A few more words on that extraordinary woman, Ann Barnhardt.

Ann Barnhardt is an attractive 34-year old commodities broker in Lone Tree, Colorado who owns Capital Management, Inc. On April 3rd, Ann posted two videos on YouTube in response to Liberal RINO Senator Lindsey Graham's critical comments about the Florida preacher who burned a Qur'an. I reposted those videos on my blog a few days ago. Ann Barnhardt gave the most eloquent assessment about free speech that I have ever heard and how a jackass RINO politician has misunderstood the origin, meaning and purpose of those rights. Here is a commentary on those videos posted on another web site, Pajamas Media followed by an updated comment by Ann Barnhardt from her own web site.

Ann Barnhardt, Culture Hero
April 6, 2011 - 6:51 am - by Roger Kimball

Even if you don’t do anything else today, please take a moment to look at the two videos that Ann Barnhardt, an intrepid Colorado resident, made a couple of days ago responding to Senator Lindsey Graham’s spineless attack on Terry Jones, the Florida minister who presided over a “trial” and burning of a Koran late last month. I link to them at the end of this post.

A recap: When publicized and condemned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and officials in Pakistan last week, Jones’s bonfire provided the occasion for the deadly riots in Afghanistan that (so far) have left a dozen people dead, including UN and NATO personnel. The instant response from the liberal establishment was condemnation — not of the rioters who were, as is their wont, murdering for Allah, but of Terry Jones. As I noted in this space Monday, Islamophiliacs from Time’s Joe Klein to Senators Harry Reid and Lindsey Graham blamed Jones for the rampage. Even General David Petraeus condemned the Koran burning as “hateful, intolerant, extremely disrespectful.” On Face the Nation, Lindsey Graham said:

I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war. During World War II you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy. Any time we can push back  here in American against actions like this that put our troops at risk, we ought to do it.

Sobering, isn’t it, to realize how quickly folks entrusted with upholding the Constitution are willing to dispense with its protections? I was moderately tart about these latest exhibitions of what I called “preemptive capitulation.” But my response was a veritable valentine compared with Ms. Barnhardt’s eloquent demolition. There are some theatrics in her presentation. She repeatedly calls Graham a “jackass” — a “stupid, stupid jackass” on one occasion.  In part two, she reads various passages from the Koran — those memorable bijoux that advocate the murder of Jews, infidels, and apostates, the rape of women prisoners, pedophilia, and beating of insufficiently  submissive wives, etc.  — and then rips out the offending pages and burns them in a glass fire-bowl. Crowning detail: she has bookmarked the passages with rashers of uncooked bacon. (“Raw bacon,” she explains, “makes the best Koranic bookmark.”)

Ms. Barnhardt describes the reading and burning of the Koran as “the main event.” It is a riveting performance, her declamation and analysis of all those goads to violence and mayhem, followed by the incineration, one leaf after the next, of the dozen or so pages she chose: “Evil, evil garbage, in it goes and up in flames!”

But perhaps even more impressive is Ms. Barnhardt’s  excoriation of Lindsey Graham and his contemptible suggestion that the free speech of American citizens should be curtailed in the face of Islamic intimidation.

Read it again: “I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable,” said this U.S. senator. “Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war. During World War II you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy. Any time we can push back here in American against actions like this that put our troops at risk, we ought to do it.”

Ms. Barnhardt picks this apart phrase by disgraceful phrase.  “Hold people accountable”? Accountable for what? she asks.

For exercising their Constitutionally protected and divinely ordained right to freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion? Hey Jackass, have you not read the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States?

What Lindsey Graham wants to do, she continues, is to “elevate the totalitarian political system masquerading as a religion called Islam to a status which

supersedes and overrides the First Amendment to the Constitution  and thus places it in a position of specially protected   legal superiority wherein criticism of Islam or failure to show proper and sufficient deference and honor for Islamic texts is a crime.  Hey Lindsey, you Jackass, you know what that’s called? It’s called Sharia. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Delicious, no? Ms. Barnhardt then announces that she will burn a Koran in a few minutes and invites Little Lindsey  to have her arrested and dragged before before Congress and held to account. “Do it. Nothing would make me happier. I would relish the opportunity to explain to you how exactly it is that we do things in the United States of America. If you want to pick a fight, Sir, you go right ahead, but understand that if you pick a fight with me the only way it ends is with you sobbing in the men’s room.”

Why can’t we have senators like this?

Ms. Barnhardt then moves on to Little Lindsey’s declaration that “Free speech is a great idea but we’re in a war.”

Point One: free speech is not just a great idea, it is “bedrock principle of Western civilization and the United States.”

Point Two: “Individuals are free sovereign agents. Individuals are not property or drones of the state. The government doesn’t tell the people what to think and say. The people tell the government what to think and say through the mechanisms” of  representative government.

Point three: Intellectual snobbery. Ms. Barnhardt discerns it in Little Lindsey’s remarks. Terry Jones is a redneck Southern preacher with a drawl and a handlebar mustache to match. No fancy Ivy league education. Ergo, he’s not eligible for the same sort of Constitutional  protection that, for example, Little Lindsey and his peers enjoy. “Listen, Jackass, it doesn’t work that way.  The First Amendment applies to all American citizens equally. It does not operate on a sliding scale based upon how expensive an education one received, what one’s income is, or whether or not one is invited to tony soirées in Georgetown.”

Ms. Barnhardt then takes up and demolishes Little Lindsey’s invocation of World War II as a precedent for clamping down on free speech. “Lindsey, you Jackass, the only prohibitions on speech during World War II and all other wars pertained to speech which would give aid and comfort to the enemy, not speech which demoralized, discouraged, or degraded the enemy.” She then enumerates various examples from those World War II posters depicting the Nazis and Japanese as deranged animals to cartoons that “ruthlessly mocked and degraded”  Germans, Italians, and the Japanese. “The informal prohibition during the war was on speech that was defeatist or conciliatory towards  the enemy, which is exactly what you are engaging in, you stupid, stupid, Jackass.”

And so it goes. Little Lindsey wants to “push back” against people like Terry Jones who burn the Koran or otherwise criticize Islam because, he says, it  “puts the troops at risk.” “Push back?” Ms. Barnhardt asks. “Since the free speech in question is by a loyal, law-abiding American citizen  against the sworn enemy of the United States and its Constitution — which is Islam — and you Senator Graham are talking about ‘pushing back’ using the force of the government of the United States, it sure sounds to me like you have decided that the United States  government is allied with Islam against the people of the Untied States who do not show sufficient deference and respect for Islam.”

Oh, and as for putting our troops at risk, “the only thing that is putting our troops at risk at are the suicidal, defeatist rules of engagement which prevent our brave soldiers from actually fighting and defeating the enemy. You hang our boys out on the lines of battle and then refuse to give them ammunition, refuse to allow  to engage the enemy without permission from a flipping attorney, and refuse to allow them to engage ‘civilians’ while fighting a force that is 100 percent comprised of civilians. How dare you accuse us of putting our troops at risk.”

There’s more. Watch both videos.  They are inspirational. Ann Barnhardt opens with the observation that she is “apparently one of the very, very last people left in Western Civilization who possesses any quantity of brains and balls simultaneously.” She is probably right. Thank God for her.

The fact that YouTube has become increasingly conscious of political correctness, Ann Barnhardt's videos might not remain visible for very long so I thought it best to pass along these comments from Pajamas Media because it contains a pretty fair depiction of her sentiments. Ann Barnhart's own web site has been inundated with favorable commentary and I am also passing along her latest post on this subject. It should also be noted that Ann is well aware of the consequences of her act and she has informed the world of her means and ability to protect herself.

Bowling with Lindsey

Posted by Ann Barnhardt - April 7, AD 2011 1:17 PM MST 

Upon further reflection, I realized that Lindsey That Jackass Graham managed in less than 100 words to eviscerate three of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights plus the 14th Amendment. Six more, and you'll pick up the spare, Player. 

First Amendment: Lindsey wants to limit freedom of speech. We've already covered this in depth.

Fifth and Sixth Amendments: Lindsey repeatedly said that while he had no desire to either amend the Constitution OR pass a law limiting free speech, he still strongly and repeatedly advocated "holding people accountable" and "pushing back" against speech offensive to islam. What he is wanting to do is completely shred the Constitutional right to DUE PROCESS OF LAW. Read both the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, and then tell me that Jackass isn't advocating for a means by which the government can punish people without actually having a law to back it up. If this doesn't terrify you, then you aren't sentient.

Fourteenth Amendment: Section 1 in full:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Lindsey advocates a legal caste system whereby muslims are held to a different legal standard than non-muslims, or "the sane", as I like to refer to them.

Lindsey Jackass Graham MUST MUST MUST be hounded from office. The people of South Carolina MUST peaceably but resolutely demand his resignation immediately. Any person who has such a superficial knowledge and understanding of the Constitution which he SWORE AN OATH to defend is not qualified to hold congressional office. Period. And I don't give a damn if he holds a Juris Doctor degree or not. The man is either a slack-jawed, mouth-breathing imbecile, or he is a conscious and willful traitor to the Constitution of the United States. Either way, he must be dismissed post haste.
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"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
--Extracted from Barry Goldwater's Speech Accepting the Republican Presidential Nomination delivered 16 July 1964, in San Francisco
Hat tip: thale_taxurfeet at BigPeace.com 

And, Yes, this gutsy lady knows how to defend herself. She mentioned that it was very unwise for anyone to drop by and pay her a visit without first calling ahead. She even posted her street address and phone number.

 

That is her hand, her Rosary beads and her pink gun. God Bless her and keep her safe.