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Arrests for child sex crimes during the first two years of Operation Predator have exceeded 6,000 and 85 percent of the arrestees are criminal immigrants. Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security recently revealed that arrests for child sex crimes during the first two years of Operation Predator have exceeded 6,000 and 85 percent [...] While it’s true that I invariably vote for Republicans, I never fool myself into thinking they’ll be anything except better than their Democratic opponents. The other day I was listening to a talk radio show, and heard a caller announce that there’s no freedom of speech in this country, that, because of the fascistic administration in Washington, people are afraid to criticize the government. His proof was that Cindy Sheehan had been rebuked for merely exercising her constitutional right to mouth off against authority figures. The show’s host correctly pointed out that the 1st Amendment guarantees her freedom to speak her mind, such as it is, but that doesn’t in any way curtail the right of other Americans to call her an idiot. What the host didn’t point out was that even as the caller spoke, he was contradicting his own statement. He was freely sharing his own foolish thoughts with millions of listeners. Liberals have become so accustomed to having only their own points of view disseminated by the mass media that they now believe that any opinion in conflict with their own is an infringement on their right to free speech. So not only do they feel entitled to spout off ad nauseam, but honest disagreement is regarded as censorship! What they enjoyed before talk radio and the Internet bloggers came along was a virtual news monopoly, consisting of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the three major networks. All of which could be counted on to parrot the liberal line. Now, like spoiled brats being forced to share their toys, they can’t stop whining. Frankly, I’m amazed that liberals can be wrong so often about so many things. One of the few issues they are occasionally right about is protecting the environment. But even when it comes down to that, the radical element that infests their ranks like termites are always trying to stop any and all forms of development, the source of homes and jobs for those of us who don’t want to live in trees. Their love for Mother Earth leads them to blow up buildings, bomb car dealerships, and sabotage logging sites, all with an air of moral authority. They don’t, in fact, love snail darters, spotted owls or Alaska’s caribou, anymore than the rest of us; they merely hate western civilization in much the same way that Islamic fascists do. A fact worth noting is that during LBJ’s administration, a group of tree huggers got an injunction to prevent the feds from working on a certain project in the South, for fear it would harm the environment. The project involved shoring up the levees of New Orleans. As someone who has spent most of his lifetime working in television, I find it odd that there are two Hollywoods. The famous one is filled with wealthy writers, directors, actors and production executives, 99% of whom are liberals, all of whom naturally regard themselves as populists, standing shoulder to shoulder with the working stiff. What isn’t so widely known is that when it comes to the caste system, whatever its status in modern day India, it’s alive and well out here. Go on any movie or TV sound stage and you’ll find that among Hollywood’s untouchables, those who don’t pop up on award shows or in the tabloids — the grips, the costumers, the camera crew, the wranglers, the stunt people, the technicians — the percentage of conservatives is roughly 99%. I would think the hardest part of being a liberal is always having to remember to spout the party line, just like old-time Stalinists. For instance, they always have to keep in mind that they support our troops even though they believe the men and women in Iraq are spilling innocent blood in an evil war. In the same way, they must always remember to parrot the propaganda that they, every bit as much as conservatives, want a strong military. The basic difference, of course, is that they don’t want it to do anything. Sometimes, people ask me why I invariably identify myself as a conservative, and not a Republican. The first, I point out, is a philosophy, while the latter is a political party. A philosophy can afford to be pure as the driven snow. A party, on the other hand, has to deal with the nitty-gritty of fund-raising and electing candidates. I accept the realities of politics. Furthermore, I know too much about human nature to ever have my illusions crushed. Unlike my fellow conservatives, I don’t believe it when an office seeker of any political persuasion vows he’ll cut spending and clear out all the bloated bureaucracies once he or she is elected and goes off to Sacramento, Springfield, Albany, Montgomery, Austin, or, especially, Washington, D.C. It simply goes against every instinct known to man to seek office with the intention of having less money, power and influence, than one’s predecessor. While it’s true that I invariably vote for Republicans, I never fool myself into thinking they’ll be anything except better than their Democratic opponents. Those people who are hurt by such political facts of life are to be pitied. It’s like a child’s discovery that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aren’t who they’ve been cracked up to be. To such conservatives, all I can say is: Grow up. Lately, I have been agog at the spectacle of folks on the right going berserk over the nomination of Harriet Miers. By now, I imagine we’ve heard all the arguments for and against the lady. On the plus side, if you’re a conservative, she’s a friend and a trusted ally of a Republican president. What’s more, she’s a devout Christian. On the negative side of the ledger, at 60, some ageists claim she’s too old; they’re afraid she’ll be replaced by some liberal whippersnapper in twenty years. They also point out she’s never been a judge, although I, for one, would put that in the plus column. But, worst of all, my fellow conservatives are upset because she’s not one of four or five right-wing judges on their wish list. They are willing to overlook the fact that President Bush, a man they admire, knows her and trusts her to tilt the Supreme Court to the right, unlike his father, who apparently never met David Souter until that awful day his appointee was sworn in as a justice. The fact is that, thanks to a certain number of Republican senators, otherwise known as the gang of jellyfish, Bush didn’t have enough votes to get any of those conservative judges confirmed. While I realize that certain folks on the right enjoy losing fights simply because it makes them feel so special while they’re engaged in these sedentary versions of blood sports, to me it merely proves that on occasion, fortunately very rare occasion, conservatives can be every bit as loony as lefties. Looking back on my own political metamorphosis, I realize how typical it is that, as one matures, takes on responsibilities, deals with tragedy and loss, one tends to drift from left to right, and how rarely the reverse occurs. It is hard to dispute the old truism that if, at 20, you’re not a liberal, you have no heart; and, if by 40, you’re not a conservative, you have no brain. And, it’s worth noting that if, by, say, 50, you have neither, you’ll probably wind up voting for Ralph Nader. Email Burt Prelutsky When it comes to business, liberals literally don’t know what they’re talking about. Liberal-socialist academics, far from educating students, fill their heads with simplistic nonsense that is far removed from the realities of the business world.Rudy Rummel’s The Free Market as Utopia highlights a fundamental piece of liberal-socialist ignorance: the assumption that businesses under free-market capitalism force people to do as “the rich” desire. In fact, as Rudy notes, the free market leads business people to search endlessly for new ways to benefit consumers. If customers don’t like a corporation’s products or services, it goes out of business. Listening to liberal theorists, however, you would never know that. From Karl Marx through today’s ivory tower academics, liberal-socialists paint a beatific picture of the good life under socialism and contrast it with their picture of fear and uncertainty under the horrific free-market competition of individualistic capitalism. They believe that business owners and managers, via a combination of advertising and financial power, can simply compel people to buy their products, whether the buyers really want the products or not. Profit at any price is, in the socialist picture, the only motivating power in capitalism. Michael P. Lerner, who was a professor at Trinity College in Hartford when he wrote The New Socialist Revolution, illustrates this simplistic view of the business world. We must move to socialism, because, Mr. Lerner writes, “These vestiges, institutionalized as the capitalist system, not only keep us from our potentialities but simultaneously threaten the whole world with extinction in the process of maintaining an oppressive rule.” This is true, because, (1) a small number of Americans have vast economic power while the overwhelming majority have almost no power in the economic realm; (2) economic power gives the small group that wields it a huge amount of political power while, for most Americans, political power is very limited and exists within a narrow framework; and (3) powerlessness in the economic and political spheres affects people’s daily lives in a large number of ways, permitting the development of a society in which the human needs of most people are largely ignored so that the wealthy and powerful can benefit. Businessmen, in other words, are like French farmers who cram vast amounts of food into the throats of geese to create an abnormal obesity that yields high-priced pate de foie gras. This vicious capitalistic system, says Mr. Lerner, enables a “small number of people, through their ownership and control of the means of production (e.g., factories, farms, mines)….to buy the labor power of most other people and to direct that labor power into production of goods to be sold for the profit of the owners.” This frightful state of affairs divides the nation into two classes, the haves and the have-nots, so memorably described by liberal-socialist candidates John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004. The “haves” control banks and corporations that give them power over everyone else. They sit back and rake in dividends from ill-got profits squeezed from the oppressed “have-nots,” who have no choice but to work at substandard wages or starve. Managers of large corporations, Mr. Lerner informs us, can selfishly exploit the public, because they are the largest single group in the stockholding population. This will come as a great surprise to pension funds, mutual funds, and insurance companies, the institutional investors who own the vast bulk of all common and preferred stocks, as well as corporate bonds. In a typical example, officers and directors of General Motors own only about one percent of its stocks, while a single institutional investor, representing many thousands of individual clients, in 2004 owned roughly 17 percent of the common stock. This supposed dictatorial power of management would also come as a great surprise to the many corporate managers who have been forced from office by institutional shareholders impatient with their poor performance. The purported dictatorial power of business managers, according to Mr. Lerner, enables them to force customers to buy their products whether they need them or not. For example, he writes, …a bank might convince a corporation to take out loans for unneeded investments in order to increase the bank’s wealth…. Bank control over airlines is so heavy-handed that, even though airlines are suffering from considerable overcapacity, they continue to buy more giant planes…. Banks are willing to finance the production and sale of unneeded aircraft because they make an estimated 56 percent profit on their aircraft leasing business. Mr. Lerner obviously has not even a faint clue about realities in the business world. First, let’s take the 56 percent on aircraft leasing. Simply plugging numbers into a basic lease calculation reveals that 56 percent is a ridiculously unattainable number. To start, corporations lease equipment, rather than buying it, among other factors, to be able to switch to newer equipment, after a short time, where there is a high rate of technical obsolescence. From the financial institution’s viewpoint, the rent charged on the aircraft lease is only part of its calculated rate of return on the lease. A huge part of the rate of return depends upon the expected market value of the airplane at the end of the five-year lease. If an airline leased an airplane, say for five years, with an annual rent percentage of 7 percent (which is higher than what corporations now pay as interest on their bonds), the bank lessor would have recouped less than half its purchase cost on the airplane (7 percent, times 5 years, neglecting interest earned on annual rents, would be only 35 percent of the cost). Thus, just to break even on the deal, the bank must be able to sell the used airplane at the end of year five for at least 65 percent of its original cost. Plug numbers into a lease calculations and you will find that, in order to make 56 percent on the lease, the bank will have to be able to sell the airplane after five years at a price more than 800 percent of the original, brand new purchase price. Even in the fairy-land of socialism, that’s an unrealistic assumption. But remember that Mr. Lerner says that the banks’ heavy-handed power is used to compel airlines and other corporate borrowers to take loans and to lease aircraft that they really don’t need. In the real world, leases under such conditions would flood the market for used aircraft at the end of lease periods and drive world aircraft market prices down to probably considerably less than even 65 percent of original purchase cost. If bank managers really operated as Mr. Lerner supposes, they would quickly lose their jobs and their institutions would go bankrupt. How do business people accomplish their power grab? Mr. Lerner breathlessly informs us that, “large corporations are permitted to spend millions of dollars each year that are not reported as income but are written off as business expenses. In fact, the tax system actually works to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich, because the wealthy control the state legislatures, the Congress, and the government bodies.” Mr. Lerner, as does the New York Times regularly, several times every year, excitedly notes that the top-bracket wealthy have much higher incomes than other people. Of course, neither Mr. Lerner nor the Times has the fairness and honesty to add that the top one percent of those high-income people also pay 34.3 percent of all Federal income taxes, while earning just 16.8 percent of the adjusted gross income; and that the top five percent of taxpayers pay more than half of all Federal income taxes, while the entire bottom half of taxpayers pay just 3.5 percent of Federal income taxes. However, let’s not trouble ourselves with nasty specifics. It’s enough for liberal-socialists that a gap, of any size, exists between the top and bottom income groups. By definition in a world of social justice, as they conceive it, everybody is equally poor. The one thing that academic liberals like Mr. Lerner don’t do is examine the real-world performance of socialistic economies and compare them to even a partly socialized economy like that of the United States. We do considerably better than socialistic nations like France and Germany. And, as one of the auto companies used to say in its advertisements, “Ask the man who owns one.” The newly liberated former Soviet Comintern nations that have rejected socialism and adopted free-market competition have far outstripped the still-socialist EU nations in job creation and increases in wealth for all their citizens. Thomas E. Brewton had the extraordinary good fortune to study political philosophy under Eric Voegelin and Constitutional law under Walter Berns. His website is The View from 1776. Email Thomas Brewton When push comes to shove on the Left, radical Islam trumps gay rights. It was with interest that I learned Bev Desjarlais, a Canadian Member of Parliament who represents the constituency of Churchill, Manitoba, was soundly defeated on the first ballot at the New Democratic Party (NDP) nomination meeting by Niki Ashton, who has never held elected office. On October 18, the day after the nomination meeting, Desjarlais resigned from the NDP caucus and now sits as an Independent. This development does not interest me because Desjarlais, who was thrice elected by the people of Churchill (a constituency that covers nearly all of northern Manitoba), was unseated by Ashton, a 24-year old. This development does not interest me because Ashton’s father, Steve, is a cabinet minister in the Manitoba NDP government of Gary Doer. This development interests me because Desjarlais was rejected by her party (and my old party) because of her stance on same-sex marriage. Desjarlais was the lone NDP MP to oppose Bill C-38, which recognizes same-sex marriage in Canada. Although there was a free vote in the House of Commons, it was the expectation of NDP leader Jack Layton that all caucus members would support the bill. Layton laid the down the law to NDP parliamentarians after a caucus retreat in September 2003. “We have a party policy and it is to support this legislation and that’s the way it’s going to be.” At the time of Layton’s decree, Desjarlais remarked, “This hasn’t been an overnight decision for me. It’s something that I’ve thought about for a long period of time, that I’ve talked to people with even before I was a member of Parliament.” Desjarlais went on to state that “discipline within caucus is a far lesser worry for me than my living with myself over something I believe quite strongly about.” Of course, I disagree with Desjarlais on this matter. Same-sex marriage is one of the few things with which I am in agreement with the NDP. However, there is something rotten in the province of Manitoba. I cannot help but think that Desjarlais might be a victim of a double standard here. Would Desjarlais, a Presbyterian and a member of the United Church of Canada, have been challenged for her party’s nomination if she practiced another religion? If Desjarlais were a practicing Muslim and voted against Bill C-38 would she still be sitting in the NDP Caucus? Would there have been an effort by local constituency activists to challenge her? Does the NDP (and by extension the Left) have one standard of acceptable behavior for Muslims and another for everyone else? Canadian Muslims have traditionally voted for the Liberals. This is of little surprise since the Liberals have long been successful at catering towards new immigrant communities for many generations. This has enabled the Liberals to remain Canada’s natural governing party. However, there has also been some Muslim support for the NDP. I first noticed it in the late 1990s while I was living in Ottawa and was active in the Ontario NDP. I would regularly attend Provincial Council meetings in Toronto and see a small contingent of Muslims who also attended the Council. They, like many other New Democrats, supported the party in opposition to cuts in social services by the then Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris. However, they also supported the NDP because it was most sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Since 9/11, support for the NDP amongst Muslims has grown. The NDP opposed intervention in both Afghanistan and Iraq and spoke out against tougher border controls at Canadian customs which allegedly targeted Muslims on a disproportionate basis. Then there was the case of Maher Arar. Arar, a Syrian who moved to Ottawa in 1987 and later became a Canadian citizen, was returning to Ottawa from a vacation in Tunisia in September 2002. Arar was detained at JFK International Airport in New York and was accused of belonging to al Qaeda. The following month, Arar was deported to Syria. Canadian officials were not advised of Arar’s deportation until after the fact. Arar would eventually be released by Syria in October 2003. But this did not soothe over the palatable anger in the Muslim community. There was criticism from the Muslim community that the Liberal government was not acting vigorously to secure Arar’s release. The Liberals did not help matters a great deal by initially opposing a public inquiry on Arar’s detention. A public inquiry was eventually announced by the Liberals in January 2004. A few months later Arar’s wife, Monia Mazigh, was nominated as the NDP candidate in the constituency of Ottawa South (where I used to reside) and ran unsuccessfully in that summer’s federal election. It appears that Mazigh will not seek the NDP nomination in Ottawa South in the next federal election which will likely take place some time in 2006. However, it is certainly not inconceivable if not inevitable that there will come a time when a Muslim will be elected to the NDP caucus. It will be interesting to see how Jack Layton would handle a situation where the issue of gay rights arose and another sitting NDP MP — this one Muslim — made it clear that he would not support the party’s position regarding gay rights. Would Layton lay the down law as he did with Desjarlais? Or would he look the other way? Would a local NDP constituency association be prepared to oust an elected official who happens to be Muslim? Or would they let the anti-gay position slide? The idea of gay marriage is abhorrent to most Muslims. Indeed, the very notion of homosexuality is abhorrent to most Muslims. Heaven help you if you are gay and living in an Arab country. In 2002, Yossi Klein Halevi wrote about the plight of homosexuals living in the Palestinian Authority in The New Republic: Indeed, the torment of gays is very nearly official Palestinian policy. “The persecution of gays in the Palestinian Authority {P.A.} doesn’t just come from the families or the Islamic groups but from the P.A. itself,” says Shaul Ganon of the Tel Aviv-based Agudah-Association of Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgender in Israel. “The P.A.’s usual excuse for persecuting gays is to label them collaborators — though I know of two cases in the last three years where people were tried explicitly for being homosexuals.” Since the intifada, Ganon tells me, Palestinian police have increasingly enforced Islamic law: “It’s impossible to be an open gay in the P.A.” Guess where gay Palestinians seek refuge? Why Israel, of course. Yet one would not know that if one examined the behavior of former NDP MP Svend Robinson. The very year Klein Halevi wrote his article, Robinson visited the Palestinian Authority not to draw attention to the plight of gay Palestinians but to show solidarity with then P.A. President Yasser Arafat — the very man responsible for the P.A.’s anti-gay practices. When Israeli soldiers refused Robinson access to Arafat, he accused Israel of “state terrorism.” This from the first openly gay Canadian Member of Parliament. Evidently, Robinson would sooner condemn Israel – which tolerates gays and lesbians — than criticize the Palestinian Authority which does not. Robinson did not run for re-election in 2004 after he plead guilty to stealing a ring worth $5,000 from an auction house. However, he has announced that he is returning to politics and will seek the NDP nomination in the constituency of Vancouver Centre to battle Liberal cabinet minister Hedy Fry. Yasser Arafat can now rest in peace. But Robinson is hardly the first member of the Loony Left to put on blinders when it comes to radical Islam. London Mayor Ken Livingstone, well known for his support of gay and lesbian rights, nonetheless hosted Muslim cleric Dr. Yusuf al Qaradawi in July 2004. Qaradawi has called for the execution of all Muslim males who engage in acts of homosexuality. One would think that Livingstone would want nothing to do with such an individual. However, al Qaradawi’s support for Palestinian homicide bombers and opposition to American and British presence in Afghanistan and Iraq put those considerations aside. Indeed, Livingstone went as far as to state that al Qaradawi opposed the “repression of homosexuals.” Talk about rationalizing intolerance. But then again who said denial was just a river in Egypt? I’ve heard about the enemy of my enemy being my friend but this is ridiculous. Does the Left support gay rights or doesn’t it? Does the Left’s support for gay rights end where the Left’s opposition to America and Israel begins? Currently, the NDP has 18 seats in the House of Commons. Not a large number of seats but enough to hold the balance of power in a Liberal minority government. The NDP has not enjoyed this much influence at the federal level since David Lewis propped up Pierre Trudeau between 1972 and 1974. Canadians will elect minority governments but are not inclined keep them for very long. Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper scares the bejesus out of most Canadians and a critical mass of voters want to ensure the Liberals remain in power. Consequently, the NDP stands the most to lose — particularly in Ontario. If either a local NDP constituency association or the NDP leader are prepared to exercise disciplinary action against one of their own elected officials for opposition to gay marriage and gay rights be they Christian, Jewish or Muslim, then at least there is some degree of consistency. However, I cannot help but think that if the NDP were to face such a scenario that they would not be prepared to lose membership and support from the Muslim community. I cannot help but think that the argument would be along the lines of, “Well, you can’t impose Western values.” Others might offer, “We are a multicultural society and must respect the values of other cultures.” Others still might state that we must not offend Muslims. When push comes to shove on the Left, radical Islam trumps gay rights. The NDP can perhaps to afford to cast aside a white, Christian middle aged woman from its ranks for deviating from the party line. The question is will that line remain in place if a young, brown skinned, male Muslim decides to do the same? Or will the NDP simply erase that line? Aaron Goldstein, a former member of the socialist New Democratic Party, writes poetry and has a chapbook titled Oysters and the Newborn Child: Melancholy and Dead Musicians. His poetry can be viewed on www.poetsforthewar.org.
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