By Mark Steyn
Jonah yesterday, apropos ObamaCare and the postponement of the employer mandate, said we were now living under an “arbitrary system” in which “the political arm of the White House gets to decide what laws are going to be enforced and which ones aren’t“.
I made a similar point guest-hosting for Rush last Friday, noting that this was one of the indictments against George III in the Declaration of Independence:
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.When legislatures pass laws but the head of state decides which ones he’ll implement and which he won’t, that is a monarchy – and not a constitutional but an absolute one. When the English were as mad with James II as the Americans later were with George III, they spelled it out in the first charge of the 1689 Bill of Rights:
Whereas the late King James the Second, by the assistance of divers evil counsellors, judges and ministers employed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of this kingdom;
By assuming and exercising a power of dispensing with and suspending of laws and the execution of laws without consent of Parliament;President Obama has developed a habit of “dispensing with and suspending” all manner of laws from health care to immigration. If he gets to choose which laws he’ll enforce, do we get to choose which laws we follow?
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/352950/unconstitutional-monarchy-mark-steyn
White House Has Known For Months Obamacare Implementation Wouldn't Work
Last week, it scaled back several required provisions. They aren't the first. And probably won't be the last.
If you've been reading all the Obamacare stories lately, you might get the impression that the administration has just realized it will not be able to implement the massive health reform as designed.It has known for months.
As far back as March, a top IT official at the Department of Health and Human Services said the department's current ambition for the law's new online insurance marketplaces was that they not be "a Third-World experience." Several provisions had already been abandoned in an effort to simplify the administration's task and maximize the chances that the new systems would be ready to go live in October, when customers are supposed to start signing up for insurance.
In April, several consultants focusing on the new online marketplaces, known as exchanges, told National Journal that the idealized, seamless user experience initially envisioned under the Affordable Care Act was no longer possible, as the administration axed non-essential provisions that were too complex to implement in time. (Read the story for some examples and commentary.) That focus has intensified lately, as officials announced that they would not be requiring employers to cover their workers next year or states to verify residents' incomes before signing them up for insurance.
"There's been a focusing in not on: 'What is the full ACA vision?' but: 'What are the pieces we have to get running by October 1?" said Cindy Gillespie, senior managing director at McKenna Long and Aldridge, who is working with states and health plans.
To get a sense of what the Obama administration is up against, take a look at this chart, provided by Dan Schuyler at Leavitt Partners, a consultancy helping states build exchanges. (Bear in mind, this chart is supposed to simplify and explain.)
In an ideal world, the exchange websites need to be able to talk to several federal agencies—IRS to verify an applicant's income and employment status, the Department of Homeland Security to determine her citizenship, and the state government to see if she qualifies for Medicaid, to name a few—all in real time, so a person could fill out a form and purchase insurance in one sitting.
Each of those departments has its own computer system and its own means of tracking information. Creating a "data hub" to share them has been a challenge, as a recent Government Accountability Office report highlighted. It is increasingly clear that the kind of Amazon.com, one-stop shopping that was once described – and that Obama himself referenced in a speech on Monday -- will not be available in most parts of the country.
"It's the joyous, simultaneous, nonlinear equation from hell," said Kip Piper, a former top official at HHS and OMB who is now a consultant in close contact with IT vendors. Piper said it's no surprise that the administration has given up on certain functions given the technological complexity needed and the short time-frame.
But the long-term nature of the bad news could be good news for those who hope that the new marketplaces will launch in some form on time.
The struggles with technology and administrative complexity have not come as a recent surprise to administration officials; they've been negotiating them for months already. By eliminating non-essential tasks, they may be violating the letter of the health reform law, with its rigorous timetables and multiple requirements, but they may be more likely to get the core functions right.
And whatever the bad politics of the recent announcements, a failure of crucial systems next year would be much worse for the president and Democrats running in 2014. "I continue to see the federal government focusing on mission critical issues, and moving forward on them, and jettisoning to the extent they have to the things that aren't mission critical," says Joel Ario, a Managing Director at Mannatt Health Solutions, a consultancy, and the administration's former top exchange official. "I have not heard anything that suggests to me that we will not move forward with the main exchange functions in time."
http://www.nationaljournal.com/domesticpolicy/white-house-has-known-for-months-obamacare-implementation-wouldn-t-work-20130709
IRS released thousands of Social Security numbers
The Internal Revenue Service unwittingly released thousands of Social Security numbers, according to the government transparency group Public.Resource.org.Members of nonprofit political organizations known as 527s were the victims as the IRS published highly sensitive information to a public database
that reports the transactions of these groups.Public.Resource.org founder Carl Malamud received a phone call and subsequent email from the IRS on June 18 ordering him to delete the information contained in business
income tax return forms called 990-Ts, which Malamud received in
mid-February. Public.Resource.org reposts publicly available government
data in bulk.
Although the data was deleted the following day, the public domain
site further investigated the extent of the problem. It determined that
there were eight distinct privacy breaches, including the exposure of
at least 2,319 Social Security numbers.
site further investigated the extent of the problem. It determined that
there were eight distinct privacy breaches, including the exposure of
at least 2,319 Social Security numbers.He further scolded the IRS’s lack of transparency and warned that the failure to immediately correct the issue would constitute a cover-up.
Palestinian Terror Group Claims Responsibility for Arizona Wildfires
A Palestinian terror group has claimed responsibility for the deadly wildfires that have spread across Arizona, according to reports.
A Palestinian jihadist group known as Masada al-Mujahideen took credit for the fires in a statement that was obtained and translated by Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Intelligence Group, according to the Clarion Project.
The terror group claims that the fires are a reprisal for Israel’s “occupation” of what they say are Palestinian lands.
Nineteen firefighters have been killed while fighting the blaze.
“We had previously announced an unconventional war against the occupation state of Israel, and then we escalated this war to reach its main supporter, America, so that it receives a major share of it, which will destroy their flora and fauna, with permission from Allah and then with our hands,” the group said, according to Clarion and SITE.
“In order to make it clear and to make it known that we can reach it when we warn it, and to make it certain that our hands don’t just reach it but also strike it,” the group reportedly said.
The group promises similar attacks in the future, stating that the Arizona fires “will not be the last, if America does not respond to our demands.”
Clarion reported that al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for setting fires in several European nations.
“The summer 2012 issue of Inspire, the online propaganda magazine run by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, devoted 11 pages to starting forest fires in NATO countries, including instructions,” Clarion reported.
http://freebeacon.com/palestinian-terror-group-claims-responsibility-for-arizona-wildfires/
Raid, Arrests, and Mass Resignations Because of ‘Biased Coverage’: Al Jazeera’s Very Bad Week
In the U.S., Soledad O’Brien and other journalists have flocked to Al Jazeera,
but in the Middle East, the network for the past week has been facing a
major challenge to its credibility including mass staff resignations, a
raid of one of its offices, its reporters kicked out of a news
conference by fellow journalists, and the arrest of some of its staffers
by Egyptian security forces.
The dramatic developments are the
result of widespread perceptions in Egypt and in the Arab world that Al
Jazeera has shown a pro-Muslim Brotherhood slant in its reporting. With
the demise of President Mohammed Morsi’s government, the channel is now
facing unprecedented wrath.
Twenty-two of the network’s Cairo staff
resigned on Monday. According to Gulf News, anchor Karem Mahmoud of Al
Jazeera’s Mubasher Misr channel announced that the resignations were
motivated by what he called “biased coverage” of the events leading up
to the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned former President Morsi.
The news anchor revealed that Al
Jazeera management would instruct each staff member to favor the Muslim
Brotherhood in their broadcasts. According to Gulf News, Mahmoud said that “there are instructions to us to telecast certain news”.
He characterized the coverage of the
Qatar-based channel as lacking in professionalism and said that “the
management in Doha [Qatar] provokes sedition among the Egyptian people
and has an agenda against Egypt and other Arab countries.”
In his resignation announcement, Luxor Correspondent Haggag Salama accused Al Jazeera of “airing lies and misleading viewers.”
Four additional Egyptian nationals
working at the network’s Doha headquarters also resigned in protest of
the “biased editorial policy” regarding the Egypt coverage, according to
Gulf News.
It’s not every day you see reporters
protesting the presence of colleagues at a news conference. That’s what
happened on Tuesday when one Egyptian journalist stood during a press
conference demanding that Al Jazeera be excluded (video below). The
Associated Press reports that when Al Jazeera reporters finally walked
out of the room, it was to the sound of other journalists chanting “Out! Out!”
At the press conference, the military was presenting its version of what occurred early Monday morning when dozens of Muslim Brotherhood protesters were killed outside the Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo.
On Wednesday, just hours after Morsi was ousted by the army, security forces raided Al Jazeera’s Cairo offices. Reuters reports that at least five staffers were detained and that the network was prevented from broadcasting a pro-Morsi rally.
Karim El-Assiuti told Reuters that
some of his colleagues were arrested while they were in the middle of
covering the breaking news event.
According to Al Jazeera, Ayman Gaballah who is director of Al Jazeera’s Mubasher Misr had to post bail of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,480) after spending two days in custody.
Al Jazeera condemned the raid in a statement
released Thursday. “Media offices should not be subject to raids and
intimidation. Journalists should not be detained for doing their jobs,”
said Al Jazeera’s acting director general, Mostefa Souag.
Other news bureaus perceived to be pro-Morsi were also raided in Cairo last week.
According to Lebanon’s Daily Star, the public has taken to calling the news network derogatorily “Al Jazeera Ikhwan,” which means “Al Jazeera Brotherhood.”
Sultan al-Qassemi, a widely-followed
media commentator from the United Arab Emirates tells the Daily Star,
“Al-Jazeera Arabic in 2011 was squarely on the side of the
anti-government [anti-Mubarak] protesters, today the channel is
notorious for being the mouthpiece of the Brotherhood party.”
As the coup drama unfolded last Wednesday, al-Qassemi tweeted
that on-air guests were slamming the network. “Al Jazeera Arabic
anchors, one after the other, [are] defending themselves from
accusations of pro-Brotherhood bias (which are true) by guests,” he
wrote.
“Al Jazeera Arabic went from being the
channel of the regime with unrivalled [sic] access to having its
offices shut down within a few hours” he also tweeted.
The political backdrop of the backlash
Al Jazeera is facing is rooted in Qatar’s strong ties with the Muslim
Brotherhood, having provided $8 billion in aid to Morsi’s government
over the past two years, with $3 billion transferred just two months
ago, according to the Daily Star.
Raphael Lefevre, a Cambridge
University expert on the Muslim Brotherhood tells the Daily Star, “The
Qatari channel put a strong emphasis on interviews with the leaders and
members of the opposition and in this respect clearly gave Muslim
Brotherhood movements throughout the region a public visibility they
previously lacked.”
Lefevre also points out that the
channel aims its programming at “conservative Sunni constituencies” like
the Brotherhood, offering shows such as the popular “Shariah and Life”
hosted by hardline cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/09/raid-arrests-and-mass-resignations-because-of-biased-coverage-al-jazeeras-very-bad-week/
Obama Demands Peaceful Surrender to Brotherhood
Barack
Obama's administration is the best American friend the global caliphate
movement has ever had. Obama, a notorious backstabber of accomplices
who have outlived their usefulness, is now demonstrating that he is
capable of steadfast comradeship when his heart is in it, responding to
the mass uprising and military coup that has toppled Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood regime by demanding that the Brotherhood be allowed to
participate in whatever form of government comes next.
From Bloomberg News, we get this:
Let
us leave aside the obvious hilarity of the Obama administration
demanding "a transparent political process" from anyone else -- while
secretly collecting personal communications and financial data on all of
its citizens, using federal agencies to target political opponents,
concocting elaborate lies to cover for the gravest moral misdeeds, and
arbitrarily micromanaging the implementation of destructive laws to
shield its party from election fallout. The more important consideration
here is what exactly this call for an "inclusive" process in Egypt is
intended to achieve.
With his demands that today's Egyptian leaders pursue transparency and "avoid any arbitrary arrests," Obama is suggesting that the new leaders need to be pushed into behaving with restraint, thus implicitly painting the Morsi government as the victim in this struggle. Further, the Obama administration has implied, though they have "stopped short of" declaring, that the ouster of Morsi was illegitimate; why else would they demand that the faction just removed from government in a popular uprising must be allowed right back in as quickly as possible?
Note to the duplicitous "fact checkers" out there: of course you will not find Obama's direct statement of support for the MB. At the risk of vindicating Michele Bachmann's account of MB influence within the government, Obama obviously cannot come straight out and say, "If I had a son, he'd look like the boy who killed Tyrone Woods with mortar fire." Instead, the administration is reverting to the progressives' standard method of indirect support for anti-Western tyrants: moral equivalency arguments. Thus, in answer to accusations from Egyptians that the Obama administration had long supported Morsi's government, the administration's official answer is that Obama "is not aligned with, and does not support, any particular Egyptian party or group." That's the administration's strongest effort to dissociate itself from a terrorist-supporting organization openly advocating world dictatorship -- moral equivalency. In effect, "We don't support them, any more than we support anyone else."
Predictably, the rationale for this tacit moral support of the Muslim Brotherhood is that MB involvement in the "process" is a prerequisite of peace.
The Obama administration is "concerned" that Egypt's military leadership may wish to instigate an all-out fight with the MB support base, with the intention of wiping out the movement. As an alternative, they are urging that the MB be allowed to participate equally in a new democratic political process -- exactly what they were urging a year ago. And what happened a year ago? Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader, was elected with the support of the large faction of Egyptian Sunnis who advocate political rule by Sharia law, support Hamas, and would eliminate all alternative voices within the Egyptian press and political community.
Notice how the administration's reasoning also buys into the "root causes" talk that is typically favored by jihadist sympathizers. Muslims are radicalized by feeling excluded from the political process, we are told; and remember that in this case we are not even talking about Muslims in general, but rather a particular faction of Sunni Muslims that openly supports terrorist groups and hopes to eliminate all religious competitors within and without Islam. A group that would "probably" "shift to al-Qaeda type terrorist tactics" if they didn't get their way is already radicalized. If al-Qaeda itself wished to be granted official party status, would Obama go out of his way to demand it? (Sadly, the answer is probably yes; following the thinking of his Chicago friend Rashid Khalidi, he would accept the premise that it is only a sense of disenfranchisement -- ultimately caused by the Jews -- that has radicalized the terrorists.)
The question the Obama administration, like all progressive organizations, wishes to elide is whether demanding that an extremely intolerant, tyrannical faction be allowed to participate as an equal partner in a "democratic political process" is not a recipe for a speedy drift into tyranny. In fact, arguments for compromise with tyranny made in the name of "peace" and "justice" are the progressives' stock-in-trade in both domestic and foreign policy, as these have been pursued throughout the late modern world.
The League of Nations and the United Nations were progressive ideas, grand moral equivalency schemes foisted upon the West by men who wished to achieve gradually what the world's tyrants wished to achieve immediately, namely "global governance" in the name of collectivist peace. The abolition of property rights, the dilution of national sovereignty, and the establishment of an international technocratic elite that would supersede elected governments and seek peace through compromise of the fundamental principles of individualism and freedom -- these progressive goals lulled the West into a sleepwalk through fascism, and finally built an entire culture of apologetics for the spread of communism.
The tyrannical men and regimes of the world must be included in any legitimate political process, the West was repeatedly told by its leaders -- they must "have a voice" -- lest they become militant and unmanageable. The worst thing we could do, the progressives continually warned, would be to exclude the totalitarians from the discussion, for this might "provoke" them into a more radical and threatening position.
The present case could not demonstrate the folly (let's be generous) of such a position any more clearly. The Muslim Brotherhood is an international organization bent on achieving world Islamic rule. And their notion of Islamic rule is in no way morally or politically equivalent to what defenders of Israel mean when they speak of a "Jewish state." For one thing, the state they seek is global -- there would be no alternative homeland for those who do not wish to live in this "Islamic state." And for another, the society they envision, and toward which they strive, is not a pluralistic, open society, but the most monolithic, closed society imaginable -- outside of the communist totalitarian world, toward which Western progressives also urged tolerance, inclusion, and understanding.
The Talibanization of the Earth would, in practice, differ from the dream of world communism primarily in that the chains would come down most heavily on women and infidels first, rather than on everyone at once. In the end, a global approximation of Taliban Afghanistan would be the result in either case; whether the murdered and re-educated are called "infidels" or "capitalists" makes very little difference. The only significant difference would be perceptual: we wouldn't actually be able to see the women's starving faces.
The Morsi government was supposed to be the "friendly" face of this global caliphate fantasy. Within a year of the election of these "moderates," they had begun in earnest the process of reconfiguring Egypt to destroy secular politics, and to eliminate modern (non-jihadist) culture. This is the faction that the Obama administration is offering its tacit moral backing, by demanding that it be included in the political machinery that evolves out of the latest crisis.
Consider, once again, the standard progressive argument for appeasement, as promoted by anonymous Obama administration officials. Marginalizing and excluding the MB from the political process would "probably prompt a shift to al-Qaeda type terrorist tactics by extremists in the Islamist movement in Egypt and elsewhere." In other words, their goals are coercive and authoritarian, so the best course of action is to allow them to achieve those goals gradually and peacefully rather than forcing them to resort to violence. To restate: "Give them what they want, and nobody gets hurt." You might hand over your wallet to an armed thief on such terms; but would you deliver millions of people into Taliban-like servitude on the same terms?
The current predicament in Egypt is more evidence -- as if we needed it -- for the principle that broadly "democratic" political arrangements cannot be superimposed on a society that does not have a populace morally and intellectually prepared for self-governance. A population that votes itself into tyranny is like a free man who sells himself into slavery -- he is not spiritually mature enough for self-determination. And the nations of the West are hardly in a position to look smugly at the unfitness of the Arab world for self-government, given that we have had all the historical preparation and civilizational establishment one could hope for, and are nevertheless well along in the process of doing the same thing Egypt did last year, and will likely do again this year.
The fact that the Obama administration's instinct, when secular tyrants were being ousted in favor of Islamic rule, was to encourage this shift as evidence of "hope and change," while, when the developing Islamic tyranny is ousted, the administration's instinct is to admonish Egyptians and make demands on behalf of political Islam, is both telling and revolting. I cannot pretend to understand what is happening in Egypt, or to predict what will happen next. The horror stories of dozens of rapes during the recent protests, and recent reports about the character of the general leading the coup, indicate that this mass movement is threatened from the inside, probably by the involvement of radical Muslims who happen to oppose the MB's methods. It is likely, however, that there are also a good number of people who genuinely desire a new start for their country, on a footing of reasonable, pluralistic government. No population votes itself into tyranny unanimously: rather, the majority uses its own submission to authority to strip away the freedoms of any minority faction that might have preferred a more civil order. (Sound familiar?) Given the history of Egypt and the region, the well-intentioned minority's chances don't look good. But they could not look much worse than they did under the quickly tightening authority of the MB regime.
Given the turmoil this decent minority is going through now, nothing, I imagine, could be more disheartening than the thought that after all this, they will simply end up in another "democratic process" that brings some version of the global caliphate movement back into power. And yet the likelihood of that miserable outcome is being enhanced, and even promoted, by the Obama administration's demands that "democracy" be restored quickly, and that this "democracy" include the Muslim Brotherhood. What we are witnessing, among other things, is the vindication of everyone who ever warned that democracy without limiting principles quickly devolves into the tyranny of the majority.
It is usually best to avoid overused comparisons, but this time the obvious seems inevitable: Had Hitler survived his defeat in WWII, would the Allies have demanded, as a condition of Germany's restoration, that he be reinstated as a candidate for chancellor immediately? Imagine seeing those campaign posters on your ride home from Auschwitz.
What should happen next in Egypt is hardly clear. And it is almost a given that this is not what will happen. Is it not unseemly, however, for a U.S. administration to declare that a "democratic process" cannot be judged legitimate unless it includes the advocates of global tyranny? On the other hand, if ever there were a U.S. administration well-positioned to make such a declaration, it would be this one.
From Bloomberg News, we get this:
While
President Barack Obama's administration has stopped short of condemning
the July 3 military takeover, it has called on Egyptian leaders to
pursue "a transparent political process that is inclusive of all parties
and groups," including "avoiding any arbitrary arrests of Morsi and his
supporters," Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security
Council, said July 4 in a statement.
With his demands that today's Egyptian leaders pursue transparency and "avoid any arbitrary arrests," Obama is suggesting that the new leaders need to be pushed into behaving with restraint, thus implicitly painting the Morsi government as the victim in this struggle. Further, the Obama administration has implied, though they have "stopped short of" declaring, that the ouster of Morsi was illegitimate; why else would they demand that the faction just removed from government in a popular uprising must be allowed right back in as quickly as possible?
Note to the duplicitous "fact checkers" out there: of course you will not find Obama's direct statement of support for the MB. At the risk of vindicating Michele Bachmann's account of MB influence within the government, Obama obviously cannot come straight out and say, "If I had a son, he'd look like the boy who killed Tyrone Woods with mortar fire." Instead, the administration is reverting to the progressives' standard method of indirect support for anti-Western tyrants: moral equivalency arguments. Thus, in answer to accusations from Egyptians that the Obama administration had long supported Morsi's government, the administration's official answer is that Obama "is not aligned with, and does not support, any particular Egyptian party or group." That's the administration's strongest effort to dissociate itself from a terrorist-supporting organization openly advocating world dictatorship -- moral equivalency. In effect, "We don't support them, any more than we support anyone else."
Predictably, the rationale for this tacit moral support of the Muslim Brotherhood is that MB involvement in the "process" is a prerequisite of peace.
The administration has urged the Egyptian military to stop using heavy-handed tactics, according to two U.S. officials who asked not to be identified commenting on private communications. They said the administration is concerned that some in the military may want to provoke the Islamists to violence and provide a rationale for crushing the movement once and for all.
Such a move would fail and probably prompt a shift to al-Qaeda type terrorist tactics by extremists in the Islamist movement in Egypt and elsewhere, the U.S. officials said.There it is, in bold colors: the progressive case for appeasement that, over the past century, has served the modern world up to global socialism, and now does double duty on behalf of an Islamic jihadist movement that would swallow Western civilization whole, while destroying the remnants of political liberty and the fruits of the industrial revolution in the "process."
The Obama administration is "concerned" that Egypt's military leadership may wish to instigate an all-out fight with the MB support base, with the intention of wiping out the movement. As an alternative, they are urging that the MB be allowed to participate equally in a new democratic political process -- exactly what they were urging a year ago. And what happened a year ago? Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader, was elected with the support of the large faction of Egyptian Sunnis who advocate political rule by Sharia law, support Hamas, and would eliminate all alternative voices within the Egyptian press and political community.
Notice how the administration's reasoning also buys into the "root causes" talk that is typically favored by jihadist sympathizers. Muslims are radicalized by feeling excluded from the political process, we are told; and remember that in this case we are not even talking about Muslims in general, but rather a particular faction of Sunni Muslims that openly supports terrorist groups and hopes to eliminate all religious competitors within and without Islam. A group that would "probably" "shift to al-Qaeda type terrorist tactics" if they didn't get their way is already radicalized. If al-Qaeda itself wished to be granted official party status, would Obama go out of his way to demand it? (Sadly, the answer is probably yes; following the thinking of his Chicago friend Rashid Khalidi, he would accept the premise that it is only a sense of disenfranchisement -- ultimately caused by the Jews -- that has radicalized the terrorists.)
The question the Obama administration, like all progressive organizations, wishes to elide is whether demanding that an extremely intolerant, tyrannical faction be allowed to participate as an equal partner in a "democratic political process" is not a recipe for a speedy drift into tyranny. In fact, arguments for compromise with tyranny made in the name of "peace" and "justice" are the progressives' stock-in-trade in both domestic and foreign policy, as these have been pursued throughout the late modern world.
The League of Nations and the United Nations were progressive ideas, grand moral equivalency schemes foisted upon the West by men who wished to achieve gradually what the world's tyrants wished to achieve immediately, namely "global governance" in the name of collectivist peace. The abolition of property rights, the dilution of national sovereignty, and the establishment of an international technocratic elite that would supersede elected governments and seek peace through compromise of the fundamental principles of individualism and freedom -- these progressive goals lulled the West into a sleepwalk through fascism, and finally built an entire culture of apologetics for the spread of communism.
The tyrannical men and regimes of the world must be included in any legitimate political process, the West was repeatedly told by its leaders -- they must "have a voice" -- lest they become militant and unmanageable. The worst thing we could do, the progressives continually warned, would be to exclude the totalitarians from the discussion, for this might "provoke" them into a more radical and threatening position.
The present case could not demonstrate the folly (let's be generous) of such a position any more clearly. The Muslim Brotherhood is an international organization bent on achieving world Islamic rule. And their notion of Islamic rule is in no way morally or politically equivalent to what defenders of Israel mean when they speak of a "Jewish state." For one thing, the state they seek is global -- there would be no alternative homeland for those who do not wish to live in this "Islamic state." And for another, the society they envision, and toward which they strive, is not a pluralistic, open society, but the most monolithic, closed society imaginable -- outside of the communist totalitarian world, toward which Western progressives also urged tolerance, inclusion, and understanding.
The Talibanization of the Earth would, in practice, differ from the dream of world communism primarily in that the chains would come down most heavily on women and infidels first, rather than on everyone at once. In the end, a global approximation of Taliban Afghanistan would be the result in either case; whether the murdered and re-educated are called "infidels" or "capitalists" makes very little difference. The only significant difference would be perceptual: we wouldn't actually be able to see the women's starving faces.
The Morsi government was supposed to be the "friendly" face of this global caliphate fantasy. Within a year of the election of these "moderates," they had begun in earnest the process of reconfiguring Egypt to destroy secular politics, and to eliminate modern (non-jihadist) culture. This is the faction that the Obama administration is offering its tacit moral backing, by demanding that it be included in the political machinery that evolves out of the latest crisis.
Consider, once again, the standard progressive argument for appeasement, as promoted by anonymous Obama administration officials. Marginalizing and excluding the MB from the political process would "probably prompt a shift to al-Qaeda type terrorist tactics by extremists in the Islamist movement in Egypt and elsewhere." In other words, their goals are coercive and authoritarian, so the best course of action is to allow them to achieve those goals gradually and peacefully rather than forcing them to resort to violence. To restate: "Give them what they want, and nobody gets hurt." You might hand over your wallet to an armed thief on such terms; but would you deliver millions of people into Taliban-like servitude on the same terms?
The current predicament in Egypt is more evidence -- as if we needed it -- for the principle that broadly "democratic" political arrangements cannot be superimposed on a society that does not have a populace morally and intellectually prepared for self-governance. A population that votes itself into tyranny is like a free man who sells himself into slavery -- he is not spiritually mature enough for self-determination. And the nations of the West are hardly in a position to look smugly at the unfitness of the Arab world for self-government, given that we have had all the historical preparation and civilizational establishment one could hope for, and are nevertheless well along in the process of doing the same thing Egypt did last year, and will likely do again this year.
The fact that the Obama administration's instinct, when secular tyrants were being ousted in favor of Islamic rule, was to encourage this shift as evidence of "hope and change," while, when the developing Islamic tyranny is ousted, the administration's instinct is to admonish Egyptians and make demands on behalf of political Islam, is both telling and revolting. I cannot pretend to understand what is happening in Egypt, or to predict what will happen next. The horror stories of dozens of rapes during the recent protests, and recent reports about the character of the general leading the coup, indicate that this mass movement is threatened from the inside, probably by the involvement of radical Muslims who happen to oppose the MB's methods. It is likely, however, that there are also a good number of people who genuinely desire a new start for their country, on a footing of reasonable, pluralistic government. No population votes itself into tyranny unanimously: rather, the majority uses its own submission to authority to strip away the freedoms of any minority faction that might have preferred a more civil order. (Sound familiar?) Given the history of Egypt and the region, the well-intentioned minority's chances don't look good. But they could not look much worse than they did under the quickly tightening authority of the MB regime.
Given the turmoil this decent minority is going through now, nothing, I imagine, could be more disheartening than the thought that after all this, they will simply end up in another "democratic process" that brings some version of the global caliphate movement back into power. And yet the likelihood of that miserable outcome is being enhanced, and even promoted, by the Obama administration's demands that "democracy" be restored quickly, and that this "democracy" include the Muslim Brotherhood. What we are witnessing, among other things, is the vindication of everyone who ever warned that democracy without limiting principles quickly devolves into the tyranny of the majority.
It is usually best to avoid overused comparisons, but this time the obvious seems inevitable: Had Hitler survived his defeat in WWII, would the Allies have demanded, as a condition of Germany's restoration, that he be reinstated as a candidate for chancellor immediately? Imagine seeing those campaign posters on your ride home from Auschwitz.
What should happen next in Egypt is hardly clear. And it is almost a given that this is not what will happen. Is it not unseemly, however, for a U.S. administration to declare that a "democratic process" cannot be judged legitimate unless it includes the advocates of global tyranny? On the other hand, if ever there were a U.S. administration well-positioned to make such a declaration, it would be this one.
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