Category Posts by Others

Feb 2 2015

Multiculturalism and “Anti-Semitism”: Thoughts Out of Season


By Paul Eidelberg

Savvy people know that multiculturalism is simply a fancy term for cultural relativism, which denies the existence of ideas and values that transcend space and time. Relativism holds that the validity of moral and philosophical ideas is limited to the cultural horizon in which they originate. But what has this to with “anti-Semitism”?

Anti-Semitism is a misnomer for Jew-hatred and Judaism, or “Judeophobia”. What does this really mean? Judeophobia is hatred of Israel. What underlies this hatred?

Judaism posits the idea that such is the plenitude of God that He creates, in addition to a vast number of unique individuals, many diverse of nations to reveal His infinite wisdom, power, and graciousness in every domain of existence. But to disseminate that knowledge, God has created a special nation for this purpose, Israel. This nation embodies two sets of laws. One set is intended for Jews. A subset of these laws, the Seven Laws of Noah (or the seven law of universal morality) is intended for all mankind. (I have elaborated on this subject in my book Toward a Renaissance of Israel and America: The Political Theology of Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh.)

Bearing the preceding in mind, Judaism provides an intellectual foundation for both monoculturalism and multiculturalism. It follows that anti-Semitism, understood as hatred of Jews and Judaism, has two dimensions. On the one hand, it rejects the monocultural aspect of Judaism – which is to reject the existence of Israel as a sovereign nation-state. On the other hand, it rejects the multicultural aspect of Judaism implicit in the Seven Noah Laws which apply to humanity as a whole.

What has replaced the Seven Noah Laws which apply to humanity as a whole is the academic doctrine of multicultural moral relativism. This doctrine rejects the existence of any universal laws of morality, hence of any trans-cultural or trans-historical standards of right and wrong, good and bad, justice and injustice.

From these thoughts out of season it follows that what is universally and egregiously called “anti-Semitism” should be replaced by the reality it obscures, namely, hatred of Jews and Judaism.

At the same time, what is called “multiculturalism” should be understood as a hidden form of hatred of Judaism if only because multiculturalism implies a rejection of the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality.

By linking multiculturalism (now prevalent in America and Europe) with anti-Semitism redefined as hatred of Jews and Judaism, we can better understand the decay and decline of Western Civilization. Moreover, understanding multiculturalism as an indirect form of Jew-hatred – i.e., of Judaism’s universal laws of morality – conveys a deeper understanding of Islam’s fanatical hatred of Judaism and the West.

Islam, contrary to the Bible of Israel, rejects the concept of the nation state, hence the Bible’s liberal and human affirmation of diverse nations or cultures. But this Islamic rejection of the Bible’s positive affirmation of diverse nation-states is in fact a diminution or rejection the plenitude of God.

Moreover, Islam’s diminutive conception of God’s creativity is related to the Hebraic conception of man’s creation in the image of God. This Hebraic conception logically and ontologically entails an infinite Being who creates the vast multiplicity of unique individuals required to “relate His praise,” as stated in Isaiah (43:21): “This people I fashioned for Myself that they might relate my praise,” meaning God’s infinite wisdom, power, and graciousness in every domain of existence. This plenitude of God, which reconciles permanence and change (which is manifested in the Written and Oral Torah), requires diverse nation-states and an enormous variety of human beings to sanctify God’s Name.

Feb 1 2015

Invoking God in Statesmanship


Prof. Paul Eidelberg

One of the most important ingredients of statesmanship is to foster national unity.  A prerequisite of national unity is the citizen’s belief that he and his fellow-citizens share supreme values. How did George Washington address this issue? Let’s consider a few words of his famous “Farewell Address,” America’s most important state paper.

He first reinforced belief in the value of national unity by appealing to the three motivating factors of human nature: sentiment, interests, and ideas. Accordingly, he points out that “With slight shades of difference, you have the same Religion, Manners, Habits and political Principles.” Religion is mentioned first.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the renowned author of Democracy in America, writes: “Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it.” Americans, he said, combine the notions of religion and freedom so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.” Hence, with the exception of Barack Obama, American presidents often invoke the name of God. In fact, the American Presidency Project website lists the whopping number of 10,984 presidential references to God, with only 267 to Jesus.

Unlike Israeli prime ministers, Arab leaders, in their ambition to gain control of the Land of Israel, frequently invoke the name of God—in their case, “Allah.” Even if they have murder in their hearts, their appeal to God (or “Allah”) sanctifies His name and thereby furthers the Arab cause vis-à-vis Israel whose leaders are unabashed secularists. Perhaps I am mistaken—and if so I apologize in advance—but Mr. Netanyahu rarely if ever invokes the name of God in a public address.

This goes to the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It underlies the failure of critics of the “peace process” to have any discernible effect on Israel’s government-sponsored territorial and spiritual shrinkage which began even before the 1993 Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement.

No one can deny that the Arabs have made enormous gains since Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977. Recall his speech in the Knesset, a speech broadcast to countless millions of people around the world.  In the first ten sentences of that speech Sadat intoned the name of God ten times!

Wonder of wonders, without firing a shot, Egypt recovered the Sinai with its Alma oil fields and sophisticated air bases—a $17 billion infrastructure developed by Jews. All this Egypt obtained in exchange for what Sadat scornfully called “a piece of paper.”

And when Yasser Arafat, exiled in Tunis, triumphantly marched into Gaza as a result of the Oslo Agreement and there spoke of the ultimate aims of the “Palestinians,” he, too, invoked he name of God on behalf of the Arab cause.  Behold the result:  The Arabs now control Gaza and PM Netanyahu has virtually yielded Judea and Samaria by endorsing a Palestinian state!

Turn, now, to the late King Hussein of Jordan.  Again and again Hussein intoned the name of God while calling for “peace and justice,” whether he was speaking from Amman or from Washington.  And lo and behold, in October 1994 he signed a peace treaty with Israel, in which treaty the godless government of Yitzhak Rabin rewarded Hussein with 330 square kilometers of Jewish land!

Arabs, inspired by “Allah” and confident in the justice of their cause, advance; Jews longing for peace and silent about God only retreat. Let us try to understand the Arab advance and the Jewish retreat in psychological terms.

Because Jews clamor only for peace, they make no serious demands on Arabs. Indeed, Israeli governments are ever making unilateral concessions. This can only arouse Arab contempt and encourage them to make more demands, however outrageous. But the Arabs are predisposed to make demands if only because they demand “peace and justice.”

Now justice involves a relation between persons and things.  In the present context, the persons are Arabs and Jews, while the things consist of land. Arab leaders vow they will not be satisfied until they possess all the Land of Israel. Contrast the Jews, satisfied with a mere strip of this land. The asymmetry is striking and ominous.

The Arab’s maximalist attitude, paraded in terms of justice, precludes justice.  So does the Jewish attitude, which is silent about justice. The Jews are also silent about Divine Justice, according to which the entire Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish People. The Jews want only peace, for which they are willing to give Arabs land. But peace, unlike land, is not a tangible thing. Justice in these terms is not possible. Only Divine Justice is possible, but this exalted idea does not animate Israel’s godless leaders.

Nevertheless, godless Jews have been desperately seeking a common ground with their Allah-inspired Arab enemies. The Jews would like to believe that Arabs, like themselves, fear violent death, hence war.  But Arab suicide-bombers tell a different story: they believe in paradise. Godless Jews do not—another asymmetry. As for religious Jews, they cling to life under the danger-to-life avoidance concept of “pekuach nefesh.”  So how can Jews, by yielding land, purchase peace from Arabs who love war and even death in the name of “Allah”?

But wait! God has given the Jews the best of enemies! This enemy exposes the artificial foundations of the present secular-Zionist State of Israel! Day after day the Jews of Israeli are being degraded by the insincerity, deviousness, and lack of moral courage exhibited by their prime ministers. We behold such leaders with increasing disgust – their lack of wholehearted dedication to that which alone justifies Israel’s existence: the God of Israel, the Torah of Israel, and the Land of Israel.

Sooner or later, Israel will vomit out these play actors who pretend to speak and act for the People of the Book.  Sooner or later, this People will rise up and restore God’s Holy Name in the domain of statecraft.

Jan 22 2015

The Beginning and End of Secularism: From Socrates to Machiavelli


Prof. Paul Eidelberg

[Extracted from Chapter 1 of my book Beyond the Secular Mind (Greenwood Press, 1989)]

Mankind is tottering on an abyss.  Violence punctuates daily existence in a world increasingly portrayed as meaningless.  We are strangers, not only to each other but to ourselves. The “crisis of identity” has become a cliché.  Familial and national ties have been eroded: we are homeless cosmopolitans. [Recall Barack Obama boasting in 2008 that he was a cosmopolitan!]

Not knowing who or what we are, we lack the hauteur and confidence of cosmopolitans of the past. They believed in Universal Man, in man sub specie aeternitatis; we believe in nothing.  Our humanism is hollow; we cannot even take our own humanity seriously.  Nihilism and relativism have rendered the distinction between man and beast problematic in theory and hardly discernible in practice.  What indeed is noble about man that anyone should boast of being a “humanist”?

When man becomes problematic, it is a sign of civilizational decay, but also of the possibility of renewal.  Such was the case some twenty-four hundred years ago when Greek sophists like Protagoras exulted in teaching youth that “man is the measure of all things.”  This unheard of and skeptical doctrine – the dogma of today’s universities – signifies that all ideas concerning the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are human creations, hence relative to time and place. Socrates saw that this secularism cum relativism, which was then spreading throughout the Mediterranean world, would eventually destroy the Olympian gods and was even then undermining public morality in Athens, the “open society” of the Hellenic Age. Various sophists, the Greek counterparts of todays “value-free” social scientists, were broadcasting the death of Zeus, the pagan god of justice. Without Zeus, what would hold society together?  Without the traditional understanding of right and wrong, men would devour each other like animals.

Socrates’ task, completed by Plato and Aristotle, was to substitute a restrained skepticism for the sophists’ unrestrained skepticism, lest men revert to beasts.  Their world-historical function was to construct a philosophy of man and the universe that would replace the no longer credible mythology of the Homeric world. Accordingly, and as dramatized in The Republic (when the god-fearing Cephalus leaves the dialogue), philosophy replaces religion – the philosopher – replaces Zeus. No longer are the gods to rule mankind, but reason, unaided human reason, would henceforth determine how man should live.

Of course, neither Plato nor Aristotle was so naive as to expect the generality of mankind to defer to the rule of philosophers. Apart from other considerations, philosophers are not only as quarrelsome as the offspring of Zeus and Hera, but, unlike the Olympians, they are mortal: here today, gone tomorrow. Something impersonal as well as immutable and eternal was therefore needed to command the obedience of man.  What else could this be but Nature – nature divested of Homeric Deities. Neither the gods nor man but all-encompassing Nature was to be the measure of all things.  And this Nature, far from being arbitrary and mysterious, was fully accessible to the human mind.

The magnitude of Aristotle’s program has not been surpassed in the history of philosophy. He merely set out to comprehend the totality of existence, to reduce heaven and earth and all between to an organized system of theoretical, practical, and productive sciences. To borrow the terminology of Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik [Halakhic Man, 1983]: “Aristotle would tolerate no randomness or particularity, no mystery to obscure the fleeting events of existence.  Everything had to be fixed, clear, necessary, ordered.” Nothing was beyond the grasp of the human mind because Nature or the Cosmos was an intelligent and therefore intelligible whole.

With Greek philosophy a new type of man appeared in the forefront of world history, Cognitive Man.  Cognitive Man is a secularist who deifies the intellect.  He is therefore to be distinguished from his secular rivals, Volitional Man and Sensual Man.  Whereas Cognitive Man seeks to understand the world, Volitional Man wishes to change or conquer the world, while Sensual Man wants to enjoy it.  It is only with the ascendancy of Volitional Man, portrayed by Machiavelli in The Prince, that secularism comes into its own as the regnant force of history. [This is where we are today, even in Israel, waiting for her spiritual redemption, while Secular Man is at the helm.]

 (To be continued)

Jan 19 2015

Western civilization is under attack by the Obama administration


Post by Jeff Longo

What should keep every American awake at night is the hateful ideology that is threatening Western civilization. Equally concerning is the Obama administration’s inability or determined unwillingness to stand up and identify the enemy who embraces this ideology. Anyone paying attention knows it’s radical Islam and their complete lack of tolerance for any other religion or group of people. It’s painful to watch members of this administration with their tortured attempts to avoid calling out this enemy of freedom.

Why the president refuses to name this enemy is open to speculation but certain facts can’t be disputed. From his first day in office Mr. Obama has refused to use the words Islam and terror in conjunction with one another. For a long time he refused to even use the word terrorist. This is the same administration that called the Fort Hood massacre “work-place-violence.” They did the same when an Oklahoma City woman was beheaded by a co-worker who clearly had been radicalized.

For the first time in years Americans rank defending our homeland as their number one priority. Recent attacks make it clear that Western civilization is engaged in a world war against radical Islam. In France nine journalists were gunned down because their paper published material that was critical of the prophet Mohammad. Hamas continues their brutal assault on Israel with rocket attacks on the civilian population. In Syria and Iraq ISIS continues to slaughter thousands of Christian men, women and children while taking control of large tracts of land. This land will be used to breed terrorism and launch future strikes against the United States. ISIS acted out their level of evil when they filmed the beheading of two American journalists for the world to see. In 2014 the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped 273 Nigerian school girls who haven’t been heard from since. Already this year they have massacred over 2000 people in northeast Nigeria. They capped of this bloodbath by strapping bombs to 3 Nigerian girls, one as young as 10, and blew them up in a crowded market place. In December of 2014 seven Taliban militants entered a Pakistani school and put bullets into the heads and chests of 132 Christian children. And now we’re told al-Qaeda has developed an undetectable bomb that can be made using common items found in the home. U.S. airlines have been identified as a probable target. All of these terrorist organizations can be linked by their hatred of Jews, their hatred of Christians, their stated goal of world dominance under Sharia law and the ideology of radical Islam.

The world has entered into a new phase in the war on terror and it’s heading our way. Radical Islam is the global security challenge of our generation. Western civilization faces a level of threat that requires leadership from the United States. Unfortunately President Obama lacks the political courage and moral fortitude to lead. He can no longer tell us that al-Qaeda has been “decimated” or that ISIS is the “JV” because we now understand this is just another lie. By his actions this president appears to put his legacy ahead of the security of the American people. Why on God’s earth would he be releasing the most dangerous terrorists at Guantanamo Bay to re-engage in an effort to kill Americans. Many feel he’s doing it to fulfill a regrettable campaign pledge to close the prison and help preserve his liberal progressive legacy. These are not the actions of a leader.

Cowardice thrives in the political morgue known as Washington DC. Many on the left are in denial and political correctness is driving our country to national suicide. Our president likes to tell us the “tides of war are receding.” They are not and America, and its people, need to prepare for a long and brutal stuggle to preserve our Republic. The stated goal of radical Islam is to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Does anyone believe that once nuclear weapons are secured our enemy won’t try and use them on our most populated cities? Left unchecked America will again be the victim of a catastrophic event that could make 9/11 pale in comparison.

And for those who label this column as nothing more than an Islamophobic rant from a Tea Party conservative…you’re right! I love America as it was founded and I fear the ideology of radical Islam that wants to destroy her.

 

 

 

Jan 19 2015

A War America Can’t Win, Part One


Prof. Paul Eidelberg

This article was published nine days after 9/11, after I had seen with my own eyes the rubble of the World Trade Center, which I had previously visited on various occasions. I am publishing the article again for two reasons: first, because American scholars and politicians, as well as Israeli scholars and politicians – including Benjamin Netanyahu – persist in denying a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, second, because my 2001 article, “A War America Can’t Win” explains why Israel can’t win her current war with the Palestinians.

America can’t win the war against international terrorism because the U.S. has failed to identify the enemy. The enemy is nothing less than Islam, and democratic, multicultural America is conceptually incapable of conquering such an enemy.

We have here a clash of civilizations of world-historical significance. The United States, including its most notable intellectuals, obscure this clash by defining the enemy as “Islamic fundamentalism” or “Islamism,” supposedly an extremist aspect of Islam.  But as I shall now show, what is called “Islamic fundamentalism” is authentic, resurgent Islam.

First, consider a booklet entitled Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel (1971) edited by D.F. Green.  The booklet is a 76-page condensation of a 951-page volume containing papers presented at “The Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research” of Al Azhar University in Cairo (1968).  Al Azhar University, it should be emphasized, is the Harvard of the Islamic world.  Al Azhar is attached to the office of the President of Egypt and unofficially represents the theological-political position of that country, if not most of the Arab-Islamic world.

Delegates from 24 countries attended the conference:  Algeria, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Philippines, Russia, Senegal, Sierra-Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Togoland, Turkey, Uganda, Yemen, and Yugoslavia.

Some 22 papers were presented by Islamic theologians and professors:  Egypt 10; Lebanon 3; Jordan 2; Syria 2; Indonesia 2; and one each from Morocco, Iraq, and “Palestine.”

The papers frequently denote Jews as the “Enemies of God” or the “Enemies of humanity.”  One paper refers to Jews as “the dogs of humanity.”  The Bible of Israel is referred to in pejorative terms and as a counterfeit work.  Jews are described as evil, as deserving the hatred and persecution of all the peoples with whom they have come into contact—and this was said in full awareness of the Nazi Holocaust! Also, the State of Israel is described as a culmination of historical and cultural depravity.

Since the Conference portrays the evil of the Jews as immutable and permanent, the attending Muslim theologians and professors were prompting the Arab-Islamic world to annihilate Israel (politicide) and the Jews (genocide).  This was not a conference of “Islamic fundamentalists,” unless Islamic fundamentalism is authentic Islam!

Second, the present writer has shown that the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of March 1979 did not diminish Egyptian hatred of Jews and Israel.  (See my Sadat’s Strategy, 1979.)  Indeed, as the eminent Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis has noted, Egypt’s anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda increased after the signing of that treaty!

Third, consider Professor Y. Harkabi’s Arab Attitudes to Israel (1972).  This 500-page volume documents hundreds of statements made by Arab rulers, scholars, journalists, and writers throughout the Arab-Islamic world vilifying Jews and calling for Israel’s destruction.   Harkabi makes no distinction between Islam and “Islamic fundamentalism” when he describes Islam as a “militant,” “combative,” and “expansionist” creed.

Fourth, recall the Teheran Conference of October 1991 (which, by the way, took place two weeks before the October 30 Madrid “peace” conference sponsored by the U.S. and the USSR and attended by Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and PLO surrogates).   Attended by a score of Arab and Islamic states, including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the PLO, the Teheran Conference unanimously signed various resolutions calling for Israel’s destruction.  Egypt, despite its peace treaty with Israel, signed those resolutions!  Again, this was not a conference of “Islamic fundamentalists” or of any single Islamic sect—Sunni, Shi’ite, or Wahhabi.

Now for some basic principles.  In The Political Language of Islam (1988), Professor Lewis notes that Islam divides the world in two:  “the House of Islam (dar al-Islam), where Muslims rule and the law of Islam prevail; and the House of War (dar al-Harb), comprising the rest of the world.  Between the two there is a morally necessary, legally and religiously obligatory state of war, until the inevitable and final triumph of Islam over unbelief.  According to Islamic law books, this state of war could be interrupted, when expedient, by an armistice or truce of limited duration.  It could not be terminated by peace but only by a final victory” (p. 73).

The question arises:  How should Muslims behave in territories previously conquered by Islam—for example Portugal, Spain, and the Balkans—but which were subsequently reconquered by Christians?  According to certain Islamic jurists, it was the duty of Muslims to leave such territories and not remain under non-Muslim rule.  Other jurists held that Muslims might remain under a non-Muslim ruler and were even obliged to obey his orders, provided only that Muslims were allowed to observe their religion.  This ruling, however, was based on practical necessity.  For as Lewis remarks, the territories conquered by Christians would then become part of the House of War, “subject, when circumstances permit, to jihad and reconquest” (p. 106).   (This has obvious implications for Israel and its Muslim citizens.)

Finally, it should be noted that the destruction of the World Trade Center is the manifestation of a war between East and the West.

Jan 19 2015

A War America Can’t Win, Part Two


Prof. Paul Eidelberg

… Unbeknownst to the West, and unacknowledged by Israel’s ruling elites, the 1948 War of Independence was a civilizational war, one that has been going on to this day.  Thus, in a lecture sponsored by the Arab League in Cairo, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz, Professor of Law at the University of Baghdad, who later became Iraq’s Prime Minister, declared in 1962:  “The existence of Israel … is a flagrant challenge to our philosophy of life and the ideals for which we live, and a total barrier against the values and aims to which we aspire in the world.”

Islam perceives Israel both as a Jewish and secular democratic state that threatens the religio-political power structure of the Islamic world. Tyrannies do not like democracies on their borders.  But let us probe a little deeper into the conflict between the East (here limited to Islam) and the West, with which Israel finds itself precariously aligned.

The West exalts the individual, and the state exists to maximize his comfort.  Accordingly, the function of the state is not to cultivate virtue or morality but to promote freedom and material prosperity.  In the West, therefore, religion is a private matter.  Contrast the fatalistic world of Islam.  There personal and political freedom is unknown.  There the state is all-powerful.  Its primary function is to serve Allah by imbuing people with the moral and religious teachings of the Koran.   There poverty is the rule.

The World Trade Center represented the pinnacle wealth.  Like the Tower of Babel, it symbolized the exaltation of man.  The Twin Towers were monuments of scientific technology in stark contrast to pre-industrial, feudal Islam.

The destruction of the Twin Towers by suicide bombers reveals the unbridgeable gap between the West’s preoccupation with this world and Islam’s concern with the afterworld.  While America pursues a life of pleasure here and now, Islam is infatuated with death as the entry to eternal Paradise.  Can mundane life defend itself against death?

The World Trade Center’s destruction was an act of revenge—revenge against centuries of Western domination of the East—intolerable to Muslims.  The West is the home of Christianity, hated by Islam.  Also, the U.S., by supporting Israel, is the Great Satan.  Hence the Mufti of Jerusalem urges Muslims to kill Americans as well as Jews.

Multicultural, relativistic America is incapable of waging war against this totalitarian enemy.  It lacks the concepts, the understanding, required to wage such a war.  President Bush called the destruction of the World Trade Center a “cowardly” act, when, in truth, it was an act of dauntless courage.  He called this act “senseless,” when in fact it was well calculated to humble America, to uplift Islamic pride, to glorify Allah.

Moreover, responsibility for this monstrous act was attributed to “Islamic fundamentalism,” or to a network of terrorists led by Osama bin Laden.  True, Islamic states were held responsible for harboring these terrorists.  But this tacitly indicates that the so-called war against international terrorism involves Islam as a whole: there is hardly an Islamic state that does not provide a haven, to say nothing of financial support, for Arab terrorists.  Yet, to make a mockery of the World Trade Center disaster, the U.S. invited Islamic regimes and even arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat to join the war against international terrorism!  Nor is this all.

President Bush called this a war between good and evil.  And so it is.  But the United States and the West have long been silent about evil, indeed, have honored the personification of evil, again, Yasser Arafat.  Hence the U.S. is far from being simply good.  Besides, American cultural imperialism is vulgarizing much of the world, undermining moral and religious values.   We see this in the Americanization of Israel.  True, Israel is indebted to the United States and is itself to blame for the vices it has imported from America.  Some may also blame Washington for Oslo, which has resulted in thousands of Jewish casualties—an enormous number for a small country like Israel.  But Oslo is primarily the product of Westernized or secularized Jews.  Indeed, the Israeli architects of Oslo were animated by one ultimate objective, and that is to destroy Israel as a Jewish state and to transform it into miniature, multicultural America!

Jan 19 2015

A War America Can’t Win, Part Three


Prof. Paul Eidelberg

If it is true, as I maintain, that “Islamic fundamentalism” is authentic Islam (now resurgent), and if international terrorism is merely a manifestation of Islam’s war against Western civilization, then it should be obvious that multicultural America is incapable of winning such a war.   Never mind the enormous economic interests of the United States in the Islamic Middle East.  There are some 50 Muslim states and more than one billion Muslims on this planet; they are not going to be cowed by America.

To win this war, America would have to bring about a Protestant Reformation in Islam.   Muslims would have to renounce the ethos of jihad.  Islam would then cease being a militant, expansionist, and proselytizing creed.  It would have to recognize, as one may see in the Bible of Israel, that God creates nations as well as individuals, and that the independence of diverse nations, above all Israel, is to be respected so long as they observe the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality.

Moreover, Islamic autocracies, without becoming secular, would have to become commercial republics.  On the one hand, they would cease to be corporate states in which the individual has no unalienable rights.  On the other hand, the rights of individuals would not be exalted at the expense of religious-based morality.  Accordingly, the state would introduce an ethical market economy.  This would promise an end to the poverty endemic in the Islamic world.  It would promote creativity and the development of a middle class, a precondition of a moderate and stable republic.

From this it should be obvious that American democracy, to the extent that it has departed from the principles of the American founding fathers, is hardly a model for the Islamic world.  To mention present tendencies:  Its unrestrained freedom spawns licentiousness; its indiscriminate egalitarianism undermines deference and respect for parents and lawful authority; its form of capitalism promotes avarice and materialism; its pop culture fosters vulgarity; its university-bred doctrine of moral relativism breeds atheism and cynicism.

If Islam has to undergo a “Protestant Reformation,” America has to undergo a Judeo-Christian Restoration.☼

Jan 19 2015

A War America Can’t Win, Part Four


Prof. Paul Eidelberg

The following Op-ed was published in: Arutz Sheva – Monday, January 19, 2015 12:50 AM

 

The West Cannot Win this War

The West doesn’t want to make the changes that will allow it to win

100 img506208
Giulio Meotti The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly…
►More from this writer

Take another look at the video filmed under the Charlie Hebdo’s building, the black car of the terrorists who had no fear of death and are advancing by shooting, while the white car of the policemen is forced to retreat.

We are capitulating.

The West cannot win this war. Take the last French mass rally with dozens of heads of states from around the world: it was a silent march, a mute show where nobody took the podium. As if these people didn’t know what to say. As if these Western leaders didn’t really believe in what they were doing in Paris.

A few days ago, Martin Wolf in the British daily Financial Times gave voice to the deep estrangement of Europe’s élite. He suggested using massive doses of multicultural recognition of equality between different cultures in order to combat Islamism. Mr. Wolf is implicitly saying that we must surrender, that we cannot win, that we have to contain terror and finally find a way to coexist with it.

The French horror doesn’t lie in the killings per se. A few hours later, in Nigeria, Boko Haram destroyed many villages and burned hundreds of people to death. Europe’s horror lies in the fact that the terrorists came from the heart of the continent. The Chouaci’s brothers, the British bombers and Theo Van Gogh’s killer didn’t came from Raqqa, in Syria, or Al Qaeda in Yemen. No, they were born and raised in European democracies.

Europe gave everything to these terrorists: schools, education, entartainment, sexual pleasures, salaries and freedom. The French terrorists rejected the French values of liberté, egalité and fraternité; the British suicide bombers rejected British multiculturalism, while Dutch terrorist Mohammed Bouyeri, who slaughtered the film maker in Amsterdam, rejected the Dutch mute values of moral indifference.

A few days ago, I was talking with Flemming Rose, the Danish journalist who first published the cartoons in 2006 and now lives protected by the police. He told me the shocking truth nobody wants to hear:

“I am pretty pessimistic about the future of free speech, though I am delighted that so many people came out to support Charlie Hebdo”, Rose told me. “I knew several of the cartoonists who were killed, and I was a witness in a criminal case against CH in 2007. My fear is that this supportwill not translate into real decisions and changed behavior when we get back to our day-to-day life. We have seen that before. Madrid 2004, Theo van Gogh 2004, London 2005, Kurt Westergaard 2008 and 2010 (one planned attack and another real attack in which he was nearly killed). Every time lots of support and solidarity with the victims, but very little has changed in reality, quite to the contrary, apart from CH no European newspapers have dared to publish Mohammed cartoons since 2008”.

They speak theology, we reply with logic. They use bullets, we march in the streets.

Charlie Hebdo’s journalists were brave people, defiant, but if they are the Western heroes, we have already lost. “Charb” and the other cartoonists didn’t believe in anything.

A few years ago, at my newspaper in Italy. I suggested we publish a letter that Mohammed Bouyeri released from his Dutch prison. Bouyeri says he does not feel remorse for what he did. The tone of the letter is marked by a kind of puerile candor. Bouyeri never mentions Van Gogh, but he makes it clear that he has fulfilled a religious duty by killing him.

The West cannot win this war. The price it would have to pay is the loss of European values: reducing the civil rights of many people, deporting them, declaring a war of values, sending boots on the ground in the Middle East, imposing Western civilization on them. Europe will never do that. Europe itself doesn’t believe in these values anymore. This is also one of the reason why Europe hates Israeli Jews who daily confront evil and fight it, so deeply.

The terrorists of Charlie Hebdo talk a religious language and use terms like honor, faith, prophet and loyalty, while the West replies to them with words such as freedom, democracy, rights, respect and tolerance. They speak theology, we reply with logic. They use bullets, we march in the streets.

It is a sad joke. The truth is that people in the West are relieved that they don’t have to fight, that we are surrendering, that life goes on as usual. Hurray, we are capitulating!

Jan 17 2015

What Steps May Be Taken To Curb America’s Number One Enemy


By Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Any enemy of the United States is an enemy of Israel. Conversely, any enemy of Israel is an enemy of the United States. This makes Barack Obama the greatest enemy of Western Civilization, which he hates and has brazenly displayed by returning a bust of Winston Churchill, who President John F. Kennedy, by an act of Congress, April 9, 1963 (Public Law 88-6; 77),  declared an honorary citizen of the United States.

I therefore invite all people who agree with me – and I am a citizen of both countries – to think of lawful ways to remove Barack Obama from his office as President of the United States, the man John Bolton, the illustrious former U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, scornfully called the first “post-American President.”

Let us consider some of the pernicious acts thus far perpetrated by this post-American President, and ponder those he may commit during his two remaining years in the White House.

  • He has curtailed U.S. defense expenditures despite the threat of a new Cold War.
  • He has curtailed missile defense facilities for Eastern Europe.
  • He has supported the Palestine Authority which is responsible for the murder of more than 1,000 Israelis and the maiming of many thousands more.
  • He has appointed multicultural moral relativists of dubious loyalty to America for life-time tenures in the federal judiciary.
  • He has appointed Muslims to positions in the Executive Branch of Government.
  • He has deliberately failed to sign or execute laws enacted by Congress.
  • He has released al-Qaeda terrorists without Congressional authorization.
  • He has appeased Islamic states and organizations committed to America’s as well as Israel’s demise.
  • He has failed to enforce immigration laws and naturalization policies intended to preserve the America’s national security and cultural identity.
  • He has disparaged America’s primary foundational document, the Declaration of Independence.
  • He has fostered disrespect for the American Constitution.
  • He has belittled America’s Founding Fathers.
  • He is undermining the patriotism of American youth.
  • He has displayed contempt for the American work ethic.
  • He has undermined respect for law and lawful authority.
  • He is promoting crime and violence.
  • He is provoking racial hatred.
  • He is undermining reverence for the Judeo-Christian ethos.
  • He is deliberately instigating a cultural revolution unparalleled in American history.
  • He has disgraced the office of the President of the United States, the world’s greatest Democracy, by bowing to a Muslim Despot, the king of Saudi Arabia where women are held in chattel slavery.
  • He has disgraced America by not participating in the gathering of world leaders in Paris who protested against Islamic terrorism.
  • He has displayed abject ignorance and/or intellectual dishonesty by refusing to describe as Islamic terrorism the Muslim murder of innocent civilians.

By virtue of these and other acts of commission and omission, which manifest his political irresponsibility add incompetence,  as well as his appeasement of Islamic terrorism, Barack Obama is emasculating America. Accordingly:

Jan 15 2015

On the Need to Transcend Language


By Paul Eidelberg

An individual who opposes the use the word “extremism” in connection with Islam, or with the behavior of  Muslims who murder innocent human beings, has not only transcended the distinction between ignorance and stupidity, but has also obscured the language that differentiates what is human  from what is subhuman.  Indeed, such a creature has escaped the rational constraints and meaningfulness of language. No longer should the term “homo sapiens” be applied to creatures called “human beings.”

That such a creature may become the President of the United States is unexceptional since, according to Muslims who believe in Allah’s Quran, most Americas are “pigs” and “dogs.” That such Muslims regard most Americans as subhuman is a normative, not an extremist, Islamic doctrine. This Islam is personified by of the current President of the United States.

In our age of moral equivalency, what some people call “terrorists” are nothing more than disliked “freedom fighters.”  In this age, there is no such thing as “Islamic Extremism” or “Radical Islam.” Such language denotes value-judgments having no objective validity. Such terms should be expunged from the English language.

It’s about time that we heeded the refined teachings of higher education exemplified, for example, by the doctrine of Positivism or Logical Empiricism, a doctrine exalted at the bexst universities in Boston, London, and Paris.  If we are to avoid hurting the feelings of others, all moral distinctions should be eliminated, especially words like “good” and “bad.”  Such words should be avoided even when house-breaking dogs. Dogs also have feelings.