If there is one thing we can say with certainty about progressive opinion makers in the media and in Washington, it’s that they have an uncanny ability to create action around manufactured morality crises. In fact, it’s been proven that one can fashion a very successful political career having done little else- an apparently indispensable skill we’ve come to know as “community organizing.”

Their success in this endeavor can likely be attributed to many factors, but chief among these is the malleability of the left’s concept of morality. You see, a conservative generally seeks to “conserve” the principles of our founding, which was undertaken by men that could, in their time, be identified as liberal Christians. This provides an ethical baseline for conservatives, influenced by Christian doctrine and tempered by a belief in essential freedoms like property rights and free expression. While we accept our Constitution’s imperfection, this is nonetheless the touchstone of our identity, against which all issues of morality must be tested.

The left’s litmus test in judging morality is far less static or reliable.  The progressive ideology is built upon not only the acceptance of imperfections in our founders’ vision, but the wholesale folly of it.  The principles of the founding have, for the left, thus become the very reason for the nation’s woes. For example, a CEO’s right to keep and own ample property becomes the reason that so many live in poverty, or anti-jihadists like Robert Spencer practicing free speech becomes the reason men like Anders Breivik commit violence.

The problem with all this is that there are no substantive rules guiding the principles of the left.  Having abandoned the traditional American touchstone of these basic rights, their notion of morality must always exist within constantly morphing boundaries, set by politicians and pundits, designed to satisfy whatever political goal they may have in mind. This creates some of the marvelous inconsistencies in their ethical positions.  Like how providing a convicted murderer with quality healthcare is a moral imperative, but providing medical care to an innocent child that survives an attempted abortion is an unnecessary consideration. Or how it is unethical to consider race or gender in employment standards, but it is entirely ethical to hire someone on the basis of race or gender if it satisfies a politically determined quota.

And then there’s the most recent curiosity- the left’s moral objection to Rush Limbaugh’s comments about thirty year-old student activist Sandra Fluke on his show.

Limbaugh has made a career lampooning the absurd, and in entertaining his audience for these decades, he has been given to hyperbole in making the occasional point. This was one of those instances. He suggested that since Ms. Fluke would like to have her contraception and sex life financed by others, she is a “slut,” and perhaps as a manner of repaying those who will be providing for her needs and desires, she should put the sex acts on video for others to see.  

The blogosphere and social media erupted leftist venom. President Obama called Fluke to offer her consolation, Rush almost immediately lost sponsors who feared the coming political backlash, and the left is working tirelessly to silence Limbaugh, claiming that his words are ethically intolerable and indicative of a conservative “war on women.”

I could beat the dead horse and go into detail to relate the copious examples of blatant misogyny being communicated by the left, but that’s been done very well already, and my aim is not to present equivalency. The point is that modern conservatives have been less apt to get caught up in a bandwagon bent on silencing opposition, because conservative anger becomes checked when they hearken back to that immovable cornerstone of their morality: freedom of speech.  Progressives are unfettered by such constants in their notions of morality, which is why they can invoke freedom of speech when it suits them, only to all of a sudden be manipulated to believe that this speech is so heinous that it deserves derision, condemnation, and ultimately, the gagging of the speaker- for no other convincing reason beyond the fact that it was right-wing villain Rush Limbaugh that said it. 

Morality is nothing more than a gambit being used to hide the unacceptable nature of the left’s current proposition. The federal government does not have constitutional authority to mandate that private, state domiciled insurance companies provide any specific coverage like contraception, and to do so would violate the tenth amendment. And a federal mandate that religious institutions provide contraceptive care is a clear violation of the first.

So without reasonable support, the left again manipulates the confines of morality to reflect the current political initiative, successfully rousing its rabble to apply moral judgments upon their opposition. It’s just ethics, they say, and if you don’t support that, you must hate women like Rush Limbaugh does.  

William Sullivan frequently contributes to American Thinker, and blogs at: http://politicalpalaverblog.blogspot.com. He can now be followed on Twitter.

“I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan…I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses…In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered.” (Sanger 366)

The above quote is taken from the autobiography of Margaret Sanger, the sometimes revered mother of American abortion. She is also the founder of Planned Parenthood, an organization that has come under scrutiny recently for its use of federal tax dollars in financing the abortions that generate the bulk of its revenue, causing public friction for its supporting groups like Susan G. Komen and the Girl Scouts.  

Though a highly misunderstood figure, Sanger is often quickly associated with “progressivism.” But considering that the Ku Klux Klan would be considered anything but “progressive” by today’s standards, this quote immediately begs the question- why were the women of the KKK so attracted to her message? These women, predominantly Protestant Christians in Sanger’s time, would have generally rejected progressive or scientific social initiatives. Yet they, much like the liberal and commonly unreligious advocates of Planned Parenthood would later do, found Sanger worthy of admiration.  

Lloyd Marcus, author of Confessions of a Black Conservative, provides some perspective to address this peculiarity, and shares some truths about what the left’s devotion to abortion has wrought, specifically in regard to American blacks.

He writes:

 “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.” So said Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Seventy-eight percent of Planned Parenthood clinics are in black neighborhoods. Blacks make up only 12% of the population, but 35% of America’s aborted babies are black. Half of black pregnancies end in abortion. Is this an intentional genocide? (Emphasis added)

 ”The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb,” according to Pastor Clenard Childress, Jr. Blacks are the only minority in America experiencing a declining population.

 So why would Obama, the NAACP, Rev. Sharpton, and other black leftists be passionate supporters of Planned Parenthood? Why did Al Sharpton threaten to protest a pro-life billboard which exposed the devastatingly high number of black abortions?

 Why, indeed. The application of ethics and morality in the abortion issue may vary from person to person, and debating this might require the most complex human philosophy, but the specificity of the abortion agenda’s targets in the black community could be recognized even by a child.  

 These trends are unpleasant to progressive sensibilities, and they therefore will be ignored or dismissed as false by those unwaveringly devoted to the notion that a woman’s right to “choose” is the crux of the debate. But the extent to which these disturbing trends are hidden and avoided by abortion advocates gives the pro-choice agenda a decidedly insidious nature.

 Abortion advocates in Washington, most notably San Francisco’s resident crooked Catholic Nancy Pelosi, have for years prattled about the long-term savings to be had through federal spending on contraception and abortion. The future public cost of education and welfare, they argue, will be significantly reduced if the welfare class can more readily afford and acquire abortions. So the fact that the abortion agenda has a targeted demographic should not, in itself, be surprising- implicit in these past suggestions is that the fertility of the lower economic rungs of society be cauterized. 

 There is an intense irony in the poor accepting Democrats like Pelosi as their champion in spite of the crowing about the need to sterilize them, but perhaps even more puzzling, and certainly tragic, is the fact that Barack Obama garnered 95% of the black vote in 2008 while promoting a wholesale devotion to a practice that proves uniquely destructive to black Americans.

 Half of the black children conceived in this country are aborted before reaching our world, and they are aborted at levels nearly three times their demographic representation. Lloyd Marcus ponders whether this is intentional, but the reality is that it doesn’t matter whether it is intentional or not. Either by design or inadvertently due to social realities, the evidence conclusively shows that the left is fulfilling Margaret Sanger’s vision of systematically exterminating blacks, which should reveal even to the most naive abortion advocate why her message was so incredibly attractive to the KKK in her time. In fact, it would even be reasonable to assume that those same women who once hung on Sanger’s every word might today support Planned Parenthood in their efforts, unintentional or not.

 The fact that today’s modern left doesn’t likewise profess the racist intentions of the KKK or Margaret Sanger does not change the fact that the result of its continuing quest to promote federally-sponsored abortion and Planned Parenthood, if one appraises a child in the womb to have the smallest ounce of humanity, does indeed border genocide.

 William Sullivan is a frequent contributor to American Thinker, and has been featured at FrontPage Magazine and World Net Daily.  His blog can be found at: http://politicalpalaverblog.blogspot.com and he can now be followed on Twitter.

At a recent Department of Justice (DOJ) conference, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole took the stage to talk about “the issue of religious and ethnic discrimination in the wake of 9/11.” But sadly, what ensued in his dialogue was anything but an honest assessment about cultural and religious biases.

 Likely, that is because an honest assessment was clearly not the aim.  Rather, Mr. Cole’s intention on this stage was to trivialize Islam’s role in international terror, while at the same time accentuating other religions’ contributions to it.  The result, he must have hoped, would be that the conference attendees would come to the conclusion that there exists a moral equivalency among all religions- equally valuable to the American tapestry, equally malignant in their propensity to commit acts of evil. 

This sounds very fetching to modern, politically correct sensibilities.  The problem is that coming to this conclusion requires that political correctness carry more value than truth.  And in the Department of Justice under Barack Obama’s administration, this is clearly the case. 

James M. Cole offered his listeners: “All of us must reject any suggestion that every Muslim is a terrorist, or that every terrorist is a Muslim. As we have seen time and time again, from the Oklahoma City bombing to the recent attacks in Oslo, Norway- no religion or ethnicity has a monopoly on terror.” 

True, no religion has a monopoly on religious terror. But unless you are completely devoid of deductive reasoning, it’s safe to say that Islam has the market cornered.  To exemplify this point, consider that Cole’s flimsy support consists of two specific references to Christian terrorists, each having committed a crime set apart by nearly twenty years: Timothy McVeigh, who did not commit his crime in the name of religion, and Anders Breivik, the notorious psychopath who only recently replaced McVeigh as the poster child of Christian terror.  Then, consider that in the ten years since 9/11, over 17,941 acts of terror have been committed by militant, devout Muslims.  This means that four or five times every day, Muslim fundamentalists commit an act of terror predicated upon religious duty.   

When compared to the level of Islamic terror the world endures, Christian terror becomes statistically marginal.  Overlooking such awesome evidence of this is an act of intellectual fraud, to be sure.  But when our DOJ, in thebes. spirit of political correctness, refuses to acknowledge the impact Islam has on global terror, it becomes something extremely dangerous. 

Cole claims that the DOJ “is doing everything possible to protect the national security.”  Yet in these same breaths, he says that he “recently directed all components of the DOJ to re-evaluate their training efforts” in a manner that reflects “racial sensitivity and respect for all peoples and faiths.”  As Robert Spencer points out in FrontPageMag.com, Cole is “bowing to pressure from the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic advocacy groups” by striking inflammatory truths from FBI training material.  For example, FBI agents will no longer be trained to recognize that “devout Muslims are more prone toward violence,” despite the inarguable fact that the vast majority of jihadists are extremely devoted to their faith.  In the future, our FBI agents will also be unaware that Islamic charitable giving is a “funding mechanism for combat.”  So even though such charities are an indisputable sourceof funding for jihad, we can expect that our national security overseers will apply no more scrutiny to Islamic charities than they would the Christian or Jewish charities that cannot be significantly implicated of any such crimes.   

The actions of the DOJ under Obama’s administration have been more than suspect.  We all remember the failure to prosecute the black supremacist Samir Shabazz, though he was blatantly guilty of voter intimidation in Philadelphia.  And of course, fresh in our memory is the “Fast and Furious”debacle that supplied weaponry to Mexican drug cartels with no clear route to a positive outcome.  And now, the DOJ is willfully suppressing the truth about the demographic trends associated with global terrorism on the grounds that the facts are unpleasant for some people to hear.  The result will be that future FBI agents will not have the knowledge to effectively profile and assess potential sources of violent extremism.  And this all goes well beyond inefficiency- it is a self-inflicted wound to the very national security that our DOJ is sworn to protect. 

William Sullivan is frequently featured in online conservative publications, and blogs at http://politicalpalaverblog.blogspot.com

Recent evidence shows that there is an epidemic of racially motivated black-on-white crime clearly manifesting itself across America. But one would hardly know that unless such events take place locally- the Department of Justice and national news outlets have been reticent to notice, much less appropriately report on these incidents.

Violent crime predicated upon the color of someone’s skin is a monstrous atrocity, right? Isn’t that the reason the distinction “hate” prefaces “crimes” in these instances- to signify that they are worse than “normal” violent crimes? So where is the outcry over this startling trend?

The outcry is delayed and muted, if heard at all. For example, take a recent story in a local news report on September 27th about an incident that took place on Sept. 9th in the Port Richmond area of Philadelphia.

Mark LeVelle was walking home on that afternoon and was spotted by two “fearful white teens” who asked for his help. Shortly after, a mob of black and Hispanic youths appeared, apparently believing that the two were responsible for harming an African-American teen nearby. They shouted, “We got you, you white mother——!” So Mark hurriedly took the boys into his house to provide them safety, rather than handing them over to a clearly racist and bloodthirsty mob.

But the mob would not be deterred. So they “pounded on his front windows and kicked his wooden door so hard it flew open and some of them entered his house.” With his wife and kids screaming, LeVelle was hit with a pipe, punched in the face, and one among the mob pulled a gun and attempted to aim it at him, though LeVelle thwarted this effort just before police arrived.

Afterward, LaVelle identified his attackers and they were arrested, one of which was the 17-year-old juvenile that punched him in the face. The next day, that child’s mother came to his house with others, banging on his door and screaming. The woman yelled at LeVelle, “You white mother——, you got my kid locked up! You got my son locked up because he’s black, you’re white!” The mother proclaimed her child’s innocence as a mere “witness,” to which LeVelle assured her that the truth would come out in court. The woman then replied, “If you make it to court. I know where you live!”

In addressing this scenario, I’m reminded of the famous scene in “A Time to Kill,” when Matthew McConaughey’s character draws a picture of racial equivalency to point out the biases prevalent at the time of the film’s setting. I believe it works equally well today, if applied inversely.

Now- imagine he is black.

Imagine that Mark LeVelle, a black man, pulled two black children off the street to protect them from an angry white mob bent on harming them. His home is broken into, he is beaten, his family is threatened, and one among the mob pulls a gun with the intent of murder. Mr. LeVelle recognizes those who harmed him, and fingers them as the culprits for his wounds. The white mother of an incarcerated villain comes to Mark LeVelle’s home, calls him a “black mother——,” and says that he won’t make it to court because she is likely to direct someone to kill him.

Imagine that these were the events that took place on September 9th.

What are the chances that it would not be national news within a week, heralded as a deplorable hate crime, signifying a troubling epidemic of racism against blacks? As we all know, this would almost certainly be the result. It must be asked of our seemingly race-sensitive elites in our political and national media constructs: why, when whites are the victims of hate crimes, is it so easy to ignore?

William Sullivan is a frequent contributor to online conservative magazines and he blogs at http://politicalpalaverblog.blogspot.com

In anticipation of what may develop from the “flash mob” activity in America, perhaps it’s time to revisit the recent riots in England and extract whatever lessons we can.

Being that the United Kingdom has legislated ultra-strict limitations on the right to own weapons, it can be assumed that the populace has forfeited its right to bear arms for the promise of governmental protection from those who would do them harm or illegally confiscate or destroy their personal property. And if that means fire hoses, tear gas, rubber bullets, or even rifles, one would think that the British government has an obligation to employ all necessary measures to fulfill this duty of protecting its people.

But during the recent riots in England, that government failed miserably in doing its job.

Some Americans, however, approve of the outcome. Though he concedes that the extent of the damage was probably greater due to Englishmen not having firearms to defend themselves, The Boston Globe’s Ben Jacobs asserts that letting the violence naturally subside without having these rioters meet an armed citizenry was a good thing, as very few died during the riots. Adam Shah of Media Matters responded to Ann Coulter’s suggestion that the riots would have quickly ended after a “few well-placed rifle shots” by accusing her of inciting a massacre.  Therefore, England’s pacifistic approach was preferable in his eyes.

They underlying suggestion here is that violence against these criminals would be a greater injustice than a century-old business being burnt to the ground, or innocent children being beaten and having their property stolen. They think this way because they are plagued by the common ignorance of their ilk. To them, the riots were merely a physical manifestation of the people’s anger at Britain’s representative government, and the rioters should therefore not be subjected to forceful suppression. They seem unable to make a distinction between peaceable assemblies “to petition the government for a redress of grievances” and a violent mob selfishly and opportunistically targeting innocent people and their property.

Such ignorance should be nothing new to us. The same voices made a similar argument for those criminals who looted businesses, raped innocent people, and even fired upon their rescuers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. They were by and large not to be held accountable for their actions- they were simply made out to be victims of a government that did not properly care for them.

Though our founders believed firmly that all men are created equal, they also firmly believed that diligence, character, and earned wisdom would dictate a man’s success in his “pursuit of happiness.” Progressives, on the other hand, seem to believe not only that all men are created equal, but that all men are always equal regardless of the choices they make, and any lack of success in the “pursuit of happiness” is a result of societal repression. This diseased mindset has led to the creation of the welfare state, whose fruits have now come to bear in England.

The problem is that being given a substantial livelihood does not result in character growth or earned wisdom; it results in a sense of entitlement that creates societal stagnancy, and the bottled-up angst of idle generations that leads to class war against the successful.

The welfare state in England has not produced Englishmen who are interested in the advancement of its culture. It has produced parasitic millions that merely subsist on the product of English sweat. Now, the host has begun to swoon, and according to one BBC report, England was helpless throughout the rioting. “Unless these gangs of youths tire of the violence,” this report stated, “it doesn’t seem that there’s any real reason for it to stop.”

In America, these youths would have been met with the barrel of a gun in nearly every home and business they unlawfully entered, and that might give them a reason to stop before they got tired of beating and robbing their innocent neighbors. Since England doesn’t have that luxury, maybe next time, for the sake of its people whose children were beaten and robbed and whose homes and livelihoods were destroyed, they should consider stronger measures to protect the English people.

So when it is all said and done, what are the lessons we have learned? That we must resist the progressive nudging to expand the welfare state, as it does little more than decay our society to a culture of dependence and unwarranted entitlement.  And we are reminded that we must defend our cherished right to arm and protect ourselves in America, because we cannot rely on an impotent nanny state to do this for us.

William Sullivan frequently contributes to American Thinker and blogs at http://politcalpalaverblog.blogspot.com.

Jonah Goldberg writes in his book Liberal Fascism that there is a well-defined distinction between the left and right of the political spectrum.  “Broadly speaking,” he writes, “the left is the party of change, the right the party of the status quo.” (59)

This is a perfectly acceptable observation, insofar as a broad, global history is concerned.  But when it comes to America today, how well does it fit?

It is certain that the left fancies itself as Goldberg describes it.  There can be no greater sense of self-satisfaction for the American leftist than to believe he is aligned with a vehicle of “change.” The raw power of that belief is what drives humanitarian leftists to revere such conduits of “change” as Mao Zedong and Che Guevara- despite the inhuman mass-murder of their political opposition.  And in 2008, we witnessed the practical manipulation of that desire when an inexperienced Barack Obama coupled the idea of “change” with the substantively meaningless abstraction of “hope” to orchestrate an emotional and successful campaign.

You see, for Obama’s constituents, “revolution is always good” because it “moves the Hegelian wheel of history forward.” (59) So the left has a vested interest in presenting its policy as a new and profound direction to “move America forward”- and its mantra of “change” clearly suggests the revolutionary innovation necessary to reach desired Utopian ends. 

But the truth is, any honest spectator must recognize that in America today, the left does not really offer anything new or profound.  They, like conservatives, are simply “trying to “conserve” the values of a previous revolution.” (59)  On the right, there are those who wish to conserve the values of the late 18^th century revolution that severely limited the federal government’s power.  On the left, there are those who wish to conserve the values of the socialistic revolution of the 20^th century that expanded the federal government’s power.

In his book, Jonah Goldberg refers to Woodrow Wilson as the “George Washington of modern liberalism.” (81)  His success could be attributed to the “activist ideological movement” supporting him, as could be said of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler’s later success.  “In Italy,” he says, “they were called Fascists.  In Germany, they were called National Socialists.  In America, we called them progressives.” (81)   These progressives were “openly and proudly opposed to individualism. Religion was a political tool, while politics was the true religion. [They] viewed the traditional system of constitutional checks and balances as an impediment to progress because such horse-and-buggy institutions were a barrier to their own ambitions.” (81) During his presidency, Woodrow Wilson jailed thousands upon thousands of political dissidents and compromised a multitude of civil liberties.  He launched an assault upon the press that “would have made Mussolini envious.” (Goldberg 80)  And as Hitler would later do, Wilson granted badges to over a hundred thousand thugs to enforce his bidding.

This heinous abuse of power (largely edited out of popular history by modern progressives) began the progressive reformation of the 20^th century.  This restructuring of American government included such statist and redistributive agendas as the heavily progressive income tax, the mandatory purchase of an ill-devised communal annuity called Social Security, and the increasingly prevalent role of our central government in all manner of industry, trade, banking- and even an absolute role in suppressing the individual’s right to religious expression. 

While these ideals might all be found conducive to the planks of Marx’s manifesto, it is inarguable that they are wholly antithetical to the philosophy of Paine.  And yet since Wilson’s presidency, these progressive ideals became part and parcel of the broad American status quo, becoming completely recognizable as “American” for many- and to some, more recognizable as “American” than the notions of individual liberty and limited government.

The left is not the “party of change” in America- it simply represents a different element of the status quo than the right. As progressive values have become as much a part of the status quo as conservative values, neither party clearly represents “change.” 

But as we anticipate that Barack Obama will continue touting himself as an instrument of “change” in the run-up to 2012, here’s an interesting question to consider: If we must assign the label of “change” to one of these factions, which of them would you say truly offers to “change” the contemporary political landscape of America?  The one that suggests that we continue on our established path of perpetually granting federal authority to administrate our lives and our wealth?  Or the one that suggests that we cease marching on the path that we have tread for a hundred years- by stripping the federal government of its established mandate to administrate our lives and our wealth?

It seems to me that not only does Barack Obama not represent change- he is even less representative of change than his opposition.

William Sullivan commonly contributes to American Thinker and has been featured on WorldNetDaily.  He blogs at: http://politicalpalaverblog.blogspot.com

Work Cited:

Goldberg, Jonah. Liberal Fascism. New York: Doubleday, 2008.

 A new report by The Washington Times shows that Medicare will lack the sufficient funds to pay out full benefits by 2024.  And where Social Security was not expected to experience such an event until 2037, a slow economic recovery has shortened that forecast by a year to 2036.  Knowing well that these have been considered “doomsday” events for the two leviathan entitlement programs, the government will look to continue demanding that taxpayers fund them, and will just run them in “permanent” yearly deficits. 

Despite the fact that progressive politicians have often bucked the calls to reform these programs by presenting them as not only moral imperatives but as complex abstractions that can only be understood by experts, it should be clear to anyone who can balance a checkbook why they are unsustainable.  One expert named William G. Shipman condensed it very clearly.  He describes “an interesting paradox; as countries become more wealthy, their social security systems become more poor.  The oddity is driven by the casual relationship between increasing wealth- and increasing life expectancy along with decreasing birth rates- all wrapped up around pay-as-you-go financing.” 

The dire formula is painfully easy to solve:

(Decreasing number of contributors) + (Increasing number of collectors) =

Perpetually increasing burden upon taxpayers                                          

Yet despite being ever more unsustainable, the government has chosen to accept inevitable failure and simply run these programs in “permanent” deficits until the taxpayer fountain dries up.  But as shareholders financially backing the American venture, shouldn’t we do something to stop such nonsense?

Imagine for a moment that Medicare is not a government entitlement program, but a business.  Then imagine that the CEO of that business announces his intention to run his company in “permanent deficits.”  What would be the reaction?  Shareholders would largely jettison their stock, the CEO would be replaced by order of the remaining shareholders, and the business model would be amended to again become productive. 

Government programs enjoy no such adaptability.  We can’t just stop paying, immediately cast Obama and Geithner out of their positions, and revamp entitlement programs to become more successful.  So we must wait to hold elections.  And to ensure that those elections yield a proper result, we have to first convince the indoctrinated American people that we need to amend what is obviously broken. 

Yet election after election, this has proven to be a difficult task.  Progressives cling to these entitlement programs with profound ideological resolve.  Where our founders and modern conservatives view the government as a “necessary evil” whose influence must be limited to preserve individual liberty, progressives have come to view government a sort of “necessary benevolence;” a means for the productive to subsidize the unproductive via wealth redistribution.  And no deluge of logic or reason can dislodge some of them from this unmistakably socialistic position.

But sensible Americans need to act- and fast.  The Social Security and Medicare constructs are aflame, and adding more taxpayer revenue will only fuel the fire and make it that much more difficult to douse.  We must demand that our representatives restore our individual property rights and seek responsible alternatives to counter the undeniable fiscal burden of these entitlement programs, rather than allowing the left to continue positioning it as a moral debate that has been twisted into a crisis by a fear-mongering right.

The aforementioned William G. Shipman, among others, has presented sound and constitutionally prudent ideas to Congress.  He suggests that we can pay benefits for existing collectors and proximally collecting retirees while establishing a personal investment alternative to government administrated retirement programs.  In describing this course of action, he relates:

If [Americans] could acquire this freedom they also would have personal property rights over their accumulated wealth. They have no such rights to Social Security benefits. They also could bequeath some or all of their retirement assets. They cannot under Social Security… They would no longer be tethered to the government. They would no longer be subject to politicians’ preferences over when they can retire, how much they can get, how their spouses are treated, how much they’re going to pay, and all of the rules and regulations that have evolved to the point of being incomprehensible. They would be free.

Now that sounds like a plan our founders would agree to: limiting the government’s right to an individual’s property and allowing liberty and freedom of choice to shape the destiny of American citizens.  We cannot let our lamentable lapses into socialistic enterprise lead us to our ruination, but rather, we must re-imbue our nation with the ideals of its founding.  That is the only way we can reverse or reform these destructive redistributive platforms.

Including ObamaCare.

William Sullivan commonly contributes to American Thinker, and blogs at http://politicalpalaverblog.blogspot.com

The fact that there’s a great rigmarole surrounding whether to release the photos of a dead Osama bin Laden is really quite perplexing.  Because in reality, it shouldn’t even be an issue.

Barack Obama, whose speech uplifted the nation nearly a week ago, has given a couple of reasons why he will not release the pictures. First and foremost, we hear the president saying that the pictures are gruesome, and that releasing them could incite violence from Islamic supporters.  Of course, one has to wonder if showing a dead bin Laden could make anything worse- something tells me that al Qaeda’s dormancy has more to do with lacking the ability to strike and less to do with how nice we’ve been to terrorists lately.  Nonetheless, Obama then goes on to explain that that releasing the photos won’t do anything to “prove” the death of bin Laden either, because conspiracy theorists will not relent. Here again, the logic doesn’t make a lot of sense.  The photos are evidence of bin Laden’s death, and providing evidence is the only way to prove anything.   

But while we’re considering whether the president’s reasons for withholding the photos are sound, something else escapes us. The photos are not his, so he shouldn’t get to decide what to do with them.

Imagine this scenario. A pharmaceutical company approaches a university science department, and asks it to accomplish a difficult task. Oh, I don’t know- it asks the university to find a catalyst that will expedite a particular chemical reaction. The pharmaceutical company pays them- quite well- to accomplish the task. After 10 years of diligent work and continued compensation, the university succeeds in their effort.

“We did it! We finally did it!” cries the university.

Elated, the pharmaceutical company says, “Fantastic! Now, can we have the proof?”

The university replies, “Proof? No, you don’t need that. We found the catalyst and sped up the reaction for you.”

“No, seriously,” says the pharmaceutical company. “Thanks for your work, but we paid for you to do this. You did not do us a favor. We enlisted your help and compensate you well. You owe us proof of the result.”

“No, I don’t think it would do any good to show it to you,” says the university, and the matter is put to rest.

This would be a ridiculous situation, to be sure, but Barack Obama choosing to withhold these photos is equally ridiculous.  It seems that we have lost our sense of who is in charge in this country. We enlist the assistance of our elected representatives to do our bidding, not to be patriarchal figures. We finance their efforts, including the efforts that brought down bin Laden.  The photos, therefore, belong to us- not the president.  We do not cross our fingers and ask to see something that belongs to us; we tell him to let us see it.

Personally, I don’t have any real burning desire to see the photos.  But apparently, according to some polls, over 80% of Americans would like to see them. I’m sure there are a myriad of reasons why, and I don’t care what those reasons are. What I care about are the families of those who perished in the September 11th attacks. And if they want to have a bit of closure or even a small sense of satisfaction from looking at those “gruesome” photos of a bloodied, evil murderer that caused indescribable suffering, then our president has no right to withhold them.

I feel like maybe that needs to be repeated, because too often we forget our supreme role in American government.  If the American people want the president to release the photos, the president has no right to withhold them.

William Sullivan blogs at: http://politicalpalaverblog@blogspot.com

The West has taken a curious approach to combat the precariously rising tide of fundamental Islam in Europe.  Rather than criticizing its ideology or the contemporary interpretations that have led to thousands of incidents of violence, Western European nations have decided instead to propose legislation to ban the wearing of face-coverings, namely the hijab and the burqa that are commonly worn by Muslim women.

Phyllis Chesler of Fox News particularly applauds France’s recent decision to ban veils.    “France is brave and right to ban the burqa.  There is no reason for a modern Western country to honor what is, essentially, a political statement and an ethnic and misogynistic custom.”  As evidence, she provides testimony of the emotional toll veils have taken upon some Muslim women, and she feels that disallowing women to cover their face would strike a “principled blow against the Talibanesque and barbaric subordination of Muslim women on Western soil.” 

Certainly, Dr. Chesler and I would agree in spades about condemning fundamental practitioners of Islam for their mistreatment of women, and I would certainly agree that a mandate to wear the hijab or burqa is sexist and oppressive by my Western values.  But of all the points of criticism one can find with Islam, why this?  Yes, the garments can be seen as a symbol of historical oppression.  But in a sense, so can the Egyptian ankh or the Nazi swastika or the Soviet hammer and sickle.  Should we ban the wearing of those symbols?  Even if we did, would we be any closer to stamping out slavery, anti-Semitism, or Communism?  What makes “face-coverings” so dangerously symbolic that we must ban them altogether?

Without a doubt, the veil symbolizes more than just this historical oppression and misogyny.  For many, the veil is meant to hide the wearer’s female form as a symbol of purity.  And that should not be altogether strange to us, considering that brides in Western civilization wear veils when married for that precise reason.  So we can assume that it is the Islamic aspect of veil-wearing that France has taken issue with, as some Muslim women wear these garments as an outward message to the world and to other Muslims, to show piousness and the absolute submission to the will of Allah.

There seems to be some controversy over whether Allah intended women to cover their faces at all, however.  Dr Chesler contends that many “educated Muslim religious (and secular) women- as well as ex-Muslims—insist that the Koran does not mandate that women cover their faces.”  So apparently, many Muslims agree that Allah does not mandate the hijab, and that only certain radical offshoots of Islam believe face-covering is a religious duty for women.  And since it’s not really part of their religion but rather a misogynist’s after-the-fact implement, the conclusion has been drawn that forbidding Muslim women to wear veils is not infringing upon their religious rights.

But does the fact that some sects of Islam reject the veil as a religious duty make it unreligious?  For example, the denomination of Christianity that I practice allows me to both drink alcohol and dance.  Many Christian scholars would agree that the Bible does not forbid these acts.  But what about the extremely devout Southern Baptist that doesn’t imbibe or let his children dance?  Is his family’s restraint unreligious?

Without question, it is religious, though not in what we consider to be common practice.  So let’s assume that face-veils are religious expression, albeit an unwanted expression for many young Muslims who, according to Dr. Chesler, would not wear them unless they were “coerced into doing so to please their families and avoid being beaten or even honor murdered.”  But is demanding that a family member do something uncomfortable to satisfy religious requirement a crime, or should we focus on those who are committing the actual crimes of beating and honor killing their children?

Imagine a practitioner of Sikhism.  Neither he nor his children are to cut their hair for they shall “suffer a terrible death and known as a ghost.”  So imagine that a Sikh man demands that this child of fifteen not cut her hair.  When his daughter defies him and comes home with her hair trimmed in the latest fashion, he beats her.  Is the crime in the father demanding that she stifle her expression of hairstyle per religious belief, or is the crime in beating his daughter?

The crime is in the beating of his daughter, and not in choosing to raise his child with uncomfortably long, probably unhygienic hair, even though most Westerners would disagree with the practice.

I concede that this does not constitute a perfect analogy.  The Sikh prohibition of cutting hair is applied upon both sexes, and I am certainly not trying to draw a parallel between the actual ideologies of Islam and Sikhism.  But the fact remains that even though it is uncomfortable to wear a rag over one’s face or to grow long hair under a turban, these are generally not acts that harm anyone and they are often personally and religiously significant.  And certainly, they should not be crimes in a society that professes to protect free religious expression.

So why is the West trying so damn hard to make wearing veils a crime?  I refuse to believe that there are not better ways to confront the dangers Europe faces.  In France alone, fundamental Islam has amassed a dossier of hate and intolerance a mile high, so why engage in the questionable act of banning an article of clothing that has religious significance?  Why doesn’t France amend its immigration policy that has allowed nine million Muslims to illegally enter the country, or stop the crippling welfare payments to this group?  Why not demand that all suburban Sharia communities immediately conform to French law under penalty of deportation or incarceration?  Why not arrest or deport all Muslim demonstrators who use aggressive Islamic rhetoric to advocate violence and the overthrow of the French government?  Why not prosecute all honor killings and hate crimes committed by Muslims to the fullest extent of the law?  All of these actions would be legal and prudent, and would be far more effective in safeguarding French culture from the threat of its unassimilated Muslims.

And more practically, consider that there are fourteen million Muslims in France. If we guess on the extremely conservative side and say that two percent of that population is comprised of fundamental extremists, that means that there are 280,000 legitimate, hidden threats to national security within France’s borders, many of which may be either in or around someone wearing a burqa.  Why, again, do we want to forcefully remove such self-imposed identifying marks?

William Sullivan blogs at: http://politicalpalaverblog.blogspot.com