DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE WEEKLY ROUNDUP PART 2
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RAPPROCHEMENT BETWEEN TURKEY AND ISRAEL IMMINENT
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed a local crowd in Diyarbakır, saying that: “We are the grandchildren of Saladin Ayyubi’s army that conquered Jerusalem.”
Funny, Saladin was a Kurd and Erdogan is busy stealing Kurdish seats in parliament. If Saladin were around today, he’d be at war with Erdogan or in one of his prisons.
A TALE OF TWO CONQUESTS
A few days earlier, Mr Erdoğan, this time in Trabzon, reminded his party’s supporters that on May 29 “We proudly celebrated the 558th anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul.”
Compare and contrast this with Sydney, where bowing to pressure from people who claim to be aborigines, but probably barely rank up an aborigine grandmother somewhere, is describing the settlement of Australia as an “invasion”.
The Turks are proud of what they have, the Australian government is ashamed. Which type of people have more staying power, shamed conquerors or proud ones?
AN INTERVIEW WITH ED
Edward Cline, the author of the Sparrowhawk novels and occasional commenter at this blog, has an interview up at Capitalism Magazine.
There’s humor in every one of my novels, but humor must have a purpose, and not be there just for the sake of humor. Comic relief, it’s called. Comic relief can be used to underscore the good, or to undermine it. Shakespeare used it in all but a few of his dramas and tragedies, and so have other playwrights and novelists. Humor must fit into a plot and be consistent with a plot-theme. Otherwise it’s extraneous and there just to get a laugh. Much humor is inserted into otherwise good stories as a cowardly apology. It has no purpose but to assure readers that the author doesn’t really mean what he says
See the entire interview at Cap Mag
RECESSIONAL
Beck leaves FOX, a victory for the left, which was not able to drive out Limbaugh, but did succeed here. The difference is that Limbaugh was not dependent on a single company or a single man.
Replacing Beck is a panel discussion. One of those things everyone loves and can’t get enough of. Especially when they include Juan Williams. I predict a huge uptick in ratings as the entire country rushes to tune in eager to hear a bunch of people talking to each other… on camera.
IMMIGRATION AND JEWISH LIBERALISM
At View From the Right, Lawrence Auster credits Bloomberg’s support for immigration to his Jewish ethnicity.
Bloombrain’s nation-saving immigration reform consists essentially of legalizing illegal aliens. Thus Bloombrain apparently believes that legalizing 11 million sub-literate Mexicans is going to add to America’s entrepreneurial and technological creativity. And he believes it so much that he says it with a straight face to the august Council on Foreign Relations.
My theory: Bloombrain represents a florid extreme of the collective liberal Jewish narcissism I have spoken of previously. Such narcissists see every issue through the filter of Jewish experience and sensibililty. Since Jewish immigrants to America and their offspring became successful entrepreneurs and professionals, the same must be equally true of all immigrants, even Mexicans with 90 IQs.
If Auster has discovered a Jewish sensibility in Bloomberg, that’s right up there with finding a cure for polio. Bloomberg is the least Jewish of the city’s three Jewish mayors. And he avoids the topic except around election time, when he dusts off his Yiddish and visits Israel. Something that quite a few politicians do in between a photo op at a deli and a black church. If Beame and Koch were Bagels, Bloomberg is an English Muffin with a Kosher stamp somewhere on the bottom.
Bloomberg’s rhetoric is virtually the same as Arnold Schwarzenegger. And of personalities ranging from John McCain to Rupert Murdoch. It’s virtually the same consensus in parts of Europe that have hardly any Jews in them.
Blind support for unlimited immigration is less racial, than it is political. The progressive narrative says that a nation’s identity is external, the product of nurture by the state. Bring any group of people, run them through the system and they will come out Dutchmen, Englishmen, Norwegians, etc. It is not people who define the state, it is the state that defines the people. The idea long predates the current immigration debates. And it has survived even in the age of multiculturalism.
Auster makes the mistake of treating the liberal politics of many Jews as anti-Christian neurosis. Which would hold up better if the average Latino immigrant were not a devout Catholic. And if Jewish liberals did not equally despise Jewish and Christian conservatives. The interpretation of Jewish liberalism as some quirk from the ghetto, rather than a common failing by many of the best educated and wealthiest Jews and non-Jews in the Western world, is not only outmoded, it hides the real scope of the problem.
And it’s ridiculous when discussing younger generations whose ghetto experience comes from 15 minutes of the Fiddler on the Roof movie that they caught on TV. Who have no religion, let alone any sense of religious persecution, and who are likely to get married in an interfaith ceremony with a pastor and a rabbi. Who are not afraid of Christians, but are afraid of “religious extremists” of all denominations, except Muslims. Religious extremists being people who take religion of the non-Oprah variety seriously.
The time when any Jews felt the need to justify immigration as self-justification is long past. The average liberal American Jew from New York was born here, and immigration to him is a distant bit of family lore, not relevant to his identity. He certainly feels no shame or uncertainty over it. He does treat that background as universal, but in this he is no different than his Irish and Italian counterparts. The universalization of experience has become a cultural mandate. Part of the state as primary nurturer of citizens.
Steve Sailer at VDare jumps in with the following…
Instead, it’s largely the outcome of various stereotypical Jewish tendencies, such as neurotic anxiety, persecution complexes, and a weakness for he-who-says-A-must-say-B verbal logic, famously compiled in comedies such as Woody Allen’s Annie Hall and Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.
This is a little like using W.C. Fields and Benny Hill as representative.
These excerpts sum up the problem with trying to find a uniquely Jewish take on liberalism. There isn’t one. Jews are statistically more likely to be liberals, but their liberalism is not particularly unique.
Bloomberg’s support for immigration is no different than that of Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain. It’s pro-business sentiments mixed with political pandering, diluted with an idealistic view of immigration. It’s marked by a refusal to consider the consequences, because there isn’t political room to accept them.
Jewish liberals will pay lip service to Jewish immigration, but they rarely know anything about it. Similarly Irish-American Democrats will push the relevant emotional buttons. And WASP’s will mention the Mayflower. These are mere placeholders, not really rooted in anything deeper than the need to hang their dubious politics on a convenient symbol.
The issue has never been immigration, it is destructive immigration. And that is a discussion that is very difficult to have– as Wilders has demonstrated. Not because it threatens anyone’s ethnic identity, but because it threatens their politics. Their faith in the ability of the state to uplift and transform the people under its control.
95, WITHOUT DOGMA
Mickey Kuhn, who, in Gone With the Wind, played de Havilland’s character’s son Beau Wilkes as a seven-year-old, has been communicating with de Havilland in recent years via letters and notes. He offers this assessment of her: “She’s a lovely lady. She’s just the epitome of class. And she’s a delight to talk to.”
Kuhn also notes de Havilland’s concern about Stalinist atrocities and her resistance to efforts of the international Communist movement to infiltrate Hollywood. He states: “It’s nice to know that she was one of those in Hollywood who saw through the Communist plot.”
THE DOGS BARKAT
Religious Jews in Jerusalem were unable to unite around a candidate and so they got Nir Barkat, and now Barkat brought in Meretz, a radical left wing anti-Israel party.
The Chairman of the East Jerusalem Public Complaints Bureau, Aryeh King, affiliated with the National Union-National Religious Party, castigated the decision of Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to appoint left-wing Meretz party council member Meir Margalit to handle the ultra-sensitive East Jerusalem file in the municipality.
“He leads the Committee against the Demolishing of Homes, an organization that supports a boycott of Israel, and rebuilds East Jerusalem court-order demolished homes. He will be in a position to approve or deny demolishing in East Jerusalem, and this is a severe conflict of interests. From now on, the municipality representative on any possible forum will be a Meretz man in favor of the division of the city. He has been defaming the State of Israel for years, and will now decide on East Jerusalem projects. The Mayor has made a ‘left turn’, and the public should relate to him accordingly.”
The Meretz left-wing party that Dr. Meir Margalit belongs to, supports a Palestinian state, the dismantling of most of the Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria, and the division of Jerusalem.
Why even bother appointing Margalit, when Barkat could just appoint Abbas?
The real question is will anyone who let this happen last time around learn from their mistake so that Barkat doesn’t get to be the second coming of Teddy Kollek for another term.
DICTATORS NEED WELFARE TOO
a NEWSWEEK investigation of Pentagon contracting practices in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Bahrain has uncovered more than $14 billion paid mostly in sole-source contracts to companies controlled by ruling families across the Persian Gulf.
You didn’t think we had bases there out of the goodness of their hearts and ours.
Ruling families hosting other U.S. bases in the Gulf seem to be profiting in the same way. Consider Kuwait, where Arifjan, the major U.S. base, serves as the chief military supply route to Iraq. Like the Al Nahyan family in Abu Dhabi, the al-Sabah clan runs Kuwait, as well as its national oil concern, Kuwait Petroleum Co., which has received some $4 billion in Pentagon contracts since 2005, much of it in sole-source contracts. The DLA explains, “Contracts providing fuel destined for Iraq are sole source due to Kuwaiti restrictions.”
Yet, according to contract documents, that money has bypassed the competitive bidding process that is supposed to accompany any -purchase—of firearms, flak jackets, or fuel—by the Pentagon.
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