From Human Events:
Why Do Muslims Tolerate Jihadist Evil They Claim to Abhor?
by Robert Spencer
Jun 22, 2006
The vast majority of Muslims in the West are decent, law-abiding citizens who do not engage in jihad terrorism, right? Of course. But the recent arrests in Canada have raised questions about to what extent Muslims in Canada and other Western countries who are not engaging in terrorist plotting actually disapprove of such plotting -- and how many passively allow it to continue under their noses either out of fear or because the ideological kinship between them and the plotters is closer than most Western authorities would like to believe.
In a meeting with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police just after the arrests, one Canadian Muslim leader asked Canadian officials why they hadn't informed Muslim leaders about the plot, so that those leaders could have stopped it.
But there is mounting evidence that many Canadian Muslims did know -- and yet did nothing to notify Canadian authorities of the plot. The Toronto Star reports that another suspect, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, actively spread the jihad ideology at the Ar-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education in southern Ontario. The Washington Post reports: "He cleaned the rugs and took out the trash at the mosque. For those services, the directors tolerated his vitriolic speeches that portrayed Muslims as oppressed by the West, according to people familiar with the mosque." No mainstream media outlet seems to have asked Ar-Rahman Islamic Center officials why they thought taking out the trash was a sufficient counterbalance to preaching hatred and violence.
Another imam in Toronto, Sayyid Ahmed Amiruddin, noted that three of the plotters, Saad Khalid, Zakaria Amara and Fahim Ahmad, "would enter into the mosque to pray, and they would pray in a very aggressive manner, and they would come in military fatigues and military touques and stuff. It looked to me that they were watching a lot of those Chechnyan jihad videos online and stuff." Amiruddin said that they were influenced by jihadist material from Saudi Arabia, including Korans with inflammatory explanatory notes: "In the back of these Qur'ans that are being published in Saudi Arabia, you have basically essays on the need for offensive jihad and the legitimacy of offensive jihad and things like that. Very alarming stuff." According to the CBC, "Amiruddin said many mainstream Muslim organizations in Canada are really part of the problem, standing by as extremist propaganda spreads in the mosques." But while Amiruddin points out that these young men would attempt to win others over to their point of view, he says nothing about having done anything to stop them, or about resisting jihadist recruitment in general.
Likewise another Toronto Muslim, Mohammed Robert Heft, said that one of the plotters, Fahim Ahmad, "believed the 19 people involved in the World Trade Center bombings were martyrs, and he was handing out DVDs openly of wills and testimonies of those 19 people suggesting what they did was right." According to the CBC, Heft asserted that "a lot of young Muslims are angry and extremism is prevalent in the Toronto area." Heft claimed that he was dedicated to combating this "extremism": "For the last two years, I’ve been involved in this mentality. I was dealing with it on a grassroots level. All it takes is a little education and sorting out who to take religion from." Yet he, too, apparently did nothing to alert Canadian authorities to Ahmad's views.
And after all this, Canadian Muslim leaders complain that authorities did not go to them.
Canadian authorities, and officials in all the Western countries, have been supine in the face of all this kind of thing for far too long. The jihad arrests in Canada should focus scrutiny not on the alleged misbehavior of Canadian law enforcement officials, but on the Muslim community's tolerance of the jihadist evil they profess to abhor. Law enforcement authorities in the West should call Muslim communities in their countries to account on this, and quickly -- or risk the successful execution of a jihad plot planned and executed under the noses of silent and supposedly moderate Western Muslims.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Friday, June 23, 2006
Iraq, Vietnam, the MSM & Dan Rather
By Jack Kelly
Dan Rather's 44-year relationship with CBS News came to an unceremonious end this week. This should remind us that of the many differences between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq, the three most important are talk radio, Fox News, and the Internet.
Mr. Rather must think his fate unfair. He was in effect fired when the documents on which he based an expose of President Bush's National Guard service were shown to be clumsy forgeries. But Walter Cronkite, who told a much bigger lie, is still an esteemed figure at CBS.
The one great similarity between Vietnam and Iraq is that our enemies, despairing of victory on the battlefield, sought to win with a propaganda campaign.
In Vietnam, this strategy succeeded. If it fails in Iraq, it will be chiefly because of the emergence of the new media.
The turning point in Vietnam was the Tet Offensive of February, 1968. It was a crushing defeat for the Viet Cong.
"Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise," said North Vietnamese Army Col. Bui Tin in a 1995 interview. "Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out. It took until 1971 to re-establish our presence."
"The Tet Offensive proved catastrophic to our plans," said Truong Nhu Tang, minister of justice in the Viet Cong's provisional government, in a 1982 interview. "Our losses were so immense we were unable to replace them with new recruits."
The news media reported this overwhelming American victory as a catastrophic defeat.
"Donning helmet, Mr. Cronkite declared the war lost," recounted UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave. "It was this now famous television news piece that persuaded President Lyndon Johnson...not to run for re-election."
Shaken by Tet, he planned to seek terms for a conditional surrender, the North Vietnamese commander, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, wrote in his memoirs. But our news media's complete misrepresentation of what had actually happened "convinced him America's resolve was weakening and complete victory was within Hanoi's grasp," Mr. de Borchgrave said.
Journalists are repeating in Iraq the errors (or worse) they made in Vietnam. Earlier this month, the Army sponsored a conference for retired general officers at Fort Carson, Colorado. They were addressed by recent returnees from Iraq, including Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
"All returnees agreed we are clearly winning the fight against the insurgents but are losing the public relations battle," said a retired admiral in an email to friends.
A disturbing anecdote from Col. McMaster illustrates why. His 3rd ACR broke the insurgents' hold of the city of Tal Afar last September in an operation which generated these effusive words of praise from the town's mayor:
"To the lion hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets...(you are) not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism."
Time magazine had a reporter and a photographer embedded with the 3rd ACR. When the battle was over, they filed a lengthy story and nearly 100 photographs.
"When the issue came out, the guts had been edited out of the reporter's story and none of the photographs he submitted were used," said the admiral, quoting Col. McMaster. "When the reporter questioned why his story was eviscerated, his editors...responded that the story and pictures were 'too heroic.'"
Time is an especially egregious offender. But most of the news media play up alleged American atrocities and play down those committed by the insurgents, or acts of heroism by U.S. troops. Terrorist bombings are big news, while successful campaigns like that in Tal Afar are not.
The relentless drumbeat of negativity has had its effect on support for the war in Iraq. But it's been nothing like the change in public opinion brought about by the massive media mendacity that followed Tet. That's because in those days journalists could lie with impunity. This is no longer the case.
No one knows that better than Dan Rather. He was undone because a Web logger noticed the memoranda on which he was relying had been typed on a computer, which did not exist at the time they allegedly were written.
Others noted the fraudulent memos used the wrong format and terminology. Thanks to the Web, word spread fast.
The truth still has a ways to go to catch up with what the news media are shoveling out. But at least now it's in the race.
By Jack Kelly
Dan Rather's 44-year relationship with CBS News came to an unceremonious end this week. This should remind us that of the many differences between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq, the three most important are talk radio, Fox News, and the Internet.
Mr. Rather must think his fate unfair. He was in effect fired when the documents on which he based an expose of President Bush's National Guard service were shown to be clumsy forgeries. But Walter Cronkite, who told a much bigger lie, is still an esteemed figure at CBS.
The one great similarity between Vietnam and Iraq is that our enemies, despairing of victory on the battlefield, sought to win with a propaganda campaign.
In Vietnam, this strategy succeeded. If it fails in Iraq, it will be chiefly because of the emergence of the new media.
The turning point in Vietnam was the Tet Offensive of February, 1968. It was a crushing defeat for the Viet Cong.
"Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise," said North Vietnamese Army Col. Bui Tin in a 1995 interview. "Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out. It took until 1971 to re-establish our presence."
"The Tet Offensive proved catastrophic to our plans," said Truong Nhu Tang, minister of justice in the Viet Cong's provisional government, in a 1982 interview. "Our losses were so immense we were unable to replace them with new recruits."
The news media reported this overwhelming American victory as a catastrophic defeat.
"Donning helmet, Mr. Cronkite declared the war lost," recounted UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave. "It was this now famous television news piece that persuaded President Lyndon Johnson...not to run for re-election."
Shaken by Tet, he planned to seek terms for a conditional surrender, the North Vietnamese commander, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, wrote in his memoirs. But our news media's complete misrepresentation of what had actually happened "convinced him America's resolve was weakening and complete victory was within Hanoi's grasp," Mr. de Borchgrave said.
Journalists are repeating in Iraq the errors (or worse) they made in Vietnam. Earlier this month, the Army sponsored a conference for retired general officers at Fort Carson, Colorado. They were addressed by recent returnees from Iraq, including Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
"All returnees agreed we are clearly winning the fight against the insurgents but are losing the public relations battle," said a retired admiral in an email to friends.
A disturbing anecdote from Col. McMaster illustrates why. His 3rd ACR broke the insurgents' hold of the city of Tal Afar last September in an operation which generated these effusive words of praise from the town's mayor:
"To the lion hearts who liberated our city from the grasp of terrorists who were beheading men, women and children in the streets...(you are) not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism."
Time magazine had a reporter and a photographer embedded with the 3rd ACR. When the battle was over, they filed a lengthy story and nearly 100 photographs.
"When the issue came out, the guts had been edited out of the reporter's story and none of the photographs he submitted were used," said the admiral, quoting Col. McMaster. "When the reporter questioned why his story was eviscerated, his editors...responded that the story and pictures were 'too heroic.'"
Time is an especially egregious offender. But most of the news media play up alleged American atrocities and play down those committed by the insurgents, or acts of heroism by U.S. troops. Terrorist bombings are big news, while successful campaigns like that in Tal Afar are not.
The relentless drumbeat of negativity has had its effect on support for the war in Iraq. But it's been nothing like the change in public opinion brought about by the massive media mendacity that followed Tet. That's because in those days journalists could lie with impunity. This is no longer the case.
No one knows that better than Dan Rather. He was undone because a Web logger noticed the memoranda on which he was relying had been typed on a computer, which did not exist at the time they allegedly were written.
Others noted the fraudulent memos used the wrong format and terminology. Thanks to the Web, word spread fast.
The truth still has a ways to go to catch up with what the news media are shoveling out. But at least now it's in the race.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
From Real Clear Politics:
Conservative Bush Critics Late to the Party
By Robert Robb
In the June 19th New Republic, Jonathan Chait contends that, by criticizing George W. Bush, conservatives are acting like spoiled brats.
This continues a long-standing presumption on the left to instruct conservatives about what they should think and how they should behave. Conservatives used to leave it largely up to liberals to sort out their own take on things. Lately, however, the talk-show right has shown a reciprocal presumption.
There is something to Chait's contention. It is hard to reconcile the unbridled support conservatives gave to Bush up through his re-election with the harshness of the criticism today.
However, he has the inconsistency backwards. According to Chait, conservatives were right to be uncritical in their early support. They are only abandoning Bush now, he suggests, because Bush has become politically unpopular. So, to avoid conceding that it is conservatism that is unpopular, as Chait sees it, conservatives are now arguing that Bush is unpopular because he is not conservative enough.
In actuality, it was the unbridled early support for Bush by conservatives that was unwarranted.
The ambitiousness of Bush's domestic agenda was not widely recognized when he was first elected. Bush aimed to transform American politics by establishing a durable conservative consensus. But he was going to do that in significant part by transforming conservatism as well.
In domestic policy, conservatism has long stood for the proposition that the power and scope of the federal government needed to be trimmed. Bush instead stood for the proposition that federal authority should be retained and even expanded, but harnessed to conservative ends.
This is clearest in his No Child Left Behind Act. Conservatives traditionally have advocated that the federal role in elementary and secondary education be reduced and even eliminated. Bush, however, proposed that it be expanded, but primarily to impose the conservative reform of accountability through testing.
Initially, Bush proposed a similar transformation of Medicare. The scope of the program would be expanded to include prescription drugs. The prescription drug benefit, however, would be available only to seniors who switched from the traditional fee-for-service program to a private health insurance plan. The role of the federal government in providing health care to seniors would have been transformed from paying for services directly to paying subsidies for private insurance.
Although the Bush administration scrupulously avoided saying so, this transformation would set up a further transformation of making the premium subsidy a function of income, a necessary reform as the ratio of workers to retirees continues to deteriorate.
Tellingly, the Bush administration abandoned the reform, but not the benefit, when congressional Republicans exhibited cold feet about it.
This was part of a pattern of the Bush administration failing to fight for true conservative reform when it involved political risk. It abandoned vouchers as part of No Child Left Behind at the first whiff of Democratic opposition. It abandoned fundamental Medicare reform, but continued to push for the expensive prescription drug entitlement.
Chait notes that after the election, Bush advocated tirelessly for private retirement accounts as part of Social Security reform, even as the idea was taking a beating in public opinion surveys. What else could he have done?
Well, he could have put forward a relatively specific reform plan that addressed the hard issues of transition costs and investment risks, rather than continuing to speak of private accounts as though they were a cost-free add-on to the existing system. They aren't, as the subsequent public debate quickly established, with critics given the chance to take the offensive on these tough issues.
And he could have put forth such a plan before the 2004 election, so that he could claim a mandate for it if elected. That, however, required taking a political risk for a fundamental conservative reform. And, except for tax cuts, Bush has consistently flinched at taking such risks.
Now, some conservative commentators (including me, from my relatively obscure desert outpost at the Arizona Republic) pointed out these things as they were happening. But Chait is right, for the most part conservative commentators and activists gave Bush a pass until recently.
There are several reasons why.
For the most part, conservatives strongly supported Bush's foreign policy. They liked the declaration of American independence from the constraints of multilateralism reflected in the rejection of the Kyoto treaty, the international criminal court and the ABM treaty.
After 9/11, protecting the country against terrorist attacks became the national priority, for conservatives and everyone else. Conservatives liked, and still like, Bush's standup stance on the war on terror.
On domestic policy, the conservative commentariat was willing to consider Bush's proposed transformation of harnessing federal authority to serve conservative ends. The neoconservative wing sort of liked the idea. Social conservatives were also mostly on board, quite willing to use the power of the federal government to support and promote traditional values and institutions.
Small-government conservatives feared that the political point might be valid. Fighting to trim the size and scope of the federal government was, perhaps, futile. Maybe Bush was right that the only way to a durable conservative consensus was through accepting a large and active federal government.
Of course, a durable conservative consensus within the body politic no longer seems near. The American people seem to have had enough of complete Republican control of the federal government.
Small-government conservatives are now striking out with a vengeance, at Bush and a profligate and pork-addicted Republican Congress. It's one thing to have one's principles rejected by the body politic. It's quite another to endure the perception that those principles are being rejected when, in reality, they were never fought for.
Chait is right that the piling on by conservatives against Bush does appear unseemly, given the pass he was largely given as the apostasies were being committed. It does give the impression of conveniently abandoning a sinking ship.
The mistake, however, isn't the current criticism. The mistake was not providing a more balanced and challenging assessment of Bush and his domestic policies all along.
Robert Robb is an editorial columnist for the Arizona Republic. He can be reached at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com. Read his blog at robbblog.azcental.com.
Conservative Bush Critics Late to the Party
By Robert Robb
In the June 19th New Republic, Jonathan Chait contends that, by criticizing George W. Bush, conservatives are acting like spoiled brats.
This continues a long-standing presumption on the left to instruct conservatives about what they should think and how they should behave. Conservatives used to leave it largely up to liberals to sort out their own take on things. Lately, however, the talk-show right has shown a reciprocal presumption.
There is something to Chait's contention. It is hard to reconcile the unbridled support conservatives gave to Bush up through his re-election with the harshness of the criticism today.
However, he has the inconsistency backwards. According to Chait, conservatives were right to be uncritical in their early support. They are only abandoning Bush now, he suggests, because Bush has become politically unpopular. So, to avoid conceding that it is conservatism that is unpopular, as Chait sees it, conservatives are now arguing that Bush is unpopular because he is not conservative enough.
In actuality, it was the unbridled early support for Bush by conservatives that was unwarranted.
The ambitiousness of Bush's domestic agenda was not widely recognized when he was first elected. Bush aimed to transform American politics by establishing a durable conservative consensus. But he was going to do that in significant part by transforming conservatism as well.
In domestic policy, conservatism has long stood for the proposition that the power and scope of the federal government needed to be trimmed. Bush instead stood for the proposition that federal authority should be retained and even expanded, but harnessed to conservative ends.
This is clearest in his No Child Left Behind Act. Conservatives traditionally have advocated that the federal role in elementary and secondary education be reduced and even eliminated. Bush, however, proposed that it be expanded, but primarily to impose the conservative reform of accountability through testing.
Initially, Bush proposed a similar transformation of Medicare. The scope of the program would be expanded to include prescription drugs. The prescription drug benefit, however, would be available only to seniors who switched from the traditional fee-for-service program to a private health insurance plan. The role of the federal government in providing health care to seniors would have been transformed from paying for services directly to paying subsidies for private insurance.
Although the Bush administration scrupulously avoided saying so, this transformation would set up a further transformation of making the premium subsidy a function of income, a necessary reform as the ratio of workers to retirees continues to deteriorate.
Tellingly, the Bush administration abandoned the reform, but not the benefit, when congressional Republicans exhibited cold feet about it.
This was part of a pattern of the Bush administration failing to fight for true conservative reform when it involved political risk. It abandoned vouchers as part of No Child Left Behind at the first whiff of Democratic opposition. It abandoned fundamental Medicare reform, but continued to push for the expensive prescription drug entitlement.
Chait notes that after the election, Bush advocated tirelessly for private retirement accounts as part of Social Security reform, even as the idea was taking a beating in public opinion surveys. What else could he have done?
Well, he could have put forward a relatively specific reform plan that addressed the hard issues of transition costs and investment risks, rather than continuing to speak of private accounts as though they were a cost-free add-on to the existing system. They aren't, as the subsequent public debate quickly established, with critics given the chance to take the offensive on these tough issues.
And he could have put forth such a plan before the 2004 election, so that he could claim a mandate for it if elected. That, however, required taking a political risk for a fundamental conservative reform. And, except for tax cuts, Bush has consistently flinched at taking such risks.
Now, some conservative commentators (including me, from my relatively obscure desert outpost at the Arizona Republic) pointed out these things as they were happening. But Chait is right, for the most part conservative commentators and activists gave Bush a pass until recently.
There are several reasons why.
For the most part, conservatives strongly supported Bush's foreign policy. They liked the declaration of American independence from the constraints of multilateralism reflected in the rejection of the Kyoto treaty, the international criminal court and the ABM treaty.
After 9/11, protecting the country against terrorist attacks became the national priority, for conservatives and everyone else. Conservatives liked, and still like, Bush's standup stance on the war on terror.
On domestic policy, the conservative commentariat was willing to consider Bush's proposed transformation of harnessing federal authority to serve conservative ends. The neoconservative wing sort of liked the idea. Social conservatives were also mostly on board, quite willing to use the power of the federal government to support and promote traditional values and institutions.
Small-government conservatives feared that the political point might be valid. Fighting to trim the size and scope of the federal government was, perhaps, futile. Maybe Bush was right that the only way to a durable conservative consensus was through accepting a large and active federal government.
Of course, a durable conservative consensus within the body politic no longer seems near. The American people seem to have had enough of complete Republican control of the federal government.
Small-government conservatives are now striking out with a vengeance, at Bush and a profligate and pork-addicted Republican Congress. It's one thing to have one's principles rejected by the body politic. It's quite another to endure the perception that those principles are being rejected when, in reality, they were never fought for.
Chait is right that the piling on by conservatives against Bush does appear unseemly, given the pass he was largely given as the apostasies were being committed. It does give the impression of conveniently abandoning a sinking ship.
The mistake, however, isn't the current criticism. The mistake was not providing a more balanced and challenging assessment of Bush and his domestic policies all along.
Robert Robb is an editorial columnist for the Arizona Republic. He can be reached at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com. Read his blog at robbblog.azcental.com.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
From Opinion Journal:
NEW WORLDS OF ART
'Thought to Have Merit'
An English sculptor loses his head.
BY LIONEL SHRIVER
Tuesday, June 20, 2006 12:01 a.m.
LONDON--Once in a while a news story so speaks for itself that it threatens to put commentators out of a job.
In this year's summer show at London's Royal Academy of Arts, "Exhibit 1201" is a large rectangular tablet of slate with a tiny barbell-shaped bit of boxwood on top. Its creator, David Hensel, must be pleased to have been selected from among some 9,000 applicants for the world's largest open-submission exhibit of contemporary art. Nevertheless, he was bemused to discover that in transit his sculpture had gotten separated from its base. Judging the two components as different submissions, the Royal Academy had rejected his artwork proper--a finely wrought laughing head in jesmonite--and selected the plinth. "It says something about the state of visual arts today," said Mr. Hensel. He didn't say what. He didn't need to.
Moreover, the Royal Academy denies having made an error, for the plinth and hastily carved wooden support were, according to an official statement, "thought to have merit."
For those who despair that artists these days seem to have lost the skill of fashioning meticulously crafted objects, don't blame Mr. Hensel. While the slate base took only four hours to hack from a mortuary slab, and the little boxwood prop less than an hour, he had painstakingly carved and polished that laughing head for two months. But alas, the sculpture itself has--shudder--emotional content. It was originally christened "One Day Closer to Paradise," a far too expressive title; Mr. Hensel would have been better off with the portentously enigmatic "Exhibit 1201." His laughing head is not only fatally well rendered, but exudes a sense of joy and hilarity, and the overtly evocative is declassé. How much more sophisticated, a stoic square of slate that speaks of--well, ask the viewers.
"The sculpture is a mixture of heavy stone with a light piece of wood on top," the Daily Telegraph quoted a Dane as explicating last week while admiring the plinth. "I like the total effect. It is a really nice contrast." A Londoner rejoined, "If it was in more of a minimalist show, it would definitely seem more beautiful." Presumably these folks would find an emperor clad in a "minimalist" manner equally stunning.
Me, I just put a brick on my desk. I gaze in wonderment at the contrast in textures--the smooth, unyielding sides of the brick, the rough, almost sexual crumble on its chipped corner, the humbler, more submissive sensuality of the scarred plywood desktop. I marvel at the fierce, affirmative perpendicular of the brick, in firm opposition to the languid, taciturn serenity of the lateral . . . But that's not even funny, is it? Joseph Beuys has piled bricks on a floor of the Guggenheim and called it art. How exasperating, a field so far out in la-la-land that it is impervious to parody. You see what I mean about being out of a job.
Of course, the Royal Academy's exaltation of that plinth recalls many a misapprehension in galleries, where visitors are wont to coo over the fire hydrants, ventilation grates and trash cans, all of which are more durably and fastidiously crafted than the works on display. For that matter, one gift that contemporary art seems to have given us viewers is a way of seeing every object in our surround--as I look about my study now, the powerful yet precarious piles of paperbacks, the airy, ephemeral flutter of bank statements--as art. But in that event, we not only don't need commentators; we don't need artists, do we?
Or the Royal Academy.
Ms. Shriver's last novel was "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (HarperPerennial, 2004).
NEW WORLDS OF ART
'Thought to Have Merit'
An English sculptor loses his head.
BY LIONEL SHRIVER
Tuesday, June 20, 2006 12:01 a.m.
LONDON--Once in a while a news story so speaks for itself that it threatens to put commentators out of a job.
In this year's summer show at London's Royal Academy of Arts, "Exhibit 1201" is a large rectangular tablet of slate with a tiny barbell-shaped bit of boxwood on top. Its creator, David Hensel, must be pleased to have been selected from among some 9,000 applicants for the world's largest open-submission exhibit of contemporary art. Nevertheless, he was bemused to discover that in transit his sculpture had gotten separated from its base. Judging the two components as different submissions, the Royal Academy had rejected his artwork proper--a finely wrought laughing head in jesmonite--and selected the plinth. "It says something about the state of visual arts today," said Mr. Hensel. He didn't say what. He didn't need to.
Moreover, the Royal Academy denies having made an error, for the plinth and hastily carved wooden support were, according to an official statement, "thought to have merit."
For those who despair that artists these days seem to have lost the skill of fashioning meticulously crafted objects, don't blame Mr. Hensel. While the slate base took only four hours to hack from a mortuary slab, and the little boxwood prop less than an hour, he had painstakingly carved and polished that laughing head for two months. But alas, the sculpture itself has--shudder--emotional content. It was originally christened "One Day Closer to Paradise," a far too expressive title; Mr. Hensel would have been better off with the portentously enigmatic "Exhibit 1201." His laughing head is not only fatally well rendered, but exudes a sense of joy and hilarity, and the overtly evocative is declassé. How much more sophisticated, a stoic square of slate that speaks of--well, ask the viewers.
"The sculpture is a mixture of heavy stone with a light piece of wood on top," the Daily Telegraph quoted a Dane as explicating last week while admiring the plinth. "I like the total effect. It is a really nice contrast." A Londoner rejoined, "If it was in more of a minimalist show, it would definitely seem more beautiful." Presumably these folks would find an emperor clad in a "minimalist" manner equally stunning.
Me, I just put a brick on my desk. I gaze in wonderment at the contrast in textures--the smooth, unyielding sides of the brick, the rough, almost sexual crumble on its chipped corner, the humbler, more submissive sensuality of the scarred plywood desktop. I marvel at the fierce, affirmative perpendicular of the brick, in firm opposition to the languid, taciturn serenity of the lateral . . . But that's not even funny, is it? Joseph Beuys has piled bricks on a floor of the Guggenheim and called it art. How exasperating, a field so far out in la-la-land that it is impervious to parody. You see what I mean about being out of a job.
Of course, the Royal Academy's exaltation of that plinth recalls many a misapprehension in galleries, where visitors are wont to coo over the fire hydrants, ventilation grates and trash cans, all of which are more durably and fastidiously crafted than the works on display. For that matter, one gift that contemporary art seems to have given us viewers is a way of seeing every object in our surround--as I look about my study now, the powerful yet precarious piles of paperbacks, the airy, ephemeral flutter of bank statements--as art. But in that event, we not only don't need commentators; we don't need artists, do we?
Or the Royal Academy.
Ms. Shriver's last novel was "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (HarperPerennial, 2004).
From The New York Times:
An A-to-Z Book of Conservatism Now Weighs In
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON, June 20 — It has red states and blond pundits; home schoolers and The Human Life Review; originalists, monetarists, federalists and evangelists; and no shortage of people named Kristol.
Now American conservatism can claim another mark of distinction: an encyclopedia all its own.
It is a big deal, in terms literal — 997 pages — and metaphorical. Few insults have stung the movement's thinkers as much as the barb from Lionel Trilling, the literary critic, who said conservatives had no ideas, "just irritable mental gestures."
A half-century later, 251 contributors have weighed in, not so irritably, with a four-pound response.
"Feel the heft of it," said Lee Edwards, a former aide to Senator Barry Goldwater, who appears in the volume with a byline and an entry. "It's more than a book. It is, if you will, an estimate — it shows the maturation of the conservative movement."
And a timely one, at that. Sixteen years in the making, American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia appears with American conservatism, the political movement, warring over its future direction.
"We've gone from history's adversary to destiny's child, but governing has brought a whole new level of challenge," said Jeffrey O. Nelson, publisher of ISI Books, the conservative press in Wilmington, Del., that produced the encyclopedia. Criticizing what he called the "big education, big spending, big war, big government" conservatism of Republican leaders, Mr. Nelson said he hoped that the book, whose list price is $35, would help the movement return to its small-government roots.
"If conservatism is going to succeed and thrive in the 21st century," he said, "it's got to look more like the conservative tradition as expressed in this book than the conservatism currently practiced in Washington."
Those people toiling in the capital trenches may not recognize the conservatism represented here. The book omits familiar names like Ann Coulter, Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist, Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove.
It includes the journals University Bookman, circulation 2,600, and First Things. It gives Willmoore Kendall, a political scientist who died in 1967, three times as much ink as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Those proportions are appropriate, said a former student of Mr. Kendall, William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review, who called the reference book "terrific."
"Newt came and went rather fast but didn't leave hard fingerprints," Mr. Buckley said. "The quote, unquote conservative politicians have a pretty short lifetime in encyclopedia usage.
"It seems to me that if one were looking for orientation in such a world that the encyclopedia tries to serve that you would be more interested in Burckhardt," he said, a reference to Jacob Burckhardt, a 19th-century Swiss historian of the Renaissance, "than in any of more than 100 conservative senators in the past 50 years."
Garland Publishing started working on the encyclopedia in 1990. ISI Books took over the project 10 years later. ISI Books is part of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which, as Page 436 explains, is a nonprofit group founded in 1953 to promote conservative ideas in colleges.
The encyclopedia is being featured by two conservative book clubs, Mr. Nelson said, and has sold nearly 20,000 copies since its release about two months ago. Along with Mr. Nelson, its editors were Bruce P. Frohnen, who teaches at the Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Jeremy Beer of ISI Books. Given its gestation, the book includes contributions from scholars who are long dead, including Russell Kirk, who in 1953 published a seminal book, "The Conservative Mind." Kirk, who died in 1994, wrote essays on John Adams and moral imagination. Mr. Nelson is his son-in-law.
Some entries wear their conservatism on their sleeve. Goldwater's "loyalties were to duty, honor and country." Ronald Reagan had a "vigorous and principled agenda." Bill Clinton was "corrupt."
Others plumb more obscure topics with no obvious tilt. "Public choice economics" describes a theory of how special interests wield power. Two of its proponents have won Nobel Prizes.
The discussion under "Jewish conservatism" acknowledges a history of anti-Semitism on the right. The entry on Abraham Lincoln explores a conservative split between admirers and those who think he laid the groundwork for "contemporary statist liberalism."
The longest entry belongs to "Straussianism," a school of political theory founded by a professor at the University of Chicago, Leo Strauss, that emphasizes classical texts. Embraced by some leading proponents of the Iraq war, Straussianism is often regarded by those beyond its fold as opaque mumbo jumbo, a reputation that five pages of explanation may not dispel.
If there is a place where the rivers of the right converge, it appears to be the office of William Kristol, a Straussian editor and advocate, whose mother (Gertrude Himmelfarb), father (Irving Kristol), philosophy (neoconservatism) and magazine (The Weekly Standard) all earned separate entries.
Though Mr. Kristol was puzzled to read that he valued "the virtue of a citizenry" more than its prosperity or freedom, he declined to dwell on quibbles, praising the volume for concluding each entry with a short bibliography.
"What I liked most was that it encouraged you to read additional works," Mr. Kristol said.
Some quibbles are edifying. The entry about "God and Man at Yale," Mr. Buckley's most famous book, says it portrayed a campus "conspiracy" against capitalism and Christianity. But Mr. Buckley said his book "made a rather emphatic point to say there was no conspiracy, that people were acting out of their own impulses."
Another entry describes the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal as "pro-business." The page's editor, Paul A. Gigot, said the paper often criticized businesses that sought government favors and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 partly for an editorial called "Down With Big Business."
"We believe in capitalism, free markets and free people, not business over labor," Mr. Gigot said.
The volume treads lightly, when it treads at all, on matters of race. It describes the "courtesy and dignity" of Strom Thurmond, who as a South Carolina governor and senator led the South's effort to preserve segregation. It does not mention that Mr. Thurmond had a black daughter whose existence he kept secret.
George C. Wallace, who became governor of Alabama pledging "segregation forever," was "always more complicated than his critics allowed." The discussion of "Southern conservatism" pays tribute to the region's "precious Anglo-American continuity" and says nothing about Jim Crow.
Dan T. Carter of the University of South of Carolina said such entries offered a "pasteurized" view of racial history. "The rise of American conservatism owes, in some part, to racial animosity, and it's uncomfortable for many conservatives to deal with that," said Mr. Carter, a biographer of Wallace who describes his politics as liberal. "You don't have to say that conservatism capitulated to it. But you have to acknowledge it was there."
Mr. Nelson agreed that the encyclopedia's discussion of race was incomplete and said the next edition would include an entry about conservatives' reaction to the civil rights movement.
"Our forebears made a mistake on the issue," he said. "They were just wrong. I don't know how to say it more clearly than that."
The sheer mass of the volume left at least one subject with mixed feelings. Richard A. Viguerie, a founder of Moral Majority, was delighted to find himself portrayed as a "liberal bogeyman." But given the army of thinkers and doers who inhabit the book, Mr. Viguerie said, "we should have achieved more politically than we have."
That, Mr. Kristol said, was not a conservative view. "Conservative thinking," he said, "should teach you not to expect too much from politics, at least in the short run."
An A-to-Z Book of Conservatism Now Weighs In
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON, June 20 — It has red states and blond pundits; home schoolers and The Human Life Review; originalists, monetarists, federalists and evangelists; and no shortage of people named Kristol.
Now American conservatism can claim another mark of distinction: an encyclopedia all its own.
It is a big deal, in terms literal — 997 pages — and metaphorical. Few insults have stung the movement's thinkers as much as the barb from Lionel Trilling, the literary critic, who said conservatives had no ideas, "just irritable mental gestures."
A half-century later, 251 contributors have weighed in, not so irritably, with a four-pound response.
"Feel the heft of it," said Lee Edwards, a former aide to Senator Barry Goldwater, who appears in the volume with a byline and an entry. "It's more than a book. It is, if you will, an estimate — it shows the maturation of the conservative movement."
And a timely one, at that. Sixteen years in the making, American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia appears with American conservatism, the political movement, warring over its future direction.
"We've gone from history's adversary to destiny's child, but governing has brought a whole new level of challenge," said Jeffrey O. Nelson, publisher of ISI Books, the conservative press in Wilmington, Del., that produced the encyclopedia. Criticizing what he called the "big education, big spending, big war, big government" conservatism of Republican leaders, Mr. Nelson said he hoped that the book, whose list price is $35, would help the movement return to its small-government roots.
"If conservatism is going to succeed and thrive in the 21st century," he said, "it's got to look more like the conservative tradition as expressed in this book than the conservatism currently practiced in Washington."
Those people toiling in the capital trenches may not recognize the conservatism represented here. The book omits familiar names like Ann Coulter, Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist, Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove.
It includes the journals University Bookman, circulation 2,600, and First Things. It gives Willmoore Kendall, a political scientist who died in 1967, three times as much ink as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Those proportions are appropriate, said a former student of Mr. Kendall, William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review, who called the reference book "terrific."
"Newt came and went rather fast but didn't leave hard fingerprints," Mr. Buckley said. "The quote, unquote conservative politicians have a pretty short lifetime in encyclopedia usage.
"It seems to me that if one were looking for orientation in such a world that the encyclopedia tries to serve that you would be more interested in Burckhardt," he said, a reference to Jacob Burckhardt, a 19th-century Swiss historian of the Renaissance, "than in any of more than 100 conservative senators in the past 50 years."
Garland Publishing started working on the encyclopedia in 1990. ISI Books took over the project 10 years later. ISI Books is part of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which, as Page 436 explains, is a nonprofit group founded in 1953 to promote conservative ideas in colleges.
The encyclopedia is being featured by two conservative book clubs, Mr. Nelson said, and has sold nearly 20,000 copies since its release about two months ago. Along with Mr. Nelson, its editors were Bruce P. Frohnen, who teaches at the Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Jeremy Beer of ISI Books. Given its gestation, the book includes contributions from scholars who are long dead, including Russell Kirk, who in 1953 published a seminal book, "The Conservative Mind." Kirk, who died in 1994, wrote essays on John Adams and moral imagination. Mr. Nelson is his son-in-law.
Some entries wear their conservatism on their sleeve. Goldwater's "loyalties were to duty, honor and country." Ronald Reagan had a "vigorous and principled agenda." Bill Clinton was "corrupt."
Others plumb more obscure topics with no obvious tilt. "Public choice economics" describes a theory of how special interests wield power. Two of its proponents have won Nobel Prizes.
The discussion under "Jewish conservatism" acknowledges a history of anti-Semitism on the right. The entry on Abraham Lincoln explores a conservative split between admirers and those who think he laid the groundwork for "contemporary statist liberalism."
The longest entry belongs to "Straussianism," a school of political theory founded by a professor at the University of Chicago, Leo Strauss, that emphasizes classical texts. Embraced by some leading proponents of the Iraq war, Straussianism is often regarded by those beyond its fold as opaque mumbo jumbo, a reputation that five pages of explanation may not dispel.
If there is a place where the rivers of the right converge, it appears to be the office of William Kristol, a Straussian editor and advocate, whose mother (Gertrude Himmelfarb), father (Irving Kristol), philosophy (neoconservatism) and magazine (The Weekly Standard) all earned separate entries.
Though Mr. Kristol was puzzled to read that he valued "the virtue of a citizenry" more than its prosperity or freedom, he declined to dwell on quibbles, praising the volume for concluding each entry with a short bibliography.
"What I liked most was that it encouraged you to read additional works," Mr. Kristol said.
Some quibbles are edifying. The entry about "God and Man at Yale," Mr. Buckley's most famous book, says it portrayed a campus "conspiracy" against capitalism and Christianity. But Mr. Buckley said his book "made a rather emphatic point to say there was no conspiracy, that people were acting out of their own impulses."
Another entry describes the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal as "pro-business." The page's editor, Paul A. Gigot, said the paper often criticized businesses that sought government favors and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 partly for an editorial called "Down With Big Business."
"We believe in capitalism, free markets and free people, not business over labor," Mr. Gigot said.
The volume treads lightly, when it treads at all, on matters of race. It describes the "courtesy and dignity" of Strom Thurmond, who as a South Carolina governor and senator led the South's effort to preserve segregation. It does not mention that Mr. Thurmond had a black daughter whose existence he kept secret.
George C. Wallace, who became governor of Alabama pledging "segregation forever," was "always more complicated than his critics allowed." The discussion of "Southern conservatism" pays tribute to the region's "precious Anglo-American continuity" and says nothing about Jim Crow.
Dan T. Carter of the University of South of Carolina said such entries offered a "pasteurized" view of racial history. "The rise of American conservatism owes, in some part, to racial animosity, and it's uncomfortable for many conservatives to deal with that," said Mr. Carter, a biographer of Wallace who describes his politics as liberal. "You don't have to say that conservatism capitulated to it. But you have to acknowledge it was there."
Mr. Nelson agreed that the encyclopedia's discussion of race was incomplete and said the next edition would include an entry about conservatives' reaction to the civil rights movement.
"Our forebears made a mistake on the issue," he said. "They were just wrong. I don't know how to say it more clearly than that."
The sheer mass of the volume left at least one subject with mixed feelings. Richard A. Viguerie, a founder of Moral Majority, was delighted to find himself portrayed as a "liberal bogeyman." But given the army of thinkers and doers who inhabit the book, Mr. Viguerie said, "we should have achieved more politically than we have."
That, Mr. Kristol said, was not a conservative view. "Conservative thinking," he said, "should teach you not to expect too much from politics, at least in the short run."
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Is Catholicism now 'unacceptable'?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
© 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.
On the political roundtable "21 This Week," on Maryland's tiny Access Montgomery cable channel 21, Robert J. Smith has been a regular panelist. Introduced as a "Republican activist," Smith was also Gov. Robert Ehrlich's appointee on the Metro Transit Authority board.
No more. Smith has been fired for remarks that the GOP governor considers "inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable." What did Smith say? Did he cut loose into some racist rant using the "n" word?
Nope. One of the panelists on "21 This Week" had volunteered that Mary Cheney, the vice president's daughter who has come out of the closet, would not want the federal government interfering in her life. Smith interrupted: "That's fine, that's fine. But that doesn't mean that the government should proffer a special place of entitlement within the laws of the United States for persons of sexual deviancy."
Parsing that statement, what was Smith saying? That the feds should not intrude into private lives, but neither should the feds grant special privileges to homosexuals. Smith was also saying that, in his view, homosexuals are "persons of sexual deviancy." In short, Smith was saying what most Americans have always thought.
But at the next meeting of the Metro board, he was confronted by D.C. member James Graham, a homosexual activist, who demanded that Smith recant and apologize, or be fired by the governor.
Smith held his ground. "Homosexual behavior, in my view, is deviant," Smith said. "I'm a Roman Catholic."
He added, "The comments I make outside of my (Metro board job) I'm entitled to make." Moreover, said Smith, these were personal beliefs that have "nothing to do with running trains and buses, and have not affected my actions or decisions on the board."
Five hours later, Gov. Ehrlich, in a tight re-election race, fired Smith. The episode is instructive for what it says about the correlation of forces in America's religious war.
To save himself, Ehrlich threw Smith to the wolves. He declined to defend traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality – i.e., that it is unnatural and immoral, ruinous to body and soul alike. Ehrlich sacrificed one of his own to appease the homosexuals and their media auxiliary, rather than defy their moral authority.
Smith was fired by a Republican governor for standing by a truth rooted in 2,000 years of Catholic doctrine, Natural Law, the Torah, the Islamic faith, the teachings of every Christian denomination and the laws of every Western nation up to the late 20th century. One has yet to hear a word in defense of this faithful son from the Catholic hierarchy of the Washington area.
As for homosexuality, where it has been prevalent – in the late Roman Empire, Weimar Germany, San Francisco – it has been regarded as a mark of and a metaphor for moral decadence and societal decline.
But the bottom line is this: What is the truth? Is homosexuality moral or immoral, natural or unnatural, normal and healthy or deviant and destructive behavior?
In 1983, when the AIDS epidemic first broke onto the national scene, this writer wrote in a column predicting scores of thousands could perish: "The poor homosexuals. They have declared war against nature, and nature is exacting an awful retribution."
This sentence restated the Natural Law teaching of Thomas Aquinas. Homosexuality is against nature, contra naturam. It also said what was, by then, obvious to all. Acts that cannot be described in this publication were transmitting a dread and deadly disease that was killing homosexuals in the hundreds, and would soon kill them in the scores of thousands.
Indeed, a subsequent clamor by homosexuals for a mass government education program on the use of condoms suggested they knew exactly how and why the disease was spreading.
But in a May 28 column, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times accused this writer, Ronald Reagan and the Rev. Jerry Falwell of "behaving more immorally" in the 1980s than the clientele of "the San Francisco bathhouses." It was our "indifference to the suffering of gays," said Kristof, that "allowed the epidemic to spread."
Not a word of reproof – or even of recognition – may be found in Kristof's column against those who actually spread the disease that has now killed millions. Nick knows his readers.
What does all of this tell us? Our society is being marinated in lies – the lie that homosexuality is a natural, normal and healthy lifestyle; the lie that those who think otherwise are all hateful bigots; the lie that the diseases that afflict the homosexual community are the fault of an uncaring society.
Humankind cannot stand too much truth, said T.S. Eliot.
In the matter of Robert Smith, there was indeed intolerance: a savage intolerance of one man with the courage to declare Christian truths in the face of the fabricated and fake faith that has become the established religion of America's secular elite.
By Patrick J. Buchanan
© 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.
On the political roundtable "21 This Week," on Maryland's tiny Access Montgomery cable channel 21, Robert J. Smith has been a regular panelist. Introduced as a "Republican activist," Smith was also Gov. Robert Ehrlich's appointee on the Metro Transit Authority board.
No more. Smith has been fired for remarks that the GOP governor considers "inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable." What did Smith say? Did he cut loose into some racist rant using the "n" word?
Nope. One of the panelists on "21 This Week" had volunteered that Mary Cheney, the vice president's daughter who has come out of the closet, would not want the federal government interfering in her life. Smith interrupted: "That's fine, that's fine. But that doesn't mean that the government should proffer a special place of entitlement within the laws of the United States for persons of sexual deviancy."
Parsing that statement, what was Smith saying? That the feds should not intrude into private lives, but neither should the feds grant special privileges to homosexuals. Smith was also saying that, in his view, homosexuals are "persons of sexual deviancy." In short, Smith was saying what most Americans have always thought.
But at the next meeting of the Metro board, he was confronted by D.C. member James Graham, a homosexual activist, who demanded that Smith recant and apologize, or be fired by the governor.
Smith held his ground. "Homosexual behavior, in my view, is deviant," Smith said. "I'm a Roman Catholic."
He added, "The comments I make outside of my (Metro board job) I'm entitled to make." Moreover, said Smith, these were personal beliefs that have "nothing to do with running trains and buses, and have not affected my actions or decisions on the board."
Five hours later, Gov. Ehrlich, in a tight re-election race, fired Smith. The episode is instructive for what it says about the correlation of forces in America's religious war.
To save himself, Ehrlich threw Smith to the wolves. He declined to defend traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality – i.e., that it is unnatural and immoral, ruinous to body and soul alike. Ehrlich sacrificed one of his own to appease the homosexuals and their media auxiliary, rather than defy their moral authority.
Smith was fired by a Republican governor for standing by a truth rooted in 2,000 years of Catholic doctrine, Natural Law, the Torah, the Islamic faith, the teachings of every Christian denomination and the laws of every Western nation up to the late 20th century. One has yet to hear a word in defense of this faithful son from the Catholic hierarchy of the Washington area.
As for homosexuality, where it has been prevalent – in the late Roman Empire, Weimar Germany, San Francisco – it has been regarded as a mark of and a metaphor for moral decadence and societal decline.
But the bottom line is this: What is the truth? Is homosexuality moral or immoral, natural or unnatural, normal and healthy or deviant and destructive behavior?
In 1983, when the AIDS epidemic first broke onto the national scene, this writer wrote in a column predicting scores of thousands could perish: "The poor homosexuals. They have declared war against nature, and nature is exacting an awful retribution."
This sentence restated the Natural Law teaching of Thomas Aquinas. Homosexuality is against nature, contra naturam. It also said what was, by then, obvious to all. Acts that cannot be described in this publication were transmitting a dread and deadly disease that was killing homosexuals in the hundreds, and would soon kill them in the scores of thousands.
Indeed, a subsequent clamor by homosexuals for a mass government education program on the use of condoms suggested they knew exactly how and why the disease was spreading.
But in a May 28 column, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times accused this writer, Ronald Reagan and the Rev. Jerry Falwell of "behaving more immorally" in the 1980s than the clientele of "the San Francisco bathhouses." It was our "indifference to the suffering of gays," said Kristof, that "allowed the epidemic to spread."
Not a word of reproof – or even of recognition – may be found in Kristof's column against those who actually spread the disease that has now killed millions. Nick knows his readers.
What does all of this tell us? Our society is being marinated in lies – the lie that homosexuality is a natural, normal and healthy lifestyle; the lie that those who think otherwise are all hateful bigots; the lie that the diseases that afflict the homosexual community are the fault of an uncaring society.
Humankind cannot stand too much truth, said T.S. Eliot.
In the matter of Robert Smith, there was indeed intolerance: a savage intolerance of one man with the courage to declare Christian truths in the face of the fabricated and fake faith that has become the established religion of America's secular elite.
From The News & Observer:
O captain
Brind'Amour's leadership spurs Carolina to title
Luke DeCock, Staff Writer
RALEIGH - It was only right and fitting that Rod Brind'Amour was the first to lift the Stanley Cup.
The Carolina Hurricanes would never have won it without him.
Brind'Amour is the team captain. He was the one so disgusted after a Game 5 loss to the Edmonton Oilers, the one whose emotional words after the Canes' dismal 4-0 loss in Game 6 were just what his teammates needed to hear.
"Since Game 5, there was a great lump in my chest," Brind'Amour said Monday after the Canes clinched the Cup with a 3-1 victory. "I have just been feeling it. You know what is at stake.
"When you have so many that deserve it and you want it so bad, not just for yourself but for the guys sitting beside you, for your dad and your kids, guys who have been with you, your friends, there are so many people you are thinking about."
That's what Brind'Amour got off his chest after the embarrassment of Game 6 in Edmonton.
"He said something like we were glue, we had to stay like glue," defenseman Glen Wesley said. "Nobody ever wavered or doubted what we were capable of."
A leader both by word and deed, Brind'Amour scored some of the Hurricanes' biggest goals and gave all the biggest speeches. With the Canes on the verge of elimination three games into the playoffs and again in Game 7s in the final two rounds, Brind'Amour's leadership got the Canes' through.
"No question," forward Matt Cullen said. "Especially a guy like Roddy who ... is not a guy who says much -- you could see the intensity in his eyes."
Brind'Amour was among the NHL leaders in playoff goals, and the timing of some was memorable. But while Brind'Amour's most dramatic contributions were on the ice, his most effective came far from the view of fans.
After Game 2 of the Montreal series, Brind'Amour spoke up. Before Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals against Buffalo, he called a brief, players-only meeting.
"He has their ear, and that's when I back out of it," Laviolette said. "He has a powerful voice in the locker room and he carries his weight and that's a sign of a great captain and a great leader."
Brind'Amour backed up his talk. With the Canes down 2-0 to the Canadiens, he scored in the third period to send the game to overtime, where Eric Staal gave the Hurricanes the first of seven consecutive wins. In Game 7 against the Sabres, with the game tied 2-2 in the third period, Brind'Amour scored the game-winner.
In the first game of the finals, Brind'Amour was in the right place at the right time to capitalize on Oilers goalie Ty Conklin's miscue and win the game. After the last game, he was holding the Stanley Cup.
O captain
Brind'Amour's leadership spurs Carolina to title
Luke DeCock, Staff Writer
RALEIGH - It was only right and fitting that Rod Brind'Amour was the first to lift the Stanley Cup.
The Carolina Hurricanes would never have won it without him.
Brind'Amour is the team captain. He was the one so disgusted after a Game 5 loss to the Edmonton Oilers, the one whose emotional words after the Canes' dismal 4-0 loss in Game 6 were just what his teammates needed to hear.
"Since Game 5, there was a great lump in my chest," Brind'Amour said Monday after the Canes clinched the Cup with a 3-1 victory. "I have just been feeling it. You know what is at stake.
"When you have so many that deserve it and you want it so bad, not just for yourself but for the guys sitting beside you, for your dad and your kids, guys who have been with you, your friends, there are so many people you are thinking about."
That's what Brind'Amour got off his chest after the embarrassment of Game 6 in Edmonton.
"He said something like we were glue, we had to stay like glue," defenseman Glen Wesley said. "Nobody ever wavered or doubted what we were capable of."
A leader both by word and deed, Brind'Amour scored some of the Hurricanes' biggest goals and gave all the biggest speeches. With the Canes on the verge of elimination three games into the playoffs and again in Game 7s in the final two rounds, Brind'Amour's leadership got the Canes' through.
"No question," forward Matt Cullen said. "Especially a guy like Roddy who ... is not a guy who says much -- you could see the intensity in his eyes."
Brind'Amour was among the NHL leaders in playoff goals, and the timing of some was memorable. But while Brind'Amour's most dramatic contributions were on the ice, his most effective came far from the view of fans.
After Game 2 of the Montreal series, Brind'Amour spoke up. Before Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals against Buffalo, he called a brief, players-only meeting.
"He has their ear, and that's when I back out of it," Laviolette said. "He has a powerful voice in the locker room and he carries his weight and that's a sign of a great captain and a great leader."
Brind'Amour backed up his talk. With the Canes down 2-0 to the Canadiens, he scored in the third period to send the game to overtime, where Eric Staal gave the Hurricanes the first of seven consecutive wins. In Game 7 against the Sabres, with the game tied 2-2 in the third period, Brind'Amour scored the game-winner.
In the first game of the finals, Brind'Amour was in the right place at the right time to capitalize on Oilers goalie Ty Conklin's miscue and win the game. After the last game, he was holding the Stanley Cup.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Carolina Hurricanes win Stanley Cup
By Luke DeCock, Staff writer
RALEIGH — As his teammates danced wildly at the other end of the ice, Rod Brind’Amour skated by himself, head bowed and hands on his knees. As Justin Williams scored into an empty net to seal the win, Brind’Amour was overwhelmed by the moment.
After years of struggle for both the captain and the Carolina Hurricanes, he was minutes away from lifting the Stanley Cup above his head.
You could say it took the Hurricanes 10 months and 107 games to win the Stanley Cup, but it really took nine years, countless losses, the trials and tribulations of a slapdash move, two years in Greensboro and a lost season to realize this impossible dream. A franchise once seen as hopeless has now conquered the entire hockey world.
On the brink of tragedy after missing out on two chances to close out the Edmonton Oilers, the Hurricanes claimed ultimate success with a 3-1 win in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals Monday, securing North Carolina’s first major-league title and setting off a night of wild celebration across the Triangle, starting with the scene at center ice at the RBC Center where Brind’Amour accepted the Cup from commissioner Gary Bettman.
Cam Ward became the first rookie goalie to win the Stanley Cup in 20 years and Cory Stillman became the first player to win consecutive Cups with different teams in a decade, while Peter Laviolette became the second straight American-born coach to win the Cup as the trophy remained with the Southeast Division.
Glen Wesley, meanwhile, ended his long quest for the Cup and possible his career. No active player had been in more playoff games without winning than Wesley’s 168, who can now be crossed off the list at age 37 and may decide to retire on top after No. 169.
Ray Whitney was one of three Hurricanes to win his first Stanley Cup against the team he hoped to win it with as a kid. The son of the Oilers’ practice goalie, Whitney grew up around the Oilers, taping sticks for Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier as a teenager. His victory touched off a night of bittersweet celebration for his friends and relatives in suburban Edmonton, as it did for Ward and Mike Commodore.
It was a appropriate culmination of the most exciting finals in memory, a fast-paced, high-energy battle between two worthy opponents that represented just about everything that’s right with the game of hockey.
The Canes may have been the better team, but no team they faced played harder or with more will than the Oilers, whose improbable run from the eighth seed in the Western Conference gave Carolina all it could handle.
On a hazy summer day ideal for tailgating, the atmosphere outside came inside as almost every fan in the building stood for the entire game — in excitement for two periods, then nervously after the Oilers scored early in the third to pull within a goal.
The Hurricanes’ defense scored only once in the first six games of the series but Aaron Ward and Frantisek Kaberle scored for Carolina. Denied a goal by a blown call with only a one-goal lead, the Canes killed off a two-man advantage late in the second period to take a two-goal lead into the third period.
Fernando Pisani scored his NHL-leading 14th goal of the playoffs to bring the Oilers within a goal only a minute into the period, but he couldn’t get a rebound past a sprawling Cam Ward with 3:40 to play.
From the opening moments, it was clear the Canes would not allow a repeat of their Game 6 capitulation. Kevyn Adams dove headfirst to stop a shot with his neck and Erik Cole leveled Chris Pronger with a big hit along the boards on one of his first shifts.
Their effort paid off quickly. The Canes opened the scoring for only the second time in the series when Mark Recchi’s pass from behind the net deflected out to Ward at the top of the right circle. Ward ripped a one-timer through traffic and past Jussi Markkanen 86 seconds into the game.
The first period ended on a controversial note when the Hurricanes were denied an apparent goal with 4.1 seconds to play, one replay conclusively showing that a Craig Adams shot crossed the goal line but referee Bill McCreary had already whistled the play dead. It was a tense moment, but not five minutes into the second, Erik Cole drew a penalty as he beat Jaroslav Spacek on the right wing, and the Canes needed only eight seconds to score.
After the Oilers won a defensive-zone faceoff, Jason Smith couldn’t clear the puck. Cory Stillman corralled it at the blue line and fed Frantisek Kaberle, who fired the puck from the top of the left circle.
His shot deflected off a sliding Smith and under Markkanen. The Oilers had chance to narrow that gap late in the second with the Canes holding a 20-9 shot advantage. After Niclas Wallin was called for holding, Aaron Ward backhanded the puck into the netting behind the goal off the opening faceoff to give the Oilers almost two full minutes of two-man advantage.
But the Canes allowed only one shot in the first 56 seconds before Ryan Smyth hooked down Wesley in front of the Carolina net to make it a four-on-three for 56 seconds. Cam Ward made two huge saves — one on Chris Pronger, one on Ales Hemsky — to nullify that advantage.
The third period opened with a quick Edmonton goal as Pisani bulled through the crease to knock a Rem Murray rebound past Cam Ward, tumbling into the goalie as he scored. Raffi Torres fired high with eight minutes to play and the Canes killed off a Bret Hedican penalty late in the third before Eric Staal stole the puck in the Carolina zone and fed Williams for the Cup clincher.
They did it with a rookie goalie, a young superstar, a long-suffering veteran, a fiery coach and a captain who at the most difficult of times would not be denied.
Cam Ward. Eric Staal. Glen Wesley. Peter Laviolette. Rod Brind’Amour. They hail from different generations, different backgrounds, yet they all coalesced into a team in a process carefully cultivated from the first day of training camp and designed to deliver this very result.
Who would have thought this possible when the Hurricanes were a team without a home? Now they’re a team without peer. After years as a punchline, the Hurricanes delivered the knockout blow to the rest of the league Monday. As of now, the Stanley Cup resides in Raleigh.
By Luke DeCock, Staff writer
RALEIGH — As his teammates danced wildly at the other end of the ice, Rod Brind’Amour skated by himself, head bowed and hands on his knees. As Justin Williams scored into an empty net to seal the win, Brind’Amour was overwhelmed by the moment.
After years of struggle for both the captain and the Carolina Hurricanes, he was minutes away from lifting the Stanley Cup above his head.
You could say it took the Hurricanes 10 months and 107 games to win the Stanley Cup, but it really took nine years, countless losses, the trials and tribulations of a slapdash move, two years in Greensboro and a lost season to realize this impossible dream. A franchise once seen as hopeless has now conquered the entire hockey world.
On the brink of tragedy after missing out on two chances to close out the Edmonton Oilers, the Hurricanes claimed ultimate success with a 3-1 win in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals Monday, securing North Carolina’s first major-league title and setting off a night of wild celebration across the Triangle, starting with the scene at center ice at the RBC Center where Brind’Amour accepted the Cup from commissioner Gary Bettman.
Cam Ward became the first rookie goalie to win the Stanley Cup in 20 years and Cory Stillman became the first player to win consecutive Cups with different teams in a decade, while Peter Laviolette became the second straight American-born coach to win the Cup as the trophy remained with the Southeast Division.
Glen Wesley, meanwhile, ended his long quest for the Cup and possible his career. No active player had been in more playoff games without winning than Wesley’s 168, who can now be crossed off the list at age 37 and may decide to retire on top after No. 169.
Ray Whitney was one of three Hurricanes to win his first Stanley Cup against the team he hoped to win it with as a kid. The son of the Oilers’ practice goalie, Whitney grew up around the Oilers, taping sticks for Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier as a teenager. His victory touched off a night of bittersweet celebration for his friends and relatives in suburban Edmonton, as it did for Ward and Mike Commodore.
It was a appropriate culmination of the most exciting finals in memory, a fast-paced, high-energy battle between two worthy opponents that represented just about everything that’s right with the game of hockey.
The Canes may have been the better team, but no team they faced played harder or with more will than the Oilers, whose improbable run from the eighth seed in the Western Conference gave Carolina all it could handle.
On a hazy summer day ideal for tailgating, the atmosphere outside came inside as almost every fan in the building stood for the entire game — in excitement for two periods, then nervously after the Oilers scored early in the third to pull within a goal.
The Hurricanes’ defense scored only once in the first six games of the series but Aaron Ward and Frantisek Kaberle scored for Carolina. Denied a goal by a blown call with only a one-goal lead, the Canes killed off a two-man advantage late in the second period to take a two-goal lead into the third period.
Fernando Pisani scored his NHL-leading 14th goal of the playoffs to bring the Oilers within a goal only a minute into the period, but he couldn’t get a rebound past a sprawling Cam Ward with 3:40 to play.
From the opening moments, it was clear the Canes would not allow a repeat of their Game 6 capitulation. Kevyn Adams dove headfirst to stop a shot with his neck and Erik Cole leveled Chris Pronger with a big hit along the boards on one of his first shifts.
Their effort paid off quickly. The Canes opened the scoring for only the second time in the series when Mark Recchi’s pass from behind the net deflected out to Ward at the top of the right circle. Ward ripped a one-timer through traffic and past Jussi Markkanen 86 seconds into the game.
The first period ended on a controversial note when the Hurricanes were denied an apparent goal with 4.1 seconds to play, one replay conclusively showing that a Craig Adams shot crossed the goal line but referee Bill McCreary had already whistled the play dead. It was a tense moment, but not five minutes into the second, Erik Cole drew a penalty as he beat Jaroslav Spacek on the right wing, and the Canes needed only eight seconds to score.
After the Oilers won a defensive-zone faceoff, Jason Smith couldn’t clear the puck. Cory Stillman corralled it at the blue line and fed Frantisek Kaberle, who fired the puck from the top of the left circle.
His shot deflected off a sliding Smith and under Markkanen. The Oilers had chance to narrow that gap late in the second with the Canes holding a 20-9 shot advantage. After Niclas Wallin was called for holding, Aaron Ward backhanded the puck into the netting behind the goal off the opening faceoff to give the Oilers almost two full minutes of two-man advantage.
But the Canes allowed only one shot in the first 56 seconds before Ryan Smyth hooked down Wesley in front of the Carolina net to make it a four-on-three for 56 seconds. Cam Ward made two huge saves — one on Chris Pronger, one on Ales Hemsky — to nullify that advantage.
The third period opened with a quick Edmonton goal as Pisani bulled through the crease to knock a Rem Murray rebound past Cam Ward, tumbling into the goalie as he scored. Raffi Torres fired high with eight minutes to play and the Canes killed off a Bret Hedican penalty late in the third before Eric Staal stole the puck in the Carolina zone and fed Williams for the Cup clincher.
They did it with a rookie goalie, a young superstar, a long-suffering veteran, a fiery coach and a captain who at the most difficult of times would not be denied.
Cam Ward. Eric Staal. Glen Wesley. Peter Laviolette. Rod Brind’Amour. They hail from different generations, different backgrounds, yet they all coalesced into a team in a process carefully cultivated from the first day of training camp and designed to deliver this very result.
Who would have thought this possible when the Hurricanes were a team without a home? Now they’re a team without peer. After years as a punchline, the Hurricanes delivered the knockout blow to the rest of the league Monday. As of now, the Stanley Cup resides in Raleigh.
First Things First on Immigration
By Center for American Common Culture
An Open Letter to President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Frist, and Speaker of the House, Hastert.
Recently, columnist Thomas Sowell wrote: "It will take time to see how various new border control methods work out in practice and there is no reason to rush ahead to deal with people already illegally in this country before the facts are in on how well the borders have been secured."
We the undersigned agree with this statement. In 1986, Congress passed "comprehensive" immigration reform that included amnesty for around 3 million illegal immigrants, border enforcement, and interior enforcement (employer sanctions). Amnesty came, but enforcement was never seriously implemented either at the border or in the interior.
Let us not make this mistake again. We favor what Newt Gingrich has described as "sequencing." First border and interior enforcement must be funded, operational, implemented, and proven successful, and only then can we debate the status of current illegal immigrants, or the need for new guest worker programs. We are in the middle of a global war on terror. 2006 is not 1986. Today, we need proof that enforcement (both at the border and in the interior) is successful before anything else happens. As Ronald Reagan used to say "trust, but verify."
The majority of Republicans in the Senate opposed the recently passed Hagel-Martinez bill. Senator Vitter (R-LA) said that because border enforcement will not be in place, "this [bill] will in fact make the illegal immigration problem much bigger." The No. 3 Republican in the Senate, Senator Rick Santorum (PA) said, "We need a border-security bill first." Senator Vitter, Senator Santorum, the majority of Senate Republicans, and the majority of House Republicans are right¾we need proven enforcement before we do anything else. Adopting cosmetic legislation to appear to be "doing something" about enforcement, but which actually makes the situation worse, is not statesmanship, it is demagogy.
We thank the majority of the Senate Republicans (33 in all) and the seven Democrats who supported the Isakson amendment, which insists upon verifiable benchmarks for border security before considering other issues. Moreover, we say "Thank You" to Jim Sensenbrenner, Peter King, and the bi-partisan House majority including 36 Democrats, that passed HR 4437. We may quibble with a clause here and there, but you in the House and the majority of Senate Republicans are right to emphasize that the Congress and the President must deal with enforcement first and other issues later. Stand fast; the American people are overwhelmingly with you.
Signed,
William B. Allen, Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University
William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education under President Reagan, former Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under former President George H.W. Bush
Thomas L. Bock, National Commander of the American Legion
Robert H. Bork, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, former Solicitor General, acting Attorney General, Supreme Court nominee, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge
William F. Buckley, Jr., founder and Editor-at-Large of National Review
Peter Collier, founding Publisher of Encounter Books, cofounder of Center for the Study of Popular Culture
Ward Connerly, former Regent at the University of California, founder and Chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI), winner of the 2005 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement
T. Kenneth Cribb, former domestic policy advisor for President Ronald Reagan
Glynn Custred, Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Hayward, and coauthor of the California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209
John C. Eastman, Professor of Law at Chapman University School of Law, Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
John Fonte, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center of American Common Culture at the Hudson Institute
David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, Resident Fellow at American Enterprise Institute
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., founder and President of the Center for Security Policy
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chairman of the Gingrich Group, Senior Fellow at American Enterprise Institute
Jonah Goldberg, Editor-at-Large of the National Review Online, national syndicated columnist
Victor Davis Hanson, Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, recipient of the 1991 American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award
David Horowitz, cofounder of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Editor of FrontPageMag.com
Fred C. Iklé, former Undersecretary of Defense under Reagan, former Director of U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
David Keene, Chairman of the American Conservative Union
Brian Kennedy, President of the Claremont Institute, Publisher of the Claremont Review of Books
Roger Kimball, Managing Editor of The New Criterion
Alan Charles Kors, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania
Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies
Bevery LaHaye, Founder and Chairman of the Concerned Women for America
Michael A. Ledeen, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
Seth Leibsohn, Fellow at the Claremont Institute
John Leo, columnist and Contributing Editor to U.S. News and World Report
Herbert London, President of the Hudson Institute
Kathryn Jean Lopez, Editor of National Review Online
Rich Lowry, Editor of National Review
Heather Mac Donald, John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, winner of the 2005 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement
John O'Sullivan, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Editor-at-Large of National Review
Juliana Pilon, Research Professor at the Institute for World Politics
Daniel Pipes, founder and Director of the Middle East Forum and Campus Watch, former member of the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace
Andrew "Andy" Ramirez, Chairman of the Friends of Border Patrol
Phyllis Schlafly, founder and President of Eagle Forum
Thomas Sowell, Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, winner of the 2003 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement
Shelby Steele, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, winner of the 2006 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement
Stephen Steinlight, Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, former National Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee, and Vice President of the National Conference of Christians and Jews
Thomas G. West, Director and Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute, Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas
Wendy Wright, President, Concerned Women for America
By Center for American Common Culture
An Open Letter to President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Frist, and Speaker of the House, Hastert.
Recently, columnist Thomas Sowell wrote: "It will take time to see how various new border control methods work out in practice and there is no reason to rush ahead to deal with people already illegally in this country before the facts are in on how well the borders have been secured."
We the undersigned agree with this statement. In 1986, Congress passed "comprehensive" immigration reform that included amnesty for around 3 million illegal immigrants, border enforcement, and interior enforcement (employer sanctions). Amnesty came, but enforcement was never seriously implemented either at the border or in the interior.
Let us not make this mistake again. We favor what Newt Gingrich has described as "sequencing." First border and interior enforcement must be funded, operational, implemented, and proven successful, and only then can we debate the status of current illegal immigrants, or the need for new guest worker programs. We are in the middle of a global war on terror. 2006 is not 1986. Today, we need proof that enforcement (both at the border and in the interior) is successful before anything else happens. As Ronald Reagan used to say "trust, but verify."
The majority of Republicans in the Senate opposed the recently passed Hagel-Martinez bill. Senator Vitter (R-LA) said that because border enforcement will not be in place, "this [bill] will in fact make the illegal immigration problem much bigger." The No. 3 Republican in the Senate, Senator Rick Santorum (PA) said, "We need a border-security bill first." Senator Vitter, Senator Santorum, the majority of Senate Republicans, and the majority of House Republicans are right¾we need proven enforcement before we do anything else. Adopting cosmetic legislation to appear to be "doing something" about enforcement, but which actually makes the situation worse, is not statesmanship, it is demagogy.
We thank the majority of the Senate Republicans (33 in all) and the seven Democrats who supported the Isakson amendment, which insists upon verifiable benchmarks for border security before considering other issues. Moreover, we say "Thank You" to Jim Sensenbrenner, Peter King, and the bi-partisan House majority including 36 Democrats, that passed HR 4437. We may quibble with a clause here and there, but you in the House and the majority of Senate Republicans are right to emphasize that the Congress and the President must deal with enforcement first and other issues later. Stand fast; the American people are overwhelmingly with you.
Signed,
William B. Allen, Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University
William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education under President Reagan, former Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under former President George H.W. Bush
Thomas L. Bock, National Commander of the American Legion
Robert H. Bork, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, former Solicitor General, acting Attorney General, Supreme Court nominee, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge
William F. Buckley, Jr., founder and Editor-at-Large of National Review
Peter Collier, founding Publisher of Encounter Books, cofounder of Center for the Study of Popular Culture
Ward Connerly, former Regent at the University of California, founder and Chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI), winner of the 2005 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement
T. Kenneth Cribb, former domestic policy advisor for President Ronald Reagan
Glynn Custred, Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Hayward, and coauthor of the California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209
John C. Eastman, Professor of Law at Chapman University School of Law, Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
John Fonte, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center of American Common Culture at the Hudson Institute
David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, Resident Fellow at American Enterprise Institute
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., founder and President of the Center for Security Policy
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chairman of the Gingrich Group, Senior Fellow at American Enterprise Institute
Jonah Goldberg, Editor-at-Large of the National Review Online, national syndicated columnist
Victor Davis Hanson, Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, recipient of the 1991 American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award
David Horowitz, cofounder of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Editor of FrontPageMag.com
Fred C. Iklé, former Undersecretary of Defense under Reagan, former Director of U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
David Keene, Chairman of the American Conservative Union
Brian Kennedy, President of the Claremont Institute, Publisher of the Claremont Review of Books
Roger Kimball, Managing Editor of The New Criterion
Alan Charles Kors, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania
Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies
Bevery LaHaye, Founder and Chairman of the Concerned Women for America
Michael A. Ledeen, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
Seth Leibsohn, Fellow at the Claremont Institute
John Leo, columnist and Contributing Editor to U.S. News and World Report
Herbert London, President of the Hudson Institute
Kathryn Jean Lopez, Editor of National Review Online
Rich Lowry, Editor of National Review
Heather Mac Donald, John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, winner of the 2005 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement
John O'Sullivan, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Editor-at-Large of National Review
Juliana Pilon, Research Professor at the Institute for World Politics
Daniel Pipes, founder and Director of the Middle East Forum and Campus Watch, former member of the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace
Andrew "Andy" Ramirez, Chairman of the Friends of Border Patrol
Phyllis Schlafly, founder and President of Eagle Forum
Thomas Sowell, Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, winner of the 2003 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement
Shelby Steele, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, winner of the 2006 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement
Stephen Steinlight, Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, former National Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee, and Vice President of the National Conference of Christians and Jews
Thomas G. West, Director and Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute, Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas
Wendy Wright, President, Concerned Women for America
From Tammy Bruce:
Dixie Chick Confused by Patriotism
In what is nothing less than an anti-American orgy in the UKs Telegraph newspaper, Dixie Chick Natalie Maines confirms that she really doesn't hate George W. Bush, she actually looks down on everyone who loves this country. And you know the problem with those self-obsessed MalNars--the only thing that matters, the only relevant thing, is how they feel.
And Natalie, well, doesn't understand why Americans especially love their country. Why? Because she doesn't.
How the Chicks survived their scrap with Bush
"A lot of pandering started going on, and you'd see soldiers and the American flag in every video. It became a sickening display of ultra-patriotism."
"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism," Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. "Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."
I think that story headline might have jumped the gun just a tad. And since she "doesn't understand" patriotism, I have a short list of a few concepts which epitomize America and illustrate why we goofballs so love this country.
1) Freedom of Expression, which exists in its clear form only in America. If she doubts this she should speak to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Oriana Fallaci, Bridget Bardot and every woman in one of Saddam's mass graves.
2) Personal liberty. Only in America could someone as obnoxious and vapid as Maines become a millionaire superstar and not be arrested after speaking against her president and country abroad, especially during a time of war. She can ask any woman in Cuba, North Korea or China what it's like to not have that freedom.
3) The best health care in the world.
4) The best schools in the world.
5) The strongest economy in the world.
6) Religious freedom.
7) Democracy and the free market, allowing everyone to have an equal opportunity at achieving the most they can, limited only by their imaginations.
8) A society based on mutual respect, and hope.
Ms. Maines exemplifies the Ugly American--someone who completely takes for granted the extraordinary life the American ideal has given to people like her. She noted "you can like where you live and like your life..." but like a classic MalNar simply can't see beyond herself.
I would suggest she move to Syria or North Korea or Mexico, and see exactly how much she'd like her life in those pits. Perhaps she could also make a short visit to one of our citizen swearing-in ceremonies and chat with those people who have braved all to become American citizens. Those are people who, unlike Ms. Maines, understand the importance of joy and freedom, have fought to live it, and know that it is only in America where dreams come true.
A one-way ticket to Iran might also enlighten Maines just a tad. In the meantime, odds are she is one of the more miserable people around. She, like Michael Berg and John Murtha, must now be viewed simply as the pathetic and be pitied.
Dixie Chick Confused by Patriotism
In what is nothing less than an anti-American orgy in the UKs Telegraph newspaper, Dixie Chick Natalie Maines confirms that she really doesn't hate George W. Bush, she actually looks down on everyone who loves this country. And you know the problem with those self-obsessed MalNars--the only thing that matters, the only relevant thing, is how they feel.
And Natalie, well, doesn't understand why Americans especially love their country. Why? Because she doesn't.
How the Chicks survived their scrap with Bush
"A lot of pandering started going on, and you'd see soldiers and the American flag in every video. It became a sickening display of ultra-patriotism."
"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism," Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. "Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."
I think that story headline might have jumped the gun just a tad. And since she "doesn't understand" patriotism, I have a short list of a few concepts which epitomize America and illustrate why we goofballs so love this country.
1) Freedom of Expression, which exists in its clear form only in America. If she doubts this she should speak to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Oriana Fallaci, Bridget Bardot and every woman in one of Saddam's mass graves.
2) Personal liberty. Only in America could someone as obnoxious and vapid as Maines become a millionaire superstar and not be arrested after speaking against her president and country abroad, especially during a time of war. She can ask any woman in Cuba, North Korea or China what it's like to not have that freedom.
3) The best health care in the world.
4) The best schools in the world.
5) The strongest economy in the world.
6) Religious freedom.
7) Democracy and the free market, allowing everyone to have an equal opportunity at achieving the most they can, limited only by their imaginations.
8) A society based on mutual respect, and hope.
Ms. Maines exemplifies the Ugly American--someone who completely takes for granted the extraordinary life the American ideal has given to people like her. She noted "you can like where you live and like your life..." but like a classic MalNar simply can't see beyond herself.
I would suggest she move to Syria or North Korea or Mexico, and see exactly how much she'd like her life in those pits. Perhaps she could also make a short visit to one of our citizen swearing-in ceremonies and chat with those people who have braved all to become American citizens. Those are people who, unlike Ms. Maines, understand the importance of joy and freedom, have fought to live it, and know that it is only in America where dreams come true.
A one-way ticket to Iran might also enlighten Maines just a tad. In the meantime, odds are she is one of the more miserable people around. She, like Michael Berg and John Murtha, must now be viewed simply as the pathetic and be pitied.
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