Will the Mormon Church’s Support for Muslim Immigration Block Trump’s Victory?

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Luke Ford

Tom Tancredo writes: The media is suddenly full of stories on Trump’s “Mormon problem.” According to the mainstream media, Trump’s call for “extreme vetting” of Muslim immigrants in his foreign policy speech kicked open a hornets’ nest of Mormon concerns about “religious tolerance.”

The truth is more simple, as is often the case in politics, and it has nothing to do with religious freedom as practiced by Americans under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

It is an open secret in Washington, D.C. that the Mormon church supports open borders and lax enforcement of immigration laws. Many Mormon politicians have been supporting amnesty and open borders for decades. When I was in Congress I had a confrontation with former Utah Senator Robert Bennett over his sponsorship of an amendment to exempt religious institutions from a Sanctuary City bill establishing penalties for harboring illegal aliens. It turned out he did it at the request of his church leaders. Mormon church support for John McCain in his Arizona Republican primary race is also due in large part to his open borders record and his challenger’s strong criticism of McCain’s hypocrisy on border security.

So, no one should be surprised that Trump’s call to build a wall on the southwest border and his plan for putting the war on Islamist terrorism above open immigration has encountered resistance among some Mormon politicians. What is surprising is the dishonest way even some Republicans have framed that disagreement as opposition to infringement on religious liberty.

ISIS leaders must be rolling in the mosque’s aisles in uncontrolled laughter over the Mormon concern over Muslim immigration, considering that religious liberty is the first casualty wherever radical Islam and Sharia are enforced.

Under Sharia law enforced by orthodox Muslims wherever they have the power to do so, religious liberty is defined as giving Christians and Jews and other “infidels” a choice: either convert to Islam, pay the “Jizya” tax, or die. That is religious liberty under Islam, and it bears no resemblance to the religious liberty guaranteed by the US Constitution.

Trump is advocating a new policy of vigorous, effective screening of Muslim refugees and immigrants to identify likely Islamist terrorists and bar their admission to our country. So, how did a ban on admission of likely terrorists become a war on religious liberty? Once you find a good answer to that question, my friends, you will have discovered the answer to the riddle of political correctness run amok.

Immigration restrictions based on national security concerns are not new. Maybe liberals and progressives do not want to remember it, but during the cold war against international Communism, America had laws restricting immigration from the Soviet Union and a dozen communist nations. Why is a ban on admission of Islamist terrorists any different?

Why is it suddenly an affront to religious liberty to say with Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact”? Justice Jackson’s famous phrase was in dissent to a 1949 Supreme Court ruling striking down a Chicago ordinance prohibiting incitement to riot. But the same common sense sentiment was expressed by a Supreme Court judge appointed by President John Kennedy, Arthur Goldberg, when he said in 1962, “Congress has broad power under the Necessary and Proper Clause to enact legislation for the regulation of foreign affairs. Latitude in this area is necessary to ensure effectuation of this indispensable function of government.”

The truth is that not only does the Constitution NOT prohibit immigration restrictions on persons holding beliefs hostile to public safety and national security, there are several US Supreme Court decisions upholding Congress’s and the President’s powers to put the nation’s safety and security ahead of any alleged universal right of foreign nationals to enter the United States. Suggestions to the contrary, whether expressed by Sharia advocate Khizr Khan addressing the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia or Mormon Senator Jeff Flake stirring up opposition to Donald trump in Arizona, is pure demagoguery and ought to be called by its right name no matter where it occurs.

A clear-eyed look at the current presidential campaign suggests to me that the extent of Mormon opposition to Donald Trump is being exaggerated by the hostile media and some “Never Trump” opponents. The recent announcement by an ex-CIA agent of the Mormon faith, Evan McMullin, that he will wage a candidacy as an independent candidate for president, is not generating a tidal wave of support in Utah or anyplace else.

Nonetheless, the statements of some Mormon leaders raising the specter of religious persecution if immigration of radical Muslims is banned, is poisonous to intelligent debate over immigration policy. But then again, this is not new: the open borders lobby has never wanted to allow intelligent debate on the issue and has always tried to slander proponents of border controls.

Governor Herbert of Utah has been pouring kerosene on the smoldering fire by trying to link immigration policy to religious persecution. The former LDS missionary recently said, “I am the governor of a state that was settled by religious exiles who withstood persecution after persecution, including an extermination order from another state’s governor. In Utah, the First Amendment still matters. That will not change so long as I remain governor.”

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Orthodox rabbis condemn Donald Trump’s ‘hateful rhetoric and intolerant policy proposals’

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Luke Ford

LINK:

We the undersigned are a group of American Orthodox rabbis, speaking as individuals, who have come together — in solidarity with other religious leaders — to make this statement on a matter of grave religious import.

We believe that religion should be lived in daily life and applied in the public square and in making policy judgments. We also believe that religion should be invoked with care because its tendency to judge matters in absolute or ultimate terms may interfere with the ability of the political system to work through partial steps, compromises and pragmatic accommodations. We also affirm that it is improper to claim that God or our religion is totally on one side, be it progressive or conservative. We affirm that people of good faith can come to contradictory conclusions on policy matters.

Nevertheless, there are times when the political discourse veers into morally offensive language and policy proposals that violate fundamental religious norms. In such cases, we feel that we must speak up — and as Orthodox rabbis in particular — since we believe that every action in life should be shaped and guided by our religious values.

We issue this statement on the heels of the week of the 9th of Av. On the Jewish religious calendar, this commemorates the anniversary of the destruction of the Second Holy Temple and the Great Exile — the greatest catastrophe of Jewish history until the Holocaust. The Talmud states that this disaster was a direct consequence of the release of gratuitous and unrestrained hatred into the body politic.

In the current presidential election, we have been deeply troubled to hear proposals that condemn whole groups and which are justified by pointing to evil behaviors by members of that group or religion. Wholesale condemnations — such as the proposal to ban all Muslim immigration into the United States — violate the principle of individual responsibility and violate the fundamental religious principle of “love thy neighbor as thyself,” which is one of the greatest commandments of Judaism (see Jerusalem Talmud, Nedarim 9:4). These proposals violate the biblical prohibitions to spread hatred or slander about groups and individuals and violate the oft-repeated biblical command to love the stranger.

We add that we were shocked by the disrespect shown to parents who suffered the greatest pain — losing a son who died in the service of our country. The Torah commands us always to comfort mourners. The fact that the parents criticized a candidate does not justify harsh and hurtful retaliation.

Similarly, we condemn the candidate’s remarks demeaning women, and we denounce his attacks labeling many Mexican immigrants as rapists or criminals. Again, opposition to immigration or to amnesty for illegal aliens cannot justify wholesale denials of the dignity of human beings or threats to round up and deport millions of families. These remarks and proposals are gross violations of the fundamental principle of our religion that every human being is created in the image of God and should be treated as equal, as unique, and as a person of infinite value and dignity.

Finally, we are troubled by candidates who signal authoritarian tendencies and pursue personal vendettas that come across as a dismissal of constitutional rights and legal processes. Protection of the law, equality before the law, and respecting democratic political processes (though they may fall into gridlock or frustrate us from time to time) are the bedrocks of democracy. Democracy is the system most protective of human dignity. Upholding it and protecting its processes is of the highest religious value. The fact that these dangerous tendencies have been coupled with statements of admiration for authoritarian dictators has aroused our conscience.

All these behaviors, taken together, have led us to make this extraordinary statement in the name of our religious principles. Our core religious values and essential theological beliefs require us to condemn Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric and intolerant policy proposals in the strongest possible terms.

Rabbi Dr. Irving (“Yitz”) Greenberg, a scholar and theologian, is the founding president of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation and of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York City. Rabbi Daniel Ross Goodman, J.D., is a Ph.D. candidate at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. Other lead signatories on this statement were Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz, founder and president of Uri L’Tzedek: The Orthodox Social Justice Movement, and president and dean of the Valley Beit Midrash in Scottsdale, Arizona; and Rabbi Aaron Potek, who works with Jewish young adults in Washington, D.C. At least 36 other Orthodox rabbis have also co-signed this statement.

1. Rabbi Dr. Elisha Ancselovits
2. Rabbi Yonah Berman
3. Rabbi Dr. Tsvi Blanchard
4. Rabbi Barry Dolinger
5. Rabbi Michael Emerson
6. Rabbi Steven Exler
7. Rabbi Dr. Josh Feigelson
8. Maharat Ruth Friedman
9. Rabbi Jeffrey Fox
10. Rabbi Aaron Frank
11. Rabbi Daniel Geretz
12. Rabbi Dr. Bin Goldman
13. Rabbi Daniel Goodman
14. Rabbi Ben Greenberg
15. Rabbi Steve Greenberg
16. Rabbi Dr. Yitz Greenberg
17. Rabbi Ari Hart
18. Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld
19. Rabbi Dr. Richard Hidary
20. Rabba Sara Hurwitz
21. Rabbi David Jaffe
22. Rabbi David Kalb
23. Rabbi Will Keller
24. Rabbi Fred Klein
25. Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn
26. Rabbi Danny Landes
27. Rabbi Dr. Dov Lerea
28. Rabbi Aaron Levy
29. Rabbi Jon Leener
30. Rabbi Dov Linzer
31. Rabbi Ariel Evan Mayse
32. Rabbi Avram Mlotek
33. Rabbi Micah Odenheimer
34. Rabbi Avi Orlow
35. Rabbi Dani Passow
36. Rabbi Aaron Potek
37. Rabbi Haggai Resnikoff
38. Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller
39. Rabbi Ben Shefter
40. Rabbi Garth Silberstein
41. Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein
42. Rabbi Victor Ureki
43. Rabbi Devin Villarreal
44. Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz
45. Rabbanit Devorah Zlochower

Jewish Press responds:

The quote from the Yerushalmi is the famous note by Rabbi Akiva that “Love your friend as you would yourself” is a great Torah principle. It is, but it refers exclusively to Jews, as can be easily discerned from the complete verse: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against the people of your nation (B’nei Amecha), and love your friend (Re’acha) as you would yourself, I am God.” Of course, there are universal interpretations of this verse, but as it happens, the Yerushalmi chapter the group cited actually emphasizes one line earlier the idea of the verse referring to the people of your own nation, meaning Jews.

Frankly, even if one does not support Trump’s xenophobic attacks on “Rapist Mexicans” and “the Muslims,” a group of 45 learned rabbis could have come up with a more convincing, perhaps intellectually challenging argument, especially since they present the Trump proposals on banning—temporarily—Muslim immigration without context, as if the candidate just picked a fight with a billion and a half peaceful people who are minding their own business just worrying about grazing their camels and perfecting their hummus.

The 45 rabbis also say they were “shocked by the disrespect shown to parents who suffered the greatest pain—losing a son who died in the service of our country. The Torah commands us always to comfort mourners. The fact that the parents criticized a candidate does not justify harsh and hurtful retaliation.”

This time they didn’t go to the Yerushalmi to support their “always comfort mourners” point. It’s probably not true, as can be seen in the commandments regarding the beautiful war captive, where comforting her as she is mourning her killed parents is distinctly not part of the Jewish soldier’s obligations.

They also attack Trump for his “authoritarian tendencies” and “personal vendettas that come across as a dismissal of constitutional rights and legal processes.” They’re about a year late in comforting Prime Minister Netanyahu, who suffered from the personal vendettas of the current US president. Maybe there’s something in the Yerushalmi about that.

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WP: ‘Racial realists’ are cheered by Trump’s latest strategy

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Luke Ford

Washington Post: OAKTON, Va. — Jared Taylor hits play and the first Donald Trump ad of the general election unfolds across his breakfast table. Syrian refugees streaming across a border. Hordes of immigrants, crowded onto trains.
“Donald Trump’s America is secure,” rumbles a narrator. “Terrorists and dangerous criminals kept out. The border, secure; our families, safe.”
Taylor, one of America’s foremost “racialists,” is impressed and relieved. “That’s a powerful appeal,” he said. “If he can just stick to that, he is in very good shape.”
From his Fairfax County home, Taylor has edited the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance and organized racialist conferences under the “AmRen” banner. He said that Trump should “concentrate on his natural constituency, which is white people,” suggesting that winning 65 percent of the white vote would overwhelm any Democratic gains with minorities.
When Trump made Breitbart News CEO Steve Bannon his campaign’s chief executive this week, Taylor found reasons to celebrate. It was the latest sign for white nationalists, once dismissed as fringe, that their worldview was gaining popularity and that the old Republican Party was coming to an end.
The rise of the alt-right — named for the Alternative Right website that the “identitarian” nationalist Richard Spencer set up in 2010 and adopted by those opposed to multiculturalism and mass immigration — has come to define how many of its adherents see Trump. There’s less talk now about a “pivot,” or a moment when Trump will adopt the ideas of people that he conquered. His strategy now resembles the alt-right dream of maximizing the white vote — even as polling shows his standing with white voters falls short of Mitt Romney’s in 2012.
Trump’s newest speeches, read from a teleprompter, hit all of their favorite notes. “I don’t think Trump had mentioned ‘sanctuary cities’ previously,” Spencer said in an interview. “There’s reason to believe that Bannon is returning him to his powerful, populist message — indeed, honing it. [Former campaign chairman Paul] Manafort was turning Trump into a standard Republican, with the [Mike] Pence [vice-presidential] choice, the economic policy, talk of how ‘Hillary is the real racist,’ if not quite in those words. Bannon is making me hope again, making Trump Trump again.”

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Bad! ‘Yesterday we published a review of Seth Rogen’s new animated film, Sausage Party’

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Luke Ford

LINK: After we published the review, we heard from Latinx readers who believe the portrayal of Salma Hayek’s taco was racist and that it reinforced harmful stereotypes. We heard from readers who were upset that we labeled the taco a lesbian when it seems more likely that she was bisexual. We heard from readers who questioned the consent of the sexual encounter between the taco and the hot dog bun. We heard from readers who found the taco to be a damaging portrayal of a predatory queer woman.

There are several reasons I should have listened to the alarm bells of unease I felt about the Sausage Party review. First and most damning: we allowed a non-Latina writer to cover a story about a caricature of a Latina, and while the review didn’t specifically mention the film’s stereotyping, by praising the film as a positive portrayal of a queer Latina, we allowed a white writer to, in effect, condone that stereotyping. Second, when I was looking for reviews, I trusted the opinion of mainstream newspapers and websites and didn’t specifically seek out reviews written by women of color, generally; or Latina women, specifically. Furthermore, if the review had been written by a staff writer we would’ve talked it out with the writer in Slack if we had concerns and asked them more questions. Since the writer was a freelancer, we chose not to reach out to ask follow up questions over email; instead, we plowed forward for the sake of a time-sensitive article. Third, we did not consult with our full team to see if anyone had heard anything positive or negative about the film’s portrayal of a queer Latina character. And finally, we put the burden on Yvonne of being the conscience and voice for all queer Latina women.

I want to personally apologize to every reader who was hurt by the Sausage Party review. I failed you as a senior editor of this website and I failed you as an ally. I am wholly sorry for the pain and anger I caused you. I offer you no justification. I was blinded by my own whiteness existing inside a system of white supremacy. I must do better. I will do better. I also want to take full responsibility for not working more closely with the freelancer. This was not her fault. This was an editorial failure. I should have asked more critical questions about the film, especially since no one I know had seen it.

A note from Yvonne: I want to apologize to our Latinx readers specifically because I could’ve stopped this from happening, especially when I recognized the red flags and didn’t stop to question them. I knew the taco was a racist caricature but attributed it to a systemic problem in media that wasn’t necessarily our problem. But it became our problem when we used our voice as a queer publication to write a positive review of that racist caricature and perpetuated a racist narrative for the sake of the queer representation in the film. I was wrong for not stopping this immediately, especially when it deeply effects my own people. I’m a Latina and I’m also susceptible to the racist, oppressive system we live in. I know how incredibly challenging it is to find genuine Latinx representations in media and I’m sorry I was a disservice to Latinxs by not demanding better. These aren’t our stories and we deserve better. I’m deeply shamed by this deplorable mistake and I will definitely learn from this and make sure I can provide the best representation for people of color going forward.

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Black Guy Vs White Guy Basketball

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* When I was younger, my mildly athletic white friends and I would often play basketball as a team against much more athletically talented black teams. It always surprised me that we won a good portion of the time.

The reason that we could win against them was that we played a team oriented style that focused on passing, high percentage shots and defense while they tended to play as individuals with each one wanting to be “Jordan”.

* African-Americans got much better at the less glamorous parts of basketball, such as defense away from the ball, during the 1980s. In the late 1970s for two seasons in a row, three of the five NBA All Defense players were white (Bill Walton, Bobby Jones, and Don Buse.) But nowadays whites are notorious for poor defense.

My impression is that Coach John Thompson at Georgetown with Patrick Ewing in the early 1980s made defense glamorous for blacks. He had an interesting kind of Black Nationalist vibe, apparently refusing to recruit white Americans (he often had one white European on his squad).

Basketball used to be more like baseball in that you could hide guys with strong offensive skills and weak defense. If you go back far enough in time to when Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game in 1962, there was kind of a message that defense didn’t sell tickets so let’s not work too hard on defense.

The quality of defense improved a lot in the 1980s, leading to the notorious 1990s scoring drought, so the NBA took steps in the rules to make defense less suffocating and now has a well-balanced game.

* Black boys (link) and girls (link) both mature earlier on average than whites. So they may respond well to certain PED’s earlier in their life histories, enabling them to out-compete whites for sports opportunities (like scrimmaging/competing with better teammates, access to better coaches, etc.) which may power a compound-interest effect leading to higher terminal attainment.

Perhaps the old mental-capability age-ratio formulation for IQ holds a clue for us, to help us understand a possible way in which blacks could be “more sensitive” than whites to some athletic PED’s.

Just as the ability to benefit from schooling at an earlier age (high IQ) may drive an “compounded returns” cycle for a while leading to higher educational attainment by school-leaving age for high-IQ subjects compared to low-IQ subjects, the ability to benefit from some PED’s at an earlier age might drive an “compounded returns” cycle for a while leading to higher athletic attainment by sport-retirement age for earlier-maturing athletes compared to later-maturing ones.

* My impression from reading old sports books is that up into the 1960s the concept of a “sprinter’s build” meant somebody like Dave Sime: 6’2″ and 179 pounds: i.e., slightly more ectomorphic than mesomorphic. The assumption was that it didn’t make much sense to have lots of surplus upper body mass to have to accelerate.

Carl Lewis might have fallen into this category as well, although musculature was so much more prominent during his era.

But Bob Hayes, the 1964 gold medalist was more mesomorphic than ectomorphic.

We now know that upper body strength helps sprinters rise up out of a crouch faster.

But perhaps the area of interest is the calves: maybe general muscle-building among whites puts too much weight into the calves, which slow runners down (e.g., look at deer or horse legs). Maybe whites on steroids tend to grow heavier calves, while blacks on steroids add more weight relatively in their thighs?

Jamaica’s sprinting talent has been tied into American college track teams for at least a half century. For example, when OJ Simpson was on a world record sprint relay team at USC the anchorman was Lennox Miller of Jamaica, who medaled twice in the Olympic 100m. So Jamaicans and Americans are part of the same information sphere of training techniques.

I think what happened is that after the 2004 Olympics, where the US did well in the sprints with really massive guys like Justin Gatlin and Shaun Crawford, the USOC imposed more serious drug testing, while the Jamaican equivalent did not. Jamaica is not a rich country, so spending a lot of money to catch their national heroes was not a priority for them.

The other thing of course is that Bolt is just a Carl Lewis-level phenom who likely would still be dominant in a totally clean world.

Posted in Basketball, Blacks, HBD | Comments Off on Black Guy Vs White Guy Basketball