Bloated Drunken Senator Was Bagman for Communists

In a new book by Paul Kengor written about Ronald Reagan we learn some surprising things about the alcoholic whale from Massachusetts. Specifically we find that the trust fund senator, who has never had a real job in his life, was working for the Soviets during the cold war years of the Reagan administration by attempting to help the Russians undermine the American people's chosen President. So far, the pompous bag of fat has had no comment on the issue of his apparent treason against his country.

Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

In his book, which came out this week, Kengor focuses on a KGB letter written at the height of the Cold War that shows that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) offered to assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan's foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts.

The letter, dated May 14, 1983, was sent from the head of the KGB to Yuri Andropov, who was then General Secretary of the Soviet Union's Communist Party.

In his letter, KGB head Viktor Chebrikov offered Andropov his interpretation of Kennedy's offer. Former U.S. Sen. John Tunney (D-Calif.) had traveled to Moscow on behalf of Kennedy to seek out a partnership with Andropov and other Soviet officials, Kengor claims in his book.

At one point after President Reagan left office, Tunney acknowledged that he had played the role of intermediary, not only for Kennedy but for other U.S. senators, Kengor said. Moreover, Tunney told the London Times that he had made 15 separate trips to Moscow.

"There's a lot more to be found here," Kengor told Cybercast News Service. "This was a shocking revelation."

North Korea by Night

Or how to send a nation of millions back to the cave

In science when you want to test a theory you create two groups from which you will collect your data; a test group and a control group. You leave the control group as it currently is and you implement your idea on the test group. In this way you get to see the differences, if any, that are created by your idea when put into practice. In the case of the utopian plans of socialists and communists we have had several side by side tests which have shown the difference between communism and capitalism when they are put into practice.

Here we have a photograph taken from space which shows the Korean peninsula at night. Notice anything? OK, that was a rhetorical question. Because what we see here are the real world effects of two different ideas when they are put into practice. In North Korea we have communism, and in the South we have capitalism.

In this photo we see the bright lights of cities and towns all across South Korea that would be familiar to anyone who lives in the West and who is used to a modern, industrial standard of living. Even in the middle of the night there is activity in most urban areas and towns as people enjoy different forms of night life or get home late from work. But in the North we see nothing but unending darkness. Why would that be?

Well the reason is simple. Communism is not a system that works. Or to be more precise, Karl Marx, who advocated the communist ideal, never came up with an explanation of just how a communist society would actually be able to create wealth in the absence of a capitalist society from which it could be expropriated. Communism claims to be an economic theory, but it has no idea of how to generate goods and services for the people who live under it. Moreover, communists have a completely unrealistic view of human nature woven into their theory of how things should be. They speak of "collectives" and "the masses" and of class theory. But the reality is that people in the real world respond to individual wants and needs and most of all to incentives.

Capitalism recognizes the real nature of human beings with all of their requirements, impulses and motives and flaws. And it has a system of wealth creation which is rooted in real world experience as well as a complex theory of prices, production and finance which is vital to any advanced society. Communist societies lack these things, which is why North Korea is left in the dark after the sun goes down.

The satellite image of the North in darkness is living, visual proof of yet another failure of utopian communist ideology to bring the people under it anything other than misery and suffering. For while the Angry Left is denouncing capitalism and swooning over revolutionary communism, the starving people of North Korea are reduced to eating the bark off of trees in order to keep from dying. This is what the people in the Angry Left are trying push us towards, if they can. And somehow, all of the evidence in the world of its failure won't keep them from trying it again, in the vain hope that this time it might just work.

Life is a Cabaret

In this week's column by documented legal immigrant Mark Steyn, we look at the question of how this upcoming election is marked by the choice between the frivolous and the serious. Mr. Steyn argues that during the 90s Americans opted for the silly party and their court jester pederast Boy Clinton. Charles Kruathammer called it a "holiday from history." And surely there can be no doubt that after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, most Americans thought that all of our national security problems were solved and we could pop the champagne and celebrate with endless episodes of Baywatch.

But just because you ignore it, doesn't mean that history isn't there unfolding behind the scenes. Indeed, all during that long and apparently sunny decade, the storm clouds were gathering on the horizon. And on 9-11 history showed up at our front door to announce that it had never really been away. Will the American people acknowledge the reality of the world we live in today and keep the silly party out of power, or will they opt to hide their heads in the sand until the next attack in hopes of avoiding it? It is difficult to prognosticate. But regardless of which way this election goes, history will not go away, and the world we live in will continue to offer dangers that sooner or later will end up at our front door. The only question is whether we will be ready and prepared to face them or not.

In my new book (out this week, folks: you'll find it at the back of the store past the 9/11 Conspiracy section and the Christianist Theocrat Takeover of America section and the ceiling-high display of the new Dixie Chicks six-CD box set of songs about how they're being silenced), I say that some of us looked at Sept. 11 as the sudden revelation of the tip of a vast iceberg, and I try to address the seven-eighths of that iceberg below the surface -- the globalization of radical Islam, the free-lancing of nuclear technology, the demographic weakness of Western democracies. Other folks, however, see the iceberg upside down. The huge weight of history -- the big geopolitical forces coursing through society -- the vast burden all balancing on the pinhead of the week: in this instance, Mark Foley.

Thomas Sowell says the question for this election is not whether you or your candidate is Republican or Democrat but whether you're "serious" or "frivolous." A lot of Americans, and not just their sorry excuse for a professional press corps, are in the mood for frivolity. It's like going to the theater. Do you really want to sit through that searing historical drama from the Royal Shakespeare Company? Or would you rather be at the sex comedy next door?

In the 1990s, Americans opted for the sex comedy -- or so they thought. But in reality the searing historical drama carried on; it was always there, way off in the background, behind the yuk-it-up narcissist trouser-dropper staggering around downstage. The mood of the times was to kick the serious stuff down the road so we could get back to President Lounge Act offering to feel our pain. With North Korea, the people delegated to kick the can a few years ahead -- Madeleine Albright, Jimmy Carter -- are now back, writing self-congratulatory op-eds about their genius and foresight. Not at all. Albright's much-touted "agreement" was a deal whereby Washington agreed to prop up a flailing basket-case state in order to enable it to buy enough time to become a serious destabilizing threat to its neighbors and beyond. Many of our present woes -- not least Iran -- derive explicitly from the years when Carter embodied the American "superpower" as a smiling eunuch.

Thanks in part to last decade's holiday from history, North Korea and Iran don't have to buy any more time. They've got all they need. Life isn't a night on Broadway where you can decide you're not in the mood for "Henry V" and everyone seems to be having a much better time at "La Cage Aux Foley." Forget the Republicans for a moment. In Connecticut, the contest is between a frivolous liberal running on myopic parochial platitudes and a serious liberal who has the measure of the times and has thus been cast out by the Democratic Party. His state's voters seem disinclined to endorse the official Dems' full-scale embrace of trivia and myopia. The broader electorate should do the same.

The Democrat's High Water Mark

Talk show host and blogger Hugh Hewitt brings us this optimistic post in which he argues that the eruption of the Foley scandal brought the Democrats as close to electoral victory in this cycle as they are likely to get. And it's all downhill from here for the Dems because critical and dangerous world events have a way of intruding on the cloistered bubble of Democratic self-righteousness and the artificial outrage of The Elite Media Monoculture.

If memory serves, there is a famous quote from Churchill to the effect that "there are few things which are as exhilarating as being shot at without success". This week's test of an atomic weapon by the North Korean potato-head psychopath is indeed a shot across the bow of America and our allies. The Democrats seem to think that clinking champagne glasses with people who want to kill us and singing "kum-ba-yah" is somehow going to protect us from dangerous killers who lust for power. And that's giving the Democrats the benefit of the doubt that they do, in fact, actually recognize that these people are a danger. The hard left base doesn't seem to be able to perceive even this fact. For them it is America that is the enemy. After all, Victor Chavez and Noam Chomsky say so, and therefore it must be true.

But if the American public is paying attention, they will notice that there are many people in the world who are delighted at the prospect of American defeat, and that somehow the Democrats always seem to end up on their side. The reality is that the Democrats just don't take the current world situation seriously and they have no intellectual framework for dealing with the events which are rapidly unfolding around the world. Thus any vote for any Democrat is a vote for vulnerability and defeat.

It took 48 hours of loose nukes in the control of bad hair kooks to get the electorate refocused on the stakes in November's elections. But even before North Korea reminded the electorate of the wonders of Clinton-Albright era diplomacy, even as "The Path to 9/11" and The Looming Tower had done, the Foley effect had begun to dissipate as the reality of the choice before the country broke through even the MSM's fascination with the destruction of the Republicans because of the notorious IMs.

Now Santorum in Pennsylvania, DeWine in Ohio, and Corker in Tennessee have showed strong momentum to match that of Allen's in Virginia. Jim Talent will win in Missouri, but and Democratic nominee McCaskill's remarkable ability to churn out gaffes might make it a breakaway. Key Congressional candidates have the same momentum, as does Bob Beuprez in Colorado. Arnold out west and Charles Crist in Florida are crushing their Democratic opponents and with them, Democratic enthusiasm in those states.

To this mix we add increasing focus on the hard left politics of the Nancy Pelosi/John Murtha appeasement Democrats, and the unexpected assists intentional and unintentional received from folks like David Zucker and Jimmy Carter, respectively.

The timely return to the lists of Jimmy C. --original enabler of the Ayatollah Khomeni and shrewd poker player with Kim Jung Il-- is a special treat for Republicans, even better than Bill Clinton's FNC reprise of his best finger wagging moment. Dean has dealt with it, but I don't think even that fine post summarizes the impact of James Earl Carter on the nation's decision making when it comes to politics. His election was birthed in reaction to political scandal of course, and we got what we paid for, the very disasters that haunt us to this day.

When North Korea Falls

Robert Kaplan, author of "Imperial Grunts", brings us this lengthy essay in which he looks at the long term effects that will ensue when the odious Kim Family Regime comes to its inevitable and pathetic end. Kaplan looks at how such a collapse might occur and how the major players in the area will jockey for position to take advantage of the situation in order to increase their dominance in the region, with a particular emphasis on what the Chinese can be expected to do. How things play out will be the result not only of strategic considerations and the events on the ground, but of local culture and history as well.

Given that North Korea’s army of 1.2 million soldiers has been increasingly deployed toward the South Korean border, the Korean peninsula looms as potentially the next American military nightmare. In 1980, 40 percent of North Korean combat forces were deployed south of Pyongyang near the DMZ; by 2003, more than 70 percent were. As the saying goes among American soldiers, “There is no peacetime in the ROK.” (ROK, pronounced “rock,” is militaryspeak for the Republic of Korea.) One has merely to observe the Patriot missile batteries, the reinforced concrete hangars, and the blast barriers at the U.S. Air Force bases at Osan and Kunsan, south of Seoul—which are as heavily fortified as any bases in Iraq—to be aware of this. A marine in Okinawa told me, “North Korea is not some third-rate, Middle Eastern conventional army. These brainwashed Asians—as he crudely put it—“will stand and fight.” American soldiers in Korea refer to the fighting on the peninsula between 1950 and 1953 as “the first Korean War.” The implicit assumption is that there will be a second.

Speechless In Seattle

Government goons are taking your free speech away

In this article from George Will, we look at the awful consequences of John McCain's ego trip fantasy of becoming president one day. Thanks to the McCain Feingold law that "regulates" political speech, and thanks to a foolish president who signed it into law on the false assumption that a bunch of guys in black robes would muster the courage that he could not, we are now seeing the erosion of the first amendment under the guise of "reform." Naturally this reform takes the shape of silencing the voices of ordinary Americans who wish to exercise their freedom of speech to protect their other rights, which the supreme court is also rapidly trying to take away, such as happened in the "Kelo" decision. This, senator McCain, is why you will never be president.

SEATTLE—As the comprehensive and sustained attack on Americans' freedom of political speech intensifies, this city has become a battleground. Campaign-finance "reformers," who advocate ever-increasing government regulation of the quantity, timing and content of political speech, always argue that they want to regulate "only" money, which, they say, leaves speech unaffected. But here they argue that political speech is money, and hence must be regulated. By demanding that the speech of two talk-radio hosts be monetized and strictly limited, reformers reveal the next stage in their stealthy repeal of the First Amendment.

A few people opposed to a ballot initiative that would annex their neighborhood to Parker, Colo., talked to neighbors and purchased lawn signs expressing opposition. So a proponent of annexation got them served with a complaint charging violations of Colorado's campaign-finance law. It demands that when two or more people collaborate to spend more than $200 to influence a ballot initiative, they must disclose the names, addresses and employers of anyone contributing money, open a separate bank account and file regular reports with the government. Then came a subpoena demanding information about any communications that opponents of the initiative had with neighbors concerning the initiative, and the names and addresses of any persons to whom they gave lawn signs. They hired a lawyer. That has become a cost of political speech.

In Florida, a businesswoman ceased publication of her small-town newspaper rather than bear compliance costs imposed by that state's speech police. Even though the Wakulla Independent Reporter contained community news and book reviews as well as political news and editorials, state campaign regulators declared it an "electioneering communication" in league with certain candidates, and ordered her to register with, and file regular reports to, the government.

This is the America produced by "reformers" led by John McCain. The U.S. Supreme Court, in affirming the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold speech restrictions, advocated deference toward elected officials when they write laws regulating speech about elected officials and their deeds. This turned the First Amendment from the foundation of robust politics into a constitutional trifle to be "balanced" against competing considerations—combating the "appearance of corruption," or elevating political discourse or something. As a result, attempts to use campaign regulations to silence opponents are becoming a routine part of vicious political combat.

What Clinton Didn't Do

and when he didn't do it.

With the recent airing of "The Path to 9-11" and the now notorious Bill Clinton whine-fest on Fox News the question of how Boy Clinton failed to deal with the growing threat of terrorism on his watch is a subject of much discussion. In this article from The Wall Street Journal, Richard Miniter runs down the attacks and warning signs which the boy president ignored while he chased the interns around the Oval Office desk.

The Disappearing 'Us'

Michael Barone argues, in this article at RealClearPolitics, that the Democrats have a bad habit of using the first person plural only when they are in power. Right now that is not the case, and so they don't say "our troops" or "our President" or anything else in a similar vein. The fact that they hate the President and his party is a well established fact. One only has to visit the fever swamp on the left side of the blogsphere to see clearly the rage of the Dems. But I wonder if Mr. Barone isn't operating on a false assumption here when he makes his argument.

He seems to be assuming that when the Dems are in power and they use the word "we" that they are referring to all of us. What if they are not? What if when they us the word "we" in this context, they really mean "we Democrats"? After all, they make no secret of the fact that they think the rest of us who don't live in New York, Washington or L.A. are basically stupid hicks who live out here in fly-over-country because we aren't smart enough to rent a U-Haul and move to where they are. They think that people who join the military are somehow retarded or didn't have what it takes to get into Harvard and Yale. They certainly wouldn't be caught dead shopping in a Sam's Club or a Wal Mart.

So who do they really mean when they say "we"?

The Hate Trap

Dems repeat the mistakes of the past

The New York Post's Craig Charney writes in this article about the now undeniable fact that the Democrats have become completely unhinged in their all consuming hatred for George W. Bush and his policies. Indeed, they hate him so much that they now side with America's enemies in their desire for his defeat and the defeat of America that would logically follow from it. But this emotionalism has not had a history of winning elections, as Republicans found to their regret in the Clinton years. With today's terrorist threats in an ever more dangerous world, the American people are unlikely to put the Democrats into power when they are on the wrong side of nearly every issue. A vote for any Democrats is, in this climate, a vote for vulnerability and defeat.

Faith, Reason and the University

Memories and Reflections

Pope Benedict gave a speech recently at the University of Regensburg in which he examined the relationship between faith and reason in the Catholic Church with respect to the influence of the ancient Greeks. It is actually quite an interesting argument as it is generally sympathetic to the role of reason in the creation of modern Western Civilization, although I personally would give much more credit to Thomas Aquinas and his re-introduction of Aristotle to the canon of Western thought than the Pope's emphasis on Plato.

Naturally the hordes of Islamic savages are rioting and burning as they always do when someone asks them to answer uncomfortable questions. And to show just how non-violent they really are, they have now shot a nun in the back. The pretext for these actions was the Pope's reference to the comments of a long dead Byzantine Emperor Manuel II who had a few things to say about Islam in his own time, which seem not too different from what we know today. For Manuel was at that time defending Europe from Islamic invasion and conquest by the sword. And he apparently was not shy about saying that he thought that forced conversion in the name of religion was a great sin against God.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels," he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably ("syn logo") is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...."

Oriana Fallaci Passes Away

Anti-Fascist Journalist and fighter against radical Islam Oriana Fallaci died this weekend in Italy after a long battle with cancer. Sophie Hardach writes about her life and work in this obituary in the Washington Post. In the war against the head-choppers she was unapologetic and uncompromising. She was not shy about calling evil by its proper name and she will be missed.

Aggressive and provocative to the end, Fallaci made her name as a tenacious interviewer of some of the most famous leaders of the 20th century.

She quarreled with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, provoked U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger into likening himself to a cowboy, and tore off a chador (enveloping Islamic robe) in a meeting with Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

"A great Italian and brave writer has died who has led a life full of passion, full of love, with great civil courage," Ferruccio De Bortoli, editor-in-chief of Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper, told Reuters.

De Bortoli first published the angry essay that turned into Fallaci's controversial best-seller, "The Rage and the Pride," which described Islam as oppressive and Arab immigrants in Europe as dirty, foul-mouthed and bigoted.

She called on Europeans to defend their culture and values instead of adjusting to immigrants' needs.

It's Fascism -- And It's Islamic

Historian Victor Davis Hanson looks at some of the similarities between the fascism of the old German variety and the new and improved Islamic version. It should be no surprise that among the jihadists of today, the vision of Hitler's ambitions remains a romantic ideal.

George Bush recently declared that we are at war with "Islamic fascism." Muslim-American groups were quick to express furor at the expression. Middle Eastern autocracies complained that it was provocative and insensitive.

Critics of the term chosen by the president, however, should remember what al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist Muslim groups have said and done. Like the fascists of the 1930s, the leaders of these groups are authoritarians who brook no dissent in their efforts to impose a comprehensive system of submission upon the unwilling.

Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to kill any American they could find, and then tried to fulfill that vow on Sept. 11. Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah bragged that "the Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them" - and then started a war. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, promises to "wipe out" Israel, and is seeking the nuclear means to do so.

Sharia law and dreams of pan-Islamic global rule fuel their ambitions. Once again, they seek to fool Western liberals through voicing a litany of perpetual hurts. Like the Nazis who whined about the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I, and alleged maltreatment of Germans in the Sudetenland, for years Islamists harped about American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, the U.N. embargo of Iraq and the occupation of Gaza and Lebanon.

Pan-Islamism Challenges the Idea of the Nation State

In this article from Sun Times columnist Mark Steyn we look at the effects of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and how they seek to undermine the validity of the nations in which they operate. And as Steyn points out, the recent events in Lebanon show that this is not just limited to their attacks on Western civilization. What they are working towards is a breakdown in the civilized order of the world. For that breakdown would serve their puspose and allow them to move in and take over.

We take it for granted that some things are the normal state of the world in which we live. We expect that we will be able to deal with our fellow citizens in a rational manner on a day to day basis. We expect that we will be able to go to work in the morning and come home at night without having to dodge bullets and bombs. We expect that random violence is rare and security the norm. And we expect that laws to protect us are the standard and that life will be more or less regular and predictable. And it is all of these things that the terrorists seek to undermine.

For the purpose of a nation state and its government is to establish a system of justice and insure domestic tranquility. For a civilized people are a people who can work to achieve their ends on a day to day basis without the kind of random and ceaseless violence which the Islamists seek to impose on us.

The most recent attempt by the terrorists to blow up commercial aircraft in mid-Atlantic flight is yet another example of the Jihadists disrupting the civilized order and replacing it with random chaos. It doesn't take much imagination to look at the ruins of the Arab world and to see the future that awaits us if we do not destroy the cancer of Islamofascism before it drags us all back to the dark ages.

We Should Not Tolerate the Preachers of Jihad

Richard Perle argues, in this article from The Telegraph, that we have been much to complacent when it comes to shutting down the preachers of hate within our own societies. And indeed, our own history and tradition, as well as legal precedent, show that freedom of speech is not without limits. The incitement to violence and law breaking is not covered by the 1st amendment no matter how loudly the ACLU and the Angry Left may bellow about it. We have the right to defend our civilization from those who advocate its destruction. And those Islamofascists who advocate violence and the murder of the infidels can be, and should be shut down.

The Lesson So Far

Hard Truths to Learn From Israel's War on Hezbollah

Ralph Peters writes in The New York Post concerning the larger lessons which we must learn from our experiences in the war on Islamofascism. One of the most important is that so far we have fought this war with our hands tied by political correctness. The Angry Left, both in America as well elsewhere in the West, does not really want us to win. Thus they have worked to throw up road blocks at every turn to prevent us from using the full force of our military might as well as our intelligence and civilian resources. They argue in court for terrorist rights; they leak classified national security information to help the terrorists and to thward our own people from catching them; they argue for the moral equivalence of the civilized world and the barbarians in the media every day. And they always, always always blame America first. The time must soon come when we reject the leaden baggage of leftist multiculturalism and moral equivocation. For us to survive, we must fight for our way of life and the superiority of our civilization without apology and with full confidence in the moral nature of our defense against barbarism.

Thursday's Lessons for Tuesday's Victors

Michael Barone writes about the victory for Ned Lamont and what it portends for the Democratic party now that they have been taken over by the Angry Left. And just as regular as clockwork, no sooner did the angry anti-American, anti-war candidate win his primary, British authorities broke up a plot to attack Western civilization by the Islamofascists.

The Angry Left is in denial about the existential threat that we face, just as they were in denial back in the 30s with the rise of Hitler. Back then it took a pretty solid whack on the head for the nattering nabobs to finally get the fact that we were under threat. Today's Angry Left seems no more intelligent than the ankle biters of that previous conflict. Obviously what we have to do is to shove the Angry Left aside until they learn to grow up and recognize the reality of the dangerous world in which we live.

Tuesday was a victory for the angry antiwar Left that set the tone in the Democrats' 2003-04 presidential cycle and seems likely to set the tone again in 2007-08. Thursday was a reminder that there are, as George W. Bush has finally taken to calling them, Islamic fascist terrorists who want to kill us and destroy our way of life.

Thursday's lesson was not one Tuesday's victors wanted to learn. Left-wing bloggers played an important part in Lamont's victory. Here's the reaction of one of them, John Aravosis, to the red alert ordered here in response to the British arrests: "Do I sound as if I don't believe this alert? Why, yes, that would be correct. I just don't believe it. Read the article. They say the plot had an 'Al Qaeda footprint.' Ooh, are you scared yet?"

Laughing at the Asteroid

Dinosaur media pretend they are not headed for irrelevance

One of the most interesting trends which I have been noticing of late is that there is an edgy sort of resentment brewing in the hallowed halls of The Elite Media Monoculture. Like the slow witted creatures of the past whose glory days in the sun have long since passed into memory, today's "journalists" of the Angry Left seem to dimly sense that something is amiss, but are unable to fully grasp the shape of the forces that are changing their cloistered world.

In this article from The New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, pines for the good old days of media dominance whilst simultaneously trying to claim that the Internet and the blogsphere have not actually changed anything and that Really Important People Who Matter aren't fooled by all of those self proclaimed citizen journalists anyway.

One can understand, of course, why this would be the most likely argument to come out of the elite universities. Journalists have become used to the power that they have been able to wield for the many decades since the end of the Second World War and up to the relatively recent invention of the Internet. In that period of time the news and information that the vast majority of Americans relied on was supplied by a relatively small number of professional journalists with a remarkably consistent world view. And that view was overwhelmingly liberal-leftist. In poll after poll Americans recognize that elite journalism is primarily liberal. And journalists themselves have responded in polls that they vote overwhelmingly on the Democratic side. Liberal-Leftist journalists have enjoyed this monopoly position and the money and power that it has brought them for many years.

But now that power is passing away before their eyes. The Internet has empowered a revolution which allows any American to engage in the debate of ideas and to challenge the Elite Media Monoculture. The blogsphere is a net of millions of individuals that comprises a web of distributed intelligence and analysis which no news organization can hope to match in the scope of its size, breadth, experience and expertise. And while it is no doubt true that there is a broad range of quality in the blogsphere, so too there is a significant amount of knowledge which can be brought to bear on any given information related task.

Societies create structures of authority for producing and distributing knowledge, information, and opinion. These structures are always waxing and waning, depending not only on the invention of new means of communication but also on political, cultural, and economic developments.

This statement reveals that Mr. Lehmann does not understand the new medium of the Internet. It is precisely because the blogsphere is not a top down hierarchy that it is revolutionary. The blogsphere is a distributed intelligence net in which every node is an individual who can influence every other node and in which the nodes can, when required, be focused on a single problem with massive parallel processing capability, far beyond the limited abilities of a city newsroom or magazine editorial staff. We saw this most recently in the scandal involving Reuters when fraudulent photos were discovered by a reader of Charles Johnson's LittleGreenFootballs. As soon as this was discovered the information then flew at the speed of light across the net resulting in blogs across the net, and their readers, investigating all of the photos coming out of Reuters. In just 24 hours the blogsphere had discovered dozens of examples of cloned or staged photos by Adan Hajj which caused Reuters to pull all of his 920 images off the net and to fire him from their employ. The question one must ask is, would the elite media have been able or willing to do the same? One cannot help but answer, "no".

In fact, what the prophets of Internet journalism believe themselves to be fighting against—journalism in the hands of an enthroned few, who speak in a voice of phony, unearned authority to the passive masses—is, as a historical phenomenon, mainly a straw man.

Well, no not really. What Mr. Lehman fails to mention here is that the elite media after the war had only one official ideology, and that was liberalism. And true conservative thinking really did not re-emerge from its long slumber suddenly in any case. It took a very long time. First there were the writings of intellectual authors such as Hayek, VonMises, Rand, and a host of others which were published in book form starting in the thirties and forties. Then came the founding of a few conservative magazines, the most important being The National Review. Then began the development of conservative and libertarian think tanks which focused on the development of policy ideas grounded in conservative philosophy. And only recently have we seen the emergence of talk radio, Fox News and finally the Internet. Each of these developments came as a layer on top of the ones which preceded it. Taken together they form a new media which is not a top down command and control structure, but a self-organizing network made up of millions of individuals each of whom takes part because they have an understanding of the importance of communicating the ideas of liberty to the rest of society in a form which is not diluted or misrepresented by the coastal elites such as Mr. Lehmann.

The most fervent believers in the transforming potential of Internet journalism are operating not only on faith in its achievements, even if they lie mainly in the future, but on a certainty that the old media, in selecting what to publish and broadcast, make horrible and, even worse, ignobly motivated mistakes.

I imagine that Dan Rather and Mary Mapes would still be employed by CBS were it not for the efforts of bloggers to uncover the fraud perpetrated by "60 Minutes" in the National Guard memo scandal. And I think "ignobly motivated" is just the right way to describe what happened when a major media network tried to tilt a presidential election at the last minute by presenting as factual a set of fabricated documents purporting to present the sitting president as an sub-par coward unfit for his position in the National Guard. And lest we forget, CBS news stalled for weeks before they finally came to admit that the memos could not be confirmed as genuine. Was that the sort of performance that Mr. Lehmann believes to be superior to that of the blogsphere? He, of course, gives no answer.

And interestingly, Mr. Lehmann neglects to mention any of the most visited and popular conservative sites on the net such as LGF, PowerLine, Captain's Quarters, Michelle Malkin or any others which regularly comment and analyze media bias. Could it be that the New Yorker doesn't want its readers to be aware of those sites? Or is it just that Mr. Lehmann is so out of touch that he really does not know where to look for real conservative ideas and opinions? And which would be worse?

In their Internet versions, most traditional news organizations make their reporters available to answer readers’ questions and, often, permit readers to post their own material.

And perhaps it is worth noting that newspapers that have put up blogs on their sites can often come under fire from Angry Leftists when their assumptions and ideas are challenged, such as was the case with one of the blogs on The Washington Post site. You can, of course, send them an e-mail which is just as likely to be published as a traditional letter to the editor. And if your letter is conservative in it's content or tone; if you provide an alternative view or non-liberal idea, just what do you think the odds of it ending up in print are? Slim to none, I would think. They don't need you or your opinions and they don't want to bother with feedback.

After all, they are the Really Important People Who Matter. And you are not.

Why Inept Republicans Can Win

Quin Hillyer, of The American Spectator, details the many ways in which Republicans have strayed from their traditional smaller government, low tax and strong defense principles which have been the major force in the party since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. And as we can see, when they forget these ideas and become just another big government party, they lose the confidence of the voters. But Republicans can still correct this course and return to their roots. And if they want to continue to hold power they need to do so. The American voters want a Republican party that actually stands for what they say they do. And that means that the Republicans have to get spending under control, confirm conservative judges for the courts and keep the country safe by securing the borders.

Do You Remember This?

Once in a while we need to be reminded just how childish and silly The Elite Media Monoculture has become, especially in a world which is full of real danger. Case in point:

"This story is never going away. Harry Whittington is Dick Cheney's Monica." —Bob Herbert, NY Times, commenting on the story of Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

I guess never is getting shorter all the time.

The Religion of Blowing Up Airplanes

Primitive Islamic killer savages plot against civilization again

In this article from SkyNews we learn once again that the broad strata of society is in danger from the fanatic killer savages of Islam. A plot to blow up airliners using difficult to detect liquid explosives was foiled in the UK by British authorities after a lengthy investigation which the New York Times did not know about and therefore did not publish on its front page while claiming that it was all George Bush's fault. Naturally the editors over at the Times are trying, even now, to figure out where they went wrong and will be thinking up a way to blame this new development on an evil Neo-conservative conspiracy just as soon as they can find a way to spin it.

Reuters Admits to Doctoring Beirut Photo

The Jerusalem Post reports on the big story which took place over the weekend. It seems that, once again, dinosaur media has been caught fabricating news for the purpose of advancing the terrorist agenda. Photos submitted by one Adnan Hajj were discovered to have been altered in Adobe Photoshop and then put up on news sites around the net. It did not take long for bloggers to discover the poorly executed cloning that was used to make the pictures far more dramatic than they otherwise would have been. And now all 920 photos by Mr. Hajj have been pulled by Reuters as a consequence of their now obvious unreliability.

Mr. Hajj offered the pathetic excuse that he was just trying to remove dust from the images. But there are several problems with this story. The first is that Mr. Hajj is probably using a digital camera. And if that is the case then dust would not be an issue since the image can go directly from the camera to a computer and thus to the Net. And if Mr. Hajj is using an older film type camera, then the first round of prints would likely have little or no dust on them since they have not had time to accumulate any. Moreover, the images, either the negatives or positive prints, would have to be scanned before they could be uploaded. This kind of cleaning up of images is usually done by a professional scanner operator in a large media organization. The photographer would likely have nothing to do with the images once they had been scanned. That's how we do it where I work, at the top printing and graphics company in the US.

Division of labor is the norm in the printing world, and there is no reason to think that a large news organization would operate differently when it comes to handling images. The protocols for graphics in this day of digital technology are pretty much the same everywhere and thus we can conclude that Mr. Hajj is guilty of his own poorly manipulated fakery at the front end and that Reuters is guilty of allowing such a hack job to get by their editorial filters because it suits their own pre-conceived political bias.

The Brink of Madness

A familiar place

Historian Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that we have been here before. In the 1930s the world was on the road to total war. It was a time of tinpot dictators strutting before the world stage while democracies tried ever new ways to appease them and postpone the inevitable. But it was all in vain, as we know from looking back. And in our hindsight we understand that the cost of stopping them sooner would have been much less than it turned out to be in the end.

But as the sage has said, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And our elites in government, in the media and in the universities, the people who should know better, have proven that they have learned nothing. And from that nothing will come the terrible storm through which we must ultimately pass. And as before, the toll in blood will be higher than it might have been. Much promise of human potential will be cut short; wasted by the false promise of moral relativism and post-modern multiculturalism that has made us all too vulnerable.

In time, I believe we will wake up from that deadly illusion and throw off the bonds that the left has slowly woven around us to keep us passive and quiet while the enemy advances upon us. And as before we will win the day.

But not before we pay, with compound interest, the butcher's bill of our forgetfulness.

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.

It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the frontline in Iraq , the United States and NATO have troops battling the Islamic fascists in Afghanistan . European police scramble daily to avoid another London or Madrid train bombing. The French, Dutch, and Danish governments are worried that a sizable number of Muslim immigrants inside their countries are not assimilating, and, more worrisome, are starting to demand that their hosts alter their liberal values to accommodate radical Islam. It is apparently not safe for Australians in Bali, and a Jew alone in any Arab nation would have to be discreet — and perhaps now in France or Sweden as well. Canadians’ past opposition to the Iraq war, and their empathy for the Palestinians, earned no reprieve, if we can believe that Islamists were caught plotting to behead their prime minister. Russians have been blown up by Muslim Chechnyans from Moscow to Beslan. India is routinely attacked by Islamic terrorists. An elected Lebanese minister must keep in mind that a Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist — not an Israeli bomb — might kill him if he utters a wrong word. The only mystery here in the United States is which target the jihadists want to destroy first: the Holland Tunnel in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago .

In nearly all these cases there is a certain sameness: The Koran is quoted as the moral authority of the perpetrators; terrorism is the preferred method of violence; Jews are usually blamed; dozens of rambling complaints are aired, and killers are often considered stateless, at least in the sense that the countries in which they seek shelter or conduct business or find support do not accept culpability for their actions.

Anti-war, Anti-Israel, Anti-Joe

The New Democrats

Bill Kristol, of the Weekly Standard, looks at how the primary in Connecticut tells us about the present and future of the Democrats and their lurch to The Angry Left. For in that state, as you probably know already, Ned Lamont is on the verge of winning the primary and thus the Democratic slot on the ballot in November. And the kook fringe is on the march to unseat Joe Lieberman. And it's not because Senator Lieberman is a conservative. He most certainly is not. On most economic and social issues he is reliably liberal and votes with the bulk of his party 90 percent of the time. But for the nutroots that is just not pure enough.

And so instead of a political party of adults who argue for their positions predicated on the assumption that the rest of us are smart enough to understand and weigh the issues at hand, we get pictures of Joe Lieberman in blackface from the Huffington Post via Lamont staffer and Angry Leftist blogger Jane Hamsher. The Democrats have been carjacked by their Angry Leftist base and show no signs that they understand the folly of letting their most immature and extreme members drive the tone and policy of the party. We should have two serious political parties in this country. But for the foreseeable future it seems that at least one party will be composed of spoiled emotional brats who have yet to grow up.

A Strange War

Israel is at last being given an opportunity to unload on jihadists.

Victor Davis Hanson of National Review Online brings us this essay in which he looks at some of the oddities in the recent Israeli conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah Islamofascists. In particular he notes that it has perhaps come as a bit of a shock to many on the Angry Left to find that other Arab nations are not lining up behind the Jihadist kidnappers and beheaders and are, instead, condemning them while seeming to give Israel a pass in this particular circumstance.

One of the reasons for this has been put forward by Mark Steyn in an interview with Hugh Hewitt in which he pointed out that the Arabs are coming to the realization that their brief time of independence since the end of the First World War and the fall of the Ottoman Empire may come to an end if the Iranians are allowed to dominate the gulf region and create an Empire of their own. And since these terrorists are backed by Syria who are in turned backed by Iran, a victory here would help to prevent such a thing from developing.

This is why we are hearing, once again, the terrible whining and seething of the Angry Left who just can't understand why Israel should be allowed to defend itself without the permission of Kofi Annan and his band of merry oil-for-food pranksters. But as Victor Davis Hanson points out, the world's patience for the Jihadists may have begun to run out. And if that is the case, then we will see more and more nations take the threats of the Jihadists seriously. And that would be good for everyone but the terrorists and the Angry Left.

What should the United States do? If it really cares about human life and future peace, then we should talk ad nauseam about “restraint” and “proportionality” while privately assuring Israel the leeway to smash both Hamas and Hezbollah — and humiliate Syria and Iran, who may well come off very poorly from their longed-for but bizarre war.

Only then will Israel restore some semblance of deterrence and strengthen nascent democratic movements in both Lebanon and even the West Bank. This is the truth that everyone from London to Cairo knows, but dares not speak. So for now, let us pray that the brave pilots and ground commanders of the IDF can teach these primordial tribesmen a lesson that they will not soon forget — and thus do civilization’s dirty work on the other side of the proverbial Rhine.

In this regard, it is time to stop the silly slurs that American policy in the Middle East is either in shambles or culpable for the present war. In fact, if we keep our cool, the Bush doctrine is working. Both Afghans and Iraqis each day fight and kill Islamist terrorists; neither was doing so before 9/11. Syria and Iran have never been more isolated; neither was isolated when Bill Clinton praised the “democracy” in Tehran or when an American secretary of State sat on the tarmac in Damascus for hours to pay homage to Syria ’s gangsters. Israel is at last being given an opportunity to unload on jihadists; that was impossible during the Arafat fraud that grew out of the Oslo debacle. Europe is waking up to the dangers of radical Islamism; in the past, it bragged of its aid and arms sales to terrorist governments from the West Bank to Baghdad.

Lebanon Government Owned by Hezbollah

Nasrallah's speech gave 5 key insights into Hizbullah's position

An article in the Lebanon Daily Star by Walid Choucair inadvertantly gives the game away and shows that Hezbollah is calling the shots in that country. If the information presented here is correct, it is unrealistic to expect the government of Lebanon to do anything to clean up their own house, since the house is owned by the terrorist group.

First, Nasrallah insisted on an exchange of prisoners, beginning with the longest-held Lebanese detainee, Samir Qantar. However, according to contacts with Israel, the Jewish state would never agree to release Qantar because he killed Israeli civilians.

Second, Nasrallah said he did not care about Arab criticism of Hizbullah. Commenting on the issue, Nasrallah said, "We forgot them as if they [Arab states] do not exist," and advised the Arabs to "leave us alone." Some observers said the latter comment had a "harsh and negative" tone.

Third, by agreeing to conduct negotiations through the government (specifically Speaker Nabih Berri), Nasrallah consolidated an agreement made between Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Berri and Hizbullah last week. Nasrallah also said the government was relaying proposals from the international community and that the resistance was commenting on them.

The ministerial sources said that while approving the government's role, the conditions set by Hizbullah did not allow either the government or Berri a free hand.

This information demonstrates that the claims of the Lebanese government that they had nothing to do with Hezbollah's actions are thrown into disrepute by the fact that they are acting in concert. And it clearly indicates that it is Hezbollah which is giving orders to the government of Lebanon, contrary to what the Lebanese government had been proclaiming. Israel is therefore justified in considering this not just an act of terrorism, but rather a state sponsored act of war by the Lebanese, and by their Syrian and Iranian masters.

Why Elites are AWOL

Patrick Poole Reviews a new book by Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer, AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from the Military – and How It Hurts Our Country (HarperCollins). In this essay he takes a look at the growing problem of an isolated and smug cultural elite which is disconnected from the military, and one should also point out from much of the rest of the country, and how that could have serious implications for our democracy and our future ability to defend ourselves.

The cultural dominance of the anti-war narrative after Vietnam is acute in academia, which many anti-war protestors never left, but is perpetuated as well in our entertainment and media industries. Hollywood’s version of the Vietnam War can be seen in a long string of anti-military films, such as Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, and Full Metal Jacket, while Mel Gibson’s pro-military We Were Soldiers is the rare exception. The anti-war narrative still reigns in Hollywood, as seen in the recent film, Jarhead, and emboldens many A-list entertainers, who feel free to openly criticize the military and the current administration’s war policy, despite the fact that virtually no A-list celebrity criticizing our war effort against terrorism or complaining of abuses by members of our armed service has ever served in the military they are quick to deride.

The media have also embraced the anti-war narrative. Ignorance of military affairs, if not open contempt for them, severely limits the abilities of the media to accurately portray the many dimensions of military actions. Instead, media coverage of conflicts is extremely myopic, focused almost exclusively on corruption or casualties. One only needs to pick up any major newspaper or watch network news to see that these types of corruption or casualty stories overwhelmingly dominate current media coverage. And while most mainstream media reporters in Iraq huddle in the relative safety of Baghdad’s Green Zone, only a few intrepid reporters – mostly independents and freelancers, such as Michael Yon – are actually engaged in first-hand coverage of current combat operations.

A Wake-up Call for the World

Noel Sheppard, who also writes for The American Thinker, reminds us of some of the history which has led us up to the present sistuation in Lebanon. For nearly 60 years the Islamofascists have been trying to destroy the "Zionist Entity" with every weapon at their command. The reasons for this should be obvious to every serious individual. The various dictatorships and sundry tinpots of the Middle East are threatened with the constant reminder of modernity by the fact that tiny Israel is both free and prosperous while the people of their own countries are, by and large, poor and ignorant despite the vast oil wealth that lies beneath their feet. The difference between the performance of a free people and those enslaved by the radical utopianism of Islam are clear for all the world to see.

It's a War, Stupid

Christopher Chantrill points out the fatal flaw of the isolated elites in the West who still think that one can negotiate with barbarians. But while the modern world has moved on from primitive tribalism, the world of Islamofascism is stuck in a barbarous past that is blind to the forces which have improved, and are improving, the lot of much of the rest of the developing world.

For in our part of the world, we live by the principle of trade and voluntary cooperation. Over the last several thousand years the West has learned, and refined, the methods of modern civilization and social organization which have allowed us to have both extraordinary levels of personal freedom as well as a constantly improving standard of living and advancing technological progress.

Civilization is the name we give to that form of social organization in which the individual has rights and force is used as a last resort in conflicts. America, Europe and Asia have largely adopted the ways of Western political and social organization and the result has been a swift and massive increase in the standard of living in that part of the world which is still accelerating.

But the dull Arab savages are still clinging to their primitive tribal ways and the violence that is the inevitable result of despotism and tyranny. Millions of Arabs are still blinded by their fantasy of a mythical Islamic past, unable and unwilling to look to a different future. They have so far refused to join the rest of the world on the path to modernity and they have paid the price in poverty, misery and isolation from the rest of the world. Their only solution has been to blame everyone else, and particularly the Jews, for their problems while refusing to examine how their own beliefs have contributed to their unhappiness. It is long past time for them to grow up and act like adults and join the rest of the civilized world. For their own sakes, they need to renounce forever the violent and backwards doctrine of Jihad and to understand and accept that they are just another people in a wide world and that they have no right to attack other nations and cultures for the purpose of imposing their abhorrent tribalist society on the rest of us.

The War Zone Within the New York Times Company

Rosslyn Smith writes at The American Thinker about some of the financial prospects which now face The New York Times as a result of their treasonous behavior and their declining fortunes. If I were a shareholder I would be getting out, and fast.