Posted on 08/08/2006 4:51:41 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
On July 28, 2006, a Muslim entered the building of the Seattle Jewish Federation and shot every Jew he saw, murdering one woman and wounding five others.
On the same day, Mel Gibson was arrested on DUI charges and while intoxicated let loose with anti-Semitic invective at the Jewish police officer who arrested him.
Question: Which story has most troubled the Left?
The answer is known to any American who can hear or read.
So, the real question is: Why? Why has the shooting and murder of Jews elicited less angst from the Left than the anti-Semitic statements made by Mel Gibson when drunk?
The answers are very troubling. As Time magazine said about global warming (but never about Islamic terror), "Be worried, very worried."
We should be worried about this: The liberal world fears -- and much of it loathes -- fundamentalist Christians considerably more than it does fundamentalist Muslims.
This is as true of most Jewish liberals -- even though conservative Christians are Israel's and the Jews' most loyal supporters and even though Nazi-like anti-Semitism permeates much of the Muslim world -- as it is of most other liberals, certainly including the mainstream media.
That is why Jewish writer Zev Chafets wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "On the same day Gibson got into trouble in Malibu, a fellow named Naveed Afzal Haq brought a pistol to the Jewish Federation office in Seattle and shot six women, killing one. Two days later, this personal jihad -- one of the most gory anti-Jewish crimes in American history -- got second billing on the ADL website, under "Mel Gibson's Apology for Tirade 'Insufficient.' " (For the record, the ADL later announced it had accepted Mel Gibson's apology.)
This is one more example of the greatest flaw of contemporary liberalism -- its inability to recognize and confront the greatest evils. Since the 1960s, when liberalism became indistinguishable from the Left -- e.g., when New York Times positions became indistinguishable from those of The Nation -- liberals tended to attack opponents of evil far more than those who actually committed evil. The Left (around the world) was far more antagonistic to Ronald Reagan than to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, and far more disturbed by anti-Communism than by Communism.
So, too, today. For example, with few exceptions (the liberal columnist Thomas Friedman being one of the most notable) one only hears conservatives use the term "Islamo-fascism." Nearly the entire academic world that discusses the issue is far more concerned with the threat of "Islamophobia" than of Islamo-fascism. Liberal and left-wing anger is largely reserved for conservatives and especially conservative Christians, while analogous antipathy about Islamic groups with genocidal designs on Israel or America is largely to be found on the Right.
The liberal doctrine on fundamentalist American Christians is that they are the moral equivalent of fundamentalist Muslims and constitute a similar threat to our republic. As bestselling author Karen Armstrong said to Bill Moyers on PBS, "Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States."
Regarded by the liberal media as perhaps the greatest living historian and commentator on religion, Karen Armstrong does not even see the Muslim fundamentalist support for murder of innocents as a distinguishing feature. According to Armstrong, "Christian fundamentalists in the United States have committed fewer acts of terror than the others for two main reasons: they live in a more peaceful society . . . [and they] believe that the democratic federal government of the United States will collapse without their needing to take action: God will see to it" [beliefnet.com].
The antipathy toward Christian fundamentalists and conservatives is why Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic statements trouble the Left more than Naveed Haq and the genocidal anti-Semitism permeating the Muslim world. And what is it about those Christians that most disturbs the Left? That they talk in terms of good and evil and believe the former must fight the latter, precisely the area of the Left's greatest weakness.
Agree wholeheartedly; see my previous post.
Ping to wag and self for later pingout (or whoever gets to it first.)
The liberal world fears -- and much of it loathes -- fundamentalist Christians considerably more than it does fundamentalist Muslims.
As I've said before much of the left has gone stark raving MAD!
Totalitarians for Cultural Suicide. The West is in danger of being euthanized as long as they are the power elite. they are ticks on the body politic.
"I honestly do not believe that liberals are anti-American. I do believe that they are anti-confrontational. THis means that any time America confronts its enemies, they are opposing us. They are, in essence, cowards. They are scared to fight, insult, or confront any enemy."
I disagree with what you have said based on the fact that the libs LOVE confrontation with anyone who disagrees with them. They fight like rabid dogs on any number of issues (war, abortion, guns, religion, etc.). They never fight the country's enemies because they are naturally sympathetic to them.
Hwever, when it comes to an enemy who is known for physically attacking any ideological enemy, they shy away.
The question is, is the perception of the left that Christians are presently more dangerous to constitutional liberties than Islamists connected to reality? Prager's point is that leftists have a skewed since of proportionality ("As Time magazine said about global warming (but never about Islamic terror"), "Be worried, very worried."
Of course leftists are preoccupied with the ability of Christian fundamentalists" to thwart leftist's perceived innate right to absolute power. That obsession is what leads to the incoherence that equates Christian fundamentalists with, or even makes them worse than, Moslem terrorists.
The attribution of leftists' who fear "Islamophobia" more than they fear Islamo-fascism to the left's perception that Fundamentalist Christians are capable of directly influencing our government and laws may be trivially true, but it seems to be oblivious to the overall insanity of the obsessed liberal mindset, which is what Prager is pointing out.
Cordially,
This is so true. Some time back, I asked a liberal friend to tell me how she felt about fundamentalist Christians - and I wrote down the gist of what she said. Then I read it back to her substituting the word "Jew" for the term she used - "evangelicals". She was shocked at how awful she sounded -- how intolerant and hateful. Then I told her this was what she sounded like to conservatives. In one flash she realized she was what she supposedly looked down on...
It's not that Liberals don't confront evil. It's just what they think is evil is so far off the map.
A case in point, in the 1930s the liberals were against getting involved against Hitler. Then, Hitler invades the Soviet Union, in 1941. Then they started demanding we get into the war.
Yep, the cartoon episode was a perfect and practical illustration of your theory.
Ironic, considering tommorrow the much awaited "World Trade Center" movie is set to come out to general theater showing around the country. These liberals cannot face the reality that these same terrorists are going to get after them also regardless of their political thinking.
Ping
As far as the left is concerned, there is no "evil", it's all relative!
He died a brutal, heart-wrenching death. It caused me to weep for him, as it did others. But I think that it's entirely likely that even then, he didn't think of them as evil. The whole situation probably didn't even compute in his mind.
There have been plenty of blatant, clear, black-and-white, obvious evidences of the evils that we face. Yet the left continues to vehemently, even violently deny their existence. I believe that, for many of them, their blindness is willful, stubborn and complete.
Yep, the cartoon episode was a perfect and practical illustration of your theory.
----
That was the defining moment when I realized that a driving factor of the elitist left is cowardice. They trip over themselves to bully, belittle, ridicule, and attack those they perceive to be unable to strike back (i.e. Christians). But they bend over backward to appease, condone, and placate those they perceive might harm them (at least that was their excuse for the cartoon fiasco).
This cowardice to confront the true enemy explains so much when it comes to the recent behavior of the MSM as far as Mel, the Seattle shooting, faked pictures, faked CNN stories, etc.
All leftist thought is of and from Satan. If they confronted evil, they'd be confronting themselves.
Of course to the left there is evil, it's called Capitalism.
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