“This legislation is not going to work,” Sessions told Breitbart News. He described the measure sponsored by the bipartisan so-called Gang of Eight in the Senate as a “surrender to illegality that will guarantee we’ll be back in this position again.”

“We have no indication whatsoever that this administration will have renewed [its] commitment to follow whatever law is passed,” Sessions said. “This Senate bill is very, very dangerous. It won’t work, and I hope the American people will dig into it and follow the details of it.”

In a time of high unemployment, record food-stamp dependency, and economic stagnation, a minimum of 11 million immigrants will immediately be given Social Security cards that will allow them to compete for government and blue collar jobs. The legislation puts “tremendous pressure” on the job market and makes it harder for workers to find jobs and leave welfare programs.

Although amnesty remains deeply unpopular among the American public at large, the activist Left wants the estimated 11 million illegal aliens present in the U.S. to be processed because they see them as future Democratic voters. In addition, many labor unions, such as SEIU (which has executives focused solely on immigration issues) see today’s illegals as future union members. Business lobbies favor amnesty because they crave the cheap, largely unskilled labor.

The Left’s goal with the current immigration bill, which a Heritage Foundation study found would add $6.3 trillion to the nation’s budget deficits over the coming 50 years, is the same as with most of its major policy initiatives over the past half century: To destroy the American system.

The radicals’ goal is to use immigration to subvert the American system, just as it has been since the 1960s when the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) shepherded reform of that era’s immigration laws through Congress. The concept is simple: Flood America with people who don’t share Americans’ traditional philosophical commitment to the rule of law, limited government, and markets, in order to force changes in society.

An added benefit, from the Left’s perspective, is the proposed mass amnesty would destroy once and for all the Republican Party.

Starry-eyed Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) think that backing the measure will somehow win their party Latino votes. They must hope that if it becomes law the new voters it brings to their party’s fold will more than offset the all-but-certain exodus of fed-up conservatives the legislation will prompt. Among those disgruntled Republican-leaning voters are the same people whose failure to vote in November helped to deprive GOP candidate Mitt Romney of the presidency.

Democrats, on the other hand, know with much greater certainty that the legislation will secure their party more votes. “This legislation is all about the Democrats bringing in new voters who will assure them of a permanent leftist majority,” writes Paul Mirengoff.

Well-heeled radicals like George Soros are eager to push the national GOP over the cliff. One of the more active progressive groups pushing amnesty, National Immigration Forum, has taken a lot of money from Soros. According to tax records, the group has taken $3,807,152 from Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society since 2009 and $1,650,000 from Soros’s Open Society Institute since 1999.

On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Graham made the nonsensical argument that if the GOP doesn’t pander to Latinos it will die.

“If we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table and in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run [for president] in 2016,” he said. “We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party. And the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who we run in my view.”

Of course, the kind of outreach proposed by Graham is pointless.

Immigration is not an important issue for most Latino voters and Latinos are traditionally staunch, pro-big government Democrats.

“Anyone who believes that they’re going to win over the Latino vote is grossly mistaken,” said Representative Lou Barletta (R-Penn.). “The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they’ll depend on.”

According to Sessions, the legislation provides that an additional 4.5 million illegals will be legalized over the following decade. At that point the nation’s intake of immigrants will grow by at least 50 percent per year over 10 years for a total of 1.5 million immigrants a year being placed on a path to citizenship, or 15 million more for 10 years.

In addition to these 30 million immigrants placed on a path to citizenship, the measure would also double the quantity of temporary workers who could come and stay in the U.S. for three years, Sessions said. The workers would have the option to “re-up” for another three years with their families.

The bill is currently close to 1,100 pages long, reportedly weighing in at 24 pounds. It deals not only with immigration itself, but also with border security, welfare programs, free trade, and a multitude of other issues. Democrats are hoping to force the legislative monstrosity through the Senate before Independence Day.

The foremost champion of the bill, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), has made the laughable claim that the measure contains “the toughest enforcement measures in the history of the United States, potentially in the world.”

Last week the Senate rejected a “border security first” amendment to the Gang of Eight legislation. The amendment, offered by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), would have required the Department of Homeland Security to show that the southern border was secure for six months before illegals would be granted legal status.

One of the recently discovered gems buried deep within the legislation is a provision that would create a small business advocates’ office within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The office would have the power to block enforcement actions and revoke penalties slapped on an employer.

Another provision would give the attorney general the ability to provide a taxpayer-funded defense lawyer to illegal aliens facing deportation. Even U.S. citizens are not entitled to free government attorneys in administrative proceedings. (A deportation hearing is an administrative — not a criminal — proceeding.)

“Illegal aliens fighting deportation would be entitled to see all of the documents in their file, including those obtained by ICE from other law-enforcement agencies, which may be sensitive or even classified,” writes Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “The likely result is that other agencies would decline to provide ICE with these documents if they were worried about their release. And, if ICE refused to release any documents, then the alien could not be removed.”

Incidentally, embattled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director John Morton said he’s quitting at the end of next month.

Morton became infamous in 2010 when he directed law enforcement to stop enforcing immigration laws. ICE’s union, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, approved a non-confidence motion against him on a vote of 259 to zero. Morton also released thousands of illegal immigrants from custody, hundreds of whom had violent criminal records.

But amnesty opponents should not lose heart. All is not lost even if the Senate approves the bill.

The measure faces an uncertain future in the House.

“This is President Obama’s number one political agenda item because he knows we will never again have a Republican president, ever, if amnesty goes into effect. We will perpetually have a progressive, liberal president, probably a Democrat, and we will probably see the House of Representatives go into Democrat hands and the Senate will stay in Democrat hands,” Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said.

An analysis by Amy Walter of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report puts the odds of passage in the House somewhere between slim and none.

For House Republicans, “[T]here is little short-term gain to supporting immigration legislation,” Walter says. “It won’t make them any safer in a general election and instead may make them more vulnerable in a primary.”

GOP operatives’ entreaties to House lawmakers to support the bill out of loyalty to the party are likely to fall on deaf ears. “Today, with over 40 percent of the GOP conference elected since 2010, the idea of ‘taking one for the team’ is likely to fall flat,” Walter says. “Most of these members ran to shake up Washington and have pledged to refuse to bow to party bosses.”

“[I]t’s going to take more than just talk of being a ‘good soldier’ to get House GOPers to go along with comprehensive immigration reform,” she says.

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Sign This Letter and Send the UC Regents a Message:

June 17, 2013

The Regents of the University of California
1111 Franklin St., 12^th Floor
Oakland, CA 94607

Dear Regent:

We are concerned by your nomination of Sadia Saifuddin, a leading figure in two organizations that conduct an annual hate campaign against the state of Israel and Jewish students on UC campuses to be a University of California student regent for 2014-15.  Appointing Sadia Saifuddin to the Board of Regents would be an offense to the “Principles of Community” for UC Berkeley which are supposed to be core values in the UC system, and which calls on UC students to “ respect the differences as well as the commonalities that bring us together and call for civility and respect in our personal interactions.” How is it respectful for the organizations that Sadia Saifuddin represents to sponsor “Israeli Apartheid Weeks” which support terrorist organizations like Hamas and call for the destruction of the Jewish state?

Sadia Saifuddin has been an active participant in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement which eminent academics like Larry Summers and Alan Dershowitz of Harvard have described as “anti-Semitic” and which call for the destruction of the Jewish state. Two student senators at UC Berkeley who voted against the divestment resolution that Sadia Saifuddin and her organizations support reported that they had received death threats.

Sadia Saifuddin is a leader of the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine who have featured speakers that promote hate against Jews at multiple campuses in the UC system. Amir Abdel Malik-Ali, a leading figure in these organizations who has spoken at UCLA, UC Irvine and other UC campuses under the auspices of the MSA and SJP openly supports the terrorist organization Hamas, calls for a war against America and describes Jews “the new Nazis.”  And Malik-Ali is not alone.

Recently, Saifuddin has been behind the vicious attacks on Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz who is also a co-founder of the AMCHA Initiative, a grass-roots advocacy coalition dedicated to protecting Jewish students from anti-Semitism on UC campuses.

The anti-Jewish activities of Sadia Saifuddin’s organizations are well documented. Here are links to two current lawsuits about them:

• http://www.investigativeproject.org/3100/lawsuit-details-depth-of-berkeley-jewish-student
• http://zoa.org/2004/10/101869-jewish-students-at-uc-irvine-harassed-intimidated-zoa-reports-in-complaint-to-u-s-civil-rights-office/

The nomination of Sadia Saifuddin as the student regent is inappropriate, and if she were confirmed, it would set a dangerous precedent to encourage escalated anti-Semitism on campus, which is already a big problem in the UC system.  I urge you to reconsider Saifuddin’s nomination and not to confirm her as a Regent next month.

Sincerely,

David Horowitz
Founder and CEO
The David Horowitz Freedom Center

Jeffrey Wienir
Campus Director
David Horowitz Freedom Center

To sign this letter to the UC Regents, fill out the form below: 

Kerry’s cynical turn was emblematic of a whole gang of Democrats who had been for the war when it was popular and rushed to come out against it when it wasn’t. Kerry joined the likes of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton in initially backing the Bush Administration’s policy because it was their policy to begin with.

Invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein had been a policy explored by the same Democrats who went on to become the loudest voices against it; sometimes after voting for it. And that hypocrisy made them unelectable.

Everyone remembers the loathsome spectacle of mainstream Democrats suddenly embracing creatures like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan for no other reason than that they made useful weapons against George W. Bush. That alone should keep us from embracing the equally repulsive Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald.

At least the Democrats went deeper to their side of the spectrum, further to the left, once they realized that they could score political points over Iraq, but some Republicans are going not deeper into their own side of the spectrum, but also to the left.

It’s an ugly spectacle in which a man who escapes to a territory held by an enemy nation and reveals information about intelligence gathering that goes far beyond any domestic surveillance and that alerts enemy states to our capabilities becomes a patriot because his revelations are temporarily damaging to Barack Obama.

Americans should be watchful of what their government does. But that watchfulness should be based on actual actions, not on potential actions.

The IRS scandal is so compelling because there is clear evidence that political targeting had occurred. The NSA scandal is apolitical. It’s about how extensive the information gathering capabilities of the government have become. It’s a valid topic, but it’s also an apolitical topic.

The IRS was used to suppress dissent. The NSA was not. Turning the IRS into a weapon of political destruction is all on Obama, but the NSA has been making people apolitically uncomfortable for a while now.

It’s sensible to distrust what Obama is capable of doing with the NSA, but preemptively shutting down defense and intelligence capabilities out of fear of what Obama might decide to do with them would cripple our national defense.

Kerry and his fellow Democrats did not stop and think before turning the War in Iraq into collateral damage in their war on George W. Bush. We might want to pause before turning the War on Terror into collateral damage in a war on Obama.

Recent attempts to depict drone strikes or extensive information gathering as some gimmick that Obama cooked up on the golf course are as dishonest as the revisionist history that was peddled by Gore and Kerry. If those things are to be opposed, then they should be opposed honestly.

Obama did not invent the War on Terror. He inherited it and mismanaged it. It’s one thing to take issue with that mismanagement and another to take issue with the war. And that is what we’re really talking about.

The War on Terror has mostly been pared down to clumsy intelligence gathering and drone strikes. Take those two off the table and the war is over. It’s not over in the sense that a victory has been achieved or peace has been obtained. It’s over in the sense that we revert back to a pre-9/11 reality in which Islamic terrorism is treated like organized crime.

That outcome is not one that Obama opposes. Instead it’s one that he has fervently worked toward over the years.

We can attack Obama from the right for bungling the War on Terror or we can attack him from the left for continuing the War on Terror and that will just push him in the direction that he already wants to go.

Obama left the remnants of the War on Terror in place because it was the politically safe thing to do. Federal law enforcement has been blinded and neutered when it comes to dealing with Islamic groups, but “smart” intelligence gathering programs and drone strikes have been used to fill the gap to avoid domestic terrorist attacks and accomplish foreign policy objectives.

Both of those tactics have failed. The Boston Marathon bombings and the defeat in Afghanistan are proof of that. The only way to hold Obama accountable for the loss of all those lives is to explain how he tied the hands of the FBI and American soldiers in fighting the real enemy, instead of hooking up with enemy propagandists like Glenn Greenwald who claim that we are the real enemy.

It’s only sensible to have a national conversation about the tactics that we are using to fight terrorism, but giving the anti-war movement the microphone turns the conversation into a choice between doing something and doing nothing. And not even Obama is self-destructive enough to choose doing nothing because once a bomb goes off in a crowded place, there are political consequences to having done absolutely nothing.

Kerry became a walking cartoon because of his dishonesty. Like so many Democrats, he wanted to change his views without admitting that they had changed. If we are going to have a conversation, then it should be an honest one.

We face an extensive conspiracy of Muslim terrorists operating in global organizations on a large scale, and as individuals and cells locally. These groups and individuals communicate through everything from burner phones to coded posts on abandoned forums to Xbox Live game console chats making tracking them a challenge.

Yes, a lot of this would be less of an issue under President Allen West, but under Barack Obama the options are limited. We can’t have the War on Terror that should exist. We can advocate for it, but for now we are stuck with the shambling skeleton of the War on Terror that is. That War on Terror is a mixed bag, but we should be wary of tossing it completely overboard for a temporary political advantage.

The mismanaged War on Terror in its current state may not stop the next bomber. But then again it might.

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The Obama administration is using the election of Iran’s new president-elect, Hassan Rouhani, as an excuse to consider resuming negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Iran is cleverly running the clock, using the election of the moderate-appearing Rouhani as bait to lure the Obama administration and its European allies into another round of useless talks while Iran forges ahead to develop a nuclear arms arsenal.

Rouhani, a cleric, had served as the Supreme National Security Council chairman under Presidents Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), and was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005.  He is perceived as a “moderate” compared with the other candidates who ran for president against him. However, everything is relative. Hundreds of reformist and pragmatic candidates, and all women, were barred from running. Rouhani was the last so-called “reform” candidate standing.

Denis McDonough, President Obama’s chief of staff, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” this past Sunday that he sees Rouhani’s election “as a potentially hopeful sign.”

For his part, Rouhani is doing all he can to stoke the Obama administration’s interest in resuming talks. “The idea is to engage in more active negotiations with the 5+1, as the nuclear issue cannot be resolved without negotiations,” president-elect Rouhani said during his press conference on June 17th, referring to the UN Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany.

There are “many ways to build trust” with the West, Rouhani added. “Our nuclear programmes are completely transparent. But we are ready to show greater transparency and make clear for the whole world that the steps of the Islamic Republic of Iran are completely within international frameworks.” Rouhani pledged to follow a “path of moderation and justice, not extremism.”

At the same time, Rouhani complained that the U.S. and European Union sanctions against his country were unfair and unjustified, and he vowed that the “period is over” for Iran to consider ending its uranium enrichment program.

“The Iranian nation has done nothing to deserve sanctions. The works it has done has been within international frameworks. If sanctions have any benefits, it will only benefit Israel. It has no benefits for others,” he said.

Using Rouhani’s election as Iran’s next president as an excuse for the Obama administration to chase the rabbit of further fruitless negotiations is a fool’s errand.  Whatever negotiating position Rouhani would like to pursue, his hands are tied by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who calls all of the shots.

As explained by an Iranian Christian leader quoted by Joel Rosenberg, author of The 12th Imam series and expert on the Middle East:

We must remember that Khamenei is the supreme power and will make all the important decisions. This includes relationship with the west and nuclear program… Khamenei and the clergy have set up a power structure so that there are layers of protection for them. They use the government as their puppet (a front) to implement their national and international wishes. But if something goes wrong, they have the government to blame for it.

In any case, Rouhani is an insider. He is reported to be very close to Khamenei and has been serving as a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, an advisory body to Khamenei. He is also a member of the Assembly of Experts, a body vested with authority to elect and remove the Supreme Leader.

“Dr. Rouhani is absolutely in the pro-regime camp. He is loyal to the Ayatollah Khamenei and is committed to obeying his wishes and orders,” the Iranian Christian leader,  Dr. Hormoz Shariat (known as the ‘ the Billy Graham of Iran’), is quoted as telling Joel Rosenberg.

Rouhani is no fan of political dissent. In July 2010, for example, he strongly denounced the Green Movement protesters who were demonstrating in support of the Arab Spring. In any event, as president, Rouhani will have little to say about how Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Ministry of Intelligence or Basij militia handle dissenters.

In terms of demeanor and rhetoric, Rouhani is expected to project a far more reasonable image than the outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, Rouhani was highly critical of Ahmadinejad and refused to serve in his administration. However, a shift in style does not mean a shift in substance.

Rouhani sees negotiations as merely a tactic to buy time in advancing Iran’s nuclear program. It is worth noting that Ayatollah Khamenei had specifically requested his appointment as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in 2003, a post he retained until Ahmadinejad came to power.

In an in-depth interview given to the Mehrnameh periodical in May 2012 to mark the publication of his book, National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy, Rouhani said that during Iran’s voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment, which Rouhani negotiated with the European Union in 2003, Iran’s nuclear program made major advances. He declared in the interview that no matter who is elected president of Iran, “Iran’s position on nuclear technology will not change.”

Even if Iran’s new president-elect Hassan Rouhani wanted to steer Iran’s nuclear policies in a fundamentally different direction, which is hardly likely, he will have no power to do so. Hardliner Ayatollah Khamenei will continue to be in charge, which means no real change. Thus, the Obama administration will be wasting more precious time if it is lured by Rouhani’s siren song, as Iran progresses towards achieving its ambition of a nuclear arms capability.

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Even if we ignore the fact that the US cannot absorb and assimilate all the people who want to come to America, we cannot ignore the question of whether we are doing Mexico a favor with our open borders. No doubt, life as an illegal alien in the US is much better than being unemployed and poor in Mexico or any other third world country.

At face value illegal immigration seems to be good for Mexico, which benefits tremendously from the pouring of US dollars into its economy, supporting families and relatives of immigrants in America. That is why the Mexican government is not complaining and is happy to maintain the status quo on its borders. The government of Mexico acts like it is a right for its citizens to cross the borders into the US to find work. Not a bad deal for any government that does not want to be accountable to its own citizens to improve their lives, the economy and human rights conditions. The message of the Mexican government to its citizens is: You want a job, human rights and medical care, then go to the US if you can’t afford it here.

The natural urge for any country to improve comes from pressure from the lower classes that demand employment and pressure governments to work hard to educate citizens to meet the demands of job competition. By absorbing Mexico’s unskilled workers, the US government has become an enabler in this equation.

That is why the US government cannot claim to be an innocent victim here since it has politicized, used and abused the illegal immigration issue and narrowed it down to getting the Hispanic vote, name-calling Americans who want to respect the law and maintain border control, while neglecting the bigger picture: open border policies’ impact on the rights of American citizens and the healthy functioning of both Mexican and American sovereignty and economies.

If the huge number of illegal immigrants from Mexico was good for Mexico as a nation, then how come its economic, political and security conditions have not improved over the years, but instead have steadily deteriorated? The steady absorption of the bottom of Mexican society by the US has deprived Mexico of its motivation to improve its economy and to become a government that serves the welfare and living conditions of its poor and unemployed. Why should Mexico work hard on improving conditions for the poor and unemployed if America is doing the job for them?

It is not easy for any nation to be located on the border with a giant economic super power like the United States. This situation tempts smaller nations to exist like small fish living off the crumbs and leftovers of a giant whale.

The situation in both Mexico and the US is unnatural and self-defeating, leaving Mexico stagnant and unmotivated to improve and meet the needs of its citizens. Groups in America who claim moral superiority for being on the side of open borders and absorbing all illegal aliens because they have big hearts are in fact absolving the Mexican government of its duty toward its citizens and economy and are contributing to the internal problems of Mexico and the United States. In the long run, we are not doing Mexico a favor with our open borders, but we are crippling them and robbing them of the healthy functioning of their nation.

The US should immediately end the politicization of the immigration issue not only for the sake of America, but also for the sake of Mexico. We need a sane immigration policy that respects US sovereignty and that helps Mexico become more responsible as an independent nation to end its sluggish economy and political corruption.

The sovereignty of both the US and Mexico has been compromised under the status quo, which is unsustainable. Either we control the US border or say goodbye to both US and Mexican sovereignty as two separate nations.

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The Gang gathered to discuss The Totalitarianism at the Heart of the Obama Scandals. The discussion occurred in Part II and focused on how the Left’s lust for power and tyrannical control now lies exposed in front of all. The segment also dealt with Obama’s Catastrophes in the Middle East, shedding light on the White House recently giving $1.3 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — while Syrian jihadists await U.S. arms.

In Part I, the Gang’s discussion centered on Edward Snowden: Traitor. The dialogue focused on the importance of punishing a snitch for violating the Espionage Act. At the same time, the Gang analyzed the destructiveness of the Obama administration’s Jihad Denial, which has led to mass numbers of Americans being put under surveillance, rather than the actual jihadists who wish us harm.

To watch both parts of this two-part series, see below:

Part I:

Part II:

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Intellectuals argue that diversity is necessary for academic excellence, but what’s the evidence? For example, Japan is a nation bereft of diversity in any activity. Close to 99 percent of its population is of one race. Whose students do you think have higher academic achievement — theirs or ours? According to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, the academic performance of U.S. high-school students in reading, math and science pales in comparison with their diversity-starved counterparts in Japan.

Should companies be treated equally? According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed (9/7/2009) by Manhattan Institute’s energy expert Robert Bryce, Exxon Mobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with its pollutants. The company paid $600,000 in fines and fees. A recent Associated Press story (5/14/2013) reported that “more than 573,000 birds are killed by the country’s wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.” The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted windmill farms, sometimes called bird Cuisinarts, for killing eagles and other protected bird species. In fact, AP reports that the Obama administration has shielded the industry from liability and has helped keep the scope of the deaths secret. It’s interesting that The Associated Press chose to report the story only after the news about its reporters being secretly investigated. That caused the Obama administration to fall a bit out of favor with them.

But what the heck, the 14th Amendment’s requirement of “equal protection” before the law for everybody can be cast aside in the name of diversity, so why can’t it be cast aside in the name of saving the planet? There are politically favored industries just as there are politically favored groups.

What’s the difference between a progressive, a liberal and a racist? In some cases, not much. President Woodrow Wilson was a leading progressive who believed in notions of racial superiority and inferiority. He was so enthralled with D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” movie, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, that he invited various dignitaries to the White House to view it with him. During one private screening, President Wilson exclaimed: “It’s like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” When President Wilson introduced racial segregation to the civil service, the NAACP and the National Independent Political League protested. Wilson vigorously defended it, arguing that segregation was in the interest of Negroes.

Dr. Thomas Sowell, in “Intellectuals and Race,” documents other progressives who were advocates of theories of racial inferiority. They included former presidents of Stanford University and MIT, among others. Eventually, the views of progressives fell out of favor. They changed their name to liberals, but in the latter part of the 20th century, the name liberals fell into disrepute. Now they are back to calling themselves progressives.

I’m not arguing that today’s progressives are racists like their predecessors, but they share a contempt for liberty, just as President Wilson did. According to Hillsdale College history professor Paul A. Rahe — author of “Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift” — in his National Review Online (4/11/13) article “Progressive Racism,” Wilson wanted to persuade his compatriots to get “beyond the Declaration of Independence.” President Wilson said the document “did not mention the questions” of his day, adding, “It is of no consequence to us.” My question is: Why haven’t today’s progressives disavowed their racist predecessors?

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After America said no to a pork-filled security-undermining amnesty bill in 2007, the No Illegal Alien Left Behind lobbyists changed their overtly thuggish tactics. They put down their upside-down American flags, stopped wearing their commie Che Guevara T-shirts and cloaked their radical “Aztlan” aspirations in the less divisive rhetoric of “reform” and “opportunity.”

It was all just an act, of course. Inevitably, the mask has slipped. Over the weekend, illegal alien protesters descended on the private residence of Kansas Secretary of State and immigration enforcement lawyer Kris Kobach. As Twitchy.com reported on Saturday, 300 amnesty activists marched into Kobach’s neighborhood and barged up his driveway and right onto his doorstep. It’s how the Alinskyite “community organizers” roll.

Shouting into a bullhorn and waving their fists from his front porch, the property rights-invaders dubbed Kobach “King of Hate” for his work representing border security activists and federal customs enforcement agents who are fighting the systemic sabotage of immigration law. Thankfully, Kobach, his wife and their four young daughters were not home at the time.

But the aggrieved amnesty demanders are not done yet. And Kobach is not the only one in their crosshairs.

After tea party activist turned Kansas state representative Amanda Grosserode condemned the mob action publicly on Facebook, racist insults and threats littered her page. Roberto Medina Ramirez wrote: “I’ll give her something to be disgusted about!” Doris Lynn Crouse Gent chimed in: “OMG! Maybe her drive should be next.” Matt S. Bashaw echoed the call: “Maybe her house should be next.” Facebook user Jude Robinson also ranted on Grosserode’s page: “Since Kobach steals taxpayer money spreading hate around the country, he deserves what he gets.”

Dennis Paul Romero left this message for Grosserode: “(N)azi kkk and she is proud of it.” A user writing as “Paul-says Fckmarkzuck” left death threats under Romero’s comment: “Gotta start killing all the Nazis. Politicans (sic), bankers, and priests. Cops, lawyers, and Judges. ASAP.” The same user added: “Just another b*tch that needs to die off already.”

The radicals of Occupy Kansas posted an inflammatory photo of Grosserode with the race-baiting caption: “Kansas State legislator Amanda Grosserode says she is ‘disgusted’ by Hispanic protesters.” Grosserode wasn’t disgusted by their ethnicity.

She was disgusted by their actions. No matter. Race/ethnic card: activated.

Gina Long pounced: “(S)he is stupid and doesn’t like brown people.” So did Diana Bauer: “Ah, poor Ms Grosserode; sorry that you find our Constitution so difficult to stomach. Or is it only whites that have the right to freedom of speech.” One Lupe Ramirez left his own message for Grosserode: “We are starting our fundraising and campaign to unseat you. Do you not realize how many Hispanics are in Kansas. You no longer live in Dorothy’s Kansas. You cannot represent your state, you don’t even know who they are.”

Grosserode isn’t backing down. She told me Tuesday that she will remain “vigilant” and has given local law enforcement a heads-up. The conservative mom and lawmaker notes sadly that “there are some who would say that when you are in elected office that you should expect this kind of thing. I would disagree. No one deserves threats nor threats to their home and family.”

But the amnesty vigilantes have no respect for borders, let alone private front porches, in their quest for another massive federal illegal alien bailout. They have no respect for law-abiding U.S. workers. They have no respect for law-abiding foreigners applying to get into our country the right and proper way.

As they besiege Capitol Hill this month demanding more rights and payoffs, take note: These groups do not stand for the American dream. They are a nightmare conglomeration of George Soros-funded social justice operatives, transnationalists and La Raza militants who detest U.S. sovereignty. National People’s Action, which spearheads progressive “direct actions” at the private homes of their political foes and led the march on Kobach’s home, is a “community organizing” nonprofit based in — you guessed it — Chicago.

NPA’s past shakedowns have involved busing in protesters and schoolchildren (using public school buses) to invade the private property of their victims and intimidate their families. They relish their brass knuckles with this anthem:

Who’s on your hit list NPA?

Who’s on your hit list for today?

Take no prisoner, take no names.

Kick ‘em in the (a—) when they play their games.

As I first reported in 2004, NPA is funded by the Tides Foundation, the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, and the MacArthur, Ford and Rockefeller foundations. It’s also funded by your tax dollars. My research found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Massachusetts Department of Education had all given tens of thousands of dollars in grants to NPA members for left-wing activism, identity politics and illegal alien benefits.

Rubio, Ryan and other Republicans who’ve made common cause with these welfare-state goons have betrayed fundamental principles of limited government and the rule of law. They’ve allied themselves with the mob. There’s nothing, not one thing, “conservative” about mass illegal alien amnesty. It’s the complete Chicago-ization of America.

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“Let us not delude ourselves. The international community must not become caught up in wishful thinking and be tempted to relax the pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program,” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet in response to Hassan Rouhani’s clear-cut victory in Iran’s presidential elections.

Netanyahu’s fears are, unfortunately, well founded. There is nothing the West loves more than another round of appeasement and deluding itself that the wolf has magically turned into a sheep.

Rouhani, on Monday, already spoke what appeared to be conciliatory words. He promised “greater transparency” in Iran’s nuclear program that would “make clear for the whole world that the steps of the Islamic Republic of Iran are completely within international frameworks.” He said Iran would engage in “constructive interaction with the world through moderation.”

The Wall Street Journal had already reported that “the Obama administration and its European allies” were “surprised and encouraged” by Rouhani’s win and “intend to aggressively push to resume negotiations with Tehran on its nuclear program by August to test his new government’s positions….”

These eager plans come just as Israeli intelligence minister Yuval Steinitz has been warning that Iran is now “very close” to the nuclear finish line and that its nuclear industry is already “many times larger than that of either North Korea or Pakistan.”

But should Rouhani be given a chance? Is it just possible that, as the Wall Street Journal report describes Washington and Brussels as hoping, his “unexpected victory could pressure [Iranian Supreme Leader] Khamenei into softening his position on the nuclear issue or scaling back Tehran’s broader rift with the West”?

Not according to more sober, knowledgeable voices.

On Monday the Wall Street Journal’s Sohrab Ahmari gave some important background on Rouhani that has been missing from Western media’s laudatory accounts of his “moderation.”

Ahmari notes that Rouhani “spent Iran’s revolutionary days as a close companion of the Ayatollah Khomeini.” Later, as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Council, Rouhani led an effort to—as he himself put it—“crush mercilessly and monumentally” the 1999 student uprising.

Ahmari quotes a victim of that crackdown who recalls how, after Rouhani’s statement, security forces “poured into the dorm rooms and murdered students right in front of our eyes.”

During this year’s election campaign Rouhani also boasted of how, as Iran’s nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, his wily approach achieved great gains for Iran’s nuclear program (for details see this account by an Israeli expert). And Rouhani gave his view of the Syrian crisis just last January, saying: “Syria has constantly been on the front line of fighting Zionism and this resistance must not be weakened.”

Indeed, Dr. Soli Shahvar, head of the Ezri Center for Iran and Gulf Studies at Haifa University, told The Tower that in his view Khamenei’s regime actually wanted Rouhani to win. Shahvar’s analysis is worth quoting at length:

If [the regime] had wanted one of the conservatives to win, they would have gotten four of the five conservatives to drop out of the race, paving the way for [eventual runner-up, Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Bagher] Ghalibaf to win. But they didn’t do that. Moreover, it was the regime that approved the candidacy of Rouhani alongside only seven others. This is striking evidence that Khamenei wanted Rouhani to win, both internally and externally.

…Victory for a candidate who is perceived as more moderate yet still has the confidence of Khamenei, serves the regime in the best way. Externally, Iran today is in a very difficult situation with regard to sanctions and its international standing. A conservative president would only have increased Tehran’s isolation in the world. A victory for someone from the “moderate stream,” however, will immediately bring certain countries in the international community to call for “giving a chance to dialogue with the Iranian moderates.” They will ask for more time in order to encourage this stream, and it will take pressure off the regime. And so we see that in the non-disqualification of Rouhani and especially in the non-dropping-out of four of the five conservative candidates there is more than just an indication that this is the result the regime desired.

Or as a former head of the Mossad station in Tehran and prime ministerial adviser put it more pithily: “We will miss the Ahmadinejad era. He spoke like Hitler and the world knew him.”

Israel’s leaders will, of course, try very hard to clarify Tehran’s game of deception to top Western officials. Their work will be cut out for them.

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Following the president’s announcement that we will provide small arms and ammunition to the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Senator John McCain has intensified his drumbeat for war and demanded even more extensive U.S. involvement, particularly a no-fly zone. But McCain has not indicated any awareness of the risks and complications of such an escalation.

McCain’s argument is the typical one made by “responsibility to protect” internationalists like Samantha Power, Obama’s new U.N. ambassador, whom McCain supported despite her record of anti-Israel animus and doubts about America’s worthiness. But we can’t stand by and watch Assad slaughter his people, the interventionists claim. Except we have stood by on numerous occasions, in Congo, Sudan, and Rwanda, to name just a few venues of slaughter. We are standing by right now as Christians in the Middle East are being murdered, assaulted, harassed, and cleansed from lands that have been Christian for two millennia. We are standing by as al-Qaeda in Iraq slaughters its political and sectarian rivals, and we will for sure be standing by in Afghanistan when the Taliban slaughter even more enemies after we depart in 2014.

The lofty notion of “responsibility to protect” is a fraud, for the fact is we can’t protect every victim of global violence and oppression. This means that our national interests and security can be the only reasons for an armed intervention.

Of course, McCain et al. argue that our interests are at risk, and that providing weapons or even a no-fly zone offers little danger to our soldiers. An Assad victory, so the argument goes, will also be a victory for Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah. But Iran’s real achievement will be the possession of nuclear weapons, which will change the geostrategic calculus in the Middle East much more than Assad’s holding on to power. If we’re concerned about Iran, then, we should be focusing on the regime’s nuclear weapons program, which day by day relentlessly progresses to fulfillment. It’s not Iran’s proxies we should worry about, but Iran.

Nor should the apparent ease with which the U.S.––excuse me, NATO––toppled the Gaddafi regime fool us into thinking we can do the same in Syria. The odds of civilian casualties, for example, will be much greater in Syria if we attack Assad’s air defense system. Once the videos of dead children amidst the rubble hit the international media, how long will all those “allies” still be in our corner? And what about Assad’s stockpiles of chemical weapons? What if he responds by unleashing them against his enemies? And will Russia simply stand by while we bomb its ally’s assets that it provided to them? Perhaps Putin will decide to send the promised S-300 missiles after all. There are all sorts of risks and contingencies, and unless we have a plan to deal with them that puts all our assets on the table, including ground troops, we could make the situation even worse.

Equally bad, McCain doesn’t really know to whom he is eager to give sophisticated weapons. Clearly the most effective and dedicated fighters are to some degree Islamist in ideology, ranging from Muslim Brotherhood affiliates to al-Qaeda franchises like the al Nusra front, which has already pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda headman Ayman al-Zawahri. Jihadists from Europe and across the Middle East are streaming to Syria, where they are getting valuable battlefield experience. The so-called “moderate” Syrian Free Army, the force comprising mostly army defectors, has made it clear they will cooperate with the al-Nusra fighters and anybody else committed to destroying Assad’s regime. Do we really think that if they win, they will then turn their guns on their allies?

And what makes McCain think that weapons delivered to “vetted” groups––assuming that there is any way to definitively establish that they are “moderate”–– will be kept out of the hands of jihadist gangs that are sworn enemies of the U.S. and Israel? We’ve already suffered blowback in Benghazi from Gaddafi’s looted arsenals in the four coffins of dead Americans. The Syrian rebels have asked for anti-aircraft weapons, as these are necessary for countering Assad’s air superiority. So we’re going to provide weapons that can bring down commercial airliners to committed jihadists? In 1979 we hadn’t yet been sufficiently awakened to the terrorist threat from jihadists, so providing the mujahidin with the means to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan made sense. But we know now the nature of the enemy, and so should be a little more prudent.

No one pressing for intervention in Syria has confronted the fact that even if defeating Iran and its proxies is critical to our national interests, arming a congeries of different jihadist groups and imposing no-fly zones are not going to accomplish that aim. It will take a much larger, more intrusive force, including troops on the ground, to defeat Assad, secure his chemical weapons arsenals, and marginalize the jihadists. After our experience in Iraq and the failure of political nerve that has kept us from achieving similar aims, good luck reprising that experiment in Syria.

But even if Assad is driven out just by airpower and arming rebels, what sort of government does McCain think will arise out of these various Islamist factions? As Barry Rubin points out, our choice in Syria “will be one of Sunni anti-Christians, anti-Americans, and anti-Semites rather than Shia anti-Christians, anti-Americans, and anti-Semites.” Whatever it is, it’s not going to be a liberal democracy friendly to us and our interests, if what’s going on in Egypt is any indication. The most likely outcome will be Libya on steroids, with large swaths of the country available for sheltering jihadist camps right next door to Israel and Jordan.

And so live on the delusions of Middle East “democracy” promotion, a consequence of wishful thinking rather than analysis of reality. And so continues the baleful influence of John McCain on our foreign policy. His demonizing of waterboarding helped to eliminate one of the most effective tools for extracting intelligence, with the result that now we have no effective means for gleaning intelligence from captured terrorists. And his naïve faith in the magic powers of “democracy” to change a culture steeped in 14 centuries of religious intolerance, supremacism, and violence promises to repeat in Syria the empowerment of jihadist regimes we’re witnessing in Egypt. We’ll be living with the consequences of those delusions for a long time.

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The same U.S. policies that helped created al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s are today creating many al-Qaedas in many Muslim countries, promising to deliver future terror strikes that will make 9/11 seem like child’s play.

To understand this dire prediction, we must first examine the United States’ history  of empowering Islamic jihadis—only to be attacked by those same jihadis many years later—and the shortsightedness of American policymakers, whose policies are based on their brief tenure, not America’s long-term wellbeing.

In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Afghani rebels—among them the jihadis—to repel the Soviets.  Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and countless foreign jihadis journeyed to Afghanistan to form a base of training and planning—the first prerequisite of the jihad, as delineated in Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones.

Al-Qaeda—which tellingly means “the base”—was born.

The U.S. supported al-Qaeda, they defeated the Soviets, shook hands with Reagan, Afghanistan became ruled by the Taliban, and for many years all seemed well.

But it wasn’t.  For over a decade al-Qaeda, unfettered in Afghanistan, trained and plotted.  Then came the strikes of 9/11, which were portrayed by the talking heads as a great and unexpected surprise: “What happened? Who knew?  Why do they hate us?”

Had al-Qaeda not secured a base of operations, 9/11 would not have occurred.

But if Reagan unwittingly helped create the first al-Qaeda cell in relatively unimportant Afghanistan, Obama is helping to create al-Qaeda cells in some of the most important Islamic nations.

He is doing this by helping get rid of those Arab autocrats effective at suppressing jihadis (even if for selfish reasons), while empowering some of the most radical jihadis who were formerly imprisoned or in hiding.

And all in the name of the “Arab Spring” and “democracy.”

In Egypt, Obama threw Mubarak, America’s chief Mideast ally for three decades, under the bus, and cozied up to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Egypt’s government is today overrun with Islamists, many who share al-Qaeda’s radical worldview.  Several of these new policymakers—including President Morsi himself—were imprisoned under Mubarak, not, as the Western media portray, because they were freedom-loving rebels, but because they were, and are, Sharia-loving radicals trying to transform Egypt into an Islamist state.

The Sinai alone is now infested with jihadis, including possibly al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri.

In Libya, Obama supported the opposition against Gaddafi—knowing full well that al-Qaeda was among them—enabling the Benghazi attack and murder of Americans on the anniversary of 9/11. The unprecedented persecution of Christians in Libya—from attacks on churches to attacks on nuns—is further indicative of the direction “liberated” Libya is taking.

And now in Syria, Obama has decided to arm foreign jihadis.  One report indicates that foreigners make up 95% of Syria’s so-called “opposition.”  As in Libya—and as in Afghanistan in the ’80s—foreign jihadis are flooding Syria, terrorizing non-Muslims and cleansing the nation of Christians in their bid to create another base, another qaeda.

One of them recently declared, “When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!”—precisely al-Qaeda’s thinking in the ’80s-’90s when it was supported by the U.S. against the U.S.S.R.

Thus all the forces and circumstances that led up to the strikes of 9/11—foreign jihadis infiltrating and consolidating power in Muslim countries formerly run by secular dictators—are once again in full play, but in a much more profound way.  Today it’s not just one unimportant country, Afghanistan, that is being subverted by jihadis but several strategically important nations.

If 9/11 was the price the U.S later paid for helping turn Afghanistan into a jihadi base of operations in the 80s-90s, what price will America later pay now that it’s betraying several major nations to the jihadis, who are turning them into bases, into qaedas?

So why are American politicians not blowing the whistle on Obama’s suicidal policies?

Because their myopia and inability to see beyond today—beyond their tenure—has not changed since September 11, 2001.  Just as it took over a decade after al-Qaeda’s creation to launch the 9/11 attacks—a time of ostensible peace and calm for the U.S., a time of planning and training for the jihadis—it will take time for the jihadi storm to pour on America.

And that’s the era we’re currently in: the calm before the storm. Just as before 9/11, today’s American leaders focus only on the moment—a moment when the U.S appears relatively safe—never considering the future or the inevitable consequences of a woefully counterproductive U.S. foreign policy.

Speaking of foreign policy, if Reagan supported the jihadis to combat the U.S.S.R—a hostile super-power—why is Obama supporting the jihadis?  What exactly does America have to gain by propping up jihadis in some of the most strategic Arab nations?

In short, just as it was before 9/11, when the jihadi storm eventually does break out—and it will, it’s a matter of time—those American politicians who helped empower it, chief among them Obama, will be long gone, and the talking heads will again be stupidly asking “What happened?” “Who knew?” Why do they hate us?”

Except then it will be too late.

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First of all, Iran’s political structure is strictly run by institutions which were established by the founding father of the Islamist state, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. These institutions include the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, the Basij (with more than 7 million members, the Basij is the largest volunteer paramilitary militia in Iran), and Ettela’at, Iran’s notorious intelligence agency. All of these institutions are directly monitored and guided by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, to whom the high officials and commanders directly report. Moreover, these institutions receive a high number of benefits from the Supreme Leader and are extremely loyal to him. This kind of shrewd political apparatus can be compared to that of North Korea under Kim Jong-un.

Iran’s foreign and domestic policies are also controlled by the Supreme Leader, under the guidance of the aforementioned powerful institutions. As a result, Iran’s presidency can be regarded as a peripheral, shallow, depthless, and perfunctory position – a superficial political figure that is only granted the authority to set the tone in national and international platforms for the Supreme Leader. When it comes to making policies, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran – although also from the gilded circle of the ruling clerics – is a powerless figure.

Secondly, climbing the political ladder in the Islamic Republic of Iran requires specific personal characteristics and qualifications. If a political figure’s ideologies, policies and tendencies do not comply with those of the ruling cleric and the Supreme Leader, he/she will be thwarted from succeeding in their political career. Tactics that have been utilized to accomplish this include imprisonment, torture, blackmailing, and assassination. As a result, the political figures that have been capable of running for presidency are those who have significantly proven their loyalty and compliance with the Islamist revolutionary ideals. The most significant ideals include antagonism towards the United States and Israel, imposing Shari law throughout the country and across Iran’s borders, arming terrorist militia groups, supporting Assad’s sect-based and police regime, and seeking to become a regional and international hegemon.

Thirdly, and more fundamentally, even if those political figures who challenge the Supreme Leader are able to register for presidential candidacy, they will inevitably become immediately disqualified by the Guardian Council – an authoritarian body that consists of 12 non-elected members who are directly or indirectly appointed by the Supreme Leader. As Kambiz, a 24-year-old computer engineering student at Tehran University, told me: “I am not going to vote. Many of my friends will not vote too. All these candidates are the same. We trusted Khatami (the reformist), but he was one of them and did not stand for us. Rafsanjani, Mashaei and the rest [of the conservatives] are all supporters and beneficiaries of the current corrupt and theocratic regime.”

Fourthly, major issues that the Islamic Republic of Iran faces – such as enriching uranium and confronting Israel and the United States – have been matters of consensus across all of Iran’s political spectrum, among hardliners, principlists, centrist, moderates, and reformists alike.

When considering the major political and ideological spectrums, all the members of the reformist, hardliner, principlist, centrist, and moderate political camps share identical policies and strategies. The only difference lies in the shrewd political language that each camp uses. While the hardliners – such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and current presidential candidate Jalili – publicly attack the West and use inflammatory and provocative language to express their intentions, the reformists are much more sophisticated political statesmen, employing softer tones in order to manipulate the international community and achieve the objectives of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Supreme Leader.

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Unfortunately, while it is expected that she would have critics (who doesn’t?), her detractors have proven time and again to be her antithesis.  They reveal themselves to be absolute losers, and slime balls to their core.  And last week, in which she turned 21, they proved it once again.  By the simple fact of having bumped into her uncle, Michigan Congressman Fred Upton, and some of his Republican colleagues in New York, she was accused by anonymous left-wing commenters of a) racism; b) being airheaded; c) not caring about the poor; and other things that shall go unmentioned.  (Ironically, these are – literally – the same morons who destroyed her home state of Michigan.)

But to celebrate her birthday is more than an appreciation of her beauty and grace. It is also a celebration of freedom – because hundreds of millions of people owe their freedom to the Upton family.

The many examples of how the Uptons so greatly contributed to advancement of liberty are too numerous to chronicle in one article. But I wish to highlight just one of the most dramatic – and unexpected – examples.

In what was, as William Safire wrote, “one of the great confrontational moments of the cold war … Nikita Khrushchev, bombastic anti-capitalist leader of the Soviet Union, and Richard Nixon, vice president of the United States with the reputation of a hard-line anti-communist, came to rhetorical grips” in the famous “Kitchen Debate” at the 1959 American exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow.  Standing inside of a model American kitchen, the Soviet dictator resorted to the debating tactic of screaming at Vice President Nixon about how much better Soviet Communism was than American Capitalism, and all Nixon had to do to win the argument was point to a Washing Machine, the invention of Frederick Upton 50 years before, to show how much better our system was for the common person.  The Russians who witnessed this spread the news about it throughout the Soviet Union and fueled 30 years of discontent over the fact that their Communist system couldn’t produce helpful things like that – they were only able to produce missiles and guns – and they kept demanding change, which is the equivalent of a death sentence to Communist governments.

This is not to say that Frederick Upton, great grandfather of Kate Upton, invented the Washing Machine in 1911 for the purpose of undermining the Soviet Union (which wouldn’t even come into existence for another six years).  The man was simply doing what Americans do: building a product that makes life easier, and selling to those who wanted it.  It was the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith at work.  It just so happened that with this product, Smith’s “invisible hand” would one day be able to reach out and slowly strangle the ghost of Karl Marx.

The collapse of the Soviet Union happened for many reasons – especially once the fight was taken to them by Ronald Reagan (in who’s administration the other Fred Upton, Kate’s uncle, served) – but the fact that life was so demonstrably better in the West served to undercut there claim to their creation of a “worker’s paradise..  Freedom inspires genius, and genius inspires innovation, and innovation inspires a better life.  It’s what America is all about.

Kate herself contributes to this tradition.  When she goes to other places around the world, she becomes a representative of what our society really is – that we are more than what they see and read about coming out of Washington.  That we the people are really, really, awesome.

So three cheers to Kate and her family.  You make us proud.  And ignore the idiot critics – nothing defeats them more than when they see you succeed.

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As the online rules of order for the German parliament or Bundestag explain, the KA in Section 104 allows the Bundestag’s president to receive questions for the federal government about “certain delineated areas.” Normally the president calls upon the government to answer the questions in writing within 14 days, although agreement with the KA authors can extend this time limit.  As the German-language KA Wikipedia entry explains, this procedure serves as a means of parliamentary control over the government by calling upon it to give account of a given state of affairs.

Die Linke’s May 13, 2013, KA (document 17/13573, available in PDF format here) notes that “Islam-hostile internet portals” like PI with its “tens of thousands of visitors daily” and parties such as the Freedom Party (Die Freiheit) and Germany’s Pro movement (Pro NRW/Pro Deutschland) “warn against a supposed ‘Islamization of Europe.’”  In PI reader comments, meanwhile, Muslims “are collectively humiliated and denigrated in a racist, xenophobic, insulting, hate-filled, and at times violence-glorifying manner.”

Referenced by the KA and previously reported by this author (see here and here), PI and Die Freiheit, with common members such as Michael Stürzenberger, have conducted a petition drive for a referendum to stop a proposed Center for Islam in Europe-Munich (Zentrum für Islams in Europa-München or ZIE-M).  The KA references a story from the Munich-based German national newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung discussing how Stürzenberger commonly compares the Koran with Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Die Freiheit rallies have featured signs stating “Christ is truth, Muhammad is a lie.” Previously reported by this author as well (see here and here), the KA also notes that the Bavarian Office of Constitutional Protection (Verfassungsschutz) has recently begun monitoring Bavarian chapters of PI/Die Freiheit due to “anti-constitutional” sentiments.

A previous August 18, 2011, Die Linke KA (17/6823)  had also dealt with PI/Die Freiheit in the wake of the July 22, 2011, massacre perpetrated in Norway by Anders Behring Brevik.  This earlier KA bemoaned in Germany an “increasing hostility to Islam precisely among high earners and people with high levels of education.” In this context “populist and xenophobic campaigns against ‘Islam’” appeared to the “extreme right in Europe” as a “recipe for success for their propaganda” and an “entrance ticket into the political middle.” Die Freiheit was one of several attempts to found “anti-Islam parties” while PI had become a “central forum of Islam haters in the German-speaking area.”

Yet in citing an article from Berlin’s leftwing Tageszeitung (taz), the 2011 KA noted that the federal Verfassungsschutz had not deemed PI’s outlook as anti-constitutional given PI’s self-professed “pro-Israeli, pro-American” character.  The article noted additionally PI’s “emphatic profession of loyalty to the Grundgesetz,” Germany’s Basic Law or constitution.

The government’s answer on September 5, 2011, (17/6910) to the various questions concerning matters such as membership and statements of PI/Die Freiheit and other groups in the 2011 KA continued this analysis. With respect to Die Freiheit, there were “not sufficient indications” to classify Die Freiheit as “rightwing extremist.” The “overwhelming majority of PI entries,” meanwhile, “made no use of classical rightwing extremist argumentation patterns, but rather was to be situated within the Islam-critical spectrum.” While some PI contributions had “anti-Muslim or in parts even racist content,” these were “practically exclusively” in the comments section and were “even there the exception.” Thus a “rightwing extremist effort (still) did not allow itself to be discerned” at PI.

Not to be deterred, Die Linke responded on October 31, 2011, with yet another KA (17/7569) about “anti-Muslim agitation” citing several sources such as newspapers warning against PI, Die Freiheit, and other groups.  In this KA, Die Linke indicated that it was not so much interested in a “secret service surveillance of the Islam- and Muslim-hostile scene” by the federal Verfassungschutz as a “societal ostracism of this body of thought just like every other form of racism and anti-Semitism.” Among other questions, Die Linke wanted to know what connections PI had to “religious groupings from the evangelical, dogmatic-Catholic, and old Catholic milieus.” The government’s response (17/7761) on November 17, 2011, however, reiterated the position taken in 17/6910 and noted that “individual statements” did not suffice to define an entity as “extremist” but rather demanded an “overall observation.”

In 17/13573 Die Linke repeated many of its previous questions and inquired whether the federal government still maintains its previous outlook in light of recent Bavarian decisions.  This is the latest Die Linke salvo in an ongoing campaign to bring about a self-proclaimed political “ostracism” of PI/Die Freiheit and other groups.  Yet the irony was not lost on Stürzenberger, who pointed out to PI that Die Linke, with much of its roots in East Germany’s Communist Party, is itself an object of federal Verfassungsschutz surveillance.

The future of a free and open discussion of Islam in Germany seems perilous with the likes of Die Linke, a totalitarian-legacy group, continually demonstrating its propensity to use the German federal government as a tool of intimidation against Islam’s critiques.

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

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The belated recognition of this administration’s contempt for the truth, for the American people and for the Constitution of the United States, has been long overdue.

But what if the NSA program has in fact thwarted terrorists and saved many American lives in ways that cannot be revealed publicly?

Nothing is easier than saying that you still don’t want your telephone records collected by the government. But the first time you have to collect the remains of your loved ones, after they have been killed by terrorists, telephone records can suddenly seem like a small price to pay to prevent such things.

The millions of records of phone calls collected every day virtually guarantee that nobody has the time to listen to them all, even if NSA could get a judge to authorize listening to what is said in all these calls, instead of just keeping a record of who called whom.

Moreover, Congressional oversight by members of both political parties limits what Barack Obama or any other president can get away with.

Are these safeguards foolproof? No. Nothing is ever foolproof.

As Edmund Burke said, more than two centuries ago: “Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state.”

In other words, we do not have a choice whether to trust or not to trust government officials. Unless we are willing to risk anarchy or terrorism, the most we can do is set up checks and balances within government — and be a lot more careful in the future than we have been in the past when deciding whom to elect.

Anyone old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when President John F. Kennedy took this country to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, may remember that there was nothing like the distrust and backlash against later presidents, whose controversial decisions risked nothing approaching the cataclysm that President Kennedy’s decision could have led to.

Even those of us who were not John F. Kennedy supporters, and who were not dazzled by the glitter and glamour of the Kennedy aura, nevertheless felt that the President of the United States was someone who knew much more than we did about the realities on which all our lives depended.

Whatever happened to that feeling? Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon happened — and both were shameless liars. They destroyed not only their own credibility, but the credibility of the office.

Even when Lyndon Johnson told us the truth at a crucial juncture during the Vietnam war — that the Communist offensive of 1968 was a defeat for them, even as the media depicted it as a defeat for us — we didn’t believe him.

In later years, Communist leaders themselves admitted that they had been devastated on the battlefield. But, by then it was too late. What the Communists lost militarily on the ground in Vietnam they won politically in the American media and in American public opinion.

More than 50,000 Americans lost their lives winning battles on the ground in Vietnam, only to have the war lost politically back home. We seem to be having a similar scenario unfolding today in Iraq, where soldiers won the war, only to have politicians lose the peace, as Iraq now increasingly aligns itself with Iran.

When Barack Obama squanders his own credibility with his glib lies, he is not just injuring himself during his time in office. He is inflicting a lasting wound on the country as a whole.

But we the voters are not blameless. Having chosen an untested man to be president, on the basis of rhetoric, style and symbolism, we have ourselves to blame if we now have only a choice between two potentially tragic fates — the loss of American lives to terrorism or a further dismantling of our freedoms that has already led many people to ask: “Is this still America?”

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Even while he was delivering a speech promising to begin nation-building at home, the warplanes he had dispatched to Libya were bombing government targets in support of the Islamist uprising.

A month earlier, Obama had told Americans that he had a duty to protect “Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte”. Given a choice between nation-building in Charlotte and Benghazi; Obama chose Benghazi.

In September 2012, Obama gave yet another speech calling for a withdrawal from Afghanistan and nation-building at home. Ten days later, the diplomatic mission in Benghazi came under attack by militias and terrorists who had been allowed to take over the city by Obama’s  Libyan intervention.

At the presidential debate, despite the broken promises on Libya, Obama once again brought out his “nation-building at home” card.

In response to a question about the challenges of the Middle East and the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Obama speechified, “The other thing that we have to do is recognize that we can’t continue to do nation building in these regions. Part of American leadership is making sure that we’re doing nation building here at home.”

The response should have come with a laugh track. Eight months later, the Nobel Peace Prize winner is preparing to lead America into his second Arab Spring war.

The script has already been written and it’s the same script that saw airtime in Libya. Claim an imminent threat to civilians that is actually a threat to the terrorists. Carve out a No Fly Zone. Arm the terrorists. And then sit back and wait for the next Benghazi.

To invade Libya, Obama lied and told the American people that the residents of Benghazi were about to suffer a massacre that would stain “the conscience of the world.” No such massacre had taken place or was ever going to take place. The only innocent people who wound up massacred in Benghazi were the Americans sent there by Hillary Clinton.

This time, swap out Aleppo or Homs for Benghazi as the cities badly in need of American protection. Never mind that the Christians of Aleppo and Homs, the only innocent parties in a religious war between a Shiite government and Sunni terrorist groups, are in far more danger from the Islamist Sunni terrorists that Obama is proposing to arm.

The Free Syrian Army’s Farouq Brigades went door to door expelling Christians in Homs. Of the 160,000 Christians in the city, there are now barely a 1,000. Christians in Aleppo have faced kidnappings and car bombings. Some have chosen to arm themselves against the rebels.

“We see on TV armed young men with beards shouting, ‘Allah is great!’ and calling for jihad. We have the right to defend ourselves,” one Christian in Aleppo said. But Obama won’t be supplying the Christians with any weapons. Those are reserved for the bearded young Allah-shouters.

In Qseir, the city recently recaptured by the Syrian Army from the Sunni militias, whose loss partly triggered the rush to war by the Western allies of the Muslim Brotherhood, most of the Christians had fled a place where they were once 10 percent of the population following Sunni Muslim persecution.

The 10,000 Christians of Qseir were ordered to leave the city by loudspeakers on mosques. If Obama’s intervention helps the Islamist militias retake Qseir; there will soon be no Christians left in the city at all. And the same goes for Homs and Aleppo.

Intervention in support of the Islamist militias in Syria is nothing more than a Christian ethnic cleansing project. And those supporting it should be treated like any other advocates of ethnic cleansing.

Obama’s intervention in Libya turned Benghazi over to Islamist militias who have persecuted Christians. His intervention in Syria will ethnically cleanse Christians while rewarding the Muslim Brotherhood with another building block for their caliphate plans.

The Syrian War, like the Libyan War, is built on a pyramid of lies. There are no good options in Syria and nothing we do will help anyone there.

Despite the belated declaration that the Syrian government had breached a Red Line by using chemical weapons, the evidence points to chemical weapons use by both sides.

Obama is choosing to hold only one side accountable for actions that both sides have taken. While the Sunni rebels who used chemical weapons will be armed and aided, the Shiite government which used chemical weapons will get bombed. That’s not human rights; it’s cynical hypocrisy.

The vaunted “Red Line” was and is irrelevant. The White House delayed taking a position when the evidence of a breach first came in and dispatched its media allies to make excuses for not taking an immediate stand because the line was never the issue. The determining factor was whether the Sunni rebels could win on their own or not.

The Libyan intervention had nothing to do with protecting the people of Benghazi and everything to do with protecting the Islamist militias in Benghazi which were in danger of losing the city. The Syrian intervention has nothing to do with whether Assad used chemical weapons, but the worry that the Sunni militias will lose Aleppo and Homs the way that they appear to have lost Qseir.

It was only when it became clear that the Sunni rebels were being rolled back by government forces, that the Red Line began flashing in the White House.  And if there is any doubt of that, Politico quoted an administration official as saying, “The decision was ultimately driven by the discovery Assad used [chemical weapons], but there were a number of other factors in place that were also important… “Would we have made [the determination Assad had breached the red line] even if we didn’t have the evidence? Probably.”

Had an official of the previous administration made such a statement around the Iraq War, there would have been talk of impeachment, but the media has long since gotten used to swallowing the bizarre lies put out by an administration that ended the Iraq War twice and kept insisting that Al Qaeda was on the run even as it was expanding across North Africa.

Obama lied the country into war in Libya. Now no one even blinks as an official admits that he was prepared to lie the country into war in Syria.

Before the campaign, Obama yammered about nation-building at home. Libya isn’t home. Neither is Syria.

While Obama botched Afghanistan, he has insisted on committing the United States to intervening in every nation-building war that the Arab Spring can throw up. Despite slashing the military to the bone, he hasn’t slaked his appetite for new wars. Even though he has dismantled the ability of the FBI to track Islamic terrorists at home, he has busily devoted government resources to helping them win abroad.

Syria is not America’s war. It is the Muslim Brotherhood’s war. Instead of nation-building at home, Obama is caliphate-building abroad.

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Reality hit home on Friday when the city missed a $39.7 million payment on a debt obligation used to fund pensions. Orr met in a closed-door session with about 180 of the city’s creditors, including bond holders, union representatives, pensions trustees and others, seeking critical concessions that include taking ten cents on the dollar for what those creditors are owed, while underfunded pensions plans may get even less. Even if the deal is acceptable, Detroit’s chances of going bankrupt remain 50-50. “This is not a jaded effort just to get to a bankruptcy filing,” said Orr. “I sincerely want people to behave rationally and take this opportunity to work together.”

Rational behavior has been scarce in Detroit for quite some time. Beginning in 1962, Detroit has endured a steady diet of Democratic mayors and their social welfare agenda. Beginning in 1962, Mayor Jerome Cavanagh ushered in a “Model City” program to a nine-square-mile section of the city. It was based on a Soviet Union-style approach, aimed at rebuilding entire urban areas all at once. The effort was funded by a commuter tax and a new income tax that Cavanagh told residents would be paid by “the rich.” Yet the same central planning that that formed the heart of the Model City program was extended to the people themselves, who eventually resented being told by government how to run their businesses and their lives in exchange for government goodies. Unsurprisingly, the program was a monumental failure.

Then there were the riots. In 1967, police broke up a celebration at a “blind pig.” Blind pigs were after-hours clubs that featured gambling and prostitution and had been part of the traditional black culture in Detroit since Prohibition. The political leadership considered them antithetical to the Model City program. An enraged neighborhood did not. People took to the streets, igniting the worst race riot of the decade. Black-owned business were looted and burned to the ground. Forty people were killed and 5,000 were left homeless. Thus began the “white flight” out of the city center, totaling 140,000 people over an eighteen month period, ensued. The city never recovered.

None of this stopped the progressive agenda from continuing to be implemented. Public employees were given precisely the exorbitant wage and benefits packages that are coming back to haunt the city now. This Democrat-fostered attitude extended to private sector unions, whose equally exorbitant packages, along with efficiency-strangling work rules, made the cost of doing business in the Motor City prohibitive. As a result, much of the car industry that formed the city’s employment backbone left for right-to-work states that provided a far less hostile — and far more affordable — business climate.

As chronicled here, the same progressive-inspired insanity destroyed the Detroit public school system (DPS), which itself stands on the brink of bankruptcy. This tragedy is highlighted by several sad realities. In 2009, DPS students turned in the lowest scores ever recorded in the national math proficiency test over its then-21-year history. The state of Michigan, led by Detroit, has one of the highest black-white achievement gaps in the nation. As of June 12, only 1.8 percent of the system’s students were capable of doing college level work.

Yet by far the most telling indictment of the system is this mind-bending reality: a full 47 percent of city residents are functionally illiterate.

Thus, Detroit’s date with fiscal destiny was pre-ordained. Orr is applying the pressure, telling creditors that they might not fare as well in bankruptcy court as they can right now. “It doesn’t get better with time, OK?” he told the Detroit Free Press editorial board following the meeting. “It actually gets worse. So the sooner you come in, the better treatment you might get.”

Orr may not be exaggerating. Left unchecked, the city’s debt obligations, including pensions and healthcare outlays that currently total a staggering 42.5 percent of all city revenue, will rise to 65 percent by 2017. No other major city has more than 20 percent of their revenues going to similar payouts. Thus, in addition to the aforementioned 90 percent losses Orr needs for the city’s creditors to absorb, other measures are also being considered. These include the possibility of selling city assets, including parking garages, and artwork from the Detroit Institute of Arts. The city park of Belle Isle will be leased to the state–under virtually the same conditions the Democrat-controlled City Council rejected. The Water and Sewerage Department will remain under ownership of the city, but spun off into a regional authority. And finally, the city wants to replace its retiree health-care plan with one relying on ObamaCare’s federal insurance exchanges or Medicare, coupled with some city supplements.

All of the ostensible savings generated by this plan will be plowed back into the city over the next ten years, including $500 million for blight removal and $1.25 billion earmarked for shoring up the police and fire departments, and restoring many of the streetlights in the city ranked by the FBI as the second-most dangerous in the nation.

Two of the nation’s rating services were unimpressed with the plan. Following the meeting, Standard & Poor’s lowered the rating on the city’s general-obligation debt from CCC-minus to CC with a negative outlook, while Fitch Ratings cut the city’s unlimited-tax and limited-tax general obligations, along with its pension obligation certificates, to C. The former rating indicates a debt obligation 10 steps below investment grade. The latter rating constitutes “imminent default.”

More than imminent, default looks inevitable. This is due to the reality that even if creditors sit still for ten cents on the dollar, the follow-up to this plan requires that the city borrow additional funds. Where will that money come from, given that current creditors have been asked to forgo 90 percent of their investment? National Reviews’s Kevin Williams reveals the infuriating answer, noting that “the unwilling taxpayers of Michigan and those of the United States” will be forced to foot the bill, even as “the collection of misfits, miscreants, and criminals who govern that poor city” remain in control of the municipal government.

Again, that would be a collection of Democrat misfits, miscreants, and criminals.

Yet as Williams correctly explains, it is not entirely clear whether pensions and retiree benefits can be legally reduced. The city furthest along the timeline in determining whether such an arrangement is viable is Stockton, CA. In April, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein allowed that city to enter bankruptcy, pitting the city’s creditors against its public employee retirement funds, regarding who gets paid off first. Since that was the first Chapter 9 bankruptcy case challenging state pension obligations, it really becomes a matter of whether the Tenth Amendment of of the Constitution preserving states’ rights trumps federal bankruptcy law. The case is likely to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Yet regardless of any court ruling, there are no winners. Either thousands of municipal employees take a hit on their contractually obligated health and benefit packages, or the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market where cities go to get much of their financing — long considered a safe, mom-and-pop investment vehicle — may be far more reticent to lend money to the nation’s municipal basket cases. Orr spokesman Bill Nowling expresses that no-win reality with regard to Detroit. “It’s going to have an impact” on the municipal-bond market, he said before the meeting. “But we’re at a crossroads.”

The city has 10,000 current city workers, roughly 20,000 city retirees, and 700,000  residents, and its current budget deficit could top $380 million by July 1. Nowling didn’t say whether Detroit would honor its next general-obligation bond payment, contending the city is “going to go month to month.” Kevyn Orr believes Detroit’s long-term debt tops $17 billion. Negotiations begin with union leaders next week, and continue through August. If they stall at any point along the line, Orr can file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

Orr wants to avoid bankruptcy. “What the average Detroiter needs to understand is that where we are right now is a culmination of years and years and years of kicking the can down the road,” he said, insisting his proposal should not be seen as a “hostile act,” but a step in the right direction. Maybe so, but it seems like an impossible task, given the reality that the city has spent $100 million more than it takes in every year since 2008. In three words, Orr expressed the reality that Detroit and several other cities mismanaged by years of Democratic control currently face.

“We’re tapped out,” he said.

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Wahhaj’s notable quotes include, “America is the most wicked government on the face of the planet Earth” and “If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.” He is also listed as “unindicted person who may be alleged as co-conspirators” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Wahhaj is the Amir of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). Two of its Shura Council members have served on the board of the Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia. The Interfaith Center boasts that in 2010 it “served nearly 10,000 individuals, partnered with more than 150 local religious congregations and institutions and two dozen civic and service organizations…”

MANA Shura Council member Anwar Muhaimin is on the Interfaith Center’s board of directors and is one of its founders. He is also a member of the Interfaith Center’s Religious Leaders Council of Philadelphia, which organized the inaugural prayer services for Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. Muhaimin currently leads the Quba Institute, previously called the International Muslim Brotherhood.

Although Muhaimin was educated in Saudi Arabia, he says he is not a Salafist and that his group is not affiliated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. However, its website has said that it’s been long partnered with the Muslim Students Association, a group that a 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo lists as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” More alarmingly, the Quba Institute’s former website said that Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood cleric Hasan al-Turabi was “instrumental in contributing instruction.” Al-Turabi has been called the “The Pope of Terrorism.”

Other supporters of the Quba Institute/International Muslim Brotherhood include Abdul-Hamid Abu Sulayman, former rector of the Islamic University of Malaysia and Medhat Hassanein, former Egyptian Finance Minister. The website used to acknowledge that they and al-Turabi “added their voices and their efforts to replenish and support International Muslim Brotherhood’s educational agenda.”

The former website of Muhaimin’s organization also said it rejects “’jihad al-saif’ (armed warfare) under one condition: unless in the context of self-defense or guarding the sacred, holy lands of Islam.”

MANA Shura Council member Kenny Gamble, now known as Luqman Abdul-Haqq, was one of the Interfaith Center’s founding board of directors. His United Muslim Movement actually merged with Muhaimin’s International Muslim Brotherhood in 1998 for a period of time. Gamble has been accused of trying to create Muslim enclaves.

Gamble’s organization says it is “dedicated to the full implementation of the Qur’an and the Sunnah…” Gamle was originally a member of the Nation of Islam. That is no longer the case, but he still collaborates with Louis Farrakhan’s radical organization.

Joe Kaufman discovered that an organization called the Jawala Scouts was registered to the same address as Gamble’s group and Gamble appeared to be its email contact. Photos show young Muslim boys dressed in military fatigue learning combat skills. The Scouts was started in 2005 by a group called the Sankore Institute of Islamic-African Studies International. As the Clarion Project reported in April, the organization’s website instructs Muslims to engage in “litigation jihad” to bring America into greater compliance with Sharia Law.

The group’s leader is undeniably anti-American and the FBI raided its offices in 2006. In 2010, Sankore’s leader condemned the “the pseudo-religion redefined by the pacifist ‘imams’ who deny the obligation of jihad and who have deluded their followers into the fruitless activity of supporting democratic constitutional government.”

The problem of Islamist interfaith engagement goes beyond Philadelphia.

The Council on-American Islamic Relations honors its interfaith partners at its fundraising banquets which often have radicals as speakers. The Islamic Circle of North America celebrates the friendships of churches as evidence that it’s moderate. The Presbyterian Church (USA) uses Islamist groups in interfaith studies.

These relationships have led to many Christian and Jewish organizations becoming political allies of groups linked to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. They join their campaigns and church leaders endorse their causes. There are church events about “Islamophobia” that attack these groups’ critics as bigots. In another case, an interfaith event was used to teach Christians that U.S. involvement in oppression is to blame for terrorism. On foreign policy, the Islamists’ non-Muslim allies rail against Israel and protest Israel’s alliance with the U.S.

This platform helps increase these groups’ political influence to the point where they are courted by the White House to build support for their policy agenda and offer advice. Other non-Islamist Muslim groups are left out in the cold.

This is what the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood envisioned when it instructed followers to “possess a mastery of the art of ‘coalitions’, the art of ‘absorption’ and the principles of ‘cooperation.’”

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

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Warning: Spoilers ahead.

It’s been a while since Americans have seen Superman on screen representing America. When Superman Returns came out in 2006, it eschewed the Man of Steel’s all-American background, instead choosing to cast him as an international good guy. The creators of the film even changed his iconic line, “Truth, justice, and the American way,” to the far more cynical line snorted by newsman Perry White: “Truth, justice, and all that stuff.” Superman went 1960s in his morality, fathering a child out of wedlock, then ditching the kid with mom Lois Lane.

Not this time.

Man of Steel is an all-American reboot, featuring a true philosophical understanding of what it means to be a patriot. Superman is, of course, an alien from another planet. But through his experiences on doomed Krypton and his upbringing in rural Kansas, he understands what it means to represent the flag.

The movie begins on Krypton, where a battle ensues as the planet dies. The people of Krypton, it turns out, began on another planet, and explored the universe. They settled on Krypton and lived there for tens of thousands of years. But then their exploratory energy failed. Fearful of overpopulating their planet, they instituted population control measures. That, in turn, necessitated the outright banning of natural birth – all children on Krypton were created in artificial settings, and genetically pre-programmed to occupy certain stations. Eventually, even these measures could not save the planet from exploitation, and the collapse of Krypton began.

Enter General Zod. Zod has all the right intentions – he wants to save his people. But the council, which has become tired and old, refuses to recognize the danger of the planetary collapse. So Zod launches a military coup, with the intent of laying his hands on a fossil – the codex — which somehow encodes the possible genetics of all possible living future people of Krypton. He will then flee the planet and set up shop elsewhere.

But, being a creature of the strictly-regimented, fascistic Krypton society, Zod wants to imitate their ways. He wants to preserve the population and control those who live and those who die. He wants to better the race. He is a sort of science fiction Hitler.

He is opposed in this quest by Jor-El. Jor-El was a onetime ally, a man who wanted to save the people of Krypton by convincing the council to flee the planet. But he broke with Zod over Zod’s insistence on the preservation of only the “pure” bloodlines. Instead, he stakes the future of the people of Krypton on his son – natural born, infused with free will, and handed the codex. His son, Kal-El, will create a new world – but he will do so by working with the people of Earth, who Jor-El later assures Kal-El, have the capacity for great good.

Jor-El is the real hero of Man of Steel. He believes in the people of Earth, not blindly, but realistically. He is not a fan of regimentation, but freedom. And he knows that energetic pursuit of exploration and constant self-betterment is the recipe for a successful individual, as well as a successful civilization.

That’s all before Kal-El heads to Earth. Once he gets there, he spends time acclimating to American values by growing up with Jonathan and Martha Kent. Jonathan wants to protect Clark (Kal-El) from the world, but explains to him that he has been put on Earth for a reason – to do good. And Martha has faith that Clark will find his way.

Eventually, Clark has to choose between his people – Zod, who reinvades Earth – and the Americanism of his father. He makes that choice unabashedly. Late in the film, he explains that he can’t get much more American – after all, he grew up in Kansas. And that’s right. He can’t. Despite his unique abilities, Superman is an all-American immigrant, prepared to strengthen himself and the world around him, fighting on behalf of freedom.

It is odd to say that America’s finest filmmaker spent much of his time growing up in Britain, but it’s the truth: Christopher Nolan, the story creator for Man of Steel, gets Americanism in his bones. That’s why he could make the ode to freedom that is The Dark Knight Rises. And it’s why he could create the narrative behind Man of Steel.

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Mohamed Abdul Azeez, imam of the Salam Islamic Center and winner of the FBI’s community leadership award, told the Sacramento Bee that staging the event was “risky” but “why not present an alternative? Instead of listening to rap music filled with filth, why not listen to clean rap?” The event, Azeez said, “represents a paradigm shift in the Muslim community. Kids are listening to this stuff, so why not be proactive and expose them to beautiful, inspiring music that promotes love of religion and country?” Imam Mahmoud Abdel of the Masjid Annur Islamic Center has a different view on music.

“Music actually makes you high, 100 percent,” he told the Bee. “It’s a chain reaction – when people listen to music, they ask for alcohol, which will lead to adultery. One step leads to another in the majority of cases. It’s well known that anybody who listens to music a lot will be distracted from his or her mission, which is worshipping God Almighty.”

Imam Mumtaz Qasmi of Sacramento’s Downtown Mosque said “Music has magic, it gets in your blood and makes you want to get up and dance and forget your personality. Your butt is shaking and she’s going to get up and her butt is going to shake – where is the religion then?” Mosques don’t allow music, the imam said, “So how can we allow it outside the mosque?”

Azeez argued that “there’s nothing conclusive in the Quran that states music is inherently wrong,” and in Egypt his parents listened to Oum Kolthoum, “the greatest singer in the Muslim world,” even though the local imam forbade it. But the FBI’s favorite imam still has reservations. He alluded to stories of how political leaders used music to sway people from the Quran and in some musical settings “really bad things took place, like the inappropriate mingling of genders, drinking or fornication.”

“An Islamic Expression of Traditional & Contemporary Art,” allowed no dancing and it may have consoled some that the event included recitations of the Quran along with the poetry and music. Performers included violinist Riad Abdel Gawad, known for improvisational playing, but rapper Amir Sulaiman might challenge imam Azeez’s concept of music that is “beautiful and inspiring.” And it’s a stretch that Tyson Amir’s music “promotes love of religion and country.”

Since tickets were $30, the event might have been construed as an example of capitalism. The news story, meanwhile, was highly promotional and included no contrary views from non-Muslims. Had a local Baptist minister said that rap was “full of filth” and declaimed against “really bad things” like “inappropriate mingling of genders,” the outcry would have been long and loud. Even so, the piece included more contrary opinion than those on more controversial issues involving the Salam Islamic Center, which has co-hosted events with CAIR, and Mohamed Abdul Azeez.

The recent terrorist bombings at the Boston Marathon, for example, prompted Azeez to extend condolences to victims of the “explosions” in Boston. But the whole story had a “fishy stench” and the imam said he was “weary of having to deal with this pressure all the time, whenever something stupid happens in the world. I feel similar to a gun owner worried about gun laws all the time because people are shooting people, or a Jew who has to worry about the atrocities being committed in Israel.”

In similar style, the FBI’s favorite imam was not exactly outspoken on the terrorist attacks in Libya. But he’s okay with a musical concert, as long as there’s no dancing.