Edward Cline's Blog, page 33

The Fakirs of Reality

Raymond Ibrahim, an associate director of The Middle East Forum, wrote an article for Pajamas Media, "The Ultimate Lesson of Egypt's Faked Photo." In it he explains why a leading Mideast newspaper, Al Ahram, decided to run a doctored photograph of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

One of the most widely circulated newspapers in the world, Egypt's Al Ahram, recently ran a fake picture depicting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak walking in front of U.S. President Barack Obama and a pack of...

Burning the First Amendment

In the classic western, High Noon , Will Kane, the retiring U.S. Marshall of Hadleyville, must face a gang of criminals who have come back to town, intent on vengeance on Kane for his having helped send the leader to prison. Most of the townspeople, in an demonstration of mass cowardice (a "terror-stricken town," as the trailer narrative goes), repair to a church after they have abandoned Kane, citing a host of rationalistic excuses. There they pray and squeeze their eyes shut in desperate hop...

"Emotionalism" and the Ground Zero Mosque

In today's Daily Telegraph (London) article, Anne Applebaum asks:

Today, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, there is only one relevant question to ask about this sudden outburst of anti-Muslim rhetoric: why now?

Why indeed, after nine years? She is somewhat stunned by the level of discussion and "anger" displayed by Americans, an emotion directed specifically at Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his Cordoba Initiative (now "Park51") to replace a building damaged on 9/11 with a 13- or 15-story "c...

H.L. Mencken, Au Contraire

"So far as I can make out, I believe in only one thing: liberty."
Henry L. Mencken to Ernest Boyd, 1925

It is rare any more that I do not feel compelled to address the rise of statism in this country, abetted as it is by the Millionaire Mendicants of Capitol Hill, the Mooners of Mecca, or the Mariachi Marauders of the Southwest. Not to mention the Ground Zero Gang. One of the most astute, devastating, and frequently amusing observers of American politics and culture was Hen...

The Fatal Links of Servitude

Quo Vadis, Redux
I sometimes imagine myself in the role of a latter day Roman contrarian, living in a time of my country's certain dissolution on the eve of an invasion by barbarian hordes bent on loot and conquest. On one hand, will granting twelve million illegal, mostly Mexican aliens the right to vote and so skew the November election returns, secure for Democrats their continued occupation of Congress and President Barack Obama the freedom to "transform" the country? The Democrats have b...

We Are All Al-Qadists Now

One of the most appalling and bizarre opinion pieces about the Ground Zero mosque appeared on August 21st in The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof's "Taking Bin Laden's Side." The op-ed closely follows and dovetails with a Times report on how opposition to the mosque has only "provoked" Islamic "extremists" and "played into their hands."

Some counterterrorism experts say the anti-Muslim sentiment that has saturated the airwaves and blogs in the debate over plans for an Islamic center near g...

Nancy Pelosi, Pen Pal

Levity can be leveraged.

Roger L. Simon, writer, critic, and regular columnist for Pajamas Media and other news outlets and blogs, responded to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's remark on KCBS Radio in San Francisco that the funding behind the effective and influential opposition to Imam Feisal Rauf's Ground Zero mosque (once Cordoba House, now called Park51) should be investigated. Doubtless she had been informed that about 65% of Americans are opposed to the mosque, and that this is large...

A Nexus of Nihilism

"Political nihilism advocates the prior destruction of all existing political, social, and religious orders as a prerequisite for any future improvement," states one Internet site. "Existential nihilism, the most well-known view, affirms that life has no intrinsic meaning or value."

It should confound no one that the "atheistic" or "agnostic" liberal/left has found common ground with Islam, ostensively a religious creed, thus allying itself with political/religious ideology. How can this be, w...

Towering Babble Over Cordoba House

What should one write about first and foremost? The "greening" of America? The "socialization" of America? The "de-exceptionalism" of America? Or the "Islamization" of America?

I do not think Charles Krauthammer saw it coming, but in a rare alignment of political planets, he agreed with President Barack Obama by opposing the planned site of the Ground Zero mosque in lower Manhattan for the same reason that Obama endorsed it. Krauthammer claims that Ground Zero is "sacred" and that no mosque s...

Cordoba House: A 'Man-Caused' Disaster

In March of 2009, the German magazine Der Spiegel interviewed Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano.

SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word "terrorism." Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?

Napolitano: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word "terrorism," I referred to "man-caused"