Category Archives: Christianity

Not Another Sermon on the Mitt

Christian Right, Christianity, Elections, Ethics, Morality, Politics, Religion

Whatever you say about Mitt Romney, one cannot dispute that this presidential candidate is patrician; Romney is a refined, mild-mannered man. He could have made mincemeat out of Rick Perry for his word-salad during the debate in Tampa, Florida. Romney’s retort was, “Nice try.” That’s all. But a lot of people prefer the boorish Bush clone, Rick Perry. In fact, rumor has it that Perry is behind the latest assault on Mitt’s Mormonism. Via the WaPo:

Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, a Rick Perry supporter who recently described the Mormon religion as a “cult,” and isn’t backing off that claim in subsequent interviews.
But while the “Mormon Question” was a big one in the 2008 presidential race, there’s plenty of reason to believe its impact has somewhat lessened four years later, as Romney becomes more of a known quantity to voters.

Mitt Romney’s response typified his good manners: “We should remember that decency and civility are values too.”

The country and the “cognoscenti” did this dance in 2007, back when Mitt was forced into publicly defending his faith.

I’ll repeat what I said back then, on 12.07.07:

“I have no dog in the fight over Mitt’s Mormonism … Admittedly, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may have some odd ideas. Not so the Mormons I know; they are very fine people. And quite magnificent is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; it’s in fact the finest in the world.”

What gets to me is the absolute Alzheimer’s of the political players involved and their followers.

I would not put it past Bush’s clone (Perry) to have had a hand in this latest anti-Mormon mischief-making.

Paul on the Value of Peace & Personal Sovereignty

Christianity, Conservatism, Family, Foreign Policy, Judaism & Jews, Morality, Religion, Republicans, Ron Paul

Ron Paul melds the teachings of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to remind “Values Voters” at the 2011 Summit of the Biblical imperative and the blessings of peace, and personal sovereignty; of the need to follow the Golden Rule (treat others as you wish to be treated), of the importance of striving for virtue and excellence as individuals—and not as subjects beholden to the proverbial king about whose evils Samuel forewarned. Above all, Paul emphasized the urgent need to revive the restraints this country once placed on the federal government. And fast.

Read the complete speech.

The Texas congressman won 37% of the poll at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, sponsored by the Family Research Council, a social conservative group.

[CNN]

UPDATED: ‘ILANA’ With An Aleph

Christian Right, Christianity, Etiquette, Hebrew Testament, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Judaism & Jews

SO JEWS SUCK; I GET THIS ALL THE TIME. BUT WHAT ABOUT MEMBERS OF THE CHRISTIAN TRIBE? Emails flood this blog spot on a regular basis pointing to the machinations of Jews and to their tribal nature. As you know, I often publish these tracts. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” and all that stuff.

On the other hand, I’m totally tactful—and more than gracious—about Christian tics, despite my dismal experience with the decency and grace of this group’s individual members (one or two stellar individuals excepted.)

A kind word or a helping hand from a Christian? What’s that? Not in my world, although Christians do spend a lot of their time shouting “Praise the Lord” from the rooftops. Then again, perhaps Jews are not Kosher; don’t qualify for decent treatment? Who knows? All I know is that, in my experience, Christians are the quintessential tribalists. You’re either in or out.

The other day, a snippy, self-professed Christian, having befriended me on Facebook, wrote to demand imperiously that I justify the letter Aleph near the URL of my website.

I know better than to expect readers in “The Age of the Idiot” to have researched the object of their scorn, and thus to know that she is Jewish and grew up in Israel. That’s too much like fact-finding. So politely, I responded with a link to the Hebrew alphabet, explaining that my name begins with an Aleph.

But information was not what he was after. Judging from the obnoxious, follow-up on my Facebook Wall—a forum which is supposed to be collegial—some rude, distinctly theological routine was the man’s aim.

The chutzpah of this investigation into the legitimacy of an ex-Israeli, Hebrew-speaker’s use of her Hebrew name! What’s up with that?

I’m curious, truly. Where does he get off judging/commenting on my use of my native tongue, Hebrew? Can he speak the language? Can he even read the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew? Did he spend his formative years debating/conversing/conducting life in Hebrew? Did he take all his school exams in Hebrew?

I did. For the first 19 years of my life, I was “ilana” with an aleph.

It’s who I am.

UPDATE: Compassionate Fascist’s posts are an example of the collectivist, contempt-filled comments I’m pretty patient with. Isn’t it time to kick CF off BAB? Here he is below, maligning Jews again. At the same time, he is a recipient of my hospitality in cyberspace, where he is permitted to vent his disdain for the likes of his host. The way I treat Compassionate Fascist provides a measure of proof against his theorizing about how bad Jews are. In effect, by bad-mouthing Jews as a group, and posting here quite happily, for the most, he finds himself in self- contradiction.

Writing on the topic of Western Civilization, historian Alan Charles Kors once observed that avoiding self-contradiction is the touchstone of truth—being mired in self-contradiction, the touchstone of error. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in self-contradiction was to be “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.”

UPDATE IV: Don’t Believe Michelle Obama (“Respec”)

Affirmative Action, America, Christianity, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, History, Political Correctness, Political Philosophy, South-Africa

In time for the release of my new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa,” this week’s WND column explains what the book is about and why it is an important read at this juncture in our history. Here’s an excerpt from “Don’t Believe Michelle Obama”:

“Michelle Obama will travel to South Africa later this month. The First Lady’s trip coincides with the release of my new book, ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.’ And not a moment too soon. (Read the Preface on VDARE.COM.) ‘Into The Cannibal’s Pot’s’ will dispel any myths Michelle Obama is likely to help perpetuate about this writer’s former homeland.

So why is this book so very crucial at this juncture in our history? Simply this: It is essential that we curb the naïve enthusiasm among American elites, and those they’ve gulled, for radical, imposed, top-down transformations of relatively stable, if imperfect, societies, including their own. As the example of South Africa demonstrates, a highly developed Western society can be dismantled with relative ease. In South Africa, this deconstruction has come about in the wake of an almost overnight shift in the majority/minority power structure. In the U.S., a slower, more incremental, but equally detrimental, transformation is underway. …

America’s intellectual ‘Idiocracy’—the president and the “Untamed Ids” of the media, liberal, libertarian, and conservative—are egging on revolution in the Middle East. Post-apartheid South Africa should serve to remind this retinue of romantics that stable societies, however imperfect, are fragile. They can, and will, crumble in culturally inhospitable climes. For better or for worse, societies are built slowly from the soil up, not from the sky down. And by people, not by political decree. …”

The complete column is “Don’t Believe Michelle Obama.”

Purchase “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” from Amazon or from the Publisher (who ships free) by clicking on the “Buy” Button of your choice.

UPDATE I (June 10): Ruth, I am against forced integration. I am for free association, as intended by the founded of this great country, and as is egregiously violated by the Civil Rights Act. If you don’t want to hire or serve a Jew (that’s me) because you have misgivings about Jews qua Jews; I support your natural right as a property owner to associate or dissociate at will.

UPDATE II: It’s interesting how the FB thread on WND was hijacked by one jackass’s complaint, instead of being a forum to discuss the substance of the book. Then two people fell into each others’ pixelated arms had a love fest, giving into sheer vanity and sanctimony. America’s reality-show mentality! For a jackass who hates writers who use words he doesn’t know (my favorite kind of writers), the guy sure spent a lot of time dismissing and dissing me. I think I used a term in the column I learned from the editor of my book (Robert Stove): “Untamed Id.” That’s what’s on display here.

I wrote the book b/c people are dying. But it’s become the topic of reality-show like kibitzing on WND’s facebook thread. There’s the Yiddish my Afrikaner reader Mr. Juann Strauss likes. Sorry: It came to me. My late grandpa’s influence. In the USA you have to apologize for your personal idiosyncrasies; for not fitting a mold.

My complete comment posted @WND (visible if you are on Facebook), in response to the complaint, is this: Imagine having to apologize for using the English to the best of one’s ability! Our founding fathers forewarned against an “Idiocracy” rising. “If a nation expects to be …ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” That genius, Thomas Jefferson, also insisted that liberty would be “a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed and enlightened to a certain degree.” That means not being angered by what you don’t know. (A function of a fragile ego.) For the benefit of the reader who heaps scorn on me for failing to mirror his vocabulary and mindset, I recommend avoiding “The Federalist”- and “Anti-Federalist Papers.” Anything our founders wrote is sure to drive him and his ilk to distraction. May I also suggest reaching for a dictionary, or for Google, instead of the ad hominem? I do the first whenever I read words I don’t know, which is often.

UPDATE III: Rob Stove, who posted below, always reserves his funniest comments to email. I’m sorry, Maestro, I’m outing you:

It’s weird. When I was an undergraduate I was perpetually being rebuked by my lecturers because they found my prose “superficial”. Now I’m being rebuked by these lecturers’ sons and daughters, who find my prose “elitist”. Yet it has been the same sort of prose which I’ve written all along!
Back when lecturers were denouncing my stuff as “superficial”, I was getting quite a few articles published in The Canberra Times, The Weekend Australian, and suchlike recognizably serious newspapers, earning fairly substantial sums as a consequence. The 1980s was a veritable paradise for a literate freelancer in this country. Now that I’m officially “elitist”, I can’t even land an article in The Pig-Breeder’s Gazette.
“Elitist” now gets routinely applied in Australia to any remark above the intellectual level of Britney Spears’s navel-lint.

UPDATE IV (June 11): Hey Roger, dodo, if you can figure it out, please post your impressions of the book to Amazon. Unlike jackass, you will read it and offer a comment on the substance of da book, good or bad, or both. I began reading it to refresh my memory in anticipation of interviews. It’s pretty easy sailing. Even my stats have been, as I like to say, de-Sailerized. I.e., made simple, unlike Steve Sailer’s statistics (which are fit for the smarter cohort), so that jackasses can grasp. Oh, stay tuned: sometime soon I will post a column about crappy writing. A few lessons I learned in journalism school in the country of da Hebes where I be getting some of my learning. The column I wrote yesterday on WND is wicked good, according to those criteria. I will compare it with a crap piece of writing, which the likes of Jackass will find heavenly.

Respec to my peeps.