Language is a potent weapon for legitimizing any political system. In many instances, the language in the liberal West is reminiscent of the communist language of the old Soviet Union, although liberal media and politicians use words and phrases that are less abrasive and less value-loaded than words used by the old communist officials and their state-run media. In Western academe, media, and public places, a level of communication has been reached which avoids confrontational discourse and which resorts to words devoid of substantive meaning. Generally speaking, the liberal system shuns negative hyperbolas and skirts around heavy-headed qualifiers that the state-run media of the Soviet Union once used in fostering its brand of conformity and its version of political correctness. By contrast, the media in the liberal system, very much in line with its ideology of historical optimism and progress, are enamored with the overkill of morally uplifting adjectives and adverbs, often displaying words and expressions such as “free speech,” “human rights,” “tolerance,” and “diversity.” There is a wide spread assumption among modern citizens of the West that the concepts behind these flowery words must be taken as something self-evident.

There appears to be a contradiction. If free speech is something “self- evident” in liberal democracies, then the word “self-evidence” does not need to be repeated all the time; it can be uttered only once, or twice at the most. The very adjective “self-evident,” so frequent in the parlance of liberal politicians may in fact hide some uncertainties and even some self-doubt on the part of those who employ it. With constant hammering of these words and expressions, particularly words such as “human rights,” and “tolerance”, the liberal system may be hiding something; hiding, probably, the absence of genuine free speech. To illustrate this point more clearly it may be advisable for an average citizen living in the liberal system to look at the examples of the communist rhetoric which was once saturated with similar freedom-loving terms while, in reality, there was little of freedom and even less free-speech

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An opening out of the themes from Part 1, these being the inadequacy of our philosophy and its fatal disconnection from first principles, or first cause.  On the Radio page now.

So as to produce equality of outcome for Hispanic students, they will receive full credit for the University of Majority Rights course Geography 101, the only requirement being that they demonstrate mastery of this map:

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City Pages interviews former CIA analyst, specializing in Osama Bin Laden, Michael Scheuer:

CP: Getting back to what you said a moment ago about the importance to bin Laden of offering the U.S. a warning, didn’t he in fact get in trouble in a lot of Islamic circles after 9/11 for failing to provide a warning?

Scheuer: Yes—that is, for failing to provide enough of a warning. The prophet’s guidance is that you go the extra mile to warn your enemy. Bin Laden was called on the carpet by his peers in the Islamic militant movement for three things. One was that he didn’t give us enough warning. He’s now addressed the American people on five separate occasions since 2002. So he’s taken care of that one. He was also called on the carpet for not offering us a chance to convert to Islam. He’s now done that three separate times, and Zawahiri has done it once. So they’ve covered that angle. The other thing they were taken to task for was that they didn’t have the religious authority to kill as many Americans as they did. In the summer of 2003, he got a religious judgment from a very reputable Saudi cleric that he could use weapons of mass destruction, specifically nuclear weapons, to kill up to 10 million Americans.

After 9/11, he had several very important loose ends to tie up, in religious terms, before he could attack us again. He’s done all of those things. It’s interesting, because he spoke on the eve of our presidential election, and he said, This is the last time I’m going to warn you. In his speech last week, he said, I was not going to talk to you again, but your president is lying to you. I wanted to give you one more opportunity to hear the truth.

Well, that was February, 2006, and Bin Laden has just put forth another video urging the US to convert to Islam.

So its getting to be a little tiresome, all this admonishment without any real Jihad.  Is he full of hot air?  Is he a neocon version of Emmanuel Goldstein?

One possibility here is that he really is attempting to “go the extra mile” as required by Islamic law if the other side shows signs of seeking reconciliation.  He shows this may be his motivation during his discussion of the 2006 election when the US citizenry did move toward the Democrats—a collective act which he interprets as an expression of good intentions by US citizens, but which he says is clearly not working and must be regarded as inadequate.  So is this his “final warning”?

I don’t know but the fact that he plays the same race guilt cards as Jews and blacks during his rhetoric seems to point to him being something less than genuine.

UPDATE (10:23AM PDT 9/9):  Well, it looks like my identification of the ethnic origin of the rhetoric may have been correct.  The Times UK reports that:

American spy chiefs were quick to name Adam Gadahn, the head of al-Qaeda’s English language media operations, as the author of large sections of bin Laden’s broadcast.

Adam Gadahn is also known as “Adam Pearlman” whose grandfather was on the Board of Directors of the Anti-Defamation League.  But I cheated:  I based this prediction on my being an “antisemite” and as we all know, you cannot count naughty predictions toward your credibility.  You must say things like “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.” even if your naughty model of the world is right 86,400 times a day.

Lew Rockwell’s Rick Fisk writes of Ron Paul’s immigration policy:

The worst rhetorical device used when discussing immigration and border control is the ad hominem, “illegal alien.” It is used daily but its absurdity is rarely challenged other than to suggest it is a politically incorrect term.

There is no such thing as a person whose very nature makes him illegal. Nobody is born into a state of illegality….

A border is not a property boundary; it is a demarcation of legal jurisdiction. A person, who crosses a border, has not committed a common law crime…

The U.S. Constitution grants no authority to harass people crossing the border unless those crossing are obviously intent on committing harm. The only authority given to congress relating to immigration was to determine what constituted citizenship. Since it is allegedly supposed to protect our rights, it has no legal authority to demand identification or to detain us merely because we cross a border. We celebrate Ellis Island, but we shouldn’t. It was a detainment camp that violated the rights of everyone who entered even if they gladly accepted it. Many people died there unnecessarily.

Here’s what Ron Paul actually says about border enforcement:

No amnesty.  Estimates suggest that 10 to 20 million people are in our country illegally. That’s a lot of people to reward for breaking our laws.

Lew Rockwell, withdraw Rick Fisk’s story now or face legitimate accusations of libel against Ron Paul on the most significant issue facing the public.