Daniel Greenfield

The unexpected snake

The Farmer and the Snake A Farmer walked through his field one cold winter morning. On the ground lay a Snake, stiff and frozen with the cold. The Farmer knew how deadly the Snake could be, and yet he picked it up and put it in his bosom to warm it back to life. The Snake soon revived, and when it had enough strength, bit the man who had been so kind to it. The bite was deadly and the Farmer felt that he must die. “Oh,” cried the Farmer with his last breath, “I am rightly served for pitying a scoundrel.” The Greatest Kindness Will Not Bind the Ungrateful.

A Manageable People

Obama's stated logic behind compelling all Americans to buy health insurance was that the system wouldn't work unless everyone was compelled to be part of it. Conformity is of course is a major requirement for big government solutions, they don't work unless everyone is forced to take part in them. And they don't work unless everyone lives mostly the same. Without individual choices that might take them off the graph. (They still don't work even then, but the numbers look better up front.) And this is how big government solutions lead to the pursuit of a "More Manageable People".

Imposing Another Final Solution

This Sunday, April 11th was the 67th Yom HaShoah, a Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, the National Socialist attempt at imposing a solution on the Jewish problem. But the idea that there was a Jewish problem that needs a solution predated the Nazis. Pharaoh had the same notion that there was a Jewish problem that needed solving. And countless nations and ideologies followed in his footsteps. Today the socialists of the Democratic Party and the EU again want to impose a solution on that pesky Jewish problem.

Obama’s Global Failure

Our allies hate him. Our enemies are laughing at him. Nearly two years after Obama's World Tour in which he did his best to convince voters that he understood global challenges with a high profile tour of a lot of foreign countries (a approach that if it worked should convincingly make every internationally famous rock star a foreign policy expert), his biggest global accomplishment is still his ability to travel around the world to high profile destinations on the taxpayer's shrinking dime. His attempts at diplomacy consisted of delivering vicious slaps across the faces of longtime allies, from England to Israel, and pathetic love notes to tyrants in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, who responded by openly mocking him.

Everything is Unilluminated

Obama's festival of surrender, aka the Nuclear Summit proceeds with our allies on the sidelines or sitting it out, and our enemies up there front and center.

Karzai’s Gambit and Obama’s Betrayal

Whatever else Hamid Karzai may be, he's always been a survivor. And now he's trying to survive the Obama Administration. Karzai knows that unlike Bush, Obama has no commitment whatsoever to Afghanistan. What Obama wants is to pull out as quickly as possible in time for his own 2012 election. And he wants to do it without the appearance of a disaster and a defeat. And there's only one way to do that, cut a deal with the Taliban. To that end, the Obama Administration is operating on two tracks. Track 1, the public and visible track, is the military approach that Obama got pushed into, a temporary surge to push back the Taliban and allow him to declare victory ahead of a pullout.

The Real Price of Change

In 2008, the Democratic Party hoped that Americans were insecure enough and unhappy enough with the way things were in Washington D.C., that they would buy the "Change" brand, sight unseen. But it's 2010 and the American People are quickly waking up to the real price of change.

How the Western Pursuit of Muslim Moderates Actually Promotes Extremism

The term Moderate Muslim is a misnomer, because it is the equivalent of describing him as a Secular Catholic or a Liberal Conservative. Muslims who pride themselves on sticking to the Koran view extremism as a virtue, not a fault. Islam's reform movements that succeeded were not movements that made Islam more liberal, but that made it stricter, harsher and more unfeeling.

An Unhappy Passover for Hussein Obama

Obama delivered the expected Passover greeting in which he informed Jews that our holiday is really about social justice and "our ongoing responsibility to fight against all forms of suffering and discrimination", which sounds a lot more like the job of a Community Organier or the party platform of the Democratic Party, than the actual Biblical commandment which calls on the Jews to remember when G-d took them out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

A Brand New Pharaoh and a New Slavery

How did the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt begin? Pharaoh announced a Public Works Project and called upon them to volunteer to labor for the public good. To set an example, he was the first to arrive and personally wielded a shovel to show his commitment to the project. The Jews came as well to volunteer as well and anyone who complained about the work being too hard was pointed to Pharaoh, who wore a brick mould around his own neck, and asked, whether he was less willing to contribute than Egypt's own ruler?

Falling Down

WND is reporting that the Obama Administration encouraged protests against Israel in Jerusalem. While there is no way to verify that, it would generally be in line with the Administration's take, and whether or not they understood that such protests would be violent, well that too is up in the air.

The Full Measure of Joe Biden’s Hypocrisy on Jerusalem

Not that long ago, Joseph Robinette Biden was supposedly gravely insulted by Israel announcing that potential housing to be built in Jerusalem had passed one stage of a multi-stage approval process. Biden was so insulted by this dastardly act that he stood up the Prime Minister of Israel for 90 minutes and that he and various Obama Administration officials proceeded to lambaste Israel for "insulting" Biden. Hillary Clinton proclaimed; "it was not only an insult to Biden, but an insult to the United States." "There was an affront, it was an insult", huffed Senior Obama advisor David Axelrod. Hundreds of newspapers immediately penned editorials denouncing Israel's grave insult. The essence of it was that Israel had insulted Biden by laying claim to Jerusalem during his visit.

The Immigration Jihad

Several hundred years ago when the forces of Islam wanted to capture Vienna, they came with the sword and the cannon and laid siege to the city walls. Today they simply take a plane. While Vienna was able to resist repeated sieges, it was not able to resist Islamic immigration, and as a result the city looks a good deal more the way it would have had it fallen to an actual siege. Today as much as a third of Vienna is of foreign origin. And as many as 50 percent of Viennese schoolchildren have a non-German language as their mother tongue.

Liberalism’s Weaponization of Multilculturalism

Multiculturalism is one of those political words that liberals have successfully added to the day to day lexicon. It's become so that no business or political party can describe itself without employing multicultural language.

Iraqi Elections and Chavez’s Tyranny

The forces of tyranny are strong around the world, as Chavez completed his crackdown on the independent media with the arrest of the President of Globovision Television. Globovision was Venezuela's equivalent of CNN, the country's first 24 hour news network. Chavez had previously shuttered Radio Caracas Televisión, resulting in student protests and a violent crackdown that foreshadowed the actions taken by Chavez's Iranian ally, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

2012 - A Commemorative Address on the Defeat of the United States Economy

Comrade Workers, Peasants and Welfare Recipients of America, For four long years we have battled the economy, and now I am pleased to announce that the economy is finally ready to surrender. Representatives of the economy have met with the party leadership and signed a preliminary surrender agreement. This means that our prolonged War on the Economy has been successful, and the complete destruction of the economy is at hand. And with these newly liberated resources from the private sector, we believe that it may actually be possible to drive unemployment down beneath 50 percent.

Is it Muslim Rage or its Causes that Threatens Us?

The debate over how to handle Islamic terrorism essentially comes down to those who advocate managing Islam in order to control its propensity for violence, and those who believe that instead we should be managing anything and everything that might provoke Muslim rage

Obama’s Victimization of Jewish Refugees from Muslim Countries

One of the unreported aspects of Obama's manufactured insult over an Israeli housing project in Jerusalem is the way in which the administration has targeted Jewish refugees from Muslim countries.

The United States of Socialist Republics

What exactly was the difference between the United States and the USSR? Both were political unions occupying large land masses. Both believed themselves to be unique political experiments which would redefine the nature of human governance around the world. Both even believed that government existed for the benefit of the people. Yet beyond the specifics, there was one fundamental difference between the two. Not simply in how they were governed, but why they were governed.

The Empire of the Out of Touch

Three is just not just the number of graces, fates and gorgons-- for the Obama Administration, there were three major pieces of legislation they had in mind that would radically change America. The first of these was government health care, an approach that would not only eventually lock in all Americans deeper into the government's cradle-to-grave programs, but would also make it virtually impossible to reduce government spending while providing carte blanche for just about any mandatory public health program to be implemented.