Category Archives: The Zeitgeist

Men & Women Who Hothouse Hamasniks & Those Who Love Them

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Terrorism, The Zeitgeist

Believe it or not, there are a couple of *creeps and kooks on the Internet who find nothing creepy or kooky about how Palestinians cultivate kids into killers.

By the looks of it (take a look), this “educational” effort is a real communal affair, involving immediate and extended family, grandmothers too. Nothing cute about them or their offspring. Yet some find them sympathetic, certainly tragic, even endearing. Fail to finesse this ugly and evil specter and Friends of the Palestinian Authority and Enemies of Everything Israel accuse you of bias.

You must understand, after all, that the tinfoil faithful usually read from a script every bit as binding as the Quran. They parrot their lines like any good madrasa student regurgitates The Hadith and Sunnah. And in particular, our automatons shun the concepts of free will or personal responsibility when it comes to the Palestinians, and blame Israel for causing Palestinians to raise children to die as “martyrs.”

What do you know? A Jewish mother prays for a lawyer or a doctor; her Palestinian neighbor prefers a cold-blooded killer. All out of necessity, you see. For, as her defenders preach, under the skin, all mothers are equal in their love for their offspring. Including those who partake in “sex-selective infanticide in several of the world’s cultures.” Ultimately, behind every fine female who kills her kid or raises him to kill lurks a man, often an Israeli.

Yes, it’s Israel’s doing.

If not for the Israelis, a veritable economic oasis and a culture of life would flourish where a black hole now threatens to collapse on itself. And the evidence for this putative Palestinian revival, whence does it come? Why, from the Islamic world, at large. Oh, you mean to say the Ummah is not exactly in the grips of a Renaissance? Well, then, let me tell you about those crusaders.

And so the blame game goes.

* The link to the suicide slideshow promo originated at the little green footballs, was picked up by Michelle Malkin, and was lovingly redeemed and reinterpreted (minus soft focus, though) by libertarian exculpators of evil, where yours truly found it. (What’s up with the popular affectation of giving credit to the finder of a link, by the way? It’s not as if he or she is a real secondary source.)
†Recommended reading: “Coddling Killers: The Liberal Root-Causes Racket”, The American Spectator.

Men & Women Who Hothouse Hamasniks & Those Who Love Them

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Terrorism, The Zeitgeist

Believe it or not, there are a couple of *creeps and kooks on the Internet who find nothing creepy or kooky about how Palestinians cultivate kids into killers.

By the looks of it (take a look), this “educational” effort is a real communal affair, involving immediate and extended family, grandmothers too. Nothing cute about them or their offspring. Yet some find them sympathetic, certainly tragic, even endearing. Fail to finesse this ugly and evil specter and Friends of the Palestinian Authority and Enemies of Everything Israel accuse you of bias.

You must understand, after all, that the tinfoil faithful usually read from a script every bit as binding as the Quran. They parrot their lines like any good madrasa student regurgitates The Hadith and Sunnah. And in particular, our automatons shun the concepts of free will or personal responsibility when it comes to the Palestinians, and blame Israel for causing Palestinians to raise children to die as “martyrs.”

What do you know? A Jewish mother prays for a lawyer or a doctor; her Palestinian neighbor prefers a cold-blooded killer. All out of necessity, you see. For, as her defenders preach, under the skin, all mothers are equal in their love for their offspring. Including those who partake in “sex-selective infanticide in several of the world’s cultures.” Ultimately, behind every fine female who kills her kid or raises him to kill lurks a man, often an Israeli.

Yes, it’s Israel’s doing.

If not for the Israelis, a veritable economic oasis and a culture of life would flourish where a black hole now threatens to collapse on itself. And the evidence for this putative Palestinian revival, whence does it come? Why, from the Islamic world, at large. Oh, you mean to say the Ummah is not exactly in the grips of a Renaissance? Well, then, let me tell you about those crusaders.

And so the blame game goes.

* The link to the suicide slideshow promo originated at the little green footballs, was picked up by Michelle Malkin, and was lovingly redeemed and reinterpreted (minus soft focus, though) by libertarian exculpators of evil, where yours truly found it. (What’s up with the popular affectation of giving credit to the finder of a link, by the way? It’s not as if he or she is a real secondary source.)
†Recommended reading: “Coddling Killers: The Liberal Root-Causes Racket”, The American Spectator.

Fierce, Fabulous Fallaci

Classical Liberalism, Criminal Injustice, Critique, Free Speech, The Zeitgeist

Here’s an interview with Oriana Fallaci in The New Yorker that doesn’t do her justice. Fallaci is unique in the annals of journalism. No superlative can properly describe the kind of irreverent grilling she subjected her interviewees to. The clubby, tête-à -têtes journalists conduct with their overlords are a disgrace—they’ll never come close to Fallaci’s skin-them-alive inquisitions.
Omitted from this interview is how Fallaci began her exchange with Qaddafi. It approximates the following paraphrase: “So your manifesto is so small and insignificant it fits in my powder puff. Why should anyone take you seriously”?”
When I attended journalism school, my teachers held her up as the iconic role model to emulate (of course, this would be unheard of in the left-liberal, groupthink dominated journalism schools of today). Thus one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received was Reginald Firehammer’s. In “The Passion of Principles,” his review of my book for the Randian Free Radical, he likened my passion to Fallaci’s. The passion, perhaps, but never the courage, the life-force, or the capacity for adventure.
The New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot depicts Fallaci as pathologically anti-authoritarian. Is there any other way to be? Talbot, moreover, likes Fallaci’s classically liberal feminism, but flagrantly frames her crusade against Islam as a function of waning faculties. Yes, Fallaci is out of place in youth-worshipping America, where the lukewarm nonchalance of a Wonkette and her “Whatever” Generation is considered the ideal intellectual and existential temperament.
It would, however, be a grave mistake not to heed Fallaci’s warnings. This is an immensely cultured woman, steeped in the past. She understands history and the forces that shape it. More material, she has lived it.

Realism Or Racism? (& Excellence Vs. Offal)

English, Literature, Racism, The Zeitgeist

I never tire of commending—and recommending—the generally apolitical Times Literary Supplement for its intellectual rigor. I’m equally energetic when it comes to berating that bit of dreck, the New York Review of Books, for its pamphleteering. The latter’s obtuse art and book critiques, interspersed as they are with lengthy political essays on the undisputed purity of Hamas or Cuban-styled healthcare, fall into the category of agitprop.

In a preface to his review of two books dealing broadly with the fraught topic of racial—or what I term rational—profiling, the TLS’s James Bowman doesn’t disappoint. He quotes the former Education Secretary, William Bennett, who created an uproar by saying that,—If you wanted to reduce crime, you could—if that were your sole purpose—you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.'”

“The remark,” observes Bowman matter-of-fact, “was widely characterized as ‘racist’ and President Bush was called upon to disavow the views of his fellow Republican—and he obliged with that new favorite substitute for moral judgement, the word ‘inappropriate.’ Yet while doubtless tactless—the sort of deliberate provocative comment that delights the philosophy professor, which is what Bennett used to be—his words had been in substance nothing more that a statement of the undisputed fact that in America black people proportionately commit more crimes than whites.” (My emphasis; Bowman’s words)

To underscore my original point, the TLS is generally liberal (although more classically so) but is committed to a heuristic pursuit of truth and excellence. The NYRB is left-liberal and dedicated to the crass promotion of specific political perspectives. If it reluctantly succumbs and discusses “the color of crime,” the “debate” is carefully in root-causes circumlocution and strictly confined to the Three P’s—the pale patriarchy, poverty, and powerlessness. No wonder the TLS is sophisticated and fascinating and the NYRB as pedestrian and dull as any good Bolshevik bulletin.