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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: Neets
"What two gay guys?"

Funny!

Ya know, there are always going to be people who disagree here. But, to tell them to go away, or some other inane suggestion like go back to DU, is both intellectually lazy and corrupt.

Some here just one a board with mirrors and parrots.



41 posted on 02/19/2004 4:59:18 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: Bluntpoint
Good arguments assume personal superiority?
42 posted on 02/19/2004 5:03:23 AM PST by trebb (Ain't God good . . .)
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To: Bluntpoint
sean has a new book?
43 posted on 02/19/2004 5:03:57 AM PST by contessa machiaveli
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To: Bluntpoint
OK. We get it. You don't like Hannity and you are his intellectual superior.

You are also a frustrated hick sitting on his ass in front of a computer while Hannity has an audience of millions and makes more money in a day than you do in a year.

Go back to shoveling sh*t. Living well is the best revenge.
44 posted on 02/19/2004 5:04:05 AM PST by moneyrunner (I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed to its idolatries a patient knee.)
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To: Bluntpoint
The difference between, let’s say a Rush or Medved and Hannity, is with the former you come away with ideas and concepts, with the latter, just “throw-away” talking points.

I totally agree.  I'll add too that's what frustrates the dems so much.  They don't take the time or have the wit to process the consequences of their positions or actions.  Hannity, on the other hand handles dems the way I do.  Just beat them with a stick, repeatedly.  Dems don't think, reason, or possess an intellectual property to allow them to debate with honesty.

I gave up years ago trying to reason with dem-lib types.  When family, friends, co-workers go their lefty rants I just whack them, Hannity style.  I may not change anyone's mind but I shut them the hell up in a fraction of the time without getting frustrated.   The technique works.

Sean is necessary as just one more strong spoke in the wheel.

45 posted on 02/19/2004 5:05:01 AM PST by quantim (Victory is not relative, it is absolute.)
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To: Bluntpoint
As opposed to those who practice mental onanism with a keyboard and a mouse?
46 posted on 02/19/2004 5:07:12 AM PST by kristinn
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To: longtermmemmory
Absolutely on point....during Reagan's tenure as President, the Democrats were, once again, demonizing Reagan as ignorant, stupid and a 2-bit actor...BUT once Reagan (the hedgehog) forced Gorby to "tear down this wall"....Reagan made his place in history....Reagan was not afraid to take on the liberals and neither is President Bush...there are a lot of similarites between the two and both, no doubt, will go down in history....(unless, of course, the liberals (foxes) are rewriting it)...
47 posted on 02/19/2004 5:10:20 AM PST by smiley
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To: kristinn
Find a "ra ra" corner with your buddies. People that disagree with are not your enemies.

People whom afraid to tell you they disagree with you will always do you more harm.
48 posted on 02/19/2004 5:11:21 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: quantim
I guess Bluntpoint would prefer a more "nuanced" approach. I agree with Malkin, Hannity gets the the rat talking points and refutes them every day, in detail, and repeatedly. He's very popular and the "security" moms like him. I like it that he keeps his arguments simple enough to fit on a 3X5 cards because it keeps the rats from changing the subject. And Hannity isn't nearly as clueless when he gets off politics as Rush is.
49 posted on 02/19/2004 5:20:45 AM PST by johnb838 (Phoney Medals, Phoney Ribbons, Phoney Political Hack. J. Effing Kerry, Esq., Traitor)
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To: johnb838
Bingo. Nuanced and a more "critical" and thoughtful argument.

There are people who love this guy and there are those, like myself, who are embarrassed by him.

Both sides should be allowed to express such and then just sit back and enjoy the debate.

Debate is fun.
50 posted on 02/19/2004 5:25:17 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: Bluntpoint; Admin Moderator
Blunt point, I am receiving FReepmail about that photo you posted, and others are as outraged as I am.

Sorry if that's not "nuanced" enough for you.

51 posted on 02/19/2004 5:36:44 AM PST by Judith Anne (Send a message to the Democrat traitors--ROCKEFELLER MUST RESIGN!)
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To: Judith Anne
I'm sure its not the first time you hit the abuse button.

I'm sure you live to be offended.

If you can't find offense looking out one window, you move to another window.

Then you get the binoculars out.
52 posted on 02/19/2004 5:46:28 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: Bluntpoint
Ya know, there are always going to be people who disagree here. But, to tell them to go away, or some other inane suggestion like go back to DU, is both intellectually lazy and corrupt.

Some here just one a board with mirrors and parrots.

41 posted on 02/19/2004 7:59:18 AM EST by Bluntpoint

Find a "ra ra" corner with your buddies....

48 posted on 02/19/2004 8:11:21 AM EST by Bluntpoint

Hello, mirror. Polly want a cracker?

53 posted on 02/19/2004 5:47:27 AM PST by kristinn
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To: kristinn
And it was a fun debate.

Except for lemon suckers like yourself.

Do you ever tire of being the hall monitor?

54 posted on 02/19/2004 5:49:52 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: Bluntpoint
Yeah, ALL of us with binoculars don't have to look very far. Just find an article by Michelle Malkin, posted by nickcarraway, about Sean Hannity and you'll be all over it.

Incidently, you don't know how many people have hit the abuse button, do you?

And you can make any remarks you want to about me, the fact is, your behavior on this thread has been over the top and offensive, not to mention devoid of the "nuance" you seem to treasure, unless of course the photo you posted is what you are referring to. I can do without the homosexual "nuance on a Michelle Malkin thread about Sean Hannity's new book.
55 posted on 02/19/2004 5:52:28 AM PST by Judith Anne (Send a message to the Democrat traitors--ROCKEFELLER MUST RESIGN!)
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To: Bluntpoint; kristinn
You seem to be insulting everyone, Bluntpoint--me, Kristinn, others--as well as hijacking the thread.

56 posted on 02/19/2004 5:55:15 AM PST by Judith Anne (Send a message to the Democrat traitors--ROCKEFELLER MUST RESIGN!)
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To: Judith Anne
Face it, anything is overtop for you if it is not in agreement with you.

You post what you post, I will post what I post and I will hit the abuse button zero times.
57 posted on 02/19/2004 5:56:09 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: Judith Anne
Insulting?

Give me a break. I commented on Hannity alone. It was others that started the personal nonsense. I just gave it back to them.

So spare me.
58 posted on 02/19/2004 5:57:40 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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To: Bluntpoint
I thought that picture was funny as hell in the context it was posted. Not everyday you see a flogging on the street. LOL.

Maybe Hannity could interview them on Man in the Street Thursday. "Who is the President?"

59 posted on 02/19/2004 5:58:18 AM PST by Benrand
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To: Benrand
You really need to try to read it out of context to be offended by it.

But what the hey, I'm having a good morning, even though the coyotes got in my garbage last night.

Have a great day. I have to go back flush my radiator and take care of the horses.
60 posted on 02/19/2004 6:01:18 AM PST by Bluntpoint
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