"Where's the outrage?"

That headline brought to you by your friendly "faux Koran flushing" brethren at Newsweak. Article here, excerpt follows:

Back in the 1980s, when I was living in Johannesburg and reporting on apartheid South Africa, a white neighbor proffered a tasteless confession. She was "quite relieved," she told me, that new media restrictions prohibited our reporting on government repression. No matter that Pretoria was detaining tens of thousands of people without real evidence of wrongdoing. No matter that many of them, including children, were being tortured—sometimes to death. No matter that government hit squads were killing political opponents. No matter that police were shooting into crowds of black civilians protesting against their disenfranchisement. "It's so nice," confided my neighbor, "not to open the papers and read all that bad news."

I thought about that neighbor this week, as reports dribbled out about President George W. Bush's sanctioning of warrantless eavesdropping on American conversations. For anyone who has lived under an authoritarian regime, phone tapping—or at least the threat of it—is always a given. But U.S. citizens have always been lucky enough to believe themselves protected from such government intrusion. So why have they reacted so insipidly to yet another post-9/11 erosion of U.S. civil liberties?

Yes, the author reflexively remembered a brutal apartheid government (that, by his own admission, tortured and killed children) when the words "George W. Bush" hit his ears. Color me with the "unsurprised" crayon! Continuing:

I'm sure there are many well-meaning Americans who agree with their president's explanation that it's all a necessary evil (and that patriotic citizens will not be spied on unless they dial up Osama bin Laden). But the nasty echoes of apartheid South Africa should at least give them pause.

The term "well-meaning Americans" is typical leftist-speak for "you poor (though nice) unintelligent rubes!" Thank goodness we have guys like him to tell us what really is going on, otherwise we just might continue to keep rejecting their "enlightened" drivel at the ballot box.

I'd like to ask this author from the magazine that apparently got its accuracy tips from Dan Rather and Mary Mapes: Where was your outrage when Bill Clinton was doing the same thing? I've documented here, as have others in various comments here, that Bill Clinton spied on suspected white supremacists, anti-abortion clergy, and perhaps the most vile entities in the world today...(gasp!) businesses! All without FISA warrants, too.

I suppose that it's safe to infer from the silence exhibited from this author and his other leftist siblings that as long as the entities being spied on by a Democrat administration are from a politically incorrect group, there are no problems or concerns...at least, not loud enough to voice. Once a Republican president does the same thing in the same manner, though to a more "misunderstood" politically correct group like oppressed Islamofascists who want us all dead and have left a crater in lower Manhattan as a reminder (though obviously an ineffective one) that we are at war, then and only then are these concerns voiced.

Newsweak ran a bogus story about a Koran being flushed down a toilet at Club Gitmo. If they want a similar but (this time) accurate story, they can send the aforementioned author to my place and he can witness me flushing a copy of their puppy housebreaking tool (i.e. their magazine) down MY toilet!