From VDARE: To nobody’s surprise, and confirming the Open-Borders fix is in among Europe’s elites, France’s ruling Socialists and the potty-trained opposition led by former president Nicolas Sarkozy, now re-named (revealingly, to Americans?) The Republicans, joined forces to urge a vote for anything but the National Front in the December 13th second round. This repeats what they did when Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the final round of the presidential election in 2002.Plus ça change…
Suicidally, given Islam’s views of Jews and the fact that “French” anti-Semitism is now essentially the exclusive province of France’s Muslim diaspora, Official French Jewry also leapt to condemn the National Front. CRIF, the leading French-Jewish group—France’s ADL/AJC/AIPAC-equivalent—issued a call to arms against the National Front:
CRIF calls [on French voters] to vote massively next Sunday to block the National Front, a xenophobic and populist party.
CRIF president Roger Cukierman claims: “For us Jews, this is a dangerous political environment, even though we can count on the support of the governing parties and the opposition Republicans.” CRIF strongly supports mass immigration to France, no matter how hostile the immigrants are. Cukierman even says “it is unworthy for a Jew to vote for the National Front”—although French Jews would be more secure under the National Front, as those parties Jews “can count on” have failed utterly to safeguard France.
CRIF is also firmly in favor of securing Israel. CRIF’s Israel position makes sense, but its France position is insane, and its hypocrisy palpable.
Joining CRIF, the Grand Rabbi of France (there’s no American equivalent), Haim Korsia, pronounced that the French must “reject en bloc those who set one group against another, who promote isolation and exclusion.” The Grand Rabbi mused about how lighting Hanukkah candles leads us to oppose “obscurantism.”
Comment?Hanukkah commemorates the Hasmonean Jews’ revolt against their Seleucid Greek overlords to preserve the Jewish character of Israel—quite understandably. Invoking Hanukkah to defend the destruction of the French character of France through mass immigration is chutzpah indeed.
What explains this suicidal reflex of the French Jewish establishment? France has no Ellis Island, so it’s not Ellis Island Derangement Syndrome.
Posted inFrance, Immigration, Islam, Jews|Comments Off on VDARE: French Jewish Leaders Condemn Le Pen, The Only Leader Likely To Protect Them From Muslims
Donald Trump’s persistent lead in the GOP presidential-preference polls has been a great source of confusion for the chattering classes. But Trump is actually just the latest manifestation of a more global trend: Data suggests the appeal of anti-immigrant policies to working-class voters is much deeper than most American elites want to believe. And because Trump draws the bulk of his support from less-educated, working- and middle-class voters, he may be positioned to do even better still—for now. Polling data from Europe shows that parties with similar voter profiles to Trump’s consistently do better in both online polls and at the ballot box than in live-interview polling. And currently Trump is far ahead online.
Why does this happen? It starts with working-class voters across developed countries being under severe economic pressure because of competition with foreigners at home (immigration) and abroad (EU/trade). They respond to people and parties who tell them this state of affairs isn’t inevitable, and they are often impervious to cries of racism. Their lives are just plain harder than they used to be and working-class voters don’t see elites doing much—or wanting to do much—to make them better. Donald Trump is simply the American version of Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, and many other European leaders of working-class, anti-immigrant parties who profit from stoking the flames of resentment because there is so much kindling available to light.
So what explains the chasm between these particular candidates’ online versus live polling data? It turns out that a nontrivial share of these same working-class, anti-immigrant voters won’t tell a live person who they support but will share their true feelings when their support is secret—like on Election Day. This is no surprise: Support for immigration and globalization are perhaps the only political sentiments that unite elites from both business and the academy, from right and left. Openly supporting an anti-immigration candidate can risk social opprobrium, ridicule, or worse. In other words, for every group of vocal Trump supporters, there are probably a lot more who just don’t advertise it.
Posted inAmerica, Donald Trump|Comments Off on The Polls May Be Underestimating Trump’s Support
Here is a term you need to know — the “Overton Window.” Developed by the late Joseph Overton, a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the “window” refers to the range of acceptable political discourse on any given topic. As the Mackinac Center explains, “the ‘window’ of politically acceptable options is primarily defined not by what politicians prefer, but rather by what they believe they can support and still win re-election.”
The key to shifting policy lies not so much in changing politicians but in changing the terms of the debate. In other words, “The window shifts to include different policy options not when ideas change among politicians, but when ideas change in the society that elects them.” The Left — dominating the media, the academy, and pop culture — is unmatched at moving the Overton Window. Consider gay marriage, a subject once so far outside the mainstream that less than 20 years ago, Republicans and Democrats united to pass the Defense of Marriage Act to define marriage under federal law as the union of one man and one woman. Now? That view is such an anathema that it’s difficult to get — or retain — a job in entire sectors of the economy if you openly hold to the traditionalist position on marriage.
The Overton Window moved even faster on transgender rights. Ten years ago the notion that a man with emotional problems and breast implants could be named “Woman of the Year” was unthinkable. Now, in some quarters it’s just as unthinkable to refer to Bruce Jenner — Bruce Jenner! — as a man. At the moment, the Left is working hard to move the Overton Window on the gun debate. The same president who mocked the idea that he was interested in confiscating guns is now openly admiring Australia’s confiscation program. But the president isn’t leading this charge. He’s following the emerging conventional wisdom on the left: that gun “control” is not enough, that advocating outright gun bans is the only morally serious position, and the Second Amendment — at a minimum — must be judicially reinterpreted into irrelevance…
Critically, the Overton Window was smashed not by a politician but by a very American hybrid of corporate/entertainment titan — a man rich and powerful enough to be immune to elite condemnation and famous enough to dominate the news media. How many people can commandeer live television simply by picking up the phone and calling in? How many politicians can cause Twitter to detonate seemingly at will? While many of Trump’s actual proposals are misguided, nonsensical, or untenable, by smashing the window, he’s begun the process of freeing the American people from the artificial and destructive constraints of Left-defined discourse. Serious and substantive politicians like Ted Cruz will get a more respectful hearing, and PC shibboleths about allegedly boundless virtues of Islam and immigration will be treated with the skepticism they deserve.
To be clear, this change is occurring both for good and for ill. The shattering of the window reflects the shattering of the American consensus, and the result will likely be deeper polarization, and even less civility, with further strains on the ties that bind our nation together. At the same time, however, the Left’s very success at defining the terms of discourse meant that the price of civility and unity was all too often an acceptance of liberal norms and manners. It meant swallowing liberal pieties and confining your discourse to Left-approved terms. In other words, it often meant surrender.
Posted inAmerica, Donald Trump|Comments Off on For Good and Ill, Donald Trump Has Brought Discussion of Political Impossibilities into the Open
Vox’s headline announces the results for Republicans, 76% of whom agree. But the view is shared by a majority of all respondents (56%) and independents (57%) and a substantial minority of Democrats (43%). Blacks and Hispanics are evenly divided, and majorities of every Christian subpopulation, including black Protestants, agree.
Our own view of the question is complicated. Certainly Islam and the American way of life are compatible inasmuch as America is capable of welcoming Muslims who are not Islamic supremacists. On the other hand, it’s always struck us that categorical statements to the effect that Islam is “a religion of peace” are far more hortatory than empirical—which is to say that there is a gap between Islam as it actually exists and Islam as President Bush or President Obama would like it to be. How wide that gap is, and how dangerous, we do not know.
Thus Trump’s proposal for a pause in Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” strikes this columnist as entirely reasonable. That’s not to say it’s necessarily a good idea. There are potential costs in American-Muslim relations both internationally and domestically, and humanitarian costs as well. There are practical questions about how it would be implemented. The religious-freedom argument, although legally empty, is not without moral force.
Instead of debating the proposal in a reasoned way, the political class—both parties—and many in the media are treating it as a thoughtcrime. Yet the PRRI poll suggests a large majority of Americans are thinking along similar lines.
The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein summed up the politics in a tweet yesterday: “@realDonaldTrump will get days of coverage in which GOP rivals, Obama, Clinton, media, will all sound same. This is bad for him how?”
Posted inAmerica, Islam|Comments Off on Did Trump Just Win?
I don’t know a Jew in my personal life who wants more Muslims in Israel or more Muslims in the West. Jewish organizations (though rarely normal Jews) such as the ADL, however, are using Because Holocaust with greater frequency and intensity. Comparing Trump to Hitler is of course risible but when it comes to immigration, Jewish nationalist organizations such as the ADL, SWC, SPLC, etc, reference WWII not because the goy is similar to the Nazis, but rather, because these Jews are focused on the larger conflict. The more closely you identify with your group, the more likely you are to fear and even hate the outsider. Some Jews never stopped fighting after WWII. Immigration plus WWII is a reminder to Jewish organizations such as the ADL that demographics is destiny and that they must drown the dangerous goy with Others. These organizations needs to be called out for their duplicity.
Israel doesn’t allow in Muslim immigrants or refugees, but is lecturing Trump on his proposal. This reveals who Israel really fears. Not the Muslim, but the goy.
Some left-wing Jews (ADL, SWC, etc) sure are revealing their fears pretty blatantly. I hope the goy isn’t noticing. They may figure out that the multiculturalism Jews are forcing upon them doesn’t really come from a loving, universal place. At all. This radical Jewish defense of Muslim immigration should awaken even the sleepiest of goyim as to the greatest Jewish fear.
Like all groups, Jews have radicals. Israel has radical Jews. Jews tend to condemn these freaks and Israel locks them up when they break the law.
At some point the goyim may wake up and ask, if Israel can have borders and ethnic solidarity, why not America? Why not Germany? And we all know where that can lead: The goyim erecting borders against us at exactly the moment we need to cross them, as when the Muslim figure out how to bring down the 3rd Temple.
ADL: Trump’s Plan to Seal Borders Against Muslims Runs Contrary to Our Nation’s Deepest Values
New York, NY, December 7, 2015 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned Donald Trump’s calls to bar entry into the United States for all Muslims, calling the plan “deeply offensive.” Earlier today, Mr. Trump said in a statement he was calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO, issued the following statement:
“Mr. Trump’s plan to bar people from entry to the United States based on their religion is unacceptable and antithetical to American values. The U.S. was founded as a place of refuge for those fleeing religious persecution, and religious pluralism is core to our national identity. A plan that singles out Muslims and denies them entry to the U.S. based on their religion is deeply offensive and runs contrary to our nation’s deepest values.
In the Jewish community, we know all too well what can happen when a particular religious group is singled out for stereotyping and scapegoating. We also know that this country must not give into fear by turning its back on its fundamental values, even at a time of great crisis. As we have said so many times, to do otherwise signals to the terrorists that they are winning the battle against democracy and freedom.”
As a 501c3 nonprofit organization, ADL takes no position on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for office.
Simon Wiesenthal Center reaction to Donald Trump’s statement on Muslims
“Mr. Trump, by lumping all Muslims in the crosshairs of the Terrorism crisis only hurts the legitimate campaign against Islamist Fundamentalism anddemeans law abiding American citizens,” said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper Dean and Founder and Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO. “Such a policy would only serve to strengthen ISIS recruitment around the world,” Center officials concluded.
In ways direct and subtle, the Jews of America and the Jews of France, the Jews of the left and the Jews of the right, the Jews of the Reform movement and the Jews of the Orthodox movement, have sent Donald J. Trump a message: Feh.
“Feh” is Yiddish for “Go away, get out of here.” And the fact that Trump could provoke such a uniform reaction from such a fractious people is a credit to the dumbness and darkness of his ideas.
His increasingly xenophobic and racist rhetoric reached a low point this week when he declared that under a Trump administration, America would close its borders to Muslims.
“We need a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States while we figure out what the hell is going on,” Trump said to cheers of approval from his supporters.
If Trump thought Jews, so often the targets of Islamic terrorism, would join the cheers, he really doesn’t get Jews. The reaction from Jewish organizations and leaders was immediate and uniformly negative.
Trump’s plan was “unacceptable and antithetical to American values,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a written statement.
“The U.S. was founded as a place of refuge for those fleeing religious persecution, and religious pluralism is core to our national identity,” Greenblatt continued. “A plan that singles out Muslims and denies them entry to the U.S. based on their religion is deeply offensive and runs contrary to our nation’s deepest values.”
Greenblatt’s words echoed similar statements from across the Jewish political, religious and ideological spectrum. Last month, even the Orthodox Union joined in opposing Trump’s call to keep Syrian refugees out of America.
Trump must be scratching his – insert your own hair joke here. Jews are a particular target of Islamic terror. The coward who shot up the disabilities center in San Bernardino was “obsessed” with Israel, his father told reporters.
According to the FBI’s most recent statistics, Jews still are the prime target for hate crimes in America—59 percent are directed at Jews. Second place, but rising faster, are Muslims.
But Jews understand that the democratic safeguards built into America’s Constitution, including the separation of church and state, form our strongest safeguard against hate and discrimination. When those crumble, we all fall down.
Beyond the danger posed by the threat to civil liberties and religious freedom, there is the practical issue. In Trump’s mind, the best way to stop Islamic terror is to target all Muslims. But that just encourages Muslim radicalism, creates the “holy war” between Muslims and non-Muslims that the extremists pray for, and pushes moderate believers to the extremes.
Liberal claptrap? Ask the French Jews and the Israelis.
When Trump’s recent foulness exploded across the Web, I was having coffee with an Israeli official. Israelis, he told me, are simply bemused by Trump’s antics. If Muslims in and of themselves are the problem, how to account for the success of Israel, a democratic Jewish state with a 20-percent mostly Muslim Arab minority ?
Israel faces threats from Islamic extremism that, to use a Trumpism, would make your head spin, but Israeli leaders from David Ben Gurion to Benjamin Netanyahu have known that the best way to increase radicalization is to persecute the majority of law-abiding Muslim citizens, or to insult the Muslim religion itself.
French Jews have seen their own and their fellow countrymen slaughtered on the streets of Paris and Toulouse at the hands of Muslim terrorists – but they know the moral and practical dangers of a discriminatory France are a far greater threat.
This week, the Jews of France issued a stinging rebuke to their homegrown anti-democratic forces, and, by extension, to Trump.
On the eve of the upcoming regional elections in France, the Alsace chapter of CRIF, the umbrella Jewish organization, came out strongly against the Muslim-baiting National Front, led by Marine Le Pen.
“The Alsace chapter, strongly attached to the values of the Republic,” the statement read, “calls upon all voters to participate at the upcoming elections – since so much is at stake. We are calling to reject the extremist parties that advocate hatred and try to prosper at the expense of the divide within the society created by fear.”
CRIF president Roger Cukierman called on the Jewish community to vote “in order to block the National Front, a party of xenophobia and populism.”
Oren: Jews, Israelis must be first to condemn Trump
Jews and Israelis must be the first to condemn Donald Trump’s comments against Muslims, Israeli Knesset Member and former Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren said Tuesday.
In an interview with i24News, an English-Israeli TV network, Oren said, “Whatever the reason, it is thoroughly unacceptable. It is very important for Israelis to stand up against this, precisely because we are Israelis; precisely because we are facing threats from radical Islam. We have to stand up for the vast majority of Muslims who are not radical.”
Oren said that during his tenure as Ambassador he worked with Imams and hosted an Iftar party every years at the Embassy. “This are wonderful people. And to stigmatize, derogate and criminalize an entire population is thoroughly unacceptable,” the Knesset Member told host Lucy Aharish, herself an Arab-Israeli. “Support for Israel in the U.S. is at an all-time high. But I knew as Ambassador that a part of that 70 percent were people who like Israel because they don’t like Muslims, and I would go out to the audience and say: ‘If that’s why you like Israel, we don;t want your support.’If that’s the price, we don’t want it.”
On Monday, Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner, called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” He doubled down on his call during a campaign rally Monday night, as well as in a round of TV interviews Tuesday morning.
The comments were immediately condemned by the Anti-Defamation League, who compared the ban to the persecution of the Jewish people in the 1930′s. “Mr. Trump’s plan to bar people from entry to the United States based on their religion is unacceptable and antithetical to American values,” Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, said in a statement. “A plan that singles out Muslims and denies them entry to the U.S. based on their religion is deeply offensive and runs contrary to our nation’s deepest values. In the Jewish community, we know all too well what can happen when a particular religious group is singled out for stereotyping and scapegoating,” he added.
The former Ambassador said he hopes the most recent comments would be a “turning point” in the Republican race for president.
“It is very important for Israelis to say” that recent terror attacks in Israel and abroad are “not about Islam,” Oren stressed. ”We were victims of precisely what Mr. Trump is calling for – calling for closing the gates on immigration on the basis of a racial and religious Identity. So, we know what it feels like.” Adding, “One of the reasons I moved to Israel was because I grew up in a neighborhood where I was the only Jewish kid and I got beaten up every day for being Jewish. But I don;t want to be part of a majority that, in any way, discriminates and is judicial against its minorities.”
Some Jewish Groups Waffle on Donald Trump Anti-Muslim Push
Mainstream and left-leaning Jewish groups joined both Republican and Democratic honchos in condemning the statement. But some Jewish leaders were more equivocal in their responses.
Zionist Organization of America national president Mort Klein said banning all Muslims from entering the country was “going too far.” But he went on to rationalize Trump’s position: “Few people would oppose Hindus or Buddhists, or Christians coming to America, but Hindus or Buddhists or Christians are not saying or doing things that threaten people’s lives,” Klein said. “Muslims are.”
Klein said that the ZOA’s board recently voted unanimously to oppose “Syrian Muslims coming to America.”
Congressman Lee Zeldin, the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives, did not answer directly when asked what he thought of Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the country.
Instead, he too focused on the issue of Syrians.
“Focus at the moment should be on improving the visa waiver program, stopping the influx of Syrian refugees due to current vulnerabilities in the vetting process, and defeating ISIS altogether,” Zeldin wrote in a statement.
The Orthodox Union, meanwhile, a large centrist Orthodox umbrella group, said that it had “no position” on Trump’s Muslim ban. The group and its advocacy arm are often vocal on foreign affairs issues, and rallied loudly on Capitol Hill against the Iran deal.
The Rabbinical Council of America, a Modern Orthodox group, did not respond to a request for comment about Trump’s plan. The group has made statements in recent months on terror attacks in Israel and Paris, and on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Groups that did condemn Trump include the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, J Street, and the Israel Policy Forum, according to a JTA report.
Blogger and activist Pamela Geller, who the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead,” told the Forward that Trump’s proposal doesn’t go far enough.
“Trump didn’t call for a complete ban, but only a temporary one,” Geller wrote in an email.
Jewish groups slam Trump for call to block entry of Muslims
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jewish groups blasted Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for his proposal to block all Muslims from entering the United States.
“A plan that singles out Muslims and denies them entry to the U.S. based on their religion is deeply offensive and runs contrary to our nation’s deepest values,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement Monday evening hours after Trump, a real estate billionaire and reality TV star, issued his call.
“In the Jewish community, we know all too well what can happen when a particular religious group is singled out for stereotyping and scapegoating,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s CEO. “We also know that this country must not give into fear by turning its back on its fundamental values, even at a time of great crisis.”
The American Jewish Committee’s director of policy, Jason Isaacson, noted the timing of Trump’s statement, which called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” coincident with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
“As Jews who are now observing Hanukkah, a holiday that celebrates a small religious minority’s right to live unmolested, we are deeply disturbed by the nativist racism inherent in the candidate’s latest remarks,” Isaacson said. “You don’t need to go back to the Hanukkah story to see the horrific results of religious persecution; religious stereotyping of this sort has been tried often, inevitably with disastrous results.”
Trump in his news release alluded to the massacre in San Bernardino, California, last week of 14 people by a couple apparently radicalized by the Islamic State terrorist group.
“Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension,” he said. “Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.”
Other Jewish groups condemning the comments included J Street, Bend the Arc, the National Jewish Democratic Council, the Israel Policy Forum, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and JAC, a Jewish political action committee.
We must know our enemy. We must be clear about who the enemies of America are so we can more effectively fight them.
Steve Sailer writes: French history is currently speeding up, which ought to be of intense interest to American Republicans pondering whom to nominate in 2016. While many Americans enjoy engaging in lowbrow derision of France, the French traditionally value displays of intelligence, and thus are often the first to work out the logic of events. If the 21st-century French are beginning to figure out that the conceptions of left and right (which they invented in the late 18th century) are becoming less critical in a new century when the fundamental issue is whether the West will allow itself to be swamped by the Rest, Republicans ought to pay attention.
The most important novel of 2015, Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, a tale of the 2022 French election, provides English speakers with a convenient literary lens upon the central question in France: Will the French ruling class accede to the demographic replacement of the French nation with the overflowing populations of the Middle East and Africa?
As part of the global electoral trend toward the right, in the initial round of the French regional elections on Sunday, Marine Le Pen’s National Front came in first with 28 percent of the vote nationally. Her party led in six of thirteen zones.
Posted inFrance, Immigration|Comments Off on Will France Vote For The National Front?
A black woman writes: I tend to chalk up my ambivalence about Princeton to my experience as a lower-middle-class black woman on campus. It felt like the expectations of the university were constantly shifting goalposts that I could never hope to meet. My introductory-level science instructors would grant me extensions when I was sick from stress, but then my freshman adviser would admit that he purposely told me to sign up for too many classes in a semester because he wanted to weed me out of premedical studies. I shared that adviser with many students, and from what I heard the only ones who received such treatment were minorities.
The university paid for me to go home during an internship to attend my uncle’s funeral, but then my department head essentially told me to get over it when I told him that grieving the deaths of my pastor, uncle, and aunt in one year was making it difficult to cope. Based on his response, it seemed impossible for him to believe that a student could have a pastor gunned down in a robbery, an uncle murdered, and an aunt who died of untreated cancer all in one year. He seemed to think that I was making up tragedies in order to get out of classwork or to cover up academic inadequacies. To me, it seemed that since he had never experienced a life that was so frequently beset by setbacks, he couldn’t empathize with a student who came from a background where these things happen, maybe not with regularity, but with relative frequency.
Posted inBlacks|Comments Off on Steve Sailer: What % of shrieking coeds of the Black Autumn are lesbians?
Mark Krikorian writes: Donald Trump has again succeeded in setting the terms of political debate, this time by calling for a temporary halt to the admission of all Muslims from abroad, whether as immigrants or as visitors (“nonimmigrants” being the technical term). Everyone’s outraged, of course, but this is a topic that needs to be addressed head-on.
First of all, it’s important to underline that Congress can exclude or admit any foreigner it wants, for any reason or no reason. Non-Americans have no constitutional right to travel to the United States and no constitutional due-process rights to challenge exclusion; as the Supreme Court has written multiple times, “Whatever the procedure authorized by Congress is, it is due process as far as an alien denied entry is concerned.”
What’s more, while the president doesn’t have the authority that Obama has claimed, to let in anyone he wants for any reason (under the guise of “parole”), he does have the statutory authority to keep anyone out, for any reason he thinks best. From 8 USC §1182:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate (emphasis added).
So in considering Trump’s statement, the question is not whether it would be lawful but whether it would be good policy. (Barring the return of American citizens from abroad simply because they’re Muslims is ridiculous and illegal, but it doesn’t seem that Trump actually said that, despite the media’s trumpeting of that point.) As usual, Trump is playing the part of your crotchety Uncle George holding forth on politics at the Thanksgiving dinner table. But the reason his careless and sloppy immigration commentary resonates is that no one else in public life is willing to address issues that worry–and, at this point, frighten–people. If “respectable” politicians refuse to even talk about the real problems caused by mass Muslim immigration, then a larger and larger share of the public will turn to carnival barkers unafraid of elite disapproval.
{snip}
But large Muslim populations, continually refreshed by ongoing mass immigration, are a problem. Polling suggests between a quarter and a third are not attached to the principles of the Constitution, supporting things such as sharia law over U.S. law and the use of violence against those who insult Islam. Nor is this merely hypothetical; Muslims account for only about 1 percent of the U.S. population but account for about half of terrorist attacks since 9/11. That means Muslims in the United States are about 5,000 percent more likely to commit terrorist attacks than non-Muslims.
{snip}
The narrowest solution would be to restore the principle of “ideological exclusion” to U.S. immigration law. With the end of the Cold War–which too many imagined to be the End of History–we eliminated the legal bar to enemies of America who were not actual members of terrorist organizations or card-carrying members of totalitarian political parties. Specifically, the law says the State Department is prohibited from keeping a foreigner out “because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States.” In other words, since 1990 we have applied the First Amendment to all foreigners abroad seeking admission to our country. The only exception is if the secretary of state “personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest”–note this exception is only for a “compelling . . . foreign policy interest,” not a domestic-policy one, like limiting the number of residents who support killing apostates.
Even President Obama has paid (grudging) lip service to the ideological–as opposed to the violent–threat. In his Oval Office speech Sunday night he said “Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to . . . speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity.” So why aren’t we keeping out people who adhere to such interpretations?
Such screening would be stricter for people coming as immigrants than for nonimmigrants (visitors). So long as he’s not a terrorist, it doesn’t matter too much to us if a Turkish businessman attending a trade show in Atlanta supports the killing of homosexuals. But for people who want to become permanent (or even long-term “temporary”) residents, it does matter. At the very least, we should be asking things like whether they support freedom of religion and speech, regardless of content, even if it is insulting to other faiths. Of course people could, and would, lie, but the very fact that such a question is asked would send a message about what we expect of people hoping to live among us–that believing in Islamic supremacism is disqualifying even if you yourself do not use violence.
{snip}
There’s really no way around it: Continuing to admit 1 million Muslim immigrants per decade will translate into more attacks. We need to cut Muslim immigration. But limiting the cuts to Muslim-majority countries would exclude Christians and other non-Muslims and also ignore Muslim immigration from non-Muslim countries such as India, Russia, France, and England.
So alongside ideological screening we need to cut immigration overall, focusing on the categories most likely to cause problems. That means eliminating the visa lottery, an absurd program in its own right but also the source of a disproportionate share of Muslim immigration; limiting family immigration to the closest relations, to prevent a cascading chain of relatives; dramatically curbing refugee resettlement, allowing us to help many more people while keeping the potential security threats off shore; and reducing the number of foreign-student admissions, the feeder program for a large share of new permanent immigration from the Islamic world.
{snip}
But if we just keep doing what we’re doing now, we can’t expect a different result. Trump’s sweeping call to stop all Muslim travel to the U.S. will resonate with people rightly frustrated with our rulers’ insouciant approach to the threat we face. Rather than simply point in outrage at Trump’s crude prescription, responsible policymakers should offer a grown-up alternative.
Posted inImmigration, Islam|Comments Off on National Review: It’s Time for a Grown-Up Alternative to Trump’s Crude Muslim-Immigration Proposal
* Trump’s opponents all rushed into the trap tonight. I knew they were all mostly mediocre but even Cruz botched it.
ISIS is going to strike again and Trump will be coronated. ISIS doesn’t even have to strike stateside.
The thing about Trump is he demonstrates the total lameness of our top politicians. The puppeteers want dump puppets and that’s what we’ve got.
Even Fiorina who is verbal and has some dexterity walked into this one.
Judging by the recent frequency of ISIS attacks: there should be at least a half dozen significant attacks in the next year and Trump will leap higher with each one.
* Muslim eruptions and the reactions have taken how many trillion dollars out of the US economy over the last few decades? And furthermore their violence has provided the convenient fig leaf for a host of intrusions on our liberties. I know memories fade quickly, but remember what it was like to fly 20 years ago? Remember when you could see a loved one off at the gate?
* Michael Jackson used the word “ignorant” a lot when responding to questions about why he liked to sleep with little boys. South Park spoofed it:
* Does Carlos Slim self-identify as “Arab”? Maronites often don’t. It appears that Slim’s father had ties to a rightwing Falangist (i.e., Fascist) party, as well as Slim’s late wife being the cousin of Maronite warlord Bashir Gemayel.
It would seem like an interesting topic for the New York Times to investigate, no?
* “Oh no here come the Muslims! Geez, you guys are scared little pussies,” Kikuyu said mockingly as people began screaming when the black-clad couple burst into the room where his Christmas party was being held and fired indiscriminately into the crowd.
* Lothrop Stoddard was a New York Times correspondent into the 1940s. Imagine that. It’s true.
* Curtailing immigration from Islamic basket cases is the thin end of the wedge, Mr. Wizard. Once the public sees how “less immigration == more better” who knows how far we might ride that horse?
* “They will always be a small minority”. Famous last words.
* George Orwell must emerge as one of the few towering intellectual giants of the 20th century. As time moves on, and the memories and personalities of that century fade away, surely Orwell must be remembered in the same way as remember Burke, Locke, Paine etc as great intellects and defenders of the human spirit.
The only problem with Orwell was that he was true – too true.
* Muslims make up less than 1 percent of the U.S population, but on a per capita basis they sure have committed a lot of terrorist attacks/mass shootings on U.S soil for such a small miniscule demographic.
If a bunch of religious extremist Orthodox and Hasidic Jews went around committing terrorist attacks/mass shootings on U.S soil, I doubt you would say religious Jews do not pose much of a threat to the U.S. You would be the first to say the U.S needs to bomb Israel out of existence or at least advocate for a ban on all Jewish immigrants from entering The U.S in order to prevent anymore terrorist attacks on U.S soil from crazy violent religious Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, even if most Jewish immigrants are not terrorists but you would not want to take any chances.
* Having been just ahead of the “that’s ignorant” “that’s racist” trend, I can see it very clearly, like an avalanche on my heels. I think it’s a little like how one’s accent used to give away one’s social class, but now that our American accents are much more homogenized into the broad regions, we need something else to distinguish our betters. Also, it’s never said “you’re racist” or “you’re ignorant” as those are personal attacks – but the formation “that’s ____ [what you just said or believe]” which is effective in enforcing the moral “upper class” code. “That’s racist” has limited use, although quite flexible, so I believe “that’s ignorant” is used for all other non-racist contexts, or as a substitute to avoid saying the R-word.
PC orthodoxy is based on a confusion between belief and truth. Adherents believe that their beliefs are the Truth, and any contradiction to the Truth must be due to ignorance or malice [racism]. Perhaps the switch to the word “ignorance” is to avoid direct conflict; but perhaps it also reflects the current generation’s loss of skepticism. “It just is.” “I just can’t even [believe what I see/hear]” “Didn’t you know that [such and such study says that whatever liberal talking point]?” And even if you can contradict them with evidence or facts or anecdotes, these do not have enough weight against their believed orthodoxy. You’re just ignorant of the Truth.
Thus the Truth can be used both as a status marker in conversation and to distinguish between Believers and the Unsaved (or worse, they know the Truth and mock it-just like the Devil!!!! Those on the side of the Devil are Evil and must be resisted/destroyed no matter what!).
Hear the Good News and repent!
* The word ‘ignorant’ is used nowadays as meaning someone who doesn’t think what they’re supposed to, someone who doesn’t go in for group-think. Anyone who doesn’t agree with the party line is called stupid, uneducated and ‘ignorant’.
No non-Muslims have ever lived next to Muslims without hating them. This has been true everywhere there’s Muslims. There’s reasons for that. People who deny reality are ignorant.
* I’m waiting for a breakdown of American college campus sexual assault rates compared to the racial demographics of the school. That would be a real hoot!
* After 9/11 bin Laden wrote a clear, concise letter explaining that US support of the Israeli government was the sole reason for the attacks. End the finance & military support of Israel, and he would leave us alone. I hope everyone here understands how misguided and evil Bush’s “it’s because Sadam has weapons of mass distruction & let’s double down on support for Israel” was. And the idiocy of Invading Afghanistan while calling Iran, who has quietly been fighting the taliban for decades now, part of the Axis of Evil. Now the Muslims have more reason to attack.
You are right that they only attack due to our foreign policy. But the Zionist Jews only have power because evangelicals worship them like leftist worship blacks.
Our real problem is ever other white Gentiles.
* he same newspaper that would sign off TOMORROW on legislation outlawing “intemperate racial/religious/political speech”; on prioritizing the maintenance of extra-legal Homeland Security databases tracking real-life and online activities of same; and on the vigorous and disproportionately-punitive prosecution of such offenders, all in the name of Fighting Hate (whatever the fuck that is, exactly)…..this same newspaper has the nerve to serve up this tired bilgewater, with chunks of cliche swimming in it that would embarrass the producers of an ABC Afterschool Special.
* I totally agree that society should promote virtue (good habits that lead to good acts) and and punish vice, and it certainly is something difficult for the government to discern generally and for the most part.
However, in other situations it is pretty straightforward, for example membership in organized crime operation. Our society prohibits such organizations from having a formal status before the law and persecutes those suspected of being its members.
Considering the intrinsically warlord like behavior of the religion’s founder and the fact that he is regarded as the exemplar of a good human being for Muslims then it is not to far fetched to think of Islam itself as being a good deal like an organized crime organization. For example the jizya is basically a protection racket. Most people involved in organized crime don’t actually do the violent stuff themselves, but the muscle does rely on a broader network of smugglers, numbers guys, informants, and wives/girlfriends to maximize the efficacy of the violent acts.
* Carlos Slim’s dad was a member of the fascist Phalange in Lebanon and his older brother was a secret policeman in Mexico who interrogated / tortured leftist troublemakers. His beloved late wife was the cousin of the extreme right warlord Bashir Gemayel who allied with Ariel Sharon in 1982 but was blown up before taking the oath of office as president.
For some reason, the NYT hasn’t shown much interest in exploring this fascinating family history.
* Shinto was a massive problem for the United States, both as a foreign policy and then as a domestic policy, because it encouraged militarist craziness.
On the other hand, Shinto and Japanese culture in general, like American culture at the time, came with a sense of honor about its craziness, so loyalty oaths turned out to be a highly effective tool for predicting the behavior of individual . About 5,000 Japanese Americans, many of whom had been sent back to Japan for high school and indoctrination in the Shinto cult, refused to take a loyalty oath to the U.S. They were sent to a special camp, Tule Lake, where they caused all sorts of problems for the guards with their violence. On the other hand, these Emperor-worshippers never promised not to make war against the U.S. so their violence against the U.S. was not dishonorable.
The Japanese Americans who took a loyalty oath to America were allowed to stay where they lived if they didn’t live on the West Coast. And the West Coasters who took oaths to the U.S. did not cause much trouble at all at their lower security internment camps (where they were paid like draftee privates in the U.S. Army). So, in retrospect, a big injustice was done to the Japanese-Americans since, after a few unfortunate incidents of treason at the time of Pearl Harbor, they showed a high degree of honorable behavior in living up to their loyalty oaths to America.
So that raises the question of whether Muslim culture puts as high of a value of honor regarding loyalty oaths as does Japanese culture? Or does it have a culture of dissimulation?
But in any case, our 21st culture tends to treat loyalty oaths as a McCarthyite joke, so it would be weird for Muslims to take them all that seriously. For example, the immigration oath would appear to require immigrants to give up citizenship in other countries, but the Supreme Court’s 1967 Afroyim case allowing an immigrant from Israel to vote in both countries gutted the oath.
From Breitbart: The Center for Security Policy released a poll Tuesday that should give all Americans pause. The results show that a startling number of American Muslims, our fellow citizens, agree that violence is a legitimate response to those who insult Islam. A full majority of 51% “agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.”
According to the just-released survey of Muslims, a majority (51%) agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.” When that question was put to the broader U.S. population, the overwhelming majority held that shariah should not displace the U.S. Constitution (86% to 2%). …
Even more troubling, is the fact that nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, “It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.”
A full 25% of those polled agreed that “violence against Americans here in the United States can be justified as part of the global jihad.”
For those who don’t know, Sharia Law is nothing less than the Nazi-ification of a religion. Sharia authorizes murder against non-believers who won’t convert, horrific oppression of women, the execution of gays, the extermination of Jews, and the beheading of anyone who draws Muhammad.
Currently anywhere from 3 million to 7 million Muslims live in America.
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