Cloward-Piven Strategy: bring down Capitalism by flooding the welfare system

That is the basic goal involved in the Cloward-Piven strategy that most of us never heard of until Obama and the community organizers got to the White House.  I’ve been reading about it lately, thanks to RRW reader Paul, and it came to mind last night as I considered the fact that Somali refugees had flooded Maine primarily for the generous welfare system (more shortly).

This is just some background from David Horowitz’s Discover the Networks that I want to post so we can continue to build our ‘community destabilization’ category, and not lose the links.

Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty” in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called “crisis strategy” or “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven’s early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. “Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one.

You should take some time and read Cloward and Piven’s 1966 seminal work in the Nation magazine to fully understand the concept.  They (and their comrades today) want to enroll as many people as they can on public assistance, cause a crisis by overloading local governments, bring greater federal control and ultimately collapse Capitalism as the federal government takes greater control and brings about ultimately a guaranteed wage for all— a redistribution of wealth.

This is the opening paragraph of the Nation article:

How can the poor be organized to press for relief from poverty? How can a broad-based movement be developed and the current disarray of activist forces be halted? These questions confront, and confound, activists today. It is our purpose to advance a strategy which affords the basis for a convergence of civil rights organizations, militant anti-poverty groups and the poor. If this strategy were implemented, a political crisis would result that could lead to legislation for a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty.

My theory is that the “poor” of the 1960’s were, in subsequent decades, entering the middle class.  Thanks to Capitalism there weren’t enough of them to collapse the system and many other Americans have an  antipathy to living off the government and accepting welfare!   So community organizers need the immigrants and refugees who have become accustomed, in the case of refugees, to living off of the United Nations, to help swell the welfare rolls.  That is the only logical explanation for the Obama Administration continuing to resettle very high numbers of refugees right now (in a recession!) when there is little work for them—well that, and the desire on their part to create a magical borderless utopian world.

The Somalis who migrated to Maine are only too happy to comply, next!

Horowitz publishes pamphlet on rules for revolution

David Horowitz has published a pamphlet that helps to educate us about Saul Alinsky and his influence on Obama and his Administration, something we have addressed  in our “community destabilization” category which we began at this time last year.   Here is what Frontpage magazine says about Horowitz and the pamphlet:

David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s and an editor of its largest magazine,Ramparts. He is the author, with Peter Collier, of three best selling dynastic biographies: The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (1976); The Kennedys: An American Dream (1984); and The Fords: An American Epic (1987). Looking back in anger at their days in the New Left, he and Collier wrote Destructive Generation (1989), a chronicle of their second thoughts about the 60s that has been compared to Whittaker Chambers’ Witness and other classic works documenting a break from totalitarianism. Horowitz examined this subject more closely in Radical Son (1996), a memoir tracing his odyssey from “red-diaper baby” to conservative activist that George Gilder described as “the first great autobiography of his generation.”

Since taking office Barack Obama, who promised during his campaign to create a moderate, inclusive administration, has engaged in actions that have created division and fear because they are meant to radically change America, not improve on what has always worked. As a result, David Horowitz writes in Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model, “Many Americans have gone from hopefulness, through unease, to a state of alarm as the President shows a radical side only party visible during his campaign.”

Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model provides an understanding of the roots of the current administration’s effort to subject America to a wholesale transformation by looking at the work of one of the President’s heroes—radical Chicago “community organizer” Saul Alinsky.  

Read on and learn how you can get a copy.

How does this involve refugees and immigrants?  My theory is that since Alinsky said in order to “change” America one needed to continually pit the “have-nots” against the “haves,”  as Americans generally rose out of poverty, the immigrants were needed to continually build the “have-not” armies.  Now with Obama’s policies and the far left activists he has spread throughout government we will see an acceleration of immigrants, refugees and Americans arriving at the poverty level.  That is the goal!  That is why it is so baffling to logical people who wonder how we can continue to bring in tens of thousands of refugees and other immigrants when there is no work for them.  Their strategy is to build the “have-not” armies.

By the way, as I write this Judy is at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend, so maybe we will get a report about this auspicious gathering of conservatives when she returns.

Endnote:  I was looking for something else and came upon this post from earlier this month to help illustrate what I’m saying about a strategy and a goal, here.

Won’t amnesty for illegal aliens hurt legal refugees?

That is a question that has been bothering me for some time.  We know for a fact (the IRC told us in ‘Refugee Horrors in Houston’) as few as 20% of the legal refugees entering the US are finding work in some areas of the country.  So, if 12 million, or whatever the number is these days, workers are legalized overnight won’t that just add to an already huge pressure on legal immigrants (and Americans!) finding work?   So why do the NON-PROFIT refugee resettlement agencies continue to lobby for amnesty?

An article about Homeland Security head honcho Janet Napolitano saying the Administration was ready to push Comprehensive Immigration Reform (Amnesty) on Friday got me thinking about this again.

The Obama administration expects Congress to begin moving to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws early next year, while improved border security and a drop in migration caused by the economic downturn make passage “far more attainable” than in 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday.

“When Congress is ready to act, we will be ready to support them,” said Napolitano, President Obama’s “point-person” on immigration policy issues. “The first part of 2010, we will see legislation beginning to move,” she said.

Napolitano’s speech, delivered Friday morning at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, was aimed at Latino advocates who have bridled at her rhetorical emphasis on enforcement in her first 10 months in office, and expressed skepticism that Obama would fulfill a campaign pledge to push for a “comprehensive” package.

LOL!  To learn more about he “liberal-leaning Center for American Progress” go here.

Huh?  She says this is the time to work on this legislation because the job market is tight!  So, we legalize overnight 12 million people and add more to the unemployment numbers?  That’s a good plan?  Makes me think that she too is an admirer of the Cloward-Piven strategy.

“We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows,” Napolitano said.

At the same time, Napolitano sought to reframe the debate from past years, saying lawmakers’ earlier demands that the government improve “enforcement first” have been met, and arguing that the time to work on immigration issues is when a sluggish economy is dampening illegal migration, not when rapid job growth is fueling it.

Refugee resettlement contractors lobbying for Amnesty, why?

Now how can the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, perhaps the largest refugee resettlement contractor in the United States, be lobbying for more employment competition for the thousands of refugees they are contracted to care for who are living unemployed and in squalor in some cases.  It makes no sense!

“The president and his administration need to make it clear that immigration reform is a priority and must be acted upon during this Congress,” said John Wester, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and bishop of the diocese of Salt Lake City. “Hopefully this is the beginning of a campaign by the administration to get legislation moving.”

I want to remind readers that the Obama Administration has taken the lead in pushing Amnesty, they are just making it look like they are leaving it to Congress (just as they did with health reform).  Please note that in August Ms. Napolitano called all of the open borders groups and big businesses together at the White House to give them marching orders.  Why are the USCCB, World Relief, and Church World Service to name a few, lobbying with big businesses that surely want to keep labor costs low by having a huge pool of workers available?  Are they helping immigrants, especially refugees, or helping big business and big labor?

So what about groups like the Bowling Green International Center?  In, without a doubt, the most read and inflamed debate we have had for awhile, here, I wonder how it is that this obviously ‘over-its-head’ refugee contractor could have justified organizing a demonstration and lobbying campaign in Bowling Green in 2006 to push for Amnesty.

… have a look at this Form 990 for 2006 where 87% of this group (whatever its name is) was funded by taxpayers.   Yet, here they are involved in lobbying for an Amnesty for illegal aliens bill before Congress that year!

I honestly do not get the logic in this.  The only thing that makes sense is that these supposedly non-profit, but largely funded by taxpayers (that includes the USCCB) groups, see this as a way of expanding their “businesses” supplying labor to big businesses (like the meatpackers!) and supposedly services to immigrants hidden from public scrutiny by a presumption of good intentions.

Center for Immigration Studies report explains how the Sierra Club justifies more immigration

If you follow immigration issues generally, one of the most perplexing questions is how did it come about that the major environmental organizations (especially the Sierra Club) in the US don’t want to work to slow immigration when it is clear that more people means more environmental degradation.  Jerry Kammer has written a very detailed piece for the Center for Immigration Studies entitled, “Strategic Negligence: How the Sierra Club’s Distortions on Border and Immigration Policy Are Undermining its Environmental Legacy” that seeks to explain how this happened and tells us that some true conservationists are trying to turn that around.   Please read the report.

Mr. Kammer is just missing one key element in my opinion.

That key element is that Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s long-time Executive Director, is more a Marxist than an environmentalist.   The new communist movement in this country has coalesced around the Apollo Alliance (Pope sits on its board of directors).   Pope is more comfortable with the far left labor unions, leftwing foundations, the big corporations and the likes of revolutionary Van Jones (be sure to watch the Pope/Jones interview linked in here) then he would be with David Brower.    The powerful alliance that helped elect Obama must have poor demanding immigrants to “change” our government—the goals of the ”social justice movement” are more important to Pope and Jones than saving a little biodiversity.   

I only wonder that it took so long for people truly concerned about the environment to organize against open borders communists.  No, I don’t really, because they are mostly on the political left too and couldn’t begin to grasp that Far Left (communists!) had taken over the environmental movement that they began.

P.S. to all the environmentalists concerned with population growth generally, well-educated Americans have been having fewer children while the Somalis, Bosnians and other Muslims pouring into the US have no such concern—six kids and up is what they are aiming for—because they don’t give a damn about the environment!

Obama starving Somalis

I’ve purposefully titled this post ‘Obama starving Somalis’ to make my point that if the Bush Administration were still in control in Washington, this article in Foreign Policy would surely have blamed Bush.  Instead the article about a new policy position that cuts humanitarian aid and warns that a humanitarian crisis is at hand, blames the “United States,” the  “US Treasury Department,” “Washington,” and the “US government”—-but no mention of the fact that the Obama Administration is responsible now!

You can read the article yourself, it begins:

The United States is willfully letting millions of Somalis go hungry in its drive to hunt down terrorists.

A year ago this article would have begun with the sentence:  “The Bush Administration is willfully letting……”

Obama Administration to lift ban on immigrants/travelers with HIV/AIDS

President Obama, while signing legislation yesterday that extends taxpayer funding of medical care and treatment to people with HIV, announced the final steps to lifting a ban on those entering the US with HIV/AIDS.  Guess we will be taking care of more of the world’s HIV population right here.*   From the Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON – President Obama said yesterday that the United States will overturn a 22-year-old travel and immigration ban against people with HIV early next year.

The order will be finalized on Monday, Obama said, completing a process begun during the Bush administration. The United States has been among a dozen countries that bar entry to travelers with visas or anyone seeking a green card based on their HIV status.

This next section of the article is inaccurate because refugees with HIV have been allowed entry.  The reporter should have used the word ‘immigrants’ instead of ‘refugees.’

The law effectively has kept out thousands of students, tourists, and refugees and has complicated the adoption of children with HIV.

Those countries still banning people with HIV/AIDS are as follows.  I wonder at the accuracy of the list.   Do Iran and Syria, for example, let in people with the disease? 

The 11 other countries that ban HIV-positive travelers and immigrants are Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Sudan, according to the advocacy group Immigration Equality.

I don’t have the time, but if you are interested you might want to visit Immigration Equality and see if you can find any mention of the list.

* The Bush Administration is credited with spending a lot of money in Africa to fight HIV/AIDS, but I just talked with a young man in my town who spent 2 years in Africa recently with the Peace Corps.  He said the Africans in his area of Africa refused the condoms because they believed they were contaminated with the AIDS virus and that it was a US plot to infect them.   Consequently, his Peace Corps compatriots who were assigned to work on HIV/AIDS had nothing to do.

Some Gitmo prisoners might go to Georgia, the country not the state

It’s getting closer every day—the deadline for Obama to clear out Guantanamo Bay that he promised last January.   Now, here is a story that says Georgia is willing to take some prisoners in what they refer to as a “prisoner resettlement” initiative.   At least they aren’t referring to the detainees as “refugees” as some previous news accounts have done.

A senior Georgian official tells EurasiaNet that Tbilisi and Washington are discussing the possibility of Georgia accepting suspected terrorists currently being held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba.

Georgian National Security Council Secretary Eka Tkeshelashvili stated that negotiations about a prisoner transfer are “ongoing.” She would not specify the nature of the talks, or discuss any potential timetable for a transfer.

President Mikheil Saakashvili has made it clear that Georgia is ready to take Guantanamo prisoners. In a television interview with Fox News in late September, Saakashvili said that the country is “absolutely” willing to host Guantanamo detainees. “You know, whatever we can do to help America on its war on terror, we will do,” he said.

The Obama administration faces a January 2010 deadline to close the Guantanamo facility, which still houses over 200 inmates. An estimated 60 detainees have been cleared for release, according to human rights groups.

But finding homes for the prisoners has not been easy. Georgia is one of just a handful of countries that have offered to take Guantanamo prisoners this year, according to the London-based prisoner rights organization Reprieve.

Meanwhile at the White House speculation continues to swirl about the fate of Greg Craig, the White House Counsel who has been responsible for the now screwed-up Gitmo closure plan.

Help!!! We Maldivians will drown or become refugees!

As we get closer to the big global warming pow-wow in Copenhagen, you know the one where Obama will likely cede our sovereignty to the third world (while we dither over health care and the war against FOX News), we will be seeing more stories like this one from the Maldives (see map of Asia, here) warning us of the dire consequences of “climate refugees.”

NEW DELHI — The people of the Maldives face the prospect of life in a “climate refugee camp,” President Mohamed Nasheed warned Thursday as he urged rich countries to clinch an effective global warming treaty.

Calling the South Asian island chain a “frontline state” in the fight against climate change, Nasheed said global warming threatened to submerge his low-lying country and “kill our people” unless action was taken urgently.

“We have a written history of more than 2,000 years and we don’t want to trade our paradise for a climate refugee camp,” he told a climate change summit in New Delhi.

Last weekend, Nasheed’s government staged a cabinet meeting underwater — complete with ministerial scuba gear — to highlight the plight of the archipelago whose atolls stand a mere 1.5 metres above sea level.

The president stunned the world last year when he announced he wanted to buy a new homeland to relocate the population of the Maldives in the event that damage from rising sea levels became too great.

“What happens to the Maldives today happens to the rest of world tomorrow,” he warned Thursday.

In 2007, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that an increase in sea levels of just 18 to 59 centimetres (seven to 24 inches) would make the Maldives virtually uninhabitable by 2100.

And, boo hoo, Mohamed Nasheed has no money to get to the conference, but didn’t he just say he wanted to buy land to move his country?  Not to worry the European socialists will pay his way to Denmark because they need him as a poster boy—we must save the Muslim Maldives!

Last month the Maldives announced it had no money to pay for Nasheed to attend the Copenhagen summit, but Denmark has said it will fund him as his participation is considered essential.

But, get this!   A world renowned expert on sea levels travelled to the Maldives and concluded there was no rise in sea level there for the last 50 years and the citizens had nothing to worry about.  The Maldivian government refused to let him demonstrate his findings.   From the UK Telegraph:

When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he (Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change) launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.

A world government on the way

It’s all about money, the redistribution of wealth to the third world and the creation of a world government.   Here is what Lord Christopher Monkton told an American audience just this week:

At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.

I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.

I’m making a new category “climate refugees” because surely this will not be the last of these ludicrous stories.  I’m going back now and be sure to post my previous reports on climate refugees to the new category.   Think about it, the radical leftists and communists have found the perfect melding of two major issues through which they can control the world with guilt—refugees and environment.

Gaza refugee rumor has eternal life

Last January President Obama signed a Presidential Determination about refugees in Gaza. Its purpose was to send $20 million in aid to  Gazans who had suffered in the war with Israel. (Would he ever send aid for the traumatized Israeli children who lived under constant bombardment by rockets from Gaza? Fat chance!) An email has been circulating ever since, saying that this order meant that we were bringing hundreds of thousands of Hamas members into the United States, probably because the funds were directed to “urgent refugee and migration needs.” “Refugees” refers to the people in Gaza, who have been awarded perpetual refugee status, unlike all other refugees around the world. “Migration” is not the same as immigration; it refers to people moving around over there, not coming here.

I’ve been seeing references to this inaccurate email since the directive was signed. The rumor was so widespread that Senator Jon Kyl sponsored an amendment based on it, and had to withdraw the amendment when he realized it was false.

Lately it seems to be reviving; I’ve been seeing more references to it. Today I saw a blog post that simply reproduced the email — or rather, an embellished version of it that added another mistake: that HR 1388 was passed behind our backs (this happened in February and was reported on widely) and that this bill about volunteerism had a stealth measure about bringing Hamas members here. So I thought I’d better deal with this issue again, in case our readers are coming across this nonsense. If you want to see the wrongheaded blog post, here it is, though I hate to give such an incompetent blogger any traffic.

Here is the comment I left there. As of this writing it has not been approved, so let’s see if “Compass” can redeem himself by issuing a correction. Responsible journalists who repeated the rumor have corrected themselves when I informed them of the error.

This post is completely inaccurate. You are conflating two different things. HR 1388 was passed last January and became law in April. It is about volunteerism and has nothing to do with Palestinian refugees. See this.

Obama signed the Presidential Determination about the Palestinians in January. It was a reaction to the Gaza-Israel war and was meant to provide aid IN GAZA. The information is based on an inaccurate email that apparently is still circulating. I have written on the issue extensively on my blog, Refugee Resettlement Watch; here is one post.  Snopes also deals with it accurately here.  The Snopes account also mentions the conflation of HR 1388 with the Presidential Determination.

So, whoever you are, Compass Blog, you have just reproduced an old and inaccurate email with any fact-checking at all. Your supposed link to the Federal Register doesn’t work, so you probably didn’t even click on it yourself, just left it in the email you copied. You give blogging a bad name.

Obama has done many terrible things, and is set to do many more. He is the worst president ever by far, an enemy of America and all we stand for. Perpetuating false rumors does not help the fight against him; it just makes his opponents look silly and ignorant.

I will add that since this memo was signed in January we have not seen any refugees from Gaza come here, in case you need a further fact check. And it wouldn’t make sense anyway. Obama is an enemy of Israel and would want its foes to remain where they are. They can’t fight Israel from our land, whereas in Gaza they can continue to prepare for their final solution. Much of the aid money flowing into Gaza goes right to Hamas, as we reported here.

Update 10/16/09: The offending blog did not post my comment. Contrast that with Phyllis Chesler and Michael Ledeen who made corrections based on the information I sent them. That’s the difference between serious writers and sensationalist bloggers.

Obama’s weakness strengthens Al-Shabaab

James Jay Carafano links America’s new posture of weakness and the probability of an attack from Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab in an op-ed piece today in the Washington Examiner. (That’s a paper well worth reading, by the way.)  He says:

Today, the group aims to be a world-class terrorist outfit, recruiting fighters under the banner of religious holy war. They are more than just a local band of fanatics. They may be plotting the next 9/11.  

When you start to “connect the dots,” (the phrase made famous by the 9/11 Commission), you find there are a lot of dots to connect.

Al-Shabaab is no home-grown terrorist boy’s club. Various news sources report “foreign fighters” have joined their ranks, some in high-level leadership positions. That suggests that group has an international perspective and sees itself as part of the global Islamist campaign.

 

Furthermore, government intelligence officials find unambiguous links between al Qaeda and Al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab seems to see itself as the East African franchise of Osama Bin Laden International. Last month, the group released a video featuring a Somali training camp and members pledging their allegiance to Bin Laden.

 

As you know if you read RRW regularly,

 

Most troubling, Al-Shabaab definitely has links to the United States. There is a significant Somali Diaspora here. Most came in the wake of the civil war. Somali communities have sprung up across the country. About 25,000 live in Minnesota, where hundreds of Somali-owned businesses dot the state. 

 

Al-Shabaab has been recruiting fighters from the U.S. to help wage their holy war. An American Somali recently took part in the suicide bombing of an African Union peacekeeping base in Mogadishu. The question now is whether Al-Shabaab will use its network to launch attacks here. U.S. officials think they might.

 

And here is the important connection:

 

Sensing weakness in the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, the Islamist group may believe Bin Laden’s pronouncement that America has become a “paper tiger.” If so, now would be the time for them to strike.

 

Carafano is too kind. It’s certainly not just weakness in our Afghanistan effort. It’s also President Obama’s continuous groveling before our enemies and our Muslim “friends” like the king of Saudi Arabia. I’ll never forget that picture of Obama bowing to the king as long as I live! At the moment we are indeed a paper tiger, because no matter what our actual military strength, if our government is determined not to stand up for our interests we may as well not have a military. To be  clear, Carafano doesn’t mention Obama; just “the government.”

 

Carafano goes on to talk about counterterrorism measures:

 

Stopping any Al-Shabaab operation here will require solid counterterrorism operations and non-stop intelligence sharing. In particular, we are going to need the tools authorized under the Patriot Act which have helped foil at least 26 intended attacks on the U.S. since 9/11.

 

Some of these authorities, such as “roving wire taps” that let law enforcement agencies track suspected terrorists as they jump from cell phone to cell phone, are now up for renewal in  Congress.

And I’ll point out that if Congress doesn’t renew those measures we’ll be hurt two ways: One by losing the measures as weapons in our fight against terrorism on our land, and two by continuing and amplifying the signal that we’re weak, weak, weak.  Carafano’s conclusion:

 

Given all the misinformation that’s been spread by opponents of the Patriot Act, let me make one more important point right here. It would be a terrible idea to regard Somali immigrants as terrorist suspects. Profiling any group because of a few bad apples is simply un-American.

 

Somalis are professionals, teachers, barbers, factory workers, cab drivers, soccer moms, and members of the PTA. Communities should be working with them, building stronger ties, fighting extremist ideas, and helping them share the American dream. That’s counter radicalization, American-style. 

 

As Ann has shown, the situation is far more complex than that. But I think Carafano knows that. We do know that there are Somalis who are upset and distressed by the radicalization of their young men by imams and others. Just as in Iraq we worked with ordinary people who did not want jihad or civil war, we of course should find and strengthen those Somalis who reject radicalism. And that would be first and foremost the women. I wonder if our government has a clue about that.