One of them is material equality as the preeminent moral goal. Another is the villainy of corporations. The bigger the corporation, the greater the villainy. Thus, instead of the devil, the left has Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Oil, the “military-industrial complex,” and the like. Meanwhile, Big Labor, Big Trial Lawyers, and, of course, Big Government are leftwing angels. And why is that? Why, to be specific, does the left fear big corporations but not big government? The answer is dogma — a belief system that transcends reason. No rational person can deny that big governments have caused almost all the great evils of the last century, arguably the bloodiest in history. Who killed the 20-30 million Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago — big government or big business? Hint: There were no private businesses in the Soviet Union. Who deliberately caused 75 million Chinese to starve to death — big government or big business? Hint: See previous hint. Did Coca Cola kill five million Ukrainians? Did Big Oil slaughter a quarter of the Cambodian population? Would there have been a Holocaust without the huge Nazi state?

Whatever bad big corporations have done is dwarfed by the monstrous crimes — the mass enslavement of people, the deprivation of the most basic human rights, not to mention the mass murder and torture and genocide — committed by big governments.

How can anyone who thinks rationally believe that big corporations rather than big governments pose the greatest threat to humanity? The answer is that it takes a mind distorted by leftist dogma. If there is another explanation, I do not know what it is.

Religious Christians and Jews also have some irrational beliefs, but their irrationality is overwhelmingly confined to theological matters; and these theological irrationalities have no deleterious impact on religious Jews’ and Christians’ ability to see the world rationally and morally.

The Obama Administration is just beginning to reckon with this courageous man. Although Chen was pressured out of the Embassy, at suggestions that his wife would be beaten to death, and his extended family would suffer, his trust in the Americans had already created a diplomatic nightmare for the Obama Administration. They have been reticent in their remarks on Chen Guangcheng.

On the other hand, members of Congress have been vocal in their support for Chen. In the past three weeks, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights Chair Christopher Smith (R-NJ) has held two hearings on Chen. Remarkably, Chen has phoned in and made statements at both the Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing on May 3 and the Subcommittee hearing on May 15.

At the May 3 hearing, U.S. Representative Frank R. Wolf (R-VA) declared, “The most generous read of the administration’s handling of this case is that it was naïve in accepting assurances from a government that has a well-known and documented history of brutally repressing its own people under this government.” Witness Michael Horowitz, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow, remarked that one of the “great things we could do for the pursuit of American interests” would be to “replace the State Department with the AFLCIO.” “This is an issue of bargaining,” said Horowitz. “Anybody at the Teamsters Union would have flunked every one of these people who were bargaining for the life and freedom of such a world hero.”

Women’s Rights Without Frontiers’ President Reggie Littlejohn stressed the underlying issue that set the Chinese Communist government against Chen and that has been left out of much of the discussion in the mainstream media: “he was the one person in China who dared to stand up against the One Child policy.” Not many in the media or the Administration were eager to reveal that Chen’s crime was exposing the brutal practices of forced abortion and sterilization of Chinese women, and the “gendercide” practiced against baby girls. Surely, part of the Obama Administration’s uneasiness over Chen stems from the awkwardness of defending an anti-abortion activist. Vice President Joe Biden has even defended the One Child policy.

Chen is called a “barefoot lawyer,” because he provides free legal services but has no law degree. The blind were previously denied college admission in China, so Chen, who has been blind since childhood, was only permitted to audit classes. He started giving legal advice to disabled people in his home province of Shangdong, Dongshigu Village, in 1996. But in 2005, his activism shook the entire country and beyond. Chen went from village to village in Shandong Province collecting testimonies of tens of thousands of women who had been rounded up and forced to be sterilized or have abortions, even in the eighth month of pregnancy. Neither Chen’s blindness nor his lack of a degree prevented him from exposing some 130,000 forced abortions that took place in one year in that one province and filing class-action lawsuits on behalf of the victimized families.

Chen presented his findings in a class-action lawsuit against the Lin Yi City bureau of the Family Planning Commission. He also exposed this hidden horror to major international media when he traveled to Beijing in June 2005 to file a lawsuit there.  A year later, Chen was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2006. In her tribute, journalist Hannah Beech said, “He may have lost his sight as a child, but Chen Guangcheng’s legal vision has helped illuminate the plight of thousands of Chinese villagers.”

In September 2005, Chen was placed under house arrest by Lin Yi City officials. Beech related, “three hours after meeting with Time in Beijing to discuss the issue, Chen was shoved into an unmarked vehicle by public-security agents from his hometown. They bundled him back to his village, where he was held under house arrest for months.” In March 2006, he was removed from home and taken to detention. At his trial in August 2006 he was sentenced to four years and three months’ detention on trumped-up charges of “damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic.” Chen’s attorneys, some of the most well-known Christian human rights attorneys in China, were also subjected to abuse of various forms for their defense of Chen Guangcheng.

For both of the main protagonists in the deal—Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Kadima Party leader Shaul Mofaz—it makes eminent sense. While all polls showed Netanyahu easily emerging triumphant again from the putative elections, the deal saves him—and the country—the trouble and debilities of having to prepare for them, not to mention prolonged coalition negotiations once the results would have been in.

As for Mofaz—who wrested leadership of Kadima from Tzipi Livni in a primary less than two months ago—the polls showed his party plummeting, had elections been held, from its current 28 seats to about a dozen. While Kadima’s fate in the October 2013 (when Netanyahu’s four-year term runs out) elections will not necessarily be better, Mofaz—whom the deal makes deputy prime minister and member of the Forum of Eight (now nine) ministers, Israel’s highest policymaking body—gets a chance to make more of an impact on a public never particularly impressed with him.

But apart from Netanyahu and Mofaz, the deal—by creating a massive coalition immune to extortionate pressures by small parties—holds great potential for the country.

For two of Israel’s most intractable problems—refusal of military or national service by most of its growing ultra-Orthodox population, and dysfunctionalities of its parliamentary system—solutions are now eminently possible. In their joint press conference on Tuesday, Netanyahu and Mofaz pledged that the new coalition would tackle these issues without offering any specifics.

The problems are indeed complex. The draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox, which are contingent on yeshiva study, not only sow bitterness among the army-serving public but lead to large-scale unemployment among ultra-Orthodox men and a growing, worrisome drain on the economy. To date, ultra-Orthodox parties in fragile coalitions have prevented possible solutions. For the mega-coalition, though, the path appears clear to legislating some sort of mandatory service and remedying this longstanding malady.

This being linked, of course, to the issue of a parliamentary system that allows small parties of various—not just ultra-Orthodox—descriptions to proliferate and wield disproportionate influence. Again, the new coalition stands a real chance to cure the illness. Raising the electoral threshold and introducing regional elections are two often-mentioned ideas. Israel could emerge as a better-functioning, more representational democracy with much more stable governments.

Why? Because 1) self-sufficient women voters aren’t as sheeple-ish as Democratic strategists make them out to be, 2) conservative activists are overtaking Obama’s zombie army online, 3) non-delusional Americans don’t want cradle-to-grave utopians turning their country into the next Greece or Spain, and 4) responsible grownups are getting sick and tired of radical Saul Alinsky-style tall tales from the progressive Pied Piper.

Using snazzy graphics and interactive slideshow features, BarackObama.com spins a glowing narrative of imaginary Julia’s life from age 3 to 67. But “Julia” is a pathetic figment of the progressive imagination. She simply cannot function without the lifelong intervention of federal patriarchs.

Instead of two parents preparing her for school, Obama credits Head Start bureaucrats with ensuring that Julia is “ready to learn and succeed” in kindergarten.

Instead of individual teachers, private mentors, home-school organizers or charter school leaders, Obama extols his federal Race to the Top program for implementing the high school “classes she needs to do well” in college.

Instead of thrift-minded families who save for their own kids’ higher educations (or who opt for non-college alternatives) and who encourage those kids to work in private-sector summer jobs, Obama praises his “opportunity tax credit” and Pell Grants for putting Julia through college.

Instead of acknowledging how costly Obamacare mandates have caused individual-market health care insurers to drop plans altogether, Obama promotes the government-manufactured umbilical cord tethering “children” like Julia to their parents’ health care plans until age 26.

Instead of accepting that the costs and consequences of a woman’s sexual choices should be a matter of personal responsibility, Big Daddy Obama heralds his religious liberty-crushing birth control/abortion mandate for allowing Julia to “focus on her work instead of worrying about her health.”

Religion, to many liberals, is a sign of weakness, a demonstration of the inability to reason for oneself. With the Bible telling him what to do, how to think, what to believe — why, such a person is downright scary. Recall Obama explaining how small-town Midwesterners deal with difficult economic times: “They get bitter,” as the then-presidential candidate put it. “They cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them … as a way to explain their frustrations.”

When, however, the left uses religion to justify expanding the Welfare State, well, invoking God becomes perfectly acceptable. During the last National Prayer Breakfast, for example, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer praised how “movingly” Obama spoke about the way his religion informs his policies.

Take Los Angeles Times columnist David Lazarus. In a recent column, he uses religion to denounce those who oppose ObamaCare: “These critics seldom acknowledge other aspects of the law aimed at helping insure some of the roughly 50 million people in this country who now lack coverage. That’s an act of pure selfishness. … It’s also a display of heartlessness unbefitting a country that claims to define itself by love-thy-neighbor Judeo-Christian values.” (Emphasis added.)

Judeo-Christian values? In caring for the needy, scripture dictates that The State supplant individuals, community, houses of worship and other nonprofits in helping care for the needy?

Tell this to the Rev. Robert Sirico, of the free-market think tank Acton Institute. Whether arguing for government programs like Medicare, Medicaid or even Social Security, the first question to ask is a moral one: Does turning the business of compassion over to the state harm us as a society and damage us in ways proponents fail to consider?

In his 1999 piece “Morality and Social Security,” Sirico says Social Security’s biggest failing is that it creates a culture of dependency:

“Is it right that the young be taxed to enable the government to provide a generous retirement program for able-bodied older people? What are the social and moral implications of this idea?

“The very existence of Social Security has convinced tens of millions of people that government-mandated savings are utterly necessary for security in our later years.

Editor’s note: John Stossel will be speaking about his new book in a Freedom Center event at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills on Monday, April 23. Click here for details.

In his television specials and in books like Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel – Why Everything You Know is Wrong and Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media, reporter John Stossel has built an award-winning reputation as a tenacious debunker of commonly-held assumptions, and as a thorn in the side of business-as-usual bureaucrats. Now, as a welcome antidote to President Obama’s “Yes, we can!” big-government campaign mantra, comes Stossel’s latest book, No They Can’t: Why Government Fails But Individuals Succeed.

The libertarian Stossel hosts his own show and a series of specials on the Fox Business Network, and appears frequently on other Fox News shows. His consumer reporting has made him a nineteen-time Emmy winner and a five-time honoree for excellence by the National Press Club. Those familiar with Stossel’s laidback, plainspoken, eminently reasonable TV persona (and who isn’t?) will find it in full evidence here in No They Can’t as well.

The book’s thirteen chapters are devoted to a wide range of the biggest issues facing our government today, such as health care, the war on drugs, education, military spending, and the “budget insanity.” Stossel points out that our instinct is to believe that government can and should step in and resolve such problems. In a rhetorical device which he returns to frequently throughout the book, he posits “What Intuition Tempts Us to Believe: When there’s a problem, government should act.” He answers that with “What Reality Taught Me: Individuals should act, not government.”

Other examples of What Intuition Tempts Us to Believe: “If we just elect the right politicians, we can reinvent government and balance its books.” “Individuals are selfish, so we need government to ‘level the playing field’ and make life ‘fair.’” “The Food Police want to help us make better choices.” “It’s nice for people to have their say, but some speech is so hateful and offensive that we must limit it.” “Education is too important to be left to the uncertainty of market competition.” Chapter by chapter, Stossel systematically lays out his case for why these assumptions and many, many more about our government’s problem-solving capabilities are wrong on all counts, and why the truth is actually counter-intuitive.

The overarching, “most socially destructive” assumption of all, writes Stossel, is “the intuitively appealing belief that when there is a problem, government action is the best way to solve it.” For him, “Good government has to mean less government.” One would think that this sentiment would put Stossel squarely in the Tea Party camp. But he believes that even many Tea Party activists don’t want to cut the big government tether entirely (“61% of Tea Party sympathizers believe free trade has hurt the United States,” for example). And he notes that even Tea Party politician favorites can’t be trusted once they’re in office.

If we banned or restricted all activities that affect, harm or have the possibility of harming other people, it wouldn’t be a very nice life. Let’s look at what can affect or harm other people. Non-obese people are harmed by obesity, as they have to pay more for health care, through either higher taxes or higher insurance premiums. That harm could be reduced by a national version of a measure introduced in the Mississippi Legislature in 2008 by state Rep. W.T. Mayhall that in part read, “An act to prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the state Department of Health.” The measure would have revoked licenses of food establishments that violated the provisions of the act. Fortunately, the measure never passed, but there’s always a next time.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that in 2010, nearly 33,000 people were killed in auto crashes. That’s a lot of harm that could be reduced by lowering the speed limit to 5 or 10 miles an hour.

You say, “Williams, that’s ridiculous!” What you really mean to say but don’t have the courage to is that to save all of those lives by making the speed limit 5 or 10 miles per hour is not worth the inconvenience. Needless to say — or almost so — there are many activities we engage in that either cause harm to others or have the potential for doing so, but we don’t ban all of these activities.

In a number of states, pregnant teenage girls may be given abortions without the notification or the permission of parents. The issue is neither abortion nor whether a pregnant teenager should have an abortion. The issue is this: What gives the government the authority to usurp parental authority?

Part of the problem is that people who act as instruments of government do not pay a personal price for usurping parental authority. The reason is Americans, unlike Americans of yesteryear, have become timid and, as such, come to accept all manner of intrusive governmental acts. Can you imagine what a rugged American, such as one portrayed by John Wayne, would have done to a government tyrant who confiscated his daughter’s lunch or facilitated her abortion without his permission?

I believe that the anti-tobacco movement partially accounts for today’s compliant American. Tobacco zealots started out with “reasonable” demands, such as the surgeon general’s warning on cigarette packs. Then they demanded nonsmoking sections on airplanes. Emboldened by that success, they demanded no smoking at all on airplanes and then airports and then restaurants and then workplaces — all in the name of health. Seeing the compliant nature of smokers, they’ve moved to ban smoking on beaches, in parks and on sidewalks in some cities. Now they’re calling for higher health insurance premiums for smokers. Had the tobacco zealots demanded their full agenda when they started out, they would not have achieved anything.

Using the anti-tobacco crusade as their template and finding Americans so compliant, zealots and would-be tyrants are extending their agenda.

The same presumptions of superior wisdom and virtue behind the interventionism of Progressive Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in the domestic economy also led them to be interventionists in other countries.

Theodore Roosevelt was so determined that the United States should intervene against Spain’s suppression of an uprising in Cuba that he quit his post as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to organize his own private military force — called “Rough Riders” — to fight in what became the Spanish-American war.

The spark that set off this war was an explosion that destroyed an American battleship anchored in Havana harbor. There was no proof that Spain had anything to do with it, and a study decades later suggested that the explosion originated inside the ship itself.

But Roosevelt and others were hot for intervention before the explosion, which simply gave them the excuse they needed to go to war against Spain, seizing Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

Although it was a Republican administration that did this, Democrat Woodrow Wilson justified it. Progressive principles of imposing superior wisdom and virtue on others were invoked.

Wilson saw the indigenous peoples brought under American control as beneficiaries of progress. He said, “they are children and we are men in these deep matters of government and justice.”

If that sounds racist, it is perfectly consistent with President Wilson’s policies at home. The Wilson administration introduced racial segregation in Washington government agencies where it did not exist when Wilson took office.

Woodrow Wilson also invited various dignitaries to the White House to watch a showing of the film “The Birth of a Nation,” which glorified the Ku Klux Klan — and which Wilson praised.

All of this was consistent with the Progressive era in general, when supposedly “scientific” theories of racial superiority and inferiority were at their zenith. Theodore Roosevelt was the exception, rather than the rule, among Progressives when he did not agree with these theories.

Earlier this week, Mitt Romney got into trouble for saying, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” To comprehend why the political class reacted as if Romney had just praised Hitler, you must understand that his critics live in a world in which no one can ever be fired — a world known as “the government.”

(And a tip for you Washington types: Just because a person became rich without working for government doesn’t mean he is “Wall Street.” A venture capital firm in Boston that tries to rescue businesses headed for bankruptcy, for example, is not “Wall Street.”)

Romney’s statement about being able to fire people was an arrow directed straight to the heart of Obamacare. (By the way, arrows to the heart are not covered by Obamacare.)

Talking about insurance providers, he said:

“I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.”

Obamacare, you will recall, will be administered by the same people who run the Department of Motor Vehicles. They will operate under the same self-paced, self-evaluated work rules that have made government offices the envy of efficiency specialists everywhere.

And no one will be able to fire them — unless they’re caught doing something truly vile and criminal, such as stealing from patients in nursing homes.

Oops, I take that back: Government employees who rob the elderly also can’t be fired.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that, after a spate of burglaries at a veterans hospital in California several years ago, authorities set up video cameras to catch the perpetrators. In short order, nurse’s aide Linda Riccitelli was videotaped sneaking into the room of 93-year-old Raymond Germain as he slept, sticking her hand into his dresser drawer and stealing the bait money that had been left there.

Riccitelli was fired and a burglary prosecution initiated. A few years later, the California Personnel Board rescinded her firing and awarded her three-years back pay. The board dismissed the videotape of Riccitelli stealing the money as “circumstantial.” (The criminal prosecution was also dropped after Germain died.)

But surely we’ll be able to fire a government employee who commits a physical assault on a mentally disturbed patient? No, wrong again.

Psychiatric technician Gregory Powell was working at a government center for the mentally retarded when he hit a severely disturbed individual with a shoe so hard that the impression of the shoe’s sole was visible on the victim three hours later. A psychologist who witnessed the attack said the patient was cowering on the couch before being struck.

Powell was fired, but, again, the California Personnel Board ordered him rehired.

Now, let’s turn to New York City and look for any clues about why it might be the highest-taxed city in the nation.

For years, the New York City school budget included $35 million to $65 million a year to place hundreds of teachers in “rubber rooms,” after they had committed such serious offenses that they were barred from classrooms. Teachers accused of raping students sat in rooms doing no work all day, still collecting government paychecks because they couldn’t be fired.

In the aftermath of the death of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il, there was deep concern that the dictator’s chosen successor, his third son Kim Jong-un, would have a rocky time trying to consolidate his position. Now it appears that his path to power has been smoothed by an apparent agreement with the military to share the responsibility of governing the state until the younger Kim can consolidate his position with the military and the party.

Reuters is reporting that there will be “collective rule” in North Korea with Kim Jong-un at the head of a “ruling coterie” that will include the military with the younger Kim’s uncle and Kim Jong-il’s brother-in-law, Jang Song-thaek, acting as regent.

North Korean news reports indicate that the military has pledged allegiance to young Kim, which will strengthen his hand as he deals with other factions also interested in ruling the Stalinist state. Those factions include two brothers passed over for leadership, the powerful sister of Kim Jong-il and wife of Jang, Kim Kyong-hui, and an up-and coming-general, chief of the joint chiefs of staff Ri Yong-ho.

None of these individuals are likely to challenge Kim Jong-un in the near future. But the inexperienced Kim may find himself being pushed out by those with a stronger base of support in the military and the party, or who are simply more ruthless and willing to upset the status quo to seize power.

His two older brothers may resent being passed over, but Kim Jong-il made sure they were never able to build an independent base of power to challenge their younger brother. Perhaps the most serious rival to Kim is his uncle, Chang Song-taek. Married to the elder Kim’s sister, Chang is an important member of the Politburo and Vice Chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission. Reuters’ source believes that the military has agreed that he will wield power in a kind of regency with the younger Kim as something of a figurehead. Since no one knows precisely how the internal leadership dynamics function in North Korea, and since this kind of collective leadership has never been tried in a country ruled since 1948 by all-powerful dictators, Kim Jong-un’s position may be precarious indeed.

Chang may be satisfied with being the power behind the throne, or he may not. An analyst at Seoul University said of Chang that he “has played a considerable role during Kim Jong-il’s illness of managing the succession problem and even the North’s relations with the United States and China.” The Korean Economic Institute (KEI) speculates that Chang is China’s choice to succeed the elder Kim, adding, “These factors, including his involvement in economic projects and directing internal security matters, leave a possibility for Chang Song-taek to attempt to seize power himself.”

The military is the wild card in the succession drama. Perhaps fearing that his brother in law might make a play for power himself, the elder Kim placed the chief of the joint chiefs of staff, Ri Yong-ho, close to his son, according to an expert on the North’s powerful structure at the Sejong Institute. But the KEI believes that it “will remain to be seen if they [Chang Song-taek and Ri Yong-ho] and others are really trying to help him, rule by controlling Kim Jong-un from behind the scenes, or set him up for failure.” This kind of convoluted intrigue is common in totalitarian states and one misstep by the younger Kim may have deadly consequences.

Laughing all the way to the bank.

Labor unions claim to champion the Worker, confronting management in pursuit of “fair” compensation. However, the real enemies of organized labor have always been competing non-union workers.

We need look no further than the word “scab.” This pejorative reference to someone who crosses a picket line was coined for a single purpose, to coerce behavior through intimidation.

That’s the only way a union can function. The only way to prevent people from filling vacancies left by strike is to – well, prevent them. That is why conservatives tend to oppose organized labor, not because there is anything inherently wrong with collective bargaining, but because we detest coercion.

The case is vividly made in an ongoing development as instructive as it is amusing. The Huffington Post has been under strike for weeks, and nobody seems to notice.

[The] strike has been called by two legitimate unions: the Newspaper Guild (an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America) and the National Writers Union, Local 1981 of the United Auto Workers. The two unions, and hundreds of bloggers throughout the country, are trying to get a share of the riches pocketed by the owners of the Huffington Post via its sale to AOL, and, as important, set a standard for fair treatment in the future…

This strike can be won. But, the many bloggers who call themselves “liberals” or “progressives”–people who collect money from unions and/or ask for labor’s political endorsements–have to stop crossing the Huffington Post electronic picket line. But, they continue to work for–scab– at a workplace that is being struck and boycotted.

Part of the unions’ frustration stems from the nature of an “electronic picket line.” It’s a hell of a lot tougher to intimidate people when you can’t physically obstruct them, shout them down, or pay a “visit” to their house.

[A] campaign–to publicly identify and praise people who support the strike and publicly identify the scabs–is about to commence in earnest.

Why do the unions want to “identify the scabs?” So they can be effectively bullied into acting against their self-interest.

That’s perhaps the most amusing aspect of the story, leftists nakedly perusing self-interest. In shrugging off the strike, HuffPo bloggers are affirming a fundamentally conservative principle.

Here are three of the justifications from a few of the scabs I have spoken to or emailed with directly–all of whom have received labor money and/or labor political endorsements.

… I’ve determined that she [Huffington] is too important to me and I don’t care whether I’m scabbing or you call me a scab.

Ok, you are a scab.

I get five times as many people to read what I write about [X topic...] so I’m not going to do this.

“This” being honoring the picket line.

I’m an independent contractor who writes where I choose whether the place is organized or not.

Perhaps the lamest of the excuses I’ve heard.

Hilarious, isn’t it? What these HuffPo contributors are saying is, Listen, I’m getting value out of my consensual relationship with The Huffington Post. I’m  sorry you’re not. But that’s you’re problem.

Indeed, why should anyone refuse to work if the work benefits them? More to the point, why should anyone be kept from working if the work benefits them?

Next: What union coercion says tells us about their claims…

To love your country is to hate red ink.

Sounds like a Tea Party slogan, doesn’t it? This concise declaration of fiscal responsibility would look at home on many a conservative bumper or amid a sea of protest signs, but incredibly, it was uttered by Boston University history professor Andrew Bacevich as—I kid you not—a glowing endorsement of President Barack Obama’s April 13 speech on the federal budget. On the Daily Beast, Bacevich declares that the 44^th president has “expanded the operative definition of patriotism to encompass belief in balanced budgets”:

This is surely a good thing. So too is the president’s willingness to finger the essence of the problem: a widespread desire for an endless free lunch—people coveting government benefits without a willingness to pay for them.

Obama also performed a useful service in pointing out that any serious effort at deficit reduction will have to target the Big Four: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security.

Regarding that last category, the president promises to reassess not only military missions and capabilities, but also America’s role in the world. In our post-unipolar moment, such a reassessment is long overdue. Yet to have more than cosmetic results, Obama will have to take on some very sacred cows and some very powerful interests.

I defy you to find a more surreal reaction to Obama’s remarks. We’ve previously discussed how Diamond Barry’s proposed budgets have been so bloated they call for new taxes by the trillions to sustain them. The president might have said on Wednesday that he wants to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next twelve years, but as Mark Knoller of noted right-wing mouthpiece CBS News reports:

Budget totals issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in February project 10 years of deficits totaling $7.2 trillion between 2012 and 2021. Another two years at that rate would bring the 12 year total to $8.6 trillion.

The Obama 12-year plan would cut the projected deficit total in half, but would leave another $4 trillion in deficits that would be added to the National Debt, which now stands at $14.27 trillion.

Separately, OMB expects the Debt to double over the next ten years to a mind-boggling total of $26.3-trillion in 2021. It’s estimated the Debt that year would cost U.S. taxpayers $928-billion in interest payments. Four trillion dollars in deficit reduction would reduce the Debt to just over $22-trillion, and still inflict $700-billion in interest on the federal budget.

If budget-balancing really is the new patriotism, then Obama falls short of the good, solid B plus range right out of the gate. By the way, Obama has decided signing statements aren’t evil anymore, and is using one to declare that he simply won’t abide by Congress’s vote to de-fund his czars. I don’t see how unilaterally disregarding spending cuts enacted by the legislative branch gets you points as a fiscal hawk. This is what Professor Bacevich considers visionary leadership aimed at cleaning up the mess we’re in?

If we assess Obama’s approach to “sacred cows” (and no, it’s not bold for a leftist to say we’re spending too much on defense, which isn’t the problem area anyway), then the grade drops further still. Consider his reaction to the substantive (if imperfect) plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), which attempts to address Medicaid and Medicare. Did the Uniter-in-Chief applaud Ryan’s willingness to make tough decisions? Did our first post-partisan president offer to reach across the aisle to find common ground between their plans, while offering substantive, good-faith critiques of particulars he disagreed with? Er, not exactly:

But the way this plan achieves those goals would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known throughout most of our history […] These are the kind of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America we believe in.  And they paint a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic […]

Worst of all, this is a vision that says even though America can’t afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can’t afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy […] their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.  As Ronald Reagan’s own budget director said, there’s nothing “serious” or “courageous” about this plan.  There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.  There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.

The demagoguery is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The fact is, the Ryan budget returns discretionary spending to not-exactly stingy 2008 levels. And as the Wall Street Journal writes, his Medicare “cuts” are cuts “only in the sense of slowing the rate of growth,” and his healthcare proposals are meant to address government-distortion of the incentive structure: “By capping the Medicare subsidy, seniors would pay for the marginal costs of their care, promoting competitive insurance. That would in turn incrementally change how doctors and hospitals provide care, encouraging competition in price and quality.” And the tax cuts for the rich?

The Ryan budget outline by design does not provide many tax specifics, aside from an instruction to the Ways and Means Committee to propose a reform plan that would swap lower rates for fewer loopholes and special exclusions. This overhaul is not even a net tax cut—the instructions are to design a reform that is revenue neutral. It would hold tax receipts to their post-World War II average of between 18% to 19% as a share of the economy.

The liberal claim that this means a tax cut for the wealthy is based entirely on the fact that marginal tax rates would decline, even though the loopholes primarily benefit higher-income taxpayers. At any rate, Mr. Obama’s own deficit commission also favored lowering the rates and broadening the base for a more efficient and competitive tax code.

Mr. President, the only thing that embodies “a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known throughout most of our history” is your vision. Your talk of what “we” can afford, what “we’ve” promised to this or that slice of the population, betrays your ignorance of a simple, quintessentially American truth: the people are not the government. Yes, we the people have a moral obligation to lend a hand to our young, our sick, and our downtrodden, but the role of our federal government is to protect our individual rights so we don’t have to watch our backs all the time, so we can focus on other pursuits, such as bettering ourselves and the world around us.

To recognize that the government can’t afford all the collective charity work our liberal betters think it should undertake is not to reject the individual’s obligations to his countrymen. Mr. President, you accuse conservatives of “changing the basic social compact in America.” America’s social compact is the United States Constitution, and we’re not changing a word of it—we’re simply reasserting it’s original, true meaning.

The most significant outcome of the Mavi Marmara incident is that there can no longer be any doubt that Turkey has joined the anti-Western bloc that includes Hamas, Iran and Syria. The Muslim country was once devotedly secular, an ally of Israel, and remains a member of NATO, but under the direction of Prime Minister Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (often referred to as the AKP), Turkey has gone in the completely opposite direction with enormous strategic consequences.

“Unfortunately, the AKP government of Mr. Erdogan and the oil-rich regime of Qatar joined the regional bloc opposing the more traditional governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco,” Dr. Walid Phares told FrontPage.

Erdogan’s turn to the other side is not the result of a single incident such as Operation Cast Lead or the Israeli raid on the flotilla, but is the culmination of an agenda long held by Erdogan and the AKP.

“In fact, it is not secular Turkey that we see moving against the U.S., West, Israel and Arab moderates. It is the AKP Islamist cabinet which is uncovering its long-term ideological agenda. The West should have projected this since 2002,” Dr. Phares said, referring to the year in which Erdogan’s party won a majority in the Turkish parliament.

Erdogan was imprisoned in 1998 for his involvement with the banned Welfare Party, which the Turkish government considered Islamist. Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy describes the Welfare Party as the “motherboard of Turkish Islamists since the 1980s,” saying it was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan was specifically punished for reading a poem at one speech with the lines, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers.”

In 2001, he founded the AKP, which took a more moderate line, portraying itself as committed to separation of mosque and state but “faithful governance,” as Dr. Essam El-Erian, the chief of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political bureau, described the AKP’s “moderate Islamist” ideology. There was no anti-Western rhetoric and the party strongly supported membership in the European Union. The group won a large victory in the 2002 elections, resulting in Erdogan taking the post of Prime Minister.

Dr. El-Erian praised Erdogan’s victory, saying that it was the result of the “exposing of the failure of the secular trend.” El-Erian confirmed that the Muslim Brotherhood had close ties to the AKP, but the West treated Turkey as if nothing had changed. It wasn’t until Turkey steadfastly refused to allow U.S. soldiers to transit their territory to overthrow Saddam Hussein that the West began questioning the allegiance of Erdogan’s government.

The Erdogan government soon began a concerted effort to fuel anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment, knowing that such feelings help the AKP politically and hurt its opponents in the secular military that have long ties to the West. The Turkish media consistently reported alleged U.S. atrocities, fanning the already massive anti-war sentiment. The outrageous claims can only be compared to the anti-Israeli propaganda seen in the Arab world and Iran, echoing similar themes such as the use of chemical weapons against civilians and the harvesting of organs from killed Iraqis.

The AKP won an even larger share of the vote in the July 2007 election and had even more dominance over the government. Since then, the ideology of Erdogan has become more apparent as Turkish opinion has become less hostile to anti-Western Islamism.  Shortly after the victory, Turkey’s moves towards Iran and other enemies of the West became more visible and aggressive.

Turkey began entertaining the prospect of Iran’s natural gas being delivered to European markets through its territory, and the two countries launched joint military attacks against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq. The Party of Free Life for Kurdistan, or PJAK, claimed it actually saw Turkish officers working alongside the Iranian military. Newsmax.com reported that eight Turkish officers were in Iran coordinating the attacks with the Revolutionary Guards.

In the spring of 2009, Moqtada al-Sadr, the Iranian-backed militia leader whose followers killed dozens of American soldiers in Iraq, met with Erdogan and Turkish President Abdullah Gul for “political consultations.” Most recently, Turkey has opposed sanctions on Iran and helped put together a deal with Brazil meant to delay any United Nations measures despite Iran’s lack of cooperation on the nuclear issue.

Erdogan’s government simultaneously became more anti-Israeli, particularly once the Israeli military offensive into Gaza began in response to the rocket attacks of Hamas. Erdogan went so far as to predict that Israel’s actions “would bring it to self-destruction,” saying “Allah will sooner or later punish those who transgress the rights of innocents.” He accused Jewish-controlled media outlets of “finding unfounded excuses to justify targeting of schools, mosques and hospitals.”

On January 29, 2009, Erdogan publicly confronted Israeli President Peres at the World Economic Forum over the Israeli offensive. When he was denied extra time to continue his criticism of Israel, he stormed out. Erdogan was a hero overnight in the Muslim world.

Soon after, an exhibit opened in a major state-controlled metro in Istanbul that included many viciously anti-Israeli and anti-American cartoons, portraying Israeli soldiers as massacring innocent people with American weapons. The AKP won the March 29 local elections, further cementing their hold and convincing Erdogan that he was politically safe to follow the agenda he held from the beginning. Later that year, Israel had to confront Turkey over anti-Israeli propaganda on prime-time state-controlled television.

In October, Turkey refused to allow Israel to participate in annual military exercises also involving Italy and the U.S. Instead, Turkey and Syria announced that they would hold their own joint exercises. The Turkish-Syrian alliance began shortly after Erdogan came to power, with Syrian President Bashar Assad visiting Turkey and a free trade agreement being signed.

Turkey has also moved closer to Sudan, refusing to describe the situation in Darfur as a genocide. Erdogan’s government also opposes the International Criminal Court’s indictment of President Omar al-Bashir for human rights violations. His defense of Bashir is that “no Muslim could perpetrate a genocide.”

Now, Turkey is taking center stage in the wake of the Mavi Marmara incident. Turkey is openly considering cutting off all diplomatic ties with Israel and is saying that its warships will escort future convoys to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. There are reports that Erdogan himself may actually join a convoy. Erdogan now openly says, “I do not think that Hamas is a terrorist organization…They are Palestinians in resistance, fighting for their own land.”

He was among the first to accept Hamas after it was elected in Gaza, and he is calling their rule a “democracy” based on elections alone. Democracy is much more than elections, but Erdogan, like the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, want to equate democracy with elections so as to give themselves legitimacy as they move against the other pillars of democracy. Professor Barry Rubin says that as the AKP won election victories, the Erdogan government “repressed opposition and arrested hundreds of critics, bought up 40 percent of the media, and installed its people in the bureaucracy.”

Today, the government has begun the country’s “largest-ever crackdown” on the military, prosecuting 33 current and former military officers for allegedly planning a coup to overthrow the AKP government in 2003 including the former head of the special forces. Those arrested have been accused of planning to carry out acts of terrorism including the bombing of mosques, which they deny. Given the military’s pride in acting as the guardian of Turkey’s secularism, it isn’t surprising that elements of the military would desire to see the AKP overthrown. However, this could be an Islamist attempt to weaken the military and paint them as dangerous and anti-Muslim.

Erdogan’s defense of the vessel owned by the IHH, a Turkish Islamist group tied to Hamas and other terrorist activity, is particularly insightful. Any true opponent of terrorism and radical Islamism would ban the group or at least officially investigate them. In 1997, the Turkish authorities raided the IHH’s office in Istanbul and made numerous arrests. IHH operatives were found with weapons-related materials and the French counterterrorism magistrate said that they were planning on supporting jihadists in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.

“The essential goal of this Association was to illegally arm its membership for overthrowing democratic, secular, and constitutional order present in Turkey and replacing it with an Islamic state founded on the Shariah,” the French magistrate’s report said.

If the goal of the IHH is to establish Sharia Law in Turkey, and Erdogan’s government is describing them as a “charity,” what does that say about Erdogan’s plans? The Washington Post has raised alarm over this connection, noting the IHH leadership’s praise for Erdogan.

The West’s loss of Turkey has frightening strategic consequences. They are so frightening that the West refused to acknowledge the trend until it became undeniable in recent weeks. Professor Juan Cole, who already was a strident critic of Israel, bluntly states, “Strategically, if the U.S. had to choose between Turkey and Israel, it would have to choose Turkey.” The pressure on the U.S. to restrain Israel so as to court the stronger bloc has now become greater than ever.

The situation is even more precarious for other countries in the region previously bonding together to oppose Iran. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa that are hostile to Iran’s ambitions now face an even more threatening bloc that has been enlarged by the defection of Turkey. The temptation for them to surrender the mantle of leadership to the Iranian-Syrian-Turkish bloc in order to save themselves will now reach unprecedented levels, regardless of whether Iran obtains nuclear weapons or not.

To make matters worse, Erdogan’s prestige as the preeminent challenger of Israel will lead to competition with Iran, sparking an escalation where each side tries to establish superior anti-Israeli and anti-Western credentials. Israel is now in its most isolated and dangerous situation since its birth in 1948.

I Support Justice, Not Jihad
By Mustafa Akyol

Recently Robert Spencer argued on Frontpage that I, once a "moderate Muslim," have joined the jihad against "infidels" and especially the state of Israel.

Well, not really. If I ever join an armed struggle one day, I will tell you. What I actually did was to condemn a particular action of the Israeli government: their bloody raid on the Free Gaza flotilla, an international group of NGOs that tried to bring in humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, defying Israel's blockade.

The incident has become a global issue, as nine Turkish activists on the flotilla were killed by Israeli commandos. The two sides, as you can expect, have their own versions of the events. Mr. Spencer seems to accept and defend the Israeli narrative, and that is just fine. I, for my part, don't accept the Israeli narrative, and hope that a "credible, independent international investigation," as a recent New York Times editorial suggested, will show us what really happened.

Meanwhile, I don't think that the fact that some of the activists on board were "Hamas sympathizers" justifies Israel's attack. In Turkey we have a few million "PKK sympathizers," and although I regard the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) as a terrorist organization, I don't regard those people as terrorists and thus legitimate targets. I understand that they just see the world quite differently.

I also don't accept that Israel has a right to put a blockade on the Gaza Strip -- a collective punishment on 1.5 million people -- for the terrorist actions of the radicals in that destitute part of the world. I actually think that the radicalism on the Palestinian side is only exacerbated by such brutal and humiliating policies of Israel, which include the occupation of Palestinian lands since 1967 and the building of illegal settlements on them. The latter recently infuriated even Joe Biden, who does not shy away from describing himself as "a Zionist."

I, on the other hand, am not a Zionist, but I certainly accept Israel's right to exist, in its internationally acknowledged pre-1967 borders. I also strongly support a two-state solution which will, hopefully, give peace and security to both the Jewish and the Palestinian peoples.

The bottom line, I guess, is that I am not "pro-Israel," as I believe Mr. Spencer is. I am rather trying to be pro-justice, and equally respect the rights of the both sides of the Middle Eastern conflict.

As for being a "moderate Muslim," I never recall calling myself as such. The only political-sounding term I prefer to use is "liberal," in the classical sense of the word. In other words, I do define myself as a "liberal Muslim," for I uphold individual liberty, and criticize some elements within the Islamic tradition that contradict this value -- things such as the ban on apostasy, the bans on "sinful" things, or the enforcement of certain religious practices.

I probably am "moderate," too, for I always prefer dialogue to confrontation and diplomacy to armed conflict. But if being a "moderate Muslim" means being uncritical of Israel, or any other government, in order to enjoy flattery by them and their supporters, then let me kindly return the badge.

Spencer responds:

Mustafa Akyol, oddly enough, seems in his note to equate “jihad” with “armed struggle,” and to ignore the jihad of the tongue, the jihad of the hand, the jihad of the heart, and the jihad against the lower self, all of which are abundantly represented in Islamic tradition. But for the record, I do not believe and did not intend to imply that Mustafa Akyol was going to blow himself up in a crowded restaurant in Tel Aviv, or hide explosives in his underwear and attempt to set them off on an airplane, or drive a bomb-rigged car into Times Square, or shoot soldiers on a U.S. Army base. I do not believe that he is ever going to take up arms in order to further the hegemony of Islamic law over the world — but that doesn’t mean that in endorsing the Jihad Flotilla, and accepting the Islamic supremacist Turkish government’s fantastic version of events, that he is not siding with the jihad against Israel, and hence with the larger global jihad of which the jihad against Israel is just one of many fronts, albeit the foremost.

For the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is indeed a jihad — if it weren’t, Mr. Akyol would have had his two-state solution in 1948, when the Arabs rejected a Palestinian state and went to war with Israel instead, motivated by the jihadist intransigence that demands all the land of Israel as an Islamic waqf. That line of thinking is also why the Camp David Accords, the Oslo Accords, the Road Map, and all other attempts to “solve” the Israeli/Palestinian conflict have failed, and why all future such initiatives will fail unless they involve the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and its incorporation into an Islamic Sharia state. That is the stated goal of the Hamas movement that runs the Gaza strip that was to be the recipient of this “humanitarian aid.”

The “radicals,” as Mr. Akyol calls Hamas and its ideological kin, are supported by the overwhelming majority of Gazans, who voted them into power by a large margin. The society they envision is not in any sense “pro-justice” except in the eyes of Sharia supporters and sympathizers, and given that Mr. Akyol acknowledges that “some of the activists on board were ‘Hamas sympathizers,’” it reflects poorly on the moral sense of the other “activists” that they made the trip at all in the company of such people.

Meanwhile, Mr. Akyol conveniently ignores the fact that what he characterizes as the “Israeli narrative,” to which he generously grants me permission to subscribe, is abundantly established by video footage showing that the “activists” attacked the Israeli soldiers first, and by the photographs showing that the weapons they used were anything but the harmless “kitchen utensils” he earlier characterized them as being. But it has already been abundantly established that the world will not accept Israeli evidence no matter how compelling, while swallowing Palestinian propaganda (which they are very skillful in packaging for the mainstream media) with eager credulity.

So I do not, by any means, expect Mr. Akyol to break ranks with the dominant mainstream, the overall objectives of which he accepts anyway. I do wonder, however, what would happen to this self-professed “liberal Muslim” if he himself were to visit Gaza and proclaim publicly his opposition to the Islamic death penalty for apostasy. He might in that event not find too many of the oppressed, starving, but inexplicably obese (indeed, one of the most obese populations in the world) people of Gaza not quite as “pro-justice” as he might have hoped.

[Editor's note: In our June 3rd issue of Frontpagemag.com, we ran a piece by Robert Spencer: Another Moderate Muslim Joins the Jihad: Mustafa Akyol.  Below is a rejoinder by Mustafa Akyol, followed by a response from Spencer.]

I Support Justice, Not Jihad
By Mustafa Akyol

Recently Robert Spencer argued on Frontpage that I, once a “moderate Muslim,” have joined the jihad against “infidels” and especially the state of Israel.

Well, not really. If I ever join an armed struggle one day, I will tell you. What I actually did was to condemn a particular action of the Israeli government: their bloody raid on the Free Gaza flotilla, an international group of NGOs that tried to bring in humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, defying Israel’s blockade.

The incident has become a global issue, as nine Turkish activists on the flotilla were killed by Israeli commandos. The two sides, as you can expect, have their own versions of the events. Mr. Spencer seems to accept and defend the Israeli narrative, and that is just fine. I, for my part, don’t accept the Israeli narrative, and hope that a “credible, independent international investigation,” as a recent New York Times editorial suggested, will show us what really happened.

Meanwhile, I don’t think that the fact that some of the activists on board were “Hamas sympathizers” justifies Israel’s attack. In Turkey we have a few million “PKK sympathizers,” and although I regard the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) as a terrorist organization, I don’t regard those people as terrorists and thus legitimate targets. I understand that they just see the world quite differently.

I also don’t accept that Israel has a right to put a blockade on the Gaza Strip — a collective punishment on 1.5 million people — for the terrorist actions of the radicals in that destitute part of the world. I actually think that the radicalism on the Palestinian side is only exacerbated by such brutal and humiliating policies of Israel, which include the occupation of Palestinian lands since 1967 and the building of illegal settlements on them. The latter recently infuriated even Joe Biden, who does not shy away from describing himself as “a Zionist.”

I, on the other hand, am not a Zionist, but I certainly accept Israel’s right to exist, in its internationally acknowledged pre-1967 borders. I also strongly support a two-state solution which will, hopefully, give peace and security to both the Jewish and the Palestinian peoples.

The bottom line, I guess, is that I am not “pro-Israel,” as I believe Mr. Spencer is. I am rather trying to be pro-justice, and equally respect the rights of the both sides of the Middle Eastern conflict.

As for being a “moderate Muslim,” I never recall calling myself as such. The only political-sounding term I prefer to use is “liberal,” in the classical sense of the word. In other words, I do define myself as a “liberal Muslim,” for I uphold individual liberty, and criticize some elements within the Islamic tradition that contradict this value — things such as the ban on apostasy, the bans on “sinful” things, or the enforcement of certain religious practices.

I probably am “moderate,” too, for I always prefer dialogue to confrontation and diplomacy to armed conflict. But if being a “moderate Muslim” means being uncritical of Israel, or any other government, in order to enjoy flattery by them and their supporters, then let me kindly return the badge.

Spencer responds:

Mustafa Akyol, oddly enough, seems in his note to equate “jihad” with “armed struggle,” and to ignore the jihad of the tongue, the jihad of the hand, the jihad of the heart, and the jihad against the lower self, all of which are abundantly represented in Islamic tradition. But for the record, I do not believe and did not intend to imply that Mustafa Akyol was going to blow himself up in a crowded restaurant in Tel Aviv, or hide explosives in his underwear and attempt to set them off on an airplane, or drive a bomb-rigged car into Times Square, or shoot soldiers on a U.S. Army base. I do not believe that he is ever going to take up arms in order to further the hegemony of Islamic law over the world — but that doesn’t mean that in endorsing the Jihad Flotilla, and accepting the Islamic supremacist Turkish government’s fantastic version of events, that he is not siding with the jihad against Israel, and hence with the larger global jihad of which the jihad against Israel is just one of many fronts, albeit the foremost.

For the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is indeed a jihad — if it weren’t, Mr. Akyol would have had his two-state solution in 1948, when the Arabs rejected a Palestinian state and went to war with Israel instead, motivated by the jihadist intransigence that demands all the land of Israel as an Islamic waqf. That line of thinking is also why the Camp David Accords, the Oslo Accords, the Road Map, and all other attempts to “solve” the Israeli/Palestinian conflict have failed, and why all future such initiatives will fail unless they involve the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and its incorporation into an Islamic Sharia state. That is the stated goal of the Hamas movement that runs the Gaza strip that was to be the recipient of this “humanitarian aid.”

The “radicals,” as Mr. Akyol calls Hamas and its ideological kin, are supported by the overwhelming majority of Gazans, who voted them into power by a large margin. The society they envision is not in any sense “pro-justice” except in the eyes of Sharia supporters and sympathizers, and given that Mr. Akyol acknowledges that “some of the activists on board were ‘Hamas sympathizers,’” it reflects poorly on the moral sense of the other “activists” that they made the trip at all in the company of such people.

Meanwhile, Mr. Akyol conveniently ignores the fact that what he characterizes as the “Israeli narrative,” to which he generously grants me permission to subscribe, is abundantly established by video footage showing that the “activists” attacked the Israeli soldiers first, and by the photographs showing that the weapons they used were anything but the harmless “kitchen utensils” he earlier characterized them as being. But it has already been abundantly established that the world will not accept Israeli evidence no matter how compelling, while swallowing Palestinian propaganda (which they are very skillful in packaging for the mainstream media) with eager credulity.

So I do not, by any means, expect Mr. Akyol to break ranks with the dominant mainstream, the overall objectives of which he accepts anyway. I do wonder, however, what would happen to this self-professed “liberal Muslim” if he himself were to visit Gaza and proclaim publicly his opposition to the Islamic death penalty for apostasy. He might in that event not find too many of the oppressed, starving, but inexplicably obese (indeed, one of the most obese populations in the world) people of Gaza not quite as “pro-justice” as he might have hoped.

Last week, The Heritage Foundation’s second annual “Protect America Month” came to a close.  The program was designed to express commitment to America’s national security, advocate for increased defense spending, point out the constitutional basis for government’s role in protecting America, and to examine the threats to the United States.  John Ashcroft, former Attorney General of the United States, delivered the closing speech.

Attorney General Ashcroft began by asserting his belief that “the defense of America is tantamount to the defense of freedom.  And freedom is worth defending.”  He astutely reviewed his understanding of the definition of freedom, and how American exceptionalism plays a vital role in contributing and sustaining freedom around the globe.

He rejected the common argument that freedom and national security must be balanced.  Rather, freedom is the highest value with no parallel.  However, in order to maintain it, it must be secured.  Therefore, the two are not counterweights to each other.  Rather, national security protects America’s freedom, and ensures that freedom stays intact.

Ashcroft explained that the ability to engage in the pursuit of happiness increases freedom, while the provision of happiness by the government impairs freedom, and often comes at a high cost.  In other words, when needs are converted into rights, freedom shrinks.  Most importantly, the imposition of that which is not wanted constitutes the denial of freedom regardless of the virtue of that which is being imposed.

Freedom is under attack.  Nine years after September 11, 2001, Americans have become complacent.  Many have a false sense of security.  But the former Attorney General encouraged the audience not to surrender to the terrorist threat, and always be mindful of those who sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom.

Ashcroft believes that the number one responsibility of the federal government is to protect its citizens.  The way he believes national security is enforced is through the rule of law, so that people are on notice of what they can and cannot do.

In analyzing habeas corpus doctrine, the use of military tribunals and indefinite detention, Ashcroft reviewed numerous Supreme Court cases including Hamdi, Quirin, and Eisentrager.  He also discussed the DC Court of Appeals case, titled Maqaleh v Gates.

When asked about his positions on specific policy and legal matters, he emphasized the reasoning process that should support these decisions.  They included the following:

• Be aware that policies send a message that can deter behavior or invite behavior;
• Determine if the conduct in question constitutes a war crime or merely violates a domestic criminal statute;
• Ensure that all three branches of government are acting within their appropriate constitutional limits;
• Know that the executive branch can make faster decisions to ensure the protection of America’s national security than can the legislative branch;
• Acknowledge the fact that military tribunals, while operating under different rules than federal courts, still result in outcomes that are fair and respect the true facts;
• In deciding whether a defendant should be tried in a military tribunal versus a federal court, determine your objective.   If national security information in involved, minimize the release of this information to our enemies;
• If a person with US citizen status is fighting against the US with America’s enemies, perhaps he should be treated as an enemy;
• Laws should be clear and certain.  If the geographical location of the occurrence doesn’t provide clear rules, then look to the circumstances surrounding the case;
• America should make sure that she runs prisons only in locations where she can maintain control of what occurs within them;
• Finally, Americans should distinguish between detention for the purpose of punishment and detention for the purpose of removing enemy combatants from the stream of battle.

The former Attorney General also noted that America’s reckless financial conduct will have grave national security implications for future generations who might be unable to finance their defense.  Moreover, if America reveals a lack of self-sufficiency to the world by becoming a debtor to the world, it signals America’s weakness.  Funding national security should be one of government’s main priorities.

America’s current Attorney General, Eric Holder, appears to have no clear rules guiding his decisions in reference to which defendants go to a military tribunal versus a federal court.  His decisions appear to be arbitrary and capricious.  Though he is the head of the Department of Justice, national security does not seem to be his paramount priority.  He refuses to acknowledge the Islamist ideological threat, favors the closing of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, opposes the Patriot Act (responsible for disrupting numerous terrorist plots in the US) and is critical of enhanced interrogation techniques.  Instead, he has stated that engagement in “dialogue” with the Muslim community is a priority for his Department, as is the prosecution of so-called “hate crimes.”  Though he is not an expert in Islamic theology, he nevertheless asserts with seeming authority the claim that that those who commit terrorist acts in the name of Islam behave in a way that is “un-Islamic” and contrary to Islam’s actual teachings.

By contrast, John Ashcroft led America through its toughest times after the largest terrorist attack on US soil following September 11, 2001.  He made fighting terrorism his number one priority.  He reorganized DOJ to ensure that suspected terrorists were prosecuted when the evidence warranted it.  Under his leadership, DOJ dismantled numerous terrorist cells throughout the US and over 150 plots throughout the world.  Ashcroft’s role in the execution of the War on Terror was one of the most difficult of any cabinet member.

Ashcroft’s speech at the Heritage Foundation expressed a love of freedom, an appreciation of American exceptionalism, an understanding of the threats to liberty, respect for the law, Judeo-Christian values, and a deference to “we the people.”  The Left, of course, has consistently expressed its venom toward John Ashcroft and the entire War on Terror. But Ashcroft’s speech reminded me of the time after September 11, 2001, when, however briefly, the country came together to face our common enemies.  Our government united us in the cause for freedom and our shared American values.  My, how things have changed.

PATTANI, Thailand - A drive-by bombing near a mosque wounded 23 people in Thailand's turbulent south in what police said Wednesday was an attack by Muslim insurgents.

Witnesses saw two men on a motorcycle throw an improvised explosive device at a government pickup truck in Yala town Tuesday evening, but the bomb missed the vehicle and landed just across the street from the mosque, Police Superintendent Col. Piyawat Chalermsri said.

Most of those hurt were Muslims. Two victims were in intensive care, including a 14-year-old girl in critical condition.

Thailand's southernmost provinces, the only ones with Muslim majorities in the predominantly Buddhist country, have been gripped for the past six years by a separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 4,000 lives.

Southern Muslims have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens, and the government has put more effort into suppressing the insurgency than dealing with the root causes of their disaffection.

In other words, they should play the dhimmi rather than meet violent intimidation with resistance.

Piyawat said he believed Islamist insurgents targeting the government were behind Tuesday's bombing. Surveillance video broadcast on Thai TV stations showed an explosion seconds after an army truck drove by a teahouse.

However, one analyst was skeptical about the government claim because no previous attacks had been carried out in that area of Yala, which is a wholly Muslim sector filled with people going to the mosque....

I didn't post this video only because it came in while I was very busy with preparations for the mosque rally, and by the time I was able to watch it it had already gone viral -- and indeed, you have probably already seen it. But the story now is that Israeli authorities have taken clueless dhimmitude to new heights by actually apologizing for this video, as if it is somehow wrong to mock the Palestinian propaganda machine that does, in fact, con the world. Or is it wrong to mock the self-indulgent rock stars who created "We Are the World"?

"Israel Apologizes for Music Video Mocking Gaza Flotilla," by Mara Gay for AOL News, June 8 (thanks to Pamela Hall):

(June 8) -- The Israeli government has apologized for circulating a satirical video that uses Michael Jackson's hit single "We Are the World" to mock activists from the Gaza flotilla.

"There's no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the greatest bluff of all," one refrain in the parody goes.

Last week nine people aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of six ships carrying aid to Gaza in defiance of Israel's blockade, were killed under hotly contested circumstances during an Israeli raid on the flotilla. In the video, Israelis dressed up as activists offer their own take on the incident through song.

"We con the world, we con the people," the song continues, in an apparent reference to Hamas and the activists aboard the flotilla.

The Israeli Government Press Office distributed footage of the music video to foreign journalists on June 4, but then sent an apology to reporters just hours later, insisting it had been an accident.

"The contents of the video in no way represent the official policy of either the Government Press Office or of the State of Israel," Israel's Government Press Office later told CNN....