Introduction: Humanity at the Crossroads: The Future Will Be Leftist, Islamist, or American
1. “Iran Plans for a World Without America,” Investor’s Business Daily, August 4, 2011.
2. There are moments, however, in the life of other countries when such values are espoused. Margaret Thatcher’s Great Britain was perhaps the most prominent example.
3. Thomas Friedman, New York Times, January 30, 2010.
Chapter 1: What Is Leftism?
1. Reuters, cited in Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2000. Here is how the New York Times reported it: “Despite spending more than $2 billion over two decades to improve education and attract more white students, the Kansas City School District has essentially been judged a failure by a state education review board, which has denied it accreditation.”
2. David Brooks, “Tools for Thinking,” New York Times, March 27, 2011.
3. “How Rich People Spend Their Time,” Washington Post, June 23, 2008.
4. Today, NBC, March 3, 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE0gHtQXWhI.
5. Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2009.
6. Psychiatrist-author Theodore Dalrymple has written perhaps the best single work on the role of the welfare state in creating the underclass: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001).
7. Speech to the Economic Club of New York, December 14, 1962.
8. Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1843.
9. See, for example, Arthur C. Brooks, “A Nation of Givers” American, March/April 2008: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/a-nation-of-givers.
10. “Iowa Town Renames Good Friday to ‘Spring Holiday,’” ABC News, March 29, 2010.
11. “Hawking expresses a radically skeptical view of reality in general,” in Steven Weinberg, “The Universes We Still Don’t Know,” New York Review of Books, February 10, 2011. Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, disagrees with Hawking: “Like most people, I think that there is something real out there…. I can’t help believing in an objective reality.”
12. Darrow’s speech is in William Safire, Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (New York: Norton, 1997). For a discussion of the religious view of free will and human nature, see Joseph Telushkin, A Code of Jewish Ethics, vol. 1, You Shall Be Holy (New York: Bell Tower, 2006), chapter 2.
13. BBC Sport, November 16, 2000.
14. “Seles’s Assailant Gets Suspended Sentence,” New York Times, April 4, 1995.
15. The audio and the transcript of the entire dialogue are available at my website, www.dennisprager.com.
16. It is not widely known, or it has simply been forgotten, that America won the Vietnam War in 1973 when North Vietnam signed the Paris Peace Accords conceding “the South Vietnamese People’s right to self-determination.” North Vietnam agreed to cease its aggression against South Vietnam, and the United States agreed to supply the South Vietnamese government with arms to defend itself if the North reneged on the agreement and attacked again. The North did renege, resuming its attacks almost immediately. At the time, even the Nobel Committee believed peace had been achieved and both Vietnams would endure. It awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to American secretary of state Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho. Tellingly, Le Duc Tho declined to accept the award. See Bruce Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrenders of South Vietnam and Cambodia (New York: Beaufort Books, 2010). Also see the Bruce Herschensohn video on this subject at Prager University, www.prageru.com.
17. Music critic James H. North, Fanfare, September–October 2010, p. 304.
18. Anthony Tommasini, “Top 10 Composers: The Vienna Four,” New York Times, January 10, 2011.
19. “EU Declares Vacation Travel a Human Right,” Economic Policy Journal, April 20, 2010.
The European Union has declared travelling a human right, and is launching a program to subsidize vacations with taxpayers’ dollars for those too poor to afford their own trips. Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry, proposed a strategy that could cost European taxpayers hundreds of millions of euros a year. “Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life,” Mr. Tajani told a group of ministers at the European Tourism Stakeholders Conference in Madrid on April 15.
A pilot vacation program is scheduled to be launched in 2013, when EU taxpayers will be footing 30% of vacation bills for seniors, youths between the ages of 18 and 25, disabled people, and families facing “difficult social, financial or personal” circumstances.
20. “Egyptians Turn Against Liberal Protesters,” Wall Street Journal, August 2, 2011.
21. “How Did Rich People Vote and Why?” New York Times, November 11, 2008.
22. Dennis Prager, “Why the Democrats use 12-year-olds,” August 3, 2004, http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2004/08/03/why_the_democrats_use_12-year-olds.
23. Some of the examples I noted are worth citing:
“Has it come to this? The desperation of the GOP? Insulting a 12 yr old girl. You sure are a class act.”
“You’re an asshole for saying that Wexler girl has not earned the right to criticize Cheney. Fuck YOU dick head.”
“I have found that my own kids, aged 5 and 6 now can make very profound statements and can be very wise.”
“Ilana Wexler earned the right to criticize anyone she wants to on the day she was born an American, you idiot!”
“Picking on little girls—too pathetic for comment, really. I will pray for you. Geek.”
“You are a very sad person if picking on the kid at the convention is your idea of clever writing.”
“You have some nerve picking on a child. But I guess that is what we should all expect from Republicans now. Bible thumping and self righteousness all the while raping and molesting children when they think no one is looking. So, blow it out your ass.”
“In re: your incredibly harsh words for Ilana Wexler…Go Fuck Yourself.”
24. This is frequently asserted—as a negative, of course—by the Left. See, for example, the column by Charles M. Blow, “Religious Outlier,” New York Times, September 3, 2010.
25. A superb book with which to begin a study of anti-Americanism is Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965–1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Hollander was a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts.
26. David Brooks, “All Hail Moore,” New York Times, June 26, 2004.
27. Peter O’Neil, “ Feminist’s Anti-U.S. Speech Causes Uproar,” Vancouver Sun, October 02, 2001.
28. Gore Vidal, the New Statesman, October 15, 2001.
Chapter 2: Why the Left Believes What It Believes
1. Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, October 31, 2011.
2. Dennis Prager, “Are People Basically Good?” Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, October 20, 2010.
3. Dennis Prager, “Human Nature, Judaism and Liberals: Response to My Critics,” Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, November 3, 2010.
4. In fact, the historical consensus is that Hitler and the Nazis actually toned down their anti-Semitism in order to win more votes.
5. Thomas Sowell, “Next stop: Supreme Court?” Townhall.com, May 23, 2002.
Chapter 3: Why the Left Succeeds
1. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/26/677292/-Dennis-Prager-Endorses-Marital-Rape.
2. For an important discussion of this exhibition and what it says about the Left’s assault on culture, see Heather MacDonald, “Radical Graffiti Chic,” City Journal, Spring 2011.
3. In Vasconcellos’s words: “I grew up in the 1930s in a constrained, traditional, Catholic family. I was educated in both public schools and Catholic (Jesuit) schools, through college and law school. In school, I was a high-achiever, receiving awards and excellent grades. In adulthood, I became a prominent lawyer in a prestigious firm. My first campaign for a seat in the state legislature in 1966 was successful, and I have now been reelected eleven times. Yet, through it all, I had almost no sense of my self, no self-esteem…. I had been conditioned to know myself basically as a sinner, guilt-ridden and ashamed, constantly beating my breast and professing my unworthiness.”
See http://www.lightparty.com/Visionary/ImportanceSelfEsteem.html.
4. Vasconcellos: “It has become essential to my political views and priorities. My legislative record has paralleled and in some ways become a reflection of my personal growth. In its essence, after all, politics properly understood is nothing more than the making of policy for all of us together, the sum of our individual beings.”
5. See R. F. Baumeister, J. M. Boden, and L. Smart, “Relation of Threatened Egotism to Violence and Aggression: The Dark Side of High Self-Esteem,” Psychological Review 103, no. 1 (1996), pp. 5–33.
6. Paul C. Vitz, “The Problem with Self-Esteem,” http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/education/ed0001.html.
7. Lori Gottlieb, “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy,” Atlantic, July/August 2011.
8. For a devastating discussion of this subject, see Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), written by one of the preeminent historians of our time, Paul Johnson.
9. “New state law requires textbooks to include gays’ achievements,” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2011.
10. “Scholars note that at the time Western European countries abolished capital punishment it had widespread public support (Zimring and Hawkins, 1986; Simon and Blaskovich, 2002; Hood and Hoyle, 2009). Steiker (2002: 108).” James Unnever, “Global support for the death penalty,” Punishment & Society 2010 12:463. Unnever is a professor of criminology at the University of South Florida, Sarasota-Manatee.
11. “The Power of Christian Young Men,” Selected Addresses and Papers of Woodrow Wilson (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1918), pp. 49–55. Reproduced at http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=19484.
12. Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2001.
13. “Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammad in New Book,” New York Times, August 12, 2009.
14. For a transcript of the relevant portions of the interview, see Dennis Prager, “College Taught Her Not to Be a Heterosexual,” Townhall.com, April 19, 2005. http://www.dennisprager.com/columns.aspx?g=d9342985-b046-46ea-bc19-ab36da1454f5&url=college_taught_her_not_to_be_a_heterosexual.
15. “Harvard President Sees Rise in Anti-Semitism on Campus,” New York Times, September 21, 2002.
16. “Northwestern University to Investigate What Happened When Sex Toy Was Demonstrated in Optional Panel,” New York Daily News, March 3, 2011. Also see Dennis Prager, “The $50,000 Orgasm,” National Review Online, March 8, 2011.
17. http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/.
18. “The Einsatzgruppen Reports,” Holocaust Library, 1989.
19. Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, February 4, 2011.
20. “Israel Outraged as EU Poll Names It a Threat to Peace,” Guardian, November 2, 2003.
21. BBC News, April 9, 2004.
22. “U.S. Image in Australia Isn’t So Good, Poll Finds,” New York Times, March 29, 2005.
23. BBC News, April 6, 2005.
24. “U.S. Needs to Go Goodwill Hunting,” Washington Post, November 30, 2005.
25. The Guardian, November 3, 2006.
26. “Poll: Over 40% of Canadian Teens Think America Is ‘Evil,’” Canada Free Press, June 30, 2004.
27. “British Believe Bush Is More Dangerous Than Kim Jong-Il,” Guardian, November 3, 2006.
28. Reuters, May 24, 2002.
29. “An Operation Gone Wrong,” Washington Post, October 7, 1997.
30. Morning Edition, NPR, November 6, 2009, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120162816.
31. Edward S. Shapiro, Crown Heights: Blacks, Jews, and the 1991 Brooklyn Riot (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2006), p. xi.
32. Ari L. Goldman, “Telling It Like It Wasn’t,” New York Jewish Week, August 9, 2011.
33. The audio is in my possession, and can be heard at www.dennisprager.com.
34. Rolling Stone, fortieth anniversary edition, 2007.
35. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/grayson-explains-what-it-means-to-be-a-democrat-we-have-a-conscience.php.
36. “After 50 Years of Covering War, Looking for Peace and Honoring Law,” New York Times, December 16, 2001.
37. ABC News, August 31, 2011.
38. NBC Nightly News, reported by CNN, September 15, 2009.
39. CNN Politics, September 16, 2008.
40. Daily Beast, August 22, 2008.
41. New York Times, December 5, 2009.
42. “Pelosi Hammers GOP for ‘Anti-worker Agenda,’” Hill, August 15, 2011.
43. Raleigh News & Observer, April 30, 2011.
44. Rick Perlstein, “Christian Empire,” New York Times, January 7, 2007. Needless to say, these people who speak about American Christian fascists would label anyone who used the term Islamo-fascist an “Islamophobic” bigot. Again, those who do not fight real evil fight make-believe evil.
45. Frank Rich, “The Rage Is Not About Health Care,” New York Times, March 27, 2010.
46. Cited by Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, January 5, 2001.
47. MSNBC, November 10, 2010.
48. Glenn Greenwald, “Who Has Moral Courage?” New York Times, August 17, 2010.
49. Charles Krauthammer, “Moral Myopia at Ground Zero,” Washington Post, August 20, 2010.
50. For a list of leading Democrats who believed Saddam was hiding WMDs, see www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp.
51. Fareed Zakaria, “Why Do They Hate Us?” Newsweek, October 15, 2001.
52. Deborah Solomon, “The Way We Live Now, 7/11/04: Questions for William F. Buckley; Conservatively Speaking,” New York Times, July 11, 2004.
53. It also leads, all too frequently, to the emasculation of boys. Then many women looking to marry wonder where masculine men are.
54. “For Little Children, Grown-Up Labels as Sexual Harassers,” Washington Post, April 3, 2008.
55. Oregonian, July 22, 2007.
56. http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html.
57. http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html#Health.
58. Guardian, January 10, 2010.
59. Ibid.
60. http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/features/chernobyl–15/cherno-faq.shtml.
61. “Chernobyl Death Toll Grossly Underestimated,” Greenpeace International, April 18, 2006.
62. Andrew Bolt, “Time to Stop Nuke Hysteria,” Herald Sun (Australia), March 16, 2011.
63. James E. Enstrom and Geoffrey C. Kabat, “Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Tobacco Related Mortality in a Prospective Study of Californians, 1960–98,” British Medical Journal, March 7, 2003.
64. Diane Macedo, “Scientist’s Firing After 36 Years Fuels ‘PC’ Debate at UCLA,” FoxNews, August 31, 2010.
65. Michael B. Siegel, “A Smoking Ban Too Far,” New York Times, May 5, 2011.
66. Face to Face with Connie Chung, CBS, December 10, 1990.
67. “Hysteria Is Easier Than Science, and It Pays Better,” Baltimore Sun, August 7, 1996.
68. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199406163302401#t=article.
69. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199506223322502#t= abstract.
70. Ed Uthman, M.D., “On Breast Implant Hysteria,” http://web2.iadfw.net/uthman/rants/on_implant_hysteria.html, March 31, 1996.
71. NBC Nightly News, November 17, 2006.
72. Cited in Christopher Jencks, The Homeless (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 2.
73. Meredith Broussard , “ Nuts to That: The People Profiting from Food Allergies,” Slate, August 31, 2009.
74. “Global Warming: Truth or Dare?” Activist Teacher, February 27, 2007.
75. “Is ‘Climate Change’ Nudging Us Closer to a New Ice Age?” Seminole County Environmental News Examiner, January 13, 2010.
76. George Will, “The Law of Doomsaying,” syndicated column, February 15, 2009.
77. http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2007/02/global-warming-truth-or-dare.html.
78. Richard S. Lindzen, “The Climate Science Isn’t Settled,” Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2009.
79. http://www.petitionproject.org/seitz_letter.php.
80. “Open Kyoto to Debate: An Open Letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper,” National Post, April 11, 2006.
81. http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=de6a54bf-802a-23ad-45ed-60ae6f3febe2.
82. Vanity Fair, May 2006.
83. Time, April 21, 2008.
84. As Michael Moore said on CNN’s Larry King Live in 2008, in refusing to condemn Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” sermon: “I do not believe, as a white guy, that I am in any position to judge a black man who has had to live through [American racism].”
Chapter 4: The Left’s Moral Record
1. Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 4.
2. “The Germans murdered about as many non-Jews as Jews during the war, chiefly by starving Soviet prisoners of war (more than three million) and residents of besieged cities (more than a million) or by shooting civilians in ‘reprisals’ (the better part of a million, chiefly Belarussians and Poles).” Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010), p. x.
3. The Canada-based Human Security Report Project says the number is about half the IRC number. In either case, the number is in the millions, genocide-like numbers of which almost no one in the world is aware. See “DR Congo war deaths ‘exaggerated,’” BBC News, January 20. 2010.
4. Barry Gewen, New York Times, December 21, 2009.
5. Donald Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him (New York: Random House, 2005), p. xii.
6. “Muslims Must Embrace Our British Values, David Cameron Says,” Telegraph, February 5, 2011.
7. “Cameron Criticizes ‘Multiculturalism’ in Britain,” New York Times, February 5, 2011.
8. “Nicolas Sarkozy Declares That Multiculturalism Has Failed,” Telegraph, February 11, 2011.
9. “Germany’s Angela Merkel: Multiculturalism Has ‘Utterly Failed,’” Christian Science Monitor, October 17, 2010.
10. George Will, “Britain Tackles the Welfare State,” Washington Post, August 10, 2011.
11. “Antiwar Rallies Draw Millions Around the World,” Los Angeles Times, February 16, 2003.
12. “American Fury as German Justice Minister Compares Bush to Hitler,” Telegraph, September 20, 2002.
13. “No Parade for Hans,” New York Times, November 14, 2009.
14. Quoted in New York Times, January 30, 2005.
15. Editorial, Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2006.
16. Michael Oren, Washington Post, September 23, 2011.
17. The interview was recorded and is available from www.dennisprager.com.
18. Paisley Dodds, “Amnesty Takes Aim at ‘Gulag’ in Guantanamo,” Associated Press, May 25, 2005.
19. David Bosco, “Gulag v. Guantanamo,” New Republic, June 3, 2005.
20. Democratic representatives Barbara Lee, Michael Honda, and Laura Richardson of California; Melvin Watt of North Carolina; Bobby Rush of Illinois; Marcia Fudge of Ohio; and Emanuel Cleaver II of Missouri.
21. The Miami Herald labeled the seven members of the CBC who went to Cuba, “The Clueless Seven.” From the Herald’s editorial: “If only the group had met with even one prisoner of conscience or one of the wives, mothers, daughters or sisters of the 75 independent journalists, librarians and human-rights advocates imprisoned in Cuba’s ‘Black Spring’ of 2003…. Or the seven could have traveled three hours from Havana to see the hunger-striking dissidents led by Jorge Luis Garcia ‘Antunez’ Perez in Placetas. Or they could have asked to see Oscar Elias Biscet, a doctor serving 25 years in prison for following the peaceful resistance of Martin Luther King Jr…. Or what of the mothers of three young men who were tried in a day and killed the next by firing squad in 2003 for trying to hijack a ferry from Havana Harbor? No passenger was hurt, but that didn’t stop the Cuban government from sending a swift and terrifying message to the country’s Afro-Cuban masses.”
22. A Washington Post editorial noted that Representative Barbara Lee said that “‘Cubans do want dialogue. They do want talks.’ Funny, then, that in five days on the island the Congress members found no time for dialogue with Afro-Cuban dissident Jorge Luis Garcia Perez…. Mr. Garcia, better known as ‘An tunez,’ is a renowned advocate of human rights who has often been singled out for harsh treatment because of his color. ‘The authorities in my country,’ he has said, ‘have never tolerated that a black person (could dare to) oppose the regime.’ His wife, Iris, is a founder of the Rosa Parks Women’s Civil Rights Movement, named after an American hero whom Afro-Cubans try to emulate. The couple have been on a hunger strike since Feb. 17, to demand justice for an imprisoned family member.”
23. Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2003.
24. Alan Cooperman, “Israel Divestiture Spurs Clash. Jewish Leaders Condemn Move by Presbyterian Church,” Washington Post, September 29, 2004.
25. “Norway: Parliament Shuns Israeli Products,” Ynetnews.com, December 22, 2005.
26. “CUPE in Ontario Votes to Boycott Israel,” CBC News, May 27, 2006.
27. Ronen Bodoni, “South African Union Joins Boycott of Israel,” YnetNews.com, June 8, 2006.
28. “The Anti-Israel Divestment Campaign: Churches,” ADL website.
29. New York Times, April 17, 2007.
30. Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Press Release, May 29, 2008.
31. Jerusalem Post, September 17, 2009.
32. Counterpunch, December 13, 2001.
33. Ibid.
34. Quoted in Commentary, June 2002.
35. See Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust (New York: Plume, 1994).
36. The distinction is one of actions versus feelings. The anti-Semite hates Jews. The individual who works against Jews does not necessarily hate Jews.
37. Joshua Muravchik, “A Portrait of a Self-Hostile Jew and Holocaust Survivor,” Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2004.
38. New York Times, December 30, 2009.
39. Cited by Ruth Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature at Harvard University, in “Drowning in the Red Sea,” Jewish Review of Books, Fall 2011.
40. “U.N. Official Answers Questions About Fierce Criticism of Israel,” Forward, July 21, 2011.
41. “London Mayor Defends the Use of Palestinian Suicide Bombers,” Haaretz, July 19, 2005.
42. Deborah Orin, “Howard’s Hatefest,” New York Post, December 16, 2003.
43. Quoted in Chronicle of Higher Education, November 29, 2009.
44. Agence France-Presse, January 13, 2011.
45. “MOCA Gala’s Main Dish Is Performance Art,” Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2011. One can see what it looks like at http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-moca-gala-abramovic–20111112,0,1348643.story?track=rss.
46. New York, June 8, 1970.
47. The New York magazine article also reported on a prior party for the Black Panthers at the home of another major figure in the American entertainment world, Sidney Lumet:
“The emotional momentum was building rapidly when Ray ‘Masai’ Hewitt, the Panthers’ Minister of Education and member of the Central Committee, rose to speak…. ‘Some of you here,’ he said, ‘may have some feelings left for the establishment, but we don’t. We want to see it die. We’re Maoist revolutionaries, and we have no choice but to fight to the finish.’
“For about 30 minutes Masai Hewitt laid it on the line. He referred now and again to ‘that M—F—Nixon’ and to how the struggle would not be easy, and that if buildings were burned and other violence ensued, that was only part of the struggle that the power structure had forced the oppressed minorities into.”
48. Time, January 25, 1982.
49. “Smoke’s No Joke for Tom and Jerry,” BBC News, August 21, 2006.
50. George Will, Newsweek, January 1, 2011.
51. New York Law Journal, March 25, 2002.
52. “Equal Cheers for Boys and Girls Draw Some Boos,” New York Times, January 14, 2007.
53. Gerald Uelman (dean of Santa Clara University School of Law), “The Price of Free Speech: Campus Hate Speech Codes,” http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n2/codes.html.
54. Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1997.
55. This and many of the following examples of free speech banned are to be found on the website of Professor Eugene Volokh of UCLA School of Law: http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/harass/breadth.htm#39.
56. “CCLU Threatened School District with Injunction,” Windsor Locks (CT) Journal, June 21, 2004.
57. Cited by John Leo, U.S. News & World Report, July 10, 2005.
58. http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/what-we-learned-from-the-alito/.
59. “Alito and the Ted Kennedy ‘Study,’” National Review Online, January 9, 2006.
60. “Alito Accused of Racism,” Washington Times, January 11, 2006.
61. Washington Post, April 3, 2010.
62. Edwy Plenel, editorial director, Le Monde, September 14, 1998.
63. Cited by Professor Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University, http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/etzioni/B317.html.
64. Kate N. Grossman, “NU [Northwestern University] Sex: Academic Freedom in Action,” Chicago Sun-Times, March 6, 2011.
65. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJyWWM9OHKA.
66. For an extensive discussion of the roles of Democrats and Republicans in civil rights legislation, see Ann Coulter, Demonic (New York: Crown Forum, 2011), chapter 10. Like all other powerful and attractive conservative women, Coulter has been caricatured and demonized by the Left and the media. But this book is a painstakingly researched and carefully documented work that every open-minded liberal should read. Closed-minded liberals should also read it, but I suspect they are not reading this endnote.
67. The Left-wing rewriting of the Kennedy assassination has not stopped. See “Was Everyone Quite So Nuts? Frank Rich and Adam Moss on 1963 vs. 2011,” New York, November 22, 2011.
68. “Why Nearly 60 Percent of Russians ‘Deeply Regret’ the USSR’s Demise,” Christian Science Monitor, December 23, 2009.
69. George Will, “Conservatives More Liberal Givers,” RealClearPolitics, March 27, 2008.
Chapter 5: On Evaluating Religions
1. “U.N. Body Adopts Resolution on Religious Defamation,” Reuters, March 26, 2009.
2. The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art’s “Awards in the Visual Arts” competition, 1988.
3. G. E. Von Grunebaum, Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2007), p. 114.
4. See, for example, King’s famous letter from a Birmingham, Alabama, jail for its constant allusions to God and Christianity.
Chapter 6: The Moral Record of Islam
1. Here are the freedom rankings of the forty-seven Muslim-majority countries according to the Freedom House “Freedom in the World” 2010 survey:
|
Afghanistan |
Not Free |
|
Albania |
Partly Free |
|
Algeria |
Not Free |
|
Azerbaijan |
Not Free |
|
Bahrain |
Not Free |
|
Bangladesh |
Partly Free |
|
Brunei |
Not Free |
|
Burkina Faso |
Partly Free |
|
Chad |
Not Free |
|
Comoros |
Partly Free |
|
Djibouti |
Partly Free |
|
Egypt |
Not Free |
|
Gambia |
Partly Free |
|
Guinea |
Not Free |
|
Indonesia |
Free |
|
Iran |
Not Free |
|
Iraq |
Not Free |
|
Jordan |
Not Free |
|
Kazakhstan |
Not Free |
|
Kosovo |
Partly Free |
|
Kuwait |
Partly Free |
|
Kyrgyzstan |
Not Free |
|
Lebanon |
Partly Free |
|
Libya |
Not Free |
|
Malaysia |
Partly Free |
|
Maldives |
Partly Free |
|
Mali |
Free |
|
Mauritania |
Not Free |
|
Morocco |
Partly Free |
|
Niger |
Partly Free |
|
Nigeria |
Partly Free |
|
Oman |
Not Free |
|
Pakistan |
Partly Free |
|
Qatar |
Not Free |
|
Senegal |
Partly Free |
|
Sierra Leone |
Partly Free |
|
Somalia |
Not Free |
|
Saudi Arabia |
Not Free |
|
Sudan |
Not Free |
|
Syria |
Not Free |
|
Tajikistan |
Not Free |
|
Tunisia |
Not Free |
|
Turkey |
Partly Free |
|
Turkmenistan |
Not Free |
|
United Arab Emirates |
Not Free |
|
Uzbekistan |
Not Free |
|
Yemen |
Not Free |
2. A talk by Brian Whitaker, Middle East editor for the Guardian, at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, January 26, 2010. It can be found at an Arab website: http://www.al-bab.com/arab/articles/text/soas100126.htm.
3. Cited by Brian Whitaker in his book, What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East (London: Saqi Books, 2009), and at an Arab website: http://www.al-bab.com/arab/background/social_reform.htm.
4. Arab Human Development Report 2003: Building a Knowledge Society, United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Arab States, 2003, p. 82.
5. Economist, July 17, 2010.
6. Islamica, no. 17.
7. Professor Efraim Karsh, head of the Mediterranean Studies program at King’s College London, University of London, Islamic Imperialism: A History, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 2007, p.4.
8. Newsweek, October 15, 2001.
9. Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 72.
10. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, translated by Franz Rosenthal, Bollingen Series, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 183.
11. Denis MacShane, Labor Party MP, Guardian, November 11, 2007.
12. Charles Krauthammer, “Moral Myopia at Ground Zero,” Washington Post, August 20, 2010.
13. “Terrorism’s Christian Godfather,” Time, January 28, 2008.
14. M. Boudjemaa, “Terrorism in Algeria: Ten Years of Day-to-Day Genocide,” in Africa and Terrorism, Joining the Global Campaign, edited by Jakkie Cilliers and Kathryn Sturman (Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2002).
15. “Jordanians Turn Against al-Qa’eda Leader over Bombings,” Telegraph, November 12, 2005.
16. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 1, Our Oriental Heritage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1935), p. 459. (Prior to the latter half of the twentieth century, Westerners generally referred to Islam as “Mohammedanism.”)
17. Donald Little, “Coptic Conversion to Islam Under the Mahri Mamluks, 692–755/1293–1354,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, (1976) 39: p. 567.
18. Ibid., p. 568.
19. Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews: The Reason for Antisemitism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 96.
20. Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet (New York: HarperOne, 1993), p. 179.
21. S. D. Goitein, Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts Through the Ages (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), p. 64.
22. See Joel Kraemer, “War, Conquest and the Treatment of Minorities in Medieval Islam,” in Violence and Defense in the Jewish Experience, edited by Salo Baron and George Wise (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1977), p. 150.
23. For the complete listing of provisions in the Pact of Umar, see Fordham University’s Medieval Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pact-umar.html.
24. Salo Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed., vol. 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), p. 141.
25. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1961), p. 5; Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 25–26.
26. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, p. 141.
27. Edward Stourton, “Iraqi Christians Under Fire,” Telegraph, July 21, 2011.
28. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, p. 140.
29. Ibid., p. 124.
30. Goitein, Jews and Arabs, p. 80.
31. Ibid., pp. 74–78.
32. E. W. Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 1837, republished as Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2005), p. 537.
33. H. H. Ben-Sasson, ed., A History of the Jewish People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 847–48.
34. See Shimon Shamir, “Muslim-Arab Attitudes Towards Jews in the Ottoman and Modern Periods,” in Baron and Wise, eds., Violence and Defense in the Jewish Experience, p. 195.
35. See “Palestine Before the Zionists,” by Harvard professor David Landes, Commentary, February 1976.
36. Albert Memmi, Jews and Arabs, translated by Eleanor Levieux (Chicago: J. P. O’Hara, 1975), pp. 32–33.
37. Ibid., p. 33.
38. Speech to UN seminar on religious tolerance and freedom, delivered December 5, 1984, quoted in Anti-Defamation League’s News, February 7, 1985.
39. Cited by Middle East Media Research Institute and quoted by Jonah Goldberg in “Pigs, Jews and War,” National Review Online, November 1, 2002.
40. Cited in “Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance,” Center for Religious Freedom of Freedom House, 2006, http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/48.pdf.
41. Reported by the European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security Franco Frattini, who is responsible in the EU for combating racism and anti-Semitism in Europe. Jerusalem Post, August 26, 2011.
42. PA TV (Fatah), January 29, 2010. Translated by Palestinian Media Watch, February 4, 2010.
43. Edward Stourton, “Iraqi Christians Under Fire,” Telegraph, July 21, 2011.
44. BBC News, October 29, 2005.
45. “Beheaded Girls Were Ramadan ‘Trophies,’” Australian, November 9. 2006.
46. Time, February 21, 2011.
47. On the court’s website: www.federalshariatcourt.gov.pk.
48. “Q&A: Pakistan’s Controversial Blasphemy Laws,” BBC News, March 22, 2011.
49. The Vanguard, Lagos, allafrica.com/stories/2002/1240005.html.
50. Five Years On: No Justice for Sexual Violence in Darfur, Human Rights Watch, April 6, 2008.
51. “Islamists Rally for Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws,” Wall Street Journal, January 10, 2011.
52. See the article by Taseer’s son, Aatish Taseer, in Telegraph, January 8, 2011.
53. Telegraph, Calcutta, January 23, 2011.
54. Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1998.
55. Sheila Musaji, “The Death of Aqsa Parvez Should Be an Interfaith Call to Action,” American Muslim, December 14, 2007. http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/the_death_of_aqsa_parvez_should_be_an_interfaith_call_to_action/.
56. Quoted in Robert R. Reilly, The Closing of the Muslim Mind (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2010), p. 12.
57. Ibid., p. 6.
58. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1814/muslim-public-opinion-hamas-hezbollah-al-qaeda-islam-role-in-politics-democracy?src=prc-latest&proj=peoplepress.
59. http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/#prc-jump.
60. Timur Kuran, The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 305.
Chapter 7: Islam, America, and the West
1. www.Ijtihad.com, October 2001.
2. Peter Brownfeld, “Muslims Who Love America,” www.Ijtihad.com, February 14, 2005.
3. “Swedes Begin to Question Liberal Migration Tenets,” New York Times, February 26, 2011.
4. Valerie Strauss and Emily Wax, “Where Two Worlds Collide: Muslim Schools Face Tension of Islamic, U.S. Views,” Washington Post, February 25, 2002.
Chapter 8: Responses to Arguments on Behalf of Islam
1. Sura 2:256.
2. Dalia Mogahed, executive director for Gallup’s Center for Muslim Studies, “The Battle for Hearts and Minds: Moderate vs. Extremist Views in the Muslim World,” Gallup, 2006.
3. Fareed Zakaria, “Why Do They Hate Us?” Newsweek, October 15, 2001.
4. Ibid.
5. Commentary, July–August 2010.
6. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2010.
7. Islamica, no. 20.
8. http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Islam/2001/09/Fractured-Fundamentalisms.aspx?p=1.
9. Islamica, no. 20.
10. PBS, May 25, 2010.
11. Reliable Sources, with Howard Kurtz, CNN, August 22, 2010.
12. Nathan Burchfel, “Chris Cuomo: Christians Shouldn’t Condemn Jihad Because of Crusades,” NewsBusters.org, August 26, 2010.
13. Bernard Lewis, “Learning the Lingo: Jihad vs. Crusade,” Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2001.
14. “Muslim Bus Drivers Refuse to Let Guide Dogs on Board,” Daily Mail, July 19, 2010.
15. “Muslim Cab Drivers Refuse to Transport Alcohol, and Dogs,” ABC News, January 26, 2007.
16. Cited in Brownfeld, “Muslims Who Love America.”
17. Muqtedar Khan, “A Memo to American Muslims,” http://www.ijtihad.org/memo.htm.
18. Cited in Brownfeld, “Muslims Who Love America.”
Chapter 9: The American Trinity
1. New York Times, February 21, 2005.
2. Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty (New York: Random House, 2009), p. xi.
3. “Did the Founders Want Government Small?” Too Much, the online newsletter on excess and inequality published by Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, DC, February 20, 2010.
4. Thomas Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2010), p. 7.
5. I elaborate on this in my book Happiness Is a Serious Problem (New York: HarperCollins, 1999).
6. Claire Berlinski, in her important book on Margaret Thatcher, summarized the former British prime minster’s views of the literally demoralizing impact of socialism (Western democratic socialism, that is, Leftism):
“In all its incarnations, wherever and however it was applied—[socialism] was morally corrupting. [It] turned good citizens into bad ones; it turned strong nations into weak ones; it promoted vice and discouraged virtue; and…it transformed formerly hardworking and self-reliant men and women into whining, weak and flabby loafers. Socialism was not a fine idea that had been misapplied; in was an inherently wicked idea. This was Thatcher’s single contribution to the debate. It was a point she emphasized again and again: ‘In the end, the real case against socialism is not its economic inefficiency, though on all sides there is evidence of that. Much more fundamental is its basic immorality.’
“To a Western world preoccupied with guilt, decline and decay, Thatcher’s message has a particularly significant resonance. It is hardly a secret that many of us are still wondering whether capitalism is the right path. It is the only right path, says Thatcher, and the only one men and women of virtue—not greed, but virtue—should take.”
Claire Berlinski, “There Is No Alternative”: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2008), pp. 7–8, 13.
7. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution, pp. 245–46.
8. The Works of John Adams (Boston, 1854), vol. 9, pp. 228–9. http://books.google.com/books?id=PZYKAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA228#v=onepage&q&f=false.
9. Waldman, Founding Faith, p. 37.
10. Ibid., p. 23. Waldman is not a conservative and his book was widely praised among secular reviewers.
11. Recorded by James Madison, Records of the Federal Convention, 1787. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/benfranklin.htm.
12. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated by George Lawrence, edited by J. P. Mayer (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1969), pp. 294–95.
13. Waldman, Founding Faith, p. xv.
14. Franklin to unknown recipient, December 13, 1757. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 7, cited in Waldman, Founding Faith, p. 22.
15. Waldman, Founding Faith, p. xv.
16. Ibid., pp. 36–37.
17. Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817, quoted in Cappon, Adams-Jefferson Letters, p. 509, cited in Waldman, Founding Faith, p. 36.
18. John Adams letter to Benjamin Rush, January 21, 1810, quoted in Norman Cousins, In God We Trust (New York: Harper, 1958), p. 101.
19. Kidd, God of Liberty, p. 8.
20. Ibid., p. 2.
21. Waldman, Founding Faith, pp. 95, 96.
22. Kidd, God of Liberty, p. 117.
23. The Age of Reason, part 1, Recapitulation.
24. This was reconfirmed for me in an interview with one of the leading American historians, Pulitzer Prize–winning Brown University professor Gordon S. Wood. It was broadcast on my radio show on September 1, 2011.
25. Kidd, God of Liberty, p. 87.
26. Waldman, Founding Faith, p. 23.
27. Ibid., p. 60.
28. Leviticus 25:10.
29. Kidd, God of Liberty, pp. 169, 213.
30. Micah 6:8.
31. David Gelernter, Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2007), pp. 1, 2.
32. Paul Johnson, “The Almost-Chosen People,” First Things, June/July 2006.
33. Kidd, God of Liberty, p. 113.
34. Thomas Jefferson, first inaugural address. In the address, Jefferson answered his own question, an answer that runs completely counter to Leftist ideology: “Still one thing more, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”
35. Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), p. 16.
36. Philip Kossoff, Valiant Heart: A Biography of Heinrich Heine (New York: Cornwall Books, 1983), pp. 125–26.
37. Kidd, God of Liberty, p. 100.
38. John Adams, letter to Benjamin Rush, August 1, 1812, in Old Family Letters (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1892), cited in Waldman, Founding Faith, p. 37.
39. James Madison, Federalist No. 51.
40. From Witherspoon’s sermon “The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men,” delivered in May 1776. Cited in Waldman, Founding Faith, p. 96.
41. “Terror Inquiry Looks at Suspect’s Time in Britain,” New York Times, December 29, 2009.
42. Tim Rutten, “Keeping L.A. Safe,” Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2010.
43. Glover later became professor of ethics at King’s College, University of London. The debate was published in Ultimate Issues 9, no. 1 and is available from http://stores.dennisprager.com/06A/DPUI9_1.html.
44. He was a guest on my radio show after Cambridge University Press published his book Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew (2011).
45. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. xv.
46. “Faith Fades Where It Once Burned Strong,” New York Times, October 13, 2003.
47. David Brooks, “If It Feels Right…,” New York Times, September 12, 2011.
48. Huffington Post, February 12, 2011.
49. Arizona Daily Star, December 8, 2004.
50. Psalm 97:10. See also Psalm 45:7: “Love righteousness and hate evil.”
51. Cited by Patrice de Beer, Yale Global Online, November 8, 2004.
52. Spiegel Online International, February 21, 2005.
53. Jeanette Winterson, Guardian, October 16, 2001.
54. Two examples: “Lesbian Couple Elected High School Homecoming King and Queen; Parents React,” Yahoo News, October 31, 2011; and “Male Student Elected Homecoming Queen,” http://www.bgay.com/bnews/news71001_male_student_elected_homecoming_queen.htm.
55. Deuteronomy 25:4.
56. Deuteronomy 22:10.
57. Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1989).
58. U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part One: From Adam to Noah, translated by Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1961).
59. “The Life Sciences: Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs the World of Biological Research Requirements for the Future,” National Academy of Science, the National Academies Press, 1970, p.432. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9575&page=432.
60. These statistics are from U.S. census reports and government agencies. See the entire report, as compiled by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/08/how-poor-are-americas-poor-examining-the-plague-of-poverty-in-america.
61. See, for example, Arthur Brooks: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/a-nation-of-givers.
62. “Baby Gap: Germany’s Birth Rate Hits Historic Low,” Time World, May 23, 2010. As a liberal journal, Time ascribed the low German birthrate to economic factors: economic recession and a lack of government-sponsored day care.
63. New York Times, September 12, 1938. The Times erroneously spelled his first name “Hanford.” One can see the original article photocopied at http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/03/03/who-really-said-when-fascism-comes-to-america-it-will-come-wrapped-in-the-flag-and-waving-a-cross/.
64. “In Turkey’s Example, Some See Map for Egypt,” New York Times, February 5, 2011.
65. “Charges Against Journalists Dim the Democratic Glow in Turkey,” New York Times, January 4, 2012.
66. On Durban and anti-Semitism, see, for example, “Germany Pulls Out of Durban III Anti-racism Conference,” Jerusalem Post, September 2, 2011.