FrontPage Magazine » Jamie Glazov

Rays of Light in the Darkness Dinner

Jamie Glazov — Thu, 24 May 2012 04:13:11 +0000

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Sarah Stern, Founder and President of the Endowment for Middle East Truth or EMET, a think tank and policy shop in Washington. She is the author of Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Terrorist Network: America and the West’s Fatal Embrace, which will be coming out in paperback in June, and her think tank will be holding its annual dinner on June 21^st.

[Editor's note: The picture above is of Cynthia Farahat, who will be one of the honorees at the annual dinner. Below is a picture of Sarah Stern.]

FP: Sarah Stern, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s begin with you sharing with us why you felt it necessary to launch another think tank in Washington. Tell us its purpose and what it does.

Stern: I founded EMET when I had been the Director of Governmental Relations with the American Jewish Congress, and the AJC leadership asked me to lobby for the Gaza withdrawal in 2005. I knew in the pit of my stomach, that this withdrawal was not going to work, and that Gaza was eventually going to become a base on which the Palestinians would launch missiles onto southern Israel. I wish I had been proven wrong, but I knew I was not going to let myself become a party to enabling that to happen.

I became involved in this sort of business, approximately twelve years earlier, shortly after the signing of the Oslo Accords. That is when three members of the Israeli embassy, under the reign of Yitzhak Shamir, had called me and told me that they had a sinking suspicion that Arafat was not going to live up to one iota of the Accords he has just signed, and that they were no longer in Washington, and needed someone here, to disseminate the truth about what he would be saying to his own people in his own language, and how it would differ from what he would be saying to the Western world in English. I told them it would be an honor and a privilege, and I did that pro bono for several years.

I then became the National Policy Coordinator or the ZOA, and then the Director of Governmental Affairs of the American Jewish Congress. It was the request from the AJC for me to lobby for the Gaza withdrawal, as well as a pivotal event in a major think tank in Washington, that people have grown to know of as, the “Jewish” think tank that were turning points in my career, and pushed me over the edge to establish my own shop in Washington.

It was then that this other thank tank brought in some “Tanzem” terrorists from the disputed territories, in the fall of 2005, and introduced them as the “pragmatic alternative to Arafat, the young, more practical generation. It was at that time that I publicly challenged these guests from Tanzem with) two questions. Their answers immediately exposed them for who they were, and all the pens in the room dropped. (The person who brought them in was a friend of mine, and he was furious at me for asking those questions).

I knew, at that moment, that no-one was getting out our people’s proud narrative in Washington, without it being obfuscated by moral relativism and political correctness. I decided that day that I had to open up a think tank and policy shop that clearly articulates the truth of our people’s proud narrative about our struggle to survive in the Middle East, and I knew immediately that I wanted to I call it “EMET”, an acronym for the Endowment for Middle East Truth. “EMET” means “truth” in Hebrew.

FP: Do you have a specific mission?

Stern: Yes Jamie, we see it as our mission to simply tell the un-doctored truth about Israel’s proud struggle to survive, and the radical Islamist’s war against Israel and the West. We find the courage to say the words that few in Washington manage to say, because they are so hindered by “political correctness” and moral ambiguity about the rightness of our cause. We write and publish articles and books, and speak on the radio and on television. We are constantly on Capitol Hill, in one-to-one meetings with members of Congress or their staffers, and we arrange for seminars, at least once a month, sometimes twice, when we bring in our “brain trust” of the brightest and the best experts from Israel and all around the world to share what the Jewish state is up against and how the United States, if possible, may be able to profit from its hard-earned wisdom.

We always place everything within the framework of what is actually good for American security interests, emphasizing how, in the minds of the radical Islamists, Israel is simply “The Minor Satan” and America is “The Great Satan,” and how anything that emboldens the radical Islamist against Israel also emboldens them against the United States. In that way, we can avoid the canard of bring more Catholic than the Pope, or more right wing then the democratically elected government of the state of Israel. We think outside of the box, and we examine if the premises of our foreign policy need to be re-evaluated. For example, goal post for the “land for peace” paradigm is “peace,” we examine whether or not since the signing of the Oslo Accords, we have gotten any closer or further away from that goal post. Or whether or not it is time to re-examine the premises that this paradigm has been predicated upon.

FP: Tell us about your book and what inspired you to write it.

Stern: When I was with the American Jewish Congress, I started to lobby for a piece of legislation to try to correct the deeply entrenched anti-Israeli and anti-American biases in most, if not all, of the Middle Eastern Studies Departments in universities across our nation. These departments are brought to us at the taxpayers’ expense through the National Defense Education Act, which is an earlier moniker for Title VI of the Higher Education Act. I felt that since the taxpayer was footing the bill for these departments, we might be able to find a legislative corrective, to try to have some sort of balance in the curriculum. It was very difficult because many professors’ groups felt that this would encroach on their” academic freedom”.

Left-Hearted, Right-Minded

Jamie Glazov — Wed, 23 May 2012 04:49:24 +0000

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is David Cohen, a former Bush Administration official who says that his life in many ways mirrors that of President Obama. At around the time when Barack Obama was a half-black kid being raised by his white single mother in Polynesia (Hawaii), Cohen was a half-Polynesian kid being raised by his white single mother in a black neighborhood (in Washington, D.C.). Cohen’s politics used to be almost identical to Obama’s, but now they are mirror opposites. Cohen’s journey from left to right is documented in his new book, Left-Hearted, Right-Minded: Why Conservative Policies Are The Best Way To Achieve Liberal Ideals. Cohen claims that he became a conservative without abandoning the ideals and concerns that he held as a liberal.

FP: David Cohen, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s begin with you telling us how it is exactly that you became a conservative without abandoning your liberal ideals. How can it be that conservative policies can be the best way to achieve liberal ideals?

Cohen: When I was a liberal, I wanted America to live up to its billing as the Land of Opportunity, with no one being held back because of race, ethnicity, religion or gender. I believed that America’s diversity was its strength. I was concerned about poverty; I wanted poor people to have a genuine shot at realizing the American Dream. The key to that, I thought, was making sure that poor children across America had access to a good education. My concerns weren’t limited to America; I wanted people everywhere to be free from oppression and to have the same opportunities that I wished for my fellow Americans.

Now that I’m a conservative, guess what? I still have those very same ideals and concerns. Back then, I thought that those ideals and concerns made me a liberal. There was never any doubt in my mind that I should support the liberal agenda. I had never really been exposed to conservatives growing up, and what I thought I knew about them—from friends and family, from the media, from popular culture—I didn’t like.

Reagan was the first president that I was old enough to vote for, but I never remotely considered voting for him. He started to plant seeds in my head, though, that wouldn’t sprout until later. I remember when he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” My fellow liberals were outraged. But it got me starting to wonder why all of their outrage was directed at Reagan and none at the Soviet Union. I started to think that in this one-sided outrage, my fellow liberals were not being sufficiently supportive of the victims of Soviet oppression—and hence were essentially tolerating for others what they would never tolerate for themselves. Was that consistent with my liberal ideals?

I started to become a little more open to Reagan’s ideas on foreign policy, but not on domestic policy. It wasn’t until Jack Kemp became HUD Secretary during the Bush Administration that I started to become familiar with conservative ideas on fighting poverty. I had never considered that liberal policies might actually be harming the people they were intended to help. When I read up on Kemp’s ideas, it was a real eye-opener. I started to consider that liberal policies might be condescending to the poor—and particularly minorities who were poor. I started to see how well-intentioned liberal policies might be promoting dependence, undermining self-belief, and incentivizing destructive behavior. I came to believe that conservative ideas to fight poverty showed a greater belief in human potential, showed a greater respect for the dignity of the poor, and were more likely to encourage the behaviors required to escape poverty.

Once I was able to get past the stereotypes I grew up with—that conservatives were greedy, racist warmongers intent on getting rich by oppressing others—I was able to consider their ideas with an open mind. And I eventually concluded that conservatives had much better ideas to achieve the things that I had always cared about, and still care about.

FP: There are two Dave Cohens, right? Tell us about Liberal Dave and ConservaDave and their relationship with one another.

Cohen: Liberal Dave and ConservaDave are the two protagonists in my book. Liberal Dave is the person I was, and ConservaDave is the person I eventually became. I treat them both as live characters in my book. Even though Liberal Dave technically has not existed for many years—or perhaps I keep him locked up in the attic of my brain—I trot him out in the book to react to current events like Tea Party protests and the passage of Obamacare. I even have a chapter where Liberal Dave and ConservaDave are sitting in a pizzeria having a wide-ranging debate. They discuss everything from capitalism, socialism, Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, Steve Jobs, income disparity, taxing the rich, you name it. I think that the way that ConservaDave explains things to Liberal Dave is a great way for conservatives to explain their ideas to liberals in a way that might actually get through.

Liberal Dave and ConservaDave get along, just like I get along with my dear friends who have not joined me on my journey from left to right. A lot of times when people switch sides in either direction, they look back in anger. I don’t look back in anger, which is maybe why the tone of my book is one that liberals will not find threatening. Since I’m not yelling at liberals or lecturing them, they might drop the defense mechanisms and actually engage with me and consider my ideas. Keeping Liberal Dave alive is my way of reminding myself not to feel superior to people I disagree with. I used to be that guy, so it allows me to have a generosity of spirit to those who are still that guy. It also helps me remember how I used to think when I was that guy, and what arguments eventually got through to me to help guide me rightward. This is what my book is really about: how to explain conservatism to Liberal Dave in a way that will make him see the light.

FP: Is this book targeting any group in particular? Who do you think might most benefit from your book?

Cohen: Pardon me for being self-serving, but I think that everyone will benefit from my book. For conservatives, the book illustrates how to communicate our ideas not in ways that we would respond to, but rather in ways that others would respond to. Most conservative pundits are good at pressing the buttons that turn conservatives on, but they might be turning off people who don’t yet think like conservatives. In my book, I try to preach to the not-yet-converted rather than to the converted. Also, I try to celebrate the inherent idealism of conservatism—something that you wouldn’t know existed if you just listened to the mainstream media and the popular culture.

For independents, this is a great guide to what I think are the most important issues of our time. I think that independents will by and large be very receptive to the arguments I put forward in the book. And I think that many liberals will be receptive as well—after all, I’m using arguments that would have resonated with me when I was a liberal. I open the book with an explanation of how Liberal Dave came to be Liberal Dave. I do this for a reason: to show people how I developed my initial intolerance for conservatives and conservatism. I hope that when liberals read the story of Liberal Dave, they might recognize similar thought patterns in themselves. Perhaps this will make them realize, as I eventually came to realize, that the disdain that I had for conservatives wasn’t fair. I had to overcome this before I could be open to listening to conservative points of view. I hope to take liberal readers through this same process. This will prepare them for the rest of the book, and hopefully make them better appreciate my arguments as to why conservative policies are the best way to achieve liberal ideals.

I’m not so naïve as to think that my book will result in a mass conversion from liberalism to conservatism. But if it starts a conversation, I’d be very happy. So many prominent people have made the journey from left to right—David Horowitz and Peter Collier, of course, but also David Mamet, Dennis Miller, Gary Sinise, Roger Simon, Ron Silver, and millions of people who aren’t famous. My journey isn’t exactly unheard of. I know that many liberals can be open to what I’m suggesting in my book, and my book is designed to communicate with them in a way that will make sense to them.

FP: Ok let us get a bit more specific. How does the “Left-Hearted, Right-Minded” philosophy apply to various issues, for instance: government spending, economics, education, health care, immigration, environmentalism, the War on Terror? Give us a few examples.

Cohen: I could write an entire book on this question. Oh, and of course I did write an entire book on this question, which is why you’re interviewing me. But in a nutshell: On government spending, I talk about how the debt crisis will harm the most vulnerable in society, especially in future generations. Fiscal profligacy in the name of compassion is, in fact, heartlessly uncompassionate to our children and grandchildren. I talk about how capitalism has been the most effective anti-poverty program in history, and explain the folly of government politicos and bureaucrats thinking that they can improve upon capitalism through their micromanagement. I talk about how a guy struggling to feed his family would much rather have a job than the satisfaction of knowing that some rich bastard he’s never met will get his taxes raised.

I talk about how education is supposed to be the great equalizer, giving poor children the tools to overcome the disadvantages of their birth. Instead, it’s become the great stratifier, with failing schools locking those disadvantages into place. I talk about how school choice can help liberate poor families by giving them the power that rich parents have always had—the power to be consumers, with the ability to take their business elsewhere. I talk about how more consumer choice, rather than more government control, is also what poor people—and the rest of us—need to make our health care system work for us.

Professor Sues Purdue for Violation of his Free Speech Rights on Islam

Jamie Glazov — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:32:04 +0000

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Professor Maurice Eisenstein, an associate professor of political science at Purdue University Calumet. He is suing Purdue after the school’s investigation of his comments about Islam on Facebook. Though the probe cleared him, he says Purdue still violated his free speech rights.

FP: Professor Maurice Eisenstein, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to talk to you today about your ordeal at Purdue. How did the whole incident start?

Eisenstein: Thanks Jamie.

The entire attack on my free speech began over a post I made to Facebook in November 2011. I posted a picture with a storyline about an Islamist Muslim group (Boko Haram) killing Christians in Nigeria. I asked: Where were the moderate Muslims? They must be listening to that idiot Mohammad.

From this, one of my PUC colleagues, a Muslim, told me (on Facebook) that she believed my statement about Mohammad was beyond despicable. Once she responded to me, then several of her students were able come to my Facebook page to tell me that they also believed that I was out-of-bounds for denigrating Mohammad. Their essential issue was that I was offending Mohammed and Islam. In the wake of that incident, the Muslim Student Association became involved and they did a press release saying that no prophet (Jesus, Moses, Mohammad — their argument not mine) should be insulted because offending a religion was not an acceptable use of freedom of speech.

Basically, this whole ordeal started because I insulted Mohammad. I did insult Mohammad. I may not have been nice about it, I may have been provocative about it, but quite frankly, I think killing Christians because they are Christian and not Muslim is much more insulting than calling Mohammad an idiot.

From this incident, there emerged an active campaign from the Muslim faculty and students, the Muslim Student Association (acting, as it claimed, on behalf of all Muslims), and their leftist supporters, active collusion to get the University to fire me for offending them. Because the University could not fire me for Facebook comments, the faculty, students, and the MSA decided that it would then say that I was harassing and discriminating against students in my classroom. Toward that end, audio tapes of one of my courses from Spring 2011 were then posted on YouTube. It was an Introduction to Judaism course, which I taught from a pro-Jewish and pro-Israel perspective. Two of the books I used in the course were: Why the Jews? by Praeger and Telushkin as well as The Israel Test by George Gilder. Anyway, I am very provocative and blunt — I like challenging students, particularly since most of what is taught on campus (irrespective of the discipline) comes from a center left perspective.

Now, there are over 40 to 45 hours of lectures from that class. Out of those 40 to 45 hours, about 16 minutes were posted on YouTube and, of course, these 16 minutes were selectively edited so that I was portrayed in the worst possible light and without context. Then, based on these tapes, in conjunction with my Facebook comments, 9 separate harassment and discrimination complaints were filed against me.

FP: What tactic was used by your accusers?

Eisenstein: The tactic was: the University cannot investigate Facebook, but if we tie the problem to his teaching, well, then the University can investigate it. The problem with these 9 complaints are many. To try to sum it up:

First: only 1 of the complaints was from a student who was ever in one of my classes. That student was in a class of mine in Fall 2011 for two class periods. Yes, you read that right, that student was in a class of mine for two whole class periods. I was teaching how democracy came from the Anglo-Saxon Protestants — the English — as written by DeToqueville and this student was offended because I mentioned that democracy did not derive from any other culture or place. As a Muslim, this student was offended.

Second: There were no student complaints filed about the class I taught in Spring 2011. No student ever complained and to this day, the audio tapes posted on You Tube are anonymous. No one knows where they are from.

Third: 8 complaints involved individuals or organizations that had no basis for filing harassment/discrimination complaints. Two were from students I had never met let alone ever had in one of my classes. One was from the MSA — who filed on behalf of all Muslims. Five were from faculty members and of those five faculty members, 4 of them were not even involved in the Facebook exchange that started the whole ordeal.

In short, there was a concerted effort to get as many people as possible to file harassment/discrimination complaints against me so that the University could have a basis for sanctioning me. The University then spent the next 3 months investigating my freedom of speech. They investigated my Facebook postings, they investigated my class from Spring 2011 (based on anonymous tapes) even though the University policy for harassment/discrimination states that no complaints filed after 120 days can be investigated (e.g., the class had ended far longer than 120 days earlier during which time no complaints were filed — nor have any complaints from a student in that class been filed).

They investigated my Fall 2011 classes because of the one student who was in my course for two class periods. The University hired an outside investigator who interviewed no less than 30 people (some of whom I do not even know) — emphasizing that Facebook was being used as a means of assessing me and my character — covering my entire career at PUC. It was nothing less than an all-out assault being waged against me. For example, one of the faculty members who filed a complaint against me alleged that I took down her name plate (off her door, off her desk, I am not sure) in 1991 or 1992 while we were both adjuncts at PUC! And the University investigated this as well. It was beyond ridiculous. It factually shows that Purdue University has accepted the Muslim notion of “being offended” as a legal definition. It you offend the religion in any way you are liable.

FP: The University cleared you of these 9 harassment/discrimination complaints. How or why do you think that happened?

Eisenstein: My very short answer is: the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, FIRE. If not for FIRE, I think things could have and would have likely gone very differently. FIRE sent a letter in January 2012 and that letter was made public about 1 day before the University had to issue a ruling on these 9 complaints. The University ended up extending its decision time-line in the aftermath of the public relations fallout from the FIRE letter.

I really do think that without the support from a national organization with the credibility that FIRE has, the University would have tried to initiate termination proceedings. The whole attempt to fire me would be over the issue of “offending” someone. (For those unfamiliar — firing a tenure professor is a complicated ordeal.)

FP: What about the retaliation claims found against you?

Obama 2012, Get Used To It? — on The Glazov Gang

Jamie Glazov — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:00:43 +0000

Evan Sayet, Tommi Trudeau and Rob Nelson joined The Glazov Gang this week to discuss Obama’s chances for a second term. Below are all three segments of the three-part-series. Part I focuses on Obama’s Gay Marriage Flip Flop. Part II deals with Will Islam Destruct From Within? Part III explores Obama 2012: Get Used To It?

Part I

Part II

Part III

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Why Obama Flip-Flopped on Gay Marriage — on The Glazov Gang

Jamie Glazov — Thu, 17 May 2012 04:00:36 +0000

Evan Sayet, Tommi Trudeau and Rob Nelson joined The Glazov Gang this week to discuss Why Obama Flip-Flopped on Gay Marriage. Below are all three segments of the three-part-series. Part I focuses on Obama’s Gay Marriage Flip Flop. Part II deals with Will Islam Destruct From Within? Part III explores Obama 2012: Get Used To It?

Part I

Part II

Part III

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Obama 2012, Get Used To It? — on The Glazov Gang

Jamie Glazov — Wed, 16 May 2012 04:33:28 +0000

Leftist film producer Tommi Trudeau joins Evan Sayet and Rob Nelson — and a verbal brawl ensues on Frontpage’s television show. Below is Part III of a three-part-series. To see Part I, click here. To see Part II, click here.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Will Islam Self-Destruct? — on The Glazov Gang

Jamie Glazov — Tue, 15 May 2012 04:05:12 +0000

Fireworks set off when leftist film producer Tommi Trudeau confronts Evan Sayet and Rob Nelson on Frontpage’s television show. Below is Part II of a three-part-series. To see Part I, click here. We will run Part III tomorrow.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Obama’s Gay Marriage Flip-Flop — on The Glazov Gang

Jamie Glazov — Mon, 14 May 2012 04:21:17 +0000

Leftist film producer Tommi Trudeau joins Evan Sayet and Rob Nelson and the heated battle ensues. Below is the first segment of a three-part-series. We will run Part II in our next edition.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Silence on Islam — on The Glazov Gang

Jamie Glazov — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:19:54 +0000

Tommi Trudeau, Rob Nelson and Nonie Darwish joined The Glazov Gang this week and fought it out over the silence about Islam in our society. Below are all three parts of a three-part-series. Part I deals with The Fate of a Chinese Dissident, Part II involves the debate over whether Obama can legitimately blame his problems on Bush, and Part III focuses on how criticizing Islam is increasingly becoming forbidden.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

To watch the dynamics between Tommi Trudeau, Nonie Darwish and Evan Sayet on last week’s show, click here.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Blaming Obama’s Problems on Bush — on The Glazov Gang

Jamie Glazov — Thu, 10 May 2012 04:05:57 +0000

Tommi Trudeau, Rob Nelson and Nonie Darwish joined The Glazov Gang this week and fought it out over whether it is fair to blame Bush for Obama’s problems. Below are all three parts of a three-part-series. Part I deals with The Fate of a Chinese Dissident, Part II involves the debate over whether Obama can legitimately blame his problems on Bush, and Part III focuses on how criticizing Islam is increasingly becoming forbidden.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

To watch the dynamics between Tommi Trudeau, Nonie Darwish and Evan Sayet on last week’s show, click here.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

The Fate of Our POWs From The Korean War

Jamie Glazov — Wed, 09 May 2012 04:10:10 +0000

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is John Zimmerlee, Executive Director of the Korean & Cold War POW/MIA Network.

FP: John Zimmerlee, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s begin with what happened with our missing servicemen from the Korean War and what, for 60 years, the American government has said about them to their families. What is the real fact?

Zimmerlee: Thanks Jamie.

Immediately after the Korean War, families were told not to talk about their missing loved-ones as it might endanger their life, safety, and possible return. The truth is that President Eisenhower knew full well that thousands of American servicemen were still alive and in captivity, but pursuing them might start World War III.

FP: Why were our servicemen taken and kindly give a little bit more information about why Eisenhower and our government didn’t do anything about it?

Zimmerlee: Russia was a silent partner in the Korean War, supplying guns, aircraft, and pilots to China. In return, the Chinese agreed to send unrecorded prisoners to Siberia. Russia denied any involvement in the war.

According to Soviet estimates, more than 14 million captured citizens and prisoners of war passed through the Russian prison system, gulags, for free labor in mining and forestry camps throughout Siberia.

During the Korean War, aviators were interrogated by the Chinese for overall knowledge of the war and technical knowledge of the aircraft, then sent to the gulags. Ground forces were sent to the gulag directly.

The war was unpopular, and was lasting too long. No one would surrender. A cease fire agreement, Armistice, took more than a year to prepare and was reluctantly signed. Meanwhile, Congress had approved the use of a nuclear bomb.

Eisenhower had to make a decision. The only way to locate these men was to invade Siberia and look for them across an area of 5.1 million square miles, with no guarantee of finding them.

FP: What have American presidents done in terms of the closed documents on the cases of our missing servicemen? What have been the results?

Zimmerlee: In 1995, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12958 which stated all documents more than 25 years old should be declassified at a rate of 15% per year. By 2001, all should have been available to the public, but no effort was ever made and most of those more than even 50 years old are still classified to this day.

In 2003, George Bush signed Executive Order 13292 which repeated the language of the previous EO, but stated that in documents that may concern National Defense or ‘weapons of mass destruction’ . . . they may be kept classified for up to 50 years. Again, departments have claimed that the order was not funded and therefore they didn’t comply.

In 2009, Obama signed E O 13526 which stated the same thing, but made allowances of 75 years for sensitive documents.

No doubt the next relative EO will allow a hundred years of secrecy.

FP: Tell us about your own research and what you have discovered.

Zimmerlee: When the Defense Prisoner of War – Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) was created in 1995, I met with their attorney and initial staff to determine just what they would be doing.

During my very first meeting, it was evident that research and discovery was not their main focus. If any information was to surface, I knew I would have to find it myself.

Over the last 17 years, I have scanned more than 92,000 declassified documents and discovered compelling evidence on 835 MIA cases and 190 KIA cases that clearly indicate these men were known PRISONERS of WAR, but their families were never told.

But, I have seen only about 10% of the documents related to the Korean War POW/MIA issue. Just imagine what I could discover if the “Classified Documents” (about 90%) were released.

FP: So who is it exactly that is not obeying the orders signed by Clinton, Bush and Obama? Who exactly is succeeding in blocking the release of the documents and of the truth. And why?

The Fate of a Chinese Dissident

Jamie Glazov — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:45:15 +0000

The Road to Freedom

Jamie Glazov — Tue, 08 May 2012 04:10:45 +0000

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and a celebrated conservative author, economist, and media personality. He was formerly the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University. He is author of the new book, The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise.

FP: Arthur Brooks, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s begin with you telling us what inspired you to write this book.

Brooks: For years, the free enterprise movement has done an incredible job making the material case for free enterprise and explaining how economic freedom makes people better off. By the end of the Cold War, we had pretty much won that argument. Most mainstream liberals now publicly eschew “socialism,” and concede that the market economy is the best way to produce material prosperity in the aggregate.

But where the left has where—and where free enterprise advocates have failed to respond—is on the moral side of the ledger. Sure, the left says, free enterprise makes us better off, but at a huge cost to our society and our values.

This argument is incorrect, but it’s effective because we almost never show up to debate it. I wrote this book to explain why I believe free enterprise is not just an economic alternative, but a moral imperative.

FP: Share with us your moral defense of the free enterprise; why is being free moral?

Brooks: In a nutshell, it’s this: Free enterprise is the only system that allows us to earn our own success, is fundamentally fair, and meaningfully helps the poor. Let’s go through these one at a time.

First, free enterprise allows us to earn our success. This doesn’t mean just making money—it mean defining our success however we wish to measure it and going out and achieving success. This is what the Founders meant when they talked about the right to pursue happiness. Material goods may make us physically comfortable, but above the poverty level they don’t improve life satisfaction. This means that governments can’t make us happy. Only we can make ourselves happy, and only free enterprise lets us do it our own way.

Second, free enterprise is fair. If you believe that hard work and creativity should be rewarded, you believe in meritocratic fairness—not the redistributive “fairness” some politicians are offering today. All available data show that Americans basically believe that our country is a meritocracy and that meritocratic fairness is true fairness. Many on the left like to talk about fairness in terms of outcomes, suggesting that it’s somehow unfair that some people have more money than others. That’s a shallow, materialistic argument, and more importantly, it doesn’t match up with Americans’ understanding of fairness.

Third, free enterprise helps those in need. As Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has remarked, “the free enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than all the government anti-poverty programs combined.” The evidence shows that the senator is correct. But beyond that, the free enterprise empowers individuals to make a difference in their lives and the lives of those around them. And this means helping the poor in a meaningful sense, not just giving them handouts.

FP: Your thoughts on higher taxes and on the belief that redistribution is moral?

Brooks: When I was a college professor, many of my economics students complained that it’s “not fair” that the rich have so much more than the poor. So I cooked up a scheme to show them they were thinking about it the wrong way.

Halfway through the course, I could see big differences between students who were working hard and those who weren’t – call it grade inequality. So I made a modest proposal: take a quarter of the points earned by the top half and pass them on to the lower half. Everyone thought this was idiotic – even the students at the bottom. And they understood the broader point: Beyond providing for essential services and a minimum safety net, redistributing income just to get more equality is not fair–it’s completely unfair.

Redistributing wealth is no different. If income were handed out arbitrarily, it might be fair to pool and redistribute it. But it’s not, no more than grades are handed out at random.

Our society isn’t a perfect opportunity society, but to the extent it’s not, we should fix the real detriments to mobility: schools designed for adults and not kids, cronyism that privileges the well-connected over innovators, and a tax and regulatory system that prevents entrepreneurs from creating jobs. Redistribution doesn’t solve these problems. If anything, it makes them worse. There’s nothing moral about that.

FP: Tell us a bit about how “earned success” brings people happiness and fulfillment while “learned helplessness” leaves unhappiness and un-fulfillment.

Brooks: The data on entrepreneurs are instructive here. Entrepreneurs make less money and work longer hours on average than people who work for employers. They make almost twenty percent less money than government managers, just to take one example. But they’re much happier than almost any other profession. Why? Because they are creating something and becoming successful in the process. They’re in charge of their own lives. And that’s where true happiness comes from.

Reams of data show empirically what your mother probably told you: Money doesn’t buy happiness. But earning success, however you denominate it, does. What this means in practice is that, all else equal, someone earning a modest income that she feels she has truly earned is going to be much happier than a billionaire heiress who hasn’t earned her own success.

Merchants of Despair

Jamie Glazov — Mon, 07 May 2012 04:18:39 +0000

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Robert Zubrin, president of Pioneer Astronautics and a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. A well-known innovator in the fields of aerospace and energy, he has a PhD in Nuclear Engineering, 10 patents, numerous publications, and 8 books, including The Case for Mars and Energy Victory. His latest book is Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.

FP: Dr. Robert Zubrin, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s begin by you telling us what you mean by “the cult of antihumanism.”

Zubrin: Thanks Jamie.

Antihumanism is a belief system which holds that humans are destroyers, essentially vermin whose activities, aspirations, and numbers must be severely constrained, and that therefore someone must be empowered to do the constraining. Essentially it is an argument for tyranny, oppression, and ultimately genocide.

FP: Why would anyone choose to embrace such beliefs?

Zubrin: Well, you must understand that such arguments have always been gratifying to those seeking to enhance their power or justify their oppression of others. Therefore they use their positions of influence in society to make them fashionable, or “politically correct,” to use an originally Stalinist term that is now all the rage.

FP: It appears that much of modern-day environmentalism is antihumanist, as you’ve defined it, but antihumanism has been around for some time, right?

Zubrin: Yes. In the book I trace it back 200 years, starting with Malthus, the seminal founding father of the theory of limited resources, and then trace it forward through its subsequent development through numerous interrelated forms, including Darwinism, eugenics, German militarism, Nazism, xenophobia, the population control movement, environmentalism, technophobia, and most recently, the incredibly demented climatophobic movement, which seeks to justify mass human sacrifice for the purpose of weather control.

There was a time when humanity looked in the mirror and saw something precious, worth protecting and fighting for—indeed, worth liberating. But now, we are beset on all sides by propaganda promoting a radically different viewpoint. According to this idea, human beings are a cancer upon the Earth, a horde of vermin whose aspirations and appetites are endangering the natural order. This is the core of antihumanism.

FP: Tell us about Al Gore’s antihumanism.

Zubrin: Al Gore is trying to turn antihumanism into a global cult. Just have a look at this quote from his book An Inconvenient Truth:

“The climate crisis also offers us the chance to experience what very few generations in history have had the privilege of knowing: a generational mission; the exhilaration of a compelling moral purpose; a shared and unifying cause; the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict that so often stifle the restless human need for transcendence; the opportunity to rise…When we rise, we will experience an epiphany as we discover that this crisis is not really about politics at all. It is a moral and spiritual challenge.”

In short, the purpose of the global warming crusade is not to change the weather, it’s to organize a mob in support of totalitarian policies.

It is revealing that Gore chose the words “An Inconvenient Truth” as the title of his book. That phrase could be the virtual chorus line for all the antihuman movements for the past 200 years who used pseudoscientific arguments to demand that people harden their hearts to the human misery the purported to be necessary. I.e.

Thomas Malthus: It is an inconvenient truth that “the Irish must be swept from the land.”

Charles Darwin: It is an inconvenient truth that “the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world.”

General Friedrich von Bernhardi (German General Staff, author, Germany and the Next War, 1912): It is an inconvenient truth that “war is necessary because it eliminates the weak.”

Madison Grant (Author, The Passing of the Great Race, 1916): It is an inconvenient truth that “indiscriminate efforts to preserve babies among the lower classes often results in serious injury to the race…It is an inconvenient truth that “the laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.”

Henry Fairfield Osborn (1932): It is an inconvenient truth that “overpopulation and underemployment mat be regarded as twin sisters…the United States [with 112 million people in 1932] is overpopulated at the present time.”

Rudolf Hess (1933): It is an inconvenient truth that “National Socialism is simply applied biology.”

Adolf Hitler (1941): It is an inconvenient truth that “the law of existence prescribes uninterrupted killing, so that the better may live.”

Fairfield Osborn (author, Our Plundered Planet, 1948): It is an inconvenient truth that “the problem of the pressure of increasing populations…cannot be solved in a way that is consistent with the ideals of humanity.”

Paul Ehrlich, (author, The Population Bomb, 1968): It is an inconvenient truth that “the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people…We must shift our efforts from the treatment to the cutting out of the cancer.”

John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, (authors Global Ecology, 1971): It is an inconvenient truth that “when a population of organisms grows in a finite environment, sooner or later it will encounter a resource limit. This phenomenon, described by ecologists as reaching the ‘carrying capacity’ of the environment, applies to bacteria on a culture dish, to fruit flies in a jar of agar, and to buffalo on a prairie. It must also apply to man on this finite planet.”

The Club of Rome (authors Mankind at a Turning Point, 1974): It is an inconvenient truth that “the world has cancer, and the cancer is Man.”

Alexander King, (founder, The Club of Rome, 1990): It is an inconvenient truth that “DDT…has greatly added to the population problem.”

All: “It is an inconvenient truth that humanity must be crushed. Science requires it. So harden your heart and join with all enlightened people in support of those doing the crushing.”

FP: Share with us some of the worst crimes perpetrated by the antihumanist movement.

Zubrin: I discuss many of them at length in the book. They include denial of food aid and imposing crushing taxes and rents on Ireland and India during the great famines of the 1800s, promoting the ideologies that led to World War I, World War II, and the Nazi genocide programs, the forced sterilization of tens of millions of people by the prewar eugenics movement and the post war population control movement, the killing of hundreds of millions of people through denial of vital life-saving technologies including pesticides and vitamin-enriched crop strains to the third world, and assisting in the impoverishment of billions by blocking the development of new energy resources.

FP: Most people don’t know how the first Green Party was actually founded. Please enlighten us.

Zubrin: The German Green Party was founded by August Haussleiter. A former SS officer and member of the Nazi Party since 1923, when he stood by Hitler during the Beer Hall Putsch. It was based on such previous works as Ludwig Klages’ 1913 proto-Nazi German “Volkisch” youth movement tract Man and Earth (republished by the Green Party, without comment, as one of its founding documents in 1980) and future Nazi Agriculture Minister Richard Darre’s 1931 book A New Nobility Out of Blood and Soil.

These writers popularized a cult ideology celebrating the natural “authentic” qualities of the good old-fashioned German country people, or Volk (literally “folk,” but also carrying the meaning of “tribe”). According to these and allied writers, the Volk derived their deep and “genuine” souls from their “rootedness” in the land, shared ancestral kinship, and connection to nature. In contrast, Jews, representing corrupt urban modernity and lacking in landed rootedness, were soulless and thus could never be part of the German Volk. Christianity, science, technology, industry, progress, “mechanical and materialistic civilization,” and all else that proposed to raise man above nature, were also to be abhorred. Popularized widely in prose works, fiction, and drama, these ideas formed the basis of the huge back-to-nature Volkisch and related Youth movements that arose in Germany during the late 19^th Century.

When, in the 1920s, the new Nazi party raised the pagan swastika flag celebrating the power of irrational animal nature over civilization and reason, the Volkisch Greens flocked to the cause. In the 1970s, as environmentalism became fashionable again, Haussleiter seized the time to organize a political renaissance of this constituency. The result was the Green Party, which true to its origins in “pure race on pure soil” ideology, has taken the lead in the campaign to stop modern agriculture worldwide.

As a result of their activity, the European Union has banned farm imports from third world countries using genetically modified crops. Since the third worlders cannot afford to give up the European market, this has blocked them from implementing vitamin-enriched cereals like golden rice, which could prevent the blinding or deaths of millions of poor children every year.

FP: Crystallize please the major flaws of Darwinism.

Zubrin: Evolution is a fact. However natural selection is a radically false theory of human social development because unlike animals, humans can inherit acquired traits, such as new technological abilities. Not only that, can inherit such valuable acquired traits from people they are not related to. Furthermore, such beneficial acquired traits, which become available to all, are created by human effort during life. Therefore human existence is not a struggle of all against all. Humans benefit from the existence of other people, nations, and races, exactly the opposite of what a Darwinian view would maintain. Darwin says that it is “from this war of nature, from famine and death,” that progress in nature occurs. But this is simply untrue for humans. Human progress is driven by creative activity during life, not by elimination through death.

FP: What is really behind the climate change/global warming movement?

Zubrin: In the 1970s there was a global cooling trend going on. So the antihumanists said “look, there is global cooling, which is being driven by industry, which is being driven by out of control economic growth and population growth. They have to be put under control. Put us in control.” Then in the 1980s the climate began to warm, so they said “look, there is global warming, which is being driven by industry, which is being driven by out of control economic growth and population growth. They have to be put under control. Put us in control.” The problem is always different, the solution is always the same – put them in control. Its not about weather, it’s about power.

“The Suffering of the Innocents”

Jamie Glazov — Fri, 04 May 2012 04:06:52 +0000

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Giuseppe Gennarini, a former journalist who has been working since 1975 in the U.S. introducing the “Neo-Catechumenal Way,” an itinerary of faith within the Catholic Church that seeks renewal by working at the grass roots level in thousands of parishes throughout the world. The Neo-Catechumenal Way works to strengthen the relationship between Christian and Jews and to help Catholics rediscover the Jewish roots of their faith. There are an estimated 30,000 such communities throughout the World, with roughly one million and a half members.

Gennarini has recently helped organize a concert at the Lincoln Center titled “The Suffering of the Innocents, A Symphonic Homage and Prayer.” It will be performed on May 6^thin the Boston Symphony Hall, on May 8th in Avery Fisher Hall-Lincoln Center in New York City and on May 14 in Chicago Orchestra Hall. The will be also a performance in a Synagogue in Teaneck with a scaled down version of the concert to give opportunity to other Jewish people to attend. For more information on all of these performances and how to attend, click here.

The Symphony was composed by Kiko Argüello, the initiator of the Neo-Catechumenal Way, as homage to all innocent victims and especially those of the Shoah. It is not only a beautiful musical performance, but also an event of meditation and friendship between Jews and Christians. It was performed for the first time in January of last year in the Vatican before Pope Benedict XVI, then in Galilee, Paris, Madrid, Düsseldorf and finally, in December of last year, in Jerusalem, at the Gerard Bechar Theater. It is now coming to New York, Chicago and Boston and being welcomed with enthusiasm by many Cardinals, Bishops, Rabbis and prominent leaders in the Jewish world.

FP: Giuseppe Gennarini, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let us begin with why Neo-Catechumenal Way is offering this symphony in homage to the Jewish people. What exactly does Kiko Argüello hope to achieve in this musical work?

Gennarini: Thanks Jamie.

Rediscovering that the roots of our faith are in the people of Israel gives us a profound gratitude towards them. Carmen Hernandez, who initiated the Neo-Catechumenal Way together with Kiko, lived four years in Israel, working and visiting the Holy places. There, she acquired a profound knowledge of the Jewish festivals and traditions, transmitting to all of us the love of the Jewish roots. We are grateful to the Jews for everything we have received from them: the Holy Scriptures, the Fathers, the Prophets, the tradition, the roots of our feasts and liturgies, Jesus, the Apostles, Paul, Mary, etc… Because of that, Pope Benedict XVI said that Jews are “our fathers in faith” (avoteynu ba’emunah).

So the only reason we have for offering this Symphony is our love of the Jewish people and the conviction that the union of spirit and love between Catholics and Jews is fundamental to face the new challenges of secularization. According to the Jewish-Catholic tradition, there is no love without communion in suffering. We would like to show our love for the Jewish people, recognizing the suffering of the innocents and especially the tragedy of the Holocaust. We would like to say through this opus: “We do not turn our back to the people of Israel and to their sufferings in history.”

FP: Kindly expand a bit on the significance of the theme of the “Suffering of the Innocents” in today’s society. Share with us the Christian view of the suffering of innocents.

Gennarini: The theme of the symphony reflects Argüello’s experience in the shantytown of Madrid, Spain, in the 1960’s where, after leaving everything behind, he went to live amongst the poorest of the poor. In the midst of all these shattered people living in shacks, Argüello contemplated the suffering of many due to the sins of others: homeless people lying in the streets dying of cold, children in horrible orphanages where they suffer violence, people abandoned because of their illness. In approaching these people, Kiko saw in the innocent victims a carrying of the sin of many, as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, that in their mystery shines the presence of God. It is written, in the Jewish sources, that a good Jew must remain standing at the presence of a man struck with illness, because in him dwells the Shekhinah. Approaching these suffering innocents, he realized the magnitude of the tragedy that the Jewish people experienced in the Holocaust.

FP: What response has the symphony received before other audiences, especially in Israel?

Gennarini: We organized in Galilee and in Jerusalem two symphonies for a Jewish audience and in both occasions more than 700 people, several rabbis and civil authorities, were present. The response was marvelous and moving. I would answer your question by echoing the words of Rabbi David Rosen (Chief Rabbinate of Israel Honorary Advisor on Interfaith Relations, AJC, Israel). After hearing the symphony in Jerusalem, he stated:

“This concert represents a revolution in the relationship between those of the Christian Faith and the people of Israel; an acknowledgement that there are essential differences which separate us in faith – and yet all considered, there are very important elements which unite us. Kiko Argüello and the Way are committed to preserving the identity of the people of Israel, and I’m grateful to have taken part in this historical movement to foster the relationship between Christians and Jews.”

FP: Have you had help from the Jewish community in the US in organizing this event? Who is endorsing this event?

Alger Hiss: Why He Chose Treason

Jamie Glazov — Thu, 03 May 2012 04:37:47 +0000

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Christina Shelton, a retired US intelligence analyst; she spent the major part of her thirty-two year career (twenty two years) working as a Soviet analyst and a Counterintelligence Branch Chief at the Defense Intelligence Agency. She is the author of the new book, Alger Hiss: Why He Chose Treason.

FP: Christina Shelton, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Shelton: Thank you, Mr. Glazov.

FP: Let’s begin with you telling us what inspired you to write this book.

Shelton: I have always had an abiding interest in both the Soviet Union and the intriguing world of espionage. For the first major paper I wrote in high school a very long time ago, I chose the subject: “Stalin’s Forced Labor Camps.” My interest continued at George Washington University where I studied at the Sino-Soviet Institute. This led to a career in the Intelligence Community that covered counterintelligence in general and Soviet military and intelligence services in particular. For a couple of years before I retired from the government in 2009, I thought about writing a book, despite the fact that I had spent thirty-two years writing intelligence assessments. And the subject of Hiss “came to me” in a very natural way. Except for the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss is probably the most famous American spy of the 20^th century. The case has all the trappings of a great story–a struggle between two titans (Hiss and Whittaker Chambers), a fallen idol, a divided nation over Hiss’s innocence or guilt, all occurring against the background of the important years in American history during the Great Depression and World War II. This story has drama – unlike the current cases where an individual spies for money.

FP: Share with us some of the evidence that has surfaced over the recent years that confirms Hiss was a spy.

Shelton: The most important evidence in recent years on Hiss’s role as a Soviet spy was revealed in KGB files and Hungarian state security records. The KGB archival material represents a significant breakthrough in shedding light on the KGB’s extensive penetration of the US government during the 1930s and 1940s. In 1993, former KGB official Alexander Vassiliev was given access to KGB files. After he defected, he had a friend send his notebooks of transcribed KGB documents to him. Based on this material, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Vassiliev wrote Spies: the Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (2009). Even though the material was from KGB files, there was some information on the GRU’s asset, Hiss. In some cables, Hiss’s cover name was used, in others his name was cited in clear text. (Hiss had several cover names, among them ‘Jurist,’ ‘Leonard,’ and ‘Ales.’) One of the most damning KGB cables included a March 1950 document that noted “the trial of the GRU agent ‘Leonard’ (Hiss) a division chief at the State Department and member of ‘Karl’s group’ (Chambers), had ended in his conviction at the beginning of 1950.” Hiss was convicted in January 1950. It doesn’t get clearer than that!

Noel Field, a Communist, and former State Department colleague and friend of Hiss during the 1930s was arrested in Eastern Europe after the war and charged with being an American spy. Stalin had falsely accused him as part of his overall campaign to purge Eastern Europe’s Communist leaders. In 1992, Hungarian archivist, Maria Schmidt found the original transcripts of Field’s interrogation by Soviet and Hungarian state security. In it, Field acknowledged that Hiss tried to recruit him in the 1930s in Washington DC. Field said he told Hiss – in a moment of poor tradecraft – that he already worked for the Soviets as part of a KGB network (run by Hede Massing). This story of the attempted recruitment of Field by Hiss was corroborated by Chambers, Massing, and was in the KGB archival material.

FP: What does your book do that no book has done before?

Shelton: Most other books on Hiss focus on “the case.” In this book, I attempt to provide a strategic perspective, unique in the body of Hiss literature, by examining the case in the context of ideology. To understand Hiss and his actions, they must be seen from the perspective of what motivated his behavior – that is, his ideology. I also emphasize the historical significance of the story based on Hiss’s role in foreign policy, specifically his importance in the founding of the UN and at the Yalta Conference. Conventional wisdom is that Hiss was peripheral at Yalta; a low-level note taker. In fact, evidence points to the centrality of his role at Yalta, as manifested in Secretary of State Stettinius’s diaries and personal papers. In addition, I was able to portray the personal side and human dimension of Hiss with regard to his relationship with his first wife Priscilla and especially his son Tony. This caring, affectionate person is reflected in the hundreds of personal letters given to the NYU Tamiment Library by Tony Hiss. His father was an inveterate letter writer and the library folders contain hundreds of letters written in the 1930s and during his 44 months in Lewisburg Federal prison. As far as I know, this material, recently turned over to NYU, is not included in any other book on Hiss. And finally, although the most recent material from the KGB archives was covered in a book on overall espionage in the US in the 1930s and 1940s, for the first time all available evidence on Hiss is in a book specifically about Hiss. This book contains the recent KGB information with regard to Hiss as well as material from the Hungarian archives.

FP: What damage did Hiss do to America?

Shelton: Alger Hiss spied for the GRU (Soviet military intelligence). Because GRU operational files never have been made available, the extent of Hiss’s damage is difficult to measure. A damage assessment can be made directly only on a very small body of documentary evidence — documents of confidential military, State Department, and Navy cables Hiss gave to Chambers in the early months of 1938 (i.e. the so-called Pumpkin papers). These included, among others, summaries of cables by Ambassador Bullitt detailing pre-war events in Europe; activities of members of the anti-Comintern Pact, particularly in Asia, and detailed developments in China. Therefore, because only a small amount of the many documents Hiss passed during several years are available a damage assessment also must be based on deductive reasoning. We know Hiss was a spy and we know he had access to highly classified material. He had means, motive, and opportunity. From his post at the State Department, Hiss had access to classified material on many issues, including US-China policy. One specific example of deductive reasoning involves a State Department document relevant at the Yalta Conference. Secretary of State Stettinius placed Hiss in charge of the “black books” – all the position papers for FDR on US strategy on issues to be discussed at Yalta. All this State Department material was to go directly to Hiss. One position paper noted that the State Department strongly opposed turning over to the USSR the southern Kurile and Sakhalin islands. This memo never made it into the Yalta briefing books; Roosevelt thus was not aware of it, and therefore of State’s position. Roosevelt conceded these territorial demands by Stalin. But Stalin knew this position from his spy networks; a copy of this State Department memo was found in the Russian archives after the fall of the USSR. So it was not only what Hiss gave to Moscow, but in this instance what he withheld from the US side that allowed him to influence plans and policy.

From Moscow’s assessment of Hiss, one could also deduce his value as an asset and the significance of the information he turned over to the Soviets. The GRU considered Hiss to be one of Moscow’s most important spies; evidence indicates he presumably was among the 5 GRU assets from the Washington DC apparatus that, according to Red Star, received Soviet decorations following the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Moreover, following GRU defections and Stalin’s purges in his intelligence services in the late 1930s, GRU networks were in chaos and spies were being transferred to the KGB. But not Hiss. Indeed, a Soviet official in the KGB archives noted that if the KGB had ‘Jurist’ (Hiss) “no one else would really be needed.” Clearly, the GRU wanted to retain their high value asset. This judgment of Hiss would have been based on the quality of his information and his ability to influence US policy toward Moscow from his post at the State Department.

Moreover, it was of great value to Moscow that it was able to use the documents Hiss had turned over to his GRU contact to break the State Department codes and tap into American diplomatic traffic. This access, alone, to State Department plans and intentions prior to the onset of war would be invaluable to the Soviets. Sumner Welles, undersecretary of State (1937-1943) testified that the documents Hiss turned over to Chambers were critical to US security and specifically valuable to Moscow’s efforts to break US diplomatic codes.

Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity

Jamie Glazov — Wed, 02 May 2012 04:38:59 +0000

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Michael Coren, a television host, radio personality, syndicated columnist, author, and speaker. His TV show The Arena airs on Sun News Network in Canada. He is the author of Why Catholics Are Right, which was on the Canadian best-seller list for three months. His new book is Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity.

FP: Michael Coren, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s begin with you telling us why you wrote this book.

Coren: The most direct and practical answer is that the publisher, Random House, asked me to do so. The last one, defending Catholicism, had sold more than 50,000 copies, and so a large, secular publishing house had realized what a hunger there was out there for books explaining the Christian position to a mass audience. I wanted to go beyond the Catholic Church, to the attacks on universal Christianity and Christians. There are lots of books about prayer for example – perhaps too many! – but very few that respond to all of the most common attacks on the Christianity. I always take an eclectic approach. So as well as history and theology, I cover science and abortion, the De Vinci Code and biographies of great Christian writers, and so on. It’s supposed to be a handbook of Christian self-defense if you like.

FP: Share with us why and how Christians and Christianity are under attack in our culture. What are some of the lies and myths about Christianity and Christians?

Coren: The book takes on the most common and toxic of the attacks on Christianity: Jesus didn’t exist, Christians oppose progress, are scared of science, they’re obsessed with abortion, they’re racist and supported slavery, Hitler was a Christian, and so on.

But the supportive premise is that Christians are not treated fairly. Take the example of the Norwegian murderer Anders Behring Breivik. After his arrest, it took only hours for the media to label him a Christian. He identified himself, they said, as a “cultural Christian”. Those of who understand religion, however, know that this is shorthand for “only a cultural Christian”. Then we had Breivik’s manifesto. “Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God.”

But none of it mattered. Just as it doesn’t when we’re told that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian – he left the Church when he was a youth, and wrote that, “science is my religion.” The reason that so many in mainstream media are so hysterically eager to call Breivik and McVeigh Christians, or claim that abortionists are regular targets for armed pro-life fanatics is not only that they are opposed to Christianity, but that they are obsessed with relativism.

Commentators take every shape imaginable in their attempts to report Islamic terror as something other than Islamic. Because, they argue, all religions are the same, and all equally capable of producing violent fundamentalism. Yet Christian fundamentalism is extremely rare, and when it does occur leads to rejections of evolution rather than rejections of law and order, and snake rather than dynamite handling. For the media to admit that different religions lead to different assumptions about pluralism and different approaches to human dignity would lead to the invincible conclusion that there is a qualitative distinction and hierarchy. That, to the moral and intellectual relativist, is heresy itself.

The examples of anti-Christian behavior are legion. In the west it takes the form of ejection from the public square and the workplace, legal restrictions, mockery, and abuse. In the developing and Islamic world it is far more serious: persecution, arrest, torture, murder. Objective, secular sources agree that Christians are the most oppressed group in the world right now, and the number and intensity of attacks is staggering. A mere book cannot do very much for the millions of believers who risk life and limb, but it can empower and perhaps even embolden Christians in the west who feel weighed down every time a critical remark is made.

Being a book about Christianity, Heresy is in the forgiving business. But forgiveness does not mean forgetting the truth. We have to be resolute in what is and what isn’t, which is why I’ve taken on the most frequent arguments used against followers of Christ. Some of them are simply ludicrous, the stuff of internet wisdom and website philosophy. The notion that Hitler was a Christian is schoolboy stuff, and profoundly insulting to the Christians who opposed the man and who he in turn slaughtered. Of course there were people calling themselves Christian who were Nazis, but this says nothing at all about Christianity but a great deal about hypocrisy. Nazis were often street thugs, but National Socialism itself was an ideology, replacing Messiah with Fuehrer, Church with party, love with hate, soul with will, protection of the weakest with survival of the fittest. Even a cursory reading of Nazi theorists will reveal the sheer idiocy of the claim.

Similarly with the alleged Christian opposition to science and progress. The Christian Church has in many ways been the hand maiden of science, and the only reason opponents mention Galileo all the time is that he’s about the only scientist who Christianity didn’t always treat properly – mind you, his story is far from the caricature presented by Brecht and his comrades. The same applies to the claim that there is no evidence that Jesus existed, or that The De Vinci Code is credible, or that bad things happening to good people is somehow a difficulty for Christians. This one is especially annoying, because it’s so badly thought out. Not only do bad things happen to good people, but – just as annoying – good things happen to bad ones. But that’s a problem for the atheist, not the believer. We understand that God guaranteed not a good life, but a perfect eternity. The dying child, the cancer-stricken philanthropist is a dilemma for the materialist, not for someone who knows there is an immortal soul and that life does not end in the hospital sick bed.

Neither this nor any of the other atheist talking points that I dismantle in the book are terrors to anybody who know their faith. The problem is that too few Christians do fully understand it, and many of those who do have been cowered into silence if not submission by a culture that imposes uniformity in its purported lust for diversity. There’s irony for you.

FP: A big double standard with how Muslims and the Islamic faith are treated right? How come?

Coren: As I mentioned above, the hypocrisy is overwhelming. A lot of this is the racism of lowered expectations – the liberal elite assume such behavior is typical of black and brown people, and also that it would be ban manners and politically incorrect to judge them. Sickening!

White guilt is a terrible thing to waste. Something that became profoundly clear during the trial of Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son Hamed. Although the case was shocking, it was in fact only the most recent of a dozen murders in the last twelve years, most involving Muslim patriarchs killing young girls who wanted to be horribly western by wearing nice clothes, doing nice things. Which brings us to the greater point here, with more long-term consequences than this single repugnant case. The authorities – be they police, politicians, social workers, media – are obsessed with appearing to be non-judgmental when Islam is concerned; partly out of a fear of being accused of Islamaphobia, but also because they genuinely believe that the white, Christian west has more to learn from Islam than the contrary. The Shafia girls had pleaded with their teachers for help, and while front line social workers acknowledged that the situation was potentially disastrous, the concerns evaporated as soon as they reached middle management. So Mohammad Shafia, who had written of his daughters that he hoped “the devil shits on their graves” was, effectively, permitted to commit mass murder.

Yet even months after the Shafia case, commentators are embarrassingly, cringingly, reluctant to link the crime in any way with Islam, and it is described as domestic violence. No! This was not domestic violence but yet another example of an Islamic psychosis that has its epicenter in Pakistan, but extends to most parts of the Islamic heartland, and many in the Muslim diaspora. It’s a self-evident truth that not all Muslims behave so brutally, but it’s also undeniable that Islam teaches that a woman is the property of a father, then a husband. Most fathers and husbands are kind, but if they are not they are empowered by Koranic teaching and the prism of Sharia law to behave pretty much as they like.

While it’s true that honor killings are not exclusively Muslim, Islam is the only faith that boasts textual defense and sacred justification for such grotesque acts. When 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez was murdered in 2007 honor killing by her Pakistani father and brother, CAIR Canada told the gullible that, “It’s important not to generalize. There are cases of violence across all faiths and all cultures.” That was rubbish, but worse than Muslim extremists hiding the truth, are non-Muslims embracing lies without question. We saw this during the Parisian riots, when mobs of overwhelmingly Muslim youths beat and torched their way through the city, often screaming “Allahu Akbar.” Yet they were almost never described as being Muslim by the media. So different from when the Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik, a freemason who wrote that he had no relationship with God and had not attended a church in fifteen years, was repeatedly defined as a “Christian fundamentalist” on international television.

In the United States, President Obama played this game of obscene hide-and-seek when he dealt with Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 colleagues and wounded dozens more. Even though Hasan identified himself as a Muslim radical and told friends that it was the duty of a Muslim to wage war against the US Army, Obama refused to refer to the man’s religion.

He has gone further. Under the current administration, and to a degree even under his predecessor, moderate Muslims have been marginalized and almost excluded from the political establishment and halls of power. It’s the racism of lowered expectations. Fundamentalist organizations have convinced white liberals that only activists with beards or burkas are genuine Muslims, and to think otherwise is colonial and patronizing.

Islamic Necrophilia and Leftist Silence — on The Glazov Gang

Jamie Glazov — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:28:40 +0000

Leftist film producer Tommi Trudeau joins Nonie Darwish and Evan Sayet on the gang — and fireworks ensue over bizarre Islamic legislation. Below is Part I of the three part series. We will run Part II in tomorrow’s edition.

To see the fireworks between Tommi Trudeau, Dwight Schultz and Evan Sayet on our previous episode, click here.

Islamic Necrophilia and Leftist Silence

Jamie Glazov — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 07:23:00 +0000

Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins

Jamie Glazov — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:53:25 +0000

Our guest today in FrontPage interview is Robert Spencer. Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins, and that is the subject of our interview today.

FP: Robert Spencer, welcome to FrontPage interview.

Spencer: Thank you, Jamie.

FP: So why did you write this book? This is not a question that most people have ever even considered.

Spencer: That’s true, Jamie. The question of whether or not Muhammad existed is one that few have thought to ask, or dared to ask. For most of the fourteen hundred years since the prophet of Islam is thought to have walked the earth, almost everyone has taken his existence for granted.

FP: Of course. After all, his imprint on human history is enormous. The Encyclopedia Britannica dubbed him “the most successful of all Prophets and religious personalities.” In his 1978 book The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, historian Michael H. Hart put Muhammad in the top spot. So how can you say such a man never existed, and why does it matter?

Spencer: There is, in fact, considerable reason to question the historicity of Muhammad. Although the story of Muhammad, the Qur’an, and early Islam is widely accepted, on close examination the particulars of the story prove elusive. The more one looks at the origins of Islam, the less one sees. In Did Muhammad Exist?, I explore the questions that a small group of pioneering scholars has raised about the historical authenticity of the standard account of Muhammad’s life and prophetic career. A thorough review of the historical records provides startling indications that much, if not all, of what we know about Muhammad is legend, not historical fact. A careful investigation similarly suggests that the Qur’an is not a collection of what Muhammad presented as revelations from the one true God but was actually constructed from already existing material, mostly from the Jewish and Christian traditions.

It matters because my investigations, as the book shows, tend toward the probability that Islam was constructed as a political system foremost, and only secondarily a religious one – a point that has significant implications for the controversy today over anti-Sharia laws and how to regard the incursions of political Islam in the West.

FP: Fascinating. So what are some of those indications that Muhammad may not have existed?