The American Spectator

THE GREAT PAPPY
Re: Thomas Lipscomb’s Pappy Boyington Show Down:

Author Lipscomb has a point regarding the Left’s “inclination to massification,” but he omits reference to the specific vitriol directed to Boyington, i.e., the fact that as a combat pilot for the United States in time of war, he killed the enemies of the United States (see this WND article).

Much has been said of the “Greatest Generation”, of whom Boyington was one of the most magnificent. But while the Left has successfully denied all American warriors who followed their World War II brothers the unequivocal gratitude of the nation for their sacrifices in the name of the nation’s freedom, the temptation to retroactively withdraw that gratitude from the “Greatest Generation” is too great for the Left to ignore. The attack on Boyington’s record is just one shot in the much larger war on warriors. The introduction of women into almost every aspect of the armed forces is less a matter of equal opportunity than a matter of destroying the role of men as the sometimes taker of lives versus the role of women as the giver of life.

My father, a World War II combat infantryman, for all his travails in the ETO never had to worry for a moment whether the people back home honored his cause, his sacrifice and maybe his life. No soldier, marine, sailor or airman since can have the same confidence. I don’t know how they do it. It takes a dedication that the “Greatest Generation” never had to show.
— Frank Natoli
Newton, New Jersey

If I’m not mistaken, doesn’t the University of Washington boast a prominent statue of George Washington, who, in addition to being president and a Founding Father, was also a rich, white guy, a slaveholder and somewhat of a military man? Under the current reasoning, perhaps the UW student senate should forget about Pappy Boyington and instead work to change the name of the university, as well as the state. There’s a legacy for you.
— William M. Macfadyen
Santa Barbara, California

The controversy over the Pappy Boyington statue of the UofW reinforced my view that the reactions of the students is why there should be a draft. These kids are living in lala land and have only briefly it seems checked in with reality. The world can be a nasty place and people like Boyington helped make it safer….but NO…the students act like he is some kind of warmongering Hitler. Mandatory service in the military would teach them at least that their “individuality” is important to no one but themselves. This whole scandal, though, should not surprise us. After all, Washington state is home to the 1st school district in the nation to ban kids from playing “tag” at recess — not because of safety, but because their fragile little “ids” may be damaged if they are tagged out. These people are not survivors and don’t realize that they are weakening themselves and their communities by their political correctness….
— unsigned

The University of Washington’s kiddie congress decision to vote down a singular memorial to World War Two hero Colonel Boyington and replace it with a massemorial displays a glaring disenfranchisement between this nation’s history and how very little they actually know of the land in which they live.

UW student Jill Edwards made the comment, “She didn’t believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce.” Another UW student Ashley Miller further said, “Than many monuments at UW already commemorate rich white men.” These students comments weren’t just off the cuff, these young ladies made those comments of anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism from of many, many years of indoctrination in the public school system and the reinforcement of such warped thoughts from college professors.

Miss Edwards and Miller didn’t wake up that morning having a disdain for rich white men and United States Marines, they have been so brainwashed by teachers and professors with Marxists leanings that these girls actually thought what they said was perfectly normal and everyone else was in left field.

We cannot chock this up to youthful ignorance, there is a serious problem in our public schools and colleges and it is only getting worse. Rich white men, members of the Marine Corps are not good examples is something we might read from MoveOn.org or even hearing from members of Congress.

America, we cannot blow this off and hope that these young ladies and the many like them will eventually mature and grow out of this, “Hate the man” attitude.

Young impressionable students are being taught revisionist history and not history as it actually happened, and we are letting public schools get away with it. The attitude is, “Oh, my children’s school isn’t like that, they have an outstanding curriculum and great teachers” It’s always some other school and not your own that is teaching kids dysfunctional American and world history. Miss Edwards and Miller’s parents probably thought the same thing before their daughters made such absurd comments.

This won’t change for the simple reason that many parents in America are perfectly satisfied to let the government raise and brainwash their children that United States Marines are nothing more than jackbooted imperialistic thugs terrorizing the world. After all this sentiment was echoed by Senator John Kerry that when he was in Vietnam he personally saw his fellow servicemen torturing and brutalizing Vietnamese citizens. Then we wonder where the kids get these anti-American attitudes. Heck, all they have to do is watch CSPAN.
— Melvin L. Leppla
Jacksonville, North Carolina

I fail to see what is so hard to understand. It is simply a matter of the Marxist/Socialists of the '60s now being in power. They could not abide, for the most part, taking real jobs and becoming productive member of a free society. Therefore, they, in droves, went into the academy, the arts, and the government bureaucracy industries. They are now in leadership positions in these institutions and we are seeing the product of their diligent and patient long-term progress toward their goal.
— Ken Shreve

HANSEN HOAX
Re: Patrick J. Michaels’s Hansen’s Hot Hype:

Little wonder Pat Michaels envies NASA climate scientists getting so much “face time.” World Climate Report, the biweekly newsletter on climate studies Michaels edits at the coal industries expense, is hardly flying off the science library shelves.

Hansen, writes Michaels, says: “he is being censored….Why should we believe him now?” One reason is that Michaels’ sophomoric butchering of quotes from Hansen and climatologist Steve Schwartz is itself censorship of a very low order. The other is that Michaels is given to threatening lawsuits against scientists critical of his own contrarian views, most recently Peter Gleick, who told a Muncie, Indiana paper that Michaels “is one of a very small minority of nay-sayers who continue to dispute the facts and science about climate change in the face of compelling, overwhelming, and growing evidence…”

Next time, TAS might give us a column by a serious contrarian like Richard Lindzen of MIT. He dwarfs political appointees like State Climatologist Michaels in scientific stature because unlike them he continues to write extensively and with distinction in the peer reviewed literature, giving him the scientific street cred Michaels lacks. I hope Fox takes notice too — a climate war is a terrible thing to lose, and relying on a kamikaze run into the face of the scientific facts is a sure way to go down in flames.
— Russell Seitz
Cambridge, Massachusetts

P.S. If Dr. Michaels protests my critique of what he has failed to say in “Hansen’s Hot Hype,” please peruse this, which Michaels’ parallel TCS article provoked.

Mr. Hansen seems to expect credibility with, “Honest, I ain’t lyin’ this time!”
— Jim Wyche
Collegedale, Tennessee

SECURITY LAPSES
Re: Jed Babbin’s Fiddling With FISA:

Good points by Jed Babbin, as usual. Lately, red flags have been going up among a lot of conservatives about Bush on a few other matters. He seems to be in the process of dealing a bad blow to this nation’s security if he doesn’t override the port management agreements with the UAR company. Like NSA and FISA, though, Bush talks a good fight, then waffles at the most important moment. As Jed Babbin said, the Bush administration will be leaving our warriors drifting in the wind over where the line is on those other acts, while Congress continues to be a national security risk. Now we have the situation of our ports, like the Panama Canal, being put in the hands of a potential enemy. We’ve sent our manufacturing overseas, our technology is produced in China and India, now our ports will be managed by Arabs. I never thought I would even think this, but Bush seems to be walking the line himself between being our CIC in war and our worst enemy on the home front in this war. I hope I am reading something wrong there. I also hope someone will correct me in that case and show me where I am mistaken.
— Pete Chagnon

Mr. Babbin writes another insightful article. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the only way to get to where he proposes would be for Mr. Babbin to suddenly become POTUS. I greatly fear that Mr. Bush does NOT have the “stones” to do the right thing here. Yes, he should have vetoed the McCain anti-torture bill, but he didn’t. He should have vetoed the McCain election reform bill, but he didn’t. He appears afraid to challenge McCain on issues of importance to McCain. His administration would seem to also be scared to death to actually conclude leak investigations and actually charge the prominent Democrat leakers of the top secret programs and methods.

In fact the only area that Mr. Bush appears to have the steel to stand against the tide is in the area of his own base’s ideas of right and wrong. Mr. Bush is determined to defy the opinion of over 70% of the American people and create an illegal alien amnesty program for, primarily, Mexicans. I guess that Vicente Fox scares him. He seems now determined to turn over the operation of, and even secret activities of law enforcement, regarding American ports over to the soon to be new caliphate of Islam. In this case I would agree with the statement that the administration is “politically tone deaf” on this issue.

Given Mr. Bush’s predilections and missteps and those of the current crop of elected Republicans, the only thing keeping the Democrats in the minority would seem to be their own complete ineptitude and unreasoning malevolences and distempers.
— Ken Shreve

BRYANT GUMBALL MACHINE
Re: Carol Platt Liebau’s Why Do They Hate Us?:

Something to consider. Many years ago when I was at university, the really mediocre students, those who could barely read and see at the same time, took one of two curriculums: journalism or elementary education. This may be a simple explanation for the sorry state of education and the appalling state of journalism. The impact of less than intelligent men seeking to avoid military service by doing second or third grade level work in college so they could stay there to avoid the draft is obvious.

But those folks who went into journalism are now the opinion makers. Instead of being modest (indeed, they have much about which to be modest) their intellectual shortcomings have made them arrogant. Bryant Gumbel is an example. He clearly is a man of strong feelings and little self-control. In the years that I have viewed him on television I have discovered no discernible intellect. Mr. Gumbel is the darling of the liberals: he is easily swayed by their sophomoric arguments; he is angry; he is always ready to lash out at those who may not agree with him; and he of course accepts the liberal dogma that any development in anyone’s life which does not suit him is the work of an evil, sub rosa, movement, populated by dark, shadowy characters whose purpose in life is to subvert
Mr. Gumbel’s prejudices.

Is Mr. Gumbel really any different from any of the other so-called opinion-makers? Howard Dean? Post-nervous breakdown Al Gore? The semi- literate Hollywood crowd? Dan Rather? None of these people has any logically formulated position. They merely criticize. And they further demonstrate their lack on intellect by criticizing in the most primitive of ways: namecalling. I think Joseph McCarthy would be grinning at these Democrats right now, really proud that they learned from him. I also think Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt and JFK would probably be Republicans today since they loved their country much more than yellow journalism politics.
— Jay W. Molyneaux
Wellington, Florida

Ms. Liebau has perfectly diagnosed what ails the White House Cesspool — “Agenda Journalism”. If I were giving a second opinion, I’d say there is also a touch of VP-ness envy. Think how galling it must be for the likes of David Gregory, Chris Matthews Millbank, and Weird Olbermann. All those wasted years of trying to stick it to Dick Cheney and nothing has worked. Imagine the feeling of impotence. There’s Vice President Cheney on a weekend retreat with all his “Halliburton cronies” (they love the word “crony.” Cheney has no friends — just cronies). Accidentally shoots one of them. Crony comes out of hospital a week later and in his southern courtliness, apologizes for causing the VP pain, and thanks the press for their “concern” for his well-being. Meanwhile, back at Rancho Casa Blanco they’re busy shooting blanks. When the smoke has cleared, Scott McClellan is still standing, Dick Cheney is still Vice President, and David Gregory has to cobble together some kind of (not-quite) apology because “his wife told him” he was off base.

Leafing through Senator Al Simpson’s book, irreverently entitled Right In The Old Gazoo, I read for the first time, The Society of Professional Journalists CODE OF ETHICS. I can only conclude that a bunch of drunk reporters, sitting in their hangout bar one Friday night, put it together as a joke. It could have been written by the Pope — the goals, duties and aspirations were that pious. I was struck by their original mission — “The public’s right to know the truth.” Somewhere along the way “the truth” has been dropped and we are left with the dubious “public’s right to know…” Presumably anything they fancy
serving up on any given day.

David Gregory stated twice in his MSNBC blog that he considers himself to be a “proxy for the public.” Even repeated it on Tim Russert’s show. Well, David, proxy has to be given. You don’t have mine. You have been chosen by no one but the person who hired you. And he may be having second thoughts.

If these journalists can’t read the handwriting on the Internet wall, perhaps they would benefit from finding a copy of Breaking the News by fellow journalist, James Fallows, onetime editor of U.S. News and World Report. His assessment of the press was less than complimentary and warned that they were riding for a fall as far back as 1996, when his book was published. Instead, their arrogance and belligerence has increased as they face real competition in Fox News and the Internet. Coiffure and hairspray doesn’t seem to cut it anymore.
— Diane Smith
South San Francisco, California

For the news media to ask itself “Why do they hate us?” presumes honesty to inquire, humility to self-reflect and courage and then commitment to change. Given the news media’s years-long bias and lack of self-control or self-correction, the news media aren’t likely to do anything substantive to reverse the downward, unpopular slide in which they’ve put themselves.
— C. Kenna Amos Jr.
Princeton, West Virginia

I find it amusing that Bryant Gumbel has become the “Incredible Shrinking ‘Journalist’” in recent years. From the fall from his smug perch as the Today show’s insufferably pontificating anchor to his current near-invisibility on HBO, he has been consistently snide, crass, and wrong. Considering his latest premeditated backfire about the Winter Olympics and the GOP may well have merely echoed some of the thoughts of the MSM, it is apparent that it is he, not Scott McClellan, who should have been the target of David Gregory’s “jerk” broadside. Lastly, on this morning’s “Mike and Mike” broadcast on ESPN Radio, Gumbel was the runaway leader of their not-so-coveted “Just Shut Up” award, given to the public figure we’d most like to hear less. It looks like Bryant may finally be heading back to the obscurity he so richly deserves.
— Warren Mowry

Rather than reporting the story in a straight-forward manner, the old media aired a list of long-harbored grievances and innuendo against Cheney that had nothing to do with the story. It was an unseemly display of narcissism, acted out by an agenda-driven press corps. These “journalists” seem to believe their duty to the public is to create Oliver Stone’s next conspiratorial hallucination, and present it with Jerry Springer’s decorum.

There is irony. By trotting out every frivolous whining-point they could possibly imagine, the media used the shotgun approach to damage the Vice-President, and failed. They did succeed, however, in pointing the Rifle-of-Bias-Revealed at themselves, and hitting the target with sniper-like precision.
—GnuCarSmell
Jacksonville, Texas

I thought I was going to read why the world hates us and it is for the same reason, the MSM. Nothing good is EVER printed. Where are the headlines of Marines helping dig in the mud slides and all the good that is being done in Iraq? The only thing newspapers are good for is cage liners under my parrot.
— Elaine Kyle

HOLY VIOLENCE
Re: William Tucker’s Save This Date:

William Tucker says in “Save This Date” that Islam is a culture that has never learned to curb male violence. I agree. But it would be more accurate to say that Islam has no DESIRE to curb male violence. Instead, it seeks to exploit it. The Koran assumes that warfare will be the main method of advancing Islam.

After all, Muhammad’s acceptance as a prophet in 7th Century Arabia was entirely contingent on the battles he won. It certainly wasn’t because of an ability to perform miracles or demonstrably predict future events, qualities we normally associate with true prophets.

Muhammad became defensive about his inability to impress potential converts by summoning “signs” (miracles). This was shown by his comments on the subject in Surahs (chapters) 10:20; 13:7, 27; and 26.4 Although prophets are by definition also soothsayers, Muhammad said in Surahs 52:29 and 69:42 that he was “not a soothsayer.”

Ironically, Muhammad acknowledges the authenticity of miracles attributed to Christ in Surah 5:110-114

The Koran, holy book of the “religion of peace,” expresses disdain for those who would confine themselves to peaceful pursuits and contrasts them unfavorably with warriors for Islam. Surah 4:95 says, “Not equal are thos believers who sit at home and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah has granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit at home. To all in Faith Allah has promised good: but those who strive and fight he has distinguished above those who sit at home by a special reward.”

Muhammad promises hellfire for the slackers among those who he has summoned to go to war (Surahs 9:81; 48:15-17).

The Koran is, among other things, one of the great treatises on war. Chapter after chapter describes the rules, tactics and circumstances for going to war. Circumstances for making treaties and breaking them when it is to the advantage of Islam are described (Surah 9:1-14 and elsewhere). The eighth Surah is devoted entirely to the spoils of war, even specifying the portion of the booty which must automatically be given to Muhammad.

Tolerance for the “People of the Book,” Jews and Christians is prescribed, it is true. But Surah 9:29-30 says, “Fight those who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and his Messenger (Muhammad) nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, even if they are of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya (tax on non-Muslims) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”

Islam is ultimate a religion of peace, it is true: that is, after all of the world has been subjected to Islam. Islamic peace is the kind of internal peace we became familiar with in the Soviet Union, enforced through violence, intimidation, discrimination and ostracism.
— John Combellick
Oshkosh, Wisconsin