Liberals have has spent a great deal of time praising this January's Egyptian revolution, which deposed President Hosni Mubarak and transformed the Middle East into an arena of turmoil. Even as the mainstream media exalted the "moderates" and "democrats" in Tahrir Square, we learned about the brutal gang-rape of CBS correspondent Lara Logan. Witnesses to the crime asserted that the mob of rapists accused Logan of being a "Yehud" and an "Israeli spy."

(SIDE NOTE: In an interview with the New York Times, Lara Logan refused to mention the blatant anti-Semitism of her attackers and instead chose to turn the incident into a diatribe against all men and a sob story about the oppression of all women. Ms. Logan didn't mention how Muslim women are forced to put on burqas and cover themselves from head to toe lest they "seduce" men into raping them, in which case they would be stoned as punishment for their impurity and the men would go free.

In light of these glaring omissions, I feel not a drop of pity for Lara Logan: she is nothing more than a female chauvinist who distorts the truth in order to promote her sexist agenda, while leaving out crucial details like the nefarious cry of "Yehud.")


The latest events in Egypt have convinced me that the protestors of Tahrir Square yearned not for democracy, but for freedom - the freedom to do as they pleased, the freedom to rape, steal, and murder.

- On April 28, the New York Times reported that Egypt was reaching out to Iran and HAMAS.

- The reconciliation pact between Fatah and HAMAS was signed in Cairo, of all places.

- And, today, the Jerusalem Post reported that Egyptian activists were forming a Nazi party.
Let me say that again for those of you who are suffering from Denial Syndrome: the Egyptians are forming a Nazi party.

Less than a century after the Nazis murdered six million Jews in cold blood,  the Egyptians are forming a political party in their honor.

 

Anthony Weiner - SHAME ON YOU!

At long last, the liar has been exposed. A little over an hour ago, Anthony Weiner admitted to having sent a sexually provocative picture to a college student and Twitter follower.   

Over the past week, the liberal press has been telling us that we should be focusing on more important issues and not harassing the Congressman over this "nonsense". Weiner himself stated that his account was hacked, which - as we now know - was a bold-faced lie.

Some urged Weiner to begin a criminal investigation and prosecute the hacker. When the embattled Congressman refused to do so, we knew that something was wrong.  He wanted to let the issue die on its own, and so did his pals in the liberal media.

But now the truth comes out. Weiner directed his staff to lie to the electorate and has been misleading us for the past week. Repeat after me: Anthony Weiner is a liar. Liar, liar, pants on fire.  

But being the master of chutzpah that he is, he now refuses to step down.  He may be lacking in honesty, but he certainly isn't lacking in audacity.

A couple of weeks ago, Republican Congressman Chris Lee was forced to resign for sending a shirtless picture of himself to a woman he met on Craigslist.  But when it's a Democrat that does it, we should let the issue die, right? 

A Republican Congressman resigned for texting a shirtless (and good-looking!) picture of himself, but a President who had oral sex with a White House intern - and lied about it under oath - remained in power.  And I can only imagine the hysteria and shrieks that would have come from the liberal elite if Weiner, like Lee, were a Republican. Anyone who tells me that there aren't double standards in our politics is a moron.     

Finally, a word of advice to Mr. Weiner: Your picture showed us that you're a real man. Now act like it, and step the hell down.

If you were not ashamed to photograph a crotch shot and send it to a college student, if you were not ashamed to mislead the public about it for a week, if you were not ashamed to instruct your staff to lie, now - at long last - have some shame and get out.

You have lost the trust of your constituents. You are a sly man, and I wonder what else you have lied about. Leave in peace, but leave now.

UPDATE: For the record, Weiner is a progressive liberal on domestic issues, including ObamaCare, but at the same time he seems to be a strong supporter of Israel (despite having married a Muslim woman). Regardless of the Congressman's political opinions, I still believe that his crotch shot and subsequent mendacity are entirely unacceptable.

Double Standards in "Post-Racial America"

Michelle Obama has been busy teaching Americans what to eat at McDonald's and other restaurants, but who will teach them how to act?

From M&C:

An unimaginable fate met one unlucky 22 year-old woman who went into a McDonalds restaurant in Baltimore County, as she left in an ambulance in seizure from an unrelenting beatdown by two other women.

The assailants, ages 14 and 18, were black, the victim was white. State's Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger said the racial dynamics of the incident could result in hate-crime charges.

The Baltimore Sun reports that County Police say the incident occurred April 18 around 8 p.m. in the McDonald’s on Kenwood Avenue.

The video, first posted on LiveLeak.com and posted on the Drudge Report, shows two women — one of them a 14-year-old girl — repeatedly kicking and punching the 22-year-old victim in the head, as an employees of the Rosedale restaurant are heard laughing, and even taping the incident. The manager did nothing to eject and stop the two women from continuously kicking and hitting the victim.

One of the suspects hits the victim's head so hard that the victim goes into seizure. “She’s bleeding, yo. Her mouth bleeding, her mouth bleeding! She’s having a [expletive] seizure, yo! She’s having a seizure right now, she needs help right now! Ya’al better get the [expletive] out of here now!” the cameraman, allegedly an employee, is heard saying.

Only an older white woman steps in to confront two attackers, as the victim clings to her leg.

Both suspects were later identified.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the 14-year-old female has been charged as a juvenile. Charges are pending against an 18-year-old female. The incident remains under investigation and the State’s Attorney’s Office is reviewing the case.

The victim is reportedly still hospitalized.

McDonald’s released the following statement regarding the incident on their website:

“We are shocked by the video from a Baltimore franchised restaurant showing an assault. This incident is unacceptable, disturbing and troubling. McDonald’s strives to be a safe, welcoming environment for everyone who visits. Nothing is more important to us than the safety of customers and employees in our restaurants. We are working with the franchisee and the local authorities to investigate this matter.”

Where is the outrage from Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, and all the other so-called "civil rights actvists"? Oh, wait - do they pipe up only when crimes are committed against black people, but keep silent when the victim is a white, transgendered woman?

I can only imagine the deafening shrieks that would have emanated from the mouths of these loquacious liberals if the situation had been reversed. I can only imagine how President Obama would have called the attacker's actions "stupid," as he did when a white Cambridge police officer arrested Henry Lois Gates, Jr. Then, in an attempt to reconciliation, he would have invited both attackers and the victim to the White House for a beer summit.

But, of course, none of that happened. Welcome to Obama's post-racial America, where two black women beat a defenseless European-American into a seizure, and the world is silent.  Welcome to Obama's post-racial America, when a McDonald's employee tapes a brutal assault for three full minutes while doing nothing to stop it. Welcome to Obama's post-racial America, where Eric Holder refuses to prosecute the Black Panthers because "his people" suffered more some forty years ago.

As I discussed earlier on this blog, the world was outraged when a black stripper accused white Duke University students of rape, even though it was later determined that these charges were completely false.  But when a white woman is beaten into a seizure, there is no outrage. There is only silence - silence from the left.  

My heart goes out to the victim of this horrific assault. There is a special place in hell waiting for all those who stood by during the crime, for the low-life who videotaped it but did not intervene, and most especially for the savage criminals whom no one in the civil rights community will condemn.

An Open Letter to President Barack Obama

Dear Mr. President:

I'm sure you learned a lot of things while sitting in the pews of Jeremiah Wright's church. Anti-Israelism seems to have been foremost among them.

During your electoral campaign, you offered to sit down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who refers to the Holocaust as a "myth" and has sworn to annihilate every Jewish man, woman, and child living in the Holy Land (or, as he euphemistically puts it, to "wipe the Zionist regime off the map.")

Shortly after you became President, you lashed out at Binyamin Netanyhau for the "crime" of building homes in the capital of Israel.

And this past Thursday, you called for an end to the Zionist "occupation" of Judea and Samaria, repeating the rhetoric of Israel's most vehement enemies. You endorsed the establishment of a HAMAS-Fatah state on the 1949 armistice lines - also known as the 1967 Auschwitz borders. That phrase was coined not by an arch-Zionist right-winger, but by the leftist Knesset member Abba Egan. Even he understood the indefensibility of these borders, which you do not. If your proposal for "peace" came to fruition this September, a tourist landing at Ben-Gurion Airport for the Rosh HaShanah holiday would be nine miles away from enemy fire and Palestinian rockets. Nine miles away from the valley of death.

"God damn America!"

Mr. President, you fancy yourself a man of great wisdom, a man who associates with such scholarly minds as Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton, Bill Ayers, and Rashid Khalidi. But no matter your great intelligence, it seems that you are desperately in need of a refresher course in history.

The Jewish people have endured unspeakable suffering at the hands of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Spanish, the Crusaders, the Russians, the Germans, and - yes - the Arabs.

In 1929 - when there were no "occupied territories" or "illegal settlements" - the Arabs of Hebron managed to massacre sixty-seven Jews in a single day. Surely, this cold-blooded murder had nothing to do with the 1967 borders of which you spoke on Thursday.

The Hebron Massacre was provoked by an idea - Zionism - the idea of a Jewish State in Eretz Yisroel. And that idea alone was enough to provoke the massacre of 67 Jews already living in that land.

Last Sunday, when hundreds of Arabs invaded the State of Israel on their annual Nakba day, they weren't protesting the "occupied territories" or "illegal settlements." They were complaining about the very existence of the Jewish State, a state that they opposed in 1929, a state that they invaded in 1948, and a state that the President of Iran has sworn to obliterate from the face of the earth.

Not the "West Bank," not East Jerusalem, but all of Israel - "from the river to the sea," from the Jordan on the east to the Mediterranean on the west.

But, of course, you are a well-intentioned man. You care about the oppressed Palestinians and long for them to have self-determination. You may not know this, Mr. President, but there are already twenty-two Arab states in the world today. And only one Jewish state. Only ONE.

Many of these Arab regimes are crumbling before your eyes, but the Jewish State is a stable democracy. Do you wish to inject the instability and terror of the Arab world into the one democracy of the Middle East?

***

Let me tell you about the history of modern Israel.

In 1947, the United Nations proposed to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Arabs didn't like this idea, so they turned down the offer, invaded the State of Israel as soon as it was established, and launched a war that killed 6000 Jews.

This invasion took place long before the "occupied territories" of 1967, and long before there were any "settlements" in those territories.

After the war, Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank," as you like to call it), while Egypt annexed the Gaza Strip.

In 1964, a man by the name of Yassir Arafat founded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Mr. President, do you know what Arafat was trying to "liberate" in 1964?

In 1967, the Arabs again invaded Israel with the intention of destroying it, and again they lost. As a result of this war, the Jewish State came into control of certain land that had previously been controlled by Arab countries - among them was Jordan's West Bank, Egypt's Gaza, and Syria's Golan Heights. These are what you call the "occupied territories." 

As you know, the United States came into possession of many of its current territories as a result of war. Not only that, but the Cherokee Indians were once expelled from Georgia. (Yes, Georgia - the home state of Jimmy Carter.) Do that mean that all this land should be returned to the Indians? Should the United States go back to its 1492 borders?

Of course not. No sane person would ever dream of returning any land in the United States to the Indians, or to Mexico, or to any other people. But in 2005, Israel - a country the size of New Jersey, mind you - did take the path of appeasement in an attempt at peace.

In 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expelled nearly 10,000 Jews from Gaza and gave it over to the Arabs. By 2006, HAMAS has taken over.

And you, Mr. President, have the chutzpah to urge more territorial concessions, more appeasement, more capitulation, and more Neville Chamberlainism. You have the chutzpah to tell Israel that it should go back to the Auschwitz borders of 1967, where it once was BEFORE it was attacked by four Arab armies screaming "Itbach al Yehud!"

And this, you say, will lead to peace. There was no peace in 1929, when the Arabs of Hebron massacred sixty-seven Jews in a single day. There was no peace when the Arabs invaded Israel in 1948, or in 1967, or in 1973. There was no peace when Yassir Arafat was offered 97% of the land he wanted and he turned all it down, preferring to launch an intifada against the Jewish State. There was no peace when 10,000 "settlers" were expelled from Gush Katif, and HAMAS terrorists took over their homes a year later and started launching rockets and mortar shells all over the place.

But, now, if only Israel were to go back to the Auschwitz borders and allow for the establishment of a HAMAS-Fatah state, there would be peace. It is the two-state solution, the way to solve all the world's problems, the means of establishing 'peace in our times.' If only there were to be a HAMAS-Fatah state on the 1949 armistice lines, there would be no more suicide bombings, no more beheadings, no more hijackings, and no more terrorism anywhere in the world. Just like there was no 1929 Hebron Massacre, just like there was no alliance between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Adolf Hitler, just like there were no Arab riots in the 1930s, and just like there was no invasion of the Jewish State in 1948 - well before the "occupied territories" of the Six-Day War.

Mr. President, whenever I hear the idiotic phrase "two-state solution," I am reminded of another interesting "solution" - the Final Solution to the Jewish question.

Indeed, this is what the Arabs of Eretz Yisroel want. As the HAMAS Charter states, "Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors."

Now is the time for you to decide, Mr. President, whether you will stand with the Jews of Israel or the genocidal murderers of HAMAS. There is no in-between, and there can be no two-state solution. Not a day goes by that the terrorists of Gaza do not pray for the elimination of the Jewish State. Giving these savages a sovereign nation would be the first step to a second Holocaust. If you succeed in turning a murderous enclave into a murderous country, you will go down in history as the worst president ever.

Please understand that the Middle East conflict is not about land: The Arabs have 22 countries, and the Jews have but one. The conflict is about ideology. On the one hand, you have the most persecuted people in human history who simply wish to live on the land of their forefathers. On the other hand, you have bloodthirsty barbarians who cannot accept the presence of a non-Muslim state on land that was formerly Muslim. With whom will you side, Mr. President, those who value life or those who pray for death? The choice is yours, but I fear that its consequences will be grave.



Obama shakes hands with Holocaust denier Abu Mazen underneath a portrait of Yassir Arafat

 

UPDATE:

Some have suggested that Obama's pro-Palestinian speech was a way of apologizing to the Arab world for the assassination of Osama bin Laden - an assassination for which the President was widely condemned.

Indeed, Obama has previously bashed the Jewish State in order to ingratiate himself with the citizens of Egypt and, by extension, the Muslim world. As such, I would not be surprised if this were one of the hidden purposes behind Thursday's address.

Obama bows to the Saudi king, he apologizes to terrorists, he tells Jews that they cannot build homes in Eretz Yisroel, and now he has the chutzpah to call for the establishment of a HAMAS-Fatah state on the 1949 armistice lines - fulfilling the Talmudic prophecy that he who is merciful unto the cruel will one day be cruel unto the merciful.

One can only hope that the President will learn to distinguish between our allies and our enemies before it is too late. There is a great deal of difference between the vibrant democracy of Israel and the misogynist tyranny of Saudi Arabia. Obama would never think to oppose the face veil that Saudi women are forced to wear, but he has no moral compunctions about condemning the building of Jewish homes in Israel. What is the reason for his hypocrisy?

We know that fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers, as well as Osama bin Laden himself, were of Saudi origin. We know that Saudi Arabia decapitates homosexuals and prohibits women from driving.  It is diametrically opposed to the "progressive" and "tolerant" ideas of the liberal left. So why on earth would Obama bow to the Saudi monarch?

Was it a way of appeasing the Muslim world? Was it a way of showing American subservience to a country that engages in the most brutal practices of shariah law?

Israel, on the other hand, is tolerant of both gays and women. Israel is not a monarchy; it is a democracy that gives a voice in government to both Arabs and Jews.

If evangelical Christians had decapitated gays or stoned women, the left would be outraged beyond belief. But when a Muslim country does just that and an American president bows to its monarch, the left is silent.

When some Americans opposed the construction of a mega-mosque near Ground Zero, the left was outraged by this manifestation of "bigotry" and "intolerance." But when the President of the United States told Jews that they were not allowed to build homes in their own country, the left sided with him and condemned Israel as an apartheid state.

Now, when Binyamin Netanyhau gave Obama a lesson in reality, the left reproached him for being disrespectful. Ha!

In the late 1960s, anti-war protestors went around singing: 'Hey, hey, LBJ, how many  kids did you kill today?' Today, these leftists and their descendants reproach Netanyhau for simply stating the truth.

Let's compare. On the one hand, you have the Prime Minister of Israel  saying that his country will not go back to the indefensible borders of 1967. On the other hand, you have a bunch of drugged hooligans accusing the President of being a cold-blooded murderer. Where was the outrage over "disrespect" then?

Oy gevalt, my friends, double standards are a terrible thing.

UPDATE II (6/3/11 at 5:14 PM)

I just wanted to link to this wonderful article by Louis Rene Beres published in FrontPageMag, which reiterates many of my statements about the Israel-Arab conflict.  

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: How the Duke Rape Victim Duped America

A comedian once defined chutzpah as a youngster killing his parents and then throwing himself on the mercy of the court by virtue of the fact that he is an orphan.

Think about it: The liberal left regards every minority group imaginable as the victims of oppression. Palestinian suicide bombers are exalted for their courageous opposition to the "Zionist occupation." African-Americans are exempt from having to identify themselves to police officers because they suffer from the enduring legacy of slavery and segregation, the latter having ended some 40 years ago.  Muslims are being hounded by the horrors of Islamophobia because not everyone agrees with their decision to build a mega-mosque two blocks from the ashes of 2600 Americans. Women are being all but stifled under the heels of misogyny and chauvinism, as evidenced by the fact that we have never had a female President. (Of course, Margaret Thatcher served as Prime Minister of Great Britain for eleven years - but she was an evil conservative and so she doesn't count. And Golda Meir served as Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974, but we would never want to discuss that despicable Zionist.)

In our society, most minority groups are given the status of victimhood, and their community leaders do everything in their power to reinforce the victim mentality. But what happens when one of these so-called "victims" commits a horrible crime?



***

From the Associated Press:

The woman who falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her in 2006 was charged Monday with murder in the death of her boyfriend. Crystal Mangum, 32, was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder and two counts of larceny. She has been in jail since April 3, when police charged her with assault in the stabbing of 46-year-old Reginald Daye. He died after nearly two weeks at a hospital.

An attorney for Mangum and officials in the district attorney's office did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Mangum falsely accused the lacrosse players of raping her at a 2006 party for which she was hired to perform as a stripper. The case heightened long-standing tensions in Durham about race, class and the privileged status of college athletes.

The district attorney who championed Mangum's claims was later disbarred. North Carolina's attorney general eventually declared the players innocent of a "tragic rush to accuse."

Prosecutors declined to press charges for the false accusations, but Mangum's bizarre legal troubles have continued.  

Last year, she was convicted on misdemeanor charges after setting a fire that nearly torched her home with her three children inside. In a videotaped police interrogation, she told officers she set got into a confrontation with her boyfriend at the time — not Daye — and burned his clothes, smashed his car windshield and threatened to stab him.

Friends said Mangum has never recovered from the stigma brought by the lacrosse case and has been involved in a string of questionable relationships in an attempt to provide stability for her children. Vincent Clark, a friend who co-authored Mangum's self-published memoir, said he hopes people don't rush to judgment — echoing one of the oft-cited lessons of the lacrosse case itself.

You hear that? Crystal Mangum is an alleged murderer, and a friend of this alleged murderer is telling people that they shouldn't rush to judgment.

The chutzpah! The nerve! The unmitigated temerity of this low-life telling the public to avoid a rush to judgment!

Where was this bleeding heart Vincent Clark when three lacrose players were falsely accused of rape in 2006? Where was Mr. Clark when three lacrose players were threatened with the possibility of expulsion, incarceration, and ruin for a crime they did not commit? Why did he not advise the public to avoid a rush to judgment then?

Why did we not hear about the presumption of innocence then - then, when three innocent men faced the prospect of ruin at the hands of a mendacious stripper? Where were the cries of the leftists - the Al Sharptons, Jesse Jacksons, Jeremiah Wrights, and Louis Farrakhans - about how all people are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law? Why did they not side with the victims of a false charge?

No, the liberal left condemned the lacrosse players, screaming about the gross injustice of "white male privilege."

Here is an interesting letter written to the Duke University Administration by a raving leftist. (I am re-publishing it in full, with emphasis on the most fascinating parts.)

Television screens tuned in to MSNBC on the morning of March 29, 2006 broadcast a headline in bold red: DUKE RAPE? At the bottom right corner of the front page of The New York Times on the same day was an article about the rape allegations roiling Duke University. How is a Duke community citizen to respond to such a national embarrassment from under the cloud of a "culture of silence" that seeks to protect white, male, athletic violence and which apparently prevents all university citizens from even surveying the known facts? How can one begin to answer the cardinal question: What have Duke and its leadership done to address this horrific, racist incident alleged to have occurred in a university-owned property in the presence of members of one of its athletic teams?

The alleged crimes of rape, sodomy, and strangulation of a black woman at a party populated in some measure by the Duke lacrosse team reportedly occurred on March 13. University administrators knew about and had begun to respond internally within twenty-four hours following the incident. But Duke University citizens had no public word from our university leadership until President Richard Brodhead called a press conference on March 28. Two weeks of silent protectionism left all of us vulnerably ignorant of the facts. Receiving emails and telephone calls of concern from friends nationally and internationally, we have been deeply embarrassed by the silence that seems to surround this white, male athletic team's racist assaults (by words, certainly - deeds, possibly) in our community.

It is virtually inconceivable that representatives of Duke University's Athletic Department would allow its lacrosse team to engage in regular underage drinking and out-of-control bacchanalia. It is difficult to imagine a competently managed corporate setting in which such behavior would be tolerated (and swept under the rug), or where such a "team" would survive for more than a day before being tossed out on its ears by security. Moreover, in a forthrightly ethical setting with an avowed commitment to life-enhancing citizenship, such a violent and irresponsible group would scarcely be spirited away, or sheltered under the protection of pious sentiments such as "deplorable" - a judgment that reminds us of Miss Ophelia in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, saying that slavery was "perfectly horrible." Such timorous piety and sentimental legalism, in the opinion of the author James Baldwin, constitutes duck-and-cover cowardice of the first order.

There is no rush to judgment here about the crime - neither the violent racial epithets reported in a 911 call to Durham police, nor the harms to body and soul allegedly perpetrated by white males at 610 Buchanan Boulevard. But there is a clear urgency about the erosion of any felt sense of confidence or safety for the rest of us who live and work at Duke University. The lacrosse team - 15 of whom have faced misdemeanor charges for drunken misbehavior in the past three years - may well feel they can claim innocence and sport their disgraced jerseys on campus, safe under the cover of silent whiteness. But where is the black woman who their violence and raucous witness injured for life? Will she ever sleep well again? And when will the others assaulted by racist epithets while passing 610 Buchanan ever forget that dark moment brought on them by a group of drunken Duke boys? Young, white, violent, drunken men among us - implicitly boasted by our athletic directors and administrators - have injured lives. There is scarcely any shame more egregious than one that wraps itself in the pious sentimentalism of liberal rhetoric as though such a wrap really constituted moral and ethical action.

Duke University's higher administration has engaged in precisely such a tepid and pious legalism with respect to the disaster of recent days: the actual harm to the body, soul, mind, and spirit of black women who were in the company of Duke University lacrosse team members as far as any of us know. All of Duke athletics has now been drawn into the seamy domains of Colorado football and other college and university blind-eying of male athletes, veritably given license to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech, and feel proud of themselves in the bargain.

Many citizens have weighed in, and one hopes all departments, programs, and concerned members of our university community will speak out forcefully for swift and considered corrective action.

But of course, it is not exclusively our academic administration that seems to have refused decisive and meaningful action. The most deafening silence - and, quite possibly, duplicity (which is to say, improbable denial) - has marked, in fact, Duke's Department of Athletics. Where was Joe Alleva before Tuesday's press conference called by President Brodhead? Where now is the commercial charisma of Coach K, who could certainly be out front condemning Duke athletes who call people out of their name from the precincts of university-owned housing? Why aren't such stalwarts of Duke athletics publicly and courageously addressing the horrors that have occurred in their own domain? We remember the very first day of our new President's administration - how he and Coach K shared the media dais, and the basketball magnate was praised for his bold leadership. It all seems rather like an Indonesian shadow play at this moment of crisis. All a show.

What is precipitously teetering in the balance at this point, during weeks marked by inaction and duck-and-cover from our designated leaders is, well, confidence.

It is very difficult to feel confidence in an administration that has not addressed in meaningful ways the horrors that have occurred to actual bodies, to the Durham community of which we are an integral part, and to our sense of being members of a proactive and caring community. Rather, gag orders and trembling liberal rhetorical spins seem to be behaviors du jour from our leaders.

There can be no confidence in an administration that believes suspending a lacrosse season and removing pictures of Duke lacrosse players from a web page is a dutifully moral response to abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us.

How many mandates concerning safe, responsible campus citizenship must be transgressed by white athletes' violent racism before our university's offices of administration, athletics, security, and publicity courageously declare: enough!

How many more people of color must fall victim to violent, white, male, athletic privilege before coaches who make Chevrolet and American Express commercials, athletic directors who engage in Miss Ophelia-styled "perfectly horrible" rhetoric, higher administrators who are salaried at least in part to keep us safe, and publicists who are supposed not to praise Caesar but to damn the unconscionable ... how many? Before they demonstrate that they don't just write books, pay lip service, or boast of safe citizenship ... but actually do step up morally, intellectually, and bravely to assume responsibilities of leadership for such citizenship. How many?

How soon will confidence be restored to our university as a place where minds, souls, and bodies can feel safe from agents, perpetrators, and abettors of white privilege, irresponsibility, debauchery and violence?

Surely the answer to the question must come in the form of immediate dismissals of those principally responsible for the horrors of this spring moment at Duke. Coaches of the lacrosse team, the team itself and its players, and any other agents who silenced or lied about the real nature of events at 610 Buchanan on the evening of March 13, 2006. A day that, not even in a clichéd sense, will, indeed, always live in infamy for this university.

A responsible, and in many instances appalled - and yes, frightened - citizenry of Duke University is waiting ... and certainly more than willing to join considered actions by bold leaders to restore confidence in a great institution and its mission. Today I polled my class whose enrollment is predominantly women and white. All said that nothing had happened in terms of this university's response that had left them anything but afraid. The shame of this is unconscionable. Still, these women will surely sleep better this evening than the black woman injured at 610 Buchanan Boulevard by the white lacrosse team's out-of-control violent partying will ever again rest in her life.

[Signed]

Houston A. Baker, Jr.

George D. and Susan Fox Beischer Professor of English

Editor, American Literature

Let's see: "white male privilege," stereotypes about athletes - hell, the author even managed to invoke slavery. And, of course, the wonderful statement about there not being a rush to judgment.

But where are you now - Mr. Baker, Mr. and Mrs. Beischer, and all the others who denounced these innocent players? Where are you now that your heroine stands accused of homicide? Where are you now that this so-called "victim" has been exposed for her lies? Where are you now - the hithertofore loquacious leftists, the race and gender warmongerers who have infested college campuses with their cultural Maxism?

What do you have to say for yourselves?  Will you condemn this perjuring murderer, or will you instruct people that they shouldn't rush to judgment now that Crystal Mangum is sitting in a jail cell, awaiting trial for the most despicable of crimes?

Many years ago, American women suffered from the cult of domesticity. Ms. Mangum, however, suffers from the cult of victimhood, the entitlement mentality that comes with being a minority. Do you still feel sorry for her, just like you feel sorry for the child who butchers his own parents and throws himself on the mercy of the court by virtue of the fact that he is an orphan?

Have you apologized to the lacrosse players now that the falsity of Ms. Mangum's allegations - and yours - is clear for all the world to see?

In your letter, you expressed concern over Ms. Mangum's sleep. But where are you now, that she is sleeping in a jail cell? Why aren't you concerned about her comfort now? Why aren't you defending her against charges of homicide and child abuse? Do you really care about Ms. Mangum, or did you just seize upon the opportunity to condemn a bunch of lacrosse players for who they were - white, male, rich, and successful?

Will you apologize to them for YOUR racism and sexism in helping to perpetuate a false charge? Are you concerned about their sleep in the aftermath of this devastating scandal that has forever harmed their pysches?

Ah, the silence of these scumbags speaks for itself.

It seems that Crystal Mangum has outlived her usefulness, and has now been discarded by her defenders - abandoned in the hour of her most pressing need, cast aside as she was being cast into a jail cell. She was never regarded as a human being by those who claimed to be on her side, but as the personification of a cause - the cause of social justice. And, boy, was she  used! But the hoax fell through, and now she is no longer needed. The professors and politicians who claimed to be Ms. Mangum's friends will let her rot in jail along with all the other single, black mothers and fathers who have been let down by the liberal left.

***

And, so, let me continue with my harangue about the Bakers, Beischers, Wrights, Sharptons, Jacksons, Farrakhans, and other asorted cretins.

You condemned the lacrosse players not because they were rapists, but because they were white. You assumed that their race made them criminals; you terrorized a group of entirely innocent people for the crime of having been born white and male.

Since you had the chutzpah to compare these lacrosse players to slaveholders, let me say this. You - you, Mr. Baker - are no different from those who made up blood libels to terrorize Jews in medieval Europe. You are the real racist, the real sexist, and the real offender - and you ought to be ashamed of your despicable deeds.

And to appease you and your politically correct ways, the prosecutors refused to bring charges of perjury against Ms. Mangum. They let her off with a slap on the wrist after she perpetrated a fraud on the whole country, after she terrorized three innocent men with the prospect of utter ruin.

But now, a man is dead - and he died at the hands of this lying low-life. Perhaps he would still be alive today if Ms. Mangum had been incarcerated for perjury. Perhaps he would still be alive today if Ms. Mangum had been incarcerated for arson.

Now, nearly five years later, she is finally sitting where she should have been all along - in jail - but an innocent man has perished by her hand. This is what it took to put a lying low-life where she belongs.

Need we any more proof that political correctness is a deadly scourge?  

Random Thoughts on Politics

Ever since the massacre in Tuscon this January, the liberal left has been frantically calling for stricter gun control. The shooting in Arizona was certainly a tragedy, and it is sad to see how quickly our leaders seize upon the suffering of innocents as a pretext for advancing their politcial agendas. It almost seems as though they are dancing on the graves of the dead, exploiting a tragedy to score points with their constituents.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to a student at Long Island University who was pushing for a new anti-gun law. He brought up the incidents at Virginia Tech and Columbine as proof that guns are inherently evil and should be strigently regulated, if not banned entirely. His concern was certainly an understandable one, but let me address the problem with this young man's reasoning.

In 2005, there were nearly 6,420,000 automobile accidents in the United States. As a result, 2.9 million Americans were injured and 42,636 killed. Statistics show that almost 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in the United States - one death every 13 minutes. Why aren't our politicians calling for an immediate ban on automobiles?

Approximately 1.2 million around the world die by drowning every year, an average of two people every minute. Why aren't our politicians calling for an immediate ban on beaches and swimming pools?

• In 1988, Islamic terrorist Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi bombed an airplane over Scotland, killing some 270 people.
• In 2001, Islamic terrorists used hijacked planes to kill a total of 2976 innocent people.  
• In 2002, Islamic terrorist Richard Reid (the "shoe bomber") attempted to blow up American Airlines Flight 63.
• In 2009, Islamic terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the "underwear bomber") attempted to blow up an airplane with some 300 passengers over Detroit. 

So why aren't our politicians calling for an immediate ban on airplanes?

Given these gruesome statistics, I find it difficult to fathom the selective outrage over guns - but not cars, or swiming pools, or airplanes. All kinds of objects can be used to inflict deadly harm, and yet none arouses the ire of the liberal left as much as guns. Why?

Here's my theory: The left, as we know, is characterized by an intense hatred towards everything American - a hatred epitomized by the words of Jeremiah Wright. And what could be more American than guns? After all, it was "the shot heard 'round the world" that marked the start of the Revolutionary War. Our nation would not be around today if it weren't guns - and men who weren't afraid to use them.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution reads: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Indeed, the despots of history understood exactly what could be done when people were deprived of the ability to defend themselves.

Check this out:

• In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians were rounded up and killed.
• In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, approximately 20 million dissidents were rounded up and killed.
• In 1938 Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, over 13 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill, union leaders, Catholics and others, unable to fire a shot in protest, were rounded up and killed.
• In 1935, China established gun control. From 1948 and 1952, over 20 million dissidents were rounded up and killed.
• In 1956, Cambodia enshrined gun control. In just two years (1975-1977), over one million "educated" people were rounded up and killed.
• In 1964, Guatemala locked in gun control. From 1964 to 1981, over 100,000 Mayan Indians were rounded up and killed.
• In 1970, Uganda embraced gun control. Over the next nine years, over 300,000 Christians were rounded up and killed.

The sordid truth is this: Over 56 million innocent people have perished in the gulags, gas chambers, and death marches of history ... because of gun control. If only people had the power to defend themselves, the gruesome genocides of the last century may never have taken place.

Of course, the leftist liberals will say, "That was then, and this is now." Leftists knows that their ideas have been discredited by history, and so they will try to dismiss it. They will pretend that a genocide could never happen in the United States. They will pretend that the cavemen plotting the next Pam 103 bombing, the next 9/11, the next Mumbai, the next Fort Hood Massacre, and the next intifada are all a figment of our Islamophobic imaginations. They will complain of our "paranoia" and "McCarthyism." And they will be wrong. As an old friend used to say, paranoia is a disease that results in death at a very old age.

The illusions of the left are nice, perhaps even well-intentioned; but it is not possible to sweep history under the rug and pretend that it never happened. In the words of William Faulkner, "the past is never dead. It's not even past."

Another aphorism comes to mind: "If all guns were outlawed, then only outlaws would carry guns." This may seem difficult to understand at first, but anti-gun laws are meant to target criminals  and - surprise, surprise - criminals do not obey laws! Let's say that Congress were to ban the purchase of guns tomorrow. Would this stop the bad guys from acquiring them? Of course not. But it would stop innocent, law-abiding Americans from defending themselves.

Leftists want to strip innocent, law-abiding Americans of an essential freedom in response to the actions of a single lunatic in Arizona. They believe that the caliber of our liberty should be determined not by the Constitution, but by criminals. That, my friends, is called appeasement - giving in to the demands of an aggressor. We cannot allow nutjobs like Jared Laughner to determine the level of freedom that the rest of us will enjoy. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, "those who would give up essential liberty in the name of some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Leftists tell us that we should not blame ALL Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks; but they have no problem stripping ALL Americans of their constitutional right to bear arms in the aftermath of an isolated incident like the Tuscon Massacre. A single man has sinned, and they wish to punish an entire nation.

"Never let a crisis go to waste," advised Rahm Emmanuel some time ago. And so, once again, the leftists pounce on a national tragedy as a pretext for promoting their political agenda, their utopian ideal of a gun-free America. But - like the utopian ideals of yesteryear - this, too, is a foolish one.

Statistics show that states with lenient gun laws have lower rates of crime than those with strict gun laws. After all, criminals prey on defenseless people, on those who are weak and unable to defend themselves. Thus, we see that anti-gun laws are counterproductive: they promote crime instead of lessening it.

Guns don't kill people; criminals kill people. Bombs don't blow up airplanes; Islamic terrorists do. Pencils don't fail tests; bad students do. It's time to take off the filters of political correctness and tell it like it is. Truth hurts; but that is no reason why we must call a spade, a shovel. That is no reason to remove the word "jihadist" from government documents. That is no reason to refer to the Libyan war as a "kinetic military operation." Sorry, libs, but your euphemisms must go.

Unfortuanately, we live in a society that scapegoats objects instead of the criminals who use them. We live in a society that pats down 80-year-old nuns at airports for fear that they might have a bomb hidden somewhere. Did 80-year-old nuns fly planes into the Twin Towers? Did 80-year-old nuns try to blow up Times Square, and airplanes, and synagogues, and Christmas ceremonies? 

Why on earth are we pretending that 80-year-old nuns are just as likely to be hiding bombs as 20-year-olds from Saudi Arabia? Whom are we trying to fool? A better question would be: Whom are we trying to appease?

Perhaps we should stop blaming objects and start focusing on the bad guys who use them. Our sages tell us that he who is merciful unto the cruel will one day be cruel unto the merciful. We have become "merciful" towards criminals, granting them the right to an attorney at the expense of the tax-paying public. We have become "merciful" towards suspicious-looking people from countries that are known for sponsoring terrorism. Allow me to offer just one example. Why was the "underwear bomber" able to get on the plane? Why did no one notice that his name had been placed on a terror watch list, that he was not carrying luggage or wearing a coat, that his father had spoken to the US embassy in Nigeria before the flight? 

Self-deception is suicide, and America is clearly engaged in both. We have become merciful unto the cruel, unto the suspicious, unto the criminals among us. We are bending over backwards in order to avoid offending the terrorists. 

Note that the underwear bombing was not stopped by the government; it failed because the bomb was not properly assembled and detonated. If Abdulmutallab had been a little smarter, the ashes of 300 innocent Americans would be flying around in the air of Detroit to this day. Note that the Times Square bombing was not stopped by the government; it failed because the bomb did not detonate when it should have. If Shaszad had been a little smarter, Times Square would be a graveyard of thousands. And their blood would be on our hands; the blood of thosuands would be on the hands of those who set political correctness above national security.

I repeat: "Those who are merciful unto the cruel will one day be cruel unto the merciful."

And, indeed, we are "cruel" unto the innocent. We are cruel by treating every airline passenger as a potential terrorist. We are cruel to the law-abiding, hard-working folks who wish to own a gun for purposes of self-defense.  We are cruel by failing to protect the innocent public from the monsters within our borders.

When did this ridiculousness start? I would say that it started with Miranda v. Arizona, a naive albeit well-intentioned Supreme Court decision that attempted to level the playing field between law enforcement and criminals. Ever since Miranda, American society has placed greater emphasis on the rights of criminals than on the rights of their victims.

We are outraged by the torture of foreign-born terrorists in a foreign land, but we have forgotten the torture that our own people endured on 9/11. We are outraged by a Floridian pastor's attempt to burn the Qur'an on the anniversary of 9/11, but we have forgotten the thousands of books that lay within the World Trade Center and were burned to ashes on that fateful day. Granted, torture and book-burning are certainly not nice, not moral, and possibly not legal. Yet, it is fascinating to see how quickly we forget the suffering of our own people, our own families, and our own nation - and turn our concerns to the discomfort of genocidal murderers. It is alarming to see how quickly we forget the suffocated corpses, the mothers and fathers who leaped from the heights of the Twin Towers, the twisted heap of ash that lay in the middle of our city. Instead, we are concerned about the comfort of those responsible for this dastardly deed - and those who may be planning other terrorist attacks against our people.

We are concerned about the burning of Qur'ans - even though thousands of books were burned in the World Trade Center, even though our soldiers burned hundreds of Bibles to avoid offending the Afghan people, even though the American flag is burned nearly every day in the countries of our enemies. Liberals vigorously defend this sacrilege - this outrage - in the name of free speech and the First Amendment.  But when a fringe pastor announces his plan to burn some Qur'ans in a little-known church, we are outraged. We are not concerned about Americaphobia, but only about Islamophobia.

What is to account for this double standard? Who can explain the laughable hypocrisy of the liberal left? Could it be that the Qur'an is any more sacred than the American flag? Could it be that the comfort of our enemies is more important than the lives and safety of our people?

And so it is with guns. Just as liberals do not want terrorists to be tortured, they do not want robbers to be hurt or killed. So, they don't mind the burglaries and home break-ins that the mere brandishing of a weapon could prevent. Gazillioniare politicians walk around with Secret Service agents and hide behind bullet-proof screens when delivering a speech, but they don't believe that we are entitled to the same safety in our own homes.  We are told that Democrats are for the poor and Republicans are for the rich, but Democrats don't seem to mind that poor people can be easily robbed and killed if they are denied the right to self-defense. President Obama will not give up his taxpayer-financed Secret Service protection, but he wants ordinary Americans to give up their only means of self-defense. Obama's hypocrisy is so ubiquitous that it is almost unnoticeable. His double standards are so many that we no longer pay attention to them.

But we should. We as a society should do an about-face from the suicidal tactics of political correctness, stop our counterproductive attempts at gun control, and get to the core of the problem.

Blaming guns is a way to avoid blaming criminals, something that politically correct elitists love to do, since all criminals are "victims of society's oppression." In fact, liberal ideology is based entirely and exclusively on the notion of victimhood. If you read the Huffington Post or the New York Times, you know that the "evil corporations" are oppressing the poor, the "racist whites" are locked in a perpetual struggle with African-Americans, and the "apartheid Israeli regime" is torturing downtrodden Palestinians. But the other side of the story hardly ever gets told.

When Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. refuses to identify himself to a white police officer - a white police officer who previously saved an African-American man's life - the media screams racism with little regard to the actual facts. When Arabs butcher a family of five in Israel, the media sides with the murderers simply because the family was living in what they see as the "occupied West Bank." Perhaps a gun would have helped the Fogel family. If they could have defended themselves, perhaps they would still be alive.

But I digress. It would be interesting to know what my friend at Long Island University has to say about all this. Perhaps he, too, has been brainwashed into hating the United States of America and everything that makes it unique - like the freedom to defend oneself, a freedom that would have saved the lives of my ancestors.

But surely, my LIU friend will not dispute one simple truth: Innocents can be killed in a myriad of ways. Maksim Gelman stabbed people to death with a knife, as did Arab terrorists in Itamar. Does that mean that we should ban all knives?

Only a fool would think so.

Terror in the Holy Land: My Thoughts on the (Rest in) Peace Process

***SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE***


By now, the world has forgotten almost entirely about the Itamar Massacre carried out two weeks ago. In fact, those who listen to the liberal media may never even have heard of it. What should have been front-page news quickly receded to the back-burner of the media's mind, supposedly overshadowed by the disaster in Japan. So, let me remind you:

A mother, a father, and three children were brutally slain as they lay sleeping in their beds on a Friday evening. What had they done to deserve this horrible fate? What crime had they committed? Well, they were Jews occupying the West Bank. As Louis Farrakhan might have put it, they were Zionist interlopers dwelling on stolen land.

And, as we know, there can be no greater crime than Jews living in Judea and Samaria (the real name for the "West Bank"). There can be no greater offense than building Jewish homes in the "occupied territories." The horror! The outrage! It is a sin to be punished by death.

And it was.

These gruesome images show a bloodbath that would have made Charles Manson shudder. Even the most heartless of men would be disturbed to hear that a child had been stabbed in the heart, knifed at the throat, or decapitated. That doleful Friday night, all three of these brutal machinations had been perpetrated against the children of the Fogel family, and - yet - some people were unmoved.

Arabs living in the Gaza Strip were not disgusted by the massacre; they were delighted by it. They were delighted at the torture of children, jubilant to hear about the butchering of innocents in their beds. Just like they did on 9/11, scores of Palestinians took to the streets, passing out candy to drivers, pedestrians, and HAMAS "policemen."

 

 

Celebrating the slaughter



Now, I understand the phenomenon of schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the pain of others, but this was something more. Something worse. Something unfathomable to the human soul. But, then again, it takes a savage to understand a savage.

Frankly, I am hard-pressed to say who was worse: the actual murderers, or the low-lifes who glorified them.

***UPDATE (4/6/11): Poll shows that 32% of PA Arabs approve of Itamar Massacre

The terrorist apologists will tell us that these are "poor" and "oppressed" Palestinians whose land has been stolen by the evil JOOOOs back in 1947. Assuming that this is true - and it's not - let me say this: People have been oppressed in the most brutal ways since the beginning of time. Yet, despite the horrors of slavery and genocide with which human history is laden, no people have sunk so low as the Palestinians. No people have strapped bombs onto the waists of their children and told them to go blow up other children. No people have thrown parties in the middle of the street to celebrate the decapitation of a three-month-old infant. No people have been so devoid of morals and decency as those we saw in the pictures above - cheering the murder of a family.

But, the terrorist apologists will cry, it was the family's fault for living in "occupied territory." They deserved to die, you see, for building their homes in Samaria, in the "West Bank." While this contention is beyond disgusting, let us entertain it for a moment.

If it is true that slaughtering Jews in the "occupied territories" is justified, then what do you make of last Wednesday's bus bombing ... in Jerusalem?

President Obama believes that if only Israel were to cede control of the "occupied territories," there would be peace in the Middle East. In his eyes, the greatest obstacle to peace is not the Arab who decapitates a baby in the middle of the night, not the Arab who celebrates this murderous deed, but little old Mrs. Goldberg building an apartment in Samaria.

Of course, the bus bombing in Jerusalem proves otherwise. Contrary to our President's assertions, the Arabs do not object merely to the "West Bank settlements"; they object to the existence of Israel - the existence of the Jewish people. Nothing would please them short of Israel's utter and complete destruction.

To understand this, we need look no further than their own words. All over the world, Arabs delight in singing and chanting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." 

Note that Israel is surrounded on one side by the Jordan River and on the other side by the Mediterranean Sea. The Arabs hope that this entire region - "from the river to the sea" - will one day be "free." But free of what, you ask? Free of Jews. Judenrein.

Don't be fooled. The so-called "occupation of the West Bank" is merely an excuse. For most Arabs, the real problem is the existence of Israel, a country they have been indoctrinated to deplore since before they could walk. They want Israel to be wiped off the map, something that the civilized world must never allow.

How can the State of Israel make peace with a people who do not recognize its right to exist, with a people who seek to obliterate it from the face of the earth? "Land for peace" is all the rage these days, but let's not forget what happened when Neville Chamberlain tried it with Adolph Hitler (yemach shemo vezichro). As we saw in the 1930s, appeasement does not lead to peace. To the contrary, it emboldens the enemy and leads to war. 

Those who watch the news will remember that Israel already took the path of acquiescence in Gaza, when it expelled ten thousand people from their homes and gave their property over to criminals and ex-murderers. As of the 2006 elections, Gaza is a terrorist enclave run by HAMAS, which fires rockets at Jewish homes  outside the strip EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Appeasement didn't work then, and it won't work now. Israelis may pray for peace, but the Arabs call for blood.

If today you give them Judea and Samaria, tomorrow they will ask for Jerusalem. And the next day they will want to go back to 1947. As the expression goes, if they give them an inch, they will take a yard.  Just as Hitler made no secret of his plan to exterminate the Jewish people while expanding German sovereignty over other countries, today's Arabs make no secret of their anti-Semitic bigotry and territorial ambitions. Their own chant gives them away: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." Note the deliberate choice of words: they aren't talking merely about the West Bank; they are talking about "Palestine" - all of it. And their message couldn't be clearer. It is an incitement to genocide, a call for a Judenrein country. Sound familiar? Harry Truman, the first American President to recognize the State of Israel, put it best: "There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know."

THIS WAS THEN:

  

THIS IS NOW: