One Man’s Liberation Is Another Man’s Destruction

Washington Times:

Islamic State aims to destroy Israel, ‘liberate’ Jerusalem with Sinai Peninsula terrorist force

Arabs and Muslims, not just ISIS, want to destroy the Jewish state of Israel because they believe that land belongs to them. For this crowd, the liberation of Jerusalem means destruction of the Jewish state.

I don’t think the terms “hate” and “bigotry” and “anti-Semitism” are useful. There’s nothing sinister or satanic or unique with the Islamic antipathy to Israel.

What we might have here is a failure to communicate.

Different groups have different interests. For instance, it might be in the interests of Arabs and Muslims to destroy the Jewish state of Israel. Meanwhile, it might be, in certain contexts, in the interest of the Jewish state to expel its Muslims. For Arabs to feel liberated in Israel, they might have to expel the Jews. That’s how the world works. Much of life is zero sum. You either kill or get killed.

Your Southern patriot in America might well feel that to liberate his people, he needs to expel some people. Your average non-Muslim Belgium or Dutchman might well feel that to liberate his people, he needs to expel Muslims.

Having different subspecies in the same place competing peacefully for dominance is sometimes natural and sometimes deadly. Normally in nature one subspecies will destroy his competitors and then expand his territory as far as he can. More room for Germans to roam in the early 1940s meant there less freedom and survival for Germany’s neighbors, including slavs and Jews.

Posted in Nationalism | Comments Off on One Man’s Liberation Is Another Man’s Destruction

Trump leaving neocons in dust

Comment: “The neocons are desperately trying to get a spy/saboteur into the Trump camp as a wrecking move. Rice, Rubio – whoever – it’s all crap. There’s two ways to be pro-Israel, one is indirect by making nation states the default again and the second is the neocon thing, globalism for everyone else except Israel. I’d suggest the neocon method is in the process of back-firing spectacularly and it may even be too late.”

The Hill: The rise of Donald Trump is threatening the power of neoconservatives, who find themselves at risk of being marginalized in the Republican Party.

Neoconservatism was at its height during the presidency of George W. Bush, helping to shape the rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

But now the ideology is under attack, with Trump systematically rejecting each of its core principles.
Whereas neoconservatism advocates spreading American ideals through the use of military force, Trump has made the case for nationalism and a smaller U.S. military footprint.

In what Trump calls an “America First” approach, he proposes rejecting alliances that don’t work, trade deals that don’t deliver, and military interventionism that costs too much.

He has said he would get along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and sit down with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un — a throwback to the “realist” foreign policy of President Nixon.

As if to underscore that point, the presumptive GOP nominee met with Nixon’s Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, earlier this week, and delivered his first major foreign policy speech at an event last month hosted by the Center for National Interest, which Nixon founded.

Leading neoconservative figures like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan have assailed Trump’s foreign policy views. Kagan even called Trump a “fascist” in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

“This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac ‘tapping into’ popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him,” wrote Kagan, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution….

John Mearsheimer, a preeminent scholar in realist theory, says there’s a parallel in history to the way America turned inward after the Vietnam War.

“There’s no question that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger went a considerable ways to pursue a less ambitious foreign policy, and they talked about allies doing more to help themselves, and they began to pursue detente with the Soviet Union.”

“And this was all a reaction to Vietnam. Vietnam of course was a colossal failure. The body politic here in the United States was deeply disenchanted with American foreign policy, especially in its most ambitious forms and the end result is we ended up backing off for awhile,” he said. “We have a similar situation here.”

Posted in Neoconservatives | Comments Off on Trump leaving neocons in dust

How Eli Lake tricks readers so as to cast realists Walt, Mearsheimer and Freeman as anti-semites

Yakov Hirsch writes: Let’s read this Bloomberg story about the Koch Institute in Washington hosting Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer at an event on the future of foreign policy today. “Koch Brothers Give a Megaphone to the anti-Israel Fringe.”

On Wednesday, the Charles Koch Institute, a think tank funded by one of the conservative movement’s most generous donors, will host a conference featuring some of the academy’s most virulent foes of Israel.

Eli Lake made it almost through a whole sentence without giving away he wasn’t really a journalist. But then he just had to stick in “virulent” foes of Israel. Wasn’t “big” or “vigorous” foes of Israel enough? “Virulent” is defined as venomous or poisonous, as in a virulent disease. So now the intelligent reader has a decision. Does he or she want to risk becoming an anti-Semite by continuing to read Eli Lake right now? Because if history is any guide, the reader knows a lot of nasty things are about to be said about usually decent people.

Charles and David Koch, scions of the Koch Industries fortune, have always leaned libertarian in their political giving and nonprofit work. The two brothers have supported criminal-justice reform and other free-market initiatives in education and labor. In foreign policy, the Kochs have stayed away from the uglier fringes that blame Israel and its supporters for hijacking U.S. foreign policy. That is, until now.

Koch brothers, we used to think we had an understanding with you guys. You stick to your “conservative” issues, we stick to ours. What you’re doing would lead to a turf war on “The Wire.” You already know you can have all the conservative issues you want except for our “conservative” issues like the “special relationship”, overall Middle East policy; and of course we insist on being the “intellectuals” of the movement, too.

OK, time to meet our foaming-at-the mouth friends. Let’s recap. Virulent, uglier fringe, blame Jews Israel for “hijacking” US foreign policy.

The institute’s conference scheduled for Wednesday will feature separate panels with Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, co-authors of the 2006 [actually 2007] book “The Israel Lobby.”

While Walt and Mearsheimer are hardly household names, they are known in U.S. policy circles. Their book prompted Abe Foxman, who was then national director of the Anti-Defamation League, to write a response, “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control.”

Mr. Eli Lake– you were about to introduce us to some bad, bad people; and now we learn this is on the “word” of one Abe Foxman– and who is this Abe Foxman? He “was then” the “National Director of the Anti Defamation League.” Here Mr. Lake is where anti-semites are made. You led us to believe we were going to get as a “witness for the prosecution” an impartial witness. Do you not understand that people look at “Abe Foxman” the same way they look at, say, Ralph Reed talking about abortion rights? And if you ask why would they look at Abe Foxman like that, then you’re not being very objective. So already a dispassionate reader is thinking, If this is the best evidence you can marshal, the accused is probably innocent because everyone already knows you throw the proverbial kitchen sink at your enemies.

The institute’s decision to host a conference that features Walt, Mearsheimer and a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, is in keeping with a general realignment of U.S. politics in 2016. Under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, conservatives have embraced Israel and accused their partisan foes of not supporting the Jewish State, but this year has brought a shift. This week for example, the conservative website Breitbart featured a story that accused Weekly Standard editor William Kristol of being a “renegade Jew.”

OK; so it used to be that conservatives embraced Israel and accused liberals of not supporting Israel. But something has now changed and the example you give is a very, very vocal and combative pro-Israel American, David Horowitz, who is angry that another very, very vocal and combative pro-Israel American Jew (Kristol) is trying to sabotage Trump who Horowitz says is good for Israel and the Jews. This is evidence of what? One crazy Jew called another a “renegade Jew” and now you’re saying it’s Trump’ s fault? Or it’s Walt’s fault? Or maybe it’s the Mufti’s fault?

What it looks like is going on here is that you want to create a certain “impression” about the discourse of your enemies– but you take the discourse of your friends (Horowitz and Kristol) and say, See what I’m saying?? Well that’s just plain dishonest, isn’t it Eli? Horowitz himself insisted on that “renegade Jew” title; it wasn’t some anti-semitic Breitbart editor.

In recent years Walt and Mearsheimer have gotten a cold shoulder from the right, but have been embraced by the anti-war movement. For example they were the featured speakers at a 2011 conference sponsored by Code Pink and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. It was called Move Over Aipac, a reference to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

You’re supposed to be an objective journalist. You’re writing for Bloomberg. But the reader can sense for sure that some “smearing” is going on here. Look what you did, connected them to Code Pink and to a conference called “Move over Aipac”. But again Eli, this is where anti-semites are made. A smart reader says, Wait, isn’t this the same Eli Lake who put up an article last year on what a cuddly outfit Aipac is — “AIPAC is no different than the National Audubon Society.” And they also know from reading other Jewish journalists that AIPAC isn’t as innocuous as you make them out to be. And they heard Hillary’s AIPAC speech where she promised to take the relationship with Israel to “the next level,” and they thought to themselves WTF. And maybe some readers leave your article now to google “Move over Aipac” because it sure sounds interesting.

This made sense. Walt and Mearsheimer have doubled down against the pro-Israel lobby. In 2011 Mearsheimerblurbed a book from the notorious Holocaust denier Gilad Atzmon. During the Iran deal debate last summer, Walt tweeted his praise for an article that asserted the opponents of the Iran agreement were puppets of Israel’s prime minister.

Before you can even catch you breath, here comes the next volley of shit! And this is it: Here’s the evidence. This is going to be the best the opposition researchers came up with to explain why the Koch brothers made such a big mistake inviting Walt and Mearsheimer.

And first off, I couldn’t help but notice you offering that Walt and Mearsheimer were “not household names,” but now you give us the “notorious Gilad Atzmon” who has been giving kids nightmares for years. After all they’ve done, they’re still nobodies! What a childish knock. Then what do we get? A blurb from 2011 and a retweet from last summer. This is your evidence. Mearsheimer put a blurb on a book no one has even heard of; and on this basis the Koch brothers should throw out his 30 years at the University of Chicago and countless books.

Eli, seriously, you know you can’t be trusted with these things. Let’s cut to the chase: you want your readers to believe you when you say that Walt and Mearsheimer hate Jews. And you will do everything within the limits of the law to convince people of that “truth.” You and your friends will have no compunction about destroying their lives. Because like many, many people before Eli Lake and many people after, regular rules of civility, fair play, honesty, don’t apply when you “know” you are on the side of the angels and your opponents on the side of the devil. Of course it is lost on Eli Lake and his friends that their behavior is the strongest case for the thesis in “the lobby.” But other people are aware, the “lobby” had a fatwa put on it by Jeffrey Goldberg and the other warrior scribes have been tormenting Walt and Mearsheimer ever since.

Freeman, another panelist at Wednesday’s conference, has a similar record. In 2009 many Republicans led a campaign to stop his nomination to be the chairman of the National Intelligence Council in part because of his extreme views on Americans who support the Jewish State. In 2012, Freeman delivered a speech in Moscow on the topic, where he said, “In some countries, like the United States, Israel can rely upon a ‘fifth column’ of activist sympathizers to amplify its messages.”

So Chas Freeman gave a speech in Moscow! Is that here to suggest Chas Freeman is some sort of traitor? Or is it supposed to remind people of the Pale of Settlement? Definitely “Moscow” means something bad for Freeman. Maybe Eli Lake just put Moscow there to let each individual reader make their own negative association. So Chas Freeman in “Moscow” said that Israel has some fanatical supporters who are very aggressive in pursuing what they claim is in the American Interest but was ALWAYS in the state of Israel’s interest. Perhaps “fifth columnist” is too strong a term, but then again it may not be. We are going to explore that question in the coming weeks. And what if we discover together that 5th columnist is the most appropriate word; well then we are stuck in a situation where the truth is anti-Semitic.

Will Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute, pushed back on the idea that his think tank was providing a “platform” to Walt, Mearsheimer and Freeman. “They are all very respected members of the foreign policy community and the academy,” he said.

Big student of propaganda that I am, I have a 6th sense for trickery. What is the only fact in the above paragraph? It is that Will Ruger said of Walt, Mearsheimer and Freeman “they are all respected members of the foreign policy community and the academy.” Now read the paragraph again. Who is interpreting that statement as “pushback”? Eli Lake. Eli, did you just make that up to imply that Will Ruger is “defensive” about hosting them? Because his statement is pretty straightforward.

When asked whether he endorsed Freeman’s view of American supporters of Israel, Ruger backed off: “We’re not endorsing anything or everything these people have said; we are trying to have a broad conversation about foreign policy.” But he stressed that Freeman was a former ambassador and assistant secretary of defense and that he wrote the entry for diplomacy for the Encyclopedia Britannica. “His voice as a practitioner is relevant to a foreign policy conversation,” he said.

Look what a trick Eli Lake is playing on the reader. Ruger said what every person in the history of conferences says: “we’re not endorsing anything or everything…..” But look what Mr. Eli Lake adds here: “Ruger backed off.” What did Ruger do that showed the great journalist Eli Lake that he was “backing off?” Nothing. Eli Lake put those words in to show again some defensiveness which just isn’t there.

Do you feel any sense or responsibility to be honest, Mr. Lake? Do you expect “non partisans” to read you and believe you’re in the right? Why all the dishonesty if your cause is just?

“We went out of our way to invite a broad, diverse set of panelists for this conference,” Ruger said, pointing out that the institute had also invited two prominent advisers to Hillary Clinton, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Michele Flournoy, who both served in the Obama administration at senior levels. Neither Slaughter nor Flournoy could make it, but Kathleen Hicks, who served as a senior Pentagon official during Obama’s first term, will appear on a panel at the conference with Mearsheimer.

But the ideological diversity for the Charles Koch Institute has its limits. When asked whether the institute invited any neoconservatives to the conference, Ruger said, “Since I don’t want to assign labels to people, I don’t want to say.” He added, “We are trying to get away from labels, and we’re trying to focus on ideas.” The same cannot be said for Freeman, Mearsheimer or Walt.

So Mr. Lake ends this great polemic by saying I think Freeman, Mearsheimer, and Walt don’t “focus on ideas” but labels. I guess that means when those three have lunch together at the conference, while other tables are discussing ideas, these guys will just be “labeling.” I think the image Mr. Lake wants the reader to be left with is: Walt, Mearsheimer, and Freeman eating off in a corner (everyone else keeping away to not catch the virulent disease) and everyone else is discussing the big ideas of the conference but these three will just be chanting “Jew” in between each bite.

Posted in Anti-Semitism, Israel | Comments Off on How Eli Lake tricks readers so as to cast realists Walt, Mearsheimer and Freeman as anti-semites

Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood says Hollywood is gripped by a powerful pedophile ring and Tinseltown is covering up a ‘seedy’ underbelly full of predatory ‘vipers’

Daily Mail: Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood claims that young actors in Hollywood are being sexually abused by predatory high-powered ‘vipers’ working in the industry..
The Hobbit actor, 35, told The Sunday Times that the child abuse is ‘probably still happening’.
Shocking allegations that top Hollywood figures have been protecting child abusers have circulated widely in recent years.
Several industry figures have been convicted following claims of sex abuse and former child actors – including The Goonies actor Corey Feldman, 44 – claimed he was ‘surrounded’ by molesters when he was a teenager.
Anne Henry, co-founder of Bizparentz – a group to help young actors – said that Tinseltown is currently sheltering around ‘100 active abusers’.
Wood, who stars in his new film The Trust told The Sunday Times that his mother had protected him from abuse when he first arrived in Hollywood aged eight.
But he said: ‘I’ve been led down dark paths to realise that these things are probably still happening.’
The actor, who played Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings, believes that other actors remain in danger.
He added: ‘If you’re innocent, you have very little knowledge of the world and you want to succeed.
‘People with parasitic interests will see you as their prey. What upsets me about these situations is that the victims can’t speak as loudly as the people in power.’
Wood was talking to the Sunday Times about Jimmy Savile, a British entertainer who sexually abused dozens of victims over five decades.
He was knighted by the Queen and his crimes were only revealed after his death, despite years of rumor and innuendo and led to allegations of a cover-up by government figures and broadcasting chiefs.
Henry believes that around three quarters of child actors that ‘went off the rails’ later in their life had been abused in Hollywood.

Hollywood Gay Mafia.

Following up on this post, I’m thinking that if elites through the media can convince much of the world to celebrate same-sex marriage, then is there nothing they can’t do in shifting basic moral values?

Does anyone seriously think that if elites were against same-sex marriage, we would have same-sex marriage?

Jews provide most of the funding for the Democrats, much of the funding for the Republicans, we dominate some media and finance, and some academia and law. We help set the agenda in America. For instance, we got the country to provide Israel with over $100 billion in aid.

Traditional Judaism is 100% against gay marriage, but only about 12% of American Jews are Orthodox, and most of the rest appear to support same-sex marriage.

Jeff* emails:

There are three things that interest me about this story: (1) I got the link from Instapundit which is very widely read and usually sympathetic with gay issues, (2) that Moira says some things about male homosexuality that are anathema to the general narrative; first when she says that young men who are used by older gays see themselves as gay because the activity produces an orgasm, second when she says that homosexuals need to get to young men before they have their first experience with women and three that she believes that homosexuality is “imprinted” by conduct and environment rather than having a genetic cause. (3) that despite her feelings and experiences she still loved her father and her musical work is inspired by her mother.

There are few things that separate her from most of the anti Gay marriage activists: (1) she is not religious. So much of the opposition to same sex marriage comes from religious people, (2) she has first hand knowledge of same sex relationships, (3) she has first hand knowledge of the rationalizations gay people go through and (4) she has first hand knowledge of the consequences inflicted on others by at least those gays who share her parents’ perspectives.

The New Republic has a story (sympathetic to gays) about how gay marriage will change the nuclear family.

Concerning the Gawker story outing Tim Geithner’s brother for trying to set up a tryst with a homosexual porn actor, Nick Denton said that if he hadn’t pulled it he would have lost 7 figures worth of advertising.

Katy writes (she features in Last Chance U, S5E4):

I was born into a family of famous gay pagan authors in the late Sixties. My mother was Marion Zimmer Bradley, and my father was Walter Breen. Between them, they wrote over 100 books: my mother wrote science fiction and fantasy (Mists of Avalon), and my father wrote books on numismatics: he was a coin expert.

What they did to me is a matter of unfortunate public record: suffice to say that both parents wanted me to be gay and were horrifed at my being female. My mother molested me from ages 3-12. The first time I remember my father doing anything especially violent to me I was five. Yes he raped me. I don’t like to think about it. If you want to know about his shenanigans with little girls, and you have a very strong stomach, you can google the Breendoggle, which was the scandal which ALMOST drummed him out of science fiction fandom.

More profoundly, though was his disgust with my gender, despite his many relationships with women Moiraand female victims. He told me unequivocally that no man would ever want me, because all men are secretly gay and have simply not come to terms with their natural homosexuality. So I learned to act mannish and walk with very still hips. You can still see the traces of my conditioning to reject my femininity in my absolute refusal to give in and my outspokenness, and my choice of theatrical director for much of my life. But a good part of my outspokenness is my refusal to accept the notion that “deep down I must be a boy born in a girl’s body.” I am not. I am a girl reviled for being a girl, who tried very hard to be the “boy” they wanted.

Suffice to say I was not their only victim of either gender. I grew up watching my father have “romances” (in his imagination) with boys who were a source of frustration because they always wanted food and money as a result of the sex they were subjected to, and didn’t want HIM. (OF COURSE!) I started trying hard to leave home when I was ten, after the failure of my first suicide attempt, and to intervene when I was 13 by telling my mother and her female companion that my father was sleeping with this boy. Instead of calling the cops, like any sensible human being, they simply moved my father into their apartment, which I called “The Love Nest” and they moved back into our family home.

Naturally that made things much worse. I had already been couch-surfing at the home of my directors from the Renaissance Faire for some time, but nobody could take me all the time. As might be imagined, where my father was, there were teenaged boys, drugs, and not a whole lot of food, though I wasn’t really starved in my teens once my mother’s books began to sell really well. I lived all kinds of places as a teen, though I moved back in with my father when I started college…

…Now it should be noted that boy lovers do not think of what they are doing as “molestation.” To them it is sex, they imagine it is consensual, and any objections will certainly be overridden by the orgasms they are certain they can produce, and it is the shame of these orgasms that silences the boy-victims, and persuades them they “must” be gay. (Regardless of subsequent heterosexual marriages and children.)

…Years ago I read [Jeffrey] Satinover, who believed that gays were largely “pansexual” that is, preferring sex with EVERYONE of EVERY age and EVERY gender rather than wanting to be limited to one person, and he regarded it, credibly, as a moral and ethical problem, rather than a sexual “orientation.” I can’t tell you how many lesbians I know who simply hate men, or who have been raped and can’t face sex with men because of that.

…My observation of my father and mother’s actual belief is this: since everyone is naturally gay, it is the straight establishment that makes everyone hung up and therefore limited. Sex early will make people willing to have sex with everyone, which will bring about the utopia while eliminating homophobia and helping people become “who they really are.” It will also destroy the hated nuclear family with its paternalism, sexism, ageism (yes, for pedophiles, that is a thing) and all other “isms.” If enough children are sexualized young enough, gayness will suddenly be “normal” and accepted by everyone, and the old fashioned notions about fidelity will vanish. As sex is integrated as a natural part of every single relationship, the barriers between people will vanish, and the utopia will appear, as “straight culture” goes the way of the dinosaur. As my mother used to say: “Children are brainwashed into believing they don’t want sex.”

…This March I met Katy Faust online: one of the six children of gays who filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court opposing gay marriage. We corresponded, and I left CA. I am still reeling from the death of my last bits of denial. It IS the homosexuality that is the problem. It IS the belief that all sex all the time will somehow cure problems instead of creating them that is the problem.

So I have begun to speak out against gay marriage, and in doing so, I have alienated most of even my strongest supporters. After all, they need to see my parents as wacky sex criminals, not as homosexuals following their deeply held ethical positions and trying to create a utopia according to a rather silly fantasy. They do not have the willingness to accept the possibility that homosexuality might actually have the result of destroying children and even destroying the adults who insist on remaining in its thrall.

Now for all well-meaning people who believe I am extrapolating from my experience to the wider gay community, I would like to explain why I believe this is so: From my experience in the gay community, the values in that community are very different: the assumption is that EVERYONE is gay and closeted, and early sexual experience will prevent gay children from being closeted, and that will make everyone happy.

If you doubt me, research “age of consent” “Twinks,” “ageism” and the writings of the NUMEROUS authors on the Left who believe that early sexuality is somehow “beneficial” for children.

Due to my long experience with the BSDM community (bondage/discipline, Sado-Masochism) it is my belief that homosexuality is a matter of IMPRINTING, in the same way that BDSM fantasies are. To the BDSM’er, continued practice of the fantasy is sexually exciting. To the gay person, naturally, the same. However, from what I have seen, neither one creates healing. My mother became a lesbian because she was raped by her father. My father was molested by a priest–and regarded it as being the only love he had ever experienced. There are a vanishingly few people who are exclusively gay, but far more who have relationships with people of BOTH genders, as my parents and other relatives did.

What sets gay culture apart from straight culture is the belief that early sex is good and beneficial, and the sure knowledge (don’t think for a second that they DON’T know) that the only way to produce another homosexual is to provide a boy with sexual experiences BEFORE he can be “ruined” by attraction to a girl.

If you’re OK with that, and you might not be, it is worth your consideration. If you think I am wrong, that is your privilege, but watch out for the VAST number of stories of sexual abuse AND transgenderism that will come about from these gay “marriages.” Already the statistics for sexual abuse of children of gays are astronomically high compared to that suffered by the children of straights.

Naturally my perspective is very uncomfortable to the liberal people I was raised with: I am “allowed” to be a victim of molestation by both parents, and “allowed” to be a victim of rather hideous violence. I am, incredibly, NOT ALLOWED to blame their homosexuality for their absolute willingness to accept all sex at all times between all people.

Posted in Abuse, Hollywood, Homosexuality | Comments Off on Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood says Hollywood is gripped by a powerful pedophile ring and Tinseltown is covering up a ‘seedy’ underbelly full of predatory ‘vipers’

No True Scotsman

I grew up hearing that “no true Christian…” and I got tired of that type of thinking.

One thing I liked about Dennis Prager’s worldview was that he never used this logic.

As soon as I hear someone taking the “No True Scotsman” line, I immediately dismiss them.

From RationalWiki:

The No True Scotsman (NTS) fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when:

NTS can be thought of as a form of inverted cherry picking, where: instead of selecting favourable examples, you reject unfavourable ones. Thus, the NTS fallacy, taken to its logical conclusion, paves the path to other logical fallacies, such as letting the “best” member of a group represent it.

Thanks to these remarkable qualities, the NTS fallacy is a vital tool in the promotion of denialism.

The coining of the term is attributed to professor Antony Flew,[5] who gave an example of a Scotsman who in his 1975 book, Thinking About Thinking, wrote;[6]

Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the “Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again”. Hamish is shocked and declares that “No Scotsman would do such a thing”. The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again; and, this time, finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion, but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says: “No true Scotsman would do such a thing”.

Thus, when McDonald is confronted with evidence of another Scotsman doing even worse acts, his response is that “no true Scotsman would do such a thing,” thus disavowing membership in the group “Scotsman” to the criminal on the basis that the commission of the crime is evidence for him not having been a Scotsman in the first place.

This reasoning is clearly fallacious, as there exists no premise in the definition of “Scotsman” which makes such acts impossible (or even unlikely).

Form

P1: All X are Y.
P2: Clearly, not all X are Y.
C1: All true X are Y.
In practice, application of the NTS fallacy is far more subtle than this, but the line of thinking always boils down to a denialistic attitude towards counterexamples.

“”No man can ever be opposed to Christianity who knows what it really is.
—Henry Drummond, the Scopes Trial
With respect to religion, the fallacy is well used, often even overused. Religious apologists will repeatedly try to use NTS to distance themselves from more extreme or fundamentalist groups (and vice versa), but this does not prevent such extremists actually being religious — they themselves would certainly argue otherwise. Moderate Muslim leaders, for example, are well known for declaring Islamic extremists as “not true Muslims” as Islam is a “Religion of Peace.”
Similarly, moderate Christians, such as those in Europe, are sometimes aghast when viewing their fundamentalist counterparts in the US, immediately declaring them “not true Christians,” even though they believe in the same God and get their belief system from the same book. Many of these statements stating that the extremists are not true believers are often used as a reaction against Guilt by Association. The NTS fallacy likewise occurs when believers attribute any and all good fortune to divine intervention on their behalf, yet insist that the same can never be true when things go awry.
The NTS fallacy can also run the other way when it comes to extremism. Extremists will make a religious statement and when someone points out that there are many believers who don’t believe the extremist’s viewpoint, the moderates are deemed to be not true believers (i.e., Christians who support gay marriage are not “real Christians” or Muslims who support women’s rights are not “real Muslims”).

Posted in Philosophy | Comments Off on No True Scotsman