Comments worth noting: Leftists don’t uniformly support radical Islam

 We got a thoughtful comment from gds this morning on a post I wrote in January, The left and radical Islam: more than a convenient partnership?

The Left is not one set of values, anymore than is the Right. Many “Leftists” are equally troubled by the willingness of alleged progressive thinkers to acquiesce to Islamic theocratic dogma, mostly it comes down to gaining easy votes. As a secular agnostic Socialist, I feel no affinity what-so-ever for the anti-humanist nonsense inherent in Islam. In Britain, for example, gay rights campaigners are labeled “pink imperialists” by the parts of the Left that have embraced self-appointed community leaders as sharing a common cause. Leftists who speak out against the dangers of getting into bed with Islam are often accused of covert Zionism. Christopher Hitchen’s is a Lefty, he does not like Islam or the Left’s excuses for it. Nick Cohen is another one. There are a lot more. The point I’m trying to make is that as a Left-winger please feel free to disagree with my economic and social views, but do not fall into the trap of thinking that all Leftists support Islam. There is also a strain of “right-wing” social philosophy that sees value in Islamic notions of “piety” and social order. The English conservative philosopher Roger Scruton has often praised Islam. Me I think Islam is pile of festering 7Th century nastiness.

It’s certainly true that there are many leftists who understand the threat of radical Islam or are just turned off by its “anti-humanist nonsense.” Yet many of the organized movements of the left have embraced it — not the religion itself, or Sharia law, but its anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-western ideology and agitation. Look on the campuses for leftist groups teaming up with the Muslim Student Association. The Muslims want to destroy Israel and western civilization; the leftists — who knows? In keeping with gds’s point that the left is diverse, some want to destroy Israel right away and others only want it to adopt policies that will end in its destruction in a while.  Some just want to destroy Israel and others want to destroy America as well. Look at the anti-war demonstrations during the Bush years. Ann and I attended a counter-rally a few years ago, and were struck by the leftist groups marching alongside radical Muslim ones with signs supporting Hamas.

So the point isn’t that all leftists want to team up with radical Muslims, and neither I nor Jim Simpson said that. Many are fellow travelers who aren’t aware of the alliance, or think they are just supporting human rights when they support radical Muslim groups and demands. Leftists like the commenter are not all that common, or if they are they are not speaking up very much. Christopher Hitchens is a rare bird as one who makes a lot of noise about it, and I appreciate him very much. And doesn’t the commenter reinforce my argument when he points out that Hitchens is demonized as a “Zionist” for speaking out against radical Islam? That is, for those who demonize him, a true leftist wants to destroy Israel.

And yes, there are some conservatives who stand up for Islam. But not for radical Islam. In addition to Roger Scruton, Dinesh D’Souza’s book from a few years ago claimed that the reason there are radical Muslims is that they are so offended by our degenerate culture.  His book had little influence; his thesis may have some truth when it comes to traditionally moderate Muslims who become easier prey to anti-American propaganda. But it is not central to the issue of the threat we face from militant Islamists whose minds will not be changed by anything we do or don’t do.

So this is an odd comparison to make, if the commenter wants to show the diversity of the left. The right is not very diverse on this issue, as Scruton and d’Souza are outliers. And in reality the left is not very diverse either, as those who condemn radical Islam (out loud) are outliers. Perhaps they are due a parenthetical phrase in a discussion of the left and Islam, and if so, I give it here: Not all leftists support radical Islam or even non-radical Islam. But most do.

It’s time for the IRS to investigate the money-laundering Tides Foundation

Of course they won’t, not while Obama is President anyway—the IRS works for him.  This article that Judy just sent from American Thinker reminded me that I needed to tell you that Eric P. Schwartz, Assistant Secretary of State for Populations, Refugees and Migration is part of the Tides network having been director of Connect US Fund a spinoff of the Tides Foundation which receives staff support from the Tides Center.

Here we have the Tides Center announcing Schwartz’s appointment to the Asst. Secretary job.

Quoting liberally from ActivistCash.com, American Thinker author Clarice Feldman reports on the Tides Foundation and how it operates differently then other Far Left foundations (Rockefeller, Pew and so forth).  It pulls together secret sources of funds and distributes them to groups they basically incubate.  Feldman concludes:

It’s way past time that the IRS thoroughly investigates this sham operation and Congress end the practice of allowing such money laundering.

Consider this then Part II of my initial report on one-worlder Eric P. Schwartz. 

Connect US Fund which Schwartz directed before coming to the State Department is a Tides Foundation creation, that itself funds projects using this money first laundered by Tides.  Consider it kind of a second wash.  Before Obama’s election, Connect US Fund was busy influencing Obama’s foreign policy positions and they probably still are!

By the way, I wrote about the Tides Foundation here last June.  I noted that the International Rescue Committee (one of nine federal refugee contractors) has received some of the freshly washed money flowing out of Tides.

Hail, Hail, the gang’s all here.

Now check out Muckety and the connections between Drummond Pike (Tides Foundation head honcho), George Soros, the Center for American Progress (here the CAP wants to airlift 100,000 Iraqis to the US), the International Crisis Group and the rest of the extensive tangled web of advocates of a borderless world and one-world government.

Pushing for more refugees and immigrants to come to America is all about politics for this gang and that is why we see little interest in complaints from us and others around the country that their pawns (the refugees) are living in deplorable conditions.  It is not about the individual human beings—the refugees are expendable afterall.  It is about the war of the “have-nots” against the “haves” (see bring us your poor and angry, here).  They need to keep their pawns poor and angry and that is why we are seeing no reduction in the  numbers of refugees resettled in the US this year when there are no jobs and no hope for them.

Comment worth noting: We Somalis or Muslims will inherit America whether you like it or not

Here is a comment from reader Abdi that we received last night to a post I wrote in January, here, about how the UN was sending us 6000 Somalis from a camp in Uganda where they weren’t getting along with other African inhabitants of the camp.

They couldn’t be any clearer.

well, We Somali’s or Muslims will inherit America wether you like it or not this ‘America” is NO MAN’S LAND. Its God’s land and you can not do anything about it. cant you see how empty America is have you been to South, North Dakota or all uper midwes? is American Families having a lot of children? there good Americans who want to share their wealth with the refugees. i am a Somalian refugee i have 2 jobs i pay taxes i am happy to share it with the poor peaple. i ask a credit from God almight i dont weine about i thank God for what he gave me.
my advise to all you
Just Thank God for what you have and share your penny with poor and God will pay you back just be patient.

Ideological refugees

I came across a poignant post on Phyllis Chesler’s blog. It showed up in my Google alert for Israel refugees, but it has nothing to do with the refugees we write about here. I’m posting on it here because I like Phyllis Chesler and I am a longtime refugee myself, of the kind she describes. She begins:

For years now, newly arrived refugees have been contacting me. They write to tell me that they’ve lost nearly everybody they once knew. Their whole world is gone now. Some whisper over the phone. Others write long letters. They ask me how I’ve managed.

I am talking about ideological refugees from feminism, leftism, gay liberation, socialism, and progressivism.

Yes, that’s how it is. You lose almost everybody. Either they don’t want to talk to you any more, or you don’t want to talk to them. Reading and writing for this blog, I’ve read plenty of terrible refugee stories, and I’m not actually comparing my situation, or the situation of Phyllis Chesler and those who contact her, to real refugees who lose a lot more than their friends. But what she said struck a chord with me, so I’m posting on it here in case someone else wants to read her story.

How to defeat our enemies: Stop appeasing envy and regain our cultural confidence

 I received this speech by Jack Wheeler in an email from Janet Levy this morning and I’m posting it in its entirety. Jack Wheeler has traveled to the world’s most obscure places since his teens, and got to know the anti-communist freedom fighters in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and many other places during the 1980s. He influenced President Reagan to support these groups as a measure to help bring down the Soviet Union — a successful move, it turned out. He has always been a fighter for freedom and western civilization, and I want as many people as possible to see these words.

What Jack says is applicable to all the problems we write about here — refugee policy, immigration, jihad, etc. Our elites’ loss of cultural confidence and fear of envy make them adopt policies that those not afflicted can only look upon as lunatic.

WHY LIBERALS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN TERRORISTS 

By Jack Wheeler

March 5, 2010

[This is a speech I am delivering today to the members of the Council for National Policy, leaders of conservative organizations across America, meeting in Naples, Florida.]

There’s no time to waste here, so I’m going to skip the obligatory warm-up joke and get to the root of the problem.

First, Moslems are not really the problem, neither Moslem terrorists nor Moslem  imperialists insisting on their medieval Sharia laws.

Christendom has been fighting Islam for almost fifteen centuries.  The Spaniards fought 800 years to get rid of the Moslem invaders of their Christian lands.  800 years!  That’s how long the Reconquista took.  How long have we in America been at it – two decades?

Islam is a self-identified religion of the sword.  It cannot be anything else but.  “Islam” is an Arabic word.  It means submission.  Moslems claim this means submit to Allah.  What it really means is submit to them or die.  Just the same as it was for the Communists of the Soviet Union.  

Thus there can be no peace between Jihadi or Sharia Moslems and us, anymore than there could be with Soviet Communists.  “Peace” for us means the absence of violence.  “Peace” for Jihadis and Communists means the absence of disobedience.  So there can be no peace, there can only be victory or submission.

We achieved victory over the Communists of the Soviet Union.  How may we achieve victory over the Moslems of Jihad and Sharia?  Let’s go to Africa to find out.

Anyone here been to the Serengeti?  Then you know the tribe that lives on the plains of the Serengeti is the Masai.  How do the Masai make a living?  They are cattle herders.  Cattle herders in lion country.  Lots of lions live in the Serengeti, and they love to eat cows.  Cows are easy to kill and taste real good.  What have the Masai got to protect their cattle – and themselves – from the lions?  Spears.  No guns, just spears.

What do the Masai wear for clothing?  Bright red robes.  They want to make sure the lions see them, know where they are.  For when a lion sees a Masai, it is the lion that runs away, not the Masai.  Lions are scared of the Masai, who are very, very good at hunting lions down and killing them.  With spears.

Lions are predators.  There can be no peace between predators and prey.  Islam is a predatory religion.  Jihadi Moslems are predators.  So the only solution is to have them be so afraid of us that they leave us alone, just like lions leave the Masai alone on the Serengeti Plains of Africa. They either run away or get a spear in their gut.

So the question becomes:  Why don’t we treat Moslem predators like Masai treat lions?  

It’s because the Masai, even though they live in primitive conditions, have something we once had and have now lost:  cultural confidence.  They have a fierce pride and confidence in their culture that we no longer have.

Our Founding Fathers sure had it.  Thomas Jefferson sure had it, when he condemned King George for inflicting upon Americans – quote from the Declaration of Independence – “the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”

The men and women who fought those savages to create an American civilization from sea to shining sea sure had it.  We’ve lost it.  How?  Let’s go to the Amazon to find out.

There is a tribe in the Amazon called the Yanomamo.  When a Yanomamo woman gives birth to a baby, she cries out is a loud lament, “Oh my baby is so ugly!  Why have the spirits cursed me with such an ugly baby?”  She does this so the other villagers won’t envy her happiness at her beautiful child.

This is the famous fear of envious Black Magic, the fear of the Evil Eye that permeates so many cultures, from primitive tribes in the Amazon to Harvard-educated liberals in America.  For just like the Yanomamo tribeswoman who says her baby is ugly to deflect envy, so the American liberal says his country is ugly.

Perhaps the most instructive of all Ten Commandments is the last:  Thou shalt not covet –  don’t be envious.  Yet it needs a corollary:  Thou shalt not fear those who covet – don’t be afraid of the envious. For it is this fear that gives the envious their power over us.

For example, the crux understanding of Moslem terrorism or Jihadism is that it is a pathology of envy. 

All three of the great barbarisms of modern times have been pathologies of envy. Naziism, preaching race-envy toward “rich exploitative Jews”;  Communism preaching class-envy toward “rich exploitative bourgeois”;  Jihadism preaching culture-envy toward “rich exploitative America/Israel/the West.” In all three cases, the belief in exploitation is a primitive belief in voodoo Black Magic. 

What gives envy its enormous destructive capacity is the fear of it, fear of the Evil Eye. It is envy that makes a Nazi, a Communist, or a Moslem Terrorist. It is the fear of being envied that makes a Liberal

Liberalism is thus not a political ideology or set of beliefs. It is an envy-deflection device, a psychological strategy to avoid being envied. Liberalism is the politicalization of envy-appeasement
.

And thus liberals are driven to ever more masochistic efforts of self-humiliation in attempts at envy appeasement.

All the passions of the Left are frenzies of masochism. What could be more idiotic and masochistic than to oppose missile defense? Liberals oppose missile defense because…  they do not want their country defended

Liberals promulgate their “global warming” hoax because…  they do not want their civilization to prosper

Liberals are pro-abortion because… they do not want their species to exist

Liberals wallow in their ethical goo of moral relativism and multiculturalism because…  they do not want their culture to survive. “Political correctness” is nothing but a form of envy-appeasement – which is why, just as one example, we have politically correct airport security rather than profiling Moslems.
As the Amazon tribeswoman who says her baby is ugly, so the liberal says  his country, his culture, his civilization and even his entire species is ugly

This is why liberals always root for those who revile America. Liberals are incapacitated from being able to defend America because of their primitive fear of the Evil Eye of America’s enemies. Liberals are incapable of pride, deep pride, in being American.  Instead they feel embarrassment. 

So – how do we regain cultural confidence for America?  It’s a simple recipe of two words:

Reject envy.

This is a note of 100 Yuans – the currency of Communist China.  While we have George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on our money, the Chicoms have Mao Tse-Tung, whom the Guinness Book of World Records lists as the greatest mass murderer in human history.  America is vastly more moral than Communist China.  Yet we kowtow to the Red Chinese. 

Christianity is vastly more moral than Islam.  Ours is a religion of love and forgiveness.  Islam is a religion of conquest and slavery.  Repeatedly in the Koran, Allah advocates slavery, providing a plethora of detailed rules and permissions regarding slave ownership.  Either slavery is moral or Allah is immoral.  Moslems must choose.

But we cannot ask them to choose, we cannot stand up to Moslem terrorists or Communist Chinese or any enemy of America, foreign or domestic, if we do not reject their envy.

There could not be a clearer example of the disastrous consequences of America’s failing to reject envy than the election of Barack Hussein Obama – a man with utterly no experience or qualifications, a man no one in the country would have paid the slightest attention to if he were white.  

The only reason this man was elected was because he was black, because of his race –  it was the most racist election in American history, a deeply masochistic exercise in envy-appeasement.

At least now we can all understand the horrific results of envy-appeasement.  And while this is in no way an endorsement of Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations – I’m all up all in for Sarah Palin – he has provided the antidote with the title of his book, No Apology.

That is the message conservatives must stand for at every opportunity:  No apology for America, no apology for our success, our prosperity, our power, our religion, our culture, our civilization.

That and the American message of Live and Let Live.  You leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone.  But if you don’t, if you attempt to terrorize, threaten, or intimidate us, you’ll end up like a lion at the tip of a Masai spear.