I couldn't have been more delighted to see that Newt Gingrich has cited American Betrayal in his latest column:
As Diana West writes in her remarkable book American Betrayal, we have “new totalitarians who look to Mecca instead of Moscow.”
Old totalitarians, of course, still look to Moscow -- or to the Moscow of their Marxist memories, or, perhaps better, the "Moscow" of their totalitarian fantasties where the central state controls the lives of the citizenry, and the self-selected, self-elected few control the central state. Liberals!
Newt GIngrich is discussing the clear preference President Obama shows for tyranny (Islam) over liberty, and, by extension, how far "the modern left has strayed ... from the classical liberal commitment to a free society."
More and more, I doubt the ideological Left ever had such a commitment.
Newt sums up (links from the original):
As Diana West writes in her remarkable book American Betrayal, we have “new totalitarians who look to Mecca instead of Moscow.”
Maybe we should be grateful that First Lady Michelle Obama declined to wear a headscarf during her visit there [Saudi Arabia]. It was a tiny demonstration of freedom in a country where rape victims have been sentenced to 200 lashes for being alone in a car with a man who was not a relative.
The First Lady’s fashion choices aside, the modern left has strayed so far from the classical liberal commitment to a free society that they condemn irreverent cartoonists (victims of a terrorist massacre, no less) even while they praise a totalitarian regime as a powerful voice for tolerance, moderation and peace.
It’s simply extraordinary to have an administration that “questions the judgment” of Charlie Hebdo but calls Saudi tyrants “important partners in the fight against terrorism.” And to have a president who personally attends the funeral of an Islamist monarch but sends no senior officials to the Unity March in Paris or to the funeral of Margaret Thatcher (an authentic hero in the fight against totalitarianism).
We have an administration that offers too many apologies for Islamists and too weak a defense of freedom.
For at least thirteen years since 9/11, our elites in both parties have failed to take seriously the radical Islamist war against Western civilization. As I described in a speech in Iowa on Saturday, this is a danger we can no longer afford to ignore.
Clearly the current occupants of the White House have no intention of being honest about the threats we face. Congress can and should lead with hearings to present the facts, despite the administration’s apologies of and appeasement for those who would impose tyranny.