Official Website of Andrew Klavan » politics

Memorial Day

Andrew Klavan — Mon, 30 May 2011 14:00:48 +0000

“A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”

John Stuart Mill

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The Racism of the Left

Andrew Klavan — Mon, 09 May 2011 14:00:30 +0000

[I originally wrote this post for last week, but pushed it because of the bin Laden killing. It's no longer strictly topical, but I think it's still true.]

I have to admit I know some individual right wingers who are racist – but leftism is racism. Only the left, by politics, purpose and philosophy, divides people into racial groups and demands they be treated differently both in ordinary human commerce and under the law. No conservative I know would consent to such an outrage against justice and morality, no matter what his private feelings might be.

So obsessed with race are leftists – so convinced are they that black people especially are unable to care for themselves as men and women must – that they seek to exempt blacks and other minorities from the normal rigors of competence and good behavior. Having then disgracefully and destructively lowered the standards for people with dark skin, they accuse the rest of us of racism simply for treating dark-skinned people the same as we would treat anyone! A world turned upside down.

Questions about Barack Obama’s birthplace have been long resolved and were resolved yet again when funny-haired blowhard Donald Trump bullied the White House into releasing the president’s long form birth certificate. Many on the left then railed against so-called birthers as being racist, of all things. The “racers’” convoluted logic is that demanding Obama’s birth certificate is suggesting that he’s somehow “other” because he’s black.

Like almost all modern charges of racism, this is trash. The silly preoccupation with the president’s birth is not a reaction to his skin color, it’s a reaction to the left wing media’s reaction to his skin color – which was to give candidate Obama a complete pass on issues that would have derailed any other presidential hopeful and most especially any Republican. Twenty years in the pews of hate-monger Jeremiah Wright? Never mind. Old interviews suggesting Obama is an anti-constitutional socialist? Nothing to see here. Cowardly votes of “present,” lies about his associations with Bill Ayres, black holes in his biography? Rather than investigate, the MSM ran interference for the candidate, turning their ire instead on citizens who asked the sorts of questions they should have been asking all along.

They did this because, one, they supported Obama’s leftist policies and, two, he was black and as the press is left wing – that is to say, racist – they felt he couldn’t be treated as roughly as a white candidate would be.

As a result, a huge portion of the country feels, rightly, that they don’t know this man, that he’s been allowed to keep secrets and preserve mysteries as no president in modern times. That’s why they’re obsessed with his records. It’s not right-wing racism. It’s left-wing racism come home to roost.

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More on bin Laden

Andrew Klavan — Mon, 02 May 2011 22:57:15 +0000

Last night, as I was still watching the news, my friends at City Journal called to request a short piece for a symposium on the killing of bin Laden. I basically wrote down what was in my mind at that moment. Here’s the meat of it:

As jubilant flag-waving crowds gathered outside the White House, the president recalled our unity as Americans in the aftermath of 9/11 and called for us to recreate that unity now. In a democracy, where truth is meant to rise through debate and opposition and resolution leading to more debate, unity can be overrated. But perhaps we can unify around this: there must be justice. Justice is a moral necessity of the human heart. We cannot live without it.

This is a harsh truth because justice is a harsh good. It is not gentle like mercy. It is not stagnant like equality. It is not a soft, shapeless word to be slapped on bumper stickers or chanted during rallies in order to inflame one’s own sense of virtue. Justice is an exact description of a specific social interaction: the awarding to men and women of the outcome they deserve. This does not exist in nature, not in this life. It’s something we do, something we give and often, too often, when evil has been committed, it has to be delivered at the end of a gun. There is sometimes simply no other way.

There’s more here – and some other pieces from CJ’s terrific writing stable.

Justice with a Bullet

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Justice with a Bullet

Andrew Klavan — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:00:14 +0000

Originally had a post here about the racism of the left, but I think we can take a day off to unify in celebration over the death of Osama bin Laden. Here are a few “ancillary observations” I made over at Ricochet:

1. Killing can be good. “Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill,” says the Prince in Romeo and Juliet. In other words, there are times when what feels virtuous and gentle is in fact brutal and wrong. One only had to watch TV last night to see the society-wide relief that true justice brings to a people and know that sometimes the only really virtuous action comes out of the barrel of a gun. So peel off those “War is not the answer,” and “Co-exist,” bumper stickers and try one that says, “Death to evildoers.” That’ll spruce up your Prius!

2. How’d we find out about the courier? I understand that the courier who was the final link to the bin Laden compound was discovered four years ago during the interrogation of a prisoner. Just curious: did this interrogation involve waterboarding? Man, that stuff works.

Hit the link to read the rest.

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Klavan to GLAAD: Drop Dead!

Andrew Klavan — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Let me preface this by saying, as I often have, that I respectfully and even lovingly disagree with many of my fellow conservatives and Christians on the matter of homosexuality. I think gays are part of God’s good creation, and whatever their individual private sins, they are between each of them and God and have absolutely nothing to do with me or anyone else. I have thought this since my youth and think it still.

That said… As everyone knows by now, Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant was fined 100 grand and the entire team was forced to make obeisance to the Gay and Lesibian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) after Bryant said “f—- faggot” about a ref who teed him up during the last six minutes of a game.

In my humble opinion, the Lakers should’ve told GLAAD to go to hell. I would like to here go on record as being officially sick to death of professional busybodies and tiresome prigs like GLAAD and NOW and all the rest telling people what they can think and say. Who appointed GLAAD the official representatives of gay people? Even if they were, who gave gay people the right to be loved or even respected? If Kobe Bryant lets off steam in the heat of battle with a slur, who on earth really gives a damn or thinks it affects the state of gay people in America? Only GLAAD, whose sole purpose on earth is to take umbrage. Well, let them get on with it and to hell with them.

Bryant made all the usual apologies – but what if he hadn’t? What if he had said: “Hey, sorry, I just don’t like gay people?” What if he feels they’re sick or sinful or just kind of weird and icky? Whose business is that? Why does GLAAD or even the NBA have any right to force him to change his private opinions? If the NBA wants to fine him on grounds of language, okay, I guess, but surely bad language gets spoken on such occasions all the time. Why make a point of this except to kow-tow to the GLAAD bullies.

The Lakers and the NBA should have had the guts to say something like, “Bryant used bad language during a heated moment. This happens a lot. That language doesn’t represent our organizations but what can you do? Take it up with Bryant.” And Bryant should have then told them to take a walk.

Someone needs to stand up to the PC thugs – to the whole system of thought policing by gays or by anyone. It is turning us into a nation of old ladies. Oh wait – is that derogatory toward old ladies? Well, to hell with them too!

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The Wisdom of the Depressed

Andrew Klavan — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:00:15 +0000

As I mentioned on a Ricochet podcast last week, I have an annoying habit of holding commentators responsible for their predictions. If a sports writer tells me the Red Sox are going to the series, and we get to the end of the season and they’re under .500, I remember it and, well, I’m a little less likely to pay attention to that guy’s prediction next time. Likewise, if a political writer like Dick Morris writes a book telling me that Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton are going to be running for president in 2008, I’m going to lose interest in what he thinks is going to happen in 2012. This applies even to people I admire for their insight and general brilliance like Charles (America will never elect a man named Barack Hussein Obama during war-time) Krauthammer and Shelby (Why Barack Obama can’t win) Steele.

Two people I know whose political predictions have been remarkably accurate are pollster Pat Caddell (also on the podcast) and writer E.J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center. These are guys whose insights I parrot whenever I want to create the entirely false impression that I have some idea what I’m talking about.

And I’ve noticed something: they’re both kind of dour! Not personally – they’re delightful personally – but politically, they often have a very bleak outlook. They generally think politicians will act stupidly and corruptly and the electorate will respond emotionally and ignorantly, that – to steal a line from Yeats – the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.

The accuracy of their predictions suggests, though doesn’t prove, that their underlying cynicism about the human political animal is likewise accurate. Which worries me. This really is a dire moment in American history, a dramatic crossroads at which we’re going to have to choose between the left’s suicidal hatred of western culture, and the right’s often stumbling but nonetheless vital belief in the principles that made us great and free. Is it too much to hope that the people are going to figure out which is the wiser road by 2012?

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The Debate We’re Not Having

Andrew Klavan — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:00:01 +0000

The David Horowitz Freedom Center held its annual spring conference this past weekend. I was there to speak on cultural matters and will post or link to the video when I can (it’s supposed to go up on the center’s website at some point).

Is Freedom Toast?

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was a spirited, sometimes even fierce, debate between two great American patriots moderated by a third. The question on the table was: “Can Islam Be Reformed?” On one side, was Robert Spencer, the Freedom Center’s courageous scholar of the international jihad against humanity and civilization. On the other side was the equally courageous American Muslim reformer Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, who runs the American Islamic Forum for Democracy dedicated to reforming Islam from within. Moderating was the terrific Andy McCarthy, the former US Attorney who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheik for the first World Trade Center bombing and who now writes brilliantly on the subject of jihad at NRO and elsewhere.

Dr. Jasser, a devout Muslim, is working to build new Islamic institutions that will counter those of the Sharia Imperialists currently creating a nightmare of violence and oppression in so much of the world. He’s optimistic about bringing reformation to Islam but knows it’s a long, hard road. Spencer believes much of the ugliness emanating from Islam is inherent in the Koran and other sacred writings. While he says he’s in favor of reform, he clearly believes the prospects for it are very dim indeed.

The moment in the debate that captured the dilemma all people of good will face was when Andy asked the debaters for solutions to the problem of international jihad. Dr. Jasser pushed his reform agenda and rightly pointed out that other solutions – the conversion of one quarter of the world, for instance – were completely unrealistic. Robert lucidly detailed the depth of the problem and pointed to the move toward more oppression and sharia coming out of the current turmoil in the middle east – but proposed no alternative plan.

My own opinion – still a work in progress – is that, yes, Dr. Jasser is right, reform can and must happen but that it won’t happen without a muscular reassertion of western values specifically from America… which itself won’t happen as long as Jeremiah Wright’s spiritual pupil remains in office.

But more important than what I think – than what anyone thinks – is that the debate itself is hardly being held at all on a national level. In the mainstream media we get nothing but condemnation of ordinary Americans for their “Islamophobia” whenever they raise the issue. At the government level, we get approval for lowlifes and Sharia Imperialists like CAIR and the Cordoba Mosque crowd, who are paraded dishonestly as “moderates.” Indeed when representative Peter King held hearings on the issue (at which Dr. Jasser testified) he was demonized and mocked. From most of our popular artistic community – movie makers, novelists, comedians and so on – we get silence or, worse, self-righteous preening. Our political and cultural leaders seem to think we can wish the problem away.

Islamism is the danger of the age. Islamists are the enemy all free people face. Sharia is the vulture waiting to consume constitutional liberty if we let it grow too weak to fight back. Honest debate by good people and true is the only way to find solutions. Where is it?

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Tea Party Patriots Video

Andrew Klavan — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:00:49 +0000

This is a bit complicated, but anyone interested in watching my speech to the Tea Party Patriots in Phoenix can hit this link–then scroll to the section marked “Saturday Night Culture Panel.” Bill Whittle and Joe Hicks go first and I’m last. When there’s an easier video to link to or embed, I’ll pop it up here.

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Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer

Andrew Klavan — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:00:48 +0000

For ninety minutes of its two hour run time, this often fascinating documentary manages to avoid sinking into the usual stultifying leftist propaganda – then down, down, down it goes.

For the first hour and a half, the film does an excellent job of portraying the man who rose from New York state Attorney General to Governor – and who might have become the first Jewish president if he hadn’t gotten caught betraying the law and his values, cheating on his wife and humiliating his three daughters by sleeping with a bunch of high priced call-girls. The movie doesn’t answer the question: “What was he thinking?” How could it? But it does give a good depiction of the casual corruption that engulfs him and the driven, tormented personality behind his success.

Although filmmaker Alex Gibney is clearly an anti-business leftist – and though he generally portrays Spitzer’s prosecution of Wall Street wrongdoers in heroic terms (some were great, some were questionable, and some of his behavior at the time was inexcusable and presaged his downfall) – he at least gives voice to the opposition throughout. Then at the end, we suddenly find ourselves listening to lefty journalist Wayne Barrett giving his “hunches” about the right wing conspiracy that brought Spitzer down. Now I knew Wayne very slightly when I wrote for the Village Voice. He’s a good reporter and I mean nothing against him personally, but I simply don’t understand why his leftist innuendos are worthy of inclusion here. Likewise who cares what Karen Finley – a woman who used to shove yams up her backside onstage as part of her “performance art” – has to say about sex and politics? Really, these interviews are absurd and leaving them out would’ve improved the film immensely.

So – good first hour and a half, skippable last half hour, except for the part where Spitzer, pushing off the interviewer’s offer to blame the right, takes full responsibility for himself, as he should.

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I Heart The Tea Party

Andrew Klavan — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:00:17 +0000

Just got back from Phoenix, Arizona where, along with PJTV’s Bill Whittle and Joe Hicks, I spoke to the Tea Party Patriots American Policy Summit. I have to say, if there were no such thing as Evangelical Christians, the tea partiers would be the single most slandered and mistreated people in America. Never – with the exception of evangelicals – has the disparity between the coverage of a group of people by the mainstream media and the reality about those people been so divergent. Check out this excellent report from our friends at the Media Research Center comparing how the media covers the tea party with how they cover the unions in Wisconsin. Rich Noyes and Scott Whitlock do a tremendous job of exposing the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the networks.

Anyway, our speeches went well. Whittle rocked the house as he so often does, and Hicks was the bastion of common sense and clear-headedness PJTV viewers have come to know and love. I did my best to explain some of the intellectual theories that the left uses to allow them to lie about and slander and sometimes entirely silence the opposition.

I talked about Post Modern theories which hold that there is no such thing as truth in human affairs only competing narratives. These ideas explain in part why the media feels justified in reporting on any racist comment that comes out of the tea party and none of the virulent racism that surrounds the union demonstrations: the tea party “narrative” is racist even if the people and their cause and their opinions aren’t racist in the least.

“Now, this is very high-level intellectual material,” I told the crowd, “and I know you’re just a bunch of knuckle-dragging, Bible-thumping tea partiers who might not be able to understand its subtlties. And some of you may be asking in your simple, silly way, ‘Hey, what’s the difference between post-modernism and lying?’”

What, indeed?

The speech isn’t online that I see, but here’s an interview Joe did with Bill and me.

Anyway, great crowd, great organization, great weekend. Not to be uncivil, but network news reporters should be killed and eaten.

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