Obama plays both sides of the Benghazi issue, and loses

Commentary by James Shott

The terrorists in Benghazi, Libya who attacked our consulate last month on the anniversary of the September 11^th terrorist attacks and killed four American Foreign Service personnel have highlighted in tragic detail how deeply naïve President Barack Obama’s idea of foreign policy is.

His manic effort to deny the existence of Muslim terrorism to avoid offending Muslims confounds those of us grounded in reality. He put an end to the “war on terror,” and in its place we now have “Overseas Contingency Operations.” When a Muslim U.S. Army doctor screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he mowed down 13 of his fellow soldiers, Mr. Obama’s administration prefers to call it “workplace violence.”  

With that background it is no wonder that Mr. Obama and his disciples inside and outside of the administration twisted themselves into illogical knots to avoid admitting what was obvious to most people: that it was a planned terrorist attack. 

However, Mr. Obama tried desperately to claim the opposite during the second presidential debate, declaring that he identified the attack as a terrorist act the next day in a Rose Garden statement, and moderator Candy Crowley inappropriately backed him up on it. But the facts do not support Ms. Crowley or Mr. Obama.  

The President made a five and one-half minute statement consisting of 801 words. Several times he used descriptive language, such as:

• “… four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi.”
• “The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack.”
• “ … we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people”
• “The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.”

Notice that he did not say “terror,” “terrorism,” “terrorist” or “terrorist attack,” and he did not utter any such word in the first three-fourths of the statement.  

About three and one-half minutes into the statement Mr. Obama referenced the 9-11-2001 attacks: “Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks.” Still, there was no reference to terrorism.  

And then, four minutes and 15 seconds into the five and one-half-minute statement, and 618 words into the 801 words of the text, he spoke the words “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation …” That oblique reference – plural, not singular – was the only time the concept of terrorism entered into Mr. Obama’s text. Right after that he said: “We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act.” “Terrible,” but not “terrorist.”

If he truly wanted the nation to understand that he thought terrorists killed those four Americans, he deftly disguised the message.  

As if to prove the assertion that he didn’t “really” call the attack an act of terror, for the next two weeks members of the administration – including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Press Secretary Jay Carney and President Obama himself (who mentioned it again and again at a speech to the United Nations on September 25^th) – repeatedly blamed the attack on a violent protest in reaction to an anti-Islam video produced by an American. Yes, an American; that “shadowy character” who created a video about Islam was the cause of the Benghazi attack.

The administration offered the video as the only cause of the violence for days on end, despite the common sense reaction that people don’t show up with RPGs and mortars at a spontaneous protest, even in places occupied by radical Muslims.  

Was there a protest prior to the terrorist attack, or wasn’t there? It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that the security provided to our people in Libya was dismally inadequate. There were eight attacks in Libya in a 6-month period, one on a British convoy and another on the Red Cross facility, causing both the Brits and the Red Cross to leave Libya because of the growing level of violence. And in June, there was an attack on the American Embassy in Tripoli.  

U.S. personnel in Libya knew danger was mounting and practically begged for increased security measures. But Mr. Obama is fond of boasting that “Al Qaeda is on the run and Osama bin Laden is dead,” and mounting violence in Libya really doesn’t fit into that narrative. Al Qaeda is still alive and well, and Barack Obama’s dream of a “New Dawn in the Middle East” has proved to be a nightmare. Putting the “Dream” ahead of protecting Americans at home and abroad, the administration declined those requests for help, and now four brave Americans are dead.  

Extremists in the Middle East may make it impossible for that long-troubled region to ever become a peaceful place, and perhaps no president can change that. But a position of strength on the part of the United States best serves the interests of peace and stability. We don’t have that in President Obama’s America, where foreign policy focuses on offering apology and appeasement. Leading from behind just doesn’t cut it.  

Cross-posted from Observations

You can’t make this stuff up: reality is often stranger than fiction

 

Commentary by James H. Shott

A couple of items recently in the news illustrate the weirdness of some of the ideas that are put forth for serious consideration these days, and that actually gain support from some Americans.

Labor unions in Indiana are upset over the state’s recently passed right-to-work law. According to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a right-to-work law “affirms the right of every American to work for a living without being compelled to belong to a union. Compulsory unionism in any form – ‘union,’ ‘closed,’ or ‘agency’ shop – is a contradiction of the Right to Work principle and the fundamental human right that the principle represents.”

Individual freedom such as the option not to belong to a labor union was a fundamental component of the United States Constitution, but that concept has Indiana’s unionists all out of sorts. They fear the new law will cause a decline in union membership, something that is so far not supported by the data in other right-to-work states. Nevertheless, Indiana unions recently filed a suit to overturn the law. The suit cites two reasons that the law violates the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. First, the suit complains that it requires dues-paying union members to work alongside non-dues-paying workers, terming that condition “compulsory service and/or involuntary servitude within the meaning of the amendment.”

Translation: If all workers are not forced to join the union, union workers effectively become slaves.
The second point, however, seems a fair criticism: that it is unfair to force “unions to furnish services to all persons in bargaining units that it represents, but it may not require payment for those services,” and once again they make a “slavery” connection. However, this complaint is even more foolish than the first one, since the unions asked for and received monopoly rights over collective bargaining, meaning they asked to be the bargaining agent for all workers, and were granted that status. You cannot rationally seek and accept the monopoly right to bargain for everyone, and then complain that representing non-union members effectively makes slaves out of union members.

Moreover, if we are talking about slavery, it is a far more persuasive argument that forcing workers to join the union and pay dues in order to have a job makes slaves of those who prefer not to join the union.
Next, in an irrational effort at political correctness (excuse the redundancy), the Applied Research Center (ARC) and its news site, Colorlines.com, are demonizing Americans who use perfectly proper language to accurately describe a law-breaking activity.

“Drop the I-Word” is a movement that attempts to do through distraction and demagoguery what rational thinking precludes. The “i-word” – illegals – is “a harmful slur,” according to the ARC, “a racially charged slur used to dehumanize and discriminate against immigrants and people of color regardless of migratory status. The i-word is shorthand for ‘illegal alien,’ ‘illegal immigrant’ and other harmful terms,” it says. The organization hopes that a majority of Americans will fall for this grand fraud that attempts to persuade us that the criminal act of people who sneak into the United States is really not a crime.

Somewhere in the Great Beyond George Orwell is smiling.

By accurately labeling the method willfully chosen by illegal immigrants to enter the U.S., the ARC asserts that we are denying people “basic human rights.” “No human being is illegal,” it proclaims. That may be true, but human beings can do illegal things, and sneaking into the country is one of them, thus the completely appropriate terms “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant.”

Like the Indiana unions, the ARC does identify one piece of truth: “Immigrants without documents are regularly hired as cheap, exploited labor.” But this is not a result of correctly labeling them “illegal,” it results from the failure of the federal government to stem illegal immigration by enforcing immigration laws and guarding our borders. Businesses cannot hire and exploit illegal immigrants unless they are available to be hired and exploited.

Taking this absurdity to its illogical extreme, a video posted by the radical leftist organization MoveOn.org says calling illegal immigrants “illegal” fits the definition of a hate crime and calls for the word to be banned when used in the context of immigration. Rather than discuss the pros and cons of this issue, MoveOn.org prefers to silence the opposition, or better yet, imprison opponents to keep them from challenging goofy ideas like this one.

For Indiana unionists, apologists for illegal aliens/immigrants, and others inhabiting this strange other-world, working beside non-union workers is “slavery,” and illegal aliens are not illegal. Fitting nicely into this madness is the case of a Muslim U.S. Army officer crying "Allahu Akbar" while committing the jihadi murder of 12 soldiers. He is considered to have committed "workplace violence," but an American citizen with a Tea Party bumper sticker is regarded as a "domestic terrorist."

In this bizarre world the trees are a bright orange, the sky is chartreuse, the clouds are a rich puce, and standards and definitions change with the political winds. A society in the throes of such idiocy cannot long survive.

Cross-posted from Observations

Thinking about mountains and molehills, and tempests and teapots

Commentary by James H. Shott

America’s fairly recent infection by hyper-sensitivity rises to fever pitch at this time of the year, when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, and also the secular celebration of Christmas – which, incidentally, is not limited to Christians – and Jewish Americans celebrate Chanukah, the Festival of Lights. Since there are far more Christians in the US (78 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian) than those of other faiths, or those who claim no religion, things associated with Christianity and Christmas attract the most attention.

People get upset by all manner of things, such as someone saying or doing the “wrong thing.” And, at this time of year the sight of religious objects like a cross, a nativity scene, or a menorah gets some folks upset. But those things have no inherent power; they can’t hurt anyone or turn people into zombies. Nevertheless, people run to the courts to have those objects removed.

The infection has reached the point where one person or a few people who are “offended” by something can now deny hundreds or even thousands of people the opportunity to enjoy whatever that something is. It is the tyranny of the minority.

People are too easily offended these days, and in response to the rising instances of offense being taken by someone or some group, the nannies in governments coast-to-coast have decreed that anything and everything that might give offense to anyone should be forever banished from the Earth.

The nannies are now said to be contemplating adding an Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not offend another soul, for if thou shalt give offense, thou shalt be really, really sorry.” The nannies also advocate the creation, passage and ratification of an Eleventh Amendment in the Bill of Rights: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against offenses real and imagined, shall not be violated, under pain of death, or something just as bad.”

One object viewed as terribly offensive is a cross erected in the Mojave National Preserve in the desert on the California-Nevada border near Las Vegas, put there nearly 80 years ago as a memorial for veterans of World War I by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The VFW originally owned the land on which the memorial was erected, but later donated it to the federal government.

The sensitivity police at the American Civil Liberties Union mounted a legal challenge to the cross sitting there in the desert, perhaps at the behest of an offended descendent of a defeated Central Powers soldier. Or maybe just because it was a cross, in a desert.

The ACLU bases its objections on the principle of separation of church and state, as if the mere presence of a religious symbol on government property somehow conveys the idea that whatever government body owns that property embraces whatever religion the symbol represents. The concept separating religion and government has come to command great respect – reverence, if you will – as if it actually was part of the US Constitution, which it is not. If only the property rights and other guarantees of liberty in the Bill of Rights, like our right to keep and bear arms, commanded as much respect.

The hullabaloo arising from religious symbols appearing in places where some people don’t like them is sort of puzzling. Most folks understand that placing crosses, menorahs, the star and crescent or the Festivus pole on government property really does not mean the government actually endorses or promotes the beliefs represented by the symbol. There is nothing frightening or threatening in the mere appearance of religious symbols, where ever they appear.

Religion has been a key force in this nation since before its creation, and adherence by generations past to the dominant religious principles provided a crucial stabilizing cultural influence, without which the nation would have floundered, and likely would have failed. What the various symbols, so feared by some, represent is nothing more than that reality being demonstrated through natural and traditional activities, nothing more. As we see happening now, our disintegrating culture parallels the increasing hostility toward religion.

Today complaints about religious symbols, particularly nativity scenes at this time of the year, are routine. This mania has more recently spread to people and businesses that merely wish folks a “merry Christmas” or a “happy Chanukah.” The nannies prefer the bland and inoffensive phrase “happy holidays.” This is understandable: Nothing is more offensive than someone wishing you well.

But in America if we don’t like or believe in Christmas, that’s okay. The First Amendment says that we are free to be, or to not be religious. So, a nativity, even if it’s on government property, doesn’t require anyone to look at it, if they’d rather not. No one is obligated by religious symbols to do anything, or believe anything in particular. Why do people allow themselves to be manipulated and offended by the appearance of inanimate objects?

When someone wishes you a “merry Christmas,” have the grace to accept their good wishes, and perhaps even respond with a polite “thank you.”

Merry Christmas! Happy Chanukah!

Cross-posted from Observations

Idiocy often reigns in pursuit of non-discrimination and tolerance

Commentary by James H. Shott


The United States has been under assault for years by the Political Correctness nannies, who regularly complain about what they see as intolerance and discrimination. And good Americans, being the fair-minded souls that they are, have given in to this onslaught to a far more than reasonable degree, accepting “solutions” that are themselves intolerant and discriminatory in response. And as a result, the country is awash in senseless policies and practices that frequently trample on common sense and individual freedoms in order to make a relative few people feel better.

Case-in-point number 1: Vanderbilt University has notified four Christian student groups that they are on “provisional status” and are in danger of being thrown off campus. What horrible wrong have these young Christians committed? Fighting or drunkenness? No. Cheating on tests? No. What, then?

Vanderbilt charges the groups are out of compliance with the school’s nondiscrimination policy. Those organizations logically want leaders that share the group’s beliefs, goals and values, but the university says that is intolerant and discriminatory.

Presumably, the school’s administration thinks that a Christian group should be led by a Jew, Buddhist, Muslim or atheist, or that a women’s group should be led by a man, or a Democrat group should be led by a Republican, or a Muslim group should be led by a Christian or a Jew.

The idiocy of such a policy ought to be self-evident, but in today’s upside-down world, apparently it is not.

Case-in-point number 2: Muslim students at Catholic University of America (CU) claim that their human rights have been violated by the school because it did not provide them rooms without Christian symbols for their daily prayers, and this allegation is now being investigated by the Office of Human Rights.

The complaint alleges that Muslim students “must perform their prayers surrounded by symbols of Catholicism … which many Muslim students find inappropriate.” How could a Catholic institution be so intolerant of others and so arrogant as to fill its campus with Catholic symbols?

The attorney who filed the complaint said not providing special prayer rooms “may not be illegal, but it suggests they are acting improperly and probably with malice.” Muslims “do have to pray five times a day, they have to look around for empty classrooms and to be sitting there trying to do Muslim prayers with a big cross looking down or a picture of Jesus or a picture of the Pope is not very conducive to their religion.”

But isn’t religion about one’s relationship to a supreme entity and religious beliefs? Isn’t the prayer itself more important than the surroundings in which it is offered?

The president of an organization that promotes Catholic identity responded that “one wouldn’t expect a Jewish institution to be responsible for providing liturgical opportunities for other faiths and I wouldn’t expect a Catholic institution to do that,” he said.

That sounds sensible, doesn’t it?

The attorney’s admission that CU is not breaking the law tells us something about his motives. We may presume that the Muslim students want to attend a university based in Catholicism, a religion about as different from theirs as one could be, because of its high educational quality. But they apparently expect the institution to accede to their desires to change it to their liking.

More pertinent is why the federal government should have anything to say about how a successful and respected private institution adorns its rooms, and why it should potentially be able to alter how it operates.

Another complaint filed by this attorney charges that “eliminating all mixed-gender dormitories on campus, and henceforth forcing students who live on campus to reside in single-sex segregated residences, constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex against female students, since students will be assigned to dormitories solely on the basis of their sex, and many will be denied their residence of choice solely because of, and on the basis of, their sex." Does the attorney believe this policy discriminates only against female students? Is that position itself also discriminatory, and should that attorney therefore be sanctioned?

Case-in-point number 3: An Illinois middle school math lab instructor in her first year on the job asked for a three-week unpaid leave to take a religious trip just before exam time. The school district denied the request because the teacher was the department’s only instructor, and also stated that the contract under which she was employed did not provide for such leave. The instructor, a Muslim, filed a complaint against her employer claiming religious discrimination for refusing her time off for a trip to Mecca.

The Justice Department has forced the school district to pay the teacher $75,000 and implement a sensitivity training course throughout the district.

These examples illustrate that the inmates have taken over the asylum. Government and other nannies labor mightily to alter the realities of life to assuage the easily offended who expect everything to suit them, always. People must learn that despite the efforts of the nannies, life isn’t perfect and no one can make it so. They need to adjust to reality and figure out how to succeed despite the occasional bumps in the road.

Cross-posted from Observations

Yet another feel-good concept is revealed to be a really goofy idea

Commentary by James H. Shott

Over the last several decades the nations of Europe were not good role models for self-reliance and good judgment, embracing crazy ideas that led some to financial catastrophe and caused serious problems for others. Today, however, we see that at least on one subject the Europeans finally have seen the light and the error of their ways.

Last Thursday French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared that multiculturalism had failed. And he is not alone; other European leaders like British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Spanish ex-premier Jose Maria Aznar also say that multicultural policies have not successfully integrated immigrants into their countries. And in the land down under, Australia's ex-prime minister John Howard reached the same conclusion.

Many of us, perhaps most, knew multiculturalism was a foolish, politically correct effort doomed to failure. But like other politically correct ideas, it sounded good, and that was reason enough to give it a try. As predicted, it failed miserably in practice for all the reasons we expected.

"My answer is clearly ‘yes, it is a failure,’" Mr.Sarkozy said. "Of course we must all respect differences … [but if] you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France," he said.

"We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him," he declared.

Prime Minister David Cameron says that "under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. … We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values,” he said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said last October that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed," saying the so-called "multikulti" concept – where people would "live side-by-side" happily – has failed, and immigrants need to try harder to integrate - including learning to speak German.

"I am a passionate believer in multiracialism,” former Australian Prime Minister John Howard said. “I believe that societies are enriched if they draw, as my country has done, from all parts of the world on a non-discriminatory basis and contribute, as the United States has done, to the building of a great society," he said. "But when a nation draws people from other parts of the world, it draws them because of the magnetism of its own culture and its own way of life."

What these leaders witnessed is that rather than becoming good French, English, German, Spanish or Australian citizens the immigrants ignored the cultural traditions and ways of life in the country to which they immigrated in favor of those of the country they left, or of their own personal or religious ideas. Which begs the question: Why go to another country if you like the way you’ve been living where you are, or if the way you want to live is not a good fit in the new country?

The major problem for European countries, which have cultures hundreds or thousands of years old, is the immigration of Muslim populations. Europeans like things as they are, thank you, and see no reason to have new-comers demand that they change what they are comfortable with and what has been proven to work, or to cast off the national culture in favor of something different.

And that makes perfect sense. Consider this on a more personal level: allowing an immigrant family to take up residence in your home. Who would allow such a family to tell their hosts what food to eat, what furniture they should have, what religion to choose, or pressure them to live in a way that is markedly different from what they are accustomed to and what works well for them?

As Muslim populations have moved into Europe and Australia, they have not assimilated into the existing culture, creating the current crisis. Some nations have witnessed radical Muslim activities.

Although Muslim integration problems are just now arising in the US, the more serious and immediate problem for us is the illegal alien influx from south of the border, and like the European problem, it is of our own making. Our crisis was created by the federal government’s disregard for border security and a sappy, feel-good mentality that illegal aliens should gain citizenship without going through the proper process.

Ultimately, successful integration of legal immigrants comes down to the attitude of the immigrant toward integration. We have room for good people from anywhere who want to come here through the legal process and become an American by assimilating into our culture.

There is no room for people who want to come here and demand that Americans adjust to their very different cultural ideals, or come in illegally and expect to be accommodated.

As Europe and Australia have learned, a national culture cannot survive irrational and reckless practices. The United States must get its house in order while there is still time.

Cross-posted from Observations

This Careful Generation

Originally published December 15, 2007 by Wake Up America

by Roger W. Gardner

This, my friends, in case you haven’t noticed, is a very careful generation. In fact, I‘ve lived in this wonderful country of ours for a little over seven decades now, and this is without a doubt the most “careful” generation that I have ever had the misfortune to live amongst. Somehow we have managed to become the most careful people in the world, maybe the most careful people in history. We live in constant fear that we might inadvertently say something truthful that might offend someone, somewhere. We’ve learned to call this pervasive state of denial Political Correctness. But is it really Political Correctness, or is it something else?

I ask myself, is this present pacifistic crop of Chamberlainesque appeasers really being “careful” of other people‘s feelings, or merely being cowardly? Are all of our so-called PCisms truly demonstrations of our consideration for others, or are they rather an expression of our fear of others? Are we avoiding confrontation with those who threaten our lives and our culture out of kindness and tolerance, or are we just desperately trying to avoid that confrontation? Are we perhaps concerned that we might just antagonize our antagonists even more by naming them? Are we hoping to avoid the inevitable nastiness of these confrontations by hiding behind this intricately-wrought screen of euphemisms called Political Correctness?

When you think about it, isn’t this really that same old weasely logic that in the 1950s induced us to call a Jew “someone of the Jewish persuasion”? As though they had somehow been persuaded to become a Jew. Isn’t this just the latest manifestation of that same old hypocritical crap? Did we also talk about “someone of the Christian persuasion” in the 1950s? I don’t think so.

In short, this is nothing all that new, it’s that old familiar circuitous obfuscation that wouldn’t allow us to call a Jew a Jew. Why? Would a Jew be offended to be called a Jew? Hardly. Every Jew I’ve ever known was proud to be a Jew. Could it be perhaps that we found that word so offensive that we could hardly bring ourselves to say it? Were these semantic acrobatics really evidence of our consideration for others or evidence of that intransigent American brand of anti-Semitism? Was this an example of some early form of Political Correctness in action? Or are we really talking about something else here. Something a little bit easier to understand, but something too awful to actually put it into words. Something called the truth.

Well, I’m going to get a lot of people pissed off right now -- or at least I‘m going to give it a good try. You see, I’m getting sick and tired of being careful. I don’t know how the hell I ever let them talk me into all this bullshit in the first place.

This all started when I read that incredible little article, which I’m sure you’ve all heard about by now, about that Santa school Down Under that instructed their student Santas to no longer say “ho-ho-ho”, because it had a double meaning in the American Black Community, and that some people might find it offensive.

What???

My God, what have we become? We stand by meekly and watch as our wonderful English language becomes increasingly denigrated and devalued, we allow the primitive animalistic gruntings of our Black Inner City Gangsta Rap, pants-falling-off-the-butt “culture” to infiltrate and diminish almost every aspect of our lives: our music, our movies, our television, our sports, the way our kids act and dress -- and now we’re going to tell our Santa Clauses not to say “ho-ho-ho” because it too closely resembles that Gangsta Rap word for “whore”?

Wait a minute. Isn’t there something wrong with this picture?
Who are the folks here who should be offended?

After that, I read another article that purported to be an investigation into the causes of the enormous increase in the murder rate in one of our largest East Coast cities -- actually, two articles written explicitly to address this single major problem. However, throughout the entire two articles, not one mention was made of what had actually happened to this city. Not one single reference to the fact that this wildly escalating crime rate just happened to correspond to the most catastrophic societal upheaval in that city’s four-hundred year history. Not only did the articles not even mention these irrefutable truths, but somehow the author ingeniously avoided mentioning that any racial changes had taken place there at all. If someone didn’t know the actual facts of the city in question they would be left to surmise that the city had just suddenly started becoming more criminal for no apparent reason. This, my friends, is what currently passes for Political Correctness. But is it?

Here’s what happened: the Inner City turned Black and the crime rate soared.

Sorry, but that’s what happened.

And I really am sorry; because it was my city of origin that was the subject of these counterfeit articles. I was born and brought up there.

And this Black murder rate in this Black Inner City is a Black problem, not a White problem. These Inner City Black Gangstas are not selling crack because their great-great-grandmothers were slaves. And that disingenuous author who so adroitly skirted the most obvious by never once mentioning race, by referring to “these people and their drug problems” would have had that same delicate problem back in the 1950s calling a Jew a Jew.

The murder of young Black males by other young Black males in the Black Inner Cities is a Black problem and can only be solved by Blacks. Blacks who are willing to be honest with themselves. Blacks who are getting sick and tired of that criminal-worshipping, female-degrading, drive-by shooting, Gangsta Rap drug world of self-destruction. Blacks who are willing to listen to those honest and tough love messages of respected Black people like Bill Cosby, and even from those unapologetic liberals, like Juan Williams. Blacks who are willing to accept responsibility for their own lives and want to quit blaming everything on the Whites, who finally have the courage to disassociate themselves from those so-called Black Leaders, like Al Sharpton and that extortionist Jesse Jackson, who are nothing more than enablers, living off the suffering of others. Offering their followers that same old false comfort of self-pity and victimization by perpetuating the myth of White subjugation.

By pretending that this is still a White problem, that only White people are smart enough to fix it, those delusional liberals are only making matters worse. It’s trying to cure the alcoholic’s problem by telling him he has good reason to drink. And it just ain’t gonna work.

So, what are we really talking about here? Blacks? Jews? Racism? Anti-Semitism? No, we’re still talking about Political Correctness -- or perhaps, more precisely, that same old cowardly disingenuousness in it’s latest disguise? A problem we’ve been wrestling with throughout that whole tumultuous course of human history. It’s called moral integrity. Some people simply call it honesty.

Now, before all you liberals out there rush to get your ammunition and start bombarding me with those familiar epithets of Racist and Bigot, just answer this one simple question. If we are afraid to even identify a problem, how the hell can we expect to fix it? If no one can even address these issues for fear of being labeled a racist or bigot, then tell me how we are going to discuss the issues? With obsequious code words like “these people and their drug problems“? For God’s sake, what people are we talking about? The Swedes? The Chinese?

If the Chinese people were the major contributing factor to the rise of the crime rates in most of our major cities, then we should most certainly be able to acknowledge this fact and try to do something about it. But it isn’t the Chinese people who are causing these terrible Inner City problems, is it? And it isn’t always the Blacks. Sometimes it’s the Mexicans, and sometimes it’s somebody else. But, if we ever hope to do anything about these enormous and growing problems, we had better learn how to talk about them honestly. And have the courage to say who it is we are really talking about.

We have, it seems, traded our language of truth for some weak-kneed second-rate vocabulary of denial; and, most unfortunate of all, some of us are actually pleased with this ignoble transaction. They call it progressive; I call it regressive. They call it Political Correctness; I call it cowardice.

Right now, during this very special season, when a television commercial entices us into thinking about buying a brand new Lincoln for our lover, while adroitly managing to circumvent that contentious word “Christmas”, substituting it with that inept and meaningless word “Holiday”, are these car manufacturers sincerely interested in promoting cultural inclusiveness, or just afraid of the ACLU? Is this just one more example of this new-fangled ideology called Political Correctness? Or is it just that same old-fashioned cowardice hiding its ugly head?

We are losing our national nerve. We live in constant fear. We are afraid of being sued, afraid of being attacked, afraid of being disliked, and we are afraid of being called names. Fear has infiltrated every area of our lives and corrupted our ability to be effective as a people, as a nation. We are even afraid to admit that we are afraid. We are even becoming afraid to be patriotic Americans.

The school board who lifts the Lord’s Prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance from that unfortunate school’s curriculum isn’t doing this out of some high-minded noble concept of inclusiveness -- they’re afraid of being sued by some loathsome Dr. Newdow (described by one enthusiastic atheist as “…one of the greatest heroes in the war against religious demagogues”).

To attempt to hide this blatant cowardice behind some shining shield of Political Correctness is a lie which we can no longer ignore, and which we can no longer afford to tolerate.

When we choose to refer to our brave Israeli ally’s ongoing attempts to protect their tiny nation from that continuous generational onslaught from their vicious and hate-filled neighbors and their brutal suicide-bombers as an “Arab/Israeli conflict”, rather than calling it what it is -- "The Arab War Against Israel” -- are we not demonstrating to the world our unconscionable lack of moral fiber? Did we refer to that WWII horror show in the Pacific as some morally-neuter “Japanese/American Conflict”? Hell no.

If I get stopped by a cop for driving without a license, will he let me go if I explain that what I’m doing isn’t really illegal, that I’m really just an undocumented driver? We have become so accustomed to navigating through the perils of this world using these subtle subterfuges and lies we no longer even notice them.

On September 11, 2001 we were attacked by nineteen Muslim terrorists. They left final testaments clearly explaining their motivations for committing this horrendous crime against humanity. They wanted to kill the Infidels. And they killed 2,987 innocent people that day -- and we have still not managed to conjure up the political will to profile Muslim men at our airports.

Does anyone still believe that this is truly an expression of Political Correctness, our good-hearted and sincere efforts to avoid offending anyone of a different faith or race? Or is this just one more instance of a government and an industry caving in to fear. The fear of being sued by CAIR or their faithful ally, the ACLU.

While Islamic leaders worldwide exhort their eager followers to kill the Infidel, and describe this monumental struggle with unabashed clarity as a War of Islam against the West, of Muslims against Infidels, our own president very carefully describes this same militant religion as a "religion of Peace". We console ourselves with the comforting illusion that what we are really up against in this so-called War on Terror is just a small fanatical minority who have hijacked a "peaceful religion". We ignore all information to the contrary, no matter what its source, no matter how valid. Islam has declared War on the West but, none the less, we must be very careful not to offend any Muslims. They might think we're racists. CAIR might sue us. Jimmy Carter might get upset.

Somehow, my friends, before it really is too late, we have to come out from behind our warm and fuzzy euphemisms and have the courage to confront this world that‘s really there, not the one we wished was there. We can no longer blame our dishonorable inaction on Political Correctness. For, when all is said and done, our so-called PC culture is nothing but another form of cowardice. And this cowardice is not only never going to allow us to solve any of our problems, it’s going to get us killed.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary's Thoughts, Right Truth, DragonLady's World, Adam's Blog, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate's Cove, Big Dog's Weblog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.