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The Left’s Illogical Logic of Diversity By Jonah Goldberg

Posted By on November 28th, 2015

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia . . . could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.” — Abraham Lincoln

The winning streak enjoyed by campus activists this fall was violently interrupted by the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. Some activists were sufficiently annoyed by their ejection from the limelight that they took to Twitter to complain under the hashtag “F***Paris.”

The most obvious irony stemmed from the fact that some of the same protesters who griped about media coverage of their antics — even declaring First Amendment-free zones — suddenly whined when the cameras turned to bloodshed in the heart of Europe.

But there’s a deeper irony. In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, fueled by a cynical media strategy directed by the president himself, the national conversation turned quickly from Barack Obama’s foreign-policy failures to the bigotry and insensitivity of the Republican party. There’s no denying that Donald Trump made this an easy pivot for the Beltway Brahmins. But left unnoticed in the clamor is the dismaying disconnect between the conversation elite liberals want to have and the one being pushed by their left-wing shock troops on the ground.

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The Controversy over Syrian Refugees Misses the Question We Should Be Asking By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on November 28th, 2015

The jihad waged by radical Islam rips at France from within. The two mass-murder attacks this year that finally induced President Francois Hollande to concede a state of war are only what we see.

Unbound by any First Amendment, the French government exerts pressure on the media to suppress bad news. We do not hear much about the steady thrum of insurrection in the banlieues: the thousands of torched automobiles, the violence against police and other agents of the state, the pressure in Islamic enclaves to ignore the sovereignty of the Republic and conform to the rule of sharia.

What happens in France happens in Belgium. It happens in Sweden where much of Malmo, the third largest city, is controlled by Muslim immigrant gangs — emergency medical personnel attacked routinely enough that they will not respond to calls without police protection, and the police in turn unwilling to enter without back-up. Not long ago in Britain, a soldier was killed and nearly beheaded in broad daylight by jihadists known to the intelligence services; dozens of sharia courts now operate throughout the country, even as Muslim activists demand more accommodations. And it was in Germany, which green-lighted Europe’s ongoing influx of Muslim migrants, that Turkey’s Islamist strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan proclaimed that pressuring Muslims to assimilate in their new Western countries is “a crime against humanity.”

So how many of us look across the ocean at Europe and say, “Yeah, let’s bring some of that here”?

None of us with any sense. Alas, “bring it here” is the order of the day in Washington, under the control of leftists bent on fundamentally transforming America (Muslims in America overwhelmingly support Democrats) and the progressive-lite GOP, which fears the “Islamophobia” smear nearly as much as the “racist” smear.

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How Hollywood Fantasy Fuels Black Lives Matter By Walter Hudson

Posted By on November 28th, 2015

For the past week, Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis have been competing for headlines with the terror attacks in Paris. If not for the latter, events surrounding the shooting death of another black male suspect during an altercation with police might have attracted the same level of attention as similar incidents around the nation.

The situation in Minneapolis is not ideal for the Black Lives Matter movement. The “victim” in this case isn’t particularly sympathetic, an alleged domestic abuser with prior arrests. Nevertheless, the local Black Lives Matter chapter has proceeded as if he were “executed” in cold blood by a malicious police department.

Joining a bipartisan panel of politicos from the area on the “Wrong About Everything” podcast this past weekend, I sought to understand the cultural context which produces these protests. The panel included Republican lobbyist and rural city council member Mike Franklin, Black Lives Matter activist and nonprofit professional Carin Mrotz, Democratic National Committeeman and local SEIU president Javier-Morillo-Alicea, and yours truly — Republican activist and suburban city council member Walter Hudson.

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Muslim invaders spreading HIV across Europe at an alarming rate By Carol Brown

Posted By on November 28th, 2015

The attacks against European civilization by Muslim colonizers come from many directions. One of which is the rise in infectious diseases imported with many colonizers.

Including HIV.

Breitbart reports that the World Health Organization (WHO) director for Europe has stated that Europe now has the highest rate of new HIV infections ever seen on the continent. And while infection rates are directly tied to IV drug use and sex between men, the director also noted that newly arrived “migrants” have a particularly high rate of infection. Although “migrants” comprise a fraction of the total population, they (and non-native Europeans) account for one third of all new HIV diagnoses in Europe.

One might be surprised to hear a director from WHO speak truthfully on this matter since the authorities tend to gloss over anything bad about Muslim “refugees.”

The director blamed the high rate of HIV infection among migrants on the “social exclusion” many of them feel – exclusion that increases the likelihood of them engaging in risky behavior.

And there you have it. The rationale for Muslims behaving badly.

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Anthropologists to Boycott Archeology? By Peggy Shapiro

Posted By on November 28th, 2015

Defying logic, a band of anthropologists voted to boycott archeology. On Friday, Nov. 20, at the business meeting of the American Anthropology Association (AAA), they voted to boycott Israeli universities in line with the BDS movement’s goal of punishing Israel for it’s alleged treatment of Palestinians in the so-called “occupied territories”. The text of the resolution is here. (It is not finalized as the vote will have to go to the 10,000-member association in spring.) Should the resolution pass, the full membership vote, the association will not enter into any formal relationships with any Israeli institutions and would bar Israeli institutions from participating in its publications and events. Israeli institutions, and thereby students (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) would not have access to AnthroSource, the major anthropological database.

I ask not what these anthropologists think they are doing to Israel by weighing in on the complex challenges in the Middle East with a simplistic and biased resolution which demonizes Israel. Nor why an organization representing scholars chooses to ignore the fact that over 11,000 rockets were launched against Israelis after Israel withdrew every living Jew from Gaza. Neither do I ask why academics, who are committed to the understanding of culture and causes, place full blame on Israel and do not factor in evidence of Palestinian government incitement to the murder of Jews. I ask what they are doing to the scholarly pursuits of the archeologists who belong to the AAA.

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The ‘religious test’ hypocrisy By Carol Brown

Posted By on November 28th, 2015

As most AT readers know, President Obama recently scolded those who don’t want to admit “Syrian refugees” to the United States, saying there should not be a religious test. He had the temerity to suggest it was “un-American,” as if being American means abandoning national security to exchange our lives and future for the lives of some other group of folks, many of who hate us.

In any case, for all of Barry’s faux passion and outrage about religious tests, he had nary a word to say about the religious test that is the core of Islam – the test put forth to non-Muslims before terror strikes, sparing those who can recite passages from the Quran before massacring those who cannot. The dead did not pass the religious test.

Obama does not speak about the religious test put forth to Yazidis and Christians and other non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East when jihadists show up in their town and at their door and in their homes and demand they convert to Islam. Or die. Because they failed the religious test.

Obama does not speak about the religious test when “Palestinians” take to the streets of Israel and knife, or run over, or shoot Jews because they are Jews, with 23 murdered and 192 wounded in the most recent wave of attacks. It’s a war against Jews because they fail the test.

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Wayward Women, Warped Worldview

Posted By on November 28th, 2015

Or perhaps I should say “wayward wimmin”. After all, they are all feminists.

Then again, what kind of feminism is it which would support BDS against the nation in the Middle East that has done more for gender equality than any other, and which was the first in the region (i.e. from its inception in 1948) to give Arab women the vote?

What psychosis motivates the extreme leftists who’ve hijacked the women’s movement as they have hijacked certain Protestant churches and imposed upon them that warped worldview that imperils Western society and gives aid and comfort to its enemies?

Here’s some of the whacko weirdness:

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The Perils of Confidence The Russian navy sailed for six months to face the Japanese. The battle lasted half an hour. By Peter R. Kann

Posted By on November 28th, 2015

The word “hubris,” from the Greek, refers to overbearing pride or excessive presumption. In his latest book, the distinguished British historian Alistair Horne takes us on an episodic journey through the violent first half of the 20th century to see where and how hubris led to military debacles costing millions of lives and leading to the downfall of warlords, regimes and empires. It is an eminently provocative and readable volume in no small part because Mr. Horne, who has written more than two dozen books on modern European history, here ventures into what for him is the new territory of East Asia. Readers are the beneficiaries of this voyage of discovery.

Even students of military history are unlikely to know much if anything about the 1939 Battle of Nomonhan, fought between the Japanese and the Soviets in one of the world’s most rugged landscapes, the bleak steppes between then Japanese-occupied Manchuria and Soviet-dominated Mongolia. Mr. Horne brilliantly reconstructs this long-forgotten battle—featuring tanks clashing on the trackless wastes—and connects it to future military cataclysms, including the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad a few short years later. It’s as if he has discovered a hidden spring from which mighty rivers of blood were to flow.

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Empire, Erudition and Entertainment In Edward Gibbon’s ‘History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ the real subject is good sense and decency in a losing battle with pride, greed and vice.Joseph Epstein

Posted By on November 28th, 2015

In the closet of Abdalrahman, eighth-century caliph of Spain, this note was discovered after his death: “I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call.…In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen: O Man! place not thy confidence in this present world.”

In a footnote to this item, in the fifth volume of “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbon writes: “If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty), my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty number of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add, that many of them are due to the pleasing labour of the present composition.”

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The New Campus Dissenters Not everyone is cowed by political intimidation at universities.

Posted By on November 28th, 2015

Not least among those welcoming the respite of Thanksgiving must be the nation’s college and university administrators. After student protests evicted Tim Wolfe as president of the University of Missouri, officials at other institutions of higher learning (if we may still call them that) were harassed by shouting or otherwise threatening students. At Princeton University, students occupied the office of the school’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, demanding that he throw Woodrow Wilson down the memory hole.

Even at the remove of several weeks, it is remarkable to recall that the disturbance at Yale University was over “offensive” Halloween costumes. But amid the protests, some important principles are now at risk, notably free speech. We asked at the time where the adults were on campus—either school presidents or boards of trustees? The answer, so far, is that most have caved like wet cardboard. The most hopeful adult response has come from 18- to 22-year olds—the students themselves.