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December 11, 2014|2:27 pm

Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, delivering the Institute on Religion and Democracy's 2014 Diane Knippers Memorial Lecture, Washington, D.C., October 16, 2014.

WASHINGTON Will those liberals who value diversity and tolerance of differing viewpoints lose their fight with the liberals who have worked to drive those who do not share their opinions from the public square? Professor Robert P. George believes they will. Tolerant liberals, however, have two advantages in that fight.

On Oct. 16, George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, delivered the Institute on Religion and Democracy's 2014 Diane Knippers Memorial Lecture in Washington, D.C. In that speech (coverage and links to the video here), he argued that supporters of gay marriage will not allow for the religious freedom of those opposed to gay marriage because their ideology does not allow for the fact that gay marriage dissenters can be reasonable people of goodwill. There are some tolerant liberals that continue to support religious freedom, he said, but those liberals "will lose the battle."

During the Q&A after the speech, I suggested to George two reasons he could be wrong, that tolerant liberals could win that fight with intolerant liberals.

First, in American democracy extremism loses and moderation wins. In fact, our Founders designed our government to function that way. If most elections in the United States had a proportional representation system, candidates who can gain the support of a small portion of the population can still gain some measure of political power. Instead, the United States has a winner-take-all electoral system in which a plurality of the vote is required to win elections. This encourages candidates to build broad coalitions in order to win. In this way, our election system has a moderating effect on our candidates and our political discourse.

Intolerant liberalism has only recently become a mainstream phenomenon. It has been below the surface (or confined mostly to college campuses) for a while, but since President Barack Obama was reelected in 2012, intolerant liberals have been much more strident and much more public.

This extremism will lead to a backlash. We may have already seen the beginnings of the backlash in the responses to the Houston Mayor sermon subpoena scandal, the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel storyand the Republican victories in the midterm elections.

While support for gay marriage has seen strong growth in recent years, support for religious freedom also remains strong. Political candidates, even those who support gay marriage, will not want to be associated with a movement seen as attacking religious freedom.

Second, tolerant liberals are holding views consistent with their ideology. The hypocrisy of intolerant liberals is unsustainable in the long-term as the absurdity of their position continues to reveal itself.

Read more here:
Analysis: Why Tolerant Liberals Can Win Their Fight With Intolerant Liberals; A Response to Robert P. George

The confused public is in dire need of guidance from those with knowledge and understanding of Islam.

COMMENT

by Yusri Jamaluddin

The clash between liberal and Islamist ideologies is imminent in Malaysia. The liberals, who call themselves moderates, are on a sudden attacking spree, each amplifying the voice of the other. Their voices seem loud, but they are low in number and they constantly manipulate public perception through duplication of organizations with the same inherent agenda and political interests.

After losing in parliamentary elections, they seek to reclaim the nation with a barrage of campaigns under the umbrella of civil society institutions. In reality, their numbers are nothing compared to the silent majority. Unfortunately, the problem with the majority is that they are living in a cave of wealth and comfort, refusing to speak up to tell the world that our country is just fine without secular and liberal ideologies.

The Malaysian public is now in a confused state. Whom should the people trust the moderates, who keep painting a gruesome and bloody picture of a Malaysia ruled by militant extremists, or the Islamists, who constantly remind the nation to stay true to its identity in order to maintain peace and stability while issuing stern warnings to those who fail to do so?

ISMA has long warned of the existence of a group of people trying to secularize Malaysia. At the same time, ISMA calls for Malaysians to stay away from extremist militant groups. Many have failed to heed the warnings against secularism. Perhaps they want to wait until the day comes when they lose the religious identity that Malaysia has inherited.

It doesnt take a rocket scientist to understand that Malaysia is not a secular state and should never be treated as one. It is a myth that a secular state will ever recognize a religion to be the religion of the federation. After all, the principle concept of a secular state is that it separates religion from the affairs of the state. The fact that the constitution mentions liberty does not make it liberal either.

National identity

In light of recent events, we must ask ourselves a simple question: should a country mold itself to suit the different desires and inclinations of minority individuals, or should the people adapt to the national identity of this country, which stands on the principles that Islam is the religion of the Federation, Bahasa Melayu is the national language, the rights and privileges of the Malays and Bumiputeras are to be protected, the position of the monarchs is to be protected and the citizenship of other races is to be protected according to the social contract?

See the article here:
Liberals disguised as moderates

The Liberals are willing to fork over an additional $86 million to prove theres life on MaRS.

One day after auditor general Bonnie Lysyk upbraided Premier Kathleen Wynnes government for a high-risk $224-million bailout loan to MaRS, the Grits are doubling down on the medical and related sciences hub.

This is not a failed project, said Michael Nobrega, former CEO of the OMERS pension plan and chair of the Ontario Centre of Excellence, who co-chaired an expert panel on the future of the 20-storey tower at the corner of College Street and University Avenue across from Queens Park.

This is a project that has not been completed, Nobrega said Wednesday after recommending the government lend MaRS up to $86 million more to do upgrades that will make it easier to lease.

MaRS is only 31 per cent occupied, meaning it would not be worth immediately selling in order to recoup the provinces investment.

The new repayable line of credit is atop the $309 million already committed to MaRS, which includes the controversial $224-million loan in 2011, $65 million to buy out the buildings U.S. developer, Alexandria Real Estate (ARE), $4 million in debt-service payments, and $16 million used to buy the land.

In total, the Liberals will have sunk $395 million into the MaRS project.

Infrastructure Minister Brad Duguid conceded that this project had some significant difficulties along the way.

This is the best path forward. It will ensure that the governments loan is fully repaid with interest while also continuing our support for Ontarios innovation economy, Duguid said at an announcement attended by scores of MaRS employees.

Many people believe that the easiest ways out of the challenges we faced would be to sell the building outright and walk away from this project.

Continued here:
Liberals ready to float MaRS an additional $86 million loan

WASHINGTON Exposed to the light of day, a year-end, $1.1 trillion spending bill drew vociferous objections from liberals and milder criticism from conservatives Wednesday while lawmakers readied a brief, stopgap measure to prevent a government shutdown both parties vowed to avoid.

Democrats complained bitterly in public about a portion of the $1.1 trillion measure that eases regulations imposed on big banks in the wake of the 2008 economic meltdown even though 70 members of the party's rank and file supported an identical provision in a stand-alone bill late last year.

After a closed-door meeting, Democrats also chorused objections to a separate section of the spending bill that eases limits on campaign contributions to political parties.

The White House declined to state President Barack Obama's position on the legislation, negotiated in secret over several days by senior lawmakers, including top leaders in both parties and both houses.

"Putting these two things together in the same bill illustrates everything that's wrong with the political process right now," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

Republicans countered correctly that Democratic negotiators initially signed off on both. Speaker John Boehner rebuffed a request from the Democratic leader, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, to jettison them.

"If Rep. Pelosi doesn't think her negotiators did a good job, she should discuss it with them," said Michael Steel, Boehner's spokesman.

On the other side of the political spectrum, some conservatives grumbled that the measure left the administration's controversial new immigration policy unchallenged until the end of February. That decision "makes no sense at all. We've let the Democrats set their agenda as though we lost the election," said Louisiana Rep. John Fleming.

Given opposition from an unknown number of conservatives, Boehner and the Republican high command likely will need some Democratic support to assure the bill's passage in a vote set for Thursday.

Whatever the Democrats' motive, the political crossfire left the massive, 1,603-page bill in limbo and so, too, chances of a smooth ending for a Congress marked by two years of intense partisanship. Other legislation awaited approval as lawmakers looked to the year-end exits.

The rest is here:
Liberals, conservatives criticize $1.1 trillion spending bill

In case you've been hiding under some coats this week, liberals are keyed up on the idea of recruiting Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016. Warren showed why in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, protesting the inclusion of a measure that would loosen restriction on derivative trading in a $1 trillion spending bill Congress is expected to approve this week.

It's worth watching the entire speech -- it's less than eight minutes from beginning to end -- but if you are either super busy or an easily distracted millennial, pay particular attention to the first 49 seconds of this clip.

Here's the key line: "I come to the floor today to ask a fundamental question -- who does Congress work for? Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers? Or does it work for all of us?"

Warren's anti-Wall Street, populist rhetoric, heavily focused on reducing or eliminating income inequality, sits at the core of the Democratic base's belief system at the moment. In a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, almost six in 10 Democrats (58 percent) agreed with the idea that economic and political systems are stacked against them. As WSJ's Neil King notes, that sense of a rigged system is far from a Democrats-only belief;"51 percent of Republicans; 55 percent of whites; 60 percent of blacks; 53 percent of Hispanics; as well as decent majorities of every age and professional cluster, including blue-collar workers, white-collar workers and retirees," all hold it, according to King.

But, the sense of not only a widening gap between haves and have-nots but also a sort of a built-in institutional unfairness to it runs extremely strong within the Democratic base. That goes double when the very likely nominee for the party in 2016 is neither a) a populist or b) anti-Wall Street.

Speeches like the one Warren gave Wednesday will just fuel chatter about why she should challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton in two years. And she knows it.

Chris Cillizza writes The Fix, a politics blog for the Washington Post. He also covers the White House.

Here is the original post:
The Fix: Why Elizabeth Warren is liberals dream 2016 candidate, in 49 seconds