Rule of Reason Blog

While immersed in the 1920’s to complete my latest detective novel, chickens came home to roost on Wall Street. Also, wannabe hippies, yippies, union thugs, and the countless clueless who went to “occupy” Wall Street because they had nothing better to do. I watched and read with dismay the trashing of that short but great street as hundreds, then thousands blocked it, trashed it, yelled at it, probably urinated on it, and then camped out on Zuccotti Park. Or rather, took it over. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the “Duke of New York,” has not ordered the police to clear out the park. He has not called in companies of riot police armed with shields, batons, and Mace. He has not brought in fire engines to hose the barbarians, not so much to give them much needed baths, as to drive them off into custody. But then Bloomberg endorses the Ground Zero Mosque. Perhaps he likes the new “Camp of the Saints.” The mainstream media has done its best to sanction and egg on the “protestors.” The only objective reporting on the continuing outrage can be found in the non-MSM. From Brian Williams to Diane Sawyer to Matt Lauer, the yelping and gesticulating and sign-carrying on Lower Manhattan amuses them, encourages them. It is provocative and newsworthy. The Occupiers of Wall Street get a free pass, references to the American Revolution, and sonorous sympathy, something the MSM never gave the Tea Party. To reprise the MSM’S role in perpetuating the alleged “spontaneity” of the occupiers’ “freedom of expression” would be redundant here. Much has been made by the non-MSM of the hypocrisy of the occupiers. Daniel Greenfield of Sultan Knish is especially on top of the irony of thousands of trust fund beneficiaries protesting the system that makes trust funds possible, and has written a number of perceptive pieces on the character of the protesters and of the phenomenon. Kelly O’Donnell of Canada Free Press exposes the bogus “spontaneity” of the masses of Zuccotti Park by tracing its funding and organization to that Marxist billionaire, George Soros, its endorsement by William Ayers, the former Weatherman bomber, and other notorious notables. All this ground and more have been covered by those not distracted by the task of finishing a novel. What I would like to do here to present The Naked Ape. I saw a picture somewhere of the protesters on which someone had written all the product names of the things worn and used by the protesters: the cap from Gap, the cameras by Sony, shoes by Nike, the iPods by Apple, and so on. In short, the protesters were protesting the corporations that produced those objects and which helped to facilitate their protest. Now, governments produce nothing but forms and other kinds of paperwork, and even here government printing offices rely on technology and methods they never originated and could not improve on. The Congressional Record, the Federal Register, White House invitations, and your dollar bills all have their roots in some individual’s or private corporation’s innovation. All the desks, equipment, technology, family pictures, pens, pencils, glass in the windows, rugs, paint on the walls, insulation, flags, memo pads, etc. in any given politician’s office are all privately produced. Not even the military develops its own weapons; that task is farmed out to independent contractors in the private realm. There’s no such thing as a government tank factory or munitions farm. I will take that photograph one step further. Picture a protester, fully dressed, armed with his cell phone, iPod, perhaps with a poncho rolled up in his backpack along with toiletries and other necessities. Take away his cap – his shirt and tee-shirt – his watch – his jacket – his backpack and all is contents – his sweater or sweatshirt – his cell phone – his camera – any other gizmo he has become dependent on to communicate with his pals or to see what else is happening on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and other social sites – his wallet – his pants – his underwear – his socks – his shoes – his shaving instruments – his deodorant (if any) – his hair cut (if he has had one) – his pill box, nasal spray, inhaler, chap stick, or whatever else enables him to breathe without difficulty – his childhood inoculations – his cigarettes – his lighter – his plastic packet of whatever else he may smoke – his glasses or contacts – his tent – his sleeping bag. Take away his cardboard sign and the length or wood or plastic it may be affixed to, if it is affixed to anything. Take away the marker or pen or spray that printed the words on it. No Starbucks. No Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. No Zuccotti Park-cooked pasta and stir-fried veggies. Maybe cockroaches. Or silverfish. Or dead rats. But nothing prepared in defiance of Mother Earth. No Poland Spring water. No plastic water bottles at all. And what have you? You have a naked ape. A protester against corporate greed, an advocate of expropriating wealth and the means of production. Picture a woman and do the same to her. No hairspray, either. No make-up kits. No dyes. No lipstick. No tampons. No nail polish. No clothes. No gizmos. No signs. Nothing. And there is the female of the species. Don’t avert your eyes. Multiple those two images by the thousands, in Technicolor. Pack them all together on Wall Street or Broad Street or Broadway, and what have you? A frightening, noisy, intimidating mob stripped of everything they are protesting against. A George Romero-like Dawn of the Dead. A phenomenon more repellent than a canvas by Pieter Brueghel the Elder of peasants cavorting in the mud. Coming at you, the middle class, the bourgeoisie, the producer of wealth. The owner of wealth. The property owner. The honest wage-earner. The hot dog vendor. The cabbie. The investor. The industrialist. The inventor. The risk-taker. The gainfully employed in any private capacity. The self-employed. The bill-payer. The tax-payer. The savings account owner. The rich. The modestly well-off. Aspirants to being rich or modestly well-off. Coming to get you, because the naked apes are none of those things. They are coming at you and for you. If you don’t join them, and apologize, and hand over your property, your wealth, and your life, and join, not their “99%,” but their actual 0.83%, they intend to kill you. So said one protester during the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuFQuEwJ5xI“occupation.” Lout: S—t…won’t be exactly how you want it. S—t’s gonna change. You don’t know what’s gonna happen…. Tea Party interviewer: What do you do with the people who don’t want to change their beliefs, or don’t agree with you? Lout: Kill ‘em. (“ Just kiddin’,” he added with a chuckle, but it was too late. His answer came instantly, eagerly, and from the gut.) Lenin wasn’t kidding. Nor was Hitler. Nor Stalin, nor Mao or Pol Pot. It’s anyone’s guess that Obama isn’t kidding, either. Or William Ayers. Or George Soros. So, it isn’t a matter of hypocrisy. It’s not an issue of venality. That is not what the protesters are primarily guilty of. It is of allowing themselves to be brainwashed so thoroughly by their educators that they can no longer think. Their brains have been automatized or programmed to repeat whatever their teachers wished them to think. If they are protesting anything, it should be their government-mandated, state-commanded, and bureaucrat-tailored education. They should be protesting the government’s involvement in their lives and in their futures. By extension, they should be protesting in favor of private property, wealth accumulation, individual rights, and for getting the government out of the economy. Instead, they are demanding more of what has stunted their minds. And they believe – not think – but believe that impoverishing everyone will compensate for their imagined persecution and purported downtroddeness and make things right and level so that no one will envy anyone else. Their obvious and enervating malice was bred in our schools as surely as Pavlov’s dog was conditioned to drool. Do not bother asking them to know cause and effect. Syllogisms are beyond their ability to grasp. To them, there is no cause and effect. Things just are. The universe is causeless. Human action is causeless. The unskilled laborer, with nothing to offer the world but his muscles and capacity for mindless routine, is the source of all wealth, which the rich and the industrious and the innovators have somehow stolen from him. Steve Jobs’s personal net worth was $7 billion. He should have been made to exist on a ditch-digger’s wage, and to give them their iPods and other gizmos, too. So they have been taught. All differences in wealth and standards of living are inequitable and unjust, they were taught. The solution is to abolish all equity and the concept of justice. So, imagine that army of naked, gibbering, wild-eyed apes heading in your direction. John Dewey and a host of other Progressive educators set them loose. And they were made possible by Immanuel Kant, Heidegger, and other philosophers. Karl Marx? He was a Johnny-Come-Lately heir of Kant and Hegel. Ideas have consequences. And there they are, in Lower Manhattan, occupying it. Cross-posted from Metablog

At the risk of the accusation of my being a curmudgeon, a Grinch, overly analytical, and a person who was likely raised on a diet of sour grapes and Castor Oil, what follows is a critique of that hoary old American cinematic Christmas holiday chestnut, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). I have never liked the movie, but have watched it many times, obsessed with the problem of why I did not like It’s a Wonderful Life (IAWL). In fact, originally, after my first exposure to it, which I think was at the age of twelve, I took as personal exception to it as I did later to Arthur Penn’s Bonnie & Clyde (1967) or Robert Zemeckis’s Forrest Gump (1994). It is an essay I have wanted to write for years. Other literary tasks postponed it. That I tackle it now is in the way of a birthday present to myself. Also, most stores have already hung up their Christmas decorations and begun stocking Christmas merchandise, although we are still a month away from Thanksgiving. I am writing this far ahead of time, so I can enjoy the Christmas season. To begin, I left a comment on an Andrew Klavan Pajamas Media article, "Why Left-Wing Artists Should Not All Be Put to Death,” of October 10, 2011: Mr. Klavan concludes: “To take a strictly leftist or conservative approach to culture is to live half blind. Trust in God and affection for mankind demand, it seems to me, that we allow every life that is not vicious to live itself out in its own way.” I don’t think it’s profitable to take a leftist-conservative approach to the arts, either, although what he claims is the “conservative” perspective is perplexing. Klavan cites It’s a Wonderful Life and Bonnie & Clyde as excellent films, but they are both vicious. The Stewart movie is better made, and for that reason is more vicious than is the latter, which is pure leftist propaganda that obviously glorifies criminals as “rebels” against the supposedly capitalist establishment (thus the lingering, slow-motion ambush of Bonnie and Clyde), at a time when FDR’s socialist programs were being implemented and which perpetuated the Depression. The Stewart movie, however, glorifies selflessness and the “community” and surrendering one’s ambition to the needs of others, and ends with an eerie “bail-out” of George Bailey and the Bailey Savings & Loan – eerie because it presages the Obama-Democratic economic policy, with everyone “chipping in” to save George from financial ruin and being arrested for embezzlement, malfeasance, and other financial crimes. So, the conflict is not primarily political, but moral, and as a novelist myself (and as an atheist), I am at odds with both leftist and conservative artists. In strictly moral terms, Mr. Klavan shares the moral values that leftists tout in literature and on the big screen. It also explains why Republicans are ineffectual when going toe-to-toe against Democrats on any issue; the Democrats want a selfless, “community” oriented society NOW, with the “rich” soaked with taxes and industry burdened with onerous regulations, and “essential” services provided free; the Republicans say, yes, that’s fair, but not so fast. One reader castigated me for being so harsh on IAWL. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen the movie but as I remember, there is one BIG difference between what they did and what Obama does. The people in the movie were coming together to help a neighbor of their own free will, Obama just takes to “help” those he thinks need it more than we do whether we want to or not. As I remember, the banker was set up because he had been helping his neighbors during bad times. He was not making loans knowing they wouldn’t be paid back but was making loans to people he knew would pay them off as soon as they could when bad times turned around. I replied: It’s a Wonderful Life is one long ode to altruism and living for others. Every time George Bailey is about to escape Bedford Falls and into the wider world, something keeps him there, and in every instance it’s his feeling that it’s his “duty” to surrender his life to others’ needs. So, he never did what he had dreamed of doing, and the question is open whether or not he was just dreaming and didn’t really mean it, or if he was a true victim of his own mixed premises. His mother is a piece of work, too, literally pushing him in the direction of Mary (the Donna Reed character), a homebody (home from college) whom she knows will probably kill whatever chance he has of escaping. The “evil” Potter character is merely a caricature of capitalism. Most of the principal characters do get to escape Bedford Falls, but return to live banal lives. And the moral of the end of the story – depicting all the town citizens “volunteering” to help George – is that this is what everyone, everywhere is supposed to do. What isn’t depicted is that if they prospered at all, it was at the expense of George’s life and values. So, that’s why I say the film is insidious and vicious. The other reader had no answer to that. Let us count the ways George Bailey was betrayed, stymied, or prevented from following his dreams, exhibiting some independence, or realizing his ambition: • George is about to leave town to spend time on a tramp steamer to “see the world” when his father dies. He stays to save his father’s business, Bailey Savings & Loan, which otherwise will fall into the hands of his father’s nemesis, Henry Potter, the town banker. His brother Harry has just graduated from high school and has won a football scholarship and is leaving town. George agrees, reluctantly, to run the business to keep it out of Potter’s hands. • Years later Harry Bailey returns from college, a football hero and married to a woman whose father has offered him a job “doing research.” Harry assures George that he’ll run Bailey Savings & Loan while George goes to college. This is doubtful, because Harry’s wife doesn’t look like she would be willing to settle down in Bedford Falls and allow her husband to pass up a chance to work for her father. This conundrum is not depicted or resolved, except by implication. • George, standing outside his home while everyone else is inside celebrating Harry’s return, looks out of sorts, as though he knows he’s doomed to stay in Bedford Falls by doing the “right thing” and letting Harry accept his father-in-law’s job offer. His mother comes out and tells him Mary Hatch is back from college, too. It’s clear that she wants to marry George off to Mary, and literally pushes him in the direction of Mary’s house. George goes off screen, but returns in a second going in the opposite direction. • After wandering aimlessly around town (at one point ogling a passing girl, and having a less than inspiring encounter with Violet Bick, the town flapper), George nevertheless gravitates towards Mary’s house, and ends up proposing to her (more or less). Why he should do this is never explained. At the same time, a former Bedford Falls boyhood friend, Sam Wainwright, who did leave town and has attained some kind of success, calls from New York and offers George a chance to run a factory. • But George by now is emotionally committed to marrying Mary. It is in this same scene that he verbally renounces any ambitions he might have had that would allow him to leave town. His commitment to Mary makes little sense, because the only previous contact between George and Mary, at least what we are shown, was at Harry’s high school dance, during which they fall into the swimming pool beneath the gym dance floor. Walking home, George flirts with Mary. Then Peter Bailey, the father, dies. In the next scenes, George is shown agreeing to stay in town to save the Savings & Loan, but before which he expresses a resolve to leave town, saying to the board of directors, “you can do with this thing what you want.” • When George and Mary are about to leave on their honeymoon in New York, the stock market has crashed and there is a run on the Savings & Loan. It is George’s decision to go back to the Savings & Loan. He and Mary sacrifice their trip to stop the run, offering their honeymoon money to pay depositors. • George has some success with the Savings & Loan. Potter offers him a job that will allow him to “see the world” outside of Bedford Falls, a handsome salary, and other perks. George, initially tempted, turns down the offer because, after all, Henry Potter is the villain who probably drove his father to his grave. Potter is depicted as a “greedy businessman” who wants to control the whole town. George, however, is a kind of crusading “community organizer” who has defied Potter. In the meantime, George is settled into married life and has children. He is doomed to stay in Bedford Falls. Family responsibilities, you know. • World War II does not interrupt George’s life in Bedford Falls. Many of his friends go off to war, but George is passed up by the draft because of his “bum ear,” an injury he sustained when he saved his brother Harry’s life years before in the frozen pond. Harry is now a war hero, being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by the president, and the town is preparing to welcome him home. • Uncle Billy, in Potter’s bank, unknowingly gives Henry Potter the Savings & Loan deposit during an episode of braggadocio. Potter does not return it. The money remains missing. George panics, calls Uncle Billy a “drunken old fool.” He goes to Potter for help. Potter gloats and threatens to report him to the authorities. In a state of emergency, George turns against his family, as well. He concludes that his only way out is to commit suicide and let his family collect on an insurance policy. This is when Clarence the angel intervenes. So, there is the sequence of events leading up to the miraculous denouement of IAWL Some correspondents have objected to my critique of IAWL. Their liking of the film is based largely on an emotional response to the ostensive benevolence exhibited in much of the story. One friend suggested that perhaps George Bailey changed his mind about wanting to build bridges and skyscrapers and so on, and decided he would be happier staying in Bedford Falls running the Savings & Loan. Ergo, there is no justification for condemning the movie. But this is a fallacious defense. One can't judge a fictional character by what he might have done, one can only judge a character by what his creator has shown. Ayn Rand in one of her articles did that with Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, in the opening scene with Keating on the porch, recasting Roark as a naturalistic character to show him a as completely average person who placed value on what others thought, was unsure about what he wanted, respected Keating's opinion of him, and so on.* She demonstrated that the recast Roark would have made the rest of the novel literarily impossible and literally incredible (if she had left the rest of the novel intact). And, hypothetically, if she had originally stuck with that recasting, and written the novel from that one scene, logically Peter Keating would have emerged as the "hero" (as a champion of pragmatic compromise), and not Roark, because, as she notes, Roark would not have withstood the first crisis that came along and would have caved. The novel would have dispensed with the necessity of a Gail Wynand and Toohey. In fact, it would have dispensed with plot. As for Dominique, if Rand had kept her consistent with her original depiction, she couldn't have fallen in love with Roark and have had her conflict with him, because there wouldn't have been any distinction between Roark and Keating. Hypothetically, by the time Dominique enters the story, there would have been no Roark at all. But my point here is that while the reader or viewer can project possibilities on a fictional character; one must accept what the artist shows about the character, because that's what the artist has created and intends people to see. One can append one’s own metaphysical value judgments to what an artist has created, but it won’t change the metaphysical fact of the artist’s creation. One can only accept the artist's metaphysical value judgments, and judge for oneself whether or not they're a value. I’m sure there are artists or art critics, for example, who think that Michelangelo’s statue of David could have used a little more work, say, by turning David’s head a tad, or slightly altering the position of his legs, or mellowing the expression on his face. But they, too, must accept David as Michelangelo created him. (Such “editing” of the David is less horrific than what many so-called artists have done with the image of the statue, such as adding a baseball cap, or boxer’s shorts, or running shoes – those alterations fall into the category of desecration.) As for George Bailey's marriage to Mary, that whole aspect of the film is a reflection of the common notion that love is "blind" and inexplicable and causeless. I was never able to see any reason why he would want her, and suddenly express that love in her mother's house, in the scene after Harry comes home and pulls a guilt trip on George (the brother has just revealed that he's married and has a great opportunity to "do research" for his father in law -- not in Bedford Falls, either). The brother claims, however, that he'll stay in town and run Bailey Savings & Loan as a kind of implicit favor so George can leave town, but we never see George deciding to stay in town to allow his brother to leave with his wife to work for her father. It just happens. And what's Mary's conception of an ideal man, someone she'd want to marry? Because we aren't shown much of that, either, we can only conclude that her ideal is a man who selflessly surrenders his life to others in the altruistic tradition and who would never pose a problem to her by being anything other than what he is. Not exactly a Dominique Francon, nor even a Gail Wynand. Given what's shown about George, that's the only conclusion I can arrive at, why Mary would want George and not the clownish "Hee Haw" Sam Wainwright who calls from New York to offer George a chance to leave town. Remember also that during that call, Wainwright derides Bedford Falls and the Bailey Savings & Loan. I don't think Frank Capra's motives were so innocent. Don't forget the device of Clarence the angel, who shows him Bedford Falls as it would have become if George hadn't been there to save it from Potter. Why it was imperative or necessary for Bedford Falls to become a pit of vice and corruption isn’t explained. It's a pretty dark alternative Bedford Falls, and reveals Capra's estimate of men and the value he placed on living a virtuously altruistic life (which was, according to Capra, necessary to save the town), that without a George Bailey, the townspeople would be naturally miserable and degraded and in thrall to "evil" capitalists like Henry Potter. Capra’s “alternative” Bedford Falls is a by-the-book, dogmatic, Marxist conception of life under capitalism in a small town in which its savior had never been born. Everything I've discussed here is based on what Capra showed, and not what I projected his characters might have done otherwise. I must accept Capra's conclusions or evaluations, and not fiddle with them. And I've never accepted Capra's conclusions or his artistry. I can only critique them without attempting to rewrite them. The benevolent aspect of the film is what I believe most people fall for. It makes viewers feel good. But “feeling good” is not a proper measure or guide to judging whether or not a thing is “good.” And here’s why: The sudden concern of the townspeople about George Bailey’s predicament is an instance of what Rand called “package-dealing.” George has surrendered all his alleged important values (and I stress alleged – no matter how many times I view the film, I’m never quite sure that they are important values to George) in order to allow everyone else in town to attain theirs. That alone was a death sentence. It does not comport at all with another principle Rand articulated: the trader principle. On “package-dealing,” Rand noted: [Package-dealing employs] the shabby old gimmick of equating opposites by substituting nonessentials for their essential characteristics, obliterating differences. And: “Package-dealing” is the fallacy of failing to discriminate crucial differences. It consists of treating together, as parts of a single conceptual whole or “package,” elements which differ essentially in nature, truth-status, importance or value. The well-wishing for George by the townspeople and their showering him with money to replace the missing Savings & Loan deposit (stolen by, who else? The evil banker) attempts to obliterate the observable fact, demonstrated throughout the whole film, that George sacrificed his values for theirs, that they are the beneficiaries of that ongoing sacrifice. Add the Christmas spirit of good will to all men to the picture, and the package-dealing is successful. As for the townspeople “giving back” to George, after he’s “given” so much to them, that’s also a twist on Rand’s idea of package-dealing. It’s the Bill Gates “giving back” morality in reverse. All together, it’s Hitler in a Santa Claus suit. Or Stalin. Or Obama. I never bought the message that it was better to give than to receive, and never will. Did Frank Capra know what he was doing? Did he plan every little detail of It’s a Wonderful Life with the intention of fobbing off a package deal? I very much doubt it. There is no such creature as an “evil genius,” only men who are adept at taking advantage of their victims’ ignorance, blindness, fallacies, or faulty premises. Capra, like many other capable directors then and now, was merely a receiver of the culture’s ideas, not an intellectual or an originator of ideas. And the ideas he received but never questioned were largely altruist and collectivist. But being a passive receiver of those ideas doesn’t let him off the hook. Unlike his George Bailey, Capra had the choice to think. Well, that’s off my chest. Now I can turn back to more important work. Have a nice Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. *See Chapter 7, “Characterization” in The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers, ed. by Tore Boeckmann (New York: Plume-Penguin, 2000), pp. 63-65. Cross-posted from Metablog

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. In June of 2009, the White House launched an “inform on your fellow Americans” email campaign. It was subsequently and immediately swamped beyond capacity with ridicule, anger, and mockery by Americans who were offended by the suggestion that they are just naturally untrustworthy and coveted their neighbors’ homes, bank accounts, lawnmowers, and wives. The campaign’s purpose was to cajole Americans to rat on anyone who bad-mouthed Congress’s socialist healthcare plans. It was a short-lived experiment. When one goes to that particular White House website, one finds a blank page with a Jobs Act banner atop. Fortunately, the words of that infamous campaign have been preserved in past commentaries: “There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors travel just beneath the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to [email protected].... Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to ‘uncover’ the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.” Now we have Son of Snitch, a.k.a. “Attack Watch,” copyrighted, no less, by “Obama for America.” And it looks like it’s going to suffer the same fate. It is not so much “scary” as astonishingly obtuse. Word no sooner got out that Attack Watch was up and ready for Americans to “report” smears, inaccuracies, and lies about the White House agenda, than the site was deluged with countless responses, most of them of a “Tonight Show,” Jay Leno-monologue caliber. You can’t make this stuff up, unless you’re George Orwell composing a novel about kids turning in their parents for being thought criminals. What’s that slogan the Department of Homeland Security dreamed up? “If you see something, say something.” Attack Watch is perfectly in line with that brand to proactive “patriotism.” Of course, after reporting unauthorized “talking points,” one can also donate money to the White House’s reelection campaign, run by the Democratic National Committee. Highlights from the Attack Watch site include: Immigration Reform Inaccuracies: Republican media figures have accused President Obama of refusing to deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants. Israel and Middle East Falsehoods: President Obama’s opponents have falsely suggested that the President has not been a strong ally to Israel. Gun Control Gossip: Public figures have made outlandish claims that President Obama is planning to use a United Nations treaty to take away legal firearms from gun owners in the US. TARP Bank Bailout Smears: Attacks claiming the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was signed into law by President Obama are factually incorrect. Opponents are using smears to undermine the success of President Obama’s auto rescue. Get the facts. Well, yes, Americans want to get the facts, but the last place they should hunt for them is in the White House. There, facts are scarcer than roses on Venus. Allow me some ribaldry: The White House refuses to deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants because they’re going to be virtually the only people who will vote Democratic in 2012. The White House is a strong ally of Israel. It wants Israel to return to its pre-WWII borders, that’s all it’s asking. The White House isn’t against the private ownership of BB guns and water-pistols. Or even paintball guns. The United Nations has said nothing about those weapons. TARP was not the White House’s idea. It was President Bush’s. He signed the legislation, not the current occupant, who simply continued his predecessor’s policies. And Congress’s. Do not blame the current occupant of the White House if TARP is a shambles and a scandal! On a more serious note, any chief executive who would recruit a nation’s citizens to report on the speech of other citizens, regardless of its form or venue, is indicative of an individual who has violated his oath of office, and who would not feel constrained by the Constitution to act to punish anyone for speaking his mind. This is aside from the executive’s allegations that what others are saying about him or his policies is true or not. It is not the legitimate function of the executive branch of our government to behave like a human litmus test or a philosopher’s stone. It is not the function of that office to establish any one truth, but to acknowledge a truth. If certain policies are being “attacked,” that is in the nature of politics. Policies are not exempt from debate, discussion, or criticism. What Attack Watch seeks to accomplish is the obfuscation of truth. And the truth about the efficacy, ineptness, or destructive nature of those policies is a natural “talking point” of all American citizens, in and out of office. Cross-posted from Metablog

New York, Sept. 11 – The new World Trade Center towers, now six years old, rise in a silvery shimmer over lower Manhattan, both fifteen stories taller than the originals, commanding a plaza and an assortment of lower towers. In the daytime, only the plaza, chock full of figures hurrying purposefully on their numerous errands, gives evidence of the unseen commerce that occurs inside the fully occupied towers. IRT and PATH trains rumble through the lower levels of the plaza. Taxis rarely idle for long in the three designated cab stands that border the plaza as they skitter in and out of what seems like yellow conveyor belts of business, dropping off and picking up passengers. Bands, orchestras, and soloists usually occupy the small, sunken amphitheater; the plaza is rarely without music. Vendors serve hot dogs, knishes and ice cream from kiosks and wheeled carts. Dozens of stores, restaurants and fast food shops populate the plaza’s lower levels, even a movie theater and a bookstore. One unkind critic of the sleek new twin towers wrote in The New York Times, before they were completed, that together they looked like a giant tuning fork. But another critic, writing for The New York Post, said they were reminiscent of Winston Churchill’s “V” for victory sign. If the original towers collapsed because of the heat of an inferno, what replaced them was an inferno of controversy that resulted in the resignation of a governor, the dissolution of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation racked by scandal, corruption, and favoritism, and the relinquishment of the property by the Port Authority to a syndicate of private developers dedicated to building a new World Trade Center “as tall or taller.” Where the oddly sculptured globe once sat in the original plaza is a modest, circular black marble plaque, enclosed by an oval pool with calming, splashing fountains. The plaque contains the engraved names of all who died here that awful day a decade ago. Benches ring the front of the pool, and are usually filled with tourists and office workers from the towers at lunchtime. Similar modest memorials were erected in front of the repaired Pentagon, and in the Shankstown, Pennsylvania field where passengers on the flight died fighting to regain control of a hijacked plane destined to crash into either the White House or the Capitol Building. It has never been determined which was the hijackers’ target, although authorities are certain that the White House was the intended target. Monitored Al Quada communications repeated the query, “Is he dead yet?” They could only have been referring to President Bush, who fortunately was not in the White House that day. The Attack That day! Ten years ago, on September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked on its own soil by agents of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and Iraq. Complicit in that attack, or at least aiding and abetting it by supplying resources, training, sanctuaries, and “foot soldiers,” were key enablers, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attack, mostly Americans, including the passengers on the hijacked planes that slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and that Pennsylvania field. Everyone can remember the response of everyday, rank-and-file “moderate” Muslims: in Gaza, in Iran, in Cairo, in London, in Paris, in Indonesia, in Patterson, New Jersey, in Brooklyn, New York, in Dearborn, Michigan, celebrated, passed out candy, danced in the streets, and shouted their hatred for the U.S. Their spokesmen and leaders put on pious faces and published solemn-sounding regrets, but did not chastise their collects of celebrants. Two days after the attack, in a stirring, televised speech to Congress and the American people, still reeling from a greater loss of American life than the country had suffered during the attack on Pearl Harbor sixty years before, President George W. Bush assured the nation – and the world – that the “parties responsible for the attack will regret and rue the day they decided that this country had lost its resolve to exist as a free and sovereign nation. It will act to defend its citizens and its shores.” He did not name the suspected “parties,” nor did he specify what actions would be taken. But everyone knew the identities of the suspected “parties.” The governments of all Western nations sent their condolences: Britain, France, Italy, and most of the European Union nations. Many announced plans to hold remembrance days in honor of all those killed by the 9/11 hijackers. Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal presented New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani with a $10 million check, on one hand claiming Saudi Arabia was with the U.S. “wholeheartedly,” but on the other blaming U.S. policies for the attack. During his visit to the wreckage Thursday, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal called the Sept. 11 terrorist attack "a tremendous crime" and said the suspected mastermind, Osama bin Laden, "does not belong to Islam." But in a written statement handed out by his publicist, the prince said: "At times like this one, we must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack. I believe the government of the United States of America should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause." “Ingratitude” After reading this statement, an angry Giuliani returned the check, stating that the attack was not merely criminal, but an actual declaration of war in which Saudi Arabia was complicit, if not an active party. “Crimes,” said the mayor during a press conference at the site of the smoking, jagged piles of the World Trade Center, “are committed by individuals or gangs. Wars are declared by belligerent nations and by the victims of such belligerence. This was a declaration of war on us. We will not apologize for our policies, nor will we shrink from our duty to avenge the deaths of all those who perished in the attacks – mostly civilians – nor will we fail to demand the immediate and worst possible punishment.” Giuliani was roundly criticized for calling the attack an “act of war,” which only the President and Congress can do. He was accused of “grand-standing” and exploiting the catastrophe for his own political gain. President Bush held his tongue and did not gainsay the mayor’s usurpation of his and the Congressional prerogative. Giuliani was to be proven correct in the following days. Prince Talal, feeling offended by the rejection and by Giuliani’s remarks, gathered together his entourage and flew back to Saudi Arabia. His publicist issued another brief press release in which Talal said he felt “profound ingratitude.” A poll conducted by The New York Post of New Yorkers revealed the general sentiment about the prince’s departure. “Good riddance.” The world held its breath. It did not need to hold it for long. The retribution was swift, terrible, and permanent. The remembrance ceremonies and proposed minutes of silence, premature in their conception, were cancelled. It was, as one liberal pundit put it in a daze of astonishment, “the shortest war in human history. And the cruelest.” He was wrong about it being the shortest. That ranking goes to the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896, which lasted thirty-eight minutes. Still, another pundit retorted, “And the most just!” A Declaration of War On September 15th, President Bush asked Congress for a declaration of war. He named names. With only six dissensions, Congress approved the declaration. And the clock began ticking. Christopher Hitchens, writing as a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, adopted that theme in a column which did not please the literati or the news media, but which got him invited to the White House for dinner with President Bush (and later, in 2004, earned him a Medal of Freedom): “The clock is ticking, as inexorably as the clock in High Noon. We don’t know what Bush has planned, and we are all biting our nails while we wait and create patriotic bumper stickers and try not to think of all those people jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center tower rather than be roasted alive. But this much is clear: It’s Marshall Will Kane who’s on the train, coming to wipe out Frank Miller and his gang. It’s Frank Miller who's watching the clock this time, and his pals and the cravenly accommodating citizens of Hadleyville are debouching for anywhere in the wastes of Arizona rather than stay in town. Forgive me, Fred Zinnemann, wherever you are, but I couldn’t resist.” Everyone was familiar with the names of the guilty “parties.” The first was Osama bin Laden, an expatriate Saudi sheik who was the head of Al Quada and the mastermind of the attack. He immediately boasted of the attack within eight hours of the collapse of the World Trade Center, fulfilling a prophecy he had made years earlier. The boast, recorded on a cassette tape that made its way by anonymous couriers to the Arab news network, Al Jazeera, was soon filling the screens of countless American television sets. This was a grave error. The image of the unkempt, bearded face taunting Americans with an arrogant demand for submission, simply stoked fires of determination fiercer than those that incinerated the hapless passengers of the hijacked planes. Hiding in an Afghan village in the Swat Valley, bin Laden for two months maintained radio contact with his sympathizers and enablers in the Pakistani government and in Kabul. On November 4th, when our intelligence had confirmed his location and that of his enablers and protectors in Pakistan, the village was vaporized with a battlefield nuclear projectile mounted on a drone fired from a nuclear submarine patrolling the Indian Ocean, the Patrick Henry. A great hole was dug in the middle of Karachi when three more of the missiles, launched consecutively by the submarine, were targeted on the Pakistani intelligence headquarters. Stealth bombers also reduced to glass Pakistan’s nuclear fuel processing plants and much of its nuclear weapons arsenal. Pakistan subsequently descended into an anarchy which continues to this day. India’s military has turned back hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis looking for refuge in India, often having to fire on crazed mobs. It is thought that all of bin Laden’s lieutenants, including the hierarchy of the Taliban, perished in the Afghan blast, because nothing has been heard from bin Laden, Al Quada or the Taliban since then. On the same day, Kabul, capital of Afghanistan and held by the Taliban, was similarly razed. On September 22nd, in response to Prince Talal’s statement about the Palestinians, Bush ordered all U.S. subsidies terminated to Gaza and the West Bank. Al Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Authority immediately and jointly attacked Israeli settlements with rockets and suicide bombers. Israel’s IDF responded by reducing Gaza and the West Bank to rubble with coordinated counter-attacks. Palestinian forces and their terrorist allies were decimated. Palestinians by the tens of thousands streamed for safety to Egypt, Syria and Jordan and established impromptu refugee camps. Gaza is now fully Israeli (it has since become the Israeli “Silicon Valley”), as is the West Bank. Israel has enjoyed ten years of unprecedented peace, and has become a major economic force in the Mideast. Neighboring Lebanon again became wracked with civil war between Christians, the remnants of Hezbollah, and other intractable factions seeking power. Beirut is still a ghost town where reporters fear to tread lest they and their crews be taken hostage or simply murdered on the spot. Islam the Enemy On October 3rd, President Bush warned Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and Iraq that the “severest measures” would be taken against the regimes of those countries within forty-eight hours” if they did not confess their role in the 9/11 attack. “Let us not mince words. It has been determined by our intelligence sources that much of the funding and support of the hijackers, most of whom were Saudi nationals, was facilitated through Saudi and U.A.E. banking entities. The network was not disguised well enough, and the money trail that leads back to Riyadh, Damascus, Tehran, and Bagdad points directly to the governments of those countries playing a third-party role in the attack. If the principal figures of these regimes did not directly order or plan the attack, then they had knowledge of it. Silence about the imminent commission of a crime, or even an act of war, does not acquit the silent, it does not exonerate the mute. “State-sponsored terrorism must and will end immediately. “Further, lest defenders of those regimes claim that we have declared war on Islam – for all those nations are under the yoke of Islam – they will be right. Islam is not a religion of peace. Let me inform my former friends in Riyadh that I have since 9/11 re-read the Koran more closely, and I am sorry to say that the Koran is nothing less than a blueprint for conquest. I confess that I was misled and saw Islam through rose-colored glasses. Now I realize that the rose tint was the color of blood. It is a heinous, barbaric, and contemptible document.” But perhaps the most memorable words in that public announcement were: “Let no one claim that Islam was hijacked by terrorists. The Koran was the magic flying carpet on which the hijackers rode.” Previously, on September 23rd, President Bush ordered the freezing of all Arab assets in U.S. banks, and the confiscation of all Arab-owned property in the U.S., which included office buildings, vacation resorts, and other real property. “Ill-gotten gains seized by Feds,” ran the headline of the Investors Business Daily. Some of those money assets were subsequently released to private developers to rebuild the World Trade Center, “as tall or taller,” as the slogan went. All the real property was auctioned off to private Western developers and the revenue from the sales credited to the U.S. debt as a reduction measure. “Extortionists,” said Secretary of the Treasury, “do not have property rights over wealth they have stolen.” The only Arab government to reply to Bush’s ultimatum – and one of two not named in the declaration of war – was Jordan and King Abdullah II bin al-Hussein, who confessed his negligence and offered evidence of Saudi, Iranian, and Syrian money-laundering that had occurred in Amman-based banks. Jordan was spared the American reprisal, and Abdullah is the sole remaining Arab monarch in the Mideast. With the property confiscation and Jordan's U.S. assets frozen and dispersed, Abdullah is sitting on a tinderbox of revolution and a restless population of former Palestinian refugees. Members of the Kuwaiti royal dynasty were captured by local Islamist supremacists – agents of the former Muslim Brotherhood – and executed. The government established by the Brotherhood soon fell after an “intervention” by U.S. Marines sent to recover the oil fields. No other Arabs stepped forward to set up an Arab government. Kuwait is now an American dependency with a territorial governor. “The United States is no longer under the thumb of OPEC,” President Bush said during a press conference last March. “We are no longer in thrall to medievalists. We are no longer financing our own enslavement and destruction. Sharia law will never replace our Constitution.” With Arab oil-producing clout gone, non-Arab OPEC members scrambled to reduce their production and raise prices as a means of leveraging their new-found hegemony. But the leverage proved illusory, for a freer market allowed prices to rise and fall according to demand. State-produced oil was driven from the market. Venezuela and Ecuador nearly went to war over which country’s oil should enter the market according to old OPEC rules. The organization received its final death sentence when President Bush persuaded Congress to repeal legislation that prohibited oil drilling and development in the shallower waters of the Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska. “Moderate” Muslims Riot And everyone remembers the response of the “parties”: Riots in London, Madrid, Marseilles, the Scandinavian capitals, and in Paris, Frankfurt, and Berlin by immigrant Muslims. Riots in Malmo, Cairo and Tripoli and Toronto. Riots in Tehran and Kuala Lumpur. All of them staged by activist Muslims, sometimes called “extremists.” Spokesmen of Islamic governments jeered and mocked the U.S. “The Great Satan is also a paper tiger,” they claimed. Americans and Europeans in Islamic countries were attacked and killed as they tried to escape. “Behead those who insult Islam!” was the constant theme of signs carried by chanting Muslim demonstrators everywhere, most notably in Western capitals. British police battled Muslim mobs that tried to invade Parliament. Non-Muslim Britons, including Sikhs and other “Asians,” responded to Muslim rioting in Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham by forming their own armies of protestors to combat rampaging Muslim mobs in those and other British cities. Prime Minister Tony Blair cancelled plans to fly to Washington to confer with and “stand by” President Bush when the violence dictated that he remain at home. Oslo and Copenhagen fell into the hands of Muslim mobs for a few days, inaugurating a reign of rape, murder, pillage, and destruction, until those countries’ military forces were ordered to act with unaccustomed force with full authority to fire upon Muslims and restore order regardless of casualties suffered by the mobs. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian police and military soon warmed to their duties when they saw the death and destruction wrought by the mobs. In Paris, Muslim mobs invaded the Louvre and destroyed works of art they considered “offensive,” including the Nike of Samothrace. Mobs in Rome stormed the Vatican and sacked or destroyed its artworks. The Swiss Guard was overwhelmed; the Pope was taken for safety to a special bomb-proof bunker in the basement of his palace. In Florence, Muslims invaded the Galleria dell Accademia and toppled Michelangelo’s “David,” smashing it to bits. They stomped on the fragments, shouting, “There is only one God – not man – and his prophet is Mohammad!” David’s head was carried off by the mob as a trophy, and has never been recovered. Also in Paris, when Muslims took time out from their rioting for prayers, usually on Paris streets which they had been closing for that purpose for years to emphasize their conquest of France – with the silent cooperation of the police – Parisians finally rallied and began attacking the prayer services and engaged the Muslims in pitched battles. French police could not keep up with the battles. Many were killed on both sides. One group of Frenchmen set up loudspeakers in the open windows of their apartments and played “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt1vQ81jNWw” and Jean-Baptist Lully’s choral overture to Isis, “Publicons en tous lieux….” at full volume as the usurpers bowed, completely drowning out the cleric leading the prayers. The Muslims at first shouted obscenities and epithets at the protestors, then, when the residents defiantly continued with the music, proceeded to invade the buildings, killing some of the residents, beating up others, raping whomever they thought worthy of assault, and then setting fire to the buildings. Fifty people died – mostly non-Muslim French citizens – in the ensuing blaze, which the Muslim mob would not let firefighters through to put out. Too late did the police, lethargic by habit from avoiding conflict with Muslim arrogance, respond with force and tear-gassed the mob. Violent confrontations between the police and Muslim mobs occurred throughout the rest of the country. The government banned the burqa, the veil, and prohibited the obstruction of public streets for “religious reasons.” The French government, sometime after the war, embarked on a concerted campaign to reclaim all the notorious Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Muslim “no-go” areas throughout the country, and re-impose French law and arrest clerics and activists who called for “holy war” against the “invading” infidels, often resulting in more riots by Muslims to retain their separatist enclaves. This policy was emulated by Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. After acrimonious debate in Parliament, Britain also adopted the policy, removing its kid-gloves and donning brass knuckles. More riots ensued. A bomb was exploded in St. Paul’s Cathedral, killing dozens during services. Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen and his “Allah’s Brigade” claimed responsibility. He and his lieutenants were killed in a gun battle between them and the police. Writing about the French and Indian War in North America, English author Horace Walpole wrote, "The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.” It seemed that President Bush’s defiant volley of words had ignited the same scale of conflagration. Some supporters began to doubt the wisdom of his rhetoric. Other Americans did not, and began to prepare for the worst. Gun and ammo sales spiked off the charts. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Circle of North America, and other Muslim “civil rights” organizations issued joint warnings about the growing “Islamophobia.” Enemy Capitals Attacked But suddenly the Bush-inspired violence in Europe came to an abrupt end. After the storm, came a quiet. At first, it was not understood why. But soon, everyone knew why. On October 5th, drones armed with battlefield nuclear bombs eliminated portions of Riyadh, Tehran, Dubai and Damascus. In Tehran, political opposition forces rounded up survivors of the Mohammad Khatami/Mahmoud Ahmadinejad religious regime and executed them, and their bodies hung upside-down from lampposts, just as the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were displayed in Italy. Iranians are still struggling to consolidate a republican government. King Fahd, principal members of the House of Saud, and most of the king’s advisors rose as super-heated molecules in the mushroom cloud that towered over Riyadh. Impoverished survivors of the House have been jockeying for and bickering over the king’s title to rule a country that no longer exists ever since. Saudi brothers and cousins of the late king have resorted to assassination and murder of each other in a turf war that recalls the Prohibition gang wars of 20th century America. The royal family of Abu Dhabi fled when U.S. Navy vessels approached its shores. The United Arab Emirates subsequently disintegrated. Navy Seal teams and Special Forces units covertly sent into Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Iran before the drone launches neutralized, before they could act, the security forces responsible for sabotaging oil facilities in case of hostilities. Stealth bombers pinpointed the palaces and bunkers of Saddam Hussein in and around Bagdad and flattened them with tons of heavy ordnance, including napalm. Hussein and his sons were consumed in the fires. The Iraqi government collapsed and this artificially created country has also been in a state of chaos ever since, marked by interminable tribal warfare between Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds. Oil fields nationalized or expropriated by the Arabs were returned to their rightful owners, American, British and French oil companies. Although many of the claims are nearly a century old and now mired in court challenges and disputes over prior claims, oil is flowing and is cheap. Aramco, a Saudi-American “partnership” for decades, was abruptly dissolved. The Petroleum Club of Houston filed for bankruptcy. Numerous stocks of companies in which Arabs held majority interests were delisted from trading on Wall Street. Holy Shrines Eliminated But what ended what might have been continued rioting and dissension in Europe and elsewhere for years by immigrant Muslims was President Bush’s most courageous act. On October 6th, without warning, one Stealth bomber took off from the Enterprise in the Mediterranean, and another from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. The first dropped a two-kiloton bomb on Mecca. The second dropped a two-kiloton bomb on Mohammad’s burial place in Medina. The Kaaba in Mecca and the Green Dome in Medina were rendered gaseous. Tens of thousands of pilgrims perished in the blasts. More stunned than Westerners by the operation were Muslims. Their holy shrines were erased from existence in milliseconds. The expected wrath of Allah did not materialize. He had forsaken his chosen people. The sun did not rise in the West. The stars did not begin to vanish. The Five Pillars of Islam were rendered redundant, proven meaningless. The absence of supernatural retaliation and vengeful global punishment resulted in mass disorientation among Muslims, a species of trauma still being studied by top psychologists in major universities. Suicide rates among Muslims skyrocketed –suicides that did not include bombs detonated in public, but which were private affairs of family heads killing their own families before themselves. Countless other Muslims simply ceased adhering to the faith. Once-faithful Muslims proclaimed their apostasy, preaching tearfully and angrily to sympathetic crowds about what a fraud Islam was. Women discarded their burqas and veils, and even burned them in the streets in demonstrations of freedom. Prayer rugs were turned into welcome mats or converted into scratching posts for cats. Mosques in Western nations were eventually abandoned by the dozens. Once-influential imams and mullahs preached to ever diminishing congregations. Several clerics were arrested by authorities for plotting terrorist acts against the U.S. government and are serving life sentences. In a completely unrelated and unexpected development, on October 6th the government of Hosni Mubarak announced the return of the Suez Canal to the British and French governments. “The government and people of Egypt,” announced Mubarak, “apologize for the actions of Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein, who was nothing more than a bandit aided and abetted in his theft by a very strange American president.” By April of 2002, the world had settled down again. Vladimir Putin of Russia had stopped making bellicose threats against the U.S. and directed his energies to extinguishing the Islamic “separatist” movements within Russia. Former Soviet “republics” have formed an effective alliance against Russia to forestall any “reunification” moves by Moscow. China clamped down on the “democracy” movement there, evicted Western business and industrial “partners” and confiscated their holdings. Hong Kong defied Peking with its own separatist movement and won its independence. Droves of diehard Muslims began returning whence they came, abandoning their self-created ghettos and separatist enclaves, leaving Western nations now hostile to their creed, to countries still governed by the diminishing power of Sharia law, or where they thought there was still a chance of reestablishing it. Talk of a global caliphate ceased. Islamic “civil rights” organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations” and the Islamic Society and Circle of North America found their funding drying up and they dissolved. Several officials of those organizations left the U.S. just ahead of arrest by authorities investigating their role in the attacks, or just steps ahead of being served subpoenas by authorities investigating their finances. The Muslim Brotherhood, sire of all such organizations in the West, experienced a renewed extermination effort by Mubarak’s government. George Bush was severely criticized by the American and European press. He was accused of “cowboy geopolitics” and charged with jeopardizing world peace with his unilateral military actions, actions taken without first consulting the United Nations. Calls were made in the U.N. by Russia and China to hold the U.S. responsible for the “callous collateral casualties, in the hundreds of thousands, in actions that can only be described as criminal.” Newly appointed Secretary of State John Bolton answered them in January, 2002, “If the United Nations regards the United States as a renegade nation, why is this body still here?” War Won, Government Diminishes But as many of Bush’s critics have since acknowledged – only reluctantly and often with muted bitterness – his actions have actually created an “environment conducive to peace,” even though, for example, the European Union, an expensive and authoritarian behemoth, is on its last legs as the citizens of member nations rankle loudly against its corruption and arrogance. But the last suicide bombing occurred on New Year’s Eve in Madrid, and had nothing to do with Islam. It was a Basque terrorist action. The plane hijackings and atrocities committed by Islamists in the second half of the 20th century and the first year of the 21st comprise a nightmarish Hieronymus Bosch-like canvas of hell on earth, of bodies strewn through a landscape of wreckage and ruins, with the dark sun of the Islamic crescent and star rising over the carnage. That was the “garden of Islamic delights” this country narrowly missed becoming its reality. George Bush was, of course, reelected for a second term, and taking his cue from insurgent Republicans almost immediately dubbed by a contemptuous press the “Tea Party,” embarked on a program of vetoing Congressional spending bills and endorsing the privatization of Social Security. He also advocated ending Medicare and other welfare programs, and reduced the Department of Education to an anemic skeleton staff. It was completely abolished and its staff furloughed in 2006. The Radio Act of 1927 was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (better late than never), and the Federal Communications Commission disbanded. The Food and Drug Administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission are next on the chopping block and are expected to expire in 2014. And Ramadan dinners in the White House, initiated by President Bill Clinton and held once by Bush in 2001, were never held again. “We shouldn’t be feeding the enemy,” said Bush in June of 2002. Muslim holidays even disappeared from calendars. As his second term neared an end, the country was on tenterhooks during the 2008 election, with John Bolton running against a nobody from nowhere, Barack Obama, a former Illinois senator with questionable political connections and associations that could not remain hidden. His past could not withstand scrutiny, not even by his supporters. Someone unearthed a video of his Chicago pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, “God-damning America,” and columnists speculated on just what kind of person was actually running for the highest office in the land. Joe Wilson, a Representative for South Carolina, asked a question for which he was excoriated by the press, but for which the public forgave him: “They lie! Who’s running for office here? Reverend Wright or Mr. Obama? Or Bill Ayers?” Discouraged and disillusioned by this and other unsavory revelations, Democrats stayed away from the voting booths that November. In a landslide victory, Bolton won the popular vote and the Electoral College. The defeated candidate returned to his former post of teaching law at the University of Chicago Law School, and was later dismissed from it for having doctored his students’ test scores. President Bolton has in turn been criticized by the news media for playing too much golf and holding too many whist games in the White House. Health advocates have even scored him for smoking cigars in the Oval Office and in the presence of non-smokers. In answer, during a press conference last February, he said, “Look: Why should I be busy lobbying and strong-arming Congress, when I pledged to make government as inconsequential as possible in the lives of Americans? Idle hands are not necessarily the devil’s tools, and I mean to be as idle as possible. Congress should follow suit.” President Bolton is assured a second term in the White House. Democrats have yet to settle on a slate of candidates to run against him in 2012. Their majorities in the Senate and House were irretrievably reduced in midterm elections and by an unprecedented number of resignations and sudden retirements, leaving Republicans in control of both chambers. Authors Paint Grim Futures The nation began to rebound in prosperity and economic growth. Everyone seemed happy with the course of events that could have led to disaster and economic and societal collapse – everyone but those who had plans to turn the country into authoritarian paradise. And columnists and psychologists had another phenomenon to report: Many people would suddenly believe they were being stalked by jihadists. They would turn around see nothing. The fall of Islam and its virtual disappearance from men’s concerns was a true sign of “Islamaphobia,” but eminently curable. It is not every century when a major faith suffers from mass abjuration. One can only wonder what the U.S. would be like had Bush been less dedicated to its sovereignty, less forthright in identifying the issues, and more compromising in his facing the Islamic threat. It is hard to imagine what state the world would be in. Not a few imaginative novelists have penned credible dystopian political fantasies that describe a world almost as dysfunctional and schizophrenic as that described in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Novelist Tom Wolfe, in Love Thine Enemy, which appeared in early 2003 to rave reviews, painted an America groaning under the weight of a “Department of Homeland Security” – a very Nazi-Gestapo sounding organization that pries into the lives of all Americans – the merger of the CIA, NSA and FBI into one ineffective intelligence gathering Goliath, more concerned with controlling Americans than detecting and combating terrorism. There are his police state entities called the Transportation Security Agency and Community Action Groups that search travelers and patrons at airports, bus terminals, churches and synagogues, and even in Wal-Marts. In the meantime, he creates a gloomy picture of mounting government debt as Washington fights two costly wars in the Mid- and Far East to bring “democracy” to peoples who neither understand it nor want it, while American casualties mount to the thousands. Tom Clancy wrote another best-seller, Ground Zero, which debuted in 2004 also to rave reviews, echoing the style of Allen Drury, depicting the creation of “Eurabia” and the Islamic conquest of Europe by invading hordes of Muslims, with only Britain just barely holding out, awaiting the appearance of a new Churchill or Margaret Thatcher. But his focus was the jihad waged within America’s own borders. Former functionaries from Islamic “civil rights” organizations are now White House cabinet members. The IRS is empowered to collect Islamic jizya, the Islamic tax on non-Muslims, in addition to regular income taxes. The Secretary of State, Imam Feisal Rauf, negotiates a détente with La Raza, representing millions of illegal Mexicans. There are rumors of impending war between La Raza and Washington. His wife, Daisy Khan, runs a federal program to “educate” military and civilian draftees on the “ins and outs of Islam.” Non-Muslim recruits who convert to Islam during basic training are awarded instant promotion and special “G.I. Bill” educational status. As did Wolfe, Clancy describes the incremental loss of all Constitutional guarantees and limitations that once preserved American liberties, and the rise of a new class of citizens: the privileged Muslim. De facto Sharia law complements regulatory law. Muslim judges sit on half the federal district and appellate courts. Both writers conceived of patriotic, underground “resistance” groups or “militias” that function like the French ones of World War II, led by fugitive men and women who once wrote columns warning Americans of the advancing enemy, and of the Quislings in government who paved the way for the conquest. They are regarded as “subversives” and hunted by the DHS. Uncounted thousands of “dissidents” are transported to “reeducation” camps built on the Alaskan tundra, where food rations depend on how well prisoners respond to a daily and constant immersion in a multiculturalist curriculum designed to strip an individual of his identity. The curriculum, Clancy wrote, “was designed by leading lights in the Department of Education and approved by the National Education Association, although some dared think the roles were reversed. This hardly mattered, however, to the inmates. Few could withstand the ‘good cop-bad cop’ regimen of the indoctrination and emerge to damn the ‘therapeutics of tyranny.’ Those who did were branded ‘intractable recidivists’ and simply vanished one day from the barracks.” Clancy’s novel climaxes with the dynamiting of the “Ground Zero Mosque,” a “victory monument” approved by a former mayor of New York, erected near the site of a new World Trade Center that more resembles a public housing project than a monument to capitalism. This segment of the novel tasks one’s credibility – what cowardly souls would actually allow an Islamic victory monument be built anywhere in America? – but it is an entertaining read nonetheless Demolition of the mosque by the “James Madison Strike Force” serves as a signal for a general American uprising against the “establishment,” although Clancy left open the denouement of the rebellion. After all, the manpower and firepower are on the side of the “establishment.” But then, the British Crown had the same advantage over the colonists over two centuries ago. Clancy leaves the ending to his readers’ imaginations. Movies were made of the Wolfe and Clancy novels, and have become cult classics, especially among the young and college students. But as we remember those who died on this day ten years ago, we should be thankful to all those living souls who took their responsibilities seriously and rose to the occasion to preserve a sane and safe world. They saved us from what might have been an awful and terrible future, the end of America as it crept along a path to extinction, like a senior citizen leaning on a walker, headed for a precipice, and unable or unwilling to resist the momentum. The attack required nothing less than victory over the cancerous phenomenon of Islam, a totalitarian ideology riding on the coattails of expanding and insatiable federal powers. Islam is now a fading memory, as is Congressional arrogance. The change authored by President George W. Bush has given America – and the world – new and tangible reason for hope for the future. Benjamin Franklin wrote: “He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.” Americans can be proud that they deserve both. They have not short-changed themselves. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, once jeopardized by ignorance and complacence and an omnivorous pragmatism, have been renewed in men’s minds and in fact. Their symbols are the new World Trade Center towers that flash their meaning as eloquently and permanently as does the Statue of Liberty. Knock us down again, if you dare. We will rise again. Long may the Twin Towers shimmer in the sun! And Long Live Lady Liberty! © 2011 by Edward Cline Cross-posted from Metablog

Ah, cartoons! And comic books! They could be so much fun to read, often educational, but perhaps even more fun to create. But those days are gone. Now American children will be offered the chance to read of the adventures of the Silver Scorpion, a wheelchair-bound Muslim “superhero.” He can alter metal, you see, and presumably cause gangsters’ guns to jam and American Predator drones to miss their targets. And for a while kids have been enthralled (well, maybe not) by the quest of “The 99,” a bigger gang of proselytizing Muslim “superheroes” after the alleged ninety-nine qualities of Allah. These are now magical stones that contain the wisdom of the Bagdad Library (not the Alexandrian one). Imagine a glorified Muslim Easter egg hunt. You wouldn’t catch the League of Justice wasting their time looking for talking rocks. This has also been turned into an animated feature that would make NPR proud (“made possible by viewers like you – thanks for your tax dollars and contributions”). The editor of Family Security Matters a year ago ran a comprehensive exposé on how Islamic comics are infiltrating the culture, and with the encouragement of President Obama (see the video in this link to the article; he boasts in his best multicultural manner that Superman and Batman have shaken hands with Islamic superheroes). I will not try to top that excellent article. But every panel and frame of this propaganda is intended to indoctrinate children about the putative goodness of Islam. The Ninety-Nine are all children, including glib-tongued teens, crafted to appeal to modern sensibilities. Those sensibilities allow for creeping dhimmitude, prepared and propagated by American educational policies. Cultural jihad and creeping dhimmitude aren’t just about banning Voltaire, imposing politically correct Newspeak in politics and journalism, including Islamic holidays on calendars, and demonizing critics of Islam. It’s also about conditioning children to be passive manqués who will obey the state (or the caliphate) and never presume to think for themselves. Imagery has proven to be a powerful ideological weapon. B.F. Skinner would lavish praise on the phenomenon. Communists and Nazis would be envious. In the meantime, my sketching and blocking skills being rusty, I invite anyone to illustrate the following story. Turn it into an animated short, with special CGI effects, á la Avatar. Picture fierce-looking, never-smiling Allah, always in a nightgown and sandals, slightly bald but boasting a flowing white beard, with a kosh tucked inside his belt and a scimitar sitting at his feet (just in case), playing celestial poker with his buddies Moragu, Saturn (snacking on one of his own children), Zagaga, Lord Shiva (recently divorced from Kali, whom he finally realized was a dominatrix), and Yahweh. In between hands, and in between sips of Dazzle Dust Chablis, Allah and Yahweh reminisce about the good old days, or the good old eons when the universe was young and they had the run of the place. They went back a long way. They were the cause of the “Big Bang.” Yahweh and Allah are best friends. They weren’t always. You see, long ago (in another dimension not detectable by mere mortals), when they were all pubescent kids, Yahweh was the original alpha-male god of all gods and the neighborhood bully. Nobody knew who appointed him to that station, he just was; his and everyone else’s origins were the subject of many a heated, contentious, and often violent debate among the student body at the Universal Academy of Supreme Power and Metaphysical Manipulation (much like the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry). The issue was never resolved. However, Yahweh once tried to steal Allah’s lunch money in the school playground. Allah, being a possessive and obnoxious little brat anyway – he was parentless, as well, having had no role model on which to fashion his character, and this may have contributed to his crankiness and aggressive behavior – beat the Beejesus out of Yahweh after a vigorous game of kick-the-can (a tie between the teams). For the longest time, Yahweh was “It.” That had abruptly and unexpectedly changed during the course of the game. It was not well received by Yahweh. Yahweh, a moody and gnarly person himself, was resentful that he had only tied. He had failed to spot Wontonka, a totem-sized future American Indian god, who was hiding in plain sight behind a boxwood. He did not believe in good sportsmanship. So he attempted to channel his frustration by bullying Allah into surrendering his four-and-six-pence. Allah, not lacking in arrogance, forthwith delivered a powerful knee to Yahweh’s groin and soon was thrashing the Anointed One with a hail of blows. Yahweh stumbled back in shock and confusion. When the latter added insult to injury as Allah had him pinned down, and accused Allah’s mother of having mated with a scorpion (Yahweh knew that David Lean’s movie, Lawrence of Arabia, would be made six billion years hence, and he really liked that line of Anthony Quinn’s), Allah laid into Yahweh with even more furious blows, yanking painfully at Yahweh’s peach-fuzz beard for extra measure, screaming, “You offensive, insensitive, callous brute!” Yahweh at last had to cry uncle and plead for mercy. “Yahweh concedes to Allah!” Spectators of this match thought they had heard, “Allah concedes to Yahweh!” so similar were their names in pronunciation. They were confused. It made no sense. They argued amongst themselves as Allah continued to pummel Yahweh. But, these were up-and-coming deities, who did not need to make any sense. Hovering in the background was God (nicknamed “Bog”), a shy, quiet little gamin whose constitution caused him to flit from recognizable humanoid form to a dove. All the other students avoided him, even Yahweh and Allah, because there was something strange and unsettling about him. It was his mesmerizing eyes. Allah envied those eyes. But he knew that eventually God or Bog would cause trouble in the future. He had once remarked to Baal, “Better look out for that one. It’s always the wallflowers who make the most trouble later.” “He gives me the creeps,” agreed Baal, the demon god, munching on a piglet. He was nothing to look at, either, resembling as he did the Rancor in Star Wars, a silly movie about magical powers Allah knew would be shot six billion years hence. Baal didn’t know that, for he could not see into the future. His talents lay elsewhere. There would be a falling-out between him and Allah. Back to the schoolyard dust-up. Allah relented, released Yahweh from his hold, and stood up. “Allah is merciful,” he said, shaking a finger down at Yahweh, who was near tears, “and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!” Thus, the Big Bang, which didn’t happen that instant. It took time for the energy expended by Allah and Yahweh in that terrible fight to gather enough pressure and molecular dissonance for the temporal realm to explode, and time hadn’t been invented yet. By Allah. And that was how Allah became the only true God (so gossips say). All the other Academy’s male students more or less conceded Allah’s supremacy and offered no challenges to his new-found title as Numero Uno of the Firmament. There were some future goddesses in the school, too, but Allah didn’t like girls, especially not those pretty little Greek ones, showing off in their skimpy robes and behaving like they were Someone’s gift to men. It was just an expression, but no one could say who that Someone was; no one wanted to “go there” on the matter of the infinite regression of First Causes; the subject was not in the school’s curriculum and forbidden to discussion. Allah harbored a special dislike of the Cretan girl-goddesses, who traipsed around wearing nothing at all on top. When he accused them of immodesty and of being a distraction during class, they would usually retort, “In your dreams, Kilroy. We caught you looking.” Allah, being a natural prude who could not brook rejection, because he knew he was perfect, complained to the headmaster about the girl-goddesses. But this venerable person (no one knew where he came from, either, or how he acquired his knowledge and powers; he just was) advised Allah to be patient. “This school has a policy of diversity, and welcomes students from all cultural and belief backgrounds. But someday your time will come, and you will set the rules. In the meantime, you must be tolerant.” He paused and added another admonition. “You must stop teasing Kali about her four arms. You mustn’t make fun of others’ disabilities.” The headmaster studied Allah’s petulant face. He noted that the child’s beard was growing thick and would soon need some trimming, and perhaps a shampoo. “By the way, you have been tardy in deciding how many Imams will deliver humankind from its misery. And when. You must decide soon. Will it be the seventh, or the twelfth, or the thirty-first? I cannot award you a diploma if you continue to be so indecisive.” “I’ll do what I wish,” muttered Allah. “I will nominate the Mahdi or the Expected One when I’m damned good and ready.” From that day onward, Allah brooded, and brooded, and brooded, and thought many dark thoughts. Not deep thoughts, just dark ones. It was his foremost and governing quality. He had ninety-eight to go. Allah graduated with honors from the Universal Academy. Immediately upon receiving his diploma, he dove into his work with an enterprising passion. As the temporal realm unfolded in the Big Bang, he staked claims to large portions of it, planned the demise of the other Academy graduates (all false gods anyway, he was “It,” but he might keep a few around, just for company), and contrived a way to make himself known to humankind without really showing himself . He was very sensitive about his personal appearance. “I will invent a prophet, and his name will be Mohammad!” he exclaimed triumphantly to the void, which was slowly coalescing into the heavens. It came to him, just like that, although the thought confounded him for a moment, because he should have known about it beforehand, eons ago. That was when Allah learned that he was also omnipotent, as well as omniscient, and could change his own predestined knowledge of what was to be and what he might and might not do about it. “It is the will of Allah! It will be written!” But, where? Ah, yes, a holy book! Full of fairy tales and blood and gore and rapine and slaughter for the gullible and impressionable. Appeal to their prurience. And sacred stones! And commandments! Dozens of them! I’ll make them genuflect – No! Bow five times a day – in submission to a rock he would cast from the sky! And then have the fools swathe it in silver! But, the book? – No illustrations! He would keep them guessing! What would he call the holy book? Allah snapped his fingers. The Recitation! The story of Allah as told by Gabriel to a brigand! And it’ll be a bloody miracle if Mohammad could memorize it all! So, he’d have to make Mohammad an idiot savant! Allah cackled to himself, and rubbed his hands together, and began imagining the likeness of Mohammad the Prophet. And he remembered the mesmerizing eyes of Bog. “Yes. Svengali! He’ll put the fear of Allah in a rhinoceros!” Which he hadn’t invented. Still, he did a merry jig in celebration of his own almightiness. The rhinoceros was Bog’s doing. Bog, you see, was busy in another quadrant of the universe. Allah was right. That one was going to be trouble. But, that’s another story. Cross-posted from Metablog

In The Netherlands, a European country least likely to generate good news, Geert Wilders, the outspoken Dutch politician who was on trial for “hate speech,” was acquitted of having committed the alleged crime. We are patiently waiting for such news to emanate from other least likely European countries that are also beset by masses of non-integrating Muslims and the incremental Islamazation: Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, whose crime rates have skyrocketed because immigrant Muslims do not feel obliged to adapt to the countries they invaded or recognize any morality but their own, which is primitive, bestial, and immune from reason. The Netherlands, like those other besieged-within-their-own-walls countries, established immigration policies that were both expedient and high-sounding. These policies facilitated the importation of cheap labor and the “honor” of being non-discriminatory and open to all comers. These countries were proud to be the templates of multiculturalism and the pioneers of democratic social experiments. Their policies indiscriminately embraced its nascent and then determined conquerors: Muslims. Muslims came, paradoxically, from countries where Islam was the rule and the culture, to countries that were nominally freer. No one asked them why they chose to leave a country in which they would be culturally comfortable, and move to a country whose culture could not accommodate anything that Islam stood for, in practice and in theory, unless its intellectual and political leaders believed they could mix oil and water and produce a everlasting culture palatable to and enjoyable by all. Perhaps the Dutch policymakers (and their counterparts in the rest of Europe) thought that these people came to their country to escape poverty and persecution. What they are grudgingly conceding now is that Muslims as a rule bring their poverty and persecution with them. They are recognizing that Muslims are not the starry-eyed newcomers it was once assumed they were, “yearning to be free,” but rather the numerous and ever-growing vanguard of an ideology of conquest. They are beginning to acknowledge that Muslims came to their country with malice aforethought, with no intention of adopting or adapting to the moral and political values of their host countries, except to exploit the various welfare programs and multiculturalism – that is, to cash in on the irrational policies of those countries. Pamela Geller on her Atlas Shrugs site listed the charges against Wilders: 1. Intentionally offending Muslims 2. Inciting hatred against Muslims 3. Inciting discrimination against Muslims 4. Inciting hatred of non-western immigrants There are many things wrong with the notion of hate speech. But first there is this reportage from the BBC on Wilders’ acquittal. Amsterdam judge Marcel van Oosten accepted the Freedom Party leader's statements were directed at Islam and not at Muslim believers. They were, the judge ruled, "acceptable within the context of public debate". It is believed the plaintiffs may attempt to make their case before a European court or the UN. Their lawyer, Ties Prakken, was quoted by Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf as saying they were "deeply disappointed" and believed the right of minorities to be protected against hate speech had been violated. But suppose Wilders’ statements were not made in the “context of public debate.” Suppose they were private statements uttered by Wilders as a private citizen in a private argument or debate, not intended to be made “public,” but which were reported by eavesdroppers or informants to the authorities. What then? Would the Dutch courts have the moral authority to charge Wilders with “hate speech” or a “hate crime”? Probably. One thing that has been overlooked in the justifiable jubilation over Wilders’ acquittal is that the policy of rights, including the right of free speech, remains and is treated as a privilege granted by the government. The court simply conceded defeat on its own terms, not on any universal premise. It is interesting to note that the government’s prosecutors advised the court not to pursue the trial; one suspects that they knew that the government had no grounds for persecuting Wilders, that they believed the distinction between private and public speech was invalid, superficial and immaterial. Wilders has repeatedly stated that his statements about Islam were not directed against Muslims, that he was criticizing an ideology, and not the individuals who subscribe to it, i.e., Muslims. He has compared Islam to Nazism and its chief document, the Koran, to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Certainly Nazis and Muslims are not exempt from criticism to the extent that they, as individuals, subscribe to evil ideologies, and deserve all the criticism they have earned. Ideas do not float in the air and somehow infect and incriminate the helpless, hapless, and blameless minds of such individuals. Religious and political convictions are a matter of conscious, volitional choice. But suppose one did make statements intended to offend Muslims. Where is the crime? Where is the initiation of force? What should be the rational response of the allegedly offended person? Why should an intention be treated as a crime? Or hatred, or prejudice? Suppose one did attempt to incite with words hatred against Muslims? The speaker already hates Muslims, and whether in private or in public, speaks to persuade others to hate Muslims. How can speech be construed as assault? Is it aggravated assault, with one’s words treated as a deadly and physically harming weapon? Or simple battery, with one’s words physically harming an individual? Where is the physical contact between the speaker and the alleged victim? There is none. How can “hateful” words lead to “discrimination”? Discrimination against another person because of his race, gender or religion does not entail the initiation of force. It is a private decision to not hire or associate with persons who meet those criteria. Discrimination may or may not be a rational decision, but to enforce non-discrimination requires the employment of legislative or literal force. In the case of Muslims, it is particularly ironic that their “defenders” should exploit the “self-esteem” racket concocted by Western sociologists to silence their critics, when Islam commands an abject and total surrender of the self to a ghost. Such submission does not entail or cause “esteem” of any kind. However, they seek to be "protected" against mockery and/or moral condemnation that such submission has earned them. “Hate speech” is not the equivalent of slander or libel. Slander and libel must make claims of fact about a person before the person can sue the perpetrator of those claims and attempt to prove that they are not facts. Feelings obviously can be hurt, but a hurt feeling is not an actionable offense that justifies retaliatory force, private or governmental. Unlike a black eye or a broken arm, a hurt feeling cannot be demonstrable in court as evidence of assault. Unlike a physical injury, feelings can be faked. But lawsuits, criminal or civil, have been the weapons used by Muslims to silence the critics of Islam and Muslims, and they are successful only in those countries whose non-objective law has been further corrupted and co-opted by multiculturalism and political correctness in word and deed. So, while Geert Wilders, a courageous and passionate man, has been exonerated of having committed what the Dutch court has recognized is a non-crime, he has not truly been acquitted of “hate speech.” He has not been freed from the clutches of non-objective law, which still has the power to define, enforce and punish the “crime” of speaking one’s mind. His acquittal is a qualified victory for freedom of speech. In The Netherlands, as well as elsewhere, and as with the status of property rights, it remains a freedom treated as a grant and dispensation originating in government, not in the individual, a grant that may be withdrawn at any time. Wilders is not “free at last.” He is merely on probation. He will not be free until his right to speak is recognized as an inalienable right, inalienable from his existence as an individual. Cross-posted from Metablog

There were many pluses in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress on May 24th, and some critical minuses. It was, however, refreshing to listen to a speech that was not inflated with platitudes and bromides. It was a sincere speech, delivered forthrightly and largely unconcerned with what President Barack Obama might think of it. And it was especially refreshing to see someone publicly lecture Obama on the realities of the Mideast. Unlike some critics of Netanyahu’s speech, I derived much satisfaction from seeing our Dissimulator-in-Chief effectively slapped down for the arrogance of his putative, feigned ignorance of those realities. One can respect the office of president, but not its occupant. And respect for the office is something I am certain Obama wishes to destroy, given his behavior at home and abroad. And he is no friend of Israel. Judge for yourself. On May 19th Obama said: So while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state. Only a fool would believe that Israel would be “secure” when its committed enemies are only a stone’s throw away from its major population centers. It would be fruitless to gainsay Netanyahu’s speech. One cannot envy the Prime Minister for having had to make it. He walks on a political and rhetorical tightrope. Beneath its honesty and sincerity, and to the contrary notwithstanding forthe numerous standing ovations the speech received, was an undercurrent of trepidation. One could sense it while watching him deliver the speech and by reading between the lines of a transcript of the speech. Will America ask Israel to submit to destruction, to commit suicide? It has been observed by conservative and liberal pundits alike that Obama’s Mideast speech of May 19th was a thinly disguised betrayal of Israel and a communication of an imperative that Israel put itself in fatal jeopardy by going back the “1967 lines.” I am sure this was not lost on Netanyahu. He reminded Obama that those borders are indefensible, and that the idea is a prescription for Israel’s accelerated annihilation. There were, however, elements in Netanyahu’s speech that do not bode well for the future of Israel. One of them was this statement: " Militant Islam threatens the world. It threatens Islam." This is the fatal crack in the dam of Netanyahu’s moral certainty and moral certitude. It can only widen and usher in a flood of concessions to the Palestinians and whatever party brokers an agreement between these savages and Israel. One can see that in the text of the speech, in the Prime Minister’s willingness to make “painful compromises” to accommodate the Palestinians. It is tantamount to saying, “Militant Nazism threatens the world. It threatens Nazism.” The statement, as Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch tries to point out, masks the fallacy that Islam is just another religion whose adherents are married to its core tenets and who are responsible for all the mayhem. These are the “extremists.” All other Muslims are blameless. But they are not blameless, no more blameless than Nazi Party members who did not invade European countries or did not herd Jews into gas chambers. All those “passive,” blameless Muslims must share responsibility for the crimes committed in the name of their religion, for it is an ideology of totalitarianism. The peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan are vital. But they're not enough. We must also find a way to forge a lasting peace with the Palestinians. Two years ago, I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples: A Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state. I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel, it is my responsibility to lead my people to peace. This is not easy for me. I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the Jewish homeland. In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo. There is no way to negotiate with a tribe of savages who wish to destroy you. Netanyahu’s statements suggest that the Palestinians wish for the same things that Israelis want and have. This is placing a benevolent construct on the intentions of a boa constrictor that is already entwined around one’s leg and is working its way up to one’s torso. I believe he knows better. But to condemn the Palestinians publicly would ensure a violent reaction that could lose what little support Israel has in the United States. One can understand the pragmatism of such a statement. Netanyahu does not have the luxury of speaking his mind about Islam. He could very well be impeached or brought to trial in Israel itself, as Geert Wilders has been in the Netherlands, for even insinuating that Islam is a nihilist ideology which, among other things, regards Jews and other non-believers as the equivalent of pigs and dogs, the eternal enemies of Islam and Muslims. The pragmatism, however, does not make it right. Islamic ideology is what it is, and nothing else. Would Netanyahu call the Gazans “moderate” Islamists, but not “extremists”? What does Netanyahu think motivates the “extremists”? He has made no connection between the ideology and the actions it inspires. Not publicly. That is a tragic and dangerous failing. Not entirely unrelated to Netanyahu’s speech, is this news item from Dutch News: The public prosecution department on Wednesday called for PVV leader Geert Wilders to be found not guilty of inciting hatred, as it tied up its case against the MP. Prosecutors say Wilders' remarks are critical of Islam which is not the same as inciting hatred against Muslims themselves. This is good news that should be read with reservations. (And I believe that the outrage expressed by bloggers and others over Wilders' plight has influenced the prosecution to ask for a "not guilty" verdict.) One's reservation should be that there should be no recognized crime such as "hate speech." The notion conflicts with the concept of freedom of speech. "Hate speech" bypasses the legitimate notions of slander and libel, neither of which can incite "violence" against the slandered or libeled. "Hate speech" was invented to gag anyone critical of any group's ideology through fear of prosecution. “Hurt feelings” or “loss of dignity” or “insults” are not evidence of a crime. No force was employed by Wilders. Wilders should never have been charged with anything, because the focus of his remarks was on Islam's ideology, not on individual Muslims, singly or collectively. He has said so many times himself. Notice, for example, that the liars of the University of East Anglia and their allies, such as Al Gore, have not brought suit against anyone for "hate speech" for having discredited the whole global warming theory and the credibility and reputations of the AGW advocates and conspirators. Wilders has done the same service in the name of truth by excoriating the nature of Islam. While the prosecution’s recommendation is a step in the right direction, the Dutch judiciary and government should discard the whole fallacy of “hate speech.” “Peace” with the Palestinians is also a fallacy. As Ayn Rand succinctly put it, “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win.” And the Palestinians are a tribe poisoned by generations of racial and religious hate. It is a population of nihilists, of zeroes. They are ruled by a terrorist organization that has declared Israel illegitimate and a legitimate target for eradication. Florida congressman Allen West, in his response to Obama’s Mideast speech, made this interesting historical note: America should never negotiate with the Palestinian Authority- which has aligned itself with Hamas. Palestine is a region, not a people or a modern state. Based upon Roman Emperor Hadrian’s declaration in 73 AD, the original Palestinian people are the Jewish people. My defense of Israel rests, however, on the fact that it is a productive, Westernized, semi-free nation, and not on its historical antecedents. And the creation of Israel was the sole moral action ever taken by the United Nations. A reader known only to me as “Jake,” in a posting about my “On Planet Obama” commentary, which also appeared on Capitalism Magazine, provided an excellent précis of Middle East history in the context of the continuing Israeli-Arab conflict. I reprint his entire commentary here because, first, it is educational, and second, it is an instance of clear thinking one will not encounter in the news media or in politics. The “Palestinians” are a recent invention and a myth propagated to demonize Israel. There is no nation called “Palestine” and there is no such thing as a “Palestinian” people. There never has been such a nation or such a people. “Palestine” simply refers to the state that fanatic Islamists hope will replace Israel, once it is destroyed. After the Great War [World War I], the British controlled a chunk of land that they dubbed “the Palestine Mandate.” Even though they promised the Zionists a “national home” for Jews on this land; they soon caved to Arab hysteria and gave the Arabs 80% of the land in 1921 (this is modern-day Jordan). What was left of the Mandate had already long been settled by Arabs and Jews. Jews had lived there continuously for 3,700 years. Indeed; there had been no Arabs on this land, ever, until the barbaric Muslim Imperial invasions of the 7th Century. Since the Jews had been living here for thousands of years; there was no reason at all why these Jews could not set up a formal government on their homeland to be recognized by the UN. In 1948; the Jews were given less than half of the 10% that was left of the Mandate, with the rest going to the Arabs who had also lived on the land that remained. They were given three slivers of indefensible, disconnected land less than 10 miles across. The Arabs were given the ancient Jewish homes of Judea and Samaria, and the UN got control of their holy city of Jerusalem (which was surrounded by Arab land). This tiny nation of literally only 800,000 Jews, many of whom were Holocaust survivors, and with absolutely no natural resources in the barren wasteland of desert that represented 60% of the land it controlled; was now surrounded by declared enemies with a total population exceeding 100 million. The Arab populace in Israel was almost as large as the Jewish population. The Israelis declared that any Arab who chose to stay in Israel would enjoy equal rights under the law, and decided to make both Arabic and Hebrew their official languages. Due to the industrial and agricultural development the Jews brought about; the Arab population of this land had actually more than tripled from what it was. If the Arabs had been willing to accept more than 90% of the land when they were offered it, there would have been no Middle East conflict. Instead; the murderous Arab dictatorships of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia, urged on by Yemen; declared war and attacked Israel on the day of its creation. In an astonishing display of courage and heroism on a breathtaking scale; the Israelis swiftly defeated them all without much trouble. Urged on by their political and spiritual leaders, an estimated 472,000 Arabs fled their homes in Israel on their own accord to escape the danger and brutality of the invading Arab armies. The Arab dictators assured them that Israel would be promptly destroyed, and that they could return once all the Jews were dead. The “Palestinians” who lived in the Arab area of the UN partition never attempted to set up a “Palestinian” state, because the myth of their distinct “Palestinian” nationality had yet to be devised. So Jordan took over the entire West Bank in 1950. There was no call for “ending the occupation.” The Israelis properly refused to let back in the Arab savages who had left Israel in order to celebrate the hope of its violent destruction. They let any Arab who chose to stay remain, and today those Arab Israelis enjoy far more rights and privileges, and a greater standard of living, than that which any other Arab population anywhere else in the entire Middle East enjoy. This is because Israel is the only free country in the entire Middle East region: All the rest are feudal monarchies, theocratic dungeons, or totalitarian slave states. More than 600,000 Jews were forcibly evicted from the lands on which they had lived for centuries under threat of torture or murder by the tin-pot Arab strongmen. The Israelis welcomed them all into Israel and today they enjoy a wonderful standard of living in a beautiful and well-developed nation. The unwanted “Palestinian” refugees, urged to leave by their own leaders, were deliberately kept by those same leaders in squalid camps of unspeakable poverty for decades—despite the oil wealth the Arab nations gained by simply stealing Western oil fields and nationalizing them. They did this in order to keep the so-called “Palestinians” desperate and angry enough to be easily indoctrinated with the hatred necessary for future wars against Israel. Naturally; their self-created debased condition was blamed on Israel. Israel has had to fight five wars in self-defense against the hostile Arab aggressors. Despite having every right to annex the land it seized from the aggressors—as every other nation has done—Israel astonishingly refused to do so, and expressed the hope that the land could be traded for peace. The Arabs, however, remained in a declared state of war against Israel. Given that they were determined to destroy Israel; Israel had no choice but to hold onto some of the land from which the Arabs had launched their previous attacks in order to render itself defensible. The Arabs who denounce this are nothing but criminals protesting the alleged “injustice” of having their guns confiscated by the police. Israel has offered the Palestinians 95% of their demands and received nothing in return but terrorism. There is nothing Israel could ever do to satisfy the blood-lust of the Palestinians. They want the destruction of Israel more than they want a better life for themselves. They admit as much with pride every time Westerners go to “Palestine” to poll them on their opinions. Israelis who bring fuel and electricity into Gaza are regularly murdered or mutilated by fundamentalist killers. Israel allows sick or injured Palestinians to seek medical treatment in Israel. Hamas poses as Palestinian patients in order to suicide bomb Jewish doctors. While there are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel who call for “Peace Now” with the Palestinians and speak with passion about their sufferings; there are no notable Palestinian spokesmen who even recognize Jews as human. In short, knowingly or not, constant and repeated reference to the “Palestinians” represents the reification of a tribe of zeroes, who wish to be something they are not and can never be by murdering those who are something. They are nothing, identityless. They wish to reduce Israel to nothingness. That is Islam. That is nihilism. And pragmatism, compromise, and moral relativism make it possible. The only true “Palestinians” are the Israelis. Cross-posted from Metablog

One sometimes wonders what planet President Barack Obama lives on. It must be that mythical doppelganger of Earth that revolves unseen by us on the exact opposite side of the Sun. There, he can address a gathering in the State Department about an incredible vision of an Israel that is peacefully embraced on all sides by a benign Palestinian state whose government and citizens bear no grudge against Israel – an incredible vision of “coexistence” which nonetheless everyone believes is possible. There, in that mythical Palestine, Muslims win most of the Nobel Prizes in science and medicine, and Muslims read accounts of how Muslims discovered America and landed men on the moon. There, Muslim entrepreneurs invented the Internet and economical ways to irrigate desert land. There, Muslims are close to curing cancer. Gaza is known as the “Haight-Ashbury” of the Middle East, populated by Woodstockian, free-loving, surf-happy hippies. There, Palestinians are noted for their strenuous opposition to the death penalty, and who stiffen indignantly at any suggestion that they would ever accept foreign aid or handouts. There, the Hamas Medical Center in Samaria rivals the Mayo Clinic in cutting edge research. There, the late Yasser Arafat, at his own private expense, operated an “underground railroad” that spirited tens of thousands of Jews, Copts, Christians and apostate former Muslims from religious and political persecution in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iran. There, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem rivals that in Washington, D.C. in size and information. Fantasy? Please excuse the satire. It is nearly amusing to mock the zeroes of “Palestine” with wondrous achievements and virtues. But, is the vision of the real Barack Obama in his real May 19th speech any less fantastic? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for all to see, in the company of the president, sent Obama to the back of the class in his reply that this vision is not going to happen, because reality will not conform to his vision or his wishes. What is Obama’s vision of the Middle East? For one thing, it is the deliberate encirclement of Israel by a Palestinian state. His notion of a contiguous Palestinian state means the linkage of Gaza and the West Bank. Which means that Israel would need to surrender its Mediterranean side, cede all of the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and have a single border – with a Palestinian state and no other. The alternative, after “swaps” probably negotiated by Jimmy Carter, at best would mean a contiguous Palestinian state that would cut Israel in half. Any way one looks at it, it means the dismemberment, strangulation and asphyxiation of Israel. Or death. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state. The death of Israel has been the goal of the Palestinians for half a century. Off camera, out of sight, the wolves are licking their chops. That is the nub of Obama’s speech. All else is patronizing, insincere nonsense. To wit: The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome. The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation. Which outcome? The destruction of Israel? Because that is all the “process” can produce. Like Henry II about the stubborn Thomas Becket, the “international community” is “tired” of the troublesome effort to reconcile good and evil. “Will no one rid us of this troublesome nation?” And, of course, there is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQcQdWBqt14solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum: the Jews should go back to a Europe, as it morphs into Eurabia, that is growing more and more inhospitable for Jews. “Permanent occupation”? To the victor of three wars, all initiated by Israel’s enemies, belongs the land, to be permanently occupied and annexed into the nation because, well, the Arabs, who invaded Israel, lost. And possession of those lands has helped to guarantee Israel’s existence. Tough. Too bad. You initiate force, you risk loss. That is the reality of war. The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state. And the duration of this transition period must be agreed, and the effectiveness of security arrangements must be demonstrated. This is fantasy on LSD. Israel withdrew from Gaza. Result? Thousands of rockets fired into Israel. Tunnels that smuggle arms and terrorists into Gaza. The Israeli withdrawal was a gesture of peace. The Palestinian answer was a “peace” sign composed of an upraised middle finger. The greatest untapped resource in the Middle East and North Africa is the talent of its people. In the recent protests, we see that talent on display, as people harness technology to move the world. It's no coincidence that one of the leaders of Tahrir Square was an executive for Google. That energy now needs to be channeled, in country after country, so that economic growth can solidify the accomplishments of the street. The only technology I am aware of that Muslims are harnessing is the technology of murder, massacre and war, and it has moved the world from one of relative safety to one of unknown, unpredictable peril, in America, and abroad. As for that Google executive who was a “leader” of Tahir Square, has he apologized to Lara Logan for the assault on her by pro- and anti-Mubarak Muslims? Guess not. Rape and brutality are the Arab way. Or the islamic way. It is written. For just as democratic revolutions can be triggered by a lack of individual opportunity, successful democratic transitions depend upon an expansion of growth and broad-based prosperity. Obama is right to use the term “democratic.” Democracy means mob rule by a majority. The majorities in Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria are Muslim. Muslims, like Obama, have no conception of individual rights, or of freedom of speech. They will vote the straight Islamic ticket drawn up by Hamas, Fatah, and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the height of venality for Obama to speak of “individual opportunity” and “broad-based prosperity” when he is doing his damnedest to eradicate those things in the United States. Anything Obama has ever said or will ever say about “prosperity” and “inalienable rights” and “the rule of law” is glitter-dusted excelsior concealing his main point, like the stuff that swaddled the bogus Maltese Falcon. In this instance, his main point is to assign Israel the impossible task of playing Huggy Bear and kiss-kiss with Hamas, Fatah, and any random Palestinian without getting a chiv sunk into its back. The liberal media and all others who blatantly wish Israel would just submit to Islam or be so good as to drop dead will natter on endlessly about the feasibility of Obama’s proposals. They have been doing it for years. Our itinerant Kenyan is not satisfied with Mau-Mauing his own country with spending policies that ensure its decline and bankruptcy. No objective appraisal of his Middle East plan can ignore the fact that it is not merely suicidal, but is eminently impractical even by the Huggy Bear “ideals” of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It is a prescription for homicide. The “peace” sought by the Palestinians is the “peace” preached by Islam: the “peace” of conquest and subjugation. When all the world is under a global caliphate, there will be “peace.” And not only does Obama expect Israel to “negotiate” itself into oblivion, but he will force the American taxpayer to subsidize the process. It is not pathetic enough that the U.S. is training the Palestinian Authority’s “police.” Is this not tantamount to cooperating with Hamas and Fatah? Is it not a dereliction of office that we will “sell” the Saudis billions in modern fighter jets while they goose us at the gas pumps? No, we must help Israel’s enemies by pouring money into their corrupt coffers. [W]e do not want a democratic Egypt to be saddled by the debts of its past. So we will relieve a democratic Egypt of up to $1 billion in debt, and work with our Egyptian partners to invest these resources to foster growth and entrepreneurship. We will help Egypt regain access to markets by guaranteeing $1 billion in borrowing that is needed to finance infrastructure and job creation….[W]e're working with Congress to create Enterprise Funds to invest in Tunisia and Egypt. And these will be modeled on funds that supported the transitions in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. OPIC [Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a U.S. agency, a counterpart of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] will soon launch a $2 billion facility to support private investment across the region. And we will work with the allies to refocus the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development so that it provides the same support for democratic transitions and economic modernization in the Middle East and North Africa as it has in Europe…. Briefly, the “stimulus” goes international, and the results will be similar to what they have been here in the U.S. Much of that money will go to projects other than “peaceful” ones, funneled and laundered to further promote the arming and enabling of Israel’s enemies. Bet on it. That “charity” will make the Holy Land Foundation case look like an episode of Three Card Monte. Treachery, thy name is Obama. Cross-posted from Metablog

Instead of a comment on Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician being tried in The Netherlands for the “crime” of “hate speech,” it would be appropriate for him to speak for himself – in Tennessee. His references to the peril in which Christians have been placed by multiculturalism and political correctness apply equally to all non-Muslims, including Objectivists and atheists. His assertion that “our values” are based on the “Judeo-Christian heritage,” of course, we can disagree with. But in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Pakistan, such a statement would be a literal death sentence, carried out by the regime or by the mob, without the pretense of a trial. And, where, oh, where, is the American politician capable of such foresight and imbued with such courage? The text is taken from an item from Jihad Watch. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Geert Wilders: A Warning to America Speech of Geert Wilders, Cornerstone Church, Nashville, 12 May 2011 Dear friends from Tennessee: I am very happy to be in your midst today. I am happy and proud to be in this impressive church. My friends, I am here to speak words of truth and freedom. Do you know why America is in a better state than Europe? Because you enjoy more freedom than Europeans. And do you know why Americans enjoy more freedom than Europeans? Because you are still allowed to tell the truth. In Europe and Canada people are dragged to court for telling the truth about Islam. I, too, have been dragged to court. I am an elected member of the house of representatives in the Netherlands. I am currently standing in court like a common criminal for saying that Islam is a dangerous totalitarian ideology rather than a religion. The court case is still pending, but I risk a jail sentence of 16 months. Last week, my friend Lars Hedegaard, a journalist from Denmark, was fined because in a private conservation, which was recorded without his knowing, he had criticized the way women are treated in Islamic societies. Recently, another friend, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a human rights activist from Austria, was fined because she had criticized Islam’s founder Muhammad. She had said that Muhammad was a pedophile because he had married a 6-year old girl and raped her when she was 9. Unfortunately, there are many similar cases. I am especially happy to be in your midst because here I can say what I want to say without having to fear that I will be dragged to court upon leaving this church. My dear American friends, you cannot imagine how we envy your First Amendment. The day when America follows the example of Europe and Canada and introduces so-called “hate speech crimes” which is only used to punish people who are critical of Islam, that day America will have lost its freedom. My friends, let us hope that this never happens. Last week, we celebrated Liberation Day in the Netherlands. We celebrated the liberation from the Nazi occupation in 1945. Many American soldiers, including many young Tennesseans, played a decisive role in the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi tyranny. We are immensely grateful for that. Young Americans gave their lives so that the Dutch might be free. I assure you: The Dutch people will never forget this. Unfortunately, however, the Europe which your fathers and grandfathers fought and died for is not the Europe we are living in today. I travel the world to tell people what Europe has become. I wish I could take you all on a visit to my country and show you what Europe has become. It has changed beyond recognition as a result of mass immigration. And not just any mass immigration, but mass immigration driven by the dangerous force of Islam. My friends, I am sorry. I am here today with an unpleasant message. I am here with a warning. I am here with a battle cry: “Wake up, Christians of Tennessee. Islam is at your gate.” Do not make the mistake which Europe made. Do not allow Islam to gain a foothold here. Islam is dangerous. Islam wants to establish a state on earth, ruled by Islamic Sharia law. Islam aims for the submission, whether by persuasion, intimidation or violence, of all non-Muslims, including Christians. The results can be seen in Europe. Islam is an ideology of conquest. It uses two methods to achieve this goal: the first method is the sword. Do you know what figures on the flag of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a country where Christian churches are banned and Christians are not even allowed to wear a tiny crucifix? There is a huge sword on that flag, just below the Islamic creed. The message is clear. Without the sword Islam would not have been able to spread its creed. The second method is immigration. Islam’s founder Muhammad himself taught his followers how to conquer through immigration when they moved from Mecca to Medina. This phenomenon of conquest through immigration is called al-Hijra. My learned friend Sam Solomon has written a perfect book about it. I had a copy of Sam’s book [Modern Day Trojan Horse: The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration, By Sam Solomon and Elias Al Maqdisi, ANM Publishers, 2009} sent to all the members of the Dutch Parliament. But most of them are worse than Saint-Thomas in the Bible. Thomas did not believe what he had not seen. Most politicians refuse to believe the things they see before their very eyes. In Europe we have been experiencing al-Hijra for over 30 years now. Many of our cities have changed beyond recognition. “In each one of our cities” wrote the well-known Italian author Oriana Fallaci shortly before her death in 2006, “there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran.” – end of quote. How did the Europeans get into this situation? It is partly our own fault because we have foolishly adopted the concept of cultural relativism, which manifests itself in the ideology of multiculturalism. Cultural relativism advocates that all cultures are equal. However, cultures wither away and die if people no longer believe that its values are better than those of another culture. Islam is spreading like wildfire wherever people lack the guts to say that their values are better than the Islamic values. Islam is spreading like wildfire because the Koran explicitly tells Muslims that they are “the best of peoples ever raised up for mankind” and that non-Muslims are “the worst of creatures.” Islam is spreading like wildfire everywhere in the West where political, academic, cultural and media elites lack the guts to proudly proclaim, as I believe we all should proclaim: Our Judeo-Christian Western culture is far better and far superior to the Islamic culture. We must be proud to say so! Multiculturalism is a disaster. Almost everyone acknowledges this today, but few dare say why. Let me tell you why: Multiculturalism made us tolerate the intolerant, and now intolerance is annihilating tolerance. We should, in the name of tolerance, claim the right not to tolerate the intolerant. Let us no longer be afraid and politically correct, let us be brave and bold. Let us tell the truth about Islam. Before I continue I want to make clear that I do not have a problem with people. I always make a distinction between the people and the ideology, between Muslims and Islam. Indeed, I have no problems with Muslims, but I do have a problem with the totalitarian Islamic ideology of hate and violence. The fact that there are many so-called moderate Muslims, does not imply that there exists a moderate Islam. A moderate Islam does not exist and will never exist. And because there is no such thing as a moderate Islam, the Islamazation of our free Western societies is an enormous danger. Only two weeks ago, the British press revealed how the so-called “London Taliban” is threatening to kill women who do not wear veils in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. In some neighborhoods Islamic regulations are already being enforced, also on non-Muslims. Women’s rights are being trampled. We are confronted with headscarves and burqa’s, polygamy, female genital mutilation, honor-killings where men murder their wives, daughters or sisters because they do not behave in accordance with Islamic rules. Polls show that the influence of those Muslims who live according to Islam’s aggressive requirements is growing, especially among young people. Among 15-year-old German Muslims, 40 percent consider Islam more important than democracy. Among Muslim university students in Britain, 40 percent support Sharia. One in three of those students considers it legitimate to kill in the name of Islam. Christians are asked to follow the example of Jesus. Muslims are ordered to follow the example of Muhammad. That is why Islam is dangerous. While Christianity preaches love, Islam preached hatred and practices violence. Hatred and violence for everyone who is not a Muslim. Muhammad personally participated in the ethnic cleansing of Medina, where half the population once was Jewish. Muhammad helped to chop off their heads. On his deathbed, he ordered his followers to cleanse Arabia of all Jews and Christians. To this very day, Christian symbols are prohibited in Saudi-Arabia. If you wear a cross in Saudi Arabia, they sent you to jail. And now, Europe is beginning to look like Arabia. Just today, a poll revealed that in Brussels, the capital of the European Union, half the Islamic youths are anti-Semitic. It is dangerous for Jews to walk the streets in Brussels. If you wear a cross or a kippah in certain urban areas in Europe today, you risk being beaten up. In the capital of my own country, Amsterdam, a tram driver was forced to remove his crucifix from sight, while his Muslim colleagues are allowed to wear the veil. In June 2008, the Christian church authorities in the Danish town of Arhus decided to pay so-called “protection money” to Islamic so-called “security guards” who assure that church goers are not harassed by Islamic youths. On March 31st, 2010, Muslims entered the Roman Catholic cathedral of Cordoba, Spain, and attacked the guards with knives. They claimed the cathedral was theirs. Last month, the bishops of Sweden sent out a letter to priests advising them to avoid converting asylum seekers from Islamic countries to Christianity, because the converts would risk losing their lives. In the Netherlands, the city authorities in Amsterdam register polygamous marriages. The authorities in Rotterdam serve only halal meals in municipal cafeterias. Theaters provide separate seats for women who are not allowed to sit next to men. Municipal swimming pools have separate swimming hours for men and women, Muslim lawyers do not have to stand when the judges enter court rooms. Meanwhile Jews are no longer safe on our streets. In Amsterdam, the city of Anne Frank, Jews are again being harassed in the streets. Even political leaders acknowledged that life has become unsafe for Jews in Holland. Do you know what they said? They advised Jews to emigrate. Jews are already running for Israel. But I say: Jews must not leave, violent Muslims must leave! What is needed, my friends, is a spirit of resistance. I repeat: What we need is a spirit of resistance. Why? Because resistance to evil is our moral duty. This resistance begins with expressing our solidarity to Christians, Jews, indeed, to all people worldwide, who are the victims of Islam. There are millions of them. We can see what Islam has in store for us if we watch the fate of the Christians in the Islamic world, such as the Copts in Egypt, the Maronites in Lebanon, the Assyrians in Iraq, and Christians elsewhere. Almost every day, churches are arsoned and Christians are assassinated in Islamic countries. In a report on the persecution of Christians in the world, Archbishop Twal of Jerusalem, wrote recently– I quote: “In the Middle East to be Christian means accepting that you must make a great sacrifice. All too often and in many places, Christians suffer various threats. On some occasions, their homes and churches are burnt, and people are killed. How many atrocities must we endure before somebody somewhere comes to our aid?” – end of quote. Indeed, how many atrocities before we come to their aid? Rivers of tears are flowing from the Middle East, where there is only one safe haven for Christians. You know where that is. The only place in the Middle East where Christians are safe is Israel. That is why Israel deserves our support. Israel is a safe haven for everyone, whatever their belief and opinions. Israel is a beacon of light in a region of total darkness. Israel is fighting our fight. The jihad against Israel is a jihad against all of us. If Israel falls, we, too, will feel the consequences. If Jerusalem falls, Athens, Rome, Amsterdam and Nashville will fall. Therefore, we all are Israel. We should always support Israel! Today, we are confronted with political unrest in the Arab countries. The Arab peoples long for freedom. However, the ideology and culture of Islam is so deeply entrenched in these countries that real freedom is simply impossible as long as Islam remains dominant. A recent poll in post-revolution Egypt found that 85 percent of Egyptians are convinced that Islam’s influence on politics is good, 82 percent believe that adulterers should be stoned, 84 percent want the death penalty for apostates. The press refers to the events in the Arab world today as the Arab spring. I call it the Arab winter. Islam and freedom, Islam and democracy are not compatible. The death of Osama bin Laden last week was a victory for the free world, but we will be confronted with Islamic terrorism as long as Islam exists, because Islam’s founder Muhammad himself was a terrorist, worse than Bin Laden. And here is another truth: The rise of Islam means the rise of Sharia law in our judicial systems. In Europe we already have Sharia wills, Sharia schools, Sharia banks. Britain even has Sharia courts. In my own country, the Netherlands, Sharia is being applied by the courts in cases relating to divorce, child custody, inheritance, and property ownership. Women are always the victims of this because Sharia discriminates women. This is a disgrace. This is not the way we should treat women. My friends, I told you that we have just remembered Liberation Day to commemorate the young Americans and all the heroes who offered their lives to free the Netherlands from Nazi tyranny. It would be an insult to them if we Europeans would give up that precious freedom for another totalitarian ideology called Islam. That is the goal for which my party and I work day after day. And we are having success. In the Netherlands, we are successfully starting to roll back Islam. The current Dutch government is a minority government which can only survive with the backing of my party, the Party for Freedom. We have 24 seats of the 150 seats in parliament and we support the government, in return for measures to prohibit certain aspects of Sharia law. We have achieved that the Netherlands will soon ban the burka and the niqaab. We will also restrict immigration from non-Western countries by up to 50% in the next four years. We are not going to allow Islam to steal our country from us. It was the land of our fathers, it is our land now, our values are based on Christianity, Judaism and Humanism and we will pass this on to our children with all the freedoms that the previous generations have fought for. Let those who want to rob us from our freedoms, stay in their own countries. We do not need them. If you want to wear a burqa, stay in Saudi-Arabia. If you want four wives, stay in Iran. If you want to live in a country where the Islamic ideology is dominant, stay in Pakistan, if you don’t want to assimilate in our society, stay in Somalia. But don’t come over here. We are also going to strip criminals who have a double nationality – for instance Dutch and Moroccan, and who repeatedly commit serious crimes, of their Dutch nationality. We will send them packing, back to their homeland. My friends, what the Party for Freedom has achieved, shows that it can be done. We can fight the Islamazation of our societies. Dear friends, here is my warning. Make no mistake: Islam is also coming for America. In fact, it is already here. America is facing a stealth jihad, the Islamic attempt to introduce Sharia law bit by bit. Last March, a judge in Tampa, Florida, ruled that a lawsuit against a mosque and involving the control of 2.4 million dollars, should proceed under Islamic law. My friends, be aware that this is only the beginning. This is also how it started in Europe. If things continue like this, you will soon have the same problems as we are currently facing. Leaders who talk about immigration without mentioning Islam are blind. They ignore the most important problem Europe and America are facing. I have a message for them: it’s Islam stupid! My friends, fortunately, not all politicians are irresponsible. Here, in Tennessee, brave politicians want to pass legislation which gives the state the power to declare organisations as terrorist groups and allowing material supporters of terrorism to be prosecuted. I applaud them for that. They are true heroes. Yesterday and today, I met some of those brave legislators. They told me that Tennessee in particular is a target of Islam. Help them win their battle. They need your support. While Tennessee is in the frontline, similar legislative initiatives are also being taken in the states of Oklahoma, Wyoming, South Carolina, Texas, Florida, Missouri, Arizona, Indiana. It is encouraging to see that so many politicians are willing to resist Islam. This gives us hope and courage. I am not a pessimist. We can still turn the tide – even in Europe – if we act today. There are five things which we must do. First, we must defend freedom of speech. Freedom is the source of human creativity and development. People and nations wither away without the freedom to question what is presented to them as the truth. Without freedom of speech we risk becoming slaves. Frederick Douglass, the 19th century black American politician, the son of a slave, said – I quote – “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” I have already told you about my court case. This legal charade will not, however, prevent me from saying the truth. Never. I will speak out, even if they drag me before 500 courts and threaten to jail me for a thousand years. The fact that we are being treated as criminals for telling the truth must not deter us. We are doomed if we remain silent or let ourselves be silenced. Let us not forget, this is our first and most important obligation: defend the right to speak the truth. Second, we must end cultural relativism and political correctness. We must repeat it over and over again, especially to our children: Our Western culture based on Christianity and Judaism is superior to the Islamic culture. Our laws are superior to Sharia. Our Judeo-Christian values are better than Islam’s totalitarian rules. And because they are superior and better, we must defend them. We must fight for our own identity, or else we will lose it. We need to be warriors for the good, because the good is worth fighting for. Neutrality in the face of evil is evil. Third, we must stop the Islamazation of our countries. More Islam means less freedom. There is enough Islam in the West already. We must stop immigration from non-Western countries, which are mostly Islamic countries. We must expel criminal immigrants. We must forbid the construction of new hate palaces called mosques. We must also close down all Islamic schools because educating children in a spirit of hate is one of the worst things imaginable. We must introduce anti-Sharia legislation everywhere in the free world. Enough is enough. Fourth, we must take pride in our nations again. We must cherish and preserve the culture and identity of our country. Preserving our own culture and identity is the best antidote against Islamazation. And fifth, last but certainly not least, we must elect wise and courageous leaders who are brave enough to address the problems which are facing us, including the threat of Islam. Politicians who have the courage to speak the truth about Islam. Politicians who dare to denounce the devastating results of the multicultural society. Politicians who – without political correctness – say: enough is enough. You and I, Americans and Europeans, we belong to a common Western culture. We share the ideas and ideals of our common Judeo-Christian heritage. In order to pass this heritage on to our children and grandchildren, we must stand together, side by side, in our struggle against Islamic barbarism. That, my friends, is why I am here. I am here to forge an alliance. Our international freedom alliance. We must stand together for the Judeo-Christian West. We will not allow Islam to overrun Israel and Europe, the cradle of the judeo-Christian civilization. My friends, we will stand together. We will stand firm. We will not submit. Never. Not in Israel, not in Europe, not in America. Nowhere. We will survive. We will stop Islam. We will defend our freedoms. We will remain free. Thank you. Cross-posted from Metablog

You are standing in a gallery with another critic before two paintings hung side by side, one by William-Adolphe Bouguereau and one by Pablo Picasso. Let us say they are Bouguereau’s Idylle (1851), and Picasso’s La Vie (1903). You both agree that the Bouguereau is a fine painting, depicting two lovers in a classical setting, the young man seated on the ground, looking up with adoration at the young woman. His hands clasp her legs possessively; she glances down at him in worship. Their glances are obviously fixed on each other. Everything in the painting works because the colors, the anatomy, the composition, the theme are integrated. You can enjoy the painting, even be inspired by it, and want to own it, without having to analyze it. Your introspection gives it a “10.” You accept it as a completed entity, without the necessity of dissecting its attributes. You explain in detail these virtues to the other critic, but he merely grunts in agreement. The Picasso painting is a “Blue Period” monochrome that initially is repulsive, and on inspection is depressing. Aside from the annoying blue, the figures in it are anatomically impossible, none of figures or the four groups is thematically connected to any of the others, and the malevolence of the picture telegraphs itself from across the gallery. The whole work seems to be an arbitrary jumble of random figures that just happen to be on the same canvas. The composition is erratic and happenstance. Its theme is the futility of existence. The figures could just as well be inanimate objects or a menagerie of zoo animals. It doesn’t matter. You state that La Vie is not merely bad, incompetently done art; it was perhaps deliberately intended to be such. The other critic defends the painting with some emotion, claiming that while there are flaws in the anatomy and composition, and other lapses and errors one might object to on mere technical grounds, they aren’t important, and so one really had no justification to judge the painting so negatively. The figures are recognizable, and there seems to be a theme, though he cannot quite put his finger on it, but denies it is the futility of existence. And how would we know that Picasso was an incompetent artist with nothing of value to say? Besides, he says, if this painting were by chance seen by someone uneducated in art, he might move on to appreciate the Bouguereau. You walk away, shaking your head. You don’t know what else to say to the other critic, but you sense that whatever else you said, would be taken as offensive. That is the situation I find myself in regarding John Aglialoro’s film, “Atlas Shrugged, Part I.” The rebranding of that movie as a defensible work of art by writers who form an ad hoc but wishful consensus to give a disastrous cinematic rendition of Ayn Rand’s monumental novel, Atlas Shrugged, a passing mark has produced some curious reviews. That rebranding calls into question not only the critical skills of those writers, but their understanding of and dedication to reason and Romantic art. The latest of these defenses is C.A. Wolski’s review of the movie in the Spring edition of The Objective Standard. This rebuttal is by no means exhaustive. Readers of this blog know what I think of the movie. There are numerous assertions in Wolski’s article that need correction, and this rebuttal will focus only on the most flagrantly egregious ones. But while I wish the movie to fade into the periphery of my concerns – there are, after all, more pressing battles to fight – my esteem for Rand’s novel is too high and too personal to allow his article to stand unanswered. I could have begun instead with a comparison of the Atlas movie with another that I used in my previous commentary, “Judgment at Nuremberg.” But I decided that a comparison of two paintings and two judgments of them would more simply dramatize the issue. Comparing “Judgment at Nuremberg” with the Atlas movie would be like using a flamethrower to extinguish a nest of termites. Hardly fair. Where to start? It would be appropriate to begin with Wolski’s companion article in The Objective Standard, “Atlas Shrugged’s Long Journey to the Silver Screen,” which is an account of all the attempts to produce a feasible script of the novel, including Rand’s own attempts. In that respect, it is an informative article. But, in a boxed sidebar in the article, “Adapting Atlas: Ayn Rand’s Own Approach,” Wolski writes that Rand made changes in the novel’s dialogue and events, and omitted and created new material. For example, he notes: Rand also introduces the idea of extensive television news coverage—absent in the novel—reporting on the country’s rejection of Rearden Metal and visually depicting the collapse of industry. Where necessary, she wrote new dialogue that presented the theme more overtly, for instance changing the opening by adding new lines that explained the meaning of the giant calendar and that featured the bum telling Eddie, who expresses unease about it, “your days are numbered.” Wolski cites other changes Rand made in especially her last script. He feels it necessary to crack the knuckles of those who would object to such changes by suggesting that even “purists” would not like the changes she made. But the sidebar’s function is an obvious attempt to excuse Aglialoro’s butchered version of the story by insinuating that the “text” is not sacred, and that Rand “did not hesitate to change or add details, incidents, and characters to dramatically and visually illustrate the theme of the novel.” In between the lines one can read, “See? Even Rand did this, that, and the other to her own story, so there’s no reason to score Aglialoro for all the changes he made, etc….” Its purpose is to fend off or answer fundamental criticism of Aglialoro’s script by equating his errors with her changes. But Aglialoro is not Rand, and Atlas Shrugged was not his work to improve on. His and Brian Patrick O’Toole’s script simply assembled body parts from the novel (and perhaps even from Rand’s own script) to patch together a Frankenstein-like creature. Or, if you will, they ripped planks from the novel to fashion a creaky cinematic go-cart, held together by glue, equipped with discarded lawnmower wheels, with no motor, and a Bobble Head of Rand as a hood ornament, with “Atlas Shrugged” painted on the sides should no one recognize the Bobble Head. Wolski’s featured review is basically an example of that rare literary form, an encomium-cum-apology. It is an overture to the “Long Journey” article. Effusive praise is tempered with extraneous reservations and qualifications, extraneous because he sanctions the movie. Atlas Shrugged: Part I , the first in a planned trilogy, should, for the most part, please the novel’s patient fans. Fortuitously following a blueprint similar to one outlined by Rand in the 1970s (see “Adapting Atlas: Ayn Rand’s Own Approach,” p. 38), the film covers the first third of the story. “Adapting Atlas: Ayn Rand’s Own Approach” is a boxed sidebar within the second article. The “blueprint,” however, was possibly pilfered from Rand’s script or others’ scripts. And throughout the article Wolski feels obliged to repeatedly assure readers that viewers will be pleased “for the most part,” and that, “generally speaking,” the movie is true to the novel. Those who are not pleased can be dismissed as impractical and unrealistic. The film substantially delivers these parts. Each plot point is there, as is much of Rand’s dialogue sans most of the overt expressions of her philosophic viewpoint, which first-time feature director Paul Johansson does his best to illustrate instead through the actions of the characters and the events of the plot. For the most part, the script stays true to the novel while updating it in ways that do not blunt the power of Rand’s theme—no small feat. The film delivers those parts but in a severely damaged condition. Not all the plot points from the novel are there, either, because many of those points lie in either characterization and/or dialogue. Most of Rand’s dialogue is missing, not “watered down” as Wolski asserts later in his article, and the characterizations of what characters do survive the transition from the novel are so tamely naturalistic that no plot points can be attributed to them. No, the movie does not stay “true” to the novel, and it is “updated” in ways that do not merely “blunt” the power of Rand’s theme (the role of the mind in man’s existence, which Wolski does not mention), but smashes it to pieces. No small feat, indeed. Screenwriters John Aglialoro (who also produced the film) and Brian Patrick O’Toole solve the problem admirably by setting the film five years in the future, at a time when the Middle East is in crisis and America is on the brink of economic and social collapse. With truck and air transport crippled due to Middle East oil shortages, the burden of shipping and transportation returns to rail lines. The opening montage quickly and ingeniously establishes this new context—which is radically different than [sic] that of the novel—and provides those familiar with the source material with an indication of the script’s narrative efficiency. Aglialoro and O’Toole solved the problem of staying “true” to the novel by lifting Rand’s story out of its essential timeliness and timelessness by setting it in the near future, and thereby not being “true.” Gone is the cigarette-themed subplot (Hollywood is now anti-smoking) and in come the cell phones, the Middle East, and other recognizable “now” elements. The opening montage is something which, according to Wolski in his “Long Journey” article, Rand wrote herself, or rather incorporated in one of her scripts, the role of television news. If there was any ingenuity, it was Rand’s, not Aglialoro’s or O’Toole’s. Wolski writes that “those familiar with the source material” will appreciate the script’s “narrative efficiency.” What “efficiency”? Is the term a euphemism for “economy”? I am intimately familiar with the novel (a.k.a. “source material”) and I was completely baffled, not only by the banal characterizations and liberties taken with the story, but also by the illogical sequence of events in the movie. A brief word about the movie’s casting: Wolski praises some actors for their performances, and frowns on others. But, it would be unfair to fault most of the cast of “Atlas Shrugged, Part I” for their skewed or under-performances. They were given roles they did not comprehend and apparently given little time to absorb them. Not that it would have mattered had they the time; the script is a mess. One wonders if any of them had even read the novel. Taylor Schilling is no Barbara Stanwyck, and Grant Bowler is no William Holden. Stanwyck and Holden would have made a far more effective and credible Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, even if they had not completely absorbed the characters. Very few television-trained actors – and that is what most of the cast seems to be – successfully make the transition from formula-driven TV scripts, directors, and sets to the big screen, regardless of the quality of the film. Invariably, they bring their television-honed skills and habits with them, and not to their profit. The same may be said about directors. One of the original formats for a production of Atlas Shrugged was a TV miniseries. Such a production would have required the producer, director and screenwriter to think "outside the box" of formulaic TV production. Paul Johannsson, TV director, did not. I agree with Wolski when he describes Johansson’s portrayal of John Galt as “ham-fisted” and that his scenes look tacked on. But he does not mention that introducing Galt in the beginning destroyed the mystery present in the novel but not in the movie. Rand once related the maxim about stage plays that if one introduces a gun in the first act, it had better go off by the third. In the movie, the gun goes off in the very beginning, the trigger pulled by the “antagonist” who announces his reasons. I do not know if Johansson was assigned the role of Galt by Aglialoro, or if he insisted on the part aside from directing the movie. But someone, at some time, insisted that, like Gus Webb in The Fountainhead, he had a right to express his own “individuality” on Rand’s work. That seems to have been the standard operating procedure throughout the whole movie. Of course, there are successful exceptions to the rule that novels cannot be faithfully transferred to the small screen, too many to cite here. A production of Atlas Shrugged could work in the television medium. It could work – if the skill and talent existed in Hollywood. Although some fans of the novel might balk at such departures from the text, they serve to quickly establish the primary storyline of the film: Great producers, such as Mulligan, are disappearing for no apparent reason when the country is most in need of their ability. Apart from these substantial alterations, Aglialoro and O’Toole generally stick with the overall arc of the first part of the novel, paring away its narrative scope and streamlining the story to its essence. Yes, the “primary storyline” is established – on crutches, after a hit-and-run – but if Galt is introduced in the beginning persuading producers to quit and vanish, where is the “no apparent reason”? It is made “apparent” in the beginning. Scratch the suspense so skillfully created by Rand in the novel. And that suspense is just one element of the “primary storyline” that was efficiently hacked away by Aglialoro and O’Toole. Their paring knife was an ax. (Speaking of “streamlining,” I strongly suspected that I would not like this movie when I first saw the “Part I” poster, before I saw the trailers and the movie itself. When there are so many great renderings of Atlas holding up the world available, why did whoever was responsible for the artwork decide that some faceless, androgynous, elastic human figure in yellow, holding up what looks like a congealed drop of butterscotch pudding, would be a great logo for the movie? One of the blogs that carried my first review of the movie used an interesting illustration which might have better suited the movie. But the chosen poster for it is a perfect signature for the movie and the esthetics of those who made it.) Less attention is given to subplots and to the development of secondary characters. For instance, Francisco d’Anconia (Jsu Garcia) comes across as a complete lout in Part I because the film lacks those great moments in which Rand provides intriguing clues that he may be more than he at first appears. The script also excises all of the flashbacks found in the novel, so we do not learn about the childhood relationship between Dagny, Francisco, and Dagny’s assistant, Eddie Willers. I agree with Wolski that “lout” best describes the movie’s Francisco d’Anconia. However, in the novel, he is not a “secondary” character, but a crucial, integrated ingredient in the story. His relationships with Dagny and later with Hank Rearden are plot points lopped off because, while the screenwriters did not know what to do with him or them, they dared not “excise” him from the story. But if Aglialoro and O’Toole regarded him as “secondary,” why introduce the lout at all? Qua the movie’s careening storyline, he contributes nothing to it, except to bewilder anyone not familiar with the novel, who will be futilely “intrigued.” His introduction simply clutters up an unkempt script that boasts no continuity. And it would be pointless to dwell here on the novel’s portrayal of Francisco and the movie’s. If Rand were able to see what Aglialoro and O’Toole did to just Francisco, she would subject them to a tongue-lashing that would leave them cowering and whimpering in a corner. Particular praise should go to stars Taylor Schilling (Dagny) and Grant Bowler (Rearden). The film is a showcase for them, and they execute their parts almost perfectly….But the film really sings when Bowler and Schilling share the screen. Their relationships—both business and, later, romantic—are intense and believable. They interact with easy give-and-take, and have a powerful chemistry that is exploited to good effect. In the scene in which they discover the abandoned static electricity motor, their reaction is highly charged—almost romantic. These are characters who love technology, discovery, and production, and when they find the motor together their joy is palpable. This assertion is plain make-believe. The relationship of the movie’s Rearden and Dagny is of the banal soap-opera level, and plods along with no rhyme or reason. They “interact” easily because there is no conflict between them or in themselves that could be said to be “palpable” and which could have made their scenes together “sing.” What Taylor Schilling and Grant Bowler are truly ‘showcasing” are the unchallenging limits of their TV-honed acting abilities. This is no fault of their own, as I mention above. Roark, in The Fountainhead, acknowledges his error in placing too great a burden on Keating’s shoulders for him to guarantee the integrity of the design of Cortlandt Homes. Schilling, Bowler, and some of the other actors in the movie, were similarly over-burdened. It is Aglialoro’s fault for casting them in those roles. Wolski complains in his article that in many spots the movie lacks “dramatic energy.” However, the whole movie lacks it because no attempt was made to infuse it with the power of a moral conflict, which its makers either “pared” from the story or did not grasp enough to even inadvertently suggest it. There is no philosophical undercurrent present in the movie as there is in the novel, and the few anti-government and “this is mine” statements uttered by the Dagny, Rearden and other characters hove to a libertarian mantra. So lacking in “dramatic energy” is the movie that one correspondent remarked to me, about the bracelet/necklace exchange scene between Lillian and Dagny, that she thought “Dagny was going to point out that her diamond necklace matched Lillian's earrings.” Me? I had expected some intense acting between the actresses, of a caliber that would have left me rooting for Dagny. Instead, they may as well have been discussing fashion accessories. That scene could have been effective, even without much of a context having been established, and a viewer might have been intrigued why Dagny insisted on the trade. In the movie, Rearden intervenes as though he were dousing a minor spat, and Dagny walks off with no “dramatic energy” being exchanged between her and Rearden – as happens in the novel – and so there is no plausible basis established for their ensuing romance. Finally, and incredibly, Wolski writes: But Atlas Shrugged: Part I is not the novel and it does not pretend to be. It is a fairly competently made, credible adaptation of one of the most complex novels ever written. Even with its flaws, the film is enjoyable and has wonderful moments, including some in which it captures the power of the novel—such as the party during which Dagny gets the Rearden Metal bracelet….Those unfamiliar with the story will probably enjoy the movie as well and may find their curiosity sufficiently piqued to read the book. If so, they will be even more richly rewarded. Those who are “sufficiently piqued” by the movie to read the novel should, once they are deep into it, ask themselves: What in hell did they do to the story? Wolski, however, claims that the movie is not the novel. But, it certainly does pretend to be. If it is not the novel, then what is the movie? Why the title? Is it a “pretend” title? In connection with what? Another novel that also bears the title, Atlas Shrugged? One wonders about such sleights-of-mind that could discuss how a movie is like and is not like a novel, then state that the movie is not the novel, and then conclude this was a “fairly competently made, credible adaptation.” Of what? What, then, was the subject of the review? Does Wolski expect others to also perceive and blank out at the same time? If so, that is not a prescription for sanity or honesty. What was the review about? It was about a cinematic go-cart being promoted as a powerful vehicle for “change,” except that it lacks the energy of a motor. Or, one could say it was about an esthetics-starved and conflict-deficient hybrid car that looks suspiciously like a child’s “Big Wheel.” Cross-posted from Metablog

One of the most riveting dramas on the subject of moral judgment is Stanley Kramer’s “Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961), in which Spencer Tracy, as Dan Haywood, the presiding American judge of a tribunal called to try four Nazi judges, is subjected to the corrosive, moral relativist arguments of the defense and the ambivalent, pragmatic policies of some of his American colleagues. In fact, there is virtually no quarter from which Haywood’s judgment and moral rectitude are not assailed, openly, and subtly. He encounters an ad hoc conspiracy to make him doubt his right and ability to judge anyone. Haywood’s chief conflict is with himself. He states in the beginning, in a conversation with his excuse-making servants, that he merely wants to understand why Germans allowed things to happen. Tracy underplays the internal and external conflicts and his character, almost to a fault. But his character remains resolute throughout the film. During the trial, he is often at odds with the American prosecutor, Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark), overruling Lawson’s objections to his opponent’s questionable tactics and procedures. One of the Nazi judges is the enigmatic Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster), who at first refuses to recognize the tribunal as a legitimate judicial body, but who in the end professes admiration for Haywood. The beautiful, cultivated, but embittered Mrs. Bertholt (Marlene Dietrich), widow of a German general executed for war crimes, plies her charms on Haywood, feigning friendship and sympathy with the man she wishes to persuade that it was not the German people or their culture that was responsible for the Holocaust, but the circumstances of the time and the need to survive Hitler. She claims that she and her husband hated Hitler, as did many other educated, high-ranking Germans. She is a siren song of victimhood. Janning’s fiery defense counsel, Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell), attempts to persuade Haywood and the two other tribunal judges that guilt for the war and the atrocities committed by the Nazis must be shared by the whole world, because it permitted the crimes to be committed. He also blames Nazi “extremists” for the crimes, and not their ideology, and that if the four judges on trial are guilty of anything, it was of patriotism for their country. They did, he argues, observe and enforce German law, and it was no business of others to judge that law. He does everything he can to discredit the character and testimony of witnesses against the judges. His principal conflict, however, is not with the court, but with his client, Ernst Janning. (Schell’s performance is a tour de force.) Haywood’s senator and an American general urge Haywood to go easy on the German judges, for a harsh sentencing would alienate other Germans, whose help the Allies might need to oppose Soviet designs in Eastern Europe. The Soviets have moved into Czechoslovakia and sealed off West Berlin. They also argue that the main trials are over, the worst Nazis have been sentenced to death or have been imprisoned, and that no one is interested in the trials now. Haywood’s fellow judges waffle on the issue, wanting to resort to case law and legal precedent to decide a verdict against the German judges. They are oblivious or indifferent to the overall moral issue that Haywood struggles to grasp. In a climactic scene, Janning rises from the dock and stops Rolfe from employing the same hectoring technique on a helpless victim on the witness stand (played by Judy Garland) that Nazi prosecutors used in courts, and delivers an impassioned confession of guilt for his actions during the Nazi era. He damns himself as well as the three other judges in the dock who had served under him. The prosecutor and the audience are stunned. Even Haywood seems to be moved by the confession. The tribunal (with one dissension) finds all four judges guilty and sentences them to life imprisonment. As Haywood calls the names of the defendants, his most http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2asOWGkYQb4is reserved for Janning. This, too, stuns the court. They had expected him to “go easy” on Janning. Mrs. Bertholt, in the audience, drops her headphone in defeat. But in the final scene, in Janning’s prison cell, the most dramatic argument is stated to conclude a practically flawless film. Janning requests that Haywood see him before he leaves for America, ostensively to give the American a record of his cases. Then he praises Haywood for his judgment. “If it means anything to you, you have the respect of at least one of the men you convicted. By all that is right in the world, your verdict was a just one.” Haywood answers: “Thank you. What you said in the courtroom, needed to be said.” Janning then pleads: “Judge Haywood….The reason I asked you to come…those people…those millions of people….I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it!” Haywood stares coldly at Janning. His next words are pitiless. “Herr Janning…It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.” Janning is crestfallen. His last attempt at forgiveness has failed in the face of uncompromising justice. Haywood will not grant him the solace of moral relativism. Imagine the anticlimax had Haywood answered, I understand. That answer would have been in conformance with the predominant morality which claims that compassion, mercy, and pity are cardinal virtues, and that actual justice – in this instance, holding an individual responsible for his actions – was cruel, arbitrary, and inhuman. It would have negated everything that had preceded that scene, leaving everyone in the audience wondering about the purpose of the story. Those two simple words would have sanctioned Janning’s crimes, relieving him of the responsibility for his actions, allowing him to believe that his actions were necessary for his and his country’s survival. They would have left him feeling blameless. Those two simple words would have validated Counselor Rolfe’s charge that everyone and no one was responsible for the deaths of millions at the hands of the Nazis, and that the killers and the judges who sent the victims to their fates were not at fault. Everyone was a “victim.” They couldn’t help it. Had the director and screenwriter subscribed to that morality, “Judgment at Nuremberg” would never have been made. Some residual commitment to reason, some knowledge of the proper moral position, made such a movie possible. But the residue and knowledge are gone today, eclipsed, among other things, by subjectivism and the moral relativism that assailed Haywood. As Barack Obama wishes to erase America’s exceptionalism, so do her other enemies, foreign and domestic. (Compare the conduct of the Nuremberg trial in this movie with the trial scene in “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days” [2005]. It will give one a flavor of how Nazi trials were conducted when individuals had earned the wrath of a totalitarian state.) Half a century later, there are no Judge Haywoods in any judicial system, American or European. In fact, today it is Judge Haywood who is in the dock. His name is Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician accused by the state of the “crime” of hate speech. He is being tried by a panel of judges who have said to Islam, to Muslims, “I understand.” The parallels between Wilders’ predicament and Haywood’s are eerie. Wilders is on trial for making a moral judgment about Islam, a political/theocratic, totalitarian ideology similar in numerous respects to Nazism, which was implicitly on trial in Nuremberg. He has called for a halt to Muslim immigration to the Netherlands, called for a ban of the burka, called for a halt to Sharia, for a halt to the Islamazation of his country, has likened the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and has warned that Islam is hostile and a peril to Western civilization. Leftist and Muslim organizations brought suit against him, charging him with “hate speech,” insulting Muslims, and with inciting violence and discrimination against them, even though no violence or discrimination ever occurred as a result of his remarks. What this amounts to is a political trial of Wilders, a highly popular Dutch political figure because of his populist stands including such issues as banning burkas and fining Muslim women who don such Sharia compliant attire in public, as well as banning Muslim immigration to the Netherlands. Make no mistake about it, the trial is a thinly disguised attempt to convict and imprison Wilders on Islamic Sharia compliant charges of blasphemy. As in other European countries, the Netherlands has laws that forbid “hate speech” against any religious or ethnic minority. The definitions and enforcement of those laws are broad but vague enough to encompass virtually any utterance or action. Practically the only group that takes advantage of those laws is the Muslim one. In Britain, a veteran was arrested, jailed and fined for burning a Koran in a private video in protest of Muslims burning poppies on Remembrance Day. In Austria, a man was fined for yodeling near a mosque where prayers were being held. In Norway, an Islamic expert was found guilty of “racism” for discussing the Muslim problem of the rape of Muslim girls by Muslim men. The late Oriana Fallaci remarked: Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, another Austrian targeted for punishment, was charged with a “hate crime” for criticizing Islam. She agrees with Wilders about the core, fundamental nature of Islam; "I've read the Koran. I've studied the books from both sides -- the pro and the con. And I can tell you from what I've studied -- Islam is a political ideology disguised as a religion." And in the United States, Sharia-defined blasphemy steadily corrodes the concept of freedom of speech, secular law and the nominally secular foundations of our judiciary, from Terry Jones being jailed and fined for merely indicating a desire to protest Islam near the Dearborn, Michigan mosque to anyone burning a Koran in any venue, public or private, to the raw fear of and studied deference to Islam and Muslims in the mainstream media. Ideally, the U.S. Navy should have dipped the body of Osama bin Laden in a vat of bacon grease, making sure there was a trailing pack of sharks in the Arabian Sea poised to feed on the cadaver before it was unceremoniously heaved overboard, sans washing, winding sheet, and prayers. But our military has submitted to the acolytes of the ideology that is making war on us (Islam meaning, after all, submission), in war and in peace. Some Muslim critics are almost right in asserting that bin Laden wielded such a mystical power over our military that it observed Muslim burial rituals. Rather, it is an unreasoning fear of Islam, nearly a superstition, and the politically correct behavior of not “offending” or “insulting” Muslims lest they indulge in another “day of rage” and run amok. Imagine, if you will, that the U.S. was able to recover Hitler’s body from the Berlin bunker in April 1945. Would our government have mandated a burial in conformance with German tradition and with full honors accorded a head of state, including a casket draped with the Nazi flag? Perhaps with a warhorse with cavalry boots suspended backwards from the saddle? No. But the seeds of such a spectacle were already in existence. They merely took decades to sprout. Our policies have degenerated to the one that urged Judge Haywood to “go easy” on the Nazi judges, because otherwise a harsh sentence would have offended the Germans. (We “needed” them? Germany was a defeated, occupied country.) Under the mutually complementary policy of pragmatism and moral relativism, truth is subjective and irrelevant, an individual’s integrity and commitment to the truth are secondary in the face of others’ needs – in this instance the pseudo-self-esteem of mindless manqués who bow to a rock and swear fealty to a psychotic deity – and respect for the speech rights of those who would employ them can be sacrificed to those who do not respect them. Our policies should – and must – adopt the cold, pitiless stare of Judge Haywood when Islamists plead victimhood and disclaim responsibility for their ideology and actions. That is what it should come to. That would be the soul-killing justice Islam has earned over its fourteen century history. It will require the courage and moral certainty of a man who indeed understands, and not believes. The courage and moral certainty of a man like Geert Wilders. Cross-posted from Metablog

It was startling to see the title, Atlas Shrugged, on the theater marquee. I did not expect to live long enough to witness it. Unfortunately, “Atlas Shrugged, Part I,” the movie, has little or nothing to do with the novel. It is a badly made template, with a lot of doodling in the film outside the stencil. I have seen few movies that are one hundred percent successful translations of a novel to the screen. Even rarer are the movies that are superior to the novels. “Love Letters” (1945), with Joseph Cotton and Jennifer Jones, whose screenplay was written by Ayn Rand, bears little resemblance to Christopher Massie’s Love Letters, which is a literary and moral abomination. She was assigned the task of rendering the story into a shootable script. Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock was vastly improved on in the film version (1948) by Jonathan Lattimer, who removed most of the sociological and anti-business content and focused on the suspense. One could cite dozens of other instances of successful or near-successful book-to-screen adaptations. The key to the successful translation of a novel to the screen is to essentialize the given plot. To essentialize a plot is to identify the key conflict or conflicts, ensure that the characters, dialogue, and action mesh with the plot, and to maintain the integration throughout. Thus the integrity of a novel (if it has one) can be honored. If a fiction writer’s task is to include only what contributes to a story, and to leave out what is not essential or what does not advance a story, then the screenwriter’s task is to repeat the process for transfer of the story to the audiovisual medium. The credits state that “Atlas Shrugged, Part I” was based on Rand’s novel. Well, Steve Martin’s “Roxanne” was “based” on Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. But was the movie little else but a farce that cashed in on Rostand’s story? Massie’s novel and “Love Letters” also did that, but Rand’s screenplay added a theme to the Rostand story. “Atlas Shrugged, Part I” is not a farce, but a serious attempt intended to reduce a mountain to what its makers presumed would be a comprehensible molehill. The molehill was not the goal, but it was inevitable because of a failure to grasp, take seriously, and essentialize the governing elements of the novel. There are only two fundamental ways to approach a viewing of “Atlas Shrugged, Part I”: With an intimate knowledge, love, and technical appreciation of the novel – its plot, its characters, its events, and its theme – or from either an ignorance of the novel Atlas Shrugged or a vague recollection of it from having read it long ago. The fortunate members of the audience are those who see the movie with absolutely no knowledge of Rand or the novel; they are pleasantly shocked to hear so much anti-government dialogue. Most Americans who have seen or will see the movie fall into the second category. They have heard of the novel, and of Ayn Rand, its author, and have a foggy notion that she foretold the future – now their present. They recollect a very long story but have forgotten its details, or have never read it, and are now boosting sales of the novel over half a century after its publication. But most have a glimmering that she was right, and that the crisis and disasters confronting them in the news every day are too real to dismiss as fantasy or a matter of opinion, and are replicated in the novel and partly shown in the movie. An intimate knowledge of the novel, however, should clash violently with what transpires on the screen. An ignorance or vague recollection of the novel’s story will not clash in the same manner with what happens (or does not happen) on the screen, but engender confusion and bewilderment. That should cause people who do read the novel, once they are deep into it, whether for a first time or after a long hiatus from it, to wonder what the movie’s makers were thinking. If one is intellectually honest, the clash between the novel and the movie should lead one to conclude that the makers of the movie did not understand the novel, were consequently incapable of translating it successfully for the screen, and possibly did not think they needed to know either the novel or how to dramatize it. They had a budget, a cast, props, cameramen and digital capabilities for special effects, and all the other paraphernalia for making a movie. And a script written by a person who understood neither the theme, nor the spirit, nor the purpose of the novel, working with a director and producer who did not understand them, either. If the theme of the novel Atlas Shrugged is the role of man’s mind in existence, then the movie’s makers discarded the novel’s mind, its theme, and everything else. If they could not understand these things, then neither could they genuinely appreciate the novel. If intellectuals have any purpose in the context of evaluating this movie, they will point out its many shortcomings and failings. But conservative intellectuals have used the debut of the movie as an excuse to (again) attack Rand and her philosophy without much critiquing the movie. So have leftist critics. These intellectuals and critics will not be discussed at length here. Most conservative critics are aghast by the public response to the movie. They treat it as an affront to their moral and political philosophy, and take their anger out on Rand herself. Their petulance is futile, and it must be especially enervating when they read that the movie has boosted sales of the novel, a development they could not have ever wished for. Leftists are in the same conundrum. All conservatives and leftists can do is throw printable and unprintable tantrums. This allegedly “badly written” novel has been trumping their malice, ad hominems, and bile for fifty-four years. They are feeling their own irrelevancy, and it hurts. That is some kind of justice. My approach to the movie falls into the first category. I have read all manner of reasons, in the most benign mainstream reviews and also in personal correspondence, why I should like the movie, or at least not condemn it or subject it to any but the most superficial and irrelevant tiers of critical examination. These reasons fall into two main categories, as well: That, given the state of the culture, it is the best that can be expected from Hollywood; and that seeing it makes one feel good. My reasoning in the first instance is: If one can be critical of the culture, why should the movie’s makers and the movie itself be exempt from such criticism? After all, they are products of the culture. In the spirit of pragmatism and anxious expediency, they took a priceless value and twisted it out of recognition for the sake of “the message.” The producers, director, and screenwriter all attempted a task that was beyond their talents and vision to successfully complete. What they produced was an entertaining polemic. In the second instance, if one holds Atlas Shrugged as a supreme literary, moral, and philosophical value, then one cannot respond emotionally to “Atlas Shrugged, Part I” as a value that in any way complements the novel. One could not honestly be “entertained” by it and also hold the novel in the highest esteem. If one does, therein lurks a grave conflict in the valuer. The standard critical appraisal of the novel, however, one that has been repeated for decades by Left and Right alike, is that it is an anti-government polemic, which is not what Rand wrote. Esthetically, the difference between the novel and the movie is the difference between Michelangelo’s “David” and a Hummel figurine. Or, in terms of literary accomplishment, the difference between the Empire State Building and a 7-11 convenience store. To understand what Ayn Rand did write, see Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (Lexington Books, 2009). An anonymous, non-Objectivist critic wrote one of the best appreciations of Rand’s abilities as a writer, and focuses on her writing craft in the novel. Towards the end of his appreciation, he notes: Too often, amateurs are too obvious and throw out too few questions and reveal answers too quickly. I think many great authors are more disciplined about waiting until much later before revealing the big and little answers. They also toss up interesting developments to make you keep guessing and asking more questions. Which is what the movie does not do, but that is a venial offence when compared with what other offences the movie commits. Brian O’Toole, the chief screenwriter for the movie, in an interview offered a number of excuses and rationalizations for why the movie does not follow the novel, even though he claims it does. When the pre-production screenplay was done, it was a very strong representation of the spirit of Ayn Rand’s novel. Since we stayed very close to the structure of the novel, there was little reason for us to play fast and loose with the material. Except for the very beginning, fans of the novel will hopefully find themselves in very comfortable territory as we tell the story cinematically. The “spirit” of Rand’s novel is not a gussied-up, big-budget daytime soap opera, and the movie is nowhere near the structure of the novel. It indeed plays “fast and loose” with that structure, as anyone familiar with the novel will attest to. In fact, the movie completely abandons it. Among other obfuscations uttered by O’Toole is his repeated assurance that “purists” and “Rand fans” will like the movie even for its not following the structure of the novel and for omitting “small” details from the novel. Since our production was modestly budgeted, we certainly couldn’t create a period piece (although the book was really a near-future story) nor create a Metropolis-type movie with big sets and futuristic props and vehicles. Luckily, the book is set in a realistic world. We have small updates like cell phones and no smoking, and the freight train on the John Galt Line may be a bit flashier than we see chugging along today, but I really think audiences will quickly ease into our world and be spellbound by the story being told. Luck had nothing to do with it. Fantasy and horror appear to be O’Toole’s chief genres, so dealing with a “realistic world” must have been an educational experience for him. Cell phones? I once saw a stage production of Othello in which the principal characters produced cell phones to conduct the dialogue; this was the director’s way of saving himself the trouble of actually staging the play. It was also a way of saving the movie’s director the trouble of shooting crucial scenes (in which Rand’s dialogue does not appear anyway) in which it is critical that the characters are face-to-face. No smoking? Hollywood, always the vehicle of political correctness in virtually all matters, has adopted an anti-smoking policy in its films that requires that smoking is done by villains only. In the movie, the character of Wesley Mouch lights up a stogie in a restaurant (but not in the novel, of course, and the restaurant is not the dark cellar on top of a skyscraper where the villains plot their next moves, as described by Rand in the novel, but a brightly lit, 21 Club-style restaurant), while the bizarre character of Hugh Akston is having a “dollar sign” cigarette in the back of a diner (one had to be quick to recognize the symbol on his cigarette; or was it a diner, and if so, was it his? No explanation). O’Toole boasts that he has big plans for “Atlas Shrugged, Part II.” How does he plan to handle the significant device of the dollar sign cigarettes in the novel, and not violate Hollywood’s anti-smoking rule? Replace them with Chia pottery planters that “grow” dollar signs? And once he gets to Galt’s Gulch, will Midas Mulligan’s tobacco patch be replaced with an avocado ranch? O’Toole brazenly claims in the interview that he both remained true to the novel and did not. It was decided early on in the development stage that we should try to personify Part I’s “spiriting-away” of the world’s producers. Producers Harmon Kaslow and John Aglialoro wanted audiences to know what John Galt said to the “men of mind” that convinced them to go to Atlantis—before the speech in Part III. Again, all of the deviations made from the book were done to make the film as entertaining as possible. Not everyone will agree with these changes. To them, I just want to say that we were always respectful to the novel. The job of the film is to, hopefully, intrigue people enough to pick up the book. So, it was decided early on to discard all the suspense, mystery, and intrigue in the novel in favor of introducing Galt in the beginning. In the novel, we never learn what Galt actually says to any of the men he persuades to vanish; it is only when he has Dagny in Galt’s Gulch that he makes any statements. O’Toole’s assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, neither he nor Aglialoro nor Kaslow were “respectful” of the novel. One supposes that their notion of being “respectful” would be, for example, to transform someone like Audrey Hepburn into a Lady Gaga. What follows is a list, by no means exhaustive, of randomly recalled blunders, gaffes, and outrages in the movie. These include plot-spoilers. • The John Galt Line: The train running through Colorado. Okay. Nice scenery, great special effects. Should that salvage the movie? No. • The Ellis Wyatt character was an overweight, obnoxious bozo who could have just as well been bragging about his lottery ticket wins. There is a difference between the genuine anger Wyatt shows in the novel and the bullying language of the movie. Further, there are no expletives in Rand’s novel (just a suggestion of one, by Rearden), but in the movie the Wyatt character utters them. • The Francisco character, alleged owner of copper mines, behaved like Hugh Hefner, and looked like a scraggly, bearded Che Guevara clone with an entourage of bimbos. He displayed none of the elegance, style, panache, intensity, or any evidence that he was an aristocrat of the mind whom one encounters in the novel. • The Orren Boyle character was a third-rate impersonation of a rival Godfather gangster. • The "romantic" scene between Rearden and Dagny after the John Galt train run was reminiscent of a bar pick-up episode on "Two and a Half Men." What was lacking was any credible build-up to such a relationship between the characters. All one saw was some ambiguous eye contact between the characters. • One of the most jarring scenes occurred in what looked like a church (the State Science Institute), between Dagny and Dr. Robert Stadler -- I guess it was supposed to be Stadler, because the character's name was never given, except perhaps once. They sit in a pew and try to have an earnest conversation. When Dagny rises to leave after some contextless chitchat, Stadler wishes her "good luck” in her search for the motor’s inventor. Excuse me? • There is the Galt character showing up and accosting industrialists, looking like Freddie Kruger. I half expected him to whip out steel fingernails. I can imagine Rand’s Galt in a sports shirt and a tuxedo, but she would never have garbed him in a cheesy, thrift-store fedora and trench coat. Throughout the novel Galt is the invisible “immovable mover”; in the movie, he is introduced early on and thus was destroyed any suspense. At the film’s end the Galt character in a voice-over states who he is and why he is causing the industrialists to disappear. End of story. • When Rearden and Dagny go to the abandoned factory of the 20th Century Motor Company to search for and find the incredible motor, they are all over the map in search of the inventor in no particular sequence that makes any sense. • In the anniversary party segment, in the novel, Lillian wishes that Francisco hadn't come to the party, because she dislikes him. In the movie, they are shown as old friends and she busses him in welcome. • In the anniversary party segment, there is little tension between Lillian and Dagny during their bracelet/necklace exchange; it could have been a friendly trade during a yard sale, or a mild spat between characters in “Desperate Housewives.” • For a reason known only to the screenwriter, also in the Rearden anniversary party segment, one character tells another that "Balph Eubank" is at the party. But Eubank, a popular composer in the novel who appropriates Richard Halley’s music, is not a character in the movie, so there was no reason for his name to be mentioned. • The guy (I will not call him an actor) who plays Hugh Akston, the vanished advocate of reason, was a diffident, middle-aged, rude slob in what looks like a white jump suit. He was no more a philosopher on strike than I am a retired astronaut. He played the part like Jim Carrey on medication. Alec Guinness he is not. Another critique contradicts the movie- makers’ assertions that they were compelled to make all the changes they made for budgetary and length reasons. Film School Rejects published a convincing critique of the movie that blasts those assumptions to smithereens. …. ince the biggest problem with the adaptation was buried in the structure of the movie, there’s one thing that would have made Atlas Shrugged: Part I a far, far better film. Ready for it? Here it is: Going By the Book It seems achingly simple, but for some reason the writers, producers, director and editors of Atlas Shrugged took the elements of the book, jumbled them up slightly and turned John Galt into a shadowy, living non sequitur. I could not agree more, except that the book’s elements were not “slightly” jumbled up, but tossed into a Cuisinart food mixer set on high, which created a pitcher of unappetizing glop. FSR demonstrates, scene by scene for “Part I,” that Aglialoro and O’Toole could have faithfully followed the sequence of events and still produced a great movie near budget and only half an hour longer. To wit: …[T]he production hobbled itself by creating a foolishly short hour and forty-two minute runtime. They’re adapting a beast of a book, and didn’t even shoot for a full two hours. It’s baffling. A healthy portion of these plot moments exist in the movie, but the connective tissue isn’t there…. The production stripped the novel so far down that great character moments like the cigarette discussion, Halley’s music (as the first sign of the Galt mystery), the juxtaposition of the talks with Conway and Wyatt, Hank rebuking his mother (finally), and the announcement of everyone volunteering for the first run were left out while incredibly long shots of Colorado countryside and a nearly pointless dinner party languished on screen. There are signs that the production simply didn’t understand what made certain scenes important. The heroes of Atlas Shrugged the novel command reverence, solemnity, and joy. The non-villain characters in “Atlas Shrugged, Part I” ask only that one tolerate their non-distinctive and belabored averageness. In conclusion, producers Aglialoro and Kaslow have done what should not have been done: produced an adulterated product for the sake of “getting it out there,” regardless of its condition, to cash in on Rand’s growing popularity and relevance to what is going on in today’s world. It is irrelevant that Aglialoro invested $20 million of his own money in the project. If he and his colleagues had understood the novel, they should have “gone on strike” and not went through with the movie. But, they have appropriated the Rearden Metal of Ayn Rand’s novel and produced, not a “Lawrence of Arabia” or a “Gone with the Wind,” but something that is not even a reasonable facsimile of the novel. They have employed a forged Gift Certificate that Rand never signed. Cross-posted from Metablog

In the 21st century, on the lunatic fringe of American religion, a man decided to revive the medieval practice of putting an animal or inanimate object on trial for some grave offense, which was usually for witchcraft or being an instrument of the devil. The medievalist man is Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, who announced plans to hold a “trial” of the Islamic Koran, charging it with “inciting murder, rape and terrorism.” Mr. Jones’s capacity for intellectual discourse on the evil of the ideas contained in the book being severely limited (he is a Baptist), burning an inanimate object was all that is left to him in the way of rebuttal and protest. On the evening of March 20, the “trial” went ahead with Jones presiding. It ended with another pastor setting alight a kerosene-soaked copy of the Qur’an. A brief Agence France Presse (AFP) report said that although the event was open to the public fewer than 30 people attended. A subsequent local media report said the only journalists who turned up on the day were an AFP stringer, several students and an unassigned photographer. A video clip was posted online, however. The news media paid the event little or no attention. Jones had promised to burn a copy of the Koran last September 11, on the anniversary of 9/11, but was talked out of it by officials who feared a repetition of the Danish Mohammad cartoon riots. They feared in vain. The riots occurred anyway. For Muslims, knowledge is a dangerous thing. If it doesn’t fit, they throw a fit. Everyone underestimated the determination of Jones to make some statement, however addled it might be, and presumed that his apparent thirst for publicity had been slaked. The “trial” served as an excuse for another round of riots, murder and mayhem by Muslims. Warring Muslim factions, however, have burned or destroyed more copies of the Koran than have any group of Westerners, but this fact is an unthinkable thought to Muslims. As with Jones’s original broadcast intention to burn a copy of the Koran, together with the publication of the Danish cartoons, there was also this time a measurable delayed reaction that went unnoticed. Time passed between knowledge of the “offenses” and Muslim reaction. This was to give the doyens of “anger management” time to whip their predisposed flocks and armies of manqués into a frenzy. As of April 5th, the riots and protests against Jones and a potpourri of things Western continue. A unique train of events ensued, one that led to the latest blathering of American politicians. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who last week drew Afghan public attention to the burning, an event that initially gained little media coverage, on Sunday called on the U.S. Houses of Congress to join in the condemnation and prevent a repeat incident. Several Muslim clerics seized on this unsolicited piece of Constitutional advice by our alleged “ally” to give their humble congregations double doses of feverish outrage. Karzai was abetted in this by Pakistan. On March 22, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, in a speech to the federal parliament, condemned the incident “in the strongest possible words,” and Pakistan’s foreign ministry called the burning a “despicable act.” Dozens of reports on the Qur’an burning appeared in Pakistani media outlets on March 22-23, but the story received negligible coverage elsewhere in the Islamic world. The klaxon of hurt Muslim feelings was also sounded by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) at the U.N. Human Rights Commission. On March 31, 2011, Pakistan’s United Nations ambassador, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, spoke to reporters at UN headquarters on behalf of the 56 member state Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Ambassadorial Group, condemning the recent burning of a copy of the Koran by the pastors of a small Baptist Church in Gainesville, Florida. He highlighted the OIC’s “grave concern that the despicable act had severely hurt the feelings of 1.5 billion Muslims around the world” and warned reporters that it could lead to “incidents that are uncontrollable.” Was that a “prophecy,” a hope, or a threat? The very next day Ambassador Haroon’s warning turned into a tragic, self-fulfilling prophesy. A large mob of demonstrators in Afghanistan, angry at the Koran burning and apparently responding to calls for revenge by three mullahs who had addressed worshippers at Friday prayer in one of Afghanistan’s holiest mosques, stormed a United Nations compound in the northern region of the country and killed a number of innocent people, including at least seven UN staff members - two reportedly by beheading. Not to be outdone in condemning Jones for “causing” the Afghan riots, a number of American politicians, a Supreme Court justice, and one American general chimed in with their own “anger.” South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, Senate majority leader Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, one Supreme Court justice, Steven Breyer, and General David H. Petraeus, commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and U.S. Forces Afghanistan, all piled on the hapless Jones. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says congressional lawmakers are discussing taking some action in response to the Koran burnings of a Tennessee [sic] pastor that led to killings at the U.N. facility in Afghanistan and sparked protests across the Middle East, Politico reports. “Ten to 20 people have been killed," Reid said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We’ll take a look at this of course. As to whether we need hearings or not, I don’t know.” Lindsey Graham was more specific, but just as ignorant. Senator Lindsey Graham said Congress might need to explore the need to limit some forms of freedom of speech, in light of Tennessee [sic] pastor Terry Jones’ Quran burning, and how such actions result in enabling U.S. enemies. "I wish we could find a way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war," Graham told CBS' Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” Sunday. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos of “Good Morning America” reported these interesting instances of ignorance. We also saw Democrats and Republicans alike assume that Pastor Jones had a Constitutional right to burn those Korans. But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on “GMA” that he's not prepared to conclude that -- in the internet age -- the First Amendment condones Koran burning. Last week President Obama told me that Pastor Jones could be cited for public burning – but that was “the extent of the laws that we have available to us.” Rep. John Boehner said on “GMA” that “just because you have a right to do something in America does not mean it is the right thing to do.” General Petraeus offered his own politically correct obloquy: "We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Quran. We also offer condolences to the families of all those injured and killed in violence which occurred in the wake of the burning of the Holy Quran. We further hope the Afghan people understand that the actions of a small number of individuals, who have been extremely disrespectful to the Holy Quran, are not representative of any of the countries of the international community who are in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people." Where have all the great generals gone? Can you imagine George Patton being outraged over a desecration of Mein Kampf, or William Sherman frowning on a mocking rendition of “Dixie”? Lastly, President Barack Obama consulted his script writer and had this to say: The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran, is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry. However, to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity. No religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people, and there is no justification for such a dishonorable and deplorable act. Empty but ominous words. In Indonesia, as a boy, Obama reputedly studied the Koran, and should know better than any other politician that the Koran indeed tolerates – nay, encourages – the slaughter and beheading of non-Muslims and other infidels. Note that he specified the “text,” and not the physical object. The “text” contains ideas that sanction a brutal ideology. Mr. Obama is certainly smarter than Terry Jones. Daniel Greenfield summed it up neatly on Sultan Knish. Citing the incident of a German propagandist jailed during WWI, he notes: Today we aren't jailing filmmakers who traffic in anti-American propaganda in wartime. If we did then half of Hollywood would be behind bars. Instead Democratic and Republican Senators are discussing banning speech offensive to the enemy. Because even though they're killing us already-- we had better not provoke them or who knows how much worse it will become. What it will all lead up to is a kind of selective censorship that will insulate Islam from any criticism. Politicians, generals and pundits do not become overwrought about the burning of bibles, Torahs, or other religious documents. Only about Korans. This is because Islam is always in the news, in some form or another, and that is because Muslims are always being “provoked” by the least criticism of them and their creed to throw bloody tantrums. Islam is another “culture,” another religion, another “way of life,” and by the criteria of political correctness and an affinity for dhimmitude, it must be protected from all forms of offense. And that selective, privilege-granting censorship will serve as a precedent and lead to other brands of censorship, including prohibiting the kind of writing you are reading here. Calm, reasoned, and deserved criticism of Islam must sooner or later be classified as a “hate crime,” as “injurious,” “hurtful,” and “bigoted” as burning a Koran. Observe the intellectual and moral stature of Americans who attempt to establish a causal relationship between the Afghan riots and Jones’s publicity stunt-cum-protest. These people are not going to defend the First Amendment. They are unable to. They are intellectual troglodytes. For evidence of the fishbowls of swirling, floating abstractions their minds are, I invite anyone to read the transcript of an interview of Lindsey Graham by The National Review and to reach his own conclusion. The interview was conducted to give Graham a chance to expand and qualify his weekend statements on the Afghan riots and Jones’s Koran-burning. I challenge anyone to find an operating principle in his illiterate, emotionalist gibberish, the kind of equivocating rhetoric that can justify the kind of fascism that is congealing around American life. To wit: "Let me tell you, the First Amendment means nothing without people like General Petraeus. I don’t believe that the First Amendment allows you to burn the flag or picket the funeral of a slain service member. I am going to continue to speak out and say that’s wrong. The First Amendment does allow you to express yourself and burn a Koran. I’m sure that’s the law, but I don’t think it’s a responsible use of our First Amendment right." And if Graham, Boehner, Reid, Petraeus, and Obama do not think my writing here is a “responsible” use of my First Amendment right, what do they propose to do about it? How do they propose to make me “accountable”? The menacing growl is in their words. The First Amendment has already been whittled down to a splinter of what it once meant. It would be nothing to them to reduce it to a sliver. What distinguishes their position on freedom of speech from that of the United Nations? Nothing. A U.N. spokesman felt compelled to add his own two cents about freedom of speech as he recounted the murders of the U.N. staff by the Muslim mob in Mazar-i-Sharif. Staffan de Mistura, the U.N’s Envoy to Afghanistan, described the Koran-burning as an “insane and totally despicable gesture.” "Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of offending culture, religion or traditions," de Mistura said. "Those who entered our building were actually furiously angry about the issue about the Quran. There was nothing political there." Oh, but there was, Mr. Mistura. Freedom of speech now stands to be sacrificed on the altar of pragmatic accommodation to Muslims and Islam. And as a Graham or Reid or Boehner touch a match to a compromise-soaked Constitution, Muslims, gathering after their prayers, will watch the ashes and smoke rise in the sky, and chant: “Burn, baby! Burn!” They will not need to chant, “Death to America!” America will already be dead. Cross-posted from Metablog

Humanitarians are famously but deceptively indiscriminate in their generosity and with the dispensing of largesse, whether the latter comes from their own wealth or from extorted taxpayer revenue. As long as the object of their charity is “in need” or “needy,” it matters not to the humanitarian. His measure of “need” is both the “virtue” of poverty, and a poverty of virtue. President Barack Obama on Monday evening, March 28, 2011, demonstrated, in his speech on why he ordered military operations against Libya, that he is a humanitarian of the lowest order. He is willing to be completely selfless at the expense of this country’s blood and treasure to “save the Libyan people” and prevent the images of “mass graves” appearing before him on his teleprompter. That is, he is a vessel of humanitarian instincts brimming to overflow with a selflessness eager and willing to sacrifice things that are not his to sacrifice. Humanitarians are, at root, nihilists, destroyers of values in pursuit of “saving” non-values. Obama competes with swine in that he will eat anything as long as it is “in need” requires “sacrifice,” that altruist touchstone of moral purity. Here are pertinent excerpts from his address: Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges. But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks. What interests, what values are at stake? No answer. What responsibility? No answer. For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant -– Muammar Qaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world –- including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents. Yes, Gaddafi is a tyrant, but then so are the rulers of China, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf sheikdoms, Tunisia, the Sudan, et al., and too likely Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood consolidates its power. And it is interesting that Obama omitted mention of Lockerbie and Pan Am Flight 103, for which Gaddafi was the button-pusher. In the face of the world’s condemnation, Qaddafi chose to escalate his attacks, launching a military campaign against the Libyan people. Innocent people were targeted for killing. Hospitals and ambulances were attacked. Journalists were arrested, sexually assaulted, and killed. As other commentators have noted, this kind of thing has gone on in the Middle East for decades. So? Neither Gaddafi nor any of those other tyrants have been overthrown or dislodged by the West. Why the selectivity? Are not Assad of Syria and Ahmadinejad of Iran also tyrants? Shall we mention Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who oversaw the persecution, murders, rapes, tortures, and diaspora of white farmers and businessmen in a decades-long campaign to “socialize” the country? I have never heard a neoconservative advocate sending in a Special Forces team to put a bullet in the dictator’s skull, if only to remove that pestilence from the lives of that impoverished country’s starving black citizens. (Obama would never approve of such a one-stroke action. It might upset Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan.) We knew that if we wanted -- if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world…It was not in our national interest to let that happen. I refused to let that happen. And so nine days ago, after consulting the bipartisan leadership of Congress, I authorized military action to stop the killing and enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973. So, if a tyrant massacres his own people, and we, the moral maximizers and robots of the categorical imperative who have nothing to gain, do nothing, we share the guilt? This is one of the most obscene pronouncements to escape Obama’s mouth, but is fully consistent with his altruist generosity. In this effort, the United States has not acted alone. Instead, we have been joined by a strong and growing coalition. This includes our closest allies -– nations like the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Turkey –- all of whom have fought by our sides for decades. And it includes Arab partners like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, who have chosen to meet their responsibilities to defend the Libyan people. Aside from the ragtag army of Libyan “rebels,” Obama is boasting of a ragtag coalition of nations who are also governed by the Kantian imperative to act, even though none of them know what for or even have a plan. It should be pointed out that NATO would not exist but for American arms, and that the Arab League is fundamentally anti-American. One is surprised that Obama did not include Hamas and Hezbollah as our “allies” in the effort to remove Gaddafi to “save” the Libyan people. That’s not to say that our work is complete. In addition to our NATO responsibilities, we will work with the international community to provide assistance to the people of Libya, who need food for the hungry and medical care for the wounded. We will safeguard the more than $33 billion that was frozen from the Qaddafi regime so that it’s available to rebuild Libya. After all, the money doesn’t belong to Qaddafi or to us -- it belongs to the Libyan people. And we’ll make sure they receive it. We have no responsibility to provide the Libyan people with anything, least of all help in overthrowing their tyrant. And about that $33 billion in Libyan assets: It does not belong to the Libyan people; it belongs to us because it represents wealth extorted from the West, especially from the U.S. in the form of oil prices on oil produced from expropriated oil wells and fields. That $33 billion should be applied to Obama’s rising government debt, and be returned to American taxpayers by declaring an income tax holiday for the next three years. Two of the best critiques to date of Obama’s Libyan intervention are Richard Salsman’s March 23rd Forbes article, “Libya Exposes Obama as Our Latest Neocon President,” which presents the moral case against Obama, and Daniel Greenfield’s March 29th “The Known Unknowns of Libya” on Sultan Knish, which spotlights the utter recklessness of Obama’s irrational, illogical, and perilous actions regarding Libya. As Salsman points out, Obama’s decision to bomb Libya so that “people may be saved” and for no other ostensible reason is evil. This is aside from the equally grave charge that his actions are impeachable, for he acted on whim, bypassing the necessity of asking Congress for a declaration of war and thumbing his nose at the American electorate. As Salsman writes, Obama is moved by an altruism and selflessness that require this country to invest its energies and lives in “spreading democracy” in the best Woodrow Wilsonian and Roosevetlian tradition to populations whose concept of justice and politics is fraught with beheadings, sanctioned rapes, Sharia law, and bowing to a gussied-up and sacred meteorite in Mecca. That is, to populations still in thrall to superstition and of an arrested medievalist mentality. Finally, Salsman echoes my own contention that Obama is following the neoconservative foreign policy of being the policeman of the world in conformance with the Kantian maxim to act as though one’s selfless action should be the ultimate and universal moral maxim, to “do the right thing” regardless of reason, cost, and consequence – but especially if one stands to gain no value from the action. Obama — amid loud applause from neoconservative cheerleaders at The Weekly Standard, from excuse-making “anti-war” leftists at The New Republic, and with the seeming approval of 70% of the American people — defends his invasion and occupation of Libya on the grounds that it is not truly a “war” but instead a “humanitarian” mission. By that he means U.S. lives and wealth are to be sacrificed in order to prevent a savage political regime from harming or killing its own citizens, even if they are “rebels” of equal or greater savagery. This is not “humanitarian” or moral in the least; it’s an evil act, resting on an evil premise (that sacrifice is “noble”) and an obscene abuse of American lives and liberties, with not a single selfish gain to be had in return. As proof of the heinous agenda of the neoconservatives, The Weekly Standard patted Obama on the back. William Kristol, editor, wrote an effusive welcome to Obama to the ranks of the disinterested and self-sacrificing advocates of the tonic of a “moral adventure.” His relief is unbecoming. I knew pretty early on during Monday's speech that President Obama had rejoined — or joined — the historical American foreign policy mainstream….The president was unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, and didn't shrink from defending the use of force or from appealing to American values and interests. Furthermore, the president seems to understand we have to win in Libya. I think we will. As Daniel Greenfield points out, Obama’s action was not merely ill-considered or ill-advised. It was completely and consciously blind and indifferent to whatever intelligence reports may have been dropped on the Oval Office desk, unread – in fact, necessarily hostile – to the fact that the United States has no self-interest in intervening in what is essentially a civil war between a dictator and a ragtag army of wannabe dictators and America-hating jihadists. Who are the “rebels,” and why is Obama worried about their genocide? Are they the descendents of the Armenians who were massacred by the Muslim Turks early in WWI? Are they Christians, or atheists, or Jews, or Scientologists weary of “forty years” of Gaddafi’s oppression and clinically-defined lunacy but are now “rebelling” and risking being herded into concentration camps for extermination? A week after launching it, the administration still can't get its own story straight as to why we're fighting it at all. According to Obama, he went in because he refused to wait for images of mass graves. Other things he refused to wait for were basic intelligence, stated objectives and congressional approval. It took us ten years to decide to remove Saddam, it didn't even take Obama ten days. Was there any indication that there would be the implied genocide that comes with mass graves? Hardly. On Feb 22nd, Libyan diplomats began claiming in broken English that Gaddafi was committing 'genocide'. Since they had trouble with the language, it's an open question if they even knew what genocide was. And since Libya is an Arab-Muslim country and the civil war is fought between Arab Muslims, who exactly would Gaddafi be committing genocide against? The Tuaregs are the closest thing Libya has to a minority-- and they're fighting on his side. If there's a possible genocide here, it would be of the Tuareg people by the rebels if they win. Yes, they are fellow Muslims hankering after a chance to impose their own notion of proper Islamic governance on Libya, and who are no less barbaric than Gaddafi. But if Obama was too afraid that there might someday emerge pictures of mass graves, why then did he oppose the removal of Saddam Hussein? Mass graves in Iraq are not hypothetical. And photos of them are available. Yet Obama who campaigned on his opposition to a war in which there were mass graves and in which every option had been exhausted after a decade-- now leaps into a war to avoid the possibility that he might ever have to look at photos of mass graves. This isn't about Obama being too queasy to look at mass graves. If that were the case we would be invading North Korea, Sudan and the cartel run parts of Mexico. Gaddafi is not doing anything that half the Middle East isn't doing, and unlike our close ally Turkey, he's doing it without employing chemical weapons. We aren't in Libya because it's an extraordinary human rights situation, but because our decision making process has become a thorough and complete mess. This is not a neocon or leftist complaint about Obama’s hypocrisy and inconsistency and not really knowing what he was talking about, or caring to know. Someone called the Libyan turmoil a “revolution,” and that was enough for him. Guys with guns started shooting back at other guys with guns. It is light shed on Obama’s irrationality and freewheeling but nonetheless selective humanitarianism. Hypocrisy and inconsistency are the least serious failings of Obama’s policies. The most serious charge against him is his expressed wish to prostrate this country before the parasitical and questionable needs of countries whose “virtue” of poverty and misery is their sole claim on us. Under the guise of “humanitarianism,” Obama is determined to drain the last drop of America’s exceptionalism, of its uniqueness, of its independence, of its pride as a free nation. In George Washington’s farewell address in 1796, he warned against “interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, [or to] entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice.” He went on to say: Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combination and collisions of her friendships or enmities. Substitute “Europe” with the Middle East, and his advice is no less germane or vital. One of the causes “foreign to our concerns” is the Islamic jihad against us, and a “humanitarian” campaign to help “needy” Arab-Muslims – provided they wish to establish their own tyrannies under the equally salubrious ruse of “democracy” – will only see our defeat, bankruptcy, and subjugation. A noted philosopher, Ayn Rand, once offered this rule-of-thumb for those faced with incomprehensible irrationality: “Don’t bother to examine a folly. Ask only what it accomplishes.” And what else is Obama accomplishing but the steady and inevitable destruction of this country? It is time that Americans grasp that every action Barack Obama has taken since moving into the White House has been an episode of a war waged against this country, from ObamaCare to “green energy” to his appetite for government debt. His Libyan adventure is simply another demonstration of his war-fighting philosophy. This is not hard to grasp or concede. Obama’s actions speak louder than his words. Examine the evidence. Cross-posted from Metablog

A friend asked why Islam could not separate mosque from state as Christianity, after centuries of turmoil, war, and persecution, was able to separate church from state, and consequently become less of a peril to our freedoms. The first thing to come to mind in the way of a device to illustrate why Islam cannot emulate Christianity was the answer Christ is attributed to have given, in Mark and Luke in the Bible, to Jews about why they should or should not pay Rome’s taxes: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s. Or words to that effect. The wording varies in Mark and Luke and in different editions of the Bible. And interpretations of his words also vary. The most credible one was that his answer was an attempt to avoid being arrested by Roman authorities for incitement to sedition against Rome. If true, his words were in the best tradition of dissimulating political rhetoric. But, taking his answer at face value, and without wading into a multitude of facets, absurdities, and fallacies in the Christian faith that are germane to the issue, that one statement alone should suffice to illustrate why it is impossible for Islam to be “reformed” to the point that Sharia or Islamic law would be neutralized as a political force and pose no threat to freedom. The plain answer is that there is no equivalent dictum to be found in the Koran, Hadith, or Sunnah. Also, Sharia is so integral to the fabric of Islam, that without it, Islam would be little more than another bizarre cult, and not the ideological nemesis it is. While both faiths denigrate life on earth as a mere transient form of existence on the way to an ethereal existence in one or another “Paradise” (unless one is destined to go to hell), Christianity historically cut some slack for living on earth. That is, the slightly higher regard for actual existence worked its way over the centuries into the development of political thought. Christianity, while it preached selflessness and living for others, however stressed the ironic importance of a selfish concern for the salvation of one’s own soul. The climax of this development occurred in the United States and in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. During the Dark and Medieval Ages and throughout the Renaissance, church and state in Europe were in constant conflict. Local European rulers claimed the right to appoint bishops and to skim church revenues, while the Catholic Church contested or denied them the privileges. The conflict between Henry II and Thomas Becket was over the Crown’s temporal authority over Church personnel. England’s Henry VIII, in pursuit of an heir to his throne, challenged the Church over his marriage, and started his own church. While the Catholic Church’s political powers were inexorably waning in the face of moral and intellectual challenges to its doctrines, the Church still wielded enough influence to instigate riots against and persecutions of Protestants and Jews. Catholic doctrine guided and advised kings and princes in the formulation of their policies. Catholic cardinals occupied positions of power in the various European courts. But one key to understanding the strife and rivalry is that they were centered on who would benefit from life on earth, not on who would go to heaven or hell. The Thirty Years’ War devastated Europe not over theological disputes over the Eucharist or the validity of the Trinity. It was about earthly political power. “Caesar” claimed the right to tax and rule over the Church’s congregation in this or that nation; the Church claimed the exclusive right to tax and rule over its faithful. Caesar claimed a cut of what was God’s; God’s representatives wanted it all for themselves in the name of God. It was about hard currency and the material comfort and ease of the governing principals and the assurance of political power of the warring parties. Ultimately, religion was treated as a matter of personal choice or conscience or belief, protected from the diktats of the state and a bigoted majority. This is not possible in Islam. Islam claims all, or nothing, the “nothing” being the individual who does not submit to and acknowledge Allah as the “One” and Mohammad as his prophet. Islam’s religious elements are inextricably merged with its political elements. Islamic scholars emphasize this. Islam Online begins with: First of all, it is to be noted that Islam, being Allah’s final message to humanity, is a comprehensive system dealing with all spheres of life; it is a state and a religion, or government and a nation; it is a morality and power, or mercy and justice; it is a culture and a law or knowledge and jurisprudence; it is material and wealth, or gain and prosperity; it is Jihad and a call, or army and a cause and finally, it is true belief and worship. There is nothing there or elsewhere on the site about a division of Caesar’s and God’s due. The one quoted Islamic scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has his own site, and notes: Secularism may be accepted in a Christian society but it can never enjoy a general acceptance in an Islamic society. Christianity is devoid of a shari`ah or a comprehensive system of life to which its adherents should be committed. The New Testament itself divides life into two parts: one for God, or religion, the other for Caesar, or the state: "Render unto Caesar things which belong to Caesar, and render unto God things which belong to God" (Matthew 22:21). As such, a Christian could accept secularism without any qualms of conscience. Furthermore, Westerners, especially Christians, have good reasons to prefer a secular regime to a religious one. Their experience with "religious regimes" - as they knew them - meant the rule of the clergy, the despotic authority of the Church, and the resulting decrees of excommunication and the deeds of forgiveness, i.e. letters of indulgence. By secularism al-Qaradawi implies man-made laws as opposed to Islamic-inspired ones. Allah, per the Koran, views man-made laws as an “abomination.” Why? Because they are not his. No other reason is given. Just put up and shut up. It is almost humorous that al-Qaradawi notes that Christian Westerners prefer a separation of church and state because of their experiences with being ruled by the clergy and the despotic authority of the Church, conveniently omitting mention of rule by imams and mullahs and the despotic authority of a caliphate. Further, there is no such thing as “excommunication” from Islam; you cannot leave Islam without inviting a death fatwa, just as one cannot leave the Mafia without expecting to be fitted for cement shoes to “sleep with the fishes.” There is a fanciful Socratic exchange between “Caesar” and an emissary of Islam, Abu Sufyan. Keep in mind that when Mohammad was spreading the “word” by the sword on the Arabian peninsula, the last Imperial Roman “Caesar” had died centuries before, and that one of the last “Holy” Roman Emperors, Constantine XI, died in 1453. It is uncertain which “Caesar” the tongue-in-cheek authors of the Koran meant the person to be. Caesar: “Then I asked you what he ordered you to do and you replied that he ordered you to offer prayers, give alms, observe piety and chastity, honor your promises and not to commit breach of trust. You have admitted that he has never been dishonest, deceitful and unfaithful. This is how the Prophets of God behave. They are not dishonest, deceitful and unfaithful. In the light of these enquiries I am certain that he is the Prophet of God". This was an example of how an enemy becomes helpless and humble before a sublime personality and cannot muster up his courage to tamper with the realities. The last sentence neatly sums up the current Western approach to dealing with Islam. Neoconservatives also pose a peril. There has been a concerted effort over the last few years by the religious element of the neoconservatives to meld the founding of the U.S. with a religious doctrine, one that is intended to oppose the Islamic one. Their argument is that since all of the Founders and Framers were Christians of one stripe or another, and because God is referred to in the Declaration of Independence (“Nature’s God” and “Divine Providence”), ergo, the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and its laws are based on Christian doctrine. That is as ludicrous a charge as claiming that because many scientists believe in God and the Ten Commandments and regularly attend church or synagogue, vaccines, drugs, technological innovations, and the Internet are all founded on religious principles. Quite the contrary. Mention of God was, at the time, a fairly common practice in all nations in the texts of their official documents. And the God of the Founders was the “watchmaker” brand, a deity who created the universe, then retired from all human affairs. And, we have this evidence to the contrary enunciated in Article 11 of the Treaty between the U.S. and the Barbary States in 1796-97: ARTICLE 11. As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. As religious neoconservatives cherry-pick historical documents to “prove” the religious foundation of America, this is one cherry they leave on the tree. It is irrelevant that Washington reportedly prayed at Valley Forge or that Jefferson regarded Christ as the wisest philosopher. In all other matters, it was not mysticism, superstition, and blind faith that dominated their thinking or guided their actions, but reason. In summary, Caesar, God and Allah all are contenders for your life, wealth, and happiness. Men who value their lives, however, should ask the question: By whose leave? Cross-posted from Metablog

We begin with a brief description of the origins of multiculturalism by Lewis Loffin, in his article, “The Nazi Roots of Multiculturalism,” about the deleterious effects of multiculturalism. He wrote: The origin of multiculturalism (a secular/leftist belief system) lies with two Nazis, Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man. National Socialism is also another leftist belief system. Their philosophy became the basis of Deconstructionism, an irrational belief system that rejects facts for feelings. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2004) introduced the term, but he was influenced by Heidegger. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdEGJb5W5ks, an irrepressible critic and opponent of Islam and champion of the West, noted during a panel discussion: “You can’t be ‘multicultural’ in Saudi Arabia.” He might have added: nor in Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Somalia, the Sudan, Morocco, Algeria, Gaza, the West Bank, and Turkey. What did he mean? He meant that Islam is a head-to-toe political/theological totalitarian ideology that commands universal submission and uniformity in all that it surveys, from one’s diet and personal relationships to one’s political views. Slowly the peril is sinking into the heads of policymakers and some politicians. German Chancellor Angela Merkel broke ranks last year and declared that multiculturalism was a failure. France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain’s David Cameron soon after said, “Me, too.” Islam, however, is not a child of multiculturalism. It predates Heidegger and multiculturalism by 1,400 years. It is a monster sanctioned by multiculturalism, a nightmarish phenomenon coaxed back to life and into our lives from a chamber of historical horrors, on a par with the reputation of Vlad the Impaler, who, ironically, resisted Ottoman expansionist policies in the 15th century albeit with a barbarity that matched the Turks’ own and 20th and 21st century jihadist depredations. Without the “conditioning” of men’s minds to uncritically accept multiculturalism in the broader culture – in schools, in business, in art, in language, in advertising – Islam, for one, would never have had a chance to become the formidable enemy it has become. Multiculturalism is the progenitor of political correctness in speech, policy, and action. Political correctness is Orwellian goodthink. Standard English is badthink, if not plain thoughtcrime. Janet Levy, in her forceful article on the steady course of Western dhimmitude, noted that the phenomenon of self-censorship began, not on 9/11, but as a consequence of the violent reaction to the publication of the Danish Mohammed cartoons in 2005: Cartoongate ushered in a new standard of behavior that has had a chilling effect on free speech and expression when it comes to all things Muslim. The aftermath of the Mohammed cartoons incident established Muslims as a uniquely protected group to be effectively shielded from all critique and ridicule. Noteworthy is that this new Muslims-only standard mirrors the Islamic doctrine of Shariah that confers superior legal and political status for Muslims in parallel with a subservient status -- dhimmitude -- for non-Muslims. Today, the West all too easily and habitually gives up freedom of speech by avoiding even the merest shadow of negativity when it comes to Muslims and, thus, imposing on itself dhimmitude and enabling our sworn enemies. I would differ with Janet Levy only on the point that the inaugural stage of American dhimmitude began with President George W. Bush proclaiming that Islam was a religion of “peace” hijacked by “extremists.” Although freedom of speech was in a tenuous state before 9/11 (e.g., the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law), the orchestrated and violent reaction to the Danish cartoons virtually guaranteed its demise. It has since existed in a kind of post-traumatic stupor of denial. Not criticizing Muslims or Islam serves as the garlic or crucifix intended to ward off the specter of violent recriminations from Islamists. It is a species of Pavlovian conditioning. If a Muslim commits a horrific crime, the first thing modern journalists and critics and policymakers do is not attempt to identify the culprit or his motive, but to evade the task and point fingers in other directions. Major Nidal Hassan perhaps had a glass of sour orange juice that morning, so he opened fire on American soldiers at Ft. Hood. A Muslim woman had a bad hair day, so she blew herself up in a bus full of Israeli schoolchildren. A mere marital disagreement between “moderate” Muslim Muzzammil Hassan and his wife Aasiya resulted inexplicably in his beheading her. Sure, the MSM will concede, all these instances of violence were gruesome. But they had nothing to do with Islam. And if they did, what business is it of ignorant Westerners? That would be imposing our moral standards on Muslims. In regards to Islam, multiculturalism fosters a kind of Star Trek–inspired “Prime Directive”: Thou shalt not criticize, look askance at, or mock Islam or Muslims, no matter how primitive, brutal, savage, or backward they may demonstrate themselves to be. Nor even think of interfering with the religious practices or of examining its Mafia-style legal system. It would be easier to comprehend the phenomenon of the West’s retreat from its once-cherished freedom of speech – in this instance, the freedom to criticize, ridicule, and even condemn Islam and that “silent majority” of Muslims here in the West or abroad who sanction by their muteness terrorism and the jihad – if one understood that the phenomenon is a consequence of the wider and more fundamental corrosive philosophy: multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has spawned such fashionable but insidious notions as “cultural diversity” and “cultural relativism” which merge into a bewildering kaleidoscope of trivialities, the great and the exceptional rendered equal to the base and the mediocre. “Enshrine mediocrity,” noted one of Ayn Rand’s most pernicious villains, “and the shrines are razed.” Multiculturalism is asserting that the Mexican Hat Dance or a Peruvian folk tune is just as enthralling a piece of music as a Beethoven symphony or the finale of Antonia Salieri’s Axur, re d’Ormus. Or that anything by The Grateful Dead is just as significant as any Rachmaninoff piano concerto. Comparisons that encourage value measurements are discouraged and deemed “elitist” or “judgmental.” “Cultural relativism” exploits subjectivism or indiscriminate whim-worshipping. Multiculturalism is the haven of those who do not wish their values to be questioned or judged. Multiculturalism says that you don’t have to aspire to be the best you can be, or even look for the best in anything; being best is optional. The stigma of mediocrity is unfair, hurtful, and insensitive, and ought to be abolished. One could even argue that Islam owes its advances in the West to a multiculturalist interpretation and application of a particular verse in the Bible, from Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, lest you be judged.” On the whole, and as a consequence, multiculturalism permits the mental excrement of contemporary “artists” and writers to contribute to the raw sewage that is modern culture. Multiculturalism is the great leveler of values and of the means to measure or gauge them. It is a conscious negation of values, claiming that no culture is superior to another, that no value could be superior to another. In the steady corrosion of actual values in the West, over a period of time, ever since the philosophy was first introduced decades ago, multiculturalism must logically default to the lowest common denominator of cultures. In this instance, it is Islam. That is the inevitable end of multiculturalism. Faced with the threat of Islam – an ideology insulated from criticism – multiculturalists must retreat and keep their minds and mouths shut. It is a monster they defended and touted and claimed as an ally in the name of “tolerance” and “religious freedom.” Multiculturalism behaves like a Komodo dragon that bites its prey, lets it wander off, and waits until it succumbs to its poisonous saliva and dies. Then it sniffs out the putrefying corpse to feed on it. Islam has been emulating the Komodo dragon’s methods for decades now. Islam is not “multicultural.” It is totalitarian and brooks no rivalry, competition or disagreement. Come the global caliphate, the first Westerners to be beheaded, censored, or enslaved will be multiculturalists. Then Islam’s putative “reformers.” Then the rest of us. It is only logical that such a systematic negation would culminate at the lowest common denominator, Islam, itself a system for destroying values. It is an omnibus system of nihilism that mirrors the nature of multiculturalism. And naturally, Islam claims to be superior to all other cultures and creeds, because it requires no thought, no values apart from ready-made ones, unalterable and mandatory. All Islam offers the individual is the “joy” of selflessness and the security of obedience, neither of which asks of the individual any degree of evaluation or intellectual independence. It offers the quietude of living death. As Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish observed, Islamists and even off-the-rack Muslims are well aware of the inferiority of their ideology – and, by implication, of themselves by choice – and of Islam’s inherent impotence to destroy its cultural and moral superiors without the sanction of the victim. Discussing the stupendous white elephants the Saudis and other embedded medievalists in the Gulf are building with their extorted petrodollars in “The Towers of Barbarism” (see my April 2008 column on the same subject), Greenfield writes: It is the combination of an inferiority complex and a hatred for non-Muslims, that same combination which causes the left and some on the far-right to urge us to feel ashamed of how badly we must be treating Muslims, for them to feel that way. He makes a key connection between Muslims’ awareness of their inferiority and their compulsion to prove their superiority by means of nihilistic policies: Where Western skyscrapers were the natural product of expanding economic and technological frontiers, Muslim skyscrapers are desperate attempts to buy superiority. A product of the same need to be superior to the infidels, that caused Islamic law to ban synagogues and churches from being taller than mosques. And now that they have the money, Muslim rulers are determined to build bigger buildings than the Empire State Building or the Sears Tower, or the World Trade Center, which they destroyed. But the power comes, not from Islam, but from the philosophy that sanctions its existence by exhorting men to deny its nihilistic nature in the name of tolerance, diversity, and non-judgmentalism. To concretize the corrosive process, note the tenacious opposition to nuclear power or offshore oil drilling by environmentalists and their ilk, who ultimately envision a savage rubbing two sticks together to make a fire as the preferred state of man (in order to “save the planet”). That is their unstated goal, to reduce man to dependence on the whims of nature. Islam, by the same token, reduces man to dependence on the whims of an unprovable and frankly psychotic deity, and demands that all men submit to that vision, so that no individual is superior or better than any other and so beyond Islam’s control. In that terrible scenario, only Muslims will be equal to each other in the egalitarian sense. All those who do not submit, must be enslaved or eliminated. Nothing may rise above the ideological minarets of Islam – not minds, not ideas – because anything above or apart from them would be a threat, a reproach, and a repudiation of Islam. Under the iron heel of totalitarianism, the symbiosis between multiculturalism and Islam would perish. The assertion that the inferior is superior by virtue of being inferior is the brazen premise shared by secular egalitarianism and Islam. Egalitarianism is just another manifestation of multiculturalism. So, when one sees Muslims demonstrating against the Danish cartoons or an infidel’s critical slip of the tongue and calling for retribution and death, one is witnessing manqués boasting of their unacknowledged but demonstrable inferiority. Theirs is a poignantly felt state of existence that cannot be confessed; it can be expressed only in ugly rage masquerading as victimhood. These are the creatures set free by the multiculturalists, “liberated” from reason, from independence, from pride, from self-esteem, from free will, from volition. From Western civilization. Muslims are not the only collectivists who have been “liberated” from the responsibilities of individualism and the non-negotiable demands of reason. But they are the most dangerous in terms of their being passive or active vessels of a totalitarian ideology that will destroy by exploiting the corruption instigated by multiculturalists, or by continuing naked violence whose cause the multiculturalists do not wish to examine, because that would be “judgmental.” Postscript: To briefly expand on the idea of Muslims knowing of their own inferiority, that they are superior by virtue of their inferiority – they claim superiority because their inferiority, in conformance with altruism, requires others to defer to their wishes, to make exceptions for them, and to exempt them from the normal suasions of moral measurement and treatment. They are the lowly, the base, and the degraded; ergo, in accordance with altruist ethics, they are special and their need for deference and exception-making is an automatic claim on others – according to the others’ moral code. This is in line with the whole altruist/collectivist philosophy that governs our culture. Of course, one should not ascribe to Islamists any kind of genius for exploiting that philosophy. It is merely their feral species of insight that makes it possible. Cross-posted from Metablog

Two oddly varying March 8th versions of the same commentary, “Caliphate, Jihad, Sharia: Now What?” by Raymond Ibrahim, associate director of the Middle East Forum, appear on the Middle East Forum (MEF) and the Hudson-New York sites. In both he begins by quoting a Columbia University professor from a 2008 debate, “Clash of Civilizations.” The professor answered an “assertion that Islamists seek to resurrect the caliphate, and, according to the doctrine of offensive jihad, wage war – when and wherever expedient – to bring the world under Islamic rule.” "Suppose you prove beyond any shadow of doubt that Islam is constitutionally [inherently] violent, where do you go from there?" (Brackets mine) Ibrahim proceeds to describe a caliphate in two different ways. In the Hudson-New York version, he writes: A caliphate represents a permanent, ideological enemy, not a temporal enemy that can be bought or pacified through diplomacy or concessions -- economic or otherwise. In the MEF version, however, he writes: A jihad-waging, Sharia-enforcing caliphate represents a permanent, existentialist enemy—not a temporal foe that can be bought or pacified through diplomacy or concessions. Note the difference. The term ideological is used as synonymous with existentialist. One might wonder why Ibrahim treats ideology as existential, except perhaps because it is a system of thought that exists and which has a measurable potency or influence. But ideologies, or ideas, do not exist independently of their progenitors, advocates, or exponents. Ideologies or ideas cannot act on their own; they must have “temporal” actors or men who carry them out. Islam is an “enemy” only in the person of jihadists who perform actions of both the physical and stealth kinds. The jihad against the West is indeed temporal in nature, to either physically subjugate it, or destroy it. Ibrahim then notes in the Hudson version what the establishment of a multinational caliphate would mean to the West. The very existence of a caliphate would usher a state of constant hostility: Both historically and doctrinally, the caliphate is obligated to wage jihad, at least annually, to bring the "disbelieving" world under Islamic dominion and enforce Sharia law. Most of what is today called the "Muslim world"—from Morocco to Pakistan—was conquered, bit by bit, by a caliphate begun in Arabia in 632. And in the MEF version: Consider the caliphate: its very existence would usher in a state of constant hostility. Both historically and doctrinally, the caliphate's function is to wage jihad, whenever and wherever possible, to bring the infidel world under Islamic dominion and enforce Sharia. In fact, most of what is today called the "Muslim world"—from Morocco to Pakistan—was conquered, bit by bit, by a caliphate that began in Arabia in 632. In truth, the West did face an enemy that waged constant warfare against it: the Soviet Union. So, there is a precedent for what the West now faces in the form of a totalitarian ideology albeit which Ibrahim later in the MEF version describes as one dressed in “religious garb.” He speculates on what the West is or is not prepared to do about a caliphate. In his Hudson version, he asks: Yet, as Western people begin to understand what is at stake, what exactly are their governments prepared to do about it — now, before the caliphate becomes a reality? Would the West be willing to launch a preemptive offensive — politically, legally, educationally, and, if necessary, militarily — if these were the only solutions to the establishment of a jihad-waging, Sharia-enforcing caliphate? Would it go on the offensive without waiting until its enemies were strong so that by the time one realized what was happening it would be too late, or would political correctness and pacifist inertia allow the Islamists to have their way? And in the MEF version: In this context, what, exactly, is the Western world prepared to do about it—now, before the caliphate becomes a reality? Would it be willing to launch a preemptive offensive—politically, legally, educationally, and, if necessary, militarily—to prevent its resurrection? Could the West ever go on the offensive, openly and confidently—now, when it has the upper-hand—to incapacitate its enemies? It is noteworthy that Ibrahim substitutes political correctness and pacifist inertia with openly and confidently when he changes the thrust of his rhetorical question in the MEF version. It is also noteworthy that he leaves the military option until last. In the MEF version, he asserts that the West still has the “upper-hand.” On the contrary, that hand is palsied. The West’s “openness” and “confidence” have been disabled, if not completely amputated, by political correctness and pacifist inertia, not to mention by multiculturalism and unprincipled pragmatism of a succession of administrations. And, openness and confidence about what? That the West is superior? That it is secular in nature, not religious? That the Mideast depends on its survival on the West? That there is no such thing as “Islamic” culture or an “Islamic civilization”? Was the Mafia crime empire, which stretched from Sicily to Chicago, with its warped code of ethics and use of force, fear, and murder, a “civilization”? Ibrahim notes in the Hudson version: The West, alarmingly, does not have a political history or language to justify an offensive against an ideological foe. And in the MEF version: The fact is, the West does not have the political paradigms or language to justify an offensive against an ideological foe in religious garb. Actually, in the context of dealing with Islam, it does have such a “language” and a “political history” or “political paradigm,” ranging from the Barbary Wars of the early 19th century to the battles of Omdurman and Umm Diwaykarat in 1898-99, in all instances acting with military force against Islamist depredations and expansionist designs, and with the knowledge, implicit or explicit, that Islam was inherently hostile to Western values and dedicated to removing them from human existence. In the Hudson version, he notes: Worse, as Arab governments come crashing down, the Obama administration has made it clear that it is willing to engage the Islamists and permit the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in elections, even before institutions of democracy — such as rule of law, an independent judiciary, and above all, free speech and a free press — have developed. On the MEF version, he writes: Indeed, the Obama administration has already made it clear that it is willing to engage the Brotherhood, differentiating them from "radicals" like al-Quaeda—even as the Brotherhood's motto is "Allah is our objective, the prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, jihad is our way, dying in the way of Allah our highest hope." Likewise, a theocratic, eschatologically-driven Iran is on its way to possessing nuclear weapons—all while the international community stands by. It is unclear in Ibrahim’s article whether he is underscoring his own rhetorical question-begging and inability to provide answers, or the Columbia professor’s. But overall, Raymond Ibrahim’s articles reveal serious and fatal indecision about what action should be taken against regimes that conduct warfare against the West, and in particular against the U.S., with the aim of subjugating it and imposing the Islamic ideology. The West had the language and the resolve. And an important element in that resolve was that no Western nation was a top-to-bottom welfare state, was not “multicultural,” did not deprecate or suborn the things its citizens valued, such as individual rights, freedom from state interference in their personal lives and actions, and the rule of objective law. The West in the 19th century was riding on the mere momentum of an Aristotelian philosophy. But the rise of welfare states and the inculcation of statism undercut and finally arrested that momentum, and dissolved those things over decades of philosophical and moral bankruptcy. The United States reached a point where it elected a president who is actively anti-freedom, anti-reason, and unabashedly pro-statist, willing to apologize to the world for the U.S.’s greatness and working to see it diminished if not destroyed. One could possibly date the phenomenon to WWI and the rise of Progressivism early in the 20th century, and the steadfast implementation of policies of pragmatism and appeasement. The roots of that phenomenon can be traced clear back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when Immanuel Kant and his successors launched an attack on Aristotelian thought, that is, on reason. The West will remain helpless and impotent “in the face of an ideological foe dressed in religious garb” unless it adopts an ideology that will identify that foe and strip it of that garb for all to see. That is not going to happen when our policymakers refuse to identify Islam as the foe, but instead claim that Islam is fundamentally “peaceful” and that it was “hijacked” by “extremists.” One never heard FDR claim that Nazism and Shintoism were “hijacked” by “extremists” or say that these ideologies were somehow “radicalized.” Even left-wing FDR had a quantum of intellectual honesty that has put all of his successors to shame, including Eisenhower and Reagan. It is the West’s policies that have put it in the perilous position it is now in. I see no solution to the problem except a revolution in political thought and policy in this country. It is either that, or recognizing very quickly that only long-overdue retaliatory force will begin to solve the problem, such as eliminating states that sponsor terrorism before they eliminate us, of acknowledging that Islam is indeed an enemy in the persons of its subscribers. The same policy should apply to extinguishing Somali piracy, even at the risk of the lives of the captives of the pirates. Lancing that particular boil would be a good start. Without an honesty and confidence founded on reason and rational values, and faced with the prospect of another “evil empire” in the form of a caliphate, the only direction the West can go is down to its own destruction. The confusion and hesitancy on the part of “experts” like Raymond Ibrahim are not encouraging. Cross-posted from Metablog

One thing I have observed about the swelling opposition to big government, Obamacare (and to President Barack Obama himself), the transparently venal and corruptible nature of Congress, and Islam is that many of those “anti’s” are religious, specifically Christian. Islam especially is opposed and feared, chiefly and ironically on religious grounds. It is almost as though Christians considered Islam a rival creed that is wedding-crashing, taking over the festivities, and demanding the right of prima nocta with the bride. The literature that recounts the evils of the political/theological ideology of Islam is vast, growing, and informative. Unfortunately much of it is wrongly premised and written by individuals of a religious bent who have yet to check their premises. They really have no reason to cast the first stone at Islam, when the stones thrown at them share a striking similarity to the stones they hurl back. While the persecution of Christians and other religious sects in Islamic countries by Muslims and Islamic governments is indefensible and certainly is evidence that “toleration” of others’ religious beliefs is impossible in any state under Islamic sway, the obsession of Western Christians with the phenomena has a peculiar character that colors their opposition to Islam. The two main Christian arguments of this opposition are: the Judeo-Christian God is the only true God, Jesus Christ was his prophet (and also our Savior and one-third of the Trinity), because the Bible tells us so; and that Islam is false and hypocritical. The Islamic rebuttal is equally hubristic: There is the only one true God and his name is Allah, and Mohammad was his prophet; and that all other religions are false, because Allah says so, it is written in the Koran. On the surface, watching these two faiths in combat is, in a sense, hilarious and worthy of satire. But the serious side is that the more zealous Christian opponents of Islam are in fact no better than their Islamic doppelgangers. They, too, wish to establish a theocracy centered on the Ten Commandments and enforced with all the extra-Constitutional powers they envy the Democrats and welfare statists for having abrogated to impose regulations and controls in our personal and economic lives. Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, and Patrick Buchanan are among the more notorious and vocal exponents of the religious opposition to Islam. The fundamentalist Christian agenda is no less nefarious than is the Islamic one. Oh, yes, they assure us, they’re all for capitalism and free expression and individual rights – up to the point where the Golden Rule applies, and when the imperatives that we are our brothers’ keepers and that it is better to give than to receive should kick in. Which is the point where Progressivism and statism begin, historically and in fact. Religious conservatives have not grasped – or choose not to grasp – the fact that our current welfare state is frankly based on the secularized applications of the Christian virtues of self-sacrifice and selflessness that they profess and propound. The chief reason why Christians are not effective opponents of Islam is that Christianity is just another form of mysticism. Christians dare not charge Islam with concocting a folderol of byzantine nonsense, or with basing its political practices on a theological premise, or that Islam is an illusion, because down deep the Judeo-Christian system is a mirror image of that same folderol and illusion. Christians notably do not question the existence of Allah, for the same reason they do not question the existence of God. The names are irrelevant. While Islam has no image of Allah (none is permitted of him or of Mohammad), Christianity has the standard profile of an old man in a long white beard, clad in a nightgown, and wearing floppy sandals, clomping around the universe like a night-watchman, in his mysterious ways causing an earthquake one minute and a supernova the next, all the while keeping an eye on billions of people to check if they have been naughty or nice; or he is sitting on a blinding golden throne surrounded by a choir of angels and the adoring and revoltingly fawning pure of heart. One cannot imagine that the physiology of Allah differs much from God’s, except that he would probably be fierce-looking, armed with a scimitar, and about as friendly as a rabid Doberman. Deists, on the other hand, contend that God has no recognizable form, but rather that he is like the fabled immaterial “ether” some scientists once claimed enveloped everything in the universe but were never able to detect or prove existed. Occasionally it is instructive to cross swords with a Christian opponent of Islam. As will be seen below, religion is a dead horse I stopped beating in my teens. On rare occasions I bother to engage in such fencing simply to hone my own argumentation skills, and because the religious right needs to be faced down, contradicted, rebutted, and, if necessary, humiliated. Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of The Middle East Forum, author of The Al Quaeda Reader, and has written and lectured extensively on “radical” Islam. An article by him appeared on March 3rd concurrently on Pajamas Media and the MEF site, “Mosques Flourish in America; Churches Perish in Muslim World.” It is educational in that he documents how Christian churches and Christians in the Middle East are regularly attacked. His chief subject in this article is the overall hostile policy of Mideast governments towards Christians and their churches. He usually suggests that “radical” Islamists are the culprits, not average off-the-rack Muslims. Readers here know that I make no distinction between Islam and “radical” Islam, just as I make no distinction between a car and an automobile. Or, to put a finer point on it, between a Jaguar and a Toyota. Both are “cars” and can kill you if you step in their way. So it is with Islam. Islam can no more be reformed and salvaged than can Nazism or Communism or Socialism. What follows is an exchange I had with a “JJ” on the Pajamas Media site. “JJ” is a Christian who regards Islam as an abomination. Well, Allah said that any other creed is an abomination. This is tantamount to two juveniles sticking their tongues out at each other. Ibrahim apparently has elected not to contribute to the discussion. I would not have pursued the issue after posting my first comment that it is pointless to charge Islam and Muslims with mere hypocrisy, except that “JJ” chose to align my atheism with that of Stalin’s, Mao’s Pol Pot’s, and Hitler’s. That insinuated affiliation raised my dander. You may read Ibrahim’s article for the truth of his argument that Islam is hypocritical, but also to catch the sense that hypocrisy is the far lesser offense. Ibrahim, like many knowledgeable and articulate anti-Islamist scholars and commenters, is basically asking of Islam: Why can’t it reciprocate in terms of religious tolerance? But his intimate knowledge of the Koran and of Islam fails him. His premise is that off-the-rack Muslims are somehow more tolerant and to be tolerated than are “radical” Islamists. It is not as though he were contending that A can also be non-A at the same time. It is though he were saying that if only Muslims would take just a part of A and discard the rest, then all would be fine and there would be peace and harmony in the world. I have corrected the typos and misspellings in “JJ’s” and my own rebuttals. My original posts follow in italics. Writing here as an atheist and so very likely a member of a minority of readers, I agree with Mr. Ibrahim that it is quite and curiously hypocritical of Muslims, particularly those in the Middle East, to call for “tolerance” and “equality” and to pose as “revolutionaries” (re Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, etc.) yet then attack and murder Christians and burn down their churches. The issue is a straw man. Why belabor the point when it is conceded that Islam preaches and encourages intolerance, subjugation, and at the very least second-class status of non-Muslims? Why dwell on Islam’s obvious double standards when it is admitted that Islam is a totalitarian political/religious ideology? Islam is a primitive, tribalist religion which frankly I place in the same belief system category as Freemasonry and Druidism, to name but a few surviving examples of mysticism, with the difference being that Islam is a virulent, aggressive, and wholly anti-mind system that demands unquestioning obedience and undiscriminating credulity. So, what else should one expect? There is no difference between Islam and “radical” Islam. Islam isn’t even “radical.” It is nihilist in nature. It is an enemy and destroyer of Western values. It is not a morality for living happily on earth, free from religious and state interference in one’s life. I was struck by Mr. Ibrahim’s omission of the fact that before Christian Egypt was conquered by “radical” Islamists, Egypt was the beneficiary of the world of Rome and Greece and was largely pagan. At the time, Christians were the “jihadists,” demanding submission by all to Christian doctrines. The vacillating and compromising policies of Imperial Rome granted these terrorists political legitimacy and carte blanche to wage “holy war” against Jews and pagans. This historical fact was admirably dramatized in Alejandro Amenabar’s “Agora,” which climaxes with the savage murder by Christians of Hypatia, a pagan philosopher and scientist, because she would not submit to Christianity and recant her beliefs and accept the role as a second-class citizen. Her murder was provoked by “St.” Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, and is evocative of the recent attack on Lara Logan in Tahrir Square, Cairo, [and for the same bestial reasons, and a hatred of the good for being the good]. Hypocrisy and double standards are not the primary failings of Islam. They are wholly secondary to the evil of the anti-life creed itself. “JJ” replied: While your opposition to Islam is appreciated, your atheism isn’t. The wholesale abandonment of Christianity in the West by people like you is undermining (in fact it has already corroded) Western Civilization. Much as, if not more than, Islam. JJ: Because you have made it a personal issue (“people like me”), allow me to ask you this: What difference is there between Muslims demanding that Christians substitute a Christian God with an Islamic one, and Christians being certain Muslims are worshiping the wrong deity? After all, Muslims are just as certain of the existence of their deity as you are of yours, and any down to the wire dispute between you and a Muslim would be a matter of fisticuffs. The outcome of which, of course, wouldn’t prove or disprove the existence of either deity. A Muslim bows five times a day to a rock (probably a meteorite); you perhaps make the sign of the cross in front of a crucifix. Those actions, however, are supposed to be not only confessions of faith, but proof of the existence of a deity. Or should one ask if there is any difference between Allah the unknowable (only through blind faith) and God the unknowable (only through blind faith)? And I differ with your assertion that there is a “wholesale abandonment of Christianity in the West.” Mosques may be springing up all over the country, but they have a ways to go before catching up with the number of churches of every imaginable denomination (synagogues coming in a close second). In the small town I live in, there are at least thirty churches, mostly Protestant, with a handful of Catholic ones. There might be a mosque here, but it isn’t advertising itself. If there is one, it has likely set up shop in an abandoned bagel store. Western civilization rests on a fealty to reason, and not to faith. When reason is abandoned, and the evidence of one’s senses is disparaged and shunted aside and replaced with policies of “diversity” or “sensitivity,” then the West winds up with, say, the intractable problem of the Somali pirates (all Muslim, or Muslim-born), and how best to deal with those initiators of force. It also finds its fundamental institutions, such as individual rights and freedom of speech, under increasing attack by Islamic jihadists who are confident that the upholders of Western values are paper tigers. You also insinuate that atheism is “corroding” Western civilization. I’m not aware of atheists flying planeloads of helpless passengers into churches, or plotting to dynamite St. Peter’s in Rome and hoping for massive collateral casualties among its throngs of visitors. What I am aware of, however, are various Christian sects firebombing abortion clinics, murdering doctors, asserting that our entire legal system is based on the Ten Commandments, and indoctrinating children in schools that America wasn’t founded on secular philosophy, but on religious faith. On the matter of corrosion, it is a fealty to reason that is being corroded by blind faith, and there is an exponential relationship between the decline of reason in the West and the resurgence of any species of faith. Else how account for the cancerous inroads of Islam in the West (aside from the invidious effects of secular statism, the welfare state, and multiculturalism) and the helplessness of Christians to combat them? “JJ’s” reply: Thank you for your comments. I’m happy to respond to some of them – it would be next to impossible to do so on all of them in much detail, within such limited forum. At the outset, let me state I don’t belong to any organized religion, I consider myself a 21st century theist, although I was brought up a Christian, and I deeply appreciate the contributions Christianity has made to Western Civilization, America, my family and myself (in spite of its minor failures over the past two millennia – when compared with its spectacular successes – and its shortcomings in dogma, when compared with its undeniable strengths of offering vision real hope and deep purpose in life.) This issue is theological, and not being a theologian myself, I wouldn’t venture into it. Atheism is the outcome of Darwinism and Marxism, not the product of reason, the Renaissance or the Enlightenment all three the products of (religious) Classical Greece, Christianity and the Protestant Ethic within the Spirit of Capitalism (Max Weber). Classical Greece, Christianity and Capitalism are the pillars of Western Civilization. Take one away, and Western Civ collapses, as it has in front of our eyes. A small point in regards to reason and theism: Einstein, the early Hawking (not the today’s senile one) and Godel are impeccable sources for that link. Islam is a bad copy of the Old and New Testament, a fake religion a violent cult, a brutal socio-economic movement put together by an irrational psychotic murderer pedophile thief pseudo-prophet and nothing more nothing less. Atheism has been the ideology of tyrants from Lenin and the other soviet communist leaders, to Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest. Now, before you jump to conclusions, I would like to clarify that I don’t blame all followers and fellow travelers of atheism (people like yourself) to be necessarily evil communists or Nazis. Most likely they aren’t; but this doesn’t take away from the monkey on their back, atheism. I could delve more on all these issues, but I won’t. Hopefully you get the main gist of my key points. I replied: JJ: First, I was raised in a Catholic household, and attended a parochial school for eight years. I was a confirmed atheist by the age of 15, never having heard of Marx or Darwin. My disbelief in a deity was founded on two impregnable premises: the metaphysical impossibility of one, and the moral objection to an unseen power having power over my existence. The first aspect was based on my growing knowledge of history and of the universe and existence, and the absurdity that one omniscient, omnipotent deity was responsible for it all. The second was based on the contradictory nature of God: his was both omnipotent and omniscient, attributes he shares with Islam’s Allah. If he was omniscient, or all-knowing of everything that was, is and is to be, then he cannot be omnipotent, able to change what was, is and is to be. He would have had to know that he was going to be whimsical in the future, and cause earthquakes and plagues and know what countless billions of individuals would and would not do; but that all-knowingness lets the wind out of his being able to change anything at whim. He already knew that he was going to indulge a whim. So, where’s the omnipotence? Further on the moral objection: the role of predestination clashes with the Christian notion of free will. If one is “programmed” by God to be good, evil, or just mediocre, what role does “free will” play in the Christian scheme of things? This is double-talk, the Christian version of taqiyya. And when one points this out to especially Christians, they invariably reply that reason cannot be applied to God’s existence or actions. Reason, they say, is the handmaiden of faith, and must defer to belief. That pitiful fall-back Christians share with Muslims. I had worked this out by the age of 15 (sans Muslims, who weren’t making headlines in the late 1950’s). Contretemps: Atheism is an outcome of reason, of enquiry into the nature of existence. That most atheists historically have not conceived of a morality to replace the altruism and self-sacrifice of Christianity, Islam, and other creeds is no reason to assert that atheism is a product of totalitarian ideologies. Most atheists I know just haven’t finished that journey. They usually become welfare-statists and collectivists. Atheism predates Darwinism and Marxism. Darwinism is a legitimate “spin-off” of enquiries into the nature of existence; Marxism substitutes God with a Hegelian notion of the masses and predestination and some mystical inevitability of the triumph of communism. Capitalism is a consequence of reason applied to the nature of man and his political relationship with other men, that he must be free to act for his own gain and happiness. It is indeed a pillar of civilization. Again, it has not been morally validated, except by philosopher Ayn Rand. You say that “Atheism has been the ideology of tyrants from Lenin and the other Soviet communist leaders, to Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest.” This is not strictly true. These tyrants merely replaced God with a deity of their own: society, the people, the race, and committed mass murder and made war in the name of the people, the race, and society. That they did not believe in the existence of the Judeo-Christian God is irrelevant. They established their own religions, more “materialistic” than the prevalent ones. That the dictators you cite have given atheism a “bad name” is hardly a valid reason for denigrating atheists in general. One could no more rationally cast a pall of evil over science, medicine, and technology because these evil men all used those realms of human enquiry and action to commit their crimes. You rush to assure me that you "don’t blame all followers and fellow travelers of atheism (people like you) to be necessarily evil communists or Nazis. Most likely they aren’t; but this doesn’t take away from the monkey on their back, atheism.” Atheism has never been a monkey on my back, but rather an integral factor in my intellectual and moral growth. It liberated me from dogma and blind belief, which I disliked and had suspicions of even in my pre-atheistic childhood. It helped to require me to demand evidence and proofs behind anyone’s assertions. On a final note, I have always found the gods of Classical Greece and Ancient Rome at least far more credible – their forms and actions were invariably based on man’s, not on some invisible, unknowable deity’s – and if not more edifying, then at least more entertaining. “JJ” responded: I assume that your response to “Mike” is in effect a misplaced response to my reply? If so, let me make just a few additional points, with your indulgence. Godel (the great logician of the two “incompleteness” theorems in logic) in his last and unpublished theorem on “a God-like structure” provides the most eloquent, convincing and rigorous proof to date for the necessity to invoke God in reason. Otherwise, fundamental notions in logic are reduced to contradictory statements. Such contradictions are ubiquitous in Darwinism and Marxism, and if you wish I could point out a few. Indeed “free will” and “purpose” are essential components of Life. Atheistic science asserts statements such as “the Universe was created by random fluctuations preceding the Big Bang, it has no purpose, there is no free will, and ‘unknown’ factors and ‘random’ events were behind the creation of Life.” Well, all these are of course arbitrary, capricious and unprovable statements, let alone indefinable and unobservable: for example, science can’t define ‘randomness’ or ‘unknown’ as it can’t deal (empirically or theoretically) with questions such as “what was before these ‘random fluctuations’ and the Big Bang, and why or how did they take place”? To reject God because you want ‘empirical evidence’ and ‘reason’ and then turn around and accept ‘scientific statements’ based precisely on lack of evidence and reason seems to me quite preposterous. As for Islam, I already elaborated on it; please, don’t refer to it as a ‘religion’ it isn’t; and ‘Allah’ is a bad imitation/copy of the Judeo-Christian God, a phony notion actually. If you read the stupid way the Koran copied the book of Genesis (where it is stated that ‘Allah created the universe from nothing’) you will understand that Islam is a failed attempt to create a ‘religion sounding document’ to gain credibility. There isn’t much here to rebut. God also created everything from nothing, and in six days, so why “JJ” faults Allah for the same legerdemain, I cannot fathom. (“He stole my act”?) Yes, the Koran is very likely a knock-off of Genesis, with a whole new cast of characters, including a pedophilic brigand and warlord touted as a voice-hearing prophet and ultimate role model for killers, rapists, and sundry other criminals. The Old Testament, largely a narration, is as harrowing a series of slaughters, indiscriminate begettings, tribal conquests, raids on rival tribes’ herds and women, and truculent conversions as is the Koran, which is largely a series of diktats and commandments. The Godel “JJ” mentions was a mathematician who, to judge by his biography, reminds me of Dr. Robert “pure research” Stadler in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The rest of what “JJ” has to say is just eclectic gibberish. No persuasion is possible to a person determined to cling to an endless chess board of rationalizations. One could make a career of check-mating every assertion made by “JJ” and his ilk. There is no profit in it once one has observed that the mind of a Christian zealot is as closed as any Muslim’s to reason, logic, and evidence. Such minds are impenetrable, Teflon-coated vessels of intrinsicism, subjectivism and other epistemological disorders. Cross-posted from Metablog

Even though George Orwell was a “democratic socialist” – or even a communist – his accurate prescience regarding the growth of totalitarianism, what it required to acquire and maintain power, and what it would do to men makes him unique among all other leftist writers who also wrote dystopian novels. His writing style, which stressed clarity and intellectual honesty in any kind of writing (his essays on this subject are marvelous), redeems him. It is not for nothing that when the Obama administration proposes taking over the Internet, or when courts uphold the idea of “hate speech” or endorses the regulation of speech in schools and businesses and even in government itself, no one thinks it is Aldous “Huxleyian” or Thomas “Hobbesian.” It is immediately dubbed “Orwellian." In terms of totalitarian methods and ends, Orwell literally wrote the book. So when I first read of U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler’s recent ruling on Obamacare, in which she states, among other things, that “mental activity” can be treated as “commerce,” even if that activity does not lead to observable, demonstrable action, and that no distinction can be made between the actions of one’s mind and physical actions, I immediately recalled a statement in Orwell’s novel Nineteen-Eighty Four: Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.* Judge Kessler, a Clinton appointee, has thus, whether she knows it or not, endorsed the notion of thought crime, or “crimethink.” The “thought crime” she is endorsing, which is not choosing to buy government-mandated health insurance after private consideration (or none at all), will not entail anything as severe as execution by the state. Instead, it would entail a hefty penalty (a special “tax”) on the recalcitrant, or even prison. Of course, paying the fine and/or serving time in prison may lead to one’s death, or at least to one’s reduced financial circumstances, but that is beside the point. The details of the invidious fraud that is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are not the subject here. The particulars and mechanics of that scam have been written about extensively in other venues. What concerns us here is the attack on the mind, on the means of man’s survival. Kessler’s ruling has been excoriated, mocked, and shredded by The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, Fox, and other leading news outlets. Five plaintiffs brought action against Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Timothy F. Geithner of the United States Department of the Treasury. They argued that the individual or compulsory mandate of Obamacare would cause them financial hardship, that it was beyond the power of Congress to enact or unconstitutional, and that it reduced God to second-fiddle in terms of the deity guaranteeing their health and well-being. The paragraph that invited the well-deserved fusillade appears on page 45 of the 64-page ruling: As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress’s power. See Thomas More Law Ctr., 720 F.Supp.2d at 893 (describing the “activity/inactivity distinction” as an issue of first impression). However, this Court finds the distinction, which Plaintiffs rely on heavily, to be of little significance...It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not 'acting,' especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action on, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality. Words, to Kessler, mean nothing. They are merely “pure semantics” whose meanings will be what those with guns and laws mean them to be. Avik Roy in Forbes shines a heat-intensive arc light on Kessler’s ruling: The idea that you can pass an unconstitutional law to remedy a problem created by a prior act of Congress makes no sense. The more straightforward remedy is to repeal the old law, or fully fund it. If a dumb federal law drove New York’s newspapers into bankruptcy, would it be okay for the government to force you to subscribe to the New York Post? Indeed, according to Judge Kessler, if Congress passed a law requiring restaurants and hotels to provide their services free of charge, it would then be okay for Congress to pass a second law forcing individuals to eat out and stay in hotels. Whether or not “forgoing” health insurance can be defined as “not acting” or as a form of “acting” is irrelevant. Thinking about whether or not to purchase it is indeed “mental activity”; it may move one to purchase it, or it may stay one’s hand. Not buying it, according to Kessler’s illogic, comes under the aegis of the Commerce Clause in the Constitution. But what business has the government to begin assuming that one has or has not “thought” about it, and more, that it may, on the most specious and nearly laughable illogic, regulate this “mental activity”– indeed, punish it for not conforming to the individual mandate and just obey? That is, for not acting blindly? The only way to avoid or escape punishment for nonfeasance – that is, a failure to do one’s duty and buy health insurance and help to spread the risk around and fulfill one’s office as a loyal, responsible citizen – is to literally not think, and purchase it. Snuck into this decision is the phenomenon of thought control. Why think about the issue at all? There are no other non-punishable options possible to a conscious mind. Thinking about it will just lead to sorrow. Congress and the government may “regulate” your thinking to the extent that you do not think, that is, if you engage in no “mental activity.” Heads you lose, tails you lose -- your freedom. Fox News summed up Kessler’s brainstorm this way: The judge is saying this: “Anytime you make a choice not to act you are 'acting.'”…Are you thinking about blogging about this subject now too? DANGER! YOU COULD BE REGULATED AND TAXED STOP! And in not acting, you are acting, and therefore your non-action/ action may be regulated, and, if necessary, punished. In Kessler’s anti-Aristotelian universe, A may be non-A at the same time. Let us concretize this illogic: After paying income taxes, sales taxes, all sorts of government fees and excises, you are able to set aside some money which you put into a savings account, or the money market, or an insurance policy, or some other rewarding venue. That is, you choose not to spend it. You are not acting to spend your money. You invest it and forget it. Your money earns interest. But, the interest you managed to earn by the end of the next year by not acting – is taxed. In this instance, you choose not to spend money on a health insurance policy you don’t want or need and save money. The money not spent will be taxed. The IRS beat Kessler to the punch decades ago in the real realm of tangible wealth. Kessler has moved into the realm of the mind. That is Kessler’s non-action/action in action. She is now proposing that this horrific scheme be applied to one’s mind in the realm of socialized medicine. This is not only an assault on epistemology and reason. It is a denial of metaphysics. Kessler is the last person in the world to accuse anyone of “pretending” to ignore reality. A Congressionally “regulated” mind under the Commerce Clause is one that simply agrees with anything an advocate of Obamacare says about it. On the other side of Kessler’s coin are the three slogans of Orwell’s totalitarian state: War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery. To which Judge Gladys Kessler has added another: Meaning is Meaningless. Never mind what the Framers “meant.” *Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty Four: Text, Sources, Criticism. Ed. by Irving Howe. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1963), p. 20. Cross-posted from Metablog

On February 22nd, four Americans were executed by Somali pirates as a U.S. warship bore down on the yacht they had hijacked. The U.S. government and the military are not saying much about why the pirates killed the Americans, but it just might have something to do with the fact that the two retired couples were on a private missionary voyage around the world to distribute Bibles in Third World villages and spread Christianity. All Somali pirates are Muslims. Very likely, even after having command of the yacht for three days and in the midst of negotiations for the hostages’ release, it had something to do with the Bibles the pirates found on board the yacht. On Tuesday, Somali pirates shot and killed four American hostages. A single hostage intentionally killed by these pirates had been almost unheard of; four dead was unprecedented…. Exactly what happened Tuesday is still murky. Pirates in the Arabian Sea had hijacked a sailboat skippered by a retired couple from California, and when the American Navy closed in, the pirates got twitchy. Navy Seals rushed aboard but it was too late. It’s still not clear why the pirates would want to kill the hostages when their business model, which has raked in more than $100 million in the past few years, is based on ransoming captives alive. But I suspect that if the pirates had instead found cartons of Playboy Magazine on the yacht, the Americans would have suffered the same fate. It would demonstrate the grip Islam has even on criminal Muslims. It is unlikely that the pirates expected to collect much of a ransom from the murdered Americans. It is likely that they were holding the U.S. government hostage, by demanding it pay the pirates the ransom instead. Two of the pirates were aboard the warship “negotiating” when pirates on the yacht fired at the warship, and then gunfire on the yacht itself was heard. The big money is in hijacking commercial vessels, such as super-tankers and super-cargo ships, and holding them and their crews hostage until ransoms are paid. Because of the murders, however, I believe the Somali pirates have adopted a new tactic: kidnap smaller private vessels whose owners are unlikely to be able to pay million dollar ransoms, and hold the captured nationals on them hostage until their governments pay up. The pirates have sent an unmistakable message to the U.S. and other Western governments: they mean business. Does the U.S. mean business? Is it willing to pay millions in “tribute” to Islamic pirates (a.k.a. Islamic jizya) as Americans were not willing to pay Napoleon to stop raiding American vessels? The hijacking of a private Danish yacht several days ago suggests this new strategy. The promise to execute the Danes, a mother, father, their three teenaged children, and two other adults if a rescue attempt is made, suggests this new tactic, as well. Most hostages captured in the pirate-infested waters off East Africa are professional sailors. Pirates rarely capture families and children, but a 3-year-old boy was aboard a French yacht seized in 2009. His father was killed in the rescue operation by French navy commandos. Two pirates were killed and four French citizens were freed, including the child. The Danish family was captured along with two adult crew members, also Danes, when their sailboat was seized by pirates Thursday, the Danish government said. Mohamed [a spokesman for the pirates] said that any attack against the pirates would result in the deaths of the hostages, and he referred to the killings last week of four American hostages captured by pirates on their yacht. Jihad Watch reports on the natural and logical connection between Islamic jihadists and the pirates, who, being Muslims waging war on the West, act as a kind of guerilla contingent. But this is not officially acknowledged. The West dare not convict or indict Islam, lest Islamists cry foul. But Somali Jihadists are now demanding their cut of any ransoms paid, and the cut is strictly by the book – the Koran. "And know that whatever ye take as spoils of war, lo! a fifth thereof is for Allah, and for the messenger and for the kinsman (who hath need) and orphans and the needy and the wayfarer, if ye believe in Allah and that which We revealed unto Our slave on the Day of Discrimination, the day when the two armies met. And Allah is Able to do all things." -- Qur'an 8:41 The West, however, is not able to do anything. Its hands are tied by a fear of offending Muslims by naming the moral culprit. It refuses to acknowledge that the pirates are proxy allies of the jihadists. It prefers to treat the pirates as mere criminals. The piracy “crisis” off the Somali coast can be solved easily and quickly – the West certainly has the means to do so – but with some regrettable risks and consequences. The situation, after all, is of the West’s own making. Western governments have dithered and bitten its nails for years over what to do, not only because the pirates still hold ships and hostages, but because the pirates are Muslims. That is what is stopping any concerted action – such as blasting every pirate ship and every pirate port and safe havens to atoms, and shooting to kill on sight any pirate with no chance of “trial” in any Western nation. When pirates were captured in the West ages ago, they were summarily tried and hanged. “But,” one might object, “they’ll just execute the hostages or they’ll be killed during an attack. That isn’t very humane. It’s better to just dither and negotiate. To attack the pirates would be barbarous, especially because they aren’t as well-armed as we are. What would the world think?” It is not bad enough that “Just War” theory reigns supreme in our military. It apparently reigns supreme when dealing with gangs of pirates. During World War Ii, when the Allies decided to bomb German and Japanese cities to accelerate the surrender of the Nazis and the Japanese and to bring the war closer to an end, doubtless strategists knew that some “innocent” German and Japanese civilians would be killed as well as those who actively or complicitly supported and sanctioned the Nazi and Imperialist regimes. When American bombers attacked Japanese cities, they also did so knowing that American POW’s were being used as slave labor in those cities, and that they, too, might be killed. This is also a risk the West must take with the pirates’ hostages if it is ever going to erase the pirate jihadists off the map. The moral conundrum is possible only because the West has refused to acknowledge the nature and identity of its enemy: Islam. The piracy “problem” is a direct consequence of especially the U.S.’s “war on terror.” It is a direct consequence of not eliminating states that sponsor terrorism. What is the alternative? Allowing the hostages to remain in captivity until they rot away, or are killed because no ransom was collected or likely to be collected, and perpetuating the commissions of crime on the high seas. Is not acting decisively against the pirates a more humane policy? Is allowing the hostage sailors to remain hostages, still living at the whim of killers, who are now resorting to torturing the hostages, a more humane policy? No. I am sure that Western governments have every Somali pirate port and village pinpointed. It should simply give a single warning, broadcast to the pirates, that all hostages are to be released, unharmed, immediately, and all hijacked vessels abandoned by the pirates. If all we got in reply were threats to kill the hostages, or actual executions, or if they reply with a wish to “negotiate,” Western naval vessels should simply commence erasing the ports, the villages, and every pirate vessel afloat; the “mother ships” especially should be sunk as well, and no attempt made to rescue survivors. Let the sharks claim them. No mercy should be shown to any pirate. The Somali pirates show none for Westerners or anyone they take hostage. Remember the four Americans executed by them just a few weeks ago? Would this action violate the sovereignty of Somalia? No. There is no such country as Somalia. It is a region of anarchy with no true government, and one to which the U.S, incredibly, is paying to simply exist, with no power to punish the pirates. Somalia’s central government collapsed more than 20 years ago, and now its landscape includes droughts, warlords, fighters allied to Al Qaeda, and malnutrition, suffering and death on a scale unseen just about anywhere else. The United States and other Western powers are pouring millions of dollars into Somalia’s transitional government, an appointed body with little legitimacy on the ground, in the hope, perhaps vain, that it can rebuild the world’s most failed state and create an economy based on something like fishing or livestock. Young men then might be able to earn a living doing something other than sticking up ships. The Times aptly describes the kind of country Somalia is: Piracy Inc. is a sprawling operation on land, too. It offers work to tens of thousands of Somalis — middle-managers, translators, bookkeepers, mechanics, gunsmiths, guards, boat builders, women who sell tea to pirates, others who sell them goats. In one of the poorest lands on earth, piracy isn’t just a business; it’s a lifeline. It is time the West extinguished that bandits’ economy and severed the lifeline, but enacted no Marshall Plan to help Somalia back to its economic and political feet. Victims do not owe their subdued victimizers anything. Remember that the Somali pirates are Muslims and that they are obeying the commands of the Koran. During WWII, the Allies did not stay their hand because they could point to some “benign” passages in Mein Kampf. The Somali coast is as much a war front as Western Europe was during WWII. But the West must first acknowledge that Islam has declared war on the West, and that the Islamic jihadists have declared war on it and make no distinction between military and civilian targets. Or were the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the London subway, and the Madrid train station, and the Bali resort, et al., all figments of our imagination? The Somali pirates hold between 600 and 800 hostages, and still have under their guns between 50 and 80 vessels of various sizes, some of which they have converted into “mother ships” that can range far beyond Somali’s coast to launch “swift boats” to attack private vessels and commercial shipping. The sea lanes between the Gulf of Aden and in the Arabian Sea have become “seize lanes.” The West has the air power, the firepower and the navies in place to accomplish the end of Somali piracy. All it needs are the will and the moral certainty to get on with it. And while we are on the subject of thievery and extortion, one must ask: Is there any difference between Somali piracy and, say, Saudi, Libyan, or Venezuelan extortion of Western wealth in oil in the Western oil fields developed by Western companies? Somalis are not the only pirates. The entire membership of OPEC is a club of pirates, extortionists, and thieves – of Western wealth. At the very least, a military strike against the Somali pirates would send a clear message to Islamist jihadists everywhere: This particular reign of terror is over. One should wholeheartedly agree with William R. Hawkins when he stresses that it is the pirates, like any criminal who initiates force, who should be mindful of the risks, chiefly that they may forfeit their lives if retaliatory force is employed. It is a strategic mistake to appease aggressors. It is the pirates who must be put at risk, and learn the harsh lesson that their raids will only result in their own destruction. And punitive attacks against pirates should not mean "nation building" or any prolonged involvement in the country. Indeed, any deep intervention in a place as wild as Somalia is to be avoided. The mission would simply be to teach the brigands that "crime" doesn't pay with an application of armed might beyond anything they can imagine or endure. It the West cannot or will not deal with so lesser a threat as pirates, then it is doomed to extinction, and the Islamists will have won. Cross-posted from Metablog

“…I know the kind of terror it is….Listen, what’s the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me – it’s being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who’s had some disease that’s eaten his brain out. You’d have nothing then but your voice – your voice and your thought. You’d scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you’d have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you’d become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you’d see living eyes watching you and you’d know that the thing can’t hear you, that it can’t be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it’s breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That’s horror. Well, that’s what’s hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own….” –Steve Mallory to Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.* In the aftermath of the abduction, rape and beating of Lara Logan, CBS foreign correspondent, in Cairo on February 11th during the “celebrations” in Tahrir Square over the resignation of Hosni Mubarak as head of Egypt’s government, the news media and the web have been buzzing with accounts and recollections of how dangerous it is for especially women journalists to cover events in so-called “hot spots.” Note that I do not stress that she and her camera crew were surrounded by a “dangerous element” of two hundred men in a crowd of tens of thousands of Muslims. That whole crowd in the whole square was the “dangerous element.” Note also that I do not stress that she was somehow, inexplicably “separated” from her crew and bodyguards. Physically, yes, she was “separated,” but what does that mean in the context of what happened to her? Any kidnapping requires that the victim be “separated” from home, family, friends, and safety. She was separated with malice aforethought. Muslims consciously interposed themselves between her and her bodyguards and crew. She was blond, unscarved, unveiled, distinctly non-Muslim, dressed to the nines to conduct an interview later that night with an Egyptian official. In short, she was Western. Too late, to judge by the look on her face in the CBS-released photograph, did she realize the foolhardiness of wading into a crowd of maddened Muslim men celebrating their vaunted omnipotence. It may have been that the men who raped and beat her were pro-Mubarak Muslims, angry at Western journalists for precipitating the downfall of their man. But, regardless of the attackers’ political persuasion, she was an infidel, and a natural, inevitable target. And as they assaulted her, they shouted “Jew! Jew!” in conformance with the common fairy tale in Egypt that Israelis were behind Mubarak’s capitulation. However, they could have just as well believed that she had spit in Mubarak’s face, or hailed Islam as the end-all and be-all of human existence, and it would not have mattered. She was a value – to herself, to others – and had to be defiled and destroyed. She was the good, and Islam is all about hating and destroying the good for being the good. What happened to Lara Logan in Cairo was Islam-by-the-book, the book being the Koran. Like many stonings and beheadings in that Islamic hell-hole, the whole thing was probably recorded on video by participating Egyptian men, but that near-snuff video will not surface in the West. I read Don Kaplan’s account of the incident, in The New York Post, and offered him these thoughts: See this report from the LA Times on a CNN-altered photograph of her “moments” before the attack. My questions are: Who took the photo? One of her crew? And did this person have time to take subsequent pictures? Was it taken with a cell phone, or a regular professional camera? Has CBS, which released the original photo to the AP, any other photos that would record and shed light on what happened in the next few moments? Why isn’t there a photo credit? Where did the “200” figure for the crowd come from? Whose estimate was it? Who were the twenty women who rescued Logan and escorted her back to her hotel/crew? Is the mob in the background pro-Mubarak or anti-Mubarak? They don’t look angry enough to be pro-Mubarak, who’s just stepped down, and not jubilant enough to be anti-. It hasn’t been specified whose mob it was. The one Egyptian in the background to the right of Logan’s head looks like he’s mugging for the press. If so, would he really want the crew to escape unharmed with an incriminating photo if he planned to take part in the assault? Hypothesis: Because Logan and her crew were arrested by the military a week earlier, detained overnight, and kicked out of the country, was this the military’s punishment for her and the crew having returned to Cairo – that is, was it a set-up to drive home the point that she wasn’t welcome? Forgive the questions, it's the Call Northside 777 in me, but the LA Times report just underscores my suspicion that there is more behind the Logan photo than meets the eye. I don’t doubt that Logan was attacked and beaten. What I wonder about is why CBS is being so circumspect about it. Could it be that CBS doesn’t want to indict Muslims, or hold Islamic diktats responsible? I mean, who raped and beat Logan? Chinese? Patagonians? What men of what religious/ethnic group are noted for brutalizing Muslim women as a matter of religious belief, and defiling Western women, as a sign of actual or imminent Islamic conquest, in their own countries (e.g., Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Britain, etc.), and whose responsibility for the attacks is veiled by the press in super-sensitive, politically correct language that hides their identities? To date, Mr. Kaplan and his associates have not acknowledged or replied to my queries. I believe these to be legitimate journalistic questions worthy of some cogitation and investigation. Richard Cohen of The Washington Post made this important observation about the “frenzy” of the night of February 11th in Cairo. Castigating CBS for having withheld news of Logan’s assault, he noted: As I'm sure even Logan would admit, the sexual assault of woman by a mob in the middle of a public square is a story. It is particularly a story because the crowd in Tahrir Square was almost invariably characterized as friendly and out for nothing but democracy. In fact, some of the television correspondents acted as if they were reporting from Times Square on New Year's Eve, stopping only at putting on a party hat. In those circumstances, a mass [sic] the sexual assault in what amounted to the nighttime version of broad daylight is certainly worth reporting. “Times Square on New Year’s Eve” was precisely how most Western news media portrayed the roiling, emotional, mass-man chaos in Tahrir Square. In fact, I would disagree with anyone who claimed that the events in Egypt the last three weeks had anything to do with a legitimate “revolution.” This is an Islamic country, and its citizens are simply demonstrating for a kinder master, more jobs, better medical care, and the like. This was and is not a “revolution” founded on ideas. It was a clamoring for regime change. That is all. But even Cohen does not grasp the significance of not only the attack on Logan, but the nature of the “celebration.” Still, the assault and its undertones of pogromist anti-Semitism (Logan is not Jewish) is very troubling and, at the very least, suggests that not everyone in Tahrir Square that night had democracy on their mind. Yes, every Muslim in Tahrir Square had democracy on his mind. Democracy means mob rule. Democracy, by definition, turns men into criminals. And the attack on Logan was democracy in action. Her attackers wanted a piece of her, and to destroy her, too. That is the Muslim way. The Koran sanctioned it. On the other side of the critical scale is Debbie Schlussel, who grasps the nature of Islam but whose recent column on Lara Logan’s ordeal was callous beyond decency. She “gets it” but does not “get it.” She allowed her emotions to dictate what she wished to say, and in doing so robbed herself of credibility. She was more interested in venting her anger (and rightfully) at the Western left that has given Islam a free pass in the name of non-judgmental multiculturalism. Lara Logan was of the Western left. Schlussel ended one post about Logan with this unbecoming rant: This never happened to her or any other mainstream media reporter when Mubarak was allowed to treat his country of savages in the only way they can be controlled. Now that’s all gone. How fitting that Lara Logan was “liberated” by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the “liberation.” Hope you’re enjoying the revolution, Lara! James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal surveyed the left’s treatment of the attack on Logan. Of course, the left hates America as much as any Muslim Brotherhood member or rank-and-file “Death to America” Muslim sign carrier. So it is no paradox that the left would sidle up to Islam in an unlikely alliance. They are ideological and philosophical birds of a feather. No mystery there. Taranto points up the leftist blinders worn by the MSM and even its hostility towards anyone who questions the legitimacy of the Egyptian “revolution.” Among other instances of leftist ideological binge-drinking, he reports on the Bill Maher-level Twitter comments by left-wing journalist Nir Rosen, an academic at New York University (subsequently fired from his cushy “fellowship” at the school’s Center on Law and Security). Earlier on, however, he poses this conundrum: The lack of specific detail is completely understandable, as CBS is caught in a conflict between the imperatives of reporting the news and protecting its employee's personal dignity. But it does leave one having to read between the lines to judge the crime's seriousness. The Wall Street Journal reports that the assault "lasted for roughly 20 to 30 minutes, said a person familiar with the matter, who added that it was 'not a rape.' " Whatever it was or was not, the New York Post reports that "most network higher-ups didn't even know how brutal the sexual assault was until a few minutes before the statement went out." One major trouble I have with the story, a trouble cited by Taranto, is that there are no specifics about the assault. The CBS statement is cautionary and vague, so much so that it leaves one doubting whether or not a criminally-defined “sexual assault” occurred at all. In today’s politically correct environment, my calling Senator Barbara Boxer “Ma’am” or Nancy Pelosi a “Botox bimbo” could be deemed “sexual assault.” Was she raped and beaten, or simply beaten by the thugs? We have only an allegation by CBS, which, as Taranto writes, leaves us “reading between the lines,” one way or another. We have only that one photo of Logan surrounded by Egyptians, and nothing else but the assertion of CBS and Logan later stating that she wants to go back to work. Another New York Post article mentions that Logan suffered “internal injuries.” Again, “internal injuries” merely connotes, but does not denote, leaving one “reading between the lines.” Having watched videos of the beheading and stoning of Muslim women, and sexual assaults on them – two of them filmed in Cairo – I do not doubt the bestial capacity of Muslim men to have subjected Logan to rape and beating in public. Carolyn Glick, in a lengthy article in The Jerusalem Post, discusses the double standards of the MSM, and poses the paradox of the news media condemning Nir Rosen’s “mirthful” remarks about Lara Logan’s ordeal in Tahrir Square and its otherwise oblivious disregard for the nature of Islam and its hostility towards women. She puts her finger on the source of the paradox: “identity politics.” Identity politics revolve around the narrative of victimization. For adherents to identity politics, the victim is not a person, but a member of a privileged victim group. That is, the status of victimhood is not determined by facts, but by membership in an identity group. Stories about victims are not dictated by facts. Victim stories are tailored to fit the victim. Facts, values, and individual responsibility are all irrelevant. In light of this, a person’s membership in specific victim groups is far more important than his behavior. And there is a clear pecking order of victimhood in identity politics. Anti-American Third World national, religious and ethnic groups are at the top of the victim food chain. They out-victim everyone else. After them come the Western victims: Racial minorities, women, homosexuals, children and animals. Israelis, Jews, Americans, white males and rich people are the predetermined perpetrators. No matter how badly they are victimized, brave reporters will go to heroic lengths to ignore, underplay or explain away their suffering. All this is true. But “identity politics” is strictly a Saul Alinsky-inculcated state of mind, a collectivist tactic to achieve political power and/or to commit legalized felonies against the targeted and isolated in the name of “democracy.” Glick notes that Nir Rosen mocked Logan because she was “insufficiently anti-American.” Glick further observes: When members of Western victim groups are attacked by Third World victims, the story can be reported, but with as little mention of the identity of the victim-perpetrator as possible. So it was with the coverage of Logan and the rest of the foreign reporters assaulted in Egypt. They were attacked by invisible attackers with no identities, no barbaric values, no moral responsibility, and no criminal culpability. CBS went so far as to blur the faces of the men who surrounded Logan in the moments before she was attacked. [Which claim raises the question: Who was responsible for the altered photo: CNN or CBS?] What happened to Lara Logan was Islam unleashed. That was the “religion of peace” glorying in its power to violate, defile and destroy. That was Islam at its giddy height. Islam’s doctrines eat out the brains of its adherents, or attract people who wish to surrender their minds. That is the essence of Islam, experienced by Lara Logan in the most personal and violent way. That is what Islam has in store for the West. Islam is a system of nihilism. It is a drooling beast. I hope Lara Logan withdraws her ideological predisposition to Islam and things Muslim, or that someone tells her: That’s the essence of Islam for you, that is what you have been promoting and rationalizing. But If, after what it did to you, you continue to romanticize it, then fare-thee-well. And then there is Washington D.C., and the drooling beasts and the “dangerous elements” in the White House and Congress who wish to defile and destroy this country for the same nihilistic reasons. But, that is another story. *The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. New York: 1943. Charter Books/Bobbs-Merrill, 1962. Cross-posted from Metablog

In a February 9th interview of Middle East expert Daniel Pipes by Yosef Rapaport, “Analyzing the Turmoil (in Egypt),” Pipes reveals that while he has an intimate and comprehensive knowledge of Islam and Mideast history and affairs, he is sadly and dangerously ignorant of political philosophy. Pipes’ blog site also carries commentaries by guest columnists who echo his fallacies. In this interview, Pipes offers his views on the prospects of Egypt becoming a “democracy.” One can appreciate Pipes’ assessment of Egypt and the “regime change” there, and certainly respect his appraisal of Islam and the Mideast, but I shudder every time I encounter an otherwise intelligent and knowledgeable person employing the term “democracy” so carelessly. It is as though Pipes (and many, many others) had never read what the American Founders and Framers had to say about “democracy.” They feared and loathed democracy. Democracy, they saw in history, was always an overture to tyranny of one kind or another. Democracy was and remains mob rule. The purpose of the Founders and Framers was to establish an individual rights-protecting republic, one that would be proof against the whims and fashions of mobs, majorities, and power-seeking politicians. Democracy, for example, is a state or local government banning smoking in private restaurants and bars, because some group with political pull wanted it that way; or Obama patronizing millions of people who want lower health-care costs and endorsing socialized medicine legislation; or state or municipal governments banning plastic (or paper) bags in supermarkets to curry favor with environmentalists. The instances of “democracy” in action are legion, and they all depend on the employment of government force and the diminishment of individual rights. Democracy is not just about “free elections.” What would people vote for in these elections? What would be legitimate issues that could be voted on, and what would not be legitimate issues? Democracy makes no distinctions between these things. Regarding “democracy” a kind of stable political environment that sort of promotes freedom and does not require armies of police to regulate it – such as in the U.S. – is a rather sloppy concept of “good” government. Democracy cannot be equated with limited government. Democracy means unlimited government. But “free elections” in a politically backward country such as Egypt usually means the last election, replaced with farces such as the “free elections” in Iran. The only country in the Mideast that has “free elections” is Israel. In his interview, Pipes makes a distinction between Islam and Islamism. But what is Islamism but taking Islam’s most belligerent or noxious tenets seriously and acting on them? Islam is a totalitarian ideology, pure and simple. This is aside from its primitive, tribalist character. Islam is already a form of “democracy.” The majority of Muslims want it, and wish to conform to Sharia law, to worship Allah, honor Mohammad, demand respect, etc. What could be more democratic than that? Pipes would seem to second that evaluation. When asked about the role of “dignity” and “humiliation” in Muslim and Arab culture, he answered: They're very important. Islam imbues Muslims with a profound sense of superiority to non-Muslims, and an assumption that the natural order has Muslims ruling non- Muslims. In the modern era, that has hardly been the case, especially a century ago when so many Muslims fell under European rule. Given his inadvertently damning estimate of Muslims and their world view, one would think he would ascribe the cause of such an inbred pathology to Islam. But he stops short and holds Islam blameless. Rapaport asked Pipes to compare Egypt with Turkey, “that has a basis in secularism, but a religious party rules it right now. Is there any way Islamism can coexist with democracy? Is there any model for that, in your view?” Islam is compatible with democracy but Islamism is not. It's like asking, are fascism and communism compatible with democracy? No. Islamism is inherently antidemocratic. It demands that the sovereignty of G-d trumps the sovereignty of the popular will; that the Sharia be applied, no matter what people think; that Muslims have a superior status to non-Muslims; that men enjoy superiority over women; and that violent jihad is a legitimate means of spreading Islam. These are the profoundly anti-democratic qualities of Islamism. Compare Pipes’ answer with Amil Imani’s evaluation of Islam in his February 14th article, “Is ‘Islamofascim’ a Slur?” Political Ideology : Islam is and has always been political, in the form of Imamate, Caliphate or by proxy where Islam through religious divines controlled the state. Saudi Arabia, for instance, does not even have a constitution. The Quran is the constitution. The country has a king. Yet, the king is the supreme enforcer of the laws dictated by Islam. In another Islamic country, Iran, where the mullahs rule, the constitution is squarely based on the Quran. Many laws are strictly drawn from the Shariah. The mosque is the state and no other competing political ideology is permitted. It is apparent that Pipes repeats the same error as President George W. Bush, who alleged that Islam is a “peaceful” religion “hijacked” by “extremists.” He sees Islam as a potentially benign creed that must undergo arduous and time-consuming reformation (just as the Christian church underwent centuries of reformation), and Islamism, whose violent nature he asserts but which he cannot account for without repudiating Islam altogether. It is either/or. Pipes attempts to occupy a middle ground. (It is interesting to note that, according to Imani, Mohammad even stole the name of one of the Meccan idols he ordered destroyed when he “converted” the town: Allah. This may have been a corruption, deliberate or not, of the name of another Abrahamic deity, Jehovah, or variations on that name. Imani’s otherwise informative article is soured with an adulatory position on George W. Bush.) However, most Muslims, like most Christians (and Jews), develop a kind of schizoid ethics when it comes to practicing the creed. They, too, compartmentalize the “truths” to be found in the scriptures and keep them segregated from what thoughts and actions are required in everyday life. Christians, if they attempted to live according to the morality of selflessness and self-sacrifice, which are central tenets of their creed, would be deceased from suicide in a matter of weeks. Muslims, if they attempted to practice literally the central tenets of their creed, would become rampaging hordes and card-carrying Islamo-Nazis. Similarly, Pipes and other anti-Islamist observers make no distinction between “democracy” and a government that protects individual rights, between one that recognizes no rights and one that does and so promotes the expansion and enjoyment of freedom. Islam is certainly compatible with democracy – a democracy of, by, and for Muslims only. All others would be at the bottom of the political ladder, paying jizya to the Muslim collective/majority. Islam will not tolerate a “pluralistic” political system. Islam cannot be “modernized.” Neither can Christianity be “modernized,” only kept divorced from the political life of a nation. But the moral code of Christianity has been secularized in national politics. Else, why the constant appeals to selflessness and self-sacrifice by politicians? Strip Islam of Sharia law, and what would be left but a cult and the subject of hilarity? Neither Christianity nor Islam should be cut any critical slack. If the morality is no good for living on earth, if others’ well-being and happiness have priority over one’s own (or obeying God’s or Allah’s will, in the way of a Kantian moral imperative), if there is no “practical” application of and end to it except suicide and/or homicide, what good is it and why subscribe to it? Both creeds are antithetical and hostile to reason. Both deny or act to counter man’s nature as a being of volitional consciousness, who must choose his purpose for living and act to achieve those goals in pursuit of his own happiness. Democracy, Christianity, and Islam are all in fundamental opposition to that fact. So one should be less sanguine than is Pipes about Egypt’s fate over the next year, or, for that matter, about the fate of any Arabic Mideast country. There are millions of Arabs who are also practicing (and perhaps even devout) Muslims who have not a clue to what individual rights are, or if they are well-read enough in the subject, would be hostile to them because they would see that individual rights invalidate any morality founded on any “I, God, say so, but I am otherwise unknowable until you are dead” mysticism. Democracy, after all, is just another form of mysticism. The collective wish of the “people” will it. Ergo, it is good. Well, the Germans “willed” Nazism and racial purity through Hitler and hoped they would triumph. The Japanese “willed” Shintoist nationalism through the emperor and hoped it would triumph. Muslims “channel” Mohammad and hope Islam will triumph. As Pipes notes, Islam permits Muslims to regard themselves as superior to all others and as Allah’s chosen. This is a hubristic collectivism it shares especially with Nazism. In another article, “Islam and Democracy – Much Hard Work Needed,” Pipes projects what it would take to “tame” Islam and transform it into just another harmless creed that could coexist with “democracy”: Put differently: of course, Islam is undemocratic in spirit, but so was every other pre-modern religion and society. Just as Christianity became part of the democratic process, so can Islam. This transformation will surely be wrenching and require time. The evolution of the Catholic Church from a reactionary force in the medieval period into a democratic one today, an evolution not entirely over, has been taking place for 700 years. When an institution based in Rome took so long, why should a religion from Mecca, replete with its uniquely problematic scriptures, move faster or with less contention? Why, indeed? Why should it even continue to exist? Strip Islam of its appeal to collective superiority – the creed of the second-hander – rip out Sharia law, and what would be its appeal? Why not just join the Amish, or the Mennonites, or the Scientologists? Islamism is Islam, and cannot be reformed. It can only be repudiated and abandoned. The trouble is with religion per se, and not its assimilative capacity with “democracy” or with any other political system. The United States is now a de facto “democracy,” having slid into that perilous status with little or no opposition for over a century thanks to statist legislation that has nullified or usurped any protection against mob rule offered by the Founders and Framers. President Obama is stealthily “progressing” towards authoritarian “democracy” with his most recent legislation and policies, and his authoritarianism is evident in his “soft” approach to Islam, with whose totalitarian nature he has a natural and undeniable affinity. Amil Imani reaches the same conclusion I have been emphasizing for years: “If Muslims find fascism repugnant, then they should reconsider being Muslims.” Islam is anti-life and totalitarian to the core. Even shorn of its brutal, virulent, and belligerent aspects, there are no redeeming features to it. The sight of someone bowing to a rock five times a day hardly comports with the idea of “dignity,” especially when one knows that it is in obsequious submission to the commands of a murderous, psychopathic brigand. It does not trigger visions of, say, the climax of Antonio Salieri’s opera . It is about as enthralling and ennobling as a college fraternity initiation. Islam is Islamism. It is not salvageable as a moral guide to living on earth. There is no reason to wish to preserve it in any form. Cross-posted from Metablog

If medicine were ruled by multiculturalism, and you had a brain aneurysm that needed neurosurgery, which would you prefer: a surgeon to correct it in an antiseptic operating room, or a shaman who would chant, dance, and shake a rattle at you, and force feed you a potion of pig’s blood, dirt and rat tails? Which treatment would you think would be efficacious? What do you think would be your chances of survival? In such a regime, would you have a choice? If you elected the neurosurgery, you might be accused of wounding the feelings of the shaman, or of denying him employment, of not respecting his cultural traditions. To save you the worry of offending the shaman with your possible insensitivity, a law would compel the surgeon and the shaman to draw straws for the right to cure you of the aneurysm. But suppose, thanks to a government-mandated, government-funded “fair and balanced” information program, which taught the history of medicine, treating advances in Western science as no better than shamanism, you believed that the shaman might cure you. After all, his ancestors had been performing the ritual for centuries, without even knowing what an aneurysm was. They and their patients must have believed his chanting and dancing worked. If they hadn’t, wouldn’t they have, well, discovered medical science? Statistics on the success of shamanism are scant, but who were you to judge? You are not a doctor, and so cannot be a judge of what works and what will not work. And there just might be evil spirits inhabiting your brain, and a neurosurgeon wouldn’t know how to coax them out. So, you choose the shaman. He spent hours making noise and bathing you in his odiferous aroma. He failed. You are now near an excruciatingly painful death. The hospital tells you that it’s not too late, the surgeon can still attempt to perform the necessary operation. You feel guilty about the shaman’s failure to remove the aneurysm – and apologize to him profusely – but ask to be taken the operating room post-haste. When you recover, you hear noises outside your hospital room window. It is a demonstration of shamans protesting your not respecting their cultural traditions, of discriminating against them. You learn that the surgeon who saved your life has been beaten up, and your own car in the hospital garage has been fire-bombed. A family pulling into the empty space next to your car was killed. An “extremist” group called “Shamans for a Blended Society” claims responsibility. A “moderate” shaman spokesman assures the public that most shamans do not believe in such violence and that “peaceful” shamans shouldn’t be linked with violent ones. “Our silence about the actions of our brothers should not be construed as sanction.” More frightening, you read in a newspaper that the shamans also want to take over the hospital and integrate their brand of medical treatment, eventually as the only one available. They demand that medical schools adopt a curriculum of shamanist medical beliefs, and that non-shaman doctors be required to undergo reeducation. Those who refuse or fail “peer review” will not be allowed to practice any kind of medicine. The “moderate” shaman spokesman asserts that “such people are criminally intolerant and obviously bigoted against diversity in medicine.” On a national level, covering the cultures of whole nations, including politics and the arts, this is what has been occurring in the West for decades with the invasion of Islam. What preceded the invasion, however, and helped to make that invasion possible, was a general disintegration fomented by subjectivism, relativism, and nihilism (e.g., the “sculpture” of Duchamp, the “paintings” of Picasso, Pollock, and Warhol, the “music” of Schonberg and Cage). Europeans are slowly, ever so cautiously, taking the first timid steps to recognizing the peril that is Islam, and that the peril was sired, fostered and sanctioned by the policy of multiculturalism, enforced by government. “Islam” means submission, and they are now acknowledging that violently, or incrementally in the guise of “tolerance” and “diversity,” it means to conquer Europe, and then the world. But the steps they are proposing are fraught with a peril as pernicious as that posed by Islam. Angela Merkel of Germany, Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and now David Cameron of Britain have opened their eyes to the peril, but are otherwise rudderless in their desire to “salvage” Western civilization. They have uniformly advocated using state power to treat the symptoms of Islamism without closely examining the ideology, which they simply regard as a “religion.” Their first, ideologically congenital response to multiculturalism is state action. Soon after it was revealed that Britain’s MI6 warned of a campaign of domestic and foreign Islamic terrorism in Britain and abroad, British Prime Minister David Cameron addressed the Munich Security Conference on February 5th. His speech points up the West’s flawed perception of Islam. It repeats the fallacies uttered by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11, when he said that Islam had been “hijacked” by terrorists and that Islam, at root, was a “peaceful” religion. Cameron also prescribes a series of government actions to combat Islamic “extremists.” The reaction of the left to Cameron’s speech was predictable, exhibiting its selective amnesia about the English Defense League that advocated being “hard-nosed” about Muslim immigration (long before Cameron discovered that he had a nose), and also about British Muslims calling for Britain to become Sharia-ized from top to bottom. Preceding Cameron’s wall-flowerish approach to combating terrorism were Tony Blair (see a précis of his Foreign Affairs, "A Battle for Global Values,” on diversity vis-a-vis Islam here), and Gordon Brown's order to members of the government (at the bidding of the European Union) to refrain from publically linking Muslims and terrorism. Cameron’s speech focused on multiculturalism and its failure. What is multiculturalism? What do its advocates mean by it? Does it mean attending an Italian or Polish street fair to sample the national cuisine? Does it mean enjoying the music of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Puccini, Grieg, or Lully? Does it mean appreciating the literature of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy? Does it mean acknowledging and benefiting from the scientific and medical achievements of men and women of various countries? No. You will not find a clear definition of multiculturalism in the usual places, such as in The Oxford Dictionary and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. What you will find is a consistent but unarticulated suggestion that it is a policy of thought and/or behavior control, instituted and imposed by government at the behest of groups who claim to be “disadvantaged” or “victimized” or treated as “second class” by the norms of a secular, non-tribalist society, or who claim that their “culture” is too unique or special for its adherents to allow it to be submerged or dissipated in a general secular culture. The Stanford discussion of multiculturalism notes: Multiculturalism is a body of thought in political philosophy about the proper way to respond to cultural and religious diversity. Mere toleration of group differences is said to fall short of treating members of minority groups as equal citizens; recognition and positive accommodation of group differences are required through “group-differentiated rights”…. While multiculturalism has been used as an umbrella term to characterize the moral and political claims of a wide range of disadvantaged groups, including African Americans, women, gays and lesbians, and the disabled, most theorists of multiculturalism tend to focus their arguments on immigrants who are ethnic and religious minorities (e.g. Latinos in the U.S., Muslims in Western Europe), minority nations (e.g. Catalans, Basque, Welsh, Québécois), and indigenous peoples (e.g. Native peoples in North America, Maori in New Zealand). The Oxford discussion notes, after its definition of the term as “the practice of giving importance to all cultures in a society” (leaving open the question of who or what bestows that importance): The term ‘multiculturalism’ emerged in the 1960s in Anglophone countries in relation to the cultural needs of non-European migrants. It now means the political accommodation by the state and/or a dominant group of all minority cultures defined first and foremost by reference to race or ethnicity; and more controversially, by reference to nationality, aboriginality, or religion, the latter being groups that tend to make larger claims and so tend to resist having their claims reduced to those of immigrants. The ethnic assertiveness associated with multiculturalism has been part of a wider current of ‘identity’ politics…. To implement multiculturalism, it must have a point of reference, or something against which to measure or compare other cultures, and then it must seem to level or diminish a superior value by elevating a lesser or inferior value. To multiculturalists, comparing Patagonian culture to Eskimo or Congolese culture would be pointless, because they are all primitive, though the multiculturalists would never say that. Instead, they would compare a primitive, stagnant culture with Western culture and claim that they are all the same, that they are all unique and that none is superior to any of the others, especially not Western culture. In fact, the multiculturalists have not elevated anything, but rather demoted Western culture by juxtaposing it with the lowest common denominator. This is removing the Nike of Samothrace from its pedestal and placing it next to a mechanical carnival fat lady and a woman in a burka, which you originally thought was the charred stump of a burnt redwood. The docents of diversity, if they have done a good job of indoctrinating you, will expect you to concede that the Nike isn’t any more attractive than the fat lady or the burka. In fact, you say, like a good dhimmi, that it shames the other examples, and so should be splattered with paint to equalize things. Islam has no culture to speak of, unless one includes its reputation for barbarity, cruelty, intolerance, slavery, nihilism, and an unquenched malice for any culture that is measurably superior to it, for any culture that is pro-living on earth, pro-freedom, pro-reason. That culture happens to be Western culture. After some prefatory remarks about the necessity for military and other security measures to combat terrorism, Cameron proceeded to endorse multiculturalism while at the same time agreeing with Angela Merkel that the policy has failed. In particular, he repeatedly emphasized the notion that Islam must be distinguished from its “extremists.” To wit: But the biggest threat that we face comes from terrorist attacks, some of which are, sadly, carried out by our own citizens. It is important to stress that terrorism is not linked exclusively to any one religion or ethnic group. My country…still faces threats from dissident republicans in Northern Ireland. “Dissident republicans”? What a delicate euphemism for the Irish Republic Army, a band of indiscriminate killers, as indiscriminate as Al Quada, whose planners and “soldiers” very likely learned a few things from the IRA’s murderous techniques. We will not defeat terrorism simply by the action we take outside our borders. Europe needs to wake up to what is happening in our own countries. Of course, that means strengthening, as Angela has said, the security aspects of our response, on tracing plots, on stopping them, on counter-surveillance and intelligence gathering. Which means: not eliminating states that sponsor terrorism, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, but bolstering and expanding the police-state capabilities in the so-called Western “democracies.” But Cameron went out of his way throughout his speech to hold Islam blameless for 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, and all the other successful and attempted attacks on the West and on Westerners around the world. • Nevertheless, we should acknowledge that this threat comes in Europe overwhelmingly from young men who follow a completely perverse, warped interpretation of Islam, and who are prepared to blow themselves up and kill their fellow citizens…. • We have got to get to the root of the problem, and we need to be absolutely clear on where the origins of where these terrorist attacks lie. That is the existence of an ideology, Islamist extremism. We should be equally clear what we mean by this term, and we must distinguish it from Islam. Islam is a religion observed peacefully and devoutly by over a billion people. Islamist extremism is a political ideology supported by a minority…. • At the furthest end are those who back terrorism to promote their ultimate goal: an entire Islamist realm, governed by an interpretation of Sharia…. • It is vital that we make this distinction between religion on the one hand, and political ideology on the other. Time and again, people equate the two…. • Someone can be a devout Muslim and not be an extremist. We need to be clear: Islamist extremism and Islam are not the same thing. • There is so much muddled thinking about this whole issue. What an understatement. The muddled thinking is all Cameron’s. He affects to prune a few weeds, but ignores the roots of the Islamic kudzu that is smothering the Western values he proposes to defend. He does not advocate combating an ideology with an ideology. But, here are some counterpoints: Islam cannot be “perverted” or “warped.” It is already absurdly irrational and nihilistic. Islamic “extremism” is an ideology and is Islam in its purest, most fundamental manifestation; terrorists practice what Mohammed preached. Islam is certainly observed peacefully and devoutly by over a billion people,” who silently, and so complicitly, sanction the political ideology and actions of the “extremist minority.” Those “billion people” hardly constitute a minority. Yes, someone can be a devout Muslim and not be an “extremist.” What a devout Muslim is, is a dehumanized manqué who has surrendered his mind and his identity to the diktats of a violent, proselytizing bandit who heard voices, and is disinclined to question his creed either from mental inertia or for fear of angering the hive. Cameron went on to smear anyone who objects to the Islamification of Britain and any other Western nation: On the one hand, those on the hard right ignore this distinction between Islam and Islamist extremism, and just say that Islam and the West are irreconcilable – that there is a clash of civilizations…These people fuel Islamophobia, and I completely reject their argument. There is that old allegation again, that anyone on the “right” is naturally fascist. Anyone who recognizes that Islam and the West are irreconcilable is a bigoted racist. On one hand, Islamic “extremists”; on the other, fascist “extremists” and Islamophobes. In the middle, the great big zero of a billion devout Muslims who wish not or dare not condemn their more activist, missionary brothers. Not much logic is present in that scenario. If they want an example of how Western values and Islam can be entirely compatible, they should look at what’s happened in the past few weeks on the streets of Tunis and Cairo: hundreds of thousands of people demanding the universal right to free elections and democracy. Yes, look to what has happened in Tunis and Cairo, the taking over of blind revolts against one form of tyranny in favor of an Islamic one by the Muslim Brotherhood and other “extremist” organizations. What those hundreds of thousands of people will get – those people who haven’t a clue to what rights are – is an Iranian-style “democracy” with “free elections” rigged to perpetuate an Islamic regime. After some confusing rhetoric about leftists, “moderate” and “extremist” Muslims, Cameron stresses again: We need to be clear: Islamist extremism and Islam are not the same thing….The point is this: the ideology of extremism is the problem; Islam emphatically is not. Picking a fight with the latter will do nothing to help us to confront the former. Here is an apt analogy: Neville Chamberlain did not wish to think that Nazi “extremism” and Nazism were the same thing. He believed that Nazi ideology was the problem, not Nazism itself (perhaps he thought it was just a peculiar German predilection for authoritarianism and no threat to Britain). He did not wish to pick a fight with the Nazis. He, too, spoke in Munich. What he got was a war with a totalitarian regime bent on conquest. It is a very familiar scenario. We need to argue that prophecies of a global war of religion pitting Muslims against the rest of the world are nonsense. Are they nonsense? Then why have Islamists declared war on the West? Which religion has pitted itself against the rest of the world? The extremism we face is a distortion of Islam, so these arguments, in part, must be made by those within Islam. So let us give voice to those followers of Islam in our own countries – the vast, often unheard majority – who despise the extremists and their worldview. Islam is a political/theocratic ideology, and cannot be “distorted.” And how can Cameron or anyone else give the “vast, often unheard majority” voice, when they choose not to speak, which would explain why they are “unheard”? After all that, Cameron finally alights on the failure of state-sponsored multiculturalism, and proposes more of it. He speaks of a “muscular liberalism,” which means more state involvement in the private lives of citizens. He announces a National Citizen Service, a two-month program for sixteen-year-olds from different backgrounds to live and work together.” It sounds like a multiculturalist Hitler Youth, or an Obama Corps. I also believe we should encourage meaningful and active participation in society, by shifting the balance of power away from the state and towards the people. After all, the Party can’t do everything. It is relying on all conscientious and patriotic Germans – excuse me, Britons – to put their shoulders behind the effort and pitch in and help to achieve “true cohesion.” Earlier in his speech, Cameron bemoaned the plight of young Muslim immigrants to Britain who are left “rootless” without an “identity,” and blamed “passive tolerance” for their and the country’s troubles, and too often turn to violent jihad. Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We’ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values. This is one of Cameron’s clearer statements. Elsewhere in his speech, he proposes a kind of state defunding and spurning of Muslim organizations that preach jihad and universal Sharia. Fine. Follow that up with ending welfare payments to Muslims with multiple wives, ending Sharia courts that bypass civil courts, deporting any and all immigrant Muslims who breathe a word of treason and overthrow, and discarding the politically correct lexicon of euphemistic terms (e.g., “Asian” for “Muslim”). That would be the beginning of true “liberalism,” that is, of a limited government whose business it would be to protect individual rights, remove itself from the economy, and which recognized that providing “a vision of society” was not one of its proper functions. But the implementation of any one of Cameron’s proposals would provoke angry demonstrations of “moderate” Muslims calling for his resignation and his head and for death to all “Islamophobes.” No sooner had his speech been publicized than he was attacked by “moderate” Muslims for encouraging Islamophobia. On the whole, what Cameron had to say about his solutions to the problem was an encomium of fascism. In its fundamental errors and fallacies, David Cameron’s Munich speech echoes the same decades-old mindset of U.S. policy towards Islam and Muslims, which is an accommodationist one that seeks to “integrate” the unintegratable, grant Muslims a “respect” that is never reciprocated (and can never be, if Islam is to remain Islam), and reconcile a totalitarianism ideology with the Constitution. Representative Peter King, erstwhile friend of the IRA and more recently a friend of Long Island Muslims, is under attack by Muslims for wanting to hold hearings in the House on the radicalization of American Muslims. This is despite his apparent desire to load the testimony in favor of “moderate” Muslims with axes to grind and his not having invited experts on Islamic jihad to testify, such as Robert Spencer and Steve Emerson, both hated by CAIR, the ISNA, and the MPAC. President Obama has appointed Muslims to guide Middle East policy, and has been flirting with the Muslim Brotherhood, the progenitor of many terrorist organizations whose goals are to eradicate Israel and rot the legal and cultural innards of the U.S. in preparation of converting it into an Islamic “republic.” He wishes it to have a role in establishing a new government in Egypt. This is in demonstrated conformance to the deference he pays to tyrants and authoritarians. The Grand Dhimmis of Europe are awakening and conceding that multiculturalism has been a prescription for cultural and political suicide. Unfortunately, they are acting under the influence of the political double aneurysm of collectivism and statism. Cross-posted from Metablog

On January 31st Senior Federal Judge Roger Vinson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida ruled that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare or the “Act”), signed by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, was unconstitutional in its totality. This was theoretically a spectacularly crucial blow to socialized healthcare (and, as a consequence, to socialized medicine). With the conscientious and intellectual rigor required for the task, Judge Vinson eviscerated the concept and purpose of Obamacare on constitutional grounds, asserting that the whole Act was beyond the scope of Congress’ enumerated powers. Contrast Vinson’s approach to whether or not the Constitution grants Congress the power to mandate health insurance with then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s flip and arrogant response to the reporter who asked her if Congress had such authority. “Are you serious? Are you serious?” Yes, the reporter was serious, and so was Judge Vinson. Judge Vinson focused on the element of force. And from a strictly constitutional standpoint, he performed a magnificent and crucial task of explaining why Congress does not have the power to force one to engage in “commerce.” He compares being forced to buy health insurance with being forced to buy government price-supported wheat bread, because there will always be a market for food. He cites a number of semi-rational decisions by the Supreme Court in the past that question the government’s economic power. While Judge Vinson’s opinion refers to and explicates a key section of the Constitution – the “Necessary and Proper” clause – and correctly concludes, based on the Framers’ meaning and intention of its purpose, that it in no way grants Congress the power to “regulate” commerce in the modern, statist sense, something is missing from his reasoning. While in this instance, he argues, to create a “market” for a good that the government may compel everyone to buy – that is, by fiat control in the name of some extra-constitutional purpose or object – is not unprecedented, except in terms of its scale, he nevertheless begs the question: What is the true, proper, and moral function of government? Measured by his “strict interpretation” of the Constitution, Vinson’s reasoning is impeccable and nearly flawless. His linking of the individual mandate to the absence of a severability provision in the Act, was ingenious. With such a provision present in the Act, he argues, it would have done little good to challenge the Act’s constitutionality, because many of its individual parts could have been implemented even had the individual mandate been declared unlawful. The result would have been the same: the compulsory theft of the right to not buy the product, in which “inactivity” would be treated as a crime. Having determined that the individual mandate exceeds Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause, and cannot be saved by application of the Necessary and Proper Clause, the next question is whether it is severable from the remainder of the Act. In considering this issue, I note that the defendants have acknowledged that the individual mandate and the Act’s health insurance reforms, including the guaranteed issue and community rating, will rise or fall together as these reforms “cannot be severed from the [individual mandate].” As explained in my order on the motion to dismiss: “the defendants concede that [the individual mandate] is absolutely necessary for the Act’s insurance market reforms to work as intended. In fact, they refer to it as an ‘essential’ part of the Act at least fourteen times in their motion to dismiss.” Thus, the only question is whether the Act’s other, non-health-insurance-related provisions can stand independently or whether they, too, must fall with the individual mandate. The absence of such a clause or provision, and the defendants’ acknowledgment that the compulsory individual mandate was the heart of the Act, and that the Act’s efficacy or power to enforce depended on its compulsory character (especially regarding the Act’s dubious punitive and confiscatory funding), led Vinson to conclude that the individual mandate was unconstitutional. Therefore the whole Act, which depended on the inseverability of the individual mandate, was unconstitutional and “void.” But, with or without a severability clause, would Judge Vinson have regarded Obamacare as unconstitutional and void? That is, immoral, and in direct contradiction of the Framers’ meaning and intent? He did not address this issue. The Democrats blundered. In their rush to coerce Americans to buy health insurance, they removed the severability clause from the final version of Obamacare. Vinson noted this and nailed them. They were in such a hurry to force Americans to buy health insurance on the government’s terms, and so determined to make Americans accept Obamacare – stressing the “universality” of the scheme, to compel them to swallow the whole scheme with no way to opt out of it (except if one was a member of a special interest group, such as members of Congress or federal employees or unions) – that they passed Obamacare without a stipulated and inclusive guarantee. Judge Vinson wrote: The lack of a severability clause in this case is significant because one had been included in an earlier version of the Act, but it was removed in the bill that subsequently became law. In short, because Americans were not offered the choice to “opt out,” because there was no “escape clause” granted to anyone (except to those with political pull), and because compulsion was the fundamental character of Obamacare, the Act fell on Constitutional grounds. In his concluding remarks, Judge Vinson remarked: The existing problems in our national health care system are recognized by everyone in this case. There is widespread sentiment for positive improvements that will reduce costs, improve the quality of care, and expand availability in a way that the nation can afford. This is obviously a very difficult task. Regardless of how laudable its attempts may have been to accomplish these goals in passing the Act, Congress must operate within the bounds established by the Constitution. Again, this case is not about whether the Act is wise or unwise legislation. It is about the Constitutional role of the federal government.” (Emphasis mine) The “existing problems” in the healthcare system are all government-caused and sustained, such as insurance companies not being permitted to sell various kinds of health insurance across state lines, a fiat law that certainly comports with the statist interpretation of “regulating commerce.” That kind of regulation is neither necessary nor proper nor within the limitations placed on Congress and the government by the Constitution. Perhaps because it was beyond the scope of his task, Judge Vinson did not address the constitutionality of Medicare and Medicaid, which programs apparently were an issue with some of the states, who claimed that the states had no choice but to participate in the program and that such participation would endanger the tax-funded “entitlements” of their residents. Preserving Medicare and Medicaid, and perpetuating any government-controlled healthcare system, federal or state, however, are not “laudable” ends. Both systems should be declared “void,” as well. Judge Vinson in the beginning of his opinion quoted James Madison in Federalist No. 51: If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. Men may not be “angels,” but the enumerated powers of Congress as clearly stated in the Constitution were intended to protect men from being robbed and enslaved by devils. Judge Vinson is to be commended for having performed an invaluable task. His 78-page opinion, reasoned on strictly Constitutional grounds, tosses the 2,000+ page Obamacare law out the window to scatter hither and yon in the wind for the Democrats to scramble after and salvage what they may. The narrowly defeated repeal in the Senate yesterday guarantees that Obamacare will wend its way to the Supreme Court. And there is another issue: the Court which Obama has attempted to “pack,” FDR-style, with left-leaning liberals who may very well reverse Judge Vinson’s ruling. But, for the moment, that is another story. The strength of Judge Vinson’s ruling, in the meantime, should be further enhanced with a specific reaffirmation of the Framers’ all-important Necessary and Proper clause, to refine its meaning and intent. “Auxiliary precautions,” such as the Bill of Rights, were necessary and proper to limit the power of government, and to frustrate the machinations of devils, big and small. Cross-posted from Metablog