ORDERING PIZZA IN AMERICA

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT you had mastered the quaint old Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, along comes a spider...

Big Brother welcomes you, and look, it wasn't the Republicans, after all. It was YOU sleeping or fooling around like a spoiled brat on watch duty, all along. But pay me no mind, I'm nothing. In a nation where the splendid words of Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan are ignored or mocked, there's no claim of special consideration for the words of warning I bring to the table.

But if you like your nationalized health care, you'll like your nationalized pizza, too. Then you might be able to fit into those nationalized motor cars that are coming our way. But all is not lost; we can then celebrate the Ayatollah's Iran getting White House support for nuclear power while we note that at the same BAT time and on the same BAT channel that very same White House denies Americans the right of continued nuclear power.

What a country! After all, snookering the law of inertia, a government in motion tends to remain in motion, unless something more powerful gets in its way.

Speaking of Bat Ye'or, here she is in her own words:

I belong to no group, no community apparatus. My only contribution is my work. But I believe that my work has opened an enormous field for reflection, not only for the Jewish world but for the Christian world as well that has suffered much more than the Jews from dhimmitude.

I have described the process of Islamization of the Christian communities and of certain Christian countries through demography, immigration, enslavement, forced conversions, but also through genocide such as that which is being perpetrated against the Christians of Sudan. But beyond all that, I am Jewish. My identity is Judaism. Just as, when I was young I was subversive, didn't feel Jewish and would have perhaps fallen in with communism, since I was opposed to that Jewish bourgeoisie that I couldn't identify with—the country of Egypt was in total poverty and I did not accept the chasm between the populations...

DELUSION AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT

Syndicated columnist Diane West takes aim at the recent Orwellian rot handed down by the US State Department, apparently now on kool-aid, the whole bunch of them. West suggests something more than self-medication is at work at State:

A FEW YEARS AGO, A HARVARD psychiatric instructor named Kenneth Levin wrote "The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege." In this illuminating book, Mr. Levin examines the Israeli experience of concessionary negotiations with a "peace partner" openly dedicated to Israel's destruction. He also examines the historical Jewish diasporic experience in which Jewish populations typically identified with their tormentors and even echoed their anti-semitism. Such interactions are driven by a permanent condition of siege mentality, Mr. Levin explains, and clearly manifests two kinds of delusional thinking.

First, there is the fantasy about the intentions of the aggressor (Arab, Muslim or Christian); then, there is the fantasy about changing the aggressor's intentions. Such thinking, Mr. Levin says, is common to victims of chronic abuse, particularly children. They fool themselves into thinking that they, the victims, control the abuser by linking the abuse they suffer to their own behavior.

In other words, they believe they cause their own abuse. This mind game, Mr. Levin insists, actually gives victims a sense of control over situations beyond their control (an abusive parent, for instance). This allows the abused person to avoid feelings of helplessness and despair.

And so the besieged victim pretends: Daddy doesn't really want to hurt me; if I'm a better girl, he'll stop. Israel pretends: Muslims don't really want to destroy our state, and so we'll give them land for peace. Jews in pre-Nazi Europe pretended: The anti-Semites are really right; we deserve a pogrom. Intriguingly, Mr. Levin writes: "But the book's themes have a still broader relevance. Even ostensibly powerful and secure populations, under conditions that entail ongoing threat and vulnerability, can manifest similar trends."

I have a new one for the doctor: a delusion so enormous it begs for immediate hospitalization and a transfer of power of attorney. The problem here is, that the patient is the United States government, which now says: If we just stop talking about jihad, Muslims will neither become jihadis nor sympathize with them.

Such is the message of a crazy new government guide,"Words that Work and Words that Don't," which urges federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, to eliminate all references to Islam when discussing, well, Islamic terrorism. Not only does that mean no more talk of "Islam," but it also means no more talk of "jihad." ("Extremism" is the new "jihad.") And forget about the "caliphate." (Try "global totalitarian state.")

Read it all.