http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331098/obama-s-foreign-policy-record-ira-straus The most important outcome of the Obama administration’s actions abroad has been the deposing of America’s allies in Egypt and Tunisia. This will weigh more heavily on the historical scales than everything else in the last four years. Egypt is the natural leader of the Arab world. Under Mubarak it led the region, painstakingly, […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/big_bird_liberalism_and_perversion.html
Fifty years of clinical observation have taught me the unwillingness of many to relinquish childhood dreams of perfect bliss. Utopia seems to be the goal for many from their first frustrated cries following ejection from the womb.
The outraged reaction by liberalism’s defenders to Gov. Romney’s jocular threat to take away Big Bird’s government subsidy shows that he touched a nerve. The screaming and caterwauling, the marches announced to defend the puppet, reveal some important truths about contemporary liberalism and its adherents. Gov. Romney in one witty comment suggested that it is time to grow up, to relinquish the utopian fantasy of a blissful androgynous childhood free of conflict. In one comment, he leveled a blast at the feminized metrosexual culture of contemporary liberalism. He went on to link his opponent to childhood, by likening him to his own boys when they were young, a time when wishes often prevail over reality.
No wonder liberals reacted with rage. No wonder the president mentioned his defense of Big Bird thirteen times in the week following the debate. Liberals long for what Big Bird represents: that utopian childish dream world where differences of gender, talent, fortune, looks, race, color, intelligence, etc. do not exist. Big Bird, the perfect symbol of liberal fantasies, is neither handsome nor ugly, has no discernible sexuality, is neither smart nor stupid. He is never threatened by the need to work hard to accomplish things, because he has no discernible ambition. He never demands anything and never has to deal with aggressive wishes. Anger is not a problem for Big Bird. Competition is not for him. Unlike the creatures of classic fairy tales, he is just a bland, unthreatening being purveying the liberal fantasy that in utopia, we are all equally lovable and all think good thoughts. No doubt there are graduate students at our elite universities composing theses on the postmodren significance of Sesame Street.
I have written previously in American Thinker about perversion as a mode of thinking, not just a form of sexual behavior. Perversion (see the Marquis de Sade) seeks to abolish all differences — of gender, of generations, of species. The incest taboo is overturned, species differences are abolished, and the distinction between animate and inanimate is dismissed as all things are reduced to fecal sameness. Sade anticipated the dreams of postmodern wordsmith intellectuals.
In the world of perversion, the Old Testament story of God the father creating the world, differentiating the creatures, naming and separating male from female, children from adults, species from species, etc. is overturned. The roles and functions of the father are undermined as the paternal world of the biblical creation story is rejected. Sade makes clear that the central perverse wish is to overturn the paternal universe, deny difference, and return to a blissful undifferentiated state. The problem is that utopian wishes such as those embodied by sexual perversion and perverse thinking can never attained. No matter how many affirmative-action programs are installed, politically correct egalitarian yearnings are, in reality, unrealizable. Differences cannot be abolished. When utopia fails to arrive as promised, when the seas don’t cease to rise, when the earth fails to heal itself, when postmodern, politically correct fantasies collapse, scapegoats must be found. Suppressed rage then erupts. In the therapeutic world of modern liberalism, while praising itself for caring about the downtrodden, liberals will vilify as evil those who puncture their illusions. Romney’s and Ryan’s policies are not important enough to deal with because Romney and Ryan are bad people — “liars.” Instead, let’s all rally to protect Big Bird from the heartless conservatives.
We all remember the name-calling schoolyard bully who was really a weakling and a blowhard. As grown-ups, these are the people who insisted that George Bush was not just mistaken in his policies; he was a bad person. He was another Hitler. In these wordsmith tantrums can be glimpsed buried infantile rage. This is Sesame Street thinking by adults. Big Bird symbolizes the perverse childhood thinking at the heart of utopian ideologies like liberalism. Bland, asexual Big Bird masks the seething, frustrated rage of thwarted children.
Liberalism as an ideology has devolved into a system that represents perverse thinking in its most obvious form. Liberals are quite correct to angrily defend Big Bird, for he represents their shared fantasy of a blissful world, free of conflict. Liberalism has become an emasculated ideology for all the utopian children who have grown up but failed to relinquish their childhood fantasies. It is an ideology of arrested development.
Optimally, childhood ends, and adults develop a mature, tragic acceptance of limitations. They come to terms with differences of talent; some are more intelligent, better athletes, better mathematicians, more creative. Accepting this is, paradoxically, a necessary step toward real achievement because it allows discovery of one’s own unique talents. By age 12 I had to recognize that I wasn’t going to succeed Joe DiMaggio in center field for the Yankees. I was a nearsighted kid who didn’t run well and, most importantly, couldn’t hit a curve ball. Learning to accept that freed me to discover my own unique abilities while enabling me to enjoy the superior skills of professional athletes. I didn’t seethe with resentment. Instead, I learned to appreciate the hard work necessary to actualize any talent.
Utopians who remain immature in their thinking feel an aggrieved sense of entitlement. A fair and just world would mandate that they play center field for the Yankees. Society hasn’t recognized their wondrous attributes. Why have those other boys and girls, so much less verbally gifted, done so well? It’s an outrageous injustice. After all, teachers all praised these future liberals for their verbal skills, yet some of those non-verbally adept kids who were not such good little boys and girls have achieved tangible success way beyond that of the aggrieved. It’s not fair.
Sesame Street promised otherwise. Being good should be enough. After all, Big Bird is good just by virtue of existing, and even if it’s a fantasy, everyone loves him. Well, let’s introduce government programs to make up for the unfairness. Let’s legislate a utopian egalitarianism. Let’s apply “Sesame Street” modes of understanding to foreign policy, and everyone can join hands and show they care. We can redistribute everything in accord with “fairness.”
Nuclear weapons in the hands of fanatics? As Joe Biden laughingly suggested, we should all just calm down. Isn’t Iran’s “culture” as valid as Western culture? Given that Israel possesses nukes, wouldn’t it be fair to give nukes to 7th-century savages? (Sorry, they’re not “savages” — just believers in alternative cultural values.) Our government leaders went to elite schools, where postmodern disquisitions on “narrative truth” were taken seriously and Machiavelli was just an old Italian guy who lived a long time ago. Of course, when their postmodern “narratives” result in disaster, someone else must be to blame, and it can’t be liberals, because their hearts are pure.
Arms Flow to Syria May Be Behind Benghazi Cover-Up http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/print/arms-flow-to-syria-may-be-behind-benghazi-cover-up The day after the big Obama-Romney debate, as media and politicians were engaging in the usual after-action assessment frenzy, some of the most important issues surrounding the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, remain unaddressed. While it clearly matters (a lot) […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/house-armed-services-chair-blocked-from-getting-answers-from-military-about-threat-warnings-prior-to-benghazi-consulate-attack?f=puball
http://freebeacon.com/incommunicado/
House Armed Services chairman blocked from getting answers from senior military about threat warnings prior to Benghazi consulate attack
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is demanding answers from four senior United States military officers about whether there was advance warning of terrorist threats and the need for greater security prior to last month’s terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
However, an aide to the chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, (R., Calif.), said the office of secretary of defense Leon Panetta blocked the senior officers from providing the answers last night.
“The chairman is disappointed that the administration won’t respond to this basic request for information,” the aide said.
“It is nearly unprecedented that the office of the secretary of defense would prohibit a member of the uniformed military from answering direct questions posed by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.”
Pentagon spokesman George Little told the Free Beacon: “We received the letters last night and are working expeditiously to provide a response.”
The chairman’s letters are dated Thursday. They were sent to Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, which is responsible for military activities in Africa; Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command; Vice Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, director for operations at the Pentagon’s Joint Staff; and Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/mullikin-and-smith-receive-senate-commendations-for-honorary-titles?f=puball
COLUMBIA, S.C. – State Senator Michael L. Fair (R-Greenville) formally commended attorney Thomas S. Mullikin and military analyst W. Thomas Smith Jr. for having received the title, “Honorary Green Beret,” by the U.S. Army Special Forces Association (Chapter XXXIV).
According to the senator’s commendations, presented Oct. 18, 2012, “This honor is indicative of your years of honorable military service, your military and civilian leadership in defense of our nation in the Global War on Terror; and your activities in support of U.S. Army Special Forces, the Special Forces Association, and the special operations community.”
The Senate commendation is the second set of laurels for both men each of whom were named, “Honorary Green Beret,” by the state chapter of the Special Forces Association, Sept. 28.
Both Mullikin and Smith have extensive military – and military related civilian-professional – backgrounds.
Mullikin – founder and pres. of the Mullikin Law Firm and Global Eco Adventures – was recently named deputy commander of the S.C. State Guard. Mullikin is a former U.S. Army JAG lawyer (USAR) and was attached as an international legal officer to a Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne) within the U.S. Special Operations Command. He is a noted world adventurer, having climbed Mt. Elbrus (Europe’s highest mountain) in July and Mt. Kilimanjaro (Africa’s highest mountain) in 2010. Mullikin has chalked up multiple dives in five oceans (his most recent off Antarctica and in the Galapagos), and he has parachuted with members of several foreign airborne forces. An author, film producer, and lecturer; Mullikin is executive in residence at Coastal Carolina University.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/blood-drenched-palestinian-heroine/
On October 4, 2003, during the genocidal assault known as the Second Intifada, a young Palestinian law student from Jenin named Hanadi Jaradat blew herself up at Maxim’s restaurant in Haifa. The blast killed 21 people including four children and five Israeli Arabs.
Two of the children (aged 11 and 9) were from the Almog family, which lost five people in the bombing; another two of the children (aged 4 and 1) were from the Zer-Aviv family, which also lost five members.
Since then, the honors for Hanadi Jaradat have never stopped—and not only from Palestinians.
On January 16, 2004, the then Israeli ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, attended a Stockholm art show “linked,” as HonestReporting recounted at the time,
to an international conference on preventing genocide. Mazel was shocked to encounter there a large exhibit glorifying [Jaradat]. Dubbed “Snow White and the Madness of Truth,” the exhibit showed a tiny sailboat floating on a pool of red water. Attached to the boat was a smiling photo of the female bomber….
Mazel, in an incident that gained much notoriety at the time, reacted by “pull[ing] the plug on three spotlights illuminating the exhibit, and knock[ing] one light fixture into the red pool.” His Swedish hosts were shocked at the uncivilized behavior.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/the-stakes-in-tonights-foreign-policy-debate/print/ Foreign policy, the topic of tonight’s debate, was suddenly thrust into the voters’ consciousness by the murder of 4 Americans, including our ambassador, in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11. Intensifying the fallout of this event has been the Obama administration’s incoherent, clumsy, duplicitous, and rapidly unraveling attempt to blame the terrorist murders on […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/a-review-of-high-noon-for-america-the-coming-showdown-by-jamie-glazov
While the nation was focused on the economy, Jamie Glazov, to his great credit, gathered a stellar group of intellectuals to conduct a series of roundtable discussions on the Middle East and Arab/Moslem extremism ;Russia’s renewed aggressiveness; America’s possible military decline; the unending search for moderation in Islam; energy independence; and breaking away from the leftist cult and dogma.
Dr.Glazov who holds a Ph.D in history with specialties in U.S., Russian, and Canadian foreign policy is editor of Frontpage.com where these symposiums appeared. They are now compiled in his new book “High Noon for America-The coming Showdown.” As harbingers of our present national crisis they are essential reading.
How timely and ironic that the first chapter is titled “The Mismanaged War Against Libya” (March 2011) and deals with our response to the uprising against Qaddafi. Lt. General Miahil Pacepa was the highest official to defect from the Soviet Union. Here are his prescient words:
“All we know for certain about the “freedom fighters” opposing Gaddafi is that they fight with Kalashnikov in hand, and that Kalashnikovs have no history of promoting freedom…A recent article in Le Monde goes a step further, revealing that these “brave Libyan freedom fighters” are dominated by jihadists espousing the same complaints of “Westoxification” accompanied by the Jew-hatred and broader infidel-hatred that permeates the Arab world.”
For good measure Robert Spencer reminds us: “But he (Obama) didn’t explain how acting forcibly to remove Gaddafi would indeed be in America’s best interests….It is unlikely that he will be succeeded by Thomas Jefferson. The fact that Gaddafi is a reprehensible human being and no friend of the United States does not automatically turn his opponents into Thomas Paine.”
In the chapter “The Shadow of the KGB” (February 2011) Glazov assembles a group of Soviet dissidents including Vladimir Bukovsky, Pavel Stroilov, Lt. General Ion Pacepa, with intellectuals and academics to discuss Russia’s renewed aggressiveness and nuclear buildup.
Glazov is a splendid moderator whose own background in the Soviet Union gives him a unique window into current policies. He begins the discussion by reminding the reader that the United States ostensibly uprooted evil Soviet ideology in 1991, and Russia is seen as a friend and discounted as an adversary although much of its ideology and government are still controlled former KGB officers and their acolytes. Not quite a “reset” as some would have it.
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2283/Running-Interference-for-Petraeus.aspx
As the Benghazi storyline clears to a point where CIA Director Petraeus’ personal testimony is absolutely required to establish how the White House came to perpetuate a lie for at least two weeks — namely, that a “spontaneous” but, we now know, non-existent protest combusted into a terrorist attack on the consulate — diversionary tactics become inevitable. Media static ensues. One likely entry in that category was Saturday’s WaPo column by David Ignatius, discussed here, in which an intelligence trial balloon went up to the effect that while there wasn’t a live protest in Benghazi, the terrorists watched the Cairo protest live on TV, which is practically the same thing. (Hard to imagine such nonsense flying but you never know.)
Today, Commentary’s Max Boot seems to enter this same realm of Petraeus damage control with a blog entry clarifying, postscript-style, an earlier post pointing out that reading news reports on Benghazi probably yielded more accurate information than reading classified intelligence reports.
Boot, it bears repeating, has a history of performing damage control for Petraeus.
He writes:
Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press writes: “The CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of last month’s deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, U.S. officials have told The Associated Press.”
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ The British Empire may have made a mess of the Middle East but at least it knew what it wanted to do with it. That is more than can be said for our latest round of aimless fumblings in the region. Our latest project to flip Syria from the Shiite into the Sunni column […]
