RUTHFULLY YOURS

Robert Gates, who is the Captain Renault of our time, recounts the following White House exchange between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, back when she was serving the president loyally as secretary of state and he was taking notes as secretary of defense.

“In strongly supporting a surge in Afghanistan,” Mr. Gates writes in his memoir, “Duty,” “Hillary told the president that her opposition in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the primary. She went on to say, ‘The Iraq surge worked.’ The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”

Here’s a fit subject for an undergraduate philosophy seminar: What, or who, is your true self? Are you Kierkegaardian or Aristotelian? Is the real “you” the interior and subjective you; the you of your private whispers and good intentions? Or are you only the sum of your public behavior, statements and actions? Are you the you that you have been, and are? Or are you what you are, perhaps, becoming?

And if Mrs. Clinton supported the surge in private—because she thought it would help America win a war—but opposed it in public—because she needed to win a primary—shall we conclude that she is (a) despicable; (b) clever; (c) both; or (d) “what difference, at this point, does it make?”
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All this comes to mind after reading Mrs. Clinton’s remarkable interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic. “Great nations need organizing principles,” she said, in the interview’s most quotable line, “and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”

Cutting and pasting the old prejudice of Jews as infanticidal global masterminds onto Israel.

Britain’s leftists are patting themselves on the back for having resisted the lure of anti-Semitism. Sure, there were some ugly incidents in the U.K. during the Gaza conflict in recent weeks, including the smashing of a Belfast synagogue’s window and the pasting of a sign saying “Child Murderers” on a synagogue in Surrey. But for the most part, Britain’s anti-Israel protesters trill, we avoided the orgies of Jew-hate that stained protests about Gaza in Paris, Berlin and other European cities.

I don’t buy that Britain is an oasis of prejudice-free anti-Zionism in a European desert of anti-Semitic sentiment. Rather, Brits have simply proven themselves more adept than their Continental counterparts at dolling up their prejudices as political stands. In Britain, the meshing of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, the expression of ancient prejudices in the seemingly legitimate guise of opposing Israel, is more accomplished than it is in other European countries. Britain isn’t free of anti-Semitism—we’re just better than our cousins on the Continent at expressing that poisonous outlook in a more coded, clever way.

What has been most striking about the British response to the Gaza conflict is the extent to which all the things that were once said about Jews are now said about Israel. Everywhere, from the spittle-flecked newspaper commentary to angry street protests, the old view of Jews as infanticidal masterminds of global affairs has been cut-and-pasted onto Israel.

Consider the constant branding of Israelis as “child murderers.” The belief that Israel takes perverse pleasure in killing children is widespread. It was seen in the big London demonstrations where protesters waved placards featuring caricatured Israeli politicians saying “I love killing women and children.” It could be heard in claims by the U.K.-based group Save the Children that Israel launched a “war on children.” It was most explicitly expressed in the Independent newspaper last week when a columnist described Israel as a “child murdering community” and wondered how long it would be before Israeli politicians hold a “Child Murderer Pride” festival.

Cheeseburgers Won’t Melt the Polar Ice Caps
The next targets of the climate change enforcers will be livestock and all Americans who eat meat.

The documentary film “Cowspiracy,” released this week in select cities, builds on the growing cultural notion that the single greatest environmental threat to the planet is the hamburger you had for lunch the other day. As director Kip Andersen recently told the Source magazine: “A lot of us are waking up and realizing we can choose to either support all life on this planet or kill all life on this planet, simply by virtue of what we eat day in and day out. One way to eat takes life, while another spares as many lives (plant, animal and otherwise) as possible.”

James McWilliams, vegan author of the 2013 book “The Politics of the Pasture,” argues that modern agricultural, and the cattle industry in particular, are part of a global food-supply system so damaging that the only moral solution is to give up eating meat entirely.
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Zuma Press

Each to his own, you might say. But these ideas are working their way into government policy proposals. For example, Angela Tagtow, a self-described “environmental nutritionist” formerly with the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, was recently tapped to head the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s effort to revise federal dietary guidelines. This is a sign that the new recommendations are likely to go beyond nutritional science to incorporate environmental considerations. Many observers believe that meat will be specifically targeted for scrutiny.

Prosecutorial abuse for partisan purposes is common these days, and the latest display is taking place in the all-too-familiar venue of Austin, Texas. On Friday a Travis County prosecutor indicted Governor Rick Perry for the high crime of exercising his constitutional right to free speech and his legal power to veto legislation.

Lest you think we oversimplify, read the two-count indictment. It’s all of two pages. It charges Mr. Perry with abusing his office by “threatening to veto legislation that had been approved and authorized by the Legislature of the State of Texas to provide funding for the continued operation of the Public Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney’s office unless Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg resigned from her official position as elected District Attorney.”
Yes, that’s all they’ve got. Usually when prosecutors want to use the criminal statutes to cripple a political opponent, they come up with at least some claims of personal or political venality. In this case the D.A.’s office is trying to criminalize the normal process of constitutional government.

The background facts don’t make the case any more compelling. In 2013 police found Travis D.A. Lehmberg drunk in her car with a blood alcohol level of 0.23, or nearly three times the legal limit. A video made at the time shows her ranting against and abusing the police attempting to book her. The Democrat eventually did jail time.

Mr. Perry saw a political opening and said he would veto $7.5 million in funds for Ms. Lehmberg’s Public Integrity Unit unless she resigned. He argued, plausibly enough, that a prosecutor who breaks the law and abuses law enforcement shouldn’t judge the “public integrity” of others in government. Ms. Lehmberg refused to step down, and Mr. Perry used his line-item veto to strike the appropriation.

You can disagree with his decision, as many in the media and politics did, but that is a political dispute. Even if Mr. Perry was motivated by political animus toward the public-integrity unit, which has a history of politicized prosecutions, so what? A Texas Governor under the state Constitution has wide veto power. The legislature lacked the votes to override the veto.

To the extent people know the amazing story of the rebirth of Hebrew as a modern language, they are apt to identify it with the single-handed efforts of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, famous for having refused to allow his infant son to hear a word of any other language in his first years.

While not disputing Ben Yehuda’s role, Berdichevsky gives us a wealth of fascinating information about what he calls “the epic transformation of the classic language of the Bible into modern ‘Ivrit’, the national language of the dynamic state of Israel, its everyday vernacular spoken by seven million people.” He describes Hebrew’s influence on English, the inspirational example of modern Hebrew for the revival of a host of “minor languages” including, among many others, Irish, Welsh, Basque, Catalan and Maltese, and the influence on Hebrew of the many languages that bear witness to the three thousand years of Jewish experience, among them Akkadian, Greek, Persian, Arabic, German and Yiddish. None of this is academic or difficult to follow: Berdichevsky never loses sight of his goal of keeping the interest of the lay reader.
In an interesting sidelight, we learn of the parallels between Ben Yehuda and Lazar Ludwig Zamenhof, who created Esperanto. Born within a year of one another in similar homes only 250 miles apart, both sought a career in medicine (although Ben Yehuda’s health forced him to drop out) and both saw their work as a means to enhance the standing of the Jews, in Zamenhof’s case through fostering international solidarity via a common language. (His last major project was translating the Old Testament into Esperanto). Berdichevsky, himself something of an expert on Esperanto, demonstrates how Zamenhof used the logical structure of Hebrew in creating it. Although Ben Yehuda would have to be counted far more successful in achieving the mission he set for himself, Berdichevsky offers the interesting factoid that, after Einstein, Zamenhof is the Jew whose portrait has appeared on the postage stamps of more countries than anyone else. As far as postage stamps go, Ben Yehuda is the loser.

There’s a chapter on Hebrew’s at times bitter rivalry with Yiddish to serve as the national language. And Hebrew’s victory was at times marred by harsh tactics. Berdichevsky writes that as late as 1951, for example, the government agency charged with approving the public showing of films and plays issued a directive banning presentation of a play in Yiddish in Tel Aviv and threatened fines for the actors. Similarly the Yiddish newspaper was allotted very limited access to the government’s control of the supply of paper and had to resort to the black market where the only paper obtainable was yellow, green and red, leading to comical multi-colored editions.

In the Soviet Union, where the heavy hand of government was no laughing matter, Hebrew was condemned as a “reactionary tool” and only Yiddish considered the legitimate tongue of the “toiling masses.” The result was an almost total prohibition of any expression of thought or cultural activity in Hebrew. Berdichevsky writes: “Nowhere else and against no other language (except Esperanto in Nazi-occupied Europe) was such a policy invoked by any regime to strangle a language into total silence.”

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Norman Berdichevsky, an author, freelance writer, editor, researcher, translator and lecturer of history and culture for several major cruise lines. Formerly a lecturer of Hebrew at the University of Central Florida, the Theological Faculty of Aarhus University in Denmark, and the Jews’ Free School in London, as well as an experienced translator (From Hebrew and Danish to English), he is the author of six books and lives in Orlando, Florida. He is the author of the new book, Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language.

FP: Dr. Norman Berdichevsky welcome to Frontpage Interview. Let’s begin with what inspired you to write this new book.

Berdichevsky: Thanks Jamie.

My knowledge of Hebrew, my experience teaching the language in the Diaspora and the eleven years I spent in Israel working as a professional translator, opened up new horizons and enabled me to participate in the resilience of spirit that Israelis feel in the face of adversity. My goal in writing this book is to reach as wide an audience as possible of both Jews and Gentiles, including those with no prior knowledge of the language, to make them more aware of the importance Hebrew has played in the forging of contemporary Israeli society and culture and its function worldwide as the new Jewish international language.

A dynamic nation has been created with a determined belief in a common origin, destiny and struggle with a unifying common language adapted and modernized by the only people who identified with it and its ancient homeland. Anyone wishing to understand modern Israel, its history and development towards a more inclusive society for all its people including non-Jews should be familiar with Modern Hebrew and how this language grew and changed over the past mere one hundred and thirty years through challenges and dilemmas resulting in startling achievements and new prospects.

FP: Expand for us on the transformation of Hebrew and why this book is so important in touching on this issue.

Berdichevsky: Few subjects have commanded the attention and provoked, fascinated, excited, and enchanted so many readers as the saga of the Zionist rebirth of Israel. Yet in this monumental literature, relatively little space has been devoted to the epic transformation of the classical language of the Bible into Modern “Ivrit”, the national language of the State of Israel, its everyday vernacular spoken by more than seven million people. It was grafted successfully onto an older literature and longer historical continuity than Latin or Greek and is the official language of business, research, the law, and government of the dynamic State of Israel.

The book explores the historical background, past and current controversies, challenges, dilemmas and prospects facing the Israeli people that stem from the choice made four generations ago to create a renewed nation in the Land of Israel with Hebrew as their national language. It is a study in the politics, linguistics and sociology of language, exploring the relationship of the Israelis with the Jewish Diaspora as well as their fellow non-Jewish citizens, the largely bilingual Arabic and Hebrew-speaking Arab population.

The war against jihadism has been chronically misunderstood because of our failure to acknowledge the religious motives of Muslim jihadists. This failure began in 1979 with the Iranian revolution. Trapped in our Western secularist paradigms, we interpreted the uprising against the Shah as an anti-colonial revolt against a “brutal” autocrat propped up by the West for its own exploitative economic and geostrategic purposes. The aim of the revolution, the argument went, was to create a government more sympathetic to national sovereignty and Western pluralistic government. However, it soon became clear with the political triumph of the Ayatollah Khomeini that the revolution was in the main a religious one, inspired in part by anger at the Shah’s secularization, modernization, and liberalization policies. As Khomeini said in 1962, the Shah’s regime was “fundamentally opposed to Islam itself and the existence of a religious class.”

Despite that lesson, the rise of al Qaeda in the 90s was also explained as anything and everything other than what it was and still is–– a movement with deep religious roots. Under administrations of both parties, the mantra of our leaders has been “nothing to do with Islam.” We created various euphemisms like “Islamism,” “Radical Islam,” “Islamic extremists,” or “Islamofascism,” to explain an ideology that is firmly rooted in traditional Islamic theology and historical practice. We were anxiously assured that Islam was a “religion of peace,” its adherents tolerant and ecumenical. Popular figures like Osama bin Laden were “heretics” who had “highjacked” this wonderful faith, distorting its doctrines to serve their evil lust for power. We looked upon them as “beards from the fringe,” malignant cranks like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, or David Koresh.

This fundamental error continues today, as Muslim violence and anti-Semitism are explained by every factor instead of the essential one––the theology, jurisprudence, and history of Islam.

When one asks for evidence for this detachment of Muslim violence from the tenets of Islam, the best most apologists can do is produce a Westernized nominal Muslim, a propagandist like Tariq Ramadan, or a left-wing academic who reflexively considers any enemy of the colonialist, imperialist, capitalist West to be a friend of the left. Jihad is not, they assure us, the theological imperative to “fight all men until they say there is no god but Allah,” as Mohammed himself commanded. Jihad is merely a form of self-improvement and community service. “Allahu Akbar” is not the traditional Muslim battle cry, but merely a way of saying “Thank God.” Revered Muslim scholars like the Ayatollah Khomeini––educated in Qom, the “Oxford and Harvard of Iranian Shi’ism,” as Barry Rubin put it, and honored as a “grand sign of Allah” for his theological knowledge––was simply wrong when he said, “Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you,” and “Islam is a religion of blood for the infidels.”

Sci-Fi Author Jerry Pournelle recently re-published a sixth grade reader from 1914. In his latest FIREWALL, Bill Whittle explains how full comprehension of a single paragraph from that hundred-year-old elementary school textbook eludes virtually all of today’s college graduates; shows why it is such a sin, and reveals the Progressive Struggle for Stupidity in all of its undeniable venality.

AMERICAN EDUCATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR STUPIDITY

Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.

Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has republished, with his additional commentary, a completely forgotten – but far from forgettable – book called Literature Reader, Sixth Year, by Leroy E. Armstrong.

Literature Reader, Sixth Year, by Leroy E. Armstrong is not a novel or a scientific treatise or a book or Mr. Armstrong’s poetry. It’s a textbook – a California textbook: a collection of written tales and their analyses, the basics of literature, story structure and all the rest: that’s it and that’s all.

On a whim, I looked it up on Amazon, and on another whim, I clicked on a random link, and scanned the first paragraph I laid eyes on, which read:

Then Jason lighted the pile, and burnt the carcass of the bull; and they went to their ship and sailed eastward, like men who have a work to do. Three thousand years and more they sailed away, into the unknown Eastern seas; and great nations have come and gone since then, and many a storm has swept the earth; and many a mighty armament, to which Argo would be but one small boat; English and French, Turkish and Russian, have sailed those waters since; yet the fame of that small Argo lives forever, and her name is a proverb among men.

This is what sixth graders were reading one hundred years ago, in 1914, but if a college kid today graduated with a full and complete understanding of that one single paragraph they would be better educated than they are after a quarter-million dollars or so of student debt.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/confronting-the-muslim-brotherhood-in-the-american-heartland-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Dr. Mark Christian, the President and Executive Director of the Global Faith Institute. He is the son and nephew of high ranking leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in his home country of Egypt. After his conversion from Islam to Christianity, Dr. Christian dedicated his life and work to the proposition that “the first victims of Islam are the Muslim themselves.”

Dr. Christian joined the show to discuss Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood in the American Heartland, explaining Global Faith’s battle to stop Muslim Brotherhood front groups’ malicious plans within the “Tri-Faith Initiative” in Omaha, Nebraska. He also shared his conversion from Islam to Christianity, the dangers he has faced for doing so, his views on ISIS’s Islamic inspirations, and much more:

As the media-sanctioned rioting, bloodshed and looting continue in Ferguson, Missouri, evidence is emerging that police shooting victim Michael Brown wasn’t the upstanding citizen that many on the Left have claimed him to be.

All of this is happening as mobs have been attacking cops with Molotov cocktails and destroying community infrastructure. Some blacks in the region are reportedly randomly assaulting non-blacks as collective payback for what happened to Brown. Looting and property destruction are rampant. Scores of people have been arrested. Aircraft were ordered to fly at least 3,000 feet over Ferguson airspace after police said their helicopters were fired on from the ground.

A curfew was imposed, and the state’s feckless Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, stripped local police of some of their responsibilities, replacing them with state highway patrolmen. This, predictably, led to more looting of stores and all the things that usually happen when an angry violent mob is rewarded for its bad behavior.

Through it all, the Left is out in force in Ferguson, trying to make a bad situation worse. The criminal elements of the city have been emboldened by martyrized accounts of Brown, as they carry out a campaign of destruction against the civil order under the banner of “no justice, no peace.”

As happened in the Trayvon Martin case two years ago, the hulking, nearly 300-lbs. Brown has been portrayed as an innocent doe-eyed angel unfairly cut down by evil police as a promising future awaited him. In Brown’s case, he was said to be just days away from heading off to college.

But as one blogger observed, in this age of ubiquitous social media, the 18-year-old African-American man left behind,

“a cache of rap songs … that contain pretty much what you’d expect out of modern rap – lots of boasting about murdering, taking drugs, drinking, and sex with hos.”

In one of them labeled “Free$tyle Big’Mike,” one performer raps, “My favorite part’s when they bodies hit the ground. I soak ‘em up like I’m wringin’ out a sponge.”