Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

In Denial About the Attack in France
Townhall.com ^ | January 14, 2015 | Brent Bozell

Posted on 01/14/2015 5:05:49 AM PST by Kaslin

When America was hit on 9/11, the world united around us. France just had its 9/11, and again the civilized world has come together, all except the United States. Where were America's leaders as the rest of the world united?

The reaction to Islamic terrorists killing 17 people in Paris in the name of their radical creed has been greeted with a very strange perceived need to deflect or just dismiss it in liberal political and media circles.

Most journalists tried to downplay or ignore Obama's failure to attend the huge Sunday "unity" rally in Paris, where 40 world leaders gathered in a show of support for France. While the New York tabloids mocked Obama, most national newspapers mentioned "World leaders link arms" and barely noticed the leader of the free world had stayed home to watch football games.

Even after the White House spokesman admitted it was an error for top American officials to skip the event, obviously in reaction to national and international outrage, still some newspapers buried it inside their papers like it was no big deal.

There were other distressing signs of liberal deflection. CNN International anchor Christiane Amanpour called the terrorists mere "activists" in her reporting on the shootings at the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo: "On this day, these activists found their targets, and their targets were journalists."

Amanpour was quoting one of the dead cartoonists, who said, "When activists need a pretext to justify their violence, they always find it." Words matter, especially to journalists, and this was the wrong word. Activists write letters to the editor, join a community organization or protest, volunteer for a political campaign, man a phone bank.

Men who terrorize by slaughtering innocent men, women and children are terrorists.

Even during an outbreak of terrorism, some leftists deflect, putting bizarre political spins on the events at hand. Some continue to insist that the terrorism du jour is caused by Bush's war in Iraq, or any other response to 9/11, like the prisoners held at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.

Or it's those Jews. It was amazing to listen to Jimmy Carter (who simply refuses to leave the world stage, even decades after the curtain fell) suggest the Jews and "the Palestinian problem" bore responsibility. BBC reporter Tim Willcox upbraided a Jewish woman saying Jews are being targeted in France, insisting to her that "many critics though of Israel's policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well." (He later apologized for a "poorly phrased question," which it wasn't. It was an inaccurately stated declaration.)

After the terrorist attack, liberal journalists worried about the "backlash" from the "far right" that opposes rapid immigration or the spread of aggressive Islam. On MSNBC, for example, Andrea Mitchell lectured the attacks would be "a challenge for France," a country "where immigration and the Muslim population has been under fire." The challenge is not to "react negatively and not to paint people with a broad brush."

The left also loves to smear Christians and Jews into the conversation about radical religion. On MSNBC, former Rolling Stone executive editor Eric Bates compared the mass murder in Paris to Jerry Falwell's lawsuit against the porno magazine Hustler. "This isn't just Islamic extremism. If you go back to the '80s, during the Reagan administration, when Jerry Falwell sued Hustler magazine for portraying him having, I believe it was drunken incest with his mother in an outhouse." How on Earth can you compare Falwell filing a lawsuit to the mass murder of 17 people in France?

The left passionately attempts to inflame the world against such slow-emerging, life-threatening crises as "catastrophic global warming" or fast-food menus without calorie counts. But when it comes to Islamic jihad, they seem oddly incapable of outrage or alarm. They just deflect or dismiss.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: antisemitism; france; islamicterror
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-40 last
To: Leaning Right

No the source of Islamic terrorism is the Koran.

but to you “it’s Bush’s fault”.

The goal of Islam is world domination.

http://www.faithfreedom.org/book.htm

Maybe you’ll say Bush wrote the koran

unbelievable that on a thread about Islamic terrorism many of you sneak in an attack on Bush. what this tells me is many of you are democrat/marxist moles. You have a cult that bent on world domination but you all see to try to make this about bashing a president who is not president and you don’t even blame Obama who is president.


21 posted on 01/14/2015 6:20:19 AM PST by Democrat_media (The media is the problem. reporters are just democrat political activists posing as reporters)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: no-to-illegals
Confused, am and me too. What does that mean????????

Color blindness on the left because they can't see, or admit to, his true colors. They gloss over his true colors or faults or ignore them all together.

22 posted on 01/14/2015 6:20:45 AM PST by HotHunt
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Leaning Right

so here you praise a socialist FDR because he was a democrat.

FDR allied himself with a communist Stalin and let Stalin take over half of Europe. yes bash Bush but praise the socialist who turned America into a pseudo socialist country FDR. funny how commies like FDR allied himself with another commie Stalin


23 posted on 01/14/2015 6:23:06 AM PST by Democrat_media (The media is the problem. reporters are just democrat political activists posing as reporters)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: HotHunt

you’d have had to have been here longer to understand am and me, since we’re talking confusion. Will simply leave ...


24 posted on 01/14/2015 6:25:24 AM PST by no-to-illegals (Scrutinize our government and Secure the Blessing of Freedom and Justice)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: Democrat_media
so here you praise a socialist FDR because he was a democrat

FDR was a superb War President from 1941-1943, and he was OK in 1944.

25 posted on 01/14/2015 6:26:29 AM PST by Jim Noble (When strong, avoid them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Does Brent understand that Hebdo is a self-described “atheist magazine?”


26 posted on 01/14/2015 6:32:35 AM PST by Lisbon1940
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Democrat_media
You make some good points about FDR. He was very flawed, to put it mildly.

I see not one FDR, but three. There was the domistic-policy FDR, who turned America from a state-centered republic into a DC-centered semi-socialist nation.

Then there was the foreign-policy FDR, from 1940 to 1944. He saw the threat of fascism early, and he moved decisively to help England even before Pearl Harbor. And after Pearl Harbor, he moved decisively to destroy fascism.

Lastly, there's the FDR of 1945. Physically (and perhaps morally) weak, he could not stand up to Stalin.

It's the actions of the second FDR that I greatly admire. Bush could have, and should have, learned from that.

27 posted on 01/14/2015 6:34:19 AM PST by Leaning Right (Why am I holding this lantern? I am looking for the next Reagan.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: Lisbon1940

Must have been ‘atheists’ all, in France, that took to the streets.


28 posted on 01/14/2015 6:35:29 AM PST by no-to-illegals (Scrutinize our government and Secure the Blessing of Freedom and Justice)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: no-to-illegals
I mistakenly understood what you said until I understood that I was mistaken.

Gibberish is still gibberish. If it's such an "inside" joke, then why are you using it in a response to someone, in your words, who would "have had to have been here longer to understand"?

Will simply ignore...

29 posted on 01/14/2015 6:41:38 AM PST by HotHunt
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: HotHunt

Is best ...


30 posted on 01/14/2015 6:44:29 AM PST by no-to-illegals (Scrutinize our government and Secure the Blessing of Freedom and Justice)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: Leaning Right

democrat FDR allied himself with the soviet union and Stalin .FDR a LET Stalin take over one half of Europe (the Iron curtain).

FDR turned the USA a once free country into a pseudo socialist state .

FDR is ruined the USA and wanted to let Stalin advance socialism/communism in the world which is why he allied himself with Russia . FDR was a socialist and a villain as all socialists are.

I have pages more to say about FDR the socialist villain but i have to go.


31 posted on 01/14/2015 6:44:41 AM PST by Democrat_media (The media is the problem. reporters are just democrat political activists posing as reporters)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Obama: Je suis Ali Akbar.


32 posted on 01/14/2015 6:46:20 AM PST by arthurus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: no-to-illegals

Well, France is majority Catholic but it also guarantees freedom of religion. Catholics rallying for atheism is consistent for The French but is it for Brent Bozell?


33 posted on 01/14/2015 6:47:16 AM PST by Lisbon1940
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: Lisbon1940

yep, two paths.


34 posted on 01/14/2015 6:48:04 AM PST by no-to-illegals (Scrutinize our government and Secure the Blessing of Freedom and Justice)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: Leaning Right

Progressives cannot take lessons from history because lessons from history are that progressivism is fantasy or it is usurpation.


35 posted on 01/14/2015 6:49:54 AM PST by arthurus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: Jim Noble

You got it.


36 posted on 01/14/2015 6:52:17 AM PST by arthurus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: arthurus; Jim Noble

No weapons, please ...


37 posted on 01/14/2015 6:55:42 AM PST by no-to-illegals (Scrutinize our government and Secure the Blessing of Freedom and Justice)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

a song and a prayer for the kittehs ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp3yO7jVzn4 ... prayers for all the kittehs of which am not a kitteh. Only a contributor to Free Republic.


38 posted on 01/14/2015 7:00:16 AM PST by no-to-illegals (Scrutinize our government and Secure the Blessing of Freedom and Justice)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: Leaning Right

Hitler came on in the early 20’s

FDR is but a factor in the longer Hitler story. Ditto patton


39 posted on 01/14/2015 12:25:02 PM PST by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc.;+12, 73, ..... Obama is public enemy #1)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Jim Noble

What an impressive prediction from 9/13. I just wish it had been wrong.


40 posted on 01/14/2015 7:45:39 PM PST by Rockpile
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-40 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson