USATODAY.com - 'Fertility gap' helps explain political divide: "'Fertility gap' helps explain political divide
Updated 9/27/2006 7:36 AM ETE-mail Save Print Reprints & Permissions Subscribe to stories like this
EnlargeBy Lynn Arave, Deseret Morning News
Fourth-graders wade in the Great Salt Lake near Syracuse, Utah, in May. The state, a Republican stronghold, has high marriage and fertility rates.
2006 ELECTIONS
Interactive graphic: Senate, House and governors races
Ballots in battlefield: Overseas voting a concern again A tricky mission for troops
Gaps: Marital status could sway voters Fertility factors into elections
Races ahead: Race, religion cloud Allen bid 'Top cop' post eyed in Calif. Jefferson fights for political life
Glitches: Poll problems 'could get ugly' Election officials worried
The issues: Key issues and trends for November
More on Dems, GOP and third parties
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic mother of five from San Francisco, has fewer children in her district than any other member of Congress: 87,727.
Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, a Mormon father of eight, represents the most children: 278,398.
These two extremes reflect a stark demographic divide between the congressional districts controlled by the major political parties.
Republican House members overwhelmingly come from districts that have high percentages of married people and lots of children, according to a USA TODAY analysis of 2005 Census Bureau data released last month.
MARRIAGE GAP: Elections could"
Thursday, September 28, 2006
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic mother of five from San Francisco, has fewer children in her district than any other member of Congress: 87,727.
Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, a Mormon father of eight, represents the most children: 278,398.
These two extremes reflect a stark demographic divide between the congressional districts controlled by the major political parties.
Republican House members overwhelmingly come from districts that have high percentages of married people and lots of children, according to a USA TODAY analysis of 2005 Census Bureau data released last month.
MARRIAGE GAP: Elections could sway on status
GOP Congress members represent 39.2 million children younger than 18, about 7 million more than Democrats. Republicans average 7,000 more children per district.
Many Democrats represent areas that have many single people and relatively few children. Democratic districts that have large numbers of children tend to be predominantly Hispanic or, to a lesser extent, African-American.
This "fertility gap" is crucial to understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives, says Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. These childbearing patterns shape divisions over issues such as welfare, education and child tax credits, he says.
GOP 'traditional families'
"Both sides are very pro-kids. They just express it in different ways," Brooks says. "Republicans are congenial to traditional families, which is clearly the best way for kids to grow up. But there are some kids who don't have that advantage, and Democrats are very concerned with helping those kids."
Children in Democratic districts are far more likely to live in poverty and with single parents than kids in GOP districts.
Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., has 227,246 children in his Bronx district, the 10th most in the House. Only 29% of those children live with married parents.
By contrast, 84% of children live with married parents in Cannon's central Utah district.
"These numbers are amazing," Cannon says. "I see now where José is coming from."
Cannon used to have a locker next to Serrano at the congressional gym and considers him a friend. "The needs of kids in his district are just not the same as the needs of children in my district," Cannon says.
Marriage and parenthood define what's different about Democratic and Republican districts even more clearly than race, income, education or geography, USA TODAY's analysis of Census data found.
For example, Republicans represent seven of the 50 districts that have the highest concentrations of blacks. Both parties are well represented among affluent and well-educated districts.
Democrats control only one of the 50 districts with the highest marriage rates.
Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who represents the most-married Democratic district (32nd overall), discounts the importance of the marriage rates. "It's a statistic without meaning," he says. "If you look at numbers from enough different angles, you can see almost anything."
Demographics drive issues
Pelosi says in speeches that her most important concern is "the children, the children, the children," says her spokesman, Drew Hammill. That's why she wants to raise the minimum wage to help low-income parents, he says.
The stay-at-home mom is uncommon in all congressional districts. Mothers work at the same rate — about 71% — in Republican and Democratic districts.
Nevertheless, a big difference in family life is clear:
• Democrats represent 59 districts in which less than half of adults are married. Republicans represent only two.
• Democrats represent 30 districts in which less than half of children live with married parents. Republicans represent none.
"The biggest gaps in American politics are religion, race and marital status," says Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic mother of five from San Francisco, has fewer children in her district than any other member of Congress: 87,727.
Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, a Mormon father of eight, represents the most children: 278,398.
These two extremes reflect a stark demographic divide between the congressional districts controlled by the major political parties.
Republican House members overwhelmingly come from districts that have high percentages of married people and lots of children, according to a USA TODAY analysis of 2005 Census Bureau data released last month.
MARRIAGE GAP: Elections could sway on status
GOP Congress members represent 39.2 million children younger than 18, about 7 million more than Democrats. Republicans average 7,000 more children per district.
Many Democrats represent areas that have many single people and relatively few children. Democratic districts that have large numbers of children tend to be predominantly Hispanic or, to a lesser extent, African-American.
This "fertility gap" is crucial to understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives, says Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. These childbearing patterns shape divisions over issues such as welfare, education and child tax credits, he says.
GOP 'traditional families'
"Both sides are very pro-kids. They just express it in different ways," Brooks says. "Republicans are congenial to traditional families, which is clearly the best way for kids to grow up. But there are some kids who don't have that advantage, and Democrats are very concerned with helping those kids."
Children in Democratic districts are far more likely to live in poverty and with single parents than kids in GOP districts.
Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., has 227,246 children in his Bronx district, the 10th most in the House. Only 29% of those children live with married parents.
By contrast, 84% of children live with married parents in Cannon's central Utah district.
"These numbers are amazing," Cannon says. "I see now where José is coming from."
Cannon used to have a locker next to Serrano at the congressional gym and considers him a friend. "The needs of kids in his district are just not the same as the needs of children in my district," Cannon says.
Marriage and parenthood define what's different about Democratic and Republican districts even more clearly than race, income, education or geography, USA TODAY's analysis of Census data found.
For example, Republicans represent seven of the 50 districts that have the highest concentrations of blacks. Both parties are well represented among affluent and well-educated districts.
Democrats control only one of the 50 districts with the highest marriage rates.
Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who represents the most-married Democratic district (32nd overall), discounts the importance of the marriage rates. "It's a statistic without meaning," he says. "If you look at numbers from enough different angles, you can see almost anything."
Demographics drive issues
Pelosi says in speeches that her most important concern is "the children, the children, the children," says her spokesman, Drew Hammill. That's why she wants to raise the minimum wage to help low-income parents, he says.
The stay-at-home mom is uncommon in all congressional districts. Mothers work at the same rate — about 71% — in Republican and Democratic districts.
Nevertheless, a big difference in family life is clear:
• Democrats represent 59 districts in which less than half of adults are married. Republicans represent only two.
• Democrats represent 30 districts in which less than half of children live with married parents. Republicans represent none.
"The biggest gaps in American politics are religion, race and marital status," says Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Head-in-the-Sand Liberals
Western civilization really is at risk from Muslim extremists.
By Sam Harris, SAM HARRIS is the author of "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason." His next book, "Letter to a Christian Nation," will be published this week by Knopf. samharris.org.
September 18, 2006
TWO YEARS AGO I published a book highly critical of religion, "The End of Faith." In it, I argued that the world's major religions are genuinely incompatible, inevitably cause conflict and now prevent the emergence of a viable, global civilization. In response, I have received many thousands of letters and e-mails from priests, journalists, scientists, politicians, soldiers, rabbis, actors, aid workers, students — from people young and old who occupy every point on the spectrum of belief and nonbelief.
This has offered me a special opportunity to see how people of all creeds and political persuasions react when religion is criticized. I am here to report that liberals and conservatives respond very differently to the notion that religion can be a direct cause of human conflict.
ADVERTISEMENT
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This difference does not bode well for the future of liberalism.
Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I'd like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.
But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.
On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.
This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.
A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.
This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.
Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.
Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.
At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.
Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.
I don't know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate. The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world's Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.
Given the mendacity and shocking incompetence of the Bush administration — especially its mishandling of the war in Iraq — liberals can find much to lament in the conservative approach to fighting the war on terror. Unfortunately, liberals hate the current administration with such fury that they regularly fail to acknowledge just how dangerous and depraved our enemies in the Muslim world are.
Recent condemnations of the Bush administration's use of the phrase "Islamic fascism" are a case in point. There is no question that the phrase is imprecise — Islamists are not technically fascists, and the term ignores a variety of schisms that exist even among Islamists — but it is by no means an example of wartime propaganda, as has been repeatedly alleged by liberals.
In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.
Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.
We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.
Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.
While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren't.
The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.
Western civilization really is at risk from Muslim extremists.
By Sam Harris, SAM HARRIS is the author of "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason." His next book, "Letter to a Christian Nation," will be published this week by Knopf. samharris.org.
September 18, 2006
TWO YEARS AGO I published a book highly critical of religion, "The End of Faith." In it, I argued that the world's major religions are genuinely incompatible, inevitably cause conflict and now prevent the emergence of a viable, global civilization. In response, I have received many thousands of letters and e-mails from priests, journalists, scientists, politicians, soldiers, rabbis, actors, aid workers, students — from people young and old who occupy every point on the spectrum of belief and nonbelief.
This has offered me a special opportunity to see how people of all creeds and political persuasions react when religion is criticized. I am here to report that liberals and conservatives respond very differently to the notion that religion can be a direct cause of human conflict.
ADVERTISEMENT
<A TARGET="_blank" HREF="http://ad.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh=v7/3464/3/0/%2a/a%3B44689479%3B0-0%3B0%3B12926930%3B4307-300/250%3B18096337/18114232/6%3B%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp://www.theblackdahliamovie.net"><IMG SRC="http://m1.2mdn.net/1276964/300x250_20k.jpg" BORDER=0></A>
This difference does not bode well for the future of liberalism.
Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I'd like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.
But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.
On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.
This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.
A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.
This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.
Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.
Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.
At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.
Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.
I don't know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate. The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world's Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.
Given the mendacity and shocking incompetence of the Bush administration — especially its mishandling of the war in Iraq — liberals can find much to lament in the conservative approach to fighting the war on terror. Unfortunately, liberals hate the current administration with such fury that they regularly fail to acknowledge just how dangerous and depraved our enemies in the Muslim world are.
Recent condemnations of the Bush administration's use of the phrase "Islamic fascism" are a case in point. There is no question that the phrase is imprecise — Islamists are not technically fascists, and the term ignores a variety of schisms that exist even among Islamists — but it is by no means an example of wartime propaganda, as has been repeatedly alleged by liberals.
In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.
Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.
We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.
Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.
While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren't.
The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.
Monday, September 11, 2006
In honored memory of the 9-11 tragedy....
Skip to comments.
Pathetic liberal sissies
townhall.com ^ | 9/10/06 | Kevin McCullough
Posted on 09/11/2006 6:28:29 AM PDT by stm
Unable to compete in the world of free debate with transparent facts, liberals behaved like children this week - proving that in the end national security and even national identity are always subservient to their own ego, reputation, and appearance.
It was pathetic, cowardly, and sickening.
It is also far too typical.
Liberals, who in large part are people devoid of true substance and belief, who also have great contempt for God, morality and truth, are often unable to deal with facts that reflect poorly upon them. And using pathetic, self-serving, cry-baby tactics is how they are commemorating this week - the fifth memorial of 9/11.
By now, you've no doubt read all about the ABC Mini-Series "The Path to 9/11" and some of what it will contain on Sunday and Monday evening. This no holds barred look at mistakes that were made in both the Clinton and Bush administrations will criticize decisions made and the decision makers in the run up to September 11. Beginning just before the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, based upon the 9/11 Commission’s Report, it will trace events that led up to the horrific event we commemorate this week.
Every insider that I spoke to who has seen it has referenced it, "amazing, historical, and important." Others have called it an "even-handed critique." It sounds to me to be very faithful to the original Report.
But then came word that Bill Clinton, and four of his top staffers, objected to the way they were portrayed. But they didn't just object. They belly-ached, they threatened, and in the end they were able to force ABC television to cave on some material that took a critical look at their role in the years between 1993-2000.
Something that particularly irked them was the implication that the Clinton administration allowed Osama bin-Laden to escape. But this was no implication - it is fact. On at least two occasions OBL was within our grasp but it was our lack of initiative that let him slip through our fingers. While Clinton was being serviced by an intern, and Hillary was busy letting him, he bombed an aspirin factory in response to terrorist actions taken against us.
The Clinton staffers who squealed like pigs over the ABC series do so for the same reason they did most things when they were in power. The central focus of the Clinton years was not, "what is best for the nation." It was always, "what is best for the Clintons and the people they liked." As long as the dot.com boom held up we as a nation were told that the State of the Union was strong - even as our enemies plotted, planned, and even attacked us - and no response came.
Now that the ugly truth is about to be seen by millions of Americans, and because it will embarrass those in powerful positions, Clinton and his staff demand the facts be changed to assuage the people's opinion of them.
And one of those making the demands... none other than Mr. "stuff the papers down my pants" Sandy Berger.
But in reigniting this debate over the image of liberals in America, they have exposed themselves as something worse. Not only are they unable to deal with criticism - something that all leaders must do in order to be effective leaders - but they are a true danger to America.
The great sin of 9/11 was that we as a nation did not dare to imagine the destruction that our enemies could cook up for us.
In Clinton's time, his administration refused to!
And this holds true for us today. Where are the great voices from the Democratic Party ready to lead the charge to make America safe from the dangers of open borders? Where are the vibrant leaders in liberal America who are ready to deal justice to those who seek to kill Americans? Where are those on the ideological left who have any clue as to how to aggressively stop terror threats from re-emerging?
The few that used to exist have been run out of the party.
Because liberals are under the misguided notions that 1.) there is no such thing as moral absolutes, good and evil, right vs. wrong and 2.) if we just take the time to talk to them we can get them to like us, they are not even aware that the "infidels" the enemy seeks to kill first - would be their immoral, self-serving, hedonistic, wicked selves. And in that ignorance they are also blinded to the direct overtures that the enemy continues to make - recently even Mr. Ahmadinejhad saying directly, "bow down to Islam, or you will be forced to."
Liberals are pathetic because they serve selfish immoral purposes. That is also what makes them weak. In their twisted thinking they believe with all their hearts that such weakness is actually strength. And that perversion of reality is sealing their doom.
Their doom does not have to be America's end.
And whether they realize it or not, by preventing them from regaining power, we are saving them from themselves!
Skip to comments.
Pathetic liberal sissies
townhall.com ^ | 9/10/06 | Kevin McCullough
Posted on 09/11/2006 6:28:29 AM PDT by stm
Unable to compete in the world of free debate with transparent facts, liberals behaved like children this week - proving that in the end national security and even national identity are always subservient to their own ego, reputation, and appearance.
It was pathetic, cowardly, and sickening.
It is also far too typical.
Liberals, who in large part are people devoid of true substance and belief, who also have great contempt for God, morality and truth, are often unable to deal with facts that reflect poorly upon them. And using pathetic, self-serving, cry-baby tactics is how they are commemorating this week - the fifth memorial of 9/11.
By now, you've no doubt read all about the ABC Mini-Series "The Path to 9/11" and some of what it will contain on Sunday and Monday evening. This no holds barred look at mistakes that were made in both the Clinton and Bush administrations will criticize decisions made and the decision makers in the run up to September 11. Beginning just before the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, based upon the 9/11 Commission’s Report, it will trace events that led up to the horrific event we commemorate this week.
Every insider that I spoke to who has seen it has referenced it, "amazing, historical, and important." Others have called it an "even-handed critique." It sounds to me to be very faithful to the original Report.
But then came word that Bill Clinton, and four of his top staffers, objected to the way they were portrayed. But they didn't just object. They belly-ached, they threatened, and in the end they were able to force ABC television to cave on some material that took a critical look at their role in the years between 1993-2000.
Something that particularly irked them was the implication that the Clinton administration allowed Osama bin-Laden to escape. But this was no implication - it is fact. On at least two occasions OBL was within our grasp but it was our lack of initiative that let him slip through our fingers. While Clinton was being serviced by an intern, and Hillary was busy letting him, he bombed an aspirin factory in response to terrorist actions taken against us.
The Clinton staffers who squealed like pigs over the ABC series do so for the same reason they did most things when they were in power. The central focus of the Clinton years was not, "what is best for the nation." It was always, "what is best for the Clintons and the people they liked." As long as the dot.com boom held up we as a nation were told that the State of the Union was strong - even as our enemies plotted, planned, and even attacked us - and no response came.
Now that the ugly truth is about to be seen by millions of Americans, and because it will embarrass those in powerful positions, Clinton and his staff demand the facts be changed to assuage the people's opinion of them.
And one of those making the demands... none other than Mr. "stuff the papers down my pants" Sandy Berger.
But in reigniting this debate over the image of liberals in America, they have exposed themselves as something worse. Not only are they unable to deal with criticism - something that all leaders must do in order to be effective leaders - but they are a true danger to America.
The great sin of 9/11 was that we as a nation did not dare to imagine the destruction that our enemies could cook up for us.
In Clinton's time, his administration refused to!
And this holds true for us today. Where are the great voices from the Democratic Party ready to lead the charge to make America safe from the dangers of open borders? Where are the vibrant leaders in liberal America who are ready to deal justice to those who seek to kill Americans? Where are those on the ideological left who have any clue as to how to aggressively stop terror threats from re-emerging?
The few that used to exist have been run out of the party.
Because liberals are under the misguided notions that 1.) there is no such thing as moral absolutes, good and evil, right vs. wrong and 2.) if we just take the time to talk to them we can get them to like us, they are not even aware that the "infidels" the enemy seeks to kill first - would be their immoral, self-serving, hedonistic, wicked selves. And in that ignorance they are also blinded to the direct overtures that the enemy continues to make - recently even Mr. Ahmadinejhad saying directly, "bow down to Islam, or you will be forced to."
Liberals are pathetic because they serve selfish immoral purposes. That is also what makes them weak. In their twisted thinking they believe with all their hearts that such weakness is actually strength. And that perversion of reality is sealing their doom.
Their doom does not have to be America's end.
And whether they realize it or not, by preventing them from regaining power, we are saving them from themselves!
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