Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish Articles at DanielGreenfield.org

"In a land without history, whoever furbishes the national memory, coins the concepts and interprets the past will win the future ." Michael Sturmer Tell me who you are and I can tell you how you see the past. That vanishing country falling away behind us. Are we on the way up or the way down? Are we better off than we were four years ago, or forty or four hundred? Is this the best of times or the worst of times? The answer lies inside you. It is defined by your values. For some capacitive touchscreens and infinite channels mean a brighter future. For others, the values of home and family, dignity and country, that were lost matter more than the swipe pass and the digital swoosh. The furniture of America's national memory has been slowly and stealthily moved out and replaced with new sleek and modern styles. History has been altered, twisted and turned to the purposes of the planners of our brand new future. The battle for the past is also the battle for the futu...

Herman Cain is being lynched for taking a stand. And the people doing it are Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives. Commentators who complain about the "race card" are eagerly laying down the "bigot card" because Cain did what few candidates are ready to do. He clearly spelled out the problem with Islamic involvement in American public life. If as some insist, Cain's campaign was brought down by his statements about Islam-- then Republicans have accepted the Dhimmi Principle that the viability of a candidate depends on taking a moderate position on Islam. A moderate position being skeptical, but not particularly confrontational. A position that easily leads back to that old "Handful of Extremists" saw. All this comes down to is an Islamic vetting of presidential candidates. And everyone attacking Cain over it has given CAIR their victory. All the little condescending pieces on how Cain was a good candidate until he went a little too far...

THE TAO OF STUPID  Sheila Jackson-Lee might be the dumbest person in congress. She might even be the dumbest person outside congress. If there were ever a global championship for idiots, the country could send her there. And leave her there; because unlike Lassie, she wouldn’t be able find her way back on her own. When Enron wanted someone to use as a puppet, they picked Sheila Jackson-Lee. They wanted a woman who didn’t have a mind of her own. Enron executives described her as “agreeable”, which was a polite way of saying, “dumber than a bunch of rocks caught in the hubcaps of a slow bus going the wrong way on a one way street in the middle of a flood.” That's from my Front Page Magazine article, Sheila Jackson Lee: Racist and Moron . That was the polite title. Unfortunately congressional Republicans aren't exactly outscoring her right now. The amount of friendly fire by a circular firing squad is what you would expect after losing an election. And the blogs that ...

The clash of civilizations is also a clash of histories. The Western view of history is progressive. A march upward from barbarism to greater phases of enlightenment. This view is fairly modern and fairly liberal, yet closely associated with the success of Western civilization. In progressive history, human techniques from the technological to the social can be used to improve life and make the world a better place. The Islamic view of history is regressive. A lost golden age followed by unbelief and heresy, culminating in a struggle by the believers to restore Islamic dominance. Everything that humans do independently of Islam makes the world a worse place. The perfect touchstone of history was Mohammed. And the only way that history can be set right is by restoring the lost and corrupted caliphates. Both the progressive and the regressive views of history have their limitations. The progressive views tends to unrealistically overestimate its own progress. It does this by dismis...

The New Deal's bargain was that Americans would trade higher taxes and less economic freedom for a social safety net. That was until the left decided that the social safety net was actually a wealth redistribution platform. The social safety net slid into the welfare state, a program of subsidies for reliable Democratic voters at the expense of the general public. Now the Social Security Trust Fund has been looted and FDR II is threatening that benefits won't be paid if congress doesn't commit to another extended deficit spending binge. Not on behalf of the social safety net, but the nanny and the welfare state. The Democratic party loves taking credit for the social safety net, but they have proven to be completely irresponsible trustees, squandering the trust by borrowing against the sum, and then borrowing against the debt to fund an entirely separate agenda. What began as security for workers mutated into a bureaucracy that existed for its own sake expanding benef...

1. Anders Behring Breivik was a Fundamentalist Christian Breivik described himself as not a religious person and mentions praying only once. His plans leading up to the attacks involved multiple visits to prostitutes. In one section of his manifesto he clarifies what he means by Christian. Q: Do I have to believe in God or Jesus in order to become a Justiciar Knight? no, you don’t need to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus to fight for our Christian cultural heritage. It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian-atheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy Breivik did call himself a Christian, but meant that in a cultural sense, rather than a theological one. He emphasized that he was not seeking a theocracy, but a secular society. His idea of a Christian Europe had nothing to do with religion. 2. Anders Behring Breivik Hated Muslims Breivik viewed Muslims as the enemy, but only do...

There is very little to be gained from a study of Anders Behring Breivik. He was a loner who was alienated from the society he lived in, suffered from depression, played violent video games, used steroids, listened to angry music and was of above average intelligence. This profile describes half the spree shooters in the last two decades, right down to the Columbine Massacre. It is not Breivik's politics that make him significant. He was an outsider who despised society and escaped into romantic fantasies of omnipotence fed by video games and popular culture. Breivik cultivated a detached attitude toward the people around him and was obsessed with violent exercises of his masculinity. All this is common to killers of all political stripes and of no political affiliation whatsoever. His journal reveals a man who vacillated between crippling depression and grandiose plans. This manic-depressive behavior suggests Breivik may be bipolar. It is unknown if he was taking medication ...

The tragic events in Norway should be a wake up call to the authorities, not to the dangers of so-called "Right-Wing Extremism", but to the very real dangers of marginalizing a political opposition and a point of view to the extent that they have nowhere to go but underground. The response to the attacks by the Norwegian press and the incitement against the right of center dooms the repetition of this same cycle of violence in which views are driven underground, where they simmer into real extremism and then explode. The easy and simple way to diffuse this cycle of violence is to reach out and create safe spaces for freedom of speech even for the most disagreeable views. European liberals often boast of keeping a tighter lid on extremism than America, with tighter curbs on free speech, but the current tragedy is yet another reminder that this lid is counterproductive. Suppressing a legitimate opposition only leads to the rise of an illegitimate opposition. Shutting down...

BASH BLACK REPUBLICANS WEEK It's summer in the city. The sidewalks are melting, the ice cream is dripping and the liberal assault on Black Republicans is being ladled on thick and heavy. Whether it's Congressman West being lambasted for telling off Debbie Downer or Herman Cain under fire for asking some real questions about Islam-- this seems like the Bash Black Republicans Week to end them all. Why go after black Republicans ? The prospect of having their spending limit go down and their race cards invalidated frightens Democrats more than anything else, by the rise of a responsible African-American leadership. That is the one thing that could take away their power. The desperate fury felt by Black, female and Jewish Republicans, like West, Bachmann and Cantor is a symptom of weakness by a corrupt establishment that knows how precarious its position is. The secret of the Democratic party is that its electoral base is weak. Its grip on the White House has never...