===
Some more maudlin humor!
For those who haven't heard,
Colorado just passed both laws -
gay marriage and legalized marijuana.
The fact that gay marriage and marijuana were legalized
on the same day makes perfect biblical sense
because Leviticus 20:13 says,
"If a man lies with another man they should be stoned."
We just hadn't interpreted it correctly before!
Roe vs. Wade
>> Bambi, a blonde in her fourth year as a UCLA freshman, sat in her US government class.
>> The professor asked Bambi if she knew what Roe vs. Wade was about.
>>
>> Bambi pondered the question then finally said, "That was the decision George Washington
>> had to make before he crossed the Delaware.
Roe vs. Wade
>> Bambi, a blonde in her fourth year as a UCLA freshman, sat in her US government class.
>> The professor asked Bambi if she knew what Roe vs. Wade was about.
>>
>> Bambi pondered the question then finally said, "That was the decision George Washington
>> had to make before he crossed the Delaware.
and then
Both seem incompetent, both seem out of control and lost and both have produced a lot of discomfort, confusion and suffering..
===
My friend, Kim, points the way with her clear message.
Republicans need to avoid negativity but not shy away from responding to attacks, defend their views and offer rational solutions in clear and understandable language.
That is what is called being an American. (See 1 below.)
===
After Obama leaves The White House he should go work for Johnson and Johnson because everything he does reminds me of a boo boo and a band aid solution. (See 2 and 2a below.)
===
Recently I wrote a memo entitled: "My Thoughts on Where We Are, How We Got There and Where We Might Be Heading"
I began to reflect upon what I wrote and I want to add two other thoughts.
One pertains to what can destroy a united nation and the other is an outgrowth of an issue that, like I said about Civil Rights, was overdue in being addressed but also has resulted in serious unintended consequences.
Another matter that can bring down a united nation is when that nation moves away from a common language. English must remain America's common legal language. Other languages can certainly be spoken but English has to remain our sole legal language.
An event that, as I say, was long overdue in being addressed like Civil Rights was Women's Rights. That said, it also has spawned a host of unintended consequences which have torn at the fabric of our society and which remain unresolved to this day.
Then I came upon this article about structural problems and I thought it worth posting. (See 3 below.)
===
When you are weak, inept and lack confidence you project by blaming others. Obama needed GW , . Europe needs Israel! (See 4 below.)
And just another peace loving Muslim. (See 4a below.)
===
DickAfter Obama leaves The White House he should go work for Johnson and Johnson because everything he does reminds me of a boo boo and a band aid solution. (See 2 and 2a below.)
===
Recently I wrote a memo entitled: "My Thoughts on Where We Are, How We Got There and Where We Might Be Heading"
I began to reflect upon what I wrote and I want to add two other thoughts.
One pertains to what can destroy a united nation and the other is an outgrowth of an issue that, like I said about Civil Rights, was overdue in being addressed but also has resulted in serious unintended consequences.
Another matter that can bring down a united nation is when that nation moves away from a common language. English must remain America's common legal language. Other languages can certainly be spoken but English has to remain our sole legal language.
An event that, as I say, was long overdue in being addressed like Civil Rights was Women's Rights. That said, it also has spawned a host of unintended consequences which have torn at the fabric of our society and which remain unresolved to this day.
Then I came upon this article about structural problems and I thought it worth posting. (See 3 below.)
===
When you are weak, inept and lack confidence you project by blaming others. Obama needed GW , . Europe needs Israel! (See 4 below.)
And just another peace loving Muslim. (See 4a below.)
===
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1) A 2014 GOP Election Model
Republicans celebrating this week's victory in a Florida special House election are right to take the race as proof that they've got a potent midterm weapon in ObamaCare. Those looking to mimic the model this fall would be even wiser to view David Jolly's win in its broader context: This was a victory of offense.
1) A 2014 GOP Election Model
Republican David Jolly won a hotly contested special House election by going on offense against Democratic campaign themes—not just by opposing ObamaCare.
By Kim StrasselRepublicans celebrating this week's victory in a Florida special House election are right to take the race as proof that they've got a potent midterm weapon in ObamaCare. Those looking to mimic the model this fall would be even wiser to view David Jolly's win in its broader context: This was a victory of offense.
Democrats should have won. President Obama won this district twice. Democratic candidate Alex Sink carried Pinellas County four years ago when she narrowly lost a gubernatorial bid against Rick Scott. She outspent her opponent at least 3 to 1 on television ads, while outside Democratic groups outspent Republicans. Mr. Jolly entered the race an unknown.
He evened the odds by hitting hard, day in and day out, on the miseries of ObamaCare. This message resonated in particular with Republican base voters, who reliably turned out to vote on Tuesday. This matters. It was big conservative turnout, fueled by anger over ObamaCare, that drove Republicans' sweeping House gains in 2010. The Florida race suggests renewed conservative frustration over the law could prove as powerful a turnout tool this fall.
David Jolly and Alex Sink at a candidate forum in Clearwater, Fla., Feb. 25. Reuters
Yet Mr. Jolly didn't win with conservatives alone. Nearly 30% of voters in the 13th district are unaffiliated with a party, and some polls have shown independents are disinclined to "repeal" the health law. This is the basis of the Democrats' "fix-it" argument, which Ms. Sink flogged.
But the Republican never ran on repeal alone. Many of the conservative ads against Ms. Sink in fact never mentioned "repeal." As Mr. Jolly's website noted, he was in favor of replacing ObamaCare with "private sector solutions that address very specific problems in the health insurance industry." He spoke about some of these reforms, including allowing Americans to decouple their health care from their employer. He noted that the GOP "simply cannot be the party of 'no.'" This helped blunt the Sink argument that Republicans are only interested in rolling back the country to the pre-ObamaCare days.
Equally important, the Republican side went on offense against the growing roster of Democratic campaign themes. The party has used them to great effect in any number of recent elections, including most recently in the Virginia governor's race. The difference this time is that the GOP had answers.
Ms. Sink, for instance, rolled out the GOP-Wants-To-Throw-Granny-Off-The-Cliff line. Democrats beat on Mr. Jolly on seniors' issues, claiming he wanted to privatize Social Security and cut Medicare. Rather than run from that debate, the Republican reassured voters that he supported honoring current benefits for those in, at or remotely near retirement.
Yet he also made the case for long-term reforms to entitlement programs—insisting that, yes, Social Security privatization needs to be among the options considered. He pointed out that the only folks who have done serious recent damage to Medicare are Democrats who robbed the program to pay for ObamaCare. The district's large senior-citizen voting population knew this to be true.
Democrats also unfurled the "war against women" theme, claiming that Mr. Jolly opposed "equal pay for equal work" for women and abortion rights. He responded that wage discrimination based on gender should be illegal, and in fact already is. He laid out a straightforward pro-life position, highlighting standard exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother—and didn't waver from it. The Democrats couldn't get much traction.
Democrats simultaneously worked the "class warfare" theme, highlighting Mr. Jolly's lobbyist past and claiming he was in the race to reward special interests and fleece the middle class. Outside conservative groups ran ads and flyers pointing out the billions the state's pension fund lost when Ms. Sink sat on a panel overseeing it, and also noting the $8.8 million in compensation she made as a bank executive. Turns out voters are a bit skeptical of wealthy ex-bankers posing as populists.
The left even tried a Conservative-Special-Interests-Are-Buying-The-Election approach, with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee putting out a memo that warned that the billionaire "Koch Brothers" would "prop up" Mr. Jolly to ensure that they have "more power in Washington than Pinellas families." It was hard for voters to take this claim seriously when the airwaves were blanketed with Sink ads—many paid for by liberal "special interests" such as House Majority PAC. Harry Reid, recall your strategist.
Speaking of outside groups, one other race highlight was how pro-Jolly groups—American Crossroads, American Action Network, YG Network, Chamber of Commerce—came together to support him and key themes in the campaign. This teamwork is in vivid contrast to the feuding spats roiling some conservative primaries.
The Republicans who win this fall will be those who have serious answers to the attacks leveled on them—about ObamaCare, the economy, women's and seniors' issues. That's the bigger lesson of Florida.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) Economists to D.C.: Hiking the Minimum Wage Is a Band-Aid
More than 500 economists, including three Nobel laureates, signed a letter saying that artificially raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour through a government mandate, as President Obama has suggested, would have adverse effects on the job chances of unskilled and low-skilled workers.
In an open letter titled "A Statement to Federal Policy Makers," the group said the fact unemployment is so high and that so many Americans have simply abandoned the workforce has left lawmakers groping for a "silver bullet solution."
However, hiking the minimum wage is a simplistic ploy that ignores the need for meaningful measures to ease the plight of Americans in need, the economists said.
"To alleviate these burdens . . . we need a mix of solutions that encourage employment, business creation and boost earnings rather than across-the-board mandates that raise the cost of labor," the letter stated.
One of the signers of the letter, Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in a column for the American Enterprise Institute, "The tragedy of this well-intentioned, but misguided, legislation is that it would harm and disadvantage the very workers it is intended to help."
Perry said the letter signers were "voicing their collective objection to a government price control for entry-level workers."
"The 500+ economists who have signed the letter are in general agreement that economic reality and the laws of supply and demand are not optional, despite the arrogant attempts of economically challenged politicians and progressives to circumvent or disregard the most basic economic theory, economic laws and economic logic," Perry explained.
The Nobel laureates signing the letter were economists Vernon Smith, Edward Prescott and Eugene Fama.
Many of the signers were noted academic economists, such as Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University and Gary Hansen of University of California, Los Angeles.
Others included former or current public officials such as Robert Heller, a former governor of the Federal Reserve and Warren Coats of the International Monetary Fund, plus a sprinkling of well-known think-tank economists such as George Shultz of the Hoover Institution, who is a former director of the Office of Management and Budget and was Secretary of State under President Reagan.
In their letter, the signers warned that if the federal minimum wage is hiked, "business owners saddled with a higher cost of labor will need to cut costs or pass the increase to their consumers in order to make ends meet.
"Many of the businesses that pay their workers minimum wage operate on extremely tight profit margins, with any increase in the cost of labor threatening this delicate balance."
The economists' letter noted that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that
raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would cost the economy 500,000 jobs by 2016 — many of them unskilled positions held by people the law ironically would be intended to help.
In January, seven Nobel prize-winning economists and eight former presidents of the American Economic Association took the opposite position, and signed a letter in support of raising the minimum wage, according to BusinessWeek.
According to a new Bloomberg poll, most Americans support raising the minimum wage, but only if it means no loss of jobs.
2a) Brief and brilliant
and more from Walter E Williams, who is black himself:
Black People Duped
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3) 5 Structural Problems That Are Destroying America
By John Hawkins2) Economists to D.C.: Hiking the Minimum Wage Is a Band-Aid
More than 500 economists, including three Nobel laureates, signed a letter saying that artificially raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour through a government mandate, as President Obama has suggested, would have adverse effects on the job chances of unskilled and low-skilled workers.
In an open letter titled "A Statement to Federal Policy Makers," the group said the fact unemployment is so high and that so many Americans have simply abandoned the workforce has left lawmakers groping for a "silver bullet solution."
However, hiking the minimum wage is a simplistic ploy that ignores the need for meaningful measures to ease the plight of Americans in need, the economists said.
"To alleviate these burdens . . . we need a mix of solutions that encourage employment, business creation and boost earnings rather than across-the-board mandates that raise the cost of labor," the letter stated.
One of the signers of the letter, Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in a column for the American Enterprise Institute, "The tragedy of this well-intentioned, but misguided, legislation is that it would harm and disadvantage the very workers it is intended to help."
Perry said the letter signers were "voicing their collective objection to a government price control for entry-level workers."
"The 500+ economists who have signed the letter are in general agreement that economic reality and the laws of supply and demand are not optional, despite the arrogant attempts of economically challenged politicians and progressives to circumvent or disregard the most basic economic theory, economic laws and economic logic," Perry explained.
The Nobel laureates signing the letter were economists Vernon Smith, Edward Prescott and Eugene Fama.
Many of the signers were noted academic economists, such as Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University and Gary Hansen of University of California, Los Angeles.
Others included former or current public officials such as Robert Heller, a former governor of the Federal Reserve and Warren Coats of the International Monetary Fund, plus a sprinkling of well-known think-tank economists such as George Shultz of the Hoover Institution, who is a former director of the Office of Management and Budget and was Secretary of State under President Reagan.
In their letter, the signers warned that if the federal minimum wage is hiked, "business owners saddled with a higher cost of labor will need to cut costs or pass the increase to their consumers in order to make ends meet.
"Many of the businesses that pay their workers minimum wage operate on extremely tight profit margins, with any increase in the cost of labor threatening this delicate balance."
The economists' letter noted that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that
raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would cost the economy 500,000 jobs by 2016 — many of them unskilled positions held by people the law ironically would be intended to help.
In January, seven Nobel prize-winning economists and eight former presidents of the American Economic Association took the opposite position, and signed a letter in support of raising the minimum wage, according to BusinessWeek.
According to a new Bloomberg poll, most Americans support raising the minimum wage, but only if it means no loss of jobs.
2a) Brief and brilliant
By Walter E WilliamsDependency, Not Poverty
There is no material poverty in the U.S. Here are a few facts about people whom the Census Bureau labels as poor. Dr. Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, in their study "Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts About America's Poor" (http://tinyurl.com/448flj8), report that 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning; nearly three-quarters have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more. Two-thirds have cable or satellite TV. Half have one or more computers. Forty-two percent own their homes. Poor Americans have more living space than the typical non-poor person in Sweden, France or the U.K. What we have in our nation are dependency and poverty of the spirit, with people making unwise choices and leading pathological lives aided and abetted by the welfare state.
The Census Bureau pegs the poverty rate among blacks at 35 percent and among whites at 13 percent. The illegitimacy rate among blacks is 72 percent, and among whites it's 30 percent. A statistic that one doesn't hear much about is that the poverty rate among black married families has been in the single digits for more than two decades, currently at 8 percent. For married white families, it's 5 percent. Now the politically incorrect questions: Whose fault is it to have children without the benefit of marriage and risk a life of dependency? Do people have free will, or are they governed by instincts?There may be some pinhead sociologists who blame the weak black family structure on racial discrimination. But why was the black illegitimacy rate only 14 percent in 1940, and why, as Dr. Thomas Sowell reports, do we find that census data "going back a hundred years, when blacks were just one generation out of slavery ... showed that a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults. This fact remained true in every census from 1890 to 1940"? Is anyone willing to advance the argument that the reason the illegitimacy rate among blacks was lower and marriage rates higher in earlier periods was there was less racial discrimination and greater opportunity?
No one can blame a person if he starts out in life poor, because how one starts out is not his fault. If he stays poor, he is to blame because it is his fault. Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior. It turns out that a married couple, each earning the minimum wage, would earn an annual combined income of $30,000. The Census Bureau poverty line for a family of two is $15,500, and for a family of four, it's $23,000. By the way, no adult who starts out earning the minimum wage does so for very long.
Since President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, the nation has spent about $18 trillion at the federal, state and local levels of government on programs justified by the "need" to deal with some aspect of poverty. In a column of mine in 1995, I pointed out that at that time, the nation had spent $5.4 trillion on the War on Poverty, and with that princely sum, "you could purchase every U.S. factory, all manufacturing equipment, and every office building. With what's left over, one could buy every airline, trucking company and our commercial maritime fleet. If you're still in the shopping mood, you could also buy every television, radio and power company, plus every retail and wholesale store in the entire nation" (http://tinyurl.com/kmhy6es). Today's total of $18 trillion spent on poverty means you could purchase everything produced in our country each year and then some.
There's very little guts in the political arena to address the basic causes of poverty. To do so risks being labeled as racist, sexist, uncaring and insensitive. That means today's dependency is likely to become permanent.
and more from Walter E Williams, who is black himself:
Black People Duped
People in the media and academia are mostly leftists hellbent on growing government and controlling our lives. Black people, their politicians and civil rights organizations have become unwitting accomplices. The leftist pretense of concern for the well-being of black people confers upon them an aura of moral superiority and, as such, gives more credibility to their calls for increasing government control over our lives.
Ordinary black people have been sold on the importance of electing blacks to high public office. After centuries of black people having been barred from high elected office, no decent American can have anything against their wider participation in our political system. For several decades, blacks have held significant political power, in the form of being mayors and dominant forces on city councils in major cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, Memphis, Tenn., Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans, Oakland, Calif., Newark, N.J., and Cincinnati. In these cities, blacks have held administrative offices such as school superintendent, school principal and chief of police. Plus, there’s the precedent-setting fact of there being 44 black members of Congress and a black president.
What has this political power meant for the significant socio-economic problems faced by a large segment of the black community? Clearly, it has done little or nothing for academic achievement; the number of black students scoring proficient is far below the national average. It is a disgrace -- and ought to be a source of shame -- to know that the average white seventh- or eighth-grader can run circles around the average black 12th-grader in most academic subjects. The political and education establishment tells us that the solution lies in higher budgets, but the fact of business is that some of the worst public school districts have the highest spending per student. Washington, D.C., for example, spends more than $29,000 per student and scores at nearly the bottom in academic achievement.
Each year, roughly 7,000 -- and as high as 9,000 -- blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Contrast this with the fact that black fatalities during the Korean War (3,075), Vietnam War (7,243) and wars since 1980 (about 8,200) total about 18,500. Young black males have a greater chance of reaching maturity on the battlefields than on the streets of Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Newark and other cities. Black political power and massive city budgets have done absolutely nothing to ameliorate this problem of black insecurity.
Most of the problems faced by the black community have their roots in a black culture that differs significantly from the black culture of yesteryear. Today only 35 percent of black children are raised in two-parent households, but as far back as 1880, in Philadelphia, 75 percent of black children were raised in two-parent households -- and it was as high as 85 percent in other places. Even during slavery, in which marriage was forbidden, most black children were raised with two biological parents. The black family managed to survive several centuries of slavery and generations of the harshest racism and Jim Crow, to ultimately become destroyed by the welfare state. The black family has fallen victim to the vision fostered by some intellectuals that, in the words of a sociology professor in the 1960s, "it has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes." The real issue to these intellectuals "is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income." That suggests that fathers can be replaced by a welfare check. The weakened black family gives rise to problems such has high crime, predation and other forms of anti-social behavior.
The cultural problems that affect many black people are challenging and not pleasant to talk about, but incorrectly attributing those problems to racism and racial discrimination, a need for more political power, and a need for greater public spending condemns millions of blacks to the degradation and despair of the welfare state.
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3) 5 Structural Problems That Are Destroying America
The biggest fallacy in politics is that we need "another Reagan" or more "Tea Partiers" in Congress if we want to save the country. Granted, either would certainly help, but America's structural problems are much bigger than any personnel issues we have in D.C. Even if you're an extremely talented craftsman, you're going to have trouble building a house if the only materials you're allowed to work with are sand and straw. It wouldn't matter if Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant were all on the same basketball team if they were only allowed to put three players on the court at a time. If you're trying to build the world's largest farm in the middle of the Sahara Desert, it probably isn't going to matter if you have state of the art equipment.
We have the ability to fix every problem that's confronting us as a nation, but until we stop making cosmetic changes and start addressing the underlying, intractable issues that are ruining the country, we're unlikely to make a lot of progress.
1) Insufficient Turnover In Congress: Because of gerrymandering, political polarization, and a lack of term limits, Congress has turned into a stagnant pond. In most states and districts, that notorious Third World dictum (One man, one vote, one time) has become the rule. Unless a politician upsets his own side's interest groups or gets caught up in a major scandal, an election to Congress is likely to last until a politician is ready to retire to a beach somewhere. Career politicians produce bad outcomes for the country. Members of Congress make draconian laws because they don't expect to have to live under them as citizens. Additionally, politicians who view being members of Congress as their "jobs" are likely to feel very comfortable selling out the country to special interest groups because they contribute to their campaigns and it benefits them personally. As a practical matter, we've gotten to the point where there's not much difference between most members of Congress and nobles from 500 years ago who ruled because of their family names and given that, it's no surprise that many of them "rule" just as poorly.
2) A Broken Education System: The primary goal of our education is not to educate our students; it's to sustain the teachers’ unions and fatten the bank accounts of the college professors and administrators at our universities. This is why the education establishment hates private schools, school vouchers, and charter schools, even though they do a better job of educating students than our public school system. It's also why, as Mike Rowe likes to say, "We are lending money we don't have to kids who can't pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist." In a time when low-skill jobs are being replaced by automation and sent overseas, the quality of our high school education is inferior in most ways to what it was a couple of generations ago while the price of our college education has skyrocketed. In a world where the economy is increasingly centered around high-skill jobs, our education system is a recipe for decay.
3) Unsustainable Spending: It is quite literally impossible to pay off the debt our nation owes along with the commitment we've made to our own citizens via Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security unless inflation dramatically reduces the value of our currency which would erode savings, drive cost-of-living expenses into the stratosphere and generally decimate the economy. Meanwhile, taking even the mildest steps to safeguard the future of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid has proven to be almost impossible in the current political environment. As a practical matter, this means our country is headed towards bankruptcy or runaway inflation so bad that we might as well be bankrupt. The tragedy of this is that there is no issue more important to our nation's future, but that has been said so often that most people's eyes glaze over when you talk about the subject. Sadly, our nation will probably have to start going over the falls before everyone agrees that we have to start paddling in the other direction and by then, it will be too late.
4) Our Immigration Policies: An ideal immigration policy would be based on merit, would focus on adding highly skilled immigrants, would be easily adjustable, wouldn't change the demographics of our country and would be simple and inexpensive for law-abiding immigrants. Our current system meets none of these requirements. Instead, we have a system that for all practical matters favors a law-breaking 17 year old from Mexico with a third grade education over a British neurosurgeon or a German engineer. Moreover, at times like these, when so many Americans are out of work, it's worth asking whether it makes sense to be bringing in any new citizens. That's not a slam on immigrants because we have a lot of hard-working entrepreneurs who came here because they saw America as a land of opportunity; it's an acknowledgement of the most basic fact of immigration: the whole purpose of it is to benefit people who are already American citizens. Bringing in uneducated ditch-diggers who'll never pay income tax doesn't benefit most Americans. Intentionally changing the demographics of the country doesn't benefit most Americans. Rewarding lawbreakers who come into the country illegally doesn't benefit most Americans. Bringing in more than a million new immigrants a year when there are less people working today than there were seven years ago doesn't benefit most Americans. Immigration could be America's greatest strength, but our poorly designed system makes no sense. No business could survive if it brought in the same number of new employees every year, regardless of qualifications or need, then added everyone who could sneak into its lobby onto the payroll. Long term, our nation isn't much different than that business.
5) An Overly-Progressive Tax System: America doesn't have the highest taxes in the Western world, but it does have the most progressive tax system in the Western world. As a practical matter, what this means is that we have large numbers of Americans voting on whether others should pay more taxes in order to give them things. This is a recipe for disaster because it penalizes the most successful Americans, makes it more difficult to get ahead, discourages investment and job growth, and encourages massive spending in order to produce very marginal benefits. Put another way, "if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can be pretty sure of getting Paul’s vote." Meanwhile, as we've learned during the Obama era, even after Paul ends up with Peter's cash, he'll still be screaming that he's not getting his "fair share." That's not a recipe for a happy society, a growing economy or a small, efficient government.
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4) Europe's Alarming Push to Isolate Israel
Police vehicle in France. (Photo: Wiki Commons).
4) Europe's Alarming Push to Isolate Israel
When President Barack Obama warned of “international fallout” if Israel fails to embrace the latest U.S. Middle East peace proposal, Newsmax asked noted author and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz to comment on the growing talk of a European boycott against Israel.
Why are so many of the grandchildren of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who brought us the Holocaust once again declaring war on the Jews?
Why have we seen such an increase in anti-Semitism and irrationally virulent anti-Zionism in western Europe?
To answer these questions, a myth must first be exposed. That myth is the one perpetrated by the French, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Swiss, the Belgians, the Austrians, and many other western Europeans: namely that the Holocaust was solely the work of German Nazis aided perhaps by some Polish, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian collaborators.
False.
The Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans -- by Nazi sympathizers and collaborators among the French, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss, Belgians, Austrians and other Europeans, both Western and Eastern.
If the French government had not deported to the death camps more Jews than their German occupiers asked for; if so many Dutch and Belgian citizens and government officials had not cooperated in the roundup of Jews; if so many Norwegians had not supported Quisling; if Swiss government officials and bankers had not exploited Jews; if Austria had not been more Nazi than the Nazis, the Holocaust would not have had so many Jewish victims.
In light of the widespread European complicity in the destruction of European Jewry, the pervasive anti-Semitism and irrationally hateful anti-Zionism that has recently surfaced throughout western Europe toward Israel should surprise no one.
“Oh no,” we hear from European apologists. “This is different. We don’t hate the Jews. We only hate their nation-state. Moreover, the Nazis were right-wing. We’re left-wing, so we can’t be anti-Semites.”
Nonsense.
The hard left has a history of anti-Semitism as deep and enduring as the hard right. The line from Voltaire, to Karl Marx, to Levrenti Beria, to Robert Faurisson, to today’s hard-left Israel bashers is as straight as the line from Wilhelm Mars to the persecutors of Alfred Dreyfus to Hitler.
The Jews of Europe have always been crushed between the Black and the Red -- victims of extremism whether it be the ultra-nationalism of Khmelnitsky to the ultra-anti-Semitism of Stalin.
“But some of the most strident anti-Zionists are Jews, such as Norman Finkelstein and even Israelis such as Gilad Atzmon. Surely they can’t be anti-Semites.”
Why not? Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas collaborated with the Gestapo. Atzmon, a hard leftist, describes himself as a proud self-hating Jew and admits that his ideas derive from a notorious anti-Semite.
He denies that the Holocaust is historically proved but he believes that Jews may well have killed Christian children to use their blood to bake Passover Matzah. And he thinks it's “rational” to burn down synagogues.
Finkelstein believes in an international Jewish conspiracy that includes Steven Spielberg, Leon Uris, Eli Wiesel, and Andrew Lloyd Webber!
“But Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians,” the European apologists insist, "and we are sensitive to the plight of the underdog.”
No, you’re not! Where are your demonstrations on behalf of the oppressed Tibetans, Georgians, Syrians, Armenians, Kurds, or even Ukrainians? Where are your BDS movements against the Chinese, the Russians, the Cubans, the Turks, or the Assad regime?
Only the Palestinians, only Israel? Why? Not because the Palestinians are more oppressed than these and other groups.
Only because their alleged oppressors are Jews and the nation-state of the Jews. Would there be demonstrations and BDS campaigns on behalf of the Palestinians if they were oppressed by Jordan or Egypt?
Oh, wait! The Palestinians were oppressed by Egypt and Jordan. Gaza was an open-air prison between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt was the occupying power. And remember Black September, when Jordan killed more Palestinians than Israel did in a century? I don’t remember any demonstration or BDS campaigns -- because there weren’t any.
When Arabs occupy or kill Arabs, Europeans go ho-hum. But when Israel opens a soda factory in Maale Adumim, which even the Palestinian leadership acknowledges will remain part of Israel in any peace deal, Oxfam parts ways with Scarlett Johansson for advertising a soda company that employs hundreds of Palestinians.
Keep in mind that Oxfam has provided “aid and material support” to two anti-Israel terrorist groups, according to the Tel Aviv-based Israeli Law Group.
The hypocrisy of so many hard-left western Europeans would be staggering if it were not so predictable based on the sordid history of Western Europe’s treatment of the Jews.
Even England, which was on the right side of the war against Nazism, has a long history of anti-Semitism, beginning with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 to the notorious White Paper of 1939, which prevented the Jews of Europe for seeking asylum from the Nazis in British-mandated Palestine. And Ireland, which vacillated in the war against Hitler, boasts some of the most virulent anti-Israel rhetoric.
The simple reality is that one cannot understand the current western European left-wing war against the nation-state of the Jewish people without first acknowledging the long-term European war against the Jewish people themselves.
Theodore Herzl understood the pervasiveness and irrationality of European anti-Semitism, which led him to the conclusion that the only solution to Europe’s Jewish problem was for European Jews to leave that bastion of Jew hatred and return to their original homeland, which is now the state of Israel.
None of this is to deny Israel’s imperfections or the criticism it justly deserves for some of its policies. But these imperfections and deserved criticism cannot even begin to explain, must less justify, the disproportionate hatred directed against the only nation-state of the Jewish people and the disproportionate silence regarding the far greater imperfections and deserved criticism of other nations and groups—including the Palestinians.
Nor is this to deny that many western European individuals and some western European countries have refused to succumb to the hatred against the Jews or their state. The Czech Republic comes to mind. But far too many western Europeans are as irrational in their hatred toward Israel as their forbearers were in their hatred toward their Jewish neighbors.
As author Amos Oz once aptly observed: the walls of his grandparents' Europe were covered with graffiti saying, “Jews, go to Palestine.” Now they say, “Jews, get out of Palestine” -- by which is meant Israel.
Who do these western European bigots think they’re fooling? Only fools who want to be fooled in the interest of denying that they are manifesting new variations on their grandparents’ old biases.
Any objective person with an open mind, open eyes, and an open heart must see the double standard being applied to the nation-state of the Jewish people. Many doing so are the grandchildren of those who lethally applied a double standard to the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
For shame!
Why are so many of the grandchildren of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who brought us the Holocaust once again declaring war on the Jews?
Why have we seen such an increase in anti-Semitism and irrationally virulent anti-Zionism in western Europe?
To answer these questions, a myth must first be exposed. That myth is the one perpetrated by the French, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Swiss, the Belgians, the Austrians, and many other western Europeans: namely that the Holocaust was solely the work of German Nazis aided perhaps by some Polish, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian collaborators.
False.
The Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans -- by Nazi sympathizers and collaborators among the French, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss, Belgians, Austrians and other Europeans, both Western and Eastern.
If the French government had not deported to the death camps more Jews than their German occupiers asked for; if so many Dutch and Belgian citizens and government officials had not cooperated in the roundup of Jews; if so many Norwegians had not supported Quisling; if Swiss government officials and bankers had not exploited Jews; if Austria had not been more Nazi than the Nazis, the Holocaust would not have had so many Jewish victims.
In light of the widespread European complicity in the destruction of European Jewry, the pervasive anti-Semitism and irrationally hateful anti-Zionism that has recently surfaced throughout western Europe toward Israel should surprise no one.
“Oh no,” we hear from European apologists. “This is different. We don’t hate the Jews. We only hate their nation-state. Moreover, the Nazis were right-wing. We’re left-wing, so we can’t be anti-Semites.”
Nonsense.
The hard left has a history of anti-Semitism as deep and enduring as the hard right. The line from Voltaire, to Karl Marx, to Levrenti Beria, to Robert Faurisson, to today’s hard-left Israel bashers is as straight as the line from Wilhelm Mars to the persecutors of Alfred Dreyfus to Hitler.
The Jews of Europe have always been crushed between the Black and the Red -- victims of extremism whether it be the ultra-nationalism of Khmelnitsky to the ultra-anti-Semitism of Stalin.
“But some of the most strident anti-Zionists are Jews, such as Norman Finkelstein and even Israelis such as Gilad Atzmon. Surely they can’t be anti-Semites.”
Why not? Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas collaborated with the Gestapo. Atzmon, a hard leftist, describes himself as a proud self-hating Jew and admits that his ideas derive from a notorious anti-Semite.
He denies that the Holocaust is historically proved but he believes that Jews may well have killed Christian children to use their blood to bake Passover Matzah. And he thinks it's “rational” to burn down synagogues.
Finkelstein believes in an international Jewish conspiracy that includes Steven Spielberg, Leon Uris, Eli Wiesel, and Andrew Lloyd Webber!
“But Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians,” the European apologists insist, "and we are sensitive to the plight of the underdog.”
No, you’re not! Where are your demonstrations on behalf of the oppressed Tibetans, Georgians, Syrians, Armenians, Kurds, or even Ukrainians? Where are your BDS movements against the Chinese, the Russians, the Cubans, the Turks, or the Assad regime?
Only the Palestinians, only Israel? Why? Not because the Palestinians are more oppressed than these and other groups.
Only because their alleged oppressors are Jews and the nation-state of the Jews. Would there be demonstrations and BDS campaigns on behalf of the Palestinians if they were oppressed by Jordan or Egypt?
Oh, wait! The Palestinians were oppressed by Egypt and Jordan. Gaza was an open-air prison between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt was the occupying power. And remember Black September, when Jordan killed more Palestinians than Israel did in a century? I don’t remember any demonstration or BDS campaigns -- because there weren’t any.
When Arabs occupy or kill Arabs, Europeans go ho-hum. But when Israel opens a soda factory in Maale Adumim, which even the Palestinian leadership acknowledges will remain part of Israel in any peace deal, Oxfam parts ways with Scarlett Johansson for advertising a soda company that employs hundreds of Palestinians.
Keep in mind that Oxfam has provided “aid and material support” to two anti-Israel terrorist groups, according to the Tel Aviv-based Israeli Law Group.
The hypocrisy of so many hard-left western Europeans would be staggering if it were not so predictable based on the sordid history of Western Europe’s treatment of the Jews.
Even England, which was on the right side of the war against Nazism, has a long history of anti-Semitism, beginning with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 to the notorious White Paper of 1939, which prevented the Jews of Europe for seeking asylum from the Nazis in British-mandated Palestine. And Ireland, which vacillated in the war against Hitler, boasts some of the most virulent anti-Israel rhetoric.
The simple reality is that one cannot understand the current western European left-wing war against the nation-state of the Jewish people without first acknowledging the long-term European war against the Jewish people themselves.
Theodore Herzl understood the pervasiveness and irrationality of European anti-Semitism, which led him to the conclusion that the only solution to Europe’s Jewish problem was for European Jews to leave that bastion of Jew hatred and return to their original homeland, which is now the state of Israel.
None of this is to deny Israel’s imperfections or the criticism it justly deserves for some of its policies. But these imperfections and deserved criticism cannot even begin to explain, must less justify, the disproportionate hatred directed against the only nation-state of the Jewish people and the disproportionate silence regarding the far greater imperfections and deserved criticism of other nations and groups—including the Palestinians.
Nor is this to deny that many western European individuals and some western European countries have refused to succumb to the hatred against the Jews or their state. The Czech Republic comes to mind. But far too many western Europeans are as irrational in their hatred toward Israel as their forbearers were in their hatred toward their Jewish neighbors.
As author Amos Oz once aptly observed: the walls of his grandparents' Europe were covered with graffiti saying, “Jews, go to Palestine.” Now they say, “Jews, get out of Palestine” -- by which is meant Israel.
Who do these western European bigots think they’re fooling? Only fools who want to be fooled in the interest of denying that they are manifesting new variations on their grandparents’ old biases.
Any objective person with an open mind, open eyes, and an open heart must see the double standard being applied to the nation-state of the Jewish people. Many doing so are the grandchildren of those who lethally applied a double standard to the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
For shame!
Police vehicle in France. (Photo: Wiki Commons).
A young Jewish woman was recently assaulted at a laundromat in a suburb of Lyon, France by a mother and daughter of Arab descent, according to Israeli daily Ma’ariv on Tuesday.
The victim, named only as Candace, told the Europe-Israel news site that the mother grabbed and held her down while the daughter hit her several times in the face.
“Dirty Jew, go home to your country, Israel,” the daughter shrieked at Candace while striking her, Ma’ariv reported.
According to Candace, the assailant had noticed that she was wearing a Star of David around her neck.
One of Candace’s eyes was badly injured in the unprovoked assault. She also said she lost some hearing in her left ear as a result of the beating.
The victim, an American expat who has been living in France for 12 years, added that none of the bystanders who witnessed the incident raised a finger to help. Following the attack Candace said she was disappointed once again by her adopted country when French police did little more than record her complaint.
Candace said she remains proud of her Jewish identity, despite the horrific thrashing. However, following the traumatic experience, the young woman said that she now finds it difficult to leave the safety of her home
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