Comments on reads 1/19 II

PowerLine: Suicide Watch, Continued

I’m having way too much fun re-reading James Burnham’s Suicide of the West [FP: the book is on the recommended list on the right, which can be ordered from here to support this blog], and can’t resist sharing a few more gems from this wonderful book.  Back in the 1960s we began to speak of “limousine liberals,” the worst being those who supported forced busing to achieve racial integration but sent their own kids to exclusive and homogeneous private schools.  Today we have “Gulfstream liberals” who jet between their multiple mansions and hector us about our carbon footprint while excusing their own through bogus “carbon offsets.”  Burnham had their number (page 190-191):

The more significant achievement of liberalism, by which it confirms its claim to being a major ideology, is its ability to handle the problem of guilt for large numbers of persons without costing them undue personal inconvenience.  This is does by elevating the problem to representational, symbolic, and institutional levels.  It is not necessary for me to go in person to the slum, jungle, prison, Southern restaurant, state house, or voting precinct and there take a direct hand in accomplishing the reform that will unblock the road to peace, justice, and well-being.  Thanks to the reassuring provisions of liberal ideology, I can go about my ordinary business and meanwhile take sufficient account of my moral duties by affirming my loyalty to the correct egalitarian principles, voting for the correct candidates, praising the activists and contributing to their defense funds when they get into trouble, and joining promptly in the outcry against reactionaries who pop up now and then in a desperate effort to preserve power and privilege.

But hypocrisy and fooling the public is not the purview of just liberals. The entire US elite and particularly the political class, liberal and conservative, is playing that game with the plebos. Here’s JoshuaPundit: Bombshell - Newt's Ex-Wife Marianne Unloads On Camera :

Here's another nifty bit from the same 2010 Esquire interview, after Marianne found out about Newt's ongoing affair with Callista:

…
He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.
He’d just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he’d given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.
The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, “How do you give that speech and do what you’re doing?”
“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”

These are the people responsible for American decline and certainly not the people to save from it. Suicide of the West indeed.



Rivlin forced to enter Irish Parliament through back door
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators block Knesset speaker's entrance in Ireland • Rivlin asks to speak with demonstrators directly but security personnel do not allow him.

Sammy Revel: Dear Europe, Israel isn't the problem
Assurance of Israel's existence, recognition and promotion of peace and direct contact are part of the solution leading to a stable, prosperous and safer Middle East.

FP: Europe and its good old anti-Semitism is the problem and it’s easy to prove. Europe has traded its Jews (by exterminating or driving them out) for Moslems and look where it is today. And it still blames the Jews.


Morton A. Klein: US should not engage Muslim Brotherhood
It is inexcusable to claim extremists are moderates while assisting them into taking power. Yet Obama is doing just that.
FP: Indeed, reality does not excuse and the US is declining.



PM seeks gradual IDF enlistment for two-thirds of haredim

Netanyahu working on compromise to Tal Law that would have army enlistment rates for ultra-Orthodox communities almost at par with secular levels in the long run, but also extends the controversial blanket exemption by one year.

FP: It’s about time, but (1) I doubt most of the Haredi recruits will be useful to IDF and reliable (2) there will be serious social conflict over this which Israel may not be able to withstand (3) most likely Netanyahu will cave. The chickens of religion and state are coming home to roost.