The Left Unhinged - On Both Sides Of The Pond

Sarah Palin's nomination for VP has brought down the left's masks, exposing them in all their irrationality, deception and visceral intolerance. And its not just on this side of the pond. The socialist / marxist left the world over has gone rabid.

The most rabid of the day award goes to Air America's Randi Rhodes for describing Gov. Sarah Palin as an overbearing, latent teen molester:

She’s the woman who shows up at the kid’s birthday party and starts opining about everything from politics to lawn care. This is the woman that knows it all. Will shout you down, will get revenge on you. That’s who she is.

She’s friends with all the teenage boys. You have to say no when your kids say, ‘can we sleep over at the Palin’s? No! NO!’

Medication is sorely needed.

And of course the Hollywood left is out, unable to restrain their own carefully considered and highly articulate opinions. First up there is that well known double barrelled intellectual, Pam Anderson, who pronounced on Sarah Palin, "I can't stand her. She can suck it." Well, I don't know about you, but I now know how I am going to vote.

Lynda Carter, former Wonder Woman star, was next. She told the Philly news:

Don’t get me started. She’s the anti-Wonder Woman. She’s judgmental and dictatorial, telling people how they’ve got to live their lives. And a superior religious self-righteousness … that’s just not what Wonder Woman is about. Hillary Clinton is a lot more like Wonder Woman than Mrs. Palin. She did it all, didn’t she

Superior? Judgmental? Projection???? And I am left wondering how Gov. Palin, a self made woman who fought the establishment, somehow fails in the resume department with Hillary Clinton - a woman who owes her position to her husband and whose experience is little more than that of a one term Senator. But that's just me.

At the Chicago Sun-Times, columnist Mary Mitchell tells us that "Sarah Palin makes me sick. I hate that she was able to steal Barack Obama's mojo just by showing up wearing rimless glasses and a skirt." Ms. Mitchell goes on to tell us that she holds a visceral hatred for Sarah Palin due to a host of other reasons, among them that Palin is a "basketball-shootin', moose-huntin', fly-fishin' and pistol-packing" "extremist." Don't hold back Mary.

The NYT's editorial today, "Gov. Palin's Worldview," would have been considered over the top in unfair bias just six months ago - but today it is a restrained piece of responsible journalism in comparison. The NYT intimates that Gov. Palin is an intellectual lightweight, unable to answer the tough questions and understand the nuances of foreign policy, including such things as the Bush doctrine. They cry over Palin's lack of experience - for the position of Vice President. Apparently no experience is necessary for the top job. I do love when the left goes off on the "lack of experience" binge. You know most of America is thining of two people as they ponder that argument.

From Britian, there was the famous missive last week by Jonathan Freedland explaining to Americans why we had to elect Senator Obama president or be branded racists and face the hatred of the European left. In other words, keep the status quo. And there are numerous others just dripping with eurosnobbery, arrogance and elitism. For a people unable to protect themselves from the predators of the world without relying on America, they certainly seem a bit full of themselves.

Here is one from Paul Theroux in the Guardian who finds the thought of a hunter the penultimate in worthless Americana and a clear window into a twisted soul. Cheney, Scalia - and now Palin, he notes - are all hunters who "torture" animals to death with buckshot just for the fun of it. Those first two are well known for being demonic in origin and the cause of all evil in the world, from war in Iraq to genital warts. Clearly Sarah Palin is, we are told, of their ilk. As an aside, I would point out that all of the fish and meat eaten by the Palin household for many years was that which was caught and killed by their family.

The Editorial Board of the UK's Observer tells us that, "To many Europeans, . . . the emergence of Sarah Palin as one of the dominant forces in American politics is a cause for dismay." Indeed, with only slightly less arrogance than Johnathan Freedland, they tell us that McCain Palin must be defeated because "the world needs an America more in tune with its natural friends and allies." In between, they repeat every false rumor about Sarah Palin that Kos and friends have been able to feed into the MSM.

That is it for today. The left has come unmasked. It is not pretty. I am sure there will be much more for tomorrow.

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Of Terrorist Motivation & British Papers

Denis MacShane, a Labour MP, opines in the UK's far left newpaper The Observer that the cause of Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with the Iraq or Afghanistan Wars, nor anything else in the foreign policy of Britain or, by extension, the US. His argument is based on the litany of barbarous acts of Islamic terrorism that occurred prior to 9-11, such as the gutting and beheading of fifty Swiss tourists in Egypt during 1997. It is a good article that you can find here.

The fact is that the underlying ideology that gives rise to Islamic terrorism, the Wahhabi sect from Saudi Arabia that has infected everything it has touched (arguably even Khomeinist Shia'ism), is incredibly triumphalist and expansionist. Just as there could be no way short of capitulation of peacefully setteling with Hitler, so there is no possible way of setteling with Islamic terrorists. Any act which is perceived as preventing Islamists from reestablishing a caliphate over all lands now or once under Muslim rule would suffice as justification for attacks on the West. Indeed, the list of potential justifications goes much farther and deeper than just that. Omar Bakir justified the 9-11 attacks on the basis of the 13th century Crusades. And Osama bin Laden, in 2002 prior to the Iraq war, provided seven preconditions for peace with the "Islamic Nation," the first of which was that we convert to Islam. And one former jihadi has described how he and his friends would laugh whenever they heard a useful idiot stand and claim that the reason for terrorism was the war in Iraq or the foreign policy of the UK.

Whether we defend our values aggressively, or demurely bury our heads in the sand, there will be a clear winner and a clear loser as regards Islam and the West. If the West wins, then Western values will prevail, and Muslims who choose to practice their religion peacefully in Western countries will be free to do so. If the Wahhabi ideology wins, then this world will become a medieval kingdom, and the chattering classes of the left will find themselves in their worst nightmare. Our soldiers fighting and dying on foreign soil today, should they succeed, will be saving the far left from the extreme consequences of their own actions.

The thing that amazes me about Mr. MacShane's essay is that he is a member of Britain's left wing party and that the essay appears in the most left wing of Britain's newspapers. That shows a degree of tolerance and maturity on the part of Britain's political parties that goes beyond what we see here. The last time a left wing Democrat spoke such heresy - Joe Lieberman - he was drummed out of the Democratic Party. And my hats off to the Observer and the Guardian for three reasons. One, their factual reporting is usually balanced and first rate - something clearly cannot be said for today's most liberal major newspaper in America, the New York Times. Two, while the Guardian and Observer do give the majority of their editorial space to the far - and sometimes very far - left (there was an essay the other day bemoaning the fall of communism), they also give a fair amount of space to people of all sides to express their opinion. Lastly, their comment policy and set-up is exceptional, leading to very public and robust debate that often sees hundreds of comments posted for any one editorial. I may be fairly conservative, but I do read the Guardian and the Observer daily.

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