EDWARD CLINE:OUR DESCENT INTO MADNESS ****
http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2014/08/our-descent-into-madness.html “Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.” – Euripides, 5th Century B.C. Greek tragedian No, we are not all descending into madness. Just our political leaders, our news media, our schools, and assorted loose human cannons who are plumbing the depths of insanity and institutional irrationality to see when their and our craniums crack. And they seem to want the rest of us to go berserk and take up residence with them in their loony bin where we can all tiptoe through the tulips and have huggy-bear sessions with our killers. They are mad, and they wish to make us mad. Insanity is the new norm. The America Heritage Medical Dictionary defines insanity (or madness) as: 1. Persistent mental disorder or derangement. Not in scientific use. 2. Unsoundness of mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health facility. 3. In most criminal jurisdictions, a degree of mental malfunctioning considered to be sufficient to relieve the accused of legal responsibility for the act committed. In a sane world, men would not, for example, protest the right of Israel or any other sovereign nation to defend itself against attacks by its neighbors or by terrorist groups like Hamas. Instead, they would urge the Israeli government to wipe out its enemies and uproot them, or at least spray Hamas with a root-killing chemical (shall we call it “DDT” – Deter Deranged Terrorism?) and leave their former subjects and human shields to fend for themselves. Another mark of madness is the spectacle of Jews opposing Israel’s existence and blaming Jews for anti-Semitism, and even accusing them of racism. Daniel Greenfield, in his August 8th FrontPage article, “J Street Accuses Jews of Racism, Blames Jews for Anti-Semitism,” noted another form of madness: After Hamas violated yet another ceasefire, anti-Israel group J Street stepped up to do what it does best. Attack Jews and Israel. Jeremy Ben Ami [a spokesman for J Street] then launched into a pitch for letting Hamas smuggle as many weapons as it wants “Occupation, Blockade, Frustration, etc…), accused Israel of racism, warned Israel to “heed to the advice of its friends in the White House and the State Department and at a minimum should show them the respect that the country’s closest ally deserves.” Then Jeremy Ben Ami claimed that the conflict was promoting anti-Semitism and ranted about “growth and extent of hatred of the other, intolerance and outright racism in our own Jewish community.” For example, one would have thought that the virulent anti-Semitism that as a rule in the past expressed itself Nazi-style in murders, fire-bombings, attacking Jews, and in loud and noisy demonstrations against Jews and Israel was a disease that had been eradicated or at least suppressed, like polio or malaria. There was a time when, if one was an anti-Semite, one kept it to oneself. There was a time when it was at the risk of social embarrassment and even ostracism to blurt it out. Now tens of thousands of people are flaunting it, boasting of it, spitting out their venom under the pretence of “freedom of speech.” It is a form of Kristallnacht, practiced by Muslims and their allies on the Left in demonstrations and by roving mobs. Douglas Murray, in his August 13th Gatestone Institute article “Are ‘Integrated Muslims’ Integrated?” writes: The Gaza War has produced flagrantly anti-Semitic protests, attacks on Jews and the burning down of Jewish buildings. Those protests have come as a surprise to parts of the European public – nowhere more so than in Germany, where a hatred thought to have been disgraced for all time has found its way back onto European streets under a new guise…. Most noticeable was that the protests across Western European cities have overwhelmingly been led by Muslims — not Islamists — just normal, “integrated” Muslims, who stay at home when any other war occurs. (Where were their protests against Qatar for funding Hamas?) Where were they? Whatever advances the imposition of an Islamic caliphate is justified, even when it’s a violent imposition, and not a candidate for protest. It’s nothing to shout about, not an opportune time to carry signs that say, “Islam will dominate” and “Kill those who insult the Prophet.” The Koran permits latitude of discretionary protesting. To wit, one of many, many instances: Sura 8:38-42 (Keep fighting them until they stop persecuting believers and until Islam is established. If they stop fighting then stop. Now, a fifth of all the booty belongs to God and His leader.) “Say to the unbelievers, if (now) they desist (from unbelief), their past would be forgiven them, but if they persist, the punishment of those before them is already (a matter of warning for them).” And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God altogether and everywhere. But if they cease, verily God doth see all that they do. [YA: “If they cease from fighting and from the persecution of truth, God judges them by their actions and their motives, and would not wish that they should be harassed with further hostility.”] There are 164 such verses in the Koran, each as bloody minded as the next. And what is the policy of the mad men who know what a global Islamic “world order” would entail, which is slaughter, rapine, destruction, and legalized looting? To submit peacefully and without prejudice to Islam, for otherwise there would be “violence.” Notwithstanding the mountains of data and evidence about the fundamental means and ends of Islam and Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hamas, our political culture is poisoned with the Kantian/Hegelian imperative that the West must, in the name of “peace,” negotiate and tolerate our executioners. These urgent supplications have come from such demonstrable fools and professional altruists, and gadflies for “peace” such as Jimmy Carter, former U.S. president, and Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland in their Foreign Policy article , “How to Fix it,” of August 4th : This tragedy results from the deliberate obstruction of a promising move toward peace in the region, when a reconciliation agreement among the Palestinian factions was announced in April. This was a major concession by Hamas, in opening Gaza to joint control under a technocratic government that did not include any Hamas members. The new government also pledged to adopt the three basic principles demanded by the Middle East Quartet comprised of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and Russia: nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and adherence to past agreements. Tragically, Israel rejected this opportunity for peace and has succeeded in preventing the new government’s deployment in Gaza…. There is no humane or legal justification for the way the Israeli Defense Forces are conducting this war. Israeli bombs, missiles, and artillery have pulverized large parts of Gaza, including thousands of homes, schools, and hospitals…. There is never an excuse for deliberate attacks on civilians in conflict. These are war crimes. This is true for both sides. Hamas’s indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians is equally unacceptable. However, three Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinian rockets, while an overwhelming majority of the 1,600 Palestinians killed have been civilians, including more than 330 children. The need for international judicial proceedings to investigate and end these violations of international law should be taken very seriously. According to Carter and Robinson, Israel is guilty by the fact that regardless of Israel being attacked by Hamas, and its rockets deliberately pointed at Israeli citizens, hoping to inflict as many deaths as possible, especially of Israeli children, it had no right to retaliate with all the force it could muster, and regardless of Hamas’s using Palestinians as human shields, including men, women and children, Israel is more guilty than Hamas because more Palestinians died than did Israelis. This is topsy-turvy thinking, if can be called thinking at all. It is lunacy. It defies reason, logic, and all measures of morality. Carter and Robinson must know down deep – or perhaps they don’t, and that is a measure of their insanity – that if Israel meets all of Hamas’s demands, it would be signing its own death warrant. Andrew McCarthy, in his PJ Media article of August 6th, “Carter and Robinson: The Hamas Jihad’s Useful Idiots,” noted that: Carter and Robinson are desperate to derive or otherwise manufacture Hamas’s purported agreement to the Quartet conditions because Hamas has made quite clear that it will never actually agree to renounce the jihad and accept Israel’s right to exist. The authors would cut Hamas slack on this score because, they say, the organization cannot be expected to “cooperate in its own demise.” Even by loathsome Carter-Robinson standards, the assertion is breathtaking. The operating assumption of their op-ed is that Israel must cooperate in its own demise by ceasing to defend itself and abandoning the blockades absent which Hamas would quickly acquire even more deadly mass-destruction weapons. Furthermore, Hamas’ raison d’être is the annihilation of Israel by terrorist jihad; so by the authors’ reasoning, it could never be expected to agree to non-violent coexistence with a Jewish state since that would amount to the demise of Hamas.Without the demise of Hamas, there is no chance for peace in the Middle East. It will require tuning out terror’s useful idiots. In his FrontPage article of August 6th, “Jimmy Carter: The Only Way to Fix Gaza is by Giving Hamas Everything It Wants,“Daniel Greenfield notes that: Carter skips over that by claiming that peace will only come from a PLO-Hamas agreement (what’s more likely to bring peace than a unity agreement between two terror groups?) and urges a lifting of the blockade and replacing Egyptian and Israeli border monitoring with the UN. “The international community’s initial goal should be the full restoration of the free movement of people and goods to and from Gaza through Israel, Egypt, and the sea. Concurrently, the United States and EU should recognize that Hamas is not just a military but also a political force. Hamas cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise. Only by recognizing its legitimacy as a political actor — one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people — can the West begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons.” Carter presumes that Hamas wants to lay down its weapons. There is no evidence of that whatsoever. Hamas is an acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement”. The goal of terrorist groups is to take power, not put down their weapons. Hamas deals with dissent by shooting dissenters. Hamas, if Israel is foolish enough to empower it with concessions, means to commit genocide, just as the “Islamic State or ISIS is committed to the genocide of the Yazidis, by kidnapping Yazidi women and girls for rape and sex slavery. An unsigned Catholic Online article of August 14th, “300 Kurds kidnapped for rape: The Islamic state plans to breed out the blonde Iraqis,” reports: There are fears that the 300 Yazidi women who have been kidnapped by militants from the Islamic State last week will be used to bear children in order to break up the ancient community’s bloodline…. Referencing the kidnapping of the Yazidi women, Adnan Kochar, chairman of the Kurdish Cultural Center in London told MailOnline: “The Kurds and Yazidis are originally Aryans. But because the Yazidis are such a closed community they have retained a fairer complexion, blonder hair and blue eyes. They don’t marry non-Yazidis. Kochar continued: “ISIS have taken around 300 women from Sinjar to give to jihadists to marry and make pregnant to have a Muslim child. If they can’t kill all Yazidis, they will try to smash the blond bloodline.” This story was also carried by the Daily Mail and other sites. Well, there’s Islam’s tolerance and absence of racism for you. Meanwhile, in Europe and other places, anti-Semitism is raising its ancient and ugly head. H ere is a photo gallery of the cities in which anti-Israel (and anti-Semitic) “protests” took place, with the Gaza War, which Hamas was losing, being the excuse to vent one’s hatred. Or madness. The U.S. has seen its share of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel demonstrations. But the Metropolitan Opera has committed the most outrageous and contemptible expression of anti-Semitism by going ahead with the production of an “opera” that decidedly blames Jews for their murders. Surely this is a sign of troubling derangement. The opera is The Death of Klinghoffer. The New York Post reported on June 16th in its article, “Metropolitan Opera romanticizes one NYer’s murder“: In 1985, New Yorker Leon Klinghoffer, 69, and his wife Marilyn took a cruise to celebrate their 36th wedding anniversary. Leon never came back: Four members of the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked the Achille Lauro, shot him in the head and threw him overboard in his wheelchair. Starting in October, The Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Center plans to show a mockery of this brutal murder — the long-dormant “The Death of Klinghoffer.” The title gives away the show’s agenda: Klinghoffer didn’t “die”: This World War II vet was murdered by terrorists. The show has widely been denounced as anti-Semitic and sympathetic to the hijackers. Performances planned in Boston and elsewhere were cancelled shortly after 9/11. If it wasn’t then, what makes it acceptable now for Lincoln Center to glorify the murderers of a disabled New Yorker?…. The Metropolitan Opera receives local, state and federal funding. Will taxpayer funds support anti-Semitism? What is the artistic value in celebrating the murder of innocents? The Met cancelled its lucrative simulcast of the show which would have reached perhaps thousands of paying subscribers in the U.S. and across the word when it was broadcast in local theaters. Fox News, in its June 24th article, “Met Opera stands behind decision to cancel ‘Klinghoffer’ simulcast amid anti-Semitic concerns,” reported the cancellation of the simulcast and revealed the depraved state of its general manager, Peter Gelb. If the opera is not anti-Semitic, it is in the worse possible taste. The cancellation of the simulcast was a reaction to the severe criticism the opera received. The Metropolitan Opera is standing firm in its decision to cancel plans for a global simulcast to cinemas of John Adams’ “The Death of Klinghoffer” despite receiving criticism for shifting their plans once concerns rose that the show could stir anti-Semitic sentiments. The Met’s press director, Peter Clark, acknowledged the criticism when reached by FOX411, but said there are no plans to reconsider the decision, despite the harsh reactions [from those accusing the opera’s critics of censorship]. “I’m convinced that the opera is not anti-Semitic,” Peter Gelb said. “But I’ve also become convinced that there is genuine concern in the international Jewish community that the live transmission of ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ would be inappropriate at this time of rising anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe….” Jewish advocacy groups immediately lauded the move to cancel the simulcast. The ADL praised the decision, noting that “while the opera itself is not anti-Semitic, there is a concern the opera could be used in foreign countries as a means to stir up anti-Israel sentiments or as a vehicle to promote anti-Semitism.” Put another way, staging The Death of Klinghoffer is tantamount to staging an opera, complete with atonal singing and music and an absurdist script, about the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman during the Ferguson, Missouri riots over the shooting of Michael Brown, a thug, by a city police officer. It, too, would also be elevating criminality and unreason to a high art, and celebrating insanity. The gods are not destroying us and Western civilization. We are destroying ourselves and it.Comments are closed.
