WhatFinger


Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield is a New York City writer and columnist. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and his articles appears at its Front Page Magazine site.

Most Recent Articles by Daniel Greenfield:

A River of Race Runs Through It

Last week, Congressman Clyburn reached into his deck, discarded the queens, aces and jokers, and played the 'Race Card'. "The fact of the matter is, the president’s problems are in large measure because of the color of his skin," quoth Clyburn. Not the economy, an unwanted war or a politician who acts like a social butterfly while his constituents shovel spam from jars and dine on government cheese. It's the color of his skin.
- Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Scandal Nation

imageDespite 15 trillion dollars of debt, we still give priority to sex scandals over economic scandals. Which may explain why we are so deep underwater. Imagine if a politician who grabbed a 100 million dollar pork project for his friends had to spend a week explaining it. That would almost certainly never happen. Not to a Democrat or even a Republican. Spending isn't salacious. But maybe it should be. The biggest political scandals are unrelated to a politician's function. Sometimes sex and money do collide. As is the case with John Edwards. But mostly it's a chance to play out an old narrative. The sleazy pol, the hypocritical media and the spouse standing by his side.
- Monday, June 6, 2011

Sink To the Bottom With Me

imageWhat do you think about Global Warming? It doesn't matter what you think. Not if you live in New York, Berlin, Yokohama or Karachi that is. On behalf of his C40 group, Mayor Bloomberg explained to the BBC, "Your job is not to ask the public where they want to go and get behind them. Your job is to tell the public". But the BBC knows that already. They've been telling the public what to think for a long time now. And they don't need lessons on that from some parvenu yank billionaire. Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs and don't presume to teach the BBC how to disdainfully ignore public opinion for the public's own good.
- Sunday, June 5, 2011

Behind the Weinergate

The real story of Weinergate is the tale of conservative bloggers who kept the story alive until enough Democrats decided that they could use it to take an upstart down. The reason that CNN and so many other major media outlets decided to push the story, instead of continuing to dismiss it, is not because conservative bloggers made them do it, but because of the ambition of some Democrats.
- Saturday, June 4, 2011

Socialism’s Army of Occupation

The most pervasive myth of the welfare state is the altruism of the public sector. In this mythology, the private sector is run by a bunch of greedy businessmen who get rich by making money off people's misery. While the public sector is run by altruists who want nothing except to help those left behind by the private sector. Capitalists meet the Anti-Capitalists. But actually it's the public sector that does a much better job of making money off people's misery. Some parts of the private sector do deliberately seek out ways to feed off poverty and keep their victims poor, most notably in the lending and financial services industry, but for the most part the private sector makes money off willing customers.
- Thursday, June 2, 2011

The Great Error of Israeli Normalization

Israel has celebrated its 63rd independence day, but it is a hollow celebration in a country that is less independent than it has been in decades. Rather than working within regional and global realities, its leaders instead fanatically pursue normalization and stabilization. But normalcy and stability are illusions in the Middle East, as the past few months have reminded us.
- Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Immemorial

imageNearly 1.3 million Americans have died in the nation's wars. That is one soldier for every hundred families living today. One soldier for every 270 of us has died somewhere between the shot heard round the world' fired at Lexington and the shots being fired now as you read this on some dusty patch of rock in Kandahar. We all bear the terrible burden of their sacrifice. And the greater burden to make that sacrifice meaningful.
- Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Will Islam Destroy Itself?

In his address to congress, Netanyahu said that militant Islam threatens Islam. As if there were any such thing as a non-militant form of Islam. An ideology that was militantly expansionistic from birth. And yet that expansionism does threaten it. It's not mere militancy that threatens Islam, but its own lack of proportion. Had the Nazis satisfied themselves with a round of domestic purges and only a little territorial expansionism, today they might still be running a bankrupt decaying state.
- Monday, May 30, 2011

A Day at the Races

imageIf the Republican presidential field were any more unstable, it would be radioactive. At this point just about anyone can jump in and briefly poll on top of the heap, before slowly sinking down to the bottom again, like a banana in a bowl of stale jello. Party players pin their hopes on candidates that aren't running. Pilgrims in thousand dollar suits court state governors. Activists assemble petitions. But none of that is the solution. It's not so much that the man is missing, but the message.
- Sunday, May 29, 2011

An Enemy We Dare Not Name

LESS THAN JUST WORDS Netanyahu's visit managed to overshadow even Obama's visit to the UK. Israeli leaders have come to Washington before, but rarely has it been such big news. The visit itself was significant, mainly because Netanyahu kicked back against the narrative. His speech compromised on too many areas, but it was a show of independence against a leader who has no credibility on Israel. It was what so many conservatives and Jews wanted to hear. How much any of it matters is another question. Netanyahu's warm reception makes applying pressure more difficult, but far from impossible. And Obama is certainly not throwing in the towel.
- Saturday, May 28, 2011

Failed State Colonization - The Greatest Threat of Our Time

Let's compare two countries side by side. Country A has a sizable middle class and economy, social welfare benefits and a low birth rate. Country B is a failed state where thugs run amok in the street, a few families control the economy and the birth rate is off the charts.
- Thursday, May 26, 2011

Scarecrow Empires and Broken Alliances

Prime Minister Netanyahu's address to congress was less about the contents of his speech and more about the familiarity. Like Tony Blair, he was startlingly at home here. His presence an instinctive reminder of an alliance based on commonality and fellowship, weighed against the realpolitik of multinationalism. The warmth in his tone countering the cold counsel of foreign policy hands demanding more pressure. The chilly reception that Gordon Brown and Benjamin Netanyahu received on their visits from the Obama Administration are post-modern fracture points in the old friendships. The instinctive kinship that Blair and Netanyahu called on are completely alien to Obama who feels far more warmth toward Egypt or Indonesia, than England and Israel. But Obama's foreignness to the old traditions is only a small fracture point in the larger break.
- Wednesday, May 25, 2011

How the Left Went Wrong on Islam

What makes the creeping political correctness on Islam so startling is its very newness. It wasn't so long ago that the right and the left both agreed that as a religion and a political movement, it was dangerously backward and violent. From Winston Churchill, "Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance" to Karl Marx, "Islamism proscribes the nation of the Infidels, constituting a state of permanent hostility between the Mussulman and the unbeliever", leading figures on the right and the left held a realistic understanding of Islam. They dismissed it as violent, barbaric, ignorant and dangerous. The right saw Islam as a threat to the Western Christian hegemony. The left viewed it as a reactionary movement of superstitious fanatics. They might praise Arab generals or scientists, but not the creed itself.
- Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Three Cheers for Terroristine

imageWe need a terrorist state. Where the politicians are terrorists, the police are terrorists and even the men sitting at the desk when you come in to drop off a form are terrorists. There are states that support terrorists, and give safe harbor to them, but that's not good enough. We don't want another Pakistan or Iran. We're not half-assing it this time. What we want is the genuine article. Terrorists from the top down. Terrorists everywhere. A state where every branch of government and the entire country is nothing but terrorists.
- Monday, May 23, 2011

End of the World

The media has been having a prolonged belly laugh at a group that had the temerity to suggest that the world would end today. Of course it's ridiculous when Harold Camping predicted that the world will be over today, but not when Al Gore predicted that the North Pole would melt in five years. True believers in Gore would say that's the difference between science and eschatology. But when bogus science warns us of an apocalypse if we don't follow the tenets of their ideology, then how much difference is there anyway?
- Sunday, May 22, 2011

Peace In Our Weekend

Haven't you always wanted to send your money directly to imprisoned terrorists? Well now you can thanks to cooperation between the Obama Administration and the Palestinian Authority which will now be paying salaries to imprisoned terrorists. The PA doesn't have much of a tax base, except the Americans, Israelis and Europeans who serve as their tax base.
A law published in the official Palestinian Authority Registry last month grants all Palestinians and Israeli Arabs imprisoned in Israel for terror crimes a monthly salary from the PA.
The latest US contribution to the PA budget\Adopt a Terrorist is a quarter of a billion.
- Friday, May 20, 2011

The Ghosts of America Haunt Social Security

In a country with a life expectancy almost as long as the lines at the offices of its bureaucracy, the scale and scope of health care spending is nothing to marvel at. But it is not so much the entitlements themselves that are expensive, as the cost of the liberal social policies that surround them.
- Thursday, May 19, 2011

A People’s Approach to National Security

Two recent incidents, a tweeted photo of TSA agents examining a baby and a man shouting pounding on a cockpit door while shouting "Allah Akbar" being subdued by passengers, remind us of the absurd fictions of airline security. The biggest fiction of airline security is that it is secure. The second biggest fiction is that it is even meant to be secure. The TSA and its naked scanners don't exist to provide security, but to provide plausible deniability when an attack does happen. It was created to answer the question "Why did you let 9/11 happen". And the answer is if something happens again, this time we did everything we could short of poking sharp objects into passengers orifices or profiling Muslim as potential terrorists. But the TSA's breast milk and baby follies are a side effect of a law enforcement culture which is less concerned with public safety, than it is with public order. Where public safety works to identify threats, public order concentrates on enforcing the rules. Public safety looks for the wolf in the fold, public order treats everyone like the wolf.
- Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Nakbacide

imageImagine if every year on the 7th of May, Germans held an annual commemoration of the defeat of the Nazi state, complete with Swastikas, anti-Jewish chants and slogans, and a historical narrative claiming that the Volksdeutsche expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the real victims of WW2. That disgusting spectacle is exactly what takes place on May 15th as Arab Muslims chant and riot to protest their unsuccessful genocide of a regional minority.
- Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Liberalism’s Rape Corps

imageTwo years ago the left launched a major assault on Haliburton over its mishandling of two sexual assault cases by or against its civilian contractors. Al Franken successfully introduced a bill to bar defense contracts from going to companies who behave likewise. Left wing media boasted that they were the defenders of rape victims, while Republicans support rape. Now for the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, it's been revealed that over a 1,000 female volunteers have been raped in the last decade. Numbers that are positively 9/11 in scope. And that the idealistic Peace Corps leadership acted like the evil Haliburton leadership, blaming the victims and discouraging them from seeking legal action. There are no cries that Democrats support rape. No bills to defund the Corps, that awkward legacy of New Frontierism. This time it's Republicans, like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, stepping up to demand accountability. And it's the Democrats who are standing in the way.
- Monday, May 16, 2011

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