CNN Circles The Wagons Around Their Candidate

Hillary Clinton, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

BROOKE BALDWIN, host of CNN Newsroom and as partisan an anchor as the rest, moved quickly to shut down a line of inquiry about Hillary Clinton’s health, pursued by a DR. TIFFANY SIZEMORE. BALDWIN’s bookers clearly chose the wrong guest for her Clinton-friendly show.

BROOKE BALDWIN (HOST): Let me pivot back to the health records, Dr. Tiffany, and ask you this. As we talked about Hillary Clinton’s additional medical records to come out this week, also we’re hearing from the Trump camp that we should get some more information on his own health. When people pour through that, what do you expect to learn?

DR. TIFFANY SIZEMORE: One of my concerns, actually, is — and I want to be very blunt — pneumonia, which she has now, and what happened in 2012 are two distinctly separate things. However, the medical problems that Hillary had in 2012 are still significant medical problems. Having a blood clot in a vein in your brain is a pretty significant issue, especially when there’s been studies out that there’s a small subset of people who, when they have this problem, have chronic cognitive and decision-making impairment. So I do think —

BALDWIN: But what about [Donald] Trump? Sorry, I don’t know if I spoke —

SIZEMORE: I’m getting there. It’s OK.

BALDWIN: “OK, OK,” whereupon Brooke, who brooks no disagreement, moved on to her next, more compliant guest.

Dr. SIZEMORE won’t be called on again by bossy Brooke.

As one wag said, “When inquiry is shut down, it becomes advocacy,” or something like that.

A Youth’s Ignorance About Me, Islam & Ground Zero Of Private Property

Ilana Mercer, Islam, Kids, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Private Property

To my post “Should A Vocal, Veteran Critic Of Islam ‘Conference’ In Turkey?,” the Libertarian Alliance’s Keir Martland offers the response of a patronizing youth, who has not read one word of the (analytical) writing done by this writer regarding Islam, over the years, aforementioned in the rhetorically titled post (aka “The Islam In the Room”).

Keir Martland’s reply can be distilled thus in its “substance” (there is nothing more to it):

“There, there, little woman, you are safe in Turkey. Every Muslim I met in Turkey was nice. The place is safe because I felt safe and say so.”

Well then. That settles it, doesn’t it?? (I said why the place was likely safe for the rest, but not for me.)

In his arrogance and condescension, Martland, moreover, appears to compare me, a longtime anti-war writer (see “The Curious Case Of WND’s Vanishing, Veteran Paleolibertarian” for similar flippancy), to the “bomb them back to the Stone Age” crowd. This, when he’s not deluding himself that an Islamic activist would bother to target him (who??), in the same way the Islamist would target me.

“I never once felt in danger or unwelcome either in Turkey,” Martland promises solipsistically.

A 20-something youth with practically no writings on the topic, Islam (and a condescending attitude toward those who’ve been thinking closely and writing publicly about the topic for ages), has nothing to fear from Islamists. (Surely being a conservative-libertarian should warrant a more realistic self-appraisal? Paleolibertarians are supposed to respect hierarchy, when earned.)

Martland’s flight of fancy is as though I were to imagine that my profile on matters Islam is like that of Robert Spencer or Andrew Bostom. While my political prescriptions, as a paleolibertarian, diverge from theirs considerably (not that Martland has bothered to discern that; he writes about my perspective from studied ignorance); as scholars, they know Islam better than I, are known by the Islamic world and are, consequently, targeted by it.

However, I certainly know how to apply my paleolibertarianism to the realities of Islam, better than this youngster (who’s done none of the work and is clearly ignorant about the “uncharitable views” he imputes to me and pontificates about).

More vapor from Martland:

Even if I did hold such views [presumably as mercer does] I would like to think that I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to spend a week at the King David Hotel, hosted by a charming Jewish couple, with a hundred of the most radical libertarians in the world.

As he attends a conference informed by private property, the boy still fails to grasp the totally rational reason for my decision not to go to Turkey. Martland shows himself incapable of grasping what should be ground zero for a propertarian: the conservation of one’s prime real estate, one’s life.

Basically, emotion being Martland’s framework, he conflates my not going to Turkey to “conference,” with an insult to Hans Hoppe (whom I love). It totally escapes Martland that the prime consideration for me is making prudent decisions based on conservation of scarce—nay, irreplaceable—private property: my corporeal self.

And Martland, you are radical only in your own MIND. A Golda-Meir zinger comes to mind. It’s a relic from a time when false humility was at least still practiced: “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.”

As to Martland’s King David Hotel allusion. It could very well be random, but, to someone who knows the historical baggage, and has lived through a few wars in Israel (as chronicled in the 2003 column, “BETRAYING BRAVE BOYS”), the reference comes off as though our youth has just learned, in his history class, about the blowing-up of the King David Hotel during the British Mandate, and he thinks he can leverage it oh-so cleverly in making a parallel point.

“I understand that you have your views on Islam, just as I might – for supposition’s sake – have uncharitable views about Judaism and the Jews,” Martland intones sanctimoniously (stupidly, too, as he demonstrates zero knowledge about my views, at least he show no familiarity with them in his feelings-based post. And given his penchant for feelings-based woffle, I would not trust Martland to grapple honestly with my views on Islam).

So says a boy with little life experience, to say nothing of experience living in hotbeds of Islam as this writer has (mind you, these days Britain is more dangerous than Israel, where I grew up). So says a youth who’s written practically nothing meaningful about one of the defining issues of the day: the Western State as the enabler of Islam and its fractious faithful.

Also bandied about elsewhere in connection with my post, “Should A Vocal, Veteran Critic Of Islam ‘Conference’ In Turkey?”, is the pejorative Islamophobia. That’s of a piece with the Hillary nomenclature; the Left’s accusations of thought crimes are accompanied with a slew of big words to describe thought criminals. Now libertarians are getting in on the Left’s vile act.

Yes, in a conference about the sanctity of private property, Keir has thought not at all about the corporeal self, the starting point of private property. He then lectures me about “the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists [being] a vile group of cultural Marxists, not some brave freedom-fighters” (not that the two are mutually exclusive, but logic is not Keir Martland’s thing).

This is a common talking point—the Charlie Hebdo characters being leftist scum. It’s old hat. We’re all agreed long ago (probably before our second-hander was born), and, as usual, the aspect was covered in The Charlie Hebdo Hypocrites. Sure. We all hate the Hebdoites (although we do not want them dead; unless it’s life voluntarily taken in suicide). But the aim—mine, at least—is NOT TO END UP LIKE THEM (DEAD).

The cherry on the cake is when Martlan goes off the logical reservation completely. If you can stand the smugness:

I also hope that, if the Mises Institute was to put on a lavish conference in Bible Belt Alabama, hosted by for example Gary North, I would not turn it down for fear of encountering views and people with whom I profoundly disagree.

Not only does Martlan misunderstand whence private property originates (see above), but so, too, does he misconstrue the extension of the argument from self-preservation:

I will not go to Turkey, not because I disagree with Islam, but because, in my assessment, my life is not as safe or protected as it should be (unless the heroic Martlan gets some assault rifle training or hires Pamela Geller’s security detail; how gauche of me).

The comparison drawn between America’s Bible Belt (a hotbed of Christian terrorism) and Turkey I will not dignify. This crap has been given more coverage than it/he deserves.

Should A Vocal, Veteran Critic Of Islam ‘Conference’ In Turkey?

Free Speech, Freedom of Religion, Ilana Mercer, Islam, libertarianism, Liberty, Private Property

First, in order of importance, forgive the verbing of the noun “conference.” Bad form.

Next: Young Keir Martland, of The Libertarian Alliance (my British home, and where you can find my weekly column), describes an exhilarating conference at the Property & Freedom Society, hosted by the fabulous Hans-Hermann Hoppe whom I know and admire, and his wife, Dr. Guelcin Imre Hoppe.

Place: The majestic Hotel Karia Princess in Bodrum, Turkey.

In the past, Dr. Hoppe had graciously extended an invitation to me. But let’s be frank. Turkey is not safe for anyone with a long and known record as a vocal critic of the religion of peace—and I here finesse my stance on Islam. Nor have I been a wallflower about the campaign waged by the Turkish government against Kurdish separatists. I don’t see how libertarians can countenance the Turks in this dispute.

It’s true that the US is also unsafe for critics of Islam (read my analysis of the attempt on the life of free-speech Jewish activist Pamela Geller), but Turkey even less so. The last is not a point of debate. “Bad things could happen anywhere, these days” won’t wash to dismiss the illiberal political and religious direction taken by the Turkish State.

In the US, we still have more rights to defend our prime real estate—OURSELVES—than elsewhere in the world (although I’m eyeing Hungary and Poland, which don’t admit refugees). The rest of the world is slowly becoming Dar al-Islam (House of Islam). In other words, it’s being made safe for Islam, but not its critics.

A whimsical, “Oh, plenty Jews attended and were safe at the Property & Freedom Society is also bogus, as none, as far as I know, has beat up on Islam systematically, in writing, for a very long time.

If anything, “Those Cartoons: A Reply To Walter Block,” critiqued attendee Dr. Block for asserting, in 2006, “under the rubric of a libertarian analysis, that libertarians would view [Muhammad-mocking] cartoons as immoral and that ‘from the libertarian perspective, both sets of acts—’drawing [forbidden] pictures of Muhammad’ and offending ‘western sensibilities’—are ‘improper.” I wrote:

… If a radical proponent of freedom such as Dr. Block can dub mild satire immoral, inadvertently tainting innocent, non-aggressive satirists, then it’s imperative to address the substance of the speech being debated, lest innocent polemicists and illustrators be maligned. What is Dr. Block’s premise for asserting these things are immoral? Other than that they offend Muslims, I see none. And to give offense is not always immoral. It is certainly not immoral to lampoon the connection between Muhammad, author of Islam, and the savagery and atavism that grip the Muslim world today. …

Nah. I don’t think Turkey is the place for my opinion, although Dr. Block is safe with his.

Dr. Block’s original article was removed. In a corrected version of “Those Cartoons: A Libertarian Analysis linked here, Walter said he offered some correction to his original apologia. I couldn’t see it (which could be my shortfall).

In any event, my point obtains. As a longtime, public critic of Islam, I would not “conference” in Turkey, not even for Hans Hoppe.

Perhaps I should have titled the post, “The Islam In the Room.”

Turkey:

 

‘Remembering The World Trade Center: 15 Years Ago’

Islam, Jihad, Terrorism

I recall calling Chris Matthew Sciabarra around the time September 11 happened. Like the best of New York, Chris was hyper, in fight-but-never-flight mode. That’s my Chris. And he has commemorated the attack on the greatest city in the world—was I overcome by patriotism when I visited New York!—his hometown, in the most personal way each year.

REMEMBERING THE WORLD TRADE CENTER: FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
By Chris Matthew Sciabarra

Fifteen years. It has been fifteen years since my city, the city of my birth, the city I still call home, was changed forever by an attack of unbearable madness.

New Yorkers were awakening to a beautiful late summer day; the cicadas were particularly loud, as they always are at this time of year, their songs echoing throughout a tranquil urban landscape. It had rained the night before—I remember that all too clearly, because I was scheduled to go to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees face off against the Boston Red Sox. They had already won three straight games—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday—against their celebrated rivals, and we were going for a four-game sweep. But on September 10th, the Yankee game was rained out before it began. I had last seen the Twin Towers up close, driving a visiting friend back to Penn Station on the weekend before September 11th, as we craned our necks upward to see the tops of those remarkable buildings. No other opportunities presented themselves for me to drive passed the Towers again, for a week later, they would be no more.

Like many New York dog owners, my first order of business of the day was to walk my dog. When I walked outside with Blondie, I was stunned by how such a rainy Monday had given way to such a blazingly sunny, clear Tuesday morning, with a breathtakingly beautiful, virtually cloudless, blue sky. It was a working day, but also the day of highly contentious primary elections for the next mayor of the Big Apple. A heavy voter turnout was expected, for Rudy Giuliani was at the end of his two-term limit, and a new mayor would be elected to run City Hall, and to take over the political reins of a metropolis that had weathered the storms of high crime and urban blight over a controversial eight-year period of tumultuous social and cultural change across the political landscape. A heated mayoral race was shaping up in both of the major political parties; Michael Bloomberg would ultimately win the Republican Party nomination over Herman Badillo, and Mark Green would ultimately win the Democratic Party nomination over Fernando Ferrer. But because of the events that took place on the morning of September 11, 2001, the primaries would be postponed till September 25th. None of the Democratic candidates received a majority of the vote on that date, and it was not until October 11th that Mark Green beat Ferrer in a run-off; on November 6th, Green would be defeated by Bloomberg, who would eventually dispense with that two-term limit (a “one-time only” agreement with the City Council) and reign over the city for three terms.

Politics, politics, politics was on the minds of so many voters that morning. And since the polls opened at 6 a.m., many went to cast their votes before work. Some took their children to their first day of school. It was a godsend to be running late for those who worked in the Twin Towers, but who arrived at their destination after their typical 9 a.m. start. If the planes had struck an hour later, there may have been 50,000 people in the Towers. But two of the most iconic buildings in the world had already been struck. There was simply no workplace to enter anytime after 9:03 a.m.

Over the years, I had developed a habit of taping news events, in case I’d want to write about them. I remember especially taping the full twenty-four hours of coverage devoted to the New Year’s Eve millennium celebration, welcoming the year 2000, as broadcast on ABC television and hosted by Peter Jennings. There was no Y2K apocalypse; the Berlin Wall had fallen; the communist menace that was once the Soviet Union was a thing of the past. A new century, a new millennium, had arrived with a blast of optimism.

Nobody ever dreamed that in less than two years, that optimism would be crushed under the weight of domestic and foreign threats that had been growing underground for decades, awaiting for the right moments to spring forth.

As the early morning hours progressed, I was communicating with a friend on email. And uncharacteristically, even though I knew it was Primary Day, I was not watching “Good Morning America,” my morning show of choice on the ABC network. A little after 8:45 a.m., my sister called me from work; she was serving as Deputy Superintendent of High Schools at 110 Livingston Street, the headquarters of the New York City Board of Education (later renamed the NYC Department of Education, under Bloomberg). She told me that a plane had struck the North Tower of the Trade Center and I should turn on the TV. It must have been a terrible accident, we both reasoned.

I turned the TV on, and simultaneously grabbed the first VHS tape I could find. It was a tape that I had used only five days before this sun-drenched morning: a recording of the MTV Video Music Awards that aired on September 6, 2001. It was a particularly memorable night, held at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, because Michael Jackson made a surprise appearance in performance with *NSYNC of their song “Pop” [YouTube link]. Jackson was in town recording a special in honor of his 30th anniversary in the music industry, and that special, taped from Madison Square Garden on September 7th and September 10th, was later aired by CBS in November [full concert YouTube link], featuring a performance of “Dancing Machine” also with *NYSNC [YouTube link]. (MJ is one of the famous people who avoided death on 9/11; he was due to attend a WTC meeting that morning, but had overslept.) On the same video tape was a documentary feature that appeared a day or two after the MTV Video Music Awards. It was “Backstory,” a production of AMC—when that channel actually showed “American Movie Classics.” The feature told the story of the making of “An Affair to Remember,” a tear-jerker of a film, starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. In retrospect, little irony was lost on me as I reached for this tape in preparation for this essay, for in that 1957 film, the Empire State Building, then the tallest building in the world, plays a key “role” in the unfolding plot events of the love story. The documentary reminds us how “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993) had countless references to the Grant-Kerr classic.

In my reviewing of all the video tapes that I recorded of the news events of 2001 and beyond, I decided that, for the purposes of this year’s fifteenth anniversary, I would focus only on the September 11th coverage as it unfolded on my television, in the minute-by-minute all-day taping that I had archived for future reference. For this essay, then, I confine myself only to the television coverage that I watched from 8:45 a.m. until midnight on that tragic day.

And so, when I popped in that first tape of the dozens of tapes I own of the television coverage of the tragedy and its aftermath, I saw that as soon as the AMC “Backstory” concluded, a startling image suddenly appeared on the screen of a helicopter view of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, which had eclipsed the Empire State Building of “An Affair to Remember” as one of the two tallest buildings in the world. The tower was billowing black smoke. I was immediately transported, as if by a Time Machine, back to that tragic morning, and I can relate here my thoughts, feelings, and actions throughout that day by following the timeline of what I witnessed on TV and on the streets of my hometown. …

… There’s more. Read Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s essay: “Remembering The World Trade Center: 15 Years Ago.”