Donald Trump's Victory Speech (VIDEO)

Here's Donald Trump from last night, his remarks of which I stayed up to watch.

I'll post Hillary's concession speech this afternoon. It's on right now, live, as this post goes up.

A Postmortem for Identity Politics

From Michelle Malkin, at Conservative Review:

My obituary for Obama left-wing identity politics -- & a tribute to Trump's DIVERSE coalition==>https://t.co/WJQwDiU8Lq

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) November 9, 2016

Theresa May Taps Boris Johnson as British Foreign Minister (VIDEO)

I'd say this is something of a surprise pick.

I'd have never expected Johnson for the foreign ministry. I think this shows people the Theresa May's got some spunk, even a devious kind of humor.

At the far-left BBC, "Boris Johnson made foreign secretary by Theresa May."

Markets Soar After Poll Suggests Britain Will Stay in European Union

Hmm. It's just one poll?

Maybe traders are really jonesin' for the U.K. to stay?

At WSJ, "Global Stocks Soar After Poll Suggests U.K. Will Remain in EU":

Stocks, sterling and oil soared at the start of the week after polls suggested the U.K. was more likely to vote to remain in the European Union in Thursday’s referendum than previously expected.

The Stoxx Europe 600 jumped 3.7%, on track for its best day since August, while the British pound surged more than 2% against the dollar to as high as $1.4674.

Futures pointed to a 1.3% opening gain for the S&P 500. Changes in futures markets don't necessarily reflect market moves after the opening bell

“We’re in this sort of frenzied period where Brexit is front and center,” said Bob Doll, senior portfolio manager at Nuveen Asset Management.

A survey published in the Mail on Sunday showed that 45% of respondents backed the U.K. staying in the trade bloc, compared with 42% in favor of leaving. The poll-of-polls, averaging the last six polls in the U.K. vote, returned to 50/50, suggesting growing momentum for the “remain camp” in the referendum...

Keep reading.

There's no mention of the Jo Cox murder, but no doubt ghoulish British leftists will continue to exploit the poor woman's death.

FLASHBACK: From 2004, "Postcard from Britain: Immigration Is Hot Issue as Elections Approach."

Out Today: Kim R. Holmes, The Closing of the Liberal Mind

I blogged Mr. Holmes' YouTube video last Thursday, "Kim R. Holmes: How Liberals Lost Their Way (VIDEO)."

His new book is out today. Actually, I'm pretty excited to read this one. I might shuffle my reading list around a little to boost this one to the top.

At Amazon, The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.

Kim R. Holmes: How Liberals Lost Their Way (VIDEO)

Kim R. Holmes is a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and his book's out on April 12th. I'm really looking forward to it.

At Amazon, The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.

A former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Kim R. Holmes surveys the state of liberalism in America today and finds that it is becoming its opposite—illiberalism—abandoning the precepts of open-mindedness and respect for individual rights, liberties, and the rule of law upon which the country was founded, and becoming instead an intolerant, rigidly dogmatic ideology that abhors dissent and stifles free speech. Tracing the new illiberalism historically to the radical Enlightenment, a movement that rejected the classic liberal ideas of the moderate Enlightenment that were prominent in the American Founding, Holmes argues that today’s liberalism has forsaken its American roots, incorporating instead the authoritarian, anti-clerical, and anti-capitalist prejudices of the radical and largely European Left. The result is a closing of the American liberal mind...

More.

Brown University Changes Name of Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day

This country's becoming increasingly Balkanized, and there's no guarantee that our historic national unity will persevere.

At USA Today, "Brown University changes name of Fall Weekend to Indigenous People's Day."

Viola Davis' Powerful Speech at 2015 Emmys (VIDEO)

Watch:



And at LAT, "Emmy Awards: Viola Davis makes history winning for lead drama actress, seizes opportunity in her speech."

Marine Le Pen Fights Father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Legacy in Bid to Recast Anti-EU National Front

At the Wall Street Journal, "A Family Drama Splits Far Right in France":

PARIS— Marine Le Pen’s quest to transform the far-right National Front party from a fringe movement into a dominant force in European politics is hitting a fundamental obstacle: her own father.

The clash erupted during a closed-door meeting in early May when Ms. Le Pen attempted to muzzle the 87-year-old Jean-Marie, who had recently outraged the public by repeating his claim that Nazi gas chambers were a mere “detail” of history.

“Either you stop talking in the name of the National Front, or you stop making such statements,” Ms. Le Pen said, according to people in the room.

The response from Mr. Le Pen—the firebrand who had put the National Front on Europe’s political map decades before handing the torch to his daughter—was unequivocal.

“Never,” Mr. Le Pen said.

Months later, Ms. Le Pen finds herself locked in a political and legal battle to oust Mr. Le Pen from the party he helped found. In his defiance, the octogenarian is standing in the way of his daughter’s carefully laid plans to seize power in the heart of Europe.

Ms. Le Pen has tapped a groundswell of anti-European Union sentiment in France to position herself as a front-runner for French president in 2017—a prospect that sends shivers through the European establishment.

Currently a member of the European Parliament, Ms. Le Pen espouses pulling France out of the euro—with rhetoric more extreme than that of the far-left Syriza party in Greece, whose antiausterity platform contributed to the latest euro-membership crisis. She also campaigns to roll back key tenets of the EU, which she blames for the surge in immigration.

Ms. Le Pen’s success at the polls, however, ultimately hinges on whether the National Front can broaden its appeal to mainstream voters by removing the stain of World War II-era recriminations that have long made far-right parties taboo in Europe’s highest offices. That struggle is embodied in Ms. Le Pen’s tug of war with her father, a hero of Europe’s far right.

“She needs the votes of those who today are still uncomfortable with the National Front’s affiliation to right-wing extremist parties,” said Emmanuel Rivière, director at French polling agency TNS Sofres.

Ms. Le Pen has punished her father by suspending his membership in the party and excluding him from a caucus she forged inside the European Parliament with other anti-EU forces. She tried to have the party’s rank-and-file vote on whether Mr. Le Pen should be stripped of his role as National Front’s honorary chairman, but a French court suspended the ballot. Ms. Le Pen released the results of the voided vote, which showed 94% of those voting wanted Mr. Le Pen out of the National Front.

On Thursday, Mr. Le Pen will appear before a National Front disciplinary hearing to decide whether he should be expelled from the party.

“Marine Le Pen killed the father,” said Wallerand de Saint Just, a former lawyer of Mr. Le Pen who currently serves as the party’s treasurer, adding: “Freud didn’t have it all wrong.”

Who knows, maybe the old man will buy the farm?

It's going to be interesting to see what happens in 2017, in any case, especially if the Europeans don't get their act together on the migration crisis.

Still more.

Donald Trump Has a Point

From Rich Lowry, at Politico, "Sorry, Donald Trump Has a Point":

I was skeptical that Trump was really running, but now that the boats are burned behind him, watch out. He is set to be Herman Cain squared — an early-nominating-season phenomenon with a massive media megaphone.

As for his instantly notorious Mexico comments, they did more to insult than to illuminate, yet there was a kernel in them that hit on an important truth that typical politicians either don’t know or simply fear to speak. “When Mexico sends its people,” Trump said, “they’re not sending their best.”

This is obviously correct. We aren’t raiding the top 1 percent of Mexicans and importing them to this country. Instead, we are getting representative Mexicans, who — through no fault of their own, of course — come from a poorly educated country at a time when education is essential to success in an advanced economy.

Trump’s comments made it sound as though Mexico is sending us moral defectives. That’s not the larger problem (although gangs certainly exploit the border and there are criminals in any population). Immigrants are willing to work. Immigrant men aged 18-65 are in the labor force at a higher rate than native men.

It’s just that a lack of education is an anchor around even the hardest-working person in modern America. This is illustrated in an exhaustive report based on government data, by Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors a lower level of immigration. I rely on it for the figures that follow.

Immigrants here from Mexico — which has sent more immigrants than any other country for decades — have the lowest levels of education. Nearly 60 percent of them haven’t graduated from high school. Only about 10 percent have some college and nearly 6 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

By way of comparison, the situation of immigrants from Korea, for instance, is almost exactly reversed. More than 50 percent of them have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and less than 4 percent failed to earn a high school diploma.

This puts Mexican immigrants at an inherent disadvantage, and it shows. Nearly 35 percent of immigrants from Mexico and their U.S.-born children are in poverty; nearly 68 percent are in or near poverty. This is the highest level for immigrants from any country (the Philippines is the lowest, with 5.5 percent in poverty).

Fifty-four percent of immigrants from Mexico lack health insurance. A higher proportion of Mexican immigrants uses means-tested government programs than immigrants from any other country—more than 57 percent. As Camarota notes, this is “even higher than for refugee-sending countries like Russia and Cuba.” By contrast, the lowest percentage is for immigrants from the United Kingdom at just over 6 percent.

Immigrants make progress on almost every indicator over time, but are still far behind natives after two decades. (The exception to the general progress is welfare use, which actually increases among immigrants here for 20 years compared with immigrants here fewer than five years.)

For all its crassness, Trump’s rant on immigration is closer to reality than the gauzy clichés of the immigration romantics unwilling to acknowledge that there might be an issue welcoming large numbers of high school dropouts into a 21st-century economy. If we don’t want to add to the ranks of the poor, the uninsured and the welfare dependent, we should have fewer low-skilled immigrants — assuming saying that is not yet officially considered a hate crime...

That's great, c/o Memeorandum.

Here's Donald Trump's Letter to Univision

He's getting pretty aggressive on this whole thing.

Letter to @Univision - Re: @TrumpDoral https://t.co/6mauCmg6uO

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2015

PREVIOUSLY: "Donald Trump Under Fire for 'Mexican Rapist' Comment, Doubles Down (VIDEO)."

Donald Trump Under Fire for 'Mexican Rapist' Comment, Doubles Down (VIDEO)

At Memeorandum, "Miss USA host quits, calls Trump a ‘clown’," and "Trump Dumped! Univision Drops Miss USA Pageant Over Mexican Immigrant Remarks."

Well, he ain't too worried about alienating deep-pocket donors. He's got his own deep pockets!

France's National Front Announces New 'Far Right' Coalition in European Parliament

Geert Wilders is on board.

At LAT, "Far right forms coalition in European Parliament":

France's National Front announced Tuesday it had formed a new far-right bloc in the European Parliament that will qualify for up to nearly $20 million in funding over the next four years.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the FN, said the group would be called Europe of Nations and Freedoms.

Her allies share Le Pen's desire to curb immigration and the influence of Islam in Europe -- a concern that critics have described as xenophobic. They include the Dutch Party for Freedom, the Freedom Party of Austria, Italy's Lega Nord and Vlaams Belang from Belgium as well as lawmakers from the Polish KNP party.

At a press conference in Brussels, Le Pen described it as a "political strike force that will go far beyond our previous situation." She said far-right parties like the FN had “growing support” in Europe.

“This group is the result of a year of efforts, and our wish to avoid making dubious alliances like other groups. It’s good news for our countries, our people, our freedom,” she said.

Geert Wilders, a member of the European Parliament from the Dutch Freedom Party, told reporters: "Today is D-day, it’s the beginning of our liberation. ... I really believe today is a historical moment."

He added: "We are the voice of the European resistance, we defend national identity, our prosperity and our sovereignty. This is an excellent day because we will gain influence in the European Parliament with the newly formed group."

Wilders then addressed the European far-right’s major concerns: immigration and Islam. "The timing is right. A catastrophe is coming to the European Union and Europe today,” he said. “One million people are trying to arrive from northern Africa and this mass immigration should be stopped.”

He said the group would fight the “Islamization" of the continent and “stand for our own national values.”

As well as more money, the group will get more speaking time during European parliamentary sessions, more staff and access to key posts increasing its influence across the continent.

Reaction from more centrist European parties was dour. A German member of the European Parliament, Herbert Reul of the center-right Christian Democratic Union party, told journalists it was a "bad day for Europe."

European Parliament groups must be made up of at least 25 members from at least seven countries...

More.

And at WSJ:

Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders to announce far-right bloc in European Parliament http://t.co/RCVWLgNNyS via @WSJ

— Stephen Fidler (@StephenFidler1) June 16, 2015

'Note: this class is not academically challenging nor deeply time-consuming, but the assignments are meant to provoke some thought into the subject...'

The class?

"Palestine & Israel: Settler Colonialism and Apartheid," at the University of California, Riverside.

And those assignments aren't "meant to provoke some thought" so much as they are to force students into a murderous Israel-hating ideology.

The class is good for one unit of credit and the student organizers (yes, students teach it, not professors) are looking to double that for winter quarter.

See Jonathan Marks, at Commentary, "Anti-Israel Course is a Campus Farce."

A farce indeed.

The student "teacher," Tina Matar, is the president of the university's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. Yes, and that's another indicator of how "balanced" the class is likely to be. (Flashback to 2011: "Israeli Apartheid Week, Students for Justice in Palestine, UCLA, February 23, 2011.")

Parents of Journalist Austin Tice, Kidnapped in Syria in 2012, Slam Obama Admin's Terrorist Hostage Policy (VIDEO)

Clarissa Ward reported on the missing journalist last September, at CBS This Morning, "Family of kidnapped journalist Austin Tice calls for his release."

Debra Tice, mother of Austin, is heartbreaking at the clip above. After James Foley and Steven Sotloff were murdered, she said "It was such a gut punch, because we never imagined that that would happen to an American..."

And now they no longer doubt that that could happen to their own son --- and they're speaking out against President Obama's disinterest and inaction.

At CBS News, "Gov't handling of kidnapped Americans 'appalling'":

WASHINGTON -- Parents of a missing journalist detained in Syria and the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders are calling on the White House to help bring the journalist home safely and to improve U.S. policy on hostage cases.

Marc and Debra Tice of Houston said Thursday that they are taking part in meetings for a White House policy review on how to handle hostage cases. Their son, Austin Tice, has been missing since 2012 - 906 days by his mother's count.

"After almost two-and-a-half years ... we feel like we need to let everybody know that our son is missing - and will you please help us get him home?" Debra Tice pleaded during a news conference at the National Press Club.

On Feb. 16, the family plans to launch an online campaign with support from USA Today, McClatchy Newspapers and other media companies, placing online ads with the message "Free Austin Tice." The parents are asking supporters to sign a petition to President Barack Obama to do more to bring Tice home.

Austin Tice disappeared in August 2012 while covering the civil war in Syria. Tice is a former Marine who has reported for The Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers, The Associated Press, CBS and other outlets. He was one of the few journalists reporting from Damascus when he vanished. In 2012, Tice and the staff of McClatchy Newspapers won the prestigious George W. Polk Award for war reporting.

The circumstances surrounding his disappearance are still a mystery. It's not clear what entity is holding him, but it is not believed to be the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Syrian government, the family said. The parents said they have been told by "credible sources" that Austin Tice is alive, reasonably well treated and that they need to be patient.

"There's a general confidence that he will come home safely," Marc Tice said. "That's about as much detail as we have."

The family has grown frustrated, though, with the U.S. government's coordination and sharing of information. Each agency has its own agenda, they said.

"It is appalling to us" that no single U.S. government entity is responsible for pursuing the safe return of Americans taken hostage abroad, said Debra Tice. "That has to change."

The family is advocating for a new U.S. policy that would provide a single point of accountability, responsible to the president, to pursue the safe return of hostages. They also are pushing the government to improve information sharing among government agencies and with families and to create protections for the hostages' interests and assets at home, such as online profiles, bank accounts and housing.

"We want to make sure that when Austin comes back, he has a life to come back to," Marc Tice said...

And see McClatchy, "Family of journalist missing in Syria campaigns anew for his return."

'Vacation Cutting' — More Than 500,000 Women and Girls at Risk of Female Genital Mutilation in U.S.

The Islamization of America proceeds apace.

At the Los Angeles Times, "More than 500,000 in U.S. could be at risk of female genital excision":

Nearly 507,000 women and girls in the United States could be at risk of female genital excision, including 57,000 in California, a new study has found.

That is more than twice the number that were thought to be at risk in 2000, the last year for which estimates are available.

Analysts at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, attributed the preliminary findings released Friday to an increase in immigration from countries where the practice is common, including Egypt, Ethiopia and Somalia.

It is unclear how many families continue the practice after moving to the U.S., but community activists say there is anecdotal evidence of girls being sent back to their parents’ home countries for “vacation cutting” and of traditional cutters traveling to the U.S. to circumcise girls in this country.

To estimate the number who may have undergone the procedure or be at risk, the research group used data collected by the Census Bureau for the 2013 American Community Survey to determine the number of women and girls whose families originate in countries where female genital excision is practiced. It then applied the prevalence rates in those countries to the numbers in the U.S.

The methodology is similar to that used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a study that found about 168,000 women and girls were at risk of genital excision in the U.S. in 1990, said Mark Mather, the group’s associate vice president for U.S. programs.

Campaigners have been urging the government to update its estimate, and the CDC is expected to release new figures this year.

“What’s happening around the other side of the world has implications for families here in the U.S.,” Mather said. “We’re seeing more and more of this with immigration and economic ties. Issues that most people might not have considered before may be emerging in their small towns and communities.”

California is the state with the highest at-risk population, followed by New York (48,000) and Minnesota (44,000), the Population Reference Bureau found.

“California historically has been a very important gateway state for immigrants, and I think that’s reflected in the numbers,” Mather said.


That is also true for many of the other states with high at-risk populations. But Mather said he would expect to see more of these families spreading across the U.S. in the coming years.

Turns out those Ethiopian, Egyptian, and Somalian immigrants aren't assimilating as fast as we'd like, or something.

More at the link.

Female genital mutilation is illegal in the U.S., although the Obama administration doesn't enforce the law, especially since Barack Hussein privileges Islamic values above universal human rights.

Here's Marine Le Pen's Op-Ed at the New York Times

No need for a big quotation or anything, considering I just posted WSJ's story on Ms. LePen this morning and there's little that's new.

It's just extremely newsworthy that the Times would publish a commentary piece from the "far-right" leader of the French National Front. I'd hazard to say that Ms. Le Pen's sentiments fall quite a ways outside the views of the median New York Times reader, and that's probably putting it mildly. (I'm sure the comments are a riot, and the letters section tomorrow will only be slightly less vituperative.)

Here: "France Was Attacked by Islamic Fundamentalism."

The Champion of French Anxiety

From Sohrab Ahmari, at WSJ, "The National Front leader says ‘we are the only ones to solve the problem’ of the country’s Islamist threat":

Following last week’s terror attacks in Paris on journalists at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket, many Western leaders have been reluctant to say the motive was at all religious. French President François Hollande said Charlie Hebdo had been targeted by “obscurantism,” whatever that is. And White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Tuesday spent a painful five minutes explaining the Obama administration’s aversion to using the term “radical Islam.”

That’s not a problem for Marine Le Pen, who is never obscure.

“It’s clear Islamic fundamentalism,” says the leader of the National Front, France’s far-right political party that has been gaining in the polls. “Now all the eyes are open,” she adds, referring to a general French awakening to the Islamist threat. And “we are the only ones to solve the problem,” by which she means the National Front.

Once a political outlier, Ms. Le Pen has been gaining prominence as France’s problems—a moribund economy and its un-assimilated Muslim-immigrant population—have become more acute and seemingly beyond cure by the traditional political class. Now, in the aftermath of the home-grown Islamist slaughter in Paris, Ms. Le Pen is betting that she is the French politician most likely to benefit from her countrymen’s shock and disbelief over the threat in their midst.

So it seems a good moment to visit with Ms. Le Pen, whom I met Friday at the National Front’s headquarters in Nanterre, a northwestern suburb of Paris. National Front posters with the slogan “Oui, la France” depict a fierce woman with steely eyes, and that she is: a tall, commanding presence who speaks rapidly in a husky rumble of a voice. But the 46-year-old Ms. Le Pen, alternately smiling or reserved as the moment requires, is also unquestionably charming. There’s a smile covering the steel.

When discussing the terror attacks, or many of France’s other problems, Ms. Le Pen steers the conversation to immigration. “The first problem is that the borders are open, and practically anyone can go freely all around,” she says. “There is no responsible country that would accept such a situation.” It should have been “obvious,” Ms. Le Pen adds, that “massive immigration would just allow the fundamentalists to increase their numbers.”

Seated with three large French flags on the wall nearby, she adds: “There are obvious signs that among the people coming so easily into our country, the hormones of unrest will rise. The French Republic needs to offer to its forces, police, security and army, the proper means to protect our country.”

Yet Ms. Le Pen balks at the prospect of heightening government surveillance to prevent future attacks: “We are totally for individual freedom. The freedom for all is important. In order to catch some, we should not block everybody.”

At the same time she rejects as too weak the tough new counterterror measures announced by Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Friday—including isolation of jihadists in prison, increased staffing at intelligence agencies and granting security services broader power to monitor online communications. “Valls’s speech,” she says, “it was just a speech.” Beyond restricting immigration, her main counterterror proposal is the construction of new prisons and additional funding for the penitentiary administration.

In a country already made wobbly by years of economic anemia—with unemployment hovering intractably above 10%, roughly one in four young people unemployed, and negligible to nonexistent growth—and now quaking after the eruption of Islamist terrorism, Ms. Le Pen’s blunt-force prescriptions have made the National Front more plausible as a political force than it has ever been. Where the party had been an alarming but relatively marginal player under the leadership of her father, the rhetorical bomb-thrower Jean-Marie Le Pen, the more media-savvy Ms. Le Pen has been better at selling the nationalist line since taking over from him in 2011.

Her fixes for France’s troubles are simple: Exit the European Union and end the reign of “globalist” economics—the free movement of goods, capital and labor—that she blames for the fact that France is “dying.” Above all: “Stop immigration,” not just to discourage the potential Islamist threat, but for the overall health of the country. “There are 200,000 legal immigrants coming to France every year,” Ms. Le Pen says. “They just add to the problems.”

Ms. Le Pen doesn’t directly answer my question about what she proposes to do about the millions of Muslim immigrants whose only nationality is French. Instead, she turns her attention to immigrants with dual citizenship. “Do you know that there are 700,000 voters, Algerian and French, who voted in the recent Algerian elections?” she asks. “These people can and should decide one way or the other. We have nothing against being a foreigner in France, but they have to decide.” The message: Choose France or get out. Also: Those with dual citizenship who commit crimes in France should “be sent back.”

It’s tempting to dismiss these views as unrealistic and against the tide of history—the French political and media establishments routinely do. As Ms. Le Pen says: “Many political parties in France and many in the media, the first question they ask about anything is: ‘Will this be advantageous for the National Front?’ ” A notable example was the decision by the organizers of last weekend’s unity march in Paris not to invite Ms. Le Pen and her supporters.

But merely to dismiss or ignore Ms. Le Pen and the National Front doesn’t deter her political project. She represents a real and substantial constituency of people who, as one Paris-based journalist told me, “don’t recognize the French republic they used to know anymore.” These are working-class voters, mostly white, who once answered the old left’s call of class solidarity but who now feel left behind as manufacturers and job-creators flee the country under the press of France’s rigid labor laws, protectionist rules and high taxes...

Right.

They either ignore the National Front or attack them as "far-right extremists." Sadly, the extremists are the Muslims who're backed by the leftists, and they're literally waging terrorist jihad on France, and in particular the Jews.

Still more.

'I think our government is quite late in dealing with this problem...'

The problem is Islam, of course.

But apparently not everyone feels this way.

Watch, at Telegraph UK: "Europeans divided over increased security following terror raids."

Muslims and Free Speech

From Professor Michael Curtis, at American Thinker.

After a review of the free speech debate following the Charlie Hebdo attack, there's this:

The mainstream media with its stance of political correctness argues that the greatest danger now is that “more Europeans will come to the conclusion that all Muslim immigrants are carriers of a great and mortal threat.”  It is unlikely that anyone has ever formulated such a conclusion, but realistic commentators have pointed out that a real threat exists.  Indeed, in her combative book The Rage and the Pride, published soon after 9/11/2001 in New York, Oriana Fallaci warned that Muslim extremists with their swelling hatred for the West would launch another  attack.

One can agree that the two murderous Kouachi brothers and  Amedy Couibaly, who killed 17 people, are not the true representatives of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world.  But it is equally true that the CH satirical pieces and cartoons, some of which are infantile and obscene, are not the real instigators of the threat to the West.  The threat is Islamic extremism or Islamism, not any result of Western foreign policy in the Middle East.

Nor did violence in France result from the policies of President François Hollande, or from the high rate of unemployment or poverty or because children of Muslim immigrants are said to be caught between two cultures.  Nor is the German group Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against Islamization of the West), which demonstrates against immigration, the cause of violence.  Rather, its members argue, its existence and activity are an attempt to prevent violence.  German security authorities suggest that about 250 of the 4 million Muslims in the country are jihadists, and more than 2,000 are potentially dangerous.

Irrespective of the political views of those making the argument, criticism of Islamists and of certain parts of Muslim behavior – inferior status of women, absence of free expression on political and religious issues, the interconnection between religious and political power – is not correctly described as “Islamophobia.”...

Well, don't go making too much sense, Professor.