Category Archives: Religion

Updated: Begging For Muslim Sensitivity

IMMIGRATION, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Multiculturalism, Private Property, Religion

THE LATEST IN THE ANNALS OF DHIMMITUDE. The American Society for Muslim Advancement (very literally) plans to erect a “Mega-Mosque” at Ground Zero. They say (taqiyya anyone?) that this is a peace offering—a center intended to foster Muslim tolerance and temperance.

I agree with the apoplectic activists: this amounts to lording it over the dhimmis-in-training. It is a triumphant act of supremacy, as the erection of minarets and the mosques has been throughout the annals of Islam. This is a bitch slap to the subjugated population.

However, as much as I approve of the activists (and I do not mean to be cynical), theirs is nothing more than frenetic cry-baby Brownian motion. There is no intellectual force, much less real force, behind a demand for sensitivity from those you believe to be worse than insensitive.

Such activism reminds me of the victim impact statement in our Courts. How humiliating and futile is it to plead for contrition and kindness from entities incapable of such sentiment.

When you’re reduced to asking a cunning conqueror to be nice; you’ve been bitch slapped good. Besides, ask yourself, “Why the distrust of fellow Muslims?” The Muslims in question say they are sincere in their endeavor; why doubt them?

Activists are acting out of emotion and have failed to examine what they’re really saying and, then, say it out loud.

Restricting acquisitive property rights in a free society should never be entertained. I’ll fight you if you try! But what other course of action are these emotion-driven protests hoping for? Again: what the activists are ludicrously requesting is kindness and consideration from those they regard as conquistadors—for they refuse to go straight to the heart of the matter and address the only legitimate, if incremental, course of action:

I hope I don’t have to spell it out for you. See:

“Beck, Wilders, and His Boosters’ Blind Spot”
“Jews Jeopardized By Muslim Immigration”
“Minarets No More”

And much more (use the search facility on this site, and on IlanaMercer.com, please).

Update (May 17): Myron’s interesting comment down here seems to imply that unless the Ground-Zero controversy passes the Israel-parallels test, it is deserving of no more than a dismissive shrug. Well, I’m an American commentator, first; making sure that every American dilemma passes the fairness-to-Israel test is not the mandate I’ve accepted or will ever pursue. I’ll leave that “yente,” “boba,” neocon kvetching to others (my “Holocaustism” comment applies here).

The Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque examples Myron brings support the point of historical conquest, plonked as they were on Jewish sacred sites. But because Americans don’t know or care about them, Myron dismisses the concerns expressed by misguided, hysterical activists, to which “Begging For Muslim Sensitivity” gives voice (but slams).

Again: We disagree about the Israel Test.

Moreover, building the Mosque on the site of an Islamic victory against the West is symbolic—and a harbinger of things dhimmi to come. There is something nihilistic, atomistic, and effete in dismissing, even accepting, what I believe is a bitch slap from Islam’s messengers. It is the hallmark of the liberal, Western man. Muslims are too macho to dismiss insults and one-upmanship from “our side.”

I more than approve of Myron’s refusal to turn “the Towers into the Beit Hamikdash (Temple of Jerusalem).” It fits right in with my anti-hysteria, anti- 9/12 projects sentiments—these are designed to sustain the state of heightened emotional arousal that arose in the aftermath of 9/11.

And emotional arousal does nothing for clear thinking (although it helps in bed).

Impressions From Jerusalem

Ancient History, Family, Ilana Mercer, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Religion

THE FOLLOWING EVOCATIVE PIECE was written by a special young woman, my daughter. She traveled to Israel with the common political perspective, imbibed in insulated, privileged, propagandized North America—and shared by left-liberals and paleos alike. Once in Israel, she underwent a transformative experience.

Most individuals who write about Israel, pro and con, should not be doing so, as they have never experienced the place or the people. I’m proud of my girl. Aside a talent for spare, strong writing, she had the heart and the head to rethink received ideology when confronted by something far more powerful and persuasive.

Impressions From Jerusalem
By Nicky

My idea of a militarized society was that of the USA. Soldiers and armed guards are visible only where security is needed. They are stern, unsmiling, erect. They signify danger and command respect, wordlessly and humorlessly.

In Canada, my only experience of the military is the odd soldier in fatigues on the street, perhaps on the bus: an object of casual consideration. I view him with the privileged gaze of a Western pacifist, not obliged to look him in the eye. I think: “Why, friend, what are you doing in that uniform? What are you afraid of? What did the government tell you to make you believe you should don those clothes?” I don’t feel served or protected by this soldier because I don’t need his service or protection. My daily movements are free and unfettered; I am an independent Western woman. I cannot relate to my soldier. It saddens me that all I can summon for him is private condescension and the thought that my tax dollars could be better spent than on his meager salary.

I was certain that this attitude would be seamlessly transplanted to Israel. I was wrong; it simply would not stick. Not because I’m a Jew. I didn’t even consider myself a Zionist when I walked through the streets of Jerusalem: I still did not understand Israel, even then. And even now, after an intensive ten-day tour of the tiny country and its borders, I can barely bring myself to discuss it. There is too much history to learn, to read, too much to experience, to see, to understand with one’s full attention in order to speak of Israel, let alone flippantly as many who haven’t experienced it do.

You cannot fathom 3000 years of history, and yet there is rubble from that time, from the Temple’s first destruction. Here and there soldiers stand amidst the rubble. Jerusalem is beautiful but she is neither grand nor ornate. Even the Western Wall appears fragile. Only the Dome of the Rock shines gold and blue in a city of calcified limestone. A soldier steps graciously out of my camera’s view as I photograph one stretch of wall and rubble. At the Holy City’s entrance, a couple of young soldiers stand between the two opposing flows of traffic. They look into our faces, our eyes, their guns slung low, pointed to the ground. They are at ease, relaxed. One of them smiles warmly. A group of children scampers past, unafraid and wholly indifferent to the soldiers. Already this experience is markedly different from those I’ve had at the US and Canadian borders, or customs at Heathrow, London, where I have been treated like trash more than once. And yet I don’t doubt that these young boys could protect me. I feel safe and relaxed here amongst these soldiers.

THE HOLY CITY IS FULL OF YOUNG ISRAELI SOLDIERS. When they enter a museum together, they leave their guns in a pile at the entrance, guarded by one or two watchful but friendly soldiers who will smile for our cameras and bark no orders on how far to stand from the pile of guns. Many know each other from training and though they walk with different brigades you often see a handful stray for a moment to greet one other. They receive no reprimand for straying. No one barks commands. Gathered in groups, they sit or stand, laugh, smoke cigarettes and talk and text on cell phones. They are unabashedly affectionate: embracing and back-slapping; their faces light up at seeing one another. These are boys and girls in their late teens and early 20s. I doubt I will ever see youngsters this age behaving this way in North America. That would be “like, gay or something.”

Even in a group one can access solitude instantly while walking through Jerusalem. It isn’t unusual to fall silent mid conversation. Her history commands respect and quiet reflection. The closer you get to the Western Wall, the lower the tones, the greater the quiet. Everyone approaches slowly, atheist, agnostic, believer alike. Religious or not, you feel its power. Birds nestle in its crevices. They watch the people below and I feel certain even they know the Wall is special. It is fortified by a band of humans teaming at its base, palms and foreheads flat against the stone, as though holding it up. You approach slowly, your eyes travel through space and time, fixed on the wall. First you touch the wall, then you kiss your fingers. You gently wedge your note in with the rest, hoping it is profound, meaningful enough to be worthy of its stony recipient; worthy of its fallen defenders.

You are not speaking at all now, nobody is. You can only hear the sound of softly praying lips and of children hushed by admonishing parents. You do not turn your back on the Wall, but retreat slowly, facing it. Along the periphery, where the men and women’s sections are segregated, lone individuals, eyes covered, pray silently. Some are crying. Among the crowd, the elderly are seated, reading from Hebrew prayer books, mouthing the words in silence.

THE ISLAMIC CALL TO PRAYER booms through the quiet five times a day, everyday, even at 4am, with militaristic precision and pitch. Several mosques perform the prayer, one after the other. You cannot hear anything else for a full five minutes at a time, for up to thirty minutes a session. The speaker crackles from the distortion of the blaring volume. Secular tourists need to yell to hear one another, helping to shatter the erstwhile calm, easily distracted and pulled from their meditation. Tour guides turn off their mikes patiently and wait.

The worshipers at the wall cover their ears and pray more intensely, still silent. The soldiers, unmoved, stand sentinel at the ancient ruins.

The Value Of Lying

Christian Right, Conservatism, Debt, Politics, Religion, Republicans, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin

While we’re on the subject of liars and the lies they tell, a Values Voter Summit took place in Washington earlier today.

Read about John Boehner’s deceptions in this WSJ report.

Contra Boehner, the Democrats did not bankrupt the country; Bush did the dues before them; Barack is finishing what Bush began. The Republicans can’t “take our country back”; and Democrats have no more undermined national security than the Republicans did under Bush.

At the valueless summit, a straw poll was held and some straw men selected as favorites for president in 2012. Some learning curve, Middle America!

Huckabee grabbed nearly 29 percent of the vote. “Romney, Pawlenty, Palin and Pence each won roughly 12 percent of the 597 votes cast.”

Does anyone know if this hapless lot even invited Ron Paul?

Update III: Cass Sunstein: Most Dangerous Czar By Far

Barack Obama, Bush, Constitution, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Free Speech, Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Law, Natural Law, Pseudoscience, Reason, Regulation, Religion, Science, The Courts

And very possibly, a future Supreme-Court justice. Sunstein, bosom buddy and intellectual soul mate to Barack, was confirmed the other day by the Senate. Cusses all around. The tenacious Glenn Beck, who forewarned about Van Jones, has been on the case. But WND’s Ellis Washington makes the clearer case (although he fails to appreciate that America IS already regulated to death):

Cass Sunstein: Regulating America to Death
By Ellis Washington

Animals should be allowed to sue their owners.

~ Cass Sunstein

Because people ascribe a degree of respectability to academics, intellectuals, philosophers and scholars, they can disregard the rights of the people much easier than a naked tyrant. In fact, Rousseau, Darwin and Nietzsche can go places Hitler, Stalin, Chavez and Obama could never dream.

As I have written many times, the Obama administration are the masters of misdirection and chaos theory; therefore, while the America people last week were transfixed on the resignation of “Green Czar” Van Jones, another even more dangerous fascist from the academy quietly slipped through the portals of power.

Last Thursday Cass Sunstein, a former colleague and mentor of Obama’s at the University of Chicago Law School, was confirmed by a Senate vote of 57-40 as the new director of regulatory affairs and information, an obscure but powerful agency within the Office of Management and Budget. Here is what the “regulatory czar” does: He regulates laws – past, present and future.

Sunstein is a friendly fascist who only “nudges” people to bow to his will. TV host Glenn Beck says of Cass Sunstein that he is “the most powerful invisible man you’ll ever see.”

Are we headed for a Nazi-style totalitarian abyss? Find out in “Defeating the Totalitarian Lie: A Former Hitler Youth Warns America” Judge Richard A. Posner, an intellectual mentor of mine and former colleague with Sunstein and Obama at the University of Chicago Law School, said the following about Peter Singer, a Princeton professor and a leading scholar on animal rights with whom Sunstein is often associated:

Since the publication of “Animal Liberation” [1975], Singer has received a wide range of philosophical challenges to his formulation of animal rights. … Richard Posner challenged that Singer failed to see the “radicalism of the ethical vision that powers [his] view on animals, an ethical vision that finds greater value in a healthy pig than in a profoundly retarded child, that commands inflicting a lesser pain on a human being to avert a greater pain to a dog, and that, provided only that a chimpanzee has 1 percent of the mental ability of a normal human being, would require the sacrifice of the human being to save 101 chimpanzees.

While Sunstein spent his entire career inventing rights for rats, dogs and pigs that would make the Constitution’s framers spin in their graves, he is even more despicable in casting aspersions against constitutional rights plainly delineated in the Bill of Rights. For example, here is Sunstein views on the Second Amendment right to bear arms:

“My coming view is that the individual right to bear arms reflects the success of an extremely aggressive and resourceful social movement and has much less to do with good standard legal arguments than [it] appears.”

In 2008 Sunstein co-authored “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness” with economist Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago. “Nudge” discusses how public and private organizations can “help people” to make better choices in their daily lives since apparently Sunstein and his busybody socialist colleagues of the academy think that We the People are too stupid to live our own lives our own way and accept the consequences. Thaler and Sunstein argue that: People often make poor choices – and look back at them with bafflement! We do this because as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself. Space will not allow me to adequately detail the utter tyranny and naked assault on our constitutional rights Sunstein plans to launch against American capitalism in his new role as regulatory czar.

Here is a summary of the autocracy Americans can expect from Czar Sunstein: * Sunstein advocates a “Second Bill of Rights” even more totalizing and all-consuming than initially proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in the 1930s. Among these rights are a right to an education, a right to a home, a right to health care and a right to protection against monopolies. * Sunstein notes that personhood need not be conferred upon an animal in order to grant it legal standing for suit. * Sunstein has argued that “we should celebrate tax day.” * Rumor has it that Obama is grooming Sunstein as a future Supreme Court justice.

Last week Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said, “[Sunstein] is to the left of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” The leitmotiv of Sunstein’s entire legal philosophy and worldview is encapsulated in two very evil and failed philosophies of the past: 1) Social Darwinism [evolution], and 2) Moral Relativism – a theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.

In other words, nothing has more intrinsic value than anything else. Sunstein’s ideas on judicial minimalism and behavioral economics belie the fact that for almost 30 years he has assaulted the Judeo-Christian traditions of Natural Law so venerated by the Constitution’s framers to preserve America’s republic.

To Sunstein ideas like “liberty,” “freedom” and “Natural Law” are irrelevant and counterproductive to his grand, socialist view of law rooted in moral relativism and social Darwinism. That’s how Sunstein can have a scholarship named after his dead dog while concurrently mandating environmental policies that will put tens of thousands of American farmers out of business by fostering ever expanding environmental, land and water regulations that will de facto make farming too cost-prohibitive.

What Mussolini, Stalin and Mao did in the light to harm their citizens and deny them their fundamental human rights, Cass Sunstein, as Obama’s regulatory czar, will do in the night by slowly, irrevocably regulating America to death. Sunstein reminds me of Shakespeare’s “Othello” when the sinister Iago repeatedly whispered his verbal venom into the receptive ear of Othello (Obama), which lead to his demise. Indeed, Sunstein said it best: “There is no liberty without dependency.”

Update I (Sept. 12): I’m not mad about the cheapened Argument From Hitler (in the Comments Section). So far, Barack is continuing the “work” Bush and others before him began. Few Republicans fussed about the breakneck speed at which the Bush Administration concentrated power in the executive, to give but one example. Or the way it expanded the warfare state, to give another. So far, I don’t see a qualitative difference between Bush and Obama; they exist on the same continuum of accreting statism.

Update II: I wonder if crazy Cass would come for me if he read my defense of Michael Vick: In Defense Of Michael Vick I & In Defense of Michael Vick, Part 2.

Update III (Sept. 13): To the imperious reader who is unhappy with my disinterest in the futile, immaterial evolution debate: We are not about to go off-topic and veer into evolution. Take it behind the scenes with Myron. As for the “not good enough” complaint: More so than most columnists and writers, I have applied libertarian thinking to a wide-ranging array of topics, from intellectual property to antitrust, to Just War, to economy, Hollywood, Islam—you name it, I’ve written about it. Far more important than the idiotic evolution debate has been my defense of the unique, privileged, preeminent nature of humanity in the universe. The articulation of that philosophical position is far more significant than the idiotic debates about evolution, engaged in by the Godless neocons/Republicans and their adversaries. Now, if the bitching reader were a major donor toward my generally thankless efforts at shedding light where darkness is the rule—then I might indulge him. But, alas, he isn’t.

Addendum: Here’s fodder for another fit over my unorthodox positions: Even more disinterested am I in whether God exists or not. I conduct my life with morality and ethics. Some would say that’s godly enough. Others would demand communal worship. Frankly, I don’t care. It makes no sense to assert or fight over the irrational and the supernatural; that which cannot be proven. I respect believers and defend the Western, Judeo-Christian tradition–this is the sum of my work. That’s all that matters. To me, at least. (At that’s what counts.)