Yes, it is a pity that it is not possible for a group of Americans to openly and honestly promote the interests of a foreign country ahead of America's, or, for that matter, to criticize them for doing so, without a racial element being injected into the debate.

Who's the problem here in your eyes, Mork?

Odd circumlocution, this "it's a pity...racial element being injected," Mork. I guess that's your way of saying that it's wicked to say "Die, Jews!" Oh, wait, did you think MJT's post was about political matters? Because it's not. It's about people expressing their desire to kill me because I'm a Jew.

Mork: Yes, it is a pity that it is not possible for a group of Americans to openly and honestly promote the interests of a foreign country ahead of America's...

Please clarify your statement without sounding like the white supremacist ZOG people. The fact that the rest of your post has an element of anti-racism about it makes me assume you're being mentally sloppy rather than deliberately repeating the propaganda of the far rightists holed up in the mountains of Idaho.

Miklos - what I'm getting at here is that it seems impossible to have an honest and factual debate about the significance of Israel in the making of American foreign policy without either encouraging anti-semitism (which needs little encouragement at the best of times) or being unfairly accused of it.

As for your question, it follows that - in terms of the quality of the debate - the anti-semites are the bigger problem, because their assumptions are more offensive, and because the second problem is more of an effect than a cause of the first. Of course, to say that false accusations of anti-semitism are the lesser offense is not to say that they are not one.

Michael - there is some sloppiness there - after I posted that, I wished that I had described them (obviously, the Likudnik wing of the neo-con movement) as "people to whom it does not occur that there might be a difference between the interests of the United States and what they perceive to be those of Israel", which is a more precise way of identifying the world view that I think ought to be a legitimate subject of debate, but apparently isn't.

Yes, yes, and yes. I'm 22 and have been diving pretty deeply into academia for the past 3 or so years. Michael and Micki Weinberg are dead-on and I can attest to this, firsthand.

The vast majority of modern anti-semitic Americans are on the Left. And they're teaching your children, as well. Thirty or forty years ago the intellectual class in this country embraced nihilistic post-modernism, denied the existence of Truth, and, to say nothing of the abandonment of American Exceptionalism,..."opened" their minds.

This is what it got them.

Mork,

The problem I have with that analysis is that before September 11 the only people, to my knowledge, who thought that way were neo-Nazis and Klansmen. I'm not accusing you of being one of them because I can see that you aren't, but somehow the idea that they (predictably) came up with first is being mainstreamed.

It helps, I think, to learn where these sorts of ideas come from before they are released into the wild. The fact that an extremist shares your view doesn't automatically make the view wrong, but the fact that the extremist came up with the idea in the first place is something worth considering, in my opinion.

Michael: you know that I don't share the view of the black helicopter crowd, you know that the existence of their fantasy had no influence on the observation I expressed above, and you know that the similarity does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. And yet you want to discredit my observation, not on its merits, but by association. That, my friend, is what's known as a smear ... and it's the very thing that chills honest discussion.

And what's with the September 11 stuff? American foreign policy took a 90 degree turn after September 11. Why would anyone be making the criticisms they make now before then?

Mork,

I know you didn't lift your analysis from the black helicopter crowd. And I'm not discrediting your analysis by association. What I'm saying is that the black helicopter crowd doesn't incidentally agree with you, but that they invented that analysis in the first place. That's a bit different than guilt-by-association. I'm saying they started a meme and you picked it up fourth-hand.

Since 9/11 the ZOG theory (Zionist Occupied Government) percolated up into the mainstream in a somewhat more palatable form, and I'm sure you picked it up from there. But as my post about Berkeley shows, that theory has also risen up on the far-left in as vile a form as when it was first formed on the far-right.

The reason I know the far-rightists invented this nonsense (and I do believe it is nonsense) is because I used to study those people in the 1990s. I found them endlessly fascinating.

Here's the simple rebuttal, though. You think the neo-cons put Israel's interests above America's. The reason you're wrong is because they believe, as I do, that the foreign policy interests of Israel and the foriegn policy interests of America are the same, just as the interests of England and America are the same. Adhering to a foreign policy that matches that of England doesn't make us England's puppet, does it? England and Israel are staunch American allies. There is nothing abnormal or wrong about it.

Mork, according to the ZOG people, 9/11 was not a change at all, it merely provided the excuse to do openly what we had been doing all along.

By the way, if Israel dictated American foreign policy, we would have invaded Syria or Iran instead of Iraq.

This is ABSOLUTELY a serious and ongoing issue. I wrote about it here in this post last year... the fellow in question is a leftist, Democrat college professor from the West Coast. He saw no irony in his comment whatsoever. Freaked me out big time.

Yeah, Sean, I remember that. It is freaky. I never expected this to happen. But it did.

"There is nothing abnormal or wrong about it."

Not in the eyes of the far-right or far-left. Not saying you are a member of them Mork, btw.

In a way both the far-left and far-right are xenophobic. The far-right fears people of different relgions, ethnicities and accents. The far-left fears people of differen philosophies. Thus, it is natural for both to fear Jews, as they have managed to keep their own culture and philosophy for thousands of years. The ones that the far-left hates the most are those who have resisted assimilation into their philosphy the most. And the far-right hates them simply because they are different.

Michael - I find it very difficult to respond to that post civilly, because you are either being deliberately and dishonestly insulting, or your arrogant self-delusion has reached such a fevered pitch that you literally cannot comprehend a legitimate disagreement with your views.

Can you not see that the first three paragraphs of your post do exactly what the first sentence claims you are not doing? In the first place, the claimed resemblence with what I said and what you try to link it to is utterly spurious. Secondly, it's nothing but a cheap insult to suggest that my observation cannot have been derived from original observation of the principals, but must have been arrived at by "picking up" an existing meme. Finally, to make the absurdity of your arrogance complete, you go on to state that you share exactly the same view that you demean me for holding.

In other words, it's alright for you to make the observation that our policy is being run by people who see no difference between the interests of America and Israel, because you think it's a good thing. But, if, like me, you are concerned that it may be a bad thing (because, for example, those interests diverge on a few key points), then as far as you're concerned, you deserve to be lumped in with the black helicopter crowd, and a crypto-anti-semite.

Honestly, Mork, you lost me.

You said: a group of Americans...promote the interests of a foreign country ahead of America's...

Maybe I completely misunderstood what you were trying to say. If so, I'm probably not the only one.

There is an idea out there that says certain Americans are more loyal to Israel than they are to America. I think that's utter nonsense for the reasons I stated, but if that wasn't your point then nevermind. What I wrote doesn't apply to you.

Michael- when you gave me an opportunity to correct the description I gave in the first post, I recast it as ""people to whom it does not occur that there might be a difference between the interests of the United States and what they perceive to be those of Israel" ... an observation with which you appear to be substantially in agreement.

Okay, Mork, I see what you're saying.

I don't quite agree with you, but what I wrote about you and ZOG was totally off. Sorry about that. I really did misunderstand.

OK, Michael, thanks for that. Let's never fight again.

Mork: Let's never fight again.

I wasn't mad, but I can see that you were. It's cool.

I read the entire article by Anneli Rufus in the East Bay Express. All the way to the end, where you can read this, after a description a particularly moronic, obnoxious and downright scurrilous student group meeting:

In the aftermath, one member of the student group confessed to a non-Muslim attendee that it left him feeling shocked.

"As a Muslim," he said, and his heart was in his voice, "I just want to apologize."

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the percentage of Muslims matching the description of "young, radical and surviving on checks from their parents while they attend college" is probably something like 1% of the total.

I can take Anneli Rufus's comments in context: I was born in Berkeley, I grew up in Berkeley, I went to school at U.C. Berkeley, and I lived in my hometown for quite a few years afterward. Berkeley is an ultra-liberal college town, no question about it. But conflating its leftism with anti-semitism or islamofascism is something that Anneli Rufus would not do. And she doesn't. Because she knows it's not that simple.

In past years, it's been quite the opposite, if anything. I had a friend, James Schamus, who took over editorship of a sleepy low-circulation newsletter for U.C. Berkeley graduate students, and churned out warmed-over Chomskyish diatribes against U.S. and Israeli policies. He was a member of a small group of Jewish and Arab students called CAFIOT - Committee for Academic Freedom in the Israeli-Occupied Territories. With the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Middle East had become a hot topic, and James was always ready for a hot topic.

He was also Jewish.

One day, he was summoned to the office of an official of the graduate student union, and summarily relieved of his editor position. Word had come down from on high - a copy of the latest issue had fallen into the hands of Tom Hayden, Hayden had called local politicos among the democrats in elected office in the East Bay, they had in turn called their allies in the graduate student union, and James' head was on a platter in short order. The next issue of this periodical featured soporific reviews of ballet performances.

Who was it who said "all politics is local"?

Last I heard, James was a producer in Hollywood. If he was an anti-semite, a "self-hating Jew," he wouldn't have lasted two minutes in that industry, which was warmly welcoming talented Jews back in the 1930s, even as Cal Tech, in neighboring Pasadena, was enforcing an admissions quota on them.

If you came away from Anneli Rufus's article convinced that Berkeley is a continuously seething hotbed of islamofascist radicalism, I strong recommend that you visit, on a day when classes are in session. You might see a table or two out on Sproul Plaza with some literature you don't much care for. Basically, though, Anneli Rufus had a good story in a local, leftish freebie newspaper precisely because it's a story that's not terribly conspicuous to your average East Bay resident, perhaps even those who cross that campus almost daily.

In visiting, you'll notice that it's a beautiful campus, people are pretty nice for the most part, and the course catalogs are full of classes where you can get a fairly balanced point of view on almost any subject you can think of, including the Middle East.

Michael Turner,

I've been to Berkeley, recently even. I liked it just fine. Obviously the average person in that town isn't a fascist.

What surprises me is that this sort of thing happens there in the first place, and that it's more likely to happen there in my conservative close-minded home town of Salem. I would never have thought it possible.

While I certainly agree that the US and Israel have very similar goals in the war on terror, the possibility that they are different is worth exploring.

The USA goes after the Taliban, Afghanistan only, and leaves Saddam alone. Sanctions are "eased", since the Iraqi people are starving (after Saddam & UN steal billions). Libya continues developing its nukes, as does Iran. And, with sanctions eased, so does Saddam.

October, 2004? 2005? 2006? Tel Aviv gets nuked.
OR -- Israel, in a panic of pre-emptive defense, attacks ... who? Iran?

The alternatives to the USA in Iraq are: a) Islamofascists with nukes, prolly using them against Israel; or b) huge Israeli commando raids against nuke installations, unlikely to all be successful. Certainly all would be condemned. Prolly the world would then accept Israeli pre-emption as an excuse to allow Islamofascists to make, AND USE without much moral condemnation, nukes against Israel.

I suspect those who object to US actions being too closely aligned with Israel's have these or similar catastrophes against Israel in mind -- and don't mind if Tel Aviv is nuked.

On tolerance, the Politically Correct thought police have long been pretty intolerant. Especially of any rational questioning of their secular fundamentalism and its effects.

Glad you're noticing it; not really surprised that you seem surprised, thought censors usually just think they're correct.

I think some of the hatred is projection at the dissonance of the intolerance the "tolerators " have to those who disagree.

Michael Turner makes a case that UC Berkeley isn't so bad... excuse me if I've conflated the campus situation there with that at San Francisco State, where I seem to remember some anti-semitic incidents (including physical intimidation and the first I'd ever heard of "Hitler didn't finish the job" used by leftist Palestinian sympathizers) not too long ago.

The Bay Area was also the site of an anti-war demonstration just a few weeks back where a speaker called for "an American intifada." His remarks seemed to be calling for something rather more violent than children throwing stones.

So I'm not sure that soothing words about Berkeley's lovely campus really get to the gist of the issue raised -- one hardly unique to Berkeley, in any case. When the ultimate virtue lies in presenting oneself as a victim, Palestinians have been able to exploit the tendency of student minds to seek out simplistic, often entirely ahistorical moral absolutes... resulting in such exotica as the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), from which Rachel Corrie emerged as one blossom (fool or martyr according to one's bent).

John le Carre's novel "The Little Drummer Girl" once evoked such a scenario as a possible (and still highly plausible) terrorist tactic to evade profiling by getting impressionable German or American young women to deliver bombs.

But it's late.

mork sez:

"Likudnik wing of the neo-con movement"
Would you consider Paul Wolfowitz a good example of the "LWOTNCM"?

Consider his history:
Supporter of the Contras in Nicaragua. Does that have anything to do with Israels interests? Ambassador to Indonesia, helping make the world safe for American business interests (not that there's anything wrong with that!) And while I'm a fan of the Project for the New American Century I can understand how some might consider it a "blueprint for US hegemony".

In short, call the man an imperialist warmonger all you like, but there's no evidence that he's mongering war on anyone's behalf other than America's.

Michael Turner - I read the article to the end. It’s funny that you didn’t mention the content of the speech that most of the crowd enjoyed:
Here it is:

Later that morning, Abdel Malik Ali returned to the stage. Jewelry flashed on his long delicate fingers as he outlined "the recipe for how we come to power: From an Islamic movement we graduate to an Islamic revolution, then to an Islamic state."

"Allahu akbar," came a chorus.

"We must be in power," Ali continued coolly. He rounded up his lecture by promising that "when it's all over, the only one standing is gonna be us."

"Allahu akbar."

"We ain't gonna lose. We must implement Islam as a totality," in which "Allah controls every place -- the home, the classroom, the science lab, the halls of Congress."

More...

"You're afraid of the organizations that are trying to shut you down," she said. "UJS and Hillel are trying to shut you down. But they're the ones that are experiencing trouble on campus right now."

"Allahu akbar," came a chorus.

Abdel Malik Ali also returned one final time, prodding the young crowd to "work on building Islamic infrastructures in the USA now." He allowed: "There will be some poop-butts who will not want to live under sharia law and will leave.”

Implementing Shariah Law, a group of laws that are genocidal, misogynistic and downright fascist is the Islamic fundamentalist plan. Despite the off-the-cuff poop-butt bit, it’s the standard routine.

Shariah is currently being implemented in the Sudan and Nigeria, the plan that was implemented in Afghanistan and the result is always oppression and mass death. I’d hardly call plans for oppression and genocide “obnoxious”. And, judging from the reaction of the crowd (the enthusiastic cries of "Allahu akbar,) I’d hardly call Abdel Malik Ali's speech ‘unpopular’ in Berekeley.

The left has become the faction of hate. In the last three years, most of the left has tried to incinerate George W. Bush through their sheer force of combined hatred. We've heard - and watched - a frighteningly large number of people espouse wilder and wilder views.

Hell Michael, Fritz Hollings wrote an op-ed last weekend that might as well have been titled "Its the Jews and George Bush! Kill them all!".

Anti-semitism falls into the same category as excessive nationalism (NO American jobs going overseas! No matter how many foreign jobs are coming here), paranoia (John Ashcroft can see that I have checked out Dialing for Dollars 47 times from my local library) and the rest of the knee jerk, non rational emotional reactions that drive so many voters. I watched Ashley Judd scream "Keep your hands off my utereus" less than a month ago, in an almost exstatic state of Madonna induced rage through a megaphone on the National Mall.

This is the M.O. of the Democrats in 2004. They will find anyone in this country who hates, or who is afraid, and they will tweak them off at George Bush. And while acadmics have always felt safe in masking their rank anti-semitism in the folds of the "Pro Palestine" movement and calling their bigoted hatred "anti-zionism" instead of "anti-semitism" the sentiments have left the closet and have no joined the rest of the hate and fear mongering we have come to realize is our future as offered by John F. Kerry and Co.

What amazes me, of course, is that I can't believe anyone who is Jewish is still voting Democrat. I'm figuring this will be the last election year is will be a voting block as more and more Jewish Americans wake up and realize that the American Democrat party is waiting, in breathless anticipation, to hold Yassar Arafats hat while most of the Republicans would like to blow the Lady and the Tramp tablecloth off of his head.

Hey, with all due respect Roark...

I wouldn't call it paranoia to be upset with the fact that the government can now keep tabs on what books you read. It's a senseless add-on to an otherwise useful and necessary Patriot Act, it doesn't aid law enforcement in the War on Terror one bit, and it would have the Founding Fathers up in arms.

Maybe I'm taking you out of context or perhaps I misunderstood, but there are some very reasonable objections to that clause in particular. I say it serves no real purpose as evidenced by the fact John Ashcroft himself was forced to testify before Congress that he hasn't actually even invoked the clause once and that it therefore amounts to a gross violation of the principles of limited government. The State ought not have any more power than it reasonably needs.

You're a conservative, right? Well I'm speaking your language here, buddy. Perhaps you've forgotten: A healthy fear of government intrusion is a good thing.

PS...

And it's not like the Right, "through the sheer force of combined hatred", didn't attempt to incinerate Bill Clinton in the mid-90s. The Limbaugh/Gingrich "faction of hate" o'meter was off the charts there for quite some time back in those days and you know it.

Truth be told, it's always only politics. Politicians are like big babies constantly craving power and attention: The longer they're out of the spotlight, the more visceral the temper-tantrum gets (especially when the ones on stage are stealing your act a la Bill Clinton or, to a lesser degree, even Dubya). It's like that on both sides equally, as is the nature of modern politics. You're an intelligent guy, Roark. I know you know this is how it works.

Question (to which I have yet to formulate an opinion) -- Is it wrong for the government that pays for the books, pays for the building housing the books, pays for the people who work in the building to know to whom the books are being lent? And if so, why?

Should there (and could there) be some sort of private library system that we could all donate books (and pay a subscription) that would not be subject to the above?

Bill B.,

I'd say that the government doesn't have a right to know who's checking out which of its books (other than employing a circulation librarian to keep track of them so they can be sure to be returned). The government isn't an entity in addition to us with rights. It is our slave, utterly devoid of any rights that we do not wish to give it.

So, the question is whether we should give it rights to know who's checking out books for any particular reason that we find important. Grant's argument is powerful. Ashcroft might not be evil, but who knows whether some AG in the year 2030 might not be evil and decide to blacklist anyone reading books on Chinese philosophy or UFOs or Marxism? Also, the power hasn't had much use, as Grant pointed out. (Oddly, Ashcroft used that point to argue in favor of the power, if you catch his drift.) Moreover, with electronic communications what they are today, I don't see how a terrorist's library habits will be much use. He'll get his useful info off the net. So, Grant's right. I can see the point of an FBI agent keeping tabs on a Syrian "grad student" who has two or three suspicious things about him and wishing he could know what they heck the guy is reading from the library. But it doesn't weigh heavily enough against Grant's argument.

There are private college libraries that let local townspeople check out books.

MJT,

Do you mean that supporting Israel's security is literally in our "interest"? I agree with Mork that it has not been. But it's just that it would be unconscionable to let all 5 million Israeli Jews be driven into the sea, which is what would have happened by now without our support. That's why we should support Israel, in my view.

Mary writes: "Michael Turner - I read the article to the end. It’s funny that you didn’t mention the content of the speech that most of the crowd enjoyed ..."

[ref comment above, but preferably the article in its entirety at the link provided by Michael Totten.]

There is much there that invites comment. Do you want my blow by blow reaction to it? No thanks - the article speaks for itself, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to get a sense of Berkeley at its weirdest.

As a long-time resident of Berkeley, however, I am long since inured to fringe groups making outrageous statements. I sometimes forget that most people in most places don't worry about rubbing elbows with firebrand ideologues at the grocery store (where they are considerably tamer than their podium behavior would suggest, obviously, or they'd in jail.)

Of course, if you want a firebrand statement, how about your own?

"Implementing Shariah Law, a group of laws that are genocidal, misogynistic and downright fascist is the Islamic fundamentalist plan."

Could you please tell me exactly what in Shariah Law is inherently genocidal? Please don't cite some fringe cleric - after all, I could probably dredge up KKK arguments for genocide against black people based on the Bible. I don't like many things about Shariah, needless to say. I wouldn't live under it, because, as a non-Muslim, I'd always be a second class citizen. But if Shariah were inherently genocidal, that sounds like a great reason to invade Pakistan rather than court Pakistan as an ally, as it seems the U.S. does.

In Berkeley, I got sick to death of hearing from the loony left about how this or that was 'genocide'. I got a lifetime's worth of it. Now I have to hear it coming from islamophobes. (Totten new rules check: is "islamophobe" ad hominem?)

As for Shariah being inherently fascist, well, like the g-word (genocide), I also got pretty tired of the f-word (fascist) coming from the loony left. Looks like it's entered the islamophobe lexicon. I'll go with 'theocracy', thank you, and even that may be too harsh to describe Shariah as it's implemented in a country like Malaysia. If you want to regale us with some analysis of why Shariah amounts to fascism, I'm all ears. Please carefully cite sources, however.

As for 'mysogynistic', there is little question that women are in principle treated as not only separate, but unequal under Islamic law, Shariah ornot. However, to imagine that Islamic legal systems cannot evolve to address the issues raised by the lower status of women apparently conferred upon them by the Holy Koran is to not know the extent to which those systems have already evolved in some places.

In some Gulf Arab states, for example, the penalty for a woman committing adultery is still death. However, the legal system requires that there be no fewer than four male witnesses to a certain length of vaginal penetration. (Could I make this up?) For a man to accuse his wife of adultery is tantamount to him saying that she's been performing in live as a hardcore porn actress, but somehow without his knowledge. Surprise, surprise: no woman has been executed under that law in quite some time.

And after some decades, under some general trend to moderation, Muslims in these countries might laugh about such laws being on the books. Just as we laugh about miscegenation laws in the South (within my living memory, just barely) and shudder to think that for a black man to have sex with a white woman was considered grounds for lynching, which used to go on with considerably impunity. Are we really so many centuries ahead of all these Muslims we see as being so primitive and barbaric? In some places, it looks like we only have about 3 or 4 decades on them.

Mr. Turner,

Is defending shariah law really worth it? It's like finding all the loopholes in Jim Crow.

I always arrive at these threads painfully late. To return to Mork's original post, it is one of the most appallingly racist comments I've ever read. Of course, it is reasonable to question whether Israel and America's interests are coextensive. However, his statement, clearly read, is that because Jews (a group of Americans)
promote Israel's interests over America's, the kind of violent racism that is described in Totten's post is understandable or justifiable. There is a kind of smug irony in the comment - "yes, it's a shame that jews can't promote Israel without getting called on it.

All the rest of the doubletalk afterwards is an after the fact attempt to backpedal on this horrendous comment.

To coin a phrase that you like to use, Fuck you, Mork.

It is not the place, be it Salem, Eugene, Berkeley, or Boston, that makes the people but the people that make the place. If anti-semitism, homophobia, racism, or any other ism is prevelant somewhere it is because the people there believe it or simply tolerate it.

That said, vitriol and hate get front page news which inflates, at least, the broadness of their existence. Also, it is nearly impossible these days to question things like our support of Israel, the appropriateness of gay marriage, and the fairness of affirmative action without being labeled an anti-semite, homophobe, and racist.

MarkC,

Methinks Mork was being sloppy and misunderstood. Maybe he backpedaled from a racist position, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt because the very post in question was also explicitly anti-racist.

Michael Turner - What a coincidence - I just did a post about Shariah law, the genocidal acts committed as a result of it in the Sudan, a secular Muslim's plea that Shariah must not be implemented in any society. Here is his conclusion:

We must recognise that our society is far larger, diverse and complex than the small primitive tribal society in Arabia, 1400 years ago, from which Islam emerged. It is time to abandon the idea that anyone in the region should live under Sharia. More than ever before, people need a secular state that respects freedom from and of religion, and human rights founded on the principle that power belongs to the people. This means rejecting the claims by orthodox Islamic scholars that, in an Islamic state, sovereignty belongs to the representative of Allah or Islamic justice. It is crucial to oppose the Islamic Sharia law and to subordinate Islam to secularism and secular states.

My post is here, with plenty of links. Please excuse the bad poetry, but it seemed like the best way to tie it all together.

If you read all of the links, you'll realize that Shariah law does not prohibit slavery - in practice, it encourages it. Did the laws of National Socialism openly allow slavery? If not, then the use of the word fascist to describe Shariah is inappropriate - it's too kind.

When I criticize these horrific laws, you label me an "Islamaphobe", (the new, polite term for racist.) Since when is the criticism of ongoing and legalized slavery considered to be 'racism?'

Mr. Turner - Yes most of us would be dhimmis under sharia. Not something I would just shrug off by saying "I don't like many things about Sharia". Correct, not technically genocide for you and me, but subjugation nonetheless. Maybe you don't know, but while you and I get the privelege of becoming second class citizens, anyone who is not a "follower of the book" can be killed or made a slave. That my friend, is genocide. For a good example, please see what is happening right now in the Sudan.

Also, this is not one person screaming to themselves on a street corner. A "small minority" can be effectively ignored. Someone who has a large, responsive, and enthusiastic audience of followers is to be ignored at one's own risk. It is also not any different than the messages that emenate from Islam's spiritual homes in Arabia and elsewhere in the middle east. Which means your weak equivalence does not hold either. This is nothing like someone from the KKK saying so and so should be subjugated and killed. No, this would be more like Cardinals of the Catholic Church delivering that message each and every Sunday. Please wake up.

In the course of defending first your hometown and these extremeists that thrive there, you are proving the point instead of refuting it. You are an intelligent person. Just a bit of checking up on Sharia and what it entails will really open your eyes. This is not something you want to be defending or making excuses for. And anyone who advocates it is either an extremist themselves, willfully blind, or incredibly misinformed.

Uh, or what Mary said.

Mary - Nice post and nice site.

Michael Totten writes: "The problem I have with that analysis is that before September 11 the only people, to my knowledge, who thought that way [i.e., along the lines of the American government being a ZOG] were neo-Nazis and Klansmen."

[At this point, Michael Turner's coffee almost spurts out his nose. Then again, he lived in Berkeley too long.]

"I'm not accusing you [Mork] of being one of them because I can see that you aren't, but somehow the idea that they (predictably) came up with first is being mainstreamed."

Allow me to educate you a little. The roots of such conspiracy theorizing ultimately trace down into the malodorous loam of centuries of antisemitism in Europe. To trace them forward from that time would be redundant - there are plenty of sources out there.

Well, I can't even go into the post-war history - there's just too much. Let an anecdote suffice.

I remember Chomsky coming to speak at the U.C. Berkeley campus, during the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, and the usual zoo was in attendance, from leftists who could see no wrong in anything Israel did, to leftists who saw everything Israel did as 'fascist.' One of Chomsky's themes that night was liberals who he felt applied a double standard when it came to Israel. He dealt with the subject in his usual fashion, then came the zoo: questions from the audience. At one point, Chomsky had to face some old left splinter faction Communist (both old and 'old left') who insisted over and over that "the real left" had always been anti-Israel. Chomsky tried in vain to get the old fart to define "the real Left." Finally, in exasperation, before getting the microphone yanked away and turned over to another question-cum-editorial from the audience, he cried, "the Left is not a membership organization!"

And indeed it is not. The most left-leaning element in California electoral politics at the time was a group headed by Tom Hayden. Everybody remembers his ex-wife as "Hanoi Jane." Nobody seems to remember her posing with Israeli tanks.

Elements of the left with no claim to public office made up for it in being highly vocal, and quite a few of these were stridently anti-Israel, to the point of suggesting that Israel called the shots in American foreign policy.

It's a pretty old meme, and you don't have to get infected by an American neo-Nazi to have this particular Acquired Irrational Demagoguery Syndrome.

At the same time, however, there's no question that Israel has influence in Washington far out of proportion to the number of Israelis. I attribute this to several factors, but recently I believe the most important has to do with ensuring American oil supplies. Israel is convenient for the United States, because by persisting as a propaganda target for the surrounding Arab regimes, it provides the benighted subjects of those regimes with a distraction from how corrupt, dictatorial and disastrous their own governments are. The Israelis were and are very good fighters, but at least until they became nuclear armed, the Arab countries could have overrun Israel by sheer numbers at almost any time. They didn't, and that should tell you something. Israel as a nuclear-armed state is probably actually a source of relief to those Arab despotisms, if anything, because those nukes provide a convenient excuse for putting off any such invasion permanently - and thereby ensure that Israel will be a propaganda target forever. But wait - that's not enough! We need to have the Israelis appearing to be engaged almost constantly in evil, otherwise you have to keep recycling stale propaganda. This is where the Palestinians are so convenient to Arab despotisms. So they feed Palestinian unrest, whether the organizations are Marxist, Islamist, or simply nationalist. And so it goes on and on, back and forth, because it really works for everybody - except of course for your average Palestinian, who is just a pawn in a propaganda game.

America gets its oil, the Arab despotisms get their stability, Israel gets to survive, the Palestinians get to be shafted (as much by themselves and their leadership as by Israel and the Arab world) for generation after generation. This couldn't go on forever, but it has been an uneasy status quo for a long, long time. Over the next few years, the pattern could finally start to break down. But the dice are still tumbling, and it would be foolish to do more than hypothesize at this point.

"In some places, it looks like we only have about 3 or 4 decades on them."

I'd love to believe this, but I don't. Islam has yet to go through a real reformation of the likes the Christianity went through approximately five hundred years ago. The Reformation was the precursor to the Age of Enlightment. It basically redefined man's relationship with God as being direct and individualistic, not dictated by religious heirarchies. This opened the door for rethinking and redefined the relationship between men and government. Without the Reformation and Protestants, democracy would have been much slower to evolve. (Sorry to my many Catholic buddies, but I honestly believe this to be true.)

If you believe that Islam needs a reformation with a capital "R", then you have to believe that any country embracing Sharia Law has a long road ahead of them.

Mr. Turner's arguements also ignore trend lines. In America's history you can see progress for race relations even before the Civil War. I don't see anything positive about Sharia Law that would allow me to believe that it permits the self-criticism that it so badly needs.

Obe - It's funny about the simultaneous & similar comments. Great minds think alike?

"Without the Reformation and Protestants, democracy would have been much slower to evolve. (Sorry to my many Catholic buddies, but I honestly believe this to be true.)"

I think that this might be true in Great Britian, but in Germany where protestantism was widespread, democracy didn't really flourish until after WW2 (unless you count the Weimar Republic). France, of course, was heavily Catholic and went through their Revolution and the Terror afterwards. Poland, heavily Catholic, had an elected Monarch, as I recall. Orthodox Russians, of course, never saw democracy until 1991.

I think Democracy follows more closely from an individual's ownership of his land, his willingness to protect that land, and his voice in society resulting from that land.

Anyway, the larger point is worthwhile: the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation helped to make religion a non-violent actor in politics (to a degree, since we know that the Pilgrims fled England for religious freedom). Islam has not had such a philosophical questioning of its practices at all, and to do so is a sentence of death.

One point about the whole "Reformation" idea in regards to Islam. I have seen some theologians say that a Reformation is not possible in Islam as we understand it in relation to Christianity because the source text of the Koran is a major problem. The message was that the Reformation encouraged individuals to read the scripture for themselves (newly possible due to the printing press and translations to living languages, one being Luther's translation to German, and an explosion in literacy in the populations) and get back to the "roots" of Christianity. That is; seeing and understanding the example Jesus' set for his followers. Unfortunately, when this same concept is applied in Islam, it often encourages the type of extremism that we wish to diffuse. Their point was that Islam had it's Luther, his name was Mohammed. I think I agree with them in the sense that the more I learn I about Islam, the more I believe it has some fundamental flaws that are going to be huge obstacles to the modernization of it's principles.

"pinnacles of horror,"

Good gawd, can't anyone write about an issue without resorting to over the top hyperbole? Okay, lets have a look at Mr. Whineberg's complaints.

Weinberg scanned the inscriptions. Then he saw one, large and clear, that stopped him dead in his tracks:

"It's the Jews, stupid."

Oh my gawd, some ignorant twit wrote some graffiti on the 9/11 memorial and that crushed his spirit. The horrors. I wonder if that same memorial contained any messages reading, "Nuke Iraq" or "Kill the ragheads"? I'm betting it did since some people were that pissed off at the Arab population following the attack. But I guess those weren't important enough to mention since they would have killed his rant.

He remembers pro-Palestinian protesters insisting that Israeli border crossings are as bad as Nazi death camps.

Typical strawman nonsense. Criticizing Israel is not anti-semitic, even if it's done with over the top hyperbole.

shattered by a cinderblock, with the message FUCK JEWS scrawled nearby.

See first rebuttal. The only difference is that this time vandalism is added into the mix.

He remembers the spray-painted swastikas discovered one Monday morning last September on the walls of four lecture rooms in LeConte Hall accompanied by the chilling bilingual message, "Die, Juden. "

See first rebuttal.

To sum up his complaints, in three years at a school filled with a diversity of opinions and a few retards, he was subjected to three acts of anti-semitic behaviour in the form of graffiti. How will he ever recover?

This sort of complaining does nothing to help the cause of eliminating anti-semitism. In fact, all it does is make people tune it out because the complaints are so effing ridiculous. My advice to this guy is to find some real evidence of systemic anti-semitism--not just the actions of a few morons--and then write about it.

Robert,

My friend Jeff Jarvis banned you from his site. You were on my short list the day you waltzed in here. I'm only giving you half the slack I give everyone else who annoys me. Don't like it? Tough shit. Your karma follows you around and your attitude still stinks.

Sneering at Jews for being horrified by anti-Semitism...wow, you're a real piece of work.

What this guy is pointing to is not anti-semitism. It's whining about rudeness. Spraypainting a swastika on a wall is not anti-semitic. Preaching a doctrine of hatred against the Jews is. Writing "Fuck Jews" is not anti-semitic. Beating up someone who is Jewish, because they are Jewish is. Writing "It's the Jews, stupid," on a 9/11 memorial is not anti-semitic. Not hiring someone who is Jewish, because they are Jewish, is.

You damned well know the difference and you also know posting complaints of this nature is just part of the right's propaganda campaign against liberals and anything liberal. It's shameful that you would partake in the activity.

And Jarvis hasn't banned me. In fact, I'm not banned on any site.

"Spraypainting a swastika on a wall is not anti-semitic."
"Writing "Fuck Jews" is not anti-semitic."
"Writing "It's the Jews, stupid," on a 9/11 memorial is not anti-semitic."

A classic liberal leftist defends anti-semitism.

Not only typical, predictable as well.

"I wouldn't call it paranoia to be upset with the fact that the government can now keep tabs on what books you read."

I wouldn't call that paranoia either, if that was actually what was happening. You are a good guy Grant, so i'll outline my two areas of concern on this issue and how I see them.

Since the mid 90s, libraries have installed computer terminals and internet access. Those computer terminals and internet access points are controlled, in many places, by your library account. To access the internet, you supply your card and your actions while on the library machine is tracked via your account. The "library" clause of the Patriot Act supplies law enforcement with the ability to subpoena those records while investigating a terrorist. And, if you will do your research, you will see that one of the 9/11 hijackers used a library computer to communicate and plan the 9/11 attacks. THAT is why the clause is in the Patriot Act. As soon as you, or anyone else, provides me with an alternate method for law enforcement to obtain those records any objection to the part of the Patriot Act that allows law enforcement to their job does not strike me as a "gross violation of the principles of limited government".

Now, onto the political reality of the day. The above information is the reason the library clause is in the Patriot Act but your "library book paranoia" is the only acceptable point of discourse that has entered the public arena. Those on the left (and some on the right, Bob Barr for one) have latched onto this and other aspects of the Patriot Act, mischaracterized them, told tall-tales about their intent and their usage and attempted to scare the hell out of people. In many cases, it has worked. People have no idea what the Patriot Act actually does and does not do. It is just John Ashcroft's Boogey Man weapon and you aren't supposed to ask any questions about the paranoia and just go with the flow.

Because I am a conservative (and a former police officer), I was interested in the library clause. I was bothered, much the same way you are bothered. Then I did my homework, I came to understand where it came from and why it is there, and then I checked and saw that the doomsday predicitions have never even come close to fruition. By your own admission, this "intrusive" part of the Patriot Act has never been used.

You can bet your bottom dollar if the snowball ever starts rolling downhill to Hell, I'll be one of the first ones yelling my head off. I am a traditional conservative and I very deeply value my individual freedoms. I also have a mind and I use it for myself and I can see that the library clause is there for a reason, it has a purpose, it is a valuable law enforcement tool and it is not being misused. In fact, at this point it has NOT been used.

My point in this long response? The paranoia that seems to have transplanted itself from the far right to the far left is just as ungrounded. Scare tactics may work on the uneducated, the emotional and the eternally partisian; but I refuse to drink the cool aid without checking it out first and I think we would all be a lot better off if we turned our brains back on, did our own research and didn't let the "common understanding" of things relieve us of our obligation to think.

Correction, Vic...

The classic "liberal leftist" doesn't defend anti-semitism because there is no such thing as a "liberal leftist". It's a complete and utter contradiction in terms. Contemporary liberalism and leftism are two COMPLETELY different things and they mix about as well as oil and water.

Leftists aren't liberal in either the classic OR contemporary sense. Be more honest next time in defining your terminology, please.

Vic, try educating yourself.

Grant,

A ps for your ps ;)

"And it's not like the Right, "through the sheer force of combined hatred", didn't attempt to incinerate Bill Clinton in the mid-90s. The Limbaugh/Gingrich "faction of hate" o'meter was off the charts there for quite some time back in those days and you know it."

Oh, I know. The fundamental motivation is the same for the left today as it was for the right then. At the time, I loosely considered myself a Democrat, I liked Clinton and the hate mongering of the right bothered me.

Just like it bothers me now coming from the left.

In truth, this animosity isn't going away. Clinton was hated first, mostly as payback for Reagan hate. But the Clinton haters got their payback. Big Bill got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. All of Clinton's vocal supporters in the 90s got to wear egg on their face while their Republican and right wing buddies at work pounced on them endlessly when the "Big Dog" gave his address.

The left hates Bush now because they feel they have to even the tables. The right was rewarded for their hate with the impeachment and near removal of Clinton from office. Until, and unless, the left accomplishes the same with GWB they will never be able to fight back from even ground. Or, at least, that is what I think the motivation is.

As for "playing politics", I have tired of it. I agree that both sides do it but I am tired of hearing the side of the day putting forth that pittiful excuse when they get caught at it. 9/11 changed the world and it changed America. I can assure you, without a doubt, that if the D and the R would have been reversed on 9/12 and the same actions would have happened I would be voting for Kerry in November. Just because it has always happened does not excuse it and it does not mean we give Washington a pass. The War on Terror has turned into a political game and I will not forgive, nor excuse, the Democrats for doing it - even if it was done as "part of the game".

Obe and Sydney,

You make good points. Mohammad was a warrior, not a pacifist like Christ. If reformation simply means letting individuals accept the literal interpretation of the Quran, we are in deep trouble.

However he Reformation was not primarily a fundamentalist movement whose rhyme and reason was literal interpretation of the Bible. Note that today, many people who call themselves Christians, mostly Protestants, read the Bible metaphorically.

The key to reform is buying into the notion of seperation of church and state. There is some reason for optimisism in Iran and Iraq that this will prevail.

Robert McClelland--

But don't words mean anything? In a time in which we have overwrought campus speech codes and arguments over nine words in the president's State of the Union Address, you suggest that a series of obscene, vicious words directed against Jews is not evidence of an anti-semitic belief by the people who wrote them?

That argument may work for a young child who parrots what his parents say, or who idly draws swastikas without realizing what they stand for, but not for adults. Sorry. Stand a little closer to Occam's razor next time you shave.

Robert: And Jarvis hasn't banned me. In fact, I'm not banned on any site.

I watched the whole episode. He even mentioned the banning on the main page of his blog. I later saw that you were posting again and I asked him what's up. He said you were back on your meds and that he gave you a second chance. Maybe he blocked you again since then, I don't know.

Writing "Fuck Jews" is not anti-semitic.

That is absolutely idiotic and trollish.

part of the right's propaganda campaign against liberals and anything liberal

I've been a liberal my entire life until recently when I got fed up with it. "Fuck Jews" is not a liberal statement and you damn well know it, Robert. I know where I came from.

I don't have time to babysit here. I'm in head-cracking troll-removal mode. So check yourself.

Grant McEntire sez:

"Contemporary liberalism and leftism are two COMPLETELY different things and they mix about as well as oil and water."

So when's the Democratic party gonna separate into two already? Or are all the "true liberals" going to wind up Republicans?

ralph phelan asked:

Or are all the "true liberals" going to wind up Republicans?

I think I am a "true liberal," and I am a pre-9/11 life-long Democrat who will now, probably, vote mostly Republican.

Of course one swallow doesn't make a summer...

;-)

Jamie Irons

Michael,

Great site. Just been a lurker until now.

For what it's worth, per Webster's Ninth New Collegiate:

anti-Semitism: n (1881): hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group.

Also, on the Patriot Act, I don't know enough about it specifically to take a position one way or the other, but what concerns me is that the one person in Congress who admits to having read it (Russ Feingold) voted against it.

I can't believe Michael Turner was here defending sharia. That's incredible to me. And yes I've read the Koran. Turner says that it takes four males to verify that a wife has committed adultery. It also takes four males to verify that a woman has been raped.

And Robert McClelland doesn't think writing "Fuck the Jews" is anti-semitic. So I guess desecrating 127 Jewish graves in Alsace on April 30 was okay. It meant nothing. (It didn't even get reported in the U.S. And it was shrugged off in France.)

There's no dialogue possible with you. No "debate" is of any interest. Sharia is indefensible, period.

Wow. I didn't expect this here. Things have really gotten bad.

Everyone else: take care.

Yes, Miklos, it's bad.

This article has way too many generalizations that simply aren't true.

"Activists cast about for an issue with the proper political pedigree, one that could capture the hearts and minds of a new generation of students. And then, in the late '90s, many on the campus left adopted Palestine: a struggle involving both economics and ethnicity, one in which an underclass battled a militarily and economically dominant opponent."

This statement is way off base. The Israel-Palestine situation came to the forefront of international political discourse during the 1990's due to former President Clinton's efforts to establish peace, not due to some conspiracy by liberal Berkeley professors. And the New Intifada after the peace process broke down has made the issue even more explosive. This article makes it seem like the entire Israel-Palestine debate is some evil plan launched by liberal professors trying to corrupt students or something. Absolutely laughable. I've seen some of these Israeli and Palestinian demonstrations at both Cal and UCLA and they're all put on by the students in the local Jewish or Muslim student unions. There are no Professors at them. The only adults I've ever seen at them are a couple of rabbis and other activists from the local Hillel. The point is that professors have nothing to do with these events.

"And at UC Berkeley, which owes as much of its allure to radical rhetoric as to academic excellence, it thrives."

With statements like this, I wonder if this person has ever even been to Berkeley recently. Berkeley is no longer the bastion of leftism and radicalism that it once was in the 60's. Any radicalism left at the school is mostly a facade - put up by the few people who line the streets of Telegraph Avenue selling bumper stickers and pipes. The students there are mostly moderates from suburbia. They're just the same as students at any other university. And the campus conservative population is large and strong - they even have their own popular conservative alternative school newspaper called the Cal Patriot. Berkeley is also home to a libertarian hot dog stand and the conservative law professor John Yoo who helped the neocons in the Bush Administration develop a legal framework for why the U.S. doesn't have to comply with international laws governing prisoner rights.

Overall, this article is way off base. Its accusations about Berkeley's professors and its liberal population being anti-semitist are simply unfounded. The few examples that it points to are the work of radicals who are not at all representative of even a minority of the population at Berkeley. It's making unfounded accusations based off of a couple of bad apples. In reality, universities are the most multicultural and heterogeneous places in our entire society. You will meet more accepting people from more backgrounds at Cal or UCLA than you will anywhere else in the country.

Mike: In reality, universities are the most multicultural and heterogeneous places in our entire society.

I used to think that when I was in college. Then I graduated and moved to a real city and abruptly changed my mind. College towns are hive minds, but you can't really see it until you leave and get out of that system. The city I live in now is 20 times bigger than my old college town, and at least ten times as diverse.

What makes it more diverse isn't the fact that there are more non-white people here (there aren't) but because there are 2 million people with completely different lifestyles, backgrounds, and ways of thinking that are just totally missing in a young upper middle class campus environment.

The left has always had a thing for grand conspiracy theories to explain everything, from the assassination of JFK to LBJ's wife's rubber plantations in South Vietnam. Michele Catalano has had a lot of fun today with the twits over at Daily Kos; apparently they see some dark design in President Bush's bicycling accident.

So I'm not surprised that in the end they would get around to embracing the oldest conspiracy theory in the world. And you should not be shocked at this, really. The left has scapegoats for every grievance. Racism? The whites. Sexism? The men. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation? The straights.

But it is possible for the left to be comfortable with their bigotries, since they go against the majority, the people in positions of power. It is only when they turn on a minority that you suddenly see how wrong it is. That is to your credit, certainly, because bigotry against a minority group is particularly dangerous. But it is just as corrosive to society when the bigotry is expressed against straight white men.

Fiction:

"What makes it more diverse isn't the fact that there are more non-white people here (there aren't) but because there are 2 million people with completely different lifestyles, backgrounds, and ways of thinking that are just totally missing in a young upper middle class campus environment." - Michael J. Totten

Fact:

34.8 percent of UCLA students are from low-income backgrounds and 30.1 percent of UC Berkeley students are from low-income backgrounds. Of course this is all going to change now that Governor Schwarzenegger has completely severed all funding for student outreach programs.

Okay, Mike, fair enough.

Let me put it this way. Most college students are a similar age (I know there are exceptions) and at the same point in their lives. In a non-college big city it's a lot more varied. People who have had no contact with academia have very different temperaments and bring a whole different set of mental skills to the table, so to speak. I'm not saying it's necessarily good to have had no contact with academia; it depends on what else that person has done with his or her life.

Anyway, a guy who works as a refridgerator repair man and who has had the job since he was eighteen has a lot lower tolerance for abject bullshit than someone in an English Department. I'm not knocking English Departments when I say this because I graduated from a great one and I loved the experience. But there are drawbacks to that sort of environment, and one of them is over-intellectualizing things that really are not all that complicated. Cigars, for instance, if you catch my meaning. (Think Freud.)

I have a thought experiment for Robert, et al. Let's imagine that Weinberg is African American, and rewrite his account as follows:

"He remembers protesters insisting that Police checkpoints attempting to stop persons accused of burning a black church are as bad as Nazi death camps. He remembers the glass front door of a black church building -- where he attends Sunday services -- shattered by a cinderblock, with the message FUCK BLACKS scrawled nearby. He remembers the spray-painted nooses discovered one Monday morning last September on the walls of four lecture rooms in LeConte Hall accompanied by the chilling bilingual message, "Die, Blacks."

Is there even one person on this site who would not say that this is unadulterated racism? Would anyone say that this is argument by a few hot heads getting overly excited? Would anyone claim this is anything other than hate? Imagine that someone defending these words said, "These people don't hate African Americans. They oppose the policies of black kleptocracies in Africa that enrich a few government officials at the expense of their populations." Would that change anything? Of course not. Racism is Racism. Anti-Semitism is Anti-Semitism.

Hatred of Jews is no different. Those who would defend this type of conduct have to search their hearts for the true motives behind and meanings of these types of comments.

It is possible to oppose policies of the State of Israel without being anti-Semitic, just as it is possible to oppose affirmative action without being a racist. HOWEVER, when you oppose the policies of the State of Israel while yelling "Die Juden," you are an anti-Semite.

Yes, of course, we will soon see--or have we already?--liberals so tenderhearted that they won't buy war toys for their kids, so peaceloving that they WEEP with pacifistic fervor, carrying signs that say "kill the Jews."

vic44 writes, in response to the very weird and troubling place where Robert McClelland draws the line about antisemitism: "A classic liberal leftist defends anti-semitism. Not only typical, predictable as well."

(1) McClelland claiming that anti-semitic graffiti is not anti-semitic is something I can't remember hearing from any "classic liberal leftist," and I think I've known a great many who might fit whatever the definition is. Such behavior is neither typical, nor predictable.

(2) I haven't really been scrutinizing McClelland's posts for ideological leanings, but I haven't seen anything to indicate a leaning.

And why would there be one? Guess what, folks. You can even be a moderate Republican, even a moderate Democrat, but simply dislike Jews, or like them but still stereotype them. That's a lot more of America than many Americans would like to admit. Whether it's a Richard Nixon inquiring after the whereabout of Henry Kissinger by asking "Where's my Jew-boy?", or a Jimmy Carter griping sullenly, "Next time, I'm just going to fuck the Jews" in response to getting blindsided in some political machination in New York, there are quite a few gentiles out there - even in the power structure - who have been heard to mutter the occasional anti-semitic comment. I've heard antisemitic comments in my own family, so I know. To attribute antisemitism to the loony left and the loony right alone is to miss a pretty widespread sentiment that happens not to be very deep - at the moment.

Michael Totten has announced that he's cleaning up his comment section, because there is too much ad hominem commentary. Now, I'm not a "classic liberal leftist" (whatever that is). On even-numbered days of the week, I could vote a moderate GOP ticket, much to the horror of old friends in the home town of Berkeley, that supposed "epicenter of hatred." However, spraypainting "antisemite" on all "classic liberal leftists" strikes me as a blanket ad hominem attack based on the behavior of a single person who may not even fit the definition - whatever it is.

For that matter, I'm none too keen on having my home town and alma mater described as an "epicenter of hatred". In both Berkeley and in Tokyo I've experienced many actual earthquakes. I've seen my hometown and its campus through a good many changes, but the last time hatred was palpable to me on the scale of an earthquake was in the early 70s, when the length of its main street was littered for half a dozen blocks with window glass, after a riot. I could hardly breathe because of the tear gas still leaking from trashbins where the grenades had been dumped. I was a high school junior at the time, and I walked that main street at 2 AM (after the cops had finally won) and was incensed to discover that the public library's windows had not been spared. However, I did not at the time appreciate the depth and horror of the provocation. That riot was protesting a U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia - started in secret, without the approval of Congress - that ultimately claimed hundreds of thousands of Cambodian lives.

So let's get a sense of proportion already, shall we? "Epicenter of hatred"? Please. If you grew up in a small town in Oregon, and went to U. of Oregon, you haven't been at the epicenter of anything.

In a few comments here, I'm accused of "defending" Shariah legal systems for no other reason than having asked how they are inherently genocidal and fascist. (As for the attribution of "misogyny" under Shariah, I've said there's no question that women suffer inequalities under Shariah. Indeed they do - just as in America, the lower status of women was justified by many, for much of its history, in Biblical terms.)

Mary directed me to an essay at secularislam.org, an essay that doesn't reinforce the claims with citations, but merely repeats them. One of these claims was that a man can "easily" divorce his wife by simply saying "I divorce you" three times.

In Egypt, it's not easy. A man has to set three separate court dates for each declaration. There is plenty of time between each court date, delays that are provided for in what seems like a series of mandatory, calculated cooling off periods. The divorce rate in Egypt is under 2%. It's set to climb, with the liberalization of divorce laws to give women greater say in leaving their husbands.

Daniel Pipes has said that fundamentalist Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution. Somebody please point me to sources that convincingly argue that Shariah cannot liberalize away its own seemingly inherent conservatism. So far, all I've seen are unsubstantiated repetitions of the same claims. You can argue about the overall trend, but if you do, support it with facts and figures. Don't just awfulize about how it's all getting worse and worse. If there's a worsening trend in a particular place, be sure that you're describing a phenomenon driven by purely religious forces, not social or economic ones.

Michael,

I agree with what Daniel Pipes says about moderate Islam being the solution to the problem. If you read the man regularly, you'll also know plenty about what's really so nasty about Sharia.

I heartily recommend "The Two Faces of Islam" by Stephen Schwartz. He's a very interesting guy. He's a neoconservative who loves the labor movement, he's a Republican who has threatened to return to the left, and he's a Jew who converted to Sufi Islam. "The Two Faces of Islam" manages to be both a love letter to the religion and also a devastating condemnation of Saudi Wahhabi Islamofascism.

Michael Turner,

Also, about Berkeley. I have a special place in my heart for that town and I'm sad to see it's dark side. My own neck of the woods has similar problems, and maybe it's just a bit harder to see if you're in Asia and haven't been around lately to watch it happen. Portland, where I live now, is a lot more moderate a place but I've seen some real nastiness here too. The dark side of Portland used to be the skinheads and now it's the anarchists.

One of my ex-girlfriends joined the anarchists a few years ago. I know them well and I warned her. She seemed to think I was being a bit reactionary. Now, even though she is still somewhat of a radical, she says many of them are sick deranged people. Sometimes it's hard to know how true that really is if you haven't really spent some quality time around them. They aren't weird ultra-liberals. They are hatemongers.

Mike Reynolds: liberals so tenderhearted that they won't buy war toys for their kids, so peaceloving that they WEEP with pacifistic fervor, carrying signs that say "kill the Jews."

I already addressed this with Robert, but I guess I need to say it again.

No liberal carries a sign that says "Kill the Jews." I guarantee you such sentiment comes from the lunatic far-left or the Islamofascist "right." Genocide and liberalism are absolutely and irrevocably at odds with each other.

You are right , of course. I guess what I meant to to say is that they THINK of themselves as liberals.

Mike,

I'd bet it was Islamofascists that said "Kill the Jews." Maybe it was the ANSWER goons, but my money isn't on them. Either way, neither think of themselves as liberals. Liberals are utterly despised by both of those factions.

Some "liberals" like Robert are afraid to criticize them because of Political Correctness, which is ironic in the extreme since that forces him to make excuses for vicious racism. He trapped himself and can't get out of his own idiotic box.

Mike B. sez:

"In reality, universities are the most multicultural and heterogeneous places in our entire society. "

Funny. I now live in a non-college town in a somewhat conservative state (Nashua, NH), and I used to live in Cambridge, MA.

In my life I've seen stacks of newspapers gathered up and tossed in a dumpster by people who didn't like their point of view. I've seen speeches canceled because of threats of disruption by the speaker's political opponents. I've been at public meetings where minority views were literally shouted down by the crowd before they could be spoken. I've heard people tell me they were afraid to speak their real political views because they were afraid for their jobs.

None of these things happened in Nashua. All of them happened in Cambridge.

And by they way - we may be an un-diverse hick cow-town, but none of our synagogues have ever had a brick tossed through their windows.

Anneli Rufus's article about antisemitism in Berkeley consists more of quotes than facts, and there's nothing wrong with that. There is, however, quite a bit wrong with taking much of what was quoted with anything but a grain of salt.

Here is an example:

Two male students, like college guys anywhere, eyed a group of young women whose hair was hidden under the hijab, their blue-jeaned legs and excited voices shivery in the cold. "I wonder how all these women who are supporting the Arabs would feel about being clitorecticized," one of the guys murmured to his friend. By that, he meant the practice of clitoridectomy, which is followed in some traditional Islamic cultures.

Rufus is pretty careful here not to characterize Islam as offering some blanket endorsement of the practice of clitoridectomy. But not quite careful enough. In fact, clitoridectomy is a traditional practice in much of Africa, so traditional that it predates Islam. It continues to this day with varying degrees of support and discouragement in the more African Islamic cultures, but also in some areas of Africa that are far more Christian or animist than Muslim. It is vanishingly rare in India, and has no foothold worthy of mention in Indonesia, the top two countries in the world in terms of Muslim population.

A very interesting discussion of the practice can be found at the following site:

www.religioustolerance.org/fem_cirm.htm

I recommend reading it thoroughly before commenting.

I have read that in some parts of the world where cliitoridectomy is still practiced (I believe particularly in Egypt), most parties to the procedure are currently satisfied with a token labial nick. By this standard, I have been subject to radically extensive genital mutilation myself, and for no reason that makes any sense to me ("tradition" doesn't count as a "reason", to me.)

I bring this up to underscore a point: there's tendency in this forum to imagine that Islamic law explains much of the horror, distress and barbarism of some cultures in which Islam is the overwhelming majority religion. Actualy, Islam is a fairly new religion by world standards - it has survived and grown very much through adaptation to underlying cultures (much the same could be said of the Catholic church, by the way.)

As well, there's a tendency to think that Islamic law, as it strengthens in a nation, inexorably leads to ever more draconian social policies. The proponents of this view don't have to resort to extreme hypotheticals when they have the extreme actual of the erstwhile Taliban regime. However, this view slights the countertrends - in fact, Islam, like any religion, has to adapt to culture more than Islam can ever make a culture adapt to Islam. If there are powerful forces at work on a culture, Islam will tend follow them more than resist them. Last year, the theocracy police swept up thousands of satellite dishes in Iran, but admitted that there are ten times more than netted in that sweep. The existence of places in the world where theocracy has taken hold doesn't leave much room for doubt that conservative Islam faces an uphill struggle - Iran is no model, but it is a more liberal place than it was in 1980, and the Taliban regime crumbled fast under pressure. Denying all possibility of reform and improvement is itself an obstacle to reform and improvement. We do ourselves no favor with phobic responses and gross generalizations from the extremes.

A country can be over 95% Islamic, and still have a drag queen who is a staple on the TV talk show circuit. There was even one with the chutzpah to appeal to the authorities to get placed in a women's prison after being busted for pot possession. Yep, it happened in Indonesia late last year. Appeal denied, but hey, there are limits to everything. Including tolerance.

Mike Reynolds writes: "You are right, of course. I guess what I meant to to say is that they THINK of themselves as liberals."

Mike,you may have to submit yet another correction - you write here as if the bizarre scene you dscribe has already happened (and as if you know what any such hypothetical people would think of themselves.) But where has it happened, Mike? Where have you seen self-described liberals so pacifist that they forbid their children war toys, who have also carried picket signs say "Kill the Jews"?

Note to Michael Totten: this is rather blatant trolling, and I'm not sure why either of us have bothered to dignify it with an answer. Am I going ad hominem by suggesting that it's not just Robert McLelland who has gone off his medication, but Mike Reynolds as well? Here is the full quote:

Yes, of course, we will soon see--or have we already?--liberals so tenderhearted that they won't buy war toys for their kids, so peaceloving that they WEEP with pacifistic fervor, carrying signs that say "kill the Jews."

Reynolds is now writing as it's already been seen.

Why are some getting banned, and others getting lighter treatment? If Mike Reynolds wanted to say he was being sarcastic at the expense of the far Right, I suppose that would have worth a bar of soap, but I can't think of any other excuse. Not that any such excuse would wash, now, in view of his recent 'clarification.'

In reply to a note from me, Michael Totten writes: "I agree with what Daniel Pipes says about moderate Islam being the solution to the problem. If you read the man regularly, you'll also know plenty about what's really so nasty about Sharia."

I use that statement of Pipes' somewhat to my own amazement, because I found it startlingly reasonable after so much of what I've read from him. After all, Pipes is the one who claimed that not long after 9/11, an Islamist had proposed an Islamic takeover of the U.S. in a conference in San Jose. When I tracked the quote and established the context, however, I found that the line was spoken by a guy who seemed to be saying, in effect, the following: "America is such a great liberal, tolerant, free country that we Muslims will overcome the temporary wave of discrimination we're experiencing post-9/11, will earn our own due measure of respect in this society, and will put one of our own in the Oval Office as soon as a generation from now." If we can consider Joe Lieberman as President, why not a similarly devout, but otherwise liberal, Muslim? I happen to think this particular young man's hopes were too high, but sometimes it's the thought that counts. Curiously, the conference where this supposed putsch ambition was mooted was for an organization where, until the various local chapter websites decayed from disuse after 9/11, you could read of endorsements of George W. Bush for President in the 2000 elections.

Daniel Pipes: when he's good, he's good. But he goes off half-cocked sometimes. The low regard with which he's held in academic circles may well owe more to lapses of observance of peer-review protocols than to lousy peers. He might have interesting things to say about Sharia, but I think I'd want more reliable sources in the end.

"I heartily recommend "The Two Faces of Islam" by Stephen Schwartz...."

Noted, and thanks for the recommendation.

Berkeley is also home to a libertarian hot dog stand...

What, prithee tell, is a libertarian hot dog stand?

Michael Turner: Why are some getting banned, and others getting lighter treatment?

Because when I argued with the person in question his response was completely different than a troll's response would have been.

Michael Turner: Why are some getting banned, and others getting lighter treatment?

Michael Totten: Because when I argued with the person in question his response was completely different than a troll's response would have been.

Eh? His response (at least publicly) was to rephrase his original remark to say that certain people who think they are ultra-pacifist liberals and who have denied their children war toys out of this conviction have paraded around with signs saying "Kill the Jews." So he's not a troll, he's just a tad delusional in his ideological provocations? And that's OK? That's within your comfort zone? Or has there been some private exchange that you include when you refer to "his response"?

I'm working with this one, truly I am.

"No, Tommy, you can't have that Apache helicopter model kit. Ask for something nice, like maybe a jigsaw puzzle of a blue whale spouting."

"But Mom, me and Jason we're gonna use the helicopter to play this wargame where we use our minigun to mow down genocidal Jewish soldiers invading Gaza from the Zionist Entity."

"Oh ... well OK, then. But only if you use it for that, OK?"

"Sure Mom. Can we go play now?"

"Not until you finish your tofu."

Michael,

Are you suggested I kick Mike Reynolds off my site? If so, then just say so. I'll note your objection.

I have three jobs, four if you count this blog. Five if you count babysitting this blog. I don't have time to add a sixth which would be arguing about my babysitting policy.

I may be a little late to the party, but it's worth saying that there are different forms of sharia law in different places and at different times. http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Sharia

Just as there are different sects of Islam that may be more amenable to modernity (e.g., the notion of spiritual meritocracy among the Shia, the gnostic Sufi notion of personal enlightenment - really the opposite of literalist fundamentalism), there are different types of sharia as well, some far more hostile to Western notions of modernity than others.

One big medium term problem (IMO), is the exporting of Saudi style Wahabbism (and Wahabbist schooled sharia law) to historically relatively moderate Muslim countries (Indonesia, SE asia, Africa, etc.). Saudi funded Wahabbi schools are spreading a virulently extremist ideology among moderate muslim communities as you read this. If one US policy goal is to fight the threat of Islamic extremism, it seems to me that these schools'd better be addressed before the next generation has to deal with their graduates.

While you all debate the Middle East and fee speech, I'm focusing on the important questions here. I did a little research, and sure enough, here it is:

TOP DOG

"Gourmet sausages and libertarian propaganda, a hot-dog stand with a Berkeley twist.

In Short
Low prices, late-night hours and convenient location make Top Dog a popular destination for students and sausage devotees of all ages. The walls are plastered with libertarian and anti-government quotations, cartoons and clippings, all worth a free chortle. Sausages range from hot links with a serious kick to classic kielbasa to chicken apple. The chefs cook all sausages to order on the grill, and even the buns are griddled to a golden crisp."

Yes, after you've strolled across the beautiful U.C. Berkeley campus, and noted the curious dearth of continuously-erupting, seismically-intense antisemitic outrages being committed left and right, definitely go to grab a hot dog at Top Dog. The kielbasa is especially good.

This plan works whether you traverse that campus from north to south or south to north, since their are two stores (last I checked anyway), one on either side. Top Dog used to have a store in downtown Berkeley as well, covering the western front, but it burned. No big loss - it was dark, dingy, and my only clear memory of it was of arguing with a guy who was trying to steal my first girlfriend in high school.

As noted, if you end up there with nothing to read while you eat your hot dog, well, no problemo, muchacho: lots of Libertarian propaganda up on the walls.

Wow! Sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes. I guess "liberal" is a loaded term. "Progressive" comes closer to what I was getting at. In fact, I have been to "peace" demonstrations in which some of the demonstrators declared themselves eager to fight the Israelis. I have been to exhibits of peace-themed art that consisted largely of portraits of heroic-looking guerrillas wearing cartridge belts. All too often, progressives talk loudly and sententiously about Peace and Justice -- ie., first the Justice and (only) then the Peace. Talk about self-delusion! Be fervently partisan if you like, be a co-belligerent if you like, but please please spare us all from having to hear you do it in the name of Peace and Pacifism.

As a recent Boalt grad (Berkeley's law school, class of '02), I can tell you without reservation that the Cal Patriot (whose newspapers are routinely stolen and destroyed) and Top Dog are not effective counterweights to the overwhelming left-wing sentiment that pervades the campus and the city as a whole. Even at Boalt, where presumably the students are more intelligent and better educated than the main campus, rigid left-wing orthodoxy holds sway, including more than a fair amount of Jew hatred.

Really, does anyone think a Jew who has just seen his house of worship vandalized and been subject to death threats is going to feel better because he can read Rand quotes while powering down a hot link?

David Duke is a malignant narcissist.

He invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and the trappings of power further exacerbate this. Real life authority and David Duke’s predilection to surround him with obsequious sycophants support David Duke’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience.

David Duke's personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as "victims of persecution".
Duke fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, and mythology. The leader is this religion's ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Duke is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people - or humanity at large - should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, Duke became a distorted version of Nietzsche's "superman".

But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral. In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things "natural" - or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to, as "nature" is not natural at all.

Duke invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial - though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols - not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.
In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.

Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism - and the cult's leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.

Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the "old ways" - against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon David Duke like (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.

Minorities or "others" - often arbitrarily selected - constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is "wrong". They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are "decadent", they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin ... They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenseless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.

This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm - together with Stalin - as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.

Duke prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - Duke having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "Earth shattering" and "revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.

It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of David Duke. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform David Duke like narrative. Thus, David Duke who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite - is highly unlikely to use violence at first. The pacific mask crumbles when David Duke has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, and the prime sources of his narcissistic supply - have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, David Duke strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form", etc. When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail, David Duke becomes injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized - is now discarded with contempt and hatred. This primitive defense mechanism is called "splitting".

To David Duke, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. Duke is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the country, etc. The "small people", the "rank and file", and the "loyal soldiers" of David Duke - his flock, his nation, and his employees - they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated - is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of David Duke. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.

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BLINK 182 Lyrics

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HOOBASTANK Lyrics -
EMINEM Lyrics -
BEATLES Lyrics -
YELLOWCARD Lyrics

ALICIA KEYS Lyrics -
SLIPKNOT Lyrics -
D12 Lyrics -
AVRIL LAVIGNE Lyrics

JESSICA SIMPSON Lyrics -
EVANESCENCE Lyrics -
NIRVANA Lyrics -
METALLICA Lyrics

JAY-Z Lyrics -
MODEST MOUSE Lyrics -
LINKIN PARK Lyrics -
2 PAC Lyrics

DAVE MATTHEWS BAND Lyrics -
50 CENT Lyrics -
PINK FLOYD Lyrics

SEAN PAUL Lyrics

CHRISTINA AGUILERA Lyrics -
PEARL JAM Lyrics -
IMMORTAL Lyrics

COLDPLAY Lyrics -
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS Lyrics -
GREEN DAY Lyrics

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