World Opinion of Barack Obama Declines, Drone Strikes Faulted

Glenn Reynolds frequently jokes as follows, "They told me if I voted for John McCain world public opinion would turn against the United States, and they were right!"

And so they were.

At Pew Research, "Global Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted":

Global approval of President Barack Obama’s policies has declined significantly since he first took office, while overall confidence in him and attitudes toward the U.S. have slipped modestly as a consequence.

Europeans and Japanese remain largely confident in Obama, albeit somewhat less so than in 2009, while Muslim publics remain largely critical. A similar pattern characterizes overall ratings for the U.S. – in the EU and Japan, views are still positive, but the U.S. remains unpopular in nations such as Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan.

Meanwhile, support for Obama has waned significantly in China. Since 2009, confidence in the American president has declined by 24 percentage points and approval of his policies has fallen 30 points. Mexicans have also soured on his policies, and many fewer express confidence in him today.

The Obama era has coincided with major changes in international perceptions of American power – especially U.S. economic power. The global financial crisis and the steady rise of China have led many to declare China the world’s economic leader, and this trend is especially strong among some of America’s major European allies. Today, solid majorities in Germany (62%), Britain (58%), France (57%) and Spain (57%) name China as the world’s top economic power.

Even though many think American economic clout is in relative decline, publics around the world continue to worry about how the U.S. uses its power – in particular its military power – in international affairs.

There remains a widespread perception that the U.S. acts unilaterally and does not consider the interests of other countries. In predominantly Muslim nations, American anti-terrorism efforts are still widely unpopular. And in nearly all countries, there is considerable opposition to a major component of the Obama administration’s anti-terrorism policy: drone strikes. In 17 of 20 countries, more than half disapprove of U.S. drone attacks targeting extremist leaders and groups in nations such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

RTWT.

Muslim Students Association Seeks U.S. Destruction

At a session of the Muslim Students Association West Conference ... in San Jose, Calif., men and women sat opposite each other.

*********

FrontPageMagazine's running a series this week documenting the Muslim Students Association's holy war against the United States.

As argued in the article, the group, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, seeks to destroy America from within:

Established in January 1963 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada, or MSA (also known as MSA National) currently has chapters on nearly 600 college campuses across North America.) The relationship between MSA National and the individual university chapters is not a fixed hierarchy, but rather a loose connection. Thus the policies and views of the national organization may differ from those of some of the local chapters.) Stating that its mission is “to serve the best interest of Islam and Muslims in the United States and Canada so as to enable them to practice Islam as a complete way of life,”MSA is by far the most influential Islamic student organization in North America.

Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, MSA was named in Mohammed Akram’s 1991 memorandum as one of the Brotherhood’s likeminded “organizations of our friends” who shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation. These “friends” were described by the Brotherhood as groups that could help teach Muslims “that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God’s religion Islam is made victorious over all other religions.”

From its inception, MSA had close links with the extremist Muslim World League, whose chapters’ websites have featured not only Osama bin Laden’s propaganda, but also publicity-recruiting campaigns for Wahhabi involvement with the Chechen insurgents in Russia. According to author and Islam expert Stephen Schwartz, MSA is a key lobbying organization for the Wahhabi sect of Islam.

MSA solicited donations for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, whose assets the U.S. government seized in December 2001 because that organization was giving financial support to the terrorist group Hamas. MSA also has strong ties to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.[15]

Charging that U.S. foreign policy is driven by militaristic imperialism, MSA steadfastly opposes the American military incursions into both Afghanistan and Iraq. The organization also follows the Arab propaganda line in the Middle East conflict and has condemned the anti-terrorist security fence that Israel has built in the West Bank as an illegal “apartheid wall” that violates the civil and human rights of Palestinians.

An influential member of the International ANSWER steering committee, MSA maintains a large presence at ANSWER-sponsored anti-war demonstrations. The pro-North Korea, pro-Saddam Hussein ANSWER is a front organization of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party.

Local chapters of MSA signed a February 20, 2002 document, composed by the radical group Refuse & Resist (a creation of the Revolutionary Communist Party’s) condemning military tribunals and the detention of immigrants apprehended in connection with post-9/11 terrorism investigations. The document read, in part: “They the U.S. government are coming for the Arab, Muslim and South Asian immigrants. … The recent ‘disappearances,’ indefinite detention, the round-ups, the secret military tribunals, the denial of legal representation, evidence kept a secret from the accused, the denial of any due process for Arab, Muslim, South Asians and others, have chilling similarities to a police state.”

MSA has strongly opposed the Patriot Act, which it describes as an “infamous” piece of legislation. The organization’s chapters across the United States have similarly denounced virtually every other national security initiative implemented by the U.S. government since the 9/11 attacks.

MSA chose not to endorse or participate in the May 14, 2005 “Free Muslims March Against Terror,” an event whose stated purpose was to “send a message to the terrorists and extremists that their days are numbered ... and to send a message to the people of the Middle East, the Muslim world and all people who seek freedom, democracy and peaceful coexistence that we support them.”

But while it is possible to understand its political orientation from some of the positions it has taken on large national issues, the Muslim Students Association comes into sharper focus in the actions of the individual chapters that do its work every day on campuses across America. The following analysis of 18 separate campus chapters of MSA will make this clear.

See also, "Muslim Students: How American should they be?," and "Muslim Youth Forge Own Path in America."

For more information, see "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Obama Sought Rape Victim for Ad Promoting Abortion

Jonathan Martin reports that Barack Obama looked into procuring the services of a rape victim to appear in a pro-abortion camaign ad buy:

Barack Obama's campaign earlier this month sought to find a rape victim to appear in a campaign commercial, according to an e-mail obtained by Politico.

Kiersten Steward, director of public policy at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, served as a conduit between the campaign and victims and women's advocates....

The Obama campaign wouldn't detail the strategy behind finding an individual to discuss such a sensitive topic but did suggest the ad may be aimed at underscoring their candidate's support for abortion rights and ongoing effort to retain those women who backed Hillary Clinton in the primary.

"Choice is an important issue, and we're going to continue talking about it in battleground states through the election," said spokesman Bill Burton.

Virginia is one of those swing states that Obama is especially focused on, and that's where one rape victim received the request to appear in an ad.

Mikele Shelton-Knight declined to do so, but said in an interview that she was glad the Obama campaign was seeking to highlight the issue.

There's likely more to it than that ... perhaps Shelton-Knight found distasteful the prospect of becoming the poster-girl of the Democratic-left's pro-abortion fanaticism.

Barack Obama's an abortion extremist, Senator Infanticide.

Obama's bid to exploit tragedy is just one more example of how the left devalues life. Family-planning organizations counsel abortion as a "solution" to rape, but research shows that women feel more guilt over aborting their pregnancies than being victims of sexual assualt. The abortion industry is all about rights, except those for the baby who might come into this world, an innocent child that in the end signal's God's ultimate blessing of healing.

Obama himself has said that women shouldn't have to be "punished" with a child, and he refused as a member of the Illinois state legislature to guarantee the right to life for infant abortion survivors.

It's no suprise that the driving factor in the radical left's demonization campaign against Sarah Palin has been the Alaska Governor's living threat to the ideology of abortion on demand. Obama's effort to exploit rape victims to advance the cause of abortion extremism is logically part and parcel to that.

Making Sense of Ron Paul

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch have an analysis of the Ron Paul phenomenon at the Washington Post:

How to make sense of the Ron Paul revolution? What's behind the improbably successful (so far) presidential campaign of a 72-year-old 10-term Republican congressman from Texas who pines for the gold standard while drawing praise from another relic from the hyperinflationary 1970s, punk-rocker Johnny Rotten?

Now with about 5 percent (and climbing) support in polls of likely Republican voters, Paul set a one-day GOP record by raising $4.3 million on the Internet from 38,000 donors on Nov. 5 -- Guy Fawkes Day, the commemoration of a British anarchist who plotted to blow up Parliament and kill King James I in 1605. Paul's campaign, which is three-quarters of the way to its goal of raising "$12 Million to Win" by Dec. 31, didn't even organize the fundraiser -- an independent-minded supporter did.

When a fierce Republican foe of the wars on drugs and terrorism is able, without really trying, to pull in a record haul of campaign cash on a day dedicated to an attempted regicide, it's clear that a new and potentially transformative force is growing in American politics.

That force is less about Paul than about the movement that has erupted around him -- and the much larger subset of Americans who are increasingly disillusioned with the two major political parties' soft consensus on making government ever more intrusive at all levels, whether it's listening to phone calls without a warrant, imposing fines of half a million dollars for broadcast "obscenities" or jailing grandmothers for buying prescribed marijuana from legal dispensaries.

Paul, who entered Congress in 1976, has been dubbed "Dr. No" by his colleagues because of his consistent nay votes on federal spending, military intervention in Iraq and elsewhere, and virtually all expansions of federal power (he cast one of three GOP votes against the original USA Patriot Act). But his philosophy of principled libertarianism is anything but negative: It's predicated on the fundamental notion that a smaller government allows individuals the freedom to pursue happiness as they see fit.

Given such a live-and-let-live ethos, it's no surprise that at a time when people run screaming from such labels as "liberal" and "conservative," you can hardly turn around in Washington, Hollywood or even Berkeley without running into another self-described libertarian.

The lefty Internet titan Markos "Daily Kos" Moulitsas penned a widely read manifesto last year pegging the future of his party to the "Libertarian Democrat." The conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg declared this year that he's "much more of a libertarian" lately. Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, Tucker Carlson, "South Park" co-creator Matt Stone -- self-described libertarians all. Surely it's a milestone when Drew Carey, the new host of that great national treasure "The Price Is Right," becomes an outspoken advocate of open borders, same-sex marriage, free speech and repealing drug prohibition. As Michael Kinsley, an arch purveyor of conventional wisdom, wrote recently in Time magazine, such people are going to be "an increasingly powerful force in politics."

Kinsley is hardly alone in recognizing this trend. In April 2006, the Pew Research Center published a study suggesting that 9 percent of Americans -- more than enough to swing every presidential election since 1988 -- espouse a "libertarian" ideology that opposes "government regulation in both the economic and the social spheres." That is, a good chunk of your fellow citizens are fiscally conservative and socially liberal; in bumper-stickerese, they love their countrymen but distrust their government. Anyone looking to win elections -- or to make sense of contemporary U.S. politics -- would do well to understand the deep and growing reservoir that Paul is tapping into.

Though relatively unknown at the national level, Paul is hardly an unknown legislative quantity. A former Libertarian Party presidential candidate, he has at various times called for abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, the CIA and several Cabinet-level agencies. A staunch opponent of abortion, he nonetheless believes that federal bans violate the more basic principle of delegating powers to the states. A proponent of a border wall with Mexico (nativist CNN host Lou Dobbs fawned over Paul earlier this year), he is the only GOP candidate to come out against any form of national I.D. card.

Such positions may not be fully consistent or equally attractive, but Paul's insistence on a constitutionally limited government has won applause from surprising quarters. Singer Barry Manilow donated the maximum $2,300 to his campaign; the hipster singer-songwriter John Mayer was videotaped yelling "Ron Paul knows the Constitution!" and 67,000 people have signed up for Paul-related Meet Up pages on the Internet. On ABC's "This Week" recently, George Will half-jokingly cautioned his fellow pundits, "Don't forget my man Ron Paul" in the New Hampshire primary. Fellow panelist Jake Tapper seconded the emotion, saying, "He really is the one true straight talker in this race."

This is an excellent synopsis of Paul's recent ascent (Welch is the author of a new book on John McCain, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick). But Gillespie and Welch forgot to mention that this "straight talker" has attracted the support of neo-Nazis, 9/11 truth extremists, and hardline Stalinists (see my posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

The extremist element of the Paul phenomen is the elephant in the room. Just broaching the subject sets people off, if my many drive-by attacks from the Ronulans are any indication.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I communicated with Matt Welch on a couple of occasions when he was assistant editorial pages editor of the Los Angeles Times. If I recall, he grew up nearby my college, in Long Beach, California. He's a good guy, although I part ways with him on Paul's significance.)

Voters Support Benefit Rollback for Public Workers in California

Jammie had yesterday's headline of the day, "Shock Poll: Extremist Teabagger Californians Want Givebacks From Public Employees."

See Los Angeles Times, "California voters want public employees to help ease state's financial troubles":

California voters want government employees to give up some retirement benefits to help ease the state's financial problems, favoring a cap on pensions and a later age for collecting them, according to a new poll.

Voter support for rolling back benefits available to few outside the public sector comes as Gov. Jerry Brown and Republicans in the Legislature haggle over changes to the pension system as part of state budget negotiations. Such benefits have been a flashpoint of national debate this year, and the poll shows that Californians are among those who perceive public retirement plans to be too costly.

Voters appear ready to embrace changes not just for future hires but also for current employees who have been promised the benefits under contract.

Seventy percent of respondents said they supported a cap on pensions for current and future public employees. Nearly as many, 68%, approved of raising the amount of money government workers should be required to contribute to their retirement. Increasing the age at which government employees may collect pensions was favored by 52%.

Although pension costs today account for just a fraction of the state budget, they are putting local governments under considerable financial strain, and analysts say effects on the state may not be far off.

"It's pretty clear that there's broad support for making changes in the area of pensions," said Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who co-directed the bipartisan poll for The Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

RTWT at the link above.

I've been making this argument at my college, especially during last year's negotiations over contract renewal. And earlier today I e-mailed this story to the college community, and one of my colleagues wrote back, saying: "I don't think the union leadership reads the newspapers."

Ouch.

Surrendering Reason to Hate?

Rick Moran's morning essay made me think about what I do as an online commentator.

The piece is a lengthy discourse on the craft of blogging. Moran explains his motives and development as an online writer, discussing some of the ups and downs of the trade. Of particular note is his discussion of partisan flame wars and the demonization of the other. Moran is introspective:

If my blog attracted only those who usually agreed with me and thought I was the bee’s knees when it came to commentary, blogging would be a marvelous daily exercise. But there is another side to blogging that most of us never talk about; the relentless, daily pounding of negativism, hurtful epithets, and outright spewing hatred that arrives in the form of comments and emails from the other side as well as other blogs linking and posting on something I’ve written.

We all like to think of ourselves as having thick skins and that such criticism rolls off our backs and never affects us. This is the macho element in blogging, one of its more unattractive and dishonest aspects. In this, some of us feel obligated to give back in kind, something I have done on too many occasions to count. Yes, I regret it. And believe me, I have often been the initiator of such ugliness.

Still, there are many bloggers on both the right and left who shame me with their equanimity in the face of the most virulent and nasty personal attacks. Ed Morrissey comes to mind on the right. The folks at Crooked Timber and Obsidian Wings on the left are generally cool in the face of such criticism as well.

But this is not a confessional post where I recognize my sins and ask forgiveness. I am what I am and doubt I will change. Rather, it is my intent to highlight the fact that despite my predilection for using violent language in my defense or to ridicule my political opponents, I have always granted them a certain rough integrity in their beliefs – that they are wrongheaded not evil; that they are arrogant and stupid, not unpatriotic or that they hate America.

Read the whole thing at the link (as well as the great additional resources, here and here). There's some conjecture as to whether longitudinally politics is nastier today than, say, 100 years ago. But one of the essay's payoffs is the (sort-of) suggestion of what-goes-around-comes-around for partisan attack-masters:

Those who accuse all liberals of being unpatriotic or un-American perhaps have no cause to grumble when an equally malicious lie like “racist” is directed at them. But having such an epithet tossed in my direction – especially as it has been done recently – I find to be reflective of a mindset that is terrified of open debate and thus resorts to twisting semantics in order to obscure a flawed critique. They can’t argue the issues so the magic word is applied and debate instantly ceases.

I think the conclusion here - that weaknesses in rational argumentation are remedied by resort to argumentum ad hominem - is basically right, although I'd suggest that the point about arguing that "all liberals" are unpatriotic (or pacifist, or irreligious, etc.), needs a bit of elaboration.

I started blogging precisely to combat the anti-Americanism and postmodern nihilism that had infected debates on America's post-9/11 foreign policy. At first I was a bit surprised when attacked as "racist" (or fascist, or Nazi, or neocon warmonger, etc.). But I soon realized, seriously, that these were people who would do me physical harm if they had the chance, or at least some have said.

But I differ in debate from my antagonists in that I seek to maintain a morality of reason in argumentation. Sometimes I'm sloppy by attacking the "left" in general, but when I deploy terms like "nihilist" it's in the descriptive, analytical sense, rather than as an effort to inflict emotional or psychological pain. In other words, there's a ontological basis to my partisan repudiations. I seek to understand and explain what's underlying the postmodern hatred of the anti-everything sensibilities of the American left.

For example, I'm coming around to fuller understanding of the notion of secular demonology.

While certainly both sides engage in extremist attacks on the other, there appears to be a difference in the attack culture of central players in the partisan debates. Folks like those at Daily Kos and Firedoglake, for example, are the netroots base of the Democratic Party, people who are embraced and recruited in the partisan battles of left-wing establishment politics. This is not true on the right, for the most part. While I'm sure some comment threads at major conservative blogs get out of hand on occasion, it is not the explicit policy of conservatives to demonize their foes (while Daily Kos openly advocates it).

The most recent outburst of left-wing demonization involved last week's shootings at Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee. The leftists became positively unglued, seeing in Jim David Adkisson a footsoldier of conservative hatred. The actions of a lone, unstable killer became the basis for smearing the entire GOP universe.

Elizabeth Scalia discusses how Adkisson's case illuminates our frequent descents into partisan recrimination:

Initial reports were that Adkisson had “problems with Christians.” Later reports suggested he also had “problems” with “the liberal movement” and with gays. Predictably, people on both the right and left immediately staked out claims of victimhood and identified each other as the true culprits upon whom both blame and condemnation must rain down. “They” inspired Adkisson to kill those worshipers, no, to kill those progressives, no, to kill those … those …

Those human beings.

If you’re wondering who “they” is, “they” is us, losing a little more of our shared humanity every day, as we increasingly insulate ourselves away from the “others” who do not hold the same worldview as we do. We label ourselves as belonging to some respectable group of believers, or agnostics, or liberals, or conservatives, and we live, work, socialize, and blog — as much as life will allow — amongst our “respectable” peers, in our “respectable” echo chambers. We label the “others” as disrespectable and then commence disrespecting.

It begins with name-calling, which seems so innocuous, so sandbox. Well, name-calling is infantile behavior, but it is hardly innocuous. As marijuana is to heroin, name-calling is to diminished humanity — the gateway. It begins the whole process of dehumanization. Call someone a name and they immediately become “less human” to you, and the less human they seem, the easier they are to hate and to destroy. A “fetus,” after all, is easier to destroy than a “baby.”

Thus, George W. Bush is “Chimpy McHitler.” Hillary Clinton is “a pig in a pantsuit.” Barack Obama is “O-Bambi.” Cindy McCain, who has exhibited some courage and laudable compassion in her life, is reduced to a “pill-popping beer-frau,” and so forth. From there it is smooth sailing down an ever-descending river of hatred, until we are incapable of seeing anything good in the “other,” both because we have willfully hardened our hearts, and because our hate — especially when it is supported by a group of like minds — feels safe and inviolable.

Recently I asked rabid Bush-haters if they could manage to say “one good thing” about the president. Predictably, they could not.

They are capable of sarcasm: “One good thing is he will die someday.” “One good thing is that he can’t serve three terms.” Once, when pressed, someone sneered: “He managed to marry a librarian who could read and explain books to him.”

Scalia notes that both sides do it - both sides are unwilling to find that "one good thing" to say about their political enemies. They're ready to "surrender reason to hate."

While I don't disagree altogether, it seems that most of the recent examples of surrendering to hate can be found on the left, for example following the deaths of Tim Russert, Jesse Helms, and Tony Snow. Robert Novak's announcement last week of illness offered another opportunity for left-wing demonization.

In contrast, when Senator Edward Kennedy was rushed to the hospital in May, to be diagnosed with a brain tumor, I found nothing but well-wishing across the conservative blogosphere.

Ben Johnson offered an explanation for all of this in "Kennedy's Illness, and the Left's." At base, for Johnson, there appears to be a deficit of the soul on the left, an absence of divine grace. This gap removes a prohibitive moral restraint in left-wing partisans and preconditions them to cheer the pain, suffering, and demise of conservatives.

I've gone even further in suggesting that Marxist ideology - which guides the class conscious, anti-imperialist project of contemporary "progressives" - provides leftists with a doctrine of hatred, a political demonology to drive the dehumanization campaigns against their opponents:

As a kind of universal secular Church, Marxism succeeded, in a historically unprecedented way, in satisfying the ideological, political, and psychological needs of marginalized and alienated intellectuals scattered all over the world. It became the first secular Umma of intellectuals....

Marxism has always been little more than pseudo-universalism, a false promise of intellectual and moral universalism, for an exclusive ideology, by definition, cannot be universalistic. Far from a symbolic design for human fellowship and peaceful coexistence of societies, cultures, and civilizations, Marxism rests on the assumption of radical evil and also on the quest for enemies.

This quest for enemies consumes far left-wing partisans. It is an endless search seeking to delegitimize and dehumanize those who would threaten the safety of a secular, redistributionist world of exclusive false brotherhood and psychological security.

This is why I think there are variations in the propensity to surrender to hate. The left's psychopolitical agenda is "clothed in darkness." It is this very difficult for them to find that "one good thing" about those with whom they differ.

I Pledge: To Resist the Barack-trination!

I vaguely remember this video first coming online around the time of the inauguration. I try to be civic-minded when listening to stuff like this (it's always good to try to be more volunteeristic), but some of the "pledges" are just plain loony, if not extremist. I don't pledge to drive slower to conserve energy, for example. Been there, done that ... in the 1970s!

Anyways, it turns out some parents aren't digging the Barack-trination: "Parents Upset Over 'Leftist Propaganda' Video: Principal Apologizes for Showing 'I Pledge' to Students":

A school principal has apologized for showing a video at an assembly that a politically conservative group leader is calling "radical, leftist propaganda."

Children at Eagle Bay Elementary School in Farmington were shown a short video called "I pledge" on Aug. 28. The video opens with an image of President Barack Obama and part of a speech in which he says, "Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other." The video then features celebrities making pledges about how they will help the president and the world -- and that's where some say the problem lies.

Many pledges, such as supporting local food banks, smiling more, and caring for the elderly are noncontroversial. But other pledges, such as "to never give anyone the finger when I'm driving again," "to sell my obnoxious car and buy a hybrid" and to advance stem cell research cross the line, some say.

"Showing the video in a public school is completely inappropriate," said Jennifer Cieslewicz, whose daughter is a first-grader at the school. "I don't believe a video such as this that promotes certain values should be shown to elementary students, especially without parents being aware. "

Chris Williams, Davis School District spokesman, said school principal Ofelia Wade and school PTA leaders decided to show the video as part of an assembly about the school's theme for the year, service. He said the PTA board chose the video and Wade did not see it before it was shown in the assembly.

"It got to a point where she turned to her assistant and said, 'Oops, I wish I would have seen this before. I don't think I would have shown it,' " Williams said. He said Wade could see how some adults might find the video political.

"She acknowledges she was wrong and apologizes for it and says she's sorry," Williams said. Attempts to reach school PTA leaders Tuesday evening were unsuccessful.

Read the whole thing.

I just love the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and it bums me that Anthony Kiedis is at the video pushing the Obama-Kool Aid on this one - although I'm not suprised. (His line would be funny if it wasn't offered in the context of Obamania: "I pledge allegiance to the funk, to the united funk of funkadelica.")

Anyway, this isn't some fringe group trying to ram this crap down people's throats (what that freak Repsac3 would say). This is more hard-left ideological programming straight from the mainstream Democratic Party establishment - and it is not okay.

See also Michelle Malkin, "'I Pledge to Be of Service to Barack Obama'," and "Obama’s Classroom Campaign: No Junior Lobbyist Left Behind." (Via Memeorandum.)

Sandra Bernhard Spews Gang-Rape Taunt on Sarah Palin

********** EXPLICIT LANGUAGE WARNING! **********

If violent profanity upsets you, don't watch this video of Sandra Bernhard attacking Sarah Palin in a Washington, D.C., stage performance:

Althought this clip doesn't show it, in her routine Bernhard is said to declare that Palin would get "gang-raped" in Manhattan by some "big black brothers."

Tim Graham has the text of the available taunts from the clip:

Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the s**t and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat b***h! Don’t you f**kin’ reference Old Testament, bitch! You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bulls**t! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b***h! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You whore in your f**kin' cheap New Vision cheap-ass plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bulls**t moment.

Graham adds this comment:

The average person probably wouldn’t find it the least bit funny. But if you really, really hate Sarah Palin or Christian conservatives, this show is for you.

The D.C. Examiner's theater review basically endorses Bernard's screaming anti-Palin attacks:

Her profanity comes across as a shout to a passive, disengaged world.

Passive?

I'm sure all the the Palin-ogynists on the political left, who have been endlessly and remorseless terrorizing Sarah Palin and her family since she joined the GOP ticket will find Bernhard's conservative female abuse as essentially left-wing kitchen table banter.

I can hear the lefties now: "I do not endorse Sandra Bernard or her actions...", blah, blah, blah.

Meanwhile, we won't hear a peep against those who have libeled the Alaska Governor as sleeping with John McCain, that she's the grandmother of Trig Palin, that she's a states' rights separatist and John Birch extremist, that she bills rape victims for their CSI forensics - and the list goes on...

Gay Marriage Advocates Threaten Rule of Law

This is not new, actually.

I wrote at length about the extreme progressive thuggery in California upon the passage of Proposition 8 in 2008. And Michelle Malkin had outstanding coverage of the legal challenges to the initiative in federal court, for example: "The anti-Prop. 8 mob strikes again." (And breaking, as I write this: "California Judge's Partner Cited in Push to Uphold Same-Sex Marriage Ban.")

So what's interesting today about the latest gay marriage news is how progressive thuggery is once again driving developments in this controversial area of civil rights. The left can't win on the merits, so we get extremist cries of bigotry enforced by intimidation in order to carry the day.

The main story's at New York Times, "Law Firm Won’t Defend Marriage Act."

It turns out that Atlanta-based law firm King & Spalding caved to leftist intimidation and withdrew from representation. And in a very interesting development, former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement (pictured) resigned from the firm to protest its craven political correctness. Commentary at Althouse, Legal Insurrection, National Review, and Wall Street Journal.

Clement's letter is here.

And at Weekly Standard, "Gay Rights Group Contacted Law Firm's Clients in Campaign to Intimidate DOMA's Defenders":

King and Spalding's vague reason for dropping the case is that its vetting process was "inadequate," but Republicans are accusing the firm of putting "politics and profit" first. Indeed, the Human Rights Campaign, the country's leading gay rights activist group, took credit for applying the "pressure points" needed to "make it happen."

In addition to its public efforts, the Human Rights Campaign "contacted many of the firm's clients" as part of its campaign against King and Spalding, according to the email sent on behalf of HRC vice president Fred Sainz. The email doesn't provide details about what HRC officials said to King and Spalding's clients, and a spokesman for HRC could not be reached for comment ...

Check the link for the full intimidation e-mail from Human Rights Campaign.

Also, at Power Line, "THE LEFT POLITICIZES THE PRACTICE OF LAW" (via Memeorandum):

When a major law firm like King & Spalding puts politics above its duty of loyalty to its client, it is a sad day for our profession and for our country.

Word.

Hey John Kerry, Iran's EFPs (Explosively Formed Penetrators) Killed Hundreds of U.S. Troops in #Iraq!

A number of outlets are reporting that Secretary of State John Kerry is opening talks on security cooperation with Iran, which is world's biggest state-sponsor of international terrorism.

For Example, at the Los Angeles Times, "U.S. may join Iran in effort to resolve crisis in Iraq"; at Politico, "John Kerry: U.S. open to talks with Iran over Iraq"; and the Wall Street Journal, "Iraq Loses Key City, as U.S. 'Open' to Iran Talks on Crisis."

It boggles the mind that the Obama administration would be seeking an entente with our greatest enemy in the region, or perhaps not, since the president and his treasonous cronies have been scheming to reduce U.S. global power from their first day in office.

Here's National Journal's report from 2011, "Record Number of U.S. Troops Killed by Iranian Weapons":

U.S. military commanders in Iraq say Iranian-made weaponry is killing American troops there at an unprecedented pace, posing new dangers to the remaining forces and highlighting Tehran’s intensifying push to gain influence over post-U.S. Iraq.

June was the deadliest month in more than two years for U.S. troops, with 14 killed. In May, the U.S. death toll was two. In April, it was 11. Senior U.S. commanders say the three primary Iranian-backed militias, Kataib Hezbollah, the Promise Day Brigade, and Asaib al Haq, and their rockets were behind 12 of the deaths in June.

A detailed U.S. military breakdown of June’s casualties illustrates the growing threat posed by Iranian munitions.

Military officials said six of the 14 dead troops were killed by so-called “explosively formed penetrators,” or EFPs, a sophisticated roadside bomb capable of piercing through even the best-protected U.S. vehicles. Five other troops were killed earlier in the month when a barrage of rockets slammed into their base in Baghdad. It was the largest single-day U.S. loss of life since April 2009, when a truck bomb killed five soldiers. The remaining three troops killed in June died after a rocket known as an “improvised rocket-assisted mortar,” or IRAM, landed in a remote U.S. outpost in southern Iraq.

U.S. officials say the EFPs, rockets, and IRAMs all come from neighboring Iran. Tehran denies providing the weaponry to Shia militias operating in Iraq.

“We’re seeing a sharp increase in the amount of munitions coming across the border, some manufactured as recently as 2010,” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the top U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said in an interview. “These are highly lethal weapons, and their sheer volume is a major concern.”

Buchanan said much of the current weaponry is passing into the country through its formal border crossings with Iran. Current and former American military officers claim that those border crossings are guarded by Iraqi security personnel whose long-standing financial relationships with their Iranian counterparts means they will accept bribes or turn a blind eye in order to allow munitions through.

Back in 2007, the Washington post called EFPs "The Deadliest IEDs." See, "'The single most effective weapon against our deployed forces'":

IEDs have caused nearly two-thirds of the 3,100 American combat deaths in Iraq, and an even higher proportion of battle wounds. This year alone, through mid-July, they have also resulted in an estimated 11,000 Iraqi civilian casualties and more than 600 deaths among Iraqi security forces. To the extent that the United States is not winning militarily in Iraq, the roadside bomb, which as of Sept. 22 had killed or wounded 21,200 Americans, is both a proximate cause and a metaphor for the miscalculation and improvisation that have characterized the war.

EFPs constituted the most serious threat the coalition forces in Iraq. Here's Toby Harnden in 2006, at Telegraph UK, "Three Iranian factories 'mass-produce bombs to kill British in Iraq'":

Three factories in Iran are mass-producing the sophisticated roadside bombs used to kill British soldiers over the border in Iraq, it has been claimed.

The lethal bombs are being made by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at ordnance factory sites in Tehran, according to opponents of the country's theocratic regime.

Designed to penetrate heavy armour, the devices being manufactured in Iran involve the use of "explosively formed projectiles" or EFPs, also known as shaped charges, often triggered by infra-red beams.

The weapons can pierce the armour of British and American tanks and armoured personnel carriers and completely destroy armoured Land Rovers, which are used by the majority of British troops on operations in Iraq.

The Sunday Telegraph revealed in April that Iranian-made devices employing several EFPs, directed at different angles, were being used in Iraq.

And in June, this newspaper obtained the first picture of one of the Iraqi insurgent weapons - designed to fire an armour-piercing EFP - believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 17 British soldiers.

British Government scientists have already established that the mines are precision-made weapons thought to have been turned on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions.

Members of the Washington-based Iran Policy Committee have released the details about the three bomb factories gathered by the exile group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI).

Here are graphic photos of the destruction inflicted by these devices. In your mind's eye, situate yourself behind the controls of a Humvee patrolling Baghdad in 2007. Via Pajamas Media, "How Iran Is Killing U.S. Troops in Iraq." These projectiles explode at more than 2,000 feet-per-second:





And now the U.S. is seeking to give Tehran a lead role in resolving the crisis in Iraq? That'd be like opening talks on cooperation with the German High Command as British and French forces were being evacuated at Dunkirk in 1940.

The Obama administration has sold out American interests and placed the lives of Americans and untold number of Iraqis at risk. The solution is not to let Iran gain greater influence in Iraq. We have the options to reverse the ISIS advance. And we have over a decade of on-the-ground experience in defeating the jihadi extremist. All we need is the requisite leadership to beat back this incursion and avoid an existential defeat in the Middle East.

University of Illinois at Chicago Releases Annenberg Files

The Chicago Tribune's report on the Daley Library's release of Barack Obama's Annenberg records is intiguingly titled: "Files Linking Obama to '60s Radical a Hot Commodity":

The University of Illinois at Chicago on Tuesday released more than 1,000 files detailing the activities of an education reform group in which both Barack Obama and former 1960s radical William Ayers played key roles.

The release of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents turned the sterile special collections room at the university's Daley library into a media frenzy. Television crews hovered at the room's entrance. Librarians scurried to copying machines to fulfill the requests of a roomful of reporters. Two security officers stood guard.

On a typical day, one or two scholars may conduct research there. The library director laughed when asked whether it has had security before.

A partial examination of the documents did not reveal anything startling about the link between Obama, the Democratic presidential contender, and Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground, a Vietnam-era anti-war group that claimed responsibility for several bombings. Ayers, who spent years in hiding, is now a UIC education professor.

The interest in the documents comes as supporters of Republican presidential candidate John McCain have questioned Obama's ties to Ayers. The Obama campaign this week countered by airing television commercials suggesting that McCain is stuck in the '60s.

Perhaps there's nothing "startling" in the files, according the Tribune's initial review, although the report mentions that "Obama and Ayers attended board meetings, retreats and at least one news conference together," a simple fact that puts the lie to Obama's claim that:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

But the National Review has a deeper analysis of why Obama's Ayers connection matters:

Have you ever been a friend or business associate of a terrorist? Not someone who, to your shock and horror, turned out secretly to have bombed government buildings. No, the question is whether you’ve ever befriended an unreconstructed radical whose past was well known to you when you entered his orbit and walked through doors he opened for you. Have you been chummy with an unapologetic terrorist who, years after you’d known and worked closely with him, was still telling the New York Times he regretted only failing to carry out more attacks — and that America still “makes me want to puke”?

Barack Obama has.

An organization called the American Issues Project, backed by Dallas investor Harold Simmons, is running a campaign ad which highlights Obama’s troubling relationship with William Ayers. Ayers is a former member of the Weathermen terrorist organization that bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, various police headquarters, and other targets in the early 1970s....

Obama’s campaign has acknowledged that the candidate and Ayers are friends. Though Obama has more recently minimized Ayers as “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” it is clear that the relationship was much deeper than that. Ayers and his fellow-terrorist wife, Bernadine Dohrn (who has spoken admiringly of the infamous Manson Family murders), are icons in Chicago’s hard-left circles, to which Obama sought entrée as a young “community organizer.” In 1995, they hosted a fundraiser that helped launch his career in Chicago politics.

Ayers has never abandoned his indictment of America as an imperialist hotbed of racism and economic exploitation. He has merely shifted methods from violent extortion to academic indoctrination. Through his perch as a professor of education at the University of Illinois, he has been a ceaseless critic of the criminal-justice system (he is essentially opposed to imprisoning even the most violent criminals) and a proponent of what he calls “education reform” but what is actually the use of the classroom to proselytize for the Left’s political agenda.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune in 1997, Obama called A Kind and Just Parent, Ayers’ polemic on the Chicago court system, “a searing and timely account.” Michelle Obama, then a dean at the University of Illinois, invited Ayers to participate in a panel with her husband, then a state senator who, the program explained, was “working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system.”

Obama apologists dismiss all this as “guilt by association” based on a single joint appearance. But it was far from the only one.

In fact, by 1997 Obama and Ayers were collaborators on a far more significant level. They sat together for several years on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing Chicago charitable organization. There, they doled out tens of thousands of dollars to such beneficiaries as the Trinity Church (where Obama was a longtime member and where another Obama mentor, Jeremiah Wright, preached a radical, anti-American brand of Black Liberation Theology) and the Arab American Action Network (co-founded by Rashid Khalidi, a Yasser Arafat apologist who has supported attacks against Israel and now directs Columbia University’s notorious Middle East Institute, founded by Edward Said).

Even more intriguing, in 1995 Ayers won a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation — matched two-to-one by public and private contributions — to promote “reform” in the Chicago school system. He quickly brought in Obama, then all of 33 and bereft of any executive experience, to chair the board. With Ayers directing the project’s operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education.

Until this week, moreover, the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers works, was blocking access to the project’s files (examination of which was being sought by frequent National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz), until finally relenting under public pressure. Less than three months from Election Day, analysis of the records from Barack Obama’s only significant executive experience is just beginning.

The mainstream media has been derelict on the Obama/Ayers relationship. Perhaps now, finally, it will get the scrutiny it deserves.

Obama's ill-advised relationship to Ayers raises questions of judgment that should be at the center of the national discussion on the Illinois Senator's qualifications to serve as President of the United States.

While the National Review doesn't address the topic in its editorial, the mainstream press has also been derelict in its inattention to Obama's extremist positions on abortions and the right to life.

See also, Sister Toldjah, "FactCheck: It’s the NRLC, not Obama, telling the truth on BAIPA."

See the additional analysis at Memeorandum.

Barack Obama and the Right to Life

This video shows a protest against the Democratic Party abortion policies with a massive sign showing the message: "Destroys uNborn Children":

Also, at the Chicago Tribune, Dennis Byrne exposes the culture of death that characerizes the party's position on abortion, best represented by the revelations of Barack Obama's extremist views on the right to life:

Can we just listen to ourselves? We're debating whether some babies born alive have a right to medical attention....

Jill Stanek, a former nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, described in 2001 during congressional testimony how it happens: In a "live-birth abortion," doctors "do not attempt to kill the baby in the uterus. The goal is simply to prematurely deliver a baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward." Medication stimulates the cervix to open, allowing the baby to emerge, sometimes alive. "It is not uncommon for a live aborted baby to linger for an hour or two or even longer. At Christ Hospital, one . . . lived for almost an entire eight-hour shift." Some actually are born healthy because they are aborted to preserve the "health" of the mother, or because the pregnancy was due to rape or incest. At best, they are left in a "comfort room," complete with a camera (for pictures of the aborted baby) "baptismal supplies, gowns, and certificates, footprinting equipment and baby bracelets for mementos and a rocking chair," where they are rocked to death. "Before the comfort room was established," Stanek said, "babies were taken to the soiled utility room to die."

Yes, there ought to be a law against this, and Congress passed one unanimously. It declares that a person is defined as "every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development." Born alive means any human being that after "expulsion or extraction" from the mother "breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, Caesarean section, or induced abortion."

Pretty simple, right?

Well, not really. Some people fear that this fundamental protection, ensuring to all the first of the rights of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," is in reality a sneak attack on a woman's right to choose an abortion. To prevent this "Trojan horse," they insisted, and got, in the federal law a guarantee against construing the law to "affirm, deny or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive'. . ." This mumbo jumbo is supposed to mean that abortions can't be restricted.

To mollify pro-choice concerns, including Obama's, this was inserted in several versions of the Illinois legislation. But it didn't matter, because the legislation died anyway, with Obama's help. Whether or not he refused to vote for a version that contained the right-to-an-abortion provision isn't what's important here. What is important is that Obama put the supposed and vague threat to an abortion right ahead of a real and concrete threat to the most innocent of human lives.

Obama's response to all this is to sidestep any discussion about when human personhood begins, the key question in the abortion debate. Some say it begins at the moment of conception; others say it begins at birth. (Still others look for a middle ground, suggesting it begins when brain activity starts.) But by arguing against the born-alive legislation because it might in some distant and ambiguous way obstruct abortion, Obama implies that the right to an abortion trumps an infant's right to life, even after he is born.

Such logic is breathtaking. It says that even after birth, a mother's right to rid herself of the baby supersedes any right that a child, now independent of the mother's body and domain, has a right to live. Where America stands on this issue truly is a measure of its sense of justice and compassion. On this score, Obama fails.

See also, "The Secret Life of Senator Infanticide."

Islamic State Bombs Saudi Arabia Mosque, Targeting Shiite Muslims

It's a Shiite mosque.

It's an Islamic civil war fanning across the region, and the Obama administration's inaction fans the flames.

At the New York Times, "ISIS Claims Responsibility for Bombing at Saudi Mosque." (Via Memeorandum.)

Also at the Washington Post, "Islamic State claims responsibility for Shiite mosque blast in Saudi Arabia":

CAIRO — The Islamic State said Friday that it was behind a blast that killed or wounded scores of worshipers at a Shiite mosque in Saudi Arabia, marking the first time the militant group has claimed an attack in the oil-rich kingdom and raising fears of an expanding sectarian conflict in the region.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi authorities on the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility, which was carried in both written and audio statements distributed by accounts linked with the Islamic State on Twitter.

The Islamic State communique said that a “martyrdom-seeking brother” set off an explosive belt during a gathering of “impure” Shiites, according to the SITE Intelligence group, which monitors militant postings on social media and elsewhere.

The Sunni extremist group views Shiites as Muslim heretics and opposes the Saudi leadership’s ties with the West. The same statement called the attack a “unique operation” and referred to the group’s newly formed “Najd Province,” which encompasses central Saudi Arabia and includes the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The Saudi monarchy presides over Islam’s two holiest sites, making the kingdom a hugely symbolic target for Islamist militants.

In a statement also posted Friday on Twitter, the Saudi Health Ministry said 21 people were killed and 123 wounded in the blast.

The suicide bomber targeted worshipers at a mosque in the village of Qadeeh in the province of Qatif, part of a mostly Shiite enclave about 240 miles northeast of the capital.

An activist, Naseema al-Sada, told the Associated Press that a suicide bomber detonated explosives as worshipers marked the birth of the 7th century Shiite saint, Imam Hussein. The official Saudi News Agency reported an explosion at the mosque but had no further details. The report said authorities launched an investigation into the attack.

Saudi Arabia’s eastern region, which is the heartland of the kingdom’s Shiite minority, has been the scene of sporadic unrest and violence for years. Shiites, who account for an estimated 12 percent of the Saudi population, say they face widespread discrimination from the kingdom’s Sunni leaders. And Shiite protesters have clashed with Saudi security forces during demonstrations for greater rights in the past...

More.

Also at Euronews, "ISIL to blame for Saudi Arabia Shi'ite mosque suicide attack."

And at Reuters, "Suicide bomber strikes Saudi Shi'ite mosque," and Russia Today, "Dozens dead after suicide bomber strikes Shiite mosque in Saudi Arabia."

The Myth of Iraq's Jihadi Magnet

Reuel Marc Gerecht's got a great piece up at the Washington Post, arguing that Iraq's not a magnet for foreign-bred jihadists:

Among Democrats and even many Republicans, it is by now accepted wisdom that the war in Iraq brought huge numbers of holy warriors to the anti-American cause. But is it true? I don't think so.

Muslim holy warriors are a diverse lot, reacting with differing intensity to the hot-button issues that define contemporary Islamic militancy. For many fundamentalists, what is seen as an unrelenting Western assault on Muslim male honor and female virtue is the core infuriating offense. For others it may be the alienation that second-generation young Muslim men encounter in an immigrant-unfriendly Europe. And for still others, Iraq, Afghanistan, the tyranny of U.S.-backed Muslim rulers and the Palestinian resistance can all come together to convert individual indignities into a holy-warrior faith.

These complexities may help explain, at least in part, why so many secular Westerners seek relief in more easily understood explanations for jihadism (the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being the usual favorites) -- explanations that don't probe too deeply into Islamic history and the militant Muslim imagination.

Regarding the Iraq war and jihadism, two facts stand out. First, if we make a comparison with the Soviet-Afghan war of 1979-89, which was the baptismal font for al-Qaeda, what's most striking is how few foreign holy warriors have gone to Mesopotamia since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Admittedly, we don't have a perfect grasp of the numbers involved in either conflict. But the figure of 25,000 Arab mujaheddin is probably a decent figure for those who went to Pakistan to fight the Red Army. Most probably did so in the last four years of the war, when the recruitment organizations and logistics became well developed. In Iraq, we see nothing of this magnitude, even though Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is in the Arab heartland and at the center of Islamic history. Moreover, for Arabs, getting to Iraq isn't difficult, and once there they speak the language and know the culture. And of course the United States, the bete noire of Islamists, is the enemy in Iraq.

But according to the CIA and the U.S. military, we are now seeing at most only dozens of Arab Sunni holy warriors entering the country each month. Even at the height of the insurgency in 2006-07, the figure might have been just a few hundred (and may have been much smaller).

In the 1980s the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and most well-organized Islamist movement, was at the center of the anti-Soviet jihadist recruitment effort. But in the case of Iraq, the Brotherhood has largely sat out the war. Even in Saudi Arabia, the mother ship of virulently anti-American, anti-Shiite, anti-moderate Muslim Wahhabism, the lack of commitment has been striking. We should have seen thousands, not hundreds, of Saudi true believers descending on Iraq.

Throughout the Arab world, fundamentalism today is much stronger on the ground than it was in the 1980s. Yet the fundamentalist commitment to the Iraqi Sunni Arab insurgency pales in comparison with that made to Sunni Afghans.

A second striking fact about Islamism and the Iraq war is that the arrival of foreign holy warriors is deradicalizing the local population -- the exact opposite of what happened in Afghanistan. In the Soviet war, the "Arab Afghans" arrived white-hot -- their radicalization had occurred at home in the 1960s and 1970s, when Islamic fundamentalism replaced secular Arab nationalism as the driving intellectual force. On the subcontinent, Arab holy warriors accelerated extreme Islamism among both Afghans and Pakistanis. We are still living with the results.

In Iraq, as we have seen with the anti-al-Qaeda, Sunni Arab "Awakenings," Sunni extremism is now in retreat. More important, the gruesome anti-Shiite tactics of extremist groups, combined with the much-quoted statements made by former Sunni insurgents about the positive actions of the United States in Iraq, have caused a great deal of intellectual turbulence in the Arab world.

It's way too soon to call Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda spiritual outcasts among Arab Muslims, but they have in fact sustained enormous damage throughout the region because of Iraq. The lack of holy-warrior manpower coming from the Muslim Brotherhood is surely, in part, a reflection of this discomfort with al-Qaeda's violence, the complexity of Iraqi politics and America's not entirely negative role inside the country. If bin Ladenism is now on the decline -- and it may well be among Arabs -- then Iraq has played an essential part in battering the movement's spiritual appeal.

Iraq could still fall apart (and if an American president starts withdrawing troops haphazardly, it probably will). The country's descent into chaos and renewed sectarian strife would likely reenergize Islamic extremism. But it is certainly not too soon to suggest that Iraq could well become America's decisive victory over Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and all those Muslims who believe that God has sanctified violence against the United States.

For the debate on troop withdrawals, see Michael Gordon, "Making a Case for a Pause in Troop Cutbacks in Iraq."

From Neocons to Crazy-Cons?

Well, yeah, according to David Klinghoffer:

What has become of conservatism? We have reached a point at which nothing could be more important than to stop and recall what brought us here, to the right, in the first place.

Buckley's National Review, where I was the literary editor through the 1990s, remains as vital and interesting as ever. But more characteristic of conservative leadership are figures on TV, radio and the Internet who make their money by stirring fears and resentments. With its descent to baiting blacks, Mexicans and Muslims, its accommodation of conspiracy theories and an increasing nastiness and vulgarity, the conservative movement has undergone a shift toward demagoguery and hucksterism. Once the talk was of "neocons" versus "paleocons." Now we observe the rule of the crazy-cons.

RTWT.

Klinghoffer veers into spirituality, and suggests that the conservative vision has lost the "metaphysical dream that allows for ultimate meaning in our existence."

I can't speak for Andrew Breitbart, and I actually reject a good bit of the "craziness" on the right, but as you finish Klinghoffer ask if American politics, realistically, will be returning to a more wistful, respectful era? (And also ask if being "crazy" is code for being "racist"?) Besides, National Review's not my top source for right wing news. I prefer Commentary and Weekly Standard, to say nothing of Ace of Spades HQ, Instapundit, and The Other McCain. And I read these sources, among others, because they provide me with the intellectual sustenance to "save civilization," which is what Klinghoffer suggests is "what he signed up for" when he became a conservative.

And here's the thing: A lot of us became conservative because we saw society's moral foundations in tatters, and it was the Democratic-left holding the shears. You can always hold up your hands and scream "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right," but you still have to choose. We have no viable third party movement, and the GOP at present is the best place to form a conservative-libertarian coalition for political victory. And as a party out of power, the most strident voices at the base are going to get a lot of play, especially when new media is driving most of the key political memes. I choose conservatism. It's a no-brainer. But notwithstanding the citations above, I'm not wedded to any particular talking point. I think for myself, thank you. For example, is it crazy to call President Obama a socialist? I think he is (but on an intellectual level, e.g., see Jonah Goldberg, "What Kind of Socialist Is Barack Obama?"). But that kind of talk gets one attacked as an extremist by the left-wing media machine. How about if you don't submit? Breitbart's attacked mercilessly as a "liar" and a "unprincipled" scoundrel because he gets results. Yet, almost daily I find some MSM outlets reporting not just factual errors, but outright lies, and then people like me are crazy for calling out this sh*t? I don't think so. People are mad. And when people get mad they starting gravitating to more polarizing messages, and some of it can get heated. For me though, Klinghoffer and others like him (which no offense to him, would include idiots like Charles Johnson) simply prop up the left's Media Industrial Complex, and in that sense they're enabling the very anti-conservative forces Andrew Breitbart is finally beginning to take down.

President Obama Speaks at the Summit on Countering Violent Extremism

Oh boy. It's terrible.

Here, at the White House YouTube page.

And snippets at AP, "Obama: 'We Are Not at War With Islam'."

Obviously, Obama's problem is that Islamic State is not pushing "a twisted interpretation of religion." Indeed, as Graeme Wood writes at the cover story at the latest Atlantic:

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

We can agree that there are different interpretations of Islam, but it's simply absurd to argue that Islamic State --- or al-Qaeda itself --- is practicing a "twisted interpretation."

And if you listen long enough at the video, you'll see that Obama eventually gets to the heart of the leftist-collectivist agenda for supposedly "countering violent extremism": purportedly combating the alleged "legitimate grievances" of Islamists with ever-expanding big-government programs. Recall that this initiative is predicated on lies: "The 'Jobs for Jihad Delinquents' Program."


Anyway, FWIW, there's more at the Los Angeles Times, "Obama calls for global effort against spread of extremist ideas."

Israel Braces for Violence, Hamas Rockets, After Palestinian Baby Killed in Firebombing

Background at Russia Today, "Palestinian toddler burns to death in suspected Jewish ‘price tag’ attack," and France 24, "West Bank Arson: Palestinian child dies in suspected jewish extremist attack."

And at the Times of Israel:

Ali Dawabsha buried, doctors try to save rest of family; Israel condemns alleged Jewish terrorists who set fire to home; Abbas blames Israeli support for settlers; world slams attack; IDF sends extra troops to West Bank.

And from the IDF, "We condemn all acts of terrorism. Our thoughts are with the families of the victims. We wish all a peaceful Shabbat."

And, "Terror Attack in the Duma Village."

Watch: "IDF Forces Airlift Palestinian Victim to Israeli Hospital."

Candice Swanepoel, Chanel Iman and Erin Heatherton — Mini-Rule 5 Saturday

I'm sure readers would prefer some weekend hotness blogging over my battles with the extremist left, so perhaps some Victoria's Secret beauties might be a little more cheerful:

And as always, I look forward to Linkmaster Smith's Sunday roundup.

And see Bob Belvedere, "Some Lion Cubs Have All The Luck…", The Daley Gator, "Your Saturday Linkapalooza," Opus #6, "Brooke Shields - Beauty Through the Years," and Washington Rebel, "Sweet Mystery of Life."

RELATED: At Fausta's, "Hugo Chavez, Tomb Raider."

The Crisis of Liberaltarian Intellectualism

In yesterday's entry, "Liberaltarianism and Intellectual Dishonesty," I focused on the ideological incoherence, intellectual pedestrianism, and moral perfidy of the left-libertarians who are often labeled "liberaltarians" (with most of my attention directed at Mark Thompson's League of Ordinary Gentlemen).

Robert Stacy McCain kicked up a bit of a controversy with his critical comments on these folks, "The Luxury of 'Liberaltarianism'," and he's generated a new (and quite raw) response from Ron Chusid at Liberal Values: "Must You Be Out of Touch With Reality to Be An Economic Conservative?" These passages are particularly juicy:

The current left/right divide is now primarily over social issues, civil liberties, and one’s position on the Iraq war, with economic issues no longer providing a clear delineation between left and right. The left/right continuum has increasingly become based upon two parameters: support for liberty on the left in contrast to the authoritarianism of the right and support for science, reason, and a reality-based view of the world on the left versus the reactionary opposition to modernity, science, and reason from the right. This division can be seen in Robert Stacy McCain’s response to Wilkinson’s views on liberal/libertarian fusionism ...

Ron cites a passage from Robert's post that stresses the bedrock of Middle American "Rotarianism" and the religious traditionalism of the Republican base. He then continues:

In expressing this belief in creationism, McCain already demonstrates a limited ability to either think rationally or to coherently comment on the issues of a twenty-first century world. The degree to which he is out of touch with reality also comes from the manner in which his views of liberals comes from a Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity promoted stereotype as opposed to anything which exists in the real world.

The typical liberal is just as likely as most conservatives (and more likely than Rush Limbaugh) to be in a traditional marriage, go to work every day, and abstain from drug use. The difference between liberals and social conservatives is not as much life style as the toleration of other life styles. Many of us live a basically conservative life style but do not feel the drive seen among conservatives to use the power of the state to impose their life style and personal choices upon others ....

Obama’s victory was an example of the emergence of socially liberal and economically conservative or pragmatic voters as we had a significant impact in both the Democratic primaries and the general election. All of us affluent wine and latte drinking liberals who enjoy and understand the virtues of the free market are still around despite all the opposition from both the Clintonistas and Palinistas. Our views may or may not win in future elections, but we have become a force to counter both the views of the big-government elements of the left and the authoritarian right.

Genuine thanks should be tendered here to Ron Chusid, who has provided a fabulous window into the mind of those of contemporary left-libertarianism.

Robert Stacy McCain has already replied to Chusid's piece, in "Faux Argument," where he writes:

Chusid's "about" page envisions a point at which "Republicans break free of their control by the religious right and neoconservatives." I'll let the neocons defend themselves, but what harm exactly has the "religious right" done to deserve Chusid's contempt or hostility? Who does he have in mind by this term, "religious right"?

Well, as a bonafide (and increasingly despised) neocon, I'll take that as my entree into this stage of the debate (and be sure to check Robert's link). So, first notice all of Ron Chusid's demonic attacks on traditionalists as backwater yahoos, as "authoritarian" and "reactionary" people who oppose "modernism" and "science." These people are also unable to "think rationally" or "comment coherently" on the issues, and are thus unfit for life in the "twenty-first century world." Further, with full obligation to the nihilist fever swamps of the netroots left, people like this take all their talking points from "Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity promoted stereotypes."

Okay, this is all quite interesting. No, wait ... it's more, it's utterly fascinating actually, unbelievable in fact, since it's defies reason that for all of Chusid's hot and heavy upturned cosmopolitanism, he still claims left-libertarians are practically jonesing to be "in a traditional marriage."

But wait! Traditionalism is bad, right? Shouldn't Ron be repudiating that old fashion stuff, not embracing it. I mean really, if these backwoods yokels are so ignorant and reactionary, you'd think the enlightened types like Ron Chusid would be beating a path to abondon such "stereotypical" lifestyles faster than you can say Stonewall. It's all so mid-twentieth-century like.

But more than that, the truth is the left-libertarians aren't at all in favor of "greater liberty" and "free markets." I mean take a look around. Some of the same folks who're are now key proponents of the liberaltarian movement are some of the biggest apologists for state centralization of the economy (only the Obama administration hasn't yet "incorporated" enough "libertarian thinking") and they advocate the violent supression of the free speech rights of marriage traditionalists, as we've seen in California with the extremist left-wing backlash to the passage of Proposition 8. Indeed, basic religious freedom of expression itself is totally under fire by these very same "libertarians" (yo, look out Mormons), although someone's forgetting that religious liberty is the very first item selected for protection in the First Amendment, and is historically guarded as a key foundation of a free people. It's thus exceedingly strange for one who promotes "liberal values" to make such hackneyed attacks on conservatives as this. Aren't there enough Daily Kos clones online?

Further, Ron Chusid doesn't understand economics himself if he thinks the Obama administration's getting anywhere closer to freedom anytime soon. There's been all kinds of attacks on the new stimulus legislation and the process, from bloat to the absence of transparency. But as a killer of liberty, this one's got to take the cake. On the question of parental autonomy alone, as Michael Franc noted Thursday, the Obama-Democratic left evisicerate families by guaranteeing that children would be able to receive family planning benefits without parental knowledge whatsoever! It must be a violation of libertarian logic of historic proportions for someone like Ron Chusid to be railing away at country bumpkins while simultaneously claiming to be an advocate for family traditionalism amid the biggest expansion of state power in 75 years. God, there's got to be a bigger bogeyman than flag-waving creationists who want to have babies!

To be sure, what about this notion that libertarians are just like marriage traditionalists except they don't "impose their life style and personal choices upon others"? Is there any particular age, for example, in which libertarians have decreed it as being okay for kids to have sex and bear children? Of course, folks like me - us "evil neocons" - might sound a little "authoritarian" when rejecting juvenile liberaltarian licentiousness as social policy. You know, some people might actually be inclined to think that their "life style" is actually the superior one for the preservation of life and liberty, and the recreation of preferred standards of right.

I mean really, I'm just blown away here ...

When did left-libertarians abandon universal morals? Can Ron Chusid and his brethren even be taken seriously, when by implication the libertarian thesis holds that every human action, every decision made on the basis of personal liberty, is of equal benefit to the regeneration of moral society? It certainly seems that way, when we have examples (only the most recent) of people like Nadya Suleman - the now notorious "Octomom" - having aggressive fertility treatments at will, essentially on demand, with the demonstrated results likely to put taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in public-benefit expenses. Is that something that's truly in the public good? Whoo hoo, liberaltarians! More choice, more freedom, more out-of-wedlock fertility "science" enabled babies!

The fact is, choice is the handmaiden of responsibility. Liberaltarians, or progressive conservativces, blah, blah, as far as I can see, are hardline leftists who are afraid to admit it, so they cloak themselves in a bunch of incoherent hogwash about superior knowledge of free markets while their electoral "choices" empower Democratic mandarins who are now advancing a proletarian-minded leftist-authoritarianism hell-bent on dismantling the institutions of liberty that have made and kept this nation great for over 200 years.

We're facing a complete bankruptcy of intellectual honesty and moral righteousness, and Ron Chusid's ilk are blazing the trail down the highway of good intentions. So, who really is so "unprepared" for a life of increasing complexity in modernity? Don't bet on the completely bereft liberaltarians, who in fact offer nothing more than the losing hand of demonic compromise to a secular messianism of libertine supremacy.