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July 2013

JACK ENGELHARD: IS AMERICA STILL BLESSED?

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/jul/22/america-still-blessed/

—Has our luck run out? There was a time, going back to George Washington, when a good guy would come along to save the day. Abraham Lincoln surely came along just in time. We were blessed. This does not seem to be the case anymore. Instead of Martin Luther King, we have Al Sharpton. What does that say? Plenty.

From coast to coast, there is anger all around. On the one hand, black rage. On the other hand, white rage.

There was a time when “God shed his grace” on us.

God is dead? If so, we killed Him. Talk on the radio, on TV, along the Internet, none of it is about American greatness. Rather, it is about fear and loathing.

We have become small.

A perfectly legal acquittal that was rendered by a perfectly legal jury has been consigned to secondary importance.

If the outcome does not fit, quick, change the rules, and rather than plead for calm and harmony, our leaders rouse the streets.

As a result of the George Zimmerman case, we are being asked to submit.

JONAH GOLDBERG ON HELEN (OF HADES) THOMAS

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/354216/print She’s touted as a dogged reporter, but what were her actual journalistic accomplishments? In the movie Animal House, the Deltas are put on trial for their antics. When offered a chance to defend themselves, the best argument the fraternity’s president can come up with is, “But sir, Delta Tau Chi has a long tradition […]

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: TIME TO RETIRE THE DUMB PLANTATION THEORY

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/354265/plantation-theory-kevin-d-williamson

Cornel West is a very smart man who has some very dumb opinions, but when he’s feeling froggy he can be a hoot. In a recent interview, Professor West mocked Al Sharpton for playing the odalisque in President Obama’s media seraglio, calling him the embodiment of the “rent-a-Negro phenomenon on MSNBC.” The Reverend Sharpton, he said, is constrained because “he’s still on the Obama plantation.”

The use of the word “plantation” to describe the relationship between black Americans and their political patrons is an unfortunate staple of contemporary rhetoric. Professor West’s remark is unusual in that “plantation” rhetoric usually comes from the Right, as in Star Parker’s Uncle Sam’s Plantation, Deneen Borelli’s Backlash: How Obama and the Left Are Driving Americans to the Government Plantation, remarks by Michelle Malkin (“a textbook example of plantation progressivism”) or Ann Coulter (“Democrats seem to have decided blacks are safely on the plantation”), Rush Limbaugh (“The libs run a plantation”) and the like. Joe Biden, because he is a despicable human being, drove straight past the plantation to the sanitarium when he told a largely black audience that Mitt Romney would “put y’all back in chains.”

The plantation rhetoric is distasteful for the same reason that facile Nazi tropes should be verboten: Some instances of evil are unique, and using them as a handy cudgel in every disagreement dilutes their emotional potency. Hitler was Hitler, and nobody else is. The Reverend Sharpton is slavish, but he is not a slave. When black critics use plantation rhetoric, it is repugnant; when white critics use plantation rhetoric, it is repugnant and condescending.

ERIC HOLDER’S LAW “LIE DOWN AND DIE” :ANDREW KLAVAN

http://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/2013/07/23/eric-holders-proposed-new-law-lie-down-and-die/?singlepage=true In the wake of the Zimmerman-Martin case, Attorney General and Corrupt Political Hack Eric Holder [1] has taken aim at Stand Your Ground laws because they had nothing to do with the Zimmerman-Martin case but are a distraction from the issue of racism, which also had nothing to do with it.  So… that makes […]

Peter Martino: EU Reveals its True Colors

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3867/eu-israel-directive The EU guidelines are clearly anti-Semitic: they are a unique set of guidelines crafted for the occasion of targeting Jews. The EU does not ask similar guarantees of China for Tibet, Turkey for Cyprus, or Indonesia for Western Papua. Last week, the European Union issued guidelines regarding the use of EU funds in Israel. […]

DAVID GOLDMAN: FIRST THINGS LAST

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-03-220713.html Of the 6,000 languages now spoken on this planet, half will disappear by the end of the present century. Speakers the languages of the West, including Italian, German, Russian, Polish, and Hungarian, will suffer a catastrophic decline in numbers. The Poland of Pope John Paul II, the Catholic redoubt of the West whose resistance […]

JED BABBIN: STAND YOUR GROUND ON SELF DEFENSE

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/07/22/stand-your-ground-on-self-defe/print Under a vile race-baiting administration it’s everyone’s duty to do so. There’s a strategy and consistency in the statements by President Obama and his administration in the aftermath of the verdict that freed George Zimmerman. Whether it’s Attorney General Holder attacking thirty states’ “stand your ground” laws, the president saying he “could have been” […]

RUTHIE BLUM: NEGOTIATING THE NEXT WAR

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5083 On Friday, just as he was about to return to the United States from Jordan, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he had finally gotten the Palestinian Authority and Israel to agree to resume “stalled peace talks.” His sigh of relief was almost as palpable as it was audible. After a round […]

JED BABBIN: AMERICA EXITS BLEEDING ****

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/07/23/america-exits-bleeding

It’s time to leave Afghanistan now, regardless of what Mr. Karzai wants to charge us.

It’s not about gratitude or the lack of it. It’s not about anti-Americanism or even arrogance. The current dispute over customs duties between the American military and Karzai’s Kabul Kleptocrats is only about corruption.

As the story goes, once the Taliban were toppled from power, when U.S. military equipment — tooth and tail, bullets and MRE’s — was shipped into Afghanistan over the past twelve years, it was exempted from customs duties and taxes by an agreement between the two governments.

Now, the lower case kkk gang claims that none of that equipment can be removed from Afghanistan unless it has a validated customs form attached to it. And, because about 70,000 truckloads have already passed over the Afghan border — most of it to Pakistani ports where it can be picked up by cargo ship — the Afghans are demanding more than $70 million in “fines” for improper exporting.

And, at times, they’ve closed the border to make their point whereupon U.S. officials have shipped the cargo out by air at a cost of five to seven times the amount it costs for ground shipments.

(You may wonder why the air shipments aren’t stopped by the Afghans or why they aren’t subjected to the same customs duties and fines. Isn’t it the same question of sovereignty that supposedly prevented us from sending combat aircraft into Benghazi when the mission there was under attack on the anniversary of 9/11? Is Afghan “sovereignty” less subject to violation than its Libyan equivalent? You see, we didn’t have Libyan permission to cross their border even to save American lives and you could be confused by the inconsistency between Libyan entry and Afghan exit. But I digress.)

ANDREW McCARTHY: WILL WEINER FINALLY GO AWAY?

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/354243/will-weiner-finally-go-away-now-andrew-c-mccarthy When allegations about his “sexting” first surfaced, Anthony Weiner’s reaction was to lie, deny, claim he’d been hacked, and orchestrate a character-assassination campaign against Andrew Breitbart. It was not authentic contrition that caused him to fess up; he was backed into a corner by his own conduct and conflicting explanations. That is why he admitted […]