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Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Howard Rotberg, an author of several books who has just released his latest book, Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed (Mantua Books). He blogs at secondgenerationradical.blogmatrix.com. He has previously been interviewed by Frontpage (Fatwa on a Book) about the fate of his 2003 novel about a Jewish professor’s worry about Iran developing nuclear weapons and the professor’s problems with political correctness.
FP: Howard Rotberg, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Rotberg: Thank you for having me
What inspired you to write this book?
Rotberg: Basically, I began to understand that, in a world that was treating Islamist terrorism with tolerance and submission, as opposed to a due recognition of the war declared upon us, much of our “intelligentsia” was prisoner of a certain ideology that inhibited an appropriate response to the threats to our freedoms and lives.
As a result of my novel, The Second Catastrophe, being, essentially, banned in Canada because of the objections of some 18 year old Islamists, I was becoming aware that the very people who proclaimed their tolerance were in fact the least tolerant of all when it came to listening to, and debating, contrary opinions. In other words, political correctness, moral and cultural relativism and moral equivalency were combining to create a certain ideology in the West. I decided it was high time to write about the values and ideologies that have handcuffed much of our media and academic elites from critiquing the fascistic aspects of Radical Islam, and elevating the alleged “right’ not to be offended over the human rights of all victims of Islamist rage, including their own people.
FP: Tell us a bit about your background that has influenced you in your thoughts and outlooks.
Rotberg: My paternal grandparents and aunt were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and my father barely survived as a slave laborer there. As a member of the “Second Generation,” I was becoming alarmed at how “tolerance” was being called the most important value in the West. My background as a lawyer and as an observant Jew taught me that the most important value is justice, not tolerance. I knew that had the West “tolerated” Hitler, I would not be here. And I wondered why the West was so intent on tolerating Radical Islam and submitting to values inimical to liberal freedoms, feminism, separation of church and state, human rights and all the other great values that so many Americans and Canadians had struggled so hard to attain. As I looked out on political culture in the age of Obama, I sensed a very serious ideological problem.
FP: What is the difference between tolerance and Tolerism?
Rotberg: Over the years, such philosophers as Karl Popper and John Rawls had struggled with the idea of toleration and what limits must be placed on the tolerance of the intolerant, who, without such limitations could destroy the tolerant and the ways of tolerance. As the Second World War becomes a distant memory, we have noticed an alarming development: Instead of warnings about appeasement of Evil, we are told by the post-religious that there is no good and evil, only “competing narratives” which in a world of cultural relativism, means that western distinguished historians are given no more respect than mere polemicists, and that liberalism in Israel is given no higher respect than the totalitarian propaganda machines of its neighbours. The causes of Tolerism, then, are political correctness, cultural and moral relativism and moral equivalency.
Tolerism, the ideology, involves not just a tolerance of what should be intolerable, and the failure to set reasonable limits on tolerance, but an intolerance of opposing viewpoints within liberal democracies, and an element of self-hatred, cultural masochism, and delusions about the difference between social tolerance and political tolerance. Those who seek justice are mocked with the allegation that we are seeking “vengeance,” as Spielberg did with his dastardly re-writing of history in the movie Munich to show that Israel, and, impliedly, the Bush administration, were all about retribution and vengeance instead of the supposedly enlightened trait of tolerance. Tolerism, then, is the ideology of those who have attempted to cast off the Judeo-Christian ethics of justice and morality, and the sanctity of human life and fundamental liberties, and instead seek to undermine the great liberal democracies by their unwillingness to accept that tolerance has limits and that justice is far more important.
FP: How do Tolerists view the United States and its place in the world? Is Obama a Tolerist?
Rotberg: Obama gave the highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, to the horrible Mary Robinson, who presided over the U.N. Durban conference where the illiberals brought into the mainstream the absurd view that the Israelis are the new Nazis and the Palestinians are the new Jews. Obama’s equivalency of American tolerance and justice with that of Muslim countries in his first major foreign policy speech at Cairo was so absurd that it showed that he is not just “tolerant” but a proponent of the new ideology of “Tolerism” – which implies not just a sympathy for opposing views but an “indulgence,” that is a treatment of those views with excessive leniency. The idea that America is comparable to Saudi Arabia is surely laughable, except that if the American President believes that, the Founding Fathers must be turning over in their graves. And therefore one can see the relevance of Obama’s past associations with Reverend Wright, William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and Rashid Khalidi.
There is no better proof that Obama is a Tolerist than examining his responses to the Fort Hood Massacre. By continuously referring to the Islamist Major Hasan (whose emails, statements and entire life-view was that of a terrorist Islamist) as an “extremist,” Obama creates a vile moral equivalency. For example, I might be regarded by some an “extremist” because some of my views are extreme relative to the mainstream, but I would not care to share that terminological status with the likes of Hasan. America must wake up; its soldiers must carry guns, and its President must understand who is the enemy, before America descends into a British-like fantasy world of submission and tolerance of a parallel Sharia universe, where universities actively promote radicalization of Muslim students.
FP: What is the connection between Tolerism and anti-Semitism?
Rotberg: There are several: Firstly, to the extent that Tolerism contains a large dose of self-hatred, or the hatred of America and Israel standing for all that is good – liberal freedoms and human rights- a large number of Tolerists (think Naomi Klein here) begin to hate America and the Jewish state equally. These haters of all that is good relate well to Radical Islam which is the repository of unbridled hate for all things Jewish and American. While historically, up until the 1940s, Islam accepted Jews as dhimmis, Radical Islam has never accepted Jews in the Middle East, which is, according to them, Dar-Al-Islam, once and forever Muslim territory, notwithstanding the continual presence of Jews for 3500 years.
Secondly, Tolerism posits a type of moral and cultural relativism that resents states like America and Israel striving for the morality and justice advocated in the Bible. As well, if Islamic totalitarian theocracies or Palestinian death cults are as morally valid as any other position, then the Jewish narrative must by its nature be extremist and hence suspect. This is why there is such little regard paid in the topic of “refugees” for the nearly one million Jews who were expelled from Arab countries in the 1940s, and were taken in and resettled by Israel. The United Nations then can create a separate organization for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and be utterly silent about the Jewish refugees from Iraq, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon.
Thirdly, I referred to Spielberg’s travesty of a movie, Munich, which portrays the Jew-nation of Israel as vengeful and intent on retribution, compared to the supposed Christian virtues of tolerance and mercy. This is a theme that is best explored in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, where a proper reading of this classic shows a man so marginalized and abused by society that he ends up, as a result of this marginalization, vengefully obsessed with retributive justice, which of course is denied to him, because the very Court proceeding has been corrupted by Portia impersonating the Judge. An improper reading, such as was done by the Englishman Michael Radford in the most recent movie version of The Merchant of Venice, makes the Jew Shylock the archetype for the supposedly vengeful Jews and Americans exacting a negative form of Justice against the poor, oppressed terrorists or the Iraqi terror state. The fact that the worst terrorists have university educations and come from above average income families is irrelevant to the anti-Semitic fantasy that the intolerant Americans and Israelis are the new Nazis and supposedly deserve the terrorism inflicted on them. It is all anti-Semitic in nature.
FP: How do we find the limits of tolerance?
Rotberg: Starting with the great philosophers of Toleration, we would have to accept, like Karl Popper that “if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them … We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”
But just as important, we have to begin to discuss how Tolerism and its associated ideologies are behind many of the delusions about the nature of the war that has begun against us, and the nature of the enemy. We must learn that Terrorism is successful precisely because it creates what I call a “Cultural Stockholm Syndrome” or a cultural response similar to the “Patty Hearst Syndrome” where we begin to indentify with our terrorist oppressors and begin to accept small benefits from them as part of a submission to their will and values. The idea that the West can defeat terrorism by more tolerance of the evil perpetrators of murder directed at civilians, is, quite frankly, preposterous.
In the book, I explore a variety of ways to find a suitable limitation for tolerance, and I refer to writings of such heroic writers as David Solway, David Horowitz, Charles Krauthammer, Daniel Greenfield, Vijay Kumar, and even moderate Muslims like Tarek Fatah (who has called for a clear statement by Islamic theologians that Jihad must henceforth be only construed as an individual inner struggle for spirituality rather than be construed as an outer-directed violent struggle against Jews, Christians and Hindus). I hope that my book induces further discussion of what are the limits of tolerance.
FP: Howard Rotberg, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
To order Howard Rotberg’s new book, click here.
Is future gloomy also for America ?
Consult: http://xrl.us/bgs93x
Every American should know the truth
No one should miss this video:
http://xrl.us/bf29mb
Look to the end ( 10 min.)
Tolerism is a new word….I liked Mega Tolerance too….The basis of PC submissiveness.
Over 115,000 people have signed the petition against the KSM trial going to New York. See, this is not tolerating the namby pamby liberal granting of Constitutional rights to foreign mass murdering terrorist armed combatants. Keep KSM in Gitmo and never let him leave, except perhaps in a wooden box.
[...] Tolerance For Terror [...]
Re OBAMA's actions…
Once a cop, always a cop and once a Muslim, always a Muslim and, whether people like it or not, to me his actions go beyond what Mr Rothberg coined very properly as 'TOLERISM"…
His denigrating America in his CAIRO speech, his preocupation about the poor cuthroats in
Guantanamo, his appreciation of the HASAN murders and finally this of giving KSM and Co.
their day in court, coming from the lawyer he is, is the last straw on the camel's back, just because, if it has four feet, horns, weighs a ton and moos, it can't be a horse…
I said before that, being as intent as he has been on solving the Guantanamo "guests" problem , best thing to do would be, as SPAIN'S Generalissimo Francisco Franco did, have a Moorish Guard he trusted more than his fellow Spaniards…
This way he would have an Al Quaida guard, he could trust more that the Secret Service…
Perhaps the victory of Scott Brown in old Massachusetts heralds a stiffening of the Electorate's spine. If people in Massachusetts can get fed up with P.C./multi-culti/diversity, then anybody can. I hope so. Short of all-out war within the boundaries of the United States, the ballot-box and the courtroom are proxy for the bloody battleground.
What shall we do about the millions of unionized government bureaucrats? Bureaucrats are the ones responsible for formulating and enforcing the P.C./multiculti/diversity regulations:
bureaucrats protected by unions and trial-lawyers. How do we get the rotten bureaucrats off our backs?
Tolerance is a word that has been very misused. I have seen it used for years to mean something it does not. The left seems to have convinced our society that tolerance means total acceptance (or even endorsement), and it does not. There is a big difference between those two words.
We have no moral obligation to accept or endorse all behaviors. In fact, quite the opposite.
You beat me to the use of the words "moral obligation". You're quite right that there is no moral obligation to accept or endorse all behaviors. There is nothing in the ethical discipline that compels us to do so.
For example, I tolerate the behavior of a nephew who has convinced himself that he is a homosexual. I tolerate it, but I do not endorse it, and I let him know that I don't endorse it. I have told him that the reason why I don't accept his behavior as "normal" is because of my religious beliefs. I have warned him what his life shall be like, if he continues his behavior.
However, he demands that I accept and endorse his lifestyle, which I shall never do. I usually end the debate by telling him that I accept him and care for him, which is the end of my responsibility in the matter.
My friend, I don't care why someone becomes a terrorist, or advocates terror. It is absolutely irrelevant to the fact that they are terrorists, or advocate it. As you put it, "We have no moral obligation to accept or endorse all behaviors".
Work, contribute, write…do what you can to insure sensible, budget cutting candidates are elected in 2010. Cut Big Nanny State Government spending…..get the PC liberal idiots out of office. Elect sensible Democrats and Republicans who will control the spending, cut the deficits before it is too late….and the nation goes bankrupt.
[...] Read more at FrontPage Magazine. [...]
In the terrifying New World Order, MASS MURDER is tolerated! Muslim terrorist PLO leader Abbas, financed the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games and is immorally respected by the US/EU/UK/UN! Why is it OK to murder Jews? Murderers of Jews are rewarded and respected.
Global Terrorist Arafat was the most invited foreign guest to the Clinton White House. Egyptian Arafat who had more Jewish blood on his hands than anyone since Hitler was adored by international ruling elites. It was considered that Arafat's bloody record of barbaric mass murder and terror made Arafat the perfect 'peace' partner for Israel.
PLO/Palestinian Authority Muslim terrorist organization are treated as friends and allies even though the PA continually incite to mass murder Jews and have killed more Jews than Hamas.
Under intense U.S. pressure, Israeli leaders, over the years, have released thousands of Muslim terrorists from jail to rejoin the jihad against hated Jewish infidels.
Western ruling elites hate and despise G-D, the Bible, Judaism and Christianity. They seek to re-make our Judeo-Christian culture into an Islamic one.
The Euro-Mediterranean project: 50 MILLION More MUSLIMS to be Imported into EU
The New World Order is to be an ISLAMIC New World Order.
Turkey's Prime Minister, Erdogan, publicly read an Islamic poem: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and Muslims our soldiers…”
From Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE):
Euromed conference in Folketinget, the Danish parliament.
June 5, 2009
Anders Bruun Laursen was presenting documentation exclusively from the homepages of the EU that the Euro-Mediterranean co-operation will eventually end up with a new Great EU, with borders similar to those of the ancient Roman Empire, meaning that the Mediterranean Sea will become a domestic sea within the new Great-EU. Already now it is called a union and the presidency will be shared between north and south. At present it is President Sarkozy of France and Mubarak of Egypt having this honour. And already from next year and until 2012 the possibility is being implied for goods and people to move freely within the new union.
A lot of links were shown to EU homepages proving that Europe is to be islamized. Democracy, Christianity, European culture and Europeans are to be driven out of Europe. 50 million North Africans from moslem countries are to be imported into the EU. And against the wishes of the people, Denmark is participating. The Daily Express had also discovered some of the truth when they wrote the following article: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/65628/Secret-...
Excerpt from the Barcelona – Euro Mediterranean Declaration of 1995:
http://euro-med.dk/conference
The Euro Mediterranean Declaration was agreed upon by the EU, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Israel and comprises:
Comprehensive political partnership, among other things about:
1. Establishing a free trade area and economic integration to begin by the year of 2010
2. Considerably more money for the partners
3. Cultural partnership.
The EU Offers the Populations of 9 Muslim Countries Free Movement of Goods, Services, Capital and People into the EU.
In return for concrete political and economic changes the EU offers partners´integration into the expanded internal market of the EU and the possibility to obtain free movement for goods, services, money and people.
Association agreements have been made with all partner countries except Syria – which will be offered association in 2009. (Abstract of the 6. Euromediterranean Foreign Minnister Conference in Naples 2-3 Dec. 2003). http://euro-med.dk/partnership
Confirmed by the Danish Prime Minister on Aug. 28, 2006 in a correspondence where on Sept. 12, 2006 he refused to tell why he, the government and media have concealed the Euromediterranean Project for 11 (now 13) years http://xrl.us/beb3d2 . On Jan. 7, 2009 he refused once more.
We will arrange giant Muslim Youth Festivals – like the ‘Images of The Middle East’, which lasted 6 weeks in 2006 in Denmark.
The EU and the Danish governmental CCD have signed a cooperation agreement with the Islamic Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, whose goal acc. to art. 5a of the ISESCO-Charter is to spread Muslim thinking and life style throughout the world.
http://tinyurl.com/78wqsr
http://tinyurl.com/865xzr
The Euromediterranean is a step toward world government
The Financial Times 8 December 2008: World Government is coming http://xrl.us/bebvqj
http://sioe.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/euromed-conf...
The Euromediterranean project is a shocking betrayal of the European people. Because of EU leaders' all-consuming intense hate for G-D, Christianity, Judaism and the Bible, they choose instead Islamic conquest which will bring tremendous suffering and great horror to Europe.
There are many no-go Muslim areas in Europe, UK, Israel and India where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter. In some European cities, ambulances require police car escorts because of the violence directed at hated non-Muslim infidels. European leaders are determined to utterly destroy the lives of indigenous Europeans, facilitating the goal of Islamic conquest of Europe. When Muslims occupied and ruled Eastern Europe, as a tax, one out five European children were taken as slaves to Turkey to lives of living hell.
’“One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.”
—Former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne’s prophetic warning to Europe in a speech at the U.N. In 1974.
In Sweden, many Muslim youth wear a t-shirt proclaiming: "2030-then we take over"
“Soon we will take power in this country. Those who criticize us now, will regret it. They will have to serve us. Prepare, for the hour is near.”
— Belgium-based imam, “De Morgen”, Oct. 5, 1994. Cited in Koenraad Elst, “The Rushdie Rules”, Middle East Quarterly, June 1998.
The following two videos were produced before the Euro-Mediterranean project was known:
Muslim Demographics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU
The End of Europe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfOmQ4Eo_as
Alija Izetbegovic stated in the Islamic Declaration that:
"there can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions"
http://www.balkanpeace.org/cib/bos/bosi/bosi01.ht...
Looks like important and worthwhile book. I will read.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by orthodoxwarrior: Tolerance for Terror
Posted by Jamie Glazov
…http://tinyurl.com/y9sj74t…
tolerance should be shown to all peaceful and patriot americans whatever their religion and the society should react if the government didnt if imams in mosques or professor in college or muslim leaders spew hatred or provoke violance towrd american people .
I'm all for giving Khaled his trial, his verdict, his prison sentence, his execution….
…only the needle is really false anasthesia and he gets the gasps but his blood stays oxygenated!
That's stage 1 death!!!! PR 10 USA #1
Then we wake him up and tell him he made it into heaven, but give him a false heaven. Anything goes….
…that's stage 2!!!!!
His miserable life ends when he sees Dick Marcinko, aka The Great American Satan War God who chases him via ATV across the Shenandoah valley only to use him as bait in his yacht. Just string some fishing line through his nostril and out his mouth and go trolling for pike fish and musky. You know, sh!t with big teeth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Marcinko
Then Marcinko becomes head of the union, aka Labor Secretary to fix this jobs mess.
Jobs? What Jobs? How about friggin' indentured servitude.
Now get on that steel line boy! PR 10 USA #1
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