tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15175270699403476322024-03-12T19:59:51.843-07:00Agnotology in JournalismG. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-71771337971856432492021-02-14T14:26:00.004-08:002021-02-14T14:30:03.257-08:00<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>WHY MICHAEL FLYNN MATTERS<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The duty of a true Patriot is to
protect his country from its government.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>― </span><span class="authorortitle"><b><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas Paine</span></b></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Maxims and
clichés enter language as insights with bromide potential. Just as often, repetition
turns a platitude into a cultural virtue. Indeed, many a cliché is just an
asserted conclusion masquerading as wisdom. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For the American
Intelligence Community, the perennial virtue signal is usually some version of the
need to “speak truth to power.” Alas, hearing a spy master pontificate about
truth today is a little like hearing about chastity from a hooker. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Intelligence
agencies, and their contractors, foreign or domestic; lie, distort, cheat,
steal, kill, misrepresent, deceive, or even perjure while draped in the flag or
the Kevlar of national security. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nearly all
of what contemporary Intelligence does anywhere is illegal, if not immoral,
somewhere. Spies and analysts lie because it’s what they are trained to do. It’s
what they get paid to do. It’s what they get rewarded for doing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">James
Angleton, a legendary CIA station chief, made his bones and career at Langley by
orchestrating a regime change operation in Italy after WW II. Rome at that
point was an American ally. And yes, we are talking about the same James Jesus who
subsequently wined and dined double agent Kim Philby during the Cold War at the
Army Navy Club in Washington. CIA has been running regime change campaigns ever
since. Ukraine and Libya are just two of the most recent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75"
coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe"
filled="f" stroked="f">
<v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/>
<v:formulas>
<v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"/>
<v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"/>
<v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"/>
<v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"/>
</v:formulas>
<v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/>
<o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"/>
</v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_1" o:spid="_x0000_i1030" type="#_x0000_t75"
alt="Die geheimen JFK-Akten (10): Der “Geist” hinter Oswald – James Jesus Angleton | Mathias Broeckers"
style='width:305.5pt;height:203.5pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg"
o:title=" Der “Geist” hinter Oswald – James Jesus Angleton | Mathias Broeckers"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="Die geheimen JFK-Akten (10): Der “Geist” hinter Oswald – James Jesus Angleton | Mathias Broeckers" height="271" src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_1" width="407" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Intelligence
is not a profession where morals or legality matters anyway. The only ethic
that counts today is political loyalty. Albeit, what’s good for the foreign
goose is not necessarily good for the domestic gander.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Double
agents Robert Hanssen (2001) at the FBI and Aldrich Ames (1994) at CIA are
echoes of the Angleton mole hunt in the wake of the Philby caper. The FBI and
CIA are perpetually vulnerable because they are too large, too naïve and, too
unprofessional. Russians shoot double agents for prudent reasons. Neither side
can trust a double. Dead men tell no tales. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_5" o:spid="_x0000_i1029" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Credit: Getty Images/FBI"
style='width:154pt;height:187pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image003.jpg"
o:title="FBI"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="Credit: Getty Images/FBI" height="249" src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image004.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_5" width="205" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id="Picture_x0020_6" o:spid="_x0000_i1028" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="The Assets' review: Real-life spy case in ABC miniseries"
style='width:282pt;height:187pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image005.jpg"
o:title=" Real-life spy case in ABC miniseries"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="The Assets' review: Real-life spy case in ABC miniseries" height="249" src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image006.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_6" width="376" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hansen and
Ames now get three hots, cots, and indefinite celebrity at American taxpayer
expense, hardly <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a prophylaxis for sleepers
or future traitors.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Lying to a
foreigner or enemy is just another tactic in the IC playbook. Intelligence
operatives also lie to domestic audiences; say a cops, legislatures or courts. There
mendacity becomes a personal hazard. You can go to jail for lying to the FBI. Just
ask Mike Flynn. The FBI can fabricate or deceive at will and have little to
fear from the law or courts. The various domestic plots against Donald Trump
will never be aired or tried because the American left has a bigger apparatchik
constituency and thus a bigger thumb on federal scales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Deceit or perjury
is just a “misunderstanding” for a federal cop with a law degree in any case. Truth
today is political play dough, a shape shifter; any ruse you can get away with
– or believe. National Intelligence and federal police apparatchiks are literally
above the law, raising the perennial question of “who polices the police?” at
the federal level. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The honest answer
is, nobody. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Congress is,
by statute, the agent of oversight and accountability. In practice, with rare
exception, the US Congress seldom has the access (not to be confused with security
clearances) to understand, no less police, any Intelligence operation or top
cop-shop like the FBI. The Intelligence Community is just too big, too
compartmented, too opaque, too well-funded, and, these days, too partisan to be
restrained.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In practice,
American agencies and cabinet departments don’t trust Congress with sensitive
information because the people’s representatives are free to leak at will, with
little fear of prosecution. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">IC briefings
on the Hill and congressional delegations (CODELs) to far-flung bases are often
characterized as “feeding the animals.” Nothing gives a station chief, base, or
installation heartburn quicker than an alert with a subject line that reads
“CODEL inbound”. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Congressional
travel at taxpayer expense is called a “junket” for a reason. Oversight is a fig
leaf, usually just serial boondoggles on the public dime. Adding insult to
injury, Intelligence czars deceive either house of Congress in open session and
still kept their jobs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Just ask
General Jim Clapper.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For years,
under J. Edgar Hoover, the Congress was hostage to dirty federal cops. The Hoover
“dossier” threat against leading politicians was the worst kept secret in
Washington. Given the recent PRISM and “unmasking” revelations, it’s safe to
assume that the capability, if not content of NSA/FBI “dossiers” today is light
years ahead of Hoover’s paper files.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The FBI
cannot open your Christmas cards. But, NSA can capture and archive your emails and
search history for future reference. Out in Utah, at Bluffdale, troves about
your personal or private life are called “metadata.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And when attributable
dirty tricks might be too embarrassing, the contractor (aka cutout) card is
played, again at taxpayer expense. The creation and/or dissemination of weaponized
scat is a kind of official misinformation. The Steele dossier is just the most
recent example of manufactured smut pedaled to a gullible Congress and partisan
media by CIA and the FBI. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Intelligence
is fond of barnyard metaphors. Chickenfeed is innocuous or phony data; bullshit
is weaponized chickenfeed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Contractors
usually get the call when IC oligarchs need “plausible deniability” for black
ops at home or abroad. Fake news is officially underwritten by fake Intelligence
inside the Washington Beltway today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Flynn’s
Sins <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">General
Michael Flynn is the exception that proves the new rule, or should we say
deficit, of truth in Washington. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Alas, Flynn’s
hot water was at a boil prior to 2016. Recall those late Obama years, when
Flynn was a candor casualty at the Defense Intelligence Agency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Apparently,
Flynn believed that Islam should be judged on the behavior of its adherents,
not the selective reading of history, the Koran, or Hadith. Flynn saw Islam as
politics wearing the burka of religion and dared to say as much. He saw the
various global wars, so-called “small wars” on terror, to be part of larger war
with Islam, an <b>existential</b> kinetic and cultural clash of civilizations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_4"
o:spid="_x0000_i1027" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="February 18th, 2014- Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn spoke about upcoming challenges for the United States as well as current events and the need for the integration of intelligence. "
style='width:275.5pt;height:183.5pt;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image007.jpg"
o:title="February 18th, 2014- Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn spoke about upcoming challenges for the United States as well as current events and the need for the integration of intelligence"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img alt="February 18th, 2014- Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn spoke about upcoming challenges for the United States as well as current events and the need for the integration of intelligence. " height="245" src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image008.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_4" width="367" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Flynn was brutally
honest about the politics and aims of Islamism. He claimed the struggle was
global and should be called a war, a war that Flynn thought America and the
West was losing by any measure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">With such
candor, General Flynn went from apostate to heretic overnight in the “woke” era
of snowflakes and global appeasement. Heresy was compounded when Flynn allowed
that, with the fall of the Warsaw Pact, the Russians were no longer ten feet
tall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After the
2016 election, Flynn arose again like a vampire, surely a nightmare for team
Obama. Flynn could have been a major player in “draining the DC swamp.” With 30
years of experience in the deep state, Flynn knew where the bodies were buried.
The surprise election of Donald Trump, however, mobilized like-minded deep
state liberals at the White House, National Security Council, the IC, and
Justice Department to “get Flynn,” a predicate to discrediting and removing a
parvenue president. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As irony
would have it, General Flynn provided his critics with the rope from which he
would be hung. By all accounts, he was “dangerous,” indeed an alleged traitor
on two grounds. Flynn dared finger the Islamic menace whilst diminishing the threat
from Moscow. Flynn knew that exorbitant Intelligence, profligate Defense, and a
superfluous NATO alliance could not be justified without a perennial Russian threat
in Europe, real or imagined. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After 2016,
an alarmed national security establishment concluded that the Cold War in
Europe had to stay, Islam had to be appeased, and Mike Flynn had to go. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The FBI trapped
(trick fu**ed in Intelligence jargon) the general with some insignificant interview
contradictions. Flynn and family were subsequently tortured into bankruptcy for
three years by a corrupt Justice Department and a cooperating district judge,
Emmet G. Sullivan, a Clinton era appointee. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This state
sponsored hit squad endorsed by President Barack Obama and led by James Clapper
(DNI), James Comey (FBI), and John Brennan (CIA) didn’t try to argue the merits
Flynn’s assessments of Russia or Islam. Instead, they sought to shoot the
messenger, using a partisan FBI and corrupt Justice Department. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The subject
was Flynn, but the target was always Trump. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ironically,
both left the national stage in January. Before too much time passes then,
let’s do what team Obama never did, examine the merits of Flynn’s assessments
of Russia and Islam.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Take on
Russia<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Flynn’s assessment
of Russia is self-evident. Muslim militants, not Russians, are killing Americas
today. Russians are not bombing newspapers, sporting events, gay bars, or flying
commercial airliners into American skyscrapers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After 1990, Russia
ceased to be the Soviet Union, nor was Moscow captive to Communism anymore. The
Warsaw Pact, and its combined armed forces were history too, along with any illusions
of empire. Vladimir Putin may be an autocrat, but he is not Khrushchev or
Stalin. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">While national
security Russophobes, right and left, sought to resuscitate the Cold War, the unreformed
Communist threat, China, stole or bought, the strategic initiative; underlining
Flynn’s critique of an unfocused and inept, if not incompetent, US American Intelligence
Community. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Indeed, after
1990, Beijing was able to checkmate Washington in just two decades with an
assist from imprudent debt, Big Tech dependencies, and a servile Democrat Party
distracted and obsessed since 2016 with fake “enemies” like Flynn and Trump. General
Flynn understood too well that the Intelligence Community was collecting data omnivorously
at the expense of objective and prudent analysis. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Withal, Flynn’s
take on Russia was spot on. Moscow, warts and all, makes a better social, cultural,
or strategic ally today than either Beijing, Mecca, or Tehran. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The war with
Islam <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Flynn’s
assessment of Islam and Islamists was a veritable cold shower of candor and reality
too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2"
o:spid="_x0000_i1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style='width:135pt;height:131.5pt;
visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image009.png"
o:title=""/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img height="175" src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image009.png" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_2" width="180" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Prepare”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He tried to
point out that Islamism was a global religious crusade, not a series of
unrelated local terror campaigns. Instead of playing tactical “whack-a-mole,”
Flynn suggested that the <i>jihad</i> needed to be seen as a war, a strategic ideological
and kinetic threat. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Surely all
Muslims are not jihadists, but just as surely, all jihadists are Muslims. Cultural
ideology is the strategic problem. Terror is simply a tactic used by militant
Islam, those so-called “extremists.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Alas, if
only 15 percent of Muslims world-wide are radicals or Islamists; the army of
God, the <i>jihad</i>, has 150-million-foot soldiers worldwide. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
unwillingness of American Intelligence to publicly acknowledge and confront Muslim
state sponsors of Islamism, and related terror, has allowed Islamism to
flourish, indeed triumph at the nation/state level. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Theocracy,
not democracy is trending in the <i>Ummah</i>, the Muslim world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Strategic disasters
since the theocratic coup in Iran in 1979 include Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon,
Libya, Yemen, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Afghanistan and a host of north African
nations now at risk, all plagued by Islamicist fanaticism or religious terror. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Iran</span></b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> was a lost to theocracy in a single
religious coup in 1979. The CIA and Jimmy Carter were clueless or indifferent
about Shia Islamism in Persia. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Afghanistan</span></b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">, after 40 years, is about to go over
to the Sunni Taliban, again, in 2021. <b>Iraq, </b>after two wars with the US<b>,
</b>is now a permanent sectarian US dependency. Shia Hezbollah now pulls the
strings for <b>Lebanon</b> puppets. <b>Turkey</b>, now a neo-Ottoman trojan
horse, went from janissary to Sunni theocracy in 2014 without a whimper or
demure from Brussels or Washington. <b>Libya</b> went, after an American
sponsored regime change, from the wealthiest secular nation in Africa to a
sectarian <i>sierra hotel </i>overnight. <b>Yemen</b> is a permanent civil/sectarian
basket case. <b>Egypt</b> keeps <i>Al Ikhwan </i>and the theocratic<i> </i>wolf
at bay with permanent martial law. The Horn of Africa and North Africa are now
persistent religious war zones. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In Europe,
the Clinton era sectarian division of Yugoslavia created two new Muslim
majority states, <b>Kosovo</b> and <b>Bosnia</b>, the source we might add, of
most European born ISIS terrorists and jihadists in the Levant.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Russia,
China, Thailand</span></b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">, <b>Myanmar,
</b>the<b> Philippines </b>are plagued with jihadists of all stripes too, a problem
which DOD and the US State Department insists on minimizing as regional insurgencies
or isolated civil disturbances. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Losses to
theocrats in the <i>Ummah</i> are so bad, that no one inside the Beltway dares keep
score anymore. Withal, Michael Flynn’s threat assessment of Islam was prescient.
The West, Europe and American are losing the military and ideological war with
Mecca <b>and</b> Tehran. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Good luck to
us now with an imperial China on the march. Beijing now sponsors a new “ism,”
capital Communist colonialism, on several continents. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Whence
Israel?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Many analysts
and pundits are euphoric about the recent denouement between Israel and the
Arab world. Some might argue that the thaw in the Middle East spikes General Flynn’s
assessments of the <i>Ummah</i> and Islam.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Surely any political
progress in the Middle East, even at the margins, benefits Israel. Just as
surely, Sunni Arab politics and motives are more about survival than cultural
or political sea changes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Islamism
is a direct strategic threat to autocratic Muslim regimes</span></b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">, Arab tribal royalty especially. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Israel and
the West, at best, are secondary targets. When Arabs Improve relations with
Israel, they underwrite good will in Washington. Uncle Sam continues to fight Islam’s
battles in all those small wars that threaten the Muslim establishment. The Islamic
refugee flow continues to be a one-way street too - at American and European
expense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The great
irony of modern history is the spectacle of watching euphonous “free-world”
policy energize the Socialist left in Europe and Communist China whilst appeasing
the totalitarian Muslim religious right. Schizophrenic foreign policy never
ends well. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, Muslim refugee
crusaders of the 21<sup>st</sup> Century may do tomorrow what Suliman’s
Ottomans could not do at the Gates of Vienna in 1683. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3"
o:spid="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" style='width:201.5pt;height:258pt;
visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image010.jpg"
o:title=""/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img height="344" src="file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Packages/oice_16_974fa576_32c1d314_19d0/AC/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image011.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_3" width="269" /><!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Europe is at
risk again. Terror is just the punctuation for the perennial if not historical <i>jihad</i>
narrative.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">America now carries
both the burden and consequences of all those small wars in the Muslim <i>world</i>.
Indeed, the Muslim immigrant/refugee diaspora to Europe, then America, under a
humanitarian flag is a bonus for Muslim absolutist and jihadist alike. Islam is
exporting its social, ideological, and extremist excesses to the West whilst
clinging to authoritarian, if not totalitarian, repression at home. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There are no
refugees nor refugee camps in Mecca, Medina, Tehran - or Beijing for that
matter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Key
Judgements<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Washington
is cursed by the best and most expensive Intelligence collection and the worst
analysis in the developed world, a systemic step-child of entrenched liberal
politics and “</span><a href="https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/orwells-1984-today/"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">woke</span></a><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">” (nee politically correct) national
security analysis. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The purpose
of Intelligence today is to confirm the conventional wisdom. Truth is now
power’s bitch.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Anything
positive about Russians, is likely to be labeled collaboration or treason. Concurrently,
anything negative about Islam, worse still religious fascism, evokes knee-jerk
charges of bigotry. The Communist Chinese threat is, for the most, ignored or
minimized for reasons too obvious to discuss here. Suffice it to say that Beijing
now purchases all the American good will necessary to stay under the existential
threat radar.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Gaslighting,
not National Intelligence Estimates, is the gold standard for analysis in the
American Intelligence Community today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In sum, three
streams of modern moral superiority (nee Imperialism) are on the move today.
The American/European globalist left is moving East. The Islamic religious
right is moving West. When the dust settles from the clash between the two,
China, yea capital Communism, is well-positioned to pick over the choice bits
that survive.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Surely,
being correct about these matters is small comfort to General Flynn and family.
Ironically,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“speaking truth to power,” was
Flynn’s great offense, the mortal sin, the penalty for which is excommunication.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In a culture
where truth is toxic, candor is a fatal dish. Albeit, when facts do not alter
minds, they do not alter reality either. Intelligence analysis that fails understand
or recognize truth, undermines policy designed to deal with realty. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ignorance,
shabby analysis, and even bias have remedies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Stupidity is
incurable. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Addendum</span></b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Any candid discussion
of Islam today, like race, is a political, if not social, minefield. Three
distinctions are important. <b>Islam</b> is the religion, periodically
militant, but often benign. <b>Islamism</b> is the political or imperial propagation
of Islam which tolerates no alternatives, sacred or profane. <b>Islamofascism</b>
is the kinetic or military incarnation of Islamism that uses <i>jihad</i>
(literally “struggle”), terror, coups, insurrections, small or large wars to
achieve political goals. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Fascism, even the Islamic variety, is predicated on force,
coercion, and violence. Groups like <i>al Qaeda</i> (Muslim Brotherhood), Black
September, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, <i>Hizballah </i>(Party of God), and the <i>Taliban
</i>are just a few of the many global agents of Islamism and Islamofascism. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">All are
bound by the same strains of imperial religious zeal, all in God or Mohamed’s
name. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">-----------------------<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">G. Murphy
Donovan writes about the politics of national security.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Key Words</span></b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">; Michael Flynn, American
intelligence, gaslighting, Vladimir Putin, Russia, Islam, Islamism,
Islamofascism, Capital Communism. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Images:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.broeckers.com/Wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/JJAngleton-700x466.jpg"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">https://www.broeckers.com/Wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/JJAngleton-700x466.jpg</span></a><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Muslim_Brotherhood_Logo.png"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Muslim_Brotherhood_Logo.png</span></a><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQgCbmEqD3jgU_WY7lSUL5-CtXAjMZZuu-fL5RNKDQfe4IEvK0dQ-uQmYn0EBX8"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">https://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQgCbmEqD3jgU_WY7lSUL5-CtXAjMZZuu-fL5RNKDQfe4IEvK0dQ-uQmYn0EBX8</span></a><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQHEx_a5dZpudbNyJJw7bhN4DVDPmNhnAL5Hg&usqp=CAU"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;">https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQHEx_a5dZpudbNyJJw7bhN4DVDPmNhnAL5Hg&usqp=CAU</span></a><span style="font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-53566073424878586842012-05-04T03:39:00.000-07:002012-05-04T04:30:33.932-07:00The Devil Made Me Do ItChoice is one of those issues that never leave the headlines for very long. The latest brouhaha began when Hilary Rosen, a Democratic Party advisor, claimed that Mitt Romney’s wife, mother of five, grandmother to 16, “never worked a day in her life.” What Rosen meant was that stay-at-home moms don’t contribute to the world of commerce as a plumber, or a lobbyist, might. Put aside for a moment things like tact or facts; and consider why an advisor or strategist would sneer at the rigors of motherhood on national television, in an election year – just a few weeks before Mother’s Day! The controversy echoes Hillary Clinton’s wild shot at women who bake at home.<br />
<br />
As is often the case in these matters, the follow-on apologetics made a poor choice worse. Ms. Rosen quickly took to the airwaves to change the subject, claiming that, unlike Ann Romney, most women couldn’t choose between mothering and the workplace; asserting that wives are compelled to work outside the home. Rosen’s claim was quickly endorsed by President Obama who insisted, on the one hand, that political spouses should be off limits; then with the other hand, dragged his wife, Michelle, into the fray; claiming that even the distaff half of a breeding pair of lawyers, with a mid-six-figure income, had to work outside the home to make ends meet. The president argued, like Rosen, that wives don’t have choices; implying that they are victims - of economic circumstance. Never mind that claiming mothers (compared to fathers?) are not free to choose is at once condescending or patronizing. Indeed, the very phrase “working mothers” is at best a pleonasm.<br />
<br />
Two of the four principals in this controversy are lawyers. You might think that litigators would have a better grip on facts, rhetoric, and precedent; but the real agenda here may be political, not economic or moral. The Rosen/Obama trope casts women working outside of the home as victims, not free agents. Or perhaps Rosen and the president merely confused no choice with poor choice.
Clearly, circumstances might mitigate a choice, but by tradition and common law, circumstances do not determine, control, or preordain. Unless the defense of poor choice is insanity, mothers are as liable for their selections as anybody. Custom and legal praxis does not support the Rosen/Obama twist on compulsion, on choice, on free will - or any related notions.<br />
<br />
Arguments about free will and choice have an antique lineage. The decisive moment for Western culture came in the 16th Century when two Augustinian Monks, Desiderious Erasmus and Martin Luther, squared off in the middle of the Reformation. Luther landed the first blow by claiming that free will does not matter in matters of salvation. Fra Martin argued that an omnipotent God knew and predestined the fate of all men; some were saved and others were destined to burn. No amount of good works could lead to salvation. Luther’s argument is similar to what you might hear from empiricists today; just substitute biology, illness, or natural forces for God’s omniscience – or the devil’s grip.<br />
<br />
(Flip Wilson, an American comedian with a finger on the pulse of modern absurdities used to justify his comedic antics with: “The devil made me do it!” Using the devil as an excuse for human frailties was given more than a little traction at the beginning of the modern era by Martin Luther.)<br />
<br />
Back at the Reformation, Fra Erasmus replied to Luther that knowledge of good and evil was not destiny; just as a scholar’s knowledge of planetary movements did not influence those motions. He further claimed that free will was a gift to humanity; the capacity to choose between good and evil and suffer the consequences; rewards or punishment. Erasmus also argued that there would be no need for God’s commandments (or man’s law) if men and women were not responsible for choices or behavior. Clear lines between church and state had yet to be drawn in the 16th Century.<br />
<br />
Still, the arguments of Erasmus had obvious civic significance.
Verily, these arguments were made in a day when morality was a serious issue in the public square, not the quaint historical artifact it has become. Nonetheless, over time, the views of Erasmus prevailed even in the secular world. Today, all notions of individual accountability, law, and democracy itself are based on an accepted understanding of free will. Indeed, the act of voting in a democracy is free men and women, freely choosing – and living peacefully with the consequences. Voting is true choice.<br />
<br />
Political assaults on free will today, like those of Rosen and Obama, are not as convincing as they are selective. The contemporary understanding of “choice” is an example. Choice will usually be invoked when one or more options are inconvenient, burdensome, or selfish. Marriage, children, birth control, abortion, sexual proclivities, and even racial identity are examples.
Conversely, politicized notions of choice, or options, are seldom invoked when it comes to matters like: substance abuse, welfare, minimum wages, union membership, quotas, hiring, immigration, grade inflation, graduation standards, criminality, and now spouses in the marketplace it seems. In these cases, choice is often denied. A drunk, an addict, a dropout, or now a woman with two jobs is thought to be impaired, like a disabled veteran, as if choice had nothing to do with personal or even national destinies.<br />
<br />
Indeed, many traditional cultures in the European Union, stimulated by generous welfare, labor, and immigration policies, are being displaced by primitive avatars. The no-go zones of France and northern Europe are egregious symptoms. Liberal immigration policies can be a value added, but when it morphs into colonization, the effects are far from salutary. Again, voting is choosing. Democratic choice in Brussels may be excising the adjective “European” from the noun Union.<br />
<br />
Personal choices too, in concert, have enormous consequences. The correlation between selective notions of free will and poor choice has not gone unnoticed by science.
Take the cumulative impact of no marriage, late marriage, birth control, abortion, and same sex unions among citizens of the free world.<br />
<br />
As Dr. Charles Murray points out, such choices are not the conceits of a selfish elite or an oppressed underclass anymore; these choices in America are now made by largely white middle and blue collar classes. Individually, each of the above options might be defended as progressive choices, but collectively they amount to a kind of biological or cultural nihilism, if not national suicide. The worst collective choices are often made with innocuous personal motives. Free will does not warranty good choices.<br />
<br />
As Erasmus might have said, individuals and nations are responsible for their choices, good or bad, nonetheless. Free will is destiny; consequence is the price of choice.
In spite of what empiricists, lobbyists, or presidents might claim; we are not controlled or compelled by gods, devils, natural forces, or economic circumstances. And we are not free because we reside in a place called democracy. We are free only if we believe in free will - not moral evasions or selfish notions of “choice.”<br />
___________<br />
<br />
This article (with hyperlink sources) appeared in the <i>American Thinker</i> and the <i>New English Review</i> on 1 May 2012.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-8965042140096361132012-04-23T13:31:00.004-07:002012-04-23T13:38:47.811-07:00Mike Wallace; Requiem for a LightweightMike Wallace, veteran media personality, died the other day at age 93. If air time and salary are measures of merit, Wallace was an American television star and an unqualified success. He was a triple treat too; pitchman, game show host, and actor. On the back nine, Mike liked to think of himself exclusively as a journalist. The network might have plucked him from day-time television; but, taking the shill out of the entertainer was another matter. Wallace was the quintessential barker, an ambulance chaser with Press credentials. He perfected the art of “ambush” journalism at the CBS network. With such tactics, copy only led when it bled. Indeed, Mike Wallace’s career echoes some of the more predatory traditions of broadcast journalism.<br /><br />The idea that day-time television (a mind numbing mix of games, gossip, cartoons, and fake reality shows) is a good apprenticeship for serious journalism is a little like believing that playing doctor as a child is good training for urologists or gynecologists. Nonetheless, the career paths of chaps like Wallace, and larger icons like Walter Cronkite, followed that road where entertainment and news merge. The problem might be worse with women. Barbara Walters moves seamlessly from bimbo chat in the AM to hard news in the PM. Diane Sawyer is now another refugee from daytime fluff. <br /><br />Such media figures usually have one or more characteristics in common; liberal politics, photogenic looks, variable standards – and a knack with a teleprompter. Of these, politics and visuals are probably the deal breakers. When was the last time you saw an obese, homely, or impartial anchor? <br /><br />The values are all wrong and the politics are predictable in the entertainment bullpen. Standards seem to be confined to: appearance, salesmanship, limited expertise, and selective ethics. Wallace’s Vietnam War coverage for CBS and 60 Minutes is an illustration; a case where Wallace and the network, not content with real issues like military competence, chose to attack an officer’s character. Ethos is more entertaining than issues.<br /><br />In 1982, fourteen years after the fact, Wallace accused William Westmoreland of cooking the Intelligence books on Viet Cong strength numbers in 1968. Had Wallace known anything about the Order of Battle calculations, he would have known that commanding generals do not get mired in the details of bean counting; relying instead on agencies like DIA and CIA and accepting G2 (Intelligence) numbers as received wisdom. <br /><br />The 60 Minutes segment alleged that Westmoreland personally suppressed Viet Cong strength numbers, a manipulation which led to the Tet Offensive “surprise” of 1968.<br /><br />CBS speculations were based on several flawed premises; including a flaky witness (Sam Adams) and the implausibility of underestimates in the middle of a shooting war. Estimates of enemy strength were not done exclusively at Westmoreland’s MACV HQ in Saigon in any case; calculations were also done by agencies in Honolulu and Washington, DC. <br /><br />Nonetheless, enemy threat numbers usually err on the high side (recall the ten foot Soviets of the Cold War). Threat inflation is a no-lose hedge. Higher threat estimates are also key to bigger budgets. The Tet “surprise” may have been a low point in the war, but low numbers were irrelevant in any case. The war went on for another seven years. <br /><br />The libel suite against CBS was settled out of court. Westmoreland might have proved defamation, but probably not the higher standard for “malice.” Still, Wallace’s personal conduct after the trail provides a telling coda; admitting first to profound depression and then to at least one attempted suicide in the wake of the battle with Westmoreland. Is truth depressing? Are winners suicidal?<br /><br />With the “uncounted enemy” charade; CBS was telling one story, but selling another; a tale of personal destruction. And the practice of political journalism is not without precedent before or after Mike Wallace. <br /><br />Walter Cronkite cried on air for John Kennedy. What network anchor shed tears for Ronald Reagan when he was shot? Were Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas, a liberal jurist instead of a conservative black man, would he have been savaged by PBS and Nina Totenberg? More recently, Dan Rather, another 60 Minutes regular, was caught using forged documents to attack George Bush’s character. Even colleagues claimed that Dan Rather was “transparently liberal;” a charge that might be made about many network journalists today. Rather was fired for cooking the books, while Mike Wallace was just left to marinate with a troubled conscience. <br /><br />The producers of 60 Minutes and correspondents like Mike Wallace might better be called “parachute,” not ambush journalists. Indeed, men and women with limited expertise are often dropped onto a hot issue for hours or days and then returned to air conditioned suites where they judge like experts. The near tragedy with Lara Logan, another CBS protégé, in Tahrir Square, is instructive. Who thought it was a good idea to drop a blond waif, with cowardly escorts, into a howling mob of angry Muslim men?<br /><br />Hemingway was a credible war correspondent because he served at the Italian front in WWI. George Orwell was a believable critic of retail Communism because he served with Red partisans in the Spanish Civil War. Joseph Conrad was a reliable source on colonialism because he lived in the “heart of darkness.” Ernie Pyle was beloved by the troops and on the home front because he bivouacked with, and ate the same chow as, the GIs for the duration of WWII. <br /><br />Recall the mockery of Wallace’s CBS colleague, Dan Rather, as “Gunga Dan” for his silly costumes and war zone pretense. The credibility of reporting is not enhanced by posturing. Since the Korean War, no correspondent is ever more than a helicopter ride away from air conditioning, happy hour, and room service. <br /><br />The recent network eulogies for Wallace had all the appropriate spin; replete with the numbers of Emmy and Peabody awards. Yet these, like Pulitzers, have become a kind of Special Olympics for the glitterati. If you have one significant award, it might mean something; 25 awards is a kind of faint praise - just another statistic. <br /><br />Few testimonials mentioned Wallace’s ethnic paranoia, and over compensation in the form of biased coverage of Jewish or Israeli news items. Fewer still mentioned his derogatory comments about Blacks, Hispanics, or homosexuals either. And almost none mentioned Chris Wallace, Mike’s son over at FOX, who became the journalist that Mike Wallace never was. <br /><br />Ironically, a few days after Wallace passed away, this year’s print Pulitzers were announced. The reporting trophy went to an Associated Press exposé; a series on the NY Police Department and the city program to collect intelligence on Islamists. Yes, a little more than a decade after 9/11, cops are again the enemy - and the Muslim community is a victim (of “profiling”), not a potential source of terror. Mike Wallace would have loved this choice, a world turned inside out by political pretense and journalistic spin. <br /><br />-------------------------------------------<br /><br />The author served as a junior intelligence officer at 7th AF, HQ on Ton Son Nhut Air Base, Vietnam, during the Tet Offensive of 1968. This essay with hyperlinks published in <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>, 23 April 2012.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-71714483282063641902012-04-06T06:22:00.001-07:002012-04-06T06:25:00.725-07:00Mitt Romney, Straw Man“A fool and his money are soon elected.” - Will Rogers<br /> <br />A few days ago, American Thinker carried a piece entitled: “How Mitt Can Win.” The argument was unremarkable, but the comments that followed were not. Published reader sentiments were almost universally negative, not about the writer’s facts or logic, but about Romney’s character – or lack of it. Such visceral animus is startling because many American Thinker readers might be described as somewhat east of Genghis Kahn - or be described as believers in “anybody but BO’B.” <br /><br />Yet, queasiness about a Mitt candidacy or a Romney presidency is not news. He may never be the choice for most Americans, but he is clearly the preferred choice of the Republican establishment. Nothing says ‘business as usual’ like an endorsement from John McCain or the Bush family. <br /><br />And Romney may be able to buy the nomination; yet, he is very unlikely to purchase the White House. Beating Obama was once thought to be lead pipe cinch. A Romney candidacy changes that calculus in many significant ways. If the character question can’t be answered for work-a-day Republicans, conservatives, or American Thinker readers; imagine what Democrats or liberals will do with that single flaw in a general election.<br /><br />What Romney believes or pretends to believe no longer matters. That ship has sailed. What matters now is what voters believe about Mitt Romney. And here the news is not good. <br /><br />Romney’s character problem is variously described as inconsistency, double talk, flip flopping, or any number of euphemisms that suggest that his beliefs are as variable as weather. Still, significant change of heart on any issue is not necessarily a political handicap. Churchill was fond of saying that a change of facts should alter beliefs.<br /><br />Ronald Reagan provides a telling contrast. Early in life, Reagan was a liberal activist and high union official. Based on his experience with west coast Communists, California’s social profligacy, and union corruption; Reagan eventually altered his views and his party affiliation. Through his writings and speech making, it was always possible to audit the vector of his thinking. Reagan came over from the dark side and the electorate knew how he got there. Indeed, few presidents since Lincoln left a better paper trail of personal political evolution. With Romney, there is no intellectual paper trail, just a series of apparent reversals which paint him, fairly or not, as a serial opportunist.<br /><br />Many voters seem to view Romney as the rich kid trying to pledge for the most exclusive fraternity on campus; more interested in joining the club than changing it. Hard to determine what Mitt stands for besides getting elected. And by playing to both sides of any issue, Romney panders to the worst instincts of the beltway establishment. <br /><br />Surely, mainstream conservatives are looking for an iconoclast willing to break the social, economic, and geo-strategic paradigms that have contributed to the American decline. Romney is a lot of things, but few think of him as a game changer. He may have shed the jacket and tie, but not the image of a mediocre, buttoned down, traditional politician.<br /><br />Obama’s greatest asset is that people know what he represents. “Obamacare” may go down in flames before the election, but no one has any doubts about Barack’s politics. Even his opponents will give him credit for an effort based on neo-socialist principles, however misguided those ideals might be. That much cannot be said of Romney. <br /><br />Adding insult to injury, of four Republican candidates, Mitt is the one who makes Obama look the best. Indeed, Romney might have to spend the majority of his political capital trying to explain how a Massachusetts elephant is not just another Washington jackass. <br /><br />Romney’s “etch-a-sketch” reputation was not created by Democrats. Even his staff appears to believe that Mitt is, and will be, a chameleon as the political terrain dictates. This may be, at once, a winning primary tactic and a disastrous election strategy. All that is certain about Romney to date is that he desperately wants to be president. And wanting to be somebody may not be enough. If Romney is selected as the Republican candidate, liberal or Democrat Party hit men may be the least of his worries. <br /><br />Consider the following nightmare scenario. <br /><br />Reagan conservatives, the Americans Elect movement, and traditional Jews/Christians represent three minorities whose influence in a close election could be decisive. True conservatives may not be moved by the “anybody but Obama” appeal and just stay home. Most voters are motivated to vote for, not against, a candidate. The Americans Elect movement, while possibly a Trojan horse or a fake “third way,” will, like hard core conservatives, nonetheless, tap into the ‘plague on both (Republican and Democrat)) their houses’ sentiment. Remember that Ross Perot made Clinton possible – twice. And traditional Christians, and some Jews, have long standing beefs with Bishop Romney’s co-religionists, the details of which are well represented in the Press and on the internet. If and when the Democrats have to go nuclear; religion is sure to be a weapon of choice.<br /><br />Should a Romney candidacy be as inevitable as it now seems, 2012 may be known as the year of the lesser of two evils; or the year for choosing between the devil you know and the devil that makes you gag. If historical voting statistics mean anything, Barak Obama has the edge in such a contest. The loudest voice in any American election is often inertia.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-72409658209030821122012-04-02T05:05:00.019-07:002012-04-09T04:51:12.428-07:00Aphrodite's Fluke<span style="font-style:italic;"> These impossible women! How they do get around us! <br /> Can't live with them, or without them. - Aristophanes</span><br /><br />The non-sequitur is a bottomless pit. Take the ongoing debate in America over birth control and who should pay. <br /><br />First, the loony congressional Left collared a naïve 30 year old Georgetown University co-ed and encouraged her to testify about her active social life; an ill-conceived masque put on to back government or industry subsidized birth control. In the interests of privacy, let’s call her Aphrodite – no Hera she. <br /><br />Aphrodite would have us believe that a frisky law student can afford thousands for tuition at a Jesuit graduate school, but can not afford pennies for protected recreational sex. Recreational, presumably because distaff law students haunt the saloons of “M” Street and Wisconsin Avenues looking for hangovers or hook-ups, not baby daddies. <br /><br />Ms. Aphrodite claimed that she needed $1000 worth of birth control per year. If the protection of choice is a condom; our heroine’s arithmetic comes to 12,000 safe couplings at taxpayer expense in three years of graduate school - or more than three encounters a day including weekends and holidays. The next time Nancy Pelosi holds a hearing on this matter, voters must hear from Aphrodite’s boy friend. The country needs to know what this guy eats, not what he wears.<br /><br />Not content to let gaucherie marinate, Rush Limbaugh imprudently calls our lady lawyer a “slut” on national radio. The sweet stew of indiscretion then boils over and explodes into a hoochie mama media frenzy. Even the president gets into the act, calling Aphrodite and commending the now infamous law student for what may become known as the bonobo defense; indeed, the burdens of too much sex, too much exposure, and the need for a frequency subsidy. Aphrodite seems to be on the partner track before she leaves law school. <br /><br />Then Limbaugh, ever the civic barometer, senses that he and Obama are inadvertently on the same page. OMG! The two seem to be turning a bimbo into a civil rights victim. Limbaugh, stimulated by show sponsors, apologizes quickly. Well, sort of. Rush says he shouldn’t have sunk to “their” level. Presumably we know who “they” are.<br /><br />Having shot from the lip, Limbaugh and Obama both missed the target. The Aphrodite problem is not, as it turns out, morality or women’s rights; it’s an intelligence quotient deficit.<br /><br />Had our heroine wandered out of the hook-up hothouse in Georgetown, she might have discovered that condoms are already free in the District of Columbia; as is all manner of social life style counseling, fungible ailment medications, or surgeries for any unprogrammed population growth. <br /><br />So it seems that Nancy Pelosi’s Muppet masters were using Aphrodite to double down. Anyone can find free rubbers or pills in the big city. What the social democrats really want is wall-to-wall coverage, and mandates, for all means of birth and (after) control in the name of women’s health. Aphrodite’s Potomac sex life was just the salacious bait for a bigger fish. <br /><br />Seems the birth control beef is a viral extension of the abortion logic, where the seedier dimensions of life style choices, eugenics, and population control are elevated with the rhetoric of women’s rights or health care. Never mind that miscasting abortion exclusively as a health issue is a little like confusing genocide with gentrification. <br /><br />Before you could finish a chorus of Wankers Aweigh, flyover feminists jumped into the fray to sponsor a nationwide sex strike. Yes, a coitus moratorium to punish men; insensitive brutes who joke about condoms and bananas in sex education classes - and then refuse to stretch a condom into an inalienable right.<br /><br />The sponsors of the sex strike are based in Austin, Texas. They call themselves the Liberal Ladies Who Do Lunch (LLDL). Their cyber manifesto reads:<br /><br />“We are women between the ages of 25-125 who are liberals and proud of it. We enjoy conversations with likeminded women in a safe environment about topics other than boyfriends and fashion, and we like to grab lunch together. Hope you'll join us for some interesting discussions and fun times. NOTE: This group is for true liberals--both socially and fiscally.”<br /><br />A quick visit to the LLDL web site reveals that average age is closer is closer to 100 than 25 and these dowagers, as a group, look like they could miss a meal or two and be healthier for the hiatus. And if years, girth, and the exclusions in their manifesto matter; sex with men is probably not a recreation likely to worry these ladies anyway. For these gals, giving up sex may be a little like a mayfly giving up a trout. <br /><br />Yet, they are not without influence. LLDLers have inserted themselves into the condom conundrum; and their proposal is nothing short of astounding. Choice is now joined with chastity; to wit, choosing not to have to have sex at all.<br /><br />The liberal matrons of Texas have endorsed abstinence! Like clenched knees, long thought to be one of those common sense, yet equally improbable, solutions we hear on the religious Right. With this, the Austin abstainers may have stumbled upon the silver bullet that neuters the extremes and potentially ends the “war on women”. <br /><br />George Orwell was fond of saying that the quickest way to end a war was to lose it. Exactly! The clenched knee solution does just that. At first glance a tad misanthropic, but on closer examination, giving up giving it up, resolves every issue on the gender front; health, choice, civil rights, birth control, and abortion. If ladies “just say no,” Lysistrata will have been born again. <br /><br />The sex strike is scheduled to begin on 28 April, too late for April Fools, but on point for Mother’s Day. Nonetheless, more than a few chads are still dangling. <br /><br />Will a professional house call, an Eliot Spitzer if you will, be allowed? If the working girls can’t work, are they just labor statistics, do they get unemployment? And does an Anthony Weiner count? Is cyber sexting off the keyboard? And what about a Lewinsky? Ever since the Clinton administration, the meaning of “is” and genuine sex has been up in the air. And what about a Bill Maher, aural sex, or talking dirty? Will potty mouth be covered by the blackout? And who has checked with the White House and congressional intern programs? What are these youngsters to do during the moratorium? <br /><br />Enough now! Quibbling about details will never give peace a chance; and better soft simulacrums than stiff kinetics any day. Sometimes the most obvious solutions hide in plain sight; a page out of Hilary’s foreign policy playbook maybe? Why shouldn’t sex sanctions work as well on domestic dinosaurs as economic sanctions work on atomic chauvinists in far flung places like Teheran or Pyongyang? <br /><br />The gender wars have come full circle in a week; from bonobo to Lysistrata; from too much sex with government subsidies to no sex and no subsidies. But before those peace dividends are spent in May, Aristophanes provides some cautionary words about tumescent threats of the future. Or as that Greek chorus put it: “For I (women) am taxed too and as revenue provide men for the nation.” Amen, sisters!<br /><br />------------------------------------------<br /><br />G. Murphy Donovan is a former carpetbagger and resident of Amarillo and San Antonio. Based on field research, the author is very skeptical that real Texas women will ever give up what is arguably, after football, the second favorite pastime in the state. This essay appeared in the April issue of the <span style="font-style:italic;">New English Review</span>.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-82465358533468159512012-03-01T03:13:00.004-08:002012-03-04T14:09:10.010-08:00Act of Valor?Socialist realism is making a comeback in some strange places – Hollywood and the Pentagon are good examples. Like the Soviet propaganda flics of yore, the good guys are ten feet tall and the bad guys are ambiguous nitwits. The action film, Act of Valor, purports to show “active-duty SEALs,” an elite cadre specially trained for covert warfare, in operations “based on true events.” For openers, it’s hard to quibble about the hype for feature length propaganda, but it’s also difficult to reconcile “true” anything and a Hollywood film crew. <br /><br />And the nonsense about covert or secret is just that. Clandestine forces, and what they do, haven’t been secrets since the Kennedy administration. If special operations are covert, you might ask; why is the Department of Defense in bed with Tinsel Town again? If the secret Navy is on a heading from cloak and dagger to Hollywood Boulevard, recruiting numbers should hit bottom in no time. True warriors make poor actors and the best actors often make implausible warriors. <br /><br />Beyond advertising hyperbole, this film fails as a recruiting incentive, art, or politics. Indeed, nearly two thirds of the early professional reviews are negative. And let’s not be too quick to write off the Media for their usual liberal bias. This ham-handed attempt to glamorize the special operations deserves all the bad press it gets. The whole project looks like a poorly made, and politically fishy, video game.<br /><br />Kathyrn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008) was an award winning piece of military realism a few years ago because the film had good actors and great writing - sparse and laced with grim humor. Act of Valor has none of this. Hurt Locker had the look and feel of a documentary; because the director had the good sense to step back and avoid the usual Hollywood bravo sierra. <br /><br />Who in the Pentagon or Department of Defense thought it was a good idea to show real SEALs fighting a fake enemy? Are we not fighting a real Islamists in what is now approaching half-dozen real Muslim countries? All the real action is in the real Muslim world; yet Act of Valor would have you believe that the bad guys are Russian drug dealers, Chechens, or Filipinos with weird accents. Are we to believe that the world-wide terror campaign against peace and civility only flourishes in the Caucuses or Mindanao? <br /><br />The problem with national security awareness is not that the taxpayer or potential recruits have a diminished appreciation of military heroes. The problem with retention and recruitment is that the Pentagon, and now Hollywood it seems, can not paint an honest picture of the threat – an enemy with a toxic political theology that inspires suicide bombers. No one dies for ambiguity!<br /><br />It’s a safe bet that every suicide bomber has a clear, albeit necrotic, picture of their enemies; and those enemies appear to be almost any Jew, apostate, or infidel in Europe or America. And Islamist clarity, no matter how malignant, covers motives too; in short, doing God’s will, crying “Allahu, allahu akbar” all the way to perdition.<br /><br />Successful wars have four essentials; a competent militia, an unambiguous picture of the threat, a supportive populace, and a political class willing to be candid about the first three. After two decades of combat, only the first standard has been met; and the outlook for the other three is not good. For any perceptive audience, Act of Valor does nothing but underline some intractable and long-standing deficits of strategic candor.<br /><br />The appearance of this film in an election year is also troubling. This is not to say the movies shouldn’t have political spin, but if the film is sponsored by the Pentagon, the trip wire between admirals and politicians should launch a blinding flare. The only thing “covert” about Act of Valor may be the politics.<br /><br />Act of Valor, ironically similar to recent national security estimates, is a transparent, if not deceptive, picture of the who and the why of a tedious ongoing war. The taxpayer, that pays the bills, and the warriors, that do the bleeding, deserve better from Washington and Hollywood. <br /><br />Think for a moment about the real subtext of Act of Valor. Through film, the Navy brass seeks to recruit brave men to fight in a series of wars where Europe and America have already surrendered! There is little evidence today that Europe or America is willing to defend the culture that made industry, democracy, art, and science possible.<br /><br />Both political parties no longer use the language of victory. Indeed, the political class can not bring themselves to name the enemy, no less defeat him. The bad guys are always vague euphemisms like “radicals” or “extremists.” Terms like “stability’ and “nation building” have replaced achievable military goals and political objectives - like victory. <br /><br />The oldest American military decoration is the Purple Heart. The front has a miniature profile of George Washington; the back is inscribed with three words “For Military Merit.” Sadly, this soulless movie, politically correct and trite, has little to do with real heart or real merit.<br /><br /> “We are not going to baby sit (sic) any civil wars.” – Barak H. Obama<br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />G. Murphy Donovan is a Vietnam veteran. He writes frequently about national security and politics. A version of this review, with hyperlinks, appears in the 1 March 2012 edition of the <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-9527138314782349822012-02-27T05:13:00.009-08:002012-02-27T09:15:54.508-08:00Blow in the New York Times“You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.” – P. J. O’Rourke<br /><br />Presidential candidate Rick Santorum drew fire from the usual suspects the other day for his remarks on the utility of inequality. A typical reaction was that of columnist Charles M. Blow in the <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Times</span> who accused Senator Santorum of “praising income inequality.” (Blow is best noted for sneering at Mitt Romney's "magic underwear".) Santorum was actually praising the value of individual and group inequity - as a necessary motive force for hard work, competition, and success. Unlike the shallow reaction of the <span style="font-style:italic;">NY Times</span>, Santorum’s argument is underwritten by history, science, and common sense. <br /><br />William Playfair (1759-1823), groundbreaking political economist, when discussing the rise and fall of individuals and nations concluded:<br /><br />“The superior energy of poverty and necessity which leads men, under this pressure, to act incessantly in whatever way they have it in their power to act, and that seems likely to bring them on a level with those that are richer, is then the ground-work of the rise and fall of nations, as well as of individuals…. the triumph of poverty over wealth on the great scale as on the small, though very irregular in its pace, has continued without interruption from the earliest records to the present moment.”<br /><br />Playfair’s contemporary, Adam Smith (1723-1790), underwrote the “poverty and necessity” argument in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Wealth of Nations</span>. Smith concluded that individual economic effort, devoid of any larger social purpose; nonetheless, contributed to a greater common good. Smith’s “invisible hand” is the equivalent of Playfair’s “triumph of poverty.” The successful also have cultural utility; they serve as role models for the next generation. For such men, progress is a function of initiative and competition.<br /><br />A few years later, philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) picked up the thread. For Hegel, progress in the world of ideas was a process of old ideas (thesis) competing with new ideas (anti-thesis) resulting, hopefully, in a better idea (synthesis), one which retained the best elements of the competitors. This common sense historical formula, for Hegel, explained the evolution of intellectual and social institutions. In short, utility is discovered by trail and error. Ideas are necessary, but only a dialectical test, or competition, of ideas is sufficient.<br /><br />Darwin applied a similar notion of competition to the natural world. He argued that improvement of microbes and monkeys alike was a result of conflict between and among the weak and strong, a kind of natural selection which insured the survival of the fittest. <br /><br />Of course, suggestions that Darwin’s hypothesis might be applied in the human realm, today, is usually dismissed out of hand for reasons you might never see on the editorial pages of the NY Times. Applications of social Darwinism are politically correct only in so far as they do not touch the third rail of human physical and social development. <br /><br />In any case, struggle or “natural” competition that might make men and women more competitive, hence improve, is inhibited by the “visible hand” of modern government. Indeed, when enlightened social scientists, like Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), suggest that inept entitlement programs create and sustain generational dependencies; such arguments are often dismissed as racism. <br /><br />Closer to our times, the best scholars, such as Jacques Barzun, complain about the corrosive effects of artificial leveling; that is, social promotions and affirmative actions, unrelated to merit or competition. Dr. Barzun may be too polite. The academic poverty of American teachers and students has gone from bad to abysmal since Barzun first wrote about the pitfalls of lowering school standards.<br /><br />The most obvious artifact of merit in the American public school system is athletics - where competition and achievement are the only measures of effectiveness. Unfortunately, sports thrive in a school culture where athletic standards are higher than academic standards for a diploma or a degree. Low expectations are the cruelest forms of poverty.<br /><br />Inequality and its symptoms, such as poverty, are value neutral. Like weather, climate, and heritage; these things are part of the human condition. And these are conditions that, in a meritocracy, can be overcome. Competition between unequals is the leitmotif of natural, social, and political history.<br /><br />The <span style="font-style:italic;">NY Times</span> and like minded social theorists ignore the key sources of social motivation; and then fail to reform those government programs, such as intemperate welfare and impotent public education, which actually make social and economic poverty possible. <br /><br />The issues of inequality and justice are bound to dominate the coming electoral food fight where the table is set for another orgy of class warfare. Yet on Election Day, democratic equality will prevail nonetheless. Warren Buffett’s vote will not be worth any more than that of his over taxed secretary. And if four more years of economic and social leveling are still on the table next spring; who is to say that poverty, like a good appetite, will not be the best sauce?<br /><br />-------------------------------------------<br /><br />This essay appeared in the 16 February edition of <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>. See original for hyperlinks.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-56551632686270218142012-01-22T04:30:00.000-08:002012-01-23T08:27:49.826-08:00Newt Bites Cocker Spaniel“I hope we never live to see the day when a thing is as bad as some of our newspapers make it.” – Will Rogers<br /><br />Correspondent John King was lit up like a floozy by Newt Gingrich at the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina on 19 January. If audience reaction is a measure, King came across like a prissy cocker spaniel baiting a pit bull. Clearly JK “clueless” had to put a rug cleaning bill and several pairs of knickers on his South Carolina per diem claim after the encounter with the former Speaker. You may recall that King works for Cable News Network (CNN); the 24 hour news advocacy channel begun by one of Jane Fonda’s boy toys.<br /><br />King opened the debate with a banal, offensive, and irrelevant inquiry about Gingrich’s second marriage. The opening question wasn’t a hanging curve ball; it was more like a 30 MPH “fastball.” Predictably, Newt hit it out of the park to a standing ovation. By morning, Gingrich was ahead of Mitt Romney in the Carolina polls by six points. Clearly, the bitter ex-wife smear backfired. According to observers like Sarah Palin, John King’s smarmy imitation of Nina Totenberg was a coast-to-coast bust. <br /><br />Gingrich, like Clarence Thomas, knows that the best strategy with Media bullies is to fight back; bloody their noses if necessary. Rush Limbaugh would take it a step further; he suggests that someone needs to audit the personal lives of Media types – if entertainment is the name of the game in presidential campaigns.<br /><br />Who at CNN thought that Newt wouldn’t be ready for an opportunity to expose CNN as another partisan network? If the Turner network had any shame, King would be another unemployment statistic today. He even tried to defend CNN by blaming the second wife story on ABC. Gingrich responded by suggesting that defending hearsay by pointing at another source requires a special variety of journalistic cowardice. Amen, brother!<br /><br />CNN and most of the other networks have never gotten over Newt Gingrich’s efforts to convict Bill Clinton; a serial cheat, convicted perjurer, impeached president, and defrocked shyster. Clinton escaped conviction because too many US Senators have the ethical compasses of alley cats. <br /><br />And the most scurrilous charge against Newt Gingrich is hypocrisy. Somehow, Newt’s behavior in two failed marriages is supposed to be the moral equivalent of Bill Clinton’s behavior. Here’s how they are different.<br /><br />Gingrich wasn’t president. Gingrich didn’t have a long history of using state and federal office to exploit female staff young enough to be his daughters. Unlike Clinton, the former Speaker was never accused of being a chicken hawk. Gingrich doesn’t claim that fellatio isn’t sex.. Gingrich didn’t lie to the nation or a grand jury. Newt hasn’t been disbarred. And none of the former Speaker’s wives, unlike Hilary, have played the bimbo by faking a marriage in the name of “political viability.” In short, as Mark Twain might have said, the difference between Clinton and Gingrich is “like the difference between lightening and lightening bugs”.<br /><br />Newt Gingrich’s marriages have little or nothing to do with his abilities, or lack of them, to serve in high office. He was Speaker of the House for Charlie’s sake. And surely there is enough temperament and policy junk in Newt’s trunk to argue about. Nonetheless, given the priorities of the American press corps, we shouldn’t dismiss the entertainment potential of an Obama/Gingrich title fight. It couldn’t possibly get any better than that. Maybe these trying times call for the services of a junk yard dog. And in any dog fight, the smart money goes with the pit bull. <br /><br /> --------------------------------------------------<br /><br />This post appeared in the 19 January edition of<span style="font-style:italic;"> American Thinker.<br /></span>G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-76576928610824241152012-01-10T13:07:00.000-08:002012-01-11T07:53:01.612-08:00"Americans Elect" and Political Dirty Tricks“They say, 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth,' but when it's a Trojan horse, you do.” - Eric Johanson <br /> <br />Americans Elect (AE), the new political party that claims to be a non-partisan non-party, is now on the California ballot. What a shocker! The left coast is the first big state to endorse a staking horse! After reading a piece in <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>, a <span style="font-style:italic;">Beverly Hills Courier</span> reporter called AE HQ to inquire about the “dirty tricks” potential of third party candidacies. Predictably, their spokesperson, lleana Wachtel, denied any trickery and claimed that the new party was formed to give America a “real choice.” Spokesmen for AE continue to insist that the sources of AE’s funding can not be revealed because donors might be intimidated. Non-profit status protects such organizations from too much scrutiny.<br /><br />Choice indeed! The chances of AE electing anyone are nil; but, their potential to skew close races is enormous. After the two Bill Clinton victories (1992 and 1996), wife Hilary should have sent Ross Perot a case of cognac. In one race, Perot’s revolutionaries siphoned off 20% of the national vote. No coherent analyst could argue that Perot supporters would have voted for Clinton had there been no Perot. <br />Indeed, Perot's candidacy may have been more personal than political. More than a few analysts have run up the spoiler alert. Perot couldn't abide George H.W. Bush and made no secret of that animus. <br /><br /><br />Then as now, the vast majority of the disaffected. Libertarians included, fall on the right side of politics – just as a near totality of AE principals and their media supporters today come from the Left. <br /><br />Donald Trump tells anyone who will listen that he is being courted by the AE crowd as a potential third party presidential candidate. Ego aside, it’s hard to believe that Trump doesn’t see through the smoke and mirrors of this well-timed electoral scam. But then again, engorged egos love to play the spoiler.<br /><br />Beyond folks like Trump, the Republican dilemma is further compounded by the usual RINO inertia. The <span style="font-style:italic;">Savannah Morning News</span> calls Americans Elect an “air sandwhich.” Such cynicism may represent a dangerous slice of conventional wisdom. Conservatives seem unwitting or unwilling to expose the liberal puppeteers behind Americans Elect. Most of today’s political discontent (i.e. Tea Partiers, independents, and Libertarians) is boiling on the right hand side of the political spectrum. The hard Left is content with Barack Obama, thank you; or at least not unhappy enough to throw him under the bus. <br /><br />A large restive mushy American center is in play in 2012; a center which Obama has probably lost already before another presidential vote is cast.. With Americans Elect, the Left is poised to exploit or neutralize a center of discontent with a “third way” charade. Sadly, with conservatives, inertia is often the loudest voice in the room. If the polite Right refuses to light up the AE Trojan horse, then maybe the malcontents will stay at home - or vote for the Pinocchios, just as Democratic Party strategists seem to expect. Sometimes we get what we want and sometimes we get just what we deserve; another four years of Barak Obama. <br /><br />------------------------------------------<br /><br />This article originally appeared in <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-39394258166174188852011-06-17T08:36:00.000-07:002011-06-22T13:10:52.948-07:00Making Wiener's Possible“Women marry men hoping they will change: Men marry women hoping they will not. Each is inevitably disappointed.” - Einstein<br /><br />The sorriest aspect of philandering politicians is often their wives, the spouses who stand by their man and play the victim in the service of political viability. The modern standard for political survival was set by former NY Senator, now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham, a player who may soon be in the on-deck circle for the Presidency. Still, Mrs. Clinton is just one of many. The modern indulgent political spouse has a long history going back to icons like Jackie Kennedy.<br /><br />The list now includes Dina McGreevy, Silda Spitzer, Maria Shriver, and now Huma Abedin, Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) bride of less than a year. Apparently, Mr. Wiener didn’t let an engagement, a honeymoon, his wife’s pregnancy, or congressional duties interfere with “sexting” photos of his giblets to adoring “friends” on Twitter over the last few years. Wiener, 47 years of age, was widely expected to be the next mayor of New York City. <br /><br />Indeed, opinion surveys reveal that Big Apple voters believe that Weiner should have continued to represent Brooklyn and Queens in Congress. Such sentiments are not surprising in a city where Woody Allen is a celebrity and Kitty Genovese is a chalk outline on a city street. A Good Samaritan in Queens is often someone who minds his business. Weiner calls his behavior “a bump in the road.” He may be correct in a metropolis where the political class would build a mosque to memorialize the victims of Islamic fanaticism.<br /><br />The Huma Abedin/Tony Weiner tale has a special irony. Huma is Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. The famously priapic Bill Clinton officiated at the recent Weiner nuptials on Long Island. More recently, while Anthony was getting roasted by the media, Mrs. Abedin Weiner was conveniently off on a trip to the Arab Emirates with Mrs. Clinton.<br /><br />This is not to blame victims. Political wives are frequently represented as smart and capable in their own right. How could they not know? New Jersey Governor McGreevy was cheating with men, a low blow even by Jersey Shore standards. President Clinton was frolicking with an intern a floor below his wife and daughter in the White house. Governor Schwarzenegger had his maid and wife pregnant at the same time! Not wanting to know the truth is not the same as not knowing. And isn’t feigned ignorance a not too subtle kind of enabling? <br /><br />What used to be called a triangle is now more like a carousel. There are no victims in these liaisons, just enablers and manipulators. Escorts and hookers have more integrity than indulgent wives. Silda Spitzer, Harvard Law ‘84, gave an interview where she blamed herself for Eliot’s indiscretions. According to Mrs. Spitzer, “inadequate sex” on her part led her husband to sacrifice his career and her reputation.<br /><br />The Press is often a co-conspirator when randy politicians feel the need to share their extra-marital seed. John Kennedy and his protégé, Bill Clinton were serial swingers who thrived with indulgent or partisan media. Ben Bradley of the Washington Post, with bimbo eruptions of his own, covered for Jack Kennedy; and Bill Clinton weathered impeachment with the help of a servile wife and newspapers like the Post. Hillary claimed that her husband was the victim of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” and that canard was spread far and wide by a sympathetic Press. In fact, Clinton never needed any real enemies. Like Tony Weiner, his real bete noire was always lurking in his skivvies.<br /><br />It would be a mistake to conclude that political wives or matrons of convenience are facilitating narcissism. The hitch isn’t self-love so much as insecurity and self-loathing. Poltroons like Weiner, love their image and still hate themselves. Indeed, one of Weiner’s Twitter conversations contained a telling remark, an offensive stereotype about the sexual reticence of Jewish women. Weiner is married to a Muslim.<br /><br />Back in the Bill Clinton era, White House advisor Betsey Wright coined the term “bimbo eruptions” to describe a long list of presidential gal pals. How feminism is advanced by defending a serial predator and his co-dependent wife is still a mystery. Ms. Wright’s notable contribution to the exploitive sex debate was to cast all “other” women as floozies. Wright got it wrong; the true bimbos are the female enablers – those wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, and female groupies who defend creepy behavior and thus make politicians like Clinton and Weiner likely.<br /><br />If just one high profile political woman kicked someone like Weiner, Spitzer, or Clinton to the curb, a whole new standard of behavior might be set in Washington. Women are a voting majority, yet spineless girls often defend the indefensible and continue to make porcine politics possible. <br /><br />Hillary Clinton is the pin-up for an American idiom that might charitably be described as bimbo feminism, a novel kind of electoral survival morality. The print media can hardly write a story about infidelity in any political marriage without mentioning Hillary’s trail by Bill. <br /><br />Under the Rodham ethic; you stand by your man, play the victim, and maintain your political possibilities. Low self-esteem and poor taste in men might not be the most obvious political assets; but, they seem to work for the Press and enough voters. The victimized Mrs. Clinton clung famously to her husband’s coattails and now stands poised to become the Democratic Party standard bearer for the Oval Office. Who knows, her protégé, Mrs. Huma Abidin Weiner, another victim au gauche, may parlay her marital drama into a Cabinet post also - in a second Clinton administration.<br /><br />While in denial, Congressman Weiner claimed that his actions on-line did not break the law, violate congressional rules, or hinder his ability to honor his oath to defend the Constitution. It’s hard to believe a man who doesn’t defend a pregnant bride worries much about defending the abstractions in the Constitution. <br /><br />Anthony Weiner has not left the public square without performing a public service. He now becomes the poster boy for virtual onanism, a living model of the pitfalls of pornography, self promotion, and the infinite possibilities for exhibitionism and professional suicide in cyberspace. Weiner doesn’t just look at himself in the mirror; he is also a reflection of the pitfalls of democracy and the gullibility of voters. Like his Long Island constituents, apparently; Anthony was well below average and proud of it. <br /><br />Marriage and democracy offer blessings and curses. Sometimes we get the champions we need, yet more often we choose or elect the mountebanks we deserve.<br /><br />-------------------------------------------------<br /><br />G. Murphy Donovan was born in the Bronx and schooled in greater New York. He writes also at Agnotology in Journalism. This essay appeared in the 17 June 11 edition of <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-65193877438722382912011-05-19T02:11:00.000-07:002011-05-19T02:18:57.962-07:00Stick a Fork in it Newt!The Best way to sound like you know what you’re talking about is to know what you’re talking about.” - anonymous<br /><br />Newt Gingrich has done it again. He throws his hat into the ring, and before it hits the ground, he has his foot in his mouth - again. Hard to believe that a politician can have too much ego, but surely Gingrich is suffering from an embarrassment of glitches. What was he thinking over the weekend when he attacked Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), one of a few politicians, other than Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), who has the courage to argue for common sense and fiscal sanity? Indeed, Ryan and Coburn are two of the most sensible and civil politicians in America. Neither is running for President.<br /><br />Between Newt and “The Donald,” the Republicans have the beginnings of a circular firing squad. Are there no Democrats to excoriate?<br /><br />Gingrich announced his presidential bid and then in the same week squandered his Sunday morning pulpit launch by attacking potential friends and allies, using rhetoric more appropriate to the loopy left.<br /><br />On Sunday, he called Ryan's economic proposals an example of "right-wing social engineering," and suggested they were an attempt to impose "radical change" on Americans.<br /><br />Ryan is a radical, a social engineer? Hasn’t this been the rap against progressives? Now, if Gingrich is neither right nor left, neither “radical” nor “right-wing,” then he has positioned himself in the moderate middle, the median strip – like road kill. No surprise then that the first prominent Democrat to endorse Newt’s lunacy was Howard Dean, left-wing spokesman extraordinaire. <br /><br />Rhetorical fusillade may be the only fair way to characterize reactions to the Gingrich remarks. One caller likened the former Speaker of the House to a kind of political Michael Jackson, best remembered for setting his hair on fire. Another wag pleaded for a “mulligan,” arguing that Gingrich hadn’t been on the stump for a while and should be allowed a stroke or two.<br /><br />Mulligan? A mulligan is what you get when you hit the ball in the water or out of bounds. Gingrich wrapped his wedge around his partner’s neck. When you try to decapitate a member of your foursome; the penalty is game over, off the course, and out of the club. Put a fork in it Newt, you’re done.<br /><br />There’s good news and bad news in the wake Newt’s gaffe on <span style="font-style:italic;">Meet the Press</span>. For conservatives who may have been harboring any illusions, Gingrich has revealed himself to be a crass opportunist, one willing to throw colleagues under the bus. Yet the bad news is likely to be more pervasive. Liberals have been gifted a film clip that will make a devastating campaign ad. No amount of backtracking or insincere apologies will unring that bell. Barack Obama ought to send Gingrich a thank-you note and a box of golf balls. <br /><br />---------------------------------------------<br /><br />A version of this entry appeared in the 18/19 May 11 edition of <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>’s blog. The author also writes at G. Murphy Donovan.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-7025934401268717202011-04-13T03:09:00.000-07:002019-02-09T05:44:54.957-08:00The Scent of Revolution“A lie will travel half way round the world before truth gets its pants on.” – Mark Twain <br />
<br />
Revolutions and institutions begin with good intentions. Too often, the institution then becomes the enemy of the idea. The communications revolution is such an example. Early enthusiasts, like Marshall McLuhan, thought that improved connectivity would create a kind of “global village” where a better informed, or better educated, world would evolve. McLuhan’s optimism was an academic variant of Hegelian or Marxist determinism which often mistakes the passage of time with progress. Indeed, scientific expectation often confuses technical innovation with moral, cultural, or political advance.<br />
<br />
The internet revolution of the past two decades is thought by many to be a validation of McLuhan’s optimism. Internet social sites (e.g. You Tube, Facebook, and Twitter) are feted as the enablers of social, political, and cultural change; unvarnished truth in 140 characters or less. The so-called “jasmine revolution” underway in the Arab world is celebrated, in a similar vein, to be a direct and salutary consequence of global social networks. Unfortunately, early reports and hasty judgments are seldom true. <br />
<br />
The World Wide Web is a tool. Yet, akin to a pistol in the wrong hands, it can also be a dangerous weapon. A better metaphor would be to describe the Internet as Chekhov’s gun; if a rifle appears in the first act, someone will be shot before the curtain falls.<br />
<br />
Banality might be the primary ethic of the virtual world. If we can believe the numbers, personal computers are used mainly for pornography, mindless socializing, shopping, and surfing – the latter a catch-all for many activities, such as games and videos. Personal videos posted on sites like You Tube provide a global forum for stunts, bad taste, voyeurs, and associated nitwits where the host primes the pump by keeping score. Site visits or “hits” and “followers” are the principal measures of merit, or achievement, on the Internet.<br />
<br />
Social networks use a kind of ego arithmetic; recording and posting member’s site visits, friends, “followers,” “pokes,” and associated vanity statistics. Not all of the activity is frivolous, however. Bullying, personal attacks, privacy violations, and hacking have become more malicious over time. Informal or secretive players like Anonymous and Wikileaks feature deadly serious political agendas and few scruples about truth, the law, or civility. Personal malice and political mayhem are the predictable consequences when rhetorical assault mediums fall into the wrong hands. <br />
<br />
The virtual world exhibits Orwellian pathologies beyond language; encouraged, if not sponsored, by Internet hosts. Anonymity is the most pernicious. Traditionally, authors in the print world used pseudonyms to mask race, sex, or class. However, what used to be a harmless literary convention has now become a malicious digital rule. All manner of mischief and agendas hide behind “screen” names. Privacy is the usual defense for the anonymous; but, nameless users exhibit precious little concern for the truth about, or the privacy of, their targets and victims.<br />
<br />
With all, ignorance is the biggest fly in the Internet ointment. And the difficulty is not simply error in fact or analysis. The problem is the conscious propagation of falsehoods in the name of science or politics. Robert Proctor of Stanford University elevated this spread of ignorance to a scientific study, “Agnotology.” Proctor documented how faux science was used by the tobacco industry to defend cigarette smoking. Other investigations have exposed similar frauds associated with climate change (nee “global warming”). <br />
<br />
The internet does not create information; it merely carries it. Sadly, the internet has few content standards and ignores most moral hazards. Indeed, ignorance may be more likely than truth in the virtual world. The growing dependence of state “news” outlets, such as al Jezeera and a host of Western cicadas, on unsourced social networks is not an advance for objectivity, enlightenment, or truth. <br />
<br />
The ongoing “Arab Spring,” “awakening,” or “jasmine revolution” is a telling case study. The rolling mayhem in the Middle East has become viral, in part, because social and news networks have represented political mayhem as consequence-free. Upheaval in the Arab world is obviously not peaceful and outcomes are not likely to be democratic. Nonetheless, news readers and politicians underwrite illusions by insisting that riots and insurrection are “peaceful” protests or “pro-democracy” movements.<br />
<br />
Social technology and social revolutions may be related, but they are not necessarily symbiotic. The Internet is an echo chamber where repetition is too often confused with truth. Euphemisms like “jasmine revolution” or “awakening” are a kind of rhetorical wishful thinking; serial insurrection or civil war in the Muslim world is not likely to be good news for oppressed apostates or naïve infidels. <br />
<br />
Whilst Americans and Europeans bleed for fantasy democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now Libya; the bankers of ideological jihad in Riyadh and Doha are ruthlessly suppressing any threats to totalitarian rule at home. If regime change were helpful anywhere in the Arab League, Saudi Arabia or the Emirate regimes would be the first logical targets.<br />
<br />
Surely, the relationship between Sunni theocrats and Arab royals is a marriage of convenience. Sectarian imperialists need funding and tribal tyrants need to purchase immunity from regime threatening fellaheen. <br />
<br />
Nevertheless, the rolling revolt in the Arab world is not a struggle between democracy and tyranny. There are no democratic states in the Arab League or the Gulf Cooperation Council and few if any political movements which merit the adjective “moderate”. Yusef al Qaradawi, the Sunni voice of al Jezeera and al Ikwan al-Muslimeen ( the Muslim Brotherhood) says it best when he claims the “the train of revolution” has now reached Damascus. Qaradawi’s target is Sunni secularism - and his politics have little to do with democracy and everything to do with irredentist religious identity. <br />
<br />
Middle East and North Africa civil wars are struggles between seculars and theocrats, not tyrants and democrats. Europe and America seem to have (as they did with Iran, Algeria, Turkey, Lebanon, and Gaza) cast their lot with the Islamists; again, allowing naive hope to mask the threat of religious reactionaries. <br />
<br />
Several decades back, Tennessee Williams wrote of the “sickly sweet smell of mendacity.” Indeed, lies are the cheap spices we use to mask the stench of truth. The books are being cooked, without doubt, when fragrant adjectives like “jasmine” are used to sweeten the sour breath of revolutions. <br />
<br />
Those who thrive on chaos seldom lend a hand to restore civility. The flaw in all radicalism - technical, political, or religious - is that zealots and activists obscure the end game and care little about unintended consequences.<br />
<br />
____________________________________<br />
<br />
G. Murphy Donovan, a former USAF intelligence officer, writes frequently about national security matters. This essay originally appeared in the 13 April 11 edition of <span style="font-style: italic;">Family Security matters</span>.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-91249375165677741242011-03-03T04:39:00.000-08:002011-03-13T08:02:04.814-07:00The Violence of Culture“A perfect world doesn’t need guns. We don’t live in a perfect world.”<br /> – Sheriff Ben Johnson<br /><br />Firearms play a large role in American history. Guns of every sort are used to settle issues great and small. Literature and film does not exaggerate so much as reflect the role of guns in American history and culture – although Hollywood body counts are more than a little fantastic. <br /><br />The value at work here, enshrined in the constitution, is that Americans did not give police, soldiers and criminals an exclusive franchise on deadly force. Call it defensive lethality. Gun ownership is closely related to a historical suspicion of intrusive or incompetent government. They also represent a kind of portable fair play. From the beginning, a gun was thought to be the great equalizer – the tool that levels the playing field. Indeed, that ubiquitous Colt six-shooter of the American West was called “the Peacemaker”. <br /><br />When citizens speak of “Second Amendment remedies,” such warnings were common, although rare today, up to and after the Civil War. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote of the periodic need to “water the tree of liberty” with the blood of patriots. His philosophical heirs exercised that license with a suicidal Civil War. Guns in the hands of recidivist Democrat Party vigilantes played a large role in enforcing Jim Crow laws for a hundred years after emancipation. Yet, even in the wake of armed insurrection, the nascent Republican Party did not seek to disarm cranky American individualists.<br /> <br />The primary objection to guns is political. Gun owners and their opponents have radically different world views. Gun owners do not trust their personal security to the city or state for pragmatic and philosophical reasons. <br /><br />At the curb level, no municipal or state agency can guarantee the security of individuals or specific property. Crime statistics, especially in urban areas, support this belief. Police provide general community security, but specific lapses are too many and too troubling. Book keeping, like Compstat, monitors the ebb and flow of municipal mayhem, but such statistics, like public school audits, are too sensitive to careerism and political winds. Indeed, judicial process is calibrated also to accommodate the wants of criminals and political interests, not needs of victims or taxpayers. In short, gun advocates do not trust the state with personal safety. Overwhelming statistical evidence supports citizen skepticism.<br /><br />Gun opponents, on the other hand, have little evidence to underwrite their faith in the state’s ability to provide personal security. Indeed, the nation’s capital, with arguably the highest per capita number of law officers of every stripe, has one of the highest crime rates in the country. Clearly, rates of violent street crime against individuals and property, especially in urban areas, can be influenced, but not controlled by police. <br /><br />The philosophical differences between gun owners and their opponents are self evident; the former believe that individual rights and responsibilities are paramount; the later believes that individual prerogatives are subordinate to the state. This political divide has a long history and the gun control debate is just another chapter in that argument. <br /><br />The controversy following the recent Tucson shootings illustrates the chasm. Gun control advocates, like Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, quickly tried to assign guilt to Republican and conservative rhetoric. Second Amendment advocates like Governor Sarah Palin took to the airways to dispute charges of collective guilt, insisting instead on personal accountability .<br /><br />Beliefs about guns are more myth than science. Gun control dogma has little to do with evidence or reason. There is no correlation between gun ownership and homicide rates. The United States, where 40% of citizens own firearms, had a homicide rate (year 2006) of 5.70 deaths per 100,000 of population, only 3.72 were gun related. If the worst kill rates for cities (such as Baltimore 42.0, St. Louis 38.0, and Washington, DC 35.4) were extracted, the US homicide rate, given the high rate of legal owners, is comparable to any country in the world with draconian control laws. <br /><br />If any political party is guilty by association, the Democrat Party has much to answer for. Indeed, in February, Boston congressman Michael Capuano (D) urged union members to "get bloody when necessary." Capuano holds Jack Kennedy's old seat. Most violent crime in the US occurs in large cities, like Boston, where constituents and their political mentors are Democrats. Chicago, the president’s home town, is twice as deadly as New York and three times as violent as Los Angeles.<br /><br />Mr. Capuano's gory admonition is fairly typical of left logic. When government at any level fails to deliver on promises it can not possible keep, progressives light torches and reach for the pitchfork.<br /><br />Gun control advocates try to mask the statist argument with utopian terms like “common good.” Were this a sufficient argument, individual prerogatives such as automobiles, knives, axes, machetes, alcohol, matches, and mood altering drugs might be banned also. <br /><br />There were 12,632 firearm homicides in 2007. In the same year, 37,435 auto related deaths were reported. Approximately 40% of auto fatalities are alcohol related. Every auto injury or death caused by a drunk is criminal violence by definition. Few states track, non-alcohol, drug related auto fatalities. Worldwide, nearly 40 million serious injuries and deaths are attributed to automobiles. This figure is projected to reach 50 million by 2020.<br /><br />In the most recent genocide in Rwanda, nearly a million killed, the agent of death was an edged weapon or a club. Indeed, since WWII the deadliest weapon of choice worldwide is the machete. In medieval Europe, long before guns were common, the homicide rate in cities was thought to be 60.0. Then as now, no country seeks to decommission edged tools and weapons as a solution to violent crime.<br /><br />Finland and Switzerland have some of the highest gun ownership rates in the world, yet their gun homicide rates are low (3.24 and 1.32 respectively). South Africa, in contrast, has had a homicide rate as high as 75.30 deaths per 100,000 - and few guns. There are no concrete figures available on gun ownership, but non-gun homicides in South Africa account for twice as many deaths. <br /><br />The Swiss example merits consideration in any gun debate. All eligible Swiss males are required to serve in the military and undergo annual small arms qualification. After service, Swiss men are allowed to retain their semi-automatic side and long arms at home. The Swiss government encourages shooting competitions and subsidizes ammunition. Almost all Swiss households possess small arms of one sort or another. Shooting is a national sport. <br /><br />Swiss homicide rates are lower than Great Britain where most guns are banned. The second largest city, Geneva, reported no armed robberies in 1993. The Swiss experience contradicts the conventional anti-gun wisdom so dramatically that the United Nations often omits Switzerland in “studies” of small arms. Clearly, culture not hardware, drives the Swiss experience. <br /><br />Any honest assessment of American culture recognizes the role of guns in history and contemporary civility – or lack of it. Gun advocates, for the most part see guns as personal insurance. Gun opponents, are tainted with hypocrisy; opposing legal gun ownership for innocents on the one hand while ignoring illegal gun violence among their guilty constituents. <br /><br />Modern gun rhetoric on the right is just that; actual revolutionary and criminal street violence has been the near exclusive franchise of big cities and the American left. The professional left is the last institution in America that should scold others for having “blood” on their hands. <br /><br />A great civil war and all the rural violence of reconstruction was a Democrat Party legacy. Indeed, Jim Crow law and the associated 100 year reign of terror against black Americans was sponsored or ignored by Democrat politicians.<br /><br />The failure of American “progressives” appears to be one of introspection; an unwillingness to look inward and accept adult responsibility. They also fail to acknowledge the legitimate fears and concerns of law abiding citizens who wish to take prudent precautions for the safety of their families. Liberals compound their error by insulting the intelligence of voters; attempting to blame violence on conservative rhetoric while ignoring the history and culture of criminal mayhem among their constituents. <br /><br />H. Rap Brown (aka Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin), former Justice (sic) Minister for the Black Panthers, once said: “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” He was right. Unfortunately he failed to mention that he was speaking for himself, his politics, and his culture. In March 2000, Brown shot two police officers with an assault rifle. As one of the officers lay wounded, Brown executed him with three shots from a handgun. Both officers were Black. Mr. Brown is now serving a life sentence for murder.<br /><br />Modern American and European political violence invariably emanates from the professional left. National Socialists and Communists were not conservatives. The 1968 political convention mayhem in Chicago was a liberal phenomenon on both sides of the barricades. Recent austerity riots in France and Greece follow 20th Century patterns. Organized street violence and arson is tactic peculiar to left-leaning activists and unions. Three low-level bank employees were incinerated at their workplace by radicals during the 2010 Athens entitlements riots.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Epilogue</span><br /><br />Just as guns and violence are not synonymous; legality and morality are not equivalent either. From a moral perspective, 16,000 US homicides a year could be compared to over a million legal abortions per year on average. Indeed, since 1973, there have been over 52 million abortions (300 abortions for every 1,000 live births). In New York City today, 40% of pregnancies are aborted. Homicide and infanticide are morally equivalent to the extent that they are acts of free will – or choices. For too many, abortion is just a more callous variety of birth control. <br /><br />The hypocrisy associated with rare shooting incidents and other forms of pervasive urban violence is best illustrated by two recent cases; Jared Loughner of Tuscon and Dr. Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia. The Loughner tragedy was a “one of ” incident where nineteen people were shot, six fatally. Good Samaritans intervened immediately to halt the mayhem. <br /><br />Gosnell is an abortionist who according to the Philadelphia Inquirer was “a butcher of women and babies” for 30 years in spite of numerous complaints to city and state authorities. According to the Inquirer, Gosnell “routinely killed viable infants (with a scissors)…hundreds of them.” After failing three annual health inspections: “The state Health Department decided after 1993 to stop inspecting abortion clinics for ‘political reasons’.” Gosnell continued to kill until January, 2011 when he was arrested. No good Samaritans intervened on behalf of women and children in the ‘city of brotherly love.” <br /><br />Compared to abortion, gun homicide occupies the moral high ground; abortion is actually a false, if not arbitrary “choice.” Two of the three principals in abortion, the father and the child, have no say in the matter. On the question of guilt, homicide also has an advantage. In most shootings, the victims are other criminals, usually recidivists. All infanticide fatalities, like Gosnell’s victims, are innocents. Criminal violence often makes the present uncomfortable; abortion always makes the future impossible.<br /><br />Urban apologists, like Paul Krugman in the <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Times</span> and Larry McMurtry in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Washington Post</span>, are whistling in the dark when they look to rhetoric in the wide open spaces of Arizona and Alaska for explanations. They need look no further than their urban back yards for the roots of violence. Epidemic rates of mayhem, legal or otherwise, are peculiar to large cities and liberal constituencies. Unfortunately, speculations about violence seldom confront these troubling sources. And if numbers matter, big city crime and abortion, not guns, are the principal symptoms of any climate of hate or any cultures of violence in America today.<br /><br />-------------------------------------------- <br /><br />The author is a veteran of three violent combat tours; 17 years in the Bronx and two years in Vietnam. He also writes at <span style="font-style:italic;">G. Murphy Donovan</span>. This essay originally appeared in the March, 2011 edition the <span style="font-style:italic;">New English Review.</span>G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-55943195560432484222011-02-24T02:00:00.000-08:002011-02-24T02:08:43.041-08:00The Odd Couple; Lara Logan and CBS“He who allows oppression shares the crime.” - Erasmus<br /><br />Lara Logan walked into a journalist’s worst nightmare. Instead of covering a story, she became the story. Such hazards are something of a tradition at CBS; Mike Wallace became the William Westmoreland story and Dan Rather became the George Bush story. Wallace had a nervous breakdown and Rather retired in disgrace. Unlike her predecessors, Ms. Logan’s problem wasn’t fabricated evidence; she was assigned to, or volunteered for, the wrong story in the wrong neighborhood. And as it turns out; she, 60 Minutes, and CBS were just as reckless as Wallace and Rather.<br /><br />The stage was set by a spin cycle of politically correct talking points, in effect an Oval Office party line that a complicit media were quick to parrot. Demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt were represented as “peaceful and democratic,” never mind that neither country had any experience with democracy since the Roman republic. The peace rhetoric pretty much ignored the mayhem, killing, arson, and looting as long as it was done in the name of anti-regime sentiments. <br /><br />Indeed, hypocrisy became comic opera when pyramid tour guides brought counter-revolutionary camels and horses to the fray in Tahrir Square. Tragically, some of the animals and their keepers were summarily executed on the spot, presumably in the name of democracy. <br /><br />Nevertheless, in the space of a week, President Obama was pressing for “democratic” reform and Mrs. Clinton was holding the Cairo rioters up as a “model” for some undefined Arab utopia. Presumably, CBS executives, and possibly Ms. Logan herself, bought into this false narrative and wanted to be in Tahrir Square for the victory lap. Al Jazeera was the worst of the “revolutionary” shills, seldom broadcasting any footage that would challenge the anti-Mubarak narrative. <br /><br />The drumbeat from most reporters, following al Jazeera’s lead, was to portray the demonstrators as peaceful, diverse, ecumenical, and enlightened. No anti-American or anti-Israeli sentiments were reported. The stage was set for tragedy when CBS allowed a slight blond American to mingle with a predominantly male, testosterone fueled, anti-Semitic and xenophobic mob in Tahrir Square. Indeed, Christiane Amanpour, Katie Couric, and Anderson Cooper had already experienced near misses. And if Christina Lamb’s research on the subject is to be believed, the photogenic Mr. Cooper was as likely to be buggered as any female reporter.<br /><br />This is not to shoot the wounded or to suggest that the victim is to be blamed. Lara Logan, war correspondent, would be the last to think of herself as a victim; but, she was exploited nevertheless. She was undone by naiveté and high risk bravado - and these, CBS producers exploited in full measure.<br /><br />Ms. Logan is as famous for her drop dead good looks and extramarital escapades as she was for her reporting. Indeed, there are numerous internet web sites dedicated to Lara’s secondary assets. Her journalistic colleagues broadcast “hotie” photos and Logan’s extra-marital exploits widely - and with relish. In short, you might say, as they did back in the day, she had a reputation.<br /><br />Coverage of Lara Logan’s personal life, especially by Rolling Stone and Huffington Post reporters, was nothing short of salacious and predatory. Logan’s wedding was touted in one headline as a “shotgun” affair. An internet post by Matt Taibbis was entitled “Lara Logan, You Suck!” The girly men at Jann Wenner’s Chicago salon were incensed because Logan had dared to defend General Stanley McChrystal. Taibbis salted his attack on Lara with infantile bigotry; characterizing American soldiers in Afghanistan as “drunken assholes” and “insubordinate douche bags.”<br /><br />CBS’s chief foreign affairs correspondent was savaged often and maliciously by colleagues, including Katie Couric, long before the Tahrir Square incident.<br /><br />Surely, all of this is well enough for CBS ratings, but to send such a high profile, risky icon into a conservative, religiously intolerant, and misogynistic Arab hothouse approaches some unfathomed level of cultural ignorance and stupidity. Adultery can be a capital offense in dar al Islam. <br /><br />Adulterers, especially females with celebrated indiscretions, are seen as prostitutes or worse in the world of Islam. No Arab male will be prosecuted for assaulting an American infidel, even one with press credentials. CBS executives had to know this; which probably explains network attempts to hide the Logan’s trauma from Egyptian authorities and the American public. A cowardly media mainstream is unlikely to seek justice for one of their own, especially a women. Treasured illusions about Muslim civility are too important to put at risk. <br /><br />Lara Logan’s image was not the only risk factor. The near universal refusal of the professional left, the academy, and several American administrations to recognize or confront the golems of Islamic and Egyptian culture are part of the back story too. Many religious or cultural practices enable the abuse of women in Egypt and other Arab communities. These include, but are not limited to: vindictive fatwas, child marriage, honor killings, genital mutilation, amputations, stoning, purdah (burkas and hijabs), polygamy, consanguinity, slavery, and death penalties for adultery. Christina Lamb’s Afghan protégé characterized women under Islamic law as “insects in the dust.”<br /><br />The silence of American feminists on institutionalized Arab misogyny is deafening. High profile American women like Madeline Albright (now at PEW Global Attitudes), Hilary Clinton, and now Michelle Obama, ladies who could make a difference, have yet to act against the systematic abuse of women among one fourth of the world’s population. Tongue tied feminists are co-conspirators with the “animals” of Tahrir Square.<br /><br />World Health Organization (WHO) studies reveal that over 90% of Egyptian women have been abused by circumcision. Apologists regularly defend genital mutilations in Egypt as “cultural” practices, as if that matters to young girls, butchered to suppress their sexual pleasure. PEW and other polling agencies, that survey Egyptian and Arab attitudes, also document wide-spread support for terror, religious law, anti-Semitism, and political Islamism. How do these facts not influence the judgment of the Oval Office, the State Department, and the corporate offices of American news networks? <br /><br />Sexually repressed cultures like those of the Arab League are unlikely to see a difference between liberated working girls and targets of opportunity. If just one of those 200 “peaceful,” democratized, internet savvy Arab males knew of Ms. Logan’s history; in their culture, she’s fair game. Islamic law does not distinguish between adulterers and whores. No Muslim male will ever be prosecuted for “raping” a woman who flaunts marital indiscretion. If Rachael Maddow (of Air America fame) ever covered a Muslim riot for MSNBC, her life might be forfeit under at least two Sharia statutes. The truth about the worst in Islam is ever a bitter pill.<br /><br />And there’s a profound difference between courage and recklessness. CBS and 60 Minutes knew of Lara’s personal baggage and sent her into a howling mob of angry Arab males anyway. And Ms. Logan, having been warned at least once by the Egyptian officials, chose to put herself at risk again, among those she may have imprudently thought to be on “the right side of history.” She and CBS were tragically wrong about the risks of an irredentist Egyptian revolt and nearly fatally wrong about the personal perils of xenophobic, misogynist cultures. <br /><br />CBS probably can’t be charged with sexual abuse, but someone should sue the suits for reckless endangerment. The American public should demand to know also how and why the men in the CBS support crew did not fight to protect Lara Logan from a gang assault. That story is one you may never see in Rolling Stone or on 60 Minutes.<br /><br />Post-mortem commentary on the Logan affair is as shallow as earlier collegial attacks on her character. Most, like that in the Chicago Sun Times fall under the “s—t happens” school of journalism: “Women are victims because they are women.” Here Richard Roeper cites obscure and questionable (Egyptian) statistics about trivial harassment of women in buses and on Cairo streets:” Such analysis is pure bandwagon. CBS and NPR are worse still, still desperately trying to hang the Logan assault on Mubarak.<br /><br />Lara Logan wasn’t assaulted because she was a vulnerable, attractive woman caught in a city of fanny pinchers. She was attacked for the same reasons that Daniel Pearl was beheaded. She was a journalist (aka spy), an American, and thought to be a Jew. For too many in the Islamist and Arab world, such credentials are presumptive evidence that merits vigilante justice.<br /><br />The most distressing fallout of the Lara Logan saga lies ahead. The Obama/Clinton team is unlikely to change the party line about the Arab League; full speed ahead with revolution, consequences be damned. And American journalists, especially women, are unlikely to stop their suicidal rooting for Islamic monoculture. In all of this, politicians and pundits will fail to see the hazards of haste and cultural denial - where the enemy of our enemies will never be our friends.<br /><br />-----------------------------------------------------<br /><br />The author also writes at G. Murphy Donovan. This essay appeared in the 22 February 11 addition od <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-53029663715231411632011-02-16T06:13:00.000-08:002011-02-16T06:21:30.480-08:00Rumsfeld: Truth is the Best Revenge“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” – Thomas Jefferson <br /><br />Donald Rumsfeld has written a book. Four years out of office, such tomes ought to be called “shots from the grave,” a fusillade of explanations after the fact. Such literature has a long and honored tradition. <br /><br />Dwight Eisenhower wrote and spoke of the dangers of the “military/industrial complex” as he lounged on the 19th hole; and Maxwell Taylor sounded <span style="font-style:italic;">The Uncertain Trumpet</span> about nuclear weapons as he left the Pentagon. Their arguments were bestsellers in their day, but that industry complex and those megatons are still with us. General Taylor was right about several things however, especially the need for Special Forces designed to fight below the nuclear threshold. <br /><br />Media critics are no happier with Rumsfeld’s memoir, <span style="font-style:italic;">Known and Unknown</span>, than they were with his tenure as Secretary of Defense. Reviewer angst begins with the title which is both a poke at detractors and a paraphrase of Rummy’s most famous soliloquy:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.”<br /></span><br />This infamous quote is a velvet stiletto; a masterful parry - and twist of the knife; a kind of humility and honesty you seldom see in journalists. The Defense Secretary was telling the Press that there were things that he did not know; and that there were things that he and they might never know. In short, nobody has good answers to stupid questions. <br /><br />The Fourth Estate hates such candor. Press scribblers prefer the comfort of lies to the discomforts of truth. This, and low standards, probably explains why Bill Clinton and Julian Assange have become Media idols – especially in America. <br /><br />A survey of the reviews of Known and Unknown, reveals a uniform list of complaints – or better still, talking points. Rumsfeld is characterized as arrogant, combative, and dishonest; he is also charged with sanctioning torture and refusing to send enough troops to Iraq, almost precipitating a catastrophe. These complaints, in part or collectively, could be dismissed charitably as “bravo sierra!” <br /><br />Gwen Ifill (of NPR) writing for the <span style="font-style:italic;">Washington Post</span> is typical of the “hot wash-ups” on Rumsfeld’s book . Her brief 8 February book review contained at least two factual errors. Any writer who doesn’t know the difference between a civilian Service Secretary and a military Chief of Staff shouldn’t be writing about defense issues.<br /><br />Donald Rumsfeld was indeed pugnacious, not a handicap for a warrior. The two-time Secretary of Defense was a college wrestler, a fighter pilot, and a retired Navy captain. He did not suffer fools gladly; his candor was often mistaken for arrogance. Alpha males are seldom appreciated among the girly men and khaki sniffers that frequent Pentagon press conferences.<br /><br />The charges of sanctioned torture and of strategic incompetence are more serious, yet even less credible. <br /><br />On the torture charges, there are multiple layers of civilian and military bureaucracy between the remote Abu Ghraib prison and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The military police responsible for the prisoners were poorly trained reservists from rural Cumberland, Maryland. The idea that any cabinet-level appointee would direct or condone torture of prisoners is ludicrous. A more likely culprit would be the Army Chief of Staff, the Army theater commander, or the on-site commander in Iraq.<br /><br />The commander of the prison guards at Abu Ghraib was Brigadier General Janis Karpinski another reservist, a lady who pleaded ignorance about the criminal behavior under her nose. Karpinski also tried to implicate the Israelis in the Abu Ghraib fiasco. If anyone in DOD was blame worthy, or got a pass on their culpability, it was Karpinski. Instead of trying to hang Rumsfeld for Abu Ghraib, you would think that critics might want to ask the Army how and why Janis Karpinski dodged a court martial. <br /><br />Karpinski was first demoted to colonel in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal and then promoted back again to general by the Army before she was allowed to retire gracefully with full benefits.<br /><br />And the claim that the “surge,” 30,000 fresh troops, was the only tactic that saved the day in Iraq is nonsense too. More critical was the decision to buy off Sunni al Qaeda supporters with bribes. Only when that money dries up, will we know which way that insurgency blows. In any case, having reversed the sectarian poles in Iraq, the last chapter of the Iraq ‘victory’ is yet to written. <br /><br />The most malicious and mendacious charge against Rumsfeld concerns the now mythical Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. “They (Bush and Rumsfeld) lied and people died” critics cried. Trying to lay blame for the flawed 2002 <span style="font-style:italic;">Iraq National Intelligence Estimate </span>(NIE) at the feet of the Secretary of Defense misrepresents responsibilities and history.<br /><br />The bogus Iraq estimate was prepared by the Intelligence Community with George Tenet’s CIA in the lead. One of two footnotes (dissents) in the document was taken by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence Research (INR). State analysts didn’t think the nuclear weapons evidence was convincing.<br /><br />The deceptive speech at the UN was delivered by then Secretary of State Colin Powell. Tenet and Powell secreted themselves in the woods of Langley a week before the fateful speech in New York. Somewhere between Foggy Bottom and New York, Colin Powell was rolled. He contradicted his own State Department intelligence analysts at the United Nations.<br /><br />Rumsfeld’s rap against Powell was that he couldn’t be trusted. Indeed,<br />since his retirement, Powell postures like Arianna Huffington; a kind of political hermaphrodite – a chap who could play for either team.<br /><br />Rumsfeld’s criticism of the former Secretary of State is generous because no interpretation of Powell’s behavior in 2003 can be rationalized. He was; either ill-informed, incompetent, gullible, or mendacious. None of the options are flattering. Rumsfeld lets Powell off the hook by simply writing that he was “wrong.” Yet the bottom line is clear, if anyone cooked the intelligence books on Iraq, it was Tenet and Powell, not Rumsfeld and Bush.<br /><br />Pundits are fond of claiming that “journalism is the first draft of history.” Unfortunately, political myth and innuendo sell better than facts. The real truth about Rumsfeld and the Press is their mutual contempt. And coverage of Rumsfeld isn’t the first draft of history as much as it is an insult to truth.<br /><br />_______________________<br /><br />G. Murphy Donovan was the Senior USAF Research Fellow at RAND Corporation when Donald Rumsfeld served on the RAND Board of Directors. The author also writes at G. Murphy Donovan. This essay appeared previously in th <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-88207605319117030732011-01-26T06:36:00.000-08:002011-01-26T06:47:29.620-08:00Body Bags on the LeftRham Emanuel, heir apparent to Democrat Party fortunes in Chicago, once said that “you never want a crisis to go to waste.” Emanuel’s cynicism was a paraphrase of a maxim coined by a Stanford University economist. Nonetheless, in light of recent events in Tucson, Emanuel’s axiom seems to have taken root on the west side of the political spectrum. <br /><br />Indeed, the recent murders in Arizona seem to be a political shill’s wet dream. Without evidence or trail, a liberal cop has come forward to politicize what, in another time, might be just another random, murderous tragedy. Complicit Media and venal politicians are giving political mayhem a megaphone. <br /><br />Before the shell casings hit the ground, PBS claimed Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) had been killed when in fact she was gravely wounded. Press reports on Arizona were similar to those on Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina when casualties were reported to reach 10,000. The actual casualties were a fraction of that number. <br /><br />With the Arizona shootings, a small town cop, like then Mayor Nagin of New Orleans, shamed his profession and rose to instant prominence by rushing to judgment. Before the smoke cleared in the Safeway parking lot, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, a Tucson Democrat, told all comers that Republican rhetoric was to blame for the shootings. Without judging the actual shooter, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik indicted conservative politicians and talk show hosts by name. No liberals or Democrats appeared on Dupnik’s hit list. President Obama called Dupnik to thank him for his help.<br /><br />Sheriff Dupnik denied political motivation; yet continued to blast those he had wounded. Bigots, racists, gun control opponents, conservative politicians, and talk radio hosts took direct hits as the sheriff fired from the lip. Yet, Dupnik failed to speculate on the motives of the real gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, a dropout living with his parents. The hirsute killer was known to be a fan of Karl Marx, National Socialism, and marijuana – a liberal triptych. <br /><br />A close reading of Clarence Dupnik’s interviews suggest that he and Loughner may suffer from similar delusions. The sheriff has leveled charges of racism, bias, and conspiracy without evidence or argument. Indeed, the entire state of Arizona was indicted by the Tucson Sheriff as a “Mecca (sic) for prejudice and bigotry.”<br /><br />Clearly, political operatives and a sympathetic media would like to stem the recent Democratic electoral hemorrhage by laying the criminal violence in Phoenix at the feet of conservatives and Republicans. By any historical or contemporary measure, any attempt to link Republican politics to violent crime is bound to blowback. <br /><br />From the end of the Civil War (1865) to the end of the Johnson administration (1968), the Democratic Party was the institutional support system for Jim Crow law, state sponsored segregation, and much of the depredations, including lynching and violent property confiscation, that plagued rural America for a hundred years. The Republican Party, in contrast, was a distinct product of the abolitionist movement. When Jim Crow lost its chokehold on Dixie, the Democrat plantation migrated to big cities. <br /><br />Today, urban constituencies are mostly registered Democrats. The vast majority of big city mayors and legislators are Democrats also. Violent crime rates, in many of these liberal sinecures, are multiples of the numbers in flyover country. Two of the “most dangerous cities in the world,” Detroit and New Orleans, have been run by Democrats for generations. Some cities such as Miami and El Paso have never had a Republican mayor. Understandably, Chicago, the “most corrupt city in America,” does not submit crime statistics for national comparison. <br /><br />The poverty and bankruptcy rates of Democrat cities show similar numbers. And large urban public schools are violent prep schools for large violent rural prisons where might makes right. Even a Democrat President does not consign his daughters to the hazards of “public” schooling in the nation’s capital. Of 51 state schools systems rated countrywide, the District of Columbia ranks next to last. If there is a link between violence, social pathology and any political party, the overwhelming statistical evidence points left. <br /><br />Contemporary anecdotal evidence is also overwhelming. The Puerto Rican nationalists who tried to assassinate President Truman, a Democrat, were leftists. They were pardoned by a Democrat president. The man who successfully assassinated President Kennedy was a communist. The city of Chicago was besieged by violent leftists during the Democratic National Convention in 1968. The violent police response was authorized by a Democrat mayor. Almost all of the arson, violence, and urban riots of the 1960’s and 1970’s, including the District of Columbia, were sponsored by the professional left. Indeed, recreational arson may still be a Halloween tradition in long suffering Democrat bastions like Detroit.<br /><br />The vast majority of apologists for Islamic terror and violence also hail from the academic and political left. Indeed, President Obama and Army Chief of Staff, George Casey, took to the airways to caution against any rush to judgment when a Muslim officer, Nidal Malik Hassan, massacred fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009. No similar cautions have been offered in the wake of the Arizona tragedy. <br /><br />On a personal level, the evidence is even more disturbing. Take the Michael Vick case where the President publicly commended the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles for giving Vick a second chance. Recall that Vick, Virginia Tech dropout, when not chucking a football, used to amuse himself by raising fighting dogs. When the dogs wouldn’t kill, Vick would kill the dogs – often with his bare hands. Obama’s favorite quarterback was convicted of several felonies before migrating to the “city of brotherly love” for millions. Vick gets second chances, while Sarah Palin gets torched.<br /><br />Indeed, Palin has become ground zero for the metaphorical war. Sandra Bernhard says that Govenor Palin should be “gang raped by my big black brothers” when she comes to Manhattan. It’s not difficult to understand Palin’s gun metaphors or “reload” rhetoric when confronted with such threats. Loose cannons like Rahm Emanuel, John Kerry, Democrat members of Congress, and the president himself are also guilty of violent hyperbole. <br /><br />Emanuel recently referred to ObamaCare opponents as “f--king retards”. Only an expert in rhetorical excess could mix two metaphors in two words and offend three liberal constituencies. Assuming the first term applies to men and women; surely the second word captures a portion of both sexes. <br /><br />Democrat John Kerry joked on television about shooting Republican George Bush. Hard to believe Boston Democrats think assassination jokes are funny. A Democrat Senate candidate from West Virginia recently ran a political ad where he literally used a rifle to shoot an odious bill. And the President, never one to miss a teaching moment, uses violent metaphors like “bringing knives to gunfights.”<br /><br />So we are left with several questions for the head of the free world. If that psycho pathetic animal abuser were some cracker quarterback from Wisconsin, would he merit the President’s public concern? And if judgments should be reserved on serial killers like Nidal Malik Hassan, shouldn’t Mrs. Palin be given the benefit of a doubt? And if we are to be concerned with virtual rhetoric on the right, shouldn’t the president show similar concern about actual violence among his constituents?<br /><br />Three of the ten most dangerous Democrat cities in America are clustered in the President’s back yard; Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. In 2009, the District of Columbia alone had 150 rapes, 144 homicides, 8,071 violent crimes, and 28,456 crimes against property. 5, 623 citizens have been murdered in the District in the past two decades according to Metro Police statistics. For perspective, in DC alone, this number nearly exceeds the number of US casualties in two wars during the same period. Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, none of the DC victims are volunteers – yet, many are children. <br /><br />In the last election, 90% of DC votes were cast for Democrats. The District is yet another city that has never had a Republican mayor or legislature. While rhetoric on the right may be subject to interpretation, the body bags on the left speak for themselves<br /><br />When local and national Democrats try to attribute criminal mayhem to their opposite numbers, they breathe life into yet another violent metaphor – the circular firing squad.<br /><br />_____________________________________<br /><br />The author was born into the Democrat Party in the Bronx and retained that affiliation until he became an adult. He also writes at Agnotology in Journalism and G. Murphy Donovan. A version of this essay appeared in <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-18426503257002718402010-09-12T15:21:00.000-07:002010-09-12T15:42:41.611-07:00The Shifting Paradigm of Islam"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." - Winston<br />Churchill.<br /><br />Richard Cohen of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Washington Post</span> has discovered an Egyptian anti-Semite. Unfortunately, the object of Cohen’s ire has been dead for over four decades. Yes, Cohen who once labeled Israel a “historical mistake,” has taken to the pages of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Washington Post</span> to chastise a martyred cadaver. Indeed, Cohen castigates <span style="font-style:italic;">The Economist </span>for its review of Sayyid Qutb’s biography which celebrates Sayyid’s contributions to contemporary Islamic political “reform” while ignoring the bigotry for which he is equally famous. Cohen’s column makes you wonder where he and the American Press corps have been for the last 50 years. Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood (al Ikwan) has already been taken to the woodshed by Cohen’s betters; the likes of Paul Johnson, Bernard Lewis, and Paul Berman. Cohen also suggests that the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is starting to get thin. Do you think, Dick? <br /><br />There are precious few columns in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Post</span> or other dailies about contemporary home grown anti-Semitism and hate speech like that of Louis Farrakhan (aka Louis Walcott) of the Nation of Islam and Malik Zulu Shabazz (aka Paris Lewis) of the New Black Panthers. Indeed, Cohen could audit Farrakhan’s hate speech on one of his many visits to Howard University right there in Washington, DC. In case anyone missed it, the old Panthers, who were once garden variety black nationalists, have been hijacked by another malignant strain of Islam. Most of the “new” cats are radical Muslims. <br /><br />But the most egregious negligence of the Press on all things Islamic is their failure to track the bloom of foreign Muslim study programs, cultural centers, mosques, and related organizations in the West – especially those on American university campuses. Indeed, one of more notable Saudi funded institutes thrives, again, in Cohen’s backyard at Georgetown University. <br /><br />The Alwaleed Bin-Talal Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding is funded by “Prince” Alwaleed whose autocratic family, the house of al Saud, mandates Wahhabism as the state religion of Saudi Arabia. Alwaleed owns three palaces, the world’s largest yacht, and the world’s largest private airplane. He was educated in US schools, yet he still practices polygamy. Alwaleed’s lifestyle and similar Saud family excesses help to make countrymen like Osama bin Laden possible.<br /><br />A Freedom House study of Wahhabi publications used in American mosques concluded that the Saudi brand of Islam: opposed all non believers, advocated hatred of all other religions, and blamed “democracy” for the pathologies of the 20th Century. Wahhabis also control the Islamic shrines at Mecca and Medina, sacred to Muslims of all stripes, yet off limits to non believers, infidels, dar al harb (literally “the house of war”). <br /><br />There are no Jewish or Christian centers of “understanding” in Saudi Arabia. Cohen and most of his journalistic colleagues have been remarkably uncurious about the ideology, funding, and objectives of a host of Islamic propagandists, most of whom originate in the Arab world. Many scholars suggest that Saudi Arabia alone may have spent as much “87 billion dollars” to date to spread “theofacism.”<br /><br />No surprise then when John Esposito, the noisy Catholic director of the Alwaleed Center, was quick to come to the defense of the ground zero mosque - even beating President Obama to the punch. Twenty million Saudi petro-dollars did not come to Georgetown University without political obligations or ideological strings. <br /><br />Beyond pederasty, it’s difficult to know what Catholic hierarchies believe they have in common with Islamist elites. <br /><br />Take Turkey as an illustration. The Turks have long been held up as an example of Islamic “moderation,” yet starting with the Armenian genocide (1915) official state policy has sought to eliminate all vestiges of ecumenicism in what was arguably the oldest Christian diocese in the world. The only seminary in Turkey has been closed now by Ankara fiat; and without clergy, the Christian congregation has been reduced to marginal numbers. The Eastern Rite Orthodox patriarch in Istanbul has sought a dialogue with the Islamist regime in Ankara for years - to no avail. Anatolian Christianity is being exterminated in slow motion. Even in the so-called “moderate” Muslim world, tolerance is a one-way street.<br /><br />No less an Islamic eminence than the Turkish prime minister has put a stake through the heart of moderation. Indeed, on several occasions Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that to put the adjective “moderate” before the noun “Muslim” is an insult to Islam: “The term ‘moderate Islam’ is ugly and offensive; Islam is Islam,” says Erdogan. If Muslims themselves don’t believe in Islamic moderation, why is this myth so pervasive among Europeans and Americans?<br /><br />Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, discredited Swiss professor of taqiyya (the Islamic art of deception), and celebrated “moderate” was recently granted a visa, courtesy of Hillary Clinton, to tour the American academy, including a stop at Georgetown University. Previously, Ramadan had been offered a university sinecure at Notre Dame University. Ramadan, labeled a “dangerous” man by the French foreign minister, is notorious for breathing fire at young European Muslims while singing dulcet notes of moderation when speaking French or English to infidels. Ramadan defends the infamous Islamic practice of stoning women. How moderate is that?<br /><br />Clearly, academic America is motivated by petro-dollars, seen as an alternative revenue stream. These same scholars seem all too anxious to return the favor by defending Islamism and associated practices on cue under the burkas of ecumenicism, culture, and moderation. Tolerating intolerance in the name of tolerance is not a virtue; it is an oxymoron; the first impenetrable paradox of the early 21th Century. <br /><br />Richard Cohen’s opinion columns and similar reporting, like that of Michelle Boorstein, is typical of most journalism or academic writing on all things Islamic; more notable for what it excludes or ignores. Qutb is not simply a lone agitator for Muslim irredentism; that creed is now spread by the global reach of the Muslim Brotherhood, cutouts, and subsidiaries. Hamas and al Qaeda are just two of the more notorious military spin-offs of the Brotherhood. <br /><br />The spread of an equally virulent Wahhabism with Saudi monies is complemented by a plethora of irredentist Deobandi seminaries in Pakistan. 60% of Pakistani clerics attend such religious schools. Deobandi, Taliban, and al Qaeda fanaticism are now the dominant Islamic idioms in South Asia. In flood ravaged Pakistan, the void created by Islamabad incompetence is being filled by radicals. <br /><br />With the help of Arab financing, the spread of radical Islamic proselytizing centers in the form of mosques, cultural centers, and madrasses now threatens the myth of Islamic “moderation” – especially in Europe and America. The moderation paradigm has been carefully cultivated, with little or no evidence, by a combination of Islamic missionaries, venal academics, naïve journalists, and fearful politicians in the West.<br /><br />Nonetheless, major Arab states like Saudi Arabia (the richest), the Emirates, Egypt (the most populous), Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and the two Palestines are slowly shedding the veils of victimhood. World Health Organization studies of Egypt alone suggest that as many as 90% of Egyptian women have been castrated. Consanguinity in the Emirates is thought to be 50% among Arabs. <br /><br />Even if terrorism, Sharia financing, and jihad proselytizing were set aside; the prevalence of these and other irredentist practices, which also include fatwas (summary judgments), honor killings, beheadings, amputations, stoning, flogging, polygamy, and child marriage, would put the lie to any conventional notions of “moderation” in the Muslim world. Arguments about whether these traditions are religious or cultural are becoming less and less relevant. These practices are being exposed as part of the weft and warp of dar al Islam. <br /><br />Not every Muslim is a terrorist, yet nearly every terrorist is a Muslim. In the past year, 90 terror groups struck in 83 countries where there were nearly 60, 000 casualties. Sunni attacks alone accounted for more than half the victims. <br /><br />Recent Pew surveys of Arab attitudes towards Jews put another nail in the moderation coffin. In the countries surveyed, negative attitudes towards Jews were well north of 90%. Europeans and Americans didn’t fare much better. <br /><br />While perceptions about the Sunni side of the Islamic equation are shifting in Europe and America; there has never been any doubt about radical Shiite irredentism in Iran and elsewhere. Salman Rushdie, author of Satanic Verses, a novel which mocks the Koran and Mohamed, still has a Shiite price on his head. Indeed, just as theocratic Arabs hijacked a noble Egyptian culture over time; a more recent surge of Shia Islamists has commandeered a noble Persian tradition. Israel, Europe, and America are now in the crosshairs. Nonetheless, signs of blowback are appearing in both worlds.<br /><br />In 1962, Thomas Kuhn published The Structures of Scientific Revolutions, a groundbreaking study of shifting paradigms. Kuhn argued that reasonable observers might look at the same evidence and come to radically different conclusions because both proceed with different bias or assumptions. He also argued that the reconciliation of conflicting views, paradigm shifts, was glacial – often requiring a new generation of analysts. <br /><br />The conventional wisdom about Islam, or more precisely its status as a morally equivalent religious culture, is starting to shift. The tectonic plates of opinion are moving almost imperceptibly towards the recognition of radical Islam as a necrotic menace, an undemocratic, if not toxic, political paradigm. Appropriately enough, the early evidence of the shift is iconic. <br /><br />In 2002, a <span style="font-style:italic;">Wall Street Journal reporter</span>, Daniel Pearl, was found decapitated and literally decimated (cut into 10 pieces) by Islamists in Pakistan. Then there was the award winning 2007 UNICEF ‘engagement’ photo of a nine year old girl and a bearded, aging patriarch. Then comes the photo of a mutilated young Afghan girl on the cover of <span style="font-style:italic;">Time Magazine</span>, nose and ears cut off by Islamic fanatics for some minor transgression. The girl was rescued on a roadside by some American GIs before she bled to death. <br /><br />Most recently, in New York City, the ground zero mosque and its controversial imam have been swept up in a vortex of public dismay over the cleric’s politics, foreign finances, and Islam’s dismissal of American sensitivities. “In your face” is sometimes out of place even in Manhattan. <br /><br />Defenders of the mosque refuse to recognize the politics, foreign financing, or the religious double standards of Muslims, especially Arabs, when it comes to infidel (aka “unclean”) churches and or synagogues in Muslim countries. Adding insult to injury, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, has been hired by the US State Department as an American outreach (sic) spokesman to the Emirates. Americans are beginning to recognize the lengths to which apologists will go to defend the indefensible. Public opinion polls reflect that dismay.<br /><br />The Islamic paradigm is shifting in Europe and America. And the questions these changes raise have global consequences. As the appeasement paradigm oxidizes, the West will ask itself why non-Muslims should sacrifice their children and treasure to save Islam from itself. And if fanaticism is more of a threat to dar al Islam than the West, infidels need to know why “moderate” Arab and Muslim armies are not at the front. Europe and America will also need to know why “moderate” Arab treasure is not financing the fight against extremism - instead of buying yachts, palaces, and propaganda pulpits in Europe and America.<br /><br />As we speak, Saudi Sunnis are praying that the Israelis will make short work of Shiite apostates in Tehran. Yet, the question remains; why should Israel, Europe, or America fight any battles for or within Islam? <br /><br />All of which raises a penultimate strategic question: What are the consequences of a transient Islamist triumph in South Asia or the Middle East? Do we continue to support Muslim royals, oligarchs, and tyrants or do we let them fall to their fate in the hands of fellow believers? If the Israeli experience provides any precedent, no amount of reason or appeasement (see land for peace) will placate Muslim elites or radical insurgents.<br /><br />The short answer may be that any merger of Islamist non-state and Islamic state actors simplifies the targeting problem. The West may die from a thousand cuts before it prevails in any series of debilitating guerilla wars. Conversely, NATO still retains the conventional and nuclear superiority to make short work of state actors. If conflict is inevitable, why let a weaker, decentralized adversary dictate the terms of the fight? <br /><br />Tactical simplicity often provides strategic clarity. Islam is not a monolith, nor is it a monoculture; nonetheless, for too many, it aspires to be both. These aspirations pit the irreconcilable paradigms of theofacism and democracy against each other. The coming clash will not be military, political, religious, or cultural; it will be all of these. <br /><br />___________________________________________<br /> <br /><br />This essay first appeared in the <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span> on 11 September 2010. The author also writes at G. Murphy Donovan.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-77858966161992615632010-08-25T12:36:00.000-07:002010-08-25T12:50:42.546-07:00Atheists and Anti-SemitesThere is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart. - Blaise Pascal<br /><br />Christopher Hitchens’ <span style="font-style:italic;">God Is Not Great</span> (the book) and Bill Maher’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Religulous</span> (the film) are hysterical; not hysterically funny, just frenzied. If you didn’t know better, you might think that rabbis and priests were pursuing these guys through the salons of Georgetown and the gin mills of West Hollywood threatening them with bris, baptism, or brimstone. They protest too much. Indeed, they seem to be self-anointed missionaries for nihilism. <br /><br />The Hitchen’s book and the Maher film are just two examples of a post 9/11 cultural bloom that seeks to argue that Islamic barbarisms are logical outcomes of the ignorance and oppression of Judaism, Christianity, and related Imperialism. The premise of their arguments is moral equivalence; that is, all religions are equally evil – well springs of barbarity. <br /><br />Maher is also a self-styled expert on moral courage. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, while bivouacked at ABC, Maher charged:<br /><br />"We (Americans) have been the cowards. (The US military) lobbing cruise missiles from two thousand miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building (i.e. the World Trade Center), say what you want about it. (Islamists are) not cowardly.<br /><br />Maher also claims religion is a “neurological disorder.” Yet, a son who ambushes his Jewish mother to mock religion surely quacks like an atheist. So let us review the arguments for rational atheism, their theology if you will. <br /><br />For starters, atheists reject the historical consensus on God. Never mind that every culture, large or small, believes in some sort of deity. Secondly, they reject the common consensus that is the faith of their peers. As a practical matter (see Pascal’s Gambit) the vast majority of people believe in some kind of superior being. They do so, not out of fear or ignorance, but out of humility - the certainty that humans can not be ‘as good as it gets’. Experience and common sense tells us that Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens can not represent the apex of evolution. <br /><br />Another axiom for militant atheism is invective; laying the history of bad behavior at the feet of traditional religion. This is more than a little like blaming war on soldiers and crime on cops. A corollary of invective is ad hominem attacks; cherry picking religious figures to vilify. The Pope, Mother Teresa and Talmudic scholars come to mind; every contemporary liberal’s favorite whipping posts – as if name calling were an argument.<br /><br />Yet, Hitchens saves the best of his worst for Blaise Pascal, the brilliant 17th Century mathematician and physicist who examined the limits of reason, especially in matters of faith. Pascal celebrated and defended “the expected value of faith” and the “infinite” value of belief against any utility of relying on reason alone. Pascal argued that reason provides neither certainty nor truth. Hitchens calls this “sordid” and likens Pascal to “hypocrites and frauds” who abound in the “Talmudic Jewish” (sic) tradition. <br /><br />Polemicists like Maher and Hitchens confuse God with religion. Our entire ethical, legal, and democratic tradition is a linear descendant of Judaism and Christianity. A Temple or Church is only one of many public institutions; each populated with saints and sinners. Yet, without these influences, democratic capitalism is impossible. Indeed, it was an Augustinian monk (Erasmus) who raised the most profound and lasting defense of free will and free choice. <br /><br />Rational atheism, on the other hand, is a kind of moral anarchy. Ethical autism has a long history with science; now compounded by the electronic autism of Eric Schmidt (Google as God). George Orwell would feast on such carrion!<br /><br />Many modern anti-religious zealots, unlike Pascal, are not tempered by humility or doubt. They can not say: I do not know. The can not say: I may never know. What they do say is that all that will be known shall be known by people like me; an enlightened, progressive, liberal, rational, scientific, intellectual elite. This group will take all of the credit and none of the blame for the mixed record of reason and science since the Enlightenment. They seldom note that the ABC’s of modern warfare (atomic, biological and chemical weapons) were not created by nuns, monks, or rabbis. <br /><br />The heart of evangelical atheism is cowardice. What many can not say is what they truly believe. They believe that they, and only they, know the way forward – all others are backward. They believe that they should not be constrained by “arbitrary” ethics, morality or law; sounds too much like religion. Hitchens uses the phrase “unfettered scientific inquiry” to describe his vision of the future. Josef Mengele would be comfortable with such a charter.<br /><br />A profound, some would say fatal, conceit infects secular rationalists; the belief that there could not be any intelligence that is superior to their intelligence. They also believe what tyrants and oligarchs have always believed since the birth of philosophy; they are the philosopher kings (Plato); they are the vanguard (Lenin); and they are the master race (Hitler). They believe that they should do the thinking for the rest of us. They believe that men like Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky are as godlike as it gets. Hobbes called them necessary and Nietzsche called them supermen. <br /><br />Hitchens disinters Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg in his rant against religion. This is typical Left logic; one which confuses radical with significant. The only possible service Trotsky and Red Rosie provide is to illustrate how the atheist Left deals with apostates. Trotsky ended his days with a socialist axe buried in his skull. Someone might also point out to Hitchens that Karl Marx was not so much a descendant of the "rabbinical line" as he was a product of Teutonic philosophy and a virulent, self-loathing Anti-Semite. <br /><br />National Socialism and Soviet Communism shared Anti-Semitic roots. And now at the start of a new century, Anti-Semitism is again the legit motif of yet another “ism” – Islamism. Indeed, the convergence of the secular left and the Islamic right is one of the great ciphers of the new millennium – a merger where ecumenicism and suicide pacts are interchangeable.<br /><br />Things get very unscientific very quickly when you ask an atheist to define objectivity and reason. How do they separate their minds from the things they try to understand? Are rationalists capable of some out-of-body experience where they are devoid of inherited knowledge, historic influences, emotions, bias, prejudice and all the other sensibilities and tangential influences that plague ordinary mortals? <br /><br />If you listen carefully, you would never know that reason is just one tool, like arithmetic, that we use to understand. And you will seldom hear that most “research” is a smoke screen for junk science – secondary or derivative compilations. Primary research and reproducible experiments are rare, very expensive and time consuming. Yet, as long as academics get something into print, nobody seems to notice.<br /><br />In their hearts, so-called secular rationalists may not believe in consensus; may not believe in the wisdom of crowds, may not believe in history or tradition; and if you have visited any modern American university campus recently, you will understand that they sure as hell do not believe in tolerance, free speech, or democracy – at least not in any recognizable forms.<br /><br />Truth is what we choose to believe. And the most difficult challenge for all inquiry is to bridge that gap between analysis and acceptance. Any belief is more potent than any new idea. And what we believe always has more to do with faith than reason; we can not test every belief or every premise for every action. We believe in many things so that we do not trip over everything. The alternatives are chaos or inertia.<br /><br />In the end, the liabilities of atheism are twofold; philosophical and practical. <br /><br />Although separated by centuries, Pascal and Thomas Khun (1962) noted that reason often creates parochial blind spots where the quicksand of irreconcilable paradigms is obscured. Pervasive efforts to minimize the blatant political threat of Islamism are symptoms of this philosophical necrosis today. Here atheists and Islamists share compatible illusions; they believe they are omniscient, they harbor similar conceits, and they worship many of the same false idols.<br /><br />On a practical level the “school house” test is also revealing. Rationalists seldom consign their children to shabby state institutions, like the secular schools that they “mandate” for less affluent citizens.<br /><br />Indeed, even “community organizers,” send their kids to private or “religulous” schools. Faith is just another word for trust. Civilization is impossible without it. Thank God!<br />______________________________<br /><br />The author, like George Carlin and Martin Scorsese, attended Cardinal Hayes High School on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. He also writes at <span style="font-style:italic;">G. Murphy Donovan</span>.<br /><br />______________________________G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-62138503671119874022010-07-29T12:27:00.000-07:002010-07-29T12:47:54.665-07:00The Binary Imperative“Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced. Whatever is above all price has dignity.” – Emmanuel Kant<br /><br />Agnotology is the study of ignorance, or not knowing. As such it is the antithesis of epistemology, the study of the scope and limits of knowledge. In spite of its Greek roots, the word was minted within the last decade by Robert Proctor, a California academic who specializes in the history of science. The term Agnotology was coined to discredit the “junk science” used to defend cigarette smoking; but more recently it could be found imbedded in the faux science used to defend theories of climate change (nee “global warming”). <br /><br />Surely ignorance itself is not a modern phenomenon. An individual might be expert on some subject, but no person is expert on all subjects. And specialized expertise is often dangerous; Dr. Frankenstein of literature and Werner Von Braun, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Einstein of recent memory are famous examples. <br /><br />When the latter three wandered beyond their niche of expertise, specialized knowledge was of little value, hardly fungible. Von Braun and Heidegger became Nazis and the German refugee Einstein, as a Princeton recluse, was a late arrival as a critic of mid- 20th Century German behavior. Even within his specialty, Einstein was morally ambiguous; he was for nuclear weapons before he was against them. <br /><br />In isolation, science is the study of process; how things work, not how they should work. Pure science has few concerns with ethics; legal restrictions maybe, but few notions of propriety beyond that. <br /><br />Ignorance, scientific and moral, is universal to some degree or other. You might also expect ignorance to be value neutral; a kind of immunity for unfortunates who do not or will not understand. Not in a democracy! Ignorance is not a defense in any common law tradition. <br /><br />All are called before the bar for what a “reasonable man” might be expected to know. Ignorance is indeed held to a higher standard than knowledge. This facet alone makes the study of ignorance a worthy field of inquiry.<br /><br />Thus Agnotology is not simply the study of vacuums of knowledge, but it is also a study of responsibility and societal expectations. Dr. Proctor’s wife therefore refined the definition of Agnotology as a kind of “culturally produced” ignorance; clearly implying that social movements and motives play a role. Unlike Epistemology, Agnotology carries significant moral hazard.<br /><br />No small wonder then that the praxis of Agnotology covers a multitude of sins; structural ignorance, inattention, suppression, selective fact finding, secrecy, manipulation, plagiarism, and other engineering tools. These are inspired by some combination of social, political, religious, or cultural ideology (including political correctness). Indeed, many observers see Agnotology, or false narratives, as the product of social and political struggle – a kind of perverse dialectic that creates and sustains pervasive ignorance – beliefs at odds with truth. <br /><br />Giving this phenomenon a name is a new development; but clearly several related practices have been around for centuries. Politicians use “opposition research” to discredit opponents, intelligence agents use disinformation, and soldiers use psychological operations (aka PSYOPS) to confuse the enemy. Perhaps the most notorious subterfuge was the Communist practice of agitation and propaganda (agitprop), the use of arts or Media to incite violence or discredit opponents. Agitprop could be compared to the contemporary use of “talking points,” repetition to sustain false narratives, a practice common to journalism and politics. <br /><br />The communications revolution of the past sixty years was thought to extract the teeth from agitprop. Indeed, communications philosophers like Marshall McCluhan went so far as to forecast a “global village,” a theory that suggests that electronics would create a kind of value neutral, global central nervous system where judgments might be suspended. The content of Media, such as TV, according to McCluhan, shouldn’t matter either. Indeed, content like The View, Kieth Olberman, Bill Maher, Sixty Minutes, Homer Simpson, and Grand Theft Auto might be confirmation of McCluhan’s influence, if not his theory. <br /><br />If content didn’t matter, then advertisers would be wasting their money. Commercial content seeks to influence minds and open wallets. If content doesn’t matter, then censorship shouldn’t matter either. Here Beijing Communists recently hoisted Google’s Eric Schmidt on McCluhan’s petard. Surely other morally ambiguous entrepreneurs like Microsoft now wait for the ax to drop. Indeed, the evidence to date suggests that communications philosophers, scientists, and engineers are clueless about the cultural implications of an internet revolution - “unfettered” by value judgment. <br /><br />It seems that value neutral techno-optimism fails to account for two developments.<br /><br />The first is the centrifugal spin of political forces since the end of WWII. The world has not become more unitary, as McCluhan had forecast, it has become more fractured. Membership at the UN has grown tenfold since 1942. Neither democracy nor enlightenment is the dominant idiom among a resounding majority of new members.<br /><br />A bloom of international institutions has accompanied the colonial meltdown. Like the sponsor states, organizations like the UN, the European Union, the Arab League, and the African Union rapidly oxidized into expensive talking clubs where tyrants, apologists, oligarchs, anti-Semites, and fiscal illiterates predominate.<br /><br />The second development is the realization, now formalized as science by Dr. Proctor, that communications gadgetry is as likely to spread ignorance as knowledge. Here, the growth of fanatical religious irredentism is exhibit “A.” And the donut hole of scientific integrity is being filled by theocratic barbarisms that many political “scientists” and academics defend in the name of culture or ecumenicism.<br /><br />The thread of utopian optimism that guides modern science and engineering has a specific lineage in German philosophy; a theme that runs through Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Lenin, and now Fukuyama. That thread is the assumption that struggle, or dialectics, coupled with the passage of time, is somehow a kind of progress. Ironically, religious irredentists, progressive journalists, and academic utopians seem to share a similar vision of the future. Christopher Hitchens, a step-child of Marx, in his recent best seller, God is Not Great, uses language like “unfettered (sic) scientific inquiry.” Josef Mengele might have been comfortable with such imagery.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the science of communications is a modern Janus: both a marketplace for ideas and a nitwit’s megaphone. The centrifugal forces of anti-democratic politics are at odds with the gravitational pull of improved communications. Indeed, some combination of technology and false content could undo the very democratic traditions that made the internet possible.<br /><br />The pandering of scientific monopolies (e.g. Google and Microsoft) to totalitarian regimes has an obvious logic beyond markets. Business is thought to be a vehicle for change. Yet, the sword of commerce also cuts two ways; do they become more like us or do we become more like them? With market communists like China and Venezuela, the jury is still out. The evidence in the Muslim world is far less ambiguous. Islamism clearly has the upper hand – a growing anti-democratic malignancy within the Muslim world and the West. <br /><br />The study of ignorance, or Agnotology, is still a new science. Nonetheless, a number of axioms might now be postulated:<br /><br />The first is that truth, especially scientific truth, has a moral component. There are no “unfettered” sciences, especially communications. <br /><br />An understanding that knowledge and ignorance (masquerading as content) have equal footing in the internet age might be a second axiom. While reason is necessary, only values are sufficient in the pursuit of truth. Unfortunately, the willingness of democracies to defend either reason or democratic values is still a cipher.<br /><br />A third postulate is the realization that modern journalism is not so much “the first draft of history” as it might be the last draft of truth. Journalism (Agnotology, Proctor and Schiebinger, p. 266) is clearly the prime suspect in the viral spread of ignorance and false narratives, now formalized as Agnotology. McCluhan captured the danger when he concluded: “News, far more than art, is artifact.”<br /><br />As an academic philosopher, Marshall McCluhan was familiar, no doubt, with the role of moral philosophy in the development of commerce and culture in the West; a tradition that included; Augustine, Aquinas, Erasmus, Adam Smith, and Immanuel Kant. Kant was unique because he was the first great modern ethicist without religious credentials. His arguments had a profound influence on western epistemology and legal traditions. His “categorical imperative,” the admonition to do the right thing (fiat justitia, pereat mundus), was a duty; an obligation based on reason informed by values - not appeals to tradition or theology. <br /><br />If there is now to be a science of ignorance, its implications are as relevant as epistemology or any subordinate field like communications theory. McCluhan was wrong. No medium, or content, is value neutral. This is not to say that McCluhan was amoral; he, like Google, Microsoft, and contemporary content providers, simply chose to ignore the values issue. <br /><br />Philosophers and entrepreneurs of the Internet Age at some point will be forced to consider a “binary imperative;” step up to the ethical plate or lose the cultural game. If we fail to consider what is best, surely we will succumb to the worst.<br /><br />……………………………………..<br /><br />This essay appeared in the 29 July 10 issue of <span style="font-style:italic;">Family Security Matters</span>.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-26234582729762822132010-07-05T10:01:00.000-07:002010-07-25T11:28:59.777-07:00Richard and HelenWhat the doyenne of the White House Press Corps misses (WashPost, 8 June 10) isn't half as important as what Richard Cohen and the the MSM ignore every day. The issue here isn't what Helen Thomas thinks about Israel; it's her expressed bigotry towards Jews that should be worrisome. Jews should "return to Germany and Poland" for what; a second shot at the Holocaust that missed them last century? <br /><br />Thomas's blatant and obscene suggestion goes to the heart of a myth perpetuated by most of Richard Cohen's colleagues and progressive fellow travelers (pardon any redundancy); this is the notion that if Israel behaved better, or disappeared, the Islamist menace goes away too. This line of thinking demonstrates a profound ignorance of Arab and Muslim history - and 50 years of modern Islamic barbarisms. The roots of Muslim irredentism and antisemitism predate the modern state of Israel by a millennium or more.<br /><br />We don't need a lesson in Holocaust history so much as Cohen and every other urban redneck like Thomas needs a lesson in the history of Islam (see "Islam and Monoculture," <span style="font-style:italic;">American Thinker</span>,16 Aug 09) The distinction, made by self-loathers, between Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism is just another burqa for a kind of politically correct bigotry. Israel was once thought to be the canary in the coal mine of civilization; we might now change the metaphor to sacrificial lamb. Cohen, and those who believe as he does, is making the next Holocaust likely.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-51458593442535769782010-06-29T00:50:00.000-07:002010-06-29T01:06:22.127-07:00Who Betrays US?"If everybody is thinking alike, then someone isn’t thinking.” - George S. Patton <br /><br />Crystal is not glass. Strike crystal and it rings like a bell. When it breaks, crystal makes a special noise, a sound like the end of music. The other day, we heard the end of a special elergy, the 24 notes of taps, when General Stanley McChrystal furled his flag. <br /><br />McChrystal was no ordinary infantryman; he chose the road not taken. Rangers are a unique fraternity where only extraordinary warriors thrive. Those who rise to the top in any calling often walk a fine line between genius and eccentricity, soldiers are no exception. General McChrystal crossed the line more than once, but he never stepped on a land mine until Rolling Stone magazine came to do a “profile” at HQ Afghanistan.<br /><br />The agent of McChrystal’s demise was an effete free lancer who looks and sounds like a prep school refugee. Lest anyone pretend the author of “The Runaway General” didn’t have an agenda, Michael Hastings coined the following journalistic axioms in an earlier piece for GQ: <br /><br />"You pretend to be friendly and non-threatening. And over time you build trust, which everyone knows is an illusion. If the time comes, if your editors calls for it, you're supposed to f--k them (your subject) over."<br /><br />Hastings was on special assignment for a magazine whose usual fare is sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Yet, like Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone has cultural pretensions. Those affectations were on full display in the McChrystal issue. Lady Gaga (sic) graces the cover; equipped with a bullet brassiere on full auto. Ms. Gaga is a performance artist whose cultural niche is defined by Madonna groupies. <br /><br />Like Hefner, Wenner panders to a young and, by their own definition, hip demographic of readers under 30 years of age; although both publishers might charitably be described as priapic geriatrics, 84 and 64 years of age respectively. Like all purveyors of progressive culture, Wenner has trouble separating value and vulgar. And, to no one’s surprise, he consistently carries water for the left; as a Clintonista or, more recently, as an Obama contributor. <br /><br />From any perspective, we have to assume that General McChrystal, and/or his staff, was aware of these things and the risks of having of an anti-war zealot in their midst. The key question to be answered is; who was using whom? <br /><br />After Afghanistan, a maverick like McChrystal wasn’t going to be selected for a political job like Army Chief of Staff. Hard to picture McChrystal, like the incumbent George Casey, making the rounds of the Sunday gab shows reminding citizens that the feelings of Muslims were more important than the safety of soldiers massacred at Ft. Hood, Texas. And surely McChrystal wasn’t a candidate to follow Mike Mullen into the political swamp at the JCS. On the Pentagon’s E Ring, Mullen is better known for social issues, like gay “rights” for sailors, than he is for war fighting. There were no stars in McChrystal’s future either; he already had his four.<br /><br />McChrystal is a country music fan; no doubt he’s familiar with Kristofferson’s iconic line: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” When McChrystal let the fox into the Afghan hen house, he knew which huevos were in play.<br /><br />Before the Rolling Stone controversy, the friction between the “White House wimps” and the military brass was the worst kept secret in Washington. Yet the rift, from the beginning was cultivated by the president - and what can only be described as a cabal of divisive beltway toadies. From the start, Obama ignored the field commander, refused to define the enemy or describe the end game - or explain to the American public why Afghanistan “is a war of necessity.” The party line had three “soft” features; don’t use the word “war,” don’t mention Islam, and restrict descriptions of the bad guys to either Taliban or al Qaeda. <br /><br />Shortly after the election, Obama put on his long pants and fired the previous ISAF commander in Afghanistan - and then dithered for months over troop deployments. Since then, the White House has been driving on a learner’s permit. In the past year and a half, the commander in chief has met the tactical commander on few occasions; McChrystal, in contrast, has met with Hamid Karzai, face to face, over 50 times during the same period. If McChrystal claims Obama is only “disengaged” on the subject of war: the general is being generous.<br /><br />The hapless Senate majority leader, Harry Reid (D- Nevada), told America that the Iraq “war is lost,” just before the last American election. A newly elected Vice President followed up with very public carping at General McChrystal’s expense. If there were ever a toady who should be cashiered for loose lips; it’s Joe Biden (hereafter known as Joe “bite me” to troops in the field). Biden doesn’t just put his foot in his mouth; he doesn’t bother to remove his shoes after he steps in something. Biden’s advice on Iraq was to subdivide, i.e. three new states (sic), as if the UN didn’t have enough dysfunctional members.<br /><br />“Team” Obama was augmented by Richard Holbrooke and Karl Eikenberry early on, both sent to Kabul, presumably, to make sure McChrystal walked the “soft power” walk. Unfortunately, neither Holbroke nor Eikenberry play well with other adults. <br /><br />Holbrooke’s function in South Asia is a dark swan. He doesn’t seem to get along with anyone but himself. In the foggy world of diplomacy, androgyny, and cookie pushing; Holbrooke stands out. He is supposed to be a special envoy; but, his specialties might be limited to arrogance and petulance. Holbrooke, former Clintonista and incumbent Karzai basher, doesn’t play well with 3rd World leaders or allied military officers.<br /><br />And Eikenberry’s performance isn’t too far removed from Holbrooke’s. Soon after arriving in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry started to “back channel” McChrystal, (i.e. send critical, uncomplimentary reports back to Washington). Indeed, Eikenberry pique seems to have been tweaked because a Brit, and not Eikenberry, was appointed “viceroy”; a slight he seems to lay at the feet of a Karzai/McChrystal conspiracy. Eikenberry was miscast by Rolling Stone as a martinet “stuck in 1985;” the year may be closer to 1895 and the Eikenberry character could have come straight out of Gilbert and Sullivan. <br /><br />On the UN side of Kabul, the blue helmets were having a civil war of their own. Norway’s Kai Eide, and his American deputy, Peter Galbraith, had a transnational shoot out over the legitimacy of Hamid Karzai’s election in 2009. Galbraith got fired, Karzai got a second term, and Eide took the Quisling special back to Scandinavia. Eide was and remains an ardent fan of accommodation with the Taliban<br /><br />These “team” players were supplemented by a gaggle of second guessers back in Washington with the president’s national security advisor, Jim Jones, on point. Jones’ most recent contribution to the clueless sweeps was a “greedy Jew” joke spliced into a speech that was supposed to underline American support of Israel. After 18 months in office, the commander in chief has traveled to several Arab, Turkish, and Muslim capitals, yet never to Israel. Mr. Obama’s Islamic globe trotting sends a message consistent with Jones’ taste in jokes. From the beginning, the former Marine commandant, like Joe Biden, also made loud noises that undermined or contradicted McChrystal’s strategy at the front.<br /><br />So what’s a soldier to do when a president hand picks you to lead the charge in combat and then allows rear echelon cockroaches to eat your lunch? McChrystal did what any good guerrilla fighter would do; he let another insect carry a poison pill back to a dysfunctional nest. Indeed, General McChrystal performed one final service for his country; he used a press nitwit to expose a confederacy of national security dunces; using the prescribed “soft” tactics – things like toxic ridicule. <br /><br />A cipher in all of this is Hilary; she comes off like the Cheshire cat; grinning from ear to ear while the Oval Office tries to put lipstick on another pig. Clinton has kept her distance; “give him (McChrystal) what he wants;” says she. If and when the Obama national security crowd self-destructs, Hilary can say “I told you so,” pick up the pieces, and do a pants suit rendition of what Bobby Kennedy did to Lyndon Johnson in 1968.<br /><br />Any idea that McChrystal was insubordinate or threatened civilian authority is bravo sierra, as they say in the barracks. The general simply raised the blinds and let in some light. He even helped the young president to grow up a bit. On the day Obama let his field commander go, the president used the word “war” to describe the Afghan conflict. That’s progress! Obama then appointed a third field commander in 18 months; demoting the CENTCOM commander to replace McChrystal in Kabul. <br /><br />And yes, the new guy is the old David Petraeus who, when serving in Iraq under George Bush, was vilified by the left, including then Senator Obama, as a liar and traitor. Indeed, the same news outlets that published those scurrilous George Soros ads, now celebrate the Petraeus choice as “inspired.” General “betray us” under a Republican has morphed into General “save us” under a Democrat. So much for politics stopping at the water’s edge.<br /><br />So what’s the plan now? It appears the exit strategy for Iraq and Afghanistan is on schedule (according to Joe bite me) and Petraeus will be the happy face of at least one success even if it belongs to the previous administration. Yet, the president is still hostage to a campaign slogan, that “war of necessity.” Unfortunately, the Oval Office position is already flanked left and right. The incumbent does not want to carry any war, of choice or necessity, into the next presidential cycle. And the Cheshire cat just grins and waits. <br /><br />All of which highlights the distinction between politics, Chicago style and principled soldiering, McChrystal style. Given a choice between sacrifice and survival, which road do men of character take? McChrystal has answered that question; he fell on his sword. Obama will get back to us in 13 months. <br /><br />Stanley McChrystal may have furled his flag, but let’s hope he has not spiked his guns. In or out of Iraq and Afghanistan, the threat whose name we dare not speak will get worse before it gets better. When it does, real soldiers will need to strap on their irons again. Keep your powder dry, Stan.<br /><br />--------------------------------------<br /><br />A shorter version of this essay appeared in the 29 June 10 edition of <span style="font-style:italic;">American</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">Thinker</span>G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-14226751143958169432010-06-22T03:31:00.000-07:002010-06-22T03:43:59.905-07:00Applebaum; the buck stops with BP?“Never confuse movement with action.” – Ernest Hemmingway<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Frau Fraud</span><br /><br />Almost every time you read an Applebaum column in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Washington Post</span>, you will be reminded that the author is a conservative. Such clues are necessary because, unlike Charles Krauthammer, you would never know from reading Annie's copy. Applebaum is in danger of giving tokenism and affirmative action a bad name.<br /><br />Indeed, Ms. Applebaum reads more like E.J. Dionne on a bad hair day. Take her recent contribution, "The oil spill isn't Obama's Katrina,"(Wash Post, 15 June) where she absolves the administration for the accident and its consequences. With such reasoning Ms. Applebaum qualifies for an "s--t (rhymes with twit) happens" tee shirt, or maybe a bumper sticker that reads; THE BUCK STOPS WITH BP.<br /><br />More than a few facts are ignored or distorted in Ms. Applebaum’s argument. First, the accident wasn’t a spill; it was a blowout (aka leak). Second, Katrina was an "act of God," as lawyers are wont to say, and the blowout was man-made. Thirdly, if you give government, at any level, an excuse to do nothing - it will do nothing. A fourth feature of the problem, overlooked by Applebaum, is that federal restrictions in safe areas have pushed oil seekers to deeper waters where the hazards are greater.<br /><br />Nonetheless, the Oval Office response to the Gulf disaster from the start was too little and way too late. The initial posture was "not our problem," and a storm of invective was hurled at the most visible industry culprit. In fact, there were several industries and a host of government culprits including the Minerals Management Service (MMS). When the MMS chief, Elizabeth Birnbaum, was fired; the President either did not know, or lied, about the firing to a room full of complicit journalists. If the government could do nothing, why fire the hapless Ms. Birnbaum? <br /><br />Instead of marshaling every resource, foreign and domestic, to manage the damage, political and Press nitwits insisted on quibbling for two months about estimates of the "flow," as if they didn't know that precise flow could only be known once the flow was captured. Here we have a legitimate Katrina flashback. Remember those early Press casualty estimates; those 10,000 Katrina dead that never materialized? <br /><br />The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a case study of a flawed model of governance. Like all liberal or socialist models, the internal contradictions are insurmountable. On the one hand, the statist argues for more government hands in every detail of life - until government fails; and then he blames everyone except the “managers” feeding at the public trough. <br /><br />The knee jerk reaction of the Oval Office to the Gulf disaster was to point fingers and look backwards. Somehow, even after years in power, four if you count a Democrat Congress, the previous administration is still blamed for all of our ills. The "blame Bush" irredentism is a creepy echo of Communist era paranoia when totalitarian failures were laid at the feet of Imperialists and counter revolutionaries. <br /><br />The excuse making of Ms. Applebaum and like minded apologists does nothing but resurrect all the original doubts about a politician who was thought to be a callow amateur; an inexperienced, empty suit with a good rap. The "community organizer" model is one that sees management as a public relations problem; i.e. you manage the crisis by controlling the spin.<br /><br />The drilling embargo announced shortly after the blowout is illustrative. Before the explosion, the White House was for more drilling, after the accident, a moratorium was announced - natural disaster would now be compounded by economic suicide. Halting new drilling is like shooting the wounded. What's next, grounding every airline after the another crash?<br /><br />Stephen Chu’s resume is another swirl in the spin cycle. The White House seeks to reassure a skeptical public by mentioning the Energy Secretary’s Nobel Prize at every opportunity. Mentioning Chu’s physics prize does nothing but illuminate his lack of experience as a crisis manager or drilling engineer. Dr. Chu’s prize is about as relevant to the Gulf problem as Mr. Obama’s prize was to world peace. Credentials may be necessary, but they are never sufficient.<br /><br />Ms. Applebaum, like the White House, seems oblivious to the big picture; that is how to achieve energy independence and minimize risk. There are no risk free solutions and there are no silver bullets either; there are only painful trade offs. Most hobby horse technologies amount to expensive wishful thinking while proven solutions like nuclear power languish because of opposition from the left. The same “progressive” factions that oppose safe shallow water exploration and safe drilling on federal lands are also anti-nuclear. <br /><br />So again the nation is in peril because politicians can not overcome ideological or obstructionist partisans. The true villains in the Gulf disaster are vacuums; a want of political leadership and a lack of legislative courage. <br /><br />Anne Applebaum is correct about one thing; the Gulf oil blowout is not another hurricane; it's much worse by orders of magnitude. The White House and Congress are hurling charges about a "reckless" oil industry in the vain hope that nobody notices the public servants who continue to posture and dither at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. <br /><br />It is more dangerous to work on a drill rig or a deep sea fishing boat than it is to serve in combat. The risks and sacrifices of oil workers are seldom noted by politicians or industry critics. Death by fire is a horrible end. <br /><br />Until the blowout, BP was one of the most successful companies of modern times. Would that public services of any sort be half as productive or competent. Big enterprises, like BP, create jobs and wealth; big government consumes wealth and often smothers enterprise. It is obscene for any politician to suggest that safety is not a constant concern of those who take the risks as a condition of their employment. <br /><br />BP has lost half its market value since the accident; were governments to shrink comparably when they fail, taxpayers might be better served. The problem with our notion of “public servants” is that only half of the phrase is true.<br /><br />Ms. Applebaum's brand of journalistic agnotology recently won a Pulitzer Prize, a tribute which should put to rest any doubts about her politics. Indeed, she and fellow laureate, Janet Cooke, now share the same pedestal and similar fantasies. <br /><br />_______________________________<br /><br />This article originally appeared in the 22 June 10 edition of <span style="font-style:italic;">Family Security</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">Matters</span>.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-26777016020622519082010-06-09T05:58:00.000-07:002010-06-09T06:08:39.630-07:00Those Troublesome JewsCharles Krauthammer<br />Washington Post<br /><br />Some truth for a change.<br /><br />A timely tale (Wash Post, 4 June 10), well told, Charles. Little room for optimism left. I used to think of Israel as the canary in the coal mine, now the metaphor might be changed to sacrificial lamb. Unfortunately, Israel may be the price we pay for our next wake up call. Were I an American Jew, I would be nervous; were I an Israeli, I might think about putting my head between my legs and kissing my ass goodbye. For Israel's enemies, the next three years are the window of opportunity they have been anticipating for last 60 years. The next Holocaust may not be a "final solution," but the next attempt will surely be worse than the last. <br /><br /><br />http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304287.html?hpid=opinionsbox1G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-54390926777624301162010-06-01T15:36:00.000-07:002010-06-01T16:02:33.124-07:00Manly Women and Girly Men“If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.” – Nietzsche <br /><br />Have you noticed how many Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) types are showing up on the editorial pages and network chat shows these days? You can’t miss the girls; Nina Totenberg, Diane Rehm, Gwen Ifill, and Eleanor Clift. (Yes, Eleanor made her bones as a public pundit!) Most of them look, and sound, like refugees from a John Waters makeover in Baltimore - hair helmets and all. <br /><br />Top dollar female commercial network anchors and correspondents, on the other hand, usually look and squeak like pole dancers (think Kelly or Norah O’Donnell); yet, when the need is for an acid tongue; the public bullpens at CPB or BBC are where the go-to gals hang out. <br /><br />Katty Kay missed the network glam team by a decade or three, but she kept her stage name anyway. Kay is one of those unique triple-dippers; hands in two public pockets - and one shapely ankle dipped in commerce. She now sits to the left of ABC’s Chris Mathews on Sunday morning - should there be any lingering doubts about Ms. Kay’s politics. Truth is, you can not have a news panel or reality (pardon any redundancy) show in America today unless your team includes at least one bitchy or condescending representative of the British Commonwealth. Take a bow Simon!<br /><br />Most of the public broadcasting chaps, by the same token, seem to look like Andrea Mitchell or Katie Couric. The look may be pant’s suit ambiguous, thanks to Hilary, but there’s nothing vague about fey politics; all the boys hail from left field. <br /><br />Even token conservatives like Paul Gigot are well left of center. A token is any nominal conservative who has accepted a Pulitzer or pretends to provide the “balance” on a loaded panel. The men of CPB seem to take their cues from progressive stalwarts like Bill Moyers or Daniel Schorr. Moyers, you may recall, had retired, but CPB brought him back to cover the Obama Awakening.<br /><br />Girly men were all over the fish wrap last month. First, there was the study suggesting that healthy (as in plump?) women prefer effeminate men. The study was mute on the preferences of skinny sensitive men; but, chubby chasing was not excluded. Christina Romer and Elena Kagan might need Secret Service protection.<br /><br />The ‘girlie man’ study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, also concluded that countries with “poor hygiene” were more likely to tolerate polygamy. What happens when the natives in Arabia, South Asia, and Utah get this bulletin? <br /><br />And then we saw Rupert Murdoch outing Arthur Sulzberger, the flamboyant editor of the New York Times, as a “poofter” on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Can you say Manhattan cat fight? What’s next; limp noodles at fifty paces?<br /><br />Ever anxious to stay with the big boys, Fred Hiatt, editor at the Washington Post has been featuring the soft side of Agnotology in the wake of the Obamacare vote. Take Matt Miller’s piece, “The Republican Crack Up,” on 31 March. Now if you knew ahead of time that Mathew had a sinecure at a “progressive” think tank (Center for American Progress), a microphone at National Public Radio, and a column at the Post – you probably wouldn’t read the article, because it would be too predictable. <br /><br />Nonetheless, his argument has four premises; the Republicans “lost big” (sic) on the healthcare issue, the “tax issue” is dead, Mitt Romney will be hoisted on the “Massachusetts” health care petard, and Obamacare brings “security that families crave”. Any, or all of these, sound like they might be White House talking points?<br /><br />Miller’s soft spin ignores more than a few facts. To date, all the political losses have been Democrat; and a bi-partisan majority has consistently opposed Obamacare and the inevitable higher taxes. And who anointed Mitt Romney as the Republican heir apparent? And who argues that a particular state, especially uber liberal Massachusetts, is representative of America on any issue? <br /><br />Miller also ignores the risky synergy of debt, deficits, recession, unemployment, “higher taxes,” and all of the uncertainties associated with yet another major federal program. Sanity is now the major domestic concern; “security” left the tent when another entitlements circus came to town. Withal, Miller puts words in the mouths of imaginary enemies and then proceeds to argue with himself as if no one will notice him begging (or buggering) the question.<br /><br />Such reasoning might be dismissed as the untidy musings of a giddy progressive, but it seems that the author is a Brown University product. Indeed, a few clicks of the browser reveal that Mathew Miller has a web site devoted to himself. Ut ameris, amabilis esto!<br /><br />Like their role models at BBC, American public radio and television newsrooms have long been an employer of first resort for “progressive” polemicists like Miller. Ironically, their commercial colleagues, already awash in partisan muck, are trying to save themselves by throwing a lifeline to the Left. Featuring more liberals, to save a sinking “mainstream,” is a little like bailing water into the boat.<br /><br />Maybe it’s something in the water or maybe just a politically correct variant of narcissism, but the Left in America has become loopier and loopier over time. Ambiguity and hysteria appear to emanate from some fundamental confusion. Admission to the progressive club today seems to be predicated on some bizarre affirmative action criteria; a 25% set aside for women who want to be men, a 25 % set aside for men who want to be women and a 50% reserve for those who might not make either team. <br /><br />……………………………………………………<br /><br />The author is a recovering urban progressive who left the Bronx at an early age to get a job and become an adult. He also blogs at G. Murphy DonovanG. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1517527069940347632.post-88740825579967100502010-05-23T05:41:00.000-07:002010-07-25T11:32:45.024-07:00The Internet and the Agora“The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know.” – Charles Pierce (1870)<br /><br />The blogosphere seems to be flushing the mainstream downstream. The blowback is venomous, not a pretty sight. Media stars, especially, are fighting a vicious rear guard action against the inevitable. The rise of the Internet and the fall of traditional journalism are giving hyperbole a new lease on life. <br /><br />First we see Tom Friedman on Meet the Press calling the Internet “an open sewer of disinformation”. Then we hear Eric Schmidt, from the heights of Mountain View, second the motion by calling the Net a “cesspool.” Next, Ellen Goodman, in her swan song, tells us with a straight face that Internet users will lament the loss of “fact checkers” and old school “journalists.” <br /><br />Friedman’s attack on the blogosphere fairly drips with irony. His opinion colleague at The New York Times, Maureen Dowd, was cited for plagiarizing from a blogger last May. And now again in February the Times has had to fire a financial reporter, Zachery Kouwe, for lifting copy from The Wall Street Journal.<br /><br />Truth is not simply what you say; it is also what you don’t say. What Ms. Goodman does not say is that facts are what we choose to believe. Unfortunately, what we believe is not necessarily true. And so it is with Goodman’s facts and analysis.<br /><br />A list of fact checkers from Ms. Goodman’s world of truth might include; Janet Cooke, Ben Bradlee, Stone Phillips, Jane Pauley, Mike Wallace, Mike Barnicle, Jayson Blair, Howell Raines, Dan Rather, Nina Totenberg, and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Professor Goodwin is included here because she is a high profile triple threat; academic, historian, and Media maven.<br /><br />These traditional practitioners have one or more of the following in common; fraud, plagiarism, misrepresentation, cover up, or little or no fact checking. These are just the descriptions that might be used in polite conversation. <br /><br />Yet, those are not all of the facts. Consider also the iconic institutions that employed or continue to employ such poseurs: The Washington Post, NBC, CBS, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, ABC, National Public Radio, and Harvard University. <br /><br />Cases of journalistic malpractice often have common denominators; tenured activists and like-minded employers. The Washington Post and The New York Times cases are instructive. Their agendas were mirror images. <br /><br />In September 1980, Janet Cooke created a fiction about a young District of Columbia crack addict. The Post story was nominated by the paper’s editors for a Pulitzer Prize. After the prize was awarded, some real fact checkers couldn’t find the lad in question and the fraud was exposed. When Editor Ben Bradlee tried to return the prize; the Pulitzer Committee demurred at first, confirming that this competition, like the annual Norwegian Nobel peace contest, is a kind of Special Olympics for the politically correct. <br /><br />The New York Times fraud of 2003 was an eerie parallel to The Washington Post tale more than two decades earlier. Times editor Howell Raines ignored internal complaints about Jayson Blair’s sloppy work and advanced his young black protégé anyway. And, like Janet Cooke, Blair stepped on a land mine covering a story with racial overtones – the Beltway sniper. <br /><br />Blair’s scam was exposed by a former Times employee and the scandal occasioned an internal review that pretty much concluded that Jayson’s entire tenure under Raines was an extended exercise in misguided affirmative action, if not ethnic immunity. After the Raines era, The New York Times might have changed its motto to; “All the news that fits, we print!”<br /><br />The real story behind both frauds was the hazards of soft racism. Both reporters were all too willing to spin narratives about African American drug abusers and serial killers that their editors were all too willing to print - facts be damned. This willingness to confirm racial stereotypes by black reporters and white editors is the real tale yet to be told. <br /><br />The perils of patronizing bias are not limited by race, youth, or sex. Newsroom cougars have been part of the swim to the bottom too. Maureen Dowd, Sally Quinn, and Ellen Goodman could be pinups for journalistic agnotology, other variants of false narrative. <br /><br />Miss Dowd recently accused a congressman of calling the president a “boy” with no proof other than innuendo. The false narrative here is the belief that those who criticize black politicians are bigots. Ms. Quinn (Ben Bradlee’s wife), along with Jon Meacham, famously hosts an ecumenical web site (On Faith) which features Islamist apologists. The false narrative here is the belief that there are “moderate” or harmless variants of Jihad and Sharia. And lastly there is Ellen Goodman, herself, who in a recent column equated those who question some of the “junk science,” associated with global warming, with “holocaust deniers.” These recent cases illustrate the lack of fair play and racial double think that has come to characterize many traditional newsrooms.<br /><br />As it is with fact checking, reporting, and analysis; Media dinosaurs are again unwilling or unable to deal with truth. The mainstream monopoly is over. It is no longer possible for a few elites with a narrow ideology to control information or analysis, the building blocks of belief. Hemingway, a journalist by trade, was fond of saying that good writers know what to throw out. The same might be said of good editors.<br /><br />Politics, academia, and journalism are all troubled by the absence of term limits. Over time, these institutions tend to collect like-minded players where tenure becomes the dominant idiom. Small wonder that the ideological stasis at the networks and in the newsroom has fueled the “thunder on the Right,” enabling the rise of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch. A news consumer hopes to be better informed by the provider. If we are misled or polarized; surely, these are self-inflicted wounds.<br /><br />Limbaugh and Murdoch have thrived for different reasons. Limbaugh sees himself as a voice for a “silent majority,” an audience patronized or ignored by the mainstream. Unlike his detractors, Limbaugh makes no secret of his agenda and he makes no fatuous claims of impartiality. Murdoch is probably less ideological, but just as savvy. Possibly taking a cue from Limbaugh, Murdoch and his FOX network recognized an underserved audience and exploited the bias of their competitors. There’s money to be made in filling a vacuum – even when it’s something as simple as providing another point of view.<br /><br />The virtues of the new paradigm are self evident. On the Internet, readers can go to an original content site, an aggregator, or they might create their own site. No one, save endangered pundits, laments the end of network and press monopolies; or the role that tenure, spin, hypocrisy, and bias play at those institutions. The Internet is the best thing to happen to free choice since Erasmus; the best thing to happen to democracy since John Locke; and the best thing to happen to commerce since Adam Smith. The Internet is the new agora, a new market for ideas. The end of the mainstream, the mendacity monopoly, is gospel. Good news indeed!<br /><br />___________________________<br /><br />A shorter version of this piece appears in the <span style="font-style:italic;">American Tinker</span> on 27 Feb 10.<br />The author is also the principal contributor to Anacostia Angst on Blogspot.G. Murphy Donovanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14524265596388811573noreply@blogger.com0