Robert Spencer has already taken apart Huffington Post UK Political Director Mehdi Hasan’s apologetics for Islam after the grisly murder of a British soldier by two Muslims screaming, “Allah is Great.”

Apologists for Islam often quote, out of context, a Koranic verse, which says ‘Whosoever killeth a human being… it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind” as proof that Islam is humanitarian.

In fact this is a Talmudic quote that the Koran appropriates and then uses to spew hate against the Jews and Christians as unbelievers. Hasan, like most apologists, amends the quote removing the exception that you may kill as revenge for a killing or “for creating disorder in the land”. Those who create disorder should “be slain or crucified or their hands and their feet be cut off on alternate sides.”

For a full measure of Mehdi’s perversity, the Koranic verse quoted by the London Beheader advocating an eye for an eye is in Koran 5:46. The one quoted by Mehdi is in 5:33.

Mehdi Hasan insists that the Muslim faith does not turn men to terror, that it is not hateful and that Islam doesn’t permit the killing of innocents. Then he turns to the favorite topic of the London beheader. “Few want to discuss the role of British foreign policy in helping to radicalise these young, disaffected individuals,” Hasan says.

In fact that’s the only thing anyone wants to talk about. What no one wants to talk about is the role of Islam in Islamic terrorism. It’s always another chat about the role of British foreign policy or Indian foreign policy or Israeli foreign policy or American foreign policy or Swedish foreign policy in making Muslims violent.

“Yet conventional wisdom still says the religion of Islam is behind violent extremism and radicalisation; that Muslims don’t do enough to denounce terror; that imams and mosques incite hate and holy war. As is so often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong. I have been a Muslim all my life and visited mosques across Europe, North America and the UK. Never, not once, have I come across an imam preaching violence against the West or justifying the murder of innocents,” Hasan says.

Perhaps Hasan hasn’t been paying enough attention… to himself. Here’s one of Hasan’s greatest hits from the distant past. Last year.

Mr Mehdi Hasan, biographer of Labour leader Ed Miliband, can be found on YouTube saying as follows: ‘The kuffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Koran; they are described in the Koran as “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort  it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Koran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.’

On a separate occasion, jabbing his finger as he speaks with some force, Mr Hasan is recorded as saying: ‘Once we lose the moral high-ground we are no different from the rest of the non-Muslims; from the rest of those human beings who live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfil any desire.’

Well goodness. I certainly hope Muslims never lose that moral high ground. Then maybe they would stop killing people and then lying about it like the rest of us cattle.

But good news. We inferior subhuman non-Muslims might not only be cows. We might actually be mad cows.

In Islam, to believe is to know. To disbelieve is not to know. That is what it fundamentally comes down to; it [to disbelieve] is to remain ignorant; to cover up knowledge. After all, what is kaffar? Kaffar comes from the root word which means to cover up, to conceal. The kaffar is the one who covers up that knowledge which is clear. The French orientalist scholar Lamens, he once wrote that the Quran is not far from considering unbelief, disbelief as an infirmity, as an illness, as a disease of the human mind.

In other news, there is nothing at all hateful in Islam. Mehdi Hasan tells us so and since there is nothing hateful about him, we have no choice whatsoever but to believe him.

And it would be uncharitably Islamophobically mad cow of us to say otherwise.

Reports are still sketchy, but this is some of what we know so far. Two men attempted to rush the cockpit of a plane traveling from Pakistan to the United Kingdom.

Passenger Nauman Rizvi told Pakistan’s GEO TV that two men who had tried to move toward the cockpit during the flight were handcuffed and arrested once the plane landed. Rizvi said that after the men were taken away, the flight crew told passengers there had been a terrorist threat and that the pilot had raised an alarm.

Two men were arrested on suspicion of endangering an aircraft Friday after a U.K. fighter jet was scrambled to divert their plane as it traveled from Pakistan to Britain, officials said.

A British security official said the situation involving the Pakistan International Airlines flight, which carried more than 300 people, did not appear to be terror-related, but that police were still investigating.

Since Pakistan is a Muslim country, I’m sure that this couldn’t have possibly been an act of terror, because we know Muslims don’t do that.

Mashhood Tajwar, a spokesman for PIA, said the incident followed a call to air traffic control. He said that about 20 to 30 minutes before landing, information received by air traffic control in Manchester had indicated there might have been “some security threat”.

A spokesman for Pakistan International Airlines said the two men had threatened to blow the plane up, then said they were joking.

Someone call Albert Brooks and tell him that he doesn’t have to go looking for comedy in the Muslim world anymore. It’s been found.

Scholars of Islam like Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson insisted that the gruesome murder of a British soldier by two Muslims shouting “Allah Akbar” and quoting the Koran had nothing to do with Islam.

However Imam Omar Bakri Muhammad, who influenced Mujaheed Adebowale, the London beheader, disagrees saying, “Under Islam this can be justified”, “I saw the film and we could see that he [the suspect] was being very courageous” and “To people around here [in the Middle East] he is a hero for what he has done.”

Nothing is more courageous and heroic than two men running down one man in a car and then cutting him up while screaming praises to Allah.

What are Imam Omar Bakri Muhammad’s qualifications as an Islamic scholar? Aside from being a former member of that notoriously moderate Islamist organization; the Muslim Brotherhood?

From the age of five he was enrolled in the al-Kutaab Islamic boarding schools (a primary school teaching children how to recite and keep Quran by heart) where he studied the Qur’anic Sciences, Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet of Islam and his Companions), Fiqh (Islamic Religious Philosophy), and Seerah.

Later, Bakri joined the Shari’ah Institute at Damascus University where he then studied Fiqh and Shari’ah. When he completed his studies, obtaining a BA in Shari’ah and Usul al-Fiqh. Bakri obtained his MA in Fiqh ul-Madhaahib from the Imaam Uzaie University, Lebanon.

He studied at Al-Azhar University for six months and then moved to Saudi Arabia, where he joined the Madrassah Al-Saltiyyah studying and completing a Diploma in Jami’ Al-Qur’an. At this time he also completed a thesis entitled, ‘Nizaam al-Khilafahfil Islaam’.

Offhand, I would say Bakri’s qualifications as a scholar of Islam top those of Boris Johnson and David Cameron. And he has some scholastic views on killing infidels derived from one of those many degrees in how to kill infidels the Islamic way.

A radical Islamist cleric banned from Britain has been secretly recorded in a series of rants in which he calls on Muslims to behead their enemies and kidnap Westerners.

Investigators have discovered that Bakri encouraged a kidnapping terrorist act just months before he was banned from the UK last year. On another occasion, he specifically mentioned capturing a British Muslim serving in the Army.

Bakri, who has frequently suggested that “the enemy” are Westerners, particularly Americans and the British, says: “When you meet the enemy, slice their own necks. And when you make the blood spill all over, and the enemy becomes so tired, now start to take from them prisoners. Then free them or exchange them until the war is finished.

“Verily they remind the sunnah (actions/sayings of the prophet Mohammed) of removing the head of the enemy. They remind the sunnah of slaughtering the enemy. They remind the sunnah of how to strike the neck of the enemy. We saw him in his brother’s house. They removed the head of the enemy\u2026 Use the sword and remove the head of the enemy.”

In a separate rallying call over the internet last summer, Bakri encouraged terrorists to kidnap a soldier serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. “I hope they capture British Muslims who are in the Army over there,” he said.

Nine men were arrested on Wednesday as part of an alleged plot to kidnap a Muslim soldier, who was believed to have served in Afghanistan but who was back on home leave. The police think terrorists intended to torture and kill their victim before broadcasting their actions on the internet.

Which is nothing at all like what just happened in London. And what are Imam Omar Bakri Muhammad’s thoughts on the human life of non-Muslim civilians?

“We don’t make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no sanctity.”

Nothing to do with Islam. Not a bloody thing.

What’s the harm in exposing teenagers to Islam? It can end on a busy street with bloody cleavers. That’s the story of Michael Adebolajo who was drawn into a Muslim gang as a teenager and became Mujaheed. Or Holy Warrior of Islam.

Giving his name only as Jack, the 27-year-old said: “He was a lovely lad at school and was liked by everyone.

“In the five years I went to school with him I never saw him have a fight or even get into an argument. What on Earth got into his head?”

It’s the “I” word. The thing that British pols all agree can’t possibly be responsible. Islam.

Adebolajo was born in Britain to churchgoing Nigerian immigrants. He was raised a Catholic along with younger brother Jeremiah, 26, and their two elder sisters in Romford. But shortly after his 16th birthday he began studying radical Islam and his behaviour seemed to change.

He started raising thorny religious and political issues — and sparked rows with his mother by briefly experimenting with wearing traditional Muslim robes.

Both he and Jeremiah appeared increasingly drawn to extremist videos and literature. A friend of Jeremiah said: “Michael was giving him all this stuff.

“Later on when I was with them Michael grabbed me and produced what looked like a knuckle-duster with a dagger sticking out of it and held it to my throat.

Adebolajo’s parents were said to have become so worried they moved to Lincoln to escape extremist brainwashers. But he left home to study business at Greenwich University, South East London.

Adebolajo fell in with a “bad crowd”, experimented with drugs and had links to notorious South London gangs.

The South London gangs were likely Somali drug dealers with ties to Al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups back home. And so the former Catholic boy began to combine drug dealing and Jihad.

He used the name “Mujahid”, or holy warrior, and handed out radical leaflets in Woolwich High Street. And he began plotting jihad — while selling drugs back in Romford.

Every morning he would drive there while texting customers about that day’s pick-up spots. Regulars knew him as Jay but nicknamed him Freddie Mercury and Red Rum because of his buck teeth.

Another source said: “When he came to Romford to sell drugs he would let it be known in coded text messages just what was on offer.

“He would say, ‘I’ve got some designer white shirts’ which meant crack cocaine, or ‘I’ve got black T-shirts’, which meant heroin.

Another said: “Very occasionally he was in his car with the second man who was photographed at the murder scene. Now we wonder who was calling the shots.

The Koran was. And that’s the problem.

Some context for this; JFK was 20 years old at the time and was likely heavily influenced by his father who was a fairly blatant supporter of Nazi Germany. And while his views seem shocking now, it’s important to remember that at the time they were conventional wisdom. There was a sizable strain of admiration for fascism in liberal circles extending into the FDR administration. The sense was that fascists were capable of getting things done.

England, in many American circles, had come to seem like Israel today, a country that dragged the United States into wars. While Nazi Germany, like the Muslims today, was seen as misunderstood and a victim of history. Kennedy’s observations would not have been unusual even for many liberal visitors older than him who came away from Germany with the same impression that the country was on the way up and that it just needed to be left alone.

After a visit to the river Rhine in 1937, Kennedy wrote: “Very beautiful, because there are many castles along the route. The towns are all charming which shows that the Nordic races appear to be definitely superior to their Latin counterparts. The Germans are really too good – that’s why people conspire against them – they do it to protect themselves.”

A fortnight earlier, Kennedy, who was touring with his friend Lem Billings, wrote in his diary: “I have come to the conclusion that fascism is right for Germany and Italy. What are the evils of fascism compared to communism?” Billings later recalled that Kennedy was “completely consumed by his interest for the Hitler movement” during their trip.

But even after Germany’s defeat in 1945, when the Holocaust was common knowledge, JFK appears to have retained an extraordinary fascination for Hitler. By then a naval officer he accompanied the US Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, on a tour of Germany that August.

After visiting Hitler’s bomb-damaged Bavarian Berghof residence and his Eagle’s Nest mountain retreat, Kennedy noted in his diary: “Anyone who has visited these places can imagine how in a few years, Hitler will emerge from the hate that now surrounds him and come to be regarded as one of the most significant figures ever to have lived.” He adds: “There was something mysterious about the way he lived and died which will outlive him and continue to flourish. He was made of the stuff of legends.”

By that point, JFK was no longer twenty and there’s less excuse for it. But let’s look at mainstream media reports from the 1930s, which weren’t filed by bored 20-year-olds.

Nazi Drive on Jews Under Control Now: US Investigation Shows No Cause for Protest (AP)

March 26, 1933

“A reply has now been received indicating that whereas there was for a short time considerable physical mistreatment of Jews, this phase may be considered virtually terminated. There was also some picketing of Jewish merchandising stores and instances of professional discrimination.

“These manifestations were viewed with serious concern by the German government. Hitler in his capacity as leader of the Nazi party issued an order calling upon his followers to maintain law and order, to avoid molesting foreigners, disrupting trade and to avoid the creation of potentially embarrassing international incidents.”

Fortunately Hitler turned out to be a moderate Nazi and that was the end of it.

After Obama extracted an apology from Israel, Turkey went on to flagrantly violate the terms of the agreement. A Muslim country violating an agreement with a non-Muslim country is routine, but it was still embarrassing to the United States which had negotiated the apology.

But instead of being called on it, Erdogan got a splashy trip to Washington where he rubbed the violation in everyone’s faces by dragging one of the terrorist daddies from the Mavi Marmara for a photo op with Kerry and a letter for Obama.

Prime Minister Erdogan was quite blatantly showing that the Mavi Marmara Jihad boat issue wasn’t done. Despite Obama Inc’s notorious hostility to Israel, Secretary of State John Kerry should have at least had the common sense to avoid a photo op like that because it wrecks the closest thing to a diplomatic triumph that his people had been claiming credit for.

But Kerry has repeatedly pandered to Turkey on the Mavi Marmara. In April, he went into outright outrageous territory.

US Secretary of State John Kerry compared the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing to the nine Turkish terrorists killed by the IDF as they tried to break Gaza’s naval blockade, at a press conference in Istanbul on Sunday.

You can put this down to Kerry being Hanoi John again. Or the usual hostility to Israel. But there has been a notable uptick in the Turkey pandering lately.

Turkey’s proxy war in Syria has made it an even bigger player and Obama Inc. can’t seem to decide if it wants to negotiate with Assad or climb in deeper with the rebels.

Erdogan desperately wants the US to bail out his Syrian War. But all the pandering suggests that Obama Inc. has pivoted to negotiations and is working hard to get Erdogan to go along.

The project is doomed. Erdogan didn’t begin this war just to end it with a negotiated agreement that will leave the Alawites in power. But in courting him, Kerry is selling out not only Israel, but his own credibility.

Erdogan is just as bad as Assad. The difference is that he hasn’t really been challenged yet. But there’s little difference between how Assad and Erdogan handle dissent. Both do it with jails and bullets.

Meanwhile Kerry’s treatment of Israel has been dramatically different.

A senior Israeli official told Haaretz that after Kerry learned of the Israeli decision last Thursday, he personally called Oren and requested clarifications, stressing that the move undermines his efforts to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Kerry requested that the government rethink its decision, or at least postpone the outposts’ legalization.

A phone call from the secretary of state to a foreign ambassador to demand explanations and voice a protest is considered a very unusual move, one that indicates Kerry’s anger at the Israeli decision. Such protests are usually conveyed through lower-level channels.

Just like this week’s nightly riots by “youths” in Stockholm, the brutal slaughter in Woolwich was plainly a jihadist act. Yet just as the Swedish elites are continuing to dance around that uncomfortable core truth, their British counterparts are engaged in some fancy footwork of their own – led by Prime Minister David Cameron, who described Tuesday’s atrocity as “not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life” but “also a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country.” (Does it need to be said that for a British leader to haul out this ragged, repulsive lie in the year 2013 is itself a betrayal – a shameless, craven betrayal of precisely what Cameron pretends to be standing up for, namely “Britain and…the British way of life”?)

The papers were full of the standard-issue stuff. The Muslim Council of Britain made the usual assertion that the latest heinous act committed in the name of Islam had “nothing to do with Islam.” Baroness Warsi, a Pakistani-English Muslim who serves as “Communities Secretary” in the current government, painted the familiar pretty picture of “faith communities coming out together” in the wake of said heinous act “and showing a unified condemnation of this.” The Guardian ran the obligatory hand-wringing article about the “fear of backlash” against Muslims in the wake of the heinous act in question. (The headline of another Guardian article actually indicated that there had been “Anti-Muslim reprisals after Woolwich attack”; it turned out that one man was “in custody on suspicion of attempted arson after reportedly walking into a mosque with a knife in Braintree, Essex,” and that “police in Kent were called to reports of criminal damage at a mosque in Canterbury Street, Gillingham.”) And Ken Livingstone, the loathsome ex-mayor of London (which he described as “the most successful melting pot in the history of the world and the city of the free”), warned those less evolved than himself not to “scapegoat entire communities for this barbaric act.” This from the sometime host, defender, and chum of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is famous precisely for encouraging such barbaric acts.

Newspaper commentaries on the atrocity added up to a depressing profile of the pathetic, obstinately reality-challenged psychopathology of the British elite when confronted with Islamic violence. The prize for sheer inanity of approach must go to Laborite Dan Hodges, who spent a whole column in the Telegraph elaborating on the theme that “for me, yesterday’s barbaric act of terror in Woolwich was literally senseless. None of what happened actually made any sense.” The murder, he asserted, was “confusing, horrific, bizarre.” He proceeded to repeat this refrain in one paragraph after another: “none of it made sense….Still none of it made sense….It didn’t make sense….It didn’t make any sense….Yesterday was the senseless day.” Reading this feeble, embarrassing nonsense, one could not help wondering: was Hodges equally stumped by 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, Beslan, the Boston bombings? One of the things that didn’t “make sense” to Hodges was that one of the murderers spoke of “our lands,” meaning the Muslim world, even though “he had a south-east London accent.” It was as if the Woolwich killers were the first “home-grown terrorists” to ever come to Hodges’s attention. How remarkable that during all these years when the non-Muslim world has been racked by one death-dealing jihadist assault after another, Hodges’s contemplation of these incidents has apparently yielded absolutely nothing in the way of awareness or insight.

Brendan O’Neill, also writing in the Telegraph, was also purportedly baffled beyond all hope by Tuesday’s events, professing to find it “shocking” and “bizarre” (that word again) that one of the terrorists “claimed to be acting on behalf of all Muslims,” speaking “as if he were a representative of the ummah.” Again, one would have thought that this was the very first time such a thing has ever happened. “How can a couple of men,” O’Neill asked, “so thoroughly convince themselves that they speak for all Muslims, to the extent that they seriously believe their savage and psychotic attack on a man in the street is some kind of glorious act of Islamic resistance?” Unlike Hodges, however, O’Neill had a theory. A certain kind of thinking, he posited, had led directly to the Woolwich atrocity. Jihadist ideology? Nope: contemporary British identity politics. You see, “in this era in which any old fool can claim to be a ‘community spokesperson’, and can be treated seriously as such, these murderous loners seem to be trying a psychotic version of the same trick – claiming that by dint of shared skin colour or common religious sentiment they have the authority to speak on behalf of millions of people they have never met or whose lands they have never visited.” Somehow, O’Neill would appear to have missed the news that it’s not only in Merrie Old England that jihadists have proudly proclaimed themselves to be jihadists.

Some observers emphasized that it was crucial to “keep calm.”  Writing in the Independent, sociologist Frank Furedi urged Brits not to “over-react” – and, moreover, not to “redefine” this “incomprehensible act of violence” (yes, he was mystified too) as “an act of political terrorism.” If O’Neill saw the two killers as products of British identity politics, Furedi, calling it “unlikely” that they had “been busy reading al-Qaeda’s terror manual,” cast them instead as products of “reality entertainment” culture, noting their decision to record their monstrous actions on camera. “The murderers may have adopted the role of idealist jihadists as one of them chanted ‘We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you,’” wrote Furedi, “but what they really meant was that we will never stop performing.” Furedi’s advice to his readers: don’t give “recognition to two self-obsessed killers who did not deserve it.”

Michael White made a similar argument under the headline “Woolwich attack: let’s try a bit of keeping calm.” Hey, here’s a thought: could it be, just possibly, that official Britain has been too damn calm for too damn long? How about finally getting a little angry? Just to begin with, how about reforming the insane immigration and deportation policies that have made London a sanctuary for some of the most contemptible preachers of Islamic terror on the planet? How about cutting out all the smooth lies, the slick euphemisms, the talk of “Asians” when the subject is really Muslims? How about somebody in a position of authority screwing up a little courage and facing a few facts – and thereby maybe, just maybe, causing Churchill to stop spinning in his grave?

White had a lot to say. Protesting that the publication of photos of the Woolwich perpetrators’ “rusty knives and meat cleavers” was “indecent” and “voyeuristic,” he proposed that today’s Brits adopt the “Keep Calm and Carry On” attitude of their World War II-era forebears – in other words, turn away from the gruesome images and don’t exaggerate the importance of these evildoers (who might just as easily have been members of some street gang unrelated to Islam rather than “ill-educated and unemployed young men…who have been watching jihadi video nasties on the internet”). Suggesting that the Woolwich killers are “lone wolfs” (sic) whose acts have no wider meaning or organizational backing, he maintained that “the only visibly organised conspiracy” in the picture is the English Defence League (that tacky pack of unspeakable rowdies). He went on to insist that, in any event, ordinary street gangs are “a greater problem for life in our big cities than wannabe jihadis.” And he found it appropriate to add that British soldiers of the non-Islamic persuasion are, after all, sometimes “attacked” or “even occasionally murdered” by “their drunken co-religionists.” So why make a fuss about the Islamic roots of this unfortunate affair? (For good measure, White worked in a passing reference to the nightly riots in Stockholm by “the unemployed.”)

What artful dodgers! The lesson was clear: with very few exceptions, the British elite is terrified to call jihad by its rightful name. It would rather condemn the English Defence League for the thousandth time than choke out even the most muted, gracefully nuanced acknowledgment that there might, in fact, be something of a causal connection between the instructions to the faithful spelled out in the Koran and the actions carried out in Woolwich on Tuesday afternoon. Yet it’s precisely that elite’s dishonest, irresponsible, lily-livered response to abominable transgressions like this one that is driving more and more people into the arms of the EDL. For while Cameron, Livingstone, and company were responding to the Woolwich killing by defending Islam, feigning perplexity, and/or dismissing the idea that this murder had any larger significance, EDL leader Tommy Robinson was speaking the plain and simple truth, accusing the country’s leaders of being “scared to say the word Muslim” and flatly rejecting the fatuous falsehoods about Islam that are proferred in Britain’s classrooms and endlessly reiterated in its media. Said Robinson on Tuesday: “Our next generation are being taught through schools that Islam is a religion of peace. It’s not. It never has been. What you saw today is Islam.”

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There is a characteristic feature to tyranny. It isn’t the scowling faces of armed guards or the rusting metal of barbed wire fences. It isn’t the black cars of the secret police or the prison camps surrounded by wastelands of snow.

The defining characteristic of tyranny is the diversion of power from the people to the unelected elite. The elite can claim to be inspired by Allah or Marx; it can act in the name of racial purity or universal workers compensation or both. The details don’t matter, because in all instances, tyranny derives its justification from the superiority of the rulers and the inferiority of the people.

The left launched two revolutions. One was the hard revolution of bombs and assassinations by those who did not have the time or patience to wait for the long march through the institutions of the state. This revolution was born quickly and died quickly. It killed millions and choking on their blood it died by stages, losing its ideas and then its power, until there were only a few old men and women in shawls clinging to red velvet portraits of Stalin.

But there was also the soft revolution that was slow and subtle. It was a revolution of laws, rather than bombs. It did not concern itself with 5-year-plans but with 50-year-plans. It proceeded by increments, raising the temperature so very gradually that the free world did not realize it was cooked until it could smell its own burning flesh.

The revolutions of the east failed. They rose quickly in fire and fury and only ashes and statues remain. But the revolutions of the west have been underway for generations in countries where millions of men and women go about their business without realizing what is taking place around them.

When H.G. Wells met with Lenin in 1920, he wrote, “Our essential difference, the difference of the Collectivist and Marxist, the question whether the social revolution is, in its extremity, necessary, whether it is necessary to overthrow one social and economic system completely before the new one can begin.”

Lenin demanded a revolution that would directly attack the capitalist system, but Wells believed that, “through a vast sustained educational campaign the existing Capitalist system could be civilized into a Collectivist world system.”

That educational campaign is the soft tyranny we see all around us. The educational campaign is a nanny state in which we are forever being educated by our betters for our own good.

The nanny state has a short term purpose and a long term purpose. Its short term purpose is to educate us out of our selfish freedom of choice. Its long term purpose is to incrementally “civilize” or “evolve” a free people into collectivism through smaller measures undertaken in the name of the public good.

Instead of a single explosive burst of revolution, instead of terrorists rushing in with guns in hand, instead of bombs exploding and assassins gunning down public officials, there is the slow creep of laws that remake attitudes and accomplish the same purpose not in a day or a year… but over the decades.

Instead of one great revolution, there are a million smaller revolutions stripped of overt ideology and pretending to serve the public good.

Health care is nationalized. Gun control is implemented. Education is centralized. Environmental panic is used to enforce rationing. The successful are taught to be ashamed of their success. They are taught that they didn’t build that. The state did.

The new bureaucratic collectivism sets out to control the most minor habits of every man, woman and child. People are told to spy on their neighbors. Children are taught to report the politically incorrect habits of their parents. The media asserts that all property and even children belong to the state.

Each of these is a miniature revolution. A string of these revolutions over time transforms the soft tyranny into a hard tyranny.

The nanny state is outwardly benevolent and inwardly ruthless. Instead of a Big Brother who must be feared and worshiped, it puts forward a Big Sister who shames and controls you for your own good. But the difference never goes deeper than the mask that tyranny wears. Like the difference between Lenin and H.G. Wells, it is only a matter of the speed at which tyranny arrives.

The hard tyranny of the red revolutions and the soft tyranny of the bureaucratic collectivists both agree on the fundamental premise of tyranny.

A century before Bloomberg’s soda war, Theodore Roosevelt stood in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and delivered one of his most famous speeches, which began with the words, “The great fundamental issue now before the Republican party and before our people can be stated briefly. It is: Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves?”

The answer of the liberal technocrats, the Bloombergs and Obamas, is a chorus of jeers. They make it clear with their policies that they believe that the American people are unfit to govern themselves in matters great or small.

If the American is unfit to be trusted with a soda cup or a gun or a lawn dart or any of a thousand other things taken away from him for his own good, then how can he be trusted with the ballot box?

That mistrust, more than any single abuse, reveals the scowling tyrant behind the smiling face, the Lenin in every H.G. Wells, the totalitarian face behind every liberal mask. The soft totalitarianism of the public interest technocracy is a tyranny that seeks to destroy the rule of the people and replace it with the rule of the left.

The creeping pace of the soft revolution forces the inner totalitarian to practice some discretion, mummifying his tyrannical aspirations in the embalming fluid of political correctness, but no flood of words can conceal the inner contempt behind the false benevolence of the tyrant who makes policies that deprive the people of their freedom for their own good.

“I believe the majority of the plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller class or body of men, no matter what their training, will make in trying to govern them,” Theodore Roosevelt said.

The hard revolutions showed the truth of his words when the red kingdoms fell and the soft revolutions are showing us the truth of his words as the nanny cities and states falter economically and fall.

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“The time to act and turn the tide against Assad is now,” Senator Menendez said at a hearing on his bill. “The United States must play a role in tipping the scales toward opposition groups and working to build a free and democratic Syria.”

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), along with Democratic Senators Chris Murphy (Connecticut) and Tom Udall (New Mexico) voted against the bill. Senator Paul’s proposed amendments striking the bill’s weapons provision and ruling out the authorization of the use of military force in Syria were rejected.

Senator Paul tried to introduce a dose of reality into the committee deliberations on the bill, but the bill steamrolled ahead anyway. “This is an important moment,” Senator Paul warned. “You will be funding, today, the allies of al Qaeda. It’s an irony you cannot overcome.”

The bill’s supporters took refuge in the bill’s stipulation that weapons and military training would go only to those members of the opposition forces who “have been properly and fully vetted and share common values and interests with the United States.”

This is sheer fantasy.  The Syrian opposition is hopelessly fragmented, but it is al Qaeda affiliates and other Islamist jihadist groups in Syria who dominate the opposition’s armed forces.

“In your rush to get involved in Syria, you may be arming Islamic rebels who will be shooting Christians,” Senator Paul said in responding to the bill sponsors’ assurances that the vetting process would provide sufficient protection against U.S.-supplied arms getting into the wrong hands. “We’re actually arming the side of al Qaeda.”

Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey originally supported the idea of providing arms to the rebel forces, but now is not so sure. His current thinking has moved in the direction of Rand Paul’s position. During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in April, General Dempsey testified:

My military judgment is that now that we have seen the emergence of Al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham notably, and now that we have seen photographs of some of the weapons that is have been flowing into Syria in the hands of those groups, now I am more concerned than I was before.

Libya provides good reason for General Dempsey’s concern. After the Obama administration had secretly given its blessing in 2011 for Qatar, a U.S. ally in the Gulf region, to ship arms to Libyan rebels, the administration belatedly woke up to the fact that these arms were ending up in the hands of jihadists who hate Americans.

They were “more antidemocratic, more hard-line, closer to an extreme version of Islam” than the main rebel alliance in Libya, said a former Defense Department official according to a December 5, 2012 New York Times article.

The same thing appears to be happening with arms transferred by Qatar and Saudi Arabia to the Syrian rebels, with intelligence and logistical support from the United States.

“The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” an American official familiar with the arms transfers was quoted by the New York Times as saying in October 2012.

Supporters of direct U.S. arms transfers to Syria seem to believe that the risk of arms getting into al Qaeda and its affiliates’ hands can be significantly reduced if the U.S. itself retains control over who receives its weapons by first carefully vetting the proposed recipients. This argument is fatally flawed.

The Syrian opposition has no effective centralized political or military leadership. Ahmed Mouaz al Khatib, a Sunni Islamist opposition activist, who had served as president of the U.S.-supported political opposition umbrella group, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces (National Coalition), resigned in April. His willingness to negotiate with Syrian government figures had drawn criticism from the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which has a seat in the umbrella National Coalition. At the same time, Khatib took issue with the Obama administration’s decision to designate the al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al Nusra Front as a terrorist organization.

The National Coalition incorporated the existing Syrian National Council (SNC) in which the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has substantial influence. The Muslim Brotherhood’s deputy leader Mohammed Farouq Tayfour serves as the SNC’s deputy president.  Tayfour said that the al Nusra Front is well-liked by the Syrian people. “They are seen as (a group that) can be relied on to defend the country and the civilians against the regular army and Assad’s gangs,” Tayfour said.

In other words, within the umbrella opposition group supported by the Obama administration is a national council with a Muslim Brotherhood leader as its deputy president who sees nothing wrong with the al Qaeda affiliated al Nusra Front.

If this were not confusing enough, there is a separate opposition Supreme Military Command Council, in which there are varying views of the legitimacy of the political umbrella National Coalition and the degree to which the opposition military forces should submit to the National Coalition’s oversight. In any case, Islamist militia groups who do not recognize the legitimacy of the National Coalition at all remain the most capable opposition armed groups on the ground.

Even assuming that U.S. military and intelligence officials can accurately pinpoint the friendly “moderate” elements within the Syrian opposition to receive our arms, there is no effective control that the U.S. can exercise once the arms are out of our hands. The recipients can decide to voluntarily turn over the weapons to Islamist jihadist forces on the grounds, stated by the Arab proverb, that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Even more likely is that the jihadists will turn on the weaker “moderate” fighters and seize the U.S.-provided weapons for their own use against Americans and other “infidels” as well as Assad.

Finally, until the entire Libyan mess gets sorted out, it will be a grave mistake to court more trouble by getting any deeper into the Syrian civil war.  Why did the United States maintain a presence in Benghazi in the first place after other delegations had left in the wake of Islamist attacks?

Reports have been recently circulating that President Obama’s State Department mistakenly sold Stinger missiles to al-Qaeda in Libya, thinking that they were more friendly insurgents. Then, according to a PJ Media story based on unnamed whistleblower accounts, Ambassador Chris Stevens went to Benghazi to try to buy the mistakenly transferred weapons back. If true, this incredibly botched operation may well have cost Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans their lives. Moreover, it would completely undermine any assurances that the Obama administration would be capable of limiting sales of arms to Syrian rebels who have been properly “vetted.”

PJ Media said in its article that it recognized it was based largely on hearsay, but indicated that its sources – two former U.S. diplomats – “sounded quite credible.” In any case, we already have reason for deep concern over the sorry record of the bungling Obama administration. Recall that this is the same administration which lost track of guns in Operation Fast and Furious – guns which ended up in the hands of Mexican drug lords and reportedly led to the death of one of our border guards.

At the very least, the Obama administration’s entire Libyan operation needs to be fully and publicly vetted before we even consider for one moment embarking on any vetting of Syrian oppositions forces to receive U.S. arms.

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The murder of Brendan Mess, 25, Raphael Teken, 37, and Eric Weissman, 31, occurred in Waltham, Massachusetts two years ago on September 11. The three men were discovered a day later, with their throats slit, and their bodies covered in marijuana and thousands of dollars in cash. No one has been charged in the case.

Law enforcement sources said that Todashev and Tsarnaev once worked out together at a Boston area gym. So did victim Brendan Mess. Tamerlan’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said his son and Todashev belonged to a small circle of Chechens involved in amateur fighting in the Boston area, and that they met “a few times” at events. Mess was also involved in mixed martial arts fighting, and sparred with Tsarnaev on occasion, a friend of both men told the Wall Street Journal.

The FBI became interested in Todashev when phone records connected him to Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The FBI kept track of him over the course of several weeks and questioned him on a few occasions as well. According to one official, Todashev had been cooperative to the point where he cancelled a planned trip to Russia in order to keep talking to the FBI. Todashev’s friends corroborated the FBI’s interest, saying they had been keeping track of him since the April 15 atrocity in Boston. They added that Tuesday night’s interview was supposed to be his last one with law enforcement officials.

Another friend, Umar Taramov, said he and his younger brother accompanied Todashev to meet investigators that night, but left when the meeting dragged on for hours. He was shocked when he returned and discovered Todashev had been killed following a violent altercation. ”The Ibragim I know is a very normal guy,” contended Mr. Taramov. “This isn’t someone who would have done something crazy.”

Despite that assessment, Todashev had been involved in two previous incidents. In 2010, he was charged with with reckless operation of a motor vehicle, disorderly conduct, and civil infractions following a crash between his van and a car carrying two women. Todashev had to be restrained by witnesses when he attempt to aggressively confront them.The charges were subsequently dropped.

Earlier in May, he was charged with felony aggravated battery for fighting over a parking spot with a 54-year-old man and his 36-year-old son at Orlando’s Premium Outlets mall. The son was hospitalized after sustaining a split upper lip and getting several teeth knocked out, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. Todashev was free on a $3,500 bond after being arrested by sheriff’s deputies at gunpoint, according to Florida court records.

Neighbors who knew Todashev while he was still living in the Cambridge area of Boston, described him as nasty. They also noted that he and Tamerlan Tsarnaev used to hang out together drinking beer and eating chicken on a Harding Street stoop. “I was the happiest person when they moved. … It’s a little more peaceful since they left,” said one neighbor. Another neighbor said Todashev “intimidated” her.

NBC News is reporting that the motive for the triple slaying was a drug deal gone wrong. According to law enforcement sources cited by the network, Tsarnaev and Todashev executed the men when they realized that the victims would be able to identify them. That may turn out to be the case, but it is hard to completely dismiss the Qur’anic implications associated with the crime. Two of the victims were Jews, and the Qur’an designates the Jews the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82). All three had their throats slit to the point of near decapitation, and the Qur’an instructs the faithful to “strike the necks” of the unbelievers (47:4). It is unclear why, if the murders were indeed the result of a “drug deal gone bad,” a large sum of money and drugs were left behind, leaving the possibility that the scene was crudely staged. That the crime took place on the anniversary of 9/11 is also significant, due to the obsession Islamic jihadists characteristically possess for dates of terrorist attacks and Western victories.

It is not clear who shot Todashev during his interrogation. Along with the FBI agent who was attacked, there were Massachusetts state troopers and the Orlando police in the house during the interrogation. An FBI incident review team from Washington, D.C. was in the Orlando area yesterday investigating the incident. According to procedure, the team will question all the witnesses to the shooting. A separate Shooting Incident Review Group committee, comprised of as many as 13 FBI members, will also analyze the incident to determine if the use of force was justified or not. The agent who was attacked has not been publicly identified, but he is a member of the FBI’s Boston division.

As of now there is nothing to indicate that Todashev had anything to do with the Boston bombings. Officials concede that he had some connection with radical Chechen rebels, but it remains unclear whether he had any role in radicalizing Tsarnaev. According to his father, Abdulbaki Todashev, Ibragim was neither violent or particularly devout. ”He is ordinary, like all Chechens, he followed Islam and that’s it.” He further contended that his son was currently ”learning to walk again” following an operation, which would have made it impossible for him to take part in the Boston bombings.

Abdulbaki Todashev also questioned the FBI’s version of his son’s death. ”How could he attack a policeman with a knife especially, as they say, if there were five or six of them in his house?” he asked.

An autopsy was expected to be completed yesterday, but the report will not be made available while the case remains under criminal investigation. A relative whose name was kept from the public came forward to claim Todashev’s body from the Orange-Osceola County Medical Examiner.

Late yesterday afternoon, the Washington Times reported that the condo occupied by Todashev is owned by Roman Shakhmanov, 28, who is currently residing in Houston, TX. At this time the relationship between the two men is unknown.

In a note left behind on the boat where he was hiding, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev claimed he and his brother bombed the Boston Marathon in retribution for U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Dzhokhar called victims of that atrocity “collateral damage.” Sadly, numerous pundits on the Right and the Left have been parroting Dzhokhar’s line, also alleging that the bombing was more or less “blowback” from America’s Middle East forays. Never mind that our missions liberated countless Muslims from the likes of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein and that, in fact, they are now all but abandoned. Certainly, if anything strikes at the heart of the discredited “blowback” hypothesis, it is the 2011 9/11 anniversary slaying. The brutal murder of the three Boston men allegedly committed by Tamerlan Tsarnaev — something it is virtually impossible to believe that Dzhokhar would have been unaware of — proves that the Tsarnaevs were not driven by politics but driven by bloodlust. They were adherents to an ideology that nurtures the human capacity for evil. And they became monsters.

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But if we look at Obama’s actual record rather than his rhetoric, it is plain that the middle class has been one of the leading victims of his presidency.

The decline in median family and median net worth that began during George W. Bush’s presidency has continued under Obama. Citing recent Census Bureau data, the Pew Research Center published data showing that the only one of nine income levels whose net worth increased in the 2009-2011 period was the highest-earning cohort—those earning over $500,000 per year.

Income, too, showed a similar pattern: During Obama’s first term, the wealthiest 20% of households eked out a 2% gain while incomes for the rest fell.[2] Obama may talk tough about “the rich,” but they have been the only group that have gotten richer on his watch.

Further evidence of Obama’s silent war on the middle class is the explosion in the number of Americans receiving food stamps. When Obama took office in January 2009, there were approximately 32 million Americans on food stamps; as of April 5, 2013, that numbered had swollen by nearly 50% to 47.3 million.[3] Poor Americans already had been receiving food stamps before Obama became president; the increase came from members of the middle-class Americans that his policies had initiated into hard times.

Another dramatic indicator of economic hardship has been the unprecedented increase in the number of Americans receiving federal disability payments—8.8 million, a 19% increase in only four years. Working conditions haven’t become more dangerous;  the disturbing rise in these numbers means that many  have found it easier to get on disability than to get a job. The 1.4 million net increase in disability enrollments is five times greater than the growth in net jobs during the same period—a meager 291,000 jobs.[4]

Lowering The Economic Hammer

The three primary sources of income in a market economy are labor, investment and entrepreneurial business startups. All three have fared poorly under Obama’s policies.

Investment Income

Millions of middle-class Americans, especially seniors, prefer to stick to safe, ultralow-risk interest-paying investments, such a savings accounts, interest-earning checking accounts, money-market accounts, and certificates of deposit. A normal market rate of return on such investments would be around 3%, but today’s savers have been zeroed out by  the Federal Reserve’s “Zero Interest-Rate Policy.”[5]

Obama’s extraordinary increase in federal spending is the culprit. His big-spending policies far exceeded federal revenues, so they had to be financed by borrowing. The massive amount of new debt that was incurred was beyond the capacity of capital markets to finance at interest rates low enough for the federal treasury to afford. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke became Obama’s compliant accomplice, essentially bailing out the treasury by employing extraordinary measures (the series of “quantitative easing” programs) to cram interest rates down to near zero. In doing so, Bernanke deprived millions of Americans of the option of earning safe interest income. The Fed has rigged the markets so that middle-class seniors who want the safety of U.S. Treasury debt instruments are losing income while, in effect, granting virtually interest-free loans to the federal government.

Entrepreneurial Income

Obama’s policies have had a dampening effect on business startups—foundation for the middle class. Citing a study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which specializes in studying startups, respected social scientist Joel Kotkin writes, “…today fewer than 8% of U.S. companies are five years old or younger, down from between 12% and 13% in the early 1980s, another period following a deep recession.”[6]

There are several reasons for the sluggishness in small business startups, but one of the central ones is been the administration’s heavy-handed regulatory practices. The Mercatus Center, which maintains a database of federal regulations, tabulated an average of 17,212 regulatory rules and restrictions added per year by Obama, compared to 13,441 per year under George W. Bush.[7]

Obama’s second term will see even more new regulations—and therefore more trouble for the middle class– as his administration proceeds to implement the most significant, complex laws passed during Obama’s first term—the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  Both of these pieces of legislation will remove people from the middle class and make it harder for those trying to climb the economic ladder to reach this rung.

Labor Income

The official unemployment rate has fallen at historically slow post-recession rates under Obama. At the end of April 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate was 7.5%—the lowest it has been since he became president.

On the surface, it might seem that this statistic points to an increasingly healthy job market. But Investor’s Business Daily reports, “The average workweek in April was 2% shorter than it was a year ago, marking the ‘steepest decline since 1980.’” Employers are reducing the number of hours they employ workers to avoid incurring the heavy costs of impending ObamaCare rules.[8]

The participation rate of the US labor force is lower than it has been in decades–63.30% as of April 30, 2013. This rate has been declining, counter-intuitively, in lockstep with the official unemployment rate.[9] This means that the middle class is not only having a hard time finding jobs, but even giving up on the prospect of employment.

More than half of Americans under age 25 holding a bachelor’s degree are either unemployed or underemployed.[10]

Economic statistician John Williams, who maintains the well-known Shadowstats website, pegs the actual unemployment rate at the end of April 2013 at 23.0%.[11]

Obama channeled millions of stimulus dollars to increase employment for such favored constituencies as teachers, construction workers, and federal employees in his first two years without significantly reducing unemployment. The economic explanation is this: When a job exists (or earns as much as it does) only because of a government subsidy, then the job is costing more than the value it is producing. This imposes a net loss on society, and the wealth that is diverted from the private sector reduces its ability to create and sustain economically viable jobs.

Is the Obama-Caused Economic Weakness Intentional?

Was this Obama’s goal? Either he didn’t understand that his policies would be so detrimental, in which case he is economically illiterate and incompetent, or he knew what he was doing and was willing to sacrifice the middle class to achieve his overall goals. I think the latter is the case.

Signs of Antipathy

Five days before the 2008 election, Obama told a crowd of his supporters that “we” were on the verge of “fundamentally transforming” the country. Since the American system was designed to maximize economic opportunities and the standards of living, middle-class Americans might well wonder why Obama wanted to fundamentally change it.

Obama revealed his antipathy for middle-class values in the 2008 presidential campaign when he spoke contemptuously of Americans who cling to guns and religion. For 20 years, he attended Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church where the message from the pulpit was a vehement “God damn America!”

It is well known that Obama is a disciple and practitioner of the strategy and tactics of the late revolutionary Saul Alinsky, who despised the middle class, denigrating them as “materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt.”[12]

Obama repeatedly displayed his disrespect for the middle class in his policy approach to the deflating housing bubble he inherited. His proposals to bail-out underwater mortgage holders—many of whom had put little or no money down on their houses—was blatantly unfair to the tens of millions of middle-class Americans who had faithfully made the monthly mortgage payments for ten, twenty, or thirty years, and to those who had deferred Hawaiian vacations, new cars, and other enjoyments to save for large down payments on their houses. Obama pushed for bailouts not only to rich Wall Street firms, but to homeowners whose adjustable-rate mortgages had been reset higher—hardly fair to more financially prudent middle class Americans who had bitten the bullet and locked in fixed-rate mortgages that initially (and potentially permanently) were at higher interest rates than those who took out ARMs.[13]

The Green Agenda

President Obama is what I call a “mean green.” Like the radical environmentalists, he objects to the American middle class’s standard of living. He disapproves of Americans living comfortably when there are poor nations in the world. In his words: “We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes, you know, 72 degrees at all times…and then just expect that every other country is going to say OK…[when we] keep using 25 percent of the world’s energy.”

That explains why Obama chose Dr. Steven Chu to be Secretary of Energy for his first term. Chu’s most famous policy goal was encapsulated in his statement, “Somehow we have to figure out a way to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Well, Chu didn’t succeed fully, but the price of gasoline is approximately double what it was at the outset of the Obama presidency.

Chicagoland Politics and the “Curley Effect”

Chicago politicians are known for being particularly ruthless in their pursuit of political power. They play hardball. Their goal is to demolish their competition and forge a permanent majority. It hardly seems surprising, then, that Barack Obama is doing his best to take the Curley effect, historically an urban phenomenon, nationwide.

As defined by Harvard scholars Edward L. Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer in a famous 2002 article, the Curley effect (named after its prototype, James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston in the first half of the 20^th century) is a political strategy of “increasing the relative size of one’s political base through distortionary, wealth-reducing policies.”  Translation: A politician or a political party can achieve long-term dominance by tipping the balance of votes in their direction through the implementation of policies that reward their political allies and punish their opponents, even if the overall result is economic decline. Yes, strange as it seems, making a city poorer often increases the power of those who engineer that impoverishment.

Here is how the Curley effect works: Politicians adopt policies that bestow tax-financed favors on various special interest groups—welfare constituencies, unions, the public sector in general, and select corporations. In demonstration of George Bernard Shaw’s astute axiom, “The government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul,” the recipients of those favors and handouts loyally support their political patrons, giving them reliable electoral support in the form of votes, campaign contributions, get-out-the-vote drives, etc.

Meanwhile, those segments of the population who bear the economic burden of supporting the favored special interests often flee. This reduces the number of political opponents on the city’s voter registration rolls, thereby tilting the electoral balance and making it more likely that the political party running the wealth redistribution scheme stays in power. So successful has this strategy been for Democrats that they have retained uninterrupted control of many large American cities for decades, and in the more extreme cases, have created virtual one-party fiefdoms.

Perhaps you have seen the chain e-mail listing the ten poorest US cities with a population of at least 250,000: Detroit, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Miami, St. Louis, El Paso, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Newark. Besides all having poverty rates between 24% and 32% and a vanishing middle class, these cities share a common political factor: Only two have had a Republican mayor since 1961, and those two (Cincy and Cleveland) haven’t had one since the 1980s. Democratic mayors have had a lock on City Hall despite these once-great and prosperous cities stagnating on their watch. This is the Curley effect in action.

The strategic mistake of the Democratic leaders of those poor cities have adopted policies so virulently anti-business that they have hollowed out the economic base of the city and caused stagnation, decline, and bankruptcy.

Obama is trying to achieve the Curley effect nationwide. He is striving to forge a political coalition that will give the Democrats a permanent electoral majority. He has adopted a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, he has done everything he could to strengthen Democratic constituencies (e.g., stimulus spending steered predominantly toward unions and strategically allied state and municipal entities; waivers from Obamacare for unions; continual increases in the Index of Dependence on Government during Obama’s presidency);[14] on the other, he has endeavored to weaken Republican constituencies by strengthening alliances with Big Business while making things difficult for small businesses, because the latter are “a building-block of the Republican base.”[15]

If Obama and his fellow progressives succeed in achieving the Curley effect on the national level, Americans will no longer be able to move to a new city or state to escape the withering economic impact of Curley-style politics. Their only option would be to leave the country.  However, it appears that Obama has anticipated that response. To close the escape hatch from an Obama-led, Curley-effect America, the president has signed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act that mandates closer monitoring of Americans’ offshore accounts. He also seems to favor policies that would impose financial penalties on anyone desiring to give up U.S. citizenship, and he has called for “global minimum taxes.”[16]

An Enduring Crisis of the Middle Class

Obama’s policies are enlarging the twin millstones around the neck of the middle class– taxation and inflation. While it is true that income tax rates haven’t yet risen under Obama and inflation has surfaced only in a few areas (e.g., food and energy) these twin curses are quietly gathering strength for a future whirlwind of destruction. The six trillion dollars of new debt resulting from Obama’s spending binge (plus trillions more of accumulated unfunded federal liabilities) are tax hikes on future taxpayers. As mentioned earlier, the costs of this flood of red ink has been obscured by the Fed’s Zero Interest Rate Policy and its willingness to buy approximately 60% of new federal debt with newly created dollars. Whenever ZIRP ends, some combination of massive tax hikes and/or raging inflation will ensue. .

Already, Obama’s economic policies have hurt the middle class. They have sapped the job market, raised food and energy bills, and resulted in falling incomes and net worth. Now the table is set for additional economic pain in the future.

A contracting middle class in retreat from the optimism and affluence that have always been its hallmark is, at this stage of his presidency, Barack Obama’s legacy.

The letter was signed by well-known conservatives like Monica Crowley, Erick Erickson, Victor Davis Hansen, and David Horowitz. On a conference call introducing the letter, several prominent conservatives explained their opposition to the bill. The letter opened by stating unequivocally that the current bill is beyond repair and should be scrapped entirely.

We write to express our serious concerns regarding the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill, S. 744. We oppose this bill and urge you to vote against it when it comes to the Senate floor. No matter how well-intentioned, the Schumer-Rubio bill suffers from fundamental design flaws that make it unsalvageable. Many of us support various parts of the legislation, but the overall package is so unsatisfactory that the Senate would do better to start over from scratch.

On the conference call, several prominent conservatives attacked individual parts of the proposed bill. Carol Swain is a professor at Vanderbilt University, and she said that if this bill were to pass it would only lead to more unemployment of American workers, and especially in the African-American community.

“The proposed legislation works directly against the interest of American workers, especially those with a high school education or less.

“We can safely predict increases in black unemployment, as well as incarceration rate.”

Swain continued, “The last thing that America needs is another guest worker program for low-wage, unskilled workers. What America needs is an investment in American workers.”

Andrew McCarthy is a former US Attorney in the administration of George W. Bush and he was the lead prosecutor in the successful conviction of the so-called “blind sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, the man responsible for the original World Trade Center attack in 1994. McCarthy said that passage of this bill would hurt national security.

“Sponsors of the immigration bill promised us security and enforcement first, and legalization only when that was achieved.”

Instead, said McCarthy, the bill that has been agreed upon gives provisional status to all illegal aliens immediately, even as politicians make yet another promise to secure the border at a later unspecified date. McCarthy concluded with what he would like to see from immigration reform.

“Enforce the law, establish a track record of enforcing the law, and then come back to us [the American people] in five years with a track record of enforcement.” (And to ask for some sort of amnesty at that point.)

Meanwhile, Senator Jeff Sessions pointed out a mandatory biometric system was voted down, and that the new bill scraps the e-verify system in favor of another untested system.

The proposed bill has been going through a furious period known as mark-up. It finally passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee with a 13-5 vote. A vote in the full Senate is expected in the next week and the process will then move to the House of Representatives, where the members appear close to announcing their own immigration reform bill.

For immigration reform to be effective there must be aggressive border enforcement, work enforcement, as well as visa tracking and enforcement. While proponents of the bill have maintained that enforcement will be a priority, numerous troubling details covered by FrontPage Magazine have shown that true enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws continues to be lacking.

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The answer is simple: Slaughter is a routine, widespread practice among many Moslem families. Many children see how their fathers slaughter sheep when celebrating an important event, and the whole family is present at the sacrificial slaughter during Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, when the slaughter is part of the holiday ritual.

In modern societies, the slaughter of animals for meat consumption takes place in slaughterhouses, far from the eyes of the public and children, who generally get their meat free of blood and hair and ready for cooking or eating. This sterile arrangement spares the public the sight of the slaughter, the blood and the accompanying cries. In the West, many of those who witnessed animal slaughter become vegetarian.

In many Islamic societies, slaughter generally occurs at home, in front of the children, and is part of the routine of life. They are immunized against the sight of slaughter, are not moved by the blood dripping from the animal’s neck and are not frightened by its snorts and struggles. In many cases, the children hold the legs of the lamb in order to immobilize it during slaughter; they sense very well its frantic reactions as the knife so painfully slices through its neck. The presence and participation of the children in the act of slaughter immunizes them emotionally against its influence; when they are older they perform the custom of sacrifice with their own hands and knives, and in front of their own children.

The emotional immunity to the act of slaughter allows a Moslem to utilize it whenever he feels he must employ radical methods to rid himself of someone. The slaughter of sheep during the Festival of Sacrifice is accompanied by the recitation of “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful”, and the butchering of girls who do not behave properly is conducted as a kind of execution ceremony. The slaughterer feels that he is doing something important and worthy, acting in a way to which he is inured since early childhood.

In western societies, slaughter seems barbaric, while members of Moslem societies view it as proper and commendable when carried out within the proper context. Therefore, slaughtering a Jew, a Christian or anyone seen as an enemy is not considered unusual in traditional Islamic societies. This is what professional jargon calls “a cultural difference.”

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Steinitz said Iran’s nuclear industry was “many times larger than that of either North Korea or Pakistan” and that Iran is not just seeking to become a nuclear state but a “nuclear superpower.”

And regarding Israel’s northern front, air force chief Tamir Eshel said war with Syria and Hizballah could be imminent. Or as he put it: “It’s not as if we can say we have two weeks to prepare [for war]. I am not sure we have two weeks to prepare.”

Eshel also said the powerful Russian S-300 anti-aircraft system was on its way to Syria despite U.S. and Israeli attempts to talk Russian president Vladimir Putin out of it.

Eshel made his statement during a week when Syria, for the first time since its civil war broke out, took credit for incidents of firing into Israeli territory on the Golan Heights.

Steinitz’s words about Iran seemed borne out by the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which says that: Iran has now added 700 high-tech centrifuges that can enrich uranium two to five times faster than its older centrifuges; has also added hundreds of the older ones to bring the total to over 13,000; and keeps developing its heavy water reactor at Arak that will be able to produce several plutonium bombs a year.

And while it is difficult, from the welter of reports and assessments, to make out just how imminent the Iranian threat is—with some claiming Iran is still avoiding crossing Netanyahu’s red line of enriching enough uranium for a bomb—an assessment last month by the U.S. intelligence community tended more to the pessimistic side.

As it stated: “Teheran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity to produce nuclear weapons. So, the central issue is its political will to do so.”

National Intelligence Director James Clapper said such a decision would be made by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—who, it should be noted, is a deeply ideological leader who has called Israel “a cancerous tumor [that] must be uprooted from the region” and just this month predicted the collapse of the West.

The Syrian alarmism, too, seemed borne out as two top-level visitors—U.S. secretary of state John Kerry and British foreign secretary William Hague—came to Israel on Thursday to discuss the crisis. Kerry, who has appeared obsessed with the relatively minor Palestinian issue in recent months, was reportedly—along with Hague—actually much more focused on the Syrian arena.

There too assessments differ, with some in Israel claiming the last thing embattled president Bashar al-Assad needs is to open a front with Israel, while others—as the New York Times put it on Wednesday—say that for Assad “engagement with Israel could distract attention from his massacre of his own people and win him support at home and across the Arab world.”

To sum up, the situation is unstable. The fact that Putin—after delaying delivery for a couple of years—is now sending the S-300s to Syria does not indicate much concern about President Barack Obama as a strategic actor and could reflect Putin’s perception that Obama is all the more weakened by his current troubles at home.

The administration’s descent into a whirlpool of scandals could also make it more difficult for it to act against Iran—if it has ever really seriously intended to do so. Apart from being distressed and preoccupied, scandal-ridden administrations that launch military actions are automatically accused of doing so to divert attention and save themselves.

In that regard the Senate’s passing this week of a unanimous resolution, calling to support Israel if it finds itself compelled to attack Iran, may be even more timely than it means to be. Israel may have to deal with the crises on its own, and it will not live with a nuclear-superpower Iran.

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Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse made the same dubious claim and explicitly blamed Republicans. “Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse,” the Senator said, “care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms.” Whitehouse later apologized, but only for his timing, not for his smear.

But Boxer and Whitehouse are simply following the lead of President Obama, who made the same unscientific and partisan claim in his inaugural address:

“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”

Once again, the party of science and reason has exposed itself as hopelessly unscientific and irrational.

These self-styled rationalists and defenders of science could have saved themselves embarrassment by consulting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climate Data Center. As the NCDA’s U.S. Tornado Climatology site explains, “With increased national Doppler radar coverage, increasing population, and greater attention to tornado reporting, there has been an increase in the number of tornado reports over the past several decades. This can create a misleading appearance of an increasing trend in tornado frequency.” A chart is provided which “indicates there has been little trend in the frequency of the stronger tornadoes over the past 55 years.”

But science and fact have had little to do with the apocalyptic climate change movement. The absence of global increases in temperature since 1998 has raised serious questions about all those dramatic computer models predicting disaster from human-caused CO₂ polluting the atmosphere. For true believers to hold on to their belief inCO₂ caused warming, they have to admit that some unknown factor is causing temperatures not to rise even when CO₂ is increasing. But to admit that is to admit that they don’t fully understand how climate works, at least not enough to justify subjecting our economy to a multi-trillion-dollar hit from the war against carbon in order to ward off those dire consequences that may happen. As a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal signed by 16 scientists writes, “There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC [the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change], aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.”

But the unproven claim about the link of CO₂ to warming is just one of the many holes in apocalyptic global warming theory. Remember when warming-cult high priest Al Gore claimed that the 400 parts per million (ppm) of CO₂ present today would be “a sad milestone, a call to action”? Given that hundreds of variables govern climate, isolating one trace gas as the engine of climate change was always dubious. Indeed, scientists outside the global-warming cult have argued that doubling or tripling CO₂ ppms would have no major impact on the planet. As Human Events’s Marc Morano reports, “Scientists also note that geologically speaking, the Earth is currently in a ‘CO2 famine’ and that the geologic record reveals that ice ages have occurred when CO2 was at 2000ppm to as high as 8000ppm. In addition, peer-reviewed studies have documented that there have been temperatures similar to the present day on Earth when carbon dioxide was up to twenty times higher than today’s levels. And, a peer-reviewed study this year found that the present day carbon dioxide level of 400ppm was exceeded — without any human influence — 12,750 years ago when CO2 may have reached up to 425 ppm.”

An even greater problem with the CO₂ obsession is the uncertainty about what levels of the gas establish the baseline with which to compare the current levels that are so dangerous. Back in 2010 the New York Times explained how this baseline is established: “Bubbles of ancient air, trapped by glaciers and ice sheets have been tested, and they show that over the past 800,000 years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air oscillated between roughly 200 and 300 parts per million. Just before the Industrial Revolution, the level was about 280 parts per million and had been there for several thousand years.”

That seems definitive––unless you ask how long CO₂can remain in the atmosphere, or whether the volume of CO₂ trapped in ice has remained stable all those millennia and so can provide an accurate baseline. According to Dr. Tom Segalstad––past head of the Geological Museum in the University of Oslo’s Natural History Museums, an associate professor of resource and environmental geology at the University of Oslo, and a past expert reviewer for the IPCC––abundant research evidence suggests that CO₂ stays in the atmosphere for at most 12 years. If that is true, then people cannot possibly have pumped enough CO₂ into the atmosphere to account for the alleged increases they caused. Either something other than humans is increasing CO₂, or the way the gas is measured is flawed.

That brings us to those “bubbles of ancient air” that are used to establish how much CO₂ was in the atmosphere before humans started burning fossil fuels. Many scientists, including Zbigniew Jaworoski–– the author of four books and nearly 300 scholarly articles, and the senior scientific advisor of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Poland––have challenged this assumption that ice cores accurately record CO₂ concentrations in ancient air. Jaworoski’s research suggests that the ice is not a closed system that preserves air bubbles unchanged and keeps gas concentrations stable. Because of ice liquefying, the different solubility levels of gasses in cold water, cracks in the ice, and extreme pressure that crystallizes CO₂ into a solid, CO₂ in ice can be reduced. Thus the baseline alluded to in the Times article that establishes the notion of dangerously increasing CO₂ is put in doubt.

For all their talk of “science,” then, the Democrats are indulging ideological preferences when they holler about climate change. Nor is it difficult to see the origins of that ideology. Partly it reflects the old romantic discomfort with the same industrialism and technology that have made us the healthiest, most long-lived and comfortable humans ever to walk the earth. Disneyfied idealizations of nature and Blakean denouncements of modernity’s “Satanic mills” bestow cheap moral superiority on people who couldn’t live five minutes without the high-tech conveniences made possible by fossil fuels.

Creepier still is the late-Marxist demonization of industrial capitalism that also lies behind the attack on carbon. Having been repudiated by history, Marxism must attack liberal democracy and free-market capitalism with the weapons of environmentalism, which gives them allies among the suburban recyclers and Prius-drivers, Sierra-Club plutocrats, and Occupy Wall Street anarchists. The irony, of course, is that communist economies have historically been some of the worst polluters on the planet. Look at China today, where Beijing’s air looks like coal-burning London’s in the 1840s, and hundreds of dead pigs float in the rivers. Finally, the Marxist-lite big government folks––i.e. Democrats––find in the global warming crisis a convenient pretext for expanding government control over the economy and business, thus weakening the most powerful rival to the Leviathan state. Just look at the current war on extracting natural gas through fracking.

Al Gore once sneered, “Fifteen per cent of the people believe the moon landing was staged on some movie lot and a somewhat smaller number still believe the Earth is flat. They all get together on a Saturday night and party with the global warming deniers.” More and more scientific evidence suggests that it is Gore and his Democratic brethren who are the flat-earthers, clinging to an exploded paradigm not because of the “overwhelming judgment of science,” but because it gratifies their ideological and political preferences and interests.

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Modern Family is one of the most popular comedies on television. It’s cleverly written, and obviously quite liberal – the premise of the show is the Mrs. Doubtfire notion that all families are created equal, with similar foibles and similar levels of parenting skill, all united under the rubric of love. The show revolves around three couples: Jay (Ed O’Neill) and Gloria (Sofia Vergara), as a once-divorced older man and his trophy wife who truly love each other, and Gloria’s son from a prior marriage, Manny (Rico Rodriguez); Jay’s son, Mitchell (Jesse Lee Ferguson), who is gay and in a relationship with Cam (Eric Stonestreet), with whom he has adopted a daughter, Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons); and the traditional family, Jay’s daughter Claire (Julie Bowen), her husband Phil (Ty Burrell), and their three children, Haley (Sarah Hyland), Alex (Ariel Winter), and Luke (Nolan Gould).

When it comes to parenting, the show’s take is that all parents are created equal. Claire, the housewife, is the cringe-inducing mother who loves her children but can barely handle them. Phil adores his kids, but is an overgrown kid himself. Overall, their three children run wild.

Jay and Gloria, meanwhile, bring up their young son (and step-son), who is a mature-beyond-his-years prodigy. Manny parents Jay and Gloria as much as they seem to parent him.

Cam is the equivalent of Claire – a stay-at-home dad, overprotective and ubercompetitive, at risk of stereotypically stage-momlike behavior. Mitchell is the more rational parent, who may not be as involved as he should be.

This is a comedy, which means that even the worst parental failings end in laughter rather than tears. Everybody is happy and healthy despite their various family structures. This is liberalism’s vision of the perfect universe, and it is an attractive one.

But it’s not liberal enough for some. ACLU Action has now started a letter-writing campaign designed to get the show to marry Mitchell and Cam. “Mitch and Cam are a couple that America has come to know and love, and seeing them get married, and seeing the characters in the story grapple with their desire to get married, makes it real for a bigger part of America,” James Esseks, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Project at the ACLU said to the Associated Press.

The show is already preparing to embrace the proposal. Steven Levitan, who created the show, tweeted out a link to the campaign. Jesse Lee Ferguson commented via Twitter, “Love this! Thank you ACLU! Maybe once Prop 8 is overturned!”

It is unlikely that Modern Family will wait for that. After all, Friends participated in a lesbian wedding more than a decade ago. And the folks in Hollywood get that warm, fuzzy feeling inside when they’re stumping for social change.

Just as in every other capitalistic enterprise, Hollywood is not solely consumed with profit. Most people who go into business do not do so only to make money, though it is a major consideration. Those in Hollywood wish to go to cocktail parties and tell their friends and family what they’re doing for society and the world. That’s why Christopher Nolan may make blockbuster after blockbuster, but he’s not as hot-ticket a party item as Dustin Lance Black (Milk). And that’s why on television, you’ll find your favorite sitcom overstep its bounds on an irregular basis and smash you in the face with politics.

Thanks to the monopoly in Hollywood from one side of the political spectrum, there’s no risk in doing that. So get ready for it, gang: Modern Family will have a gay wedding soon. How else can the big government liberals who run the show live with their more politically-oriented buddies?

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Originally published by 

One of the traditional purposes for studying History has been to learn from it, to see how past events can shed light on the present.  This is possible assuming the history presented is true.

Unfortunately, in our postmodern era of relativism, history has become a malleable tool to justify one’s philosophical and/or political inclinations—with all the wild anachronisms, projections, and conjectures that entails.

Happily, there is a little known antidote to these distorted revisionist histories. Ironically we can often learn about the past by looking at the present—for the patterns of human nature do not change.

Consider the book The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, by one Candida Moss.  Despite the fact that Christian martyrdom under the militant Roman Empire has long been an unquestioned historical fact, Moss claims that it was largely a “myth,” that many of history’s best known narratives of Christian martyrs were entirely fabricated.

This thesis, as most modern-day academic theses concerning early history, is fundamentally based on conjecture, projections, and above all, anachronisms—the sort that earlier turned Christ into a homosexual hippie and Muhammad into a humanitarian feminist. Neither Moss nor anyone else can prove or disprove what the primary historical texts say—that Roman persecution of Christians was very real, widespread, and brutal.

We weren’t there.

But from an objective point of view, is it not more reasonable to accept the words of contemporary eyewitnesses, than it is the conjectures of a politically charged book that is separated from its subject by 2,000 years?

Among other ideas unintelligible and inapplicable to the ancient world, Moss invokes “T-shirts,” “favorite athletes,” and “brands of soda” to “prove” that the ancient narrative of Christians tortured and killed for their faith was all a gag to make a profit: “Martyrs were like the action heroes of the ancient world,” Moss says. “It was like getting your favorite athlete endorsing your favorite brand of soda. …Of course, the prices were completely jacked up.”

In short, the merit of Moss’ thesis rests in the fact that it satisfies a certain anti-Christian sentiment—that it satisfies a modern-day political perspective—and not that it offers any facts or serious arguments. Indeed, by projecting cynical postmodern perspectives onto the mentalities of people, both Romans and Christians, who lived worlds and centuries away, the thesis is ultimately farcical.

Even so, let’s tackle the myth charge from a different angle.  Let’s leave the question of eyewitnesses, texts, and traditions, and instead rely on common sense—that which is in short supply in the academic community—by considering the following question: If at least 100 million Christians are currently being persecuted today, in an era when Western ideas of humanitarianism and religious tolerance have permeated the rest of the world, thanks to globalism, is it not reasonable to conclude that 2,000 years ago, when “might made right” and brutally prevailed, that Christians were also being persecuted then, especially when contemporary sources clearly indicate as much?

Consider the modern Islamic world alone, where today’s overwhelming majority of horrific Christian persecution occurs, as documented in my new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians.  Today in the 21^st century, Christians under Islam are still being tortured, imprisoned, enslaved, and killed; their churches and Bibles are routinely banned or burned.

Why is that?  Because Islam is a supremacist cult, which brooks no opposition and demands conformity, one way or the other: Islamic law (see Koran 9:29) teaches that those who come under its hegemony must either convert, or keep their faith but live as ostracized third-class citizens (dhimmis), or die.

The supremacist culture of the Roman Empire—an even older martial cult devoted to the gods of war—was not much different and demanded compliance from the subjugated, regardless of how modern, armchair historians try to romanticize it.

If today’s Muslims—who are acquainted with modern ideas of humanitarianism and tolerance—are still brutally persecuting the Christian minorities in their midst, are we seriously to believe that the warlike Roman Empire, which existed at a time when brutality and cruelty were the expected norm, did not persecute Christians, especially when the records say it did? The Roman punishment of crucifixion alone sheds light on the ruthless severity of the ancient empire.

Moreover, Christianity was and still is the one religion that refuses to comply with its supremacist overlords, that puts its beliefs above the preservation of life.  Unlike other religions which approve of dissembling and outward conformity—Islamic law permits Muslims to outwardly renounce Muhammad, if doing so will save their lives—Christians have long had a habit of “annoying” their superiors by refusing to comply, even to save their lives.

Thus, just as Christ irked Pilate, the representative of the supremacist Roman Empire, by refusing to utter some words to save his life, his disciples and countless other ancient Christians did the same; and today, countless modern day Christians are doing the same. And in all cases, their supremacist overlords—whether pagan Romans or modern Muslims—persecuted, and continue to persecute, them for it.  (Most recently in Iran, Islamic authorities are trying to force an American citizen to abjure Christ, even as he resists under torture.)

Historical texts aside, today’s Christian persecution is a clear indicator of yesterday’s Christian persecution—for those who exercise some common sense, that is.

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From 1999-2010, the OIC succeeded in passing its “defamations of religions” resolutions, which ostensibly would protect Islam from all criticism, including true statements of fact.  Though the name of the resolutions indicated that it would pertain to all religions equally, in the OIC’s interpretation, it applied to Islam only.

Realizing the clash that this concept holds with that of free expression, the US State Department urged the OIC to produce an alternative resolution which would address the OIC’s concerns about “Islamophobia” and still protect free speech.

Accordingly, in March 2011, the OIC introduced the now infamous Resolution 16/18 to combat intolerance based on religion or belief, purportedly proposed as a replacement for the defamation of religions resolution.  It garnered wide-spread support and Western states touted it as a victory for free speech.  They believed that its focus marked a landmark shift from suppression of speech critical of religions to combating discrimination and violence against individuals based on their religious beliefs.

Over time it became clear that the OIC retained its long term goal to protect Islam from “defamation” and indeed to criminalize all speech that shed a negative light on Islam or Muslims.  Resolution 16/18 turned out to be a tactical move by the OIC to bring the West one step closer toward realizing its goal of achieving global blasphemy laws, by using language more palatable to the West, and open to interpretation.

Against this backdrop the US held the first conference to “implement” Resolution 16/18, the process now known as the “Istanbul Process.”

Unfortunately, America’s concern for the protection of free speech seems to have gotten lost as its focus moved closer to the OIC’s positions, and an emphasis was placed on protecting Muslims in the West from “Islamophobia.”

Some circles including free speech advocates, national security experts, and those concerned about the Persecuted Church, have beaten the drum against Resolution 16/18 and the continuation of the Istanbul Process.  Their efforts have been to no avail as the Istanbul Process continues.

However, while awareness of the perils of Resolution 16/18 is on the increase, news on Resolution A/HRC/22/L.40 has gone virtually unreported.  It retains the same title as Resolution 16/18, but has glaringly dangerous amendments.

To focus on just one, it asserts that “terrorism…cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or ethnic group.”  This is obviously problematic.  The lumping together of these categories implies a false equation of immutable characteristics such as nationality and ethnicity with those that are subject to choice such as religion or belief.

Religions and belief systems come in all stripes.  To preclude the possibility that any of them might be ideologically associated with terrorism leads to a position based on an unexplored assumption rather than a conclusion based on fact.  Indeed, the assertion condemns the mere exploration of the facts a priori, a notion which is not only illogical but dangerous.

After 9/11 and the multitude of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Islam, one ought to be able to raise legitimate questions about Jihadi ideology without being labeled a bigot. Government has an obligation to determine the motivational ideology of terrorism even if even if it turns out to be an interpretation of a religion.

The government should not get into the business of ascertaining what is or is not proper theological interpretations of any religion.  But a distinction has to be made between those who are truly practicing a religion as the word is understood in the West, versus those who are implementing a subversive political ideology cloaked in the language of religion.

Anyone who has conducted a good faith investigation knows that there is such a phenomenon as “Islamic terrorism.”  Only those in denial can claim otherwise.  Truth should never constitute prohibited speech, no matter how ugly reality might be.

The condemnation of honest discussion on this important matter, along with other disturbing speech restrictive clauses in Resolution L.40, demonstrates the unraveling of the “consensus” by nation states to promote freedom of expression.  Those who follow the OIC closely know that its allegiance to this concept was folly from the onset.  One need only take a cursory glance at the OIC countries to determine the disingenuousness of this portention, as many OIC countries fine, jail and even execute the exercise of speech deemed blasphemous to Islam.  For those less informed, nothing more than the language embodied in Resolution L.40 is needed to realize that the OIC’s commitment to free speech is a sham.

Subsequent to passage of Resolution L.40, the EU representative to the UN expressed unabashed concern over the erosion of international consensus to support free speech.  He insisted that the EU will continue to uphold the ideas pertaining to the protection of minorities, but will oppose any efforts to undermine the right to free expression, including discussion of Islamic terrorism.

The US representative stated no such concern. She failed to make a principled statement on America’s position regarding freedom of speech.  Instead, she lavished praise on the OIC for maintaining a “consensus” on Resolution 16/18 for three consecutive years.

The Obama Administration has erroneously characterized the Fort Hood attack as mere “workplace violence”; has cleansed from its national security and counterterrorism lexicon any reference to Islamic terrorism, has blamed the Benghazi attacks on the an “anti-Islam video” and has taken a lead role in the Istanbul Process, promising to use “peer pressure and shaming” against American citizens who speak out on these issues in a way that the Administration finds disagreeable.

Therefore, it should have come as no surprise when after the Boston bombings, during a time of trial, tribulation and grief, the President’s address emphasized that people should prioritize America’s value of diversity.  No doubt that this diversity of ideas includes the motivational ideology of Islamic terrorism, even though acknowledgment of its existence is now verboten.

This article was commissioned by the Legal Project, an activity of the Middle East Forum.

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Last year, the Clarion Project launched a petition to boycott Best Buy in response to the company’s donations to a fundraiser for the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The company defended its actions in the name of “interfaith” relations, even after nearly 13,000 people signed the petition. The same annual fundraiser was recently held—and Best Buy’s name is missing from the list of sponsors. However, other sponsors remain and readers are encouraged to contact them.

The story begins last April when Islamist-Watch.org broke the story that Best Buy was a “Platinum Sponsor” of CAIR-MN’s annual fundraiser. Best Buy later said it donated $1,450 over two years to the event.

CAIR was designated by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for financing the Hamas terrorist group. The government listed CAIR as an entity of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, a secret body set up to politically support Hamas.

A 2007 federal court filing states, “From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists…the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.” In 2009, the unindicted co-conspirator designation was upheld because of “ample” evidence linking CAIR to Hamas.

The CAIR-MN fundraiser that Best Buy donated to had Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of “Ground Zero Mosque” fame as the keynote speaker. The Master of Ceremonies was Hussein Khatib, a former Holy Land Foundation official and designated unindicted co-conspirator. Federal prosecutors said he is among those who “are and/or were a part of the HAMAS’ social infrastructure in Israel and the Palestinian territories.” He is also on the National Board of American Muslims for Palestine, another radical group.

CAIR-MN was honored with CAIR-National’s “Chapter of the Year Award” on September 29, 2012.

Best Buy refused to express regret or to promise not to donate to CAIR in the future. The company said the donation was done by its Inter-Faith Employee Business Network and “Best Buy’s customers and employees around the world represent a variety of faiths and denominations and we respect our employees’ efforts to constructively promote diversity and education in their communities.”

That’s when the Clarion Project stepped in and started a petition to boycott Best Buy. It quickly spread and caught the attention of U.S. Marine James Canning who served in Iraq and Beirut, who responded with a video on YouTube.

“Because of this support Best Buy has been giving the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR, I can no longer conduct business with Best Buy,” he says as he snips his “Reward Zone” card in half. Shortly after the Daily Caller reported on it, PetitionBuzz.com suddenly removed the petition. It was later restored.

CAIR-MN held its sold-out fundraising banquet on April 13. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) were guest speakers. Best Buy was absent from this year’s list of sponsors.

However, others sponsored the fundraiser including: Walmart, Ameriprise Financial, Best Care, the National Lawyers Guild of Minnesota, Metro Health Care Services LLC,  University of Minnesota Law School, Hamline University School of Law, Minnesota Interfaith Network and Jewish Community Action. Tellingly, their fellow sponsors are American Muslims for Palestine and the Muslim American Society, which federal prosecutors say was “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” You can contact the sponsors at the links provided.

I contacted Walmart about the sponsorship. Spokesperson Delia Garcia said that the information about CAIR would be passed along to the appropriate people and it could affect future sponsorship:

Walmart is not a corporate sponsor of CAIR. At the local level, we empower our store managers to guide community relationships. Because of the unique needs of our workforce in the Twin Cities, Walmart representatives in our Minnesota market purchased a table at a broadly attended CAIR annual event. Our store managers re-evaluate their community involvement annually, so it’s important to note that our local relationships are subject to change.

Fundraisers and other events by groups like CAIR cost money and much of that money comes from businesses looking for an opportunity to advertise. They are sometimes small companies; ones whose stores you can call and talk to the manager. Others are large companies whose attention is harder to capture. We need to all do our part to educate them.

Nearly 13,000 people took action last year by signing the petition. They expressed their beliefs with their voices, Facebook postings, emails and wallets. And, apparently, they could not be ignored.

This article was sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

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In 1996, as he faced an incumbent state senator and two other challengers for the Democratic nomination for state senator in a heavily-Democratic district in Chicago, then-candidate Barack Obama directed his campaign staff to challenge the candidacy petitions of his opponents.  By disqualifying signatures one by one, as one local columnist put it, Obama “made sure voters had but one choice.”

Then, in 2004, not only in the Democratic nomination for United States Senator from Illinois, but in the general election, Team Obama perfected the art of getting confidential documents on Obama’s opponents unsealed.

First, Obama’s primary opponent had to try and explain to the voters the contents of recently-unsealed divorce records, which included allegations of spousal violence.  The former front-runner finished third, far behind the winner, Barack Obama.  Then, in the 2004 general election, Republican nominee Jack Ryan ended his race for the Senate after child custody records were unsealed, revealing allegations of wild forays at sex clubs with his actress wife, Jeri Ryan.

Is it any wonder that once President Obama’s signature accomplishment, Obamacare, came under scathing criticism from Tea Party groups in 2010, that the IRS suddenly began to give extra scrutiny, and in many cases deny non-profit status to groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their name?  The extra IRS scrutiny and audits were blamed on a few “rogue” IRS agents in Cincinnati, but the scandal is big enough to be blamed for the harassment of over 500 conservative groups.  Reportedly, 63% of all Tea Party-related groups that applied for non-profit status since 2010 eventually withdrew their applications, obviously limiting donations to these groups, and their ability to promote conservative ideas.  Government harassment works.

With the non-profit voter integrity group “True The Vote,” a delayed application for non-profit status was only the beginning.  In the two years since the group applied for non-profit status, the founder and her family’s business became targets of other government agencies, including the FBI, the ATF, and OSHA.

And despite denials to the contrary, evidence suggests direction from the top of the executive branch.  An anonymous IRS official employee from the Cincinnati office confirmed that orders of singling out organizations based on political belief is something that would only “come from the top.”

Old Chicago habits die hard, and during the 2012 campaign, the Obama campaign website posted the names of 15 prominent donors to Mitt Romney’s campaign, sending the message far and wide to investigate these people, possibly unsealing any confidential files, at the least dissuading other possible Romney supporters from donating to the campaign.

Apparently the IRS and the Labor Department took the bait and audited one of the listed Romney donors, Frank VanderSloot.  Within weeks of being listed on the Obama website, IRS agents audited VanderSloot’s personal and business tax returns, and the Labor Department even investigated VanderSloot’s business.  VanderSloot says he is not the only person on that list to be audited.

How extensive is this scandal?  As far as we know today, the IRS took the lead in harassing conservatives and Tea Party groups, occasionally joined by the Department of Justice, OSHA, the ATF, and the Labor Department.  If you were to add some news of spying on reporters – that was announced Monday — then it all becomes reminiscent of the following exchange from the 1976 movie All the President’s Men:

Bob Woodward: Segretti told me and Bernstein that…

Deep Throat: [interupting] Don’t concentrate on Segretti. You’ll miss the overall.

Bob Woodward: The letter that destroyed the Muskey candidacy… did that come from inside the White House?

Deep Throat: You’re missing the overall.

Bob Woodward: What overall?

Deep Throat: The people behind all of this were frightened of Muskey and that’s what got him destroyed. They wanted to run against McGovern.  Look who they’re running against. They bugged offices, they followed people, falsified press leaks, passed fake letters… they canceled Democratic campaign rallies, they investigated Democratic private lives, they planted spies, they stole documents… and now don’t tell me that all of this was the work of one Donald Segretti.

Substitute the phrase “a few rogue IRS officers from Cincinnati”  for Doanld Segretti, and a few other updates, and this exchange gives a glimpse at how big and how far this scandal may go.  But one thing is for sure: all of these actions are part of an old Obama pattern since his days in Illinois of doing whatever it takes to get one’s opponents, be they candidates or groups, to withdraw from the competition of ideas.

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