One of the most astute, prolific critics of the growing threat posed by Islamism to the United Kingdom-and the West in general-is Douglas Murray. Some of you might remember him from the Intelligence Squared debate where he teamed up with human rights activist and apostate from Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali to refute the proposition that Islam Is a Religion of Peace. Now he’s written a book that takes to task those-mostly on the left, but across the political spectrum-who would continue to defend the religious precepts animating the Woolwich butchers and those rampaging across Stockholm out of ideological solidarity. Islamophilia: A Very Metropolitan Malady is not only timely, but pivotal to understanding the incoherent thinking that is the ethos  of the illiberal consensus.

Read it, before it’s too late. 

Art Credit: Bosh Fawstin.

Once again, the words of Enoch Powell appear prescient, although perhaps in not quite the way the late British parliamentarian and classicist intended. In the same week that Swedes have been besieged by aggrieved jihadists imported by their own government, Londoners experienced yet another subsidiary benefit of multiculturalism. This time, in the form of a Nigerian convert to Islam ritualistically slaughtering a member of the British Army.

Drummer Lee Rigby, of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was methodically  dismembered by an adherent to the Religion of Peace as he walked to his barracks yesterday. The loving father, who had served in Afghanistan, was the latest victim of an alien ideology which has already killed or attempted to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of Britons on their own soil. The perpetrators of this particular atrocity-which echoed an earlier attempt to murder and behead a British soldier in the streets of London-were emulating their countrymen in Nigeria, where Boko Haram, which in Hausa translates to “Western education is a sin,”has turned the northern portion of the country into a charnel house, slaughtering Christians,  security forces, women, and anyone else who does not submit to the imperatives of sharia. The Nigerian government has responded ambiguously, besieging three northern states even as it releases detained members of the ultra-violent, Islamic terror network.

How the UK will respond to this atrocity remains to be seen, although the signals emanating from the ruling class-which is in large measure culpable for this sort of barbarity-are not encouraging. The widely ridiculed British security apparatus responded with undue alacrity. The ahistorical, insipid pabulum put forward by the current empty suit occupying 10 Downing Street was to be expected. Mr. Cameron was simply following the example of our President, who won’t let  the premeditated vivisection of a British citizen sully the good name of Islam. Better not to mention it at all. Of course, most of the large media organs-with a few notable exceptions-sedulously elided the unpleasant fact that these Muslim youths grounded their butchery in Koranic injunctions. The current mayor of London, who once distinguished himself from his Islamophile predecessor, “Red” Ken Livingstone, issued a similar appeal to his constituents not to form a hasty, negative opinion of the perpetrator’s religion simply because of the actions of a few misguided Muslim jihadists who had just assassinated an infidel in the name of Islam.

After all, this is just an isolated incident, most likely the work of a lone wolf-or wolves-which won’t be repeated in the future. It’s not like London is the European hub for pan-Islamic, jihadist terror,  to the point of earning its own delightful sobriquet reflecting the dramatically altered demographics of this international capital of commerce. Despite the feigned expressions of shock and disbelief by the usual suspects, the biography of the soldier of allah seen in video footage is anything but surprising. A follower of the protean jihadist movement known as Al-Muhajiroun, which serves as a finishing school of sorts for would-be Islamic terrorists, he spent recent months exhorting his fellow Muslims to join the Syrian jihad, which I’m sure would have met with the approval of Secretary of State Kerry and much of Congress.

Although we don’t know what precipitated his conversion to Islam, the opportunities presented to him in this new England are ubiquitous. In addition to numerous mosques-both of the mega and storefront variety-Islamic bookshops whose offerings range from Mein Kampf to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; there is the Islamic community itself, where anti-Semitism and hatred of the West proliferates, at least according to British Muslims. There are even committed jihadists willing to instruct young pupils in the tenets of Islam. That is why the words of Cameron, Johnson, and the worse than useless talking heads in the media ring so hollow today.

The message sent by this jihadist’s ostensible mentor, Anjem Choudary, reveals more than any of the lies or willful delusions being promoted by the usual suspects. His testimony to the character of the bestial creature who disemboweled Lee Rigby is illuminating in its own warped way. Islam is a peaceful religion, and Muslims are without sin, because submission is peace and killing infidels is not sinful. According to this belief system, what took place yesterday is commendable and should be emulated, just as the deeds of Mohammed-the model for all proper conduct and behavior-should serve as a model for true Muslims.

In some respects, the philosophy of apocalyptic, jihadist Islam is in perfect harmony with that espoused by the unreconstructed, revolutionary left, which has aided its rise throughout the West. Both are governed by situational ethics, where the ends-if achieved-are justified by the means. Specific actions are judged to be right only insofar as they facilitate a certain outcome. The growth of Islam and sharia in the case of the former, the ideal collectivist state for the latter. Both buttress each other, but the foundation stone is the left, which has constructed the meta-narrative that there are no reasons to oppose mass immigration from the third world-or the customs and beliefs these newcomers hew to-which aren’t invidious and racist in origin, and that the thoughts and feelings of the majority of Europeans and Americans constitute a form of mass psychosis.

That is why western European cities are being sacked for the first time since the end of World War II, and why the president will not even utter the name of the religion which is responsible for the atrocity committed yesterday in Woolwich. If diversity is our strength, then any action-or even statement-which might diminish public support for this grand experiment of our political leadership is forbidden; or “haram,” if you will. The loving, caring family of Lee Rigby is experiencing a torment that defies description, yet the government of Great Britain refuses to look reality in the eye and identify the killer by its rightful name. In this respect, there is some truth to the words of the orc who murdered and desecrated the body of that courageous serviceman. David Cameron and Boris Johnson-Labour, the Tories, and the Liberal Democrats-do not care about English people.

That much is obvious.

Congratulations to UKIP and its visionary leadership, including leader Nigel Farage! Granted, it’s simply by-elections-the real test lies ahead-but anytime you can anger and frighten the multi-culti, metropolitan,middle class, left wing pricks at the Beeb and their Guardianista comrades to this extent, you know you’ve hit pay dirt. The debate over coercive multiculturalism and ahistoric, politically engineered mass immigration to Great Britain, as well as the legal/moral double standards these policies engender, has finally begun in earnest, despite the best efforts of that nation’s gatekeepers to ruthlessly suppress it.

Just as the UK Independence Party exposed the folly of the European integration project, so it will lead the charge to restore common sense to that country’s immigration policies. Three cheers from across the Atlantic!

It’s been over a year since we lost Andrew Breitbart, although it seems much longer, and his departure is just as piercing today, as we confront an administration unencumbered by the rule of law, overseen by a politically neutered Congress, and whose actions are facilitated by a press whose slavish devotion to the left’s ideological agenda is something you would expect to find in the former Soviet Union.  I don’t think we can exaggerate the importance of the space he occupied within the counterrevolutionary movement against the domestic left, and particularly, its allies among the mainstream media. Sitting through a screening of Hating Breitbart, a remarkable film directed by Andrew Marcus which examines why his enemies hated him-and went to such great lengths to misrepresent, vilify or simply ignore his message-reminded me yet again of what a groundbreaking figure he was in disseminating news and information that had been suppressed by what Jim Lehrer nostalgically calls America’s “gatekeepers.”

The beauty of this documentary is that it captures the essence of Andrew Breitbart both as the public face of an online samizdat as well as the individual whose unique personality and character shaped the movement which arrived at an historical moment when-as Andrew Klaven observes-quantum leaps of technology had made the stranglehold the fourth estate exercised over the distribution of information increasingly obsolescent. This is one of the recurring themes of Hating Breitbart, whose interview subjects accurately diagnose the dilemma facing a mainstream media which has consistently failed to adapt to the challenges imposed by progress. In this regard, the campaign to destroy Andrew Breitbart’s reputation made practical sense not only because he offered an alternative form of news gathering and media consumption, but a wholly different business model.

Nothing illustrates the threat this new form of investigative reporting posed to the existing model of journalism more vividly than the mainstream media’s reaction to the  2009 sting conducted by Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, which uncovered ACORN employees colluding with putative criminals in order to exploit the American taxpayer. True to form, the paper of record didn’t deign to print anything about these potentially criminal activities, even after the organization itself had been defunded by a bipartisan majority in Congress. A multimillion dollar organization that was a mainstay of the post-McGovern Democratic Party, which had generated the shock troops of the activist left, and whom the sitting President had once served as counsel to, was forced to disband. The fact that this galvanic political event went officially unnoticed by this country’s media barons demonstrated beyond dispute that their newspapers and television networks had no interest in uncovering the truth, or even distributing high quality news or information if it didn’t gibe with their sacred cows.

The ferocity with which these entities attacked the reputation of Andrew Breitbart, and to a lesser extent, James O’Keefe, reflected  not only their alienation from any ideas that did not come from the Columbia School of Journalism, but their recognition that a new form of journalism was rendering their filters-and by extension, their credentials-null. The backlash against Breitbart, and the concept of citizen journalism itself, was a reactionary gambit by institutions which had invested their reputations in preserving a decaying edifice. A reflexive instinct similar to the MPAA’s attempt to suffocate online speech through proposed laws like SOPA and the Protect IP Act.

The struggle between the bastions of big journalism and Andrew Breitbart over the nature of the ACORN revelations constitutes one third of Hating Breitbart, the remainder of the documentary devoted to an examining a subject, i.e. the framing mechanisms the media uses with regard to race, which I think is by far the most important part of this film.

Many people have accused Andrew Breitbart of being a provocateur; someone who stoked outrage simply for the sake of professional advancement and personal aggrandizement. The idea that his actions and demeanor served as a facade used to generate publicity is superficially appealing, because he was-unlike so many conservatives-brilliant at marketing and keenly aware of how important it was to disseminating your product, which in his case was the message that the left and its instruments in the media industrial complex were engaged in the big lie. However, Bretbart’s outrage wasn’t artificial, it was born of genuine passion for truth and anger at those who have dedicated all of their energies to suppressing it.

His response to the premeditated media smear campaign against the Tea Party prior to the 2010 elections is a perfect example of this-genuinely felt-righteous indignation. For those who don’t recall the circumstances of this controversy-in fact, extensive slanderous/libelous campaign based upon an elaborately crafted myth-it began with charges by a group of bottom-feeders from the Congressional Black Caucus-led by nepotism beneficiary Andre Carson-that they were bombarded with racial epithets as they ostentatiously paraded by a group of anti-Obamacare protestors along the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The genesis of this media creation was a demonstration against a singularly unpopular and unsustainable public policy attended by thousands of individuals from states and cities across the nation. Instead of covering the mass opposition to this plan among the people it was to be forced upon-or examining how it was conceived-the national press corps decided to use the opportunity to defame a group of its political antagonists who threatened Barack Obama’s signature political achievement.

Andrew Breitbart spent months refuting these charges, which were not supported by any contemporaneous accounts from people who didn’t have a vested interest in maintaining this fiction-and which were leveled by people who routinely manipulated the subject of race to engage in political burlesque-because he was incensed by an injustice. He was outraged that the mainstream media would impugn the integrity of millions of Americans simply to shape a narrative that dovetailed with the political ambitions of the current administration. Rather than talk about the vision of a national, grassroots movement which was lobbying for liberty-rather than simply spoils for a particular race, guild, or corporate interest-he spent the better part of 2010 debunking the regurgitated lies of cretinous flunkies like Terry Moran and Tommy Christopher. The reason he did so is because he was genuinely enraged by the lies-and what they implied-and believed that the American public needed to know who was lying to them and why they were doing so.

This is a part of Andrew Breitbart’s composition that I wish more of his admirers would seek to emulate. You hear conservatives condemn or lament the litany of abuses by the left and its accomplices in the media time and again, but rarely do they grasp the immorality of these deceptions, let alone point it out to the broader American pubic. The depth of Breitbart’s fury was commensurate with the outrageousness of the lie we were being asked to accept. Namely, that an organic, nationwide movement to roll back government encroachments upon our freedom of choice was simply some sort of paroxysm of racist tourette’s on the political stage. The insidiousness of this story-line is something that should have generated more righteous anger, even among people who have become inured to the media’s factory line of disinformation.

The third and final part of Hating Breitbart, which examines the Shirley Sherrod controversy-wherein he was personally vilified-is arguably the most critical aspect of this documentary, because it provides us with the sharpest demarcation in philosophy between Breitbart and his enemies. While the former believed in equality of opportunity and the basic principles of the Constitution-at its most fundamental core, free will and voluntary exchange-the latter, including Ben Jealous and the husband of Mrs. Sherrod, desire a spoils-based society that takes the cult of multiculturalism as its  starting point.

Breitbart was an exponent of individual rights, not the group rights that Julian Bond, Ben Jealous, et. al. seek to impose as the dominant mode of political discourse in this country. The dangers of embracing this mentality do not consist merely of defrauding the American taxpayer, or even distorting history, but of causing permanent damage to future generations. Prominent conservative blogger Dan Riehl explains just why this reliance upon racial categorization and definition is so corrosive in a welfare state, not only to the body politic, but even-perhaps especially so-to the intended beneficiaries of this racial spoils system. If government benefits are entitlements, then any attempt to curb these payments-or critique the system under which they are distributed-is a personal attack. And when you’re classified according to your ethnicity or race, it is by definition a racist assault.

This is one of the invaluable insights of Hating Breitbart, and one of the many reasons you should see this film. Have it screened in your city. Follow the Hating Breitbart Facebook page, and follow the film’s Twitter page. You need to see and hear Andrew Breitbart for yourself in order to discover why he was such a visionary leader, and why he was so irreplaceable to the conservative moment and the new media. Congratulations to Andrew Marcus, Evan Coyne Maloney,  Maura Flynn, Katie O’Malley and everyone responsible for putting this story together. It’s one that needed to be told, and needs to be remembered.

Dogmatism and obfuscation mark virtually any media discussion of the subject of immigration-a pattern which holds true both domestically and abroad-but Sky News managed to conduct a good interview of Nigel Farage, standard bearer for the UK Independence Party, nonetheless. The Week provides a brief summary of what caused  two caring English foster parents to have the child they had cared for ripped from their arms by a Labour council that George Orwell would have had difficulty  imagining.

For those of you who believe this to be an anomalous event, you obviously haven’t been paying attention. Six years ago the government of the United Kingdom attempted to criminalize blaspheming Islam, and although unsuccessful-by a single vote-it’s hard to believe that this issue won’t reappear once the process of strip-mining Great Britain is closer to completion. The Farage interview is illustrative of the fact that not every individual wants to embrace the brave new world charted by our current statesmen, who have decided in their infinite wisdom to elect a new people.

Former sergeant Layne Morris has made his objections to Khadr’s release widely known, as have the widow and surviving relatives of Sgt. 1st Class Chris Speer, whose life was taken by one of Al Qaeda’s princelings. As infuriating as this situation is, there is something that you can do to help the family Sgt. Speer left behind. The Speer Kids’ Fund was established in order to assist Tabitha Speer as she continues to pay down legal costs incurred by this case, as well as to defray the expense of educating her two children. Ezra Levant explains the details behind the fund established in her children’s name in this segment of The Source.

This is a fantastic interview of Congressman Steve King-conducted last month after the President’s unconstitutional administrative amnesty-which I urge you all to listen to. Rep. King is one of the few members of Congress willing to stand up to Barack Obama’s subversion of the legislative process. A dogged opponent of multiculturalism, King is exceptional in his willingness to resist the tide of political correctness in all its multifarious manifestations.

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One of the more obnoxious political phenomena this election cycle is the continued fixation of the media upon placing voters into specific taxonomic, ethnic boxes. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the press corps insist upon classifying all potential voters who hail from Spanish-speaking countries into the same amorphous, unitary bloc, regardless of the variant cultures and/or beliefs present within this “group.” A good antidote to this blinkered perspective is provided by Fausta Wertz, a respected blogger and writer who focuses primarily upon Latin American politics. She’s gone to the trouble of republishing her 2006 essay which illuminates the misconceptions that have gone into creating what she describes as the Hispanic mirage.

The only way to get past an illusion is to dispel it, and the best way to do so is by discovering the truth.

 John Wayne’s “The Hyphen”:

The hyphen.

Webster’s dictionary defines as a symbol used to divide a compound word or a single word.

So it seems to me that when a man calls himself Afro-American or Mexican-American or Italian-American or Irish-American or Jewish-American, what he’s saying is “I’m a divided American.”

Well, we all came from other places, different creeds, different races, to form a nation, to become as one.  Yet look at the harm a line has done, a simple little line, and, yet, as divisive as a line can get.  A crooked cross the Nazis flew, and the Russian hammer and sickle, too – time bombs in the lives of Man.

But none of these could ever fan the flames of hatred faster than the hyphen.

The Russian hammer built a wall that locks men’s hearts from freedom’s call.  The crooked cross flew overhead above 20 million tragic dead, among them, men from this great nation who died for Freedom’s preservation.

A hyphen is a line that’s small.  It can be a bridge or it can be a wall.  A bridge can save you lots of time; a wall you always have to climb.

The road to Liberty lies true.  The hyphen’s use is up to you.

Used as a bridge, it can span all the differences of Man.  Being free in mind and soul should be our most important goal.

But, if you use the hyphen as a wall, you’ll make your life mean and small.

An American is a special breed whose People came to her in need.  They came to her that they might find a world where they’d have peace of mind, where men are equal, and (something more), stand taller than they stood before.

So you be wise in your decision, and that little line won’t cause division.  Let’s join hands with one another, for in this land, each man’s your brother.  United we stand; divided we fall.

We’re Americans.  That says it all.

h/t: Sad Hill News