Bruce Bawer: An Anatomy of Surrender

What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, Kho­meini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.

The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success. Two events in particular—the 2004 assassination in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh in retaliation for his film about Islam’s oppression of women, and the global wave of riots, murders, and vandalism that followed a Danish newspaper’s 2005 publication of cartoons satirizing Mohammed—have had a massive ripple effect throughout the West. Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideology—which teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressive—people at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies. (Emphasis mine)

 

On Dec. 1, 1963, immediately after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X responded to that event with the comment that, "Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad," prompting the audience, according to a newspaper account, "to loud applause and laughter." When, shortly after, Malcolm X explained his comment in an interview with Louis Lomax, his views closely anticipated Wright's:

I meant that the death of Kennedy was the result of a long line of violent acts, the culmination of hate and suspicion and doubt in this country. You see, Lomax, this country has allowed white people to kill and brutalize those they don't like. The assassination of Kennedy is a result of that way of life and thinking. The chickens came home to roost; that's all there is to it. America—at the death of the President—just reaped what it had been sowing. (Source: Daniel Pipes)

 

   An increasingly firm Howard Dean told CNN again Thursday that he needs superdelegates to say who they’re for – and “I need them to say who they’re for starting now.”

“We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,” the Democratic National Committee Chairman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We’ve got to know who our nominee is.”

After facing criticism for a mostly hands-off leadership style during much of the primary season, Dean has been steadily raising the rhetorical pressure on superdelegates. He said Thursday that roughly 65 percent of them have made their preference plain, but that more than 300 have yet to make up their minds.

The Patriot Post

Founders' Quote Daily

 "The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity."

~~ George Washington (letter to the people of South Carolina, Circa 1790)

Reference: Maxims of George Washington, Schroeder, ed. (16); original The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Fitzpatrick, ed., vol. 31 (67)

“You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl,” she said. (Source: FOXNews, CNN Politics)

"She is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the Second Amendment. She's talking like she's Annie Oakley," Obama said, invoking the famed female sharpshooter immortalized in the musical "Annie Get Your Gun." (Souce: FOXNews: Fox and Friends, Washington Post)

“FOX News can’t understand that,” Wright said to rousing cheers and applause. “[Bill] O’Reilly will never get that. Sean Hannity’s stupid fantasy will keep him forever stuck on stupid when it comes to comprehending how you can love a brother who does not believe what you believe. [Pincham’s] faith was a faith in a God who loved the whole world not just one country or one creed.” (Source: FOXNews) Click here to listen to Reverend Wright's "sermon." 

 "This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great," George Allen on the campaign trail. (Source: Washington Post)

 

Speaking Thursday at a 100th birthday party and retirement celebration for Sen. Thurmond (R-S.C.) in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Lott said, "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." (Source: Washington Post)

"I remember landing under sniper fire," she said in Washington on Monday. "There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." (Emphasis mine, source: Newsvine)

"...I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator-when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time. I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. And that's just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation." (Source: American Thinker)

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. (Source: Ben Smith, FOXNews reported this afternoon as well)

 

Founders' Quote Daily

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint."

~~ Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 15)

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.
~~Ronald Reagan

Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives. 
~~Ronald Reagan

 

"In Colombia, 17,198 people were killed for all reasons in 2007.  That's down 40.4% from 2002.  Deaths among 833,000 union members dived 86.7 over that time, to just 26 last year." (Source: IBD, U.S.-Colombia Deal Faces Labor Deceit)

 

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."  ~~John Adams