Tuesday, August 31, 2010
HACKETT: The next Ronald Reagan?
Sarah Palin follows in the Gipper's large footsteps
Ronald Reagan was an American original and a unique political phenomenon. He combined unusual charm and personality and showed common sense that connected with the average American. He was attacked viciously by the political elites, who saw his popular appeal - and his opposition to big government and high taxes - as a threat to their domination of the nation's politics.
Conservatives have been searching for a new Ronald Reagan, so far without success. But perhaps the Gipper's heir is in sight. Sarah Palin is remarkably similar to the late president. The Mama Grizzly from Alaska is certainly an American original, and her success in picking political winners against the odds has shown that she is no less a political phenomenon. And the policies she supports are similar - small government and low taxes, plus energy self-sufficiency and a balanced budget.
Just as Reagan was denigrated as an ex-movie actor with limited education, Mrs. Palin is portrayed as an ex-model with limited education, which means she did not go to Harvard or Yale, like most recent presidents and much of the liberal elite. The fact that elites from those institutions have nearly destroyed the economy and bankrupted the country does not reduce their arrogance or diminish their efforts to hold onto power.
Mrs. Palin was roundly criticized when she left the office of governor of Alaska, but since then, she has been riding a populist wave accompanied by Tea Party activists who want a return to common sense and responsible spending. President Obama promised change, which many sought after the budget excesses of the George W. Bush years and the pork-obsessed Republican Congress. But candidate Obama was unclear, telling each audience what it wanted to hear.
Now we know what he meant by change - a much bigger federal government, excessive government spending, harsh new energy and environmental regulations on business, spending in support of labor unions and the bailout of profligate state governments. Under Mr. Obama, the environmentalists are running amok, spending billions on windmills, electric cars and other green-energy schemes while blocking oil drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
The administration does not care that giving money to the states only perpetuates their overspending while doing little to help unemployment. At the same time, their anti-oil bias and excessive regulation are reducing jobs in the all-important private sector. The Keynesian economists in control will not accept that their policies are aggravating the problem.
Most Tea Party activists are grass-roots Americans who see what Washington elites cannot, which is why they keep winning. Sarah Palin has become a political power by encouraging Republican women to run for office and by her amazing ability to pick winners - and often help them win - even against heavy opposition spending. With Mrs. Palin's support, Republican women are becoming politically successful in growing numbers.
Mrs. Palin has endorsed more than 20 winners in Republican primaries this year, many underdogs who were given little chance against the party's chosen candidates. Among her notable successes have been the nominations of Nikki Haley, an Indian-American woman, for governor of South Carolina; Carly Fiorina, a former corporate executive running against Sen. Barbara Boxer in California; Rand Paul, a maverick candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky; and Susana Martinez, running for governor of New Mexico. Now she is supporting another maverick, Sharron Angle, in her high-profile race against Harry Reid, the Democrats' Senate leader.
But Mrs. Palin's biggest success has to be the amazing turnaround in last week's Alaska election for the Republican Senate nomination. It is very hard to oust an entrenched incumbent such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski, daughter of a former senator and governor, with eight years in office. Her opponent, a virtually unknown lawyer, Joe Miller, was considered a hopeless candidate, with polls showing him far behind and practically no one picking him to win, except Sarah Palin.
Yet, with Mrs. Palin's endorsement, he came from behind to win the Election Day count by 1,668 votes. The final result waits for the counting of absentee and contested ballots, but the turnaround has nonetheless been spectacular. Mrs. Palin has shown she is a force to reckon with, which is why the left is attacking her so relentlessly.
The question is whether she can apply her keen political instincts and the grass-roots support she generates to become the next Ronald Reagan. The liberal powers clearly fear that she can.
James T. Hackett is a former Reagan administration official and Heritage Foundation writer.
The Washington Times
By James T. Hackett - The Washington Times
Ronald Reagan was an American original and a unique political phenomenon. He combined unusual charm and personality and showed common sense that connected with the average American. He was attacked viciously by the political elites, who saw his popular appeal - and his opposition to big government and high taxes - as a threat to their domination of the nation's politics.
Conservatives have been searching for a new Ronald Reagan, so far without success. But perhaps the Gipper's heir is in sight. Sarah Palin is remarkably similar to the late president. The Mama Grizzly from Alaska is certainly an American original, and her success in picking political winners against the odds has shown that she is no less a political phenomenon. And the policies she supports are similar - small government and low taxes, plus energy self-sufficiency and a balanced budget.
Just as Reagan was denigrated as an ex-movie actor with limited education, Mrs. Palin is portrayed as an ex-model with limited education, which means she did not go to Harvard or Yale, like most recent presidents and much of the liberal elite. The fact that elites from those institutions have nearly destroyed the economy and bankrupted the country does not reduce their arrogance or diminish their efforts to hold onto power.
Mrs. Palin was roundly criticized when she left the office of governor of Alaska, but since then, she has been riding a populist wave accompanied by Tea Party activists who want a return to common sense and responsible spending. President Obama promised change, which many sought after the budget excesses of the George W. Bush years and the pork-obsessed Republican Congress. But candidate Obama was unclear, telling each audience what it wanted to hear.
Now we know what he meant by change - a much bigger federal government, excessive government spending, harsh new energy and environmental regulations on business, spending in support of labor unions and the bailout of profligate state governments. Under Mr. Obama, the environmentalists are running amok, spending billions on windmills, electric cars and other green-energy schemes while blocking oil drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
The administration does not care that giving money to the states only perpetuates their overspending while doing little to help unemployment. At the same time, their anti-oil bias and excessive regulation are reducing jobs in the all-important private sector. The Keynesian economists in control will not accept that their policies are aggravating the problem.
Most Tea Party activists are grass-roots Americans who see what Washington elites cannot, which is why they keep winning. Sarah Palin has become a political power by encouraging Republican women to run for office and by her amazing ability to pick winners - and often help them win - even against heavy opposition spending. With Mrs. Palin's support, Republican women are becoming politically successful in growing numbers.
Mrs. Palin has endorsed more than 20 winners in Republican primaries this year, many underdogs who were given little chance against the party's chosen candidates. Among her notable successes have been the nominations of Nikki Haley, an Indian-American woman, for governor of South Carolina; Carly Fiorina, a former corporate executive running against Sen. Barbara Boxer in California; Rand Paul, a maverick candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky; and Susana Martinez, running for governor of New Mexico. Now she is supporting another maverick, Sharron Angle, in her high-profile race against Harry Reid, the Democrats' Senate leader.
But Mrs. Palin's biggest success has to be the amazing turnaround in last week's Alaska election for the Republican Senate nomination. It is very hard to oust an entrenched incumbent such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski, daughter of a former senator and governor, with eight years in office. Her opponent, a virtually unknown lawyer, Joe Miller, was considered a hopeless candidate, with polls showing him far behind and practically no one picking him to win, except Sarah Palin.
Yet, with Mrs. Palin's endorsement, he came from behind to win the Election Day count by 1,668 votes. The final result waits for the counting of absentee and contested ballots, but the turnaround has nonetheless been spectacular. Mrs. Palin has shown she is a force to reckon with, which is why the left is attacking her so relentlessly.
The question is whether she can apply her keen political instincts and the grass-roots support she generates to become the next Ronald Reagan. The liberal powers clearly fear that she can.
James T. Hackett is a former Reagan administration official and Heritage Foundation writer.
The Washington Times
The Success of the Beck Rally
By Jeffrey Lord on 8.31.10 @ 6:09AM
I love watching Glenn Beck on TV.
Day winding down, he makes so many good points. As someone who has spent a lifetime studying history, been there in government and politics, I find it great to watch Beck's particular insistence on educating
Americans about real history that has gone missing. Having long ago learned first hand the progressive-race connection, for example, by having lived for a couple years in Woodrow Wilson's hometown, I am stunned to see someone have the wit and the chops to detail this particularly disturbing history of America's "progressive" president on popular television.
Bravo.
So I watched the rally on C-SPAN.
And you know what? (He says gently…)
I was elated -- and concerned.
Elated because putting together something like this is no day at the beach. Beck clearly worked his heart out on it and so too the Tea Party folks and all manner of others. It was a triumph. A huge success and Beck deserves congratulations for it.
If I may raise one concern.
Believe it or not, I found this event to be a bit of an intellectual muddle.
After considerable amounts of time doing a superb job on his television show analyzing American history -- from early American religion to the Founders to the Progressives -- and managing to draw a television audience of amazing size with all this, it was almost as if there was a bit of indecision as to what to say at this rally. Was this politics? Or religion? Or something else?
In truth, I wasn't sure. There's a difference between spot-on political assessments of "social justice" and being Billy Graham. Of urging people to political action -- and religious action. Oddly, this is one of the reasons (in reverse) why Beck opponents in the world of liberal religion have lost members: they have presented themselves as religious leaders yet behave as if they were secular politicians. Beck seems to be struggling with being a secular talk radio commentator -- or the Reverend Glenn.
There's nothing wrong with either. But the latter, per se, seems not what he was about all of this time up until now.
FOR REASONS THAT HAVE nothing to do with Glenn Beck -- television, the celebrification of America, the eternally human tendency to be attracted to powerful personalities -- it is critical to remember that events of this nature are not about the speakers but the participants. Martin Luther King's famous speech will be remembered forever -- but it will be remembered because the American people understood how to bring about racial equality for all Americans using the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Principles King spent a career discussing.
In other words, while the headlines go to a King or a Beck -- it is in fact the principles and the millions working to make those principles a reality that are always the real story.
But if the leader is well-intentioned yet unclear, well, muddle ensues.
The 2010 election is not about personality X,Y or Z. With the greatest of respect to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, both of whom I like, neither this election -- nor any other -- can afford to be about Glenn or Sarah or Newt or Rush or Sean or Mark or the Tea Party or Rand Paul or Sharron Angle or Alaska's Joe Miller or anyone else.
Is God part of this election? Yes, as always in American history. Beck is fond of quoting what originally came from Lincoln, saying that it's not important whether God is on our side but whether we are on God's side. But having well and powerfully established himself as a man of politics, Beck seems to be going elsewhere. True? Untrue? No idea.
Conservatives would do well to remember that this election is simultaneously about none of the above -- and all of the above. It is about millions across America who are totally un-famous beyond their church, their village, town or city, their service club, their school, their military unit if serving.
The 2010 election -- and every day we all draw a breath -- was correctly summarized centuries ago by Edmund Burke when he spoke of the principles at stake in a "partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
The Beck rally, says Beck, was about prayer. About God. And God generally supplies the help. As John Fund reported over at the Wall Street Journal, the grass roots nature of this event was evident as hundreds of Tea Party members buckled down to do the hard work of making the event and other events associated with it actually happen and run smoothly. But the Tea Party as it has emerged has presented itself as a political movement concerned about economics and politics. Not a religious faith.
The conservative movement's success comes from, among other things, the very fact of its messiness. Burke never said it wouldn't be messy. It is totally uncoordinated, filled with vibrant personalities who are busy blossoming in their own way that is not someone else's way. To which one can only say: Amen! This is a central strength, never a weakness. Beck says the rally to him was about God and, with his brigade of 240 ministers and awards for Faith, Hope and Charity, he added a distinctly unique flavor that is his. Some watched and saw a direct connection to politics. To each his own.
Ronald Reagan never ever saw himself as anything other than what he was his entire, mature adult life -- an advocate for timeless conservative principles. The reason conservatives celebrate the life and presidency of this mortal human being was his thorough, in-the-bones understanding of the fact that the principles are timeless -- even if individual humans are not. To be a Reaganite is to take Reagan's lesson to heart.
Liberals are out there just going crazy waiting for Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or any other prominent conservative to take a fall -- so they can turn around and say to the country: "See? It doesn't work. It's all about them." Turning himself from talk radio and TV commentator Glenn to Reverend Glenn will surely be seen by some -- if in fact that's what happening -- as just such an opening.
If Glenn Beck hasn't yet figured out where he's going with all of this, all the more reason for conservatives to stay focused on principles.
Beck has to know this. He comes across as so remarkably open, educating himself and his audience as he goes along. This is what surely accounts for part of the enthusiastic response from his audience. So too does Sarah Palin get it.
But whether Americans see the Beck rally as a rally about God or a rally about American politics, without doubt what is also at play here is the absolute rebellion that is taking place across America. A rebellion of which Beck and Palin and Newt and the call for God are symptoms but not causes. The American people in 2010, not at all unlike the American people in 1776, have had it. As Angelo Codevilla has so devastatingly captured in his forthcoming book on America's Ruling Class, beyond any one issue they are simply done with the arrogance that is the "dismissal of the American people's intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance." They are done, more than done, with the self-selected class of their fellow citizens whose "principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows and operates by standards beyond others' comprehension."
THIS REBELLION HAS BEEN COMING for a very long time. Surely the 40-plus years of yanking God out of every public school and square plays a role in this upheaval. Take a good look around.
One of the most successful books in the last year has been Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.
What's particularly interesting about Levin's book is that it was written before the election of Barack Obama. Which is to say, that Levin understood exactly the continuing conservative revolution -- and that it was not, as its critics of the moment wishfully insisted, dead. A prediction made with some regularity since at least the day after Barry Goldwater's 1964 defeat.
On the contrary, the success of conservatism can be measured in multiples of ways, Levin's book sales but one.
Let's take Levin's own talk radio field. Rush Limbaugh is in a class all by himself. The story of his success is both personal and a tale of conservatism's genuine popularity. His influence as he patiently and entertainingly explains principle in terms of daily events is simply unmatched. There are others behind Rush, from Sean Hannity to Levin to Beck and so on. Each with his own unique style. America knows these people well.
Which means something in the real world of 2010 politics.
Has anyone paid attention to the success of Sean Hannity's Freedom Concerts? Here's a guy who spent his vacation-less August trekking from city to city putting on star-studded musical extravaganzas at the rate of two a weekend from Atlanta to Las Vegas to San Diego and Dallas to Cincinnati to name just a few locations. Sold out crowds. Tens and tens of thousands of people. Millions of dollars raised for a charity, the Freedom Alliance, which in turn has used its funds for, among other things, the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund. A program to help educate the kids of those who were disabled or lost their lives in the military. Hannity pays for chunks of this personally. And the concerts are always presented with the help of Alliance co-founder retired Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and a cast of hundreds.
Does no one think this means anything politically? That there's no message from all those people who show up to cheer on Hannity as he sings (sort of!) "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with Charlie Daniels fiddling away? Of course there's a message, and that message is about principles. Conservative principles.
Does no one really get the Sharron Angle story? Here is a conservative struggling in her Nevada primary race against more establishment, better-known and financed Republicans. Suddenly she is lifted from obscurity because Levin has taken up her cause -- and now she is the designated terror that Harry Reid is trying to use to scare Nevadans into giving him yet another endless term? Even as Reid's son tries to claim the state's governorship? Of course there's a message here -- a message about conservative principles.
Does no one understand the role of talk radio -- alongside Sarah Palin -- in Joe Miller's apparent lead over the establishment incumbent GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski? Yes, indeed, once again it was Levin at work. Levin plunged into Arizona, and took up the cause of McCain opponent J.D. Hayworth -- losing. But the loss is beside the point. The real point is Levin's understanding that these races for conservatism are won state by state, district by district, one vote at a time, doing the nitty-gritty of hard work all across America.
IT HAS BEEN BEYOND BREATHTAKINGLY foolish for liberals to take a look at the Tea Party movement and shut it out, dismissing the participants as just a bunch of racist, ignorant Nazi-loving nuts. Aside from being insultingly and deliberately bogus, it was mind-bogglingly stupid. A year ago I spent some time in the small town of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, while Senator Arlen Specter was conducting one of those now-famous raucous town hall meetings on health care. The astonished police told me there were at least 1,000 people outside on the streets. I spent time talking with those in the crowd. They were from all across the state. They had taken time off of work to drive to Lebanon. They came on their own. They did not, they made it clear, come because of anyone on the radio or television. They were mad. Furious about what they saw as, in the President's words, an attempt to "fundamentally transform" their country from a set of constitutional principles to some sort of statist utopia.
All of this hot success -- the conservative books, the talk radio shows, the summertime Beck rally and the Hannity concerts, the ratings of Fox News and the prominence of publications like the one you are reading -- combined with the Internet -- are in the process of bringing forth the next chapter in a serious philosophical movement that features a veritable universe of stars past and present discussing in Burkean fashion a timeless set of principles.
From the Edmund Burkes, John Lockes, Adam Smiths and Abraham Lincolns to a Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and on and on right down to, as was said in the famous Longfellow poem of Paul Revere's ride, "every Middlesex village and farm" -- the conservative revolution flowers. And yes, Beck is correct to include early American religious leaders in this long chain.
Make absolutely no mistake.
Glenn Beck is doing his thing, which only he can do and do well. This is no slam at Beck. It is just an expression of, well, not understanding where he's going with this. Those half million on the mall with him are now part of this chapter of the Conservative Revolution. Whether they were showing up for God or America or tax cuts or to support the troops, whatever it is or was is having an impact. And so too the thousands who showed up at Sean Hannity's Freedom Concerts are part of all of this. Yes, don't forget the people who bought -- and continue to buy --- Mark Levin's book. Or Laura Ingraham's or Ann Coulter's or Michelle Malkin's or -- yes again -- Glenn Beck's. Not to mention who those who voted for Sharron Angle or Joe Miller or conservative candidate X. Or those who tune in faithfully to Rush.
But never forget that the real hero here is, well, you. Or, as Beck might have it, the children of God.
The average American who gets out of bed every single day and raises a family, goes to work, pays the taxes, serves in the military or in some fashion is the driving force in their community.
And the average American is now in open rebellion from coast to coast. Against a ruling class bent on social engineering when they're not busy erasing American history.
The message is timeless. The principles sound. They are colorblind and reject attempts to divide by race, class or religion. And yes, they do have a core that comes from a Judeo-Christian heritage.
America, as Ronald Reagan use to say, is an idea. You can move to England yet you will never be an Englishman. You can move to France but you will never be French. But anyone can become an American (legally!). And once here, a realization takes hold, as Levin quotes Reagan in his book.
If the Beck rally, the Hannity concerts, the talk radio and Fox ratings, the book sales and the intensity factors of every poll out there are correct -- conservatives are busy.
Millions of you. All at the same time. All in your own way. God's children one and all.
To borrow from James Carville: It's the principles, stupid.
Can you say Amen!
American Spectator
I love watching Glenn Beck on TV.
Day winding down, he makes so many good points. As someone who has spent a lifetime studying history, been there in government and politics, I find it great to watch Beck's particular insistence on educating
Americans about real history that has gone missing. Having long ago learned first hand the progressive-race connection, for example, by having lived for a couple years in Woodrow Wilson's hometown, I am stunned to see someone have the wit and the chops to detail this particularly disturbing history of America's "progressive" president on popular television.
Bravo.
So I watched the rally on C-SPAN.
And you know what? (He says gently…)
I was elated -- and concerned.
Elated because putting together something like this is no day at the beach. Beck clearly worked his heart out on it and so too the Tea Party folks and all manner of others. It was a triumph. A huge success and Beck deserves congratulations for it.
If I may raise one concern.
Believe it or not, I found this event to be a bit of an intellectual muddle.
After considerable amounts of time doing a superb job on his television show analyzing American history -- from early American religion to the Founders to the Progressives -- and managing to draw a television audience of amazing size with all this, it was almost as if there was a bit of indecision as to what to say at this rally. Was this politics? Or religion? Or something else?
In truth, I wasn't sure. There's a difference between spot-on political assessments of "social justice" and being Billy Graham. Of urging people to political action -- and religious action. Oddly, this is one of the reasons (in reverse) why Beck opponents in the world of liberal religion have lost members: they have presented themselves as religious leaders yet behave as if they were secular politicians. Beck seems to be struggling with being a secular talk radio commentator -- or the Reverend Glenn.
There's nothing wrong with either. But the latter, per se, seems not what he was about all of this time up until now.
FOR REASONS THAT HAVE nothing to do with Glenn Beck -- television, the celebrification of America, the eternally human tendency to be attracted to powerful personalities -- it is critical to remember that events of this nature are not about the speakers but the participants. Martin Luther King's famous speech will be remembered forever -- but it will be remembered because the American people understood how to bring about racial equality for all Americans using the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Principles King spent a career discussing.
In other words, while the headlines go to a King or a Beck -- it is in fact the principles and the millions working to make those principles a reality that are always the real story.
But if the leader is well-intentioned yet unclear, well, muddle ensues.
The 2010 election is not about personality X,Y or Z. With the greatest of respect to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, both of whom I like, neither this election -- nor any other -- can afford to be about Glenn or Sarah or Newt or Rush or Sean or Mark or the Tea Party or Rand Paul or Sharron Angle or Alaska's Joe Miller or anyone else.
Is God part of this election? Yes, as always in American history. Beck is fond of quoting what originally came from Lincoln, saying that it's not important whether God is on our side but whether we are on God's side. But having well and powerfully established himself as a man of politics, Beck seems to be going elsewhere. True? Untrue? No idea.
Conservatives would do well to remember that this election is simultaneously about none of the above -- and all of the above. It is about millions across America who are totally un-famous beyond their church, their village, town or city, their service club, their school, their military unit if serving.
The 2010 election -- and every day we all draw a breath -- was correctly summarized centuries ago by Edmund Burke when he spoke of the principles at stake in a "partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
The Beck rally, says Beck, was about prayer. About God. And God generally supplies the help. As John Fund reported over at the Wall Street Journal, the grass roots nature of this event was evident as hundreds of Tea Party members buckled down to do the hard work of making the event and other events associated with it actually happen and run smoothly. But the Tea Party as it has emerged has presented itself as a political movement concerned about economics and politics. Not a religious faith.
The conservative movement's success comes from, among other things, the very fact of its messiness. Burke never said it wouldn't be messy. It is totally uncoordinated, filled with vibrant personalities who are busy blossoming in their own way that is not someone else's way. To which one can only say: Amen! This is a central strength, never a weakness. Beck says the rally to him was about God and, with his brigade of 240 ministers and awards for Faith, Hope and Charity, he added a distinctly unique flavor that is his. Some watched and saw a direct connection to politics. To each his own.
Ronald Reagan never ever saw himself as anything other than what he was his entire, mature adult life -- an advocate for timeless conservative principles. The reason conservatives celebrate the life and presidency of this mortal human being was his thorough, in-the-bones understanding of the fact that the principles are timeless -- even if individual humans are not. To be a Reaganite is to take Reagan's lesson to heart.
Liberals are out there just going crazy waiting for Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or any other prominent conservative to take a fall -- so they can turn around and say to the country: "See? It doesn't work. It's all about them." Turning himself from talk radio and TV commentator Glenn to Reverend Glenn will surely be seen by some -- if in fact that's what happening -- as just such an opening.
If Glenn Beck hasn't yet figured out where he's going with all of this, all the more reason for conservatives to stay focused on principles.
Beck has to know this. He comes across as so remarkably open, educating himself and his audience as he goes along. This is what surely accounts for part of the enthusiastic response from his audience. So too does Sarah Palin get it.
But whether Americans see the Beck rally as a rally about God or a rally about American politics, without doubt what is also at play here is the absolute rebellion that is taking place across America. A rebellion of which Beck and Palin and Newt and the call for God are symptoms but not causes. The American people in 2010, not at all unlike the American people in 1776, have had it. As Angelo Codevilla has so devastatingly captured in his forthcoming book on America's Ruling Class, beyond any one issue they are simply done with the arrogance that is the "dismissal of the American people's intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance." They are done, more than done, with the self-selected class of their fellow citizens whose "principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows and operates by standards beyond others' comprehension."
THIS REBELLION HAS BEEN COMING for a very long time. Surely the 40-plus years of yanking God out of every public school and square plays a role in this upheaval. Take a good look around.
One of the most successful books in the last year has been Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.
What's particularly interesting about Levin's book is that it was written before the election of Barack Obama. Which is to say, that Levin understood exactly the continuing conservative revolution -- and that it was not, as its critics of the moment wishfully insisted, dead. A prediction made with some regularity since at least the day after Barry Goldwater's 1964 defeat.
On the contrary, the success of conservatism can be measured in multiples of ways, Levin's book sales but one.
Let's take Levin's own talk radio field. Rush Limbaugh is in a class all by himself. The story of his success is both personal and a tale of conservatism's genuine popularity. His influence as he patiently and entertainingly explains principle in terms of daily events is simply unmatched. There are others behind Rush, from Sean Hannity to Levin to Beck and so on. Each with his own unique style. America knows these people well.
Which means something in the real world of 2010 politics.
Has anyone paid attention to the success of Sean Hannity's Freedom Concerts? Here's a guy who spent his vacation-less August trekking from city to city putting on star-studded musical extravaganzas at the rate of two a weekend from Atlanta to Las Vegas to San Diego and Dallas to Cincinnati to name just a few locations. Sold out crowds. Tens and tens of thousands of people. Millions of dollars raised for a charity, the Freedom Alliance, which in turn has used its funds for, among other things, the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund. A program to help educate the kids of those who were disabled or lost their lives in the military. Hannity pays for chunks of this personally. And the concerts are always presented with the help of Alliance co-founder retired Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and a cast of hundreds.
Does no one think this means anything politically? That there's no message from all those people who show up to cheer on Hannity as he sings (sort of!) "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with Charlie Daniels fiddling away? Of course there's a message, and that message is about principles. Conservative principles.
Does no one really get the Sharron Angle story? Here is a conservative struggling in her Nevada primary race against more establishment, better-known and financed Republicans. Suddenly she is lifted from obscurity because Levin has taken up her cause -- and now she is the designated terror that Harry Reid is trying to use to scare Nevadans into giving him yet another endless term? Even as Reid's son tries to claim the state's governorship? Of course there's a message here -- a message about conservative principles.
Does no one understand the role of talk radio -- alongside Sarah Palin -- in Joe Miller's apparent lead over the establishment incumbent GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski? Yes, indeed, once again it was Levin at work. Levin plunged into Arizona, and took up the cause of McCain opponent J.D. Hayworth -- losing. But the loss is beside the point. The real point is Levin's understanding that these races for conservatism are won state by state, district by district, one vote at a time, doing the nitty-gritty of hard work all across America.
IT HAS BEEN BEYOND BREATHTAKINGLY foolish for liberals to take a look at the Tea Party movement and shut it out, dismissing the participants as just a bunch of racist, ignorant Nazi-loving nuts. Aside from being insultingly and deliberately bogus, it was mind-bogglingly stupid. A year ago I spent some time in the small town of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, while Senator Arlen Specter was conducting one of those now-famous raucous town hall meetings on health care. The astonished police told me there were at least 1,000 people outside on the streets. I spent time talking with those in the crowd. They were from all across the state. They had taken time off of work to drive to Lebanon. They came on their own. They did not, they made it clear, come because of anyone on the radio or television. They were mad. Furious about what they saw as, in the President's words, an attempt to "fundamentally transform" their country from a set of constitutional principles to some sort of statist utopia.
All of this hot success -- the conservative books, the talk radio shows, the summertime Beck rally and the Hannity concerts, the ratings of Fox News and the prominence of publications like the one you are reading -- combined with the Internet -- are in the process of bringing forth the next chapter in a serious philosophical movement that features a veritable universe of stars past and present discussing in Burkean fashion a timeless set of principles.
From the Edmund Burkes, John Lockes, Adam Smiths and Abraham Lincolns to a Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and on and on right down to, as was said in the famous Longfellow poem of Paul Revere's ride, "every Middlesex village and farm" -- the conservative revolution flowers. And yes, Beck is correct to include early American religious leaders in this long chain.
Make absolutely no mistake.
Glenn Beck is doing his thing, which only he can do and do well. This is no slam at Beck. It is just an expression of, well, not understanding where he's going with this. Those half million on the mall with him are now part of this chapter of the Conservative Revolution. Whether they were showing up for God or America or tax cuts or to support the troops, whatever it is or was is having an impact. And so too the thousands who showed up at Sean Hannity's Freedom Concerts are part of all of this. Yes, don't forget the people who bought -- and continue to buy --- Mark Levin's book. Or Laura Ingraham's or Ann Coulter's or Michelle Malkin's or -- yes again -- Glenn Beck's. Not to mention who those who voted for Sharron Angle or Joe Miller or conservative candidate X. Or those who tune in faithfully to Rush.
But never forget that the real hero here is, well, you. Or, as Beck might have it, the children of God.
The average American who gets out of bed every single day and raises a family, goes to work, pays the taxes, serves in the military or in some fashion is the driving force in their community.
And the average American is now in open rebellion from coast to coast. Against a ruling class bent on social engineering when they're not busy erasing American history.
The message is timeless. The principles sound. They are colorblind and reject attempts to divide by race, class or religion. And yes, they do have a core that comes from a Judeo-Christian heritage.
America, as Ronald Reagan use to say, is an idea. You can move to England yet you will never be an Englishman. You can move to France but you will never be French. But anyone can become an American (legally!). And once here, a realization takes hold, as Levin quotes Reagan in his book.
"Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."Conservatives, Levin noted in his book, need to get busy.
If the Beck rally, the Hannity concerts, the talk radio and Fox ratings, the book sales and the intensity factors of every poll out there are correct -- conservatives are busy.
Millions of you. All at the same time. All in your own way. God's children one and all.
To borrow from James Carville: It's the principles, stupid.
Can you say Amen!
American Spectator
Humility and Honesty About Iraq Can Inspire Trust
by Sarah Palin on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 2:01pm
Later today, President Obama will speak to the American people about Iraq. No doubt he will laud the “end of major combat operations” by the date he randomly selected some 18 months ago. His press secretary Robert Gibbs also gave us a glimpse of what else he might say, telling the Today Show this morning that ”What is certainly not up for question is that President Obama, then-candidate Obama, said that adding those 20,000 troops into Iraq would, indeed, improve the security situation, and it did.”
Iraq in 2010 is indeed a very long way from Iraq in 2006, when violence and sectarian conflict threatened complete chaos. But then-candidate Obama did not support the course that brought us here as his press secretary now claims. On January 10, 2007, when President Bush announced the surge, Senator Obama insisted that the surge would actually increase sectarian violence: “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” Barack Obama was clearly in opposition to the surge strategy.
Had we followed the course advocated by then-candidates Obama and Biden, the Iraq war would be remembered now as a crushing defeat for the United States and our allies. Al Qaeda in Iraq and Iranian supported extremists would have claimed victory over America – with grave implications for us throughout the region and the world. Iraq would have descended into full-scale civil war. Iraq’s neighbor would have likely been drawn into the conflict. Parts of Iraq would have been made a safe haven for terrorists to train and plan for attacks far beyond Iraqi borders.
Fortunately for all of us, these events did not occur. They did not occur because America changed strategy in Iraq. President Bush decided to increase our forces in Iraq and pursue a counterinsurgency strategy – a course long advocated by Republicans in Washington. This “surge” policy in 2007 was opposed by many – most notably and adamantly by Senators Obama and Biden. In October 2006, as the violence was spiraling out of control, Senator Obama actually advocated reducing our troop presence: “It is clear at this point that we cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve, and we have to do something significant to break the pattern that we’ve been in right now.”
In response to President Bush’s State of the Union address on January 23, 2007, Senator Obama said: “I don’t think the president’s strategy is going to work…My suggestion to the president has been that the only way we’re going to change the dynamic in Iraq and start seeing political commendation is actually if we create a system of phased redeployment. And, frankly, the president, I think, has not been willing to consider that option, not because it’s not militarily sound but because he continues to cling to the belief that somehow military solutions are going to lead to victory in Iraq.”
Senator Joe Biden, just before the surge was formally announced, actually declared: “If he surges another 20, 30 [thousand], or whatever number he’s going to, into Baghdad, it’ll be a tragic mistake.”
In May 2007, Senator Obama voted against funding our troops in Iraq. Reporters have insinuated that I haven’t been telling the truth on this fact, but consider the fact: he did not support additional troop funding. Had his position prevailed, our troops would have been forced to leave Iraq precipitously and chaos would have ensued. Goodness, even Senator Biden voted for the funding and had to admit this about Senator Obama and others who opposed it: “My colleagues voted against the funding to make a political point. There’s no political point worth my son’s life. There’s no political point worth anyone’s life.” As the mother of a soldier who spent his year in Iraq recently, I have to agree with Biden on that point.
As it became clear in the summer of 2007 that the surge strategy was working, Senator Obama was still stubbornly in denial about the success our American troops were having, saying: “My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.” What willful blindness he showed with that assessment.
And even in November 2007, when everyone could see the success of the surge in reducing violence and increasing political space in Iraq, Senator Obama said: “Finally, in 2006-2007, we started to see that, even after an election, George Bush continued to want to pursue a course that didn’t withdraw troops from Iraq but actually doubled them and initiated a surge and at that stage I said very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but we’re actually worsening, potentially, a situation there.”
As Americans tune in to watch President Obama, it is important to remember the facts. He opposed the surge. He predicted it would fail. He said it would make things worse even after it dramatically improved the situation. He voted to cut off funds for our brave soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines fighting in Iraq. For months he refused to accept that the surge he fought was actually a spectacular success. As President Obama usually likes to look backwards and declare the state of everything to be “George Bush’s fault,” my hope is that tonight he stays consistent and looks backwards, and in this case acknowledges that credit should be given where credit is due.
Along with the points that Bill Kristol made yesterday, I too have some suggestions for the president. President Obama, please show grace, humility and some honesty before the American people tonight. Please don’t declare “Mission Accomplished” and then saunter away with an assumption that your opposition to the Iraq strategy was key to our troops’ success. Please end the political posturing. Admit you were wrong about the surge. Recognize what our brave armed forces have achieved. Admit that the strategy long advocated by Republicans, proposed by President Bush, led by Generals Petraeus and Odierno, and executed by thousands of America’s finest – our brave men and women in uniform – brought violence under control and made responsible withdrawals possible. The more honest you are about the past, the more likely it is you will gain the support of the American people for your Iraq policy in the future. We need to be able to trust the White House war strategy, as our children’s future depends on it. Being honest with us tonight is a good starting point in building trust.
- Sarah Palin
Monday, August 30, 2010
Two Rallies in Washington D.C.: One Honored Dr King, The Other Spread Divisiveness
by Jeff Dunetz
Martin Luther King’s niece Dr. Alveda King, addressed the crowd of 3-500,000 with a plea for unity and prayer “in the public squares of America and in our schools.” She called for national unity by echoing her uncle’s declaring “I have a dream.”
Big Government
Unless you spent the a few weeks on a different planet, you knew that there would be two rallies in Washington D.C. on Saturday, one to honor Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., the other to restore Honor to America. In the days leading up to the events, there was much conjecture about each gathering. Liberals in the media blasted the Glenn Beck-run Restoring Honor rally predicting that it would be a political event filled with hatred divisiveness. At the same time they predicted the Al Sharpton-led rally would honor the memory of Dr. King. At the end of the day, it was the Glenn Beck rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that Honored Dr. King, while Sharpton’s taught divisiveness.
On August 28th 1963, Dr. King sent a message to all Americans, combining his great faith, his honor for all people he relayed his hope that together, people could realize the dream of America.
I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”Forty-Seven years later Al Sharpton and a host of speakers stood in front of a group of 3,000 people and declared that Reverend King’s dream was their property alone.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
“We will not stand silent as some seek to bamboozle Dr. King’s dream,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. “We reclaim the dream of Dr. King for the 21st century. We reclaim this dream because we are here to say we must be one nation. We stand on the shoulders of our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers.”Sharpton, who incited two anti-Semitic riots killing a total of nine people, continued to push a message of divisiveness.
Jaime Contreras, president of SEIU-32BJ, said those gathered at the Mall with Beck “represent angry white people and hate-mongering.” He added: “We will not let them stand in the way of the change we voted for!”
Avis Jones DeWeever, executive director of the National Council of Negro Women, drew thunderous roars when she challenged those gathered to stand up for their place. “Don’t let anyone tell you that they have the right to take their country back,” she said. “It’s our country, too. We will reclaim the dream. It was ours from the beginning.”
“They may have the mall, but we have the message. They may have the platform, but we have the dream.” Sharpton and other activists gathered to commemorate the 47th anniversary of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, then joined hands and walked 3 miles to the site of King’s future memorial. “This is our day and we ain’t giving it away,” said Sharpton.Dr. King did say that one day some of you will own my dream. He never said that some would own his message, and others had to stay away, he said that we should unite in faith and freedom:
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.Across town at the Lincoln Memorial, a much larger crowd heard a different message:
“I have a dream that America will pray and God will forgive us our sins and revive us our land,” King said. “On that day, we will all be able to lift every voice and sing of the love and honor that God desires of all his children.”Governor Palin’s message was also one of unity:
“We must not fundamentally transform America, as some would want,” Palin said. “We must restore America and restore her honor.”Beck’s message was return to God, no matter how you worship. He called on Americans to go back to their churches, back to synagogues, and back to mosques.
“Here today, at the crossroads of our history, may this day be the change point,” Palin said. “Look around you. You’re not alone. You are Americans! You have the same steel spine and the moral courage of Washington and Lincoln and Martin Luther King. It is in you. It will sustain you as it sustained them.”
“Something beyond imagination is happening. Something that is beyond man is happening,” Beck said” America today begins to turn back to God.”
By far the most most stirring part of his speech was about the power of the individual….”It happens the same way, it has since the Burning Bush. Moses. Freedom. And then they forget. They wander ’til they remember that God is the answer. He always has been. And then they begin to trust.”
“Somewhere in this crowd — I know it. I have been looking for the next George Washington. I can’t find him. I know he is in this crowd. He may be 8 years old, but this is the moment. This is the moment that he dedicates his life, that he sees giants around him. And 25 years from now, he will come not to this stair, but to those stairs. And he can proclaim, ‘I have a new dream.’ That must be our goal: to raise the next great monument.”
Two rallies in Washington DC, one emphasized that the legacy of Martin Luther King was theirs and theirs alone. The other didn’t claim any ownership of the MLK legacy, but promoted his belief that all God’s children should join hands and let freedom ring.
Forty-Seven years ago, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and said.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial, that legacy was honored and renewed.
Big Government
A Free Society And The Muslim Conundrum
The recent debate over the Ground Zero Mosque, now innocuously called “Park51″ by the AP and other nitwits, has been instructive on several levels.
We’ve learned a great deal about the liberal mindset that thinks a Christmas creche on a courthouse lawn, or a cross on a desolate Mojave hilltop, is a grave affront to the “separation of church and state” yet the building of a mosque/islamic community center/target beacon on land made available for development by the 9/11 terror attacks is a testimony to our tolerance.
We’ve also learned a great deal more about America’s islamic community and what that seems to mean for America in the future.
Case in point: last week’s Washington Post and a story headlined “Hostility across U.S. jars Muslim college students.”
Although the Muslim students hadn’t eaten since dawn, something besides food was on their minds as they loaded plates with tandoori chicken, chickpeas and rice at American University to break their Ramadan fast.The story details the whining of a bunch of rich, privileged muslim kids at American University about how bad things are for them in the United States. They’re attending a private university, a university that offers a special cafeteria offering for their religious observance and they don’t see the irony of bitching about “swelling hostility.”
For weeks, their faith had been under attack by some opponents of a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. Every time they turned on the TV, there were new reports of anti-Muslim sentiment: mosque construction being opposed hundreds of miles from Ground Zero; a Florida pastor vowing to burn copies of the Koran to mark the anniversary of Sept. 11; a poll showing that 43 percent of Americans hold unfavorable views of Muslims. And just this week, a Muslim cabbie was stabbed in New York.
All of it points to a swelling hostility that many of these students had scarcely known was there and that religious and political leaders worry could fuel alienation and radicalism among some young American Muslims.
But for the sake of argument, let’s color the principled opposition to the GZM in the worst possible light and stipulate for a couple of paragraphs that the opposition is rooted in religious bigotry.
So what?
The argument that this bigotry is somehow unusual is nothing more or less than a simple butchering of American history. This country has a long heritage of being less than welcoming to religious minorities. Bay Colony Puritans hanged Quakers. Dissenters were banished from Anglican colonies. Catholics were subjected to virtual pogroms in New York, Philadelphia and Boston in the 1840s and 1850s and the shameful legacy of anti-Catholicism is still evident in 37 states by way of the Blaine Amendments. Mormons. Jehovah Witnesses. Etc. So to say that being the object of religious hostility and bigotry makes muslims somehow unique is ridiculous.
But this isn’t about bigotry. This argument is really about monumental arrogance and a lack of sense of proportion that ultimately calls into question the degree to which any but the most secular muslims will ever be the part of the mainstream of American political culture.
The attacks perpetrated on the United States were the culmination of a long series of attacks upon Americans and American interests by a muslim enemy dating back to the late 1960s. Though Israel is often trotted out as the reason for these attacks that is little more than a smoke screen.
The attempt by the adherents of the GZM, both muslim and quislings, try to use a wave of the hand to make this history go away but the reason that the opposition is so deep is because we all remember the bombings and hijackings that preceded 9/11. So the inability of those pushing the GZM to admit that reasonable people could object to the GZM in light of our recent history with islam and islamists, or to even attempt to understand the objections, speaks much more about the attitude and motivation of the adherents than it does about the opposition.
The GZM is opposed by something approaching three-quarters of all Americans. We don’t know the underlying reason for that opposition but many surely see it as a calculated insult. As a tawdry in-your-face gesture designed to use our open society as a means of allowing the GZM backers and islamists to laugh in their sleeve at what they have accomplished. I say this is a calculated insult rather than a effort a “bridge building”, because any true effort at bridge building would have had some symbolic dimension like, for instance, an offer to rebuild St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church which was destroyed on 9/11 at Ground Zero as part of the redevelopment of the area.
This kind of behavior would have been an unremarkable though churlish behavior act were it not for the subtext being broadcast by the GZM supporters and the muslim community. From the Washington Post article:
“My brother came home one night really upset,” said Asma Mian, a 20-year-old junior from Potomac. He’d encountered a man on the Metro who was railing against the proposed community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan.We need to pause for a second to understand this fully.
It rattled her to see her 17-year-old brother so emotional. “He barely gets involved in politics. He’s not extremely religious or anything,” she said, adding that people his age can be quick to take offense. They “feel like it’s more a personal attack. It’s more mortifying than it would be if you were older.”
That anger, youth leaders and terrorism experts warn, could push some young Muslims into the arms of such extremists as U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, who has been linked to several terrorist plots. In his recruiting efforts, Aulaqi often portrays Islam as being under attack by the West.
The most vociferous mosque opponents “do not know what they are doing,” said Yahya Hendi, the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University. “They are radicalizing people.”
We have a young muslim, whose family is established enough to live in Potomac, MD (median family income, $177,000) and front the AU tuition and expenses for at least one of his siblings, who is upset that someone voiced opposition to the GZM. He wasn’t beaten or threatened or in any way insulted. He either heard or was involved in a conversation in which one party was against the GZM. While we can write his outrage off to the Walter-Mittyism of a 17 year old, we are less able to rationalize the statements by people who should know better. When we are told that if the mosque is not built there will be more islamic radicals and when the muslim chaplain at Georgetown and other “leaders” warn that Americans exercising their rights as citizens could “radicalize” people this is not a cry for acceptance, this is narcissism on steroids.
Above I mentioned the difficulties many religious minorities have had in the United States. The one thing these minorities never did was resort to violence because they weren’t welcomed everywhere. Sometimes they set up parallel institutions. Without sacrificing their religious doctrines they strove for accommodation with their neighbors. More often than not by their daily actions and behavior they gave the lie to any accusation that they weren’t loyal Americans. They also realized that our politics is analogized to a bare-knuckle fight for a reason and they actively engaged in that arena.
One hesitates with generalities because rarely are they all encompassing, but with muslims in America we are seeing a much different behavior. The attitude we are seeing is one that demands acceptance rather than acknowledging that acceptance is earned in a free society. Indeed the demand goes beyond mere acceptance to an implied threat of violence if that acceptance is not granted.
Were that attitude limited to coddled 17-year-olds on the Metro then we could laugh it off. But the fact that influential people within that community see the threat — or want us to see the threat — as real speaks to a culture that is incapable of taking criticism. It also belies a culture that on the one hand assures us that most musims are not like those who carried out the 9/11 attacks (or those that funded them, or those who trained them, or those who gave them travel documents, or those who just thought America getting its comeuppance was grand) but in the next breath tells us that unless we cease criticism they will, indeed, become just like them. An assertion which, if it is to be believed, certainly calls the initial statement into question.
The question, therefore, concerning the GZM has nothing to do with religious bigotry. The question is what role can any group ever play in our free and often rancorous society if, by its own admission, it will resort to violence to avenge even perceived insult?
Redstate
Sunday, August 29, 2010
More Proof by Half
More proof of the morally bankrupt media's inability to actually report news objectively ..... as if we needed more proof:
Just when you thought "the media" couldn't make bigger fools of themselves, along comes their buffoonish treatment of the attendance at yesterday's Glenn Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial. Most danced around the issue, falling back on the stock "thousands" or "tens of thousands" weasels. But there was one twit among them who spilled the beans. CBS went on the record: Glenn Beck Rally Attracts Estimated 87,000.
Fortunately, we have better ways to judge the size of the crowd than to rely on Dan Rather's news organization. MLK's famed 1963 "I Have a Dream" rally was held on the same ground, and the accepted figure is 250,000. (thanks to Dan F)
Judge for yourself. Do you think Beck drew less than half?
NB: Open field filled with people on the left was over grown with trees and not available to people in 1963.
And Sharpton's rally, which the clowns positioned as the anti-Beck rally, "attracted" 3,000 and was given the same media coverage as Beck's "Restore America." Is it any wonder the American people are misinformed?
OT but related: Martin Luther King would have despised Sharpton.
Atlas Shrugs
Insidious, Non-violent Jihad–More Dangerous than Violence
Aug 28th 2010 at 12:04 pm in Islamic extremism, Terrorism, ground zero mosque, sharia
I am enormously thankful that the Ground Zero Mosque (GZM) debate is still raging. It is the first “stealth Jihad” issue that promises to help bridge the gap between Right and Left. If we check our egos at the door, right and wrong will trump Right and Left every time. As I pointed out in “Black and White,” my first blog for BigPeace, this GZM issue is so black and white that even left-leaning independents and liberals cannot in good conscience support it. There are already one hundred mosques in Manhattan; the only reasons to place a giant mosque at Ground Zero are built on a foundation of inexcusable insensitivity or non-violent Islamic extremism.
The far left ideology that encourages a Muslim center, mosque, shrine, or triumphalist structure of any kind at this consecrated ground is simply wrong. There, I said it. It’s not really a partisan issue; it’s a lucid, rational, and logical one. It’s a sad commentary that even when we know right from wrong, we are pulled Right and Left. The New York Times Magazine Sunday and TIME (current cover story: “Is America Islamophobic?”), both media giants with “Time” in their name are embarrassingly anachronistic with this week’s articles accusing all of us critical of a Muslim shrine at Ground Zero as being xenophobic. They will fail to deflect the real issue with their blatantly false charges of bigotry as their magic pens of influence finally wane due to this lightening rod GZM issue awakening America.
I beseech conservatives to refrain from gloating now that a clear majority of Americans are on their side of this issue; it isn’t easy for liberals to embrace the right position when it is the Right position. In fairness, conservatives would struggle if the situation were reversed. With this in mind, a little humility can help narrow an ideological chasm that is truly our greatest threat to establishing a re-united America that can never be defeated. (Re-United States, CamHouse Press 2010)
However, and for our less conservative brethren who don’t quite get it yet, I’d like to present a little Poli-Sci lesson:
One of our greatest misconceptions in America is that Islamic extremism is defined by terror. In fact, it is not.
Terrorism is just one tool in the Jihadist’s armament. Jihad has two faces: violent and nonviolent, but each shares the same goal or world vision—that ancient Shari’a law and culture must have dominion over all peoples. This is non-negotiable and America is the greatest impediment to this vision; this therefore places us squarely in the gun sights of all Islamists. The impatient Islamist uses terrorism, but the patient Islamist uses slow cultural transformation and “lawfare” to steadily erode the West’s mostly Christian culture and replace it with one that is progressively more Islamic in nature.
I believe that this slow Jihad poses the greater threat. Terrorism elicits some type of reaction from us; slow Jihad rarely does. Although terror is frightening, deadly to its ill-fated victims, and capable of causing serious economic havoc, it does not pose an existential threat to us. This is not say that we are not in danger of losing a city—or more likely, two or three, as Al Qaeda loves simultaneous strikes—to a radiological-dirty bomb or some other nefarious act, but they will never defeat us militarily. Slow Jihad flies under the radar and therefore fails to cause us to react—this is a perilous strategy that does threaten our freedom and our way of life.
The GZM is a great example of the slice-by-slice approach to defeating a much stronger enemy; slice-by-slice doesn’t elicit much reaction from us. Toss in a little politically-correct appeasement and accusations of anti-multiculturalism or bigotry, and we barely react at all. And when we do, the mainstream media just labels it “Islamophobia.” The way I see it, the Left can either continue to function as the unwitting mercenary army of our Islamist enemy, or they can do the right thing—in this case, join us in vigorous opposition to the GZM.
Lesson over.
I am enormously thankful that the Ground Zero Mosque (GZM) debate is still raging. It is the first “stealth Jihad” issue that promises to help bridge the gap between Right and Left. If we check our egos at the door, right and wrong will trump Right and Left every time. As I pointed out in “Black and White,” my first blog for BigPeace, this GZM issue is so black and white that even left-leaning independents and liberals cannot in good conscience support it. There are already one hundred mosques in Manhattan; the only reasons to place a giant mosque at Ground Zero are built on a foundation of inexcusable insensitivity or non-violent Islamic extremism.
The far left ideology that encourages a Muslim center, mosque, shrine, or triumphalist structure of any kind at this consecrated ground is simply wrong. There, I said it. It’s not really a partisan issue; it’s a lucid, rational, and logical one. It’s a sad commentary that even when we know right from wrong, we are pulled Right and Left. The New York Times Magazine Sunday and TIME (current cover story: “Is America Islamophobic?”), both media giants with “Time” in their name are embarrassingly anachronistic with this week’s articles accusing all of us critical of a Muslim shrine at Ground Zero as being xenophobic. They will fail to deflect the real issue with their blatantly false charges of bigotry as their magic pens of influence finally wane due to this lightening rod GZM issue awakening America.
I beseech conservatives to refrain from gloating now that a clear majority of Americans are on their side of this issue; it isn’t easy for liberals to embrace the right position when it is the Right position. In fairness, conservatives would struggle if the situation were reversed. With this in mind, a little humility can help narrow an ideological chasm that is truly our greatest threat to establishing a re-united America that can never be defeated. (Re-United States, CamHouse Press 2010)
However, and for our less conservative brethren who don’t quite get it yet, I’d like to present a little Poli-Sci lesson:
One of our greatest misconceptions in America is that Islamic extremism is defined by terror. In fact, it is not.
Terrorism is just one tool in the Jihadist’s armament. Jihad has two faces: violent and nonviolent, but each shares the same goal or world vision—that ancient Shari’a law and culture must have dominion over all peoples. This is non-negotiable and America is the greatest impediment to this vision; this therefore places us squarely in the gun sights of all Islamists. The impatient Islamist uses terrorism, but the patient Islamist uses slow cultural transformation and “lawfare” to steadily erode the West’s mostly Christian culture and replace it with one that is progressively more Islamic in nature.
I believe that this slow Jihad poses the greater threat. Terrorism elicits some type of reaction from us; slow Jihad rarely does. Although terror is frightening, deadly to its ill-fated victims, and capable of causing serious economic havoc, it does not pose an existential threat to us. This is not say that we are not in danger of losing a city—or more likely, two or three, as Al Qaeda loves simultaneous strikes—to a radiological-dirty bomb or some other nefarious act, but they will never defeat us militarily. Slow Jihad flies under the radar and therefore fails to cause us to react—this is a perilous strategy that does threaten our freedom and our way of life.
The GZM is a great example of the slice-by-slice approach to defeating a much stronger enemy; slice-by-slice doesn’t elicit much reaction from us. Toss in a little politically-correct appeasement and accusations of anti-multiculturalism or bigotry, and we barely react at all. And when we do, the mainstream media just labels it “Islamophobia.” The way I see it, the Left can either continue to function as the unwitting mercenary army of our Islamist enemy, or they can do the right thing—in this case, join us in vigorous opposition to the GZM.
Lesson over.
Tolerance for the Intolerant
Aug 29th 2010 at 9:10 am in Islamic extremism, ground zero mosque
“We are Americans, each with an equal right to worship and pray where we choose,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week. “There is nowhere in the five boroughs of New York City that is off limits to any religion.”
Our founding documents guarantee that — and not just in the five boroughs.
But the unprecedented furor over plans for a mosque complex at Ground Zero tells us there is a coalescing sense that Islam is more than a “mere” religion as non-Muslims conceive of “religion.” It is becoming clear to people, despite the gag of political correctness, that there’s a reason “Islam” means “submission.” Islam not only seeks to order the spiritual realm inhabited by a Muslim and Allah, it lays out a doctrine to control every believer’s behavior (down to the most intimate bodily functions) as well as the public life of the collective.
Doctrinally, Islam is thus “doubly totalitarian” in the words of G.H. Bousquet, a leading scholar of Islamic law, in accordance with the body of law known as Shariah. Under Shariah, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech are outlawed with extreme sanction (those who leave Islam fear death to this day), while non-Muslims and women exist as legal inferiors to the Muslim man. Meanwhile, jihad — holy war to extend Islamic rule — is a sacred command. And I have the books that prove it.
In other words, this isn’t Islam because I say so, but because its sacred, authoritative, mainstream, non-hijacked, untwisted texts say so. It is the religious and political and legal ideology that inspired the al-Qaida killers on 9/11, and it is the religious and political and legal ideology that inspires the mosque complex at Ground Zero. And I didn’t come up with that, folks; I just happened to notice, and thought you should know.
The crucial fact is, whether we are brutalized by acts of jihad or confused by acts of dawa (proselytizing), their goal is identical: more Islamic law. And this end will always justify the means as seen, for example, back in 2005 when hundreds of acclaimed Islamic clerics and heads of state gathered in Amman, Jordan. There, quite anti-climactically, they issued the “Amman Message” that declares that no Muslim who adheres to a recognized school of Islam may be labeled an apostate. Subtext: Not even Osama bin Laden could be, in effect, ex-communicated or otherwise blackballed or removed from good standing by these Islamic authorities. One of the 552 signatories was Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
Bloomberg types are blind to these things, from the Shariah-spreading efforts of Rauf (noted here last week), to dictates of Shariah that subvert constitutional liberties. So, blindly, they sound platitudes in Islam’s defense, plucking emotional chords that resonate with Americans about “liberty,” “tolerance” and “religious freedom” on behalf of a belief system that, ultra-ironically, outlaws them all.
Bloomberg actually suggested that a failure to erect the mosque complex would “undermine our soldiers,” “our foreign policy objectives” — even “our national security.”
“Just as we fought communism by showing the world the power of free markets and free elections,” said Bloomberg, “so must we fight terrorism by showing the world the power of religious freedom and cultural tolerance. Freedom and tolerance will always defeat tyranny and terrorism — that is the great lesson of the 20th century, and we must not abandon it here in the 21st.”
It almost sounds wonderful — until the froth dries and you remember that fighting tyranny is never as easy as show-and-tell. This is something that victims of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, for example, could explain to the mayor. Freedom and tolerance, regardless of how well they are exemplified, don’t have a chance against tyranny and terrorism if they aren’t vigilantly protected.
Indeed, tolerance is doomed if it is extended to the intolerant, something philosopher Karl Popper worked out in the last century. “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
For the sake of the Twin Towers that’s a duty.
“We are Americans, each with an equal right to worship and pray where we choose,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week. “There is nowhere in the five boroughs of New York City that is off limits to any religion.”
Our founding documents guarantee that — and not just in the five boroughs.
But the unprecedented furor over plans for a mosque complex at Ground Zero tells us there is a coalescing sense that Islam is more than a “mere” religion as non-Muslims conceive of “religion.” It is becoming clear to people, despite the gag of political correctness, that there’s a reason “Islam” means “submission.” Islam not only seeks to order the spiritual realm inhabited by a Muslim and Allah, it lays out a doctrine to control every believer’s behavior (down to the most intimate bodily functions) as well as the public life of the collective.
Doctrinally, Islam is thus “doubly totalitarian” in the words of G.H. Bousquet, a leading scholar of Islamic law, in accordance with the body of law known as Shariah. Under Shariah, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech are outlawed with extreme sanction (those who leave Islam fear death to this day), while non-Muslims and women exist as legal inferiors to the Muslim man. Meanwhile, jihad — holy war to extend Islamic rule — is a sacred command. And I have the books that prove it.
In other words, this isn’t Islam because I say so, but because its sacred, authoritative, mainstream, non-hijacked, untwisted texts say so. It is the religious and political and legal ideology that inspired the al-Qaida killers on 9/11, and it is the religious and political and legal ideology that inspires the mosque complex at Ground Zero. And I didn’t come up with that, folks; I just happened to notice, and thought you should know.
The crucial fact is, whether we are brutalized by acts of jihad or confused by acts of dawa (proselytizing), their goal is identical: more Islamic law. And this end will always justify the means as seen, for example, back in 2005 when hundreds of acclaimed Islamic clerics and heads of state gathered in Amman, Jordan. There, quite anti-climactically, they issued the “Amman Message” that declares that no Muslim who adheres to a recognized school of Islam may be labeled an apostate. Subtext: Not even Osama bin Laden could be, in effect, ex-communicated or otherwise blackballed or removed from good standing by these Islamic authorities. One of the 552 signatories was Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
Bloomberg types are blind to these things, from the Shariah-spreading efforts of Rauf (noted here last week), to dictates of Shariah that subvert constitutional liberties. So, blindly, they sound platitudes in Islam’s defense, plucking emotional chords that resonate with Americans about “liberty,” “tolerance” and “religious freedom” on behalf of a belief system that, ultra-ironically, outlaws them all.
Bloomberg actually suggested that a failure to erect the mosque complex would “undermine our soldiers,” “our foreign policy objectives” — even “our national security.”
“Just as we fought communism by showing the world the power of free markets and free elections,” said Bloomberg, “so must we fight terrorism by showing the world the power of religious freedom and cultural tolerance. Freedom and tolerance will always defeat tyranny and terrorism — that is the great lesson of the 20th century, and we must not abandon it here in the 21st.”
It almost sounds wonderful — until the froth dries and you remember that fighting tyranny is never as easy as show-and-tell. This is something that victims of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, for example, could explain to the mayor. Freedom and tolerance, regardless of how well they are exemplified, don’t have a chance against tyranny and terrorism if they aren’t vigilantly protected.
Indeed, tolerance is doomed if it is extended to the intolerant, something philosopher Karl Popper worked out in the last century. “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
For the sake of the Twin Towers that’s a duty.
The Honor of a Great People
Posted at 12:00 pm on August 29, 2010 by Doctor Zero
Three hundred thousand people gathered in the Washington Mall on August 28, at the invitation of radio and TV host Glenn Beck, to discuss restoring the honor of the American people. How did a great people come to lose their honor?
It certainly hasn’t been lost by all of us. Individuals, families, and communities across America never broke faith with the noble traditions of self-reliance, responsibility, and adventure that forged this honorable nation. Such people can be found in every neighborhood of every city… but the nation as a whole has lost its way.
We dishonor ourselves when we tolerate the use of our fighting men and women as pawns in a political game. As long as they stand in harm’s way, we should accept no insult or slander against them. Robust criticism of the policy makers who declare and end hostilities is fair and welcome… but there is a line between politicians and soldiers, and it is easily visible to honorable people. We should have nothing but contempt for the likes of Code Pink. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin’s political career should have ended the day after he compared our service members to Nazis. There is no place for such creatures in the Congress of a nation that answers the dedication and sacrifice of its veterans with love and respect. In a rough economy with an uncertain future, Beck’s rally raised $5.5 million to help the families of special-operations soldiers killed in battle. That is a strong step in the right direction.
We dishonor ourselves when we create massive obligations with unsustainable financing. This shows disrespect to the future, and a craven refusal to face the realities of today. If time is money, then madcap deficit spending steals the time of the future… draining it away like so much sand down the neck of a broken hourglass. As parents love their children, we should be mindful of the future, and eager to shoulder our current burdens instead of passing them along, with interest. We cannot know the shape of tomorrow, or what hardships they may be facing when the bills for our indulgences come due.
We dishonor ourselves when we declare the rights and freedoms of our fellow citizens to be conditional, and subject to our needs. Free people do not expect the State to confiscate and ration. They don’t subcontract the design of the future to political appointees. They understand such designs require obedience, and obedience requires compulsion. You cannot “honor” a neighbor you deem unfit to manage his own affairs.
There is no honor to be found in the pursuit of a perfect State to rule an inadequate people.
We dishonor ourselves when we embrace death as the solution to inconvenient people.
We dishonor ourselves when we deny the possibility of progress to embrace tribal hatreds. Race and feminist hustlers peddle a message that says the vast majority of people cannot be trusted to show common decency to minorities and women. We’ve had enough of this toxic superstition. Precious lives have been wasted, and ended, because there is power and profit to be gained in pretending the Civil Rights Act happened yesterday, and slavery ended the day before that. Where is the honor In shrieking that people who disagree with your politics are “interchangeable with the KKK?” An ideology so weak that it must resort to these underhanded tactics is garbage unfit for the intellectual consumption of a proud people. Those who are foolish enough to ignore the evidence of their eyes and ears, and consume that garbage, will rediscover their honor after they find their self-respect.
Most crucially, we dishonor ourselves when we forget we “have the same steel spine and the moral courage of Washington and Lincoln and Martin Luther King,” as Sarah Palin said at the Restoring Honor rally. We remain the proud inheritors of a revolutionary philosophy, the children of vision and industry. We have not diminished into timid weaklings, unworthy of the trust of our ruling class. Our land is still abundant, and filled with parents who want to make a better life for their children. Why should we listen to assurances that our future will be one of decline, where children hear their parents mourn better times from distant memory? Why should we accept that ten percent and more of our population must remain unemployed forever? Why should we excuse the failure of an incompetent Administration by believing we became helpless and destitute in just a few short years, and are now obliged to provide limitless resources to our caretakers?
We have listened too long to the poisonous whispers of those who say we’re too old and feeble to stand up and deal with our own problems. The doom they have written for us can be swept aside like so many cobwebs. Honorable people do not fear risk and challenge. We dishonor ourselves by believing we have no moral claim on the entirety of our labor, or responsibility for the maintenance of our needs. We dishonor ourselves by paying trillions to hear the same old fairy tale about limitless entitlements distributed by friendly giants wearing power ties. The American people have wasted enough time reading the elaborate limited warranty on the inside of the coffin lid our Left is preparing to nail shut.
We reclaim our honor by turning away from those who believe the great mass of us are beneath their contempt, and compassion is best expressed through domination. They have no power we didn’t give them, which means they have no power we cannot take away. Let us begin.
Cross-posted at www.doczero.org.
Doctor Zero: Year One now available from Amazon.com!
This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
From Its Lofty Perch, Smug, Intolerant MSM Roots for New American Civil War
Diane Sawyer is a racist. Matt Lauer is a racist. Charlie Gibson is a racist. Wolf Blitzer is a racist. Katie Couric is a racist. Kiran Chetry is a racist. Chris Matthews is a racist. Ed Schultz is a racist. Keith Olbermann is a racist. Gary Tuchman is a racist. Elizabeth Vargas is a racist. Sharyl Attkisson is a racist. Anderson Cooper is a racist. George Stephanopoulos is a racist. David Gregory is a racist. Chuck Todd is a racist. Rick Sanchez is a racist. Melissa Stark is a racist, and for those of you whom I left out (personnel and outlets), it’s just due to space.
Not only that, but they want racial violence. It’ll be a great story, it’ll help their chosen political party, and maybe even discredit some conservative talkers.
Now, I’m sure the aforementioned big heads may be all offended.
Tough.
How does it feel?
Almost every broadcast and cable news entity repeats the action line that the Tea Party is racist. They’ve done so without any hard evidence, in fact they had to rely on Media Matters to Photoshop racist signs and the failed Crash The Tea Party losers to smear a whole group of Americans as evil haters. With the looming Glenn Beck “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial, the professional news media is doing what it does best: select and disseminate the news they agree with and thus to us it to tarnish those they don’t.
And all it takes are willing dupes….
Tea Party Spells KKK, Rights Leader SaysBy invoking the Ku Klux Klan, Rev. Fauntroy once again parroted the notion that Glenn Beck/Tea Party supporters are racist, and he did so at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. He obviously knew by using such language, the media would continue its symbiotic relationship with race-baiters and run with it.
The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, the non-voting delegate who represented the District of Columbia from 1971 to 1991, called on African-Americans to organize a “new coalition of conscience” to rebut the rally scheduled for Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial featuring Fox News pundit Glenn Beck and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
“We are going to take on the barbarism of war, the decadence of racism, and the scourge of poverty, that the Ku Klux — I meant to say the Tea Party,” Fauntroy told a news conference today at the National Press Club. “You all forgive me, but I — you have to use them interchangeably.”
Curiously, three weeks ago prominent black conservatives (some aligned with the Tea Party Express) came together for a press conference at… the National Press Club! Much of the major news media was in attendance as black conservatives denounced the cavalier use of the race card by the NAACP.
There were also eyewitness accounts of laughter by media members at the conclusion of the presser.
That press conference lasted close to two hours yet only one sentence by Tea Party Express activist Selena Owens was all that made the airwaves. Six seconds out of 111 minutes. One condescending column ran on Salon.com and CNN’s Shannon Travis wrote a piece online for which the comments were disabled after a few hours because his readers were becoming a tad intolerant; dare I say racist…?
But Fauntroy uses inflammatory language and ABC News treats this as breaking news.
While other Tea Party groups are receiving death threats and race-baiters are getting more attention that they deserve, the media elite are playing a very dangerous game just to further a political agenda. While they sit back in their make-up chairs, hoping for violent footage to codify their assertions of conservative racism, real people are at risk. Emotions are being ratcheted up, verbiage is becoming confrontational, and the media cowards who already have their “conservative/Glenn Beck/Tea Party goers are extreme, violence-prone Klan members” narrative in place will sit back in air-conditioned studios hoping for bloody b-roll.
The left and their media are desperate. With only two major events left before the midterm elections, they need to paint conservatives with a broad, racist brush to salvage the Democrat majority, and if there is collateral damage, so be it. The media royalty will act all shocked on-air while high-fiving and fist-bumping off.
It must be nice to think you can look down on millions of Americans you believe you can manipulate and if any ugliness happens at the Beck or 9/12 events, they will look the other way, devoid of conscience.
You know, like the Klan.
Big Journalism
The Emotionally And Politically Bankrupt Left Was Not Happy Today
Any movement that can bring from 300 - 500 thousand men, women and children to Washington is a significant one - an American one.That was as true on August 28th, 1963, as it was today, even if it took time for all of America to interpret Martin Luther King, Jr's Dream.
But despite being American, today's left can't access the dreams of the majority of Americans. The news and events of the past year have identified them as the out of touch minority most of us always knew they were. They haven't gotten near as much as they wanted to from Obama. Yet, America is already rejecting him for whatever amount he gave them at all.
Think Progress attempts to sterilize today of any emotion. No surprise, it is always and only about politics to the Left, even when they are winning: Political Rally Or Not? We Report, You Decide.
Crooks and Liars pretends to sleep through it. But I gather they're too frightened for much sleep, otherwise, they wouldn't attempt to cover themselves with the race card: Snoring Honor: Beck's big rally just a long-winded and boring sermon. And boy, was the crowd white.
Bob Herbert at the New York Times is mortified that the dream King offered to all of America might slip a blacks and progressives only grasp that has turned it more into a nightmare, than a dream. He doesn't want it to actually become America's dream, as King intended. It does too much to empower Herbert's politics for him to want that. Today, Herbert's dream, stolen from King, has nothing to do with equality. It's been twisted into a superficial and often ugly means of gaining and holding onto political power.
Hundreds of thousands of people in DC and no doubt more all across America were better than Bob Herbert today, though he'll never admit it. Who, really, is the ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure here? It's a rhetorical question, one with a rather obvious answer given the disparity in tone between Herbert and Beck and Palin. And I'm not even a big fan of Beck's.
America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure.
Talking Points Memo scrambles for whatever angle it can come up with to diminish the event, humor, accusation, division, the usual tactics. But that's all they are and there's barely any emotion or energy in them, as is the case across nearly all of the Left today.
They don't have a ticket to the party and, by and large, when it comes to the type of vision for America Restoring Honor represented today, they are politically and emotionally bankrupt. They can't afford a ticket and wouldn't buy one, even if they could. They invested all their capital in 2006 and 2008 with Obama.
Now, a year and a half into Obama's term, four years after taking the House, it is looking very much like a losing bet. And the party that is America at its best is moving ... and moving on without them.
Man, it must suck to be them and miss such a wonderful show. But that's entertainment!
Riehl World View
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The 'End of the Beginning' on Shariah?
Frank Gaffney
08/24/2010
As I looked out at the thousands of people assembled near Ground Zero on Sunday to oppose the construction of a megamosque there, I was reminded of Winston Churchill's famous line that enspirited Britain at the first sign the tide was turning in World War II: "Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
To be sure, the rally held two blocks from the World Trade Center was not a decisive defeat of the enemy like that dealt by the storied British "Desert Rats" to Hitler's Afrika Korps in November 1942. But there was something pivotal about the fact that throngs of ordinary Americans - many of them family or friends of those who died on 9/11 - had come together to stand for hours in an intermittent rain not just to contest the construction of a megamosque at a wholly inappropriate location, but in informed opposition to the impetus behind that mosque: shariah.
In fact, throughout the crowd could be seen signs with just the word "shariah" lettered in dripping, blood-red ink. The prospect that the tide is beginning now to turn in our generation's War for the Free World can be found in those signs. They bespeak a recognition of the danger posed by the brutally repressive, totalitarian and anti-constitutional program that is espoused by the authorities of Islam. Shariah, the law of Saudi Arabia and Iran, is what Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the prime-mover behind the Ground Zero mosque, says he wants to "bring to America."
The assembled union workers, firefighters, police officers, Patriot Guard bikers and other regular folks were addressed by a succession of citizen activists, community leaders and 9/11 family members. The thunderous response to patriotic speeches and songs about freedom and the threat posed to it by people l like those who toppled the once-adjacent World Trade Center rang in the canyons of Lower Manhattan and - due to the massive media presence - across the land.
When my turn came to speak, I actually thanked Imam Rauf. For, in his overreaching ambition to build what he first dubbed the "Ground Zero Mosque," Rauf unwittingly and unintentionally created a "teachable moment" about shariah, and what he and others like him are doing to insinuate it into this country.
As a result most especially of President Obama's ill-advised decision on August 13th to embroil himself in the debate over the mosque, millions of Americans are now opposing its construction in proximity to some of our most hallowed ground. Our countrymen are also becoming more knowledgeable about shariah and why simply moving this advocate and his Islamic "cultural center" complex a few blocks away will not mitigate the danger they pose.
Specifically, the public is learning of the obligation on shariah's adherents to impose this toxic program everywhere via jihad - holy war, waged by violence or by stealth. Thanks to the Ground Zero mosque controversy, Americans are also getting a crash-course on the preeminent perpetrator of the stealthy form of "civilization jihad," the Muslim Brotherhood. While its tactics may differ from, say, al Qaeda's, the Brotherhood's objectives are identical: the supremacy of Islam and the establishment of a theocratic ruler, the Caliph, who is to govern worldwide in accordance with shariah.
As spokesmen from various Brotherhood front groups (notably, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Muslim American Society and the Muslim Public Affairs Council) have been vociferously demanding that the construction of a megamosque is a test of our religious tolerance, more and more of us are realizing that this is what is known in shariah as taqqiya, lying for the faith.
The crowd on Sunday understood that, no matter how often the Brotherhood's operatives and their non-Muslim apologists and enablers assert otherwise, the United States is not intolerant of the practice of Islam; the hundred or so mosques in New York City alone attest to that. Rather, the Brothers endlessly make such claims as part of the stealth jihad. Their playbook calls for them cynically to use our civil liberties to suppress opposition to the insinuation here of the most intolerant doctrine of all: shariah.
As public awareness of and concern about shariah intensifies, the Muslim Brotherhood and its friends are employing taqqiya frantically in the hope of maintaining the obscuration so critical to their stealth jihad. Notably, on the margins of Sunday's event, Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council - who attended Obama's iftar dinner on the 13th - tried to deflect criticism of Shariah, saying it is subject to various interpretations. He and his friends would have us believe that the jihad it orders means nothing more than "internal struggle" to practice one's faith properly. Some, like Feisal Rauf, go so far as to insist that shariah is compatible with the U.S. Constitution.
Fortunately, not all Muslims adhere to or seek to impose shariah. If we start in a concerted way to empower those that do not, and effectively counter those - like the Muslim Brotherhood -- that do, we may just be at the end of the beginning of this war to keep America shariah-free.
Townhall
As I looked out at the thousands of people assembled near Ground Zero on Sunday to oppose the construction of a megamosque there, I was reminded of Winston Churchill's famous line that enspirited Britain at the first sign the tide was turning in World War II: "Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
To be sure, the rally held two blocks from the World Trade Center was not a decisive defeat of the enemy like that dealt by the storied British "Desert Rats" to Hitler's Afrika Korps in November 1942. But there was something pivotal about the fact that throngs of ordinary Americans - many of them family or friends of those who died on 9/11 - had come together to stand for hours in an intermittent rain not just to contest the construction of a megamosque at a wholly inappropriate location, but in informed opposition to the impetus behind that mosque: shariah.
In fact, throughout the crowd could be seen signs with just the word "shariah" lettered in dripping, blood-red ink. The prospect that the tide is beginning now to turn in our generation's War for the Free World can be found in those signs. They bespeak a recognition of the danger posed by the brutally repressive, totalitarian and anti-constitutional program that is espoused by the authorities of Islam. Shariah, the law of Saudi Arabia and Iran, is what Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the prime-mover behind the Ground Zero mosque, says he wants to "bring to America."
The assembled union workers, firefighters, police officers, Patriot Guard bikers and other regular folks were addressed by a succession of citizen activists, community leaders and 9/11 family members. The thunderous response to patriotic speeches and songs about freedom and the threat posed to it by people l like those who toppled the once-adjacent World Trade Center rang in the canyons of Lower Manhattan and - due to the massive media presence - across the land.
When my turn came to speak, I actually thanked Imam Rauf. For, in his overreaching ambition to build what he first dubbed the "Ground Zero Mosque," Rauf unwittingly and unintentionally created a "teachable moment" about shariah, and what he and others like him are doing to insinuate it into this country.
As a result most especially of President Obama's ill-advised decision on August 13th to embroil himself in the debate over the mosque, millions of Americans are now opposing its construction in proximity to some of our most hallowed ground. Our countrymen are also becoming more knowledgeable about shariah and why simply moving this advocate and his Islamic "cultural center" complex a few blocks away will not mitigate the danger they pose.
Specifically, the public is learning of the obligation on shariah's adherents to impose this toxic program everywhere via jihad - holy war, waged by violence or by stealth. Thanks to the Ground Zero mosque controversy, Americans are also getting a crash-course on the preeminent perpetrator of the stealthy form of "civilization jihad," the Muslim Brotherhood. While its tactics may differ from, say, al Qaeda's, the Brotherhood's objectives are identical: the supremacy of Islam and the establishment of a theocratic ruler, the Caliph, who is to govern worldwide in accordance with shariah.
As spokesmen from various Brotherhood front groups (notably, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Muslim American Society and the Muslim Public Affairs Council) have been vociferously demanding that the construction of a megamosque is a test of our religious tolerance, more and more of us are realizing that this is what is known in shariah as taqqiya, lying for the faith.
The crowd on Sunday understood that, no matter how often the Brotherhood's operatives and their non-Muslim apologists and enablers assert otherwise, the United States is not intolerant of the practice of Islam; the hundred or so mosques in New York City alone attest to that. Rather, the Brothers endlessly make such claims as part of the stealth jihad. Their playbook calls for them cynically to use our civil liberties to suppress opposition to the insinuation here of the most intolerant doctrine of all: shariah.
As public awareness of and concern about shariah intensifies, the Muslim Brotherhood and its friends are employing taqqiya frantically in the hope of maintaining the obscuration so critical to their stealth jihad. Notably, on the margins of Sunday's event, Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council - who attended Obama's iftar dinner on the 13th - tried to deflect criticism of Shariah, saying it is subject to various interpretations. He and his friends would have us believe that the jihad it orders means nothing more than "internal struggle" to practice one's faith properly. Some, like Feisal Rauf, go so far as to insist that shariah is compatible with the U.S. Constitution.
Fortunately, not all Muslims adhere to or seek to impose shariah. If we start in a concerted way to empower those that do not, and effectively counter those - like the Muslim Brotherhood -- that do, we may just be at the end of the beginning of this war to keep America shariah-free.
Townhall
A Challenge to the MSM: In the Name of Decency, Back Off the Ground Zero Mosque
Posted by Dr. Gina Loudon Aug 24th 2010 at 1:55 pm in Mainstream Media, Religion
Rancor among religions is one thing, but the questions surrounding the proposed mosque at Ground Zero are an entirely different sort of attack.
The land surrounding Ground Zero is a war memorial. The proposal of an Islamic mosque there is synonymous with a Nazi war memorial in downtown London. How would the world react to that proposal? Wouldn’t Western Europe just about leap off the map if that were proposed? Where is the outrage from our European “friends?”
Perhaps they are confused with the whole rosy picture of “peace” being painted by the Mainstream Media? Perhaps they believe the lie that this mosque is going to exist to “bring religions together.” Is that why they chose Ground Zero, the most hallowed ground in the country at the moment?
I have a proposal for the MSM and their Islamic buddies. I suggest that they, in the interest of religious peace and bringing religions together, extend an olive branch by bowing out of this ridiculous and divisive proposal altogether! If they really were interested in peace and fellowship among the “faithful” they would do the right thing. There is only one right thing to do here, and that is, in the words of our friends from Jersey, Fahgettaboutit!
If the Muslim world continues to fight for this mosque to be built at Ground Zero, they are not interested in peace, or religious dialogue. They are interested in war. They are using the concept of taqiyya (lying) in the best interest of Islam, and they will be further from the hearts of America than ever before.
Big Journalism
Rancor among religions is one thing, but the questions surrounding the proposed mosque at Ground Zero are an entirely different sort of attack.
The land surrounding Ground Zero is a war memorial. The proposal of an Islamic mosque there is synonymous with a Nazi war memorial in downtown London. How would the world react to that proposal? Wouldn’t Western Europe just about leap off the map if that were proposed? Where is the outrage from our European “friends?”
Perhaps they are confused with the whole rosy picture of “peace” being painted by the Mainstream Media? Perhaps they believe the lie that this mosque is going to exist to “bring religions together.” Is that why they chose Ground Zero, the most hallowed ground in the country at the moment?
I have a proposal for the MSM and their Islamic buddies. I suggest that they, in the interest of religious peace and bringing religions together, extend an olive branch by bowing out of this ridiculous and divisive proposal altogether! If they really were interested in peace and fellowship among the “faithful” they would do the right thing. There is only one right thing to do here, and that is, in the words of our friends from Jersey, Fahgettaboutit!
If the Muslim world continues to fight for this mosque to be built at Ground Zero, they are not interested in peace, or religious dialogue. They are interested in war. They are using the concept of taqiyya (lying) in the best interest of Islam, and they will be further from the hearts of America than ever before.
Big Journalism
For Obamacare supporters, judgment day approaches
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
August 23, 2010
The answer should be easy. In passing the national health care bill, you accomplished something your party dreamed of for decades. It was your most important vote, and now is the time to take credit for it.
Except it's not.
Recently a number of top Democratic strategists conducted focus groups in Las Vegas, Charlotte, Philadelphia and St. Louis. They also conducted a national poll of 1,000 likely voters and an online poll of 2,000 more likely voters. They wanted to measure the public's feelings about Obamacare and help Democrats make an effective case for the bill they passed in March.
The researchers found what they call a "challenging environment," which is a nicer way of saying "disaster in the making." Voters simply aren't buying the Democratic case that health care reform will insure more than 30 million currently uninsured people and save money at the same time. And when they think about their own health care, people worry that reform will mean less, not more, availability of care, and at a higher cost.
Faced with that bad news, the pollsters came up with several recommendations for Democratic candidates. When talking about Obamacare, Democrats should "keep claims small and credible." They should promise to "improve" the law. They should avoid talking about policy and stick to "personal stories" of people who will benefit from Obamacare. And above all, the pollsters advise, "don't say the law will reduce costs and deficit."
It's a stunning about-face for a party that saw national health care as its signature accomplishment. "This is the first time we've seen from Democrats that they clearly understand they have a serious problem in terms of selling this legislation," says Republican pollster David Winston.
The reluctance to defend Obamacare as a cost-cutter and deficit-reducer is particularly telling. Wasn't that the No. 1 reason for passing the bill in the first place? "This legislation will ... lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades," President Obama said when he signed the bill into law on March 23. Now, Democrats are throwing that argument out the window.
It's no mystery why the party is in retreat. The public's disapproval of Obamacare hasn't changed in the last five months. The RealClearPolitics average of recent polls shows 52 percent of Americans oppose the new law, while 39 percent support it. A variety of pollsters -- Rasmussen, CNN, Pew, and CBS News -- all find significantly more opposition than support. And there's not just opposition but enthusiasm for outright repeal. "Overall support for repeal has ranged from 52 percent to 63 percent since the law was passed by Congress in March," writes Rasmussen.
The story might be even worse than that for Democrats. Everyone knows the public's top issue is the economy. It has been since before Obama took office. So when the president and Democratic congressional leadership devoted a year to passing national health care, Republicans charged they were ignoring the public's wishes. Now, when Democrats admit that Obamacare won't cut costs or reduce deficits, they open themselves up to a more serious charge: they spent a year working on something that will actually cost jobs and make things worse.
"Before it looked like they were just on the wrong topic," says David Winston. "Now, it makes it look like they're actually going to hurt the economy."
No wonder Obama and Democratic leaders are constantly saying they want to look forward, not back. They don't want to dwell on ancient history, like the events of 2009 and early 2010. But there is no chance in the world Republicans will let them forget it.
Just a few months ago, Obama issued a very public challenge to opponents who seek to dump Obamacare. "For those Republicans and folks who are on the 'repeal' platform, my attitude is, go for it," the president told a cheering crowd at a Democratic fundraiser in Florida April 15. "I'll have that fight. We'll have that argument."
Well, the time to fight, the time to argue, has arrived. But with everything on the line, the president's party is trying to run away.
Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blogposts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.
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