Archived-Articles

Will Obama Sink the Democrats?

2011-05-31T05:04:55Z

The media are playing "divide and conquer" games against Republicans now, a strategy that worked in 2008 by leaving us with John McCain as the only candidate. This time they are swinging between viciously attacking Sarah Palin and her family, and hyping real or imaginary divisions between Republicans -- never among the Democrats, who present the image of a united front with Stalinesque unity. But you can bet there's a lot of vicious in-fighting among Obama, the Clintons, and all the rest, because Obama may be destroying the Democratic Party as we know it.

Already the media are spreading the Big Lie that the GOP has a "weak field" of candidates, declared and undeclared. Like Rudy Giuliani, the best NYC mayor in the last half century and a heroic figure on 9/11/01. Or the four successful former governors of Alaska, Massachusetts, Alabama, and Minnesota. We have one accomplished black businessman, who looks, acts, and talks like a responsible adult, and two brave and articulate conservative women. Even with his flaws, Newt Gingrich was the most powerful GOP Speaker of the House in the last half century. This is a "weak field"?

When know-nothing Obama ran in 2008, the left orgasmed all over itself, and swung a Nobel Peace Prize for him, just for running while black. Even today Obama is a hyped-up incompetent compared to Giuliani.

What the left really fears is that Obama will sink the Democrats. American political parties come and go. In the 19^th century the Whigs died out and the Republicans emerged with Abraham Lincoln. Harry Truman's Democrats were forced to purge the Stalinist left from the Democratic Party, making a fast switch to the mainstream because they were deeply penetrated by Stalin's spies and agents of influence. Americans were justifiably scared of Stalin's nuclear bombs, weapons so big and destructive that nobody knew what might happen. The Democrats, some of them vociferously pro-Soviet, had to change in order to survive. They produced generations of mainstream liberals -- Truman, Humphrey, LBJ, JFK -- who would look exactly like conservatives today. Without purging the totalitarian left, they would have died as a party.

Today, as soon as Iran explodes a bomb, Obama is going to be in deep, deep trouble with American voters. Nuclear proliferation is now happening all over the Middle East, because Arabs fear a nuclear Iran much more than a nuclear Israel. Obama has Carterized the most unstable region in the world ten times over. The Democrats well remember how Jimmy got beaten by Ronald Reagan.

The left cannot be trusted in the War on Terror. Carter let the Shah of Iran be overthrown by murderous tyrannical throwback Ayatollah Khomeini. The left is just weak-minded -- which is why they keep denying there is a war going on, even when our troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, and parts of Africa like Somalia.

When the history of the War on Terror is written, it will start with Jimmy Carter, who honestly thought that bloody-minded old Khomeini was "some kind of saint," according to his UN Ambassador Andrew Young. The Shah was pro-American, and educated generations of Iranians (including women) in modern ways of thinking. When Carter allowed Khomeini to take Iran, the mullahs immediately killed off the secular opposition, tried to overthrow the Saudis next door, and ended up in a vicious war with Saddam that killed a million people. Today they control Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. They have always had tactical alliances with Sunni terror groups like Hamas, the Taliban, and Al Qaida. Afghanistan is taking huge bribes from Iran. The Iraqis are worried that as soon as the Americans leave, they will be next.

Thank you, peace-loving Jimmy Carter. What a masterstroke it was to enable the first modern throwback terror regime in the Islamic world. What an example for future generations Jimmy Carter gave us.

Americans who are not mentally comatose today are turning against Obama, because O openly pushed Mubarak out of power in Egypt, thereby sabotaging the only effective peace treaty in the Middle East. Anybody who doesn't see that as a disaster is simply lost to reason. But a lot of liberals will never, ever get it.

Just like Jimmy Carter, Obama is bringing to power the most radical Islamists in Egypt, Turkey, and the other Sunni nations. Obama has done nothing to stop Iran's ruthless march to nuclear power, so that the Saudis may now be ordering their own off-the-shelf nukes from Pakistan. China just announced that "any American attack on Pakistan would be treated like an attack on China." North Korea allowed a US nuclear scientist to visit a brand-new enrichment plant that could only have come from China.

Is this a royal mess or what? And that's only his Foreign Follies.

Domestically, what has Obama done? He's Carterized the economy, with inflation rising for food and gas, and economic stagnation causing almost 10 percent unemployment. He has constantly insulted and demoralized ordinary Americans. He is a racial divider, not a healer. He has literally given the middle digit to Hillary Clinton on television, and symbolically dissed just about everybody else, especially the most productive people in America.

Obama has lost the House of Representatives for the Democrats, and that means that hungry liberals all over the country see their career prospects stymied. His plans for a second term are terrifying: like running your medical care from DC. Rationing medical care for seniors, like the UK. Driving doctors out of business. Affirmative action in all the medical schools, just like Hillary proposed in the 90s.

Listen to these mainstream commentators.

Michael Barone keeps warning that Obama has brought in "gangster government." That's the considered judgment of the best-known PhD political scientist in the country, the editor of the Almanac of American Politics.

Patrick Caddell, after a long career as a mainstream Democratic pollster, is utterly enraged at the leftward lurch of the Demagogues since Clinton. Caddell is just about the last honest man on that side of the aisle. All the decent people in the Democratic Party have been chased out.

Charles Krauthammer, the only other conservative at the Washington Post, just wrote that:

Note how Obama has undermined Israel's negotiating position. He is demanding that Israel go into peace talks having already forfeited its claim to the territory won in the '67 war -- its only bargaining chip. Remember: That '67 line runs right through Jerusalem. Thus the starting point of negotiations would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter are Palestinian -- alien territory for which Israel must now bargain.

The very idea that Judaism's holiest shrine is alien or that Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter is rightfully or historically or demographically Arab is an absurdity.

This is not just about Israel. Imagine what people are thinking in Taiwan, South Korea, Poland, Egypt, Saudi Arabia -- all international flashpoints where trust in American assurances has kept the peace for long decades. When Obama publicly abandons Israel, people start shaking in fear all over the world.

The leftist monopoly on the news is crumbling. The new conservative media are expanding and in quality and quantity, a long-delayed response to the leftist degradation of our culture. Conservatives now have the most articulate speakers in the country, including Rush Limbaugh, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and more.

The left is intellectually bankrupt, and the only thing keeping it alive is media control and government payoffs. The only way the left can stay in power is by monopolizing the media and the schools, to brainwash an entire nation about such little things as the history of the Cold War.

Obama himself is locked in post-colonial socialism, an ideology that has been completely rejected in China, Russia, India, and much of Latin America and Africa.

It is fear, and not self-confidence, that is making lefties like Chris Matthews act like aggressive chimps. When chimpanzees feel scared they go into a very aggressive stance, tear branches off the bushes, bare their teeth, and make loud noises. That's Matthews today. This is not what people do when they feel confident. It's what the power class does when it's afraid of losing it all.

Some leftists are scared that another McCarthyist backlash will arise if Obama loses. They have brainwashed themselves so much about Joe McCarthy that they are now scared of normal Americans. But they also know how extreme they look. To answer Rush Limbaugh the left presents vicious name-callers like Ed Schultz and a squad of Hollywood airheads. If they felt confident they would simply answer substantive arguments with their own. But they are dreadfully weak on substance.

When Americans become serious again -- when Iran's big bomb goes off, or the Great Recession keeps going -- they will vote out Obama and the Democrats.

Every time you read another JourNOlist claiming the GOP is in trouble, just change the word "Republican" to "Democrat." The left isn't losing sleep about Republican losses. They can see the earth yawning open under their own feet, ready to swallow them up, just as the House Democrats were swallowed up in the midterms. Don't think they aren't worried about their poll numbers. Don't think they aren't scared about Tea Party Americans. Don't think they can allow conservatives like you and me to exercise our free speech. They feel panicked, vulnerable, and incompetent. That's where all the rage is coming from.

Historically, leftward lurches in America are always followed by conservative corrections. Woodrow Wilson was followed by Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover; FDR and Truman by Eisenhower; JFK was relatively conservative by leftist standards, but after LBJ swung hard left, Nixon and Ford succeeded him. Jimmy Carter led straight to Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton was stymied by a powerful GOP Congress. And Obama...

We'll find out soon. The SEIU has just pulled out their old Communist banners, and they are tearing off the mask. ACORN is back in business. George Soros is funding all the loudest leftist fronts. Marxists are suddenly sprouting all over the campuses, like an outbreak of ugly pimples. The left is out of the closet.

Yet the Global Warming fraud has been exposed, and the Democrats have suddenly found out they want missile defenses. We now have Aegis-equipped anti-missile vessels near all the hot spots in the world; that's the technology the left threw screaming fits about for decades. Had the left won that debate we would now be exposed to the tender mercies of Iranian missiles a half an hour away. Now that the US has proven that missile defense is possible, every other nation in the world is rushing them into place.

The phony "energy crisis" is on its last legs as countries like Poland, Canada, China, and Israel have discovered major deposits of convertible shale deposits. Natural gas from shale will break the monopoly of OPEC in less than a decade, and reactionary Islam will then lose its big money edge in the world. The Middle East will lose much of its strategic importance as shale deposits are exploited all over the world.

Obama is starting his reelection campaign six months early. The left is already flooding us with phony pre-election headlines and disinformation. Those are signs of panic. They can read the portents of doom in the polls.

The left is strongest on hype, not substance. Alinsky taught them that the appearance of power beats real power. They are always puffing themselves up like blowfish, and trying to demoralize the rest of us. Just watch it happen.

By next year we will know if the left can fool all the people all of the time. No matter how much Obama tries to look like a winner, in fact he is a ball and chain for the Democrats. He lost the House in the midterms. Even the French and Chinese are ridiculing him.

Here's hoping that they all sink together, and that a more centrist party will succeed them.

A Real Act of God in Joplin, Missouri

2011-05-31T05:04:23Z

What happened in Joplin, MO was not an Act of God. It was a natural act of nature. The storm came about because the weather patterns were right, but it would have happened there with or without the town of Joplin in its path. The Act of God is was what came later.

Joplin will never be the same. Our hearts are broken, but not our spirit. I am standing on Range Line road looking at what was my town. I see where the Academy Sports used to stand and near it our favorite pizza place, Pizza By Stout. Behind me the remains of Home Depot. It is hard to tell where you are as you survey the area. There are no more street signs, all the familiar landmarks are gone. As a good friend of mine, Elidia says, "It is all disappeared." It is not what we all remember at all.

While I look out, I think of the people who will never be there again as well. You know those people who you see everyday at the stores, the ones who greeted you with a smile and were always there to help with a great attitude and a servants heart? Picture them in your mind. You may not know their names but some of those special people are no longer here.

For some of us, it is family and loved ones who were lost and you can just feel the pain of the entire community. Our hearts throb and ache as one. The tension is absolutely palpable. Not a soul here could begin to describe the pain and the anxiety we have all lived with and tried to sleep with at night.

When the rain comes again fear wells up in all our hearts. Will the storm come again? The storms people once ignored that roll through our area regularly are now a source of grave concern. There is a kind of hyper-sensitivity everywhere.

When I look at all these things, I think of how this simple, normal act of mother nature has destroyed our way of life and touched all of us.

However, when I look at how we reacted as a community I see the Act of God. People from every surrounding community descended on Joplin. They hurt when we hurt and lent that shoulder of support we all needed. They cried with us and worked side by side with us.

I was lucky enough to be involved recently in a feed, one of many that happened here. We cooked and served food to survivors, rescue workers, and volunteers. My company was very generous and the people I work with astounded me with their goodness and desire to help. We reached out and touched a lot of people that day.

When you look into the eyes of someone who has lost everything, and tell them you are here for them and you care, that is where you see God. When you hand someone a much needed drink of water, that is where you see your Act of God. When you are crying together as a community and loving each other, that is an Act of God.

So, I say the storm was not an Act of God. What happened after the storm was an Act of God. What we will continue to see as time passes and the re-building of our community inside and out, that is the Act of God. We are a very lucky town, mother nature can not defeat us, we have God on our side. Joplin will be fine, but thanks for your prayers.

Heather Carlton lives in a suburb of Joplin.

Are Obama's Academic Defenders Vulnerable?

2011-05-31T05:04:01Z

In late October 2010, Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg gave a standing room-only lecture at a New York City conference on intellectual history.

There, the New York Times reported, Kloppenberg shared the insights gleaned in researching his book, Reading Obama. As the good professor explained, Obama stood tall among that rare breed of philosopher presidents.

"There's John Adams, Thomas Jefferson," he told the crowd, "James Madison and John Quincy Adams, then Abraham Lincoln and in the 20^th century just Woodrow Wilson." And now Obama, a "true intellectual" and a philosophical "pragmatist."

In his book, Kloppenberg would unblushingly describe the president as "gifted," a "genius," a man of "exceptional intelligence," one who writes "brilliantly and poignantly." Kloppenberg's colleagues shared his enthusiasm. According to the Times, they responded to his talk "with prolonged applause."

As I keep being reminded, the Obama genius myth will not easily yield to evidence or reason. For the record, this myth derives largely from one source, Obama's celebrated 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father. On the basis of this book, British literati member Jonathan Raban anointed Obama "the best writer to occupy the White House since Lincoln," and his is the consensus opinion.

Unlike most other critics, however, Kloppenberg chose to concentrate not on Dreams but on Obama's Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, two years into Obama's career as a U.S. senator. In so doing, however, he advances a thesis so profoundly wrong in so many salient ways that it could undermine the whole Obama enterprise.

I first became aware of Kloppenberg's folly in a Washington Post book review written by a Yale graduate student named Craig Fehrman. What caught my attention was that Fehrman compared Reading Obama to my new book Deconstructing Obama. It will surprise no one who knows the largely shared worldview of Harvard, Yale, and the Washington Post that Fehrman much preferred Kloppenberg's book and felt free to say so in no uncertain terms.

Kloppenberg's book, Fehrman assures the reader, "will teach you much about Obama." What it will teach is not entirely clear. On his blog, Fehrman concedes that "Obama's early writing sucks." Yet he makes no effort to explain how someone who "sucks" as a writer even after graduating from an Ivy League college could write "brilliantly and poignantly" just a few years later. It does not happen in the real world. Fehrman knows this, but as an aspiring presidential historian, he is savvy enough not to cross Kloppenberg, the esteemed chair of the Harvard History Department.

Shortly after Fehrman's review was published, I wrote a piece on Kloppenberg's faulty understanding of Audacity. Among the problems I cited was that at least 38 passages from Obama stump speeches delivered in 2005 or 2006 appear virtually word for word as ordinary text in the book.

Days before I posted this article, Bill Ayers had publicly dismissed Audacity for what it is -- a "political hack book." He knew whereof he spoke. He largely wrote Dreams. He did not write Audacity. As I document with ample evidence, Obama turned to 23-year-old video game whiz Jon Favreau for the speeches in question and likely for most of Audacity as well. This raises an inconvenient question: Does Obama rank with Jefferson and Lincoln or does Favreau?

As part of his research, Kloppenberg claimed to have read every article published while Obama was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, "a superb cure for insomnia." What he apparently did not read was anything written by anyone on the right, no matter how relevant.

By the time of Kloppenberg's New York speech, Stanley Kurtz's Radical-in-Chief had been released and Dinesh D'Souza's The Roots of Obama's Rage was climbing the bestseller charts. Kurtz, in particular, had been meticulously documenting Obama's radical associations for the previous two years.

Although both are Ivy Leaguers, D'Souza of Dartmouth and Kurtz a Harvard Ph.D., their pedigrees make no impression on their liberal brethren. By identifying as conservatives, they long ago relinquished their rights to relevance or reviews in mainstream publications. Kloppenberg could safely ignore them because few, if any, of his colleagues would have read them or even heard of them.

Conservatives outside the ivied gates occupy a lower rung still on the Great Chain of Being. By way of example, New Yorker editor David Remnick -- Princeton '81 -- traces my provenance to what he calls "the Web's farthest lunatic orbit." Fehrman calls my book "grotesque, delusional and paranoid." Both can be sure no one they know will challenge their lack of judgment or their lack of manners.

On May 6, I posted a lengthy review of Kloppenberg's Reading Obama in the American Thinker. Immediately afterwards, I drafted a review more appropriate for an academic publication and tried to place it. The message I have gotten from those editors who responded was that it did not quite fit the expectations of their audience.

Allow me to cite one such response. In that the editor was gracious enough to read what I sent him, I conceal his and his publication's name:

... my main problem with the review is that 4.5 of the 11 pages of text are dedicated to the question of authorship -- meaning Obama's ability or inability to author both *Audacity of Hope* and *Dreams from my Father*. The blog demands a focus on the intellectual history, or history of ideas, in Kloppenberg's book. Another three pages of the review address issues of style and editing on Obama's essays from the 1980s. Issues and questions like these are more appropriate for journals dedicated to book history and print culture ...

The editor claimed that neither my "credentials" -- a Ph.D. in American studies from Purdue -- nor my "ideology" had anything to do with his decision. Taking him at his word, I am left to conclude that he shied from a debate of potentially historic consequence because my review did not fit precisely into his narrowly defined academic portfolio. This is possible in academia but not likely here.

Short of my finding the literary equivalent of a stained blue dress, I believe now that only an academic insider can bring Kloppenberg to his senses. That may be happening. Last week, a Rutgers professor named David Greenberg weighed in with a seriously impertinent review of Reading Obama in the New Republic.

Greenberg wondered out loud if Kloppenberg's judgments were "not shaped in part by his admiration for his subject," an admiration that Greenberg found "cloying." This excess affection for his subject led Kloppenberg "to over-value Obama as an intellectual" and to shower him with praise that "strains credulity."

In the final analysis, Greenberg rejected Kloppenberg's argument that Obama was a pragmatist and an intellectual. Concluded Greenberg, "the case does not persuade." This was not quite the same as calling it "lunatic" or "grotesque," but within the ivied walls, it was close.

Impressed, I sent Greenberg an email with the subject line, "Enjoyed the Kloppenberg review." In the text I praised his boldness and elaborated, "There is a deeper level of challenge involved when you realize that Obama does not write his own material." I asked Greenberg's help in expanding the debate.

Terry Scambray, a writer who teaches English at Fresno City College in California, independently contacted Greenberg with the same idea. "Your review is thick with ideas and I do look forward to reading your book on progressivism," Scambray wrote. "However, no mention of Jack Cashill's Deconstructing Obama?"

Greenberg sensed a conspiracy afoot. "You are the fourth person to write me about Cashill, including Cashill himself," Greenberg wrote Scambray. "Is this coordinated?" It was coordinated only to the degree that Greenberg's review circulated around the blogosphere and provoked a similar response from several people.

"I don't know Cashill," Scambray responded. In fact, he and I had never communicated before he shared this email with me. "You are clearly a scholar so I think that my concern is justified as to whether you have examined all the pertinent information on your subject."

Curiously, although he answered Scambray's email, Greenberg has yet to answer mine. This does not surprise. Despite the fact that Donald Trump, Andrew Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity have all publicly advanced my thesis, I have yet to hear from a single person within either the media or academic community curious enough to contact the source of that thesis and assess its validity.

(This 7-minute video by Chris Kusnell gives an excellent overview of the media reaction to this subject.)

Still, I will keep the door open for Greenberg. He showed some grit in taking on Kloppenberg. Let us see how true it is.

Obama May be Getting Tough with Gaddafi

2011-05-31T05:03:59Z

It's crunch time for Moammar Gaddafi and President Obama. Will Gaddafi stay or will he go? And does President Obama intend to continue acting like the Leader of the Free World?

Yes, I'm still counting the days until Barack Obama's out of office. And the President is actively -- and unforgivably -- hostile to Israel. But, every now and then, Obama does something commendable. He seems, in certain circumstances, willing to use force to defend American interests and to defeat America's enemies.

Back in March, I made the suggestion that President Obama needed to learn a lesson from the last Democratic president. When an international crisis breaks, Bill Clinton said, an American president asks: "Where are my carriers?" There's now some evidence that America's current president finally has absorbed that lesson.

On March 4, I commented that the then-existing deployment of America's supercarriers suggested that the Obama Administration had simply decided to sit out the Arab Spring. There were no American capital ships in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, or the Western Pacific (except for the USS George Washington, sitting in its home port of Yokosuka). Worldwide, only two U.S. carrier strike groups were at sea.

I wrote: "[c]ontrary to doctrine, the U.S. Navy is not, in fact, forward deployed. It is hard to believe this is an accident...This President has no options because, a month into the Arab Spring, he has decided against moving American naval assets so as to give himself options" (emphasis omitted).

Since then, of course, the intervention in Libya has happened; and Osama bin Laden has been killed. The President's now made the important discovery of why a U.S. Navy carrier strike group should always be near a major crisis zone. It would not have been possible on May 2 to execute "Operation Geronimo" without the handy presence, already on station in the North Arabian Sea, of the USS Carl Vinson. As a Navy press release noted, two other CSG's were cruising nearby.

Is President Obama "growing in office"? We shall see. According to gonavy.jp, six American supercarriers are now deployed or at sea on maneuvers.

The OBL take-down led me, for the first time since I was one of three print commentators to call Senator Barack Obama a Marxist before the 2008 election, to write something positive about the President. In a May 4 Blog post -- which, no doubt, triggered acute indigestion on the part of some readers -- I congratulated the President on finally becoming the Leader of the Free World. I wrote:

Welcome to the fight, sir. Wouldn't this be a good time to send an American supercarrier (or two)... into the Med to encourage Gaddafi and Assad to pack up their bags for Venezuela? [snip].

You'll be surprised, sir, at the enhanced effect your mere words will now have.

Congratulations on becoming the Leader of the Free World. Please keep acting like it.

My point, of course, was this: if the United States is to remain caput mundi, then the American President must be feared. Even if he's a Marxist. Even if our ultimate goal, as conservatives, is to chase him from office in 18 months' time.

Which brings me to the instant question of President Obama's willingness to pull the trigger again and the mounting paranoia of one Moammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi seems to think we're coming to get him. Could he be right?

Yes.

Quite unreported by the U.S. media, a formidable naval armada is now assembled in the Central Mediterranean. An American carrier strike group should get there this week. Most importantly -- if you believe in a "post-American world" in which America "leads from behind" and American military power should be used only with authorization from a transnational body, all the diplomatic i's have now been dotted and the t's crossed for what French diplomats call "decisive action."

Since NATO's initial intervention in Libya on March 19, President Obama has persistently called on the Gaddafi regime to amscray. Does he mean it? If Obama doesn't mean it -- if he's not willing to back up his words with force, why is he saying it?

As Napoleon said, "if you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna."

At press time, there were signs Gaddafi may actually go. Venezuela has been mentioned. Last week, there seems to have been an overture to Russia to mediate. Now, President Zuma of South Africa is in Libya, trying to broker some kind of deal.

Third, it's not true that things in Libya have settled down to a stalemate. Yes, after an initial barrage of cruise missiles and other actions to "prepare the battle space," the U.S. stepped back from a direct combat role. But France and Britain have stepped up their game.

Tripoli's been pounded. British and French officers, as well as covert forces, are on the ground. NATO's now taken out most of Libya's navy and air force. Misrata's siege has been substantially weakened. Aid is getting through; and casualties are getting out. Gaddafi's forces have lost the initiative. Defections are mounting.

Fourth, the U.S. Navy is about to be in position to re-enter the fray. It was Secretary of Defense Gates who pointed out, three months ago, that doing Libya right "...requires more airplanes than you would find on a single aircraft carrier."

Next, as was done for NATO's initial intervention in Libya, an international consensus has now been put together for regime change. R2P has been replaced by "leave or else." So said all eight G-8 members over the weekend.

Not coincidentally, the International Criminal Court last week issued international arrest warrants for Gaddafi, his sons, and his brother-in-law. The U.S. and NATO now have explicit, internationally-recognized authorization to -- as George W. Bush might say -- "git 'im." And a sheriff's posse is assembling.

With the imminent appearance of a U.S. carrier strike force off the Libyan coast, the "or else" part of "leave or else" is about to arrive.

France's nuclear supercarrier, the Charles de Gaulle, has been on station off Libya participating in combat operations for some time. So has the Italian carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi. Several non-capital NATO ships have been making their presence felt too.

What's been lacking is tank-killing helicopters for close-in ground support. But on May 17, the French helicopter carrier BPC Tonnerre deployed out of Toulon into the Med. Also newly-arrived on station is the HMS Ocean, a British helicopter carrier.

And here, on cue, comes the spanking-new USS George H.W. Bush. CSG Two should be making passage through the Straits of Gibraltar as early as Wednesday. They're scheduled to leave Portsmouth, England, at 10:00 BST on Tuesday morning.

So, Moammar's right: there's a lot of "heat" headed his way.

To repeat: the ICC arrest warrants were the last necessary predicate for U.S. military action in Fareed Zakaria's "post-American world." While conservatives may not like it, this appears to be how "leading from behind" works.

The rest is up to President Obama.

Does he want to go on acting like the Leader of the Free World?

Hamas, Hezb'allah, the Iranians, Bashar al-Assad, and Kim Jong-il -- not to mention the people of Israel -- will all be watching for the answer to that question.

Palin and the White Working Class

2011-05-31T05:03:51Z

Sunday May 29 and Rolling Thunder marked Sarah Palin's first incursion into "enemy territory" since 2008, according to Politico's Molly Ball. The US Northeast is the region that's "least friendly" to the Tea Party favorite.

Molly might have written that, with her Tea Party base all sewn up, Palin is already reaching out to the Northeast, a target-rich environment full of the white working class that has been up for grabs in recent elections. But then, Molly is writing for Politico, not the Wall Street Journal.

There's a good reason why the white working class is up for grabs. It is the "the most pessimistic and alienated group in American society," according to Ronald Brownstein in the National Journal. That is no wonder, for "the average high-school-educated, middle-aged man earns almost 10 percent less than his counterpart did in 1980."

There's only one problem, according to Brownstein. Minorities have suffered in the recession and have experienced the same wage squeeze as the white working class. But minorities are optimistic about their future.

We know why. Time was that the white working class was the darling of the liberals. But then the liberals soured on them. In the 70s working-class whites were bigoted Archie Bunkers; in the 2000s, "bitter clingers." Liberals decided that all along they had really loved women and minorities, and they became the darlings of the liberals, extolled and boosted in the university, the halls of Congress, in stock photos, and on stage and screen.

Of course, the white working class has only itself to blame. Put not your trust in princes, says the Good Book. Back in the 19^th century the working class had built its own authentic social institutions, the labor unions, the fraternal associations, the Methodist and Baptist Churches, from scratch. But then the liberals came calling with flattery and free money. There's a line for that too: The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

When you are living in the Garden of Eden, the darlings of the liberals, life is peachy: good jobs, good wages, benefits, health care, pensions. But when the liberals decide to change you out for a newer model, then it's back to the real world, only now the unions are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Democratic Party and the fraternal associations have withered away into irrelevance. But for the "pessimistic and alienated" in this fallen world, there is God and guns and Sarah Palin.

You can see why the party professionals don't take Palin seriously. The way people talk, you'd think Sarah Palin was a political newcomer, rather than a 20-year veteran of elected politics.

But there is another, bigger reason why the Republican insiders find it so difficult to take Palin seriously. Their game is political chess, a game of movement, and Palin plays Chinese Go or weiqi, a game of position, where you put down counters and never move them. With Going Rogue, she put down a counter that positioned herself as a "commonsense conservative." With America by Heart she positioned herself as a "commonsense constitutional conservative." Now, with her "One Nation" bus tour, she is mounting a "campaign to educate and energize Americans about our nation's founding principles, in order to promote the Fundamental Restoration of America."

That's the new counter that Sarah Palin is placing on the board as she moves up the Northeast corridor: the "Fundamental Restoration of America." It has quite a ring to it. It is just the line you would want to take if you were running for president against Barack Obama and his czars, his crony green capitalists, his waivers-for-friends ObamaCare, his regulatory blizzard, his jobless recovery, and his 1967-borders foreign policy. With "Restoration," Palin appeals to the patriotism of the white working class without getting into tricky economic details.

But what about women and minorities? Isn't Palin going down a cul-de-sac bidding for the white working class, a demographic slice in decline? It could be, but don't forget that the day will come when women and minorities will no longer be the "darlings of the liberals" either. Women might wake up one day and decide that they believe in marriage and children; minorities might opt one day for jobs, jobs, jobs, instead of debt, debt, debt.

A warning to you women and minorities: Stand up to your liberal "partner" on these issues and you too will soon recall in your lonely pessimism and alienation the old injunction. You'll say: forget the princes. Put not your trust in politicians.

Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his usgovernmentspending.com and also usgovernmentdebt.us. At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism.

Obama and the Frog Pot Boil

2011-05-31T05:03:31Z

We all know the metaphor for dangerous incrementalism: put a frog in a pot, slowly raise the temperature, and the frog will boil to death. For generations, liberalism has cleverly coordinated the country's slow, incremental push leftward: exploiting sympathies for the poor and sick to expand all things government and hammering the benefits of social justice, diversity, and multiculturalism to expand government into a centralized behemoth. The 2008 financial crisis provided cover for further governmental expansion, ushering in the presidency of Obama. With a nation on the ropes and control of the White House and Congress, liberalism had a straight path to its inveterate goal: irreversible European-style socialism here in the U.S. Fortunately, unchecked hubris triggered a reversal that may well save this nation.

Following the frog pot metaphor, an arrogant Obama walked up to the stove unsure of why no one simply spun the dial to high and boiled away our remaining liberties and free-market prosperity. Perhaps he thought, as he has been told much of his life, that nobody before him was brilliant enough to sort out this bothersome delay. It looked so easy. In came Obama, up went the temperature, and out leapt the Tea Party and a public awareness and involvement that outsized even his unprecedented hubris. Chances are that slow-cooking frogs will never be easy again.

You can't blame them. Enjoying the cakewalk that put Obama in the White House and with Pelosi and Reid in power, there really was nothing to stop them. "If not now," they thought, "when?" Plenty of leftists focused on the long view probably offered strategic caution to stick with the slow-and-steady plan. But again, if not now, when -- it's rare for one party to control everything. They all knew they weren't going to fundamentally transform America by providing full disclosure of their intentions and methods. Joe the Plumber was marked for destruction after eliciting an honest "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody" M.O. from candidate Obama.

But things got away from them. A president with no executive experience whatsoever delegated the enactment of ObamaCare to Pelosi and Reid, neither of whom had the savvy to play modestly with their winning hand. Convinced that all means were justified and that resistance was futile and/or nonexistent, they scared away an otherwise docile segment of voters (and non-voters until that moment). Simple lip-service to criticism of the proposed health care overhaul and the negotiation process may have simmered the growing opposition. But then again, we're talking about a president who responds to critics with "I won" and a Speaker who thought an oversized gavel was a clever prop to demonstrate her modesty and professionalism.

ObamaCare was passed, despite every signal that the wheels were coming off, and Pelosi mocked the opposition. Constitutional? "Are you serious?" How will it work? "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it." Unaware that most people would be fired for such incompetence, they thought that they were beyond reproach. Nope. The sleeping giant awoke and jumped out of the pot -- into town hall meetings across the country, and eventually into the voting booths in November 2010.

Now, ObamaCare appears to be at the mercy of the death panels of public opinion, its popularity and legality constantly in question. Instead of talking about government expansion, the left is trying to minimize spending contractions. Instead of further empowering labor unions, the country is wondering aloud how and why government workers have such a good deal. Suddenly, defined contribution v. defined benefit is no longer a distinction without a difference to the public at large.

And that's how things changed. An ever-growing portion of the public, including the college-aged, is learning about the realities of a centralized government attempting wealth redistribution based upon an unrealistic worldview. The ineffectiveness of liberalism's treatment of all things economic is coming to light. A supposed elite who know everything -- except, apparently, basic human behaviors -- is demanding unchecked control of all things.

Not only has a whole generation witnessed why the Tea Party pumped the brakes, but the current jobless recovery is forcing these same people to sort out what "redistribution of wealth" really means and whether government can actually and efficiently create jobs. The empty campaign rhetoric of blaming everything on everyone else isn't as persuasive when one's career and life are on hold due to a stagnant economy. Perhaps Obama will go down as having lost an entire generation of left-leaning voters -- or at least that generation's blind assurance that only one party offers realistic solutions.

Obama was ushered into office by a perfect storm of circumstance. His rank inability to appreciate today's realities may be yet another perfect storm to ensure that liberalism will no longer enjoy its silent march through the Constitution. Now the right is slowly trying to be more conservative -- not more centrist.

But the center is a moving target, and liberals have been very successful in defining the center leftward, leaving even mild conservatives to be viewed as "extremists." Even when Obama is gone, the left will be fighting to reclaim, rather than redefine, the center.

Obama may now understand why you stick with the plan and slowly boil away freedoms. The frog pot boil will always be on the political menu. Now, hopefully, more people will be jumping out of the pot than in.

Syria to Become Iranian Vassal or Saudi Ally

2011-05-31T05:03:17Z

The Arab popular movements clamoring for reform in the Middle East have not only reached the shore of Syria, but have also spread throughout the country. The initial attitude of the regime, as expressed by Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, that Damascus is immune to Arab protests sweeping the region, has been turned on its head. The Syrian regime is deeply concerned about the growing protests in the country, which have been gradually but steadily breaking new taboos. The unheard of call for the removal of the regime has become a rallying cry for protesters, who have been smashing statues of the Asad family.

The gravity of the unfolding situation is symbolized by the reach of the protests to the heart of Damascus, the Maydan, despite attempts by the Syrian security forces to check the expansion of the protests to urban areas, especially Damascus. The Maydan in Damascus symbolizes the pillar upon which the power of the regime rests. It is where the Alawi military-Sunni merchant complex thrives as a ballast for the Asad regime. After all, it was the Damascene merchant class in the early 1980s that saved the regime of late Syrian president Hafez al-Asad from the rebellious Muslim Brotherhood. Since then, this alliance between Sunnis and Alawis has grown in intermarriages, wealth, but also in corruption. It is this hybrid class that supported the regime's erratic, and in most cases, insignificant reforms, for the sake of stability.

But this time around, the protest movement has grown beyond the grasp of the Syrian bureaucracy and the country's fearsome security services. It has taken a multi-dimensional character hardly possible for the regime to subdue, but also difficult for the opposition to mold into a singular leadership. No longer can the regime successfully single out, clamp down on, or divide the leadership of the opposition, as it had done since President Asad assumed power in 2000.

Thanks to social media, the leadership of the opposition has become a collective one. Opposition members, such as Ammar abd al-Hammid, have interfaced and mobilized Syrian youth from the diaspora through Facebook. They have also helped create in Syria a multitude of leadership groups guided by seasoned activists from diverse backgrounds. Conversely, as a consequence of both the regime's superficial policies and harsh actions the opposition has become linked to a broad societal group that cuts across sects, gender, and class.

By firing at protesters, even as they mourn the loss of their loved ones, the regime has not only created a cycle of revanchism, but also a crucible of common grievances shared by inter- and intra-communal groups and sects. The expansion of the protests throughout Syria, in spite of the regime's concessions of repealing emergency rule and abolishing security courts, is undoubtedly both a product and a growth of common grievances and the collectiveness of the opposition's leadership. Simply put, the regime has de-legitimized itself by its brutal actions.

But this does not mean that the Syrian regime will not fight for its survival or the opposition will not create the critical mass needed to overpower the regime. Arguably, inasmuch as the protest movement grows bolder, the regime may use indiscriminate and brutal power to fight for its survival. True, the regime may have prevailed over the Alawi community by convincing it that its survival is linked to that of its own; yet it has not irreversibly secured the critical allegiance of the merchant class, especially in Damascus and Aleppo. Reportedly, this merchant class has become nervous about the regime's growing recourse to violence and de-legitimization on the domestic and international levels. As one pre-eminent Damascene reformer told me: Syrian authorities are acting as outlaws and are being perceived as outlaws.

But, most ominously for the protest movement in the time being is the emergence of Damascus as the battle grounds for Iran to re-assert its regional authority and policy. Tehran can ill afford the loss of the Syrian regime as a regional ally and a nodal point for its projection of power and deterrence strategy against Israel. Hezb'allah, Iran's proxy militia, can also ill afford a regime change that may put the Islamist party far out on a limb by severing the overland weapons supply from Tehran and denying the party Syria's strategic depth. In his recent speech, Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezb'allah, asserted that "the downfall of the Asad regime is an American and Israeli interest," and added that "we should all be protective of the security and stability of Syria." Consequently, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezb'allah's militants have systematically expanded their operations in Syria in order to protect the regime.

No less significant, Iranian involvement in Syria has been counteracted by Saudi support of Syrian opposition groups. In fact, the Saudis, and by extension the Hariri's Mustaqbal party, had politically supported opposition groups following the murder of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005 up until the beginning of the rapprochement between King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Asad in 2009. True, the monarchy does not like to see radical changes in Syria; yet its concern about Iran's regional projection of power partly through mobilizing Arab Shi'a has emboldened some Saudi leaders, including Interior Minister Prince Nayef, who practically runs the daily affairs of the kingdom, to try to frustrate Iranian regional policies and activities. Consequently, certain Saudi leaders associated with the conservative Saudi religious establishment, in conjunction with Islamists and activists from Tripoli in northern Lebanon, have supported religious scholars as a conduit for channeling domestic opposition to the Syrian regime. It is no coincidence that some mosques have emerged as a rallying place for protesters. The Saudis and their allies are apparently trying to shake the merchant-military alliance by putting communal pressure on the Sunni merchant class.

The protest movement in Syria has become inadvertently associated with a grim battle of wills between Iran and its allies on one side, and Saudi Arabia and its allies on the other. This battle may not only decide the future of Syria, but also the future of the region. The international community's approach towards Syria has been thus far cautious and reserved, despite targeting the senior figures of the regime with sanctions. Barring a concerted international effort to support the Syrian opposition and to pressure the Syrian merchant class, there is little chance the regime may change its horrific policies. In fact, the current international policy is only deepening Iranian influence in Syria and turning Damascus into an Iranian vassal state paying tribute to Tehran.

Professors Robert G. Rabil and Walid Phares are authors of the forthcoming Religion, National Identity and Confessional Politics in Lebanon: The Challenge of Islamism (2011), and The Coming Revolution: The Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (2010), respectively.

Dear 'World Community': You Are Not Our Equals

2011-05-31T05:03:11Z

The so-called world community has no standing to tell the U.S. how to run its affairs.

The political left supports the idea that the United States should conform to "international norms" in matters that range from "global norms of civilian non-possession of firearms" to respect for militant Islam. As an example, the United Nations' Human Rights Council (HRC) has banned criticisms of Sharia law: "the Council will no longer tolerate criticism of either Sharia or specific fatwas in the name of human rights."

The world may indeed be a community but not all members of a community are equal. The community's wife-beater and drug dealer are not the equals of the community's doctor, home builder, banker, or teacher. Societies that abuse women and religious minorities under color of the ideology they call Islam are similarly not the equals of Euro-American and primarily Judeo-Christian nations whose laws and cultures encourage freedom of thought, rational inquiry, and full social and economic participation by both sexes and all races and religions.

The left's standard reply to unpleasant statements of truth of this nature consists of the single word "racism." A behavioral choice, and this includes a society's culture, shared beliefs, and values, is not a race.

A Behavioral Choice is Not a Race

Martin Luther King said to judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skins. The content of the Third World's character, and especially the character of its militant Islamic components, is why these nations are almost universally poor, ignorant, backward, and violent.

They are not poor because they, like Japan, have few natural resources; some are in fact rich in resources like oil. Japan however made a deliberate and collective choice during the mid-19^th century to adopt certain Euro-American values and practices. It took less than fifty years for Japan to transform itself from a feudal society to an industrialized nation equal to that of any in Europe. Japan's status as a developing nation therefore indicated genuine development in contrast to today's so-called "developing nations," whose decades of "development" have led nowhere but poverty, ignorance, and squalor.

This also explains why the Third World hates Israel.

Israel is, like Japan, relatively poor in natural resources. It was however settled by primarily European refugees and emigrants who brought with them Euro-American values that are intolerable to their militant Islamic neighbors. As reported by the International Monetary Fund, Israel's per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) was $26.7 thousand in 2010. Iran's is $4.7 thousand, so one oil-poor infidel is on average more than five times as productive as an oil-rich Iranian Shiite. The per-capita GDPs of Syria and Egypt are less than $3 thousand, and even that of oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia is $17 thousand.

This makes Israel living daily proof of the superiority of infidel culture over militant Islamic culture. Theocrats, mullahs, and ayatollahs who rely on the darkness of ignorance and superstition to control their subjects cannot tolerate such a beacon in their midst, and that is why they seek Israel's destruction. It is past time to speak this unpleasant truth and others no matter how many accusations of "racism" they evoke.

Western Civilization is Superior; Live With It

"Whatever happens, we have got / the Maxim gun, and they have not." The source of this jingoistic slogan was the Battle of Omdurman (1898) in which fanatic cries of "Allahu akbar!" proved no match for European discipline, logistics, and machine guns. Victor Davis Hansen's Carnage and Culture (pp. 21-22) adds, "Because free inquiry and rationalism are Western trademarks, European armies have marched to war with weapons either superior or equal to their adversaries, and have often been supplied far more lavishly through the Western marriage of capitalism, finance, and sophisticated logistics." The reference adds that Western science has operated without restraint from "religious fundamentalists, state censors, or stern cultural conservatives" -- that is, the kinds of people who are in charge of most of the Islamic world.

Ernest Volkman's Science Goes to War (p. 60) shows even more explicitly why militant Islamic societies are inferior to Christian, Hindu, and Jewish societies:

At the very moment [Thomas] Aquinas was telling his fellow Europeans how faith and reason could coexist, his counterpart, the leading Arab philosopher Ghazzali, concluded that the treasure of ancient texts represented social dynamite. The study of science and philosophy, he wrote, was harmful because it would shake man's faith in God and undermine the Muslim religion. Accordingly, the ruling caliph of Baghdad, to demonstrate his piety, ordered the burning of all manuscripts in the city's great library.

People who read books are universally far more advanced and affluent than people who burn books. When a society's religious police force half the population to wear face-covering sacks, and when religious reactionaries throw acid in the faces of girls who try to attend school, that society deprives itself of fifty percent of its human potential right up front. The paucity of Nobel Prizes in the Islamic world underscores this simple and inarguable fact.

Nobel Prize Ratio: Infidels 100, Muslims 1

The world's more than 1.5 billion Muslims have produced a total of nine Nobel Prize winners. Of these we can dismiss outright the Peace Prizes given to terrorist Yasser Arafat and also Anwar Sadat; it was hardly an achievement for the latter to sign a peace treaty after losing a war he started. (We dismiss Menachem Begin's Peace Prize for the same reason, as he simply made peace with a defeated aggressor.) This leaves seven legitimate Muslim Nobel Laureates of whom at least one, Shirin Ebadi, was persecuted by her Muslim-majority nation for the activities that earned her the Peace Prize.

The world's 15 million Jews have meanwhile produced about 160 Nobel Laureates, or more than 22 times as many as the Islamic world. This is a 2,200 to 1 ratio on a per capita basis. It comes as no surprise that Islamic supremacists hate Jews as living daily reminders of their culture's inferiority, and they also hate the Christian world for earning almost 100 times as many Nobel Prizes as their own. "My bully can beat up your honor student" summarizes their attitude but the world's honor students fortunately have enough advanced weapons (per Hansen and Volkman) to keep the bullies in their place. Bullies whose most imaginative use of construction cranes is to hang gay people, women, and Baha'is don't invent things like stealth bombers, Chobham armor, and Predator drones.

We therefore dismiss with intentional and willful contempt the Human Rights Council's directive against criticism of a misogynistic death cult that incites thousands of acts of mindless violence every year. Most of these acts are against peaceful and innocent people who identify themselves as Muslims but the bottom line is that this death cult kills people because of who they are (gay, female) or what they believe (Jew, Christian, Hindu, Baha'i, or wrong kind of Muslim). The HRC's efforts to suppress discussion of this problem make it a willful enabler of and accomplice to human rights violations, and therefore an enemy of civilized humanity.

The Nazis Find a Home in Post-Mubarak Egypt

2011-05-30T13:20:11Z

Wednesday May 25, 2011 a group of Egyptians, led by founding member Emad Abdel Sattar proclaimed the establishment of "a contemporary frame of reference" Nazi Party.

Sattar reportedly stated that the party, whose founding deputy is a former military official, would bring together prominent figures from Egyptian society, and vest all powers in a "carefully selected" president.

The Egyptian Leftist publication Al-Masry Al-Youm, at its English website, further contends the Nazi party operated clandestinely during the Mubarak regime which had prevented party leaders from carrying out their activities in the open. Two Facebook pages which appeared recently under the title of "the Egyptian Nazi Party," may confirm the party's public emergence since Mubarak was deposed.

Whether or not the inchoate new Egyptian Nazi Party, operating within a "modern framework," becomes a significant political force, Nazism and its ugly resonance with the country's Muslim masses, has a prolonged, disturbing legacy in Egypt.

Aribert Ferdinand Heim, was a member of Hitler's Waffen-SS, and a psychopathic "medical doctor" who committed the most heinous atrocities at the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps, including: the performance of operations on prisoners without anesthesia; removing organs from healthy inmates, who were then left then to die on the operating table; injecting poison, including gasoline, into the hearts of others; and taking the skull of at least one victim as a "souvenir."

As revealed in this February 4/5, 2009 New York Times story, Heim, like many Nazi war criminals, lived safely in Egypt, perhaps for up to three decades, following his flight from Europe in 1962.

A dusty briefcase with rusted buckles, sitting nearly forgotten in storage here in Cairo, hid the truth behind Dr. Heim's flight to the Middle East. Obtained by The New York Times and the German television station ZDF from members of the Doma family, proprietors of the hotel here where Dr. Heim resided, the files in the briefcase tell the story of his life, and death, in Egypt.

Josef Kohl, a former inmate at Mauthausen, gave the following testimony regarding Heim to a United States war crimes investigating team on Jan. 18, 1946, less than a year after the German surrender.

Dr. Heim had a habit of looking into inmates' mouths to determine whether their teeth were in impeccable condition. If this were the case, he would kill the prisoner with an injection, cut his head off, leave it to cook in the crematorium for hours, until all the flesh was stripped from the naked skull and prepare the skull for himself and his friends as a decoration for their desks.

During 1979, Heim (who died on Aug. 10, 1992, according to his son and the death certificate), wrote a letter to the German magazine Spiegel, after the publication of a report about his war-crimes case. Whether he ever sent the letter, which was found in his files (along with numerous others were "written in meticulous cursive style in German or English") is unclear. According to the Times report,

the letter...accused Simon Wiesenthal, who was interned at Mauthausen, of being "the one who invented these atrocities." Dr. Heim went on to discuss what he called Israeli massacres of Palestinians, and added that "the Jewish Khazar, Zionist lobby of the U.S. were the first ones who in 1933 declared war against Hitler's Germany." The Turkic ethnic group the Khazars were a recurring theme for Dr. Heim, who kept himself busy in Cairo, researching a paper he wrote in English and German, decrying the possibility of anti-Semitism owing to the fact, he said, that most Jews were not Semitic in ethnic origin.

Heim converted to Islam (in his case, at the Cairo mosque of Sunni Islam's foremost religious teaching institution, Al Azhar), becoming "known to locals" as Tarek Hussein Farid. Apparently, Heim, aka, Dr. Death, became a devout Muslim, "maintained the discipline to walk some 15 miles each day through the busy streets of Egypt's capital...to the world-renowned Al Azhar mosque", and bonded with his Muslim neighbors, who knew him as "Uncle" Tarek Hussein Farid.

He formed close bonds with his neighbors, including the Doma family, which ran the Kasr el Madina hotel, where Dr. Heim lived the last decade before his death. Mahmoud Doma, whose father owned the establishment, said Dr. Heim spoke Arabic, English and French, in addition to German. Mr. Doma said his neighbor read and studied the Koran, including a copy in German that the Domas had ordered for him. Mahmoud Doma, 38, became emotional when talking about the man he knew as Uncle Tarek, whom he described giving him books and encouraging him to study. "He was like a father. He loved me and I loved him."

He recalled how Uncle Tarek bought rackets and set up a tennis net on the hotel roof, where he and his siblings played with the German Muslim until sundown. But by 1990, Dr. Heim's good health began to fail him and he was diagnosed with cancer.

Thus Heim epitomized scores of other Nazis, who found safe haven in Egypt, most importantly, the pious Muslim jihadist and Nazi ideologue, Johannes "Omar Amin" von Leers. Historian Bat Ye'or has described this phenomenon, as follows (here, pp.154-55):

...they lived under false names and worked in anti-Zionist propaganda centers, such as the Institute for the Study of Zionism, which was founded in Cairo, in 1955. Its director, Alfred Zingler (alias Mahmoud Saleh), worked together with Dr. Johannes von Leers (d. 1965, alias Omar Amin), who had been a specialist on the "Jewish Question" in Josef Goebbels' propaganda department. Zingler's main assistants were Dr. Werner Witschale and Hans Appler (Saleh Shafar), who had also served on the staff of Goebbels' ministry, as well as Louis Heiden. Heiden was the editor of one of the many Arabic versions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and of a translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf into Arabic. In 1955, the Cairo Egyptian special services for anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propaganda hired Appler.

Other Nazis settled in Egypt as well. Most of them worked with the Egyptian government as advisers on anti-Zionist propaganda or assisted with the organization of police forces or as military trainers in Palestinian terrorist camps. In 1957, according to Frankfurter Illustrierte [August 25, 1957], the number of Nazis in Egypt was two thousand. [emphasis added] Erich Altern (Ali Bella), the chief of the Jewish section of the Gestapo in occupied Galicia [Eastern Central Europe, between Poland and Ukraine] during the war, escaped to Egypt in the early 1950s, where he served as a military instructor in the Palestinian camps. [Standartenfuhrer (an SS regiment leader)] Baumann (Ali Ben Khader), who had collaborated in the extermination of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and went into hiding, became a military specialist in Egypt for the army of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The pervasive impact of this ugly mentality is perhaps best illustrated by then Colonel Anwar El-Sadat's 1953 "Letter to Hitler". When, in September, 1953 several news agency reports were circulated claiming that Hitler was still alive, the Cairo weekly Al Musawwar, posed this question to a number of Egyptian personalities, including Sadat: "If you wished to send Hitler a personal letter, what would you write to him?" In response, Sadat wrote the following, published September 18, 1953: (here, p. 155 )

My dear Hitler,

I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart. Even if you appear to have been defeated, in reality you are the victor. You succeeded in creating dissensions between Churchill, the old man, and his allies, the Sons of Satan. [emphasis added] Germany will win because her existence is necessary to preserve the world balance. Germany will be reborn in spite of the Western and Eastern powers. There will be no peace unless Germany once again becomes what she was. The West, as well as the East, will pay for her rehabilitation-whether they like it or not. Both sides will invest a great deal of money and effort in Germany in order to have her on their side, which is of great benefit to Germany. So much for the present and the future. As for the past, I think you made mistakes, like too many battlefronts and the shortsightedness of Ribbentrop vis-a vis the experienced British diplomacy. But your trust in your country and people will atone for those blunders. We will not be surprised if you appear again in Germany or if a new Hitler rises up in your wake. [emphasis added]

Almost 40 years ago (1973/74) Bat Ye'or published a remarkably prescient analysis of the Islamic antisemitism and resurgent jihadism in her native Egypt, being packaged for dissemination throughout the Muslim world. The primary, core Antisemitic and jihadist motifs were Islamic, derived from Islam's foundational texts, on to which European, especially Nazi elements were grafted.

Nazi academic and propagandist of extermination Johannes von Leers' writings and personal career trajectory - as a favored contributor in Goebbels' propaganda ministry, to his eventual adoption of Islam (as Omar Amin von Leers) while working as an anti-Western, and antisemitic/anti-Zionist propagandist under Nasser's regime from the mid-1950s, until his death in 1965 - represents the apotheosis of this convergence of jihad, Islamic antisemitism, and racist, Nazi antisemitism, described by Bat Ye'or.

Upon his arrival in Egypt in 1956, it was the jihadist and Nazi ally, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, former Mufti of Jerusalem, who welcomed von Leers, stating, "We are grateful to you for having come here to resume the struggle against the powers of darkness incarnated by international Judaism." The ex-Mufti oversaw von Leers' formal conversion to Islam, and remained one of his confidants. And von Leers described the origins of the Muslim "forename," Omar Amin, that he adopted as part of his conversion to Islam in a November, 1957 letter to American Nazi H. Keith Thompson,

I myself have embraced Islam and accepted the new forename Omar Amin, Omar according to the great Caliph Omar who was a grim enemy of the Jews, Amin in honor of my friend Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti.

Already in essays published during 1938 and 1942, the first dating back almost two decades before his conversion to Islam while in Egypt, von Leers produced analyses focused primarily on Muhammad's interactions with the Jews of Medina. These essays reveal his pious reverence for Islam and its prophet, and a thorough understanding of the sacralized Islamic sources for this narrative, i.e., the Koran, hadith, and sira. which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics.

Von Leers' 1942 essay simultaneously extols the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty, and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later. And even earlier, in a 1938 essay, von Leers sympathized with, "the leading role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the Arabians' battles against the Jewish invasion in Palestine." Von Leers observes that to the pious Muslim,

...the Jew is an enemy, not simply an ‘unbeliever' who might perhaps be converted or, despite the fact that he does not belong to Islam, might still be a person of some estimation. Rather, the Jew is the predestined opponent of the Muslim, one who desired to bring down the work of the Prophet.

Von Leers, for example, offers this reverent summary characterization of Muhammad's activities in Mecca, and later Medina, which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics:

[Mecca] For years Muhammad sought in Mecca to succeed with his preaching that there was only one God, the sole, all-merciful king of Judgment Day. He opposed to the Christian Trinity the unity of God, rejected the Christian doctrine of original sin and salvation, and instead gave every believer as a guiding principle the complete fulfillment of the commands of the righteous, given by a compassionate and just God, before whom every individual person had to account for his acts.

[Medina] September 622 he left Mecca for Medina, where he took up residence. Here he encountered the Jewish problem for the first time. He believed in the victorious power of good in the world, he was firmly convinced that the religion of the one and only God, with its easy, practical, reasonable, basic laws for human life was nothing other than the original religion. He wanted to take mankind out of the current turmoil and lead it toward the original, clear vision of God. But since he had to deal with people who had been influenced by both Christianity and Judaism, he said that it was the religion in which Abraham (Ibrahim) had already believed, andwhich Christ and Moses had proclaimed, only each time it had been distorted by human beings. He said that this had been revealed anew to him by God. He wanted to make the path easy to follow for both Christians and Jews; thus at first he allowed his followers to pray facing toward Jerusalem. He repeatedly emphasized that he only wanted to purify the existing religions, to establish the restored, newly revealed faith. At the same time he was a skilled statesman. When the Arab tribes were unified, theJews became a minority in Medina. Muhammad provided them with a kind of protectorate agreement: they were to retain their administration and their forms of worship, help the faithful defend the city, not ally themselves with Muhammad's opponents, and contribute to the faithful's wars. The Jews could have been satisfied with this. But they began a general hate campaign against Islam, which proclaimed a pure conception of God.

Citing (or referring to) the relevant foundational text sources (i.e., Qur'an 13:36; 8:55-58; 59:1-15; the sira and canonical hadith descriptions of the fate of individual Jews such as Abu Afak and Ka'b ibn Ashraf and the Jewish tribes Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayzah, as well as the Jews of the Khaybar oasis), von Leers chronicles Muhammad's successful campaigns that vanquished these Jews, killing and dispersing them, "or at most allow[ing] them to remain in certain places if they paid a poll tax." Von Leers further describes the accounts (from the hadith, and, more elaborately, the sira) of Muhammad's poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess, and also notes the canonical hadith that records Caliph Umar's rationale for his putative expulsion from northern Arabia of those remaining Jews who survived Muhammad's earlier campaigns:

On his deathbed Mohammed is supposed to have said: "There must not be two religions in Arabia." One of his successors, the caliph Omar, resolutely drove the Jews out of Arabia.

And von Leers even invokes the apocalyptic canonical hadith that forty-six years later became the keystone of Hamas's 1988 charter sanctioning a jihad genocide against the Jewish State of Israel:

Ibn Huraira even communicates to us the following assertion of the great man of God: "Judgment Day will come only when the Moslems have inflicted an annihilating defeat on the Jews, when every stone and every tree behind which a Jew has hidden says to believers: "Behind me stands a Jew, smite him."

Von Leers's 1942 essay concludes by simultaneously extolling the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic suzerainty and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to Islam just over a decade later:

They [the Jews] were subjected to a very restrictive and oppressive special regulation that completely crippled Jewish activities. All reporters of the time when the Islamic lands still completely obeyed their own laws agree that the Jews were particularly despised. . . .

Mohammed's opposition to the Jews undoubtedly had an effect-oriental Jewry was completely paralyzed by Islam. Its back was broken.

Oriental Jewry has played almost no role in Judaism's massive rise to power over the last two centuries. Scorned, the Jews vegetated in the dirty alleys of the mellah, and were subject to a special regulation that did not allow them to profiteer, as they did in Europe, or even to receive stolen goods, but instead kept them fearful and under pressure. Had the rest of the world adopted a similar method, today we would have no Jewish question-and here we must absolutely note that there were also Islamic rulers, among them especially the Spanish caliphs of the House of Muawiyah, who did not adhere to Islam's traditional hostility to Jews-to their own disadvantage. However, as a religion Islam has performed the immortal service of preventing the Jews from carrying out their threatened conquest of Arabia and of defeating the dreadful doctrine of Jehovah through a pure faith that opened the way to higher culture for many peoples and gave them an education and humane training, so that still today a Moslem who takes his religion seriously is one of the most worthy phenomena in this world in turmoil.

Seven decades ago, University of Notre Dame historian Waldemar Gurian, and Protestant theologian Karl Barth, each elucidated the profound attraction of Islam for a hardcore Nazi ideologue such as von Leers-which also underpins the subsequent Islamic-Nazi symbiosis so evident in post World War II Egypt.

Gurian, a refugee, who witnessed first hand the Communist and Fascist totalitarian movements in Europe, concluded (circa 1945) that Hitler, in a manner analogous to the 7th century precedent of Muhammad, had been the simplifier of German nationalism.

A fanatical simplifier who appeared as the unifier of various German traditions in the service of simple national aims and who was seen by many differing German groups - even by some people outside Germany - as the fulfiller of their wishes and sharer of their beliefs, with some distortions and exaggerations - such, as long as he had success, was Adolf Hitler.

Based upon the same clear understandings, and devoid of our era's dulling, politically correct constraints, Karl Barth [from, The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day] had offered this warning, published in 1939:

Participation in this life, according to it the only worthy and blessed life, is what National Socialism, as a political experiment, promises to those who will of their own accord share in this experiment. And now it becomes understandable why, at the point where it meets with resistance, it can only crush and kill - with the might and right which belongs to Divinity! Islam of old as we know proceeded in this way. It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam [emphasis in original], its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah's Prophet

Investigative journalist John Roy Carlson's 1948-1950 interviews of Arab Muslim religious and political leaders provide consummate independent validation of these Western assessments. Perhaps most revealing were the candid observations of Aboul Saud, whom Carlson described as a "pleasant English-speaking member of the Arab League Office." Aboul Saud explained to Carlson that Islam was an authoritarian religio-political creed which encompassed all of a Muslim's spiritual and temporal existence. He stated plainly,

You might describe Mohammedanism as a religious form of State Socialism...The Koran give the State the right to nationalize industry, distribute land, or expropriate the right to nationalize industry, distribute land, or expropriate property. It grants the ruler of the State unlimited powers, so long as he does not go against the Koran. The Koran is our personal as well as our political constitution.

And after interviewing Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna himself, who "preached the doctrine of the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other," Carlson observed:

It became clear to me why the average Egyptian worshipped the use of force. Terror was synonymous with power! This was one reason why most Egyptians, regardless of class or calling had admired Nazi Germany. It helped explain the sensational growth of the Ikhwan el Muslimin [Muslim Brotherhood]

However, as Brynjar Lia's 1998 analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood's formative years (1928-1942) points out,

...al-Banna was anxious to distance himself from the aggressive chauvinism and racism that flourished in several countries in the 1930s, and rejected racial theories as utterly incompatible with Islam. In fact, the Muslim Brothers used to make fun of the Young Egypt Party (Misr al-Fatah) which they saw as trying to imitate the German Nazis.

Lia acknowledges how Al-Banna's and the Muslim Brotherhood's vision remained steadfastly Islamic-hence its deep resonance with the timeless aspiration of the Muslim masses to establish a transnational Muslim Caliphate via jihad.

Quoting the Qur'anic verse [2:193] "And fight them till sedition is no more, and the faith is God's," the Muslim Brothers urged their fellow Muslims to restore the bygone greatness of Islam, and to re-establish the Islamic empire...[T]het even called for the restoration of "former Islamic colonies" in Andalus (Spain), southern Italy, Sicily, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands...When they did express admiration of certain aspects of Nazism or Fascism, it was usually in the context of demonstrating that the Europeans had implemented some of "the principles of Islam," such as modest dress code, encouragement of early marriage, a strong patriotism, and a military jihad spirit.

Remarkably concordant views on jihad were expressed by von Leers during the same era, prior to his formal conversion to Islam. I was able to obtain (from the Russian State Military Archive of captured Nazi documents), and have translated from the original German, an unpublished ~ 6000 word essay Leers' wrote during World War II (apparently in 1942), entitled, "Philosophies of Peace and War in Islam."

Disingenuously ignoring the explicit imperial designs of jihad-to subjugate all of mankind under Islamic Law, as detailed with lucidity in the Koran, sunna, and a millennial continuum of Muslim jurisprudence-von Leers provides this hagiographic overview of Islam's bellicose institution for global conquest, linked to his condemnation of Western European Christendom:

For quite a long time, however, the great colonial powers have been using treaties between themselves and smaller nations merely as a mutual means of help, that is, until one nation has become stronger than the other in its leadership and its means of war. The Qur'an intends and demands that treaties be established upon the bases of justice and equal rights of access, without ulterior motives or underhanded intentions - otherwise, there will never be peace upon the earth.

Leers amplifies this traditional Muslim apologetic in his assessment of the Koranic injunction-verse 9:29-for timeless jihad against Judeo-Christian societies.

"Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden -- such men as practice not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book -- until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled" (9:29, Arberry translation). One must therefore fight against those who possess the Book and who threaten the land and life of the Muslims, who oppress the people or want to convert the Muslims to their faith. This enemy, when defeated, must pay tribute....This payment, therefore, is not a "payment of reparations" in the European sense, by which the enemy is completely ruined.

Predictably, Leers also highlights this traditional Koranic statement of Jewish perfidy in relation to wartime treaties. But again, Leers "exegesis" on Koran 8:55 is entirely consistent with the gloss on this verse in the seminal, mainstream Koranic commentary Tafsir al-Jalalayn which maintains that 8:55 refers specifically to the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza.

The Qur'an considered the Jews, who never remained true to the treaties they made with the Prophet, to be lower than cattle. It says concerning them, " Surely the worst of beasts in God's sight are the unbelievers, who will not believe, those of them with whom thou hast made compact, then they break their compact every time, not being godfearing" (8:55-56, Arberry translation)

Until his death in 1965, von Leers remained unrepentant about the annihilationist policies towards the Jews he helped advance serving Hitler's Reich. Indeed he was convinced of the righteousness of the Nazi war against the Jews, and as a pious Muslim convert, von Leers viewed the Middle East as the succeeding battleground to seal the fate of world Jewry. His public evolution over the course of three decades illustrates starkly the shared centrality to these totalitarianisms - both modern and ancient - of the Jews as "first and last enemy" motif.

Over fifty years later ignorance, denial, and delusion have engendered the sorry state of public understanding of this most ominous conversion of hatreds, by all its potential non-Muslim victims, not only Jews. This lack of understanding is little advanced by the spate of contemporary analyses which seek "Nazi roots" of the cataclysmic September 11, 2001 acts of jihad terrorism, and see Nazism as having "introduced" antisemitism to an otherwise "tolerant", even philosemitic Islamic world beginning in the 1930s. Awkwardly forced, and ahistorical, these analyses realign the Nazi cart in front of the Islamic steed which has driven both global jihadism and Islamic antisemitism, since the 7th century advent of the Muslim creed, particularly during the last decade of Muhammad's life.

Finally, an October 1957 US intelligence report on von Leers' writing and activities for Egypt and the Arab League confirmed his complete adoption of the triumphal Muslim worldview, desirous of nothing less than the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization by jihad (#382):

He [Dr. Omar Amin von Leers] is becoming more and more a religious zealot, even to the extent of advocating an expansion of Islam in Europe in order to bring about stronger unity through a common religion. This expansion he believes can come not only from contact with the Arabs in the Near East and Africa but with Islamic elements in the USSR. The results he envisions as the formation of a political bloc against which neither East nor West could prevail

The so-called "Arab Spring" has unleashed jihadist forces-most notably within Egypt itself-pious Muslim convert "Omar Amin" von Leers long ago foresaw, and cherished. Those who wish to preserve our uniquely Western heritage of freedom must not ignore, or worse still, delusively re-interpret this existential threat.

Will America Suffer the Fate of Rome?

2011-05-30T05:05:00Z

Many people with whom I talk these days say they sense something is happening to their familiar world. They are not sure how to put this feeling into words. For them, the river of time seems to have altered its course. You hear this uncertainty expressed not only at cocktail parties but at barbecues, too.

We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." These words by Barack Obama echo through time. Have they been heard before, in another language, in another age?

I sense those who walk by the banks of the Potomac nowadays realize the politics of those who once walked by the banks of the Tiber. We share in our time, as the United States of America passes into something else, an experience shared by those who lived through the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.

Like a mighty river, the flow of politics creates a current that is irresistible. We may want to stop the flow but we can't. That feeling of struggling against the current, of swiming hard but getting nowhere, is what the man cast adrift feels before he is drowned by events."

In Niall Rudd's introduction to his English translation of The Republic and The Laws by the Roman statesman Cicero, Rudd writes:

Cicero dreams of Rome as she had been a hundred years earlier, before the structure had begun to give way under the strains of empire.

Granted, it would be too late to save the Republic now; three years later Caesar would cross the Rubicon. But even if, by some stroke of magic, Cicero's dream had come true, disaster would not have been averted. By the 50s huge problems had developed which could not be solved within the framework of what was, essentially a city-state.

First, an empire of such size and complexity could not be run by a small élite of all-around amateurs in which within a decade the same man might be expected to manage finances, administer city departments, sit as a judge, and lead a military campaign. The voting system was over-centralized and out-dated; citizens could no longer be expected to travel to the capitol for elections and other meetings of the assembly...

There were also intractable economic problems resulting from the decay of smallholdings owing to the absence of farmers on military service...All this led to the growth of a workless and resentful urban proletariat, which could easily be inflamed by demagogues.

That, in turn, contributed to the worse problem of all. Troops were recruited by promise of loot and land...(these troops) depended for their future, not on the Senate, but on the power of an ambitious general...There is an air of unreality about the Laws.

Little by little, the river of time floated the Republic into the Empire. Today, we look back and remember the insanity and debauchery of Caligula. We remember, too, Cicero for is writings and how he, according to Plutarch, "stretched out his neck to meet the murder's stroke."

Now, let us imagine a thousand years from today. A scholar of that new age is translating from English to his own language what remains of William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale.

In his introduction to Buckley, this future translator writes about Buckley as if he were the Cicero of his age living in the American Republic, except Buckley did not suffer the fate of having his hands and head cut off by his political enemies.

Our future translator writes:

Buckley dreams of the United States as she had been a hundred years earlier, before the structure had begun to give way under the strains of globalization.

Granted, it would be too late to save the US Constitution, now; the Democrats would run Obama for President. But even if, by some stroke of magic, Buckley's conservative dream had come true, disaster would not have been averted.

By the late 1990s huge problems had developed which could not be solved within the framework of what was, essentially a nation-state. First, a nation of such size and complexity as the United States could not be run by a small élite of patronage, party politicians in which within a decade the same man might be expected to manage finances when he was only good at campaigning.

The voting system was corrupted by illegal immigration and out-dated machinery; voters could no longer be expected to prove citizenship, or vote for a candidate who would abolish their government job...

There were also intractable economic problems resulting from the decay of small business, owing to the increase in government regulations and higher taxes ... All this led to the growth of a workless and resentful urban proletariat who lived off welfare, and which could easily be inflamed by Democrat Party demagogues and their media allies.

That, in turn, contributed to the worse problem of all. Troops, who were recruited to fight the desert wars, came home to inflation, falling property values, and unemployment. Their patriotism also was suspect in the New North American Union.

Many of these troops joined the underground and resistance. They were hunted by military drones, the same drones they used for desert warfare ... There is an air of unreality about God and Man at Yale.

Three thousand years have passed in translation. Our translators wonder if to be born and to die is the common journey of man. In-between, there is politics; Republics and Empires come and go. Some are statesmen. Other men are assassinated.

Robert Klein Engler lives in Des Plaines, Illinois. His books, Monarchs of August and Contra Obama, are available from Lulu.com. Read about his legal defense fund.

America's Exceptionalism and Destiny

2011-05-30T05:04:58Z

The people of United States, a nation struggling to regain a sense of optimism and confidence, have, over many years, been told by the elites in American society that their country is one of an ignoble nature and history. That "American Exceptionalism" is a myth which has precipitated the plunder of the planet and the exploitation of mankind throughout the world.

A nation whose alleged sins have been so egregious that the current President, whose primary campaign promise was to "transform America" into a collectivist state, feels duty bound to go around the world on bended knee apologizing for those perceived transgressions.

The United States has become a ship without a rudder aimlessly wandering about the turbulent seas piloted by those who only interest is themselves, their ideology and thirst for power. Yet the majority of the American people know that they have in their possession the key to a prosperous and equitable society: individual freedom and liberty concurrent with a significant constraint on the power of government.

They also know that in the annals of mankind the true account of America's contribution to the world and it peoples is one of magnificent achievement whether freeing millions from tyranny by force of arms or improving their standard of living by fostering global economic growth and new technology.

Perhaps the one thing above all others that many in the United States, particularly among the ruling class, do not appreciate is the indispensable and unprecedented role this nation has played in giving hope and a real-life vision of the blessings of true freedom and liberty to countless millions throughout the world. Nothing this country has done in its history can compare to being what Ronald Reagan referred to as: "The Shining City on the Hill."

On this Memorial Day the following is a tale emblematic of this unique role and the strain of honor and bravery that permeates the American character. While this story took place in Europe during World War II, it could have been set in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, or countless other nations:

A soldier, a small American flag on the shoulder of his jacket, slowly walks through the streets of a once bustling city now lying in ruin. The few still upright walls, their windows and doors blown out, appear as skeletons framed against the blue sky. His senses honed to a fine razor's edge to react to the slightest sound or movement, he steps carefully around the broken bricks and shattered glass.

The soldier hears a faint stirring behind him and wheeling around, rifle at the ready in anticipation of the worst, he sees, instead, a young girl perhaps five or six years of age slowly walking towards him. Her tattered clothes barely able to cover her emaciated frame. Their eyes meet. Eyes now dulled by the weariness of war and the never-ending struggle for survival.

He offers his hand to her and while wary she senses a genuine kindness in his demeanor. They share a chocolate bar and though unable to communicate there is an instant bond. She then motions to three other children, among them a boy around the age of two or three, to join them. They slowly and apprehensively come from the behind the shattered walls. Welcoming them into the group, the soldier, with a gentle smile, gives all his rations to the youngsters. For an hour or two, the children, some for the first time in their brief lives, revel in a sense of security and companionship as they gather around the soldier. They sit and talk to each other as best they can while the thoughts of the young man gradually turn to the memory of his childhood, family, and a sweetheart in a small town so far away.

When the time comes for the soldier to depart, the little girl tugs on his sleeve and with tears in her eyes hugs and kisses him on the cheek; the other children hold onto him unwilling to let go. Doing what he must, the soldier reluctantly turns away and without hesitation returns to his duty and the bloody cauldron of war; but he leaves behind children who for the rest of their lives would cherish the memory of that day and of the young man from another country who had shown them such genuine friendship and kindness.

The following day a snipers bullet found its mark and the same young man so full of hopes and dreams lay dead beneath the gaunt image of a splintered and shattered tree silhouetted by the purple haze of the setting sun.

Yet in a street of a devastated city thousands of miles from his home the soldier had shared a fleeting moment of peace and tranquility with a new family, those he and his fellow Americans had freed from a life of slavery and oppression and given a chance to pursue their dreams as he willingly gave up his.

The country, the United States of America, from whence this soldier came, is unique in the history of mankind. When attacked by foreign powers America never viewed those incidents as a pretext to conquer and permanently subjugate other nations. Rather this country in the pursuit of self-defense also aspired to the noble calling of freeing others from tyranny and allowing the people of those nations to establish their own governments based on freedom and liberty.

The basic tenets in the founding of the United States: 1) that all men are endowed by God with certain inalienable rights and, 2) that the individual and not the state is paramount, enabled a society to be created that fostered love and respect not only of country but of fellow man regardless of where he might live.

It is this distinctive trait among all global communities which has motivated countless American men and women over the years to willingly take up arms to defend a land they cherish and to expend blood and treasure so others can live in peace and freedom.

Those that were liberated, initially pre-occupied with rebuilding and getting on with their shattered lives, sometimes have failed to acknowledge their debt to those living and dead who rescued them and succeeding generations from lives of tyranny and repression. As the years march inexorably on, the memory of the past, particularly the most unpleasant chapters are pushed into the recesses of daily consciousness. With each new generation the knowledge and experience of war and survival is replaced with the demands of day-to-day living but throughout the four corners of the earth the sacrifices and the ideals that America represents are embedded in the psyche of all men.

I have lived among the people of the United States for sixty years after having been welcomed to its shores as a survivor and displaced orphan from World War II. I have been privileged to get to know the magnificent everyday citizens of this country from all walks of life and ethnicity whether in the foothills of Appalachia, the farm fields of the Great Plains, the imposing vistas of the West or the streets of America's cities. Their forbears created and molded the country that became the foremost nation on earth. That drive, determination, and character still beats deep within the heart of all who are proud to call the United States their home.

I am confident that once freed from the shackles of oppressive government as well as the misguided, egocentric, and often hostile leadership extant throughout the corridors of power, the vast majority of the people of this nation will make certain that America's best days are still ahead of it. The role of being the noblest and most successful experiment in the annals of mankind is this nation's destiny and an obligation it will fulfill.

Our Holiday

2011-05-30T05:04:31Z

The left long has loathed our military. During the 1960s, students on campuses supported by blue collar taxpayers vilified the sons of these steelworkers and truck drivers who were fighting and dying in Vietnam. An entire television series, M*A*S*H, was constructed around the venality of career soldiers and the nobility of conscripted doctors who thought that fighting the father of Kim Jong-Il was somehow morally wrong. Most of us have known brave American servicemen who were spat upon and mocked when they came home on leave from Vietnam. This was, some Americans once thought, the residue of an unhappy war in Southeast Asia which ended four decades ago.

The politicians that spoke most contemptuously of American troops in Vietnam were leftist Democrats. Bill Clinton, the draft dodger president, famously wrote of loathing the military. Listen to John Kerry despicably defame the conduct of American troops in Vietnam. After Desert Storm, after Enduring Freedom, has anything changed? No. Watch the Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin describe our men and women in uniform in Iraq behaving like Nazis or Gulag guards. See Congressman John Murtha, who was almost the Democrat Floor Leader, condemn United States Marines at Haditha without so much as a hearing. Hear what Barack Obama said in 2007 about American forces razing villages and killing civilians. These are not the wild comments of rogue politicians. This is the face of the Democrat Party.

As Jeanne Kirkpatrick put in more than thirty years ago, describing the left's pathological hatred of America: "They always blame America first." The reasons are not hard to understand. American exceptionalism, that virtue which Prime Minister Netanyahu so recently described as a companion to Israeli exceptionalism, means that the two forces which proceeded from opposite direction into the foul heart of the Reich in 1944 were just as opposite in their moral purpose. American and British troops came to liberate people and Soviet troops came to re-enslave people. When American troops go to Iraq and to Afghanistan, it is also as liberators and not oppressors. Only someone so blinded with hatred of America could think otherwise.

Those who hate America and who hate Israel take their casualties in the war between decency and malice. Just as Netanyahu's own brother, Yonatan, a decorated hero of the Yom Kippur War, was the only Israeli soldier to die in the raid on Entebbe, an operation he commanded. The day Yonatan died was the very day of our nation's bicentennial, July 4, 1976. It is certain that the Prime Minister of Israel, on our Memorial Day, fully grasps what the left in America does not: The best, the very best of America, paid the final price for our liberties and our safety just as the best, the very best of Israel, pays that price so that politicians are free to squabble in the Knesset.

The left does not grasp that the men and women who volunteer to place their bodies between us and those who hate us are held in special respect by all the rest of us. That is why when Gallup asked Americans which institution of our nation it respects most, military was at the very top of the list and when Gallup asks Americans which profession we trust most, out of twenty-two professions, military officers are second on the list (right after nurses). My wife's father, who knew the domains of Hell and its demons well, as a skeleton waiting for hope in Bergen-Belsen, grasped at once after Liberation that the British and American soldiers were the heroes in a world of pain and fear. He never forgot it and for the next fifty years, Paul told everyone who would listen that his life -- his life as a proud American citizen -- was a debt he owed to the boys at Omaha Beach and Bastogne who never made it back home.

The American military, of all the forces on our troubled planet, offers hope. It is a meritocracy in a land too often addicted to affirmative action or cronyism. Some of the first big steps in racial equality were through the military, and it is no accident that men like Congressman West in Florida are as courageously conservative as any member of Congress, and that he is wholly untroubled by the ninnies of black groupthink in Congress. Every other minority -- Hispanics, Asians, Arabs, and others -- serves proudly within our Armed Forces. The very composition of our Armed Forces ought to make leftists beam, especially since no one has been conscripted to serve for almost forty years. But the left still hates this ultimate symbol of America, this first significant organization of our nation in 1776, this group of people who are more inclined to seriously trust God than, say, a community organizer who has never faced real danger.

Memorial Day is our holiday. That does not mean it is the holiday of conservatives -- every brave Democrat and every courageous leftist who serves and risks his life for this nation deserves the same respect as a soldier, sailor, or airman whose politics we love more. But it does mean that Memorial Day is our holiday by default. The left wants no part of it, really. An Obama who could not find time for an Easter address, but who sees every obscure Muslim holiday or whimsical invention like Kwanzaa, wants no part of Memorial Day except to scratch up a few style points in the afterglow of bin Ladin's death. Leftists who see nothing of worth in life cannot grasp the sacrifice of young men who saw a lifetime compressed into quiet, lonely moments of mortal sacrifice for freedom. The left, indeed, eschews the very idea of "sacrifice" in an adolescent world of entitlement. While we, the rest of America, the normal and respectful part, see on Memorial Day a time of remembrance for those who can remember no longer: and we do remember.

Bruce Walker is the author of Poor Lenin's Almanac: Perverse Leftists Proverbs for Modern Life.

They Who Serve

2011-05-30T05:03:56Z

My father lives in a wonderful retirement community where the lawns are all neatly mowed, the roses pruned, and the trees trimmed every fall. When I come by each week Dad usually has three or four requests from his friends lined up for me: move a couch, carry some heavy boxes upstairs, assemble some furniture, or set up a new TV or computer.

Em and Sparks, a happy but odd couple live in the building across the courtyard in a large condo. I have moved their TV, and re-arranged their living room furniture a couple of time over the past few years. I have also hung Sparks's models from the ceiling in his study. This week Dad asked that I would help Sparks with something heavy in his closet.

"Age is finally catching up with Sparks," My father told me. "He's almost ninety and has had a couple accidents getting around the house."

"Anything serious?"

"Em is thinking of moving Sparks to an extended care facility, if these problems continue. Accidents at his age are pretty damn serious. See what you think when you go over there."

I walked across the courtyard and asked myself the question I always asked before I rang their doorbell. Why does Em, who is very sprightly and spirited sixty- eight-year-old widow, shack up with man over twenty years her senior?

I rang the doorbell, while anticipating Sparks's normal greeting. I was not disappointed.

"Is that NMI's kid?" a gravelly voice asked. My Dad was in the service and had no middle initial in his name. Sparks heard this story once and I was thereafter known as NMI's kid, even with my own graying mustache and salt and pepper hair. Em answered the door, her usual cheerfulness clouded with serious dark eyes and a thin smile.

Em grabbed my arm and hurriedly whispered in that deep Southern lilt, "We must talk first, Cal. I'll tell Sparks he needs to finish up the ailerons on that ME 109, before you move anything." Em guided Sparks into his study, got him settled in at his work bench, and closed the door as she left the room.

She's a very confident and attractive woman in her summer dress and sandals, I thought. Em sat down across the couch from me, tucked her dress under her legs and looked right into my eyes.

"What did your Dad say, before you came over?"

"Just that Sparks had a couple of accidents and you were thinking of moving him to that new residential care facility on Montego Drive. It's a very fine place from what I hear."

The silence grew between us. Decisions were being weighed, and finally a few tears flowed from the corner of her eyes. She dabbed at her cheeks and said in that sweet drawl, "Cal, I'm pretty sure I'll be asking a favor for Sparks. He's been all wound up since he asked for you to come over." Em lowered her voice and leaned toward me, "After twenty- three years, even I don't know what's up there."

Em took a small couch pillow, wrapped both arms around it, and hugged it to her body. "You know, all these years, Sparks and I have only been.... friends." Her eyes bored into mine.

"I never tell Sparks about my lovers, but I‘m sure he knows. I met Sparks at an officer's club reception, six months after my husband was killed at Khe Sahn. He was just about to retire from the Army after 27 years as a non- commissioned officer. He came over to my table and said some very kind words about Jeff, my late husband, and told me to get on with my life, as that's what most servicemen would want for their families. I never forget that kindness. But, I didn't re-marry, so no children, and then I went on to a very successful career in commercial real estate."

"Twenty years later I ran into Sparks at a Las Vegas casino. He was frankly, a mess. Broke, drinking, and washing dishes just to pay for a cheap room off the Strip. I bought him dinner and saw hope in his smile. He was still that Command Sergeant Major with a chest full of ribbons and medals." Em paused, and stared into the distance. "I realized at that moment my anger at Jeff's death had finally disappeared. And I saw that I had never really given anything back to my country or those vets like Sparks. I know that sounds a bit trite, but that's the truth."

"The next morning at breakfast I told Sparks that I just bought a new condo, with 4 bedrooms and he could have two of them, for a third of his monthly retirement pay, plus we'd split the grocery bill. I would pay for everything else. The only rule was there was to be no more drinking, and he would have to make me laugh once a day. So Cal, you know the whole story. Sparks and I have had a good home. He had made hundreds of models that have been donated as Christmas gifts throughout the county, and I...uh," tears welled up in her eyes, "I really have given back to at least one vet. I'm going to have to put Sparks in the residential care facility next month, I just cannot take a chance with him any more." Em was quiet for a minute, then continued, "Those that come home, Cal, our protectors, our guardians, this countries finest, they all grow old and die. It just doesn't seem right."

We sat for while and I finally said, "Shall we find out what's inside door number two?"

Em laughed and led me to the hall closet. I opened the stepladder stored in the closet and climbed up. On the top shelf, underneath a gray army blanket was long mahogany box, the deep red wood still gleaming, beautifully preserved under an oil finish. I carried the thirty -five pound box to the dining room table while Em got Sparks from his study.

The rich red box had a single long brass piano hinge in the back and two large brass fasteners in the front. Sparks slowly shuffled up to the box, his eyes glistening, and with his discolored and veined hands slightly trembling, he opened the fasteners. Inside was a mint M1 Garand, lying on its side. Beneath the barrel of the rifle, were two factory fresh Colt M1911's , standing upright in a mahogany bracket.

Sparks reached out and touched the receiver. He smiled and them wiped his eyes with the white handkerchief that appeared from his pocket.

"So, kid, " Sparks said, " These are just like the ones we used against the Germans, but a whole lot cleaner." I noticed a blue folder in the corner of the case. As I reached for it, Sparks grabbed it and haltingly said, "I don't want..Melissa to hear this."

"Sparks, you never call me Melissa!" Em held his free hand. "Did you ever consider that I might want to hear what happened? You don't talk about the war, yet it's always here with us. I know your war, any war, is not clean and tidy, not like the movies. Have Cal read it... please...we may not have too many more.... well, you know what I'm saying."

I opened the folder and there was single sheet of yellowing paper - a hand written letter.

July 17, 1945.

Staff Sergeant Robert "Sparky" McKenna,

During Third Army's operation to relieve Bastogne, my jeep skidded off the road in middle of a snowstorm. Your tank destroyer came upon my driver, my adjunct, and I. Your men set up a perimeter to protect us from patrolling German's. The ensuing firefight was hard and lethal, finally ending in hand-to-hand combat in the dark freezing night. Your seven brave soldiers killed 13 Germans, while only losing two men. Our lives and the operational plans and maps I was carrying were saved. It was foolish of me to carry such vital information in such a cavalier manner. I remember vividly your fluent cursing at the loss of your personal weapons. I hope this personal gift from me will make up for their loss.

Sincerely,

G. S. Patton

Em sat down on the couch with Sparks, whose eyes radiated a deep pride at the memories. "Cal," Em asked, "Would you be willing to take Sparks up to that shooting range near Mariposa, next week? That is if Sparks want to fire them, they are collectors items."

Sparks sat quietly for a minute, smiled and looked directly at me. "Cal, I‘ve heard enough gunfire in my life, but when I move on, could you arrange to fire three eight- round clips of .30-06 Springfield from that lovely Garand before the bugler plays Taps?"

Memorial Day honors all serviceman, and the families and friends who remember them, for giving their "last full measure of devotion."

Beyond the Folded Flag

2011-05-30T05:03:38Z

A weeping widow receiving a folded flag from white-gloved hands of a soldier is a common image we see in Memorial Day ads. "From a grateful nation" are the words uttered with quiet respect before he steps back into formation beside the grave of a fallen "brother/sister." Next to the widow sit young children looking sweet, innocent, and lost. It is an uncomfortable representation to look at for long, so we shake our heads and turn our eyes away. "What a sad shame," we think. "She will one day find another to love," some wish. "We will never forget," we speak with confidence. "What a waste of a young life," someone else may quip.

Taps is played on the bugle, gentle crying is heard through the congregation, and the gathered mourners disperse as the family is driven home in a black Cadillac. And that, as they say, is that. Yes, it was sad but now it's over. But there is more to the story beyond the folded flag. In fact, the story of a soldier's life never ends at the cemetery.

Memorial Day is not just about the death of a US service member. It is a day to celebrate their life, acknowledge their contribution, and honor their continuing legacy. It is a day so sacred that despite our political and religious differences, we would be hard-pressed to find a single citizen to besmirch its sanctity. The newspapers are full of sale ads and yard sales and community festivals to enjoy before you head out to the beach or bar-b-que. All this Americana flag-waving is wonderful and a feel-good holiday but it does not fully capture our "beyond the folded flag" tradition.

Each year, mourners gather in Washington, DC for a national grief seminar and honor ceremony via the esteemed program appropriately named "TAPS." It is my great privilege to attend this gathering as a volunteer and to hear the most amazing stories from loved ones of our Troops. Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (http://www.taps.org/) was founded by veteran and military widow Bonnie Carroll. What began in 1994 as a needed supporting friendship group for Bonnie and the other wives of the crew members lost during a training mission has grown into a nationally recognized non-military, non-political, non-denominational, non-profit organization. Their mission statement reads: "TAPS offers immediate and long-term emotional help, hope, and healing to anyone grieving the death of a loved one in military service to America, regardless of their relationship to the deceased or the circumstances of the death."

This year TAPS hosted 2,000-plus attendees for a four-day seminar offering counseling sessions, meal fellowships, and friendship bonding activities. Children ages infant to teens enjoy a high quality program called "Good Grief Camp" where each child is paired with a military member "big brother/sister" for the weekend. This unique population of military family members and children live out the stories of the "beyond" of that folded flag each and every day of the year.

The stories of faithful duty and the faces of youthful beauty simply take my breath away as I listen to a mother tell of how her boy went from fresh out of high school to Marine boot camp and into Iraq. She is so proud, so patriotic, and yet the depth of grief leaves us both without words and we sit in silence holding hands. Another mother asked me to pray Psalm 23 tonight on behalf of her son. She raised him to repeat the Scriptures each night before sleeping. Sean gave his life for Freedom's Holy Light while standing guard duty in Afghanistan.

A Native American father placed the published story of his "Nathan" into my hands. "Distant Thunder" (Nathan's tribal name) was a third generation warrior who left us on a Thanksgiving day. Dad is a Vietnam veteran who suffers PTSD and parental grief. I remember Nathan when I hear rumbling summer thunderclouds and I pause to give thanks for an Indian patriot. Questions about suffering are often asked, the answers both feared and needed. Beautiful "Lucky," a soldier and a mother, left behind a daughter in the care of her parents. Lucky served in Afghanistan but returned home with a deadly lung disease. Her father has since passed on from "a broken heart" says the mother who, though not born in America, shared her only child with this country's military. "Jessica" also came home but quickly succumbed to leukemia, leaving behind her children in the care of her husband and her parents. Girls, seemingly way too young to be wives -- much less already widows -- gather for coffee and chat while their little ones play...and all miss the husbands and fathers. Young husbands, grand-parents, siblings, cousins, and buddies come not knowing quite what to expect but return home refreshed and glad they came.

At lunch, I sat beside a very quiet 30-year Marine veteran. "I am here with my daughter," he tells me in monotone as he pushes away his meal, uneaten. The daughter brought her teenager with them for a family bereavement retreat. Her husband served for twenty-five years but died just months short of his retirement. They had just bought a new house, not even yet furnished. The house is now for sale. She must move to be near her father to help raise a teenager.

And there are the stories of those whose pain was just too great to bear. They made it home physically only to leave this world by suicide. This is a special kind of grief; the circumstances so difficult to speak of by the family that many will never share with others. This past decade has seen a reportedly record number of losses from suicide. The walking wounded, they are called.

There is indeed more beyond the folded flag. And it is sobering and humbling. This Memorial Day (after you bargain-hunt, beach, and bar-b-que) please take the time to:

STOP to remember...STAND in respect...SALUTE with patriotism...SILENCE your busy-ness...SEE the legacies beyond the folded flags...SPEAK your prayers of gratitude...and SERVE to honor their sacrifice.

May we as American citizens truly be "the grateful nation" beyond the folded flag.

Happy Memorial Day/ Tea Are The World

2011-05-30T05:03:32Z

A few Memorial Days ago, I was sitting comfortably on my sofa, enjoying salty snacks and a refreshing sweet tea while watching a program honoring our military on TV. Mary would inform me when the charcoals were ready to throw on the steaks. Life was good.

Featured in the TV program was Veteran actor, Charles Durning who was a U.S. Army Ranger during WWII. Durning won the Silver Star for gallantry and was awarded three Purple Hearts for bravery at Normandy.

Despite his remarkable achievements and sacrifices for freedom, still moved after all these years, Durning humbly stood at the podium and wept for his fallen brothers. Wow, do they make real men like Durning anymore?

After the TV program honoring Durning and other American heroes, the following program honored great American conscientious objectors.

Folks, it was quite annoying watching these guys, conscientious objectors, being portrayed as superior human beings while pontificating about the evils of war and why they chose not to participate. I thought, "You guys are free to enjoy success, freedom and spout your crap "in English" because brave men like Charles Durning fought on your behalf. How dare you!"

Debbie Lee is the mom of Marc Alan Lee, the first Navy SEAL killed in Iraq. On numerous occasions, Marc stepped up putting himself at risk to defend his fellow soldiers. In response to the death of her decorated son and experiencing first hand the challenges facing the families of fallen soldiers, Debbie Lee founded AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

Almost a year ago, musicians, singers and bands across America responded to my call to come together to record a song titled, Taking Back America and donate their recorded songs for an album to celebrate America, honor our military and benefit the families of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

The response was overwhelming. From Country music to rap by a black conservative and every genre in between, we selected the best 44 songs from hundreds of submissions. Jo Piazza at FoxNews titled the project, Tea Are The World.

Now, here is the truly heartwarming divine providence aspect of the project. We had no money for recording, manufacturing, distribution or marketing. When asked about such details, my response was, "I don't know?" I felt God only instructed me to put out the call to musicians. He did not fill me in on how it would all come together.

Remember the old Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies? In the films a character would say, "Let's put on our own show!" Another character would say, "That's a great idea! My uncle has 500 chairs stored in his garage." They would rally together and put on an amazing production.

Tea Are The World pretty much came together the same way. Get this folks, around 100 musicians across America flew or drove, on their own dime, to Deltona Records in Florida to record, Taking Back America.

Emmy winning TV producer Norvell Rose informed me that he and his son, Conner, would be coming down from Virginia to attend the recording session to produce a music video and "Making of Tea Are The World" documentary; all for FREE. Both are included on DVD in the Tea Are The World package.

Deltona Records owner, music producer and engineer Frank Starchak is famed for recording Tupac Shakur and numerous other celebrities. Starchak recorded and produced the 100 musicians singing, Taking Back America. Starchak also mastered the 44 song double CD set included in the Tea Are The World package; completely FREE of charge.

Professional distributor, Tom Horn, offered to distribute Tea Are The World FREE of charge.

Singer, Lisa Scott Kelly and Debbie Lee, founder of AmericasMightyWarriors.org, shook the trees and found funds for manufacturing; which was our only expense. Everything has been donated.

Rev. Minion told me how his wife Danielle, a professional graphic designer, got involved. Upon hearing about Tea Are The World on the news, Danielle said, "Honey, I feel I am suppose to help these people".

Danielle Minion designed the Tea Are The World package and promotional materials. She did all of the production artwork work needed to prepare the package for manufacturing. Danielle donated her services FREE of charge.

Now here is the kicker, after Danielle committed to our project, she became pregnant. Of her three pregnancies, this one has been the worst; sick almost every day. Then, Danielle's files of the project became corrupted. Rev. Minion said in Danielle's years in the business, never have so many things interrupted her completing a project.

Folks, I am pleased and grateful to announce that Tea Are The World is completed, beautifully packaged and available for purchase. Praise God.

Please do not think I am dissing other fund raisers. I am simply stating a fact. With some, when the dust clears, as little as 10% goes to the charity. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of Tea Are The World go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org which benefits the families of our fallen soldiers.

Because of the sacrifices of our military which include brave women and men like Charles Durning and Marc Alan Lee, we are blessed to enjoy Memorial Day cookouts with our families. Please remember the families of our fallen soldiers; AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

Happy Memorial Day!

http://vimeo.com/14767123

Lloyd Marcus, Proud Unhyphenated American

LloydMarcus.com
Spokesperson & Entertainer of Tea Party Movement & Tea Party Express.
The American Tea Party Anthem cd/album.
Confessions of a Black Conservative, written by Lloyd Marcus & foreword by Michelle Malkin
President, NAACPC (National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of ALL Colors)
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Tea Are The World, "Taking Back America" The Making of Documentary... The MUST SEE Tea Party Historic Conservative Music Event !