Devin Saucier

I'm sure you all remember being back in elementary school when the only thing cooler than Tamagotchis and POGs was trying to outdo your buddy's moose ears and KISS tongue every time the substitute teacher turns around to write something on the board.

Whenever the talking heads of the Left turn Sauron's eye on the Tea Party Movement, they purport to have a similar impression. Sure, when video cameras and news reporters are around, the Tea Baggers are murmuring some nonsense about being over taxed and wanting "freedom" – whatever that means… but as soon as the cameras are switched off and the reporters fade away, that's when white hoods are donned and goose-stepping ensues.

Nothing, of course, could be more absurd. At February's National Tea Party Convention here in Nashville, African-American Angela McGlowan shared the stage with the Syrian/Lebanese-American Joseph Farah. Both were very well received. Indeed, most tea party organizers will trip over each other trying to book the limited number of minority conservatives in hopes of not having their speaker lineup mirror the recipients of the Country Music Awards.

Now, whether these talking heads actually believe the nonsense they spew about the real motivations of the Tea Party or not is insignificant. What matters are the effects these accusations engender. Rather than focusing on legitimate issues like health care or overbearing tax rates, the accused begin uttering something about how many black friends they have and how their distant cousin once dated an Asian. They then throw in a few genuflecting comments about Michael Steele and Bobby Jindal, for good measure.

It's no coincidence that the day before the health care bill passed the House of Representatives, two members of the Congressional Black Caucus accused Tea Partiers of shouting the N-word at them 15 times. Conveniently, none of the TV cameras, voice recorders, or handheld video cameras picked up the alleged epithets, including the cameras the Congressmen themselves were holding (that footage has yet to be been released and I'm not holding my breath waiting for it). The point was to shift the debate from the radical transformation of one-sixth of our economy to determining just how racist Tea Partiers are.

Ascribing racial motivations in general is a favorite tactic of the Left. A regular columnist for two student newspapers here at Vanderbilt, Mike Warren, was a recent victim of this ad hominem when a commenter on one of his columns claimed he was only critical of Vanderbilt's endorsement of the health care bill because he is a "selfish, white male." Now in some respect, this commenter may have a point. A March Gallup survey found that, while 57% of white Americans felt the health care bill would improve conditions of the uninsured, only one-third felt it would benefit the country, and a meager 20% thought it would benefit their own families.

While I believe Mike's dislike of the health care bill is based on principle, for the sake of argument let's accept the commenter's assertion that he only feels this way because he believes the bill will be a disadvantage to him and the majority of his racial group. Rather than being able to defend his own interests as a white American, the commenter labels him "selfish" and intends the remark maliciously. Imagine, on the other hand, a white person accusing Jesse Jackson of only supporting affirmative action because he is black. The likely response would be "Duh!" and that would be that.

The underlying logic here is that minorities are not only allowed, but are strongly encouraged by the Left to organize around and support their own racial interests. Groups like the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, and the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses are promoted, while the NASCAR-like crowds at Tea Party rallies are vilified for even implicitly supporting their own racial interests. To a casual observer, this would constitute a double standard, but for the Left, there is no logical contradiction.

You see, whites are not allowed to advocate their own racial interests because they are recipients of "undeserved white privilege." Evidently, whites are not entitled to inherit the privileges associated with their skin tone, but are, on the other hand, mandated to inherit that other favorite catch phrase of the Left, "white guilt," which we are to share as a collective racial burden, despite the reality that most of our ancestors had nothing to do with slavery or imperialism. The result is that the only acceptable moral virtue for whites is to actively favor their own dispossession.

For all its talk about being post-racial, it sure seems that for the Left, it's all about race.

Pat says we will wind up with a "tangle of squabbling nationalities and a country the southwest of which is linguistically part of Mexico." 

The video is from '07.

I like watching Glenn Beck. His focus on analysis makes the show more stimulating than typical evening news programs. I also like his willingness to focus on history and the totalitarian ideologies of the past century and how they relate to us today. That said, Beck completely blew it last night and lost quite a bit of credibility in my book. Watch the clip below to see what I mean.

In the clip, Beck says

Also, you have far right Dutch M.P. Geert Wilders. Last year, he was banned from the U.K. They said his presence could threaten community a harmony and therefore public safety. Last week, not only was he allowed into England, he was at the House of Lords, where he screened a film on the Quran.

The right and left are growing again in Europe. The left — listen carefully — the left in Europe is communism. The right is fascism, in Europe.

Clearly, Beck equates Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party with fascism, which is too absurd a claim to even warrant disproving. What is even more significant, in my view, is the tone with which he lamented Wilders’ being allowed in Britain to screen his documentary in the House of Lords. This is the same Glenn Beck who, just one year ago, had Wilders on his program to discuss infringements on free speech in Europe and to condemn the UK for banning him from screening the very same documentary in the very same chamber. The hypocrisy doesn’t seem to add up.

If something like this came from Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But when it comes from a commentator who is supposed to be fighting in our corner, it’s unacceptable.

If you detest Glenn Beck’s sorry mischaracterization of this courageous, forthright politician and his objection to Wilders’ appearance at the House of Lords, contact him here and let him know how you feel. We have enough media personalities spreading lies and criticizing our freedoms without typically conservative commentators doing the same.

Read more at Atlas Shrugs.

An interesting confrontation recently took place a couple of days prior to Dutch local elections. All the candidates of the leading political parties of the Netherlands met on national television for one last debate before voters headed to the polls. Out of the seven or so political leaders on stage two were chosen to go head to head on a question that a decade ago could not even have been raised but has since come to dominate Dutch political discourse: Is Islam a threat to Dutch society?

The two men chosen for this debate truly represented polar opposites of Dutch society. On one side was Wouter Bos, former vice-premier and leader of social-democratic Party of Labor, a party that has been in power in some form of coalition or another for the majority of years since 1945. The party is credited with helping rebuild the Netherlands after the war and reshaping it into all of what the post-war Netherlands has come to represent: social liberalism, the welfare state, tolerance, and of course, multiculturalism. This is the establishment.

On the other side was Geert Wilders, a man currently under indictment by the Dutch government. A man who lives under twenty-four hour protection due to death threats and is routinely vilified by politicians and major press as a "fascist." A man who until recently was banned from even entering the United Kingdom. In other words, the anti-establishment.

Wouter Bos predictably answered that Islam poses no threat to Dutch society; there is room enough for everyone in the Netherlands.  Wilders retorted that Islam is indeed a threat, arguing that with it have come extremism, criminality, and lack of respect for western values. He called for a moratorium on immigration and for foreign criminals to be punished with lengthy prison sentences followed by deportation. "Enough is enough!" exclaimed Wilders to a mixture of cheers and boos.

The majority of the rest of the debate featured the other Dutch politicians bashing Wilders.  From the political left to the right Wilders was called and "extremist" and "dangerous." There was a call from one party to exclude Wilders from the political process. Then, at the end of the debate the moderators made known the result of a poll asking 'Who won the debate?' There was hushed silence followed by loud shock when it was announced that Wilders was voted overwhelmingly the winner. It seemed the Dutch politicians and Dutch people were of two completely different mindsets.

The results of the elections two days later are well known. Wilders’ party, the Party for Freedom, performed very well, becoming the largest party in Almere and the second biggest party in the capital of The Hague.  The media immediately proclaimed it a victory for the "far-right." The international media in particular reported the results with a sense of alarm, asking how such an "extremist" as Geert Wilders could possibly have widespread support in such a tolerant country as the Netherlands?

It is a valid question. Of course, Geert Wilders is really neither "far-right" nor an "extremist", but media regularly portray him that way and I would wager the majority of Dutch public believe it. So why do so many support him?

It is because they are reacting to extreme conditions. By extreme conditions one may be inclined to think I mean the murder of Theo van Gogh in broad daylight for being critical of Islam, the Hofstad terrorist network, or the fact that a Dutch politician is forced to live under constant security for fear of his life.  That is all true, but what I really mean are the fear and injustices many Dutch must face on a daily basis.

Dutch women are harassed and called whores when walking through Muslim neighborhoods. Dutch who have contributed through high taxes their whole lives to social services are put last in line behind immigrants. Dutch who are attacked by gangs of immigrant youth for just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Dutch who must fear their house being broken into or car stolen because criminals are given a slap on the wrist and released back on the streets. I could go on and on. This is what creates true terror for many Dutch citizens.

Naturally, critics would be quick to point out that not all Dutch suffer these injustices. This is true. The Dutch working and middle class suffer them but those who drive to work, live in rich neighborhoods, and only travel in exclusive circles have little to fear. They don’t live near asylum centers, ride the tram through sketchy areas late at night, or attend “inclusive” schools. They live in a different world. Therefore it is little wonder that this elite class which comprises the Dutch political establishment is amazed and dumbfounded by the popular appeal of Wilders.

The political establishment may not understand the problems of ordinary Dutch but they have come to realize that Dutch voters want to hear about immigration and law and order. As a result, many parties such as the Christian Democrats have recently come to adopt Wilders-style slogans about crime and immigration. Even the social-democrat Wouter Bos spoke during the debate about the need to crack down on crime and the problem of criminality among foreigners.  Unfortunately for them, however, the Dutch are not as stupid as they think and easily recognize insincerity. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that if the Christian Democrats and Party of Labor really wanted to do something about crime and immigration they'd have done it during their past four years in the ruling coalition government.

Therefore the people turn to Wilders because they’ve had enough. Enough of the unresponsive political establishment.  Enough of living in fear. Enough of paying for social parasites. Enough of living as foreigners in their own country. That is why when Wilders yells “enough is enough!” a million Dutch voices join him.

Original article by Hugh Fitzgerald published at Jihad Watch. To see the video in question and my take on the whole affair, click here. 

At Jihad Watch, less than a week ago, on January 28, a YouTube video of Awadh A. Binhazim, Ph.D., was put up.

The tape shows one Awadh A. Binhazim being subject to questioning by a persistent questioner. The tape received a good deal of comment (a heinzian 57, at last count) here. Many rightly deplored what they described as Binhazim's attempts to avoid stating what, in the end, he was forced to admit. That is, - under a questioner's relentless refusal to give up, and that questioner's insistence on receiving a straight answer to the question "does Islam proscribe capital punishment for those who are practicing homosexuals and do not renounce their homosexuality?," Awadh Binhazim, Ph.D., Professor of Pathology at Meharry Medical College and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Adjunct Professor of Islam at the Divinity School, Vanderbilt University, Adjunct Professor of Africana Studies at Tennessee State University, most reluctantly and begrudgingly, finally answered: "Yes."

But despite being put up just a few days ago, I think that tape is worth a rewind, and then replay, stopping here and there along the way to observe those few minutes of meretriciousness on display. And together we can observe, and analyze, the usefully distinct stages of Awadh Binhazim's effort to dodge and weave as best he can. He clearly is perfectly aware of what Islam teaches. He did, after all, attend a madrasah as a child in Kenya, then was a student of Islamic studies in Saudi Arabia, and for years has been an "explicator" of Islam to the Infidels, whenever he can inveigle an invitation, or invite himself, to present - why, practically as a public service - his exposition on Islam. He has even offered to give "free courses" on Islam - in short, a solid Muslim citizen, ready to mislead here and there and everywhere, even as he conducts his Da'wa for the Unwary. Awadh Binhazim is not one of those Muslims who is a bit hazy on what Islam teaches, someone who can claim "he didn't know." He knows.

Remember that Awadh A. Binhazim begins by saying that there is no room in Islam for questioning. The rules are laid down. You are not to challenge them, not to ignore them, and not to ask if, morally, they make sense. You are only to ask what those rules - on What Is Commanded and What Is Prohibited - and to slavishly follow those rules. What Islam says, Awadh A. Binhazim agrees that he, and all other Muslims, have a duty to accept. That's a useful admission, though of course he will now dodge and duck and try not to be held onto, as he attempts not to answer a simple question about Islam, capital punishment, and homosexuality.

But the questioner would have none of it.

So what is the first thing that Binhazim attempts? It's Tu Quoque. It's this: an immediate refusal to answer the question, and instead, a shifting attention to Judaism, to Christianity, to "other religions" that "condemn homosexuality." We do it, You do it, Everybody does it. Well, he, Awadh A. Binhazim, Ph.d. (Professor Pathology at Meharry College, and Adjunct Professor, no doubt hoping and scheming for more, at Vanderbilt), ignores the precise question, eliminates the part about the death penalty, and simply reduces it to "disapproval of Islam" and then, quickly, alludes to what he would have his questioner and the larger audience believe is identical "disapproval of homosexuality" in other religions, in all of them, in fact. At this point the most obvious thing must surely come to mind: well, some religions do condemn homosexuality, but which of them, in doctrine or in present-day practice, condemns homosexuals to death? And do we have reason to believe that, at least in the Western world, the entire direction of things has been toward greater and greater tolerance, even acceptance, with both the tolerance and the acceptance often comically ostentatious, while society's new norms cause some to express their doubts or lack of shared enthusiasm circumspectly? Think of those SNL skits, or the Stewart-and-Colbert mick-mockeries, when they imitate a speaker nervously and incessantly, when discussing the topic, constantly reiterating "not that there's anything wrong with that."

The Tu Quoque at this point falls flat. The questioner, who will not be deflected, fails to be satisfied with it, and most in the audience no doubt recognized its ridiculousness, even if they haven't themselves seen the online pictures of homosexuals subject to judicial murder in Iran, or read the reports on the murder, by Muslims, on their own, applying the Shari'a punishment of death to homosexuals in Gaza, or the West Bank, or Iraq, or other places in the Arab-dominated countries where such news sometimes gets out.

No doubt the failure of this was a disappointment to Awadh Binhazim, and he quickly grasps at another rhetorical straw, in his attempts to avoid answering the question.

This time it is not Tu Quoque - "you do it too (and probably worse)" -- but rather, an attempt to confuse the questioner, and the rest of the audience. Ah, says Binhazim, we really can't answer that question, can we, because there is no country in the world where the law is the pure Shari'a, and if we have no country where the law is identical with Shari'a, then how can we give an answer as to what the Shari'a would say? We just don't have any example, in reality, of such a legal code now being enforced. But this is nonsensical. The Shari'a exists independently, in the ether of Islam, and the question was not what does Saudi Arabia do, or Pakistan do, by way of punishing homosexuals, but what does the Shari'a, the Holy Law of Islam, mandate? Binhazim knew perfectly well that the hudud, or criminal punishment, exists in forms, more or less diluted, in a number of Muslim countries, and he also knows that there is great hypocrisy in the application of the law in those countries, so that the fantastic sexual decadence of the Al-Saud (see, for example, Robert Baer's book on the Saudis), no doubt makes them less likely, given the proclivities and experience of members of the Al-Saud, to administer fully the Shari'a when it comes to what are regarded, in the Shari'a, as prohibited acts and attitudes. To give an answer that says, in effect, nowhere in the world is the Shari'a completely identical to the law of the Muslim land, so therefore we cannot say anything at all about the contents of the Shari'a, is self-evidently nonsensical.

That too, does not dissuade the relentless questioner.

And so, finally, mentally squirming and most unhappy, Awadh Binhazim - who, after all, also was aware that in his audience were Muslims who knew the rule, and perhaps even among them converts to Islam who had learned the rule from him, Awadh Binhazim himself, in his local efforts at Da'wa - says, quickly, as if rapidity of delivery would somehow allow his admission to avoid attention, says: Yes. Yes, in Islam homosexuals who do not abjure their behavior are sentenced to death.

And there's a lesson there. The lesson is that the behavior of the questioner, the relentlessness of him (and the fearlessness, too, of course), is to be admired and emulated. For there are people like Awadh Binhazim all over this country, giving their little "introduction to Islam" talks, and they have to take questions, they can't avoid taking questions. That's not the American way, after lectures. And when they do, there should always be a handful of determined questioners ready to ask about Islam. But not always, not only, not even mainly, about homosexuality, as here.

They should ask about what Islam inculcates about the status of women. They should ask what Islam says about Art, about sculpture, and about paintings of living creatures, and list ten masterpieces of Western art whose creation would have been forbidden under Islam. They should ask what Islam teaches about Music, and what that might mean for such things as jazz, or gospel music, or any kind of music at all - with perhaps the kind most important to other members of the audience carefully mentioned. ("So you're telling us that Mozart, and Louis Armstrong, and the dancing of Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers, and Johnny Cash with June Carter, would all be banned? You're telling me that Beyonce would be locked up?") They should ask about the Muslim attitude toward free and skeptical inquiry, and whether or not Muslims are allowed to question in any degree, at any point, what Islam teaches, and if they are allowed to discuss the morality of this or that rule, especially the rule as to what Muslims should think of, and how they should behave toward non-Muslims, and whether they agree that non-Muslims everywhere should have the exact same rights, be treated equally to, Muslims, in Muslim-ruled lands, including of course the right to build their own religious structures, and the right to freely proselytize.

And in every case, about these and other topics, the questioners (an attractive girl, for example, would not be out of place among such prepared questioners) should come prepared. They don't have to have a lot. They don't have to come with hundreds of passages from the Qur'an or several hundred Hadith. They need, however, to have the most relevant texts - not only from the Qur'an, but from the Hadith (from the "authoritative" collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim, and Hadith that have by those muhaddithin been assigned to the rank of being "most authentic"). They should be prepared to discuss Muhammad, and the prisoners from the Banu Qurayza, and Asma bint Marwan, and Abu Afak, and the Khaybar Oasis, and little Aisha. You will, of course, have already established that, in the eyes of Muslims, Muhammad is the Model of Conduct (uswa hasana), and the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil). And thus, when you raise these matters, this may cause ill-concealed fury and even hysteria on the part of the Muslim you are questioning. And that display of hysteria can be useful, can be instructive for the other non-Muslims, until then perhaps unwary, in the audience. And that is what you are trying to do.

You are trying to take that door into the truth, opened by that intrepid questioner in Nashville, and leave it ajar. And not ajar only in Tennessee.