makers to go stand in the corner, like bad children.
When people in my presence criticize Arizona I ask them: "Did you know the week the bill passed, an Arizona deputy sheriff was shot in the stomach by a suspected illegal immigrant with an AK-47?" They get quiet. They hadn't heard about Louie Puroll.
The relative lawlessness of Mexico is spilling across our borders.
"Border Patrol agents have been told at daily musters that the Mexican drug cartels have put a $250,000 bounty on their lives," reports the Examiner.com. One agent said, "We were warned about this recently at several musters, and we were advised to take this threat seriously and to take precautions."
The lawfulness of American society is a precious commodity. Our tradition of welcoming immigration and the idea of racial equality are both precious commodities too. There is no easy answer.
But right now, American sheriffs are being gunned down with machine guns in the Arizona desert. The governor of Arizona is pleading in vain with the president of the United States to send more National Guard helicopters to help secure the borders.
And the president of the United States is standing with the president of Mexico criticizing the very hardworking, law-abiding Americans who are trying to do the job that the president of the United States doesn't want to do.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
It's open season on Arizona.
A Kennedy compared Arizona's law to the slave trade. Boycotts of Arizona by governments, convention-goers and girls basketball teams have been declared.
A former Phoenix Suns basketball star who is now the mayor of Sacramento put the repulsive logic of the Arizona boycott in shocking clarity. "I still have many friends in Arizona, and know the state is not a land filled with hatred. But sometimes Arizonans need a reminder of their foolishness. If we shun them, maybe they will get it."
If we shun them, maybe they will get it. Or maybe not.
The boycott will cost Arizona $90 million in hotel business, the mayor of Phoenix predicted. He opposes the law and the boycott, which will hurt all Arizonans including illegal aliens.
Why is the president of the United States and his party acting this way? To jack up the Democratic vote.
Let's be clear about one thing: The attempt to humiliate Arizona is not about solving the immigration issue. If anyone wanted to actually solve the problem, they would not begin by bullying Arizona. Sixty percent of Americans support Arizona.
People who were serious about actually reforming immigration would begin by defusing, not inflaming, the racial issues. Americans are pro-immigration. It is part of our DNA. We are also pro-rule-of-law, and pro-powerful-leaders who care what we think. We believe racial understanding is a two-way street.
I cannot speak for all Americans, but I can tell you about this American: I am sick and tired of the way working-class folks are treated as objects beneath contempt when they react the way any normal human being would react to uncontrolled immigration. (Imagine dumping 1,000 hardworking, law-abiding, illegally immigrating Iowans in a small Mexican village -- how would the locals react?) This is a generous country. Millions of Latinos are not rushing to our borders because we are such a racist society.
Serious immigration reform must begin by refusing to play the race card, by attempting to conciliate the legitimate concerns about immigration's sometimes serious local costs.
It is not that racism doesn't exist -- of course it does. But when ordinary Americans have normal concerns -- when they object to their children being bussed an hour across town in order to pursue cultural elites' visions of statistical racial harmony, or to a border so porous that the rule of law appears a joke -- they get told in no uncertain terms by powerful culture makers to go stand in the corner, like bad children.
When people in my presence criticize Arizona I ask them: "Did you know the week the bill passed, an Arizona deputy sheriff was shot in the stomach by a suspected illegal immigrant with an AK-47?" They get quiet. They hadn't heard about Louie Puroll.
The relative lawlessness of Mexico is spilling across our borders.
"Border Patrol agents have been told at daily musters that the Mexican drug cartels have put a $250,000 bounty on their lives," reports the Examiner.com. One agent said, "We were warned about this recently at several musters, and we were advised to take this threat seriously and to take precautions."
The lawfulness of American society is a precious commodity. Our tradition of welcoming immigration and the idea of racial equality are both precious commodities too. There is no easy answer.
But right now, American sheriffs are being gunned down with machine guns in the Arizona desert. The governor of Arizona is pleading in vain with the president of the United States to send more National Guard helicopters to help secure the borders.
And the president of the United States is standing with the president of Mexico criticizing the very hardworking, law-abiding Americans who are trying to do the job that the president of the United States doesn't want to do.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Reclaiming Our Language From the Left
Caroline Glick
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Courtesy of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Thursday Israel will again be the target of a jihadist-leftist propaganda assault. A flotilla of nine ships which set sail for Gaza from Cyprus earlier this week is scheduled to arrive at our doorstep.
The expressed aim of the flotilla's organizers is to unlawfully provide aid and comfort to Hamas - an illegal terrorist organization. Since it seized power in Gaza three years ago, Hamas, which is openly committed to the genocide of world Jewry and the physical eradication of Israel, has transformed the Gaza Strip into a hub of the global jihad. It has been illegally holding hostage Gilad Schalit incognito for four years. And it is continuously engaged in a massive, Iranian-financed arms buildup ahead of its next assault.
Beyond providing aid to Hamas, the declared aim of the "Free Gaza" movement is to coerce Israel into providing Hamas with an outlet to the sea. This too is in contravention of international law which expressly prohibits states and non-state actors from providing any support to terrorist organizations.
IN SENDING out the latest group of ships, Turkey and its Irish, Greek and Swedish partners seek to appropriate the imagery of the Jewish pre-statehood struggle for independence from Britain. In a bid to appease Hamas's jihadist precursors, in 1939 Britain's Mandatory authorities broke international law and prohibited Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine.
The League of Nations' letter of mandate for Britain specifically enjoined the British to facilitate Jewish immigration to the land of Israel. Yet following the Arab terror war from 1936-1939, the British issued the White Paper that all but prohibited Jewish immigration. This move blocked the one place on Earth where European Jews were wanted from accepting them and so trapped 6 million Jews in Hitler's Europe.
In the aftermath of the war, the British maintained their prohibition on Jewish immigration. To fight this British policy, the Zionist leadership in pre-state Israel organized the Aliya Bet program of illegal immigration. Jewish agents scoured the world for ships large enough to bring Europe's Jewish refugees to the land of Israel.
The ship most emblematic of the era was the Exodus. The Exodus which set sail from France in July 1947 with 4,515 Jewish Holocaust survivors on board was the Zionist response to a new British policy to force illegal immigrant ships to return to Europe.
The British rammed the Exodus in Haifa. They boarded and killed three Jewish defenders. They then forced its passengers to board British prison ships that would return them to Europe. French authorities denied the ships the right to land in France, so the British sailed on to Hamburg, Germany, where the refugees were forced to disembark.
The international outcry against Britain in the wake of the Exodus affair shamed London into cancelling its new policy. It also paved the way for Israel's independence 10 months later.
Now the Turkish, Greek, Swedish and Irish governments are colluding with Hamas to purloin the imagery of the Exodus and the heroism of the Jewish people in the years leading up to statehood and project that imagery onto a terrorist organization that seeks to complete Hitler's work. They further seek to invert reality by portraying Israel, which in accordance with international law is trying to contain and defeat Hamas, as a combination of the German Nazis and the British imperialists.
SO FAR, they are getting away with it. So far, for their efforts on behalf of a genocidal terrorist organization Erdogan and his ilk are being extolled as human rights champions. Barring any unexpected events, Israel will suffer yet another public relations disaster on Thursday when the ships approach Gaza.
How has this happened? How is it that we have become so overwhelmed by the Left's propaganda that most of our political leaders and intellectual elite are incapable of even describing the evil that is being advanced against us?
Over the past generation, the Left has commandeered our language. It has inverted the terminology of human rights, freedom, morality, heroism, democracy and victimization. Its perversion of language has made it nearly impossible for members of democratic, human rights respecting, moral societies to describe the threats they face from their human rights destroying, genocidal, tyrannical enemies. Thanks to the efforts of the international Left, the latter are championed as the victims of those they seek to annihilate.
Two incidents in recent weeks make clear just how disastrous the Left's wholesale theft of language and through it, their inversion of reality has been for Israel.
Last Monday, Noam Chomsky arrived at the Allenby Bridge and requested a visa to enter Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The police at the border refused his request. The radical leftist Israel-basher made a fuss and waited around for several hours before he went back to Jordan.
Chomsky left Jordan at the end of the week and travelled to Lebanon. For the second time in four years, on Friday Chomsky toured southern Lebanon with a Hizbullah guide. Now an official guest of Hizbullah, Chomsky is scheduled to give an address in Beirut Tuesday to celebrate the IDF's pullout from south Lebanon 10 years ago.
As David Hornik detailed in FrontPage Magazine on Friday, the leftist-dominated Israeli media went nuts when they discovered Chomsky had been turned away at the border. Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz heralded Chomsky as a great mind and proclaimed hysterically that the refusal to allow him to enter the country marked the end of Israeli democracy and the start of a slide into fascism. The Western media quickly piled on and within hours Israel's right to deny its avowed enemies entry was under assault.
And Chomsky is Israel's enemy. As Hornik pointed out, Chomsky has repeatedly defended Holocaust deniers while accusing Israel of being the ideological heir of Nazi Germany. When he hasn't been too busy championing the Khmer Rouge and Josef Stalin, and attacking the US as the Great Satan, Chomsky has devoted much time and energy to calling for Israel's eradication and defending Palestinian and Hizbullah terrorists.
IT WAS the government's job to point this out. But instead, faced with the leftist onslaught against its right to control its borders, the government crumpled. Instead of explaining that Chomsky is an enemy of Israel and an abettor and defender of genocide, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev apologized for the unpleasant reception Chomsky received at the Allenby Bridge. Regev also promised that if Chomsky returns, he will be granted an entry visa.
The government's cowardly handling of the Chomsky incident is testament to the Left's success at intimidating Western leaders to the point where instead of standing up to leftist propaganda and lies, they accept them as truth and even collaborate in disseminating them.
Probably the folks in the Prime Minister's Office figured no one would listen if they told the truth about Chomsky. They probably felt that defending the decision to bar Chomsky from the country would only elicit a second barrage of media attacks.
And perhaps they were right. But the fact that the Left would have remained unconvinced doesn't excuse the government's abject surrender of the truth about Chomsky to Israel's enemies on the Left who portray the MIT professor as a human rights activist and a great intellectual humanitarian. As David Horowitz and Peter Collier prove in their book The Anti-Chomsky Reader, there doesn't seem to be a tyrant that Chomsky hasn't championed or a victim that Chomsky hasn't demonized in the entire span of his 50-year career as a radical activist.
The government is not alone in its fear of exposing and fighting the Left's campaign to demonize the country.
THE RADICAL Left's ability to block voices of dissent from its anti-Israel and anti-freedom positions was similarly demonstrated two weeks ago at Tel Aviv University's annual Board of Governors meeting.
For several years, a large, vocal group of tenured professors from the university have actively participated in the international campaign to boycott Israeli universities and academics while actively supporting Hamas and Hizbullah. That is, many Tel Aviv University professors, whose salaries are paid by university donors and Israeli taxpayers, have been using their university titles to undermine the university and to advance the cause of Israel's destruction.
This year the university's Board of Governors bestowed an honorary doctorate on Harvard Prof. Alan Dershowitz. In his acceptance speech, Dershowitz called these professors out for their vile behavior and named three of the most vocal enemies of the university and Israel on the international stage: Profs. Anat Matar, Rachel Giora and Shlomo Sand.
The university's tenured anti-Zionist activists were quick to retaliate. Forty-six professors signed a letter to university president Joseph Klaffter demanding that the university disassociate itself from Dershowitz's statements.
Klaffter was quick to oblige. At the Board of Governors meeting, Klaffter silenced board member Mark Tanenbaum when he tried to put forward a resolution calling for disciplinary action against university professors who use their university titles to defame the university or Israel. Klaffter, who isn't even a member of the Board of Governors, reportedly grabbed the microphone away from Tanenbaum and adjourned the meeting. Klaffter justified his physical denial of Tanenbaum's freedom of speech by claiming that he was defending academic freedom.
Like the Prime Minister's Office's apology to Noam Chomsky, Klaffter's action - aside from arguably being prohibited by his own university's constitution - was further proof of the Left's success in appropriating the language and imagery of freedom and tolerance in the service of forces that seek to destroy freedom and end tolerance.
ON THURSDAY Hamas's maritime enablers from Europe, Turkey and beyond will arrive at our doorstep. The navy will block their entry to Gaza. Israel will be demonized by terror-abettors disguised as human rights activists and journalists worldwide. And the story will pave the way for the next assault on Israel's right to exist.
This endless circle of demonization and aggression will continue to widen and escalate until our political leaders and our intellectual elite reclaim our language from those on the terror-abetting Left. True, our reclamation of our language will not go unopposed. But if we do not reassert our right to describe objective reality, our inability to explain why we are right and our detractors serve evil will be our undoing.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Courtesy of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Thursday Israel will again be the target of a jihadist-leftist propaganda assault. A flotilla of nine ships which set sail for Gaza from Cyprus earlier this week is scheduled to arrive at our doorstep.
The expressed aim of the flotilla's organizers is to unlawfully provide aid and comfort to Hamas - an illegal terrorist organization. Since it seized power in Gaza three years ago, Hamas, which is openly committed to the genocide of world Jewry and the physical eradication of Israel, has transformed the Gaza Strip into a hub of the global jihad. It has been illegally holding hostage Gilad Schalit incognito for four years. And it is continuously engaged in a massive, Iranian-financed arms buildup ahead of its next assault.
Beyond providing aid to Hamas, the declared aim of the "Free Gaza" movement is to coerce Israel into providing Hamas with an outlet to the sea. This too is in contravention of international law which expressly prohibits states and non-state actors from providing any support to terrorist organizations.
IN SENDING out the latest group of ships, Turkey and its Irish, Greek and Swedish partners seek to appropriate the imagery of the Jewish pre-statehood struggle for independence from Britain. In a bid to appease Hamas's jihadist precursors, in 1939 Britain's Mandatory authorities broke international law and prohibited Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine.
The League of Nations' letter of mandate for Britain specifically enjoined the British to facilitate Jewish immigration to the land of Israel. Yet following the Arab terror war from 1936-1939, the British issued the White Paper that all but prohibited Jewish immigration. This move blocked the one place on Earth where European Jews were wanted from accepting them and so trapped 6 million Jews in Hitler's Europe.
In the aftermath of the war, the British maintained their prohibition on Jewish immigration. To fight this British policy, the Zionist leadership in pre-state Israel organized the Aliya Bet program of illegal immigration. Jewish agents scoured the world for ships large enough to bring Europe's Jewish refugees to the land of Israel.
The ship most emblematic of the era was the Exodus. The Exodus which set sail from France in July 1947 with 4,515 Jewish Holocaust survivors on board was the Zionist response to a new British policy to force illegal immigrant ships to return to Europe.
The British rammed the Exodus in Haifa. They boarded and killed three Jewish defenders. They then forced its passengers to board British prison ships that would return them to Europe. French authorities denied the ships the right to land in France, so the British sailed on to Hamburg, Germany, where the refugees were forced to disembark.
The international outcry against Britain in the wake of the Exodus affair shamed London into cancelling its new policy. It also paved the way for Israel's independence 10 months later.
Now the Turkish, Greek, Swedish and Irish governments are colluding with Hamas to purloin the imagery of the Exodus and the heroism of the Jewish people in the years leading up to statehood and project that imagery onto a terrorist organization that seeks to complete Hitler's work. They further seek to invert reality by portraying Israel, which in accordance with international law is trying to contain and defeat Hamas, as a combination of the German Nazis and the British imperialists.
SO FAR, they are getting away with it. So far, for their efforts on behalf of a genocidal terrorist organization Erdogan and his ilk are being extolled as human rights champions. Barring any unexpected events, Israel will suffer yet another public relations disaster on Thursday when the ships approach Gaza.
How has this happened? How is it that we have become so overwhelmed by the Left's propaganda that most of our political leaders and intellectual elite are incapable of even describing the evil that is being advanced against us?
Over the past generation, the Left has commandeered our language. It has inverted the terminology of human rights, freedom, morality, heroism, democracy and victimization. Its perversion of language has made it nearly impossible for members of democratic, human rights respecting, moral societies to describe the threats they face from their human rights destroying, genocidal, tyrannical enemies. Thanks to the efforts of the international Left, the latter are championed as the victims of those they seek to annihilate.
Two incidents in recent weeks make clear just how disastrous the Left's wholesale theft of language and through it, their inversion of reality has been for Israel.
Last Monday, Noam Chomsky arrived at the Allenby Bridge and requested a visa to enter Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The police at the border refused his request. The radical leftist Israel-basher made a fuss and waited around for several hours before he went back to Jordan.
Chomsky left Jordan at the end of the week and travelled to Lebanon. For the second time in four years, on Friday Chomsky toured southern Lebanon with a Hizbullah guide. Now an official guest of Hizbullah, Chomsky is scheduled to give an address in Beirut Tuesday to celebrate the IDF's pullout from south Lebanon 10 years ago.
As David Hornik detailed in FrontPage Magazine on Friday, the leftist-dominated Israeli media went nuts when they discovered Chomsky had been turned away at the border. Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz heralded Chomsky as a great mind and proclaimed hysterically that the refusal to allow him to enter the country marked the end of Israeli democracy and the start of a slide into fascism. The Western media quickly piled on and within hours Israel's right to deny its avowed enemies entry was under assault.
And Chomsky is Israel's enemy. As Hornik pointed out, Chomsky has repeatedly defended Holocaust deniers while accusing Israel of being the ideological heir of Nazi Germany. When he hasn't been too busy championing the Khmer Rouge and Josef Stalin, and attacking the US as the Great Satan, Chomsky has devoted much time and energy to calling for Israel's eradication and defending Palestinian and Hizbullah terrorists.
IT WAS the government's job to point this out. But instead, faced with the leftist onslaught against its right to control its borders, the government crumpled. Instead of explaining that Chomsky is an enemy of Israel and an abettor and defender of genocide, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev apologized for the unpleasant reception Chomsky received at the Allenby Bridge. Regev also promised that if Chomsky returns, he will be granted an entry visa.
The government's cowardly handling of the Chomsky incident is testament to the Left's success at intimidating Western leaders to the point where instead of standing up to leftist propaganda and lies, they accept them as truth and even collaborate in disseminating them.
Probably the folks in the Prime Minister's Office figured no one would listen if they told the truth about Chomsky. They probably felt that defending the decision to bar Chomsky from the country would only elicit a second barrage of media attacks.
And perhaps they were right. But the fact that the Left would have remained unconvinced doesn't excuse the government's abject surrender of the truth about Chomsky to Israel's enemies on the Left who portray the MIT professor as a human rights activist and a great intellectual humanitarian. As David Horowitz and Peter Collier prove in their book The Anti-Chomsky Reader, there doesn't seem to be a tyrant that Chomsky hasn't championed or a victim that Chomsky hasn't demonized in the entire span of his 50-year career as a radical activist.
The government is not alone in its fear of exposing and fighting the Left's campaign to demonize the country.
THE RADICAL Left's ability to block voices of dissent from its anti-Israel and anti-freedom positions was similarly demonstrated two weeks ago at Tel Aviv University's annual Board of Governors meeting.
For several years, a large, vocal group of tenured professors from the university have actively participated in the international campaign to boycott Israeli universities and academics while actively supporting Hamas and Hizbullah. That is, many Tel Aviv University professors, whose salaries are paid by university donors and Israeli taxpayers, have been using their university titles to undermine the university and to advance the cause of Israel's destruction.
This year the university's Board of Governors bestowed an honorary doctorate on Harvard Prof. Alan Dershowitz. In his acceptance speech, Dershowitz called these professors out for their vile behavior and named three of the most vocal enemies of the university and Israel on the international stage: Profs. Anat Matar, Rachel Giora and Shlomo Sand.
The university's tenured anti-Zionist activists were quick to retaliate. Forty-six professors signed a letter to university president Joseph Klaffter demanding that the university disassociate itself from Dershowitz's statements.
Klaffter was quick to oblige. At the Board of Governors meeting, Klaffter silenced board member Mark Tanenbaum when he tried to put forward a resolution calling for disciplinary action against university professors who use their university titles to defame the university or Israel. Klaffter, who isn't even a member of the Board of Governors, reportedly grabbed the microphone away from Tanenbaum and adjourned the meeting. Klaffter justified his physical denial of Tanenbaum's freedom of speech by claiming that he was defending academic freedom.
Like the Prime Minister's Office's apology to Noam Chomsky, Klaffter's action - aside from arguably being prohibited by his own university's constitution - was further proof of the Left's success in appropriating the language and imagery of freedom and tolerance in the service of forces that seek to destroy freedom and end tolerance.
ON THURSDAY Hamas's maritime enablers from Europe, Turkey and beyond will arrive at our doorstep. The navy will block their entry to Gaza. Israel will be demonized by terror-abettors disguised as human rights activists and journalists worldwide. And the story will pave the way for the next assault on Israel's right to exist.
This endless circle of demonization and aggression will continue to widen and escalate until our political leaders and our intellectual elite reclaim our language from those on the terror-abetting Left. True, our reclamation of our language will not go unopposed. But if we do not reassert our right to describe objective reality, our inability to explain why we are right and our detractors serve evil will be our undoing.
Going "Green"
John Stossel
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
I ride my bike to work. It seems so pure.
We're constantly urged to "go green" -- use less energy, shrink our carbon footprint, save the Earth. How? We should drive less, use ethanol, recycle plastic and buy things with the government's Energy Star label.
But what if much of going green is just bunk? Al Gore's group, Repower America, claims we can replace all our dirty energy with clean, carbon-free renewables. Gore says we can do it within 10 years.
"It's simply not possible," says Robert Bryce, author of "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy." "Nine out of 10 units of power that we consume are produced by hydrocarbons -- coal, oil and natural gas. Any transition away from those sources is going to be a decades-long, maybe even a century-long process. ... The world consumes 200 billion barrels of hydrocarbons per day. We would have to find the energy equivalent of 23 Saudi Arabias."
Bryce used to be a left-liberal, but then: "I educated myself about math and physics. I'm a liberal who was mugged by the laws of thermodynamics."
Bryce mocked the "green" value of my riding my bike to work:
"Let's assume you saved a gallon of oil in your commute (a generous assumption!). Global daily energy consumption is 9.5 billion gallons. ... So by biking to work, you save the equivalent of one drop in 10 gasoline tanker trucks. Put another way, it's one pinch of salt in a 100-pound bag of potato chips."
How about wind power?
"Wind does not replace oil. This is one of the great fallacies, and it's one that the wind energy business continues to promote," Bryce said.
The problem is that windmills cannot provide a constant source of electricity. Wind turbines only achieve 10 percent to 20 percent of their maximum capacity because sometimes the wind doesn't blow.
"That means you have to keep conventional power plants up and running. You have to ramp them up to replace the power that disappears from wind turbines and ramp them down when power reappears."
Yet the media rave about Denmark, which gets some power from wind. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says, "If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark."
"Friedman doesn't fundamentally understand what he's talking about," Bryce said.
Bryce's book shows that Denmark uses eight times more coal and 25 times more oil than wind.
If wind and solar power were practical, entrepreneurs would invest in it. There would be no need for government to take money from taxpayers and give it to people pushing green products.
Even with subsidies, "renewable" energy today barely makes a dent on our energy needs.
Bryce points out that energy production from every solar panel and windmill in America is less than the production from one coal mine and much less than natural gas production from Oklahoma alone.
But what if we build more windmills?
"One nuclear power plant in Texas covers about 19 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Manhattan. To produce the same amount of power from wind turbines would require an area the size of Rhode Island. This is energy sprawl." To produce the same amount of energy with ethanol, another "green" fuel, it would take 24 Rhode Islands to grow enough corn.
Maybe the electric car is the next big thing?
"Electric cars are the next big thing, and they always will be."
There have been impressive headlines about electric cars from my brilliant colleagues in the media. The Washington Post said, "Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they're within reach of the average family."
That was in 1915.
In 1959, The New York Times said, "Electric is the car of the tomorrow."
In 1979, The Washington Post said, "GM has an electric car breakthrough in batteries, now makes them commercially practical."
I'm still waiting.
"The problem is very simple," Bryce said. "It's not political will. It's simple physics. Gasoline has 80 times the energy density of the best lithium ion batteries. There's no conspiracy here of big oil or big auto. It's a conspiracy of physics."
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
I ride my bike to work. It seems so pure.
We're constantly urged to "go green" -- use less energy, shrink our carbon footprint, save the Earth. How? We should drive less, use ethanol, recycle plastic and buy things with the government's Energy Star label.
But what if much of going green is just bunk? Al Gore's group, Repower America, claims we can replace all our dirty energy with clean, carbon-free renewables. Gore says we can do it within 10 years.
"It's simply not possible," says Robert Bryce, author of "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy." "Nine out of 10 units of power that we consume are produced by hydrocarbons -- coal, oil and natural gas. Any transition away from those sources is going to be a decades-long, maybe even a century-long process. ... The world consumes 200 billion barrels of hydrocarbons per day. We would have to find the energy equivalent of 23 Saudi Arabias."
Bryce used to be a left-liberal, but then: "I educated myself about math and physics. I'm a liberal who was mugged by the laws of thermodynamics."
Bryce mocked the "green" value of my riding my bike to work:
"Let's assume you saved a gallon of oil in your commute (a generous assumption!). Global daily energy consumption is 9.5 billion gallons. ... So by biking to work, you save the equivalent of one drop in 10 gasoline tanker trucks. Put another way, it's one pinch of salt in a 100-pound bag of potato chips."
How about wind power?
"Wind does not replace oil. This is one of the great fallacies, and it's one that the wind energy business continues to promote," Bryce said.
The problem is that windmills cannot provide a constant source of electricity. Wind turbines only achieve 10 percent to 20 percent of their maximum capacity because sometimes the wind doesn't blow.
"That means you have to keep conventional power plants up and running. You have to ramp them up to replace the power that disappears from wind turbines and ramp them down when power reappears."
Yet the media rave about Denmark, which gets some power from wind. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says, "If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark."
"Friedman doesn't fundamentally understand what he's talking about," Bryce said.
Bryce's book shows that Denmark uses eight times more coal and 25 times more oil than wind.
If wind and solar power were practical, entrepreneurs would invest in it. There would be no need for government to take money from taxpayers and give it to people pushing green products.
Even with subsidies, "renewable" energy today barely makes a dent on our energy needs.
Bryce points out that energy production from every solar panel and windmill in America is less than the production from one coal mine and much less than natural gas production from Oklahoma alone.
But what if we build more windmills?
"One nuclear power plant in Texas covers about 19 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Manhattan. To produce the same amount of power from wind turbines would require an area the size of Rhode Island. This is energy sprawl." To produce the same amount of energy with ethanol, another "green" fuel, it would take 24 Rhode Islands to grow enough corn.
Maybe the electric car is the next big thing?
"Electric cars are the next big thing, and they always will be."
There have been impressive headlines about electric cars from my brilliant colleagues in the media. The Washington Post said, "Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they're within reach of the average family."
That was in 1915.
In 1959, The New York Times said, "Electric is the car of the tomorrow."
In 1979, The Washington Post said, "GM has an electric car breakthrough in batteries, now makes them commercially practical."
I'm still waiting.
"The problem is very simple," Bryce said. "It's not political will. It's simple physics. Gasoline has 80 times the energy density of the best lithium ion batteries. There's no conspiracy here of big oil or big auto. It's a conspiracy of physics."
Europe's Burqa Rage
Michael Gerson
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
WASHINGTON -- After the British army conquered the Sindh region of what is now modern-day Pakistan in the 1840s, Gen. Charles Napier enforced a ban on the practice of Sati -- the burning of widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands. A delegation of Hindu leaders approached Napier to complain that their ancient traditions were being violated. The general is said to have replied: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. ... You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
The incident can hardly be commended as a model of cross-cultural relations, but it clarifies a tension. Conflict can arise between respect for other cultures and respect for universal human rights.
This is particularly true when it comes to the rights of women. Traditional societies can be deeply admirable -- conservative, family-oriented, stable, wise about human nature and human society. But they can also be highly patriarchal, evidenced by such practices as Sati, foot-binding, widow inheritance and female circumcision. This is not to say that modern, rights-based societies are without their own faults and failures; it is only to recognize that multiculturalism and human rights can sometimes clash.
For the most part, these tensions no longer emerge through colonialism but through migration, which can transplant a traditional culture smack in the middle of an aggressively liberal one. The most visible areas of difference -- say in dress -- can spark controversy, just as the wearing of the burqa is now doing in Europe.
Belgium is moving toward a total ban on face-covering veils in public. Italian police recently fined a woman for wearing a burqa. In France, a law banning garments "designed to hide the face" is likely to be introduced in July. "The burqa is not a sign of religion," says French President Nicolas Sarkozy, "it is a sign of subservience. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."
Disagreements about the burqa among Islamic women are often heated. This is to be expected because religious covering means different things in different contexts. It can be a "body bag" placed on unwilling women by threatening relatives and religious police. It can be, according to one critic, "a sad process of self-isolation and self-imposed exile." But it can also be a way for women from traditional backgrounds to preserve their marriage prospects and family honor in mixed-sex settings. Many women who wear the burqa are fully conscious of the choice they are making.
The motives of European leaders in this controversy are less sympathetic. Some speak deceptively (and absurdly) of a security motive for banning Islamic covering. Who knows what they are hiding? But by this standard, the war on terror would mandate the wearing of bikinis. The real purpose of burqa bans is to assert European cultural identity -- secular, liberal and individualistic -- at the expense of a visible, traditional religious minority. A nation such as France, proudly relativistic on most issues, is convinced of its cultural superiority when it comes to sexual freedom. A country of topless beaches considers a ban on excessive modesty. The capital of the fashion world, where women are often overexposed and objectified, lectures others on the dignity of women.
For what the opinion of an outsider is worth, I do think the burqa is oppressive. It seems designed to restrict movement, leaving women clumsy, helpless, dependent and anonymous. The vast majority of Muslim women do not wear complete covering because the Koran only mandates modesty, not sartorial imprisonment.
But at issue in Europe is not social disapproval; it is criminalization. In matters of religious liberty, there are no easy or rigid rules. Governments apply a balancing test. A tradition that burns widows or physically mutilates young girls would justify the Napier approach. Some rights are so fundamental that they must be defended in every case. But if a democratic majority can impose its will on a religious minority for any reason, then religious freedom has no meaning. The state must have strong, public justifications to compel conformity, especially on an issue such as the clothes that citizens wear.
In France -- where only a few thousand women out of 5 million Muslims wear the burqa -- a ban is merely a symbolic expression of disdain for an unpopular minority. It would achieve little but resentment.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
WASHINGTON -- After the British army conquered the Sindh region of what is now modern-day Pakistan in the 1840s, Gen. Charles Napier enforced a ban on the practice of Sati -- the burning of widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands. A delegation of Hindu leaders approached Napier to complain that their ancient traditions were being violated. The general is said to have replied: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. ... You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
The incident can hardly be commended as a model of cross-cultural relations, but it clarifies a tension. Conflict can arise between respect for other cultures and respect for universal human rights.
This is particularly true when it comes to the rights of women. Traditional societies can be deeply admirable -- conservative, family-oriented, stable, wise about human nature and human society. But they can also be highly patriarchal, evidenced by such practices as Sati, foot-binding, widow inheritance and female circumcision. This is not to say that modern, rights-based societies are without their own faults and failures; it is only to recognize that multiculturalism and human rights can sometimes clash.
For the most part, these tensions no longer emerge through colonialism but through migration, which can transplant a traditional culture smack in the middle of an aggressively liberal one. The most visible areas of difference -- say in dress -- can spark controversy, just as the wearing of the burqa is now doing in Europe.
Belgium is moving toward a total ban on face-covering veils in public. Italian police recently fined a woman for wearing a burqa. In France, a law banning garments "designed to hide the face" is likely to be introduced in July. "The burqa is not a sign of religion," says French President Nicolas Sarkozy, "it is a sign of subservience. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."
Disagreements about the burqa among Islamic women are often heated. This is to be expected because religious covering means different things in different contexts. It can be a "body bag" placed on unwilling women by threatening relatives and religious police. It can be, according to one critic, "a sad process of self-isolation and self-imposed exile." But it can also be a way for women from traditional backgrounds to preserve their marriage prospects and family honor in mixed-sex settings. Many women who wear the burqa are fully conscious of the choice they are making.
The motives of European leaders in this controversy are less sympathetic. Some speak deceptively (and absurdly) of a security motive for banning Islamic covering. Who knows what they are hiding? But by this standard, the war on terror would mandate the wearing of bikinis. The real purpose of burqa bans is to assert European cultural identity -- secular, liberal and individualistic -- at the expense of a visible, traditional religious minority. A nation such as France, proudly relativistic on most issues, is convinced of its cultural superiority when it comes to sexual freedom. A country of topless beaches considers a ban on excessive modesty. The capital of the fashion world, where women are often overexposed and objectified, lectures others on the dignity of women.
For what the opinion of an outsider is worth, I do think the burqa is oppressive. It seems designed to restrict movement, leaving women clumsy, helpless, dependent and anonymous. The vast majority of Muslim women do not wear complete covering because the Koran only mandates modesty, not sartorial imprisonment.
But at issue in Europe is not social disapproval; it is criminalization. In matters of religious liberty, there are no easy or rigid rules. Governments apply a balancing test. A tradition that burns widows or physically mutilates young girls would justify the Napier approach. Some rights are so fundamental that they must be defended in every case. But if a democratic majority can impose its will on a religious minority for any reason, then religious freedom has no meaning. The state must have strong, public justifications to compel conformity, especially on an issue such as the clothes that citizens wear.
In France -- where only a few thousand women out of 5 million Muslims wear the burqa -- a ban is merely a symbolic expression of disdain for an unpopular minority. It would achieve little but resentment.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The World Is a Cruel Place -- and If America Weakens, It Will Get Crueler
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
One of the many beliefs -- i.e., non-empirically based doctrines -- of the post-Christian West has been that moral progress is the human norm, especially so with the demise of religion. In a secular world, the self-described enlightened thinking goes, superstition is replaced by reason, and reason leads to the moral good.
Of course, it turned out that the post-Christian West produced considerably more evil than the Christian world had. No mass cruelty in the name of Christianity approximated the vastness of the cruelty unleashed by secular doctrines and regimes in the post-Christian world. The argument against religion that more people have been killed in the name of religion than by any other doctrine is false propaganda on behalf of secularism and Leftism.
The amount of evil done by Christians -- against, for example, "heretics" and Jews -- in both the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity -- was extensive, as was the failure of most European Christians to see Nazism for the evil that it was. The good news is that Christian evils have been acknowledged and addressed by most Christian leaders and thinkers.
But there were never any Christian Auschwitzes -- i.e., systematic genocides of every man, woman and child of a particular race or religion. Nor were there Christian Gulags -- the shipping of millions of innocents to conditions so horrific that prolonged suffering leading to death was the almost -inevitable end.
The anti-religious Left offers two responses to these facts: The first is that modern technology made the Nazi and Communist murders of scores of millions possible; had the church been technologically able to do so, it would have made its own Auschwitz and Gulag. The second is that Nazism and Communism were religions and not secular doctrines.
The response to the first is that technology was not necessary for the Communist murders of over a hundred million innocent people in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and elsewhere. In Cambodia, millions were murdered with hammers, in Rwanda with machetes.
The response to the second is that Communism and Nazism were secular movements and to deny that is to tell a gargantuan lie. Even if one argues that Nazism and Communism were religions, they were nevertheless secular religions. That too many Christians morally failed when confronted with Nazism is true, but irrelevant to the fact that Nazism was in no way a Christian movement.
And now the post-Christian world is getting worse.
The moral news about the world in which we live is almost unremittingly negative.
Russia
Russia is devoid of a moral values system. Whatever moral role the Russian Orthodox Church played was largely extinguished during the seven decades of Communist suppression of religion. Today, pockets of religious morality notwithstanding, Russia is essentially a nihilistic state. Under the leadership of a former KGB director, Russia now plays a destructive role in world affairs. Russia today is characterized by major arms shipments to Syria, protecting Iran while it becomes a nuclear power, forcing its will on Ukraine and other neighboring states, and the violent suppression of domestic critics who shed any light on the organized crime syndicate that rules the geographically largest nation in the world.
Turkey
The Ataturk Revolution is being undone. Turkey, the country long regarded as the bridge between the West and Islam, is rapidly moving away from the West and to an increasingly anti-Western Islam.
Iran
Iran is ruled by the heirs of Nazism, if that word still means anything after being cheapened by the Left for decades, most recently by the Left's comparison of Arizona to a Nazi state. The rulers of Iran boast of their desire to initiate a second Holocaust against the Jews, all the while denying that the first Holocaust took place. And the country's treatment of Iranians who seek elementary human freedoms and of Iranian women is among the worst on earth.
Congo
According to all reports, nearly 6 million people have been killed in the Congo in the last decade. The great secular liberal hope in "humanity" and "world opinion" has once again been shown to be the false hope it is. World opinion and "humanity" have rarely done anything to help the truly persecuted. But there is more to the Congolese genocide -- the absence of reporting about it in the world's media and its being a non-issue at the United Nations. If an Israeli soldier kills a rock-throwing Palestinian, or even worse, makes plans to build 1,600 apartments in east Jerusalem, the U.N., world opinion and the world media cover it as if it were the primary evil on earth. But the Congolese deaths are barely worth a mention.
Mexico
Mexico is fighting for its life against narcotics gangs that compete with Islamists in their sadism. Mexico could become the largest narco-state in the world. To be a good person in Mexico today, i.e., to oppose the drug lords in any way, is to put oneself in danger of being slowly tortured to death.
Europe
Europe long ago gave up fighting for or believing in anything other than living a life with as much economic security, as many days off and as young a retirement age as possible. World War I killed off European idealism. And whatever remained was destroyed by World War II. What I have written about the Germans is true for nearly all of Europe: Instead of learning to fight evil, Europe has learned that fighting is evil.
Other consequences of European secularism and the demise of non-materialistic ideals include a low birthrate (children cost money and limit the number of fine restaurants in which one can afford to dine), and appeasement of evil. Thus most European nations are slowly disappearing and nearly every European country has compromised Western liberties in order to appease radical Muslims.
Radical Islam
Polls taken in the Muslim world regularly report that about 10 percent of the world's Muslims say they support radical Islam -- meaning Islamic totalitarianism as practiced by the Taliban and terror as practiced by Al-Qaida. That means at least one hundred million people. Add to that the unspecified number of Muslims who support the Nazi-level and Nazi-like anti-Semitism promulgated in much of the Middle East and you have an enormous body of people committed to the death of the West.
China
As in Russia, traditional Chinese virtues were largely destroyed by Communism, and China, too, is essentially a nihilistic state whose government spends its vast sums of foreign currency in buying influence in some of the cruelest places on earth (Zimbabwe, for example) and protecting the genocide-advocating regime of Iran.
The United Nations
The net result of the United Nations is an increase in evil on earth. Whatever good is performed by some of its institutions, like the World Health Organization or UNICEF, that good is outweighed by the amount of evil the U.N. either abets or allows. It has supervised genocide in Rwanda, done nothing to stop genocide elsewhere (e.g., Congo and Sudan), gives a respectable forum to tyrannies, and is preoccupied with vilifying one of its relatively few humane states, Israel. Its contributing to human suffering is exemplified by Libya being elected to its Human Rights Commission and Iran's election to its Commission on the Status of Women.
The United States
The United States was described by President Abraham Lincoln as The Last Best Hope of Earth. Most Americans agreed then. However, with the ascent of the Left in America -- in our educational institutions, news and entertainment media, and arts world -- fewer and fewer Americans believe this. On the contrary, the Leftist view of America, which pervades American life, is of a country deeply morally compromised by endemic racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, militarism, imperialism and a rapacious capitalism, leading to immoral levels of economic inequality.
As in Europe, these views are leading America to avoid offending its enemies. The American attorney general recently refused to answer a congressman's repeated question about whether he believes that radical Islam might have been one factor motivating recent Muslim terrorists in America.
With America more interested in being like Europe and being liked rather than in fighting its enemies, more and more countries are identifying with America's enemies than with America. Last week's three-way hug among the leaders of Brazil, Turkey and Iran was a clear example of such.
Meanwhile, America is rapidly accumulating unpayable debts that will render it not very different from Greece. Indeed, California, once the grease of the American economy, has become the Greece of the American economy.
As the Left's power increases, America's power recedes -- and the world further deteriorates. Under Democratic Party rule, the Last Best Hope of Earth has decided that the United Nations and Western Europe deserve that title, not the United States.
Those of us working to remove Democrats from power regard this November's election as not only a referendum on the direction of America, but of the world itself.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
One of the many beliefs -- i.e., non-empirically based doctrines -- of the post-Christian West has been that moral progress is the human norm, especially so with the demise of religion. In a secular world, the self-described enlightened thinking goes, superstition is replaced by reason, and reason leads to the moral good.
Of course, it turned out that the post-Christian West produced considerably more evil than the Christian world had. No mass cruelty in the name of Christianity approximated the vastness of the cruelty unleashed by secular doctrines and regimes in the post-Christian world. The argument against religion that more people have been killed in the name of religion than by any other doctrine is false propaganda on behalf of secularism and Leftism.
The amount of evil done by Christians -- against, for example, "heretics" and Jews -- in both the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity -- was extensive, as was the failure of most European Christians to see Nazism for the evil that it was. The good news is that Christian evils have been acknowledged and addressed by most Christian leaders and thinkers.
But there were never any Christian Auschwitzes -- i.e., systematic genocides of every man, woman and child of a particular race or religion. Nor were there Christian Gulags -- the shipping of millions of innocents to conditions so horrific that prolonged suffering leading to death was the almost -inevitable end.
The anti-religious Left offers two responses to these facts: The first is that modern technology made the Nazi and Communist murders of scores of millions possible; had the church been technologically able to do so, it would have made its own Auschwitz and Gulag. The second is that Nazism and Communism were religions and not secular doctrines.
The response to the first is that technology was not necessary for the Communist murders of over a hundred million innocent people in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and elsewhere. In Cambodia, millions were murdered with hammers, in Rwanda with machetes.
The response to the second is that Communism and Nazism were secular movements and to deny that is to tell a gargantuan lie. Even if one argues that Nazism and Communism were religions, they were nevertheless secular religions. That too many Christians morally failed when confronted with Nazism is true, but irrelevant to the fact that Nazism was in no way a Christian movement.
And now the post-Christian world is getting worse.
The moral news about the world in which we live is almost unremittingly negative.
Russia
Russia is devoid of a moral values system. Whatever moral role the Russian Orthodox Church played was largely extinguished during the seven decades of Communist suppression of religion. Today, pockets of religious morality notwithstanding, Russia is essentially a nihilistic state. Under the leadership of a former KGB director, Russia now plays a destructive role in world affairs. Russia today is characterized by major arms shipments to Syria, protecting Iran while it becomes a nuclear power, forcing its will on Ukraine and other neighboring states, and the violent suppression of domestic critics who shed any light on the organized crime syndicate that rules the geographically largest nation in the world.
Turkey
The Ataturk Revolution is being undone. Turkey, the country long regarded as the bridge between the West and Islam, is rapidly moving away from the West and to an increasingly anti-Western Islam.
Iran
Iran is ruled by the heirs of Nazism, if that word still means anything after being cheapened by the Left for decades, most recently by the Left's comparison of Arizona to a Nazi state. The rulers of Iran boast of their desire to initiate a second Holocaust against the Jews, all the while denying that the first Holocaust took place. And the country's treatment of Iranians who seek elementary human freedoms and of Iranian women is among the worst on earth.
Congo
According to all reports, nearly 6 million people have been killed in the Congo in the last decade. The great secular liberal hope in "humanity" and "world opinion" has once again been shown to be the false hope it is. World opinion and "humanity" have rarely done anything to help the truly persecuted. But there is more to the Congolese genocide -- the absence of reporting about it in the world's media and its being a non-issue at the United Nations. If an Israeli soldier kills a rock-throwing Palestinian, or even worse, makes plans to build 1,600 apartments in east Jerusalem, the U.N., world opinion and the world media cover it as if it were the primary evil on earth. But the Congolese deaths are barely worth a mention.
Mexico
Mexico is fighting for its life against narcotics gangs that compete with Islamists in their sadism. Mexico could become the largest narco-state in the world. To be a good person in Mexico today, i.e., to oppose the drug lords in any way, is to put oneself in danger of being slowly tortured to death.
Europe
Europe long ago gave up fighting for or believing in anything other than living a life with as much economic security, as many days off and as young a retirement age as possible. World War I killed off European idealism. And whatever remained was destroyed by World War II. What I have written about the Germans is true for nearly all of Europe: Instead of learning to fight evil, Europe has learned that fighting is evil.
Other consequences of European secularism and the demise of non-materialistic ideals include a low birthrate (children cost money and limit the number of fine restaurants in which one can afford to dine), and appeasement of evil. Thus most European nations are slowly disappearing and nearly every European country has compromised Western liberties in order to appease radical Muslims.
Radical Islam
Polls taken in the Muslim world regularly report that about 10 percent of the world's Muslims say they support radical Islam -- meaning Islamic totalitarianism as practiced by the Taliban and terror as practiced by Al-Qaida. That means at least one hundred million people. Add to that the unspecified number of Muslims who support the Nazi-level and Nazi-like anti-Semitism promulgated in much of the Middle East and you have an enormous body of people committed to the death of the West.
China
As in Russia, traditional Chinese virtues were largely destroyed by Communism, and China, too, is essentially a nihilistic state whose government spends its vast sums of foreign currency in buying influence in some of the cruelest places on earth (Zimbabwe, for example) and protecting the genocide-advocating regime of Iran.
The United Nations
The net result of the United Nations is an increase in evil on earth. Whatever good is performed by some of its institutions, like the World Health Organization or UNICEF, that good is outweighed by the amount of evil the U.N. either abets or allows. It has supervised genocide in Rwanda, done nothing to stop genocide elsewhere (e.g., Congo and Sudan), gives a respectable forum to tyrannies, and is preoccupied with vilifying one of its relatively few humane states, Israel. Its contributing to human suffering is exemplified by Libya being elected to its Human Rights Commission and Iran's election to its Commission on the Status of Women.
The United States
The United States was described by President Abraham Lincoln as The Last Best Hope of Earth. Most Americans agreed then. However, with the ascent of the Left in America -- in our educational institutions, news and entertainment media, and arts world -- fewer and fewer Americans believe this. On the contrary, the Leftist view of America, which pervades American life, is of a country deeply morally compromised by endemic racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, militarism, imperialism and a rapacious capitalism, leading to immoral levels of economic inequality.
As in Europe, these views are leading America to avoid offending its enemies. The American attorney general recently refused to answer a congressman's repeated question about whether he believes that radical Islam might have been one factor motivating recent Muslim terrorists in America.
With America more interested in being like Europe and being liked rather than in fighting its enemies, more and more countries are identifying with America's enemies than with America. Last week's three-way hug among the leaders of Brazil, Turkey and Iran was a clear example of such.
Meanwhile, America is rapidly accumulating unpayable debts that will render it not very different from Greece. Indeed, California, once the grease of the American economy, has become the Greece of the American economy.
As the Left's power increases, America's power recedes -- and the world further deteriorates. Under Democratic Party rule, the Last Best Hope of Earth has decided that the United Nations and Western Europe deserve that title, not the United States.
Those of us working to remove Democrats from power regard this November's election as not only a referendum on the direction of America, but of the world itself.
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