Dreams Into Lightning

Prejudice, Real and Invented

First, the news item, from B. Daniel Blatt aka GayPatriotWest:

The news division of another broadcast network has been staging “news” in an attempt to show the prejudices of the American people. Only this time, it didn’t work out as planned. After planting a gay couple and an actor portraying a loud-mouthed anti-gay bigot at a New Jersey sports bar, ABC News learned that the bar’s patrons are, on the whole, a remarkably tolerant lot.

Surprise, surprise. You might be reminded, as Dan was, of this incident from three years ago:

Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 13:05:54 -0800 (PST)
From:
Subject: Looking for Muslim Males to participate in NBC Dateline Segment
[Forwarded]
Salam,
I hope everyone is doing well.
I have been talking with a producer of the NBC Dateline show and he is in the process of filming a piece on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination in the USA. They are looking for some Muslim male candidates for their show who would be willing to go to non-Muslim gatherings and see if they attract any discriminatory comments or actions while being filmed. ...

That said, I’m urgently looking for someone who can be filmed this April 1st weekend at a Nascar event (and other smaller events) in Virginia. NBC is willing to fly in someone and cover their weekend expenses. The filming would take place all day on Saturday and Sunday.

I'll let the good folks at NASCAR have the last word on that one:

The inference is that NASCAR fans are bigots, and NBC News was hoping to bait fans into making insensitive remarks to the Muslim / Arab people it had planted at the track.

Ramsey Poston, NASCAR's managing director of corporate communications, said Wednesday that no instances of unrest were reported. "No one bothered them," Poston said.

It's hard to imagine that NBC News would try to entrap fans in a ploy to make its Dateline segment juicier. But apparently the network did just that; NBC did not deny its actions when confronted by NASCAR.

So, back to ABC's stunt:

When, however, they dispatched an actor to verbally harass a gay couple they had sent to a New Jersey sports bar, they found more tolerance than bigotry. While a handful of patrons expressed disapproval of the couple’s presence in the bar, the patrons who spoke out the loudest called the actor on his bigotry, in the process challenging the prejudices the ABC News producers apparently harbored against the patrons of a suburban sports bar.

They had the gay couple come into the bar at two different times — first during the mid-day lunch hour, then later in the evening.

In the mid-day visit, no one took much notice of the two men until the aforementioned actor, at the network’s behest, started “stirring the pot,” pretending “to be bothered” by the couple. A few guys seemed to share his sentiments but didn’t act out their animosity.

Yet when the actor pestered a “new arrival” about the gay guys, the new guy did express some animus, though not against the gay couple. He told the ostensibly bigoted actor to shut up, saying that if he had to choose between that irritated individual and the gay couple, he’d probably be asking him, not them, to leave. Indeed, he told the gay men, “I’d rather have twelve of you them than four of him.”

In the evening, the couple turned up the heat by increasing their public displays of affection. At the same time, the producers raised the stakes by having a straight couple, also actors, “appear to be bothered too.” The actor remained obnoxious. A few people grumbled, with one man saying the gay men’s display “disgusts” him. But the most agitated person was a woman who objected not to the their affection, but to the basher’s antics.

Go to the article to read the rest, but this comment from Dan caught my eye: "The only gay bashing that took place at this sports bar was a verbal one staged by ABC."

And that put me in mind of an incident (or series of incidents) in Canada mentioned by Ezra Levant (and cited by Five Feet of Fury):

Who is Canada's largest "hate group", as measured by the number of anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-black and pro-Nazi comments published on the Internet?

As I've pointed out before, it's none other than the taxpayers' own Canadian Human Rights Commission.

It is official CHRC policy for their employees to join neo-Nazi groups, and go online in full neo-Nazi drag, spewing filthy venom that would make Joseph Goebbels proud. ...

It's as if liberals have found they haven't got enough real bigots to keep them busy these days, and must invent them, or else lose their own relevance.

Because it's either that, or else be forced to take on the real bigots. And that's dangerous work.

Melanie Phillips on the Real Liberals

This stand-out July 26 piece from Melanie Philips is well worth reading in its entirety.

Such people often think of themselves as liberals. But authentic liberalism is very different. For it was at its core a moral project, based on the desire to suppress the bad and promote the good in the belief that a better society could and should be built. What has happened in recent decades is that this moral core which upholds social norms and discriminates against values that threaten them has been replaced by a post-modern creed of the left, which has tried to destroy all external authority and moral norms and the institutions that uphold them, and replace them by an individualist, moral free-for-all —the creed which has led to the moral relativism and denial of truth that lie at the core of the anti-war movement.

Where [Andrew] Sullivan is absolutely right is to call Bush a liberal. For in repudiating the corrupted values of both the post-moral left and the reactionary appeasers of the right, Bush has indeed exhibited the classic liberal desire to build a better society, along with the characteristic liberal optimism that such a project can and must succeed.

And this is surely why Bush is so hated by the left. For this hatred wildly exceeds the normal dislike of a political opponent. It is as visceral and obsessive as it is irrational. At root, this is surely because Bush has got under the skin of the post-moral left in a way no true conservative ever would. And this is because he has stolen their own clothes and revealed them to be morally naked. He has exposed the falseness of their own claim to be liberal. He has revealed them instead to be reactionaries, who want both to preserve the despotic and terrorist status quo abroad and to go with the flow of social and moral collapse at home, instead of fighting all these deformities and building a better society.

She goes on to quote Michael Novak:

Then, too, the Left has developed a tic about neoconservatives. These former leftists (for a former leftist is what a neoconservative is, of the first generation anyway) do have a vision of the future, a bright vision to rival that of the Left. They fight the Left, ideology for ideology, policy proposal for policy proposal, class analysis for class analysis. The neoconservatives side with the conservatives on most issues, but with an attitude, and an aim, and a determination. They are, in the life of the intellect, warriors. Their sharpest weapon is the reality check. That is their comparative advantage over the Left. They have been "mugged by" and won over to reality. The Left has lost argument after argument to the neoconservatives for the past 20 years — has proved to be on the wrong side of reality on issue after issue — and hence reserves for the neoconservatives a special loathing.

George W. Bush turns out to have been far closer to the neoconservatives (though he is not one) than Ann Richards and Al Gore ever believed possible. True enough, he is no intellectual, and would not want to be one. Still, his mind is quicker, of a more tempered steel, and honed to a more acute practicality than lazy-minded leftists before 2001 ever allowed themselves to imagine. They "misunderestimated" him then, and still do.

Via the indispensable Random Jottings.

Joe Lieberman: "This was the Democratic Party."

Joseph Lieberman in the Wall Street Journal:

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

Via Neo, who adds:

Will he be heard? I think the answer is, “Fat chance.” Now that the Democrats have committed themselves to nominating Barack Obama, they have embraced the exact wing of the party about which Lieberman warns.

But I think the Democrats are not really so reluctant to make themselves offensive to their enemies, after all. The thing is: how do they define “enemies?” It’s become more and more apparent as time goes on that many Democrats today and most of their leaders (i.e. Pelosi and Reid), consider the Republicans to be a greater enemy than any country or group on earth—with the possible exception of oil companies.

Go to the links to read it all.

What's wrong with the Jews?

Muslims Against Sharia:

When Muslims criticize Jews chances are it's Islamists. You rarely see moderate (an I do mean real moderate, not Islamists like CAIR who claim to be moderate) Muslims saying unflattering things about the Jews. So, normally, when I see the Jews do dumb things i.e., supporting an Islamist congressional candidate because of partisanship (American Jewish World's support for Keith Ellison) or providing utilities to a terrorist enclave (Gaza), I try to keep my mouth shut. For obvious reasons. But not this time.

I thought I've seen everything: Cuban missile crisis, fall of Berlin wall, 9/11. Until recently, I thought that the father of modern terrorism getting awarded a Nobel Peace Prize was the most peculiar event in my lifetime. But a recent, largely unnoticed event, could take the cake in peculiarity contest.

On December 15, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, the president of the Union of Reform Judaism (one of the largest Jewish organizations in America), gave a sermon in San Diego in front 5,000 Jews in which he announced URJ's alliance with Islamic Society of North America (ISNA - one of the largest Muslim organizations in America).

As a part of the sermon, Rabbi Yoffie stated that "[ISNA] has issued a strong and unequivocal condemnation of terror, including a specific condemnation of Hizbollah and Hamas terror against Jews and Israelis. It has also recognized Israel as a Jewish state and supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." But has it really? The statement Rabbi Yoffie refers to reads: "ISNA rejects all acts of terrorism, including those perpetrated by Hamas, Hizbullah and any other group that claims Islam as their inspiration." While there appears to be forward progress in this statement, there are several problems with it:
- ISNA does not say it condemns but says it "rejects" acts of terrorism. What does reject mean? Why not say "condemn"? Rejection is not synonymous with condemnation.
- Yes, ISNA seems to be acknowledging that Hamas and Hizballah carry out acts of terrorism but nowhere do they say come out and say that Hamas and Hizballah are terrorist groups. Only the other day we saw witnesses on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation in Dallas claim that Hamas can be divisible by its "military (terrorist) wing" and its "social-humanitarian wing." The failure to unequivocally condemn Hamas or Hizballah as a terrorist group is like me saying that I reject the tactics used by anti-abortion doctors who "claim to be inspired by Christianity." The use of the term "claim Islam as their inspiration" is another attempt by ISNA to deny the unequivocal fundamental Islamic basis for groups that carry out acts of terrorism. This is in line with ISNA's statement which claims the use of the term "Islamic terrorist" is racist. Now, how can one be said to condemn Hamas or Hizballah while simultaneously denying the existence of "Islamic terrorism"? ISNA's statement "condemning terrorism" from http://balancedIslam.org quotes approvingly the European Council of Ifta and Research. This is a council that has justified suicide bombings by Hamas. One of its leaders is Yousef Al-Qardawi who has issued fatwas calling for the killing of Jews (not Israelis) and Americans in Iraq.

We all remember bogus fatwa issued by Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA). The same FCNA whose chairman, Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against Sami al-Arian, the North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Gihad (PIG). Is ISNA's rejection of terrorism any different?

Prior to his praise for ISNA, Rabbi Yoffie stated the following: "Islamic extremists constitute a profound threat. For some, this is a reason to flee from dialogue, but in fact the opposite is true." I am a bit confused. Does this mean that the Rabbi realizes that ISNA is an extremist organization? ...

Zero Dimensional

“No, I mean they would kill me.”

There are problems, and then there are problems.

Hollywood Ex-Liberal

From Jeremayakovka, here's a post from Ex-Liberal in Hollywood: What's in a name?

I was born into the lower-middle class neighborhood of Pacoima, California in 1957. My mom was an undocumented immigrant from Porto Alegre, Brazil; my Dad was a mechanic from Ohio. I grew up hearing stories of LAPD brutality and racism during the 60s. I always loathed bullies and heard that change was in the wind during the early 1970s. I wanted to be part of the new LAPD.

I joined the Marine Corps in 1975 to prepare myself for the Academy. I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976.

By 1978, I was a sergeant working at the US Embassy in El Salvador, a country where the military junta committed as many as 100 murders, kidnappings and torture of local dissidents each month. "Death Squads" seemed to act with impunity while then-Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher oversaw Latin American affairs. ...

Read the rest of his fascinating story at the link.

Against "White Europe"

Epaninondas on Vlaams Belang:

Shall we assert PRECISELY that we can't help it if white power is among our allies?

Shall we assert that white power is a natural cultural defense because europe was all white, against all demographic perils as we fight off sharia and 9:29 and 9:5? [link added - aa]

This is precisely what I have been told in the last few days, and precisely what David Duke says. He just likes the jews less than Mr. DeWinter. ...

Is there anyone who thinks the mantle of god's blessing will fall on them simply because they are NOT anti semitic?

I assert that it is the GOOD FIGHT to oppose those who believe these things. I assert that to be for white europe as a metaphor or in reality is equal in every single way equal to what Stormfront and David Duke proselytize, regardless of what one thinks of the existence of Israel, and as a jew I can tell you IT SHAMES ME PERSONALLY to have the support of these people in the belief that Israel must exist. ...

Go read every word.

HT: Israel Matzav.

Daniel Pipes on James Piereson: The Assassination of Liberalism

Daniel Pipes:

In a tour de force, James Piereson of the Manhattan Institute offers an historical explanation both novel and convincing. His book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism (Encounter), traces liberalism's slide into anti-Americanism back to the seemingly minor fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was neither a segregationist nor a cold warrior but a communist.

Here's what Piereson argues:

During the roughly forty years preceding the Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963, progressivism/liberalism was the reigning and nearly only public philosophy; Kennedy, a realistic centrist, came out of an effective tradition that aimed, and succeeded, in expanding democracy and the welfare state.

In contrast, Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower lacked an intellectual alternative to liberalism and so merely slowed it down. The conservative "remnant" led by William F. Buckley, Jr. had virtually no impact on policy. The radical right, embodied by the John Birch Society, spewed illogical and ineffectual fanaticism.

Kennedy's assassination profoundly affected liberalism, Piereson explains, because Oswald, a New Left-style communist, murdered Kennedy to protect Fidel Castro's rule in Cuba from the president who, during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, brandished America's military card. Kennedy, in brief, died because he was so tough in the cold war. Liberals resisted this fact because it contradicted their belief system and, instead, presented Kennedy as a victim of the radical right and a martyr for liberal causes.

Fascinating stuff. As always, get the whole thing at the link.

"They hated it because it exposed them."

John Weidner at Random Jottings:

You would think that removing Saddam, one of the cruelest fascist tyrants ever, would have at least a partial appeal for people who call themselves "liberal?" (Or "progressive," or whatever this month's term is.) Fascist dictators are what they are against, right?

But the Katies [Katie Couric] of our world hated the idea from the start. They did NOT express themselves as "torn" between wanting to free Iraq and worrying that we might get into difficulties. And they still don't.

They hated it because it exposed them. Their liberalism is a fake. Not all liberals perhaps, but a lot of them. That's why I can never pin them down in arguments. There's no there there. There's nothing inside, no liberal philosophy or core values. Or any sort of philosophy. They are nihilists.

"I support gay marriage and the War on Terror."

Roger L. Simon:

I support gay marriage and the War on Terror and I believe my views on both to be linked in a matter that is not tenuous. But I’ll get to that – first allow me to discuss marriage. I am not going to deal here with current legislation like DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act), nor with the “let’s leave it to the states” doctrine, which seems more like the premise for a sitcom given the millions of people commuting daily between places like New York and New Jersey. Nor will I get into my views on how gay marriage should be achieved – legislative versus judicial. Although I recognize valid arguments on both sides, I don’t feel qualified. I am going to express my gut on the matter.

For me gay marriage is a human rights issue. It is a natural development of the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties, part of extending to gay people what was extended to African-Americans at that time. Simple equality. To hold those beliefs, of course, you must believe that homosexuality is not an evil, but another part of nature. I see homosexuality that way for two reasons. One - personal: I have lived most of my life in New York and Los Angeles and known and worked with countless homosexuals, a number of them now with children. I found these people to be good and bad human beings, good and bad parents, to the same degree heterosexuals are – no difference. In other words, they are normal people. Two - scientific: It is becoming increasingly clear that sexual preference, although in part environmentally influenced, is largely fixed at birth chemically (fetal baths, etc.). It is also clear that it is virtually immutable. Attempts to change sexual preference have been utter failures. Meanwhile, homosexuality appears in animals with some frequency. It seems safe to conclude it is, in essence, part of nature. ...

Those of us concerned about human rights, about the separation of church and state, about gay rights and women’s rights, about democracy itself, have bigger fish to fry – the War on Terror. And here is the connection in my belief system.

Because I am such an adamant adherent of gay rights, women’s rights, human rights – the values that evolved out of the Enlightenment – I have to vote for the candidate I think will best carry forth that war (by whatever means appropriate at the moment) to defend those Enlightenment values. This means, unless I am very lucky, that I will not always love that person in all areas. Indeed, I may have to swallow some very bitter pills, but these are serious times, by far the most serious of my lifetime. And I was born at the end of World War II.

I never cease to be amazed – and perhaps it is my own myopia – that my former colleagues on the Left can be blind to this situation. ...

Read the whole thing at the link.