In 1868, a British army led by Sir Robert Napier sailed from India to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to rescue several English and European hostages from the mentally unstable, sadistic King Theodore. Theodore had become enraged a few years earlier because his letter to Queen Victoria asking for military assistance had been ignored, and so he retaliated by taking the hostages. Napier’s expedition required the building of a port, railroad, and road in order for his army of 13,000 soldiers to march to Theodore’s stronghold Magdala, 400 brutal miles from the coast. After the three-month march, the British met Theodore’s army at Magadala and routed it. The hostages were released, and Theodore committed suicide. Then Napier led his army back to the coast and sailed away, surprising many who believed that rescuing the hostages was a pretext for colonial expansion.

The Abyssinian expedition illustrates the British awareness that an empire must defend not just its material interests, but also its prestige. Insults and injuries to its citizens cannot be tolerated, for rivals and enemies will interpret such forbearance as a weakness to be exploited. The expedition was an expensive, massive undertaking, but one necessary in order to warn the Empire’s potential enemies that England would pay any price to defend its honor and interests. Power is not just about material resources, but also the perceptions of others that power will be used, a perception that works as a force multiplier. As Vergil says in the Aeneid, “They have power because they seem to have power.”

History is filled with examples of how costly it is for a nation to allow its prestige to be damaged, thus weakening its power and inviting aggression. By 1938, Hitler had no respect for the English or the French despite their combined military might, given their failure to respond to Germany’s serial violations of the Versailles settlement over the previous two decades. Thus Hitler’s brilliant manipulation of diplomacy in the Czechoslovakia crisis, when England and France, as Churchill would write later, “presented a front of two over-ripe melons crushed together.” Hitler agreed: a year later, he would respond to England and France’s guarantee of Poland’s security by sneering, “I saw them at Munich. They are little worms.”

Likewise the U.S. paid the price for its loss of prestige following the abandonment of South Vietnam in 1975. As Jimmy Carter publicly announced a “crisis of confidence,” fretted over America’s “recent mistakes” and “recognized limits,” and cut spending on the military, an emboldened Soviet Union went on a geopolitical rampage throughout the Third World. Equally ominous was the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the seizure of the embassy hostages, a grievous affront to our prestige met with toothless sanctions, U.N. resolutions, secret negotiations, and the whole repertoire of excuses to substitute talk for action. A byproduct of this blow to U.S. prestige was the creation of an oil-rich jihadist regime in the heart of the Middle East, one that immediately started creating and supporting terrorist groups that for 30 years have murdered Americans. A series of jihadist attacks followed Iran’s victory over the superpower America, from the 1983 Beirut bombing of the Marine barracks, to the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, none of which were met with a punitive response that would have made clear the overwhelming price to be paid for assaulting America’s interests and citizens. So it was no surprise that Osama bin Laden, convinced that America was a “weak horse” with “foundations of straw,” on September 11, 2001 sent his jihadists to attack the very centers of American power and prestige in Washington D.C. and New York.

The Obama administration’s position on Syria is clear. Administration officials have said that Bashar Assad’s days are numbered and affirmed that the goal is a “democratic transition” that would see Assad deposed from power. President Obama has added moral urgency to the situation, condemning Assad’s brutal 11-month crackdown on dissent and vowing that “cruelty must be confronted for the sake of justice and human dignity.” For all the forcefulness of its intentions, though, the administration has yet to spell out a concrete course for ousting Assad and ending the violence.

Diplomacy seems to be the administration’s preferred strategy for regime change, at least judging from the desperate way in which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to win Russian support for a UN Security Council resolution backing Assad’s exit. But as Russia and China’s obdurate refusal to part ways with Assad shows, there will be no such unanimity at the UN. Neither country seems to have been moved by Syria’s humanitarian crisis, as UN ambassador Susan Rice’s admonition that both countries “will have any future blood spilled on their hands” plainly has fallen on deaf ears.

Russia and China’s backing isn’t necessary to tighten sanctions or to seize the regime’s finances abroad, but these measures may have reached diminishing returns. Switzerland and the EU have already frozen Assad and his lieutenants’ assets and it’s not clear how much more can be done on this front. Powerful economic sanctions have already been pushed through by the European Union, Turkey, and the Arab League, meanwhile, and while their impact will certainly be felt in Damascus it’s unlikely to be decisive. As international sanctions expert Daniel Drezner points out, sanctions alone rarely collapse regimes as determined to hold on to power as Assad’s.

The administration’s least-preferred option – the use of force – is also unlikely. Although the Department of Defense has said that it is reviewing all options for Syria, the administration has been at pains to stress that it has not been considering a Libya-style military intervention. Speaking with NBC’s Matt Lauer last Sunday, President Obama stressed that it is “very important for us to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention.” Obama added that he thought that was “possible.”

This reluctance may seems strange coming from the Obama administration, particularly considering its willingness to use force in Libya, where Moammar Qadaffi only threatened the kind of collective punishment and humanitarian disaster that Assad has already inflicted on Syrians. But according to national security reporter Laura Rozen, the administration considers Syria a different case for several reasons.

First, Syria’s location matters more than Libya’s. Syria’s neighbors – Iraq, Israel, Turkey – make the threat of regional instability arising from military intervention far more worrying. There is also the matter of Syria’s internal sectarian divisions and its fractured political opposition. Not only are there long-running tensions between the majority Sunnis and the Alawaite sect of Assad, but there is feuding even among the two leading opposition groups, the Syrian National Council and the National Coordination Body, who fell out most recently after disagreeing about the use of foreign force against Assad.

Not long ago, I used this space to ask if the Arab Spring was like 2009 (the failed Twitter Revolution in Iran), 1989 (the democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe) or 1979 (the Islamist revolution in Iran). Like others, I believed the end of Mubarak’s autocratic rule was something to celebrate, but I worried that what ultimately replaces Mubarak may not be worth celebrating. And sadly, a year later, elements of the Arab Spring are starting to resemble 1979, as evidenced by the brewing hostage crisis in Egypt.

Nineteen American citizens working for well-known and well-established nonprofit groups are being held on trumped-up charges that they tried to destabilize Egypt. Their offices were raided in late December, some are holed up in the U.S. embassy and all of them have been barred from flying out of Egypt. As Time magazine notes, December is significant. December is when Congress passed a number of conditions for aid to the Egyptian military, including proving a “commitment to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, progress toward democratic reforms, and the protection of free expression, association and religion.” Not only are the last two of those conditions not being met by Egypt, but Time adds that Cairo’s case against the Americans is “propagated by the military-led regime.”

That’s also an important part of the story. To its credit, the Egyptian military played a key role in persuading Mubarak to cede power, and in preventing Egypt from careening into chaos. The Egyptian military is now trying to serve as something of a referee/power broker/king-maker. Up until this crisis, Washington recognized that while having the Egyptian military in charge is not ideal, it may be necessary to hold the political pieces together in Egypt. But if this is how the “responsible” parties in post-Mubarak Egypt are going to treat Americans, then it’s time to reevaluate everything about this interests-based relationship. Hopefully, Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey is conveying that very message in his talks in Cairo.

The clear, unambiguous and indeed private message should be threefold:

• The U.S. aid spigot—an average of $2 billion per year since 1979—will be shut off if these hostages aren’t freed and if post-Mubarak Egypt continues to resemble post-Shah Iran. As Time puts it, “if Egypt’s generals get away with the NGO crackdown and the political humiliation of its biggest foreign benefactor, it’s going to set a dangerous precedent for other regimes testing the waters of democracy.”

• The United States is prepared to radically rethink its security posture and force structure in the region. There are many other countries in the region that will take U.S. aid dollars and assist the U.S. in protecting its strategic interests.

• U.S. force will be employed if American interests or citizens are again threatened. Washington cannot allow another far-off revolution to hold America hostage.

Let’s say you’re Israel.  An enemy dedicated to your destruction is developing the means to wipe you off the face of the earth, with the covert and overt help of world powers like Russia and China.  It’s only a matter of months before that enemy achieves its goals – and when it does you will not be able to stop the mushroom cloud rising over your cities.

So you come up with a sophisticated military plan to strike your foe in an extraordinarily targeted fashion.  And you ask for the help of your longtime ally – virtually your only ally – the United States.  All you want is covert logistical support … and secrecy.  Secrecy is of the utmost importance, since a full-scale aerial assault on your enemy is unfeasible.

Let’s say you’re Israel.  What would you say if the United States promptly proceeded to broadcast your military plans to the rest of the world?

Two little words come to mind.  And neither of them is “thanks.”

That’s precisely what happened this week, when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced via the Washington Post that “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June – before Iran enters what Israelis described as a ‘zone of immunity’ to commence building a nuclear bomb.”  What was the point of spilling the beans?  To scuttle the attack, of course.  According to the Post, “President Obama and Panetta are said to have cautioned the Israelis that the United States opposes an attack, believing that it would derail an increasingly successful international economic sanctions program and other non-military efforts to stop Iran from crossing the threshold.”

This has become pattern for the Obama Administration.  Back in June 2010, you’ll recall, the London Times reported that the Saudi Arabians had cut a deal with the Israelis to allow them to use Saudi airspace for a strike on Iran.  Where did the Times learn this?  According to the Jerusalem Post, “The report cited a US defense source as saying the Saudis have already done tests to ensure no jet is shot down in the event of an Israeli attack.  The source added that the U.S. State Department is aware of the agreement.”

Well, isn’t that odd – two blown secrets, two references to the U.S. Defense Department.

The real problem isn’t just the blown secret, of course.  It’s the signal it sends to the Iranian regime.  By letting the cat out of the bag, the United States has signaled to the Iranians that the Israelis are on their own – that the Israelis are in fact a rogue state operating outside the bounds of conventional international politics.  By signaling open opposition to the Israelis defending themselves, the Obama Administration has demonstrated to the Iranians in crystalline fashion that even if Iran develops weapons, and even if the Iranians hand those weapons off to a terrorist group for use against Israel, America may stand idly by.

The Egyptian Government has released the names of nineteen American citizens that it intends to prosecute for their role in fomenting anti-government protests – a charge they deny. Protests from the American Government have so far been futile, met with sneers of contempt.

The echoes are unmistakable. On November 4, 1979, Iranian thugs stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. Jimmy Carter’s government wrung its hands in futility for the next fourteen months, until finally the Islamic Republic released the hostages on January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan took office as President of the United States.

The bitter irony in all that was that Carter had betrayed the Shah of Iran, a longtime U.S. ally, and thereby paved the way for the ascent to power of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian mullahcracy that has ruled Iran ever since. Rather than feel gratitude toward Carter, however, Khomeini viewed his abandonment of the Shah as a sign of weakness, and pressed forward with his jihad against the Great Satan.

Iran has maintained a hostile posture toward the United States ever since then, including gleeful predictions of our nation’s imminent demise. Just days ago, Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, declared to an enthusiastic Tehran crowd that “in light of the realization of the divine promise by almighty God, the Zionists and the Great Satan (America) will soon be defeated….Allah’s promises will be delivered and Islam will be victorious.”

As the Iranian regime inches ever closer toward constructing nuclear weapons, as even Hillary Clinton has acknowledged it is trying to do, these words become more than just empty braggadocio and saber-rattling. The U.S. and Israel have one man to thank for the advent of a genocide-minded regime that considers them both the most implacable of enemies, is not deterred by the prospect of millions of its own people dead, and is racing toward completion of a nuclear weapon.

That man, of course, is Jimmy Carter. And from the looks of recent events, he is back in the White House.

In June 2009, when Barack Obama made his notorious appeal to the Muslim world from Cairo, he specifically stipulated that leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood be allowed to attend – despite the fact that at that time the Brotherhood was still an outlawed group. Last March, as the “Arab Spring” uprisings toppled the sclerotic and brutal regime of Hosni Mubarak, Obama hailed “the peaceful transition to democracy in both Tunisia and in Egypt.” As the regime fell, Obama exulted: “We’ve borne witness to the beginning of new chapter in the history of a great country and a longtime partner of the United States.”

At the same time, Obama signaled his willingness to open talks with the Muslim Brotherhood, and gave every indication that he would not oppose the establishment of an Islamic state in Egypt.

Now, as Egypt rushes headlong toward becoming a Sharia state and adopts a posture of increasing hostility toward the United States, Obama is scrambling to hold at bay the forces he is largely responsible for unleashing.

In this edition of The Glazov Gang, Frontpage’s television program, three distinguished guests shed light on the rebirth of communism on American soil. Our guests are: Sonja Schmidt, a conservative political analyst, Evan Sayet, America’s #1 conservative comedian and Kevin Hand, CEO and President of Hand & Associates. See Part I of this three part series below. We will run Part II, Fired for Islamophobia, in tomorrow’s edition.

[For the whole story behind Occupy Wall Street and how this movement marks a new phase in the rebirth of the communist Left, read the new broadside by David Horowitz and John Perazzo, Occupy Wall Street: The Communist Movement Reborn. This essential pamphlet exposes the roots, leaders and hidden agendas of the radical movement and its war on capitalism and free societies.]

Floating a trial balloon for the White House, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced last week that the Obama administration is planning to speed up its withdrawal timetable in Afghanistan. “By mid- to the latter part of 2013, we’ll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise and assist role,” Panetta said. That would be a year earlier than what the Obama administration had initially proposed.

This should come as no surprise. In fact, it’s exactly what President Obama has been pushing for, itching for, advocating, from the very beginning of his administration.

Recall that in 2009, after a lengthy re-review of his own policy, the president concluded that “it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan,” before promising that “after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”

That announcement raised red flags for many observers.

First, the notion that “our vital national interest” somehow has an expiration date was nothing short of bizarre.

Second, the much-ballyhooed surge of 30,000 troops was less than what the generals asked for—Gen. Stanley McChrystal wanted 40,000—and arguably never had the full impact it was designed to have. In fact, the White House was trying to get the military to accede to a faster draw-down—and arguably shorter withdrawal timetable—last July.

As Defense News reported at the time, then-Defense Secretary Gates was “sparring at a distance with White House aides who are pushing for a faster draw-down of the 100,000-strong U.S. force.” Indeed, after the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, the president declared that “it’s now time for us to recognize that we’ve accomplished a big chunk of our mission and that it’s time for Afghans to take more responsibility.” He then ordered the withdrawal of 33,000 troops by summer 2012. Again, the military advocated a more modest reduction of between 5,000 and 10,000 troops.

Third, letting the Taliban know when the U.S. military would end its offensive only made the mission harder—and the Taliban less open to some sort of settlement.

That helps explain why a leaked U.S. military report, based on interviews of Taliban prisoners, concludes that:

“Taliban commanders, along with rank and file members, increasingly believe their control of Afghanistan is inevitable. Though the Taliban suffered severely in 2011, its strength, motivation, funding and tactical proficiency remains intact…they see little hope for a negotiated peace. Despite numerous tactical setbacks, surrender is far from their collective mindset.”

Regrettably, it seems the very opposite mindset is at work in Washington.

To be sure, the American people and their military should not be expected to sacrifice more for Afghanistan than the Afghan people are themselves willing to sacrifice. Moreover, it is the president’s responsibility to determine and then to do what is in America’s national interest—not what is in Hamid Karzai’s interest. In other words, sometimes the wisest, most just, most appropriate decision a president can make is to pull back and turn away.

Apparently the Taliban are softening, even allowing girls to get an education. Clearly this heralds an opening to the West, a heady indication that their most repressive days are past them, and that soon they will take their place among the free people of the earth. Soon they will be following the teachings of Naomi Wolf and Thomas Paine.

Yaroslav Trofimov, in a piece that ran Sunday in the Wall Street Journal, noted that Maulvi Qalamuddin, who headed the Committee to Protect Virtue and Prevent Vice back when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, has completely changed his tune regarding the education of girls. Where once he oversaw the shutting-down, sometimes violently, of girls’ schools, now he says: “Education for women is just as necessary as education for men. In Islam, men and women have the same duty to pray, to fast—and to seek learning.”

Anyone who believes this, or believes that Maulvi Qalamuddin believes it, should contact me, as I have a lovely bridge to sell you. “War is deceit,” said Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, according to a famous hadith, and the Taliban are listening. But the Taliban are to be forgiven for thinking that this sort of thing would play well in Washington, for it very likely will. After all, Joe Biden is still the Vice President – the amiable dunce who recently said: “Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us.”

In other words, the Taliban might win, so we have to surrender and act as if we’re just fine with that. And the alternative? Hamid Karzai, who got so annoyed with his American patrons last year that he threatened to join the Taliban himself. The Karzai government, that has been so helpful in “cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us” that an increasing number of American and allied soldiers have recently fallen victim to surprise attacks from Afghan army forces that are supposed to be on our side.

There’s been a heap of criticism placed upon President Barack Obama’s domestic policies that have promoted government intrusion and prolonged our fiscal crisis and his foreign policies that have emboldened our enemies. Any criticism of Obama pales in comparison with what might be said about the American people who voted him in to the nation’s highest office.

Obama’s presidency represents the first time in our history that a person could have been elected to that office who had long-standing close associations with people who hate our nation. I’m speaking of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for 20 years, who preached that blacks should sing not “God Bless America,” but “God damn America.” Then there’s William Ayers, now professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago but formerly a member of the Weather Underground, an anti-U.S. group that bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and other government buildings. Although Ayers was never convicted of any crime, he told a New York Times reporter, in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attack, “I don’t regret setting bombs. … I feel we didn’t do enough.” Obama has served on a foundation board, appeared on panels, and even held campaign events in Ayers’ home, joined by Ayers’ former-fugitive wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Bill Ayers’ close association with Obama is reflected by his admission that he helped write Obama’s memoirs, “Dreams from My Father.”

Many Americans thought that with Obama’s presidency, we were moving to a “post-racial society.” Little can be further from the truth. Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, in a National Review (1/18/2012) article titled “Obama’s Racial Politics,” says that Obama’s message about race and his charges of racial bigotry are “usually coded and subtle.” Criticizing Republicans, before a Mexican-American audience, Obama said that he ran for office because “America should be a place where you can always make it if you try — a place where every child, no matter what they look like (or) where they come from, should have a chance to succeed.” If you don’t get it, “no matter what they look like” is code for nonwhite.

California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system.

Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of politics is that it is all other people’s money, including among those other people generations yet unborn.

The high-speed rail system proposed for California has been envisioned as a model for similar systems elsewhere in the United States. A recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle used the high-speed rail system in Spain as an analogy for California.

Spain is about the same size as California, and has a similar population density — and population density is the key to the economic viability of mass transportation, from subways to high-speed rail.

It so happens that I have ridden on Spain’s high-speed rail system. It was very nice, especially since I did not have to pay the full costs, which were subsidized by the Spanish taxpayers.

While the Spanish government has been subsidizing the passengers on its high-speed rail system, the European Union has been subsidizing the Spanish government. Someone once said that government is the illusion that we can all live off somebody else. Spain’s high-speed rail system is not even covering its operating costs, never mind the enormous costs of setting up the system in the first place. One reason is that half the seats are empty in the high-speed trains in Spain.

That is what happens when you don’t have the population density required for passengers to cover the operating costs. You would need the hordes of Genghis Khan riding the high-speed rail system to cover the additional costs of the rails and the trains.

An economics professor at the University of Barcelona says that Spain “has not recovered one single euro from the infrastructure investment.”

In a refreshing change of pace from Republican candidates taking potshots at each other on the campaign trail, Newt Gingrich put some perspective on the presidential race when he clarified the challenge for the eventual party nominee, and what is at stake. He told a large crowd in Coral Springs, Florida Wednesday that

We need somebody who is a conservative and who can stand up to [President Obama] and debate and who can clearly draw the contrast between the Declaration of Independence and the writings of Saul Alinsky… The centerpiece of this campaign, I believe, is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky.

Gingrich’s attempts to tie Alinsky, the Chicago community organizer and author of the revolutionary handbook Rules for Radicals, to the Chicago community organizer in the White House prompted James Rosen to question this unusual strategy for Fox News online:

Why does Gingrich think it effective messaging for him to conjure a man who’s been dead forty years, and whose name is recognized, in all probability, by one in every 100,000 registered voters?

Rosen’s piece “Gingrich attacks on Obama resurrect Saul Alinsky” suggests that Alinsky is nothing more than an obscure, forgotten civil rights leader whose model for organizing the “Have Nots” against the entrenched “Haves” aims to empower the powerless and mainstream the marginalized. Rosen notes that Alinsky helped tutor, among others, a young Cesar Chavez, who “became one of the most celebrated activists of the twentieth century,” and that Alinsky’s intent was to teach people how “to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace.” The closest Rosen comes to painting a negative about Alinsky is by noting his “in-your-face” style. He even closes the article by claiming that “numerous Tea Party figures have expressed admiration for Rules for Radicals, as a primer on grassroots activism.”

It’s hard to imagine there could be a single Tea Partier who “admires” Alinsky and his strategy of deception to effect radical social transformation. It would be more accurate to say that anyone truly familiar with Alinsky’s methodology of infiltration mixed with confrontation simply acknowledges its impact on the left and its effectiveness in getting disciple Obama into the Presidency.

To get the complete picture of Saul Alinsky and his influence over protégés like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, click here to download the Freedom Center’s essential, 50-page booklet from 2009, Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model, by David Horowitz. The most prominent apostate of the radical left, Horowitz understands them and exposes their cynical, power-grabbing strategies like no one else. “Alinsky is the Sun-Tzu for today’s radicals,” he writes, “his book a manual for their political war.” Here Horowitz identifies Alinsky’s and the progressive left’s political nihilism:

An SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] radical once wrote, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” In other words the cause – whether inner-city blacks or women – is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution. That was the all-consuming focus of Alinsky and his radicals.

Hillary Rodham interviewed Alinsky himself for her college senior thesis, in which she compared him to Martin Luther King, Jr. After college she was offered a position in Alinsky’s new training institute in Chicago, but she went to Yale Law School instead and met future husband Bill – although she maintained her connections to and support of Alinsky’s army.

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address maintained that a “return to the American values of fair play and shared responsibility will help us protect our people and our economy.” A theme of the speech focused upon rectifying injustice in the economy. The president mentioned some variant of “fair” eight times throughout the speech. The word was ubiquitous; its definition, elusive. Fair can be so unfair like that.

Obama wants an America where everyone gets “a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.” But how do “we” reclaim “fair” when everyone seems to have a conflicting opinion on just what it is?

“Be fair,” like “be reasonable,” is another way of saying “Do what I want you to do.” It’s a command that sounds like a plea.

Occupy Wall Street complains that it’s unfair that the richest one percent enjoys eleven percent of U.S. income (and an even greater share of wealth). The National Taxpayers Union complains that the richest one percent pays thirty-seven percent of federal taxes (and an even greater share of total taxes). Fairness for the former would mean decreasing that income share by increasing taxes. Fairness for the latter would mean increasing that income share by decreasing taxes. Everyone agrees on fairness but disagrees on its meaning.

Manufacturers may find “fair” trade fair, but consumers don’t. The Fairness Doctrine appeals to liberals but not conservatives. An employee, but not the employer, may endorse a “fair” wage. The wealthy paying their “fair” share in taxes sounds fair to the recipients of government largesse but not to the funders of it. Fairness is often self-interest masquerading as the common good.

Fairness is one of those words that says more about the speaker than about what is spoken. Conflating one’s interested perspective for the disinterested arbiter of the proper balance is actually quite unfair. Never does partiality play impartiality better than when dressed up as fairness. Those petitioning others to be fair generally don’t take into consideration the interests of the others but want others to bow to their interests. It bespeaks an inability to walk in another’s shoes. At the same time, the invoker of “fairness” imagines himself above the fray. It is a word suited for a parent but not a president.

Articles on FrontPagemag.com and other sites have picked apart President Obama’s latest State of the Union address, both in terms of substance and tone. The speech dragged on and on, with language recycled from his previous State of the Union addresses. The rhetoric was highly partisan. The economic proposals consisted of a laundry list of progressive, anti-private enterprise, big government ideas and so on. However, beyond the specific deficiencies in Obama’s speech, his address was more of an exercise of a state of denial than an honest accounting of the State of the Union.

The most glaring example of Obama’s state of denial was his self-righteous chastisement of others for what he has done himself:

[A]nyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Remember, Obama’s barbs at others is coming from the same man who felt that America had to be fundamentally transformed from the kind of political and economic system that has come down to us from the Founding Fathers.

Moreover, Obama himself has put down America on several occasions while representing the United States abroad. Perhaps it is time for him to admit that he didn’t know what he was talking about when he leveled all his criticisms of the United States in front of foreign audiences. For example, on his very first trip overseas, in Strasbourg, France, Obama said the United States had “failed to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world” and that “there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”

In addition to his apologies and put-downs of America, Obama has downplayed the idea of American exceptionalism. When asked in France what he thought of America’s claim to an exceptional position among nations, he quipped that “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

By extension of Obama’s logic, since every country would most likely think of itself as exceptional, the idea that America truly is a unique example of freedom, economic dynamism, and goodness to the rest of the world has no meaning. This is moral relativism at its worst, compounded by Obama’s embarrassing habit of bowing to world leaders.

Moreover, as a result of some of his own policies, Obama is helping to bring about a decline of American power and influence, if they are not soon reversed. He is planning to hollow out our military with drastic budget cuts. He is ceding economic power to China. His so-called reset policies with Russia have played into Russia’s hands. Iran is ever closer to developing a nuclear bomb while Obama’s engagement policy has cost us crucial time. The list goes on and on.

A second example of Obama’s state of denial in his State of the Union address involved energy. He still believes the sun and wind gods, with a big dose of government funding, are the answer to our nation’s energy problem.

Because of federal investments, renewable energy use has nearly doubled. And thousands of Americans have jobs because of it.

Somehow, the Solyndra fiasco didn’t make it into Obama’s speech. American taxpayers were the losers to the tune of $500 million. So were the Solyndra employees when the company went belly-up. The only winners in the case of Solyndra were Obama’s campaign contribution bundlers who were lobbying for the Solyndra government loan guarantees.

Obama’s inexplicable decision to block the Keystone pipeline for crass political reasons didn’t make it into his speech either. Obama is inexcusably playing political games to hold on to his environmental base through the election, with good jobs for Americans and increased energy independence cast aside as the sacrificial lambs. Even Obama’s own jobs council has recommended building more pipelines. But then again, Obama rarely listens to the critical recommendations of his own councils and commissions such as his bipartisan deficit reduction commission.

Coming during an election year, President Obama’s State of the Union address was supposed to be a kinetic affair, the opening salvo in Obama’s battle to retain the White House. While making the case for his reelection, the president was expected to offer a bold political vision for leading the country. But the remarks he offered last night were surprisingly tame, an aimless blend of populist gimmicks, class warfare, and outright contradictions that made the soaring oratory of Obama’s 2008 election seem like a distant memory.

Rather than the politics of renewal, Obama dealt in the politics of envy. At the heart of his speech was the theme of economic unfairness. As the president told it, the rich are not paying their fair share. The result is a “country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by.” The claim came courtesy of billionaire investor Warren Buffet, who has repeatedly bemoaned the fact that he pays a lower tax rate than his personal secretary. But what might have been simply a tendentious talking point has apparently become the heart of Obama’s reelection campaign, as the president paid symbolic debt to Buffet by seating his secretary, Debbie Bosanek, in the gallery with First Lady Michelle Obama. That set the stage for Obama to voice his support for the so-called “Buffet rule,” which would require Americans making over $1 million a year to pay a minimum tax of 30 percent.

The idea that secretaries are paying more in taxes than their billionaire bosses is certainly sensational. It’s also, for the most part, false. Under America’s progressive tax structure, the overwhelming majority of high-income earners pay the top rate of 35 percent. True, there are some minor exceptions, such as the case of Buffet. Not unlike Mitt Romney, most of Buffet’s income comes from investments like capital gains and dividends, which are taxed at 15 percent. That might seem to be a lower rate that Buffet’s secretary pays. In reality, however, most investment income is taxed twice. For most high-earners, the 15 percent capital gains tax on investments comes in addition to a corporate tax rate of 35 percent. Altogether, the effective tax rate for investment income in America is a sizeable 44.75 percent. Given that low-income earners pay little to nothing in taxes, it should come as no surprise that, according to the Tax Policy Center, a full 60 percent of Americans pay a lower effective rate than Buffett does. That includes most secretaries.

Obama did his best to distort that reality.  He insisted, for instance, that he was simply asking a “billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes,” which he called “common sense.” A better description might be “extremely misleading.” Quite apart from the fact that tax rates for the rich are not as low as the president suggests, it’s ludicrous to claim that billionaires are not paying as much in total taxes as their secretaries. Not even Warren Buffet has suggested anything of the sort. It is surely a sign of the shallowness of the president’s domestic policy agenda that he sees stoking class resentment as his best appeal to American voters.

And not just class resentment. When not assailing the rich, Obama lashed out at America’s global competitors, most notably China. His affirmations of American greatness were interspersed with crude protectionism that left one to wonder whether he truly believed in America’s ability to succeed in the free market. Thus he announced the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit to monitor Chinese goods entering the United States, applauded his administration for slapping a tariff on Chinese tires, and condemned companies for outsourcing jobs. To be sure, that rant did not prevent Obama from calling for the emergence of “the next Steve Jobs.” That would be the same Steve Jobs whose Apple has long outsourced jobs to China.

The following article presents one interpretation of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. For a counter-view written by Ryan Mauro, in favor of Mitt Romney’s electability, click here. 

For well over a year now, we’ve been hearing that Mitt Romney was the inevitable nominee for the Republican Party.  I’ve personally heard it from Republican fundraisers, Republican Party staffers, and high-ranking conservative commentators.  Not only was Romney inevitable, they’d say, he deserved inevitability, because he was clearly the most electable candidate.

With Newt Gingrich blowing Romney’s inevitability meme out of the water in South Carolina and Florida, the question is no longer whether Mitt is inevitable – he’s not—but whether he deserves to be the nominee based on electability.

I believe Mitt is, in fact, virtually unelectable.  By contrast, I believe that Newt Gingrich has a serious shot at beating President Obama.  Here’s why.

(1) Narrative.  Presidential elections are decided on narrative and who gets to define it.  In 2004, conservatives succeeded in defining the race as a strong and stable wartime president against a flip-flopping Vietnam-era radical who lied about his war record.  In 2008, Obama and the media defined the narrative, which quickly became “The Chosen One.”

In 2012, the conventional Republican wisdom goes, Republicans must run as bland a candidate as humanly possible.  If they do, Obama’s record will be the issue rather than the Republican candidate.  Romney is clearly the least offensive candidate.

There’s only one problem: every narrative has to define both candidates.  The Republican establishment may wish to define Romney as a successful businessman and CEO with governing experience.  But he will be defined instead as a 1% elitist out of touch with mainstream Americans; his Bain Capital background will be trotted out to no end; his failure to create jobs in Massachusetts will become a key campaign issue (he was 46^th out of 50 during his tenure).  The Obama campaign is drooling to get their hooks into Romney – that’s what the entire Occupy Wall Street movement has been about.

Romney has been absolutely incapable of fending off such attacks in the primaries.  Gingrich trashed Romney over Bain Capital, and it clearly had an effect with South Carolina voters; Romney’s tax records have been more of an issue than Newt’s marriages in the last two weeks, despite the best efforts of Marianne Gingrich.

In fact, it gets even worse for Romney.  Historically, boring candidates don’t do the defining – they get defined.  Name the more boring candidate in each election since 1976, and you will be naming a loser: Ford, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, H.W. Bush, Dole, Gore, Kerry, McCain.  This is an unbreakable rule.  Boring candidates do not have the charisma or capacity to define themselves.

What’s worse, they don’t have the ability to define their opponents, either.  Romney is especially plagued by this.  The two issues of this campaign will clearly be Obamacare and job creation.  Romney loses on both – he created the model for Obamacare, and his job creation record is extraordinarily spotty.  The best argument he can make about Obama is the one he’s been making: that Obama is incompetent, that he has “amassed an actual record of debt, decline and disappointment.”  It’s a good argument.  It’s just  not a winning argument.  Kerry tried the same argument in 2004; Dole tried the same argument in 1996.  Defining Obama as incompetent won’t cut it, because in fact, he is extremely competent – at achieving far-left goals.

Want to know Obama’s counterargument?  It’ll look a good deal like Andrew Sullivan’s infamous Newsweek piece.  And if this campaign gets bogged down in the details of whether a recovery is actually taking place, even as Obama defines Romney as an out-of-touch richy-rich guy, Obama will win.

It will be significantly more difficult for Obama to craft a narrative about Newt.  Obama can’t attack Newt on lobbying – Obama’s stacked his administration with lobbyists, and he was the #2 recipient of Fannie/Freddie money in the Senate.  He can’t attack Newt on job creation – if Obama wants to argue Gingrich era job creation vs. Obama era job creation, good luck to him.  He could go after him on his personal life, but the only people who care about that are conservative, anyway.  He can’t attack Newt as an elitist – they’re both professors.  So what’s left?  The “crazy old coot” argument.  If Newt can avoid that pitfall, as he’s been doing so far with Romney, he can maintain his image as the “big idea guy” who worked with and against Clinton to create massive economic growth.

As for Newt defining Obama – well, Newt hasn’t been shy about that.  His goal is to paint Obama not just as incompetent but as unexpectedly radical – a man who posed as a moderate but governed like a hard-left ideologue.  Newt has been impressively articulate on this.  He may not cite Alinsky during the general election, but you can bet he’ll go after Obama on Obamacare, foreign policy spinelessness, and socialistic redistributionism.  McCain hit on that theme last time, but only in the last two weeks – and by then, it was too late.  Newt has already come up with the single catchiest title for Obama: The Food Stamp President.  It works because not only is Obama putting people on food stamps, he’s ideologically committed to increasing the number of people on food stamps.  This title sticks.  But it won’t stick coming from Romney, who looks like he’s never met anybody on food stamps.

(2) Numbers.  The Republican establishment constantly acts as though it must run the most moderate possible candidate in order to win.  Candidates without clear vision, in this view, run the best.  Once again, that’s wrong.  Gallup shows that 40 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative; 35 percent of Americans consider themselves moderate; just 21 percent of Americans consider themselves liberal.  That means that for a Republican to win convincingly, he need only win less than one out of three moderates and draw the entire conservative base.

[Editor’s note: The author of this article, Josh Brewster, is the host of "Duck Calls" Anaheim Ducks postgame radio show and the Editor-in-Chief of Hockeytalk.biz.]

Hockey’s culture of conformity took a hit Monday when Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas snubbed an invitation from the Obama White House, declining to visit the President during his annual meeting with the NHL’s reigning Stanley Cup Champion.

One of only three Americans on the Bruins roster,* Thomas is one of the sport’s biggest stars. Thomas, from Flint, Michigan, is a two-time Vezina Trophy winner (2008-09 and 2010-11) as the league’s best goaltender, also a Stanley Cup Champion and Conn Smythe Trophy winner as most valuable player in the playoffs (both 2010-11).  He has represented his country in six world championships and won a Silver Medal at the 2010 Olympics. He is featured in a very funny Visa commercial during which an obsessed Boston cabbie worships his photo, but fails to recognize him in person.

She’ll recognize him now, alright.

Jack Edwards, the TV voice of the Bruins on NESN, told FrontPage that Thomas is a patriotic American, but whether this is the right platform for Thomas’ politics remains to be seen.

“There’s no doubt Tim knew what he was doing,” Edwards told Frontpage, noting that the meeting with Obama comes just one day prior to the Bruins’ visit to Washington, DC for a game in Obama’s backyard, against the Capitals.

His teammates will respect and support his right to speak, says Edwards, but with the Bruins heading into the second half of the season as one of the league’s better clubs, the defending champions don’t need a distraction.

“This will surely create a firestorm, a media circus,” Edwards said.  “And the thing that concerns me as someone who follows the Bruins closely is that this could be to the detriment of the team.”

Sources tell Frontpage that Thomas made the decision to reject the White House invite over a month ago.

“We are disappointed that Tim chose not to join us, and his views certainly do not reflect those of the Jacobs family or the Bruins organization,” team President and former player Cam Neely said in a statement that served to distance the club from the politics behind the remark, without chastising its number one goaltender.

No different from any other major pro sports, the NHL doesn’t involve itself in political issues.  It serves too broad a community and alienating half the political aisle would be unwise.

The only initiative in which the league is involved that hints at ideology is its “NHL Green” program, focused on recycling and sustainability alongside the Natural Resources Defense Council.  The program buys in with the fashionable notion of man-made global warming, a viewpoint accepted by so many that it seems almost apolitical to most—but not to Thomas and many of his fellow conservatives (not to mention hundreds of scientists).

Sources tell Frontpage that inside the Bruins’ locker room, Thomas has engaged in friendly debates on global warming with defenseman Andrew Ference, who is actively involved with NHL Green.  The program offers NHL players an opportunity to purchase carbon credits, purportedly to offset the emissions from their travel over the course of the season.  Thomas does not purchase carbon credits.

Editor’s note: The world is at this moment witnessing a horrific phenomenon: Islamists coming to power throughout the Middle East under the guise of a supposed “Arab Spring” – while the President of the United States is facilitating the entire process. Indeed, President Obama is reaching his hand out in solidarity to Islamists and enabling their solidification of power throughout the region. While displaying a disastrous weakness with Iran and allowing the Mullahs to move ahead aggressively with their nuclear weapon program, the Obama administration is helping the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt and the Taliban regain power in Afghanistan.

In these tragic and disturbing circumstances, the editors of Frontpage felt it timely and relevant to rerun the video of Frontpage editor Jamie Glazov’s interview with Erick Stakelbeck on CBN News in May 2009, in which he discussed his book “United in Hate,” which crystallizes why the Left is in league with our deadly jihadi enemies. The interview explains precisely why a leftist like Obama is pursuing a disastrous foreign policy that is helping Islamists gain and consolidate power throughout the Middle East. Below is the second part of the two-part interview. We ran the first part in our next previous issue. 

Part II:

Most students no longer are taught their nation’s triumphs that would equip them to be knowledgeable citizens.

Major universities have turned from instruction in the significance of Western Civilization to the “profound” influence of Lady Gaga, (real name: Stephanie Germanotta), the bizarre recording artist whose commercial success has somehow topped charts around the world. In some colleges today even history majors don’t have to delve into our nation’s influences and beginings.

The national Association of Scholars, in a new analysis, “The Vanishing West: 1964-2010,” describes the tragic near disappearance of the study of Western Civilization from the American undergraduate curriculum.

Four top-tier universities now offer Lady Gaga’s influence in music, the arts, fashion and the LGBT lifestyle. At the same time, shockingly, none of the schools—University of Virginia, University of South Carolina, Wake Forest, and Arizona State require their students to study history to get their diploma.

Western civilization courses have been scratched from the general education requirements. They have been replaced in large part by courses that either undermine traditions in the West or “Balkanize” the curriculum. For example, black studies emphasize the plight of blacks. Women’s studies enthuse over the rising role of women. Yet American history, when it is available and required, emphasizes conflict, exploitation and imperial goals. Third World studies typically relate supposed abuse and unfair dominance by the West.

Polls indicate that students are alienated from their own culture.  Witness the Occupy Wall Street Movement., so warmly embraced by Obama forces. Young people who will vote this year and some of whom will eventually be the nation’s leaders are no longer learning about their civilization’s triumphs and its role in transforming the human condition.

“[F]or much of the twentieth century the Western history survey course was the standard means by which colleges and universities provided American undergraduates with a coherent nature of their civilization’s rise,” the National Association of Scholars (NAS) said. The studies told of the exceptionalism of the United States, a national characteristic which Barack Obama disparages.

“Western Civilization courses had deep symbolic importance for those who were seeking to refocus the undergraduate curriculum on multiculturalism and diversity,” the NAS declared. “When in 1987 Jesse Jackson led Stanford protestors in a chant of ‘Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s got to go,’ the object was not to displace mathematics or English literature, but eliminate a course that focused on Western Civilization,” the analysis recalled. Getting rid of Western Civilization courses reflected an ideological hostility. “Western Civilization” had come to be seen by radicals as a form of apologetics for racism, imperialism, sexism, and colonialism.

The first, comprehensive, multi-year investigation of subjects being taught in colleges across the country was “One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy,” by David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin in 2009. They cited more than 150 courses revealing the left-wing politics infused in liberal arts curriculum, including attempts to convince students that America is imperialistic and racist. An earlier book (2006) by Horowitz, “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,” exposed those with terrorist or non-democratic goals.

Editors’ note: The world is at this moment witnessing a horrific phenomenon: Islamists coming to power throughout the Middle East under the guise of a supposed “Arab Spring” – while the President of the United States is facilitating the entire process. Indeed, President Obama is reaching his hand out in solidarity to Islamists and enabling their solidification of power throughout the region. While displaying a disastrous weakness with Iran and allowing the Mullahs to move ahead aggressively with their nuclear weapon program, the Obama administration is helping the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt and the Taliban regain power in Afghanistan.

In these tragic and disturbing circumstances, the editors of Frontpage felt it timely and relevant to rerun the video of Frontpage editor Jamie Glazov’s interview with Erick Stakelbeck on CBN News in May 2009, in which he discussed his book “United in Hate,” which crystallizes why the Left is in league with our deadly jihadi enemies. The interview explains precisely why a leftist like Obama is pursuing a disastrous foreign policy that is helping Islamists gain and consolidate power throughout the Middle East. Below is the first part of the two part interview. We will run the second part in our next issue. 

Part I:

In a previous essay, the present writer exposed the concept of “taqiyya” as a traditional Muslim form of deceit employed by Yasir Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and other leaders of the Arab terror war against Israel.  El-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood also are using taqiyya against the USA and other western countries, and with frightening success.

While the Qur’an encourages honesty between believers (Sura 40:28), deception directed at non-Muslims, generally known in Arabic as taqiyya, has full Qur’anic support.

The Qur’an (Sura 2:225, 3:28, 3:54, 9:3, 16:106, 40:28, and 66:2) establishes the religious legitimacy of breaking oaths, lying, unilaterally violating treaties, and generally scheming against non-Muslims.  Allah Himself is described as “the best of schemers” (3:54, 8:30, 10:21), and Muhammad declared, as a justification for murdering unarmed prisoners after offering them safe passage, “war is deceit” (see the Hadith collection of  Bukhari, vol. 4, book 52, nos. 268-271).

The Qur’an and later sources command the obedient Muslim to be engaged in eternal war, jihad, with the non-Muslim world until the supremacy of Islam over the entire world is complete.  More than 120 times ((2:193, 4:89-90, 8:12, 8:39, 9:5, 9:11, 9:25, 9:29, 9:39, inter alia; and see here for detailed discussion) the Qur’an calls Muslims to jihad until Islam is the only or dominant religion in the world.

Based on its bloody and gruesome history, and on the voices of its dominant figures, Islam must be understood as a religion that institutionalizes war, conquest, imperialism and subjugation as its normative behaviors.  And in its most extreme iteration, it preaches the destruction of Judaism, Christianity, the Hindu civilization, and western civilization.  This being the case, what is the value of a treaty with a country under the control of Muslim extremists who subscribe to this iteration of Islam?  The answer to that question comes from Muslim scholars themselves: “By their very nature, treaties (with non-Muslims) must be of temporary duration, for in Muslim legal theory, the normal relations between Muslim and non-Muslim territories are not peaceful, but warlike” (Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1955, p. 220); and “…open-ended truces are illegitimate if Muslims have the strength to renew the war against them [non-Muslims]” (Ahmad Mahmud Karima, Al-Jihad fi’l Islam: Dirasa Fiqhiya Muqarina, p. 461, quoted by Raymond Ibrahim here, and discussed in greater depth here and here).

Such a violent and bloody history of conquest and expansionism ought to spark concern among neighbors to Muslim countries and targets of Muslim aggression.  Knowing this, some Muslim leaders employ taqiyya to promote an image of Islam as a religion of peace, and the practitioners of jihad as an aberrant few, a  minority of misunderstanders of the “true Islam” — in short, nothing about which the targets of jihad need worry.

But even as apologists for Islam declare any western leader’s concern about jihad to be an insult bordering on Islamophobia , Muslims speaking in their own languages to their own people have no hesitation about verbalizing their plans for Muslim world domination.  A popular topic for discussion on Arabic TV channels is the best strategy for conquering the West.  That strategy seems to be patience in the use of taqiyya, since the West currently has overwhelming economic, military and scientific power and cannot be defeated by traditional military strategies.

For a more graphic example, note the comments of an Australian Muslim cleric Abu Bakr, also known as Abdul Nacer Benbrika :

“I am telling you that my religion doesn’t tolerate other religions. It doesn’t tolerate (them). The only one law which needs to spread, it can be here or anywhere else, has to be Islam.”  Along the same lines, in Kuala-Lumpur (Malaysia), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad declared that: “… Islam will soon be the domineering force in the world…the world will be in the hands of Islam over the next few years” (ITAR/TASS Russian news agency, March 5, 2006 quoted here and here based upon here).

In numerous sermons Egyptian Muslim scholar and preacher Sheikh Yusuf el-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, rants about the destruction that awaits the Jews when Islam is the world’s ruling religion and the ancient “just and righteous Caliphate” is triumphant (see here, here and here for a general survey of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, here for el-Qaradhawi’s plans for future conquest of the west,  here for reactions to el-Qaradhawi’s fatwa calling for the killing of Americans in Iraq, here for al-Qaeda and other Muslim terror group’s plans for the West, and MEMRI TV’s video of a typical Qaradhawi speech).

And similar sentiments are expressed in the mosques and among the leaders of America’s ally, Saudi Arabia.  In the most sacred mosque in Islam, Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Sudais, the leading imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, uses his sermons to call for Jews to be ‘annihilated’ and to urge the overthrow of Western civilization.