BILL MAHER'S FESTIVAL OF IDIOTS

Appearing on Bill Maher's Real Time, British subject Andrew Sullivan raves about a President's obligation to protect "our constitution", claims that the British ignored the IRA's bombing campaigns (other than tightening security) and says that the "first Americans" would have reacted more appropriately to the Islamic terrorism threat:

The first Americans would say to al Qaeda come and kill us, we will never give up our freedoms, that's why we came here. These people [the Bush administration] throw away our freedoms for the sake of phony security you can't even secure permanently.

Sullivan's wrong: Thomas Jefferson didn't dare the Barbary Pirates – the Islamic terrorists of the day – to "come and kill us", he sent in the Marines. Military action seeing the U.S. ending tribute payments in 1815 despite some European nations continuing to pay off the pirates until the 1830s. Thus the Barbary terrorism threat was permanently neutralised.

Here's how the threat was described by Tripoli's ambassador to Great Britian, as reported to Congress:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.

Sound familiar?

Anyway, please do watch the whole Real Time vidoe clip, which also contains plenty of lunacy from Bill Maher and Naomi Klein.

Via Leftard.