Trumped Up Scandal

Well, I must say I feel like a fool. I actually thought that the IRS targeting Tea Party and conservative organizations was an example of the improper use of a government agency to intimidate and harass people with dissenting viewpoints. Lucky for me, I read Noam Scheiber‘s piece in the New Republic. Mr. Scheiber has explained everything and straightened me out.

Democrats can’t say it; Barack Obama can’t say it; and the IRS certainly can’t say it, so here goes: The only real sin the IRS committed in its ostensible targeting of conservatives is the sin of political incorrectness—that is, of not pretending it needed to vet all the new groups that wanted tax-exempt status, even though it mostly just needed to vet right-wing groups.

How do we know this? Because, for one thing, the people submitting the questionable applications were overwhelmingly right-wingers. As others have pointed out, the early Obama era was a boom time for conservative activists, who were forming groups faster than NBC burns through “Today Show” hosts. This coincided with a series of court rulings that made it possible for these groups to claim tax-exempt status without disclosing their donors under section 501c4 of the tax code.1 As a result, there were suddenly way more non-disclosing political groups trying to claim tax-exempt status than there ever had been, and the vast majority were right-leaning. No surprise, then, that the IRS would focus on whether these groups actually qualified for that status—something that was questionable since the law said their primary activity needed to be “social welfare,” not politicking.

But, in fact, the IRS’s great conservative crackdown is even more innocent than that. It turns out that the applications the conservative groups submitted to the IRS—the ones the agency subsequently combed over, provoking nonstop howling—were unnecessary. The IRS doesn’t require so-called 501c4 organizations to apply for tax-exempt status. If anyone wants to start a social welfare group, they can just do it, then submit the corresponding tax return (form 990) at the end of the year. To be sure, the IRS certainly allows groups to apply for tax-exempt status if they want to make their status official. But the application is completely voluntary, making it a strange basis for an alleged witch hunt.

So why would so many Tea Party groups subject themselves to a lengthy and needless application process? Mostly it had to do with anxiety—the fear that they could run afoul of the law once they started raising and spending money. “Our business experience was that we had to pay taxes once there was money coming through here,” says Tom Zawistowski, the recent president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, which tangled with the IRS over its tax status. “We felt we were under a microscope. … We were on pins and needles at all times.” In other words, the groups submitted their applications because they perceived themselves to be persecuted, not because they actually were.

So you see. There were just so many shady Tea Party groups forming that of course the IRS had to be very careful vetting all the applications. Oh but wait. According to USA Today, liberal groups had very little trouble getting tax exempt status.

In the 27 months that the Internal Revenue Service put a hold on all Tea Party applications for non-profit status, it approved applications from similar liberal groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with obviously liberal names were approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like “Progress” or “Progressive,” these groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups.

The controversial, 3-year-old strategy to manage the increasing number of political groups seeking tax-exempt status came under fire Tuesday. The agency’s own inspector general blamed IRS leadership for “ineffective management.”

The Justice Department wants to know if that was more than just mismanagement. Calling the IRS’ actions “outrageous and unacceptable,” Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that he has asked the FBI to investigate. “We’re examining the facts to see if there were any criminal violations,” he said.

A federal official who has been briefed on the matter said the investigation could focus on potential violations of civil rights law, including targeting groups based on political affiliation and infringing free speech. The official, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said authorities could consider possible violations of the Hatch Act, which restricts political activities of government workers.

There goes that narrative.

Mr. Scheiber wonders why the Tea Party organizations might be anxious to make sure all their paperwork was in order. For many organizers of the Tea Party, this was their first actual experience with political activism. Despite the liberal talking point that the Tea Party is Astroturf, most Tea Partiers are not the sort of professional protesters found in Soros funded Left wing political pressure groups. Quite a few of these people owned their own businesses and most were used to the idea of obeying the laws and regulations they were subject to. Also, Tea Party activists knew full well that liberal politicians from the President on down and the mainstream media hated them. The Tea Party has been called racist, bigoted, fascist, Nazis, and worse by tolerant, compassionate liberals.No slander was too outrageous to fabricate about the Tea Party. They had good reason to want to make sure everything was in order.

Fine—there’s no law against neurosis. But, to borrow a thought experiment from my colleague Alec MacGillis, consider all this from the perspective of the IRS’s Cincinnati office, which handles tax-exempt groups. You’re minding your own business in 2009 when you start to receive dozens of applications from right-leaning groups, applications you didn’t solicit and don’t require. You peruse a few of the applications and it looks like many of the groups, while claiming to be “social welfare” organizations, have an overtly political purpose, like backing candidates with specific ideological agendas. Suffice it to say, you don’t need an inquisitorial mind to decide the applications deserve careful vetting. One Tea Party activist from Waco, Texas, has complained that an IRS official told her he was “sitting on a stack of tea party applications and they were awaiting word from higher-ups as to how to process them.” The quote is intended to sound nefarious—an outtake from some vast left-wing conspiracy—but it’s actually perfectly straight-forward: The IRS was unexpectedly flooded by dodgy 501c4 applications and was at a loss over how to manage them.

Why did they have to wait for word from higher up? Did they not have a standardized procedure for processing 501c (4) applications? Why are conservative applicants somehow more dodgy than liberal ones. According to USA Today, the vetting only applied to groups with names like “Tea Party”.

Let’s try a thought experiment of our own. Suppose a Republican administration were caught giving extra attention to liberal groups that were active in protesting against the President’s policies. Would Noam Scheiber have such a blase attitude about the matter? I think it is more likely that every liberal columnist and pundit in the country would be screaming bloody murder.

So the crime here had nothing to do with “targeting” conservatives. The targeting was effectively done by the conservative groups themselves, when they filed their gratuitous applications. The crime, such as it is, was twofold. First, in the course of legitimately vetting questionable applications, the IRS appears to have been more intrusive than justified, asking for information about donors whose privacy it should have respected. This is unfortunate and intolerable, but not quite a threat to democracy.

Second, the IRS was tone deaf to how its scrutiny would look to the people being scrutinized, given that they all subscribed to the same worldview, and that they were already nursing a healthy persecution complex. Which is to say, the IRS didn’t go about its otherwise legitimate vetting in a very politically-correct way. “It’s part of their job to look for organizations that may be more likely to have too much campaign intervention,” a law professor named Ellen Aprill told The Washington Post. “But it is important to try to make these criteria as politically neutral as possible.”

Again, according to USA Today, the crime had everything to do with targeting conservatives. The people who work for the IRS must have a good idea of the anxiety even a routine inquiry produces in most Americans. Getting official letters demanding to know details about donors, books read, personal lives of board members and their families must be a terrifying experience, even for people who do not have an anti-government world view. The people behind all this were counting on that.

The article goes on about profiling and implies that conservatives are hypocrites for supporting profiling Muslims as potential terrorists while opposing the idea of conservative groups being profiled as engaging in fraud for requesting tax exempt status. There are some interesting reader comments, though. I will omit the names of the people who made the comments.

Considering how right-wing conservatives beginning with Newt Gingrich have targeted the IRS for crippling budget cuts and rigamarole that prevent it from effectively auditing tax returns (“… the average person [has] a one-in-200 chance of an audit, which is down from one-in-112 in 1999, and one-in-60 in 1996, according to new data from the IRS”) I would say this sounds like a case of turnabout-is-fair-play.

I am down on democracy these days because the right wing has abandoned its responsibility to govern. Very well then: if they will not govern, they will damn well be ruled.

Don’t you think an organization named after a famous tax refusal protest MIGHT deserve a little extra scrutiny, especially if they are claiming to be a “social welfare” organization? As far as I know, the members of the Boston Tea Party didn’t claim they were the Boston United Way.

So, these people believe that a proper function of government is to punish people who are against high taxes. Interesting. Also, why do we right wingers have to choose between being rulers or being ruled. Personally, I don’t want to rule anyone. I want to be left alone.

 

Related articles

• Auditing the Tea Party (davidscommonplacebook.wordpress.com)
• ACLJ Calls on IRS to Approve Tax-Exempt Status for 10 Tea Party Groups (cnsnews.com)
• IRS approved liberal groups while Tea Party in limbo (m.usatoday.com)
• Notes on a Trumped Up Scandal (newrepublic.com)
• SHOCK: NO TEA PARTY GROUPS WERE APPROVED BY IRS FOR TAX-EXEMPT STATUS FOR 2 YEARS AND 3 MONTHS – Democrat Groups Approved Regularly (patdollard.com)
• IRS Accused of Targeting Tea Party Groups Seeks Tax-Exempt Status (fox40.com)
• IRS approved liberal groups while Tea Party in limbo (usatoday.com)

 

What Hawking is Supporting

By participating in an academic boycott of Israel in support of the Palestinians, Stephen Hawking is sending an implied message of support to the Palestinian leadership, which in the Gaza Strip is composed of the terrorist group Hamas. It might be worthwhile for Professor Hawking to learn more about what sort of people he is siding with. First up is a report from Israel National News.

Hamas is lobbying for a stricter enforcement of Islamic law in Gaza – including provisions to cut off the hands of thieves, and execution of individuals who cheat on their spouses. A report in the Al-Hayat daily newspaper said that Hamas expects the new regulations to take effect in the coming months, after introduction of the legislation in the PA parliament.

Existing laws mete out the death penalty to individuals convicted of murder, spying, homosexuality, or selling land to Jews. The new legislation will expand the crimes for which individuals can be executed to include disloyalty to a spouse – having sexual relations outside the context of marriage. Other provisions of the law include chopping off the right hand of a thief (along with at least a seven year jail sentence), and lashes for a large number of “crimes,” including drinking alcoholic beverages and gambling. All the punishments are derived from sharia, Islamic law.

In addition, girls age 15 will be able to decide to marry on their own, without requiring permission from their parents. Individuals age ten and over are considered adults under the new legislation, and are subject to the full force of the law for offenses.

Hamas has a large majority in the PA parliament, with 74 of the 134 parliamentarians belonging to the Islamist party. Many of them belong to the fundamentalist Salafist movement, and they are behind the push for the new laws. While there is opposition in Hamas to the passage of the legislation at this point, it is expected to easily pass. Once it does, the laws will be extant in both Gaza and Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria, but it is not clear if they will be enforced there.

Selling land to Jews merits the death penalty. Who is the violator of human rights here? Next up is a report from ABC News.

A prominent Islamic scholar making a landmark visit to the Gaza Strip declared Thursday that Israel has no right to exist and voiced his support for rocket fire on Israel, giving a boost of legitimacy to the militant Islamist Hamas rulers of the Palestinian territory.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi is the latest of a few high profile figures visit Gaza, boosting the Hamas effort to break its international isolation. The U.S., EU and Israel brand Hamas a terror group, while the rival Fatah, which rules in the West Bank, enjoys Western backing.

Al-Qaradawi issued the strongest anti-Israel declarations of any of the visitors to date.

“This land has never once been a Jewish land. Palestine is for the Arab Islamic nation,” said al-Qaradawi, a Qatar-based cleric made famous by his popular TV show and widely respected in the Muslim world.

“The rockets made in Gaza are more powerful than the (Israeli) occupation’s rockets,” he added.

Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 following several days of fighting against the rival Palestinian faction Fatah. Since then, Hamas militants have launched thousands of rockets into Israeli towns. Israel carried out two punishing military offensives, one in the winter of 2008-2009 and another late last year which killed the chief of the Hamas military wing.

Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, but imposes a maritime blockade and controls the flow of goods coming from Israel into the territory. Gaza’s Hamas rulers and their backers still refer to Israel as “the occupation,” referring to Israel’s control of the West Bank and reflecting a belief that the presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East is an illegitimate occupation.

The Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which governs in the West Bank, condemned al-Qaradawi’s visit, saying his presence is cementing the rift between the two Palestinian factions.

Fatah and Hamas have tried to reconcile their differences in recent years but failed. Western leaders have demanded that a unified Fatah-Hamas government must recognize Israel and agree to enter peace negotiations. Hamas has refused.

How do you make peace with people who will not concede you have a right to exist? Please note that while the Fatah faction is not so openly calling for the destruction of Israel, that is their goal too. The difference between the two factions is that the leadership of Fatah has enough sense to downplay their genocidal ambitions, at least before Western audiences.

And finally here is a report from Palestinian Media Watch.

wo senior Palestinian Authority officials praised the use of violence against Israel last week.

Senior PA official Sultan Abu Al-Einein expressed his open support for the murderer who killed Evyatar Borovsky, an Israeli who was stabbed to death by Palestinian terrorist Salam Al-Zaghal while he was waiting for a ride.

Abu Al-Einein, who was until recently an advisor holding the rank of minister to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and who was subsequently appointed Head of the Palestinian Council for NGO Affairs by Abbas, honored the murderer:

“We salute the heroic fighter, the self-sacrificing Salam Al-Zaghal.”

Abu Al-Einein also praised the murderer and his killing with the words:

“He insisted on defending his honor, so he went against the settler and killed him. Blessings to the breast that nursed Salam Al-Zaghal.”

The audience applauded and whistled at this statement.

Last week, Palestinian Media Watch reported that only hours after the murder, the administrator of Fatah’s official Facebook page glorified Al-Zaghal as a “hero.”

Another senior PA official, Jibril Rajoub, also praised the use of violence against Israel. During an interview on a Lebanese TV channel, the host referred to “the negotiations game” with Israel, and Rajoub expressed the view that negotiations are held because the Palestinians lack military strength:

“I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.”

Jibril Rajoub is the Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee and Chairman of the PA Olympic Committee. The interview was broadcast on the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV channel and also published on Rajoub’s Facebook page on May 2, 2013.

Senior PA officials often state that avoiding violent confrontation or war with Israel is only temporarily, due to the PA’s inability to take on such a conflict. They claim that negotiations with Israel are the right course of action for now, because conditions are not right for violence.

Mahmoud Abbas himself has also said on several occasions that if the Arab nations would begin a war against Israel, “Palestine” would join them.

The following is an excerpt of senior PA official Sultan Abu Al-Einein’s interview, in which he praises a murderer as a “heroic fighter”:

“Praise Allah who honored us and designated us to be in Ribat (religious war defending or liberating “Islamic” land) until Judgment Day, until the dawn of freedom and national independence will shine [on us]… On behalf of all those who fell as Martyrs or were wounded, we salute the heroic fighter, the self-sacrificing Salam Al-Zaghal from the Tulkarem District, whose honor and pride would not let him remain silent, consenting to the settlers’ aggression against him in his vehicle. He insisted on defending his honor, so he went against the settler and killed him. Blessings to the breast that nursed Salam Al-Zaghal.”

[Palestine Live TV, May 2, 2013]

The following is the translation of senior PA official Jibril Rajoub’s interview, in which he swears that the PA would use nuclear weapons against Israel, if it possessed them:

Lebanese TV host: “The American [John Kerry] came to the PA. They are talking about reviving negotiations, about getting back to the table with the Israelis… Will you go back to the negotiations game?”
Jibril Rajoub: “There is no going back to negotiations unless the source of authority is the international resolutions, with a time frame and with the freezing of all unilateral Israeli steps: Jerusalem, the fence, settlements and prisoners.”
Host: “You’ve heard Israel’s refusal.”
Jibril Rajoub: “That doesn’t matter. Listen. We as yet don’t have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.”

It surely must be obvious to any disinterested observer that the Palestinians do not want peace with Israel. The only way that they will agree to peace with Israel is if they are convinced that they cannot win by violent means. When well meaning but idiotic Westerners support them and condemn Israel, the Palestinians are encouraged to believe that they will prevail. The Palestinians will never bargain in good faith if they think they can destroy Israel. By supporting an academic boycott of Israel, Stephen Hawking is encouraging terrorists to keep up their campaign of terror and is costing the lives of people on both sides of the struggle.

All of the above links came courtesy of Jihad Watch, a website Stephen Hawking ought to read. There is a lot more there.

 

Related articles

• Palestinian leaders tell their own people what they really mean (legalinsurrection.com)
• PA Official: ‘If We Had Nuke, We’d Have Used It This Morning’ (israelnationalnews.com)
• Islamic cleric in Gaza rejects Israel’s existence (stripes.com)
• Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel in solidarity with Palestinians (rawstory.com)
• New PA Laws: Cutting Off Thieves’ Hands, Lashes for Drinking (iamnotashamedofthegospelofchrist.com)
• Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel (worldbulletin.net)
• Furore deepens over Stephen Hawking’s Israel boycott (guardian.co.uk)

Unicorns

I got another e-mail from Organizing for Action.

David –

If I said to you: “Unicorns exist, I totally just saw one galloping down the street,” most likely you’d give me a sad look and get on with your day.

But what if House Speaker Boehner and the chairman of the House Science Committee said they didn’t know if the science behind climate change was real. (Yeah. That actually happened.)

Now obviously, it doesn’t matter if I just make stuff up about unicorns. But it matters, and it matters a whole lot, that so many of our elected officials in Washington who represent us are denying science and using that denial to refuse to take action on climate change.

It’s actually dangerous — and it matters how we react.

Each and every day that congressional leaders hold on to their bizarre fantasy world, OFA is going to be there, not letting them get away with it.

Add your name and say you’re ready to hold climate deniers accountable.

We’re going to make them say it out loud — either double-down on their claims, or come to their senses. The National Academy of Sciences and more than 13,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers all confirm that the carbon pollution in our atmosphere today is causing dangerous climate change.

The sticky thing about the truth is that it’s the truth whether Congress likes it or not.

Unicorns don’t exist, climate change is real, and we said we weren’t going to let this go.

Sign here and help Congress get real:

http://my.barackobama.com/Hold-Climate-Deniers-Accountable

Thanks,

Ivan

Ivan Frishberg
Climate Campaign Manager
Organizing for Action

I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss out of hand an account of a unicorn viewing out. Although I have never seen a unicorn, that does not mean they don’t exist, although I have to admit the evidence that unicorns are real is slim. If a person who I know to be honest and not subject to hallucinations were to tell me that he saw a unicorn, I would believe that he either saw a real unicorn or something that resembled a unicorn until I found evidence to the contrary. On the other hand, if a person who has had a history of not being very honest or who has often made doomsday predictions that have never come to pass, than I would be more skeptical.

I do not believe that climate change is settled science. I am not a climate scientist, so it is not likely that I possess the information and training to determine that on my own. Nevertheless, I have observed that the people who have been pushing the climate change hypothesis have not acted in an honest or honorable fashion. There is the use of the word “denier” with the implied resemblance to Holocaust denial. This is not a scientific or logical argument. This is name calling. There is the rebranding of the name of the crisis. You never hear “global warming” any more. The expression now is “climate change”. Why is that? Could it be that the Earth has not warmed significantly in the past few decades? There are scientists who are apparently communicating with each other on the best means of manipulating data to obtain the desired results. Shouldn’t science be in the business of following where the data leads, even if it disproves a cherished hypothesis? What is carbon pollution? Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring component of the Earth’s atmosphere. Every animal exhales carbon dioxide as a waste product of respiration.

Then there is the fact that for most of my life I have been told that an environmental catastrophe is just around the corner unless drastic action, which somehow always seems to involve an expansion of government into everyone’s personal lives, is begun right now! There is no time to debate! We have to act! And yet, the catastrophe never comes. How many times do we have to listen to the boy who cried “Wolf!” before we stop listening to him?

It would be better if Ivan Frishberg stuck to believing in unicorns. Believing in unicorns would do a lot less damage.

 

Related articles

• Climate Deniers in Congress (davidscommonplacebook.wordpress.com)
• My Unicorn Is Kind of a Pain in the Ass (lorcadamon.com) They are not as bad as environmental zealots.
   

Book Burning Morons

Here is the Nazi book burning scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Good thing we don’t have idiots in this country who go around burning books.

Those must be a couple of teabaggers, the sort of idiots who go around burning books that challenge their narrow, ignorant view of the world. Oh wait. I found this picture on the blog Watt’s Up with That. It turns out that these two people are from the San Jose State University Meteorology Department.

From the Fahrenheit 451 department comes this indictment of California’s higher education’s “tolerance” for opposing views. When I first got the tip on this, I thought to myself “nobody can be this stupid to photograph themselves doing this” but, here they are, right from the San Jose State University Meteorology Department web page:

The caption from the SJSU website reads:

This week we received a deluge of free books from the Heartland Institute {this or this }. The book is entitled “The Mad, Mad, Made World of Climatism”. SHown above, Drs. Bridger and Clements test the flammability of the book.

Maybe they just can’t help themselves, note the pictures on the wall.

Here is a screencap of the website relevant section:

SJSU Meteorology page is here: http://www.sjsu.edu/meteorology/

Fully archived here:

http://www.webcitation.org/6GJvAbb2t

This is the link for book:The Mad Mad Mad World of Climatism

I think Drs. Bridger and Clements have proved the point of the book quite well.

I am shocked that tolerant, liberal academics would burn books and suppress dissenting points of view. I thought that universities were centers of open inquiry. I guess we know who the real book burning morons are.

Related articles

• Warmists Decide “Settled Science” Means They Should Burn Books (stoptheaclu.com)
• San Jose State University Meteorology decides burning books they don’t agree with is better than reading them (philosophers-stone.co.uk)
• Mark Steyn on warmist burning books: ‘Goebbel Warming’ (climatedepot.com)
• Photo: Warmists at San Jose State about to burn book by skeptic (junkscience.com)

 

Women’s Underwear for Men

I am afraid that I am going to have to report that Western Civilization has entered its terminal phase. We had a good run but there is no way that a civilization that produces this product can have any hope of lasting. I am referring to a new product made by the lingerie firm HommeMystere, women’s underwear designed to fit men. Here is the story from Metro. There are pictures that go with the article, but I would rather not copy them.

If you’re a man and have ever wanted to dress in women’s lingerie a firm has come up with the perfect product for you.

HommeMystere are hoping their new range of lingerie for males, which includes thongs and padded bras, will change the landscape of men’s underwear.

The Australian firm said their under garments include ‘comfortable men’s panties that really do fit, bra straps that don’t fall off the shoulder, teddies that don’t ride up halfway through the night and quality soft fabrics that feel great for all day wear’.

The label already has a UK seller so men this side of the world can look forward to more ‘enjoyable’ pants.

And the company are keen to stress the garments are not just for gay men.

They added: ‘We provide our lingerie for guys.

‘We are not concerned if you are gay, straight, vegetarian, republican, anglican, martian or any other persuasion.

‘We just design and manufacture attractive luxury underwear for men.’

I guess that is a problem for cross-dressers. Women’s bodies are shaped differently from men’s so the clothes that a cross-dresser wears must not ever fit just right. I can see where there would be a market for this sort of thing. It is too bad Ed Wood never lived to see this.

 

I think he preferred Angora. Maybe HommeMystere could introduce a line of Angora underwear for men.

But, as I said, the fact that there must be something of a demand for these products is disturbing and a sure sign that our civilization is doomed.

 

Related articles

• Lingerie firm launches women’s underwear for men (metro.co.uk)
• Lingerie firm launches a line of women’s lingerie… for dudes (rare.us)
• Lingerie firm launches women’s underwear for men (worldduh.com)
• Oz Firm Launches Women’s Underwear For Men (sweetness-light.com)

Denial is a River

Denial is the major river in Liberal Land, at least in regards to Islam as a possible motive for terrorism. It is truly remarkable the mental gymnastics that some commentators will undergo to deny that the Religion of Peace is perhaps not so peaceful. If backed into a corner that will admit that some violence is committed by fanatic Muslims but will assert that other religions have their fanatics that are just as violent. Consider this exchange between Bill Maher and one Brian Levin. I don’t usually have much use for Bill Maher but he has his head screwed on right here.

There are hypocrites and fanatics in every religion, but the Christian or Buddhist fanatics are not blowing people up. I do disagree with one statement of Maher’s, that Christianity may have been more of a problem  in the Middle Ages. The truth is that throughout the Middle Ages Islam was an aggressive expansionist ideology. We must not forget that the Crusades were a belated Christian response to centuries of Muslim aggression against Christendom.

Melissa Harris-Perry does not think the Tsarnaev brothers’ religion is not relevant to their actions.

According to her guests, the only reason why anyone would want to blame Islam for the recent atrocity is the preserve a sense of “otherness”. Why is it so hard for them to connect the dots? Why can they not realize that noticing a pattern that almost every contemporary terrorist attack is committed by Muslims is not being prejudiced or islamophobic.

Marc Ambinder at The Week thinks that it is insane to blame Islam for terrorist attacks committed by Muslims.

We are still speculating about virtually everything right now, but I feel as though I need to explain why I find the quick and easy conversation about Muslims being radicalized in America to be so illogical and laced with bigotry.

Of course, there is a global violent jihadist movement, loosely organized, that wants to recruit young men to influence policies at home and abroad and perhaps usher in the global caliphate. That ideology motivates some Muslims to kill innocent people.

But you’re allowed to be a radical Muslim in America. You’re allowed to believe that the Qu’ran proscribes the most elegant set of laws. You’re allowed to believe that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. And you can say, in America, pretty much anything you want. Not everything, and after 9/11, a little less, but you can still make very unpopular arguments.

So just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the only factor that motivated these two brothers from Chechnya to set off bombs and kill police officers is their decision to accept some form of radical Islamic teachings as their foundational belief system. (I highly doubt this is the case, but let’s just throw it out there.)

We ask: “We have to look at the whole issue of radicalization. What prompts someone raised as an American to cause such carnage?”

I don’t think that he realizes that freedom is the problem for some people. Yes, you are allowed to be a radical Muslim in America, but you are also free to be a more moderate Muslim, or a Christian, or a Jew or even an atheist. To people who believe that sharia law should be imposed, this freedom is hateful and even against the will of God. To them, the only just and good society is one in which either everyone is a Muslim or one in which the Muslims dominate and non-Muslims are submissive.

Let’s move on.

It’s a horrible habit: A Korean-American shoots fellow students at Virginia Tech, and suddenly, we’re forced to pretend that it’s OK to blame Korean-American family structure and culture for putting him over the edge, ignoring the millions of Korean-Americans who have never considered taking up arms.

The murderer Andrew Cunanan was, in Tom Brokaw’s famous words, a “homicidal homosexual.”

See? The gay made him do it.

But when a white kid murders dozens of children, we don’t ask whether the predominant Christian religion in America somehow radicalized him, or whether his upbringing was somehow less American than anyone else’s. Stupid questions! Glad we don’t ask them.

I don’t recall anyone arguing that Korean family structures or homosexuality is a cause of mass murder. There are not large numbers of Korean-Americans or homosexuals flying planes into buildings, placing bombs to kill people, or trying to ignite their shoes. If there were, the question of whether Korean culture or homosexuality encourages violence would be a legitimate one. The predominant Christian religion in America does not preach hatred and violence against non believers. I doubt there is a single priest, minister or preacher, with the exception of Fred Phelps, at any church in America who has called for the extermination of any group. There are any number of Imams both here and abroad who do preach violence at their mosques.

It is far more plausible that American gun culture, the way that Americans are uncomfortable with people who are different, the gaps in the mental heath system, and a hundred other things, some of which cannot ever be controlled, pushed these two men over the edge. If it was Islam, or a hidden network of radical jihadists, then these types of events would not be rare in America. That they are is the answer to whether Islamic radicalization is a problem that Americans can and must contend with by stigmatizing Muslims.

What is it about America that so alienates young men?

What is it about their community — Cambridge, lower-middle class, American popular culture — that isolated them and encouraged their pursuit of a different way to add meaning to their lives?

So, its our fault. We have immigrants from all over the world in this country. Why is it that only people from predominantly Muslim countries feel so alienated that they turn to jihad. There are not large numbers of Mexican-Americans or Chinese-Americans engaging in violence. Surely, someone just arrived from India or Africa would feel a certain culture shock and perhaps some alienation. Young men native to the United States who commit crimes and atrocities are rarely of any religion, McVeigh was an agnostic. Yet, somehow when a young man does turn to religion and commits an act of terrorism, the religion he turns to is Islam, never Hinduism or Rastafarianism.

He concludes.

Bias against Muslims is real and it hurts. And the easiest way to radicalize un-radicalized people is to treat them like enemies.

Bias by Muslims hurts a whole lot more. I do not think it is right to blame every Muslim for terrorism, but there is a connection there that we ignore at our peril. How many more people must be killed before Brian Levin, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Marc Ambinder will admit there is a problem?

Related articles

• On the Difficulty of Criticising the Public Face of a Religion (choiceindying.com)
• Muslim Leaders Teaching Muslims They Don’t Have to Abide by American Laws (godfatherpolitics.com)
• Radical Muslim In TX: “We Are Above The Law Of The Land” (freedomoutpost.com)

 

Lenin’s Birthday or Earth Day

Last week, NPR Counter-terrorism Correspondent Dina Temple Raston speculated that the Boston Marathon bombing was the work of domestic right-wing extremists because of the timing. Here is the story and video courtesy of viralfeed.

On NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’ yesterday, Counterterrorism Correspondent Dina Temple Raston concludes that the Boston Marathon tragedy was more than likely “a domestic extremist attack” citing April as a “big month for anti-government, right-wing individuals.”

In her segment, she notes that Hitler’s birthday and the anniversaries of the Columbine attack, the Oklahoma City bombing and the assault on the Branch-Davidian compound in Waco, TX all fall in April.

I think I can honestly say that there is no one in the United States would could even remotely be considered conservative or right wing who celebrate Hitler’s birthday or the anniversaries of the shooting at Columbine or the Oklahoma City bombing. On the other hand, liberals celebrate the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the Russian Communist dictator and mass murderer every year on Earth Day.

Happy Earth day/Lenin’s Birthday.

Oh, and I have never seen a conservative with an Adolf Hitler or Heinrich Himmler T-shirt, but I see liberals with Che Guevara shirts regularly. I guess that they think that because they admire tyrants and murderers, conservatives must too

Related articles

• NPR thinks the Right did Boston bombings because it was Hitler’s birthday (fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com)
• NPR commentator implies Boston bombing was domestic terrorism from ‘right-wing individuals’ (redalertpolitics.com)
• NPR: Hitler’s Birthday Might Have Motivated Right to Commit Marathon Bombing (breitbart.com)
• NPR #Communist, Dina Temple-Raston Blames Patriots For #BostonBombing, Mentions Hitler, Columbine. (themadjewess.com)
• NPR host says Hitler’s birthday, Columbine celebrated by the right (utsandiego.com)

 

Children of the Commons

MSNBC commentator Melissa Harris-Perry‘s recent comment that we need to move away from the idea that our children are ours to the idea that children belong to the community has  proved to be more controversial than she, or anyone else at MSNBC, have anticipated, which shows that there is something terribly wrong at MSNBC.

Most conservative commentators have focused on the rather fascistic overtones of her remarks or have noted that public education is not, in fact, underfunded. I would like to tackle this subject from a different angle. I wonder if Melissa Harris-Perry is familiar with the concept of the tragedy of the commons.

The tragedy of the commons is a concept developed by Garrett Hardin in 1968. Put simply, it works something like this. Suppose there is a village in which every farmer has one cow which he grazes in the village commons. The number of cows that graze on the field is limited and the field is able to feed the cows. Now, suppose that one farmer decides to get another cow and let it graze on the common ground. He gets two cows to milk so he benefits more than his neighbors but two cows cost him no more than one. The presence of one more cow doesn’t hurt the green all that much. Then, other farmers decide to get another cow and put it on the green to graze. They get the benefits of having more cows to milk but their cost is no greater. However, as more cows are left to graze on the common field, at some point the field starts to become overgrazed and eventually what was once a fertile field becomes a barren, dusty wasteland.

The reason this happens is that while all of the farmers in the village benefit from the common field, it is no one person’s responsibility to maintain it. Each farmer gains the benefit of feeding his cows, whether he limits his number of cows or works to maintain the pasture and no one gains any extra benefit from doing the work of maintaining the field. Thus what is beneficial to each farmer individually, eventually ruins all the farmers in the village.

Garrett Hardin was an ecologist who was concerned about the problems associated with overpopulation and over use of natural resources. It is not easy to place him on any political or economic spectrum although he did favor government regulation as a means to resolve the tragedy and coercion to limit population. Environmentalists have used his analysis to justify restricting property rights for the common good. On the other hand, advocates of private property and the free market have pointed out that property and responsibility that belongs to everyone, really belongs to no one, and the best way to resolve the tragedy is through privatization of the commons. Human nature, being what it is, people are far more responsible for things that they feel personal ownership for, while common ownership property or a thing  means that no one person really feels they own it and so no one person feels really responsible for it, especially if they benefit from the use of it without the trouble of being responsible for it.

This is one of the reasons Communism didn’t work out so well. Consider Ivan, the worker at the collective farm. He didn’t own the farm, the fields or anything else at the farm. He did not benefit from the harvest and it made no difference to him if the crops rotted in the fields while he got drunk on vodka every afternoon. They weren’t his crops. They belonged to the people of the Soviet Union, so they really didn’t belong to anyone. Extend this sort of thinking over an entire national economy and you can see why there would be trouble.

With all of this in mind, we can revisit Melissa Harris-Parry’s statement that we need to get away from the idea that we personally own our children and are responsible for them and move toward an idea of community ownership of and responsibility for our children. If we make our children the responsibility of the village or the community rather than the responsibility of their parents, then the children will really be no one’s responsibility. Consider, as an extreme example to clarify matters, that there were a dystopian state that took children from their mothers at birth and raised them in institutions with trained caregivers attending to them. Does anyone truly believe that the children would be better off than if they were raised by their own parents? Melissa Harris-Perry has it backward. Children are more likely to be properly raised by parents who feel a sense of ownership and responsibility for them than by a village in which no one feels responsible for any one child. Indeed, it may be that part of the problem with public schools is precisely because they are public. No one really owns the public schools so no one is really responsible for the results of a public school education and no one feels any responsibility for spending the funding for public schools wisely.

The answer to the failure of the commons is not to create more commons but to privatize the commons as far as it is possible. If people have a stake in maintaining a continuing supply of a resource, they will see to it that the use of that resource is sustainable. It may be that the answer to the commons in education is greater privatization as a means of having the parents feel more that they are directly responsible for the state of their children’s education. In other words, we need to have more of a feeling of ownership of our children not less.

 

Related articles

• The Tragedy of The Commons, Children’s Edition (nooneofanyimport.wordpress.com)
• Melissa Harris-Perry Dismisses The ‘Haters’ And ‘Welcomes’ More Debate On MSNBC Promo (mediaite.com) A “hater” is someone who disagrees with a liberal.
• MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry: “We Need To Impinge On Individual Freedoms” For “The Common Good”… (redflagnews.com)
• Melissa Harris-Perry Reaffirms “…children are not our private property.” (curmudgeons.net)
• MSNBC: Your Kids Belong to the State (rushlimbaugh.com)
• Melissa Harris-Perry Doubles Down on Her Marxist, Anti-Family MSNBC Ad (pjmedia.com)
• Elinor Ostrom Debunks the Tragedy of the Commons (ourcommonfutureblog.wordpress.com)
• MSNBC host: Kids do not belong to their parents; they are owned by the collective (dprogram.net)

Diversity Comics

 

The people at DC  Comics can certainly give themselves a well-deserved pat on the back for their recent attempts to promote diversity in the world of comic books. First, they decided that the latest incarnation of the Green Lantern would be the first homosexual hero in mainstream comics. Now they have decided to introduce the first mainstream comics transgender character in Batgirl. DC originally stood for “Detective Comics”. Perhaps DC should change it to mean Diversity Comics.

 

But, not all forms of diversity are welcome. Just ask Orson Scott Card who was hired to write new adventures for Superman. Card happens to be one of the many people in America who are not quite convinced that same-sex marriage is a wonderful idea and for this diversity from the standard Left-Liberal line the artist assigned to illustrate the stories stepped down, stores threatened to boycott the comic, and the new series has been quietly put on indefinite hold.

 

Evidently there is good diversity, based on sexual deviancy  and gender confusion and bad diversity which is based on an real differences of values and opinions. Or, perhaps to put it another way, true diversity will only be obtained when everyone thinks alike. It is a pity that Orwell didn’t live to see this day. He could have added diversity is conformity to the Party’s slogans; freedom is slavery, war is peace, ignorance is strength.

 

Check out the comments on the article from Wired I linked to, not to mention the rather snarky tone of the article itself. The great majority of the tolerant liberals seem to believe that since they have determined Card to be a bigot, he has no right to free speech or even employment. Luckily Orson Scott Card is already an established award-winning science fiction writer, but the message is clear to any aspiring writer, toe the politically correct line or else.

 

Related articles

 

• DC Reveals Transgender Character in BATGIRL #19 (newsarama.com)
• DC Comics Introduces First Openly Transgender Character (fox2now.com)
• DC Comics Artist Refuses to Illustrate Homophobe Orson Scott Card’s ‘Superman’ Comic, Leaves Project (towleroad.com)
• “Superman” Artist Quits Rather Than Work With Homophobe Orson Scott Card (queerty.com) Tolerance at work here.
• A note on the Orson Scott Card’s Superman “controversy” by way of that stuff that happened with Chick-Fil-A last year (alexwilgus.wordpress.com)
• Waiting for Hateful Homophobe Orson Scott Card’s Superman Comic Book? Don’t Hold Your Breath (slog.thestranger.com) So, believing that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman (the sane definition) is being a hateful homophobe.
• DC Comics Reveals First Trans Character (newser.com)
• Comic Book Diversity (dish.andrewsullivan.com)

 

Global Warming and the Lizard People

I had another point to make about the poll I referred to the other day but I thought it would distract attention from my discussion of the Anti-Christ, and anyway the post was getting to be long enough. Let me quote the article again.

It’s official: Americans love their conspiracy theories. Public Policy Polling asked voters to weigh in on 20 more infamous ones, and the results show that a not-insignificant number of people believe that President Obama is the anti-Christ (13%), Big Foot exists (14%), and the planet is secretly ruled by the New World Order (28%). Four percent think our societies are actually ruled by “lizard people.”

• 21% believe the government covered up a UFO crash in Roswell; 29% believe in aliens
• 6% believe Osama bin Laden is alive
• 5% think Paul McCartney has been dead for decades
• 15% think there’s mind-control technology hidden in TV signals
• 37% think global warming is a hoax
• 7% think the moon landing was faked
• 15% think Big Pharma develops new diseases as a way to make money
• 14% see the CIA’s hand in the 1980s crack epidemic

If you look carefully, you will notice that one of these crazy conspiracy theories is not like the others in terms of plausibility. It is insane to believe that lizard people rule the world or the CIA distributed crack to minority neighborhoods. It is more than a little silly to believe that Bigfoot exists or the Moon landing is a fraud. These sorts of things are possible, but the available evidence is against their being true. The belief that the New World Order or the Trilateral Commission secretly rules the world seems like paranoia, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to watch any group of powerful people who meet on a regular basis.

What about the idea that global warming is a hoax? Well, given that the behavior of some of the principal proponents of the idea that man made global warming will lead to catastrophic results has been less than honest in their dealings with the public and given that at least some of these proponents seem to have a political agenda that is quite unrelated to any scientific evidence, it does not seem that the theory that global warming (or is it climate change or climate catastrophe or climate chaos?) is a hoax is quite in the same league as these others.

To be fair, I am not sure if the scientists at the Climate Research Institute and elsewhere were consciously engaging in fraud. Their misbehavior may be more due to self-deception, wishful thinking and shoddy scientific technique. They did not take Richard Feyman’s advice.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you   easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful aboutthat. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We’ll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

Instead of presenting the facts the best way they could, too many decided the matter was so important that they had to be alarmist. If global warming is a real threat, then they harmed their cause considerably.

When you consider the business people and politicians who stand to profit from this sort of alarmism, would be carbon credit billionaires and world leaders who will leap at any excuse to gain more power for themselves (Yes, I have Al Gore in mind), then perhaps hoax is not too strong a word to use.

Of course, the idea here is to associate people who are unconvinced by any lack of evidence for global warming with crazy people who believe that the lizard people rule the world.

The fact that 37% of the people in a poll believe that global warming is a hoax does not, of course, make it a hoax. But then, listing the idea that global warming is a hoax with a group of less plausible ideas does not make disbelief in global warming less plausible. One hurricane, however strong, does not prove that the world is getting warmed, nor was Sandy unprecedented in its size and destructiveness. Sandy was a category 3 hurricane, while the highest rating is category 5. There have been worse tropical storms in the Atlantic.

Hurricane Sandy was the largest hurricane on record as far as actual diameter, as well as the second most destructive in terms of property damage, with 2005′s  Hurricane Katrina causing the most property damage. You have to consider, however, that coasts are more developed today than they were decades ago and property is worth more, not to mention that both these storms struck urban areas in the United States.

I suppose that it is too much to ask that a television meteorologist be familiar with logic and the scientific method though.

Related articles

• 13 percent of Americans believe Obama is the anti-Christ (rt.com)
• One in four Americans think Obama may be the antichrist, survey says (guardian.co.uk)
• Conspiracy Theory Poll Results (publicpolicypolling.com)