PERHAPS, AT LONG LAST, American liberals are awakening, little-by-slow, to the horrific reality of the Islamic threat.
A group of Bostonians calling itself Citizens for Peace and Tolerance – by its birth announcement, a coalition of “concerned citizens, academics and community activists...united by the need to keep Boston Hate Free” – has launched a campaign to expose the influence of jihadist Islam not only in Boston but throughout the United States. The group says its membership includes Christians, Jews and (presumably moderate) Muslims. Its website, available here and worthy of a very thorough perusal, says CPAT’s immediate objective is countering "the establishment of a potential radical Islamist center in Boston, which will promote religious hatred and intolerance against Christians, Jews, humanists and secularists.” The news release announcing CPAT’s formation (once on its site, click on “Press Release”) is the first public acknowledgment by liberals I have ever seen anywhere of the dire threat to homeland security posed by politically “correct” – that is, matrifascist – censorship of mass media and public discourse in general. Note especially this key passage:
“We are...disturbed by the lack of public discourse and very limited media coverage relating to the role that radical Islam plays in American mosques and in particular the Islamic center being built in Boston,” Dennis Hale noted. “We are in a rhetorical trap of political correctness that does not know how to be ethnically sensitive and honest at the same time. This is very dangerous, given the intentions of radical Islamists. There’s a knee-jerk reaction by most of our civic leaders to refrain from any criticism of a perceived vulnerable minority. They don’t know how to deal with it; they are concerned about being accused of being anti-Muslim, and so they avoid it. Unfortunately, radical Islamists are well aware of this aversion and fully exploit it.”
About all I can say in response is, “amen!” And, yes, I have already bookmarked CPAT's website.
Meanwhile – lest I be overly encouraged – The New Republic Online contains a piece its author holds out as an example of Bush Administration hypocrisy but which in actual fact is damning evidence of an entirely different sort: proof positive of the dire extent to which the politically “correct” down-with-the-Jews cult still dominates the State Department. A legacy of the vicious anti-Semitism that was once a unifying characteristic of the (Protestant) Eastern Establishment and the federal bureaucracy it dominated (note for example the shameful U.S. policy of returning whole shiploads of European Jewish refugees to Nazi Germany for extermination), the cult is still strong enough to brazenly attempt to torpedo an important Congressional anti-Semitism measure:
The law's primary elements--including the new office and envoy, and the new reporting requirements--were the brainchild of Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress. Back in July, when Lantos was trying to get his ideas incorporated into a weaker bill on anti-Semitism--which would have required only a one-time report on the issue--an official at the State Department's Bureau of Legislative Affairs wrote him that a separate reporting requirement "could erode our credibility by being interpreted as favoritism in human rights reporting," and added that it would be "inappropriate to create a stand-alone section for one group when so many others involving severe abuses are treated in this established manner, which demonstrates equal respect for all groups." A livid Lantos fired off a letter to Colin Powell urging him to "immediately retract and disavow the Department comments ... as they reflect a shocking and offensive ignorance within the Department of State about the nature of anti-Semitism and the serious threat that it poses to U.S. interests." A month after the letter was received, Powell and Lantos spoke by phone, but the conversation did not produce a shift in State's position.
The rest of TNR’s story is available here. Too bad writer Janine Zacharia is so gullible (or perhaps so blinded by her hatred of President Bush) she does not understand how she is being used to discredit this administration – thus to replace it with a presidency guaranteed to be far more "understanding" of the Islamic threat.
Lastly – and touching on matters critical not only to the presidential election but to maintenance of the Republican majority in the Senate – there is a Must Read by Evelyn Nieves in The Washington Post:
...Five years after that visit, all the hopes Clinton stirred have amounted to very little. The house across the street from Blue Bird's still has no windows and no running water. Same goes for the one next to it, and the one next to that one. Beyond this neighborhood of brittle hovels one bad storm away from becoming firewood, the Pine Ridge Reservation is besieged by problems decades in the making and beyond its ability to fix.
More Lakotas who had left are returning to the Plains, preferring to live among their own people rather than in relative comfort on the outside. But failings of the federal government -- from mismanaging Indian money held in trust to shortchanging programs it is legally bound to fund -- continually undermine efforts here at self-help.
Things are not much better on some other reservations. The Navajos in the Southwest, the Crow tribe in Montana and the Comanches in Oklahoma are also very poor...
The rest of this eye-opening report is available here. (Sorry; registration required.) The story shows once again how the term “Indian giver” is a total reversal of reality: it is Wasicum who giveth then cunningly taketh away.
I am also embarrassed to say I do not have any idea how many votes the combined Indian Nations contribute to national elections. But I have no doubt that, this year more than any other, the electoral choices of American aboriginals will be vital to the outcome – every bit as vital as the rest of our votes.
Posted by Loren at October 21, 2004 04:23 AMI have read your postings since this blog opened and have noticed an interesting underlying rabid hostility emanating from you, especially towards women. Have you always been such an angry person?
Posted by: joseph at October 21, 2004 11:10 PMNot hostility and not rabid. (Your VDT may need cleaning or re-adjustment: that's a white beard -- not froth and foam -- around my mouth in the on-site mugshot.)
But I am very much vexed by the lack of choice in this presidential election, between an apparent bungler and an avowed appeaser (though the apparent bungler will at least fight for America). And I am frightened by the extent to which feminization has undermined our national will: witness our daily inability to unify against 9/11's renewal of the 14-century Islamic threat.
As much as I deplore feminism, I do not make the common error of assuming that feminists speak for all womankind. Thus I reserve the right to damn feminism specifically for its implicit tyranny and subversive intent, and assuredly not as a generalization about womanhood or femaleness. Most readers, I think, understand this distinction. Hence it is typically only feminists and their supporters who (falsely) accuse me of misogynism.
In this context, note my wholehearted praise of Annie Jacobsen and Michelle Malkin in "Two Good Writers, Two Must Reads." Last I heard, the courageous Ms. Jacobsen and the eloquent Ms. Malkin were both of the gender toward which you seem to feel I bear "underlying rabid hostility."
The duration of my anger? It dates precisely from the Muslim outrages of September 11, 2001, which I witnessed that awful morning on live TV. My anger is probably intensified by the fact I am a born New Yorker -- lived in the City until age 3, raised two-thirds in the South, one-third in Michigan, lived in Manhattan (by choice) for nine years as an adult. Beyond my reaction to the atrocities of 9/11, a sense of rightful indignation at injustice has always animated my best (and sometimes award-winning) journalism.
But journalism as I practice it is not a personality contest. If you disagree with my conclusions, be bold enough to say so -- and I will surely meet you half way in discussion.
Meanwhile, thank you for your readership. I always appreciate feedback, even if it is seemingly negative.
Posted by: Loren Bliss at October 22, 2004 02:48 AMFYI:
You seem to be under the impression that "Citizens for Peace and Tolerance" is a liberal group that has finally come to its senses. This is understandable, because the language CPT uses to describe itself is deliberately modeled on language employed by liberal grassroots groups.
Let me assure you, however, that you are mistaken - CPR is a front for Dennis Hale's anti-Muslim activism, whose aim this time is to discredit the Islamic Center under construction in Boston. Hale is also the founder of another group, the Episcopalian-Jewish Alliance for Israel, whose main function is to spread lies about the Mideast conflict to support Israel's Occupation.
I know Professor Hale well; he taught me Political Science at Boston College. He is a hardcore rightwinger like yourself - pro-war, pro-Bush, etc. He'd probably rail against "forced feminization" as you do, if he could get away with it.
Sorry to disappoint you: CPR isn't a sign that liberals are waking up to the "Islamic threat". It's just the same old bigoted conservatives, posing as liberals for PR purposes.
Posted by: K B at October 26, 2004 12:36 PM