Phyllis Chesler: President Obama Believes He Can Charm the Barbarians

Another great Chesler article at PJM:

Western liberals — and in the past I have been a very good one — still refuse to describe any culture other than their own as “barbaric” lest they be maligned as “racists.” Now, America’s first (half) African-American president, whose first order of business was to reach out to the Muslim world on Al-Arabiya, has said he will actively negotiate with the Iranians, Afghans, Pakistanis, and Saudis.

I wish him well. But I also fear for him and hope he reads what I have to say.

He must understand that he will be dealing with barbarians. Like all good liberals, he may not understand what that means. But what word other than “barbaric” describes the systematic incitement to violence that takes place in mosques and on television and which has led to mob rampages and episodes of “wilding” against Muslim girls and women who are group-groped, gang raped, kidnapped into sexual slavery, set on fire, buried alive, blinded by acid for daring to go to school, work as a newscaster, a hairdresser, or for a foreign company, refuse to wear a shroud, or choose to marry someone of their own choice. Few Muslim clerics and even fewer fabled Muslim “moderates” have loudly and perilously condemned such behavior towards their sisters–or towards Christians, Jews, and other infidels who routinely fall prey to such mobs.

President Obama is in favor of women’s rights as is his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. How in God’s name do they think they can persuade barbarians who behave in such ways to change their behaviors?

…

The western liberal media is not so much reluctant as it is terrified to further offend the rampaging Muslims whose religion is, presumably, one of peace. But not telling the truth, keeping one’s head deep in the sand, does not abolish the barbarism. It only makes it more difficult for us to name it and to defend ourselves against it.

…

“Barbarism” is not only a mob or youth-gang phenomena. It defines the very nature of Muslim religious law.

For example, on February 11, 2009, a Saudi judge ordered that a young woman who was gang raped and impregnated be imprisoned for one year. He also ordered that she be given 100 lashes after she gives birth, (which is often a death sentence), because she talked with and followed a man who was not her relative and who turned out to have planned the attack.

Read the whole thing.

Former Liberal Eli Bernstein Says Goodbye to President Bush

At PJM: Former Liberal Eli Bernstein says goodbye to President Bush. A short but great article, well worth reading in full.

I didn’t always like George.

There was a time I thought of him as a stupid stooge, a man undeserving of power. There was a time I thought he had shattered America’s greatest asset — its democracy.

I had followed every twist and turn in that infamous ballot count, read all the relevant legal proceedings, and felt personally wronged when on December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the man I voted for. I was so incensed by what I saw as an appointment against the will of the people that I inquired about rescinding my U.S. citizenship. Thankfully, I never followed through.

It was nine months later that I felt American again, and a proud one at that.

As I watched the second plane crash into the World Trade Center, I realized the world had changed forever; that a dark new reality has set in; that the world my children will grow up in will not be the world of my childhood.

I understood this in seconds and so did George, my old foe. Some have still to grasp this.

On that day, George grew into his role as leader of the free world. Hanging chads no longer mattered when smoke filled the skies of Manhattan. A man not known for his words was saying exactly what I needed to hear. He spoke on that fateful day:

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.

…

As a former liberal, I had to get used to living with George’s moral clarity, a world of black and white, good and evil, Cowboys and Indians. But then I realized, even black and white has its place on a full color spectrum. There is a time and place for monochrome. I also realized that the alternate view, proposed by the liberal camp, was even more limiting in its spectrum. Unlike George, their world was painted a single shade of murky grey, a world where perpetrator and victim were morally equaled. This alternate view suggested that America had brought September 11 upon itself and should see itself as its own aggressor and its aggressor as its victim. In this topsy-turvy weltanschauung, old allies and long held values should be abandoned for the sake of expediency. It is the same logic that blames the rape victim for her ordeal: she should have never worn that mini skirt in the first place.

George recognized that the problem was more fundamental than America’s mini skirt; that Osama and the 9/11 crew had little grievance about U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict but were rather fiercely opposed to the spread of secular thought in the Middle East; that the best way of beating them was to do just that, spread democracy in the region, by whatever means necessary. A government by the people and for the people has no interest in perpetuating ongoing conflict. …

…

The Iraqi elections proved that the unspoken notion of non-interventionalists that Arabs are (a) incapable or (b) undeserving of democracy was indeed a fallacy. It took a man of black and white to rid the world of this grey notion. The premise of basic human rights is set on universal principles that apply to all people at all times at all places — an absolutist notion. The relativist approach that opposes the imposition of democracy has pushed human rights championship away from their camp to the political right.

…

As George said back in March 2005, “the trend is clear. In the Middle East and throughout the world, freedom is on the march.” His ally John Howard backed this view up when he stated that “these things wouldn’t have been thought remotely possible a year ago and I have no doubt that … one of the reasons … was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.” Even old foes like Walid Jumblatt, the leftist Lebanese Druze leader, shared the view:

I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen.

The Berlin Wall has fallen once again while your news reporters were looking the other way, counting body bags in Iraq and actively embroiling themselves in partisan politics.

And so I bid farewell to the man who sacrificed his legacy to protect America’s greatest asset, freedom and democracy. Ironically, he had become the defender of the asset I had once accused him of robbing.

Rush: Something for Nothing

This is the final post in a series of six, in which I’m lyricblogging the 1976 Rush album 2112. To start at the beginning, see the post that started it all here.

“Something for Nothing” is the gem and culmination of 2112, the part I’ve been most eager to get to — a song I can listen to again and again, and a parting bit of imparted wisdom that sticks deep in your mind where it belongs.

Neil Peart (Rush’s peerless drummer and primary lyricist) is well known for having drawn inspiration from Ayn Rand’s “Objectivist” philosophy, and he has surely produced no more direct expression of that influence than in “Something for Nothing”, which is both a wake-up call to the dreamer who has yet to back his plans up with committed and decisive action, and a fierce defense of the individual’s right to take pride in and enjoy profit from his own hard-won achievements.

“Something for Nothing” is a worthy anthem to rouse you to action when you crawl reluctantly out of bed in the morning, or to keep in your head through late night entrepreneurial labors of love when exhaustion might drive others to their comfortable beds. Its bold, ringing declaration has surely changed my life for the better, and I hope it will do the same for others.

Something for Nothing

Waiting for the winds of change
To sweep the clouds away
Waiting for the rainbow’s end
To cast its gold your way
Countless ways
You pass the days

Waiting for someone to call
And turn your world around
Looking for an answer to
The question you have found
Looking for
An open door

You don’t get something for nothing
You can’t have freedom for free
You won’t get wise with the sleep still in your eyes
No matter what your dream might be

What you own is your own kingdom
What you do is your own glory
What you love is your own power
What you live is your own story
In your head is the answer
Let it guide you along
Let your heart be the anchor
And the beat of your own song

You don’t get something for nothing
You can’t have freedom for free
You won’t get wise with the sleep still in your eyes
No matter what your dream might be

Previous: Tears

2112 — The Complete Album

1. 2112
2. A Passage to Bangkok
3. The Twilight Zone
4. Lessons
5. Tears
6. Something for Nothing