Psychological Warfare for Conservatives

By William A. Levinson

How do grossly unqualified individuals like Barack Obama become President of the United States? Why is the Second Amendment under continual attack? The root cause is, in both cases, conservatives’ failure to understand psychological warfare and failure to understand the concept of the Propaganda Man.
Colonel Paul M. A. Linebarger's classic, Psychological Warfare, defined the Propaganda Man as the "lowest-common-denominator of a man who can be reached by enemy propaganda and by yours." Linebarger then adds the need to understand the Propaganda Man's mentality, fears, and aspirations.

Make up the prewar life of the Propaganda Man. …What kinds of things did he like? What prejudices was he apt to have? What kind of gossip did he receive and pass along? What kind of words disgusted him? What kind of patriotic appeal made him do things? What did he think of your country before the war?

The Republican Party and the National Rifle Association both seem to omit this basic and vital first step of successful public relations. Consider for example the numerous responses to my American Thinker article, “The Felon in the White House.” Examples include:

• "Who would prosecute the president for any crimes? The Department of Justice. Who owns the Department of Justice? President Obama."
• "No one will ever care about this, ever" (in all caps).
• "His worshippers wouldn't care if he was caught robbing a Brinks' truck."

What all fail to understand is that the article was not directed to:

1. The Justice Department
2. The big city urban Democrats who would probably vote for the head of ISIS if he ran for office with a D after his name. We will not, as the commentator said, change their minds.
3. Rural, Southern, and Mountain State Republicans who will vote for whomever the Republicans nominate. We do not need to change their minds.

The article's Propaganda Man is the swing voter, the independent voter who holds the balance of power in almost every national election. We won't convince the Obama Democrats and we don't need to convince the solid Republicans, but if we can persuade the independent voters, we win. The independent voter is proud of thinking for himself or herself, and generally takes the time to gather the facts. If the facts show, as they do, that Barack Obama gained his position through the commission of a felony, and was apparently given the kind of pass that an ordinary citizen could never expect, these voters will turn against him and anybody associated with him.
The Propaganda Man is Our Friend
It is absolutely vital, though, that we be sure of our facts before we present them to the Propaganda Man. Trust is the foundation of effective psychological warfare and, the instant we lie to the Propaganda Man, we will rightfully lose his trust. Consider for example these potential attacks on Obama.

1. The fact that the Obama Administration did not allow consideration of pro-ISIS social media postings makes Obama the "third San Bernardino shooter."
   • I was actually preparing side by side photos of Tashfeen Malik, Syed Farook, and Barack Obama for this purpose when I discovered that, contrary to the original story, Malik had not posted publicly visible pro-ISIS messages on Facebook. We cannot therefore blame the Obama Administration for failure to act on Malik's social media activities, although the act of Islamist violence still says a lot about the DHS vetting process as a whole.
2. The rumor that Obama is not a U.S. citizen is at best not provable, and has in fact been discredited. "In 1961, birth notices for Barack Obama were published in both the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on August 13 and 14, 1961, respectively, listing the home address of Obama's parents as 6085 Kalanianaole Highway in Honolulu."
3. "Obama is a Muslim."
   • There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim as long one does not belong to the subset of Muslims (aka Islamists) who believe they have an Allah-given right to hurt infidels, including the wrong kinds of Muslims. This argument does little more than reinforce the other side's denunciation of our side as Islamophobic, as in prejudiced against all Muslims rather than those who engage in easily identifiable problem behaviors.
   • A Muslim would have probably not worshiped in a Trinity United Church of Christ. We can however cite repeatedly Jeremiah Wright's racist sermons, and his blood libel of Israel and the United States for purportedly developing an "ethnic bomb" and the AIDS virus respectively. To this we can add the racist quotes (with page numbers) from Obama's Dreams From My Father, and Michelle Obama's racist thesis from Princeton. The racist content of the latter can be verified from the original, and it shows clearly that Michelle Obama cannot be First Lady for all Americans. The inarguable truth is on our side, so why tout a dubious rumor?

A Weak Argument is Worse than No Argument
The latest rumor that Michelle Obama is actually a man is totally counterproductive, and General Patton made that clear more than 70 years ago. Patton said that it is worse than useless to fire a rifle at a tank because (1) it wastes ammunition and (2) it tells the tank crew that you don't have an antitank weapon because you would have otherwise used it. A weak argument is therefore worse than no argument. There are enough things genuinely wrong with Barack and Michelle Obama that we don't need the kind of material that might come from the Jeff Rense Show.
We can also win the Propaganda Man's support by proving that the enemy has lied to him. The anti-Second Amendment Million Mom March, for example, engaged in fraudulent fundraising practices by (1) lying to its donors about firearm misuse killing 12 or 13 children a day, and (2) concealing from its donors its plans to divert 501(c)(3) tax exempt money to Democratic political campaigns.
The Second Amendment's Propaganda Man (or Woman)
Second Amendment advocates make the similar mistake of talking about "our Second Amendment rights." The nation's 100 million or so law-abiding firearm owners should already be on our side. If they are not, we need to prove to them with the enemy's own words that the enemy is indeed after their sporting firearms as well as so-called "assault weapons."
The swing voter who does not own firearms does not, however, care about "our" Second Amendment rights. A woman who has been indoctrinated by Michael Bloomberg's lies via Everytown for Gun Safety is quite likely to take the position, "Your rights end where my safety and that of my children begins." This Bloomberg video, for example, shows a domestic abuser breaking in a woman's door to take her child, and then shooting her when she tries to resist. We need to address our arguments to the Propaganda Woman whom this Yellow Press-style video may have terrified into voting Obama Democrat, and not to people who are already on our side.
If the video is not copyrighted, or if "fair use" could include modification for educational purposes, I would do the following. When the abuser kicks the door in, stop the video and point out that this is the video's sole useful learning opportunity. I learned at a defensive gun class at Luzerne County Community College (LCCC) that a home invader can kick your door in more rapidly than he can open it with a key, let alone a lock pick. I therefore installed a strike plate that screws into the wall studs, and also a Nightlock security device. This protects the prospective home invader too because, if he doesn't get into the house, the person inside is probably not justified in using deadly force on him. If he continues to try to break in, the police can read him his rights when they arrive.
Next we deal with the home invader's gun by pointing out that, unless he is attacking somebody like Cynthia Rothrock or Ronda Rousey, his superior weight and upper body strength create a disparity of force situation in which he is a deadly threat even without a weapon. This means he can beat her to death or strangle her with his empty hands, and then abduct or kill her children after she is dead or too badly hurt to protect them. Disparity of force justifies her use of a firearm against him but, if Obama Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, and Dannel Malloy get their way, she won't have a firearm. Underscore the issue of "authority without responsibility or accountability" because crime victims cannot sue government officials the way a victim of gross medical malpractice can sue a quack -- and make no mistake, Clinton, Bloomberg, Cuomo, and Malloy are quacks when it comes to public safety.
Then we support this position with real-world examples such as this one from FrontSight. Both involve home security videos of actual home invasion crimes. In the first part at about 1:10, a mother is beaten almost to death (by an unarmed male assailant) in her own home. In the second, three home invaders, one with a handgun, kick in the door of another woman's home. They get an unpleasant surprise in the form of a rifle, and a warning shot convinces them to flee. This is the only part with which I disagree. First, if you are not justified in shooting your assailant (as this woman was clearly justified), you are not justified in shooting at all. Second, a warning shot wastes a cartridge and gives the aggressor time to kill you. The incident still ended well for the homeowner, though, as it would not have done had she lived in a gun-free paradise like Cuomoland or Bloombergland.
Here is yet another genuine news story in which a mother tried to hide her child and herself from a home invader, but he found them anyway. That was when she emptied a 5-round .38 revolver at him, but did not hurt him badly enough to prevent him from fleeing (or, had he chosen to do so, killing her anyway). This says plenty about proposals to limit magazine capacities; unless you are using a caliber that starts with .4, you may well have to hit your assailant 10 or more times to stop him. Thomas Lifson's Go ahead #BlackLivesMatter: Make my Day features a video of a man who could have been Barack Obama's brother (re: Obama's statement that Trayvon Martin could have been his son) punching a police officer in the face and then shooting him with a .357 Magnum. The officer's return fire with 14 rounds of 45-caliber ACP failed to drop the aggressor, which underscores the fact that Andrew Cuomo is simply not competent to tell anybody what kind of firearm he or she "needs" for self-protection.
In any event, though, when we give the Propaganda Woman enough real world examples of defensive gun use, as well as information on where she can learn to use firearms safely and effectively, she is likely to take the position, "Your snake oil gun control ideology ends where my safety and that of my children begins."
William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.

The Coming Economic Crisis

By Catherine Sellers

Among the topics discussed in the last Republican debate was Senator Rand Paul’s advocating an audit of the Federal Reserve. Senator Ted Cruz is also cosigning this bill to have Congress exercise its auditing and oversight authority of the Fed, a duty that has been sorely lacking throughout the Fed’s murky history. The Federal Reserve, a major contributor to our highest-ranking debtor status, has become a central banking debt machine that exerts tremendous control over the U.S. economy; yet many Americans are barely aware of its existence or the power it wields.    
Created in 1913 by Congress to combat financial panics, the Federal Reserve is composed of the twelve regional big commercial banks. The controlling board is composed of five members from those banks and seven members, nominated by the president, including his appointed head of the Federal Reserve -- currently, Janet Yellen. This unholy alliance of government and private banks is supposed to help the economy and employment through bank regulation, setting interest rates, and controlling the supply of money. It is no coincidence that the 16th amendment instituting the personal income tax was passed in the same year as the Federal Reserve’s creation as a means to fund ever-growing government debt.     
Today, the Fed banking cartel simply creates money with computer keystrokes and lends this new money to Wall Street banks, which, in turn, lend it to government. The huge national debt is the result of the government’s ability to borrow an unlimited supply of money at low rates. Inflation, the devaluation of the dollar, is caused by the creation of ever more new dollars. Think how little a dollar buys today; most of that inflation has been caused by the Fed’s money-printing. By setting extremely low interest rates, the Fed creates an environment for the misallocation of money, causing financial bubbles that repeatedly burst, such as the 2008 housing bubble. 
In response to the 2008 financial crash and in a doubling-down of its failed policies, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to nearly zero and created $4.5 trillion dollars. That money was borrowed by the federal government, used to bail out the big banks, and funneled to Wall Street, where it was spent to buy back company stocks, inflating stock values. This money was not used to grow or improve company infrastructure, hire more employees, or pay higher wages. Almost none of the money was used to help people who were losing their homes or stimulate job growth.
The Fed’s policies of currency creation (inflation) and zero interest rates are responsible for the biggest redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the rich elites in national history. The distribution of money has gone to Wall Street, not the sluggish Main Street economy. Seven years into an economic recovery of the Fed’s financial engineering, homeownership is at its lowest level since 1965; and the median household purchasing power is equal to that of 1989. The Fed proclaims concern about employment and wages, but labor participation is 62.6%, the level of 1977, and real wages are lower than in 2009.  Saver’s earnings are virtually zero, meaning that retirees and those with little capital suffer, or are coerced into risking their IRA’s and savings in the stock market. 
This economic malaise and growing national debt is not limited to the U.S. Central banks in China, the European Union, and other countries have followed the Fed’s program. Global debt increased from $87 trillion in 2000, to $225 trillion in 2014. While debt rises, there is now a major decline in world trade and commodity prices such as oil, gas, and copper, all symptomatic of a slowdown in the global economy that is rolling like a snowball downhill. Recession red lights are flashing in bloated manufacturing inventories, falling sales, and declining transportation of goods.
Now the Federal Reserve is supposedly in a quandary over increasing interest rates in such an environment. Donald Trump has said that Yellen is not raising rates to forestall a financial crisis during Obama’s administration. Fearing its Wall Street bubble will burst, the Fed has only strategically hinted at raising rates. If the Fed does increase rates in December, expect a mere .25 percent, or less, increase that will cause only minimal stock declines. But in truth, the Federal Reserve cannot restrain rates forever nor prevent the bursting of financial bubbles. As history has repeatedly shown, market forces will eventually overwhelm the Fed’s control and spin us into another crisis that the Fed never sees coming. The next financial crisis will be much worse because of overvalued stocks, sky-high debt, and an economy already in recession.     
What weapons does the Federal Reserve have in its arsenal to fight the next economic crisis? Will it lower interest rates into the negatives and require people to pay for bank deposits, or take a percentage of depositors’ checking and savings accounts, IRAs, or 401ks? Will it print more currency, spurring inflation or even hyperinflation? Congress has already passed a law to put taxpayers on the hook to bail out the “too big to fail” banks, which we bailed out the last time, and which now hold more trillions in risky derivative debt than in 2008.             
The Federal Reserve has never been able to foresee or halt a crash, not in 1929, and none in this century. The Fed refused to reveal secret deals, including deals with foreign banks, made during the 2008 crash. We should join Senator Paul and Senator Cruz and demand that Congress calls for this audit and examines the Fed’s activities. Congress created the Federal Reserve and has the power limit the Fed’s control or dissolve it. Interest rates should be set by free market supply and demand, and only the U.S. Treasury should issue currency. The Federal Reserve should be abolished.     

Obama Really Doesn't Like People

By Ed Lasky

A comment made by one of President Obama’s closest aides explains his blasé attitude toward the lives of Americans. In late 2012, Neera Tanden, who had been one of President Obama’s closest aides, observed:

Clinton, being Clinton, had plenty of advice in mind and was desperate to impart it. But for the first two years of Obama’s term, the phone calls Clinton kept expecting rarely came. “People say the reason Obama wouldn’t call Clinton is because he doesn’t like him,” observes Tanden. “The truth is, Obama doesn’t call anyone, and he’s not close to almost anyone. It’s stunning that he’s in politics, because he really doesn’t like people.

Barack Obama had been warned that leaving Iraq without a residual American force could lead to genocide. When questioned about this risk, he complacently answered that preventing genocide was not a good enough reason to have troops in Iraq .
Barack Obama’s coldness towards Americans -- and others, for that matter -- was obvious before 2012.
Barack Obama has long had an Empathy Deficit, as I wrote in 2010. He easily and coldly boasted he would destroy the coal industry and kill thousands of jobs with the aplomb of Chairman Mao and Josef Stalin reengineering their societies. The jobs that were promised after passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus plan never materialized because as Barack Obama jocularly put it two years later “shovel-ready was not as shovel ready as we expected.”  When Texas was hit with devastating forest fires, Obama was cracking jokes at a California fundraiser, “You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change.”  He has articulated his contempt for so called everyday Americans many times (see my 2012 column, What Obama Thinks of Americans  and my 2014 column, Obama Thinks You Are Stupid, That’s Why)
Barack Obama seems particularly complacent when it comes to Americans endangered and murdered by Islamic extremists.
Here are some examples (with more undoubtedly to come as President Obama oversees a massive influx of Muslims into America, hence fulfilling his promise to “fundamentally transform America”). Obama’s Syrian asylum policy continues apace, despite the role of at least one Syrian “refugee” in the massacres in Paris. Obama wants to welcome at least 10,000 more Syrians into America (Hillary wants 65,000). What could go wrong? Ben Rhodes, Obama’s chief liar now that Susan Rice has outlived her usefulness in that role, appeared on numerous broadcasts to assure us these “asylum seekers” will be thoroughly vetted to eliminate security risks -- contradicting the widely respected FBI chief, James Comey, who testified before Congress that vetting Syrian “refugees” will be challenging. Can’t we trust the competency of an administration who can handle the IRS, the VA, the stimulus program, green energy projects, and security of government employee records so well?
When Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was murdered by Islamic terrorists the best that Barack Obama could offer was that his “loss” had “captured the imagination of the world.”  Captured the imagination? Mark Steyn had some choice words for Obama’s lazy tribute to Daniel Pearl. There was no indignation or rage.

First of all, note the passivity: "The loss of Daniel Pearl." He wasn't "lost." He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his "loss" merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster none. (snip)
Well, says the president, it was "one of those moments that captured the world's imagination." Really? Evidently it never captured Obama's imagination because, if it had, he could never have uttered anything so fatuous. He seems literally unable to imagine Pearl's fate, and so, cruising on autopilot, he reaches for the all-purpose bromides of therapeutic sedation: "one of those moments" – you know, like Princess Di's wedding, Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, whatever – "that captured the world's imagination."

After Barack Obama announced that American journalist James Foley had been beheaded by Islamic extremists he raced off to the links to yuck it up with NBA star Alanzo Mourning  and others.

Obama's golf pals on Wednesday included NBA legend Alonzo Mourning (left)

George Bush gave up golf as president because he felt it unseemly for a commander-in-chief to be playing golf while Americans were serving overseas in the military. Clearly Obama has different seemliness standards (see his interview with the YouTube comedian GloZell who bathes in milk and cereal in a bathtub).

When Americans were killed in Benghazi the White House refused to give an honest accounting of who murdered them (it was an offshoot of Al Qaeda). Their deaths were, in Obama’s cold phrasing, were not “optimal.”   Well, they certainly weren’t optimal for him and his re-election campaign, so he and his Praetorian guard lied about their murders. Who got the blame? An obscure Coptic Christian who had directed an equally obscure video that may have riled some Muslims -- had they seen it (which, basically, no one had). The spin was that Muslims had been (“legitimately”?) enraged by the video that mocked Mohammed. Survivors were lied to and are still awaiting a call from the President to honestly explain why their loved ones had been murdered. They will be waiting a long time.
At times, he seems intent on justifying Islamic terrorism,or at least relativizing such violence by putting it in “historical context.”  Last year, at the National Prayer breakfast (of all places) he invoked the Crusades while talking about Islam and terrorism:

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Obama noted there was a time when people mass-murdered in the name of Christianity, too:
And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.
As many were quick to point out, the Catholic Church's Crusades began more than 900 years ago, and the Inquisition began in the 13th century.

The comparison was absurd but part of a pattern of Obama being an apologist for Islamic terrorism. The violence perpetrated by Muslim terrorist never has anything to do with Islam in the rose-colored view of Barack Obama and his officials and they have all but covered up the role played by Islam in the murder of Americans.
John Kennedy wrote of Winston Churchill “he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”  Barack Obama has thumbed through the thesaurus and mobilized the English language in ways that George Orwell had foreseen -- as a way for regimes to hide the truth from people. In this case, camouflaging an enemy.
The Muslim Brotherhood becomes a “mostly secular” group-this gem from Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.   Islamic terrorist attacks become “man-caused disasters.”  The 2009 Fort Hood massacre is described as a case of “workplace violence” despite the murderer, Nidal Hassan, having business cards describing him as a “soldier of Allah.”  When a Chattanooga  Navy recruitment center was attacked by Mohammad Abdulazeez, a Muslim who justified his attack because he was displeased by America’s war on terror (and therefore committed terror), the White House all but ignored the murder of our Navy personnel. Those murders merited almost zero notice. The White House has focused a lot of attention on violence on college campuses but was silent in the wake of the recent stabbing spree by Faisal Mohammed at a California university campus.
One wonders at what point, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, did American lives ever matter to Barack Obama? After all, his moral compass, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr., celebrated 9/11 as America’s chickens having come to roost and routinely spouted anti-American diatribes as Barack Obama and his family stayed in the pews (Oprah Winfrey and others quit the church). Israel’s Ambassador to America, Michael Oren, read both of Obama’s books and what struck him the most was that Barack Obama never had one good thing to say about America. Not one.  Is that what they teach at private prep and Ivy League schools or was that an ideology inherited from his parents?
Meanwhile, Barack Obama extolls the role of Islam in America and the world, fabricating history to do so.  He also fabricates in real time, too: erasing the role as much as he can of Islamic radicalism in violence around the world. Indeed, “Islamic radicalism” and “Islamic terrorists” are banished from the lexicon of Obama and all his officials. If one cannot name an enemy it makes it harder to fight them.
Maybe that is the point.
Compare and contrast the treatment meted out to the Cambridge policemen who were merely doing their job when they merely arrested Barack Obama’s friend, Henry Louis Gates Jr., for apparent breaking and entering. From his perch in the White House Obama called the police “stupid” and indicted police nationwide for racism. One can do the same exercise regarding Obama’s complacency when Americans are killed by Muslims to his over the top reaction to the deaths of Trayvon Martin (“if I had a son he would have looked like Trayvon”) and Michael Brown -- both cases cleared the people who shot them as having done so in self-defense, despite the efforts of the federal government to coerce state governments to find otherwise.
 Do some American lives matter more to Barack Obama than others? Given the disparate treatment shown one can speculate so.
Meanwhile, a Texas high-school boy whose feelings were hurt when a teacher confiscated what appeared to be a bomb but what he represented as being a clock he had built (and was probably just a disassembled Radio Shack clock) was acclaimed as  a Muslim Rosa Parks and granted a White House visit. The whole affair now appears to have been a contrived effort by the his activist father to create a cause celebre and another Muslim martyr (though not in the most radical sense, though now that the family has moved to Qatar…that clock making may come in handy).
President Obama has an agenda that is becoming increasingly visible. Marc Thiessen recently wrote in the Washington Post of “Obama’s stubborn, willful complacency on terror”:

Somehow, to paraphrase President Obama, it has become routine — the president dismisses the terrorist threat, only to see terrorists carry out horrific attacks that give lie to his complacency.
On Sept. 6, 2012, Obama boasted at the Democratic National Convention that “al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat.” Five days later, al-Qaeda-linked terrorists attacked two U.S. diplomatic compounds in Benghazi, Libya, killing the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
On Jan. 7, 2014, Obama dismissed the Islamic State as the “JV” team in an interview with the New Yorker, adding that the rise of the Islamic State was not “a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.” That same month, the Islamic State began its march on Iraq, declaring a caliphate, burning people alive in cages and beheading Americans.
Then on Thursday, Obama did it again, telling ABC News, “I don’t think [the Islamic State is] gaining strength” and promising “we have contained them.” The very next day, the Islamic State launched the worst attack on Paris since World War II, killing at least 132 people and wounding more than 350 others.
How many times is this sad spectacle going to repeat itself?

Well, chronologically, for at least one more year. Barack Obama is not interested in pursuing a war against radical Islam -- he doesn’t think there is or should be a “war on terror” (another banished phrase) and seems more intent on burnishing Islam, even if it is at our expense and at the cost of our lives. Neera Tanden was right; he doesn’t like people and couldn’t care less what happens to (most) of us: our lives don’t matter.

The Taqiyya Factor

By Carol Brown

Taqiyya is an Islamic doctrine that allows Muslims to deceive non-Muslims. As in lie to them. Dr. Sami Mukaram, author of Taqiyya in Islam, writes: “Taqiyya is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it… Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.” (Specific references to taqiyya in the Quran, the Hadith, and in Islamic law, can be found here.)
One of the most common and persistent forms of taqiyya we are witnessing today is noted at Islam-Watch:

When placed under scrutiny or criminal investigation, (even when there is overwhelming, irrefutable evidence of guilt or complicity), the taqiyya-tactician will quickly attempt to counter the allegation by resorting to the claim that it is, in fact, the accused who are the 'the victims'. Victims of Islamophobia, racism, religious discrimination and intolerance. Currently, this is the most commonly encountered form of distraction and 'outwitting'….

Indeed. We see this manifest just about every day as Muslims claim to be victims when it is they who are the aggressors. And the goal is always the same: deceive the non-believer in order to advance Islamic supremacy. Of course, the non-believers can only be outwitted if they are also non-thinkers.
Here are three among a seemingly infinite number of examples of taqiyya in action.
The first example is of taqiyya played out at the highest levels of politics and world affairs, as Raymond Ibrahim recalled an anecdote brought to his attention by Daniel Pipes.

Back in the 1980s, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the president of Pakistan, explained to Ronald Reagan how it was no problem for the Pakistanis to sign the Geneva agreements and yet continue supplying weapons to the Afghan jihadis (“freedom fighters”) combating the Soviet Union.
Why wasn’t it a problem? According to Zia, “We’ll just lie about it. That’s what we’ve been doing for eight years.” He added, “Muslims have the right to lie in a good cause….”

The second example is when Boston bombing jihadist, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, became a suspect (posthumously) in an unsolved triple murder that took place on 9/11/11. The Boston Globe reported:

It was one of the most gruesome killings in Greater Boston in many years: three young men found with their throats slit inside a Waltham apartment….
Now, police and prosecutors are stepping up their investigation into the unsolved 2011 triple homicide at the request of victims’ relatives who believe that suspected Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have played a role, noting that Tsarnaev had been close friends with one of the dead men.
What is more, the grieving relatives say the killings took place on a highly symbolic date for Islamic extremists: the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

What the Boston Globe article omitted was that all three of the young men were Jewish. The fact that one of them was Tsarnaev’s “friend” is a classic example of how some Muslims may outwardly befriend non-believers, only to turn around and kill them. (For more examples of this pattern, see here.)
The third example is when, most recently, Muslim academics claimed that Ben Carson’s comments on taqiyya were false (which they weren’t), as reported by Raymond Ibrahim covering a Washington Post story:

…according to the Muslim professor, “there is no concept that would encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal. That is a complete invention.” (snip)
Apparently it never occurred to the WaPo’s Kessler that El Fadl himself may have been exercising, in Zia’s words, his Muslim “right to lie in a good cause” — in this case, to prevent Americans from ever being suspicious of Muslim individuals and organizations in the U.S.

Taqiyya about taqiyya.
The obvious problem with lying is that once you know a group of persons will intentionally deceive, everything they say or do is called into question. And therein lies one of the rubs with Muslims. How can any non-Muslim know when a Muslim is telling the truth or telling a lie? We can’t. For the sake of self-preservation, one must err on the side of caution and maintain skepticism at all times. Because taqiyya can only work if the person being lied to is uninformed.
As Daniel Pipes wrote (emphasis mine): “…Taqiyya has been used by Muslims since the 7th century to confuse and split 'the enemy'. A favored tactic was 'deceptive triangulation'; to persuade the enemy that jihad was not aimed at them but at another enemy. Another tactic was to deny that there was jihad at all. The fate for such faulty assessments by the target was death.”
And there you have it. Deny jihad and invite your demise.
The Islamic world has got the West coming and going. When they truthfully tell us what they plan to do (such as with ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood), the West opts for deaf, dumb, and blind.  When the Islamic world deceives us, the West falls for it every time.
How can any nation survive such willful stupidity?

A Plague of Unruly Children

By Michael A. Thiac

On Halloween in National Review, the estimable David French opined that the Spring Valley High School video of a deputy dragging a child out of a chair wasn’t “disturbing,” I beg to differ; it’s very disturbing, but not for the reasons he listed.
As Mr. French noted, the “child” was told by the teacher to leave the class, then by an administrator, and finally by Deputy Ben Fields.  She refused each time.  The initial video showed only a teenager being pulled back and forth and assaulted by a man twice her size.  Based on this limited knowledge, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott terminated Deputy Fields less than 48 hours later. 
It is disturbing that a senior law enforcement executive fired a man when the situation was not fully known at the time.  However, what I saw in the video is greatly disturbing but a multiple levels.  To borrow the phrase from our president’s favorite pastor, “America’s chickens…have some home…to roost!”
We have generations of children now who were born but not raised.  I don’t know the particular circumstance of this student’s family, but in far too many black families (and a growing number of white and Hispanic families) the norm is a single mother.  The stats are three out of four black children are born out of wedlock.  While there is no question this is the worse situation for the child and the “parental unit,” it’s been encouraged since the “Great Society,” an oxymoron almost as bad as “rap artist.”  The federal government told one generation after another, “Young ladies, have kids, Uncle Sam has become Uncle Sugar, we’ll pay for the kid.  We’ll send you money, a rent voucher and food stamps.  Young men, have as many kids as you want, don’t worry about supporting them, we’ll ‘raise’ them and you don’t have to worry about getting a job.  We got disability for that, you can chill….”  Professor Thomas Sowell said it best, “The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state.” 
We’ve given birth to generations (and imported others) of people who were not raised to be respectful and functional citizens of this nation.  In ages past, the parents knew the primary duty to raise their children was theirs, but this was also reinforced by other adults outside the house.  Part of the raising was the respect given to teachers and other school officials, police, and adults in general.  A child raised properly would have never had a phone out in class or at least would have put it away immediately after the teacher told her to do so.  As writer and talk show host Mark Levin said, the civil society was reinforced by the parents; children would learn the world does not revolve around themselves and they must show their elders respect.
That notion now seems rather quaint, and the losers are society in general and the children in particular.  They don’t know the discipline that they need to make their way in the world, delay gratification, and that they must prepare to support themselves.  I’ve been in law enforcement for almost two decades, mostly on patrol and often in “Da Hood”.  I’ve seen the disaster these types of policies have brought upon society.  In one family after another, the child is not disciplined or told “No,” accustomed to delayed gratification and or told there are things more important to himself.  In years past in a similar Spring Valley situation, the parent would be called and actually be embarrassed by the way her child acts.  Now as we see with later videos the 16 year old refused to leave and struck the deputy, the family is still proceeding with a lawsuit.  Money and 15 minutes of fame are very enticing things and they don’t care the child is the worse for it.
On patrol I’ve had calls where a mother is reporting to the police, “My children won’t do their homework.…”  I must explain to this “adult” that it’s not the job of law enforcement to raise her child, and where is the father to assist you?  But this is a symptom of a bigger issue.  The mother was not raised to by two parents with discipline, guidance and love to steer her to a better life, particularly out of the ghettos of the major cities.  In many public housing projects you have generations of the same family living in a subsidized unit, and they’ve never known anything but this hellhole; and they are quite content to live there. Sad, pathetic and not surprising.
In one particular incident I remember a mother (36 years old) and her daughter (16 years old) in a fight that required medical attention for the daughter.  The issue started over the mother telling the daughter she could not go out and the daughter refusing.  I thought to myself: “Lady the problem is not that you’re trying to discipline your child at sixteen.  The problem is you didn’t discipline her at six.”
Another part of “Da Hood” is what is idolized, what is reinforced, what is shown as your way to a better life.  Education and vocational training?  No, often black students working hard are told they are “acting white.”  Discipline in getting up, going to a job, putting in a full day’s work for a day’s pay, saving for your future? No.  Successful businessmen and women who achieve in small industries, such as the store manager, mechanic shop owner?  Or minorities that made it out of poverty and achieved greatness like Dr. Ben Carson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice?  Not much.   Who are revered in today’s ghettos?  Sports stars, “rap artists,” people who are famous for “being famous,” or people who made it onto “America’s Got Talent.”
America took generations to get into this fix and it will take decades to get out of it.  The first step for any recovery is to admit you have a problem.  We have to convince young ladies to not start families before they get a diploma, to graduate, to have children only with their husbands.  And we have to insist these young men honor the mother’s of the children, more than their “baby mama.”  Both will require time, reinforcement and the reintroduction of a sense of shame for certain actions.  The future is to be determined but this a critical matter that must be worked on.