What is a ‘Religious Extremist’? This Lefty Weekly Sure Doesn’t Know

-By Warner Todd Huston

For the Independent Weekly of Durham, North Carolina, writer Sam Wardle proves that he hasn’t a clue how the phrase “religious extremist” is properly defined. But, I’d suggest that his confusion is endemic in the far left and proves to show why so many in the west don’t understand how to face and defeat the real religious extremism of radical Islam.

In a story about Representative Sue Myrick (R, NC) and her association with The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools as juxtaposed with her condemnation of radical Islam, Wardle sees no difference between a radical Islamist that might blow himself up with a suicide vest or cut off the head of a helpless captive and a Christian American that wants to use properly constituted law to have the Holy Bible used in the classroom.

Certainly you can disagree with having the Bible used as a text in the classroom, but to say that a person that does want the Bible in the classroom is no better than a terrorist is, well, just plain stupid. It is also intellectually vapid. Unfortunately, Mr. Wardle is all too representative of the vapidity of the left that so often comes to this intellectually dishonest conclusion.

Wardle reveals his hatred of all things Christian in his IndyWeek piece titled, “For Rep. Sue Myrick, Islamic moderates are extreme, Christian extremists are moderate,” wherein he equates Rep. Myrick to a religious extremist.

Wardle starts his piece straight on with an attack on Rep. Myrick:

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) is one of North Carolina’s staunchest defenders from Islamic extremism. When it comes to Christian extremism, though, the record is more mixed.

Wardle says that Myrick’s “defense against Islamic extremism” itself borders on the extreme.

Those are pretty serious charges, of course. So what does Wardle show as his proof to bear out the finger wagging at Myrick? One of the first of Wardle’s accusations would take an Olympic gymnast’s back-bending performance to agree with. In short it is weak as heck.

However, Myrick’s concern over religious extremism seems relegated to practitioners of one religion. At the forum, she pointedly avoided applying the label of “terrorist” to Joseph Stack, the 53-year-old Texan who flew his airplane into an IRS building in Austin in February.

Whether Stack should have been termed a terrorist by Myrick or not is one question, but what it has to do with the subject of religion is anyone’s guess. Austin IRS building attacker Joe Stack had no connection to any religion whatever. He did not perpetrate his act of terror in the name of religion so Wardle’s usage of Stack as his religious foil for Myrick is insensible. But such is Wardle’s hatred for both Myrick and Christianity that any stretch is excused, apparently.

Then Wardle goes on the attack against The NCBCPS, a “right-wing evangelical group” in Wardle’s terminology. Wardle reports that the NCBCPS’ goal is to “bring a state certified (sic) Bible course (elective) into the public high schools nationwide.” He says that the group claims that it has gotten its curriculum in 532 schools in 38 states.

Wardle counters that success by revealing that this group’s school texts have been criticized as containing “shoddy research, factual errors and plagiarism.” Wardle also lays out all the other groups and Media outlets that have attacked the veracity of the NCBCPS’ offerings.

But one thing is completely missing from Wardle’s piece. Any actual “extremism.” Apparently just the fact that the NCBCPS wants to get its curriculum in a school is enough to be classified just as extreme as al Qaeda to one such as Wardle.

But implicit in the whole discussion (but only implied because Wardle does not say it) is the fact that if the NCBCPS did get its curriculum in schools in 38 states it must have done so through the legitimate process of appealing to school boards and having those schools agree to accept the program. In other words, the NCBCPS followed the same legal procedure that every other education advocate has followed.

Notice how the NCBCPS didn’t win over those schools by cutting off administrator’s heads, bombing public buildings, or killing students thereby using intimidation and violence to get its way. So, while this Christian group is certainly seriously active, to act as if they are somehow just as extreme as Islamic Radicals is idiotic.

But this is the empty logic that befalls the far left in this country. Any religion, all religion is classified as “extreme” to these people. No logic need apply.

(Originally posted at BigJournalism.com)

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Terrorists at Fla. Atlantic U Are O.K., Young Americans for Freedom VERBOTEN

-By Warner Todd Huston

We send our young adults to university to be educated in the ways of the world, we all know. Following that well-worn path, young James Schackleford decided on the publicly funded Florida Atlantic University for his edification and boy did he learn a lesson about modern education last week. Mr. Schackleford learned that the FAU administration prefers on its campus Islamic terrorist supporters over representatives of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom organization. He also learned that it’s open season on all conservatives at our American universities.

At the Boca Raton campus Mr. Schackleford determined that his school needed a chapter of YAF, a 40-year-old conservative student organization, and so gathered a few like-minded students to meet with YAF State Director Daniel P. Diaz to discuss how they should proceed on organizing a chapter in the school.

As the few gathered were meeting, university administrator *David Blank burst into the room and demanded that they cease their meeting and vacate the room. According to the YAF press release, Mr. Schackleford asked for an additional 15 minutes to finish and Blank acquiesced to the request. But the 15-minute grant was short lived.

Upon hearing Diaz address the liberal bias on the FAU campus, Blank stopped the meeting again and boorishly ordered the students to vacate the meeting room. Blank then shut off the room lights, tore down the group’s promotional posters, and called the campus police.

It didn’t end there. According to YAF, the campus police arrived and began to harass the students and Mr. Diaz outside as they were in the process of leaving the campus. The police demanded to see student IDs and then menacingly followed YAF rep. Diaz to his car.

Police told Diaz that they were investigating a “possible trespassing charge,” and then loudly joked that Diaz “probably had tea bags hanging out the back of his car” as Diaz prepared to leave.

Diaz says that the whole incident is proof positive of why a conservative group is needed at Florida Atlantic University.

“If we were a Marxist, Socialist or Liberal group they would have let us finish our meeting, but the university officials and police harassed us because we are conservatives. This was the exact liberal bias on campus that I was discussing in the meeting that these future YAFers experienced firsthand. The university is no longer a place of open discussion and freedom of expression, but a breeding ground of intolerance for conservative beliefs.”

One question immediately comes to mind over this incident: did student organizer Schackleford and YAF representative Diaz officially reserve a room at FAU for their informal meeting? I asked Diaz this very question.

Diaz told me that since it was an informal meeting that should have been over rather quickly, Mr. Schackleford did not think that he needed to officially reserve a room through the university staff. In fact, according to Diaz, himself a former FAU student, such unscheduled meetings occur all the time.

No we did not reserve a room. When I was a student at the university when a room wasn’t being occupied one could go in and meet or study, and as long they left before the next scheduled group arrived they would be ok. After asking around that is how it still is.

In retrospect it was an obvious lapse in judgment not to officially reserve a room. Or perhaps they should have met off campus.

However, that small lapse in judgment does not absolve this oppressive, over-the-top reaction that university administrator David Blank exhibited. After all, not long ago Florida Atlantic University hosted a whole slew of Islamic terror supporters on campus. In 2006, for instance, the Muslim students group at FAU hosted an event at which appeared Hamas and Hezbollah supporter, Al-Haaj Ghazi Khankan; alleged Neo-Nazi, William Baker; and potential co-conspirator of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Siraj Wahhaj.

Apparently it’s perfectly O.K., as far as the FAU administration is concerned, to have Islamofascist terror given full-throated support on its campus but it is a serious no-no to talk about organizing a patriotic American conservative student’s organization there.

Perhaps Mr. Diaz is right in his contention that a YAF chapter is sorely needed at Florida Atlantic University?

*David Blank appears to be the Event Planning Specialist for the Student Union at FAU. He can be reached at dblank@fau.edu.

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Fish Wrap: Legislation Requiring Full Discussion Of Scientific Issues Is Bad

Here we go: Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets

Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools.

My first thought when I caught the headline and first paragraph (above) on my iPhone news app (Fluent News) was “please, no. Do not combine anti-Darwinism with anti-AGW. Let the science or lack thereof stand on their own merits.” As I have written, and said, time and time again, one of the things I hate the most about what the climate alarmists have done is incorporating every real environmental issue with global warming. We forget the real reasons. Manatees (I’m a big donor) must be saved from climate change, not boats going too fast in areas that are restricted. Coral must be saved from AGW, not polluted waters. The Amazon must be saved from globull warming, not pollution and deforestation. So, the real issues are not addressed anymore.

That said, the reality

In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”

The bill, which has yet to be voted on, is patterned on even more aggressive efforts in other states to fuse such issues. In Louisiana, a law passed in 2008 says the state board of education may assist teachers in promoting “critical thinking” on all of those subjects.

Last year, the Texas Board of Education adopted language requiring that teachers present all sides of the evidence on evolution and global warming.

This is what Excitable Chucky Johnson call “stealth creationism,” and, in some small cases, he is correct, however, what exactly is wrong with teaching all sides of an issue? Not all those bills, or others, are telling or allowing teachers to teach religious tenets, or even Intelligent Design (funny how the same liberals had no problem with teaching Islam in schools, something that happened quite a bit after 9/11, as lefties tried to teach “tolerance” and “multiculturalism”). Should not kids be taught the good and bad of scientific theories? Should they not be provided with all the facts from all sides, to allow themselves to make a rational, intelligent decision on where they stand? Or, are our schools simply to be used as indoctrination centers, much as in North Korea and Hitler’s Germany?

James D. Marston, director of the Texas regional office of the Environmental Defense Fund, said he worried that, given Texas’ size and centralized approval process, its decision on textbooks could have an outsize influence on how publishers prepare science content for the national market.

“If a textbook does not give enough deference to critics of climate change — or does not say that there is real scientific debate, when in fact there is little to none — they will have a basis for turning it down,” Mr. Marston said of the Texas board. “And that is scary for what our children will learn everywhere.”

A perfect example of which side is actually anti-science. It is “scary” that children be presented with all sides of a scientific argument.

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Teacher Wins Against Ban of His Patriotic Banners in Classroom

-By Warner Todd Huston

Back in January of 2007 math teacher Brad Johnson of Westview High in San Diego County, California was told by his school administrators he had to take down the patriotic banner he had put up in his classroom because the word “God” appeared on it.

Johnson, of course, was quite upset about being told to take down his banner and took the school to court. In 2008 Judge Roger T. Benitez sided with the patriotic-minded teacher saying that the school was “brash” in its effort to force the teacher to take down the banner.

Well, after so long we have some news to report on this story and it is good news, indeed. The very same judge that sided with Mr. Johnson two years ago has officially ruled in favor of the teacher’s right to free speech.

Judge Benitez’s 32-page opinion was strongly worded and critical of the Poway school districts aversion to mentioning God: “[The school district officials] apparently fear their students are incapable of dealing with diverse viewpoints that include God’s place in American history and culture. . . . That God places prominently in our Nation’s history does not create an Establishment Clause violation requiring curettage and disinfectant for Johnson’s public high school classroom walls. It is a matter of historical fact that our institutions and government actors have in past and present times given place to a supreme God.”

The Thomas Moore Law Center represented the repressed teacher to good effect. Likely this isn’t over as left-wingers are not apt to being told “no” very often, especially by a judge.

We will have to await to see what further comes of this. but as of right now, we have a victory for free speech to celebrate.

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How Libs Deal With the Constitution: Pack the Court and Change the Rules

With recent Supreme Court decisions preserving Constitutional rights to free speech and gun ownership, liberals are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the Supreme Court, and some are beginning to think of ways to subvert the Constitution.

Liberal Stan Isaacs provides an illustrative look in his column Obama Should Expand the Court.

Obama can easily be a quarterback for change on a court that will give the president continued grief as he tries to implement his agenda.

Obama can give himself a fighting chance by changing the rules of the game, just as they were changed for other presidents in the 1800s. He should forget bipartisanship and work with congressional Democrats to name three new justices to the court to meet the challenges he faces.

Court giving him grief on his agenda? Only if he tries to violate the Constitution.

Change the rules? Yeah, we know liberals don’t like the Constitution, but they don’t often admit it.

Remember, FDR also had his personal vendetta against the Constitution, as has any other “progressive” liberal who wants to push forward with new policies for the public good their own personal power grabs.

In response, Roosevelt sought to appoint an additional justice for each incumbent justice who reached the age of 70 and refused retirement, with a maximum size of 15 justices. The phrase “packing the court” became the pejorative that turned the public against FDR’s plan.

Mitchell Blatt publishes a weekly email column at MitchBlatt.com.

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