Pinning the Tail on D.C.'s 'Assclowns'

April 29, 2013
Steve Flesher

 
 To say that Sarah Palin shook things up by taking to Twitter to express her displeasure at the nonchalant nose-rubbing going on at the White House Correspondent's Dinner Saturday night would be an understatement.

It doesn't matter who you are. If you watched the White House Correspondent's Dinner and simultaneously possessed one shred of passion for the future of our country with regards to crony capitalism and corruption, it's pretty easy to determine the overwhelming consensus of the event. The media is supposed to exist to hold these people accountable. Instead, they choose to play dress up and throw themselves a "nerd prom" to schmooze with them. I thought it was pathetic, and many other ordinary Americans did as well.

Sarah Palin's tweet spoke for all of us. The "assclowns" threw themselves a party while the people they are all supposed to be serving are feeling the consequences of their good-old-boys networking.

Palin remains a top-trender on Twitter as liberals mindlessly rage-tweet her in response. Some alleged Republicans are buying into it as well. These are the same ones who believe that clumped voter-focus based on race or sex is better than promoting the ideals of conservatism to empower the individual. The only voter worth pandering to is the American, whatever the makeup.

These folks argue that the White House Correspondent's Dinner is a tradition. This is true. It was created in 1914 by grassroots journalists who responded to a rumor that the government would hand pick reporters to cover Woodrow Wilson's press conferences. This is pretty ironic when you consider the current state of affairs. The idea was to prevent the media from becoming state controlled. Unfortunately, that didn't work. 

Now, it's a black-tie event celebrating the marriage of big media to big government. They party on with their contest of egos and sophisticated humor while the average American is recognized as the true butt of the joke.

Others double down. They avoid facing that sad reality by simply trying to portray Palin as a hypocrite claiming she had attended one of these events herself. Yes, she was invited, but she didn't attend because she opted to spend her time with a small group of pro-life activists.

Afterwards, Greta Van Susteren's husband explained that even though Palin opted to not take part in the event itself, she would stop in at the after parties. Predictably, every "assclown" reporter flocked to her immediately.

In addition to briefly attending the after-parties, Palin has in fact brilliantly infiltrated many similar high-profile venues. She attended Time magazine's most influential party the same year she was profiled by the magazine. She had a high-profile pizza date with Donald Trump. She attended a star-studded premiere of NBC's Stars Earn Stripes where her husband competed for military charity efforts.
So what?

A few cherry-picked high profile events filled with people who cannot help themselves from swarming around her on the rare occasions she does accept their invitation to one of their shows does not erase the fact that she indeed chooses to spend most of her public time in flyover country. In fact, it only proves that while they often condescend to her, she's got what it takes to hang with the self-proclaimed big boys. She simply does it on her terms, not theirs.

Palin has endured hectic traveling schedules to cross the heartland campaigning for dozens upon dozens of constitutionally conservative candidates for Congress -- which usually helps them to successfully cross the finish line.

She flew to Texas to prevent big money from buying the state's U.S. Senate primary in 2012. As a result, she helped put Ted Cruz in the Senate (as he willingly admits). She stood in hundred degree heat last summer in places like Belleville, Michigan and Cleveland, Missouri to talk to crowds of Tea Party Americans letting those good people know that she was there with them to help them stay engaged thereby, little by little, sending the ultimate message of displeasure to Washington D.C.

Despite which venue she chooses to use her very authentic way of engaging the masses, Sarah Palin has done the work and delivered the results to win the respect of the usual air-conditioned, cocktail-party elites in D.C. But instead of being grateful to her for doing the work that they've failed to do, they deliver more senseless ridicule which delivers nothing substantive in tackling our country's greatest problems -- problems created by D.C. politicians and their friends in the media all-too-ready to drive the getaway car.

They don't hate Palin because they think she lacks the moxy to play their game. Instead, they despise her refusal to follow the terms of their elitist rulebook.

Steve Flesher is a Contributing Editor at Conservatives4Palin

American Thinker

Obama as Messiah—Anointing Oil Included!

By Kelly OConnell

 Recent developments in the American petroleum sector have utterly exposed the rhetorical excesses of Obama, suggesting his speeches are designed towards supporting a certain ideology over known facts.

During a period where Barack’s energy policy can be succinctly quoted as, “We can’t drill our way out,” huge advances are being made in stateside production, daily. In fact, America recently passed Saudi Arabia as the world’s #1 petroleum producer. Moreover, the EIA announced the US will be fully energy independent by the year 2035.

It seems as if Obama is against developing new sources of native oil, given his recurrent embargoing of the industry. There are said to be few direct statistical correlations in economics, but one certainly stands out. Charles C. Mann declares this in What If We Never Run Out of Oil?:

...a basic truth: economic growth and energy use have marched in lockstep for generations. Between 1900 and 2000, global energy consumption rose roughly 17-fold, the University of Manitoba environmental scientist Vaclav Smil has calculated, while economic output rose 16-fold—“as close a link as one may find in the unruly realm of economic affairs.” According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the United States has experienced 11 recessions since the end of the Second World War. All but one were associated with spikes in energy costs—specifically, abrupt jumps in the price of oil.

I. Obama’s Anti-Oil Drilling Energy Policy

Given the importance of oil for America’s economy, one would expect our leader to put first securing supplies of the stuff. Sadly, this has not been the case. In fact, not only has Obama seemingly done everything in his powers to limit growth in the US energy sector, he has also stated blankly that America cannot meet its own needs by increasing domestic production. He stated: “You know there are no quick fixes to this problem, and you know we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.” (audio) This type of leadership is devastating for investors in American energy companies, not to mention private consumers!

A classic example has been Barack’s intransigent opposition to the Keystone Pipeline, which would have brought in almost a million barrels a day to the US, a significant part of our daily consumption. According to the WA Times, Obama has done the following to discourage development…

...barred drilling and exploration for oil on the vast majority of federal lands and waters, while camouflaging this policy by highlighting increased drilling on private lands that remain outside the scope of his anti-oil policies. Mr. Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has created a blizzard of conflicting regulations on oil producers, fuel manufacturers and petrochemical plants that raise energy cots by billions of dollars, are sometimes impossible to comply with, and accomplish little or nothing for the environment. Almost daily he calls for discriminatory energy-tax increases that could further raise the costs of producing oil and manufacturing fuels.

Mr. Obama has made it clear in the past that his chief energy goal is not to lower fuel prices, but to get Americans off fossil fuels as quickly as possible by forcing up the price of petroleum products and heavily subsidizing “alternatives.”

II. Recent Developments in US Petroleum—Boomtown

There has been an astonishing sea-change in America’s energy futures in just the last few years, after decades of diminishing output. The US Energy Information Agency states that American production is surging. Investor’s Business Daily reports:

The U.S. passed Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest petroleum producer in November 2012, according to recently released data of the federal Energy Information Administration. Over the last 5 years, domestic oil output has risen 40% and continually outpaces projections. Last year, domestic output increased by 800,000 barrels per day, the largest increase in annual production since the first oil well was drilled in 1859 in Pennsylvania.

These facts are already shaking up the global order, according to NBC News:

Without fanfare, China passed the United States in December to become the world’s leading importer of oil—the first time in nearly 40 years that the U.S. didn’t own that dubious distinction. That same month, North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania together produced 1.5 million barrels of oil a day—more than Iran exported.

This leap in production is caused by the new technology called “fracking”:

...hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”—a technique for shooting water mixed with sand and chemicals into rock, splitting it open, and releasing previously inaccessible oil, referred to as “tight oil”...fracking releases natural gas, which, when yielded from shale, is known as shale gas…it has unleashed so much petroleum in North America that the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based consortium of energy-consuming nations, predicted in November that by 2035, the United States will become “all but self-sufficient in net terms.”

In fact, America has so much oil in the ground that private citizens are actually procuring their own drills to drill on their own land, and hitting gushers like a real life Jed Clampett, as this article reveals: “‘Backyard Oil’ a real-life ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ as DIY drillers turn into millionaires overnight.”

The facts on the ground are so different than the Obama administration has painted. He stated we should simply give up even trying to become energy independent for petroleum and simply accept the “Green Economy” without a fight. But why would a sitting president want his own people to give up and accept diminished economic circumstances? Simply as a result of ideology overriding facts on the way to trying to collect more power. Socialism is simply the aggrandizement of power by government, whereas they seek to become the major domo in every undertaking instituted by a society.

III. Sowell’s Conflict of Visions

The current fissure in American society is well-explained by Thomas Sowell in The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. This work examines how the elite class, aka the “anointed”, sells crises and their antidotes as a way of taking increasing control over the masses. These self-anointed elites have a vision of life which Sowell opposes with the “tragic vision.” The tragic vision is the basis for the Conservative, or Classical Liberal, movement which accepts life can never be perfected, only its opportunities maximized. The anointed vision is essentially progressive, and therefore utopian—and claims that the costs of perfecting the world are worth the outcome. Sowell says the tragic vision is realistic and can create a good world, whereas the vision of the anointed is essentially so unrealistic it is cruel and unhinged.

A question which must be asked is, Why would a politician pretend there is a problem and then propose a very painful and expensive solution? The answer to this is disappointing to state. First, the more crises a politician successfully presides over, the more essential the person is seen as being. Second, certain political ideologies are based upon the notion that they are only a few elites in any society, and these have a noblesse oblige, a sacred duty, to care for others not fit for leadership. Third, another some politicians simply crave power over others, which is why they entered politics to begin with. And increasing their own power maximizes their enjoyment.

Sowell describes how the crises are presented that the elites use to promote their ideas. These are promoted as having the following characteristics:

1. Assertions of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.
2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe.
3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.
4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either.

Sowell maps out how the essentially contrived crises and their failed responses play out:

A very distinct pattern has emerged repeatedly when policies favored by the anointed turn out to fail. This pattern typically has four stages:

STAGE 1. THE “CRISIS”: Some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed propose to eliminate. Such a situation is routinely characterized as a “crisis,” even though all human situations have negative aspects, and even though evidence is seldom asked or given to show how the situation at hand is either uniquely bad or threatening to get worse. Sometimes the situation described as a “crisis” has in fact already been getting better for years.

STAGE 2. THE “SOLUTION”: Policies to end the “crisis” are advocated by the anointed, who say that these policies will lead to beneficial result A. Critics say that these policies will lead to detrimental result Z. The anointed dismiss these latter claims as absurd and “simplistic,” if not dishonest.

STAGE 3. THE RESULTS: The policies are instituted and lead to detrimental result Z.

STAGE 4. THE RESPONSE: Those who attribute detrimental result Z to the policies instituted are dismissed as “simplistic” for ignoring the “complexities” involved, as “many factors” went into determining the outcome. The burden of proof is put on the critics to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause of the worsening that occurred. No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had so confidently predicted improvement. Indeed, it is often asserted that things would have been even worse, were it not for the wonderful programs that mitigated the inevitable damage from other factors.

Conclusion

In a shocking number of scenarios, the elite class—whether in the form of the media, the academics, or in entertainment—presents a crisis to the society, and the “only way” the crisis can be solved. Invariably, the solution is worse than the often non-existent “crisis.”

One such example is currently Obamacare, and how this threatens to undermine the very best medical system in the world. And so it is with energy, where the petroleum sector has been attacked relentlessly as greedy, polluting, and focusing on rapidly diminishing supplies. Now one can only hope that Obama will stop pretending the “green economy” is more important than real oil for real Americans. Our horribly battered economy sure could use some good news after five years of ineffective DC fixes.

Comments

Kelly O’Connell hosts American Anthem on CFP Radio Sundays at 4 pm (EST).
Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico. Kelly is now host of a daily, Monday to Friday talk show at AM KOBE called AM Las Cruces w/Kelly O’Connell
Kelly can be reached at: hibernian1@gmail.com

Canada Free Press

Islam’s World War Came to Boston

By Daniel Greenfield 

 After the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Obama asked, “Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?”

Despite the scholarships and the positive press, the money and the good times that came their way, the Tsarnaevs were never truly part of our communities or our country. As the words of a Jihadist song in Dzhokhar’s playlist go, “Be in this temporary world a stranger/Infidels rule the earth/for the faithful life is torture.”

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were strangers. Tamerlan had an American wife and Dzhokhar had plenty of American friends but they chose to treat a city and a nation that had taken them in as targets in a terrorist war. As infidels who deserved nothing more than to be lied to and killed.

The Tsarnaevs weren’t insane. Nor were they nihilists looking to go out with a bang just for the kicks. Their social media accounts reveal the world of two men who had strong beliefs and commitments. These beliefs and commitments however were not to this country. They were to the Islamic Ummah.

Two months before his killing spree, Tamerlan reproved another Muslim for not believing. Unlike him, Tamerlan believed. What he believed in was not the mere nationalism of a land that he had never lived in. If Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had only wanted Chechen independence, they could have joined the fight there. But if the thought ever crossed their minds, they were reoriented in another direction.

To Americans, the Chechen Jihadists, the Syrian rebels, the Palestinian terrorists, the Afghan Taliban and the Mali Turaeg fighters all represent national struggles. To Muslims, they are all local manifestations of a global struggle between Islam and the world. For the Tsarnaevs, Chechnya wasn’t any different than Afghanistan, Nigeria, Thailand, America or any other theater of battle in a world war. Instead of trying to fight a war in a country he had never seen, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was dispatched or dispatched himself to fight a battle in the country that he knew best.

In Obama’s speech, the willingness of the Tsarnaev brothers to kill the people of the country they had grown up in is a paradox. But it isn’t a paradox; it’s the point.

Communists in America undermined the country not just because they saw it as the greatest villain, but because Communists in every nation were committed to undermining it in order to remake it. Each Communist movement was fighting a local front in a transnational struggle. For Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev their local front was not Chechnya; it was Boston.

Chechnya to the Tsarnaevs represented the Islamic transnationalism of the Jihadist that transcended nations.

Their Chechen nationalism, like Hamas’ Palestinian nationalism and the Syrian nationalism of the rebel brigades linked to the Muslim Brotherhood derived from a common Islamic identity. It could have no meaning without Islam.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev carried out the marathon massacre not because they were on the outside, but because they were on the inside. Islamic terrorism was their way of expressing their American identity.

When they detonated bombs at the Boston Marathon, they weren’t doing it as Chechen Muslims, but as American Muslims.

Like Anwar al-Awlaki and Nidal Hasan, they wanted an American identity that would be based on Islam in the same way that Chechen identity was based on Islam. They wanted it because they believed it to be the only possible way of making America over into a country that would reflect their own values.

There is a reason why second and third generation Muslims are more likely to turn terrorist than their immigrant parents. It is because they have become American, British, Canadian and Australian part of the way. They have gone deep enough to begin making a claim on the country. The Western Islamist seeks to align his internal Islamic identity and his external national identity by unifying them through Islamization.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were not fighting for Chechnya at the Boston Marathon. They were fighting against the American infidels who were barring the way to an Islamic America. They were fighting to make America like Chechnya. Islam is not just a religion. It is a political system. You cannot expect a devout Muslim to live as an American, the same way that you could not expect a Communist, Nazi or any other consuming political identity to just keep it private or local. To think that way is to truly misunderstand Islam.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not become radicalized. They became religious. They embraced a transnational ideology which applied not only to them, their mosque or their community, but to the entire world. Eventually the discontinuity between their beliefs and the life of the city around them became too great to be tolerated. And so the Tsarnaevs, inspired in no small part by the Islamist culture that they found on the internet and perhaps at their own radical mosque, set out to resolve the conflict through terrible violence.

The two brothers were showered with educational and financial advantages. The United States took them in as refugees. The City of Cambridge awarded Dzhokhar a $2,500 scholarship. Tamerlan aspired to be a boxer and found a woman who loved him enough to take his religion. They lived the good life, but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.

The liberals who refuse to see what the Tsarnaev brothers stood for passionately believe in the things that they think it will take to make the world a better place. The Tsarnaevs believed that only one thing was necessary; Islam.

Islam was born out of war and terror. It spread through the sword and the slave. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were not the disciples of some imaginary religion of peace, but a religion of war. What they did was horrifying, but not surprising. They were taking part in a world war that had begun over a thousand years ago.

They did not expect to strike the finishing blow; just another blow to bring America closer to the form of submission known as Islam. Like other Muslim terrorists operating in the countless theaters of the world war, from Asia to Africa to the Middle East to Australia and America, they sought to shock and horrify, to break our will to resist and force us to submit.

“He it is who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist.” Koran 61:9

In Boston the infidels resisted the messengers of Mohammed and Allah. They patched up the wounded and saved as many as they could. They hunted down the messengers and shot them. But more will come. They will speak the language of our popular culture and their classmates will remember them as nice young men.

No one will understand what caused such nice young men to do it except other nice young men like them who feel the tension between Islam and America inside them waiting to break.

Front Page Magazine

The Most Effective, Logical Solution: Arming School Staff

By Mike McDaniel

 Only one question matters in the school violence debate: when a shooter is attempting to enter a school, what will be done to protect the lives of students and staff?

Asking what can be done to prevent mass school shootings is a secondary matter. Honest commentators — with the background and experience to know what they’re talking about — should be aware that in a constitutional republic, school shootings cannot be altogether prevented, and that gun control can have no effect. The worst school attack in history — in Beslan, Chechnya, leaving 300 dead and 700 injured — took place in a liberty-restricted state with democratic pretensions. Deterrence is possible, but not with past or current policies; the actual defense of the school during an incident is the heart of the debate.

At enormous expense, schools can be hardened, which may help to deter some potential killers, and which may slow down, to some degree, less intelligent and prepared killers. Unfortunately, “slow down” implies seconds, not minutes. Equally unfortunate: the money necessary to harden schools to the point of truly credible deterrence that could slow or stop killers to any meaningful degree is not available during the Obama economy.

Just recently, it was revealed that the Sandy Hook Elementary School killer needed only five minutes to shoot his way into the school and murder 20 children and six adults before killing himself. This fact is fodder for those wishing to ban “assault weapons” and standard capacity magazines so that future killers with five minutes will require a few seconds longer, or might only be able to kill 20 rather than 26. They miss the point, and many intentionally ignore more sensible proposals.

Former Navy SEAL and current educator John A. Czajkowski proposes a solution that embraces the recommendation of the NRA: place armed security in every one of the 100,000-plus American schools.

However, he generally opposes the arming of school staff:

Although I grew up very comfortable with the responsible use of firearms as a boy and then later professionally, I still can’t support arming teachers first when there are still so many other more proactive opportunities for improving our security. Arming teachers is far down my list of recommendations for improving security, per balancing return on investment and risk assessment. Although I am entirely comfortable with the idea at a personal level, the difficulty of applying Kant’s universal imperative makes me hesitate to adopt an armed teacher paradigm.

Only one policy can credibly deter school shooters, will cost little or nothing, and will provide the maximum chance to limit — or even to eliminate — the loss of life when an attack on a school occurs: arming school staff.

When school design, security cameras, hardened doors and glass, magnetic door locks, and every other security measure have failed — as they did at Sandy Hook — and when a killer is seconds from firing, what is that school prepared to do at that moment to prevent any loss of life? Unless they are taking affirmative steps to arm staff so multiple people will always be present and prepared to immediately engage an armed attacker, the schools tacitly admit they are willing to accept a death toll of some size. This, in exchange for “feeling safe” rather than being safe.

NRA chief Wayne LaPierre and Czajkowski’s approach — using trained, armed personnel focused on school security — is not unreasonable, but it is impractical and embraces several faulty assumptions.

La Pierre would even demand federal funds for the purpose. Even so, some schools — usually larger high schools and some middle schools — do have school “resource” or “liaison” officers, who are usually certified law enforcement officers provided by local agencies.  Some schools share an officer from time to time, but most schools have none. This is so for practical and insurmountable reasons. Moreover, those few officers do not function as most of those supporting this concept believe.

These officers are essentially small-town police, responsible for all law enforcement functions in and around their assigned schools. They are generally present only during normal school hours, but must be absent for a wide variety of reasons: court, job-related errands, transporting arrestees, mandatory training, medical appointments, and vacation. At those times, they are virtually never replaced, and they are seldom present for extracurricular activities.

Further, it is not their job to principally focus on building security. And because there is only one of them per school — if that — the chance they will be present at the time and place an attack occurs is small. If no one else is armed, they are better than nothing, but are not the answer.

Most schools don’t have these liaison officers and never will; it’s too expensive. Their salaries, whether paid by their agency, their school, or some combination, come from the taxpayers, an increasingly scarce funding source. Affordably putting more of them in schools is wishful thinking.

As an educator, I deal with colleagues who recoil at the idea of armed police officers in school, as though the mere presence of authority, particularly armed authority, somehow poisons a mystically pristine educational atmosphere. I have heard others argue that teachers are untrained and unqualified to carry firearms, and as such would be tempted to misuse them, or would be more likely to harm themselves, or others, or to be shot by the police in a school attack. I have heard some argue that students will steal teachers’ guns.

However, the most fervent argument I’ve encountered — and only after the Newtown shooting — suggests that teachers must focus 100% of their energy and attention exclusively on teaching. Therefore, they cannot be expected to assume the same duties as school liaison officers, including engaging and stopping school shooters.

Some have gone so far as to suggest that teachers would be particularly bad at even recognizing that a shooting was happening, so oblivious to their surroundings does teaching make them.

This misconception is a related to the idea that anyone carrying a gun on school grounds must be trained to the same level — and must assume the same focus and duties — as a certified police officer, or else they are a tragedy waiting to happen.

No. Armed school staff should have precisely the same duties and responsibilities as any citizen with a concealed carry permit.

They are responsible for keeping their weapon safe, secure, and concealed, and on their person at all times.

A handgun locked in a desk or in an armory in a principal’s office suite is of no use to a teacher meeting an armed killer in a hallway or on a playground.

Above all, they will know to use their handgun only in circumstances where it is necessary to stop the imminent threat of serious bodily harm or death to themselves or others. And that is all.

Police officers undergo lengthy and rigorous training because their jobs encompass far more than this simple directive, whereas armed citizens and teachers need know only two primary things: the law relating to the possession and use of deadly force, and how to shoot straight.

Additional training along these lines is desirable, but if required, will prevent some teachers from being able to save their lives and the lives of students.

The entry qualification should be precisely the same as for any concealed carry license holder. Teachers should in fact be already almost entirely qualified, for like license holders, they have been fingerprinted, photographed, and undergone extensive background checks.

Unlike license holders, they must have at minimum a bachelor’s degree, and must undergo additional extensive testing. The only qualification most teachers lack would be any state-required training course or shooting qualification.

A cornerstone of this policy must be correct publicity. Making the public aware a given school district allows and encourages its staff to carry concealed weapons confers on every school, whether anyone is carrying or not, the benefits of deterrence.

Properly chosen by and for individuals, concealed handguns are quite invisible: this is another strength of concealed carry. Because no criminal can know who is carrying a handgun, they must assume that everyone could be. Just about anywhere in America except schools, this is also the case.

Consider the cognitive dissonance of those who argue that teachers can’t be expected to take extra time to qualify for concealed carry: recall that they already spend hours on “run and hide” drills, hiding students behind locked and easily breached doors to fearfully wait and hope that a killer will not find them. This dependence on the lack of competence and marksmanship of madmen (as well as their mercy) is not a strategy.

Consider too those who argue that teachers aren’t smart enough to understand what is happening, and will thereby shoot innocents. When a school attack occurs, and this was very much the case at Sandy Hook Elementary, the victims knew exactly what was going on. When the killer was shooting his way into the school, if one or more staff had been armed he could have been immediately stopped. No one had to die that day; no one has to die in any school.

The idea that teachers’ guns will be stolen and misused, while possible, is hardly a reasonable argument for failing to protect lives: all of life is a matter of balancing benefits and risks.  Fortunately, there is an experience model. Utah has for many years allowed teachers to carry handguns: there has not been a single instance of such misuse. Texas also allows it, and South Dakota has recently passed a law allowing on-campus concealed carry. Other states are considering legislation.

What about the argument that teachers can’t shoot straight?  It’s not well-known, but the police are hardly firearm experts. They are required to qualify only once a year on less-than-demanding courses of fire with equally non-demanding qualifying scores. Many citizens surpass the police in shooting skill. Wearing a uniform and badge does not confer magical shooting skills beyond the capability of the private citizen.

Consider the plight of teachers holding concealed carry licenses. Off of school property, their inalienable natural right to self-defense is operative. They may protect the lives of themselves and their children, at home and anywhere they may be. But step on school property, and due to those that claim to be most concerned with protecting children, they and their children lose the affirmative means to preserve their lives. Are the lives of teachers and children worth less on school property than off?

In any school attack, two things matter most: time and distance. Armed killers have the advantage of both.

Every second matters, and time is not on the side of victims or the police. At Newtown, a life was lost approximately every 11.5 seconds. From the time the killer shot his way into the school until he shot himself, only five minutes elapsed, but it took the first police officer 20 minutes to arrive. This is normal, and must be expected in the future: in virtually every school shooting, the police have had no active role in stopping the shooter.

Even if the Newtown police had arrived within five minutes, they still would have had no role in stopping the killer.

If there is no one present to immediately engage and stop a school shooter, the only factors determining the eventual body count will be the killer’s lack of marksmanship and dumb luck.  Depending on the mercy of a madman, or luck, for the lives of innocents is quite insane. Even an armed teacher running from one hallway to the next to engage a shooter is far preferable than waiting for police that will virtually never arrive in time, and will be summoned only after some children and teachers are already wounded or dead.

One may conjure any number of objections to allowing armed teachers and school staff, but every possible objection can be addressed with proper — and inexpensive — procedures and training. The undeniably positive benefits of armed teachers, people always present and always ready and able to stop armed killers, greatly outweigh any potential objection. Which possible negative consequence outweighs the preservation of innocent lives?

Consider Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker, commenting on the defeat in the legislature — only a short time before the attack — of a bill that would have allowed students and faculty to carry firearms on campus. He said:

I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.

Signs, doors, locks, and good intentions do help some to feel safe, but teachers and staff ready and able to stop killers is actual safety.

PJ Media

Leftist Nazis, the Gaystapo, and Islamofascists

By Jim ONeill

 “One of the ways you control what people think is by creating the illusion that there’s a debate going on, but making sure that that debate stays within very narrow margins. ...you have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions….”—Noam Chomsky

“[Nazism] is simply collectivism freed from all traces of an individualist tradition which might hamper its realization.” —F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) “The Socialist Roots of Naziism"from “The Road to Serfdom”                                   
“All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”—Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator (1883-1945)

Recently I came across several references to “the far right Nazis,“and “the far right Fascists.“Although this is a subject I have covered before, it will continue to be a topic of great importance for as long as the Left continues to lie about it, and people swallow their lies.

Fascism always has been, and always will be a left-wing ideology—period. That means that the Nazis, being a subset of Fascism, are left-wing as well. I cannot stress enough the importance of understanding this truth.                   
The oft repeated lie that Fascism and the Nazis are right-wing has effectively served three important purposes:

• It has enabled the political left to deny any culpability for the atrocities committed by Hitler.
• It has unfairly and incorrectly shifted the blame for the Holocaust, Nazi eugenics, and other Nazi programs onto the right-wing, i.e. conservatives.
• It has served to muddy the waters to such an extent that true conservative values are tainted by “guilt through association” right from the starting gate.

I am not claiming that Communism and Fascism are the same thing—they are not. They are, however, variations on the same theme—the theme of collectivism. That is, they both promote Big Government at the expense of individual freedom. As such, they both belong on the left side of the political spectrum.

The media has long promulgated the myth of a political spectrum that looks something like this:  

Far-Left (Communists)—————-Moderates—————Far-Right (Fascists).

What is wrong with that picture? What is wrong with it is that the true political spectrum looks like this: At the far left of the political spectrum we have collectivist ideologies such as Communism and Fascism, then moving to the right we find Socialism, then the Moderates. On the right side of the spectrum we move from the Moderates to Conservatives (who favor a Constitutional, or limited, form of government), and finally at the far right we find the true anarchists, who favor no government at all (not to be confused with faux-anarchists, who wish to tear down existing governments so that they can replace them with other forms of government).

In short, the political spectrum moves from Big Government on the far left, to no government on the far right, with the size and influence of government decreasing as one moves to the right, and vice versa. Fascism belongs squarely on the left side of the spectrum.             

Benito Mussolini (who was raised on Marxist philosophy) essentially brought Fascism onto the world stage—so perhaps if I rephrase Mussolini’s quote from above it will make how Fascism views the role of government clearer:

“Everything within the federal government, nothing outside the federal government, nothing against the federal government.”

One notable Fascist element within the left-wing is the “Gaystapo,“or homo-Fascists. Scott Lively, co-author of “The Pink Swastika,“describes the movement thusly:   

Homo-Fascism is a form of extreme left-wing radicalism which attempts to establish rigid totalitarian controls over public discussions and policies addressing sexual morality, and to punish or suppress all disapproval of homosexuality and related sexual behaviors. ... Where pro-family speech and other activities are not yet constrained by law, homo-fascists employ bullying and other intimidation tactics to silence opponents and manipulate policy makers, all while posing as victims.”—Dr. Scott Lively

Although leftists will, as a matter of course, reject whatever Scott Lively may say, they will have a harder time dismissing what self-described “gay left-wing man,“Johann Hari has written regarding homo-Fascists:

“The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was—including the gay-gassing, homicidal Third Reich. [Almost] all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past 30 years have been gay. It’s time to admit something. Fascism isn’t something that happens out there, a nasty habit acquired by the straight boys. It is—in part, at least—a gay thing, and it’s time for non-fascist gay people to wake up and face the marching music.”—Johann Hari “The Strange, Strange Story of the Gay Fascists”

Let me hasten to add that I am not saying that the entire homosexual community is homo-Fascist. They are nothing of the sort, and I do not wish to imply such—but there most certainly is a militant minority, a sub-set, of homo-Fascists whose presence can be traced back prior to the rise of Hitler, then permeating the Nazi hierarchy, and continuing up to the present day. These über-masculine homosexuals are anything but effeminate.

Further weighing down the left side of the political spectrum are the Islamofascists who are, of course, not right-wing in any way, shape, or form—why do you think the Far-Left finds it so easy to climb into bed with them? This “Odd Couple” marriage-of-convenience between the atheistic Left and the religious collectivism of Islam is bound to end badly for one side or the other (possibly both), but for now it suits both of their anti-freedom agendas to a “T.”                       

I bring all the above to our attention because, as Chomsky implies in the quote at the top of this article, we can argue and debate all day within certain parameters and be doing nothing but spinning our wheels. The debate that “we the people” have been handed to wrangle over, amounts to which form of leftist collectivism we prefer—Socialism, Fascism, or Communism? That is—Left, or more to the Left. “We the people"must refuse to buy into that trap, and resolutely and unabashedly stand up for America; for freedom, for God, and our Constitutional rights.

Death camps, the Gulag, mass-starvation tactics, “killing fields” et al. can all be laid at the feet of left-wing collectivist ideologies—millions upon millions of corpses. Who is left to stand against this tide of Machiavellian duplicity, arrogance, and greed; this tsunami of brutality, barbarism, and death? 

To paraphrase Hillel the Elder: If not us, then who? If not now, then when?

Comments

Born June 4, 1951 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Served in the U.S. Navy from 1970-1974 in both UDT-21 (Underwater Demolition Team) and SEAL Team Two.  Worked as a commercial diver in the waters off of Scotland, India, and the United States.  While attending the University of South Florida as a journalism student in 1998 was presented with the “Carol Burnett/University of Hawaii AEJMC Research in Journalism Ethics Award,” 1st place undergraduate division.  (The annual contest was set up by Carol Burnett with money she won from successfully suing a national newspaper for libel).  Awarded US Army, US Navy, South African, and Russian jump wings.  Graduate of NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School, 1970).  Member of Mensa, and lifetime member of the UDT/SEAL Association.

Jim can be reached at: lausdeo.jim@gmail.com

Canada Free Press

Dangerous Times: Will Shale beat Shari'ah?

April 27, 2013
By James Lewis

 A week after the Boston Marathon bombing, Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson wrote a shameless puff-piece celebrating the glories of "sensuous" camel racing in the Gulf emirates in the London Telegraph. Gulf Arabs, including the Saudi Arabians, are huge terrorist enablers, big European spenders, London party animals, media investors, sexual abusers, wife beaters, Euro-American arms purchasers, Shari'ah imperialists, massive London vote buyers and powerful political meddlers.

Boris Johnson, who is not a stupid man, is also aware of a slew of London Jihad bombings starting in 2007, both successful ones and a reported sixteen fizzled plots. He knows exactly who pays for Al Qaida and who pays for vote-buying by hundreds of thousands of radicalized Pakistanis imported into London via the corrupt and politicized immigration system.

But Mr. Johnson still sang for his supper about the glories of camel racing in the Gulf emirates and their "dynamic" economies. He has that in common with Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Hussein Obama.
Desert Arabs of the Gulf region would still be living in pathetic tents and whooping up rape and pillage raids on each other, were it not for John D. Rockefeller, whose company discovered Arabian oil in vast quantities before 1900. Even today radical Islamists on both sides of the Gulf have only two exports: oil and religious fanaticism.

London has seen its share of Jihad bombings, and yet -- it has allowed radical terror-preaching imams to radicalize thousands of followers at places like the Finsbury Park Mosque. In Europe and America the most fanatical Wahhabi imams run the worldwide Saudi missionary campaign to convert the infidel by lies, promises, and the revenge psychology of 7th century Arabia, which killed off more advanced civilizations like the Persian and Byzantine Empires. There are two major sources of terrorism in the Muslim world: Iran and Arabia, both fueled by oil and war theology.

Britain's huge investment in universal electronic spying has prevented 16 attacks the size of the 7/7 Underground bombing. But the corrupted and Europeanized political system of today's Britain has never managed to do the obvious: to shut out the sources of societal toxins.Today, the ruling classes of Britain and Europe are drunk on oil money from the Gulf.

Boris Johnson is just one little example of the corrupting power of OPEC monopoly in Europe and America. 

Britain now has a press censorship law as part of its surrender to political correctness. The left wing of Labour and Arabian desert fanatics will benefit, because they can only survive with censorship. Britain is the transatlantic Chicago Machine of Illinois, and Washington, D.C. today is the national version of Chicago. 

When child sexual abusers like Senator Menendez can be exposed by the FBI and still survive as the corrupt and sleazy chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee we know that Washington D.C. has entered a stage of Third World corruption. This is America in the age of Obama.

Well, the good news today is that with the rise of shale energy wells all over the world, OPEC will lose its near-monopoly very soon, maybe in half a dozen years.

Shale may therefore defeat shari'ah before it is too late.  -- Caroline Glick.

Obama is a far more rigid leftist ideologue than Boris Johnson, who is capable of real flashes of common sense. As he has written himself, Obama is ideologically pro-Muslim. While that sounds bizarre to most of us, for rigid Third World Socialists the Muslims are an "oppressed" people. The fact that they keep killing and oppressing each other has no meaning in Obama's stuck belief system. The fact that Muslim regimes persecute secular Marxists at every opportunity means nothing.

Even after the Boston Marathon bombing, the Obama left is trying to transform Muslim killers into victims. But nobody believes them anymore. Normal people are seeing Islamist fanaticism for what it is. Only the political and media establishment is mentally stuck in some groove of their own.

We can now see a thousand signs that the radical left is allied to Islamic fascism. In Benghazi Obama was caught smuggling Libyan arms to the Al Qaida-allied rebels in Syria. That is the real meaning of Benghazi: this administration is now obviously supporting the enemy. Whether or not they have some scheme to set Sunnis against Shi'ites in Syria, it is a very dangerous gamble. Islamists can fight each other one day and unite against the infidels the next. Once Iran gets a nuclear bomb their decision time is reduced to minutes.

Conservatives think Obama's anti-American bias is insane, which is why it is so upsetting to see the Islamist narrative win in the media over and over again. Supporting barbarism is nuts. It contradicts everything civilized peoples have learned since World War II. And yet, jihad propaganda keeps winning the liberal media.

Why? The last time Democrats allowed an enemy to infiltrate the U.S. was during the Stalin era. When Americans realized the degree of leftist betrayal of the country it took them decades to recover. The country found its conservative roots again after FDR, the New Deal, and the first half of the Cold War.
Why are liberals risking political suicide to protect Islamist ideology?

The simple answer is money, oil, and power. Starting with OPEC in the 1970s, the oil powers have thoroughly corrupted America and Europe. Oil money has bought media power for the Saudis and Iranians, thanks to the radical left that rose to power starting in the 1960s. We saw the depth of corruption when Saddam Hussein bought Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac, and Dominique de Villepin in the Oil for Food Scandal ten years ago. The Saddam scandal was only the tip of the Saudi and Iranian iceberg.

But now the oil tourniquet of the Middle East is beginning to lossen up. Huge shale energy discoveries in the U.S. and Canada have turned this country into a net exporter of natural gas, in spite of the rise of fanatical ecoworshippers in the Obama administration. Capitalist technological dynamism has already defeated the publicity campaign against shale development, and for a very simple reason: there is no central spigot to control. Political alliances can control the flow of tankers going through the Gulf. But there are no political alliances that can stop China and other energy-hungry nations from developing their enormous domestic sources of shale. The "oil crisis" has just ended with a great, technological victory for capitalism.

The media won't figure this out for a few years, but intelligent investors know it. Just as left ideologues seem to have won in the United States and Europe, their crucial economic leverage is crumbling. Ideologues think they know the future. Technologists and capitalists know better.

What effect will this radical change have on the culture wars? Will left-Islamist control freaks like Obama try to control a low-cost energy world with few practical limits?

China now builds the equivalent of one coal-burning power plant every day. In ten years that plant will be converted to natural gas from China's own sources (including the ones it just grabbed in the South China Sea). The pollution impact of that coal plant will then drop drastically, because natural gas has no particulates like diesel fuel or coal. In Europe and America, irrational schemes for wind and tidal power will die aborning. They are doomed to crumble, and the only question is "how quickly"?

In a major civilizational struggle like this, communication and education are the main battlefields. In the West the radical left conquered the organs of propaganda in the Sixties and Seventies, when the media took a hard left turn. Even as the Soviet paradise crumbled around 1990, Western ideological media remained stuck in the Communist Manifesto of 1848. The mental world of the socialist media stayed fixed in the distant past, just as the Islamist media are stuck in the ancient world of the 7th century.

For conservatives the shale revolution represents a huge new chance for a political renaissance. Once again, rigid ideological empires are set to crumble. In Europe the radical-left ruling class is running into the giant iceberg of the single Euro currency. The Euro ruling class is scrambling to keep its money and power while the world is moving under their very feet. The Euro struggle is now a pure powerstruggle, like Bourbon France before the French Revolution. If European voters could throw out the bums they would do so today. 

That is also why crypto-fascist opportunists are now arising, like Beppe Grillo in Italy and Viktor Orban in Hungary.

This year it looks like Islamic imperialism is on the rise as a result of the "Arab Spring" -- bringing anarchy and war to Syria, Libya, Egypt, Somalia, and all the rest. Islamists have been making ferocious war on the West since 1993, the first bomb attack on the World Trade Center. Last week's Boston massacre shows they have not given up, and the Obama Administration has not made America more secure. On the contrary -- Obama has yielded to the enemy.

But in less than a decade the Middle East will lose its monopoly oil power, as fountains of shale energy emerge all over the world. There will be thousands of new opportunities for freedom and prosperity, as technology and knowledge spread around the world at near-zero cost.

Will conservatives be prepared to spread freedom through the new media?

Humanity could see a new renaissance.

Or -- the power-hungry control freaks could win.
 
Which will it be? Freedom or medieval tyranny?

And what will you do to speed a return to normalcy?

American Thinker

Report: Russia Warned U.S. Government Numerous Times About Boston Bomber

by AWR Hawkins 25 Apr 2013

 

  Reports indicate Russian authorities warned the U.S. government about Tamerlan Tsarnaev multiple times before he bombed the Boston Marathon on April 15. During a closed briefing on April 23, Senate Intelligence Committee members learned Russia had made "multiple contacts" with U.S. authorities, including "at least one in October 2011."

The FBI has maintained that it interviewed Tsarnaev in early 2011, determining at that time that he wasn't a threat.

But the FBI did not know Tsarnaev traveled to Russia in 2012. Sen. Lindsey Graham said the FBI was not alerted toTsarnaev's trip because his name was misspelled "on an airliner passenger list."

It is unknown whether Tsarnaev's name was misspelled on purpose to avoid detection.

In light of the contradiction between the Russian government's claims and those of our own government, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) worries that we may be slipping back into pre-9/11 intelligence sharing practices between federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Big Peace

New Media Shames President Obama into Visiting Memorial for West, TX Victims

by Kevin L. Martin 24 Apr 2013

 Earlier this week, the blogosphere lit up with the news that President Obama's official weekly schedule did not include a visit to the devastated town of West, Texas, despite the fact that the President will be visiting the region this week. The initial schedule put out by the White House for the President included attending the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and a fundraiser in Austin, coupled with an overnight stay, but no mention of a visit to the town of West. More than a dozen people were killed and more than 200 were hurt following an explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town on April 17th. A week late, over 50 people remain missing.

The White House seemed to change course by Monday afternoon and publicly stated that Obama would attend a memorial for all the victims after several websites reported the initial schedule.

While many can speculate on the White House’s sudden reversal of course, one thing that can be said is that the blogosphere was responsible for applying pressure in that decision. This stands as further proof that more and more Americans are turning to new media to hold elected officials accountable over the propaganda presented by the old media.

It is a shame that it has fallen to the new media to now do the job the old media use to do: to hold our elected officials accountable to the very people who put them in office.

Big Journalism

I Saw Something, So I'm Saying Something

April 22, 2013
By Stella Paul

 
 Are you fed up with the antiseptic slogan, "If you see something, say something?"

The authorities expect us to report suspicious backpacks, but stay silent as the tomb about the nature of the men who put them there.

We're instructed to speak up about a bloodied man's movement under a boat tarp, but to shut up about the ideological movement that drove him to commit his carnage.

Well, as it happens, I've seen quite a lot of things over the last few years that I'd like to say something about -- enough things to break a heart and to kill a country.

And after the Boston Massacre committed by two immigrant jihadis, I'm going to say them.

I've seen the president of the United States bow down before the Saudi king, whose country sent fifteen hijackers to topple our towers. The reason French President Sarkozy is laughing in the photo is because he's reading the "Kick Me" sign on Obama's rump.

I've seen Obama stand before the United Nations after the jihad-crazed slaughter of four Americans in Benghazi, including our ambassador, and proclaim "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

So much for America's right of free speech! And freedom of religion! Can you find anything in that bizarre sentence with which the Boston bombers would disagree? No wonder Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an Obama supporter.

I've seen Obama's minions arrest and jail an obscure California film-maker for creating a YouTube video that criticizes Mohammed. Incredibly, I then witnessed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempt to blame the hapless guy for inciting the Benghazi slaughter. How about arresting Obama's pal George Clooney for bad acting? That would make more sense.

I've seen Obama's UN ambassador hustle to pass UN Resolution 16/18, an "anti-blasphemy law" pushed by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to make criticizing Islam an international crime. So if you harsh the mellow of Shariah fanatics by critiquing their child marriages, honor killings, homosexual hangings, and genocidal plots to wipe out Israel, you're the one who's going to jail.

I've seen Janet Napolitano, Obama's Homeland Security Secretary, refuse to use the term "terrorism" and insist on calling jihad-inspired carnage "man-caused disasters." As she helpfully explained to a German interviewer, she selected this term to "move away from the politics of fear" and, presumably, towards the politics of insanity.

I've seen Obama's Department of Defense, which prosecutes our War on Man-Caused Disasters, order a complete purge of "anti-Islamic content" from all military training materials. Do me a favor: If you see a U.S. soldier, could you explain to him what "jihad" means?

Just this month, I've seen a U.S. Army training instructor teach his military students that "Evangelical Christianity" is the leading movement of dangerous "Religious Extremism," along with "Catholicism" and "Islamophobia." Funny how that works. I didn't notice the entire city of Boston cowering inside their homes to stay safe from Islamophobes, did you?

I've seen the FBI conduct an interview with Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 and come up blank. Maybe if Obama's FBI hadn't just purged its counterterrorism training manual of words like Muslim, Islam, jihad, Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Sharia, they might have found a clue.

Three weeks ago, I saw the U.S. Army formally refuse to award Purple Hearts to the 13 soldiers killed and 32 wounded in the shooting rampage of Major Nidal Hassan at Fort Hood. Although Hassan was in extensive communication with Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki before screaming "Allahu Akbar" and opening fire, the military claims Hassan merely committed "workplace violence."

I suppose Hassan's slaughter of the pregnant 21-year-old soldier Francheska Velez was just "sexual harassment." Fort Hood hero Sgt. Kimberly Munley now says that Obama "betrayed" her and the other victims.

I've seen the military refuse a Purple Heart to Private Andy Long, who was killed in 2009 outside an Army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas. His murderer was an all-American boy who converted to Islam at Tennessee State University and traveled to a terrorist training camp in Yemen, before returning home to commit jihad.

Obama threatened to veto the entire 2013 Defense Authorization Act, because it awarded a Purple Heart to Private Long, whom the military claims is merely a victim of street crime. See no jihad, hear no jihad, speak no jihad.

I've seen jihadis kill and maim Jews at the El-Al airport counter in Los Angeles and the Seattle Jewish Federation, attempt to blow up airplanes with explosives in their shoes and underwear, go on a hit-and-run killing spree in San Francisco and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and plant a car bomb in Times Square. And after each Allah-crazed attack, the political-media complex rushes to assure us that Islam is "a religion of peace."

Of course, nobody in the mainstream media seemed to notice, but I watched Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris driven underground in fear of her life after proposing "Everybody Draw Muhammed Day" on Facebook. 

Unlike the late Margaret Thatcher, who provided government protection for author Salman Rushdie when his life was threatened by jihadis, Obama has given Molly Norris exactly nothing -- not even one word of support.

Americans are being disarmed of our right to free speech, our most potent weapon in this brutal war. Obama and his media allies are locking up the language to even discuss the nature of our enemy, and leaving us stripped of the basic knowledge we need to resist submitting to Islam.

Oh, here's another thing I saw: Page 261 of Obama's The Audacity of Hope, in which he writes, "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." Are the winds ugly yet?

Stella Paul's new ebook is What I Miss About America: Reflections from the Golden Age of Hope and Change, available at Amazon for just $1.99. Write Stella at Stellapundit@aol.com

American Thinker

The ‘Co-exist’ Bombers

This must disappoint David Sirota.

By Mark Steyn

This has been a strange and deadly week in America. On Monday, two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, the first successful terrorist attack on a civilian target on American soil since 9/11. And yet a mere two days later, Boston’s death toll was surpassed by a freak fertilizer accident at a small town in Texas.

In America, all atrocities are not equal: Minutes after the Senate declined to support so-called gun control in the wake of the Newtown massacre, the president rushed ill-advisedly on air to give a whiny, petulant performance predicated on the proposition that one man’s mass infanticide should call into question the constitutional right to bear arms. Simultaneously, the media remain terrified that another man’s mass infanticide might lead you gullible rubes to question the constitutional right to abortion, so the ongoing Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia has barely made the papers — even though it involves large numbers of fully delivered babies who were decapitated and had their feet chopped off and kept in pickling jars. Which would normally be enough to guarantee a perpetrator front-page coverage for weeks on end. In the most recent testimony, one of the “clinic”’s “nurses” testified that she saw a baby delivered into the toilet, where his little arms and feet flapped around as if trying to swim to safety. Then another “women’s health worker” reached in and, in the procedure’s preferred euphemism, “snipped” the baby’s neck — i.e., severed his spinal column. “Doctor” Gosnell seems likely to prove America’s all-time champion mass murderer. But his victims are ideologically problematic for the media, and so the poor blood-soaked monster will never get his moment in the spotlight.

The politicization of mass murder found its perfect expression in one of those near-parodic pieces to which the more tortured self-loathing dweebs of the fin de civilisation West are prone. As the headline in Salon put it, “Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American.” David Sirota is himself a white American, but he finds it less discomforting to his Princess Fluffy Bunny worldview to see his compatriots as knuckle-dragging nutjobs rather than confront all the apparent real-world contradictions of the diversity quilt. He had a lot of support for his general predisposition. “The thinking, as we have been reporting, is that this is a domestic extremist attack,” declared Dina Temple-Raston, NPR’s “counterterrorism correspondent.” “Officials are leaning that way largely because of the timing of the attack. April is a big month for anti-government and right-wing individuals. There’s the Columbine anniversary, there’s Hitler’s birthday, there’s the Oklahoma City bombing, the assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.” Miss Temple-Raston was born in my mother’s homeland of Belgium, where, alas, there were more than a few fellows willing to wish the Führer happy birthday back when he was still around to thank you for it. But it was news to me it was such a red-letter day in the Bay State. Who knew? At NPR, “counterterrorism” seems to mean countering any suggestion that this might be terrorism from you know, the usual suspects. David Sirota’s column appeared on Tuesday. By Wednesday he got his wish, not re the Boston perp but with the Ricin guy, a man who (in further echoes of those first days after 9/11) mailed poison-laced letters to a Republican senator and the Democrat president. The would-be Ricin terrorist turned out to be not a jihadist from Yemen or Waziristan but an Elvis impersonator from Mississippi whom Senator Wicker had once booked as entertainment for a friend’s party. Kevin Curtis is not just your run-of-the-mill Elvis impersonator, but a seven-time finalist in the prestigious “Images of the King” competition. Yet he is, in fact, the second Elvis impersonator to be mixed up with Ricin, following the arrest last year of Michael Conley in a Florida motel room after a showdown with cops in which he brandished a vial of white powder at them.

Despite this pattern of behavior, Mr. Sirota is probably right. There will be no profiling of Elvis impersonators by Homeland Security. No one will stare suspiciously if someone is seen walking around the perimeter of sensitive facilities in a rhinestone-studded white jumpsuit with flyaway collars. The president is unlikely to drone Vegas. Elvis impersonators can post all the threats they want (“If you’re looking for trouble, you’ve come to the right place  If you’re looking for trouble, look right in my face”) and the Islamophobic security state will still pursue its peculiar obsessions.

Twenty-four hours later, Mr. Sirota had a second feather in his cap. The two suspects in the Boston bombing turned out to be Caucasian males — that’s to say, males from the Caucasus, specifically the North Caucasus, Chechnya by way of Dagestan. Unfortunately for his delicate sensitivities, the two Caucasians were also Muslims. They were alumni of Cambridge Rindge and Latin, one of the oldest public schools in America and latterly one of the most “diverse,” boasting (being the operative word) students from over 80 countries.

The Tsarnaev brothers had spent most of their lives in the United States, and lived the diversity dream. They seem to have had a droll wit when it comes to symbolism: Last year, the younger brother took his oath of citizenship and became an American on September 11. And, in their final hours of freedom, they added a cruel bit of mockery to their crimes by carjacking a getaway vehicle with a “Co-exist” bumper sticker. Oh, you must have seen them: I bet David Sirota has one. The “C” is the Islamic crescent, the “O” is the hippy peace sign; the “X” is the Star of David, the “T” is the Christian cross; I think there’s some LGBT, Taoist, and Wiccan stuff in there, too. They’re not mandatory on vehicles in Massachusetts; it just seems that way.

I wonder, when the “Co-exist” car is returned to its owner, whether he or she will keep the bumper sticker in place. One would not expect him to conclude, as the gays of Amsterdam and the Jews of Toulouse and the Christians of Egypt have bleakly done, that if it weren’t for that Islamic crescent you wouldn’t need a bumper sticker at all. But he may perhaps have learned that life is all a bit more complicated than the smiley-face banalities of the multicultists.

It’s very weird to live in a society where mass death is important insofar as it serves the political needs of the dominant ideology. A white male loner killing white kindergartners in Connecticut is news; a black doctor butchering black babies in Pennsylvania is not. When the manhunt in Boston began, I received a bunch of e-mails sneering I was gagging for it to be the Muzzies just as hungrily as lefties were for it to be an NRA guy, a Tea Partier, a Sarah Palin donor. But, actually, I wasn’t. On Monday, it didn’t feel Islamic: a small death toll at a popular event but not one with the resonance and iconic quality the big-time jihadists like — like 9/11, the embassy bombings, the U.S.S. Cole. After all, if the jihad crowd wanted to blow up a few people here and there IRA-style they could have been doing it all this last decade.

On the other hand, it didn’t feel like one of those freelance bumblers — the Pantybomber, the Times Square Bomber — finally got lucky. It feels like something in between, something new. Is it just a one-off? Or a strategic evolution?

Either way, the fatuities of the “Co-exist” bumper sticker are not real. The disaffected young Muslim on the lam in a car with a “Co-exist” sticker is.

 National Review