Peter Wehner, at Commentary, discusses the administration’s “red lines”. His article is titled The Obama Presidency Descends Into Farce.

He starts by quoting a Washington Post report:

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Thursday that he has seen “raw data” indicating that the Syrian government
has used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in a “number of ­instances” in recent months.

“There will be consequences” if evidence of new chemical use is confirmed, Kerry said, but “we’re not going to pin ourselves down to a precise date, time, manner of action”. …

“I’m not going to discuss what specific weapons or what country may . . . be providing or not providing” the arms, he said. “I will say that out of today’s meeting, every facet of what can be done is going to be ramped up. Every facet.”

Poor John Kerry cannot use language to express the vague ideas that float in his skull. He grabs at words like a drowning man grabbing at flotsam.

Exactly how do you “ratchet up a facet”? 

We have now reached the farcical stage in the Obama presidency.

Does Secretary Kerry understand how much of a joke it is for him to threaten “consequences” if evidence of new chemical weapons by the Assad regime turns out to be true? Given the Obama administration’s track record on Syria – with “red lines” drawn and erased, with its refusal to arm opposition groups early on, with agreeing to negotiations that have empowered the Syrian regime – it is better that Mr. Kerry keep his mouth shut than to speak and provoke ridicule.

The president and his secretary of state’s words long ago were emptied of meaning. So please, for your sake and ours, give up on the bluster. It only makes a shameful situation worse.

And here is Daniel Greenfield writing about the same subject:

Kerry was then questioned by a reporter about the possible responses if the evidence eventually proves that chemical weapons were indeed used again:

QUESTION: Thank you. Secretary Kerry, to follow up on your last point, if it is proven that chlorine was used as a chemical in war, which is prohibited, what will the Syrian Government face? What steps can be taken?

SECRETARY KERRY: …With respect to the CW and what the consequences are, it has been made clear by President Obama and others that use would result in consequences. We’re not going to pin ourselves down to a precise time, date, manner of action, but there will be consequences if it were to be proven, including, I might say, things that are way beyond our control and have nothing to do with us. But the International Criminal Court and others are free to hold him accountable. And as you know, we have a resolution that will be in front of the United Nations with respect to culpability for crimes against humanity, atrocities in the course of this conflict. So one way or the other, there will be accountability.

Let’s translate that from Diplomatese into English. There will be no consequences whatsoever except for a meaningless resolution somewhere.

Putin and Iran won. Obama lost.

After having set a red line, Kerry is withdrawing the red line while still insisting that there will be consequences … including consequences “beyond our control”.

He doesn’t mention the use of force, which is smart since he has no intention of using it, and instead babbles about the UN and the ICC which are threats to make any dictator laugh himself to death.

To summarize

1. Obama set a red line for Syria

2. His bluff was called

3. There is now no more red line

This is the pathetic foreign policy of Obama Inc. This is what they’ve done to American power and credibility.

Meanwhile, down in Foggy Bottom, servants of the state are trying to find out how to ratchet up those facets. When they know how, and do it, Assad will be taught a tremendous lesson. Just wait and see. And while we’re waiting, good old John Kerry will mix us some more metaphors.

BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI!

Worse and worse.

The US State Department – ie Hillary Clinton – hired a terrorist group, “February 17”,  to guard the Benghazi mission. That we already knew. (See our post, State Department employed terrorists as guards in Libya, October 14, 2012.)

But …

It now emerges that …

They stopped paying them.  

And then, with no one employed to guard the mission, and disgruntled terrorists who knew everything about the two stations still hanging about, they sent Ambassador Stevens there on the anniversary of 9/11. 

Did they want Chris Stevens to be killed? That seems too incredible. Even for this administration. Even for President Jarrett, Frontman Obama, and useless Hillary Clinton. What reason could there be to send one of their own (Stevens was a Democratic true believer) to his death?

So, we must conclude, all that happened, all that was allowed to happen in Benghazi on that fatal night, and the subsequent desperate cover-up, were the results of nothing but stupidity and incompetence. There was no evil intention. (Or at least – surely? – not that evil intention.)

But then again, are not stupidity and incompetence  – particularly in those who guide the destiny of nations – evils in themselves?

Chances are there will be an increase of Islamic terrorist atrocities in Western countries when (if ever) the war inside Syria is over.

This is from an article by Soeren Kern at Gatestone:

More than 100 Dutch Muslims travelled to Syria in 2013 with the intention of taking part in jihadist activities there, and at least 20 battle-hardened jihadists have since returned to the Netherlands, posing a significant threat to national security, according to a new report published by the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD. …

The principal concern in this year’s report is the mounting threats posed by the returning jihadists … 

The report warns that the presence of European fighters in Syria provides the jihadist groups active there with an “excellent opportunity to recruit individuals familiar with our region to commit acts of terrorism here”.

In addition, returnees could “exploit their status as veterans to radicalize others in the Netherlands”. …

AIVD says the age of Dutch jihadists is decreasing constantly and the number of women in this group is growing.

Most of the fighters are of Moroccan descent, although some are from Bosnia, Somalia and Turkey. Many of the Dutch jihadists are second-generation immigrants who were born in the Netherlands. …

The vast majority of Dutch jihadists in Syria have joined one of two rebel groups, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] or Jabhat al-Nusra [JaN]. AIVD believes that at least ten individuals from the Netherlands were killed in 2013, including two Dutch jihadists who blew themselves up in suicide attacks …

The report says that Al-Qaeda’s involvement in the Syrian conflict makes the threat far more acute. AIVD warns:

[Al-Qaeda] still has every intention of carrying out attacks in the West, and the use of fighters from Europe could make that goal easier to achieve. It is conceivable that some will return home with an order to commit or facilitate such acts. There is also a risk that these fighters will form new networks in Europe …

The presence of jihadist fighters from Europe in the ranks of groups affiliated or associated with Al-Qaeda, such as ISIL and JaN, offers it a chance to deploy battle-hardened operatives in countries like the Netherlands as well as in Syria. Most hold a European passport and have their origins in our region, making them unlikely to attract much attention once they return and so ideal to carry out or facilitate assignments on behalf of the organization.

As well as potentially posing a direct threat, returnees from Syria might also have a radicalizing and mobilizing effect upon fellow Muslims … “that could strengthen local radical groups and spread their message to a wider audience.”

The report also focuses on a new, more activist form of radical Islam that has emerged across Europe over the past several years, spearheaded by groups such as Sharia4Holland, Islam4UK, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Millatu Ibrahim and others.

AIVD says these groups “provide an environment in which ideas about violence and jihad are allowed to develop; their supporters make no secret of their sympathy for Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and have become more and more open in their expression of a jihadist ideology.”

Many of the young Muslims attracted to the Syrian conflict come from one of these activist groups. As such, they have crossed the line from rhetoric to action. Effectively, the organizations have thus become actual jihadist networks with their core members fighting in Syria and, at home, a wider group of supporters engaged in ever more fervent propaganda. Social media are used to disseminate stories about ‘brothers’ on the front line in Al Sham (Syria) and the deaths of their “martyrs”.

… The interior ministry has employed various measures to confront the jihadist threat. For example, it revoked the passports of 11 would-be jihadists in 2013 to prevent them from traveling to Syria. … The government has prohibited returning jihadists from collecting social welfare benefits, and in some instances it has frozen their bank accounts. At least four radicalized youth are currently under the supervision of the juvenile delinquency system.

AVID has also heightened surveillance of recruitment networks. … [and] efforts have also been made on a judicial level to criminalize so-called “jihad travel.” … [But] the light sentences handed down by the court are unlikely to serve as a meaningful deterrent to future would-be jihadists.

Once again, critics say, the ideology of multiculturalism has trumped justice.

There is a similar danger of trained, fanatical Muslim terrorists returning to organize and incite “radical action” in many Western countries, including the United States.

According to the New York Times (which tries not to associate the words “Islam” or “Muslims” with terrorism, but sometimes can’t avoid it):

Dozens of Americans have traveled or tried to travel to Syria to fight with the rebels against the government of President Bashar al-Assad since 2011 … 

The Americans are a small subset of the mostly radicalized young Muslims with Western passports who are entering Syria from Europe, North America and Australia, a group that numbers roughly 600, according to the officials and classified estimates from Western spy agencies. That represents a fraction of the roughly 6,000 to 11,000 foreign fighters over all who have poured into Syria by way of the Middle East and North Africa. 

The Americans’ numbers are small — intelligence officials would not be more precise than saying “dozens” were involved — and they have so far not distinguished themselves on the battlefield. … 

The influx of young Muslims with Western passports into Syria has raised fears among American and European intelligence officials of a new terrorist threat when the fighters return home.

In Syria, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS] has emerged as the leader in attracting foreign fighters as it exploits the chaos of the civil war and tries to lay the groundwork for an Islamic state. The group has repeatedly clashed with other rebel brigades, including another group aligned with Al Qaeda, the Nusra Front. …

In addition to these two Islamic extremist groups, the American officials said “migrant brigades”, which do not have the strict vetting requirements of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or Nusra to weed out Western spies, are also proliferating.

Among the best known of these emerging units is Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, a group that actively recruits armed followers from Central Asia and Europe …

While the [US] intelligence officials said there had not yet been any confirmed cases of foreign fighters carrying out attacks in their home countries upon their return — most of those suspected militants are still in Syria — it is the militants from groups like Jaish, they say, that pose the greatest threat when they come home.

The left pretends that the Benghazi disaster has been sufficiently inquired into, and that all the necessary answers have been been given.

But here Trey Gowdy, who is to chair the Select Committee set up by the House of Representatives to make the full inquiry that has not in fact been made, asks the press some questions it cannot answer.

The Democrats and their media toadies are very afraid of a proper inquiry into the attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, on 9/11/12, when the US Ambassador  and three other Americans were killed.

They are trying to wreck Trey Gowdy’s Select Committee that will investigate the tragic event. They speak of boycotting it. Nancy Pelosi complains that (if they don’t) it will have a majority of Republicans sitting on it.(It will have a Republican majority of one. When Pelosi was Speaker of the House she never minded if a committee had a majority of Democrats – the more the better.)

Nancy Pelosi says: “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi. Why aren’t we talking about something else?”

A great many cartoons are appearing in which people and animals and unidentifiable shapes blurt out “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi”. They are supposed to be mocking those of us who are appalled by what happened and want to know why it was allowed to happen. (We recently had an outbreak of such cartoons being posted on our Facebook to shout down our support for the new inquiry.)

Here is an example:

They are supposed to be very “yaboo!” in that puerile way that characterizes the left.

But actually, such cartoons are useful. They can help the cause of pursuing the truth about the lethal mishandling of the tragedy.

Up until recently, the left media have studiously avoided the subject of Benghazi. Now they are shouting its name from the rooftops, and in the valleys and on the mountains and the plains, day in and day out.

Their intended taunt of “BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI!” is at last spreading public awareness that “Benghazi” is the name of an immensely important issue.  

They are doing it in a spirit of fierce aggression and spite, arising from a deep frustration that they cannot after all keep the issue out of public attention; hoping to intimidate those who will not let the scandal be forgotten. But, with the gratifying justice that unintended consequences can sometimes bring, they are being punished by their own campaign. It is rebounding in their faces.

They have chosen a self-defeating tactic.

Let’s shout with them (for once);

“BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI ….!”

Are some Europeans waking up to the fact that their countries are slowly but steadily being colonized and subjugated by a barbarian horde out of the Dark Ages?

Are they ready to die opposing it?

Lars Hedegaard, the intrepid Danish historian and journalist, who was nearly assassinated last year by a jihadist, gave an impassioned speech on May 4, Denmark’s Day of Liberation from the World War II-era Nazi occupation.

He spoke at Copenhagen’s Grove of Commemoration for the patriots who gave their lives as members of the Danish Resistance against the Nazi occupation 1940-1945.

We quote from Dr. Andrew Bostom’s report of what he said:

The prophet’s followers certainly do not lack for passion or singleness of purpose. How about the rest of us?

Remember our glorious forebears – and reflect. … Thousands were willing to risk their lives [in the Second World War] to defend the inalienable gift that is Denmark and the freedom without which nothing matters. Today hardly anybody talks about Denmark as our common home and even fewer can imagine being part of a freedom front. That is very strange, for the enemies of freedom who have entered our country and gained powerful allies among our ruling elites certainly do not lack for determination. They know what they want – which is to replace our man-made laws and democratic order that are the results of a thousand-year history with a law they claim has been handed down by a god and therefore cannot be changed.

It is a god who says that the entire world belongs to him and that it is the duty of every believer to engage in holy war until there is not a single human being who has not accepted his tyranny. This god’s prophet has created an ideology that has left a trail of blood through 1400 years of history and compared to which Nazism and Communism were like ripples on history’s surface.A few decades ago this ideology – and the project of conquest for which it stands – gained a foothold in our country. And here it will have the same consequences as in any other place to which it has spread. There is no reason to enumerate these consequences. Anyone with eyes to see will notice them or can read about them.

Nonetheless we are told that this ideology of conquest is an enrichment and if something is an enrichment, you cannot get enough of it. Consequently our political and spiritual masters see to it that Islam’s influence grows by the day and fall over each other to comply with every demand raised by the prophet’s strongmen. While doing this, our masters accuse everyone who refuses to toe the line of being racists and Fascists. Why don’t we – all of us common people – turn our backs on political parties, politicians, intellectual icons, journalists and priests who endeavor to destroy our country? So far we are not in a situation similar to the one faced by our comrades in the anti-Nazi Resistance. We can still speak our minds. We don’t have to vote for parties that open a door to evil and thus hand over their compatriots to foreign oppressors. We can stop buying newspapers that fill us with lies and propaganda. And if our priest agitates for an ideology he has promised to oppose, we can attend another church. We can refuse to give money to the erection of our enemies’ barracks and command and control centers.

Some of us will lose our lives because we refuse to submit. It cannot be otherwise. We must be realists. And if we are realists, we acknowledge that we must eventually die no matter how we have chosen to live our lives. And we will realize that if we remain silent when faced with the worst evil ever devised by man, we are already dead anyway. It takes a measure of courage to stand up to our country’s enemies and their Danish collaborators and facilitators. But we must consider how much more courage it will take in 10 or 20 years when the enemy has become more numerous and well entrenched. And consider what courage we demand from our children the day they stand with their backs against the wall and have to choose between freedom and submission.

If we do not act now when we still have the option of fighting for our liberty and constitutional order with peaceful and democratic means, what will our descendants think of us? Surely there will be no monuments in our honor. We will have monuments of infamy: ”Here lie the sorry remains of a generation that failed in the fight against evil. Damn their memory!” So far there are few signs that we have realized what we are up against and even fewer that the majority are prepared to accept the consequences of such realization.

People think they can tame the beast by speaking nicely to it. They think they can save their skin by bowing their heads, singing the praise of multiculturalism, showing obeisance to barbarians – and delivering their countrymen to persecution. That may succeed for a time – until the day we realize that the Danish lion has been shot and its skin sold and that we shall never get our country or our freedom back.

Look at what has happened wherever the prophet’s ideology has gained the upper hand. And ask the obvious question: What makes us believe that it will be different here?

The evil ideology’s spokesmen and champions have not a second’s doubt that they are following Allah’s command and will get their reward for our oppression in Paradise. They laugh in their beards at our stupidity and cowardly attempts to please them. But of course they are happy that Danes make their power grab all that easier. …

We are gathered here surrounded by the bodies of those whose conviction was strong enough that they risked their lives in the battle for Denmark’s freedom.

Please observe a minute of silence – for them and for us.

He is right that the Danes – as all Europeans – must choose now between freedom and slavery.

“The worst evil ever devised by man” is the ideology that is intolerant, cruel, murderous, intent on world conquest, and totalitarian in its tyranny. It  goes by various names: Nazism, Marxism, Communism, Bolshevism, Islam.

In October, 1938, when the threat of bellicose Nazism hung over Europe, Winston Churchill made a speech in the House of Commons in which he said:

This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

Lars Hedegaard’s speech is admirably brave. He  has been prosecuted for saying less. (See our posts, Speaking freely for freedom, February 9, 2013, and The new heresy trials, February 12, 2013.) A jihadist has tried to kill him. And still he speaks out loud and clear against the evil of Islam. But  there are not many like him in Denmark or anywhere in Europe.

We see no signs that Britons, Danes, or any indigenous Europeans, in any effective numbers, are ready to take their stand for freedom “as in the olden time”.

We mentioned in a footnote to our post The Benghazi conspiracy, May 1, 2014, that a person named Mehdi K. Alhassani was among the recipients of the Ben Rhodes email that has blown the Benghazi cover-up wide open.

We thought he may be an adviser to Obama.

Here’s more about him, by Daniel Greenfield:

The ‘smoking gun’ email that reveals who instructed Susan Rice to blame the Benghazi attack on a video also exposes a recipient named Mehdi K. Alhassani.

Alhassani was the leader of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), a Muslim Brotherhood front group, and attended the sister mosque of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) mosque attended by the Boston Marathon bombers.

It is a mystery how Alhassani slipped through the cracks to become a Special Assistant to the Office of the Chief of Staff, National Security Council Staff, and Executive Office of the President. It is unknown why a few hours before the Benghazi attack, Alhassani met in the White House with Samir Mayekar, a George Soros ‘fellow’ for an unscheduled visit.

But is it a mystery? Hasn’t Obama made it glaringly obvious that he favors the Muslim Brotherhood, seeks its advice, and promotes it in the Middle East – all against the interests of America? And doesn’t George Soros do all he can to harm America?

It’s certainly interesting that Ben Rhodes was sending out a memo pushing the video over policy argument and that one of the men in the loop was part of an organization that had ties to the attackers.

The people on the list were generally high up on the communications ladder. It’s debatable whether Mehdi K. Alhassani should have been on it, but he clearly was and that raises all sorts of unanswered questions about the links between Obama’s pro-Muslim Brotherhood policies and the September 11 attacks.

Benghazi matters because it was and is a matter of national honor. And the men and women currently in charge in Washington have no honor.

We quote from an article at PJ Media, by Michael Walsh:

Honorable people do not let American diplomats twist slowly in the wind while they attend “debate prep” and rest up for a shakedown meeting with the One Percent. Honorable people do not suddenly go AWOL while American soil is under attack. Honorable people do not fail to mobilize the formidable resources of the American military, even if it might not be possible for them to get there in time. Honorable people, under questioning by Congress, do not lose their temper and start shouting. Honorable people do not look the bereaved in the eye and lie about who and what killed their loved ones.

Further: honorable people do not go before the public on the Sunday talk shows and knowingly transmit a bald-faced lie. Honorable people do not continue to lie about what took place. Honorable people do not say “We are Americans; we hold our head high,” and then hang their heads in shame as they cut and run at the first sign of trouble. Honorable people do not continue to reward the dishonorable with ever-higher posts. Honorable people resign.

And until honorable people are restored to Washington — not credentialed Ivy League lawyers with high name recognition steeped in cheap Marxism and fashionable anti-American contempt, but genuine patriots who understand that something has gone terribly wrong with America and needs to be redressed — there will be no justice for the victims of Benghazi.

And Andrew C. McCarthy writes at the National Review Online:

Dereliction of duty and fraud on the nation are not just serious matters; they are impeachable offenses, and I’ve argued for many months that the president and his underlings are guilty of both. …

Benghazi is not an ordinary scandal — it involves an act of war in which our ambassador, the representative of the United States in Libya, was murdered (along with three other Americans) under circumstances where security was appallingly inadequate for political reasons, and where the administration did not just lie about what happened but actually trumped up a prosecution that violated the First Amendment in order to bolster the lie. …

The reason for pursuing Benghazi is not to remind people of Mrs. Clinton’s disgraceful performance; it is to establish how and why our people were killed in order to reverse the government policies that led to the empowerment of Islamic supremacists; it is to hold accountable the government officials who designed those policies and then abused their power in covering up the foreseeable results.

Let’s hope it will also serve to remind people of Mrs. Clinton’s disgraceful performance.

David Horowitz was a “red-diaper baby”. In his own words:

I was a leftist as early as I can remember. Raised in a Communist family and surrounded by radicals my entire childhood, I could hardly be anything else”.

– Until

A  friend of mine named Betty Van Platter was murdered by the Black Panthers in 1974. … I  was forced to question my most basic beliefs, and that began my long and difficult journey to sanity.”  

We’ve just received a booklet from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, titled Rush Limbaugh’s Conversation with David Horowitz. (The whole of the conversation, which took place six months ago in November, 2013, can be read here.)

The following  are extracts from it:  

Horowitz: … According to a Pew poll, 49% percent of young Americans have a favorable view of socialism. What is socialism? It is a system that leads to mass misery, mass impoverization, and human slaughter. That’s what it means. Yet almost half of the young think it’s benign …

RUSH: … I look at so-called conservative commentators in Washington who seem to be content to commentate, but they don’t have any interest in beating this back. I don’t want to mention names, but most of them are that way. Same thing with the Republican Party. You come from the left. You’re one of the founders of the New Left. You’ve emerged; you were in the inner circle. You’ve spent much of your career trying to explain who these people are, the destructive, vicious malice that they have.

HOROWITZ: Yes.

RUSH: And you don’t think — this is astounding to me — you don’t think that the Republicans or conservatives really yet comprehend the seriousness of the threat.

HOROWITZ: No.

RUSH: Wow.

HOROWITZ: No. Otherwise they wouldn’t be squabbling among themselves so much. There’s another thing going on, and that is that the left controls the language. Our universities, our schools, our mainstream media are gone [into the hands of the left] — so if you pick a real fight with the left, you get tarred and feathered, as you know all too well. Conservatives are brought up in a healthy way; they mind their reputations, they don’t want to be bloodied, they don’t want to be looked at as kooks and extremists, which are the terms of abuse that are used.

RUSH: That’s true.

HOROWITZ: Obama is a compulsive, habitual liar. He makes Bill Clinton look like a Boy Scout. Clinton spun things and he did lie about something very personal and embarrassing to him, but Obama lies about everything, and all the time. And yet it’s taken five years for people to start saying this. Including conservatives. Take so-called single payer health care. Why do we use phrases like “single payer?” It’s communism! If the state controls your access to health care, which is what this is about, they control you.This is a fundamental battle for individual freedom, which is what conservatives are about, or should be. But who’s saying this about Obama’s plan to organize health care along communist lines?

RUSH: Let’s talk about persuasion a second. I’ve got true believers in my audience, and I’ve also got elements of the low-information or the swing-voter segment, and then a few leftists who listen. One thing I have discovered over the course of my career is that whenever I’ve used the word “communism” to describe, say, typical modern-day liberals, people say, “Oh, come on, Rush! They’re not communists!” It ends up being counterproductive, because I have found people don’t want to believe that about somebody like Obama. How do we go about persuading people that it is what it is?

HOROWITZ: That’s a very good question. … I think the language problem is a very serious one. I once tried to launch the word “neo-communist.” We talk about neo-fascists, so how about neo-communists? But that doesn’t work. People look at you as a relic if you use the term. But you have to at least say what their agenda is, and their agenda is controlling, is destroying individual freedom. That’s the way I would do it. By continually reminding people of what their agenda is. It’s anti-individual freedom. You can’t talk about the national debt just as an accounting problem. It’s taking away the freedom of future generations. It means that you have to work for the government instead of yourself. Currently we work something like half our lives for the state. Every other day we’re working for the government instead of for ourselves. What Obama is doing is diminishing the realm of freedom. Conservatives need to keep bringing that up all the time. …

RUSH: You pointed out that Democrats are always in lockstep, in contrast to Republicans, who are all over the place rhetorically and strategically. You said, and I’m quoting here, “The result is that a morally bankrupt, politically tyrannical, economically destructive [Democrat] Party is able to set the course of an entire nation and put it on the road to disaster.” David, people always ask, my callers ask me, “Why don’t the Republicans do ‘x’? Why don’t they do this? Why don’t they do that?” So let me ask you why. Aside from what you’ve said, that there’s a fear of being castigated by the media, mischaracterized. … Republicans simply don’t want to have mean things said about them. They want to be liked by the people who run Washington, D.C. But I don’t even see any pushback from the Republican Party. They’ll go after Ted Cruz and they’ll go after Sarah Palin and they’ll go after Mike Lee, but they won’t go after Obama.

HOROWITZ: Exactly. I have never seen Republicans conduct such bloody warfare as they do against conservatives. They don’t do that to Democrats, ever. And I think it’s great that all the people that you mentioned, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, are people, finally, who don’t care what The Washington Post says, don’t care what The New York Times says, and don’t care what the Republican establishment says. That’s the way it has to be done. I will tell you that the big difference between the left and the right that I saw when I came into the conservative movement 30 years ago was that the right had no ground army. I watched as the Democratic Party was pushed to the left by the activists in the streets — the MoveOn.org people, the Netroots — until it’s now just a left-wing Party. It was Howard Dean, a 60s leftover, who launched the anti-Iraq war campaign that shifted the whole Democratic Party. But on the Republican side, there was nobody pushing from the right. There was no ground war, no force pushing on Republicans from the grassroots. Now we have the Tea Party.

RUSH: You come from the belly of the beast. …  You lived this stuff. You were a leader of the left in your youth. Talk about MoveOn.org — these are average Americans. They may make $50,000 a year. The Netroots, they’re a bunch of people in their pajamas, sitting there blogging and posting. What do they think is in it for them? They are not people Obama is prospering.

HOROWITZ: What’s in it for them is the fact that progressivism is a religion, or a crypto-religion. Like religious people, they believe the world is a fallen place. But they also believe that they can be its saviors. Salvation and redemption are … going to come … from the movement they are part of, from the organized left. What they get out of this is the consolation of religion. They get a sense of personal worth; they get a meaning to their lives. That’s what drives them. It’s not money. It’s much more powerful. When Whittaker Chambers left communism, he said, “I’ve left the winning side for the losing side.” Why did he think that? Because communists have ideas they’re willing to die for, and conservatives don’t. Conservatives have to get that idea. They have to understand that their freedom will be lost if we don’t stop the left.

RUSH: About stopping them. …  Can the right triumph ever again?

HOROWITZ: I remain an optimist, which brings me to the second problem with conservatives. In addition to their decency and their not wanting to make enemies and not wanting to turn politics into war, they’re fatalists. If you think you’re going to lose, you can’t win. That’s very basic. I believe there’s a lot of hope. The ideas of the left are bankrupt. They don’t work. We’re seeing this now with Obamacare. Ludwig von Mises wrote a book in 1922, titled: Socialism. He explained that you can’t centrally plan a large economy, and he showed why. 1922. That’s almost 100 years ago, yet the Democratic Party rammed through Obamacare, ignoring what the last 100 years has proved. They’re going to organize the health care of 300 million Americans with their computers. It’s lunacy. Yet it’s the policy of the whole Democratic Party. They’ve staked their political future on this. … To sell Obamacare, they claimed — lied — that it’s to cover the uninsured. But it doesn’t even do that. Everything they said about Obamacare is a lie. Why? Because their real agenda is not health care. It’s to create a socialist state. To do that they need comprehensive control over people’s lives. I never thought I’d be saying this, because I didn’t see it even in a remote future, but we’re on the brink of a one-party state if they were to succeed. If you are ready to use the IRS politically, if you have access to every individual’s financial and health care information, and if your spy agency can monitor all communications, you don’t need a secret police to destroy your opponents. Anybody you want to destroy, you’ve got enough information on them and control to stop them. That’s how close we are to a totalitarian state. They want to control your life — for your own good of course — even to the point of whether you can buy Big Gulps. That’s not incidental.

RUSH: No, it’s not. Now when this kind of thing happens … I wonder about the average American, somebody who’s not an activist like you or me. Do they not see this, and if they don’t, how can they be made to see it?

HOROWITZ: I don’t think they see it. Most people are averse to politics and don’t pay that much attention. However, Obamacare is going to make them pay attention because his plan affects so many people. You have to start using moral language against these people. I want to hear our guys saying, “This is a threat to individual freedom. You are attacking the freedom of every American when you run up the debt like this. You are attacking the freedom of every American when you put them all in a government-controlled program like this. Government should not have this information.”  …  Every time they have a program that hurts individual liberty, we need to stop talking about it as though it was just about money. The money figures are so big, trillions, nobody can even grasp them, unless they’re very involved in the economy and understand it — and then they probably are Republicans. …  

RUSH: … Freedom requires personal responsibility. …

HOROWITZ: … We need to use a moral language. Notice when the left attacks, it’s always using moral language. Racist, sexist, homophobic, whatever. These attacks sting. We don’t use language like that. We need to. It’s they who are racist. …  Why are we letting them get away with their destruction of inner-city minority communities? Detroit, Chicago: why weren’t the disasters Democrats have visited on these cities huge in the Republican campaign last time? Democrats control these cities, they’ve controlled them for half a century and more. They’re ruining, destroying the lives of young black and Hispanic kids in these cities, and poor whites there as well. They’re 100 percent responsible for that, yet we never mention it. It is beyond me. … They don’t want to be at war, and particularly a moral war, with other Americans. But that is the reality. The left has already made it that. Republicans are treated as though they’re of the Party of Satan. That goes with the religious nature of leftist beliefs. Progressives believe that they are creating the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and that people who oppose them are the Party of the Devil. That’s the way they fight. We have to use that kind of language. Fight fire with fire.

RUSH: You’re nailing it. You came up with something … that I think is worth repeating, and to me it’s brilliant. I would never have seen it had you not pointed it out. You write that the fall of soviet communism had the unforeseen effect of freeing leftists from the burden of defending failed Marxist states, which in turn allowed them to emerge as a major force in American life. That’s so right on. The failure of communism, ironically, led to a rebirth of it in this country. We wipe it out in the Soviet Union, and a shining example of its atrocities goes away, and it becomes a tougher sell to educate people what it is. 

HOROWITZ: Exactly, and leftists saw that at the time. That’s the first thing they said about it. …  That’s why connecting them to the communists is very important. It’s part of the battle. Republicans, and conservatives as well, have let the foreign policy issue, national security, slip off the political radar. Barack Obama is a supporter of the Islamofascists. He’s supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that wants to … destroy America. Obama and Hillary have supported them. Their Administration is infiltrated by Islamist agents. That’s why Benghazi is so important, and why I’m really encouraged that Republicans haven’t let it totally disappear. …

If conservatives and Republicans do learn at last to “fight fire with fire”, can America’s leftward slide be stopped? Can America be restored to a country that values and protects the freedom of the individual? Rush asks Horowitz if the rule of the left – of the Democratic Party – will “implode”.

HOROWITZ: I think they’re going to go down in flames in the coming election. I’m hoping for that, and I can’t see how that won’t happen.

So David Horowitz, at this point, is optimistic.

We would like to share his optimism. But we have one difference of opinion with him which makes us less sanguine that a Republican victory – even if led by a person such as Ted Cruz who understands the urgency of the need to recover from the leftward slide – is almost certain.

He says, in the same conversation, “we need morality, religion, laws”. Morality and laws, yes, we need them. But religion? He means a religion with a god – to oppose the communist religion which has no god. He observes with wonder the inability of the left to learn from the horrible history of their religion that it only creates widespread misery and sheds lots of blood. Yet he fails to learn from the much longer horrible history of god-worshipping religions that they created widespread misery and shed lots of blood.

We immensely admire the great work David Horowitz has done, and continues to do, teaching Americans the awful truth of the left’s ideology, and actively combating it.

But if the right insists on sticking “God” into its political platform, the left is much less likely to “go down in flames”.

As president of the United States, Barack Obama has done no good for his country.

Or was there one thing? Many of his critics – even some conservatives  – say that at least he had the mastermind of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, tracked down and executed.

But while it is true that bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011, by US Navy SEALs, and though it could only have been done with his consent, it was done against his wishes. His consent was given very reluctantly. Three times he put off ordering a raid on bin Laden’s known hideout in Abottabad, Pakistan, because his éminence grise Valerie Jarrett told him not to do it. We don’t know what arguments or pressure, or whose persuasion, finally brought him to let the act of justice be carried out by the SEALs. He even tried to stop it happening hours before it was due to start with the frantic  excuse that bad weather would make it too difficult. When he was shown that that was not the case, that the weather would be “ideal” for the raid, he had no more excuses and had to let the deed be done.

As he was emotionally against it, was he likely to enjoy watching it on a screen in the White House? He’d have hated every moment. But he needs the American people to believe he watched it. He needs them to give him credit for it, as they do. He needs them to say what a courageous act it was;  how brilliantly planned and executed – by Barack Obama. So he needs to deceive them, as is his habit and custom.

Do you believe this picture?

See how small Obama looks. This narcissistic president, the commander-in-chief whose great achievement this would be, on a low seat cramped in a little space rather far back and to the side? Compare the size of his head with the others. Has a picture of him sitting somewhere else, some other time, been inserted to make it look as if he had been in this room intently watching the killing of bin Laden?

It has been authoritatively said that he was playing a card game in another room as Biden, Clinton, Gates and the others watched the raid.  Did he nip in here just to have the photo taken?

It sure looks photoshopped to us.

Opinions are invited.