RUTHFULLY YOURS

André Carson, Islamists’ Choice for the House of Representatives
Leading Islamist groups are contributing more to Democrats than to Republicans by a ratio of 17 to 1.
ANDRE CARSON (D- INDIANA DISTRICT 7) is rated with a 5+ by the Arab American Institute indicating markedly pro Arab policy opinions

In politics, the adage goes, follow the money. And so, data abound for contributions from trial lawyers, insurance brokers, and even optometrists.

But what about Islamists, those Muslims who seek to replace the Constitution with the Koran and apply Islamic law in its entirety and severity — who, in other words, seek not just to tweak the tax code but to change the nature of the United States?

Until now, their campaign contributions have been unknown. A new initiative of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch provides a first look at the dimensions of this lobby, using a sortable database. The Islamist Money in Politics (IMIP) project finds that, over the past 15 years, prominent figures associated with six leading American Islamist organizations have donated almost $700,000 to federal U.S. candidates.

Those six are the

The state’s new “affirmative consent” law shows who the real aggressors in the culture war are.

I have a slightly different take on California’s recent decision to regulate college sex. Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s beyond idiotic, unworkable, even borderline Orwellian. We’ll get to all that.

But I also think it’s incredibly useful. You see, for years I’ve been railing and ranting about the ridiculous myth that liberalism is socially libertarian; that liberals are “live and let live” types simply defending themselves against judgmental conservatives, the real aggressors in the culture war.

That thinking runs counter to most everything liberals justifiably take pride in as liberals. You can’t be “agents for change,” “forces for progress,” or whatever the current phrase is, and simultaneously deny that you’re the aggressors in the culture war. For instance, just in the last decade, liberals have redefined a millennia-old understanding of marriage while talking as if it were conservatives who wanted to “impose” their values on the nation.

Most libertarians are surely against racial discrimination, sexism, poor eating habits, homophobia, and so on. But their proposed remedies don’t look anything like a liberal’s. Libertarians, for the most part, do not favor racial or gender quotas. They’re against banning big sodas, campus speech codes, or forcing elderly nuns to pay for birth-control coverage, among other things.

Liberals, meanwhile, are quite open about their desire to use the state to impose their morality on others. Many conservatives want to do likewise, of course. The difference is that when conservatives try to do it, liberals are quick to charge “theocracy!” and decry the Orwellian horror.

Enter California governor Jerry Brown, whose answer to the alleged “rape epidemic” on campuses was to sign the new “affirmative consent” law. It will require a verbal “yes” at every stage of amorous activity on college campuses.

The Republican Party has played Marley’s Ghost for the past half-dozen years, dragging behind it the sins of the foreign-policy utopians who persuaded George W. Bush to bet the farm on nation-building in the Middle East. Bush’s 2004 Second Inaugural, written with the help of the Weekly Standard‘s Bill Kristol and the Washington Post‘s Charles Krauthammer, was the high-water mark of foreign-policy overreach and the cusp of Republican fortunes. By the 2006 congressional elections, the electorate had had enough, and the public’s disgust with the pointless sacrifice of blood and treasure helped propel the junior senator from Illinois into the White House. The Bushies who blundered so badly–occupying Iraq, pushing for the West Bank elections won by Hamas, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt against the Egyptian military–are still fighting for what is left of their reputations. And their greatest fear is that a Republican leader will come along untainted by their mistakes, and able to admit what we Republicans should have admitted years ago: the Bush administration made some big mistakes.

That leader is Sen. Ted Cruz, who said Sept. 24,

I think we stayed too long, and we got far too involved in nation-building…. We should not be trying to turn Iraq into Switzerland.

Cruz is a foreign policy hard-liner, not an isolationist, but he is a tough-minded realist in a party contaminated by the ideological impulse to export America’s political system to the Middle East. His way of looking at things is close to that of the original Reagan foreign policy team, for example, Prof. Angelo Codevilla, whose new book I reviewed recently. Codevilla argued that “U.S. viceroys spent most of a decade fruitlessly trying to negate the Shias’, Sunnis’, and Kurds’ democratically expressed mutual antagonism.” The much-lauded “surge” “consisted of turning over to Sunni insurgents the tribal areas into which the Shia were pushing them. Rather than defeating them, the U.S. government began arming them.” And the result: “After a bloody decade, Iraq ended up divided along ancient ethno-religious fault lines but more mutually bitter.”

Codevilla was one of the architects of the Strategic Defense Initiative that helped win the Cold War, and his views are shared by other key members of the Reagan team, for example, my old mentor at the Reagan National Security Council, Dr. Norman A. Bailey. When Sen. Cruz calls his foreign policy “Reaganite,” he can claim agreement with key Reagan aides.

That explains why the neo-conservatives are throwing mud at him. If Cruz is right, the Republican Party doesn’t need them any more. As Eliana Johnson points out at National Review, Kristol et. al. have signed on with Marco Rubio. The neo-cons detest Cruz, Johnson reports:

PJ Media has put together a new publication about voter fraud called Crimes Against the Republic.

When it comes to voter fraud, there are several myths and several truths of note — enough to leave everyone unhappy. Here are five:

1. Myth: President Obama won reelection because of voter fraud. Nonsense. The margins in key swing states such as Ohio and Virginia were too vast to be driven by voter fraud. No voter fraud scheme can move tens of thousands of votes. That’s impossible and would be detected. The machinery of elections simply doesn’t allow for the possibility of organizing and procuring tens of thousands of votes. If you are desperate for a singular explanation for Obama’s reelection, you should get to know Catalist. This massive database and how the modern left uses it to drive turnout among the base are behind Obama’s releection, not voter fraud. That Republicans and conservatives have absolutely no effective counterpart makes it even more so.

2. Fact: Voter fraud has altered the outcome of elections. Senator Al Franken (D-Lino Lakes), the Saturday Night Live clown, is in the United States Senate because of voter fraud. Franken won his election because Minnesota has same-day voter registration, where a person can register to vote and cast a ballot simultaneously. Felons were ineligible to vote but did so anyhow — by the thousands (1099 of them to be exact). This means that Franken owes his Senate seats to graduates of Faribault and Lino Lakes. Remember, Franken won by only 312 votes. News media in Minnesota contacted many of the felons and they admitted they were proud of their votes for Franken. Not a one voted for Norm Coleman. But it’s worse. Al Franken was the 60th vote to pass Obamacare over a filibuster. Because of voter fraud, Obamacare passed.

3. Myth: Paper ballots are the safest. Paper ballots actually facilitate voter fraud. Electronic voting machines cannot be hacked from outer space. The machines are not connected and manipulated by the Illuminati. The worst form of elections are paper ballots because they are subject to human interpretation. When paper ballots are counted, partisans on each side get to interpret stray marks the way they want to. Xs stray from boxes, and — magically — votes move. Electronic machine counting is the best way to eliminate voter fraud. The single best election system is the optical scan ballot where you make selections inside ovals and the paper is fed through an electronic counting scanner. People who waste time on electronic voting machines are overlooking the many other ways the system is manipulated.

With the publication of Crimes Against the Republic: How the Democratic Party’s Voter Fraud is Fundamentally Transforming America [2], PJ Media has launched its new ebook program. And what a tome to start with! This chronological collection of PJ Media Legal Editor J. Christian Adams’ Rule of Law blog posts details how the American Left and the Holder Justice Department have undermined efforts to improve the integrity of the election process and deter voter fraud.

Adams believes that “the Republic is at risk from a corrupt wing of the Democratic Party that is willing to sacrifice the rule of law, and – for the sake of reaching its goals – is just as focused on exploiting the process of the franchise as it is on political persuasion.” He then proceeds to make his case. His reporting should alarm all Americans who believe in the sanctity of the ballot box.

Adams, my former colleague in the Civil Rights Division and co-writer for the PJ Media “Every Single One” series [3] on biased hiring at the division, left the Voting Section in protest after Eric Holder and other political subordinates ordered the dismissal of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party for its outrageous misbehavior in Philadelphia in 2008. The Justice Department’s loss was our gain, since it freed Adams to write about not only voter fraud cases occurring around the country, but about the malfeasance of the Holder Justice Department and its war on election integrity, all of which is covered in this new book.

Adams has a bold, distinctive writing style that is easy to read, yet very informative. In addition to his extensive coverage of the inside workings of the Civil Rights Division where he used to work, Adams has no hesitation in naming those in academia and the media — like Rick Hasen and Simon van Zuylen-Wood — who are “in the tank” with the administration in attacking election integrity efforts and denying that voter fraud exists.

Adams points out how the New Republic attacked the passage, by popular referendum, of Mississippi’s voter ID law without mentioning the evidence of voter fraud in the Ike Brown case — a Mississippi prosecution that Adams handled when he was still at Justice. That evidence included “rampant absentee ballot fraud, in-person impersonation fraud, ballot forgery, ineligible voters voting, cooperation with illegalities by law enforcement officials … and on and on and on.”

The protesters know that what’s hailed in the West as ‘the China dream’ is a hoax.

Whatever comes next with the demonstrations in Hong Kong, they’ve already performed a historic service. To wit, they remind us of the silliness of the China infatuation so prevalent among pundits and intellectuals who don’t live in China.

That’s the central lesson of “Occupy Central With Love and Peace”—a movement that, morally speaking, is to its Wall Street namesake roughly what Václav Havel was to Abbie Hoffman. The student-led protests, which have demanded that Beijing honor its promises to allow democratic elections for Hong Kong’s chief executive, represent the ideal future of modern China: principled and well-educated, pragmatic and worldly. And what this potential Chinese future has been saying emphatically for the past week is that it wants no part of China’s dismal present.

That might come as news to the legion of China boosters who have been insisting for years that the 21st century belongs to the Middle Kingdom, and that the sooner we get used to it the better off we all will be. These are the people for whom a visit to Shanghai’s skyscraper-rich Pudong district, or a glance at official Chinese economic statistics, or a ride on one of China’s bullet trains, is enough to convince them that the West has had its day.

If only we could be “China for one day,” so that democratic partisanship didn’t stand in the way of enlightened governance— wouldn’t that solve everything?

Don’t tell that to the people of Hong Kong, who have learned the hard way that, except when pressured, Beijing honors no promises, countenances no dissent and contemplates no future in which the Communist Party’s grip on power can be loosened even slightly. Hong Kong became rich on the small government, laissez-faire, rule-of-law-not-men principles of its late colonial administrators. It has remained rich because, by comparison to mainland China, it remains relatively free and uncorrupt. Hong Kong is what China could be if it weren’t, well, China—if state intervention were minimal; if government weren’t a vehicle for self-enrichment; if people could worship, write, exercise and associate just as they please.

The siege of Kobani shows the holes in Obama’s strategy.

A month ago President Obama ordered the world’s greatest military “to degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. America’s word isn’t what it used to be. As we went to press on Tuesday, ISIS was on the verge of a major military victory in Kobani, a mostly Kurdish city along Syria’s border with Turkey.

The siege of Kobani has left hundreds dead and forced some 200,000 to flee, mostly to Turkey. The city’s fall would mean a massacre of civilians and Kurdish fighters—ISIS doesn’t distinguish among “apostates”—that would put Kobani in the same sentence with Srebrenica. So soon after Mr. Obama’s call to arms, it would also be a blow to American prestige and a huge recruiting tool for ISIS. The jihadists would claim they’ve defeated an America unable to stop them.

For three weeks the U.S. has watched while doing little to help undermanned Syrian Kurdish fighters holding out against the terrorist army that is using stolen American weapons. The black flag of ISIS appeared Monday above buildings in an outlying district of Kobani, which before the war had a population of some 50,000.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is cutting health insurance for another 30,000 part-time workers and raising premiums for its other employees, as U.S. corporations push to contain costs in the wake of the federal health-care law.

Autumn is typically when U.S. companies unveil changes to employee insurance plans. This is the first such enrollment period since employers could assess the full financial impact of the federal health-care overhaul, and it is a key moment as companies work to lower their spending ahead of looming taxes on the most generous plans.

Many businesses are continuing to shift more costs to workers. Phoenix-based technology distributor Avnet Inc., for example, is paring back its traditional plans in favor of high-deductible options. Other companies are reducing coverage for spouses, according to consultants at Towers Watson & Co.

Still others are going further, ending their traditional coverage for employees who will instead get a fixed sum of money to buy their own insurance on private exchanges. Aon PLC’s Aon Hewitt is set to announce that enrollment in its exchange will grow to around 850,000 workers and dependents next year, as another 15 employers sign up.

Several facets of the health-care overhaul are driving concerns about costs: one is the coming tax on so-called Cadillac plans, which carry high premiums and offer rich benefits, and another is the individual mandate that requires most workers to obtain coverage or else face a penalty.

The President’s lack of attention and indifference to years of intelligence reports and analysis is leading to a potential horror in which Iran fulfills its quest to make its own nuclear weapons. It already has the missile capacity to deliver them throughout the Middle East and to Europe.

On October 6th Secretary of State John Kerry received a letter signed by 354 members of the House of Representatives that said in part “We are concerned that an agreement that accepts Iran’s lack of transparency on this key issue (inspections) would set the dangerous precedent that certain facilities and aspects of Iran’s nuclear program can be declared off limits by Tehran…”

Obama, however, is so intent on securing a deal with Iran-any kind of deal-that he has virtually ensured it will become the next nuclear power at the worst time in the worst place. This is the same President who thought he could reverse that hostility of the region to the U.S., blaming it on his predecessor’s military interventions. He thought he could also ignore the most powerful element of the region, the hostilities between Sunnis and Shiites that have been around for 1400 years.

Throughout history there have been world leaders who have warned of a coming horror only to be ignored. Almost alone Winston Churchill warned of the Nazi regime’s intentions and now Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, issued a comparable warning about Iran on September 29 at the United Nations. He spoke to a General Assembly gathering that many diplomats from Mid-Eastern nations shunned.

If you’d asked me three months ago, who was Leo Strauss, I’d have answered, “Didn’t he write polkas or operas? Or was he a ne’er-do-well brother or cousin of Johann or Richard?”

Email correspondents of mine have engaged in a lengthy discussion centering on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s U.N. speech of September 29th and whether or not he was either a “Straussian” or a tool of the “Straussians.” The statement by Netanyahu that precipitated the discussion was, concerning the depredations of ISIS – “It’s not militants. It’s not Islam. It’s militant Islam.” – in which he makes a contentious distinction between Islam and jihadist violence in the name of Islam. Readers know my position well enough: Islam is what Islam does – what ISIS is doing – and has been doing for fourteen centuries.

However, not being familiar with Leo Strauss, I investigated him and discovered some unsettling information. I had expected to find that he was associated with the Frankfurt School, a Marxist intellectual clique that emigrated to the U.S. from Nazi Germany in 1933. This was not the case. Shadia Drury, a Strauss scholar, wrote in an encyclopedia entry:

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was a German-Jewish émigré political philosopher and historian of political thought, who wrote some fifteen books and eighty articles on the history of political thought from Socrates to Nietzsche….

Strauss was born in Kirchhain, Hessen, Germany. He studied at the Universities of Marburg and Hamburg where he came into contact with Edmund Husserl and the young Martin Heidegger. He left Germany in 1932 and eventually settled in the USA where from 1949 to 1968 he was professor of political science at the University of Chicago. He amassed a sizeable following of devoted students, who have played a significant role in US academic life and government.

And what did Strauss write? What did he advocate? What influence did his devotees and disciples exert on academic life and government? Apparently, he was a political Platonist.