Dennis Prager: Time Fights Carbon Emissions; Military Fights Evil

This nails it for today - the original is posted on RealClearPolitics. (Emphasis mine)
By Dennis Prager

The state of the liberal mind is on display on this week's cover of Time magazine.

The already notorious cover takes the iconic photograph of U.S. Marines planting the American flag on Iwo Jima and substitutes a tree for the flag. Why Time's editors did this explains much about contemporary liberalism.

The first thing it explains is that liberals, not to mention the left as a whole, stopped fighting evil during the Vietnam War. As I wrote in my last column, whereas liberals had led the fight against Nazism before and during World War II, and against Communism after the War, the liberal will to fight Communism, the greatest organized evil of the post-War world, collapsed during the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War did to American liberals what World War I did to most Europeans -- it rendered them anti-war rather than anti-evil.

That is why liberals have gone AWOL in the fight against Islamic totalitarianism. As during the post-Vietnam Cold War, when liberals fought anti-Communists much more than they fought Communists, they fight anti-Islamists much more than they fight Islamists. Thus, Democrats routinely dismiss the Bush administration's talk about the threat of Islamic terror as "scare tactics."

But -- and this is a primary reason for Time's cover -- liberals know that they have largely opted out of the fight against Islamists; their only passion on this matter is abandoning the war against Islamists in Iraq. But like nearly all people who believe in a cause, they know that they have to fight some evil -- after all, the world really seems threatened by something. So they have channeled their desire to fight threats to the world to fighting an enemy that will not hurt them or their loved ones -- man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

It is much easier to fight global warming than to fight human evil. You will be celebrated at Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, the BBC and throughout the media world, no one will threaten your life, there are huge grants available to scientists and others who fight real or exaggerated environmental problems, and you may even receive an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize. Individuals who fight Islamists get fatwas.

The Time cover is cheap heroism. It is a liberal attempt to depict as equally heroic those who fight carbon emissions and those who fought Japanese fascists and Nazis.

Second, for much of the left, the cover reflects the primacy of environmental concerns over moral concerns. For example, the left seemed never to care about the millions of Africans who continued to die from malaria largely because of the environmentalists' worldwide ban on the use of DDT as pesticide. The same holds true for another leftwing environmentalist fantasy. Changing corn into biofuels is causing a surge in food prices throughout the world. The European Union continues this policy despite warnings even from some environmentalists that food shortages, starvation and food riots are imminent. But human suffering is not as significant as environmental degradation.

Third, the left is far more internationalist -- global, if you will -- in its orientation than national. As the Time article states, "Going green: What could be redder, whiter and bluer than that?" Whereas, for most Americans patriotism remains red, white and blue, for much of the left it is green.

Fourth, the further left you go, the more inclined you are to hysteria. From the threat of DDT to the threat of heterosexual AIDS in America to that mass killer secondhand smoke, the left believes and spreads threats that, unlike the threat of Islamic terror, really are "scare tactics."

Years from now, Time's cover will be regarded as another silly media-induced fear. But, as with Time's 1974 article warning its readers about "another ice age" and its many articles on the threat of heterosexual AIDS in America, Time will just let public amnesia deal with credibility problems. Until then, however, one fact remains: Today, conservatives fight evil and liberals fight carbon emissions. That's what this week's cover of Time is about.

Goose Creek Update: Life In Prison, and a New York Connection?

For those of you who read this when it was the old Body Politic, you'll remember the coverage of the two "youths" who were arrested in Goose Creek outside the Naval Weapons Center there. Pictures to left.

Yesterday, a federal grand jury handed down indictments against both men which add up to possible sentences of 65 years to life. These new indictments supersede prior charges.

Today, a third man (also a USF student) was charged by the FBI, allegedly in relation to weapons charges and support for terrorism. This new defendant, Karim Moussaoui, apparently has New York connections. This is just starting to play out.

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Odd note of the story: Jonathan Turley, the law professor that most of us would remember as defending President Clinton on the cable news shows during the impeachment proceedings, is apparently defending Sami al-Arian, the USF professor who may have started Mohamed and Megahed on this particular terror journey. Now he's trying to claim that these new charges for al-Arian's cohorts are spurious (these charges don't make his client look very good, if proven true). Interesting and strange connection there...


Also reporting/blogging: Michele Malkin, Debbie Schlussel, Tampa Bay Observer

Random Monday Thoughts on Presidential politics

Barack Obama thinks small town voters are "bitter", and that their bitterness drives them to guns and religion?

Hasn't that pretty much been the Democrat Party Platform since the late 1960s?

I'm just glad he had the honesty to tell us what he really thinks. What thinking evangelical leaders can possibly take his candidacy seriously now?

Matt Lewis (of TownHall and the Leadership Institute) sums it up nicely:

The most disturbing aspect of this entire scandal is that Obama's comments demonstrate how liberals truly view religion: As unwelcome competition to government -- their real savior.

Newt piles on:

If you go to the most expensive private school in Hawaii and then move on to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, you may not understand normal Americans. Their beliefs are so alien to your leftwing viewpoint that you have to seek some psychological explanation for what seem to be weird ideas.

They can’t really believe in the right to bear arms.

They can’t really believe in traditional marriage.

They can’t really believe in their faith in God.

They can’t really want to enforce the law on immigration.

Therefore, they must be “bitter” and “frustrated.”

This is the closest Senator Obama has come to openly sharing his wife’s view that “America is a mean country”. Not since Governor Dukakis have we seen anyone so out of touch with normal Americans. It makes perfect sense that it was in a fundraiser in San Francisco that he would have shared the views he has so carefully kept hidden for the entire campaign.

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Not that Hillary can fully take advantage, since her Hubby won't shut up about the Tuzla canard... Clinton Fatigue II, the Return...

Honestly, I don't know who to root for on the D side, the Marxist or the Serial Liar.

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Is it any wonder, then, that McCain has taken small leads in Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania... and New York??!? This is going to be a fifty state race, but with Hillary and Obama shooting their own feet, you've got to think McCain wins out if the Dems can't hold on to big blue states.

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Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter sums up what's been wrong with Democrat Presidential foreign policy for three decades: "I've been meeting with Hamas leaders for years."