Tag Archive for: Speech

Secretary of State Antony Blinken admits in the wide open federal government’s plans to use AI to censor Americans’ speech

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken admitted last week that the State Department is preparing to use artificial intelligence to “combat disinformation,” amidst a massive government-wide AI rollout that will involved the cooperation of Big Tech and other private-sector partners.

At a speaking engagement streamed last week with the State Department’s chief data and AI officer, Matthew Graviss, Blinken gushed about the “extraordinary potential” and “extraordinary benefit” AI has on our society, and “how AI could be used to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals which are, for the most part, stalled.”

He was referring to the United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development goals, which represent a globalist blueprint for a one-world totalitarian system. These goals include the gai-worshipping climate agenda, along with new restrictions on free speech, the freedom of movement, wealth transfers from rich to poor countries, and the digitization of humanity. Now Blinken is saying these goals could be jumpstarted by employing advanced artificial intelligence technologies.

Listen to Blinken, in the video below, openly describe how the government will use AI to clamp down on the free speech of citizens. (Fast-forward to the 3-minute mark and watch through the 7:07 mark.)

Blinken bluntly stated the federal government’s intention to use AI for ”media monitoring” and “using it to combat disinformation, one of the poisons of the international system today.”

Don’t ever say they didn’t warn us. They are no longer hiding their agenda, but you have to search for it. When you find it, in posts like this, share it. Because the corporate media keeps these outrageous statements from high government officials hidden from we the people. Have you seen any stories from CNN or Fox News on the government’s self-admitted plan to use AI to censor our speech? I haven’t either.

©2024. Leo Hohmann. All rights reserved.


Please visit Leo’s Newsletter Substack.

The Opponents of Free Speech Are Gaining Ground. Here’s How We Can Fight Back

When we break down the core institution of free speech, we lose a lot of what made America so successful in the first place.


Free speech used to be held up as one of the core American institutions. It was enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights for a reason: while other countries have also adopted free speech, it is a fundamentally American tradition.

More than that, free speech is essential on its own terms. It is the single best way for humans to make progress. None of us are perfect, and none of us know the full truth. Therefore we all need to engage in the marketplace of ideas in order to find the truth and develop the best path forward.

But free speech has been under attack for decades.

One of the earliest—and most influential—critics was Herbert Marcuse, a college professor and the father of the New Left. In an essay called Repressive Tolerance published in 1969, Marcuse recommended removing rights (including the right to free speech) from conservatives. Marcuse didn’t see the world in terms of human beings who all have equal worth; he saw the world in terms of power. Those with power should be forcibly silenced (at least, the ones he disagreed with) so that those at the bottom could have more freedom. For Marcuse, if a majority is being repressed, what is needed is “repression and indoctrination” of the powerful so that the weak get the power they deserve.

In recent years, Marcuse-style attacks on free speech have filtered down from academic institutions into the mainstream.

Ilya Shapiro, adjunct law professor at George Washington University and the University of Mississippi, provides a case study on the new rules around who can speak and what they can say. Early in 2022 Georgetown Law School hired him to teach. When President Biden said he would only nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court, Shapiro expressed dismay at this form of blatant affirmative action. At the voicing of this heterodox view, the sky fell down on him.

Georgetown swiftly placed Shapiro on administrative leave, where he languished for months without knowing whether or not he’d be fired. An administrative investigation into the offending Tweets lasted 122 days.

Georgetown finally reinstated Shapiro, but only on the technicality that he hadn’t officially started at Georgetown at the time he sent his tweets. The Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action (IDEAA) said that his comments were “objectively offensive” and that saying something similar in future may be enough to get him fired.

Even more disturbingly, the IDEAA adopted a blatantly subjective standard for deciding whether or not speech by faculty would be punishable. “The University’s anti-harassment policy does not require that a respondent intend to denigrate,” according to the report. “Instead, the Policy requires consideration of the ‘purpose or effect’ of a respondent’s conduct.”

As Shapiro puts it: “That people were offended, or claim to have been, is enough for me to have broken the rules.”

This punishment of heterodox speech isn’t an isolated incident. A 2017 survey by the Cato Institute and YouGov found that over a third of Democratic responders said that a business executive should be fired if they “believe psychological differences explain why there are more male engineers.” A substantial number of respondents thus advocated stripping someone of their job for the crime of saying what many psychologists know to be true.

The new cultural norms around free speech aren’t just a problem for right-wingers. In an in-depth explainer on cancel culture, Julian explains the scope of the problem:

“Heterodox Academy surveyed 445 academics about the state of free inquiry on campus, asking them, ‘Imagine expressing your views about a controversial issue while at work, at a time when faculty, staff, and/or other colleagues were present. To what extent would you worry about the following consequences?’

One of the hypothetical consequences Heterodox Academy listed was, ‘my career would be hurt.’ How many academics said they would be ‘very concerned’ or ‘extremely concerned’ about this consequence? 53.43%.

To put it another way: over half of academics on campus worried that expressing non-orthodox opinions on controversial topics could be dangerous to their careers.

We see the same self-censoring phenomenon among college students. In 2021, College Pulse surveyed 37,000 students at 159 colleges. They found that 80% of students self-censor to at least some degree. 48% of undergraduates reported feeling, ‘somewhat uncomfortable’ or ‘very uncomfortable’ expressing their views on a controversial topic in the classroom.

In a panel on free speech and cancel culture, former ACLU president Nadine Strossen said, ‘I constantly encounter students who are so fearful of being subjected to the Twitter mob that they are engaging in self-censorship.'”

It’s not just students and professors. In an article titled “America Has A Free Speech Problem,” the New York Times editorial board noted that 55 percent of Americans have held their tongue in the past year because they were concerned about “retaliation or harsh criticism.”

Extremists on both sides of the aisle increasingly wield their power to shame or shun Americans who speak their minds or have the temerity to voice their opinions in public. This problem is most prominent on social media, but is spilling into offline conversations as well. Citizens of a free country should not live in fear that a woke or far-right mob will come for them because they express an idea that isn’t sufficiently in vogue.

The very concept of free speech is increasingly associated with violence. When former vice president Mike Pence planned to speak at the University of Virginia, the student newspaper Cavalier Daily published a furious editorial saying that Pence shouldn’t be allowed to speak. Why not? “Speech that threatens the lives of those on Grounds is unjustifiable.” It takes a lot of mental contusions to conclude that letting Pence give his opinion could threaten anyone’s life.

It’s not just students. Psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett published an op-ed in the New York Times titled, “When is speech violence?

According to Barrett, “If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech—at least certain types of speech—can be a form of violence.”

She continued: “That’s why it’s reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. There is nothing to be gained from debating him, for debate is not what he is offering.”

The fact that psychologists are lending the veneer of science to the idea that speech is violence should be deeply troubling to every American.

When we break down the core institution of free speech, we lose a lot of what made America so successful in the first place. Robust norms of free speech helped people build the emotional and mental resilience to cope with ideas they disagreed with. It helped us build bonds with people who believed different things, because we were able to listen to and understand their position.

Free speech also enabled multiple parties to argue from competing worldviews and find a solution that was better than what any party had formulated going into the discussion.

The silver lining is this: Americans increasingly recognize that free speech is a value whose preservation is essential. The New York Times editorial board notes that “84 percent of adults said it is a, ‘very serious’ or ‘somewhat serious’ problem that some Americans do not speak freely in everyday situations because of fear of retaliation or harsh criticism.”

As a strong and integrous person, what can you do to limit the impact of the degradation of free speech on your own life?

First, speak up about what you know to be true—even if no-one else is speaking up, even if there are risks to you. Develop the courage to call a spade a spade. If you see insanity—in your workplace, in politics, in your home—call it out openly and honestly. You’ll sleep better at night. You’ll also become stronger through the act of speaking out. Speaking takes courage, but it also creates courage.

Second, seek out people who disagree with you. Listen to them. Go further; try to be persuaded by them. Skewer your sacred cows and let go of your ideology. Neither one is serving you.

Third, banish forever (if you haven’t yet) the infantile notion that words are violence. This notion is profoundly damaging, because it makes you weak. If mere disagreement can hurt you, after all, then so can everything else in life. So will everything else in your life. Instead, embrace the adage of the Stoics: other people are responsible for their actions, you are responsible for your response. Once you embrace the idea that mere words—whether vicious or merely heterodox—cannot hurt you, you are on the path to emotional strength and groundedness.

Fourth, don’t let yourself become a “tribe of one.” It’s easy, in this environment of chilled speech, to always feel scared to speak up. Find a group of friends who encourage you to speak your truth, and who speak their truth in return to you. Find people who aren’t afraid to share heterodox ideas and to challenge your sacred cows, nor to have their own challenged in return.

Find a group you’d trust to have your back in a firefight, and who will love you and expect you to have theirs in turn.

This article was republished with permission from The Undaunted Man.

AUTHORS

Julian Adorney

Julian is a former political op-ed writer and current nonprofit marketer. His work has been featured in FEE, National Review, Playboy, and Lawrence Reed’s economics anthology Excuse Me, Professor.

Mark Johnson

Mark is an executive coach and men’s coach at The Undaunted Man.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Expert Analysis of Melania’s and Michelle’s Speeches Confirms Strong Differences

ROCKVILLE, Md. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Melania Trump and Michelle Obama’s speeches were, in fact, very different. That is the finding from an analysis conducted by global cognitive computing technology provider Expert System (EXSY.MI) in its latest Expert IQ Report: Melania vs. Michelle – Divided Speeches

In conducting its analysis, Expert System used publicly posted transcripts of each speech. The company’s analysis focused on transcript text, processing both speeches with its Cogito semantic analysis technology.

“This will likely be surprising information to many out there, but our analysis shows that in fact there are stark differences between First Lady Michelle Obama’s and Melania Trump’s speeches,” said Daniel Mayer, CEO of Expert System Enterprise. “We found differences in their emotions, topics of importance, main concepts and main speech elements. In simple terms, these speeches had very different messages and it really comes down to truly understanding the context, not just the words.  That is the beauty of data science, we can test assumptions and prove otherwise.”

In the report, Expert System found, for example, that when it came to emotions “hope” was the most relevant emotion in Michelle Obama’s speech, followed by love and success. “Desire” was the first emotion in Melania Trump’s speech. In looking at the main sentences, both Melania and Michelle talk about the key-role of the President for the future of the US. However Melania’s remarks are direct and incisive (Donald wants our country to move forward in the most positive ways) while Michelle uses special repetitions (Millions of Americans… Barack) that provides emphasis and clarity.

The vocabulary used in both speeches reveals an interesting difference as well: Melania Trump’s sentences are 45% shorter than Michelle Obama’s and 68% more easy to understand based a comparative readability index.

Expert System also analyzed the specific parts of the speeches that have been called out as duplicative. When measured by Cogito, the company found that there was indeed a 95% correlation between these parts, making the two, by data analysis standards, nearly exactly the same.

To access the full report which includes additional data analysis visit http://www.expertsystem.com/comparing-melania-trump-michelle-obama-speeches-analysis/

expert system logoAbout Expert System

Expert System is a leading provider of cognitive computing and text analytics software based on the proprietary, patented, multilingual semantic technology of Cogito. Using Expert System’s products, enterprise companies and government agencies can go beyond traditional keyword approaches for the rapid sense making of their structured and unstructured data. Expert System technology has been deployed to deliver solutions for a vast range of business requirements such as semantic search, open source intelligence, multilingual text analytics, natural language processing and the development and management of taxonomies and ontologies. Expert System serves some of the world’s largest industries including Banking and Insurance, Life Sciences and Pharmaceuticals, Oil and Gas, Media and Publishing, and Government including companies such as Shell, Chevron, Eli Lilly, Networked Insights, Nalco Champion, US Department of Justice, DTRA, BAnQ, Biogen, Bloomberg BNA, Elsevier, Gannett, IMF, RSNA, P\S\L, Sanofi, SOQUIJ, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Thomson Reuters, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Wiley and Wolters Kluwer.

For more information visit www.expertsystem.com or follow us on Twitter at @Expert_System

VIDEO: Donald Trump’s presidential speech in New York City on 6/22/16

On Wednesday, June 22, 2016 GOP nominee Donald Trump gave a speech at Trump SoHo in New York City. The speech addressed a number of issues facing America. He laid out his policies to address these issues, both domestic and in foreign policy.

Here is Mr. Trump’s full speech:

RELATED ARTICLE: GOP Senate Debates Gun Control Instead of Real Measures to Fight Terrorism

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Obama’s Mosque Speech: Missing a ‘Berlin Wall Moment’

U.S. President Barack Obama delivered his first speech from a mosque on February 3. He pushed the Muslim-American community to lead the Muslim world into a better future, but he missed a “tear down this wall” moment by speaking at a mosque with a radical history instead of giving a lift to Muslim reformists who confront Islamism.

Here are three hits and three misses from Obama’s speech in alternating order:

Hit: Using quotes from Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Obama simultaneously countered Islamist preaching that Muslims cannot reconcile their faith identity with American patriotism. This is also a strong rebuttal to those that wish to exempt Muslims from constitutional protections simply for their choice of faith. He said:

Back then, Muslims were often called Mahometans.  And Thomas Jefferson explained that the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom he wrote was designed to protect all faiths — and I’m quoting Thomas Jefferson now — “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan.”  (Applause.)

…Benjamin Franklin wrote that “even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.”  (Applause.)

Miss: He implied that Muslim terrorists and extremists purposely “twist” Islamic verses to suit their agendas, as if groups like ISIS do not actually believe in the Islam they practice and impose. He said:

“Right now, there is an organized extremist element that draws selectively from Islamic texts, twists them in an attempt to justify their killing and their terror. Part of what’s happened in the Middle East and North Africa and other places where we see sectarian violence is religion being a tool for another agenda—for power, for control.”

By denying the Islamist ideological root of these threats, President Obama removes the obligation from the Muslim world to directly address, debunk and reform Islamic interpretations that are dangerous and strongly-held. He disarms the chief argument of the best Muslim allies, like those in the Muslim Reform Movement.

Hit: Pressuring Muslim leaders to confront anti-Western propaganda, anti-Semitism in Europe and persecution of Christians.

Obama did not call on Muslim leaders to refute Islamism overall but he did directly tell them that they have an obligation to confront anti-Western views that present the U.S. and its allies as an enemy of their faith.  He said:

“Muslim political leaders have to push back on the lie that the West oppresses Muslims, and against conspiracy theories that says America is the cause of every ill in the Middle East. Now, that doesn’t mean Muslim Americans aren’t free to criticize American-U.S. foreign policy. That’s part of being an American.”

“…The fact is, there are Christians who are targeted now in the Middle East, despite having been there for centuries, and there are Jews who’ve lived in places like France for centuries who now feel obliged to leave because they feel themselves under assault—sometimes by Muslims.”

The Islamists’ constant depiction of the U.S. and its allies as evil, including reflexive bashing of the integrity of law enforcement, acts as a trigger for radicals to become violent jihadists. We need genuinely democratic Muslims around the world to hold Islamist propagandists accountable for their incitements.

Miss: The choice of the Islamic Society of Baltimore as a venue, which he described as “an all-American story.”

The ideological war against Islamism is somewhat like a political campaign. The Muslim reformers need positive press, resources and a platform. By praising the Islamic Society of Baltimore, the president gave a helping hand to the Islamist side of the competition.

The Islamic Society of Baltimore, as documented in this impressive expose by the Investigative Project on Terrorism , has a long history of promoting Islamist extremism including the very same views Obama pushed Muslim leaders to confront.

A Muslim Brotherhood leader from Sudan named Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh served as the imam for a total of 15 years from 1983 to 1989 and 1994 to 2003. He was instrumental in setting up the U.S. branch of the Brotherhood. He also led the radical Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, was regional director for an al-Qaeda-linked charity and said in 2004 suicide bombings are justifiable if authorized by afatwa and if it’s in a situation where “Muslims are to be cornered where they cannot defend themselves, except through these kinds of means.”

El-Sheikh signed a letter condemning ISIS, but the letter endorsed the foundational doctrines of ISIS and other Islamist terrorists.

A screenshot from 2000 shows the mosque’s chosen resources for Muslims were radicals, including known supporters of terrorism like Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi, Bilal Philips and Jamal Badawi.

Even after El-Sheikh left, the mosque has not been a model for countering Islamist extremism. Its imam preaches against“progressive groups within Muslims” like those that tolerate homosexuals. It has radicals as guest speakers, such as Zaid Shakir in 2008.

The Obama Administration did a better job in selecting the Muslim participants in the preceding roundtable with Obama, but still included Imam Khalid Latif, who was a board member of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in 2008. The FBI’s official policy prohibits using CAIR as a liaison partner because of evidence linking it to Hamas. The New York chapter has been a particularly radical chapter of CAIR.

Hit: Advising Muslims to respond to negativity by rejecting extremist views and maintaining patriotism.

After ISIS’ attacks in Paris, Clarion Project wrote here and explained on Fox News how the group’s supporters were salivating at the prospect of reprisals against innocent Muslims. ISIS and other jihadists have a separatist view and want Muslims to see democracy as a failed concept for them and to accept Islamism as the alternative.

Obama urged Muslims not to respond to anti-Muslim sentiment by validating these views, decreasing their patriotism or accepting propaganda legitimizing hostility towards the West. He said:

“You’re not Muslim or American. You’re Muslim and American. (Applause). Don’t grow cynical. Don’t respond to ignorance by embracing a worldview that suggests you must choose between your faith and your patriotism. Don’t believe that you have to choose between your best impulses and somewhat embrace a worldview that pits us against each other—or, even worse, glorifies violence.”

Miss: Failing to endorse or at least include the best Muslim allies for this cause, even if they are less resourced and well known.

Imagine what would have happened if Obama gave global coverage to the declaration of the Muslim Reform Movement, putting them on at least equal footing with the Islamists. Imagine the shiver down the spine of the Islamists who have defamed them essentially as “apostates,” all the while touting their own professed inclusiveness and moderation.

Imagine if Obama used the microphone of the White House to form a common thread between Muslim activists against Islamism everywhere: From Malala Yousefzai to the Muslim mayor of Rotterdam who cursed off Islamists promoting separatism in Europe; from the Muslims of the Green Movement who protested against the Iranian regime in 2009 to the Muslims who demonstrated and defeated the Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia; from the Muslims in Libya, who asked for U.S. help in their fight against Islamist militias and held pro-American rallies after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed, to the Syrian protestors who greeted the American ambassador with cheers, roses and olive branches.

Just outside the Islamic Society of Baltimore, Muslim women protested the mosque for its gender separation and inequality. Asra Nomani wrote a powerful op-ed about Obama’s choice of venue. She pointed out how photos from 2010 showed the “second-class conditions women endure in spaces akin to a ‘penalty box.'”

Imagine what a quick photo-op with the Muslim women would have caused. Think of the attention to their cause and productive dialogue that it would have spurred simply due to a choice by the Obama Administration to be inclusive of Muslim reformers and their progressive agenda.

Watch President Barack Obama’s full speech at the Islamic Society of Baltimore:

ABOUT RYAN MAURO

Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio. Read more, contact or arrange a speaking engagement.

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VIDEO: On Modern Man’s Fatal Conceit

In case you missed my talk from Restoration Weekend 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina, here it is again, complete with a transcript from FrontPage:

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Robert Spencer: Good morning. This is going be very easy because the topic is, “Do we have the will to defeat ISIS or the Islamic State?” Obviously, the answer is “no.” So enjoy your breakfast. But there’re actually some reasons for that, and very simply, in the first place, in order to defeat the Islamic state, airstrikes alone are not going to do it.

In the history of air warfare, it has never been known that a country was conquered solely from the air, and the Islamic State is going to be no exception. There’re going to have to be significant ground forces. Nobody wants to send ground forces back to Iraq. And even if we did send ground forces back to Iraq, we would probably make the same mistakes we made the first time in engaging in Wilsonian nation building projects instead of actually trying to win the war and the whole thing would be foredoomed. The idea that wars are to be fought in order to aid the enemy, instead of to defeat the enemy, is actually a new concept that has come about in the last few decades and is really a core of the problem of why the west, at this point, does not have the will to defeat the Islamic State.

The core of the concept was actually summed up, I think, recently in a New York Times piece that was called 27 Ways to be a Modern Man. And it was a wonderful piece because the New York Times, of course, is the adjudicator of acceptable opinion, the arbiter of style and the guide and for the perplexed and they set it all out for us: what does it mean to be a modern man? And I thought, well, I want to be a modern man. I’m going to read this. And so, I found out actually that the modern man listens to Wu Tang at least once a week. Now, I had to look that up. I found out actually that Wu Tang is an American hip–hop group from New York City originally composed of East Coast rappers RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Now, of course there’re plenty of us still alive, but the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard is somebody who I think sums up a lot of the problem here that modern man doesn’t seem to care about the societal decay that his musical tastes represent.

Modern man doesn’t seem to have much of any moral compass. And one of the things that we’re also told by the New York Times about the modern man is that he has no use for a gun. He does not own one and does not need one. And I thought, well, I understand that he might not want to own one, but how does modern man know that he doesn’t ever need one? Because he even says, “the modern man lies on the side of the bed closer to the door. If an intruder gets in, he will try to fight him off so that his wife has a chance to get away.” Well, it’s interesting enough that modern man has a wife at all, but he has no use for a gun; so how, exactly, is he going to fight off this guy? Well, we understand that the modern man always has a melon baller on hand to make sure that his cantaloupe, watermelon and honeydew are uniformly shaped. And so that obviously, he can use to fight off the intruder. The modern man, also, we’re told, cries. He cries often. And I think one of the reasons why there’s going to be more and more crying in the West is because modern man is in charge of the United States government at this time.

Barack Obama is a modern man. John Kerry is a modern man. And the core assumption, in all seriousness, is that they think we’re beyond all that: we’re beyond wars, we’re beyond fighting. There is no conflict in the world that cannot be solved by sitting down and negotiating because everybody else is a modern man as well. See, that’s why the modern man doesn’t need a gun, because if the guy comes in with a gun, they can just sit down and talk about it and they’ll reach some accord. And they really believe that this is true. Barack Obama and John Kerry showed that they were quintessential modern men when they thought well we have the Ayatollah Khamenei, he’s somebody just like us. Well, sure, he shouts death to America a few times but really he has the same aspirations for peace, the same desire to join the harmonious community of nations and so we can do business. And they did. The biggest obstacle that the modern man faces, however, is that there are some people in the world who are not modern men. Khamenei, of course, is one very much so and the leader of North Korea, the caliph of the Islamic State, all of them old–fashioned guys. And old–fashioned guys, they understand that there is tribalism, there are ancient hatreds, there is warfare and there are some things that you just can’t settle by means of talking things out.

Now, what’s very interesting nowadays is that we see the confrontation of the modern man with the old–fashioned man in many, many arenas nowadays. And it’s always a very interesting confrontation. For example, there is a very courageous individual, Canon Andrew White. He’s known as the vicar of Baghdad and he is an Anglican clergyman from the UK who has remained in Baghdad and in Iraq as it has become a war zone and as the Christians have been victimized by the hundreds and thousands, and he has stayed there. But Canon White showed the other day that he still has a bit of modern man in him because he contacted the leaders of ISIS as they were getting close to Baghdad and invited them to dinner. And I thought wouldn’t that be amazing if Winston Churchill had written to Hitler and said, hey, come on to dinner. But, of course, Neville Chamberlain did just that. He accepted Hitler’s invitation and went to Munich. Neville Chamberlain was a modern man. Churchill understood there’s no talking to this guy. There is no talking to him (that is going to solve anything) and we’re just going to have to go to war. But Canon White, he invited the leaders of the Islamic State to dinner and they very graciously responded, “We’ll be glad to come to dinner and we’ll cut off your head.” That’s the confrontation between modern man and the old–fashioned man.

Another one that was very interesting, just the other day, was in regard to Faisal Mohammad. Faisal Mohammad was a young man who, on the University of California Merced campus, just recently stabbed four people and seriously wounded them. And it has come out that he left a manifesto that has not yet been published in full, but we have heard that, in the manifesto, he praised Allah and he had a step–by–step plan for what he was going to do when he carried out the stabbings including to sit down and sing the praises of Allah after he’d carried out the stabbings, and that it has been further revealed by a television station in Merced itself that he was on a terror watch list and had an ISIS flag in his possession. And Vern Warnke who is a police investigator in Merced at this time said he conceded these facts and then said but this has nothing to do with his religion. This has nothing to do with Islam, whatsoever. He didn’t kill anybody. He stabbed these people because he was disgruntled about being kicked out of a study group and that’s all it’s about.

Now, that’s quintessential modern man. The modern man is not annoyed by reality. He is not troubled by reality. Reality is not something that the modern man is interested in at all. But here again, in reality keeps impinging upon who he is and what he wants to do.

Just a few days ago also in Hamtramck, Michigan near Detroit, for the first time in the history of the United States a majority Muslim City Council (8:42 in video) was elected in Hamtramck and all the while that the Muslim candidates were running, this was celebrated as something that would be a triumph of diversity in multiculturalism. So as soon as they were elected, at the celebration party, one of the new city councilmen in Hamtramck said, “We showed the Polish and, everybody else, Hamtramck having been a historically Polish city. And this sent shockwaves through the local community and a lot of the people including some of the defeated candidates said, “Well, you know he’s speaking in a way that’s not really consistent with diversity and multiculturalism. He shouldn’t be wanting to show the Polish or show them up or rebuke them in any way. We’re all working together in harmony here, aren’t we?” Well, no. But that what happens when modern man meets reality.

Now, the disjunction, I think, is society wide between reality and the modern man. You take for example Ben Carson and Barack Obama, and Ben Carson recently, of course, ignited a firestorm by saying that he wouldn’t want to see a Muslim president. And lots of people said wait a minute. He doesn’t even know the constitution. There’s no religious test for candidates in the constitution (and he ought to be aware of that). He wasn’t saying that, however. This was a misinterpretation, probably willful, of his words. What he was pointing out was that Islamic law of Sharia has numerous aspects that are incompatible with constitutional freedoms. Denies the freedom of speech, denies the freedom of conscience, denies the equality of rights of women, denies the equality of rights of non–Muslims. These things, obviously, are not compatible with constitutional principles such that, as Dr. Carson pointed out, a presidential candidate if he were a Muslim would have to either adhere to the constitution or Sharia but he couldn’t do both; and he would have to renounce aspects of Sharia in order to adhere to constitutional principles and he might be doing that honestly or dishonestly. And this is a problem that is probably going to recur. And, of course, this was a terrible thing and Dr. Carson was widely denounced as an Islamophobe. Now, on the other hand, you have Barrack Obama, who of course has said Muslims are part of the fabric of this nation and have contributed to it since its founding. And, of course, you remember all the Muslim generals in the Revolutionary War and the Muslims among the founding fathers, the Muslim signers of the Declaration of Independence, and so on.

And so, we have to admit he has a point, but here again, modern man is untroubled by reality, and the idea that Barack Obama could say that and could say the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam which is a direct attack on the First Amendment, a direct attack on the freedom of speech and on the idea that even if something considered to be slander of the prophet of Islam, Americans ought to be free to say it. That ought to have ignited the firestorm, but of course, there was nothing because modern man is in control of the mainstream media as well as in control of the government.

And so, what all this makes clear, in brief, is that what we need in the government of the United States as we approach the new election cycle are some old–fashioned men and women who understand that we’re not beyond all that at all and that modern man, going into the confrontation with the ancient old–fashioned men represented by the caliph al–Baghdadi and Ayatollah Khamenei and so on, is absolutely outmanned, is absolutely out classed and has no chance of defeating him. And as a matter of fact, of course, defeat is not even something that he’s interested in pursuing. You may recall as a matter of fact that we went into Afghanistan 13 years ago, or 12 years ago, in order to defeat the Taliban and now the Pentagon and the United States government are announcing that the Taliban are an integral part, an important aspect of the post–war situation and the new harmonious and peaceful Afghanistan. Can you imagine if we had said, “Well we have to have the Nazis in the post World War II German government.” But course, modern men weren’t in charge during World War II. And what we have to do is turn them out now and insist that we elect people who are patriotic and who are aware of reality, who are aware of the reality of the Islamic Jihad against the west, who are aware of the reality of Islamic law and the implications that that has for the American polity as well as for international relations and people who will confront these facts realistically and formulate strategy on the basis of them rather than as, Barack Obama and John Kerry and all the other modern men are trying do, reshape reality into the image that they wish it to be, the glorious multicultural future in which there’s no nationality and no boundaries and no standards for anything and we’re all just together in this one glorious mosaic. It’s unfortunately true that, when these kinds of fantasies are applied to reality, then disaster ensues and that is what we are unfortunately heading for unless we get the modern man out of office and so that should be our primary objective for 2016. Thank you.

Audience member: That was great, Robert.

Robert Spencer: Thank you, Nina.

Audience member: I wanted to ask, “Is Jihad Watch going to do a compendium of kind of, how do you say, grave missteps in the same regard as you just documented, the conflict with the First Amendment to get sort of the contrast out there?”

Robert Spencer: Yeah, that’s a good idea. Thank you. And I think absolutely so, yes. People aren’t aware of the nature of Islamic law (and it’s widely obfuscated). A few years back there were nationwide attempts to outlaw Sharia in various states and the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic advocacy group with links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, they fought fiercely against these initiatives and were able to get activist judges to overturn them where they were passed in most of the places where they were passed. Now, they said that you can’t outlaw Sharia because Sharia is simply Islamic religious law and so you would be forbidding Muslims to practice Islam. And this was taken as axiomatic by the judges who overturned the statutes. But obviously, the point needs to be made, people aren’t concerned about Sharia because Muslims are reading the Koran or getting married according to Islamic rights or something of that kind or setting out their wills in accord with Islamic law and so on. Nobody’s concerned about that. People are only concerned about Islamic law, about Sharia, insofar as it does conflict with the principles and the freedoms that are guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. And so that ought to be the focus of these anti–Sharia initiatives and I hope that they’ll be able to be revived on that basis.

Audience member: That was really brilliant, Robert. I’m wondering since all of this in this room are not modern men and women, but dinosaurs –

Robert Spencer: Neanderthals.

Audience member: – proud dinosaurs and Neanderthals, I’m wondering as a case study, since you’re one of us, you’re one of the dinosaurs and you’re a very brave one, what CAIR and other organizations have personally done to you and whether or not you have had fatwas put out on your head and how you’ve managed to deal with that.

Robert Spencer: Well, yeah, I have a lot of death threats in terms of that. I don’t know if I have any formal fatwas but a death threat is a death threat, whether it’s got an official stamp from a Muslim cleric or not. I’m not concerned about death threats. Obviously, if I’m speaking in a public place where it’s been announced and there are likely to be people who are just coming in from wherever, then I generally have security with me and the great Floyd is right here. And that’s always a consideration but I’m not really concerned about it. It’s not as if I’m going to be immortal if I don’t do this work. And so, at a certain point you just have to make a decision to go ahead. As far as CAIR goes, it’s much more important. What CAIR does is, and it’s not only with me but anybody, anyone and everyone who speaks the truth about these issues CAIR will target and try to discredit and silence and marginalize. And they have done this for years such that they tar with the charges of racism, bigotry and islamophobia. Anyone who speaks about this in any forum, and I see it all the time, I get the CAIR mailing every day and they are asking some place to cancel some speaker or asking that some city officer somewhere resign because he wrote something anti–Muslim on his Facebook page. And the anti–Muslim statement was really about how we need to resist the jihadis but of course CAIR tries to obstruct that. The idea is to intimate Americans into silence and make people afraid to speak out about this because they think, well I don’t want to be charged with racism and bigotry and so I’ll just keep quiet about this. And it’s been an extraordinarily effective campaign, the Fort Dix jihad plot. There are six Albanian Muslims were going to go into Fort Dix and shoot as many American soldiers as possible before they themselves were killed and went to the virgins. That was foiled by a 17 year old boy because he was working in a video store and the jihadis went into the video store and they asked him to transfer all their gory jihad tapes from VHS to DVD. And so he was watching all this and he was alarmed. But this is the key point. He went to his manager and he said, “Dude, I’m watching all this weird stuff on the screen. Should I go to the police or would that be racist?” Would that be racist? See, that I think sums up right there where he’s worried would it be racist to turn in some blood thirsty jihadis to the police? That shows how successful the CAIR campaign has been, that this teenager, he’s internalized all that.

Audience member: Next question’s right here, Robert.

Audience member: Thank you for your analysis of –

Robert Spencer: Thank you.

Audience member: – the character. Because this is something that our enemies always do. We always used to read about how the soviets paid so much attention to what our leaders were like and indeed Putin has done that for Obama. He is inside his head as somebody said. And we never do it.

Robert Spencer: Rent free, yeah.

Audience member: And that was a really perfect thing using that modern man.

Robert Spencer: Thank you.

Audience member: One thing I want to ask you about is tribalism, connected with that. Because one of the great achievements of not modern man, but modern civilization in America is that we have tried to overcome tribalism. We pursued integration. We broadened rights to everybody. And it seems to me that what our modern men and the left is doing is to bring back tribalism. So when those jihadis said we got the Polish (that just seems like an omen of things to come). If you were always attacked for who you are, you’re going to be tribal after a while.

Robert Spencer: Yeah, absolutely. I think, well of course, many people have observed that the multiculturalist imperative is all cultures are equal except our own and all cultures are good except Judeo–Christian western culture which is to be rejected and despised in every possible way. And so the idea of multiculturalism does encourage tribalism because it encourages you to take on your cultural identity even and especially in the west and especially in the U.S. at the expense of the mainstream culture. And so, yeah, at a certain point, it’s going to result in atomization and conflict. There’s no way that it can’t. It’s just like the Austria–Hungary empire with all its constituent nationalities and the more that they began to press for their national identities, the more it became inevitable that the empire was going to dissolve and these constituent parts would be independent. Now, in the United States, it’s going to be actually much messier and bloodier because it’s not a regional thing or a matter of different nationalities together in one, but these different cultural identities that are being reinforced and often in a manner that is quite hostile to the mainstream. So yes, it’s not going to end well.

Audience member: Question in the back, hold on, Robert.

Audience member: Thank you. Is there enough drive or purpose behind the movement to get the Muslim Brotherhood designated as a terrorist organization?

Robert Spencer: Well, the purpose is to stop the Obama administration from favoring the Muslim Brotherhood. The Obama administration solicitude for the Muslim Brotherhood is so extreme that when the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt was being toppled, by the Egyptian people, millions and millions of Egyptians out on the streets, demonstrating against the Brotherhood regime in 2013, they were holding up signs saying, “Obama stop supporting terrorists.” And it was all about Obama’s supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. Even after the Brotherhood regime has been toppled, he has met with Brotherhood representatives in Washington and sent American representatives over to speak to the Brotherhood in Cairo while snubbing and giving the cold shoulder to the AsSisi regime that is against the Brotherhood. So the idea of designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terror group would be to try to end this Muslim Brotherhood influence and they decided pro–Muslim Brotherhood slant of the Obama administration. Excuse me.

Audience member: Okay. Right here, right here Rob.

Audience member: So I was in class and I was defending Dr. Carson’s statements because the United States was founded on Judeo–Christian values and not Islamic values and I had a teacher tell me that Judeo–Christian was a term made up to get votes from republic Christians. Is that the case, which I know it’s not, but how could I defend against that in class?

Robert Spencer: Well, you can point out that there are people you can point to who were Jews and who were Christians who really were participating in the founding of the United States. And there were Jews who were participating in the American Revolution right from the beginning. As a matter of fact there was a very significant, I believe his name was Haym Salomon, a very significant figure in the political career of George Washington and the ability of the Continental Army to sustain itself was this supporter who was Jewish. And so you have Jews and Christians from the beginning of the United States. You don’t have any Muslims there (contrary to Obama’s fantasy). So the idea that there is something newly minted and manipulative or propagandistic about the Judeo–Christian is simply flying in the face of the facts. There really has been Jewish and Christian cooperation and a congruence in seeing the principles of the United States as worth founding and worth defending and a Jewish and Christian presence here, obviously, all through the history of the United States and Jews having been persecuted all over the world found this to be the most welcoming nation probably in the history of the world for the Jewish people, whereas Muslims were never present here at all. And when they came here, have been supremacist and antagonistic from the beginning, in demanding special privileges and so on that other groups are not accorded. So the claim that your professor is making is just more of this ahistorical modern man fantasy really.

Audience member: Okay. This will have to be the last question.

Robert Spencer: Okay.

Audience member: Well, it’s not a question, just an add–on to an excellent observation. There were of course synagogues during the colonial times and the first mosque in the United States was established, when? Does anybody know? Anybody in the room know? 1928 Omaha, first masque, first synagogues, George Washington Times. Thank you very much.

Robert Spencer: Thank you. Thank you, very much.

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Where Is Speech Most Restricted in America? by George C. Leef

A good argument can be made that free speech is least safe on private college campuses.

At public universities, the First Amendment applies, thus giving students, faculty members, and everyone else protection against official censorship or punishment for saying things that some people don’t want said.

A splendid example of that was brought to a conclusion earlier this year at Valdosta State University, where the school’s president went on a vendetta against a student who criticized his plans for a new parking structure — and was clobbered in court. (I discussed that case here.)

But the First Amendment does not apply to private colleges and universities because they don’t involve governmental action. Oddly, while all colleges that accept federal student aid money must abide by a vast host of regulations, the Supreme Court ruled in Rendell-Baker v. Kohn that acceptance of such money does not bring them under the umbrella of the First Amendment.

At private colleges, the protection for freedom of speech has to be found (at least, in most states) in the implicit contract the school enters into with each incoming student. Ordinarily, the school holds itself out as guaranteeing certain things about itself and life on campus in its handbook and other materials. If school officials act in ways that depart significantly from the reasonable expectations it created, then the college can be held liable.

As the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) puts it, “There is a limit to ‘bait-and-switch’ techniques that promise academic freedom and legal equality but deliver authoritarianism and selective censorship.”

With that legal background in mind, consider a recent case at Colorado College. If Franz Kafka or George Orwell had toyed with a similar plot, they’d probably have rejected it as too far-fetched.

Back in November, a student, Thaddeus Pryor, wrote the following reply to a comment (#blackwomenmatter) on the social media site Yik Yak: “They matter, they’re just not hot.” Another student, offended that someone was not taking things seriously, complained to college officials. After ascertaining that the comment had been written by Pryor, the Dean of Students summoned him to a meeting.

Pryor said that he was just joking. What he did not realize is that there are now many things that must not be joked about on college campuses. Some well-known American comedians have stopped playing on our campuses for exactly that reason, as Clark Conner noted in this Pope Center article.

In a subsequent letter, Pryor was informed by the Senior Associate Dean of Students that his anonymous six word comment violated the school’s policy against Abusive Behavior and Disruption of College Activities.

Did that comment actually abuse anyone? Did it in any way disrupt a college activity?

A reasonable person would say “of course not,” but many college administrators these days are not reasonable. They are social justice apparatchiks, eager to use their power to punish perceived enemies of progress like Thaddeus Pryor.

For having joked in a way that offended the wrong people, Pryor was told that he was suspended from Colorado College until June, 2017. Moreover, he is banned from setting foot on campus during that time. And in the final “pound of flesh” retribution, the school intends to prohibit him from taking any college credits elsewhere.

With FIRE’s able assistance, Pryor is appealing his punishment. Perhaps the college’s attorney will advise the president to back off since its own “Freedom of Expression” policy hardly suggests to students that they will be subject to severe punishment for merely making offensive jokes on a social media site. If the case were to go to trial, there is a strong likelihood that a jury would find Colorado College in breach of contract.

Even if the school retreats from its astounding overreaction to Pryor’s comment, the administration should worry that alums who aren’t happy that their school has fallen under the spell of thought control will stop supporting it.

This incident is emblematic of a widespread problem in American higher education today: administrators think it’s their job to police what is said on campus, even comments on a social media app. Many colleges and universities have vague speech codes and “harassment” policies that invite abuse; those positions tend to attract mandarins who are not scholars and do not value free speech and unfettered debate. They are committed to “progressive” causes and will gladly use their power to silence or punish anyone who doesn’t go along.

American colleges have been suffering through a spate of ugly protests this fall. Among the demands the protesters usually make is that the school mandate “diversity training” for faculty and staff. Instead of that, what most schools really need is tolerance training, with a special emphasis on the importance of free speech. Those who don’t “get it” should be advised to find other employment.

George C. Leef
George C. Leef

George Leef is the former book review editor of The Freeman. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

Obama’s San Bernardino Speech – The Missing Link

U.S. President Barack Obama’s December 6 speech contained few surprises and, on many points, he said the right things.

He mentioned the “I” word, admitting there is a perversion of Islam out there that resulted in last week’s San Bernardino massacre.

The president repeated his refrain about aerial strikes against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), which he prefers to a boots-on-the-ground approach.

He gave us the very quotable quote: “If we are to succeed in defeating terrorism, we must enlist Muslim communities as our strongest allies in rooting out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization.”

But outside of that, and a plea for all in America to use non-inciting language, his televised White House speech focused on ISIS.

His speech lacked a clear policy on what to do about the Islamist extremists already operating in the United States – with or without the support of ISIS, al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization.

See a map of some of the Islamist terror attacks planned or carried out in the United States in 2015.

There seemed to be no linkage in his comments between the order for more bombing raids in the Middle East and the inspiration ISIS provides for terrorists on American soil – whether directly under ISIS’ aegis or acting alone.

This was where Obama missed the point in his speech:

“But over the last few years, the threat has evolved as terrorists have turned to less complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all-too common in our society. For the past seven years, I have confronted the evolution of this threat each morning. Your security is my greatest responsibility. And I know that, after so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure.”

The obvious follow up to this would have been to give at least some details of the numbers of arrests in the U.S., or the types of actions being taken by the FBI and other agencies, without going into sensitive operational details.

However, Obama’s logical follow up was not on home soil but rather:

“So, tonight, this is what I want you to know: The threat of terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us. Here’s how:” (this part of the speech was bolded in the statement to the media)

And then he discussed what Washington will and will not do in its war against ISIL in the Middle East.

Maybe the president is trying to avoid panic in the homeland, but he did not give the American public any reason to feel calmer by ignoring the very real, palpable threat in the United States.

And if his policy of destroying ISIS succeeds, will it mean no more terror attacks on U.S. soil? The answer to that I will leave for the reader to mull.

Suffice it to say, unless the president announces a clear intention to increase surveillance and other interventionist measures at home – and yes, it should come from the president himself – he will leave Americans scared and the terrorists feeling emboldened.

Watch President Obama’s speech:

David Harris is editor in chief of Clarion Project.

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The Speech Pope Francis Should Have Given by Lawrence W. Reed

Pope Francis, Address to the United States Congress — September 24, 2015:

Members of the U.S. Congress and the American people:

I come before you in glowing admiration for the historic accomplishments of your spirit of enterprise. In the pursuit of personal gain — the desire to improve your lives while serving others in the process — you Americans have fed, clothed and housed more people at higher levels than all the combined efforts of humanitarians worldwide throughout history.

In my profession, we speak of “collecting” money. Americans practically coined the phrase, “making money.” After 36 hours in the United States, I now realize that we can’t collect it until you first make it, and while both activities are motivated at least in part by a shared desire to “do good,” the one that your risk-taking, visionary entrepreneurs, investors, builders, inventors and job creators do so well is by far the bigger challenge.

I’ve said some things lately that gave you reason to think I was hostile to the dynamic spirit of enterprise that made this country a beacon for the world and the most generous society in history. I’ve spoken about excessive greed in the capitalist system, but now I realize that no variant of socialism ever does away with greed. It simply ensures that the only way a person can satisfy it is by using his political connections to steal what he wants, to pillage hapless value-creators while condemning the poor to a life of politicized dependency. I’m a little ashamed now that I fell for such nonsense, but I am happy to be here to begin my education in economics and politics in earnest.

One of the beautiful things about your country is the intellectual diversity. One example is my conversations with American Christians who have spent much time in thought and prayer on the question of Jesus’s views on property and politics. In my conversations, we have discussed how Jesus, the man whose teachings I regard as sacred and divine, never once argued for redistribution of income by political power.

While he disdained the worship of money, he never disparaged the crucial role of money as a medium of exchange or as a wealth-creating motivator. I had apparently forgotten Jesus’s advice (in the Book of Luke) to a man who asked him to redistribute some wealth. “Who made me a judge or divider over you?” he asked. I think as legislators, you should ask that very question of yourselves.

So rather than read a stock speech of clichés and finger-wagging, I’m simply going to implore you to keep learning, as I have dedicated my life to doing. And before any of us are quick to jump to policy prescriptions on things about which we know so little, let’s all remember what the Austrian economist Murray Rothbard advised:

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a “dismal science.” But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, this was not the speech the Pope delivered to Congress today.

The good news is that you don’t have to wait for the Pope’s next encyclical to benefit from the insights on property, economics, and Jesus’s teachings on them that the Pope is no doubt gleaning on his American tour.

You can order a copy of Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus a Socialist?yourself. In fact, you can even order multiple copies, get a bulk discount, and start informing others of the important principles the pamphlet champions! What are you waiting for?

Lawrence W. Reed
Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s.

Geert Wilders Speaks at the Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley

Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom party (PVV) spoke at a heavily guarded forum last night  at IFES Portuguese Hall in Mountain View, California in the heart of liberal Silicon Valley. The sponsor for Wilders event was the Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley where an appreciative audience of 300 showed up. The topic of wilders speech was: “Hard Facts about Islamic Extremism”. Because of the jihadi attack at the Garland, Texas  Mohammed Cartoon AFDI event in May 2015 Wilders was heavily guarded by both police SWAT teams and the ubiquitous Royal Dutch Protection Service which has  continually provided him with 24/7 protection since 2004. The parking lot for the venue was completely surrounded to prevent a possible attack on Wilders, a noted international anti-Islam critic and Dutch politican whose Freedom Party is ranked at the top of political polls in The Netherlands. This writer experienced that first hand when we arranged for a speech by Wilders at one of my alma maters, Columbia University in New York in 2009.

Watch this NBC Bay Area video report on Wilders speech in Mountain View, California.

Note these comments in the NBC Bay area report from attendees and bystanders at the Wilders Mountain event:

“I thought it was an amazing speech, I think he’s a tremendously brave man, and saying what’s very plain it’s all right in front of our eyes,” San Jose-resident Jane Kearney said.

Christian Perez lives near the hall, and said the road closure was an inconvenience. He was also unsure of the event’s speaker.

“I think it’s great we can actually have forums and discuss topics like this safely, but I don’t necessary have to agree with the opinions held,” he said.

Wilders’ speech at the Mountain View Conservative Forum can be found on his weblog.  The following are some excerpts.

On Islam as totalitarianism

Islam is totalitarian. It wants to submit us all and according to Islam there is no room for anything but Islam. It is not voluntary either. No Muslim is allowed to renounce it. Apostates must be killed. It commands the submission of every nation on earth to Islamic Sharia law.
The Koran is full of verses such as Sura 47:4: “When ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks and cause a bloodbath among them.” There are over 150 verses in the Koran calling for jihad or holy war. It is put in practice every day. Just put on the television news and you can see Islam in action.

We are all the victims of Islamization. Look around you. This building is surrounded by heavily armed law enforcement officers. This gathering here tonight is heavily protected. Why? We are no criminals. We are peaceful, ordinary citizens exercising a fundamental right in our free society, the right of free speech. This is something the American Founding Fathers fought for, and enshrined in the First Amendment of your Constitution.

This situation here, tonight, is absolutely un-American. But, unfortunately, it has become a reality in America and the rest of the Western world. Why? I will tell you why: Because Islam has entered America and is taking over Europe.

Islam is fundamentally changing our societies. Fanatics, brainwashed by a totalitarian ideology, are ready to kill us if we simply try to inform people about Islam. They terrorize people into submission. I am grateful that you did not give in to these threats. But the fact remains:
Our Judeo-Christian identity, our traditions, our freedoms and values, including free speech, are no longer a given. They are in danger. They have to be protected. And that is a sad thing, unworthy of a free society.

Only last month, we saw another tragic example of Islamization in America.
A gunman in Chattanooga. Tennessee, murdered four American Marines and a Navy officer. The assassin, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, was an immigrant from Kuwait.
This makes one think of events in France in March 2012, where Mohammed Merah, an immigrant of Algerian descent, killed three French paratroopers. The same assassin later attacked a Jewish school, murdering three children and a rabbi.

On European abdication to Islamization:

During the past decades, the European governments have made a terrible mistake. They have foolishly allowed millions of immigrants from Islamic countries to settle within our borders.

And now, we are witnessing a new reality:
Islamic neighborhoods are expanding. Many European cities have rapidly expanding Islamic populations: just take Amsterdam, Brussels, Bradford, Marseille and Malmö in Sweden and so many other cities in Euope. Europe is becoming a continent of head scarves and mosques.

In the Netherlands, Muhammad is currently already the second most popular name among newborn boys nationwide and even the most popular name in our three largest cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. This is also the case in the Belgian capital Brussels, the Norwegian capital Oslo, the British capital London. As a matter of fact even in the whole of Great-Britain, Muhammad has become the most popular name for newborn boys.

Europe is also becoming a continent of extremism and intolerance.

Last Summer, in my home town, The Hague, sympathizers of the Islamic State paraded in the streets. They carried swastikas and the black flags of IS. They shouted “Death to the Jews.” In broad daylight in my home town. According to the Koran, Jews are monkeys and pigs.

In Britain, Islamic gang have been filmed patrolling London streets, demanding that passersby confirm to Sharia law.

Recently, a young girl was beaten up in the French city of Reims by so-called Islamic religious police, because she was sunbathing in a park in her bikini.

In every Western nation, there are homegrown jihadis, prepared to commit violence. ISIS calls them “city wolves.” There are thousands of them. According to the European police agency Europol, 5,000 homegrown jihadis have left Europe to fight in Syria and Iraq. And many of them return.

Last January, an ISIS operative said that his organization had already sent some 4,000 fighters into Europe. The British authorities have uncovered an ISIS plot to blow up Queen Elizabeth. And the organization has announced that by 2020 it aims to conquer large parts of Europe, including Spain and the entire Balkans, as well as the northern half of Africa and the Indian peninsula.

Our political leaders, your president Barack Obama, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, my own Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, they still say that Islam is a religion of peace.

Let me tell you: They are wrong!

John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth President said: “The precept of the Koran is perpetual war against all who deny that Mahomet is the prophet of God.”
Winston Churchill, the great British wartime Prime Minister, called Islam a “retrograde force” and called Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic book Mein Kampf a “new Koran.”
Adams was right. Churchill was right. Obama and Cameron are wrong!

So, let us stop bowing to Islam! No appeasement anymore!
The jihadis and their sympathizers do not belong in our societies.
I say: Let us reclaim our freedom!

[..]

We must not give in. We cannot allow the terrorists to win and evil to triumph.
Where are the Western government leaders with the wisdom of Adams and Churchill?

On the eve of the battle of Long Island, the first major battle of the American War of Independence, George Washington told his men: “The time is now at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission.” These words – these wise words – apply to us as well today.

Where are the Western government leaders with the courage of George Washington?

Extent of Muslim support for ISIS in the Netherlands and the U.S.

Let me give you some shocking numbers. The University of Amsterdam did a study about the 1 million Muslims in my country. It found that 11% is prepared to use violence for the sake of Islam. That is a staggering 110,000 people in a small country that is only half the size of Maine.

And it gets even worse. While the terrorists are only a minority, polls show that they have the support of the majority.
73% of the Islamic population in the Netherlands say that Muslims who go to Syria to fight in the jihad are heroes. 73%,
80% of the Turkish youths in the Netherlands do not think that the violence by ISIS against non-believers is wrong. 80%!
Can you believe it!?

Last June, a survey among US Muslims revealed that a majority of 51% want to be able to live under Sharia law.
Even more disturbing is the fact that 29% of American Muslims are okay with violence against people who so-called “insult” Muhammad.
25% – a staggering one in four – agree that violence against Americans here in the US is justified as part of jihad.

Indeed, you have a serious problem. We have a serious problem. We all have a problem.

It is called Islam. The problem is growing. And we cannot afford to ignore it any longer because our existence is at stake.

Clarion Call to combat Islamic Extremism and stand for Freedom

What we are witnessing today is how freedom dies. It dies because politicians are unwilling to defend it. It dies because of cowardice, ignorance and political opportunism and false correctness.

But that is not my way.

We owe it to the past generations always to speak the truth and not to take our liberties for granted.
We owe it to the future generations not to sign away their freedom.
We can halt the global expansion of Islam if we do our duty.
We can turn the tide if we act today. Today, my friends, must be our finest hour.
We must confront cowardice with the truth. We must confront ignorance with the truth.
We must confront political opportunism with the truth.
The truth about Islam.

I am from Europe, you are Americans, but we are all in the same boat.
We must unite against a common threat. The Islamic tide is strong, but the West has repulsed it before. And we can do so again if we stand together.

[…]

Indeed, my friends, a choice has to be made. The choice between Islam and freedom.
Let us make the right choice.
Let us continue the legacy our ancestors bestowed on us, with liberty and justice for all.
Let us never surrender.
Let us choose freedom.

Let me finish by quoting one of your great president. Thomas Jefferson. I also quote him in my book Marked for Death. His words are a great inspiration to me.
Jefferson said: “In matters of principle, stand like a rock.”

And that, my friends, is exactly what we will do.

We will stand like a stone wall in the defense of our freedoms.

EDITORS NOTE: The column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Ferguson Protesters in Israel and Washington, D.C. to Disrupt Netanyahu Speech

ferguson proterers in Israel

Ferguson protesters in Israel.

HAMAS JOINS WITH FERGUSON? – Why are Ferguson protesters in Israel and on their way to Netanyahu’s speech in D.C.?

Once again, The United West goes to Israel and D.C., via Skype and some fancy studio work to bring you two key people involved in the Netanyahu visit to America.

First up is Barry Shaw who explains the Israeli election system that the Prime Minister has to navigate in order to get re-elected on March 17, 2015. Then we are off to the snowy part of America to hook up with our MC buddy “WALL.”

Wall brings us some very good news about the status of our permit process for Rally approval in Washington D.C.

Watch and learn, laugh, live.

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UPDATE: Victory for Iran — Hegemony Over the Arabian Peninsula

Iran has thrown  a lasso around Arabian peninsula with Houthi Shia takeover in Yemen.  Friends of ours here in Pensacola have two serving U.S. Marine Captains. One of them was in charge of  Marine Security for our embassies in the Middle East.  He called home to say that he was in the last group of 10 persons that  vacated the U.S. Embassy in Saana, Yemen, He told his parents in a phone call of the circuitous trip to the airport in Yemen’s capital evading Houthi checkpoints. The flight took the group to safety in Dubai. Yemen is now a failed state that will likely devolve into sectarian war between the minority Houthi and the divided majority Sunni.  It also marks another failure of this  exemplar  of the Obama ‘no name’ counterterrorism strategy.

Saudi Arabia’s fences on its northern and southern borders may become the equivalent of France’s Maginot Line that failed to stop the Nazi blitzkrieg in 1940 that saw the demise of Third Republic. The Kingdom has the largest number of Islamic State foreign fighters who will constitute a fifth column upon return to the Wahhabist realm.  That gives Iran virtual control of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, plus Lebanon with Proxy Hezbollah.  Then  there are restive majority Shia in Bahrain and oppressed Shia sitting atop Saudi Arabia’s oil fields in the eastern province on the Persian Gulf. Some argue that Iran may have even been complicit  fostering the rise of ISIS despite the alleged hatred between radical Islamist Salafist and Apocalyptic Twevlers in Tehran.

If President Obama’s quest for a nuclear pact with the Islamic Regime in Tehran occurs on March 24th with the P5+1 final agreement, Iran becomes a nuclear hegemon threatened the region, America’s ally Israel  and the West. Remember that agreement excludes ICBMs that may be capable of covering Europe and beyond.  Yesterday Uruguay arrested a senior Iranian diplomat  alleged to be involved in a possible repeat in Montevideo  of the Iranian sponsored 1992 Buenos Aires blast at the Israeli Embassy.

Obama’s ‘Strategic Patience”  document released Thursday amounts to capitulation and appeasement of Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, IS, Taliban and Al Qaeda. To say nothing of his failed Russian reset with Imperialist Putin in the Ukraine and  failed pivot to contain China’s saber rattling in East Asia  He even changed the wording of his original war declaration against IS  from “degrade and destroy” to “degrade and destroy”.  He is worse than British PM Neville Chamberlain at Munich in 1938 that sold out pre-war Czechoslovakia. At least Chamberlain brought Sir Winston Churchill into his cabinet after the declaration of war against Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939  as First Lord of the Admiralty, a prelude to Churchill being asked by King George VI to form a government on May 10,1940 following Chamberlain’s resignation.

Obama and  many Democratic Senators and Representatives deplore the proposed speech by Israel’s PM Netanyahu on the dangers of  Iran and radical Islam before a Joint Session of Congress on March 3rd at the invitation of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner. If that does occur then the leader of America’s only democratic ally in the Middle East, who is said to speak in Churchillian cadence, will like the fabled UK wartime premier, have a third opportunity to present his prescient views.

NOTE: This Twitchy headline and  tweeted  comments  posted on ‘Victory for Iran’: Shia rebels in ‘success story’ Yemen dissolve parliament, take charge

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Houthi Shia rebels in Yemen.