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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (59401)	10/23/2012 7:22:25 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 59480

Townhall Columnists Bill Murchison America First, and Other Modern Heresies Bill Murchison Oct 23, 2012 Click if you like this column! The paltriness of the Obama presidency comes vividly to mind as the debates wrap up. Crotchety and defensive about a stewardship that half of likely voters find, well, inadequate to present purposes, Barack Obama in the foreign policy debate trafficked most memorably in pre-planned insults to his opponent. "[W]e have these things called aircraft carriers ... these ships that go under water," was the retort to Mitt Romney's expostulation concerning shrinkage of our navy. Why is the United States a safer, healthier place than Barack Obama found it upon entering the White House? Is it, indeed, that kind of place? On that score, the president wasn't much help. Not that he particularly meant to be, concerned as he was with appearing more commander-in-chiefish than his opponent: more involved in the minutiae of foreign affairs. More involved he certainly is -- by virtue of holding an office to which Romney merely aspires at present (the way Obama aspired to the same office in 2008, with no foreign policy experience to commend his quest). A little more modesty on Obama's part might have been indicated. However, that's not what Obama is about -- modesty. As we have long observed, he's chiefly about self-advertisement. The surprising element, when it comes, as it did this week, is how little there is to advertise. Obama's implied boast to have made America safer by killing Osama bin Laden and announcing an end to the Afghan war walks wide of the larger question: what now about radical, America-hating Islam? What's the strategy? And could Mitt Romney do better? Good question, that last one. No president, or presidential candidate, makes America safer by speechifying. Rather, he decides what's needed then he does whatever that thing is. Radical Islam is, for foreign policy purposes, the new Soviet Union -- a metaphor made more real by Iran's supposed (do you want to risk betting against the supposition?) pursuit of nuclear weapons. Obama and Romney both insist they mean to thwart the Iranians. That is clearly as it should be. The larger duty, at that, rests with Obama in terms of showing whether he is wrestling with a single, disconnected challenge to the country's peace or with a component of a bigger threat. Such as what? Such as maybe the radical Islamic world's rejection of the whole Western enterprise: free speech, the rule of law, human rights, human obligations, Christianity, Judaism, the whole panoply of normal life as understood by sentient Americans. Do the radicals want to get us? Isn't it possible at least to suppose so on the basis of everyday observation? If so, what's our strategy?

To: calgal who wrote (59401)	10/23/2012 7:27:56 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

Unlearning Liberty Mike Adams Oct 23, 2012 Click if you like this column! Author's Note: On Wednesday, October 24th, I will be debating liberal Rick Perlstein and libertarian Jim Harper at NC State University in Raleigh. The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 6 pm in Dabney Hall. Despite their feigned interest in tolerance, college campuses are among the most punitive and stifling environments in the country. Students are routinely punished for "offenses" ranging from penning mild satire to holding the wrong opinions on important social and political issues. One book, Unlearning Liberty, by Greg Lukianoff, documents these abuses better than any other that has been written since I joined the campus culture wars over a decade ago. Greg is able to document these things well and for a simple reason: he has been the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for the last seven years.