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Hannity vs. Evil: A one-man rally for America (Michelle Malkin)
National Review Online ^ | February 18, 2004 | Michelle Malkin

Posted on 02/19/2004 2:27:59 AM PST by nickcarraway

Have you forgotten? Sean Hannity hasn't. The conservative radio and cable television megastar's most important contribution to political discourse since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been his tireless reminder to America's liberal elite that the attacks did indeed happen — and that our enemies, foreign and domestic, must not go unpunished.

For the Long Island native, this is a personal mission. He goes to church with families who lost members to the murderous destruction at Ground Zero. He has two young children whose futures and freedoms he passionately wants to preserve. Last July, he hosted a concert that raised $1.5 million for families of U.S. soldiers killed or disabled while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. And with an unabashed patriotism that greatly antagonizes the Manhattan-Berkeley-Hollywood Axis of Snivel, Hannity uses his daily bully pulpit to provide full-throttle support for President Bush’s war on terror.

In his new book, Deliver Us From Evil, Hannity rallies against the forces that threaten American liberty: “I decided to write this book because I believe it is our responsibility to recognize and confront evil in the world — and because I’m convinced that if we fail in that mission it will lead us to disaster. Evil exists. It is real, and it means to harm us.” Deliver Us From Evil takes readers through a useful tour of the nation’s (and the world’s) struggle against terrorism, despotism, and liberalism. He devotes chapters to the Holocaust, the Cold War, the first Persian Gulf War, and the corruption of the Clinton years. “Every great champion of freedom in the modern era has had to overcome a prominent voice of appeasement,” Hannity writes. “For Winston Churchill there was Chamberlain, for Ronald Reagan there was Jimmy Carter. Today, George W. Bush faces the modern Democratic Party.”

Even before the book’s Feb. 17 release, detractors were balking at the inclusion of liberalism in Hannity’s trio of evil forces. But as he notes, it is the "professional apologists of the Democratic Party…eager to turn any setback in the war into a referendum on the Bush administration” that he pegs as menaces — not rank-and-file Democrats or post-Sept. 11 national-security hawks such as former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, Georgia Democrat Sen. Zell Miller, and political operative Donna Brazile, who urged fellow Democrats last spring to channel the spirit of Scoop Jackson and return to the “muscular national security principles” of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. “If voters continue to see us as feckless and effete,” Brazile noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed cited approvingly by Hannity, “they will re-elect Mr. Bush.”

The most compelling chapter of Hannity’s book, titled “Playing politics at the water’s edge,” recounts when the talk-show host obtained a jaw-dropping memo last fall, apparently written by a Democratic staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The memo detailed plans by Democratic strategists to use the panel’s ongoing review of intelligence activities to undermine the Bush administration’s case for preemptive war. “We can verbally mention [e.g., leak] some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing....We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration’s use of intelligence at any time…The approach outline[d] above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the Administration's dubious motives," the memo noted.

“If that isn’t bad faith,” Hannity writes, “I don’t know what is.” The memo “is only the tip of the iceberg — a symbol of the attitude of the liberal Democratic Party, which is single-mindedly bent on discrediting the president and winning back the White House — even if it means compromising national security in the process.”

There was a time when both major political parties could be relied upon to put national security above short-term political gain. Hannity might have mentioned the extraordinary bipartisan cooperation between the Roosevelt administration and Republicans in protecting the secrecy of the MAGIC decrypts of Japanese diplomatic codes. When Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey vowed to make intelligence failures at Pearl Harbor a campaign issue in 1944, which raised the dire possibility that the cracking of Japanese codes might become a public issue, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall appealed directly and confidentially to Dewey to protect MAGIC. Intercepted messages between the Japanese and Hitler were providing critical information. Citing the central role MAGIC played in the victories at Midway and in the battle of the Coral Sea, Marshall asked Dewey to consider “the utterly tragic consequences if the present political debates regarding Pearl Harbor disclose to the enemy, German or Jap, any suspicion of the vital sources of information we possess.”

Putting the national interest above his political ambitions, Dewey heeded Marshall’s advice — and lost the election to save American lives. Would John Kerry or Hillary Clinton do likewise today?

For its part, the Bush administration’s execution of the war on terror, especially at home, has not been flawless. I pray nightly for someone to deliver us from the evils of Saudi coddling, border insanity, Norm Mineta, and Islamist influence over the White House. My one complaint is that Hannity gives short shrift to these national-security lapses in the book, though he has been openly critical of some Republican missteps over the airwaves.

In the end, as Hannity writes, “when it comes to confronting evil, the fact is that there are essentially two types of people: those who are willing to fight it, and those who try to excuse it — or, worse, deny it even exists.” Deliver Us From Evil is a valuable read not only for conservatives, but also for the new breed of swing Democrats-turned-“9/11 Republicans” and soccer moms (turned “security moms”) whose lives were changed inalterably by the terrorists attacks — and who, like Hannity, “pray that America will make the right choice” in 2004.

— Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists Criminals & Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: New York
KEYWORDS: 911; bookreview; books; calwasthere; defense; deliverusfromevil; democrats; hannity; malkin; michellemalkin; terrorism; yescallurkshere
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To: Bluntpoint
Still flogging Hannity, eh. Too bad you don't spend your time going after our opponents with such zeal, you might actually help us.
21 posted on 02/19/2004 4:24:34 AM PST by kristinn
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To: Bluntpoint
You've made your point over and over on this thread. I clicked on it to get some information--and find you dominating it with some pretty shallow accusations. Apparently nobody can enjoy Hannity or even learn anything about the book without also seeing you insult the man on just about every other post.

Why don't you just write an anti-Hannity article and post it? Better yet, go post it on DU. Chances are you'll find a lot of agreement there.
22 posted on 02/19/2004 4:24:51 AM PST by Judith Anne (Send a message to the Democrat traitors--ROCKEFELLER MUST RESIGN!)
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Comment #23 Removed by Moderator

To: Bluntpoint
Sean can only respond simply and mono-intellectually.

Are you a Dim? If not, you are one of the reasons why this country is as sick as it is - so many claim to be Republican, then turn around and spit on those that actually try to make things happen for the good of the country. They start to sound rather like the socialist/commie/gays-are-the-best, sanctimonious Dims who think that their perverted rights outweigh the rights of everyone else.

Your witness, counsellor...

24 posted on 02/19/2004 4:28:52 AM PST by trebb (Ain't God good . . .)
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To: Judith Anne
Like yourself, the folks at DU like their shallow "Begalas."

Your anticipated responses are greatly appreciated.

And I won't tell you to go away if you post something I don't agree with.

Oh, by the way, close your shades and I won't hide in your shrubs so often.
25 posted on 02/19/2004 4:30:43 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: trebb
Good conservatives are lock steppers?



26 posted on 02/19/2004 4:32:01 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: Bluntpoint
If you were in my shrubs you'd be dogfood.

You are abusing this thread. What blunt point were you planning to make with the picture of the two gay guys?
27 posted on 02/19/2004 4:33:21 AM PST by Judith Anne (Send a message to the Democrat traitors--ROCKEFELLER MUST RESIGN!)
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To: Flyer
Me, too. Hes on our side and he does a lot of good. Besides, right now hes promoting his book cause its new. They say in the book business, competion is brutal. I figure he will stop talking so much about it when his tour is over.
28 posted on 02/19/2004 4:33:21 AM PST by beckysueb (Lady Liberty is in danger! Bush/Cheney 04.)
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To: Bluntpoint
See?

You should have gone to one of the booksignings and oooed and aahhhhed over him and worship the ground he walks on.

I have always said, most folks with the biggest egos, relate quite well to others who have the biggest egos.

Hannity is a good conservative...but I just can't stand more than 10 mins of his self-promotion.

It is MAJOR TURNOFF.
29 posted on 02/19/2004 4:33:35 AM PST by Neets (Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.~)
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To: sirchtruth
Al right! Here is one thing Sean Hannity does - among many - that irks me the most. He will have a guest on - a lib - and sometimes another guest - a conservative - and their is a passionate debate. Then just at the time when the lib is losing the argument, Hannity says he's up against a hard break and they will continue when they get back. The get back after the commercials and nothing is said about the argument they had before the break! It's like it never happened! He does this time and again. It is like during the break he appeases the dem so that nothing is said when they get back.
30 posted on 02/19/2004 4:33:56 AM PST by 7thson (I think it takes a big dog to weigh a 100 pounds.)
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To: kristinn
Better a boot licking sycophant?



31 posted on 02/19/2004 4:34:10 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: trebb
People claim that death and taxes are the only two certain things in this life. I think they're wrong. Another certainty is that Hannity will take advantage of his forum to promote his book, and more power to him.

The other certainty is that some of FR's more, shall we say, "easily amused" readers will continually post shallow, inane criticisms of Hannity.
32 posted on 02/19/2004 4:35:55 AM PST by LanPB01
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To: Neets
Hannity is trying to turn the conservative movement from ideals and intellectual debate into a daily infomercial for his goods.
33 posted on 02/19/2004 4:37:11 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: Bluntpoint
He talks about his book a good deal but he is a good person. I wish everyone in the world was like Shawn Hannity. There would be the utopia the Rats are always promising everybody.
34 posted on 02/19/2004 4:40:41 AM PST by beckysueb (Lady Liberty is in danger! Bush/Cheney 04.)
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To: Bluntpoint
As opposed to the steaming pile the boots step over?
35 posted on 02/19/2004 4:41:21 AM PST by kristinn
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To: kristinn
Some are famous, others, like the likes of yourself, are content with the "smell" of the famous upon them.
36 posted on 02/19/2004 4:43:05 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: Bluntpoint
You must listen to Hannity regularly to have him pegged so well. You are only helping to keep him doing his show as he does by keeping his audience numbers up.
37 posted on 02/19/2004 4:45:53 AM PST by Flyer (Don't abandon our military - Re-elect President Bush!)
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To: Flyer
He keep giving him 5 minute chances. Then I turn him off and go back to farm work.

Hannity's I,I,I just drives me nuts.

So I post how I feel.

I would never tell anyone not to post why they like him.

But many tell me to do otherwise.

But they are the minority.
38 posted on 02/19/2004 4:49:21 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: Bluntpoint
What two gay guys?
39 posted on 02/19/2004 4:50:51 AM PST by Neets (Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.~)
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To: nickcarraway
Hannity will reveal how evil can be defeated...in his next book.
40 posted on 02/19/2004 4:56:29 AM PST by PBRSTREETGANG
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