Rule of Reason Blog

Missing most from arguments against burning Korans is the fact that a Koran may be one’s personal property. This fact is overlooked in all arguments I have read against the action. It is also absent from the argument that when authorities arrest someone who is charged with a “hate crime,” or with “hate speech,” or even with “promoting racial hatred,” the property status of the book is not considered relevant. It is one’s property, but it is subject to the equivalent of a local building or property code on speech. Burning a book – the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, Mein Kampf, Das Kapital, Ulysses, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, any of the Harry Potter novels, even of Atlas Shrugged, or any work that someone or some group may object to – is basically an emotional expression of the contempt, anger, or fear one harbors for the book. It is fundamentally cathartic in nature; it begins with the flames and ends with the ashes. The emotion is indulged and expended, privately or in public. It is certainly a species of freedom of speech, or of expression, but what does it accomplish beyond the satisfaction of having committed the action? I do not see that it accomplishes anything tangible, except for the declaration of a particular attitude, view, or position, which may or may not be rational, for all to witness and evaluate. Burning a Koran lets friends, enemies, and the disinterested know where one stands on a specific issue. If one fears or despises the implementation of the Mohammedan diktats in the Koran, one certainly has the right to burn the work in a public or private venue. But one would better contribute to the defeat of the Islamists – who base their stealthy and violent actions on the contents of the Koran, and who, to judge by their actions in this country and around the world, should be feared – by writing a critique of Islam. Burning a Koran should not be regarded or treated as a crime or a criminal action. The hate, the speech, the fear, or the bigotry demonstrated in such an action is one’s own, not anyone else’s, not the government’s, not society’s. It is a personal affair which one has chosen to make public. Once demonstrated, the hate, the fear, the speech, or the bigotry is in the open for others’ evaluations, for better or for worse. To punish, fine, or otherwise prohibit a person by force from the expression of his own mind, at his own risk, expense, and venue (or even in a “public” place) is to impose politically correct speech, or censorship. Conversely, “hate speech” statutes not only represent an attempt at thought control, but insulate the “hated” from criticism and opposition, deserved or not. Words, unlike bullets or stones, have no metaphysical attributes to harm, injure, or kill. It is only one’s premises that are subject to correction or “wounding.” Several arguments have been made in favor of burning and/or banning of the Koran, based on some inexplicable danger it represents. None of them is valid. Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, for example, courageous as he may be, has called for a ban of the Koran, just as Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf has been banned in Germany and in other countries. Wilders has rightfully compared the Koran with Mein Kampf. Both works are about a “struggle” to implement the authors’ world views, which include conquest and the elimination or subjugation of enemies. Both works, he says, are threats in and of themselves. The Koran is anti-Christian. This is true. Unlike the Bible, it is a collection of primitive homilies and diktats to Muslims to keep the faith and to spread it, violently if necessary. The Koran is most like the Old Testament, all blood and thunder and rapine and conquest of unbelievers and sinners. Somewhat like the Old Testament, it was written by a tribalist for tribalists. It has no place in the modern world. It has as much to do with morality as Indian rain dances have to do with climatology. The Old Testament, however, is balanced by the pacific New Testament. The Koran stands by itself, unbalanced by an ancillary or supplementary text, unrepentant in its horrid, barbaric tribalism. More germane, however, is that the Koran is also anti-atheist, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-Jew, anti-reason, and much, much more. Christians do not have a monopoly on being hated and targeted by Islam through the sanction of the Koran for conquest, submission, persecution, or elimination. The Koran, as a moral and political expression of Islam, is un-American. This is true. One could even claim that it is anti-American. It does not advocate individualism, reason, limited government, and freedom of speech, but their opposites: conformity, irrationality, totalitarianism, and censorship. The Koran does not at all resonate with the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. An article on the Holocaust Museum site about the May 10th, 1933 book-burning in Nazi Germany cites the German students’ reasons for participating in the burnings. That event was billed as a “spontaneous” protest against Jewish and “un-German” influences in German culture, orchestrated, however, by the Nazi Party. About the first major book-burning by students in Germany in 1817, the article explains: The students, demonstrating for a unified country -- Germany was then a patchwork of states -- burned anti-national and reactionary texts and literature which the students viewed as “Un-German.” And, writing about the 1933 book-burning: The students described the “action” as a response to a worldwide Jewish “smear campaign” against Germany and an affirmation of traditional German values. Substitute “Jewish” with “Arab,” Germany” with “America,” “un-German” and “traditional German values” with “un-American” and “traditional American values.” What is the meaning of “un-American,” and what are “traditional American values”? Other than the conservative, non-intellectual assertion that they are family, home, and religion, I have never read any statement of what those values are. The Koran, like Mein Kampf, can seduce men’s minds, and so should be banned. The state of Bavaria controls the copyright and publication rights to Hitler’s book, whose copyright will expire in 2015. Officials have blocked wishes to have the book republished, citing its possible deleterious influence on certain segments of the German population. The British Daily Mail had an article about the drive to republish Main Kampf. The Bavarian government do not want Hitler's words to be abused by neo-Nazi. Historians say a thorough, academic presentation that places Hitler's work in historical context would be the best defense against neo-Nazis who might want to use the book to advance racist agendas. Bavarian lawmakers have routinely turned down calls to reprint the book for fear that it might be misused by right-wing extremists and out of respect for the victims of the Holocaust….“Mein Kampf" was banned from publication after World War II. Possession and resale of old copies in Germany is legal, but highly regulated. This position ascribes to evil – and both works do advocate evil ideas and actions – a potency it does not possess. There is no innate power in either work to magically work its corruption in men’s minds. This position views men’s minds as passive receptors, and the books as insidious incubi. But a copy of the Koran, like a copy of Mein Kampf, is merely a collection of atoms. The paper and the ink on it that forms audio-visual symbols that are words are not an alchemist’s formulae for turning gold into acid. No combination of words, whatever its content or purpose, can cast an irresistible hex or spell on anyone’s mind, neither at a glance nor during years of examination. Philosophies, Ideologies and systems of ideas do not have the power of autosuggestion. Evil has only the appearance of virility and strength, when in fact it is strong only in proportion to the unwillingness of men to oppose it or acknowledge it. Men can agree or disagree with any idea expressed in any work; it is their actions encouraged by such ideas that count. The books themselves are impotent. The phrases “the power of ideas” and “ideas have consequences” have meaning only in the context of action and in the volitional nature of men’s minds. Ideas are not poison ivy. The Koran can no more automatically influence a person to become a Muslim and/or a jihadist than Atlas Shrugged can automatically turn a reader into an intransigent champion of reason, individualism, and capitalism. The power of any fiction, nonfiction, religious, and scientific work, or of the ideas contained in them, depends on a reader’s predisposition to any work’s theme and purpose. If one is open to reason and rational answers, one will be influenced by Atlas Shrugged, and be impervious to or on guard against any appeal to the irrational. If one is open to mysticism, to the comfortably unknowable, envy, belonging to a group, an ethics that requires no thought, and to hatred of the good for being the good, one will be influenced by the Koran, and be immune to any appeal to reason. If one composted copies of all the books mentioned in this commentary, and used the compost as fertilizer in one’s garden, one’s vegetables or flowers would not grow into inflammatory, poisonous, hate-inculcating monsters. A Koran, when all is said and done, is merely a physical object, owned by someone, who is free to do with it what he wishes. He can burn it in protest of the ideas contained in it, or tear out its pages, or mulch it. Or he can read it, to better understand what he senses or has heard is objectionable and evil in it. But treating what could be a personal misdemeanor or futile gesture, such as burning a book, as a capital crime is as much an act and instance of intolerance as an Islamic charge of blasphemy. Any law that protects the “feelings” or “dignity” of Muslims by incorporating “hate speech” laws into its legal system has taken the first crucial step to censorship and the subversion of secular law, including the negation of the First Amendment. Burning a book is a concession to its author. It hands him a victory he would not have otherwise had. Cross-posted from Metablog

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech of January 25th does not defy analysis; it invites it. It is basically a reworking of his 2010 SOTU speech, with the threats, leftist ideology, and hysteria muted and recast so as not to cause a panicky rush for the exits. He spoke as someone who had for two years brutally abused a bound captive, and in an attempt to make up for it, offered the victim a giant cone of pink cotton candy in the way of “reconciliation.” He sounded like MSNBC’s departed Keith Olbermann, heavily sedated. I was stuck for a title for this commentary, weighing between its current title and one that contained a reference to cotton candy. But “word cloud” better describes the speech. A word cloud is a kind of mosaic of buzz-words or key concepts either smashed together or arranged in some logical format. The best one I can think of at the moment is “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHdMlT3E7cg,” which is narrated, animated and informative. The White House brain trust put together its own word cloud for Obama’s speech. It is static but nevertheless informative, “giving greater prominence to words that appear more frequently.” The White House opus is a bewildering jumble of dozens of words that were repeated again and again by Obama; nouns, verbs, adjectives, and conjunctions in various sizes and hues all vie for one’s attention. It is entertainment for the easily amused and the congenitally entranced. However, one could subject Lincoln’s Gettysburg address or any of Churchill’s wartime speeches to the same toss-in-the-air visual word salad and produce the same effect. The White House word cloud means absolutely nothing, serves no purpose, and is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Its total effect resembles the result of a vocabulary project assigned to kindergarten students by a progressive teacher to see how many words could be glued onto a single sheet of paper. Missing like a deafening silence from the mix-and-match are words that did not frequently occur in Obama’s speech, or not at all: freedom, liberty, capitalism, free markets, totalitarian, control, regulation. Freedom occurs only once: And America’s moral example must always shine for all who yearn for freedom and justice and dignity. Au contraire. Obama’s policies will guarantee that there is no more freedom or justice in America, and there is no dignity in servitude. Who would want to immigrate here, except Muslims, whose creed lends itself perfectly to totalitarian rule? Liberty does not occur once. Capitalism is nowhere to be found in the text. Invest and investment occur thirteen times, but by “investment” Obama meant government spending in enterprises and programs of his choosing or approval. Market appears twice in conjunction with stock market, and once in reference to creating a market for green energy and green jobs. Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling. So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. This is sheer fantasy. By 2035, if the oil industry is destroyed, and the country ground to a halt, those of us still alive will be riding donkeys or ponies or bikes to our government-created green jobs. Or walking. You can bet that by “clean energy sources,” Obama did not mean nuclear power, either. Obama’s speech was an organized word cloud, ostensibly banal but loaded with political arsenic. The arsenic was the appeal to “pull together” to reach goals deemed by Obama to be worthwhile and unattainable unless Americans just forgot their freedom and fitted the yokes on their own shoulders. It was an attempt to sound centrist, compromising, and accommodating, without being any of those things. Inserted in the flow were key words that appear in the White House word cloud, words that were calculated to elicit a response. And respond the House chamber did, applauding eighty times. Several marvelous stake-in-the-heart critiques of Obama’s speech have appeared. One of the most interesting is Daniel Greenfield’s “Obama’s State of the Soviet Union” on Canada Free Press. I do not agree with Greenfield that the president’s speech was exclusively crypto-communist; I am certain it was specifically fascist in content and appeal. Fascists, Nazis, and Communists in the past, after all, employed the same rhetorical styles, slogans, patter, and lexicons. Obama does not want to nationalize American businesses and industries. He may “fist” Hugo Chavez in collectivist camaraderie, but his agenda is different. He will allow businesses and industries to remain private, but set their goals. Most of Greenfield’s piece is a fine, passionate disquisition on the vacuity of Obama’s promises and plagiarized Kennedy-like urgings (“Ask not for your freedom, but what your country can do for you in the way of jobs, education, high-speed rails, etc.”). On the theme of the speech, “Winning the future,” Greenfield has this incriminating revelation about that phrase’s origins: As usual, the slogan du jour comes from the dictionary of the left. “Winning the future” was a common slogan on the left. While it was belatedly used by Newt Gingrich, it was most commonly employed in the 20th century by Communists and the far left. Two-time Lenin Prize winner, Danilo Dolci used it as the theme of one of his addresses. Jesse Jackson made use of it during his presidential campaign. Max Lerner gave a number of talks on “Winning the Future.” Mandela threw it in there. Most notably it was used by Lenin, “Our hopes must be placed on the young. We must win the youth if we are to win the future.” What an indictment! As though Obama’s “Sputnik moment” was not great enough a clue. How many times must Moe twist Curly’s ears, or slap Larry on the head? Claudia Rosett apparently grew tired of all the knee-jerk applause. If I close my eyes and ask what the president outlined this evening, I get visions of 100,000 new (and unionized) engineering and science teachers criss-crossing rural America in windmill-powered, solar-paneled high-speed trains — questing after the three doctors who will still be in private practice once ObamaCare really takes hold. In “private practice,” and in hiding? Rosett is too optimistic. ObamaCare means to enlist all medical personnel into his army of the future. Draft dodgers, or physicians in private practice, will be eliminated or sent to reeducation camps to get their minds straight. But then Rosett notes: Two years ago, this was our time, now was our moment. Now, after two years under President Obama, it is no longer our moment, but our “Sputnik moment.” A Sputnik moment is when you suddenly realize your enemy is way out ahead of you. So, when did we fall behind? Does this mean NASA can now forget the Middle East outreach business and carry on sending Americans into space? And why is our government making three-year plans to “double our exports by 2014″? I’m all for trade, but why the targets? Five-year plans, or three-year plans, are for planned economies. True, and not necessarily for communist ones. Mark Alexander of The Patriot Post also offers a biting critique of the speech. He offers evidence of Obama’s first priority in an “abbreviated version of the SOTU”: "I want ... I believe ... I've seen ... I've heard ... I said ... I will be ... I'm asking ... I don't know ... I challenge ... I urge ... I set ... I know ... I'm proposing ... I ask ... I took ... I made ... I would ... I intend ... I've ordered ... I will not ... I've heard ... I am eager ... I'm not ... I'm not ... I'm not ... I am ... I've proposed ... I care ... I recognize ... I'm willing ... I've proposed ... I created ... I don't agree ... I am prepared ... I hear ... I will submit ... I ask ... I will veto ... I will travel ... I call on all ... I know ... I stand..." I do not think Hitler employed so many forms of “I” in any of his speeches. But all tyrants and wannabe tyrants are naturally narcissistic and obsessive about controlling everything; in short, neurotic. Alexander reminds his readers to keep “in mind that nothing Obama proposed has an authorizing provision in our Constitution.” We, however, occurred 149 times, and us 24. We are a “great nation” because in the past we “pulled together,” and it is incumbent upon us to don the yoke to pull the wreckage across the landscape according to his plan. What caused the wreckage? Not Obama’s policies. The deficits just “happened.” Now is the time for both sides and both houses of Congress – Democrats and Republicans – to forge a principled compromise that gets the job done. If we make the hard choices now to rein in our deficits, we can make the investments we need to win the future. Let me take this one step further. We shouldn’t just give our people a government that’s more affordable. We should give them a government that’s more competent and more efficient. We can’t win the future with a government of the past. What is a “principled compromise”? Principles should not be compromised or adulterated. Those that are, are merely “stances” hiding a pretence. The principles were never there. Republicans may be ready to surrender half a loaf to the Democrats, who have no bread of their own to negotiate. But they and Obama will in the end possess half a loaf, and in a spirit of bipartisan magnanimity, be ready to compromise even further. Follow the syllogism, and see who winds up with the whole loaf. Who are “we” who regard “our people” as the dependents and wards of government? Note the inadvertent assumption of ownership – by Obama, by Congress, by every bureaucracy. And in what sense should a government be “more competent and efficient”? In taxation, regulation, and guidance? Should Americans want a government that is expert and skillful in stiffing them of their wealth, their liberty, and privacy? And, under ObamaCare, their lives? They should fear such a government. Excuse us, Mr. President, our future – not yours as a politician – can be “won” with a government of the past that was limited, corralled and restrained in its powers, and which protected and upheld individual rights. That kind of government has not been seen here in perhaps a century and a half. But what exactly were you referring to as a “government of the past”? The Woodrow Wilson administration? FDR’s? Eisenhower’s? JFK’s? Bill Clinton’s? One as “well-intentioned” as theirs, but not nearly as all-encompassing as what you are suggesting by insinuation? No answer will be forthcoming from Mr. Obama. His meaning is disguised in a word cloud. Fools, believing that Obama’s word cloud is similar to a palm lined with forecasts of the future, will read into his words their hopes for a change from his statist ideology. Leftists, the entitlement class (read Medicare, Social Security, tax and tariff advocates, and others of that sort), career politicians, and gluttons of earmarks will be assured that “the battles of the last two years” will be renewed. Republican representative Kevin Brady penned a negative wish list in Investor’s Business Daily, “What The President Shouldn’t Say Tonight in The State of the Union.” I hope the president doesn't apply the word "invest" as a synonym for "spend.”… I hope the president doesn't continue to claim credit for "pulling our economy back from the brink and restoring growth."… I hope the president doesn't claim he "heard the American people" and "got the message" from the November election… I hope that the president doesn't continue to pour billions of dollars into subsidies in an attempt to create green energy jobs or invest in premature technologies, while shutting down proven energy sources… I hope that his words will be matched with deeds. Soaring rhetoric will not restore the American people's confidence in their government. President Obama needs to signal that there has been a serious change in direction, not just another rhetorical pivot. Brady’s hopes were dashed. The president discussed everything Brady hoped he would not. There will be no serious change in the administration’s direction. The American people, if they have any sense, will not have their “confidence” in government restored, but instead their certainty in its malign purposes buttressed. Brady prefaced his hopes with, “Tonight, this president is at a crossroads.” In terms of his reelection prospects, yes, that is true. But in terms of his agenda, no, he is not at a crossroads. Only his rhetoric has pivoted, not his policies. He is ready to “win the future” by “moving forward as one nation,” just as he was in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Only those bedazzled and mentally benumbed by his word cloud will believe he is changing direction. They should deconstruct that word cloud and piece together the words to form whole sentences. Then they would see the ominous message contained in the State of the Union. Cross-posted from Metablog

Spin. An interesting word. It has a variety of definitions in as many realms of human activity, such as in finance, music, and even computer science. In politics, it means exaggeration, fabrication and falsehood. Its political role in “civil discourse” means that truths, facts, theories, or accusations can be “spun” out of whole cloth from a single thread, or out of context, or “twisted” beyond recognition, twirled to tweak into existence a perceived fact to reflect positively or negatively on someone or some thing. In advertising, spin means creating an entertaining or appealing image around a product. For example, the old Wilkinson Sword razor blade TV ads used to end with two swords coming together with a metallic clash. Benson & Hedges used to promote its cigarettes with a series of TV and print ads that showed how smokers were inconvenienced by the longer Benson & Hedges cigarette. (Wilkinson Sword is no longer in business as an independent company, and cigarette ads are now banned from TV.) Chivas Regal had a print ad of a man sidling up to an attractive woman at a bar. And Capital One’s barbarians, to my knowledge, are still asking viewers what is in their wallets. I liked all these ads. They are examples of benign spin, not of brainwashing by “hidden persuaders.” For four days, the nation was bedazzled (or browbeaten) by the spin that because Sarah Palin (and her alleged coven of radio and television witches and warlocks) believes in gun ownership, because she is outspoken in her views of government and of those in it, because she uttered some gun-related verbs (e.g., “reload”), because she employed the visual device of putting certain Democratic voting districts under her “crosshairs,” and because she is more or less associated with “rowdy” town hall Tea Partiers, she was in part, if not wholly, responsible for the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six people during a political event in Tucson on January 8th. She was a contributor to the “climate of hate” and the vitriolic “polarization” of political debate. Or so everyone was to believe, because Democrats and leftists usually regard most Americans as chuckle-headed morons ready to be taken in by a campaign of dissimulating bombast. That is also called “spin.” It is the malevolent kind. It leaves one who is acquainted with elemental logic in a state of bafflement, with one’s head spinning, as well, by the arbitrary, selective clustering. There are word salads, and there are concept salads. There is nothing logical to see in them. But concept salads are more revealing than any Rorschach test of what one “sees” in blots of spilled ink. But for a moment let us assume that, in its root etymological meaning in relation to political rhetoric, spin was initially inspired by the illusion created by tops. Stationary, a top’s decorations and markings are clearly visible and distinguishable. But as a top spins, its colors and markings blur into horizontal streaks and bands. And for as long as a top is spinning, those streaks and bands are distinguishable. They seem real. When the top comes to rest, however, the truth is visible again. The bands and streaks are illusory. Much vigorous spin was applied also to President Barack Obama’s Tucson “memorial” speech of January 12th. He did not so much memorialize and remember the victims of the shooting in that city, as promote himself, his statist agenda, and his tenuous popularity. Liberal columnists and pundits are still spinning the speech, calling it dignified and appropriate and the mark of a great president. It is now being disclosed that the whole affair was a super spin, complete with an Organizing for America slogan emblazoned on T-shirts and with applause prompters. These revelations will not matter to the spinners. Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate, alleged economist, and consummate spinner at The New York Times, is always busy spinning his top and pointing to the bands and streaks on it to advocate one statist scheme or another, claiming they are the real thing and that it is a shame that gravity and inertia keep affecting the top’s spin and bringing it to a rest. I say alleged because, when his disconnected fiscal and financial ramblings are pitted against the thinking and deliberations of Adam Smith, Frédéric Bastiat, or Ludwig von Mises, or even against the economic observations of thinkers such as Margaret Thatcher, Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, he is more to be consigned to the class of Jared Loughner’s mental aberrations than he is to the realm of sane and credible economic theory. Then why examine anything he has to say, if his ramblings defy rationality? Because even before his elevation to the Lords of the Nobel Prize, he was an “authority” on not so much economics, as on the collectivist morality behind statist economics. His allies in collectivism and statism take their cues from him. We have a duty, he claims, to rob productive or rich Peter to pay unproductive, needy, or unthrifty Paul, never mind the consequences, which assure the mutual, egalitarian impoverishment of all. But to Krugman, that would only be “fair.” The Gray Lady, perennial champion of “need,” is “standing by her man” and allowing him to go on about “civility,” even though his pugnacious and accusatory assertions in “Climate of Hate” have been rebutted by the facts behind Jared Loughner’s eminently non-politically motivated criminal actions. Facts will not stand in the way of Krugman. The facts, he asserts – indeed, a moral imperative – are to be found in his bands and streaks. Those, however, are the markings on a top designed by a student of Jackson Pollok. But in his first relatively lucid commentary on matters, “A Tale of Two Moralities,” Krugman adumbrates the “moral divide” between his vision of America and that of his freedom-oriented adversaries, and states that this conflict exists and must be resolved. Of course, he comes down on the side of statism, and feels compelled to sneer at “the other side.” He begins by virtually beatifying Obama over his Tucson speech. On Wednesday, President Obama called on Americans to “expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Those were beautiful words; they spoke to our desire for reconciliation. But antithetical opposites cannot be “reconciled.” The “hopes and dreams” of Obama or of his father or of anyone else who advocates “social justice” or socialism or a permanent welfare state cannot be “bound together” with the “hopes and dreams” of those who protest the elimination of their freedoms by the imposition of legal servitude. Slave-masters and the enslaved are not on the same moral page. For the great divide in our politics isn’t really about pragmatic issues, about which policies work best; it’s about differences in those very moral imaginations Mr. Obama urges us to expand, about divergent beliefs over what constitutes justice. Here Krugman presents a false dichotomy: the “moral” has little to do with “what works.” It is just our “imaginations” that count. Called by another name, it is wishful thinking. But the moral is the practical, because moral practicality is justice. If the indentured servitude of the productive among us is “moral,” then it is both unjust and impractical, for the beneficiaries of that servitude will reap rewards they refuse to “imagine.” It will be justice when the enslaved or the fettered produce as little as possible, or not at all. One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate. This is where Krugman begins to lapse from lucidity. America does not have a capitalist economy, although private enterprise and productive work are the source of whatever wealth it can boast of. (And productive work should not include the paper-shuffling and regulation-minding of government employees, wherever they may be employed.) America has a mixed economy, one of private enterprise governed by controls and regulations. It is beginning to assume the features of fascism, in which the government allows private ownership of production but establishes the goals and means of that ownership. This was the character of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. The trend in America began long before Roosevelt’s New Deal. America has never had a fully capitalist economy. But, note that Krugman feels free to characterize capitalism as “red in tooth and claw.” That is his “imagination” at work. And any nation that has established a tax-supported “social safety net” cannot claim to be capitalist. The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty. Which, in fact, taxes and regulations are, regardless of who “sees” them. The “modern right” does not have a “fondness” for “violent rhetoric.” Advocates of limited government identify wrongs in the calmest rhetoric possible. If the liberals and the Left feel admonished or intimidated by such “harsh” language, there is no semantic alternative available other than gibberish. What one has worked to own or create would not otherwise exist for a government to assess and tax. The forcible taking of it is basically theft – by a criminal, immediately; by a government, over a lifetime, through extortion. It is the Left that has a fondness for violent rhetoric, from the “kill the pigs” calls of the 1960’s and 1970’s, up to Saul Alinsky’s “target and isolate” advice to leftist radicals, and Obama’s less than genteel suggestion about guns and knives. Right-wingers, libertarians, free-marketers, and Tea Partiers do not have a history of robbing banks, occupying universities, obstructing property with noisy demonstrations, taunting and battling the police, fire-bombing military recruitment offices, destroying private and government property, and advocating the violent overthrow of the government. There’s no middle ground between these views. One side saw health reform, with its subsidized extension of coverage to the uninsured, as fulfilling a moral imperative: wealthy nations, it believed, have an obligation to provide all their citizens with essential care. The other side saw the same reform as a moral outrage, an assault on the right of Americans to spend their money as they choose. This is true. There is no “middle ground” between those positions. In Krugman’s “imagination,” wealthy nations automatically have a Kantian moral imperative to provide for the needy, regardless of whether or not they “need” or want medical insurance or anything else deemed “essential.” Krugman then makes this statement: Commentators who pine for the days of civility and bipartisanship are, whether they realize it or not, pining for the days when the Republican Party accepted the legitimacy of the welfare state, and was even willing to contemplate expanding it. As many analysts have noted, the Obama health reform — whose passage was met with vandalism and death threats against members of Congress — was modeled on Republican plans from the 1990s. This is also true. Both Presidents Bush sanctioned the growth of big government and the expansion of the welfare state. They built on what the Democrats had created. Krugman does not dwell on the fact, but this was possible only because of the moral and philosophical bankruptcy of the Republicans. The Republican notion of preserving freedom has been to advocate putting just one handcuff and one fetter on just one wrist and ankle, instead of on both wrists and ankles, as the Democrats propose. Krugman becomes nasty later on his article. The “other side” is guilty of moral turpitude. Regular readers know which side of that divide I’m on. In future columns I will no doubt spend a lot of time pointing out the hypocrisy and logical fallacies of the “I earned it and I have the right to keep it” crowd. And I’ll also have a lot to say about how far we really are from being a society of equal opportunity, in which success depends solely on one’s own efforts. But there is no “hypocrisy” or “logical fallacy” in the idea. Why is wanting to keep what one has earned “hypocritical”? One has earned it, or one has not. “Earning” is not synonymous with theft. He does not answer. Why is it a “logical fallacy”? Krugman offers no evidence to support that assertion, either. His remark about success depending “solely on one’s own efforts” identifies him as an apostle of John Rawls’ morbidly egalitarian A Theory of Justice (1971), in which “original positions” and “final outcomes” are equalized and weighted in favor of the “least-advantaged.” One’s skills, ambition, ingenuity, perseverance, and values are “unfair” if they net one rewards. If one is, say, less skilled, or less hard-working, or simply a mediocre performer, then one should be boosted to the level of one’s superior. That would be “fair” – to the envious. Envy is now a “moral” virtue. If one has no skills and does not work at all, then one somehow has a right to everything the skilled and ambitious attain, because the latter simply lucked out in the distributive “lottery” of skills, ambition, and so on. Who or what “distributed” the advantages? Neither Rawls nor Krugman provides an answer. Others adopt the Rawlsian mantra and claim that one’s abilities, skills, vision, and success are somehow bestowed on one by “society,” and that it is one’s moral duty to “give back” to it, voluntarily or by law. Such a perspective discounts the volitional nature of man’s consciousness and demotes it to a passive role. It implies that the content of one’s mind is not one’s own, but the property of any random stranger or group of strangers. One is merely a “steward” of the property of an absentee landlord. The hidden premise in Rawls’ theory is that, ultimately, it is the professional parasite, the moocher, the career welfare state beneficiary and system gamer, who is the “least-advantaged” and who requires a “safety net.” In Krugman’s “imagination,” one’s success in achieving one’s values is directly responsible for another’s luckless failure. Ergo, the achiever “owes” the non-achiever. Krugman’s article is one long endorsement of egalitarianism by decree. Its “moral” foundation is the impractical, suicidal code of altruism, and its political expression is collectivism. Right now, each side in that debate passionately believes that the other side is wrong. And it’s all right for them to say that. What’s not acceptable is the kind of violence and eliminationist rhetoric encouraging violence that has become all too common these past two years. Again, the “violence” has been perpetrated by the Left, and the “eliminationist” rhetoric has also been a monopoly of the Left, and for much, much longer than a mere two years. No Tea Partier ever told Democrats to shut up, or smeared them with the allegations of racism or bigotry or knuckle-dragging. We all want reconciliation, but the road to that goal begins with an agreement that our differences will be settled by the rule of law. No, we do not all want reconciliation. We do not agree that it is possible, practical, or even desirable. Reconciliation means compromise, of “one side” surrendering in part or in whole its principles and values, just to “stay in the game,” while the “other side” – Krugman’s side – not only “stays in the game,” but sets its rules. And how will differences be settled, and by whose rule of law? Should it be the law founded on the “practicality” of laissez-faire, individual rights, and the preservation of liberty, including the freedom to employ “violent” rhetoric? Or the fiat law of legislators, bureaucrats, czars, and the dispensers of “fairness”? Yes, there are “two moralities” in conflict. Krugman does not bother to delineate them other than in a crude, superficial manner. The purpose of his article is to blur the distinctions between them by making an appeal for “non-violent” discourse, in which A would be equated with non-A by both “sides” of the conflict. That is the goal of Krugman’s spinning top, to vitiate the epistemology and metaphysics of the sane and the owners of their own lives. Cross-posted from Metablog

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, Diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy. – Ernest Benn On the premise that words have meanings, and in the spirit of vitriol, eliminationationism, toxicity, and incivility, I offer here an inflammatory, abrasive, and indecorous critique of the latest bucket of double-talking swill to be dumped on America by the White House. On Wednesday, January 12th, President Barack Obama delivered a “eulogy” that magically but predictably morphed into a campaign speech before some 14,000 people in a university sports arena. It was a slyly spun delivery that fooled such stalwart “right-wingers” as Glenn Beck, Brit Hume, and Michael Gerson, and won their wholesome praise and uncritical adulation. Even dependently acerbic Charles Krauthammer, usually so sensitive to the nuances and syntaxical trickery in Obama’s speeches, and so mercilessly forthright in his appraisal of the president’s utterances, was taken in. Appearing on Fox News, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said the speech was a “remarkable display . . . both in terms of the tone and the content,” adding, “You could only conclude that he did exactly what he had to do in a difficult environment,” The New York Times reported. Those concessions leave one doubtful of the moral certitude of the “right” and of conservatives. Republican Senator John McCain, defeated for the presidency by Obama in 2008, went out of his way to congratulate Obama in a Washington Post article in calling for a “gentler form of politics.” His article could have been written by Obama’s speechwriter. President Obama gave a terrific speech Wednesday night. He movingly mourned and honored the victims of Saturday's senseless atrocity outside Tucson, comforted and inspired the country, and encouraged those of us who have the privilege of serving America. The president appropriately disputed the injurious suggestion that some participants in our political debates were responsible for a depraved man's inhumanity. He asked us all to conduct ourselves in those debates in a manner that would not disillusion an innocent child's hopeful patriotism. I agree wholeheartedly with these sentiments. We should respect the sincerity of the convictions that enliven our debates but also the mutual purpose that we and all preceding generations of Americans serve: a better country; stronger, more prosperous and just than the one we inherited. The question is: When political opponents begin to sound like each other, as McCain and Obama do here, and invest effort to soften their principles (if any) and criticisms, so as not to sound “hurtful” or “caustic,” and seem to be saying the exact same things, what difference will it make to the electorate? When no one brings any metaphorical weapons to a fight – recall Obama’s advising allies to bring a gun when the opposition brings a knife – what else can be substituted but Aunt Emma’s Etiquette for Polite Political Engagement? Who wins in such a confrontation? The party that has the most to hide, the most to protect, the most to shield from criticism. In this case, the Democrats. If one is reluctant to call a leftist a leftist, a socialist a socialist, a power-luster a power-luster, who gains in that political version of tag football? Civil discourse by the opponents of the administration’s policy of statism will only mean their defeat. “Civil discourse” in the spirit of compromise and bipartisanship can mean only the routing of the White House’s “enemies.” As novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand noted in her prophetic novel Atlas Shrugged in 1957: In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. When the chief target of the Democrats and the Left, Sarah Palin, responded to the libelous charge that she was in large part responsible for Jared Loughner’s homicidal mental state, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) also joined in the “civil tongue” mantra over Palin’s use of the otherwise odious term blood libel: In response to rampant speculation that a map that had appeared on Palin’s website, which placed a crosshairs-like image over Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ district, may have inspired the shooting, Palin responded that “journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.” The Anti-Defamation League responded with a statement issued by national director Abraham Foxman, in which he noted, “while the term ‘blood-libel’ has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history.” Foxman acknowledges the secular currency of the term “blood libel,” but denies its legitimate usage at the same time. The ADL subsequently called for Americans to “reach out.” As one part of our overall effort, ADL has launched a campaign to make this the moment when our country dramatically shifts the tenor of our national discourse—an appeal for leaders to work together to change the bitter climate of political and policy debates. Our call is not directed at Republicans or Democrats. It is a call for all America’s leaders to consider the impact of their words and to reject appeals that exploit voters’ fears, frustrations and prejudices. An impromptu but none too subtle slogan for the memorial service, originating in Obama’s “Organizing for America” (aka, “Organizing of America”) was “Together We Thrive.” Attendees of the memorial service, as they entered the stadium, were handed blue T-shirts bearing that slogan. There is a picture of rows of stadium seats with the T-shirts neatly folded over the chair backs. This leaves one to wonder: Why did it take so long for the service to be orchestrated? One presumes it would have taken time to have all those T-shirts produced and sent to Tucson. Or were they really produced in Tucson? Who were all those people? Did they arrive by the busload from out of town, from out of state? That would have taken time to schedule. It would be interesting to know the composition of the audience. For it was not strictly a memorial service, but a performance for an audience, and nationally televised. Why did it feel to free to cheer, virtually on cue? One smells the manipulative hands of George Soros and the Democratic National Committee behind the whole memorial-cum-rally. Why a stadium? Why did not those who had a more intimate connection – the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, the relatives of Judge John Roll, and the relatives and friends of the others killed and injured during the Tucson shooting of January 8th – insist on a more private occasion, held, say, in a chapel, with attendance limited to perhaps two hundred, including the press? Perhaps saying “no” to the White House’s desire to transform the service into a podium for pontificating was thought to be an offense to the office and fraught with a perceived insult that may have had unpredictable consequences. It is, after all, hard to reject the wishes of a party one suspects is imbued with delusions of absolute power. His speech? Here is a selection of ideological non sequiturs to ponder: On Saturday morning, Gabby, her staff and many of her constituents gathered outside a supermarket to exercise their right to peaceful assembly and free speech. Is the recent rule-making of the Federal Communications Commission on broadband availability but an overture to an administration-sanctioned takeover of the Internet? What else could it be but an overture, a first installment? They were fulfilling a central tenet of the democracy envisioned by our founders –- representatives of the people answering questions to their constituents, so as to carry their concerns back to our nation’s capital. Gabby called it “Congress on Your Corner” -– just an updated version of government of and by and for the people. The Founders never envisioned a democracy – except as an overture to tyranny – but an individual rights-defending, limited government republic. But this is something we either cannot expect Obama to understand, or correctly assess his hostility to, on the evidence of his words and actions. And when the concerns and questions of the people were carried back to Washington in 2009 and 2010 – sometimes by their representatives, but mostly not – how were those concerns and questions treated by Obama’s Congress? With arrogant dismissal and the condescension of an elitist political class. And by “government of and by and for the people,” Lincoln surely did not mean mob rule by the United Auto Workers, the SEIU, manufacturers of solar panels and ethanol, and other groups with a vested interest in billion-dollar handouts and subsidies. Speaking of Gabrielle Giffords and one of the murder victims, Phyllis Schneck, Obama said: A gifted quilter, she’d often work under a favorite tree, or sometimes she'd sew aprons with the logos of the Jets and the Giants to give out at the church where she volunteered. A Republican, she took a liking to Gabby, and wanted to get to know her better. A sly appeal for “bipartisanship”? Speaking of Gabe Zimmerman, the Giffords aide who was also murdered, Obama remarked: As Gabby’s outreach director, he made the cares of thousands of her constituents his own, seeing to it that seniors got the Medicare benefits that they had earned, that veterans got the medals and the care that they deserved, that government was working for ordinary folks. “Ordinary folks”? Another patronizing and populist sop. The only legitimate “work” the government can perform is to protect individual rights, and not help people get their alleged welfare state entitlements. And we are grateful for the doctors and nurses and first responders who worked wonders to heal those who’d been hurt. We are grateful to them. But not grateful enough to refrain from advocating and signing legislation which will make those doctors, nurses and first responders indentured servants of the state and of any person who claims their skills as a right. But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -– at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than [sic] we do -– it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds. Who was the first “polarizer”? Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik, who, in addition to reporting a crime almost immediately after its commission, made improper political remarks about everyone being culpable for Jared Loughner’s mental state. His rant set the tone for what was to follow, a kneejerk smearing by a desperate Left of anyone speaking his mind about the political state and direction of the country. Dupnik excoriated “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business,” and claimed that Arizona was becoming a “Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” And when discussing political differences, why is “wounding” a necessary consequence of speaking one’s mind and disagreeing with another person’s political notions or ideology? Why not lay the blame “for all that ails the world” on a particular philosophy and moral code? Why engage in any “civil discourse” if one cannot name one’s own premises and conclusions without risking the wounding of someone’s tenuous self-esteem? Yes, we have to examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence in the future. Which “old assumptions” are these whose elimination would “lessen the prospects of such violence in the future”? Identifying the facts of reality? Identifying culprits and the guilty? Naming names and producing evidence? The inviolateness of the First Amendment? Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together. It is only by pointing fingers and assigning blame that one can identify wrong ideas and the perpetrators of disastrous policies. The “hopes and dreams” of the Tea Party are not shared by anyone who takes for granted big government and billion dollar. No “empathy” is possible between the two groups. Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point-scoring and pettiness that drifts away in the next news cycle. This may or may not have been a reproachful allusion to the likes of Paul Krugman and other liberal pundits who immediately began to smear Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and other opponents of Obama’s policies. Obama cannot have been unaware of the vicious mud-slinging that Sheriff Dupnik’s remarked instigated. But then, Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other Democrats disdained Americans who protested their collectivist agenda, raising contemptible point-scoring and pettiness to a new plateau of political dissimulation. The most despicable part of Obama’s speech occured at the end, when he used the death of nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green as a point of comparison, and suggested that he is the moral equivalent of her. And I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us. I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us -– we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations. Aside from the offensive notion of putting himself on the same moral plane as a child – this man who uses gangster metaphors to advance a gangster government – Obama’s remarks are puerile to say the least. Mozart at the age of nine understood the principles of composition and developed the imagination to write music which adults of his time could not even conceive of. With all due respect to Christina Green, I do not think she was such a prodigy that she had developed any adult expectation or conception of what America politically should or should not be. This is Obama tugging at his audience’s heartstrings and pleading for similitude. It is his politics as usual. Fortunately, there are those of us who will not fall for the rhetoric. We know that together as a chain gang bound together in the mutual fetters of sacrifice, selflessness, and timorous civility, we will not thrive, but move as one in a state of ignominious poverty and servitude. Cross-posted from Metablog

On the heels of excising the “hurtful” language from Mark Twain’s novels, come the calls for mellowing the “caustic language” of anyone criticizing big government or its recent depredations against the country and its citizenry. The occasion is the attempted murder (the charge of “attempted assassination” is arguable; the victim was not a head of state) of Gabrielle Giffords, Democratic U.S. representative from Arizona, on January 8th during a political event outside a Safeway store in Tucson. There is a drive on now to blame the Tea Party, “right-wingers,” and any frank discussion of Obama and/or liberal politics for the shooting. The liberal/left is scrambling to cast a pall of “responsibility” on the authors of any “toxic rhetoric” alleged to have “encouraged” the shooter Jared Loughner to act out his fantasies and to “take action” against a perceived enemy. The abrupt shift of focus from Jared Loughner the mad man to the necessity of “civil” discourse could only be orchestrated by the left. Philosophy 101: All of the blather has its roots in determinism. If one is constantly exposed to violence (or to “violent” words), one will be somehow programmed to commit violence, if not now, then at some time in the future. This idea views all men as ticking time-bombs who must be disarmed, even if it means removing their tongues. Ideally, they say, society should be an environment of fields of daisies and solar panels and unconditional tolerance for all, even for the insane. If one is constantly exposed to pacific rhetoric, one will always be disposed to peaceful demonstrations of agreement or opposition. Determinism, of course, denies men their capacity for thought and volition. Whatever his mental state, whatever mental parallel universe his mind lived in, Loughner chose to do what he did. In reality. It is almost laughable, watching the MSM, E.J. Dionne on the Washington Post, Paul Krugman in The New York Times, and others try to "pin the rap" on the Tea Party, conservatives, and anyone else deemed guilty by them of "hate speech" and "ugly rhetoric." It is so predictable. And, of course, on Sarah Palin (no, I am not a fan of hers). They are all "responsible" for the shooting. Poor Jared Loughner was just an unfortunate, receptive "pawn" of talk radio and indiscriminate "blogging." It is an “evil” environment that Loughner grew up in, so he cannot really be blamed for his actions. Only society. Or, rather, the “right” side of it. Up come the scarecrows of “violent” or “hateful” language. Of course, The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is shedding crocodile tears over the event, when it has approved of far greater massacres in the name of Allah and has nothing to say about Hamas’s goal of eliminating Israel, which would mean something greater than a shooting outside a grocery store. It is much like Al Capone or his lieutenant Frank Nitti sending flowers to the funeral of a rival gangster he has had rubbed out, complete with a nicely-worded card of consolation for the gangster’s surviving family. In a statement, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said: "We offer sincere condolences to the friends, colleagues and family members of all those killed or injured in this brutal and senseless attack. We must come together as a nation to mourn the dead, pray for the speedy recovery of the injured and reject the extreme partisanship and inflammatory political rhetoric that can contribute to such tragedies." We are not implying here that Giffords was a gangster. But, “inflammatory political rhetoric”? What was Loughner’s “rhetoric,” other than the diffuse, wildly careening statements of a deranged person that had no politically identifiable foundation, other than some inchoate conspiracy theory about government control of grammar and brainwashing, with a bias to the left? Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen, with equal proportions shared by left and right. One truly could not fix one’s “crosshairs” on what Loughner thought; the “target” keeps jumping around in and out of sight. Literally. Michigan CAIR booster Dawud Walid wept copiously on his Weblog about the shooting, then played the Muslim victim card almost immediately. Now imagine if Loughner’s last name was Muhammad, or if Loughner was a convert to Islam. Elected officials such as Rep. Peter King (R-NY) would be using yesterday’s attack as further proof that American Muslims need to be watched closer and that we aren’t doing enough to stop such attacks. And no doubt, media would be discussing now the looming danger of homegrown terrorism. Just imagine it! Victimhood at last! Well, Mr. Walid, that was not what happened. But if there was ever a candidate for conversion to Islam, Loughner’s application was exemplary and complete. He was growing more and more disconnected from reality and in need of a realm that would save him the effort of rational thought: Islam. Either that, or writing his ticket to a maximum security mental institution. I’d like for there to be more discussion in the media about the growing intolerance in America and the passive radicalization of America via the Tea Party Movement and their champion Sarah Palin regarding the caustic language environment that we live in which opens up the door to such attacks. And if the “discussion” leads to the subject of Islamic violence around the globe, a violence sanctioned by vitriolic rhetoric by Islam’s spokesmen, what will he have to say? No rebuttal is possible. If the “dialogue,” “discourse,” or “debate” does not go his way, and he loses the engagement, then what? His wishes are being fulfilled. Islamists focus on “caustic language,” namely any language that exposes Islam as a political/theocratic ideology bent on conquest and the establishment of universal Sharia law. The MSM and the liberal establishment are focusing on such language, as well. The Washington Post published a rather insipid analysis of Loughner’s “ deteriorating mental state,” and several readers took the bait to basically blame the First Amendment and Sarah Palin for Loughner’s action. More interesting were those reader comments, which fell in line with the charge. Here, without correction of grammar or syntax, are some reader comments on The Washington Post article: “The nutcase was an avid Sara Palin fan. I hold Sara Palin and her rhetoric responsible for this mess.” “People get killed and the gun nuts seem to rejoice in their peculiar interpretation of the 2nd amendment (which always seems to omit that "well-regulated militia" part). Very sad, predictable and unfortunately all too common in US culture.” “The Palinisation of America is a sad thing to watch.” “Yesterday, this forum was filled with the very hatred that Congressman are saying caused the problem... as my congressman said it was rhetoric from the right that spurs such violence. The sheriff did his part by blaming political rhetoric as the cause. So all the name calling by people who are, I guess, still upset over the outcome of the elections. This was a crazed lunatic and the system let him go. A result of p. c. . Innocent until he does something. Now we know more, and the sheriff should look at his comments and learn.” “Am I to believe that a mentally unstable young man watching newscasts of Tea Party attendees carrying guns to public meetings was not influenced by theses images? Isn't that what he did? Listen to the anger of Tea Party defenders. Have these folks learned anything from this violent event?” These comments echo Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik’s out-of-turn political remark about everyone being culpable for Loughner’s mental state and the shooting, a remark which set the tone for what was to follow, a kneejerk smearing of anyone speaking his mind about the political state and direction of the country. Dupnik excoriated “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business,” and claimed that Arizona was becoming a “mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” (That will not sit well with CAIR or any other Islamic spokesman; it is tantamount to associating the Lourdes shrine with orgies, drug-dealing, and witchcraft.) Dupnik later explained his remarks, saying they were made in “anger.” So, who is guilty of making “vitriolic” statements? His explanation comes too late. His words framed the “debate,” and words have consequences. E.J. Dionne, Jr., the Post’s pundit-in-chief, in a column, “Gabby Giffords, a tragic prophet,” also did his part to paint the Loughner shooting in the darkest conservative and Tea Party colors. After extensively quoting Gifford on the political “language” that has characterized positions over the last two years, he goes on to point out: … It is not partisan to observe that there are cycles to violent rhetoric in our politics. In the late 1960s, violent talk (and sometimes violence itself) was more common on the far left. But since President Obama's election, it is incontestable that significant parts of the American far right have adopted a language of revolutionary violence in the name of overthrowing "tyranny." It is Obama's opponents who carried guns to his speeches and cited Jefferson's line that the tree of liberty "must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." It was Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada, who spoke of “Second Amendment Remedies” And, yes, it was Palin who put those gun sights over the districts of the Democrats she was trying to defeat, including Giffords. One imagines that Dionne’s notion of perfect political discourse is for a president to endorse and sign socialist legislation and for citizens to just calmly say, “Gee, that’s all wrong, it’s violating my rights and this will bankrupt me, but we’ll just go quietly and not make a fuss about it. Pardon us for interrupting.” When a country is being “transformed” into a penal colony of servitude, are not its citizens permitted to express outrage and angry “rhetoric”? If they did not, they would deserve the incarceration. Dionne concludes: Liberals were rightly pressed in the 1960s to condemn violence on the left. Now, conservative leaders must take on their fringe when it uses language that intimates threats of bloodshed. That means more than just highly general statements praising civility. Translation: Anyone who cites the Constitution, quotes any one of the Founders about the proper role of government, or speaks passionately about the growing loss of freedom – even the freedom to speak one’s mind – must be told to hush, or say it nicely, so as not to frighten anyone. In short, this is an endorsement of censorship. No, wait. That is too violent an accusation. It might get freedom-of-speechers and First Amendment cultists “fired up” and we cannot predict what they will do, especially if they are also Second Amendment pistol-packers. Let us settle for the softer, more civil appellation of public speech management. The New York Times dwelt on Loughner’s “disjointed” statements (but, what is so enjoined about politicians when they profess a knowledge of economics and then saddle a country with trillion dollar debts?) He had posted on his MySpace page at some point a photograph of a United States history textbook, on top of which he had placed a handgun. He prepared a series of Internet videos filled with rambling statements on topics including the gold standard, mind control and SWAT teams. And he had started to act oddly during his classes at Pima Community College, causing unease among other students. The evidence and reports about Mr. Loughner’s unusual conduct suggest an increasing alienation from society, confusion, anger as well as foreboding that his life could soon come to an end. Alienation? That one-size-fits-all excuse for becoming a homicidal maniac? Did the shooter alienate himself, or did “society” alienate him? One supposes that if Loughner were raised in an idyllic hugs-all-around-for-everyone society, he would have matured to discover the secret of gravity and patented the formula for a new kind of ambrosia. Beating the Times is the paper’s own prize ignoramus and alleged economist (caustic language intended), Paul Krugman. In his opinion piece, “Climate of Hate,” he acts as a bellows to raise the heat against freedom of speech. Not satisfied with “caustic language” or “hate speech,” he invents his own term: “eliminationist rhetoric.” The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary. And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence. Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P. Since long before Barack Obama was elected president, no Republican, no member of the Tea Party, no conservative, no libertarian, no Objectivist, no prominent “anti-government” activist has ever advocated assassination or even an armed rebellion against the federal government. The best of these individuals has simply reminded the administration and Congress of the proper role of government in as forceful language as possible – note that the term is forceful language, not forceful action. The focus has been on eliminating statist laws, not their authors. The day may come when action is justified, but that can happen only if the government moves to fit Americans with a velvet gag. When one is denied by force the power of words, the only alternative left to men to regain their freedom will be the power of force. Krugman has already reached a conclusion about what ought to be done. So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before? Yes, the massacre was the “mere act of a deranged individual” – the facts of reality are on the side of objective observers – and there is no reason to not “go on as before,” possibly with the repeal of ObamaCare and other legislation favored by Krugman and his statist ilk across the country. While Krugman and his cohorts do not deny that Loughner was “deranged,” they not so subtly imply that anyone who values his freedom and speaks without fear about his value of it is also “deranged” and a menace to society. The government, the liberal/left in politics, and the intellectual establishment, are collectively guilty of their own “toxic rhetoric” – with the approving rhetoric of censorship. Cross-posted from Metablog

The latest submission to political correctness in speech (that secular version of Islamic “sensitivity”) is that a publisher will come out next month with the text of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn cleansed of all 219 occurrences of the word nigger, at the behest of Twain scholar Alan Gribben at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama. His motive for bowdlerizing the novel is demonstrably specious: the term is “hurtful.” Standing in for the term will be “slave” or “slaves.” Also, the feelings and tribal “self-esteem” of American Indians have been protected by Gribben in the same novel, as well. Excised from it is the term injun. It has not been reported what will replace it. Twain scholar Alan Gribben said he decided to reissue the 19th century classic "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" replacing the slur with the word "slaves" in all 219 places it occurs in the text because the original offended many readers. Many school systems have banned or simply stopped teaching the books because of the epithet and because of a characterization of Native Americans that is also deleted from the new edition, said Gribben in a telephone interview. Gribben will jointly reissue [with New South Books] another Twain classic, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with epithets also deleted. Now, where have we heard this complaint before, and from whom? Ragheads? Camel jockeys? Goat herders? Oh. Excuse me. Muslims. There are countless ethnic, racial and religious slurs and epithets in circulation intended to denigrate all races and creeds. Put under an epistemological microscope and examined for their alleged power to hurt, however, all such terms are metaphysically neutral and impotent. Spoken, they cannot literally “hurt” anyone. It is only the second-hand emotional strength they seem to contain and convey by their users. Conversely, the object of such a term must necessarily also respond to the term in a purely emotional context, having been communicated the user’s estimation of him. Logically, all such a “victim” can do is resent it, and learn something appalling about the user. The idea of a more politically correct Finn came to the 69-year-old English professor over years of teaching and outreach, during which he habitually replaced the word with "slave" when reading aloud. An individual with a genuine sense of self-esteem qua individual, who does not see himself as a cipher of a race or religion, is not bothered by the slurs. Amused, perhaps, and even indifferent. He will not think that he has been judged by a rational person, but by an irrational one. He may for a moment resent the appellation, but not dwell on it. I cannot recall the number of times I have been called a “honky” and other epithets employed by blacks. Or a “male chauvinist pig” by women with feminist pretensions. These name-callings left me amused and shaking my head in brief pity for the persons who attempted to “offend” me. It can be assumed that scholar Gribben has more than a passing affection for the works of Mark Twain. (For the record, I have never much cared for Twain.) Yet he is willing to compromise and adulterate Twain’s works in order to see them more widely read and used in literature classes (or in what passes for them today). His decision to redact Twain’s works merely panders to the politically correct pining of teachers who want to use the two novels but are afraid to. It was during a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) program to encourage reading that Gribben made his decision. "After a number of talks, I was sought out by local teachers, and to a person they said we would love to teach this novel, and Huckleberry Finn, but we feel we can't do it anymore. In the new classroom, it's really not acceptable." Gribben became determined to offer an alternative for grade school classrooms and "general readers" that would allow them to appreciate and enjoy all the book has to offer. "For a single word to form a barrier, it seems such an unnecessary state of affairs," he said. The “single word” was a barrier only in terms of the emotions it would engender in others, in this instance, fear. Fear of what? The unknown, in the form of possible lawsuits, disciplinary action, dismissal, physical assault, or charges of hate speech or a variety of “phobias.” Unacceptable to whom? The politically correct speech enforcers, in and out of government. What is arguably worse than Gribben’s cleansed Twain works has been the nature of the objections to his crusade to adulterate Twain. Reuters, for example, had this to report: "We are not fans of changing Mark Twain's words," said Cindy Lovell, executive director of The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri. "They have stood the test of time. The book is an anti-racist book and to change the language changes the power of the book. He wrote to make us squirm and to poke us with a sharp stick. That was the purpose," Lovell said. Poking “us” with a stick may have been one of Twain’s purposes, but that side-steps the crucial issue of literary integrity. Publishers Weekly carried an amen to the notion that literature should serve a purely “social” purpose, regardless of its alleged offensiveness. Twain scholar Thomas Wortham, at UCLA, compared Gribben to Thomas Bowdler (who published expurgated versions of Shakespeare for family reading), telling PW that "a book like Professor Gribben has imagined doesn't challenge children [and their teachers] to ask, ‘Why would a child like Huck use such reprehensible language?' " Answer – if the” challenged” pupil and teacher have been properly indoctrinated by the federal education czars and the National Education Association: Because Huck had not been properly sensitized to the feelings and needs of others. That is, he had not been subjected to social engineering and pedagogical brow-beating. Reprehensible language? Perhaps that is an accurate description of the language. But one will not know it is unless one can encounter such language in the original, untampered-with text as the author intended it to be read. And is studying reprehensible language the sole purpose of tackling Twain’s or H.L. Mencken’s or anyone else’s literary work? Try redacting the works of James Joyce or D.H. Lawrence; there would be little left of them that would appeal to anyone’s prurient interest. Reading original, unadulterated works that contain questionable language allows one to gauge the character of an author and the worth of his work. And if an author includes such language in his work as a critically satirical device, then one can encounter the power of such language and be able to reach numerous conclusions other than the “hurtful” or “offensive” nature of such language. Gribben is not a pioneer regarding the term nigger. Joseph Conrad’s short novel, The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, published in 1897, was subjected to the same thorough redacting in 2009 by Ruben Alvarado, who even re-titled the work The N-Word of the Narcissus (sic), published by WoodBridge Publishing. The purpose was to “remove this offence to modern sensibilities.” Call it anti-shock therapy. The “sensibilities” are old-hat. Dodd, Mead and Company demanded that the title be changed, as well, so that Conrad’s novel first appeared here under the ludicrously evasive title of The Children of the Sea: A Tale of the Forecastle. Dodd, Mead feared that no one would want to read a book with the “n-word” in its title. The prissy objections of Gribben stand in stark contrast to the obscene lyrics of contemporary pop “music,” performed by alleged artists in a deliberately malevolent and provocative style by blacks and whites. If one applied the 18th and 19th century editing policy to the sheet music of such rubbish, one would see little more than strings of asterisks interposed now and then by an innocuous but ungrammatical article, noun, or verb. Most students today are no strangers to the terms nigger, wetback, wop, kike, or slant-eye. They can hear them in contemporary “music” and in films and on TV and are inured to them. These terms have lost their power to shock and offend. To illustrate the ubiquity of verbal victimhood claimed by Muslims, contrast the case of the Spanish Muslim student who was “traumatized” when his geography teacher mentioned ham in class (the suit his parents brought against the teacher was thrown out) with how British law enforcement and newspapers employ the euphemism Asians to stand in for Muslims (from fear of legal and physical retaliation). Readers know that Muslims are the referents, and not Indonesians, Japanese, or even Australians of undeniable Scotch-Irish-English origin. More often than not, a euphemism can carry a double-charge of “hurt.” It is a mentally-induced fig leaf that fools no one. Everyone knows what it is intended to hide, disguise, or evade, and sires an even stronger, unreasoning contempt (deserved or not) for the beneficiary of the euphemism. The danger lies in men adopting euphemisms as substitutes for the real as a matter of course and habit. In the past, when works of art remained sacrosanct and off-limits to arbitrary tampering as a matter of policy, redacted, abridged, or adulterated works from the literary canon remained anomalies that were soon forgotten. In today’s culture, however, when intellectual property rights are not consistently upheld by the courts, and when no dominant esthetics exists but the cult of “artistic” destruction, Gribben’s widely publicized adulteration of Twain’s novels could inaugurate a wholesale campaign to render politically correct and “safe for consumption” other less “offensive” works. There are many marauding censors and literary vandals in the culture eager to wash out the mouths and minds of literary characters with the soap of sensitivity to protect the spiritually anemic and the collectivized vessels of second-hand identities. Cross-posted from Metablog

There are many model nations around the world that the United States can be said to be emulating in its slide to statism, in particular to fascism, or national socialism. The least likely one is Hungary. Observed from afar, the politics and turmoil of that former communist nation seem at first glance exotic and bewildering, but not much more than a storm in a teacup. After all, this is an eastern European nation more sinned against than sinner. Remember the Uprising of 1956? But once, willingly or not, it steps into the limelight, the confusion that reigns there points to a very familiar pattern, one that is eminently recognizable and emerging here in America. The trend is tragically poignant if one recalls that the United States was for a long time the model to admire and emulate to discover, establish, and preserve the freedom of the individual. Compounding the confusion is the ubiquitous fallacy of “democracy.” The common understanding of the term is that it means “majority rule,” and that whatever the majority wants, is ipso facto good. The will of the people is primary, the end-all and be-all of political action and existence. The Founders, however, more specifically the Framers of the Constitution, distrusted if not abhorred democracy, and designed the Constitution to be as democracy-proof as their informed and received wisdom could make it. Benjamin Franklin’s attributed quip at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 about “A republic, if you can keep it,” was not a throw-away line, but an earnest answer to an earnest question, reflecting a wisdom measured in thousands of fathoms, as opposed to mere inches in the stagnant pools of contemporary political savvy. The Constitution of this republic was intended to define and limit government force, and to recognize and empower the individual to live his own life without interference from majorities, which could only employ government force to attain their ends. Democracies, regardless of their size, agreed the Framers, inevitably collapsed into tyrannies as factions vied for power over one another. The democratic element in the structure of American government was the franchise or vote for representatives of “the people” in the House of Representatives in Congress. Representatives were originally intended to defend “the people” from the caprices and machinations of the politically ambitious who sought power and privilege, and not to advance one faction’s special interest or prejudice in contests with that of other factions. Should representatives be elected to the House who were the tools or spokesmen of factions, the Senate was intended to serve as an obstructive, sitting committee of nullification against all plots and conspiracies to abridge or obviate individual freedom and to foil the intentions of leagues of larcenists. It was intended to be a state-seated repository of wisdom as a check against populism, grifters, and mob rule. As we look at Congress today, we might conclude that the democracy-proofing did not quite work. Democracy seeped in through the insulation and began to rot the institution. Not true. The Constitution, sans the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments, is basically a sound manifesto. Operator error, and not mechanical failure, is at fault. This is chiefly because more and more Americans forgot what the government and the Constitution were for and demanded their particular messes of pottage. Others did not wish to keep the republic at all, but worked to transform it by stealth, populism, and saccharin bombast into a democracy, that is, to establish a legal and self-perpetuating regime of grand larcenists. So, we have a “democracy.” Emblematic of the confusion of meanings, for example, is an article by The Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum on December 28th, “Jeopardizing democracy in Hungary.” In it she rues recent developments in Hungary, such as the virtual takeover of the government by Viktor Orban. She is worried that Orban’s turn to the “right” bodes ill for Hungary. Hungary is a fully paid member of NATO and the European Union, a country with functioning political parties and a 20-year history of free elections. Hungary's transition from communism to democracy has been an unmitigated success. We can agree with that assessment. Orban is very popular in Hungary. He was elected prime minister last April to replace the corrupt socialist government that ruled the country for eight years. In the past, Orban opposed the socialists’ desire to censor newspapers, radio, and television. If Belarus is cursed with a leader who is not popular enough to stay in power without violence, Hungary is now cursed with a leader who is too popular - or has too large a majority - and who can change his country's laws and constitution to keep himself in power without any violence. That is democracy at work. What are Applebaum’s reservations? But victory wasn't enough for Orban, who used his years out of power to plot his revenge against the journalists who didn't support him, against the chattering classes who didn't vote for him, and above all against his corrupt and incompetent opponents. Since taking office he has appointed a council to rewrite the constitution, deprived the national audit office of funding and stripped some of the powers of the country’s supreme court. More recently, his parliament passed a set of laws governing the media….A new, state-run media council, composed entirely of Fidesz [Orban’s political party] appointees, now has the right to impose fines of up to $1 million for journalism it considers "unbalanced," whatever that means. The council is also tasked with protecting "human dignity," whatever that means. The law seems to aim to control not just Hungarian media but media available to Hungarians on the Internet or anywhere - a task that is impossible…but that will require the creation of a massive system of surveillance and control anyway. There is even a government-mandated cap on "crime-related news," which cannot take more than 20 percent of airtime - though the law does not define "crime" or state whether it includes government corruption. So, how is “democracy” jeopardized by a popularly elected despot? Is this not democracy at work? Is this not the essence of democracy? Is this not how Hugo Chavez in Venezuela gamed the democratic system there? That “massive system of surveillance and control” – think the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration – and how effective they are, not in “combating terrorism,” but in watching everyone and obstructing Americans in their business and pleasure. It also portends the FCC’s initial steps to regulate the Internet here with so-called “net neutrality,” which, as I remarked in an earlier commentary, is a euphemism for neutering speech and the power of ideas. Applebaum regards Orban’s actions as typical of “right-wing” fascism. She is worried that such a movement in this country will also have the same consequences. About Orban’s regime, she writes: In fact, the real problem with this government is not its "fascism" but its uncontrolled contempt for its "liberal elite" and its "mainstream media." This problem is not unique to Hungary. I can imagine plenty of American politicians would love to punish "unbalanced" journalists who oppose "human dignity." This is a circumspect allusion, not to Hungary’s “liberal elite” and “mainstream media,” but to her own. Is she expecting to be purged, punished, and fined if a Republican wins the White House in 2012 if she presents an “unbalanced” estimate of the candidate and the party’s policies? And her last remark is odd. It is her liberal elite who would love to have the power to punish those who oppose “human dignity” – whatever that means. But, why the concern about what goes on in Hungary? Two days earlier, the Post featured an editorial about Orban, “The Putinization of Hungary.” NEXT MONTH many European Union members may be regretting their system of a rotating presidency. That's because the gavel will be handed to Hungary, whose populist and power-hungry government has just adopted a media law more suited to an authoritarian regime than to a Western democracy. The right-wing Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban won 53 percent of the popular vote in an election this year but gained 66 percent of the seats in parliament - enough to change the constitution. It proceeded to take over or attack the authority of every institution it did not control, including the presidency, the Supreme Court and the state audit office; the central bank is now under its assault. There must have been a long line of newspaper editors and writers the day truncated minds were being handed out. Never mind the Post’s confusion about what is or is not a “democracy.” The joker here is that the European Union, governed by a mammoth bureaucracy in Brussels, is already an authoritarian super-government that lords it over Europe and diminishes the sovereignty of its individual members. So, why should anyone object to someone who has experience in authoritarianism to preside over the E.U.? Meanwhile, Mr. Orban has overseen passage of two media laws that will put Hungary in a league with Russia and Belarus on press freedom. One puts Fidesz in control of state television channels and all other public media outlets. The second, approved by parliament by Tuesday, creates a powerful Media Council with the authority to regulate newspapers, television, radio and the Internet. The council may issue decrees and impose heavy fines - up to $950,000 - for news coverage it considers "unbalanced" or offensive to "human dignity." Journalists can be forced to reveal their sources, and the council can search editorial offices and require that publishers reveal confidential business information. But, sirs, that is democracy in action. Is it any different from the E.U. passing legislation that trumps the laws and judicial systems of its member nations? The New York Times agrees with the Post about what the rise of Viktor Orban holds for Europe. Mr. Orban’s conservative Fidesz Party was swept into power last April after a surge of resentment against the former socialists. He can change several laws and the constitution because his party holds a two-thirds majority in the parliament. Here Orban has been deemed a “conservative.” Is this the same as being a “centrist”? Somehow, political leaders who virtually take over newspapers and the Internet through censorship are “right-wing” or “conservative,” while liberal/left political leaders who take the same actions are somehow not “left-wing” or “socialist” or even “fascist.” If they are neither left, right, nor center, what are they? Viktor Orban is not helpful in finding in definition or a distinction. In April, the Times had this brief item on his own confusion: The incoming prime minister, Viktor Orban, left, vowed Monday to defend Hungary from the ascent of a far-right party and its black-clad paramilitary branch, which have railed against the Roma community and called the capital ''Jewdapest.'' Mr. Orban, 46, the leader of Fidezs, the party that defeated the incumbent Socialists in first-round parliamentary elections on Sunday, said he was unhappy over the rise of the far-right party, Jobbik, which won 16.7 percent of the vote. "No radical party will be allowed to get rid of law and order in this country," he said. "Democracy in this country is strong enough to defend itself." But not strong enough to defend itself against Mr. Orban, if one accepts the premise that mob rule can defend itself against all comers, especially someone voted into office by a mob. In August of 2002, the prime minister was against government control of the news media. More than 100,000 supporters of Hungary's former prime minister, Viktor Orban, rallied here today against what they say is a stranglehold on the public news media by the ruling Socialists. Since losing April elections to a center-left coalition of Socialists and liberal Free Democrats, leaders of Mr. Orban's center-right Fidesz alliance have warned against the risk of a Communist-era press monopoly. "Those programs of Hungarian television that conveyed civic and right-wing values have been turned into government loudspeakers, Mr. Orban told the rally, referring to state-owned broadcasters. So, the socialists having a stranglehold on the public news media is bad. Eight years later, it is good, but please do not call Mr. Orban and his party “socialist” or “fascist.” They are right-of-center. Or left-of-center. Or left. Or right. Perhaps even centrist. Who knows? If you are a Hungarian journalist or TV news reporter, or even a blogger, you may want to think twice before putting any label on Orban and his party. It might be considered “unbalanced” news and offensive to the “dignity” of the regime. The whole system of judging political ideologies by false criteria can leave one mentally cross-eyed. Indeed, “polarization” is an art of evasion, of verisimilitude, of using both hands to point in opposite directions. It is an old vaudevillian sight-gag, usually applied when the guilty comic is asked by the straight-man who impregnated the farmer’s daughter. In America, it is practiced mostly by liberals and liberal publications like The New York Times and Washington Post – that is, by “progressives” – who do not wish to draw attention to the fact that they share the same premises, methods, and ends as their enemies – the “right-wingers” – which is the subjugation of the individual to the collective or the state by direct force, by fiat legislation, and by regulatory decree. There is not a syllogism’s worth of difference between them when it comes to initiating and employing government force. With that observation, I bid adieu to 2010. Happy New Year to one and all. Cross-posted from Metablog

What bothers me endlessly about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is that they operate on the policy that defeat by our enemies is implicitly conceded. That is the policy adopted by our government, and one can trace it all the way back to President Ronald Reagan’s failure to retaliate against the murder of nearly 250 Marines in their bunker-like barracks in Lebanon in 1983 and the policy that sent them there. Instead of striking a mortal blow at Iran and Hezbollah, we indulged in a wave of maudlin mourning and shameful self-pity. The policy of defeat, however, is made possible by a variety of factors, not least of which are the philosophy of multiculturalism, a refusal to identify and strike against our enemies (that is, a refusal to ascribe evil to the advocates of the philosophy that motivates them), and, in the context of a government dedicated to expanding its powers under both Republican and Democratic administrations, a penchant for control at all costs, including the sacrifice of freedom. Tyrannies, dictatorships, and authoritarian regimes have no concern about the loss of freedom. Freedom is their enemy. It is not on their checklists of things to preserve and protect. Freedom is antithetical to control. The TSA is deserving of every bit of criticism it has earned, both as a functioning bureaucracy and as a product of government policies. It is staffed by thousands of careless, indiscriminate, prostituting, ignorant drones. I no longer consider them as Americans, but as an alien presence in our midst, as alien as the mindless followers of Islam. So, please, no one remind me or any other liberty-loving American that they are just “doing their job” or that they do not establish policy, or that they are just “following orders.” That’s the Nuremberg trial defense. Every nation at any period of its history has its population of dross and ballast – even during the American Revolution – and the TSA is a natural magnet for the ones in this country. But the TSA is merely a handmaiden of the DHS, and the DHS is but an ossified expression of a suicidal policy that has been germinating for decades. It is purely reactive in nature. It has accepted the overall policy of a state of siege as a normal, permanent mode of this country’s existence. The government does not bear the burden of such a policy, but rather its citizens. That policy will not strike a mortal blow at our enemies – Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and the lesser regimes – so it must adopt a state of siege mentality. Osama bin Laden knew his enemy, we must credit him with the observation that neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama would acknowledge and act against Islamic states as the enemy, but instead adopt the futile policy of appeasement and a state of siege. As part of the "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan," bin Laden cited a British estimate that it cost al Qaeda about $500,000 to carry out the attacks of September 11, 2001, an amount that he said paled in comparison with the costs incurred by the United States. "Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs," he said. As for the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. The total U.S. national debt is more than $7 trillion. The U.S. federal deficit was $413 billion in 2004, according to the Treasury Department. A government that will not acknowledge an external enemy of “the people” must regard “the people” as its potential enemy. Its capacity for aggression, if not directed against a legitimate enemy, will be directed against a nation’s civilian population. Witness now the energy it is expending to control the speech of its citizens via the Federal Communications Commission through its incipient control of the Internet. “Net neutrality” is just a euphemism for neutering the power of ideas. Two consequences are ensured by such a state of siege policy: the establishment of a police state that monitors and regulates every action and thought of the citizens of this country (this is beside the domestic policy of adopting socialized medicine through ObamaCare, and other instances of destructive and parasitical Democratic legislation); and the continued assault on this country by its enemies. A government that will not order its military to open its gates and storm out to assault the besiegers, is doomed to capitulation and defeat. What is holding us back? In 2002 former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was interviewed about the Marine barracks massacre. He was asked why President Reagan did not order a military response. He answered, quoting Reagan: “Almost any target we attack will have huge collateral damage.” Collateral damage is the polite way of phrasing the number of innocent women and children who are killed because you’re engaging in a war, and it was up in the hundreds of thousands. But a concern about “collateral damage” was not our policy while waging war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. If it had been, World War II would have lasted decades or even have been lost – just as the current “war against terrorism” has lasted a decade and is being lost. Weinberger also made this revealing observation about Reagan: He said he simply did not want to trust the future of the world to philosophic assumptions. There you have it. Philosophical bankruptcy, even “on principle,” necessarily means moral bankruptcy. Instead, Reagan, Bush, and to a lesser extend President Obama, cite “tradition,” God, and other irrelevant issues as reasons to “resist” Islamic jihadists, but not to exterminate their root. That would be “judgmental,” and moral judgments are prohibited in an environment of “moral equivalency.” So, discussions such as the Washington Post’s cogitations about the efficacy of airport body scanners and intrusive pat-downs are superfluous but indicative of how far this country has declined as a free one, and how far the government is prepared to go to establish a permanent police state. In the broad picture of things, such an article is useless speculation and complicit in a trend to “condition” Americans to being answerable to the state. In the country of the self-blinded, the one-eyed man is king because he has a purpose and an insidious method and can see where he is going. Reading this cold, dispassionate discussion in the Washington Post of how better to establish a police state, one realizes that this is now a country that would prefer to live in a state of siege, rather than eliminate the countries that sponsor terrorism and that have attacked us by proxy with foreign and American-born or naturalized terrorists. What bothers me just as much is also the willingness of Americans to tolerate and endure the airport terminal as a police state. There is no fundamental difference between conscientiously filling out a 1099 and an IRS audit, and removing one’s shoes, belts and jewelry and submitting to a body scan or a pat-down, except in its immediacy. Obey, or suffer the consequences. So, let us suggest here that, for example, the omnipotent IRS, as one controlling agency, has conditioned Americans to that kind of treatment, to sanction the hostage-taking of their values and to concede that they are but the wards of a guardian government. The Tea Party movement to the contrary notwithstanding, Americans are behaving more and more like sheep willing to be sheared. They need to be taught that such shearing leaves them naked before the government and all its eager, groping minions, and a laughing stock of our external enemies, who will continue killing us as they snort in triumph. Sheared, shivering, and going about their government-approved business, laden with computerized ankle or wrist bracelets, too many Americans will assure themselves that they will feel “safe.” They will be told that surrendering their freedom is the “price of freedom.” Contradictions do not exist in reality, except in human action and within one’s mind. That is a perilous, suicidal mode of existence. Cross-posted from Metablog

The Muezzin of Pennsylvania Avenue sang in his semi-mellifluous voice. American business leaders answered his call to prayers and bowed to the god of pragmatism. Like British playwright Terence Rattigan’s infuriatingly unpublished play, Follow My Leader (1940), a satiric attack on Nazi Germany, the true substance of President Barack Obama’s December 15th meeting with twenty American business leaders at Blair House in Washington must remain unknown to most Americans. Aside from what has been reported in newspapers that certain topics were discussed and that attendees “felt good” about the gathering, no one knows what Obama said to these individuals that mattered, or what they said to him. What was the nature of those discussions? Was it an invitation to attend this meeting, or a command? Or do Obama and the attendees treat the terms as synonymous? The Washington Post reported some significant absentees, major bank executives, with the exception of Robert Wolf, president of the financial services firm UBS. This is the company that cooperated with the Internal Revenue Service to uncover the identities and assets of some 15,000 secret account holders who thought their money was safe from government confiscation. No major U.S. bank executives came, even though the financial industry has had an especially rocky relationship with the White House after the passage of financial overhaul legislation and the president's criticism of "fat cat" bankers. The administration has tried to build a rapport with executives such as Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, neither of whom attended the meeting. Also missing was Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon, who delivered a stinging speech in June, saying the president's policies hurt economic growth. Seidenberg, who is also chairman of the Business Roundtable, presented a "road map" last week of policies supported by the business community relating to taxes, trade and energy. Also missing was someone with the capacity for “spontaneous” anger of South Carolina representative Joe Wilson. I am betting that no one at this prayer meeting had the chutzpah to reply to the muezzin, “ According to the Los Angeles Times, Wolf said afterward that it was “a very constructive, positive meeting.” Which means nothing. “Constructive,” in what sense? “Positive,” how? You fill in the blanks. Many of the attendees were ardent Obamites. The group consisted of some strong Obama supporters — Google chief Eric Schmidt, Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr and Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker — along with such corporate leaders as John Chambers from Cisco, Jeffrey Immelt from GE, Indra Nooyi from PepsiCo Inc., Paul Otellini from Intel Corp. and Brian Roberts from Comcast. Unless someone releases a transcript of who said what during the meeting, the country must be satisfied with the unfounded assumption that the participants, including the White House, were not discussing how better to further nationalize the economy. The Washington Post’s Perry Bacon wrote: In a session with 20 chief executives…Obama - whose sharp rhetoric about pay on Wall Street has annoyed some executives - declared, "I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success," according to a source in the room. Also in attendance at prayers were executives from Honeywell International, United Parcel Service, Eli Lily & Co., Boeing, Comcast, Motorola, Centerbridge Partners, and American Express. Prayer, after all, is nothing more than earnest wishful thinking with a dash of hope, of blanking out reality and squeezing one’s eyes shut, thinking, “Please, let it be! (or not).” Dana Milbank, a regular columnist for The Washington Post, let the cat out of the bag with the title of his December 15th column, “The socialist president plays host to capitalism.” Writing with an obvious bitter sarcasm directed at Obama, Milbank ascribes the appellation “socialist” to “many Republicans,” but it is an honest appraisal of Obama’s ideological identity and a confession of Milbank’s political persuasion. He, too, wondered what was actually said during the meeting by all the parties. Whatever Obama said privately to the executives over the next four-plus hours, they must have liked it. When they emerged from Blair House, several of them stopped at the microphones to welcome the president into the club of capitalists. "I think they have a lot of business acumen in the White House," judged UBS's Robert Wolf, an Obama golfing partner. That was worse than saying nothing. “They” in the White House have the business acumen of Bernie Madoff, now serving a life sentence at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex near Raleigh, North Carolina for his multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme. If that is Wolf’s honest assessment of the Obama administration’s notion of business, it would be advisable to avoid doing business with UBS. The Blair House meeting is just the latest in a succession of meetings between Obama and business leaders to ease tensions between him and the leaders of our alleged free market system. This one was supposed to help patch things up in the aftermath of the midterm elections. Aside from saying prayers and speaking in tongues (to the press and the public), the business leaders also performed ablutions. Jim McNerney, president and chief executive of Boeing, said after the meeting, "We have a chance for a new beginning." McNerney later told CNBC: "We all made our apologies and said we wanted to move on." To what? The president gave little indication. President Barack Obama said he and 20 company executives made “good progress” during a four and a half hour meeting toward establishing closer cooperation between government and business to accelerate the U.S. economic recovery. “We focused on jobs and investment, and they feel optimistic that by working together we can get some of that cash off the sidelines,” Obama said as he left the session yesterday, referring to the almost $2 trillion that he said companies have amassed. Cooperation and collaboration to accomplish what? Since when do corporate executives seek the advice of the government on how to invest their companies’ money? One supposes the answer is when private individuals regard the government as the lodestone of their purposes. Since when do presidents feel they have the right to advise private individuals on how to conduct their business? When those individuals grant him the sanction to “guide” them. Honeywell chairman David Cote said, after the meeting, Executives at the meeting agreed with the president’s assessment that the two sides made progress. “It’s important for business and government to be able to work together,” Cote said. “I came away feeling very good.” What can explain this secular version of Islamic submission to the American version of Louis IV, the Sun King? Gerald F. Seib wrote about a similar “rapprochement” between the White House and business last February, in The Wall Street Journal. Commenting on the ablutions performed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after its previous harsh criticisms of White House economic and social policies, he noted that Obama’s signals of reconciliation were merely rhetorical. The president who somewhat famously told Republicans earlier in the week, "I am not an ideologue," told his party's senators they shouldn't be ideologues either. "We've got to be nonideological about our approach to these things. We've got to make sure that our party understands that, like it or not, we have to have a financial system that is healthy and functioning, so we can't be demonizing every bank out there," Mr. Obama said. One would be right to feel a sense of déjà vu, when, on December 7th, he replied to liberal and Democratic critics who upbraided him for “compromising” over extending the Bush tax cuts for two years. Obama's tone was alternately defensive and fiery. He dismissed his Democratic critics as "sanctimonious" and obsessed with staking out a "purist position." He said they hold views so unrealistic that, by their measure of success, "we will never get anything done." And what is the difference between an ideologue and an ideological purist? Not a whit. Clearly, the business leaders who answered the call to prayers are “non-ideological” pragmatists, empty vessels – many of them, except for those committed to the White House agenda. It is their muezzin who, contrary to his assertions notwithstanding, is the purist and ideologue. And yet, critics and congratulators are proclaiming that he is now a “centrist.” The centrist label is wholly unjustified, warned Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist who has so often and accurately kenned Obama’s soul, style, and savvy. In his December 17th column, “The new comeback kid,” he notes: … ome on the right are gloating that Obama had been maneuvered into forfeiting his liberal base. Nonsense. He will never lose his base. Where do they go? Liberals will never have a president as ideologically kindred – and they know it. For the left, Obama is as good as it gets in a country that is barely 20 percent liberal. The conservative gloaters were simply fooled again by the flapping and squawking that liberals ritually engage in before folding at Obama's feet. American business leaders, most of them, will continue to follow their leader, together with their enemies, the liberals and the left. From this point on, on up through the presidential race of 2012, there will be many more calls to prayer from Pennsylvania Avenue. Cross-posted from Metablog

Long, long ago, in a world far, far away, philosopher and cultural critic George Santayana in 1905 noted that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”* Have Americans learned from history? Have they any core knowledge of the past from which to draw wisdom, conclusions, and rational guidance? To judge by the record of the last half century – no. Perhaps a more pertinent question might be: Do they know history? Most Americans are feeble on their own history, having never encountered much of it except for the Howard Ziinn- or Bill Ayers- style of history, or the multiculturalist brand, never mind world history or ancient history. They have been dumbed down and rendered ignorant of their own past. The Punic Wars? The Gates of Vienna? The Council of Nicaea? Kristallnacht? These events may as well have occurred on a distant planet. Our educational establishment, at great taxpayer and personal cost, has seen to it that most Americans have been enfeebled from K1 up through college commencement, and has performed a pretty thorough and effective job of it. I’ve done enough booksignings to observe that more than one American has had a Jay Leno “man in the street” moment. Who crossed the Delaware? Lincoln. Who is Joe Biden? Isn’t he a quarterback for the New England Patriots? Sharia Law? Wasn’t she one of the Dixie Chicks? One can only blink in discreet and astonished trepidation. The “Enablers” in the title of my previous post got me thinking about Adolf Hitler’s Enabling Act of 1933. Its formal name was the Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation. This was a sweeping, across-the-board repudiation and nullification of what few liberties Germans had in the expiring Weimar Republic, a single, all-encompassing piece of legislation that ushered in the rule of men who subsequently buried the rule of law. Hitler demanded its passage. It would give him unobstructed and unprecedented power to impose his vision of Germany on the country. Many Germans were enamored of that vision. It comported nicely with their shared sense of victimhood. He was their messiah. He had all the answers. He would do something to get them out of their economic rut, to restore the country’s collective self-esteem, and resurrect Germany as a Teutonic power to be reckoned with. The Act received overwhelming approval by the Reichstag, or the parliament, in March that year. And in approving it, it voted itself out of existence. Perhaps most of the delegates were tired of passing laws that only made things worse. Perhaps they knew their limitations. The man at the podium did not seem to have any limitations. He could probably work miracles. One impetus for passage of the Enabling Act was the Reichstag Fire of February 1933, a week before the general election that sent veteran and new delegates to the Reichstag. Regardless of who was responsible for the fire, the Communists or the Nazis, it allowed newly appointed Chancellor Hitler to push even more vigorously for passage of the Act. His sole purpose was to increase the number of pro-Act votes in the Reichstag to two-thirds or better, which would ensure passage of the Act. Support came from the Catholic Center Party, whose votes were secured with promises to respect religious freedom. This is somewhat reminiscent of how ObamaCare was passed – with bribes and guarantees of earmarks and not a little support from the American Catholic Church. Before the fire, the Nazis had polled only twelve percent of the vote. Hitler’s decree of a national emergency pushed that up to about forty-four percent. Blaming the Communists, he issued the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended most civil liberties in Germany. It enabled him to ban publications considered hostile to the Nazi cause. It also precipitated a reign of terror and intimidation against anyone who voiced doubt about the wisdom of the Enabling Act. This served to increase the Nazis’ chances of passage, because many deputies and voters abstained or were prevented from voting by Hitler’s paramilitary SA. (Worried that his hold on the government and the country was being jeopardized by the thuggish SA, whose head, Ernst Rohm, insisted that the SA replace the German army, Hitler in June 1934 launched the bloody “Night of the Long Knives” that resulted in the murders of Rohm and hundreds of SA chiefs. Just as Hitler wished to legalize his dictatorship with the Enabling Act, he wished to soften and legitimize the image of the Nazi Party.) When the Act became law, Hitler dispensed with the Reichstag, a representative body of the electorate. He would not need to answer to it or to the electorate. It became superfluous, an empty ornament and a semi-respectable podium for his subsequent rantings. Are Americans condemned to repeat that history? It would be heartening if by that it was meant that Americans were going to finish the American Revolution and roll back government spending, abolish the all the parasitical and regulatory alphabet bureaus, agencies and departments in Washington from A Street S.W. to Z Street N.E., get the government out of our lives, pockets, and pants, off our menus, out of our cars, out of hospitals and doctors’ offices, out of the schools, and reintroduce the idea of inviolate individual rights and the proper role of government. The Tea Party movement had the potential for firing Congress, just as Americans had fired the British Crown. What we have not witnessed ever since Barack Obama took office in 2009 is anything so arrogant and bold as the kind of “democratic” coup d'état staged by Hitler. The move to the Oval Office was loudly orchestrated, just as Hitler’s move to the Chancellorship was loudly orchestrated. Instead, Obama has been writing his own Enabling Act piecemeal, in installments, as patiently as completing a jigsaw puzzle. This puzzle was begun by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson long, long ago. One cannot call it anything but an Enabling Act, because it not so much exclusively bestows the president with plenary powers, as shares those powers with Congress with dependable ideological encouragement from the White House, and opaque (i.e., not transparent) horse-trading and log-rolling between it and Congress, coupled with the White House’s arm-twisting and brow-beating emissaries. It comes slowly into focus as each new government-caused “crisis” is answered with an expansion of controls and as each piece of the puzzle helps to complete a picture of what Obama knows is its final form. Obama campaigned, after all, on the platform that he, too, had remedies for a distressed people and nation. He was rather vague and equivocal about what he meant. But people who were enamored of his vision of what the country should be voted for him. His rhetoric resonated with their yearning for the unearned and the miraculous. Visions of sugar plum fairies and stockings stuffed with all sorts of redistributed goodies danced in their heads. His rhetoric and bogus charisma commanded a near-religious devotion among his supporters that has few historic parallels. The power of John F. Kennedy’s appeal and Amiee Semple McPherson’s revival tent and radio style comes to mind. Kennedy and McPherson, too, were faith-healers who spoke in tongues. “By its decision to carry out the political and moral cleansing of our public life, the Government is creating and securing the conditions for a really deep and inner religious life.” Really deep? Another sloppy Obamaism? No. It was Hitler urging the Reichstag to pass the Enabling Act. But one can easily imagine those words being spoken by Obama. He probably has. I don’t pretend to remember every toxic and rancid drop of dissimulating verbal swill that has been uttered by the man. I see parallels here between the purge of Rohm and the SA and the announced departures of key Obama appointees. Whether these resignations were voluntary or solicited by Obama is a moot question. Intentional or not, they serve to ameliorate the tangible public hostility to Obama and his administration and create a more conciliatory image of a man unswervingly dedicated to nationwide “community organizing.” But, what is our Reichstag Fire? On the face of it, the subprime mortgage meltdown in 2008, and everything that followed. To attempt to recount that debacle would be to lose the reader in a labyrinth of Federal frauds, scams, bailout tarpaulins, and malfeasances that would bewilder Theseus. There would not be enough thread for him to go clear back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s time and then retrace his steps without being assaulted, TSA-style, by Barney Frank’s many Minotaurs. But the subprime collapse served as the excuse to adopt certain “emergency” confiscatory powers, many already in existence but not fully exploited, others created from whole cloth. Capitalism, Wall Street, and Joe the Plumber were blamed, not Federal policies whose illegitimate economic concoctions had been percolating since at least Bill Clinton’s administration. Beginning with Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act, followed by Ronald Reagan and his Alternative Mortgage Transactions Parity Act and the bailouts of the savings and loans under his watch, every president since then has had a hand in stirring the pot in which the frog swims, and both political parties. Hitler believed in a division of labor. He wanted his devoted cabinet, not the Reichstag, to exercise power and make law. Obama’s cabinet appointments emulate the character and pattern, as well. As Germany’s economy was warped and woofed by government fiscal, regulatory, and taxation policies together with entitlement programs, so was and has been America’s. Obama enlarged his “cabinet” by creating two or so dozen “czars.” They would make law, as well, in their particular satrapies, with the sanction of a complicit and ideologically friendly Congress and to the eager applause of a co-opted press. In Germany, the Enabling Act allowed Hitler to virtually nationalize key industries – in fact, the whole German economy – allowing owners to “own” them but compelling them to take orders and conform to the government’s statist priorities. What is the difference then and now? Only the venue and the language. We have a government intent on regulating, if not taking over, numerous realms of private productive activity, from travel to toys to tobacco to diets to the Internet to oil drilling and exploration to food and farming to medical care and insurance. All of this and more represents only a climax of successive waves of growing government controls, but it took an Obama to orchestrate it – to slam-dunk it, in populist parlance – not in the name of fascism (that would be bigoted “profiling”), but of “progressivism.” Also known in certain circles whose members remember the past, have learned from it, and who fear its repetition, as incremental socialism. Call it national socialism, if you will. It still means totalitarianism. One’s more immediate enemies are not Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid, or Barney Frank, or Henry Waxman, but rather those countless American manqués who empower them and in turn are patronized by them, who do not mind being fondled and groped and radiated by the TSA in the name of a national security that is not security at all, but control for the sake of control. These are the people who scoffed at the Tea Party movement and now sneer at defenders of the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments. These are also the same happily ignorant and insouciant people who claim that the “price of liberty” is slavery to the IRS, the FDA, the EPA, the FCC, the FEC, the PPACA, the SEC, ad infinitum. Philosophically, morally, they are the original authors of Obama’s Enabling Act. They are card-carrying ciphers of the police state, ready to obey and receive their rewards and enjoy their state-granted They are the altruist and collectivist dhimmis of a secular Islam. Will the Republicans check the implementation of Obama’s Enabling Act? I have my doubts, too, that a beaver dam can contain a freshet. Their willingness to “negotiate,” for example, an extension of the Bush tax cuts instills no confidence in me, nor should it in anyone else. As deadly as Obama’s emerging Enabling Act might be, is the anti-principle, anti-morality, anti-philosophy of appeasing pragmatism, of cutting a deal to stave off disaster or to retain power. It sanctions and enables the evil that men can do. As Ayn Rand famously noted in her novel, Atlas Shrugged, “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.” Will the Republicans be the death of us? Long live Lady Liberty. *“Life of Reason," in Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905, page 284. Cross-posted from Metablog

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) only seems to lack perspicuity, foresight, basic analytical skills, and senses of humor and irony. Its head, its staff, and its administrator are as distant from reality as Pluto is from the Sun. It has just launched a propaganda campaign called, “If You See Something, Say Something.” They have roused the wrong “enemy” – the American people. "As Americans head into the busy holiday travel season, it is important to remember that every individual has a role to play in keeping our country safe and secure," said Secretary Napolitano. "The ‘ If You See Something, Say Something' campaign encourages travelers and those who work in the hotel industry to identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to the proper law enforcement authorities." Imagine that in Nazi Germany, every German was urged to perform the same “patriotic” duty to keep the country safe and secure. To wit: “If you see a Jew, say something. If you see a gypsy, say something. If you see a Negro, say something. If you see a German curse Hitler, say something.” You get the picture. In the official announcement site, the term “terrorism” occurs only once. Nowhere are the terms, Islam, Muslim, and jihad to be found, even though it is Islamic terrorists who are the purported enemy. The enemy, however, is left unidentified. Common criminals can wage terror, too, while “other threats” also float in the sump of official DHS terminology. You, the concerned citizen, have a role to play in spotting and ratting on shapeless, nameless bogeymen. Forgive the TSA if it treats you like a suspect, guilty before proven innocent. It is your duty to act guilty until proven innocent by a semi-literate making just above the minimum wage. But, think twice, though, if you see a Muslim behaving oddly or suspiciously. Do not point fingers at men performing prayers in an airport lounge, or at women wearing various kinds of strange headgear. That would be discriminatory, evidence of prejudice, bigotry, and groundless fear. Do not for one minute, however, think that the introduction of these “enhanced” security procedures is a consequence of poor planning or shortsightedness. The procedures are obnoxious, repellent, and invasive by design. They are intended to inure Americans to being treated as chattel and the property of the state. Americans are supposed to treat the right and luxury of flying as a state-granted privilege. A memo to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano: I have seen something, and I am saying something. Aside from violating the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against the federal government conducting “unreasonable searches and seizures” at airports, loosing on American and foreign travelers the costly, invasive, and futile sham of security checks at airports, sexually assaulting individuals of both genders and of all ages, subjecting said travelers to degradation and humiliation, physically assaulting travelers who may have included an eye-drop dispenser or a tube of toothpaste in a carry-on bag – there is this observable but too-often overlooked defining characteristic of especially the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA’s) airport security checks: the practice of criminal extortion. The legal definition of the act and crime of extortion includes: Perform[ing] any other act which would not in itself materially benefit the actor but which is calculated to harm another person materially with respect to his health, safety, business, calling, career, financial condition, reputation or personal relationships. Excuse me, but doesn’t this definition apply to a TSA agent (I refuse to call these creatures “officers”) telling you that if you don’t submit your luggage and your person to his optionless search and likely seizure, you won’t be flying anywhere? You won’t be going to Cleveland on business, you won’t be having turkey with all the trimmings with family in Reno, you won’t be seeing your sweetheart in Des Moines? Of course, once one submits to the extortion, it triggers and sanctions the unreasonable search and seizure, also chargeable offenses. Extortion is the threat of withholding a value by compelling a victim’s consent to surrender another, perhaps lesser value. Think Sophie’s Choice. The consensual character of extortion does not hide or disguise the element of the threat of initiated physical force by compelling an individual to take an action he otherwise would not choose to take. But this is not the exclusive realm of TSA policy. It is the federal government’s modus operandi in virtually all areas of American life. For example, Americans are already “conditioned” to filing tax returns under the threat of audits, fines, expropriation, and prison. Employers act as unpaid tax collectors under penalty of audits, expropriation, fines, and prison. Other examples would fill several pages of redundancies. The TSA is merely a late-comer to the game, an in-your-face and in-your-pants late-comer that reveals the true nature of statism. The growing resistance to the TSA’s policies is evidence that Americans still don’t like to be pushed around. They don’t like being treated like pieces of meat, or print cartridges, to be inspected and certified by the lackeys of federal authority. The Fourth Amendment reads: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. So, when an infant, or a person in a wheelchair, or schoolchildren, or adults, are subjected to virtual strip searches, legalized molestation, and exposed to radiation in the back-scattering machines, where is the “probable cause,” unless one is already a suspect? Where are the “warrants”? And where is the “particular place” that must be searched, other than one’s whole person and property? Where is the description of the “person or things to be seized”? Nowhere to be found in the TSA playbook. The TSA’s policies, past and present, are in complete and demonstrable violation of the Constitution. What a banquet of litigation and lawsuits Napolitano’s and John Pistole’s policies present to the legal profession! The TSA and its operatives across the nation, as actors in the extortion, do not “materially benefit” from the act (unless they are the receivers of the all the confiscated – that is, stolen – goods taken from travelers). They are just “doing their job,” like the good totalitarian functionaries they were hired to be. There are, however, personal and psychological benefits they must derive from holding power over their victims. They hold one’s values hostage until the ransom is paid, and that ransom is submitting to their salacious scrutiny. The only alternative they offer is the destruction of a value. They are gratified, either way, because they offer you no choice. You, the violated individual, are the loser. Americans exhibited signs of rebellion during the Tea Party movement and in the recent midterm elections. A brewing revolution against the depredations and incompetency of the TSA and DHS is part and parcel of those uniquely American phenomena. After all, “opting out” is nearly as good as good as “Going Galt.” Cross-posted from Metablog

“Usually I’m pretty mild, in fact many of my friends are kind enough to call it ‘Folksy,’ when I’m writing or speechifying.” – Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip* A chilling familiarity: Where have we read this before? Oh, yes, in Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 dystopian novel, It Can’t Happen Here. In it, a charismatic middle-aged man on a white unicorn gallops across a battered economy littered with the wreckage of past federal stimulus programs to the White House, advocating the transformation of the country into a utopia of social justice, and promising everyone, not $5,000 a year, as did Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, but government-managed health care and a “fairer” (re)distribution of wealth. In his entourage are numerous placemen eager to control everything from the consumption of oil and nicotine and sugar and salt and history and science to education, and who also suggest “minor” adjustments to the Bill of Rights in the Constitution to better facilitate social justice and economic fairness to bring about their leader’s promised land. Just like Windrip and his entourage in the Lewis novel. The administration and “folksy” style of President Barack Obama have in part prompted this essay. His and Congress’s statist legislation and semi-disguised and dissimulated agenda to “transform” the United States from a faltering constitutional republic, already burdened with a plethora of government interventions, regulations, and extraordinary enforcement powers, into a certified socialist “republic,” have elicited an intense public hostility toward him and that agenda. Many Americans have now seen the face of extortionate, authoritarian arrogance, and like it not. It was not gratuitous slander or character assassination when many Tea Party protest signs featured a pairing of his face and the term, “Big Brother.” Whether or not that hostility will translate into effective resistance, a rediscovery of freedom, a decoupling or abolition of government powers, and support for the sanctity of individual rights, remains to be seen. There is, however, no part of the Obama agenda that does not comport, complement, or mesh with legislation advocated and enacted by earlier administrations, and that does not contain the germ of totalitarian or dystopian power. This includes Social Security, Medicare, the Federal Reserve, the income tax, the FDA, the EPA, and so on. Obama’s agenda is merely the undisguised climax of collectivist ideas and yearnings dating back to the early years of the republic. Both major political parties are responsible for the patchwork of economic and “social” controls, the direct and indirect confiscation of wealth through taxation, and regulations that weigh upon Americans, a byzantine quilt not quite basted together to create the kind of smothering totalitarianism that existed in Soviet Russia or that exists in Mainland China and North Korea, or in a theocratic state such as Iran or Saudi Arabia. But, back to Berzelius Windrip, Adam Sutler, Mr. Thompson, and Big Brother. The corpus of dystopian literature is old, vast, disparate, intriguing, and of varying quality. The stories discussed here focus only on a few of the better known or outstanding examples of it, and does not claim to be comprehensive by any means. It will not address the concerns of past dystopian writers, such as Thomas More, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Butler. It will, however, address what I see are key strengths and faults of the genre. The term utopia is classical Greek for nowhere – meaning an imaginary, impossible, unrealistic place – while a Greek homophone, eutopia, means a “good place,” or a society that has actually achieved realizable perfect happiness and contentment. Dystopian stories focus on one or more negative attributes of totalitarianism. Therein lies their key fault. The only realm in which tyrannies or dystopias “work” is in literature, specifically in fiction and in motion pictures. In reality, by their nature, they must self-destruct. If they endure for any length of time, it is by grace of external factors: the sanction of the victims, as dramatized in the finest and eminently credible “dystopian” novel, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged; by compromise with evil, a la Neville Chamberlain; or by toleration of totalitarian regimes, e.g., through “trade pacts” and “cultural exchanges” between totalitarian regimes and semi-free nations. The trouble with the dystopian genre is that while the best of it can be disturbing, compelling, instructive, and very effective – depending on a writer’s narrative and dialogue skills – they are not credible, no matter how well accomplished. That is because if such dystopias existed in reality, they would, once they had reached the point of perfection, implode and collapse. I do not think that any creator of a literary dystopia has ever believed that such societies could actually exist and function. Most men, however, take them literally as the possible. The chief value of a dystopian story – and here is its potential strength – is that it can impart a moral, in the way of a parable, or portray the essence of a particular totalitarian ideology, or offer insights into current social or political phenomena in reality that are in incubation and not yet fully grown, and which deserve dramatic explication. They can depict the consequences of evil ideas in action, and what men do or do not do about them. In reality, a perfect dystopia would collapse and perish because it was perfect, because it could not achieve its ideal state, stagnation, without courting suicide. Total control and manipulation of men, their minds, and actions in such a political projection would succeed in crushing the very thing such a system depended on to make the system work: man’s volitional capacity. To prevent such a death, totalitarians resort to even more force – invasion of their neighbors, or unleashing the power of the state on their own citizens. Pol Pot in Cambodia, Stalin in Russia, and Mao in China, are examples of the latter alternative. Force is the only alternative in a totalitarian’s ideological toolbox. It is there to be used. Stagnation, or an enforced state of a status quo, of an arrested movement in men’s minds and actions, is the ideal state sought after by despots and totalitarians. But, stagnation means regression, dissolution, and death. It can have no other end. And, as only one fiction writer has eloquently demonstrated, it has only one unacknowledged purpose: destruction for the sake of destruction. Or death. For example, in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the ruling Inner Party pursues of policy of lobotomizing the members of the Outer Party to create an obedient, unthinking cadre of servants of the Inner Party’s hold on power. This is most evident in Orwell’s brilliant grasp of the necessity of destroying language, of a policy of deliberately reducing the number of operative and permitted words and ideas among all Party members. But if such a policy were actually implemented, the Inner Party would be helpless against the first man who rediscovered or reinvented the words that had been excised from others’ minds (and words are, as novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand defined them, audio-visual symbols for things or entities, including ideas). The literary and philosophical antidote to this aspect of Orwell’s novel, as pointed out by Shoshana Milgram in Essays on Ayn Rand’s Anthem**, is Anthem, in which the hero triumphantly rediscovers the words that were lost to or banished from the truncated minds of his fellows. Orwell demonstrates an understanding the role of language in the essay that accompanies the novel, “The Principles of Newspeak.” However, the essay is merely a description of the mechanics of thought control and thought suppression, of chaining men’s minds to a miniscule lexicon of politically correct thought, and is not a critical delving into its infeasibility, one consistent with his true contention, portrayed throughout the novel and also in a fictive book in the novel, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, that a totalitarian regime could not maintain or progress beyond the technological level that it inherited when it took power. (Incidentally, it is only government force that can fuel and sustain political correctness in speech. See my “Speechless Speech” and other essays on political correctness and incorrect speech. It can accomplish this if it has a head-lock on a nation’s educational institutions, as the government now has. Syme, a character in Orwell’s novel who works on the ever-shrinking Newspeak Dictionary, remarks to Winston Smith, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?....Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller….Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."*** Because he is intelligent enough to make such an explicit observation – which is completely in line with the Party’s ends – he is subsequently vaporized by the Party. Active minds such as his can also rebel against the Party. But Syme’s acumen reveals an internal plot contradiction in the novel. O’Brien, an Inner Party member and Smith’s tormentor, displays an intellect vastly superior to Outer Party member Syme’s, who not only repeats Syme’s statements but claims he helped to write the banished book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, an indictment of the Party and its ends. Yet, it is unlikely he will be targeted for liquidation, even though he has the mind to orchestrate the Party’s overthrow.) In reality, a government that ruled a nation of truncated minds would not be able to “run the country,” other than “running it to the ground.” It would not last. Either the country or the government would collapse first. Independent minds do not obey commands to think or not to think. And independent minds not free to act on their thinking, do not produce, create, innovate, or function at their maximum capacity in totalitarian systems; at the very most, they function, quite deliberately, at minimal capacity, on the short-range. They produce as little as possible. They cease to function – as far as the statists are concerned – or they remove themselves from the realm of coercion. That is a key point demonstrated in Atlas Shrugged. A totalitarian regime cannot even remain stagnant for long – unless it leeches off what is left of a nation’s private sector, or benefits from the proximity and productiveness of its free or semi-free neighbors. Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Imperial Japan, among others, subsisted on a combination of loot, conquest, and trade with willing, indiscriminate, more prosperous nations that they had not yet invaded and looted, together with the willingness of most of their populations to work for and defer to the state. Whence the means of oppression? Many dystopian novels, dubbed “technocratic,” are warnings about an over-reliance on technology. They depict technology “gone wrong.” This view is in error on two counts. The first is that technology can “go wrong” only with the power of government force. The second is that in most novels of this type, an industrial civilization that could produce the technology is implied or taken for granted. A literary indictment of any technology is, implicitly, an indictment of industrial civilization per se. We have seen today protests against everything from nuclear power to cosmetics to sugar to salt. No product of human effort is exempt from the indictment. For example, in the film V for Vendetta (a gross distillation of a popular British comic book series) there is no negative existential consequence portrayed in a recognizable, prosperous society ruled by Adam Sutler’s totalitarian government. Set in Britain, one discerns no real distinction between contemporary Britain and its standard of living, and the story’s setting. One is left asking: What has anyone to complain about? Everyone seems fat and happy, and the trains run on time. This copasetic depiction renders all of the subplots – of some government biological experiments, the round-up and extermination of anyone not approved by a nominally “Christian” dictator, and the protagonist’s mission of vendetta – entirely irrelevant. On the other hand, In Nineteen Eighty-Four (the novel or the 1984 film production), the appalling material living conditions are gruesomely described, just the opposite of those portrayed in V, with incredible poverty endured by Outer Party members – aside from their risk of arbitrary arrest, torture and execution for thought crime. Orwell was close to identifying the key motive – the poverty is planned and has a purpose, to sustain a grinding, exhausting existence that drains men’s capacity to think clearly, or to choose not to think and rather obey so as to earn an increase in the chocolate ration – but not close enough. He knew that a key to enforcing obedience was to erase concepts from men’s minds – to stymie any thought of disobedience and the possibility that one could even imagine or experience another kind of existence. Without the object or vision of freedom as an expressed possibility, no motive to think of it or move toward it could be possible. The goal of the Inner Party in Orwell’s novel was power for the sake of exercising power for its own sake – the power to destroy and reshape men – and he gave Big Brother a more credible means to achieve and retain total power. Still, he discounted the role and efficacy of volition and the possibility that men might still think and triumph, and that, even in the absence of eradicated words, minds would still struggle to find, identify or create words. The fate of Winston Smith, the novel’s anti-hero, reveals the malevolent, deterministic premise of its creator. In spite of his contention that such a regime could not foster technological progress, he grants it an overriding metaphysical potency. But, where does the chocolate come from? And the telescreens? Who produces them? Under what conditions? As do most other dystopian writers, he makes only passing references to an industrial base, manned largely by the “inhuman” proles, with raw materials coming from regions of the world contested by perpetual warfare between similar totalitarian regimes. The parable of the short film 2081 is about complacency. George Bergeron, the father of Harrison, a man of superlative virtues – possessing genius, beauty, and strength , who has earned every “handicap” equalizing device imaginable – watches his son be murdered by the state, but cannot remember the event, thanks to the state’s power to disrupt his thinking and memory. His son, an “extraordinary” who was “beyond the reach” of the Handicapper General’s purposes, was impervious to the punishments. But in fact it is not the devices hanging from George’s body that stop him from thinking, or remembering. It is his acclimation to wearing the devices. He tells his wife that if he removed the devices, he wouldn’t want to put them on again. But, by the end of the story, he chooses to leave them on. But, where do these sophisticated devices come from? Who makes them? Of course, 2081 is a parable, and not meant to be taken literally. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 assumes that a society in which books are burned and banned can maintain itself as a technologically advanced and prosperous one, relying on mere pictures and the general illiteracy of its population. Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day depicts a society that can maintain technology if its citizens are regularly doped up (or doped down). THX 1138 depicts an underground society that relies heavily on industrial production; in neither of these instances is there evidence of how a regime obtains its sophisticated tools of oppression, such as drugs and robot policemen and fire engines. Totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, could claim some longevity because, aside from the sanction granted each regime by its victims, they also existed by grace of pragmatic policies and toleration of their more prosperous and freer neighbors. Red China has sustained its existence as a nominally communist country by adopting pragmatic “free market” policies that allow its citizens some modicum of freedom. Communist Cuba has existed on handouts from friendly statist regimes. Mixed economies such as Argentina and Mexico, or the Scandinavian countries, stumble along, relying on the vestiges of freedom that have not been snuffed out. The only novel to make the connection between a government’s expropriation of the products of an industrial civilization (to use as weapons against men) and industrial civilization itself, is Atlas Shrugged. That unique, distinct feature makes Atlas not only more credible as a story and a projection of the possible, but more realistic, for the principles that govern the story also govern reality. It is a masterful integration of creative imagination and loyalty to facts and reality, an integration not evident or only suggested in most dystopian stories, and not likely to be repeated in the near future. In the story, as in reality, when the policies of force lead to the shut down or extinction of free, productive work and the suspension of thought, the nation and the government both collapse. The nation has been bankrupted, not only in its economy and its productive industrial capacity, but it loses the minds that made the economy and capacity possible. The philosophy for living dramatized in Atlas is equally and wholly applicable to living in the “real world”; there is no dichotomy between them in any particular, no lapse of context, evidence of ignorance, or evasion of truth. At their very best, dystopian novels and films, particularly those with a clear dramatization of the choices between freedom and slavery, freedom of thought and servile parroting, productive work and drudgery for the state, and revolution and submission, can lose one for a time in an imaginary world where those choices parallel the ones necessary in the real. *It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis. 1935. (New York: Signet Classics, 2005), p. 130. *”Anthem in the Context of Related Literary Works: We are not like our brothers,” by Shoshana Milgram, in Essays on Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Ed. Robert Mayhew. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), pp. 119-171 (Orwell discussion, pp. 149-154). ***Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. 1949. Ed. Irving Howe. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), p. 36. Cross-posted from Metablog

There is a scene in Schindler’s List in which all the inmates of the concentration camp are forced to strip naked en masse and run through a gauntlet of outdoor medical checks. If the inmates weren’t already “conditioned” to incarceration, humiliation, being kidnapped, robbed, tagged, folded, spindled, shredded, and “processed,” that exercise guaranteed it. Those who didn’t pass the “test,” were pulled from the line and never heard from again. Not that it mattered in the long run: they were all scheduled for extermination. Too eerily a parallel with the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA's) new “enhanced” security policies at American airports, which include full-body scans that show every detail of one’s person beneath clothing and/or intimate “pat-downs” by manqués wearing blue surgeon’s gloves, who are authorized to probe and grope infants, school children, adults, nuns, businessmen, well, everyone for combustibles or explosive materials. Passengers are allowed to “opt out” for the pat-down, should they object to being seen naked, or if they’re susceptible to involuntary radiation treatments. Some choice. No pressure at all, your choice – unless you choose to stop flying the unfriendly skies. And if you object to either invasive scrutiny, you will be pulled from the line and browbeaten by the Cro-Magnons of the TSA. “It’s your patriotic duty.” “It’s for your own safety.” “It’s the law.” “If you resist, we’ll fine you bundles of money and put you on our watch list and have you investigated.” “Resistance is futile.” “You want to be arrested? We know how to waste your time.” Perhaps that is unfair to the Cro-Magnons. They at least left us some magnificent cave paintings, more than Janet Napolitano, Michael Chertoff, President Barack Obama, and the minions and munchkins of the TSA are ever likely to leave the country. I will not inveigh about how the whole idea of screening passengers violates the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures (and the TSA’s personnel, besides being legalized molesters, are also kleptomaniacs; what happens to all the things they confiscate?). This has already been thoroughly discussed by others. I will not point out how great a failure the TSA is in preventing terrorist hijackings and bombings; handfuls of passengers have a greater track record in foiling them than the 250,000 employees of the TSA. I will not reiterate that, if airport security is necessary, then the simplest solution would be to profile Muslims of any gender or age; after all, it is Muslim terrorists, acting in the name of their faith, that the TSA is purportedly hoping to catch in the act. Islamists have used women and children as suicide bombers. But, to governments with a penchant for the police state, the simplest solution is not an option. The TSA has “opted out” of it. We can’t profile Muslims. That would be “discriminatory.” Not respectful. Insensitive. A violation of their persons, forbidden by the Koran. Both former President George W. Bush and the current occupant of the White House believe in “outreach,” which means taking under advisement from the likes of the Council on American-Islamic Relations the necessity to exempt Muslims, especially Muslim women, from the kind of thorough concentration camp routine all others must endure. That “outreach” means that an infidel may not feel a Muslim woman’s breasts and groin, run his or her hands over her buttocks, legs, and back, or rummage through her hair. Napolitano and Company know what they’re doing. Aside from giving carte blanche to the perverts and pedophiles in the TSA a dream job of feeling up attractive women (or men) and children and availing themselves to an endless stream of wacko porn in a dark room (and we have only the government’s word that these images are not stored or able to be added to some employee’s catalogue of porn), the TSA from the beginning has played the role of extortionist and hostage-taker: You want to see your relatives, seal a business deal, get to school, take your kids to Disneyland? You can’t, unless you surrender your liberty, your dignity, and your money. That is an option the TSA knows you can’t refuse. The Mafia had a term for this kind of abuse: a protection racket. Cross-posted from Metablog

I sent the following as an open letter of protest to U.S. District Court, Chief Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange, Oklahoma City, in response to the news that she had blocked an amendment to Oklahoma’s constitution that would prohibit state and local judges from factoring Sharia and international law into their decisions. The Associated Press reported: A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Monday to block a new amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution that would prohibit state courts from considering international or Islamic law when deciding cases. Why? Is not the judge sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, as well as that of the state of Oklahoma? Well, she doesn’t think so, and neither does Muneer Awad. Who? "My constitutional rights are being violated through the condemnation of my faith," said Muneer Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma. “Islam was the target of this amendment. This amendment does not have a secular purpose." Wrong. It does have a secular purpose: to stop Islamic religious Sharia law from insinuating itself into American secular law. And wouldn’t you know it? A bill for amendment was introduced into the Oklahoma state legislature, passed, and approved by the voting electorate by 70%. Whether you call that “democracy at work,” or the proper procedure of a rights-protecting republic, the shills for Sharia object very much to self-governance. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) jumped on it immediately, waving the unsheathed sword of lawsuits. During a radio interview on WABC on November 7th, Awad, who graduated from law school, claimed that … Shariah is compliant with both American values and its Constitution, since the Islamic law is "dynamic" in that it changes based on circumstances, including governing law of lands where implemented. There’s a serving of Taqiyya Supreme for you. Sharia is not “compliant” with American values and the Constitution. The Constitution was designed to protect individual rights; Sharia does not recognize individual rights, neither its religious nor its political side. In any event, the Koran regards all other man-made governments as “abominations” to be eliminated. And I wonder how Mr. Awad can reconcile his statement with that of Omar M. Ahmad, chairman of the board of CAIR, who said to Muslims in 1998: "If you choose to live here (in America) . . . you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam," he said. “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant,” he said. “The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” Awad, among other claims, asserts that the law “stigmatizes” Muslims. Wrong. The fact that the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks in this country and around the world, are committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, stigmatizes them. And the primitive, brutal, Dark Age legal and moral code that comprises Sharia law stigmatizes Sharia, as well. Why was this amendment passed by the state legislature and put up for referendum? The measure's author, Rep. Rex Duncan, R-Sand Springs, attended the brief court hearing and said afterward he was surprised by Miles-Lagrange's decision. "It thwarts the will of the people," said Duncan, an attorney who was elected district attorney in the northern Oklahoma counties of Osage and Pawnee in the general election. Duncan has said the constitutional amendment was not intended as an attack on Muslims but an effort to prevent activist judges from relying on international law or Islamic law when ruling on legal cases. That is an eminently clear reason for approving the amendment. But, “activist” judges? Is Judge LaGrange an “activist” judge? Has Duncan any grounds for making that stigmatizing allegation? It turns out that Vicki Miles-LaGrange, a former state senator, was appointed in 1994 to the federal bench in Oklahoma, Western District, by President Bill Clinton, and has sat as chief judge there since 2008. It is interesting, also, that among the 367 judges nominated by him and still active in the federal system during his administration, he also elevated Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2008. She was subsequently nominated and elevated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama. Another “activist,” former Harvard Law School dean and Solicitor General Elena Kagan, since elevated to the high scourt, is Obama’s own creature. Would liberal/left/collectivist presidents nominate any judge to a high court whose political affinities and agendas did not mesh with their own? My letter follows: 9 November 2010 Vicki Miles-LaGrange, Chief Judge U.S. Courthouse 200 N.W. Fourth St. Room 3301 (Third Floor) Oklahoma City, OK 73102 Courtroom 301 (Third Floor) Chambers Telephone: 405-609-5400 Chambers Fax: 405-609-5413 Dear Judge LaGrange: Re your very recent decision to suspend voter certification of the referendum to bar the introduction of Sharia law into American jurisprudence. Here are some perorations for you, from a major Horse's Mouth, about Sharia law: "Those who know nothing about Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those people are witless. Islam says: 'Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all!' Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by the infidel? Islam says: 'Kill them, put them to the sword and scatter them.' "Islam says: 'Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword.' The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim." The Horse? Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But, don't take his word for it. Consult the Koran. Sharia law would forbid you, a female, from being a judge, or having any kind of education or career goal beyond knitting, cooking, and child-bearing. Sharia would insist that you wear a burqa or niqab, or some other garb in public that would hide and denigrate your sex. Sharia would permit your husband to beat you and otherwise abuse you in all sorts of inhuman ways, and you would have no recourse to objective, rights-protecting law, because his actions would be motivated by the beast’s “religious beliefs.” Sharia would, if your eye ever roamed and fixed upon another man, permit the "community" to stone you to death. The advocates of Sharia wish to first, insinuate Sharia law into American jurisprudence, as they have in British law, then pursue the main goal of supplanting it with Sharia. Founders and current executives of CAIR, Mr. Awad’s mother organization, have said so repeatedly in public. Your “honor”? Forgive me for neglecting to mention the “honor” killings of women and girls for straying from Islamic ways. “Your honor” would take on a completely different meaning, no? All this and much more would be permitted in your own country. This is what you're sanctioning by blocking the Oklahoma law. Or are you a bean-counting judge, able to see concrete things, but not the total picture? Are you an anti-conceptual mentality, unable to project consequences from causes? Either way, you have demonstrated by this act that you are as much a danger to America as any suicide bomber, and ought to be disqualified or cited by the American Bar Association, if there is any reason left in that organization. This advisory has been sent as an open letter to leading Oklahoma newspapers. Regards, Edward Cline (Address withheld for security reasons) Cross-posted from Metablog

"I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the Civil Rights movement in this country," Williams said on the show. "But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous." So said Juan Williams, news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR), to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. The remark got him promptly fired from NPR, and subsequently hired fulltime by Fox News. What was NPR’s reasoning? "His remarks on The O'Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR," the statement read. And what editorial standards and practices might those be? No one really knows, but it is easy to guess, to judge by the wholly left-liberal-progressive bias and content of all its news programming. From NPR’s perspective, Williams not only shot from the hip, but shot himself in the foot. Williams expressed a private concern shared by multitudes of Americans, including very likely many denizens of NPR, when they see Muslims in their tribal garb anywhere, and not just in airports. But those other NPR employees will not be punished, because they have kept their mouths shut. Using Williams’s pseudo-gaffe as an example, Gary Wickert, an insurance trial lawyer in Wisconsin and author or editor of several books on insurance, wrote an interesting article on Pajamas Media on the corrosive effects of political correctness, “Political Correctness and the Thought Police” (November 1st). He begins by stating that political correctness is hard to define. It’s hard to define political correctness, but like pornography, you know it when you see it. Some say it is a social philosophy that strives to ensure nobody will ever be offended by anything, ever. Wikipedia defines it as a term which “denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, disability, and age-related contexts.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities — as in matters of sex or race — should be eliminated.” Two minor errors in the piece should be corrected: Mr. Wickert says that “niggardly” (a supposedly offensive term discussed in the article) means “spendthrift.” Actually, it means not quite the opposite: “ungenerous,” or “cheap,” or “penny-wise.” Then, he invented a new term, “cow-tow,” when he meant “kowtow.” However, his article delves handily but inconsistently into the causes and consequences of political correctness in speech, action and policy. I penned a review of Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing, published by The Task Force on Bias-Free Language, in 1996 for The Social Critic, “The Ghouls of Grammatical Egalitarianism.” Thought orthodoxy is not synonymous with thought control. There is no Federal Board of Language Usage to which publishers must submit their books and journals to be tested for discriminatory or disparaging language before they can be put on the market for sale to the public. However, while no official agency of control exists, there is a kind of interlocking directorate of semi-public institutions and organizations which accomplishes the same purpose by presenting a united front against freedom of expression and imposing orthodoxy on our culture's intellectual and literary pacesetters. 'Say what you please, we're not censors!....But say it our way, or do not bother to say it.' Short of overt government repression, I cannot imagine a more insidious form of thought control than this, which is to thrust independent minds of whatever professional suasion or degree of ability into a purgatory that is not quite freedom and not quite slavery. (See also my entry, “Censorship,” in The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science.) The Task Force was created by the Association of American University Presses (the AAUP, see its membership here) in response to constant mewlings from other cultural quarters to research and write Guidelines, which has become a kind of Psalter of Bowdleristic Banter for academics and others obsessively sensitive to sensitivity. Only H.L. Mencken could do better than P.J. O’Rourke, who reviewed this abomination in August 1995: The pharisaical, malefic, and incogitant Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing is a product of the pointy-headed wowsers at the Association of American University Presses, seven women, two men] who established a Task Force on Bias-Free Language filled with cranks, pokenoses, blowhards, four-flushers, and pettifogs. This foolish and contemptible product of years wasted in mining the shafts of indignation has been published by the cow-besieged, basketball-sotted sleep-away camp for hick bourgeois offspring, Indiana University, under the aegis of its University Press, a traditional dumping ground for academic deadwood so bereft of talent, intelligence, and endeavor as to be useless even in the full precincts of Midwestern state college classrooms. Politically correct speech and writing are not necessarily traceable, as Wickert alleges, to the Frankfurt School and Marxism, although the two are closely allied ideologically. I doubt that even David Axelrod, Cass Sunstein, or Anita Dunn would claim that politically correct speech is Communist in origin, though they would have no problem enforcing it. Politically correct speech in America, as a phenomenon, is a direct result of legislated envy. Politically correct speech is the political bowdlerizing of thought and expression of thought. It requires ceaseless “conditioning” by government- and academically-approved wardens. As Thomas Bowdler sought to expunge “indecencies” from language by simply removing them from literary works (such as Shakespeare’s plays), politically correct speech seeks to expunge objectionable terms from the mind. The “authorities” plant un bacio Della morte on unwelcome terms, as surely as Michael Corleone condemned his brother Fredo in . However, while a mind cannot be forced, it can be corrupted. That is the sole purpose of politically correct speech. A corrupted mind will accede to anything. It is ready to be moulded and given its marching orders. Political correctness is an insidious, poliomyelitic epistemological affliction that attacks, not the brainstem or spinal cord, but language, concepts, and ideas in one’s mind to render the mind an impotent and helpless plaything of authorities or the thought police. In short, it attacks the mind, and, like Orwell’s Newspeak Dictionary in Nineteen Eighty-Four, seeks to reduce the range of the mind by homogenizing and cleansing its contents and imposing a literal mindless conformity. The catch is that, while imbeciles would not know the difference between plain, politically correct, and “incorrect” speech – they are not the objects of the tyranny, it is only active minds that are the object of controls – it works only if one is willing to submit, Muslim-style, to a higher “authority,” only if one knows that one is expected to knuckle under and bow to the god of sensitivity. Compliance with politically correct speech, however, is voluntary. It is a conscious action requiring knowledge of what one is submitting to and for what reason, and knowledge of what one is abandoning. This in turn contributes to a deadening miasma of habitual, congenital conformity in politics, art, speech, and other realms of endeavor, even in soccer moms who applaud scoreless, “non-competitive” games – designed to protect the feelings of the losers and bolster their “self-esteem” – which in turn contributes to the growth of a servile, passive, complacent citizenry. And a dishonest one, as well, for while “incorrect” terms may be suppressed, the banished terms form a black market of expression. They do not disappear. Genuinely offensive terms, which would not be employed by a civil person in any circumstance, such as wetback, Polack, wop, or kike take on even more vicious meanings, as well as prejudice-free terms such as black, idiot, moron, and imbecile. (Note: Black basically means either a color or an absence of color; the latter three terms were formerly clinical terms used to measure thinking or reasoning capacity, and are now “disused.” I have no idea what terms have replaced them, except the popular, universally applicable and now humorously denigrating challenged.) In the written realm, political correctness results in staleness of writing, in thinking, in literature. It is only government force that can fuel and sustain political correctness by imposing penalties on incorrectness. The trials of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolfe in Austria, and of columnist Mark Steyn in Canada are proof of that power, a power handed government by its allies in academia. Political correctness is a trickle-down phenomenon with dual ends: the punishment and fettering of independent minds; and fostering the increase in truncated minds, which are more easily managed, manipulated, and led. It is a communicable polio that corrupts an increasing number of fields, from the military to politics to education and art. It is an enfeebling disease, promoted and imposed by government. Political correctness, especially in speech, vitiates a person’s epistemology, with the consequence of creating a universal state of desideratum, or the nagging sense that the identifying terms of some things have been deliberately banished or eradicated. One’s only option is to conform to an arbitrarily enforced norm. For an individual who knows the terms, it puts him on a cautious self-defense regime that is more destructive repression than it is studied discretion. It is noteworthy that it is specially protected or patronized groups that are the beneficiaries of politically correct speech. They are viewed in the same way that certain animals and plants have been designated “endangered species.” They beg protection from indiscriminate speech or “wounding words” and real and imagined insults. The disabled, the aged, the mentally incapable, and so on are allied in a unique menagerie of untouchables and the socially coddled, and safe-housed in the same iron-clad fortress of exclusivity with the spotted owl and the delta smelt and, more recently, Muslims. To echo Juan Williams, whenever I encounter politically correct speech and action, I get worried and nervous. It means that I am dealing with dishonesty, with corruption, with a consciously shrunken mind that demands that I speak and write on its terms. But then, as a free man, I simply laugh and say what I wish. Cross-posted from Metablog

Raymond Ibrahim, associate director of the Middle East Forum, recently published an article, “Offensive Jihad: The One Incontrovertible Problem with Islam,” in the Middle East Forum and on Pajamas Media (October 30th). This excellent article for the first time (known to me, at least) addresses one of the fundamental problems of and with Islam I have always stressed: jihad. Jihad is a core tenet in what is a codified system of irrationalism that cannot be “reformed” without obliterating Islam as a distinct religious creed. Remove the belligerent jihadist commands from the Koran to wage jihad, for example, and it would cease to be Islam, not only in Muslim minds but in non-Muslim, as well. There would, of course, remain a host of other irrational assertions and imperatives, such as the sanctioning of wife-beating and the murder of apostates and the like, which constitute, after some astounding mental gymnastics by Islamic clerics and scholars, chiefly the byzantine and illogical underpinnings of Sharia law. The jihadist elements of Islam, however, are easily transmutable into a political policy, which is conquest of all non-Muslim or infidel governments and their submission to Sharia. That makes it an ideological doctrine. Muslims are either obliged to wage jihad, or they are not. Mohammad and Muslim scholars say they are. End of argument, so far as Koranic interpretation goes, and that interpretation is biased to the literal. Reading the debates about what Islam’s mission is and the role of jihad in it and what they truly “mean,” I am always reminded of H.L. Mencken's observation on religious zealotry: "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it." Islam is a puritanical creed that makes no allowances for either infidels or apostates or its adherents. I cannot believe that beneath the pious exterior of any person who would be seduced by Islam is not a seething, percolating envy of men who are indeed free, an envy easily and maliciously transfigured into violent jihad. This policy is operative and underway today in Western nations with varying degrees of success, and it is making progress only by default. Islam is strong only because the West’s defenders are emasculated by multiculturalist premises and a general disinclination to condemn any religion. Aggravating the problem is an unadmitted but general fear in the tolerance-obsessed and pragmatists of “offending” Muslims, who might start rioting and demonstrating again, claiming discrimination and disrespect, etc., none of it spontaneous but clearly organized and orchestrated by so-called “radicals.” I was initially impressed by Ibrahim’s quotation from an entry on jihad in the Encyclopedia of Islam, which is an admission that “Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad can be eliminated” – until I realized that it could just as well mean that, after a global caliphate has been established, there would be no more justification for violent jihad. Every nation would by then be conquered, recalcitrant infidels slain, enslaved, or reduced to dhimmitude, and Sharia made the law of every land. But, if Islam is completely “made over” in the sense of reforming it, what would be left of Islam that virtually any other creed could not claim as its fundamental tenets, as well? And to “make over” Islam, its principal font of “kilman” or wisdom, the objectionable and barbaric Mohammad, would need to be dispensed with. He is a role model for killers and tyrants and other psychopathic individuals. Remove that one critical link of the irrational and arbitrary in Islam, and all the links fall to the floor. What would be substituted for Mohammad? It would need to be something as enduringly fable-worthy as Mohammad, but measurably benign. But, Islam has no alternative icons. What then, would be Islam’s driving force, if not jihad as commanded by Allah as told to Mohammad? Once Mohammad is removed from the text, the next step would be to question the existence and credence of Allah; if he commanded jihad, and if his word is sacred and unalterable, and known only through Mohammad, then he would need to be subjected to a “make over,” much as the focus of Christian doctrine was shifted from an Allah-like Jehovah of the Old Testament to the largely pacific New Testament with Jesus Christ (as God on earth) and his homilies. If a “reformation” of Islam is undertaken, who in Islamic lore is Christ’s counterpart? Would it be Abraham or Moses? But, neither of them was much better than Mohammad in terms of their behavior towards men of other faiths; they also advocated the righteous slaughtering of unbelievers and sinners and distributing slaves, women, and sheep among their more zealous followers. But, then, all faiths are faced with that intellectual chore regarding their own individual conceptions of a “supreme being,” and not just Islam. Ibrahim writes: “Worse, offensive jihad is part and parcel of Islam; it is no less codified than, say, Islam's Five Pillars, which no Muslim rejects.” In sum, it is either-or: repudiate Islam entirely, or submit to the whole palimony of irrationalism that is Islam, including the imperative of jihad. The one incontrovertible problem with Islam (aside from the untenable claim of Allah’s existence) is its dependence on violent conquest, or the initiation of force. This renders the creed absolutely inconvertible to a pacific doctrine. That is its unarguable dead-end. Or, as Ayn Rand might have put it: “You can’t have your mystic of muscle and deny him, too.” He is either the source of Islam’s potency, or he isn’t. And if he isn’t, whither Islam? Cross-posted from Metablog

For the past two weeks I have been embroiled in a fight to either regain the publication rights to my Sparrowhawk series of novels from the publisher, MacAdam/Cage Publishing in San Francisco, or to be compensated per contract for the sales of that series. I am awaiting the consequences of a breach of contract and rescission notice recently and justly served on that publisher by an attorney for nonpayment of royalties and delinquent royalty statements. I have been engaged in this conflict for three years. The breach of contract notice is just the latest episode in this unwelcome and mentally exhausting adventure. Dealing with a publisher which has, for all practical purposes, stolen one’s work, but which expects the author to help sell it in contravention of the Thirteenth Amendment, is much like dealing with the IRS or some other confiscatory agency: its functionaries do not care what the extortion and theft do to one’s life and ambition, even if it means penury for the victim. The irony is that Sparrowhawk has been a revenue-generating mainstay for the publisher. It sells virtually without any marketing on the publisher’s part. If it has sold at all, it is chiefly because of my own numerous booksignings and my ability to sell it to the reading public. This effort, also, has gone largely uncompensated and unacknowledged by the publisher. For a long time, I did not mind that, because Sparrowhawk is important on various levels. To name but four: to me as a writer, as a literary accomplishment, as an exclusively American cultural phenomenon, as an educational tool for Americans who wish to grasp why their country came into existence, which I never intended it to be, but which is serving that purpose nonetheless. But the time came for me to “go Galt” or to pull a Howard Roark on my own work. I will perform no more booksignings, and will not help to market the work until either the breach of contract is cured, or I regain possession of the publication rights to grant to another publisher that will honor the terms of a contract and market the work more aggressively. I wrote the series with the confidence that I would profit from the labor. To quote Roark: “I have not been paid.” Galt abandoned a revolutionary new motor because he refused to work as a slave. Until further notice, I am on strike, as well. I am abandoning a seminal work on the American Revolution. So, this year is a watershed year for me. For the past month I have been distracted by this issue, so much so that I have not devoted much attention to current events and have neglected to pen relevant commentaries. 2010 will also be a watershed year in American politics, marked by the midterm elections next week on November 2nd. This is when Americans will have a chance to “throw the bums out” in hopes of electing a more responsive and reality-centered alliance of bums. The Washington Post, awakening from its self-induced stupor and going against its inbred bias, featured a story today headlined, “Across the country, anger, frustration and fear among voters as election nears.” The headline is the best thing about the article, which is a consensus-driven mishmash of opinions, giving equal time and space to those who do not think Obama and Congress have done enough to bankrupt the country or bring it to heel, and to those who do not think at all. A far grimmer mood now pervades the electorate, one shaped not just by the immediacy of the economic distress that has hit virtually every household, but by fears that it might take years for everyone, from the average family to the federal government, to climb out of the hole. Anger is one word that is often used to describe the electorate this year. But one word alone cannot adequately capture the sentiments expressed by voters on doorsteps and street corners, at community centers or candidate rallies. Along with the anger there is fear, worry, nervousness, disappointment, anxiety and disillusionment. Briefly, what most of the electorate is responding to is the naked face of collectivism in action. The faces are many and insouciant: President Barack Obama’s, Nancy Pelosi’s, Harry Reid’s, Rahm Emanuel’s, Anita Dunn’s, Henry Waxman’s, Barney Frank’s, David Axelrod’s, Robert Gibbs’s – an opera cast of hundreds, if not thousands, all singing in chorus the same liberal/left/collectivist libretto. The anger and frustration, however, are owned by the electorate; the fear, by the incumbent Democrats. Their reign of terror is nearly over. When Obama took office, he and the Democrats behaved like some street gang taking over a neighborhood. Their unspoken motto was: “This ain’t your Founding Fathers’ country anymore.” From that swaggering hubris of thugs and “community organizers” awarded a sanction to loot the country at will and virtually without opposition, they are experiencing the humility of fear and loathing. These last few months have served as a reality check for Obama and the Democrats. And that is nothing compared to what the Republicans will experience if they do not repeal ALL the socialist/fascist legislation the Democrats rammed down the throats of captive Americans no longer captivated by Obama or government spending and arrogance. The GOP will feel the sting of frustration and disappointment if they merely “amend” the destructive legislation passed by their colleagues across the aisles of the House and Senate. One lesson the Democrats and closet socialists and fascists in and out of government will not learn is that this election will serve as an unqualified rejection and repudiation of Washington-style collectivism. The Washington Post and The New York Times will always endorse the expansion of government powers, because their City on the Hill is a national Sunnybrook Farm. They will wait in the wings for the chance, provided very likely by the Republicans, to re-impose their legislative servitude. They will not relinquish the idea that servitude and looting will somehow lead to prosperity and an improved “general welfare.” That is because prosperity and security and happiness are not their fundamental goals or motives: it is destruction for the sake of destruction. That is a serious, morally damning charge to make, but it is the only one that explains the administration’s and the Democrats’ otherwise inexplicable obtuseness and indifference to the electorate. More and more Americans are grasping that fact in an emotional, unarticulated sense-of-life reaction to the pillaging of the Democrats over the last two years. Their contempt for incumbents and candidates in both parties is unmitigated, tangible, and to be reckoned with. What they must understand now is that they should insist that the Republicans -- undeserving beneficiaries of the Tea Party movement – adopt a more principled policy necessary to undo the damage perpetrated by the vandals in Congress and the White House – and to discover and advocate the freedom they have helped Democrats to diminish and obviate, or they will earn and suffer the same deserved fate. Of course, if the Republicans squander the mandate that will probably be given them by Americans, that will be the end of the line for this country. We might be able to endure and survive two more years of Obama and a gridlocked Congress, but not two more years of Obama and a timorous, compromising Republican Congress. Anger management is not a good thing to practice in a watershed election year. Cross-posted from Metablog

I wonder how many readers remember John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, that scholarly paean to egalitarianism and institutionalized envy, from 1971. How would one dramatize, in visual and auditory concretes, its high-blown, insidious principles? I recently watched a little gem of a cinematic parable about a Rawlsian dystopia, 2081, which depicts a society in which “everyone is equal.” The film, made under the aegis of the Moving Picture Institute, produced by Thor Halvorssen and written and directed by Chandler Tuttle (based on a Kurt Vonnegut story, “Harrison Bergeron”) is exactly that, a parable, not meant to be taken literally, because the purpose of a parable is impart profound and lasting lessons. In 2081, the exceptionally skilled, beautiful, strong, and intellectually endowed are “made equal” with their averagely endowed fellow men by means of a variety of restraining agents – weights, masks, and taser-like devices that interrupt thought and impede movement. Anyone tested by the state and deemed to be above average in any respect is required by law to be fitted with one or more of these restraints or “equalizers.” The penalty for removing them is imprisonment. George Bergeron’s son Harrison was arrested and imprisoned for six years for refusing to wear the agents and for “blatantly removing them in public.” He escapes from prison and appears in a concert hall that is staging Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” ballet live in a national broadcast. The ballerinas are also arrested by weights that make their movements clumsy. Harrison announces to the audience that he has placed a bomb beneath the hall. He declares, among other things, that he is “an exception to the accepted,” and that he “was not created equal,” and proceeds to shed all the devices that burden his body, including a yoke fitted over his shoulders and neck. That is his statement of freedom. He may be mad or perfectly lucid. He does not wish to continue living in a world of “fairness” and “original positions.” That is for the viewer to judge. He then invites a volunteer to do the same. One of the ballerinas rises and discards her weights, as well. (Forgive the plot-spoilers here, they are necessary to making a point.) In the meantime, SWAT teams of the United States Handicapper General surround the hall, disable the bomb (it is unclear whether it was a real bomb, I don’t think so, but that is mere conjecture), and prepare to capture or kill the “public threat.” The authorities order the broadcast stopped, but Harrison Bergeron has a device that overrides the kill signal and rebroadcasts the program (shades of John Galt’s broadcast in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged). As Harrison Bergeron and the ballerina perform with total freedom of movement to a doleful composition and for a dumbstruck audience (many members of which are also wearing restraints), the SWAT teams move into the hall itself. An expressionless, silent woman who is in charge of the operation takes a gun and kills Harrison Bergeson and the ballerina. The action is televised without her knowledge and one of the last things one sees is her slightly startled face staring into the camera. That is what Harrison wanted the nation to see – the vapid face of evil. End of broadcast. The extraordinary has been eliminated. Please stand by. George (also loaded down with restraints), has watched all this in the comfort of his living room, while his dimly conforming and nattering wife, Hazel, played convincingly by Julie Hagerty (who wears none, because there is nothing extraordinary or exceptional about her), is oblivious to the events on the television screen. She is washing dishes with her back turned to the screen and misses the whole broadcast and a last glimpse of her son, the running water serving as her own sound-obliterating handicapping device. When George begins to think of the abduction of his son from their home years before, and begins to respond to the broadcast and the heroism of his son, his memory is disrupted by his ear piece. HIs wife asks him why he is looking so upset; he can only reply that he saw something “sad.” He cannot remember what. He shuffles out of the living room to oblivion, because he will not remove the things that hold him down. The film is only twenty-five minutes long, but it packs a punch as terrible as Michael Radford’s gritty, nearly two-hour long Nineteen Eighty-Four. The production values are as good as any $20 million budget blockbuster’s. As a parable on the price of silence and the fate of those who prefer security and passivity over independence and freedom, it is one of the best films I have ever seen. 2081 is A Theory of Justice, illustrated. It is philosophy in motion. Cross-posted from Metablog

I have written about just how morally androgynous the Shanksville “memorial” for the passengers and crew of United Flight 93 is intended to be in “Let’s Not Roll: The Islamic Memorial in Pennsylvania.” Since posting that commentary, I have confirmed what I had earlier suspected: that Flight 93 crashed onto private land. Apparently, the families of the passengers on Flight 93 were unable to persuade the landowners to sell that land on which to create their “memorial.” They turned to the government. The government, in its infinite turpitude, gave the landowners an offer they couldn’t refuse: sell it the land, or, under the aegis of eminent domain, see it seized by the government. Compensation to the owners would be whatever a judge deemed was “fair market value.” As with past instances of eminent domain (most notably the Kelo case), if a private organization has its heart set on someone else’s private property, all it need do to acquire it is apply to Uncle Sam (or to the state or other government entity) for assistance. Eminent domain was originally intended to give the government power to take land (with “just compensation”) to build roads, improve waterways, or erect public or government structures. It was not intended to be a weapon of a private organization to use against a private property owner. It is a disgrace that the advocates and enablers of the “memorial” to the heroes of Flight 93 turned to the government to pressure landowners to relinquish their property so that this botched “tribute” can be realized. The tactics employed by the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service, and the Families of Flight 93, a nonprofit group created to fund construction and maintenance of the memorial, demonstrate that they have not an ounce of understanding about what this country was intended to be – a free country – and what it has become – a country whose government is basically a “steward” of wealth it never created but which it can “redistribute,” provided enough pressure and tears are brought to bear. As the Islamic hijackers seized control of Flight 93 in the name of Allah, the Families of Flight 93 sanctioned the seizure of private property in the name of “grief.” This makes the whole Flight 93 “memorial” project a sham. One can empathize with the families of the passengers and crew who died in that act of war. I do not think they sprang into action in the name of slavery or servitude or the expropriation of property. But one should not sanction what the Families of Flight 93 resorted to, which was to appeal to the government to clear the way for their memorial by relying on the government’s power of eminent domain to fulfill their wishes. Squabbling between many family members of people who died during the attack on the World Trade Center in New York over what ought to be built in the “footprints” or “sacred ground” also contributed to interminable design and construction delays, and was exacerbated by politicking between government entities and other pressure groups and factions. The Families of Flight 93 had no legal power to sue the landowners for refusing to sell their property, nor any power to seize the land themselves. Failing persuasion, they enlisted the offices of the ultimate persuader: the state. Their wishes, they thought, gave them a right to the crash site. Under duress, the landowners eventually negotiated what they considered a “fair market value” of their property. But whether or not they agreed to sell it, it was still legalized extortion. It wasn’t the Fuller Brush salesman who came knocking at their doors with a fistful of discount coupons. It was a bureaucratic behemoth with a gun behind its back. This drama occurred at about the same time, May of 2009, when Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told the summoned heads of nine banks that they were not leaving the room until they agreed to accept TARP cash. Only one individual is known to have protested the government’s bullying tactics, Somerset County Commissioner Pamela Tokar-Ickes, who resigned from the Flight 93 Federal Advisory Commission over the option of eminent domain, which she opposed. “I do not support the Department of Interior’s imminent action to condemn the property,” she said in a written statement. The National Park Service is part of the Department of Interior. “I feel it would be impossible for me to continue to serve in this official capacity to construct a permanent memorial to the crew and passengers of Flight 93.” Lest anyone think that the government initiated the extortion, Advisory Commission chairman John Reynolds revealed during a telephone interview after Tokar-Ickes’s resignation that, “The commission never recommended this (land condemnation),” said Reynolds, a retired National Park Service executive. “It was the totality of the partners led by the families that communicated directly with the governmental powers that unless they did this no piece of the memorial could be built by the 10th anniversary and the Park Service could not protect the remains of the heroes.” [italics mine] In April 2008, members of Families of Flight 93 went to Washington to remove an obstacle to federal funding of the memorial, which was being blocked by the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Charles Taylor of North Carolina. His objection to federal funding of the project was merely one of bean-counting, and certainly not based on any concern about property rights. “It would be unacceptable to the memory of the sacrifice of those aboard Flight 93 to fail to adequately provide for future operations and maintenance of this memorial,” he said. “The subcommittee is simply trying to refrain from making commitments of unrealistic support that will either discourage private fundraising efforts or fail to meet our commitment to the country and the families of the heroes aboard Flight 93.” How much will the memorial cost? Last week the National Park Service confirmed it has begun the process of taking about 500 acres from seven property owners so construction can begin on a permanent memorial. The Park Service is requesting that the U.S. Department of Justice file land condemnation proceedings in U.S. District Court. Facing the likelihood of that seizure, the seven holdouts apparently surrendered. In August 2009, The New York Times reported the story with an almost audible sigh of relief. Work will begin this fall on a memorial to those killed aboard United Airlines Flight 93 Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, now that agreements have been reached to buy the last key pieces of land in Pennsylvania, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said Monday. The New York Times is no stranger to having property condemned for specious reasons. Its new headquarters in New York City sits on a site once occupied by thriving commercial structures, but which it wanted removed and was not shy about using political influence to have the buildings arbitrarily condemned. There is no fundamental difference between the extortion practiced by Secretary Paulson, the New York Times, and Families of Flight 93. The federal government will pay about $9.5 million to the owners of nine parcels near Shanksville, in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, totaling 1,395 acres, including the site where the plane crashed and one right-of-way, Mr. Salazar said. The announcement ends years of bargaining with landowners. Negotiations intensified at the end of last year when, with some parcels still in limbo, the Families of Flight 93, a nonprofit group that has been helping with the purchases, asked the Bush administration to get something done before it left office. This summer, with time running short to get the first $58 million phase of the memorial completed in time for the 10th anniversary of the crash, the Interior Department set a deadline for the remaining landowners and threatened to take the land through condemnation. In the end, the Families of Flight 93 will get what they deserve: not a simple, minimal-maintenance cenotaph bearing the names of the passengers and crew of Flight 93, with a tablet below describing their actions on 9/11. Instead, they will get some very expensive maple trees, voiceless wind chimes, and some 1,400 acres of land that will guarantee NPS employees continued employment. All in all, a meaningless space that could very well be turned into an outdoor mosque. The “memorial” will commemorate nothing but the triumph of force: that used by Flight 93’s Islamic hijackers, and by the government at the behest and urging of the heroes’ survivors. I, for one, will refuse to visit the Shanksville site. That is the best tribute I can pay the heroes of Flight 93. Cross-posted from Metablog

"Are you guys ready? Let’s roll!" That was the call to arms, the cavalry charge sounded by Todd Beamer aboard United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11th, 2001. The forty passengers and crew decided to not be helpless pawns of what they now knew were jihadist hijackers – through their cell phones they had learned of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center – but to do what they could to foil the plans of the “martyrs.” Their weapons? No muskets, no swords, no artillery, no firing from behind fences and trees as Americans did at Lexington and Concord. They had to settle for a beverage cart to ram through the locked pilot’s door and then hope to grapple with the two hijackers who were steering an erratic course to Washington, D.C., possibly to crash the plane into either the Capitol Building or the White House. It could just as well have been the Washington Monument, or the Lincoln or Jefferson Memorials. The passengers’ object was to neutralize the hijackers “with extreme prejudice” and regain control of the plane. It is not known if they succeeded in breaking into the cabin, and throttled the two hijackers and recaptured the captain’s chair. Whatever the cause, the plane dived nose first into a Pennsylvania field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in Somerset County. And what is being constructed to commemorate the heroism of those passengers? Not much. Cynthia Yacowar-Sweeney of Canada Free Press notes in her startling article, “Under Construction – The Other 9/11 Mosque,” With eyes on New York, [on the Ground Zero mosque] it’s easy to overlook the other ground-zero mosque that is presently being built in Shanksville, Pennsylvania at the Flight 93 crash site. That 9/11 site is home to what will soon be the world’s largest open-air mosque disguised as a memorial, contends author Alec Rawls. After five years of insignificant media coverage and minimal public awareness, construction of the Flight 93 Memorial centerpiece is already in progress. The giant half-mile wide Islamic-shaped red crescent of maple trees is slated for completion next year on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, when the autumn leaves of the crescent’s trees turn a brilliant flaming red. An earlier article by Clinton W. Taylor in The American Spectator, “Monumental Failure,” claims that the crescent of maple trees has been turned into a circle. According to Alex Rawls, who claims in his yet-to-be-released book, Crescent of Betrayal: Dishonoring the Heroes of Flight 93, that the whole memorial, once completed, will be nothing less than the largest outdoor mosque in existence. Rawls, reports Sweeney, claims there is hardly a facet of the final design that still does not incorporate or at least suggest basic mosque design features, most notably the crescent and a minaret-like tower, which face Mecca. According to Rawls, this crescent is one of many mosque features embedded in architect Paul Murdoch’s winning “Crescent of Embrace” design, later changed mainly in name only, to “Circle of Embrace”. Another important and mandatory mosque feature is Mecca orientation for prayer. For this memorial to be a proper mosque, it must face Mecca. And Rawls proves it does, in his book “Crescent of Betrayal: Dishonoring the Heroes”. Using math and geometry, Rawls calculates that the center of the crescent points almost exactly towards Mecca. That makes the Flight 93 Memorial a mosque. But, just as the “memorial” to the casualties at the World Trade Center has been mired in politics and governed by a cloying philosophy of “grief,” with the consequence that what was decided on – by committee, by consensus – will satisfy no one and will certainly not “memorialize” all who died on that site, so has the one scheduled for Shanksville. The Pentagon 9/11 memorial is also a study in “grief.” The Shanksville memorial may or may not have incorporated mosque features in its design. What cannot be denied is that the design is extraordinarily vacuous. Going to the National Park Service website to study perspectives of the memorial, one is stymied. Click on the highlighted “The Memorial Design” link, and nothing happens; one must be satisfied with the NPS’s assurances that construction of the memorial is underway. All the other highlighted links work but that one: Construction is underway. We are on schedule to dedicate the initial phase of the permanent memorial on September 11, 2011. Learn more about the design and the entire plan to construct the memorial. Is the National Park Service (NPS) so ashamed of the design that, in the grand tradition of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it won’t permit anyone to see “what’s in it” until it is finished? Is it so nondescript, banal and noncommittal that the NPS knows that people will be astonished by how much the design is an exercise in blandness, and raise objections, if not for its non-statement, then for its mosque elements? Yes, to both questions. As Clinton W. Taylor indicates in his American Spectator article, a circle of maple trees, a tower of wind chimes, and other oddities do not a monument or memorial make – except, perhaps, to the sensitive pragmatism of the designers and to those who sanctioned the design. Taylor writes: I don't think Paul Murdoch Architects, the L.A.-based firm who came up with this harbors some deep affinity for Taliban hegemony. On the other hand, I do believe that the revised plan is so vague that it is possible to find any number of conflicting interpretations within its incoherent and nihilistic expanse. The conflicts and controversy over these three “memorials” reveal an underlying but unacknowledged fear of Islam. No one wants to name the ideology or the religion of the hijackers. That would be “offensive” and serve to invite charges of anti-Muslimism or anti-Islamism or disrespect for Islam or prejudice against Islam. So virtually everyone involved in choosing memorial designs has steered a pragmatic middle course, and settled for something to “remember” the “victims” – not casualties, as they actually were, because we are demonstrably at war with Islam, just as all who died during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor are not referred to as victims, but as casualties. The committees, the boards, the designers all felt compelled to do something because of the historic nature of the attacks, and know that they must acknowledge it -- somehow. As the rebuilding of the World Trade Center was subjected to a design competition and a public vote, which vote the bureaucratic entity in charge of the project chose to ignore, the design for the selected Shanksville memorial, with subsequent alterations, from over 1,000 submissions, was then subjected to deliberation by a committee and jury overseen by the NPS, which had bought the land on which the plane crashed. Why the NPS should have intruded on the matter is easily explained: No national monument or memorial can be erected without the approval of a bureaucracy. Self-censorship is a deep-rooted psychological phenomenon, a congenital act of repression, as well as a political issue. It will not manifest itself in an individual in so revealing an introspective message as: “I’d just rather not provoke Muslims by accusing their brothers of being responsible for 9/11, I don’t want to be accused of bigotry or anything like that, I’m too cowardly, so I’ll just go along with whatever someone else suggests, so long as it’s not discriminatory or judgmental.” In such a mind, the door is shut and locked to such thoughts. It manifests itself in a circumspect advocacy of the safely banal and in virulent opposition to anyone not so repressed or self-censored. Sweeney warns in her article that, Intentional or not, the symbolism does matter and has remained an issue of grave concern for many, especially against the backdrop of the growing threat of Sharia Law in America - the legal code of the Quran which can be brutally oppressive when interpreted by radical Islamists who view the West as the enemy to be conquered. The controversy over the Shanksville memorial design doubtless has been noted by Islamists here and abroad. Their chortles and snickers will grow louder and bolder when the memorial is completed. Sweeney concludes, If Rawls is correct in his contention that the memorial is truly a victory mosque in disguise, then there is ample reason for concern, given that many American mosques are funded by Saudi Arabia, the country that gave America 15 of the 19 terrorists on 9/11, and are radicalized by its Wahhabi hardliners - meaning that these radicals choose and train the imams and also write or give final approval of the sermons. If Rawls is correct, then one should expect to see, after the memorial is opened to the public, large numbers of Muslims flocking to it to say prayers, very likely in a special space provided to them by our dhimmi National Park Service. Virtually everyone with any say-so in the Shanksville design has lacked the courage and resolution of Flight 93’s passengers and crew. They will not get behind the beverage cart of facts, suspicious coincidences, and speculation and smash through the wall of evasion, self-censorship, and dhimmitude to identify and acknowledge the cause of their circumstances. Americans died at Lexington and Concord. See French’s “memorial” to them here, or Kitson’s “memorial” here. Or the Iwo Jima Memorial, here. These are not “memorials.” They are proper and proud tributes to heroism. What the passengers of Flight 93 deserve is not a “memorial,” but a monument to their intrepidness and their refusal to become “victims.” Cross-posted from Metablog

“Nothing propinks like propinquity.” There is some controversy about the origin of this aphorism. Did Felix Leiter say it in Ian Fleming’s 1956 Bond novel, Diamonds are Forever, or Bertie Wooster or Jeeves in P.G. Wodehouse’s 1934 novel, Right-Ho, Jeeves? Or did Fleming rearrange the Wodehouse reference to propinquity in the Jeeves novel? Wodehouse apparently never said or wrote it. At least one newspaper attributes the full aphorism to Wodehouse, and a book to Groucho Marx, as well. But it is more than likely that Fleming coined it. Fleming was no slacker when it came to writing memorable lines. Dark propinquity governs the attacks on freedom of speech coming from two principal quarters: The Democrats, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Their ideological hostility to freedom of speech is mutual and certainly proximate. An argument could be made that the attacks are politically part and parcel of a major counter-offensive by the enemies of freedom in the face of real and projected defeats and growing antagonism to “big government” and Islamic cultural jihad. Its military analogue is the Battle of the Bulge. And both parties are demonstrably hostile to Americans speaking their minds or criticizing anything statist or Islamic. It remains to be seen if the counter-attack succeeds or fails. Is there a George Patton out there who can relieve the new Bastogne? CAIR has recently announced the creation of a department that will be devoted to educating Americans on the “true” character of Islam, but more specifically to counter what it has deemed “Islamophobia.” “We have seen a small but vocal group of bigots and hate-mongers manufacture an atmosphere of anti-Islam hysteria through smear campaigns that rely on distortions, misinformation and outright falsehoods,” Awad said. The statement said the new “Islamophobia” department would produce an annual report tracking “trends in rhetorical attacks on Islam and Muslims and will offer accurate and balanced information to be used in the struggle for tolerance and mutual understanding.” “Tolerance and mutual understanding” are not what will be accorded by CAIR to this particular instance of a “rhetorical attack” on Islam and Muslims. Islam is a political/theocratical ideology bent on the conquest of any and all nations whose governments and systems of jurisprudence are not now partially or wholly infected with Sharia law. The term “Islamophobia” has become widely used in recent years despite criticism – even from some Muslims – about a term which etymologically suggests an irrational fear or horror of Muslims or Islam. Unfortunately, the term does not “suggest” a rational fear or horror of Muslims or Islam”? Not to put too fine a point on it, I personally do not “fear” Muslims; I have a deep, abiding contempt for any selfless manqué who bows to a rock five times a day, believes in an omnipotent and omniscient ghost, and idolizes a scimitar-wielding barbarian who spread his faith by force and also is alleged to have written a book touted as a “guide for living,” the Koran. On the surface, Islam is a cult, but fundamentally it is a totalitarian blueprint for governing any and all aspects of an individual’s life. Moonies, Methodists, and the Mennonites are not maneuvering to insinuate their creeds into the system of American law. Islamists are. Not so ironically, CAIR is not concerned with most established newspapers or with the mainstream media. Those institutions have already “submitted” to Islam by refusing to criticize Islam or even so much as reproduce a cartoon of Mohammad. It is all the “Islamophobia” that can be found on the Internet that CAIR and its fellow Islamic organizations wish to check and deem “disrespectful” of Islam, and so censorship- or regulation-worthy. President Barack Obama and the Democrats have also not been shy about expressing their hostility to freedom of speech. They view any criticism of their socialist (some would say communist) agenda, hurriedly imposed on the country this year, as tantamount to blasphemy, if not altogether seditious in nature or intent. Obama stooped to a smear (nothing new to him) by suggesting that the GOP is receiving a hefty chunk of campaign contributions from “foreign sources.” Newsmax reported: With massive midterm losses looming, President Barack Obama is blasting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for accepting foreign donations for its political advertising — a charge that myriad watchdogs and media outlets already have debunked as groundless…. It began at a political rally in Maryland last week, when the president echoed a charge that first appeared in a left-wing blog that the Chamber of Commerce had used foreign contributions to help defray its $75 million campaign advertising budget. When in doubt about the truth or legitimacy of one’s accusations, call in the ghouls: Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has asked the IRS to investigate groups, such as the Chamber, that do political advertising. Also, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., has called for a Federal Election Commission probe into whether the Chamber is using foreign donations to influence domestic politics. The Chamber of Commerce answered with a denial of all unproven, unsubstantial, and unjustified allegations: U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue vowed Tuesday to "ramp up" political advertising in the final weeks before the Nov. 2 election and accused the Obama administration of conducting a smear campaign against the chamber. In a defiant letter to the chamber's board of directors, Donohue denied White House and Democratic claims that the chamber has used foreign money to pay for its political ads this election campaign. "It's sad to watch the White House stoop to these depths and try to salvage an election," Donohue wrote. That did not stop departing White House advisor David Axelrod from perpetuating the notion that the Chamber of Commerce is guilty until proven innocent – a decidedly anti-American concept of justice wholly in character with the administration’s “world view” on America. On Sunday's "Face the Nation" program, White House senior adviser David Axelrod conceded that the administration has no facts to support its claim, while not backing off on the president's implication that the Chamber may have violated U.S. laws. When ABC host Bob Schieffer asked whether he had any evidence to support the charge, Axelrod shot back: "Well, do you have any evidence it's not [true], Bob?" Schieffer's replied by asking Axelrod: "Is that the best you can do?" On October 10th, The Wall Street Journal blasted the Democrats in its editorial, “Shutting Up Business.” The editorial was not shy about naming the issue. It did not beat around the bush with the stick of circumspection, but beat the bush itself: Since the Supreme Court's January decision in Citizens United v. FEC, Democrats in Congress have been trying to pass legislation to repeal the First Amendment for business, though not for unions. Having failed on that score, they're now turning to legal and political threats. Funny how all of this outrage never surfaced when the likes of Peter Lewis of Progressive insurance and George Soros helped to make Democrats financially dominant in 2006 and 2008. Of course, a repeal of the First Amendment “for business” would necessarily and ultimately mean a repeal of it for all Americans, whether or not they were incorporated here or offshore, in partnership, or acting as individuals. There is no such thing as an exclusionary prohibition of speech; sooner or later that selective exclusion can and will be extended by some court or regulatory agency to other venues of speech until the exclusion is universal in application and enforcement. Principles, whether eminently rational or corrosively irrational, must by their nature be principles, that is, fundamental in nature as guides in thought and action, and not selectively ad hoc. It is left to the Journal to redeem the good name of American journalism. The Journal editorial chides its colleges in the press: Faced with electoral repudiation as the public turns against their agenda, Democrats are unleashing government power to silence their political opponents. Instead of piling on, the press corps ought to blow the whistle on this attempt to stifle political speech. This is one more liberal abuse of power that voters should consider as they head to the polls. And, what about that repudiation, that distrust of big government, that rejection of the Obama and Congressional agenda, so arrogantly and blithely ignored by our dismissive corps of Democratic Platonic guardians? The Associated Press reports: Nearly 80 percent of Americans say they can’t [trust Washington], and they have little faith that the massive federal bureaucracy can solve the nation’s ills, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center that shows public confidence in the federal government at one of the lowest points in a half-century. The poll released Sunday illustrates the ominous situation facing President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as they struggle to maintain their comfortable congressional majorities in this fall’s elections. Midterm prospects are typically tough for the party in power. Add a toxic environment like this and lots of incumbent Democrats could be out of work. It is interesting to note that while Democrats can accuse Americans of “Federaphobia,” and CAIR can accuse bloggers of “Islamophobia,” Democratic incumbents have a phobia of their own: they don’t want Obama campaigning for them. He is seen as bad luck, as a hex, as a liability. But, it is not about phobias at all. It is the totalitarian ideology that Americans are grasping and rejecting, the statist kind and the Islamic kind. Cross-posted from Metablog

I have been over this ground before in past commentaries, but the danger of the Tea Party being commandeered by religionists is very real and compels me to add a footnote concerning one of the consequences of that phenomenon. Family Security Matters (FSM) on October 5th ran an article, “An Open Letter to Barack Obama,” which carried a link to a petition to Obama asking him to permit the replacement of the World War I Memorial cross erected in the Mojave Desert, but which was stolen and never recovered. It opens with: President Obama has ignored requests to restore to its proper resting place the only federal WWI memorial, the Mojave Desert War Memorial Cross, while supporting the Ground Zero mosque to be built on the 9/11 gravesite. What is wrong with this picture? One thing wrong with the picture is that that Ground Zero is not a “gravesite,” but a construction site whose status has been a political football for about ten years. A new World Trade Center, perhaps higher than the original, could have been topped off five years ago. It would have been a suitable “memorial” to everyone who perished there, and a tribute to America’s greatness. But the inter-faction dialogue that has prevented anything of note being built on that site is indicative of national political dialogue. Another thing wrong is that the petition does not address the question of whether or not religious symbols should be permitted on federal or public land. A cross is not the same as the Iwo Jima Memorial or the Statue of Liberty. The existence of such a religious symbol on federal property, whether or not it is a war memorial, arguably violates the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the Constitution. But, this is another issue. Yes, Obama sorta-kinda endorsed the Ground Zero mosque, also known as Cordoba House and Park 51, and I do not think he will author anything like a non-negotiable concession and give the WWI memorial petitioners any satisfaction. If he did, it is likely that the Council on American Islamic Relations and other Islamic front organizations would interpret his okay as “anti-Muslim” and launch another anti-American public relations intifada. Obama has not replied to or acknowledged the petition. Nor is he likely to. One word from him to the National Park Service, which refuses to allow the cross to be replaced by a replica, would see some action. Doubtless there are countless Christians willing to chip in to fashion a new cross. But the National Park Service, a lumbering dinosaur bureaucracy in its own right, as noted in the petitioners’ letter, refuses to allow anything but the original cross to be erected on the site. Mr. President, if you were to endorse the National Park Service’s policy, you would be inviting wholesale desecration of religious symbols at war memorials across the country and at our battlefield cemeteries abroad. If we are not allowed to replace memorial crosses that are stolen or destroyed, then your administration will rightly be seen as openly encouraging attacks on religious symbols. Presumably, by Muslims. I am surprised that no Islamic outfit has protested the illustration of the eagle and the cross. One can imagine that they would prefer the crescent and star in place of the cross, but be absolutely incensed if it were pictured with the cross, the Star of David or menorah, a Buddhist dharma, a Hindu trishula, an atheist symbol of Pisces with rudimentary legs (a Darwinian fish symbol and adaptation of the “Jesus fish”)….and so on. The one symbol that virtually everyone would object to is the dollar sign, which is a more fitting symbol for the country. People live here or come here to make money, and only incidentally remain to practice their creeds in peace. Except, perhaps, Muslims. Of course, Obama has never redacted, or at least retracted, his statement that the U.S. was a not just a Christian one, but a whole Campbell’s Soup 57 Varieties of Religion kind of nation. As with virtually everything Obama has ever uttered, I must disagree with his multi-faith sophistry. His prepared remarks to a religious conference in June 2006 differed a little from his delivery. As reported by FactCheck.org.: Obama, June 28, 2006 (prepared remarks): Given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers. That quote appears also on Obama’s campaign Web site. Unfortunately for Obama, he stumbled just a bit when he delivered the actual quote, as can be seen in this video of his speech, posted on YouTube by the Obama campaign. The way it actually came out was: Obama, June 28, 2006 (as delivered): Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers. His inner teleprompter must have been on the fritz. America, however, is a nation whose government was founded on a secular political philosophy that recognized individual rights. It happens to be largely populated by men subscribing to a variety of religions. The religions and number of people subscribing to any one of them, however, do not define its essential nature or character. I will not embark on a philosophical discourse here about why the United States is NOT a “Christian nation,” or try to counter the claim that it was founded on the Ten Commandments (John Adams to the contrary notwithstanding). What I shall do is knock the stuffings out of the most strenuous assertion that the United States was founded as, and intended to remain, a Christian nation. Long, long ago, early in the Islamic jihad against the United States, a pact was reached between this country and the elevated robbers’ roost of Tripoli, whose Musselman Big Man the Bey had been overseeing and sanctioning the seizure of American merchant vessels and holding them and their crews for ransom. Without remarking on the wisdom of the Treaty of November 1796, the last year of Washington’s presidency, I offer here Article 11 of the document, with the original punctuation, which states: 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. The Treaty was subsequently ratified by Congress on June 10, 1797, during John Adams’s first year as President. Presumably Congress then, as it is now, was populated by Christians of various stripes and varying degrees of devotion or pretences thereto. They did not object to Article 11 and raise Cain over it. It was a fact they acknowledged and implicitly enacted into law via the Treaty – that the United States was not founded on the Christian religion, and that these United States were not to be regarded as a Christian nation by any and all foreign powers – and especially not by the marauding Barbary Pirates. And particularly not by its Christian inhabitants. Briefly, the United States is a nation many of whose citizens subscribe to a multitude of religious doctrines, and who are protected by secular law, not by any one or any combination of religious law. These citizens can coexist peacefully by virtue and grace of secular law. Secular law is this country’s defining attribute vis-à-vis its operable jurisprudence. The outstanding thing about our secular law is that it was designed and implemented by men of faith, who wisely set aside their religious differences to grasp that only secular “atheistic” law would protect them and their faith from religious strife and warfare. In short, they were men of reason who realized that faith would not ensure the longevity of the republic, and that reason alone would guarantee its continued existence and tranquility. Cross-posted from Metablog

The President Barack Obama’s feelings are hurt. For most of his time in the White House, Obama has been critical of information about him and his administration posted on the Internet. He’s frequently denigrated bloggers and Internet conservative news & commentary web sites for their efforts to cover stories the so-called mainstream news media refuse to cover, according to critics of his plans to control the “Information Highway.” This is precisely the kind of speech that Obama and his unelected czars and wannabe censors wish to monitor, judge, squelch, punish, crush, and eradicate. Permanently. Napoleon shared the same touchiness: "I fear the newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets." And those newspapers, together with the bayonet thrusts of bloggers, conservative (and non-conservative) news and commentary websites, have needled Obama and his staff and advisors beyond endurance. Any words critical of Obama or the government has been regarded as the equivalent of blasphemy, slander, libel, and the subverting the “community harmony” of the nation. In an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Obama, when asked about his media nemesis Fox News, remarked: (Laugh) Look, as president, I swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press. We’ve got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated. The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition – it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.” Obama may have sworn to uphold the Constitution, but in his realm of pragmatism, words are cheap, their meanings are negotiable. As one blogger noted about his position on the Second Amendment, “Obama’s position on the 2nd Amendment has one more side than a polygon.” He has done everything in his power to usurp the Constitution. A free press – or freedom of speech – is not a “tradition,” but a right founded on the nature of man and the political requirements to preserve his freedom, one of which is property. What “golden age of an objective press” was he referring to, and what would he define as an “objective press”? The mainstream media that helped get him elected? He called Fox News “wildly successful,” but what did he mean by that? As virtually the only television news outlet that has consistently criticized Obama and promoted his critics, it has been “wildly successful” in alerting the public to his and Congress’s machinations. He was not paying Fox News a compliment. Fox News’ freedom of speech is “ultimately destructive.” Destructive of what? His socialist agenda? What has Fox News’s position to do with a “vibrant middle class,” “long-term growth,” and being “competitive in the world”? These are non sequiturs issues picked out of the air to fill space. Behind his laughter was a suppressed growl. Even a “temporary” or “emergency” lock-up of this kind of speech is intolerable. Under a statist regime, “temporary” means permanently. The regime also decrees what is an “emergency.” Nazi Germany existed in a state of permanent emergency, from the day Hitler came to power in 1933 to its collapse in 1945. Obama and his allies in government are pining for a Nazi-style “Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” that would filter, interpret, suppress, and outlaw news and information they deem harmful to and critical of the government’s policies, powers, and actions. The Obama administration, at first defensive of its powers, policies and actions, has conducted an offensive against any and all who question the motive and wisdom of that administration. Obama’s administration is definably statist. What is statism? Encarta’s World English Dictionary, offers the best “mainstream” definition: the theory, or its practice, that economic and political power should be controlled by a central government leaving regional government and the individual with relatively little say in political matters That definition fits the Obama administration like a glove, a glove that fits neatly over the mailed fist clenched behind the back of every one of his appointees (remaining or departed). The definition, however, omits or neglects the fundamental philosophical foundation of statism. Novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand delves beneath the obvious description to the roots. The political expression of altruism is collectivism or statism, which holds that man’s life and work belong to the state—to society, to the group, the gang, the race, the nation—and that the state may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good. And: Statism—in fact and in principle—is nothing more than gang rule. A dictatorship is a gang devoted to looting the effort of the productive citizens of its own country. De facto censorship or semi-regulated speech, not overtly controlled by the government, but ominous and damaging all the same, has crept into the culture. Submission to the wishes of Islamic activists not to reproduce pictures of Mohammad, or to criticize Islam at all, is a recent example of self-censorship. It also takes the form of self-suppression and compliance as a result of a threat from a non-governmental agency, such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), which recently “persuaded” the ice cream maker, Ben & Jerry’s, to remove its description “all natural” from its product line. (I am no fan of Ben & Jerry’s, which, before it was acquired by Unilever, was a regular donor of its profits to virtually every left-wing and environmentalist group in the country; compliance with the complaint was in the way of just desserts and a consequence of its support for one of its destroyers.) The CSPI, based in Washington, said the government should define the term."The Food and Drug Administration could do consumers and food manufacturers a great service by actually defining when the word 'natural' can and cannot be used to characterize a given ingredient," CSPI Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson said in a statement. So, the CSPI wishes the FDA to define terms. Well, let us see how the censors and their patrons do not think about the phrase “all natural.” Ice cream is not “natural,” that is, it is man-made and not found in “nature.” But why are man-made entities excluded from “nature” or barred from being deemed “natural”? If it exists, it is indeed “natural,” or of nature, even though it is manufactured. Ice cream must be made from things that exist and rearranged by man. So, ice cream can truly and literally be said to be “all natural,” including the additives and ingredients cited by the CSPI. The phrase all natural is, therefore, an oxymoron. But in this instance the term “all natural” is not being employed by the “pure food and drug” police as a scientific term. It is used exclusively as a political weapon and a brandished club to compel compliance with the whims of the CSPI. Freedom of speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It is disliked by tyrants. It is disliked by Obama and his cohorts in the administration and Congress Why? Because it facilitates communication between those who practice it and those who audit it, Because by allowing those who have an opinion or point of view to express it to those who are receptive to it, it may lead to action that could checkmate or obviate fiat power and the ongoing violation of individual rights. Because it exposes tyrants and their lies and machinations and power-lusting ambitions. Because it is a vehicle of the truth. Because it is a source of knowledge. Because its guarantee of unregulated, uncontrolled, unsuppressed knowledge can precipitate trouble for tyrants. It is this freedom of speech which has led to the Tea Party and to the wide dissatisfaction of Americans with Obama and Congress, and to the likely defeat of the Democrats in the coming midterm elections, a defeat virtually ensured by the authoritarian legislation passed by Congress and advocated and encouraged by Obama. The dumbing-down of Americans in public education has not been entirely successful; there are still enough Americans left who possess a sense of imperiled and outraged self and a focused concern that is reflected in the polls and in anti-government rhetoric and on numerous websites dedicated to broadcasting the truth. One of the most recent and insidious means of de facto censorship is what is called “libel tourism,” an action taken by a foreign national to suppress criticism of him in this country by ruinous litigation. The story of the SPEECH Act starts with Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, the director of the American Center for Democracy, who bravely stood up to a Saudi billionaire named Khalid bin Mahfouz whom she accused of financing terrorist groups in her book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed – and How to Stop It. Mahfouz, who died of a heart attack on August 16, 2009, targeted Ehrenfeld with a lawsuit as he had done to other authors accusing him of having ties to terrorism. Taking advantage of the United Kingdom’s libel laws that force the defendant to prove their accusations in court, Mahfouz sued 45 publishers and journalists and all settled, except for Dr. Ehrenfeld. Following a law passed by New York State that did not recognize the jurisdiction of foreign libel laws in that state, Congress passed its own version of the law. On August 10, a major victory for freedom of speech was achieved. President Obama signed the Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act (SPEECH Act) into law, stopping Americans from being sued for libel by individuals in other countries with inadequate First Amendment rights. The legislation is a defeat for those who would seek to silence Americans speaking out against radical Islam by threatening to bankrupt them with costly lawsuits. Given Obama’s “outreach” efforts to the Islamic world, together with his refusal to take anything but a Pollyannaish perspective on Islam’s religious ideology, a perspective which denies its perils – one of them the brutal silencing of any and all criticism of Islam – he must have signed that law with gnashing teeth and a hurried flair of his pen. He could not very well have not signed it, because it passed Congress unanimously. Glib speakers like President Barack Obama can be boring or enervating, but nevertheless dangerous. His tenure in the White House has allowed him to not only reveal his core, anti-freedom, anti-liberty, anti-American premises, but those of his allies in and out of government. They have become emboldened in their designs to establish their own satrapies of power, power that would comport with his own and answerable to him. Proposed cybersecurity legislation circulating on Capitol Hill would give the president the power to declare an emergency in the case of big online attacks and force some businesses to beef up their cyber defenses and submit to scrutiny. The draft bill, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, allows the president to declare an emergency if there is an imminent threat to the U.S. electrical grid or other critical infrastructure such as the water supply or financial network because of a cyber attack. What is proposed in the bill is de facto nationalization of businesses deemed by the government to be “critical.” This is a signature sign of fascism. Steve DelBianco, director of the trade group NetChoice, whose members include Yahoo, eBay and News Corp., objected to a part of the bill that would bar companies designated as "critical" from fighting that designation in court. "That has to be amended to make this bill fair to the businesses who will pay for it," he said. The draft tries to calm fears the government is reaching too far into business operations by requiring specific designations for which parts of a company or industry might be considered "critical infrastructure." Obama’s statements indicate not so superfluous a revelation as his “mindset” as a compulsive, ideological predisposition to control what is said about him and his policies and what he wishes not to be said about him and his policies. His statements about freedom of speech Government controlled media and speech are not free media and free speech. Government controlled news is not news but falsehoods, half-truths disguising lies, and fairy tales spun for the gullible and the ignorant. Fortunately, if only temporarily, Obama and his gang know that the jig is up, insofar as the midterm elections are concerned. Seeing the signs of an uncompromising rejection of the administration’s policies (at least by the American people, but not by the Republicans), many of his key advisors and appointees are jumping the Titanic before they are sucked into the vortex of ignominious defeat. Obama’s once highly-charged public performances are now insouciant to the point of boredom. His papered halls fool no one, not even him. Yet, he will have two more years left in his term. He is still a danger to contend with. He will try to abridge the First Amendment under the guise of the “public interest.” His pronouncements on the Constitution are directly pronouncements on property rights, on which is dependent freedom of speech. As long ago as 2001, he claimed. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.... (Italics mine) He was wrong about that, because the Court has often decided to redistribute wealth, but that is another issue. The key issue here is that he knows that “redistributed wealth” also means redistributed privileges of speech. And if one has no influence or pull in the government, then chances are one will not be allowed to speak. A position such as he articulated in 2001 and has repeated since then constitutes malice aforethought. He knows what he is doing. Americans should be advised to say so as vigorously and often as they can. Cross-posted from Metablog

I will begin with a comparison between two buildings, because a question of property rights entered recent debates and disputations about the propriety of the Ground Zero mosque, the rightness or wrongness of opposing its construction, and the nature of Islam itself. This mosque, to be called “Cordoba House,” is just a brief walk from Ground Zero in New York City. Its construction, to replace a private office building damaged on 9/11, has been approved by a city council. But, first allow me to discuss another building. Years ago Korean Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, bought a defunct, former first-class hotel in Manhattan, the New Yorker, and turned it into a center for the propagation of his religion, and also as a dorm and office space for his local followers. Doubtless many readers remember the Moonies, converts who had to be “de-programmed” by their parents of the brainwashing these young adults had experienced in Moon‘s “madrassas.” There were countless numbers of them all over the country, knocking on doors and spreading literature about the Unification Church. They were as annoying as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, but as immune to reason as any Witness and Mormon traveling recruiter. And about as dangerous. They were squeaky clean, nicely dressed and well-behaved. One had the impression they were manufactured on an assembly line. But, when Moon bought the hotel, no one objected. It was private property. I am guessing that Moon got tax and zoning exemptions and the like from the city government because his was a religious organization, just as I am sure Faisal Abdul Rauf and his cohorts will get them for the Cordoba mosque, as well. It was inconceivable at the time that the Moonie elders were preaching anti-Americanism and Moonie jihad in the hotel. No one could imagine that they encouraged hate and called for conquest and replacing, with violence, if necessary, the Constitution of the United States with a Moonie Compact of Love and Peace. No one imagined that bombs and suicide vests were being assembled in the hotel basement, or that classes were being held on how to rig a vehicle to explode with the maximum number of casualties. Moonies who happened to live around town outside of the hotel were not regarded with suspicion by their neighbors or the authorities. No one contested Moon’s right to turn the property into a center for his creed (which is an amalgam of pacifist tenets borrowed from other creeds, but especially the Christian). The idea that the Moonies were planning something awful and homicidal and destructive never occurred to anyone -- because no one had any reason to doubt the “benign” purposes of the hotel purchase. More often than not, Moon and his followers were the butt of jokes. (Try making a public joke about Islam, or Mohammad, or Allah today.) And, nothing happened. No car bombs exploded in Times Square, no massacres of commuters occurred in Grand Central Station. No planes were hijacked and flown into the Empire State Building. The Moonies have faded from memory. The Islamists, however, do not want us to forget Islam. Islam is not a Moonie religion. Moon’s religion did not attempt to incorporate or integrate a political agenda with its theological agenda. Islam does. Moon did not declare war on America from South Korea. Islam’s leading lights have, Shiite and Sunni, from all quarters where Islam reigns supreme. The religious and political elements of Islam are mutually supportive, complementary, and coextensive. They are based, in the Koran, on action -- by force or fraud or dissimulation -- with the sole object of conquest and anchoring Islam in the host, and soon-to-be vanquished country. Someone remarked to me: We are not at war with Islam. War is tanks and machine guns and going over the top. We cannot be at war with an ideology. Yes, we are at war with Islam. Just as we have been at war with Kant and his philosophical successors, and with John Dewey, and Marxism -- in short, with every anti-individual, anti-life, anti-rights, anti-mind philosophy. it is a war of ideas. “War” is not strictly a metaphor for the conflict that is raging right now under our noses. Islam is a body of ideas totalitarian in nature, designed to wipe out the individual and inculcate mindless obedience to irrational and arbitrary dictats spoken by an angel to a barbarian prophet. From a ghost. The “war” is a battle for men’s minds. Reason seeks to enable men‘s minds. Islam seeks to cripple them. it is as simple as that. In this culture, it is irrelevant that neither President Bush nor President Obama (nor their immediate predecessors in the White House) ever declared “war” against Islam, or against states that sponsor terrorism. If by chance we declared war on Iran -- with full, but belated justification -- that would be perceived on the Muslim or Arab Street as a declaration of war on Islam. Fine, I would answer. Have it your way. You are a tribe of manqués and we are about to take down one of your kingpins. Send Allah your Imprecations to slay us. But do not take it out on your moral superiors if nothing happens. Many believe that opposing the Ground Zero mosque would be a violation of property rights. But where do property rights enter the picture? They do not, as least as far as mosque-building Muslims are concerned. Mosques are centers of indoctrination and propaganda, and of exhortations to wage war against the infidel -- us. Mosques are venues for spreading and entrenching Islam. They are field headquarters of conquest, and they have sprung up all over the country. The piety and good citizenship standing of the flocks of rank-and-file Muslims are irrelevant. They subscribe to the ideology, do not question it, and remain silent when their brethren blow up things and kill people. Their creed commands the silence, but it is still a matter of choice, of volition, and Muslims as a rule choose to remain silent. No man of reason should sympathize with them. Some have cited the 14th Amendment as an intrinsic good to be brought to the defense of the builders of the Ground Zero mosque, forgetting that, first, that Amendment has been violated countless ways by our own government, and second, that we are indeed at war with Islam and its advocates. To iterate: Just as we were at war with Nazism, another body of inimical ideas (Hitler was its Mohammed, and he sought the help of Muslims to exterminate Jews in Palestine), we are at war with Islam. Islam respects neither individual rights, nor property rights, nor capitalism. It is a holistic vehicle for conquest and subjugation of all who do not subscribe to it. Period. Faisal Rauf may look like a kindly, gentle cleric, but that is the soft, friendly face of Islam. The Koran permits falsehoods, deception, and lies -- taqiya -- in the name of Islam and Allah. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem looked harmless and well-meaning, too. Think again. Rauf, the leading light of the Cordoba mosque, has said publicly that the Cordoba mosque is intended, among other things, to be a venue for “interfaith dialogue.” However, Walid Shoebat, former terrorist but now a dedicated anti-Islamist, notes that, as a rule, public pronouncements by prominent Muslim spokesmen are consciously intended to say one thing for Western consumption, but these same spokesmen reveal their thoughts in Arabic. Rauf is a prime example: For that we searched Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf’s own words – in the Arabic and not what he says in English to the western media. It should shock every American to find out that Faisal Abdul Rauf stated to the popular Islamic media Hadiyul-Islam on May 26th, 2010 in an article by Sa’da Abdul Maksoud. In it he states that an Islamic state can be established regardless of the government being a kingdom or democracy. In another article titled “I do not believe in religious dialogue” should alarm the ardent skeptic on the mindset of the Islamic visionary who advocates establishing Islamic lobbies throughout the West. The defenders of the mosque forget, or have never grasped as a first-hand understanding, that as we live in a mixed economy, we are also living in a culture of mixed epistemologies and metaphysics. The 14th Amendment is only as powerful as the culture that values and respects it, it is only as good as the government that upholds it. So, how can one reconcile the "rights" of the exponents of a religion that denies rights, in a deteriorating political culture, in which individual rights are usurped daily everywhere one looks? An argument in defense of the Cordoba mosque, based on the 14th Amendment, is dependent on two conditions: that Islam is not an ideology inimical to freedom, bent on conquest and subjugation, and that we are not at war with it; and that our government, through the courts, is moved by an absolute fealty to reason, and so receptive to an argument based on the inviolability of property rights. Neither of these conditions exists today. Respecting the alleged rights of the mosque builders is not going to stall or reverse the statist trends of our own government. On the other hand, “violating” them is not going to accelerate our own government’s “jihad” against reason and our freedoms. The Obama administration already has the pedal of power to the floor. It could be about “property rights” were trends reversed and we were on our way to a recognition of individual rights and the sanctity of the Constitution. If we were, Islamists would not bother trying to infiltrate and conquer us by stealth. But, that is not the trend. We are hurtling faster and faster in the direction of fascism. Upholding the “rights” of the mosque builders is pointless when neither our government nor Islam recognizes individual rights. Look at today’s Supreme Court decision on guns and Citizens United. How do they jibe with its decision on Kelo and with its other decisions that nullify individual rights? The Supreme Court is an instance of our living in a culture of mixed moralities, mixed premises, mixed values. The irrational element in the culture is in the ascendant, despite the occasional semi-rational triumphs. I do not know any more how better to argue the case against the Ground Zero mosque, other than to refer people to Dr. Leonard Peikoff's podcast on the issue. We are living in an unprecedented time, when this country is under attack by secular jihadists in the White House, and religious ones from Mecca and Medina, both sides demanding unquestioning obedience from Americans, and no one is doing much about it. This is the larger picture -- an aerial photograph of the battlefield, if you will -- that must be grasped. It is and it is not about “property rights.” Abundant information exists on the means and ends of Islam, on Faisal Rauf’s double-think and purposes, on the record of Islam’s depredations. Read Robert Spencer’s article, or Alyssa Lappen’s, or go to Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project site. These articles were picked at random from a mountain of information open to anyone willing to think. We are engaged in a literal war, both physical and ideological, a war that has exceeded the time such a war should have been waged. A paramount example of it is Afghanistan. We went into that country looking for the Taliban, Al-Quada, and bin Laden. Seven or eight years later, we are still there -- building roads and hospitals and community centers and handing out candy and good will, now and then taking out a group of killers with a drone. In the meantime we are dealing with an unreliable and reluctant ally, Pakistan, and propping up Karzi's corrupt and "open-to-a-deal" government. Is this war a hallmark of rationality? There’s no reconciliation possible between reason and faith, between reason and Islam. So, even though it may seem futile, I am opposed to the Ground Zero mosque, because of its symbolic power, because it is evidence of an invasion of this country by an alien philosophy inimical to my life and limb, because its backers are necessarily linked to terrorism and the jihad being waged against this county, and because I refuse to grant Islam any semblance of respect or advantage. We are not battling Moonies here, but killers and enslavers who wish to offer Americans the choice of becoming Muslim Moonies -- or dhimmitude or death. Again, no one should be deceived by the kindly, grandfatherly demeanor of Faisal Rauf. He is just a front man -- one of many such front men -- of a larger phenomenon. As a friend remarked to me in the middle of the battle, “Toohey was impeccably dressed and drank Cointreau.” Rauf looks like he would not hurt a fly, either. But, think again. Think twice. Take his assurances for what they are worth -- nothing -- and use his image as the portrait of our enemy. That kindly face hides a mind that subscribes to a philosophy that attacked this country on 9/11 and continues to attack it. Cross-posted from Metablog

Watching the video, it was hard to determine if North Carolina Representative and Democrat Bob Etheridge was drunk or sober. There was a nasty, tell-tale slur in his words that suggested alcoholic inebriation. But, on the other hand, that might have been the influence of another notorious intoxicant: political power and its constant companion, arrogance. Or, it might have just been his naturally abrupt and abrasive Southern speaking style, coupled with a not-too wholesome character. Did the students detect in him an odor of alcohol, or an odor of sanctimony? Or a combination of the aromas? He was leaving a Nancy Pelosi fundraiser. Only the college students whom he attacked would know for sure. Etheridge issued an “apology” when news of the incident spread like wildfire. His public statement was not specifically addressed to the students, but to the “public.” So, it was less an apology, and more an expression of panic. Etheridge regrets, but does not apologize. “I have seen the video posted on several blogs. I deeply and profoundly regret my reaction and I apologize to all involved. Throughout my many years of service to the people of North Carolina, I have always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect. No matter how intrusive and partisan our politics can become, this does not justify a poor response. I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.” Not exactly a tear-jerker. He has “always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect.” Except when he thinks they are questioning his character and political leanings. His manhandling of the student did not “justify a poor response.” If anyone else had tried such a “poor response” on the student, he could have been arrested for and charged with assault. He will “always work to promote a civil public discourse,” except when he’s in a nasty mood and feeling touchy about his reelection prospects and doesn’t feel like having discourse with the public. Etheridge was addressed -- not accosted -- on a public street by the students. They didn’t approach or stalk him. He approached them, and was “ambushed” by an inconvenient question. He wasn’t the first. Other Democrats have been “ambushed” and ignored or told the questioners to get themselves to a nunnery. He was elected to represent his district, but, like many of his Democratic and Republican brethren, behaves like he owns the seat and needn’t answer to well-dressed and well-mannered strangers who ask him a simple question. “Do you fully support the Obama agenda?” The students continued to call him “Sir” even when the representative got violent. Granted, it was a loaded question. The students were angling for a hypothetical “Yes, I fully support the Obama agenda,” which would have been an admission of guilt for endorsing an agenda that is playing havoc with the economy and whittling down our liberties to zero. Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, and once on Etheridge’s staff, had this to say about the North Carolinian‘s statement: “I’ve known Bob Etheridge for more than a thirteen years and I am proud to have worked for him. He is one of the most honorable people I know. Everyone makes mistakes, and I’m proud of Bob for taking responsibility and apologizing for his.” But, it wasn’t an apology. It was false humility tailored for voter consumption. Democrats “don’t need no stinking badges.” They’re the majority, and they’ll do as they like. The “Obama agenda” has been so excoriated by the blogosphere that Democrats have become super-sensitive to any questions about it. Was he really “ambushed” by the college students, as some MSM commentators charge? The students apparently were working for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government news outlet. Etheridge couldn’t have known that at the time, otherwise he wouldn’t have kept repeating “Who are you? I want to know who you are,.” all the while manhandling the student. Breitbart’s troops are famous -- some say notorious -- for entrapping on video politicians, government employees, and professional parasites with a line into government money, or anyone who deserves to be snared in behavior, attitude and speech, and all of whom are complicit in the growth of the federal government and the ongoing diminution of freedom. Etheridge’s voting record is spectacularly undistinguished. That is, it is nearly the straight Obama agenda party platform. The college students couldn’t be blamed for loading their question. Of all his nearly one hundred and ninety “yes” and “no” votes, only one stood out. In April 2001 he voted “yes” on eliminating the estate or “death” tax. But his voting record puts him solidly in the Obama camp. And as a Southern Christian “new” Democrat, his stances on abortion, free trade, TARP, and other issues are as fuzzy and bollixed as any other “moderate” Democrat’s. Every member of Congress should be similarly “ambushed.” President Obama should be “ambushed.” It is practically the only means left of drawing out the true character and attitude of those who would be kings, queens, and Congressional courtiers. We, the people, have a right to know who they are. Cross-posted from Metablog