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Nov. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 16, 2009 / 24 Sivan 5769

Free speech, but not for me?

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Paul Krugman's outrage is selective and aimed, as usual, at conservatives.


I was surprised to see the New York Times columnist take a swipe at me and the paper that has long been my home. Since Frank Rich, another New York Times columnist, and numerous bloggers have all written essentially the same thing as Mr. Krugman, it is obvious that a new line of attack against conservatives is emerging. It needs to be stopped in its tracks.


In a column called "The Big Hate," Mr. Krugman seized upon two unrelated shootings in different cities — of a Kansas abortionist and a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum guard in Washington — to contend outrageously that disaffected conservatives and Iraq war veterans may pose a public threat.


Mr. Krugman faulted the leading lights of the conservative media for fostering a climate of alienation and anger. He castigated Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, charging them with "mainstreaming right-wing extremism." Talk radio's Rush Limbaugh "peddles conspiracy theories" on Planet Krugman.


To this list of alleged extremist-enablers, Mr. Krugman added The Washington Times, noting that it "saw fit to run an opinion piece declaring that President Obama not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself and that in any case he has 'aligned himself' with the radical Muslim Brotherhood." The unnamed author was yours truly.


Let me be clear. The nature and religious context of Mr. Obama's relationship with his Creator is, as far as I am concerned, the man's own business. Religious tests for holding public office in this country went out around the time of the Salem witch trials, and I don't want them to come back.


Mr. Obama's policies, however, are fair game for criticism. If the president singles out for special treatment any faith or seeks, whether wittingly or not, to advance the agenda of its most intolerant practitioners, that is decidedly our business.


Indeed, one would think Mr. Krugman and his friends would be the first to defend the rights of such critics. After all, Mr. Krugman's cohort on the left and its media echo chamber endlessly assailed President George W. Bush's policies. They also routinely engaged in the most aggressive and inflammatory personal attacks on the president and his subordinates. Remember "Bush lied; people died"? Charging a chief executive with deliberately prevaricating and, consequently, with responsibility for the deaths of untold numbers of innocents surely would qualify as the mainstreaming of left-wing extremist views.


Where, for that matter, is Mr. Krugman's outrage about the fact that MSNBC has made a cottage industry of hiring virulent Bush-haters and promoting their conspiracy theories about Mr. Bush's imperial and unconstitutional ambitions? How about the prevailing Hollywood meme that our 43rd president was a fascist guilty of war crimes — in comparison with which actor Jon Voight's contention that Mr. Obama is a "false prophet," which merited a Krugman denunciation, is pretty tame stuff. Did Mr. Krugman ever object to the "opinion pieces" of his New York Times colleague Maureen Dowd, whose serial character assassinations of senior U.S. officials would, by any objective measure, be examples of, in his words, "the media establishment joining hands with the lunatic fringe"?


In addition to selective outrage, Mr. Krugman is given to selective quotation. He ignores the evidence I cite showing an uncanny similarity between some of the language and policies of the president and of Muslim Brotherhood.


In my column, I identified a number of instances in which Mr. Obama's policies track with this agenda. These include his promise in his Cairo speech to "fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear"; to ensure that Muslim women in America can cover their heads, including, presumably, when they are having their photographs taken for driver's licenses; and to permit the Muslim practice of tithing known as zakat, even though Islamic "charities" have been convicted of using this practice as a cover for money-laundering and material support for terrorism.


Islamists are thrilled by the president's "tough love" campaign against Israel. They have every reason to believe the concessions now being demanded of the Jewish state will no more require Arab reciprocity in the future than has been the case in the past.


One could add to this worrying list Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s announcement following the president's Cairo speech. Mr. Holder promised "a return to robust civil rights enforcement and outreach in defending religious freedoms," with a view to "using criminal and civil rights laws to protect Muslim Americans." Radical Muslims have proved adept at using such rights to thwart legitimate surveillance and other countermeasures by law enforcement.


It is not extremism to observe that these Obama initiatives could have very far-reaching and negative implications for the United States, its society and security. It is extremism to hold that all critics of the president should be shunned into silence.


Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration, heads the Center for Security Policy. Comments by clicking here.

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America has been at war for years, but until now, it has not been clear with whom or precisely for what. And we have not been using the full resources we need to win.

With the publication of War Footing, lead-authored by Frank Gaffney, it not only becomes clear who the enemy is and how high the stakes are, but also exactly how we can prevail.

War Footing shows that we are engaged in nothing less than a War for the Free World. This is a fight to the death with Islamofascists, Muslim extremists driven by a totalitarian political ideology that, like Nazism or Communism before it, is determined to destroy freedom and the people who love it. Sales help fund JWR.

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