Courting Killer: Columbia Was Chosen For A Reason

It now seems that Ahmadinejad chose Columbia (they didn't invite him) because of Columbia's storied past. Columbia invited Hitler's envoy. This was what then President Butler said:

In response, President Butler harrumphed something about how Columbia "does not ask what a man's opinions may be but only whether he is intelligent, honest, and well-mannered in their presentation and discussion. There is no subject which a company of scholars such as that assembled on Morningside Heights, is not prepared to have presented to it by a man or woman of high intelligence and good manners, and to hear fully discussed and debated." When the "well-mannered" Herr Luther made his appearance on Morningside Heights, it seems only to have whetted the Nazi lust — and to have established a precedent for abasement. It turned out that the only kind of intercourse the Nazis understood was the kind conducted by General Eisenhower, who not only liberated Europe but went on to Morningside Heights, where he brought great distinction to the presidency of the University.

Columbia's modern president shows the same kind of moral obtuseness and it's astounding. Because Ahmadinejad spits his venom at a common enemy, George Bush, a good portion of the Left don't mind that the poison would ultimately kill them, too.

This is where consuming hatred gets a person: the line between rage and suicide blends. Would Dean Coatsworth rather die than honor his own country? If Ahmadinejad has his way, everything Western, American, Israeli, Jewish and Democratic will give way to Sharia and death squads and extermination. Dean Coatsworth would not be spared this fate, his lofty ideals notwithstanding. Back to a quoted Jeff Goldstein post of yor:

And so we have Islamic fascists exploiting the postmodern rhetorical assumptions of a western socialist / progressivist left in order to bring about the spread of totalitarianism.

Goldstein says today:

"Of course we’d invite Hitler to speak”
So says the Dean of Columbia. Sadly, no follow-up question asking how he might react should der Fuhrer get a little tipsy at the post-speech cocktail party and order his band of traveling storm troopers to stuff a dozen or so gypsies, a gay couple, and 6 million Jews into one of the caterer’s mobile convection ovens.

Which is a shame, really, because I think there’s half a chance we’d have been treated to a bit about “respecting cultural differences.

It is doubtless that Ahmadinejad knows Columbia's history. He chose Columbia for a reason. He knows our history even if the scholars choose to forget theirs. These Western elites don't mind being played for fools. Again. That's why I don't call them Useful Idiots. They are worse than useful because they are not idiots. They are intelligent. They know the game and they have chosen a side and they don't stand for freedom, no matter how they spin it. They stand for oppression and extermination. Anyone with any sense will revile them. Men like Dean Coatsworth are disgusting human beings.

P.S. This is the same institution who wouldn't allow the Minutemen to engage in the free exchange of ideas. Some ideas are more "correct" than others.

Evil Or Useful Idiot?--UPDATED & Bumped

It is amazing what lengths people will go to feel special, to feel "in" and to feel smarter than others. There is a profile and John Kerry and Scott Beauchamp fit it: Lazy, arrogant, persecution complex, feeling unappreciated, desire for fame and fortune and willing to do anything, sell anyone to achieve it. Sure they have a belief system but that is secondary to the desire to belong and feel better than average. They are extreme examples to be sure. Look how easy The New Republic bought the lines--they wanted to...they are the definition of Useful Idiots.

But what of the narcissistic poseurs themselves? Are they Useful Idiots? I say no. These people are calculating, intelligent and ambitious. They use their gifts to serve themselves above their friends, their family, their country. They lie. They smear with the ease other people tell the truth. They are evil.

I know what I'm saying. It's strong. It's alarming in its implications, but consider this, and I'm heavily quoting from Gateway Pundit:

Today in the Opinion Journal, former KGB intelligence officer Ion Mihai Pacepa explained the propaganda tactics of the communists during the Cold War.
Here is a bit of what Pacepa had to say about the Soviet's propaganda campaign in the West:

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.

Does that remind you of anyone?
Here are the words of future democratic Senator John F. Kerry in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971:

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam...

John F. Kerry- Useful Idiot.

John F. Kerry is useful, but he's no idiot. He's evil. Most people don't fall into this category. Oh, they'll talk a big game in their social circles, but if push came to shove, they'd back up their friend, their family, their country. Still, far too many these days are willing to believe smut against their own country and purify the enemy. That is dangerous ground. They refuse to see their usefulness.

I made the connection between Beauchamp and John Kerry:

You knew there would be a John Kerry coming out of this War, didn't you? I mean, it's inevitable. Never mind that the army these days is 100% volunteer. Never mind that soldiers are re-upping and re-upping to serve in Iraq; to get the job done. There had to be at least one of these guys. [I was referring to Scott Beauchamp. -ed.]

This war, like all conflicts, will produce not only a plethora of Useful Idiots (being a contrarian and hiding your fear under faux-sophistication makes you sound so cool in the Beltway--it's called conventional wisdom) but also worse. There will be out and out double agents betraying America. And there will be subtler snakes, but snakes still, who use their experiences (or pretend ones--as with Kerry and Beauchamp) as a platform to destroy what better men and women have built.

And these destroyers destroy for the basest of reasons: their own egos. No, not Useful Idiots. Evil.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin lists many more false testimonies given by evil people banking on the usefulness of the Western media:

Winter Soldier Syndrome will only be cured when the costs of slandering the troops outweigh the benefits. Exposing Scott Thomas Beauchamp and his brethren matters because the truth matters. The honor of the military matters. The credibility of the media matters.

Jimmy Massey, Jesse MacBeth, Micah Wright, Josh Lansdale, Amorita Randall, and the big one--John Kerry.

Russia's "Street Theater"

Austin Bay:

The big point: Russia is offering options and talking cooperation. The second big point: The Russian huff has been street theater since the mid-1990s. “Useful idiots” bought the schtick– but they always do. They made for sensational anti-American headlines.

Bay notes that Russia has a crumbling infrastructure and needs allies against strengthened border states. (What of the joint military ops with the Chinese?)

"Allies" seems a strange word to use in a sentence with anything Russian. They are like the autistic kid on the world block. (The big one, not the savant one.)


H/T Instapundit

Getting Real--Taking On Postmodernism's Mushy Headedness

Over the weekend Dr. Pat Santy and my blog-friend MaxedOutMama wrote compelling pieces on the nature of reality. (Please read both!) I can hear the collective sigh, but snap to, people! This is important. The real divide worldwide is philosophical. The war we wage is a war of ideas. There are reasons why Bush went to war and there are feelings why Democrats and progressives fight it.

Let's make this argument practical. Today in England, these topics are being debated not in abstract but concretely. Who deserves to die without choice is the question. Answer: 1) euthanasia for newborns who are sick or disabled and 2) Saddam Hussein's life should be spared. The first argument involves arguments about having a "useful life". The second argument involves a morally-superior sounding "humanitarianism". But whose life is worth less? A raping, murdering despot or an innocent, disabled child?

So the overall topic is important: what is real? The two sides of the divide are: what I experience is the only real thing or there is universal experience that is real. Dr. Santy says:

Well, let me tell you that this particular philosophical problem is not abstract at all, but one which pops up all the time in current discussions--even on this blog. How you deal with the concept of universals turns out to be extremely important, particularly in rational discourse, where objective reality and truth are necessary.

Consider this: if there is no way to account for generalizations or universals through empirical experience, then all such attributions may be considered subjective and hence, invalid.

In this word of subjectivity, my experience with gravity is as valid is say, Albert Einstein's. I say gravity is my friend and I don't fall down, I simply float. Albert sees me walking on the ground and says, Melissa, dear, you're planted to the earth. I reply, "That's what you think. You just don't get my reality." Does this conversation sound insane? Well, it is unless you don't believe in any universalities. When everyone's experience is "real", what is reality?

MaxedOutMama points out the logical ends of this thinking:

It follows also that no argument can be settled by recourse to reason or law, which leaves all arguments to be settled only by force. Seriously. Think about it. All law depends upon the ability to create abstract definitional categories, and then to assign individual behaviors or actions as being within the category or outside of it. A law as simple as the laws mandating that establishments that sell food require shirts and shoes on their customers cannot be enforced if the definition of "shirt" or "shoe" is considered infinitely malleable.

I believe this is the reason for the extreme left's love affair with dictators; unconsciously they know that in their epistemological view of the world, only a dictator can bring peace, because only a dictator can enforce law. [my emphasis, -ed.]

She states further:

This, of course, is the reason why so many of these leftists have fallen in love with Islamacist terrorism, even while they excoriate the evils of Judeo-Christian religion. To a person who does believe in universals, it is puzzling beyond belief that the same person can excoriate one religion and exalt a sect of another. But leftists recognize their counterparts quite accurately; it is the universality of the concepts and laws in the Judeo-Christian tradition that they resent (because they perceive them as a direct impairment on their individual lives), whereas the credo of the Islamicist terrorists is very simple. Quite literally, those who are taught in this tradition are told that anyone who does not believe what they (the terrorist) believes is an enemy of God and should be killed. Children raised in this belief system make admirable footsoldiers, and are the world's quintessential "useful idiots".

Mama is on a roll and continues:

To restate this, if your entire world is defined by yourself, disagreement is an attack upon your entire world. Disagreement is experienced as a literal attack, equivalent in psychic shock to someone busting down your door in the middle of the night and beating you within your own home.

The deep insecurity engendered by questioning the worldview of those who don't believe in universality and objectivity generates a strong defensive response beginning as fear, which is expressed as anger and then restated to the self as contempt. But the contempt does not adequately reddress the fear, and inevitably mutates into a fixed rage against the opponent. Human beings filled with rage inevitably hate.

Jeff Goldstein, back in the day, has taken on postmodernism and skewered it over and over. He says here in a post titled "Life and Death: Western guilt blinds us to the nature of Islamic extremism":

This is an interesting phenomenon, and one I’ve noted before. Specifically, a medievalist, pre-modern mindset like the ine animating the Islamofascist movement is, ironically, quite adept at using postmodern observations about the nature of truth to sustain a rhetorical advantage over the West. And it does so by playing to the West’s arrogance—its idea that, because it has embraced the tenet of multiculturalism, it is somehow showing itself to be tolerant and nuanced in its dealings with the Other.

But recent history has shown us that all this Western “understanding” is a ruse. Instead, it is a mindset that pretends to an understanding by deferring to the Other, a maneuver that serves only to undermine Enlightenment principles and ideas of universal rights while simultaneously giving control of the identity narrative to groups it purports to “understand”, who are then able to use that control to affect victim status, define and shame their enemies, and bracket out unfriendly criticisms.

But this only works because the premises have been accepted by many in the western intelligensia, and have, from there, made their way into public and social policy. I have noted time and again how this process proceeds from (or is reinforced by) the acceptance of certain linguistic assumptions—precisely those favored by political and social movements that are collectivist in nature.

And so we have Islamic fascists exploiting the postmodern rhetorical assumptions of a western socialist / progressivist left in order to bring about the spread of totalitarianism.

I made this huge, because this is the crux of the matter. The John Kerry's and Teddy Kennedy's of the world aid and abet this march to submission either overtly (sending love letters via the KGB) or covertly (cooing reassuringly that "America must be willing to redeploy and step out of the way."). The end result is the same: by embracing a multicultural, every reality is as valid as every other reality philosophy, they've embraced a totalitarianism that wishes to enslave them. It is suicide and to them, it is defined as liberty.

It really comes down to foregoing reality to listen the sticky, honey hued rhetoric that promises to reduce harm and help more by walking away. When any aggressive act is viewed as a loss, then actually losing has no reality. We haven't lost in Iraq, but to the left, going to Iraq was a loss at the outset. They cannot even entertain what a true loss will mean. Actually, to them losing, retreating, would be winning.

Jeff is right: the language is being butchered at the altar of self which ironically, embraces collectivism. The war we fight is against this thinking. Once that war is won, Iraq and obliterating Islamofascism will be simply one of applying the undivided will to win.

Useful Idiots--It's Nice to See Them Where They Belong

The lawyer who spirited messages to terrorists was sentenced to 2 1/2 years of prison today. The punishment is hardly commisurate to her treasonous behavior, but hey, at least it's something. In a bold move of defiance to the oppressive state, she thrust her fist "power to the people" style high in the air. You go girl.

I find it bemusing that these people still imagine that little indiscretions like this don't actually result in death and misery. They don't connect their pious philosophy and absolute sense of morality with aiding and abetting the enemy.

Most of the time, the treason is symbolic or an emotional gesture meant to humiliate the Bush administration with the unintended (or intended) consequence of bolstering the enemy. In this case, literal information got passed via a U.S. citizen to a network of state enemies. That makes you, Lynne Stewart, a traitor. And for that, you get just over two years in a nice, clean, American jail. You should be hung.

In a letter to the judge before her hearing, Stewart proclaimed: "I am not a traitor."

"The end of my career truly is like a sword in my side," She said in court Monday. "Permit me to live out the rest of my life productively, lovingly, righteously."

And this:

Stewart, in her letter to the judge, said she did not intentionally enter into any plot or conspiracy to aid a terrorist organization.

Key word: intentionally. The fact that she was passing notes like a fifth grader without knowing she was handing them to the bully's henchment meant nothing. She didn't mean for innocent people to be killed. Her heart was in the right place.

Words in this day and age matter. Actions matter. Maybe Ms. Stewart will grow up in prison and get over the notion that she is just a kid trying to be cool on the playground of life. Maybe she'll wake up and see herself for the very dangerous and treasonous idiot she most definitely is.

Somehow I doubt an 11th hour awakening.

Jeff Goldstein: How Useful Idiots are Made

Could a lost propaganda war force Israel into conceding to a cease-fire that is bad for them? And did they lose the propaganda war because the press is so biased they cannot even see the truth in front of them?

Jeff Goldstein on Useful Idiots & Just Plain Idiots

He talks about the photoshopped images and Reuters knowing the photographer's sketching reputation and working with him anyway. He's fired. For now.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, PubliasPundit has exclusive photos exonerating Reuters. Maybe I wrote too soon.