Et Tu, Indiana? Shut Up & Sing
Ingraham, Laura
BOOKS IN REVIEW Et Tu, Indiana? Shut Up & Sing: How Elites From Hollywood, Politics, and the U.N. Are Subverting America by Laura Ingraham (Regnery, 368 pages, $27.95) Reviewed by Jed...
...Unlike most of us, who are God-fearing in the OCTOBER 2003 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 55 BOOKS IN REVIEW religious sense, Ingraham shows how the elites are really theophobic: enemies of religion...
...It was simply cruel and absurd for the Clinton administration to implement politically correct policies intended to "correct" military culture, thereby increasing the already high risk to the lives of American soldiers...
...is the failed successor to the League of Nations, a second marriage among nations...
...Especially religious freedom...
...Her indictment of the International Criminal Court—cobbled together by the multilateralists to bring Americans to trial on politically motivated war crimes charges—reads like the preamble to the Declaration of Independence...
...There will always be an England, but so long as there's a France, a Russia, and a China on the Security Council, the U.N...
...To the overseas elites Ingraham is no more gentle or less perceptive...
...Not just by conservatives, but by everyone who wants to understand the biases and anti-Americanism of those who are oh so sincere, so sensitive, and so caring that they will rob us of our freedoms for our own good...
...Religious people are routinely censored precisely because of the content of their speech and such censorship is justified by the elites in the name of freedom, the right to 'freedom from religion.'" Hence the coercive liberal who doesn't want to protect his daughter from having to recite the Pledge of Allegiance with the phrase "one nation, under God" intact...
...participation in this nonsense, Ingraham wants to reform the U.N., to bring it to responsibility and reason...
...The U.N...
...In the interest of full disclosure, I confesssmilingly—that one of the most fun things I do is appear occasionally as a guest on Laura's show...
...Disarmament Commission...
...Were it up to me, every member of Congress (and every employee of CBS News and the New York Times) would be required to attend a class on that subject, taught by Prof...
...The U.N...
...Ingraham attributes their shared hostility to religion to their core belief in the supremacy of the individual...
...Which is more than you can say for the muddle-headed bloviations of those who Ingraham targets...
...In Shut Up & Sing, Ingraham takes the fight to the enemy...
...Ingraham says the elites "harbor an intense bigotry against people of faith...
...Fortunately, that war is being fought by some very capable forces such as syndicated radio talk show host Laura Ingraham...
...The cultural elites share the common conviction that, as Ingraham puts it, "American values, traditions and principles [are] low, embarrassing, and inferior compared with `higher' European ones...
...She knows that Kofi Annan is as anti-American as France's smarmy foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin...
...She really gets it: [T]he United States military has a culture of its own...
...It is simply not fair to endanger the lives of our servicemen so that the elites at home can feel good about themselves...
...Her mission is not only to generate controversy, but to beat the opposition to death with its own words, and she succeeds seriatim...
...Rest assured, everyone who has worn the uniform does...
...Ingraham is no mere provocateuse...
...Instead of simply calling for a halt to U.S...
...Ingraham knows that the U.N.—as she puts it succinctly—is a scam...
...We civilians should be very careful about imposing our values on the military...
...So their goal is to impose those "higher" European values of confiscatory taxation and reduced personal freedom...
...Her principal targets are emotional celebrities and academics who enter the battle of wits only half armed...
...It is good fuel for many a rhetorical fire...
...On the last Wednesday of August, we had to endure the following from Harrison Ford: "I'm very disturbed about the direction American foreign policy is going," said Ford...
...The other faux elites all fall to the same sword...
...I think something needs to be done to help alleviate the conditions which have created a disenfranchised and angry faction in the Middle East . . . I don't think military intervention is the correct solution...
...The coercive liberal wants to prevent anyone else from reciting the pledge in public...
...itself, however, is where Ingraham's common sense is overwhelmed by her optimism...
...There are common ties that bind all the "cultural elites" that infest America...
...showed up, Saddam's "elite" Republican Guard learned that when you have to fight someone other than unarmed civilians, you'd better bring something more to the fight than a fancy beret and a sneer...
...And that culture rests on the deeply felt belief that evil is real, that it is present in the world, and that it threatens the very existence of this country...
...How bad has it gotten...
...Shut Up & Sing needs to be read...
...They are 'citizens of the world' . . . They have outgrown America...
...And all in the name of religious freedom...
...When the First Marine Division and the Third I.D...
...Get two copies of this book: one for yourself, and one for someone you enjoy arguing with...
...Ingraham defines them as those who "have embraced post-Americanism...
...Second marriages, the sage said, are the triumph of hope over experience...
...is, sadly, a waste of time, money and energy...
...Are Subverting America by Laura Ingraham (Regnery, 368 pages, $27.95) Reviewed by Jed Babbin THIS HASN'T BEEN A GOOD YEAR for the phony "elites" of the world...
...And she, like most conservatives, finds it amazing that anyone would take seriously geopolitical advice that is predicated only on record sales or box office receipts...
...She holds it up to the ridicule it deserves, citing examples such as the January 2003 schedule—at the height of the U.N.'s failure to deal with Iraq—that called for Iraq to take over the chair of the U.N...
...Among the Hollywood-enheads, Kofi's Klatsch, the girly-boys of Old Europe, and even a few conservative elites, Ingraham finds a common thread: they all think they are better and smarter than we...
...Ah, Laura, my friend...
...All the facts, logic and good argument you hear on radio comes through loud and clear in the book...
...He often appears as a talking warhead on MSNBC...
...They are no longer Americans first...
...I regret what we as a country have done so far...
...California moneybags—conservatives and liberal 56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2003 alike—take a torpedo amidships for their encouragement of illegal immigration...
...Many of us who spend our time thinking, writing and talking about the war on terrorism spend too little time on that other war which—in many ways—affects our personal freedom and our nation's future just as directly...
...Laura Ingraham has as profound an understanding of the value of the military culture as any civilian I have known...
...Remember a certain president who (at least once) professed to "loathe" the military...
...Jed Babbin was a deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration, and is "Loose Canons" columnist at spectator.org...
...Ingraham finds it amazing that anyone would take seriously geopolitical advice predicated on box office receipts...
...Ingraham comes to the fight as well trained, equipped and motivated as a fighter driver...
...We have grown used to the other phony "elites"—those in Hollywood, Old Europe and the U.N.—and their ersatz Gallic disdain for us...
...will be forever feckless...
...The U.N...
...But how can Indy go over to the other side...
...I can easily ignore Barbra, Fatmichael Moore, and Al Frankenfraud...
Vol. 36 • October 2003 • No. 5
