Liberals play ostrich with facts they don’t like, and American discourse suffers

The other day, Mr. Bookworm asked me to tell him “what the right wing wackos were talking about.”  Among other things, I mentioned that people were interested in the fact that Hillary had recently announced that she would not return as Secretary of State for Obama’s second term, leading to speculation that she was planning a primary challenge.

“That’s not true,” he exclaimed.  “That’s just another of those conspiracy theories that get your little blogosphere so excited.”

Since we were in the car, I mildly responded that it was true and changed the subject.  He was troubled, though.  That night, after I’d already turned my computer, he told me I was clearly (a) wrong or (b) making things up or (c) in thrall to a conspiracy theory, because his computer search didn’t turn up any mention of Hillary quitting her job.

“That’s peculiar,” I said.  “Give me your computer and I’ll find it for you in a second.”

His response startled me:  “No.  I’m not going to let you use my computer to waste time looking for something that’s not true.”

“Well, if I find it, then it is true and I haven’t wasted time.”

“No.  It’s not there so don’t look.”

Next morning, when I turned on my computer, it took me about 1 minute to find a CNN article entitled “Clinton says no to second run” (with a permalink giving the alternative title as “Clinton-running-for-president”).  The text was straightforward:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer she does not want to serve a second term as secretary of state or run for president of the United States.

[snip]

Q- If the president is reelected, do you want to serve a second term as secretary of state?

No

I wasn’t wrong; I didn’t make it up; there was no conspiracy theory.  On a liberal venue, in an on-air interview with a liberal media personality, Hillary explicitly announced her upcoming retirement.

I actually wasn’t going to write about this little interaction with Mr. Bookworm, because although silly, it was no big deal.  We go through this all the time.  I say something, he challenges my veracity, and then he refuses to look at the proof I send him.  I thought it was just one of his little eccentricities.  I only mention it now because a Lee Stranahan post establishes that Mr. Bookworm is not alone.  His behavior appears at the highest echelons of liberal thinking.

Lee Stranahan, as you may recall, is the long-time, self-admitted, well-known Progressive who wrote a HuffPo column calling out the MSM on its hypocrisy regarding civility:

Why isn’t the mainstream media talking about the death threats against Republican politicians in Wisconsin?

[snip]

Burying the death threat story is a clear example of intellectual dishonesty and journalistic bias.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Look into the story of death threats in Wisconsin yourself and see who has been covering the story and who hasn’t. Try for a moment to see this story from the perspective of those who you may disagree with on policy and ask yourself how this looks to them. Can you blame them for feeling that way? Then take a few seconds and read those questions I asked you at the beginning of this article.

And then ask why progressives shouldn’t expect more from our media — and ourselves — than we expect from our political adversaries.

What I’ve since learned is that Stranahan, rather than sparking a wave of self-analysis and honesty from his fellow Progressives, has been subject to opprobrium for having developed a working relationship with Andrew Breitbart.  He’s a sell-out, they say, making his criticism completely irrelevant.

Stranahan, in response to these attacks, has written a post explaining why he ended up in a working relationship with Breitbart, despite the fact that Stranahan hasn’t abandoned his Progressive principles.  Stranahan never expected to like Breitbart.  Their relationship started after Stranahan watched, and was offended by, the media ridicule directed at Jon Stewart for his Rodney King moment in Washington, D.C., (a “can’t we all get along” speech that Stewart’s subsequent outings on his show proved he didn’t mean).

Stranahan decided to “get along” by interviewing the most reviled conservative media figure.  He picked Breitbart.  I’ll let Stranahan explain the rest:

So I thought about writing a HuffPost piece about this idea that the left was missing the entire point of what Stewart was trying to say. I wanted to interview someone, so I tried to think of the most reviled person in the world by left and Andrew Breitbart sprung.to mind. I only know a little about him. I remembered he was involved the Shirley Sherrod thing and that ACORN thing but my knowledge of these events was pretty shallow. I knew he was called a racist, a homophobe and every other name under the sun. But I also remembered something I’d seen months earlier.

It was an appearance on Good Morning, America with Andrew Breitbart and Eric Boehlert. I’d watched it because I knew Eric Boehlert, who’d written about me and the John Edwards story in his book Bloggers on the Bus. So when I watched, I was a lot more inclined to agree with Boehlert than Breitbart.

There’s a part in that segment where Breitbart discusses the story about racial epithets being yelled at members of the Congressional Black Caucus by members of the Tea Party; a story that was widely reported in the left wing blogosphere. It was so widely reported, I just assumed it was true but here was this Breitbart guy saying he had video tapes that proved the incident didn’t happened as described. Okay, that was interesting – maybe I had the story wrong and this Breitbart guy seemed eager to prove it,

And then – on live television– Eric Boehlert & George Stephanopoulos totally blew off Breitbart’s offer to show them the video tapes.

That stuck with me for months. The story was either true or not and here was someone eager to get to the truth and the liberal host and other liberal guest weren’t a bit interested. And it seemed so dishonest. I knew if they thought the video proved their case, it’d be shown all day and night. It didn’t make me proud to be on the same side ideologically as Boehlert and Stephanopoulos.

(You should read the rest of Stranahan’s post, but that’s the point I wanted to make for purposes of my own post.)

For Stranahan, this was a light bulb moment.  For me, it’s my life.  Mr. Bookworm is the most common culprit only because he’s the one with whom I most frequently converse.  But I see the same thing with other liberals:  If it challenges their dogma, they don’t want to know.  They understand that bubbles only work if no one pokes them with a sharp object, and facts are the ultimate sharp object.  (Or, as John Adams more eloquently said, “facts are stubborn things.”)  They’re not going to let anything near them that might puncture their tidy ideological bubble.

I’m not optimistic about reasoned political debate in our country if one side of the debate, after hurling insults and misinformation, then sticks its collective fingers in its collective ears, and hollers “Nyah, nyah, nyah.  I caaaan’t hear you.”  It’s not that we’re talking different languages or different values.  It’s that, thanks to the ostrich media’s (thankfully weakening) stranglehold on the dissemination of information, we’re not actually talking at all.

Defining terms so that they align with values

Anecdote 1:  My son is now, and always has been, fascinated by weapons.  He’s especially intrigued by sniper rifles, and their spectacular range, especially when in the hands of a talented shooter.  I therefore emailed my son a link to an article about two British snipers in Afghanistan who killed 75 Taliban fighters in just 40 days.  Mr. Bookworm was in the room when my son read the article, and he started reading it too.

Mr. Bookworm was horrified.  “I can’t believe you sent our son this stuff.  These are cold-blooded murderers.  They boast about killing people.”

My son froze.  Had mommy just sent him the written equivalent of a snuff film?

I responded, “Are you calling my father a murderer?  [As Mr. Bookworm and my son both know, my father spent five years fighting Nazis, sometimes in hand-to-hand bayonet combat.]  This is war, not murder.  In war, you kill the enemy before he kills you.”

My son relaxed.  Mr. Bookworm harrumphed, but subsided.

Anecdote 2:  Last night, we got around to watching HBO’s television show about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which occurred 100 years ago this month.  The show was interesting insofar as it had interviews with descendants of those who survived the fire (including one of the factor owners).  The pictures of the young women who died were moving.  The show was also boring insofar as it was one of the most heavy-handed pro-union polemics I’ve ever seen.  It was as if the SEIU wrote the script.  Subtlety would have been more attractive and, probably, more effective.

When the show ended, Mr. Bookworm said to me, “You and your right wing wackos want to get rid of all those protections.  You want to go back to the time when nothing stopped the rich people from exploiting the workers.”

“I don’t know where you get that idea,” I said.  “I think it’s a good thing for the government to impose minimal, reasonable standards for workplace safety.”

“Hah!  ‘Minimal.’  That’s like no standards at all,” he responded.

“No,” I replied.  “That’s not what I mean.  I just mean that bureaucracies tend to be self-propelling, and they enact ever more standards.  I’m totally on board with life-saving safety standards.  But you know that OSHA gets involved in everything from chairs to types of pens used.  If they could, they’d dictate what color paint to have on the wall, because more people find pink soothing, while some people say that green makes them bilious.”

“Harrumph.”

I thought of this little exchange when I read Evelyn Gordon’s post about the way in which the international community has cheapened to meaninglessness such terms as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.”

It’s hard to argue with the Israeli diplomat who called Richard Falk, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestinian rights who accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” an “embarrassment to the United Nations” yesterday. But the problem isn’t that Falk lies, or even that he does so with the UN’s imprimatur. The real problem is the larger trend he represents: The self-proclaimed “human rights community” increasingly treats minor issues as indistinguishable from major crimes.

[snip]

By defining “ethnic cleansing” so broadly as to even include tenant evictions, Falk is essentially equating such evictions to events like the Srebrenica massacre, in which Bosnian Serbs massacred more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, and demanding that the world be equally outraged by both. But humans have a limited capacity for outrage, and the international community has a limited capacity to intervene. Thus demanding international intervention in cases like this actually reduces the likelihood of intervention in genuine cases of ethnic cleansing like Srebrenica — i.e., in precisely those cases where the victims most need help.

My interactions with a liberal show precisely the same thing:  To a liberal, two soldiers fighting a war against a committed enemy determined to kill them (and, as 9/11 shows, us) are “murderers.”  In the same extremist vein, the government should control workplaces, because all safety issues are equally serious.

In both situations, Mr. Bookworm’s “harrumph” was a tacit admission that I’d talked him down from such silly and egregious definitions.  Most liberals, however, function in a vacuum or an echo chamber.  They never have anyone applying logic to their increasingly Orwellian vocabularies.  This wouldn’t be a problem if the Lefties never left their houses.  As long as they control the media and most educational institutions, though, it’s a big problem.  We need to talk them down harder and faster if we don’t want our world reduced to flammable, meaningless mush.

Liberals — lording it over lesser beings *UPDATED*

If there is one defining characteristic of liberals, it is their sense that they are better than everyone else.  Nowhere was that more explicitly illustrated than in Ron Schiller’s comments:

In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives.

Schiller wasn’t unique, just unguarded.  The whole point of liberalism, after all, is to put government — controlled, of course, by liberals — in charge of everyone else’s lives.

This world view requires that liberals occupy the highest rungs in the world hierarchy.  Part of this means winning elections, by fair means or foul.  Another part, though, means ensuring that the little people stay little.  I’ve written before about the racism that is inherent in liberal thinking.  For all the liberal talk about liberals being the only hope for people of color in the world, one begins to notice that what liberals really mean is that they’re the only hope provided that they stay in the driver’s seat.  And why must they stay in the driver’s seat in perpetuity.  Rhetoric aside, it turns out that their expectations about people with skin darker than their own are shockingly low.

Just today, in the wake of a horrifically brutal murder in Israel — a sleeping couple and three of their five children, 11, 4 and 3 months, were brutally stabbed to death by Palestinians — the New York Times explained why the killing happened:

The killers appeared to have randomly picked the house, one of a neat row of identical one-story homes at the edge of the settlement, on a rocky incline overlooking the nearby Palestinian village of Awarta — the proximity underlining the visceral nature of the contest in this area between Jewish settlers and Palestinians over the land.  (Emphasis mine.)

You see, the brown people cannot be expected to resist visceral temptation.  They are the perpetual two year olds of the world, who need to be surrounded by locked cabinets and blocked off electrical outlets.  If you leave those things in plain view, they’re irresistible.  It’s not the two year old’s fault he burns the house down or breaks the china, it’s the adult’s fault for failing to remove temptation.  So too, did the Fogel family deserve to die, because they should have known better than to place themselves in the path of two year olds with guns, knives, bombs, and a hate-filled, genocidal ideology.  This is a “blame the victim” approach taken to existential levels.

Daled Amos provides painfully graphic evidence of the way in which Palestinians simply cannot resist the completely understandable (to liberals, that is) temptation to kill the Israeli children placed so temptingly within their reach.  If liberals were the decent people they boast they are, they would stop explaining away Palestinian bestiality and start demanding that Palestinians begin to behave like civilized human beings, with no excuses allowed.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

UPDATED:  If you have a strong stomach (seriously strong), the surviving members of the Fogel family have authorized the release of pictures of the carnage those “visceral” killers left behind.  This is what it looks like when a family of five is knifed to death.  It turns out that even 3 month old babies “have … so much blood in them.”  The media may not be interested, but we, as civilized people, should be.

Doomsday scenarios — are conservatives or Progressives better at predicting the future?

In America, each side of the political aisle routinely accuses the other of engaging in “scare” tactics.  Each side is right.  Doomsday scenarios are how you engage an increasingly distracted population.  My question for you is, when it comes to predicting doomsday scenarios to engage the population, which side is more accurate?

I’ve got three Progressive predictions, two of which were definitely wrong and one of which I think is proving to be wrong:

Progressives argued global cooling, and they were wrong.

Progressives argued anthropogenic global warming, which they’ve now altered to anthropogenic climate change, which I’m sure they will alter to some other fine name when their predictions fail to come to pass.  Currently, I count them as wrong.

Progressives promised that, if “welfare as we know it” ended in 1994, the poor would be dying in the streets.  They were wrong.

Here are three conservative predictions that were correct:

Conservatives said that if ObamaCare passed, health care costs would go up immediately and dramatically.  So far, they’ve been right.

Conservatives said that withdrawing from the Vietnam War would result in a blood bath.  They were right.

Conservatives said that “welfare as we know it” was a miserable, enslaving institution and that reforming it would not result in instant death of all poor people.  They were right.

Obviously, I’ve cherry-picked to find incorrect Progressive predictions and correct conservative predictions.  Can you support my position or disprove it?  I’ll be interested either way.

Liberals: not evil, not stupid…just 100% wrong!

For conservatives and libertarians, the movie icons might be High Noon or True Grit.  For Liberals, the defining anthem is John Lennon’s “Imagine“.

Why is there such a fundamental gulf between ourselves and Liberals, to the point where we find ourselves simply talking past each other? Can this gulf ever be bridged?

I came across this delightful essay at “1389 Counter-Jihad” that builds upon the thoughts of one of my favorite political and social commentators, Evan Sayet, to help define this gulf. It doesn’t necessarily say anything new, but it packages it so well.

http://1389blog.com/2010/11/17/why-modern-liberals-are-100-wrong-about-everything/

The central tenet of this posting is that, after years and years of indoctrination, Liberals see the world so fundamentally different than the rest of us that they can no longer recognize human fallibility and evil. If the core premise is correct, then I say there is no way to overcome this gulf and, perhaps, it would be best if we lived apart from one another. Why? Because I fear that the endgame of this Liberal world view can only be an epic global disaster. This Liberal view not only cannot survive (Darwin), but is the enabler of its/our own destruction.

Here’s a sterling outtake: “So the mindless foot soldier, which is what I call the non-elite, will support the elite’s blueprint for utopia, will side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success, out of a sense of justice”

I know that we at Bookworm Room have explored this issue over and over. Does this help explain the divide? Can this gulf be overcome?

That’s what I’ve said too (only not so well)

Mark Steyn harmonizes with my thoughts about liberal wars and multiculturalism, and Andy McCarthy gives an in-depth, erudite analysis of something I’ve also pointed out before:  the totalitarian statism that ties together the Left and radical Islam.

Thank God he’s back! Mark Steyn writes again

Mark Steyn took a long break from writing, and I really missed him terribly.  Why?  Because he wrote things like this, as part of a larger essay about the Kosovan who killed to U.S. Airmen in Frankfurt, Germany:

Remember Kosovo? Me neither. But it was big at the time, launched by Bill Clinton in the wake of his Monica difficulties: Make war, not love, as the boomers advise. So Clinton did — and without any pesky U.N. resolutions, or even the pretense of seeking them. Instead, he and Tony Blair and even Jacques Chirac just cried “Bombs away!” and got on with it. And the Left didn’t mind at all —  because, for a modern Western nation, war is only legitimate if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever war you’re waging. Unlike Iraq and all its supposed “blood for oil,” in Kosovo no one remembers why we went in, what the hell the point of it was, or which side were the good guys. (Answer: Neither.) The principal rationale advanced by Clinton and Blair was that there was no rationale. This was what they called “liberal interventionism,” which boils down to: The fact that we have no reason to get into it justifies our getting into it.

Not only beautifully written, but absolutely correct too.  I’ve been saying the same thing since 2001, but without Steyn’s inimitable style and clarity.

Orwellian history on the left when it comes to the banking industry’s collapse

One of my take-away images from reading George Orwell’s 1984 is Winston Smith’s job:  he destroys any historic evidence that conflicts with Big Brother’s current agenda.  As with all things Left, George Orwell knew exactly what he was talking about.  The Left likes to re-write history.  Its misfortune is that it hasn’t yet created a society in which it has complete control over the memory hole.  For example, there are people who paid attention to the root causes of the banking crisis at the time, and who can now call out the Left’s attempted revisionism.

National Review editors nicely sum up the civility issue in Wisconsin

I like these paragraphs:

And the exquisitely temperate ladies and gentlemen who were just the day before yesterday lecturing us about the allegedly corrosive tone of conservative political discourse are parading through the mean streets of Madison waving placards bearing the name and likeness of Adolf Hitler, and denouncing Governor Walker as a Nazi.

Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist government murdered some 6 million Jews and waged a bloodthirsty war for world domination under a “Thousand-Year Reich.” Governor Walker has proposed that government employees in Wisconsin pay 12.6 percent of the cost of their insurance premiums, which in the minds of Wisconsin Democrats apparently amounts to more or less the same thing. President Obama, himself fresh off lecturing the nation about its tone, chimed in with a predictably tin-eared characterization of this modest initiative as an “assault.”

An excellent video about the violent imagery and rhetoric on the Left

The MSM, which went on a fruitless hunt for violent rhetoric from the Tea Party, is hiding from the public the fact that it finally found that violent rhetoric.  The MSM’s problem, of course, is that the rhetoric and imagery have nothing to do with the Tea Party, and everything to do with the Left:

VodkaPundit has another good compare and contrast.

Never underestimate hate from the Left, especially when it comes to conservative blacks

This morning, I read and enjoyed Jeannie DeAngelis’ post about a potential Herman Cain candidacy.  From everything I’ve heard, including musings from our own Danny Lemieux, Cain is a person one would like to have in the White House.  He may not have a political track record, but he’s still got a lot more under his belt than our current president.  The latter had a few years voting “present” in regional and national senates, and a cushioned existence as a lecturer and activist.  Cain has lived out in the real world, and made a success of himself.  He has a moral center, and the ability to communicate those values.  We could do — and are now doing — infinitely worse.

But DeAngelis said one thing that struck me as wrong.  She believes that Cain’s race (he’s black for those few who might not have heard of him) would take race off the table in the next election.  My instinctive reaction was “No way!”  No one inspires a racial frenzy on the Left the way a conservative black person does.  The old “Uncle Tom” insult is nothing compared to what the Left dishes out now.  Just think of the vicious “Mammy” attacks on Condi Rice.

I didn’t have to wait very long for my instincts to be proven right.  AlterNet, a loud and popular Leftist site, just published one of the most vile racist rants I’ve ever seen.  Because it doesn’t deserve your links, I’ll reprint the post here (copied from Hot Air):

In the immortal words of Megatron in Transformers: The Movie, Herman Cain’s speech at CPAC really is bad comedy. As you know, I find black garbage pail kids black conservatives fascinating not because of what they believe, but rather because of how they entertain and perform for their White Conservative masters.

When race minstrelsy was America’s most popular form of mass entertainment, black actors would often have to pretend to be white men, who then in turn would put on the cork to play the role of the “black” coon, Sambo, or Jumping Jim Crow. Adding insult to injury, in a truly perverse and twisted example of the power of American white supremacy black vaudevillians would often pretend to be white in order to denigrate black people for the pleasures of the white gaze. …

In total, CPAC is a carnival and a roadshow for reactionary Conservatives. It is only fitting that in the great tradition of the freak show, the human zoo, the boardwalk, and the great midway world’s fairs of the 19th and 20th centuries, that there is a Borneo man, a Venus Hottentot or a tribe of cannibals from deepest darkest Africa or Papua New Guinea on display. For CPAC and the White Conservative imagination, Herman Cain and his black and brown kin are that featured attraction.

We always need a monkey in the window, for he/she reminds us of our humanity while simultaneously reinforcing a sense of our own superiority. Sadly, there are always folks who are willing to play that role because it pays so well.

Believe it or not, there’s a much bigger insult in the above text than the blatant, obvious, KKK-style name-calling.  It is the notion that blacks are nothing more than puppets.  They don’t bring anything original to the table.  Instead, they simply dance for their political masters, with those who dance for the conservatives being the idiot field hands, while those who dance for the Progressive puppeteers are the deserving house slaves.  To demean a group that way, to imply that its members are incapable of making rational decisions (whether or not one agrees with those decisions) is more racist than foul language and antiquated imagery AlterNet can strain itself to produce.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

Leftwing bile

From whence does the viciousness in the Leftwing soul emanate?

I know that most if not all of us in the Bookworm circle have seen this horrific video below. I post it because we need to see this again and again. We need to look into their eyes to recognize what this is. I view this with fascination, much as I would were I an anthropologist viewing South Pacific cannibals at the village feast…with morbid horror at the depths of human depravity:

I have never, never experienced such hatred and vileness emanating from any group of conservatives that I know. Not even close. When I have observed rank racism, misogyny or homophobia, it has almost always emanated from people of the Left. It’s as if by incanting a few pat phrases of Liberal/Left orthodoxy or voting for a half-black man (speaking of race, not culture) as President, they feel they get a pass at spewing such vileness (as in, “I can’t be racist, I just voted for Obama”).

I like to use my own Leftwing /Liberal brothers-in-law as my own anthropological laboratory. A couple are happy cheerful people who don’t have a mean bone in their bodies. OK, they are clueless, but that is another story. There is one, however, who projects a portly, kindly exterior that absolutely seeths with venom underneath (his Facebook postings make my skin crawl).

Perhaps one clue is that he is also a man very much disappointed with his choices in life. I also don’t know if he is able to see himself as others see him. Similarly, we have the wife of a close family friend…outwardly, she is a very kind and considerate person. She talks the talk, anyway. But if you get her on the subject of George Bush or Sarah Palin, she transforms into a writhing, spitting demon (to her credit, she is at least aware of this and admits it as a character flaw).

Frankly, these people scare me. I feel that, should they ever be given the power to act out what they verbalize, they would unleash great evil on humanity.

What’s going on with such people? What goes on in their hearts and minds?

Does any budding psychiatrist within our discussion group have insights to share?

Salary envy

I attended a family gathering not long ago, liberally populated with Liberal in-laws,  in which the mood was decidedly sour. Discussions revolved around the poor job market, employment uncertainty and health insurance.

In conversations, a lot of resentment was directed at corporations, CEOs and their “disgusting and greedy” profits, salaries, benefits and bonuses. I understand (but don’t excuse) much of this as pure envy, a failing that I see expressed far more in Liberal/Left circles than conservative circles. I should also point out that some of this is the bitterness expressed by people that were pretty casual about their own work ethics and careers and now, in middle age, confront an uncertain future, not to mention retirement prospects. We all make critical decisions at key junctures in life with which we have to live.

I have also known and worked with enough CEOs and senior execs with large corporations to know that they work under highly stressful conditions and in between short, sleepless nights. The ones that I have known were extremely hard workers 24/7 and I, personally, value my quality of life far too much to envy them their salaries and perks (we don’t need to explore how seriously pathetic many of their personal and family lives are). Anyway, I consider envy a particularly ugly member of the deadly sins.

One irony is that my Liberal/Left relatives (some of whom purport to be very well educated) apparently cannot draw the connection between corporate profitability, personal incentives and a healthy jobs market. I can understand this to be the case with college students (sophomoric minds full of mush), but working adults have no excuse.

However, what floors me, is that these same Liberal/Lefty in-laws seem to have no trouble accepting the extraordinary high incomes of a) sports figures and b) entertainment figures (newscasters, movie actors, television personalities, etc.).

Sports figures that play games to entertain, singers that…sing songs…, actresses that pretend to be people they aren’t (when they do work) and newscasters that read copy from teleprompters are idolized.

Corporate executives that manufacture services and products that improve our lives (drugs, fuel, cars, food, shelter, insurance, bank loans, etc.) are vilified.

Why is this the case? Any ideas? Please help to understand.

As good a summary as any about the Left’s libels

Dennis Prager hits it out of the park:

People are awakening to the crucial fact of left-wing success: The only way the Left can succeed in America is by libeling the Right. Only 20 percent of Americans label themselves liberal, let alone leftist. How, then, do leftists get elected? And why don’t more Americans call themselves conservative, when, in fact, so many share conservatives’ values?

The answer to both questions is that, through its dominance of the news media, entertainment media, and educational institutions, the Left has been able to successfully demonize the Right for at least half a century.

The Left rarely convinces Americans to adopt its views. What it does is create a fear of the Right that influences many Americans to align themselves with the Left.

That precisely describes why I was a Leftist for so many years.  I didn’t understand the issues very well, and I was hazy on the facts, but it was enough to know that I “good” and they were “evil.”  Moreover, as someone who lives in a Leftist world, I can tell you that arguments are never about facts, they are always about the conservative’s personal failings:  mean-spirited, ignorant, confused, brainwashed, etc.

The whole thing is here.

The vicious Palin tweets

A couple of days ago, I posted a YouTube video made up entirely of tweets from Palin haters.  It was a classic “unclear on the concept” thing, as the tweeters, in response to their perception that Palin’s “hate speech” caused the Tucson shooting, tried to top each other with vivid and obscene fantasies about Palin’s torture, death and dismemberment.

YouTube has removed that video.  I don’t know if it was a principled stand against violent threats against a politician, or a craven attempt to hide Lefty violence.  

Whatever.  I think people need to see the ugliness emanating from the Left.  The video is still on Vimeo, so I’m reposting it here.

Palin Death Wish Tweets Re Tucson Shooting from Legal Insurrection on Vimeo.

(Thanks to Lulu for the new link)

Irony alert with some on the Left showing themselves very unclear on the concept

Is there a cause and effect between hate speech and violence?  These tweeters are certain there is, and they believe that Palin should be tortured, given loathsome diseases and killed for having the temerity to engage in (unidentified) hate speech:

Hat tip:  The Jawa Report

What really irks me is that I, as a California taxpayer, pay this guy’s salary

I didn’t elect this guy.  I can’t get rid of this guy.  This guy is in charge of education for the roughly 33,000 students at UC Berkeley.  This guy gets a salary that 90% of America would envy and that I, as a California taxpayer, help pay.  This guy gets a taxpayer funded computer system to disseminate his messages.  And this guy says things of transcendent stupidity and viciousness:

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau has come out swinging over the shooting spree that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people, linking it to Arizona’s “discrimination against undocumented persons” and a “climate in which demonization of others goes unchallenged and hateful speech is tolerated.”

In a campus-wide e-mail message, Birgeneau said: “It is not a coincidence that this calamity has occurred in a state which has legislated discrimination against undocumented persons.”

He added that “this same mean-spirited xenophobia played a major role in the defeat of the Dream Act by our legislators in Washington, leaving many exceptionally talented and deserving young people, including our undocumented students, painfully in limbo.”

You can read more about this taxpayer funded “educator” here.

The politics of dirty bathtubs

Here are two questions for you to ponder:

1.  How disgusted would you be if you were asked to take a bath in a tub that had a visible ring left by someone other than you?

2.  How disgusted would you be if you were asked to take a bath in a tub that had a visible ring that you had left from a earlier bath?

My bet is that, as to question number 1, you’d be very disgusted; while as to question number 2, your response would be “eh — what’s a little dirt?”

My house, populated by my own two kids, half the neighborhood, and a dog, not to mention me and my husband, is never as clean as I would wish, but it’s my dirt.  It’s familiar, and I assure myself that there’s nothing “bad” lurking in it.  My neighbors’ houses, all of them boasting more or less the same level of kid and dog generated crime, are more suspect.  It’s their dirt and, really, that’s just not so nice.

(Yes, I’m going somewhere with this.)

I was reminded of our willingness to accept our own dirt when I read Jonathan Tobin’s comment about Paul Krugman in a larger column about the Leftist’s accusatory response to the Tucson shooting (emphasis mine):

To seize upon just one of the most egregious examples, the Times’s Paul Krugman claimed today that the Arizona shooting was the result of a “Climate of Hate” created by conservatives. Yes, this is the same columnist who wrote in 2009 that progressives should “hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy” because of his opposition (albeit temporary) to ObamaCare. But just as those who accuse conservatives of spewing hate that leads to violence ignore the daily provocations of TV talkers like Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz, just as they ignored the unprecedented hate directed at President Bush, the Times Nobel Laureate thinks his own direct call for violence against Lieberman also doesn’t count.

Dirty bathtub syndrome, right?

But there are different degrees of dirt.  While one might be able to tolerate the faint rime of dust and grease that ones own body leaves behind in the bathtub, all sane people will respond different to a tub crusted by black goo occasioned by a visit to a swamp or pig farm.  The same is true for Krugman’s approach to politics, which often goes beyond the faint dirt of any political battle and veers into Marquis de Sade territory.

It’s one thing to engage in debate about ideas, or even to castigate someone holding those ideas.  That’s what the right does.  We attack ideologies, and we may work to expose people as fools or hypocrites (as I am doing here).  That’s the faint ring on the tub.  What we don’t do is speak longingly of our political opponents’ violent deaths, or the torture and suffering we hope to see inflicted against them (as I am not doing here).  For conservatives, politics is politics, although we recognize that different political systems have a direct impact on individuals.  For liberals, the battle of politics itself, not just the ideology, is definitely personal, and the personal seems lodged in a sadist’s fondest dreams.

And that’s the filthy black ring on the bathtub.  Any sane person should recognize that this type of dirt isn’t “just a little dirt” that’s tolerable because we tolerate our own mess.  This is ugly stuff that should be washed away.

The real story behind the Tucson shooting

In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm [at Sidmouth, England], Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.  — The Rev. Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

Today, I feel like Mrs. Partington, with the Leftist chattering classes standing in as the angry Atlantic.  You see, sadly, the real story about the shooting in Tucson isn’t the shooting at all.  The shooting — if you’ll pardon me for saying this in the face of a tragedy that took so many innocent lives and left a vibrant young woman, mother and Congressperson fighting her way back to neurological health — was a garden-variety act of madness.

Loughner’s writings and videos show that, although high functioning, he was almost certainly a paranoid schizophrenic.  In the Middle Ages, he would have been communing closely with God or the Devil, with a broom and black cat at his side.  In the 1950s, he would have raved about fluoride and Martians, all while nattily attired in a tin foil hat.

In our day, Loughner’s madness saw him seeking bizarre meanings in numbers and word patterns; revering books of antisemitism, violence and collectivism (Mein Kampf; The Communist Manifesto; Clockwork Orange); and gravitating towards fringe groups and ideas.  Most importantly, in a day and age when the famous are, collectively, our Gods, Devils and Martians, he did what John Hinckley, Mark Chapman, Arthur Richard Jackson, and Robert John Bardo did — he fixated on a celebrity, in this case a Blue Dog Dem, stalked her, and ultimately shot her, along with a large number of bystanders.  Nothing new here, although each insanely inspired act of violence carries with it its own share of grief and despair and, too, bravery and hope.

Looking beyond  the tragically ordinary mass murder, one discovers the actual story here:  the chattering class’s instant, concerted, deliberate effort to use a routine tragedy to destroy an American political party.  Facts were irrelevant:  Loughner’s manifest insanity and his Left wing affiliations were irrelevant.  What went out instantly, over the airways and the internet, through formal outlets and social networks, was a meme:  American conservatives, especially Sarah Palin, were guilty — guilty because they used the word “target,” or perhaps “cross hairs,” or even “reload” in their political discourse.  In a two party system, the chatters claimed, one of the parties was, by its very existence, an incitement to violence.

The speed with which this meme took hold was staggering.  Within one day, 50% of the liberals on my “real” facebook account were shrilly decrying “hate speech” and Sarah Palin, with many adding loving quotations from Keith (“worst person in the world”) Olbermann on the virtues of peaceful political discourse.  Pushback in the form of a reality check — Obama is especially adept at violent political imagery; Democrats love cross hair and target advertising; the violence in speech has actually declined since Leftist insanity against George Bush — was all irrelevant.  As my live-in liberal proudly informed me, Sarah Palin’s career is now dead in the water.  The facts don’t matter, he added; it’s enough that she’s been irremediably smeared.

We’ve seen this kind of thing before, of course.  The Nazis were masters of this type of smear politics; as were the Communists; as were the Tsarist Russians.  In other word, wherever you have totalitarianism, whether it’s theocratic, aristocratic, oligarchic or socialist (or some -ist or -ic I haven’t thought of), the first thing that happens is the corruption of facts and ideas, which often reaches its apex with deliberate efforts to twist common tragedies in order to smear political opponents.

My hope is that this time, for the first time in history, the presence of alternative media will prevent the ferocity of the falsehoods from taking root.  Never before have the totalitarian chattering classes had to cope with truly free speech.  They meme; we anti-meme.  They lie; we trumpet the truth.  They smear; we focus on core facts and preserve our ethics and dignity.

I started with a quotation from a great enlightenment thinker, Sydney Smith.  He charmingly recognized the futility of trying to sweep back an overwhelming force.  Maybe this time, though, rather than challenging the mighty Atlantic, we may discover that we’re facing the last fetid emanations from a draining swamp — and our efforts at sweep-back will prevail.

No air of verisimilitude to this otherwise unconvincing narrative

It turns out that the young man who hung on the Union Jack flag in order to climb a cenotaph dedicated to the dead of WWI, a cenotaph that has inscribed on it in large letters “the glorious dead,” has apologized, claiming he knew not what he did.

Hogwash.

First of all, any halfway civilized person knows that people will take umbrage if, during a violent protest, you use your nation’s flag as a rappelling rope.  Second, as noted, the Cenotaph doesn’t hide its identity as a war memorial.  It has written all over it encomiums to the “glorious dead.”  Further, it’s not a minor little memorial.  Instead, it’s quite famous Cenotaph, located at England’s political heart:

Probably the best-known cenotaph in the modern world is the one that stands in Whitehall, London at 51°30′09.6″N 0°07′34.1″W / 51.502667°N 0.126139°W / 51.502667; -0.126139 (The Cenotaph, London). It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, who conceived the idea from the name of a structure (“Cenotaph of Sigismunda”) in Gertrude Jekyll’s garden,[1] and constructed from Portland stone between 1919 and 1920 by Holland, Hannen & Cubitts.[2] It replaced Lutyens’s identical wood-and-plaster cenotaph erected in 1919 for the Allied Victory Parade commissioned by David Lloyd George, and is a Grade I listed building.[3] It is undecorated save for a carved wreath on each end and the words “The Glorious Dead”, chosen by Rudyard Kipling. It commemorates specifically the victims of the First World War, but is used to commemorate all of the dead in all wars in which British servicemen have fought. The dates of WWI and WWII are inscribed on it in Roman numerals. The design was used in the construction of many other war memorials throughout the British Empire. The British Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is located nearby in Westminster Abbey.

The sides of the Cenotaph are not parallel, but if extended would meet at a point some 300 metres (980 ft) above the ground. Similarly, the “horizontal” surfaces are in fact sections of a sphere whose centre would be 900 feet (270 m) below ground.[4]

It is flanked on each side by various flags of the United Kingdom which Lutyens had wanted to be carved in stone. Although Lutyens was overruled and cloth flags were used, his later Rochdale cenotaph has stone flags. In the years following 1919, the Cenotaph displayed a Union Flag, a White Ensign, and a Red Ensign on one side and a Union Flag, a White Ensign, and a Blue Ensign on the other side. On 1 April 1943, an RAF Ensign was substituted for the White Ensign on the west side of the monument. The flags displayed as of 2007 represent the Royal Navy, the British Army, the Royal Air Force, and the Merchant Navy.

It also turns out that it’s reasonable to assume that the young man at issue is familiar with both London landmarks and the Cenotaph’s fame.  You see, he wasn’t just any old protester.  Instead, the young man, Charlie Gilmour, is the son of Pink Floyd guitarist, Dave Gilmour.  One has to assume a certain amount of sophistication — that is, a familiarity with London — from a young man raised in those august rock circles.  Add to that the fact that Charlie was a history major and, well, the plea of ignorance pretty much falls apart.

But there’s more going on here than an unconvincing apology.  This riot was about increased tuition.  The same article that discusses Charlie’s manifestly insincere apology notes that his father is worth 80 million pounds.  In other words, given both Charlie’s age, which puts him past his university years, and his family wealth, this wasn’t his fight.  He was there, instead, to take part in a protest for protest’s sake.

His presence for the “fun” is no little thing.  In timely and coincidental manner, today’s FrontPage Magazine has a review of a new book, Anna Geifman’s Death Orders: The Vanguard of Modern Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia.  Her book notes the ideological tend line that began with the death cult of Russian anarchy and communism, traveled to Nazi Germany, and right now manifests itself with modern Islamism.  By death cult, Geifman does not mean that these ideologies result in lots of deaths, although they do.  Instead, Geifman writes about, and I’m focusing on, the fact that these ideologies are dedicated to death:

Geifman maintains dogma has nothing to do with terrorist violence in the two principal eras studied. Many Russian revolutionaries knew little about socialist theory, while Islamist terrorists are often ignorant of the Koran’s tenets. The causes the terrorists espouse are simply the means, and a camouflage, to sustain their anti-life religion of violence and to make the blood sacrifices their God of Death demands. Similar to the Russian revolutionary and Islamist movements were India’s Thugs who murdered thousands of unsuspecting travellers as human sacrifices to their death goddess, Kali. But unlike the Thugs, in carrying out the murderous rites of their pagan religion inside of a religion, the Marixst and Islamist terrorists often sacrifice themselves.

I acquit useful idiot Charlie Gilmour of being an informed acolyte of the confluence of two death cults, Islamism and anarchy.  I don’t, however, see it as coincidence that he swung from a memorial raised to those who died defending Western civilization, a culture that has always been dedicated to choosing life.  (And no, it’s not an oxymoron to speak of war dead in the same sentence as choosing life.  It’s not merely the fight that matters, unless you’re a moral relativist.  What matters is the cause for which one fights.  A soldier who dies in the cause of freedom, as opposed to totalitarianism, is choosing life even as he willing accepts the possibility of death.)

Poor Charlie, who has manifestly fallen into Britain’s Leftist, anarchic circles (even if his dad didn’t raise him this way), has been steeped in the culture of death.  For him to swing from his nation’s flag in order to scale a memorial raised to the dead was, consciously or not, a logical outcome of his upbringing and ideology.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

Left again allies itself with radical Islam

My husband has, for years, castigated me for refusing to listening to Cat Stevens’ music.  He makes two points, the first of which is valid, the second of which is not.  First, he says, the music predates Stevens’ conversion.  If I hear it on the radio, Stevens isn’t getting any royalties anyway, so there’s no harm, no foul.

This is true.  But I still hate to hear Stevens because he irritates me so much.  And why does he irritate me?  Well, that gets to the second reason my husband scolds me, and as to that reason, my husband is wrong:  “You don’t like him just because he’s a Muslim.”  No, buddy.  I don’t like him because he’s a jihadist who advocates the murder of those who disagree with Islam.

My twenty-year old mini-dispute with my husband (and it really is mini, because how often does Cat Stevens come up in daily life?) has suddenly taken on a bit more resonance for me, as my husband’s favorite comic du0 — Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert — happily and proudly hosted this jihadist at their rally to “restore sanity.”  I know I’m picky, but I don’t consider it sane for Americans, especially Jewish Americans, to cavort with jihadists.  I’m clearly out of step, though, with this “super hip” American zeitgeist.

If you want to know more, lots more, check out Ed Driscoll, who always has good stuff.

Wow! Someone was eavesdropping on my conversations with liberals.

Apparently there’s a template out there.  I am not alone:

Hat tip:  NewsReal Blog

They’ve always gotten it bass-ackward when it comes to religion and morality

The Chris Coons-Christine O’Donnell debate over the First Amendment has cast into stark relief the fact that the Left believes the First Amendment’s purpose is to keep religious people out of the public square.  I’ve blogged on this point before, so I won’t belabor it.  I’ll only say briefly that the Amendment’s language, the historical context, and the Founder’s contemporaneous writings all establish conclusively that they didn’t want the government to meddle in religion, not vice versa.

While looking for something else, I stumbled across a monologue from a Hollywood movie that perfectly sums up the Leftist view about the First Amendment, a view supported only by wishful thinking and religious animus, without any historical or textual support.  The movie is The Contender, which came out in 2000.   The plot is simple.  Democratic VP dies in office; President picks perfect liberal female politician to replace him; evil, hyper-religious Republican seeks to destroy her with footage showing her cheerfully participating in a gang bang; female politician refuses to defend herself; perfect Democratic president, knowing her rectitude, understands that it’s all a fake, and gets her appointed as VP.  End of morality story.

I’ve often cited to the movie as an example of navel gazing, because there’s a scene where the perfect liberal female plays solo basketball, all the while monologuing about how her own intuitive moral sense is the only guide she and the world need.  I can’t find the language, though, so you’ll just have to accept as true my take on it.

While I was looking for that language, though, I stumbled across some other language, which I haven’t thought about in years, and wouldn’t have thought about but for the Coons/O’Donnell debate.  This is from the end of the movie, when the triumphant perfect liberal female, in an address to Congress, puts the evil Republicans in their place, and provides spiritual manna to the good Democrats (emphasis mine):

And, Mr. Chairman, I stand for the separation of Church and State, and the reason that I stand for that is the same reason that I believe our forefathers did. It is not there to protect religion from the grasp of government but to protect our government from the grasp of religious fanaticism. Now, I may be an atheist, but that does not mean I do not go to church. I do go to church. The church I go to is the one that emancipated the slaves, that gave women the right to vote, that gave us every freedom that we hold dear. My church is this very Chapel of Democracy that we sit in together, and I do not need God to tell me what are my moral absolutes. I need my heart, my brain, and this church.

Do I need to add anything here?  No?  I didn’t think so.

America is Wikileak’s true enemy — by guest blogger Steve Schippert *UPDATED*

A question about Wikileaks was posed by my best and closest friend in this life who nominally follows such things. My dear friend queried, “I need you to explain to me who Wikileaks is, and why they would release sensitve documents that could compromise national security. In layman’s terms please.”

In answering, care was taken to avoid punching the screen or writing in flames. My opinion of Wikileaks, Julian Assange and those who support them and feed them classified material marginally meets NC-17 standards at best. Likewise, care was also taken to avoid technical military- or intelligence-speak. Layman’s terms it was.

And in the end, it must be acknowledged that ones view of Wikileaks is less reflective of Wikileaks or Julian Assange and exponentially more reflective of ones views of America herself. This is a truth that cannot be avoided in honest, quiet, personal reflection.

Below, my quickly hammered out response in answer to the question, “Who is Wikileaks.” Best understood by first pondering, “Who is America?”

*******

Wikileaks is a small cabal of people who, in their own site description, “Publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct.”

In reality, what they are is a like-minded gathering of hardcore Leftists who see their greatest enemies and threats as the American military and intelligence coupled with free market capitalism.

For instance, when they say they expose documents on “government abuse,” what they mean — almost exclusively in practice — is that they fish for folks to send them secret operational documents potentially damaging to the US military and intelligence. They create entire waves of news cycles. The intent is to damage military ops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The reality is that they get people killed. Names of Afghans and Iraqis who have cooperated with us have been exposed publicly — and they have been snuffed out by al-Qaeda and other like-minded enemies. Usually quite gruesomely.

When they say they expose leaked documents on “corporate misconduct,” what they mean is that they do so for documents that are seen to be damaging to the concept of free-market capitalism — the basis of our economy — for the purposes of presenting central governmental control of the economy, redistribution of wealth, and fomenting class warfare. They see themselves in this sense as some modern version of Robin Hood.

Notice that they do not seek or publish secret documents about or from within, say, the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons program or its slaughter of its own citizens in the streets — especially since last year. No, that’s because the enemy, for them, is America. America and its free market economy is the real enemy — of mankind.

Imagine a small cabal doing this during World War II. How long would they be doing this damage? Why is it different now? Because we are more enlightened? Because in 1942, our patriotism was rote, recited and robotic without thinking?

In order to understand what you really think of Wikileaks, you have to ask yourself one simple question:

Do I think the United States is what’s wrong with the world? Does our economic system make people poor? Are our companies evil, greedy abusers? Is our military ruthless and murderous?

If you think yes, then you agree with the Wikileaks folks and their supporters, and probably see them as courageous information warriors fighting a righteous fight against a deadly, greedy machine and for the little people.

If you think no, then you disagree with them and their supporters, and probably see them as traitorous saboteurs who get American troops and their foreign cooperators and intelligence sources killed.

You have to decide, and it has little to do with Wikileaks and everything to do with what you think of America, for all her imperfections. There is no middle ground on this one.

_______________________________

You can follow Steve Schippert on Twitter and Facebook.

Steve Schippert is a National Security analyst, writer and commentator and co-founder of ThreatsWatch.org and the Center for Threat Awareness, a 501(c)3 non-profit. He has been published by the Washington Times, National Review, The Weekly Standard and others. Steve has been a frequent guest on national and local radio shows and has also guest hosted.

UPDATE:  Bookworm here, suggesting you might find interesting a related post I did about the New York Times‘ approach to the WikiLeak documents.

Kristof takes relativism to its logical and utterly stupid extreme *UPDATED*

I admit it — I didn’t read the whole thing, because the obscene relativism permeating Nicholas Kristof’s first couple of paragraphs so disgusted me, my brain shut down.  Anyway, because of fair use concerns, I don’t want to quote more than the first two paragraphs, which more than adequately make my point:

Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.

That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.

You understand that Kristoff just equated extreme Muslim conduct with what he perceives to be extreme American conduct, right?

It’s useful to list the conduct he’s speaking about.  First, extreme Muslim conduct against Americans and other Westerners:

1.  The first World Trade Center attack, in 1993 = 6 dead; 1,042 injured.

2.  The USS Cole attack = 17 dead, 39 injured.

3.  The Fort Hood attack =13 dead, 30 injured.

4.  The 9/11 attack = 2,996 dead.

5.  The Beslan massacre = 334 dead, mostly children.

6.  The Madrid train bombing = 191 dead; 1,800 injured.

7.  The Mumbai massacre = at least 173 people dead; at least 308 injured.

8.  The U.S. Embassy bombing in Africa = 230 or so people dead; approximately 4,100 injured.

9.  The attack on the U.S. Marines in Beirut = 299 dead.

10.  The Bali night club bombing = 202 dead; 240 injured.

And that’s just the short list of Islamic attacks against civilians.  The long list is here.  Since 9/11, the total number if attacks exceeds 16,000.  That’s not dead bodies; that’s just attacks — against Americans, Europeans, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and even fellow Muslims.

And now for extreme American conduct against Muslims:

1.  Many Americans complained that it was inappropriate for a mosque to be raised at Ground Zero, considering that it was practitioners of Islam that brought down the Twin Towers killing 2,996 people.  These same Americans pointed out that the Imam’s ostensibly reconciliatory rhetoric was belied by (a) his past words dreaming of a destroyed Israel and a sharia-controlled America and (b) his threats that, if Americans didn’t comply with his peaceful mosque plan, Muslims would get violent.  Finally, these aggressive Americans suggested that the mosque would be a fine thing if it was moved a few blocks away.  Dastardly Americans!

2.  Two Americans threatened to burn the Koran, sparking national outrage . . . against the ones threatening to burn the Koran.

I don’t know about you, but my feeling is that you’d have to have an IQ in the single digits to agree with Kristof that those Americans who failed to object to the Koran burning (about 50 Americans) or side with media about the GWM’s location (about 70% of Americans), are precisely the same as those Muslims who are utterly silent, nay, complacent, in the face of two decades of blood-saturated Muslim atrocities.

UPDATE:  This Austin Hill article is nicely on point.

We only hate what we fear — why liberals hate the church and pay lip service to the mosque

You’ve all heard by now about the group of Massachusetts school children taken to a mosque where they were taught utterly fallacious history about Islam and America, and then led in prayer:

A mosque spokesperson is seen teaching the children that in Mohammed’s 7th century Arabia women were allowed to vote, while in America women only gained that right a hundred years ago. This seems to be an increasingly recurring theme in American schools – the denigration of western civilization and the glorification of Islamic history and values. In fact, just recently, the American Textbook Council revealed that the New York State high school regents exam whitewashes the atrocities that occurred during the imperialistic Islamic conquest of Christian Byzantium, Persia, the African continent, and the Indian subcontinent, even as it demonizes European colonialism in South America.

The mosque spokesperson also taught the students that the only meaning of Jihad in Islam is a personal spiritual struggle, and that Jihad has historically had no relationship with holy war. As far as we know, the school has not corrected these false lessons.

The above, trip to the mosque, the propaganda, and the prayers were all in the name of multiculturalism, of course….

Every conservative I know (myself included) had precisely the same reaction, often in precisely the same words:  This field trip would never have happened with a Catholic church.  That is, not only would it have been inconceivable to the powers that be within the school to introduce their charges to a church, if it had been conceivable — if a maverick teacher had said, “well, let’s balance the mosque trip with visits to a church and a synagogue and a Hindu temple” — the fecal matter would have hit the fan so quickly that it would have been raining poop for days.  The battle cry, of course, would have been that visiting a church (or synagogue or Hindu temple) violates the separation of church and state.

The interesting question is why the Left doesn’t perceive a similar separation problem when it comes to mosque and state.  I think it has to do with the liberal’s perception of an institution’s potential power over the masses.

A few months ago, I did a post about Rush Limbaugh, and the inordinate fear Leftists, not just extreme Leftists, but garden-variety Democrats, feel when they think about Rush.  After a lot of background talk (I do love my background talk), I boiled it down to my key thesis, which is that liberals fear Rush because he is the one they worry will penetrate their defenses, make them think, and change their minds:

It’s quite a high compliment to Rush that ordinary liberals believe he has extraordinary powers.  It isn’t every conservative radio or talk show host who is perceived as so compelling and seductive that he can destroy people’s world view in an instant.

It’s also very frustrating to me because, in a funny way, I agree with my liberal friends that Rush can rejigger their world view very quickly.  The only thing is that I don’t believe Rush works his magic through hypnotism and trickery.  Instead, I think Rush’s real magic lies in his ability to view the political world as a vast chess board, one on which he can see multiple future moves; his prodigious memory; his well-informed mind; his logical analyses; and his funny persona.  He convinces by appealing to our rational mind, our sense of humor, and our knowledge of the world as it is, and not as some Ivory Tower liberal tells us it should be.

So, whether by cajolery or challenge, I’m still trying to get my liberals to listen to Rush.  For all the wrong reasons, they’re right about one thing:  he will change their minds.

The same dynamic is at work when it comes to Leftists on the one hand, and mosques and churches on the other hand.  For all their multicultural bloviating, so-called liberals don’t think much of Islam.  They recognize that its moral teachings are limited (nothing clear and humanist like the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, or the Golden Rule), that its history is ugly, and that its current practice, with all the demands about daily prayers and handwashing and fasting, is not going to be that attractive to the majority of Americans.

The Progressives therefore don’t seriously believe that anyone can go to a mosque and convert.  Sure, if you go to prison you might convert, but anything looks good in prison.  Further, as my cousin, the prison pastor, says:

It is not a contradiction to be a Muslim and a murderer, even a mass murderer. That is one reason why criminals “convert” to Islam in prison. They don’t convert at all; they similarly remain the angry judgmental vicious beings they always have been. They simply add “religious” diatribes to their personal invective. Islam does not inspire a crisis of conscience, just inspirations to outrage.

In other words, it’s not really a conversion at all.

Christianity, though, is scary.  If you’ve got a good minister or priest or pastor, suddenly all sorts of persuasive stuff is going to appearing on people’s radars and penetrate their ignorance or defenses.  You know what I mean:  Stuff about justice, about dignity, about respect, about love, about forbearance.  Worse, all this icky, non-Marxist stuff is going to fall on fertile soil, because even forty years of Progressivism in the public sphere hasn’t completely managed to leech away the Judeo-Christian beliefs that underlie American culture.  Worse, Christ doesn’t demand of his followers grueling physical rituals.  Instead, he demands faith.  Not lip service and clean feet, but faith.

Just as Rush is a threat to the Marxist/Progressive/liberal mindset, so too is Christianity (and, if you’re me, Judaism).  This cannot be said of Islam.  Even the most slobbering dhimmis would be hard put to imagine a world in which people, instead of just admiring Islam from afar because it’s politically correct to do so, would actually want to transfer their allegiance from the Judeo-Christian tradition to the Muslim faith.

Liberals demand Big Government, except when it comes to national security

On my personal Facebook account, I linked to a report about the cartoonist who suggested “Everyone Draw Mohammed” day.  It turns out that this little moment of satire occasioned death threats so serious that she has now been forced into a life of hiding:

An American cartoonist whose satirical work inspired the controversial “Everybody Draw Mohammed Page” on Facebook has gone into hiding, the newspaper which published her comics said Wednesday.

Molly Norris, of Seattle, Washington, has moved and changed her name following a call for her assassination by US-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, The Seattle Weekly said.

“You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week,” the newspaper said. “That’s because there is no more Molly.”

“The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, ‘going ghost’: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity.

“She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program — except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab,” the newspaper said.

I understand this news story to demonstrate how Islamists and jihadists are using terrorist tactics to hijack American freedoms — in this case, freedom of speech. In America, we fight speech with speech, not with swords.

My Facebook post resulted in comments several friends, two of whom (both far Left liberals) used it as a springboard to vent, not about Islamic terrorism, but about America’s security infrastructure.*  One complained that the airport security measures encourage terrorism.  Huh?  The TSA measures are definitely inconvenient band-aids, that leave the root cause of terrorism unaddressed, but I’m completely confused as to how they relate to the fact that Islamists are threatening to kill Molly Norris because she made a joke about their religion.

The other made almost precisely the same point:  He didn’t say that jihadists or Islamists are the problem.  Instead, he said that the U.S. government uses these threats (which he dismissed without comment) to justify stripping us of our civil rights and fighting two wrongful wars.  In other words, it’s not “cause and effect,” it’s “effect and cause” in his world.

Is it too much to ask of the liberals that they say “these Islamists are bad people whose theocratic world view is a fundamental threat to our Constitutional civil rights?”  Why do I ask these dumb questions.  Apparently it is too much to ask.

It’s this vast ideological chasm that explains why it’s virtually impossible to hold a civil conversation, let alone a persuasive one, with a liberal.  For one thing, they do not see Islam as a problem.  Instead, they see our government as a problem — except that they’re also the ones who want to expand our government to totalitarian levels.  They want overwhelming welfare and nanny-statism, which is the one thing the Founders didn’t want; while utterly rejecting national security, which is the lowest common denominator of effectiveness for any functioning government, and is both an implicit and explicit part of the government’s obligations under the Constitution.  Without the latter, you end up without a state.  (Just ask the Romans.)

______________________________

*Yes, I do have liberal friends, because I grew up in a liberal part of the world.  These are people I’ve known for decades.  In any event, I find their views interesting, if not always intelligible.

The liberal is either at your throat or at your feet….

My post caption is mangled version of an English expression popular in the years leading up to and during WWI:  “The Hun is either at your throat or at your feet.”  It was a reference to the fact that Germany was a deeply hierarchical, undemocratic nation, with only the haziest notions of equality. England wasn’t that democratic either back around 1910, but it was still light years ahead of Germany.

What these “advanced” English realized was that the German nature, because it was so hierarchical, could never just relax into equality.  People were either above, in which case they required deference (even if grudgingly given), or below, in which case they were to be treated with the utmost contempt.  This contempt, of course, was not successfully purged from the German character, despite the rigors of WWI.  It came to full flower with the Nazis, who turned their contempt into genocide and slavery for those in the below position, whether Jews, gypsies, gays, the mentally ill, slavs, or whatever other group the German psychology needed to pigeonhole.

It occurred to me that, although the dynamic arises from a different psychology, liberals have precisely the same habit of classifying people and then, depending on the classification,treating them with abject respect or blood-chilling contempt (a contempt, fortunately, that is still limited to words).  With liberals, though, the categories aren’t above and below.  Instead, they are I dislike you or I dislike and fear you.

What sparked this thought was two news stories.  The first was an update on a story out of San Francisco, one about which I already blogged.  Briefly, a war is brewing over a gun store in the upper Mission District, a neighborhood that is part working class, part yuppie.  The gun store has been there for a long time but the former owner let the license lapse while he considered reconfiguring the store.  Now that the new owner is trying to reinstate the license, neighbors and San Francisco citizens are objecting vociferously.

In my earlier post, I posited (based on nothing more than intuition), that the same people protesting the gun store are probably completely in favor of the Ground Zero Mosque.  That is, they almost certainly support a mosque connected to a man who espouses sharia (wife beating, wife stoning, gay hanging, hand cutting, infidel killing sharia), while vocally opposing a store that is consistent with one of the oldest and most clearly stated constitutional rights in America.

The second story was the report from Hartford, Connecticut, an overwhelmingly Democratic city, announcing that the next City Council meeting would open with a Muslim invocation.  My bet is that Hartford’s Muslim population is small (I can’t find numbers on it), so this invocation is intended to be symbolic and is, no doubt, a way for the government to show its support for the Ground Zero Mosque.

Think about it, which required putting myself in the liberal brain for a minute, I can appreciate that liberals hate guns, which they see as symbols of violence and, worse, as equalizers.  However, I am incapable of imagining that these same liberals actually like sharia law.  After all, as I noted above, many of sharia’s principles are deeply inconsistent with liberals’ self-identification as the party of love, peace and harmony.

The difference, I believe, is fear.  Even though liberals fear guns, they know that gun owners are fundamentally law abiding people.  Equally well, they know that a significant percentage of committed Muslims are sharia-abiding people, who are not averse to using extreme violence against opponents.

You can, of course, always find the lone wacko in any group.  However, I challenge you to find a situation in which Jews or Christians or Hindus or Sikhs or Buddhists or any other clearly defined religious group) has recently risen up en masse to attack Americans for perceived insults against their faith.  Muslims, however, have done that.  Not all Muslims, of course, but enough Muslims.  Anywhere in the world, it is Muslims who grab the gun, sword and bomb when they perceive an insult.  The Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Atheists, and any other group I can think of refrain from the gun, the sword and the bomb when insulted.

This willingness to respond to criticism with violence is pretty much a Muslim thing.  Not all Muslims, of course, but enough.  And certainly enough to make us fearful of the group as a whole.  After all, it’s usually not until after the bomb explodes that we can separate the Muslims who embrace violence from the ones who didn’t — and, worse, most of the ones who don’t embrace it, rather than speaking out, are passive to the point of acquiescence.

But liberals, rather than being driven by principles, which would have them looking down their noses at Muslims until the day comes when world Muslim leaders explicitly disavow terrorism, tend to be driven by fear.  If you’re a liberal and you both dislike and fear someone, you’re at their feet, as with the liberal response to Islam’s ceaseless attacks on America’s sensibilities and constitutional liberties.  Of course, if you merely dislike them, then you’re at their throats, at least rhetorically.

Right now, liberals don’t like Jews, Christians, Israel and conservatives, and their rhetorical contempt is unbounded.  And right now, while they probably don’t like Muslims very much, they do fear them, and their abject groveling is equally unbounded.

I’ll going on a limb here and say that liberals have exactly the same relationship with blacks as they do with Muslims.  Liberals don’t want to live in black neighborhoods or attend black schools (and, as their hostility to vouchers shows, they don’t want blacks attending their schools).  But blacks have shown themselves to be a volatile population, more than willing to out-rhetoric the liberals, and to stand around with bully clubs, so liberals grovel there too.

Whether the liberals are groveling before Muslims or militant blacks, it’s not a very healthy situation, either for the groveler or the grovelee.  The situation, indeed, is precisely analogous to a parent who spoils a child:  The child, rather than feeling loved, feels resentful and, worse, the child’s pathologies rage uncontrolled.

And that’s what happens when liberals are either at your throat or at your feet.

A perfect illustration of how the Left counterattacks

The mosque debate in America has been instructive when it comes to Leftist rhetorical tactics.  Ordinary Americans make an argument — “the mosque is inappropriate on secular sacred ground.”  The Left then responds, not substantively, but with personal attacks — “you’re racist, Islamophobic, xenophobic and stupid.”

If you think this approach to debate is limited to the American Left, think again.  Precisely the same thing is playing out in Germany.  There, Thilo Sarrazin, a German central bank board member and former senior city official in Berlin, has given an interview and published a book, both of which carry the same message:  Germany is being destroyed by its Muslim immigrants, who take a disproportionate amount of welfare relative to their contributions, who do not contribute to the nation’s intellectual life, and who are having children at a much faster rate than the Germans themselves.

The Leftist response has been predictable.  They’ve produced carefully detailed statistics showing the major economic and social contributions that Muslim immigrants are making to Germany society, and proved that the birthrate argument is a fallacy.  In the face of these reasoned arguments, Sarrazin has backed down.  They’ve hurled myriad personal insults at Sarrazin, and threatened his right to free speech:

Sarrazin’s comments have also made waves outside of the SPD. Green Party head Cem Özdemir called Sarrazin a “tribal leader in the mold of bin Laden” in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE and said that he has done a “disservice to efforts aimed at improving the dramatic social inequalities in our country, and not just among immigrants.” He said he was disappointed because “the ongoing debate over mutual expectations of Germans and immigrants is much more rational than Sarrazin makes it seem.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel is likewise unimpressed. Through her spokesman Steffen Seibert, she said on Wednesday that Sarrazin’s offerings were “extremely injurious, defamatory and very polemical.” She also called them “completely unhelpful” and said that “a different tone is necessary.”

[snip]

Following Sarrazin’s comments last autumn, the SPD began proceedings to kick him out of the party, but the attempt failed in March. He was, however, disciplined by the German Central Bank, which stripped him of his previous responsibility for cash management as a result of the Lettre International interview. It is unclear whether the SPD will make another effort to strike him from the rolls.

No matter in which country you drop a Leftist, he’s still a Leftist, committed to doctrinal purity regardless of objective reality.

All About Money

One of the things that I try to understand is the Great Divide between today’s Liberals and conservatives that has left us talking past one another on policy issues. Frankly, I have concluded that discussion with Liberals is often futile because we attribute different meanings to words and concepts.

One of those concepts, I suspect, has to do with “money”.  Let me throw the following proposition on the table for discussion:

Liberal /Lefties view “money” as a fixed, tangible quantity with intrinsic value, like gold coins, for example. Thus, the value of money is intrinsic to the lucre itself, be it coins or dollar notes. Conservatives, on the other hand, see “money” more abstractly as representing “created value”…as scrip or IOU on value created or received. As economists put it, money is a “medium of exchange” for value. So, for liberals, “money” is something tangible to that must be amassed by taking from someone else’s stash. For conservatives, “money” is something more abstract that must to be created (i.e. goods or services) directly (e.g., wages) or indirectly (e.g., inheritance) through the creation of “value”.

How might this color our perceptions of one another?

1) When people like Bill Gates amass a large quantity of money by creating products that many people wish to purchase, conservatives view Gates’ money as a reflection of the value that he created and contributed others. No hard feelings there – it’s a fair exchange. A Liberal/Lefty, however, sees only Gate’s amassed pot of lucre that appears disproportionately high compared to the lucre stored in other peoples’ pots. They see this imbalance as patently unfair, especially since this lucre was transferred from other peoples’ modest stashes into Bill Gates’ already whopping big stash: Bill has more, all of his customers have less.

2) When money is needed to achieve a desirable social or governmental goal, a conservative recognizes that such money needs to be generated somewhere to pay for this goal. This can only be done by either drawing down existing value (confiscating peoples’ lucre) or by creating new  ‘value” that can be taxed (i.e., growing the economy). A Liberal/Lefty doesn’t make this connection – they see the process simply as one of either redistributing the existing lucre from other peoples’ pots or creating new lucre by printing more money. The problem of printing new lucre, of course, is that it is still underwritten by a fixed quantity of value – expanding money supply representing a fixed value means that each dollar is worth less. We call that inflation.

I can’t tell you how many times Liberals have looked at me with puzzlement when I have asked where they expect to get the money for their favored social programs.

3) De-linking “money” from the process of wealth creation makes it easy for Liberal/Lefties to confuse using tax money to pay for unemployment checks, dance troupes or road repair as “economic stimulus”. You are, after all, taking lucre sitting idle in some peoples’ pots and putting that lucre into other peoples’ pockets to spend on purchases. Unfortunately, the fact is that such activities do not in themselves create new value. This cannot therefore “grow” the economy.

What do you think? Am I onto something? And, if so, what other aspects of the Great Divide does this help to explain? Does this help or hinder us in discussing our differences with the Liberal /Left?

An American Thinker article that’s all about sex *UPDATED*

A couple of weeks ago, I did a very short post bringing to your attention some peculiarities of sexuality when it comes to the far Left.  Thinking about that — and thinking about the wonderful comments you all left — led me to create a much longer post about Sex and the State.  American Thinker published that post today.  I have a few more things I want to add to it, things that came to my mind thanks to a vigorous and delightful conversation I had with Don Quixote.

DQ agreed with me about Sex, the State and Islam — namely, that Islam uses sex as a means of controlling its citizens (which is why adultery is a capital crime).  He agreed with me about the Leftist obsessions with sex, with breaking down traditional boundaries, and with interfering with the family.

Where he and I parted ways was with my belief that the Left, by approaching sex as it does, is trying to break down individual will.  His point of view is that it’s conservatives, who believe that sex should be done certain ways, who interfere more with individuality than do the Leftists.  The latter, by believing sex should be boundary free seem to give more, not less, control to individuals.  He has a point . . . except:

What I was trying to say in the article (and articulated much less well in conversation with DQ) is that the Leftist approach to sex implies that a person has no ownership over his body.  The early German Leftist experiments had sex become a public spectacle, a notion they actively pushed onto the children in their care.  Sex and the public were one.

This same notion of lack of control over ones own body is also inherent in pedophilia and pederasty.  Faced with a dominant adult figure, the child is forced into “sharing” his body, whether or not that “sharing” is consistent with his individual desires.

This whole hypersexualization — this “anything goes” approach — has led to the hook-up culture that dominates American high schools and universities.  Sex is unrelated to emotional relationships.  It’s just something you do.

What we know from an increasing number of studies on the subject is that this culture is very damaging to girls’ self-esteem.  (See this study, for example.)  They give their bodies away, not out of empowerment, but because they feel they have no control over this most personal of commodities.  A girl who feels worthless, and who feels that her body is an object as to which she has no say is, to my mind, a malleable creature who will much more readily yield herself to the State.  After all, by the time she’s 20 or so, there’s a good likelihood that she will have already yielded herself to a room full of strangers.

UPDATE:  Here’s an apropos quotation:

“It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness.”

–James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

UPDATE II:  Melissa Clouthier took my idea and ran with it.  I love what she has to say.  The only point where I part ways with her is her belief that second and third graders do not yet know about homosexuality, so that teaching true tolerance (as opposed to advocacy) is premature at that age.  The sad fact is that, thanks to Hollywood, the kids do know about those things.  TV shows (think:  award shows), movies and especially music inundate these little people with sex.  Although I would never have played it in my home, my third grader came home from school singing “I kissed a girl and I liked it,” a song he learned from his classmates.  Hollywood, of course, is a liberal place….

“Simplistic” and “primitive” *UPDATED*

As I’ve mentioned just a few times, I just read, and was very moved by, Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10.  A liberal I know flipped through the book’s first few pages and had a very different reaction.  The following passages bugged the liberal:

My name is Marcus.  Marcus Luttrell.  I’m a United States Navy SEAL, Team Leader, SDV Team 1, Alfa Platoon.  Like every other SEAL, I’m trained in weapons, demolition, and unarmed combat.  I’m a sniper, and I’m the platoon medic.  But most of all, I’m an American.  And when the bell sounds, I will come out fighting for my country and for my teammates.  If necessary, to the death.

And that’s not just because the SEALs trained me to do so; it’s because I’m willing to do so.  I’m a patriot, and I fight with the Lone Star of Texas on my right arm and another Texas flag over my heart.  For me, defeat is unthinkable.  (pp. 6-7)

[snip]

[As they’re taking off from Bahrain to Afghanistan:] There were no other passengers on board, just the flight crew and, in the rear, us, headed out to do God’s work on behalf of the U.S. government and our commander in chief, President George W. Bush.  (p. 12.)

[snip]

[Of the Taliban/Al Qaeda enemy in Afghanistan:]  This was where bin Laden’s fighters found a home training base.  Let’s face it, al Qaeda means “the base,” and in return for the Saudi fanatic bin Laden’s money, the Taliban made it all possible.  right now these very same guys, the remnants of the Taliban and the last few tribal warriors of al Qaeda, were preparing to start over, trying to fight their way through the mountain passes, intent on setting up new training camps and military headquarters and, eventually, their own government in place of the democratically elected one.

They may not have been the precise same guys who planned 9/11.  But they were most certainly their descendants, their heirs, their followers.  They were part of the same crowd who knocked down the North and South Towers in the Big Apple on the infamous Tuesday morning in 2001.  And our coming task was to stop them, right there in those mountains, by whatever means necessary.  (pp. 13-14)

The liberal felt that the above passages showed that the writer was simplistic and primitive in his thinking.  The whole notion of simple patriotism offended the liberal, who also thought it was just plain stupid to seek revenge against guys who weren’t actually the ones who plotted 9/11.  My less than clever riposte was, “so I guess you would only kill Nazis who actually worked in the gas chambers?”  Frankly, given the differences in our world views, I’m not sure there is a clever comeback or, which would be more helpful, a comeback that actually causes the liberal to reexamine those liberal principles.

UPDATE:  Here’s an apt quotation, written by John Stuart Mill, in 1862, as a comment upon the American Civil War:

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Dennis Prager inadvertently highlights the vast chasm between Left and Right *UPDATED*

Dennis Prager writes a long and interesting column detailing the way in which the Left resolutely refuses to conflate two ideas:  terrorism and Islam.  He then wraps it up with a conclusion that operates only if you accept Prager’s view of the world, but that is meaningless to the average Leftist:

The Left’s inability to identify the religious beliefs of Islamic terrorists, its insistence on instead ascribing their murders to terrorists’ psychological tensions and economic problems, and its simultaneous certainty that conservative white Americans have only the most vile motives — these are all expressions of the Left’s failure to recognize and confront real evil.

Just remember this: If Faisal Shahzad had not been identified as the would-be bomber, the mainstream (i.e., liberal) news media and leading Democrats would have told us repeatedly that a white male — surely a conservative white male — was the Times Square terrorist, and that we should therefore be looking suspiciously at our fellow Americans on the right, especially those attending tea parties. For while liberals claim not to know the motives of Muslim terrorists, they are always certain of conservatives’ motives: racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia.

When, one day, the Left exits from history’s stage, its epitaph will read: “Those who do not understand evil will not understand good.”

The Left understands fully understands evil; it just doesn’t define it the same way we do.

Our conservative baselines are justice and maximum freedom, with respect for life as an important subset of those values.  Sometimes we understand that, as in the case of just wars aimed at expanding or protecting freedoms, innocent lives will be lost — and that’s a price we recognize we must pay for the greater good.

For Progressives, however, a more Orwellian baseline applies:  All people are equal, except those classified as PC victims, are more equal than others.  Freedom, justice and respect for life all pay homage to a hierarchical world view that organizes people by victim classifications.  Once classified, the rule of thumb is that someone who is in a victim class cannot be considered evil when s/he turns on someone in an oppressor class.  And that’s it.  There are no abstract values.  It’s just a bizarre spreadsheet of relative victimhood.

UPDATE:  Please see the way in which Rick, at Brutally Honest, has expanded on the ideas expressed above (with a nice nod to me) using as his springboard a nonchalant young woman’s casually professed desire for a second Holocaust.

In an email exchange with Rick, I noted that she is nonchalant because her ideology is precisely the same as the Nazi ideology:  killing a Jew is just like squishing a bug.  You simply don’t get that upset when you view yourself as simultaneously a member of a master race (or religion) and a righteously oppressed person.  It gives you carte blanche to do whatever the hell you want to anyone who gets in your way.

I’ve quoted it before to you all, but I’d like to quote again my cousin’s words about Islam (he’s a Christian prison pastor in Virginia):

It is not a contradiction to be a Muslim and a murderer, even a mass murderer. That is one reason why criminals “convert” to Islam in prison. They don’t convert at all; they similarly remain the angry judgmental vicious beings they always have been. They simply add “religious” diatribes to their personal invective. Islam does not inspire a crisis of conscience, just inspirations to outrage.