RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/new-anti-semitism-woke-progressives-old-stereotypes/

Old stereotypes resurface among today’s woke progressives.

The old anti-Semitism was mostly, but not exclusively, a tribal prejudice expressed in America up until the mid 20th century most intensely on the right. It manifested itself from the silk-stocking country club and corporation (“gentlemen’s agreement”) to the rawer regions of the Ku Klux Klan’s lunatic fringe.

While liberals from Joe Kennedy to Gore Vidal were often openly anti-Semitic, the core of traditional anti-Semitism, as William F. Buckley once worried, was more rightist. And such fumes still arise among the alt-right extremists.

Yet soon a new anti-Semitism became more insidious, given that it was a leftist phenomenon among those quick to cite oppression and discrimination elsewhere. Who then could police the bigotry of the self-described anti-bigotry police?

The new form of the old bias grew most rapidly on the 1960s campus and was fueled by a number of leftist catalysts. The novel romance of the Palestinians and corresponding demonization of Israel, especially after the 1967 Six-Day War, gradually allowed former Jew-hatred to be cloaked by new rabid and often unhinged opposition to Israel. In particular, these anti-Semites fixated on Israel’s misdemeanors and exaggerated them while excusing and downplaying the felonies of abhorrent and rogue nations.

Indeed, evidence of the new anti-Semitism was that the Left was neutral, and even favorable, to racist, authoritarian, deadly regimes of the then Third World while singling out democratic Israel for supposed humanitarian crimes. By the late 1970s, Israelis and often by extension Jews in general were demagogued by the Left as Western white oppressors. Israel’s supposed victims were romanticized abroad as exploited Middle Easterners. And by extension, Jews were similarly exploiting minorities at home.

Then arose a relatively new mainstream version of Holocaust denial that deprived Jews of any special claim to historic victim status. And it was a creed common among World War II revisionists and some American minorities who were resentful that the often more successful Jews might have experienced singularly unimaginable horror in the past. The new anti-Semitism that grew up in the 1960s was certainly in part legitimized by the rise of overt African-American bigotry against Jews (and coupled by a romantic affinity for Islam). It was further nursed on old stereotypes of cold and callous Jewish ghetto storeowners (e.g., “The Pawnbroker” character), and expressed boldly in the assumption that black Americans were exempt from charges of bias and hatred.

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/islamophobia-invention-has-served-its-purpose-spectacularly-well/

“Islamophobia” is an idea recently invented and defused by advocates and apologists for Islam for the purpose of silencing criticism of Islam. The term “phobia” indicates an irrational fear, which is how users of the term hope criticism of Islam will be understood.

As is well-known, criticism of Islam, of Allah, of Mohammed, or of the Koran is forbidden by Sharia law; violators (or even those unjustly accused) are subject per Sharia law to summary execution. Where execution for this offense is rarer due to its extralegality, such as in America and Canada, defenders of Islam have tried to avoid criticism by presenting themselves as unjust victims of persecution and by using moral suasion through the concept of Islamophobia.

Islamophobia has become a standard topic in Middle East Studies and Islamic Studies courses, often presented in conferences and publications as a great threat to the well-being of Muslims in North America. In reality, government statistics on religion-oriented hate crimes indicate that Jews are by far the most targeted group — and many of these cases are perpetrated by Muslims. Muslims are targets in a small minority of cases.

Some Middle East and Islamic Studies professors appear to believe it is their job to present Islam in the best possible light. While daily Islamist militias and proto-states fight to conquer land and populations in the name of jihad for the caliphate, professors and media commentators claim that jihad actually means “inner struggle to submit to God.” Most of the West’s most prominent political leaders announce that Islam is a religion of peace, even as they contemplate going to war against jihadis. They claim that the Islamic State “has nothing to do with Islam,” even as the Islamic State justifies its policies and actions with detailed references to Islam’s foundational texts.

The Islamic State has distinguished models to follow: Did not Mohammed spur the military thrusts of the great Arab Muslim Empire, which soon conquered land between India and Iberia for Allah? Does not the Koran divide the world into the Dar al-Islam, the land of peace, and the Dar al-harb, the land of infidels and war?

From the Koran to present-day Muslim imams and ayatollahs (read the word-for-word translations published by the Middle East Media Research Institute), a prominent theme is the commanded killing of infidels and the conquest of the world. This theme is repeated in the charters of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the writings of bin Laden and myriad others, and by preachers of Middle Eastern origin and funding in mosques throughout America and Canada. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272514/money-doesnt-stink-bruce-thornton

In his biographies of the Roman emperors, Suetonius describes a conversation between Vespasian and his son Titus, who disapproved of his father taxing the urine that tanners and other industries collected from public restrooms: “When Titus found fault with him for contriving a tax upon public conveniences, [Vespasian] held a piece of money from the first payment to his son’s nose, asking whether its odor was offensive to him. When Titus said ‘No,’ he replied, ‘Yet it comes from urine.’”

This sentiment has been summarized in the proverb, “Money doesn’t stink.” Currency, in other words, is morally neutral. Its buying power is the same no matter how good or evil its users or creators. As such the market cannot create on its own virtues or morals or any good other than profit.

This wisdom is often forgotten by those, like Karl Marx and today’s well-heeled socialists, who criticize free market capitalism for the social disorders that in fact mostly derive from the free choices of individuals, and an intrusive, technocratic federal government that has displaced and marginalized civil society––especially families and churches––and weakened the virtues they once taught and reinforced.

A monologue by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson set off a debate over the obligation of businesses to care about the welfare of their fellow citizens, and the impact of their products on society’s morals and happiness. But the responses of both sides miss the true culprit–– the corroding effects of secularism, the two-centuries-long intellectual movement that has tried to do without God, and replace Him with government.

Carlson starts by exposing Mitt Romney’s hypocrisy in criticizing the economic populist Donald Trump for his “character.” After all, Carlson argues, Romney made a fortune as a buccaneer capitalist who bought companies, sucked them dry of assets, then left them to wither and die. He is part of an economic system and a government whose bipartisan goal is to “make the world safe for bankers.”