Posted on 10/18/2001 6:41:57 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.”— Thomas Jefferson
In the mass of war stories this week, two items popped out. The first quotes a senior US military officer who blames a recent failure to kill Taliban leader Mullah Omar on "a slow degeneration of the system due to political correctness." The second item, largely overlooked in the press, was the murder last week in Seattle of Tom Wales, 49, a federal prosecutor and a leading gun control activist. The first item is an excellent example of the subversion of the military due to feminist influence. The second is an extremist response to this kind of subversion, but it is a despicable criminal response that itself subverts freedom. The Right needs to uphold the rule of law. A better target would be the stranglehold that feminism holds on the education system and on parts of the federal bureaucracy. We need to use the electoral system to purge feminists from government. If feminists want to corrupt society, let them do it on their own dime.
"Political correctness" means adherence to feminist doctrine. The term is alien to America because it originates in the Communist Party. I have demonstrated in previous columns that feminism is a successful "rebranding" of Communism. In this form, it has subverted our minds and our social fabric. Second-wave feminism originated in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and almost all its leading activists were/are Marxists. Essentially it is dedicated to achieving power by advocating and imposing gender, racial and economic "equality" (i.e. outcomes) on individuals who are neither equal nor the same. It goes under various names such as "anti racism", "equity", "diversity" and "multiculturalism" but the aim is to transfer wealth and power from people who have earned them to feminists and their allies. In gender terms, it is lesbian because, while despising men, the standard of sameness is male. Here, feminism has undermined heterosexual identity and the nuclear family and torpedoed the birth rate, posing a dire threat to western civilization.
I had read that Donald Rumsfeld was "seething" over the failure to nail the Taliban leader Mullah Omar when he was in our crosshairs. Seymour Hersh has the story of this breakdown in the current New Yorker entitled Annals of National Security. Apparently a $40 million unmanned CIA drone called "The Predator" equipped with cameras and missiles had located the Mullah fleeing Kabul in a convoy. The Predator tracked the Mullah to a building where he and a hundred or so soldiers took cover. The CIA had to get permission from Central Command in Florida to terminate. The response from General Tommy R. Franks was that his legal officer "doesn't like this, so we're not going to fire." The Mullah escaped unscathed. Let Seymour Hersh continue:
Days afterward, top Administration officials were still seething about the incident. "If it was a f--kup, I could live with it," one senior official said. "But it's not a f--kup it's an outrage. This isn't like you're six years old and your mother calls you to come in for lunch and you say, 'Time out.' If anyone thinks otherwise, go look at the World Trade Center or the Pentagon." A senior military officer viewed the failure to strike immediately as a symptom of "a cultural issue""a slow degradation of the system due to political correctness: 'We want you to kill the guy, but not the guy next to him.' No collateral damage." Others saw the cultural problem as one of bureaucratic, rather than political, correctness. Either way, the failure to attack has left Defense Secretary Rumsfeld "kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors," the officer said. "But in the end I don't know if it'll mean any changes."
To understand why the U.S. military seems to need mommy's permission to get its hands dirty, I recommend Stephanie Gutmann's book The Kinder Gentler Military (2000). For most of the 1990's the military has devoted more energy to appeasing feminists than to preparing for battle. The result has been that soldiers, from generals on down, are afraid of women, specifically of sexual harassment accusations. Sexual harassment is a Red Guard-like denunciatory tactic used by feminists to dis- empower men — the victim is most often the accused. Costly investigations of thousands of charges show that, despite what feminists think, most women are very sexual creatures enthralled by powerful men. Nonetheless a Marine will cross a street "to ensure [a woman] isn't offended because he invaded her space," as one female Marine sergeant said. "The atmosphere in today corps is one of fem fear." (226) Men who are afraid of their mommies cannot act decisively, and that's what happened in the Mullah Omar incident.
This war will expose the damage feminism has inflicted on the US military. According to Guttmann, morale is low. Men resent that women soldiers, pregnant or breast-feeding, have turned army bases into day cares. They resent that standards are lowered because 85% of army women fail to meet the minimum physical requirements, are three times more injury prone and when the going gets tough, "get pregnant." Men fight to protect women. As Amelia Earhart said, "men would rather vacate the arena of combat altogether than share it with women." And they have been doing that in droves.
As in the Cold War, this war will force the United States to define what it represents and to purge subversive elements. It will force liberals to decide where they stand. The rot is deep and the process will be painful. Gun control, which prevents good people from defending themselves, is a hallmark of the feminist "mommy" state. Communist dictatorships in Russia and China would not have survived if the citizenry had been armed. So, in the current context, there are strong feelings when the state tries to disarm people. Last week, a leading gun control advocate, Tom Wales, 49, was shot and killed while working in his basement home office in Seattle. The assailant shot him through the window. In terms of our cultural civil war, this murder is comparable to the assassination of Hamas and Israeli political leaders. Wales made many enemies in his 19 years as an U.S. attorney prosecuting business crimes and fraud. But probably his role as president of "Washington Ceasefire" motivated the attack. In 1997, Wales campaigned for a statewide initiative to require all gun owners to register and complete a safety course. Gun-rights advocates and the NRA bitterly fought the measure that was rejected at the polls. Undeterred, Wales stepped up his activism.
Wales was an idealist. Activists on both left and right share a certainty that their vision is true and some are willing to resort to violence. Until I had a taste of feminist fascism, I too was a leftist. If only we could get rid of the "Right," the world would be a beautiful place, I thought. Now I am on the Right myself. However misguided our opponent is, often his intentions are good.
Left-lib feminists believe in using the government to "improve the world." Unfortunately, their prescription is deeply flawed. And behind this "idealism" is self interest, a "doing well by doing good" as one social worker said to me. They represent a large class of unproductive people, paper pushers who depend on government programs for their livelihood. The vast majority are cowards who will do anything for job security. When they see the wind is changing, they will trim their sails accordingly. Feminism has become a job requirement, like membership in the Communist Party was in Russia.
Conservatives should aim at breaking the feminist stranglehold on the public education system, which they use to indoctrinate the young. We need to break their control of government bureaucracy. We need a genuine "diversity" program that will make our public institutions truly representative of the nation's values. The way to proceed is to organize politically. The greatness of America is the rule of law. It works. America remained steady and calm, while the Presidential election hung in limbo for weeks.
Let us defend freedom by upholding it. Let's fight the cultural civil war at the ballot box.
I just want to know if Gen. Tommy R. Franks has been relieved of his command yet. If not, why not?
It contends that the observable differences between boys and girls has been the product of generations of differential upbringing. Developmental psychologists have found that, across cultures, boys and girls are significantly different in what interests them and in how they engage with their environment. The emerging discoveries from Brain Science have found that the male and female brains are organically different, proving that there is a physical basis for the cognitive differences between men and women. Men and women do think differently.
It is a human triumph and is rooted in our evolutionary success story. Our education system should be teaching and celebrating that difference instead of engaging in social engineering, which further alienates boys by seeking to re-construct their natural maleness.It is a truly pernicious experiment which is an attempt to indoctrinate a generation of young men with feminist propaganda and to inflict a collective guilt trip on them.
I'm amazed that all the "reformed liberal" pundits, from this guy to Horowitz and Radosh, more than any other conservatives, bring up the "Spectre of Communism" in every article. Makow has the same lame tactic as Horowitz - he attempts to link these two disparate events with a greater conspiracy-theory strength anti-American movement. He fails to do so in any way. Also, in order to demonize an idea, in this case feminism, he attempts to link it to Communism AND he takes the most extreme elements of that movement for the whole. The article appears both hastily written and poorly thought out.
Here, feminism has undermined heterosexual identity and the nuclear family and torpedoed the birth rate, posing a dire threat to western civilization.
All these things are on their way out not because of feminism. Do you think both parents working is a feminist problem? Could it have anything to do with economic necessity? Because some women have cried wolf all claims to gender bias are false? Because some small group of feminists are man-hating lesbians then the whole of the group feels that way? I certainly couldn't lump all conservatives together - ascribing libertarian tenets to the religious right.
Even more ridiculous is his attempt to connect feminism with the failure to take out Mullah Omar and the killing of Tom Wales. Is it just me, or is there really no connection made at all? It's shotty, and also despicable. Are we privy to the reasons why we failed to take out Omar? Do we yet know who it was that killed Tom Wales and why? Makow clearly looks at every event and sees only how he might connect it to his agenda, whether there is a connection there or not.
The core idea of this programme, i.e. that gender is socially constructed, is a central tenet of the entire feminist belief system.
How very right you are. I know a woman (a “doctor” of “women’s issues,” if you can believe it) and this is one of her dozens of goofy mantras.
She honestly believes that boys should play with dolls, and that their “supposed preference” for “cops and robbers” or “cowboys and indians” is entirely socially-driven.
The good news is she gave birth to a girl, and does not plan on having any more children. When she was pregnant, myself and others who know her, were praying that she would have a girl. Though she’ll undoubtedly screw her daughter’s head up royally, the damage she would have inflicted on a son would have been monumentally worse.
(PS - where in Ireland? My brother-in-law is from Tipperary. I spent four days there and a week in Dingle a few years back. Dingle may be my most favorite city in the world, after NYC. The music and the food were heavenly.)
Unfortunately, it's those few women who abuse power who are making or have made policy.
Why not?
Is the suggestion here that "cover-my-butt girlie man" General Tommy R. Franks is immune to dismissal for incompetence?
He doesn't have a superior?
If neither his superior nor anyone higher up can get rid of this incompetent, then mass firinga appear to me to be in order until a rational warrior is found.
Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker that CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy R. Franks, when told on the day bombing commenced that reconnaissance had picked up Omar's convoy, refused to fire because his "JAG people didn't like it," presumably because collateral damage would have been unacceptable. Later reports confirmed that Omar was in the convoy.
How come this story hasn't received more airplay? I also heard that the CIA also had their chance with him too, but also took legal cover.
During the cold war, you prayed that your commanding officer was the type to act and then ask for forgiveness. That meant that he cared for the men under his command and doing his mission, not some bs legal interpretation from DC of a hot situation thousands of miles away!
I'm waiting for one of the professional GW haters to try and blame this on GW and Rumsfield! This situation has been going on with the JagOffs since the Korean War, and it apparently in the last 8 years under X42 reached the level that you cite in your post! It will take 8 years for GW and Rumsfield to clean of the left wing extremists/Jagoffs and other pink panty wearers in our military!
GW and Rumsfield will not tolerate this behavior when it pops up. However, it will popup as the JagOffs and their pink panty wearing Generals and Admirals are so PC and anti really killing the bad guys! The CIA/FBI have the same problems!
True; they're considered expendible. They are also operated and controlled by the Air Force, not the CIA as indicated in the article.
If Henry did it, he should confess. If he didn't he may as well shut up. He's doing nobody any favors to write as though it's common knowledge that a conservative did this. I think this is proof that too much education causes brain damage to some people.
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