Krauthammer on Loughner

Let's discuss our treatment of the mentally ill; our laws which tie our hands against the dangerous, ostensibly in favor of their right to autonomy...while disallowing others their right to safety, protection & even life.

Stop using this tragedy as a cynical, malicious political billy club...Just STOP.



Krauthammer -- the lone, brave voice in the wilderness.

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Wow: Charles Krauthammer. Really - wow!

The Last Refuge of a Liberal

By Charles KrauthammerFriday, August 27, 2010
*(all emphases mine)

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the "bitter" people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging "to guns or religion" or -- this part is less remembered -- "antipathy toward people who aren't like them."

That's a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

-- Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

-- Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

-- Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

-- Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities -- often lopsided majorities -- oppose President Obama's social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the Tea Party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president's proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.

Then came Arizona and S.B. 1070. It seems impossible for the left to believe that people of good will could hold that: (a) illegal immigration should be illegal, (b) the federal government should not hold border enforcement hostage to comprehensive reform, i.e., amnesty, (c) every country has the right to determine the composition of its immigrant population.

As for Proposition 8, is it so hard to see why people might believe that a single judge overturning the will of 7 million voters is an affront to democracy? And that seeing merit in retaining the structure of the most ancient and fundamental of all social institutions is something other than an alleged hatred of gays -- particularly since the opposite-gender requirement has characterized virtually every society in all the millennia until just a few years ago?

And now the mosque near Ground Zero. The intelligentsia is near unanimous that the only possible grounds for opposition is bigotry toward Muslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two-thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack of connection between Islam and radical Islam, a proposition that dovetails perfectly with the Obama administration's pretense that we are at war with nothing more than "violent extremists" of inscrutable motive and indiscernible belief. Those who reject this as both ridiculous and politically correct (an admitted redundancy) are declared Islamophobes, the ad hominem du jour.

It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms). Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with "antipathy toward people who aren't like them" -- blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims -- a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it succinctly, "just downright mean"?

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

~~

Ouch.

Perfect.

Thank you, God, for Charles Krauthammer!

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NASA's new mission: "Feel-good" outreach to Islam.

Hi friends,

My last post was full of video. Because I didn't want to overload the post w/ more, I didn't provide any BHO/NASA=Muslim "feel-good" outreach linkage.

But since my friend Expat Matt was curious & asked for it, here goes:


And Dr. Krauthammer's point of view on the matter:


"...a new height in fatuousness [foolishness/silliness]...this is the worst combination of group therapy psychobabble, imperial condescension & adolescent diplomacy...absolutely unbelievable."

Dr. Krauthammer, well said. Indeed.

~~~

Krauthammer: Foreign policy a la Obama

Conservatives take note: "while many of us learn liberalism from liberals, I fear that far too many of us have learned what conservatism is from liberals as well." So says our friend at A Voice in the Wilderness.

In the coming weeks/months, A Voice in TW will offer an "explanation and defense of the [conservative] things I believe in and what led me to believe in them...my intent is to clarify the positions and underlying assumptions of conservatism that bind us, however loosely." This ought to be interesting reading & discussion for us all, & thought I'd put in a plug for it!

Meanwhile, one of the keenest conservative minds of our time has a few words about Obama foreign policy, moral leadership & American Exceptionalism:



Please listen carefully to Dr. Krauthammer's clear & measured treatment of Obama's systematic dismantling or of the "moral foundation of American dominance."

Key phrases:
American Exceptionalism: refers to the theory that the United States occupies a special niche among the nations of the world[1] in terms of its national credo, historical evolution, political and religious institutions and unique origins. The roots of the term are attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville,[2] who claimed that the then-50-year-old United States held a special place among nations, because it was a country of immigrants and the first modern democracy.

hajj: the fifth pillar of Islam is a pilgrimage to Mecca during the month of Dhu al-Hijja; at least once in a lifetime a Muslim is expected to make...

undermine: to cause weakness in a foundation, to weaken gradually

moral claim to world leadership

moral confidence any nation needs to have to justify to itself (& to others) its position of leadership.

mandate of Heaven: a philosophy, rooted in Imperial Chinese history, assumed by the evolution of American democracy, which presented itself to the world as something like a heaven-sent template for the democratic future of humankind.

So, now that the new non-exceptional, "humbled America" has abdicated world leadership, how does this 'new world' govern itself?

Odd, now that he has stripped the world of its 'governor,' we don't hear Mr. Obama posing structure & means for such governing, do we?

~~~

A Guy, A Bartender & Charles Krauthammer

Just because I’m in a mood…

You’ll see, this all ties together:

So a guy walks into a bar & asks the bartender, “What’s the difference between God & Obama?”
Bartender: “I don’t know, what?”
Guy: “God doesn’t think he’s Obama.”

And…

Charles Krauthammer is one of my journalistic heroes. This piece says everything that’s been on the tip of our tongues, but we couldn’t quite wrap words around it. Krauthammer: brilliant.

Hovering on High: Obama Surveys the World
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, June 12, 2009

WASHINGTON -- When President Obama returned from his first European trip, I observed that while over there he had been "acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating" between America and the world. Now that Obama has returned from his "Muslim world" pilgrimage, even the left agrees. "Obama's standing above the country, above -- above the world. He's sort of God," Newsweek's Evan Thomas said to a concurring Chris Matthews, reflecting on Obama's lofty perception of himself as the great transcender.

Not that Obama considers himself divine. (He sees himself as merely messianic, or, at worst, apostolic.) But he does position himself as hovering above mere mortals, mere country, to gaze benignly upon the darkling plain beneath him where ignorant armies clash by night, blind to the common humanity that only he can see. Traveling the world, he brings the gospel of understanding and godly forbearance. We have all sinned against each other. We must now look beyond that and walk together to the sunny uplands of comity and understanding. He shall guide you. Thus:

(A) He told Iran that, on the one hand, America once helped overthrow an Iranian government, while on the other hand "Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians." (Played a role?!) We have both sinned; let us bury the past and begin anew.

(B) On religious tolerance, he gently referenced the Christians of Lebanon and Egypt, then lamented that the "divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence" (note the use of the passive voice). He then criticized (in the active voice) Western religious intolerance for regulating the wearing of the hijab -- after citing America for making it difficult for Muslims to give to charity.

(C) Obama offered Muslims a careful admonition about women's rights , noting how denying women education impoverishes a country -- balanced, of course, with "meanwhile, the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life."

Well, yes. On the one hand, there certainly is some American university where the women's softball team has received insufficient Title IX funds -- while, on the other hand, Saudi women showing ankle are beaten in the street, Afghan school girls have acid thrown in their faces, and Iranian women are publicly stoned to death for adultery. (Gays, as well -- but then again we have Prop 8.) We all have our shortcomings, our national foibles. Who's to judge?

That's the problem with Obama's transcultural evenhandedness. It gives the veneer of professorial sophistication to the most simple-minded observation: Of course there are rights and wrongs in all human affairs. Our species is a fallen one. But that doesn't mean that these rights and wrongs are of equal weight.

A CIA rent-a-mob in a coup 56 years ago does not balance the hostage-takings, throat-slittings, terror bombings and wanton slaughters perpetrated for 30 years by a thug regime in Teheran (and its surrogates) that our own State Department calls the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism."

True, France prohibits the wearing of the hijab in certain public places, in part to allow the force of law to protect Muslim women who might be coerced into wearing it by neighborhood fundamentalist gangs. But it borders on the obscene to compare this mild preference for secularization (seen in Muslim Turkey as well) to the violence that has been visited upon Copts, Maronites, Baha'i, Druze and other minorities in Muslim lands, and to the unspeakable cruelties perpetrated by Shiites and Sunnis upon each other.

Even on freedom of religion, Obama could not resist the compulsion to find fault with his own country: "For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation" -- disgracefully giving the impression to a foreign audience not versed in our laws that there is active discrimination against Muslims, when the only restriction, applied to all donors regardless of religion, is on funding charities that serve as fronts for terror.

Hallelujah! THIS is what I was talking about, in part, when I made my case (comments) that Obama was incredibly manipulative, injecting racism into his speech, using it against his own country. I can hear angels singing!

Obama undoubtedly thinks he is demonstrating historical magnanimity with all these moral equivalencies and self-flagellating apologetics. On the contrary. He's showing cheap condescension, an unseemly hunger for applause and a willingness to distort history for political effect.

Distorting history is not truth-telling, but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership, but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one's own country.

Brilliant.

Meanwhile, back @ the bar:
Bartender: "Nah, Obama's not God. He just plays one on TV..."

~~~