The Tea Party stands as a moral challenge to the status quo. It’s not a third-party movement. It’s an extra-party movement. It’s not political. It’s philosophical. It is a manifestation of the market, an example of how free minds and free will seep through the cracks of the established paradigm to fulfill unmet needs.

Although it did not manifest in rallies and town halls until 2009, the seeds of the Tea Party were planted 15 years earlier. Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, propelled by the Contract with America. The sweeping reforms Republicans pledged to attempt were largely unsuccessful, an outcome they could lay at the feet of President Clinton. Nonetheless, the perception among rank-and-file conservatives was that the Republicans failed to deliver.

Republican credibility was further eroded when the party held both the White House and Congress during the presidency of George W. Bush. After years of listening to pundits suggest that Democrats were the sole driving force behind ever-expanding government, conservatives watched in awe as Republicans drove the ship of state 180 degrees away from every principle they ran on.

That led to widespread apathy among the grassroots, deflating Republican campaigns and enabling the Democratic victories of 2006 and 2008. Of course, the inauguration of Barack Obama and the subsequent acceleration of government activism through bailouts, nationalized health care, and other forms of “fundamental transformation” reinvigorated conservatives. But they weren’t about to be fooled twice.

Instead of rallying under the Republican banner, discontented citizens took to the streets under the Gadsden flag. The Tea Party became a revolt against politics-as-usual, against partisanship over principle, and for a return to the principles of the Founding.

Among the grassroots movement, many voices have emerged to articulate a philosophy of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. We’ve scoured the net to bring you some of the best bloggers championing that message. We sought to bring to light writers whose work deserves more attention than they currently receive. We wanted to introduce you to voices you may not have heard of before and will be glad to know. These aren’t folks who necessarily identify as Tea Partiers, but who boldly articulate the philosophy which drives the movement. Here are the top 10 Tea Party bloggers you need to read.

Next: The Canine Pundit…

The left’s reaction to last week’s deadly tornadoes that wreaked havoc throughout the south was as predictable as it was reprehensible: blame the tragedy on the fantasy of “climate change.” The New York Times declared: “The cruelty of this particular April, in the number of tornadoes recorded, is without equal in the United States,” before launching into a polemic that tried to link “climate change” to the supposed fact.

The Center for American Progress’s Brad Johnson put up a blog post entitled: “Storms Kill Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers.” “The congressional delegations of these states – Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky – overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous,” he wrote. “They are deliberately ignoring the warning from scientists.”

This is, of course, the modus operandi that the alarmist crowd employs again and again: attaching their cause to a headline-grabbing event and using the occasion to wag their fingers at anyone who disagrees with them. Examples of this behavior run the spectrum from the ridiculous to the sublime. Actor Danny Glover’s assertion that global warming caused the earthquake in Haiti last year is a textbook example of the former. But tornadoes are a climatic event, so linking them to “climate change” appears a more credible claim on the surface. Yet, if we dig just a little deeper, we find that the alarmist crowd is once again ignoring the scientific process that they claim to hold so dear. The data simply does not back up their wild pronouncements.

Will April 2011 prove to be a record month in terms of tornadoes recorded in the United States? Maybe. Does that data bit prove anything? No. First of all, the climatic record in the United States spans a ridiculously small period of time in geologic terms – about 150 years in all – and a good deal of that data set doesn’t include large portions of the nation. Secondly, modern instruments like Doppler radar mean that we can detect tornadoes better than ever before. The better we are able to detect tornadoes, the more we record.

Thus, picking out a narrowly-defined data point like tornado activity in the United States during the month of April is a particularly meaningless metric. It’s like trying to define the state of the United States educational system by examining how your child scored on social studies quizzes that he or she took on Thursdays during months that have one-syllable names.

A sober examination of data that is actually relevant shows that tornado activity in the United States has been relatively low in recent years, as compared to average activity over the last 60 years. Moreover, overall tropical storm and hurricane activity has been trending steadily lower on a global basis for the past forty years. There is simply no good scientific data that suggests that so-called “climate change” has in any way led to an increase in severe weather events on planet earth. Meteorologist and leading climate skeptic Anthony Watts posted a great summary of the issue over at The Daily Caller.

In the Family Way is our sub-blog devoted to bringing the Freedom Center’s messages to parents and families.

Rhonda Robinson is the associate editor in charge of it and she needs a few more people on her team who are concerned about families and eager to write about politics. The sub-blog also focuses on examining the intersection of religion and politics. Its writers will frequently challenge the so-called “Religious Left” who have hijacked religion for political purposes.

If you would like to apply to blog for In the Family Way then please contact us below. Tell us about you, your writing, and what you’d like to bring to the publication. High-potential contacts will be given the opportunity to apply

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Let’s take this a step at a time.

I emailed Jumanah Imad Albahri, the infamous UCSD Muslim student who called for genocide against the Jews, on Sunday at 10:19 AM Pacific Standard Time. I got the email from the login used by Albahri (apparently) to comment on Robert Spencer’s post yesterday morning to protest that the remarks attributed to her were not her own. She instead had this statement at a brand new blog here. (It appears to be actually from her, as well as the comments left at NRB.) I blogged about the email I sent here. I have yet to receive a reply to this message.

Now, something everyone who’s ever emailed with me might know: in my signature I have a link to my twitter page.

Thus, at 12:39 PM PST I received an alert from Twitter that I had a new follower identifying themselves as Jumanah Imad Albahri. This was a brand new account and I was the only person Albahri (apparently) was following.

At the time that I checked my email on my phone I was out and about running errands with my wife. I got back to my computer in the late afternoon with a freshly groomed Siberian husky, a fridge filled with groceries, and a head full of questions. I began investigating this supposed Albahri’s twitter page and found several weird anomalies.

First, the name had been changed. Now she was listed as “Not Jumanah Albahri.” Why would she change that?

Second, in addition to links to all of the comments she had made at NRB there were several intentionally-inflammatory tweets, such as this one:

I’m not an anti-Semite. I am a semite. I just hate all jooooooooooooos.

Why joke about this when you’re trying to prove that you’re not a genocidal bigot?

Third, there was a new, brief post at what we’re basically regarding as her “real” blog:

“A number of people”?

What’s going on here? I can’t know for certain but I can guess. I suspect that Albahri and her MSA fellow travelers are trying to pull a fast one on us. They want NRB to jump on these inflammatory tweets, attribute them to Albahri, and then they can jump in and claim that we’re smearing her and that we’re not to be trusted in what we say. In that fashion they can distract the issue so that people stop talking about the fact that Albahri said she favored the extermination of the Jews. But there’s more…

Albahri is a pathological liar who’s going to attempt to obfuscate her way out of the mess she’s gotten herself into. If she was sincere then she would have responded to my email with grace. She would have been kind, apologized, and asked to be given a chance to demonstrate her commitment to countering the anti-Semitism rampant in Islam. She would not have left contradictory comments at NRB as she has.

Consider this comment here where she apologizes to me:

Actually Mr.Swindle, I didn’t write that. I wrote this: fortruthforjustice.wordpress.com. Perhaps you would like to hear my actual opinion on things, and not LurkerGod’s.

Also Mr. Swindle, I would like to apologize for any distress this has caused you. It was never my intent to offend you or any anyone else for that matter.

Then she pulls a complete 180 claiming that the only ones who should apologize are me and David Horowitz:

As far as my non-apology, I do not need to apologize on the blog. It is people like you that are blowing this out of proportion. If you want an apology though, I’ll give it to you: I am sorry that you are so ignorant and so easily fooled by people like David Swindle and David Horowitz. If anyone deserves an apology, its me. And it should come from Mr. Swindle and Mr. Horowitz for scandalizing and sensationalizing this. They should also apologize to everyone who has been reading this too, for misleading you all.

But the most revealing fact which should demonstrate Albahri the taqiya spinmeister (thanks for the link, Pamela) is this: before Albahri commented at NRB identifying as herself on Robert’s post she did so as someone else on all the other posts about her.

Albahri thought she was smarter than David Horowitz. And she seems to think that she’s smarter than me too. Her arrogance knows no bounds. (Which makes sense since after all, we’re infidels.) But she’s not smart enough to realize that when you comment at a blog your IP address gets left behind. And the blog’s administrator can then discover if you decide to do something like, oh I don’t know, comment with multiple names.

The same IP that commented as “fortruthforloveforjustice” and identifed as Albahri first commented on all the previous posts as “John.” The first two comments seemed to identify as someone initially angered by the video but who changed their mind after reading the clarifying statement. Here’s the first:

I have to admit, I was suspicious at first, but it seems that Anita is not so wrong afterall. Check out the girl’s response:

fortruthforjustice.wordpress.com

And this one:

Hey guys, you might want to check out what this girl has to say. It made me feel pretty dumb for flying off the handle like I did (privately.)

Then “John” proceeded to just jump from post to post advertising the statement at the new blog four times. Who would do that other than the author of the statement herself?

From the moment Albahri opened her mouth in her pseudo-question she was lying. She was asking for proof for something that David Horowitz and the Freedom Center have never claimed. (The pamphlet she claims to have read does not say that the MSA gets money from terrorists.) It was a question meant to confuse sympathetic and ignorant leftists and “centrists.” (And she’s also lying in her statement regarding the amount of money that anti-Semitic groups received from the University this past semester. She accuses David Horowitz of exaggerating the amount of $40,000. But check out the three links that we provided to see that we’re telling the truth.)

And now we see the same behavior in Albahri’s Twitter and commenting ruse.

This confusing, lying behavior from Albahri is a further, college-level version of the stealth jihadis’ modus operandi: deceive the infidel. There is no way of backing out of her statement. The video is irrefutable. The only tactic now is to try and sabotage and embarrass Horowitz, NRB, and the Freedom Center. But we won’t let that happen. Just as we will not stand by as totalitarians try and bring down our country from within.

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Robert Spencer has a recent post highlighting a statement made from someone claiming to be Jumanah Imad Albahri, the UCSD student whose words supporting the extermination of the Jews have been heard by over 300,000 people on YouTube and even more on cable television and talk radio. Albahri herself showed up in the comments to deny authorship and direct readers to her own statement.

It’s been almost a week since David Horowitz’s talk at UCSD and Albahri is all of a sudden finally trying to explain herself at a new blog she has recently created.

I have emailed Albahri. Here is what I said:

Ms. Albahri,

I’ve read your blog post in which you try and explain the remarks you made Monday night at David Horowitz’s talk.

“Towards the end of the exchange, I became emotional. I could no longer hear Mr. Horowitz speaking and so did not even hear his injection of Hezbollah’s credo of ’rounding up’ Jews in his last tangent.  I could no longer contain my anger at being implicitly and improperly labeled a terrorist, an anti-Semite, and a proponent of genocide. The answer I was coerced into giving grossly misrepresented my beliefs and ideologies.”

I have a hard time believing your explanation that all of a sudden you could not hear what he was saying. You seemed to be able to communicate with him perfectly fine and hear what he was saying up until he asked his question. The video speaks for itself.

I have a question: if you oppose anti-Semitism and you oppose Islamists’ quest to instigate a second Holocaust, what have you ever done to challenge these tendencies within the MSA itself and Islam as a whole? If you do not hold such views yourself, why are you a part of an organization who regularly hosts speakers who call for the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews?

Albahri's nose will just keep getting longer and longer the more she talks

Robert Spencer had a post this morning highlighting a statement made from someone claiming to be Jumanah Imad Albahri, the UCSD student whose words supporting the extermination of the Jews have been heard by over 300,000 people on YouTube and even more on cable television and talk radio. Albahri herself showed up in the comments to deny authorship and direct readers to her own statement.

It’s been almost a week since David Horowitz’s talk at UCSD and Albahri is all of a sudden finally trying to explain herself at a new blog she has recently created.

I emailed Albahri just now:

Ms. Albahri,
I’ve read your blog post in which you try and explain the remarks you made Monday night at David Horowitz’s talk.

“Towards the end of the exchange, I became emotional. I could no longer hear Mr. Horowitz speaking and so did not even hear his injection of Hezbollah’s credo of “rounding up” Jews in his last tangent.  I could no longer contain my anger at being implicitly and improperly labeled a terrorist, an anti-Semite, and a proponent of genocide. The answer I was coerced into giving grossly misrepresented my beliefs and ideologies.”

I have a hard time believing your explanation that all of a sudden you could not hear what he was saying. You seemed to be able to communicate with him perfectly fine and hear what he was saying up until he asked his question. The video speaks for itself.

I have a question: if you oppose anti-Semitism and you oppose Islamists’ quest to instigate a second Holocaust what have you ever done to challenge these tendencies within the MSA itself and Islam as a whole? If you do not hold such views yourself, why are you a part of an organization who regularly hosts speakers who call for the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews?

-David

Will Bunch of left-wing character assassination site Media Matters for America has penned what has to be one of the dumbest items I have ever read from the George Soros steno pool.

In a blog post titled, “Beck fans strike gold…for now,” Bunch argues that Glenn Beck is causing a speculative bubble in gold by hyping doom and gloom. “[N]o one does more in his supposedly untainted editorial commentary to invoke panic about a future currency collapse or societal breakdown than the Fox News and radio host,” Bunch writes.

As evidence Bunch cites a single Wall Street Journal item, an op-ed by Peter Cohan on AOL that relies on an unnamed source, and a blog post from Bman409 (whoever that is) on a Motley Fool discussion board.

Bunch quotes approvingly from Cohan: “When the U.S. recession ends and the Fed starts to raise interest rates, those who buy gold now will likely suffer for their faith in the metal.”

Bunch is guilty of short-term thinking. He doesn’t seem to understand the long-term damage that President Obama and the Democratic-dominated Congress have done to the economy. Even if Republicans take back both houses of Congress in November, Americans will still experience the fallout from their folly for years.

Bunch’s assertions about inflation make no sense. People buy gold because they are anxious about the future. Gold investors are nervous that inflation will skyrocket. There is ample reason to believe that inflation will be on the march in the not-too-distant future because of the massive increases in the money supply that have taken place during the Obama administration. Even if the Fed raises its trend-setting interest rate a few points there is no guarantee that consumer prices won’t shoot up.

Moreover, there is no quick resolution expected for the worsening fiscal crises in Europe. Everyone with a lick of sense knows that the bailout of Greece won’t make any difference at all. The Greek left won’t give up its government jobs, early retirement age and all the other accoutrements of the welfare state. The Greek situation will not be resolved any time soon and other European countries (Spain, Portugal, and Ireland) are also on the verge of fiscal collapse.

In the U.S. the economy has yet to hit bottom. The commercial real estate market is poised to implode, residential real estate foreclosures are climbing, and private sector job-destroying government spending is at an all-time high and more useless government stimulus spending is on its way.

If you believe the crises endemic to socialism are at an end, don’t buy gold. If you think President Obama’s policies (ObamaCare, higher taxes, cap and trade, increased Wall Street regulation, crackdown on oil companies, nationalizing student loans) will promote economic growth, don’t buy gold.

But if you think the worst is yet to come, load up on it.

For all his bluster and mood swings, Glenn Beck happens to be right.

Link:

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If you have a favorite Horowitz quote you want to highlight for others then please submit it here. Please include:

1. “Horowitz Quote of the Day” in subject line.
2. A link to where the quote is from. (No need to include this if it’s from a book.)
3. Any remarks you’d like published explaining what value you take from it.
4. Your preferred name and a link to your blog or homepage (if you have one.)

Have you ever felt like people meant well, but they just aren’t helping your cause?

I have no desire to attack the Right. If anything, I will do everything in my power to encourage anyone and everyone who is willing to work to replace this sliver of the far-Left that is currently running our country. However, sometimes we have to take stock of ourselves. This is one of those times.

A favorite ploy of the Left is to take things out of context and/or twist them like a pretzel to fit their preconceived ideas. Unfortunately, the Right has been doing way too much of this of late.

A case in point:

The following quote from this video went viral:

“First of all, then we’d have to say the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama,”

Blog after blog ran with that statement claiming that Al Sharpton believes that America voted for socialism by voting for President Obama. Al Sharpton is one of the last people on the planet that I want to defend since I disagree with him on…well everything. But the Right needs to maintain intellectual honesty and this is a perfect example.

What the Reverend was saying was that if someone was to claim that Obama represented socialism, then the logical antecedent of that argument is that America must have voted for socialism. His point was not that America voted for socialism, but that he feels Obama is not a socialist.

Another case in point:

Unfortunately, the quote from the above video that has made its way onto hundreds of blogs is, “I don’t worry about the constitution”.  Now, I disagree with virtually everything Rep. Hare says in this video, and in fact I disagree with virtually everything he stands for, but it is simply not honest or fair to take that quote out of context like so many have.

It is quite likely that he was stating that he felt the bill was constitutional and extremely unlikely that he was saying he just didn’t care about the constitution even though his actions seem to confirm his disregard for the constitution.

We have all too often decided that the sensational is more important than the factual. It is difficult to get hits on your blog with so much competition, but this must not cause us to be in such a frenzy to find the salacious and sensational that we are willing to cast aside any attempt to be fair and unbiased. It is the truth that is in our side, not the use of gimmickry, which is usually the fare of the Left.

Accepting what people say in context does not mean you have to agree with them, but it does grant you higher ground from which to convince others to agree with you.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler has a weekly column here at NewsReal Blog. She is the author of The New Anti-Semitism, The Death of Feminism, and the classic Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman.

Two texts that she recommends:
Virgins? What Virgins?: And Other Essays by Ibn Warraq

The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy by Stephanie Gutmann

Visit Jihad Watch

Chicago Tribune reporter Manya Brachear has kindly written to me to alert me to this article. In her email to me she invited Jihad Watch readers to comment at her Tribune blog on this story, so have at it — why shouldn’t News Real readers join in the fun as well? Note her identification of Tariq Ramadan as a “religious scholar” in her parting question below. “Chicago welcomes once-banned Muslim scholar,” by Manya Brachear in the Chicago Tribune’s Seeker blog, April 5:

[...] Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said he wasted no time inviting Ramadan to speak when the scholar’s rights to enter the U.S. were restored in January. He had last spoken with Ramadan in December when both of them spoke at the Parliament for the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia. Ramadan now has a 10-year visa.”We are all about reconciling Islam and the West,” Rehab said. “We challenge those who attempt to drive a wedge between Muslim and being American. That’s really the life cause of Tariq Ramadan as an academic and philosopher and media personality. He often says that he’s culturally Western, nationally Swiss, ethnically Egyptian and religiously Muslim. For him and for us as well, there is no inherent schism between being Muslim and being American.”…

Rehab said Ramadan’s visa was originally yanked by a “paranoid” Bush administration. He said Ramadan was, and still is, one of the most popular Muslim voices in the world. He is grateful that the Obama administration realized the absurdity of barring an intellectual to speak in the U.S.

But author Robert Spencer says that popularity is dangerous. In interviews, he has criticized Clinton for making an exception to U.S. law that prohibits supports of terrorist groups from entering the country. Spencer said Ramadan should still be barred for donating money to a group that funds Hamas.

Spencer contends that the scholar has the same goals as Osama bin Laden–to impose Shariah law in the West. While Ramadan paints himself as a moderate intellectual, Spencer said, he is actually a “stealth jihadist.”

What do you think? Is allowing a religious scholar to speak in the U.S. dangerous or democratic?

A “religious scholar”? Is that really all that Tariq Ramadan is? Ramadan is the grandson of Hasan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood — an international Islamic supremacist organization that is dedicated, in its own words (according to an internal Brotherhood document captured in a raid of the Holy Land Foundation), to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.” While he has alluded vaguely to disagreements with his grandfather, he has also lionized him, and has never repudiated the Brotherhood’s program.

The Trib article may give the impression that I am the originator of any suspicion of Ramadan’s reformist bona fides. In fact, that is not the case. French journalist Caroline Fourest, who has published a book-length study of Ramadan’s sly duplicity, Brother Tariq, concludes that this much-lionized putative Muslim Martin Luther is actually anything but a reformer: in reality, Ramadan is “remaining scrupulously faithful to the strategy mapped out by his grandfather, a strategy of advance stage by stage” toward the imposition of Islamic law in the West.

Ramadan, she explains, in his public lectures and writings invests words like “law” and “democracy” with subtle and carefully crafted new definitions, permitting him to engage in “an apparently inoffensive discourse while remaining faithful to an eminently Islamist message and without having to lie overtly — at least not in his eyes.” Ramadan, she said, “may have an influence on young Islamists and constitute a factor of incitement that could lead them to join the partisans of violence.”

Ramadan was barred from the country by the Bush Administration not for disagreeing with the Iraq war, as Brave Ahmed Rehab suggests here and as even the Obama Administration has irresponsibly claimed, but for contributing to an Islamic charity that funded Hamas. Ramadan has also recently been in the paid employ of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Dr. Chesler has expanded her post for her Chesler Chronicles blog at Pajamas Media. Please be sure and check it out.

I’m thrilled to report that Dr. Chesler will be visiting her hatchlings and me at the Nest every week with a brand new post. I hope her rigorous argumentation and elegant prose will inspire all of you as much as they do those of writing at NRB.

Mark Pritchard MPBlog: By Mark Pritchard, Conservative MP for The Wrekin since 2005 and a member of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.

Since the 1996 Arbitration Act, Government ministers have allowed Islamic tribunals around Britain to rule on a range of financial disputes, provided both parties agree to accept the court's decision. But in recent years, these tribunals have developed into fully fledged Sharia Councils - allowed to settle new disputes, such as divorce, family law, and faith issues. These powers go well beyond the letter and spirit of the original legislation and whilst they provide new ways of dispensing cheap justice they do not always dispense fair justice.

By expanding the powers of Sharia Councils, ministers have set the scene for a breaking narrative which is fractious, discriminates against women, and, incrementally, is establishing a parallel legal system.

As Sharia Councils expand their powers and reach, ministers have unwittingly rolled the dice over a type of cultural snakes and ladders, all in the hope that such initiatives will increase inclusiveness and marginalise Islamic radicals. But all the evidence contradicts ministers' stated aims. Sharia rulings are more likely to create legal ghettos - undermining rather than improving social cohesion. And in so doing, ministers are found guilty of piecemeal legal vandalism and managing the gradual decline of English jurisprudence. [...]

Sharia Councils shine an embarrassing light on how ministers have increasingly relegated and downgraded thousands of Muslim women to de facto second class British citizens, perversely, in the name of tolerance and understanding. [...]

Since the 1996 Arbitration Act, Government ministers have allowed Islamic tribunals around Britain to rule on a range of financial disputes, provided both parties agree to accept the court's decision. But in recent years, these tribunals have developed into fully fledged Sharia Councils - allowed to settle new disputes, such as divorce, family law, and faith issues. These powers go well beyond the letter and spirit of the original legislation and whilst they provide new ways of dispensing cheap justice they do not always dispense fair justice.

By expanding the powers of Sharia Councils, ministers have set the scene for a breaking narrative which is fractious, discriminates against women, and, incrementally, is establishing a parallel legal system.

As Sharia Councils expand their powers and reach, ministers have unwittingly rolled the dice over a type of cultural snakes and ladders, all in the hope that such initiatives will increase inclusiveness and marginalise Islamic radicals. But all the evidence contradicts ministers' stated aims. Sharia rulings are more likely to create legal ghettos - undermining rather than improving social cohesion. And in so doing, ministers are found guilty of piecemeal legal vandalism and managing the gradual decline of English jurisprudence. [...]

Sharia Councils shine an embarrassing light on how ministers have increasingly relegated and downgraded thousands of Muslim women to de facto second class British citizens, perversely, in the name of tolerance and understanding. [...]

The aftermath of my column

For the past two days, I have been embroiled in an enormous campus controversy concerning a column I wrote criticizing the concept of “date rape” and decrying the victim-based ideology of the sexual left. Printed in the university’s paper, the American University Eagle, the column went up on its website on Sunday night.

Readers of NewsReal Blog can probably anticipate what’s coming next. Papers were vandalized, people have been intimidated — par-for-the-course. I knew what I was getting into. Although from a pro-feminist perspective, Amanda Hess of the Washington City Paper has the run-down of who said what.

Sometime yesterday, Jezebel.com, a leading feminist blog, decided to chip in its two cents. What did the site’s commenters say when they found a picture of me — that wasn’t actually of me?

In the responses to Jezebel.com’s reaction to my article, a picture of me was posted by a commenter, who proceeded to criticize me for looking like a “bag of douche.” Commenter “lillymaidofastolat” declared that I look “like a rape-y, creepy guy.” Some of them bashed my facial hair patterns.

The problem? The picture wasn’t of me. Oops!

Let’s turn the tables here: let’s assume that a group of conservatives dug up a picture of a feminist and proceeded to criticize her hairstyle, say that she looks like a slutty whore, and criticize her for looking like a bitch. Far be it from me to say that most feminists are not bitches — but wouldn’t this be proof-positive of misogyny, in the eyes of these womyn?

Although the picture has now been deleted, proof of its presence — and the ugly comments left beneath it — remains.

The feminists also bombarded me with the following niceties: I am “going to make some unlucky woman very, very, very bored in bed,” I was clearly “rejected for my looks” and speaking from my “hormone-addled” lust for girls. Other comments referred to me as a frustrated frat boy trying to justify his longing to date-rape women.

Um, yeah. More problems: I’m gay. I’m also a teetotaler.

Don’t feminists usually call this “heteronormativity” — the assumption of a person’s heterosexuality?

Seldom do we get such spectacular proof of feminist insularity. They are so busy fighting their stock characters that they cannot even be bothered to spend three minutes on Google to research my background. So eager are they to destroy the straw man of a boozy frat boy who (not-so-) secretly wants to rape them — that they don’t even stop to ask me, my editors, or my publishers about who I am. I’m an opponent of radical feminism and I used the word “rape” — to the vanguard, ladies!

Over the next 72 hours, I will update here at NRB with my continued experiences in dealing with cultural Marxism and censorship-by-intimidation on campus. Depressingly, this incident is just the beginning.

Talk to Alex Knepper at apkkib@aol.com

Since NewsReal Blog is a media analysis blog, bear with me as I point out (again) what the media got wrong about Ann Coulter’s history-making trip to Canada. (And yes, I mean that. As I’ve said from the start, her visit has cast into high relief a debate that until now has mostly existed on the margins in my country: about the definitions of “free speech” and “hate speech.”)

So I’m obliged to remind the MSM that Ann Coulter never said that “Muslims should be banned from airlines.” Here’s what she did say. Her 17 year old questioner in London, Ontario actually got it right, but subsequent media reports didn’t. That’s what happens when you crib from your colleagues instead of doing your own homework.

Part of the “trouble” with Ann Coulter is that she is female. There, I said it. P.J. O’Rourke has written equally “mean spirited” and even “racist” things; oddly enough, he doesn’t attract the rabid craziness that defines Coulter haters. No one writes entire books condemning him, and his speeches don’t spark riots.

The other “trouble” is something I call “genre dysphasia,” because I can’t think of a better expression. The great Rex Murphy came close to articulating this the other day, describing Coulter’s “Don Rickles’ conservatism”:

Coulter is so relentlessly and deliberately abrasive that she almost chases support away. In her London, Ont., appearance this week, her harsh “take a camel” answer to a Muslim student was fingernails on a blackboard to our sensibilities. But then, I recall the Michael Moore images of kids kite-flying in Saddam’s Iraq, which was a real shudder-inducing moment. Disneyfying the torture state that was Saddam’s Iraq was the grander affront by far. Moore, playing to the easy line of George W. Bush as an idiot-Hitler, got feted at Cannes and won an Academy Award.

They both operate in a new and mixed terrain, a compound of journalism, comedy, politics and entertainment…

The more outlandish the performance — think of Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, in comparison with whom Bill O’Reilly is a self-effacing introvert — the higher the partisan fame. These figures are less commentators than impresarios. They use politics as a rough script for a daily performance — and are paralleled by the emergence of the comic pundits, of whom Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are of course the premier examples.

As the likes of Dennis Miller have observed about Coulter, she is a born stand up comic, with enviable timing, a way with hecklers and a fearlessness that borders on reckless. Had she called herself “a stand up comic” instead of “a political pundit,” she would have attracted far less vitriol — and come away with less money and fame to show for it. And less controversy: imagine videos of her saying exactly the same things in front of a sign that reads “Yuk Yuk’s” instead of “CPAC.” Then try to imagine anyone caring. “Take a camel”? Please. Her “routines” are tame compared to the stuff millions of us grew up listening to on comedy albums back in the 70s and 80s.

But stand up wasn’t the path Coulter’s background had perfectly prepared her for. She would have been insane not to leverage her law degree and other traditional conservative pundit creds as booster rockets to launch her career; that Coulter then transformed mid-flight into what I’ll call a “sit down comic” makes her problematic, if only for unimaginative types who insist upon slotting people into pre-conceived slots. Alas, unimaginative types make up 90% of the Establishment elite and its commentariate.

Speaking of which: the same government body which spent countless tax dollars analyzing Mark Steyn’s jokes a while back is, this very day, “investigating”a Canadian “stand up” comic for “hate speech” and “homophobia.”

No, seriously.

So there goes my fancy theory, I guess.

I have had the sad task of writing a just-published book about my daughter Sarah who died at the age of 44 from complications related to a birth condition. No parent should have to bury his child, and the book I have written, which is called A Cracking of the Heart, is naturally about grief and loss, which is something that none of us can escape. But it is also about my remarkable child who came into this world with handicaps that would have defeated most of us but managed to make her short life a blessing to others. She was a compassionate individual and a gifted writer, who despite her disabilities traveled to distant lands to help those in need. She was also a liberal whose last campaign was a trip to Iowa in the teeth of a bitter winter to help the first African American to win the presidential nomination of a major political party. This inevitably stimulated a dialogue between us, and because my daughter was a serious and intelligent thinker it engaged the essential themes that divide us into liberals and conservatives.

My daughter was a religious person, in a modern way. On the day after she died, an interview with her appeared in the online magazine Nextbook in which she revealed that every day over her morning coffee she said the Jewish prayer “You resurrect the dead,” and then explained to the interviewer that though you can never have the person back, you should “pay attention to the way the relationship continues.” And I have. Every day I am overcome by a profound sadness, missing my daughter, and every day she teaches me again to appreciate the life I have and the lives of those around me.

– Remembering Sarah from PowerLine Blog

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Last night, I started seeing stuff in my Twitter feed about “#AnnCoulter,” “2000 protesters,” people throwing tables, and even people being whisked to the U.S. Embassy for protection. Ann Coulter was in our nation’s capital, to speak at the University of Ottawa.

I’d seen her speak the night before, in London, Ontario, and like many people across Canada, was wondering what kind of reception she’d get at this next venue. After all, it was a U of O provost, known Frenchman Francois Houle (his real name), who’d sent Coulter that now-famous passive aggressive letter before her arrival, ever so politely advising her not to, you know, advocate genocide or incite violence on Canadian soil.

I expected a problem. I didn’t expect a riot.

Two veteran Parliament Hill reporters, Brian Lilley (mainstream media) and Deborah Gyapong (Christian media) were on the scene and filed reports. (Full disclosure: I consider both of them friends).

Here’s part of Lilley’s report:

One of the loudest protestors outside was Sameena Topan, the young woman holding the “safe place” sign. Sameena told me she brought that sign because, “This is a space for all students from all backgrounds to come and feel welcome.” Sameena went on to say that no student should feel threatened or marginalized.

Asked if she had protested, complained or tried to shut down Israeli Apartheid week, Sameena first seemed shocked at the question, then answered no.

Here’s part of Gyapong’s account:

When I got outside one of my blog readers came up to me and told me he had been inside the hall before 7 p.m. He said a group of people rushed the hall, jostling the three people who were at a table checking student ids and those who had registered. The table got pushed aside. When the volunteers said they needed order and for people to come to the table, some of the rowdies folded the table up and threw it aside. Then the volunteers decided it was too dangerous for them and they shut the doors to the auditorium.

(…)

One gal was waving one of Ann Coulter’s books around asking whether they should burn it. “Let’s debate this,” she says.

I’ll have more at my blog as the day goes on, but I should warn you that, because it is my blog and not David Horowitz’s, my language and views may be more salty than some NewsReal readers may be accustomed to.

Understand: Establishment Canada hates America, but paradoxically, cares desperately about what America says about our country, and seeks secondhand validation from any meager attention we might get from you; consider the thirty-years-worth of boilerplate Canadian puff pieces, bragging about how many now-famous comedians we’ve “given” to Hollywood, and how we built the arm (the arm!) on the Space Shuttle like, 500 years ago, to take two of the more pathetic examples. The “look at us! Pleeeeeze!!” b.s. surrounding the supposed wonderfulness of the recent Vancouver Winter Olympics (yawn) is another.

So for us, the Ann Coulter Riot is A. Very. Big. Deal. I expect lawsuits galore, questions about the pathetic security apparatus that “protects” our nation’s capital, criminal charges and countercharges, commemorative tee shirts (the “Coulter in Canada” one pictured above is now selling fast), magazine cover stories story — I forgot: we only have one magazine — and much more.

(Note: on the topic of security — “the university handed Coulter a bill to pay for her own security, something it doesn’t do for other speakers.”)

PS: if you hear something about a Muslim girl who asked Coulter a question in London, and was “stabbed in the heart” when Coulter told her to go ride a camel, do note that my husband outed the girl as a (now former) member of an anti-Israel Facebook group.

And as Michael Coren pointed out acidly, it’s other Muslims who are more likely to literally stab a Muslim girl in the heart, or other places, rather than an outspoken American pundit.

Here’s part of his Tuesday pre-riot interview with Coulter, complete with now-ironic opening segment:

Sounds like something from the Koran, right? Wrong. This passage about violently rendering payback and vengeance to one’s enemies comes not from the Koran, but from the Bible’s Old Testament (Deuteronomy 32:41).

When it comes to politics, I stand second to no one in my willingness to swim against the tide and to champion unfashionable causes. I also stand second to no one in my support of the war on radical Islam.

In fact, I quite literally enlisted in that war by joining the United States Marine Corps after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. However, I must say that I have been dismayed and disappointed at the hostility toward Islam expressed by some NewsReal Blog contributors and commenters.

For example, my March 4 blog entry, “Our Troops Believe in Moderate Islam,” was met with near-universal scorn and skepticism. Commenter Joe Blough seemed to capture the prevailing sentiment best.

“WAKE UP! …There may be plenty of moderate Muslims… but there is NO moderate Islam.”

Another commenter, Tanstaafl (JW), even provided a list of passages from the Qur’an  (or Koran) which purport to demonstrate the “myth of ‘moderate’ Islam. Taken in isolation, of course, the passages seem shockingly violent and vindictive. For example:

Qur’an 9:5 Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.

13And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:

Oops. That last passage isn’t actually from the Qur’an. It’s from the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 20:13).

My point isn’t to create a false equivalence between Islam and Judaism or Islam and Christianity. Judeo-Christianity is a demonstrably superior tradition which has given rise to the undeniable greatness of the West. Islamic culture simply isn’t comparable.

But the idea that Islam is inherently threatening and irredeemable also isn’t true. This charge, in fact, is a dangerous and malicious lie. In reality, as Dinesh D’Souza observes in his excellent (albeit much misunderstood) book, The Enemy at Home: the Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11:

The Koran, like the Old Testament, has a number of passages recommending peace and others celebrating the massacre of the enemies of God.

This is not to say that Islam is a religion of peace. Rather it is to say that Islam is far more rich and complicated than the simple caricature of Islam created by vehement right-wing critics like Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch, Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online, and yes, my colleague here at NewsReal Blog, John L. Work.

In any case, going to war, either literally or metaphorically, against Islam is as imprudent and unwise as it is unnecessary. Muslims, after all, are an estimated one-fifth of the world’s population and are a majority in some 57 countries.

The United States is seriously challenged to win the wars it is now in in two of those countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. Opening up a second front, this time against all of Islam, seems to me to be completely impractical and profoundly stupid. Yet, that seems to be the approach urged upon us by right-wing critics like Spencer, McCarthy and Work.

A better approach would be to follow the counsel of Islamic scholar Daniel Pipes. Pipes urges Western leaders to encourage and promote moderate Islamic thinking and scholarship. This to help promote a moderate reformation of Islam.

But to follow this approach, you first have to believe that Islam has an inherent truth which is worth explicating and developing. I believe that it does; my right-wing critics believe otherwise; and therein lies the crux of our dispute.

—

John R. Guardiano is a writer and analyst in Arlington, Virginia. Follow him on Twitter.

– The Wednesday Morning Club, February 26 2010

If you have a favorite Horowitz quote you want to highlight for others then click here to submit. Please include:

• “Horowitz Quote of the Day” in subject line.
• A link to where the quote is from. (No need to include this if it’s from a book.)
• Any remarks you’d like published explaining what value you take from it.
• Your preferred name and a link to your blog or homepage (if you have one.)