"The developments followed a campaign promise by Ahmadinejad for a more Islamic-oriented country. He took office last August."

It is revolting how the media report such things with misleading verbiage to suggest that the "democratic" system over there is functioning just as ours does.

As I recall, Ahmadinejad won his "election" by having the ayatollahs disqualify all the liberal opposition candidates. So what is the real significance of his "keeping his campaign promises"?

Posted by: Stendec at September 5, 2006 8:55 AM

Next - They'll be burning books and forcing non-Shia to wear colors armbands... 1938 anyone?
KnightHawk

Posted by: KnightHawk at September 5, 2006 9:23 AM

OT but freaky:

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/05/060905132119.i7c4tz8n.html

British hospital introduces burka-style gown for Muslim patients

Posted by: Ben-Hur at September 5, 2006 9:33 AM

the mullahs join ranks with Lenin, Mao Tse Tung and Pol Pot...

It never works for distopians who attempt to foist their truth on the rest of us. Forcing the truth on the unwilling has even less chance to work now due to the fact that free thought can't be stopped at any artificial border. The world is too interconnected and disseminating information can't be stopped any longer. It's too easy.

It would work better for them to take on the ideas headlong, but Islam has no strength to take that approach. It has never had to mount a counter offensive in terms of ideas like other irrational faith-based belief systems have had to do in the past. It is far too late for the Islamic belief system to be able to do this - since it has pushed the old means of keeping itself in power on the world at large (force & threats).

The world is coming back on it with a vengence. The system is brittle and rigid. It won't be able to withstand a serious ideological and intellectual attacks. It simply doesn't have the tools and has painted itself into a corner with inshallah fatalism, determinism and absolutism.

Good bye Islam. It was real, but it wasn't fun and it won't be real run to finally get rid of you. You'll make sure lots of people die. May the curse of allah be on you.

Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at September 5, 2006 10:06 AM

Not to make light of this, but the thought occurred to me that maybe we can trade our liberal professors for theirs. The Chomsky's, Esposito's, et al, can go to Iran and happily teach anti-American and anti-Israel ideology, along with a dose of Holocaust denial; while Iran's liberals can come to the U.S. and teach democratic values. I think we'd all be better off.

Posted by: Howard, Fine & Howard at September 5, 2006 10:21 AM

Take the very best one. The one who is close to recognizing that the problem is not the regime, nor the "mullahs," but Islam itself, and what Islam does, and the attitudes and atmospherics that Islma creates. The real thing, the "moderate" who is on his way to becoming Ali Sina, rather than the "moderate" who is on his way to continuing to seek for that demmed elusive "true" Islam -- the Islma that has no Jihad, no claim to stake on the entire world, no division of the universe between Believer and Infidel, no right to so cruelly mistreat, as civilized people now understand and view it, and according not to a cruel ruler's whim but according rather, to the Holy Law of Islam, the Shari'a, all non-Muslms.

Take that person and bring him to, say, Columbia Univesity. Make room for him by getting rid of at least one or two of the "construction-of-Palestinian-nationalism" boys. Get rid, for example, of as-yet untenured Joseph Massad, while making conditions such that others, who managed to be tenured in the Esdrujula Period, that period of timidity and cupidity and stupidity during which there was a wholesale failure to detect, much less oppose, the Long March of Propagandists, both Muslims and non-Muslims (Carl Ernst, Michael Sells, Bruce Lawrence) for the Lesser and Greater Jihads through the ranks of MESA Nostra, until American universities, and their students, must endure the situation in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies that we all know so well today.

Hard to slowly divest oneself -- off, off, you lendings from the PLO office in Beirut -- of such people as Khalidi and the inimitable panegyrist Hamid Dabashi, but perhaps they can be forced out, the way, one suspects, the permanently nasty, and far too un-Lebanese, Rami Khouri has been eased out of "The Daily Star" where his disgraceful views on Hezbollah must have gotten to Michael Young, and will now be heading a specially funded Arab propaganda effort, one more of those pretend think-tanks designed to support Islam and the local Jihads.

With the money no longer going to the likes of Massad, or possibly Khalidi and Dabashi, hire that one Iranian. Let him show the students that there is more to the culture of Iran than the movies that Dabashi likes to show (and what would Kierostami think of Dabashi's Ode to Edward Said?) and actually give them Sa'adi, Hafiz, Firdousi, Omar Khayyam to read, and also to explain how very un-Islamic most of them were, and how they detected the Arab supremacism within Islam that made it so antipathetic to them.

Don't choose, please, one of those mere "moderates" who just thinks the rabble has gotten the upper hand but who believes, with Daniel Pipes, that "moderate Islam" is the "solution." Take someone whom you are sure is almost there -- almost at the point of recognizing not that "Islam itself is not the problem, but only those who misinterpret it" (in some always unspecified way) but that Islam, tout court, is the problem, and will always be the problem, and who may be on his way to something else -- possibly rediscovering, for the purposes of having that damned "identity" that everyone in the Muslim world thinks everyone has to have, including himself, or perhaps finding Christianity (on converts from Islam it always looks good) or the perils and plesures of the obstinate non-believer.

Make room for that kind of hopeful duckling. But only by getting rid of at least a few of those myrmidons of MESA Nostra, taking up time, taking up space.

Posted by: Hugh at September 5, 2006 10:27 AM

It's funny. Our university secular liberals are all in favor of Hizbollah and Iran.

Here's what should happen. We should do a trade. All the secural liberals in the muslim world should come to our universities, where they belong, and all our university secular liberals should be sent to the hell holes of islam, all the places they ideologically support.

What a perfect trade that would be. And everyone would be happy. Madhat would have his islamic apologists, and we would have sane, rational liberals in our universites, instead of the wacko, radical leftists.

Everyone would be happy - except for the wacko leftists. They would see that they made the wrong decision once the torturing starts.

It is interesting that the muslim universtity secular liberals oppose their state, while the western university secular liberals oppose ours. The difference is that the muslims secular liberals are opposing cruelty and tyranny, while the spoiled western secular liberals are championing and/or excusing cruelty and tyranny and denouncing the very forces of decency that allow them to exist in the first place.

Posted by: August22 at September 5, 2006 12:28 PM

He seems to be on the right path. It is important he remove any suspect scientists from the nuclear program and have only devout Muslims in charge; only by seeking divine inspiration can Iran overcome the limitations of Western Science and build upon its historic traditions.

The more educated the person the more he moves away from Islam and can become permeated with Western ideologies so it is best that only handpicked devout Muslims are put in charge and the power of true Islamic Knowhow be utilised.

This seems to be a far better solution to the Iran problem than attacking them..................just let them nuke themselves !

Posted by: Voyager at September 5, 2006 1:06 PM

Islamic "academics": According to the recently published UNDP report on Arab development, more than 50% of degrees granted by Saudi "universities" are in religion and Islamic literature.

The religion curricula no doubt include whole semester courses like "JINNS 205" or "ADVANCED ALCHEMY 451".

It should suit us just fine if Iranian astrologers ascend to the top of their academic food chain and busy their finest minds in the construction of Ptolemaic epicycles instead of weapons of mass destruction.

Posted by: Hulegu Khan at September 5, 2006 3:43 PM

This is really rich. Now, how are all the pro-Islamofascist [Iranian variety] goons in the academic world going to react now to this latest move by ahmadinajad? Are they going to cheer, to explain it away as "unislamic" or merely "extreme"? Where indeed will our degenerative linguist [Khomsky] stand? How about the MESA Nostra? or the myriads of politically correct, mentally defective myrmidons infesting the groves of academe?

[about Khomsky, it has been rumored that he plagiarized his linguistic theories from the late Prof. Zellig Harris of the Univ of Pennsylvania. If he goes to take up a chair at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Qom, he'll probably be more highly honored that ever before in his life. Under the beneficent sway of Ahmadinajad, any hint that Khomsky may have plagiarized from Prof. Harris will be an offense to the Shari`ah and the Prophet's Beard]

Posted by: Eliyahu at September 5, 2006 4:02 PM

One more reason to nuke Tehran.....

Posted by: Bohemond_1069 at September 5, 2006 5:49 PM

... while Iran's liberals can come to the U.S. and teach democratic values. I think we'd all be better off.

Haa. That's funny, in a twisted sorta way.

Let's do this: trade 10 of our Marxist professors for every one Persian "liberal" "academic" we must take in exchange.

As the Marxists fly east, puffing their pipes in their cardigan sweaters, we tranship the Persian "liberal" "academics" across the States and quiety move them off the easternmost beach on the easternmost Aleutian isle.

To be humane, the Persian "liberal" "academics" would be outfitted in whale boats with oars, full supplies for a 21-day voyage, a compass, and a map leading the to Kamchatka. Just to be a good non-Moslem, throw in a pile of halogen flashlights and spotlights for good measure.

Their multilayered Jihadi robery would protect them from the unkind elements there.

* 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 *

That hopeful fantasy would comprise the ultimate cultural exchange program ever.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at September 5, 2006 7:29 PM

It's funny our righteous conservatives are all for purging our own universities and schools of liberals and seculars, but when Ahmadinejad calls for it, they become hypocrites. Aint that right Eliyahu and August 22. You and many others on the "right" would , if you could, purge liberals and seculars wouldn't you? Of course you would.

And by the way not all Liberals and seculars are Islamophiles or apologists, I and many others (including some who post here) are not, but friend(s) I find no difference in substance or mentality between you guys and the Mullahcracy of Iran. In fact I find no difference (from a secular point of view)twixt Pat Robertson and Ahmadinejad.

Or even George Bush and Ahmadinejad, as both are religious and righteous, both believe in the End Times and apparently both believe they can hasten and bring on the end times..Tim La Haye prots and the Shi'ites have a lot in common.

Posted by: Nariz at September 5, 2006 8:48 PM

Nariz -

I was waiting to see how long it'd be before we'd see a comparison like that. Pathetic.

Posted by: Mo at September 5, 2006 9:16 PM

The silence and avoidance that you will hear from Academia around the world will be deafening.

And one must ask a liberal, is this too the cause of American foreign policy?

Posted by: alaskan1000 at September 5, 2006 10:31 PM

Nariz -

I was waiting to see how long it'd be before we'd see a comparison like that. Pathetic.

Posted by: Mo at September 5, 2006 09:16 PM

It's funny our righteous conservatives are all for purging our own universities and schools of liberals and seculars----Nariz

No Nariz, nobody ever suggested "purging" our universities of liberals and seculars. However, in the name of some of your favorite things, like "diversity" and "academic freedom", faculties should not consist of only America-hating Marxist, socialist, and secular or jihadist islamic professors. Believe it or not, there are other political ideologies in this country which are every bit as legitimate and worthy of respect as communism in its many insidious forms, and the latest darling of the left, political/cultural islam. Yes, I know that islam is more than politics and culture, but don't tell your pals at the ACLU.

I'm looking forward to the day their throats are cut by their favorite clients. Nobody on God's green earth deserves it more than the red diaper traitors in the ACLU, who have done more to aid and abet islamic terrorists and the islamic fifth column in America than CAIR. But now that CAIR and the ACLU have merged, they can work in tandem to make us all more vulnerable and insecure, while simultaneously pursuing their endless assaults on Christianity, the Boy Scouts, Christmas, and many other institutions and symbols that tens of millions of Americans cherish.

Oh my, I forgot! "We" don't count, do we? Only those vaunted, sacred minority groups who have been so egregiously oppressed, and only their "equivalent", but really superior, cultures are worthy. AFter all, they migrated to the West to fulfill their lifelong dreams of becoming persecuted victims, and with that lofty ambition comes eventual supremacy and dominance. Yes Nariz, left-wing radicals are the truly enlightened ones, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Three cheers for "progressives." Let me know when we get there, as soon as you decide where "where" is.

Posted by: Susanp at September 5, 2006 11:02 PM

It's funny our righteous conservatives are all for purging our own universities and schools of liberals and seculars, but when Ahmadinejad calls for it, they become hypocrites.

I guess you didn't read what I wrote concerning the differences between Islam's secular liberals and OURS. They are diametric opposites.

Ah, my leftist friend, there's the rub.

What a tortured existence you must live Nariz. Pro-left, but opposed to islam. Sooner or later you will have to make a choice.

Did you take my advice and go to a leftist rally with an anti-islam banner? Try it.

Posted by: August22 at September 5, 2006 11:37 PM

This is actually the best thing that could happen. Tyrannies have always tended to purge academia of all but loyal types, and as a result they have always tended to fall behind free countries. Even supposing that Chemist A and Chemist B both are equally competent in their subject, the fact that Chemist A has been promoted because he is a reliable party member and Chemist B because he is a star chemist in a college that values achievement in their own subject will soon send all sorts of disastrous messages about the employers of Chemist A. And at any rate that is rarely the case. Mediocrities are the ones who usually resort to party support to build an academic career. Read Trevor-Roper's brief but brilliant account of the decline of German education under Hitler, to see the script Ahmedinajad has brainlessly written for himself. He could not have done more to insure that Iran will grow weaker, more corrupt, more ignorant, and more incapable of coping with opponents.

Posted by: Paolo at September 5, 2006 11:42 PM

Ciao Paolo,

What's happening in La Patria ? Is La Finanziaria going to be passed, will this government last till Christmas, have they given all muslims the vote so they can stay in power ?

Posted by: PAS at September 6, 2006 1:54 AM

Ciao, PAS
I am not following very closely of late, because Prodi's decision to bail out Kofi Annan at the cost of Italian honour (whatever is left of it) and quite possibly of Italian lives (sent on a save-Hezbollah mission by a government that is thick with extreme pacifists, pro-Arabs and military-haters) has made me so apopleptic with fury that I cannot contemplate any Italian politician without the pleasing thought of a lamp-post and a knotted rope. While d'Alema wnt walkabout hand in hand with Hezbollah's number two thug - who will, no doubt, be ordering the death of Italian peacekeepers in a few months; but why should we be rude to him on that account? - Berlusconi supported Prodi's idiotic decision, indeed gave him advice; leaving, incredibly, the ignorant and undignified thug Bossi to speak for decency and honour. Ah yes, and Prodi is brilliantly proposing to shorten the time for grant of citizenship to five years. This while Italy is shaken by a series of terrible Muslim and immigrant crimes - "honour" killings, women committing suicide, rapes, robberies, murders, political terrorism, people trafficking. Prodi cleverly reassures the worried citizens that these are "individual" matters, as if "honour killing" and rape were a bizarre quirk that any member of any community might just indulge in.

Thanks to Berlusconi and Tremonti's criminal mismanagement of State accounts, the Finanziaria is out of Italy's control. Whatever posturing the two Communist parties may indulge in, Brussels calls the shots now, and they will demand a strong document featuring effective cuts in spending. The Communist yelping is pure posturing for the sake of their dumber electors - something in which they are very experienced. There literally is no politician in Italy whom I would touch except with a knife or a heavy bludgeon. They have all, majority and opposition, proved to be filth.

The good news is that the Press is still rather better than its counterparts over here. When, for instance, UCOII - the Italian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood - saw fit to try to publish an ad describing Israel in the usual terms of the international left - apartheid, nazi, warmongering, etc. - not only did all the media, right and left, Catholic and secular, explode in a fury of condemnation that rang from the Brenner to Lampedusa, but no major media outlet would take its money to publish it; not even the Communist Il Manifesto, notoriously sympathetic to Islamist extremism - and notoriously bankrupt. Only a few provincial papers ran it. And the condemnation was so loud and so continuous that, after a few days of obduracy, UCOII were forced to apologize. Nor does the Press cover up Islamic crimes: to the contrary, it is exactly because rapes by Muslims and honour killings are perceived to have become so common, that the Prodi government is having trouble with its nationality bill. Recently the whole country was horrified by the vicious murder of a nineteen-year-old girl by her own father and uncle; her Italian boyfriend - for whose sake she had been killed - burst into a fierce condemnation of Islam and all its works, which the British media would no doubt have censored. The Italian media reported it more or less in full, and it was in response to it that Mr.Prodi made his emollient comments about honour killings being "individual matters".

Posted by: Paolo at September 6, 2006 4:32 AM

Paolo,

Thanks, great post. Surely things aren't that dire. At least your media isn't as PC as elsewhere and this citizenship bill is facing hurdles. Would love to know what the boyfriend in Brescia said about the RoP. Can you put a link here ?

Pasquale.

Posted by: PAS at September 6, 2006 5:20 AM

Nariz, I am also a leftist, a ACLU supporter and an atheist, but even I think you are going a little to far in your anti-right rhetoric. I understand your disdain for many of the religious right's favorite lights, especially the end-timers. But realize that the religious right's power is mostly gone. Yes, they elected the Bush twice, but only with the help of people mad at Clinton for his shenanigans and again in 2004 because Kerry, god help him, just looked too weak. Look at the RR's "greatest threats" pre-9/11: Prayer in public shools, teaching evolution, no gay marriage, putting up the ten commandments, abortion and stem cell research. After 5 years of Republican control, these issues are still dead because the majority of Americans do not care about them. Well, not gay marriage, but still. And despite heated rhetoric, no one from the religious right (except the abortion clinic attackers) espouses or uses violence as a means to accomplish their goals. Stop beating the dead horse of the religious right, at least until they stage one terrorist attack of note against us liberals.

Now, look at the Islamists. They hate women and do everything in their power to abuse and keep them from power, they hate gays, and kill them on a regular basis, they hate atheists and free-thinkers and kill them on a regular basis, they hate freedom of speech and religion and kill those who espouse such freedoms on a regular basis, they attack and hate everything liberals love about freedom and an open society and they do it violently. So, yes, there are differences between the RR and IF. The Islamists are the real threat at this time and must be dealt with first.

Which doesn't mean you can't attack Bush. I think he is a fool, not because of his religion, but because of his intellect. Attack what he is doing, without trying to make his motives the equivalant to the Irainian President or OBL, because then people may listen to you.

And, just to show you my leftist credentuals are still in place: Ann the man Coulter was on Hannity and Colmes recently and she stated that it did not matter if America caught or killed OBL because "OBL doesn't matter." No THAT is a statement worth attacking.

Posted by: ryoga at September 6, 2006 8:26 AM

I love the idea of the trade -- as a joke. But Nariz, one of the many differences between us (i.e., the "rightists" here) and the Islamists is that we really do want the freedom to dispute ideas, and although we'd of course prefer to be in the majority (who wouldn't?), we wouldn't want people who disagreed with us fired or carted off to jail unless they did something illegal or unethical (e.g., destroyed property, plagiarized scholarship, incited to riot, etc.).

Another major difference is that if any of my liberal or leftist colleagues actually were caught in such a trade as the one we're joking about, and wound up suffering from the Islamic sanctions against infidels, women, gays, and so on, we really wouldn't sit back and enjoy seeing them tortured; we'd be revolted and we'd demand that they be rescued. I've had my own run-ins with leftists at my university, but I can't think of a single one whom I'd want mistreated in the way the Islamists treat their enemies.

So I'll have to say that the charge of hypocrisy is silly.

Posted by: Columba at September 6, 2006 9:02 AM

Pasquale:
the situation is so bad that I genuinely do not see where relief can come from. All the worst features of Italian politics, without exception, have come out of the election strengthened and flattered. Let us start from what I, and any honest patriot or lover of Italy, would have wanted from the last elections: a convincing win for a moderate left coalition, leaving outside the irresponsible green-communist-radical mob with their rainbow rags, that put paid once and for all to the undeserved personal prestige of Berlusconi among his followers, and, by clearing Italian politics of this anomalous, dishonest and failed figure, allow the creation of an honest and decent right-wing coalition led by someone like Fini or Casini.

What happened? The exact opposite. Panicked by a bad electoral law designed by Berlusconi, and in my view driven by the vicious ancient dream of "Unita' delle sinistre," unity of the Left, the moderate Left threw itself in the hands of the rainbow rabble and created an alliance whose lunacy, stretching as it did from Mastella (moderate Catholic) to Diliberto (raving Communist and fan of Fidel Castro, as well as friend of the Muslim Brotherhood), made the internal contradictions of Berlusconi's right look coherent and sensible by comparison. Now Berlusconi's government had been a complete, monumental failure, and Italians knew it. Two months before the elections, he was a political corpse. A goldfish could have run against him and won. For much of the electoral campaign, he remained dead: his big-personality, look-at-me-ain't-I-wunnerful shtick, no longer worked even with his most devoted followers. Finally, barely a month before the elections, he found the right chord to strike. Communists! Communists! COMMUNISTS!!! He kept hammering at that one concept, the awfulness of the enemy, its nature as a Communist Trojan Horse; and by playing only that one note, he nearly won. In fact, he probably did; the few tens of thousand of votes by which the Prodi coalition eventually made it home came from a party whose name and symbol were visibly imitated from that of Bossi's Lombard League (a member of the Berlusconi coalition) and which had otherwise no standing at all, clearly designed to steal Bossi votes. People voted for him in disgust, in weariness, in anger and self-hate, knowing only one thing - that bad though Berlusconi might be, they did not want the rainbow mob in government.

The result has been as bad as a lost war. On the right, far from being finally brought down to allow better men to lead the conservative alliance (better men? A goldfish would be better), Berlusconi, by his umpteenth feat of coming back from the dead, of surviving the loathing, the hatred, and the extremely deserved contempt of the majority of his fellow-citizens, has reinforced his standing as fated and inevitable leader. "I am doomed to go on," he has said himself, with a falsely martyred air, at a meeting of Catholic youth. The Government, heir to Berlusconi's disastrous and criminal mismanagement - for which he and his Finance Minister Tremonti ought to have been impeached long ago - has no margin of manoeuvre at all in managing the public expenditure, and will be forced by Brussels, against all its left-wing instincts, to cut and cut and cut. In order to retain some shadow of left identity and please the irresponsible rainbow wing which is now wretchedly welded into the majority (the Communist Bertinotti, Speaker of the Senate, caused great offence by attending the annual military parade of June 2 with a rainbow "peace" badge in the lapel of his exquisite suit), stupid and irresponsible social policies are sure to be enacted. Thus both sides grow daily worse, more morally corrupt, more mentally compromised. And these are the people who will go on governing my country.

Posted by: Paolo at September 6, 2006 10:05 AM

Ah conservatives being stupid again. I dont know where you get these statistics that say all university faculty are leftists, and that all leftists are marxists. I know conservatives cant distinguish between marxism of the 19th century and socialism in the form of
regulated, anti-corporate special interest capitalism, but the fact that conservatives usually get MBAs instead of a well-rounded education is probably why they're working at insurance companies, banks, and brokerage houses raping the American
worker of their honestly-earned income is why there arent more conservatives in universities. Conservatives always have a little bit of a complex about their brainpower, look at our idiot not-savant prezeeduhnt. Right-wingers are always suspicious of brains, because its easier to be akneejerk couch general sending other people's kids to die for their corporate payoffs.

Repub women are almost worse than the men, with their entitled racist beotch attitudes. Look at Ann Coulter spouting forever ab out moral values, while she cant stop wearing a short black cocktail dress. Talk about hypocrisy.

Yes, the Iranian leaders are nuts and yes, purging professors is bad. I seem to distinctly remember neanderthal right-wingers wanting 'leftists' purged from universities for teaching something as factual as evolution. Boy, you repubs have short memories to go along with your pitifully small abilities to analyze and look around an issue, instead of marching into the sea like the lemmings you are.

So whatever, couch jockeys, you want to change Iran, then shut up and join the armed forces, or send your lily-livered spoiled brats like GW to the war to fight it. We're not gonna get solid dems at home until economics gets bad enough to frame the issues where they really should be, power of the worker versus the master. And no, thats not communism necessarily. I know conservatives dont understand nuance
and compromise. Figures right-wing nutcases would try
to blame university professors for everything. They always have blamed someone other than themselves.

Nariz is right , period. And Ryoga, if you thin k the right-wing in thisn tounry wouldnt try a coup, you're really
an apologist. The right-wing needs to eb fought and defeated. They are the fascists they talk about. The only thing that saves us is I doubt that the local police and natl guard would enforce martial law, so that seems unlikely. Plus, declaring martial law would sink the economy and probably get the administration arrested or worse. still, I'm so tired of compromising little dems and liberals. Sure, Islam is a threat,
so is right-wing capitalist fascism, and master-race christianity. You dont negotiate with terrorists and all these groups are terrorists.

Posted by: JacksonWallace at September 6, 2006 5:27 PM

Mo, youre the pathetic one for saying you can imagine what someone will say before they say it and then respond with such a superior response backed up with nothing. Typical republican response and worse than 'pathetic' - nyanyanyanya, I'm a little baby like GW - pout pout.

Susan - I dont know what youre smoking but I guess you havent been paying attention when you said "noone has called for a purging of US universities" You want influence in academia, then buckle down and get a PhD, maybe your brain will open up. I guess Roberston is an expert on domestic and foreign policy just because he speaks for God like an idolater on the network he stole from Jim Bakker. PLEASE WAKE UP.

Alaska1000 - I suppose American foreign policy has nothing to do with the situation we're in, huh? We've just been Mr Sweetcheeks to the world for the last 100 years, right? Read some history, good gawd.

Then US right has had decades to show us that they know how to do something right, and every time they fail miserably fail and subvert the Constitution in the process. The Dems will have to clean up the mess, and what will the conservatives be doing? Will they be helping, like they want the left to help GW? No, they will be whining from the sidelines.

YOUR hypocrisy, greed and mental laziness is what has dragged this country to this place we're in. YOU had power and you cant take responsibility for what you've made, an unmitigated disaster. Even during Clinton, you had the congress for six out of eight years, but its all Clinton's fault?
Sorry, but thats just stupid beyond any help.

Stupid kneejerk thinking of Repubs is what is PATHETIC, the only big word repubs know.

Posted by: JacksonWallace at September 6, 2006 5:53 PM

JacksonWallace, you forgot to call the workers to unite.

Posted by: JadeDragoness at September 6, 2006 6:50 PM

More "tolerance" from the Left?

I just love how they tolerate islam, and hate fellow Americans.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at September 6, 2006 7:24 PM

I suppose American foreign policy has nothing to do with the situation we're in, huh? We've just been Mr Sweetcheeks to the world for the last 100 years, right? Read some history, good gawd.

Who has clean hands, Mr. Rightgeous? Huh? What country? What leader?

Posted by: Carolyn2 at September 6, 2006 7:26 PM

and yes, I had typos
Righteous

Posted by: Carolyn2 at September 6, 2006 7:51 PM

Who has clean hands, Mr. Rightgeous? Huh? What country? What leader?

Posted by: Carolyn2 at September 6, 2006 07:26 PM

Why Fidel is the leader, Cuba is the country. The left-wingers just adore Fidel because he is such a wonderful, kind, and generous tyrant. He provided every family in Cuba with their very own rice cooker. They may not have electricity, refrigerators, or FOOD, but hey, they all have rice cookers. That's a stellar example of the social justice the "progressives" clamor so loudly for, but they're always mute regarding the collective poverty, misery, and prisons or executions for political dissidents. Ahh, the joy of owning one's very own rice cooker. Utopia in Cuba, coming soon to America if the Democrats have their way. I can just see Hillary's "village" now, the Marxist witch.

Posted by: Susanp at September 6, 2006 11:04 PM

Dear Nariz,
I am afraid that like Pinocchio, your nariz is growing apace every time that you tell a fib. I did not call for anybody to be fired from any university. I was pointing to the hypocrisy of those who so often strike poses of civil libertarianism, but in fact condone the suppression of civil liberties when it suits them. Such are Khomsky, and many other academic phoneys. Read my post again. Furthermore, I reject the notion of a political spectrum, of right-left, and even doubt that the "conservative-liberal" distinction has much meaning today in practice. So I don't especially mind if you call me either a liberal or a conservative. There is something to be said for both positions, if understood in the classical sense of those terms. In fact, I think that today one ought to be both. On the other hand, left-right, izquierda-derecha, sinistra-destra, are simply non-existent distinctions. The use of the political spectrum notion only helps the enemies of civilization.

Posted by: Eliyahu at September 7, 2006 8:01 AM

What a tortured existence you must live Nariz. Pro-left, but opposed to islam. Sooner or later you will have to make a choice.

And some other choice quotes of "wounded and self righteous, self proclaimed rightists".

Sorry to disappoint but my existence is not tortured, unlike most fools on this planet, I do not believe that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Fact is that I am not a pure leftist, I consider myself a Goldwater Conservative, but put me to the left of the proto fascists who have infiltrated and usurped what was once an honest conservative movement.. and in truth I find todays so called consservatives little differentiated (from a cultural and social point of view) than the Islamists..the end result will be the same for us "liberals and leftists" and as one poster signs off A plague on both houses.

Proto fascist right wingers disgust me as much as those idiot left wingers and Marxists who roll over for Islam.

Posted by: Nariz at September 8, 2006 12:18 AM

By the way Ryoga if you come back and read this, you waste your time educating me about Islam and it's threat.. I probably know more than you do.. I certainly have read more than most, including most posters on this forum.. and I haven't met anyone who holds Islam in more disdain than I do...at the same time I do not discount, or play down, the threat to my and your civil liberties and rights by the so called right wing..

And I find little different between them, they both hate liberals and seculars, they both would suspend (if they could) the civil rights of those who are not as "religious" and righteous as they..and I know from experience (I'm 67) that conservatives have no tolerance for dissent or those who refuse to conform and submit.. no tolerance at all...regardless of what they might say.

Conservative is what Islam is, ultra conservative, conservative is what the Family Council, Bush, the Independent Womens Forum, the Eagle Forum, the Freepers, and "god fearing" Christians are...

This liberal (and not I am not a leftist, but I am a social liberal) wants nothing to do with any of them.. but from a practical point of view.. the homegrown threat is more immediate and dangerous and no my friend they are not disempowered.. they still dominate the media, the airways, cable TV, punditry and elections.

Posted by: Nariz at September 8, 2006 12:31 AM