Althouse: "And so it begins. With the Dutch election on Wednesday, Europe embarks on a yearlong test of how far it’s ready to realign itself..."

March 14, 2017

"And so it begins. With the Dutch election on Wednesday, Europe embarks on a yearlong test of how far it’s ready to realign itself..."

"... as an anti-immigrant, pro-Russian continent marked by ascendant nationalism, alt-Right intolerance and the fragmentation of the European Union. The worst could happen. Nobody who has watched the British decision to quit the European Union in a strange little-England huff, or the election of Donald Trump with his 'America First' anti-Muslim jingoism, can think otherwise. The liberal order has lost its center of gravity. People without memory are on the march. They have no time for the free world if the free world means mingling and migration...."

From Roger Cohen (in the NYT).

95 comments:

sunsong said...: Interesting times!; 3/14/17, 1:01 PM
JohnAnnArbor said...: All the same, tired accusations, no real analysis of what's actually going on.; 3/14/17, 1:01 PM
Mr. Majestyk said...: Anti-illegal immigrant is not the same as anti-immigrant, nor does it imply being pro-Russian.; 3/14/17, 1:01 PM
rehajm said...: Does NYT think the Dutch care about what NYT thinks?; 3/14/17, 1:04 PM
Drago said...: sunsong: "Interesting times!"

Theo Van Gogh was unavailable for comment.; 3/14/17, 1:04 PM
Unknown said...: Oh please. Many Europeans remember German "immigration" back in the 40's quite well.

Immigration and mingling is not an automatic good thing. Ask the Romans if Germanic immigration was a good thing. And Muslim immigration has always, always, always led to genocide of some sort. Ask the Romanians if Vlad the Impaler, who impaled many a Turkish invader, was a bad man.

It's not even Muslim, necessarily: ask Koreans if they are fond of Japanese immigration. Or the people in Nanking about Japanese people.

Is western civilization worth defending? Apparently, most leftists do not think so. Why?

--Vance; 3/14/17, 1:04 PM
David Begley said...: Where does this pro-Russia stuff come from?; 3/14/17, 1:05 PM
chickelit said...: Cohen give absolutely no thought that all this great "mixing" is just freeloaders freeloading. Nope, can't happen in his world.; 3/14/17, 1:05 PM
Anonymous said...: Let's see if there is a blowback to the blowback to immigration in Europe. Maybe Putin doesn't look so good to those Continental Europeans as he does to the Brits or Americans.; 3/14/17, 1:06 PM
Anonymous said...: "Where does this pro-Russia stuff come from?"

Trump.; 3/14/17, 1:07 PM
tcrosse said...: What does Putin have to do with any of this ? Oh, I forgot. He's the convenient boogeyman. Look out ! He's under the bed ! He's hiding in the closet ! Putin's gonna get you if you don't watch out.; 3/14/17, 1:09 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: "Where does this pro-Russia stuff come from?"

I love that they can't drop this narrative. The average Democrat voter couldn't find Russia on a map of the Northern Hemisphere, yet the douchelords are just certain that Putin! is some kind of compelling accusation. Please, don't stop.; 3/14/17, 1:11 PM
Larry J said...: It could be that most people are looking at the so-called "elites" and noticing they're naked.; 3/14/17, 1:12 PM
Paddy O said...: I've said it before, the trouble is corruption. If the Left (of any country) wanted their policies to find widespread acceptance and application, they'd start by a purge of all corruption. People turn to radical approaches when they feel they are being lied to or deceived by those who are clearly out for their own gain.

Such, of course, is the history of Europe, so why expect things to change now?

The end of the Second Holy Roman Empire seems nigh.; 3/14/17, 1:12 PM
YoungHegelian said...: The worst could happen. Nobody who has watched the British decision to quit the European Union in a strange little-England huff, or the election of Donald Trump with his 'America First' anti-Muslim jingoism, can think otherwise.

Could Cohen be any more of a condescending shit here if he tried? Hey Rog! Stuff like the quotation above has a lot to do with why "The liberal order has lost its center of gravity".; 3/14/17, 1:13 PM
Kate said...: "...little-England huff..."

Yeah, that'll win hearts and minds to his argument.; 3/14/17, 1:14 PM
Abdul Abulbul Amir said...: Roger Cohen must think that those who look askance at a culture that supports honor killing, genital mutilation, and the beheading of apostates are simply bigots that need to wake up to the modern multicultural society.; 3/14/17, 1:15 PM
bagoh20 said...: "They have no time for the free world if the free world means mingling and migration...."

And riots, and bombings, and rape, and sharia law, and insolvency and unrest, and massive ethnic associated unemployment and poverty.

Maybe the racists and xenophobes just prefer their own lifestyle and culture to the beautiful available and imported from murderous atrocity-ridden Syria. I mean if they want to have a taste of that, they can always vacation in Aleppo - whatever that is.; 3/14/17, 1:15 PM
robother said...: "Mingling"? So that's what the NYTimes calls the Bataclan and Nice incidents, the News Year Eve gang-gropes, the Swedish riots and car burnings. Mingle, mangle, whatever.; 3/14/17, 1:17 PM
Drago said...: David Begley: "Where does this pro-Russia stuff come from?"

The Lefts inability to accept that their policy choices have resulted in significant previous democrat voters switching to Trump in a "change election".

Thus: "Putin Did It!" fever.

Go ahead: ask Unknown if she believes that Putin hacked the election which is the reason why Trump won.

She will say "yes".

She has to.

Otherwise she might have to question some of her leftist assumptions.

And we all know that ain't happenin'!; 3/14/17, 1:18 PM
dreams said...: "People without memory are on the march."

The provincials, Roger Cohen is at the mercy of provincials and it's so unfair.

"Roger Cohen is a journalist and author. He is a columnist for The New York Times and International New York Times. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in fifteen different countries."; 3/14/17, 1:19 PM
traditionalguy said...: Holland is a Nationstate with a Reformed Christian tradition that Defeated the Spanish Kings , the French Kings, and the English Kings up to becoming the English King by an invitation. A few sneaky Muslims will not trick them into submission to theDeath Cult just to please Merkle and Obama.

The Dutch love Americans. Now we have an American loving Presidennt again, all will work out.; 3/14/17, 1:20 PM
Drago said...: Unknown: "Let's see if there is a blowback to the blowback to immigration in Europe."

Apparently there have not been near enough mass sexual assualts in Europe to satisfy Unknowns taste.

Je Suis Jihadi!; 3/14/17, 1:20 PM
Unknown said...: Cohen give absolutely no thought that all this great "mixing" is just freeloaders freeloading.

Also no thought that this is a pushback on the carnage in places like Paris, Brussels, Nice, Malmo, Cologne, San Bernadino, Orlando, and many others. Apparently these don't deserve even a one sentence mention in the analysis of European politics.; 3/14/17, 1:20 PM
gerry said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/14/17, 1:22 PM
CWJ said...: Cohen stuffed so many ingredients into that thoughtless word salad I doubt there's room for the homophobe dressing. "I knew I forgot something!" said Cohen.; 3/14/17, 1:25 PM
Unknown said...: Shorter leftism: "How dare you not want to be raped, peasants! It's wrong to reject being conquered by barbaric Islamic people who want to rape, torture, and murder you!"

Sure, not all, or even most Muslims want that. But so far, their track record in stopping their colleagues who do want that is bad.

Just like I'm sure the vast majority of Nazis were nice, kind, upstanding folk. But their track record in reigning in the bad apples was, well, atrocious.

So I hope the Netherlands stands up and says "Stop!" to the leftists desire to surrender to Islam.

--Vance; 3/14/17, 1:30 PM
Anonymous said...: That's the worst thing about xenophobes: they don't hate Russians enough.; 3/14/17, 1:35 PM
Rob said...: The anti-Russian hysteria is strong with this one.; 3/14/17, 1:37 PM
Fernandinande said...: The worst could happen.

He didn't mention what that might be. I wonder why.

The liberal[sic] order has lost its center of gravity.

Well then, the best is already happening.; 3/14/17, 1:37 PM
Kassaar said...: Cohen: “The worst could happen.” He doesn’t seem to grasp the essential difference between Brexit and Trump’s victory on the one hand, both of them game changers, and a good election result for Wilders on the other. The latest polls predict 24 seats for Wilders’s party, out of 150, i.e. 16% of the popular vote. Even allowing for the kind of crappy polling we saw in the UK and the United States, Wilders isn’t likely to get more than 20% of the popular vote. Nonetheless his party, the PVV (Party for Freedom) may win more votes than any of the competition (which tells us something about the fragmentation of the political landscape in the Netherlands). There is no chance at all that even a good result for the PVV will upset the status quo the way Brexit or Trump did.; 3/14/17, 1:50 PM
Scott said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/14/17, 1:54 PM
Swede said...: The fact that the natives rebelling against the muslim hoards invading their countries, hoards that were invited by their stupid governments, can be chocked up to native bigotry by this author is not at all surprising.

Fuck this guy.; 3/14/17, 1:54 PM
Jay Vogt said...: . . . . [What's} the worst that could happen[?].

If i recall my HS history well enough, that was roughly Samoset's thinking as he strolled up to greet the recently arrived pilgrims of Plymouth Colony.; 3/14/17, 1:56 PM
Drago said...: Unknown: "Sure, not all, or even most Muslims want that."

Actually, it is "most".; 3/14/17, 1:56 PM
Scott said...: Like so many NYT writers who comment on culture, Cohen regards his views as normative. Maybe that's an occupational hazard, since you can't be a critic without a frame of reference. But if your norms drift away from those of the people you write about, what do you do? Cohen retreats to formulaic prog-left blathering, and dismisses what's happening in the Netherlands as craziness. It's anti-intellectualism putting on airs of respectability. Honestly, though, The New York Times can't deliver anything better than that.; 3/14/17, 1:57 PM
Drago said...: Unknown: "Just like I'm sure the vast majority of Nazis were nice, kind, upstanding folk. But their track record in reigning in the bad apples was, well, atrocious."

What a bizarre comparison.

All actual Nazi's were....Nazi's!! And there was not a single one of them who were "nice, kind, upstanding folk". About 10% of the population were actually Nazi party members out of about 80 million.

We can assume there were supporters and the "go alongs" but we don't know their thoughts.

We do know that the vast majority of the muslim world believes in death for apostates, imprisonment or worse for gays, etc.; 3/14/17, 2:00 PM
Gahrie said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/14/17, 2:02 PM
Bill said...: Europe is detested less for its actual faults than for its efforts to correct them, for tearing itself away from its bestiality and inviting the rest of the world to follow its example, even at the cost of shaking its own sovereignty. As soon as Europe began to moralize history in this fashion, however, it was caught in its own trap, and other peoples began to throw all its wrongs back at it.

-- Pascal Bruckner; 3/14/17, 2:03 PM
Unknown said...: Drago, by all account Rommel, though an actual Nazi party member, was nice and very honorable; to the point of delivering medical supplies to the British during one of the battles in Africa.

--Vance; 3/14/17, 2:06 PM
Gahrie said...: The liberal order has lost its center of gravity.

The political Left has been busy undermining the liberal order of the Western Civilization for fifty years. You only need to see the environment on college campuses to know this is true.

What is the bigger threat to Western Civilization and the liberal order:

Opposition to Islam and Islamic immigration to the west,

or

Islam?; 3/14/17, 2:06 PM
traditionalguy said...: FTR the Netherlands is a Monarchy by tradition in an area supported by Spanish and French Catholic kings in the 100 Years War days.But Holland is the original stronghold of Protestants. They are tolerance first guys. They we're the refuge for William Bradford's Puritan sect, to keep his Church from arrest and murder by the heretic hunting Catholic governments so they could live and start Plymouth Plantations.(a/k/a Cape Cod, Massachusetts.); 3/14/17, 2:12 PM
Ken B said...: I already see groups of Trump supporters strangling the German Shepherds they raised from pups.; 3/14/17, 2:14 PM
Kassaar said...: And so it begins. With the Dutch election on Wednesday, Europe embarks on a yearlong test of how far it’s ready to realign itself as an anti-immigrant, pro-Russian continent marked by ascendant nationalism, alt-Right intolerance and the fragmentation of the European Union.

Mostly nonsense. The “pro-Russian continent” is hysterical. Anti-immigrant? Applies only to those “immigrants” who force themselves and their anti-Western ideology on us. Alt-right intolerance? That’s just name calling. We’ve had marriage equality for sixteen years now in the Netherlands and we have excellent relations with all foreigners who do not reject Western culture. The fragmentation of the European Union? Probably, and a good thing too as long as the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels keep nibbling away at the national sovereignty of the member states.; 3/14/17, 2:14 PM
Big Mike said...: The liberal order has lost its center of gravity.

No they didn't. They threw it away. It sometimes forced them to admit that other people had a valid point, and once in a while to work hand in hand with Republicans. Can't have that!!!

People without memory are on the march.

Yes, and they're all the so-called "Progressives." (Note: the name should not in any way, shape or form be taken to mean that they stand for progress. What they view as progress, more rational people view as regression.

They have no time for the free world if the free world means mingling and migration.

Let's hear from the people gunned down at the night club in Orlando, or Bataclan theater, or ... Surely the German and Swedish women secretly enjoy being raped or at least groped.; 3/14/17, 2:23 PM
Earnest Prole said...: The liberal order has indeed lost its center of gravity, but if Mr. Cohen believes the new center of gravity is pro-Russian, he's an idiot. It reminds me of the dumb old days when New York Times liberals would use the term conservative to refer to Stalinists and American anticommunists alike.; 3/14/17, 2:25 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: In the NYTimes Article, the author notes that a Congressman tweeted: “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

He then writes: "Fascist genetics now have a place on Capitol Hill."

This is why the NYTimes is so crappy these days. They have this Orwellian trigger mechanism: "more immigration, good; less immigration, bad" or "multi-culture, good; one culture, fascist"

I think the Netherlands is mostly comprised of Dutch people, who speak Dutch. I also think Denmark is comprised of Danish people, who speak Danish. Can you imagine that?

The truth is America was never a multi-cultural society. Up until 1965, we took the BEST immigrants of foreign countries (mostly England, Ireland, German) and expected them to assimilate.

The Left wants to take any immigrants of foreign countries, and expects them not to assimilate, as long as they vote Democrat. Of course, whether the cultures collide, fight, kill or rape each other, is not a concern. The Left just sticks its collective head in the sand, and ignores the conflict. It's usually doesn't happen in Beverly Hills, Pacific Heights or the Upper West Side.

I hope Wilders wins. And if a majority of Dutch voters think that slowing down the influx of Muslim immigrants is their preferred policy prescription, I hope their voices are heard.; 3/14/17, 2:25 PM
Hunter said...: Translation:

the international left is ready to lose tomorrow.

Again.

And no sign of stopping.; 3/14/17, 2:32 PM
whitney said...: That is some purple prose; 3/14/17, 2:33 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Drago hasn't watched Band of Brothers so he doesn't know what Steve Ambrose thought the 101st guys thought about the Nazi soldiers capacity for not being Satan walkin'.

After they surrendered.

FYI, you bet your ass I get my knowledge from movies and TV, still know important things to know more than you people.; 3/14/17, 2:35 PM
MadisonMan said...: Life for everyone would be so perfect if only we all listened and obeyed. Please tell us what to do, Mr. New York Times.; 3/14/17, 2:43 PM
JaimeRoberto said...: If Wilders wins we'll see the press play the same script they played after Brexit and Trump: hate crimes up (though unsubstantiated), immigrants cowering in fear (though not so fearful that they won't talk to the press), and Russia!!!(tm).; 3/14/17, 2:44 PM
Paolo said...: The level of self-centeredness at the NYT is astonishing.; 3/14/17, 2:45 PM
Dude1394 said...: Lord save me from pretentious democrats.; 3/14/17, 2:47 PM
Eric said...: Just when you think that Roger Cohen couldn't get more hateful and ignorant, he reaches a new level and, yes, that piece is hateful and ignorant.; 3/14/17, 2:48 PM
Jupiter said...: I would so like to strap Roger Cohen to a Muslim suicide bomber. "People without memory are on the march. They have no time for the free world if the free world means mingling and migration...."

What does the stupid putz even think he is saying? The "free world" is Islam? Talk about people without memory. Please make him stop. Suppress the dim-witted bastard. I want to live in a World where Roger Cohen is suppressed. Is that so much to ask? Put the nattering little shit in a concrete burkha and mingle him with the East River.; 3/14/17, 2:49 PM
n.n said...: It looks like the left is doubling down on [class] diversity, anti-nativism, Catastrophic Anthropogenic Immigration Reform, social justice adventures, redistributive change (e.g. monopolies and practices), selective child, and other anti-capitalist, trans-human projects.; 3/14/17, 2:53 PM
Henry said...: That's a lot of sentences, Roger. Enough of those and you have a column.; 3/14/17, 2:53 PM
Paolo said...: The same people who dismissed very real Soviet espionage for decades as anti-communist hysteria, and who later shrugged with indifference before the Venona evidence; these same people are now freaking out for non-existent threats allegedly posed by Russia.

The reason is always the same: they can see only themselves as the center of the world.; 3/14/17, 2:54 PM
Martin said...: Cohen writes, "The liberal order has lost its center of gravity."

Yes, the classical liberal order of people like Mill and Voltaire lost its center of gravity about 100-120 years ago when their successors became statists and supported, and ultimatewly became, the new monarchical class. Cohen is one of those who are destroying that liberal order.

And the equating of "anti-immigrant" with "pro-Russian" is just throwing a handful of spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks.; 3/14/17, 2:57 PM
MikeR said...: This is how you get more Geert Wilders: pretend that sensible concerns are racism.; 3/14/17, 3:11 PM
pacwest said...: What happened to common sense? It's getting outright stupid in places. The we are the world crowd is not even trying to make sense anymore. Just wow. Unbelievable.; 3/14/17, 3:12 PM
Drago said...: Unknown: "Drago, by all account Rommel, though an actual Nazi party member, was nice and very honorable; to the point of delivering medical supplies to the British during one of the battles in Africa.

--Vance"

Let's be very clear here. Most of the old line German general staff and major families did not have much choice in "joining" the party. Not that there weren't many who did so happily. Those folks were high profile and the pressures on them to conform publicly to greater Nazi aims has to be taken under consideration.; 3/14/17, 3:15 PM
Drago said...: Guildofcannonballs: "Drago hasn't watched Band of Brothers so he doesn't know what Steve Ambrose thought the 101st guys thought about the Nazi soldiers capacity for not being Satan walkin'.

After they surrendered."

Uh, how did you get to "Drago hasn't watched Band of Brothers"?

Guildofcannonballs: "FYI, you bet your ass I get my knowledge from movies and TV, still know important things to know more than you people."

You want to try that one again?; 3/14/17, 3:16 PM
Drago said...: n.n: "It looks like the left is doubling down on [class] diversity, anti-nativism, Catastrophic Anthropogenic Immigration Reform, social justice adventures, redistributive change (e.g. monopolies and practices), selective child, and other anti-capitalist, trans-human projects"

The left has no feedback/adaptation capability, and since the liberals long ago surrendered to the left there is no longer even a minor moderating influence.

Expect the left to triple, quadruple, quintuple down. They know no other way.; 3/14/17, 3:18 PM
Drago said...: pacwest: "What happened to common sense?"

The western Social Justice variant of marxism requires the destruction of common sense.; 3/14/17, 3:19 PM
Unknown said...: Exactly, Drago. And indeed, that was my point: much like today's colleges, not being a Nazi was hazardous to your health. Many Nazi's were decent people trying to keep their heads down.

Can you imagine being a conservative at, say, Harvard today? You'd better be quiet, comrade. Be a shame if something happened to your career.....

Even the STEM areas, where you could be a conservative because hey, light going through a prism doesn't care one whit about your politics, is now under siege. Publish or perish, but all the peer review people are flaming leftists because they are the ones who want to run everyone's life, and decent people hate committee meetings. And thus, the left has seized control of academia.

--Vance; 3/14/17, 3:23 PM
Jupiter said...: Guildofcannonballs said...
"Drago hasn't watched Band of Brothers so he doesn't know what Steve Ambrose thought the 101st guys thought about the Nazi soldiers capacity for not being Satan walkin'."

The Third Reich, like all of its enemies, practiced conscription on a massive scale. It is therefore quite likely that many or even most of the men fighting in the German Army were not Nazi ideologues. Even the all-volunteer SS had many soldiers motivated more by patriotism than by any particular ideology. Nazism was quite popular with the faculties of German universities, however.; 3/14/17, 3:27 PM
John said...: "Wilders-loving King might also go to Ellis Island for a refresher on the American idea"

You mean the idea that immigrants are documented when they choose to migrate to the US and were put through the Immigration Process?; 3/14/17, 3:28 PM
David said...: "The liberal order has lost its center of gravity."

No. The damn fools threw it away, they didn't lose it.; 3/14/17, 3:29 PM
Oso Negro said...: Those Roger Cohen quotes make me hope to learn that someone has given him a sound thrashing. Preferably an illegal immigrant.; 3/14/17, 3:32 PM
Achilles said...: Unknown said...

Sure, not all, or even most Muslims want that. But so far, their track record in stopping their colleagues who do want that is bad.

Any Muslim that believes in Sharia law believes it is ok to murder infidels and apostates and gay people. Now go take a poll on how many mulsims believe in sharia law and you will get "most."; 3/14/17, 3:35 PM
Achilles said...: The liberal order has lost its center of gravity.

Oh no they haven't. They are just returning to it. The left and the Muslims they want to import have a lot in common. They are both very intolerant of dissent and are in no way liberal.

People without memory are on the march.

No shit.

Mao. Stalin. Trotsky. Marx. Pol Pot. Hitler. Mugabe. Castro. Chavez/Maduro. They never change. And can you honestly look at the violence on the left here and think it would be different if they were in power?; 3/14/17, 3:45 PM
Anonymous said...: Scott: Cohen regards his views as normative. Maybe that's an occupational hazard, since you can't be a critic without a frame of reference. But if your norms drift away from those of the people you write about, what do you do? Cohen retreats to formulaic prog-left blathering, and dismisses what's happening in the Netherlands as craziness. It's anti-intellectualism putting on airs of respectability.

Emphasis added - wish I'd come up with that little phrase. Precisely right.; 3/14/17, 3:49 PM
LYNNDH said...: Wonder what the comments in the NYT are on this article? Most would be very frightening to clear headed thinkers.; 3/14/17, 4:11 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Bay Area Guy said...
The truth is America was never a multi-cultural society. Up until 1965, we took the BEST immigrants of foreign countries (mostly England, Ireland, German)

Pretty sure no one thought the Irish were the 'best' immigrants at the time.; 3/14/17, 4:12 PM
Rick said...: The NYT is becoming more like Der Sturmer where every event and preference is reshaped to fit the conspiracy theory.; 3/14/17, 4:22 PM
Drago said...: ARM: "Pretty sure no one thought the Irish were the 'best' immigrants at the time"

Do NOT make me link to "Blazing Saddles".; 3/14/17, 4:24 PM
Comanche Voter said...: As for A Reasonable Masn at 4:12 PM--and the Bay Area Guy for that matter. Ellis Island was a giant sorting pool, with many immigrants being sent right back home and denied admission to the USA. And immigrants tended to come in ethnic waves during the 19th century and earlier. Some of my French Huguenot ancestors arrived in 1695--some of my English ancestors arrived well before that. As for the Irish ancestors--well that was mid 19th Century after the Potato Famine, although family legend has it that one of them came earlier to esccape punishment for being a pig thief. And so it goes.; 3/14/17, 4:25 PM
Anonymous said...: ARM: Pretty sure no one thought the Irish were the 'best' immigrants at the time.

No, they didn't. And the receiving society didn't make any bones about telling them that their dysfunctional behavior sucked and to get with the program, the surly papist sots.

Which most of 'em did, in fairly short order, without making a detour to get Thomas Nast sacked or jailed for drawing hate cartoons. Though I still think there's a case to be made for deporting certain Kennedys, O'Reillys, and Hannitys. Just because.; 3/14/17, 4:33 PM
damikesc said...: Let's see if there is a blowback to the blowback to immigration in Europe. Maybe Putin doesn't look so good to those Continental Europeans as he does to the Brits or Americans.

You'd think Hillary's people didn't meet with Russian diplomats during the campaign...; 3/14/17, 4:49 PM
Mark said...: You'd think Hillary's people didn't meet with Russian diplomats during the campaign...

Of course the former Secretary of State maintained the contacts she had built up as Secretary, including the reset Russia. And of course so did others in her campaign, as any presidential campaign has sought to foster connections with various foreign personages. And they had business dealings with them. Over at the "Clinton Global Initiative" too, where they not only had communications, but all sorts of quid-pro-quos and pay-to-play.

It was when the intel embeds intercepted Trump's people doing such routine stuff that they came up with the absurd idea, "Hey, let's try to smear him and the GOP as Russian tools. And we can use it as an excuse for all sorts of electronic surveillance, which we can then leak to Hillary's campaign, including that part of her campaign apparatus at the NYT and WashPost."; 3/14/17, 5:31 PM
Fernandinande said...: "Look out Itchy, he's Irish!"

Jupiter said...
I would so like to strap Roger Cohen to a Muslim suicide bomber.

Good thing you didn't mention a "wood chipper" or Preet would be after you - if only he could.

Preet! Preet!; 3/14/17, 5:43 PM
eric said...: Blogger David Begley said...
Where does this pro-Russia stuff come from?

Hillary had her reset button for the Obama administration. She also had her nice, large, sale of Uranium to the Russians.

How do you focus attention off of the crimes you're committing and get everyone to focus on someone else? Accuse them of that which you are guilty.

Is anyone talking about the Obama administrations deals with Russia and cozying up to the regime? Of course not. Why? Because Trump!

And that's where it comes from. Trust me, as soon as a Democrat is in office again, Russia will be made great again.; 3/14/17, 5:52 PM
Mattman26 said...: I guess if Cohen says nobody can think otherwise, who am I to disagree?; 3/14/17, 6:12 PM
Michael K said...: Blogger Unknown said...
"Where does this pro-Russia stuff come from?"

Trump.

Inga is a barrel of fun with clueless statements like this. You're late, Inga!

Even the NY Times has stopped mentioning wire taps.

ARM. The Irish stuff comes mostly from Boston where Irish immigrants were mostly laborers and maids.

In New York City they were cops and politicians. Speaking the language helped a lot. Read Paul Johnson's history sometime.

My own ancestors came in through the St Lawrence River about 1800 and some went north to Canada and some went south to New York State. There was no Ellis Island then.

They were farmers.; 3/14/17, 7:22 PM
Michael said...: What malarkey (Cohen). The liberal order is precisely what the Brexiters and Trumpsters and even Wilders-ers are trying to defend - against a globalist, bureaucratic tyranny which thinks it knows better than the people how the people ought to live. Their message is simple: this day we fight!; 3/14/17, 7:57 PM
hombre said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/14/17, 8:21 PM
hombre said...: Cohen is so caught up in his patronizing hyperbole that he has forgotten how to think. It is the progs who think history begins today, not "the others" he so obviously despises. We "others" recognize the slaughter wrought by the purveyors and practitioners of leftist extremism. We recall at least two Muslim invasions of Europe preceding this one. We are baffled by his pretext of American and European adulation of Putin and the ignorance of even recent history required to perpetuate this myth.

Cohen's article is just blather. NYT is no longer merely biased. It is foolish. Perhaps this is the hysteria derived from cognitive dissonance that Scott Adams blogs about.

BTW, I will be surprised if Wilder wins. I expect Europeans to remain effete until they are displaced by Muslims.; 3/14/17, 8:23 PM
Sebastian said...: "The liberal order has lost its center of gravity. People without memory are on the march. They have no time for the free world if the free world means mingling and migration." Mingling with migrants who despise your free world is a sure way to make that world lose its "center of gravity."

As others have pointed out, it seems that under the Dutch coalition system Wilders can't win. But he opposes immigration, and Islam, as hostile to Western, liberal values--including women's and gay rights.; 3/14/17, 9:16 PM
Leora said...: I think we are trying to protect our traditional freedoms from a wave of intolerant immigrants.

See this short film about the activist Muslims in Luton England https://youtu.be/nP0XTvuRycY
or the longer version at https://youtu.be/SgKMI1wV0ps.

This really is a conflict of civilizations and we who live in Western freedom need to deal with it honestly in a way that protects and defends our traditions and laws. This may mean denying entry to those who oppose our values.; 3/14/17, 9:42 PM
Alex said...: Cohen is so caught up in his patronizing hyperbole that he has forgotten how to think.

The insane bubble that NY Times columnist + EU technocrats live in must be hermetically sealed from any sense. Sort of like Hitler's Wolf Lair.; 3/14/17, 11:08 PM
Alex said...: As others have pointed out, it seems that under the Dutch coalition system Wilders can't win. But he opposes immigration, and Islam, as hostile to Western, liberal values--including women's and gay rights.

Eventually enough Dutch people will wake up to what is going on and Wilders will win in a landslide.; 3/14/17, 11:09 PM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: When did Titus learn Indonesian?; 3/14/17, 11:50 PM
Rusty said...: Cohen is a hysterical little bitch , isn't he.; 3/15/17, 6:03 AM