— Namely, by the institutionalization of a fear of shame, and the creation of enough shame — by way of demanding the present answer for the past — to place everyone in constant worry of covering himself in it. All of which leads to a culture of sanctimonious finger-waggers who, as I noted last night, are afraid of their own shadows. Herd animals. Looking for scapegoats.
And as is usual, Israel will do. Shelby Steele:
This is something new in the world, this almost complete segregation of Israel in the community of nations. And if Helen Thomas’s remarks were pathetic and ugly, didn’t they also point to the end game of this isolation effort: the nullification of Israel’s legitimacy as a nation? There is a chilling familiarity in all this. One of the world’s oldest stories is playing out before our eyes: The Jews are being scapegoated again.
“World opinion” labors mightily to make Israel look like South Africa looked in its apartheid era—a nation beyond the moral pale. And it projects onto Israel the same sin that made apartheid South Africa so untouchable: white supremacy. Somehow “world opinion” has moved away from the old 20th century view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a complicated territorial dispute between two long-suffering peoples. Today the world puts its thumb on the scale for the Palestinians by demonizing the stronger and whiter Israel as essentially a colonial power committed to the “occupation” of a beleaguered Third World people.
This is now—figuratively in some quarters and literally in others—the moral template through which Israel is seen. It doesn’t matter that much of the world may actually know better. This template has become propriety itself, a form of good manners, a political correctness. Thus it is good manners to be outraged at Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and it is bad manners to be outraged at Hamas’s recent attack on a school because it educated girls, or at the thousands of rockets Hamas has fired into Israeli towns—or even at the fact that Hamas is armed and funded by Iran. The world wants independent investigations of Israel, not of Hamas.
One reason for this is that the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now. Today we in the West are reluctant to use our full military might in war lest we seem imperialistic; we hesitate to enforce our borders lest we seem racist; we are reluctant to ask for assimilation from new immigrants lest we seem xenophobic; and we are pained to give Western Civilization primacy in our educational curricula lest we seem supremacist. Today the West lives on the defensive, the very legitimacy of our modern societies requiring constant dissociation from the sins of the Western past—racism, economic exploitation, imperialism and so on.
When the Israeli commandos boarded that last boat in the flotilla and, after being attacked with metal rods, killed nine of their attackers, they were acting in a world without the moral authority to give them the benefit of the doubt. By appearances they were shock troopers from a largely white First World nation willing to slaughter even “peace activists” in order to enforce a blockade against the impoverished brown people of Gaza. Thus the irony: In the eyes of a morally compromised Western world, the Israelis looked like the Gestapo.
This, of course, is not the reality of modern Israel. Israel does not seek to oppress or occupy—and certainly not to annihilate—the Palestinians in the pursuit of some atavistic Jewish supremacy. But the merest echo of the shameful Western past is enough to chill support for Israel in the West.
The West also lacks the self-assurance to see the Palestinians accurately. Here again it is safer in the white West to see the Palestinians as they advertise themselves—as an “occupied” people denied sovereignty and simple human dignity by a white Western colonizer. The West is simply too vulnerable to the racist stigma to object to this “neo-colonial” characterization.
Our problem in the West is understandable. We don’t want to lose more moral authority than we already have. So we choose not to see certain things that are right in front of us. For example, we ignore that the Palestinians—and for that matter much of the Middle East—are driven to militancy and war not by legitimate complaints against Israel or the West but by an internalized sense of inferiority. If the Palestinians got everything they want—a sovereign nation and even, let’s say, a nuclear weapon—they would wake the next morning still hounded by a sense of inferiority. For better or for worse, modernity is now the measure of man.
[…]
[…] this recalcitrance in the Muslim world, this attraction to the consolations of hatred, is one of the world’s great problems today—whether in the suburbs of Paris and London, or in Kabul and Karachi, or in Queens, N.Y., and Gaza. The fervor for hatred as deliverance may not define the Muslim world, but it has become a drug that consoles elements of that world in the larger competition with the West. This is the problem we in the West have no easy solution to, and we scapegoat Israel—admonish it to behave better—so as not to feel helpless. We see our own vulnerability there.
And so we finger-wag and tut tut, eager to join the chorus of those “authentic” enough to even claim oppression and victimhood.
And though many of us know in our hearts that we’re being used — that our own supposed shame is being leveraged against us — we go along anyway, eager for that clap on the back that comes from a contrived but majoritarian moral authority.
Because it feels good. And because it’s so much easier to scold the scapegoat than it is to stand outside the mob and defend him.
(h/t TerryH)
We were once their allies.
I have found myself wondering lately: where are voices of such as G W Bush, Former Sec. Rice, VP Cheney himself (as opposed to his daughter) and the many others who have conducted a US foreign policy that understood the dangers of now current policy toward Israel. Surely, I think, they know how awful this path of conduct is. Surely they can see the pending consequences. How is it they are not speaking out against this policy as forcefully as they may know how to do? Are they actually persuaded that popular prejudice against them will be coupled with prejudice against Israel and is sufficient to excuse their silence, i.e., that they will argue that their public speech will only exacerbate the evils in train and is therefore imprudent? I can’t find that weak argument credible, yet at the same time cannot find another that would better fit what I see.
What these people fail to understand is that when you put someone in a “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” situation, you pretty much guarantee that they’ll pick the option that works best for them.
I don’t look forward to it, but I don’t see any way around it: the time is coming when the world’s “good” powers will decide to follow the examples of Iran and China and Russia, and just go shithouse on their enemies safe in the knowledge that the tongue-lashing they get is no worse than the tongue-lashing they’d get for any other action.
Fear of shame works well enough on the rank qand file useful idiots whwo will do damn near aything for that orgasmic moment of sanctimonious self righteousness, which of course has nothing to do with any rational moral philosophy. It’s only important to be fashionably right. But Israel and Israelis can have no such delusions, and as Squid wrote above, they will take the most effective and least bad option left open to them, and that plainly means war. They will destroy their enemies or be destroyed. We’ve left them no choice.
“…the time is coming when the world’s “good” powers will decide to follow the examples of Iran and China and Russia, and just go shithouse on their enemies safe in the knowledge that the tongue-lashing they get is no worse than the tongue-lashing they’d get for any other action.”
While I’m uncertain as to the specificity of calling out Iran, China and Russia as exemplars, that you are quite correct in your thrust Squid is as clear as can be, even if based only on the remarks of Ambassador Oren a few days ago. What is specially interesting about your thought is on the question whether the characteristics composing the ‘good’ nations idea can be themselves the source of the ‘not-good’ resulting condition you cite, so weren’t in fact ‘good’ to start with but ‘bad’.
“We don’t want to lose more moral authority than we already have.”
So we refuse to exercise that authority, and as a consequence, continue to see it bleed away.
The Disenlightenment. Catch the Fever!
There’s a reason I used scare quotes in my description, sdferr. I’ve no delusions about any particular group’s innate virtue. Which, come to think of it, is a large part of my head-scratching over the removal of so many polite barriers against undesirable behavior.
If I advocate for homogeneity in the USA, I’m ridiculed, shamed, and called evil.
If I do the same for Israel, I’m rewarded. Things get really strange when you follow the money of those who won’t allow the USA to be homogeneous nation. Even though “they” live in the USA, their loyalty is to their homogeneous nation.
If no illusions as to the innate virtue of a particular group (or groups), might we find a virtue as virtue which any group or for that matter, person, could practice? And resolving to the previous question (or waltzing it in through the front door), how would that look or what would it be?
And so we finger-wag and tut tut, eager to join the chorus of those “authentic” enough to even claim oppression and victimhood.
I can’t even rhetorically go there, Jeff. Aren’t there a lot of “us” who are mad as hell? I see our country divided between the fools like Obama, those who don’t know what the fuck is going on (this is a rather large group), and those who are about as opposed as they can be about current US foreign policy.
The “we” may be a larger portion of “The World Community”, but fuck teh world community. Their day of reckoning is coming. The face of the Anti-Joos is ugly.
Israel breathes; world condemnation instantaneous.
Saddest part of the post is that the author felt he had to point out this is satire.
#8: Self-deluded or self hating wealthy liberal dupe Jewish people? That’s not exactly anything new. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, but not new.
I have some Jewish friends (I swear) and they are pretty liberal. Except, the worm turns because they now have a daughter that has married and moved to live (forever) in Israel. Grandchildren to be raised there.
I’m DYING to talk to ’em (they’re actually friends of my Aunt and so we get together when the relatives are in town) and see what they’re thinking right now.
I bet “conflicted” is an understatement.
If there’s any consolation to this latest outbreak of global anti-Israel bigotry, it’s that throughout history, the enemies of Israel and the Jews have, in due time, fared very poorly.
I defend Jews.
BP. Not so much. Sorry.
Defending Israel = moral imperative.
Defending every dumb thing Joe Barton says = not so much.
Are you thinking of BP as you would a scapegoat, Joe? Otherwise, what has BP (and your contempt for BP) to do with the thrust of this thread? Or are you thinking of yourself (in your plain contempt for the rule of law) as a scapegoat, one taken up to explain the miseries of the country itself?
Next time anyone wonders how the world could let such evil flourish as Fascism and Bolshevism, look no farther than these despicable types, who know that condemning the innocent carries no cost (in the short term), whereas condemning the guilty puts a target on their backs.
They’re worse than cowards: A mere coward would keep his head down and his mouth shut. These people are cheerleaders, enablers, and in some cases, active participants in the spread of one of the world’s oldest evils.
The Jewish people will survive—they always do—but we will not be better for having permitted yet another holocaust.
Defending every dumb thing Joe Barton says = not so much
Joe Barton spoke the indelicate truth: Obama and company are most certainly engaged in a shake-down. And in the ultimate qui bono, the crippling of the U.S. oil industry only helps others, say, Petrobras, in which George Soros is heavily invested and to whom Obama sent $2 billion last year to help them with their deep-sea exploration.
“The Jewish people will survive—they always do—…”
That’s a bad assumption I think. And most likely not one the leaders of Israel are counting on while they prepare their defenses.
Holy Jeebus. Who is “defending” BP? Who? Specifics. Or are you so wrapped up in your self-lefteous outrage that you cannot understand basic English? And, if you sold BP in the 20’s you are too stupid to keep your money, proving the old adage about fools and their money.
The mistake Barton made was that he apologized to the wrong folks. He should have apologized to the American people.
And most likely not one the leaders of Israel are counting on while they prepare their defenses.
Sadly, I suspect that their basic defense contingencies are significantly different today than they were less than 2 years ago.
sdferr: Most Jews don’t live in Israel, so if that spot of land is reduced to glass, there’s plenty more Jews elsewhere to carry on the line.
If I’d said that the Israelis always survive, that would be another thing.
Joe Barton spoke the indelicate truth
And the way we know Barton spoke the truth is that he got his ass stomped for his indelicacy.
“Defending Israel = moral imperative.
Defending every dumb thing Joe Barton says = not so much.”
Opposing theft of authorial intent = moral imperative.
Greetings:
Even though I agreed with Mr. Steele’s article in the macro sense, I think that he gave somewhat short shrift to two aspects of Israel’s current difficulty, namely, the MIddle East’s primarily tribal culture and its primary religion, Islam. Tribal cultures tend to be based on honor/shame dynamics which are probably not the most healthy dynamics around in a psychological sense. Those cultures are often notable for their aggression and paranoia. As to Islam, in many ways, what Mohammed’s religion does is globalize the Arab tribal, honor/shame culture, with its attendant need for supremacy, in the guise of a message from god.
Unfortunately, Israel finds itself in the lands of “I against my brother; my brother and I against our cousin; and, my cousin, my brother and I against the stranger”. There is sickness abroad in those lands.
All I can say to that dicentra is that we ought to look to the trend. Oh, but it’ll never happen here.
“Joe Barton spoke the indelicate truth”
yes–but he also said “I apologize to BP”. BP is covering the Gulf with slime. Obama is slime covering the Gulf. Neither get an apology.
The mistake Barton made was that he apologized to the wrong folks
The “mistake” Barton made was that he apologized. Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.
Islam may be a problem 11B40, but the totalitarianism of the west, introduced into the MiddleEast by the Nazis and carried as well by way of socialist salons in Paris has proven a far more efficient vehicle of annihilation than the Koran ever contemplates.
The mistake Barton made was that he apologized to the wrong folks
Carin, that’s the position I was arguing last night; apparently only sniveling, finger-wagging cowards think it’s stupid to apologize to someone who is crapping in your punch-bowl and won’t stand up for their own rights.
Herd animals. Looking for scapegoats Or people who think that phrasing/wording/framing counts? Tomato tomahto.
motionview, how is this
to be understood as apologizing “… to someone who is crapping in your punch-bowl and won’t stand up for their own rights” as someone who is ciyp-b, and not as someone accused of wrongdoing, just as anyone may be accused of wrong doing and therefore presumed to have due process rights afforded to all such accused?
30. Except when you are wrong, then it is the honorable thing to do. I don’t think Barton is, BTW,
I’ll take door number three–Let Israel defend itself.
Unfortunately, ME politics being what they are–and Obama being who he is–we need to be seen to be radically committed to “the peace process.” On the deeper level, It is virtually guaranteed that the Arabs, who have watched our social fabric tear as we spent north of $750bn in Iraq and Afghanistand and sustain over 40k casualties to an uncertain end (Iraq improving; Afghanistan a quagmire), view us as having a weaker power position than at any other recent time.
To that end, their quite material “sub-rosa” help (intel, interrogation, surveillance of groups/suspects) is now directly connected to weaker verbal support for Israel. We can’t tell them to go pound because we really need this help on the down low.
Domestically, This is all relatively risk-free for Obama because he has the Jewish vote locked down in ’12.
sdferr,
Organized mass slaughter has always been part of the human condition, and often the impulse hides behind priestly robes. Islam is no exception. The Prophet saw to the slaughter of all the Jewish tribes in and around Medina. It seems likely that his motivation was primarily political in that the tribes were probably conspiring with the Meccans against the umma. Some religions are more easily hijacked by the totalitarian proclivity for genocide. The Qur’anic concept of jihad is a problem. The Prophet’s slaughter of the Jews was, in his own terms (or more correctly Allah’s words) jihad. Of course, Islam has lots of company when it comes to mass murder.
Old dad, though mass slaughter had been a phenomenon known to peoples as deep back into human existence as written matter will take us, yet totalitarianism is something new, at least so I believe. See:
Some religions, you say, which must I suppose include the Christian religion of Nazi Germany. Jihad is indeed a problem, though for whom it is a problem is currently a question worthy of pursuit.
The business about Islam fitting into a tribal shame-based morality is spot on.
The Judaeo-Christian ethics say that your acts are objectively right or wrong, as judged by the standards of God, who knows when you break His Commandments even if no human ever catches you.
The shame-based culture punishes girls for being raped because other people knowing about a shameful event is the problem. It punishes the whistleblower for shaming the person who did what we would consider an objectively evil act.
“The “mistake” Barton made was that he apologized. Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.”
Specially when you’re wrong.
No. Especially when you’re WEAK.
Get back in line and keep your interval.
The honorable thing to do, McGruder, is to admitt error and make the necessary amends. An apology shows the vulnerabilities of your position and invites attack.
sdferr,
I think you are probably right about Totalitarianism. I would argue, though, that the rise of Totalitarianism was more a product of technology than of a new idea. The Industrial Revolution created, for the first time in history, a massive, modestly comfortable middle class that could be easily manipulated–or exterminated as conditions required.
As a practical matter, jihad is a problem for the United States. It’s in our national interest to keep nukes out of Iranian hands. Now whether the mad mullahs’ notion of jihad is radical and violent and sincere, I don’t know, but they say it is. Regardless, our national security demands that they not get nukes. We also would prefer to maintin a relatively stable free of oil from the region. These goals may be mutually exclusive. Any military action against Iran would likely close the Straits of Hormuz, and that would be disastrous, but not as disastrous as mushroom clouds over NYC and Jerusalem. In my view, the radical Islamists cannot be appeased, only defeated. So jihad it is.
39-I’ll agree with you for the most part. I don’t take your point on apologizing, but really, it’s a quibble.
“…than of a new idea…”
Oh, but the rise of technology is only in consequence of a new idea. For a latter day distillation of the idea as an example, think of Bacon’s Novum Organum , among others. Fixing the origin of that idea is no simple matter however, since it was built, filtered, and molded by so many thinkers over so very many years. Indeed, we may even have to repair — as to its origin — to a time when it wasn’t even contemplated as a possibility, which needless to say, is a passing strange circumstance in itself.
However that may be, the origin wasn’t Islamic, though Muslims may have taken some particle of it up at an early time in their own history, nurtured it, cared for it, preserved it for posterity, even for us.
Our problem has long been, and still is, the relative power of the idea of modern natural science as over against the relative poverty of the power of our political ideas. Far worse (as to consequence to us), far more complex, far more serious (as admitting no simple or even widely suggested solution today) than any problem we may have with Islam and its proponents, are these problems we have with ourselves, or so I believe.
None of that is to say that we don’t have very serious problems in our relations with the Islamic world or with the Islamist terrorist jihadis themselves, I hasten to add. These, however, admit of a plethora of practical and plausible strategic and tactical solutions, though none of those, so far as I can see, on offer from the precincts of the Obama foreign policy apparatus.
Jihad, in turn, it seems to me, is far the greater problem for the Muslim world with itself, not least because the logic of the thing confronts that world with the stark lack of power possessed by themselves to carry it out, if necessary, in a world where the infidel might annihilate them at a moment.
And as I said last night, it takes a lot of ellipses to wind up with “I apologize” as the thrust of that particular oration, helpfully produced in full by sdferr.
To agree to that shortening for the purposes of joining in the OUTRAGE is to succumb to the narrative as framed by your opponents. If you don’t want to see that — and would rather try to ironize the way I’ve drawn it out for you — have at it. This is, after all, all about making you feel better about the OUTRAGED position you’ve taken.
I mean, you may as well be arguing that what we need are time machines.
39-I’ll agree with you for the most part. I don’t take your point on apologizing, but really, it’s a quibble.
Shorter Barton: ” We’re a country that prides ourself on the rule of law and the protection of the rights of minorities –particularly unpopular ones, like a big dirty oil company. I apologize.”
The statist horde sees an exposed position and attacks: “Joe Barton thinks the “real victim” is the big dirty oil company (that we intend to degrade and abuse because it’s a big dirty oil company). See, this is what we mean about Republicans being in bed w/ big businesses like dirty oil companies (pay no attention to the fact that the said big oil company donated a shit load of money to us and our White House Chief of Staff is living rent free in an apartment we own)”.
General Boehner & his staff officers note the attack on Barton, and instead of providing reinforcements to repel the attack, order a retreat: “With the complements of General Boehner! Barton is ordered to immediately apologize for his apology! Retreat! Run Away! Run Away!”
The statist horde sees the retreat and turns it into a route (It’s Sunday, unleash the Hounds!) And turns the Republican retreat into a route. (Hey! We can hate big dirty oil companies too!)
Never Apologize. It’s a sign of WEAKNESS.
It’s a route, it’s a path. It’s a rout, it’s a debacle.
Sigh. Live by the editorial comment, die by the editorial comment.
#34 – “…view us as having a weaker power position than at any other recent time.” So you do not consider 2006-2007 as recent? Remember the various “emirates” AQI had?
Your metrics of power might be a bit different than the folks over there – in Iraq they see AQ routed and down to the occassional car bomb murdering civilians, not to mention the Ba’ath getting it first (They’d ask Saddam, Uday or Qusay – but they are dead). In Afghanistan, the Talib, Haqqani, HIG and some fragments of AQ keep fighting, but the weak old infidel has been there for one long assed time – and there aren’t a whole heck of a lot of 1st, 2nd or even third set of leadership that haven’t been captured, killed or if still alive don’t flinch everytime they see a shadow, thinking “Predator!”
What they see is not a lack of power but a strange and partial lack of will to use it. One the one hand, the air of the border areas hums with Hellfires. On the other, troops can’t call for fire, air or other support, or even look in house. I think our enemies see danger – pop your head up and it gets blowed off – and opportunity, let us not pop up, but wait for the “deadline”… not necessarily weakness or a power deficit.
I should add that Capt. Brittles is old and never learned standardized English, having run away from his pappy’s farm to join the army when he was 16.
Well, this is encouraging.
sdferr,
I see your point. Bacon was a great popularizer and synthesiser of older humanist ideas, and it’s probably fruitless to try to pinpoint the origin of a movement. We do it and name it because it’s useful for the sake of discussion, not because it’s necessarily true; eg, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, etc.
Your comment about the relative power of science versus politics was fascinating, but I think of it a little differently maybe–I think science has been coopted as a political idea. Pennicillin saved my life as a kid (it really did). Science good–yeah. The danger comes when politicians promise pennicillin for votes. And scarier still, when they enforce ideology at the point of a gun, or a nuke, or a stem cell. Vote for me and I’ll make the crippled walk, and stave off the rising of the tides.
Englese messy tricksy blabbalicious funch to so’s like mees padner.
Old Dad, my own old dad (now passed on to my sorrow), was a human guinea pig of sorts as he put it, when at 14 yrs old and suffering a raging infection leading to bronchiectasis, his own life was saved by the tetracycline he was the fortunate third human to receive.
This idea of the disjunction between politics and science is of course not original to me in the least. Let me quote Leo Strauss on the matter (from the introductory remarks to his lecture on Plato’s Symposium):
I’d like to amplify my point, McGruder, by adding that the armchair general’s on our side, every last one of them a student of McClellan, by focusing in on Barton’s failure to position himself as they would have preferred, overlook the fact that it was Boehner and his staff who panicked and ordered the retreat. Boehner is also a student of McClellan. The important thing is to at all times move cautiously and deliberately, husbanding your resources for that day when the enemy makes its fatal mistake. Then you can strike that decisive knock-out blow. Someday. Maybe someday.
sdferr, point of order on your comment #36. The religion of Nazi Germany was the Aryan Volk, actualized by the Führerprinzip, not Christianity, which was too pacifist and Jewish for der Führer. Thank you.
I am going to stick with Christianity Ernst, over against a posited ‘Aryan Volk’, as having the better not only of the facts, but of the grip on the people both before the Nazis came to power and after they’d long gone. Not to mention that the long history of Christian persecution of Jewry played no small role in these developments.
“…the long history of Christian persecution of Jewry played no small role in these developments.”
No argument from me there. Shall we agree to disagree over what the nature of the religion of Nazi Germany was, seeing as how it’s of a second or third order of relevancec to the original question (the relationship between totalitarianism & organized mass slaughter)?
“Shall we agree to disagree over what the nature of the religion of Nazi Germany was, seeing as how it’s of a second or third order of relevance to the original question (the relationship between totalitarianism & organized mass slaughter)?”
Yes, I suppose we might, so long as I am allowed to clarify (and you with me to drive that clarification where I fail or simply stand in need of driving out of ignorance) to this extent: that to OD’s reasonable enough statement “Some religions are more easily hijacked by the totalitarian proclivity for genocide” I replied “Some religions, you say, which must, (editing mit commas!) I suppose, include the Christian religion of Nazi Germany” not in order to place blame on Christianity for Nazism itself (for I don’t) but to say that in that instance I see a hijacking of a similar sort to the implications of OD’s idea.
I know of various Christians who strongly opposed Nazism, who hated everything it stood for, who attempted with all their might to stop Nazism in its tracks and failing that to oppose it in its strength and this opposition arising in themselves from deep within the principles of their faith in testament to those principles, some who were themselves Germans and who were in their turn persecuted by the Nazis (the White Rose, for instance) even unto death.
These, however, I see as by far a tiny minority of Christians in Germany (France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania, Hungary, etc. to nauseating etc., with the most outstanding contrary example of Denmark standing against them), the great bulk of whom were content to be ‘hijacked’, to use OD’s term. That’s as far as I had intended.
Not a challenge, just idle curiosity, but I thought the Nazis were heavy into the occult.
You might say the German people were predominately Christian when the Nazis came to power (I don’t know myself, it sounds right I’ll grant you), but I don’t think it’s accurate to preface “Nazi” Germany with Christian. I seems to me to ascribe Christianity (ie. followers of Jesus)a roll in animating the Nazi Party, when it had no such part. At most they exploited Christianity.
Of course, Ferdinand and Isabella exploited Christianity too. They pretty much had to ignore all the central themes Jesus taught to throw an inquisition.
Ah, sorry, I didn’t see your clarification before I posted.
Hijacked; exploited. I think we’re on the same page.
Hitler had his army swear an oath to him and not God (it did not appear to take much convincing).
In this, Hitler was the prototype for the mullahs, they just are a little better at PR than he was.
Whenever you see someone trying to stamp out God you can be assured that their leader will soon be trying to take his place.
Sorry…that should be ‘His’ place.
An aside: though while I know of the Danes’ heroism, as I conceive it, in the act of saving the nation’s Jewish population nearly entire, I believe, I don’t know what it was that motivated the act, whether it was a love of the Jewish Danes or a hatred of the Nazi German, or some combination of both, or some other motive altogether? I suppose I should look into it.
Ah, the subtle nuances emphasis…
And alll I meant, was that In Nazi Germany, there were Christians as you’ve just described them, and a large number of nominal “christians” as you’ve also described them, and a core cadre of the Nazi leadership that was neither. I read “Christian religion of Nazi Germany” in the sense of Nazi German “christianity” and took you to mean some kind of official state religion, when “Christian religion[ in or under] Nazi Germany” would have been a better reading on my part.
Language is fraught. Anyhow, glad to avert an unneccessary disagreement. I wasn’t looking forward to pulling quotes from Goldberg and Burleigh, seeing as my kids just painted my garage in mud and I need to go hose it off now. Little buggers.
Regards.
Lee has it right too, I think, that the stuff the Nazis propounded as ‘religion’ (to the extent that they did propound such stuff, and here my ignorance is going to be found vast I’m afraid), I would tend to think of as a ‘cultish’ thing (bending Lee’s ‘occult’ a bit) or if I may interject another term for it, a ‘pseudo-religion’, something I can’t for my part rank as religion alongside Christianity, or for that matter, Islam.
…And we simply can’t have anyone but our approved groups get the Moral High Ground of Holy Victimhood.
I have struggled mightily to explain why it’s necessary to defend scummy people and companies in order to defend our own liberties. I’ve tried Niemoller, but people go Godwin on me.
If some Crip slangin’ rock on a street corner gets charged with murder due to some collateral damage when he’s returning fire against a drive by, some people who will rush to insist he get a good defense, his day in court, and even after he’s convicted, demand he not be executed. Why is it that many of those same people think that Obama shaking BP down for $20B is not only hunky, but downright dory?
Why is it that Joe feels compelled to comment and spam links under fictional names?
It isn’t clear to me that he has done that in this thread JD, though he does seem to have done so in others. Why he has done that there, I can’t say, outside speculative guesses not worth our time. Or is there something about the thrust of the thread itself that brought your question to mind?
Today we hear of a Supreme Court decision on giving aid to designated terror organizations and with the decision some discussion of the fungibility of money. Along with money, might we think of a fungibility in the carrying capacity of tunnels bound from Egypt into Gaza with overland routes from Israel into Gaza? If we might, then may we see an exchange of use in the tunnels, from bearing luxury goods disallowed to the Hamas leadership structures heretofore, now to put the tunnels to work carrying other materials when the luxury goods will be allowed to enter overland from Israel? That is, there are only so many tunnels, and the space and time in the tunnels required to meet the needs of the cilantro or chocolate consuming Hamas bigwig can now be diverted to other ends.
But if this hypothetical treatment of pathways for materials into Gaza does amount to a boon in relief on the pressures in the tunnels, and to the extent that such pressure relief comes at the insistence of the Obama administration, how are we to square that with the aim of this Supreme Court decision?
Just a random question, sdferr. Popped into my head, that is all.
I have yet to see where there is an upside to the Israeli concessions, for the Israelis.
Equally true.
And a similar point regarding the tactics of Islam. There are far more people pushing for a Palestinian state than a free Tibet, because the Dalai Lama hasn’t sent monks to blow themselves up in crowded pizza parlors. Sooner or later, that which we reward (violence) is what we will get.
Because Joey thinks that if he just screeches loudly enough and throws enough shit at BP, Dunham will cut him in for a chunk of that twenty billion his owners have extorted.
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