WONDERFULLY STATED – AT 10:54 A.M. ET:  Americans are asleep, but I suspect many who aren't are appalled by our government's behavior during the Mideast crisis.  The Weekly Standard nails it:

It was bad enough, two years ago, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates called fringe Florida pastor Terry Jones to ask him not to burn copies of the Koran, or last week, that chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey took his turn to call Jones to ask him to stop publicizing a YouTube video, The Innocence of Muslims. But then on Friday, White House spokesman Jay Carney told the world that the violent protests in Cairo and Ben­ghazi and elsewhere were a “response not to United States policy, and not obviously the administration or the American people,” but were “in response to a video, a film we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting.” Carney repeated the point for emphasis: “This is not a case of protests directed at the United States at large or at U.S. policy, but in response to a video that is offensive to Muslims.”

Humpty Dempsey is one of the most political generals I've ever seen.  You may recall that he recently 1) told retired American military officers to shut up about politics, defying a tradition of military men leaving the service and entering politics that goes back to George Washington; 2) said he wouldn't be "complicit" in an Israeli strike on Iran, as if Israel were engaging in criminal activity.  Now Dempsey makes phone calls to minor pastors.  He is Obama's poodle.  Put him on a leash and walk him.

Carney’s comments lie outside the range of plausible spin, even by Obama administration standards, and if his bosses believe them—as we fear they do—are simply delusional. But they are not without consequence. Nor are Gates’s and Dempsey’s phone calls. They all send the message to America’s enemies that if you kill our diplomats and lay siege to the our embassies, the first move the American government will make is to denounce .  .  . Americans. Our leaders apparently believe that the way to protect Americans from extremists and terrorists abroad is to tell other Americans to shut up.

What’s next? Where does it go from here? There are more than 300 million ways in which Americans expressing themselves might give offense to those who make it their business to be offended. Maybe it’s some other film, maybe it’s a book or even just a tossed-off phrase that our enemies might seize on to galvanize support for their causes. Is the White House going to put every American crank on speed-dial so it can tell them to shut up whenever a mob gathers outside a U.S. embassy or consulate?

COMMENT:  The nerve of this administration to act the way it has.  But, of course, it has the support of the mainstream media, whose major practitioners had "multiculturalism" pounded into their heads in college. 

Let me tell you something:  From what I've seen, multiculturalism is just a branch office of anti-Americanism.  It's the proverbial old wine in a new bottle, the old leftists saying the same thing in different language.  They revise their vocabulary about once every 10 years.  Their current line is, "Who are we to doubt other cultures?"   Question:  Have you ever once heard anyone other than an American asked that?   Have you heard anyone from a "third world" country asked, "Who are you to doubt American culture?"  I haven't.

It's a game, but it's a dangerous game, which affects the way we get our news. 

September 15, 2012