Screeds
Monday, September 13, 2004
A Nation Gone Half Mad
April 15, 2004
Via the invaluable Ann Coulter, possibly the most underappreciated pundit in America, we have the following:
Last week, 9-11 commissioner John Lehman revealed that “it was the policy (before 9-11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that’s discriminatory.” Hmmm ... Is 19 more than two? Why, yes, I believe it is. So if two Jordanian cab drivers are searched before boarding a flight out of Newark, Osama bin Laden could then board that plane without being questioned. I’m no security expert, but I’m pretty sure this gives terrorists an opening for an attack.
Yet the committee’s focus was on grilling National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice hard enough to trip her into admitting that the Bush Administration had somehow contributed to the Black Tuesday atrocities through negligence.
Jonathan Calt Harris reports the following:
A Catholic priest gave pronouncements “in the name of Allah.” Signs were sold proclaiming “Support Armed Resistence [sic.] in Iraq and Everywhere,” next to tomes of Marx, Trotsky and Che Guevara. A smiling student marched carried a sign saying “Long Live Fallujah,” and another held a Bush effigy aloft on a noose. Such was the scene at the latest anti-war rally that occurred April 10 in San Francisco, where Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in Islamic studies at Berkeley called for an “intifada” in America.
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, who deserves an award for his thorough and relentless coverage of Islam-powered madness, has alerted us to a mosque in predominantly Christian Hamtramck, Michigan that wants an exemption from local anti-noise ordinances, so it can disturb the peace five times per day, starting at 6 AM, with the “adhan,” the Muslims’ call to prayer.
Meanwhile, just a few of days ago, the Democratic Club of St. Petersburg, Florida ran an advertisement that advocated the execution of Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld:
The ad says of Rumsfeld, “We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say, ‘This is one of our bad days,’ and pull the trigger.”
The club’s spokesman claimed in the ensuing firestorm of criticism that the language was meant to be “metaphorical.”
Florida Democrats are also boosters of a class action that seeks to restore the vote to convicted felons, of whom there are more than 600,000 in the state...on the grounds that the disfranchisement of felons has a disproportionate impact on blacks.
With all this going on, and the future of the country quite literally hanging in the balance, the Justice Department has decided to wage a new war on pornography.
Any minute now, your Curmudgeon expects to hear that Glitter and Gigli have begotten sequels and reality-TV series.
What is wrong with us?
It’s bad enough that the Old Media have decided that their supreme mission is to defame the Bush Administration and make Dubya look personally responsible for everything from the Black Tuesday atrocities to the delayed arrival of Utopia. It’s bad enough that prominent politicians make harshly critical comments about our purpose, our progress, and our prospects in Iraq without a shred of concern for their effect on the morale of our occupation forces there. It’s bad enough that celebrities of limited ability and dubious achievements are regarded by so many as worthwhile sources of political opinion and analysis.
Why can’t we get our priorities straight? Why, when an unknown but non-trivial fraction of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims is doing its level best to kill Americans and friends of America wherever the opportunity might arise, specifically because they’re Muslims and we aren’t, are we fixated on who is to blame for past non-cooperation between the FBI and CIA? Why, when our own airliners were so easily used against us as weapons of mass destruction, have we made it so difficult for the airlines to act on the one reliable datum about those who did such things—that they were young male Muslims from the Middle East? Why, when our forces are critically engaged with the minions of Islamic totalitarianism in Iraq, when the future of that newly liberated land will depend on the events of the next eight weeks, are Democratic politicians and their supporters so free with their slanders of President Bush and the most effective and knowledgeable persons in his Administration—Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld?
Why can’t we see the nature of our Islamic enemies? Why do we dignify their demands for special accommodations and their stentorian denunciations of America, American ways, and American actions with even a groat of press coverage? Why do Democratic partisans implicitly align themselves with that enemy? In the hope of political advantage?
Why do the Democrats explicitly align themselves with a group of men who’ve proved by their past actions that they have no interest in civil order? In the hope of “winning a battleground state” in the upcoming election?
Aren’t Democrats Americans first? Have they so little regard for the country they hope to rule?
Why do the governors of a huge state university system, the largest in the world, tolerate such outrages as Berkeley and San Francisco State University have been hosting? Why haven’t the miscreants who’ve uttered these slanders and calls for an American intifada been ejected from their state-funded academic sinecures, if not bound over for trial on charges of incitement to riot?
Why can’t the Justice Department admit that “no law abridging the freedom of speech” means no law abridging the freedom of speech—which covers sexually-oriented entertainment, no matter how anyone might feel about it?
Why do we continue to follow the slime trails of Howard Stern, Al Franken, Opie and Anthony, and comparable spewers of vulgar nonsense? They don’t deserve prosecution...well, maybe Franken does...but do they deserve our attention? Why does anyone think the marital travails of Jennifer Lopez and Uma Thurman to be of interest? Anyone but their current suitors, that is.
At least our armed forces in Iraq have their heads on straight. Murderer and insurrectionist Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, now encircled in the “holy city” Najaf, has generously offered “peace terms” to the American forces around the city...after having incited his followers to rise up and kill Americans, which they did. But this was Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt’s response:
“The target is not Najaf. The target is Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia,” said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy head of US military operations in Iraq.
“We will hunt him down and destroy him. We would prefer it not in Najaf or Karbala. We have very great respect for the shrines, for the Shiites.”
A man with a rifle in his arms, who’s being shot at, can’t afford the luxuries permitted to us who enjoy less hazardous circumstances. The insurrectionist al-Sadr will presently be dead or incarcerated. The Shi’ite “holy city” will not protect him for long; American troops are a bit tired of being shot at from the doors and windows of mosques.
Why can’t we achieve that kind of clarity here at home? If it comes only after more Black Tuesday-scale damage has been done, it will be a cold light by which to read the obituaries.
“Up on your feet, you ward heelers, you courthouse loafers. Can you not see that Rome is burning?”—Robert A. Heinlein, The Puppet Masters
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