An interesting column by Julai Gorin:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THEY MAY PLAY the lamb, hiding behind
their fiction novels, "New Yorker" magazines
and cultural events calendars. But they are the
wolves, the aggressors, the war-makers. Their
latest battle is to send Elian Gonzales back to
his father, Fidel Castro.
They are the peaceniks, the pro-refugee,
pro-choice, anti-gun, anti-capital punishment
humanitarians. At first blush, the well-meaners’
position on the Gonzales issue seems riddled
with inconsistencies, with inversions of their own
principles. Whence, for example, this newfound
respect for parental rights? And wherefore this
uncharacteristic zeal for deporting refugees?
But it is no more baffling than their support, nay,
demand, for the recent war in Yugoslavia on the
side of aggressors. Or their moral support for
Marxist revolutionaries the world over, who
commit terrorist acts but whom they
affectionately refer to as "freedom fighters" and
"patriots."
It’s not the inconsistencies that are so
confounding here. It’s the constant: Violence.
Who else could be creative enough to come up
with a bumper sticker like "Save a donut: Kill a
cop"? Who else could weigh the worth of one
life over another, bolstering a hate-crimes bill
which imposes harsher penalties depending on
who’s assaulted?
Recall, too, the way sympathy for an unborn
child elicits their revulsion while death-row
inmates elicit their sympathies. Somehow, it is
not our place to end life when that life has taken
others, but our inalienable right to do so on
certain occasions when it hasn’t.
Even their contempt for the Second Amendment
finds explanation in similar terms. Without the
right to bear arms, only those who intend malice
will be left bearing them, leaving the average
American citizen as defenseless as a fetus.
According to one such violently enlightened soul
with whom I’m acquainted, it is Rupert
Murdoch who "should be shot!"
Why?
"Because he publishes things. Awful right-wing
things."
Actor Alec Baldwin might have agreed, but he
was more concerned with lynching Henry Hyde
and his family.
Not unlike once blacklisted Hollywooder Abraham Polonsky who was
"hoping someone shoots [Elia Kazan]," at last year’s Oscars. "It would
no doubt be a thrill in an otherwise dull evening."
No wonder they’re for gun control: It’s themselves they don’t trust.
No wonder they’re soft on criminals: They identify with them.
On the international front, these people’s ambivalent loyalties have been
instrumental in setting up some of the most violent regimes the world has
known (Ho Chi Min and Stalin, for starters) as part of a relentless
struggle to keep the world’s strongest democracy in its place. For a long
time now, these saboteurs have been bent on diminishing the influence of
their country, clearing the way for dictatorships, oligarchies, warlords,
and religious fundamentalist rule. What intention could be more violent
than sabotaging the world’s most committed peacekeeper and effective
check on aggression and human rights abuses?
"Send him back to Cuba," was the essence of Hollywood’s head
revolutionary Susan Sarandon’s verdict, as expressed in one interview.
Could this be the same woman who only a few years ago utilized
primetime Oscar airwaves to shame the government for detaining 10,000
HIV-positive Haitian refugees?
Helping these folks in their latest obfuscation of truth and their drive
toward a perverse reality is the Department Formerly Known as Justice.
Itself the object of an investigation, it nonetheless perches in anticipation,
waiting to pounce on its child sacrifice to the Cuba prison.
"The rule of law" is what’s guiding us here, Reno said Thursday, looking
as though she’s been dead for a year, held up only by a string which
Clinton pulls. "We want to show Castro what kind of country we are,"
the marionette added.
Since when are we compelled to prove ourselves to totalitarian regimes?
(Especially to a tiny island with a stale grudge and a leadership on its last
legs.) Perhaps ever since Bill Clinton realized that he hadn’t protested the
Vietnam War from enemy shores out of "youthful idealism"; or that he
wasn’t too sorry to see some secret technology go China’s way; or
maybe it was ever since the Commander-in-Treason secretly admitted to
himself that Fidel Castro was his patron saint. Is it an accident that every
other week another of the Communist-in-Chief’s appointees is under
investigation for breaches of national security?
But let’s not call a spade a spade. Because in Clintonian America, where
up is down, black is white, foe is friend, and "is" isn’t, we’ve come
around to a way of thinking that is unprecedentedly convoluted. It used
to be, there were no rewards for dictatorships without reforms. But
Clinton, not unlike the compatibly anti-American U.N., has repeatedly
called for the repeal of sanctions against Cuba. Today, democracies
bend to dictatorships, and not the other way around.
Keeping Elian here is considered "pandering" to Cuban exiles, but
somehow, sending him back isn’t pandering to Castro. Americans are
happily going to let their country lose this battle. (They’re just not going
to see it that way.) So let’s go ahead and send the boy back into
Castro’s clutches, and let’ s get used to losing battles internationally
against lesser nations and domestically against our self-loathing fellow
Americans.
But if we do surrender Elian, it will be at the hands of a strange and
unfamiliar America, one that is at the same time callous and knuckling,
with a government run for the most violent people, by the most violent
people.
Today a child. Tomorrow the country.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THEY MAY PLAY the lamb, hiding behind
their fiction novels, "New Yorker" magazines
and cultural events calendars. But they are the
wolves, the aggressors, the war-makers. Their
latest battle is to send Elian Gonzales back to
his father, Fidel Castro.
They are the peaceniks, the pro-refugee,
pro-choice, anti-gun, anti-capital punishment
humanitarians. At first blush, the well-meaners’
position on the Gonzales issue seems riddled
with inconsistencies, with inversions of their own
principles. Whence, for example, this newfound
respect for parental rights? And wherefore this
uncharacteristic zeal for deporting refugees?
But it is no more baffling than their support, nay,
demand, for the recent war in Yugoslavia on the
side of aggressors. Or their moral support for
Marxist revolutionaries the world over, who
commit terrorist acts but whom they
affectionately refer to as "freedom fighters" and
"patriots."
It’s not the inconsistencies that are so
confounding here. It’s the constant: Violence.
Who else could be creative enough to come up
with a bumper sticker like "Save a donut: Kill a
cop"? Who else could weigh the worth of one
life over another, bolstering a hate-crimes bill
which imposes harsher penalties depending on
who’s assaulted?
Recall, too, the way sympathy for an unborn
child elicits their revulsion while death-row
inmates elicit their sympathies. Somehow, it is
not our place to end life when that life has taken
others, but our inalienable right to do so on
certain occasions when it hasn’t.
Even their contempt for the Second Amendment
finds explanation in similar terms. Without the
right to bear arms, only those who intend malice
will be left bearing them, leaving the average
American citizen as defenseless as a fetus.
According to one such violently enlightened soul
with whom I’m acquainted, it is Rupert
Murdoch who "should be shot!"
Why?
"Because he publishes things. Awful right-wing
things."
Actor Alec Baldwin might have agreed, but he
was more concerned with lynching Henry Hyde
and his family.
Not unlike once blacklisted Hollywooder Abraham Polonsky who was
"hoping someone shoots [Elia Kazan]," at last year’s Oscars. "It would
no doubt be a thrill in an otherwise dull evening."
No wonder they’re for gun control: It’s themselves they don’t trust.
No wonder they’re soft on criminals: They identify with them.
On the international front, these people’s ambivalent loyalties have been
instrumental in setting up some of the most violent regimes the world has
known (Ho Chi Min and Stalin, for starters) as part of a relentless
struggle to keep the world’s strongest democracy in its place. For a long
time now, these saboteurs have been bent on diminishing the influence of
their country, clearing the way for dictatorships, oligarchies, warlords,
and religious fundamentalist rule. What intention could be more violent
than sabotaging the world’s most committed peacekeeper and effective
check on aggression and human rights abuses?
"Send him back to Cuba," was the essence of Hollywood’s head
revolutionary Susan Sarandon’s verdict, as expressed in one interview.
Could this be the same woman who only a few years ago utilized
primetime Oscar airwaves to shame the government for detaining 10,000
HIV-positive Haitian refugees?
Helping these folks in their latest obfuscation of truth and their drive
toward a perverse reality is the Department Formerly Known as Justice.
Itself the object of an investigation, it nonetheless perches in anticipation,
waiting to pounce on its child sacrifice to the Cuba prison.
"The rule of law" is what’s guiding us here, Reno said Thursday, looking
as though she’s been dead for a year, held up only by a string which
Clinton pulls. "We want to show Castro what kind of country we are,"
the marionette added.
Since when are we compelled to prove ourselves to totalitarian regimes?
(Especially to a tiny island with a stale grudge and a leadership on its last
legs.) Perhaps ever since Bill Clinton realized that he hadn’t protested the
Vietnam War from enemy shores out of "youthful idealism"; or that he
wasn’t too sorry to see some secret technology go China’s way; or
maybe it was ever since the Commander-in-Treason secretly admitted to
himself that Fidel Castro was his patron saint. Is it an accident that every
other week another of the Communist-in-Chief’s appointees is under
investigation for breaches of national security?
But let’s not call a spade a spade. Because in Clintonian America, where
up is down, black is white, foe is friend, and "is" isn’t, we’ve come
around to a way of thinking that is unprecedentedly convoluted. It used
to be, there were no rewards for dictatorships without reforms. But
Clinton, not unlike the compatibly anti-American U.N., has repeatedly
called for the repeal of sanctions against Cuba. Today, democracies
bend to dictatorships, and not the other way around.
Keeping Elian here is considered "pandering" to Cuban exiles, but
somehow, sending him back isn’t pandering to Castro. Americans are
happily going to let their country lose this battle. (They’re just not going
to see it that way.) So let’s go ahead and send the boy back into
Castro’s clutches, and let’ s get used to losing battles internationally
against lesser nations and domestically against our self-loathing fellow
Americans.
But if we do surrender Elian, it will be at the hands of a strange and
unfamiliar America, one that is at the same time callous and knuckling,
with a government run for the most violent people, by the most violent
people.
Today a child. Tomorrow the country.