THE PATRIOT POST 12/14/2015

Right Analysis | Right Hooks | Right Opinion Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Daily Digest December 14, 2015    THE FOUNDATION "[I]n the mouths of some [Liberty] means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote good." —Oliver Ellsworth, 1787 TOP RIGHT HOOKS Fear and Loathing at the Paris Climate Summit It's rarely a good thing when world leaders in a groupthink mood decide to act quickly. On Saturday, the "international community" who met at the UN Summit on Climate Change in Paris reached an agreement. Most of the world's leaders have pledged to lower their countries' emissions rates. The pressure is on for developed countries to pay out a collective $100 billion a year to poorer countries to help them adapt to a supposedly swiftly heating planet — a handout that will do nothing for the global thermostat. Indeed, the real climate agenda is not about climate at all, but rather an effort from the leftist elite to "level the economic playing field," giving countries like China and India a pass while shaming and bankrupting the United States. Case in point: Barack Obama's loathing and regulation of the fossil fuel industry is causing massive economic headaches for regions of the country whose lifeblood is black gold. "Forgive us for looking through the legacy smoke," wrote The Wall Street Journal editorial board, "but if climate change really does imperil the Earth, and we doubt it does, nothing coming out of a gaggle of governments and the United Nations will save it. What will help is human invention and the entrepreneurial spirit." While the best qualities of human resourcefulness are ignored (because they require Liberty), Secretary of State John Kerry is appealing to the baser methods of human motivation to keep this accord in place. The man who once said climate change was a weapon of mass destruction wants to whip fellow countries towards the fight against nature with shame and international condemnation because it's "the most powerful weapon in many ways." Shame and mockery is all they've got left. Comment | Share After Sandy Hook, Americans Recognized Need for Guns The Left cannot fathom why mass shootings cause the number of gun purchases to rise. Today marks the third anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, where 26 elementary school children and their educators died at the hands of a mentally deranged man — one of the most horrific mass shootings in modern history. In the aftermath, Barack Obama and his gun-grabbing lemmings felt a sense of vigor. A handful of states like New York and Connecticut passed stricter gun laws. But the tragedy was not quite the tipping point they were after. According to a review by the Associated Press, more states than not have recognized the Second Amendment more fully, increasing the freedom of self-defense and the right to bear arms. Mississippi may consider a bill allowing churches to designate armed parishioners. Wisconsin eliminated a 24-hour waiting period. You don't need a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Kansas. For months, the FBI has been breaking records on how many times the National Instant Criminal Background Check System is used to check on a firearm purchaser. Meanwhile, gun control advocates like Obama spokesman Josh Earnest just don't get it. Last week, Earnest told reporters, "The more that we see this kind of violence on our streets, the more people go out and buy guns. That is both ironic and tragic." Why does he think this is? Does he honestly think more law-abiding people passing background checks want to jump into street violence? Instead, maybe, just maybe, Americans realize that as self-governing people they must ensure their own security — that more guns equal less crime. Comment | Share These Are Not the Weapons You're Looking For The Zero-Tolerance Empire strikes back. This time, a Houston seventh grader was informed he had to zip up his jacket to cover his Star Wars T-shirt because it portrayed a stormtrooper holding a — gasp! — blaster. (It is called Star Wars, after all.) The boy's father was incredulous, saying, “It’s political correctness run amok. You’re talking about a Star Wars T-shirt, a week before the biggest movie of the year comes out. It has nothing to do with guns or making a stand. It’s just a Star Wars shirt.” Not to Sith dealing in absolutes school officials bound by zero-tolerance policies it isn't. The school's handbook lists potential violations of dress code. Among them are “symbols oriented toward violence.” And if there's anything more obnoxious than Jar Jar Binks, it's school officials who can't make rational decisions about school policy. But hey, at least the kid didn't chew his Pop Tart into a blaster. Administrators might have thrown him into the sarlacc pit for that one. Comment | Share FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS Religious vs. Political Islam By Arnold Ahlert Americans take many things for granted. One of them is a rather brilliant decision made by the Founding Fathers, who were among the many settlers coming to the New World to escape religious oppression by state-affiliated faiths. The Founders decided that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Hence, while people were free to worship as they please, church and state would remain separate entities. Islam makes no such distinction, and America is in desperate need of a forthright conversation regarding the differences between religious and political Islam. "Some Muslims come to the United States to practice their religion peacefully, and assimilate into the Western tradition of tolerance of other people’s liberties, including religious liberty — a tradition alien to the theocratic societies in which they grew up,“ writes National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who led the case against the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. "Others come here to champion sharia, Islam’s authoritarian societal framework and legal code, resisting assimilation into our pluralistic society. Since we want to both honor religious liberty and preserve the Constitution that enshrines and protects it, we have a dilemma.” Dilemma indeed. As McCarthy further explains, the overwhelming majority of people emigrating from Muslim-majority countries to Western nations are coming from societies where "Islam is a comprehensive ideological system that governs all human affairs, from political, economic, and military matters to interpersonal relations and even hygiene.” And while Islam does have religious tenets, McCarthy argues "these make up only a fraction of what is overwhelmingly a political ideology.” At the center of that political ideology is Sharia Law, a system of governance that embraces such concepts as discrimination against women, homosexuals and non-believers, the suppression of free speech and unfettered economic activity, and the denial of due process and protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Now, one might think Muslims emigrating to nations that view such barbarity with contempt might be inclined to heartily embrace more enlightened views of their new countries. Not exactly. A poll released last June by the Center for Security Policy reveals that 51% of Muslims believe “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.” By comparison, 86% of the broader U.S. population held that Sharia should not replace the Constitution. Even more ominously, nearly 25% of Muslims surveyed insisted violence is legitimate "to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed,” and nearly a fifth believed violence was justified to turn America into a sharia-based nation. Such thinking can be characterized as many things. A commitment to assimilation isn’t one of them. Nevertheless, a bipartisan majority of U.S. senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee adopted an amendment by Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) aimed at preventing the federal government from considering religion as part of the process in immigration and entrance decisions, because "such action would be contrary to the fundamental principles on which this Nation was founded.” Such consideration is currently the law for those seeking asylum. Not only do these senators completely ignore the political aspect of Islam, their proposal runs completely contrary to the thinking of Founding Fathers such as James Madison, who stated "those who acquire the rights of citizenship, without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of.” Likewise, Alexander Hamilton asserted that the "safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment.” The alternative? “To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens the moment they put foot in our country,” Hamilton warned, "would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty." To their credit, there are Muslims who recognize the difference and reject Sharia Law. A Muslim Reform Movement has been established whose adherents declare they "are in a battle for the soul of Islam, and an Islamic renewal [that] must defeat the ideology of Islamism, or political Islam.” Toward that end they "reject interpretations of Islam that call for a violent jihad, social injustice and political Islam” and declare loyalty "to the nations in which we live.” On Dec. 4, 2015, the group produced a Declaration for Muslim Reform and posted it on the door of the Islamic Center of Washington, DC. It was quickly taken down. In an article for Front Page Magazine, Dr. Steven M. Kirby expressed profound skepticism, labeling the movement “Fantasy Islam” because, while well-intentioned, it is utterly inimical to the tenets of the Koran. "If folks are serious about religious reform, one thinks they would like to maintain some connection to their own religious traditions as a basis for that reform,” Kirby writes. "But the Muslim Reform Movement has apparently decided otherwise and seems more interested in establishing a connection with the non-Muslim Western world as the basis for their reform.” Middle East Forum president and historian Daniel Pipes explains the underlying problem with modern-day Islam. "The trauma of modern Islam results from this sharp and unmistakable contrast between medieval successes and more recent tribulations,” he writes. "Put simply, Muslims have had an exceedingly hard time explaining what went wrong.” The search for an answer has precipitated "three political responses to modernity — secularism, reformism and Islamism.” Secularism is an effort to emulate Western values, reformism an effort to selectively appropriate them, and Islamism is the effort to thoroughly reject those values as a means of transforming "faith into ideology.” "Islamists espouse deep antagonism toward non-Muslims in general, and Jews and Christians in particular,” Pipes notes. “They despise the West both because of its huge cultural influence and because it is a traditional opponent — the old rival, Christendom, in a new guise. Some of them have learned to moderate their views so as not to upset Western audiences, but the disguise is thin and should deceive no one.” Unfortunately, virtually the entire American Left and a considerable number of Republicans are more than willing to be deceived, because a stultifying political correctness demands it. Thus we are assured a vetting process that allowed San Bernardino terrorist Tashfeen Malik entry in the United States despite years of radicalization — discovered after the atrocity, of course — can be used to vet Syrian “refugees” emigrating from a country embroiled in a civil war where no reliable databases exist. And anyone who disagrees embraces the "racism behind the agenda of the right wing on immigrants and foreigners [that] has long been plain as day,” states The New York Times editorial board. Following Paris and San Bernardino, such assertions ring increasingly hollow. Moreover, they might very well be obliterated by "events on the ground": a terror plot discovered last Friday reveals that Chicago, along with Geneva and Toronto, may be targeted by the Islamic State. McCarthy explains, "If we continue mindlessly treating Islam as if it were merely a religion, if we continue ignoring the salient differences between constitutional and sharia principles — thoughtlessly assuming these antithetical systems are compatible — we will never have a sensible immigration policy.” Make no mistake: There is no “right” to enter our nation. And a progressive ideology that willingly ignores the difference between religious and political Islam — for political correctness' sake — is utterly anathema to national security and national sovereignty. Comment | Share Share MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE ANALYSIS: Speech Police Attack Scalia Actor Sets Reporter Straight on Guns Fossilized Regulation Hurting the Oil Industry Every Student Succeeds Act Becomes Law California Knife Attack Still Not Called Terrorism Gowdy and Jordan Hammer DHS Regs BEST OF RIGHT OPINION Marvin J. Folkertsma: Trumpism and Elitism Todd Starnes: Church Slapped With Criminal Summons Over Worship Service 'Noise' Joe D'Aleo: The Killer Smog in China (and India) — A Lot Like 60 Years Ago in the West For more, visit Right Opinion. TOP HEADLINES 'Big Shakeup' in Iowa Presidential Poll GOP Considers a Brokered Convention 10,000 Minors Apprehended at Border in Just Two Months For more, visit Patriot Headline Report OPINION IN BRIEF Marvin J. Folkertsma: "America’s self-appointed opinion overseers — Republicans and Democrats alike — have constructed rhetorical edifices celebrating their own righteousness and moral superiority, which in their minds bestow on them the right to tell citizens what to think and what to do. Indeed, our avatars of civic virtue preach to the peasants below about threats none of the avatars will personally ever have to confront themselves. All of which ... would be downright amusing, if the subject matter weren’t so serious. Except this time the peasants are having none of it. Although Americans certainly don’t want to wage war against Islam, they are also smart enough to know that the San Bernardino massacre wasn’t committed by a bevy of disgruntled Baptists, and that a culture based on Sharia is antithetical to American constitutionalism. So, they’re clinging to their guns, and religion, and many of them, to the only person who has demonstrated the guts to excoriate the elite’s view of America. This is not an argument for or against Donald Trump, about whom we all have our own opinions. It is to say, however, that his supporters are enraged about America’s elite endlessly spouting their irrelevant and scolding pieties, which are enough to make many American citizens deeply unsettled." Comment | Share SHORT CUTS The Gipper: "There is no question that we have failed to live up to the dreams of the Founding Fathers many times and in many places. Sometimes we do better than others. But all in all, the one thing we must be on guard against is thinking that because of this, the system has failed. The system has not failed. Some human beings have failed the system." Braying Jackass: "Senate Republicans passed yet another bill to try to repeal ObamaCare — a bill they knew that I would veto as soon as it landed on my desk. You may not be able to point to a lot of legislative accomplishments with this group of Republicans in Congress, but you’ve gotta give these folks credit for their chutzpah. The thing is, after all our successes and setbacks together, there is no doubt that the Affordable Care Act is working." —Barack Obama Alpha Jackass: "[T]he stonewalling and the bait-and-switch that goes on ... from the [gun] lobby that [NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre ] represents, to us, is a form of terrorism because it terrorizes the safety of innocent American people." —New York Daily News editor in chief Jim Rich Friendly fire: "It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bull— for them to say, 'We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.' It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises." —James Hansen, who clearly isn't impressed with the UN global climate accord For the record: "The United Nations climate summit was billed as the meeting that would save the world. But that's not what the conference delegates want — their goal is to fundamentally transform the world. ... By the time spring rolls around, [climate alarmists will] again be claiming the 2016 Morocco summit will be the last chance to save the world." —Investor's Business Daily Late-night humor: "Hillary Clinton told People Magazine that her granddaughter called her 'grandma' for the first time on the same night as the first Democratic debate. Then Hillary gazed into her granddaughter's eyes and said, 'This is my night, not yours. Pick your moments.'" —Jimmy Fallon Comment | Share Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis! Managing Editor Nate Jackson Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm's way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.