Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Leftism, Islam, anti-Semitism, and the Jews

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Democrats and Muslims have come together with anti-Semitism because it is their ideological destiny — and Leftist Jews are too indoctrinated to see it.

Islam Socialism Anti-SemitismOne of the fascinating things about the world in which we live is the alliance between Leftists and Muslims. At first glance, it seems as if they have nothing in common. Leftists tout women’s rights; Muslims tout women’s burqas. Leftists tout LGBTQ rights; Muslims tout homosexual hangings. Leftists purport to hate slavery; Muslims have slavery as a core doctrine. Leftists hate rape; Muslims have rape as another core doctrine.

Given these profound differences, one way to account for the Leftist/Muslim alliance today is to look to the old Arab adage stating “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” (Or, as Aristotle said first, “a common danger unites even the bitterest enemies.”) Both the Left and Islam are united in a fight against Western civilization. And significantly, the thing they are fighting against most fiercely is what lies at the core of Western civilization: The value of the individual.

Here’s the thing: Despite their superficial differences, Leftists and Muslims have something very profound in common, which is that both are completely totalitarian ideologies. Each envisions complete control over all people around the world. Individualism is anathema to them. It is this common vision that binds them in the short term. In the long term, of course, each assumes that its ideology will be victorious and that, like the Borg, the winning ideology (whether Islam or Leftism) will either assimilate or destroy the losing ideology (whether Leftism or Islam).

Oh, I almost forgot. There’s another thing that binds them and that is their abiding hatred for Jews. (They hate other religions too, don’t get me wrong, as we can see from the murderous purge of Christians across the Muslim world as well as the softer effort to purge Christians in America. But there’s something about the Jews….) [Read more…]

Donald Trump’s speech and the Judeo-Christian religious tradition

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donald-trump-and-obamas-inauguration-speechesI don’t know about you, but I thought Donald Trump’s inauguration speech was excellent. It was short, direct, and outwardly focused. By “outwardly focused” I mean that President Trump, unlike President Obama, did not anoint himself as a godhead through endless self-references. Instead, Trump made the American people the stars of his speech. For example,

That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.

This is your day. This is your celebration.

And this, the United States of America, is your country.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.

The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

Everyone is listening to you now.

You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.

Trump’s focus on the American people (“you”), rather than himself, is in marked contrast to Obama’s speeches, which invariably are all about . . . Obama. The words “we” or “I” dot his rhetorical landscape and his image is the focal point for every event the White House commemorates. Just think of these gems from his Twitter feed:

(Townhall has compiled a list of other self-referential Obama commemorations.)

Now that I’ve made my point about Trump’s focus on the people and Obama’s focus on himself, I have to make good on my promise that Trump’s speech is marvelously consistent with Judeo-Christian tradition. I can do that.

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National Review cruise — let’s talk about the individual in the West

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img_1925My post title actually has little to do with the topics raised during the 6.5 hours (!) of discussion panels NR offered yesterday (which was an at sea day). Having gotten to know fairly well the panelists’ different personalities, however, I was struck by the West’s tight focus on individual personalities. Keep that concept in mind, because I’ll get back to it after a very quick rundown of yesterday’s afternoon events and the personalities I’ve come to know on the cruise.

First, the afternoon’s seminars:

The War on Cops. John Miller moderated a discussion with David French and Sheriff David Clarke. The bottom line was simple: Yes, there is a war on cops, one so severe that in many inner city neighborhoods, police have ended proactive policing, leaving the neighborhood to the hoodlums. Oh, and BLM is a con.

Tales from the Campaign. Rich Lowry had a discussion with Eliana Johnson to see what the takeaway lessons were from this last campaign. We got a reminder that Trump won by small margins, that the down ballot Republicans often won by larger margins, that Trump targeted disaffected working class people while the down ballot Republicans targeted the generic Republican voter, that Hillary was a simply awful candidate, and that Trump may be sui generis so that it’s difficult to draw too many future conclusions about his candidacy.

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One Old Testament — Two Interpretations

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It’s always interesting to hear my husband, a militant atheist, and me, a respectful agnostic/atheist, talk about the Bible to the kids.  Today, my husband tackled the story of the sacrifice of Isaac.  He told the kids that the whole point of the story is to remind religious people that they have to be blindly obedient to their God, no matter how evil or wrong his commands are.  I told the kids that it’s a stunningly important story, since it marked the beginning of the end of human sacrifice.

My husband has a different view of the story of Exodus too.  He refuses to celebrate Passover, because he says it commemorates the genocide of the Egyptians.  While it is certainly troubling that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart to the point where the Egyptian First Born had to die (a neat parallelism, of course, to Pharaoh’s decision to kill the Jewish First Born), the fact is that Jews, for thousands of years, have celebrated Passover as a story of freedom — it’s the world’s first recorded slave revolt.  As celebrated, it isn’t a blood-thirsty tale of murder but is, instead, a story about Mose’s personal redemption, and about individual dignity and liberty.  It’s also a story about overarching human emotions:  self-sacrifice, greed, fear, etc.  Or, I guess, if you want to see it that way, it’s a story about genocide.

There are many troubling stories in the Bible, whether Dinah’s brothers slaughtering a whole town, Lot offering to throw his daughters to a rape-made crowd, or even the story of the circumcision of Moses’ son.  What’s striking about the Judeo-Christian tradition is that these religions have looked at these stories, some of which reach far back in pre-history, and have rejected their randomness and violence.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we tell these stories, but we keep our life lessons focused on justice and morality.  Just as it’s troubling that modern Muslims take literally Mohamed’s most violent prejudices and prescriptions, so too is it sad that atheists look at the Bible and see only a book of evil.