There’s a short quiz you can take at The Advocates that will classify your political position. Here’s how I came out.

ACCORDING TO YOUR ANSWERS,
The political description that fits you best is…
.
LIBERTARIAN

LIBERTARIANS support maximum liberty in both personal and
economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one
that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence.
Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose
government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate
diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

The RED DOT on the Chart shows where you fit on the political map.

Check it out and see where you fall on the political spectrum.

Yesterday, New York Gov. Pataki declared that The International Freedom Center would not be included as part of the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero:

Gov. George Pataki on Wednesday removed a proposed freedom center from the space reserved for it near the planned World Trade Center memorial, saying the museum project had aroused “too much opposition, too much controversy.”

Pataki initially said the state would help the International Freedom Center find another home, but center officials said they weren’t interested and considered the project dead.

Pataki said a planned cultural building meant for the freedom center would now tell only the story of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

[…]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave conflicting statements in recent days about the museum’s future, said Wednesday: “Although I understand Governor Pataki’s decision, I am disappointed that we were not able to find a way to reconcile the freedoms we hold so dear with the sanctity of the site.”

Thanks to the efforts of those who opposed it, the International Freedom Center, whose objectives became public only after Debra Burlingame exposed them in her article, The Great Ground Zero Heist, is no longer a threat to the sanctity of the hallowed Ground Zero. As Burlingame pointed out

The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man’s inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich’s Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground.

Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. These are important subjects, but for somewhere–anywhere–else, not the site of the worst attack on American soil in the history of the republic.

So what has been achieved, and what does it mean?

Let’s first look at the backers of the International Freedom Center.

1) Michael Posner,Executive Director of Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights). Human Rights First promotes its activities on its web site as

In 2004, Human Rights First launched its End Torture Campaign, a public education and advocacy effort that challenges the framework of U.S. policy and practice that allows coercive interrogation techniques and unlimited, secret detention of those in U.S. custody in violation of U.S. and international law. As part of the campaign, Human Rights First, retired military leaders, and other human rights advocates sued U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for the torture of eight former prisoners who were held by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. Human Rights First also organized a group of retired admirals and generals to speak out publicly against U.S. interrogation and detention policies.

2) Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. Mr. Romero’s biography indicates that he

has worked tirelessly to protect civil liberties through its Safe and Free campaign and its efforts to hold government officials accountable for the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and in Afghanistan. Other new ACLU initiatives developed under Romero’s leadership have focused on racial justice, religious freedom, gay rights, reproductive freedom and privacy.

3) Eric Foner, Professor at Columbia University. Mr. Foner’s biography indicates

Beloved by undergraduates and reviled by right-wing ideologues, Columbia University’s Eric Foner is arguably the world’s foremost authority on the tumultuous period of American Reconstruction (1865-1877). […]…Foner’s writing is animated by a deep and abiding passion for America’s promise, a passion made all the more potent because it is tempered by an honest and critical appraisal of the times our nation has fallen short of our founding ideals.

David Horowitz writes of Mr. Foner as

Eric Foner, Columbia professor and president-elect of the American Historical Association, is indeed the scion of a family of well-known American Communists, a supporter of the Rosenbergs, a sponsor of CP stalwarts Angela Davis and Herbert Aptheker, a lifelong member of the radical left and, recently, an organizer of the secretaries union at Columbia and a would-be architect of an alliance between intellectuals and the working class.

4) George Soros, the billionaire leftist who supports MoveOn.org and other left-leaning organizations.

As you can see, the supporters were all people of the left, whose objectives are more to point out the failings of America than the good of America.

The significance of what has happened is this.

In the past, these very influential leftists, who have much clout in New York, particularly in Manhattan, would have worked out a deal with the Governor, the Lower Manhattan Commission, the Mayor, etc. Debra Burlingame and other 9/11 families might have objected, and Debra might even have gotten her article published in the Wall Street Journal Opinion section. But it would have ended there. The IFC would have been built.

The reason the Left has made the inroads it has in America to date is because things happened and no one knew about it until it was too late. In this instance a new factor was introduced. The internet. A web site, Take Back the Memorial, was set up which contained facts about the IFC, and provided an online petition for opponents to sign. Bloggers, like Michelle Malkin, Captain’s Quarters and many smaller bloggers picked up the ball and ran with it. They brought knowledge to the public. Once the public was informed, they could act, and did. Finally, even Hillary Clinton, seeing that nearly 50,000 people had signed the petition decided that the IFC should not be there, as did Rudy Giuliani.

This never would have happened without the blogosphere. The world is changing. No longer will the leftists and anti-American forces be able to surprise the American public with institutions they do not approve of. The internet is anathema to the political left. It is much easier now to find out who backers are, and to what socialist or communist organization they may belong to, or support.

Those of us who love America, and who believe that the Memorial at Ground Zero should solely exist to memorialize those who lost their lives in that great attack on America, and to honor those brave heroes who risked their lives in attempts to rescue the survivors, are pleased.

An informed and educated people is a free people.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Update: Kevin Alyward at Wizbang makes a good point about the IFC’s sudden lack of interest in promoting “freedom” at some other location.

All it was ever about for the IFC crew was ramming their world view down the throats of unsuspecting ground zero visitors. If they’re not front and center they’re not interested.

If the IFC was in such demand they’d be looking to build it somewhere else. They’re not…

Introducing Uzi Landau – Candidate for Leader of Likud and Prime Minister of the State of Israel

Redacted from an interview by Ruthie Blum
Jerusalem Post International, September 22, 2005

Uzi Landau is a married father of three who lives in Ra’anana. Landau first became a Member of the Knesset (MK) in 1984. He has chaired or been a member of numerous Knesset committees since then, including foreign affairs and defense, economic affairs, justice, and immigration and absorption.

Between March 2001 and February 2002, he served as minister of public security and as minister without portfolio between February 2002 and October 2004, when he resigned from the cabinet due to his fierce opposition to disengagement from Gaza.

Question: Why do you want to be prime minister? Don’t you have enough troubles?

Excellent question. I believe I have no choice because I have a family and over the past two years, everything in this country is failing apart. Politics are corrupt down to the core. The prime minister and his son are methodically ruining the Likud. They have turned it into a playing field for wheeling and dealing; for buying and selling political appointments for threats and promises. Where diplomacy and defense are concerned, the prime minister has reneged on the voters. We are witnessing active surrender to the brutal terrorism that has been hitting us since Oslo and particularly in the last four years, leaving unprecedented numbers of casualties.

Society too, is being split at the seams by the prime minister. The withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria is not merely a geographical pullout, but the beginning of a process of withdrawal from Zionism. It’s a spiritual withdrawal from Jewish-Zionist values. An entire culture of educating generations of pioneers to settle the country — whether The Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley Jerusalem or Gush Katif – is crumbling before our very eyes – A culture of settlement not only created and encouraged by Likud governments, but by Labor Zionists, who regarded people settling the land as emissaries of the state: As Zionists at their best; and they were.

The communities in Gush Katif, for example, were not only established as a statement of Israel’s sovereignty over the land. You could actually see a whole different culture thriving there. A different Israel, characterized by mutual respect and compassion and living by “honor thy father and mother.”

Now we have a prime minister – a man those policies I supported for dozens of years – who calls this “occupied territory.” and he’s taken this wonderful group of people and demonized them as enemies of the state.
When you look at the government’s attitude toward these people who have just been yanked out of their homes – and you hear stories of the bureaucratic nightmares they are being forced to endure – you realize that this is no longer a political drama over disengagement. It is a human tragedy.

One has to make a distinction between a policy one supports or opposes and the way in which it is achieved – whether through democratic public debate or through wheeling and dealing and threat. I’m not talkng about politics but about the very fact that decisions are being taken contrary to the democratic process. This prime minister has shaken the very foundation on which the democratic decision-making process is based. This, above all, is why he is not worthy of his post

Q. Sharon didn’t emerge from the Likud. He was originally from Mapai. Do you think there is a connection?

There is no doubt that people bring their political upbringing with them. And during the past four years, he and his son Omri have been butchering the Likud with a combination of enticements and threats in order to further some policies and stymie other policies antithetical to what the Likud stands for in order to curry favor with the Leftist media.

Q. Sharon’s defenders claim that everything he has done politically has been completely legal.

When a candidate is elected on the basis of one platform, and then turns around and adopts the platform of the candidate he beat, it is fraud.

If that’s the case, why hasn’t there been a major public outcry?

That’s a separate question. I’m not saying that a prime minister can’t change his mind. But then he has to address the public and ask for renewed support.
Sharon, on the other hand, not only cheated his voters, but then he went on to promise the 200,000 Likud members that he would accept their vote on a referendum on disengagement – whatever it was. Yet, when the referendum opposed disengagement by a landslide 60-40, Sharon simply disregarded it.

To top it all off, he marketed disengagement abroad as though it were a plan forged by the government – a plan that didn’t even have a majority in the cabinet. To ensure such a majority he simply fired two ministers, Avigdor Lieberman and Benny Elon. Just like that.

Look, Sharon began with a very reasonable coalition and gradually he shed all his supporters. First, the National Union, then, the NRP then, certain Likud members; after that Shinui, and finally he brought in the Labor Party. So naturally he ended up with an uncontested government. Can anyone witness this and not fear for the future of our democracy? The Sharon I know today is a different man from the one I used to know. He underwent a fundamental metamorphosis …

First, Sharon said we have to withdraw from Gaza unilaterally because Arafat was not a partner for peace negotiations and because of our commitment to the Road Map. But then Arafat dies. Enter Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas]. It’s said of him that he’s a moderate. He wears a suit; he’s clean-shaven and smells of expensive after-shave. If so, then why not negotiate with him? Why take unilateral steps? Why not receive something in exchange?

Q. What makes you so sure that if you were prime minister you wouldn’t make similar withdrawals to those Sharon is making, or those Netanyahu made with the Hebron agreement — or those Begin made in Sinai?

This is not a question of withdrawing from territory but rather of upholding certain principles, such as that of reciprocity. It was on this very principle that I opposed the Hebron agreement and the reason Netanyahu didn’t ask me to join his cabinet.

Look, we’re engaged in a war with the Palestinians. When you’re at war, you don’t talk about compromises; you talk about victory. You have to defeat your enemy, so that when peace talks ensue, it is totally clear that you are making compromises out of generosity that the agreement you’re signing has a chance of being upheld for many years.

The trouble goes deeper than that, though. Israel is our country. What has happened here is that the Palestinians have convinced themselves and everybody else that this land is theirs. All we keep talking about is whether certain territory is necessary for our security. We’re not saying: “This is ours.”

Q. What about the consequences of disengagement on the Palestinian?

All you have to do is listen to Abu Mazen and you know that this is a victory for terrorism. He says they won’t stop until they get Jerusalem.

Q. Is Abu Mazen unable to control terrorism or is he actively encouraging it?

I don’t know. But at the moment he can’t control it, even if he wants to. I’m not so sure he wants to. He was among those who five years ago rejected the generous offers made by Barak at Camp David; he was the one who aided the terrorists at Munich; and he was a Holocaust denier. Today, when he comes out against terrorism, he says it is a tactical mistake, not an immoral act! He also says he’s not going to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.

Q. Sources in Washington claim that Sharon initiated the disengagement plan without any US pressure and assured President Bush that it would be good for Israel at a time when the Road Map was becoming irrelevant due to a rise in suicide bombings. Do you think this is true?

I know for a fact it’s true. The Americans didn’t want it. Bush was involved in Iraq right before elections, and didn’t want anything like this. Sharon pressured him, with the help of [PM advisor Dov] Dubi Weisglass – someone totally ignorant about foreign affairs and US defense policy. But once the Americans agreed, they said: OK, you want to go ahead with it (the Gaza withdrawal)? Fine, but throw in northern Samaria while you’re at it.”

One of the country’s most momentous moves was made by a handful of people who have no knowledge of foreign affairs and defense – two PR men, the Sharon family lawyer Dubi Weisglass and Sharon’s son.

Q. Are you saying that Ariel Sharon has no knowledge of defense?

Of course he has, but when you do something this monumental, you work with a team of professionals. I mean, even the chief of staff and the head of the Shin Bet were unaware of the plan. It was all done on the sly, as though this were some banana republic.

Q. It is said that because you lack charisma, your integrity won’t help you get elected?

Was Harry Truman charismatic? No. Did he have integrity? Yes. Did he not get to be president of the United States?

Let’s end the un-civil war of language
By Edward Emanuel
The Fresno Bee

(Updated Saturday, September 24, 2005, 6:52 AM)

I’m a professor at California State University, Fresno. From day to day, I’m in contact with the future leaders of America, and I must tell you that I’m in a state of shock. What our children are learning is how to express themselves with venom, innuendo, insult and personal character assassination. And where are our future leaders, our future politicians, our future teachers learning this vile and perverted form of communication? From us.

Politics, partisanship, power over decorum and gossip over truth are what stands for discourse today. It is shameful. There is so much hate between the two political parties that it has placed the interests of America behind personal attack. Our Founding Fathers frowned upon the concept of professional politicians because, in their wisdom, they knew that the profession of politics was detrimental to the good of the country.

How right they were. No longer do our political parties represent the needs of the constituents but rather the needs of the parties themselves, which are so counterproductive to the good of the nation. It is the pursuit of political power at any cost that is at the root of these bitter attacks on the elected officials who are in power. And so many of these vicious attacks on each party are funded by organizations within and around the parties themselves, which raise millions and millions of dollars to spread their negativism through the media.

Donate the cash

Think for a minute: If the two major political parties took the hundreds of millions of dollars that they use to attack each other and donated that money to charity, scientific research to end harmful diseases or to education, what wonderful work could be accomplished, rather than the banal disregard for courtesy and good conduct that this money now creates?

This country was founded on the principles of free speech and honest criticism. But when honest criticism sinks to the level of personal attack and insult, we all lose a bit of our freedom. When the “loyal opposition,” no matter which party falls into that category, becomes only continual and vitriolic “opposition,” then it must make the Founding Fathers roll in their graves.

Personal attacks on the character, intelligence and morality of the president, no matter which party the president represents, send a signal to our children that there is nothing in this culture that need be respected. When a leader from one party appears before a group of children and calls the president of the United States a “loser,” then this is not freedom of speech; it is license to destroy the dignity of the office.

I was in a state of shock when, in the middle of the Gulf Coast’s great tragedy, I heard politicians and celebrities blasting our national leaders with charges of racism and planned inhumanity. How horrible to share those misguided and utterly banal attacks when our thoughts and allegiance should only be focused on helping those poor victims in New Orleans, Alabama and Mississippi. Where is the sense of decorum? Where is the patriotism that argues, “put America first”? America must come first.

Ineptness displayed

There is no question that there was ineptness displayed in this national tragedy. And charges ought to be leveled at those who were guilty. But it is obscene to announce to the world, and more important, to our children, in the middle of a crisis, that our national conscience is immoral and weak.

If both of the two major political parties would only stop this unrelenting trading of insults and get off the path of personal vendetta, then we would be giving our children a priceless gift. If we could stop referring to ourselves as “red states” and “blue states” and only speak of America as one nation dedicated to securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, then this nation would be united in such a way that no outside enemy in the world could ever destroy our will and our culture. Let us teach our children how to argue a point without stooping to insult and personal character destruction. Let us teach our children that dissent is good as long as it is civil and based on facts, not lies, forgeries and innuendo.

America is the greatest nation on earth, and the only way we can preserve our greatness is through respect for the truth, love for our fellow citizens and the preservation of political civility and decorum.

Edward EmanuEl is a professor in the Theatre Arts Department at California State University, Fresno.

This is either the start of the next Arab-Israeli War, or an expansion of the GWOT if Assad should decide he sees an opportunity to get involved.

Here is Debka’s analysis:

The Palestinian-Israel war has blown up in force five weeks after Israel evacuated all its civilians from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank – 12 days after pulling its troops out of Gaza and one day after they exited the northern West Bank – as though nothing had changed.

The scenario was not unexpected; it was plotted by Palestinian terror chiefs.

The three Palestinian ticking bombs killed by Israeli troops near Tulkarm Friday Sept. 23 were no more than a pretext for scores of Qassam missiles to start flying from the Gaza Strip at Israeli towns and villages that same night. But that was not the source of the deterioration. It began when Israel failed to fight off Palestinian attacks in the course of the evacuations. That operation was plagued by shooting attacks, roadside bombs, Qassam missiles and grenade attacks on troops pulling out of the Philadelphi border route. Israel’s defense minister and generals promised “zero tolerance” for Palestinian attacks – but sat on their hands.

On the West Bank, the situation went from bad to worse. As Israelis were rooted out of the northern region, Palestinian terrorists regrouped further south undisturbed. They systematically upgraded their gunmen as mortar and missile crews. They laid the foundation for a proactive operational link between Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel’s passivity was most remarked when Palestinian weapons and terrorists flooded into the Gaza Strip from Egyptian Sinai, day after day, from the moment Israeli troops departed on Sept 12. The ordinary Israel has never been told how an enormous pile of war materiel came to be stockpiled in northern Sinai, who paid for it and who stood ready to organize its efficient transfer to waiting hands in Gaza. There is no explanation of why Israel omitted to make Egypt’s liquidation of the lethal stocks a condition for handing over the Philadelphi route to Egyptian border police?

Up to this minute, the border remains wide open for the free passage of terrorists and smugglers.

According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, this open door enabled the Hamas and Jihad Islami to beef up their manpower and weapons resources by one third. Incredibly, the Palestinian Authority purchased some of the smuggled goods.

The slow-burning terror embers of the last few weeks burst into flame Friday, Sept 23, when two missile-trucks blew up during one of Hamas’ almost daily triumphal “military” parades. The missiles were meant for Israelis, but at least 19 Palestinians were killed including some top Hamas terror chiefs. One was identified as Ahmed Randur, northern Gaza commander. Another 80 people were injured, including children. The presence of Israeli helicopters overhead to stop the hail of Qassam missiles fired earlier against Israeli border locations gave the Hamas a convenient party to blame for its own criminal negligence.

The Palestinian Authority hastened to blame Hamas’ own Qassam missiles for the disaster, fearful that the escalating violence would eliminate its vestigial hold in the Gaza Strip.

The flare-up erupted within hours – with much greater speed and force than even the most pessimistic intelligence experts predicted. It begs the question: why did Israel permit the situation to rocket out of control? Clues may be found in two speeches.

September 15, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon addressed the UN General Assembly without a single mention of the proliferating security problems, lest he mar the presentation of the Israeli evacuations as “an historic feat,” performed by a peace-loving farmer forced to assume the roles of military leader and statesman.

Then, on September 23, defense minister Shaul Mofaz, in a lecture in Tel Aviv, laid bare the Sharon government’s policy guidelines.

He made three points:

1. The most important project after the pull-backs is to build up the Palestinian economy as the means of reducing incentives to engage in terrorism.

2. The Palestinian Authority is geared for a genuine, tough struggle to assert its authority over the Hamas.

3. If the Hamas seizes power through the ballot box, Israel will withdraw its cooperation from Palestinian Authority institutions.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror and intelligence sources maintain that all three guidelines are totally unreal, based on nothing more than pious hopes.

Read more.

Those of us who were aware of the situation in Gaza and who were not living in fantasy, like our own Secretary of State, knew that shortly after the Israeli pullout hostilities would begin in earnest.

Expect to see an all-out war between the Palestinians and the Israelis within days.

Related prior posts:
Gaza and Victory?
It has begun: Rockets fired into Israel from Gaza
More Deadly Appeasement by Israel
The Facts on the Ground are Different, Mr. President
Hamas threatens more attacks after Gaza pullout
The Secret of Gaza
Sharon’s Gaza Capitulation
U.N. Poverty Funds Used to Fund Palestinian Political Aims
News Items from Israel – August 14th
Netanyahu resigns over Disengagement
Al Queda Confirms Base in Gaza
Al Queda Already in Gaza
After Gaza
Undermining U.S. Interests
Disengagement not in US Interest
Eyeless in Gaza
Why The “Roadmap” Will Hit A Dead-End
Arab Terrorist Bombs Israeli Mall
Female Terrorist Targets Israeli Hospital That Helped Her

The government can decide what artwork is worthwhile without being accused of censorship as long as it is funding that art, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told an audience Thursday at the Juilliard School.

“The First Amendment has not repealed the ancient rule of life, that he who pays the piper calls the tune,” Scalia said.

The justice, who limited his discussion to art issues, said he wasn’t suggesting that government stop funding the arts, but that if it does fund artwork, it is entitled to have a say in the content, just like when it runs a school system.

Read more…

From MEMRI:

Saudi Government Official on Iqra TV: All Muslims Must Support Jihad – Send Money to the Saudi Committee for Support of the Al-Quds Intifada, Account No. 98

An August 29, 2005 program on Saudi Iqra TV was devoted to supporting Jihad in Palestine. The program host began by telling all Saudis that they must donate and explained how to do so.

A caption then appeared on the screen: “Saudi Committee for Support of the Al-Quds Intifada, Account No. 98, a joint account at all Saudi banks.” A moderator stated that “Jihad is the pinnacle of Islam” and explained that the funds would go directly to those waging Jihad, where it would “help them carry out this mission.”

The program included the secretary-general of the Saudi government’s Muslim World League Koran Memorization Commission, Sheikh Abdallah Basfar, who explained why it was an “obligation” for all Muslims to support Jihad. He also promised that “all of the funds sent via the known charities and organizations” would reach “your Muslim brothers.” TO VIEW THIS CLIP VISIT: http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=843.

For more on this subject see Special Report No. 17, – “Saudi Royal Family’s Financial Support to the Palestinians 1998-2003: More than 15 Billion Riyals (U.S $4 Billion.) Given to ‘Mujahideen Fighters’ and ‘Families of Martyrs,'” http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR1703.

Caption: Jerusalem in their hearts.

Host: “Palestine calls out to you – its women, children, elderly, and youth. They appeal to the generosity of the Khalifa Al-Mu’tasem within you. Wage Jihad for the sake of Allahin what you do best, in order to defend the first Qibla [direction of prayer] and the third holiest shrine. Donate, even the smallest thing, for your brothers in Palestine, and you will be blessed.”

Caption: The Saudi committee for support of the Al-Quds Intifada. Account No. 98, a joint account at all Saudi banks.

[…]

Organizer: “As the Prophet Muhammad said, Jihad is the pinnacle of Islam. A person who cannot wage Jihad with his soul is required to wage Jihad with his money, with his tongue, with his thought, and with any means at his disposal. There is no doubt that our brothers in Palestine desperately need financial support, which goes directly to this cause, and helps them to carry out this mission.”

[…]

Sheikh Abdallah Basfar: “All the funds sent via known charities andorganizations reach your Muslim brothers, Allah be praised. Undoubtedly, this aid is obligatory and not just recommended. This is the duty of every Muslim, based on the scholars’ religious ruling that supporting our brothers in Palestine is obligatory. Therefore, material support is a duty.

[…]

“The Prophet said: ‘He who equips a fighter – it is as if he himself fought.’ You lie in your bed, safe in your own home, and donate money – and Allah credits you with the rewards of a fighter. What is this? A privilege. So why this reluctance, despite all this encouragement? The Prophet said: ‘He who equips a fighter – it is as if he himself fought’ – and what a great difference there is between the two! What comparison is there between someone who pays money while living in comfort, and someone who sacrifices his soul for the sake of Allah, wages Jihad, and exerts efforts? There is a great difference. Yet Allah – because money is so important and since Jihad cannot be waged without it… Who will care for the families of these martyrs who sacrificed their souls? These people sacrificed their souls – can we be stingy with our money? We are not saying we should give away all our money – although it wouldn’t be strange for a Muslim to do so for this cause – but a Muslim should at least donate some of his money – and money is abundant, Allah be praised.

[…]

“The Prophet threatened people who refrain from giving their money for the sake of Allah. He threatened them with disaster that Allah would inflict upon them before Judgment Day. The Prophet says: ‘Someone who did not fight or equip a fighter – Allah will inflict disaster upon him before Judgment Day.’ In other words, you, as a Muslim, have no alternative whatsoever. You have no alternative if you want to be spared Allah’s torments. Allah tempts you. If you give money, you’ll be rewarded. But he threatens you that if you don’t give money, and you are stingy in spending your money for the sake of Allah, you should expect punishment from Allah, because Jihad is the protection of land and honor. It’s a most important thing. When you repel evil from your brothers in Palestine, you repel it from yourself and from your country, your family, your daughters, and your sons. Don’t think you are only protecting them – you are also protecting yourself. Furthermore, Allah is trying you with this money. Allah is testing you to see whether you spend this money for His sake. Hence, he who refrains from fighting and from donating money for the sake of Allah, Allah inflicts disaster or catastrophe upon him before Judgment Day.”

The Roberts Disruption

A few years ago, checking in with the office, I was told I had a telephone call from Norman Lear. I immediately returned it, and probably my voice quavered. The very thought of being in personal touch with the producer of All in the Family! My all-time favorite television program. “What,” I asked unctuously, “can I do for you?”

“Well,” he said, “I would like you to be the keynote speaker at the annual banquet of People for the American Way.”

I wondered how Archie Bunker would have responded to such a request, mutatis mutandis. If I had the powers of Carroll O’Connor to register bewilderment/surprise/stupefaction, the expression on my face would have flowed, coast to coast, over the telephone line.

“Mr. Lear — ”

“Norman.”

“Well, Norman, it wouldn’t be right for me to address People for the American Way.”

Why not? he asked. All I had to do was give a speech about free speech.

It was with difficulty that I explained to him that his organization was devoted in almost all matters to promoting the opposite of what I have spent my life championing.

He seemed genuinely surprised. And in this morning’s papers I read that he called together his circle in Hollywood to register his dismay at the nomination of John Roberts to serve on the Supreme Court. After Senator Leahy announced that he would vote to confirm Roberts, Mr. Lear’s — Norman’s — organization described that decision as “inexplicable.” The news story recounting the event went on to report that “some Democratic activists are already warning that these votes could affect turnout in the 2006 midterm elections.”

“It’s not right,” as Archie would say, to engage in tu quoque argumentation, but I break the rule to say that, talking of inexplicability, it is very close to that to suggest that any vote against Judge Roberts is motivated by anything at all except rank and mindless opposition to anything proposed by President Bush. The qualifications of Judge Roberts are clear beyond any reasonable question. Short of repealing that clause in the Constitution that gives the president authority to nominate members of the Supreme Court, how else deny Roberts?

What is in the political wings is something like an early polarization among Democrats. Senator Edward Kennedy is pretty steadfast as an undeviating leftist, and although Judge Roberts was tender as a lamb in replying to his questions during the hearings, Roberts, speaking extemporaneously, did everything this side of taking Senator Kennedy’s written text and correcting its historical errors, to treat him as an informed interrogator. But there were a half dozen Democratic senators waiting to follow Kennedy’s lead.

It is too early to know whether the effort at consolidating the Democratic Party in its left-lurch is going to succeed. It is a polarization without, at this moment, hard resistance from the center. Senator Leahy said he would support Roberts, but managed to appease the left by saying unpleasant things about the judge’s record. Several senators are being courted by the left, among them Durbin and Schumer and Lautenberg, and there will be a substantial vote in opposition.

It has the dawning feel of the separatism of 1947-48. The hard left back then pressed for either appeasement of the Soviet Union, or else submission to it. They had a candidate then — Henry Wallace — and don’t have one now. Senator Kerry’s ungoverned hostility to President Bush edges him toward supremacy among the Bush haters, but it is not clear that these are definitely en route to governing the Democratic Party. What cause would the left seek out, in a bid for national control first of the Democratic Party, then of the nation?

Norman Lear is not, for all his affability and innocence, the stuff of which grand secessions are made. He is more in the school of Kerensky than of Lenin. And it is too early to discern what will be the vote of Democrats at large on the matter of John Roberts’s nomination. If Roberts were to fail of confirmation, then a political front would have opened up.

But Roberts, inexplicable as it may be, isn’t going to fail, so the Democrats will not be able to use him as the great cause for dissension from the American way.

I will be away for a little while and won’t be able to blog. I should be back here in a week, or possibly sooner.

In the meantime, click on some of the blogs on my blogroll in the right-hand column. They all have something brilliant, interesting and relevant to say.

The Bear

Destruction of the United States through Immigration
by former Colorado Governer Dick Lamm

We all know Dick Lamm as the former Governor of Colorado. In that context, his thoughts are particularly poignant. Last week there was an immigration, overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, filled to capacity by many of American’s finest minds and leaders. A brilliant college professor named Victor Hansen Davis talked about his latest book, “Mexifornia,” explaining how immigration—both legal and illegal—was destroying the entire state of California. He said it would march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of The American Dream.

Moments later, former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stood up and gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America. The audience sat spellbound as he described eight methods for the destruction of the United States. He said, “If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that ‘An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'”

“Here is how they do it,” Lamm said: “Turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bi-cultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.

“The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way: ‘The histories of bilingual and bi-cultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy.’ Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans.”

Lamm went on: “Invent ‘multi-culturalism’ and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. I would make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.

“We could make the United States an ‘Hispanic Quebec’ without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: ‘The apparent success of our own multi-ethnic and multi-cultural experiment might have been achieved not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.'” Lamm said, “I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural sub-groups living in America reinforcing their differences rather than as Americans, emphasizing their similarities.”

“Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50% dropout rate from high school.”

“My fifth point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of ‘Victimology.’ I would get all minorities to think their lack of success was the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.”

“My sixth plan for America’s downfall would include dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I would stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other—that is, when they are not killing each other.”

“A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes to keep a nation together. Look at the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshipped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic games. A common enemy Persia threatened their liberty. Yet all these bonds were not strong enough to over come two factors: local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions. Greece fell.

“E. Pluribus Unum” — >From many, one. In that historical reality, if we put the emphasis on the ‘pluribus’ instead of the ‘unum,’ we can balkanize America as surely as Kosovo.”

“Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits—make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of ‘diversity.’ I would find a word similar to ‘heretic’ in the 16th century—that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like ‘racist’ or ‘zenophobe’ halt discussion and debate.”

“Having made America a bilingual/ bicultural country, having established multi-culturism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of ‘Victimology,’ I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra: That because immigration has been good for America , it must always be good. I would make every individual immigrant sympatric and ignore the cumulative impact of millions of them.”

In the last minute of his speech, Governor Lamm wiped his brow. Profound silence followed. Finally he said, “Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis’s book Mexifornia. His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to destroy America. If you feel America deserves to be destroyed, don’t read that book.”

There was no applause. A chilling fear quietly rose like an ominous cloud above every attendee at the conference. Every American in that room knew that everything Lamm enumerated was proceeding methodically, quietly, darkly, yet pervasively across the United States today. Every discussion is being suppressed. Over 100 languages are ripping the foundation of our educational system and national cohesiveness.

Barbaric cultures that practice female genital mutilation are growing as we celebrate ‘diversity.’ American jobs are vanishing into the Third World as corporations create a Third World in America—take note of California and other states—to date, ten million illegal aliens and growing fast. It is reminiscent of George Orwell’s book “1984.” In that story, three slogans are engraved in the Ministry of Truth building: “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength.”

Our nation and the future of this great democracy is deeply in trouble and worsening fast. If we don’t get this immigration monster stopped within three years, it will rage like a California wildfire and destroy everything in its path, especially The American Dream.