Posted on 10/22/2010 3:08:55 PM PDT by library user
World War II was my war. We fought the Germans. They were the enemy. There was a German problem. Of course, if we had stopped to think about it, which we didn’t because we were too busy trying to win the war, we would have realized that not every German wanted to fight us; maybe not even a majority of them did. But they didn’t oppose the Nazi extremists who had taken over their government and attacked us in the name of German racial superiority. I’m sure a lot of Germans agreed with Hitler. But those who were against him, didn’t dare speak up. A few did, of course, like the great German patriot Reverend Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He spoke out against the Nazi thugs. For his pains he was put into a concentration camp and died there.
Jihadist thugs are now attacking us in the name of Islam. No doubt there are a lot of Islamic believers who don’t support this. But like the Germans in World War II, they are not speaking up… for good reason of course, as there was a good reason back in the days of the Third Reich. But because they aren’t speaking up to oppose what is being done in their name, the world has a Muslim problem. Everybody knows this. Not many public figures dare to say it out loud. Some public figures don’t want to know it, much less say it out loud.
Bill O’Reilly, who has taken great pains in recent years to position himself as a centrist, has now had the courage to say out loud what everybody knows. The predictable cries of outrage have ensued. Juan Williams, a true blue liberal who has no doubt outraged his bosses at NPR for years by appearing on Fox, even if it was to espouse their cause, is now paying the price for O’Reilly. They couldn’t fire him; he doesn’t work for them. Juan does, so out he went.
I used to watch Bernie Goldberg in his early days on Fox trying to retain what he could of his liberal beliefs. As he came to see the savagery of the left he slowly came around to being more conservative. It will be interesting to see the same thing happen to Williams. Both of them were decent liberals who found that the ground moved out from under them.
NPR has made a serious miscalculation. It should have buttoned its lip and shut up. But leftists are not just hateful, they are stupid.
You hit the nail on the head when you say the moderate Muslims have not done anything to stop this nonsense. CAIR has yet to issue a formal apology that I have seen.
Orson Bean is 82 and still active. Wow!
He’s also related to Calvin Coolidge and father-in-law to Andrew Breitbart.
Very interesting biography.
Great poiece of writing. Tremendously accurate assessment. Wisdom of years no doubt.
BUT THEY WILL NOT
*That* Orson Bean?
I love Orson Bean. Awesome dude!
bookmark
I’m glad someone still knows how To Tell The Truth.
But leftists are not just hateful, they are stupid.
I wonder if Kitty Carlyle, Polly Bergen, Tom Poston, Arlene Francis and Allen Ludden will weigh in?
I loved Orson Bean on Queen for A Day and I’ve Got a Secret. We used to watch it on the old Philco.
Gramps was right about TV brainwashing the idiots. No wonder Bean was in early TV because his father founded the ACLU and he was blacklisted in the 1950s. Gramps was right.
Idiots traded liberty for a TV clicker. Gramps would be sickened seiing a Islamic is sitting in Ike’s chair.
Good column
It does appear that radical Islam has essentially co-opted all of Islam. Now the driving force of Islam is the destruction of Western civilization.
But, does not the Juan Williams incident illustrate the same type of radicalization of the Left? The Left will no longer debate the logic and merit of its ideas and policies. In this respect, Williams is somewhat of an anachronism; he resembles the more traditional liberals that we saw 30-40 years ago in this country.
Islam and today’s Left is driven by fanaticism, an allergy to logic and reason, and a blind faith in their ideologies. They both abhor Western civilization and share the common goal of destroying the Western world.
‘This is the same Orson Bean who I heard rail for left wing causes after a theater appearance in Santa Monica California years ago?’
Don’t know how long ago you heard him, but I read him supporting the Vietnam War in National Review about 40 years ago. He was a friend of Bill Buckley, who personally converted him, I believe.
He was pretty good as Bilbo Baggins in the animated Hobbit and Lord of the Ring films around this samme time.
According to Wiki: ‘A conservative Christian, he came out in support of the Proposition 8 ballot initiative in California.[4][5] He is father-in-law to Andrew Breitbart’
He writes a column for Breitbart, and is still acting, as a recurring performer on Desperate Housewives.
I haven’t thought of or heard the name Orson Bean in years but the image of him came back to me instantly with this thread.
I especially remember the cast of WHAT’S MY LINE and remember as a kid hearing of the untimely death of Dorothy Kilgallen. Bennett Cerf of Random House, John Charles Daly, and Arlene Francis all bantered and laughed like my parent’s generation could do so well.
It's highly uncommon, but sometimes even the most hardcore idiotic Hollywood lefties eventually see the light and leave the dark side behind. Jon Voight and Ron Silver come to mind and Orson Bean is another one.
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