In Norway, An Awakening

From Pajamas Media

In terms of values, 2010 was a red-letter year for Norway. Our innocence was destroyed. From one end of the country to the other, and in no uncertain terms, Islamists proclaimed their sinister message. Henceforth, only those in deep denial will insist that our freedom is not endangered. And only true innocents will fail to grasp that we are headed for a raging conflict about values. 

It all started at the same spot where Quisling and his followers held rallies in the 1930s. Around 3,000 people filled University Square in Oslo on February 12, 2010, many of them dressed just like Muhammed himself – a long coat, baggy, ankle-high pants, and a head covering, plus full beard. In the gravest of tones, they articulated their contempt for the society that has given them so many benefits. The threat of a new September 11 on Norwegian soil, issued by Mohyeldeen Mohammed (who had studied sharia in Medina), marked the end of one era and the beginning of a new one.

It continued with the growing influence of Islam Net at Oslo University College. Over the course of only two years, the group has managed to acquire over 1,200 paying members and is now the largest Muslim student organization in the country. The only positive thing that can be said about Islam Net is that it doesn’t hide its objective: a society living under the Koran and sharia. One of these students’ ideological heroes is Zakir Naik, who preaches hate and terror and is considered so extreme that he is not permitted to enter either Britain or Canada.

In 2010, Islamism also manifested itself in the Paris of the North. With Saudi sponsorship to the tune of 20 million kroner, a Muslim congregation called Alnor planned to build a gigantic mosque in Tromsø. The Tromsø newspaper Nordlys (Northern Lights) shone an intense spotlight on the project and uncovered the fact that one of Alnor’s front men, who is the husband of Alnor’s leader, convert Sandra Maryam Moe, had taken part in terrorist training with the radical organization Jemaah Islamiah, which is considered to be responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings.

In collaboration with Islam Net, Alnor also arranged a nationwide “revival tour” last summer. The revivalists took their message as far north as the North Cape.

And as if all this weren’t enough, Norwegian state television, NRK, revealed that the despots in Teheran are sending imams to Norway to prepare Norwegian Muslims to commit terrorist acts on Norwegian soil.
But it isn’t terror that is the greatest threat to our society. The terrorists are few in number. The Islamists aren’t. On the contrary, they’re a large and growing group who seek nothing less than to transform our society’s values. The organized Islamists are winning ground especially among younger people. Three studies are worth mentioning here. Among 15-year-old German Muslims, 40 percent believe that Islam is more important than democracy, while 37 percent want sharia law to apply to European Muslims.

In Britain, 28 percent of all Muslims want the British Isles to be ruled by sharia. Here’s the really serious part: while “only” 17 percent of those over 55 want sharia, no fewer than 37 percent of British Muslims aged 16–24 embrace it. And now for the scariest statistic of all, which brings us back to Islam Net at Oslo University College: 40 percent of Muslim university students in Britain are “strong or relatively strong” in their support for a sharia-run Britain. One in three believes it is legitimate to kill in the name of Islam.

For all this, however, Norway’s political leaders remain stuck in the assumption that education and employment lead to integration. The truth is the opposite: it’s mostly among the well-educated that you can find radical views. Yes, education is all well and good, but it’s no guarantor of integration — a somber fact to have to admit. Well educated Muslims are often very aware of their distinct Muslim identity, and work actively to further separate their fellow Muslims from mainstream society and its values.

I believe that this decade will be decisive for Norway’s future — and for that of Europe generally. The question is: will we manage to stand up to the open Islamization and force it into retreat, or will the Islamization of Europe continue?

If we manage to defeat Islamism, we will need, above all, political leaders who understand the forces that have put down deep roots in our society, who openly acknowledge what is going on, and who take action to stop it. We must lead with an assimilation policy that leaves no doubt as to which of our values are non-negotiable: sexual equality, equality of all individuals regardless of ethnic, religious, social, tribal, clan, or caste background, religious freedom (including the right to renounce a religion), and the freedom that is the very foundation of our free society, namely freedom of expression. Everyone, including members of offbeat Christian sects, should be expected to assimilate into these values.

A great many Persians who fled from despotism under Ayatollah Khomeini are role models in this regard. They fled tyranny and were assimilated into our society’s values when they came here. They have become full-fledged members of mainstream Norwegian culture and full participants in our society, even as they remain highly conscious of their Persian identity and usually celebrate Persian New Year.

Our government is steered by multiculturalism, an ideology that is now rejected by major European politicians such as Angela Merkel. This ideology has failed and has created conditions favorable to Islamization. What is it that holds a nation together? What is it that made possible the nation established in our Constitution at Eidsvoll in 1814? Our leaders seem to have forgotten the answer to these questions; namely, that modern Norway was established by a single people with a common culture rooted in Christianity, a people who were able to unite around a shared set of beliefs.

A community based in mutual trust — on belonging. This is what we’re losing.The greater the number of Muslims who turn their back on Norway, the more intense the division and mistrust that will arise between groups.

Aftenposten’s Ingunn Økland recently asked a timely question: how many faceless women will have to appear in public before the politicians set them free? Why is it that a precautionary principle governs our environmental policy but not our policy relating to integration and democratic values?

We need politicians who show genuine love and reverence for Norway’s core values, and who act upon that love and reverence by instituting the following measures:

• Identify the ideological foundations of Muslim religious communities. Those that are also political should be treated politically and should thus not receive government support. (In Norway, religious institutions are funded by the state.) Today, Norwegian taxpayers are financing institutions that are working intensely to liquidate democracy and replace it with sharia. Macabre, but undeniably true.

• Reject special demands — they’re always indulged at the cost of freedom, especially the freedom of the most vulnerable.

• Let all grade-school girls’ hair flow freely. The Islamists will go berserk.

• Get rid of the “mobile prisons” — that is to say, the burka and niqab.

• Halt all integration support to religious and ethnic groups and channel the money instead into shared social activities — especially those designed for children.

• Stop engaging mosques in well-meant “dialogue.” Muslims are, above all, human beings, not religious objects.

Greco-Roman civilization, wrote the historian Arnold J. Toynbee, “died not by murder, but by suicide.”If we want to prevent the demise of Western civilization, we need leaders who will steer us away from the path to self-destruction and toward a future of equality and liberty for all.

This article, translated from the Norwegian by Bruce Bawer, appeared originally in Aftenposten.

A Flashback To the "Civility" of the 1980's

From "No Left Turns"

Posted in Politics by Steven Hayward

There's something more than a little ironic to see Chris Matthews, given his neck-bulging, vein-popping anger displayed every night on MSNBC, in today's Washington Post looking back with nostalgia on the wonderful comity between Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s.  There's something to this, of course; Reagan could get along with anyone if they gave him a chance.  Just ask Gorbachev; first he smiled at Reagan, and before you knew it, his country went poof.

Matthews seems to forget or gloss over the fact that the "tone" of public discourse in the 1980s was just as bad as today.  For example, here's a public comment from O'Neill about Reagan that seems not to be in Matthews's archive: 

"The evil is in the White House at the present time.  And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He's cold.  He's mean. He's got ice water for blood."

That's just a warm up. Democratic Congressman William Clay of Missouri charged that Reagan was "trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf."  Who can forget the desperate Jimmy Carter charging that Reagan was engaging in "stirrings of hate" in the 1980s campaign.  Los Angeles Times cartoonist Paul Conrad drew a panel depicting Reagan plotting a fascist putsch in a darkened Munich beer hall.   Harry Stein (nowadays a conservative convert) wrote in Esquire that the voters who supported Reagan were like the "good Germans" in "Hitler's Germany."  In The Nation, Alan Wolfe wrote: 

"[T]he United States has embarked on a course so deeply reactionary, so negative and mean-spirited, so chauvinistic and self-deceptive that our times may soon rival the McCarthy era." 

As Reagan's 100^th birthday approaches next month, don't be taken in by all the liberals who now say what a wonderful guy he was or how much more civil things were then compared to that dreadful woman from the northern territories today.  Funny how liberals always seem to discern the virtues of conservatives only after they're dead and gone.

Ed Koch On Sarah Palin

From Real Clear Politics.com

January 18, 2011

Palin Holds High Ground Over Harsh and Unfair Critics

By Ed Koch
As I see it, in the current battle for public opinion Sarah Palin has defeated her harsh and unfair critics.
After the January 8 shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others in Tucson, Arizona, some television talking heads and members of the blogosphere denounced her and held her in part responsible for creating a climate of hatred that resulted in the mass attacks.

An example is Joe Scarborough and his crew on the "Morning Joe" show, which I watch and generally enjoy every morning at 6:30 a.m. when I rise to start the day. Because Palin designated Congresswoman Giffords and others for defeat in the November elections by the use of crosshairs on website maps of the Congressional districts, they blamed Palin for creating an atmosphere that caused Jared Loughner (whom everyone now recognizes as being mentally disturbed) to embark on the shooting and killing spree.

Then reason set in, led by President Obama in his now famous and widely-lauded speech in Tucson bringing the country together. Most commentators did an about-face, recognizing that the lack of civility in both speech and actions by politicians, particularly in Washington, were not the cause of the shootings. A friend of the shooter said he had no interest in politics or talk radio. Insanity was the cause of his vicious acts, not political rhetoric.

While the charge of responsibility against Palin was dropped, the Scarborough crew continued to assail her for defending herself on her website where she stated that she had been the subject of a blood libel. Her critics were incensed that she should use the term "blood libel." That was the description given by Jews to the charge of Christian clergy who falsely accused Jews of killing Christian children in order to make matzos (unleavened bread) during the Passover holiday. That libelous accusation was intended by those using it to cause pogroms that killed and injured thousands of Jews. It started in the early centuries A.D. and continues to date, according to Wikipedia. That same charge - blood libel - is now repeated by the media in Arab countries to stir up the anger of the Arab street against the Jews in Israel. The libel continues to do damage.

Today the phrase "blood libel" can be used to describe any monstrous defamation against any person, Jew or non-Jew. It was used by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when he was falsely accused of permitting the Lebanese Christian militia to kill hundreds of defenseless and innocent Muslim men, women and children in Lebanese refugee camps. The killings were monstrous and indefensible revenge for earlier killings by Muslims of innocent Christian civilians.

Time Magazine published a story implying that Sharon was directly responsible for the massacres. He sued the magazine. At trial it was determined that the magazine story included false allegations, but since Sharon was a public figure, he received no monetary damages.

How dare Sarah Palin, cried the commentators, use that phrase to describe the criticism of her by those who blamed her for creating the atmosphere that set Loughner off in his murderous madness. Some took the position that it proved their ongoing charges that she is not an intelligent person and probably did not know what the phrase meant historically. In my opinion, she was right to denounce her critics and use blood libel to describe the unfair criticism that she had been subject to.

Here are excerpts from her statement:

"Like millions of Americans I learned of the tragic events in Arizona on Saturday, and my heart broke for the innocent victims. No words can fill the hole left by the death of an innocent, but we do mourn for the victims' families as we express our sympathy." "Like many, I've spent the past few days reflecting on what happened and praying for guidance. After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event."
"Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions. And after the election, we shake hands and get back to work, and often both sides find common ground back in D.C. and elsewhere. If you don't like a person's vision for the country, you're free to debate that vision. If you don't like their ideas, you're free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible."
"As I said while campaigning for others last March in Arizona during a very heated primary race, ‘We know violence isn't the answer. When we take up our arms, we're talking about our vote.' Yes, our debates are full of passion, but we settle our political differences respectfully at the ballot box - as we did just two months ago, and as our Republic enables us to do again in the next election, and the next. That's who we are as Americans and how we were meant to be. Public discourse and debate isn't a sign of crisis, but of our enduring strength. It is part of why America is exceptional."

Why do I defend Palin in this case? I don't agree with her political philosophy: She is an arch conservative. I am a liberal with sanity. I know that I am setting myself up for attack when I ask, why did Emile Zola defend Dreyfus? Palin is no Dreyfus and I am certainly no Zola. But all of us have an obligation, particularly those in politics and public office, to denounce, when we can, the perpetrators of horrendous libels and stand up for those falsely charged. We should denounce unfair, false and wicked charges not only when they are made against ourselves, our friends or our political party but against those with whom we disagree. If we are to truly change the poisonous political atmosphere that we all complain of, including those who create it, we should speak up for fairness when we can.

In the 2008 presidential race when Sarah Palin's name was first offered to the public by John McCain as his running mate, I said at the time that she "scared the hell out of me." My reference was to the content of her remarks, not to her power to persuade voters.

It was McCain who lost the presidential election, not Palin. Since that time she has established that she has enormous power to persuade people. A self-made woman who rose from PTA mother to Governor of Alaska, she is one of the few speakers in public life who can fill a stadium. Her books are enormous successes. Her television program about Alaska has been a critical and economic success. When Sarah Palin addresses audiences, they rise to their feet in support and applause. She is without question a major leader of the far right faction in the Republican Party and its ally the Tea Party.

I repeat my earlier comment that she "scares the hell out of me." Nevertheless, she is entitled to fair and respectful treatment. The fools in politics today in both parties are those who think she is dumb. I've never met her, but I've always thought that she is highly intelligent but not knowledgeable in many areas and politically uninformed. I don't believe she will run for president in 2012 or that she would be elected if she did. But I do believe she is equal in ability to many of those in the Republican Party seeking that office.

Many women understand what she has done for their cause. She will not be silenced nor will she leave the heavy lifts to the men in her Party. She will not be falsely charged, remain silent, and look for others - men - to defend her. She is plucky and unafraid.

While I disagree with her and I am prepared to oppose her politically, in the spirit of longed-for civility I say, Ms. Palin you are in a certain sense an example of the American dream: You have the courage to stand up and present your vision of America to its people. Your strength and lack of fear make America stronger and are examples to be emulated by girls and boys, men and women who are themselves afraid to speak up. You provide the example that they need for self-assurance.

Ed Koch is the former Mayor of New York City.

Sargent Shriver dies at 95

From the Boston Herald

BETHESDA, Md. — R. Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy in-law whose career included directing the Peace Corps, fighting the War on Poverty and, less successfully, running for office, died Tuesday. He was 95.
Shriver, who announced in 2003 that he had Alzheimer’s disease, had been hospitalized for several days. The family said he died surrounded by those he loved.

His death came less than two years after his wife, Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who died Aug. 11, 2009, at age 88. The Kennedy family suffered a second blow that same month when Sen. Edward Kennedy died.

Speaking outside Suburban Hospital in Maryland, Anthony Kennedy Shriver, said his father was "with my mom now," and called his parents’ marriage a great love story.

At Eunice Shriver’s memorial service, their daughter Maria Shriver said her father let her mother "rip and he let her roar, and he loved everything about her." He attended in a wheelchair.

The handsome Shriver was often known first as an in-law — brother-in-law of President John F. Kennedy and, late in life, father-in-law of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But his achievements were historic in their own right and changed millions of lives: the Peace Corps’ first director and the leader of President Lyndon Johnson’s "War on Poverty," out of which came such programs as Head Start and Legal Services.

President Barack Obama called Shriver "one of the brightest lights of the greatest generation."

"Over the course of his long and distinguished career, Sarge came to embody the idea of public service," Obama said in a statement.

Within the family, Shriver was sometimes relied upon for the hardest tasks. When Jacqueline Kennedy needed the funeral arranged for her assassinated husband, she asked her brother-in-law.

"He was a man of giant love, energy, enthusiasm, and commitment," the Shriver family said in a statement. "He lived to make the world a more joyful, faithful, and compassionate place. He centered everything on his faith and his family. He worked on stages both large and small but in the end, he will be best known for his love of others. "

In public, Shriver spoke warmly of his famous in-laws, but the private relationship was often tense. As noted in Scott Stossel’s "Sarge," an authorized 2004 biography, he was a faithful man amid a clan of womanizers, a sometimes giddy idealist labeled "the house Communist" by the family. His willingness to work for Johnson was seen as betrayal by some family members.

The Kennedys granted him power, but also withheld it. He had considered running for governor of Illinois in 1960, only to be told the family needed his help for John Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Hubert Humphrey considered him for running mate in the 1968 election, but resistance from the Kennedys helped persuade Humphrey to change his mind.

When Shriver finally became a candidate, the results were disastrous: He was George McGovern’s running mate in the 1972 election, but the Democrats lost in a landslide to President Richard M. Nixon.
Four years later, Shriver’s presidential campaign ended quickly, overrun by a then-little-known Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter.

Although known for his Kennedy connections, Shriver, born in 1915, came from a prominent old Maryland family. His father was a stockbroker, but he lost most of his money in the crash of 1929.

Shriver went on a scholarship to Yale, then went on to Yale Law School. He served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II.

Returning home, he became an assistant editor at Newsweek magazine. About this time, too, he met Eunice Kennedy and was immediately taken by her. They married in 1953 in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Her father, Joseph P. Kennedy, hired him to manage the Kennedy-owned Merchandise Mart in Chicago. He was a big success on the job and in Chicago in general — and even was elected head of the school board in 1955.

Shriver had fought for integration in Chicago and helped persuade John F. Kennedy to make a crucial decision in the 1960 campaign despite other staffers’ fears of a white backlash: When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in Georgia that fall, Kennedy phoned King’s wife and offered support. His gesture was deeply appreciated by King’s family and brought the candidate crucial support.

Soon after taking office, Kennedy named Shriver to fulfill a campaign promise to start the Peace Corps. Although it was belittled by some as a "kiddie corps," Shriver quickly built the agency into an international institution.

After Kennedy’s assassination, in 1963, Johnson called upon Shriver to run another program which then existed only as a high-minded concept: the War on Poverty.

Shriver’s efforts demonstrated both the reach and frustrations of government programs: Head Start remains respected for offering early education for poor children, and Legal Services gave the poor an opportunity for better representation in court.

But other Shriver initiatives suffered from bureaucracy, feuds with local officials and a struggle for funds as Johnson devoted more and more money to the Vietnam War.

In early 1968, with Shriver rumored to be on the verge of quitting, Johnson offered him the ambassadorship to France. He accepted it even though some family members wanted Shriver to support Sen. Robert Kennedy’s presidential candidacy instead.

In Paris, Shriver won many French fans, but he left the post for a job in private business not long after Nixon took office in 1969.

He campaigned for congressional Democrats in 1970, and two years later McGovern drafted him to replace Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his running-mate. Eagleton dropped out because of questions about his medical history.

Shriver was good humored that he had been McGovern’s seventh pick for the job — after brother-in-law Ted Kennedy, among others. He named his campaign plane "Lucky 7."

In September 1975, Shriver joined an already crowded race for the 1976 Democratic nomination. But he dropped out in March 1976 after poor showings in the early primaries and never again sought office. He instead worked with Special Olympics and other causes.

In 1994, Shriver received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, from President Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, daughter Maria Shriver gained fame as an NBC newswoman and, since 2003, first lady of California. The Shrivers also had four sons — Robert, Timothy, Mark and Paul Anthony. Mark Shriver was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1995 and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2002. They also had 19 grandchildren.

Gates of Vienna: Praying for the Destruction of America

Gates of Vienna: Praying for the Destruction of America: "I reported several years ago in this space on Suhail Khan and the penetration of certain parts of the American conservative movement — inclu..."

Seymour Hersh Lunacy

From the Washington Examiner

By: Mark Hemingway 01/18/11 2:26 PM

Over the course of his long career as an investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh has broken the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib scandals. These two big stories that have given him quite a bit of institutional credibility. But oddly, the mainstream journalistic establishment seems to overlook the fact that he's essentially a dishonest conspiracy monger. (I'll commend to you two terrific pieces by Reason's Michael Moynihan and National Review's John Miller that address Hersh's utter disregard for journalistic standards in more detail.)
In any event, Foreign Policy reports on Hersh's latest outrageous smear:

He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta."

Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to "defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering," according to its website.

"Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They seem themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."

"They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.”"

Crusader coins? The Knights of Malta are a threat to the military? What's next? Is Hersh going to tell us the Elks Club is behind Wikileaks? And I know that the Da Vinci Code is a regrettably popular novel, but in real life Opus Dei isn't exactly sinister.
Jonah Goldberg adds, "Oh and here’s the depressing part. He gave this speech in Qatar. So you can be sure the Arab press will pick it up and take it seriously."