Rod Dreher's Blog, page 643

Dostoevskian Demons on Campus

A reader writes about the possession of his/her university campus by Dostoevskian demons:

With the recent legalization of gay marriage in the US, the LGPBTTQQIIAA+ community has been floundering for a new cause to rally behind. “The fight isn’t over” as they say here in California. In desperate attempts to find purpose in this world of oppression, some of the once “gay” men and women have decided that being gay isn’t enough to stand out. And thus we have the birth of the most confused mess of gender and sexual identity the world has ever seen. In student government here at my university, we are required to attend workshops and seminars which help us become more diverse and inclusive. Allow me to share with you what I have learned from these workshops about gender and sexuality.

First, gender identity is now a greyscale, and being uncertain about where one lies on the gender scale is popular among the trendy communities. This uncertainty is now referred to as being “gender-queer” and is often simplified to just “queer”. However, think twice before you call someone queer because you can’t call someone queer unless you are one. Wow that’s a lot of queers for two sentences! An even more queer gender identity is one that varies throughout the day or week, with the moon, the tides, the last meal, and the temperature. They call this one gender-fluid. No, ladies and gentleman (and others), you can’t drink it, but if you are feeling really girly in the morning, then you are a girl, regardless of your plumbing. But if your hamburger makes you feel manly later in the day, then hop in that big ol’ pickup truck of yours because today you’re a man. Being gender-fluid allows you to transform genders at will. A fluid individual can change between transgender, asexual and of course, the dreaded cisgender. All of us normal people are cisgendered which in today’s “progressive” society is now “outdated.” According to the teachings of wise and tolerant individuals, the human race has to evolve away from the arcane gender binary and embrace the dissociation of one’s gender from one’s sex. If you think that’s confusing, we are just getting started.

Sexual identity is even more diverse and inclusive than gender. Many of the gender and sexual identities overlap, but bear with me. I will include here a list of the sexual identities that I have encountered here at my University along with my closest interpretation of their meanings:

Heterosexual- You already know.

Homosexual- If you are sexually attracted to the same sex.

Bisexual- If you are a boy and you are sexually attracted to other boys and other girls but not the in-betweens.

Asexual- You hate the world.

Pansexual- 1) You are sexually attracted to anyone. 2) You are sexually attracted to pans?

Biromantic- You are sexually attracted to one gender, but romantically attracted to the other.

Transsexual- This is strangely not a sexual identity.

Androsexual- You are sexually attracted to men.

Queer- 1) You aren’t sure what you are attracted to. 2) A label if you don’t already have one.

In public meetings, being diverse and inclusive is just as important as literacy. I do believe diversity and inclusion is important, but when debate is thwarted every 20 minutes or so by a student who calls out someone for using the word “guys” when referring to the participants as a whole (a sin punishable by death), one must question where we draw the line. We can thank the south for the progressives’ new favorite gender-inclusive word, “y’all” which is so much more inclusive. Heaven forbid we use “heteronormative” terminology. Is a mailman now a mailperson? A fireman a fireperson? A butler a but-person? The English language obviously needs a complete renovation for true inclusivity to be achieved.

In all seriousness being inclusive and understanding is necessary for a functional society, but the movement is being taken too far. It frustrates me that our student government wastes so much time and money ensuring that a small fraction of campus feels validated. Many students have lost sight of real world issues such as an overly enrolled campus, maintenance issues, tuition hikes, campus safety, and improper allocation of student fees. When anyone attempts to prioritize real world issues on campus, they are immediately shutdown and labeled as a capitalist, white, privileged, cisgendered, heterosexuals who don’t understand oppression. If anyone questions the allocations of money towards LGBPTTQQIIAA+ community, he or she (or other) is automatically deemed ethically wrong.

Now that sexual orientation has been constitutionally recognized, the LGBPTTQQIIAA+ community spends most of its time clogging up discussion, requesting gender-neutral bathrooms, and shutting out opposing opinions with their incessant need for validation. These people have considered themselves victims of oppression their whole lives and now that they are not legally oppressed, they complain about improper vocabulary when referring to the “many” genders and sexual orientations. No one gives a hoot about whether or not you recognize your genetically coded identity. If people want to pretend that they are a woman when they are not, let them; it doesn’t affect the rest of us. If you truly believe in your identity, you don’t need validation from others.

Sincerely,

Anonymous California Student

P.S. If the administration of my university were to identify me as the author of this letter, I would be at risk of expulsion. Yay first amendment!

You know, we laugh at this stuff, but there is a profound sickness present here, and an incredibly destructive nihilism present. The entire university is being held hostage to these deranged narcissists who are fully possessed by ideology, and the Stepan Trofimoviches who enable them. Something’s gotta give — but what?

It really is diabolical, at least in the sense that I spoke of in this past post. Excerpt:

Rieff’s prophetic point is that Western culture has renounced renunciation, has cast off the ascetic spirit, and therefore has deconverted from Christianity whether it knows it or not. In bringing this up with my priest friend, I asked him why he thought sex was at the center of the Christian symbolic that has not held.

“It goes back to Genesis 1,” he said. “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then he told them to ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ We see right there in the beginning the revelation that male and female, that complementarity, symbolizes the Holy Trinity, and in their fertility they carry out the life of the Trinity.”

In other words, from the perspective of the Hebrew Bible, gender complementarity and fertility are built into the nature of ultimate reality, which is God. Our role as human beings is to strive to harmonize our own lives with that reality, because in so doing we dwell in harmony with God.

“Do you know what the word ‘symbol’ means in the original Greek?” he asked. I said I did not.

“It means ‘to bring together,’” he said.

“To integrate,” I replied.

“Yes. Now, do you know what the antonym for symbol is?”

“No.”

“It is diabolos, which means to tear apart, to separate, to throw something through another thing.”

“So when something is diabolic, it means it is a disintegrating force?”

“You could say that, yes,” he said. “All the time I’m dealing with the fallout from divorce and families breaking up. Kids who don’t know their fathers. You should hear these confessions. It’s a huge deal. You can see the loss of the sense of what family is for, and why it’s important.”

He said that the students he works with are so confused, needy, and broken. Many of them have never seen what a functional, healthy family looks like, and have grown up in a culture that devalues the fundamental moral, metaphysical, and spiritual principles that make stable and healthy family formation possible — especially the belief that the generative powers of sex, within male-female complementarity, is intimately related to the divine nature, and the ongoing life of the Trinity. Nobody has ever explained it to them, he says. If they’ve heard anything from the Church, it’s something like, “Don’t do this because the Bible says not to” — which is not enough in this time and place. And many of them have never, or have rarely, seen it modeled for them by the adults in their lives.

A person who believes in the dis-integrating of reality is insane. And here were are. Diabolical is the right word for it.

We Want Spring Interns

Do you want to work as an intern at the TAC mothership in Washington, DC? We need spring interns. Deadline is tomorrow; apply here. 

It’s a pretty great gig, I’d say. Here’s what you get to do:

Editorial interns gain experience in all aspects of producing the website and print magazine. This internship offers real experience in all the moving parts of a media organization and exposure to both editorial and marketing projects.

Responsibilities include:

Preparing pieces for the web, writing headlines, curating images
Managing TAC’s presence on social media platforms
Contributing headlines and story ideas
Proofreading, fact-checking, and editing
Blogging for the web and writing for the print magazine
Devising strategies for audience development and engagement
Helping with event-planning and special projects

Clerical duties, such as answering the phone and handling the mail, are also involved.

All candidates should possess:

Eagerness to work tirelessly on a small but ambitious team
Superb writing and editing ability
Strong communication and organizational skills
Love of considered, lengthy journalism as well as an appreciation of horse-race politics
Excellent news/culture/opinion judgment
A background in intellectual conservatism and keen understanding of The American Conservative’s sensibility

Past experience with a news or opinion publication is preferred, though not required.

This is a really interesting magazine to work for, and the added advantage of being in the DC office is you don’t have to put up with me on the premises making you listen to me gas on about Dante.

The Vindication of Viktor Orban

From The Guardian:

Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister strongly opposed to immigration, will feel vindicated in his view that western Europe is reaping what it has sown through a disastrous policy of liberal multiculturalism that will not be repeated in central and eastern Europe. He has plenty of support.

I think he’s right, but before my fellow conservatives look forward to Orbanism spreading in Western Europe, read this piece by James Traub on what Orban’s (popular) rule has meant in Hungary. Excerpt:

Orban’s Hungary is not Putin’s Russia, or even Erdogan’s Turkey, but it is a country where checks on the power of the state have been steadily eroding. “You now have an intrusion of the state into your every day life in a way that was not true before,” Laszlo Seres, a journalist for an opposition newsweekly, argues.

Government officials, he says, are now rewriting the history curriculum and appointing teachers; obscure right-wing authors from the past have suddenly been resurrected. Orban has appointed party officials to the Constitutional Court and the prosecutor’s office. In Freedom House’s most recent rankings, where 1 is most free and 7 least, Hungary scored a 2 for overall freedom, political rights, and civil liberties; Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, by contrast, got a 1 in all cases.

One of the first measures the Fidesz-controlled legislature passed in 2010 established a body, appointed by the parliament — and thus by Fidesz — to regulate the media. The law made it a crime, punishable by fines of up to $900,000, to publish “imbalanced news coverage” or material deemed “insulting” to a group or “the majority” or that insulted “public morality.” The law provoked outrage abroad just as Hungary was assuming the rotating presidency of the European Union. In what would become a pattern, Orban responded by submitting to parliament a slightly less onerous measure, which then passed muster with European authorities.

The most draconian elements of the law have not been applied. No media outlet has been fined or closed down for insulting Orban or Fidesz or the Hungarian people. Although Orban has turned public media into Fidesz propaganda organs, private newspapers and television stations remain critical of the government. Gergo Saling, editor of the investigative online news site Direkt36, told me that “the fear was much bigger than the reality.”

Later in the piece, Traub writes about the far-right Hungarian party Jobbik:

Jobbik has increasingly gained the support of well-educated young people, sick of all the traditional parties, including Fidesz [Note: Orban’s party — RD]. The single smoothest person I met in Hungary was a Jobbik legislator, Marton Gyongyosi, a 38-year-old graduate of Trinity College Dublin, who sat with me on a crimson velvet bench in the misleadingly named Press Room (in fact, no press was normally allowed — I was an exception) in Budapest’s magnificent 1904 parliament building. Gyongyosi demurred when I described Jobbik as a “conservative” party.

“For the Hungarian people,” he said, “conservative parties in Western Europe are also liberal.” Both the left and the right in Europe, he said, were secular heirs of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Hungary, he said, was struggling to “defend its sovereignty” in the face of post-Christian European values.

Jobbik is openly anti-Semitic, which Orban is not, at least not yet, thank God.

Here’s the thing: I am inclined to agree about liberalism and post-Christian Europe — meaning that I fear that liberal, secular democracy and all it implies cannot sustain itself, either in the face of Islamic terrorist attacks in the short run, or, in the long run, by reproducing itself. I mentioned in this space earlier this year something a scholar involved in advising the EU said to me: that EU governments know that their nations cannot endure the collapsing birth rate and the withering away of the traditional family, but they have no idea how to reverse this trend. The scholar told me that in his view, only a religious revival could do it — and that’s not on the horizon. But we may be surprised.

Anyway, I find myself in the same place as Livy described the Romans at the end of their Republican phase: as being unable to endure our vices or the cure, if the cure is illiberal democracy, à la Orban. What if that’s the only thing that stands a chance of holding Europe together, though? This is something we have to soberly consider, by which I mean we cannot dismiss it as an unthinkable possibility, even if we find it extremely distasteful. If we do not consider why Europeans would be attracted to an illiberal regime, we will fail to appreciate the appeal of such a political option, and act accordingly.

When I was in Italy earlier this year, I was surprised to hear a few conservative Catholics expressing admiration for Putin. Over the weekend, a reader in Paris e-mailed to say you hear a lot of admiration for Putin among the French today. If I were French, seeing the terror that has played out on the Paris streets this year, and considering the futility of the government’s gestures till now, and the haplessness of the liberal establishment in the face of the deadly challenges facing the country (not just from Islamic radicalism), I cannot say I would not be tempted to consider stronger medicine.

Barry Lando, writing in Counterpunch, says it’s already happening there:

 

“Is France Ripe for an Authoritarian Regime?” What is remarkable about that Op Ed piece in the conservative Le Figaro newspaper, is that it was written not in the wake of today’s horrific terrorist attacks in Paris—but the day before.

As I write, it is still unclear how many have been killed in the French capital—the reported total has reached at least 140–but there is no question that the massacre could have a devastating impact on France’s already very shaky democratic institutions.

According to the Le Figaro, when asked by IFOP, a respected French poling agency, if they would accept a non-democratic form of government to bring necessary reforms to France, 67% of the French said they would opt for a government of non-elected technocrats. 40% percent said they would back a non-elected authoritarian regime.

Again, that survey was carried out the day before the bloody carnage in Paris. People may have poured out into the streets in an impressive show of unity earlier this year in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings, but that moment of attempted racial harmony was brief and the situation has been fraying ever since.

Lando, expanding in HuffPo on his thoughts, says:

A shaken but defiant President Francois Hollande has declared that ISIS’s attack was an “act of war.” It was “prepared, organized and planned” from the exterior with complicity from people inside France. Among other measures, he has called up more military, closed the borders, and announced a nationwide state of alert. France he said will be will be “pitiless in attacking the barbarians” of ISIS both abroad and at home.

But the fact is that for months now France has been on extra alert–policemen and soldiers with bulletproof vests and automatic rifles patrolling the airports, guarding Jewish schools and synagogues, checking the bags of people entering large department stores and museums. France’s security agencies have been monitoring all forms of communication.

They’ve attempted to block would-be jihadists from going to Syria, tried to deal with hundreds, perhaps thousands of others–who have come back. They claimed to have thwarted some potential attacks.

One of the reasons they were bombarding Isis training camps in Syria was that they knew a plot against France was in the works. As President Hollande said today, “We know who they are, where they are coming from, who are these terrorists.”

Yet, despite all that, the ISIS terrorists managed their devastating strike.

Lando continues:

It would be marvelous indeed if the Muslim community in France and its leaders could somehow take more of the lead in dealing with the Islamic radicals within their own ranks, speak out even more forcefully against them, condemn the more radical schools and Imams, Indeed, the great majority of French Muslims have rejected radical Islam for years.

But the more Islamophobia spreads, the more the French government cracks down, the more ISIS and other radical Muslim groups will achieve their goal. That is, to convince French Muslims that there is no way moderation will work in France, no way they will ever be accepted as full citizens in this country. The only solution is radical Islam, jihad, the way of al-Qaeda and Isis.

If that happens, than the current Islamic “Fifth column” in France could morph from a few hundred or thousand young radicals, to a much more terrifying threat.

The problem is that, at this time of national crisis, France lacks any great leader of vision and courage. There is no De Gaulle or Clemenceau in the wings. Only Francois Hollande.

Here’s a response typical of the liberal establishment. The author is David Gow:

Friday the 13th is a clear historic watershed: either Europe bows to the angry, intolerant clamour of the Right and makes itself an authoritarian, xenophobic fortress or it re-asserts republican values of openness, tolerance, equality – while protecting all its citizens.

I do not believe any person of good will wants Europe to become “an authoritarian, xenophobic fortress,” but it’s pretty clear by now that “republican values of openness, tolerance, equality” are not capable of dealing with the deadly challenge facing Europe. What, then, is?

Over the weekend, I read Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, and will post on it later today. It’s not really a good book, but it is an amazingly diagnostic novel. It’s not anti-Muslim in the least, but is rather a depressing commentary on the despairing state of secular materialist France. In the book, the French accept an authoritarian president from the Muslim Brotherhood because they are terrified of the far right, and because they are exhausted, and the strong leadership he promises is more appealing than the enervated purposelessness that they live with.

 

 

 

UK Benedict Option Bleg

Readers in the UK, a British journalist has approached me about doing a story on the Benedict Option for his publication. He asks if there are any examples of the Ben Op in the UK. Can any of you think of any? If so, please list them in the comments section, and drop me an email at rod — at — amconmag.com if you would be willing to be in touch with the reporter.

Pope Cracks Door to Lutheran Communion

Francis continues to, um, amaze. From Rocco Palma’s report on the Pope’s meeting with Lutherans in Rome on Sunday, as part of an ecumenical dialogue:

In an answer that’s almost certain to resonate broadly across the ecumenical scene (and elsewhere, quite possibly show his hand on his intended course following last month’s Synod on the Family), the pontiff – clearly wrestling with the plea – pointedly appealed less to the standard prohibition of the Eucharist for Protestant communities than to the woman’s discernment in conscience.

As if to reinforce the point, in a move clearly decided in advance, Francis publicly presented the pastor with a chalice which appeared identical to the ones the Pope gave the archbishops of Washington, New York and Philadelphia during his late September US trip.

Quoting from his answer to a question posed by a Lutheran woman married to a Catholic man, about when she and her husband can expect to receive holy communion together (it is forbidden in the Catholic Church for non-Catholics — Orthodox Christians excepted under certain conditions — to receive communion):

I can only respond to your question with a question: what can I do with my husband that the Lord’s Supper might accompany me on my path? It’s a problem that each must answer [for themselves], but a pastor-friend once told me that “We believe that the Lord is present there, he is present” – you believe that the Lord is present. And what’s the difference? There are explanations, interpretations, but life is bigger than explanations and interpretations. Always refer back to your baptism – one faith, one baptism, one Lord: this Paul tells us; and then consequences come later.

I would never dare to give permission to do this, because it’s not my own competence. One baptism, one Lord, one faith. Talk to the Lord and then go forward. [Pauses] And I wouldn’t dare – I don’t dare say anything more.

In other words: let your conscience be your guide. Who is the Pope to judge?

It is not in the competence of the pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church to say that a Protestant cannot receive communion in a Catholic mass? Really? The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

1400 Ecclesial communities derived from the Reformation and separated from the Catholic Church, “have not preserved the proper reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Holy Orders.” It is for this reason that, for the Catholic Church, Eucharistic intercommunion with these communities is not possible. However these ecclesial communities, “when they commemorate the Lord’s death and resurrection in the Holy Supper . . . profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ and await his coming in glory.”

“Eucharistic intercommunion with these communities is not possible” is now “One baptism, one Lord, one faith. Talk to the Lord and then go forward.”

Of course he “would never dare to give permission to do this,” the Jesuit pope said, Jesuitically, but said so in winking at doing that very thing. Hard to avoid the conclusion that Pope Francis just effectively rewrote the Catechism, and destroyed a Eucharistic discipline that has existed since the Reformation. Did you ever think you would live to see this? The Pope is refuting the magisterial teaching of his own Church, and not on a small matter either.

The Catholic anthropologist Mary Douglas, in her celebrated 1968 book Natural Symbols, writes:

Now I turn to the other example of how messages about symbols issue from the Vatican only to be decoded here [England] as messages about ethics. The celebration of the Eucharist is central to Catholic dogma. If this gets bowdlerized, then the tendency which Herberg describes for denominations to become social compartments empty of distinguishing empty of distinguishing doctrines will have worked its way right through the modern world. Historic, sacramental Catholicism will have faded out.

She goes on to talk about how the condensation of symbols in the Catholic Eucharist is “staggering in its depth.” Says Douglas, “If it were just a matter of expressing all these themes, symbolizing and commemorating, much less blood and ink would have been spilt at the Reformation.

She talks about how Catholics view the Eucharist as being, for Catholics, a “real, invisible transformation” of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the deity, and this having “saving efficacy for those who take it and for others.

It is based on a fundamental assumption about the human role in religion. It assumes that humans can take an active part in the work of redemption, both to save themselves and others, through using the sacraments as channels of grace — sacraments are not only signs, but essentially different from other signs, being instruments. This touches on the belief in opus operatum, the efficacious rite, whose very possibility was denied by the Protestant reformers.

Douglas, quoting a scholar of the Reformation, says that the Reformation’s most powerful effect was to turn Christianity into a religion of inner feeling. It did that not by toppling the Pope, but by changing the sacramental system. “For the Catholic Church, it was not the attack on the Papacy that was the most fateful event which has happened in the Reformation, but the emptying out from her Mysteries of the objective source of power.”

And yesterday, the Pope — the Pope! — told a Lutheran woman to “come forward” because “life is bigger than explanations and interpretations.”

Poor historical, sacramental Catholicism…

Are the Democrats Trending Anti-Christian?

So, last week the Obama administration endorsed redefining the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a way that would give churches, mosques, and Orthodox synagogues the same status under federal law as racist organizations. Last month, Hillary Clinton said that passing the so-called Equality Act would be her “highest priority.”

I get that. If you believe that homosexuality = race, then it makes sense that you would try to write LGBT into the Civil Rights Act. But you cannot hide from the implications of that move — that is, what it means for traditional Christians, and how this administration, and a Hillary Clinton administration, would be likely to view traditional religious believers.

Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reports that the Obama administration will likely soon designate Iraq’s Yazidi minority victims of “genocide” at the hands of ISIS. Excerpt:

The action, which sources say could be announced by Secretary of State John Kerry in the next few weeks, has been pushed by top officials at the human rights and religious freedom offices at the State Department.

It has also been prodded by a report to be released today by the U.S. Holocaust Museum. The report documents horrific mass killings and sexual slavery targeting the small Yazidi community, as well as crimes against other ethnic minorities, by IS forces who swept through Northern Iraq last year.

“What we found is there was a deliberate attempt by the forces of the Islamic State to not only ethnically cleanse the Yazidi population [forcibly remove them from their lands] but to exterminate them,” said Cameron Hudson, the director of the museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide, which commissioned the report.

The Yazidi are believers in a syncretic religion, and called “devil worshipers” by ISIS. There can be no question that they are targeted for genocidal extermination by ISIS. Here, from the US Holocaust Museum’s report, is why the museum’s investigators concluded that the Yazidi alone are being singled out for genocide:

IS specifically notes that its treatment of the Yezidis differs from its treatment of ahl al kitab, the “people of the book,” Christians and Jews, who had the option of paying the jizya (tax) to avoid conversion or death. By refusing Yezidis any option to avoid death or forced conversion, IS demonstrates that its actions were calculated with the intent of destroying the community and thereby different from its attacks against other minorities, which were part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Targeting the largest population centers of Yezidi people, killing men, kidnapping and enslaving women and children, and destroying religious shrines suggests a pattern from which the intent to destroy a religious group can be further inferred.

It’s important to note here that the Holocaust Museum does not even consider Jews who might be in ISIS’s path to be genocide victims — this, because the investigators appear to be using a very strict standard. There is nothing at all the Yazidi can do to escape death or forced conversion, say museum investigators, therefore they are victims of genocide.

I can see the legalistic point here, but I side with Nina Shea, who says this is a distinction with very little real-world difference:

A genocide designation would have significant policy implications for American efforts to restore property and lands taken from the minority groups and for offers of aid, asylum, and other protections to such victims. Worse, it would mean that, under the Genocide Convention, the United States and other governments would not be bound to act to suppress or even prevent the genocide of these Christians.

Christians have been executed by the thousands. Christian women and girls are vulnerable to sexual enslavement. Many of their clergy have been assassinated and their churches and ancient monasteries demolished or desecrated. They have been systematically stripped of all their wealth, and those too elderly or sick to flee ISIS-controlled territory have been forcibly converted to Islam or killed, such as an 80-year-old woman who was burned to death for refusing to abide by ISIS religious rules. Pope Francis pronounced their suffering “genocide” in July. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a broad array of other churches have done so as well. Analysis from an office of the Holocaust Museum apparently relied on by the State Department asserts that ISIS protects Christians in exchange for jizya, an Islamic tax for “People of the Book,” but the assertion is simply not grounded in fact.

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Nebraska), Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and three other House members have introduced a bipartisan resolution expressing the sense of Congress that what is happening to Christians, Yazidis, and other minority groups under ISIS assault amounts to genocide:

“Christianity in the Middle East is shattered,” said Fortenberry, co-chair of the Religious Minorities in the Middle East Caucus. “The ancient faith tradition lies beaten, broken, and dying. Yet Christians in Iraq and Syria are hanging on in the face of the Islamic State’s barbarous onslaught. This is genocide. The international community must confront the scandalous silence about their plight. Christians, Yezidis, and other religious minorities have every right to remain in their ancestral homelands.”

I believe that the Obama State Department should designate the Yazidis as victims of genocide. But it should also do the same to Christians. Nina Shea says that if Isikoff’s report is correct, then State’s turning a blind eye to the extermination of Christianity in the Near East “would reflect a familiar pattern within the administration of a politically correct bias that views Christians — even non-Western congregations such as those in Iraq and Syria — never as victims but always as Inquisition-style oppressors.”

Is there a pattern here with this administration, and with the national Democrats in general (Rep. Anna Eshoo and presidential candidate Martin O’Malley being two laudable exceptions)? Here in Louisiana, chances are we are going to elect this weekend John Bel Edwards, a pro-life, pro-gun Catholic Democrat, as our next governor — a turn of events that has shocked veteran political watchers, who assumed that US Sen. David Vitter, the Republican, was unbeatable. If the vote turns out like the polls suggest it will, it tells us that people in a state as conservative as Louisiana will vote Democratic if you give them the right candidate. This administration may be able to justify, from a very narrow legalistic perspective, leaving the Christians off the genocide list, but when you think about what it’s doing to the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the administration’s opinion that traditional Christians are the moral equivalent of racists, an unwillingness (if it comes to that) to put the murdered, raped, enslaved Christians of the Near East on the genocide list, despite what they have endured and do endure every day, suggests a pattern. I doubt there is a bit of difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the how-do-we-treat-non-progressive-Christians. In fact, remember what Hillary said earlier this year at a forum in Manhattan, talking about women’s access to contraception and abortion?:

“Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will,” she explained. “And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

With leadership like that, the Democrats are not a party traditional Christians can trust to be in charge of the White House. I was so alienated from the GOP in 2008 and 2012 that I voted for a write-in candidate (Wendell Berry) in ’08 and didn’t vote for president in ’12. Because of the mounting threats to religious liberty from the Democratic Party at the national level, and their insensitivity to Christian concerns (such as ISIS-led genocide), it’s much harder to justify sitting out the 2016 race. Conservative Christian turnout in 2016 is going to be massive.

‘He Was A Bad Man’

A reader sends along that clip from a famous episode of the old Twilight Zone TV show, saying it reminds him of life on campus today. A brilliant catch!

France As the West Bank

From The Guardian:

As police worked to identify the militants, all of whom died in the attacks, Molins also confirmed that at least one of the fighters, identified by his fingerprints, was a French national from the Paris suburb of Courcouronnes. The man, born in 1985, had a criminal record and had been flagged as an extremist as early as 2010, the prosecutor said.

He also said a Syrian passport, belonging to a man born in 1990 who was not known to the French authorities, had been found lying close by the bodies of two other jihadis, who both blew themselves up in the course of their attacks.

Greece’s citizen protection minister, Nikos Toskas, said earlier that that the passport’s owner had entered the European Union through the Greek island of Leros on 3 October, adding: “We do not know if the passport was checked by other countries through which the holder likely passed.”

National Front leader Marine Le Pen held a press conference today. The NYT reports:

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s extreme-right National Front party, declared at a news conference on Saturday: “France and the French are no longer safe. It is my duty to tell you so.”

Ms. Le Pen expressed her condolences to the families of the victims and praised the work of emergency and security forces, but she said that France had to “finally determine who are its allies and who are its enemies.” She accused unnamed countries of having “benevolent” relationships with radical Islam and “ambiguous” ties with terrorist groups.

More:

Ms. Le Pen also said France had suffered a “programmed collapse” of its security and defense capacities, and that it needed to strengthen its military and police forces.

“Finally, fundamentalist Islam must be wiped out,” she said. “France must ban Islamist organizations, close radical mosques, and kick out foreigners who are preaching hatred on our soil, as well as illegal immigrants who have nothing to do here.”

She said that people who are members of Islamist movements and who have dual citizenship — from France and another nation — should have their French citizenship taken away and should be banned from French territory.

As many of us have been saying for some time, if the mainstream parties cannot deal with this problem, Europeans will turn to the far right. I was talking earlier today with a reader in Paris who is mourning the murders of two of his friends in the Bataclan. I told him that the video of the anonymous musician playing John Lennon’s “Imagine” on a piano decorated with a peace symbol, outside the nightclub, was touching, in a way, but also emblematic of the reason France is so unprepared to deal with this situation. That song — an anthem of hippie nihilism — and that symbol are all that the Soixante-Huitard (literally, “Sixty-Eighter,” or a participant in the 1968 student unrest symbolic of the Boomers) generation has to offer, and it cannot stand up to radical Islam. You cannot fight something with nothing. If liberal society cannot defend itself, the weakness of the authorities calls up illiberalism.

The reader, a mainstream French conservative who is plugged in to French politics, responded:

I do agree with you on all fronts. But the French population is now divided into three groups: “Imagine” singers, plain ignorants, and — how to put it — pragmatic pessimists. This third group hovers between mainstream conservatism and the new Le Pen flavor. Starting today, I guess they’ll flock around Marine Le Pen.

Oddly, classic French conservatives are moving from the traditional Atlantic alliance to the reemerging Russian raw power. President Putin is praised in private, a lot! President Obama is now considered a huge disappointment, a weak president who wobbled on the Syrian problem.

Right now, a mainstream conservative (Laurent Wauquiez, close to Sarkozy) is floating the idea of internment camps for all French citizens under suspicion to be linked with radical Islam. This idea is now very popular.

Houellebecq is spot on. The fact that some of those terrorists were born in France, that’s a big problem. The Us vs Them thing doesn’t run along nationalities any more; it’s not a passport thing. Our enemy lives in the desert but he has many allies on our soil. This is a new kind of war — part classic, part civil. I won’t say that in public but we have to admit that a large part of the French population – I mean people born in France or French citizens – hates our guts. France we’ll end up like the West Bank. I could draw the map right now.

France as the West Bank. Imagine that.

Andrew Bacevich says the West cannot win this fight with radical Islam by bombing more people in the Middle East. Rather, he suggests an alternative strategy:

Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost than is gained by engaging in futile, open-ended armed conflicts. Rather than vainly attempting to police or control, this revised strategy should seek to contain.

Such an approach posits that, confronted with the responsibility to do so, the peoples of the Greater Middle East will prove better equipped to solve their problems than are policy makers back in Washington, London, or Paris. It rejects as presumptuous any claim that the West can untangle problems of vast historical and religious complexity to which Western folly contributed. It rests on this core principle: Do no (further) harm.

Hollande views the tragedy that has befallen Paris as a summons to yet more war. The rest of us would do well to see it as a moment to reexamine the assumptions that have enmeshed the West in a war that it cannot win and should not perpetuate.

Refugees & the Paris Attacks

Last night I tweeted something to the effect that Merkel’s open-door policy to refugees fleeing the Middle East makes attacks like what happened in Paris much more likely in the future. It was widely interpreted as my blaming the Paris attacks on refugees. It was not that; I did not believe last night that the refugees had anything to do with the Paris attacks, and I don’t believe it now. Still, I concede that that sentiment ought to have been expressed later, not hours after the attacks.

Oh … wow. After writing that paragraph, I checked the latest news, and The Guardian is reporting that one of the “refugees” actually may have been involved in the attack:

The holder of a Syrian passport found near the body of one of the gunmen who died in Friday night’s attacks in Paris passed though Greece in October, a Greek minister told Reuters.

“The holder of the passport passed through the island of Leros on 3 October 2015, where he was identified according to EU rules,” said Nikos Toscas, Greece’s deputy minister in charge of policing.

A Greek police source told Reuters that European countries had been asked to check the passport holder to see if they had been registered.

While this heavily implies that one of the gunman came into Europe along with refugees, Syrian passports are known to be valuable currency amongst those trying to enter Europe, and it is not yet confirmed whether the holder of the passport is indeed the perpetrator.

So, that’s a thing that happened.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make last night is that it is very, very likely that within the millions Europe is taking in, primarily instigated by Angela Merkel, there will be a non-trivial number of terrorists. Far more worrying is the long-term threat of Islamist terrorism. Why? Europe is taking in millions of Middle Eastern Muslims indiscriminately (that is, without vetting), at a time when it manifestly cannot successfully assimilate the Muslims who are there. Whether this is the fault of racist Europeans, recalcitrant Muslims, or both, is beside the point. Europe has a serious problem with this, and it is going to lead to much more violence — not all of it caused by Muslims — and, most likely, the rise to power of the far right. Merkel’s act of mercy is laying the groundwork for violence, civil strife, and yes, terror.

The problem is not really one of terrorists coming in undercover with the refugees. The problem is Europe not being able to find jobs and establish lives for the massive numbers of refugees coming now, and those people — or, more likely, their sons — being highly susceptible to radicalization. Daniel Byman of Brookings wrote earlier this fall:

But Europe already has a terrorism problem, and the bigger danger is that radicalized European Muslims will transform the Syrian refugee community into a more violent one over time. Thousands of Europeans have gone to fight with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and al-Qaida has long had a presence in Europe. These volunteers are sustained by radical preachers who condemn European ideals and support the idea of Muslims taking up arms. In addition, many European Muslims are alienated from their governments and societies, believing that as Muslims they never truly will, or should, belong.

If the refugees are treated as a short-term humanitarian problem rather than as a long-term integration challenge, then we are likely to see this problem worsen. Radicals will be among those who provide the religious, educational, and social support for the refugees – creating a problem where none existed. Indeed, the refugees need a comprehensive and long-term package that includes political rights, educational support, and economic assistance as well as immediate humanitarian aid, particularly if they are admitted in large numbers. If they cannot be integrated into local communities, then they risk perpetuating, or even exacerbating, the tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Europe. Despite their current gratitude for sanctuary in Europe, over time the refugees may be disenfranchised and become alienated. We’ve seen this movie before, where anger and disaffection fester, creating “suspect communities” that do not cooperate with law enforcement and security agencies and allow terrorists to recruit and operate with little interference.

The actual security risks now are low, but the potential ones are considerable if the refugee crisis is handled poorly. Policing, service provision, and local governance in general need to be provided for the long term. The worst thing European countries could do would be to invite in hundreds of thousands of refugees in a fit of sympathy and then lose interest or become hostile, starving them of support and vilifying them politically, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A liberal German journalist, just returned from the US after serving as a foreign correspondent, reacts with shock to what is happening there now:

What has happened to Germany? Does the sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees justify forgetting almost everything that used to be important to us? The refugee crisis is, of course, a challenge. Solving it will take time, money and energy. But Germany has all the resources it needs to manage this crisis without surrendering its civility. Instead the mood in the country is akin to a drunken rage of the kind last seen in the beer halls of the 1920s Weimar Republic — that period of crude, uncivilized behavior that paved the way for Hitler’s rise and the most brutal decade in world history.

It’s well and good to deplore right-wing thugs who are threatening refugees and their supporters with violence. But these people are there, and must be dealt with. Is it really possible to shame them all out of their xenophobia and racism? Besides, are all of the skeptical Germans right-wing thugs? Der Spiegel reports that conditions are worsening:

Now the Meyers are planning to move out in November. They’re sick of seeing asylum-seekers sit on their garden wall or rummage through their garbage cans for anything they can use. Though “you do feel sorry for them,” says Ralf, who’s handed out some clothes that his children have grown out of. “But there are just too many of them here now.”

Hesepe, a village of 2,500 that comprises one district of the small town of Bramsche in the state of Lower Saxony, is now hosting some 4,000 asylum-seekers, making it a symbol of Germany’s refugee crisis. Locals are still showing a great willingness to help, but the sheer number of refugees is testing them. The German states have reported some 409,000 new arrivals between Sept. 5 and Oct. 15 — more than ever before in a comparable time period — though it remains unclear how many of those include people who have been registered twice.

Six weeks after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s historic decision to open Germany’s borders, there is a shortage of basic supplies in many places in this prosperous nation. Cots, portable housing containers and chemical toilets are largely sold out. There is a shortage of German teachers, social workers and administrative judges. Authorities in many towns are worried about the approaching winter, because thousands of asylum-seekers are still sleeping in tents.

But what Germany lacks more than anything is a plan to make Merkel’s two most-pronounced statements on the crisis — “We can do it” and “We cannot close our borders” — fit together. In the second month of what has been dubbed the country’s brand new “Welcoming Culture,” it has become clear to many that Germany will only be able to cope if the number of refugees drops.

But that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Tens of thousands of people are making their way to Germany along the so-called Balkan route; at the same time, Merkel’s efforts to reduce the influx through diplomacy and tougher regulations remain just that.

If you don’t think Merkel’s open-door policy is setting the stage for terrible things to come, you are not paying attention, or not willing to do so.

The Brazen Confront the Gutless

It will not stop until authorities find their backbone:

At close to midnight on Thursday night, roughly 200 students marched to University President Peter Salovey’s home on Hillhouse Avenue under a new name — Next Yale — wielding a new set of demands.

The students said the new movement will hold Yale accountable to its students of color and that a diverse coalition of students crafted the new demands, which supersede those put together by the Black Student Alliance at Yale and presented to administrators more than a week ago. The new demands, which were read aloud to Salovey in front of his home, call on the University to develop ethnic studies, increase support for the cultural centers, address mental health issues for minority students and remove Nicholas and Erika Christakis from their respective positions as master and associate master of Silliman College. The students demanded an administrative response by Nov. 18.

“Because the administration has been unwilling to properly address institutional racism and interpersonal racism at Yale, Next Yale has spent hours organizing, at great expense to our health and grades, to fight for a University where we feel safe,” one of the student leaders read from a prepared statement to Salovey. “Next Yale intends to hold Yale accountable to its students of color in the public eye.”

“At great expense to our health and grades.” Good grief. Maybe Salovey would like to resign himself, and let the student radicals run the show.

Did you see the news today about the dean at Claremont-McKenna who yielded to student protesters and resigned? :

Dean Mary Spellman at Claremont McKenna stepped down after she sparked a campus protest and hunger strikes by two students this week over her email to a Latina student saying she would work to serve those who “don’t fit our CMC mold.”

Spellman later apologized, but her remarks appeared to be a tipping point for students who have pressed the campus for months for greater diversity among faculty and staff and more funding for multicultural services.

They drove this dean out because she said she would help those who felt marginalized on campus, but she didn’t say it in the right way!

Why do people like Mary Spellman surrender to these thuggish students? Look at how a student crowd at Claremont McKenna responded to an Asian girl who said that we should look at the hearts of people, not just their color, because black people can be as racist as whites. A group of dissenting Claremont McKenna students responded to this and to Spellman’s resignation with admirable contempt. Excerpt:

First, former Dean Mary Spellman. We are sorry that your career had to end this way, as the email in contention was a clear case of good intentions being overlooked because of poor phrasing. However, we are disappointed in you as well. We are disappointed that you allowed a group of angry students to bully you into resignation. We are disappointed that you taught Claremont students that reacting with emotion and anger will force the administration to act. We are disappointed that when two students chose to go on a hunger strike until you resigned, you didn’t simply say, “so what?” If they want to starve themselves, that’s fine—you don’t owe them your job. We are disappointed that you and President Chodosh put up with students yelling and swearing at you for an hour. You could have made this a productive dialogue, but instead you humored the students and allowed them to get caught up in the furor.

Above all, we are disappointed that you and President Chodosh weren’t brave enough to come to the defense of a student who wastold she was “derailing” because her opinions regarding racism didn’t align with those of the mob around her. Nor were you brave enough to point out that these protesters were perfectly happy to use this student to further their own agenda, but turned on her as soon as they realized she wasn’t supporting their narrative. These protesters were asking you to protect your students, but you didn’t even defend the one who needed to be protected right in front of you.

Second, President Chodosh. We were disappointed to see you idly stand by and watch students berate, curse at, and attack Dean Spellman for being a “racist.” For someone who preaches about “leadership” and “personal and social responsibility,” your actions are particularly disappointing. You let your colleague, someone who has been helping your administration for the past three years and the college for six years, be publicly mocked and humiliated. Why? Because you were afraid.

Amen. Why are you people so afraid? I do not understand it at all.

A reader at Princeton writes, of Spellman’s resignation:

This is truly crazy stuff.

Here at Princeton, the climate is not nearly a politically active as other campuses (Yale, etc.), yet we do have some of the same rumblings.

We have had protests where students held placards quoting vile, racist comments they found on Yik-Yak. I get it. There is ugly racism, here at Princeton and everywhere.

Here’s what I don’t get: How/why is a University’s administration directly accountable for anonymous racist comments? You can’t legislate these kinds of heart issues. Students somehow think that the Administration is responsible for each and every heart and mind. It’s crazy!

We’ve also had some interesting commentary regarding Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was an obvious racist (I agree). Because of his racism, Wilson’s legacy is (according to some students) to be ignored in it’s entirety see: http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2015/09/on-the-legacy-of-woodrow-wilson-a-racist-bigot/

I will say that Princeton is actively recruiting first-gen, low-income students, and the university is trying to support them, both financially and with additional programming to help them navigate the college experience here. There are people in the administration here acting with genuine goodwill trying to help. Just like the Claremont McKenna Dean of Students was! At some schools, one misstep, and it’s off with your head!

So, now leftie Freddie de Boer, praised yesterday by me for standing up to the protesters, is now fully on board with them. He writes:

I’m very afraid that, because conservatism so dominates state politics in the US, we’re going to see a lot of these bodies come down hard on campuses with effective protests.

So if like me you’re sympathetic to these protests, I think you’ve got to start to lay the groundwork and fight for representation for these students in these bodies. If you live in Missouri and you support the protesters, you need to start calling and emailing your state legislators now. If you support the protesters, you need to start calling and emailing the (Democrat) governor now. You’ve got to make these demands. And people in other states have to be prepared for the fights that are likely ahead. Because everything I know about 21st century America tells me that the empire is going to strike back, and hard, and it will use the bodies it most strictly controls to do so.

Let us hope so. Strike back, empire, and strike hard. The reader who sent me that item said: “Don’t think anyone on the left is, in any way, on our side.”

Amherst College loonies have gone so far they’ve even alienated Panda, a strongly left-wing reader of this blog. Here are their demands of the school administration. Excerpt:

We as a compassionate student body have gathered to address the legacy of oppression on campus. If these goals are not initiated within the next 24 to 48 hours, and completed by November 18th, we will organize and respond in a radical manner, through civil disobedience. If there is a continued failure to meet our demands, it will result in an escalation of our response.

1. President Martin must issue a statement of apology to students, alumni and former students, faculty, administration and staff who have been victims of several injustices including but not limited to our institutional legacy of white supremacy, colonialism, anti-black racism, anti-Latinx racism, anti-Native American racism, anti-Native/ indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Middle Eastern racism, heterosexism, cis-sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, mental health stigma, and classism. Also include that marginalized communities and their allies should feel safe at Amherst College.

2. We demand Cullen Murphy ‘74, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, to issue a statement of apology to students, alumni and former students, faculty, administration, and staff who have been victims of several injustices including but not limited to our institutional legacy of white supremacy, colonialism, anti-black racism, anti-Latinx racism, anti-Native American racism, anti-Native/ indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Middle Eastern racism, heterosexism, cis-sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, mental health stigma, and classism

3. Amherst College Police Department must issue a statement of protection and defense from any form of violence, threats, or retaliation of any kind resulting from this movement.

4. President Martin must issue a statement of apology to faculty, staff and administrators of color as well as their allies, neither of whom were provided a safe space for them to thrive while at Amherst College.

It goes on and on.

 

At my own alma mater, LSU, a black student went berserk after she saw a noose hanging from a tree on campus. Except it wasn’t a noose at all, but rather, said the university, “the end of a grounding wire that was uprooted when a heavy branch fell down on the wire.” Among the subsequent tweets the student, Clarke Perkins, sent out:

@lsu has confirmed it is NOT a noose. Just a coincidence – as far as we know, there is NO noose on campus.

This morning, I was walking across campus and saw what I thought was a noose hanging from a tree. So I shared my concerns.

Not a professionally made noose – I believed it to be a makeshift one created as an offensive joke.

I was wrong, it was a wire that fell. But if black students were more accepted here, I wouldn’t have thought a noose

So she’s a paranoid nut, but it’s LSU’s fault. Or non-black people’s fault. Got it. The chancellor must resign!

At Brown University, about what you’d expect happened:

“I charge this university and many others for being perpetrators of structural and ideological racism, sexism and other systems of oppression,” Khalif Andre ’19 wrote in an email to The Herald, clarifying a sentiment he expressed in his speech earlier in the day.

“Our humanity is not up for discussion,” he said. “If you do not take a stance for our humanity, you’re taking a stance against it. … Either you’re with us, or you’re against us.”

Godwin Tsado ’16, an organizer of the event, said he “envisioned something extremely organic, (where) people said whatever was on their mind, and that happened.” He added, “It’s obvious that people in power in the University know this is going on,” with students calling for action for years. “Why don’t they address it head on?”

… The grad students read a list of demands for the administration, including that the University hire more faculty members of color, create mandatory training on critical race theory for all faculty members and adopt an intersectional framework for Title IX training. The Graduate Students of Color Collective, the Nabrit Black Graduate Student Association and Africana Studies grad students encourage members of the community to read their official statement, which includes their full list of demands.

“Practicing anti-racism should be everyone’s job, not just students of color,” Lily Mengesha GS, a speaker at the teach-in and a fourth-year graduate student in theatre arts and performance studies, told The Herald. Arguments for neutrality do not result in productive or constructive dialogue, she said, adding, “I’ve gotten used to feeling silenced by the institution.”

“I really appreciated that (organizers) allowed trans black students to speak at this event because there are so few of us on campus,” said Jackie Rice ’16, a former MPC and former head chair of the Queer Alliance. “People listened and affirmed and made a commitment to make changes on campus for people like me.”

Finally tonight, the student government at the University of Minnesota — Twin Cities voted down a resolution to establish a remembrance on all future 9/11 anniversaries:

Nathan Amundson serves as President of UMN’s Young Americans for Liberty chapter and student group representative for Write Things, a creative writing group. Amundson said debate on the resolution centered around whether enacting the moment of recognition might instill a more islamophobic sentiment on campus.

“This resolution was non-controversial and was supported by the MSA’s President and Vice-President,” said Amundson, “However, several members, in exchanges with CRs rep Theo Menon, were militant in their opposition to it due to a perceived bias toward Muslims.”

Other proponents of the resolution argued in forum that its passage could bring up controversial topics, and that a healthy dialogue and campus tension reduction would ensue from the moment of recognition.

At-large MSA representative and Director of Diversity and Inclusion David Algadi voiced severe criticism of the resolution. He also made sure to emphasize 9/11’s status as a national tragedy in his response.

“The passing of this resolution might make a space that is unsafe for students on campus even more unsafe,” said Algadi, “Islamophobia and racism fueled through that are alive and well.”

Hey, young Social Justice Warriors of Minnesota, what do you think about the idea that the citizens of Paris deserve a “safe space.”

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I hope that’s true for this SJW spasm. But I do wonder if universities even have the capacity to defend themselves and their mission against racial nihilists and their allies.

This, from a real Twitter account (that has been deleted), really says it all about America’s Social Justice Warriors and their crusade:

And this:

Interesting how the news reports are covering the Paris terrorist attacks but said nothing about the terrorist attack at #Mizzou