This week, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled as unconstitutional the definition of legal marriage as exclusively between a man and woman.  He wrote:

The State of California has no interest in differentiating between same-sex and opposite-sex unions.

The significant, logical implication of this statement is that, in the eyes of the State of California, the child has no value.

Laws are the official promotion of that which is considered beneficial to the State, and the forbidding of that which is considered harmful to its citizens.  The values dictating these laws produce a culture, or social environment,  that exude a specific character.

Western Civilization is rooted in the fundamental conviction that human life is of value, is an objective good, and that the continuity of the human race is an imperative.  Aristotle posited:

The family is the building block of the State.

Aquinas further elucidated that:

The family exists for the procreation and education of the child.

The civilization that results from this concept is legally and culturally focused on protecting the child-centered family, defend the institution of marriage for the sake of the child.  Far from being “a matter of indifference” to the State, its natural interest in the child is the only factor that justifies the intrusion of the State into the contract of marriage.  The conditions effecting its future citizens directly concern the State.  Not that the State’s interests ever supersede those of the family, but the duty to protect the development of its citizens does justify interest.

Observation, history, and logic  illustrate that permanent, and monogamous parental unions foster the development of a balanced, well-formed child, a future citizen upon whom depends the health of the State.

A completely different culture will result from the abandonment of the value of the child-centered family.  With the California ruling, the State has declared that the child is no longer the determining, constitutive element of the family.

The interest of the Left in the entire Homosexual Marriage issue is, as always, not the perceived “rights,” or “happiness” of those it champions, but rather, the advancement of its own revolution.  In his article, How Important is the Left?, David Horowitz reiterates a central theme concerning the post-Marxist Left.  The revolution is no longer focused on the establishment of a Communist, economic utopia, but rather, on the nihilist destruction of civilization as we know it.

On Friday May 27, at the White House Jewish Heritage Celebration, Helen Thomas, the “Dean” of the White House Press Corps, answered a journalist’s request for an opinion on Israel:

“Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it’s their land…not German and not Poland.”

“So, where should they go?”

“Go home. Poland, Germany.”

“So, you think the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?”

“And America and everywhere else.”

Helen’s comments drew the just ire of Jewish leaders throughout the country.  Richard Nodel, president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metro Detroit responded to Thomas by saying:

“I think her comments represent the vilest form of blatant anti-Semitism.  Did she mean we should go back to the gas chambers? The concentrations camps of Germany and Poland?”

No doubt inspired by their desire to show sensitivity to the Jewish community, the Arab American National Museum is planning to honor Thomas with a statue. I mean, that’s what you do when you are opposed to anti-Semitism, you take up a collection for someone who hates Israel.  Helen Thomas, who is Lebanese, is a member of the Museum’s advisory board.  The Museum is having trouble raising enough money for her statue.  Fortunately, erecting statues in honor of rabid anti-Semites still appears to be distasteful to many Americans.

Anan Ameri, the Museum’s director, has found two points that might sweep aside the obstacles to raising the final ten thousand dollars needed for Thomas’s monument; pretend that she didn’t mean that Jews occupy Arab land, and tout the fact that she was a great model for independent women who want to work in a man’s world.  These are curious positions to be lauded by the head of a Muslim Museum.

“Ameri said he does not think Thomas herself believes in what she said.  ‘She did good things during her career and contributed a lot and opened doors for women in this country.’”

Myths are at the base of the entire War on Israel, starting with the myth of Israel as the “occupier” of what are rightly Arab lands, so it makes sense that a statue honoring the “martyr” of the Arab’s cause in the Middle East, who sacrificed her career for “telling the truth” about Israel, should stand on more myths.  What is shocking, is that the same Jewish leader, Richard Nodel, who first condemned Thomas’s comments, recently contributed money to Helen’s cause.  Of course he expresses hope that:

“the support for this memorial is there despite her anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views and not because of them.”

The bronze effigy of Helen Thomas raises some important questions.  Would the Arab Museum be so eager to honor the journalist if she hadn’t verbalized the Arab myth?  If she had, for example, stated that Hamas should relax its extremist grip in life in Gaza, would the Arab Museum still wish to honor her feminism and legendary career?

More importantly, how is it possible for the leader of an important Jewish Community organization to pretend that one can separate Helen Thomas’s career from her opinions about Israel, opinions he previously referred to as

“vile and blatantly anti-Semitic?”

Both the Arab Center and the Jewish Community Center are located near Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest Muslim population in the United States.  Perhaps sacrificing Israel is the price for improving relations between the Muslims and Jews in Dearborn.

Since 1948, every international condemnation of Israel, every rocket launched from land given to Arabs in the hope of purchasing peace, every Israeli murdered by terrorists, have been rooted in the lie that Thomas chose to reiterate, a lie she did not chose to retract.

It is fitting that an Arab Museum  decided to build a tangible memorial of this lie. The lie is the defining element of their political existence in the world.  What is incomprehensible is that a Jewish leader with the scantest knowledge of history can justify his adulation for a woman he claims did “good things for society” while paving the way for the next Holocaust of seven million people.

Ideas have consequences.

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center penned an article entitled The Forgotten Pope Who Challenged Hitler, in which he renews the charges that Pius XII:

“simply did little to stop the Nazis.”

Hier applauds efforts made by Pius XII’s predecessor, Pius XI, in particular, the 1937 public condemnation of National Socialism, Mit Brennender Sorge.

He speaks otherwise of Pius XI’s successor, Pope Pius XII:

“Normally, it is not the business of Jews who the Catholic Church designate a saint, but Pius XII must be an exception to the rule because it would require us to teach our children and grandchildren that while history’s greatest crime was being committed and 6 million Jews, 1/3 of all of world Jewry were exterminated, a saint was sitting on the throne of St. Peter.”

A defense of the Pope’s actions during the Holocaust is not a exculpation of Christian bystanders.  I am profoundly convinced that the most significant secondary, contributing factor to the Holocaust was the neglect, on the part of the majority of European Christians, to obey the First Commandment of Our Lord:

“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another as I have loved you.”

In spite of the heroic examples of those who did remember, too many did not.  Had Christians opposed Hitler’s treatment of their Jewish neighbors, the execution of six million could simply not have occurred.

Another group facilitated the persecution of the Jews. Compiling lists of Jews to be “transported,” enforcing Nazi regulations and, physically loading Jews on the trains, were actions performed by the Jewish Councils and police enlisted by the Nazis to control the doomed Ghetto populations.

I, in no way, intend to draw a perverted parallel or “moral equivalence” between culpable or negligent Christians and the Judenrat.  Serious scholars neither condemn nor question the material assistance lent to the Nazis by Jewish councils and police because it is universally understood that their intention or motivation was to improve – and later save – the lives of as many Jews as possible.

David Horowitz’s chapter Second Thoughts, in part 7 of Radical Son, chronicles his open embracing of conservatism after having lost his faith in Marxism.  Following the publication of his support for President Reagan’s stand against a Communist take-over of Nicaragua, he spoke as the “token conservative” at a rally on the campus of the University of California at Berkley.

“Twenty-five years ago I spoke here as one of the founders of the New Left …tonight I come before you as a man I used to tell myself I would never be; a supporter of President Reagan, a committed opponent of the Communist rule in Nicaragua.”

“I make no apologies for my present position.  It was what I thought was the humanity of the Marxist idea that made me what I was then; it is the inhumanity of what I have seen to be the Marxist reality that has made me what I am now. If my former comrades who support the Sandinista cause were to pause for a moment and then plunge their busy political minds in the human legacy of their activist pasts, they would instantly drown in an ocean of blood.”

I read this chapter tonight after returning from a rally for Kansas conservative candidate for Senate, Todd Tiahrt.  The guest speaker was the elegant first-lady of conservatism, Phyllis Schlafly.  Schlafly is a legend in the fight against the Left’s destruction of the family.  Her sister and brother-in-law spent their lives fighting the “human legacy” of Marxism.  Following the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, they founded the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation in honor of, and following his escape from prison, in collaboration with one of the greatest heroes of the counter-revolution, the Roman Catholic prelate tortured and imprisoned by the Communists for not assisting in their gradual take-over of Hungary.

Listening to Phyllis and Todd speak of Obama’s successes in radically transforming America, hearing their plans for arresting the progress of our Larval Stalin and his minion Czars, and reflecting on Radica Son,  I could not help but ask, “What are we going to do if we can’t stop them?”  Over 65% of Americans didn’t want Obamarations, but we will probably be obliged to live under this redistributive healthcare system.  Even more Americans favored the Arizona Immigration law, and yesterday, a Leftist judge overturned the law because of her anti-American ideology.

If we are not able to elect strong enough conservatives,  what will undo the damage of the Democratic Politburo?  How far will we descend into actual Communist totalitarianism?

In his book, The Gulag Archipelago, Alexandre Solzhenhitsyn wrote of the Scarred Rabbits his countrymen became.  He described the midnight arrests during which family and neighbors sat in selfish, relieved silence while dissidents were taken away, never to be heard of again.  Before the Russians became scarred rabbits, they witnessed the same creeping measures by which the revolution is devouring our freedoms.

What are we going to do if we cannot rid ourselves of the Marxists and the trolls who will vote for anyone who will feed them?  Will future generations study the Iron Curtain around the United States and think of us as we once thought of the nations in the Soviet Bloc:

“Didn’t they see this coming?  Didn’t these people help bring down the Berlin Wall?  How could they slowly just surrender to the very enemy from which they fought to deliver the rest of mankind?”

This week, Oliver Stone spouted the Protocols of Zion and the nation yawned. Several News Real Bloggers posted their thoughts on the ominous significance of our national apathy.  The incident should have caused outrage – that a public figure can regurgitate Hitler and still have an employee willing to work for him, a production company willing to show his movies, or a grocer willing to sell him his lunch.

This is evidence that we are ripe for revolution.  You don’t need an army of revolutionaries to take over the United States, you need a handful of Marxists in power and 300 million bystanders willing to feed Joseph Goebbels.

So I return to what Horowitz dubbed the:

“human legacy of the activist, an ocean of blood,”

and ask, prematurely, what will be the alternative for those who resist the Revolution, other than inexorably accepting submersion in that ocean of Marxist-drawn blood?  When we realize we were wrong to think “it” can’t happen here, that it won’t get worse, will we simply pack our allotted six kilos and wait for the round-ups of academics, intellectuals, journalists, and disturbers of peace?

Americans are not the stuff of which scarred rabbits are made.  We, who helped free the world from the first wave of Communism, will not likely allow ourselves to fall victim to its global Islamic protégé,  and all indications are that our nation’s foray into collective utopianism will be of short duration.  We can cautiously hope that, after November, the Left will have nothing to show for its social experiment than having provoked a renewed commitment to the principles of Western civilization.

Still…it is never a bad idea to have a Plan B, preferably one that does not involve further proving the reality of Marxist inhumanity.

Aristotle taught that the highest human happiness is the intellectual contemplation of truth.

Aquinas defined truth as:

“The conformity of the mind with what is.”

When one accepts that truth is not something we make up individually, then finding out “what really is” outside of our own opinions and feelings becomes the imperative in order to not live a life that is  meaningless.

NRB Editor David Swindle, along with bloggers Lisa Grass and Rhonda Robinson, are reading and analyzing their way up the Everest that is Leszek Kolakowski’s Main Currents of Marxism. Two posts sent down for the rest of us at Base Camp addressed this fundamental question of the seeking of truth. Understandably, truth figures in Kolakowski’s thousand page study of the most destructive counterfeit of reality, Leftist Marxism.

In Mastering Marxism With Rhonda, Lisa and David part 5, Swindle asks:

“How do we find truth?”

And blogger, Lisa Grass  says of Kolakowski:

“While the reading is laborious…it is important that we have this explanation in order to understand the depth of his credibility.”

We instinctively grasp that truthfulness is at the heart of human credibility.

Alan Dershowitz recently wrote an op/ed for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency denouncing the deliberate falsification of his position concerning Israel by J Street.  One may raise an eyebrow at much in the Dershowitz resume.  He understands, however, that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state and that she does not bear the chief responsibility for the Arab war against her.

“J Street, the leftist lobbying organization that claims to be pro-Israel, is running a television ad that divides the world into two groups: the good guys who support the two-state solution, the end of the occupation and peace; and the bad guys who oppose these results and instead favor a continuation of violence.  Pictured as representing anti-peace, me!  Now Jeremy Ben-Ami, who runs J Street…knows full well that I support the two-state solution and peace, and have opposed Israeli settlements since he was in diapers.  Ben-Ami knows this because we debated each other…and he publicly acknowledged that I support these positions. He knows that I wrote a book, The Case For Peace. For Ben-Ami to try to persuade the public that I oppose the two-state solution, favor expansion of the settlements and oppose peace is simply a lie, and a deliberate one at that. No softer word will suffice.”

After reading J Street’s deliberate falsification of Dershowitz position, David Horowitz asked:

“Are Leftists Compulsive Liars?”

“Palestine” is the Left’s new Vietnam, it is the Rosenbergs, it is Cuba.  It is the embodiment of the oppressed pitted against crushing capitalist Empire. There cannot be a third option, one Dershowitz claims to represent.  There can only be the revolutionary myth in which you either stand with Palestine as the victim, or with Israel, as Empire.

Of course, the Leftist vision of the war on Israel is not true, is not “what really is.”  Since admitting the truth about Deshowitz implies a host of truths about Israel that J Street cannot endorse, they simply negate him, declare him to be what his is not.

My brilliant fellow-blogger, Calvin Freiburger and NRB Editor, David Swindle had the goodness to read my post, It’s Time to Put the Coffee Down and Eradicate Islam in the West and to give it the honor of their analysis in Eradicating Islam Reconsidered and Calvin, is Islam a Religion or a Political Movement?

While Mr. Swindle answered most of the objections raised by Calvin, I would like to join the round table with one point.

I cited Mr. Geert Wilders’:

“Islam is not a religion, it is a political ideology.”

I believe that we might get lost in a discussion about what constitutes a religion.  Since Islam is universally recognized and characterizes itself as a religion, a set of beliefs that relate human beings to a deity, it might be better to cede this point and consider Islam as such so we can face the problem of applying religious freedom to  Islam.

Calvin’s first objection to eradicating a religion is the protection afforded by the Constitution to religious liberty itself:

“First, the Constitution guarantees all Americans the right to “the free exercise” of religion, regardless of how odious any given set of religious ideals may be…it does mean that Islam can never be fully “eradicated” as long as conservatives also uphold their fidelity to the Constitution.”

It is important to note that, while the Bill of Rights does limit the establishment of an official cult, it has found it necessary to delineate religious freedom when practices were deemed harmful to the common good, to core values of our country, or at variance with the rights of other citizens.  The most salient example is the constitutionality of state laws against polygamy.  Polygamy was a core element of the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith having stated that plural marriage was the most important doctrine revealed to him by God.  Yet the US Government arrested the patriarchs of that faith in our territories, and later in the State of Utah, for practicing it.

Utah was initially deprived of statehood until the Mormons renounced the key component of their faith.  Fortunately, a timely revelation to the President of the LDS resulted in the 1890 Manifesto, a document declaring that marriage to multiple wives was no longer divinely mandated.

Following Andrew Breitbart’s publishing of Shirley Sherrod’s now famous speech at the NAACP, Sean Hannity hosted the Big Government founder.

Breitbart:  And what this video shows and what the NAACP affirms in their initial rebuke is not just that Shirley Sherrod, what she said was wrong, but that the audience was laughing and applauding as she described how she maltreated the white farmer.

Hannity: Before she gets to the end of the story which is — which she’s claiming puts context. But there’s a —

Breitbart:  Did the people in the audience know that there was going to be a point of redemption?

Hannity: No.

Breitbart: The point is that the NAACP at a dinner honoring this person is cheering on a person describing — describing a white person as the other.

The NAACP released the tape of the entire talk given by Mrs. Sherrod – leaving us with some profound “take home” lessons.

In the moments directly preceding the portion of her talk originally released by Mr. Breitbart, she tells of the murder of her own father by a white man.  Ms. Sherrod doubted her own father would receive justice, so she resolved, that very night, not to avenge his death, but to remain in her home town to make a difference, to work for justice.

“When you are true to what God wants you to do, the way opens up and things just come to you.  When I made that commitment, I was making it to black people, and to black people only.  But you know, God will show you things and will put things in your path so you realize that the struggle is really about poor people.”

At this point, the audience nods in approval and one even calls out, “Alright, alright.”  The atmosphere in the room is one of absolute agreement.  Then Ms. Sherrod tells the story of her initial reluctance to help the white man, admitting that she thought of him as “the other.”  She clearly set the story up as the incident that changed her ideas about relations between black and white people.

After explaining that the white lawyer she assumed would help “his own kind,” did nothing for the white man she didn’t want to help, she said she realized we are all “in the same boat,” that her work needed to be for all the poor, not only black people.

She continued:

“It’s about those who have and those who don’t.  They could be Black, they could be White, they could be Hispanic.  In the sixteenth and seventeenth century there were black and white indentured servants.  They didn’t care about each others’ skin color.”

Sherrod told the audience that the rich created division between the white and black servants to keep them from uniting for justice.  Conflict between races is, for Sherrod, a construct she opposes, not one she encourages.

“Here we are four centuries later…we have to get this out of our heads.  There is no difference between us. It’s a shame we don’t have a room full of white and black people here today.”

St. Thomas Aquinas defined “peace” as the tranquility of order, tranquillitas ordinis.  He believed that the individual human soul and society find fulfillment when their actions are directed towards a good end in a prioritized manner.  For most, the end, or goal of each day is simply earning a living to care for family and enjoy lives together.

A threat to this tranquility of order must often appear imminent before we are persuaded to divert our efforts to anything else.  This fact of human existence accounts for many of the terrible totalitarian conquests of the last Century.  During the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Communist Revolution, ample forewarnings were everywhere. While no one could be faulted for not extrapolating the precise details of horror that would accompany the regimes, the essence of promised utopias was clear enough to inspire early resistance among those who accepted to face reality, rather than enjoy imperiled order.

We are willing to put up with a great deal to avoid disturbance of our daily tranquility, and this is why those who foresaw that Hitler and the Communists would impoverish and enslave millions were actually rebuffed by the people they were trying to rouse to self-defense.  Members of the clergy, intellectuals, and journalists warned that their countrymen were preparing their own doom by tolerating the monsters in their larval stages.  It was more comforting to dismiss their warnings by thinking, “It can’t happen here, things won’t get any worse.”

We are facing the totalitarian threat of our age.  Islam is poised to replace civilization with Sharia dictatorships. In a speech delivered to the Florida Security Council, Geert Wilders, director of the movie Fitna and member of the Dutch Parliament,  delivered a “Warning to America,” containing these statements on the nature of our own peril:

There is a serious problem with Anna Clark’s Salon Magazine article, The Truth About Honor Killings - it doesn’t tell the truth about honor killings.  Clark begins:

“Canada is on the verge of adding honor killings to its federal criminal code, affirming the practice of murdering girls and women who supposedly bring dishonor to a family as “barbaric cultural practices” and “heinous abuses.”

She cites the study at the heart of the new Canadian legislation:

“The government’s action seems to be prompted by a new report from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Released this past weekend, the report found that honor killings in Canada’s immigrant communities are on the rise. The Report emphasized that these crimes must be acknowledged as a practice that is unique from traditional homicide because of its cultural roots and the targeting of females.”

“It’s a practice with deep, tenacious roots in the tribal traditions of the Middle East and Asia.  Amazingly, honor killings in the U.S. have been largely ignored by the national media.  For her part, Noor has come to represent the profound complexities faced by young women with one foot in suburban America, the other in Middle Eastern tradition.”

Clark cites a Marie Claire article by Abigail Pesta about the barbaric murder of Noor Almaleki, a twenty-year old from Phoenix whose Iraqi father crushed her spine and skull by driving over her in a parking lot.  Noor’s parents had taken her to Iraq and forced her into an arranged marriage. The young American girl wanted to become a school teacher here and already had a boyfriend.  Her father objected.

Inspired by the pedagogical method of Allah, Most Gracious and Merciful, he did the only thing any loving father could do when his 20 year old wants to make her own way in the world, he hunted her down and drove his Jeep over her body.

After six pages chronicling events leading to the murder, Pesta offers this attempt to explain the crime:

“The story of the next generation shedding the customs of the old country is part of the American experience.”

So, honor killings are similar to Italian and Polish grand-parents refusing to learn to speak English.

Both Salon and Marie Claire authors deplore the killings, the lack of effective legislation that differentiates honor killings from domestic violence, and complain that the media has not paid more attention  Repeatedly though, they help create an environment favorable to the killings by refusing to really tell the truth.  What is missing in their reports?

The universal lie about the honor killings is that, except in very rare cases, they are motivated by Islam.  They are condoned by the Quran explicitly, in the case of stoning women who commit adultery. They are the product of the view of women prevalent in Islam, that women are primarily servants of men, easily dispensed with when they “dishonor” men by indulging, or even only seeming to indulge, in sexual pleasure without the consent of the men who virtually own them.

It is very easy to adopt the comfortable version and claim that honor killings are a cultural phenomena because then we don’t have to consider the limits of religious relativism or, horror!, have to reconsider the potential necessity and justification for the Crusades, those clear and patent proofs that Western Civilization is evil – having condoned its own moral equivalent of Islamic Jihad.

At the heart of the debate over the French ban of the burqa is the question of objective morality and government’s duty to promote it through legislation.  Is there a standard of right and wrong that is true, conformed to human nature, and others that are reprehensible, that pervert human beings instead of allowing them to strive for objective goodness?

The Burqa Ban involves both the right of the individual to follow prescriptions imposed by the religion of his or her choice, and the right of the government to maintain a culture  favorable to values it espouses – in this case, maintaining a public sphere in which men and women are at liberty to exist and act without distinctions based on gender.

Amnesty International issued the following statement concerning the French decision to ban the burqa:

“Amnesty International has condemned an overwhelming vote by the lower house of the French parliament to ban the wearing of full-face veils in public. The human-rights organization said in a written statement that the move, which passed in the lower house on a 336-1 vote and was sent on to the French Senate, impinged on Muslim women’s freedom of religion and expression.”

“As a general rule, the rights to freedom of religion and expression entail that all people should be free to choose what – and what not – to wear. These rights cannot be restricted simply because some – even a majority – find a form of dress objectionable or offensive. States are obliged under international law to protect women against pressure and threats to wear full-face veils. However, comprehensive bans are not the way to do this.”

Because the entire discussion has focused on the veiling of women, something pathetically easy to dismiss as trivial, it has avoided the central problem of Islamic morality, the standard by which Islam judges the character of individual human actions. What is more critical than the foundational ideology of the laws governing relations in a society? The Ban-War encapsulates the radical opposition between two different ideas about which human actions are good and which are evil, as well as the duty of government to determine which idea will be applied to its citizens, and allowed to inform its culture.

Those who oppose the Ban on the basis that doing so violates religious freedom, must, if they are intellectually honest and logical, also step aside when the Muslim community stones or lashes “its” women for being gang-raped, for kissing a boyfriend, or for sitting at an internet café next to a man to whom they are unrelated. Amnesty International must stand aside while 60 year-old pedophiles marry and have sex with nine year old children. Those condemning the French legislation must march in favor of Muslim husbands’right to beat their wives with civil impunity.

These crimes against women are permitted, even required in given circumstances, by the Quran, by Sharia Law. They emanate from the same concept of women, are codified in the same Law that requires Hijab, the burqa. According to Islam, women are created only to serve husbands and bear children. The public domain is the exclusive sphere of action for men,  and women enter it only to accomplish duties to their husbands. When doing so, they are responsible to conceal their presence as much as possible. Women are radically contingent beings with no right to non-domestic, non-male centric aspirations of their own.

Wonderful news for Civilization is coming, surprisingly enough, from France.  A sweeping victory for President Sarkozy’s efforts to ban the burqa was announced by the Times:

“Calling full face veils ‘a new form of enslavement,’ the lower house of the French parliament voted 335 to 1 to ban any garment which obstructs the face.”

“No one can, in the public space, wear clothing intended to hide the face.”

Last year, the President had the courage to say of the burqa:

“It is a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement. ”

Though he wasn’t quite ready to name the real culprit:

“It is not a religious symbol.”

Those opposing the ban say that outlawing the veil is contrary to the very values of freedom and liberty Sarkozy claims he is upholding.

The use of a full-faced burqa is not a question of the subjective, individual disposition of the women wearing the burqa, but of objective imposition of the burqa on women by the religion itself.  Islam covers women because their presence in the social space is considered an ontological threat to the purity of men, whose lust can only be kept in check by the elimination of women from man’s normal realm of existence.  When serving of men requires women to invade the space of man – buying his food, for example, she must limit the extent of her disturbance of male equilibrium by covering herself.

France has the duty to refuse such a social construct as fundamentally opposed to women’s right to live in and influence society as much as men.

It is wholly to be expected that fear of social, spiritual and physical punishment drives women to comply with the Islamic Hijab ordinance.  Women who embrace Islam may initially consider their compliance to be an  independent and personal choice, but government has the right to give priority to the general protection of  women’s freedom, over the right of individual women to enslave themselves.

Al-Shabaab Suspected in Deadly Bombings in San Francisco!

Oh, wait…never mind, here’s the real headline:

Al-Shabaab Suspected in Deadly Bombings in Uganda

Whew!  The bombings didn’t take place here, so there’s no need to worry.  And they didn’t take place in Israel, so there’s no need for the Left to rejoice.  It’s just another ole “banal homicide bombing,” to borrow the title of a book recently selected for our book club by NRB Editor, David Swindle, brought to the world by the proponents of the Religion of Peace!  

The Telegraph provides the following details:

“The explosions ripped through two bars packed with football fans watching the final moments of World Cup in an Ethiopian-themed restaurant and at a gathering in a Kampala rugby club on Sunday.  Al-Qaeda-inspired al-Shabaab militants in Somalia have threatened to attack Uganda for sending peacekeeping troops to the anarchic country to prop up the Western-backed government.”

“Uganda is a major infidel country supporting the so-called government of Somalia,’ said Sheikh Yusuf Isse, an al-Shabaab commander in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu.  We know Uganda is against Islam and so we are very happy at what has happened in Kampala. That is the best news we ever heard,’ he said.”

The Jonathan Institute, an Israeli organization founded in the wake of the Entebbe Raid to help analyze and counter global Islamic Terrorism, defined terrorism as follows:

“Terrorism is the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends.”

The World Cup Bombings fit this definition perfectly.  Sixty-four innocent people went to what could have been Applebee’s or Old Chicago to watch a football match, and were deliberately, systematically butchered to advance a political agenda.

We are at war. President Bush sadly misnamed this war, by calling it The War on Terror. In fact, it is a war between Western Civilization and Marxist-inspired Islamic Barbarians.  The David Horowitz Freedom Center clearly defines its role in this war as follows:

The DHFC is dedicated to the defense of free societies whose moral, cultural, and economic foundations are under attack by enemies both religious and secular, at home and abroad.

A crystallizing event, one illustrating the essence of this mission - in a single moment, was the joust between Mr. Horowitz and Jumana Imad Albahri during Islamofascism Awareness Week.

Horowitz: I am a Jew. The head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally. For or Against it?

Jumanna: For it.

The above exchange captured the fundamental opposition between civilization, based on respect for law, reason and free will, and barbarians advocating genocide for Sharia-rejecting Jews and anyone else not interested in worshiping the author of misogynist slavery.

The Wall Street Journal published an excellent article by author Paul Berman entitled, What You Can’t Say About Islamism: American Intellectuals Won’t Face Up to Muslim Radicalism’s Nazi Past.

“You are not supposed to observe that Islamism is a modern, instead of an ancient, political tendency, which arose in a spirit of fraternal harmony with the fascists of Europe in the 1930s and ’40s. You are not supposed to point out that Nazi inspirations have visibly taken root among present-day Islamists, notably in regard to the demonic nature of Jewish conspiracies and the virtues of genocide. And you are not supposed to mention that, by inducing a variety of journalists and intellectuals to maintain a discreet and respectful silence on these awkward matters, the Islamist preachers and ideologues have succeeded in imposing on the rest of us their own categories of analysis.”

While the historical ties to the Third Reich are crucial, it is on Islam’s shared Antisemitic ideology with the Nazis that Mr. Horowitz and the Freedom Center have concentrated. Radical Islam perpetuates the Nazi concept of the Jews as the obstacle to a perfect society and their intention to eliminate the Jewish race.

We are at war. We are faced with a choice, now –today- between a life of freedom, or a life under Sharia. Information is the crucial element of the fight in its present stage. Clear ideas, devoid of pleasant self-excusing delusions, will cause effective action, particularly on America’s campuses and in the blogsphere. Every informed faculty member, student, and blogger can be an equal and opposite civilizing force pushing back against the barbarian force of Sharia.

The most complete and easily accessed resource for this intellectual formation is available at Discover the Networks. This Freedom Center website provides simple links to every article and major work published by Mr. Horowitz himself. It also provides collections of articles written by the Frontpage Magazine team and NewsReal Blog concerning Islamo-Fascism.

Feminist Hawk Phyllis Chesler pushed The New York Times up against the objective-journalism wall today in her piece, Is the New York Times on the White House Payroll? listing the manipulative attempts by the Keyboards at the Times to shame Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, out of defending his country, Chesler calls herself, “only one Jew crying out.”

Her plea reminds me of St. John the Baptist referring to himself as, “The voice of one crying in the desert. Vox Clamantis in Deserto.” The obvious difference is that the Baptist heralded the advent of the Light, not, as does Dr. Chesler’s warning, the reemergence of a terrible darkness.

“There is an avalanche of hatred bearing down on Israel. I fear it might be too late to stem this “blood-dimmed” tide and its fearful consequences. Now, the very existence of the only Jewish state is being used to justify attacks against Jews and Jewish holy sites all around the world, including within Israel itself. And, the entire world is, irrationally, heart-sickeningly, joining in the legal, cultural, military, propaganda, and economic lynching of Israel.”

If one presumes to characterize her anguish at the Times’s display of Anti-Semitism, it is perhaps stunned amazement at the blatant, brazen nature of this hatred of the Jewish People. The Times signals total absence of fear of reprisal, of consequence. Equally stupefying is the lack of resistance to the War on the Jews, an apathy, that is only rivaled by the apparent determination of the Left to be rid of Israel, once and for all.

In his memoir, The Secret War Against Hitler, Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a German philosopher who participated in the Von Stauffenberg attempt to assassinate Hitler, provides a lengthy analysis of the Nazi rise to power. Von Schlabrenberff speaks of the openness with which Hitler exposed his plans:

Caroline Glick, Editor of the Jerusalem Post and Fellow at the Center for Security Policy, wrote this week of the startling outcome of a British trial involving Muslim vandalism of a munitions factory:

In Britain today, hating Israel has become a valid criminal defense. This week five criminal defendants charged with destroying property valued at some $285,000 at the EDO MBM arms factory in Brighton during a January 2009 break-in were found innocent of all charges. They were found innocent despite the fact that all five admitted to having committed the crime.

As the Guardianreported, the defendants boasted in online forums at the time of the incident that their crime was premeditated. It took place during the IDF’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Their declared aim was to, “smash up,” the factory. And they achieved their goal.

The jury found the five innocent because the jurors accepted as a valid defense the defendants’ claim that they vandalized the EDO MBM plant because they wanted to prevent Israel from carrying out war crimes in Gaza. EDO MBM does business with the IDF, therefore, the defendants claimed and the jury agreed, it deserved to be attacked.

This result is a perfect example of the lack of serious response to Islamic Terrorism that constitutes a deadly threat to Western Civilization.

Thirty-four years ago today, while Americans celebrated our Bicentennial, a young Israeli commander was shot and killed as he helped free 105 hostages in one of the worst terrorist hijackings in history.  The soldier’s name was Jonathan Netanyahu, and he led the command of the forces in the Raid on Entebee.

Ten years later, in July of 1986, his father, Benzion Netanyahu and son, now-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, published the conferences of the second of two international symposiums on the subject of International Terrorism.  The symposiums, held in 1979 and in 1984, were hosted by the Jonathan Institute, an organization founded by Professor Benzion Netanyahu in memory of his son, who died in the war on Terror.

Published as International Terrorism: Challenge and Response and Terrorism: How We Can Win present the collection of the conferences and represent an intense analysis of the philosophical roots of terrorism, an assessment of the Western nations lack of sufficient reaction against Terrorism, and a practical plan to defeat Terrorism that will destroy our civilization if we continue to ignore the menace it presents to our way of life.

In the preface to Terrorism: How We Can Win, Prime Minister Netanyahu states the following:

“My brother believed that the battle against terrorism was part of a much larger struggle, one between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism.”

The institute adopts, as its official definition of Terrorism:

“Terrorism is the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends.”

What is the political end pursued by Terrorists?

“To destroy the fabric of democratic, lawful societies all over the world.”

Unable to sway American sentiment against Israel by myths of illegitimacy or brutal occupancy of “Palestinian Territories,” the I-Hate-Israel-But-Love-Jews crowd has a new talking point. Not that it’s exactly new, but since the attempt to breach Israeli defenses by the terrorist flotilla, this particular drum-beat is heard with greater frequency. Israel, it appears is becoming  a true “strategic liability” for America.

This particular accusation is dangerous because it appeals both to the Marxist Left and the Paleoconservative Right.  An article by John Mearsheimer, co-author of The Israel Lobby, promoting this concept of Israel as America’s Albatross, is featured on Pat Buchanan’s American Conservative website.

Mearsheimer has this to say about Israel:

Israel is on a disastrous course that it seems incapable of reversing. The attack also highlights the extent to which Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States.  Israel is addicted to using military force yet unable to do so effectively. None of the activists had their own guns. The bloody operation was condemned around the world—except in the United States, of course.

Israel’s intoxication with military force, helps explain why the Israeli press routinely carries articles predicting where Israel’s next war will be.  But surely the most troubling development for Israel is the growing chorus of voices in the United States who say that Israel’s behavior is threatening American interests around the world, to include endangering its soldiers.

If that sentiment grows, it could seriously harm Israel’s relationship with the United States.   There is not going to be a two-state solution…instead, Gaza and the West Bank will become part of a Greater Israel, which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa.

]]> http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/07/02/the-left-and-paleo-right-unite-against-the-evil-terrorist-state-of-israel/feed/ 0 http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/07/01/what-the-freedom-writers-could-teach-jeremiah-wright-and-barack-obama/ http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/07/01/what-the-freedom-writers-could-teach-jeremiah-wright-and-barack-obama/#comments Thu, 01 Jul 2010 23:00:18 +0000 Jeanette Pryor http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=65711

Since I read the latest racial rant from Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor, the Irreverent Jeremiah Wright, I can’t stop thinking of Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers.

Erin Gruwell’s first classroom as an idealistic, new teacher brought her face to face with a microcosm of the gangs of Long Beach, California. These freshmen, many with learning disabilities, rap sheets, and parents who were inmates or junkies, entered Room 203, ignoring the eager rookie at the podium whose skin matched the pearls she had been cautioned not to wear in class. They staked out territory, pushed desks together and prepared to chat away their English class. None dreamed of making it to Junior year. Like their family members, they were treading water until fully absorbed into gang life, pregnant, in jail, or dead.

One morning, after six months without being able to elicit any cooperation let alone teach them anything, Gruwell wanted to know why the boy in the front row was upset and the rest of her class was laughing. She tore a crumpled note from his shaking hand. The boy was African American and the picture was a portrait with exaggerated racial features passed to him by the Latino gang memebers. Holding the picture up for all to see, she confronted them:

“I saw a picture like this once in a museum, only it wasn’t making fun of black people, but of a Jewish man. It was originally published in a magazine by the worst gang in history. You kids think you are original gangsters? You’re nothing compared to that gang. ”

“You think that your life would be good, that you would have it all together if the ‘others’ were gone, right? If the Black students were gone, or the Asians, or the Latinos, or whoever your ‘other’ is, then you would have a fair life? Well, that’s what this gang did. This (picture) is how the Holocaust happened. You think that when you die in the ‘war,’ you’ll get respect? You know what will happen to you when you die? You’ll rot in the ground and no one will ever think of you again. You will die forgotten, because you will have left nothing behind you except this.”

She held up the symbol of their mutual hatred. One student raised his hand:

“What was that thing you said, that thing that happened because of the pictures?”
“You mean the Holocaust?”
“Yeah, what’s that?”

Erin was stunned. She asked the students,

“Who knows what the Holocaust is?”

Only one knew. The bell rang.

During the next months, Gruwell worked two extra jobs to pay for books for her students, since the principle of the school wouldn’t hand out nice books to the gang kids. They started with the Diary of Anne Frank. Seen at a historical distance, and through the eyes of a real victim, the students were able to grasp the real nature and ugliness of the primary motivating force in their lives.

]]> http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/07/01/what-the-freedom-writers-could-teach-jeremiah-wright-and-barack-obama/feed/ 0 http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/06/29/sophie-scholls-battle-of-everyman-saving-the-world-one-conscience-at-a-time/ http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/06/29/sophie-scholls-battle-of-everyman-saving-the-world-one-conscience-at-a-time/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:00:19 +0000 Jeanette Pryor http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=65024

On June 26^th, NRB Editor, David Swindle penned his much anticipated review of Marc Rothemund’s exquisite Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.  Mr. Swindle shared his thoughts:

“The other night April and I watched the 2005 German film “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.” With the tension of a thriller, the Academy Award-nominee chronicles the arrest, interrogation, show trial, and finally execution of Hans and Sophie Scholl, two leaders of the White Rose Society, a Nazi Resistance movement during World War II. They were convicted of High Treason for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets.”

“(Now) it’s not 1943. It’s more like 1925. Genocidal totalitarians are not in power — not in the United States at least. They’re only on the rise. And it’s up to us to stop them. And the way to do it is through intellectual combat…And it’s time to stand up in resistance and defiance.  But to do that we need the emotional inspiration. We need to be filled with vigor and energy.”

An NRB reader left the following disconcerting comment:

“I’ve got some serious misgivings about putting the White Rose group on a pedestal. Their resistance was, in a word, pathetically ineffective. I salute their idealism and their courage to the skies, while at the same time deploring the utter hopelessness of their efforts. I’ve read up on this episode and discovered that it had no effect on the regime whatever while throwing away dozens of lives. Absolutely no one was inspired by this at the time–they were merely considered traitors. Students at Munich University issued proclamations denouncing them and extolling the porter who turned Sophie in.”

]]> http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/06/29/sophie-scholls-battle-of-everyman-saving-the-world-one-conscience-at-a-time/feed/ 0 http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/06/28/final-thoughts-of-a-closet-democrat-marxist-pagan-vitriolic-mindless-republican-robot-about-the-many-faces-of-rand-paul/ http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/06/28/final-thoughts-of-a-closet-democrat-marxist-pagan-vitriolic-mindless-republican-robot-about-the-many-faces-of-rand-paul/#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:00:00 +0000 Jeanette Pryor http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=64628

Several readers, kind enough to read and respond to my posts concerning Dr. Rand Paul, have concluded that:

1. I must be pro-choice even though I am staunchly pro-life;
2. I am a desperate, liberal blogger being screened by Paul’s campaign staff and prevented from discovering their secret whereabouts, because they know I am hostile;
3. I hate Rand Paul because he doesn’t fit the conservative box;
4. In spite of having a Christian or Jewish name, I attack Paul because I am really a Marxist-Pagan.

If I have asked questions concerning Dr. Rand Paul, I have done so, not because I secretly love high taxes, abortion, shredding the Constitution, omniscient, omnipotent government, and/or am the owner of the Federal Reserve, afraid of losing my fortune, should Rand the Reformer be elected.

I joined the sane, true conservatives raising the alarm about Dr. Paul because I believe he espouses the same isolationist, anti-Semitic, utopian agenda as his father, Ron Paul. I am concerned that his idealistic foreign policy is based on a Conspiracy-saturated world-view, including the idea that men and women who served in the government and military on September 11^th, facilitated the terrorist attacks that killed three thousand Americans.

Most of all, I am convinced that Paul Jr.’s foreign policy decisions will be rooted in a vision of the United States as the primary agent of disorder in the world, a capitalist empire that rapes and pillages to engorge corporations.  Acting upon this vision, Dr. Paul will vote to diminish our presence in the world, enabling the re-emergence of Marxism and the establishment of totalitarian Islamic regimes that, together, will attempt to annihilate Western civilization.

Am I justified in asserting these beliefs concerning Rand Paul?

Although Paul now attempts to distance himself from his father’s vociferous antipathy for a strong American military presence in the world, the War on Islamic Terrorism, and active practical support for Israel, this readjusting of his image is belied by the simple fact that Rand spent the 2007-2008 campaign year diligently working to place his father — and consequently his father’s ideology — in the White House.

Whatever Rand claims to think of his father today, two years ago, he thought he should be President of the United States.

In 2009, Rand Paul was a guest on Anti-War Radio hosted by Scott Horton.  During the interview, Paul concurred that the most important issue facing America is the dismantling of the “Military Industrial Complex.” That is, the supposed mutually beneficial interaction of the military and corporations manipulating politics to profit from wars of their own making. Paul stated that a coalition of the Left and Right opposing this Complex was what “you needed to win an election.”

Paul also told Horton that he held:

“…almost all the same ideas of my father, but would have to present them differently, so as to win the Primary.”

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