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The Nomalization of Evil
The Nomalization of Evil

BY HERB DENENBERG

THE PHILDELPHIA BULLETIN
Perhaps the most serious and most dangerous problem we face is the normalization of evil. That’s the subject of an essay published on in the Wall Street Journal by Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl, the 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded by Islamofascist terrorists in Pakistan .

The title of the article, “The Normalization of Terror,” and its theme carry a devastating message, showing how the mainstream media, many of our leading universities, and people like Jimmy Carter and Bill Moyers have succeeded in transforming the most despicable, immoral, genocidal degenerates into a respectable category freedom fighters, part of a resistance movement even though they are using the most illegitimate, immoral, and illegal ends to achieve their political goals.

These are the real moral degenerates of our time, with the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Moyers leading the parade of evil,

LEADING THE PARADE OF EVIL, BUT THEY ARE THE ONLY LEADERS, THE REST OF THE CROWD IS SECOND RATE PROFESSORS WITH NO PUBLIC FACE, AND A BUNCH OF BLOOD THIRSTY TEENS AND TWENTY KIDS LOOKING FOR ATTENTION.



followed by many in our elite universities and the mainstream media.


NO. THAT IS WHERRE THE LIE IS. MAINSTREAM MEDIA. NOT AT ALL. ONLY BILL MOYERS, AND I JUST SAMPLED FIFTEEN TRANSCRIPTS FROM HIS PBS SHOW, NOT A LEADER IN AUDIENCE POLLING BY A LONG SHOT, AND NOT ONE MENTION OF ANY OF HIS SO CALLED MISSION TO NORMALIZE TERROR.

April 11, 2008
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to THE JOURNAL. NOTHING ABOUT HAMAS.

Food is the big story this week. We're paying a lot more for it, a lot of people don't have enough of it, and Washington may be about to make a bad situation worse.

First, the price of food. Rice alone has shot up by more than half in just two weeks —double its price a year ago. But corn, wheat, and other grains are sky-high, too, creating a crisis for poor people around the world.

Here at home milk prices have soared over the past year by 26%, eggs by 24%, bread by 13%. Add rising grocery prices to the higher cost of gas and electricity, throw in disappearing jobs and home foreclosures, and you can understand why people are struggling to keep food on the table. Our government figures 28 million Americans will be using food stamps this year —the highest level since the program began in the 1960s.
April 4, 2008
Skip to Part II
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.

The head of the United Nations' world food program says "a perfect storm" is hitting hungry people around the globe. The cost of food is soaring. Food riots have broken out in Indonesia, Pakistan, and Egypt, where the price of bread rose 10 times in a week. Afghanistan has asked for urgent help. Forty countries are judged to be at risk of serious hunger, or already suffering from it.

January 4, 2008
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.

I know, I know — enough politics already. But no matter how sick and tired you may be of all Iowa all the time, something fresh is brewing here. This small mostly white, corn-growing state has put forward two men who are not more of the same. Michael Huckabee's a Baptist preacher...


July 20, 2007

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal. Here with me now are two partners of Triglyceride Investments, a private equity fund that recently announced its intention of combining the assets of all the hedge funds on Wall Street in order to bring under a single canopy of ownership every media outlet in America...


June 1, 2007 — Full Transcript (Watch the show) (print)
Congressional Ethics
Bob Kerrey

Listening to History

May 27, 2007 — D-Day Revisited )




May 18, 2007 —
"SOS Essay/Melissa Harris-Lacewell
Bruce Bawer
Trade Talks

May 11, 2007 —
"I'm Harry" Essay/Keeping the Faith
Nick Gillespie
Marilyn B. Young
The Cost of War

May 4, 2007 - t)
Carlo Bonini
Jerry Miller and the Innocence Project
Jonathan Miller

April 27, 2007 -
Jon Stewart
Blogging for Truth

WHERE'S ALL THE ORWELLIAN LANGUAGE. YOU WOULD THINK BUT THAT'S 20 ARTICLES, FULL TRANSCRIPTS.

NOTHING. HE ISN'T INVOLVED. IT'S A LIE, OR SO THE EVIDENCE SEEMS TO SUGGEST.



Bill Moyers talks with Imam Zaid Shakir
BILL MOYERS: It is not easy being a mainstream American Muslim these days. The specter of radicalism hangs in the public mind, and even the most assimilated of believers...those born here or immigrants who now claim America as their own face skepticism wherever they turn. Here's our account of how one increasingly prominent figure in the community copes with the skepticism - and the scrutiny. His name is Zaid Shakir.

BILL MOYERS: On a recent Saturday at a mosque in Brooklyn, New York, hundreds of Muslims gathered to hear one of the rising stars in their faith.

ZAID SHAKIR: Many people act like this is the worst that the Muslims have ever experienced - you know, in America it's like: "I can't take it anymore!" Can't take what? "People looking at me! You know, that look!" Man, people's homes are being blown up and you're worried about that look?! You want to de-fuse that look? Just wave. Seriously, just wave and blow a kiss. And then start running towards them in slow motion. Boom, that look will go away real fast!


BILL MOYERS: Imam Zaid Shakir is one of the most popular Muslim teachers in America today.



They speak in Orwellian language, turning evil into good, murder and genocide into resistance, and blowing the brains out of young children into acts of heroism. What is most disturbing about this terrible trend is that barbarism seems to be going mainstream even in America .

THIS IS VERY DISTURBING. MAINSTREAM. WHERE... NOWHERE. IT'S A LIE.



This is the story that Judea Pearl tells so well and so powerfully that it is a classic of the English language and a message that should be engraved on the mind and soul of every civilized person.

At the end of his powerful message to establish moral clarity in a world gone mad, Mr. Pearl writes, “Danny’s picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.”

Mr. Pearl says it is now seven years after the murder of his son, and then asks, “Would Danny have believed that today’s world emerged after his tragedy?

“The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.

“Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South American reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheiky Mohammed, now in Guantanamo , would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of the sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of ‘the resistance.’ Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnapers deserve international recognition.”

Judea Pearl would have thought that the murder of his son, Danny, would actually be a turning point in man’s inhumanity to man,


THERE THEY GO AGAIN WITH A TURNING POINT IN MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN. THAT IS THE KEY. TURNING POINT, SEA CHANGE, MORNING AFTER A GREAT DIVIDE IN AMERICA. I HEAR THIS, AND MY MENTOR. DR. JOSEF BLOCK WON'T LET ME ABSORB IT BECAUSE IT CANNOT BE TRUE. VLAD THE IMPALER, GENGIS KHAN,. POL POT, STALIN, JONESTOWN. THE SPANISH INQUISITION, SALEM WITCHES, TO HOPE FOR A SUDDEN TURNING POINT JUSTS DOESN'T MEASURE UP TO APPROPRIATE HISTORICAL REALISM.


THAT IS THE WHOLE THING. A TURNING POINT?? BECAUSE OF YET ANOTHER HIDEOUS ACT OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE. BOB LEES WAS BEHEADED. DANIEL PEARL WAS BEHEADED, MARIE ANTOINETTE WAS BEHEADED. HUMANS EAT BABIES, MAIM CHILDREN AND GENERALLY ACT LIKE THE CHIMPS THEY ARE DESCENDED, ONE OF WHOM ATE THE FACE OFF THEIR CARETAKER.





and that the slaughter of innocents to communicate political messages would once and for all be universally condemned....

THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS IS UNIVERSALLY CONDEMNED, EXCEPT WHEN AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES KILLED AT A THOUSAND YARDS, UNTIL WE KILLED TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND IN HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI. AND FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND IN IRAQ, AND NINE HUNDRED THOUSAND IN THE DRESDEN FIRESTORM. OR THE SIX MILLION KILLED IN A WAR TO PRESERVE AMERICA'S CONTROL OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. UM ER, UH... YES VIRGINIA, THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS.









by civilized people and sent to the ashcan of history, where such gross barbarism is no longer tolerated, the place reserved for such atrocities as slavery, human sacrifice, and other shocking and totally discredited practices of an era long gone.



But the moral degenerates mentioned above have given these icons of evil,

OVER THE EDGE. CARTER AND MOYER MAY BE THAT, BUT THEY ARE NEVER SEEN IN THE MEDIA EXCEPT PBS, AND THOSE SHOWS HAVEN'T MENTIONED HAMAS FOR A FULL YEAR, NOT BY MY SAMPLING OF MOYER'S JOURNAL. SORRY.


these most degenerate of moral degenerates, moral standing in our society and acceptance in elite circles of universities, of the media, and of political leadership. Mr. Pearl says we have reached the point where we are no longer disgusted by evil: “Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.”


WELL SPEAK FOR YOURSELF. WE ARE THE SAME AS WE ALWAYS WEREL. WE WATCH THE SLAUGHTER IN DARFUR AND GO TO THE MOVIES AND UPGRADE OUR KITCHENS, AND DON'T TITHE FOR THE POOR, AND WAIT FOR SOCIAL CHANGE TO DO IT FOR US.

WE LIVE IN LUXURY AND WRIGN OUR HANDS ABOUT KIDS WITH HAIRLIPS. PEOPLE ARRE JUST NOT WHAT WE WISH THEY WERE.




I am not so sure we have been numbed by violence into acceptance of evil. I don’t think people like those moral degenerates Jimmy Carter and Bill Moyers are numbed by anything. That would be an excuse. They are not numbed but have placed themselves in the hands of the devil by dark prejudices of various sorts that are lodged deep in their psyches.


SAME THING OVER AND OVER. CARTER AND MOYERS, IN THE HANDS OF THE DEVIL FINE. BUT NOBODY LISTENS TO THEM.


“But brute force can turn self-defense into state terrorism. It’s what the U.S. did in Vietnam, with B-52s and napalm, and again in Iraq, with shock and awe. THAT'S RIGHT. MOYERS STEPPED IN SHIT ON THAT ONE. CALLED US TERRORISTS, WHICH WE ARE, NAPALM AND SHOCK AND AWE, DEATH FROM ABOVE, VIETNAM, BABY KILLING.
YOU CAN'T SAY THAT. AND IF YOU HAPPEN TO STEP IN SHIT AND SAY NOT ONLY AMERICA BUT, AHEM, MAYBE, HERE WE GO, ISRAEL, BELIEVE ME, MOYERS IS OJN PBS AND NOBODY WATCHES AND IN FIFTEEN PROGRAMS SAMPLED NOT ANOTHER WORD ABOUT TERRORISM. HE'S BEEN DECLAWED.



The people I associate with have not been numbed and they can still recognize evil, be disgusted by it, and reject it. Mr. Carter and Mr. Moyers can no longer do that, but that is due to dark prejudice, not numbness.
\
ENOUGH OF CARTER AND MOYERS. SO THEY ARE CRAZY. HORRIBLE. DESPICABLE. DOES HE HAVE ANYONE ELSE??? NO BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ANYONE ELSE.


This is the way Mr. Pearl explains the described descent into evil. He reasons that well-meaning analysts in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy but only a tactic. Thus the mechanism that drives terrorism was made to disappear and in its place we now have the more “manageable ‘tactical’ considerations.”

OH, ANOTHER SHIT HOOK, THE FORMER MAYOR OF LONDON. THER BRITS HATE JEWS. OF COURSE YOU CAN FIND SOMEBODY TO STICK UP FOR HAMAS.

Armed with that kind of reasoning, the former mayor of London , Ken Livingstone, in July 2005 could tell Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man’s second nature: “In an unfair balance, that’s what people use.” So the slaughter of innocents, the blowing the brains out of babies, was suddenly transformed into human nature, an almost reflex-like inevitability with moral neutrality. It’s not a choice or a moral decision, but more like breathing out and breathing in. Terrorism is magically transformed into the morally acceptable.


COME ON. former mayor of London , Ken Livingstone, in July 2005 could tell Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man’s second nature.

SHAME ON YOU. SECOND NATURE??> THIS GUY IS A THUG, A CREEP AND A MORON. KEN LIVINGSTONE I PRESUME IS AN IDIOT.!





But our former president, Jimmy Carter, the most degenerate of the moral degenerates of our time,


LANGUAGE. THE MOST DEGERATE OF THE MORAL DEGENERATES OF OUR TIME. OUR TIME DOESN'T HAVE ANY FAMOUS SPOKESMEN FOR MORAL DEGENRACY.


makes the clearest argument for terrorism and the slaughter of innocents. In his book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, this is the way Mr. Carter slyly justifies terrorism with what is an appeal to suicide bombers: “It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel.” Translation : Acts of terror are no longer taboo, but are just a legitimate means to a political end. Until you get what you want, terrorism is perfectly acceptable. Jimmy Carter, in effect says, “Keep killing women and children, and blowing up babies; as a former president of the U.S. I find your terrorism and even genocide perfectly acceptable.” And a subtext of that translation: The Palestinians should continue the slaughter of innocents until Israel yields to their demands, however reasonable or unreasonable, and without regard to whether the acceptance of those demands would spell the eventual destruction of Israel. Whenever I hear of Mr. Carter’s foreign policies misadventures, I wonder if there is a way to impeach an ex-president. If the answer is yes, I recommend starting with Mr. Carter.

Mr. Carter, whose ability to do evil knows no bounds, has put forth the dominant paradigm now widely used to justify, humanize and legitimize terrorism. When Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, was asked what Israel should do to end rocket attacks aimed at innocent civilians, she replied, “They should end the occupation.” In other words, terrorists must have their demands met before they agree to stop murdering innocents and blowing the brains out of babies.

Mr. Pearl also notes that the media, in the U.S. and abroad, have played a major role in making terrorism acceptable. Qatari-based al-Jazeera television keeps providing Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi hours of free television time to spew the murderous interpretation of the Quran, authorize suicide bombings, and call for jihad against Americans and Jews.

Don’t think it can’t get worse, as it always does thanks to the international media and our own mainstream media. In August 2008 came the birthday of Samir Kuntar, an unrepentant killer, who is 1979 smashed the head of a 4-year-old Israeli with his rifle after first killing her father before her eyes. (But remember, Jimmy Carter, in effect, gave him the OK to do that.) al-Jazeera elevated Mr. Kuntar to heroic heights, writes Mr. Pearl, “with orchestras, fireworks and sword dancers, presenting him to 50 million viewers as Arab society’s role model. No mainstream Western media outlet dared to expose al-Jazeera efforts to warp its young viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera’s management continues to receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.”

American pundits like Bill Moyers see the world just like al-Jazeera, so they should not be surprised to find the blood of innocents dripping from their hands. Mr. Moyers, after the war in Gaza , was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a “resistance movement.” And he resorted to the old cycle of violence, to make moral equivalence between Hamas’ deliberate slaughter of innocents and the Israeli attempts at self-defense.

He said, each side greases the “cycle of violence” and one man’s terrorism becomes another’s resistance to oppression. Thus, whether blowing up innocents or acting in self defense, it’s all the same. There is moral equivalence and neutrality; anything goes in this immoral world of Mr. Moyers, Mr. Carter and much of our mainstream media. Mr. Moyers uses this moral equivalence to indict the victims of terrorism as if they are merely actors in the endless cycle of violence.

Then Mr. Pearl turns to the universities, which he says are being manipulated into the support of terrorist and genocidal organizations like Hamas. He uses his own university, UCLA, where he is a professor of computer science, to illustrate the point. At UCLA there was a symposium on human rights, which was turned into a recruiting tool for Hamas. The director of the UCLA Center for Near East Studies selected only Israel bashers for the panel, and every member of the panel concluded Israel is the greatest criminal in human history.

Here is the way this human rights symposium turned out: “ The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, ‘Scholars says: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza ,’ to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western mind.” For more on the sorry state of our colleges and universities read David Horowitz’s classic, The Professors, and his second book on the subject, Indoctrination U.

So, as Mr. Pearl’s article so artfully documents, we are losing our ability to distinguish between good and evil. We are being brainwashed into thinking that evil is good. Our media, our academics, and some of our political leaders are transforming terrorists and genocidal murdering maniacs into freedom fighters. If we lose our moral clarity, losing everything else we hold dear may not be far behind.

I have often written about the mainstream media, our academic institutions, and some of our political leaders seem to have become pro-terror and even anti-American. The Pearl essay is another classic statement of this theme. If I were editing one of those “Patriot’s Handbooks,” I would put Pearl ’s piece in it. I would recommend it for inclusion in the second edition of William Bennett’s fine book, The American Patriot’s Almanac.

I was struck by something else about the article. I missed it when it originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 3, 2009, the seventh anniversary of the death of Daniel Pearl. In retrospect, I thought it significant that it appeared in the Wall Street Journal, one of the few major American papers that has retained its moral clarity and that is able to distinguish between good and enable. You would not find this article in the New York Times or Philadelphia Inquirer, as they are part of the problem, the part that gives legitimacy to terror, murder and genocide.

And where did I come across the Pearl piece after missing it in the Journal? It is reprinted on Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism Web site ( www.investigativepr oject.com). It is significant, that one of the most powerful forces in identifying and fighting terrorists and terrorism has the moral clarity to see the importance of Mr. Pearl’s message, and consequently pay for the republication of the piece on its Web site. People like Steven Emerson have more moral clarity and common sense than the mainstream media put together. It is also significant that the mainstream media, which did not and probably would not publish the Pearl piece or one like it, are also that segment of America that has lost moral clarity and that has virtually become friends and advocates of terrorists and other enemies of America .

Can we fight and win the war on terror when such powerful opinion makers as the mainstream media and our elite academic institutions often seem to be on the side of terror? Can we fight and win the war on terror when political leaders such as the moral degenerate Jimmy Carter are dedicated to legitimizing terrorism, terrorists and their organizations?

Let me clarify one point, as in the course of this column I may have paid the likes of the Jimmy Carters and Bill Moyers of this land, the mainstream media, and our elite academic institutions an undue compliment. I’ve done that by implying they are on the same moral level as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the world’s other terrorist and genocidal organizations. The compliment is undue because I said they were on the same level as the terrorist and genocidal organizations. I should make it clear they are on a lower level. They have had the advantages of living in the greatest country in the history of the world, reaping all of its limitless advantages, and enjoying its right of citizenship. Yet they turn on their own country in favor of terrorists and the other enemies of America . This puts them on an even lower plain than the terrorist organizations. They, like Jimmy Carter, are indeed among the most morally degenerate of the morally degenerate.

Perhaps this all raises an even more fundamental question: Has America lost its moral bearings? We’ve seen Europe lose its moral bearings, where even religion is virtually disappearing from the scene. We’ve seen powerful observers of the scene, such as Mark Steyn in America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, and Bat Ye’or in Eurabia, show us how Europe has pretty much surrendered to Islam and Shariah. Is that one more sign it has lost its moral bearings and doesn’t even defend its values? Like Europe , are we too becoming victims of multiculturalism (all cultures are of equal value) and political correctness? When you observe the pathetic moral and verbal gyrations of the mainstream media, our academic elite, and leaders such as the moral degenerate Jimmy Carter, you tend to answer America may be far along on the road traveled by Europe .

Perhaps this suggests we better get back to fundamentals, and have less tolerance for who clearly can’t distinguish between good and evil. We better start treating the likes of the mainstream media, those academic elites, and the political leader exemplified by Jimmy Carter for what they are worse than the terrorists and genocidal maniacs we are at war with. That means no support for such political leaders, media outlets, and academic institutions where these types hold forth (such as Columbia and UCLA). If Americans don’t make a stand on this issue, no one else will. If Americans don’t make a stand now, America itself may be lost.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School . He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulleti n.us.