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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; History</title>
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		<title>Palestinians Attempt to Co-Opt Jewish History</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/palestinians-attempt-to-co-opt-jewish-history/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinians-attempt-to-co-opt-jewish-history</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Dec 2014 05:08:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israeli]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jewish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[state]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248061</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The desperate antics of an invented people. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_248203" style="width: 346px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/tel.jpg"><img class="wp-image-248203" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/tel-450x337.jpg" alt="tel" width="336" height="252" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The Tel Dan Stele</p></div>
<p>In December 2011, former House Speaker and presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich made the <a href="http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2011/12/13/yes_palestinians_are_an_invented_people_99796.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">following observation</span></a> regarding the Palestinians;</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we&#8217;ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community…</i></p></blockquote>
<p>That comment set off a firestorm of debate and criticism but is in actuality, grounded in historical fact. As noted historian Benny Morris pointed out in his acclaimed book, <i>1948: The First Arab-Israeli War</i>, at the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, most Arabs residing in the Land of Israel or “Palestine” considered themselves to be subjects of the Ottoman Empire. There were some Palestinian Arabs with vague nationalistic tendencies but even this minority considered itself to be part of Greater Syria. There simply was no reference to an independent Palestine for a distinct group of people calling themselves “Palestinians.”</p>
<p>Morris also perceptively notes that the residents of Palestinian villages routinely failed to come to the assistance of nearby villages that were under attack by Jewish forces thus reinforcing the view that Arab villagers felt little loyalty to all but clan and village. The notion of a “Palestinian people” was an alien concept to the common Palestinian villager who was not bound by any sense of duty to assist a neighboring village.</p>
<p>Occasionally, Palestinians themselves will acknowledge this fact. In a revealing 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, PLO executive committee member <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zuheir_Mohsen"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Zahir Muhsein</span></a> stated,</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct &#8216;Palestinian people&#8217; to oppose Zionism.</i></p>
<p><i>For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>It was a rare but astonishing moment of candor. A senior PLO member was openly acknowledging what few would readily admit. But his was not an isolated admission. In a March 2012 televised address, Hamas Minister of the Interior and of National Security <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAfENxzv2mc"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Fathi Hammad</span></a> essentially validated Gingrich’s assessment of the Palestinians. While pleading for Egyptian fuel, Hammad let loose with a series of embarrassing admissions that were certainly not intended for Western audiences.</p>
<p>“Every Palestinian…throughout Palestine can prove his Arab roots, whether from Saudi Arabia or Yemen or anywhere.” He went on to say that “personally, half my family is Egyptian, we are all like that.” And further buries himself deeper by stating, “Brothers, half the Palestinians are Egyptian and the other half are Saudis…Who are the Palestinians?” he asks rhetorically. “We have families called al-Masri whose roots are Egyptian, Egyptian! We are Egyptian! We are Arab! We are Muslim!” He concludes his rant with the obligatory Muslim battle cry, “Allahuakbar!” Curiously absent from his long diatribe is any recognition of an independent Palestinian identity and that’s precisely because there simply isn’t any.</p>
<p>Lacking their own independent history, culture and identity, Palestinians have adopted a strategy of <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1468"><span style="color: #0433ff;">denying Jewish history</span></a>. Arafat, for example, flat out denied the fact that great Jewish Temples, built first by king Solomon and then by Herod, once stood where the Al-Aqsa Mosque currently stands. So ridiculous were his comments that they earned a swift rebuke from President Clinton. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas taking cue from his boss also adopted this odious position. It should therefore come as no surprise that Abbas is also a <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/exposing-abbas-5335"><span style="color: #0433ff;">confirmed Holocaust denier</span></a>, despite his transparent efforts to <a href="http://tabletmag.com/scroll/170686/mahmoud-abbas-still-a-holocaust-denier"><span style="color: #0433ff;">rehabilitate his image</span></a> for his gullible Western audience.</p>
<p>Palestinian Arabs have also attempted to recruit Western “experts” and academics to their cause. In his insightful book <i>The Fight for Jerusalem:</i> <i>Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City,</i> veteran Israeli diplomat Dore Gold chronicles the length to which Arab-Muslims and their Western lackeys will go to deny the Jewish nexus to the Land of Israel. They argued that much of ancient Jewish history was nothing but mythology including the Kingdoms of David and Solomon.</p>
<p>From the Arab perspective, the tactic was a sound one. Sever the ancient historical Jewish nexus with Israel and you severely undermine claims of indigenousness. But archeology does not lie and those very Western academics (at least the intellectually honest ones) were forced to retract their findings and conclusions after the dramatic 1993 discovery of a 9<sup>th</sup> century stele at Tel Dan in northern Israel that clearly referenced the “<a href="http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/artifacts-and-the-bible/the-tel-dan-inscription-the-first-historical-evidence-of-the-king-david-bible-story/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">House of David</span></a>.” Additional discoveries since then, including finds in <a href="http://www.aish.com/h/9av/ht/48961251.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Jerusalem</span></a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/international/middleeast/09alphabet.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Tel Zayit</span></a> and at the <a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2013/June/Did-David-Solomon-Exist-Dig-Refutes-Naysayers/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Fortress of Elah</span></a> have further eroded claims by skeptics and naysayers.</p>
<p>Not content with denying Jewish history, Palestinian Arabs have actually attempted to co-opt it by absurdly claiming that Moses as well as King Saul were Palestinian Muslims who conquered and claimed “Palestine” for the benefit of Palestinians. These risible comments were spewed forth by “Dr.” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqjwLKdg9ro"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Omar Ja’ara</span></a>, a lecturer at Al-Najah University in Nablus and broadcast on Palestinian Authority TV. He notes further that the actions of Moses and Saul represented “the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine&#8230; this is our logic and this is our culture.”</p>
<p>Incidentally, Al-Najah University boasts on its <a href="http://www.najah.edu/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">website</span></a> that it is “the first Palestinian University to obtain the EFQM European Certificate of Excellence.” Something to bear in mind next time any parent contemplates sending their child off to Europe for higher education.</p>
<p>Of course it doesn’t matter that Saul lived approximately 1,700 years before Muhammad was zygote. Facts play absolutely no role in Palestinian academia. Empirical data and evidence is ignored. Precedence is given to upholding a false, pernicious and viscerally anti-Semitic narrative that either denies historical fact or co-opts it.</p>
<p>As PLO bigwig Zahir Muhsein candidly noted, the claim of a Palestinian identity is a myth whose aim is not designed to achieve liberation or advancement for any particular people but rather to subjugate and destroy another people. For those of you, who still remain unconvinced; consider the <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/al-aqsa-speaker-the-slaughter-of-the-jews-is-near/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">recent comments</span></a> made by a prominent sheikh during a religious sermon at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. During his tirade, which included the usual dose of anti-Semitic vitriol, the sheikh never once uttered a desire or longing for Palestinian statehood. Instead he expresses the desire to join with ISIS in its quest for an Islamic caliphate and asks the large crowd of acolytes surrounding him to, “pledge allegiance to the Muslim Caliph,” and they in turn respond with chants of “amen!”</p>
<p>Few in the West have faced up to this malevolent reality. They continue to adhere to the harmful, dogmatic formula of a two-state solution. What they willfully fail to realize is that such a solution poses an existential threat to the Mideast’s only democracy and will most certainly have grave negative consequences for the region at large.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>Raymond Ibrahim on ISIS&#8217;s Threat to America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/raymond-ibrahim-on-isiss-threat-to-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=raymond-ibrahim-on-isiss-threat-to-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Nov 2014 05:30:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245649</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Freedom Center's Shillman Fellow sheds light on Islam vs. the West throughout history.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #323333;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/02.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-246100 size-full" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/02.jpg" alt="0" width="317" height="266" /></a>Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim was interviewed last month on &#8220;<a href="http://calltorights.com/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">A Call to Rights Radio Show</span></a>&#8221; with Steve Kates. Topics ranged from the dangers of the Islamic State, history and the Crusades, Christian persecution, and the Obama administration’s policies.  To listen to the nearly one-hour long interview, <a href="http://calltorights.com/audio/CTR100414Hour1.mp3"><span style="color: #0433ff;">click here</span></a> (interview starts around the 9-minute mark)</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>California Law Enshrines Obama’s Place in History</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/california-law-enshrines-obamas-place-in-history/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=california-law-enshrines-obamas-place-in-history</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Sep 2014 04:25:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Textbooks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240088</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[His election was a watershed moment in more ways than one.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/obambro.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240141" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/obambro-341x350.jpg" alt="obambro" width="247" height="254" /></a>In case you were concerned that future generations of schoolchildren won’t be sufficiently indoctrinated into the cult of the man and the legend that is Barack Obama, here is some good news: the <em>Washington Post</em> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/08/26/california-law-calls-for-schools-to-teach-about-the-significance-of-obamas-election">reported</a> last week that, beginning with the 2015-2016 school year, California textbooks will teach about the significance of President Obama’s election thanks to a new law signed Monday by Governor Jerry Brown.</p>
<p>Under measure <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_1901-1950/ab_1912_bill_20140825_chaptered.html">AB 1912</a>, the California Instructional Quality Commission will be required, during its next revision of the history-social science curriculum, to consider including instruction on “the election of President Barack Obama and the significance of the United States electing its first African American President.”</p>
<p>The bill’s sponsor is Democrat Assemblyman Chris Holden, who said <a href="http://asmdc.org/members/a41/news-room/press-releases/governor-signs-assemblymember-holden-s-bill-recognizing-president-obama-in-california-textbooks">in a statement</a> that “Obama will take his rightful place in California textbooks” under the legislation, which “will be the first step toward acknowledging President Obama’s legacy for generations to come.” Holden was concerned that Obama’s presidency would otherwise be “relegated to a footnote in textbooks,” despite the fact that his election “represented the moment when all things seemed possible.”</p>
<p>Let’s look at some of the specific wording of the measure [<em>with added commentary in brackets</em>]: “The Legislature finds and declares all of the following”:</p>
<blockquote><p>(a) The election of Barack Hussein Obama to the office of President of the United States was a historic step in the effort towards equality in the United States.<br />
[<em>And since then, his presidency has been more about racial payback than equality; Obama has done more to inflame race relations in this country than O.J. Simpson.</em>]</p>
<p>(d) Barack Obama attended Harvard Law School where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review.<br />
[<em>And the first to do so without publishing anything of his own, a self-proclaimed constitutional law expert who views the Constitution as a “living” document which he has ignored at will.</em>]</p>
<p>(e) After law school, Barack Obama worked to fulfill the spirit of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by encouraging people to register to vote.<br />
[<em>And to vote as often as possible, including dead people and illegal aliens</em>]</p>
<p>(h) In honor of his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.<br />
[<em>Actually, Obama was awarded the meaningless Nobel Peace Prize not in honor of any effort on his part; it was given to him prematurely by the Nobel Committee – chaired by Thorbjørn Johansen, one of Europe’s leading socialists and an outspoken critic of the mythical plague of “Islamophobia” – for no substantive reason apart from the halo of hope and change enveloping The One’s head. In light of the numerous foreign policy debacles that have unfolded under his presidency, the notion that Obama has strengthened “international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” is laughable</em>.]</p></blockquote>
<p>Though I don’t believe a law is necessary to enforce this measure, I’m actually wholeheartedly in favor of the concept. I believe strongly that California high school students <em>should </em>be educated about Obama and his presidency. Future generations of students <em>all across</em> America <em>should</em> be informed of the legacy he has left us. Every schoolkid should be aware of the subversive process whereby we, as a once-great, pre-eminent superpower, were brought low by a post-colonialist, post-Western, post-American President who successfully carried out his mission to effect a fundamental transformation of the United States.</p>
<p>I’m being facetious, of course; educating our children about the ugly truth of Obama’s rise and reign certainly isn’t what Assemblyman Holden had in mind. The purpose of his bill is to insure precisely the opposite: to enshrine the election of Barack Obama as a watershed moment for civil rights in American history. And in truth, it was; all joking about the sax-playing Bill Clinton aside, Obama is technically our first (half-)black President.</p>
<p>But it was a watershed moment in our history for a much more significant reason. For many of his star-struck fans, Obama’s election may have “represented the moment when all things seemed possible,” as Holden put it, but his subsequent two-term presidency represented the years when all things went to hell in a handbasket.</p>
<p>“If you watch the nightly news,” Obama <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/obama-the-medias-making-you-think-the-world-is-falling-apart/">said</a> at one of his many fundraisers recently, “it feels like the world is falling apart.” Yes it does, because it is. But it’s not just the media ginning up that false impression, as Obama was suggesting; it is a hard reality, and he principal reason for the alarming state of the world today is Barack Obama himself, and six years of his destructive presidency that has kneecapped the United States as the world’s leading superpower.</p>
<p>Assemblyman Holden wants future generations to acknowledge Obama’s legacy, but he didn’t specify in AB1912 or in his statement exactly what that legacy will be, so allow me to elucidate. Obama has alienated our allies and empowered our enemies. He facilitated the disastrous “Arab Spring” and left the Middle East inflamed by chaos. He has exacerbated racial tensions to the breaking point. He has overloaded our immigration system, launched the healthcare leviathan, and boosted our national debt into the stratosphere. He has implanted the Muslim Brotherhood in our own government. He has gutted our military. And he still has two years remaining in which to wreak further havoc.</p>
<p>That is Barack Obama’s shameful, colossal failure of a legacy, about which every schoolkid definitely should be made aware.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>The Era of Spiraling Debt</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-era-of-spiraling-debt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-era-of-spiraling-debt</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Aug 2014 04:50:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[7 trillion]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Federal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237820</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How long will the scheme last? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Money_Black_Hole.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237827" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Money_Black_Hole.jpg" alt="Money_Black_Hole" width="277" height="203" /></a>To the surprise of absolutely no one, the nation’s debt has skyrocketed during President Barack Obama’s tenure. In a little over five and a half years, the Obama administration has <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/706025967449751-federal-debt-7t-under-obama"><span style="color: #1255cc;">added</span></a> more than $7 trillion to the total, a number that represents more debt accumulation than the administrations of George Washington through Bill Clinton combined. At the close of business on July 31, the nation’s debt was $17.6 trillion, with $7.06 trillion of it accumulated since Obama was inaugurated in 2009.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">CNS News offers some gut-wrenching perspective regarding the numbers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">As of June, there were 115,097,000 households in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The $17,687,136,723,410.59 in debt the federal government had accumulated as of the end of July equaled $153,671.57 per household.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The $7,060,259,674,497.51 in new debt that the federal government has taken on during Obama’s presidency equals $61,341.82 per household.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The median household income in the United States in 2012 (the latest year estimated) was $51,017. Thus, President Obama has increased the federal debt by more than the typical household’s annual income.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">There is bitter irony and hypocrisy attached to these numbers. &#8220;The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents –number 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back&#8211; $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic,” said presidential candidate Barack Obama, at a 2008 campaign event in Fargo, ND.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Bush was indeed nearly as irresponsible as Obama, <a href="http://useconomy.about.com/od/usdebtanddeficit/p/US-Debt-by-President.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">adding</span></a> $5.849  trillion in eight years to the national IOU, an increase of 101 percent over the $5.8 trillion in debt America owed at the end of Clinton&#8217;s last budget in FY 2001.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet it is worth noting two salient facts: the <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/image/federal-debt"><span style="color: #1255cc;">largest</span></a> accumulation of debt on Bush’s watch occurred after Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress in 2006; and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Bush signed into law in 2008, accounting for a large part of his administration&#8217;s debt accumulation, was supported by a majority of Democrats in both the <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/110-2008/h681"><span style="color: #1255cc;">House</span></a> and <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/110-2008/s213"><span style="color: #1255cc;">Senate</span></a>, while a majority of Republicans opposed the measure. Furthermore, Democrats have had majority control of the government, including total control for the first two years of the Obama administration, for the last eight years.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">None of this should be seen as an excuse to mitigate the economic irresponsibility wrought by Bush and his “compassionate conservative” agenda that represented nothing more than &#8220;tax-and-spend liberalism&#8221; by another name. But apparently once our current Redistributionist-in-Chief entered the Oval Office, taking out a credit card for the Bank of China in the name of our children was no longer considered irresponsible or unpatriotic.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Americans will never know with absolute certainty whether bailing out the banks was necessary. On the other hand, they are certain about a number of other things. They know there wasn&#8217;t a single resignation demanded from those who engineered the crisis in return for that bailout. They know the Federal Reserve policies emanating from the crisis, including multiple rounds of Quantitative Easing (QE), coupled with the Fed’s Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), have precipitated both the <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/08/01/plosser-says-fed-well-behind-on-rate-setting/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">weakest recovery</span></a> since WWII, and a financial bonanza for the top 1 percent of Americans, who have <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/13/obama-economic-policies-fail-to-turn-trends-hurtin/?page=all"><span style="color: #1255cc;">garnered</span></a> 90 percent of the income gains since the so-called recovery began in 2009. They know the Fed’s policies were so egregious, that Andrew Huszar, who helped engineer the Central Bank&#8217;s bond-buying spree, offered up a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303763804579183680751473884"><span style="color: #1255cc;">public apology</span></a> in the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> for &#8220;the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">But there is something most Americans <i>don’t</i> know. In 2011, in one of the most under-the-radar financial stories in the history of the nation, Bloomberg News <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reported</span></a> that the Federal Reserve made <i>$7.7 trillion</i> available to the banking industry, completely in secret. &#8220;The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day,” the article revealed. &#8220;Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Thus while ordinary Americans struggled through the worst recession since the Great Depression, those partially responsible for it were taken care of. The other bad actor in this fiasco was the federal government itself, which turned owning a home into a de facto entitlement program, forcing the banks to offer mortgages to minority applicants with shaky credit, lest they be accused of racism and subject to the attendant federal penalties.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Keynesian economists who currently run the show continue to insist all the “pump-priming” that precipitated the $7 trillion in additional debt—and counting—accrued during the Obama administration, was a necessary tradeoff for our current recovery.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is a “recovery&#8221; in which 11.4 million Americans have <a href="http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/080414-711620-obama-new-jobs-numbers-tell-another-tale.htm?p=2"><span style="color: #1255cc;">left</span></a> the workforce since 2009, and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/part-time-job-creation_n_3788365.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">75 percent </span></a>of the jobs created last year were part-time. As of last month the part-time labor force still contained <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/08/01/337094697/as-labor-market-advances-millions-stuck-in-part-time-jobs"><span style="color: #1255cc;">7.5 million</span></a> Americans who want full-time employment. The labor-force participation rate remains at its lowest level since 1978, and shows few signs of <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/07/17/white-house-economists-see-few-labor-force-dropouts-returning/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">rebounding</span></a> any time soon. Record numbers of Americans remain on <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/hhs-report-percentage-americans-welfare-hits-recorded-high"><span style="color: #1255cc;">welfare</span></a> and <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/10962532-us-disability-beneficiaries-exceed-population-greece"><span style="color: #1255cc;">disability</span></a>. Most of the jobs being created are low-paying and <a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/markets/item/18845-july-bls-jobs-report-the-sound-of-one-hand-clapping"><span style="color: #1255cc;">insufficient in number</span></a> to keep up with population growth. And while the <i>initial</i> estimate of GDP growth for the 2nd quarter was 4 percent, it was offset by a negative 1st quarter. Moreover, most economist expect the nation&#8217;s annual growth rate to come in at under 3 percent, &#8220;not high enough to break us out of the wage-stagnating &#8216;new normal&#8217; of the Obama era,” as the <i>New York Post’s</i> Charles Gasparino <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/08/03/obamas-hollow-economic-boasts/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">put</span></a> it.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Through it all, the debt keeps climbing. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the total amount of publicly-held federal debt is now 74 percent of the economy’s annual output (GDP) &#8220;a higher percentage than at any point in U.S. history except a brief period around World War II and almost twice the percentage at the end of 2008.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In short, we remain on an <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/15/americas-unsustainable-long-term-debt-tr"><span style="color: #1255cc;">unsustainable</span></a> debt trajectory with no end in sight, during a flaccid economic recovery sustained only by saddling future generations of Americans with the burdens of our unconscionable economic recklessness.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The late Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents Nixon and Ford, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/467811-if-something-cannot-go-on-forever-it-will-stop"><span style="color: #1255cc;">characterized</span></a> the ultimate consequences of such recklessness. “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” he said. One is left to wonder whether that stoppage will be abrupt, or simply an <a href="http://money.msn.com/investing/15-disappearing-middle-class-jobs"><span style="color: #1255cc;">incremental</span></a> ratcheting down of economic expectations, along with many others that comprise the foundation of American exceptionalism. Perhaps that’s what the “fundamental transformation” of the United States is <i>really</i> all about.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Inventing Freedom. How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/inventing-freedom-how-the-english-speaking-peoples-made-the-modern-world/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=inventing-freedom-how-the-english-speaking-peoples-made-the-modern-world</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jul 2014 04:56:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Hannan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inventing Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Liberty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236417</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Daniel Hannan recovers the forgotten history of the free world. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/9780062231734_p0_v5_s260x420.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236420" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/9780062231734_p0_v5_s260x420-231x350.jpg" alt="9780062231734_p0_v5_s260x420" width="193" height="292" /></a><strong>[Daniel Hannan will be speaking at a Freedom Center event in Los Angeles on July 22, 2014. For more info, </strong><a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/evening-event-with-daniel-hannan-tickets-11563925011" target="_blank"><strong>click here.]</strong><br />
</a></p>
<p><strong>Daniel Hannan, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Freedom-English-Speaking-Peoples-Modern/dp/0062231731">Inventing Freedom. How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World</a>.</i></strong></p>
<p>The fundamental incoherence of multiculturalism comes from its cultural relativism that posits no one way of life is better than another, but then singles out the West as a uniquely oppressive global villain. Even more contradictory, at the same time that multiculturalists slander the West for its alleged crimes, they praise and promote political and social ideals––democracy, freedom, equality, and law-based justice–– that flourish only in the West. This cognitive dissonance is made possible by massive historical ignorance of just where such ideas originated and developed. The great value of Daniel Hannan’s <i>Inventing Freedom</i> lies in its recovery of that history, and the role that the “Anglosphere,” the English-speaking countries, played in recognizing and nurturing those ideals for over 1500 years.</p>
<p>Hannan is a writer, blogger, and currently the Conservative representative of Southeast England in the European Parliament, where he vigorously monitors and battles the dirigiste excesses and autocratic impulses of the European Union functionaries. He is also a stalwart friend of the U.S., a throwback to the days when the “special relationship” between Britain and the U.S. was instrumental in turning back the fascist, Nazi, and communist assault on everything that comprises the liberal democratic ideals universally admired and imitated, even by those illiberal regimes who must pay lip-service to democracy and freedom even as they work to subvert them. Readers will find in <i>Inventing Freedom</i> an immensely readable, clearly argued survey of those ideals, the history in which they struggled to survive, and the great heroes whose sacrifice and commitment to them ensured that we enjoy them today.</p>
<p>First Hannan defines the core political ideals and virtues that create the bonds between England and America, the Anglosphere’s most spectacular success story. “Elected parliaments, habeas corpus, free contract, equality before the law, open markets, an unrestricted press, the right to proselytize for any religion, jury trials” all find their modern origins in England, from where they have spread not just to America, but to the whole world, along with the English language and its rich vocabulary that makes for precise, concrete expression. Protestantism is another inheritance from England that shaped the political order and mores of the United States. The notion that individuals can read scripture unmediated by a hierarchical, centralized authority reinforced the bond between religious and civic freedom, both of which are predicated on individual freedom and equality. “Free speech, free conscience, and free parliaments”––Protestantism, Hannan argues, was the guarantor of all of them. Finally, the principles of the American Revolution codified in the Declaration of Independence were seen by the Colonists as theirs by right as Englishmen, for they were grounded in the common law, Magna Carta, and the English Bill of Rights created by the Glorious Revolution of 1689. Hannan reminds us that the Colonists did not understand “revolution” as the destruction of the old and the creation of the new, as would happen in France and later Russia, but rather as a “turn of the wheel” to restore traditional political rights and institutions that had been violated by a tyrant.</p>
<p>Hannan traces the history of these political ideals and beliefs from their origins in the tribal assemblies of the Germanic tribes that settled in England, to their most dominant expression in the United States. Critical in this development is the notion of “common law,” the idea that laws come not from the needs or caprices of rulers, but exist “as a folkright of inherited freedoms that bound the King just as surely as it bound his meanest subject.” Such laws evolve organically through time and become traditions that reflect generations of human experience and collective wisdom. Trial by a jury of peers, the presumption of innocence, property rights, and free contract also are buttressed by common law, and protect individuals and communities from the depredations of the more powerful.</p>
<p>Next, common law holds that “anything not expressly prohibited is legal,” and so citizens do not have to solicit the permission of government agents or authorities for their actions. These and other developments all reinforce the notions of individual self-reliance, responsibility, and agency over one’s own life that have contributed to the incredible success of the Anglosphere in creating free-market economies and unprecedented prosperity. These ideals also lead to the notion that even a king rules only by the consent of the people, who retain the right to petition or question the king about his behavior, a development codified in 1215 in the Magna Carta. “For the first time,” Hannan writes, “the idea that governments were subject to the law took written, contractual form,” and the Magna Carta became “the foundational charter of Anglosphere liberty.”</p>
<p>The story Hannan tells with wit and verve may look in hindsight as if it was preordained to succeed, as it has so spectacularly. But over the centuries these ideals had to battle alternatives borne by alien invaders like the Normans, or arising internally from the sectarian conflicts that followed the wars of religion or the “cousins’ war” between the Colonies and England sparked by George III’s tyranny. Yet through all this disorder and conflict the core ideals, carried in the hearts and minds of the people and transmitted through their common tongue and traditions, survived. And they created the “shared values” of today’s Anglosphere: “parliamentary supremacy, the rule of law, property rights, free trade, religious toleration, open inquiry, meritocratic appointments, representative government, control of the executive by the legislature, individual liberty.”</p>
<p>Moreover, Hannan stresses that all these boons are not tied to race or ethnicity, but can be embraced by any people. His discussion of India and its evolution into the world’s largest democracy illustrates his point that “Anglosphere values had been developed in a multiethnic context, that they had been transmitted through intellectual exchange rather than gene flow.” Here Hannan challenges one of the great lies of multiculturalism, which traffics in the bankrupt Marxist-Leninist smear-terms “colonialism” and “imperialism” in order to tarnish the Anglospheric legacy as a racist, exploitative imposition of alien values on innocent, dark-skinned “others.” On the contrary, the freest and most prosperous places outside the West are those like India, Singapore, and Hong Kong that have been shaped by the ideals of the Anglosphere.</p>
<p>This legacy of freedom and autonomy, however, has been eroding over the last decades, and the forces of destruction have come mostly from within. As Hannan note, “History has become a hierarchy of victimhood.” National and cultural pride in the achievements of the Anglosphere is considered bad form mainly because of its global dominance and success.  Such pride risks “the appearance of complacency or jingoism,” or evokes “supposed cultural imperialism or colonial arrogance.” Also, virtues like tolerance or seeing other peoples’ point of view have degenerated into “if not exactly self-hatred, certainly a form of cultural relativism in which the unique achievements of Anglosphere civilization are devalued.” Trickling down from the intelligentsia into the curricula of schools, such ideas cultivate guilt rather than pride, and a refusal to judge the dysfunctions of other cultures even as we obsess over the alleged crimes of our own. “As we lose sight of what the Anglosphere has achieved,” Hannan warns, “we risk losing the institutions that have served to make it what it is.”</p>
<p>Indeed, this process is well underway. England’s participation in the European Union has subjected it to the heavily regulated, top-down intrusive management of politics, culture, and the economy precisely the opposite of the ideals of individual autonomy and local government that have shaped the Anglosphere. And here in the U.S., the Obama administration and the progressive Democrats have tried to duplicate the E.U. model in everything from the slow-motion debacle of Obamacare, to the foreign policy of guilt, apology, and retreat masked by the magical thinking of “multilateralism” and “diplomatic engagement.” A federal Leviathan managed by a technocratic elite is a repudiation of everything that defines the Anglosphere and has made it the freest, most prosperous, and greatest force for good in history.</p>
<p>Hannan ends with a quote from a young Bostonian doctor named Joseph Warren as in 1775 he rallied his countrymen to defend the freedoms trampled by George III: “You are to decide the question on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions of unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.” We need to heed this advice, and Daniel Hannan’s rich history of our freedom is a good place to discover the unique worthiness of our civilization.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Remembering American Exceptionalism on Independence Day</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/callista-gingrich/remembering-american-exceptionalism-on-independence-day/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=remembering-american-exceptionalism-on-independence-day</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jul 2014 04:46:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Callista Gingrich]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[4th of July]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Founding Fathers]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Independence Day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Patriotism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235609</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How progressive education is failing to pass on patriotism to the next generation. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/declaration-of-independence.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235611" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/declaration-of-independence.jpg" alt="NGS Picture ID:394287" width="299" height="200" /></a>It was 238 years ago today that 56 men pledged &#8220;their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor&#8221; for the freedom of a new nation, signing a document that might have been their death sentence, the Declaration of Independence.</p>
<p>Their act of courage, like that of the patriots at Concord a year earlier, reverberated around the world. Their words did, too, stating the cause of the Revolution (and of many revolutions to follow) with a clarity that no one has ever matched.</p>
<p>&#8220;We hold these truths to be self-evident,&#8221; they wrote: &#8220;that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.&#8221;</p>
<p>With these words on that hot summer day in Philadelphia, the Founding Fathers changed the course of human history. The United States became the first country on earth to be established on fundamental principles of freedom. And for more than two centuries, our nation has continued to be defined by these big ideas. They are the basis of our system of government, the subject of our political debates, and at the heart of what makes America exceptional.</p>
<p>Most Americans still understand these timeless ideals. In 2010, a Gallup survey asked respondents, “Because of the United States’ history and its Constitution, do you think the U.S. has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world?” 80 percent of all Americans affirmed their belief in America as an exceptional nation, including 91 percent of Republicans, 77 percent of Independents, and 73 percent of Democrats.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we are failing to pass on our appreciation for America to the next generation of Americans. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that only 34 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 34 say they believe America is the greatest country in the world.</p>
<p>The problem begins in our schools. Our students are failing to learn American history&#8211;and without understanding our country’s past, they can’t possibly understand what makes America an exceptional nation.</p>
<p>For two generations now, we have taught our children revisionist or politically correct history&#8211;like the strange idea that our Founding Fathers risked their lives out of greed or self-interest. As a result of this failure to teach the truth about our history, we are beginning to see our nation’s memory of the past slip away&#8211;especially the values and principles for which our founders <i>actually</i> fought.</p>
<p>Recent results of a Department of Education National Assessment of Educational Progress survey suggest how great a challenge we face in correcting this problem. Just 20 percent of fourth-graders, 17 percent of eighth-graders and 12 percent of twelfth-graders are at grade-level proficiency in American history.</p>
<p>Only one in three fourth-graders can identify the purpose of the Declaration of Independence that we celebrate this week.  Less than half understand why George Washington was an important leader in American history.  And most fourth-graders don’t know why the Pilgrims left England.</p>
<p>These are alarming findings. It seems we are doing a poor job of helping the next generation understand both our amazing history and the great privilege of being American.</p>
<p>Those of us who are proud of our country and committed to passing on the lessons of its past must find creative ways to tell the American story.</p>
<p>Children’s books can be a good way to introduce young people to American history.  As the author of three children’s history books (including my most recent, <i>Yankee Doodle Dandy</i>, about the American Revolution), I have visited classrooms across the country to share the adventures of Ellis the Elephant, my time traveling pachyderm, with four to eight year olds. Most young people I meet are eager to learn and are excited to discover our nation’s pivotal moments.</p>
<p>Interactive online courses, television programs like Liberty’s Kids, and educational video games like Oregon Trail can also teach critical history lessons.  And of course, visits to historic sites like George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon or Independence Hall in Philadelphia are wonderful ways to inspire a love for American history.</p>
<p>This Independence Day, take a moment to appreciate the courage and sacrifice of those who signed the Declaration of Independence&#8211;the youngest just 26 years old. And then, take the opportunity to share with the young Americans in your life the meaning of that extraordinary document.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>How the American Left Distorts History in an Attempt to Find Past Heroes and Create a New Generation of Activists</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ron-radosh/how-the-american-left-distorts-history-in-an-attempt-to-find-past-heroes-and-create-a-new-generation-of-activists/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-the-american-left-distorts-history-in-an-attempt-to-find-past-heroes-and-create-a-new-generation-of-activists</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jun 2014 04:45:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ron Radosh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[anarchism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Haymarket bombing]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Rosenbergs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spanish civil war]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Three of the Left's top historical myths exposed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #000000;"><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/m19-haym-harp-480.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234751" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/m19-haym-harp-480-450x311.jpg" alt="m19-haym-harp-480" width="320" height="221" /></a>Originally published by <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2014/06/23/how-the-american-left-distorts-history-in-an-attempt-to-find-past-heroes-and-create-a-new-generation-of-activists/">PJ Media</a>. </em></p>
<p>The American Left has been expert in indoctrinating a new generation with false history. We have seen this with Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s Showtime TV series on the Cold War, and especially with the writings and pseudo-history of the late Howard Zinn. While conservatives — with some laudable exceptions — concentrate largely on policy issues, the left knows that it is not sufficient to work only for its own political agenda. The left realizes it needs to capture the realm of culture, which includes the portrayal of the American past.</p>
<p>The left believes that if the American past is to be accurately understood, its citizens must be educated to understand that their country was always the real oppressor of both its own citizens and the world community. Then, the evil of virtually all administrations will be seen not as an aberration, but as the result one should expect.</p>
<p>In order to understand this, it is necessary for the left to create myths. It does not matter if they have already been challenged and accurately discredited. They merely repeat them as fact.</p>
<p>In the past two weeks, a few examples have surfaced that illustrate how this is done.</p>
<p><strong>1. How American Communists see the Haymarket bombings</strong></p>
<p>The first example concerns what took place as part of the convention of the American Communist Party recently held in Chicago. As reported in the<a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-06-14/news/ct-communist-party-convention-met-20140615_1_communists-chicago-convention-95th-anniversary"><i> Chicago Tribune</i></a> by reporter Ron Grossman, a man named Tim Yeager took the comrades on a history tour of Chicago. Yeager is described as juggling three jobs — “United Auto Workers union organizer, Communist official, and Episcopal priest” (consider for yourselves what that reveals). The article tells us what Yeager presented to  his CP group on a tour of labor-related sites in Chicago:</p>
<blockquote><p>Friday morning, Yeager led a bus tour of some party history. The first stop was at the Haymarket statue on Desplaines Street just north of Randolph Street, where in 1886 a bomb thrown during a labor rally killed seven police officers and at least one civilian.</p>
<p>Known radicals, some not even present at the rally, were rounded up, speedily convicted and hanged. Several were buried at Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, making it a pilgrimage site for labor activists and the second stop on Friday’s tour. The Haymarket affair made Chicago the natural site for the Communist Party’s founding convention in 1919.</p>
<p>Yeager noted that the Chicago establishment leaders who called for swift punishment of the Haymarket martyrs were “the 1 percenters of that day” — the favored few who enjoyed immense riches while the majority toiled for crumbs.</p></blockquote>
<p>In the CP’s version of events, the radicals at Haymarket were framed for what was clearly a police provocation, an excuse to arrest and condemn the radicals for their protest of bad working conditions. As <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/338656/what-happened-haymarket">John J. Miller</a> explained last year in <i>National Review</i>, labor historian Timothy Messer-Kruse has written a <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Trial-Haymarket-Anarchists-Terrorism-Justice/dp/0230120776/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1403367043&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Timothy+Messer-Kruse">book</a> that demolishes the myth and tells the truth: the trial was not a travesty of justice, as the left has always argued, but a real anarchist conspiracy meant to create an insurrection starting with attacks on the police.</p>
<p>The prosecution proved its case, and was able through solid evidence to show that the anarchists were responsible for the throwing of the bomb that led to the death of the police officers. It was not “one of the great miscarriages of justice,” as one mainstream textbook tells its readers.</p>
<p>Messer-Kruse is an honest historian who personally is a social-democrat. “I drunk the Kook-Aid,” he told Miller, but he now puts accurate history in front of ideology. It is more than likely, he says,  that the seven dead policemen were not killed by the bomb, but shot in cold blood by the anarchists present at the rally. It was, as I put it in my own <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/01/28/haymarket-another-leftist-historical-myth-gets-destroyed/?singlepage=true">PJM column</a>, the destruction of “another historical myth.”</p>
<p>The people Comrade Tim Yeager took on his tour, or the many thousands who read Howard Zinn’s falsehoods, believe the frame-up myth. And if they come across anyone who disputes it, they respond by attacking the person as a turncoat and a traitor, and by repeating the myth to their own students, over and over. The myth cannot be allowed to be exposed, or the result will be a possible rethinking of everything they have learned from the falsifiers of history</p>
<p><strong>2. The Rosenberg Case</strong></p>
<p>The second long-standing myth is that of the trial for conspiracy to commit espionage of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Suffice it to say, the Rosenbergs were indeed Soviet agents, seeking to provide Stalin’s U.S.S.R. with whatever military and industrial secrets the ring could gather to hand over to the Soviet totalitarian state. When I first wrote about this in the 1983 <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Rosenberg-File-Second-Edition/dp/0300072058/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1403368124&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Ronald+Radosh+and+Joyce+Milton">book</a> Joyce Milton and I co-authored, we were lonely voices intent on telling the true story. By now our conclusions have been widely accepted, and in America, only a dwindling group of old Communists and fellow-travelers believe in their innocence.</p>
<p>This, however, is not the case, evidently, with the French.</p>
<p>On the 61st anniversary of their execution, June 19 of this year, <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://www.lepoint.fr/c-est-arrive-aujourd-hui/19-juin-1953-un-couple-de-cocos-grille-sur-la-chaise-apres-un-proces-truque-les-epoux-rosenberg-19-06-2012-1475063_494.php"><i>Le Point</i></a><i> </i>ran a piece informing its readers that the “conviction of the Rosenbergs is the result of a huge paranoia that grips an entire nation.” It is a result of “fantastic Red-baiting” that existed throughout the United States. The trial was nothing but “a mock trial.” They note that “many organizations worldwide are calling today for review of the Rosenberg case.”</p>
<p>That falsehood is meant to create the impression that they will not be hoodwinked, and that despite everything known about the case, the left knows the “truth” that they were innocent. And readers of Howard Zinn’s <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present-ebook/dp/B00338QF46/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1403535235&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=a+peoples+history+of+the+united+states+by+howard+zinn"><i>A People’s History of the United States</i></a>, <em>revised way after the truth of their guilt was known</em>, will find a section of his book on the Rosenberg case where he predictably uses old discredited material to “prove” that they were framed (pp.432-435).</p>
<p><strong>3. The Spanish Civil War</strong></p>
<p>For decades, the left wing in America has spread the myth about the Spanish Republic’s fight against fascism that started in 1936, and the decision of heroic volunteers to fight on its behalf. Especially singled out are the Americans who went to volunteer in that fight, who belonged to what they called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which was actually a small battalion, the size of which they exaggerated purposefully in order to make themselves appear as more important than they actually were.</p>
<p>The old pro-Communists have their own falsified history to explain that event. That too has been long discredited, especially by the historian Stanley Payne, in books such as his recent <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Civil-Cambridge-Essential-Histories/dp/0521174708/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1403536424&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Stanley+Payne"><i>The Spanish Civil War</i></a><i> </i>and in <i><a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Comrades-Commissars-Lincoln-Battalion-Spanish/dp/0271029102/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1403552274&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Cecil+Eby">The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism. </a>   </i></p>
<p>The truth about the Lincoln Battalion can be found in Cecil Eby’s important yet neglected book, <em><a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Comrades-Commissars-Lincoln-Battalion-Spanish/dp/0271029102/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1403553132&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Cecil+Eby">Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War</a></em>. The role played by the Soviet Union in Spain can be understood in the book Mary Habeck and I wrote, <em><a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Spain-Betrayed-Soviet-Spanish-Communism/dp/0300089813/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1403553174&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Spain+Betrayed">Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War</a></em>. Reviewing it for <em>The Weekly Standard</em>, Stephen Schwartz wrote: “It will effect a complete overturn in historical perceptions of the twentieth-century Left.”</p>
<p>No matter. The left continues to teach its false history to a new generation. In the past two weeks, an article by William Loren Katz appeared on the website of the<a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="https://zinnedproject.org/2014/06/the-forgotten-fight-against-fascism/"><em> </em>Zinn Education Project</a>, which is devoted to spreading the word of the most popular leftist defiler of the truth, the late Howard Zinn. His column also appeared on the <a style="font-weight: bold; color: #24839f;" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-zinn-education-project/the-forgotten-fight-again_b_5483988.html">Huffington Post</a> and other websites. According to Katz, the volunteers had one mission:</p>
<blockquote><p>By November the volunteer rush became a torrent: An estimated 40,000 men and women from 53 nations left home to defend the Republic. For the only time in history, a volunteer force of men and women from all over the world came together to fight for an ideal: democracy. The volunteers brought a message that ordinary people could resist fascist militarism</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>In the United States some 2,800 young men and women of different races and backgrounds formed the “Abraham Lincoln Brigade.” Seamen and students, farmers and professors, they hoped that their bravery could turn the tide, or at last alert the world to the fascist drive for world domination. Most made their way to Spain illegally as “tourists” visiting France.</p></blockquote>
<p>The truth: what they were joining was a Comintern army, put together by the NKVD’s international apparatus and the Communist International, and controlled and run by Stalin.</p>
<p>Rather than the mythical “good war” depicted by Katz and the propagandists, it was put together to help Spain fall under Soviet control, and to put into power a regime that would be the model for the post-World War II “people’s democracies” and that would be given limited military aid until such time as Britain and France might change their policy and unite with the Soviets in a new world alliance.</p>
<p>You will not find anywhere in Katz’s article — which continually heralds the volunteers’ anti-fascism — that during the Nazi-Soviet Pact, their Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade adopted the slogan “The Yanks are Not Coming!” Or that its leaders gave speeches condemning the warmongering of Franklin Roosevelt and the British, and depicted Nazi Germany as a benign power that was not a threat to the Western nations. Of course, their anti-fascism returned as soon as Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and Stalin again demanded an overnight change in the party line.</p>
<p>The left continues to present its ideologically determined view of the past as a tool to inspire today’s naïve and uneducated young activists, many of them taught these falsehoods by leftist professors at major universities. Their project is to mine history for heroes and martyrs, even if the heroes they praise turn out to be not heroes at all, and their martyrs actually guilty. Those of us who respect the truth have an obligation not to leave history to them.</p>
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		<title>The Early Roots of Anti-Israel Lawfare</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/the-early-roots-of-anti-israel-lawfare-3/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-early-roots-of-anti-israel-lawfare-3</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jun 2014 04:11:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Harvard]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Sreemati Mitter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234619</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The long and disturbing history of the legal assault against the Jewish State. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/weapon-of-choice.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234622" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/weapon-of-choice-350x350.jpg" alt="weapon of choice" width="259" height="259" /></a>Anti-Israel lawfare actually has a longer pedigree than usually imagined, dating from a seemingly obscure lawsuit arising from Israel’s 1948 re-birth.  <a href="http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/experts/2893/sreemati_mitter.html">Sreemati Mitter</a>, an Ernest May Fellow at the Belfer Center of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and Harvard history Ph.D. candidate detailed the matter in a May 20 lecture.  About forty mostly middle-aged and older pro-Palestinian individuals at the like-minded <a href="http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/46328">Jerusalem Fund</a> think tank heard Mitter.</p>
<p>Mitter recounted the June 12, 1948 freezing by the newly reborn state of Israel of all bank accounts belonging to Arab refugees from Israeli-controlled territory during the country’s independence war.  She focused on the Palestine branches of Barclays and the Ottoman Bank in London, the two of which held deposits from the Arab Bank, a “Palestinian nationalist bank.”</p>
<p>Arab Bank’s attempts to win restitution of its seized accounts ultimately resulted in a “seminal lawsuit in banking history” against Barclays and Ottoman.  A 1954 House of Lords (then the British high court) decision in <i>Arab Bank Ltd. v. Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas)</i>, though, rejected Arab Bank’s demands.  Yet Barclays and Ottoman “won in Britain, lost in Jordan” as lawsuits in the latter country produced the opposite result. These banks then threatened to leave an economically developing Israel, leading to a settlement with Israeli account restitution in return for a low interest loan from the two British banks.</p>
<p>Mitter assesses that in principle “everybody is happy” in this story, as the banks along with the United Kingdom in general preserved commercial reputations, the account holders received their assets, and Israel got a loan.  Yet her general euphoria has one wrinkle.  Rebuffed in the United Kingdom, lawyers for the Palestinian account holders tried to “find a legal regime that does not recognize Israel,” Mitter explained.  Some fifty resulting lawsuits filed in Jordan led to the judicial holding that Israel is an “illegal entity” not entitled to seize property.  Therefore “Palestinians really fought for their rights” and “turned to the law” precisely by denying Israel its rights.</p>
<p>Britain’s Law Lords, by contrast, affirmed in their decision private sector subordination to wartime Israeli state action.  Similarly, Israel’s March 14, 1950 <a href="http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/E0B719E95E3B494885256F9A005AB90A"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Absentee Property Legislation</span></a> seizing Palestinian refugee property in Israel comes “almost word for word” from British enemy property legislation, Mitter noted.  These laws have the “same justification, which is war.”</p>
<p>The decision cites the Israeli proclamation on May 19, 1948, five days after Israel’s independence declaration, that Palestine Mandate “English law…should remain in force” wherever “not repugnant to” Israeli enactments.  Thus in “all questions relevant . . . there is no difference” in British and Israeli application of “English common law regarding trading with the enemy.”  Under a “general principle . . . not in dispute . . . war prevents the further performance of contracts” with “persons in enemy territory . . . . Many kinds of contractual rights are totally abrogated.”</p>
<p>The “economic dimension” of “what it means to be stateless” formed the central theme of Mitter’s presentation, which sought to place “Palestinians in context with stateless people everywhere.”  Yet, upon this reporter’s questioning, Mitter conceded that Jordan did bestow citizenship upon <a href="http://prrn.mcgill.ca/background/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">West Bank Palestinian refugees</span></a>, the largest Palestinian refugee contingent, in contrast to other Arab states.  Mitter also acknowledged that Jewish refugees fled Arab countries following Israel’s independence.</p>
<p>In fact, these <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/the-jewish-exodus-from-arab-landstoward-redressing-injustices-on-all-sides/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Jewish refugees</span></a> exceeded Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel in numbers and property losses, prompting Israeli demands that Jewish refugees concurrently receive compensation in any Palestinian refugee settlement.  Most of these Jewish refugees avoided statelessness precisely through immigration to an “illegal” Jewish homeland at considerable integration costs to Israel.  Not surprisingly, <a href="http://www.angusreidglobal.com/polls/1401/israelis_reject_reparations_for_1948_refugees/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">68 percent</span></a> of Israeli respondents in a 2007 poll rejected compensating 1948 Palestinian refugees.</p>
<p>This long record of lawfare against the Jewish state, with the goal of denying Israel’s right to protect sovereign interests, provides Israel’s enemies with legal and propaganda weapons used to delegitimize its existence to this day. The assertion that Jewish settlement in any territories won by Israel in the 1967 war, including Jerusalem, are absolutely illegal, rest on these efforts, as do (more perniciously) attempts to justify sanctions and actual violence against Israel. While Mitter and others focus on the plight of Palestinian refugees and their descendants who deserved integration into Arab states long ago, Israel, a country formed largely by Jewish refugees from all over the world, remains under threat.</p>
<p><i style="color: #000000;">This essay was written for</i><span style="color: #000000;"> </span><a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.campus-watch.org/" target="_blank"><i>Campus Watch</i></a><i style="color: #000000;">, a project of the</i><span style="color: #000000;"> </span><a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.meforum.org/" target="_blank"><i>Middle East Forum</i></a><i style="color: #000000;">.</i></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Glenn Beck at the West Coast Retreat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/glenn-beck-at-the-west-coast-retreat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=glenn-beck-at-the-west-coast-retreat</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Apr 2014 04:58:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A conservative titan finds hope for America's future in forgotten historical treasures. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s note: Below are the video and transcript of Glenn Beck&#8217;s speech at the Freedom Center&#8217;s West Coast Retreat, held at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California from March 21-23, 2014.</strong></p>
<p><strong>To see David Horowitz&#8217;s introduction of Glenn Beck, click <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-horowitz/glenn-beck-americas-defender/">here</a>. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/89838489" height="281" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Glenn Beck:</strong> About half way through, I was thinking that&#8217;s the problem with Obama Care, everybody knows everything about your life.  David, that is, the last time I came to speak at your event was in Florida, and I asked you for a copy of your remarks of introduction, and I&#8217;d like to do the same.  As you know, it&#8217;s rare that people in our position have someone say nice things; especially in California.  So thank you.  It&#8217;s an honor to be here tonight.  I am actually speaking tomorrow; also tomorrow morning at a breakfast with some very brave people also in California, and I want to share some thoughts; some reasons why what you&#8217;re doing is so critical and so important.  Do you mind?  I don&#8217;t mean to be sacrilegious but I can see it.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We are at a crossroads, and I believe in divine providence.  I don&#8217;t believe in divine destiny.  I believe in divine providence.  And there&#8217;s a difference.  If you are humble, if you are listening and you are willing to serve God, and you&#8217;re willing to stand alone no matter what the consequence, divine providence has a way of working things out.  And exactly what&#8217;s supposed to happen, will happen.  And it will all be for His good and His work.  That&#8217;s what started this country.  And we have forgotten.  Because there isn&#8217;t anybody who&#8217;s been essential.  We have all just said, &#8220;Well, that&#8217;s okay.&#8221;  We all on 9/12 &#8212; I really thought we really were; I really thought Nancy Pelosi was a lot like me.  I really thought some of these people were just like me.  I didn&#8217;t really understand the progressive movement.  It wasn&#8217;t until about 2000 maybe &#8217;5 or &#8217;6, I&#8217;m thinking to myself, &#8220;What is happening to us?  How did we go from this country that understood who it was to something I don&#8217;t even recognize?  What happened to us?&#8221;  What happened to us was we got fat and lazy.  We said it would never happen here.  It could never happen here.  We conquered Communism.  They just changed their outfits.  Progressives are nothing more than patient Communists.  And so we are now building a movement that is also patient; must be patient.  Must know that we have allowed over 100 years of damage to be done.  And there&#8217;s a lot to repair. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is the original prospectus of Disney Land.  This is; well David and I were on stage in the Cowboys Stadium, one of my teams was actually here in Los Angeles at an auction house trying to bid and win this, and we were very fortunate to get it.  I am trying to preserve important pieces of American history.  This is critical.  There was a weekend; it&#8217;s called the Weekend Prospectus and Walt Disney, nobody would invest.  It was 1953.  He couldn&#8217;t get anybody to see the vision.  They thought he was just going to make an amusement park and he said it&#8217;s a theme park. There&#8217;s a difference.  And nobody would listen to him, and so he got a secretary in and his artist; his main artist and said come on in, bring a pillow.  We&#8217;re working over the weekend and then on Sunday I&#8217;m flying to New York and I&#8217;m going to get us the money.  He brought this prospectus into the banks.  He brought it in three different banks.  They all turned him down.  He left this at the last bank and the banker he was talking to thought it was really neat and brought it home to his kids and said kids I want you to see what Walt Disney is thinking about doing.  Did you give him the money daddy?  No, he&#8217;s a crazy man. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sometime in 1955 Walt Disney will present for the people of the world and children of all ages a new experience in entertainment.  And then he says the Disney Land story, and I want to read one paragraph.  As I read it after we won it in auction because it had never been printed before, it had never been seen before, it jumped out as my mission because I don&#8217;t think Walt did it.  Somehow or another, he got lost.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;Disney Land will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America.  It will be uniquely equipped to dramatize this dream and these facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That&#8217;s not Disney Land.  That is what all of us must pick up and do.  We have a story to tell.  We have the greatest story the world has ever heard.  The story of real freedom and now with technology, now the ideas that our founders only dreamt of are right within our reach because I don&#8217;t need a middleman any more.  I don&#8217;t need anybody to communicate.  I don&#8217;t need a radio station or a radio company.  I can get and do a podcast.  I can be in my underpants in my mom&#8217;s basement and I can make a podcast on my phone and a million people can hear it.  It&#8217;s true freedom.  But we have to know the story and then live our lives in a way that we are worthy of it. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is a rare book printed by Thomas Edison on the invention of the connectal phonograph.  It is the movie projector.  This, he was so excited about, that he printed this book for investors, and the last page says:  &#8220;The line of thought might be indefinitely pursued with application to any given phase of outdoor and indoor live which is desired to reproduce.  Our methods point to ultimate success.  No scene however animated and extensive will eventually be within reproductive power.  Marshal evolutions, naval exercises, processions, countless kindred exhibitions will be recorded for the gratification of those who are debarred from attendance.  The invalid; the isolated country let loose.  They will all be able to see not only all our resources but those of the entire world now will be at our command.  The advantages to students and historians will be immeasurable,&#8221; he said about the movie projector and film.  &#8220;Instead of dry and misleading accounts tinged with exaggerations of the chroniclers&#8217; minds, our archives will be enriched by the vitalized pictures of great national scenes, instinct with all the glowing personalities which characterize them.&#8221;  He said, &#8220;Now that we have motion pictures, you&#8217;ll never be able to put a lie past anyone.&#8221;  Thomas wasn&#8217;t so bright. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is Tokyo Rose&#8217;s microphone.  This is the microphone that was taken by a naval officer as he arrived and he walked into the radio station.  He said, &#8220;I&#8217;m gonna kill that son of a bitch,&#8221; and she wasn&#8217;t there.  He took the microphone, put it in a box, brought it back to America, and there is sat in his closet.  It hasn&#8217;t been used until I repaired it just recently and plugged it in, and as I was going to say test into it, we were back in our shop in our movie studies, and I said, &#8220;Unplug it quickly.  I don&#8217;t think it should; I can&#8217;t say test into that,&#8221; and I wanted a day to think about what should be said.  The last time anyone spoke in this microphone it was Tokyo Rose.  What would you say?  What should be heard all across the nation and the world from this microphone?  I decided that what should be said was, &#8220;I&#8217;m Tokyo Rose.  I am innocent of what your government says I did.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Tokyo Rose is one of the most tragic stories I&#8217;ve ever read.  Tokyo Rose was actually pardoned by Gerald Ford.  But she went to prison.  She was an American who went over to Japan to visit her relatives.  She was born in America.  And she went over to Japan and the war kicked off and she was trapped.  And they tried to use her.  They tried to do everything they could to get Tokyo Rose; the one that we put in prison.  There were five of them.  The one we put in prison was a patriotic American that was actually risking her life for our soldiers.  Our soldiers later testified that they were in the islands, the Pacific, and Tokyo Rose&#8217;s voice would come on and she would say, &#8220;For those of you in these islands, you&#8217;d better go to sleep early because things might keep you awake tonight,&#8221; and our soldiers would say, &#8220;Wait a minute.  Wait a minute.  Is she saying that they&#8217;re going to bomb us?&#8221;  She actually smuggled medicine in.  But because our President at the time at the end of the war and our press wasn&#8217;t just lazy, they wanted a good story.  They wanted somebody to pay.  They went over, they got her story.  She was just trying to earn money to be able to come back to her home where she thought she would be a hero.  It was Time Magazine came, offered her money, sat down, she told her story.  They didn&#8217;t write that story.  It was one of the most expensive trials up to OJ Simpson in American history.  The lies and the corruption from our own government smearing an innocent woman that lasted until 1976.   Most people don&#8217;t know that story.  Why not?  Why don&#8217;t we know the truth about our own country?  It&#8217;s not just Tokyo Rose. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These are the shoes of a woman that was also born here in America.  Her name was Risotto.  She was an artist.  Born here in America 1912.  She was actually she had some of her art in one of the art galleries in San Francisco when the war broke out and the Japanese were rounded up in the Pacific and sent to camp.  She was wearing these shoes when they sent her to one of the race tracks just outside of San Francisco.  She lived in a barn with her folks for about three months in a stall of a barn at a race track wearing these shoes.  Then she took these shoes and she went to Wyoming where she lived in the cold wearing these shoes.  And you know what she did?  She taught the little children of Asian descent, I have the art, how to draw little girls in kimonos; holding hands with little white American girls.  Even in a camp where she was put by her own country, she refused to turn.  She was bigger than the people that put her in. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I&#8217;ve talked to her family.  They&#8217;ve given me her collection for care.  They had no idea this was their mother until she; just before passed away.  They said they were shocked because she was the most patriotic woman they had ever met.  They had no idea she had been betrayed by a country that had lost its moral compass. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We don&#8217;t know American history at all because of films.  D.W. Griffith; anybody know the film that D.W. Griffith is famous for?  Birth of a Nation.  And the subject matter of Birth of a Nation?  Slavery.  It is the Klan.  It glorifies the Klan.  This is D.W. Griffith&#8217;s walking stick.  D.W. Griffith was a pretty evil dude.  Glorifying the Klan.  Anybody know where that actually premiered?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Audience Member: </strong> At the Whitehouse.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Glenn Beck:</strong>  At the Whitehouse.  It premiered at the Whitehouse.  Because the writer was at that particular premiere, the writer was who?  Woodrow Wilson.  Woodrow Wilson.  I hate that guy.  This is the book.  Written by Woodrow Wilson.  You know that Woodrow Wilson actually resegregated?  We didn&#8217;t have segregation until the progressive Woodrow Wilson came in and resegregated the military.  And yet, somehow or another, we&#8217;re the bad guys.  Somehow or another, we are the racists.  Somehow or another, we&#8217;re the ones.  And because we don&#8217;t know our own history they get away with it.  Somehow or another we&#8217;re not just racists, we&#8217;re also the fascists.  We&#8217;re the ones that like the Nazis.  We&#8217;re the ones that want to starve and kill little children. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Look at the people of the progressive movement.  Look at the Margaret Sangers.  Tell me that we are the ones that hate children.  Tell me that we&#8217;re the ones that wan t to starve little children and even if I did want to starve them, it&#8217;s better than cutting them off.  But somehow or another we&#8217;re the bad guys.  Only because we don&#8217;t know our own history.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The President when he went to run for his second term, he put out a video, and it was on and then it was off, and it went away quickly because when I saw the title, I said, &#8220;Oh I know that title.&#8221;  And it was pulled within the first day.  The title was The Road We&#8217;re Traveling.  Do any of you remember that?  The Road We&#8217;re Traveling.  Forward.  The road we&#8217;re traveling forward is actually a Stalin campaign.  And the road we&#8217;re traveling comes from this book, and this book is when the war ends, the road we&#8217;re traveling by Stuart Chase.  Stuart Chase is the guy who coined the phrase &#8220;The New Deal.&#8221;  But in here, on Page 99, we can&#8217;t go back.  We can&#8217;t go back on what we&#8217;ve started on this road we&#8217;re traveling, but what is the road we&#8217;re traveling?  The road we&#8217;re traveling he says, &#8220;Soon we will have something I would like to call X.  It&#8217;s the first intelligent attempt to understand what we are doing; a managerial revolution.&#8221;  A managerial revolution.  So in other words, nobody&#8217;s actually going to be running the country.  We&#8217;ll just have a bunch of little middle managers; the EPA will be running.  He says, &#8220;We&#8217;re moving the road we&#8217;re traveling.&#8221;  He says, &#8220;This is a good thing,&#8221; and he says, &#8220;It&#8217;s too late to turn back.&#8221;  This is in 1945.  &#8220;We&#8217;re moving from free enterprise to X.&#8221;  Now he didn&#8217;t want to call it anything else &#8212; before they were calling it fascism.  They were calling it socialism.  They were calling it Communism.  But because those were all discredited, he then just called is System X.  And here&#8217;s what System X is:  A strong centralized government.  An executive arm growing at the expense of the legislative and judicial arms.  A control of banking and credit and security exchanges by the government.  The underwriting of employment by the government.  Either through armaments or public works.  The underwriting of Social Security by the government; of pensions, of unemployment insurance that never ends.  The underwriting of food, housing, medical care by the government.  The use of deficit spending technique to finance these underwritings.  The annually balanced budget has lost its old tininess.  The abandonment of gold in favor of management currencies.  The control of foreign trade, to control natural resources, to control energy sources.  The control of the railway, the highway, and the airwaves.  The control of agriculture.  The control of labor organization.  And heavy taxation.  The road we&#8217;re traveling.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It&#8217;s clear to see what we&#8217;re doing if you are a Communist with patience. It&#8217;s clear to see what they&#8217;re doing.  They&#8217;ve said it.  Go try to buy this book online.  It&#8217;s very hard to find especially with Page 99.  I&#8217;m not kidding you.  I can&#8217;t tell you how many…I&#8217;ve asked my listeners.  Could you go find this book?  Send it in.  I can&#8217;t tell you how many were sent in without Page 99.  They know. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So who do we become?  At the same they&#8217;re doing that, remember we&#8217;re the Nazis.  There&#8217;s a guy named Father Coughlin, and Father Coughlin – this is who I first was accused of being; Father Coughlin, and here&#8217;s his series of lectures on social justice.  I&#8217;m against social justice.  I don&#8217;t think it exists.  Oh and he was for the Nazis.  But he was beloved for a long time.  See the left doesn&#8217;t mind Nazis.  They don&#8217;t mind the socialists.  They don&#8217;t mind any of these things until they get ugly and then they have to disavow and distance themselves from them.  But then they just change the name and move onto something else.  So, here they go.  They go in and try to take in our churches because they know the toke veil it&#8217;s the church.  It&#8217;s the people&#8217;s faith that makes the difference.  That&#8217;s what the glue is to America.  So we need somebody.  Oh man if we could just find somebody like Jim Wallace to get into the churches and tear the faith of the American people apart.  Then you win.  They don&#8217;t shy from monsters.  This book is the Intelligent Woman&#8217;s Guide to Socialism.  Notice that?  The Intelligent Woman&#8217;s Guide to Socialism.  If you&#8217;re a dummy you can read about capitalism.  This one is for intelligent women only.  This is George Bernard Shaw. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">George Bernard Shaw I never knew what an evil due that guy was.  George Bernard Shaw; we all must know a few people whose life isn&#8217;t worth living.  Just put them in front of us and we&#8217;ll ask them sir or madam.  Will you justify your life?  And if they can&#8217;t, well we have no use for you and we certainly can&#8217;t use our substance to keep you alive.  He went on to say there must be some sort of a gas that can be used.  That&#8217;s George Bernard Shaw, the beloved playwright.  They found the gas.  But first they put triangles on people.  This, if you were a Communist or a capitalist, this one meant you were pretty much in charge.  This one was you were a criminal.  And so they would give you the green diamond.  This one was you&#8217;re Jewish and criminal.  The most rare out of all of these, because nobody ever talks about this one, is this.  The purple triangle.  That meant you were a bible scholar.  You see, Hitler was not a Christian as everybody tries to say he is.  He wasn&#8217;t a Christian.  Christians don&#8217;t generally take the crucifix out of the churches and the pictures of Jesus off of the altar, and replace it with the fuhrer.  Destroy religion.  Destroy religion.  That&#8217;s what Coughlin was doing.  And then mix it with science.  Because if you can mix it with science, then we can tell you this is really good.  This is good.  This is good for all of us.  This is good for the collectives and we&#8217;re going to be compassionate about it.  This is the last thing Mengele assigned.  The last order Mengele assigned before he went to Auschwitz.  This is as his head of the hospital for children.  This is an order for a giant drum of Luminal.  He was killing children with Luminal.  But just for the good of all the Germans.  They didn&#8217;t have a quality of life anyhow.  We can&#8217;t afford it.  I mean that child is not really having any kind of life and we&#8217;ve got people on the front lines.  And we have socialized medicine.  We have to make choices.  Monsters.  The same kind of monsters that decided to stop talking about race cleansing and start talking, taught by the Germans, about family planning.  Planned Parenthood.  The mix between these two is phenomenal. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One of my favorite letters of condemnation comes from the Germans themselves. The Germans are writing a progressive movement here in California.  And in the progressive movement in California, they were – this was the hot bed of international progressivism, and they were the real scientists and they went over and told the Germans exactly how all of this nice science can work, and this letter &#8212; I love this letter.  It says the last line from the Germans to the, I think it was the California Betterment of Society or something, and it said, &#8220;May you never forget, may you never forget the contribution you have made in exciting this nation and its industry in family planning and eugenics.&#8221;  I can guarantee you everybody that received that letter promptly forgot their contribution, but we must not or we will repeat it. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If we forget our past, it repeats.  I was on the air in 1999 in New York, and I said, &#8220;Have you read Osama Bin Laden&#8217;s words?  He&#8217;s a crazy man.  I think he&#8217;s crazy enough to do it.&#8221;  They actually accused me of being a supporter of Bill Clinton of all people.  I was new to talk radio, and I was on WABC, and I said that, and they didn&#8217;t know who I was, and they&#8217;re like you&#8217;re just a Clinton apologist, and I said no, would you stop it?  Listen to him.  My quote was, &#8220;When there are blood and bodies in the streets of New York, when buildings are blocking the traffic, will you then wake up?&#8221;  We should have woken up a long time ago.  From this book.  This is the first Quran printed in America.  This was printed by Jefferson.  Everybody says well, oh, Jefferson he had a Quran. No, he just – no, no, no, no.  At 25 percent of budget when he gets in; 25 percent of our budget is going to pay off the Barbary pirates; 25 percent.  And he&#8217;s like this isn&#8217;t sustainable.  I&#8217;m pretty good at math.  This doesn&#8217;t work.  He says to somebody can&#8217;t we negotiate with them?  You don&#8217;t know them.  What do they want?  They don&#8217;t want anything.  They want to kill you because you&#8217;re an infidel.  What are you talking about?  It&#8217;s the Quran.  Well get me a copy of it.  It had just been printed in England.  He read it.  We went to war with the Barbary pirates because he knew there is no negotiation.  He then had this Quran printed.  This is from 1806.  Tell me how politically incorrect this is.  There&#8217;s a note to the reader in the front, and it says, &#8220;You will wonder that such absurdities that are found in this book have infected the better part of the world.&#8221;  It&#8217;s a warning.  They will be back.  See, our enemies have patience.  We don&#8217;t.  I want it now.  We must have patience.  We must look not to us but to our next generation and the generation after.  I am perfectly willing to lose, not happily, to lose the battle of the country if my children can put the flag back up somewhere along the line.  I&#8217;m willing to do the hard things.  I&#8217;m willing to lose right now.  But we have to teach our children history so they know.  Because the farther this infection, these absurdities go, the more desperate people become.  We&#8217;re pacifists.  Pacifists.  Who are talking to his own congregants and saying so if a man believed that war was wrong and if a man believed that killing was wrong, and you knew that, and he knew that, but he had the opportunity to stop a monster, would he be a bad man?  His students looked at him and said no.  No can you give us an example?  No I&#8217;m just wondering.  His name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  This is the napkin from the table when they tried to kill Adolf Hitler.  A pacifist.  A preacher.  Because he had tried everything else.  Gandhi, I&#8217;ve got to talk to Gandhi.  Gandhi has the answer.  Jesus had the answer.  Gandhi had the answer.  Martin Luther King has the answer.  Washington doesn&#8217;t have the answer.  You know what the answer is.  Standing for principles that are true and then having the courage before things get so crazy and out of hand. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The movie with Tom Cruise, the Vagary, the German Von Stoffenberg.  This is his copy of my account.  From the Von Stoffenberg library.  I just want you to look at the edges.  Not one dog-eared page.  Never been read.  You can dress like a Nazi, but unless you&#8217;ve read it, unless you&#8217;ve dog-eared it, unless you&#8217;re turning the page over and over and over again, you&#8217;re not a Nazi.  Unless you know our history.  Unless you know the sacred scripture that drives you and your faith and you&#8217;ve dog-eared every page, and you&#8217;ve read it over and over and over again, you&#8217;re not a Christian.  You&#8217;re not a Jew.  That&#8217;s just a title for you.  If you don&#8217;t know our history, you&#8217;re not an American.  You just happen to live here at this time.  We have to choose.  Each generation chooses, and it&#8217;s a tremendous time.  I don&#8217;t want to live in times where it&#8217;s not a challenge.  It sucks.  Standing up having to know what you believe in sucks.  You lose a lot of sleep.  You lose a lot of friends.  You lose a lot of hair.  You gain a lot of weight.  It sucks.  But you know exactly who you are. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I can go into any room.  I can meet with anybody.  I can meet with presidents, prime ministers, kings.  I can meet with anybody on the street.  I know who I am.  Who are you?  I know what&#8217;s worth living for.  I know what&#8217;s worth dying for.  When you don&#8217;t care anymore, when you&#8217;re down on that shag green carpet, and its Christmas without your children and you can&#8217;t even afford to buy them a toy from a CVS drug store, you have a choice.  Check out or live.  Live.  Live is the choice.  For Christmas two years ago, my wife gave me this.  It&#8217;s one of – this is a passport signed by Raul Wallenberg; a man who saw what was happening and said, &#8220;You can&#8217;t do this.  You can&#8217;t make them aware of the stars.  You can&#8217;t just kills them.  Come with me.  You&#8217;re my Jew.&#8221;  His own government said you can&#8217;t do that.  Yes I can.  He made so many of these at the end he would stand up on the trains as they were going, and he&#8217;d stuff them through the cracks and then he&#8217;d say, &#8220;Stop, stop you have the wrong people.  These are all my people.  These are all citizens.  Show them your passports.  Open these trains back up.&#8221;  This particular passport was one of the last he gave.  One of the last women that received it said to him, begged him, please, please come with us.  The Russians are coming.  He said the Russians cannot be as bad.  He was last seen running for help to the Russians.  He stood.  He won.  No matter how dark things may get at any time, he won.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer won.  Martin Luther King won.  Gandhi won.  Jesus won. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If I were talking to a group of people just like you and this was Europe 1943, and I&#8217;d say how are you?  You&#8217;d say really bad.  And look at what they&#8217;re doing to our Jewish friends.  And if I said you just keep standing, you just keep standing, you&#8217;d look at me as if I were insane.  But I give you the same message now.  Stand back and watch the awesome power of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  In the 1940s, if I would have said that to you, you would have said, &#8220;Look what&#8217;s happening?&#8221;  And if I would have said in just a couple of years the State of Israel will be refounded, you&#8217;d think I was a mad man.  We don&#8217;t know how this story ends.  I tell you this.  The good guys do win in the end no matter what Hollywood decides to say.  The good guys win in the end.  Because good is a much more powerful force.  But it requires people to stand and give it all.</span></p>
<p>One of the most amazing horrible stories from America, the only time a religious extermination order was ever given in America.  We don&#8217;t exterminate our own people.  We did the Indians.  But for religion.  We did it once.  In the State of Missouri.  The Mormons.  The Mormon prophet was Joseph Smith.  He bought one more day with this watch.  They had come to tar and feather him.  For a third time that week they had tried to arrest him; three times that day.  The last time he was in a buggy with Brigham Young in America and the sheriff pulled up on his horse with a goon squad and pulled him out and said, &#8220;I gotcha now old Joe.  You owe so and so some money on your stove.&#8221;  He said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t owe any man.&#8221;  He said, &#8220;Yes you do.  You owe him $20.00.&#8221;  Joseph Smith took this pocket watch out of his vest and put it into the hand of the sheriff and said, &#8220;Then I guess this would take care of it.  I owe no man any money.&#8221;  You may not believe in what he did, but he believed in something enough to risk and lose his life.  Do we?  Is there anything that motivates you that animates you that much?</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Be careful because a spellbinder can talk you into just about anything.  It is truly about principals. It&#8217;s about having exactness in all that you do.  George Washington all he wanted to be was a farmer.  He just wanted to go back to Mt. Vernon and farm.  When they came to him for the Constitutional Convention, he was tired and the country was falling apart again and they rode from Philadelphia to Mt. Vernon, and they said, &#8220;General you have to come or we&#8217;ll lose the republic.&#8221;  His response in the doorstep &#8212; and you never read about Washington losing his temper.  He did that day.  He stood in the doorway and he said, &#8220;Have I not yet done enough for my country?&#8221; and slammed the door.  In my mind&#8217;s eye I see him turning around and walking in and putting his hand on the banister by the key of the vastile and realizing, no.  No I haven&#8217;t.  He got onto his horse and he rode back.  He didn&#8217;t say anything.  He didn&#8217;t say a word at the convention.  It was his mere presence that held it together. He was truly the indispensable man because of the way he lived his life. If have one regret, it is that I screwed up my life up for far too long.  I discredited myself for far too long and we need to find men who are real decent honorable men, decent, honorable, honest people that will self-sacrifice who might say every day, &#8220;Have I not yet done enough?&#8221; and realize no.  This is George Washington&#8217;s compass.  It had to leave the Washington family this generation.  It&#8217;s been in the family since.  He had this everywhere he went.  He was a surveyor.  He had this.  This is the only compass he owned.  He got it when he was 13 years old.  He had it with him on the battlefield.  He had it with him in the farmlands. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One day I was facing a really tough day and I had two ways to go.  I could let my political foes have it and I could smear them or I could let them continue to do what they were doing and I would let that fight be fought by someone far greater than me and believe in divine providence and not become everything I despised.  But it was very hard because it would have been a quick and easy win.  I took this out of its box; the case that I keep it in and I put it in my suit pocket, and if you would ever watch that episode on Fox, you would see that I had my hand in my pocket the whole time.  Just stay true.  Just stay true.  But the greatest thing happened.  As I held that all day, I held it like this and I found a thumbprint.  It&#8217;s a rub mark right here.  I have nothing to back this up but I think Washington from 13 had this in his hand and did the same thing and stayed true.  Just get through it.  Stay true. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We win in the end if we are strong, if we are courageous, if we are decent, if we are honorable; if we don&#8217;t care what the world does or says about us.  I come whenever David asks me.  I am probably busier than I should be, but when David asks me to come and speak, I always do.  Because I believe David is a true American patriot.  David didn&#8217;t know I brought this with me because he was talking about Isaac Potts.  I wasn&#8217;t going to show this to you even.  I just happened to have it.  This is the deed to the land where Isaac Potts saw George Washington pray.  We know that story is true only because of Isaac Potts.  A guy who was not on our side and he saw him and he stood in those trees and Washington, the only thing about that painting is wrong is that Washington has his head down.  Washington never prayed with his head down.  He prayed out loud and he looked up.  Lord and he spoke it.  That&#8217;s how Isaac Potts heard him.  He said any man who speaks to the Almighty like that is not going to lose.  He saw Washington&#8217;s example and he switched sides.  May I humbly suggest that we each set our own example for the Isaac Potts that is watching us.  Set the example and others will follow.  Divine providence will assure our victory.  God bless you.  Thank you.</span></p>
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		<title>The Writings of Historian Ron Radosh</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/the-writings-of-historian-ron-radosh/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-writings-of-historian-ron-radosh</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Dec 2013 05:54:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Communist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[ron radosh]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Discover The Networks unveils a massive new archive of Radosh's extraordinary insights into the leftist mind.
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/radosh1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-213237" alt="radosh" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/radosh1.jpg" width="199" height="201" /></a>Discover The Networks is proud to announce that it has newly added, to its website, a <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1954">massive archive</a> of the writings of the eminent conservative historian (and former leftist) Ron Radosh. This archive includes many hundreds of articles wherein Radosh shares his deep understanding of the leftist worldview, thereby greatly enhancing the mission of Discover The Networks as the premier database on the American Left for writers and researchers. <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1954">To view the contents of the archive, click here</a>.</p>
<p>In his writings, Radosh aims “to <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/bio/">challenge</a> those who believe they have no need to be tolerant or broad-minded, and think that anyone who sees things differently is a secret leftist, a fake conservative, or worse.” While <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2008/10/15/introducing-myself/">characterizing</a> himself as “a center/right conservative,” Radosh takes pains to emphasize: “I differ with many conservatives on many issues.” Marty Peretz, former editor and publisher of <i>The New Republic</i>, once described him as “the myth-busting historian”—and that, says Radosh, is “a term I am rather content with.”</p>
<p>Radosh was born in New York City’s Lower East Side in 1937. His parents, Reuben Radosh and Ida Kreichman, were Jewish immigrants from Russia who raised their son in a leftist, though not Communist, home. “Neither of my parents were Communist,” <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2011/01/24/huffpos-peter-dreier/">says</a> Radosh. “I was brought up in a Red Diaper baby milieu, but my father was a fellow-traveler who distrusted the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7511">CPUSA</a>, and my mother was an anti-Stalinist Jewish anarchist.”</p>
<p>In his youth, Radosh <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2010/09/17/why-i-missed-my-summer-camp-reunion-camp-woodland-alumni-show-how-little-they-have-learned/">attended</a> Camp Woodland for Children, in Phoenicia, New York—first as a camper, and later as a counselor. The children at this facility were thoroughly indoctrinated with Communist and socialist propaganda under the guise of “humanitarian values” like civil rights and social justice. “The camp’s ‘progressive’ agenda that it heralded,” Radosh <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2010/09/17/why-i-missed-my-summer-camp-reunion-camp-woodland-alumni-show-how-little-they-have-learned/">recalls</a>, “was a code-word for the politics of the Popular Front, the Communist-led coalition of liberals and Communists that formed the left-wing of FDR’s New Deal, and tried to stay together to fight the Cold War liberals in the period of Harry Truman’s presidency.”</p>
<p>In the early 1950s Radosh <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2012/11/01/thoughts-on-my-75th-birthday/">attended</a> Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York City, an essentially communist institution that was the upper division of The Little Red Schoolhouse, an elementary school that Radosh and his peers commonly referred to as “The Little Red Schoolhouse for Little Reds.” Today, Radosh traces his decision to become a historian to “the inspiration” he received from an admired Marxist-Leninist history teacher at EI, “who told me that ‘Marx said history is the queen of the sciences.’” “My adoption of communism and a belief that it was the key to all truth,” Radosh adds, “stemmed from what I was taught by my high school teachers,” virtually every one of whom was a member of the American Communist Party. “Impressionable young people like me learned that being decent meant being a good leftist,” says Radosh.</p>
<p>During the Vietnam War, Radosh was actively involved in the peace movement, from whose platform he extolled “the heroic Vietnamese people” while denouncing the United States as “the enemy of the world’s people.” He was particularly <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=f3SgSXOofcYC&amp;pg=PA133&amp;lpg=PA133&amp;dq=">angered</a> by what he perceived as ideological betrayal by Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party of America’s six-time U.S. presidential candidate, when the latter wrote that he did not “regard Vietcong terrorism as virtuous.” “My final judgment,” Radosh recalls, “was that Thomas had ‘accepted the Cold War, its ideology and ethics and had decided to enlist in fighting its battles’ on the wrong—the anti-communist—side.”</p>
<p>During the Vietnam War era as well, Radosh served as a faculty advisor to the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6723">Students for a Democratic Society</a> (SDS), a radical organization that quickly morphed into terrorist activities as The Weather Underground. He was also a member of the Movement for a Democratic Society, SDS’s adult support group composed of young New York City faculty. In addition, Radosh joined the socialist <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7628">New American Movement</a> in its first phase, as well as the New University Conference, an alliance of leftist professors from the New York area.</p>
<p>A watershed moment in Radosh’s intellectual journey occurred when he began writing <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300072058/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=pajamasmedia-20&amp;link_code=as3&amp;camp=211189&amp;creative=373489&amp;creativeASIN=0300072058"><i>The Rosenberg File</i></a>, published in 1983. At the outset of that undertaking, Radosh was convinced that the infamous Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were innocent of the espionage charges against them—and his objective was to use historical evidence to prove that premise conclusively. But his research led him to crucial information that he had not expected to find, and “it quickly became <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2012/11/01/thoughts-on-my-75th-birthday/">apparent</a> that they [the Rosenbergs] were guilty as charged.” “Seeing that the evidence did not square with the views I believed,” says Radosh, “I went with the evidence, and began to reevaluate the left-wing mythologies I had always thought were true.” This, in a nutshell, has been a defining characteristic of Ron Radosh’s scholarship throughout his professional career, both as a leftist and, later, as a conservative. No belief, no icon, is so sacrosanct as to be inaccessible to the potentially withering light of reason.</p>
<p>Today Radosh finds a powerful sense of purpose in trying to help impressionable young people avoid being misled by the corrosive deceptions of the modern Left:</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2012/11/01/thoughts-on-my-75th-birthday/">Although</a> the period I considered myself a communist was thankfully a very brief one, and decades ago, I realize how if someone skillful had been around to counter the misinformation I was regularly fed, I could have avoided taking such a path that led to some wasted years. Today, equally idealistic and well-meaning young people, who now as before crave a better world, join movements and organizations that espouse a totalitarian mentality because they believe they are promoting social justice. They too think their oppositional stance will lead to the utopian future they think remains possible—not understanding that no such utopia exists for them to make possible, and that their actions will only make things worse.</p></blockquote>
<p>Further, Radosh <a href="http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2012/11/01/thoughts-on-my-75th-birthday/">seeks</a> “to hopefully provide the kind of wisdom that will allow some to avoid taking the path of utopian fantasies that can never be realized, and to write works as a historian that give my readers a real perspective on our country’s path—rather than the kind of ideologically motivated ‘history’ of an <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=628">Oliver Stone</a>, that takes material out of context to fit it to his preconceived, communist world-view.” “I find myself angry and as motivated as I ever was to try and tell what I consider to be the truth,” says Radosh, “and to take up and challenge all the charlatans that surround us.”</p>
<p>Harvey Klehr, Professor of Politics and History at Emory University, says: “Few contemporary intellectuals have been so reviled by the Left, but Ron has never flinched in his determination to tell the truth.” Historian John Earl Haynes views “Radosh’s refusal to be cowed or silenced” as “a model of how a scholar must resist the intimidation by pro-Communist partisans within and without the academic world.”</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/History/HistoryEmeritusFaculty.html">addition</a> to his writing, Radosh has <a href="http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=staff_bio&amp;eid=RadoshRon">served</a> as a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Communitarian Studies at George Washington University; a Professor of History in the City University of New York’s Graduate Faculty; Research Director of a report on Radio and TV Marti, which was funded by Congress under the auspices of the United States Information Agency; Associate Director of the American Federation of Teachers’ Office of the President; Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute; and Professor of History Emeritus at Queensborough Community College.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1954">To view the contents of the Ron Radosh archive, click here</a>.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Why Should We Study War?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/why-should-we-study-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-should-we-study-war</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/why-should-we-study-war/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Dec 2013 05:30:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[churchill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[human nature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thermopylae]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WWII]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What military history tells us about human nature.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Jacques-Louis_David_004_Thermopylae.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212081" alt="Jacques-Louis_David_004_Thermopylae" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Jacques-Louis_David_004_Thermopylae-450x330.jpg" width="270" height="198" /></a>Originally published by <a href="http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/162466">Defining Ideas</a>.</em></p>
<p>In the latter years of World War I, Winston Churchill met with the novelist and poet Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon was a winner of the Military Cross––he single-handedly routed 60 Germans and captured a trench on the Hindenburg Line––and a fierce pacifist. Sassoon’s reminiscences of that meeting reveal how odd my title question would have struck most people before our time. He recalled that during their conversation, Churchill “gave me an emphatic vindication of militarism as an instrument of policy and stimulator of glorious individual achievements.”</p>
<p>After Sassoon left, he wondered, “Had he been entirely serious . . . when he said that ‘war is the normal occupation of man’? [I]t had been unmistakable that for him war was the finest activity on earth.” Churchill, remember, had served under fire in India, Sudan, Cuba, and South Africa even before his service in the trenches, so his comments were not the braggadocio of the armchair militarist unfamiliar with the horrors of war.</p>
<p>Many of us moderns, of course, find Sassoon’s beliefs, expressed in his poems and novels, about the futility and misery of war more attractive than Churchill’s idealization of it, and consider such enthusiasm untoward, if not sinister. Such attitudes have made war a disreputable topic of study. Once vigorous in the academy, military history programs are rarely found at universities and colleges today, even as  “peace studies” programs have proliferated. Reasons for this change are not hard to find. America’s historically unprecedented military power, its enormous wealth, and since 1865 its freedom from battle on its own soil and from foreign invasion have all insulated Americans from war, and enabled the perception that rather than a foundational and ennobling experience of humanity, war is an unnatural anomaly, a species of barbarism from our benighted past, and hence an unsavory topic of formal study, even as it remains a lucrative (and, to many people, low-brow) subject for books, movies, cable television channels, and video games.</p>
<p>In contrast to the modern disdain for studying war, most people before the twentieth century would have found Churchill’s comments unexceptional, indeed banal, and they would have considered self-evident the answer to the question raised in this essay’s title. The ancient Greeks were one of the most civilized, artistic, and cultured peoples in history. But they never questioned the eternal necessity of war. “War is the father of all,” Heraclitus said of the original “creative destruction.”  Plato in the <em>Laws</em> has Cleinias say, “Peace is only a name; in reality every city is in a natural state of war with every other.” The arch-realist Thucydides in his <em>History of the Peloponnesian War</em> has an Athenian ambassador tell the Spartans that states fight one another because of the constants of human nature such as fear, honor, and self-interest, and invoke higher ideals such as “justice” only when they cannot achieve their aims by force.</p>
<p>All these Greeks agree with Churchill that war is a non-negotiable necessity and a legitimate “instrument of policy,” given the realities of human nature and its perennial passions and interests. In a harsh world of limited resources and violent men, war is as critical for the survival of civilization as agriculture, and as such, it would be as great a folly not to study war, as it would be to ignore the craft and skills of farming.</p>
<p>So too with Churchill’s praise of war as the “stimulator of glorious individual achievements.” From the beginnings of Western literature in Homer’s <em>Iliad</em>, and of history in Herodotus’ <em>Histories</em>, the glorious deeds of warriors, their bravery and self-sacrifice for honor and community, have been celebrated and admired. Who can forget the doomed valor of Hector, when despite knowing he is fated to die at the hands of Achilles, says before his last charge, “But now my death is upon me. Let me at least not die without a struggle, inglorious, but do some big thing first, that men to come shall know of it”?</p>
<p>And even today, in an age of historical amnesia, the last stand of the vastly outnumbered Thespians and Spartans at Thermopylae is still remembered, when, as Herodotus writes, the Greeks, their spears and swords shattered, “defended themselves with knives, if they still had them, and otherwise with their hands and teeth, while the Persians buried them in a hail of missiles.”</p>
<p>Those before us knew that for all its horrors and misery––which our ancestors acknowledged as much as its glories––war is when the best that men are capable of is manifested, and great deeds worthy of memory are achieved. And they understood as well that the commemoration of these deeds by men “who knew their duty and had the courage to do it,” as Pericles said of his fellow Athenians, creates models of virtue and honor for subsequent generations to study and emulate. Only in that way can a civilization survive in a world of limited resources and ruthless aggressors.</p>
<p>Churchill’s comments, then, suggest two reasons for the study of war, one practical, and the other philosophical. If war is an unavoidable and necessary instrument of statecraft, then we should study the origins, conduct, successes, and failures of wars in order to find, as the Roman historian Livy describes the purpose of history, “what to imitate,” and to “mark for avoidance what is shameful in the conception and shameful in the result.” This need is particularly pressing in a democracy, where the military is subordinated to the civilian government, and the voters have the responsibility to debate and deliberate policies, and to choose leaders whose charge is to serve the security and interests of the citizens both in the short and in the long term.</p>
<p>Two historical examples, one ancient, one modern, illustrate the importance of military history for teaching the lessons of the past. In 415 B.C., over ten years into the war against Sparta, the democratic Assembly of Athens voted to send an expeditionary force 800 miles to attack the rich and powerful city of Syracuse. In Thucydides’ telling, this decision was based neither on short-term nor on long-term strategic national interests and security, but on the promise of an expanded empire and the greater revenues that would be available to the citizens through the tribute of subject states.</p>
<p>The charismatic and ambitious Alcibiades was a prime mover of the expedition. He dangled the lure of greater empire, telling the Assembly, “We shall either become masters, as we very easily may, of the whole of Hellas [Greece], or in any case ruin the Syracusans, to the no small advantage of ourselves and our allies.” As for the Assemblymen, Thucydides writes, “The idea of the common people and the soldiery was to earn wages at the moment [the treasury increased the pay for rowers, and the commanders of the ships promised bonuses as well], and make conquests that would supply a never-ending fund of pay for the future.” The expedition sailed, and became one of the most famous military disasters in history. The Athenians lost 6000 men and 200 ships, the whole expeditionary force and a relief fleet as well.</p>
<p>This disaster offers many lessons. First, dispassionate knowledge of the enemy and the logistics of war are critical for success. According to Thucydides, the Athenians were “ignorant of [Sicily’s] size and of the number of its inhabitants, Hellenic and barbarian, and of the fact that they were undertaking a war not much inferior to that against the Peloponnesians.” Thus the Athenians woefully underestimated the power and resources of the Syracusans and the dangers of resupply and relief when 800 miles from home, both factors in the ultimate debacle. Next, parochial self-interest, the selfish desire for personal wealth and glory rather than the safety and well being of the state as a whole, are dangerous motives for undertaking a war, as they obscure the limits and obstacles a more sober consideration might reveal.</p>
<p>Finally, politicians like an Alcibiades––who according to Thucydides was “exceedingly ambitious of a command by which he hoped to reduce Sicily and Carthage, and personally to gain in wealth and reputation by means of his success”­­––will end up sacrificing the state as a whole in order to further their own ambitions. These are all dangers that the citizens should beware when contemplating the use of force to pursue policy, and when deliberating and evaluating the aims which war will achieve.</p>
<p>The modern lesson comes from the origins of World War II. As Winston Churchill said in his famous “Sinews of Peace” speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946, “There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot.” Churchill was referring to the period before 1935, when Germany’s serial violations of the Versailles treaty, particularly its clandestine programs for rebuilding its army and armaments industry, were met with indifference or appeasement. But even later, timely military action could have stopped Nazi Germany at a fraction of the 50 million dead World War II cost.</p>
<p>In 1936, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, the territory between the French border and the Rhine River, in violation of the Versailles treaty. His 36,000 policemen and green army recruits faced nearly 100 French and Belgian divisions, who did not fire a shot. Later Hitler would admit that the Germans would have had to “withdraw with our tails between our legs” had the French resisted. Two years later, England and France abandoned their ally Czechoslovakia, and Germany absorbed this strategically critical country. Yet if England and France had fought back with force, an outnumbered Germany would have been defeated, as Poland and the Soviet Union would likely have followed their ally France’s lead. A French advance east from the Maginot Line would have opened a second front and overwhelmed Germany’s manpower and materiel. As historian Williamson Murray writes, “Germany would have faced overwhelming Allied superiority . . . The results would have been inevitable and would have led to the eventual collapse of the Nazi regime at considerably less cost” than the butcher’s bill of World War II.</p>
<p>Once Hitler’s ambitions became obvious even to the appeasers after the debacle of Munich, the French and British announced that they would protect Poland’s territorial integrity should Germany invade. But this was the wrong place and time to draw that particular red line. The occupation of Czechoslovakia had strengthened Germany and put the Wehrmacht on the southern border of Poland, beyond the state-of-the-art fortifications the Czechs had built in their mountainous western region. And Germany now possessed the military hardware of the Czechs and the Skoda works, one of the largest arms manufacturers in Europe. In fact, the Panzer 35(t) and 38(t) tanks used in the invasion of Poland were actually Czech tanks produced by Skoda. Given Germany’s advantages, there simply was not much England and France could do militarily to help the Poles, which explains the 8 months of “phony war” marked by the Allies’ inaction after Hitler invaded Poland.</p>
<p>The lesson we should learn from this sorry history is that preemptive war is a necessity when facing a determined aggressor, and that the time and place of a potential conflict, and the capacity to wage war until its successful conclusion, must be carefully considered and prepared for when making treaty commitments and pledging the nation’s blood and treasure. This means that often a nation cannot merely wait to react to aggression, but must anticipate where the blow will fall.</p>
<p>To use the simile of the great fourth-century Greek orator Demosthenes, when he chastised the Athenians for serially failing to react to Philip of Macedon’s aggression, a nation must not deal with an aggressor the way a barbarian boxes: “The barbarian,” Demosthenes said, “when struck, always clutches the place; hit him on the other side and there go his hands. He neither knows nor cares how to parry a blow or how to watch his adversary.” Given that Hitler had 13 years earlier laid out his plan of conquest in <em>Mein Kampf</em>, the Allies should have anticipated the sequence of aggression that would culminate in the attack on Poland, and resisted the Germans in 1936 in the Rhineland, or in 1938 in Austria or Czechoslovakia.</p>
<p>The larger lesson, however, of this “low dishonest decade,” as W.H. Auden called the thirties, is that success in war depends on morale, not material superiority. Long before 1938, England and France had lost their nerve, and simply did not have the will to fight. Instead they had bought into the illusions of internationalism and collective security, pacifism and disarmament, which had merely fed the alligator of Nazism, to paraphrase Churchill, in the vain hope that they would be eaten last. And this brings us to the philosophical lessons the study of war teaches. Contrary to our modern therapeutic utopianism, the history of war shows us the unchanging, tragic reality of human nature and its irrational passions and interests that will spark state aggression and violence.</p>
<p>The modern world, in contrast, rejects the notion that human nature comprises destructive passions and selfish interests that will start wars only force can stop. On the contrary, to the modern optimist, humans are universally rational and peace loving, if only the external, warping constraints on these qualities––ignorance, poverty, parochial ethnic and nationalist loyalties, the oppression of priestly and aristocratic elites––can be removed. Then people will progress to the realization that their true interests like peace, freedom, and prosperity will be achieved not by force but by international trade, economic development, democracy, and non-lethal transnational institutions that can adjudicate conflict and eliminate the scourge of war.</p>
<p>This influential belief was famously expressed by Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace.” In it Kant imagined a “federation of free states” that would create a “pacific alliance . . . different from a treaty of peace . . . inasmuch as it would forever terminate all wars, whereas the latter only finishes one.” In his conclusion, Kant expressed the optimism that would become an article of faith in subsequent centuries: “If it is a duty, if the hope can even be conceived, of realizing, though by an endless progress, the reign of public right––perpetual peace, which will succeed to the suspension of hostilities, hitherto named treaties of peace, is not then a chimera, but a problem, of which time, probably abridged by the uniformity of the progress of the human mind, promises us the solution.”</p>
<p>Throughout the nineteenth century international institutions were created to realize this dream and lessen, if not eliminate, the savagery and suffering of war. The First Geneva Convention in 1864 and the Second in 1906 sought to establish laws for the humane treatment of the sick and wounded in war. The first Hague Convention in 1899 established an international Court of Arbitration and codified restrictions on aerial bombardment, poison gas, and exploding bullets.  The preamble to the first Hague Convention explicitly acknowledged its Kantian aims: “the maintenance of the general peace” and the “friendly settlement of international disputes” that both reflected the “solidarity which unites the members of the society of civilized nations” and their shared desire for “extending the empire of law, and of strengthening the appreciation of international justice.” One wonders how such optimism made sense of the Franco-Prussian War three decades earlier, when two of the world’s most “civilized nations” suffered nearly a million casualties, including 170,000 dead.</p>
<p>Even after the industrialized carnage of World War I showed international solidarity and universal progress to be a fantasy, the Versailles treaty established the League of Nations, the transnational institution intended to realize Kant’s dream of a “federation of free states” that would keep the peace and promote global progress. But within a few years the League had been exposed as ineffective, since the same sovereign nations that had fought each other so brutally in the war continued to pursue their zero-sum interests, frequently with force. No more effective has been the United Nations, a “cockpit in the Tower of Babel,” as Churchill feared it might become, that also has failed at its foundational goal of maintaining peace, becoming instead an instrument of the member-states’ nationalist interests, one that frequently supplements and abets, rather than controls or limits state violence.</p>
<p>Familiarity with the history of war should disabuse people of these Kantian illusions. Studying the causes and nature of armed conflict reveals that technological progress, better education and nutrition, global trade, and increased prosperity has not eliminated or reduced wars, but often made them more brutal and destructive. Military history teaches us that war is not a distortion of a peace-loving human nature that not yet has sufficiently progressed beyond such savage barbarism, but rather is a reflection of a flawed human nature, and the necessary instrument for states to protect their security and pursue their interests, whether these are rational and good, or irrational and evil. The study of war, in short, can remind us of the tragic wisdom evident on every page of history: that humans are fallen creatures prone to destructive violence that only righteous violence can check.</p>
<p>The lessons we can learn from studying war, of course, are more numerous than the few discussed here. Our judgment of any war, whether of its origins or its conduct, must be based on the record of history rather than the utopian fantasies of a world that will never exist. From the standard of history, in any conflict we should always expect mistakes, unforeseen consequences, civilian casualties, deaths from friendly fire, barbarism, and cruelty. All of these contingencies can be found in every war, including the so-called “good war,” World War II, from the Market Garden disaster in September 1944 that cost the Allies 16,000 casualties, to the harvesting of gold teeth from the Japanese dead in the South Pacific. These evils are the costs of using violence to defend our security and interests, and should be expected, though never condoned, the moment the decision to go to war has been made.</p>
<p>We also should expect­­––particularly in constitutional states where citizens are responsible for the decision to go to war––impatience, second-guessing, and frustration with these unfortunately perennial evils of armed conflict. And we should not be surprised when the citizens want to punish the politicians and leaders who started and managed the war. After news of the disaster in Sicily reached Athens, Thucydides writes, the people “were angry with the orators who had joined in promoting the expedition, just as if they had not themselves voted it.” We recently experienced the same phenomenon during the Iraq war in 2004, when many of the same Senators who had voted to invade Iraq year earlier, a decision based on the same intelligence the Bush administration had studied, responded to growing criticism of the war by turning against it and attacking the president.</p>
<p>Leon Trotsky allegedly said, “You may not believe in war, but war believes in you.” Though likely a mistranslation, the sentiment is still valuable. War and its horrors will always be with us, along with its unavoidable suffering and cruelty, “such as have occurred and always will occur as long as the nature of mankind remains the same,” as Thucydides writes. And as long as we cherish our way of life, with its freedom and human rights, its prosperity and its opportunity, we will at times have to make the awful decision to send our citizens to fight, kill, and die to defend those goods from those who want to destroy them. The more we know about war, the better equipped we will be to make that choice and see our efforts succeed.</p>
<p><em>This essay is based on a speech delivered at Hillsdale College.</em></p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>David Horowitz</strong> on<strong> The Glazov Gang </strong>discussing his new collection of conservative writings, <strong><a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=SZLFMGIYTBFM">The Black Book of the American Left, Volume I: My Life and Times:</a></strong></em></p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/QL9WUvnJ_Cs" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/eeN2K6romr8" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>How Historic Revisionism Justifies Islamic Terrorism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/how-historic-revisionism-justifies-islamic-terrorism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-historic-revisionism-justifies-islamic-terrorism</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 31 Oct 2013 04:35:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209135</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Islam: the great "liberator" of the Middle East? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/koran-kalashnikov-500x332.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209168" alt="koran-kalashnikov-500x332" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/koran-kalashnikov-500x332.jpg" width="256" height="198" /></a>How important, really, is history to current affairs?  Do events from the 7<sup>th</sup> century—or, more importantly, how we understand them—have any influence on U.S. foreign policy today?</span></b></p>
<p>By way of answer, consider some parallels between academia’s portrayal of the historic Islamic jihads and the U.S. government’s and media’s portrayal of contemporary Islamic jihads.</p>
<p>While any objective appraisal of the 7<sup>th</sup> century Muslim conquests proves that they were just that—conquests, with all the bloodshed and rapine that that entails—the historical revisionism of modern academia, especially within Arab and Islamic studies departments, has led to some portrayals of the Muslim conquerors as “freedom-fighters” trying to “liberate” the Mideast from tyrants and autocrats. (Beginning to sound familiar?)</p>
<p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=WZdDbmxe_a4C&amp;pg=PA59&amp;lpg=PA59&amp;dq=muslim+liberated+egypt+from+byzantines&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=yb0e1LAGcv&amp;sig=1rwK4wI9IVz09E0CE7KFatTogqQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=DIRpUrCuEsWX2QX4poCYCA&amp;ved=0CFYQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&amp;q=muslim%20liberated%20egypt%20from%20byzantines&amp;f=false">Today’s approach</a> to teaching the history of the Muslim conquests of the 7<sup>th</sup> century is something as follows: Yes, the Mideast was Christian, but local Christians helped Arab Muslims invade and subjugate their countries in preference to Christian Byzantine rule, which was oppressive due to doctrinal disagreements over the nature of Christ.  Hence, the Muslim conquerors were actually “liberators.”</p>
<p>This perspective, as with many modern Western perspectives concerning Islam, is a product of modern day epistemic distortions, chief among them: 1) repackaged narratives of the “noble savage” myth—yes, 7<sup>th</sup> century Muslim invaders were coarse, but had elevated ideals, including a fierce love for freedom and religious tolerance in comparison to Christians of the time (not to mention now); and 2) entrenched political correction that seeks to <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/surreal-and-suicidal-modern-western-histories-of-islam/">whitewash the true history of Islam</a> followed by the uncritical acceptance of Islamic apologetics, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/were-conquered-christians-really-liberated-muslims/">some of which border on the absurd</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, before the Islamic “liberator” thesis had become mainstream, historians such as Alfred Butler, author of <i>The</i> <i>Arab Conquest of Egypt</i>, had this to say about it:</p>
<blockquote><p>Even in the most recent historians it will be found that the outline of the story [of the 7<sup>th</sup> century conquest of Egypt] is something as follows:… that the Copts generally hailed them [Muslims] as deliverers and rendered them every assistance; and that Alexandria after a long siege, full of romantic episodes, was captured by storm. Such is the received account. It may seem presumptuous to say that <i>it is untrue from beginning to end, but to me no other conclusion is possible</i>. (emphasis added; pgs. iv-v).</p></blockquote>
<p>In fact, one of the major themes throughout Butler’s <i>Arab Conquest of Egypt</i>—which, published in 1902, is heavily based on primary sources, Arabic and Coptic, <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/52/islam-a-short-history">unlike more modern secondary works</a> that promote the Islamic “liberator” thesis—is that “there is not a word to show that any section of the Egyptian nation viewed the advent of the Muslims with any other feeling than terror” (p. 236).</p>
<p>Butler and other politically incorrect historians were and are aware of the savage and atrocity-laden nature of the Islamic conquests.  The Coptic chronicler, John of Nikiu, a contemporary of the Arab conquest of Egypt and possibly an eyewitness, wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>Then the Muslims arrived in Nikiu [along the Nile]…  seized the town and slaughtered everyone they met in the street and in the churches—men, women, and children, sparing nobody.  Then they went to other places, pillaged and killed all the inhabitants they found….  But let us say no more, for it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed…”</p></blockquote>
<p>Nonetheless, today’s accepted narratives do not come from antiquated historians or primary historical texts; they come from the <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=13551">Saudi-funded ivy league</a>— Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, etc.—all of which peddle pro-Islamic propaganda (I personally had direct experience at Georgetown), including the “freedom loving jihadis” vs. “oppressive tyrants” thesis.</p>
<p>Percolating out of liberal academia to liberal mass media, the effects of this well-entrenched but false narrative have taken their toll, ultimately helping to create a disastrous U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p>Put differently, the Islamic terrorists waging jihad against autocratic (but secular, religiously tolerant) governments—most notably in Syria today—are easily portrayed in the West as “freedom fighters” against oppressive tyrants and thus deserving of U.S. support in great part because this motif has permeated the social consciousness of America—as molded by <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1408320/posts">Hollywood</a> and the <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2013/09/03/fox-news-asks-raymond-ibrahim-why-christians-persecute-muslims/">news rooms</a>—thanks to the academic distortion of events that took place nearly fourteen centuries ago.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Islamic “freedom fighters” are <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=528121740608901">slaughtering</a>, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/new-fatwa-permits-rape-of-non-sunni-women-in-syria/">raping</a>, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/syrias-graphic-beheading-videos/">beheading</a>, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/al-qaeda-promises-to-slaughter-christians-after-u-s-liberates-syria/">persecuting and plundering</a>—<i>just as they have been for </i><a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/surreal-and-suicidal-modern-western-histories-of-islam/"><i>nearly fourteen centuries</i></a>.</p>
<p>That is the only unwavering constant in this sad story.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Jamie Glazov&#8217;s video interview with Raymond Ibrahim about how Obama enables Islam&#8217;s new war on Christians:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/i-UBjuUOBHw" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Our First African American President</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/our-first-african-american-president/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=our-first-african-american-president</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Oct 2013 04:05:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[It is very sad how Obama will be judged. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/of.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-206710 aligncenter" alt="of" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/of-350x350.jpg" width="350" height="350" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Attribution for photo and quote: <a href="http://beforeitsnews.com/obama/2013/08/barack-obama-basically-dishonest-incompetent-and-corrupt-it-is-very-sad-that-our-first-african-american-president-will-be-judged-in-history-as-the-most-inept-corrupt-wasteful-subversiv-2454790.html">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Time after Time</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/time-after-time/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=time-after-time</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Aug 2013 04:15:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=201974</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The news magazine's great days are far behind it -- but of course we knew that.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/si.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-202018" alt="si" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/si.jpg" width="195" height="259" /></a>It is a widely acknowledged fact that what goes by the name of reporting nowadays, in the mainstream media, is often shamelessly slanted – and that the slant is almost invariably leftward. But it is also true that some reporters are a good deal more shameless – to the point of being incontrovertibly mendacious – than others. Thanks to the proliferation of alternate news sources on the Internet, the MSM&#8217;s power to bamboozle the general public with outright lies has eroded year by year. Yet, God bless &#8216;em, they keep trying.</p>
<p>Case in point: an <a href="http://world.time.com/2013/08/19/norways-far-right-may-come-to-power-despite-memory-of-anders-breiviks-killing-spree/%20">article</a> in <i>Time</i> Magazine, datelined Oslo, posted on August 19, and written by one Charlotte McDonald-Gibson (hereafter CMG). Entitled “Norway’s Far Right May Come to Power Despite Memory of Anders Breivik’s Killing Spree,” it provides a classic example of what it means to twist the facts beyond recognition in the name of ideology.</p>
<p>The headline alone does a splendid job of telegraphing – to anyone who actually knows something about subject at hand – the article&#8217;s breathtaking bias. The reference is to the forthcoming Norwegian parliamentary elections on September 9, which, barring a major upset, are expected to lead to the formation of a government by a coalition of non-socialist parties. The dread prospect to which CMG refers, in short, is that Norway, currently run by socialists, may soon – horrors! – be run by non-socialists. This new coalition would probably include the Progress Party. It&#8217;s this party, which at present is the second largest in parliament, that CMG dishonestly categorizes as “far right” and links to Anders Behring Breivik, the maniac who murdered 77 people two years ago.</p>
<p>CMG opens her piece by introducing us to Pableen Kaur, a 20-year-old<br />
Labor Party candidate for parliament. Kaur, we&#8217;re told, was attending the Workers&#8217; Youth League camp on the island of Utøya when Breivik carried out his shooting spree. When we meet Kaur, she&#8217;s at an Oslo shopping mall handing out red roses (which became the Labor Party symbol after it was realized that the hammer, borrowed from the Soviet Communist Party, carried too much negative baggage). CMG tells us of Kaur&#8217;s “unshakable faith in Norway’s democracy.” She also informs us of Kaur&#8217;s democratic</p>
<blockquote><p>tolerance toward those sharing the views of Anders Behring Breivik, the white supremacist who left her cowering under the bodies of her friends as he calmly shot dead 69 people at a Labor Party youth camp on Utoya Island two years ago. He claimed to be on a crusade against multiculturalism and immigration, intent on wiping out the future generation of a party he blamed for the “Islamic invasion” of Norway.</p></blockquote>
<p>CMG characterizes Kaur&#8217;s “tolerance” for “those sharing the views of&#8230;Breivik” as “hard&#8230;to understand.” For the Progress Party, she maintains, is “an anti-immigration party that once counted Breivik as a member.” CMG proceeds to connect the party to “far-right extremists whose voices fell silent” after Breivik&#8217;s atrocities but who are now “back on blogs peddling their hate.” She cites “[a]ntiracism campaigners” who “say society failed to mount any real challenge to their views after Utoya, preferring to blame a lone fanatic rather than examining some of the more mainstream prejudices that shaped his worldview.” And she quotes Shoaib Mohammad Sultan of the Norwegian Centre Against Racism as saying that these awful bigots, presumably including the leaders of the Progress Party, “have sort of got away with it.”</p>
<p>Okay, let&#8217;s unpack all of this. The Progress Party has nothing to do with “white supremacist” views: it&#8217;s only far right if your idea of the center is the far left. Its leader, Siv Jensen, is a classical liberal who sincerely idolizes Reagan and Thatcher, whose praises she&#8217;s been singing throughout her political career. The Progress Party doesn&#8217;t oppose immigration <i>per se</i>; it opposes (as do most Norwegians) the catastrophic immigration policy of the current Norwegian government, which has saddled Norway with a sizable minority of Muslims who don&#8217;t work, won&#8217;t integrate, take everything they can get, and have nothing but contempt for the people who are giving it to them. To say that the Progress Party “shares the views of&#8230;Breivik” is a shabby guilt-by-association ploy: the “views” in question are, essentially, classical liberal ideas that go back to John Stuart Mill and Thomas Jefferson (both of whom were cited in Breivik&#8217;s “manifesto”) and opinions on Muslim immigration policy that, as noted above, most Norwegians also share. Yes, Breivik was a Progress Party member – just as Fort Hood terrorist Nidal Hasan is a registered Democrat. As for Shoaib Sultan, that upstanding anti-racist authority, this is the same gentleman who, as I <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/selling-out-western-culture-in-norway/">wrote</a> here in March, “refused to publicly criticize the execution of gays in Iran” and “declined to comment on Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s praise for the Holocaust as a &#8216;gift from Allah.&#8217;”</p>
<p>But to CMG, it would seem, hatred <i>by </i>Muslims is invisible. In her view, plainly, Norway isn&#8217;t endangered by the genocidal sympathies of people like Sultan; it&#8217;s endangered by native Norwegians who know very well what people like Sultan represent and who don&#8217;t want sharia to shape the future of their country. This attitude, CMG would have us believe, amounts to far-right, white-supremacist bigotry.</p>
<p>CMG goes on to draw a stark contrast: Labor Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is a man of “dignity and sensitivity”; the Progress Party is a gang of cynical opportunists that “tweaked some of its rhetoric” after the Breivik killings, rebranding itself “as a mainstream movement in the mold of U.S. Republicans or the British Conservative Party.” When Progress Party candidate Kristian Norheim, apparently in CMG&#8217;s company, walked “past photos of Thatcher and Reagan” in the party&#8217;s offices and identified them as the party&#8217;s heroes, he was, in CMG&#8217;s characterization, “at pains to portray the Progress Party as a &#8216;folkish&#8217; movement guided by Ayn Rand’s philosophy of the power of the individual over the state.” The unambiguous thrust here is that the Progress Party&#8217;s image as an individualist, classical liberal party is a lie, and that these people are really a gang of fascists. But it&#8217;s CMG who&#8217;s the liar here – either that, or she&#8217;s been duped by socialists eager to get their propaganda into the news pages of <i>Time </i>Magazine. In any event, listen up, CMG: Siv Jensen and her party haven&#8217;t changed a whit from what they were before Breivik came along. Read <a href="http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/692/full">this</a> interview – in English – from 2007, in which Jensen expressed admiration for America and for Thatcher, support for Israel, and hatred for Communism.. Asked to define her party&#8217;s principles, Jensen said: “We are a classical liberal party, and are very much in favor of market mechanisms.”</p>
<p>CMG to the contrary, what happened after Breivik&#8217;s murder spree was not that the Progress Party altered its public ideological profile. What happened was this: Norway&#8217;s mainstream media, which are fully owned and operated by the Norwegian left, saw an opportunity to demonize the Progress Party, associate it with Breivik, and even blame it for Breivik&#8217;s actions, in an effort to crush it once and for all. At the same time, they sought to construct a creepy personality cult around Stoltenberg, hero of the hour, and to depict the Workers&#8217; Youth League (which, in the days before the Breivik massacre, had spent much of its time at Utøya savaging Israel and celebrating Palestinian terrorists) as a choir of angels. The Norwegian media&#8217;s merciless attacks on the Progress Party caused a serious drop in its numbers. What CMG is doing in her article is taking that Stalinist-style campaign international. For this, she deserves the deepest contempt – while Jensen, Norheim, and other Progress Party leaders merit admiration for keeping their cool, and carrying on responsibly, in the face of the most monstrous kind of vilification.</p>
<p>Who is Charlotte McDonald-Gibson? Well, for one thing, she doesn&#8217;t live in Norway: she&#8217;s British, based in Brussels. There&#8217;s no reason to believe that she reads or speaks Norwegian, or that she knows the first thing about Norwegian politics. One assumes that she has contacts, here and elsewhere, whom she counts on to provide her with the proper socialist spin – which she then sets about purveying in a tone of absolute authority, and without the slightest intention of providing a fair, balanced picture of reality. An <a href="http://www.minnpost.com/global-post/2013/04/iceland-election-looks-set-turn-country-back-right%20">article</a> she wrote in April about the then-forthcoming Icelandic election followed much the same formula as this latest one on Norway. Citing polls which suggested (correctly, as it turned out) that a center-right coalition would wrest control of Iceland&#8217;s parliament from the ruling center-left coalition, CMG might have provided an objective overview of the issues, but instead chose to highlight quotes from a “political analyst” who dismissed center-right voters as mindless, and from a folk singer who said: “I don&#8217;t believe that people are so stupid as to vote for these parties.” There were no similar quotes from the center-right about socialist voters.</p>
<p><i>Time </i>Magazine was never the most serious of publications. It was often criticized for its excessive attention to famous personalities, and like any magazine it had an editorial slant. But in its heyday, nothing like CMG&#8217;s propaganda would ever have made it into print. Surely Luce, a solid anti-Communist and believer in freedom, would have been appalled to see the <i>Time </i>imprimatur on a text that celebrates socialists and smears a party of liberty. It&#8217;s a good thing that we have alternative news sources, and that <i>Time, </i>a shadow of its former self, will soon likely be joining its old rival <i>Newsweek </i>on the ash-heap of history.<b><br />
</b></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>New York Ain’t the Land of the Free</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/new-york-aint-the-land-of-the-free/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=new-york-aint-the-land-of-the-free</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 04:10:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why job creators have had it with the Empire State. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ronn-torossian/new-york-aint-the-land-of-the-free/homelessness-on-the-rise-in-new-york-city/" rel="attachment wp-att-185908"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-185908" title="Homelessness On The Rise In New York City" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/PHO-09Oct27-184169-450x300.jpg" alt="" width="227" height="151" /></a>The line from Frank Sinatra’s song New York, New York, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” has never been truer – just didn’t know it was government obstacles he was referring to. Forgive me for believing foolishly that New York was free, and as an entrepreneur I am able to control my own destiny.  As a business owner I am unsure sometimes of just how free we are when one learns of some of the absurd laws, rules and regulations which are passed in NY and we are forced to live with.</p>
<p>The newest absurdity comes from New York’s City Council, which has decided that employers won’t be able to check job applicants’ credit history as a means of deciding whom to hire. The council bill prohibits employers from using credit checks as the means by which they can hire employees’ – and fines violators up to $50,000 and forces the employer to hire the worker anyway.  So, basically, if someone is fiscally irresponsible and you discover it, you have to hire them anyway. How can that be possible or legal in this great republic?</p>
<p>As Kathy Wylde, president of the business organization Partnership for New York City said, “I think the city council does not understand the cumulative cost, particularly to small business, of their many efforts to make their mark.” Naturally, few of these politicians have ever had to work or actually earn a living.  So much for the concept of “civil servants.”</p>
<p>Of course, on the heels of the recently passed sick leave bill, whereby businesses are required to give employees at least five sick days a year, here comes more rules. And New York State’s Governor Andrew Cuomo extended his so-called &#8220;tax cuts,&#8221; which increase tax cuts on anyone making more than $300K for a total of $2 billion. As the Partnership for New York City said, this extension “at this time is the worst possible message New York State could send to our most important job creators and revenue generators.” New York attracts many of the best and brightest – and we are penalized by the government because they know entrepreneurs and job creators keep forging forward – so they pass more of the burden along.</p>
<p>New York for 2012 ranked as the 50<sup>th</sup> state (i.e. the worst) for the “<a href="http://www.sbecouncil.org/news/display.cfm?ID=4689">Small Business Survival Index</a>” by a report issued annually by The Tax Foundation, a non-partisan Washington, D.C. non-profit organization.  It has only gotten worse. We are also far from free – in fact the least free state in America – according to a study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.</p>
<p>As the Mercatus Center report said, NY has “the highest taxes in the country: 14.0 percent of income, three and a half standard deviations above the national mean.” We fare poorly on economic regulation, are the most indebted state in the nation and undoubtedly it will only keep getting worse.</p>
<p>As the study says:</p>
<blockquote><p>Labor law is poor, with no right-to-work law, restrictions on workers’ compensation funding options, and a required short-term disability program. New York has the strictest health insurance community rating regulations in the United States, which have wiped out the nongroup market. There has also been a dramatic increase in mandated coverages in 2009—10, rising to 54.9 percent of the cost of a no-mandated-benefit policy.</p></blockquote>
<p>By the way, at my <a href="http://www.5wpr.com/news/index.cfm">PR firm</a>, which employs over 100, we offer nearly a month of paid time off – but employers should be the ones to decide what benefits we offer. It is none of the government&#8217;s business what we choose to do, and it is not one’s birthright to be guaranteed a job.</p>
<p>Of course, I have already spent too much time writing.  There are many people who depend on the more than 50% I pay in taxes as a New York City property owner and resident.  Time to go back to work to provide for them.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>How Stalin Fooled the World and Why It Matters Today</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/how-stalin-fooled-the-world-and-why-it-matters-today/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-stalin-fooled-the-world-and-why-it-matters-today</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Mar 2013 04:46:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Every time appeasers push "diplomatic solutions," we find ourselves back sitting across the table from Uncle Joe.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/how-stalin-fooled-the-world-and-why-it-matters-today/joseph-stalin-us-army-public-domain/" rel="attachment wp-att-182235"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-182235" title="Joseph-Stalin-US-Army-public-domain" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Joseph-Stalin-US-Army-public-domain.jpg" alt="" width="253" height="205" /></a>There are two ways that liberal historians usually look at Stalin. The most leftward of these is to see Stalin as a victim of German and American imperialism who struggled to maintain the peace in the face of aggressive expansionistic efforts by Nazi Germany and the United States.</p>
<p>Such a revisionist history would seem to have been thoroughly discredited in this day and age, despite its persistence in the early days of the Cold War, but it continues resurfacing, most recently in an Oliver Stone documentary series.</p>
<p>But for the most part, Khrushchev’s disavowal of Stalin completed a process that began once the Soviet dictator cut a deal with Hitler, triggering a growing Destalinization cascade on the left. Stalinists still persisted in the West, but their influence on the authoring of history steadily diminished. Instead they embraced a different version of history that would salvage the ideological integrity of the left.</p>
<p>In this more conventional version of history, Stalin was not truly a Communist, but a non-ideological dictator who had seized control of the Soviet ship of state and transformed a promisingly progressive revolution into a backward feudal tyranny.</p>
<p>This version of history had been developed by the Trotskyites and a number of disaffected groups on the left and with the Cold War; it became the conventional version of history. After the fall of the USSR, it was embraced by nationalists looking to resurrect Stalin as a monarch, rather than a party man.</p>
<p>Stalin indeed appeared to have jettisoned bits of the old international Communist agenda and zeroed in on domestic purges. The constant civil bloodshed convinced many of his potential enemies that Stalin’s USSR was mainly a threat to its own people. They viewed Stalin as a domestic tyrant, rather than an international Red Emperor.</p>
<p>But as Robert Gellately argues in <em>Stalin’s</em> <em>Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War</em>, accepting the view of Stalin as a pragmatic tyrant may have been the worst mistake that they ever made.</p>
<p>Gellately takes on both versions of Stalin, contending that the Soviet tyrant was not the victim of warmongering, but the author of the Cold War who had deliberately sought a global conflict for the sake of Communist ideology and Communist power.</p>
<p>The linkage between these two elements is vitally important. By reducing Stalin and his Soviet Union to mere tyrant and tyranny, revisionist liberal historians could successfully argue that they just wanted to be left alone. And if Stalin had been no more than a tyrant and the USSR no more than a pedestal for his cult of personality, that reading of history might have some plausibility.</p>
<p>Only by rediscovering Stalin as an ideological tyrant and the USSR as a Red Empire, as Gellately does, is that revisionist reading of the Cold War rendered null and void.</p>
<p>As early as 1920, Stalin was already envisioning a Red Empire, in Gellately’s words, that would encompass Russia and much of Eastern Europe. Stalin’s actions in both World War II and the Cold War were aimed at realizing that Red Empire.</p>
<p>Gellately takes note of Stalin’s self-definition as a “professional revolutionary and party organizer” and connects it to his international ambitions. The Stalin who emerges in <em>Stalin’s Curse</em> does not represent a break with the leftist history of the revolution, but a continuation of it. While liberal history insists on viewing Stalinism as a break from Leninism, Gellately makes a convincing case for the reign of Stalin as a natural extension of the reign of Lenin.</p>
<p>Most compellingly, <em>Stalin’s Curse</em> argues for recognizing Stalin’s strategic acumen in outwitting FDR and Churchill, as he had been unable to outwit Hitler, using the familiar narrative of Russian victimhood in a war that he had clumsily stumbled into to demand territorial concessions all the way up to Germany.  And yet Stalin’s achievements largely came from the willingness of his Western allies to lose sight of what he was and what he represented.</p>
<p>In one telling moment, that has a dreadful modern resonance, FDR, while staying in the bugged Soviet mission, is warned by Churchill that Stalin was preparing “a Communist replacement for the Polish government.”</p>
<p>The Soviet agent overhearing the conversation listens to FDR accuse Churchill of preparing an anti-Communist government and recalls “thinking how strange it was&#8221; for the president to “put Churchill and Stalin on the same plane” and to think of himself as “the arbiter between them.”</p>
<p>That moment is not the only one in Stalin’s Curse that bears such historical echoes. The National Front coalitions that the Soviet Union used to take over Eastern Europe bear a strong similarity to the Islamist coalitions used to take over the Arab Spring. And the willingness of the West to believe the comforting lies that they were told remind us that our disastrous foreign policy did not emerge yesterday.</p>
<p>While Stalin casually disposed of hundreds of thousands of lives, he took few major strategic risks, relying on attrition to do his work for him. As a canny negotiator, Stalin used every peace offer as an opening bid to expand his control replicating his battlefield strategy at the negotiating table</p>
<p>When FDR and Churchill thought that they were shaping a final settlement for Europe, they were actually engaging in an endless bargaining session that would only be settled with the Red Army.</p>
<p>History concerns itself with dry facts, but has less to say about human minds, and so it is difficult to know whether FDR and Churchill were fooled or whether they chose to be fooled. When FDR and Churchill praised Stalin’s integrity and sincerity, had they been deceived by the world’s greatest actor or did they allow themselves to be deceived so that the terrible compromises they made seemed more palatable?</p>
<p>This question, like so many of the others in <em>Stalin’s Curse</em>, remains applicable today. While Stalin is dead, there are many lesser Stalins like Morsi, small vicious men with an unlimited capacity for bloodshed and an even more unlimited ability to fool Western leaders into believing in their sincerity and goodness.</p>
<p>The negotiations that allowed Stalin to gobble up so many countries have been repeated again and again. And every time that diplomats call for a diplomatic solution in North Korea and Iran, we find ourselves back sitting across the table from Uncle Joe.</p>
<p>And that may be Stalin’s true curse.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Stalin’s Dead Hand</title>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Mar 2013 04:41:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why the fight over the tyrant's true brutal legacy is the fight for the future of Russia.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/stalins-dead-hand/stalin-kiss_1584259i/" rel="attachment wp-att-179942"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-179942" title="stalin-kiss_1584259i" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/stalin-kiss_1584259i-450x333.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="200" /></a>Imagine if Hitler had ranked first in a current German survey of the greatest figures of history. While that did not happen, last year <a href="http://www.carnegieendowment.org/2013/03/01/stalin-puzzle-deciphering-post-soviet-public-opinion/fmz8">Stalin finished first among Russians in a Carnegie survey</a> of the most influential figures of history, proving that people do not learn from history, they learn from the victors of history.</p>
<p>Stalin died in March 1953. Sixty years have passed since then, but the old tyrant remains a shadowy presence over Russia offering the simple solution of the bullet and the gulag. Iosif, the robber and government informant is dead, but in his place is the meticulously manufactured idea that Stalin’s way is the only way. The war over that dark history represents the political struggle over the soul of Russia.</p>
<p>Stalin became a post-ideological tyrant, posturing as a nationalist when necessary, reviving the country’s religious identity when needed, and purging people less out of ideology and more out of freewheeling paranoia. The Russian people viewed his successors, men like Khrushchev and Brezhnev, with contempt, but despite all the torture and atrocities, he retained his iconic status.</p>
<p>Despite the fall of the Soviet Union, Stalin remains a popular figure having transcended the ideology that most Westerners associated him with. The Communist left claims Stalin as a Communist while the Nationalist right claims him as a destroyer of Communism. Stalin endures among these groups as a symbol of power and decisive action.</p>
<p>The old Communist icons have faded away, but Stalin remains the quintessential tyrant. A figure closely associated with Russian greatness and Georgian glory, rather than with Communism.</p>
<p>Russia has historically vacillated between well-meaning inept leaders and ruthlessly brutal tyrants. The current governing scheme has given Russians both at the same time, with Medvedev playing the role of the well-meaning inept leader and Putin that of the ruthless tyrant stepping in when he falters. The historical pattern is as old as the czars and the outbreaks of democracy have not yet freed the Russian people from that bloody cycle.</p>
<p>During the end of the Soviet era, only 12 percent named Stalin a significant figure, but last year he was in first place again. The 1989 figures largely reflected Soviet orthodoxy with Lenin and Marx depicted as the dominant figures of history. Marx has since largely vanished, falling from 35 percent to 6 percent in 5 years, indicating that his placement was a product of ideological conformity and that there is no affinity at all for his economic ideas.  Lenin took a sharp tumble, but still ranks second.</p>
<p>The Soviet-era survey reflected the Communist interpretation of history, but the post-Soviet surveys reflect how that history has been massaged, interpreted and reinterpreted. Communism has been defeated, but its greatest tyrant lives on. The old statues might have been torn down, but the idea of Stalin as the pivotal tyrannical force of history could not and would not be so easily disposed of. Not when it is so useful to his spiritual successor.</p>
<p>A number of the contributors to the Carnegie study link Stalin’s rise in popularity to the Putin era, but Stalin’s popularity had increased significantly during the 90s before Putin came to power. Stalin’s star rose even higher under Putin, raising the question of whether Putin elevated Stalin or Stalin elevated Putin, or whether there was a synergy with tyranny feeding off tyranny.</p>
<p>There is no question that Putin’s regime has resurrected some Soviet monsters. The bust of Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police state, has been restored to a position of honor, and while Putin publicly disavowed some of Stalin’s atrocities, his political allies have paid tribute to the old monster and his regime put Stalin back into the school system.</p>
<p>Sixty years after Stalin’s death, Russia is on the cusp of losing the last few citizens who lived through his reign as adults. The Stalin of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren is a historical figure assembled from scraps of propaganda by a state-controlled media.</p>
<p>Stalin polls best among the teenagers who have been immersed in the propaganda of the new regime and the older citizens who lived under the waning decades of the Soviet era. The most educated are most likely to view him negatively while the least educated are most likely to view him positively. The ratings split similarly among the big cities and the villages suggesting that pro-Stalin images and texts are more influential in the media than in the educational system. In Russia as in the United States, television programming and infotainment may be more effective than education.</p>
<p>Stalin carefully controlled his own image while alive. In death his image has been remade a dozen times.  Most Russians denounce Stalin’s atrocities, but nearly half view his contribution to Russian history positively. Most would not want to live under his rule, but view his rule as largely beneficial. Rather than being contradictory, these clashing views reflect a willingness to embrace the tyrant’s ethos of the ends justifying the means.</p>
<p>Mussolini never did quite make the trains run on time, but Stalin is credited with everything from the electrification of Russia’s rural areas to defeating the Nazi armies during World War II. The history is often wrong, with industrial accomplishments overstated, defeats minimized and the degree of foreign aid received from the United States largely buried, but the myth has become a vital part of the official history of Russia’s new rulers. By measuring Stalin’s atrocities against his results, the implicit message is that nothing of significance can be accomplished without harsh measures.</p>
<p>The fictionalization of Stalin’s accomplishments justifies Putin’s atrocities in a version of history where getting anything done requires a strong leader willing to spill blood across the snow. And when Putin’s hour on the stage is done, it is all too likely that Stalin will go on serving that same purpose for the next tyrant and the one after that.</p>
<p>The struggle over Stalin’s place in history is also the struggle over the soul of Russia. Tyrants need a Stalin to justify their tyranny, while the democracy movement needs to definitely end the Stalin era once and for all. The struggle over history will determine whether Russia will be free.</p>
<p>In the battle over history, the state, with its monopoly over the media and the educational system, has the upper hand, diminishing Stalin’s atrocities while emphasizing his achievements. And when the last witnesses to the Stalin era have died, then history will be fully in the hands of the interpreters of history.</p>
<p>Stalin, as the study points out, has become an idea, more than a man. A dead hand weighing down Russian history.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Hollywood Left Hijacks Lincoln…Again</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/the-hollywood-left-hijacks-lincolnagain/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-hollywood-left-hijacks-lincolnagain</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/the-hollywood-left-hijacks-lincolnagain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2013 04:45:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lincoln]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Steven Spielberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tony kushner]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=178163</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg continue to rewrite history to fit false leftist narratives. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/the-hollywood-left-hijacks-lincolnagain/obama-lincoln_edit/" rel="attachment wp-att-178312"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-178312" title="Obama-Lincoln_edit" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Obama-Lincoln_edit.png" alt="" width="273" height="211" /></a>Reprising their anti-Israel screed in <em>Munich </em>(2005), Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner are at it again in their widely acclaimed new best picture nominee, <em>Lincoln</em>. The film itself is refreshingly free of wild leftist sucker punches, except for a bizarre rewriting of history that left two Connecticut Congressmen on the wrong side of the 13<sup>th</sup> Amendment banning slavery. But that doesn’t mean that its creators won’t spin the story of Barack Obama as a replay of Lincoln’s life.</p>
<p>The latest move in that direction came this week when Kushner, an Israel-hating radical leftist, told Charlie Rose that Barack Obama’s big win in 2012 signified the end of the “Reagan era ideology.” He stated:</p>
<blockquote><p>And you know I consider myself a person of the left. And &#8212; and I have left impatience with the pace of change and I am aware that people suffer terribly while they`re waiting for change to happen. The most vulnerable people suffer the most terribly. And I&#8217;m a gay man and I`ve been waiting a long time for, you know, full enfranchisement and I`m still not there. But watching this President and reading about that President, I really began to think long and hard about the processes of electoral democracy and the pace of change in an electoral democracy and what&#8217;s possible, you know.</p></blockquote>
<p>This is typical stuff from the triumphalist left, which believes that each electoral victory is an irreversible step in the progressive march to the communitarian sea.</p>
<p>But it’s Kushner’s hijacking of history to push his agenda that’s truly offensive. Kushner has stated that Barack Obama’s cynical embrace of gay marriage – an announcement perfectly timed to win him plaudits and campaign cash from gays and lesbians in Hollywood, even though Obama continues to stand against the federalization of gay marriage – was “Lincolnian.” Kushner continued:</p>
<blockquote><p>I mean he started out in &#8217;08 saying I don&#8217;t believe that marriage should be &#8212; I believe marriage is between a man and woman but I&#8217;m evolving. And that was clearly code to anybody with a brain saying, you know, of course I believe in same-sex marriage. The constitutional law scholar, he understands the difference.</p></blockquote>
<p>Well, no. Obama never said that traditional marriage was unconstitutional. He still has not. In fact, he opposes making marriage a constitutional issue at all. Yet Kushner continues this rampage through historical rewriting: “I think it was handled with absolute strategic and moral perfection. It arrived at exactly the right moment. As my husband said to him tonight, it was a life-changing moment when the president of the U.S. said that.”</p>
<p>That’s not the only comparison Kushner has made between Lincoln and Obama:</p>
<blockquote><p>Watching the Obama presidency through the lens of Lincoln has been a transformative thing for me. I think Barack Obama is a great president. I won&#8217;t say that he&#8217;s as great as Lincoln. I don&#8217;t know if there&#8217;ll ever be a president as great as Abraham Lincoln. But I think Obama inherited a mess as formidable as the mess that FDR inherited when he came into Washington during the Great Depression. Progressive people have not been patient enough, and thoughtful enough, in our criticisms of him. I feel it&#8217;s been a blessing to be thinking about Lincoln the whole time. Lincoln reminds you that great good can come from compromise, and always from politics.</p></blockquote>
<p>Obama is not a compromiser; he’s never passed a budget, and Obamacare was a partisan farce. Nor is he in Lincoln’s league in terms of the challenges he has faced. After all, is there any challenge to screwing up a recovery so badly that it marks the worst economic recovery in American history, then being feted by a lapdog media? And where’s the Lincolnian leadership in campaigning around the country without a shred of political maneuvering back home to care for the needs of Americans?</p>
<p>Hollywood has done its part to interpret Barack Obama as a great president, the same way they rewrote FDR into a dynamo of economic genius. If George W. Bush were still president, <em>Lincoln</em> would never have been made; no one in Hollywood would have tolerated the comparison, even inadvertent, between Bush and Obama. But Obama’s record is substantially worse than Bush’s in virtually every area, and Bush was no great shakes. The difference? Obama’s a far-left radical. And the <em>Lincoln </em>project is designed to achieve the same goal Barack Obama tried to achieve with his second inaugural address: hijacking American history and rewriting it to fit leftist narratives.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>New Year, Same Struggle Against Tyranny</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/new-year-same-struggle-against-tyranny/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=new-year-same-struggle-against-tyranny</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Dec 2012 04:55:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=171506</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Let us resolve that 2013 won't be the year the enemy won. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/new-year-same-struggle-against-tyranny/happy-new-year-images-2013/" rel="attachment wp-att-171535"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-171535" title="happy new year images 2013" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/happy-new-year-images-2013-450x313.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="188" /></a>And so yet another year ends, and a new one begins. And at the instant when we exchange the old, crumpled calendar, crammed with activities once planned and now completed, for the freshly printed one, a map of a land yet to be discovered, we clink champagne glasses to toast the relentless, one-directional movement of time.</p>
<p>And even as we do so, somehow the momentousness of it all can remain impossible for us to grasp –  except,  perhaps, fleetingly. In an instant 2012 ends forever, and is succeeded by 2013, and for a few days or weeks the main thing is to remember to get the date right when you fill out a check. In the same way, once upon a time, 1776 ended. And 1492.</p>
<p>Somehow, dates seem more profound when they&#8217;re dates from long ago, before we were born. Strangely, moreover, while the years we&#8217;ve actually lived through can often blend together in our minds, to become something of a mishmash, the years of History, with a capital H, seem fixed, sharp, crystalline. All of which can help blind us to the fact that the years we&#8217;ve lived through will also one day be history (provided, of course, we manage not to destroy ourselves as a species). We&#8217;re living in history; we&#8217;re making history – or, at least, history is being made around us, by our fellow human beings, whether or not we choose to take part.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re living in history: it should be an obvious point. Yet in an age when so many people in the free, prosperous, and (supposedly) almost fully literate Western world are shockingly historyless – having little or no sense of what the world was like before they were born, and little or no understanding of how the world they live in came to be what it is, and, therefore, of how very much they owe to the past, and, thus, to the future – the point isn&#8217;t necessarily obvious at all. Today, so many of us live in an eternal present, in which ancient history can mean nothing more or less than last week&#8217;s Facebook postings.</p>
<p>A new year can bring unimagined, colossal changes. As 1914 dawned, how many people in the Western world imagined that a catastrophic World War would begin before the year was out, and would transform the Western mind in ways so profound that we&#8217;re still struggling to understand them? Or, to move into our own times: as the year 2001 began, who could have imagined that it would become an infinitely more important turning point than 2000 itself, that long-anticipated, much-ballyhooed year when the digits on time&#8217;s odometer (to borrow an image from John Updike) all changed at once?</p>
<p>Surely many Americans have far more of a sense of living in history than they would&#8217;ve had if 9/11 had never taken place. Some things that happen just burn a year into your mind forever, and that&#8217;s that – and you can&#8217;t do anything about it once it&#8217;s happened. But what could have been done, and by whom, to keep 2001 from become what it became in the first place? No year&#8217;s history is written in stone until it&#8217;s over. As midnight crosses the International Date Line, the year 2012 will be history. But 2013 is a book yet to be written. The question is: who will write it?</p>
<p>In his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” first published in 1915, T.S. Eliot wrote: “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” Prufrock, the speaker of the poem, is aware – hyperaware, intensely and neurotically aware – that even his slightest action does indeed “disturb the universe,” and that every year, indeed every moment, he&#8217;s lived through has, to some degree, however minuscule, been shaped by him. Some people never think this way about their lives, and, on the contrary, are eager to put their stamp on the world; a larger percentage, I suspect, are, like Prufrock, so fiercely conscious of the potential consequences of their every move that they can barely bring themselves to step out of their long-established comfort zones for fear of doing or saying the wrong thing – and of having to take responsibility for it. They prefer to keep their heads down, to keep their mouths shut, and to mind their business. In most premodern societies, and in many modern ones, such caution was certainly understandable – it was a survival mechanism, pure and simple.</p>
<p>In the twenty-first century, however, in a free country in peril of losing its freedom, such a posture, such a policy, is pusillanimous and unconscionable – unworthy of responsible adults, citizens, and parents. For the fact is that we face enemies who are determined not just to disturb but to destroy our Western world, our free societies, our way of life. Enemies who are intensely conscious of their own history, and of the violent history they share with us – a history that saw them turned back, but just barely, at the gates of Vienna in 1683, a victory without which I would not be sitting here writing this and you would not be reading it. Enemies who have no other goal than to write the history of the years to come, and to make the future their own. While too many of us slip passively into yet another year, waiting to see what it will bring us, those enemies are doing everything they can to usher us into a time in which all our calendars will count back not to A.D. 1 but to A.D. 622.</p>
<p>They&#8217;re not shy. They&#8217;re not timid. They&#8217;re not Prufrocks. Yet so many people in the West hesitate to speak up, to act, to make even a small difference, in some cases for no better reason than that they&#8217;re scared of being called bigots, racists, Islamophobes. (As if that, at this point, were anything more than a badge of honor.)</p>
<p>Given the present circumstances, turn the question around: “Do I dare / <em>Not </em>disturb the universe?” Observing the refusal of so many people in the West, especially those in positions of authority (and this includes many people from whom some of us would have expected much more) to take seriously the clear and present danger to our future, and to our children&#8217;s and grandchildren&#8217;s future, one can&#8217;t help recalling a line from another great modern poet: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”</p>
<p>As we pop the cork and count down to 2013, then, let&#8217;s be aware that in the new year we&#8217;ll continue to be engaged in a struggle – on a variety of fronts – against tenacious and unflinching jihadist adversaries who are already transforming the way we live and who look forward to a day when every aspect of our existence will be governed by their despotic laws. As we step into a year whose history has yet to be written, let&#8217;s resolve that they won&#8217;t be the ones to write it.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Oliver Stone&#8217;s Untrue History: Stalin the Great Hero of WWII</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/oliver-stones-untrue-history-stalin-the-great-hero-of-wwii/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=oliver-stones-untrue-history-stalin-the-great-hero-of-wwii</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Dec 2012 04:52:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=169546</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Castro's worshiper weaves a twisted tale of America's immoral and minor role in the Second World War.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/oliver-stones-untrue-history-stalin-the-great-hero-of-wwii/stalin-n-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-170251"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-170251" title="stalin.n" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/stalin.n1.jpg" alt="" width="222" height="166" /></a><em>Editor’s note: The following is the first installment of a series of articles Frontpage will be running in the days ahead in response to Oliver Stone’s neo-Communist documentary series, “The Untold History of the United States,” currently airing Mondays on Showtime. Frontpage will be reviewing each episode of the Stone series, exposing the leftist hateful lies about America and setting the record straight. Below is a review of Part I of Stone&#8217;s series. </em></p>
<p>America is a soulless, unexceptional country that has done more harm than good over the last 70 years, leftist Oliver Stone argues in &#8220;World War II,&#8221; the first installment of his latest documentary project.</p>
<p>In Stone&#8217;s multi-part revisionist assault on modern American history, <em>Untold History of the United States</em>, the Communist-loving movie director argues that the U.S. lost the Second World War to the Soviet Union, our allies at the time. The Soviet Communists may have been harsh and violent, but they saved the world, not America. America was too busy getting rich building weapons of mass destruction to make the world safe for capitalism, or something along those lines, according to Stone.</p>
<p>The 66-year old Oscar winner opens the first episode with a soliloquy summing up his journey from patriot to Howard Zinn wannabe.</p>
<p>When Stone was a young boy learning about U.S. history, America was &#8220;the center of the world,&#8221; he says in the narration.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;There was a manifest destiny. We were the good guys. Well, I&#8217;ve traveled the world now. I continued my education as an infantryman in Vietnam. I&#8217;ve made a lot of movies, some of them about history, and I&#8217;ve learned a lot more than I once knew. And when I heard from my children what they were learning in school I was perturbed to hear that they were not really getting a more honest view of the world than I did.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>As Americans, &#8220;we live much of our lives in a fog &#8211;all of us&#8211; but I would like my children to have access to something that looks beyond what I call the tyranny of now,&#8221; said Stone, pretending to have invented the concept of <em><a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/presentism">presentism</a></em>.</p>
<p>All good propagandists know that the use of scapegoating and simplistic story lines make falsehoods easy for some people to digest, and Stone is one of the best.</p>
<p>Stone does his best to reduce America&#8217;s history to utopian socialist pabulum, calling the U.S. government&#8217;s development of the atomic bomb the catalyst that turned &#8220;the refuge of the Founding Fathers into a militarized state.&#8221; It seems reasonable to guess that Stone, like so many other radicals, would have considered America more virtuous if it had refrained from bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war and instead sacrificed a half million or more American lives (and at at least one million Japanese lives) in a full-scale invasion of Fascist Japan.</p>
<p>Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist who led the Manhattan Project team that developed the bomb, escapes Stone&#8217;s wrath because among leftists good intentions trump worldly deeds even when those intentions lead to catastrophe.</p>
<p>Stone deems Oppenheimer a noble soul because he was a Communist sympathizer. Oppenheimer gave up to 10 percent of his salary to help the priest-murdering Spanish Republicans. Stone notes that even though President Franklin D. Roosevelt banned the shipment of arms to Spain in the years leading up to World War II, &#8220;2,800 brave Americans&#8221; fought, mostly for the Communists.</p>
<p>Despite his refusal to help Spanish radicals, Roosevelt wasn&#8217;t all bad, as Stone sees it. When he sought a third term in office in 1940, FDR had the good sense to put a so-called progressive, Communist sympathizer Henry A. Wallace, on the ticket as vice presidential nominee.</p>
<p>As Secretary of Agriculture during the Great Depression, Wallace habitually interfered with the economy, engaging in social engineering schemes that free market economists say helped to prolong and exacerbate the nation&#8217;s agony. But Stone hails Wallace as a visionary for giving subsidies to farmers to not grow crops, giving the urban poor food stamps and school lunches, and launching programs for land use planning and soil conservation.</p>
<p><em>Untold History</em> covers largely the same ground as <em>Cold War</em>, the epic 24-part series produced by CNN founder Ted Turner in association with BBC News in 1998. That grim extended documentary, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, was legitimately criticized for pushing a false moral equivalence between the United States and the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>At the time Jacob Heilbrunn blasted the series in the <em>New Republic</em> for depicting the decades of tension between the two countries as a &#8220;morally unintelligible contest between two equally dangerous superpowers, whose fear of each other constantly threatened to plunge a world full of innocent bystanders into nuclear holocaust.&#8221;</p>
<p>But even with its problems, <em>Cold War</em> is celluloid jingoism compared to Stone&#8217;s ahistorical <em>Untold History</em>.</p>
<p>&#8220;Obsessively, Stalin spoke of the danger to world peace, the need for vigilance against internal enemies,&#8221; said <em>Cold War</em> narrator Branagh.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Conformity was enforced by police terror and by a slavish cult of [Joseph] Stalin&#8217;s personality. He became godlike; his icon worshiped everywhere. For those who did not conform there was silence and death behind the barbed wire. The gulag, the secret empire of concentration camps, stretched over 4,000 miles from the Baltic to the Pacific. In the Cold War years the camps continued to devour the lives of millions.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>The strongest condemnation Stone can offer of Stalin, one of the world&#8217;s most prolific mass murderers, is that he was &#8220;a brutal dictator.&#8221;</p>
<p>In fact Stone praises Stalin as a pragmatic hero, who, by fighting Adolph Hitler&#8217;s merciless war machine, saved not only his homeland but the whole world.</p>
<p>According to Stone, for years before the war began, Stalin had implored the countries of the West to take on Hitler. Stone seems to imply that America could not be counted on to defeat the Third Reich because its people didn&#8217;t care much for Jews. The U.S. and its allies did little to help German Jews from 1938 onward as Nazi persecution intensified, Stone says, granting admission to precious few Jewish refugees. Of course the Allies &#8211;including the USSR&#8211; destroyed the Nazi war machine, but Stone doesn&#8217;t point this out.</p>
<p>In early 1939, when Hitler took over what remained of Czechoslovakia, violating his pledge not to advance beyond the Sudetenland, Stalin became a hero in Stone&#8217;s eyes:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Stalin recognized the truth. His country was facing its most deadly enemy alone. He needed to buy time and fearing a German-Polish alliance to attack the USSR he shocked the West when he signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler dividing Eastern Europe between them. Stalin&#8217;s primary concern was the security of his own nation. In fact the Soviet dictator had proposed the same alliance with Britain and France but neither would accept Stalin&#8217;s demand to place Soviet troops on Polish soil as a way of blocking the Germans.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>American politicians didn&#8217;t appreciate the sacrifice Stalin was making for world peace, Stone suggests. After Hitler double-crossed Stalin and initiated Operation Barbarossa, Germany&#8217;s ferocious invasion of the USSR, &#8220;there were still many in the West who, frankly, were glad to see the Soviet Union finally on her knees.&#8221;</p>
<p>Stone offers then-Sen. Harry Truman, as an example of such supposed shortsightedness. An actor&#8217;s voice repeats Truman&#8217;s words spoken on the floor of the Senate in 1941: &#8220;If we see that Germany is winning then we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible.&#8221;</p>
<p>America and its allies were only minor players in the Second World War, Stone pontificates.</p>
<p>In the &#8220;pivotal years&#8221; of the conflict, &#8220;the Soviets were regularly battling more than 200 German divisions. In contrast the Americans and the British fighting in the Mediterranean rarely confronted more than 10 German divisions. Germany lost over 6 million men fighting the Soviets and approximately 1 million fighting on the Western front.&#8221;</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve all been brainwashed into believing that America and the allied powers triumphed in the war, Stone says, referring to &#8220;the myth [that] lives on that the United States won.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Serious historians agree that it was the Soviet Union, that its entire society,&#8221; including Stalin, &#8220;who through sheer desperation and incredibly stoic heroism forged the great narrative of World War II: the defeat of the monster German war machine.&#8221;</p>
<p>Like the schoolchild whose dog ate his homework, Stone fails to name those supposed giants of historiography who accuse the USSR&#8217;s allies of failing to pull their own weight and riding Stalin&#8217;s coat-tails to victory in 1945.</p>
<p>Because more Soviet soldiers died (around 8 million) than American soldiers (around 400,000) in the war, according to Stone the Soviets have a stronger moral claim to victory. He ignores the fact that many Red Army soldiers perished helping to extricate the USSR from Stalin&#8217;s cynical, short-lived nonaggression pact with Hitler.</p>
<p>Stone also appears to discount the American contribution to the liberation of Western Europe before, during, and after the D-Day invasion of 1944. Using his own bizarre calculus, Stone gives the &#8220;win&#8221; to the USSR simply because more of its often ill-equipped soldiers died.</p>
<p>Throughout his professional life the Hollywood leftist has always been a gifted fabulist.</p>
<p>The Fidel Castro-worshiping, anti-American icon-smasher, has crafted movies that seduce audiences, selling them on far-fetched conspiracy theories.</p>
<p>Stone pulled the wool over a generation of Americans, convincing them that Lee Harvey Oswald had little if anything to do with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Gallup polls <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/1813/most-americans-believe-oswald-conspired-others-kill-jfk.aspx"><em>suggest</em></a></span> that Stone&#8217;s 1991 movie, <em>JFK</em>, a crazy quilt of revisionist conjecture, helped to bolster public belief in alternate theories of the assassination. Stone argues in the movie that the U.S. intelligence community worked with the mob and disgruntled Bay of Pigs survivors to murder the then-leader of the free world so American companies could reap colossal war profits &#8212; or something.</p>
<p>The wily Stone lied to us about Kennedy&#8217;s death, downplaying the obvious starring role played by Oswald, a dedicated Marxist-Leninist who previously defected to the USSR at the height of the Cold War.</p>
<p>Why stop lying now?</p>
<p><strong>Related articles on Stone&#8217;s series:</strong></p>
<p>1. Daniel Greenfield’s <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/the-atom-bomb-and-the-truth-bomb/">review of “The Bomb,”</a> the third episode of the series.</p>
<p>2. <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/oliver-stones-left-wing-agitprop/">Bruce Thornton&#8217;s introduction</a> to this Frontpage series.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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