Gary* writes me: Will you keep on flirting with the Alt-Right now that they’ve resorted to desecrating Jewish tombstones?
My humble opinion is that the time for good relations is probably over.
The latest spate of bomb threats and desecration of Jewish graves is clearly on the Alt-Right.
Fits part and parcel with making life so uncomfortable for American Jews, that they all leave to Israel.
Jews are cowards if they leave to Israel out of pure fear.
I can only appreciate Aliyah if it’s done out of religious fervor. Anything else is cowardice and surrender.
I’d say it’s the Alt Right who should be afraid.. Unlike German Jewry, American Jews will have guns this time around and will fight back.
We can be vicious too.
And we will be.
It was all fun and games until now.
If the Alt-Right wants a fight, they will get one. They will begin to miss the relatively benign act of doxing, too.
You’ve got to be kidding me if you think the Alt Right= Evangelical Christians. The former view the latter as “Cuckservatives”. Nothing in common.
For Evangelical Christians, Jews are a necessary vessel for Redemption and Biblical prophecy. For the Alt-Right, Jews are merely Rats and Cockroaches (or worse, human viruses) assuming the form of human beings. So, to conflate Evangelicals with the Alt-Right is intellectually dishonest, at best.
The difference between Spencer and Andrew Anglin is the means by which separation is to be brought about… For Spencer it is voluntary self-deportation, for Anglin it is internment and death squads.
As for Israel.. My thoughts are mixed on the matter. Ideally, Israel is the home of the Jewish people, but practicalities govern and hold that Arabs will never accept a Jewish homeland in the Levant. Maybe the Anglos on the southern island of NZ would be willing to take Shekels as compensation in return for moving to mainland OZ or the northern island of NZ…
And the Palestinians can then choke on the abandoned land of Israel.
Luke Ford: “Alt Right simply short for Alternative Right, which is a big tent. One meaning is simply an alternative to conservatism’s practice of “invade the world, invite the world.” Another meaning is a white nationalism that is inherently xenophobic, racist and anti-Semitic. Only low-rent populist versions of the Alt Right regard Jews as rats. Alt Right intellectuals recognize Jewish gifts and strengths, but many simply don’t want them in their country. Let Jews shed the light of Torah somewhere else. Different groups have different interests. For example, every major Jewish organization in the US supports immigration amnesty. A goy who does not want to be replaced would be weird not to have some negative feelings about organized Jewry. Outside of faith statements, there are no objective good guys nor bad guys in the universe, there are just different forms of life competing to survive.”
The waves of bomb threats against Jewish institutions and high-profile vandalism of Jewish cemeteries are challenging accepted notions of anti-Semitic attacks, a prominent Jewish security expert told Haaretz Monday, warning that the threat of violence has reached unprecedented levels.
Paul Goldenberg, a former law enforcement official, is the national director of the Secure Community Network (SCN), is more concerned about attacks against Jewish institutions “than ever before during my entire career as a law enforcement officer.”
“In the past 45 days,” Goldenberg said, “there have been 190 incidents against Jews and Jewish institutions throughout the United States. This is unprecedented, we don’t know how to explain it, and, frankly, I’m worried.”
The SCN is a not-for profit organization established in 2004 by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Federations of North America. According to its website, SCN is “exclusively dedicated to homeland security initiatives on behalf of the American Jewish Community.” In this capacity, Goldenberg liaises with the FBI, which is responsible for criminal investigations, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is responsible for ensuring security within communities.
Security officials have also noticed an increase in neo-Nazi activity throughout the country, especially on websites. “Some sites have even put up pictures of Jewish children, as if they were targeted.”
Goldenberg reveals that, since the wave of attacks against Jewish Community Centers began less than two months ago, security officials “had a working theory that the calls all made by the same person. But I don’t think that any longer. Not since the desecration of the cemeteries – that’s a very different kind of activity, with a very different symbolism. At a minimum, we’re talking about copy cats.”
On Monday, at least 21 Jewish centers, including eight schools, received bomb threats in the fifth such wave sweeping the United States. According to the JCC Association, Monday’s wave brought the total of called in bomb threats over the last two months to 89 incidents at 72 locations in 30 states and 1 Canadian province.
On Sunday, a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia became the latest victim of vandalism, when anywhere between dozens to hundreds of headstones were broken and toppled. This was the second incident in as many weeks, after hundreds of Jewish graves were desecrated St. Louis.
Goldenberg says the pattern of the threats and violence is different from what he has worked with until now. “In the past, such attacks were tied to geopolitical events – like Israel’s war in Gaza, for example. So we could hold our breath and know that when the situation calmed down, it would end. But there’s no such connection now.”
SCN makes security recommendations to Jewish communities throughout the U.S. and in Europe – although he declined to specify what these recommendations are and noted that SCN has no authority to mandate the implementation of any such measures.
SCN also provides training for security personnel in Jewish institutions. Over the past two weeks, Goldenberg said, they have provided telephone training to over 1,000 institutions, more than 800 of them in a single call-in. They also provide on line training (https://scnus.org/training/scn-homeland-security-and-preparedness-training-center) and files of best practices.
Throughout the interview, Goldenberg emphasized that he has no doubt about the unwavering commitment of the American law enforcement establishment to solving this problem. “American law enforcement is taking this very, very seriously and is totally committed to apprehending whoever is doing this.”
Posted inJews|Comments Off on Haaretz: Mounting Threats Against Jews Leaves Security Expert Baffled and Concerned
He divorced his wife a couple of years ago (after converting her to Judaism) and now he is marrying a Christian.
It’s wondrous the deep spiritual change a pretty young woman can provoke in a married old man.
Anne Snyder came to work for David as a research assistant and went on to serve him in a variety of positions. Now it appears that she is indeed worth a mass. Apparently, David Brooks is jettisoning his wife, his family, his religion and his people for Ms. Snyder and her faith.
Comment: “So the thought process is – marry and procreate with the goyim, send your mischlinge children off to fight for the IDF, while propagandize against your grandkids. Then divorce the first wife you had and marry your research assistant while writing a book hilariously called “The Road to Character.” (lol – I’m guessing he must have found that road and started down the other way.).”
Comment: “The only thing worse than the old Brooks is new Brooks. Never underestimate what an older man will do to keep banging a babe 25 years his junior.”
According to his Wikipedia entry (since scrubbed): “He is engaged to marry Anne Snyder, who was his personal assistant for his book “The Road to Character” and is 23 years his junior, on April 30, 2017.”
Brooks reveals little of his personal life, either in columns, books, or interviews. He threads Christian theology through his recent work, yet won’t say whether he has converted to anything (though he’ll say vaguely that he’s integrating with a new religious community). He is divorced from his wife of 27 years, Sarah, but doesn’t explain what role that break up, or the reasons for it, played in his moral awakening.
ABOVE: David with Anne Snyder, the next Mrs. Brooks.
So it sure looks like this writer on moral virtue had an affair with his alluring research assistant and divorced his aging wife (after she had converted from Christianity to Judaism and changed her name from Jane to Sarah).
Is David Brooks' registered? Is he getting married? Anyone can set up a registry so it's hard to know if it's real https://t.co/IXnPiYhVl2
If not for her, then I could not have written
a book about man’s moral sentiments
with such precision or such elegance;
It was all her. I was merely smitten
with the fine turn of her prose; once bitten
by the sharp turn of her thoughts, evident
on my mind like a sting on skin, and delicate
and irresistible as a little kitten,
I—I’m not ashamed to say—became
a nobler man, a better author, bigger
than my critics, certainly humbler in my own life.
Can a muse be another half of the same
person? She is the sole source of the vigor
of my prose. I also thank my wife.
A young Christian named Anne Snyder spent her first three years after college trying to break into the world of journalism while trying to serve Christ through her career. Then she landed a dream job. David Brooks, a nationally known columnist with The New York Times, hired Anne to be his research assistant. She acted as his sounding board, reading early drafts of his columns and …
David Brooks Is the White-Hot Center of D.C. Gossip
The political class of D.C. likes to complain that TV shows portraying the city as sexy and moody are unrealistic, so perhaps it’s appropriate that, for going on two years now, the sex life of the most mild-mannered New York Times columnist has been the subject of ceaseless speculation. Ever since the Washington Post reported David Brooks’s divorce from his wife of 27 years, Sarah, back in late 2013 (since disputed), countless stories and tweets have been written that use his personal life as a stick to beat his opinions with. At first, the tack was simply to wonder if a divorced man could still preach the virtues of family and marriage, but lately, as recent Brooks columns have meditated on love and leave-taking, speculation that he’s essentially writing about his divorce has becomerampant.
Now Politico turns the gossip up another notch with a romp through the acknowledgments page of Brooks’s new book, The Road to Character, which apparently lavishes much praise on his former research assistant. When contacted to ask if the two had ever had a relationship, Brooks’s publicist offered up a classic present-tense denial. What’s next? Surprising revelations within Brooks’sfootnotes?
Anne Snyder is a member of the Humane Pursuits editorial board. She is currently living in Houston, Texas, where she is studying the assimilation patterns of the city’s growing immigrant population while also working for the Laity Lodge Leadership Initiative. She has started a biweekly column for the Orange County Register and freelances elsewhere. Before moving to Houston she worked in the Op-Ed department of The New York Times in Washington, DC, and before that at World Affairs Journal and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Originally from Boston but given the cross-cultural bug from a childhood spent in Hong Kong and Australia, she holds a B.A. from Wheaton College (IL) and an M.A. from Georgetown University.
Selected as Alumna of the Month for September 2014 by Georgetown’s Journalism program, Anne Snyder said: “There’s nothing like the process of discovering a person layer by layer, and I never cease to marvel at the magic that occurs when a question is asked that causes the subject to really look within and consider his life and context afresh.”
MPS Journalism: Why did you choose to attend Georgetown’s Journalism program? How did you hear about us?
Anne Snyder: I chose the program out of a keenly felt need to develop my own sense of vocational direction apart from a supportive (while very fulfilling) role at The New York Times. After a few years working at a think tank right after college, I wound up as an editor and research assistant for two columnists in the Times’ Washington bureau. While I was introduced to the institution of journalism, the craft itself remained an intimidating mystery. In the midst of learning and contributing value at a higher conceptual level (my academic background was in philosophy), I found myself yearning for more on-the-ground experience and tutelage in the nuts and bolts of a profession whose own industry changes made mentorship among full-time journalists tough to land. Georgetown’s program seemed like a safe space to find these handholds. A friend, Mallie Kim, had gone through the program, and the nature and quality of her final Capstone persuaded me that this was a place to test out new skills and practice, not simply study.
MPS JO: Who is your favorite working journalist?
AS:Anand Giridharadas, a periodic columnist for The New York Times and author (most recently) of “The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas.” I’ve found him to be a kindred mind in the way he understands immigrant dynamics in the United States today, and I’d love one day to match his gifts in painting an engaging narrative arc while also peeling back the curtain on some fascinating cultural insights and empirical realities.
MPS J0: What one piece of advice would you give current students?
AS:Don’t procrastinate! This is my Achilles’ heel, particularly when it comes to writing, and I invariably pinch myself to do better next time – no matter how many years I’ve been at this! Deadlines are deadlines, and as a wise journalist once said to me, the most important quality of any piece is that of Doneness. Grooming a sense of step-by-step regularity and discipline with your creative process early on in the program will be something you fall back on for life. I’m still learning!
MPS JO: What’s your favorite thing about journalism?
AS:The interview. There’s nothing like the process of discovering a person layer by layer, and I never cease to marvel at the magic that occurs when a question is asked that causes the subject to really look within and consider his life and context afresh.
MPS JO: What’s the most memorable piece you’ve published and why?
AS:Years ago, I labored to express some heartfelt convictions about the growing class divide in this country, and the process of publicizing some convicted questions around my role as both communicator and citizen has kept me accountable to a rather unconventional professional path, one that is trying to merge doing with describing, serving with storytelling. Every time, I wonder why I’ve jumped ship from all things Acela Corridor and the stability of a brand-name institution, I go back to that blog post and gird up fresh courage for the adventure.
Anne Snyder is a research and editorial assistant at the New York Times, where she works closely with David Brooks. She was a key speaker at the first annual Fare Forward symposium (she’s also agreed to join our board of directors), and during her talk she mentioned she was interested in pursuing “Dorothy Day-style” journalism when she leaves the Times at some point in the future. I met with her to follow-up on that idea, and explore her formative influences more deeply.
One of the things Anne and I talked about was Coming Apart, Charles Murray’s masterful exploration of the growing economic and cultural divisions between elite and working class whites. The central thesis of Coming Apart—reviewed here by Andrew Schuman in FF—is that the upper class is profiting from practicing virtues of industriousness and self-restraint, but the lower class has lost those virtues and is suffering as a result. Murray’s solution is for elites to “preach what they practice” and try to persuade the lower class—from whom they have become increasingly isolated—to adopt these virtues as well…
After she leaves the Times she wants to work on cross-class integration by doing embedded journalism in immigrant communities.
I am currently reading a book called “Good Faith: Being a Christian when Society Thinks You are Irrelevant and Extreme” by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. They tell a story of a woman they know named Anne Snyder, who attended a Christian school and got a job as an assistant to well-known New York Times journalist, David Brooks. After Anne had been working for David a few years, he published a book called “The Road to Character” which includes a lengthy excerpt about Anne’s influence on him in the acknowledgments:
Anne C. Snyder was there when this book was born and walked with me through the first three years of its writing. This was first conceived as a book about cognition and decision making. Under Anne’s influence, it became a book about morality and inner life. She led dozens of discussions about the material, assigned me reading from her her own bank of knowledge, challenged the superficiality of my thinking in memo after memo and transformed the project. While I was never able to match the lyricism of her prose, or the sensitivity of her observations, I have certainly stolen many of her ideas and admired the gracious and morally rigorous way she lives her life. If there are any important points in this book, they probably came from Anne.
What a great influence Anne was to David! Did she have a degree or career in ministry? No, but she had a Christian background and let her moral character and faith shine in a way that significantly influenced her non-Christian boss. You may not be getting a ministry degree right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a light in this world in whatever career you choose!
A college degree can definitely help you get a great career, and at Oak Hills you will receive the added bonus of having a Christian education where you will learn and be equipped in biblical teachings. You will be ready to take on the world in whatever path God sets before you AND you will be able to do it with his teachings in mind. Shine your light and make a difference! Be a positive influence to those around you by showing them what Christian Faith truly looks like in a person and in the workplace.
Is it OK to have an affair with a married man if in the end you bring him to Christ?
Luke 17:1-4
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
October 9, 2016
We can even influence, for good or ill, those “above” us. David Brooks is a nationally respected and honored columnist for the New York Times who is, by self-definition, not a Christian. A couple of years ago, he hired a recent college graduate named Anne Snyder to be his research assistant, because of how bright and articulate she is. He would soon also find out how decidedly Christian she is, radiating a vibrant faith.
While Brooks still identifies as an agnostic, he admits that knowing Snyder has changed his view of Christianity and made the faith more relevant to what he cares about. On his acknowledgement page in his 2015 book Road to Character, he writes that she challenged his previous superficial ideas, redirected his train of thought, and changed his book for the better. Brooks says, “I have certainly stolen many of her ideas and admired the gracious and morally rigorous ways she lives her life.”
Few things are more enticing to a man than a beautiful young woman’s moral rigor.
New York Times columnist David Brooks is getting the full Washington book party treatment Thursday night, with a fancy party to be hosted at the Kalorama mansion of his old friends Atlantic owner David Bradley and his wife. The new Brooks book, The Road to Character, extols the virtue of a noble life via the study of a handful of leaders and thinkers. However, it’s the effusive 110-word display of admiration and gratitude Brooks gives to Anne C. Snyder, his 30-year-old former New York Times research assistant, which is catching people’s attention. Brooks, easily one of the most admired conservative columnists in America, with a distinguished list of bestselling books, and a vocal critic of morality and cultural habits, devotes the opening paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section to Snyder, gushing about the “lyricism of her prose” and the “sensitivity of her observations.” Brooks says it was Snyder’s influence that led him to write a book about “morality and inner life” and that she was a close partner in the “three years of its writing.”
The big-thinking journalist even gives credit to Snyder for the ideas in The Road to Character, writing: “If there are any important points in this book, they probably come from Anne.” Contacted Wednesday, Brooks backpedaled a bit. “That phrase,” he said, “was probably a poor choice of words on my part. I was trying to be appreciative and lighthearted.” Yet Anne Snyder, who now lives in Houston, stands in the acknowledgements as the only person not given a specific title: Fact-checker, editor, friend, parent, or even “ex-wife.” Brooks recently divorced his wife of 28 years, Sarah Brooks, and she gets a brief nod in the very last paragraph of the Acknowledgements for the “amazing job” she has done raising the couple’s three kids. Brooks didn’t respond to a question about his relationship with Snyder, and when asked whether the columnist and Snyder had ever been in a relationship, Brooks’ publicist answered only in the present tense: “He is not in a relationship with Anne Snyder.”
Is The New York Times’ David Brooks Converting to Christianity?
America’s foremost public intellectual ponders changing faith, sources say
“I’m a believer,” David Brooks said on National Public Radio Monday, and The New York Times columnist and author was not referring to his beloved New York Mets this season. Brooks was responding to a question about how his new book, “The Road to Character,” has changed his religious life.
“I read a lot of theology — whether it’s C.S. Lewis or Joseph Soloveitchik, a rabbi — and it’s produced a lot of religious upsurge in my heart,” he said, elaborating only slightly.
Brooks’ muted but heartfelt reply reflects a change in the celebrated writer’s tone and the subjects he chooses to write and speak about. In the course of his long writing career the 53-year-old Brooks has rarely broached the topic of his spiritual life. But in the last 12 months, he has been quite forthcoming.
“There’s something just awesome about seeing somebody stand up and imitate and live the non-negotiable truth of Jesus Christ,” Brooks told The Gathering, an annual meeting of evangelical Christian philanthropists, last October. He hardly hid his religiosity under a bushel there, telling the crowd, “I want you to know that I am for you and I love you,” he said, noting that he attends a Bible study class.
In the introduction to his new book, Brooks disclosed a personal reason for writing it: “I wrote it to save my soul.” Inspired by the authentic Christian joy of what he calls “incandescent souls,” Brooks decided to find out what makes them tick. Writing “The Road to Character” was his method.
“A few years ago I sent out to discover how those deeply good people got that way. I didn’t know if I could follow their road to character (I’m a pundit, more or less paid to appear smarter and better than I really am). But I at least wanted to know what the road looked like,” Brooks wrote in a recent column adapted from the book.
“The Road to Character” profiles exemplars of humility, devotion to a calling, and hard work, such as Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and former Labor Secretary Frances Perkins.
But in his speech to The Gathering last fall and at the Aspen Ideas Festival last June, Brooks reserved his highest esteem for two religious figures, who he called his “heroes” — Dorothy Day and St. Augustine. Like C.S. Lewis, Day and Augustine are converts to Christianity. While Brooks has said he is an observant conservative Jew, one can’t help seeing these “heroes” as clues to Brooks’ own nascent conversion.
Three people interviewed who know Brooks personally say he has taken steps to do just that. “I don’t know that he’s converting, but I know he’s gone to church,” one conservative associate said of Brooks. “No one knows where it’s going to go, but he’s not in the same spot as he was two years ago.”
A second person familiar with Brooks’ thinking would only confirm that Brooks is interested in becoming a Christian. According to a third source, Brooks has received instruction in the Catholic faith from Arthur Brooks and Ross Douthat, both converts.
Arthur Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., said he does not know if his friend is converting.
“I don’t know where he is on his faith journey,” Brooks said at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of movement activists and leaders, on Feb. 28. He said he has not talked with Brooks about his possible conversion to Christianity.
Douthat, also a New York Times columnist and author of the book “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics,” did not reply to an email for comment. Nor did Brooks.
Yet Brooks has acknowledged his religious outlook has changed. “I don’t talk about my religious life in public in part because it’s so shifting and green and vulnerable,” he told NPR. “I don’t really talk about it because I don’t want to trample the fresh grass.”
Brooks has long attended Adas Israel, a Conservative congregation in Washington with many well-connected and politically influential members. The recently divorced Brooks is part of an informal Jewish study group led by Orthodox scholar Erica Brown along with fellow prominent Washingtonians, among them former Meet the Press host David Gregory and Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg. Brooks says he now also meets regularly with Christian theologians.
As Brooks, 54, struggles publicly with questions about who we are and what we believe, he is more cryptic about what he describes as his transition into a new religious community…
But you’ve hinted that you’ve undergone some kind of shift in spiritual outlook. What is that?
I don’t talk about my own faith. It’s all so new and green that I’m afraid if I talk about it in public, it will become like my political opinions, just a bumper sticker, not a living, breathing thing. I will say that right now I’m just a magpie. I read everything, and some of it is Jewish and some of it is Christian, and some of it is just humanistic. Ethnically, culturally, historically, I’m Jewish. Parts of Jewish theology I like—the emphasis on agency. There are parts of Christianity—a more richly developed sense of grace— that I find very beautiful. And so now, just in my attempt at understanding, I’m reading everything and seeing everybody. I go to the Jewish Theological Seminary and I go to Gordon College, a Christian school in Massachusetts. I’m just in learning mode.
You said you should be more in community. Have you done that?
That part I really don’t like to talk about. But the short answer is I haven’t found a community.
Was there a threshold event that led to your new focus on morality and spirituality?
No, I didn’t have a midlife crisis. If anything, it was the opposite, it was moments of coming home and seeing my kids so happy, and meeting people who were just so joyful. And I would love to experience and radiate that inner joy, which they did. So it’s more aspirational than that I hit rock bottom and I’m rebounding.
Have you experienced a loss of personal religious purpose or are you seeing this primarily in society at large?
Both. Some people pray at shul or at church or mosque, or in the woods. I pray by writing. And that means sometimes I’m like one of those creatures who’s preaching to himself from the pulpit. I’ve been observant mostly through my family. We kept kosher at home, my kids went to Jewish day schools, we had Shabbat meals. So at that moment, I was more traditionally observant than I am now. At the same time, I’m now reading a lot more Soloveitchik and a lot more Heschel. So in some sense my observance is down but my thinking is up.
Since you’re still in the pundit game, I have to ask, who do you think will be the next president and why will Americans choose him or her?
I think Hillary Clinton will be the next president. My normal rule is, people vote for order.
* “For the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many Republicans prefer a dying white America to a place like, say, Houston.”
Nothing more hilarious than white Americans cheering on the death of white America. The level of dissonance is unreal.
* He quoted Sailer for a while, actually, then they realized what he was doing and came after him.
He seems pretty solidly anti-Trump now.
* It’s remarkable how the advent of Trump has liberated speech. We’re finally having that honest conversation about race, and Republicans are leading the way!
Bill Kristol, Feb. 7, 2017:
“Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in?”
David Brooks, Feb. 24, 2017:
“For the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many Republicans prefer a dying white America to a place like, say, Houston.”
Any other examples of Republicans having such sudden outbreaks of honesty?
* David Brooks used to be very acerbic, before he saw his role as defending the new establishment. Here is a very telling Brooks piece, dancing on the grave of the old establishment.
* Brooks needs to read Borjas, George. He shows quite plainly that illegal immigration of low-skilled workers reduces incomes of low-skilled Americans and has the net effect of transferring wealth from low-skilled Americans to wealthy Americans.
* Of those Jews that vote Republican, aren’t there at least as many who do so for other reasons, such as Israel[1]; law and order/ safety from street thugs; and, especially since 9/11, national security? Don’t forget, as well, that many Jews, especially in the public sector, have been victims of affirmative action, losing their jobs to less-qualified Blacks or Latinos/Hispanics. (E.g., public school systems, perhaps most notably New York City’s.) There are also at least some Jews, as has been noted in other comments in this thread, who oppose the onslaught of mass third-world immigration. (Again, the number of such Jews has undoubtedly increased after 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks in the West.) Finally, there are Jews for whom social/cultural conservatism factors, to varying degrees, into their voting GOP. While most in this latter category are likely Orthodox, not all are. Unz Review’s own Paul Gottfried, for example, is certainly someone who seems to appreciate the moral and cultural scourge posed by “LGBTQ” degeneracy (as well, I believe, of Internet pornography).[2]
For reasons that should be obvious, I find it germane to note that I am an emphatically non-Zionist Orthodox Jew[1] who abhors Cultural Marxism and is vehemently opposed to both the “invade” as well as the “invite” wings of the globalist bird of prey. I also feel a debt of gratitude for the unprecedented kindness and religious tolerance of an overwhelmingly White and Christian America. (While wishing no one any harm merely because of such accidents of birth as race or national, ethnic or religious origin.) My view of individuals such as Jennifer Rubin, David Brooks and Bill Kristol should not be difficult to guess.
NOTES:
[1] Or, more properly, the Zionist State that calls itself “Israel”. Zionism, from its inception and in all of its forms, was declared a grave violation of Judaism and opposed by a near-unanimous consensus of the foremost rabbinical authorities and Judaic sages. Had their words been heeded, the Zionist State would never have been created. Now that it has, its existence presents a terribly difficult, complicated and ultra-delicate situation for Torah-true Jews. While there are legitimate differences in opinion among bona fide rabbinical authorities on many points concerning the proper approach to take in the matter, far too many of even some of the most otherwise loyal and devout Jews– including even some great rabbis– have been led astray by the golden calf of Zionism, causing them to err and stumble in this area.
[2] Some examples, in addition to Gottfried’s piece on Cultural Marxism that I linked above:
While addressing either his own H.L. Mencken Society or some other gathering of those on what one of the speakers termed the “heretical Right”, I heard Gottfried take exception to the conventional (and trite) Republican criticism of Obama as a “Socialist”. Being a “socialist”, argued Gottfried, is the least of the problems with Obama; “He’s a radical!”. I do not recall Gottfried’s words well enough to be more specific but I do recall that if Gottfried did not explicitly specify that he meant, at least in large part, Obama’s unprecedented level of support for the “LGBTQ” agenda (which Gottfried may very well have), then I certainly understood Gottfried to be implying that.
Another example: I heard Gottfried (in an interview with Kevin Michael Grace, if I recall correctly) in the context of explaining his rejection of White Nationalism, declare that he would not, for example, want to side with homosexuals* against Blacks.
As for pornography and the like, while there is no instance of Gottfried addressing it explicitly that I can recall or point-to, I can say the following. I do not find it it all inconceivable that someone such as Gottfried may, for all I know, have little-to-no problem with the likes of Playboy. When it comes to the kind of corrosive filth, however, that the Internet has given every child by the age of 12 de facto nearly unrestricted access to– material that makes the likes of Playboy, by comparison, look downright wholesome— I have little doubt of Gottfried’s concern and even outright disapproval.
*I feel I should note here that when Gottfried said “homosexuals”, I doubt he was referring merely to anyone’s personal proclivities or even to their personal behavior, per se— at least as long as it would remain discreet. Rather, I took Gottfried to be referring-to brazen, buggering, activist Sodomites who tyrannically insist that everyone not merely tolerate, not even merely respect, but actually embrace, celebrate, champion and subsidize their wanton, inordinately disease-promoting degeneracy– public health; the welfare of confused and vulnerable children; what was the very foundation of society for the entire history of humanity; and religious liberty all be damned. (Not to mention the spilling-over of said degeneracy into heterosexual youth culture.)
* So even after decades of ceaseless and increasingly virulent propaganda insisting that reality is not what it seems, everyone still recognises that reality to a certain extent.
But why shouldn’t intelligence be an inherited, racial trait? No one gets their knickers in a twist over certain races being fleeter of foot, or better adapted to intense equatorial UV sunlight, or a diet of fish and seeds instead of Irish stew and milk.
* White people (including Jews) certainly know. They’re quite willing to lie, either to themselves or to others, however.
I wonder if any of this comes from thousands of years of living in a strict religious environment, where certain thoughts could get you driven from the village or even tortured by the more devout. It would encourage a way of thinking that denies evidence in favor of dogma.
Asians, having come from a more religiously lax environment, might be more willing to engage in blasphemous thought and speech.
* If Ashkenazi Jews are roughly one standard deviation above European whites, who are one standard deviation above African-Americans, then we all (blacks and whites) must look pretty dim.
* Asians get to stand outside of the standard black/white mess and simply have to observe their peers in the classroom or workplace and will undoubtedly notice which group seems to be at more or less parity with themselves and who is not…plus no one is telling them that they should feel bad about themselves just for existing or because of what their genetic kin did generations ago, so Asians don’t approach blacks with the assumption that they re really just like themselves but have a headwind of structural racism they are also fighting against that masks their true capabilities.
* The War on Noticing is a difficult war to win.
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* This week’s Torah portion is not immediately compelling but it helps to believe that God wrote it if you want inspiration to study it. Imagine you have created a Torah state wherein citizens study the weekly Torah portion. Would non-Jews have much interest in this Torah portion? In a Torah state, non-Jewish residents would be a weakness. Anyone who didn’t study the Torah portion would be a weakness. Cohesion and strength require unity.
* The parasha starts with God saying let people give from their heart to build the sanctuary. There aren’t many instances in Torah where you just give from your heart. Normally, a donation is required whether your heart is in it or not.
* The key verse to me is 25.8: “The shall build a sanctuary for me so that I might dwell among them.” What do we build in our own lives so that God can dwell among us? There’s a different feeling when you walk by a church or a synagogue than when you walk by a liquor shop. Have you ever stepped foot in a Catholic church? It’s far more ornate, typically, than a Protestant church or synagogue. When one thinks of religious art, one thinks of Catholicism. Protestantism is all heart. Judaism and Catholicism are much more physical.
* When you step on to a Seventh-Day Adventist campus, you can feel a sense of God. There are many ways to create holiness. If you’ve done kundalini yoga, you’ve probably felt yourself touch the divine.
* Sacred space. You don’t feel the presence of God as easily at a bar as you do at a church or synagogue. When you walk into a home filled with holiness, you feel it. When you walk into a secular home, you feel that. If I walk into your home or office, am I going to feel the presence of God? If I talk to you, am I going to feel the presence of God?
* There are degrees of holiness in the Sanctuary as you approach the kadosh kadoshim (Holy of Holies). Not everything is equally holy. The Hebrew word for holy, kadosh, means separate. You can only maintain holiness with separation. Every people who wants to develop holiness needs to create separation from others, it needs to create sacred space, which is not easy when you live in a country like America that forbids freedom of association.
* The invisible God frees the mind.
* The concepts of “sin” and “atonement” are not popular topics today.
* Casey: Well since this chapter is about the Holy of Holies, let’s talk a bit about “authority” and how it is established and recognized… I’ll read something from Kenneth Minogue. A defense of elitism — toward a defense of tyranny. High priest as benevolent dictator. What problems does that solve?–what new problems does it create? The essential hiddenness of the basis for authority. Its inaccessibility to the plebs.
* Paul: A co-founder of Black Lives Matter makes the case that “Melanin enables black skin to capture light and hold it in its memory mode which reveals that blackness converts light into knowledge. Melanin directly communicates with cosmic energy.”
So that’s why I’m so tired these days. I have white skin?
On Thursday, at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, he described the “center core” of Trump administration philosophy as the belief that the United States is more than an economic unit in a borderless word. It is “a nation with a culture” and “a reason for being.”
* THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON
by Rudyard Kipling
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.
Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not suddenly bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.
Neither Wilhelmine Germany, nor imperial Japan, nor Nazi Germany, nor the Soviet Union had nearly as much latent power as the United States had during their confrontations … But if China were to become a giant Hong Kong, it would probably have somewhere on the order of four times as much latent power as the United States does, allowing China to gain a decisive military advantage over the United States.
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The crisis for conservatism, whether in Australia or Canada or America, is that it does not conserve anything. It is cucking (creating a sound currency for other peoples to enjoy when they take over your country). Conservatism should first be about conserving your people and protecting them. Conservatism in the West will only work if it makes its first priority creating safe spaces for its people.
Australia First like America First must mean putting the interests of its particular people first. A Japanese politics that did not make its first priority the interests of Japanese would be incoherent, just like the following article.
The fragmentation in Australian politics that sees the fracturing of the voting base of the Turnbull-led Coalition parties highlights a phenomenon evident around many Western democracies including Australia — the crisis of conservatism.
This varies from nation to nation but is most convulsive in the US, where Donald Trump has energised the conservative base yet shattered its unity, leading to the question: what does conservatism stand for in the world of 2017?
This question and its competing answers lie at the heart of the contemporary upheavals in the West. Is true conservatism dying in an age of disruption and globalisation where habits of life, work and family are radically shifting?
Will Trumpism save conservatism through populism or herald its intellectual collapse?
The crisis of conservatism is just part of a bigger story in the West: the weakening of the political centre. The tearing apart of the centre is a universal trend, seen in the Brexit vote (against both the Tory and Labour parties), the victory of Trump (against first the Republican and then the Democratic establishment), the rise of the European populists (often at the expense of mainstream parties) and in Australia, albeit to a much lesser extent, the decline of the primary vote for the main parties (the last Newspoll shows the Coalition on 35 per cent and Labor on 36 per cent, not far from a split nearly three equal ways).
Around the globe, conservative and progressive/labour parties are in the gun. Their meaning and support base are under extreme pressures. But in Australia, greater damage is being done to the Coalition as the governing party during a time of popular grievance with the existing order.
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"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
