“For the foreseeable future,” says President Barack Obama, “the most direct threat to America at home and abroad remains terrorism.” Yet his remarks at the United States Military Academy Commencement Ceremony included no acknowledgement that NSA traitor Edward Snowden has made this kind of terrorism more likely. And there were no demands for Moscow to turn him over to U.S. authorities to face espionage charges.

Our intelligence experts are worried that more terrorism is being planned. S. Eugene Poteat, a retired senior CIA Scientific Intelligence Officer and the current President of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, tells the most recent edition of Homeland Security Today that “Terrorists will now find it easy to counter our intelligence capability, which was based on NSA’s metadata, so we can expect more terrorism in the U.S. in the future.”

Asked by editor-at-large Timothy W. Coleman if Snowden received help from a foreign intelligence service, he commented, “[I] have no idea if he [Snowden] was already in Russia’s pocket, but I feel certain he is by now, and they will already have emptied his computers into theirs. The Chinese, I think, cleaned his clock also.” This was a reference to Snowden stopping in Hong Kong before going to Russia.

But some journalists, on the left and right, seem to think they know more than the experts, and that they are better equipped to judge.

Kirsten Powers is supposed to be one of the more level-headed liberals on the Fox News Channel. But her USA Today column on Wednesday praising Edward Snowden mouthpiece Glenn Greenwald is amateurish in its analysis of what happened in this case, and cavalier in dismissing the real possibility that American lives will be lost as a result of this anti-American intelligence operation.

“That Greenwald is not a member of the Washington insider club seems to be the real problem here,” she writes, in regard to some relatively mild criticism of Greenwald’s role. No, the real problem is that Greenwald’s role in publishing Snowden’s classified documents is a clear-cut violation of the Espionage Act. The former gay pornography executive deserves more, not less, media criticism.

Powers, whose bio says she graduated from the University of Maryland (but doesn’t say in what), doesn’t seem familiar with the law. She noted that NBC’s David Gregory asked Greenwald, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden…why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” She then commented, “This accusation, dressed up as a question, was nonsensical. That it came from a fellow journalist was bizarre. How could reporting news be ‘aiding and abetting’? What crime could Greenwald possibly have committed?”

As we said at the time, “The question is entirely legitimate. Section 798 of the Espionage Act absolutely prohibits the publication of classified information in the area of communications intelligence. That would include programs of the National Security Agency (NSA).”

The “crimes” are clear to anyone who reviews the law. The fact that Greenwald has not been charged is more evidence that the Obama administration is not enforcing the law. This seems to be a habit of this administration.

Powers says journalists who criticize Greenwald “seem to labor under the delusion that it’s their job to protect the government.” No, the government, in this case, is the people who expect the laws to be enforced. Snowden was a government employee who stole the property of the government. That is why he has been charged with theft of government property, in addition to espionage.

She also turns her attention to Michael Kinsley’s observation that “There shouldn’t be a special class of people called ‘journalists’ with privileges like publishing secret government documents.” Powers comments, “Actually, there should be, and there is. Without that protection, The Times could not have published the Pentagon Papers. Take that protection away, and we have zero oversight of the government from outside forces.”

In this case, Powers is horribly confused. The “protection” was given to the paper to publish the documents without prior restraint. The charges against Daniel Ellsberg, who stole the Pentagon Papers and provided them to the Times, were pursued. However, they were eventually dismissed because of allegations of government misconduct.

Finally, Powers writes, “Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg noted that the friendly fire against Greenwald is unusual. Ellsberg told an interviewer last year that though he himself was an enemy of the government for leaking secrets during the Vietnam War, ‘journalists were not turning on journalists.’”

First, Ellsberg was not a journalist. Second, as noted, the legal issue was prior restraint, not prosecution of the leaker. In addition, the Pentagon Papers were a history of the Vietnam War, unrelated to ongoing intelligence and military operations. That makes the Snowden-Greenwald case far different.

Finally, it is not a case of journalists turning on other journalists to question their behavior and point out when they violate the law.

Powers called journalistic criticism of Greenwald “strange fury.” No, it’s strange to promote the view that Greenwald should be above criticism and that questions about his conduct are somehow out of bounds.

Even more bizarre than Powers was a column by Joseph Farah in WorldNetDaily saying that Snowden, living in Moscow, should be given a ticker tape parade in the U.S. and welcomed back as a whistleblower. This was strange because Farah’s publishing house, WND Books, released the blockbuster, Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism, which examines how the Soviet Union/Russia remains a major threat to the U.S. Its co-author, Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West, told AIM that Snowden’s arrival in Russia was “the result of a well-prepared Russian intelligence operation” against the United States and that his analysis of the evidence shows that Snowden “is an agent of the Russian foreign intelligence service.”

Farah claims ignorance about Snowden’s motivations, and doesn’t seem to care. He should have consulted the co-author of one of his books. The former spy chief of Romania clearly understands the KGB/FSB.

“Apparently Snowden is willing to face the consequences of his action—which also makes him a conscientious practitioner of civil disobedience in its highest form, just like Martin Luther King Jr.,” Farah writes, in another mind-boggling statement. He quickly goes on to say, “He is willing to face trial if there is a deal that allows him to serve only a modest prison sentence.” So he is NOT prepared to face the consequences after all.

In effect, he wants a form of immunity from prosecution, no matter how many Americans die as a result of his treason.

Rather than encourage this kind of thing, journalists should be asking why the Obama administration is not doing everything possible to get Snowden back on U.S. soil to face espionage charges. As for Greenwald, the law dictates that he should be facing a grand jury himself, rather than hawking a book and flaunting his anti-Americanism.

Contrary to what Powers says, it seems that Greenwald has been admitted to the Washington insider club.

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media website.

“Swallowing half an hour before closing time that second dose of soma had raised
a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds”
(Aldous Huxley, Brave New World).

I’ll give it a go once more for the intellectually lazy and socially insulated “progressives” out there who, when discussing issues related to homosexuality, refuse to address questions regarding basic presuppositions and logical consequences. For example, Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke just wrote a silly and condescending column in the Chicago Tribune about the serious issue of religious liberty in which he revealed his own ignorance of the topic.

“Progressives” like Huppke replace serious intellectual thought and rigor with ridicule and condescension in their quest to impose their homosexuality-affirming dogma on the entire country. Unfortunately in a country hypnotized by the digital soma that spews from Hollywood, this retreat from intellect works.

Huppke’s “argument” includes the following:

1.)  First, he trivializes the real concerns of conservative people of faith that they will be required to contribute to a same-sex “wedding” celebration. He trivializes this concern through exaggeration, saying that conservatives fear that homosexuals will “flock to bakeries run by people whose faith denounces gay marriage.” 

Well, he’s surely correct in saying that homosexuals won’t “always” seek the services of orthodox Christian, Jewish or Muslim business owners, but that’s hardly reassuring to those who have been, are currently, and will in the future be sued by those homosexuals who do intentionally seek those businesses out.

2.)  He trivializes the religious liberty component central to the debate by saying that though “Americans have many serious issues to worry about—unemployment, education…one issue rises above all others…gay wedding cake.” He further describes efforts to protect religious liberty as efforts to oppose the “menace of gay wedding cakes.” 

Perhaps Huppke and his ideological compeers aren’t aware that cultural change—including radical cultural change—rarely happens through a single cataclysmic event, but rather through the slow accretion of small events or seemingly trivial ideas that society ignores, accommodates, or embraces. Using the force of government to compel property owners to violate their faith in even seemingly small matters constitutes a significant erosion of religious liberty. 

3.)  Huppke mocks Christian beliefs about the nature of homosexuality through his neologism “gaynosity.” He explains that a number of states are considering “religious liberty laws that would allow bakers—or photographers, or florists, or, I suppose, plumbers—to deny service to gay couples if the business owner’s faith is compromised by the gay couple’s gaynosity.”He might be surprised to learn that many Christians do not believe that homosexuals choose their feelings. What they actually believe is that those who affirm a “gay identity” choose to place their unchosen feelings at the center of their identity and choose to act on them. So, while their feelings are not chosen, their (to use Huppke’s insulting term) “gaynosity” is. Where orthodox Christians most disagree with “progressives” is on the Left’s assumption that homosexual acts are morally neutral or morally good—which, of course, is not a fact.

4.) Huppke and virtually every other “progressive” trot out that bedraggled, old false analogy which holds that homosexuality is analogous to African American descent, comparing the efforts of Blacks to gain access to government schools and restaurants to homosexuals forcing businesses to provide their goods and services for an event that violates their religious convictions.

Homosexuality per se has no points of correspondence to skin color, but Huppke never addresses that pesky little fact. And Christian business owners are not refusing to serve homosexuals. They’re refusing to use their labors in the service of a ceremony that the God they serve abhors. But Huppke doesn’t address that pesky fact either.  

5.)  Then Huppke goes off the humor rails in a juvenile faux-interview with well-known Illinois  homosexual activist Rick Garcia, asking him inane questions that mock what the socially insulated, intellectually lazy “progressives” assume orthodox Christians believe: 

• “Rick…are you still gay?
• “Did you find that [eating a gay wedding] cake made you more gay?”
• “Do you believe gay wedding cakes can turn people gay?”
• “What is it about wedding cakes baked by gay marriage opponents that makes (sic) them so irresistible to gay people? Does the sinfulness of the occasion enhance the taste of the cake?”

6.)  Huppke thinks he has discovered a heretofore hidden conservative inconsistency. He argues that the claim of Christian bakers that using their labors in the service of a homosexual “wedding” means they’re “complicit in a gay marriage” is at odds with the claim of gun manufacturers who argue that their sale of a gun to someone who later commits a crime does not make them complicit in the crime. But selling a legal product to someone who without the gun manufacturer’s (or seller’s) knowledge intends to use it for an immoral act is patently not analogous to creating and selling a product with the certain knowledge that it will be used exclusively for an immoral act. There is no other purpose for the wedding cake other than the non-marital, faux-wedding, which is the immoral act. 

What else should business owners be compelled by the government to do in violation of their consciences—and remember, Christian bakers, florists, and photographers are not refusing to sell their products to homosexuals. They’re refusing to sell their products for a particular event:

• Should a male Muslim photographer who would be willing to photograph the pre-wedding preparations of groomsmen be compelled also to photograph the pre-wedding preparations of the bridal party, which would entail violating his religious beliefs about interactions with women?
• Should a Catholic photographer be compelled to photograph the annual Easter “Hunky Jesus” contest  (WARNING: SOME EXPLICIT PHOTOS) in San Francisco, which is hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of “cross-dressing nuns,” and starts with an Easter egg hunt for children?
• Should an Evangelical Christian be compelled to photograph a commitment ceremony for five polyamorists, two males, two females and one genderless (aka “neutrois”)?
• If Kermit Gosnell had sought to hire a cleaning service owned by a pro-life Christian to clean aborted baby parts out of his refrigerator, should she be prohibited from refusing?

Some may raise objections to these questions, arguing that they don’t illustrate discrimination based on “sexual orientation.” First, I would once again remind them that Christian business owners are not refusing to serve homosexuals. Christian business owners are refusing to use their services for particular kinds of events. They’re perfectly willing to sell cakes and flowers to homosexuals—whose orientation they have no way of knowing anyway. Second, just wait a few years; polyamorists are going to be clamoring for their right to have their sexual desires and volitional sexual acts identified as a “sexual orientation.”

This type of objection should raise the more important question: Is “sexual orientation” a valid protected category?  No, it’s not. Historically protected categories were constituted by objective, morally neutral conditions like biological sex, race and ethnicity, and nationality. Homosexuality, in contrast, is constituted solely by subjective feelings and volitional acts on which there is no moral consensus. If “progressives” had any real interest in consistency, they would insist on protecting all members of groups that are constituted by subjective feelings and morally dubious volitional acts. This would mean adding all paraphilias to our anti-discrimination policies and laws. Logical consistency would demand that sadists, masochists, minor-attracted persons (MAPS), frotteurists, and zoophiliacs be protected for they are members of groups constituted by subjective feelings and often volitional sexual acts that are virtually always unchosen, powerful, and persistent.

But if we “protect” all groups constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts, what happens not only to our religious liberty but also to our liberty to freely associate and assemble? What else do we base our diverse associations on other than feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts?

Though Huppke intended his Garcia interview to mock conservatives, what it really accomplishes is to reveal his own ignorance of what thoughtful Christians actually believe. It’s curious that “progressive” media pundits like Huppke rarely seem to find time to interview serious conservative theologians and legal scholars from academia who are writing on this topic. Many “progressives” have no idea who the conservative scholars are who are writing on topics related to homosexuality. Nor do they engage the serious ideas that inhere this discussion. The reasons for those intellectual failures are either ignorance or fear that their “arguments” don’t pass rational muster.

When “progressive” pundit Kirsten Powers recently outed herself as a born-again believer (whose theology needs some work), she made yet another astonishing revelation: Before her religious conversion at age 38, she did not know any Christians. As disciples of diversity and militants of multiculturalism, the social and intellectual insularity of so many “progressives” is both astonishing and ironic.

“Progressives” don’t really want to engage in a reasoned argument on this or any other topic related to sexual deviance. They don’t really want to debate in a serious way the ideas proposed by smart, well-educated dissenters. This in part explains why public high school teachers censor virtually all resources that espouse conservative views on the nature and morality of homosexuality (the other reason is arrogant self-righteousness). And so “progressives” leap nimbly over arguments with unctuous sophistic non-arguments and mockery. If they’re not simply mocking, they’re reaching into their cornucopia of fallacies. In Huppke’s short piece, we can find these fallacies: false analogy, straw man, and ad hominem (the fav of “progressives”).

The only funny part of Huppke’s lamentable article was his very last sentence in which he described his interview with Garcia as a “reasoned argument.”

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