This coming Monday, May 16, 2011, Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and the David Horowitz Freedom Center Present IS OBAMA OUR CHAMBERLAIN?

Come join the discussion and book signing with Bruce S. Thornton, the author of THE WAGES OF APPEASEMENT: Ancient Athens, Munich and Obama’s America.

The event is being held at 7pm (May 16) at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA  90049.  $15 per person, cash or check at the door, free parking. Register by email at RSVP@cjhsla.org or call (818)704-0523.

To mark the occasion, Frontpage is rerunning below Mark Tapson’s full interview with Dr. Bruce Thornton from our March 17th issue.

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The Wages of Appeasement

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who famously returned from a Berlin conference with Hitler and announced appeasement in our time, may be history’s poster boy for political impotence and naïveté. But in the new book, The Wages of Appeasement: Ancient Athens, Munich, and Obama’s America, Bruce S. Thornton notes that the temptation to placate an enemy seeking one’s destruction is “as old as conflict itself.”

The book assesses three notable examples of societies’ futile, disastrous responses to the aggression of determined enemies: the Greek city-states threatened by the shrewd Philip II of Macedon, England confronted by Hitler, and now the West’s clash of civilizations with “a renascent Islamic jihad and its most powerful state sponsor, Iran.” Its message couldn’t be more timely and vital.

Front Page contributor Bruce Thornton is a professor of classics and humanities at California State University in Fresno. A National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, he’s the author of Decline and Fall: Europe’s Slow-Motion Suicide, Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization, six other books, and numerous essays on Western culture.

Mark Tapson: Dr. Thornton, what was the inspiration for a book about appeasement? What prompted you to see timeless similarities in the different historical settings of ancient Greece, pre-WWII Europe, and America under Obama?

Bruce Thornton: The idea arose out of many conversations I’ve had with [fellow historian] Victor Hanson about the value of historical comparisons for illuminating our own times. I think we’ve been particularly struck by President Obama’s foreign policy philosophy, which in some cases eerily mimics the naive idealism not just of Jimmy Carter but of someone like Neville Chamberlain.

These three instances are interesting to compare because they are all constitutional governments faced with autocratic and illiberal aggressors. Thus appeasement is not just a consequence of this or that particular leader’s weakness, but also reflects the weaknesses of democratic governments, particularly in foreign policy.

MT: How does democracy itself put us at a disadvantage against such “illiberal aggressors”?

BT: The glories of representative government are the replacement of force with discussion and persuasion, and the holding of politicians accountable to citizens through audit, elections, laws, and the rest. However, the reliance on discussion and verbal process makes it easy to substitute words for action when action is needed. And when leaders are held to citizen scrutiny and have to face election or audit, they find it more expedient to kick problems down the road rather than call on the citizens to make unpleasant sacrifices.

Foreign policy particularly requires long-term strategies pursued consistently, but with a two-year election cycle (one year in Athens for most offices), and politicians held to intense scrutiny by mass media, instant polling, the blogosphere, and 24/7 news and opinion programs, it becomes more difficult to develop a consistent strategy and stick to it over time. Illiberal regimes, of course, don’t have many of those problems.

MT: You write that the causes of appeasement “arise from the limitations of human nature and from the failure of political ideals,” and that this is a tragic view of life that’s out of step with our times. Can you elaborate on that?

BT: We moderns believe that human nature can progress for the better, that material improvements in human life will remove the suffering and want that in the past drove people to irrational and destructive behavior. The ancients, particularly Thucydides in his masterpiece The History of the Peloponnesian War, in contrast believed that the irrational drove human behavior more often than not – things like fear, ambition, honor, power, revenge, religious fervor, or greed for wealth or territory.

War then is not an anomaly arising from poverty, etc., but a reflection of human nature. That’s a tragic view, because if human nature doesn’t change that much, then war and violence will always be part of our lives. That’s a hard truth for many of us, who like to believe that we can progress to an ideal world of peace, plenty, and prosperity, where disputes can be resolved peacefully with rational negotiation and bargaining.

MT: You identify the most important factor in the failure of societies to withstand an aggressor as “the decay of civic virtues.” “To be free,” you write about the Athenians, “citizens had to have characters worthy of freedom.” What kind of character is worthy of freedom?

Swedish artist Lars Vilks has joined a Facebook group entitled Kill Lars Vilks in order to engage in discussion with his antagonists as part of his ongoing art project to explore the bounds of free speech.

"I have joined the group Kill Lars Vilks," the artist confirmed.

Vilks' notorious sketch of the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a dog was published in 2007, and since then he has lived in threat for his life. He was recently attacked at a lecture in Uppsala and his home was targeted in an arson attack.

Furthermore a woman sits interred in a US jail for allegedly plotting to kill the previously little known Swedish artist.

In response to recent events a group of ex-Muslims arranged a discussion meeting on Monday and invited Vilks to talk about the defence of freedom of expression and to stand up to extremist Islamist violence.

"It doesn't matter if it is right or wrong to draw Muhammad, but he has a right to do so. Others have as much right to protest, but they have to learn that they can not threaten," Karim Shamihammadi, who represents the secular group, said.

The meeting was arranged to take place at Medborgarhuset in central Stockholm just a few hundred metres from the main city mosque.

Vilks was keen to stress that the incident in Uppsala did not involve people representative of the group often generally referred to as "Muslims".

"It is a question of a small clique who should not be given the opportunity to grow," Vilks said.

Despite calling them "a howling mob" the artist has been seeking contact with his enemies and opponents via Facebook, active in groups such as Kill Lars Vilks (Döda Lars Vilks) and We Who Hate Lars Vilks (Vi som hatar Lars Vilks).

"I have joined all of those groups. Many are intransigent, but there are a couple who are ready to discuss," he told the media after the meeting.

Vilks reported that he had been in contact with around a hundred people, even some who had threatened his life.

"There are a surprising number that can be engaged in discussion, they can in some way understand me."...

Good luck with that.

Say what you will about Jon Stewart—his interviews, especially the extended ones hosted on the Daily Show website, are a gift to the country. For the most part, he allows his guests time to explain their thoughts, and the discussion goes far beyond the typical, predictable partisan blood sport that Stewart once famously criticized Crossfire for when he appeared on that show.

Last night, Stewart had on Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute. Stewart did some research on Brooks’ sources used in his latest book, armed with a copy of one of the Pew polls he cites. Although the discussion was wide-ranging, the main point Stewart tried to make was that Brooks and others shouting “Socialism!”are wrong for making it seem like those calling for greater government intervention are part of an “insidious ideology.” Instead, Stewart says, the debate is within the same ideology and is focused on fine-tuning regulation of free market system.

Watch the extended interview below:

Stewart makes a point with which I agree (and I think so does Brooks) that most people who favor government intervention are not ideologically committed to socialism. Instead, they still see the free market as critical to America’s prosperity but are seeking ways to mitigate its downsides. Fair enough. To describe any proponent of regulation as a socialist is akin to declaring anyone supporting de-regulation as an anarchist.

But where Stewart is wrong to dimiss the one part of the Pew poll that really mattered. Thirty percent of Americans favor European socialism over the free market. And Brooks is absolutely right to point out that Americans move inch-by-inch towards the socialist direction even though they oppose that ultimate destination.

Whatever your take on the discussion or my response to it, let’s all be thankful that these discussions are taking place. Two-minute raging debates as we see on cable news are entertaining, but rarely do they provoke deep thought. Rarely does one leave respecting the views of both sides or at least the commentators representing them.

It’s a sad day when the most intellectually-stimulating discussions of today’s major issues is happening on Comedy Central and The Daily Show’s website, instead of one of our news networks. But I guess that’s how it is nowadays. At least they’re taking place somewhere, which is considerably better than no where.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Olga Velikanova, an Assistant Professor of Russian History at the University of North Texas. She was among the first scholars to work with declassified Communist Party and secret police archives. Her research about everyday Stalinism, the cult of Lenin and Russian popular opinion has been broadcast by the BBC, Finnish and Russian radio and TV, as well as the History Channel in Canada. She is the author of Making of an Idol: On Uses of Lenin, The Public Perception of the Cult of Lenin Based on the Archival Materials and The Myth of the Besieged Fortress: Soviet Mass Perception in the 1920s-1930s. She is a recipient of many awards from different international research foundations.

FP: Olga Velikanova, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to talk to you today about the Commission to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia’s Interests, which Russian president Dmitry Medvedev created a year ago, on May 19, 2009. What are the goals of this Commission exactly and what has it achieved?

Velikanova: Thank you, Jamie.

A year ago, as you say, on May 19, 2009, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev created the Commission to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia’s Interests. This Commission puzzled many historians. Was it an offensive against freedom of thought and speech? Did it open a door for possible repression of historians who would “undermine” the national image of Russia by bringing up unpleasant things about Russia’s national identity and the cruel truth about the Soviet past?

Without a doubt, we see a Stalinist-like intervention of the state occurring right before our eyes. It is an intervention into the historical profession and an imposition of boundaries on historical study.

The idea of the Commission was initiated by the Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs to oppose attempts by the Western neighbors of Russia to return to a discussion about the beginning and the results of WWII, and the role of the USSR in the post-war settlement.  Primarily, this Commission was an instrument of struggle in foreign relations. It was a signal to Russian historians and media what positions they “should” take in their publications.

While Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have interpreted the occupation of their countries by the USSR in 1944-45 as enslavement, Soviet historiography has presented it as a liberation. As Baltic states argue, liberation from one dictatorial regime (Nazis) was followed by the onslaught and imposition of another dictatorial regime (Soviet). This account of two regimes was supported by the OSCE resolution on July 3, 2009, which stated equality of the role of Nazi Germany and the USSR in starting WWII. In response, the Russian media protested against any comparison of the two regimes of the 1930s.

Thus, the formation of the Commission should be read mostly in the context of foreign relations in the Baltic region (especially with Poland), rooted in the painful events of 1939-1945 and also in Russian-Ukrainian relations.

FP: Okay, so the Commission targets international relations rather than the public sphere inside Russia?

Velikanova: Well you have to keep in mind that, besides the international aspect, “prevention of falsification of history” obviously has domestic implications. Very logically, this premise leads to the reconsideration of the general character of Stalinism, not only in the European context, but also inside the Soviet Union. And it is exactly this problem – the definition of Stalin’s regime – that represents the most painful and controversial point of modern historical/political discourse inside Russia. Society itself has not yet come to terms with its traumatic past. There is no public consensus on the dilemma of Stalin’s legacy.

The Commission’s goal is to promote the state view on the Soviet past. The official turn towards “blind” compromise with the past became evident with Putin coming to power and is expressed in practices such as embellishing consequences, justification of human losses as inevitable, and silencing the crimes of Stalin’s regime. The superiority of the state over the human being and his life and rights is at the center of the Kremlin’s attitude toward Stalin’s politics. In parallel, not truth but national interests are prioritized by the Commission.

It’s obvious that Putin’s life-long affiliation with the most notorious institution of the Soviet state – security police OGPU-NKVD-KGB-FSB – played its role in turning the state and the public discussion towards toleration and a “not guilty” stance. Russian society, too, showed itself not mature enough to face unpleasant truths about its fathers and grandfathers. It’s especially painful in the context of the national identity crisis which followed the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

The justification of Stalin’s politics in the media and even in the school textbooks, where Stalin is called an “effective manager,” is opposed by a liberal minority in Russian society. The New Times in Russia represents historical views on Stalinism that do not always go in favor of the interests of Russia, as the Commission understands them. Thus, if “falsification of history” would be considered a state offense, as proposed by the Commission, then a publication like The New Times would become a target of harassment and persecution,

Debates about the Commission reflect the dichotomy: the Commission initially was created as a tool to protect Russian interests in the international arena (as the state and Ministry of Foreign affairs see them.) But it is obvious that the Commission is a threat to liberty of thought in modern Russia.

FP: Does the Commission target the historical truth about Russian-Ukrainian relations in the 1930s?

Velikanova: Yes, at the center of the Commission’s attention are not only problematic issues of history of relations with Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, but also relations with Ukraine. Over the last two decades, there has been discussion on the Famine of 1932-33. It is a part of a big controversy both in historical science and in relations between the two countries. It is very natural that the abused national feelings of the Ukrainians refer to the most tragic moment of their history.  In the domain of Ukraine history, they interpret famine in ethnic terms as intentional genocide by Moscow. In a broader context – in the domain of Soviet history (and Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union) the famine, as most scholars agree now, was a result of inhuman social politics of Soviet central government directed against peasantry as a whole and afflicted not only Ukraine, but also Russian and Kazakh peasants (about 1 million victims in the last case).

The guilt of the Soviet central government is not under discussion here, however, since citizens of both countries are not ready to accept responsibility for the excesses of their Soviet past.

National Ukrainian Stalinists were, after all, also involved in fatal agricultural politics, and they therefore share responsibility with the Russian Stalinists. While Russia does not accept these charges, an important step was made in resolving these old issues on January 14, 2010, when Kiev’s Court of Appeals found Josef Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders guilty of genocide against the Ukrainians during the famine. Criminal proceedings against the Russian and Ukrainian leaders – Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Postyshev, Kosior, Chubar and Khatayevich – were dropped “over the suspects’ deaths.” Former Ukrainian president V. Yushchenko in the last days of his tenure called for the organization of an International tribunal on the crimes of Communism following the model of the Nuremberg trials on Nazism.

FP: So with the organization of the Commission, does it mean that “falsification of history” will be a criminal offense?

Velikanova: The bill suggests that “falsification of history and rejection of the role of the USSR in the victory over Nazism” should be a criminal offense. It was introduced by the party United Russia. The government declined this bill on January 15, 2010. The party United Russia intends to work on a new formulation of this bill and resubmit it again.

FP: After one year of the Commission being set up, what has occurred?

Velikanova: If you mean to ask if there have been any purges – no, thank God. There are no mass purges among historians. There was just one episode when a professor of history at Arkhangelsk’s Pomorskiy university, Mikhail Suprun, who was collecting data on Germans imprisoned in Northern Gulag camps during WWII, was detained for a short period in October 2009 by the FSB. The Security service also seized his archive.  He has been charged with violating privacy laws.  The episode took place in December 2008 when the security service seized, for several months, the archives of the St. Petersburg public society “Memorial” which contains data on the victims of Stalinism.

FP: Your own personal experiences?

Velikanova: Immediately after the formation of the Commission, at the end of May, 2009, I arrived to Moscow and St. Petersburg to do my archival research.  I personally felt the new atmosphere in the historical institutions. In the summer of 2009 I met a much more secretive atmosphere in the archives than before. Reverse classification of Soviet documents has gradually progressed since 2000 with the establishing of Putin’s tenure as well as suspicious attitudes of the officials towards Americans.  Many foreign historians complained about more restrictions and denial of access to many documents.  Some archivists perceived signals from above (in our case – from the President who was an organizer of this Commission) as carte blanche to control the access to files. As a result, for example, I did not get permission to study the documents about the first wave of Stalin’s repressions in the summer of 1927.

The Commission has had two meetings by now. The first meeting of the Commission took place on August 28, 2009 at the Kremlin and was devoted to historical enlightenment. The Commission claimed to coordinate several publications undertaken on the eve of the 70^th anniversary of the beginning of WWII. In September 2009, a kind of confrontation took place in relations between Russia and Poland. Poland argues it was the Molotov-Ribbentrop deal that sparked the war when on September 1, Hitler and on September 16, 1939 Stalin, invaded Poland and divided it. While Putin struck a conciliatory note with Poland during his visit to a memorial ceremony, on September 1, the Russian Intelligence Service – Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki (Russian CIA) – presented the volume of the 60 declassified documents from the Soviet archives, “Sekrety Polskoi Razvedki, 1935-1945.” These are the documents of Polish Intelligence from 1935-1945, showing that Poland conducted undermining activities on the territory of the USSR and also reports of diplomats, etc.

The author/editor of the volume, Lev Sotskov (not a historian, but a general of intelligence) proves that Poland contributed significantly to the flaming of WWII. The presentation was shown on Russian TV and openly attached to the visit of Putin to Poland on that day.  So, the book contributed to the struggle on international relations. The chair of the Commission, S. E. Naryshkin, expressed satisfaction about such publications, which he called truthful in the last meeting of the Commission on January 19, 2010 at the Moscow Foreign Affairs Institute. On the eve of the 65th Anniversary of Victory in WWII, he called to oppose the attempts of unspecified historians and countries who claim the Soviet leadership was responsible for the excessive human cost of Soviet Victory (last historical estimates of Soviet losses is 26.6 million people) and thus, denigrate the celebration of victory in May 2010. The Commission coordinates publications of new studies and organization of conferences devoted to the history of WWII.

FP: This move by President Medvedev means that the image of him as a liberal is far from correct, right?

Velikanova: When Medvedev came to power, some liberal minded people hoped that he would soften Russian politics. After two years of his tenure, we can see only very timid attempts of independent movements. Vacillation of President Medvedev, who a few months after the creation of the Commission criticized the defenders of Stalin, reflects controversy in the Russian public sphere.

FP: So is the truth in Russian History attainable?

Velikanova: I do not believe the final, ultimate truth. Through different views and discussions, historians can endlessly approach the “reality.” But one thing is for sure: the state interventions (through the Commission) in discussions and imposing limits are not a productive tool in the search of historical truth. Retreat from this gendarme position of the state was seen in a recent online publication of the Katyn documents. We saw orders of Stalin and his cronies to shoot Polish captured officers. This publication is an important step forward in historical public debates in Russia and has implications on foreign relations with Poland.

The noisy campaign around the creation of the Commission, and its subsequent weak performance, reflects the contradictory nature of modern Russian politics. Medvedev and the government are sending inconsistent messages to the Russian public and the world.

FP: Olga Velikanova, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

This just in from Jihad Watch reader Inexion: the Muslim student at the University of California at San Diego who affirmed her support for the genocide of the Jews has now commented on the controversy on an Internet bulletin board, saying, "Death to Israel":

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Laissez's Faire > On Monday I confronted David Horowitz Pages (15): 12 3 4 5 Next › Last »

Lurker God
Jan 28, 2009
ASK ME ABOUT GETTING OWNED BY DAVID HOROWITZ (AND BEING FOR THE EXTERMINATION OF THE JEWISH RACE LOL)sieg heil ronald mcdonald;;

So earlier on Monday this week David Horowitz came out to speak at University of California San Diego for Israel Apartheid Week. The event was hosted by Young Americans for Freedom, which are your basic, Reagan fellating college republicans. Anyways, it was the usual imperialist, apologetic bullshit that Horowitz spits out in defense of the state of Israel. Later on though he took questions, and just today I found out that someone recorded mine and put it up on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fSvyv0urTE

I asked him about some statements he had made about how the MSA had financial connections to "jihadist terrorists". Of course he couldn't back his bullshit up, so he just squirmed around and accused me of being a terrorist, lol.

So I figure we could use this thread to discuss how pathetic David and others of his Ilk are for trying to defend one of most oppressive states in modern history. Also, good strategies on how to confront these cowards and show them for the worms they are. Death to Israel.

In the wake of Arizona’s SB 1070, illegal immigration is at the forefront of national discussion for the first time since the defeat of amnesty in 2007.  Arizona’s law, which makes illegal presence a state crime, has rallied supporters of immigration enforcement.  The open borders lobby is pretending that the sky is falling and using the law to demand that the federal government grant an amnesty.

Lost in this debate is any discussion of lowering legal immigration levels.  In fact, many opponents of amnesty argue that while we need to stop illegal immigration, we should increase legal immigration.

Amnesty backers cannot deny that the 1986 amnesty failed to stop illegal immigration, so they now blame the problem on the fact that we did not increase legal immigration enough after the Act.  They argue we can prevent future illegal immigration by simply increasing legal immigration alongside an amnesty.  Luis Gutierrez’s amnesty bill includes a special visa to “prevent unauthorized migration” by simply increasing legal immigration from the country where illegal immigrants come from.

Most Americans do not know just how many legal immigrants we let in each year.  The Department of Homeland Security just issued their statistics for new legal permanent immigrants in 2009.  Last year, we issued 1,130,818 green cards, the fourth highest year since 1914.  From 2000-2009, we issued over 10 million green cards, the highest decade of American history.  Currently, there are 38 million immigrants, 24 million of whom are in the workforce.  This does not include temporary workers.  DHS did not release the 2009 figures yet, but they issued 912,735 temporary employment authorizations in 2008.

Most of these immigrants are low skilled and from the Third World.  Less than 10% of new green card holders are from Europe.  People of extraordinary ability, investors, and immigrants with advanced degrees made up less than 8% of the new immigrants.

Faced with these numbers, how can anyone argue with a straight face that we don’t admit enough immigrants?

Illegal immigration is a huge problem, and we need to step up enforcement and reject amnesty.  However, all the problems caused by illegal immigration are exacerbated by massive legal immigration.

Massive legal immigration undercuts the wages of American workers and causes unemployment.  Of the 1.1 million new green cards we issued last year, 808,478 were to working age immigrants.  During this same time period, over five million Americans lost their jobs.  With these numbers, there are no jobs Americans won’t do.  Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American citizens’ wages go down 3-4% for every 10% increase of foreign workers—legal or illegal.

Massive legal immigration strains social services.  Illegal aliens are barred from most needs based welfare programs.  After being in this country for five years, legal immigrants are eligible for almost all government services.  Although there are loopholes and weak enforcement mechanisms, illegal aliens are still banned from receiving benefits in Obamacare.  However, the bill specifically eliminated the five year wait period in the public charge doctrine, which will allow legal immigrants access to government healthcare the moment they set foot on American soil.

Massive legal immigration endangers national security.   The vast majority Muslim legal immigrants do not support terrorism, but their large numbers allow terrorists to blend into the immigrant community.  The Center for Immigration Studies analyzed every Islamic extremist known to be involved in terrorist plots from 1993 through the September 11 attacks.  Of the 48 terrorists, 36% were naturalized citizens or had permanent green cards, 33% had temporary visas, 6% were asylum applicants, and only 25% were illegal aliens.

Finally, massive legal immigration causes massive illegal immigration.  As legal immigration has increased since Ted Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act, illegal immigration has risen alongside it.  The top sending countries for legal immigration are also the top sending countries for illegal immigration.  In another report by the Center for Immigration Studies, “Two Sides of the Same Coin: The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration,” Jim Edwards explains that “The incentive to immigrate to the United States arises from opportunity, the experiences of relatives or peers, and other forces. Liberal family-based immigration preferences, along with myriad nonimmigrant visa classes from tourist to student to business investor, provide ample immigration opportunity to many more people. Whereas one might not otherwise have contemplated uprooting and moving halfway around the globe before, the existence of opportunity affects one’s decisions.”

When told the facts, the American people almost unanimously support cutting back on immigration.  In February, a Zogby poll asked, “putting aside the question of legal status for a moment and focusing only on the totals, is the number of immigrants entering the country each year too high, too low, or just right.”  67% said the number was too high, 14% said it was just right, and only 4% said it was too low.

Individual legal immigrants are not to blame for these problems.  They came here in search of a better life and played by the rules.  The real culprits are the politicians who put cheap labor ahead of the interests of the American people.  With 25 million out of work, it’s time to put the American citizens first by issuing a moratorium on legal immigration.

Virgil Goode served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1997-2009, representing the 5th congressional district of Virginia.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Charles Jacobs, a columnist for the Boston Jewish Advocate who is concerned about the failure of leadership in America and in the Jewish community to deal with anti-Semitism. He has done a series exposing the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for failing to deal with Islamic anti-Semitism. He’s been widely published, including in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Jerusalem Post, and the Encyclopedia Britannica. He has appeared on local and national television and radio, including NBC, CBS, NPR, CNN and PBS. He received his doctoral degree in social policy from Harvard. In 2007, he was named by the Forward newspaper as one of America ’s 50 top Jewish leaders.

FP: Dr. Charles Jacobs, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Tell us about the series you are doing on the ADL and its failure to deal with Islamic anti-Semitism. What have you discovered?

Jacobs: Thanks, Jamie.  Let me provide some context.  The Jewish community has come under siege. We have had a wonderful 50 years after the end of WWII but the world has changed and unfortunately some of our leaders seem not to have recognized this.  Given our small size and our sizeable foes, the Jewish community has always valued unity. Unity is important, but I reluctantly decided to become critical of some of our leaders because of the seriousness and urgency of the current situation.

A few months back, I decided to break what is in effect a gentlemen’s agreement among Jewish leaders not to criticize each other in public. At the end of an op-ed about Wafa Sultan, the courageous Muslim reformer who risks her life daily to fight real threats posed by Islamists to us all, I chided ADL for its relative silence on this, the greatest threat to Jews today. When Abe Foxman responded with a letter to my home town Jewish paper attacking me, I began a series of articles on the ADL’s failure, and I proposed a list of key principles for beginning a serious effort against Islamic anti-Semitism.

Bernard Lewis explains that anti-Semitism is a virus that morphs over time. After the Holocaust, it became no longer acceptable for most in Western societies to hate Jews for the old reasons — either because of our religion (as “Christ-killers”) or because of our race – the Nazis taught we were racial vermin. Instead Jews were coming to be hated in the West because of their state. As you know, this animus against Israel comes mostly from the Left. At the same time, Radical Islam, with its virulent, theologically based anti-Semitism, surges throughout the Muslim realm. So Jews now are in a New Time, a daunting situation that can be described as a perfect storm. Unexpectedly, we became targeted simultaneously by two powerful world currents – anti-Israel Leftist “Palestinianism” and Islamic anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, Jewish leaders and their organizations, for the most part, have not responded effectively to this new situation.

For years, as President of the David Project, I had been writing articles and speaking with top Jewish leaders behind the scenes about this, urging them to call the Jews to order, to announce and explain the “New Time” and the new threat profile, and to create strategies to effectively respond. It was extremely frustrating. I recall several years ago the American Jewish Committee published a powerful pamphlet authored by Robert Wistrich on Islamic anti-Semitism. It was shocking and could have been an effective tool to awaken the Jewish community to what Wistrich showed was a looming existential threat. Yet in Boston that pamphlet stayed mostly on AJC’s shelves. I ordered copies from their New York office and used it in our summer training programs for college bound Jewish students. It should have – and could have — become a tool for AJC to run a national mass educational campaign about the realities and dangers of Islamic anti-Semitism.  That didn’t happen.

Two years ago I attended a three day conference in Jerusalem on Global Anti-Semitism sponsored by Israel ’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Senior leaders of American Jewry were present. We all heard how Islamic anti-Semitism – theologically based, was spread with Saudi funding to mosques and madrassas throughout the Islamic world, instructing tens if not hundreds of millions of people that Jews were the sons of monkeys and pigs and that to kill us is a holy deed. It was a breakthrough conference: Hundreds of Jewish leaders, teachers, scholars sat through days of powerful presentations. Everyone agreed.  I sat right behind Abe Foxman. But ADL made no significant change. Attending conferences is necessary but not sufficient. Talk is cheap. We must become activist in fighting against the new anti-Semitism. We must go beyond talking to each other and wringing our hands.

FP: Tell us about this “gentlemen’s agreement” between Jewish leaders about not being critical of other Jewish leaders.

Jacobs: Yes, there is a sort of “inside baseball” aspect to this. There are very practical economic, social and political reasons that Jews who head organizations, or who are otherwise vulnerable to powerful push-back, are essentially blocked from issuing even very responsible and important criticisms of other Jewish leaders who they think are doing foolish or even harmful things. In the case of the ADL, I know several prominent Jewish leaders who agree with my criticism 110%, but could not speak out publicly without great risk. First of all, they might have people on their boards or important donors who also donate to ADL or who think that their criticism of ADL would hurt their own organization. There is also the fear of counter criticism. Then there is the possibility that such a powerful organization as the ADL would speak badly of you, might even block your access to some Jewish audiences.  And you run the risk that there are many Jews, who while they might agree with the criticism, still don’t like “our dirty laundry” out in the public.

This is a structural problem, harmful to Jewish interests because this code of silence, this Jewish omerta, blocks public discussion of Jewry’s most urgent and serious matters: where is our leadership is taking us, how are our limited communal resources allocated? In this case, it was widely understood by people deeply knowledgeable that the ADL failure to adjust to the new threat profile was extraordinarily harmful, but nobody could break the silence. I myself only could do it after I left the David Project and became freed of organizational constraints. By the way, all the people who knew but couldn’t say are rooting me on.

FP: Abe Foxman, ADL’s head, has responded to your criticisms and there is an emerging dispute in the Jewish community. Can you talk a bit about this debate and dialogue that has emerged?

Jacobs: Yes, Foxman has been writing letters – to the Jerusalem Post and to the Boston Jewish Advocate, countering my criticism. These letters are factually wrong and they skirt or misstate the issues. Actually they unintentionally prove my point.

For example, Foxman wrote a sharp and somewhat defensive response to the Advocate which tried to show how much the ADL was doing about Islamic anti-Semitism but which only could cite one specific public “action” – a speech he gave almost four years ago. The only other examples he provided were private briefings, which cannot be checked or assessed for their effectiveness.

Meanwhile, other Jewish newspapers have picked up the debate. The Detroit Jewish News editor, Robert Sklar, wrote a long editorial citing my concerns and inviting more discussion. The Connecticut Jewish Ledger devoted an entire page to the debate, publishing my first column alongside Abe’s response, and offering its pages for future discussions. I’ve been hearing from other editors and also from ADL insiders. Finally, I was sent a recent video interview on NewsMax where Abe now says that “fundamentalist extremist Islam is the greatest threat” we face. Good.  I hope it’s a start.

FP: Why do you think most Jewish leaders and organizations are so hesitant to confront the threat of radical Islam?

Jacobs: There are three reasons: First is a fear of being attacked as racists, bigots and Islamophobes – a line of attack that has been particularly effective against Jewish organizations.

Second is a fear of being targeted for “defamation” suits like the one launched against activists and media outlets in Boston who reported on, or asked questions about the radical connections of leaders of the Saudi-funded Islamic Center in Roxbury. The Boston ADL branch was itself targeted with a threatening subpoena by the Islamic Center after the ADL had the temerity to speak out against an anti-Semitic Islamic Center trustee.  Sadly, and to my point, after being subpoenaed by the Islamic Center, the ADL deserted the issue completely and has to this day remained silent – even though the greatest threat to Boston’s Jews comes from this new base of Radical Islam in our city. Even after Boston’s Jewish establishment leadership educated itself about the Islamic Center and boycotted its grand opening, the ADL, the Boston ADL, on orders from Foxman one imagines, remains silent.

But I think the real reason that our leaders are silent is that they simply don’t know what to do. Rather than admit this, they stay mum and mostly limit their public efforts to issuing reports, posting articles on their Web sites and speaking about the matter in private or to small groups. Finally, I think that encouraging a public discussion of these matters may influence Jewish leaders to reconsider their public silence on this significant threat to the community and the American public.

FP: Expand for us a bit about the common ground that the Left has found with Islamists in hating Israel and Jews.

Jacobs: Some of the best analyses of the Left/Muslim alliance have been done by David Horowitz who was himself a radical in the 60’s and knew the left from the indise. In brief, he and other writers point out that The Left and Radical Islam find common ground: both are anti-Western ideologies and they share common enemies: Western capitalism, traditional Judaism and Christianity, and individualism. Both are totalistic belief systems intending to govern the social/religious as well as the economic aspects of society. Both are “utopianist” — guided by a vision of a perfect social order, the one under “scientific socialism,” the other under Allah. Both drive towards a state governed by a unitary power – the dictatorship of the Caliphate, or of the “Proletariat” or of the Socialist State apparatus.  The “left” thinks it can ride the Islamist tiger. It believes its own theory that “religion is the opiate of the people” — an “epiphenomenon, not a real force, but an illusion used by those in power, a narcotic for the masses. But if the left – Heaven help us – partners with Islamists to drive Western, that is to say, Judeo-Christian, civilization over a cliff, every leftist will be devoured before the Islamists come to believe Marx was right about Allah being an illusion.

Radical Islam is a more intractable adversary than any secular totalitarianism. In the aftermath of WWI, three world ideologies emerged from a devastated world order: communism, fascism and Islamism. The West defeated the first two… by force and free speech. Islamism will be much harder to defeat, first because its adherents are willing to die for Heaven. (No Nazi ever blew himself up to kill a Jew. There are Muslims who would do it every day.) Though people have called communism a “religion,” it only sort of is a religion. A real religion, with an eternal, Heavenly G-d, has the power to demand much more from its adherents. To rehearse this truth on a larger scale: as everyone has heard by now, Western threats to massively retaliate after a Soviet nuclear attack worked because Russian communists did not want to die for Marxism. But it seems the rulers of Iranian Muslims don’t mind dying at all. In fact, they may be speaking truthfully when they tell us they yearn for martyrdom for their heavenly religion.

FP: What can Jews and non-Jews do to help confront the New Time anti-Semitism we now face? And what do you recommend to Jews who want to do something but have been quiet up till now?

Jacobs: Let me set forth, in draft form, a brief summary of a 4-point program for Jews who have come to understand that we live in under a new threat profile — that radical leftists have teamed up with Islamic anti-Semites, themselves driving a global jihad and that Radical Islam has now penetrated American society.

1. The first and most important thing is a Wake-Up Call. World Jewry needs to be educated about the threat: We live in a “new time” and we must respond – with focus, energy and Jewish creativity. Most Jewish establishment leaders have failed to mobilize a response. A new kind of leadership must emerge and rally the people, a leadership that is willing to speak out honestly.  You note that I have criticized Abe Foxman of the ADL, but this criticism pretty much extends to most of Jewry’s American leadership. The one notable exception would by Mort Klein of the Zionists Organization of America. I also notice that David Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee, speaks more about this…and yet I do not see the sort of alarm bell needed, no “call to order” of American Jewry.

2. Develop Alliances. Islamic anti- Semitism forms part of a more general attack on the West. Therefore Jews have potential allies around the world who – out of their own self-interest – will join them in this effort. Anti-Jihadist alliances are already emerging in the United States. In New York, the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam (HRCARI) – a rainbow coalition of Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, gays, women, atheists, Muslim moderates and apostates from Islam – is holding rallies and protests against Islamist assaults on any and all targeted peoples around the world.

3. Analysis of religious texts and teachings. The enormous, life-saving reversals in Christian theological teachings about Jews could not have been achieved without years of intensive Jewish critique of Christian Biblical texts and traditions. It was the sensitive sharing of these studies with Christians of good will that turned the tide. If the Muslim world is ever to experience theological (and social) re-interpretations of its “teachings of contempt” about Jews – which predominate but are also contradicted in the Islamic canon – then Jews will have to confront, study and speak about the theological anti- Semitism embedded in Muslim holy books. (The ADL flees from this task: It criticizes Jew-hatred in the Arab media without reference to the Islamic sources.)

4. Activism on behalf of the community. Jewish activists seem to prefer almost every cause in the world, except what is in their own community’s interest. These talented people need to be enlisted – to sponsor conferences on Islamic anti-Semitism and Islamist penetration of American society; to expose the Saudi lobby and its impact on silencing scrutiny of anything Islamic; to lobby our elected officials about the dangers facing the country; and to campaign for implementation of sensitivity training for university students who come from lands with anti-Semitic cultures.

FP: Dr. Charles Jacobs, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Intellectuals and Society
By Thomas Sowell
Basic Books, $29.95,
Review by David Forsmark

George Orwell famously said some things are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them, for no ordinary man could be such a fool.

Thomas Sowell has made a career out of debunking those very things—most famously elite assumptions about racism and economics in classic books like Ethnic America, Race and Culture, Knowledge and Decisions, and The Vision of the Annointed.

I’ve often defined a postmodern intellectual as someone who is trained to be sure he knows better.  Thomas Sowell, however, is a true intellectual in the best sense.  His mind is not only open to the fact that he might not know better, his superb new book explains why it is impossible for one dictator or a small group of elites to know better than the great unwashed how to run their lives.

A constant theme of Sowell’s work is that elites regularly—and with disastrous effect—substitute their assumptions for the actual on the ground knowledge of the masses of people.  In Intellectuals and Society, he singles out so-called “intellectuals,” those whose profession is trafficking in ideas, and the echo chamber they tend to inhabit.

He charges that such people may be “intellects,” but that doesn’t mean they are very smart.

“The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect but not enough to encompass intelligence, which involves combining intellect with judgment and care in selecting relevant explanatory factors and in establishing empirical tests of any theory that emerges. Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect.  Wisdom is the rarest quality of all — the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce a coherent understanding.”

Of course, once you have spent a lifetime debunking things that are accepted as Gospel by the “intellectual class,” and prove Orwell’s thesis on a daily basis, the term “pseudo- intellectual” starts to lose its meaning:

The term “pseudo- intellectual” has sometimes been applied to less intelligent or less knowledgeable members of this profession. But just as a bad cop is still a cop — no matter how much we may regret it — so a shallow, confused, or dishonest intellectual is just as much a member of that occupation as is a paragon of the profession.

Recently, Boston College’s Alan Wolfe, a prime example of the above definition– wrote an intellectually dishonest pseudo-review of Intellectuals and Society for the usually rigorous New Republic—which David Horowitz dispatched quite nicely.

Wolfe’s review might as well have been titled, “I Represent That Remark.”  (I have done a couple of radio interviews with Wolfe, and found him to be less than impressive.) While Horowitz doubted that Wolfe, who protested the lack of musicians and novelists in Sowells’ discussion, had read the parameters of the discussion on page 2, I think it’s more likely Wolfe made it to the page 4 definition of pseudo-intellectuals, felt the pang of self-recognition, and then went on his very personal rant against Sowell.

Wolfe, ironically supplies the perfect example of how intellectuals who share the currently anointed vision of the world make what Sowell calls “Arguments without Arguments:”

Although many intellectuals are especially well-equipped by talent and training to engage in logically structured arguments using empirical evidence to analyze contending ideas, many of their political or ideological views are promoted by verbal virtuosity and evading structured arguments and empirical evidence. Among the many arguments without arguments are claims that opposing views are “simplistic” and opposing individuals unworthy, as well as assertion of “rights” and attributing to adversaries a belief and panaceas or golden ages.

…Before an explanation can be too simple, it must first be wrong.  But often the fact that some explanation seems to simple becomes a substitute for showing that it is wrong.

Usually, economists who discuss Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” do so in the context of business and the economy.  In Intellectuals and Society, Sowell not only gives the best explanation of why the invisible hand of self-interest works better than a central plan, he then applies it to subjects as far afield from economics as war and police shootings.

Sowell argues that the intelligentsia devalue “mundane knowledge” in favor of special knowledge.  However, mundane knowledge is what it takes to actually get anything done.

Someone who is considered to be a ‘knowledgeable’ person usually has a special kind of knowledge — perhaps academic or other kinds of knowledge not widely found in the population at large. Someone who has even more knowledge of more mudane things — plumbing, carpentry, or baseball, for example — is less likely to be called “knowledgeable” by those intellectuals, for what they don’t know isn’t knowledge.. .. It is by no means certain that the kind of knowledge mastered by intellectuals is necessarily more consequential in its effect in the real world.

For instance, it may be impressive that a physicist understands Bernoulli’s principles of aerodynamic lift, but you wouldn’t want him in the cockpit second guessing your pilot.  Sowell argues that the smartest man cannot know even 1% of what would be required to run the lives of the people in a community, but that is what experts, politicians and intellectuals attempt in their hubris.

Despite the often expressed dichotomy between chaos and planning, what is called “planning” is the forcible suppression of millions of people’s plans by government imposed plan.

….what is called “social” planning are in fact government orders over writing the plans and mutual accommodations of millions of other people.

That is why free markets, judicial restraint, and reliance on decisions and traditions growing out of the experiences of the many — rather than the presumptions of elite few — are so important to those who do not share the social vision prevalent among intellectual elites.

The intellectuals’ exultation of “reason” often comes at the expense of experience, allowing them to have sweeping confidence about things in which they have little or no knowledge or experience.

Intellectuals and Society is one of those books you want to read with a red pencil, to highlight nuggets like those above for later use.

While intellectuals’ visions cause social and economic disruption in many areas, none are so immediately deadly as their approach to war and foreign relations.  Sowell indicts the anointed for ignoring all empirical evidence and experience to the contrary, and insisting that the next dictator—from Hitler to Ahmadinejad—is the one who can be dealt with diplomatically.

Sowell concludes with a list of the anointed intelligentsia’s assumptions which have turned the world upside down, of which, he says, a complete refutation would fill volumes. “More important,” he says ruefully, “It fills our schools and colleges.”

The intelligentsia have treated the conclusions of their vision as axioms to be followed, rather than hypotheses to be tested.

Some among the intelligentsia have treated reality itself as objective or illusory, thereby putting current intellectual fashions and fads on the same plane as verified knowledge and the cultural wisdom distilled from generations of experience…

They have filtered information in the media, in the schools, and in academia, who to leave out things that threaten their vision of the world.

Above all, they exalt themselves by denigrating the society in which they live and turning its members against each other.

Of course, as he points out early in the book, an intellectual is someone who can lecture a police department on how many shots are sufficient to bring down an armed suspect under stressful conditions—when he himself has never even fired a pistol on a range.

Long before the Freakonomics phenomenon, Thomas Sowell was making this kind of real life critique from an economist’s point of view. Intellectuals and Society is accessible, witty, practical, brilliantly argued, and essential reading.  It’s sure to infuriate self-important elites.

In other words, it’s a typical Thomas Sowell book.

Of the many intellectual perversions currently taking root on college campuses, perhaps none is more contradictory to what should be one of higher education’s core values than the suppression of free speech. With alarming regularity, speakers are shouted down, booed, jeered, and barrage with vitriol, all at the hands of groups who give lip service the notion of academic free speech, and who demand it when their speech is at issue, but have no interest in listening to, or letting others listen to, ideas that contradict their own world view.

Coincidentally, just recently two Israeli officials, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon and ambassador to the United States Michael Oren had the unpleasant experience of confronting virulent anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian Muslim students whose ideology on academic debate seems to be “free speech for me, but not for thee.”

Ayalon, who spoke at Oxford University, had his speech interrupted by several audience members, including one who yelled incessantly and called Ayalon a “racist” and “a war criminal” while waving a Palestinian flag, another student who loudly read passages of the incendiary Goldstone Report, calls from one charming scholar to “slaughter the Jews,” the intrusion of a third student who remained standing for the entire balance of the lecture while she hurled anti-Israel invective, and another radical brat who threatened to Ayalon that “we will do to you what we did to Milosevic.”

The genteel, soft-spoken Ambassador Oren did not fare much better during his visit to the University of California at Irvine, a notorious hotbed of radical anti-Israelism by Muslim students. During the aborted speech to some 500 people about U.S.-Israeli relations, which was loudly interrupted ten times, boorish hecklers screamed over Oren’s talk such profound observations as “Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech,” “I accuse you of murder,”  “How many Palestinians have you killed?” and “Israel is a murderer.” Even after he took a 20-minute recess to let the crowd cool off and regain its collective composure, he returned to the podium with more volleys of invective, shouting, and speech-stopping bombast from the Muslim students, eleven of whom―eight from UC-Irvine (including the Muslim Student Union’s president) and three from UC Riverside—were eventually escorted out of the hall and arrested.

The fact that UC-I’s habitually craven administrators, led by feckless Chancellor Michael Drake, were even motivated enough by the students’ errant behavior to have them ejected from the event is a promising sign. While the University has always claimed to be dedicated to encouraging debate and scholarly inquiry by letting the Muslim Student Union mount annual hate-fests to demonize and vilify Israel and Jews, the MSU has effectively hijacked all discussion of the Middle East on campus, and their odious events are not platforms at which opposing views are aired and discussed. In fact, these so-called pro-Palestinians seem to care very little about the actual self-determination and state building of the hapless Palestinians. As is frequently the case when speaking about the Israeli/Arab conflict, the discussion often glosses over the real problems of Palestinian culture, politics, and society (including its cult of death), and targets all criticism on the perceived defects of Israel, Zionism, and Jewish power.

Ambassador Oren is hardly what even his staunchest critics could consider an Islamophobe or even a rabid Zionist, perfectly willing to trample the Palestinian’s aspirations for their putative state. A Columbia and Princeton graduate, former Georgetown professor and fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalem Center, the American-born Oren is also the author of two seminal books on the Middle East, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East and Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present, all of which clearly make him at least as qualified to speak about the Israeli/Palestinian situation as the raucous, boorish students who had decided, in advance of his UC-I appearance, that Oren was morally unfit to even appear on their campus.

This notion—that pro-Israel speakers and scholars do not even deserve, on a moral or intellectual basis, an opportunity to participate in scholarly debate is a very dangerous one, even if it comes from tendentious students. It starts with the assumption that Israel, because of its perceived moral defects and its oppression of the hapless Palestinians and the theft of their lands, does not even have the right to participate in intellectual debate, that academic free speech in Israel’s case can be modified and is not absolute. And while Muslim students and other campus radicals have, both at UC-I and other college campuses, seen to it that speech that they do not approve of, spoken by people with whom they disagree, is shut down with the “heckler’s veto,” they have never missed an opportunity to invite their own stable of slimy, anti-Israel, anti-American speakers. What is more, these speakers have never been shouted down, chased away, or jeered by those students and professors who might well have found their views to be repellant.

A closer look at the ideas tossed about by some of the MSU’s invited guests suggests both the moral incoherence and intellectual debasement that characterizes the human output of these events. Amir-Abdel Malik-Ali, for instance, former Nation of Islam member, convert to Islam, and cheerleader for Hamas and Hezbollah, has been a ubiquitous, poisonous presence on the Irvine campus who never hesitates to castigate Israel, Zionists, Jewish power, and Jews themselves as he weaves incoherent, hallucinatory conspiracies about the Middle East and the West.  Speaking from a podium with an execrable banner reading “Israel, the 4th Reich” in May 2006, Malik-Ali referred to Jews as “new Nazis” and “a bunch of straight-up punks.”  “The truth of the matter is your days are numbered,” he admonished Jews everywhere. “We will fight you. We will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious.”

At a 2008 event, dubbed “Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust,” Malik-Ali was at his hateful best once again, standing behind a banner that read “Death to Apartheid“ while he wildly contended that “The Islamic revival should only be feared by those who support imperialism, colonialism, racism, occupation . . . Groups like Hamas and Hezbollah” are not the real terrorists at all, he proclaimed. No, the actual “terrorists are the United States; the terrorists are Israel!”

Another odious guest speaker who regularly makes appearances on the hate-fest circuit is Muhammad al-Asi, an anti-Semitic, anti-America Muslim activist from Washington, DC who has written, among other notorious ideas, that “The Israeli Zionist are [sic] the true and legitimate object of liquidation.” At a MSU-sponsored event in February 2008, “From Auschwitz to Gaza: The Politics of Genocide,” which repulsively tried to draw parallels between the Holocaust and Hamas-controlled Gaza, al-Asi was a featured speaker. In his speech, he repeated the canard of Jewish control of world politics, suggesting that “Zionists or what some people call the Jewish lobby” had reduced the United States to playing “second fiddle to the Israeli government.”

Just months after 9/11, al-Asi had similar invective to utter towards Jews, in the context of Israeli oppression of Palestinians. Using his favorite image of the ghetto when describing Jews, he observed that “We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly [sic] with other human beings. You can take a Jew out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the Jew, and this has been demonstrated time and time again in Occupied Palestine.”

If ever there were utterances which deserved to be shouted down and drowned out with reason and fact, al-Asi’s hallucinatory ravings probably would qualify. But despite continual complaints from the Orange County Task Force on Anti-Semitism and other concerned UC-I stakeholders, the tenor and frequency of speakers at the MSU’s lurid hate-fests continue unabated, seemingly with the tacit approval of the university administration. The same Muslim students who could not abide even the presence of Israel’s ambassador to the United States, listen rapturously to the loathsome bloviating of Malik Ali, al-Asi, Norman Finkelstein, Ward Churchill, and any other ideological thug who have come to UC-I’s campus with the purpose of vilifying Israel and defaming Jews.

It is, of course, the MSU’s choice to hear whatever opinions they wish from whichever speakers to whom they choose to listen. What is not their choice, however, is to be able to prevent other views from being heard on campus, particularly the complex and thorny Israeli/Palestinian conversation, merely because pro-Palestinian students have decided that they will not recognize the very existence or legitimacy of a sovereign nation, Israel, nor hear that ideas of individuals who are able to defend it and explain the Israeli side of the argument. University officials must repeatedly make clear that campuses must allow many different views and perspectives, and should not try to exclude unpopular thought from being heard in the proverbial marketplace of ideas.

Concern for the long-suffering Palestinians may be a commendable effort, but the exclusion and demonization of Israeli speakers and government officials from the academic community as a tool for seeking social justice for that one group “represents a profound betrayal of the cardinal principle of intellectual endeavor,” observed commentator Melanie Phillips, “which is freedom of speech and debate,” something universities should never stop diligently defending. And they should certainly never abandon that pursuit to the baleful whining of ideological bullies intent on suppressing the views of others.

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., director of Boston University’s Program in Publishing, just finished a book about the world-wide assault on Israel taking place on college campuses, “Genocidal Liberalism: The University’s Jihad Against Israel.”

Here is a fine article on our FDI event at CPAC -- a sharp contrast to the shoddy and biased Fox report. "CPAC Day 2 - Jihad: The Political Third Rail," by Mark J. Koenig at the NewsRealblog, February 20:

(All photos provided courtesy of Pamela Geller - see her coverage of this event here)

While the agenda for day 2 of the CPAC conference featured a long list of additional conservative speakers and panel discussions, I will be focusing here on what I believe to be the single most important event of this three-day conference. Jihad: The Political Third Rail, was a panel discussion presented by Freedom Defense Initiative, a new activist organization started by Pamela Geller of atlasshrugs.com, and the Freedom Center's own Robert Spencer, who runs jihadwatch.org.

This panel featured several American and international resistance fighters working to stop the spread of Islamic supremacism and most importantly, America's infiltration by Muslim sympathizers. The central focus of the event was the Islamic jihad against the West and how Islamic organizations are working to silence free speech both in Europe and America. Security was very tight for this event, and it drew a standing-room only crowd, as you can see in the photo below.

Pamela Geller started the discussion while video was shown of Muslim radicals rioting in multiple cities across Europe and North America over the past couple of years. She pointed out that this is not being reported in the major media, and that fully TWO THIRDS of the jihad attacks since 9-11 happened in 2009. As Pamela stated, there is a cover-up in progress and "Truth has become the new hate speech."

First to speak was Wafa Sultan, author of A God Who Hates, and one of three witnesses approved to testify for Geert Wilders in his hate speech trial. Ms. Sultan is a former Muslim and outspoken critic of Islam. She stated that she has had countless fatwas issued against her. After listing several recent jihadist attacks, including the Fort Hood massacre and the media's unwillingness to connect the dots, she asked: "Jihad - is this a word we dare not speak?" Sultan pointed out that Islam is not merely a religion - it is a dangerous totalitarian political ideology.

After pointing out that President Obama has appointed a special envoy to the OIC, Sultan explained that this envoy is closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. She asked: "Is this man's loyalty to Islam or to the U.S.?" She explained as well that this envoy has been working for some time now to stifle speech critical of Islam.

Body scanners were her next topic. Sultan stated that she believes this machine could be employed against Muslim radicals as a powerful psychological weapon because of its potential for humiliation. It should be noted that Sultan is trained as a psychiatrist. Unfortunately, she stated, after a fatwa was issued claiming these scanners violate Muslim teachings regarding modesty, our TSA agreed to capitulate and substitute pat-downs by members of the same sex for Muslims.

Finally, Sultan explained that Saudi Arabia is a mastermind of Islamic terror, and that Saudi King Abdullah has the power to enforce changes in Muslim behavior if he is brought under enough pressure from the U.S. government. "September 11th was tragic, but infiltration of Islam is a subject of equal concern" she said. "We must fight it."

Robert Spencer introduced the next speaker - Stephen Coughlin - a former Pentagon Islamic law specialist who was fired from his job for his analysis of Islamic infiltration. Coughlin provided a clear and cogent analysis of the Islamic threat. He explained that the question of whether or not these terrorists are following 'true' Islam is irrelevant from a fact-driven perspective. They have repeatedly told us these are the reasons they fight jihad.

A vital part of Coughlin's discussion dealt with the doctrine of abrogation within Islam. This doctrine states that Mohammed was given progressive revelation of Allah's will, and that the later Koranic verses supersede and nullify earlier contradictory more peaceful verses. This is something that is recognized by all schools of Islamic jurisprudence. Coughlin also demonstrated that since the 9-11 commission report, political correctness has expunged words such as Muslim, enemy, Al-Qaeda and Islam from official government documents including the Ft. Hood massacre report. Coughlin: "The 9-11 commission has been completely undermined. You cannot defeat an enemy you are not allowed to define. By definition, this administration has no strategy to defeat this enemy since they refuse to define it."...

Read it all.

Hussain, now a deputy associate White House counsel, was quoted back in 2004 decrying the prosecution of a Florida professor accused of ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian. However, CNSNews reported Monday that the article quoting Hussain, published in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, was subsequently sanitized on the Web to remove the quotes and all other references to Hussain. The changes appear to have taken place in 2007 or later.

According to the original story, Hussain told a panel discussion at a Muslim Students Association conference in '04 that the criminal case against Al-Arian was one of a series of “politically motivated persecutions.” Hussain also reportedly asserted that Al-Arian was being “used politically to squash dissent.”

Washington Report news editor Delinda Hanley said Tuesday that Hussain's quotes were taken down because the quotes attributed to him actually came from Al-Arian's daughter, Laila Al-Arian, who took part in the same panel discussion. “Laila Al-Arian said the things attributed to Rashad Hussain, and an intern who attended the event and wrote up the article made an error, which was corrected on our Web site by deleting the two quotes in their entirety,” Hanley wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO.

However, the author of the article, Shereen Kandil, said Tuesday that she stood by her original report.

“When I worked as a reporter, I understood how important it was to quote the right person, and accurately,” Kandil wrote in response to an e-mailed query from POLITICO asking about the possibility of a misquotation.

“I have never mixed my sources and wouldn't have quoted Rashad Hussain if it came from Laila Al-Arian. If the editors from WRMEA felt they wanted to remove Rashad Hussain from the article, my assumption is that they did it for reasons other than what you're saying,” said Kandil, who also works in the Obama administration as a program analyst for the Middle East in the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of International Affairs.

A White House spokesman, who asked not to be named, said Tuesday afternoon that Hussain “certainly doesn’t recall making that statement. He was on the panel to talk about his legal writing on civil liberties. Ms. Al-Arian spoke about her father.” The spokesman said he had no information about whether Hussain had requested the change to the story.

Reached by phone Monday night, Laila Al-Arian said she thought it was possible she made the statements ascribed to Hussain, but that no one from Washington Report called her to ask if the quotes did belong to her. “It's kind of sad that a right-wing, pseudo-news website gets as much credence,” Al-Arian said about the CNSNews account. “I don’t remember Rashad being there. It's possible that the quote could have been misattributed.”

via Mag says W.H. Islam envoy misquoted; writer denies – Josh Gerstein – POLITICO.com.

Despite the fact that in an act of petty malice and politically-motivated spite,  Leon Wieseltier has banned me (or mention of my work) from The New Republic for twenty-five years, I have always regarded the literary pages that he edits as the best “back of the book” section in the opinion magazine business. No more.

The current issue of The New Republic contains a vapid, mean-spirited, and indefensible attack on one of the most important intellectual figures of our time. Alan Wolfe’s review of Thomas Sowell’s new book, Intellectuals and Society, is not even a review. Not a single idea presented in the book is addressed in Wolfe’s text, which is simply a lengthy ad hominem attack on Sowell that displays astounding ignorance of both Sowell and his important intellectual oeuvre.

Wolfe begins with a self-revealing attack on Sowell for writing a book about intellectuals that,

“offers no discussion of literature, music and the arts.”

One wonders if Wolfe has read even the first pages of Sowell’s book, particularly p. 2 and the section called “Defining Intellectuals” where Sowell explains that,

“Here, ‘intellectuals’ refers to an occupational category, people whose occupation deals primarily with ideas — writers, academics and the like.”

In other words, it does not include musicians and artists and writers of fiction whose occupations do not deal primarily with ideas. This is just an indication of the intellectual sloppiness and vacuousness of Wolfe’s “review” which is really just an expression of inarticulate rage against an intellectual superior who has written a work skewering progressive idea-smiths like himself. Shame on Alan for writing this and on Leon for publishing it. It can be taken as another indication of the fact that we now live in a country so divided there are two Americas and two cultures which speak a different language.

The doctrine that only whites can be racist is, in fact, itself an instigation to hate crimes. It is a doctrine that has already spread to the secondary schools. The week after the Shepard killing, a Seattle father called a national radio talk show on which I was a guest, and told the audience that his son’s class in junior high school had been discussing the hate crime concept because of the killing. During the discussion, the teacher informed the class that only heterosexual whites could be racists. The caller’s son was unconvinced and brought up the savage beating of Reginald Denny during the Los Angeles riots by a group of black gang members. Surely, he suggested, this was a hate-crime. But his teacher corrected him. Even though Denny was pulled from his truck solely because he was white, and then beaten within an inch of his life, he could not be the victim of racial attitudes. The attempted murder of Reginald Denny was actually an act of rebellion by people who were themselves the victims of a white racist system, and the act they committed, therefore, could not be considered a hate crime. This is the perspective of academics who teach “whiteness studies,” of law professors who teach “critical race studies,” and no doubt of education professors busily transmitting the progressive world view to the next generation of high school instructors.

– Hating Whitey

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.)

"Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them."

However the apologists try to spin it, the bottom line is that Allah says you can hit your wife. And so often, Muslim men do just that. "Wife beaten to death for 'disobedience," by Mohammed Elsidafy for Emirates Business 24-7, February 1:

A woman was beaten by her husband after she refused to resume breastfeeding her baby, Dubai Criminal Court heard yesterday.

The defendant, MN, a 26-year-old Pakistani tailor, again ordered the woman, AF, to feed her baby, but she refused once more, put the baby on the bed and went onto the roof of their house.

There, she removed her headscarf, which annoyed her conservative Muslim husband. He then allegedlly slapped her and brought her back to her room.

When she left the room again and went back up to the roof, he allegedly hit her several times with a plastic pipe, and she fell to the ground. He lifted his wife up and lay her on the bed, but when her condition deteriorated, he took her to hospital. She passed away after a few days due to complications from an injury to her head.

The prosecution accused the husband, who has been jailed since April pending the case, of inflicting injuries on his wife that led to her death.

The defendant attended yesterday's session and appeared distracted. He denied the charge when questioned by the court.

According to testimony by Ali Mohammed, an anesthetisation consultant at Khalifa Hospital in Ajman, nurses consulted him on the victim's condition, telling him her husband had brought her in claiming she had fallen from a ladder.

Mohammed had her moved to the emergency ward, where it appeared on examination that she had been bruised in various places. Suspecting a criminal act, he alerted his superior and called the police.

The victim was operated upon a few days later. The forensic report showed the injuries on AF's body were a result of being hit with a solid object and death occured due to an injury to the head....

It is now thirteen days since I first posted about how Google is censoring negative search suggestions on Islam, and seven days since the mighty Internet giant claimed that this was not dhimmi self-censorship, but a "bug," and would soon be corrected.

Thirteen days, and a week during which presumably the techie masterminds at Google have been on this case, and still Google can't seem to figure out how to wire their search box so that it pops up suggestions for "Islam is" that are comparable to the suggestions you get for "Buddhism is" or "Hinduism is" or "Christianity is." Try it for yourself. Search for "Christianity is" at Google and a host of negative recommendations pop up:

It's the same thing for "Buddhism is," "Hinduism is," etc. But when you search for "Islam is," no negative recommendations come up -- indeed, no recommendations at all:

The same "bug" appears at Google's YouTube.

What a coincidence that Google's "bug" would crop up in a way that shelters the world's most thin-skinned religion from criticism! The one religion shielded from adverse judgment at Google is also the only religion that has is currently engaged in an organized campaign to stifle honest discussion about its texts and teachings that inspire violence. In 2008 the Secretary General of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest voting bloc at the United Nations today, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, warned the West about "red lines that should not be crossed" regarding free speech about Islam and terrorism. For years now the OIC has spearheaded an effort at the UN to compel member states to criminalize what it calls "defamation of religions," but by which it clearly means any honest discussion of the texts and teachings of Islam that jihadists invoke to justify violence and supremacism. Interestingly enough, the OIC stepped up this campaign in the wake of the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper that touched off worldwide Muslim riots. Google, at the time those riots were raging, was dutifully removing from YouTube videos that depicted the cartoons.

Thus when the OIC has Google, it doesn't need international edicts muzzling free speech. Like many on the Left, Google seems all too willing to carry water for the Islamic bloc's war against free speech and to oblige the OIC's totalitarian and thuggish influences, by voluntarily refraining from doing anything that might offend Muslims. While its restriction of the automated search suggestions may seem insignificant, its overall willingness to conform to notoriously fragile Islamic sensibilities and deep-six criticism of Islam is anything but trivial.

It is now thirteen days since I first posted about how Google is censoring negative search suggestions on Islam, and seven days since the mighty Internet giant claimed that this was not dhimmi self-censorship, but a "bug," and would soon be corrected.

Thirteen days, and a week during which presumably the techie masterminds at Google have been on this case, and still Google can't seem to figure out how to wire their search box so that it pops up suggestions for "Islam is" that are comparable to the suggestions you get for "Buddhism is" or "Hinduism is" or "Christianity is." Try it for yourself. Search for "Christianity is" at Google and a host of negative recommendations pop up:

It's the same thing for "Buddhism is," "Hinduism is," etc. But when you search for "Islam is," no negative recommendations come up -- indeed, no recommendations at all:

The same "bug" appears at Google's YouTube.

What a coincidence that Google's "bug" would crop up in a way that shelters the world's most thin-skinned religion from criticism! The one religion shielded from adverse judgment at Google is also the only religion that has is currently engaged in an organized campaign to stifle honest discussion about its texts and teachings that inspire violence. In 2008 the Secretary General of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest voting bloc at the United Nations today, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, warned the West about "red lines that should not be crossed" regarding free speech about Islam and terrorism. For years now the OIC has spearheaded an effort at the UN to compel member states to criminalize what it calls "defamation of religions," but by which it clearly means any honest discussion of the texts and teachings of Islam that jihadists invoke to justify violence and supremacism. Interestingly enough, the OIC stepped up this campaign in the wake of the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper that touched off worldwide Muslim riots. Google, at the time those riots were raging, was dutifully removing from YouTube videos that depicted the cartoons.

Thus when the OIC has Google, it doesn't need international edicts muzzling free speech. Like many on the Left, Google seems all too willing to carry water for the Islamic bloc's war against free speech and to oblige the OIC's totalitarian and thuggish influences, by voluntarily refraining from doing anything that might offend Muslims. While its restriction of the automated search suggestions may seem insignificant, its overall willingness to conform to notoriously fragile Islamic sensibilities and deep-six criticism of Islam is anything but trivial.

Twelve days, six days, and the best minds at Google, a pioneer and master of Internet technology, can't seem to figure out how to wire their search box so that it pops up suggestions for "Islam is" that are comparable to the suggestions you get for "Buddhism is" or "Hinduism is" or "Christianity is." Try it for yourself. Search for "Christianity is" at Google and a host of negative recommendations pop up:

It's the same thing for "Buddhism is," "Hinduism is," etc. But when you search for "Islam is," no negative recommendations come up -- indeed, no recommendations at all:

The same "bug" appears at Google's YouTube.

What a coincidence that Google's "bug" would crop up in a way that shelters the world's most thin-skinned religion from criticism! The one religion shielded from adverse judgment at Google is also the only religion that has is currently engaged in an organized campaign to stifle honest discussion about its texts and teachings that inspire violence. In 2008 the Secretary General of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest voting bloc at the United Nations today, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, warned the West about "red lines that should not be crossed" regarding free speech about Islam and terrorism. For years now the OIC has spearheaded an effort at the UN to compel member states to criminalize what it calls "defamation of religions," but by which it clearly means any honest discussion of the texts and teachings of Islam that jihadists invoke to justify violence and supremacism. Interestingly enough, the OIC stepped up this campaign in the wake of the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper that touched off worldwide Muslim riots. Google, at the time those riots were raging, was dutifully removing from YouTube videos that depicted the cartoons.

Thus when the OIC has Google, it doesn't need international edicts muzzling free speech. Like many on the Left, Google seems all too willing to carry water for the Islamic bloc's war against free speech and to oblige the OIC's totalitarian and thuggish influences, by voluntarily refraining from doing anything that might offend Muslims. While its restriction of the automated search suggestions may seem insignificant, its overall willingness to conform to notoriously fragile Islamic sensibilities and deep-six criticism of Islam is anything but trivial.

Google, the Internet's ubiquitous search engine, is under fire this week for censoring negative search results about Islam. If you type "Christianity is" into the Google search box, there immediately pop up a series of suggested completions to the sentence, most of them derogatory: "Christianity is bulls--t," "Christianity is not a religion," "Christianity is a lie," "Christianity is false," "Christianity is wrong," "Christianity is fake." No positive suggests come up. Likewise with "Buddhism is," and the sentence is once again completed with numerous negative suggestions: "Buddhism is wrong," "Buddhism is not what you think," and so on. But type in "Islam is," and nothing comes up at all. The negative suggestions inundating the searcher for other religions are nowhere to be seen.

Google, however, says it was all a mistake, and denies have done anything to favor Islam. "This is a bug," insisted a Google spokesman, "and we're working to fix it as quickly as we can." Oddly enough, however, even with all of Google's technical savvy, this "bug" persisted for days and continues as of this writing, long after Google's announcement that it would quickly be fixed.

Or perhaps it isn't so odd, in light of Google's long-established penchant for favoring the hard Left and its allies in the global jihad. Critics have complained for years about Google's tendency to decorate its logo colorfully for cherished days of the Left such as Earth Day and International Women's Day, while ignoring Christmas (aside from bland Holiday greetings) and Easter. What's more, Google-owned YouTube has more than once removed material critical of Islamic jihad supremacism, while allowing blood-curdling pro-jihad and vile anti-Semitic material to remain on the site. Google's policies on removing videos all too often has appeared to follow a consistent Leftist line: anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-jihad.

It is also a remarkable coincidence that Google's "bug" would appear in Google not about Judaism or Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism, but in connection with the world's most thin-skinned religion. The one religion shielded from adverse judgment at Google is also the only religion that has is currently engaged in an organized campaign to stifle honest discussion about its texts and teachings that inspire violence. In 2008 the Secretary General of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest voting bloc at the United Nations today, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, warned the West about "red lines that should not be crossed" regarding free speech about Islam and terrorism. For years now the OIC has spearheaded an effort at the UN to compel member states to criminalize what it calls "defamation of religions," but by which it clearly means any honest discussion of the texts and teachings of Islam that jihadists invoke to justify violence and supremacism. Interestingly enough, the OIC stepped up this campaign in the wake of the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper that touched off worldwide Muslim riots. Google, at the time those riots were raging, was dutifully removing from YouTube videos that depicted the cartoons.

Thus when the OIC has Google, it doesn't need international edicts muzzling free speech. Like many on the Left, Google seems all too willing to carry water for the Islamic bloc's war against free speech and to oblige the OIC's totalitarian and thuggish influences, by voluntarily refraining from doing anything that might offend Muslims. While its restriction of the automated search suggestions may seem insignificant, its overall willingness to conform to notoriously fragile Islamic sensibilities and deep-six criticism of Islam is anything but trivial.

What's more, what with Google's influence as by far the premier search engine, the idea that Western non-Muslims must make special allowances for easily-offended Muslims sets a precedent that can only bear bitter fruit in the future. Ultimately Google, and every individual, group, business, and governing authority in the West, is going to have to decide whether it is going to stand for the hard-won principles of free speech and free inquiry, or kowtow to Islamic supremacism and intimidation. When the censorship is voluntary and self-imposed, as in Google's case, it is all the more shameful.

Google, the Internet’s ubiquitous search engine, is under fire this week for censoring negative search results about Islam. If you type “Christianity is” into the Google search box, there immediately pop up a series of suggested completions to the sentence, most of them derogatory: “Christianity is bulls—t,” “Christianity is not a religion,” “Christianity is a lie,” “Christianity is false,” “Christianity is wrong,” “Christianity is fake.” No positive suggests come up. Likewise with “Buddhism is,” and the sentence is once again completed with numerous negative suggestions: “Buddhism is wrong,” “Buddhism is not what you think,” and so on. But type in “Islam is,” and nothing comes up at all. The negative suggestions inundating the searcher for other religions are nowhere to be seen.

Google, however, says it was all a mistake, and denies have done anything to favor Islam. “This is a bug,” insisted a Google spokesman, “and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can.” Oddly enough, however, even with all of Google’s technical savvy, this “bug” persisted for days and continues as of this writing, long after Google’s announcement that it would quickly be fixed.

Or perhaps it isn’t so odd, in light of Google’s long-established penchant for favoring the hard Left and its allies in the global jihad. Critics have complained for years about Google’s tendency to decorate its logo colorfully for cherished days of the Left such as Earth Day and International Women’s Day, while ignoring Christmas (aside from bland Holiday greetings) and Easter. What’s more, Google-owned YouTube has more than once removed material critical of Islamic jihad supremacism, while allowing blood-curdling pro-jihad and vile anti-Semitic material to remain on the site. Google’s policies on removing videos all too often has appeared to follow a consistent Leftist line: anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-jihad.

It is also a remarkable coincidence that Google’s “bug” would appear in Google not about Judaism or Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism, but in connection with the world’s most thin-skinned religion. The one religion shielded from adverse judgment at Google is also the only religion that has is currently engaged in an organized campaign to stifle honest discussion about its texts and teachings that inspire violence. In 2008 the Secretary General of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest voting bloc at the United Nations today, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, warned the West about “red lines that should not be crossed” regarding free speech about Islam and terrorism. For years now the OIC has spearheaded an effort at the UN to compel member states to criminalize what it calls “defamation of religions,” but by which it clearly means any honest discussion of the texts and teachings of Islam that jihadists invoke to justify violence and supremacism. Interestingly enough, the OIC stepped up this campaign in the wake of the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper that touched off worldwide Muslim riots. Google, at the time those riots were raging, was dutifully removing from YouTube videos that depicted the cartoons.

Thus when the OIC has Google, it doesn’t need international edicts muzzling free speech. Like many on the Left, Google seems all too willing to carry water for the Islamic bloc’s war against free speech and to oblige the OIC’s totalitarian and thuggish influences, by voluntarily refraining from doing anything that might offend Muslims. While its restriction of the automated search suggestions may seem insignificant, its overall willingness to conform to notoriously fragile Islamic sensibilities and deep-six criticism of Islam is anything but trivial.

What’s more, what with Google’s influence as by far the premier search engine, the idea that Western non-Muslims must make special allowances for easily-offended Muslims sets a precedent that can only bear bitter fruit in the future. Ultimately Google, and every individual, group, business, and governing authority in the West, is going to have to decide whether it is going to stand for the hard-won principles of free speech and free inquiry, or kowtow to Islamic supremacism and intimidation. When the censorship is voluntary and self-imposed, as in Google’s case, it is all the more shameful.