The Left Wages Jihad Against A Fellow Infidel

Pamela, at Atlas Shrugs, is under heavy fire from the left wing of the blogosphere. Why? Frankly, it's because they are jealous and livid over the fact that she got an interview with John Bolton. In turn, they have "outed" Pamela by using her full name in article after article, something Pamela has declined to do out of a desire to remain relatively anonymous.

The thing is, Pamela gets interviews with people like John Bolton, Andrew Bostom, Phyllis Chesler, Benyamin Netanyahu, Natan Sharansky, and Brigitte Gabriel, because Pamela is good at what she does. Pamela is a former Associate Publisher of the New York Observer, so she knows the journalistic ropes. She is a good writer, with an eye for the interesting details of character, place, and zeitgeist which make the story come alive. When you read her reports from Israel, for instance, you feel as if she has taken you there.

What's more, Pamela is charming, witty, able to keep up with powerful minds. To her credit, she also posseses one of the most important qualities of a strong probative journalist; she is competely fearless. Witness Pamela's challenging of Bolton on his insistence that France was capable and trustworthy in insuring the peace in Lebanon. Remember as you read this, that she was challenging Bolton on the day after the Peace Treaty was announced. Three weeks later we see that Pamela was right, and Bolton was wrong. And, she told him so at the time.

But, the left can't sit with the simple explanation that Pamela is a good journalist, with connections, who lives in New York, and that these things account for the fact that she gets the interviews she gets. No.

Instead, they have to invent an alternate narrative. They have to invent a whole other Pamela. They say she is a drunk, that she's stupid, and that she is incoherent. That she gets the interviews because she is too stupid to ask the questions. That she is just a pawn in a bigger game controlled by larger forces behind the scenes.

Is this sounding familiar? Doesn't this sound eerily similar to what they say about George Bush?

It seems that whenever the left is confronted with their own impotence, they reach into their top drawer and pull out the same old tired smear template.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't write about such crap, but there is something else going on here about which I am concerned. Some of the attacks on Pamela are of the "she is a racist" variety. She is being branded an anti-Islam hater, who wants to "kill Arab civilians." And, many of the leftie writers who are tying to paint her as such are doing so in the hopes that their smears will spill over onto John Bolton in time for the upcoming confirmation vote.

This has to stop, my friends. This idea that we can't speak out against the violence and racism of Islam is very dangerous. Religion, like government, the media, and academia, is an insititution of power within society. Moreover, religions embody specific ideologies, in the same way that political parties embody ideologies.

If we, as a society, decide that we are not allowed to criticize religion, then we will have rendered ourselves powerless against ideologies which have the capacity to steer large amounts of people down dangerous paths.

In other words, we will have created the perfect conditions for totalitarianism.

If Muslim clerics in major mosques and universities call Jews apes and pigs who are to be murdered, then we ought to, as responsible citizens, speak out against this genocidal racism. If Muslim politicians do the same, citing the Koran as their inspiration, then we can only call ourselves decent people if we oppose them.

Somehow, though, many on the left now want to ban criticism of the ideology of religion.
We must put a stop to this idea now, as it is in its infancy as a force on the American political landscape. Once a meme gets out there, it is harder to inoculate the population against its virulence.

Our friend Pamela is being attacked by the left. We can not sit and be silent as she is branded a bigot for speaking out against bigotry. If we allow them to come after Pamela like this, they will come for another one of us next, and eventually the knock on the door you hear will be them coming for you.