Blaming a Video for Muslim Violence

The Foundation

"Conscience is the most sacred of all property." --James Madison

Editorial Exegesis

"Presidential confidante and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice took to the Sunday-show circuit this weekend in an effort to spin the cascade of violent anti-American protests in the Muslim world into a story about the effectiveness of the Obama administration's foreign policy. In the course of this impossible task, Ambassador Rice made a number of dubious claims, but perhaps none was more dangerous and stupid than this bold declarative to ABC's Jake Tapper: 'What transpired [last] week ... in Cairo, in Benghazi, in many other parts of the region, was a direct result of a heinous and offensive video [entitled 'The Innocence of Muslims'] that was widely disseminated, that the U.S. government had nothing to do with, which we have made clear is reprehensible and disgusting.' The baffling assertion that the protests were a spontaneous and unmediated reaction to an amateurish YouTube video that anteceded them by a month so strains credulity that we have to assume the administration doesn't even believe it. ... The truth is that the video was a pretext, and the attacks the consequence of a deep current of anti-Western rage that persists in the Muslim world despite the president's famous 'Cairo speech' and the muddled engagement strategy for which it was the synecdoche. ... To say that the besieging of American missions abroad, and the murder of American diplomats, is 'the direct result of a heinous and offensive video' is to implicitly legitimize such a causal connection; it is not more than a step or two removed from saying that the victim of a crime was 'asking for it.' To lead not with condemnation of the killers but with apologies, epithets, and disclaimers for the speech acts alleged to have incited their rage, is to incentivize the kind of thinking displayed by the Egyptian prime minister, who said that the attacks on U.S. embassies were not wrong per se but merely misdirected because the United States government hadn't actually produced the video. ... Under the First Amendment, the free-speech and free-exercise clauses are both compatible and complementary. Under the Islamism that drives the embassy besiegers, the one is, as the vice president would say, literally the mortal enemy of the other." --National Review

Upright

"As Election Day draws nearer, the Obama campaign and its surrogates in the Fourth Estate have infested the political arena with an army of tactical and rhetorical rodentia. ... This week, it's a 'secret Romney video' shot undercover at a closed-door dinner with Florida donors in May. ... 'All right, there are 47 percent who are with [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. ... And they will vote for this president no matter what.' ... Gasp! He said he's against freeloaders. Oh, the inhumanity. ... Let the parsers and panicky pundits chase their tails and hurl their nuts. This election is about America's makers versus America's takers. Romney should never, ever apologize for making that clear." --columnist Michelle Malkin

"Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.) has a post on the Hill's Congress Blog highlighting a bizarre new regulation from the EPA requiring some gas stations to sell at least four gallons of gasoline at a time. It affects those that pump both E10 and E15 ... through the same hose. ... It's a historic moment for the EPA, though, as they've never actually forced people to buy anything before. 'The EPA's first-ever mandated purchase requirement appears to have been conceived outside the normal regulatory process,' Sensenbrenner wrote, 'making this unprecedented government overreach even more offensive.' ... It's just another great example of how ugly things get when unelected bureaucrats involve themselves in the most minute decisions of individuals, like how much gas they want to buy and whether or not they want to have corn in it. Thanks, Obama!" --National Review's Betsy Woodruff

"When you realize that the President of the United States has the lives of 300 million people in his hands, he has the future of western civilization in his hands, he has the freedom that has been inherited over the centuries in his hands, and he's already starting to dismantle that, I really don't think it's a question of any individual, whoever is in the White House, being cut any slack. The last thing you need to do is cut slack to people who have power over 300 million people." --economist Thomas Sowell

Demo-gogues

Opposite day: "I've worked with Republicans in Congress to already cut $1 trillion in spending. And we're willing to do more. I don't want a government that's wasting money. It's gotta be mean, it's gotta be lean, it's gotta make sure that it's focused on the people that are working hard but need a ladder up." --Barack Obama

Says Mr. Division: "[L]ook, I want to work with [Republicans] to reduce the deficit. I've said if the Republicans need more love, if they want me to walk the dog or wash their car, I'm happy to do it. You know, I genuinely believe that most Americans, Democrats or Republicans, they just want us to solve problems. So I'm ready and willing to work." --Barack Obama

Don't worry, be happy: "[W]e don't have to worry about [the debt] short term." --Barack Obama

"You can talk a good game, but I like to walk the walk, not just talk the talk." --Barack Obama

Amazingly, said with a straight face: "I have made it clear that the United States has a profound respect for people of all faiths. We stand for religious freedom." --Barack Obama, whose government is being sued by multiple Catholic and other Christian groups for trampling First Amendment religious protections via ObamaCare

"The American people should know this: In a changing world, my commitment to protecting religious liberty is and always will be unwavering. As America's religious diversity grows, we have the chance to reaffirm the pluralism that has defined us as a nation. A pluralism that is expansive enough to protect the rights of all to speak their minds and to follow their conscience." --Barack Obama

Reality distortion field: "[Romney] thinks the middle class is $200,000 to $250,000. Whoa! Whoa! Don't you all wish you were in that middle class? ... He's totally out of touch with the reality of what ordinary Americans deal with every day. He does not get it. He does not understand." --Joe Biden, purposely changing what Romney said about middle class earning as much as $200,000 to $250,000

And he thinks working with Republicans is hard: "The message we have to send to the Muslim world is we expect you to work with us to keep our people safe. We expect their full cooperation because that's the only way the world works." --Barack Obama

Dezinformatsia

Rushing to defend their man: "There are some very, very deep and troubling things going on ... in the Middle East that have very little to do with what a president does or doesn't do. ... You don't have American policymakers being able to shape the way Muslims think about the world, about modernity, about the United States. So -- so to blame the president for ... an attack on ... these embassies, I think, is a bit much." --The Atlantic's Jeff Goldberg

"Let's be realistic. The extremists in the Middle East who are causing all of this trouble are extremists. And no Republican, no Democratic president is going to be able to control them." --The Washington Post's Bob Woodward

"[T]he Arab Spring has been a much greater, much broader troubling issue that arguably not any American president could handle very effectively." --NBC's Andrea Mitchell

Say what? "The tragedy in Benghazi that cost Ambassador Stevens his life, unfortunately, has been overshadowed by the desperate reach [of] Mitt Romney to secure a political advantage." --MSNBC's Chris Matthews

Bizarre blame: "[R]omney got in the way of the media looking at the president, going ... what happened here? How did this happen? Now, those questions are going to be asked in the coming weeks. But they weren't asked in the first 24 hours because Romney was holding this horrific, irresponsible, press conference." --MSNBC's Joe Scarborough

Stupid question: "[W]e've coexisted with first the Soviet Union and now Russia for a long, long time, and they have nuclear weapons. What is the difference in Iran having a nuclear weapon and Russia having a nuclear weapon or China or Pakistan?" --CBS's Bob Schieffer

Newspulper Headlines:

Out on a Limb: "EXCLUSIVE -- Romney on Debates: Obama Will 'Say Things That Aren't True'" --ABCNews.com

We Blame George W. Bush: "Bill Clinton: Blame Me, Not Obama" --Politico.com

Questions Nobody Is Asking: "How Dangerous Is Your Couch?" --New York Times magazine

Thanks to ObamaCare, They Can Stay on Their Parents' Insurance Until Metamorphosis: "Gross, Sure -- but Maggots Have Medical Benefits" --CNN.com

'We Have to Pass It So You Can Find Out What Is in It': "Remedies for Kidney Stones" --International.to

Bottom Story of the Day: "Europeans Favor Obama Over 'Unknown' Romney, Survey Indicates" --Bloomberg

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)

Village Idiots

Lessons not learned: "We learned that the truth matters, so you don't take shortcuts, you don't game the system, you don't play by your own set of rules. And we learned that no one gets where they are on their own. ... Barack has been fighting for us. He has been struggling with us. And together, slowly but surely, we have been pulling ourselves out of the hole that we started in. For three-and-a-half years, we've been moving forward and making progress, and we're beginning to see that change we all can believe in. That I know for sure." --Michelle Obama

Belly laugh of the week: "The economy was losing 800,000 jobs every month, and a lot folks wondered whether we were headed for another great depression. Now this is what Barack faced on day one as president. That's what awaited him, but instead of pointing fingers and placing blame, Barack got to work." --Michelle Obama

Blame game: "First of all, let's be clear about what transpired [last] week. In Cairo, in Benghazi, in many other parts of the region, [what happened] was a direct result of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated, that the U.S. government had nothing to do with, which we have made clear is reprehensible and disgusting. ... The government of Libya and the people on the streets saying how pained they are by this is much more a reflection of the sentiment toward the United States than a small handful of heavily armed mobsters." --U.S. ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice

"To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose -- to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage." --Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Race bait: "[The Tea Party] want to reduce the number of people who have cast votes. They don't want racial minorities to vote at all. And ... voter suppression is focused on racial minorities, on students, on people who are new to the voting process, on people who have just been sworn in as new citizens of this nation, and it's unfortunate because it goes counter to what this democracy is all about." --former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown

Short Cuts

"For the press, politics doesn't stop at the water's edge. It stops wherever is most convenient for Obama's reelection campaign." --columnist Rich Lowry

"Right after declining to meet with Israel's Netanyahu, President Obama announced he'll be making an appearance on Letterman. I'm guessing that night's list will be 'Top 10 Worst Ways to Treat an Ally.'" --Fred Thompson

"President Obama spoke at the White House to denounce the attacks on U.S. embassies. The president was resolute. He added a statement saying it's unacceptable to insult anyone's religion unless it refuses to pay for free birth control for its employees." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"Well, according to the Labor Department, unemployment fell from 8.3 to 8.1 percent last month. But that was because ... 368,000 Americans gave up looking for work. And today, President Obama said that's a step in the right direction, and he is encouraging more Americans to give up looking for work so the numbers will come down a little bit." --comedian Jay Leno

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team