RUTHFULLY YOURS

A society that rejects the notion of a heckler’s veto cannot accept the idea of a murderer’s veto.

Since when did the phrase “she was asking for it” gain respectability in the encyclopedia of American political correctness?

In 2011 Lara Logan was sexually assaulted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, after which several bloggers chimed in that the CBS correspondent somehow had it coming to her because she’s blonde and pretty and the demonstrators were frenzied and male. Respectable opinion, conservative and liberal alike, rose up as one to denounce the appalling suggestion.

Fast forward to the May 3 terrorist attack on the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, in which two jihadists attempted to shoot their way into a Muhammad cartoon contest organized by Pamela Geller and her organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative. Since the attack, Ms. Geller has been denounced from Fox News to Comedy Central as a provocation artist who needlessly and knowingly put people’s lives in danger.

“This is problematic to me, because I wonder whether this group that held this event down there to basically disparage and make fun of the prophet Muhammad doesn’t in some way cause these events,” commented Chris Matthews. “Well, not the word ‘causing’—how about provoking, how about taunting, how about daring?”

— Fred Fleitz is senior vice president for policy and programs for the Center for Security Policy. He worked in national-security positions for 25 years with the CIA, the State Department, and the House Intelligence Committee.

Although the Obama administration refuses to say that the attempted massacre by two heavily armed assailants at a “draw Mohammed” contest in Garland, Texas, was an act of terrorism directed by ISIS, there is little doubt this was the case. One of the heavily armed attackers had been in touch through Twitter with jihadists in Australia and Somalia who were associated with ISIS and who had called for attacks on the Garland event. ISIS also seemed to know about the attack in advance and immediately claimed responsibility for it.

Pamela Geller, the organizer of the “draw Mohammed” contest, wrote this week that whether ISIS leaders actually directed the attack or only had foreknowledge of it is a distinction without a difference, since ISIS has called for attacks on the United States and published manuals explaining how homegrown Islamist terrorists can construct bombs and kill infidels.

The Garland attack was stopped in a matter of seconds — but only because of a heavy police presence assigned to the event and a traffic cop who somehow killed both assailants with his service revolver even though they were wearing body armor. However, this will certainly not be the last attack in the United States by homegrown terrorists inspired or directed by ISIS and al-Qaeda. There may not be heavy security in place the next time ISIS attacks.

‘Today China is our key strategic partner,” President Vladimir Putin said May 8, in Moscow. In 2015, China and Russia share much in common. Both nations are ruled by confident authoritarians. Both rulers embrace territorial expansionism through the barrel of a gun. Neither has much interest in compromise. And bound by these physical and philosophical similarities, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are becoming good friends.

This past weekend, attending Russia’s World War II memorial in Moscow, President Jinping got cozy with President Putin. In addition to lending about $25 billion to cash-strapped Russian companies, China will support a major Russian rail-infrastructure project and increase its imports of Russian natural gas. In return, Russia will expand exports of advanced military equipment to China. And as a further sign of warmed relations, the two nations will conduct joint exercises in the Mediterranean Sea this week.

Free speech and artistic and intellectual expression have been controversial Western traditions since the rise of the classical-Greek city-state. When our Founding Fathers introduced guarantees of such freedoms to our new nation, they were never intended to protect thinkers whom we all admire or traditionalists who produce beloved movies like The Sound of Music.

The First Amendment to the Constitution instead was designed to protect the obnoxious, the provocative, the uncouth, and the creepy — on the principle that if the foulmouths can say or express what they wish and the public can put up with it, then everyone else is assured of free speech.

Hamas is at least being honest about its intentions to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamist state.

But Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and his people are afraid of admitting to the refugees that Arab and Palestinian leaders have been lying to them since 1948 by asking them to stay in their camps because one day they will return to their non-existent villages and homes. The same problem is also true of other matters, such as a two-state solution, the status of Jerusalem and the future borders of a Palestinian state. Palestinians consider any concessions to Israel as “crimes of high treason.”

If and when Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ever resume, neither Abbas nor any future Palestinian leader will be able to reach a compromise with Israel when the Palestinian Authority itself continues to promote such anti-Israeli sentiments.

“It is the Pamela Geller’s that are crying out to us. We need to listen. We need to support them. We need to arm ourselves if we have not done so already. Then we need to secure “concealed carry” laws in every State of the Union. We are at war.”

Does anyone remember what happened on September 11, 2001? Or is it just “ancient history” at this point? Some three thousand totally innocent Americans were murdered by a sneak attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Who did it? The same murderous Islamists who attacked an event in Garland, Texas to focus attention on the insanity that passes for one of the world’s great “religions.”

Free speech is fundamental to ensuring that any country remains free. Trifling with it should not be taken lightly. Three recent events in the U.S. remind us of its value. One was the Prophet Muhammad Art Exhibition and Contest in Garland, Texas. That incident created a debate between “free” speech and “hate” speech. Another was the PEN (poets, essayists and novelists) award to Charlie Hebdo, which was boycotted by some prominent writers who claimed the magazine is “racist.” The third, and scariest, was the assertion by Hillary Clinton and others that the Constitution may have to be amended; so that Congress in its wisdom can determine what is appropriate and what is not in regard to political speech during Presidential campaigns.

The example that is always used to define the limits of free speech is the crying of “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there is no fire. It is malicious and is intended to scare and harm those that are there. But words that are distasteful to some, or even to most, are protected. When Chris Ofili displayed his elephant dung-covered Madonna at the Brooklyn Museum in 1996, it was described by then Mayor Giuliano as “sick,” an assessment with which I agreed. But when he tried to have the City of New York withhold a $7 million grant, the museum sued on the grounds that the mayor’s action was an infringement of its First Amendment rights. The museum, rightly, won.

Some of our liberal friends, particularly the art lovers among them, are terrified of the hobgoblins that Ralph Waldo Emerson warned about. “A foolish consistency,” he famously said, “is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.”

We see this writ large in the threat to public peace and the lives of the innocent by Islamic radicals. The radicals, who maim and kill in the name of the Prophet, are treated with respect (if not terror), and the Christians who have threatened no one, must be hectored, lectured and exiled to the fringes of the public square.

In a Camp David summit meeting Thursday, leaders of Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations will attempt to persuade President Obama to enter into a military agreement to counteract the inevitable consequences of his nuclear weapons deal with Iran. This is their final opportunity to do so before the scheduled June 30 completion of that agreement.

The Arab leaders seek an agreement requiring the United States to “contain” Iran and sell their nations the weapons that could give them a qualitative military advantage over Iran. The containment statement and security agreement they seek would be a formal memorandum of understanding on regional security but, according to a Financial Times report, “something short of a treaty.”

President, London Center for Policy Research

Despite the Marxist assertion that economic factors drive the forces of history, modernity offers a different response. Jacobins during the French Revolution argued that politics – understood as the quest for power – drives history. Here, too, history provides an equivocal response. It is in the warehouse of liberal dogma that if you have a democracy and a free market, the quest for historical justification is in the offing. Presumably these are the characteristics of a smooth running machine of state.

While politics and economics are certainly undeniably important in historical assessment, they in themselves are not the dynamic force in history. At the core of historical movement is what people believe, cherish, worship. The real test of history is over what a people are willing to sacrifice; on what are they willing to stake their lives.