Liberals are so invigorated by the story about a noose being found on an obscure Columbia University professor's door that now nooses are popping up all over New York City. Liberals love to make believe the Night Riders are constantly at their doors.
I'll be shocked by a noose appearing on a college campus the day an actual racist does it.
Could Columbia at least produce one student or professor who supports racism before holding another "rally against racism"? Every concrete example of the racism allegedly sweeping the nation's campuses keeps turning out to be a fraud. Far from "institutional racism," there is "institutional racial hoaxism" run amok in this country. Will anyone rally against that?
Out of legions, here are just a few hoax hate crimes on college campuses.
-- In 1997, at Duke University, a black doll was found hanging by a noose from a tree at the precise spot where the Black Student Alliance was to be holding a rally against racism. Two black students later admitted they were the culprits and were immediately praised for bringing attention to the problem of racism on campus. Indeed, four years later the president of Duke gave a baccalaureate address nostalgically describing the hoax as a "protest" against racism. Next stop: the Nobel Peace Prize.
-- In 2003, vile racial epithets were scrawled on the dorm room doors at Ole Miss, producing mass protests and a "Say No to Racism" march. And then it turned out the graffiti had been written by black students, against whom no charges were brought. A "Say Yes to Racism" rally at Ole Miss was later canceled due to lack of interest.
-- In 2005, obscenity-laced racist and anti-Semitic messages appeared on dormitory walls at the College of Wooster in Ohio. The fliers were instantly blamed on "typical white males," even though all the letter I's in the epithets were dotted with little hearts. Breadcrumbs left by the culprits included the message "Vote Goldwater" among the obscenities. The matter was dropped and flushed down the memory hole when the perpetrators turned out to be a group of leftist students led by a black studies major.
-- Just this year, anti-Muslim fliers were put out on the George Washington University campus -- by leftists, including a member of "Iraq Veterans Against War." When it was thought the leaflets were from the conservative group Young Americans For Freedom, the dean called for the expulsion of the culprits and the university demanded that YAF officers sign a statement disavowing "hate speech." But when it turned out leftists had distributed the fliers, the matter was dropped faster than Larry Craig was dropped from Mitt Romney's campaign.
The one real example of racism on a college campus in recent memory was perpetrated against white men of the Duke lacrosse team. As that injustice was being perpetrated, gender and ethnic professors at Duke kept droning on about the "racism and sexism" students "live with every day" -- as the professors put it in an open letter that falsely presumed the players were guilty of rape. We don't expect a rally against the prejudiced professors, but an apology might be nice.
Playing the game of He Who Is Offended First Wins, Americans seek status not by claiming to be rich or of royal lineage, but by portraying themselves as victims. In one recent hoax hate crime, a white woman professor at Claremont McKenna College said her car had been vandalized with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti, with the words "Shut Up!" spray-painted on the hood of her car.
She was not black or Jewish, but had recently converted to Judaism and spoke out against racism. So she was a victim! After the vandalism of her car, she promptly became Queen for a Day. Far from "silenced," this anonymous mountebank was given a national microphone to bore us with her race-gender-culture theories. The campus was shut down for a day for anti-racism rallies in the charlatan's honor. Then eyewitnesses identified her as the one who had spray-painted her own car, and the pity party was over.
These liberal racism-hunters are like dirty old men who spend their days poring through pornography in order to better denounce it -- but enough about the Warren court.
Assuming against all reason and experience that the Columbia noose is not another hoax by a high-status victim, how is it that a pimply adolescent can cause such tumult in liberal New York City?
Liberals claim to believe the Klan has established a beachhead at Columbia University, Bill O'Reilly is head of the Manhattan branch, Rush Limbaugh despises the troops, I'm planning a pogrom from the heart of Manhattan, and George Bush is establishing fascism in America.
Some anonymous liberal hag on Air America Radio, which no one knew was still on the air, fell down outside her Park Avenue apartment this week, and her liberal colleagues were claiming it was Kristallnacht.
If it rains after a liberal washes his car, they say it's a right-wing dirty trick.
Liberals love nothing more than these constant self-righteous-athons -- as if they would ever have the courage to stand up for any cause not universally supported by everyone around them.
Have You Hugged An Islamo-Fascist Today? by Ann Coulter
College liberals are in a fit of pique because various speakers are coming to their campuses this week as part of David Horowitz's Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week -- not to be confused with Islamo-Fascism Appreciation Week, which I believe is in April.
Apparently liberals support Islamo-fascism. The Democratic leadership might want to have a powwow with their base because I believe their public position is to pretend to oppose Islamic fascism.
Elected Democrats at least make empty rhetorical gestures about opposing Islamic fascism. Of course, amidst their nonspecific condemnations of Islamic terrorism, they make very specific demands that we genuflect before Islam and perform exotic fetishes on the fascists.
Liberals believe in burning the American flag, urinating on crucifixes, and passing out birth control pills to 11-year-olds without telling their parents -- but God forbid an infidel touch a Quran at Guantanamo.
College campuses across the nation are installing foot baths to accommodate Muslims' daily bathing ritual, while surgically removing the Ten Commandments from every public space in America. Maybe the Ten Commandments could be printed on towels and kept next to the foot baths.
The National Council for Social Studies recommended a lesson plan after 9/11 that included a story titled "My Name Is Osama" about a nasty little white boy, "Todd," who taunts a fine upstanding Iraqi immigrant named "Osama." Go ahead, laugh it up -- we'll see who's laughing when "My Name Is Osama" ends up on ABC's prime-time lineup next year.
This story was proposed in response to an event in which Muslims with names like "Osama" committed the most massive hate crime in U.S. history against 3,000 innocent civilians with names like "Todd."
Still and all, Democrats who seek the votes of their fellow Americans continue to claim in a vague, meaningless way to oppose Islamo-fascism.
And then when speakers like Cyrus Nowrasteh, the writer and producer of the ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11," and Nonie Darwish, whose father founded the Fedayeen, show up on college campuses to criticize Islamic terrorism, the Democratic base threatens to riot. The only thing that makes the cut-and-run crowd mad enough to fight is the idea that someone, somewhere might be criticizing radical Islam.
Consequently, the speakers for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week require the sort of security phalanx one would expect for someone more like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Oh wait -- no. Ahmadinejad was cheered by college students a few weeks ago -- at least until he expressed reservations about sodomy. (On the basis of Ahmadinejad's claims, instead of looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, how about we start looking for gays in Iran?)
Even American intellectuals like Dennis Prager and Michael Medved who are speaking during Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week are denounced by liberals as if they were David Duke. One pro-Islamo-fascism Web site indicts Medved on the grounds that he "has claimed that Islam has a 'special violence problem.'" It doesn't get much more diplomatic than that.
Conservative speakers are constantly being physically attacked on college campuses -- including Bill Kristol, Pat Buchanan, David Horowitz and me, among others. Fortunately the attackers are Democrats, so they throw like girls and generally end up with their noses bloodied by pretty college coeds. But that doesn't make it right.
Michael Moore can waddle anywhere he wants in America without fear of violence from Republicans. But we still have to hear about every testy e-mail Paul Krugman ever receives as if liberals are living in the black night of fascism. Any time Krugman wants to get into a "Most Vicious Hate Mail" contest, just say the word. You don't hear me sniffling.
Congressional Democrats are constantly calling for conservative private citizens to be silenced. Even Democratic candidates for president and their wives are getting in on the act.
A few weeks ago, in the midst of Senate Democrats' demand that Rush Limbaugh's microphone be silenced, Lizzie Edwards distracted herself from the latest National Enquirer by announcing on Air America that Limbaugh's draft deferment was phony.
I was pretty shocked. Who knew Air America was still on the air?
I know every time Democrats call for me to be silenced, I feel a delicious surge of martyrdom. For a brief moment, I understand the thrill the left gets by going around claiming to be victimized all the time.
I could almost imagine a poem:
First they came for Rush Limbaugh, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't Rush Limbaugh;
And then they came for Ann Coulter, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't Ann Coulter;
And then they came for David Horowitz, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't David Horowitz;
And then ... they came for me ... And by that time there was no one left to speak up
Liberals claim to be terrified that the Religious Right is going to take over the culture in a country where more than a million babies are exterminated every year, kindergarteners can be expelled from school for mentioning God, and Islamic fascists are welcomed on college campuses while speakers opposed to Islamic fascism are met with angry protests.
If liberals want to face real fascism, try showing up on a college campus and denouncing fascism.
How Long Before the A.D.L. Kicks Out All its Jews? by Ann Coulter
Posted: 10/31/2007 The Anti-Defamation League is to Jews what the National Organization for Women is to women and the ACLU is to civil libertarians. They represent not Jews or women or civil libertarians, but the left wing of the Democratic Party.
In the paramount threat of our time, the Democratic Party is AWOL. And those are the patriotic Democrats. The rest are actively aiding the enemy.
The blood of millions of Israelis is at stake, and the ADL is flacking for a party that yearns to surrender to the terrorists.Continued
To hide the dirty little secret of the left's burgeoning anti-Semitism, liberals act as if they live in abject terror of right-wingers. When it comes to conservatives, the Anti-Defamation League is the Pro-Defamation League.
For decades, most Jews supported the left, and the left supported Jewish causes. But the left moved on long ago. For liberals, Jews are just so "last Holocaust."
The ADL gently chided Columbia University for making the "mistake" of inviting a genocidal, Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. It tepidly criticized Ahmadinejad's speech for being "a charade of half-answers and obfuscation." That sounds like a fair description of Hillary's current stump speech.
The ADL and its ilk reserve their real venom for a beast like Dennis Prager -- a leading Jewish intellectual, author and radio talk show host. Last year, Prager made the manifestly obvious point that the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, should take his oath of office not on a Quran, but on a Bible, in recognition of "the value system (that) underlies American civilization."
According to the ADL, Prager's column was not a trifling "mistake" on the order of allowing an American audience at one of America's premier universities to give a standing ovation to a murderous, racist lunatic. Prager was "intolerant, misinformed and downright un-American." I think I'd take "obfuscation."
The relevant organs of pious liberal society were promptly rounded up to censure Prager, including the American Jewish Committee and two members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, Rep. Henry Waxman and former New York Mayor Ed Koch -- who called Prager a "bigot." Do they have Ellison on the record acknowledging whether the Holocaust happened?
The executive committee of the Holocaust Museum called Prager's column antithetical to "tolerance and respect for all peoples regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity."
But you'll see that famed liberal "tolerance" dry up pretty fast if you render a simple statement of the beliefs of Christians.
The usual liberal coterie acts shocked and offended by Christians who actually believe Christianity is true -- unlike Democratic politicians -- to conceal the fact that the left is increasingly dominated by people conniving in the destruction of Israel.
How about having Tim Russert ask Hillary if she believes the New Testament is the perfection of the Old Testament? She claims to be a Christian. Let's get it on the table: Is she or isn't she? It doesn't get any more bare-bones than that.
Let the cat out of the bag that a 2,000-year-old religion practiced by a majority of Americans teaches that Jesus came in "fulfillment of the scriptures," and you might be better off if you had adopted the preferred approach of liberals' new friends the Muslims and simply slit the Jew's throat.
At least the ADL wouldn't object.
They're too busy conspiring with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to denounce Dennis Prager. And promoting gun control. And gay marriage. And illegal immigration. You know, all the issues that have historically kept the Jews safe.
The ADL denounces the teaching of intelligent design, the placement of the Ten Commandments on public property and Bibles in public schools. Any entity that disagrees with them on these issues will be labeled an "extremist organization."
Gosh, it's a good thing there isn't a worldwide terrorist movement dedicated to killing Jews. The ADL might have to tear themselves away from promoting faddish liberal causes.
The ADL is more concerned with what it calls the "neo-Nazis" and "anti-Semites" in the Minutemen organization than with people who behead Jews whenever they get half a chance. It's only a matter of time before the ADL gets around to global warming.
Earlier this year, the ADL issued an alarmist report, declaring that the Ku Klux Klan has experienced "a surprising and troubling resurgence" in the U.S., which I take it to mean that nationwide KKK membership is now approaching double digits. Liberal Jews seem to be blithely unaware that the singular threat to Jews at the moment is the complete annihilation of Israel. Why won't they focus on the genuine threat of Islamo-fascism and leave poor old Robert Byrd alone?
The ADL goes around collecting statements from Democrats proclaiming their general support for Israel, but it refuses to criticize Democrats who attack Joe Lieberman for supporting the war and who tolerate the likes of former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
Sure, Hillary will show up at an ADL dinner and announce that she supports Israel. And then she gets testy with Bush for talking about sanctions against Iran in too rough a tone of voice.
What does it mean for the ADL to collect those statements?
The survival of Israel is inextricably linked to the survival of the Republican Party and its evangelical base. And yet the ADL viciously attacks conservatives, implying that there is some genetic anti-Semitism among right-wingers in order to hide the fact that anti-Semites are the ADL's best friends -- the defeatists in Congress, the people who tried to drive Joe Lieberman from office, the hoodlums on college campuses who riot at any criticism of Muslim terrorists and identify Israel as an imperialist aggressor, and liberal college faculties calling for "anti-apartheid" boycotts of Israel.
The Democratic Party sleeps with anti-Semites every night, but groups like the ADL love to play-act their bravery at battling ghosts, as if it's the 1920s and they are still fighting quotas at Harvard.
Earlier this year, Rep. Virgil Goode Jr., R-Va., said "in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America."
The ADL attacked him, saying, "Bigots have always hid behind the immigration issue."
Like the noose hysteria currently sweeping New York City, liberals are always fighting the last battle because the current battle is too frightening.
Liberal Jews are on a collision course with themselves. They can't reconcile the survival of Israel with their conception of themselves as liberals. The liberal coalition has turned against them. Jews are out; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in. The new king knows not Joseph.
McCarthyism: The Rosetta Stone of Liberal Lies by Ann Coulter Posted: 11/07/2007
When I wrote a ferocious defense of Sen. Joe McCarthy in Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, liberals chose not to argue with me. Instead they posted a scrolling series of reasons not to read my book, such as that I wear short skirts, date boys, and that Treason was not a scholarly tome.
After printing rabidly venomous accounts of McCarthy for half a century based on zero research, liberals would only accept research presenting an alternative view of McCarthy that included, as the Los Angeles Times put it, at least the "pretense of scholarly throat-clearing and objectivity."
This week, they got it. The great M. Stanton Evans has finally released Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies. Based on a lifetime's work, including nearly a decade of thoroughgoing research, stores of original research and never-before-seen government files, this 672-page book ends the argument on Joe McCarthy. Look for it hidden behind stacks of Bill Clinton's latest self-serving book at a bookstore near you.Continued
Evans' book is such a tour de force that liberals are already preparing a "yesterday's news" defense -- as if they had long ago admitted the truth about McCarthy. Yes, and they fought shoulder to shoulder with Ronald Reagan to bring down the Evil Empire. Thus, Publishers Weekly preposterously claims that "the history Evans relates is already largely known, if not fully accepted." Somebody better tell George Clooney.
The McCarthy period is the Rosetta stone of all liberal lies. It is the textbook on how they rewrite history -- the sound chamber of liberal denunciations, their phony victimhood as they demean and oppress their enemies, their false imputation of dishonesty to their opponents, their legalization of every policy dispute, their ability to engage in lock-step shouting campaigns, and the black motives concealed by their endless cacophony.
The true story of Joe McCarthy, told in meticulous, irrefutable detail in Blacklisted by History, is that from 1938 to 1946, the Democratic Party acquiesced in a monstrous conspiracy being run through the State Department, the military establishment, and even the White House to advance the Soviet cause within the U.S. government.
In the face of the Democrats' absolute refusal to admit to their fecklessness, fatuity and recklessness in allowing known Soviet spies to penetrate the deepest levels of government, McCarthy demanded an accounting.
Even if one concedes to on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand whiners like Ronald Radosh that Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson didn't like communism, his record is what it was. And that record was to treat Soviet spies like members of the Hasty Pudding Club.
Rather than own up to their moral blindness to Soviet espionage, Democrats fired up the liberal slander machine, which would be deployed again and again over the next half century to the present day. In hiding their own perfidy, liberals were guilty of every sin they lyingly imputed to McCarthy. There were no "McCarthyites" until liberals came along.
Blacklisted by History proves that every conventional belief about McCarthy is wrong, including:
-- That he lied about his war service: He was a tailgunner in World War II;
-- That he was a drunk: He would generally nurse a single drink all night;
-- That he made the whole thing up: He produced loads of Soviet spies in government jobs;
-- That he just did it for political gain: He understood perfectly the godless evil of communism.
Ironically, for all of their love of conspiracy theories -- the rigging of the 2000 election, vote suppression in Ohio in 2004, 9/11 being an inside job, oil companies covering up miracle technology that would allow cars to run on dirt, Britney Spears' career, etc., etc. -- when presented with an actual conspiracy of Soviet spies infiltrating the U.S. government, they laughed it off like world-weary skeptics and dedicated themselves to slandering Joe McCarthy.
Then as now, liberals protect themselves from detection with wild calumnies against anybody who opposes them. They have no interest in -- or aptitude for -- persuasion. Their goal is to anathematize their enemies. Blacklisted by History removes the curse from one of the greatest patriots in American history.
Musharraf: The Tolstoy of the Zulus by Ann Coulter Posted: 11/14/2007
If Republicans end up with a divided convention between Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, I say we pick Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf has declared emergency rule in Pakistan, shut down the media and sent Supreme Court justices home. What's not to like about a guy who orders policemen to beat up lawyers? I bet he has a good plan on illegal immigration, too.
The entire history of Pakistan is this: There are lots of crazy people living there, they have nuclear weapons, and any Pakistani leader who prevents the crazies from getting the nukes is George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all rolled into one. We didn't hear much about Musharraf -- save for B. Hussein Obama's threat to bomb Pakistan without informing Musharraf -- until the last few weeks.
Musharraf has been a crucial ally of ours since Sept. 12, 2001. His loyal friendship to the United States while governing a country that is loyal to al-Qaida might prove dispiriting to the terrorists. So, until recently, the media mostly confined stories about Musharraf to page A-18.
Now, with the surge in Iraq working, Democrats are completely demoralized. Al-Qaida was counting on them. (We know the surge in Iraq is working because it is no longer front page news.)
In a tape released in early September, Osama bin Laden bitterly complained, "You elected the Democratic Party for this purpose" -- of ending the war in Iraq -- "but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning."
It isn't enough for the media to drop all mentions of the surge or to subsidize ads denouncing Gen. David Petraeus as "General Betray Us." (He IS betraying liberals by winning the war for America, the enemy of liberals.) They need to stir up trouble for the U.S. someplace else in the world.
On Sept. 20, Osama bin Laden cued liberals by issuing another tape demanding Musharraf's ouster. The Democrats and the media quickly followed suit.
Weeks later, The New York Times editorial page called on "masses of Pakistanis" to participate in "peaceful demonstrations" against Musharraf, which would be like calling on masses of Pakistanis to engage in daily bathing (The New York Times editorial page being the most effective way to communicate with the Pakistani masses). Most of the editorial was a mash note to that troublesome woman Benazir Bhutto for demanding democracy in the land of the deranged.
Media darling Bhutto returned to Pakistan after fleeing the country following her conviction for corruption as prime minister. Her conviction was later overturned by the corrupt Pakistani Supreme Court, leaving me to ponder, which is worse: being convicted of corruption in a Pakistani court or being exonerated of corruption in a Pakistani court? She was again convicted in a Swiss court of money laundering.
The media adore Bhutto because she went to Harvard and Oxford, which I consider two more strikes against her. A degree from Harvard is prima facie evidence that she's on the side of the terrorists. I note that Bhutto demonstrates her own deep commitment to democracy by giving herself the title "chairperson for life" of the Pakistan Peoples Party.
Liberals hysterically opposed our imposing a democracy on Iraq and despise Nouri al-Maliki, the democratically elected leader of Iraq. Say, has Maliki ever been convicted in a Swiss court of money laundering?
Compared to Pakistan, imposing democracy in Iraq is like imposing democracy in Darien, Conn. But in Iraq, liberals prefer an anti-American dictator, like Saddam Hussein. Only in Pakistan do liberals yearn for pure democracy.
You wouldn't know it to read the headlines, but Musharraf has not staged a military coup. In fact, he was re-elected easily just weeks ago under Pakistan's own parliamentary system.
But the Pakistani Supreme Court, like our own Supreme Court, believes it is above the president and refused to acknowledge Musharraf's election on the grounds that he is disqualified because he is still wearing a military uniform. That's when Musharraf sent them home.
Musharraf's election was certainly more legitimate than that of Syrian president Bashar Assad (with whom every leading Democrat has had a photo-op) or Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (adjunct professor at Columbia University) or Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (loon).
Where were the headlines like this week's Economist's ("Time's up, Mr. Musharraf") about those lovable rogues? They hate America, so they can stay.
The last time liberals were this enthusiastic about popular rule in some Third World country was in 1979, when they were gushing about Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran. Professor Richard Falk of Princeton University assured liberals in a 1979 New York Times op-ed that the "depiction of Khomeini as fanatical, reactionary, and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false."
I'm no clock-watcher, but it's been 28 years; I don't think Falk is going to be issuing an apology.
Falk cheerfully concluded that the fanatical Muslim leaders in Iran "may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane government for a Third World country."
And just look at all the wonderful things Khomeini did for Iran!
How might popular rule turn out in Pakistan? As Saul Bellow rhetorically said of multiculturalism, "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?"
Pakistan is a country where local Islamic courts order women to be raped as punishment for the crimes of their male relatives. Among the Islamists' bill of particulars against Musharraf is the fact that he has promoted the Women's Protection Bill, which would punish rape, rather than using it as a device for social control.
Pakistan doesn't need Adlai Stevenson right now. It needs Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to impose military rule and drag a country of Islamic savages into the 19th century, as Ataturk did in Turkey. Pakistan's Ataturk is Gen. Musharraf.
To try to force democracy on the differing "I hate America" factions in Pakistan at this stage would be worse than Jimmy Carter's abandonment of the Shah in 1979. It would result in what former assistant secretary of state Edward Djerejian called: "one man, one vote, one time."
NYT: Suicide Manual for Dems by Ann Coulter Posted: 11/21/2007
Here's a story that may not have been deemed "Fit to Print": In the six months that ended Sept. 25, The New York Times' daily circulation was down another 4.51 percent to about a million readers a day. The paper's Sunday circulation was down 7.59 percent to about 1.5 million readers. In short, the Times is dropping faster than Hillary in New Hampshire. (Meanwhile, the Drudge Report has more than 16 million readers every day.)
One can only hope that none of the Democratic presidential candidates are among the disaffected hordes lining up to cancel their Times subscriptions.
The Times is so accustomed to lying about the news to prove that "most Americans" agree with the Times, that it seems poised to lead the Democrats -- and any Republicans stupid enough to believe the Times -- down a primrose path to their own destruction.
So if you know a Democratic presidential candidate who doesn't currently read the Times, by all means order him a subscription.
On Sunday, Times readers learned that despite this year's historic revolt of normal Americans against amnesty for illegal aliens: "Some polls show that the majority of Americans agree with proposals backed by most Democrats in the Senate, as well as some Republicans, to establish a path to citizenship for immigrants here illegally."
Was the reporter who wrote that sentence the Darfur bureau chief for the past year? By "some polls," I gather he means "a show of hands during a meeting of the Times editorial board" or "a quick backstage survey in the MSNBC greenroom."
As I believe Americans made resoundingly clear this year, the only "path to citizenship" they favor involves making an application from Norway, waiting a few years and then coming over when it's legal.
Americans were so emphatic on this point that they forced a sitting president to withdraw his signature legislative accomplishment for his second term -- amnesty for illegal aliens, aka a "path to citizenship" for illegals.
This was the goal supported by the president's acolytes at the Fox News Channel as well as a nearly monolithic Democratic Party and its acolytes at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, MTV, Oxygen TV, the Food Network, the Golf Channel, the Home Shopping Network, The in-house "Learn to Gamble" channel at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and Comedy Central (unless that was just a sketch on the "Mind of (Carlos) Mencia").
But ordinary Americans had a different idea. Their idea was: Let's not reward law-breakers with the ultimate prize: U.S. citizenship. And the ordinary Americans won. The Times disregards all of that history to announce that it has secret polls showing that Americans support a "path to citizenship" for illegals after all! These polls are living in the shadows!
Only those "angriest on immigration," the Times said, are still using the various words related to immigration that liberals are trying to turn into new "N-words," such as, for example, "immigration." With an exhausting use of air quotes, the Times reports that: "The Republicans have railed against 'amnesty' and 'sanctuary cities.' They have promised to build a fence on the Mexican border to keep 'illegals' out."
In liberal-speak, that sentence would read: "The Republicans have railed against 'puppies' and 'kittens.' They have promised to build a fence on the Mexican border to keep 'baby seals' out." (In my version, the sentence would read: "Believing New York Times 'polls,' Democrats irritate 'voters.'")
Half the English language is becoming the "N-word" as far as liberals are concerned. Words are always bad for liberals. Words allow people to understand what liberals are saying.
According to the Times, all decent, cultured Americans cringe when politicians use foul words like "illegals" to describe illegals. Apparently, what most Americans are clamoring for is yet more automatic messages that begin, "Press '1' for English." That, at least, is the message the Times got from the stunning victory of grassroots over the elites on the immigration bill this year.
It is against my best interests to mention how utterly out of touch Times editors and reporters are with any Americans east of Central Park West and west of Riverside Drive. I enjoy watching the Democratic presidential candidates take clear, unequivocal positions in favor of driver's licenses for illegals and then denouncing those very positions a week later (after the real polls come in).
Some people love watching the trees change color every fall. I enjoy watching the candidates' positions on immigration change.
But it is too much for any human to endure to read the Times' version of history in which "most Americans" agree with the Times on illegal immigration in the very year Americans punched back against illegal immigration so hard that the entire Washington establishment is still reeling. It's not like we have to go back to the Coolidge administration to get some sense of what Americans think about amnesty for illegals. (I mean "amnesty" for "illegals.")
Using the Times' calculus, "most Americans" have also enthusiastically embraced soccer and the metric system.
Ann Coulter Home Under Assault Monday, November 26, 2007 By: Newsmax Staff
Conservative pundit Ann Coulter is accustomed to hurling verbal lances, but she’s been on the receiving end at her home often enough that she’s had the local property appraiser remove her home address from public records.
Coulter’s $1.2 million home in Palm Beach, Fla., is one of 2,674 properties in Palm Beach County whose owners are confidential in property appraiser records, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Homeowners seeking anonymity must submit an affidavit stating why they believe they require it. Exemptions are made for people in occupations that could make them targets — including police officers, judges, prosecutors, and child abuse investigators — and for victims of domestic violence, stalking, or harassment.
In March, harassment came in the form of a greeting card someone delivered to Coulter’s home, which read: “You self-aggrandizing — sociopath! The only thing left after a nuclear war are you and cockroaches.”
In June, Coulter — whose latest book is “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans” — received several phone messages from a man in Alameda, Calif., who later told police he had found her unlisted number on the Internet.
In one message he said: “Hey, Ann, now that you’ve moved to Florida and you’re in your 40s, did you know that you can join the Florida National Guard?” He also stated: “You love war until you have to put your own a** on the line. I don’t call that patriotism. I call it cowardice.”
Someone called 911 from Coulter’s house in July, but hung up, the Post reported.
On another occasion, Coulter heard someone screaming from a vacant lot next to her house: “Ann Coulter is a big [expletive].” Coulter called police, but the perpetrator was gone when they arrived.
Coulter called the cops a few days later after she found an apparently hand-delivered envelope in her mailbox. It was marked “Ann Coulter!!” and depicted a cupid heart with an arrow drawn through it.
The greeting card inside read: “Go [expletive] yourself.”
NYT: An Undocumented Newspaper by Ann Coulter Posted: 11/28/2007
Last week, in an article titled "Walking a Tightrope on Immigration," The New York Times made the fact-defying claim that the illegal immigration issue poses a risk for Republicans who appeal to voters "angry" about illegal immigration. (This is as opposed to voters "angry" that they spent good money buying a copy of The New York Times.)
In support of this assertion, the Times was required not only to ignore the stunning defeat of this year's amnesty bill, but also to proffer provably absurd evidence. I dearly hope Democratic politicians continue to look to the Times as an accurate barometer of voter sentiment.
In addition to secret polls showing that "the majority of Americans" support "a path to citizenship for immigrants here illegally," the Times cited election results from 1994 and 2006 that directly contradict this thesis.
First, the Times raised former California Gov. Pete Wilson's "precipitous slide" in the polls after he supported Proposition 187 in 1994, which denied most taxpayer-supported services to illegal immigrants.
The problem with this example is that Proposition 187 was wildly popular with California voters.
Times reporter Michael Luo seems to be referring to the Times' own prediction of catastrophe for Proposition 187 -- not actual election results.
One week before Californians voted on Proposition 187 in 1994, B. Drummond Ayres Jr. reported in the Times that there had been "a sharp falloff in support for the proposition."
He said Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans and African-American ministers were coming out strongly against Proposition 187 and that "this outcry, along with the increasing opposition being voiced by liberals, civil libertarians and assorted national political figures" was having an effect.
And then Californians voted.
Proposition 187 passed in a landslide with a nearly 20-point margin -- a larger margin than Wilson got, incidentally. It was supported by two-thirds of white voters, half of black and Asian voters, and even one-third of Hispanic voters. It passed in every area of California, except San Francisco, a city where intoxicated gay men dressed as nuns performing sex acts on city streets is not considered unusual. In heavily Latino Los Angeles County, Proposition 187 passed with a 12-point margin.
I'm no campaign consultant, but I think Wilson's support for an off-the-charts popular initiative probably didn't hurt him.
In fact, here on planet Earth, about the safest thing a California politician could do would be to wildly, vocally support Proposition 187. But in New York Times-speak, politicians are walking a dangerous "tightrope" if they dare to defy a slight majority of San Francisco voters!
The initiative went to Carter-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer, who issued a permanent injunction and then, in a series of decisions, found the initiative unconstitutional. Her rulings were still on appeal when Democrat Gray Davis became governor and dropped the appeals. Everyone remembers how popular Gray Davis was! (First governor in California history to be recalled.)
The crown jewel of the Times' pathetic attempt to marshal evidence for its thesis that Americans want more, not fewer, illegal aliens choking our roads, schools and hospitals also included this gem: "J.D. Hayworth, a hard-line incumbent Republican representative in Arizona, lost his race in 2006, as did Randy Graf, a member of the border-enforcing Minuteman group, who also ran in Arizona."
How many times do we have to disprove this canard?
As with Hillary's position on driver's licenses for illegals -- and B. Hussein Obama's entire campaign -- the Hayworth-Graf example works better when no follow-up questions are allowed. For example:
Q: Did Hayworth's and Graf's opponents campaign against them on illegal immigration?
A: No.
Q: Were there any other issues on the ballot that year that might tell us if it was Hayworth's and Graf's positions on illegals that led to their defeats?
A: Si! Oops, I mean, yes -- why, yes there were! The very election that the Times cites as proof that anti-illegal sentiment is a loser at the ballot box also included four measures that passed overwhelmingly: (1) a measure to deny bail to illegal aliens, (2) a measure that would bar illegals from being awarded punitive damages, (3) a measure that would prohibit illegals from receiving state subsidies for education or child care, and (4) a measure to declare English the state's official language.
Whatever Arizona voters didn't like about Hayworth and Graf, it wasn't that they were too tough on illegals.
My theory is that Hayworth and Graf lost because the multitudes of Times reporters losing their jobs due to the Newspaper of Record's plummeting circulation have recently moved to Hayworth's and Graf's districts. (This is what's known as a "brain drain" in those districts.)
My theory -- like the Times' theory -- is supported by no evidence. But unlike the Times' theory, mine is not specifically disproved by other evidence such as common sense, an everyday observation of my fellow man, and also those four anti-illegal immigrant measures passing in landslides in the very same election.
There’s a Huckabee Born Every Minute by Ann Coulter Posted: 12/19/2007
Despite the overwhelming popular demand for another column on Ron Radosh's review of Stan Evans' book, this week's column will address the urgent matter of evangelical Christians getting blamed for Mike Huckabee.
To paraphrase the Jews, this is "bad for the evangelicals."
As far as I can tell, it's mostly secular liberals swooning over Huckabee. Liberals adore Huckabee because he fits their image of what an evangelical should be: stupid and easily led.
The media are transfixed by the fact that Huckabee says he doesn't believe in evolution. Neither do I, for reasons detailed in approximately one-third of my No. 1 New York Times best-selling book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. I went on a massive book tour for Godless just last year, including a boffo opening interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today," a one-on-one, full-hour interview with Chris Matthews on "Hardball," and various other hostile interviews from the organs of establishmentarian opinion.
But I didn't get a single question from them on the topic of one-third of my book.
If the mainstream media are burning with curiosity about what critics of Darwinism have to say, how about asking me? I can name any number of mathematicians, scientists and authors who have also rejected Darwin's discredited theory and would be happy to rap with them about it.
But they won't ask us, because, unlike the cornpone, we won't immediately collapse under gentle questioning. It's one thing to be "easily led" by the pope. Huckabee is easily led by Larry King.
Asked on CNN's "Larry King Live" Monday night about his beliefs on evolution, Huckabee rushed to assure King that he has no interest in altering textbooks that foist this fraud on innocent schoolchildren.
I don't understand that. Does Huckabee believe Darwinism is a hoax or not? If he knows it's a fraud, then why does he want it taught to schoolchildren? What other discredited mystery religions -- as mathematician David Berlinski calls Darwinism -- does Huckabee want to teach children? Sorcery? Phrenology? Alchemy?
Admittedly, the truth about Darwinism would be jarring in textbooks that promote other frauds and hoaxes, such as "man-made global warming." Why confuse the little tykes with fact-based textbooks?
Huckabee immediately dropped his alleged skepticism of Darwinism and turned to his main goal as president of the United States: teaching children more art and music. This, he said, was his "passion" because "I think our education system is failing kids because we're not touching the right side of the brain -- the creative side. We are focusing on the left side."
I think I know someone who has just read an article in Reader's Digest about left brain/right brain differences!
When not evolving his position on Darwinism, Huckabee insults gays by pointlessly citing the Bible's rather pointed remarks about sodomy -- fitting the MSM's image of evangelicals sitting around all day denouncing gays. (Which is just so unfair. I'm usually done denouncing gays by 10:30 a.m., 11 tops.) And yet, Huckabee has said he agrees with the Supreme Court's lunatic opinion that sodomy is a constitutional right.
In the 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, a case only 17 years old (and with a name chosen by God) -- despite the allegedly hallowed principle of "stare decisis." As explained in "Godless," stare decisis means: "What's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."
Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Lawrence was so insane that the lower courts completely ignored it. Since then, courts have disregarded Lawrence in order to uphold state laws banning the sale of vibrators, restricting gays' rights to adopt, prohibiting people from having sex with their adult ex-stepchildren, and various other basic human rights specifically mentioned in our Constitution.
Lawrence was promptly denounced not only by Republican governors and Christian groups across the nation, but also by anyone with sufficient reading comprehension skills to see that the Constitution says nothing about a right to sodomy. But when Huckabee was asked about this jaw-dropping ruling from the high court, he said the majority opinion "probably was appropriate."
He made these remarks on his monthly radio show, "Ask the Governor," as was widely reported at the time, including a July 3, 2003, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article titled, "Huckabee Says Sex Lives of Adults Not State Affair." I stress that "Ask the Governor" was not a wacky, comedy-based, morning zoo-type radio program. It was supposed to be serious.
Employing the ACLU's "any law I don't like is unconstitutional" test, Huckabee said he supported the court's decision because a law "that prohibited private behavior among adults" would be difficult to enforce. Next he'll be telling us which of the Ten Commandments he considers "nonstarters."
How about adults who privately operate meth labs? How about a private contract between an employer and employee for a salary less than the minimum wage?
Hey! How about adults privately smoking cigarettes in their homes? Nope, Huckabee wants a federal law banning smoking but thinks state laws banning sodomy are "probably" unconstitutional.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a spirited dissent in Lawrence, joined by Justices William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas, raising the somewhat embarrassing point that homosexual sodomy is not technically mentioned in the Constitution. Otherwise, our Founding Fathers would have been our "Founding Life Partners."
Scalia said that inasmuch as the Texas law furthered "the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality and obscenity," the court's ruling placed all these laws in jeopardy.
Most important, Scalia said: "Today's opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions." At least no court has tried to legalize gay marriage since that 2003 ruling, so we can be grateful for -- Hey, wait a minute!
Huckabee claims he opposes gay marriage and says Scalia is his favorite justice, but he supports a Supreme Court decision denounced by Scalia for paving the way to a "constitutional right" to gay marriage. I guess Huckabee is one of those pro-sodomy, pro-gay marriage, pro-evolution evangelical Christians.
No wonder Huckabee is the evangelical liberals like.
Liberals Sing ‘Huckelujah’ by Ann Coulter Posted: 12/26/2007
All I want for Christmas is for Christians to listen to what Mike Huckabee says, rather than what the media say about him. The mainstream media keep flogging Huckabee for being a Christian, apparently unaware that this "God" fellow is testing through the roof in focus groups.
Huckabee is a "compassionate conservative" only in the sense that calling him a conservative is being compassionate.
He responded to my column last week -- pointing out that he is on record supporting the Supreme Court's sodomy-is-a-constitutional-right decision -- by saying that he was relying on the word of a caller to his radio show and didn't know the details of the case. Ironically, that's how most people feel about sodomy: They support it until they hear the details.
First, I'd pay a lot of money to hear how a court opinion finding that sodomy is a constitutional right could be made to sound reasonable. But the caller had the right response when Huckabee asked him, "What's your favorite radio station?" So he seemed like a reliable source.
Second, Huckabee's statement that he agreed with the court's sodomy ruling was made one week after the decision. According to Nexis, in that one week, the sodomy decision had been the cover story on every newspaper in the country, including The New York Times. It was the talk of all the Sunday news programs. It had been denounced by every conservative and Christian group in America -- as well as other random groups of sane individuals having no conservative inclinations whatsoever.
The highest court in the land had found sodomy was a constitutional right! That sort of thing tends to make news. (I was going to say the sodomy ruling got publicity up the wazoo, but this is, after all, Christmas week.)
So this little stretch-marked cornpone is either lying, has a closed head injury, is a complete ignoramus -- or all of the above.
Huckabee opposes school choice, earning him the coveted endorsement of the National Education Association of New Hampshire, which is like the sheriff being endorsed by the local whorehouse.
He is, however, in favor of school choice for kids in Mexico: They have the choice of going to school there or here. Huckabee promoted giving in-state tuition in Arkansas to illegal immigrants from Mexico -- but not to U.S. citizens from Ohio. "I don't believe you punish the children," he said, "for the crime and sins of the parents."
Since when is not offering someone lavish taxpayer-funded benefits a form of punishment? That's almost as crazy as a governor pardoning a known sex offender so he can go out and rape and kill.
Huckabee claims he's against punishing children for the crimes of their fathers in the case of illegal immigrants. But in the case of slavery, he believes the children of the children's children should be routinely punished for the crimes of their fathers. Huckabee has said illegal immigration gives Americans a chance to make up for slavery. (I thought letting O.J. walk for murdering two people was payback for slavery.)
Just two years ago, Huckabee cheerfully announced to a meeting of the Hispanic advocacy group League of United Latin American Citizens that "Pretty soon, Southern white guys like me may be in the minority." Who's writing this guy's speeches -- Al Sharpton? (Actually, take out "Southern" and "white," and I agree with Huckabee's sentiment).
He said the transition from Arkansas' Southern traditions would "require extraordinary efforts on both sides of the border." But, curiously, most of the efforts Huckabee described would come entirely from this side of the border. Arkansas, he pledged, would celebrate diversity "in culture, in language and in population." He said America would have to "accommodate" those who come here.
All that he expected from those south of the border was that they have a desire to provide better opportunities for their families. Basically, we have to keep accommodating everyone but U.S. citizens.
For those of you keeping score at home, this puts Huckabee just a little to the left of Dennis Kucinich on illegal immigration and border control. The only difference is that Kucinich supports amnesty for aliens from south of the border and north of Saturn.
In a widely quoted remark, Huckabee denounced a Republican bill that would merely require proof of citizenship to vote and receive government benefits as "un-Christian, un-American, irresponsible and anti-life," according to the Arkansas News Bureau. Now, where have I heard this sort of thing before? Hmmm ... wait, now I remember: It was during the Democratic debates!
In his current attempt to pretend to be against illegal immigration, Huckabee makes a meaningless joke about how the federal government should track illegals the way Federal Express tracks packages. (Can a Mexican fit in one of those little envelopes?)
In other words, Huckabee is going to address the problem of illegal immigration by making jokes. It's called leadership, folks.
Huckabee confirms for liberal TV hosts their image of conservatives as dorks by bragging about how cool he is because he "likes music." What's he doing -- running for president or filling out his Facebook profile? Arkansas former fatty loves to make jokes and play the bass guitar. Remember what happened to the last former fatboy from Arkansas trying to be "cool" by liking music? I'll take "Stained Dresses" for $400, Alex.
According to Huckabee, most people think conservatives don't like music. Who on earth says conservatives don't like music -- other than liberals and Mike Huckabee? This desperate need to be liked by liberals has never led to anything but calamity.
Huckabee wants to get kids involved in music at an early age because he believes it leads to a more balanced and developed brain. You know, as we saw with the Jackson family. Maybe someone should tell him the Osmonds are voting for Romney.
He supports a nationwide smoking ban anyplace where people work, constitutional protection for sodomy, big government, higher taxes and government benefits for illegal aliens. According to my calculations, that puts him about three earmarks away from being Nancy Pelosi.
Liberals take a perverse pleasure in touting Huckabee because they know he will give them everything they want -- big government and a Christian they can roll.
Huckabee has said illegal immigration gives Americans a chance to make up for slavery. (I thought letting O.J. walk for murdering two people was payback for slavery.)
She is one outspoken chick!
Quoted Text
He supports a nationwide smoking ban anyplace where people work, constitutional protection for sodomy, big government, higher taxes and government benefits for illegal aliens. According to my calculations, that puts him about three earmarks away from being Nancy Pelosi.
Kwanzaa: Holiday From the FBI by Ann Coulter Posted: 01/02/2008
Is it just me, or does Kwanzaa seem to come earlier and earlier each year? The same goes for the Iowa caucuses -- the early scheduling of which forced me to run an attack on a synthetic candidate, rather than a synthetic holiday, last week.
I've seen so few mentions of Kwanzaa this year, I was going to declare my campaign a success, but I see that President Bush issued another absurd Kwanzaa message this year, referring to millions of African-Americans gathering to celebrate Kwanzaa.
I believe more African-Americans spent this season reflecting on the birth of Christ than some phony non-Christian holiday invented a few decades ago by an FBI stooge. Kwanzaa is a holiday for white liberals, not blacks.
It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga, aka Dr. Maulana Karenga. Karenga was a founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers and a dupe of the FBI.
In what was probably ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the '60s the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the organization, the better. Using that criterion, Karenga's United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American '60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.
Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the '60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. They did not seek armed revolution. Those were the precepts of Karenga's United Slaves. United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented "African" names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named "Jamal" currently sit on death row?)
Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear. Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the "framed" murder of two whites included: "the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department" and so on. Karenga should know about FBI infiltration. (He further noted that the evidence against O.J. "was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt" -- an interesting standard of proof.)
In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the '70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga publicly denounced the idea, saying, "Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents."
Now we know that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga's United Slaves shot to death Black Panthers Al "Bunchy" Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins on the UCLA campus. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.
(Sing to "Jingle Bells")
Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!
Kwanzaa itself is a lunatic blend of schmaltzy '60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. Indeed, the seven "principles" of Kwanzaa praise collectivism in every possible arena of life -- economics, work, personality, even litter removal. ("Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.") It takes a village to raise a police snitch.
When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from "classical Marxism," he essentially explained that under Kawaida, we also hate whites. While taking the "best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism" -- which one assumes would exclude the forced abortions, imprisonment of homosexuals and forced labor -- Kawaida practitioners believe one's racial identity "determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding." There's an inclusive philosophy for you.
Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Worst Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA's revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani -- the exact same seven "principles" of Kwanzaa.
With his Kwanzaa greetings, President Bush is saluting the intellectual sibling of the Symbionese Liberation Army, killer of housewives and police. He is saluting the founder of United Slaves, who were such lunatics that they shot Panthers for not being sufficiently insane -- all with the FBI as their covert ally.
It's as if David Duke invented a holiday called "Anglika," and the president of the United States issued a presidential proclamation honoring the synthetic, racist holiday. People might well stand up and take notice if that happened.
Kwanzaa was the result of a '60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga's United Slaves -- the violence, the Marxism, the insanity. Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, is that they have forgotten the FBI's tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.
Now the "holiday" concocted by an FBI dupe is honored in a presidential proclamation and public schools across the nation. In Oregon public schools this year, Kwanzaa -- but not Christmas -- appeared on the official calendar.
Bush called Kwanzaa a holiday that promotes "unity" and "faith." Faith in what? Liberals' unbounded capacity to respect any faith but Christianity?
A movement that started approximately 2,000 years before Kwanzaa leaps well beyond mere "unity" and "faith" to proclaim that we are all equal before God. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:2. It was practitioners of that faith who were at the forefront of the abolitionist and civil rights movements. But that's all been washed down the memory hole, along with the true origins of Kwanzaa.
Well, it’s the New Year, and we’ve had the Iowa caucuses. Congratulations Governor Huckabee. Congratulations Senator Obama. And congratulations to all of the men and women who worked so hard in the Hawkeye State.
But, I have some bad news. Every single Presidential candidate is promising that he or she will make our lives better if we elect him or her to the White House. He or she will give us change, offer us hope, make our breath sweeter, make us more prosperous, more productive, happier, better educated, and healthier if we cast our votes for him or her. It’s a fun show but inside The White House, there is no Santa Claus.
Presidents simply cannot change much for most of us. For the huge majority of Americans, how much we earn, how healthy we are, how well our kids are educated–is up to us, not the federal government. No government program will make us middle class or rich if we don’t get educated in some way and work hard. No government program will make us healthy if we eat too much or smoke or don’t get exercise. No one in the White House will make our kids put down the video games and do their homework. The government cannot provide a lavish retirement for us if we don’t save and invest well. Oh, and all of that money the candidates promise to spend? That's YOUR money, not their money they're spending.
In the free society, what we are and who we are depends on us, except for the very most poor among us–where the government can indeed make a difference. But for the huge bulk of us, no matter what any Republican or any Democrat promises, it’s up to the people in our house, not The White House.
Barack can talk about “real change” but the only meaningful change comes from within. Huckabee can talk about being holier than we were, but that has to start with us. Politicians really cannot change much unless they start or stop wars. For most of us, what the politicians say is just side show barking. When the circus leaves town, we have to get back to the basics: work, save, and teach your children well. And enjoy the political show, but know that it’s just show business, not real business.
John Vincent Coulter by Ann Coulter Posted: 01/09/2008
The longest baby ever born at the Albany, N.Y., hospital, at least as of May 5, 1926, who grew up to be my strapping father, passed away last Friday morning.
As Mother and I stood at Daddy's casket Monday morning, Mother repeated his joke to him, which he said on every wedding anniversary until a few years ago when Lewy bodies dementia prevented him from saying much at all: "54 years, married to the wrong woman." And we laughed.
John Vincent Coulter was of the old school, a man of few words, the un-Oprah, no crying or wearing your heart on your sleeve, and reacting to moments of great sentiment with a joke. Or as we used to call them: men.
When he was moping around the house once, missing my brother who had just gone back to college, he said, "Well, if you had cancer long enough, you'd miss it."
He'd indicate his feelings about my skirt length by saying, "You look nice, Hart, but you forgot to put on your skirt."
Of course, he did show strong emotion when The New York Post would run a photo of Teddy Kennedy saying the rosary. I can still see the look of disgust. I saw that face in "How To Read People Like a Book" and it was NOT a good chapter.
Your parents are your whole world when you are a child. You only recognize what is unique about them when you get older and see how the rest of the world diverges from your standard of normality.
So it took me awhile to realize that by telling my friends that Father was an ex-FBI agent and a union-buster whose hobbies included rebuilding Volkswagens and shooting squirrels in our backyard, I was painting the image of a rough Eliot Ness type, rather than the cheerful, funny raconteur they would meet.
Besides being very funny, Father had an absolutely straight moral compass without ever being preachy or judgmental or even telling us in words. He just was good.
He would return to a store if he was given too much change -- and this was a man who was so "thrifty," as we Scots like to say, he told us he wanted to be buried in two cardboard boxes from the A&P rather than pay for a coffin.
When I was bombarded with arguments for baby-killing as a kid, I asked Father about the old chestnut involving a poverty-stricken, unwed teenage girl who gets pregnant. (This was before they added the "impregnated by her own father" part.) Father just said, "I don't care. If it's a life, it's a life." I'm still waiting to hear an effective counterargument.
Father hated puffery, pomposity, snobbery, fake friendliness, fake anything. Like Kitty's father in "Anna Karenina," he could detect a substanceless suitor in a heartbeat. (They were probably the same ones who looked nervous when I told them Father was ex-FBI and liked to shoot squirrels in the backyard.)
He hated unions because of their corrupt leadership, ripping off the members for their own aggrandizement. But he had more respect for genuine working men than anyone I've ever known. He was, in short, the molecular opposite of John Edwards.
Father didn't care what popular opinion was: There was right and wrong. I don't recall his ever specifically talking about J. Edgar Hoover or Joe McCarthy, but we knew he thought the popular histories were bunk. That's why "Treason" was dedicated to him, the last book of mine he was able to read.
When Father returned from the war, he used the G.I. Bill to complete college and law school in three years. In order to get to law school quickly, he chose the easiest college major -- a major that so impressed him, he told my oldest brother that if he ever took one single course in sociology, Father would cut off his tuition payments.
As a young FBI agent fresh out of law school, one of Father's first assignments was to investigate job applicants at a uranium enrichment plant, the only suitable land for which was apparently located on some property owned by the then-vice president, Alben Barkley, in Paducah, Ky.
One day, a group of FBI agents saw the beautiful Nell Husbands Martin at lunch with her mother. They asked the waitress for her name and flipped a coin to see who could ask her out first. Father lost the coin toss, so he paid off the other agents. And that's how Nell became my mother.
Mother swore she'd never marry a drinker, a smoker or a Catholic, and she got all three, reforming Father on all but the Catholicism. Even in foreign countries where none of us spoke the language, Father went to Mass every Sunday until the very end.
Of course, toward the end, he probably didn't even remember he was a Catholic. But on the bright side, he didn't remember that Teddy Kennedy was a Catholic, either.
Father spent most of his nine-year FBI career as a Red hunter in New York City.
He never talked much about his FBI days. I learned that he worked on the Rudolf Abel case -- the highest-ranking Soviet spy ever captured in U.S. history -- during one of my brother's eulogies on Monday. But when Father read a paper I wrote at Cornell defending McCarthy and came across the name William Remington, he told me that had been his case.
Father mostly had contempt for Soviet spies. In addition to damaging information, such as military plans and nuclear secrets, the spies also collected massive amounts of utterly useless information on things like U.S. agricultural production. These were people who looked at a flush toilet like it was a spaceship.
He told me Soviet spies reveled in the whole cloak-and-dagger aspect of espionage. One spy gave weirdly specific details to a contact before their first meeting: He would have the New York Herald Tribune folded three times, tucked under his left elbow at a particular angle.
When the spy walked into the hotel lobby for the rendezvous, Father nearly fell off his chair when the man with the Herald Tribune folded under his elbow just so ... was also wearing a full-length fur coat. But he couldn't have told his contact: "I'll be the only white man in North America wearing a full-length fur coat."
In the early 1980s, as vice president and labor lawyer for Phelps Dodge copper company, Father broke a strike against the company, which culminated in the largest union decertification ever -- at that time and perhaps still. President Reagan had broken the air traffic controllers' strike in 1981. But unions recognized that it was the breaking of the Phelps Dodge strike a few years later that landed the greater blow, as described in the book "Copper Crucible."
There was massive violence by the strikers, including guns being fired into the homes of the mine employees who returned to work. Every day, Father walked with the strikebreakers through the picket line, (in my mind) brushing egg off his suit lapel.
By 1986 it was over; the mineworkers voted against the union and Phelps Dodge was saved. For any liberals still reading, this is what's known as a "happy ending."
To Mother's lifelong consternation -- until he had dementia and she could get him back by smothering him with hugs and kisses -- Father wasn't demonstrative. But all he wanted was to be with Mother (and to work on his Volkswagens). They traveled the world together, went to DAR conventions together, engaged in Republican politics together and went to the New York Philharmonic together -- for three decades, their subscription seats were on the highest landing, or as we Scots call it, the "Music Lovers" level.
When Mother was in a rehabilitative facility briefly after surgery a few years ago and Father was not supposed to be driving, we were relieved that a snowstorm had knocked out the power to the garage door opener, so Daddy couldn't get to the car. It would just be a week and then Mother would be home.
My brother came home to check on Father the first day of this arrangement to find that he had taken an ax to the side door of the garage, so he could drive to the rehab center and sit with Mother all day.
When she left him for five days last summer to go to a family reunion in Kentucky, at some point, Father, who hadn't been able to speak much anymore, looked up and asked his nurse, "Where is she?"
And last Friday morning at 2 he passed away, in his bedroom with Mother. The police and firemen told my brother that they kept trying to distract Mother to keep her away from the bedroom with Father's body, but she kept padding back into the bedroom to be close to him.
Now Daddy is with Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan. I hope they stop laughing about the Reds long enough to talk to God about smiting some liberals for me.
Logged
She is one outspoken chick!
. It was practitioners of that faith who were at the forefront of the abolitionist and civil rights movements. But that's all been washed down the memory hole, along with the true origins of Kwanzaa.
