RUTHFULLY YOURS

The sharp demarcation between cultural issues and economic ones is ultimately bogus.

Dear Reader (and the escort from Ipanema, who might feel ignored by this “news”letter),

As the Cartagena hooker said after getting paid up front, “Where should I begin?”

I love that even Jimmy Carter is turning on Obama. The headline from Time magazine:

Jimmy Carter: Obama Dropped the Ball on ISIS Threat

First of all, having Jimmy Carter out-hawk you is like having Joe Biden attack you for being verbally undisciplined. “He really should be more careful about what he says,” Biden advised, then added, “A great way to cool down on a hot day is to shove lime Jell-O in your pants. Be sure to remove the pants-squirrels first, though.”

Jimmy Carter is like a veterinarian who specializes in male puppies: He knows his ball drops. Just for Giggles (Giggles is a guy I know without Internet access), I googled “Jimmy Carter dropped the ball.” Among the results about how Jimmy Carter dropped the ball on Iran, the Soviet Union, the Metric system, etc., I found this Yahoo Answers page from 2011. The question:

“What did Jimmy Carter do as Chief Diplomat? Any example even if he did a horrible job at it.”

The “best answer” was: “Saying Jimmy Carter dropped the ball is a BIG understatement.”

Throughout the history of the American Republic, there has been a tension between two virtues necessary to sustain republican government: vigilance and responsibility. Vigilance is the jealousy on the part of the people that constitutes a necessary check on those who hold power, lest they abuse it. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those whom we are obliged to trust with power.”

But while vigilance is a necessary virtue, it may, if unchecked, lead to an extremism that incapacitates a government, preventing it from carrying out even its most necessary and legitimate purposes, e.g. providing for the common defense. “Jealousy,” wrote Alexander Hamilton, often infects the “noble enthusiasm for liberty” with “a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust.”

Responsibility, on the other hand, is the prudential judgment necessary to moderate the excesses of political jealousy, thereby permitting limited government to fulfill its purposes. Thus, in Federalist 23, Alexander Hamilton wrote that those responsible for the nation’s defense must be granted all of the powers necessary to achieve that end. Responsibility is the virtue necessary to govern the republic and to preserve it from harm, both external and internal. The dangers of foreign and civil war taught Alexander Hamilton that liberty and power are not always adversaries, that, indeed, the “vigor” of government is essential to the security of liberty.

Lincoln and the War Power

Lincoln’s actions as president during the Civil War reflected his agreement with this principle. Owing to the unprecedented nature of the emergency created by a serious domestic rebellion, Lincoln believed that he had no choice but to exercise broad executive power.

The steps Lincoln took are well known. Under his constitutional powers as commander-in-chief of the military, he declared martial law and suspended the writ of habeas corpus in certain locations. He blockaded Southern ports. He shut down some opposition newspapers. He created tribunals similar to the ones that George W. Bush established when he was president. At one point early in the war, convinced that the Maryland legislature was poised to vote an ordinance of secession, he ordered Federal troops to arrest and detain pro-secessionist lawmakers. Lincoln justified this last step on the grounds that there was “tangible and unmistakable evidence” of their “substantial and unmistakable complicity with those in armed rebellion.”

Indigenous Peoples’ Day Is Offensive to Indigenous People By Tim Cavanaugh

If you want honor American Indians, then honor an American Indian.

It was either Francis Parkman or Frederick Jackson Turner or the composer of the theme from F Troop who first laid down an essential truth about the American experience: In the end, Paleface and Redskin both turn chicken.

Now the same white male power structure that made Black History Month the shortest month in the calendar and sabotaged the Susan B. Anthony dollar by making it indistinguishable from a quarter is at it again. And the oppression is coming from the supposedly sympathetic, progressive side: The city of Seattle, Washington, has designated an “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” on the second Monday of October — a day already reserved for the federal Columbus Day holiday.

Seattle’s City Council unanimously passed the proposal for a non-official city holiday earlier this week. Mayor Ed Murray will sign Indigenous Peoples’ Day into law Monday, and he noted to local media that the day is only an homage that has no municipal weight (no parking relief). The legislation “will honor local Native-American tribes,” the Seattle Times reports. Murray claims Indigenous Peoples’ Day will “add new significance to the date without replacing the Columbus Day tradition,” according to the paper.

Something bothers me about the first and only hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Something I haven’t been able to shake.

It was a desultory hearing. That’s not the main thing that bothers me, but it grates. Many Americans still seek real accountability for the jihadist-empowering policies and recklessly irresponsible security arrangements that preceded the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack — to say nothing of the fraud and stonewalling that followed it. We were thus cheered when the GOP-controlled House finally appointed a select investigative committee . . . although we were equally puzzled why it took so much prodding, why Republican leadership seemed so reluctant. Five months have elapsed since then, and the committee has not exactly been a bundle of energy.

The panel is chaired by Representative Trey Gowdy. We were buoyed by that, too: He is an impressive former prosecutor from South Carolina. To date, though, he has convened just the one, remarkably brief public hearing. It was on September 17, a few days after the second anniversary of the Benghazi massacre, during which terrorists killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans: Sean Smith, Ty Woods, and Glen Doherty.

The hearing seemed to be a futile quest for buy-in from committee Democrats, whose mission is to undermine the legitimacy of an investigation their party opposed — one that, if thorough and competent, cannot but damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. Representative Gowdy agreed to the minority’s request for a session that would explore the recommendations of the Obama State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) and the administration’s diligent implementation thereof.

The ARB probe, conducted by Washington fixtures handpicked by then–Secretary of State Clinton for damage-control purposes, was hopelessly conflicted. It failed to interview key witnesses — including, natch, Mrs. Clinton herself. Its recommendations are thus of dubious value. More to the point, they are far afield from the salient matter: accountability for the disastrous decisions, actions, and omissions before, during, and after the attack.

Mistaken Identity, Not Aboriginal Heroes

Depicted as martyrs in the cause of Aboriginal resistance, convicted killers Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner are to be honoured with a statue in Melbourne’s CBD. Once again, popular myth is about to trump documented history

The Melbourne City Council has decided to erect a memorial to commemorate the two Tasmanian Aborigines who were hanged in Melbourne on January 20, 1842, in the first public executions at Port Phillip. The decision coincided with its publication of a thirty-nine-page booklet by Clare Land entitled Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner: The Involvement of Aboriginal People from Tasmania in Key Events of Early Melbourne (2014). It is a beautiful booklet, in full colour with numerous illustrations, on glossy paper, obtainable from the Melbourne City Council and available, free, online. If the intent was to pay respects to the two executed Tasmanians, then it is successful.

Our problem with it is that it is history-lite, based mainly on secondary sources, with little primary research. It reads as an argument that Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were resistance fighters deserving of memorialisation. Our research, based only on primary sources, demonstrates conclusively that they were not resistance fighters: on their own personal testimony, they shot and killed two whalers by mistake.In the late 1830s and 1840s, these two Tasmanians were known to society in Melbourne, and recorded in contemporary accounts, as Bob and Jack, so, without intending any disrespect, we follow the usage by which they were recorded in the primary sources at the time, and use their European names in this account. On the same principle, we sometimes use the term “blacks” because that was the language of record. “Blacks” is not a pejorative term, but today’s more respectful consciousness usually uses “the Aboriginal people”. But to apply today’s heightened sensitivity to the records of a distant past amounts in our view to a distortion.

Are imams advocating that the faithful focus on the nice Meccan part of the Koran, rather than the advocacy of violence in the nasty Medinan part? It would be nice to have that questioned answered, but the only responses we hear are sophistries and dissembling
Seek them here Seek them there Are there moderates anywhere?

Mark Durie in Islam, Human rights and Public Policy (2009) refers to a poll taken in 2006 which found that 58% of Indonesians believed adulterers should be stoned to death; up from 39% in 2001. Apparently the polled respondents in this “moderate” Muslim nation were not asked whether adulterers should simply get a damn good thrashing. I assume there would have been even greater support for that. In 2010, the Pew Research Centre found that 84% of Egyptians, 86% of Jordanians and 76% of Pakistanis favoured death for apostasy.

In early 2011, the governor of the Punjab province in Pakistan, Salmaan Taseer, was assassinated. He was killed for opposing blasphemy laws which had resulted in a Christian woman facing execution. Pope Benedict publicly opposed the laws. A number of Pakistan’s political leaders, including then-Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, made it clear that the Pope had no business interfering in Pakistan’s internal affairs and that the blasphemy laws would remain in place. Thousands were reported to have showered the alleged assassin with rose petals.

Clearly, Enlightenment thinking is a little way off in Pakistan and in other Islamic states. But then, if that is the case, where are those moderate Muslims that I keep hearing about? Where are they hiding out? Andrew Bolts seems to be in the know. He attests, presumably as a result of some kind of revelatory insight, that “the vast majority of Muslims reject [terrorism]”; in other words, a jihad interpretation of Islamic scripture (Herald Sun, 6 October). Hmm, I wonder, wherever they are, what is going on? Have their imams told them to concentrate on the nice Meccan part of the Koran and ignore the later words of Allah in the nasty Medinan part? Are there large numbers of foolhardy imams preaching this heresy?

Perhaps it is a question of definition. What is a moderate Muslim? Can he or she be identified? One problem in coming from a Christian background is the absence of a contemporary reference point in the Christian world for moderates.

As I pointed out in “Moderate Muslims are the Problem, Not the Solution” (Quadrant, May 2013): “Christians don’t go around bombing people in the name of Christianity or envisioning a restored Christian empire, akin to a caliphate, in the Western world.” Without an immoderate and warlike comparison, the term “moderate” has no meaning. Christians don’t go around axiomatically describing themselves as moderate. It would be silly. Not so with Muslims.

In return for receiving taxpayer funds for foreign regional studies, universities must agree, according to Title VI of the Higher Education Act (HAE), to conduct “public outreach” programs aimed at K-12 teachers and the general public.

Problem is, as shown in research by Campus Watch and others, the Middle East studies centers betray a relentless bias in their Outreach programs against the United States and its allies, especially Israel, while showing a willful blindness to radical Islam. Three examples:

Gilbert Achcar of the University of London began a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, in October 2011 by declaring, “Don’t expect me to take a pro-Israel view. I’m an Arab.” Achcar went on to declare that “The Shoah [Holocaust] ended in 1945, but the suffering of the Palestinians is never-ending.”
Ilan Pappé of the University of Exeter in the U.K. spoke at UCLA in February 2012 and charged Israel with being a “settler-colonial state” that engages in “criminality” by its very existence. He also offered this apologia for Palestinian terrorism: “Peace is not the only means of bringing an end to an oppression, in this case colonization, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing.”
Sherman Jackson of the University of Southern California said at Harvard in November 2013 that the U.S. Constitution “can be challenged, modified or even abandoned” to conform to Islamic law, or Shariah.

If trains and buss are no longer safe places for soldiers on their way to work, surely they are no longer safe for ordinary citizens either.

“The best thing you can do is to make an effort to kill any infidel, French, American, or any of their allies… Smash his head with a rock, slaughter him with a knife, run him over with a car throw him from a high place, choke him or poison him.” — Mohammed al-Adnani, ISIS spokesman, September 2014.

Instead of telling their soldiers to hide themselves, Western governments should tell their soldiers to show themselves to make clear to the jihadists, and to frightened citizens, that we in the West are not afraid of terrorists. On the contrary, we will root them out and come down on them with all our military might.

Earlier this week, Timon Dias wrote on these pages that the Dutch authorities have ordered Dutch soldiers not to wear their uniforms when they are using public transport on their way to the barracks. But the Dutch are not the only cowards in the West. Unfortunately, the Netherlands is not the only country that, for fear of attacks by Muslim extremists, has advised its military to no longer wear their uniforms in public. Apparently, Australia, Belgium, Britain and France have done the same.

As Dias wrote, the order in the Netherlands was a response to a threat by a Dutch jihadist known as Muhajiri Shaam, who is currently fighting in Syria with al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. After the Netherlands announced that Dutch F-16s would participate in the allied offensive against ISIS in Iraq, Shaam tweeted that the Dutch people had now become a target for jihadists.

In Belgium, a country that has also sent F-16s to participate in the attacks on ISIS, soldiers have also been advised not to wear their uniforms when using the Belgian public transport system. According to General Tom Middendorp, the Dutch supreme military commander, the British and French authorities have made similar recommendations. In May 2013, after the murder of Lee Rigby — a British soldier hacked to death by two Muslims outside his military barracks in London — the British military commanders already told their troops not to wear their uniforms outside their bases.

We’re used to cerebral soldiers. Every American generation has given us a sprinkling. Contemporary generals are expected to be tough and irrepressible. They are also expected to be thoughtful and, increasingly, humane. Not so our cops—or at least not until very recently. If an American police chief has had a philosophy, it has been the stuff of no nonsense, one with which he has presided over an armed workforce that keeps order in a Manichaean world.

Last week I attended a memorial service for a man—a cop—who was a glorious exception, a philosopher-policeman. He was Joseph D. McNamara, a man who had been chief of the San Jose Police Department from 1976 to 1991. He retired from the force just days after calling for the resignation of Daryl Gates, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, four of whose officers had savagely beaten an unarmed black man named Rodney King —an act of violence, caught on tape, that came to be seen as the nadir of American policing.

McNamara had been one of a very few senior American police officials who had condemned Gates in public. In an op-ed on these pages, written in April 1991 while he was still running the San Jose Police Department, McNamara said that “the videotape of the LAPD brutality affects the credibility of all police officers. It has cast a cloud over policing that won’t be lifted until police chiefs drop their own code of silence and speak out against one of their own’s peculiar philosophy of policing.”

McNamara died on Sept. 19, of pancreatic cancer. He had, in the time since his retirement in 1991, been a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford (where I was his colleague for the past seven years). He wrote prolifically—op-eds for newspapers, this paper in particular, and crime novels of a lively (and sometimes best-selling) flavor. His obituary in the New York Times recognized him as the “father of community policing” in this country, which he was indisputably; but he was also much more.

In an email to me, Ray Kelly , until recently the chief of the New York Police Department, described McNamara as “a visionary leader in law enforcement at a time when they were in short supply. Starting as a beat cop in Harlem in the 1950s, he became a scholar and an advocate for progressive policing throughout the country. Never afraid to speak his mind, he was the most influential police officer-academic of his time.”

Like it or not, the federal courts should intervene in the state to uphold Americans’ First Amendment rights.

The criminalization of politics is bad enough—just ask Texas Gov. Rick Perry —but a new turn to target citizens as well threatens to permanently warp our political discourse. Like it or not, federal courts will have to intervene to uphold Americans’ First Amendment rights against win-at-any-cost politics.

Wisconsin is ground zero of this phenomenon. A partisan elected district attorney, John Chisholm, reportedly goaded on by his union-steward wife, Colleen, decided to take aim at Republican Gov. Scott Walker after his 2011 “Budget Repair Bill” cut back on public-sector collective bargaining within the state. But Mr. Chisholm didn’t stop there: After an aggressive criminal investigation failed to knock Mr. Walker out of office, the district attorney set his sights on the governor’s philosophical allies, an assortment of conservative citizen groups that supported Walker’s reforms.

The claim was that these groups illegally “coordinated” their speech on the issues with Gov. Walker’s campaign, thereby circumventing campaign-finance regulations. The evidence? Intercepted emails and phone records showing that some of the groups communicated with Gov. Walker’s campaign, mostly on policy issues. That wasn’t enough to bring charges, but it did allow Mr. Chisholm to launch an aggressive criminal investigation targeting Gov. Walker’s supporters, complete with home raids and everything-but-the-kitchen sink subpoenas.

These efforts had the intended effect: Funding for conservative policy advocacy dried up and Gov. Walker’s supporters were forced to redirect their energies from political activism to courtroom litigation.

This is not the first time the political left has used criminal law as a campaign device. It started with the prosecution of former Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay —who was finally exonerated in 2013 of trumped-up campaign-finance charges nine years after being charged. Another tactic has been to fund groups like the American Democracy Legal Fund, which has deluged Republican lawmakers with ethics complaints.

Yet the dubious innovation in Wisconsin was to target citizens, banking on the fact that they won’t or can’t fight back. The assumption held true for many groups. But not all of them.