The Future Must Not Belong To Those Who Shoot At People Who Draw Cartoons Of the Prophet Of Islam

 by John Hayward 
 4 May 2015

 Attention media: one of your most important jobs right now is to get all Democrat politicians on the record as to whether they support the free-speech rights of Americans to draw cartoons of Mohammed. We need to know how many ifs, ands, ors, and above all, “buts” they need to choke out an answer. This isn’t a political gotcha game – it’s a vitally important question that bears directly on the future of the Republic.

Let me get the head of the Democrat Party, Barack Obama, started with a nice, simple, crystal-clear statement that builds off something he famously said at the United Nations, back when he was trying to blame his appalling failure in Libya on a YouTube video:

The future must not belong to those who shoot at people who draw cartoons of the prophet of Islam.

There are no qualifiers necessary here, no “nuance,” no shades of grey, no weak-kneed dissertations on whether drawing a cartoon of Mohammed is rude. The right of Americans to draw those pictures, and be protected from violent reprisals, is absolute. If you’re not ready to stand up and be counted, then America doesn’t need you right now. Sit quietly and await further instructions from those who demand your submission.

Criticizing the content of Mohammed cartoons is fine. That’s speech answering speech. But speech was not answered with speech in Texas on Sunday night. It was answered with bullets. That’s a threat we need to defeat, not an idea to be argued about. Art critiques and sensitivity lectures should wait until later. It is vitally important, above all other things, to send the message that suppressing free expression with violence is absolutely wrong. It’s a declaration of war on American values that our police, military and patriotic citizens must stand ready to answer.

If any part of your response to the Garland attack involves blaming the people who were fired upon, you are conceding the idea of responding to speech with murder has merit. If you think this idea is defensible primarily when Muslims do the shooting, thanks to some post-colonialist garbage you swallowed from the media or a college professor, then what you’re doing is called submission.

Describing the Garland event as “anti-Islamic” is also an act of submission – a concession that Islam Is Different, entitled to considerations that no other religion is given by a secular liberal culture that prides itself on “irreverence.” For decades, this culture has gone absolutely bananas when accused of intolerance or bigotry for mocking Christianity and Judaism. Don’t you dare describe crucifix-in-urine “artists,” or militant atheists who say religious faith is a mental defect, as “anti-Christian!”

We’re constantly told that Christians must accept irreverence and mockery from those who don’t share their faith, because they also don’t share Christian piety. To them, Bible stories are works of fiction little different from epic fantasy tales (with rock monsters swapped in for Ents!) Jesus was just an interesting philosopher, and a crucifix is just a little bit of metal and wood. For the most part, Christians do accept this. Even their verbal protests tend to be relatively restrained. When Christians protest strenuously, liberals treat them as lunatics and tell campfire stories about their Last Temptation of Christ freak-outs for generations. At this point, Christians are hunted down and destroyed for politely refusing to hypothetically participate in actions they find morally objectionable.

But with Islam, all of us – Christian, Jew, Hindu, and atheist – are supposed to accept the sharia prohibition against drawing Mohammed or mocking Islamic faith as a valid restriction. It’s a piety we’re all supposed to respect – not because we believe in it, but because we accept that Muslims will enforce it with violence. No jihad outburst is complete without some imbecile saying that insulting Islam is the equivalent of “shouting fire in a crowded theater” because a violent response is to be anticipated.

Not only do the people saying this misunderstand what the “fire in a crowded theater” precedent means, but they’re missing the rather obvious difference that crowded theaters don’t follow people around and pounce on them when they shout “Fire!” Non-Muslims should be under no obligation to treat every public and private venue as a tinderbox that can be set ablaze by the slightest disrespect to Islamic sensibilities. No one seems to think performances of a play such as “The Book of Mormon” should be treated as shouting “Fire!” from the stage of a crowded theater.

(By the way, I noticed some pushback against the New York Times for supposedly describing the Garland event as “anti-Islam” on Twitter, but at least in the version of their Tweet I saw, they said “anti-Islamist.” That’s different – Islamism is shorthand for Islamic fascism, i.e. shooting at people who draw cartoons of Mohammed.)

The alternative to submission is defiance. There are no other choices, because those who demand submission will not stop until they have been defeated. The slightest concession encourages them… such as refusing to print images of the very cartoons that filled the Texas night with gunfire.

The more aggressive Islamists are looking for surrender, but their less energetic supporters applaud concessions from non-believers as righteous - it’s good that everyone learns not to draw cartoons of Mohammed, pats on the head all around! The only way to disabuse them of this misconception is to resist, firmly and consistently. Americans will always be permitted to draw such cartoons, and Muslims will always be permitted to denounce them.

At least, that’s how it should work. In today’s America of micro-aggressions and trigger warnings, people of the Left have grown very comfortable with using coercive force to stifle speech they find objectionable. Islamists are thumping their guns down on a game table already littered with boycotts and oppressive anti-religious government regulations. Prestige in our degenerate left-wing culture is earned by silencing dissent; the power players are the groups no one is permitted to disagree with, the people who cannot be mocked.

This leaves most Democrats, and far too many other politicians, ill-positioned to explain why robust free speech must be defended without compromise. That’s why it is vitally important for the media to get them on the record, and ask for their unqualified defense of the people who came under attack in Garland on Sunday night. No one who fails to provide such a swift and simple defense is qualified to hold public office in the United States of America, at any level. It’s doubtful they’re even qualified to be art critics.

Breitbart

The Great American Traveling Riot Circus

May 3, 2015
By Clarice Feldman 

 
To entertain the citizens of Rome, circular arenas – circuses -- were built to house staged events of various sorts, including the slaughter of Christians. After Rome fell, itinerant performers took their shows on the road offering somewhat less grand, but still popular, entertainments.

In the United States for the past few years the traveling inner city riots seem to be playing the same role with their own stock characters.

There are the young men who died in the course of criminal acts, portrayed at first by the media as innocent children who later turn out to have extensive rap sheets; the cops brought to the scene for gladiatorial type contests with stone throwing mobs; the press chasing, and sometimes by their presence and words, encouraging the staged battles; and an army of pundits seeing in the chaos whatever visions they project onto it. In the rear of the tent organizing the events are leftwing agitators, Black Muslims, and anarchists who show up with preprinted T-shirts and placards and plaintiffs’ counsels and race baiters stirring the pot for their share of whatever settlements they can get for representing the aggrieved family (who generally seem not to have paid much attention to the deceased when he lived). The referees are local officials too often swayed by the mob's call for blood. Instead of Christians, the sacrifices are small merchants, often Korean or Jewish, who eke out meager livings providing services to the underserved poor and the decent citizens of those communities whose lives are upended and slim resources diminished. Another sacrifice is the weakening of the communal bonds of trust and respect for law that make America work and the increased likelihood of ever more urban violence.

Like the Brown, Martin, and Garner riots before them, the Baltimore riots follow this program.

A)  The Dead Man

Freddie Gray was arrested after he made eye contact with some cops on bikes, fled, and was alleged to have a switchblade in his possession. He was the son of a single mother who had been an addict and had recently received a settlement as a result of a lawsuit claiming he’d been poisoned by lead paint in one of the apartments in which he lived as a child. He had an extensive rap sheet.

The arrest record was probably even more extensive, as Andrew Branca notes.
Andrew Branca:

Freddie Gray had an extensive criminal record, and this was well known to police officers in the community.  He was, in short, known to engage in unlawful criminal activity with a frequency that would in any other context be considered evidence of a notable work ethic. He had at least 18 arrests in the ~8 years between 2007 and his death in 2015 -- and it is worth keeping in mind that the only reason his arrest record here begins in only in 2007 is that prior arrests would be sealed as juvenile records.

It is also notable that although Gray’s early arrests were apparently confined to drug offenses, in later years he began to be charged with acts of violence, including several charges on differing dates of second-degree assault, as well as burglary.

In addition, the neighborhood where the arrest occurred is known more generally for being a high-crime area, and so the police would be expected to be particularly attuned for indications of criminal conduct.

In this context the police observe well-known criminal Gray acting in a manner that they perceive as noteworthy. The police begin to approach Gray, a form of police conduct that requires no particular legal justification at least until an actual interaction has begun.

Observing the police approach, Gray substantially increases the suspiciousness of his conduct by fleeing the officers. 

Stopping him under those circumstances and frisking him was, as Branca explains, perfectly legal. 

The pocketknife they found on him was apparently illegal in Baltimore and he was arrested.

After his arrest he was handcuffed, shackled and placed in a police van, which made several stops before it arrived at the station. At some point in the trip he was found on the floor of the van and died soon after. We do not have access to the autopsy report. We do not know if the district attorney did either before she pressed charges against the officers who arrested and transported him. It has been reported that he died of a severe spinal injury. Whether it was self-inflicted or the result of a “rough ride” in which he’d not been wearing a seatbelt, we do not know. Another passenger in the van, although out of sight, was reported to have claimed he heard Gray pounding his head against the wall of the van, but without the autopsy report we do not have a means of testing this.

B)  The Cops

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby charged six cops in connection with Gray’s death.
Three are white; three are black. One of the black cops, a sergeant, is a woman. (So much for the usual claim that a more diverse police force would prevent such things or that racism explains the events.)

Ms. Mosby’s biggest campaign contributor in what was essentially an uncontested election is the lawyer for the Gray family. Her husband is a member of the Baltimore City Council who represents the district where the rioting occurred and who encouraged the rioting. 

The weakest of the charges seem to involve the bike patrol, which arrested Gray, as Branca explained above. The bike patrol consisted of Lt. Bryan Rice, Garrett Miller, and Edward Nero, all three of whom are white.

Rice was the first officer to make eye contact with Gray while on bike patrol, State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby said. Rice then chased Gray, calling for backup on his police radio. Mosby said Rice failed to establish probable cause for Gray’s arrest.

The lieutenant helped load Gray onto a police wagon, then he ordered the driver to stop the vehicle so he and other officers could remove Gray, handcuff him and place leg shackles on his ankles.

Rice, whose bail was set at $350,000, is charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office and false imprisonment.
[snip]

Officer Garrett E. Miller is charged with second-degree ­assault, misconduct in office and false imprisonment. Miller, 26, has been on the force since 2012. Miller was on bike patrol with Rice and Nero when they apprehended Gray, according to the prosecutor. Miller helped load Gray into a police wagon and failed to restrain him with a seat belt.
[snip]

Officer Edward M. Nero, 29, who joined the force in 2012, was on bike patrol with Rice and another officer when they chased Gray. Nero handcuffed Gray and held him down until the police wagon arrived, Mosby said. Nero, who is white, is charged with second-degree assault, misconduct in office and false imprisonment.
The remaining officers are all black, and all were in contact with Gray after he was arrested and placed in the van.

They are Caesar Goodson, Jr., William Porter and Sgt. Alicia D. White. As the Washington Post described the charges against them:

Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr “drove the van that transported Gray to jail.

Goodson, whose bail was set at $350,000, is the only officer in the group facing a murder charge. He is charged with ­second-degree depraved-heart murder, a charge used when a suspect is accused of reckless disregard for another person’s life, in addition to involuntary manslaughter, second-degree ­assault, manslaughter by vehicle and misconduct in office. Officer William G. Porter [snip] became involved in Gray’s arrest after Goodson requested backup as he was driving to central booking, Mosby said.

Porter, whose bail was set at $350,000, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault and misconduct in office.

Porter, who is black, checked on Gray and asked him whether he needed medical assistance. When Gray said he could not breathe, Porter helped him off the van floor and onto a bench. The officer failed to restrain Gray with a seat belt, Mosby said. Nor did Porter call for medical help, despite Gray’s request. [snip]

Sgt. Alicia D. White, 30, joined the force in 2010. She was dispatched to investigate two citizens’ complaints about Gray’s arrest. At one point, according to Mosby, she “spoke to the back of his head, ”even though Gray was unresponsive.

The prosecutor said White made no effort to assess Gray’s condition despite having been told he needed medical assistance. White, whose bail was set at $350,000, is charged with involuntary manslaughter, ­second-degree assault and misconduct in office.”

That’s it. An arrest that seems on its face to be perfectly legal, followed by a perfectly ordinary trip to the station house and a death whose cause to the public is still unclear, but seems at best to be the result of some inattentiveness to the physical distress of the man in custody and a failure to secure him with a seat belt, a new policy which we are uncertain had been timely conveyed to the charged officers.

There can be more to this that we are unaware of, but in essence the case brings to mind the incident involving Eric Garner last July in New York, where officer Daniel Pantaleo arrested  Garner who he’d wrestled to the ground after he resisted. Garner complained he couldn’t breathe, lost consciousness and neither the officers nor the EMT performed CPR on him. A grand jury refused to indict Pantaleo and nationwide protests and rallies followed.

From what is publicly available I have to agree with those commentators like Charles Krauthammer who believe these charges were filed to appease the mob and Professor Alan Dershowitz who thinks the cases are without merit.

Alan Dershowitz really went after Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby today for charging the six cops involved in the death of Freddie Gray, saying it was entirely based on politics and “crowd control.”

Dershowitz lamented that “this is a very sad day for justice” and told Steve Malzberg that Mosby acted out of a “desire to prevent riots.” It will be “virtually impossible,” he predicted, for the six officers involved to get a fair trial.

And as for murder charges, Dershowitz said there’s “no plausible, hypothetical, conceivable case for murder” and “this is a show trial.” He predicted that Mosby might get removed as prosecutor and Baltimore citizens may get upset if and/or when they “move to a place with a different demographic.”

He concluded that it’s “unlikely they’ll get any convictions in this case” and if they do they’ll likely “be reversed on appeal.”

The police union is incensed at the Mosby charges.

What happens outside the criminal courtrooms is even more significant to me. Al Sharpton, MSNBC’s designated race pimp who has not paid the millions of dollars in back taxes he owes and yet is a regular White House visitor, claims he’s going to lead a march on Washington. Should he carry through on his threat, I hope law enforcement officials and honest citizens line the road demonstrating opposition to this effort to demonize those who are doing their job to enforce order in the urban jungles which people like Sharpton make ever more intolerable and lawless.

C) The Press

As for the press, online I read daily of young black men brutally assaulting whites who cross their path. Like this.

You don’t find these stories in the New York Times or the Washington Post as a rule. These stories suggest to me that the false narrative of hostile whites attacking innocent blacks is distorting the selective news that reaches the ill-informed, badly educated, and largely uncivilized ghetto dwelling thugs, enraging them into such behavior which the media have justified by such lies. And feeding into liberal insistence that such conduct was warranted.

D) The Pundits

No less revolting is the attitude of those largely untouched by these violent outbursts, a white liberal racism that encourages more of it. As black author Chloe Simone Valdary so ably argues (in a video apparently available only on Facebook) treating blacks as children who need not be held to the same standards everyone else is held to, is racist. And the explanations the apologists offer are false. In the Brown case in Ferguson, for example, white liberals justified the thievery as the acts of those who had no other choice in a community where all the officials and most of law enforcement were white. 

In fact, they had a perfectly available choice: the ballot box. Activists rushed to Missouri to register new voters. Hardly any signed up. Nevertheless, an election for local officials was held. The number of blacks on the city council was trebled, though how much change this will involve remains to be seen, All the officials remain Democrats. 

And the Democrats rule the urban cesspools and have for decades.

No Republican, and certainly no conservative, has left so much as a thumbprint on the public institutions of Baltimore in a generation. Baltimore’s police department is, like Detroit’s economy and Atlanta’s schools, the product of the progressive wing of the Democratic party enabled in no small part by black identity politics. This is entirely a left-wing project, and a Democratic-party project.”

As Glenn Reynolds observes: Ruin follows them wherever they go -- but hey, so do splendid opportunities for graft, so what do they care?" 

The appeasing liberals never can see the inconsistency of their views. These are the same people who on one hand are for keeping guns from law-abiding citizens while supporting elected officials like Baltimore’s mayor who issue stand down orders to law enforcement, making the lawlessness sure to spread unchecked.

In the Trayvon Martin case the press stirred the pot by making it seem as if Martin’s death was caused by racism. When it turned out that George Zimmerman was Hispanic with a black grandparent, they created a journalistic neologism, “white Hispanic.” When those law officers charged in Baltimore with the most serious offenses now revealed as black, one wonders how this can be fashioned into a racial incident though Salon’s Joan Walsh absurdly tried on twitter: “And there is no debate that tragically, black police officers often absorb the attitudes of their colleagues.”

What also deserves mention is that in the face of all of this, many black Baltimoreans in the riot area turned out to try to prevent the looting and to stand as shield between the cops and the rioters. Bless the peacemakers. Bless those who play by the rules and trust fact over emotion. Without them we will all live in chaos, violence and want.

What also must be asked, is how much of the president’s and former Attorney General Eric Holder’s and Sharpton’s, conduct  and speech are part and parcel of Obama’s new push for federalizing local law enforcement? There is already a move already underway in the COPS program and the Department of Justice’s interference with local police in Ferguson, Missouri and Sanford, Florida. In my view, this a plan fraught with danger, signaling yet another totalitarian power grab for political advantage. 

American Thinker

Why Morning Will Come

By J. Robert -- Bio and Archives 
 March 20, 2015  

Recognition of the inevitability of comprehensive bureaucratization does not solve the problems that arise out of it.—Joseph Schumpter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

Many of us—including me—worry about the downward arc of liberty, ethics and economic freedom. If you are taking the time to read this short article, in all likelihood, I needn’t detail the myriad challenges we face, even at a high level.  Rather, the question is: is there any hope? Or are we fated to descend into a new Dark Age, aided and abetted, in the famous words of Winston Churchill regarding National Socialism, by “perverted science?”

Notwithstanding those who look forward to the return of Jesus Christ—of which I count myself one—or a spiritual revival, are there any other reasons to hold out hope in the interim? I think there is reason for optimism. It is not a certain hope, but is a hope that—accompanied by courage, elbow grease, intelligence and audacity—should give conservatives, libertarians, Constitutionalists and other allies a reason for positivity. And please note by “audacity,” I do not allude to the book by Barack Obama, who is one of the leading unlights pushing us towards a new Dark Age; rather, I make reference to the words of a true American hero, George Patton, whose motto was “Audacity, audacity, always audacity.”  Patton, of course, led the charge in destroying a similar national socialism we see here today.

What is this hope for a better morning based on? Simply this: the leftist experiment has always and everywhere—by virtue of its complete misapprehension of human nature - eventually reverted to its natural ouroborotic state. It is, as Jacques Mallet du Pan (1749—10 May 1800), wrote about the first leftist reign of terror, in his 1793 essay
that ”...the Revolution always eats its own children” (“A l’exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants”)

Examples of du Pan’s thesis? The prototypical example is Robespierre falling to his own guillotine, of course. But let’s look at more history. Do you recall the Red Chinese attack on fellow communist Vietnam immediately on the heels of the US withdrawal and collapse of South Vietnam? If not, perhaps you recall the Sino-Soviet war on the Ussuri River border area in 1969, amid reports Soviet leadership had inquired of US leadership if there would be any problems if the Russians nuked Mao’s China. Or you may recall Leon Trotsky, one of those who brought into being the Soviet nightmare along with Lenin, becoming persona non grata in the Soviet People’s Workers Paradise, being forced to flee to Mexico and finally being murdered there with an ice pick. The story of former NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) head and Stalin buddy Lavrentiy Beria falling out of favour, is particularly chilling. He was dragged before a special session (“Spetsialnoye Sudebnoye Prisutstvie”) the a day before Christmas 1953 with no defense counsel and no right of appeal, then summarily dragged off to be shot—after they stuffed a rag in his mouth to shut up his whining before they pulled the trigger.  A little more recently, perhaps you recall Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo in the old Rhodesia? Of course. Operation Barbarossa, where the National Socialists of Germany invaded the socialists of the Soviet Union is a classic example. (Please… if you do not understand that the war between Hitler and Stalin was an internecine one, one version of socialism vs. another, simply go read the planks adopted at the very first Nazi convention, Munich, Feb. 1920, and tell me how they differ in any substantive way. Or consider Hitler’s own words, “There is more that binds us to Boshevism than separates us from it… I have always made allowances for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once,” or again, “I am not merely the vanquisher of Marxism, I am its implementer… The whole of National Socialism is contained in Marxism… the industrial cells, the mass demonstrations, the propaganda material.”) Most recently, we see similar dynamics where “Obama’s brain” Valerie Jarrett has made vigorous attempts to derail the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign by purportedly being the agent behind Hillary’s State Department email imbroglio.

But of course, the Fabian socialists in power today deign to use a velvet glove rather than the hammer and sickle to crush the skulls of their opposition—at least much of the time. That is, the new socialists desire to not smash your skull, but rather to get in and reside within it (another mindless “Yes we can!” chanting session, anyone?).  The goal today is generally not the guillotine (though all those banker “suicides,” or the abnormal deaths of Andrew Brietbart, Tom Clancy or Michael Hasting do not leave one with warm and fuzzies), but rather, as Charleton Heston wrote, the usurpation of culture:  “Modern media fills the cultural airwaves with a mist of anesthesia, so that principles and values are slowly desensitized to the coming onslaught. The new culture arrives on the heels of this propaganda. It simply moves in and takes over, like slipping a fine new glove over a numbed hand. The outcome of the war is just as devastating, but without bombs bursting, twisted bodies to bury, or rubble to rebuild. A new class, a different culture, simply takes over.” Andrew Brietbart, before his peculiar death, put it more succinctly: “Politics is downstream from culture.” In fact, the quotes from Heston and Brietbart are merely a shortened version of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

Where the velvet hammer fails, there is cultural marginalization, or failing at that, always the hammer of punitive legal measures, such as fining an Oregon baker a quarter million dollars for exercising her freedom of conscience re. homosexual marriages; sending another baker in Colorado to a re-education camp for the same “sin,” or Elaine Huegenin-  the photographer who graciously refused to photograph a gay “wedding” - who was informed by the New Mexico Supreme Court that her very right of citizenship was predicated on her submitting to the radical Brownshirt homosexual agenda.

Homosexuality uber alles… including the 1^st Amendment—is just part of the game.  Al Gore and his merry band of anti-science global warmers also illustrate the naked leftist hammer, where Gore recently stated that those who question global warming should “be punished.” And of course, there are always the ubiquitous campus speech and thought police, who are no more than Red Guards without the Mao suits . For them, it is as famed leftist Herbert Marcuse—who popularized the “repressive tolerance” theory of modern progressives ‚Äìsaid:“Liberating tolerance would mean intolerance against movements from the right and toleration of movements from the left. Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed.”

Famed leftist Mario Savio and his free speech crusade on the steps of the student union at UC Berkeley in the 1960s is now proven to be just part of the “realpolitik” in taking over the levers of control. Free speech be damned when there is control to be had!

But here is the optimistic twist about the leftists/fascists: As there is no God, power is the highest value in their universe. Indeed, it is ultimately all that exists for them. You know this from watching Hillary and Obama.  And from this assumption flows their whole hellish world, where it is as Dostoyevski wrote,“if there is no God… everything is permitted.”  (Без бога всё позволено, всё дозволено (the second clause is a variant of the phrase “everything is permitted.”).  And because power is their “god”—as opposed to the God the Founding Fathers invoke —the left is open to all kinds of distortions, corruptions and self-destructiveness. These self-proclaimed leftist savants have rejected the wisdom of those informed by absolutes (again… think here of America’s Founding Fathers, who were generally informed by Judeo-Christian presuppositions, which - critically - led to the division of powers) and instead have left themselves open to raw, fallen human nature… without having the intellectual grid to even be aware of the full ramifications of this.  Or as one two thousand year old book—not much read today—once stated, “Proclaiming themselves wise, they became fools.”  Or as another writer from that era, Roman satirist Juvenal, asked, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  (Who will guard the guards?) There is no answer to this, because none is possible in the amoral world of the left.

And herein lies the hope: Simply, that the left will, as it always has, destroy itself. The only question is, of course, how many must suffer or die before that implosion? Will it be the 100 million that the Black Book of Communism (Oxford Univ. Press) says were murdered last century by the left? Or will people rise before that to derail the train to darkness?

It has often been observed that the Soviet leftist beast died of its own internal contradictions and misapprehension of human nature (that is the reason why Ludwig von Mises’ best known book was called “Human Action”—downloadable here.) The point is, the leftist gyroscope is, by definition, not “in spec,” and thus can never lead anywhere that is recognizably human.  And of course a million human decisions made locally every second will always and everywhere trump the decisions by some self-appointed “best and brightest (the same “best and brightest” that gave us Vietnam) constructing today’s version of a Soviet 5 year plan while isolated in Moscow or Washington DC.

There is hope in that the left is utterly intellectually dishonest. Think the global warming scam. Science is decided by “consensus” rather than experimentation and hypothesis testing?

Notwithstanding the fact that there has been ZERO global warming since 1998, has anyone told Galileo, Copernicus about this? Has anyone told Ignaz Semmelweis—who insisted his doctors wash their hands between operation and was drummed out of the medical business in the mid-1800s because germs were not in the consensus—about this? Perhaps Mr. Gore could ask Albert Einstein - about whom Hitler had published a book entitled “100 Scientists Against Einstein” (to which Einstein replied “Why one hundred? If their facts are right, only one would be needed)—about that “consensus” scam.

The left thinks it can create a new man, a new reality based on their utterly flawed premises about human nature. But they are wrong—and permanently and forever wrong. No matter how much propaganda the left musters, it is as Horace (65—8 BC) said, “You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she will nevertheless come back.” Similarly, Solzhenitsyn predicted the downfall of the Soviet Union many decades ago, by noting simply that Communism could not, by their central presuppositions, see man as he was, and was thus inexorably doomed to fail.

There is more. Once the inevitable economic and ethical implosions occur, exactly how long will they be able to find the foot soldiers required to do leftist bidding? Not only will there be little money with which to hire mercenaries, the intellectual bankruptcy of the matter will be visible to all. In short, the Wicked Witch of the West will have no more flying monkeys at her command. People will not sacrifice their lives for something they know is bankrupt. And once this state is arrived at, the end is only a matter of time.

How do I know? I have lived in the capital of socialist Canada for many, many years, and worked with thousands of government employees. Exactly how many do you think really gave a flying rat’s derriere about anything other than their pensions and getting out the door precisely at 4 PM? Need I go through the litany of stories the US side of the border (my favourite being that distasteful issue where the EPA was having problems with employees defecating in the hallways).  Let me ask you this: this article is being written for free—my only interest is truth and justice. How many on the Big Government side would take even five minutes of their time to do the same? The truth is, that as the leftist Orwellian dystopia continues its descent, more and more will see the intellectual bankruptcy of the naked emperor, or—more narrowly—at least become disenchanted as they see a chronically unemployed brother, an elderly parent living in poverty, or their children with no future. Slowly but surely, with no bell rung at the bottom, people will one by one check out of Hotel Kalifornia.

It is true that there will always be the committed Bolsheviks; and it is true, as Margaret Mead said, that change generally comes through small committed groups (think the vile Saul Alinsky here). But recall, too, that there is no honour among thieves—let along ethics—and the world of the left will—long or short - devolve into a Lord of the Flies scenario. Worse, as the left knows it is creating an ever shrinking pie, there will be mad scrambles for the diminishing number of crumbs. There can only so many Michelle Obama-style vacations available, and that number will become smaller each year.  In fact, the old apocryphal story of Leonid Brezhnev is a perfect example:  In the 1970s, Leonid Brezhnev’s elderly grandmother, who had lived in pre-communist Russia, came to visit him at his communist headquarters. Leonid is beaming with pride as he introduces her to all his aides and servants, shows her his gold plated desk, his 15 Zil limousines waiting, all with engines running, pictures of all his well-appointed dachas in exclusive, VIP areas across the USSR, etc. Finally, at the end of the day, all the assistants, aides and servants leave. The old granny very nervously and very carefully looks around to make sure absolutely no one is anywhere near, then leans over and very, VERY quietly whispers in Leonid’s ear:
 
“This is all very well, Leonid…. BUT WHAT IF THE COMMUNISTS COME!?!?”

The truth is, formerly an army travelled on its stomach. However, today, with MREs, McDonalds and GMOs, food is not as great of an issue. There will be food (as non-nutritious as it may be!). Rather, today’s army travels on its worldview—but just like every other socialist experiment, ranging from Zimbabwe to the USSR, this worldview is neither intellectually tenable, economically sustainable nor morally bearable. Therein lies our hope.

Finally, for the left, their very fallen, imperfect human nature—which is addressed through the division of powers in traditional America, but dominated by czars, elites and autocrats in the totalitarian leftist world (remember: power is the only “god” they worship, and people become increasingly like that which they worship)—will be the final cause of their downfall.

In sum, there is hope. It is, as Dale Dauten wrote in his Greatest Quotations of All-Time “Willpower subverts passion. Bureaucracy subverts willpower. Idiocy subverts bureaucracy. If you need an example of this, just look at Obama’s cabinet.

Canada Free Press

Co-founder of Greenpeace explains why he is a climate skeptic

March 21, 2015
 By Rick Moran

 Got yer dose of schadenfreud for the day right here...

The co-founder of the granddaddy of green groups, Greenpeace, explains in a Heartland editorial why he is a climate skeptic.  Patrick Moore, who left Greenpeace in 1986 because, in his words, it "took a sharp turn to the political left" and "evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas," pulls no punches when criticizing his former colleagues in the green movement:

I am skeptical humans are the main cause of climate change and that it will be catastrophic in the near future. There is no scientific proof of this hypothesis, yet we are told “the debate is over” and “the science is settled.”

My skepticism begins with the believers’ certainty they can predict the global climate with a computer model. The entire basis for the doomsday climate change scenario is the hypothesis increased atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel emissions will heat the Earth to unlivable temperatures.

In fact, the Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years, since the Little Ice Age ended, long before heavy use of fossil fuels. Prior to the Little Ice Age, during the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings colonized Greenland and Newfoundland, when it was warmer there than today. And during Roman times, it was warmer, long before fossil fuels revolutionized civilization.

The idea it would be catastrophic if carbon dioxide were to increase and average global temperature were to rise a few degrees is preposterous.

Moore is just getting warmed up.  He makes the salient point that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a massive conflict of interest in researching global warming:

By its constitution, the IPCC has a hopeless conflict of interest. Its mandate is to consider only the human causes of global warming, not the many natural causes changing the climate for billions of years. We don’t understand the natural causes of climate change any more than we know if humans are part of the cause at present. If the IPCC did not find humans were the cause of warming, or if it found warming would be more positive than negative, there would be no need for the IPCC under its present mandate. To survive, it must find on the side of the apocalypse.

The IPCC should either have its mandate expanded to include all causes of climate change, or it should be dismantled.

He also points out that powerful interests have adopted global warming as a cause for a variety of reasons:

Cimate change has become a powerful political force for many reasons. First, it is universal; we are told everything on Earth is threatened. Second, it invokes the two most powerful human motivators: fear and guilt. We fear driving our car will kill our grandchildren, and we feel guilty for doing it.

Third, there is a powerful convergence of interests among key elites that support the climate “narrative.” Environmentalists spread fear and raise donations; politicians appear to be saving the Earth from doom; the media has a field day with sensation and conflict; science institutions raise billions in grants, create whole new departments, and stoke a feeding frenzy of scary scenarios; business wants to look green, and get huge public subsidies for projects that would otherwise be economic losers, such as wind farms and solar arrays. Fourth, the Left sees climate change as a perfect means to redistribute wealth from industrial countries to the developing world and the UN bureaucracy.

So we are told carbon dioxide is a “toxic” “pollutant” that must be curtailed, when in fact it is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, gas and the most important food for life on earth.

Without carbon dioxide above 150 parts per million, all plants would die.

The fact that CO₂ was 10 times higher 150 million years ago, at a time when life was exploding on the planet, is rarely mentioned in arguments for and against action on climate change. It's funny that we don't hear much criticism of Moore from the environmental community.  However, like most climate skeptics, he is charged with shilling for corporate interests.  Radical greens, of course, hate him, but his rational critiques of the science of global warming don't leave much room for criticism.

Moore has plenty of company in the green movement – you just never hear of them, because they don't toe the party line.  He's a refreshing voice coming from an unexpected source.

American Thinker

Israeli PM Netanyahu Addresses U.S. Congress | FULL SPEECH - March 3, 2015

Susan Rice and the Politicization of Genocide

by Shmuley Boteach

 
 Is there any dirty job for the Obama Administration that Susan Rice is not prepared to do?
 
Need someone to fraudulently blame the murder of an American Ambassador in Libya on a stupid film? Send Susan to the Sunday talk shows.
 
Need someone to savage the leader of the only democracy in the Middle East as damaging the “fabric” of Israel’s relationship with the United States? Put Susan in the makeup chair of Charlie Rose.
 
Yes, it seems there is nothing Susan isn’t prepared to do.
 
And why should that surprise us?
 
This is the same Susan Rice who forbade Israel from criticizing John Kerry in her infamous tweet: “Personal attacks in Israel directed at Sec Kerry totally unfounded and unacceptable.” Yes, Israel’s freedom of expression is circumscribed by none other than Susan Rice.
But there is another reason Susan Rice’s attack on the Prime Minister of Israel on Charlie Rose merits special opprobrium and that is the unique insensitivity she is famous for when it comes to genocide.
 
Iran is threatening to annihilate Israel. It is building the bombs to make that possible. It has lied to the world for more than a decade about its nuclear program. Iran is an oil superpower and energy exporter that needs nuclear energy about as much as I need a pork sandwich.
 
America is about to do a bad deal with Iran that will leave them something in the range of 5000 spinning centrifuges enriching Uranium. Israel is not party to the talks. It has been cast in the same position of Czechoslovakia in the Munich agreement of 1938 where Britain and France negotiated away Czech security (and much of the country) without the Czechs even allowed to be present.
 
And while Israel faces the possibility of genocide, Susan Rice shows gross insensitivity to an Israeli leader for simply speaking out.
 
But why shouldn’t Netanyahu entrust Israeli security to Susan Rice?
Perhaps its because of her record of trivializing genocide.
 
 In 1994 Susan Rice was part of Bill Clinton’s National Security Team which took no action whatsoever during the Rwandan genocide, leaving more than 800,000 men, women, and children to be hacked to death by machete in the fastest slaughter of human beings ever recorded.
 
Not content to insist on American non-involvement, the Clinton administration went a step further by obstructing the efforts of other nations to stop the slaughter. On April 21, 1994, the Canadian UN commander in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, declared that he required only 5000 troops to bring the genocide to a rapid halt. In addition, a single bombing run against the RTLM Hutu Power radio transmitting antenna would have made it impossible for the Hutus to coordinate their genocide.
 
But on the very same day, as Phillip Gourevitch details in his definitive account of the Rwandan genocide We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We will Be Killed With Our Families, the Security Council, with the Clinton Administration’s blessing, ordered the UN force under Dallaire reduced by ninety percent to a skeleton staff of 270 troops who would powerlessly witness the slaughter to come. This, in turn, was influenced by Presidential Decision Directive 25, which “amounted to a checklist of reasons to avoid American involvement in UN peacekeeping missions,” even though Dallaire did not seek American troops and the mission was not peacekeeping but genocide prevention.
 
Indeed, Madeleine Albright, then the American Ambassador to the UN, opposed leaving even this tiny UN force. She also pressured other countries “to duck, as the death toll leapt from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands … the absolute low point in her career as a stateswoman.”
 
In a 2001 article published in The Atlantic, Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning A Problem from Hell who is now Rice’s successor as American Ambassador to the United Nations, referred to Rice and her colleagues in the Clinton Administration as Bystanders to Genocide. She quotes Rice in her 2002 book as saying, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November congressional election?”
 
This is an astonishing statement. Here you have Susan Rice hearing about the murder of 330 people every hour for 3 months and her response is, How will this affect us politically?
 
That Rice would have brought up the midterm elections as a more important consideration than stopping the mass murder of so many men, women, and children that their bodies were damming the rivers of Rwanda is one of the most heartbreaking pronouncements ever uttered by American official.
 
But she did not stop there.
 
Rice then joined Madeline Albright, Anthony Lake, and Warren Christopher as part of a coordinated effort not only to impede UN action to stop the Rwandan genocide but to minimize public opposition to American inaction by removing words like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” from government communications on the subject.
 
In the end, eight African nations, fed up with American inaction, agreed to send in an intervention force to stop the slaughter provided that the U.S. would lend them fifty armored personal carriers.
 
The Clinton Administration decided it would lease rather than lend the armor for a price of $15 million. The carriers sat on a runway in Germany while the UN pleaded for a $5 million reduction as the genocidal inferno raged. The story only gets worse from there, with the Clinton State Department refusing to label the Rwanda horrors a genocide because of the 1948 Genocide Convention that would have obligated the United States to intervene, an effort in grotesque ambiguity that Susan Rice participated in.
 
It was painful enough to watch Kofi Anan elevated to Secretary General even though as head of UN peace-keeping forces worldwide he sent two now infamous cables to Dallaire forbidding him from any efforts to stop the genocide (the cables are on display in the Kigali Genocide Memorial).
 
It’s nearly as painful watching Rice now attack the Jewish state, which lost one third of its entire people in a genocide of four short years, about how its elected leader is destroying its relationship with the world’s greatest superpower simply because a weaker nation insists on standing up for itself and speaking truth to power.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom Newsweek and The Washington Post call “the most famous Rabbi in America,” is the international best-selling author of 30 books and has recently published The Fed-up Man of Faith: Challenging G-d in the Face of Tragedy and Suffering. His website is www.shmuley.com. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

 Rabbi Shmuley

Sarah Palin CPAC 2015 Full Speech. Palin Talks PTSD and Veterans