By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, September 23, 2011
On Wednesday, two men were lawfully executed. Both insisted they were innocent. If you've been watching the news or following Kim Kardashian's tweets, you've likely heard of one of these men, Troy Davis.
The other death penalty "victim," Lawrence Russell Brewer, was until this week the more significant convicted murderer. Brewer was one of the racist goons who infamously tied James Byrd to the back of their truck and dragged him to death in Texas.
The case became a touchstone in the 2000 presidential race because then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush had refused to sign a "hate crimes" law. The NAACP ran a reprehensible ad during the presidential election trying to insinuate that Bush somehow shared responsibility for the act.
Regardless, Brewer claimed that he was "innocent" because one of his buddies had cut Byrd's throat before they dragged his body around. Forensic evidence directly contradicted this.
Brewer's own statements didn't help either. Such as, "As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets. ... I'd do it all over again, to tell you the truth."
Brewer, festooned with tattoos depicting KKK symbols and burning crosses, was "not a sympathetic person" in the words of Gloria Rubac of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement.
Which is why we didn't hear much about him this week. Instead, we heard a great deal about Davis. Many people insist Davis was innocent or that there was "too much doubt" about his guilt to proceed with the execution. Many judges and public officials disagreed, including all nine members of the Supreme Court, who briefly stayed the execution Wednesday night, only to let it proceed hours later.
There are many sincere and decent people -- on both sides of the ideological spectrum -- who are opposed to the death penalty. I consider it an honorable position, even though I disagree with it. I am 100 percent in favor of lawfully executing people who deserve the death penalty and 100 percent opposed to killing people who do not deserve it.
When I say that, many death penalty opponents angrily respond that I'm missing the point. You can never be certain! Troy Davis proves that!
But he proves no such thing. At best, his case proves that you can't be certain about Davis. You most certainly can be certain about other murderers. If the horrible happens and we learn that Davis really was not guilty, that will be a heart-wrenching revelation. It will cast a negative light on the death penalty, on the Georgia criminal justice system and on America.
But you know what it won't do? It won't render Lawrence Russell Brewer one iota less guilty or less deserving of the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment are extremely selective about the cases they make into public crusades. Strategically that's smart; you don't want to lead your argument with "unsympathetic persons." But logically it's problematic. There is no transitive property that renders one heinous murderer less deserving of punishment simply because some other person was exonerated of murder.
Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people including 19 children. He admitted it. How does doubt in Troy Davis' case make McVeigh less deserving of death?
We hear so much about the innocent people who've gotten off death row -- thank God -- because of new DNA techniques. We hear very little about the criminals who've had their guilt confirmed by the same techniques (or who've declined DNA testing because they know it will remove all doubt). Death penalty opponents are less eager to debate such cases because they want to delegitimize "the system."
And to be fair, I think this logic cuts against one of the death penalty's greatest rationalizations as well: deterrence. I do believe there's a deterrence effect from the death penalty. But I don't think that's anything more than an ancillary benefit of capital punishment. It's unjust to kill a person simply to send a message to other people who've yet to commit a crime. It is just to execute a person who deserves to be executed.
Opponents of the death penalty believe that no one deserves to be executed. Again, it's an honorable position, but a difficult one to defend politically in a country where the death penalty is popular. So they spend all of their energy cherry-picking cases, gumming-up the legal system and talking about "uncertainty."
That's fine. But until they can explain why we shouldn't have a death penalty when uncertainty isn't an issue -- i.e. why McVeigh and Brewer should live -- they'll never win the real argument.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Can Israel Survive?
By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Will Israel survive? That question hasn't really been asked since 1967. Then, a far weaker Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab dictatorships that were equipped with sophisticated weapons from their nuclear patron, the Soviet Union. But now, things are far worse for the Jewish state.
Egyptian mobs just tried to storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo and kill any Israelis they could get their hands on. Whatever Egyptian government emerges, it will be more Islamist than before -- and may renounce the peace accords with Israel.
One thing unites Syrian and Libyan dissidents: They seem to hate Israel as much as the murderous dictators whom they have been trying to throw out.
The so-called "Arab Spring" was supposed to usher in Arab self-introspection about why intolerant strongmen keep sprouting up in the Middle East. Post-revolutionary critics could freely examine self-inflicted Arab wounds, such as tribalism, religious intolerance, authoritarianism, endemic corruption, closed economies and gender apartheid.
But so far, "revolutionaries" sound a lot more like reactionaries. They are more often retreating to the tired conspiracies that the Israelis and Americans pushed onto innocent Arab publics homegrown corrupt madmen such as Bashar Assad, Muammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak.
In 1967, the more powerful periphery of the Middle East -- the Shah's Iran, Kemalist Turkey, a military-run Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies -- was mostly uninvolved in the Israel-Arab frontline fighting.
Not now. A soon-to-be-nuclear Iran serially promises to destroy Israel. The Erdogan government in Turkey brags about its Ottoman Islamist past -- and wants to provoke Israel into an eastern Mediterranean shooting war. Pakistan is the world's leading host and exporter of jihadists obsessed with destroying Israel. The oil-rich Gulf states use their vast petroleum wealth and clout to line up oil importers against Israel. The 21st century United Nations is a de facto enemy of the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, the West is nearly bankrupt. The European Union is on the brink of dissolving, its population shrinking amid growing numbers of Islamic immigrants.
America is $16 trillion in debt. We are tired of three wars. The Obama administration initially thought putting a little "light" into the once-solid relationship between Israel and the United States might coax Arab countries into negotiating a peace. That new American triangulation certainly has given a far more confident Muslim world more hope -- but it's hope that just maybe the United States now cannot or will not come to Israel's aid if Muslim states ratchet up the tension.
It is trendy to blame Israel intransigence for all these bleak developments. But to do so is simply to forget history. There were three Arab efforts to destroy Israel before it occupied any borderlands after its victory in 1967. Later, it gave back all of Sinai and yet now faces a hostile Egypt. It got out of Lebanon -- and Hezbollah crowed that Israel was weakening, as that terrorist organization moved in and stockpiled thousands of missiles pointed at Tel Aviv. Israel got out of Gaza and earned as thanks both rocket showers and a terrorist Hamas government sworn to destroy the Jewish state.
The Arab Middle East damns Israel for not granting a "right of return" into Israel to Palestinians who have not lived there in nearly 70 years. But it keeps embarrassed silence about the more than half-million Jews whom Arab dictatorships much later ethnically cleansed from Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and sent back into Israel. On cue, the Palestinian ambassador to the United States again brags that there will be no Jews allowed in his newly envisioned, and American subsidized, Palestinian state -- a boast with eerie historical parallels.
By now we know both what will start and deter yet another conflict in the Middle East. In the past, wars broke out when the Arab states thought they could win them and stopped when they conceded they could not.
But now a new array of factors -- ever more Islamist enemies of Israel such as Turkey and Iran, ever more likelihood of frontline Arab Islamist governments, ever more fear of Islamic terrorism, ever more unabashed anti-Semitism, ever more petrodollars flowing into the Middle East, ever more chance of nuclear Islamist states, and ever more indifference by Europe and the United States -- has probably convinced Israel's enemies that finally they can win what they could not in 1947, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982 and 2006.
So brace yourself. The next war against Israel is no longer a matter of if, only when. And it will be far more deadly than any we've witnessed in quite some time.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Will Israel survive? That question hasn't really been asked since 1967. Then, a far weaker Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab dictatorships that were equipped with sophisticated weapons from their nuclear patron, the Soviet Union. But now, things are far worse for the Jewish state.
Egyptian mobs just tried to storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo and kill any Israelis they could get their hands on. Whatever Egyptian government emerges, it will be more Islamist than before -- and may renounce the peace accords with Israel.
One thing unites Syrian and Libyan dissidents: They seem to hate Israel as much as the murderous dictators whom they have been trying to throw out.
The so-called "Arab Spring" was supposed to usher in Arab self-introspection about why intolerant strongmen keep sprouting up in the Middle East. Post-revolutionary critics could freely examine self-inflicted Arab wounds, such as tribalism, religious intolerance, authoritarianism, endemic corruption, closed economies and gender apartheid.
But so far, "revolutionaries" sound a lot more like reactionaries. They are more often retreating to the tired conspiracies that the Israelis and Americans pushed onto innocent Arab publics homegrown corrupt madmen such as Bashar Assad, Muammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak.
In 1967, the more powerful periphery of the Middle East -- the Shah's Iran, Kemalist Turkey, a military-run Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies -- was mostly uninvolved in the Israel-Arab frontline fighting.
Not now. A soon-to-be-nuclear Iran serially promises to destroy Israel. The Erdogan government in Turkey brags about its Ottoman Islamist past -- and wants to provoke Israel into an eastern Mediterranean shooting war. Pakistan is the world's leading host and exporter of jihadists obsessed with destroying Israel. The oil-rich Gulf states use their vast petroleum wealth and clout to line up oil importers against Israel. The 21st century United Nations is a de facto enemy of the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, the West is nearly bankrupt. The European Union is on the brink of dissolving, its population shrinking amid growing numbers of Islamic immigrants.
America is $16 trillion in debt. We are tired of three wars. The Obama administration initially thought putting a little "light" into the once-solid relationship between Israel and the United States might coax Arab countries into negotiating a peace. That new American triangulation certainly has given a far more confident Muslim world more hope -- but it's hope that just maybe the United States now cannot or will not come to Israel's aid if Muslim states ratchet up the tension.
It is trendy to blame Israel intransigence for all these bleak developments. But to do so is simply to forget history. There were three Arab efforts to destroy Israel before it occupied any borderlands after its victory in 1967. Later, it gave back all of Sinai and yet now faces a hostile Egypt. It got out of Lebanon -- and Hezbollah crowed that Israel was weakening, as that terrorist organization moved in and stockpiled thousands of missiles pointed at Tel Aviv. Israel got out of Gaza and earned as thanks both rocket showers and a terrorist Hamas government sworn to destroy the Jewish state.
The Arab Middle East damns Israel for not granting a "right of return" into Israel to Palestinians who have not lived there in nearly 70 years. But it keeps embarrassed silence about the more than half-million Jews whom Arab dictatorships much later ethnically cleansed from Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and sent back into Israel. On cue, the Palestinian ambassador to the United States again brags that there will be no Jews allowed in his newly envisioned, and American subsidized, Palestinian state -- a boast with eerie historical parallels.
By now we know both what will start and deter yet another conflict in the Middle East. In the past, wars broke out when the Arab states thought they could win them and stopped when they conceded they could not.
But now a new array of factors -- ever more Islamist enemies of Israel such as Turkey and Iran, ever more likelihood of frontline Arab Islamist governments, ever more fear of Islamic terrorism, ever more unabashed anti-Semitism, ever more petrodollars flowing into the Middle East, ever more chance of nuclear Islamist states, and ever more indifference by Europe and the United States -- has probably convinced Israel's enemies that finally they can win what they could not in 1947, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982 and 2006.
So brace yourself. The next war against Israel is no longer a matter of if, only when. And it will be far more deadly than any we've witnessed in quite some time.
Mumia's the Word
By Ann Coulter
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
For decades, liberals tried persuading Americans to abolish the death penalty, using their usual argument: hysterical sobbing.
Only when the media began lying about innocent people being executed did support for the death penalty begin to waver, falling from 80 percent to about 60 percent in a little more than a decade. (Silver lining: That's still more Americans than believe in man-made global warming.)
Fifty-nine percent of Americans now believe that an innocent man has been executed in the last five years. There is more credible evidence that space aliens have walked among us than that an innocent person has been executed in this country in the past 60 years, much less the past five years.
But unless members of the public are going to personally review trial transcripts in every death penalty case, they have no way of knowing the truth. The media certainly won't tell them.
It's nearly impossible to receive a death sentence these days -- unless you do something completely crazy like shoot a cop in full view of dozens of witnesses in a Burger King parking lot, only a few hours after shooting at a passing car while exiting a party.
That's what Troy Davis did in August 1989. Davis is the media's current baby seal of death row.
After a two-week trial with 34 witnesses for the state and six witnesses for the defense, the jury of seven blacks and five whites took less than two hours to convict Davis of Officer Mark MacPhail's murder, as well as various other crimes. Two days later, the jury sentenced Davis to death.
Now, a brisk 22 years after Davis murdered Officer MacPhail, his sentence will finally be administered this week -- barring any more of the legal shenanigans that have kept taxpayers on the hook for Davis' room and board for the past two decades.
(The average time on death row is 14 years. Then liberals turn around and triumphantly claim the death penalty doesn't have any noticeable deterrent effect. As the kids say: Duh.)
It has been claimed -- in The New York Times and Time magazine, for example -- that there was no "physical evidence" connecting Davis to the crimes that night.
Davis pulled out a gun and shot two strangers in public. What "physical evidence" were they expecting? No houses were broken into, no cars stolen, no rapes or fistfights accompanied the shootings. Where exactly would you look for DNA? And to prove what?
I suppose it would be nice if the shell casings from both shootings that night matched. Oh wait -- they did. That's "physical evidence."
It's true that the bulk of the evidence against Davis was eyewitness testimony. That tends to happen when you shoot someone in a busy Burger King parking lot.
Eyewitness testimony, like all evidence tending to show guilt, has gotten a bad name recently, but the "eyewitness" testimony in this case did not consist simply of strangers trying to distinguish one tall black man from another. For one thing, several of the eyewitnesses knew Davis personally.
The bulk of the eyewitness testimony established the following:
Two tall, young black men were harassing a vagrant in the Burger King parking lot, one in a yellow shirt and the other in a white Batman shirt. The one in the white shirt used a brown revolver to pistol-whip the vagrant. When a cop yelled at them to stop, the man in the white shirt ran, then wheeled around and shot the cop, walked over to his body and shot him again, smiling.
Some eyewitnesses described the shooter as wearing a white shirt, some said it was a white shirt with writing, and some identified it specifically as a white Batman shirt. Not one witness said the man in the yellow shirt pistol-whipped the vagrant or shot the cop.
Several of Davis' friends testified -- without recantation -- that he was the one in a white shirt. Several eyewitnesses, both acquaintances and strangers, specifically identified Davis as the one who shot Officer MacPhail.
Now the media claim that seven of the nine witnesses against Davis at trial have recanted.
First of all, the state presented 34 witnesses against Davis -- not nine -- which should give you some idea of how punctilious the media are about their facts in death penalty cases.
Among the witnesses who did not recant a word of their testimony against Davis were three members of the Air Force, who saw the shooting from their van in the Burger King drive-in lane. The airman who saw events clearly enough to positively identify Davis as the shooter explained on cross-examination, "You don't forget someone that stands over and shoots someone."
Recanted testimony is the least believable evidence since it proves only that defense lawyers managed to pressure some witnesses to alter their testimony, conveniently after the trial has ended. Even criminal lobbyist Justice William Brennan ridiculed post-trial recantations.
Three recantations were from friends of Davis, making minor or completely unbelievable modifications to their trial testimony. For example, one said he was no longer sure he saw Davis shoot the cop, even though he was five feet away at the time. His remaining testimony still implicated Davis.
One alleged recantation, from the vagrant's girlfriend (since deceased), wasn't a recantation at all, but rather reiterated all relevant parts of her trial testimony, which included a direct identification of Davis as the shooter.
Only two of the seven alleged "recantations" (out of 34 witnesses) actually recanted anything of value -- and those two affidavits were discounted by the court because Davis refused to allow the affiants to testify at the post-trial evidentiary hearing, even though one was seated right outside the courtroom, waiting to appear.
The court specifically warned Davis that his refusal to call his only two genuinely recanting witnesses would make their affidavits worthless. But Davis still refused to call them -- suggesting, as the court said, that their lawyer-drafted affidavits would not have held up under cross-examination.
With death penalty opponents so fixated on Davis' race -- he's black -- it ought to be noted that all the above witnesses are themselves African-American. The first man Davis shot in the car that night was African-American.
I notice that the people so anxious to return this sociopathic cop-killer to the street don't live in his neighborhood.
There's a reason more than a dozen courts have looked at Davis' case and refused to overturn his death sentence. He is as innocent as every other executed man since at least 1950, which is to say, guilty as hell.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
For decades, liberals tried persuading Americans to abolish the death penalty, using their usual argument: hysterical sobbing.
Only when the media began lying about innocent people being executed did support for the death penalty begin to waver, falling from 80 percent to about 60 percent in a little more than a decade. (Silver lining: That's still more Americans than believe in man-made global warming.)
Fifty-nine percent of Americans now believe that an innocent man has been executed in the last five years. There is more credible evidence that space aliens have walked among us than that an innocent person has been executed in this country in the past 60 years, much less the past five years.
But unless members of the public are going to personally review trial transcripts in every death penalty case, they have no way of knowing the truth. The media certainly won't tell them.
It's nearly impossible to receive a death sentence these days -- unless you do something completely crazy like shoot a cop in full view of dozens of witnesses in a Burger King parking lot, only a few hours after shooting at a passing car while exiting a party.
That's what Troy Davis did in August 1989. Davis is the media's current baby seal of death row.
After a two-week trial with 34 witnesses for the state and six witnesses for the defense, the jury of seven blacks and five whites took less than two hours to convict Davis of Officer Mark MacPhail's murder, as well as various other crimes. Two days later, the jury sentenced Davis to death.
Now, a brisk 22 years after Davis murdered Officer MacPhail, his sentence will finally be administered this week -- barring any more of the legal shenanigans that have kept taxpayers on the hook for Davis' room and board for the past two decades.
(The average time on death row is 14 years. Then liberals turn around and triumphantly claim the death penalty doesn't have any noticeable deterrent effect. As the kids say: Duh.)
It has been claimed -- in The New York Times and Time magazine, for example -- that there was no "physical evidence" connecting Davis to the crimes that night.
Davis pulled out a gun and shot two strangers in public. What "physical evidence" were they expecting? No houses were broken into, no cars stolen, no rapes or fistfights accompanied the shootings. Where exactly would you look for DNA? And to prove what?
I suppose it would be nice if the shell casings from both shootings that night matched. Oh wait -- they did. That's "physical evidence."
It's true that the bulk of the evidence against Davis was eyewitness testimony. That tends to happen when you shoot someone in a busy Burger King parking lot.
Eyewitness testimony, like all evidence tending to show guilt, has gotten a bad name recently, but the "eyewitness" testimony in this case did not consist simply of strangers trying to distinguish one tall black man from another. For one thing, several of the eyewitnesses knew Davis personally.
The bulk of the eyewitness testimony established the following:
Two tall, young black men were harassing a vagrant in the Burger King parking lot, one in a yellow shirt and the other in a white Batman shirt. The one in the white shirt used a brown revolver to pistol-whip the vagrant. When a cop yelled at them to stop, the man in the white shirt ran, then wheeled around and shot the cop, walked over to his body and shot him again, smiling.
Some eyewitnesses described the shooter as wearing a white shirt, some said it was a white shirt with writing, and some identified it specifically as a white Batman shirt. Not one witness said the man in the yellow shirt pistol-whipped the vagrant or shot the cop.
Several of Davis' friends testified -- without recantation -- that he was the one in a white shirt. Several eyewitnesses, both acquaintances and strangers, specifically identified Davis as the one who shot Officer MacPhail.
Now the media claim that seven of the nine witnesses against Davis at trial have recanted.
First of all, the state presented 34 witnesses against Davis -- not nine -- which should give you some idea of how punctilious the media are about their facts in death penalty cases.
Among the witnesses who did not recant a word of their testimony against Davis were three members of the Air Force, who saw the shooting from their van in the Burger King drive-in lane. The airman who saw events clearly enough to positively identify Davis as the shooter explained on cross-examination, "You don't forget someone that stands over and shoots someone."
Recanted testimony is the least believable evidence since it proves only that defense lawyers managed to pressure some witnesses to alter their testimony, conveniently after the trial has ended. Even criminal lobbyist Justice William Brennan ridiculed post-trial recantations.
Three recantations were from friends of Davis, making minor or completely unbelievable modifications to their trial testimony. For example, one said he was no longer sure he saw Davis shoot the cop, even though he was five feet away at the time. His remaining testimony still implicated Davis.
One alleged recantation, from the vagrant's girlfriend (since deceased), wasn't a recantation at all, but rather reiterated all relevant parts of her trial testimony, which included a direct identification of Davis as the shooter.
Only two of the seven alleged "recantations" (out of 34 witnesses) actually recanted anything of value -- and those two affidavits were discounted by the court because Davis refused to allow the affiants to testify at the post-trial evidentiary hearing, even though one was seated right outside the courtroom, waiting to appear.
The court specifically warned Davis that his refusal to call his only two genuinely recanting witnesses would make their affidavits worthless. But Davis still refused to call them -- suggesting, as the court said, that their lawyer-drafted affidavits would not have held up under cross-examination.
With death penalty opponents so fixated on Davis' race -- he's black -- it ought to be noted that all the above witnesses are themselves African-American. The first man Davis shot in the car that night was African-American.
I notice that the people so anxious to return this sociopathic cop-killer to the street don't live in his neighborhood.
There's a reason more than a dozen courts have looked at Davis' case and refused to overturn his death sentence. He is as innocent as every other executed man since at least 1950, which is to say, guilty as hell.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Obama and the Myth of Moral Equivalency
By Kate Hicks
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
In a grandiose display of the very ignorance he therein denounced, President Obama gave an address to the United Nations General Assembly this morning. I don’t even know where to begin when deconstructing his remarks, which total nine single spaced typed pages and skip to and fro among an impressive collection of liberal talking points. My favorite moment came when he announced, “We have banned those who abuse human rights from traveling to our country,” with Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in the room. Indeed, close examination of his platitudes reveals the president’s inconsistent message and his tenuous grip on reality.
His fondness for global government took center stage. Quoting the UN charter, he credited it for averting a third World War, and for the advancement of peace and security—despite the Security Council’s historic deadlock during Cold War times which prevented any significant votes from taking place.
By Obama’s own admission, we took action in Libya on the basis of UN Security Council approval, and he reaffirmed the supposed legitimacy of our involvement in his speech. He said,
He later calls for the UN Security Council to start solving the Syrian conflict: “But for the sake of Syria – and the peace and security of the world – we must speak with one voice. There is no excuse for inaction. Now is the time for the United Nations Security Council to sanction the Syrian regime, and to stand with the Syrian people.” He sets a clear precedent in his speech for the international community’s involvement in the internal conflicts of sovereign states. He believes the UN exists to solve these problems.
Unless, of course, that’s the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. There, “the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes.”
Sure, Mr. President. Why don’t we ask a terrorist organization to take a walk in the shoes of the people they have sworn to kill. Hey, since you’re so fond of quoting charters, how about we quote that of Hamas, the governing power in Palestine: “Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion.” This is why they cannot achieve that “lasting peace” you mentioned four or five times today—because Hamas doesn’t want it. Unless peace involves the eradication of the Jewish people. Then they’re willing to give it a try.
He made constant reference to the necessity for compromise, and the legitimacy of both sides’ aspirations (one would hope the elimination of the Jews does not fall into this category). But Obama wastes his words on pipedreams of shared perspectives, because they already have one: Jerusalem. Palestine will not be content with a state that does not include the city, and Israel will obviously never relinquish it. Until someone steps forward and affirms Israel’s sovereign right to that city,
But Obama wouldn’t do it. He didn’t draw a hard line anywhere in his speech. He didn’t say anything that the UN would find repugnant or controversial. He betrayed the US’s interests and allies with a cotton candy speech designed to fill quote books of clichés (“Peace is hard?” Right.), and win the international popularity contest. Which, by the way, failed, as footage depicted Palestinians burning the American flag hours after the president’s address.
Obama talks like he wants to succeed Ban Ki Moon and play like he’s king of the world when he’s done as POTUS. I don’t doubt that’s his goal. He sees the world through Rockwellian glasses, in which “freedom from want” is a legitimate human right, and we don’t ever have to put our foot down and tell Palestine that it cannot negotiate for itself someone else’s land.
Sure, Mr. President. Peace is hard. But moral relativism comes way too easily to you.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
In a grandiose display of the very ignorance he therein denounced, President Obama gave an address to the United Nations General Assembly this morning. I don’t even know where to begin when deconstructing his remarks, which total nine single spaced typed pages and skip to and fro among an impressive collection of liberal talking points. My favorite moment came when he announced, “We have banned those who abuse human rights from traveling to our country,” with Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in the room. Indeed, close examination of his platitudes reveals the president’s inconsistent message and his tenuous grip on reality.
His fondness for global government took center stage. Quoting the UN charter, he credited it for averting a third World War, and for the advancement of peace and security—despite the Security Council’s historic deadlock during Cold War times which prevented any significant votes from taking place.
By Obama’s own admission, we took action in Libya on the basis of UN Security Council approval, and he reaffirmed the supposed legitimacy of our involvement in his speech. He said,
And when they were threatened by the kind of mass atrocity that often went unchallenged in the last century, the United Nations lived up to its charter. The Security Council authorized all necessary measures to prevent a massacre. The Arab League called for this effort, and Arab nations joined a NATO-led coalition that halted Qadhafi’s forces in their tracks.He views the United Nations, and other trans-governmental organizations, as real sources of governing authority with the power to condone the use of the lives and money of sovereign states’ citizens. Our own United States Congress had no say in our entrance into the Libyan conflict, but the UN gave us the green light, and so we went.
He later calls for the UN Security Council to start solving the Syrian conflict: “But for the sake of Syria – and the peace and security of the world – we must speak with one voice. There is no excuse for inaction. Now is the time for the United Nations Security Council to sanction the Syrian regime, and to stand with the Syrian people.” He sets a clear precedent in his speech for the international community’s involvement in the internal conflicts of sovereign states. He believes the UN exists to solve these problems.
Unless, of course, that’s the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. There, “the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes.”
Sure, Mr. President. Why don’t we ask a terrorist organization to take a walk in the shoes of the people they have sworn to kill. Hey, since you’re so fond of quoting charters, how about we quote that of Hamas, the governing power in Palestine: “Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion.” This is why they cannot achieve that “lasting peace” you mentioned four or five times today—because Hamas doesn’t want it. Unless peace involves the eradication of the Jewish people. Then they’re willing to give it a try.
He made constant reference to the necessity for compromise, and the legitimacy of both sides’ aspirations (one would hope the elimination of the Jews does not fall into this category). But Obama wastes his words on pipedreams of shared perspectives, because they already have one: Jerusalem. Palestine will not be content with a state that does not include the city, and Israel will obviously never relinquish it. Until someone steps forward and affirms Israel’s sovereign right to that city,
But Obama wouldn’t do it. He didn’t draw a hard line anywhere in his speech. He didn’t say anything that the UN would find repugnant or controversial. He betrayed the US’s interests and allies with a cotton candy speech designed to fill quote books of clichés (“Peace is hard?” Right.), and win the international popularity contest. Which, by the way, failed, as footage depicted Palestinians burning the American flag hours after the president’s address.
Obama talks like he wants to succeed Ban Ki Moon and play like he’s king of the world when he’s done as POTUS. I don’t doubt that’s his goal. He sees the world through Rockwellian glasses, in which “freedom from want” is a legitimate human right, and we don’t ever have to put our foot down and tell Palestine that it cannot negotiate for itself someone else’s land.
Sure, Mr. President. Peace is hard. But moral relativism comes way too easily to you.
Tyranny of the Typical
By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
And now let us recall the "Fable of the Shoes."
In his 1973 "Libertarian Manifesto," the late Murray Rothbard argued that the biggest obstacle in the road out of serfdom was "status quo bias." In society, we're accustomed to rapid change. "New products, new life styles, new ideas are often embraced eagerly." Not so with government. When it comes to police or firefighting or sanitation, government must do those things because that's what government has (allegedly) always done.
"So identified has the State become in the public mind with the provision of these services," Rothbard laments, "that an attack on State financing appears to many people as an attack on the service itself." The libertarian who wants to get the government out of a certain business is "treated in the same way as he would be if the government had, for various reasons, been supplying shoes as a tax financed monopoly from time immemorial."
If everyone had always gotten their shoes from the government, writes Rothbard, the proponent of shoe privatization would be greeted as a kind of lunatic. "How could you?" defenders of the status quo would squeal. "You are opposed to the public, and to poor people, wearing shoes! And who would supply shoes ... if the government got out of the business? Tell us that! Be constructive! It's easy to be negative and smart-alecky about government; but tell us who would supply shoes? Which people? How many shoe stores would be available in each city and town? ... What material would they use? ... Suppose a poor person didn't have the money to buy a pair?"
It's worth keeping this fable in mind as the reaction to last week's CNN-Tea Party Express debate hardens into popular myth. Moderator Wolf Blitzer had asked Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) what should happen if a man refuses to get health insurance and then has a medical crisis. Paul -- a disciple of Rothbard -- explained that freedom is about taking risks. "But, congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?"
At this point, a few boneheads in the audience shouted "yeah!" and clapped, though liberal pundits and activists imagine they saw an outpouring of support.
Paul calmly replied that he's not in favor of letting the man die. A physician who practiced before Medicare and Medicaid were enacted, Paul noted that hospitals were never in the practice of turning away patients in need. "We've given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves," he observed. "Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it."
Both Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have condemned the response from the Paulistas in the audience and endorsed a more active role in government in health care.
Still, it's amazing how quickly status quo bias kicks in. Since the 1960s, it has become a given not only that the government should be more involved in areas like health care and poverty but that these problems remain intractable because the government has not gotten more involved. That's the premise behind so many of the anti-libertarian questions at the GOP debates. Any rejection of the assumption is derided as a right-wing effort to "turn back the clock."
Well, let's do just that for a moment. Charles Murray, my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, notes that the most remarkable drop in the poverty rate didn't come after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty but when President Eisenhower ignored it. Over a mere 12 years, from 1949 to 1961, the poverty rate was cut in half. Similarly the biggest gains in health coverage came when government was less involved in health care, i.e. before the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1966. Duke University Professor Christopher Conover notes that in 1940, 90 percent of Americans were uninsured, but by 1960, that number was down to 25 percent.
Blitzer's specific error was to use "society" and "government" as interchangeable terms. People need shoes. But that doesn't require the government to provide shoes for everyone. Similarly, poverty rates should go down. But does that mean it's the government's responsibility?
Maybe the answer is yes. But if it is, the burden of proof that the government can do better than "society" should fall on those who, in effect, want the government to win the future by "investing" in shoes -- rather than on those of us who are open to the idea of turning back the clock.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
And now let us recall the "Fable of the Shoes."
In his 1973 "Libertarian Manifesto," the late Murray Rothbard argued that the biggest obstacle in the road out of serfdom was "status quo bias." In society, we're accustomed to rapid change. "New products, new life styles, new ideas are often embraced eagerly." Not so with government. When it comes to police or firefighting or sanitation, government must do those things because that's what government has (allegedly) always done.
"So identified has the State become in the public mind with the provision of these services," Rothbard laments, "that an attack on State financing appears to many people as an attack on the service itself." The libertarian who wants to get the government out of a certain business is "treated in the same way as he would be if the government had, for various reasons, been supplying shoes as a tax financed monopoly from time immemorial."
If everyone had always gotten their shoes from the government, writes Rothbard, the proponent of shoe privatization would be greeted as a kind of lunatic. "How could you?" defenders of the status quo would squeal. "You are opposed to the public, and to poor people, wearing shoes! And who would supply shoes ... if the government got out of the business? Tell us that! Be constructive! It's easy to be negative and smart-alecky about government; but tell us who would supply shoes? Which people? How many shoe stores would be available in each city and town? ... What material would they use? ... Suppose a poor person didn't have the money to buy a pair?"
It's worth keeping this fable in mind as the reaction to last week's CNN-Tea Party Express debate hardens into popular myth. Moderator Wolf Blitzer had asked Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) what should happen if a man refuses to get health insurance and then has a medical crisis. Paul -- a disciple of Rothbard -- explained that freedom is about taking risks. "But, congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?"
At this point, a few boneheads in the audience shouted "yeah!" and clapped, though liberal pundits and activists imagine they saw an outpouring of support.
Paul calmly replied that he's not in favor of letting the man die. A physician who practiced before Medicare and Medicaid were enacted, Paul noted that hospitals were never in the practice of turning away patients in need. "We've given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves," he observed. "Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it."
Both Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have condemned the response from the Paulistas in the audience and endorsed a more active role in government in health care.
Still, it's amazing how quickly status quo bias kicks in. Since the 1960s, it has become a given not only that the government should be more involved in areas like health care and poverty but that these problems remain intractable because the government has not gotten more involved. That's the premise behind so many of the anti-libertarian questions at the GOP debates. Any rejection of the assumption is derided as a right-wing effort to "turn back the clock."
Well, let's do just that for a moment. Charles Murray, my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, notes that the most remarkable drop in the poverty rate didn't come after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty but when President Eisenhower ignored it. Over a mere 12 years, from 1949 to 1961, the poverty rate was cut in half. Similarly the biggest gains in health coverage came when government was less involved in health care, i.e. before the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1966. Duke University Professor Christopher Conover notes that in 1940, 90 percent of Americans were uninsured, but by 1960, that number was down to 25 percent.
Blitzer's specific error was to use "society" and "government" as interchangeable terms. People need shoes. But that doesn't require the government to provide shoes for everyone. Similarly, poverty rates should go down. But does that mean it's the government's responsibility?
Maybe the answer is yes. But if it is, the burden of proof that the government can do better than "society" should fall on those who, in effect, want the government to win the future by "investing" in shoes -- rather than on those of us who are open to the idea of turning back the clock.
Your Rights End Where Mine Begin
By Rachel Marsden
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
As a conservative in favor of limited government, I'm often asked what kind of government intervention I do support. The answer is simple: I'm in support of people doing anything they want in a free and democratic society -- until their actions infringe on my freedom or anyone else's. At that point, the state ought to step in, if only to maintain personal liberty. If the state doesn't intervene in those instances, when minimal intervention would be required to rectify the situation, then the situation could potentially spiral out of control to the point where extreme measures become warranted.
If your kid is pulling items off of store shelves in a tantrum, you're going to give him an acute little whack on the behind to instill a sense of principle, so he doesn't grow up to rob a bank or something and end up in prison, right? The same holds true for correcting societal behavior that infringes on the freedom of others. Significant but relatively moderate measures prevent more drastic ones later.
Take smoking, for example. As a nonsmoker with a severe aversion to tobacco, I don't mind if someone smokes, as long as it isn't imposed on me. But when someone walks down the sidewalk puffing away and, as an unsuspecting pedestrian, I get blasted in the face with the resulting cloud of smoke, that's a violation of my personal choice not to partake in that activity. Smoke anywhere you want -- but do it with a plastic bag tied over your head, please. Then everyone's happy. Smokers lament the law becoming increasingly restrictive as to where they can light up in public, but it's only because enough of them chose to behave in a manner that imposed upon others' freedom not to smoke.
In the last few days alone, Europe witnessed several examples of socialist leniency going too far under the guise of democratic freedom and personal liberty. In each case, the reasonable and moderate measures were ignored to the point where more serious and limiting ones are now necessary.
Effective a few days ago, France's interior minister, Claude Gueant, banned Muslims from praying en masse in the streets in Paris, where more than a thousand worshippers gather in the streets of the 18th arrondissement every Friday. Banning prayer might sound harsh in principle, but when a highly personal activity becomes an obstacle to traffic and unavoidable by others, then banning becomes a necessity. The common-sense approach to maintaining one's religious freedom would have been to hold prayer groups inside people's homes or inside one of the 2,000 existing Parisian mosques or prayer facilities.
In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that migrant job-seekers whose English is poor and who don't take state-funded language classes risk losing their unemployment benefits. This is extreme in two ways: It rightfully leaves non-integrators little choice but to blend in at least linguistically, and it places the burden of integration on the taxpayer. Rather than getting to the point where blackmail is required for immigrants to learn the language of their new country, perhaps friends or relatives could have sent them some Rosetta Stone tapes so they'd be functional members of society when they arrived. The government could have also, long ago, chosen to limit non-English-speaking immigration to the odd qualified refugee.
A good example of a moderate measure to combat an intrusive societal problem was announced last week by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was in pre-election campaign mode: having juvenile delinquents participate in military camps run by former military personnel as an alternative to incarceration. Little Jean or Jacques doesn't have to actually go dodge bullets in a conflict zone for, say, snatching iPhones from the hands of unsuspecting public-transit passengers.
The urchins should be thankful for the opportunity to be straightened out via fake boot camp. If urban-youth crime is allowed to progress any further because minor wrist-slapping continues to prove ineffective, then taxpayers will gladly pay to have the little punks dropped into a war zone.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
As a conservative in favor of limited government, I'm often asked what kind of government intervention I do support. The answer is simple: I'm in support of people doing anything they want in a free and democratic society -- until their actions infringe on my freedom or anyone else's. At that point, the state ought to step in, if only to maintain personal liberty. If the state doesn't intervene in those instances, when minimal intervention would be required to rectify the situation, then the situation could potentially spiral out of control to the point where extreme measures become warranted.
If your kid is pulling items off of store shelves in a tantrum, you're going to give him an acute little whack on the behind to instill a sense of principle, so he doesn't grow up to rob a bank or something and end up in prison, right? The same holds true for correcting societal behavior that infringes on the freedom of others. Significant but relatively moderate measures prevent more drastic ones later.
Take smoking, for example. As a nonsmoker with a severe aversion to tobacco, I don't mind if someone smokes, as long as it isn't imposed on me. But when someone walks down the sidewalk puffing away and, as an unsuspecting pedestrian, I get blasted in the face with the resulting cloud of smoke, that's a violation of my personal choice not to partake in that activity. Smoke anywhere you want -- but do it with a plastic bag tied over your head, please. Then everyone's happy. Smokers lament the law becoming increasingly restrictive as to where they can light up in public, but it's only because enough of them chose to behave in a manner that imposed upon others' freedom not to smoke.
In the last few days alone, Europe witnessed several examples of socialist leniency going too far under the guise of democratic freedom and personal liberty. In each case, the reasonable and moderate measures were ignored to the point where more serious and limiting ones are now necessary.
Effective a few days ago, France's interior minister, Claude Gueant, banned Muslims from praying en masse in the streets in Paris, where more than a thousand worshippers gather in the streets of the 18th arrondissement every Friday. Banning prayer might sound harsh in principle, but when a highly personal activity becomes an obstacle to traffic and unavoidable by others, then banning becomes a necessity. The common-sense approach to maintaining one's religious freedom would have been to hold prayer groups inside people's homes or inside one of the 2,000 existing Parisian mosques or prayer facilities.
In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that migrant job-seekers whose English is poor and who don't take state-funded language classes risk losing their unemployment benefits. This is extreme in two ways: It rightfully leaves non-integrators little choice but to blend in at least linguistically, and it places the burden of integration on the taxpayer. Rather than getting to the point where blackmail is required for immigrants to learn the language of their new country, perhaps friends or relatives could have sent them some Rosetta Stone tapes so they'd be functional members of society when they arrived. The government could have also, long ago, chosen to limit non-English-speaking immigration to the odd qualified refugee.
A good example of a moderate measure to combat an intrusive societal problem was announced last week by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was in pre-election campaign mode: having juvenile delinquents participate in military camps run by former military personnel as an alternative to incarceration. Little Jean or Jacques doesn't have to actually go dodge bullets in a conflict zone for, say, snatching iPhones from the hands of unsuspecting public-transit passengers.
The urchins should be thankful for the opportunity to be straightened out via fake boot camp. If urban-youth crime is allowed to progress any further because minor wrist-slapping continues to prove ineffective, then taxpayers will gladly pay to have the little punks dropped into a war zone.
If Israel Disappears
By Cal Thomas
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The world -- or at least the large part of it that hates Israel and wishes it would go away -- moves a step nearer that goal this week when the United Nations votes on whether to recognize a Palestinian state. The vote violates the Declaration of Principles signed by the PLO in 1993, which committed the terrorist group and precursor to the Palestinian Authority to direct negotiations with Israel over a future state. This violation is further evidence the Palestinian side cannot be trusted to live up to signed agreements and promises. Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick rightly calls the prospective UN vote "diplomatic aggression."
Israel -- like the Jewish people for centuries -- has become the fall guy for people who prefer their anti-Semitism cloaked in diplomatic niceties. The Palestinians could have peace any time they wish and probably a state, too, if they acknowledged Israel's right to exist and practiced verbal, religious and military disarmament. One has a right to question the veracity of a people who claim they want peace, while remaining active in ideological, theological and military warfare aimed at its publicly stated objective: the eradication of the Jewish state.
The United States has pledged to veto the Palestinian Authority's membership application if it comes before the U.N. Security Council, but the General Assembly is another matter. There only a majority vote would be needed to grant the Palestinian government permanent observer status. From that point forward it would be death by a thousand diplomatic cuts until Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad finally decides to fulfill his own prophecy and drop a nuclear bomb on Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Following that horror, European and American diplomats will wring their hands and say it would not have happened had Israel been more "flexible" and ceded additional territory.
Before Israel is allowed to disappear again (as Palestinian maps and school textbooks already depict) and the Jews who survive are sent into exile (who would take them?), it is worth noting a few of the numerous contributions Israel has made to the world, compared to what the Arab-Muslim-Palestinian culture has contributed.
This tiny land with less than 1/1,000th of the world's population, has produced innovative scientists that have contributed to cellphone, computer and medical technology, including the development of "a disposable colonoscopic camera that makes most of the discomfort surrounding colonoscopies obsolete," discovery of "the molecular trigger that causes psoriasis," as well as "the first large-scale solar power plant -- now working in California's Mojave Desert." Read about many more Israeli contributions to the world at http://www.israel21c.org/didyouknow/didyouknow.
These innovations, and many others, took place while Israel was engaged in wars, suffering terrorist attacks from enemies who seek its destruction and spending more per capita on its defense than any other country.
If Israel were to be made even more vulnerable and possibly eradicated by unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, the moral stain on the West would be a "mark of Cain" for generations to come. What other nation, what other people, would the so-called "civilized" world allow to be targeted for annihilation like Israel has been?
Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will come to the UN to deliver a speech on the same day Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to give his speech calling for the body to support Palestinian statehood. "The General Assembly is not a place where Israel usually receives a fair hearing," Netanyahu said last week, "but I still decided to tell the truth before anyone who would like to hear it."
The UN can't handle the truth and few member states will like hearing it. The blood of the Jewish people will be on their hands if they continue to empower individuals and nations whose goal is to create Holocaust II and a "Palestine" without Jews.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The world -- or at least the large part of it that hates Israel and wishes it would go away -- moves a step nearer that goal this week when the United Nations votes on whether to recognize a Palestinian state. The vote violates the Declaration of Principles signed by the PLO in 1993, which committed the terrorist group and precursor to the Palestinian Authority to direct negotiations with Israel over a future state. This violation is further evidence the Palestinian side cannot be trusted to live up to signed agreements and promises. Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick rightly calls the prospective UN vote "diplomatic aggression."
Israel -- like the Jewish people for centuries -- has become the fall guy for people who prefer their anti-Semitism cloaked in diplomatic niceties. The Palestinians could have peace any time they wish and probably a state, too, if they acknowledged Israel's right to exist and practiced verbal, religious and military disarmament. One has a right to question the veracity of a people who claim they want peace, while remaining active in ideological, theological and military warfare aimed at its publicly stated objective: the eradication of the Jewish state.
The United States has pledged to veto the Palestinian Authority's membership application if it comes before the U.N. Security Council, but the General Assembly is another matter. There only a majority vote would be needed to grant the Palestinian government permanent observer status. From that point forward it would be death by a thousand diplomatic cuts until Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad finally decides to fulfill his own prophecy and drop a nuclear bomb on Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Following that horror, European and American diplomats will wring their hands and say it would not have happened had Israel been more "flexible" and ceded additional territory.
Before Israel is allowed to disappear again (as Palestinian maps and school textbooks already depict) and the Jews who survive are sent into exile (who would take them?), it is worth noting a few of the numerous contributions Israel has made to the world, compared to what the Arab-Muslim-Palestinian culture has contributed.
This tiny land with less than 1/1,000th of the world's population, has produced innovative scientists that have contributed to cellphone, computer and medical technology, including the development of "a disposable colonoscopic camera that makes most of the discomfort surrounding colonoscopies obsolete," discovery of "the molecular trigger that causes psoriasis," as well as "the first large-scale solar power plant -- now working in California's Mojave Desert." Read about many more Israeli contributions to the world at http://www.israel21c.org/didyouknow/didyouknow.
These innovations, and many others, took place while Israel was engaged in wars, suffering terrorist attacks from enemies who seek its destruction and spending more per capita on its defense than any other country.
If Israel were to be made even more vulnerable and possibly eradicated by unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, the moral stain on the West would be a "mark of Cain" for generations to come. What other nation, what other people, would the so-called "civilized" world allow to be targeted for annihilation like Israel has been?
Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will come to the UN to deliver a speech on the same day Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to give his speech calling for the body to support Palestinian statehood. "The General Assembly is not a place where Israel usually receives a fair hearing," Netanyahu said last week, "but I still decided to tell the truth before anyone who would like to hear it."
The UN can't handle the truth and few member states will like hearing it. The blood of the Jewish people will be on their hands if they continue to empower individuals and nations whose goal is to create Holocaust II and a "Palestine" without Jews.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Why Young Americans Can’t Think Morally
Moral standards have been replaced by feelings.
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Last week, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Here are excerpts from Brooks’s summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. It was led by “the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith”:
● “Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.”
● “When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all.”
● “Moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner.”
● “The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste.”
● “As one put it, ‘I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.’”
● “Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.” (Emphases mine.)
Ever since I attended college I have been convinced that studies” either confirm what common sense suggests or they are mistaken. I realized this when I was presented study after study showing that boys and girls were not inherently different from one another, and they acted differently only because of sexist upbringings.
This latest study cited by David Brooks confirms what conservatives have known for a generation: Moral standards have been replaced by feelings. Of course, those on the left only believe this when an “eminent sociologist” is cited by a writer at a major liberal newspaper.
What is disconcerting about Brooks’s piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend: namely, secularism.
The intellectual class and the Left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.
One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than “yummy” and “yucky.” They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, “There is no answer to the question, ‘Why not be cruel?’”
With the death of Judeo-Christian God-based standards, people have simply substituted feelings for those standards. Millions of American young people have been raised by parents and schools with “How do you feel about it?” as the only guide to what they ought to do. The heart has replaced God and the Bible as a moral guide. And now, as Brooks points out, we see the results. A vast number of American young people do not even ask whether an action is right or wrong. The question would strike them as foreign. Why? Because the question suggests that there is a right and wrong outside of themselves. And just as there is no God higher than them, there is no morality higher than them, either.
Forty years ago, I began writing and lecturing about this problem. It was then that I began asking students if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority always voted against the stranger — because, they explained, they loved their dog and they didn’t love the stranger.
They followed their feelings.
Without God and Judeo-Christian religions, what else is there?
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Last week, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Here are excerpts from Brooks’s summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. It was led by “the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith”:
● “Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.”
● “When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all.”
● “Moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner.”
● “The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste.”
● “As one put it, ‘I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.’”
● “Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.” (Emphases mine.)
Ever since I attended college I have been convinced that studies” either confirm what common sense suggests or they are mistaken. I realized this when I was presented study after study showing that boys and girls were not inherently different from one another, and they acted differently only because of sexist upbringings.
This latest study cited by David Brooks confirms what conservatives have known for a generation: Moral standards have been replaced by feelings. Of course, those on the left only believe this when an “eminent sociologist” is cited by a writer at a major liberal newspaper.
What is disconcerting about Brooks’s piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend: namely, secularism.
The intellectual class and the Left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.
One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than “yummy” and “yucky.” They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, “There is no answer to the question, ‘Why not be cruel?’”
With the death of Judeo-Christian God-based standards, people have simply substituted feelings for those standards. Millions of American young people have been raised by parents and schools with “How do you feel about it?” as the only guide to what they ought to do. The heart has replaced God and the Bible as a moral guide. And now, as Brooks points out, we see the results. A vast number of American young people do not even ask whether an action is right or wrong. The question would strike them as foreign. Why? Because the question suggests that there is a right and wrong outside of themselves. And just as there is no God higher than them, there is no morality higher than them, either.
Forty years ago, I began writing and lecturing about this problem. It was then that I began asking students if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority always voted against the stranger — because, they explained, they loved their dog and they didn’t love the stranger.
They followed their feelings.
Without God and Judeo-Christian religions, what else is there?
I'm for The Rich
By Mona Charen
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
President Obama and the Democrats are finally happy. Liberated from thoughts of compromise with Republicans, they can fully indulge their most lascivious pleasure -- trashing rich people. "We simply cannot afford these special lower rates for the wealthy," President Obama declared in his Rose Garden message Monday.
"Give 'em hell, Barry," cheered Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker. Hertzberg was chipper. Not so of Paul Krugman from The New York Times, the Democratic Party's choleric scold: "The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office," he glowered. ". . .And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: It's their money, and they have the right to keep it." Imagine.
The president, brimming with indignation, asserts that hedge fund managers are paying taxes at a lower rate than teachers and firefighters. "How can you defend that?" he demands.
You don't have to defend that, because it isn't true. This synthetic outrage about the taxes paid by the super-rich -- the so-called Buffett Rule -- is the greatest waste of political time and energy in recent memory.
As Stephen Moore, an economics writer for The Wall Street Journal, has observed, we cannot know with certainty what Warren Buffett paid in taxes. (And he is certainly free to write a larger check to the IRS.) But "according to the Congressional Budget Office, middle-class families in 2007, earning between $34,000 and $50,000, paid an effective 14.3 percent of their income in all federal taxes. The top 5 percent of income earners paid 27.9 percent and the top 1 percent paid 29.5 percent. And what about the highest earners? Americans with annual incomes above $2 million paid an average 32 percent of their income in federal taxes in 2005 (the most recent year for which data are available)."
In 2008, Charlie Gibson questioned President Obama about his desire to raise the capital gains tax. Gibson reminded candidate Obama that presidents Clinton and Bush had reduced the capital gains tax rate. "And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?"
"Well Charlie," Obama replied, "What I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."
So it isn't a matter of raising revenue -- and by most estimates, the amount raised by a millionaires surtax would be trifling compared with the size of the national debt -- it's a matter of sticking it to those guys with the "belligerent sense of entitlement" towards their right to own property.
Well, I'm for the rich, and not just because the top 1 percent of earners in America paid 38 percent of income taxes in 2008. And not just because I suspect that attempting to tax the rich more will only lead to more tax avoidance, not more tax revenues for the federal government. I'm for the rich because, with some exceptions, they've earned their money. A Prince and Associates study found that only 10 percent of multimillionaires had inherited their wealth.
In the process of earning their wealth, the rich have created products, services and whole industries that have dramatically improved my work life, my family life and my health. I'm so grateful to them for the GPS, iPads, non-drowsy antihistamines, smartphones, XM radio and The Teaching Company courses -- to name only a few advances of the past decade or two.
I'm for the rich because nearly all of the rich people I've met are extremely public-spirited. They volunteer. They form committees to improve things in their communities. And they are incredibly generous with their money. As Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute notes, "The top 10 percent of households in income are responsible for at least a quarter of all the money contributed to charity, and households with total wealth exceeding $1 million give about half of all charitable donations." In general, I think they probably make wiser choices in their charitable giving than the federal government would make if it took their money and spent it.
I'm for the rich because they create the dynamism and energy of a growing economy. The rich create businesses and hire people. A wealthy person gave me my first job. And I'll bet the same is true of you.
I'm for the rich and for all the people who simply want an opportunity to become rich -- opportunities that are becoming scarcer with every passing day of Obama's presidency.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
President Obama and the Democrats are finally happy. Liberated from thoughts of compromise with Republicans, they can fully indulge their most lascivious pleasure -- trashing rich people. "We simply cannot afford these special lower rates for the wealthy," President Obama declared in his Rose Garden message Monday.
"Give 'em hell, Barry," cheered Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker. Hertzberg was chipper. Not so of Paul Krugman from The New York Times, the Democratic Party's choleric scold: "The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office," he glowered. ". . .And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: It's their money, and they have the right to keep it." Imagine.
The president, brimming with indignation, asserts that hedge fund managers are paying taxes at a lower rate than teachers and firefighters. "How can you defend that?" he demands.
You don't have to defend that, because it isn't true. This synthetic outrage about the taxes paid by the super-rich -- the so-called Buffett Rule -- is the greatest waste of political time and energy in recent memory.
As Stephen Moore, an economics writer for The Wall Street Journal, has observed, we cannot know with certainty what Warren Buffett paid in taxes. (And he is certainly free to write a larger check to the IRS.) But "according to the Congressional Budget Office, middle-class families in 2007, earning between $34,000 and $50,000, paid an effective 14.3 percent of their income in all federal taxes. The top 5 percent of income earners paid 27.9 percent and the top 1 percent paid 29.5 percent. And what about the highest earners? Americans with annual incomes above $2 million paid an average 32 percent of their income in federal taxes in 2005 (the most recent year for which data are available)."
In 2008, Charlie Gibson questioned President Obama about his desire to raise the capital gains tax. Gibson reminded candidate Obama that presidents Clinton and Bush had reduced the capital gains tax rate. "And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?"
"Well Charlie," Obama replied, "What I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."
So it isn't a matter of raising revenue -- and by most estimates, the amount raised by a millionaires surtax would be trifling compared with the size of the national debt -- it's a matter of sticking it to those guys with the "belligerent sense of entitlement" towards their right to own property.
Well, I'm for the rich, and not just because the top 1 percent of earners in America paid 38 percent of income taxes in 2008. And not just because I suspect that attempting to tax the rich more will only lead to more tax avoidance, not more tax revenues for the federal government. I'm for the rich because, with some exceptions, they've earned their money. A Prince and Associates study found that only 10 percent of multimillionaires had inherited their wealth.
In the process of earning their wealth, the rich have created products, services and whole industries that have dramatically improved my work life, my family life and my health. I'm so grateful to them for the GPS, iPads, non-drowsy antihistamines, smartphones, XM radio and The Teaching Company courses -- to name only a few advances of the past decade or two.
I'm for the rich because nearly all of the rich people I've met are extremely public-spirited. They volunteer. They form committees to improve things in their communities. And they are incredibly generous with their money. As Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute notes, "The top 10 percent of households in income are responsible for at least a quarter of all the money contributed to charity, and households with total wealth exceeding $1 million give about half of all charitable donations." In general, I think they probably make wiser choices in their charitable giving than the federal government would make if it took their money and spent it.
I'm for the rich because they create the dynamism and energy of a growing economy. The rich create businesses and hire people. A wealthy person gave me my first job. And I'll bet the same is true of you.
I'm for the rich and for all the people who simply want an opportunity to become rich -- opportunities that are becoming scarcer with every passing day of Obama's presidency.
A Time to Act: Defending Israel and Doing What is Just
By Adam Hasner
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
For decades, the world knew America would stand beside its allies.
In World Wars, and Cold Wars, in good times and bad, an alliance with America meant that even at the cost of blood and treasure, our allies could count on this nation to honor its commitments. Now, President Obama has again put that hard-won reputation at risk by failing to fight a vote in the United Nations that threatens the very existence of Israel, our most faithful ally in the region and the one nation in the Middle East that shares our values.
Even before it became an independent state, the Islamic world denied Israel’s right to exist and sought to destroy it. After launching and losing repeated wars against Israel, they turned to political efforts in the mid-1970’s that have since proven much more successful. In fact, the full extent of their progress and influence will be on display this week in New York City, where the Palestinian Authority and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) intend to force a vote in the U.N. General Assembly to unilaterally declare the independence of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority is hoping that a U.N. General Assembly declaration will allow it to unleash a legal tsunami against Israel, and justify the violence it continues to incite. It is a direct attempt by the Palestinians to circumvent peace negotiations, to undermine international law, to demonize and delegitimize Israel, and to avoid responsibilities and commitments required of them under previously signed agreements. A promised veto alone by the United States in the Security Council would be too little, too late.
Why does the Palestinian Authority feel empowered to act so boldly?
The answer lies in the Obama administration’s enduring hostility for Israel, the one nation in the Middle East that has been a steadfast ally of the United States.
Time and time again, President Obama has demeaned and diminished Israel, opting instead for a policy that puts “daylight” between us, in order to placate Islamist states with values inimical to Israel's and our own. This administration has turned a blind eye to the ongoing incitement to violence, glorification of terrorism, and the hateful indoctrination of children committed by both Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and the Hamas terrorist organization. And they have ignored unprovoked missile attacks and bombings against Israeli civilians.
The United Nations vote could have been stopped by the Obama administration if it had acted decisively from the beginning.
Instead, President Obama's few and hollow statements of support for Israel are pro-forma, half-hearted, and self-serving. The Palestinian Authority and the OIC are willing to pursue a unilateral declaration of independence at the United Nations because they have seen that President Obama speaks softly and carries a small stick.
Given his irresponsible leadership, there must be a strong response from Congress, including the elimination of all American funding of the Palestinian Authority and ending our financial support for corrupt United Nations operations that are at variance with our strategic interests. Americans should be outraged that the Palestinian Authority uses their tax dollars to pay over $5 million a month in salaries to jailed terrorists, and that we will be footing 25 percent of the bill as Iranian President Ahmadinejad preaches hatred at the United Nations’ Durban III conference next week.
President Obama has argued that increased American engagement and funding of these corrupt institutions is necessary, and that our involvement will help bring balance and moderation to them. To the contrary, our participation merely lends the legitimacy and resources needed to perpetuate their injustices. The truth is that the extent of our support for Israel, and the willingness to withhold support for the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations, is a direct reflection of our ability to recognize what is helpful and what is harmful to America’s interests.
Israelis neither an aggressor nor an occupier. The Jews’ legal, religious, historical, and moral rights to the Land are superior to those of the Palestinian-Arabs. Nevertheless, they have always shown a willingness to share with the Arabs, having formally offered land for peace numerous times, only to be met with rejection and additional terrorism in every instance. Just this past week Prime Minister Netanyahu again called for good-faith negotiations without preconditions.
The coming efforts at the United Nations clearly demonstrate that the establishment of a 23rd Arab state called Palestine is not what is truly desired. It’s the establishment of a Palestine on the ruins of Israel which is the inevitable result of their efforts. Efforts sadly bolstered and encouraged by the actions of President Obama.
If America is truly Israel’s greatest ally, we should not be asking it to put its citizens and future at risk by forcing the establishment of a hostile Palestinian state as the only option. Israel is vital to America’s strategic interests and we should be fighting to defend its sovereignty and security, and immediately move to slash funding to the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations.
The bonds of trust between the United States and Israel have been frayed, but even the hostility and disrespect the Obama administration has shown has not severed those bonds. It is vital that Americans who honor our commitment to Israel and who appreciate Israel's steadfast support of America, stand up and speak out against this vote. Allowing it to go forward would compound the failure of the Obama administration and put our closest ally at existential risk.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
For decades, the world knew America would stand beside its allies.
In World Wars, and Cold Wars, in good times and bad, an alliance with America meant that even at the cost of blood and treasure, our allies could count on this nation to honor its commitments. Now, President Obama has again put that hard-won reputation at risk by failing to fight a vote in the United Nations that threatens the very existence of Israel, our most faithful ally in the region and the one nation in the Middle East that shares our values.
Even before it became an independent state, the Islamic world denied Israel’s right to exist and sought to destroy it. After launching and losing repeated wars against Israel, they turned to political efforts in the mid-1970’s that have since proven much more successful. In fact, the full extent of their progress and influence will be on display this week in New York City, where the Palestinian Authority and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) intend to force a vote in the U.N. General Assembly to unilaterally declare the independence of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority is hoping that a U.N. General Assembly declaration will allow it to unleash a legal tsunami against Israel, and justify the violence it continues to incite. It is a direct attempt by the Palestinians to circumvent peace negotiations, to undermine international law, to demonize and delegitimize Israel, and to avoid responsibilities and commitments required of them under previously signed agreements. A promised veto alone by the United States in the Security Council would be too little, too late.
Why does the Palestinian Authority feel empowered to act so boldly?
The answer lies in the Obama administration’s enduring hostility for Israel, the one nation in the Middle East that has been a steadfast ally of the United States.
Time and time again, President Obama has demeaned and diminished Israel, opting instead for a policy that puts “daylight” between us, in order to placate Islamist states with values inimical to Israel's and our own. This administration has turned a blind eye to the ongoing incitement to violence, glorification of terrorism, and the hateful indoctrination of children committed by both Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and the Hamas terrorist organization. And they have ignored unprovoked missile attacks and bombings against Israeli civilians.
The United Nations vote could have been stopped by the Obama administration if it had acted decisively from the beginning.
Instead, President Obama's few and hollow statements of support for Israel are pro-forma, half-hearted, and self-serving. The Palestinian Authority and the OIC are willing to pursue a unilateral declaration of independence at the United Nations because they have seen that President Obama speaks softly and carries a small stick.
Given his irresponsible leadership, there must be a strong response from Congress, including the elimination of all American funding of the Palestinian Authority and ending our financial support for corrupt United Nations operations that are at variance with our strategic interests. Americans should be outraged that the Palestinian Authority uses their tax dollars to pay over $5 million a month in salaries to jailed terrorists, and that we will be footing 25 percent of the bill as Iranian President Ahmadinejad preaches hatred at the United Nations’ Durban III conference next week.
President Obama has argued that increased American engagement and funding of these corrupt institutions is necessary, and that our involvement will help bring balance and moderation to them. To the contrary, our participation merely lends the legitimacy and resources needed to perpetuate their injustices. The truth is that the extent of our support for Israel, and the willingness to withhold support for the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations, is a direct reflection of our ability to recognize what is helpful and what is harmful to America’s interests.
Israelis neither an aggressor nor an occupier. The Jews’ legal, religious, historical, and moral rights to the Land are superior to those of the Palestinian-Arabs. Nevertheless, they have always shown a willingness to share with the Arabs, having formally offered land for peace numerous times, only to be met with rejection and additional terrorism in every instance. Just this past week Prime Minister Netanyahu again called for good-faith negotiations without preconditions.
The coming efforts at the United Nations clearly demonstrate that the establishment of a 23rd Arab state called Palestine is not what is truly desired. It’s the establishment of a Palestine on the ruins of Israel which is the inevitable result of their efforts. Efforts sadly bolstered and encouraged by the actions of President Obama.
If America is truly Israel’s greatest ally, we should not be asking it to put its citizens and future at risk by forcing the establishment of a hostile Palestinian state as the only option. Israel is vital to America’s strategic interests and we should be fighting to defend its sovereignty and security, and immediately move to slash funding to the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations.
The bonds of trust between the United States and Israel have been frayed, but even the hostility and disrespect the Obama administration has shown has not severed those bonds. It is vital that Americans who honor our commitment to Israel and who appreciate Israel's steadfast support of America, stand up and speak out against this vote. Allowing it to go forward would compound the failure of the Obama administration and put our closest ally at existential risk.
Tax the Rich and Then What?
By Heidi Harris
Monday, September 19, 2011
Radio listeners often think they have all the answers, (as opposed to hosts, who know they do) except when I ask these two very simple questions:
How much do we tax the rich? (percentage of income or dollar amount - I’ll take either answer)
Where does that money go to solve our deficit problem? (specific program, black hole known as the Treasury, etc.)
Warren Buffet has finally gotten his wish on taxation: “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”
President Obama is listening, and is now proposing a “Buffett Rule”. After all, the “the most fortunate among us...”, can afford to pay a “lil’ bit more”...right?
“Balanced approach”, “shared sacrifice”, “tax breaks for corporate jets”...no matter how you characterize it, it’s a war on the people who hire us and create things. The takers vs. the makers.
It always sounds good to those “less fortunate” to make those “more fortunate” pay all the bills, regardless of whether their lack of “fortune” is related to laziness, bad decisions, or anything else in their control. With the exception of inherited wealth, the “fortunate” have earned their money, through innovation and motivation.
When my husband and I discuss what to do with our money each month, these are the questions we are forced to answer. How much will be allocated, and where will it be allocated? Debt, savings, investments? If there’s any left, that is.
The New York Times said, “...restoring capital gains and dividend rates to the levels before the Bush tax cuts — when capital gains were taxed at a top rate of 20 percent and dividends were treated as ordinary income — would bring the Treasury an additional $340 billion over the next decade.”
And your point is...? That’s less than chicken feed, in a world where billion is the new million.
If Obama confiscated every dime of wealth from Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Steve Jobs, (none of whom acquired their wealth through luck), the amount wouldn’t even cover the debt that’s increased under Obama’s watch, let alone balance the budget. And I wouldn’t be any better off than I am now.
Not to mention the detrimental effect such a policy would have on American innovation and competitiveness.
It goes without saying that all of us should be able to keep as much of our earnings as possible. Sure, it costs money to pay for fire fighters, police officers, roads, etc., but do they have to costs as much as they do?
Can we afford to keep dumping endless money into an education system that isn’t effective? High speed rail lines to nowhere? Employing government workers whose job descriptions are vague at best? Of course not, and those problems won’t be solved by fleecing the rich.
I’ll make the “take it from the rich” crowd a deal. Since you’re so much smarter than the rest of us, let’s see if you can answer my two simple questions: How much? And where does it go? If not, keep your hands off money you didn’t earn.
You can’t be trusted with it.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Radio listeners often think they have all the answers, (as opposed to hosts, who know they do) except when I ask these two very simple questions:
How much do we tax the rich? (percentage of income or dollar amount - I’ll take either answer)
Where does that money go to solve our deficit problem? (specific program, black hole known as the Treasury, etc.)
Warren Buffet has finally gotten his wish on taxation: “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”
President Obama is listening, and is now proposing a “Buffett Rule”. After all, the “the most fortunate among us...”, can afford to pay a “lil’ bit more”...right?
“Balanced approach”, “shared sacrifice”, “tax breaks for corporate jets”...no matter how you characterize it, it’s a war on the people who hire us and create things. The takers vs. the makers.
It always sounds good to those “less fortunate” to make those “more fortunate” pay all the bills, regardless of whether their lack of “fortune” is related to laziness, bad decisions, or anything else in their control. With the exception of inherited wealth, the “fortunate” have earned their money, through innovation and motivation.
When my husband and I discuss what to do with our money each month, these are the questions we are forced to answer. How much will be allocated, and where will it be allocated? Debt, savings, investments? If there’s any left, that is.
The New York Times said, “...restoring capital gains and dividend rates to the levels before the Bush tax cuts — when capital gains were taxed at a top rate of 20 percent and dividends were treated as ordinary income — would bring the Treasury an additional $340 billion over the next decade.”
And your point is...? That’s less than chicken feed, in a world where billion is the new million.
If Obama confiscated every dime of wealth from Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Steve Jobs, (none of whom acquired their wealth through luck), the amount wouldn’t even cover the debt that’s increased under Obama’s watch, let alone balance the budget. And I wouldn’t be any better off than I am now.
Not to mention the detrimental effect such a policy would have on American innovation and competitiveness.
It goes without saying that all of us should be able to keep as much of our earnings as possible. Sure, it costs money to pay for fire fighters, police officers, roads, etc., but do they have to costs as much as they do?
Can we afford to keep dumping endless money into an education system that isn’t effective? High speed rail lines to nowhere? Employing government workers whose job descriptions are vague at best? Of course not, and those problems won’t be solved by fleecing the rich.
I’ll make the “take it from the rich” crowd a deal. Since you’re so much smarter than the rest of us, let’s see if you can answer my two simple questions: How much? And where does it go? If not, keep your hands off money you didn’t earn.
You can’t be trusted with it.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Warren Buffett's Tax Dodge
The billionaire volunteers the middle class for a tax increase..
Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Barney Kilgore, the man who made the Wall Street Journal into a national publication, was once asked why so many rich people favored higher taxes. That's easy, he replied. They already have their money.
That insight is worth recalling amid the latest political duet from President Obama and Warren Buffett demanding higher taxes on "millionaires and billionaires." Mr. Buffett is repeating his now familiar argument this week, coinciding with Mr. Obama's Midwestern road trip on the economy. Since the media are treating Mr. Buffett as a tax oracle, let's take a closer look at some of the billionaire's intellectual tax dodges.
• The double tax oversight. The Berkshire Hathaway magnate makes much of the fact that he paid only 17.4% of his income in taxes, which he considers unfair when salaried workers often pay more. But Mr. Buffett makes most of his income from his investments, in particular from dividends and capital gains that are taxed at a rate of 15%.
What he doesn't say is that much of his income was already taxed once as corporate income, which is assessed at a 35% rate (less deductions). The 15% levy on capital gains and dividends to individuals is thus a double tax that takes the overall tax rate on that corporate income closer to 45%.
This onerous tax on capital is a U.S. competitive disadvantage in the global economy, which is why Congress agreed in 2003 to cut the rates on dividends and capital gains. Even as the rest of the world is cutting tax rates on corporate income, Mr. Buffett wants to raise U.S. rates in a way that would make America less attractive for investment. Under a sensible tax reform, the feds would impose either a corporate tax or a dividend and capital gains tax, but not both.
• The middle-class bait-and-switch. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Buffett speaks about raising taxes only on the rich. But somehow he ignores that the President's tax increase starts at $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. Mr. Obama ought to call them "thousandaires," but that probably doesn't poll as well.
The President needs to levy his tax increase at such a lower income level because that's where the money is. In 2009, 237,000 taxpayers reported income above $1 million and they paid $178 billion in taxes. A mere 8,274 filers reported income above $10 million, and they paid only $54 billion in taxes.
But 3.92 million reported income above $200,000 in 2009, and they paid $434 billion in taxes. To put it another way, roughly 90% of the tax filers who would pay more under Mr. Obama's plan aren't millionaires, and 99.99% aren't billionaires.
Mr. Buffett says it's only "fair" to raise his taxes, but he's lending his credibility to raising taxes on millions of middle-class earners for whom a few extra thousand dollars in after-tax income is a big deal. Unlike Mr. Buffett, those middle-class earners aren't rich and may earn $250,000 for only a few years of their working lives. How is that fair?
• The charity loophole. For billionaires like Mr. Buffett, the single most important deduction in the tax code is for charitable giving. Middle-class earners can't give nearly as much money away to reduce their overall tax burden. Yet we don't hear Mr. Buffett calling for the elimination of that deduction in the name of fairness.
Mr. Buffett has also already sheltered the bulk of his fortune from federal taxes by putting them into a foundation that will give the money away. That's an act of generosity, but if the government's purposes are so vital, why doesn't he simply give the money to the IRS?
Rebecca Quick of CNBC put that question to Mr. Buffett in 2007. His answer: "Well, that's a choice and it's an option . . . If I had to give it to a single individual, or make some young Buffett a multibillionaire, or give it to the government, I'd absolutely give it to the government. I think that on balance the Gates Foundation, my daughter's foundation, my two sons' foundations will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government."
Mr. Buffett is no doubt right about the relative efficiency of private donors, but should billionaire philanthropists get such a large tax preference? Another case of fairness?
Mr. Buffett is one of the great stock-pickers of his time, and we don't begrudge him a single dollar of his wealth. We only wish that, having already made himself rich, he weren't so intent on making it harder for others to become rich too. If he's worried about being undertaxed, we'd suggest he simply write a big check to Uncle Sam and go back to his day job of picking investments.
Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Barney Kilgore, the man who made the Wall Street Journal into a national publication, was once asked why so many rich people favored higher taxes. That's easy, he replied. They already have their money.
That insight is worth recalling amid the latest political duet from President Obama and Warren Buffett demanding higher taxes on "millionaires and billionaires." Mr. Buffett is repeating his now familiar argument this week, coinciding with Mr. Obama's Midwestern road trip on the economy. Since the media are treating Mr. Buffett as a tax oracle, let's take a closer look at some of the billionaire's intellectual tax dodges.
• The double tax oversight. The Berkshire Hathaway magnate makes much of the fact that he paid only 17.4% of his income in taxes, which he considers unfair when salaried workers often pay more. But Mr. Buffett makes most of his income from his investments, in particular from dividends and capital gains that are taxed at a rate of 15%.
What he doesn't say is that much of his income was already taxed once as corporate income, which is assessed at a 35% rate (less deductions). The 15% levy on capital gains and dividends to individuals is thus a double tax that takes the overall tax rate on that corporate income closer to 45%.
This onerous tax on capital is a U.S. competitive disadvantage in the global economy, which is why Congress agreed in 2003 to cut the rates on dividends and capital gains. Even as the rest of the world is cutting tax rates on corporate income, Mr. Buffett wants to raise U.S. rates in a way that would make America less attractive for investment. Under a sensible tax reform, the feds would impose either a corporate tax or a dividend and capital gains tax, but not both.
• The middle-class bait-and-switch. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Buffett speaks about raising taxes only on the rich. But somehow he ignores that the President's tax increase starts at $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. Mr. Obama ought to call them "thousandaires," but that probably doesn't poll as well.
The President needs to levy his tax increase at such a lower income level because that's where the money is. In 2009, 237,000 taxpayers reported income above $1 million and they paid $178 billion in taxes. A mere 8,274 filers reported income above $10 million, and they paid only $54 billion in taxes.
But 3.92 million reported income above $200,000 in 2009, and they paid $434 billion in taxes. To put it another way, roughly 90% of the tax filers who would pay more under Mr. Obama's plan aren't millionaires, and 99.99% aren't billionaires.
Mr. Buffett says it's only "fair" to raise his taxes, but he's lending his credibility to raising taxes on millions of middle-class earners for whom a few extra thousand dollars in after-tax income is a big deal. Unlike Mr. Buffett, those middle-class earners aren't rich and may earn $250,000 for only a few years of their working lives. How is that fair?
• The charity loophole. For billionaires like Mr. Buffett, the single most important deduction in the tax code is for charitable giving. Middle-class earners can't give nearly as much money away to reduce their overall tax burden. Yet we don't hear Mr. Buffett calling for the elimination of that deduction in the name of fairness.
Mr. Buffett has also already sheltered the bulk of his fortune from federal taxes by putting them into a foundation that will give the money away. That's an act of generosity, but if the government's purposes are so vital, why doesn't he simply give the money to the IRS?
Rebecca Quick of CNBC put that question to Mr. Buffett in 2007. His answer: "Well, that's a choice and it's an option . . . If I had to give it to a single individual, or make some young Buffett a multibillionaire, or give it to the government, I'd absolutely give it to the government. I think that on balance the Gates Foundation, my daughter's foundation, my two sons' foundations will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government."
Mr. Buffett is no doubt right about the relative efficiency of private donors, but should billionaire philanthropists get such a large tax preference? Another case of fairness?
Mr. Buffett is one of the great stock-pickers of his time, and we don't begrudge him a single dollar of his wealth. We only wish that, having already made himself rich, he weren't so intent on making it harder for others to become rich too. If he's worried about being undertaxed, we'd suggest he simply write a big check to Uncle Sam and go back to his day job of picking investments.
The Billionaires Who Run Obama's America
By John Ransom
Monday, September 19, 2011
So this is what it’s come to in America.
Earwitness News reports that our Taxer-in-Chief is going to try again to tax the rich.
As part of his deficit reduction plan,” reports the LA Times, “Obama on Monday will propose a new minimum tax rate for millionaires to ensure they pay an effective federal tax rate at least as high as that paid by middle-class earners, administration officials said.”
"The president will call the new tax the ‘Buffett rule’ after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, an Obama supporter who has publicly complained that tax breaks allow him to pay a lower rate than his secretary.”
So our love of idolizing the yappy captains of industry has come to the point where George Kaiser controls investments, Warren Buffett controls tax-policy, George Soros controls media and organizing, T. Boone Pickens controls our energy policy and TV pundits treat the Donald’s TV reality candidacy like it’s, um, reality.
And we wonder why Washington and Wall Street seem so in love with each other.
Listen up people: Billionaires represent the status quo. They made their money. There is a reason why so many rich liberal do-gooders don’t want you to do so good.
For them, it’s a barrier to entry. When they call for tax on the rich, or more investment in solar, or more reading programs, or population control, you need to hear it for what it is: lobbying for their own narrow interest. And that interest has more to do with greenbacks than it does green energy.
Now that they got theirs under the old rules, they want to change the rules of the game to make it more difficult for others to get what they already have.
Does anyone really, honestly think that Warren Buffett is going to pay more in taxes when Obama starts penalizing capital gains at a higher rate?
Because if he wants to make things fairer he can: 1) give his secretary a raise and 2) pay more in taxes.
None of us are stopping him.
Did Buffett become Master of the Universe under the same system his lickspittle Obama now proposes?
This is the same government that claimed it cut spending this summer with a fake debt deal. This is the same government that claimed it saved the economy with a fake stimulus program. This is the same government that claimed it stopped the high cost of medical care with a fake healthcare reform bill. This is the same government that wanted to pass global warming legislation that never, ever in a million years would have affected the temperature of the earth by even .10 degrees.
So why do you think that a tax policy supported by the uber rich and rejected in the past by bi-partisan majorities will do anything other than serve the rich who are pitching it?
No, this tax policy is about keeping the status quo and helping Obama raise taxes on someone, anyone.
When all else fails for Democrats, you can be sure they will try to raise taxes. It’s about the only way Obama can unify the Coalition of the Whacky he’s put together and save his job.
Next up: The Moammar Gadhafi tax. I’m sure as a notable world billionaire, Gadhafi will be surrendering to Obama any day now.
First, Obama tried to increase taxes on the four million tax returns that show income over $250,000 per year. Democrats said no to that and even extended the hated, dreaded Bush Tax Cuts. Remember? The tax cuts that we’ve been told by Michael Mooooore, Matt Damon and their friends is responsible for the economic mess we’re in?
So then Obama tried to tax private jets. Republicans said no to that.
So now, with his campaign on the ropes, Obama has figured out that he needs the four million votes of those who make $250,000 per year. But he certainly can afford to tax the 22,000 returns that show “income” over $1 million.
After all, Obama apparently just bailed every last one of the 22,000 millionaires out of their nose-diving, government-guaranteed solar investments.
They owe him.
Monday, September 19, 2011
So this is what it’s come to in America.
Earwitness News reports that our Taxer-in-Chief is going to try again to tax the rich.
As part of his deficit reduction plan,” reports the LA Times, “Obama on Monday will propose a new minimum tax rate for millionaires to ensure they pay an effective federal tax rate at least as high as that paid by middle-class earners, administration officials said.”
"The president will call the new tax the ‘Buffett rule’ after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, an Obama supporter who has publicly complained that tax breaks allow him to pay a lower rate than his secretary.”
So our love of idolizing the yappy captains of industry has come to the point where George Kaiser controls investments, Warren Buffett controls tax-policy, George Soros controls media and organizing, T. Boone Pickens controls our energy policy and TV pundits treat the Donald’s TV reality candidacy like it’s, um, reality.
And we wonder why Washington and Wall Street seem so in love with each other.
Listen up people: Billionaires represent the status quo. They made their money. There is a reason why so many rich liberal do-gooders don’t want you to do so good.
For them, it’s a barrier to entry. When they call for tax on the rich, or more investment in solar, or more reading programs, or population control, you need to hear it for what it is: lobbying for their own narrow interest. And that interest has more to do with greenbacks than it does green energy.
Now that they got theirs under the old rules, they want to change the rules of the game to make it more difficult for others to get what they already have.
Does anyone really, honestly think that Warren Buffett is going to pay more in taxes when Obama starts penalizing capital gains at a higher rate?
Because if he wants to make things fairer he can: 1) give his secretary a raise and 2) pay more in taxes.
None of us are stopping him.
Did Buffett become Master of the Universe under the same system his lickspittle Obama now proposes?
This is the same government that claimed it cut spending this summer with a fake debt deal. This is the same government that claimed it saved the economy with a fake stimulus program. This is the same government that claimed it stopped the high cost of medical care with a fake healthcare reform bill. This is the same government that wanted to pass global warming legislation that never, ever in a million years would have affected the temperature of the earth by even .10 degrees.
So why do you think that a tax policy supported by the uber rich and rejected in the past by bi-partisan majorities will do anything other than serve the rich who are pitching it?
No, this tax policy is about keeping the status quo and helping Obama raise taxes on someone, anyone.
When all else fails for Democrats, you can be sure they will try to raise taxes. It’s about the only way Obama can unify the Coalition of the Whacky he’s put together and save his job.
Next up: The Moammar Gadhafi tax. I’m sure as a notable world billionaire, Gadhafi will be surrendering to Obama any day now.
First, Obama tried to increase taxes on the four million tax returns that show income over $250,000 per year. Democrats said no to that and even extended the hated, dreaded Bush Tax Cuts. Remember? The tax cuts that we’ve been told by Michael Mooooore, Matt Damon and their friends is responsible for the economic mess we’re in?
So then Obama tried to tax private jets. Republicans said no to that.
So now, with his campaign on the ropes, Obama has figured out that he needs the four million votes of those who make $250,000 per year. But he certainly can afford to tax the 22,000 returns that show “income” over $1 million.
After all, Obama apparently just bailed every last one of the 22,000 millionaires out of their nose-diving, government-guaranteed solar investments.
They owe him.
No to the Palestinian ‘State’
National Review Online
Monday, September 19, 2011
There is no such thing as a Palestinian state, and the United Nations can’t conjure one into existence. That apparently won’t stop the Palestinians from seeking recognition as a state in the Security Council this week. We should veto the Palestinian effort without hesitation.
On top of its legal nullity, the push for recognition at the U.N. trashes the spirit of the Oslo Accords, which commit both the Israelis and the Palestinians to addressing their differences through negotiations. Thwarted at the Security Council, the Palestinians will likely go to the rabble in the General Assembly, where we don’t have a veto and they will presumably succeed in putting a fig leaf on a fraud.
The General Assembly can change the status of the PLO from an observer “entity,” as it is now, to a “non-member state” observer, like the Vatican, and thereby recognize it indirectly as a state. But this won’t create a real state, either in law or in fact. Under international law, the Montevideo Convention of 1933 explicitly provides that the existence of a sovereign state is independent of recognition by other states, and further provides that a state must have a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. The Palestinians arguably have none of those things. By their own admission, they don’t have a defined territory. Their government, meanwhile, is riven: Terrorists control one half of the territories and the other half is controlled by a former terrorist whose term of office expired two years ago.
Nobody would like to see the Palestinians under a functioning state of laws more than the Israelis. But a state must have a monopoly of violence, and Hamas has always rejected the monopoly of violence in favor of the inherent individual right of resistance to occupation. The Palestinians have barely managed to maintain political institutions of any kind, and a declaration of statehood will do nothing to solve that problem.
Any action in the cause of Palestinian statehood at the U.N. will serve to isolate Israel further, and could make its government subject to international legal proceedings. But the main danger is the effect it could have in the Muslim world, including the occupied territories. Another intifada would force Israel to resort to military measures, giving Egypt and Turkey another excuse to express their growing hostility to the Jewish state.
The Middle East has come to this pass despite President Obama’s blithe belief at the inception of his administration that he could forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace. From the start, Obama cast his role in the Middle East as one of impartial mediator, not realizing that America’s influence among the Palestinians requires Israel’s confidence that we will protect the Jewish state come what may. Anyone can play the role of mediator, but only America can underwrite the risks of a negotiated settlement for both sides. The strategic prerequisites for Israeli-Palestinian peace are the same as they were for peace between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s: We must convince the Arabs that they can get what they want from the Israelis only by going through us, and we can deliver Israeli concessions only if we can guarantee Israel’s security.
Yet the Obama administration has reprised the Clinton administration’s childish schoolyard spats with Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. By embracing the Palestinian insistence on a halt to settlement construction as a precondition for talks, Obama encouraged the Palestinians to dig in their heels. Now the Palestinians think they can get what they want by forcing the issue at the U.N. and encouraging Egyptian and Turkish belligerence.
The new government of Egypt is seeking legitimacy by embracing the worst anti-Israeli sentiments of its populace. The army recently stood by as a Cairo mob ransacked the Israeli embassy. The Camp David Accords of 1979 are starting to crumble. Because no combination of Arab states could afford to go to war with Israel without Egypt’s help, Henry Kissinger realized that peace between Israel and Egypt would end the era of Arab-Israeli wars. The fraying of the Camp David Accords, which preserved a tenuous peace for more than three decades, is ominous. So is the reemergence of Turkey as a regional power. Turkey has pledged a military escort for the next “humanitarian flotilla” aimed at forcibly breaching the Gaza blockade, a fully legal blockade even according to the United Nations.
The Middle East is again on the cusp of crisis, with the U.N. about to stoke the flames and the Obama administration caught in a self-imposed impotence.
Monday, September 19, 2011
There is no such thing as a Palestinian state, and the United Nations can’t conjure one into existence. That apparently won’t stop the Palestinians from seeking recognition as a state in the Security Council this week. We should veto the Palestinian effort without hesitation.
On top of its legal nullity, the push for recognition at the U.N. trashes the spirit of the Oslo Accords, which commit both the Israelis and the Palestinians to addressing their differences through negotiations. Thwarted at the Security Council, the Palestinians will likely go to the rabble in the General Assembly, where we don’t have a veto and they will presumably succeed in putting a fig leaf on a fraud.
The General Assembly can change the status of the PLO from an observer “entity,” as it is now, to a “non-member state” observer, like the Vatican, and thereby recognize it indirectly as a state. But this won’t create a real state, either in law or in fact. Under international law, the Montevideo Convention of 1933 explicitly provides that the existence of a sovereign state is independent of recognition by other states, and further provides that a state must have a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. The Palestinians arguably have none of those things. By their own admission, they don’t have a defined territory. Their government, meanwhile, is riven: Terrorists control one half of the territories and the other half is controlled by a former terrorist whose term of office expired two years ago.
Nobody would like to see the Palestinians under a functioning state of laws more than the Israelis. But a state must have a monopoly of violence, and Hamas has always rejected the monopoly of violence in favor of the inherent individual right of resistance to occupation. The Palestinians have barely managed to maintain political institutions of any kind, and a declaration of statehood will do nothing to solve that problem.
Any action in the cause of Palestinian statehood at the U.N. will serve to isolate Israel further, and could make its government subject to international legal proceedings. But the main danger is the effect it could have in the Muslim world, including the occupied territories. Another intifada would force Israel to resort to military measures, giving Egypt and Turkey another excuse to express their growing hostility to the Jewish state.
The Middle East has come to this pass despite President Obama’s blithe belief at the inception of his administration that he could forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace. From the start, Obama cast his role in the Middle East as one of impartial mediator, not realizing that America’s influence among the Palestinians requires Israel’s confidence that we will protect the Jewish state come what may. Anyone can play the role of mediator, but only America can underwrite the risks of a negotiated settlement for both sides. The strategic prerequisites for Israeli-Palestinian peace are the same as they were for peace between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s: We must convince the Arabs that they can get what they want from the Israelis only by going through us, and we can deliver Israeli concessions only if we can guarantee Israel’s security.
Yet the Obama administration has reprised the Clinton administration’s childish schoolyard spats with Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. By embracing the Palestinian insistence on a halt to settlement construction as a precondition for talks, Obama encouraged the Palestinians to dig in their heels. Now the Palestinians think they can get what they want by forcing the issue at the U.N. and encouraging Egyptian and Turkish belligerence.
The new government of Egypt is seeking legitimacy by embracing the worst anti-Israeli sentiments of its populace. The army recently stood by as a Cairo mob ransacked the Israeli embassy. The Camp David Accords of 1979 are starting to crumble. Because no combination of Arab states could afford to go to war with Israel without Egypt’s help, Henry Kissinger realized that peace between Israel and Egypt would end the era of Arab-Israeli wars. The fraying of the Camp David Accords, which preserved a tenuous peace for more than three decades, is ominous. So is the reemergence of Turkey as a regional power. Turkey has pledged a military escort for the next “humanitarian flotilla” aimed at forcibly breaching the Gaza blockade, a fully legal blockade even according to the United Nations.
The Middle East is again on the cusp of crisis, with the U.N. about to stoke the flames and the Obama administration caught in a self-imposed impotence.
The University of Texas and Racial Preferences
The Supreme Court could consider an affirmative-action case.
Hans A. Von Spakovsky
Monday, September 19, 2011
Abigail Fisher’s application to the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 was rejected. Had she been black or Hispanic, she almost certainly would have been accepted — and so she and another student in a similar circumstance filed a lawsuit. So far, the federal courts have ruled against them, reinforcing the odious notion that colleges can discriminate on the basis of race — as long as the right people are being discriminated against.
But that may soon change.
Fischer’s lawyers filed a petition with the Supreme Court on September 15 asking the Court to review Fisher v. University of Texas. If the case is accepted, the Court could clarify — and, more important, limit — how a university may consider an applicant’s skin color and ethnicity for admissions. Since hundreds of colleges use “preferences” (the politically correct term for discrimination), clarification would be a welcome outcome.
The jurisprudence of such racial discrimination has been controversial since 1978, when Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was decided by a fractured Supreme Court. In Bakke, the Court disallowed the use of racial quotas in the admissions process at the Davis Medical School, but Justice Lewis Powell left the door open to “a properly tailored affirmative action program designed to promote diversity.” For years, legal scholars debated what a “properly tailored” affirmative-action program entailed.
It wasn’t until 2003 that the high court revisited the question in a pair of cases from the University of Michigan (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger) challenging the institution’s law-school- and undergraduate-admissions policies.
The Grutter opinion held that a racially diverse student body was so beneficial to the educational experience that there was a “compelling state interest” in lowering the admissions bar for some racial groups, and raising it for others. Still, the justices underscored that this regrettable opinion was not a blanket endorsement of the use of race in admissions. Any consideration of race must be carefully and narrowly crafted and executed.
One of the central tenets of Grutter requires that, before putting a thumb on the race scales, a school must pursue a “serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives that will achieve the diversity the university seeks.” Unfortunately, in the real world, few if any competitive universities (dominated by liberal administrators) have ever implemented race-neutral programs to replace racial preferences. But Texas schools are unique, and that is why the higher-education community is watching the Fisher case so closely.
In 1996, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals outlawed the use of race in admissions by any Texas university. In response, the state legislature passed a law that allowed any student in the top 10 percent of his high-school class to attend any public college in the state.
This boosted minority enrollment (and enrollment from rural areas) at the University of Texas–Austin (UT). In fact, enrollment of African Americans and Hispanics surged, surpassing minority enrollment levels achieved with race-based admissions. Tellingly, Larry Faulkner, the university’s president at the time, wrote that “the Top 10 Percent Law has enabled us to diversify enrollment at UT Austin with talented students who succeed.” Faulkner added that by 1999, enrollment levels for blacks and Hispanics had returned to the levels before the Fifth Circuit decision; further, minority students were earning higher grade-point averages and had better retention rates.
Yet on the very day that Grutter was decided, President Faulkner announced that UT would reintroduce race-based admissions. UT has defended its decision by arguing that while minority enrollment was up because of the Top 10 Percent Plan, it still does not mirror the overall demographics of Texas. Furthermore, UT asserts that individual classrooms still lack a “critical mass” of blacks and Hispanics, so reintroducing discriminatory preferences is justified.
Both arguments were attacked by Chief Judge Edith H. Jones, who wrote a dissent on behalf of seven out of 16 of her fellow judges. The “U.S. Constitution abhors racial preferences,” she said, adding that allowing UT to seek classroom diversity through racial preferences was “pernicious.” She questioned whether UT should be allowed to “add minorities until a ‘critical mass’ chooses” particular subjects such as nuclear physics or applied math. This was opening “the door to effective quotas in undergraduate majors” based on race.
Fisher v. University of Texas does not seek to overturn Grutter. It asks only that UT properly apply the Supreme Court’s principles that require using race-neutral alternatives first where they have been shown to work in achieving the state’s claimed interest in diversity. The plaintiffs acknowledge that a university, in certain limited ways, may use race as one factor in its admissions process under the Grutter rationale (however misguided it is). But that does not give UT or the hundreds of schools that use such discriminatory admissions policies a racial carte blanche. If the Court agrees, it would have to adopt another convoluted standard, but at least it would be better than Grutter.
If the Supreme Court takes the case, the defenders of affirmative action, including the Obama administration, will decry the case as an attack on diversity in higher education. But this will be wrong. Fisher gives the justices an opportunity to reinforce one of the bedrock principles of equal protection: Every race-conscious government decision bears dangers to our nation and must be weighed exactingly and suspiciously.
Opponents of discrimination have good reason to hope that the Court could go even farther than the plaintiffs have requested and overturn Grutter, putting an end to state-sanctioned discrimination once and for all. Not least is the shift of personnel on the Court. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who authored this decision, was replaced by Justice Samuel Alito, whose jurisprudence favors race neutrality. There is nearly a decade of proof that Grutter is a failure at limiting discrimination. And then there’s Chief Justice John Roberts’s elegant statement in a 2007 school-integration case (agreed to by a majority of the Court) that the “way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Abigail Fisher enrolled at another university and will graduate next year with an exemplary academic record. It would be a shame, however, if thousands of future applicants to UT were discriminated against on the basis of their skin color under the same circumstances.
Hans A. Von Spakovsky
Monday, September 19, 2011
Abigail Fisher’s application to the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 was rejected. Had she been black or Hispanic, she almost certainly would have been accepted — and so she and another student in a similar circumstance filed a lawsuit. So far, the federal courts have ruled against them, reinforcing the odious notion that colleges can discriminate on the basis of race — as long as the right people are being discriminated against.
But that may soon change.
Fischer’s lawyers filed a petition with the Supreme Court on September 15 asking the Court to review Fisher v. University of Texas. If the case is accepted, the Court could clarify — and, more important, limit — how a university may consider an applicant’s skin color and ethnicity for admissions. Since hundreds of colleges use “preferences” (the politically correct term for discrimination), clarification would be a welcome outcome.
The jurisprudence of such racial discrimination has been controversial since 1978, when Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was decided by a fractured Supreme Court. In Bakke, the Court disallowed the use of racial quotas in the admissions process at the Davis Medical School, but Justice Lewis Powell left the door open to “a properly tailored affirmative action program designed to promote diversity.” For years, legal scholars debated what a “properly tailored” affirmative-action program entailed.
It wasn’t until 2003 that the high court revisited the question in a pair of cases from the University of Michigan (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger) challenging the institution’s law-school- and undergraduate-admissions policies.
The Grutter opinion held that a racially diverse student body was so beneficial to the educational experience that there was a “compelling state interest” in lowering the admissions bar for some racial groups, and raising it for others. Still, the justices underscored that this regrettable opinion was not a blanket endorsement of the use of race in admissions. Any consideration of race must be carefully and narrowly crafted and executed.
One of the central tenets of Grutter requires that, before putting a thumb on the race scales, a school must pursue a “serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives that will achieve the diversity the university seeks.” Unfortunately, in the real world, few if any competitive universities (dominated by liberal administrators) have ever implemented race-neutral programs to replace racial preferences. But Texas schools are unique, and that is why the higher-education community is watching the Fisher case so closely.
In 1996, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals outlawed the use of race in admissions by any Texas university. In response, the state legislature passed a law that allowed any student in the top 10 percent of his high-school class to attend any public college in the state.
This boosted minority enrollment (and enrollment from rural areas) at the University of Texas–Austin (UT). In fact, enrollment of African Americans and Hispanics surged, surpassing minority enrollment levels achieved with race-based admissions. Tellingly, Larry Faulkner, the university’s president at the time, wrote that “the Top 10 Percent Law has enabled us to diversify enrollment at UT Austin with talented students who succeed.” Faulkner added that by 1999, enrollment levels for blacks and Hispanics had returned to the levels before the Fifth Circuit decision; further, minority students were earning higher grade-point averages and had better retention rates.
Yet on the very day that Grutter was decided, President Faulkner announced that UT would reintroduce race-based admissions. UT has defended its decision by arguing that while minority enrollment was up because of the Top 10 Percent Plan, it still does not mirror the overall demographics of Texas. Furthermore, UT asserts that individual classrooms still lack a “critical mass” of blacks and Hispanics, so reintroducing discriminatory preferences is justified.
Both arguments were attacked by Chief Judge Edith H. Jones, who wrote a dissent on behalf of seven out of 16 of her fellow judges. The “U.S. Constitution abhors racial preferences,” she said, adding that allowing UT to seek classroom diversity through racial preferences was “pernicious.” She questioned whether UT should be allowed to “add minorities until a ‘critical mass’ chooses” particular subjects such as nuclear physics or applied math. This was opening “the door to effective quotas in undergraduate majors” based on race.
Fisher v. University of Texas does not seek to overturn Grutter. It asks only that UT properly apply the Supreme Court’s principles that require using race-neutral alternatives first where they have been shown to work in achieving the state’s claimed interest in diversity. The plaintiffs acknowledge that a university, in certain limited ways, may use race as one factor in its admissions process under the Grutter rationale (however misguided it is). But that does not give UT or the hundreds of schools that use such discriminatory admissions policies a racial carte blanche. If the Court agrees, it would have to adopt another convoluted standard, but at least it would be better than Grutter.
If the Supreme Court takes the case, the defenders of affirmative action, including the Obama administration, will decry the case as an attack on diversity in higher education. But this will be wrong. Fisher gives the justices an opportunity to reinforce one of the bedrock principles of equal protection: Every race-conscious government decision bears dangers to our nation and must be weighed exactingly and suspiciously.
Opponents of discrimination have good reason to hope that the Court could go even farther than the plaintiffs have requested and overturn Grutter, putting an end to state-sanctioned discrimination once and for all. Not least is the shift of personnel on the Court. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who authored this decision, was replaced by Justice Samuel Alito, whose jurisprudence favors race neutrality. There is nearly a decade of proof that Grutter is a failure at limiting discrimination. And then there’s Chief Justice John Roberts’s elegant statement in a 2007 school-integration case (agreed to by a majority of the Court) that the “way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Abigail Fisher enrolled at another university and will graduate next year with an exemplary academic record. It would be a shame, however, if thousands of future applicants to UT were discriminated against on the basis of their skin color under the same circumstances.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
You Can’t Tax the Rich
They’ll flee the country before you can.
Thomas Sowell
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Ninety years ago — in 1921 — federal income-tax policies reached an absurdity that many people today seem to want to repeat. Those who believe in high taxes on “the rich” got their way. The tax rate on people in the top income bracket was 73 percent in 1921. On the other hand, the rich also got their way: They didn’t actually pay those taxes.
The number of people with taxable incomes of $300,000 a year or more — equivalent to far more than $1 million in today’s money — declined from over 1,000 people in 1916 to fewer than 300 in 1921. Were the rich all going broke?
It might look that way. More than four-fifths of the total taxable income earned by people making $300,000 a year and up vanished into thin air. So did the tax revenues that the government hoped to collect with high tax rates on the top incomes.
What happened was no mystery to Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. He pointed out that vast amounts of money that might have been invested in the economy were instead being invested in tax-exempt securities, such as municipal bonds.
Secretary Mellon estimated that the amount of money invested in tax-exempt securities had nearly tripled in a decade. The amount of this money that the tax collector couldn’t touch was larger than the federal government’s annual budget and nearly half as large as the national debt. Big bucks went into hiding.
Mellon highlighted the absurdity of this situation: “It is incredible that a system of taxation which permits a man with an income of $1,000,000 a year to pay not one cent to the support of his Government should remain unaltered.”
One of Mellon’s first acts as secretary was to ask Congress to end tax exemptions for municipal bonds and other securities. But Congress was not about to set off a political firestorm by doing that.
Mellon’s Plan B was to cut the top income-tax rate, in order to lure money out of tax-exempt securities and back into the economy, where increased economic activity would generate more tax revenue for the government. Congress also resisted this, using arguments that are virtually unchanged to this day — that these would just be “tax cuts for the rich.”
What makes all this history so relevant today is that the same economic assumptions and political arguments that produced the absurdities of 1921 are still going strong in 2011.
If anything, “the rich” have far more options for putting their money beyond the reach of the tax collectors today than they had back in 1921. In addition to being able to put their money into tax-exempt securities, the rich today can easily send millions — or billions — of dollars to foreign countries, with the ease of electronic transfers in a globalized economy.
In other words, the genuinely rich are likely to be the least harmed by high tax rates in the top brackets. People who are looking for jobs are likely to be the most harmed, because they cannot equally easily transfer themselves overseas to take the jobs that are being created there by American investments that are fleeing high tax rates at home.
Small businesses — hardware stores, gas stations, restaurants — are likewise unable to transfer themselves overseas. So they are far more likely to be unable to escape the higher tax rates that are supposedly being imposed on “millionaires and billionaires,” as President Obama calls them. Moreover, small businesses are what create most of the new jobs.
Why then are so many politicians, journalists, and others so gung-ho to raise tax rates on the rich?
Aside from sheer ignorance of history and economics, class-warfare politics pays off in votes for politicians who can depict their opponents as defenders of the rich and themselves as champions of the working people. It is a great political game that has paid off repeatedly in local, state, and federal elections.
As for the 1920s, Mellon eventually got his way, getting Congress to bring the top income-tax rate down from 73 percent to 24 percent. Vast sums of money that had seemingly vanished into thin air suddenly reappeared in the economy, creating far more jobs and far more tax revenue for the government.
Sometimes sanity prevails. But not always.
Thomas Sowell
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Ninety years ago — in 1921 — federal income-tax policies reached an absurdity that many people today seem to want to repeat. Those who believe in high taxes on “the rich” got their way. The tax rate on people in the top income bracket was 73 percent in 1921. On the other hand, the rich also got their way: They didn’t actually pay those taxes.
The number of people with taxable incomes of $300,000 a year or more — equivalent to far more than $1 million in today’s money — declined from over 1,000 people in 1916 to fewer than 300 in 1921. Were the rich all going broke?
It might look that way. More than four-fifths of the total taxable income earned by people making $300,000 a year and up vanished into thin air. So did the tax revenues that the government hoped to collect with high tax rates on the top incomes.
What happened was no mystery to Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. He pointed out that vast amounts of money that might have been invested in the economy were instead being invested in tax-exempt securities, such as municipal bonds.
Secretary Mellon estimated that the amount of money invested in tax-exempt securities had nearly tripled in a decade. The amount of this money that the tax collector couldn’t touch was larger than the federal government’s annual budget and nearly half as large as the national debt. Big bucks went into hiding.
Mellon highlighted the absurdity of this situation: “It is incredible that a system of taxation which permits a man with an income of $1,000,000 a year to pay not one cent to the support of his Government should remain unaltered.”
One of Mellon’s first acts as secretary was to ask Congress to end tax exemptions for municipal bonds and other securities. But Congress was not about to set off a political firestorm by doing that.
Mellon’s Plan B was to cut the top income-tax rate, in order to lure money out of tax-exempt securities and back into the economy, where increased economic activity would generate more tax revenue for the government. Congress also resisted this, using arguments that are virtually unchanged to this day — that these would just be “tax cuts for the rich.”
What makes all this history so relevant today is that the same economic assumptions and political arguments that produced the absurdities of 1921 are still going strong in 2011.
If anything, “the rich” have far more options for putting their money beyond the reach of the tax collectors today than they had back in 1921. In addition to being able to put their money into tax-exempt securities, the rich today can easily send millions — or billions — of dollars to foreign countries, with the ease of electronic transfers in a globalized economy.
In other words, the genuinely rich are likely to be the least harmed by high tax rates in the top brackets. People who are looking for jobs are likely to be the most harmed, because they cannot equally easily transfer themselves overseas to take the jobs that are being created there by American investments that are fleeing high tax rates at home.
Small businesses — hardware stores, gas stations, restaurants — are likewise unable to transfer themselves overseas. So they are far more likely to be unable to escape the higher tax rates that are supposedly being imposed on “millionaires and billionaires,” as President Obama calls them. Moreover, small businesses are what create most of the new jobs.
Why then are so many politicians, journalists, and others so gung-ho to raise tax rates on the rich?
Aside from sheer ignorance of history and economics, class-warfare politics pays off in votes for politicians who can depict their opponents as defenders of the rich and themselves as champions of the working people. It is a great political game that has paid off repeatedly in local, state, and federal elections.
As for the 1920s, Mellon eventually got his way, getting Congress to bring the top income-tax rate down from 73 percent to 24 percent. Vast sums of money that had seemingly vanished into thin air suddenly reappeared in the economy, creating far more jobs and far more tax revenue for the government.
Sometimes sanity prevails. But not always.
‘Pass This Jobs Bill!’
There is no bill, it won’t “create” any jobs, and it will be paid for with money we don’t have.
Mark Steyn
Saturday, September 17, 2011
The president has taken to the campaign trail to promote his “American Jobs Act.” That’s a good name for it: an act. “Pass this bill now!” he declared 24 times at a stop in Raleigh, N.C., and another 18 in Columbus, Ohio, and the act is sufficiently effective that, three years into the Vapidity of Hope, the president can still find crowds of true believers willing to chant along with him: “Pass this bill now!”
Not all supporters are content merely to singalong with the prompter-in-chief. In North Carolina, a still-devoted hopeychanger cried out, “I love you!”
“I love you, too,” said the president. “But . . . ”
Oh, no, here it comes: conditional love. “But, if you love me, you’ve got to help me pass this bill!” You’d be surprised how effective this line is: I tried it on Darlene in the back of my Ford Edsel when I was 17 and we didn’t get home till two in the morning.
Pass this bill now, or I’ll say “Pass this bill now!” another two dozen times! With this latest inspiration, Obama has taken the post-modern phase of democratic politics to a whole new level. “Pass this jobs bill”? Simply as a matter of humdrum reality, there is no bill, it won’t “create” any jobs, and it will be paid for with money we don’t have. But the smartest president in history has calculated that, if he says the same four monosyllables over and over, a nonexistent bill to create nonexistent jobs with nonexistent money will be yet another legislative triumph in the grand tradition of his first stimulus (the original Dumb and Dumber to the sequel’s Stimulus and Stimulusser).
The estimated cost of the non-bill is just shy of half a trillion dollars. Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that Washington was in the grip of a white-knuckle, clenched-teeth showdown over whether a debt-ceiling deal could be reached before the allegedly looming deadline. When the deal was triumphantly unveiled at the eleventh hour, it was revealed that our sober, prudent, fiscally responsible masters had gotten control of the runaway spending and had carved (according to the most optimistic analysis) a whole $7 billion dollars of savings out of the 2012 budget. The president then airily breezes into Congress and in 20 minutes adds another $447 billion to the tab. That’s what meaningful course-correction in Washington boils down to: Seven billion steps forward, 447 billion steps back.
This $447 billion does not exist, and even foreigners don’t want to lend it to us. A majority of it will be “electronically created” by the Federal Reserve buying U.S. Treasury debt. Don’t worry, it’s not like “printing money”: We leave that to primitive basket cases like Zimbabwe. This is more like one of those Nigerian e-mail schemes, in which a prominent public official promises you a large sum of money in return for your bank-account details. In the case of Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, one prominent public official is promising to wire a large sum of money into the account of another prominent public official, which is a wrinkle even the Nigerians might have difficulty selling.
But not to worry. On Thursday night, the president told a Democratic fundraiser in Washington that the Pass My Jobs Bill bill would create 1.9 million new jobs. What kind of jobs are created by this kind of magical thinking? Well, they’re “green jobs” — and, if we know anything about “green jobs,” it’s that they take a lot of green. German taxpayers subsidize “green jobs” in their wind-power industry to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars per worker per year: $250,000 per “green job” would pay for a lot of real jobs, even in the European Union. Last year, it was revealed that the Spanish government paid $800,000 for every “green job” on a solar-panel assembly line. I had assumed carelessly that this must be a world record in terms of taxpayer subsidy per fraudulent “green job.” But it turns out those cheapskate Spaniards with their lousy nickel-and-dime “green jobs” subsidy just weren’t thinking big. The Obama administration’s $38.6 billion “clean technology” program was supposed to “create or save” 65,000 jobs. Half the money has been spent — $17.2 billion — and we have 3,545 jobs to show for it. That works out to an impressive $4,851,904.09 per “green job.” A world record! Take that, you loser Spaniards! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
So, based on previous form, Obama’s prediction of 1.9 million new jobs will result in the creation of 92,000 new jobs, mostly in the Federal Department of Green Jobs Grant Applications.
Just to put it in perspective, the breezy $447 billion price tag for the Pass My Jobs Bill jobs bill is about 20 times higher than the most recent Greek government deficit currently threatening the stability of the entire eurozone. Indeed Greece’s projected 2011 deficit — $24 billion at last count — is little more than half of just one of Obama’s boutique, niche “green jobs” programs. As Churchill almost said, never in the field of human con tricks has so much been owed by so many to so little effect.
Fortunately, there is no “American Jobs Act.” Indeed, the other day, tired of waiting for Obama to turn his telepromptered pseudo-bill into a typewritten actual bill, the Texas congressman Louie Gohmert waggishly introduced an “American Jobs Act” all of his own. But back on the campaign trail the chanting goes on, last week’s election results in Nevada and New York notwithstanding. America has the lowest employment since the early Eighties, the lowest property ownership since the mid-Sixties, the highest deficit-to-GDP ratio since the Second World War, the worst long-term unemployment since the Great Depression, the highest government-dependency rate of all time, and the biggest debt mountain in the history of the planet. And the president has just announced to the world that he’s checked the more-of-the-above box. The Pass My Jobs Bill jobs bill proclaims that this is all he knows and all he wants to know.
In my new book, I point out that Big Government leaves everything else smaller — and, when it’s bigger than anything ever attempted, the everything else is going to be way smaller. Maybe if you’re a “public service” worker or a tenured professor at Berkeley or a green-jobs racketeer or a New York Times columnist married to an heiress, you can afford Obama. But, if you’re not, look at your home, look at your savings, and figure out what’ll be left after another four years of “stimulus.”
“I love you!” squeals the Obammybopper in North Carolina. “I love you, too,” says Obama. “But . . . ”
But: You gotta take this half-trillion-dollar bill, and the next one, and the one after that. Like Al Gore says in Love Story, love means never having to say you’re sorry.
Mark Steyn
Saturday, September 17, 2011
The president has taken to the campaign trail to promote his “American Jobs Act.” That’s a good name for it: an act. “Pass this bill now!” he declared 24 times at a stop in Raleigh, N.C., and another 18 in Columbus, Ohio, and the act is sufficiently effective that, three years into the Vapidity of Hope, the president can still find crowds of true believers willing to chant along with him: “Pass this bill now!”
Not all supporters are content merely to singalong with the prompter-in-chief. In North Carolina, a still-devoted hopeychanger cried out, “I love you!”
“I love you, too,” said the president. “But . . . ”
Oh, no, here it comes: conditional love. “But, if you love me, you’ve got to help me pass this bill!” You’d be surprised how effective this line is: I tried it on Darlene in the back of my Ford Edsel when I was 17 and we didn’t get home till two in the morning.
Pass this bill now, or I’ll say “Pass this bill now!” another two dozen times! With this latest inspiration, Obama has taken the post-modern phase of democratic politics to a whole new level. “Pass this jobs bill”? Simply as a matter of humdrum reality, there is no bill, it won’t “create” any jobs, and it will be paid for with money we don’t have. But the smartest president in history has calculated that, if he says the same four monosyllables over and over, a nonexistent bill to create nonexistent jobs with nonexistent money will be yet another legislative triumph in the grand tradition of his first stimulus (the original Dumb and Dumber to the sequel’s Stimulus and Stimulusser).
The estimated cost of the non-bill is just shy of half a trillion dollars. Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that Washington was in the grip of a white-knuckle, clenched-teeth showdown over whether a debt-ceiling deal could be reached before the allegedly looming deadline. When the deal was triumphantly unveiled at the eleventh hour, it was revealed that our sober, prudent, fiscally responsible masters had gotten control of the runaway spending and had carved (according to the most optimistic analysis) a whole $7 billion dollars of savings out of the 2012 budget. The president then airily breezes into Congress and in 20 minutes adds another $447 billion to the tab. That’s what meaningful course-correction in Washington boils down to: Seven billion steps forward, 447 billion steps back.
This $447 billion does not exist, and even foreigners don’t want to lend it to us. A majority of it will be “electronically created” by the Federal Reserve buying U.S. Treasury debt. Don’t worry, it’s not like “printing money”: We leave that to primitive basket cases like Zimbabwe. This is more like one of those Nigerian e-mail schemes, in which a prominent public official promises you a large sum of money in return for your bank-account details. In the case of Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, one prominent public official is promising to wire a large sum of money into the account of another prominent public official, which is a wrinkle even the Nigerians might have difficulty selling.
But not to worry. On Thursday night, the president told a Democratic fundraiser in Washington that the Pass My Jobs Bill bill would create 1.9 million new jobs. What kind of jobs are created by this kind of magical thinking? Well, they’re “green jobs” — and, if we know anything about “green jobs,” it’s that they take a lot of green. German taxpayers subsidize “green jobs” in their wind-power industry to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars per worker per year: $250,000 per “green job” would pay for a lot of real jobs, even in the European Union. Last year, it was revealed that the Spanish government paid $800,000 for every “green job” on a solar-panel assembly line. I had assumed carelessly that this must be a world record in terms of taxpayer subsidy per fraudulent “green job.” But it turns out those cheapskate Spaniards with their lousy nickel-and-dime “green jobs” subsidy just weren’t thinking big. The Obama administration’s $38.6 billion “clean technology” program was supposed to “create or save” 65,000 jobs. Half the money has been spent — $17.2 billion — and we have 3,545 jobs to show for it. That works out to an impressive $4,851,904.09 per “green job.” A world record! Take that, you loser Spaniards! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
So, based on previous form, Obama’s prediction of 1.9 million new jobs will result in the creation of 92,000 new jobs, mostly in the Federal Department of Green Jobs Grant Applications.
Just to put it in perspective, the breezy $447 billion price tag for the Pass My Jobs Bill jobs bill is about 20 times higher than the most recent Greek government deficit currently threatening the stability of the entire eurozone. Indeed Greece’s projected 2011 deficit — $24 billion at last count — is little more than half of just one of Obama’s boutique, niche “green jobs” programs. As Churchill almost said, never in the field of human con tricks has so much been owed by so many to so little effect.
Fortunately, there is no “American Jobs Act.” Indeed, the other day, tired of waiting for Obama to turn his telepromptered pseudo-bill into a typewritten actual bill, the Texas congressman Louie Gohmert waggishly introduced an “American Jobs Act” all of his own. But back on the campaign trail the chanting goes on, last week’s election results in Nevada and New York notwithstanding. America has the lowest employment since the early Eighties, the lowest property ownership since the mid-Sixties, the highest deficit-to-GDP ratio since the Second World War, the worst long-term unemployment since the Great Depression, the highest government-dependency rate of all time, and the biggest debt mountain in the history of the planet. And the president has just announced to the world that he’s checked the more-of-the-above box. The Pass My Jobs Bill jobs bill proclaims that this is all he knows and all he wants to know.
In my new book, I point out that Big Government leaves everything else smaller — and, when it’s bigger than anything ever attempted, the everything else is going to be way smaller. Maybe if you’re a “public service” worker or a tenured professor at Berkeley or a green-jobs racketeer or a New York Times columnist married to an heiress, you can afford Obama. But, if you’re not, look at your home, look at your savings, and figure out what’ll be left after another four years of “stimulus.”
“I love you!” squeals the Obammybopper in North Carolina. “I love you, too,” says Obama. “But . . . ”
But: You gotta take this half-trillion-dollar bill, and the next one, and the one after that. Like Al Gore says in Love Story, love means never having to say you’re sorry.
The European Caliphate
By Cliff May
Thursday, September 15, 2011
For more than 30 years, Bat Ye’or, a refugee from Egypt, has been writing about dhimmis – Christians and Jews living under oppression in Muslim lands. Now, she has a new book, Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate, that looks at Muslims living in lands that once were Christian but today call themselves multicultural. She predicts Europe will not remain multicultural for long. She is convinced that Europe, sooner rather than later, will be dominated by Islamic extremists and transformed into “Eurabia” – a term first used in the mid-1970s by a French publication pressing for common European-Arab policies.
Immigrants can enrich a nation. But there is a difference between immigrants and colonists. The former are eager to learn the ways of their adopted home, to integrate and perhaps assimilate – which does not require relinquishing their heritage or forgetting their roots. Colonists, by contrast, bring their culture with them and live under their own laws. Their loyalties lie elsewhere.
Ye’or contends that a concerted effort is being made not only to ensure that Muslim immigrants in Europe remain squarely in the second category but also that they become the means to transform Europe politically, culturally and religiously. Leading this effort is the Organization of the Islamic Conference, established in 1969 and which, a few months ago, no doubt upon the advice of a highly compensated public relations professional, renamed itself the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The OIC represents 56 countries plus the Palestinian Authority. It claims also to represent Muslim immigrants – the “Diaspora” – in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. It is pan-Islamic: It seeks to unify and lead the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. In a manual first published in 2001, “Strategy of Islamic Cultural Action in the West,” the IOC asserts that “Muslim immigrant communities in Europe are part of the Islamic nation.” It goes on to recommend, Ye’or notes, “a series of steps to prevent the integration and assimilation of Muslims into European culture.”
The IOC, she argues, is nothing less than a “would-be, universal caliphate.” It might look different from the caliphates of the Ottomans, Fatamids and Abbasids. It might resemble, instead, a thoroughly modern trans-national bureaucracy. But, already, the OIC exercises significant power through the United Nations, and through the European Union which has been eager to accommodate the OIC while simultaneously endowing the U.N. with increasing authority for global governance. Among the other organizations that Ye’or says are doing the OIC’s bidding are the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC).
In the eyes of OIC officials, no problem in the contemporary world is more urgent than “Islamophobia” which it calls “a crime against humanity” that the U.N. and the E.U. must officially outlaw. Even discussing why so much terrorism is carried out in the name of Islam is to be forbidden. The OIC insists, too, that international bodies ban “defamation of religion” by which it means criticism of anything Islamic. Defamation of Judaism, Christianity, Bahai, Hinduism and even heterodox Muslim sects such as the Ahmadiyya is common within the borders of many OIC countries, a fact the OIC refuses to acknowledge.
Instead, the OIC has specifically “warned” the E.U. and the “international community” of the “dangers posed by the influence of Zionism, Neo-Conservatism, aggressive Christian evangelicalism, Jewish extremism, Hindu extremism and secular extremism in international affairs and the ‘War on Terrorism.’”
Though funding for terrorist groups flows generously from individuals in oil-rich OIC countries, the organization itself is not a supporter of terrorism. Neither, however, is it an opponent. Violence directed against those it views as enemies of Islam is defined as “resistance” -- even when civilians, including women and children, are the intended victims.
While the OIC expresses concern for the rights of Muslim immigrants in the West, the egregious mistreatment of foreign workers in the Gulf countries (and other Muslim countries as well) is not something OIC officials deign to discuss. Nor has the OIC ever condemned the genocide of the black Muslims of Darfur or the genocidal intentions toward Israelis openly expressed by Hamas, Hezbollah and the rulers of Iran.
European diplomats might at least insist that the OIC accept the principle of reciprocity. If there is to be a “dialogue of civilizations” shouldn’t both sides get to air grievances? Shouldn’t Europeans work to end the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in OIC countries and to grant foreign workers in Muslim countries basic rights and a path to citizenship? If the Saudis want to fund and control tens of thousands of mosques around the world, is it too much to ask that they permit people of other faiths to at least worship on their soil?
Evidently it is and Ye’or offers this explanation: Committed to a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lateral ideology that rejects patriotism and even national identity and cultural pride, afflicted by guilt over their imperial and colonial past – and ignorant about more than a thousand years of Islamic imperialism and colonialism -- Europeans have become dhimmis in their own lands: inferiors who accept their status and submit. The OIC, by contrast, rejects multi-culturalism, openly professing the superiority of the Islamic faith, civilization and laws.
“The caliphate,” Bat Ye’or concludes, is “alive and growing within Europe….It has advanced through the denial of dangers and the obfuscating of history. It has moved forward on gilded carpets in the corridors of dialogue, the network of the Alliances and partnerships, in the corruption of its leaders, intellectuals and NGOs, particularly at the United Nations.”
If you think that’s alarmist, if you think the OIC sincerely seeks cooperation with the West or that Europeans know where lines must be drawn and have the courage to draw them, read her book. Or just wait a few years.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
For more than 30 years, Bat Ye’or, a refugee from Egypt, has been writing about dhimmis – Christians and Jews living under oppression in Muslim lands. Now, she has a new book, Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate, that looks at Muslims living in lands that once were Christian but today call themselves multicultural. She predicts Europe will not remain multicultural for long. She is convinced that Europe, sooner rather than later, will be dominated by Islamic extremists and transformed into “Eurabia” – a term first used in the mid-1970s by a French publication pressing for common European-Arab policies.
Immigrants can enrich a nation. But there is a difference between immigrants and colonists. The former are eager to learn the ways of their adopted home, to integrate and perhaps assimilate – which does not require relinquishing their heritage or forgetting their roots. Colonists, by contrast, bring their culture with them and live under their own laws. Their loyalties lie elsewhere.
Ye’or contends that a concerted effort is being made not only to ensure that Muslim immigrants in Europe remain squarely in the second category but also that they become the means to transform Europe politically, culturally and religiously. Leading this effort is the Organization of the Islamic Conference, established in 1969 and which, a few months ago, no doubt upon the advice of a highly compensated public relations professional, renamed itself the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The OIC represents 56 countries plus the Palestinian Authority. It claims also to represent Muslim immigrants – the “Diaspora” – in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. It is pan-Islamic: It seeks to unify and lead the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. In a manual first published in 2001, “Strategy of Islamic Cultural Action in the West,” the IOC asserts that “Muslim immigrant communities in Europe are part of the Islamic nation.” It goes on to recommend, Ye’or notes, “a series of steps to prevent the integration and assimilation of Muslims into European culture.”
The IOC, she argues, is nothing less than a “would-be, universal caliphate.” It might look different from the caliphates of the Ottomans, Fatamids and Abbasids. It might resemble, instead, a thoroughly modern trans-national bureaucracy. But, already, the OIC exercises significant power through the United Nations, and through the European Union which has been eager to accommodate the OIC while simultaneously endowing the U.N. with increasing authority for global governance. Among the other organizations that Ye’or says are doing the OIC’s bidding are the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC).
In the eyes of OIC officials, no problem in the contemporary world is more urgent than “Islamophobia” which it calls “a crime against humanity” that the U.N. and the E.U. must officially outlaw. Even discussing why so much terrorism is carried out in the name of Islam is to be forbidden. The OIC insists, too, that international bodies ban “defamation of religion” by which it means criticism of anything Islamic. Defamation of Judaism, Christianity, Bahai, Hinduism and even heterodox Muslim sects such as the Ahmadiyya is common within the borders of many OIC countries, a fact the OIC refuses to acknowledge.
Instead, the OIC has specifically “warned” the E.U. and the “international community” of the “dangers posed by the influence of Zionism, Neo-Conservatism, aggressive Christian evangelicalism, Jewish extremism, Hindu extremism and secular extremism in international affairs and the ‘War on Terrorism.’”
Though funding for terrorist groups flows generously from individuals in oil-rich OIC countries, the organization itself is not a supporter of terrorism. Neither, however, is it an opponent. Violence directed against those it views as enemies of Islam is defined as “resistance” -- even when civilians, including women and children, are the intended victims.
While the OIC expresses concern for the rights of Muslim immigrants in the West, the egregious mistreatment of foreign workers in the Gulf countries (and other Muslim countries as well) is not something OIC officials deign to discuss. Nor has the OIC ever condemned the genocide of the black Muslims of Darfur or the genocidal intentions toward Israelis openly expressed by Hamas, Hezbollah and the rulers of Iran.
European diplomats might at least insist that the OIC accept the principle of reciprocity. If there is to be a “dialogue of civilizations” shouldn’t both sides get to air grievances? Shouldn’t Europeans work to end the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in OIC countries and to grant foreign workers in Muslim countries basic rights and a path to citizenship? If the Saudis want to fund and control tens of thousands of mosques around the world, is it too much to ask that they permit people of other faiths to at least worship on their soil?
Evidently it is and Ye’or offers this explanation: Committed to a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lateral ideology that rejects patriotism and even national identity and cultural pride, afflicted by guilt over their imperial and colonial past – and ignorant about more than a thousand years of Islamic imperialism and colonialism -- Europeans have become dhimmis in their own lands: inferiors who accept their status and submit. The OIC, by contrast, rejects multi-culturalism, openly professing the superiority of the Islamic faith, civilization and laws.
“The caliphate,” Bat Ye’or concludes, is “alive and growing within Europe….It has advanced through the denial of dangers and the obfuscating of history. It has moved forward on gilded carpets in the corridors of dialogue, the network of the Alliances and partnerships, in the corruption of its leaders, intellectuals and NGOs, particularly at the United Nations.”
If you think that’s alarmist, if you think the OIC sincerely seeks cooperation with the West or that Europeans know where lines must be drawn and have the courage to draw them, read her book. Or just wait a few years.
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Civil Rights Group Would Not Have Been Recognized at San Diego State
By David Cortman
Sunday, September 18, 2011
On college and university campuses around the country, officials are increasingly using “nondiscrimination” policies to deny religious groups the right to choose prospective members and leaders based on whether they share the group’s religious beliefs. In other words, laws that were originally designed to protect religious groups and persons from institutionalized discrimination are now being used to punish religious groups for exercising their religious freedoms.
San Diego State University is the site of the most recent clash between religious student groups and university nondiscrimination policies. SDSU’s policy prohibits discrimination in membership or leadership on the basis of “race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, color, age, gender, marital status, citizenship, sexual orientation, or disability,” but exempts all “social fraternities or sororities” from the prohibition on gender discrimination (an enormous exemption) and, most critically, allows non-religious groups to require their members and leaders to adhere to their beliefs.
So, SDSU’s policy allows a vegetarian club to refuse membership to meat-eaters and a Democrat club to bar Republicans from leadership, but requires religious student organizations to include members and leaders who disagree with their religious beliefs.
Relying on its policy, SDSU denied official recognition (and the critical benefits that come with recognition) to Alpha Delta Chi (ADX), a Christian sorority, and Alpha Gamma Omega (AGO), a Christian Fraternity. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit put it, SDSU denied recognition to these groups because they share a “requirement that their members and officers profess a specific religious belief, namely, Christianity.” Denial of recognition imposes a huge burden on these groups. Without recognition, ADX and AGO cannot access the myriad channels of communication all other student groups use to promote their views and recruit new members. They can exist only informally, segregated from the vibrant communal life of campus clubs.
And the most critical point bears repeating. Under SDSU’s policy, all non-religious clubs may obtain recognition and require their members and leaders to share their non-religious beliefs. Only religious groups must choose between their beliefs and recognition.
Such unequal treatment of religious groups is stunning in the 21st century. And I wonder if the regents and administrators at San Diego State and other universities who use nondiscrimination policies similarly have given any thought to what the ramifications of their policies would have been had they been in place during the 1960s? Do they understand that such a misapplication of similar policies would have barred a hypothetical student chapter of Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights group – the Southern Christian Leadership Conference – from securing official recognition if it wanted to require members to adhere to its Christian beliefs?
Can’t we see that things are out of whack when Martin Luther King, who is best known for his fights against wrongful discrimination, would be discriminated against by San Diego State because of his and his group members’ religious convictions?
Just think of it: Martin Luther King and his band of co-religionists go into the San Diego State student union with the fire of freedom in their veins. They follow all the procedures and turn in all their forms to request recognized status, only to have an administrator look at them and say, “No, because you require your members to share your religious beliefs.” Welcome to the world of political correctness run amok, where the greatest proponent of non-discrimination our country has ever seen is discriminated against because of the religious beliefs that inspired his fight.
Welcome to the 21st century public university campus.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
On college and university campuses around the country, officials are increasingly using “nondiscrimination” policies to deny religious groups the right to choose prospective members and leaders based on whether they share the group’s religious beliefs. In other words, laws that were originally designed to protect religious groups and persons from institutionalized discrimination are now being used to punish religious groups for exercising their religious freedoms.
San Diego State University is the site of the most recent clash between religious student groups and university nondiscrimination policies. SDSU’s policy prohibits discrimination in membership or leadership on the basis of “race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, color, age, gender, marital status, citizenship, sexual orientation, or disability,” but exempts all “social fraternities or sororities” from the prohibition on gender discrimination (an enormous exemption) and, most critically, allows non-religious groups to require their members and leaders to adhere to their beliefs.
So, SDSU’s policy allows a vegetarian club to refuse membership to meat-eaters and a Democrat club to bar Republicans from leadership, but requires religious student organizations to include members and leaders who disagree with their religious beliefs.
Relying on its policy, SDSU denied official recognition (and the critical benefits that come with recognition) to Alpha Delta Chi (ADX), a Christian sorority, and Alpha Gamma Omega (AGO), a Christian Fraternity. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit put it, SDSU denied recognition to these groups because they share a “requirement that their members and officers profess a specific religious belief, namely, Christianity.” Denial of recognition imposes a huge burden on these groups. Without recognition, ADX and AGO cannot access the myriad channels of communication all other student groups use to promote their views and recruit new members. They can exist only informally, segregated from the vibrant communal life of campus clubs.
And the most critical point bears repeating. Under SDSU’s policy, all non-religious clubs may obtain recognition and require their members and leaders to share their non-religious beliefs. Only religious groups must choose between their beliefs and recognition.
Such unequal treatment of religious groups is stunning in the 21st century. And I wonder if the regents and administrators at San Diego State and other universities who use nondiscrimination policies similarly have given any thought to what the ramifications of their policies would have been had they been in place during the 1960s? Do they understand that such a misapplication of similar policies would have barred a hypothetical student chapter of Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights group – the Southern Christian Leadership Conference – from securing official recognition if it wanted to require members to adhere to its Christian beliefs?
Can’t we see that things are out of whack when Martin Luther King, who is best known for his fights against wrongful discrimination, would be discriminated against by San Diego State because of his and his group members’ religious convictions?
Just think of it: Martin Luther King and his band of co-religionists go into the San Diego State student union with the fire of freedom in their veins. They follow all the procedures and turn in all their forms to request recognized status, only to have an administrator look at them and say, “No, because you require your members to share your religious beliefs.” Welcome to the world of political correctness run amok, where the greatest proponent of non-discrimination our country has ever seen is discriminated against because of the religious beliefs that inspired his fight.
Welcome to the 21st century public university campus.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Saddam: What We Now Know
Bin Laden struck first, but Saddam was at least as big a terror threat.
Jim Lacey
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
NOTE: Additional sources for the information in this column are available here.
Saddam Hussein was a WMD threat and a terror threat to the United States and its allies.
Too many of the post-9/11 critics have forgotten or were never aware of this fact. Even in last week’s NRO symposium, writers called the invasion of Iraq an “unjust war,” an “optional war,” and finally a “result of the flawed intelligence that skewed the perceived threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime to the United States.”
There is little doubt that the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was faulty, mostly because of Saddam’s continuing attempts to convince Iran that he still maintained a potent WMD capacity despite years of sanctions. Unfortunately, in the years of recriminations following the invasion of Iraq the actual truth was lost, until it became commonplace for even those who supported the invasion to admit that Saddam did not pose a WMD threat. Likewise, as he was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks, many believe he was not a terror threat either.
Before the consensus is written in stone, it is worth going over the evidence collected since the removal of the Saddam regime. Leaving aside the fact that he slaughtered more than a million of his own people and was prone to launching unprovoked wars against his neighbors — both good reasons for his violent removal — what threat did Saddam actually pose? Let’s go through just a sliver of the evidence.
SADDAM AND WMDS
When American tanks smashed into Baghdad, Saddam had already completed construction of an anthrax production facility, which was a week away from going live. If it had been permitted to go into production, this one facility could have produced ten tons of weaponized anthrax a year. Experts estimate that anthrax spores that infect the skin will kill 50 percent of untreated victims. Inhaled anthrax will kill 100 percent of untreated victims and 50 percent of those receiving immediate treatment. That means that a mere 1 percent of Saddam’s annual production (200 pounds) sprayed by crop-duster over New York City would have killed upwards of three million people.
Anthrax, however, was far from the only WMD Saddam was actively researching and working assiduously to acquire. He also had teams working overtime to create a stockpile of some of the most deadly biological weapons possible. Several years ago, the press had a field day when two suspected mobile bio-labs, presented at the U.N. as evidence of Saddam’s continuing WMD development programs, actually turned out to be weather-balloon stations. That same press, however, then ignored the fact that postwar investigators found five actual mobile bio-labs in and around Baghdad. One of these labs was discovered in a mosque, which had been placed off-limits to prewar U.N. inspectors. Another was found in Baghdad’s Central Public Health Laboratory. One can imagine the anguished cries from the Left if we had bombed what the Iraqis claimed was a public-health facility. Saddam even had a huge bio-warfare production facility masquerading as the Samarra Drug Company. This facility would have been capable of producing up to 10,000 liters of deadly pathogens a year. It was less than a month from going into production when the invasion of Iraq began. If this plant had turned its attention to botulinum toxin, it could have produced enough in a few months to wipe out the world. Again, how would bombing a plant that Saddam would claim was producing life-saving drugs have played in the media?
Investigators also found two labs that appeared to be producing animal vaccines. However, according to investigators, all of the equipment was “dual use . . . and easily diverted to produce smallpox or other pathogenic viruses.” Another nearby lab was busily working on cowpox vaccines, with the exact same equipment necessary to create smallpox. One should note that even a thimbleful of smallpox germs would be enough to kill tens of millions. Smallpox, placed in the hands of a terrorist group and released at a sporting event, would devastate a large swath of the United States. It should be noted that each of these facilities was staffed or often visited by persons previously identified by the U.N. as being associated with Saddam’s pre–Desert Storm WMD programs. One facility, often visited by Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi, better known to Western intelligence as Dr. Germ, maintained, according to investigators, a “small” capacity for production of organic agents. When it comes to smallpox, a “small” capacity is all one needs to create global havoc.
Biological weapons were an important and dangerous thrust of Saddam’s WMD program, but far from all that his regime was working on. In 1991, Saddam moved all of his WMD specialists out of government labs and into universities, once again making them off-limits to inspectors and coalition bombers. According to documents discovered after the war, by 1997 the number of university “instructors” doing solely WMD work numbered 3,300, with another 700 to 800 dispatched to WMD-related facilities to help with technical problems. Between 1996 and 2002 — the eve of the invasion — spending on WMD projects increased 40-fold, and the number of specific projects increased from 40 to 3,200. Top officials captured after the collapse of the regime repeatedly told investigators that Saddam’s WMD projects were in overdrive and ready to go into production the moment sanctions were lifted.
Saddam’s minister of military industrialization, Abdullah Mullah al-Huwaysh, stated that Saddam was working to reconstruct all of his WMD programs within five years. In his words, this would have included “a sizable nuclear inventory on hand for immediate use.” Huwaysh also stated that in response to a Saddam inquiry regarding how long it would take to start mass production of chemical weapons, he told the tyrant that mustard-gas production could start within six months, but Sarin and VX would take a bit longer. Other WMD scientists told investigators that they had the materials and equipment to start mustard-gas production in days.
Inevitably, a relaxation of some of the sanctions led Saddam to start thinking again about nuclear weapons. In 1999 he met with his senior nuclear scientists and offered to provide them with whatever they needed, and immediately thereafter new funds began to flow to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). In 2001, Saddam directed a large budget increase for the IAEC and increased the salaries of nuclear scientists ten-fold. He also directed the head of the IAEC to keep nuclear scientists together, and instituted new laws and privileges for IAEC scientists, while also investing in numerous new projects. From 2001 on, Saddam convened frequent meetings with the IAEC to highlight new achievements.
Although Saddam did not possess huge stocks of WMD material when we invaded, he was well on his way to creating an arsenal potent enough to decimate any attacking force. If we had delayed even a couple of months, until Saddam actually had his deadly pathogens and gas weapons, it would have meant the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers. And if those weapons had found their way into terrorist hands, it would have doomed millions. But did Saddam have these kinds of connections? Was he a global terror threat akin to al-Qaeda? The common wisdom says no. The common wisdom is wrong.
SADDAM AND TERROR
In 1999, the top ten graduates of Saddam’s Fedayeen Academy (terrorist training center) were specifically chosen for assignment to London. Once there they were held in readiness for operations anywhere in Europe. A memorandum addressed to Saddam’s son Uday specifically states that these trainees were designated for martyrdom operations. In the same memorandum, outlining “Operation Blessed July,” Uday is briefed on plans for terrorists to be sent to Great Britain and other countries, to begin a campaign of assassinations and bombings. Interestingly, the report states that any Fedayeen terrorists operating in Europe will be provided with “death capsules” for their personal use in case of capture. Besides selecting and training these potential terrorists, the Saddam regime also undertook substantial logistical preparations. A glimpse of these preparations can be seen in the response Saddam received from his intelligence services when he inquired about what weapons were available to arm terrorists in Iraqi embassies. Here is part of the tally:
Romania: Missile launcher and missile
Athens [Greece]: Explosive charges
Vienna [Austria]: Explosive charges, rifles with silencers, hand grenades, and Kalashnikov rifles
Pakistan: Explosive materials (TNT)
India: Plastic-explosive charges and booby-trapped suitcases
Thailand: Plastic-explosive charges and booby-trapped suitcases
Prague [Czech Republic]: Missile launcher and missile
Turkey: Missile launcher, missile, and pistols with silencers
Sana’a [Yemen]: Missile launcher, missile, plastic explosives, and explosive charges
Baku [Azerbaijan]: American missile launcher, plastic explosives, and booby-trapped suitcases
Beirut [Lebanon]: American missile launcher, plastic explosives, and booby-trapped suitcases
Gulf nations: Explosive material outside the embassies
The memo further states that between 2000 and 2002, explosive materials were transported to many embassies outside of Iraq for “special work.”
Realizing the value of suicide bombers, the regime’s intelligence services, a week after 9/11, sent a letter to Saddam outlining the steps they had taken to recruit bombers: “Division Commands have launched a campaign among their members, supporters, and backers of the Party encouraging them to volunteer in suicide operations, and have them write volunteer statements, preferably in their own blood.” The rest of the memo is a list of the 42 persons who had already signed on to blow themselves up whenever and wherever Saddam wished. The selection and training of suicide bombers became so routine that the regime started scheduling training sessions around the volunteers’ vacation periods from university.
An example of a successful suicide operation is documented in a letter that Fedayeen Saddam headquarters forwarded to Uday Hussein. A woman called Nazah asks for his help in processing her husband’s pension documents. She claims the request is justified because her husband died when “he carried out a suicide mission on 19 July 2000, and exploded himself at the Ibn Sina Hotel during the presence of U.S. and U.K. citizens and officials from Iraqi opposition parties.” She goes on to list some of his other activities that would justify a pension for his family:
• Booby-trapped a car in front of the Kurdish Communist Party Headquarters
• Detonated a car bomb during the motorcade of Danielle Mitterrand (wife of French president François Mitterrand) in Halsabajah City, which killed 40 enemies
• Poisoned opposition-party members on the orders of the intelligence services
Saddam was also a sponsor of state terrorism on a truly impressive scale. One document sent to Saddam lists all the major terrorist groups that his intelligence services are in contact with, how long they have been in the Iraqi fold, and approximately how much support they have received. Most of these organizations also appear on the list of al-Qaeda–linked terrorist groups. Saddam and bin Laden may have loathed each other, but they found common cause in financially supporting, arming, and helping to train groups that are part of the same global terrorist network. One note sent to Saddam presented an account of how many foreign terrorists were currently training in Iraqi centers.
Palestine 38 Egypt 4
Lebanon 10 Libya 1
Tunisia 8 Sudan 18
Syria 10 Eritrea 7
Morocco 3 Unknown 1
In fact, after his 1991 defeat in Operation Desert Storm, Saddam ordered his intelligence services to maintain contact with all terrorist movements in the Arab countries. Captured documents reveal that intelligence-service activities went beyond just maintaining contact. One set of details appears in a report written six weeks after 9/11. It states that Iraq was sending an administrative officer to establish and oversee a terrorist training camp, and lists the equipment being dispatched in the first set of supplies:
15,000 Kalashnikov 7.62-mm rifles
15,000 [SKS] rifles
5,000 Browning pistols
5,000 Markarov pistols
1 high-quality photocopier
The memorandum ends with the names of 52 fighters waiting for training in the camp.
Evidence of Saddam’s continuing interest in and support for global terrorist activities is found in a 2002 annual report of one of the directorates within his intelligence service. It states that, in the year after 9/11, it held 13 meetings for a number of Palestinian and other organizations, including delegations from the Islamic Jihad Movement and the director general of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of al-Ahwaz (al-Ahwaz is a portion of Iran inhabited largely by Arabs). The list then details the messages various terrorist groups sent to Saddam during the year. The titles of the messages range from simple best wishes on Saddam’s birthday to the following:
• Information on the number of Palestinian martyrs killed vs. Zionists killed
• Requests for military equipment and for help for the families of suicide bombers
• Information on the financial status of various terrorist organizations, volunteers for suicide operations, and rumors of a plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein
The report also notes that among the 699 passports that the intelligence services issued, many were issued to known members of terrorist organizations. Moreover, it states that the intelligence services took four million dinars from their own budgets to finance Palestinian terrorist groups.
The report also provides a list of activities the intelligence services considered “exemplary events,” for example:
• Re-equipping and training Palestinian fighters in al-Quds training camps [in Iraq]
• Establishing and activating a course to train Arab Liberation Front fighters on martyrdom operations
• Establishing fighter schools for Arab volunteers and later for Iraqi volunteers
• Re-establishing and re-equipping the military base of the Arab Liberation Front
• Training groups from the occupied territories [Palestine] on light weapons in secret 30-day courses
All of this is just the tip of the iceberg of available evidence demonstrating that Saddam posed a dangerous threat to America. There are other reports providing specific information on dozens of terrorist attacks, as well as details of how Iraq helped plan and execute many of them. Moreover, there is also proof of Saddam’s support of Islamic groups that were part of the al-Qaeda network. A good analogy for the links between Saddam and bin Laden is the Cali and Medellín drug cartels. Both drug cartels (actually loose collections of families and criminal gangs) were serious national-security concerns to the United States. The two cartels competed for a share of the illegal drug market. However, neither cartel was reluctant to cooperate with the other when it came to the pursuit of a common objective — expanding and facilitating their illicit trade. The well-publicized and violent rise of the Medellín cartel temporarily obscured and overshadowed the rise of, and threat posed by, the Cali cartel, in the same way that 9/11 camouflaged the terror threat posed by Saddam. In reality Saddam and bin Laden were operating parallel terror networks aimed at the United States. Bin Laden just has the distinction of having made the first horrendous attack.
Given the evidence, it appears that we removed Saddam’s regime not a moment too soon.
Jim Lacey
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
NOTE: Additional sources for the information in this column are available here.
Saddam Hussein was a WMD threat and a terror threat to the United States and its allies.
Too many of the post-9/11 critics have forgotten or were never aware of this fact. Even in last week’s NRO symposium, writers called the invasion of Iraq an “unjust war,” an “optional war,” and finally a “result of the flawed intelligence that skewed the perceived threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime to the United States.”
There is little doubt that the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was faulty, mostly because of Saddam’s continuing attempts to convince Iran that he still maintained a potent WMD capacity despite years of sanctions. Unfortunately, in the years of recriminations following the invasion of Iraq the actual truth was lost, until it became commonplace for even those who supported the invasion to admit that Saddam did not pose a WMD threat. Likewise, as he was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks, many believe he was not a terror threat either.
Before the consensus is written in stone, it is worth going over the evidence collected since the removal of the Saddam regime. Leaving aside the fact that he slaughtered more than a million of his own people and was prone to launching unprovoked wars against his neighbors — both good reasons for his violent removal — what threat did Saddam actually pose? Let’s go through just a sliver of the evidence.
SADDAM AND WMDS
When American tanks smashed into Baghdad, Saddam had already completed construction of an anthrax production facility, which was a week away from going live. If it had been permitted to go into production, this one facility could have produced ten tons of weaponized anthrax a year. Experts estimate that anthrax spores that infect the skin will kill 50 percent of untreated victims. Inhaled anthrax will kill 100 percent of untreated victims and 50 percent of those receiving immediate treatment. That means that a mere 1 percent of Saddam’s annual production (200 pounds) sprayed by crop-duster over New York City would have killed upwards of three million people.
Anthrax, however, was far from the only WMD Saddam was actively researching and working assiduously to acquire. He also had teams working overtime to create a stockpile of some of the most deadly biological weapons possible. Several years ago, the press had a field day when two suspected mobile bio-labs, presented at the U.N. as evidence of Saddam’s continuing WMD development programs, actually turned out to be weather-balloon stations. That same press, however, then ignored the fact that postwar investigators found five actual mobile bio-labs in and around Baghdad. One of these labs was discovered in a mosque, which had been placed off-limits to prewar U.N. inspectors. Another was found in Baghdad’s Central Public Health Laboratory. One can imagine the anguished cries from the Left if we had bombed what the Iraqis claimed was a public-health facility. Saddam even had a huge bio-warfare production facility masquerading as the Samarra Drug Company. This facility would have been capable of producing up to 10,000 liters of deadly pathogens a year. It was less than a month from going into production when the invasion of Iraq began. If this plant had turned its attention to botulinum toxin, it could have produced enough in a few months to wipe out the world. Again, how would bombing a plant that Saddam would claim was producing life-saving drugs have played in the media?
Investigators also found two labs that appeared to be producing animal vaccines. However, according to investigators, all of the equipment was “dual use . . . and easily diverted to produce smallpox or other pathogenic viruses.” Another nearby lab was busily working on cowpox vaccines, with the exact same equipment necessary to create smallpox. One should note that even a thimbleful of smallpox germs would be enough to kill tens of millions. Smallpox, placed in the hands of a terrorist group and released at a sporting event, would devastate a large swath of the United States. It should be noted that each of these facilities was staffed or often visited by persons previously identified by the U.N. as being associated with Saddam’s pre–Desert Storm WMD programs. One facility, often visited by Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi, better known to Western intelligence as Dr. Germ, maintained, according to investigators, a “small” capacity for production of organic agents. When it comes to smallpox, a “small” capacity is all one needs to create global havoc.
Biological weapons were an important and dangerous thrust of Saddam’s WMD program, but far from all that his regime was working on. In 1991, Saddam moved all of his WMD specialists out of government labs and into universities, once again making them off-limits to inspectors and coalition bombers. According to documents discovered after the war, by 1997 the number of university “instructors” doing solely WMD work numbered 3,300, with another 700 to 800 dispatched to WMD-related facilities to help with technical problems. Between 1996 and 2002 — the eve of the invasion — spending on WMD projects increased 40-fold, and the number of specific projects increased from 40 to 3,200. Top officials captured after the collapse of the regime repeatedly told investigators that Saddam’s WMD projects were in overdrive and ready to go into production the moment sanctions were lifted.
Saddam’s minister of military industrialization, Abdullah Mullah al-Huwaysh, stated that Saddam was working to reconstruct all of his WMD programs within five years. In his words, this would have included “a sizable nuclear inventory on hand for immediate use.” Huwaysh also stated that in response to a Saddam inquiry regarding how long it would take to start mass production of chemical weapons, he told the tyrant that mustard-gas production could start within six months, but Sarin and VX would take a bit longer. Other WMD scientists told investigators that they had the materials and equipment to start mustard-gas production in days.
Inevitably, a relaxation of some of the sanctions led Saddam to start thinking again about nuclear weapons. In 1999 he met with his senior nuclear scientists and offered to provide them with whatever they needed, and immediately thereafter new funds began to flow to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). In 2001, Saddam directed a large budget increase for the IAEC and increased the salaries of nuclear scientists ten-fold. He also directed the head of the IAEC to keep nuclear scientists together, and instituted new laws and privileges for IAEC scientists, while also investing in numerous new projects. From 2001 on, Saddam convened frequent meetings with the IAEC to highlight new achievements.
Although Saddam did not possess huge stocks of WMD material when we invaded, he was well on his way to creating an arsenal potent enough to decimate any attacking force. If we had delayed even a couple of months, until Saddam actually had his deadly pathogens and gas weapons, it would have meant the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers. And if those weapons had found their way into terrorist hands, it would have doomed millions. But did Saddam have these kinds of connections? Was he a global terror threat akin to al-Qaeda? The common wisdom says no. The common wisdom is wrong.
SADDAM AND TERROR
In 1999, the top ten graduates of Saddam’s Fedayeen Academy (terrorist training center) were specifically chosen for assignment to London. Once there they were held in readiness for operations anywhere in Europe. A memorandum addressed to Saddam’s son Uday specifically states that these trainees were designated for martyrdom operations. In the same memorandum, outlining “Operation Blessed July,” Uday is briefed on plans for terrorists to be sent to Great Britain and other countries, to begin a campaign of assassinations and bombings. Interestingly, the report states that any Fedayeen terrorists operating in Europe will be provided with “death capsules” for their personal use in case of capture. Besides selecting and training these potential terrorists, the Saddam regime also undertook substantial logistical preparations. A glimpse of these preparations can be seen in the response Saddam received from his intelligence services when he inquired about what weapons were available to arm terrorists in Iraqi embassies. Here is part of the tally:
Romania: Missile launcher and missile
Athens [Greece]: Explosive charges
Vienna [Austria]: Explosive charges, rifles with silencers, hand grenades, and Kalashnikov rifles
Pakistan: Explosive materials (TNT)
India: Plastic-explosive charges and booby-trapped suitcases
Thailand: Plastic-explosive charges and booby-trapped suitcases
Prague [Czech Republic]: Missile launcher and missile
Turkey: Missile launcher, missile, and pistols with silencers
Sana’a [Yemen]: Missile launcher, missile, plastic explosives, and explosive charges
Baku [Azerbaijan]: American missile launcher, plastic explosives, and booby-trapped suitcases
Beirut [Lebanon]: American missile launcher, plastic explosives, and booby-trapped suitcases
Gulf nations: Explosive material outside the embassies
The memo further states that between 2000 and 2002, explosive materials were transported to many embassies outside of Iraq for “special work.”
Realizing the value of suicide bombers, the regime’s intelligence services, a week after 9/11, sent a letter to Saddam outlining the steps they had taken to recruit bombers: “Division Commands have launched a campaign among their members, supporters, and backers of the Party encouraging them to volunteer in suicide operations, and have them write volunteer statements, preferably in their own blood.” The rest of the memo is a list of the 42 persons who had already signed on to blow themselves up whenever and wherever Saddam wished. The selection and training of suicide bombers became so routine that the regime started scheduling training sessions around the volunteers’ vacation periods from university.
An example of a successful suicide operation is documented in a letter that Fedayeen Saddam headquarters forwarded to Uday Hussein. A woman called Nazah asks for his help in processing her husband’s pension documents. She claims the request is justified because her husband died when “he carried out a suicide mission on 19 July 2000, and exploded himself at the Ibn Sina Hotel during the presence of U.S. and U.K. citizens and officials from Iraqi opposition parties.” She goes on to list some of his other activities that would justify a pension for his family:
• Booby-trapped a car in front of the Kurdish Communist Party Headquarters
• Detonated a car bomb during the motorcade of Danielle Mitterrand (wife of French president François Mitterrand) in Halsabajah City, which killed 40 enemies
• Poisoned opposition-party members on the orders of the intelligence services
Saddam was also a sponsor of state terrorism on a truly impressive scale. One document sent to Saddam lists all the major terrorist groups that his intelligence services are in contact with, how long they have been in the Iraqi fold, and approximately how much support they have received. Most of these organizations also appear on the list of al-Qaeda–linked terrorist groups. Saddam and bin Laden may have loathed each other, but they found common cause in financially supporting, arming, and helping to train groups that are part of the same global terrorist network. One note sent to Saddam presented an account of how many foreign terrorists were currently training in Iraqi centers.
Palestine 38 Egypt 4
Lebanon 10 Libya 1
Tunisia 8 Sudan 18
Syria 10 Eritrea 7
Morocco 3 Unknown 1
In fact, after his 1991 defeat in Operation Desert Storm, Saddam ordered his intelligence services to maintain contact with all terrorist movements in the Arab countries. Captured documents reveal that intelligence-service activities went beyond just maintaining contact. One set of details appears in a report written six weeks after 9/11. It states that Iraq was sending an administrative officer to establish and oversee a terrorist training camp, and lists the equipment being dispatched in the first set of supplies:
15,000 Kalashnikov 7.62-mm rifles
15,000 [SKS] rifles
5,000 Browning pistols
5,000 Markarov pistols
1 high-quality photocopier
The memorandum ends with the names of 52 fighters waiting for training in the camp.
Evidence of Saddam’s continuing interest in and support for global terrorist activities is found in a 2002 annual report of one of the directorates within his intelligence service. It states that, in the year after 9/11, it held 13 meetings for a number of Palestinian and other organizations, including delegations from the Islamic Jihad Movement and the director general of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of al-Ahwaz (al-Ahwaz is a portion of Iran inhabited largely by Arabs). The list then details the messages various terrorist groups sent to Saddam during the year. The titles of the messages range from simple best wishes on Saddam’s birthday to the following:
• Information on the number of Palestinian martyrs killed vs. Zionists killed
• Requests for military equipment and for help for the families of suicide bombers
• Information on the financial status of various terrorist organizations, volunteers for suicide operations, and rumors of a plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein
The report also notes that among the 699 passports that the intelligence services issued, many were issued to known members of terrorist organizations. Moreover, it states that the intelligence services took four million dinars from their own budgets to finance Palestinian terrorist groups.
The report also provides a list of activities the intelligence services considered “exemplary events,” for example:
• Re-equipping and training Palestinian fighters in al-Quds training camps [in Iraq]
• Establishing and activating a course to train Arab Liberation Front fighters on martyrdom operations
• Establishing fighter schools for Arab volunteers and later for Iraqi volunteers
• Re-establishing and re-equipping the military base of the Arab Liberation Front
• Training groups from the occupied territories [Palestine] on light weapons in secret 30-day courses
All of this is just the tip of the iceberg of available evidence demonstrating that Saddam posed a dangerous threat to America. There are other reports providing specific information on dozens of terrorist attacks, as well as details of how Iraq helped plan and execute many of them. Moreover, there is also proof of Saddam’s support of Islamic groups that were part of the al-Qaeda network. A good analogy for the links between Saddam and bin Laden is the Cali and Medellín drug cartels. Both drug cartels (actually loose collections of families and criminal gangs) were serious national-security concerns to the United States. The two cartels competed for a share of the illegal drug market. However, neither cartel was reluctant to cooperate with the other when it came to the pursuit of a common objective — expanding and facilitating their illicit trade. The well-publicized and violent rise of the Medellín cartel temporarily obscured and overshadowed the rise of, and threat posed by, the Cali cartel, in the same way that 9/11 camouflaged the terror threat posed by Saddam. In reality Saddam and bin Laden were operating parallel terror networks aimed at the United States. Bin Laden just has the distinction of having made the first horrendous attack.
Given the evidence, it appears that we removed Saddam’s regime not a moment too soon.
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