Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish Articles at DanielGreenfield.org

Benjamin Franklin's famous statement is often paraphrased as, those who would trade freedom for security, deserve neither. And the big problem of governments is that we create them for security, only to then need security from them. Human beings have a tendency to want to create institutions to accomplish our goals, whether it is protecting our borders, putting out fires or perpetuating a sense of national greatness. But by collectively investing power in any institution, we risk creating an institution whose power cannot be taken away. No man is an island, which means that we face collective challenges and will act collectively to meet them. The Founders understood that. Their objective was not an America left over to anarchy, but neither was it an all-powerful state. They compromised by attempting to create consensual government whose off switch would be in the hands of the people. Of course it was never that simple. The American Experiment was just that, an experiment, and

When New York Michael Bloomberg delivered a speech blasting Obama's proposed bank policies, it was an almost underwhelming reminder of how badly Obama has lost even the most supposedly hard core loyal states and their liberal leaders. California Governor Schwarzenegger, New York Governor Patterson and city mayor Bloomberg, all former allies of Obama, have turned on his policies based on their economic impact at a state level. And economic impact at a state level played a big part in Scott Brown's MA victory. California, New York and Massachusetts are not red states, and they are barometers of just how disastrous even one year of Obama has been for America. Schwarzenegger, Patterson and Bloomberg are not tea party activists. They are liberals, though two of them are officially Republicans, who were thrilled by Obama and were happy to be his allies. What turned them around is Obama's complete disregard for the impact of his policies at a state level. To Obama, there is

It's natural for there to be Republican euphoria over Scott Brown's victory, which is both a reproach and a setback to Obama and the Democrats. It's been a long year and we could use the good feelings. Particularly when they come backed by real results. Brown's victory didn't just give Massachusetts its first Republican Class I Senator in 57 years. it also torpedoed the current version of the national health care plan and has severely rattled the confidence of the governing Democrats in D.C. But while an early battle has been won, the war goes on. While the media and the White House are still trotting out the usual excuses, the same ones that were made when Creigh Deeds lost in Virginia (he was a bad candidate, he didn't listen to the White House), the message this time has reached Democrats who were willing to ignore setbacks in New Jersey and Virginia, all the way up to Obama. The question now is what are they going to do about it? For the first time the

Gaza has become the cause celebre of the European left, and there are no shortage of activists, left wing celebrities and politicians eager to get their own Jane Fonda photo op with the Muslim Brotherhood derived terrorists of Hamas, who in any other forum would be chopping their heads off. In the name of "human rights" the presses churn out cartoons that recall the best work of Nazi Germany's Der   Sturmer and the USSR's Krokodil, in all the splendid pornographic iconography of anti-semitism mingling the Star of David with the Swastika, greedy Jews controlling the government, monstrous Jews devouring Arab children, when they aren't crucifying them. To go by all this torrent of hate, this sewer flow of bile and boiling cauldron of rage, one might imagine that Israel was conducting a non-stop military invasion of Gaza, complete with ruined buildings and charred rubble. You might picture a Sharon style bulldozing of Hamas compounds and squads of Israeli paratr

Freedom, the ability to act and think freely, is only as healthy as the system of values it is rooted in. Similarly institutions are only as positive as the values that motivate them. Detached from their values, freedom becomes a self-destructive farce that tear down society and its institutions, and institutions naturally converge to squelch freedom. This is because unrestrained freedom leads to unrestrained actions that are destructive, and unrestrained institutions become bigger and bigger, and either become absolutely totalitarian or destroy themselves. In either case the lack of values turns freedom of action and institutions into malignancies. Throughout the Cold War, America insisted that capitalism was the perfect counter to Communism. And it was right. Capitalism conclusively demonstrated the inferiority of communism in the areas of trade, resource production and distribution. Recognizing our success Russia and China switched from Communist oligarchies to National Socialis

A theme constantly repeated both by the internationalist left and the isolationist right is that Islamic terrorism is a backlash or blowback against our foreign policy. Exponents of this point of view, whether it is Bill Ayers or Pat Buchanan, echo the same list of Muslim grievances against America and imply that if we simply left the Muslims alone, they in turn would leave us alone. But their premise is as foolish as arguing that the Visigoths would have left Rome alone, if only Rome had left the Visigoths alone. One can buy some time by leaving the people who are expanding into your territory alone, but that just means postponing the inevitable. Europe is full of governments anxiously trying to leave the Muslims who are overrunning their countries alone. And all they're doing is buying themselves a little time, until the inevitable sacking begins. In countries such as France and Belgium, the sacking has begun already. The internationalists and isolationists who are expert at

A year in and Democrats are seeing their majority crumbling as party candidates are suffering prominent reverses at both the State and Federal level. That year was the year of Obama in which he successfully reversed his party's fortunes and his own. And the method by which he did was a trite combination of arrogance and ignorance. At the heart of that arrogance and ignorance lies his misreading of the FDR model. The FDR model, also known as Rahm's "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste", was based around replicating the aggressive New Deal push in the first days of the Roosevelt administration. But despite a strong congressional majority and wholehearted backing from the media, Obama actually managed to get much less done in his first year than FDR did. And the public backlash has been far stronger. While the press cheerfully touted Obama as a new FDR (when they weren't touting him as a new Lincoln or even Reagan), it seems as if there was a shortage

The media has reluctantly broken away from its latest celebrity tabloid feeding frenzy, to shamelessly exploit the disaster in Haiti, and everyone from credit card companies to aid groups to the news media to the corrupt government of Haiti are looking to profit from the disaster. Accompanying this are attacks on anyone who points out that would have been a manageable disaster everyone else, is unmanageable in Haiti because it lacks a working society. Rush Limbaugh is being savaged for questioning Obama's willingness to throw 100 million and troop deployments to Haiti, at a time when Americans at home need help, some no less so than Haitians. But the United States has been helping Haiti all along, with no good result, as the National Review points out. Since 1973, the United States has been the world’s largest foreign-aid donor to Haiti, which ranks among the world’s poorest countries. From 1990 to 2005, the U.S. sent $1.46 billion to Haiti in aid from development assis