Category Archives: Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

“Rhymes With Fagin”

Anti-Semitism, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East

That’s the title of the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens article describing last week’s TIME magazine cover story, “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace”:

“If you’re a reader of a certain age, you might understand the headline.

In May 1977, when Menachem Begin was elected Israel’s prime minister, Time magazine set out to describe the man, beginning with the correct pronunciation of his last name: ‘Rhymes with Fagin,’ the editors explained, invoking the character from Oliver Twist. Modern Israeli leader; archetypal Jewish lowlife: Get it?

The magazine’s other characterization of Begin was that he was ‘dangerous.’ A year later, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

Maybe there’s something in the magazine’s DNA. This week, readers were treated to a cover story by Karl Vick titled, suggestively, ‘Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.’ That’s one way for Time to address the current state of negotiations between the Jewish state and its neighbors, which otherwise barely rate a mention in the article.

Mr. Vick’s essay draws on the testimony of a pair of real estate agents, a columnist for a left-leaning newspaper, and a few others to explain that Israelis are too blissed-out by the fruits of their economic prosperity to pay much attention to the subject of peace, much less whatever sad things may transpire among their neighbors in Ramallah and Gaza. ‘We’re not really that into the peace process,’ says Gadi Baltiansky, a peace activist quoted in the story. ‘We are really, really into the water sports.'”

It’s hard to say what to make of this, since the article concludes by contradicting its central thesis: ‘For all the surf breaks, the palms and the coffee, the conflict is never truly done, never far away,’ Mr. Vick writes.

Indeed it isn’t: Nearly every Israeli has a child, sibling, boyfriend or parent in the army. Nearly every Israeli has been to the funeral of a fallen soldier, or a friend killed in a terrorist attack. Most Israeli homes and businesses come equipped with safe rooms or bomb shelters; every Israeli owns a gas mask. The whole country exists under the encroaching shadows of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the prospect of a nuclear Iran. How many Americans, to say nothing of Europeans, can say the same about their own lives?” READ ON.

[SNIP]

What TIME cretin Karl Vick is describing, and depicting with the aid photos of good looking Israelis on the beach, is a plucky people engaged in LIFE; working, playing, making money (horrors!), and having fun, in the face of daily existential threats. This is to be admired not condemned.

My daughter, who was decidedly not pro-Israel when she visited there, came back enthralled with the country and its people (she wrote about it HERE). Never before had she met such tough, positive, feisty sorts (and certainly not in the Jewish school she once attended in South Africa. Israelis and diaspora Jews: never the twain shall meet).

As admirable as is the Israeli absorption with the good life, I’m afraid that regular Israelis need to learn to be more guarded with creeps likes Vick of TIME. And maybe to revive some of that founding patriotism, once again.

UPDATE II: Megyn Kelly’s Mesmerism

Barack Obama, Conspiracy, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Media, Regulation

Dr. Adam Dorin, president of the Tea Party Doctors, was on with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly to expose the American Medical Association (with its “white-coat representation at the White House”), for selling out America’s doctors to her statists.

Dr. Dorin made some invaluable points about healthscare, such as that the AMA represents at best 17 percent of practicing physicians; that it has an “exclusive [copyrighted] coding deal with the US government,” compelling all doctors to bill in a certain way; that most doctors do not favor this legislation, and that, by legislative fiat, ObamaCare “elevates non-physicians (those big fat, nurses and their assistants we all dread) and other auxiliary staff, to perform the role traditionally performed by physicians. The addition of 30 millions new free loaders, moreover, will necessitate the importation of Third World, non-American trained doctors.

Now Kelly is a sharp lady, head-and-shoulders above your regular Foxette (and isn’t that a gorgeous blue dress she is wearing? Classic.). But she disappointed this time, taking a sudden turn away from the fact-packed, rational discourse of Dorin, to impugn The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons which publishes his op-eds (they once published one or two of mine, as well).

Apparently the AAPS published a piece about Obama’s oratory—which certainly has a fuzzy, hypnotic quality—having induced in voters an hypnotic state. Jumping from that factual observation to the conclusion that Americans were more somnambulist than normal when they elected BHO is nonsensical. It was my impression, however, that Kelly was mocking the former observation rather than the latter conclusion.

Either way, if this article was of interest to Kelly, she ought to have devoted a seperate segment to it, rather than taint Dorin’s perfectly straightforward position by implying he kept dubious company. The Left is praising Kelly. They are wrong. Guilt by association is an error of logic when deployed to refute an argument.

The AAPS is an avowedly pro-liberty organization, whose representatives have appeared on Fox News. Jane Orient, Executive Director of the AAPS, has done an immense amount of good for free medicine in this country.

UPDATE I (Sept. 12): My plucky physician, who had recently gone solo, has just informed me she is giving up her independence to join a group. Managing the business side of the practice had become too daunting, and will become even more so as Obama-Care regulations kick in.

I anticipate notice, any day, from my insurance, informing us of “changes” pursuant to Obama Care. Once the insurance providers and the swarms of attorneys they employ go over the Bill, they are bound to find ways to shove the insured into the government health care gulag.

UPDATE II (Sept. 13): Dr. Orient has responded to Ms. Kelly, and provided a hyperlink at the AAPS to this Barely A Blog post.

UPDATE II: Megyn Kelly's Mesmerism

Barack Obama, Conspiracy, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Media, Regulation

Dr. Adam Dorin, president of the Tea Party Doctors, was on with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly to expose the American Medical Association (with its “white-coat representation at the White House”), for selling out America’s doctors to her statists.

Dr. Dorin made some invaluable points about healthscare, such as that the AMA represents at best 17 percent of practicing physicians; that it has an “exclusive [copyrighted] coding deal with the US government,” compelling all doctors to bill in a certain way; that most doctors do not favor this legislation, and that, by legislative fiat, ObamaCare “elevates non-physicians (those big fat, nurses and their assistants we all dread) and other auxiliary staff, to perform the role traditionally performed by physicians. The addition of 30 millions new free loaders, moreover, will necessitate the importation of Third World, non-American trained doctors.

Now Kelly is a sharp lady, head-and-shoulders above your regular Foxette (and isn’t that a gorgeous blue dress she is wearing? Classic.). But she disappointed this time, taking a sudden turn away from the fact-packed, rational discourse of Dorin, to impugn The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons which publishes his op-eds (they once published one or two of mine, as well).

Apparently the AAPS published a piece about Obama’s oratory—which certainly has a fuzzy, hypnotic quality—having induced in voters an hypnotic state. Jumping from that factual observation to the conclusion that Americans were more somnambulist than normal when they elected BHO is nonsensical. It was my impression, however, that Kelly was mocking the former observation rather than the latter conclusion.

Either way, if this article was of interest to Kelly, she ought to have devoted a seperate segment to it, rather than taint Dorin’s perfectly straightforward position by implying he kept dubious company. The Left is praising Kelly. They are wrong. Guilt by association is an error of logic when deployed to refute an argument.

The AAPS is an avowedly pro-liberty organization, whose representatives have appeared on Fox News. Jane Orient, Executive Director of the AAPS, has done an immense amount of good for free medicine in this country.

UPDATE I (Sept. 12): My plucky physician, who had recently gone solo, has just informed me she is giving up her independence to join a group. Managing the business side of the practice had become too daunting, and will become even more so as Obama-Care regulations kick in.

I anticipate notice, any day, from my insurance, informing us of “changes” pursuant to Obama Care. Once the insurance providers and the swarms of attorneys they employ go over the Bill, they are bound to find ways to shove the insured into the government health care gulag.

UPDATE II (Sept. 13): Dr. Orient has responded to Ms. Kelly, and provided a hyperlink at the AAPS to this Barely A Blog post.

UPDATED: It Takes An Indian

History, IMMIGRATION, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Nationhood

To tell it like it is. An American Indian. This may be well-ploughed territory to readers of this space, but it can’t be said often enough. “America is not a nation of immigrants. America is a nation of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” writes David Yeagley at AltRight. “Everyone else is an immigrant. Even the early Celtic add-ons were not part of the foundations. The later Irish Catholic immigrants were most definitely not part of the foundations. The social order, that is, the government of the colonies, and that system which distilled into the Declaration of Independence, was created by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The Constitution of the United States of America is the work of Englishman who separated themselves, by war, from their home country.”

“Modern descendants of the Scots, the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Jews, etc., are first to declare that America is a nation of immigrants. This is their self-protection. Therefore this is their talking point when it comes to addressing the issue of immigration in general. But their mantra ‘America is a nation of immigrants’ only justifies their own presence here. The fact is, these people are all additions, not founders. All of the early immigrants, besides the Jews, have of course blended themselves into the founding sentiments. It was easier for the Scots than anyone else, because they were ‘British’ anyway.”

***
About left-liberal Jewish strategising, which is no different to the wimpy, lemming’s lunacy evinced by their WASP counterparts, THE BAD EAGLE says the following:

At this point, the argument that other non-WASP groups must be nurtured and honored by the Jew, in order for the Jew to protect himself from persecution, is a dangerous argument, and really ought to be dropped. It invites anti-Americanism. This in turn invites anti-Semitism

The argument is also self-defeating, as I observed in my 2003 “BLAME THE JEWS”:

“MacDonald’s assertion that Jews support open immigration policies so that they can bring about a more diverse society in order to diminish anti-Semitism and promote ‘Jewish ethnic interests’ must be questioned, especially in the post-September 11 world.”

Jews have little to gain by advocating for minority communities with which they haven’t much in common, culturally or socioeconomically, and who are likely to be hostile to them. How does promoting immigration from Muslim countries, for instance, benefit Jewish interests?
Jewish activism, if anything, is self-defeating as a group strategy. The community’s egalitarianism is thus more accurately seen as a function of liberal pathology, the same pathology so many Christian denominations exhibit – they all believe, mistakenly, that they are promoting ‘social justice.’
All in all, the paleoconservatives’ attempts to blame Jews for pervasive gentile madness, such as Mr. Bush’s war in Iraq, his lingering presence in Afghanistan, multiculturalism and ‘mass, non-traditional-immigration,’ is too silly to sustain, but, at the same time, a little sinister. (Next, MacDonald will hold Jews responsible for loading the Episcopal Church with homosexuals.)

[SNIP]

If you are interested, David interviewed me a while back, as part of a series of interviews with rightists about “Patriotism, Nationhood, and the American Indian.”

UPDATE (Aug. 15): From “Nation, State & Mass Immigration”:

“To say that America is a ‘nation of immigrants,’” writes commentator Lawrence Auster, “is to imply that there has never been an actual American people apart from immigration.”

It is to put America out of existence as a historically existing nation that immigrants and their children joined by coming here, a country with its own right to exist and to determine its own sovereign destiny—a right that includes the right to permit immigration or not. No patriot, no decent person who loves this country, as distinct from loving some whacked-out, anti-national, leftist idea of this country, would call it a ‘nation of immigrants.’

The people who established the American political order, described by Thomas Jefferson as “a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution … derived from natural right and natural reason,” were overwhelmingly British Christians. America’s Anglo-Saxon historical majority descends not from immigrants, but from English and Scots-Irish colonists. Over to Auster:

The immigrants of the late 19th and 20th centuries came to an American nation that had already been formed by those colonists and their descendants. Therefore to call America ‘a nation of immigrants’ is to suggest that America, prior to the late 19th-century wave of European immigration, was not America.”