Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

As I been reading the continuing commentary on the Washington Post piece that has really got the attention of bloggers and readers from the daily pundit

DADT as the reason for ROTC’s banning was always a sham. Now the mask is finally off. The elite professoriat doesn’t hate ROTC because of DADT, they hate ROTC because they just can’t stand “the warrior ethic”. That’s code for courage, honor, and duty, ethics all anathema to Leftist indoctrinators. They prefer us supine, afraid, and dependent on them.”

an opinion I share to Vodkapundit

See there, Mr. U.S. Marine Captain — McCarthy doesn’t hate you. Why, he thinks you’re every bit as respectable as a Taliban.

who adds a graphic that says it all to this post at Ace of Spades HQ that compares the course requirement for ROTC at Sienna College and woman and gender studies at Columbia guess which one is more challenging academically?

While all of these are first-rate there is a thought that hit me this morning that hasn’t been touched on. Namely that the McCarthy’s of the world actually bring about the results they claim to deplore.

Consider; our media tends to reflect the views of people like McCarthy and the movies and media we put out there tend to show our troops in a very poor light, particularly over the last 40 years that has been exported as American Cultural and elite opinion to foes all over the world that the Saddam’s, Bin Ladin’s and Chavez’s et/al have bought into. It is precisely believe they have bought into the weakness of American culture and the people opposition to the military and the troops as uneducated rabble that they have been bold enough to make war figuring we can’t defeat them or oppose them.

Hundreds of thousands of idiotic and fanatical followers of these fools have learned the hard way that this is not true (in fact it was the last thing they ever learned), yet their fanatical leaders who are not hiding in caves manage to convince them that America will simply roll over. Why don’t they believe the evidence of the empty chairs where their predecessors have been? Because men like McCarthy promote the idea of a military unwanted and supported, because our media is so focused on the number of our casualties in war that they ignored the losses of our foes that dwarf ours.

These men are the enablers of the very wars they claim to oppose, and even more ironically are only able to be such enablers because our military is precisely NOT like the Taliban or any of these guys.

The secret here is that the McCarthy’s on the left’s position is really less about their hatred of the military, but more about convincing themselves of their own moral superiority. They can’t match the courage or the honor or the sacrifice of these men and women so they denigrate them in a vain attempt to convince themselves that it is their words and good wishes, dare I say it their faith in their own love for their fellow-man that outweighs the works of the military in risking their own lives to save others.

That’s liberalism in a nutshell belief and good intention trump works and results every time.

Update: Oh Brother!

Hitler could have been waited out. He might have been overthrown by his own government. Who knows? To have 50 million people killed: Hitler would have died within 10 years no matter what he did.

Oh and Lincoln was wrong to fight the civil war too. Moe Lane nails it:

Whichever editor approved this Washington Post article should be ashamed of him- or herself. I do not expect shame, but it’s long past time that we started telling these people when they’ve done something foul.

He certainly has the right to free speech but did he have the right to a Washington Post op-ed?

If you only listen to the MSM you might not realize that long before anyone was talking about open homosexuality in the military universities on the left were banning ROTC. Those on the left used DADT as a convenient mask to justify such bans on grounds other than “I hate the US military” In the Washington Post today Colman McCarthy takes the mask of outrage off and puts the face of the left out there for all to see:

It should not be forgotten that schools have legitimate and moral reasons for keeping the military at bay, regardless of the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” They can stand with those who for reasons of conscience reject military solutions to conflicts.

Yeah I’m sure the British would have given us independence without a fight, the slaveholders would have freed their slaves without a battle, Saddam would have left Kuwait in his own good time, the North Koreans really weren’t planning to say in the south and of course there’s the guy with the silly mustache would have gotten sick of Paris or at least run out of Jews to kill.

The kicker however is this:

I admire those who join armies, whether America’s or the Taliban’s: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home.

Because of course we know deep down aren’t the US Soldiers and the Taliban just two sides of the same coin!

This Washington Post pinata has already been smacked by Jonah Goldberg, booted by Allahpundit and dismembered by Victor Davis Hanson mocked by Blackfive, denounced by the moderate voice (yes you read that right), and analyzed by Glenn Reynolds who notes:

Looking at Colman McCarthy’s language drawing equivalence between U.S. soldiers and the Taliban, I don’t think he’s just a dreamy peacenik. And I’ve grown increasingly skeptical of the good intentions of “dreamy peacenik” types anyway, since, somehow, they always seem to promote things that help the other side. At best, they’re oikophobes.

I would suggest that US elite universities have been on the other side of US wars and interests since the 60’s, they supported the NVA, backed the soviets at every chance, opposed fighting against communism in central America, fought against Star Wars, opposed the gulf wars and the current wars that we are fighting. To them a weak, demoralized and defeated United States is not a bug…its a feature.

The problem for them is those same elites no longer have the exclusive access to disseminating the message, the internet, social networking, and conservative media provides an effective counter to this nonsense.

The tactical mistake of the left in turning DADT, which was meant as a compromise to allow gays to serve (but was apparently used as a quick way out for many who didn’t want to serve) into THE public reason for opposing ROTC meant that once repeal did come, the moral urgency of keeping soldiers away, was now gone.

This op-ed is the first salvo for the left to find a new excuse to bar the military from campus. If this meme is picked up by leftist blogs in support of banning ROTC we will know that this has been plan B from the get go.

I call on blogs on the left to denounce this comparison and the argument of this “gentleman”. Their actions will answer a lot of questions about whose side the left is actually on. I know a lot of people on the left of good faith who won’t stand for this nonsense, it’s time for them to say it loudly.

One of the things that is always of note is how the left in particular likes to play with language to change opinion.

The best example of course being the change from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change” as Victor Davis Hanson mentions in this piece:

When did global warming so easily get away with becoming “climate change”? With record winter low temperatures again this year in Europe, and similar freezing weather in the U.S., we are given a number of contorted exegeses from climatologists and green activists that, in fact, argue terrible cold is proof of global warming. One wonders: if it were now 80 degrees in New York or dry and 70 degrees in London, would we be told such unseasonable heat was not an artifact, but likewise real proof of climate change?

Philology usually is a good barometer of ideology: when global warming became climate change and now is evolving to “climate chaos,” you can see a case study in deductive thinking, as symptoms are fudged to conform to a preexisting diagnosis. Circular reasoning also is characteristic: we convince the coal-devouring and nuclear-producing Chinese that there is a soon to be big (Western-subsidized) global market for wind turbines and solar panels, given the spread of Gorism among Western elites and grandees, then we frighten Americans that the Chinese will soon capture the entire “green” market that we fostered unless we … (fill in the cap and trade / green subsidy-grant blanks).

I mentioned another example in my last post where the Amnesty business crowd has morphed into the Partnership for a new American Economy and of course the is the “other 98%” that became the “coffee party” that spun off “reclaim the dream” and “return to sanity” and now is “no labels“.

Well the left is at is again, as there is a concerted attempt to pressure the media into dropping “illegal Immigrants” to “undocumented immigrants”. When Megyn Kelly called them on it on Fox the clueless TPM nutcracker actually objected to HER:

Plenty of conservatives are pretty upset over a campaign by the Society of Professional Journalists to convince reporters to stop using the terms “illegal aliens” and “illegal immigrants” in favor of “undocumented immigrant.” But none are as livid as perpetually outraged Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who on Wednesday afternoon asked if journalists were going to start calling rapists “non-consensual sex partners” next.

“You could say that a burglar is an unauthorized visitor. You know, you could say that a rapist is a non-consensual sex partner which, obviously, would be considered offensive to the victims of those crimes,” Kelly said. “So how far could you take this?”

Mind you they put this up thinking it helps their case.

Dan Riehl at Big Journalism calls them out further:

Of course the Society of Professional Journalists would have a “Diversity Committee.” How else could liberals continue on with the thought policing of which they became so fond in college?

If you want to know why Fox is cleaning up in the ratings this is it.

…the wikileaks releases continue to put lives in danger.

Heroes of the American Left, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, have destroyed the best hope for ridding Zimbabwe of madman Robert Mugabe by releasing U.S. State Department cables of communications between Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the leading opponent of Mugabe, and U.S. and E.U. officials, in which Tsvangirai secretly expressed support for sanctions against the brutal Mugabe regime as the only way to establish democracy in Zimbabwe.

He quotes this atlantic article that laments the results of the leak:

Any damage to democratic reforms from WikiLeaks likely comes not from malice but naivety. Assange is probably not best described, as Vice President Joe Biden recently put it, a “high-tech terrorist.” Rather, he, his organization, and their activist supporters believe that they can promote democracy by making an enemy of secrecy itself. What we’re seeing in Zimbabwe, however, is that those methods won’t necessarily be without significant collateral damage.

Chris it is not naivety, it is indifference. The goal is to hit the US and if some people who support democracy elsewhere end up dead who cares? This is the left, it is all about making ones self feel good (and no that wasn’t a reference to the great skank debate)

I’m with L Douglas Garrett:

The very idea that opposing Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF kleptocracy is in any way ‘treason’ against the nation of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) is shall-we-say open to dispute… although the medieval definition of ‘treason’ as an indignity against the person or property of the monarch might fit. Were that to be so in this case, of course, that would simply advertise more widely what is already known; that R. Mugabe and company see the state as their personal property.

I’ll say it plainly: In my opinion, conduct by any citizen of that nation that expedites the departure of the Mugabe regime is patriotism.

That’s about it.