It’s a nightmare that could all too easily come true: the Republican Party denies Donald Trump the nomination, he bolts, and Hillary Clinton, unindicted by a sympathetic Obama Justice Department, becomes president. If she does, it is virtually certain that the Obama administration’s lackadaisical and fantasy-based response to the jihad threat would continue.
Hillary made that clear Tuesday morning in her response to the latest jihad terror attacks in Brussels, in which at least 28 people were killed.
The mass murders were “deeply distressing,” she said, but the “dream of a whole, free Europe … should not be walked away from,” and “we’ve got to work this through consistent with our values.” Her implication was clear: any response to what is rapidly becoming a state of war in Europe must not reject the multiculturalist fantasies that created the state of war in the first place. The Muslim migrants, including any number of jihadis, must continue to stream into Europe, for to stop them would end the “dream of a whole, free Europe” and not be “consistent with our values.”
Her lockstep establishment response was no surprise. In November 2015, Hillary tweeted: “Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” Did even she believe these words as she wrote them? She may indeed subscribe to the mainstream Leftist view that Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism, and that any Muslim who does get involved with terrorism ceases at that very moment to be a Muslim. But she has never bothered to explain how she proposes to deal with those troublesome people who identify themselves as Muslims and not only commit acts of terrorism, but justify those actions and find recruits among peaceful Muslims by pointing to Islamic teachings.
Hillary Clinton — and everyone else in the world — clearly knows that all too many Muslims do in fact have something to do with terrorism. And the fact that many millions do not tells us exactly nothing about the content of Islamic teaching, and whether or not the Qur’an and Sunnah contain material that makes many Muslims think that Islam is indeed our adversary. President Hillary Clinton will have no chance of defeating the Islamic terror threat when she is this divorced from reality.
She has been adhering to and enforcing this denial for years. In October 2009 when she was secretary of State, the Obama administration joined Egypt in supporting a resolution in the UN’s Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to the freedom of speech for “any negative racial and religious stereotyping.” Approved by the UN Human Rights Council, the resolution called on states to condemn and criminalize “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”
The effect of this criminalization would be to forbid all criticism of Islam, including analyses of the motives and goals of jihad terrorists. The jihad would then proceed unopposed, as to stand against it would be “incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence.”
“Incitement” and “hatred” are in the eye of the beholder — or more precisely, in the eye of those who make such determinations. The powerful can decide to silence the powerless by classifying their views as “hate speech.” The Founding Fathers knew that the freedom of speech was an essential safeguard against tyranny: the ability to dissent, freely and publicly and without fear of imprisonment or other reprisal, is a cornerstone of any genuine republic. If some ideas cannot be heard and are proscribed from above, the ones in control are tyrants, however benevolent they may be.
But with this resolution, no less distinguished a person than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her imprimatur to this tyranny.
She affirmed the Obama administration’s support for it on July 15, 2011, when she gave an address on the freedom of speech at an Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) conference on Combating Religious Intolerance. “Together, she said, “we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of expression and we are pursuing a new approach. These are fundamental freedoms that belong to all people in all places and they are certainly essential to democracy.”
But how could both religious sensitivities and freedom of expression be protected?
Clinton had a First Amendment to deal with, and so in place of legal restrictions on criminalization of Islam, she suggested “old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.” She held a lengthy closed-door meeting with OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in December 2011 to facilitate the adoption of measures that would advance the OIC’s anti-free speech campaign. But what agreements she and Ihsanoglu made, if any, have never been disclosed. Still, the specter of an American secretary of State conferring with a foreign official about how to restrict the freedom of speech in order to stifle communications deemed offensive to Muslims was, at the very least, chilling.
If Clinton is, against all likelihood, indicted or otherwise falters, Bernie Sanders is unlikely to stand any more strongly than she would for the freedom of speech and against the global jihad. Last October, Muslim student Remaz Abdelgader referred to Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson’s statements about not wanting a Muslim president, saying to Sanders: “Being an American is such a strong part of my identity, but I want to create a change in this society. I’m so tired of listening to this rhetoric saying I can’t be president one day, that I should not be in office. It makes me so angry and upset. This is my country.” Sanders’ response? “If we stand for anything we have to stand together and end all forms of racism in this country. I will lead that effort as president.”
“All forms of racism”? What race is Islamic jihad terror? What race is Sharia oppression of women, non-Muslims, and gays? Carson raised a legitimate question about the compatibility of Sharia and the U.S. Constitution. Sharia denies the freedom of speech and the equality of rights of women and non-Muslims before the law, and contravenes the Constitution in other ways as well. As far as Bernie Sanders is concerned, however, noting these unpleasant facts is simply “racism.”
Of course, both Sanders and Clinton were just pandering to the Democratic Party base — the base that is sure that “right-wing extremists” are just as violent or even more violent than Muslims, and that all concern about jihad terror is “racism.” If one of them becomes president on January 20, 2017, one thing is certain: the global jihad will have even more opportunity than it has had during these dark days of Obama to advance in the West.
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