tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19737772197734329712024-03-13T10:37:19.758-04:00THE NEW JACKSONIAN BLOGThoughts on history, politics, culture, American exceptionalism, and the human conditionMichael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-29772463215524822012016-06-29T16:34:00.000-04:002017-10-18T14:27:27.233-04:00Zionism, Jihad, and Nakba: The Rebirth of Israel and the Palestinian Catastrophe<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By Michael Kaplan</span><br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RlON6PbFJMM/UvMVRQuLhpI/AAAAAAAACXk/vHqpARvy2DM/s1600/Husseini+with+Hitler+-+Amin_al_Husseini_und_Adolf_Hitler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="488" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RlON6PbFJMM/UvMVRQuLhpI/AAAAAAAACXk/vHqpARvy2DM/s1600/Husseini+with+Hitler+-+Amin_al_Husseini_und_Adolf_Hitler.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The Mufti and the <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Führer.</span>
Haj Amin al-Husseini, leader of the Palestinian nationalist movement, with Adolf Hitler, November 28, 1941.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Heinrich Hoffman/ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1987-004-09A,_Amin_al_Husseini_und_Adolf_Hitler.jpg" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The Palestinian Arab
movement has been committed to the <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZjA5Y0VNT3BQeE0/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">elimination of the Jews </a>from its earliest
days. Palestinian Arab nationalism was <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20141112153537/http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/10/28/palestinian-opinion-and-the-apartheid-libel-israeli-arabs-hamas/" target="_blank">born in opposition</a> to Zionism and <a href="http://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=444393" target="_blank">remains defined</a> by its <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/09/arab-racism-and-insipid-western.html#.VB-Vtst0y1s" target="_blank">uncompromising hostility</a> to the idea and the reality of a Jewish state. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000385.html" target="_blank">“<i>Filastin hi arduna, Wa al-Yahud kilabuna!</i>”</a> (“Palestine is our land and the Jews are
our dogs!”) This has been the <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/08/arab-incitement-against-jews-1920.html#.U-biJmOunmi" target="_blank">rallying cry </a>for Palestinian Arabs ever since the
Nebi Musa riots in Jerusalem in April 1920. On this point it made no difference whether Palestinians saw themselves as a distinct people or as part of the larger Arab nation.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> As early as 1905 the pioneer Arab nationalist <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=RrcoTW_vKDUC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=najib+azuri&source=bl&ots=qjiWKCBXdP&sig=rXmCIL3TDMRTCe9h7v_9t0-k9to&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BaP6VJWINYGegwSZjoLADQ&sqi=2&ved=0CF8Q6AEwDg#v=onepage&q=najib%20azuri&f=false" target="_blank">Najib Azuri</a>, a Lebanese Christian, warned that Arab nationalism and Zionism were irreconcilable. The <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=8DKl0j9MSf4C&q=%22Deux+ph%C3%A9nom%C3%A8nes+importants%22#v=snippet&q=%22Deux%20ph%C3%A9nom%C3%A8nes%20importants%22&f=false" target="_blank">two movements</a> were <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vaOrAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=%22Two+important+phenomena,+similar+in+nature+and+yet+opposed+to+each+other%22&source=bl&ots=H-IYxMUuYq&sig=fL-VqbrAVzM2D5od_eEZMeVNRU0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-rbOCkfPNAhVSgCYKHYd8D3QQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22Two%20important%20phenomena%2C%20similar%20in%20nature%20and%20yet%20opposed%20to%20each%20other%22&f=false" target="_blank">destined to clash</a> in a zero-sum struggle until one achieved a complete triumph over the other:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Two
important phenomena, similar in nature and yet opposed to each other, which
have not yet attracted the attention of anybody, are now manifesting themselves
in Asiatic Turkey, namely the awakening of the Arab nation and the concealed
effort of the Jews to reestablish the ancient monarchy of Israel on a grand
scale. These two movements are destined to a continuous struggle, until one of
the two prevails over the other. On the final outcome of this struggle between
these two peoples, representing two opposing principles, will depend the
destiny of the entire world.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">By 1914, <a href="http://www.sav.sk/journals/uploads/020310442_Be%C5%A1ka.pdf" target="_blank">if not earlier</a>, politically engaged Arab nationalists in Greater Syria agreed with Azuri that <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOWM5azZsbmpoVDA/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">no accommodation</a> with Zionism was possible. Any further Jewish settlement and nation-building, they concluded, would be harmful to the prospects of an Arab Muslim Palestine. One of these leaders, Haqqi Bey al-</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">‘</span>Azm, argued that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“by employing means of threats and persecutions </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">– </span>and it is this last method which we must employ </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">– </span></span>by prodding the Arab population into destroying their farms and setting fire to their colonies, by forming gangs to execute these projects,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span> the Zionists could be compelled to leave Palestine. One hundred years later this logic still shapes the strategies and <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-existential-roots-the-gaza-war-11214?page=show" target="_blank">tactics</a> of Fatah, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/understanding-what-hamas-wants/374656/" target="_blank">Hamas</a>, and the <a href="http://nypost.com/2015/08/01/iran-publishes-book-on-how-to-outwit-us-and-destroy-israel/" target="_blank">Ayatollah Khamenei</a>.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jLmzhdOfs3U/Vf7fysnun7I/AAAAAAAACus/LH2cIQjdfBc/s1600/vladimir%2Bjabotinsky%2B-%2Bmargalit_1-110614.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jLmzhdOfs3U/Vf7fysnun7I/AAAAAAAACus/LH2cIQjdfBc/s400/vladimir%2Bjabotinsky%2B-%2Bmargalit_1-110614.jpg" width="275" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1935. Jabotinsky Institute.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">That the Arabs were determined to oppose Jewish nation-building and preserve the Arab character of Palestine as part of the <i>dar-al-Islam</i>, <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOWM5azZsbmpoVDA/edit" target="_blank">should not</a> have come as a surprise to the Zionists. No people have ever <a href="http://www.mepc.org/articles-commentary/commentary/original-no-why-arabs-rejected-zionism-and-why-it-matters" target="_blank">voluntarily consented</a> to sharing their land with another people, even one with deep historical and religious ties to it. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/3510/the-iron-wall-we-and-the-arabs" target="_blank">Vladimir Jabotinsky</a>, the founder of
Revisionist (right-wing) Zionism, unlike the Labor (left-wing) Zionists, had no illusions about this. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“Any native people,” Jabotinsky insisted,
“views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the
complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but
even a new partner.” Jabotinsky <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100706184227/http://www.jabotinsky.org/multimedia/upl_doc/doc_191207_49117.pdf" target="_blank">warned</a> that Zionism could succeed only by confronting and pushing back against the opposition of the Palestinian Arabs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">We
cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for
Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement
being reached. So that all those who regard such an agreement as a condition
sine qua non for Zionism may as well say “non” and withdraw from Zionism.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Jabotinsky</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> assessment was confirmed by Awni Bey Abd al-Hadi, <a href="http://www.mepc.org/articles-commentary/commentary/original-no-why-arabs-rejected-zionism-and-why-it-matters" target="_blank">who told</a> the Peel Commission:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">There
is not one nation in the world that would accept voluntarily and of its own
desire that its position should be changed in a manner which will have an
effect on its rights and prejudice its interests. . . . We as a nation are
human beings with our own culture and civilization and we feel as any other
nation would feel. It will have to be imposed on us by force.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Since the Palestinian Arabs would violently resist
the Jewish return to Zion, the Zionist <i>halutzim</i> (pioneers) would have to respond with “an iron wall
of Jewish bayonets.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Britain’s Peel Commission, the <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/06/palestine_partition_and_propag.html" target="_blank">first body</a>
to recommend a two-state solution, showed great insight when it <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMTh3UDZUSm43OU0/edit" target="_blank">explained</a> the intractable nature of the
conflict in words that apply <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/struggle-palestine-1930s.html" target="_blank">just as much</a> in 2016 as they did in 1937: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">An
irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the
narrow bounds of one small country. About 1,000,000 Arabs are in strife, open
or latent, with some 400,000 Jews. There is no common ground between them. The Arab
community is predominantly Asiatic in character, the Jewish community
predominantly European. They differ in religion and in language. Their cultural
and social life, their ways of thought and conduct, are as incompatible as
their national aspirations. These last are the greatest bar to peace. Arabs and
Jews might possibly learn to live and work together in Palestine if they would
make a genuine effort to reconcile and combine their national ideals and so
build up in time a joint or dual nationality. But this they cannot do. The War
and its sequel have inspired all Arabs with the hope of reviving in a free and
united Arab world the traditions of the Arab golden age. The Jews similarly are
inspired by their historic past. They mean to show what the Jewish nation can
achieve when restored to the
land of its birth. National assimilation between Arabs and Jews is thus ruled
out. In the Arab picture the Jews could only occupy the place they occupied in
Arab Egypt or Arab Spain. The Arabs would be as much outside the Jewish picture
as the Canaanites in the old land of Israel. The National Home, as we have said
before, cannot be half-national. In these circumstances to maintain that
Palestinian citizenship has any moral meaning is a mischievous pretence.
Neither Arab nor Jew has any sense of service to a single State.</span></div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The commissioners concluded that “this
conflict was inherent in the situation from the outset.” And for both internal
and external reasons – the intensification of Jewish and Arab nationalism in
Palestine, the rise of Nazi Germany and the persecution of Jews in Europe – it
would only get worse. “The conflict will go on, the gulf between Arabs and Jews
will widen.”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The 130-year war <a href="http://abuyehuda.com/2016/09/a-war-between-peoples/" target="_blank">between Israelis and Arab Palestinians</a> has always been a <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-plight-of-middle-easts-christians.html" target="_blank">war of identity</a>, a a <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hLTVnSndBY0NEX00/edit" target="_blank">war of blood and faith</a>, an existential clash between irreconcilable national and religious aspirations.</span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Nobody understood this better than the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7haGtSSHAxMmRGV1E/edit" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Haj Amin al-Husseini</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. Seeking victory in their war of blood and faith against the Jews, Palestinian Arab nationalists led by Husseini </span><a href="http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/hitlers-mufti" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">forged an alliance</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> with </span><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/hitlers_long_shadow_over_israel.html" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Nazi Germany</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> in the 1930s and </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/12/palestinian-leader-farouq-qaddoumi-we.html" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">1940s</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, and were </span><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Exposing-the-myth-of-the-Arab-bystander-to-the-Holocaust-339430" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">complicit</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> in the
</span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hS1ZlbE9IcC1yajQ/edit?pli=1" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Holocaust</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. (See the detailed articles by </span><a href="http://jcpa.org/article/palestinians-arabs-and-the-holocaust/" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Joseph Spoerl</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and </span><a href="http://jcpa.org/article/haj-amin-al-husseini-the-nazis-and-the-holocaust-the-origins-nature-and-aftereffects-of-collaboration/" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Jeffrey Herf </a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.) One can even argue, as </span><a href="http://carolineglick.com/president-sisis-gift/" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Caroline Glick does</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, that the very idea of a Palestinian nation is the invention of Haj Amin al-Husseini.</span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">[Transcript in English <a href="http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_fi.php?MediaId=6859" target="_blank">here</a>.]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">As early as 1918, two years before he
orchestrated the Nebi Musa riots, Husseini had committed himself to the
subjugation and genocide of the Jews. “This was and will remain an Arab land,”
<a href="http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2013/10/09/a-salient-example-of-hajj-amin-el-husseinis-canonical-islamic-jew-hatred-introduction-text-and-commentary/" target="_blank">Husseini told</a> I. A. Abbady, a Jewish co-worker in the British Mandate
government. “[T]he Zionists will be massacred to the last man. . . . Nothing
but the sword will decide the future of this country.” From the beginning Husseini had pan-Arab and pan-Islamic rather than narrowly Palestinian aspirations. Meeda Elias, a young Iraqi Jewish woman who met Husseini at a Baghdad dinner party, <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dinner-in-baghdad-with-the-grand-mufti/" target="_blank">recalled listening</a> in horror as he put forth his plans to annihilate all the Jews of Palestine and the Middle East to the approval of the high society guests. Husseini (and <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hWGMtY3BoTEJqUzA/edit" target="_blank">later jihadists</a> like Hamas) was inspired by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khaybar" target="_blank">Battle of Khaybar</a>, where in 628 AD the Prophet Muhammad <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Lzs48d3tudsC&dq=robert+wistrich+khaibar&q=%22medina+and+khaibar%22#v=snippet&q=%22medina%20and%20khaibar%22&f=false" target="_blank">exterminated or expelled</a> the Jewish tribes of Arabia. In 1937 Husseini issued a <a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/CSP_A_Salient_Example_of_Hajj_Amin_el-Husseinis.pdf" target="_blank">proclamation of jihad</a> against the Jews, which was translated into German and published by the Nazis. Drawing on the <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/10/in-arabic-muslims-freely-admit-that.html#.VEcO3Mt0y1s" target="_blank">Qur</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/10/in-arabic-muslims-freely-admit-that.html#.VEcO3Mt0y1s" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">’</span>an</a> and other traditional sources of Islamic Jew-hatred, Husseini declared,</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">that the Jews are on the point of
reaching out their hands toward the holy places which are sacred for each
Muslim and each Christian. The Islamic world and the friends of Islam shall be
shown how the Jews truly are in their innermost being. Usually, one only sees
the Jews with the veneer of civilization, but the Arabs have learned best how
they really are, that is, as they are described in the Koran and in the sacred
scriptures. Then the agonies to which the Arabs in Palestine have been
subjected can be understood. And one can imagine how these agonies will
increase to the monstrous when the Jews have fully and completely laid their
hands on Palestine.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I
present to my Muslim brothers in the entire world the history and the true
experience which the Jews cannot deny. The verses from the Koran and hadith
prove to you that the Jews have been the bitterest enemies of Islam and
continue to try to destroy it. Do not believe them. They know only hypocrisy
and guile. Hold together, fight for Islamic thought, fight for your religion
and your existence! Do not rest until your land is free of the Jews. Do not
tolerate the plan of division, for Palestine has been an Arabic land for centuries
and shall remain Arabic.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Fleeing to Berlin in
1941, Husseini spent the World War II years as Hitler’s honored guest and
liaison to the Arab Muslim world. Historian <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=YzQNSTvHv-sC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=%E2%80%9Ca+true+comrade+in+arms+and+ideological+soul+mate.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=Z79BVuLJnH&sig=ezRndpc4SkIqfJf6pD75dLYfB6U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIlNzky82NyQIVi1YeCh2kNQ9-#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Ca%20true%20comrade%20in%20arms%20and%20ideological%20soul%20mate.%E2%80%9D&f=false" target="_blank">Jeffrey Herf writes</a> that Hitler found in Husseini </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“a true comrade in arms and ideological soul mate.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” And while the Mufti did not give Hitler the idea for the Final Solution, Herf points out that the genocide of the Jews was a goal they shared: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“The meeting between them on November 28, 1941, was not a clash of civilizations but a meeting of hearts and minds, and a convergence from different starting points.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Husseini presented himself to Hitler as a <a href="http://www.meforum.org/3831/palestinians-reject-statehood" target="_blank">pan-Arab</a>, rather than a Palestinian, nationalist. He asked for German support to achieve his ultimate goal: an independent, unified, and <i>Judenrein</i> Arab state of <a href="https://archive.org/stream/DocumentsOnGermanForeignPolicy-SeriesD-VolumeXiii-June23-/DocumentsOnGermanForeignPolicy-SeriesD-VolumeXiii-June23-December111941#page/n979/mode/2up" target="_blank">Syria, Iraq, and Palestine</a>. On his arrival, the Führer greeted the
Mufti <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hS1ZlbE9IcC1yajQ/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">with assurances</a> that Germany would support his plans to exterminate the Jews in Palestine and throughout the Muslim world: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Germany
stands for an uncompromising struggle against the Jews. It is self-evident that
the struggle against the Jewish national homeland in Palestine forms part of
this struggle, since such a national homeland would be nothing other than a
political base for the destructive influence of Jewish interests. Germany also
knows that the claim that Jewry plays the role of an economic pioneer in
Palestine is a lie. Only the Arabs work there, not the Jews. Germany is determined
to call on the European nations one by one to solve the Jewish problem and, at
the proper moment, to address the same appeal to non-European peoples.</span></div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Please note that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span>to solve the Jewish problem</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span> was Hitler</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">’</span>s euphemism for genocide. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">He added that once German armies reached the southern Caucasus “the Führer will himself give the Arab world his
assurance that the hour of liberation has arrived. At this point, the sole
German aim will be the destruction of the Jews living in the Arab space under
the protection of British power.” In his own memoirs, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/landedpages/printarticle.aspx?id=394103" target="_blank">Husseini wrote</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Our
fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate
every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an
explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner
befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific
methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was:
“The Jews are yours.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In return the Mufti produced Arabic-language propaganda broadcasts for his hosts calling on Arabs to make common cause with the Nazis. “Arabs!” <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hSjF2NktSVTB4dTA/edit" target="_blank">Husseini called out </a>over Radio
Berlin’s airwaves. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rise as one and fight
for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God,
history, and religion. This serves your honor. God is with you</i>” (emphasis
in the original). He also organized Muslim units to serve in the S.S. and blocked efforts that would have saved several thousand Jewish children from the Nazi death camps by allowing them to go to Palestine. <a href="http://www.hirhome.com/israel/nazis_palestinians.htm#_ftn3" target="_blank">Testimony</a> from the Nuremberg Trials named the Mufti as a collaborator with Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler in the execution of the Final Solution. Husseini also confirmed to Hitler’s foreign minister Joachim von
Ribbentrop his belief that a German victory “will undoubtedly destroy
the Jewish nation and will accordingly help to maintain the freedom and
independence of Palestine and the Arab countries.” Husseini even <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lyn-julius/demons-of-the-farhud-are-_b_7427494.html" target="_blank">drew up secret plans</a> to build an <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/how-the-mufti-of-jerusalem-created-the-permanent-problem-of-palestinian-violence/" target="_blank">Auschwitz-like death camp</a> near Nablus once German victory had been secured. Faiz Bay Idrisi, a senior Arab officer in the British Mandatory police, would recall to journalist Haviv Canaan years later:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Today,
a chill runs through my body when I remember what was said in police circles
and among supporters of the Mufti in those months [when German Field-Marshal
Erwin Rommel was poised to invade Egypt in the summer of 1942]. Haj Amin
al-Husseini was set to enter Jerusalem at the head of his aides, the soldiers
of the Arab legion, which was formed out of Muslim soldiers in the German army.
The [Mufti’s] master plan was to establish in the Dothan Valley, close to
Shechem, giant crematoriums like Auschwitz, into which would be brought the
Jews of Palestine, and the Jews of Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and even
North Africa, in order to slaughter them with the methods of the S.S. who
operated in the death camps in Europe.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Only the defeat of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">s <i>Afrika Korps</i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> at El Alamein, which is <a href="http://israelmatzav.blogspot.co.il/2014/08/reporter-poses-as-german-produces-video.html" target="_blank">still lamented</a> by Arab Palestinians, <a href="http://www.jccv.org.au/news/1073/59/How-El-Alamein-Saved-The-Jews-Of-Palestine.html" target="_blank">saved the Jews </a>of Palestine and the Middle East from Husseini</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">s planned genocide. Israel</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s enemies, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/landedpages/printarticle.aspx?id=430497" target="_blank">Melanie Phillips writes</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“react with fury to evidence of the grand mufti</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s Nazi enthusiasm because this destroys the fiction that the Palestinian cause so dear to their hearts is noble.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” In fact, Phillips goes on, the Palestinian cause </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“is the direct heir to a genocidal project.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Through his words and deeds Haj Amin al-Husseini was the original </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span>Islamo-Nazi,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">” <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/10/to-muslims-mufti-was-jihadist.html#.Vi5TzJWFO1s" target="_blank">who by integrating Nazism with modern jihadism</a>, became the progenitor of Al Qaeda, ISIS, Fatah, and Hamas.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0Pmm5VQr2x0/Vf4QdDhcXCI/AAAAAAAACsY/dbu2M6hdcsA/s1600/Palestine%2BArabs%2Bat%2BAbu%2BGhosh%2Btake%2Boath%2Bof%2Balleigiance%2Bto%2BArab%2Bcause%2B1936%2B-%2BLOC%2B18053u%2B%255B3%2Breduced%2Bto%2B30pc%2Bcropped%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0Pmm5VQr2x0/Vf4QdDhcXCI/AAAAAAAACsY/dbu2M6hdcsA/s640/Palestine%2BArabs%2Bat%2BAbu%2BGhosh%2Btake%2Boath%2Bof%2Balleigiance%2Bto%2BArab%2Bcause%2B1936%2B-%2BLOC%2B18053u%2B%255B3%2Breduced%2Bto%2B30pc%2Bcropped%255D.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.israeldailypicture.com/2011/08/1936-start-of-arab-revolt-in-palestine.html" target="_blank">Preparing for jihad, 1936</a>. Palestine Arabs at Abu Ghosh taking the oath of allegiance
to the Arab cause, to fight Jewish immigration. <a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/item/mpc2010003542/PP/" target="_blank">Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress</a>.</span><span style="font-size: 8pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">True to his word, Husseini launched <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hc09nSi1iY1RsdDg/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">jihads</a> against the Jews in 1936 and <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/1948-as-jihad-by-benny-morris.html" target="_blank">1948</a>
with the intent of perpetrating Nazi-like <a href="http://www.meforum.org/3082/azzam-genocide-threat" target="_blank">genocide</a>. Only the grim determination of the Jews to <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/12/lashing-back-israels-1947-1948-civil.html" target="_blank">fight and survive</a>, embodied in the newly formed Israel Defense Forces (IDF), turned what could have been a second Holocaust into one of the great miracles of history, the rebirth of Israel. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Palestinian apologists (Joseph Massad and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-benjamin-netanyahu-trying-whitewash-hitler" target="_blank">Ali Abunimah</a> for
example) <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOWFnYUdlOF8yTnc/edit" target="_blank">seek to whitewash</a> Husseini’s <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-nazis-and-palestinian-movement-by.html" target="_blank">collaboration</a> with the Nazis, and relieve him of responsibility for his war crimes,
by portraying him as a <i>victim</i> of British persecution and Zionist machinations. Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership still <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/11/today-is-70th-anniversary-of-hitler.html#.U_lPj8t0y1u" target="_blank">honor Husseini </a>as the founding father of the Palestinian nation.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> To this day the
Palestinians have <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hS3RYa012MDNTdzg/edit" target="_blank">refused</a> to accept any <a href="http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/12/17/its-about-the-settlements-stupid/?singlepage=true" target="_blank">responsibility</a> for the <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYzkya012cGdFb0E/edit" target="_blank">actions</a> that led
to their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nakba</i>, preferring to <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMGtLVnFQaHFqd2s/edit" target="_blank">wrap themselves</a> in the <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/the_palestinian_ideology_ignores_reality.html" target="_blank">mantle</a> of <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2586/palestinian-victimhood-narrative" target="_blank">victimhood</a>.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">I have spent some time talking about the Mufti’s collaboration with the Nazis to set the record straight. “<a href="http://mosaicmagazine.com/tesserae/2014/08/gaza-equals-auschwitz/" target="_blank">Holocaust inversion</a>,” the
anti-Semitic blood libel perpetrated by the Israel Outrage Industry, says
that the <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/the_return_of_the_malevolent_jew_the_academic_nazification_of_israel.html" target="_blank">Israelis are the new Nazis</a> and the Palestinians are the new Jews; that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span>Gaza = Auschwitz.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">” Omar Barghouti, supreme leader of the anti-Semitic BDS movement, a part of the Israel Outrage Industry, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=odEO0JqAuzMC&pg=PA231&lpg=PA231&dq=omar+barghouti+bear+no+responsibility+whatsoever+for+the+holocaust&source=bl&ots=y6zxoYvsHc&sig=jfj14RLDlqr9wZ8gpBrLPCGe90c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zPYeVfTUJYqjsAXH5YGYDg&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=omar%20barghouti%20bear%20no%20responsibility%20whatsoever%20for%20the%20holocaust&f=false" target="_blank">declares</a> that</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Palestinians—and
Arabs more generally—bear no responsibility whatsoever for the Holocaust, a
European genocide committed against mostly European Jews, Roma, and Slavs,
among others. It is therefore not incumbent upon Palestinians to pay in our
lives, lands, and livelihoods the price for relieving Europe’s conscience of
its collective guilt over the Holocaust. Holocaust guilt should never be used
as a means to justify or tolerate Israel’s horrific injustices against the
people of Palestine.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This
is a bald-faced lie. In the real history of the 1930s and 1940s the Arab Palestinians and the
larger Arab Muslim world gave their <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/palestinians-arabs-and-the-holocaust/" target="_blank">support to the Nazis</a> and the Nazi Final Solution to
annihilate the Jewish people. Haj Amin al-Husseini played a direct role in the Holocaust. The Palestinian Arab public, by using violence to block Jewish immigration to Palestine when it was literally a matter of life and death, were indirectly complicit in the Holocaust. No amount of disinformation, blood libels, and Orwellian rewriting of history by Barghouti and the propagandists of the Israel Outrage Industry can change <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/10/bibi-accurately-describes-muftis.html#.Vig975WFO1s" target="_blank">those facts</a>.</span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Now in all fairness it must be said that Palestinian support for Nazism and fascism was <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7heE83YmFNamZLOVE/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">not monolithic</a>. There were voices among the <a href="http://www.dw.de/not-all-palestinians-were-pro-nazi-says-german-historian/a-3045924" target="_blank">Palestinians</a> and throughout the Arab world that <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNGpkeS1Va00tdmM/edit" target="_blank">rejected the Mufti</a> and spoke out against Nazism and the genocide of the Jews. And there were </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span></span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hQVB1bFRIRUNzTDQ/edit" target="_blank">righteous Arabs</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">” who <a href="http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2015/Jan-27/285405-acknowledge-the-righteous-muslims.ashx" target="_blank">tried to save</a> North African, Middle Eastern, and European Jews from the Nazis and their Vichy French and Arab collaborators.</span></span> But these voices were a small dissenting minority from the overall Arab consensus in support of Hitler</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">’</span>s regime and the extermination of the Jews. Farouk Qaddumi, who along with Yasser Arafat founded Fatah, <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/12/palestinian-leader-farouq-qaddoumi-we.html" target="_blank">recently told</a> an interviewer, quite matter-of-factly, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“that we were enthusiastic supporters of Germany. . . . This was common among the Palestinians, especially since our enemy was Zionism, and we saw that Zionism was hostile to Germany, and vice versa.</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span></span></span></span> Historian Yaacov Lozowick <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hLThoREg2cEFWd0k/edit" target="_blank">gives</a> this damning assessment: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">We now
know that the Jews who didn’t get out in the 1930s were mostly dead by 1945.
Every single Jew who wanted to immigrate to Palestine but was denied the chance
by the growing restrictions can be laid to the account of Palestinian violence
and British appeasement; the number probably runs to the hundreds of thousands.
Even this small fraction of Jewish dead exceeds all of the subsequent losses of
Palestinian lives in their conflict with Zionism. This, Palestinian apologists might
reasonably say, is hindsight. Yet what was obvious at the time was that there
were violently antisemitic governments or political movements in almost all of
the European countries in which there were significant Jewish communities;
anti-Jewish legislation or agitation or both were the norm. The Palestinian
decision at the time was to join this anti-Jewish camp at its violent edge. Let
this be kept in mind when Palestinian propagandists decry their victimization
by the victims of the Nazis.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The Israel Outrage Industry <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=odEO0JqAuzMC&pg=PA231&lpg=PA231&dq=omar+barghouti+bear+no+responsibility+whatsoever+for+the+holocaust&source=bl&ots=y6zxoYvsHc&sig=jfj14RLDlqr9wZ8gpBrLPCGe90c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zPYeVfTUJYqjsAXH5YGYDg&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=omar%20barghouti%20bear%20no%20responsibility%20whatsoever%20for%20the%20holocaust&f=false" target="_blank">cries</a> that the Palestinians
are being made to <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/germany-made-palestinians-indirect-victims-holocaust-says-author-max-blumenthal/14030" target="_blank">pay for the sins</a> of <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/193689/after-cuba-obama-can-make-history-recognizing-palestine" target="_blank">Christian Europe</a>. As we have seen with
the Arab-Nazi collaboration, and as I discussed in my <a href="http://newjacksonianblog.blogspot.com/2016/06/israel-islam-and-clash-of-civilizations.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>, the Arab Muslim
world has its <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-failures-of-progressive-left-zionism-ignoring-jewish-history/" target="_blank">own long history</a> of <a href="http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42d75369-d582-4380-8395-d25925b85eaf%7D/wistrichantisemitism.pdf" target="_blank">anti-Semitism</a> to account for.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The Israel Outrage Industry, the newest incarnation of Jew-hatred, is built on
a </span><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Center-Field-Fight-the-delegitimizing-lies-dont-embrace-them-318478"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">foundation of lies</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">. Its primary argument, derived
from </span><a href="http://spme.org/spme-research/academic-boycotts-re-colonization-theory/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">postcolonial theory</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, that </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131228020806/http:/www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/12/18/indigenous-native-american-studies-and-big-lies-about-israel/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Israeli Jews</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> are </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/11/is-zionism-colonialism.html#.VANsw8t0y1t"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“settler-colonialists”</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> and that </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140308044743/http:/www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/02/18/illuminating-reactions-to-an-unpopular-proposal/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Israel is</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> an </span><a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1102/for-israels-arabs-it-is-not-apartheid"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“apartheid state”</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> are </span><a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/goal-boycott"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">demonstrably</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYXRiaDFiamJFQmc/edit"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">false</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">. (As noted in my <a href="http://newjacksonianblog.blogspot.com/2016/06/israel-islam-and-clash-of-civilizations.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>, both Israelis and
Palestinians are descended from </span><a href="http://www.israellycool.com/2014/01/09/israel-palestine-whos-indigenous/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">small indigenous</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> populations that expanded through
large-scale immigration since the mid-19th century. For a collection of essays
on postcolonialism and the Arab-Israeli conflict, </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hRjg1YnpSMVZ3djA/edit"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">click here</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">. For a typically unreadable,
jargon-laden example of postcolonialist writing, </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hVEFkSmN0Y2xVUk0/edit"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">click here</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">.)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://jcpa.org/unmasking-bds/" target="_blank">Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> movement
is a spearhead of the Israel Outrage Industry. (See Dan Diker’s </span><a href="http://jcpa.org/unmasking-bds/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">excellent article</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.) </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Richard Behar of <i>Forbes</i> </span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2014/02/04/homophobic-racist-sexist-take-xanax-reactions-to-my-open-letter-to-nyu-on-asas-israel-boycott/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">characterizes BDS</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> as “a movement without even a
pretense of intellectual honesty, one that relies on the most dreary kind of
politically radical <i>hivemind</i>, an ideological conformity that is, in
its most extreme aspects, downright scary.” And Cornell University’s
William Jacobson </span><a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/civil-rights/214344-anti-semitism-flares-up-with-gaza-crisis" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">calls BDS</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> “the modern mother’s milk of
anti-Semitism</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/students-for-justice-in-palestine-promotes-hatred-on-college-campuses/" target="_blank">The tactics</a> of the Israel Outrage Industry come straight out of the </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7heHJtRXNVcHB2NW8/edit" target="_blank">Saul Alinsky playbook: </a>it</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> uses lies,
disinformation, </span><a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/07/30/salem-on-the-thames/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">character assassination</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, and </span><a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=11&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB0QFjAAOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fopinions%2Facademias-boycott-on-ideas%2F2015%2F07%2F03%2Fa7e51d3a-138a-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html&ei=ZPmXVffcAsvm-AGmkI7IDw&usg=AFQjCNHOe326wa2AQPd6t2BJRONlR3fvlw&sig2=NYUZcoG2okZUZQcjbmYhbQ&bvm=bv.96952980,d.cWw" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">intimidation</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> to advance its agenda. </span><a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/2645/discussions/65169/book-review-professor-alvin-rosenfelds-review-bds-book-new-issue" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Anger and indignation</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, not reason and intellect, are the marks
of the Israel Outrage Industry. It adheres to an Orwellian view of
the world where black is white, night is day, Zionism is racism, jihadists
are freedom fighters, and tyranny is liberty. Indeed in a suitably Orwellian
twist, the Israel Outrage Industry smears anyone who stands up and exposes its
lies as being part of an </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2016/03/electronic-intifada-is-really-scared-of.html#.VuV2_JX2a1s" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“Islamophobia Industry.”</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> British
blogger </span><a href="http://david-collier.com/?p=503" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">David Collier</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> adds that “BDS is an
anti-democratic, anti-Semitic movement that has wrapped itself up as a peace
movement, artificially softening its image where necessary to further its
extremist goal.” While French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy </span><a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/israel-boycott-divestment-sanctions-movement-by-bernard-henri-levy-2015-06" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">concludes</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The truth is that the BDS
movement is nothing more than a sinister caricature of the anti-totalitarian
and anti-apartheid struggles. It is a campaign whose instigators have no aim
other than to discriminate against, delegitimize, and vilify an Israel that in
their mind never stopped wearing its yellow star.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Walter Russell Mead (who coined the term) </span><a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/12/17/the-asa-where-foolishness-and-ignorance-collide/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">identifies</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> five main sources of support for the
Israel Outrage Industry in left-wing academic and activist circles: liberal and
progressive Jews in the United States (</span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-lost-tribe-of-america-vic-rosenthal.html#.VZ6758vbK1s"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“the lost tribe of America</span></a><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-lost-tribe-of-america-vic-rosenthal.html#.VZ6758vbK1s"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">), Europe, and Israel who believe Israel has failed to live
up to the political standards of liberalism and the moral standards of Judaism
(one writer </span><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4525324,00.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">calls this</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> “the failure of the Jewish
intelligentsia”); Westerners who are ignorant of Israel’s historical and
cultural roots in the Middle East; Palestinians, and Americans and Europeans of
Palestinian background; Arabs and Muslims both in the Middle East and the West;
left-wing scholars and activists educated in and committed to postcolonialism,
who believe Israel is an outpost of Western colonialism in the Arab Middle East
and Israelis are colonial exploiters of dark-skinned indigenous people, much
like the <i>pieds-noirs</i> of Algeria and Afrikaners of South Africa
were. As Mead observes, “to the degree that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
has come to serve as a symbolic stand-in for colonialism and resistance to it,
across the developing world and on trendy western campuses, there’s a sincerely
felt if often poorly reasoned sense that to pass anti-Israel resolutions today
is like passing anti-apartheid resolutions a generation ago.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Public confrontations between supporters
of Israel and enemies of Israel in the Israel Outrage Industry are
so nasty and vitriolic because the two sides operate in <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2016/07/mainstream-intolerant-palestinians/" target="_blank">alternate moral universes</a>. They start from </span><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/08/israels_initial_premises.html" style="font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">completely different</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> first principles and </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/08/how-internet-has-wrecked-political.html#.Vd-tk5WFO1s" style="font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">premises</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, and their </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/may/12/israelandthepalestinians" style="font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">worldviews</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> are hostile and irreconcilable. Nor
do they agree on basic facts of history or contemporary events. The issue in a
nutshell is, to quote </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100707010916/http:/www.jabotinsky.org/multimedia/upl_doc/doc_191207_49117.pdf" style="font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Vladimir Jabotinsky</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">: “either Zionism is moral and just, or
it is immoral and unjust.” The positions taken by each side are logically
consistent with their response to Jabotinsky’s proposition.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Supporters of Israel, shaped by the traditional
Judeo-Christian worldview and classical liberalism, start from the assumption
that Zionism is moral and just, that for </span><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/how_not_to_defend_israel.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">reasons</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> of history and religion the Jewish people have the
right to self-determination in a sovereign state in <i>Eretz Yisrael</i>,
the land of its birth. Enemies of Israel, supporters of the Palestinian
cause, shaped by radical-Left “</span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hM1BsUHZxMXE0OE0/edit"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Jesus-was-a-Palestinian</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” </span><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/why_did_mideast_christians_heckle_proisrael_ted_cruz.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Christian</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, post-Christian, postcolonialist, Arab
nationalist, or Islamic supremacist worldviews, start from the assumption that
Zionism is immoral and unjust, that Jews are not a people and do not have a
right to a state in Palestine, that Israel is a colonial imposition on an
indigenous Arab people and must therefore be uprooted and destroyed. This is
why the Israel Outrage Industry keeps coming back to the “</span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hVGpGNVEwOFFXV3c/edit"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">original sin</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” of 1948. (These are the same
postcolonialist leftists who speak of the “original sin” of America’s
founding.) As Columbia University anthropologist and anti-Zionist BDS supporter Nadia Abu
El-Haj </span><a href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=681402"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">explains</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, the very idea of a Jewish people and
nation is a </span><a href="http://mosaicmagazine.com/tesserae/2014/08/gaza-equals-auschwitz/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Zionist fabrication</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. In any event the truth or falsity of
Jewish history is irrelevant:</span><br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Why? Because even if the
biblical story were entirely true, it wouldn’t change the problem of the
injustice that founding the State of Israel brought into being in 1948. It
wouldn’t change the fact that Israel is a <i>settler</i>-nation, that is,
a project of European colonial settlement that imagined and believed itself to
be a project of national return.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Controversial “scholar” and radical Left BDS polemicist Steven Salaita </span><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/steven-salaita/guide-dialoguing-palestinians?utm_medium=email&utm_source=transactional&utm_campaign=info%40electronicintifada.net" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">adds</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> that “Zionists stole Palestine from
its original inhabitants.” He </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/natiindistudj.1.2.0125?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">adds further</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> that “Zionism’s claims to an
ancient Jewish past in Palestine are largely mythological.” Or, as
Palestinian-Canadian activist Hanna Kawas </span><a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2015/12/distortions-diversions-defamations" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">states bluntly</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">: “there is no legitimacy (not
ancient nor modern) for Zionist claims to a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Period.” Salaita’s and Kawas’s statements make it crystal clear that </span><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/steven-salaita/guide-dialoguing-palestinians?utm_medium=email&utm_source=transactional&utm_campaign=info%40electronicintifada.net"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">dialogue</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> between supporters of Israel and the
Israel Outrage Industry is a nonstarter.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">It’s no coincidence that those who hate
Israel also hate America. As political scientist </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hby0yR3ZMNUdUSnc/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Andrei Markovits points out</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism have
become the <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pMDUNdw_3UsJ:www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.735800+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">defining litmus-test issues</a> of post-Cold War progressive politics in
both Europe and the United States. The postcolonialist agenda is all that unifies an
otherwise fragmented and divided Left. “If one is not at least a serious
doubter of the legitimacy of the state of Israel,” Markovits writes, “and if
one does not dismiss everything American as a priori vile and reactionary, one
runs the risk of being excluded from the entity called ‘the left.’” He adds
that “the hegemonic discourse of the left on both sides of the Atlantic
features America and Israel as identity-defining issues that are largely
nonnegotiable.” Similarly, </span><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/03/20/white-house-netanyahu-abandoned-two-state-commitment/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Greg Gutfeld</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> of Fox News observes that radical
campus ideologues, immersed in postcolonialism, will always be opposed to
Israel: “Israel is a proxy for the United States and they like poking it in the
eye.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Political scientist Donna Robinson
Divine </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hVHVnUWc3YzgzaHM/edit" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">concludes </a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">that the postcolonialist Left has made the Palestinians the
archetype of all the helpless, powerless victims of Western imperialism:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Palestinians
have become almost universal political and cultural symbols of the stateless
victim. Movements inspired by postcolonial theorizing use the pain and strife
of Palestinians as part of what they perceive to be a revolutionary struggle
against a country that wields its military power not to hold back terror but
rather presumably and primarily in order to humiliate a population already on
the edge. Accountability for the ongoing conflict, then, belongs not to the
powerless Palestinians, deprived of their dignity, but rather to the Israelis
whose policies have presumably squeezed these people between violence and
oppression. The charge is not that Palestinians have made bad strategic
choices, but rather that Israel and its policies are evil.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Again, Zionism and the creation of a
Jewish state are <i>prima facie</i> either right or wrong. This
dynamic drives the entire Arab-Israeli conflict; it is a chasm that cannot be
bridged. Neither Israelis nor Arabs (nor their respective supporters in the
West) have changed their core beliefs on the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty
over the past 130 years. “The people of Israel are not occupiers in the
Land of Israel.” This </span><a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/09/30/netanyahu_the_global_threat_of_militant_islam.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">statement</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> by Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, self-evident truth to Israel’s supporters, sends the Israel Outrage
Industry into foaming-at-the-mouth fits of fury. “No,” the </span><a href="http://jewsdownunder.com/2014/11/12/stole-land/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Israel-haters shout</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, “you
stole their land! The Jews are invaders and occupiers of Arab land!” To which
my Yeshiva students would respond: “No, they stole our land! The Arabs are
invaders and trespassers on Jewish land!” Postcolonialist godfather and </span><a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/steven-salaita-and-the-ghost-of-edward-said/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">intellectual fraud</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> Edward Said got it right when he
grimly </span><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n24/edward-said/palestinians-under-siege"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">acknowledged </span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">at the start of the second intifada that
no common ground could be found between the Israeli and Palestinian worldviews:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The most demoralising aspect of
the Zionist-Palestinian conflict is the almost total opposition between
mainstream Israeli and Palestinian points of view. We were dispossessed and
uprooted in 1948, they think they won independence and that the means were
just. We recall that the land we left and the territories we are trying to
liberate from military occupation are all part of our national patrimony; they
think it is theirs by Biblical fiat and diasporic affiliation. Today, by any
conceivable standards, we are the victims of the violence; they think they are.
There is simply no common ground, no common narrative, no possible area for
genuine reconciliation. Our claims are mutually exclusive. Even the notion of a
common life shared in the same small piece of land is unthinkable. Each of us
thinks of separation, perhaps even of isolating and forgetting the other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">For once I agree with Said. Since neither
side </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/08/how-internet-has-wrecked-political.html#.Vd-tk5WFO1s"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">accepts the premises</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> of the other, outside the
realm of realpolitik (where a different set of assumptions prevail) there
is no basis for any rational discourse between them. They can only talk, or
shout, </span><a href="http://coreyrobin.com/2014/09/09/a-palestinian-exception-to-the-first-amendment/#comment-79955"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">past each other</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, and call each other vile names in the
unbounded spaces of the blogosphere and the Twitterverse. (The same holds true
in the ivory tower. An attempt to find </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hM19LYnBrRmxJaWs/edit"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">common ground</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> between historians Benny Morris and
Joseph Massad ended in mutual accusations of racism. See also: </span><a href="https://twitter.com/stevesalaita"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Steven
Salaita</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">.) <a href="http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-end-of-enlightenment.html">Yaacov
Lozowick</a>, talking about the </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/04/mondoweiss-is-a-hate-site/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">anti-Semitic</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> website Mondoweiss, a
leading voice of the Israel Outrage Industry, </span><a href="http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2012/04/mondoweiss-vipers-nest-of-antisemites.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">adds</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">: “There is no possibility for discourse between them
and us, only invective from their side, and head-shaking from ours.” In
the foreseeable future words will not be able to effect a reconciliation
between Israelis and Palestinians, or their American and European advocates.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DUqxwKX6jgo/V2dZwtrvG_I/AAAAAAAADHw/GcXLy8Zl6kIf_xzrtgIlBwPAP1akUQEegCKgB/s1600/hagannah%2Bsoldiers%252C%2B1948%252C%2Blife%2Bmagazine%2B-%2B1948israel431.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DUqxwKX6jgo/V2dZwtrvG_I/AAAAAAAADHw/GcXLy8Zl6kIf_xzrtgIlBwPAP1akUQEegCKgB/s640/hagannah%2Bsoldiers%252C%2B1948%252C%2Blife%2Bmagazine%2B-%2B1948israel431.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Leading the fight against jihad. Soldiers of the Haganah/IDF, June 1948. <a href="https://sirlaugh.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/life-in-israel-in-1948-%E2%80%93-part-2/" target="_blank">Frank Scherschel, Life</a>.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">If you listen to the propaganda of the
Israel Outrage Industry long enough, after all its twists and turns you keep
coming back to the same point: the </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150121052354/https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/charging-israel-with-original-sin/" target="_blank">original sin</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> of 1948, <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/how-liberal-zionists-enable-israels-genocidal-ambitions" target="_blank">“the original sin of Israel’s creation</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/how-liberal-zionists-enable-israels-genocidal-ambitions" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span></a> (to quote Rania Khalek). </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Or as Ahmad Samih Khalidi </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2008/05/nakba-nonsense-floods-in.html#.VEcTiBYa-tf" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">put it</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, “Israel could not
have been built as a Jewish state except on the ruins of Arab Palestine.” Or in the words of postcolonialist historian <a href="http://www.ohio.com/editorial/walter-l-hixson-why-israel-must-confront-its-past-1.244453?comments=n" target="_blank">Walter Hixson</a>: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Israel . . . has persisted in violating international law and destroying the lives of Palestinians for some 60 years. The process began with an ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by Zionist extremists in 1948.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Or, to quote radical Left writer <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/11/30/u_n_voted_to_partition_palestine_68_years_ago_in_an_unfair_plan_made_even_worse_by_israels_ethnic_cleansing/" target="_blank">Ben Norton</a>: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“In this war, Zionist militias systematically ethnically cleansed large portions of historic Palestine . . . expelling more than 750,000 people </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">– around two-thirds of the indigenous Arab population.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> <a href="http://raritanquarterly.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/article-pdfs/falk_raritanxxxiv3_winter2015.pdf" target="_blank">Richard Falk</a>, <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xnn4azVX8tgJ:www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.743532+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">Gideon Levy</a>, Rashid Khalidi, and Edward Said have each proclaimed that Israel must humbly atone for the original sin of its morally tainted birth and apologize with genuine remorse for the injustice it perpetrated against the Palestinians as the <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=IYHfAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=edward+said+Until+the+time+comes+when+Israel+assumes+responsibility+for+what+it+has+done+to+the+Palestinian+people,+there+can+be+no+end+to+the+conflict.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=THVTwJU-P5&sig=q9SChY1yU4gkPN2oV5jpAbd2hvw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW8s-hqbDOAhVHuRQKHbUvB3oQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=edward%20said%20Until%20the%20time%20comes%20when%20Israel%20assumes%20responsibility%20for%20what%20it%20has%20done%20to%20the%20Palestinian%20people%2C%20there%20can%20be%20no%20end%20to%20the%20conflict.%E2%80%9D&f=false" target="_blank">sine qua non</a></i> for any possible peace accord. As <a href="http://www.middleeast.org/archives/8-00-31.htm" target="_blank">Said told Ari Shavit</a> at the start of the second intifada in 2000:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Until
the time comes when Israel assumes moral responsibility for what it has done to
the Palestinian people, there can be no end to the conflict. . . . What is needed,
at the very least, is an acknowledgment of the destruction of Palestinian
society, of the dispossession of the Palestinian people and the confiscation of
their land. And also of the deprivation and the suffering over the last 52
years. . . . I believe that the conflict can only end when Israel assumes the
burden of all that. I think an attempt should be made to say “this is what
happened.” This is the narrative. . . . No one gets absolute justice, but there
are steps that must be taken, like the ones taken at the end of apartheid. . .
. the only way to deal with a complex history of antagonism based on ethnicity
is to look at it, understand it and then move on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In January 2001, <a href="http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/2001/516/op1.htm" target="_blank">Said added</a> that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“like it or not, Israel can only have peace when the Palestinian right is first acknowledged to have been violated, and when there is apology and remorse where there is now arrogance and rhetorical bluster.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” In other words, Said was saying that Jews must return to their proper role as humble and submissive <i>dhimmis</i> as the price of peace.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Rashid Khalidi </span><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40203293?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">likewise argues</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> that atonement requires Israelis to concede that their historical narrative is a lie and embrace the Palestinian narrative as historical truth:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">the key
requirement for a resolution is not so much compensation (important though that
is) as acceptance of responsibility and some form of moral atonement. A gross
injustice was done to the Palestinians, half of whom lost their homes and
property and all of whom lost their homeland. It is difficult for Israelis to
accept that this was in large measure Israel’s doing; such an admission requires
substantial revisions in their self-image as victims, both of the Holocaust and
of Arab aggression, and in their national narrative in which a blameless Israel
was attacked without provocation by the Arab states in May 1948.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">For Khalidi, like his late mentor Said, the conflict can only end with Israel</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s intellectual and moral surrender to the Palestinians. (Khalidi would do better to advise Palestinians to apologize and make atonement to Israel for collaborating with the Nazis and launching their jihad against the Jewish people.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Of course what Khalek, both Khalidis, Hixson, Norton, Falk, Levy, Said, and the rest of the Israel Outrage Industry fail to say, and refuse to acknowledge, as they relitigate the history of 1948, is that the Palestinians were victims of <i>their own choices and actions</i>: victims of a war of ethnic cleansing and genocide </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">against the Jews</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> that </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">they</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> started.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The flight or expulsion of the
Palestinians in 1948 was tragic and perhaps unavoidable. It is one of the
harsh realities of history that a triumph of liberation for one people became a </span><i style="font-family: georgia, serif;">nakba </i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(catastrophe) for another. The
creation of a Jewish state was a historical necessity for the survival of
the Jewish people and the renewal of the Jewish nation. The Jewish people would not have survived as a people after the Holocaust without the rebirth of the Jewish state. But as Israel’s first
prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, realized, the creation of a Jewish state with
a Jewish majority, which the Arab Palestinians would </span><a href="http://www.mepc.org/articles-commentary/commentary/original-no-why-arabs-rejected-zionism-and-why-it-matters" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">never accept</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and actively
fought against, would be secured by their flight from the lands that
became Israel, just as the creation of the United States was secured by the
dispossession of the native American Indians. Since the war in 1948 was a war
for survival – the Palestinians and their Arab allies were determined to exterminate the Jews, to push them into the sea –
harsh measures, in some cases the expulsion of the enemy population, were <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YjNsXMaQvnMJ:www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.748673+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">acts of self-defense</a> dictated by military necessity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This is the view of Benny Morris, the preeminent historian of 1948, who <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-lawrence-wright-still-wrong-11623?page=show" target="_blank">writes</a>: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“The expulsions, where they occurred </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and most of the 700,000 Arabs who were uprooted in that war were not expelled, but simply fled in the face of the flail of war </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">– </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">were acts of self-defense. When facing the choice between expelling your attacker or being slaughtered </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">– my preference remains expelling the other.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> This was what happened at </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-happened-at-lydda-by-martin-kramer.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Lydda</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> (July 11-13, 1948), the most oft-cited example, after a hard-fought battle in the most desperate days of the war. Months later (October 29, 1948) IDF soldiers <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0fXU3R7zTX8J:www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.709439+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">killed</a> between <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=bWCN0OUiTJkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+Refugees&ei=r050TduDC4PcUJGDiaMJ&cd=1#v=onepage&q=Al-Dawayima%20&f=false" target="_blank">100 and 200</a> Arab villagers at Dawayima, near the ruins of Lachish (the Judahite town <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hV0FqNGZfZllpUUU/view" target="_blank">conquered and destroyed</a> by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 701 </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">BC</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">), in retaliation for the massacres of Jews at Hebron in 1929 and Kefar Etzion in May 1948. One IDF commander, Avraham Vered, <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0fXU3R7zTX8J:www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.709439+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">wrote</a>: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“We remembered 1929 and the Etzion Bloc.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> The houses of Dawayima, <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hUXNSVWIxLXdySG8/edit" target="_blank">Vered went on</a>,</span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">were
filled with the loot of the Etzion Bloc . . . The Jewish fighters who attacked
Dawayima knew that . . . the blood of those slaughtered cries out for revenge;
and that the men of Dawayima were among those who took part in the massacre . .
. [in] the Etzion Bloc.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Benny Morris <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/176858/kfar-etzion/2" target="_blank">chalks up</a> the Dawayima massacre to to the Middle East</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s tragic cycle of massacre, counter-massacre, and vengeance, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“a basic value and fact of life.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” But for some Israeli soldiers, neither vengeance nor retaliation, nor military necessity, could justify the killing of unarmed civilians. Such actions undermined the moral integrity of the IDF, violating its doctrine of </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“purity of arms</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” which prohibited the harming of noncombatants. Shabtai Kaplan, a soldier and journalist, wrote a letter about the terrible events at Dawayima, the details of which had been related to him by another soldier. Kaplan</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s informant <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0fXU3R7zTX8J:www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.709439+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">told him</a> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“what was in his heart because of a psychological need to unburden his soul of the horrific awareness that our cultured and educated people are capable of achieving this level of barbarism.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” It was not just the heat of battle or a desire for vengeance, but, in this soldier</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s opinion, political and military policy which led cultured and educated men to commit acts of barbarism:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
soldier relates that their cultured, polite commanders, who are considered
upstanding members of society, turned into base murderers, and not in the heat
and passion of battle but in a system of expulsion and destruction. The fewer
Arabs that will remain, the better. That principle is the political driving
force of the expulsions and atrocities, to which no one objects, either in the
operational command or in high command.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">This is the tragedy of war and the dark side of nation building. It speaks to Israel</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s nature as an open and self-critical society (unlike Arab Muslim societies), that Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris and Yair Auron, have embraced the task of researching and placing before the public the ugliest and most controversial parts of their nation</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> complex past. (Of course the propagandists of the Israel Outrage Industry, British BDS smear merchant <a href="http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-06-09/why-israel-is-blocking-access-to-its-archives/" target="_blank">Jonathan Cook </a>for example, charge that Israel is perpetrating a massive cover up of its </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">war crimes.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Those devious, conspiratorial Jews!</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Give me a break.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In 1779 as America was fighting a long and bloody war to win its independence, George Washington </span><a href="http://founders.archives.gov/?q=Volume%3AWashington-03-20&s=1511311110&r=661&search-paging=30" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">ordered</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
the “total destruction and devastation” of the British-allied Iroquois. “Our future security,”
Washington declared, “will be in their inability to injure us, the distance
to which they are driven, and in the terror with which the severity of the
chastisement they receive will inspire them. Peace without this would be
fallacious and temporary.” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“How lamentable it is,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Andrew Jackson <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/05/andrew-jackson-to-his-soldiers-april-2.html" target="_blank">told his Tennessee troops</a> after their victory over the Creek nation in 1814, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“that the path to peace should lead through blood & over the carcases of the slain!!</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> But Jackson understood that America</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s enemies </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“must be made to know . . . that our strength is mighty & will prevail. Then & not till then may we hope for a lasting & beneficial peace.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Nation building can be a </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150611044640/http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/10/what-should-we-do-if-isis-islamic-state-wins-containment/" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">messy and ugly</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> business. David Ben-Gurion, the “George Washington” of Israel, took the
same decisive action for Israel’s survival in its War of Independence <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hazZHRjM1NHJqcVE/edit" target="_blank">that
</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hazZHRjM1NHJqcVE/edit" target="_blank">Washington </a>and Jackson took</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> for America’s survival.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9iFYxHU4PAg/Vf4iPfuyqdI/AAAAAAAACto/S8AMjduS9BU/s1600/benny%2Bmorris%2B-%2Bbenny-morris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9iFYxHU4PAg/Vf4iPfuyqdI/AAAAAAAACto/S8AMjduS9BU/s400/benny%2Bmorris%2B-%2Bbenny-morris.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Benny Morris</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Benny Morris, after extensive research, concludes that the Palestinians and their Arab allies were in fact waging a </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/1948-as-jihad-by-benny-morris.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">jihad</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> against
</span><a href="http://www.meforum.org/2769/benny-morris-1948-islamic-holy-war" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">the Jews</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">What I
discovered in the documentation relating to the war, at least from the Arab
side, was that the war had a religious character, that the central element in
the war was an imperative to launch jihad. There were other imperatives of
course, political and others—but the most important from the enemy’s perspective
was the element of the infidels who had the nerve to take control over sacred
Muslim lands and the need to uproot them from there. The decisive majority in
the Arab world saw the war first and foremost as a holy war, but until today historians
have not examined the documentation that proves this. In my view, they have
also ignored Arab rhetoric of the day, which universally included religious hatred
against the Jews, because they thought the Arabs adopted this as normal speech
that did not emanate from deep mental resources. They thought this was
something superficial, that everyone talked like this. But I am positive the
Arab spokesmen in 1948 did go beyond this and clearly and explicitly talked
about jihad.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And Joseph Spoerl <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/palestinians-arabs-and-the-holocaust/" target="_blank">offers this assessment</a> of Palestinian complicity in both the Nazi and Arab wars to exterminate the Jews:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[T]he
claim that Palestinians and Arabs had nothing to do with the Holocaust is
false. In fact, Arab and Palestinian leaders played a significant role in
aiding and abetting the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews in Europe and they
hoped to implement the genocide in the Middle East. A growing number of
publications, including extensive original, high-quality archival scholarship,
proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. . . . A careful examination of this history
shows that it is neither fair nor accurate to portray the Arab-Israel War of
1947–9 as an unprovoked war of aggression by Zionists bent on the ethnic
cleansing of Palestinian Arabs. In fact, it was a war of self-defense against a
ruthless, pro-Nazi, and openly genocidal Palestinian leadership that enjoyed
enormous popularity among the Arab and Palestinian masses.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The
refusal of many Palestinians to face their moral and political failings
honestly contrasts with their lip-service to achieving “peace with justice” in
the Middle East. If they cared about justice, they would apportion a
substantial share of the blame for the <i>nakba</i>
or “catastrophe” of 1948 to themselves and would admit the existence of
widespread Jew-hatred in the Arab and Islamic world and its role in undermining
peace between Jews and Arabs from the 1920s to the present.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman, who spent his career studying the tribal roots of Middle Eastern cultures, <a href="http://spme.org/spme-research/analysis/philip-carl-salzman-self-induced-nakba/5658/" target="_blank">concludes</a> that the Palestinians were victims of a </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“self-induced Nakba</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Narratives
of victimization, such as the Palestinian one, neglect to account for the
active Arab response to the Jews and to Jewish immigration. . . . Arab
opposition to the Jews, expressed in riots and pogroms, was ratchetted up in
the face of Jewish desires for national autonomy and independence. After all,
it was believed that any part of the Dar al-Islam must remain under Muslim
dominance forevermore. And for a thousand years, Jews under Islam had been a
subservient and despised minority, cowering under the power of their Muslim
masters. The Arabs in Palestine thought that the Jews could not and would not
stand up to them, and they acted on that well established cultural principle.
Honor would allow nothing less.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Arabs acted according to their tradition, according to their lights. They
refused compromise with inferiors; they refused to divide and share, rejecting
a UN settlement. Instead, they strove for complete victory, as their ancestors
had. However, the thousand-year-old conditions did not obtain. The Jews they
faced were not dhimma, and they did not cower; against the odds, and with
little outside help, they fought and won. The Arab states answered the call,
but were ineffectual, and failed. The “Nakba” was self-induced by the Arabs.
They demanded all or nothing, and got nothing. But they have continued to hold
to the rejectionist position, taking an annihilationist stance toward Israel
and the Jews. So in reality the self-induced “Nakba” is self-perpetuating. The
successful agitprop that obscures this both to the world and to themselves is
also a result of Arab agency.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The entire Palestinian </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">narrative</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> is a <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/11/palestinian-narrative-acre-linah-alsaafin-jewish-state.html" target="_blank">denial of history</a> and a <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/07/jim-crow-for-jews-and-artificial.html#.Vbb14_1761s" target="_blank">denial of truth</a>; a refusal by Arab Palestinians to acknowledge any responsibility for the actions that led to their catastrophe. The </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Israel Outrage Industry rejects the realities of history to perpetrate a mendacious postcolonialist fantasy and indulge an <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-few-thoughts-for-pro-israel-left-mike.html#.VWtK2MvbK1s" target="_blank">ahistorical</a> Arab mythology of innocence and victimhood. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">There was <i>no original sin</i> in the creation of Israel in 1948. Israel has <i>nothing to atone for</i>. The Palestinian leadership </span><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4597344,00.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">chose</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> to
reject the United Nations partition of Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab
states. Had they </span><a href="http://www.meforum.org/207/the-unbearable-lightness-of-my-critics" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">chosen otherwise</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> there would have been </span><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kliszdXjyqYJ:www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.678483+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nakba</i></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. They chose to launch a jihad against Israel with the support
of five Arab states. They assumed they would win their holy war and, in a reenactment of the </span><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/04/muhammads_attack_on_khaybar.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Battle of Khaybar</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, wipe out
the Jews in an orgy of religious hatred. But the Israelis of 1948 were not <i>dhimmis</i>. They fought back against the jihad and they won. There would be no Khaybar in 1948. There would be no second Holocaust. The Arab forces lost and their people </span><a href="http://abuyehuda.com/2014/09/history-counts/" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">suffered the consequences</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">To quote <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/My-JNF-address-Part-II-The-peace-process-failure-foretold-352451" target="_blank">Martin Sherman</a>: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“In the final analysis, between the River and the Sea there will exist either exclusive Jewish sovereignty or exclusive Arab sovereignty. The side that will prevail is the side whose national will is the stronger, and whose political vision is the sharper.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” And to quote <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=59yPqcGsDhUC&pg=PT128&dq=tony+judt+%22what+the+jews+were+seeking+in+palestine%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMttbamNrJAhVHph4KHZwyBcMQ6AEIHDAA%20-%20v=onepage&q=tony%20judt%20%22what%20the%20jews%20were%20seeking%20in%20palestine%22&f=false#v=snippet&q=tony%20judt%20%22what%20the%20jews%20were%20seeking%20in%20palestine%22&f=false" target="_blank">Tony Judt</a>: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“What the Jews were seeking in Palestine, he [Vladimir Jabotinsky] used to say, was not progress but a state. When you build a state you make a revolution. And in a revolution there can only ever be winners and losers. This time around we Jews are going to be the winners.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Historian <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/a-revisionists-burden-3155?page=3" target="_blank">H.W. Brands</a> adds that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“life is full of unearned gifts and undeserved costs.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> There is no justice in history, just winners and losers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not the result of a misunderstanding or a failure to communicate or flawed tactics and strategies or of good intentions gone awry. This 130-year war, as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">both</i> sides see it, is <a href="http://abuyehuda.com/2016/09/a-war-between-peoples/" target="_blank">an existential conflict</a>, a war of blood and faith, a zero-sum battle over land, national, <a href="http://www.meforum.org/1813/the-middle-easts-tribal-dna" target="_blank">tribal</a>, and religious
identity, and historical legitimacy. So it has been since the beginnings of
Zionism in the 1880s. The distinguished Israeli author and longtime peace activist Amos Oz <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-oz-two-state-solution-peace-israel-palestinians-20150308-story.html#page=1" target="_blank">believes</a>, as does <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/will-israel-miss-its-moment/2015/05/07/624a582e-f4f1-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1" target="_blank">Fareed Zakaria</a>, that the threat of Iran and ISIS make this the most promising moment for ending the conflict in the past 100 years. Sadly they are wrong. It <a href="http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157347" target="_blank">will not be resolved</a> in the foreseeable future. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The original sin</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> of Zionism, <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-original-sin-occupation-or-being.html#.VGwXZ8t0y1s" target="_blank">writes</a> the blogger Elder of Ziyon, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">is that Jews are asserting their rights to live in their own ancestral homeland in peace and security. And that sin is too much for hundreds of millions of Arabs to bear.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> It is
now clear that the Arab assault on Israel in 1948 was the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/2769/benny-morris-1948-islamic-holy-war" target="_blank">opening round</a> of the
larger Islamist jihad against the West that was brought home to the United
States on September 11, 2001.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Meanwhile,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Michael Lumish <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-suckers-game-mike-lumish.html#.VRhu7st0y1s" target="_blank">writes</a> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">as the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/" target="_blank">Arab world seethes</a> with a crude and genocidal Medieval anti-Semitism, their <a href="http://dailykos.com/tag/israel" target="_blank">western-left apologists</a> condemn Israel as a violent, racist, apartheid, colonial, imperial monstrosity.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Yes, Israel is a flawed and imperfect nation
that has not always lived up to its ideals. The same can be said of all the
nations of the Earth. Yet </span><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11468605/Southampton-University-wants-to-debate-Israels-right-to-exist.-But-that-right-is-sacred.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">radical Left academics</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and activists demand of Israel a level of moral
purity and social perfection that no human society has attained – not the United
States, not Europe, and certainly not the Arab Muslim nations championed by the
Left – as the price of its legitimacy and its very right to exist. If that is
not anti-Semitism then I don’t know what is. It certainly speaks to the intellectual and moral
bankruptcy of an academic Left, theorizing in its ivory tower, mired in
postcolonialist narcissism, utterly disconnected from reality.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In the summer of 2001, at the height of
the second intifada and just before 9/11, David Brooks wrote a <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hODdiZTRmNzMtYmZjNC00MTE0LWE2ZDItZDBhZDc2Y2ZkNTgx/edit" target="_blank">prescient essay</a>
on “The Death of Compromise” in Middle East. The prime strategy of the
Palestinians and their supporters, Brooks discovered, was to undermine the
moral legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state in the eyes of the world as a
first step toward its actual destruction. This was no longer a war of tangibles
like land and security. It had become a war over rival historical, moral, and mythopoetic narratives that could continue for generations. Even those
Palestinians who were willing to accept a two-state solution wanted, in
Brooks’s words, “for the Israelis to capitulate intellectually and morally; for
the Israelis to admit that their state was founded on a crime; for them to
apologize for what their existence has done to the Palestinians.” This is what
is really behind the Palestinian demand for a right of return. (See this <a href="http://english.wafa.ps/page.aspx?id=21YKdda35565106104a21YKdd" target="_blank">recent statement</a> by <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2016/05/saeb-erekat-keeps-showing-his-hypocrisy.html" target="_blank">Saeb Erekat</a>.) “In other
words,” Brooks concluded, </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">the
Middle East conflict has been polarized and simplified. The whole dispute hangs
on a simple question: Is Israel a criminal state? Arab populations have swung
behind the idea that it is, and the Jewish population has swung behind the idea
that it isn’t. Not since 1948 has the issue been so stark and each side so
unified. There is simply no middle position on this central question, and so
all those who were trying to span the divide between the two peoples – the
businessmen who want to trade with the other side, as well as the peace
activists who want to build bridges – have found that the ground has vanished
from under their feet.</span> </div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Brooks’s analysis still holds true. Israel’s
ideological enemies – in academia, the media, the blogosphere, the religious
left, NGOs, and leftist activist groups like BDS, along with their Jewish and
Israeli fellow travelers and enablers – agree that Israel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> a criminal state. They are truly outraged that the Jewish people,
who they don’t consider a real people, have attained self-determination, empowerment, and political sovereignty. As left-wing postcolonialist ideologues, they would
prefer Jews to be disempowered victims unable to shape their own destiny. They
seek to delegitimize the very concept of a Jewish state – an <a href="http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2016/06/brexit-and-jewish-question.html" target="_blank">ethnonationalist anachronism</a> which they claim has no place in the multicultural world of the
twenty-first century – as a prelude to replacing Israel with a “secular
democratic” (i.e. Arab Islamic) Palestinian state. And like all on the radical Left,
they use lies, disinformation, slander and intimidation to advance their
agenda.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">These denizens of the Israel Outrage
Industry are implacable foes who bear nothing but malice and ill-will toward
the Jewish people. And they don’t much like the American people either. There
is simply no common intellectual and moral ground to be had between those of us
who see in Israel the fulfillment of the 2000-year-old dream of Jewish national
liberation and renewal, and those who by demonizing Israel as a racist-settler-colonial-apartheid
regime seek her destruction. They cannot be reasoned with and cannot be
compromised with. They must be <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/time-to-fight-the-jew-haters/" target="_blank">engaged and defeated</a> on the battlefield of
ideas.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">© 2016
Michael Kaplan</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<br />Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-7243801915424789952016-06-25T18:41:00.002-04:002018-04-02T22:48:44.395-04:00Israel, Islam, and the Clash of Civilizations<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By Michael Kaplan</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hE_mi1_Pf9E/V2OOMEVzgOI/AAAAAAAADHY/fWLIBgABV1UGsboBcd3-Rc8_cnOcae6mACLcB/s1600/IDF%2BWomen%2Bsoldiers%2B-%2B11892327_149731732030924_3186129887444345522_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="435" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hE_mi1_Pf9E/V2OOMEVzgOI/AAAAAAAADHY/fWLIBgABV1UGsboBcd3-Rc8_cnOcae6mACLcB/s640/IDF%2BWomen%2Bsoldiers%2B-%2B11892327_149731732030924_3186129887444345522_o.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Israeli
female soldiers of the <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/05/16/180045066/Women-In-Combat-Lessons-From-The-Israel-Defense-Forces" target="_blank">33rd Caracal Battalion</a> take part in a graduation march in the Negev desert. Female
warriors are an important symbol in the clash of civilizations. The IDF is the
one army that <a href="http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/special%E2%80%88report-behind-enemy-lines-with-isis-we-fear-the-idf/" target="_blank">ISIS fears</a>.
<a href="http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/pictures/israeli-female-soldiers-of-the-33rd-caracal-battalion-take-news-photo-163670315" target="_blank">Menahem Kahana/Getty Images</a>. </span><span style="font-size: 8pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The world – the Western and Islamic
worlds that is – has a most </span><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomatic-Conference/Danish-ambassador-JPosts-Caroline-Glick-exchange-verbal-blows-over-EU-attitude-toward-Israel-384438" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">unhealthy</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> and </span><a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/time-to-fight-the-jew-haters/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">irrational obsession</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> with Zionism, the Jewish people, and the Jewish state. An ocean of ink has been spilled over the past hundred years
– and terabytes of cyberspace filled up these days – on the existential
conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In fact the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict claims a far larger share of the world’s
attention </span><a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/copernicus-america%E2%80%99s-blame-israel-problem-11922?page=show" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">than it deserves</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">. Geopolitically it’s not that important; “a
20th century problem surrounded by 21st century chaos,” </span><a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/03/israel-palestine-relevant-anymore-150302072026022.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">in the words</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> of one diplomat. Indeed, the fate
of Israel and the Palestinians is far less important to the geostrategic
interests of the United States than events elsewhere in the Middle East, East
Asia, and beyond. Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer is right when </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=NnnBj-HQOi4C&pg=PA251&dq=ralph+peters+americans+learn+to+watch+foreigners+die&hl=en&ei=hO5vTrmCLJO_gQebqPyMBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=ralph%20peters%20americans%20learn%20to%20watch%20foreigners%20die&f=false" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">he asks</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> “can it be proven that it would make a substantive –
vice emotional – difference to U.S. security if . . . every Palestinian killed
every Israeli, or vice versa . . . ?” The “brutal but correct” answer says
Scheuer is that it doesn’t. Ethno-religious communal conflicts, like that
between Israel and the Palestinians, “evoke sympathy and stir emotion,” but
none of them, “regardless of who wins, endanger U.S. interests.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Ah, but there’s the rub. While Scheuer
overstates his case – Israel, as General David Petraeus </span><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZkVrN8Gomj8J:www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.696194+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">points out</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, does have strategic value as a
stable nation with an advanced economy and a powerful military that shares
American cultural and political values in a part of the world that is
increasingly unstable and dysfunctional – the American people do have
a considerable <i>historical</i> and <i>emotional</i> investment
in Israel.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Ever since the <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-religious-problem-by-michael-b-oren.html" target="_blank">Pilgrims landed</a> at Plymouth Rock, Americans have <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/191876/will-israel-save-america" target="_blank">seen themselves</a> as the <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMWUxNDAzODItOTIxMy00ZTZhLTgwOWItZTA5MDllODNiOWYz/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1" target="_blank">“New Israel.”</a> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Come, let</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> us declare in Zion the work of the Lord our God,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=tnMa1-t128gC&pg=PA351&lpg=PA351&dq=william+bradford+come+let+us+declare+in+zion+the+work+of+the+lord+our+god&source=bl&ots=wZ_hZi4vQK&sig=XQ3nVxJG5HqC_pfVipDdioeg_2g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRs4zHxK_KAhVC7D4KHYDTBVcQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=william%20bradford%20come%20let%20us%20declare%20in%20zion%20the%20work%20of%20the%20lord%20our%20god&f=false" target="_blank">proclaimed</a> the Pilgrim leader William Bradford, quoting the prophet Jeremiah.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Adherents of the Calvinist faith, and this includes Puritans and Jacksonians, gave their children Hebrew names (Abraham, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, Abigail, Rachel, Esther, Sarah, Dina, etc., etc.,) and bestowed upon the New World such biblical place names as Shiloh, Bethel, Bethlehem, Jericho, and New Canaan. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Preachers and pamphleteers portrayed the American Revolution as a <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=szyc2GCIaikC&dq=sacred+scripture+sacred+war&q=%22moses%2C+the+exodus%22#v=snippet&q=%22moses%2C%20the%20exodus%22&f=false" target="_blank">reenactment</a> of the biblical Exodus: the <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Cc1-29yN_8QC&q=army+of+israel" target="_blank">Continental Army</a> became the “army of Israel” under the command of the providentially chosen George Washington, <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hN1VEWnZuZzdncDg/edit" target="_blank">the Moses</a> who led the thirteen colonies out of bondage to <a href="http://founders.archives.gov/?q=Volume%3AAdams-04-01&s=1511311112&r=267" target="_blank">“Pharaoh” George III</a>, through the wilderness of war, to the promised land of independence. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The Reverend Abiel Abbot announced in a 1799 <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hbFVxZ3pHSVdfSU0/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">sermon</a>: “It has often been remarked that the people of the United States come nearer to a parallel with Ancient Israel, than any other nation upon the globe. Hence <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Our American Israel</i> is a term frequently used; and common consent allows it apt and proper.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qfyHkd7isPw/V3AWGUHvT4I/AAAAAAAADJA/tRO10CnDU6ITeH4OTRfiDsdVPNsXuStUgCLcB/s1600/Traits%2Bof%2BResemblance%2Bin%2Bthe%2BPeople%2Bof%2Bthe%2BUnited%2BStates%2Bof%2BAmerica%2Bto%2BAncient%2BIsrael%2B-%2BAbiel%2BAbbot%2B%255B1799%255D%2B%255B2%2Bcropped%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qfyHkd7isPw/V3AWGUHvT4I/AAAAAAAADJA/tRO10CnDU6ITeH4OTRfiDsdVPNsXuStUgCLcB/s400/Traits%2Bof%2BResemblance%2Bin%2Bthe%2BPeople%2Bof%2Bthe%2BUnited%2BStates%2Bof%2BAmerica%2Bto%2BAncient%2BIsrael%2B-%2BAbiel%2BAbbot%2B%255B1799%255D%2B%255B2%2Bcropped%255D.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Early Americans were among the first Zionists. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In 1819 <a href="http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7097" target="_blank">John Adams wrote</a> to the Jewish American writer and politician Mordecai Manuel Noah: “Farther I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites . . . & marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the dominion of it. For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Jacksonians tend to identify<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> with Israel, <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMWUxNDAzODItOTIxMy00ZTZhLTgwOWItZTA5MDllODNiOWYz/edit?hl=en_US" target="_blank">ancient and modern</a>. Nineteenth-century Jacksonians saw themselves as Israelites engaged in the holy work of winning the land from the Native American Canaanites. While fighting the Seminoles in Florida in 1818, <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNGUzZDdkYWYtNDYyYy00OTM5LWE0MWMtZmFjOGU0ZjZhNTIz&hl=en_US" target="_blank">Andrew Jackson </a>declared that <a href="http://books.google.com/books?ei=1LsdTuC0BIfTgQen_5zRCQ&ct=result&id=3ekMAAAAIAAJ&dq=bassett+correspondence+of+andrew+jackson&q=iseralites" target="_blank">his soldiers</a> were </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“like the Iseralites of old in the wilderness.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” <a href="http://books.google.com/books?ei=1LsdTuC0BIfTgQen_5zRCQ&ct=result&id=3ekMAAAAIAAJ&dq=bassett+correspondence+of+andrew+jackson&q=exciters" target="_blank">Jackson believed</a> his army acted as </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“the hand of heaven . . . pointed against the exciters of this war,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” on a mission to scatter the enemy </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“over the whole face of the Earth.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Present-day Jacksonians</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> admire Israeli </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20121120141717/http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/11/18/america-israel-gaza-the-world/" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">strength and resolve</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and view the Jewish state as a valuable ally in the war against radical Islam. </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">They also see Israel as a valiant David that shares American values, surrounded by a sea of Arab Muslim Goliaths whose social, cultural, and political mores leave Jacksonians baffled, whose states and societies are in meltdown, and whose embrace of jihadist terrorism places them beyond the pale of civilization and renders them enemies of the United States.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Israel is the source of the Abrahamic
faiths that claim the loyalty of at least half of mankind. Though small in
number as a people the contributions of the Jews to world civilization is
immense. (Though, as <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J6PH74lZan0J:https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium.MAGAZINE-judaism-not-a-major-historical-hero-1.5417341+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">Yuval Noah Harari</a> points out, Judaism as a religion has had a very minor impact on civilization, other than as the source of the ethical monotheism universalized by Christianity and Islam.) And so the historical and emotional importance of Israel and the Jews
to America and the world guarantee that Israel’s actions and destiny will remain
at the center of the world’s stage. (See, for example the current issue of <i><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/issues/2016/95/4#in-this-issue" target="_blank">Foreign Affairs</a></i>, cover shown below.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Of course when it comes to Israel and the Jews it’s
just </span><a href="http://foreigndaze.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/fear-loathing-the-fight-for-sanity-in-the-middle-east-and-beyond/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">not possible</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> for most observers to be fair and
balanced, or engage in calm, reasoned discourse. Israel and the Jews push too
many hot buttons for too many people – religious, historical, cultural,
psychological, and political – for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Friends
and foes of Israel, living in <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2016/07/mainstream-intolerant-palestinians/" target="_blank">alternate realities</a>, committed with </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">passionate intensity</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> to uncompromising positions, engage
in take-no-prisoners ideological jousts that inevitably </span><a href="http://www.jewcy.com/jewish-news/history-empathy-israeli-palestinian-conflict-social-media?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=history-empathy-israeli-palestinian-conflict-social-media" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">devolve</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> into incoherent paroxysms of righteous anger and rage.
(And yes, most of the anger and rage against Israel, these days largely </span><a href="http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/us_left_may_be_turning_against_israel_20050819" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">on the Left</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, <i>is</i> </span><a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100227161/anti-zionists-claim-to-be-completely-different-to-anti-semites-but-theres-one-key-thing-they-have-in-common/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">driven</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> by </span><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4419701,00.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">anti-Semitism</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. Walter Russell Mead calls this new incarnation of Jew-hatred the </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/2013/06/24/egypt-tightens-gaza-blockade-world-yawns/" target="_blank">Israel Outrage Industry</a>.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> See: </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/helen-thomas-and-bias-in-press-by.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Helen Thomas</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">.) There is simply too much </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZjA5Y0VNT3BQeE0/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">historical and emotional baggage</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> for all involved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I certainly make no claim to “objectivity.”
As an American, a Jew, and a Jacksonian, my sympathies are with Israel and her
people. I believe wholeheartedly in Zionism, the rebirth of Israel, its
language, culture, and historical heritage as a modern Jewish nation in its
ancient homeland. A nation that </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hY2RtMnJKOE1Mc2s/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">works to realize</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> its commitment to democracy, the </span><a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/15/sometimes-the-bad-news-is-also-good/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">rule of law</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, individual liberty, and the highest
moral aspirations of Judaism, however imperfectly, in the most trying of
circumstances.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">As to the other side, let me say
up-front that I have </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/04/pity-palestinians-count-me-out-by.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">little sympathy</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> for the Arab Palestinians or
their cause. There are 22 Arab states in the world, many </span><a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/garfinkle/2014/08/06/the-ironies-of-a-palestinian-state/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">increasingly</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> violent and </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140308044743/http:/www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/02/18/illuminating-reactions-to-an-unpopular-proposal/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">dysfunctional</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> (</span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/30/isis-announces-islamic-caliphate-iraq-syria" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">ISIS</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/13/isis-caliphate-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-jihadi-islam" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">caliphate</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOORW63ioY0" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">anyone</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">?);
I see </span><a href="http://abuyehuda.com/2014/09/why-a-palestinian-state-is-not-the-answer/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">no pressing need</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> for a </span><a href="http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2014/10/15/peace-when-ten-reasons-why-a-palestinian-state-now-is-bad-for-the-world/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">twenty-third</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. (Nor do </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151203222908/http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/11/30/does-the-world-need-a-weak-or-failing-palestinian-state" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Henry Kissinger</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140810031415/http:/www.the-american-interest.com/garfinkle/2014/08/06/the-ironies-of-a-palestinian-state" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Adam Garfinkle</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Israel, more than the United States and Europe, is on the front lines of a war of blood and faith with large parts of the world of Islam. “There is not much in human
affairs that is absolute,” writes anthropologist </span><a href="http://spme.org/spme-research/analysis/what-lies-behind-the-unrelenting-arab-rejection-of-israel/812/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Philip Carl Salzman</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, “but the Arab rejection of Israel
is as close to absolute as possible.” The deep </span><a href="http://www.meforum.org/1813/the-middle-easts-tribal-dna" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">tribal roots</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> of Arab culture (</span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hQVdTcFFZOG83WnM/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“I and my brother against my cousin</span></a><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hQVdTcFFZOG83WnM/edit"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">), the insistence on </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-west-and-islamism-testing-war-of.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Islamic supremacy</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> (what </span><a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/195279/terror-right-left" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Richard Landes calls</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> “triumphalist”
Islam), the belief that Jews can only be subordinate <i>dhimmis</i>, and
the call to avenge the humiliations of </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/07/without-understanding-arab-honor-you.html#.VqBNy5X2a1v" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">wounded honor</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> in an </span><a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/176673/emotional-nakba" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">honor-shame culture</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, make it almost impossible for Arabs and Muslims to
accept a sovereign Jewish state in the heart of the <i>dar al-Islam</i>.
Arab Muslims, like Palestinian Authority President </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/09/abbas-says-jews-have-filthy-feet.html#.Vgc9xpWFO1s" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Mahmoud Abbas</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, have </span><a href="http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-muslim-pedigree-for-dirty-jew.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">been taught</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> to believe that Jews are unclean
creatures whose </span><a href="http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5080.htm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">filthy feet</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> defile the sacred soil of </span><a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/10/12/abbas_must_be_stopped_128386.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Jerusalem</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The creation of Israel in 1948 is
condemned by Arabs and Muslims as a catastrophe (<i>nakba</i>) that displaced
between </span><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=uyPRCwAAQBAJ&dq=michael+mandelbaum+mission+failure&q=400%2C000#v=snippet&q=%22400%2C000%20Arabs%22&f=false" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">400,000</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> and 750,000 Arab Palestinians (</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_estimates_of_the_Palestinian_Refugee_flight_of_1948" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">estimates vary</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">; a larger number of </span><a href="http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.co.il/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Mizrahi Jews</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> were </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim_countries" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">expelled</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> from Muslim countries – a </span><a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/there-was-a-jewish-nakba-and-it-was-even-bigger-than-the-palestinian-one/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Jewish <i>nakba</i></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">), and overturned the natural order of
the world where Muslims rule and infidels submit. Political scientist Ian
Lustick </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hbU5DZTQ5RkNHa1U/edit?pref=2&pli=1" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">writes</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> that for Arabs and Muslims,
Israel’s “very creation and existence, constitute an unbearable
injustice.” He questions “whether Israel, as a Jewish country, can be
stomached by the vast Arab and Muslim majorities of the Middle East.” Hatred
of the “Zionist entity” among Arab Muslims is so intense,
Lustick warns, that it may be politically and psychologically impossible for
them to see any future for Israel “other than the fate of the
Crusaders.” That Israel is a </span><a href="http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2016/04/will_israel_reach_age_100_111810.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">successful, prosperous</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, </span><a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/15/sometimes-the-bad-news-is-also-good/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">dynamic modern society</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> while contemporary Arab societies are
catastrophic failures, only deepens the Arab sense of shame and humiliation and
intensifies the Arab commitment to eliminate the “Zionist
entity” as the only way to </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/07/without-understanding-arab-honor-you.html#.VqBNy5X2a1v" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">redeem honor</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> and attain justice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><b>(Update:</b> All this may be in the process of changing at the state level. The <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/does-the-times-want-middle-east-peace/" target="_blank">Iranian and ISIS threats</a> have led to a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/29/the-growing-arab-israeli-thaw-is-an-opportunity-for-the-west/" target="_blank">tentative thaw</a> between Israel and the Sunni Arab states. However Arab societies and the Arab street <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-meaning-of-olympic-snub-by-bret.html" target="_blank">remain virulently anti-Semitic</a>.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Arab Palestinians are an integral part of the broader Arab nation. The Arabs who live on both sides of the Jordan are the <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/so-just-what-is-a-palestinian-anyways/" target="_blank">same people</a> with the <a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2009/06/two-state-solution-is-victory-for-proxy.html" target="_blank">same culture</a>, language, and mix of ethnic and religious sects. Indeed the
same can be said for the entire Levant or “Greater Syria” (<a href="http://www.meforum.org/1877/a-land-without-a-people-for-a-people-without" target="_blank"><i>Bilad ash-Sham</i></a>, a claim <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hcFZ4MkExU3BfR1E/edit" target="_blank">frequently asserted</a> by the late Hafez al-Assad). Testifying before Britain</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Peel Commission in 1937, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awni_Abd_al-Hadi" target="_blank">Awni Bey Abd al-Hadi</a>, leader of the Arab nationalist Istiqlal Party, <a href="http://jewsdownunder.com/2013/12/17/quote-of-note-auni-bey-abdul-hadi-1937/" target="_blank">asserted</a>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">There
is no such country as Palestine. “Palestine” is a term the Zionists invented.
There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of
Syria. “Palestine” is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Zuheir Moshen, one-time leader of the as-Sa’iqa
faction of PLO, <a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2009/06/two-state-solution-is-victory-for-proxy.html" target="_blank">declared</a> in 1977 that there
never was a separate Palestinian nation. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” In 2015, PA President <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-plo-and-jordan-agree-jordan-is.html#.VXEA4svbK1s" target="_blank">Mahmoud Abbas stated</a> that Palestinians and Jordanians are </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“one people living in two states.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” A Jordanian government minister agreed with Abbas, <a href="http://www.alquds.edu/en/staff-news/139496-the-islamic-jerusalem-conference-at-al-quds-university.html" target="_blank">saying</a> that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Jordan and Palestine are one body with one spirit.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” In other words, <a href="http://www.meforum.org/3121/jordan-is-palestinian" target="_blank">Jordan <i>is</i> Palestine</a>.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> The existence of a distinct Arab Palestinian people was put forth solely as a weapon to fight Zionism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Far from dating back to “time immemorial,”
today’s Palestinian Arab population descends in large part from <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-truth-about-palestinian-immigration.html" target="_blank">immigrants</a> who
arrived between the 1830s and 1947. During the first twenty years of the British
mandate (1919-1938) some 419,000 Arabs migrated to Palestine. In those
same years they were joined by 343,000 Jews. In the <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-truth-about-palestinian-immigration.html" target="_blank">words</a> of Evelyn Gordon, “both
Palestinians and Jews comprise small indigenous populations augmented by
massive immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries.”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Take for instance Rana Baker, a Gaza-born blogger at The Electronic Intifada<i>, </i>graduate of SOAS, University of London, and Ph.D. student at Columbia University, <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/07/arab-writer-justifies-rocket-terror-as.html#.U8XVk7GiWSq" target="_blank">who declares</a> that resistance to </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span>settler-colonialism</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span> justifies violence targeted at Israeli civilians, including the cold-blooded murder of <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/06/15/supporting-terrorism-and-bigotry-at-the-electronic-intifada/" target="_blank">Israeli teenagers</a>. Baker</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rana-baker/finding-my-way-palestine-through-narrative" target="_blank">writes</a> that her family, of Syrian and Turkish origin, came to Palestine in the early twentieth century. The extended family of Palestinian
diplomat and <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/12/todays-list-of-lies-by-saeb-erekat.html#.VoKkTZVIi1s" target="_blank">professional liar</a> <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/changing-historical-narrative-saeb-erekats-new-spin/" target="_blank">Saeb Erekat</a>, despite <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/02/saeb-erekat-palestinians-were-here.html" target="_blank">his insistence</a> that they lived in
Jericho for 5,500 years before Joshua ben Nun arrived, are one of seven
clans of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howeitat" target="_blank">Howeitat</a> tribal confederation that migrated to Palestine around 1860 from the Howeitat
district of northwestern Arabia. Likewise the four main clans of the village of Umm el-Fahm <a href="http://sarahhonig.com/2015/05/14/another-tack-a-delegitimization-called-nakba/" target="_blank">traced their origins</a> to Ottoman-era migrants from Syria, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. Other clans, attracted by the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150610012408/https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/06/09/two-state-sollution-cannot-be-bought/" target="_blank">economic opportunities</a> created by Zionism, came to the village from Egypt and Transjordan during the British mandate. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The Baker and Erekat families, like the clans of Umm el-Fahm, were
following the same path as <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hWnZxVmVPTy1QeTQ/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">Sheikh ‘Izz al-Dīn al-Qassām</a>, the charismatic
Islamist <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hTVRYanhWVkc3bUU/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">preacher</a>, <i>fidai</i> (guerrilla), and inspiration for Hamas, who died leading
a <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hRzBYY1dFSzRiLTg/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">jihad</a> against the Jews and the British in 1935. Qassām was born in northern
Syria and migrated to Palestine in 1920 at age thirty-eight.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> One of the great heroes and </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span>martyrs</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> of the Palestinian resistance, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">the first Palestinian <i>fidai</i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">as <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinians-and-dilemmas-solidarity/14518" target="_blank">Joseph Massad</a> calls him, was </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hLThoREg2cEFWd0k/edit" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">not really</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> a Palestinian at all.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Well, as no less a figure than <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-truth-about-palestinian-immigration.html" target="_blank">Fathi Hammad</a>, the Hamas minister of the interior and national security, <a href="http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3389.htm" target="_blank">explains</a>: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Allah
be praised, we all have Arab roots, and every Palestinian, in Gaza and
throughout Palestine, can prove his Arab roots – whether from Saudi Arabia,
from Yemen, or anywhere. We have blood ties. So where is your affection and
mercy?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[...]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Personally,
half my family is Egyptian. We are all like that. More than 30 families in the
Gaza Strip are called Al-Masri [“Egyptian”]. Brothers, half of the Palestinians
are Egyptians and the other half are Saudis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Who are
the Palestinians? We have many families called Al-Masri, whose roots are
Egyptian. Egyptian! They may be from Alexandria, from Cairo, from Dumietta,
from the North, from Aswan, from Upper Egypt. We are Egyptians. We are Arabs.
We are Muslims. We are a part of you.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Hammad adds that Palestine is </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span></span>the spearhead for Islam</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span></span> and the tip of the Jihad. The idea, or <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Into-the-fray-The-two-stage-solution-379041" target="_blank">the myth</a>, of a Palestinian Arab nation <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/01/plo-foreign-minister-if-jews-have.html#.VBuk98t0y1t" target="_blank">as distinct</a> from the larger Arab Muslim nation <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143249/zachary-j-foster/whats-a-palestinian?cid=nlc-foreign_affairs_today-031215-whats_a_palestinian_5-031215&sp_mid=48212082&sp_rid=andlaWNrZ2VuYW50QHJlYWxjbGVhcndvcmxkLmNvbQS2" target="_blank">began to develop</a> in the 1920s, but <a href="http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/01/pinkwashing-redwashing-greenwashing-the-multi-colored-world-of-anti-israel-hate/comment-page-1/#comment-498585" target="_blank">did not fully emerge</a> until the 1960s. Historian and blogger Michael Lumish <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/09/arab-racism-and-insipid-western.html#.VDFxrxa_6VZ" target="_blank">gets it</a> just right: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span></span></span>I do not see where the Jewish people are under any obligation (moral, legal, or otherwise) to recognize a people who only recently constituted themselves <i>as</i> a people for the sole purpose of opposing the creation and maintenance of our small home.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span></span></span> Not every Arab <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hbzgtbEhvRm5ISEk/edit" target="_blank">tribe</a> that calls itself a nation <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/As-I-See-It-The-academic-intifada-380377#comment-1663051563" target="_blank">has the right</a> to its own <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6214/palestinian-dream" target="_blank">failed state</a>. There are enough <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/opinion/23friedman.html" target="_blank">tribes with flags</a> in the Middle East <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4641650,00.html" target="_blank">already</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T7xDLRena_k/V2oGxNaCx6I/AAAAAAAADIY/W16W8PGUQM8iLoVStRYBf7xXdR-pg-LVQCLcB/s1600/Jerusalem%252C%2Bthe%2BIDF%2Benters%2Bthe%2BOld%2BCity%2Bthrough%2Bthe%2BLions%2BGate%252C%2B1967%2B-%2Bgate%2Blion%2Bidf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="490" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T7xDLRena_k/V2oGxNaCx6I/AAAAAAAADIY/W16W8PGUQM8iLoVStRYBf7xXdR-pg-LVQCLcB/s640/Jerusalem%252C%2Bthe%2BIDF%2Benters%2Bthe%2BOld%2BCity%2Bthrough%2Bthe%2BLions%2BGate%252C%2B1967%2B-%2Bgate%2Blion%2Bidf.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">The IDF entering the Old City of Jerusalem through Lions Gate, June 1967. <a href="http://www.israeldailypicture.com/2012/05/jerusalem-day-celebrating-reunification.html" target="_blank">IsraelDailyPicture.com</a>.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Nonetheless, f</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">or reasons of both realpolitik and the
hope for reconciliation between two peoples dealt a hard hand by history, I was
in favor of Israel trying to accommodate Palestinian aspirations in a two-state
solution during the Oslo period of the 1990s. At that time I believed it was possible
for the Palestinians to achieve self-determination while allowing the people of
Israel to live in peace alongside their Palestinian neighbors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">A second intifada, three rejected offers
of statehood, three wars with Hamas and Hezbollah later, and the sight of
Palestinians </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Get5aG1sM" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">dancing in celebration </span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">on 9/11, have </span><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/10/19/the-two-state-solution-is-dead/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">changed my mind</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">. Self-determination for
Palestinians </span><a href="http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2014/10/15/peace-when-ten-reasons-why-a-palestinian-state-now-is-bad-for-the-world/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">can only be conditional</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> on their willingness to live in
peace with the Jewish people and the Jewish state. So far the Palestinians have
shown that </span><a href="http://thefederalist.com/2014/11/19/lets-face-it-the-two-state-solution-is-dead-and-obama-helped-kill-it/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">they are not ready </span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">to do this. Indeed, by insisting on
a “right of return,” by continuing to engage in and support
terrorism, by </span><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Abbas-to-blame-for-Jlem-violence-381301" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">saturating their society</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> with an unending stream of </span><a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/hate-israel-article-1.1905354" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">anti-Semitic hatred</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> through their media and <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/how-oslo-enabled-hate-palestinian-education/" target="_blank">education system</a>, and demanding that any future state be <i><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/abbas-arabs-in-israel-no-jews-in.html" target="_blank">Judenrein</a></i>,
the Palestinians have shown that they are still committed to Israel’s
destruction. “Israel is prepared to give up land,” Charles Krauthammer </span><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjf4drO6MDJAhVC7R4KHf8HA4oQFggcMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fopinions%2Fland-without-peace-why-abbas-went-to-the-un%2F2011%2F09%2F29%2FgIQACaoI8K_story.html&usg=AFQjCNFvUF-7ZCop0XBV8BTfTbSzSuPp7w&sig2=iMg8kQIHtOcIICRhijcQVA" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">writes</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, “but never again without peace. A final peace. Which is
exactly what every Palestinian leader from Haj Amin al-Husseini to Yasser
Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas has refused to accept.” Krauthammer adds that
“territorial disputes are solvable; existential conflicts are not.” And
Shlomo Avineri </span><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hN8hw15olTUJ:www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.605307+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">writes</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">: “The truth is that in the Palestinian narrative, the Jews
are neither a people nor a nation, but merely a religious community; therefore
they aren’t entitled to a state.” Yossi Kuperwasser lists </span><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B4Gw2X969PgJ:www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.648598+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">five fundamental principles</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> on which the Palestinians reject a
Jewish state, principles shared by much of the Israel Outrage Industry:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is no Jewish people.
Judaism is a religion, not a national group, and therefore the Jews have no
right to self-determination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Jews never had sovereignty
in the Land of Israel, and therefore there is no justification for their claim
to a Jewish state here – as a result, the disappearance of the State of Israel
is inevitable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Jews are faulty beings,
which is why the Europeans sought to be rid of them – there is therefore no
justification for the Palestinians, who have owned the land for ages and are
the descendants of the Canaanites, having to actually suffer
being in their vicinity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">All means that will expedite
the disappearance of Israel are legitimate, including armed struggle, popular
uprising and diplomatic activities. Methods that promise the greatest
achievements at the least possible cost are always to be preferred. Currently,
the focus must be on the diplomatic and legal campaign and on a popular
uprising (including the use of force without live weaponry).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Palestinians are victims of
Israel and the West, and therefore those parties have no right to demand that
the Palestinians accept responsibility for their deeds or criticism over their
course of action.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">David P. Goldman (a.k.a. Spengler) </span><a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA17Ak08.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">observes</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> that “the Palestinians are not an
oppressed people, but rather the irreconcilable remnants of a once-victorious
but now defeated empire, living in an irredentist dream world in which a new
Salahuddin will drive the new Crusaders into the sea.” In hindsight it
is clear that the </span><a href="http://www.meforum.org/783/the-oslo-syndrome-delusions-of-a-people-under" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Oslo Accords</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> were a disastrous </span><a href="http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2014/03/israels-big-mistake/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">strategic blunder</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> from which Israel is </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/09/israels-two-greatest-strategic-mistakes.html#.VfuI_ZWFO1s" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">struggling</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> to recover. To quote the <i>Wall
Street Journal</i>’s </span><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/lies_damn_lies_and_j_street.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Bret Stephens</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">: “I’m not against a two-state solution,
if the other state is Canada. Do we think Israel should be party to the birth
of the 23rd Arab state, another Iran hard on its borders?” A Palestinian
state in Judah, Samaria, and Gaza with no limits on its sovereignty is
geopolitically infeasible if not impossible. So </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hSFU0NHNSMVIxeVk/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">conclude</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> the strategic analysts at Stratfor.
Martin Sherman argues that a fully sovereign Palestinian state, a state that
would not be demilitarized, would violate Israel’s </span><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Into-the-fray-Delegitimization-anti-Semitism-and-BDS-Sharanskys-misdirected-lament-403806" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">minimum security requirements</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">. “Why,” </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/01/israels-future-by-cal-thomas.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Sherman asks</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, “would the world accept another
state that is misogynist and homophobic? Jews must realize that between the
River and the Sea there will be either Jewish or Muslim sovereignty.” There
is simply no room for two sovereign states west of the Jordan River. This hard
reality is not often discussed or acknowledged.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The bottom line is that the <a href="http://israel-thrives.blogspot.com/2015/03/one-state-two-state-red-state-blue-state.html" target="_blank">two-state solution</a> is dead because a <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-expiration-date-on-palestine-mike.html#.VQdVM8t0y1s" target="_blank">majority of Palestinians </a>don</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’t want and never did want any of the realistic versions of statehood with <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/aug/15/what-future-israel/" target="_blank">restricted sovereignty</a> that have been or can be offered. The two-state solution envisioned by the Palestinians would be, to quote <a href="http://therightscoop.com/mark-levin-exposes-why-obama-really-called-netanyahu-and-it-wasnt-to-congratulate-him/" target="_blank">Mark Levin</a>, the </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">final solution</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> for Israel. Anne-Marie Slaughter, former State Department deputy to Hillary Clinton and now president of the New America Foundation, <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/netanyahu-ignores-palestine-problem-by-anne-marie-slaughter-2015-03" target="_blank">insists</a> that Israel</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s leaders</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">by ignoring </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Palestinian dreams, are courting a nightmare.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Ms. Slaughter, trapped in the dead-end logic and <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hTmwzbmFhSXRnZGs/edit" target="_blank">false religion</a> of the Middle East peace process, has it all wrong. It is the fulfillment of the Palestinian dream </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> the destruction of the Jewish state and the genocide of the Jewish people </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">–</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> that would be the true nightmare.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“I</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’m not going to change my narrative,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/02/saeb-erekat-palestinians-were-here.html" target="_blank">Saeb Erekat</a> declares. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“When you say accept Israel as a Jewish state it means you</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’re asking me to change my narrative.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Yes Saeb, if you are <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7849/palestinians-accept-jewish-israel" target="_blank">serious about peace</a> you will have to <a href="http://david-collier.com/?p=1944" target="_blank">change your narrative</a>, which is <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/07/jim-crow-for-jews-and-artificial.html#.Vbb14_1761s" target="_blank">less than truthful</a> about Jewish and Arab history. The Palestinians need a serious attitude adjustment on the reality of Jewish nationhood. Strategic analyst and historian Michael Mandelbaum agrees. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Peace,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/peace-process-obstacle-peace/" target="_blank">writes Mandelbaum</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“requires a fundamental change of attitude on the part of the Palestinians, nothing less.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oixHJIDdvwM/V3ARJCI1_UI/AAAAAAAADIo/G4WSve7jR-o2HDKRwYOByfrLIFKa3oCkACLcB/s1600/for%2Bworld%2Bpeace%2Bisrael%2Bmust%2Bbe%2Bdestroyed%2Btrafalgar%2Bsquare%2Brichard%2Bmillett%2B-%2Bdscf2691.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oixHJIDdvwM/V3ARJCI1_UI/AAAAAAAADIo/G4WSve7jR-o2HDKRwYOByfrLIFKa3oCkACLcB/s640/for%2Bworld%2Bpeace%2Bisrael%2Bmust%2Bbe%2Bdestroyed%2Btrafalgar%2Bsquare%2Brichard%2Bmillett%2B-%2Bdscf2691.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/lauren-booth-lebanon-jordan-and-egypt-must-liberate-jerusalem/" target="_blank">Trafalgar Square, London, August 21, 2011.</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Jacksonians are now the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100317161643/http:/blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/03/15/the-israel-crisis/" target="_blank">strongest supporters of Israel</a> in the United States. And since the concept of </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/07/without-understanding-arab-honor-you.html#.U9m8Tst0y1u" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">honor</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> is as central to the </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYTBhYjIzNzYtYTA3ZS00MmYzLWJkNDItNGMwOTNiMmRiNzlm/edit?hl=en_US" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Jacksonian</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> mindset as it is to </span><a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/176673/emotional-nakba?all=1" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Arabs</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> and Muslims, they understand something that eludes
liberal progressives: that the Palestinians and their supporters in the Islamic
world and the West don’t want peace with Israel; they want </span><a href="http://www.dennisprager.com/the-palestinians-want-peace-just-not-with-a-jewish-state/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">peace with no Israel</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">. In the West anti-Semitism </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140220091652/http:/www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/08/12/the-end-of-european-jewry-anti-semitism-gurfinkiel" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">has made a comeback</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> in its old </span><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/03/is-it-time-for-the-jews-to-leave-europe/386279/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">European</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> haunts, while trendy left-wing
“postcolonialist” academic theorists like </span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/123497477/The-Iron-Cage" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Rashid Khalidi</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/06/zionism-and-israel-are-anti-semitic-by.html#uds-search-results" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Joseph Massad</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, and </span><a href="http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/07/u-illinois-prof-zionists-partly-to-blame-for-recent-outbursts-of-anti-semitism/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Steven Salaita</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, disciples of the late </span><a href="http://www.middleeast.org/archives/8-00-31.htm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Edward Said</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">,
aim to delegitimize Israel among <i>bien-pensant</i> progressive
opinion makers by declaring it the unredeemable spawn of Western </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYXRiaDFiamJFQmc/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">colonialism</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Western and Islamic anti-Zionists are
aided and abetted by members of Israel’s “post-Zionist” <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hT1BrU09jazBxb1U/edit" target="_blank">adversary culture</a>: journalists
like <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cbohW8-AetcJ:www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/palestinians-are-heroes-braving-israeli-dictatorship-1.402660+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">Amira Hass</a>, <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/02/gideon-levy-baron-of-israel-falsehood.html" target="_blank">Gideon Levy</a>, <a href="http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2007/12/27/david-landau-oslo-logician-asks-condi-rice-to-rape-israel/" target="_blank">David Landau</a>, <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/10/mairav-zonszeins-hate-for-israel.html#.VCyF38t0y1s" target="_blank">Mairav Zonszein</a>, and other writers at the newspaper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Haaretz</i> and the online journal <a href="http://972mag.com/" target="_blank">+972</a>;
academics such as the historian <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books/magazine/85344/ilan-pappe-sloppy-dishonest-historian" target="_blank">Ilan Pappé</a> (Israel’s Howard Zinn), philosopher <a href="http://oznik.com/words/040712.html" target="_blank">Anat Biletzky</a>, sociologist <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3a_rv1xW0n4J:www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.572880+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">Eva Illouz</a>, and political scientist <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2009/01/12/jailer-state" target="_blank">Oren Yiftachel</a>; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">NGOs, especially the pro-Palestinian advocacy
group <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hVU55dlJXQUs5Y2s/edit" target="_blank">B’Tselem</a>; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">and an
assortment of other individuals and groups. These left-wing elites, like their <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/07/ten_reasons_i_am_no_longer_a_leftist.html" target="_blank">American counterparts</a>, despise their own people whom they <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-fcdKi3NUrQJ:www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.578365+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">deride</a> as <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:p_ubMF_iKbsJ:www.haaretz.com/news/israel/apartheid-without-shame-or-guilt.premium-1.471650+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">racists</a>, <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/messages-israels-election/14359" target="_blank">colonialists</a>, and
<a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZU1rd0tTekpoUzA/edit" target="_blank">Islamophobes</a>, have <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140509075248/http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/05/05/why-the-left-resents-israeli-democracy" target="_blank">contempt</a> for the <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMjRENW85Q00tSnM/edit" target="_blank">democratic process</a>, and condemn their nation as the embodiment of evil, while using
every trick of intellectual casuistry to <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/08/culture-of-violence-palestinian-hobby.html" target="_blank">justify </a>and exonerate Palestinian
terrorism. The late <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/helen-thomas-and-bias-in-press-by.html" target="_blank">Helen Thomas</a>, one-time dean of White House correspondents,
revealed the true agenda of Western anti-Zionists (and ended her own
career) when <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/06/04/helen_thomas_to_jews_get_the_hell_out_of_palestine.html" target="_blank">she called on the Jews</a> “to get the hell out of Palestine” (a
sentiment recently <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/12/max-blumenthal-discusses-goliath-life.html" target="_blank">seconded</a> by <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-anti-zionist-civil-war-on-left-by.html" target="_blank">Max Blumenthal</a>). The slogan chanted at
pro-Palestinian rallies in Europe and the United States, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35P9N-dD2QU" target="_blank">“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,”</a> is nothing less than <a href="http://david-collier.com/?p=806" target="_blank">a call</a> for the <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/article/2013/07/the_palestinian_problem.html" target="_blank">genocide</a> of
the Jews.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">If the Palestinians’ opponents were
anyone other than the Jews, the international community (and the </span><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/07/31/The-Left-Hate-Israel-Because-It-Is-Everything-They-Despise-Capitalist-Conservative-and-Patriotic" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">radical Left</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">) would show them the </span><a href="http://divestthis.com/2014/03/ballad-of-the-bdsbyterians.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">same contempt</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> it shows the Kurds, Tibetans, North
Koreans, Assyrian and Coptic Christians, and so many other </span><a href="http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2014/10/15/peace-when-ten-reasons-why-a-palestinian-state-now-is-bad-for-the-world/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">ethnic and religious groups</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> in distress across the globe. </span><a href="http://zioncon.blogspot.com/2013/02/meet-bds-holes.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Hatred of the Jews</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, not </span><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/11/cambridge-professor-refuses-to-answer.html#.Vl23SZWFO1s" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">compassion for suffering</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> Palestinians, </span><a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2013/06/24/egypt-tightens-gaza-blockade-world-yawns/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">motivates</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> left-wing anti-Zionist activist
groups in the Israel Outrage Industry.</span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Progressive anti-Zionists refuse to
acknowledge that </span><a href="http://jcpa.org/article/whitewashing-palestine-eliminate-israel-case-one-state-advocates/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">there are no secular democratic states</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> in the Arab world where the rights of
ethnic and religious minorities receive </span><a href="http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2015/05/19/jewish-anti-zionism-the-proxy-honor-killing/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">any protection</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, let alone treat them as equal citizens.
This includes the Palestinians who have been <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Abbas-to-blame-for-Jlem-violence-381301" target="_blank">indoctrinated</a>
by both </span><a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/08/01/why-they-fight-hamas-too-little-known-fascist-charter/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Hamas</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and Fatah into an </span><a href="http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/%E2%80%9Cwe-harvest-skulls-jews%E2%80%9D" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Islamo-Nazi</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> culture of hate, where
militants </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/12/islamic-militant-al-ahrar-movement-in.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">call the killing of Jews</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and harvesting their skulls “an act
of worship,” and </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/palestinian-authority-uses-young-girls.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">young girls recite poems</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> declaring Jews to be monkeys and
pigs “condemned to humiliation and hardship.” Journalist <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/after-30-years-author-finds-arab-and-jewish-spirits-more-deeply-wounded/" target="_blank">David Shipler</a> and researcher <a href="http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2015/11/what-do-palestinians-want/" target="_blank">Daniel Polisar</a> both found that Palestinian attitudes have become more implacably antisemitic in the twenty years since the Oslo Accords; that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“there is less </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">– if any </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">– daylight between individual Palestinians</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’ expressed opinions and the official line of the Palestinian leadership.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Mahmoud Abbas and other
Palestinian leaders <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9086/abbas-peres-funeral" target="_blank">are now trapped</a> in this </span><a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7920/palestinians-peace" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">culture of hate</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> they helped create. Indeed, Abbas
continues to </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/10/clueless-about-religious-war-by.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">foment hatred</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> of Jews by spreading the </span><a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/10/12/abbas_must_be_stopped_128386.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">blood libel</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> that Jews seek to <a href="http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5080.htm" target="_blank">defile the Al Aqsa Mosque</a> “with
their filthy feet.” <a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/06/26/abbas-goes-off-deep-end-and-even-the-nyt-cant-overlook-it/" target="_blank">Speaking</a> before the <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/europe/european-parliament-rewards-hate/" target="_blank">European Parliament</a> just two days ago, <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2016/06/transcript-of-abbas-eu-speech-filled.html" target="_blank">Abbas revived</a> another <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2016/06/abbas-walks-back-poisoning-wells-claim.html" target="_blank">ancient blood libel</a>, accusing the Jews of <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/206162/abbas-tells-eu-parliament-that-israeli-rabbis-called-to-poison-palestinian-water" target="_blank">poisoning</a> Palestinian wells. More disturbing was the <a href="https://twitter.com/tovahlazaroff/status/745918191541563392" target="_blank">standing ovation</a> Abbas received from the assembled European representatives. Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky </span><a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/sharanskys-guide-to-the-regions-human-rights-dilemmas/?" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">told</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> The Times of
Israel’s David Horovitz that “if Abbas were to say, ‘We can accept
the fact that Jews will live here,’ he would be killed.” Edward Said at
least was more honest than his postcolonialist disciples in acknowledging the
uncertain future of a Jewish minority in an Arab Muslim majority state. “I
worry about that,” </span><a href="http://www.middleeast.org/archives/8-00-31.htm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Said told</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> <i>Haaretz</i>’s
Ari Shavit in 2000. “It worries me a great deal. The question of what is
going be the fate of the Jews is very difficult for me. I really
don’t know.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://jcpa.org/article/whitewashing-palestine-eliminate-israel-case-one-state-advocates/" target="_blank">Joseph Spoerl points out</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> that anti-Zionist advocates of a
binational “secular democratic” Palestine, “systematically whitewash
Palestinian political culture by denying, ignoring, or obscuring its Islamic,
Islamist, and antisemitic aspects. Their goal is to distract their readers from
the illiberal, undemocratic aspects of Palestinian society so as to keep the
focus relentlessly on the real or imagined sins of Israel.” They also promote
what </span><a href="http://martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/ivory-towers-on-sand-the-failure-of-middle-eastern-studies-in-america/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Martin Kramer calls</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> “the myth of Palestinian
exceptionalism.” Palestinian political culture, the Israel Outrage Industry
insists, is unique in the Arab world in its commitment to democracy, equality,
tolerance, non-violence, and respect for diverse points of view. This certainly
would make the Palestinians the exception to the Arab Muslim norm. But as
Kramer says it is a myth, a “triumph of image over substance.” Palestinian
historian </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2538003?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Ahmad Samih Khalidi</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> admitted as much in 1996:</span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">No matter what image the
Palestinians have of themselves—in particular the carefully cultivated self-
image of the large and vociferous Palestinian intelligentsia—the truth is that
Palestinian society in its basic structure and orientation is fundamentally no
different from the Arab societies that surround it. Even a fervent belief in
the justice and morality of the Palestinian cause should not blind us to the
realities of Palestinian social and political conditions and to the fact that
the kind of regime that will initially emerge from these conditions will in
many ways replicate other regimes that have sprung from similar conditions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Palestinian society, Khalidi added, was “still
dominated by traditional rural modes of action and behavior, still motivated by
local differences and tribal rivalries, and still marked by conflicts of class
and clan.” Neither Palestinian Arab nor any other Arab Muslim society had any
experience with or commitment to secular democratic norms. So it was no
surprise that the Palestinian Authority of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas
would become a typically corrupt Middle Eastern autocracy. To have expected
otherwise, Khalidi concluded, was “either naïve or ill informed.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Benny Morris, the preeminent historian of
Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and the </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hUXNSVWIxLXdySG8/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Palestinian <i>nakba</i></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, </span><a href="http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/05/14/on-the-meaning-of-secular-in-arab-discourse-benny-morris-and-palestinian-identity/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">lays out</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> the </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hY1NHZGpXd1h5eE0/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">true meaning</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> of a </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYVlMVDd1d0JFVUU/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“secular democratic Palestine”</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Palestinian vision was
never — as described by various Palestinian spokesmen in the 1960s, 1970s and
1980s to Western journalists — of a “secular, democratic Palestine” (though it
certainly sounded more palatable than, say, the “destruction of Israel,” which
was the goal it was meant to paper over or camouflage). Indeed, “a secular
democratic Palestine” had never been the goal of Fatah or the so-called
moderate groups that dominated the PLO between the 1960s and the 2006 elections
that brought Hamas to power. . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And today, again, and for the
same reasons – the phrase retains its good, multicultural, liberal ring – “a
secular, democratic Palestine” is bandied about by Palestinian one-state
supporters. And a few one-statists, indeed, may sincerely believe in and desire
such a denouement. But given the realities of Palestinian politics and
behaviour, the phrase objectively serves merely as camouflage for the goal of a
Muslim Arab-dominated polity to replace Israel. And, as in the past, the goal
of “a secular democratic Palestine” is not the platform or policy of any major
Palestinian political institution or party.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Indeed, the idea of a “secular
democratic Palestine” is as much a nonstarter today as it was three decades
ago. It is a nonstarter primarily because the Palestinian Arabs, like the
world’s other Muslim Arab communities, are deeply religious and have no respect
for democratic values and no tradition of democratic governance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">A reader </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/01/ali-abunimah-and-hussein-ibish-personal.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">commenting</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> on an article about the Electronic
Initifada’s Ali Abunimah on the <i>Jewish Daily Forward</i> website
suggests that his vision for the Jews is the same as that of the </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hM1V4QU1OM0p6Szg/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Tsarist</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> minister </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=AVwLAAAAIAAJ&q=%22will+die+out%22#v=snippet&q=%22will%20die%20out%22&f=false" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Konstantin Pobedonostsev</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">: “One-third will die out, one-third will
leave the country, and one-third will be completely dissolved in the
surrounding population.” Perhaps this is what anti-Zionist activists <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/01/omar-barghouti-admits-bds-wants-to.html" target="_blank">Omar Barghouti</a> and <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/189172/max-blumenthal-and-anti-zionists" target="_blank">Max Blumenthal</a> mean when they say that Jewish colonialists must be
“indigenized.” So behind their </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/opinion/sunday/why-the-boycott-movement-scares-israel.html?_r=3" target="_blank">talk of human rights </a>and </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">fancy academic jargon,
what Barghouti, Blumenthal, and Abunimah (and the </span><a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6263/khamenei-israel-palestine" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Ayatollah Khamenei</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">) are saying is that those Jews
allowed to remain in the new Palestine, those whose </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/12/islamic-militant-al-ahrar-movement-in.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">skulls have not been harvested</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> by Hamas, will be granted the </span><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dAu5TPVLddEJ:www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.570879+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">traditional status of <i>dhimmis</i></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, second-class subjects or worse in an
Arab Muslim state.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“Palestine is our land and the Jews are
our dogs!” the rallying cry of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Nebi_Musa_riots" target="_blank">Nebi Musa rioters</a> in 1920 is still the defining
sentiment of Palestinian nationalism, the Arab street, and radical Islam. Anti-Zionist protesters from Jerusalem to
San Francisco have shouted it out <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2009/12/palestinian-arabs-call-jews-their-dogs_23.html#.UvMacS8o61t" target="_blank">as recently</a> as 2009. Likewise <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2014/09/syrian-demonstrations-against-airstrikes-obama-we-are-digging-your-grave.html/" target="_blank">demonstrators</a> throughout the Arab world <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/10/u-of-jordan-students-chant-khaybar.html#.VElmO8t0y1s" target="_blank">chant</a> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Indeed Muhammad</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s defeat and extermination of the Jews at the Battle of Khaybar is frequently <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/ramadan-series-khaybar-is-battle-cry.html" target="_blank">celebrated and reenacted</a> in Arab popular culture. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7ha21GTkY3bGxRZlU/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">Postcolonial theory</a>, the dominant ideology of the academic Left, has <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hVDV3NDFoV2ZyNmc/edit" target="_blank">nothing relevant</a> to <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/09/toxicity-mike-lumish.html#.Ve0TrJWFO1t" target="_blank">say about</a> the Israeli-Palestinian <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hVHVnUWc3YzgzaHM/edit" target="_blank">conflict</a>. It
was not Jewish immigration and settlement <i>per se</i> that provoked Arab Muslim anger,
<a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNHdsbktFWlk0RGc/edit" target="_blank">writes</a> historian Yaacov Lozowick, “but the Jewish attempt to change the rules
by ceasing to be subordinate <i>dhimmis</i>
and to strive for a national home. The Palestinians rejected Jewish aspirations
not because they were European colonialists and foreign invaders, but because they
were familiar, second-class locals who had suddenly dared to overturn the
natural order.” This <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/seeds-of-conflict-could-sow-confusion/" target="_blank">natural order</a> was vividly described by H. E. Wilkie Young, British vice consul in Mosul in 1909, who <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMW8wT2NZdk1rVDA/edit" target="_blank">witnessed firsthand</a> just how the subordination of Jewish and Christian <i>dhimmis</i> was enforced in a traditional Arab Muslim-majority society:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The
attitude of the Moslems towards the Christians and Jews, to whom as stated above,
they are in a majority of ten to one, is that of a master towards slaves whom
he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place. Any
sign of pretension to equality is promptly repressed. It is often noticed in
the street that almost any Christian submissively makes way even for a Moslem
child. Only a few days ago the writer saw two respectable-looking, middle-aged Jews
walking in a garden. A small Moslem boy, who could not have been more than
eight years old, passed by and, as he did so, picked up a large stone and threw
it at them—and then another—with the utmost nonchalance, just as a small boy
elsewhere might aim at a dog or bird. The Jews stooped and avoided the aim,
which was a good one, but made no further protest.</span></div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Please note how the Muslim child in Young’s report treated the adult Jews as his dogs by <a href="http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2013/04/amira-hass-ignores-centuries-of-muslims.html" target="_blank">throwing stones</a> at them. </span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nVZTQTgspug/U_O-b7HefLI/AAAAAAAACg8/rEhVWON2FYo/s1600/Two%2BJews%2Bof%2BMosul%2B-%2B%5B4%2Bcropped%5D%2B(Credit_%2BKeystone-Mast%2BCollection%2C%2BCalifornia%2BMuseum%2Bof%2BPhotography%2Bat%2BUCR).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nVZTQTgspug/U_O-b7HefLI/AAAAAAAACg8/rEhVWON2FYo/s1600/Two%2BJews%2Bof%2BMosul%2B-%2B%5B4%2Bcropped%5D%2B(Credit_%2BKeystone-Mast%2BCollection%2C%2BCalifornia%2BMuseum%2Bof%2BPhotography%2Bat%2BUCR).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Jews as <i>dhimmis</i> in a traditional Muslim society. Two Jews of Mosul, c. 1910. <a href="http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt1w1028fh/?order=2" target="_blank">Keystone-Mast Collection, Univ. of California, Riverside</a>.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Young’s story illustrates how the history
of the <a href="http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2014/06/mizrahi-nation/" target="_blank">Mizrahi Jews</a>, the Arabic- and Persian-speaking Jews of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dar al-Islam</i>, turns the postcolonialist
paradigm on its head. In the words of <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/09/placing-colonial-boot-on-arab-foot-by.html" target="_blank">Lyn Julius</a>, it places “the colonial boot
on the Arab foot.” Indeed, the Arabs were among the <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/08/harris-gershon-heritage-theft-and.html#.VAP2w8t0y1s" target="_blank">most successful</a> <a href="http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5426.htm" target="_blank">colonizers and imperialists</a> in world history. Arab conquerors, filled with zeal for their
new religion of Islam, swept out of Arabia in the seventh century, imposing
their language and their faith on the largely <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/09/is-there-really-and-aramean-nation-by.html" target="_blank">Aramaic-speaking</a> Christian and
Jewish communities of the Middle East. The achievement of postcolonialist godfather and con-man <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/edward-said-oppressed-fraud/" target="_blank">Edward Said</a> was to convince liberal progressive opinion makers that <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Commemorating-the-Jewish-refugees-from-the-Arab-World-382063" target="_blank">Arab Muslim conquerors </a>and imperialists were the downtrodden victims of European </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">–</span> and Jewish! </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">–</span> imperialism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">For most of the Middle Ages <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hV3hoaXc3aTZJNG8/edit" target="_blank">some 75 percent</a> of the world’s Jews lived in Iraq, Iran and other Islamic lands. There were two sides to the
Jewish experience in the Muslim world. On the one hand Mizrahi Jews flourished
for long periods under the various caliphates, creating an economically and
culturally dynamic urban civilization. The key to Mizrahi Jewish prosperity under Islam was tolerance. Amy Chua (yes, before she became the notorious </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span></span><a href="http://nypost.com/2014/01/04/tiger-mom-some-groups-are-just-better-than-others/" target="_blank">Tiger Mom</a>,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span></span> she was a serious scholar of <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYUwtdkZCczRuSGs/edit" target="_blank">empires in history</a>) writes that tolerance </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">– </span><i>relative</i> tolerance </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">–</span> was the defining characteristic of all of history</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">’</span>s great civilizational empires. Tolerance, as Chua <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hVllxdWpBSWNzT1k/edit" target="_blank">defines it</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span></span></span>means letting very different kinds of people live, work, and prosper in your society </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">– even if only for instrumental and strategic reasons.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">” Chua adds that tolerance refers</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“</span>to the degree of freedom with which individuals or groups of different ethnic, religious, racial, linguistic, or other backgrounds are permitted to coexist, participate, and rise in society.<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Tolerance, Chua notes, does not necessarily mean respect for subject peoples by an empire</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">’</span></span>s dominant group. An empire</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">’</span></span>s rulers can make use of its subject people</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">’</span></span>s talents while still holding them in contempt. This was the other side of the Jewish experience as <i>dhimmis</i>, the <a href="http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42d75369-d582-4380-8395-d25925b85eaf%7D/wistrichantisemitism.pdf" target="_blank">legal term</a> for subject peoples under Islam.</span></span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NpsQ8JpvZ5I/Vf8-Yr2eYhI/AAAAAAAACvI/rb9W70aPD0w/s1600/The%2BCourt%2Bof%2Bthe%2BCaliphate%2Bof%2BCordova%2Bin%2Bthe%2BTime%2Bof%2BAbd-al-Rahman%2BIII%252C%2Bby%2BDionisio%2BBaixeras%2BVerdaguer%252C%2B1885%2B-%2BTORQUEMADA%2B3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="409" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NpsQ8JpvZ5I/Vf8-Yr2eYhI/AAAAAAAACvI/rb9W70aPD0w/s640/The%2BCourt%2Bof%2Bthe%2BCaliphate%2Bof%2BCordova%2Bin%2Bthe%2BTime%2Bof%2BAbd-al-Rahman%2BIII%252C%2Bby%2BDionisio%2BBaixeras%2BVerdaguer%252C%2B1885%2B-%2BTORQUEMADA%2B3.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Islam’s
golden age. Abd-ar-Rahman III, Caliph of Cordoba, and his court in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medina_Azahara" target="_blank">Medina Azahara</a>, by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:La_civilitzaci%C3%B3_del_califat_de_C%C3%B2rdova_en_temps_d%27Abd-al-Rahman_III.jpg" target="_blank">Dionisio Baixeras Verdaguer</a>.</span><span style="font-size: 8pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates,
Islam was a vibrant, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">relatively</i>
tolerant, <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/arab-muslims-yearn-for-lost-greatness.html" target="_blank">intellectually </a></span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/arab-muslims-yearn-for-lost-greatness.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">dynamic </span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/arab-muslims-yearn-for-lost-greatness.html" target="_blank">civilization</a>, whose <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-tragic-failure-of-arab-world-and.html" target="_blank">great capitals</a> of Baghdad,
Damascus, Cairo, and </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Córdoba </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">were multiethnic, multi-religious metropolises,
centers of creative cultural discourse between Muslims, Jews, and Christians.
In Muslim Spain, called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">al-Andalus</i> (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akbar-ahmed/andalusia-muslims-non-muslims-living_b_7088320.html" target="_blank">Andalusia</a>)
by Muslims and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ha-Sefarad</i> by Jews,
the period from the eighth to the eleventh centuries witnessed a renaissance of
Jewish life and culture and its synthesis with Islamo-Arab culture. Indeed the
great Umayyad Caliph of Córdoba</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd-ar-Rahman_III" target="_blank">Abd ar-Rahman III</a> (r. 912-961), chose <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasdai_ibn_Shaprut" target="_blank">Hasdai ibn Shaprut</a>, the leader of Andalusia’s Jewish community, to be his vizier.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Jews_in_Arab_lands_%28gen%29.html" target="_blank"><i>Dhimmi</i></a> status and payment of the <i>jizya</i> (poll tax) provided certain legal protections and a degree of self-government for Jews in the <i>dar al-Islam</i> that they lacked in medieval Christendom.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">But this protection came at the price of social subordination and political impotence. Muslim tolerance toward religious minorities has been <a href="https://home.isi.org/myth-andalusian-paradise" target="_blank">greatly exaggerated</a>. For all of their economic and
cultural achievements, Mizrahi Jews (along with <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/why-christian-persecution-is-islams-achilles-heel/" target="_blank">Christians</a>) were still <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dhimmis</i>, the <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-failures-of-progressive-left-zionism-ignoring-jewish-history/" target="_blank">colonized subjects</a> of an
Arab Muslim imperium, <a href="http://fathomjournal.org/rachel-shabis-mizrahi-post-zionism-a-critique/" target="_blank">subjected</a> to a regime of degradation and humiliation,
forbidden to look their masters in the eye as equals. As Michael Lumish <a href="http://israel-thrives.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/americans-support-israel-except-for.html" target="_blank">writes</a>: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“For thirteen centuries Jews lived under the jack-boot of Arab-Muslim supremacy. . . . In some places we were not even allowed to go out in the rain</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> lest Jewish filth wash onto, and thereby contaminate, the clean Muslim streets. And now the West is telling us that Jews are being mean to Arabs.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> <a href="http://www.noblequran.com/translation/surah9.html" target="_blank">The Qur</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://www.noblequran.com/translation/surah9.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">’</span></span>an</a> (Surah 9:29) calls upon all Muslims to </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“fight</span> against those who believe not in Allah... and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) until they pay the <i>jizya</i> with willing submission, and feel themselves brought low.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span> The very visible economic and social success of the Mizrahi Jews provoked anti-Semitic backlashes. Periods of peaceful
coexistence and prosperity were <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYmY4bnNxRHl2RGs/edit" target="_blank">frequently punctured </a>by pogroms and persecution to make sure that Jews were </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span></span>brought low.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span></span> This would be
increasingly the case after the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century
destroyed the urban civilization of the Middle East, and the Islamic world
began its long decline to its current state of civilizational failure.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nucDHX1fhiA/V2n-_inzPuI/AAAAAAAADII/x6D1jUpwC2M931VPNE3BVeCzDth_yiqjQCLcB/s1600/Jews%2Bat%2Bthe%2BWestern%2BWall%252C%2BFelix%2BBonfils%252C%2B1870s%2Bwikipedia%2B-%2B20160428160838%2521Jews_at_Western_Wall_by_Felix_Bonfils%252C_1870s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="498" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nucDHX1fhiA/V2n-_inzPuI/AAAAAAAADII/x6D1jUpwC2M931VPNE3BVeCzDth_yiqjQCLcB/s640/Jews%2Bat%2Bthe%2BWestern%2BWall%252C%2BFelix%2BBonfils%252C%2B1870s%2Bwikipedia%2B-%2B20160428160838%2521Jews_at_Western_Wall_by_Felix_Bonfils%252C_1870s.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Jews at the Western Wall in Jerusalem by Felix Bonfils, 1870s. <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jews_at_Western_Wall_by_Felix_Bonfils,_1870s.jpg" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Describing the Jews of Morocco in the 1780s, the Italian Jewish traveler </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=VlXZAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=oppressed,+miserable+creatures,+having+neither+the+mouth+to+answer+an+Arab,+nor+the+cheek+to+raise+their+head.&source=bl&ots=CqREa7vTob&sig=l6TC50dCZ617fCpczuh91c7RELI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1Wc7VMfXKZHisATXrYDADw&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=oppressed%2C%20miserable%20creatures%2C%20having%20neither%20the%20mouth%20to%20answer%20an%20Arab%2C%20nor%20the%20cheek%20to%20raise%20their%20head.&f=false" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Samuel Romanelli</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> exclaimed: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Lord
God! Oppressed, miserable creatures that they are! They have neither the mouth
to answer an Arab, nor the cheek to raise their head. When an Arab tells one of
them to bend down so that he might strike him, the fellow bends and lets
himself be hit, not even daring to look them in the face lest they should say that
he cursed them in his heart.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-misery-of-jews-of-morocco-1805.html#.VK8Qgct0y1t" target="_blank">Twenty years later</a> the Catalan explorer </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Domènech Badia i Leblich, who wrote under the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Bey_al-Abbasi" target="_blank">pseudonym</a> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Ali</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Bey al-Abbasi,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=J-8GAAAAQAAJ&dq=travels+of+ali+bey&q=Jews+in+Morocco+are+in+the+most+abject+state+of+slavery#v=snippet&q=Jews%20in%20Morocco%20are%20in%20the%20most%20abject%20state%20of%20slavery&f=false" target="_blank">noted that</a> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The Jews in Morocco are in the most abject state of slavery.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In the 1830s the pioneer British Orientalist <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=dLgTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA554&lpg=PA554&dq=held+in+the+utmost+contempt+and+abhorrence+by+Muslims+in+general&source=bl&ots=T0unkg99R8&sig=C_sIR6uxwMjGa_lPLptH6GtIjkc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1Eg7VLenKOmPsQSgpoK4Bg&ved=0CC0Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=held%20in%20the%20utmost%20contempt%20and%20abhorrence%20by%20Muslims%20in%20general&f=false" target="_blank">Edward Lane</a> wrote that the Jews of Cairo were </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span></span></span>held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by Muslims in general.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">” </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Western travelers in nineteenth-century Palestine, decades before the first Zionist settlements,
described the state of degradation and humiliation endured by Jews in their
ancient homeland. Here is the French author </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">François-René de Chateaubriand’s <a href="https://archive.org/stream/travelstojerusa01chatgoog#page/n172/mode/2up" target="_blank">account</a> of the <a href="http://ziontruth.blogspot.co.il/2005/06/chateaubriand-on-oppression-of-jews-at.html" target="_blank">oppression</a> of the Jews of Jerusalem in 1806:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The
particular objects of every species of degradation, these people bow their
heads without murmuring; they endure every kind of insult without demanding
justice; they sink beneath repeated blows without sighing; if their head be
required, they present it to the scymetar. . . . Enter the abodes of these
people, you will find them, amidst the most abject wretchedness. . .</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The American explorer John Lloyd Stephens, <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/03/more-on-how-arabs-treated-jews-in-19th.html#.VfPFx5WFO1u" target="_blank">who visited</a> the Holy Land while Andrew Jackson was in the White House, gave this <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=OPsxAQAAMAAJ&dq=jews+hebron&q=%22i+cannot+leave+this+place%22#v=snippet&q=%22i%20cannot%20leave%20this%20place%22&f=false" target="_blank">chilling account</a> of a massacre of the Jews of Hebron by the invading Egyptian army of Ibrahim Pasha in 1834:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I
cannot leave this place, however, without a word or two more. I had spent a
long evening with my Jewish friends. The old rabbi talked to me of their
prospects and condition, and told me how he had left his country in Europe many
years before, and come with his wife and children to lay their bones in the
Holy Land. He was now eighty years old; and for thirty years, he said, he had
lived with the sword suspended over his head; had been reviled, buffeted, and
spit upon; and, though sometimes enjoying a respite from persecution, he never
knew at what moment the bloodhounds might not be let loose upon him; that,
since the country had been wrested from the sultan by the Pacha of Egypt, they
had been comparatively safe and tranquil; though some idea may be formed of
this comparative security from the fact that, during the revolution two years
before, when Ibrahim Pacha, after having been pent up several months in
Jerusalem, burst out like a roaring lion, the first place upon which his wrath
descended was the unhappy Hebron; and while their guilty brethren were
sometimes spared, the unhappy Jews, never offending but always suffering,
received the full weight of Arab vengeance. Their houses were ransacked and
plundered; their gold and silver, and all things valuable, carried away; and
their wives and daughters violated before their eyes by a brutal soldiery.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">As Stephens’s account makes clear, the
Jews of Hebron, even before the massacre by the Egyptians, were despised by
their Arab neighbors who treated them as social pariahs whom they could abuse
with impunity. <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-jews-and-arabs-of-palestine-1852.html#.VThj4st0y1t" target="_blank">In 1852</a> the Anglican clergyman Arthur George Harpur Hollingsworth <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6RJcAAAAQAAJ&dq=arthur+hollingsworth+remarks+on+the+present+condition+and+future+prospects+of+the+jews&q=%22amongst+the+scattered%22#v=snippet&q=%22amongst%20the%20scattered%22&f=false" target="_blank">found the situation</a> of the Jews in Palestine unchanged: “This Jewish population is
poor beyond any adequate word; it is degraded in its social and political
condition, to a state of misery, so great, that it possesses no rights.” Even
if Jews had any wealth, which they didn’t, they would have to hide it, “because
to display riches would secure robbery from the Mahometan population, the
Turkish officials, or the Bedouin Arab.” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6RJcAAAAQAAJ&dq=arthur+hollingsworth+remarks+on+the+present+condition+and+future+prospects+of+the+jews&q=%22execrated+race%22#v=snippet&q=%22execrated%20race%22&f=false" target="_blank">Despised</a> by Arabs and Turks “as an
execrated race,” hated by them “as the literal descendants of the original
possessors of the country,” it was only “by the assistance of a great power
like England, that a Jew, desiring to obtain security, liberty, and justice in
Palestine, can secure his rights.” Finally, the founding father of the Left himself, Karl Marx, <a href="http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2006/03/muslim-oppression-of-non-muslims-in.html" target="_blank">drawing on the reports</a> of the French diplomat </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="https://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&id=Na0hb2jHahoC&q=Cette+population%2C+composee+de+Turcs#v=snippet&q=%22Cette%20population%2C%20composee%20de%20Turcs%22&f=false" target="_blank">César </a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="https://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&id=Na0hb2jHahoC&q=Cette+population%2C+composee+de+Turcs#v=snippet&q=%22Cette%20population%2C%20composee%20de%20Turcs%22&f=false" target="_blank">Famin</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">wrote about</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=iGZ12rjBtZQC&pg=PA322&dq=karl+marx+jerusalem+the+most+filthy+quarter+of+the+town&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-0PuGpZ7KAhVEyj4KHfyIBw0Q6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">Muslim oppression</a> of the Jews of Jerusalem in the </span><a href="http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030213/1854-04-15/ed-1/seq-5/" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">April 15, 1854 issue </a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">of the </span><i style="font-family: georgia, serif;">New York Tribune</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[T]he
sedentary population of Jerusalem numbers about 15,500 souls, of whom 4,000 are
Mussulmans and 8,000 Jews. The Mussulmans, forming about a fourth part of the
whole, and consisting of Turks, Arabs, and Moors, are, of course, the masters
in every respect, as they are in no way affected by the weakness of their
Government at Constantinople. Nothing equals the misery and the sufferings of
the Jews at Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called <i>hareth-el-yahoud</i>, in the quarter of dirt
between the Zion and the Moriah, where their synagogues are situated—the
constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the
Greeks, persecuted by the Latins, and living only upon the scanty alms
transmitted by their European brethren.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For the Left</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s supreme icon to expose the myth of Muslim tolerance and <a href="http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2012/05/karl-marx-confirms-jews-were-majority.html" target="_blank">report </a>that Jews were a majority in Jerusalem decades before the first Zionist settlements is a <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2012/05/08/karl-marx-jerusalem-jewish/" target="_blank">major embarrassment</a> for left-wing anti-Zionists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hwLAxKvOYEc/Vf4gAHq8wqI/AAAAAAAACtc/YlQwhP6_2_Q/s1600/Jew%2Bof%2BJerusalem%252C%2Bc%2B1900-1910%2BLOC%2B%255B2%2Breduced%2Bto%2B25%2Bpc%255D%2B-%2B13192u.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hwLAxKvOYEc/Vf4gAHq8wqI/AAAAAAAACtc/YlQwhP6_2_Q/s400/Jew%2Bof%2BJerusalem%252C%2Bc%2B1900-1910%2BLOC%2B%255B2%2Breduced%2Bto%2B25%2Bpc%255D%2B-%2B13192u.jpg" width="312" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">An elderly rabbi, a <i>dhimmi</i> in pre-Zionist Arab Muslim Palestine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"> Jew of Jerusalem c. 1900-1910. <a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006691714/" target="_blank">Library of Congress</a>.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This was what it meant <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/176673/emotional-nakba?all=1" target="_blank">to be a <i>dhimmi</i></a> in pre-Zionist Arab Muslim Palestine. This is what would mean to be </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">indigenized</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” in a post-Zionist Arab Muslim Palestine.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> This was the condition that the State of
Israel was created to redress. This is the condition to which Jews <a href="http://ziontruth.blogspot.co.il/2005/06/chateaubriand-on-oppression-of-jews-at.html" target="_blank">would return</a>
in a “secular democratic” (i.e. Arab-Islamic) Palestinian state.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The Israel Outrage Industry repeats </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">ad nauseam</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> that before the rise of Zionism, Muslims and Jews lived together in peace, harmony, and mutual respect. These examples all show that the alleged Muslim tolerance of Jews was greatly exaggerated. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Naïve liberal Jews, like J-Street</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/03/j-street-speaker-calls-for-destruction.html#.VVVgscvbK1v" target="_blank">Marcia Freedman</a>, should keep this in mind <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/matan-peleg/j-street-new-israel-fund-post-zionism-calling-for-the-destruction-of-the-jewish-state/" target="_blank">when calling</a> for Jews to give up political sovereignty and live once again as a </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">protected minority</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">– as <i>dhimmis</i> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">– in an Arab Muslim Palestine.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/W9hUYMRSsMI?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Historian
Georges Bensoussan <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/09/placing-colonial-boot-on-arab-foot-by.html" target="_blank">finds</a> that by the nineteenth century most Mizrahi Jews
lived in a state of <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dinner-in-baghdad-with-the-grand-mufti/" target="_blank">misery and fear</a>, which was alleviated only by the presence of the European colonial powers, culminating in the mass expulsion – the
<a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4597344,00.html" target="_blank">ethnic cleansing</a> – of Jews from the Arab lands after 1948 and their flight to Israel. And Israel, unlike the Arab world, welcomed and <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4732793,00.html" target="_blank">assimilated</a> the flood of refugees that came to its shores. Zionism, which began as a nationalist movement by European Jews, <a href="http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-im-bigger-victim-than-you-game.html" target="_blank">liberated</a> and empowered the Mizrahi Jews, enabling them to be masters of their destiny and actors on the political stage. Albert Memmi, the Tunisian-born Mizrahi author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Colonizer-Colonized-Albert-Memmi/dp/0807003018" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Colonizer and the Colonized</i></a>, rendered this verdict on how the traditional <a href="http://www.sullivan-county.com/x/aj1.htm" target="_blank">Arab contempt</a> for Jewish <i>dhimmis</i>, what historian Richard Landes calls the <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/176673/emotional-nakba?all=1" target="_blank">honor-shame dynamic</a> in Arab political culture, shapes the conflict with Israel: </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The
attitude of the Arabs towards us seems to me to be hardly different from what
it has always been. The Arabs in the past merely tolerated the existence of
Jewish minorities, no more. They have not yet recovered from the shock of
seeing their former underlings raise up their heads, attempting even to gain
their national independence! They know of only one rejoinder: off with their
heads!</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Middle East analyst <a href="http://www.meforum.org/3390/islam-christian-persecution" target="_blank">Raymond Ibrahim</a> agrees,
is the true cause of Arab Muslim hatred of Israel. Far from being brought low, “Israel—the dhimmi that got
away—actually has authority and power over Muslims. Now, if dhimmis are
supposed to be kept in total submission to Muslims, how then when one of them
actually lords over Muslims? Hence Islam’s immense and existential rage against
the Jewish state.” A rage made more intense by the <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/the-barbarians-within-our-gates-111116_full.html#.VCJWm8t0y1s" target="_blank">collapse of Arab Islamic civilization</a> and the refusal of the Arab
peoples to <a href="https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/561131-the-isis-within" target="_blank">take any responsibility </a>for their <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAAahUKEwjmxortxI7HAhXDOT4KHTCCDco&url=http%3A%2F%2Fenglish.alarabiya.net%2Fen%2Fviews%2Fnews%2Fmiddle-east%2F2015%2F07%2F04%2FWho-lost-Iraq-.html&ei=dzjAVaavM8Pz-AGwhLbQDA&usg=AFQjCNHbXGuOqBNSX4l10AgNFTzrdIiN5w&sig2=irVy2mt1xhDCRDG-On7GLw&bvm=bv.99261572,d.cWw" target="_blank">civilization’s failure</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nmLY-unrxoM/Vf888ZQ8g-I/AAAAAAAACu8/XMHXtPzijg4/s1600/cordoba%2Bmosque%2B-%2BMEZQUI%257E1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nmLY-unrxoM/Vf888ZQ8g-I/AAAAAAAACu8/XMHXtPzijg4/s640/cordoba%2Bmosque%2B-%2BMEZQUI%257E1.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">Relic of a lost golden age. The Great Mosque of Cordoba, Andalusia, Spain. <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mezquita_de_C%C3%B3rdoba_-_Techo.jpg#" target="_blank">Wikimedia</a>.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">And the hard truth is that Islam, as
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/opinion/thomas-friedman-isis-crisis.html?ref=opinion" target="_blank">currently configured</a> in its Arab heartland, is a <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZnVGdDAtTEtDSGc/edit" target="_blank">failed civilization</a>: angry, intolerant, intellectually and economically stagnant, smothered by the iron hand of autocracy, torn apart by <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/09/solving-middle-easts-problems-by.html" target="_blank">tribal</a> and <a href="http://honestreporting.com/dr-jonathan-spyer-makes-sense-of-the-middle-east/" target="_blank">sectarian violence</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/the-sexual-misery-of-the-arab-world.html?ref=opinion&_r=1" target="_blank">sexually repressed</a>,
consumed by fear and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/05/22/islamic-state-burned-a-woman-alive-for-not-engaging-in-an-extreme-sex-act-u-n-official-says/?wpisrc=nl_wv&wpmm=1" target="_blank">hatred of women</a>; the <i>dar al-Islam</i> in the 21st century is a social, political, and cultural <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389130/hatred-and-violence-dennis-prager" target="_blank">wasteland</a> where liberty dare
not show her face. <a href="http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2016/03/06/reversing-humiliation-jihadis-and-the-west/" target="_blank">Ashamed</a> of their pitiful condition, Islamic jihadists and
terrorists lash out in fury at the successful, prosperous, free societies of
the infidels, while they rape, enslave, genitally mutilate, and burn women alive. The Arab Spring</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s dream of liberation has <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21685503-five-years-after-wave-uprisings-arab-world-worse-ever" target="_blank">descended into a nightmare</a>. The millions of refugees fleeing the Arab world are, in <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-end-of-arab-spring-dream-by-sohrab.html" target="_blank">Sohrab Ahmari</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-end-of-arab-spring-dream-by-sohrab.html" target="_blank">’s words</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“rendering their own judgment about the state of Arab civilization</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”; or, as <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:U1LtB12VmV8J:www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.675412+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">Ari Shavit</a> put it, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Millions are voting with their feet against the colossal failure of the national Arab project that failed to produce</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> a single state combining prosperity and freedom.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Muslims are fascinated with jidhadist violence, writes <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/the-deadly-link-between-san-bernardino-and-pakistan/a-18897198" target="_blank">Arif Jamal</a>, because of </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“their victimhood syndrome. Jihadism teaches them that the failures of Muslims as individuals and as an ummah (community) are caused by the infidels, who must be fought against, as Islamic scriptures order them.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Looking out upon the ruins of the Arab
world, mourning its tragic decline from the <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2013/05/23/Syria-s-clash-with-history.html" target="_blank">glory days</a> of the Umayyads and the Abbasids,
the distinguished Lebanese journalist <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/the-barbarians-within-our-gates-111116_full.html#.VCNUwst0y1t" target="_blank">Hisham Melhem admits </a>with clear-eyed and
brutal honesty that “Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. .
. . Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed.” The jihadists, the
bloodthirsty psychopaths of ISIS, “did not emerge from nowhere.
They climbed out of a rotting, empty hulk — what was left of a broken-down
civilization.” Melhem then comes to a grim realization: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span>There is no evidence whatever that Islam in its various political forms is compatible with modern democracy.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-roots-of-migration-crisis-by-walter.html" target="_blank">Walter Russell Mead</a> writes:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">At
bottom, we are witnessing the consequences of a civilization’s failure either
to overcome or to accommodate the forces of modernity. One hundred years after
the fall of the Ottoman Empire and 50 years after the French left Algeria, the
Middle East has failed to build economies that allow ordinary people to live
with dignity, has failed to build modern political institutions and has failed
to carve out the place of honor and respect in world affairs that its peoples
seek.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Israeli journalist <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:U1LtB12VmV8J:www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.675412+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank">Ari Shavit</a> adds to this the role played by Edward Said and his postcolonialist disciples in stifling any honest discussion of the crisis of Arab civilization:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The
third reason for the Arab humanitarian disaster is political correctness.
Professor Edward Said and his students caused indescribable damage to the
ability to think or speak the truth when it comes to the Arab world. Their
wacky intellectual legacy did not permit talking about the region’s residents
as anything but victims. The grand Arab nation – with its rich history,
profound culture and considerable economic power – was treated like a juvenile
who isn’t responsible for his actions. So all the ills of Arab politics were
attributed to others – imperialists, colonialists, Zionists. So no real
criticism of the Arab world was permitted and no one demanded it mend itself.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Strategic
analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (ret</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">’</span>d) <a href="http://nypost.com/2006/08/24/arabs-last-chance-if-iraqs-democracy-fails/" target="_blank">concludes</a> that in the Arab world: </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">A
culture of blame prevents moral, social and political progress. This is a
self-help universe. The nonsensical Arab insistence that all Arab problems are
the fault of America and Israel (or the Crusades) ignores the fact that Arab
civilization has been in decline for 700 years – and has been in utter disarray
for the last 200.</span> </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">This is
a homemade failure. Through their own choices, cherished beliefs, values and
norms, Arabs have condemned themselves to strategic incompetence. No society that
oppresses women, denies advancement on merit even to men, indulges in fantastic
hypocrisy, wallows in corruption, undervalues secular learning, reduces its god
to a nasty disciplinarian and comforts itself with conspiracy theories will
ever compete with us. . . .</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Arab
terrorism isn’t about redressing wrongs. It’s about revenge on a successful
civilization that left the dungeon-cultures of the Middle East in the dust.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">
</span></blockquote>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The bottom line is that until the Arab
Muslim world undergoes a <a href="http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/09/local-leadership-key-in-arab-world/" target="_blank">political</a>, cultural, and <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=11553" target="_blank">moral transformation</a> – an <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150811055932/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-08-10/enlightened-despots-then-and-now" target="_blank">Islamic Enlightenment</a>, a </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“</span>transformation of hearts and minds</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">”</span> in <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/24/remarks-president-obama-address-united-nations-general-assembly" target="_blank">President Obama</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/24/remarks-president-obama-address-united-nations-general-assembly" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">’</span>s words</a>, a Second
Arab Awakening as former Jordanian foreign minister <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/01/not-losing-arab-awakening-by-marwan.html" target="_blank">Marwan Muasher</a> calls it, which may just be in its <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175862/tomgram%3A_juan_cole%2C_waiting_for_the_arab_summer/" target="_blank">embryonic stages</a> with the Arab Spring (despite all <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-end-of-arab-spring-dream-by-sohrab.html" target="_blank">evidence to the contrary</a>) – that <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/15/to-beat-isis-the-arab-world-must-promote-political-and-religious-reforms.html" target="_blank">produces</a> tolerant, <a href="http://www.mei.edu/content/article/don%E2%80%99t-be-fooled-appearances-liberal-values-are-spreading-arab-world?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=%2AMideast%20Brief&utm_campaign=2014_The%20Middle%20East%20Daily_PROMO%20UAE_12.10.14" target="_blank">liberal and pluralistic societies</a> that respect human rights and minority rights, including the right of the Jewish people to self determination, all
talk of peace between Israel and a “secular democratic Palestine” as well as a resolution to the larger conflict between the West and radical Islam, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20141113160614/http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/11/10/obamas-false-choice-on-israel" target="_blank">is a delusion</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Egypt</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> president <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/01/a_revolutionary_speech_ignored_by_the_msm.html" target="_blank">Abdel Fattah al-Sisi</a> and dissident writer <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0CC4QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fa-reformation-for-islam-1426859626&ei=56haVaHcJJKCyQSPmoGoCw&usg=AFQjCNHGFhl6QyjkU6WjaJkT4E5XeDC8hg&sig2=tFHtlzh4ph70d-1vi_HxCg&bvm=bv.93564037,d.aWw" target="_blank">Ayaan Hirsi Ali</a> have each called for a reformation in Islam. Such a reformation must, at the very least, purge the concept of jihad from the Islamic faith, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429871/islam-problem-aggressive-scripture-not-aggressive-traditionalism" target="_blank">or redefine it</a> as an <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/7333/jihad-holy-war-internal-spiritual-struggle.aspx" target="_blank">internal spiritual struggle</a> instead of a holy war against the infidels. But <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/islam-politics-exceptional/485801/" target="_blank">Shadi Hamid</a> makes a compelling argument that the Islamic world is unlikely to follow the Western path to secular liberal democracy. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Islam is distinctive in how it relates to politics </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">– and this distinctiveness can be traced back to the religion</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s founding moment in the seventh century. Islam is <i>different</i>.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Religion, law, and governance in Islam are woven together into a single fabric. Sharia law, which for fourteen centuries was the <i>only</i> law in Islamic polities, pervades all aspects of life. In Christianity there was </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6rHPCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA63&dq=shadi+hamid+no+equivalent+of+islamic+law&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiin6jstbjNAhUEbD4KHeTiCxEQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=shadi%20hamid%20no%20equivalent%20of%20islamic%20law&f=false" target="_blank">no equivalent of Islamic law</a> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">– an accumulated corpus of law concerned with governance and the regulation of social and political affairs.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Islamism and radical Islam are the products of the <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-islam-exception-16601?page=show" target="_blank">collision of Islamic exceptionalism</a> with modernity. <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/" target="_blank">Large majorities</a> of Muslims in the Middle East want Sharia to be the law of the land. This includes 89% of Palestinians. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Political analyst </span><a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-trumps-temporary-muslim-ban-makes-sense-16657?page=show" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Ying Ma notes</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> that the lines between radical Islam and mainstream Islam are not all that clear. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">What this means for the future of non-Muslim minorities in the <i>dar al-Islam</i> Hamid doesn</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’t say. It certainly supports <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYVlMVDd1d0JFVUU/edit" target="_blank">Benny Morris</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYVlMVDd1d0JFVUU/edit" target="_blank">’s dim view </a>of the prospects for a </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">secular democratic Palestine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=uyPRCwAAQBAJ&dq=michael+mandelbaum+mission+failure&q=bush+democracy+initiative#v=snippet&q=%22bush%20democracy%20initiative%22&f=false" target="_blank">Michael Mandelbaum</a> concludes: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“If </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">the Bush</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> democracy initiative had </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">demonstrated that the United States could not implant democratic government in the Arab Middle East, the Arab Spring showed that the Arabs themselves could not do so, either. The local political culture proved resistant to liberty and popular sovereignty.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">And while Fareed Zakaria <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-why-democracy-took-root-in-tunisia-and-not-egypt/2014/10/30/c5205adc-606a-11e4-9f3a-7e28799e0549_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opin&wpmm=1" target="_blank">writes</a> that Tunisia</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s recent history suggests </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“that there is nothing in Islam or Arab society</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> that makes it impossible for democracy to take root,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">with the rise of the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/" target="_blank">genocidal ISIS caliphate</a> in the ruins of Syria and Iraq that day looks </span><a href="http://mida.org.il/2014/08/19/100-years-of-failure-the-middle-east-since-wwi/" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">distant</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> indeed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4pW3wDIKSw4/Vf9epsotSoI/AAAAAAAACvY/21UUriMq27s/s1600/isis%2Bbeheading%2Bjames%2Bfoley%2B-%2Bnn_05ami_isis_140819.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4pW3wDIKSw4/Vf9epsotSoI/AAAAAAAACvY/21UUriMq27s/s640/isis%2Bbeheading%2Bjames%2Bfoley%2B-%2Bnn_05ami_isis_140819.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">The revenge of a failed civilization. ISIS jihadist <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3207366/Jihadi-John-Britain-carry-cutting-heads-chilling-new-video-man-said-hooded-butcher-beheaded-two-British-hostages-vows-come-home-murder-unbelievers.html" target="_blank">Mohammed Emwazi</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; text-align: start;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11992681/Jihadi-John-profile-how-did-Mohammed-Emwazi-a-quiet-football-fan-become-the-symbol-of-Isil.html" target="_blank">Jihadi John</a>,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; text-align: start;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> prepares to behead American journalist James Foley.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">It would be a wonderful thing if, as the </span><a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=244913608" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">prophet Isaiah envisioned</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, the
wolf could live with the lamb, and Israelis and Palestinians could sing Kumbaya
together in a binational state. I would love nothing more than for Jews and
Arabs to make love and not war. But that is not the world we are living in. In
the real world any national community that wants to survive and be the master
of its destiny needs the political and military might provided by its own
sovereign state.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Walter Russell Mead concludes that the
failure of the traditional <i>dhimmi</i> survival
strategies of accommodation and submission leaves the Middle East’s beleaguered
minorities with </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-plight-of-middle-easts-christians.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">only three choices </span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">in the face of the Islamist onslaught:
they can flee for their lives, wait to be massacred, or they can “fort
up” and create their own enclaves with military forces capable of
defeating their enemies. Israeli Jews have proven to be the most successful of
the Middle East’s minorities at “forting up.” And history has shown that
only those ethnic and religious groups able to “fort up” will
survive. Prime Minister Netanyahu acknowledged this grim reality when he </span><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1-wlq3grWroJ:www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.682374+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">told the Knesset</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> that Israel “will forever live
by the sword.” “Without the protection of the Israel Defense Forces,”
Jonathan Tobin </span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140202004235/http:/www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/01/27/why-cant-jews-stay-in-a-palestinian-state-netanyahu-settlements/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">points out</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">,</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jews in
Arab territory haven’t a chance. That’s a basic fact of life in the country
that predates Israel’s birth. Without self-defense forces, Jewish settlers in
those lands inside the pre-June 1967 borders were exposed to relentless
harassment, terrorism, and even pogroms. And there is no reason to believe the
situation would be any different in a future West Bank state where the
Palestinian population has been educated for decades to believe Jews have no
right to live in any part of the country.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And as Israeli journalist and centrist politician Yair Lapid <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/23/the-invaluable-us-israeli-alliance-security-agreement-yair-lapid/" target="_blank">writes</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">One of
the most difficult moments in the Jewish collective memory is the knowledge
that when they came to murder us all, no one came to the rescue. That’s the
reason Israel was founded, and the reason we’ll never leave our fate in the
hands of others.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">History has shown that the people of
Israel must hold on to the tools of statehood and the instruments of war in a
world still governed by the </span><a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2009/09/28/theme_ours_is_a_world_governed_by_the_aggressive_use_of_force" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">aggressive use of force</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">. The </span><a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/qa-probing-islamic-state-s-sex-atrocities-united-nations-1064004421" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">tragic fate</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> of the </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/12/chilling-screams-of-yazidi-women.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Yazidis</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> and Assyrian Christians at the hands of ISIS is a dire
warning of the price of powerlessness in the Muslim Middle East. Indeed the
IDF’s strength and proven ability to fight an effective guerrilla war is such,
that the only nation in the world that </span><a href="http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/special%E2%80%88report-behind-enemy-lines-with-isis-we-fear-the-idf/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">ISIS truly fears</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> is Israel.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">(<b>Update:</b> See this new <i>National Interest</i> article by strategic analyst Graham Allison: </span><a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-isis-fears-israel-17286?page=show" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Why ISIS Fears Israel.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">A deep knowledge and appreciation of the complex histories of the Jewish, Arab, and other Middle Eastern peoples, aided by well-developed theories of nationalism and ethno-religious conflict, rather than the </span><a href="http://spme.org/spme-research/analysis/philip-carl-salzman-self-induced-nakba/5658/" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">banalities</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> of postcolonialism, are what is needed if one wants to </span><a href="http://fathomjournal.org/rachel-shabis-mizrahi-post-zionism-a-critique/" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">understand the cultures</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and the blood-and-faith conflicts of the Middle East.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(<b>Update:</b> See these two recent pieces on the breakdown of Arab Muslim civilization: Ofir Haivry et al., </span><a href="http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2016/07/the-great-arab-implosion-and-its-consequences/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The Great Arab Implosion and Its Consequences.</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2016/07/the-great-arab-implosion-and-its-consequences/" target="_blank">”</a> Mosaic, July 7, 2016; Scott Anderson, </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmagazine&action=click&contentCollection=magazine&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart.</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmagazine&action=click&contentCollection=magazine&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront" target="_blank">”</a> <i>New York Times Magazine</i>, August 11, 2016. See also the <a href="http://www.arab-hdr.org/" target="_blank">Arab Human Development Reports</a>.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">© 2016
Michael Kaplan</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-48732155911039200442016-06-10T00:56:00.000-04:002017-09-28T10:58:21.935-04:00Existential Wars of Blood and Faith<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i2piPtOYi5s/Unpq2BxWEpI/AAAAAAAACC4/7z-degbcQOg/s1600/Bedouin+Tents+and+Occupants,+Holy+Land+1905+LOC+%5B4+auto+correct+reduced+to+50+pc+cropped%5D+-+02749u.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="472" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i2piPtOYi5s/Unpq2BxWEpI/AAAAAAAACC4/7z-degbcQOg/s640/Bedouin+Tents+and+Occupants,+Holy+Land+1905+LOC+%5B4+auto+correct+reduced+to+50+pc+cropped%5D+-+02749u.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">I and my brother against my cousin. Middle Eastern tribalism: A Bedouin camp in the Transjordan in the 1890s. <a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002725069/" target="_blank">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a>.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The conflicts of the twenty-first century
are shaping up, as strategic analyst Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters predicted,
to be </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hLTVnSndBY0NEX00/edit" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">“wars of blood and faith.”</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> This is true of the civil war in Syria, where an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/world/middleeast/death-toll-from-war-in-syria-now-470000-group-finds.html" target="_blank">estimated 470,000</a> people have <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War" target="_blank">been killed</a>, and
similar conflicts across the developing world, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
and even America’s post-9/11 war with radical Islam. Jacksonian America is
after all a folk community that embodies the blood and faith element of
American life (just listen to </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruNrdmjcNTc" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Toby Keith</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">). These wars are driven by the existential issues of tribal and
religious identity: Who am I and who is God? Is God a kind, loving, and
merciful father, or is he a harsh, hate-filled, and punitive tyrant? “Will the
god of love and mercy triumph over the god of battles?” </span><a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2007-06-24-oplede-religion_N.htm?csp=34" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Colonel Peters asks</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. Millions
will die in the coming years trying to answer these questions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">These conflicts are made even more savage
by the pressures of globalization. A <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hbzZNZ0FUbndBMVk/edit" target="_blank">recent study</a> by Hebrew University
political scientist <a href="http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~pazit/" target="_blank">Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom</a> asserts that while globalization “has
increased interpersonal contact between individuals from culturally diverse
backgrounds,” it has not promoted greater tolerance or acceptance of
difference. Nor has it promoted religious liberty and protection of minority
groups. Just look at the Muslim Brotherhood’s <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/08/increased-attacks-on-christians-in-egypt.html" target="_blank">bloody jihad</a> against <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356306/attacking-enemies-islam-andrew-c-mccarthy" target="_blank">Coptic Christians</a> in Egypt and ISIS</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/05/22/islamic-state-burned-a-woman-alive-for-not-engaging-in-an-extreme-sex-act-u-n-official-says/" target="_blank">even bloodier jihad</a> against Christians, Yazidis, and all minorities in the Middle East</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. Instead globalization’s freewheeling cultural diversity and upheaval
“induces perceived threat to a hegemonic religion, which leads to more
restrictions on religious freedom.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">People </span><i style="font-family: georgia, serif;">really</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
don’t like having cultural and religious differences shoved in their faces. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6rHPCgAAQBAJ&dq=shadi+hamid&q=more+people+interact#v=snippet&q=more%20people%20interact&f=false" target="_blank">Shadi Hamid</a> makes the less than inspiring observation, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“that the more people interact, the more they dislike each other.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">This
is just as true of </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=KB7uPJ2mKX4C&pg=PA68&dq=ralph+peters+smaller+identities&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DisUUoOfMYSS9gTLloHoBg&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=ralph%20peters%20smaller%20identities&f=false" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">subgroups</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> – smaller tribal, family, and cult identities – within
an ethno-religious society, as for example the intensifying conflict between
ultra-Orthodox Haredim and the Israeli mainstream over issues of </span><a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114124/israels-orthodox-women-new-face-feminism" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">female sexuality</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=317483" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">military service</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. Or the conflict over LGBTQ rights and <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/04/14/why_the_transgender_bathroom_wars_matter__130282.html" target="_blank">transgender bathrooms</a> in the United States. Such subcultures can live together peacefully in the same nation if they are given enough autonomy and breathing space to follow their own customs and mores and develop their own communal institutions, and eschew the urge to impose their will on the rest of the nation. Dutch political scientist <a href="https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2005/EUP405/lijphart69.pdf" target="_blank">Arend Lijphart wrote</a> that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“subcultures with widely divergent outlooks and interests may coexist without necessarily being in conflict. Conflict arises only when they are in contact with each other.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” We need to accept that some differences, especially those of blood and faith, are simply too intractable to be bridged. Contrary to the liberal ideal of all people coming together to sing Kumbaya and celebrate their diversity, the best we can hope for in many ethnically and religiously divided societies is a sort of </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“voluntary apartheid</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” where the different groups try to keep out of each others</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> faces.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qc5jrAGYyjQ/V191caNazGI/AAAAAAAADGA/Q32oynP_T8IIYUYNS1Mt8fHlrRzl2wwAQCLcB/s1600/Battle%2Bof%2BPoitiers%252C%2BOct%2B10%252C%2B732%2B-%2BSteuben_-_Bataille_de_Poitiers.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="526" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qc5jrAGYyjQ/V191caNazGI/AAAAAAAADGA/Q32oynP_T8IIYUYNS1Mt8fHlrRzl2wwAQCLcB/s640/Battle%2Bof%2BPoitiers%252C%2BOct%2B10%252C%2B732%2B-%2BSteuben_-_Bataille_de_Poitiers.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">The clash of civilizations. Charles Martel stops the Islamic invasion of Francia at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours" target="_blank">Battle of Poitiers</a>, October 10, 732. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Steuben_-_Bataille_de_Poitiers.png" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Ben-Nun Bloom and her co-authors <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hbzZNZ0FUbndBMVk/edit" target="_blank">conclude</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">that
increasing awareness of diverse cultures, ideas and traditions as a result of
globalization increases the perception of threat to religious, cultural and
national integrity and results in a backlash that manifests itself in distrust
of and even aggressive attitudes towards alien cultures and lifestyles.
Globalization thus creates a threat to the sense of group integrity, which in
turn leads to fears of loss of identity and the sense of a disintegrating
community and generates strong resistance towards other value systems, such as
other religions.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In fact globalization is <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/03/jihad-vs-mcworld/303882/" target="_blank">provoking</a> its
opposite: a <a href="http://humanevents.com/2011/04/08/is-tribalism-the-future/" target="_blank">re-tribalization</a> of much of the world. Faced with moral chaos
through the overthrow of age-old customs and values by globalization, people
are falling back on their primal tribal identities. Or to borrow Tom Friedman’s
metaphor, people are rejecting the Lexus for the Olive Tree. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Ethnic <a href="http://people.missouristate.edu/MichaelCarlie/what_i_learned_about/gangs/culture.htm" target="_blank">street gangs</a>, usually linked to
the drug trade, are the new tribes of urban America’s economic and spiritual wastelands. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">God Himself, <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hSkZKWEViRjJlMnc/edit" target="_blank">Ralph Peters writes</a>, is being re-tribalized. “Far from monolithic, both the Muslim
and Christian faiths are splintering, with radical strains emerging that reject
the globalization of God and insist that His love is narrow, specific, and
highly conditional.” This is not a recipe for peaceful coexistence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XZQBz7fNhDU/Unb1UUl1h7I/AAAAAAAACBw/wRbpmRbVUs8/s1600/pazit+ben-nun+bloom+-+Pazit1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XZQBz7fNhDU/Unb1UUl1h7I/AAAAAAAACBw/wRbpmRbVUs8/s400/pazit+ben-nun+bloom+-+Pazit1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Political scientist Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom, Hebrew University</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZGM4ZjhlNDctZjVjNy00ZmJmLTliMjMtZDQyMDExZmUxZGRi/view" target="_blank">Ethnonationalist conflicts</a></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—wars of blood and faith</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">are prime examples
of a central paradox of human nature: the connection between </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNGMwYjExZjAtYjIwOS00YmE3LWJhY2UtZGY2M2ZmMTNkZTFh/edit?hl=en_US" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">violence and sociality</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. Human nature is </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hQVdTcFFZOG83WnM/edit" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">tribal</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> and people divide the world into “us” and
“them”; and while the boundaries of what constitutes “us” and “them” changes
over time, “them” are by definition the enemy who must be defeated and
annihilated. Sociability, kindness, and empathy are reserved exclusively for
those who are within the group. Those outside the group are treated as less
than human. These traits have deep roots in our </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=GLVDFYOO5aEC&q=turn+off+empathy#v=snippet&q=turn%20off%20empathy&f=false" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">evolutionary past</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">; we share them with our closest relatives, the chimps. Conflict and violence between groups (such as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/science/22chimp.html" target="_blank">rival bands of chimps</a>, Jacksonian America
and the Indians, or Israel and the Palestinians) actually </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/science/02warfare.html?_r=1&" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">fosters social cooperation</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, altruism, and even self-sacrifice within the group or tribe. Those
groups that are more cohesive and organized are in a better position to defend
their existence and triumph over less cohesive enemies. (For an interesting study of tribalism in nineteenth-century Palestine and Transjordan, click </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hLVh0YUtYX3pBejA/edit" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a7XuXi3mqYM?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Anthropologist <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-isis-has-the-potential-to-be-a-world-altering-revolution" target="_blank">Scott Atran writes</a> that unlike in modern liberal democracies, </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“across most of human history and cultures, violence against other groups was considered a moral virtue, a classification necessary for killing masses of people innocent of harming others.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Journalist and travel writer <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/07/andrew-solomon-eyewitness-to-history.html" target="_blank">Andrew Solomon</a>, after witnessing post-Gaddafi Libya</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s descent into violence and anarchy, came to this grim conclusion:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Many
people make the mistake of thinking that democracy and justice are the natural
default state, and if you remove all of the impediments to those qualities,
that is what will rise up. And what I learned, sort of, as a personal lesson in
dealing with Libya, having argued that we should support the attacks against
Gadhafi, is that the natural state to which people default is not democracy and
is not order but is a terrifying, violent, brutal chaos.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Along these lines, the
late </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hRldCYnRnRUNUMkU/edit" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Judge Robert Bork observed</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">: “Real human beings do not have any unfulfilled
capacity for love, or at least not a large one; they simply do not regard men
as infinitely precious, whatever the homilist may say on Sunday; and they lack
the boundless energy and selflessness required to will themselves to
brotherhood.” This is especially true for those outside one’s tribe. These
tribal imperatives continue to drive much of human behavior in the globalizing
world of the twenty-first century, making it more difficult for communities
divided by blood and faith to coexist in peace.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia";"></span><br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">We should also note the sexual and
demographic dimension in ethno-religious violence. It’s no coincidence that
Islamist terrorists from Al Qaeda to Hamas to ISIS are drawn to martyrdom by the
promise of 72 virgins awaiting them in Allah’s paradise. Or in the case of ISIS, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/world/middleeast/to-maintain-supply-of-sex-slaves-isis-pushes-birth-control.html" target="_blank">sex slaves</a> for jihadis <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/12/chilling-screams-of-yazidi-women.html" target="_blank">here on earth</a>. The Arab Muslim world
has a serious <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=GLVDFYOO5aEC&dq=sex+and+war+malcolm+potts&q=Arab+society+is+sexually+chaste+#v=snippet&q=Arab%20society%20is%20sexually%20chaste&f=false" target="_blank">demographic problem</a>: a surplus of young men with little prospect
of productive employment or marriage. For these young men joining the jihad is often the most attractive option. Though if <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDsDxPlydzQ" target="_blank">Irshad Manji </a>is right, the jihadis are in for a big disappointment. Manji says that the Quran has been misinterpreted, and that martyrs will be getting <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/05/23/do_martyrs_get_virgins_or_raisins" target="_blank">72 raisins</a>, not 72 virgins, in paradise.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436312/donald-trump-barack-obama-tribalism-hobbesian-politics" target="_blank">Ben Shapiro</a> and <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436347/america-melting-pot-immigrant-culture-made-country-great" target="_blank">Victor Davis Hanson</a> write that American politics and society since the 1960s have devolved into tribalism. Assimilation of immigrants into the mainstream Anglo-American culture through education, integration, and intermarriage</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—the old ideal of the melting pot, or <i>e pluribus unum</i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—required newcomers to give up their old customs and old tribal identities and adopt American values and a new American identity. This ideal has been replaced by a divisive, balkanizing multiculturalism that denigrates American history and traditions.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> The 2016 presidential election pits the progressive/black/Latino/ethnic minority identity tribal coalition of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton against the Jacksonian populist/white identity tribal coalition of Donald Trump. John Locke has been cast aside for Thomas Hobbes. A multicultural America made up of </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“unassimilated tribes and competing racial groups</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” will be an America </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">of discord, violence, chaos, and implosion.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” All that made America the <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/09/12/an_explanation_of_american_exceptionalism_for_vladimir_putin_and_barack_obama" target="_blank">great exception</a> to the tragedies and tyrannies of world history will be gone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">People are very resistant to changing their deeply held beliefs or acknowledging the legitimacy of different points of view. Liberal progressives and Jacksonian conservatives in America now embrace such divergent and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=d7keqFsWjB8C&dq=patrick+buchanan+suicide+of+a+superpower&q=%22irreconcilable+beliefs%22#v=snippet&q=%22irreconcilable%20beliefs%22&f=false" target="_blank">irreconcilable worldviews</a> that they can <a href="http://humanevents.com/2015/06/30/quo-vadis-america/" target="_blank">no longer agree</a> on the most basic issues of politics, economics, and morality. Twenty-first-century America, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=d7keqFsWjB8C&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=buchanan+culture+war+without+end&source=bl&ots=1EbH9jBDZ4&sig=VWy2taXaNm0MqLsm1Cw-pNuQ13Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3tZnXz53NAhUGNj4KHWUFB2YQ6AEIRzAF#v=onepage&q=buchanan%20culture%20war%20without%20end&f=false" target="_blank">Patrick J. Buchanan warns</a>, is trapped in a series of </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“culture wars without end.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” <a href="http://www.dennisprager.com/its-a-civil-war-what-we-do-now/" target="_blank">Dennis Prager declares</a> that Left is engaged in a non-violent, zero-sum civil war with the rest of America. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“The American value system and the leftist value system are irreconcilable.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Well, maybe not so non-violent.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"> The Ferguson and Baltimore riots and the violence by radical Left anti-Trump protesters at Trump rallies, the increasingly bitter take-no-prisoners ideological jousts between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, support philosopher <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6rHPCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA22&dq=alasdair+macintyre+modern+politics+is+civil+war&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB3JmC0JzNAhUIPiYKHbvKBswQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=alasdair%20macintyre%20modern%20politics%20is%20civil%20war&f=false" target="_blank">Alasdair MacIntyre</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6rHPCgAAQBAJ&dq=alasdair+macintyre+modern+politics+is+civil+war&q=%22modern+politics+is+civil+war%22#v=snippet&q=%22modern%20politics%20is%20civil%20war%22&f=false" target="_blank">’s statement</a> that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Kim R. Holmes of the Heritage Foundation likewise argues that culture war intolerance, driven largely by the postmodern Left, has fractured American society into tribes organized by political ideology and cultural values. These new </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">value tribes</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” have</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> embraced Lijphart</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s voluntary apartheid as the only way to coexist with those who don</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’t share their political, social and cultural values, and whom they openly despise. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xDDtCwAAQBAJ&pg=PR29&lpg=PR29&dq=kim+holmes+political+polarization&source=bl&ots=w5TXIcNMZL&sig=hNNgzPGZVoDWpwn2F3AmNzGwkLg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRs5HY1r3OAhXKqx4KHWZjALgQ6AEIWTAI#v=onepage&q=kim%20holmes%20political%20polarization&f=false" target="_blank">As Holmes writes</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Political
polarization is not just political, but social. More and more, people are segmenting
themselves culturally into homogeneous value tribes. They are choosing neighborhoods,
jobs, and schools for their children that reflect their own values and prejudices.
They associate mainly with their own kind, and tend to look down on people outside
their own cohort. The impact on the political culture is palpable. Empathy is
in short supply. With rising intolerance comes declining community values.
People are increasingly impatient with the “otherness” implied by different
opinions and lifestyles. Each side battles to control the definition or
normalcy and the political middle as a tactic to accuse their opponents of
being crazed radicals. Put simply, intolerance is not just ideological but
increasingly a cultural norm that cuts across all ideologies. It is becoming more
culturally acceptable to demonize someone who thinks and acts outside of one’s own
clique, group, or cohort.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This ideological/culture war schism extends to issues of national security and foreign policy. Jacksonians understand that the United States is engaged in an existential</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> war of</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> blood and faith with radical Islam. So does Donald Trump. Liberal progressives do not. Nor does Barack Obama. <a href="https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-end-of-liberalism" target="_blank">Sam Harris insists</a> that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 15.3333px;">—specifically about what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” He adds: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Harris is one of the few liberals who <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2014/11/sam-harris-discusses-religious-violence.html" target="_blank">does understand </a>the existential threat of radical Islam, as does, of all people, Bill Maher. Both have <a href="http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-versus-islamophobe-sam-harris-has-new-atheist-movement-been-hijacked-bigots" target="_blank">been denounced</a> as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/oct/06/bill-maher-islam-ben-affleck" target="_blank">Islamophobes</a> by fellow liberal progressives. Watch Harris and Maher get into a <a href="https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself" target="_blank">knock-down-drag-out brawl</a> with the oh-so politically correct Ben Affleck over Islam and Islamophobia. (Transcript <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/10/03/bill_maher_vs_ben_affleck_on_islam_mafia_that_will_fucking_kill_you_if_you_say_the_wrong_thing.html" target="_blank">here</a>. Watch Maher confront Charlie Rose on radical Islam <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un935p14Hvo" target="_blank">here</a>.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Note: <i>If</i> Harris and Maher are Islamophobes, could it be</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> because there</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s much in the Islamic world to be phobic about?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Abstract principles of justice and
morality, the fruit, as the Israeli author <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZGPnsT0p89MC&pg=PA173&dq=amos+oz+union+between+jewish+tradition+and+western+humanism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjejrG6op7NAhXDyj4KHaHTCkIQ6AEILTAD#v=onepage&q=amos%20oz%20union%20between%20jewish%20tradition%20and%20western%20humanism&f=false" target="_blank">Amos Oz says</a>, of the union between the Judeo-Christian
tradition and Western liberal humanism, are the hallmark of a civilized society.
They are the building blocks for the rule of law, democracy, and the culture of
liberty, and should always be fostered in the life of a nation. In the fullness of time the Arab Muslim world
may, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/the-meaningless-politics-of-liberal-democracies/486089/?utm_source=nl-atlantic-weekly-061016" target="_blank">or may not</a>, come to share these values with America, Israel and the West (assuming the West doesn</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’t lose them in the meantime)</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">. But despite a century of Wilsonian idealism,
these principles have little or no place in the Hobbesian world of international
relations. For any nation surrounded by immemorial tribal enemies waiting to
devour it, the only morality is survival. In the existential war of blood and
faith in which America, Israel, and the West are engaged, to quote <a href="http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/douglasmacarthurfarewelladdress.htm" target="_blank">General MacArthur</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">there is no substitute for victory.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><b>Update:</b> The June 23 vote by a simple majority of Britons to take Great Britain out of the European Union</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—Brexit</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—is another example of the populist ethnonationalist pushback against globalization. Other European populist nationalists may now follow the British example and push to get their nations out of the EU. <a href="http://link.washingtonpost.com/click/7014864.104991/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2FzaGluZ3RvbnBvc3QuY29tL29waW5pb25zL2JyZXhpdC1tZWV0LXRyZXhpdC8yMDE2LzA2LzI0L2Q4ZWY3NjkyLTNhNDMtMTFlNi1hMjU0LTJiMzM2ZTI5M2EzY19zdG9yeS5odG1sP3dwbW09MSZ3cGlzcmM9bmxfb3BpbmlvbnM/546d08ef3b35d071228b6660B9bf792e6" target="_blank">Kathleen Parker</a> writes:</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It was
easier to name the manifestations — xenophobia, racism, sexism, “fear of the
other” — than it was to recognize the root causes, which, distilled, amount to
a looming sense of lost identity. . . .</span></div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Their [the British voters’] retreat
isn’t only away from the European Union and, inferentially, from globalization,
concubine of the New World Order. It is rather a turning back toward home, the
idea as well as the place. Home is who we are, the values we share, the
traditions we practice and the one flag to which we all pledge allegiance.</span> </div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> This
is the red meat of the matter.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Speaking for the liberal globalist elites, <i>Foreign Policy</i> editor <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/24/brinsanity-brexit-european-union-donald-trump-2016/" target="_blank">David Rothkopf</a> vented his anger and contempt on the British people: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Voters</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—even voters in a country with a long and great tradition of democracy informed by a world-class education system and information resources</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—are capable of tremendous stupidity.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” This is precisely the attitude that pushed many ordinary Britons to support Brexit, the same attitude that may lead Americans to elect Donald Trump.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> See also these articles by </span><a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/britains-great-divide/" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;" target="_blank">James Barholomew</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, </span><a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/divided-britain-how-referendum-exposed-britains-culture-war" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;" target="_blank">Stephen Bush</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, </span><a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/06/25/the-problem-with-brexit-is-the-leaders-not-the-voters/" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;" target="_blank">Kurt Volker</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, and <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/illiberalism-worldwide-crisis/" target="_blank">Sohrab Ahmari</a>. And these outstanding articles by Joel Kotkin, <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/class-720559-britain-brexit.html" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/005309-trumps-racial-firebombs-weaken-us" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/03/brexit-and-beyond-the-great-unruly-rebellion-against-the-neo-liberal-crony-capitalists.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">© 2016
Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-46573950517174812292016-06-08T10:30:00.000-04:002017-09-28T10:57:40.160-04:00Reviling the Rabble: Bret Stephens Wants to Teach Jacksonian America a Lesson<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By Michael Kaplan</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Bret Stephens of the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Wall Street Journal</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> has long been one of my favorite columnists. He
talks more sense on foreign policy issues like the </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/04/islam-and-radical-west-by-bret-stephens.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">threat of radical Islam</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than a whole conga
line of bloviating pundits. (See, for example, </span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/11/palestinian-state-of-denial-by-bret.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">,
</span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/10/palestine-psychotic-stage-by-bret.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">,
</span><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-boring-palestinians-by-bret-stephens.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, </span><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/lies_damn_lies_and_j_street.html" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, and <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-meaning-of-olympic-snub-by-bret.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)
This has, to Stephens’s credit, earned him the overheated hatred </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">of the Left. (See these examples from the left-wing anti-Semitic website Mondoweiss, <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2015/10/stephens-hate-speech/" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2016/06/america-stephens-netanyahus/" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/politics-jewish-ethnocentrism/" target="_blank">here</a>.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">So I was very disappointed when Stephens <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/wsj-editor-trump-needs-to-be-destroyed-in-the-november-election-to-teach-gop-voters-a-lesson/" target="_blank">launched into a tirade</a>
against Jacksonian America on a May 29 </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/05/27/exp-gps-stephens-clip-trump.cnn" target="_blank">Fareed Zakaria GPS</a></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> panel. (<i>GPS</i> transcript <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1605/29/fzgps.01.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Stephens, usually the conservative on a <i>GPS</i> panel, descends here into the same liberal internationalist contempt for the people of flyover country</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—reviling the rabble</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">typical of host </span><a href="http://link.washingtonpost.com/click/5833674.75678/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2FzaGluZ3RvbnBvc3QuY29tL29waW5pb25zL2FtZXJpY2FzLXNlbGYtZGVzdHJ1Y3RpdmUtd2hpdGVzLzIwMTUvMTIvMzEvNTAxN2Y5NTgtYWZkYy0xMWU1LTlhYjAtODg0ZDFjYzRiMzNlX3N0b3J5Lmh0bWw_d3BtbT0xJndwaXNyYz1ubF9vcGluaW9ucw/546d08ef3b35d071228b6660Da765da7f" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;" target="_blank">Fareed Zakaria</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I most
certainly will not vote for Donald Trump. I will vote for the least left-wing
opponent to Donald Trump and I want to make a vote that makes sure he is the
biggest loser in presidential history since, I don’t know, Alf Landon or going
back further.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> It’s important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this
kind of ethnic quote “conservatism” or populism, be so decisively rebuked that
the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that
they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any
way, shape or form.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So they have to learn a lesson in the way perhaps Democrats
learned a lesson from McGovern in ’72. George Will has said let’s have him lose
in 50 states. Why not Guam, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia too.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This sounds too much like the smears
against Jacksonians as stupid, ignorant, racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobes, xenophobes, and
Islamophobes that’s the stock-in-trade of the Left. Just read <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/05/11/entitled_racist_bigoted_thugs_it_is_time_to_call_donald_trump_supporters_by_their_real_names/" target="_blank">any article</a> in
Salon, the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-benn/sorry-liberals-a-violent-_b_10316186.html" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a>, or watch <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/28/fireworks_real_time_panel_vs_wayne_allyn_root_on_donald_trump_climate_change_employment.html" target="_blank">any episode</a> of <i>Real Time
with Bill Maher</i>. In calling for Trump voters to be taught a lesson they will never forget, Bret Stephens displays an elite contempt for the intelligence and interests of much of the American public. <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/05/31/cruzer_i_hate_trump_but_will_vote_for_him_because_of_the_never_trump_crowd" target="_blank">Rush Limbaugh observes</a> that Stephens, speaking for the elites and the establishment, is telling the base, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“you people are gonna have to get your minds right. You</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’re gonna have to learn how big a bunch of screw-ups you are.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” While <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421589/revenge-radical-middle-matthew-continetti" target="_blank">Matthew Continetti</a> notes that Republicans are unsure whether they should mock and insult Trump supporters or show them some respect.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> I should not have been surprised. Sadly bashing the
base and reviling the rabble is now a tactic of the conservative </span><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430137/donald-trump-conservative-movement-menace" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">Never Trump</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> movement too.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Stephens</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s tirade makes it clear that the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436544/donald-trump-jacksonian-voters-andrew-jackson-nationalist-politics-are-back" target="_blank">tension between Jacksonians and movement conservatives</a> in the Republican Party has morphed into a very public and hostile schism. As <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/01/andrew-jackson-revenant-by-walter.html" target="_blank">Walter Russell Mead put it</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Jacksonian voters are less dogmatic and less conservative than some of their would-be political representatives care to acknowledge. Jacksonians like Social Security and Medicare much more than most Republican intellectuals, and they like immigration and free trade much less.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> The Never Trump movement is driven not just by personal hostility to Donald Trump but even more by a fear and loathing of Jacksonian America as fierce as any on the Left.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> And Jacksonian voters in this GOP primary season have said loud and clear that they don</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’t want intellectual conservatives like Bret Stephens, anymore than they want liberal progressive elites, telling them what to think, how to feel, and who to vote for.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Stephens is a charter member of the Never Trump movement. He fears that Trump is an unprincipled <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-donald-and-the-demagogues-1441064072" target="_blank">populist demagogue</a> in the mold of Hugo </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Chávez. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In a <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/05/hillary-conservative-hope-by-bret.html" target="_blank">recent article</a> Stephens went so far as to
proclaim Hillary Clinton the only hope left for the conservative movement. Conservatism
can survive a Clinton presidency checked and balanced by a Republican Congress.
“What isn’t survivable is a Republican president who is part Know Nothing, part
Smoot-Hawley and part John Birch.” Stephens then goes into a rant against </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Trumpism,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> a menacing caricature of Jacksonianism:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But
Trumpism isn’t just a triumph of marketing or the excrescence of a personality
cult. It is a regression to the conservatism of blood and soil, of ethnic
polarization and bullying nationalism. Modern conservatives sought to bury this
rubbish with a politics that strikes a balance between respect for tradition
and faith in the dynamic and culture-shifting possibilities of open markets.
When that balance collapses—under a Republican president, no less—it may never
again be restored, at least in our lifetimes.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Trump may be a </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“loudmouth vulgarian,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” but <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-donald-and-demagogues-by-bret.html" target="_blank">Stephens</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-donald-and-demagogues-by-bret.html" target="_blank">’s real concern</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> is the Jacksonian base of the GOP, the </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“quieter vulgarians</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” he appeals to. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“The leader isn</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’t the problem. The people are. It takes the demos to make the demagogue.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Potty-mouthed liberal comic and hipster Bill Maher, who has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i--Uq8VXas" target="_blank">crossed swords</a> with Stephens on <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/maher-rips-gop-on-climate-what-do-you-have-against-listening-to-scientists/" target="_blank">climate change</a>, was now on the same side as his erstwhile ideological adversary. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“I think the Frankenstein monster is</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> the Trump voter more than Trump,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/bill-maher-the-gops-frankenstein-monster-isnt-trump-its-the-people-voting-for-him/" target="_blank">Maher opined</a>, denouncing the Jacksonian electorate as </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“dumb and tacky.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Maher went on to compare Trump voters to Harambe the gorilla, whose <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/science/gorilla-shot-harambe-zoo.html?_r=0" target="_blank">tragic death</a> made national headlines: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“The electorate is like that gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—and democracy is the toddler. We don</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’t know whether it</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’ll cradle it or f***ing kill it.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">This attitude is anathema to political scientist and Trump supporter F.H. Buckley, who </span><a href="http://spectator.org/trumps-revolution/" style="font-family: georgia, serif;" target="_blank">offers this response</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> to liberal and conservative Never Trumpers:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Their
smug self-satisfaction reaches odious heights when they lecture us on the
rottenness of Trump supporters. . . . In the circumstances, the unwashed Trump
supporter can be forgiven for thinking that the scribes and hypocrites have
given up on him. And if Trump chooses to shock them, so much the better.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Even liberal academic <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/09/bret-stephens-and-trump" target="_blank">Mark Bauerlein</a> was taken aback by Stephens</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s wholesale indictment of Trump</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s Jacksonian supporters </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">as stupid, self-destructive, fringe, celebrity-obsessed, tasteless, nativist, and </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">‘paranoid.’” However <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/gabriel-schoenfeld-hold-trump-voters-accountable-article-1.2593856" target="_blank">Gabriel Schoenfeld</a>, a former adviser to Mitt Romney, agrees with Stephens, aghast that millions of Americans </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“have cast their votes for this creature from the cesspool.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” OMG!</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Not only must Trump voters be taught a lesson, they must </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“be held to account for embracing a candidate whose character is so dubious and whose plans for the country</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">among them singling out a religious group for a ban on an entry to the United States</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—amount to an assault on the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">An observation by blogger <a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/363861.php" target="_blank">Ace of Spades</a> is worth noting here: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“The online conservative (?) commentariat is ghettoizing itself further and further from mainstream opinion, and convincing itself more and more as it self-selects down to tiny numbers that it is a Vital Remnant of Goodness and Good Sense in an increasingly ugly and stupid world.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Thus Bret Stephens</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s compulsion to teach Jacksonian America a lesson.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> But perhaps Stephens and Gabriel Schoenfeld are the ones who need the lesson. <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-meaning-of-trump-by-walter-russell.html" target="_blank">Walter Russell Mead writes</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Trump
appeals to all those who think that the American Establishment, the Great and
the Good of both parties, has worked its way into a dead end of ideas that
don’t work and values that can’t save us. He is the candidate of
Control-Alt-Delete. His election would sweep away the smug generational certainties
that Clinton embodies, the Boomer Progressive Synthesis that hasn’t solved the
problems of the world or of the United States, but which nevertheless persists
in regarding itself as the highest and only form of truth.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Reviling the rabble is the favorite sport of the Great and the Good of both parties. Perhaps high-minded conservative intellectuals, like high-minded liberal intellectuals, are just less able to deal with the messiness and unpredictability of life than the down-to-earth Jacksonian public, which has always had to cope with life on the edge and appreciates Trump</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s tough, no nonsense view of the world</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">. This includes placing the security of the American people ahead of the desire of <a href="http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2016/07/07/donald_trump_syrian_refugees_fortress_america.html" target="_blank">Syrian refugees</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">most of whom are no doubt just <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyashton/jo-cox-gave-this-powerful-speech-calling-for-britain-to-acce?utm_term=.sfqxDZ5Km#.pcaRVyZgA" target="_blank">desperate people</a> fleeing the <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/the-barbarians-within-our-gates-111116" target="_blank">collapse of Arab Muslim civilization</a>, but some of whom could well be ISIS operatives, despite what <a href="http://link.washingtonpost.com/click/6856409.110335/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2FzaGluZ3RvbnBvc3QuY29tL29waW5pb25zL2l0cy10aW1lLWZvci10aGUtdXMtdG8tc3RlcC11cC10by1oZWxwLWVhc2UtdGhlLXN5cmlhbi1odW1hbml0YXJpYW4tdHJhZ2VkeS8yMDE2LzA2LzAyLzYxNThmYjQ4LTI5MDAtMTFlNi1iOTg5LTRlNTQ3OTcxNWI1NF9zdG9yeS5odG1sP3dwbW09MSZ3cGlzcmM9bmxfb3BpbmlvbnM/546d08ef3b35d071228b6660B83be75ae" target="_blank">Fareed Zakaria</a> might say</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 15.3333px;">—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">to be allowed to settle in the Untied States. Coming to America is not a right, it</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> a privilege. Migrants from the Middle East, Latin America, or anywhere else should be allowed onto our soil only if their presence will be to the benefit of the American people, to the benefit of you and me. Recent events in Europe, including the <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/01/sexual-assault-in-cologne-failure-by.html" target="_blank">New Year</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/01/sexual-assault-in-cologne-failure-by.html" target="_blank">’s Eve gang rape</a> of young German women by Arab migrants in Cologne, suggest that large-scale Muslim immigration <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/16/the-crisis-is-islam/" target="_blank">will bring</a> the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429480/muslim-immigration-sexual-assault-terrorism" target="_blank">cultural attitudes and social dysfunctions </a>of the Muslim world here as well. And that <i>is not</i> to the benefit of the American people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(<b>Update:</b> Donald Trump made these same points about radical Islam and immigration in a June 13 speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, after a jihadist attack on an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida. <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-addresses-terrorism-immigration-and-national-security" target="_blank">Text</a>. <a href="https://youtu.be/FFIVXkJWzfA?t=1s" target="_blank">Video</a>.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I am not, nor have I ever been, a Never Trump person. I plan to vote for Trump in November. But I have questions about whether Trump has the temperament and character to be commander in chief. I also have those questions about Hillary Clinton. As <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436222/david-french-not-running-president" target="_blank">David French</a>, who will not be running for president, speaking for the Never Trumps writes: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Never before have both parties failed so spectacularly, producing two dishonest, deceitful candidates who should be disqualified from running for town council, much less leader of the free world.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” I support Trump</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">s unapologetic </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“America First</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Jacksonianism. I like his boisterous, in-your-face style. However, I like my Jacksonian nationalism to be grounded in constitutional conservatism. Thus Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were my original choices for president.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">For me the question is The Donald</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s narcissism: does he understand that being president is not about him? It</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">s about the nation; about the liberty and well-being of the American people. <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/trump-718906-gop-political.html" target="_blank">Joel Kotkin fears </a>that Trump will prove himself a false savior for Jacksonians. He will <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/005309-trumps-racial-firebombs-weaken-us" target="_blank">squander the opportunity</a> to lead a grass-roots Jacksonian populist revolt against the political and economic elites to victory because of his own crassness and self-obsession.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> In the end Donald Trump won the Republican nomination by connecting with Jacksonian voters at a visceral level, speaking to their deepest concerns, arousing their enthusiasm, and rallying their support. Now he must show himself worthy of that support.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Bret Stephens would do well to follow the example of his fellow Never Trump conservatives Ben Domenech and Nicholas Gallagher, who do not revile the rabble. <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430197/donald-trump-ben-domenech-reject-trumps-euro-style-identity-politics" target="_blank">Domenech understands </a>that neither conservatives nor Republicans can win an election without the enthusiastic support of the Jacksonian base. So he urges conservative intellectuals to reject Trump but embrace his Jacksonian supporters and show them the respect that Stephens won</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">t. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Trump proves that these disaffected Americans can be won by those who respect the pro-American Jacksonian spine that runs through the electorate.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” To this <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436544/donald-trump-jacksonian-voters-andrew-jackson-nationalist-politics-are-back" target="_blank">Gallagher adds</a>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">While
conservatives are more than within their rights to write off Trump, they would
be neither wise nor justified to write off the Jacksonians. They may be
disgusted with Trump’s antics, and they may find some Jacksonian positions
inchoate, wrongheaded, or unfulfillable. But after the dust from this election
settles, it will be urgently necessary to once again fuse patriotic,
idealistic, and inclusive conservatism with Jacksonian nationalism.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Stephens, like many movement conservative intellectuals, is just not comfortable with a Jacksonian </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“blood and soil</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” nationalism driven more by folk sentiment and patriotic instinct than by ideas and ideology. Gallagher</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s answer:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ideals
need gut instincts and folk tradition on their side in order to be efficacious.
The Jacksonian sense of common American identity enables self-governance,
charity, and neighborliness. . . . For now, Jacksonianism lies closer to
conservatism than it does to the identity-politics Left, and one may reasonably
hope for a “best of both” compromise between intellectual conservatism and
Jacksonian impulses.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Bret Stephens, like Hillary Clinton, believes that Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president. More
importantly, Stephens agrees with Clinton’s approach to foreign policy
and America’s role in the world. In fact on many foreign policy issues Hillary Clinton, like Bret Stephens, is <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/06/03/on-foreign-policy-hillary-clinton-leans-more-to-right-than-donald-trump.html" target="_blank">to the right of Donald Trump</a>. Bret Stephens is a globalist, while Hillary
Clinton is, to use <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-vs-hillary-nationalism-vs-globalism-2016-16041?page=show" target="_blank">Robert Merry’s words</a>, “the personification of the globalist
elite.” This puts them in opposition to <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-international-foreign-policy-global-risk-security-guide-213936" target="_blank">Trump</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-international-foreign-policy-global-risk-security-guide-213936" target="_blank">’s</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-international-foreign-policy-global-risk-security-guide-213936" target="_blank"> “America First”</a> Jacksonian nationalism. Indeed Clinton’s recent foreign policy <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/06/hillary-clintons-foreign-policy-and.html" target="_blank">Trump-bashing speech</a> was
designed in part to appeal to globalist “neocons” like Stephens, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwiO2bGPk4_NAhVBWz4KHQHZBXoQFggxMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fop-ed%2Fla-oe-boot-republicans-in-exile-20160508-story.html&usg=AFQjCNEn4OZsYRt6M3LkgLcoR2zfsoLClA&sig2=LwtXw6IBPzUASsi8GXofew&bvm=bv.123664746,d.cWw" target="_blank">Max Boot</a>, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/06/02/480487315/gop-foreign-policy-hawks-pen-letter-opposing-trumps-national-security-views" target="_blank">Reuel Marc Gerecht</a>, and
<a href="http://link.washingtonpost.com/click/6180219.58590/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2FzaGluZ3RvbnBvc3QuY29tL29waW5pb25zL3RydW1wLWlzLXRoZS1nb3BzLWZyYW5rZW5zdGVpbi1tb25zdGVyLW5vdy1oZXMtc3Ryb25nLWVub3VnaC10by1kZXN0cm95LXRoZS1wYXJ0eS8yMDE2LzAyLzI1LzNlNDQzZjI4LWRiYzEtMTFlNS05MjVmLTFkMTAwNjJjYzgyZF9zdG9yeS5odG1sP3dwbW09MSZ3cGlzcmM9bmxfb3BpbmlvbnM/546d08ef3b35d071228b6660C56b2d557" target="_blank">Robert Kagan</a>, who have all said they will support her over Trump. And <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/vote-against-trump-not-vote-hillary-16446?page=show" target="_blank">Dov Zakheim</a> writes that Clinton has now become </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“the darling of the neocons.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-vs-hillary-nationalism-vs-globalism-2016-16041?page=show" target="_blank">Robert Merry</a>, writing in </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The National Interest</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, argues that the 2016
election has become a battle between <a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/14/how-samuel-huntington-predicted-our-political-moment/" target="_blank">globalists and nationalists</a>. (The late political scientist Samuel Huntington <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMjA4MzM0ZjQtZDAyZS00NjExLWIwNzMtMjU0MWE4MDM1ZjJk/view" target="_blank">wrote of this divide</a> back in 2004.) Merry points
to five interrelated issues on which globalists and nationalists divide:
immigration; foreign policy; trade; political correctness; and cultural
heritage. Donald Trump</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s assertive Jacksonian nationalist stance on all of these issues, <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/5-reasons-trump-dominating-american-politics-16384?page=show" target="_blank">Merry concludes</a>, led to his dominance of American politics this election season.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Here</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s how strategic analyst <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-international-foreign-policy-global-risk-security-guide-213936" target="_blank">Ian Bremmer </a>sums up Trump</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s Jacksonian approach to foreign policy:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">He
won’t be guided by ideology. He doesn’t appear to have one. He’s a gut-feel
guy, a zero-sum strategist, and a bottom-line businessman. He won’t approach
problems as if the world’s sole superpower can afford to be generous, to do
more so that others can do less. He sees no special responsibility to be
magnanimous, or even patient. Being No. 1 doesn’t mean playing the role of
provider. It</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 13.3333px; line-height: 15.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">s about winning. It means being the toughest, smartest son of a
bitch at the table. In short, Trump will probably try to remake U.S. foreign
policy in his own (self-)image.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bremmer, a globalist like Stephens, is not happy with the Trump message, but admits that it </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“resonates with millions of Americans.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Jacksonians believe that America must look first to her own interests. The sufferings of peoples around the globe, like the Syrian refugees, may be tragic, but they just don</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’t count for much</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> in Jacksonian geopolitical considerations. Jacksonians are not willing to sacrifice American blood and treasure in any cause, however noble, that is not essential to America</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s prosperity and survival. As Lt. Col. Ralph Peters <a href="http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/1993/peters.htm" target="_blank">wrote in 1993</a>: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“If we want to avoid needless, thankless deaths among our own countrymen, we must try to learn to watch others die with equanimity.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Easier said than done. But if anyone can do it, Donald Trump can.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Looking at the schism between Jacksonians and movement conservatives, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429853/donald-trump-voters-conservatism" target="_blank">David French</a> put his finger on the secret of Trump</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s unforeseen political triumph:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The GOP
underestimated Trump in part because it <i>overestimated</i>
the conservatism of its own southern, rural northern, and Midwestern base. It underestimated
the extent to which many of its voters hadn’t so much embraced the corporate
conservatism of the Chamber of Commerce or the constitutional conservatism of
the Tea Party as much as they had rejected the extremism of the increasingly
shrill and politically correct Left. And, yes, the size of this population
calls into question the very process of building a national Republican
electoral majority, but it also threatens Democrats who seem intent on drumming
every blue-collar white male straight out of the party.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">For eight years Barack Obama and his
administration have tried to <a href="http://njbrepository.blogspot.com/2016/01/andrew-jackson-revenant-by-walter.html" target="_blank">purge Jacksonian nationalism</a> from American life
and politics. Jacksonians, with their traditional American values and unabashed
patriotism, represent everything this president despises about America. Liberal
progressive elites in Hollywood and academia want to redefine expressions of
Jacksonian nationalism as hate crimes. And as Bret Stephens and the Never Trumpers show, the Great and the Good of both parties are united in their contempt for the Jacksonian public. Well Jacksonian America has
had enough. Donald Trump may or may not be temperamentally suited to be
president; <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=IqhCAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA371&dq=feel+much+alarmed+at+the+prospect+of+seeing+General+Jackson+President.++He+is+one+of+the+most+unfit+men+I+know+of+for+such+a+place.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiozNP0m5XNAhUIGz4KHRBcD_U4KBDoAQhRMAk#v=onepage&q=feel%20much%20alarmed%20at%20the%20prospect%20of%20seeing%20General%20Jackson%20President.%20%20He%20is%20one%20of%20the%20most%20unfit%20men%20I%20know%20of%20for%20such%20a%20place.&f=false" target="_blank">the same was said</a> of Andrew Jackson. And his positions on
immigration, trade, and foreign policy reflect both the strengths and the
weaknesses of Jacksonian nationalism. But Donald Trump is the chosen instrument for Jacksonian America’s pushback against the assault by the Great and the Good on all
that it holds dear.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp_H6sncVqQ" target="_blank">victory speech</a> after the final primaries on June 7, Donald Trump <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/7/11880448/donald-trump-victory-speech-transcript" target="_blank">told his supporters</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“I understand the responsibility of carrying the mantle and I will never, ever let you down.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Trump also pledged that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“I</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’m going to be America</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">’s champion.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” This is what Jacksonian America has been longing to hear.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">If Trump can keep his narcissism in check and focus on the issues important to his Jacksonian supporters who have placed so much faith in him, he just might win this election. For if Donald Trump is to enter the White House on January 20,
2017, it will be a passionate and energized Jacksonian America, the rabble reviled by Bret Stephens, determined to make America great again, that brings him
there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(<b>Update:</b> Stephens expanded on his views in a June 17 <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/06/17/wsjs_bret_stephens_hillary_clinton_as_awful_as_i_find_her_is_a_survivable_event_im_not_so_sure_about_trump.html" target="_blank">radio interview</a> with Hugh Hewitt.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">© 2016
Michael Kaplan</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-16012160132812420392012-10-25T02:14:00.000-04:002017-06-05T11:55:31.260-04:00The Obama-Romney Foreign Policy Debate<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Compared to the first two presidential
debates the third debate, the one on <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/presidential-debate-full-transcript/story?id=17538888" target="_blank">foreign policy</a>, at <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=102344" target="_blank">Lynn University</a> in Boca
Raton, Florida on Monday, October 22 was something of a snooze. There were no fireworks between
President Obama and Governor Romney both of whom focused on not doing any
harm to themselves.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The video of the debate is posted below and<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tecohezcA78" target="_blank"> here</a> and <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/22/full_third_presidential_debate_between_romney_and_obama.html" target="_blank">here</a>. You can find the transcript <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/presidential-debate-full-transcript/story?id=17538888" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=102344" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Overall Romney came off quite well. He gave
the impression of being a sober and thoughtful statesman, while President Obama
came across as peevish and petulant. <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/22/krauthammer_romney_won_unequivocally_obamas_responses_were_petty.html" target="_blank">Charles Krauthammer </a>comments that “Romney
went large, Obama went very, very small, shockingly small.” Romney’s strategy
in the debate was to avoid going down in the mud with Obama and appear
presidential. He succeeded in that. Indeed, Romney looked more presidential
than the president. I would have liked Romney to be more aggressive, especially
on the Obama Administration’s <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/the_rumble/2012/10/press-obama-on-benghazi" target="_blank">cover up</a> of the <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/23/state-dept-emails-from-day-libya-attack-show-al-qaeda-tied-group-on-radar/" target="_blank">terrorist</a> <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/24/sources-say-counterterror-chief-reprimanded-for-calling-libya-attack-terror/" target="_blank">attack </a>by Ansar al-Sharia on the American consulate in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/libya-attack-white-house-benghazi_n_2007497.html?view=screen" target="_blank">Benghazi</a>,
Libya. <a href="http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/10/23/who-won-the-presidential-debate-oreilly-factor-fox-news/" target="_blank">Bill O’Reilly</a> suggests that Romney did not want to appear
confrontational because it would be a turn off to women voters. Perhaps that is
so. Anyway, if Romney does not win the election on November 6, it will not be
because of his performance in the debates.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The main point I came away with from
the debate was that Romney and Obama differ more in style and optics than in
substance when it comes to foreign policy. Romney would present a tougher, more
Jacksonian face of America to the world, while keeping in place many of Obama’s
policies—policies that Obama himself inherited from George W. Bush. This is
only natural. America’s geopolitical interests have a continuity over the long
term that transcends the four or eight years of any administration. Democratic and Republican presidents from Truman through Reagan pursued the Cold War strategy of containment for forty years until the Soviet Union collapsed. Robert
Merry, editor of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The National Interest</i>,
a leading journal of the realist school of foreign policy, <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/revealing-the-true-romney-7650?page=show" target="_blank">observed that</a> “the
Republican candidate who presented himself to the American people on
foreign-policy issues came across as measured, moderate, informed and capable
of handling complex issues with nuance and balance.” On Syria, for example,
Romney would not intervene directly in that nation’s bloody civil war—there will
be no American boots on the ground. But he would like to provide arms and
assistance to some of the rebel groups to encourage a pro-American post-Assad
regime and short-circuit the growing influence of the Islamists. Romney will
continue to use sanctions <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-limits-of-friendship/" target="_blank">against Iran</a>, though he said he would make them tougher and
more effective than Obama has, and would order a military strike against Iran’s
nuclear facilities only as a last resort. Romney also plans to carry through
on Obama’s commitment to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan by the end
of 2014. And of course he praised the president’s decision to send SEAL Team
Six after Osama bin Laden. Romney understands that Jacksonian America will not
support any further nation building in the Muslim world. The American people
have spent enough blood and treasure in what has become a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus" target="_blank">Sisyphean</a>
task.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Where Romney did distinguish himself from
Obama was in his commitment to a Reaganesque policy of peace through strength. On
how to engage with the Muslim world going forward, Romney <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/presidential-debate-full-transcript/story?id=17538888&page=2" target="_blank">said this</a>:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Well,
my strategy is pretty straightforward, which is to go after the bad guys, to
make sure we do our very best to interrupt them, to kill them, to take them out
of the picture. But my strategy is broader than that. That’s important, of
course. But the key that we’re going to have to pursue is a pathway to get the
Muslim world to be able to reject extremism on its own. We don't want another
Iraq. We don’t want another Afghanistan. That’s not the right course for us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The
right course for us is to make sure that we go after the people who are leaders
of these various anti-American groups and these jihadists, but also help the
Muslim world. And how do we do that? A group of Arab scholars came together,
organized by the U.N., to look at how we can help the world reject these
terrorists. And the answer they came up with was this: One, more economic
development. We should key our foreign aid, our direct foreign investment—and
that of our friends—we should coordinate it to make sure that we push back and
give them more economic development. Number two, better education. Number
three, gender equality. Number four, the rule of law. We have to help these
nations create civil societies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">So Romney would embrace the Arab Spring
governments, including democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood governments,
and promote American influence through foreign aid and investment. But Romney
would make such aid <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/opinion/friedman-what-romney-didnt-say.html?ref=thomaslfriedman" target="_blank">conditional </a>and use it to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/opinion/roger-cohen-working-with-the-muslim-brotherhood.html?_r=1&" target="_blank">nudge leaders</a> such as Egypt’s
President Mohamed Morsi away from Islamic supremacism and onto a path that could
in time create a civil society that reconciles Islam with liberal democracy.
Whether this can be done is the big unanswered question of the Arab Spring.
<a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/316633/no-its-ishariai-and-assault-us-missions-andrew-c-mccarthy#" target="_blank">Islamic supremacism</a> and the advance of the Jihad may yet prevail as <a href="http://andrewcmccarthy.com/" target="_blank">Andrew McCarthy</a> and <a href="http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/islamist-threat-isnt-going-away" target="_blank">Michael J. Totten</a> argue. But the
previous “realist” policy of unconditional support for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mukhabarat</i> (secret police) states
of Hosni Mubarak and his ilk in the Arab world has reached a dead end. Indeed it
was these sterile Soviet-style autocracies which suffocated the aspirations of
their young people for liberty, dignity, and upward mobility that produced Al Qaeda in
the first place. As former C.I.A. analyst <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/02/bruce-riedel-stop-the-libya-blame-game.html" target="_blank">Bruce Reidel</a> writes, reformers in the
new Arab Spring governments “are trying to build more accountable and
democratic regimes that don’t repress their own people. These new governments
are trying to do something the Arab world has never done before—create
structures where the rule of law applies and the secret police are held
accountable to elected officials.” Reidel also admits “that is a tall order,
especially when terrorists are trying to create chaos.” Mitt Romney understands
this and appreciates that working with the new populist Arab regimes will be
more complicated than working with the old dictators. But the long-term positive
transformation of repressive societies is never simple or easy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Engagement with the Arab Spring,
however, does not mean apologizing for America. Romney was at his strongest
when he blasted President Obama for his <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/10/23/it_wasn_t_just_an_apology_tour_it_was_a_condemnation_tour_and_we_have_all_the_evidence_to_prove_it_right_here" target="_blank">apology tours </a>in the Middle East,
Europe, and Latin America. These apology tours projected weakness instead of strength
and it only encouraged the bad actors of the world to treat America with
contempt. “I think from the very beginning,” <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/presidential-debate-full-transcript/story?id=17538888&page=16" target="_blank">Romney said</a>, “one of the
challenges we’ve had with Iran is that they have looked at this administration
and felt that the administration was not as strong as it needed to be. I think
they saw weakness where they had expected to find American strength.” Nothing
is more galling to Jacksonians than the projection of weakness. And in the high
stakes world of international politics projection of strength isn’t everything,
it’s the only thing (h/t Vince Lombardi). Romney went on:</span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">And
then the President began what I’ve called an apology tour of going to various
nations in the Middle East and criticizing America. I think they looked at that
and saw weakness. Then when there were dissidents in the streets of Tehran, a
Green Revolution, holding signs saying, is America with us, the President was
silent. I think they noticed that as well. And I think that when the President
said he was going to create daylight between ourselves and Israel, that they
noticed that as well.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">President Obama was visibly annoyed by
Romney’s characterization of his foreign trips. But the governor <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/presidential-debate-full-transcript/story?id=17538888&page=17" target="_blank">stood his ground</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Mr. President,
the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and
you flew to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to Turkey and Iraq. And, by the way,
you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region, but you went to the other
nations. And, by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel. And then in
those nations, and on Arabic TV, you said that America had been dismissive and
derisive. You said that on occasion America has dictated to other nations. Mr.
President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other
nations from dictators.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This was Romney’s best line of the entire
debate. It showed his determination to clothe American foreign policy in the
unswerving Jacksonian commitment to liberty through strength. The President of
the United States never apologizes for America. He trumpets American
exceptionalism to the world. He keeps the Ahmadinejads of the world off balance
with the hint that he will use American might to pound them into the dust if
they don’t take America’s demands in diplomatic negotiations seriously. Again the purpose of a strong
military is to keep the peace by not having to use it too often. As Theodore
Roosevelt understood, the Big Stick of the military is best kept in reserve to back
up the softer more conciliatory voice of diplomacy. Mitt Romney also
understands this. While he may continue much of the Obama foreign policy in
practice, by presenting it to the world in Jacksonian colors he will project
the strength needed to preserve peace and advance American interests in the
world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">© 2012
Michael Kaplan</span></span></div>
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</span>Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-80345981923369123092012-10-19T01:41:00.001-04:002017-06-05T11:56:11.384-04:00Mitt Romney Channels the Spirit of Reagan at a Campaign Stop in Ohio<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TLFD95ckdTU/UH2XRMHmtiI/AAAAAAAAAv4/kgn3Hj4kQ3g/s1600/Mitt+Romney+campaign+rally,+Lebanon,+OH,+Sat+Oct+13+-+A5HwS8RCYAEsGqp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TLFD95ckdTU/UH2XRMHmtiI/AAAAAAAAAv4/kgn3Hj4kQ3g/s640/Mitt+Romney+campaign+rally,+Lebanon,+OH,+Sat+Oct+13+-+A5HwS8RCYAEsGqp.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Overhead shot of Mitt Romney speaking to an energized crowd in Lebanon, Ohio, Saturday October 13.</span></td></tr>
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<span id="goog_1935905336"></span><span id="goog_1935905337"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In my previous post I said that Mitt
Romney needed to channel the spirit of Ronald Reagan if he wants to win this
election. Well, Mitt did it! Move over <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwaCaaqfIK4" target="_blank">Alicia Keys</a>; you’re not the only one
who’s on fire. Mitt Romney’s on fire now and it just might blaze a path for him
to the White House.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The fired up Mitt Romney, burning with
passion, was on display at a campaign stop in Lebanon, Ohio on Saturday
October 13. Speaking before an estimated <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-13/romney-s-crowds-grow-as-obama-prepares-for-n-y-debate.html" target="_blank">crowd of 10,700</a> outside the historic
Golden Lamb Inn, Romney touched on many of the themes that resonate with
Jacksonians. This is what Romney must keep on doing for the remainder of the
campaign. This is a fine demonstration of how to rally Jacksonian America on
the stump and keep it energized and focused on victory.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The video of the speech is posted below.
You can also find it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N5Jit7L3VM" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://www.therightscoop.com/full-speech-watch-mitt-romney-campaign-rally-in-lebanon-ohio/" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YusSYX5qBu4" target="_blank">here</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YusSYX5qBu4?rel=0" width="640"></iframe>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In the first half of the speech Romney listed
the five points of his plan for getting the economy moving again. “Number one
is energy. Number two is trade. Number three; I want to make sure people have
the skills they need to be able to work in the jobs of today. . . . Number 4 for me
is we’re going to cut federal spending. We are going to cap Federal spending
and get us on track to a balanced budget,” Romney added as his final point that
he would cut taxes on small businesses to encourage them to hire people. The
crowd cheered as Romney denounced the crony capitalism of the Obama administration;
how the $90 billion wasted on Solyndra and other “green” energy companies could
have hired two million teachers. “He likes picking winners and losers, or as a
friend said to me ‘no he just likes picking losers.’” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Romney also reminded the audience that the
number of people on food stamps increased from 32 million to 47 million over
the last four years. “That’s an increase of 15 million people, more than the
population of Ohio.” The president, Romney quipped, would much rather focus on
the fate of Big Bird than find ways to combat the poverty which now traps one
in six Americans, and create jobs for young graduates, half of whom cannot find
college-level work. “What I want to talk about is how I can help save the
American family and get good jobs for the American people.” Romney repeated his
pledges to repeal Obamacare, not raise taxes on middle-class Americans and
small businesses, hold China to account for unfair trade practices, and restore the strength of the American military. And he also took a swipe at the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/mitt-romney-campaign-contributions-by-teachers-unions-a-conflict-of-interest/2012/09/25/eb2e3644-072b-11e2-858a-5311df86ab04_story.html" target="_blank">teachers’ unions</a> which is always
popular with Jacksonian audiences. (Romney was careful to distinguish between teachers and the teachers’ unions.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“His campaign is getting smaller and
smaller,” Romney declared to the cheers of the more than 10,000 Ohioans
gathered in Lebanon. “And our crowds keep getting bigger and bigger. There’s a
crescendo of passion about changing Washington.” This is the look of political
momentum, “the Big Mo” as <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/a-move-toward-romney-in-polls-but-will-it-last/" target="_blank">George H. W. Bush</a> famously said.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia";"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Byron York, <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/york-gop-hopes-soar-as-romney-rolls-in-ohio/article/2510719" target="_blank">covering the rally</a> for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Washington Examiner</i>, assessed the mood
of the crowd. Danielle Low, a 22-year-old preschool teacher from Lebanon who
York described as “the quintessential Romney target voter,” made no secret of
her disappointment with President Obama. Low voted for Obama in 2008, the first
election in which she was eligible to vote. “But then I gave birth to my first
son, and I knew we needed a change.” Life is now a constant struggle for Low
and her husband. They want to have a second child and buy a bigger house but
the stagnant economy makes this impossible. Low is furious with President Obama
whom she holds responsible for her situation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I think
President Obama tricked me into voting for him. I feel like he lied to me. He
made promises he couldn’t keep. He played on my young emotions. He played on me
because I was young and naïve. I didn’t know anything about the world. I believed
that he was going to give us a change. I just feel like he made a lot of
promises—there’s no way he followed through with them. I haven’t seen any
change. I’ve seen change for the worse, not change for the better. So I hope
Mitt Romney can carry us through the next four years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Low’s anger reflects the sentiment of the
Jacksonian middle class in heartland towns like Lebanon, Ohio, which feels
betrayed by Obama’s lofty but empty rhetoric. If Romney can tap into this
sentiment, the dashing of Obama’s Pied Piper song of “hope and change,” and
follow through with his own free-market vision of economic renewal, he will win
Jacksonian America to his cause and cruise into the White House.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Sabrina Ingram is a small business owner
in Lebanon. She recently opened a restaurant, 180 Cafe, with her family’s
savings. <a href="http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/romney-campaigns-in-lebanon-adds-personal-touches" target="_blank">Ingram told</a> local television reporter Mario Ramirez that she wants to
expand her restaurant and hopes that Romney can turn the economy around. “I
mean we don’t have chain restaurants around here. We all depend on each other
to support each other and with him getting elected it will help.” Jerri Grooms,
a retired teacher, applauded Romney’s stance on teachers unions. “Get rid of
them,” Grooms told Ramirez. “Let the teachers teach the children. That’s all
they need to do is teach the children. I think he’s on the right track.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/003056-the-unseen-class-war-that-could-decide-the-presidential-election" target="_blank">Joel Kotkin</a> has labeled people like Low,
Ingram, and Groom, the new “yeomanry,” the twenty-first-century version of the
nineteenth-century Jacksonian homestead farmers. This new Jacksonian
middle-class yeomanry, committed to rugged individualism and self-reliance, is the
conservative base of the Republican Party. Kotkin places the yeomanry in
opposition to the “clerisy”; the upper-middle-class professionals and
technocrats in law, academia, the media, and the well-paid public sector who
are now, along with the government-dependent poor, the progressive base of the
Democratic Party. The yeomanry, Kotkin writes, “are primarily small property owners who lack
the girth and connections of the clerisy but resist joining the
government-dependent poor. Particularly critical are small business owners, who
Gallup identifies as ‘the least approving’ of Obama among all the major
occupation groups. Barely one in three likes the present administration.” Again
this is the social and political polarization that Romney was trying to
convey with the 47% meme. Jacksonian yeomen tend to have larger families than the
clerisy and they believe in finding solutions to social problems through
private initiatives and philanthropy rather than by expanding blue model
government. While the clerisy works in offices and rarely gets its hands dirty
in actual production, “many yeomen, particularly in business services, depend
on industry for their livelihoods either directly or indirectly.” Thus they
find Obama’s and the clerisy’s “green” regulatory regime a mortal threat to the
jobs which are their livelihood. Kotkin concludes that “ultimately this
division—clerisy and their clients versus yeomanry—will decide the election.”
And Mitt Romney understands this.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">I found the second half of the speech
where Romney, belying his image as a corporate stiff, made an emotional
connection with the crowd, the most compelling. This was where Romney was at
his most Jacksonian and Reaganesque, conveying his passionate faith in the
greatness and goodness of the American people. “It’s always been a
characteristic of this great country to know that the future is brighter than
the past. To know that we’re passing on to our kids a land more free and more
prosperous even that which we enjoyed. And that’s coming back. That confidence
is coming back.” Determined to combat the pessimism sweep-ing
America in the wake of the economic downturn, Romney declared that the American
people could overcome devastating setbacks as they did in the past and put the nation back on the
path of greatness. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">“The heart of the American people is
strong. The heart of the American people has been proven time and time again in
test after test. Regardless of the challenge, we stand and overcome those challenges.
I know it’s true. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen people in the most extreme
circumstances who dig deep and show that kind of courage. The great qualities
of the human spirit I see in my fellow Americans, day in and day out.” With those lines Romney truly embraced the spirit of Reagan and Jackson.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZasoD2bI7Ds/UIDnT_rnXWI/AAAAAAAAAwI/3jKGEfN0D8c/s1600/Mitt+Romney+and+Ann+Romney+with+Jane+Horton+-+ht_jane_horton_mitt_ann_romney_jef_121009_wg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZasoD2bI7Ds/UIDnT_rnXWI/AAAAAAAAAwI/3jKGEfN0D8c/s1600/Mitt+Romney+and+Ann+Romney+with+Jane+Horton+-+ht_jane_horton_mitt_ann_romney_jef_121009_wg.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Mitt and Ann Romney with Jane Horton</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Romney then engaged the crowd with inspirational
stories of American perseverance and grit in the face of tragedy. He told of
running into <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-obituaries/atlanta-businessman-led-charge-for-spinal-injury-f/nSH2X/" target="_blank">Billy Hulse</a>, an old classmate from Harvard, at a rally in Atlanta.
Hulse had been left paralyzed by an auto accident in 2009, but instead of
giving in to despair he devoted himself to starting a center for spinal cord
injury research. Romney put his hands on Hulse and said “God bless you, Billy;
I love you.” Sadly, though, Romney learned that Hulse had died the next day.
This was a man, a businessman, who showed a very American determination to turn
his personal tragedy into a vehicle for improving the lives of others. Romney
also told the story of <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/grieving-widow-romneys-personal-story/story?id=17434211" target="_blank">Jane Horton</a>, a 26-year-old woman he met at the
Republican Convention in Tampa. Horton had been preparing a box of birthday
presents for her husband Chris, a sharpshooter with the Oklahoma National Guard
in Afghanistan, when the dreaded knock came at the door: Chris had been killed.
Horton went on to help other bereaved families. When faced with a protest at
her husband’s funeral by the deranged fanatics of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church#Funeral_pickets" target="_blank">Westboro Baptist Church</a>,
Horton <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2012/10/10/mitt-romney-and-the-widow-horton/" target="_blank">said</a> that “Chris died for them to be able to protest.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">These stories, along with others Romney
told, while sad, speak to the very strength and courage, the combination of
rugged individualism and the ties of community, that built the nation. Romney
praised the NASA astronauts as “pioneers who lived for something bigger than
themselves. Who put themselves in harm’s way so that we could learn, pioneering
new avenues of learning, understanding space in ways that might help their
fellow Americans and their fellow men and women. That’s the nature of the
American people. We live for something bigger than ourselves.” The parents
working two jobs to keep their children fed and clothed, Romney reminded the
crowd, are just as heroic as the NASA pioneers. As are the young men and women
who put their careers on hold and join the military in service to the nation. “This
is America. This is who we are. This is why at a time like this we come
together.” Romney seemed on the verge of tears as he delivered this hymn to the
American spirit and the people who embodied it. “How I love those who served.
How I appreciate their sacrifice.” With proper leadership grounded in the
values and traditions that made America great, Romney had no doubt that the
American people could rebuild the economy and restore America’s place in the
world. And so Romney ended with an appeal to the people of Ohio to join him in
the work of renewing America. “I love America. I believe in America. I believe
in you. I believe we’re coming back. But I need your help as well.” Together,
Romney said “we’re going to be able take back America, keep it strong, keep it
the shining city on a hill.” It doesn’t get more Reaganesque than that.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">© 2012
Michael Kaplan</span></span></span><br />
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-70547185195562038052012-10-11T01:41:00.000-04:002017-06-05T11:57:07.013-04:00Mitt Romney’s Moment of Truth: The 47 Percent and the Issue of Dependency<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Mitt Romney delivering his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, August 30, 2012.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/09/25/text-of-romneys-address-to-clinton-global-initiative/" target="_blank">Free enterprise has done more to bless humanity than any other economic system not only because it is the only system that creates a prosperous middle class, but also because it is the only system where the individual enjoys the freedom to guide and build his or her own life. Free enterprise cannot only make us better off financially, it can make us better people. . . . Work builds self-esteem.It transforms minds from fantasy and fanaticism to reality and grounding. Work will not long tolerate corruption nor quietly endure the brazen theft by government of the product of hard-working men and women.</a></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/09/25/text-of-romneys-address-to-clinton-global-initiative/" target="_blank">—Mitt Romney, Address to the Clinton Global Initiative, September 25, 2012.</a></span></span></span></span></div>
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</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">When one thinks of Mitt Romney, passion
is not the first word that comes to mind. The Republican presidential candidate
does not come across as a particularly passionate guy. He is in many ways a
throwback to the 1950s era of <em>Father Knows Best</em>: a calm, old fashioned,
reserved, straight-arrow patriarch, who keeps his feelings buttoned up inside
his impeccably tailored business suit. Think of <em>Mad Men</em>’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Draper" target="_blank">Don Draper</a> without
the psychological baggage and compulsive womanizing. This emotional reserve,
suitable perhaps for the CEO of Bain Capital, has not helped Governor Romney in
his campaign, making it difficult for him, unlike President Obama, to form an
emotional connection with the American electorate. Mitt Romney may be a
competent business executive and technocrat, but he is uncool and dull, the very
opposite of the ultra-hip and cool Barack Obama. Let’s face it: before his <a href="http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/3749bf66-2db1-4461-82cb-c284d8a12970" target="_blank">outstanding</a> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-galston/romney-debate_b_1937939.html" target="_blank">performance</a> in the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACs2DU3fV80&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">first presidential debate</a> on October 3, Mitt Romney was a <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/judge-napolitano/two-failures.html" target="_blank">failure</a> as a candidate; one who put audiences to sleep and was unable to articulate a coherent and compelling message. Mitt Romney is
<em>not</em> Ronald Reagan.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Governor Romney is going to have to
channel the spirit of Ronald Reagan, and the spirit of Andrew Jackson too, and
soon, if he wants to win this election. As Wisconsin Governor <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/23/scott-walker-on-mitt-romney-i-want-to-see-fire-in-the-belly/" target="_blank">Scott Walker</a> <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/251159-walker-show-more-enthusiasm-romney" target="_blank">put it</a>, “I think you’ve gotta get off the heels and move forward. I think Americans
want a fighter . . . I want to see fire in the belly.” Mitt really needs to show some <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/10/02/everyone_thinks_they_know_what_mitt_should_do" target="_blank">passion</a>. Can he do it? On his
foreign policy trip to Britain, Israel, and Poland, in his campaign stops with
Paul Ryan, in his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3u1Y0vhtYU&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">acceptance speech</a> at the Republican National Convention, and in the <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/03/transcript-first-presidential-debate/" target="_blank">first presidential debate</a>,
Romney gave hints that underneath his phlegmatic, buttoned-up exterior burned a
passionate, poetic, dare I say Jacksonian, fire in the belly and love of
country.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This passion also came through at a
speech he delivered at a fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida, on May 17; a speech
which was secretly filmed and later released to the venerable progressive
magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser" target="_blank">Mother Jones</a></i>, by of all people <a href="http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/18/13938614-how-the-romney-video-leaked-for-carters-it-was-personal" target="_blank">James Earl Carter IV</a>, grandson of former President Jimmy Carter. And so Mitt
Romney and his campaign now face a moment of truth. It is a moment of truth in
two ways: first, Romney <a href="http://monicamemo.typepad.com/weblog/2012/09/romney-tells-the-truth.html" target="_blank">told the truth</a> about the economic and moral
challenge facing the nation when 47 percent of its people are at risk of sinking into dependency; and second, is the Romney
campaign now ready</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">to act on that truth, to
aggressively push his pro-growth oppoturnity agenda forward and do what it takes to win this election?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Mitt Romney has to stop playing small ball and <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/328667/message-mitt-make-case-charles-krauthammer" target="_blank">go big</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">—</span>to use a metaphor from his beloved Boston Red Sox, he should aim to hit that ball over the Green Monster and out of Fenway Park. Mitt can do this by becoming the champion of conservativism, its happy warrior as <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/309172/monica-s-manifesto-interview" target="_blank">Monica Crowley</a> would say, asserting conservative ideas of liberty and American exceptionalism with passion and gusto. He must unrelentingly attack
Barack Obama’s record in both domestic and foreign policy. He needs to show how
the faltering economy and the revival of the Islamic jihadist war against the
United States are the direct results of the ideological and policy failures of
the Obama administration. He should paint a picture of what four more years of
an Obama presidency would mean for the nation: a stagnating economy that
produces fewer jobs and diminished wealth creation; an expanding and increasingly
intrusive government bureaucracy; federal, state, and local governments headed
toward fiscal collapse; an America that can no longer promote liberty and prosperity at home or command respect in the
world. He has to make crystal clear why the twentieth-century social welfare administrative
state—the blue model—cannot be sustained in the twenty-first century. And Mitt
Romney needs to articulate his own pro-growth message of hope and opportunity. He must put forward a Romney alternative: specific policy proposals that
are grounded in free-market capitalism and traditional American values, and
make the case for how they will turn the country around and renew American
exceptionalism for the twenty-first century. He started to do this in the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACs2DU3fV80&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">first presidential debate</a>. Keep it up Mitt, keep it up.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">W</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">hat Mitt Romney <em>must also </em>do is rally the Jacksonian conservative base to his cause. The
former Massachusetts governor cannot defeat Barack Obama and win the White
House without an energized Jacksonian America fully committed to his victory. As <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/judge-napolitano/two-failures.html" target="_blank">Judge Andrew Napolitano</a> put it, Romney “needs to recognize that his audience for victory is not his former neighbors in Boston, but Joe Sixpack in the heartland.” This means he must engage the social and cultural issues that are so important to Jacksonian conservatives, as well as taking strong stands on foreign policy and the economy. We know for sure that Governor Romney<em> is</em> passionate about free enterprise.
The Boca Raton speech shows that Romney is well versed in Jacksonian
ideas of “producerism,” what conservatives today like to call <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/12/01/2012_election_makers_vs_takers" target="_blank">“the makers vs. the takers.”</a> This is important, <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">for Jacksonians have historically <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMTI0YWFkMDAtYWYyZi00ZDIwLWI0ZjItMDg4ZWExMmQxNDVi/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1" target="_blank">defined themselves</a> first and foremost as <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/chrystia-freeland/2011/07/08/only-hard-working-americans-need-apply/" target="_blank">hard-working</a> productive Americans, the people who
make the country work.</span></span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">I’ve posted the key <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU9V6eOFO38&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">excerpt</a> from the
speech below. The full speech can be found <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/watch-full-secret-video-private-romney-fundraiser" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge03Sys8SdA&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBj0joyCeag&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">here</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Not too long ago I talked about the
election and Mitt Romney’s prospects with Ed, a guy I work out with at the gym.
A small businessman who owns an insurance company which he runs with his sons, Ed
was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really</i> pissed off at President
Obama’s suggestion that he didn’t build his business—the now infamous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO6zd3cnL6I" target="_blank">“you didn’t build that”</a> line from the president’s July 13 <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=101347&st=&st1" target="_blank">speech</a> in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XATy4qhxMUY" target="_blank">Roanoke,</a> Virginia. Ed
then posed this question: are there enough Americans left who are not dependent
on government, who still believe in free enterprise and self-reliance, who will
support Romney and turn the country around? I told him that’s exactly what this
election and the future of America will turn on. This is the question that
Governor Romney tried to address at the Boca Raton fundraiser.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">An audience member at the fundraiser put
the question to the governor in words quite similar to Ed’s. “For the last
three years, all everybody’s been told is, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of
you.’ How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections, to
convince everybody you’ve got to take care of yourself?” To which Romney
<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/full-transcript-mitt-romney-secret-video#47percent" target="_blank">responded</a>:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">There
are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what.
All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon
government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has
a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health
care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the
government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no
matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off
with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent
of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect.
And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what
they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I’ll
never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for
their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center
that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the
other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not,
what it looks like. I mean, when you ask those people . . .we do all these
polls—I find it amazing—we poll all these people, see where you stand on the
polls, but 45 percent of the people will go with a Republican, and 48 or 4 . .
.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Romney admitted at a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/17/mitt-romney-47-percent_n_1892227.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmaing6%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D206967" target="_blank">press conference</a>
after the video was made public that his remarks were “not elegantly stated.” That’s all too true. <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-30/romney-s-remark-that-47-percent-feel-entitled-was-a-misstep-ryan-says" target="_blank">Paul Ryan agreed</a>, saying that the comments as presented were a misstep. Then again, Mitt is not
really known for his eloquent oratory; as I noted above he’s no Ronald Reagan.
But he stood by his statement, <a href="http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/09/18/watch-mitt-romneys-first-interview-since-47-percent-video-released/" target="_blank">clarifying and elaborating</a> on it to Neil Cavuto on Fox News.
Emphasizing his broader ideological perspective, Romney told Cavuto, “Frankly,
we have two very different views about America. The president’s view is one of
a larger government. . . . I disagree. I think a society based on a
government-centered nation where government plays a larger and larger role,
redistributes money, that’s the wrong course for America. That will not build a
strong America or help people out of poverty.” Romney made clear that he did
not consider 47 percent of the American people to be moochers or takers. Many
are active members of the military or disabled veterans. Others are retirees who worked hard their entire
lives, or people working two or more jobs to make ends meet. Many pay property, payroll, and other taxes. The problem, Romney
insisted, was a hard core of people within that 47 percent who have become
largely dependent on government entitlements, for whom his message of lower
taxes and smaller government has little appeal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Romney’s 47 percent remarks can be
compared the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/obama-no-surprise-that-ha_b_96188.html" target="_blank">bitter clinger</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DTxXUufI3jA" target="_blank">remarks</a> made by then-candidate Barack Obama at an
April 6, 2008 fundraiser in San Francisco. In each case the candidate, not knowing
that he was being secretly recorded, was open and honest in airing some
controversial views. Obama at his fundraiser wrote off Jacksonians as
unreconstructed racists, xenophobes, and religious bigots. This was an ugly
example of liberal progressive contempt for a large part of the American people—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">boobus americanus</i>. And it is obviously
untrue. Mitt Romney’s only misstep was the awkward way in which he expressed
his ideas, which left him open to charges of class warfare by the liberal
media. The substance of what he said, of the tragedy of growing numbers of
Americans forced into dependence on government by a stagnating Obama economy, is
all too painfully true.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">So who are these Americans, this hard
core—the takers as many conservatives now say—who have become trapped in
long-term dependence on government? Broadly speaking—and broad generalizations
are always open to exceptions—they are those who receive means tested benefits.
Such benefits, distributed to individuals or families with low incomes, include
programs such as food stamps, welfare, Section 8 housing, and Medicaid, among
others. <a href="http://www.dickmorris.com/mitt-romney-is-right/" target="_blank">Dick Morris</a> estimates that about 100 million Americans out of a
population of 308 million currently receive benefits. That’s close to one-third
of all Americans (33 percent instead of 47 percent). While some no doubt are
people who lost their jobs and are using public assistance as a stop gap until
they can get back into the labor market, others will remain on the dole
indefinitely. In the case of welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children),
this has led to the tragedy of inner city social dysfunction with families mired
in dependency and despondency for generation after generation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Janet Daley, looking at the American
presidential election from a British perspective, believes that Mitt Romney and
Paul Ryan are forcing the American people to confront the central dilemma
facing all liberal democracies in the twenty-first century: how to move beyond
the disintegrating blue model welfare state to a new social model. Writing in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Telegraph</i>, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/9513687/We-should-tune-in-to-the-Romney-and-Ryan-show.html" target="_blank">Daley insists</a> that “the
myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished. . . . The
magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is
redistributed by the state—from those who produce it to those whom the
government believes deserve it—has gone bust.” Free-market capitalism can’t
produce enough wealth to support the level of entitlements to which many in the
47 percent have come to expect under the blue model. The Romney/Ryan program,
Daley argues, represents “a reassertion of the basic values of American
political culture: self-determination, individual aspiration and genuine
community, as opposed to belief in the state as the fount of all social virtue.”
This is in sharp contrast to Barack Obama’s agenda of moving America even
closer to European-style social democracy, a model which has clearly failed.
Romney and Ryan must sharpen and hammer home this message at every opportunity
in the remaining weeks of the campaign.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">(Walter Russell Mead has dealt with the
issue of how to move beyond the blue model at length. Click <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hODVkZDUxMzktZTNhZC00NmNhLTk5ODUtNWQ5ZjUyMWIyOTc0/edit" target="_blank">here</a> for his
article on “The Once and Future Liberalism.”)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Dependency, as Daley suggests, is more
than an economic issue: it is a moral issue. At the height of the Great
Depression Franklin D. Roosevelt feared that the social welfare programs he was
creating could undermine the American people’s commitment to self-reliance and
rugged individualism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The lessons of
history,” FDR warned in his <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14890&st=&st1" target="_blank">1935 State of the Union Address</a>, “show conclusively
that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral
disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out
relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human
spirit.” Mitt Romney in 2012 is making the same moral argument on the dangers
of dependency that FDR, the very architect of the blue model, made in 1935. Today,
with forty-seven million Americans receiving food stamps, <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2012/09/21/buchanan-no-apologies-needed-mitt/" target="_blank">Patrick J. Buchanan</a>
asks: “Does it not say something alarming when one in seven Americans cannot
rely upon themselves or their families for their daily bread?” Buchanan goes on
that “during the Chicago school strike, we learned that 86 percent of the
350,000 pupils were getting free or subsidized meals twice a day. What kind of
society have we become when children in a great city cannot rely on mothers or
fathers for a bowl of cereal in the morning and a brown bag with a sandwich and
apple in it for lunch?” Such figures lend credence to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXcyX8blbu0" target="_blank">Newt Gingrich’s</a> <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-25/gingrich-calling-obama-food-stamp-president-draws-critics.html" target="_blank">charge</a>
that Barack Obama is the “food stamp president.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson’s
back-stabbing vice president and bitter foe, is best remembered today as the
champion of Southern sectionalism and slavery. But Calhoun was also a serious
political philosopher; Richard Hofstadter called him <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=fVnnj0RmdhoC&q=marx+master+class#v=snippet&q=marx%20master%20class&f=false" target="_blank">“The Marx of the Master Class.” </a>In 1849, a year before his death, Calhoun published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Disquisition on Government</i>, which
summed up his lifetime of thinking on politics. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=v_qZBNTVZKUC&dq=john+calhoun+divide+the+community+into+two+great+classes&q=%22community+into+two+great+classes%22#v=snippet&q=%22community%20into%20two%20great%20classes%22&f=false" target="_blank">Calhoun</a> <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=GEhC6kPTcsYC&dq=john+calhoun+divide+the+community+into+two+great+classes&q=%22community+into+two+great+classes%22#v=snippet&q=%22community%20into%20two%20great%20classes%22&f=false" target="_blank">believed</a> that the most
dangerous division in a society was between those who created wealth and paid
taxes and those to whom the wealth was redistributed through government
benefits.</span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The
necessary result, then, of the unequal fiscal action of the government is, to
divide the community into two great classes; one consisting of those who, in
reality, pay the taxes, and, of course, bear exclusively the burthen of
supporting the government; and the other, of those who are the recipients of
their proceeds, through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the
government; or, in fewer words, to divide it into tax-payers and tax-consumers.</span></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This was a more philosophical way of
stating the Jacksonian paradigm of the makers vs. the takers. A nation divided
along such lines Calhoun maintained “must give rise to two parties, and to
violent conflicts and struggles between them, to obtain the control of the
government.” John C. Calhoun was an outstanding writer and thinker while Mitt
Romney is not. Yet in his much less eloquent way Romney, by using the paradigm
of the 47 percent, is making the same moral argument against entitlement and dependency that
Calhoun made 163 years ago. And it is no less true now than it was then.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This moral argument over dependency,
<a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/real-debate_653224.html?nopager=1" target="_blank">Yuval Levin writes</a> in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Weekly Standard</i>,
is the real debate between Democrats and Republicans in the 2012 election. The
idea of earned success, Levin reminds us, is at the heart of American
exceptionalism. “It is built upon incentives and institutions</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">—</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">patterns
of praise and blame and honor and duty</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">—</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">that yield the drive to work and innovate, and that alone
make genuine self-reliance possible.” The risk-taking entrepreneur, who pursues
a dream, builds an empire, and in doing so creates wealth and jobs is one of
America’s great culture heroes. But to liberal Democrats who go along with
President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” mantra, such men and women—Mitt Romney
for one—are pirates who did not earn their success. Obama’s contempt for Romney
and everything he stands for was on display in the first presidential debate.
And such liberal Democrats, unlike FDR, don’t see dependency as a moral
problem. Levin suggests that the problem of dependency is better understood as
a problem of entitlement. It’s the sense of entitlement, the belief that you
are owed benefits and goodies that you did not earn, that undermines and
destroys self-reliance, independence, and the concept of republican citizenship.
Many people who are not poor and don’t need public support to survive (and
there are no doubt more than a few such folk among the 47 percent) but
nonetheless feel entitled to government largesse, are the real danger to the
nation. Such people in Levin’s words “come to approach their government as
claimants, not as self-governing citizens.”</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Mitt Romney must continue to frame the
issue of dependency and entitlement in moral terms. “Since our founding,”
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/story/2012-09-18/Romney-47-recovery-dependency/57804214/1" target="_blank">Romney wrote</a> in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">USA Today</i>, “America
has promoted personal responsibility, the dignity of work and the value of
education. Those values made our nation the hope of the earth and our economy
the envy of the world.” Economic growth is a moral imperative; it is the only
proven path to social mobility. A growing economy lifts people out of poverty
and dependence and into the dignity of self-reliance and independence. “Efforts
that promote hard work and personal responsibility over government dependency
make America strong. When the economy is growing and Americans are working,
everyone involved has a shared sense of achievement, not to mention the basic
sense of pride that comes with the paycheck they earn.” Mitt Romney’s mission
is to revive the American economy and <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331043/dependency-and-47-percent-mario-loyola" target="_blank">enable those in the 47 percent</a> who are
neither elderly nor disabled to once again contribute to the engine of human
creativity that is America.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">© 2012
Michael Kaplan</span></span></span></span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-57207035961446623202012-03-13T00:14:00.036-04:002017-06-05T11:58:18.563-04:00Rick Santorum, Higher Education, and the Jacksonian Politics of Liberty and Respect<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jeUndcOMltU/T111ExLHrrI/AAAAAAAAArM/HDdHsWQq9uk/s1600/rick+santorum+-+americans+for+prosperity+michigan+feb+25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jeUndcOMltU/T111ExLHrrI/AAAAAAAAArM/HDdHsWQq9uk/s1600/rick+santorum+-+americans+for+prosperity+michigan+feb+25.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Rick Santorum speaking at the Americans for Prosperity Michigan Forum, February 25, 2012</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">I’m a college professor and proud to be one. I teach American history at a technical college which is part of a state university system. I believe in the value of higher education and that it should be an option for those young, and not so young, men and women who have the desire and ability to pursue it. So now I’m going to do something that might seem bold and daring: I’m going to stand up for Rick Santorum who has taken a pounding in the liberal and establishment Republican media for his controversial views of higher education. Here’s why.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">First let me say that I do have some meaningful political differences with Senator Santorum, especially on social issues. He is more socially conservative than I am. I believe that women should have <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MBO9tNNejo" target="_blank">access</a> to<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/02/rick-santorum-wants-your-sex-life-to-be-special/253104/" target="_blank"> contraception</a>, though I agree with Santorum that it should not be a government entitlement. I believe that homosexuals should have the same rights as other Americans, but that gay and lesbian relationships should receive social and legal sanction through civil unions; I’m enough of a traditionalist to believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. I believe in the traditional American, conservative, and Jacksonian values of hard work, self-reliance, faith, community, patriotism, personal responsibility, and American exceptionalism. <a href="http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2012/02/rush-limbaugh-defends-santorums-contraceptives-remarks-highlights-caffeinated-thoughts/" target="_blank">Unlike</a> <a href="http://www.ocrpl.org/?p=99" target="_blank">Senator Santorum</a> I believe that these values are not incompatible with <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/sacred-dogma-left_630047.html" target="_blank">sexual freedom</a>. He <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/opinion/blow-santorum-and-the-sexual-revolution.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all" target="_blank">does not appreciate</a> the extent to which America’s core middle-class Jacksonian culture has been broadened, enriched and transformed in very positive and <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/03/11/santorum_the_exorcist_candidate_113436.html" target="_blank">liberating</a> ways by the <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hcGV1LUZXQnJSMUdiR2pjaWNMWElNZw/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">Aquarian sexual revolution</a>. That said, I’m drawn to Rick Santorum because he, more than any of the remaining candidates in this year’s presidential contest, is the strongest and most articulate champion of Jacksonian America and its idea of liberty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The politics of conservative Jacksonian America are the politics of honor, liberty, and respect. The honor and respect due to those Americans who get up every day and do the tough and demanding jobs that make America work. The liberty of those Americans to live their lives as they choose, to be the masters of their destiny. Jacksonian politics are also <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/opinion/brooks-the-possum-republicans.html?_r=2&src=me&ref=general" target="_blank">identity politics</a>: validating the heartland identity of honorable, productive, self-reliant, patriotic Americans, and validating their anger and resentment against those elites who don’t accord such Americans the respect they deserve and who are trying to limit the scope of their liberty. These are important truths about Jacksonian America that Rick Santorum clearly understands and taps into.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This helps make sense of the former Pennsylvania senator’s otherwise bizarre and confounding foot-in-the-mouth comment calling President Obama <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/...2012/post/santorum-obama-is-a-snob-because-he-wants-everybody-in-america-to-go-to-college/2012/02/25/gIQATJffaR_blog.html?tid=pm_politics_pop" target="_blank">a snob</a> for wanting all Americans to go to college. Santorum made these remarks at The Americans for Prosperity Forum in Troy, Michigan on Saturday February 25 to a very receptive audience that burst into applause as he spoke. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSn3YL1hZOU&feature=player_embedded" target="_blank">Here</a> is a video clip of Santorum’s comment. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlhWYfRmzPo&feature=related" target="_blank">Here</a> is a clip from an alternate version of the speech delivered in Chattanooga, Tennessee.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Rick Santorum is a take-no-prisoners <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/02/27/santorum-culture-warrior/" target="_blank">culture warrior</a>. That is both his strength and his weakness. His Jacksonian populism is a passionate language of the heart; there are no pale pastels for Rick, only bold colors. (See Ronald Reagan, <a href="http://www.conservative.org/cpac/archives/cpac-1975-ronald-reagan/" target="_blank">CPAC 1975</a>.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“He seems to imagine America’s problems can best be described as the result of a culture war between the God-fearing conservatives and the narcissistic liberals,” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/opinion/brooks-a-new-social-agenda.html?ref=davidbrooks" target="_blank">David Brooks</a> has written. This has set the tone for his 2012 presidential campaign, making for a sharp contrast with Mitt Romney. Romney, sad to say, comes across as a passionless, verbally-challenged technocrat, who hasn’t the first clue about how to connect with Jacksonian America. Which is why the “inevitable” front runner, who would be a competent manager of the economy, has been unable to close the deal with the Jacksonian conservative base of the Republican Party. In fact, while the Republican Party has since the 1960s become the party of Jacksonian America, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/opinion/workers-of-the-world-unite.html?ref=davidbrooks" target="_blank">it has not done a good job</a> responding to its concerns about a nation that has gone astray: about an economy that no longer seems to have a place for Jacksonians who work with their hands and did not go to college; about the disintegration of traditional values, families, and communities. For many Jacksonians, including Santorum, this election is <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/real-divide-gop-race_633058.html" target="_blank">not just about</a> reviving the economy; Santorum has offered a pro-growth and pro-family <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577243133837070396.html#printMode" target="_blank">Economic Freedom Agenda</a>. It is, more importantly, about returning America to her core values of liberty, community, Judeo-Christian morality, and limited government, which they believe are under assault by President Obama’s big government overreach symbolized by the Affordable Health Care Act otherwise known as ObamaCare. Rick Santorum has said that 2012 election is about fundamental liberty; he would not be in the presidential race were it not for ObamaCare.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">If you want to understand Santorum’s “what a snob” comment, you need to place it in the context of his entire speech, which is largely an exposé of Rick Santorum’s passionate belief in American exceptionalism. <a href="http://www.c-span.org/Events/Rick-Santorum-Mitt-Romney-Address-Michigan-Prosperity-Forum/10737428542-1/" target="_blank">Here</a> is the C-Span video of the full 26-minute speech. Santorum gave a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf0DF2rROWY&feature=related" target="_blank">55-minute version</a> of the speech later that day at the Chattanooga Tea Party’s Liberty Forum in Tennessee.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">America’s greatness, Santorum argues, rests not on her military, her form of government, or her economy, important as those are. American exceptionalism rather rests on her civil society, the respect it accords the dignity of every human life, and the freedom and opportunity it offers for every individual to realize his or her potential. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/opinion/brooks-a-new-social-agenda.html?ref=davidbrooks" target="_blank">David Brooks</a> observes that “one of Santorum’s strengths is that he understands that a nation isn’t just an agglomeration of individuals; it’s a fabric of social relationships.” Starting in the seventeenth century America’s vibrant civil society, its strong families, businesses, churches, and civic organizations, was built by free people from the bottom up, community by community. It was not created by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">diktat</i> from on high of an all-powerful central government which could allocate resources and assign people into a hierarchy of social classes. The American colonies were founded not by the king but by private entrepreneurs: individual settlers and families seeking economic independence and communities of faith seeking to build a Godly society. Colonial America, as it developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was a society of independent householders bound together in strong communities, which developed habits and institutions of self-government. Religious pluralism, a voluntaristic self-help ethic, a relatively high standard of living, and a belief in individual aspiration to upward mobility, what <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch1_17.htm" target="_blank">Alexis de Tocqueville</a> would later call “the charm of anticipated success,” also defined the society of British North America, and after 1783 of the independent United States, making it the freest and most prosperous on earth. That Santorum says is the secret of America and why other countries have found it hard to emulate America’s success. “[I]n the last dozen years we’ve tried to help other countries be like America. But they . . . can’t quite do what we do. Because we are different, we are exceptional. And we’ve done it, we did it, from the foundation the right way. We’ve believed in free people.”(3:24-3:49)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The problem now, as Santorum sees it, is that too many Americans are being lured by the siren song of entitlements and bludgeoned by government policy into surrendering their liberty to an ever more powerful blue model progressive welfare state. The blue model’s professional, technocratic elites believe they can offer you a progressive nirvana. They can manage your life better than you can and manage the economy in such a way that they can take care of you and all your needs through the entitlements of the nanny state. And should the carrot of entitlements fail to lure you in, then bureaucrats will use the power of government to compel you to surrender your liberty to them. ObamaCare is the game changer that will rob Americans of their essential freedoms, empowering the government and its elites to tell you how to live your life and how to manage your health and limit your choices. “It is the ultimate top-down I know better than you do.” (6:30)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Santorum speaks an evocative language filled with moral urgency to emphasize the threat to American liberty as he sees it. At <a href="http://electad.com/videos/rick-santorum-campaign-rally-tulsa-oklahoma-march-4-2012/" target="_blank">Grace Church</a> in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tulsa, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57390626-503544/santorum-likens-obama-administration-to-drug-dealer/" target="_blank">Santorum told</a> an audience of several hundred that ObamaCare was like an addictive drug being pushed by elite technocrats on an unsuspecting public. “That’s how they see you, as people, to get hooked like a drug dealer, someone to become dependent on them and once that happens, they got you. America is changed forever. No country that has socialized medicine has ever gone back the other way, no country that has lost its freedom has ever regained it.” <a href="http://www.newson6.com/story/17071174/presidential-candidate-rick-santorum-spends-sunday-in-oklahoma" target="_blank">Santorum added</a> that “they believe in a pre-Revolutionary America where the elite should decide what’s best for those in flyover country.” This is a Jacksonian language whose image of freedom is best captured by the flag on which a coiled rattlesnake rests above the motto “Don’t tread on me.” <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden_flag" target="_blank">This flag</a>, a symbol of the American Revolution, was designed by South Carolina’s Colonel Christopher Gadsden in 1775. Today it is a symbol of the Tea Party.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204603004577267632224945836.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop#printMode" target="_blank">Dan Henninger</a> of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street Journal</i>, who attended a Santorum rally in <a href="http://electad.com/videos/rick-santorum-campaign-rally-cuyahoga-falls-ohio-march-5-2012/" target="_blank">Cuyahoga Falls</a>, Ohio, observes that under the Obama administration the blue model progressive welfare state has crossed a Rubicon, a point of no return in which big government has jumped the shark. “A lot of people feel the government, finally, is really starting to crowd them. It has made them uneasy. For the Santorum audience, the call-and-response word to push back against the unease is ‘freedom.’” Henninger contends that it is Santorum’s embrace of this Jacksonian vision of freedom which has captured the imagination of the populist conservative base and propelled his campaign forward so that he is now a serious contender for the Republican nomination. America, Santorum proclaims, is overregulated and hooked on entitlement programs as dangerous as the most deadly street drugs. Liberty cannot survive, a free people cannot remain free, if they become dependent on government entitlements for their sustenance. You cannot be free if you expect a free lunch. More than any other candidate Rick Santorum has linked the survival of American freedom as traditionally understood to the <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/08/the_nudging_of_mitt_romney" target="_blank">defeat of ObamaCare</a> and the broader big government policy agenda of the Obama administration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">It is the fundamental disrespect by elite technocrats and bureaucrats for average Americans, their abilities, their competence, their aspirations, and their passion for liberty that Santorum believes is behind the idea that everyone <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/28/ditch_college_for_all_114285.html" target="_blank">must go to college</a> or be consigned to second-class citizenship. Many Americans have neither the desire to go to college nor the academic ability to benefit from higher education. As a college professor teaching American history, I’ve known such students who are wasting their time in my classroom. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything of value to contribute to society. For these students, vocational or technical education would be far more valuable than a traditional liberal arts education. Germany, the very birthplace of modern higher education, has successfully promoted <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/world/europe/when-a-border-shapes-more-than-territory.html?pagewanted=2&ref=general&src=me" target="_blank">technical and vocational education</a> through an apprenticeship system. Individuals have a variety of gifts and abilities and these should be nurtured and allowed to grow. That is what the pursuit of happiness is all about. People should not be forced into a rigid academic mold. It is from the wide variety of God-given talents, interests, and abilities that a free society enables its citizens to develop that generates innovation, social dynamism, and economic prosperity. To insist that it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> through going to college that a young man or woman can become a person of value really is, as Santorum proclaimed at the AFP Forum with more passion than diplomacy, the height of elite snobbery.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I know what manufacturing means to a community. I grew up in one. I understand what it means to have folks who are at the bottom of the economic ladder. Folks who are struggling to pull the skills together to be able to get value in the marketplace for their skills. And I know what it means to have those manufacturing jobs at those entry levels that get you in there and gives you the opportunity to accumulate more skills over time and rise. So you can provide a better standard of living for your family. And that those opportunities are for working men and women. Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands. Some people have incredible gifts and use and want to work out there making things. President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob. There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to the test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his. (14:24-16:01)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In this passage Santorum<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>delivers the red meat of Jacksonian politics: calling to account those elite technocrats who disrespect the average American and look upon those who did not graduate college as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">boobus americanus</i>. Caught up in the passion of the moment Santorum let loose a cry from the heart tailor made to provoke the outrage of the liberal media, and even quite a few <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/romneys-luck/2012/03/01/gIQAodiZlR_story.html" target="_blank">conservative commentators</a>. Frankly Santorum would have been better served had he phrased his comments more carefully, making it clear that he was not opposed to Americans having the opportunity to advance themselves through higher education. Many Americans, including many working- and middle-class Jacksonians, still look to college as the entry way to a successful life. Santorum did elaborate on his remarks in interviews with <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/index.html#/v/1477284611001/will-santorum-pull-off-an-upset/?playlist_id=86924" target="_blank">Sean Hannity</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/04/rick-santorum-fix-news-birth-control_n_1319393.html" target="_blank">Chris Wallace</a> on Fox News, saying that he wanted to promote trade school and military service among other options that young people could choose to pursue. Americans could manage their own lives quite well, Santorum insisted, without President Obama issuing a top-down directive that they must go to college. The president, Santorum added, should promote equality of opportunity, not force equality of results.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">To be fair, President Obama did explain to the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/obama-hits-back-against-santorum-snob-criticism-by-defending-college-education-stance/2012/02/27/gIQAmnt5dR_blog.html" target="_blank">National Governors Association</a> that he included <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/santorums-failed-pandering-to-blue-collar-workers/2012/02/28/gIQATZn0gR_story.html" target="_blank">apprenticeship and vocational training</a> in his vision of higher education. Americans need “some basic training beyond what they received in high school” if they hope to compete for the jobs of the twenty-first century. Again in the interests of fairness, Senator Santorum acknowledged to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/04/rick-santorum-fix-news-birth-control_n_1319393.html" target="_blank">Chris Wallace</a> that he might have misunderstood the president’s position. “Look, maybe I’ve read some comments where at least it was characterized that the president said we should go to four-year colleges,” he said. “If I was in error, you said you haven’t found that, I certainly read that . . . if it was an error, I agree with the president that we should have options for a variety of training.” Karen Santorum also let her husband know that his passion had gotten the better of him when he called the president a snob and he needed to dial down his rhetoric. Rick Santorum said of his wife on the March 11 edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/vp/46696992#46696992" target="_blank">Meet the Press</a></i>: “She’s a very good governor for me and tries to make sure that I keep things in perspective.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In addressing the issue of higher education, Santorum is running headlong into the challenge posed by globalization to the American dream of economic independence through small property ownership. Throughout his campaign Santorum has insisted that America must find paths for upward mobility other than higher education. At a campaign stop in Iowa last November, when he alone crisscrossed the state by bus, <a href="http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/york-why-santorum-runs" target="_blank">Santorum told</a> a small gathering of potential supporters, “We have lost a sector of our economy that used to employ, in large numbers and in good-paying jobs, people who are not college educated. And that is the manufacturing and processing sector of our economy.” He added that “we need to have policies that are not government top-down but do recognize that there are people being left behind in our economy, and we need to make sure that they have opportunities, too.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/opinion/brooks-a-new-social-agenda.html?ref=davidbrooks" target="_blank">David Brooks</a> suggests that Santorum is struggling to find a new synthesis of social and economic conservatism, of Jacksonianism and Hamiltonianism; a synthesis that balances and reconciles the creative destruction of capitalism with the timeless values, social stability, and morality of Judeo-Christian faith.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Santorum understands that we have to fuse economics talk and values talk. But he hasn’t appreciated that the biggest challenge to stable families, healthy communities and the other seedbeds of virtue is not coastal elites. It’s technological change; it’s globalization; it’s personal mobility and expanded opportunity; it’s an information-age economy built on self-transformation and perpetual rebranding instead of fixed inner character. It is the very forces that give us the dynamism and opportunities in the first place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">There’s a paradox at the heart of the American experiment. The very success of American capitalism, its creation of mass abundance, the opportunities it provides for self-transformation and the limitless pursuit of wealth, weakens the social and cultural foundations which made American prosperity possible. Community, family, faith, and traditional morality are in danger of being swept away in the flood tide of global capitalism’s creative destruction. Karl Marx, for all his utopian delusions, saw this dynamic at work in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Writing in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007" target="_blank">The Communist Manifesto</a></i> in 1848, Marx proclaimed:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Santorum understands that the people he speaks for—the Jacksonian working and middle classes—are being left behind in the new global economy. <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hVkNqbGJIemVTLVdxeDd5U05teVk2QQ/edit" target="_blank">Charles Murray’s</a> research has found that working-class communities are disintegrating along with the social capital that makes success in America possible. <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hcGV1LUZXQnJSMUdiR2pjaWNMWElNZw/edit" target="_blank">Brink Lindsey</a> argues that the twin hammer blows of globalization and the Aquarian counterculture sent the more vulnerable members of the Jacksonian working class down the rabbit hole of social dysfunction. All that was solid in their lives is melting into air and all that is holy in their lives is being profaned. Concern for the economic future of these hard-working Americans, finding solutions that don’t involve big government, along with reviving traditional faith, families, industriousness, and communities, are the passions that drive Rick Santorum in his seemingly quixotic quest for the White House. Such solutions will inevitably involve some form of post-high school education.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hz6n_8i4gMo/T1-hZMzAJzI/AAAAAAAAArc/1mp9Oa6CZcg/s1600/rick+santorum+-+AFP+Michigan+attendees+26michigan_photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hz6n_8i4gMo/T1-hZMzAJzI/AAAAAAAAArc/1mp9Oa6CZcg/s640/rick+santorum+-+AFP+Michigan+attendees+26michigan_photo.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Voters look over conservative memorabilia at the Americans for Prosperity Michigan Forum. Scott Olson/Getty Images.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Judging from the <a href="http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/michigan-tea-partiers-share-rick-santorums-fears-over-obamas-college-push.php" target="_blank">response of the audience</a> at the AFP Forum, many of whom were Tea Party supporters, Santorum did hit his mark. Many of Santorum’s listeners agreed with the candidate that college, whatever its benefits, was too often used for ideological indoctrination and social engineering. “It starts down at the elementary school level with all this bullshit about diversity, pardon my French,” said Stephen Clement of Commerce, Michigan. “Diversity and sensitivity and all that crap. That’s the stuff that needs to be taught at home not by my teachers. My teachers need to be academic: Math, science, history, social studies, that sort of thing and keep political opinions out of it, bottom line.” Elizabeth (no last name), another Santorum supporter, added: “I think he’s saying, ‘Do you think that that’s the only way you can be a successful person? To go to college?’ That is snobbery. In this entrepreneurial country that we have, where fortunes are made in a lot of ways—they’re not only made by college-educated people.” More than a few at the forum agreed that colleges and universities are using the language of equal opportunity to hide the reality that they nothing more than socialism factories. Jacksonian suspicion that intellectuals and academics are up to no good runs deep.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Santorum’s comments and the favorable response they drew from his audience, illustrate the real tension between Jacksonian populism and intellectualism in American life and politics. Anti-intellectualism has been a persistent theme of Jacksonian populism while arrogant condescension toward the American people has too often been part of academic elite culture. <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/barone/2008/04/02/reviewing-the-primary-results-academics-versus-jacksonians" target="_blank">Michael Barone</a> discussed this tension in the context of the 2008 election campaign, presenting a sharp political and cultural divide between Jacksonians and those he labeled “Academics.” Differing views of patriotism and military virtue are at the heart of the conflict. Jacksonians are fighters while intellectuals are writers. As a <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/andrewjacksonpor017642mbp#page/n75/mode/2up" target="_blank">campaign slogan</a> for the self-educated Andrew Jackson in his <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZGVkZGZhYWUtNWNlZS00Mzk4LWI5ZjctNTQ4MTJkMjI4NjA4&hl=en_US" target="_blank">electoral contest</a> with former Harvard professor John Quincy Adams in 1824 put it:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Who can fight</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This populist suspicion of intellectuals and other elites can be traced back to the early days of the republic. The Scots-Irish settlers of the backcountry had a particular hatred for the intellectual elites of Old and New England. They were a high spirited and sensual but economically hard pressed people, who had neither opportunity for nor saw much value in book learning. Senator James Webb, one of the small number of Jacksonians still in the Democratic Party, wrote in his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=bV_oMj2qQwsC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=james+webb+born+fighting+were+not+monks+and+nuns&source=bl&ots=wqp22jsadK&sig=cGMqMPS_4l2m6Zo5QwiENAr8B84&hl=en&ei=VCGVTLSEL8b_lge-mOijCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=true" target="_blank">Born Fighting</a></i>, that the Scots-Irish “were not monks and nuns” nor “were they Talmudic scholars. Most of them had little or no schooling, knew no refined trade, and had read no book except perhaps the Bible.” On the Borders of England and Scotland, the marches of Ulster, and the backcountry of the Carolinas, fighting was a far more highly valued skill than writing. And the Scots-Irish were fierce fighters indeed, driven by a love of liberty and equality, their code of honor, and their refusal to submit to any authority they deemed illegitimate. These were not people who took kindly to condescension, nor were they likely to be swayed by the nuanced arguments of intellectual discourse. “And if any man, no matter how highly born, should strike or offend them, it was their credo to strike back twice as hard.” These character traits are very much part of Jacksonian populist culture today. And Rick Santorum knows how to appeal to them. The AFP speech, indeed the entire Santorum campaign, is a case study in the Jacksonian politics of honor and respect.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wtEwGUcopDQ/T1_3THdUhlI/AAAAAAAAAr0/UFwPgWs8xcA/s1600/Andrew+Jackson+-+Set+to+Between+Old+Hickory+and+Bully+Nick+auto+correct+boxinglg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="589" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wtEwGUcopDQ/T1_3THdUhlI/AAAAAAAAAr0/UFwPgWs8xcA/s640/Andrew+Jackson+-+Set+to+Between+Old+Hickory+and+Bully+Nick+auto+correct+boxinglg.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Andrew Jackson Who Can Fight</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In fact, as <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/what-democrats-can-learn-from-santorum-about-populism-02232012.html" target="_blank">Clive Crook</a> of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bloomberg Businessweek</i> points out, “the source of Santorum’s appeal is his skill at waging class warfare, Republican-style.” Santorum always returns in his speeches to his Italian immigrant grandfather, Pietro Santorum, who worked first in the auto factories of Detroit and then in the coal mines of southwestern Pennsylvania. “He ended up continuing to work in those mines until he was 72 years old, digging coal,” <a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700212283/Rick-Santorums-moving-speech-caps-Iowa-caucuses-Those-hands-dug-freedom-for-me.html" target="_blank">Santorum said</a> through tears in his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAZdid6Bdo8" target="_blank">victory speech</a> after the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/santorums-iowa-caucus-speech-full-text-and-video/2012/01/04/gIQA5Q1naP_blog.html" target="_blank">Iowa Caucus</a>. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw someone who had died. It was my grandfather. And I knelt next to his coffin, and all I could do at eye level was look at his hands. They were enormous hands. And all I could think was, ‘Those hands dug freedom for me.’” This is Jacksonian populism’s true language of the heart. “Santorum,” Crook writes, “combines this proletarian stance—unusual in a hard-right conservative—with more familiar elements of GOP populism: patriotism, reverence for family, hard work and self-reliance, hostility to big government, and proud religiosity (to a fault, in his case).” He adds that it is only Santorum’s “extremism on sexual politics” that prevents his Jacksonianism of the heart from <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/294009/romney-s-big-night-nro-symposium?pg=4" target="_blank">appealing beyond</a> his social conservative base.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OtNvIUPFa2E/T2ErHsvLS0I/AAAAAAAAAsM/UAp8gth1Dlc/s1600/Whiskey+Rebellion+-+auto+correct+whiskey-rebellion-in-pennsylvania-1795-everett.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OtNvIUPFa2E/T2ErHsvLS0I/AAAAAAAAAsM/UAp8gth1Dlc/s400/Whiskey+Rebellion+-+auto+correct+whiskey-rebellion-in-pennsylvania-1795-everett.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The Whiskey Rebellion, 1794. Frontiersmen tar and feather a tax collector.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The west Pennsylvania coal country, where the Santorum family made its home, has a long history of Jacksonian populist politics and culture. In 1926, the year after Pietro Santorum came to America, the historian <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZGVkZGZhYWUtNWNlZS00Mzk4LWI5ZjctNTQ4MTJkMjI4NjA4/edit?hl=en_US" target="_blank">Herman Hailperin</a> observed that “Western Pennsylvania from its first settlement was peculiarly ‘frontier’ in spirit. The very people who predominated possessed the inborn qualities of fearlessness, independence and keen common sense.” The Scots-Irish who settled the region, Hailperin added, <a href="http://dpubs.libraries.psu.edu/DPubS?service=Repository&version=1.0&verb=Disseminate&handle=psu.wph/1205873089&view=body&content-type=pdf_1#" target="_blank">resisted all attempts</a> by elites to encroach on their liberty. Indeed western Pennsylvanians launched the <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hSUpNU0pxZXlRdHFpOVNQdG5DQXBRZw/edit" target="_blank">first serious resistance</a> to the new federal government’s authority to impose taxes in the <a href="http://colonialseminar.uga.edu/whiskeyrebellion-6.pdf" target="_blank">Whiskey Rebellion</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion" target="_blank">of 1794</a>. “A people with such characteristics, pioneer in their very essence, were already attuned to the call of frontier and western democracy.” Later settlers, such as the Italian immigrant Santorum family, assimilated this culture of liberty. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there were a series of violent strikes in the Pennsylvania coal country, the <a href="http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/coalstrike.htm" target="_blank">Anthracite Coal Strike</a> <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hVkMzM2NvLW5SMmkxZGhQczhkM3N0dw/edit" target="_blank">of 1902</a> being the most important. In <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hQjNfZHNQdDlScmFQOWliUUwyTm9sQQ/edit" target="_blank">that strike</a> the United Mine Workers won a ten percent wage hike and a reduction of their workday to nine hours, though they failed to gain recognition for their union. It was seen as a breakthrough victory for labor because President Theodore Roosevelt pushed the mine owners to accept an arbitrated settlement instead of sending in the army to break up the strike. Rick Santorum is the heir to this long tradition of Pennsylvania Jacksonianism that speaks for the blue-collar folk who feel put upon by big government and big business.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YP6lTdNhD_s/T1-7rJWlNSI/AAAAAAAAArs/lHxIg9lnTBw/s1600/pennsylvania+coal+miners+1911+-+coal-mine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="533" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YP6lTdNhD_s/T1-7rJWlNSI/AAAAAAAAArs/lHxIg9lnTBw/s640/pennsylvania+coal+miners+1911+-+coal-mine.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Coal miners working deep underground, 1911. <a href="http://old-photos.blogspot.com/2010/08/coal-mine.html" target="_blank">Pennsylvania Coal Company</a> shaft #6, South Pittston, PA.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Santorum’s family history shows that he is not hostile to higher education. How could he be? The Santorum family story, a classic example of the American dream, is one of using higher education as the road to upward mobility. His father, <a href="http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/obituaries/news/s_719135.html" target="_blank">Dr. Aldo Santorum</a>, who served in the Army Air Corps in World War II repairing airplanes, was able to avoid a life in the coal mines by getting a college education on the G.I. Bill. Aldo Santorum would later earn a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Ottawa. But instead of going into private practice Dr. Santorum spent his career as a clinical psychologist with the Veterans Administration, devoting himself to the very Jacksonian project of healing his fellow veterans of the psychic wounds they suffered in the service of their country. Rick Santorum would earn, in addition to a B.A., an M.B.A. and a J.D., giving him one more degree than President Obama. He has achieved considerable success, financially and otherwise, as a lawyer, lobbyist, and politician. Higher education allowed Rick Santorum and his family to live the American dream. For the reliably progressive <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/02/28/santorum_in_the_extreme_113271.html" target="_blank">Eugene Robinson</a> this just shows that Santorum is a shameless hypocrite who wants to pull up the ladder of higher education now that he’s benefitted from it. Again this just shows how out of touch Robinson is with Jacksonian America. Santorum does not want to deny young Americans the opportunity to pursue higher education; he does want to show that it’s not the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> path young Americans <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must</i> follow to live productive lives. To call Rick Santorum an enemy of higher education, as any number of progressive critics are doing, is patently absurd.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Nonetheless, Santorum has expressed serious concerns with higher education’s <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-handwriting-on-the-wall" target="_blank">secular progressive</a> challenge to traditional America. He’s made it clear that in his view contemporary academia is guilty of intellectual hubris, a view that plays into Jacksonian America’s anti-intellectual bias. Parts of conservative Jacksonian America share Santorum’s belief that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Satan</i> is working through academia, the media, and popular culture to undermine America’s values, institutions, and traditions. Speaking at Ave Maria University in Florida in August 2008, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-satan-systematically-destroying-america" target="_blank">Santorum told</a> the students that Satan “attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions. The place where he was, in my mind, the most successful and first successful was in academia.” This was because Satan knows how to use intellectual pride and arrogance to corrupt the intellectuals. “He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they’re smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Santorum’s imagery of <a href="http://www.drivebyplanet.com/2012/02/satan-endorses-rick.html" target="_blank">Satan</a> running amok on campus was extreme to say the least, though he was making the point at a <a href="http://historynewsservice.org/2012/03/rick-santorum-and-fundamentalist-catholicism/" target="_blank">Catholic</a> religious institution. But it does reflect conservative Jacksonian fears that liberal professors are trying to <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/02/28/what_youre_paying_for_your_child_to_learn_at_college_113308.html" target="_blank">indoctrinate their children</a> and turn them against God, family, and country. Alan Charles Kors, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the minority of conservatives in higher education, wrote an article on <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7haW05T0JGUVJSd0M1S25rdmhoYXZJZw/edit" target="_blank">“The Sadness of Higher Education”</a> that backed up Santorum’s argument, minus Satan.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Academics, in their own minds, face an almost insoluble problem of time. How, in only four years, can they disabuse students of the notion that the capital, risk, productivity and military sacrifice of others have contributed to human dignity and to the prospects of a decent society? How can they make them understand, with only four years to do so, that capitalism and individualism have created cultures that are cruel, inefficient, racist, sexist and homophobic, with oppressive caste systems, mental and behavioral? How, in such a brief period, can they enlighten “minorities,” including women (the majority of students), about the “internalization” of their oppression (today’s equivalent of false consciousness)? How, in only eight semesters, might they use the classroom, curriculum and university <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in loco parentis</i> to create a radical leadership among what they see as the victim groups of our society, and to make the heirs of successful families uneasy in the moral right of their possessions and opportunities? Given those constraints, why in the world should they complicate their awesome task by hiring anyone who disagrees with them?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Kors spent his long career fighting for intellectual diversity in an increasingly liberal academia. Further on he writes that universities should have the courage of their convictions and honestly advertise their bias to prospective students and their parents. “Let colleges and universities have the courage, if they truly believe what they say privately to themselves and to me, to put it on page one of their catalogues, fundraising letters and appeals to the state assembly: ‘This University believes that your sons and daughters are the racist, sexist, homophobic, Eurocentric progeny or victims of an oppressive society from which most of them receive unjust privilege. In return for tuition and massive taxpayer subsidy, we shall assign rights on a compensatory basis and undertake by coercion their moral and political enlightenment.’ It won’t happen.” Kors concludes <a href="http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/2008/05/the_affective_d.html" target="_blank">with deep regret</a> that much of the promise of higher education has been lost to political correctness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">From my own experience in academia, I believe that Santorum and Kors exaggerate the situation. Yes there is a liberal bias in academia but it is far from monolithic. While conservatives are in the minority in the academy, they are hardly inconsequential; the college where I teach has more than a few conservative faculty members. And students are far less susceptible to ideological indoctrination than their parents or Senator Santorum may fear. I’ve found students to have well-honed b.s. detectors that fend off the most dedicated professorial ideologue. Yet Kors is right to point out that <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/12/19/the-ax-is-laid-to-the-root-of-the-tree/" target="_blank">hack work</a> and groupthink are too often the norm in higher education while free inquiry is too often discouraged.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">But none of this lessens the importance of post-high school education in today’s world. Sadly, Rick Santorum’s <a href="http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2011/10/interview-with-rick-santorum-a-champion-for-the-family-manufacturing-jobs/" target="_blank">championship</a> of working-class people who acquire skills and put them to the test in the old blue-collar <a href="http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/02/27/santorum_on_manufacturing_what_an_idiot" target="_blank">manufacturing</a> <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/8844/?single_page=true" target="_blank">jobs</a> runs against the grain of history. “Manufacturing may well come back to the United States to some degree,” <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/02/20/beyond-blue-5-jobs-jobs-jobs/" target="_blank">Walter Russell Mead</a> notes, “but it will be capital intensive, automated manufacturing. Armies of blue collar assembly line workers won’t be making middle class livelihoods from unskilled factory work.” It is increasingly clear that those who have the high-level analytical skills, skill developed through higher education, are going to be the big winners in the new world of global capitalism. “Globalization and rapid technological change,” former Clinton labor secretary <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/11/ING31NGN8H.DTL" target="_blank">Robert Reich</a> writes, “are putting a premium on the ability to identify and solve new problems—the skill that’s honed in college. A college degree also signals prospective employers that a young person has what it takes to succeed.” But that really applies more to graduates of elite universities. The average college graduate from a public university is now facing many of the <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/03/09/more-white-collar-job-woes/" target="_blank">same job insecurities</a> as his or her blue-collar peers with the additional burden of student loan debt.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Jacksonian America’s anti-intellectualism has not served it well in the new world of globalization. Contemporary Jacksonians’ hostility to the intellectual and cultural elites is intensified by their sense that they are being left behind; by their inability “to take proper advantage of the new economy’s immense possibilities.” <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hcGV1LUZXQnJSMUdiR2pjaWNMWElNZw/edit" target="_blank">Brink Lindsey</a> of the libertarian Cato Institute has written that certain elements of Jacksonian culture are just not suited for success in the modern world of high technology and symbolic analytical work. “[M]any Americans have been raised in a working-class culture that does not sufficiently encourage education or long-term planning. As a result, they lack the skills that are now so highly rewarded—and what is worse, they lack the capacity to develop those skills.” Jacksonian working-class culture with its emphasis on the value and dignity of those who worked with their hands to produce the tangible goods that society needed, was well-suited to agrarian and industrial America. Whether on a farm or in a factory, a strong back, skilled hands, and the self-discipline and perseverance to use them, could lead to economic self-sufficiency and upward mobility. This is no longer the case in the twenty-first century. “Consequently,” as Lindsey observes, “the anti-intellectual mentality that remains deeply engrained in large segements of the American populace has become a socio-economic dead end.” Jacksonians have good reason to be suspicious of the intellectual and technocratic elites that hold them in contempt. They can no longer afford a bias against education.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Rick Santorum is right to insist that college is not the only path to acquiring the skills to get out of that dead end. But he has to lay out policies that will encourage vocational and technical education, while restoring America’s core values. The odds are against Santorum winning the Republican nomination or becoming president. But if he does pull it off, it will be because will have convinced the hard-working people of Jacksonian America, about whom he cares so deeply and whose culture of liberty and respect he shares, that he can show them the way to move forward and compete in the new and very challenging world of the twenty-first century while remaining true to America’s founding ideals.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">© 2012 Michael Kaplan</span></span></span><br />
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-91303381962987538662011-12-01T23:58:00.006-05:002017-06-05T12:01:12.115-04:00Winston Churchill on the Meaning of Civilization<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Winston Churchill by Yousef Karsh, December 30, 1941</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Nineteen Thirty-eight was a dark year for Western civilization. Germany, once a bastion of that civilization, the land of poets, musicians, philosophers, and scientists, had become under Adolf Hitler the very heart of evil. Having sent his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wehrmacht</i> into Austria to effect its annexation to Germany (the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anschluss</i>) without firing a shot, Hitler now set out to seize the German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. After a diplomatic crisis that stretched through the spring and summer, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the now infamous <a href="http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/2941/1/2941.pdf">Munich Agreement</a> with Hitler. Returning home to Britain with the agreement (which Hitler later dismissed as a “scrap of paper”) in hand, <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hN2RjNjkxZjgtOTRlMS00MjgwLWI3YTQtMTM1YmU5MjQyMTk4&hl=en_US">Chamberlain proclaimed</a> “I believe it is peace for our time.” The scrap of paper Chamberlain so <a href="http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=49806">proudly waved</a> to the crowds at Heston Airport on September 30, 1938, was the most notorious example of the policy of appeasement; that is of sacrificing weaker people to a tyrant in the hope that he will leave you alone. It never works. Chamberlain threw Czechoslovakia, “a faraway country of which we know nothing,” under the bus in the hope that Hitler would honor his pledge that he would make no further territorial demands. The mass slaughter of World War I had destroyed the moral capacity of Britain and France to act as great powers and stand up for liberty and civilization. Chamberlain himself had been so traumatized by his memories of the Great War that he was willing to do anything to avoid going to war again. These were dark days indeed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Yet there was one man in Britain who understood that a tyrant like Hitler could not be appeased. That there were times that war was a tragic necessity; that free men and women had to take a stand if liberty and civilization were to be saved from the dark night of barbarism and evil. That man of course was Winston Churchill. Much like Theodore Roosevelt, Churchill was a man of both words and action, pursuing a multifaceted career as a soldier, statesman, writer, and historian. His political career had begun in 1900 with his election to Parliament following his triumphant escape from captivity in South Africa in the Boer War. Between 1905 and 1929 Churchill held a number of key posts in both Conservative and Liberal governments, among them Home Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Chancellor of the Exchequer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as a proud British imperialist Churchill had fallen afoul of the politically correct thinking of the 1930s, and was now relegated to the back benches in Parliament. From the political wilderness Churchill continued to warn of the mortal danger posed by Hitler to the freedom of Britain and of Europe. Years later Churchill would <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMGI1NzkwM2YtOGQ5ZC00NGY4LWI5YmMtOWVjOWFhMGYwNmU2&hl=en_US">famously say</a> “It is ‘better to jaw-jaw than to war-war.’” Yet Churchill was very much a leader in the Jacksonian mode who knew when the time had come to call an end to jaw-jaw and vigorously prosecute war-war. As prime minister in 1940, Churchill, with his unmatched oratory, would rally the British people to the grim task ahead.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">On July 2, 1938, at the height of the Sudetenland crisis, Churchill delivered the Chancellor’s Address at the University of Bristol. In a short but powerful speech Churchill, a master of the English language, gave as eloquent a statement of the Anglo-American tradition of liberty and civilization—freedom to enjoy one’s life and property in peace, guaranteed by the rule of law and constitutional government—as has ever been uttered. Churchill’s definition of civilization brought together a liberal or Whig idea of progress with Edmund Burke’s conservative understanding that ordered liberty was grounded in custom, history and tradition. This concept of liberty and civilization is central to American exceptionalism and distinguishes the West from other civilizations; civilizations where the individual is a subject dependent upon and exploited by an autocratic state and oligarchic elites. The West alone among the world’s great civilizations, and its <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/the-anglosphere-yet-reigns-supreme/article2274566/">Anglo-American branch</a> in particular, was committed to promoting and protecting the human rights and dignity of all individuals. The liberty that Churchill spoke of was precious and fragile, and had to be renewed and safeguarded by each generation. Civilization, Churchill warned, was always in danger of being overwhelmed and devoured by the barbarians at the gate. A “manly courage” grounded in civic virtue and ready to take up arms when liberty was threatened was the ultimate guarantee that liberty and civilization would survive.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Churchill’s words are as relevant in 2011 as they were in 1938. We now face new threats to liberty in the form of Islamic Jihadism and authoritarian statism. We have an <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/649qrsob.asp?page=3">elite intellectual class </a>in parts of the media and academia, mired in post-colonial guilt and postmodern nihilism, which despises the Western civilization that Churchill stood for and despises the nation that has become the bulwark of that civilization and guarantees their own freedom of thought: the United States of America. They yearn instead for a quasi-Marxist utopia, see the hope of the future in the brutal statism of <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204630904577056490023451980.html#printMode">China</a>, and espouse sympathy for the jihadis as victims of the West’s and America’s malevolence. What we need today are leaders who share Churchill’s clear understanding of the meaning of liberty and civilization, and of the need to defend them against the barbarian and the tyrant. Leaders like George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln in our nation’s early days; like Churchill’s friend and ally Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940s; and like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. It has always been the great strength of American democracy that such leaders have emerged when they were needed. Let us hope that this holds true in 2012.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">On November 9, five months after Churchill’s speech and little more than a month after Chamberlain waved his scrap of paper at Heston Airport, the events of 1938 would climax in the horrors of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005201">Kristallnacht</a></i>. This “Night of Broken Glass” marked the end of what remained of Jewish life in Germany and the beginning of the Holocaust. Darkness was descending on Europe and soon Churchill would lead his people into “Their Finest Hour.” A beleaguered Britain would hold off Hitler’s storm troopers long enough for the United States to enter the war and save Western liberty and civilization for future generations.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">* * * * * * * * * *</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=KowyXgMOgGkC&pg=PA45&dq=winston+churchill+a+society+based+upon+the+opinions+of+civilians&hl=en&ei=zZnWTsWrHqLt0gGa29WnBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false"><span style="font-size: large;">Winston S. Churchill, “Civilization,” Chancellor’s Address, University of Bristol, July 2, 1938</span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">There are few words which are used more loosely than the word “Civilization.” What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization—and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The central principle of Civilization is the subordination of the ruling authority to the settled customs of the people and to their will as expressed through the Constitution. In this Island we have today achieved in a high degree the blessings of Civilization. There is freedom: there is law; there is love of country; there is a great measure of good will between classes: there is a widening prosperity. There are unmeasured opportunities of correcting abuses and making further progress.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In this very week we have seen a Prime Minister at the head of a large and loyal majority bow with good grace to the customs of Parliament, and we have heard Socialist Members speaking with pride of the precedents of the early seventeenth century, and the principles of the Petition of Right. (Editor’s Note: A reference to the Report of the Committee of Privileges which inquired into the dispute between Mr. Hore-Belisha and Mr. Duncan Sandys.) In this respect for law and sense of continuity lies one of the glories of England. And more than that, there also lies in it an important part of her strength and safety. Such episodes are astonishing, but also educative, to countries where dictatorships prevail, and where no one dares to raise his hand against arbitrary power. They stir and cheer the minds of men in many lands.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">We have, however, to face the problem of the turbulent, formidable world outside our shores. Why should not the same principles which have shaped the free, ordered, tolerant Civilization of the British Isles and British Empire be found serviceable in the organization of this anxious world? Why should not nations link themselves together in a larger system and establish a rule of law for the benefit of all? That surely is the supreme hope by which we should be inspired and the goal towards which we should march with resolute step.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">But it is vain to imagine that the mere perception or declaration of right principles, whether in one country or in many countries, will be of any value unless they are supported by those qualities of civic virtue and manly courage—aye, and by those instruments and agencies of force and science which in the last resort must be the defense of right and reason.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Civilization will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Here, then, we see the task which should command the exertions of the rising generation which tills this spacious hall, and which may bring to the life of Britain the surge of a new impulse towards the organization of world peace, and across the gulf of these eventful years prepare and bring nearer the Brotherhood of Man.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Source: Winston S. Churchill, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blood, Sweat, and Tears</i>, Randolph S. Churchill, ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=KowyXgMOgGkC&pg=PA45&dq=winston+churchill+a+society+based+upon+the+opinions+of+civilians&hl=en&ei=zZnWTsWrHqLt0gGa29WnBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false">pp. 45-46</a>.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-19376729147854215642011-11-07T00:29:00.038-05:002017-06-05T12:02:38.162-04:00The Mighty Putin<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_JmJrN07iKY/TrM93iOnglI/AAAAAAAAAjc/5uknWcS6G88/s1600/putin+medvedev+dolls+-+4-1318760602.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="541" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_JmJrN07iKY/TrM93iOnglI/AAAAAAAAAjc/5uknWcS6G88/s640/putin+medvedev+dolls+-+4-1318760602.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Dolls depicting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, created by Vladimir Rychkal, are exhibited during an international puppet exhibition in Moscow. Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP.</span> </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The United States is not the only nation holding its presidential election in 2012. Russia too will choose a new chief executive next year. But while the American electorate will engage in a momentous clash of personalities, ideologies, and public policy alternatives whose outcome is by no means certain, our comrades in the Motherland already know who their next president will be: former president and current prime minister Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Since the days of the tsars Russians have sought out leaders who project an image of strength and wield power with an iron hand. So there was little doubt that Putin would take back the presidency from his sock puppet successor Dmitry Medvedev. Putin has often been photographed and filmed engaged in all sorts of exterme sporting and macho physical pursuits, from riding shirtless on horseback, shooting whales with a harpoon, riding motorcyles, and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8695956/Vladimir-Putin-goes-diving-in-the-Black-Sea.html">diving for treasure</a> in the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Phanagoria beneath the Black Sea. (For a montage of Putin action pictures, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/09/vladimir-putin-action-man/100147/">click here</a>.) In the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/picturesoftheday/8813106/Pictures-of-the-day-7-October-2011.html?image=28">above picture</a> and the video below from <i><a href="http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/01/mighty-putin-puny-medvedev/">Fareed Zakaria GPS</a></i>, the Kremlin’s spin doctors play up the image of Putin as a superhero—the doll resembles Patrick Stewart in medieval warrior mode—while Medvedev comes off as, well . . . a wimp.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Putin, the man of vigor and action, presents a sharp contrast to his decrepit and too often inebriated predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, as well as to earlier Soviet-era leaders like Leonid Brezhnev. Putin’s handlers have also sought to bolster his image as a man of irresistible sex appeal. In the next video a group of faux Amazon babes who call themselves “Putin’s Army” pledge to “Tear it up for Putin.” The<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klcyPNIA698&feature=youtu.be"> video</a>, which originated on YouTube, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/07/putins-army.html">went viral</a> after it was posted on Live Journal, Russia’s most popular blogging platform, by a Moscow city councilman affiliated with Putin’s United Russia party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">As the video starts Diana, a sexy, stylish, and sophisticated Moscow “college student” (yeah, right), walks down a thoroughfare in six-inch spiked heels, talking on her iPhone, her very visible cleavage cradling a Russian Orthodox cross. Diana joins together for her viewers the sacred imagery of traditional Holy Mother Russia with the eroticized consumerism of modern post-Communist crony capitalist Russia. Julia Ioffe, a Moscow-based Russian-American journalist who blogs at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Yorker</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Foreign Policy</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Forbes</i>,<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/07/putins-army.html"> writes</a> that Putin has mastered the art of mobilizing the sex saturated pop culture of contemporary Russia as a prop for his authoritarian regime. “Expressions of sex in the public domain have been a hallmark of the Putin era. Western visitors are often shocked—many of the men pleasantly so—by how Russian women parade their highest heels and deepest decolletage, even on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.” As she teeters in her high heels, Diana proclaims her devotion to the great leader:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I am crazy about a man who has changed the life of our country. He’s a worthy politician and a great man. He is Vladimir Putin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">He is adored by millions of people. They believe in him. However there is a small bunch of people who smear him. Perhaps they are afraid of him. They’re weak and can’t be in his position.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Young, smart and beautiful girls have formed an Army of Putin. An army that will rip up anyone for him.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Diana then announces a contest for those young ladies who wish to join Putin’s Army: “You shoot a video where you rip up something or someone for Putin.” The lucky winner who shoots the most original video will receive an iPad2 (Steve Jobs’s legacy is alive and well in the Motherland). Ripping off her own shirt Diana proclaims “What are YOU ready to do for your president?” And she does not mean Medvedev.</span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">There’s more than a hint of menace in Diana’s declaration. Julia Ioffe <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/07/putins-army.html">points out</a> that the Russian verb “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">porvat</i>” which means “to tear” is often used when<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>violent retaliation is intended; as in “If you hurt Putin, I’ll tear you to shreds,” or “I’ll tear you a new one.” Images of the wild <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maenad">maenads</a> of Greek mythology, devotees of the god Dionysus immortalized in Euripides’s play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=43BXAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Bacchae</a></i>, come to mind. Just as Dionysus’s maenads tore wild animals and the occasional human to shreds and devoured their flesh, one can see Diana and her army of bikini-clad maenads doing the same to those foolish enough to stand in the way of Putin’s return to the presidency. (<a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/04/dmitry_medvedev_worst_week_ever?page=full">Dmitry Medvedev</a>, are you listening?)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOe4JRry5j8&feature=youtu.be">another video</a> the bikini-clad Amazons show their patriotism and their devotion to the prime minister by washing Russian-made cars. The British anchors of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prime Time Russia</i> are visibly discomfited by the spectacle: the female anchor could barely restrain her disgust, though her male colleague seemed to enjoy the sight. Such is the state of politics in Putin’s Russia, nothing more than <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNTA5ZjQwYTctZDNhNy00NGVlLWE4NDctNmE1OWFlNGM0NDMz&hl=en_US">bread and circuses</a> drained of any substance. The <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/11/surreal_politik?page=full">absurdity</a> of Putin’s Army shows just how far Russia has retreated from its democratic moment in the 1990s. This was perhaps inevitable. The social and economic upheavals of the 1990s <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/defense-vladimir-putin-5979">undermined public confidence</a> in democracy and reaffirmed the Russian people’s bedrock belief in the need for a strong leader at the top; a leader strong enough to keep the forces of chaos at bay. And Vladimir Putin, former KGB operative and scuba diving Indiana Jones, has convinced the Russian electorate that he is the man for that job.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I4u_YVGNYIg/TrdrL5zHI0I/AAAAAAAAAjk/qDUkOCHDBYQ/s1600/putin+scuba+diving+lg+-+p07_81105369.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="419" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I4u_YVGNYIg/TrdrL5zHI0I/AAAAAAAAAjk/qDUkOCHDBYQ/s640/putin+scuba+diving+lg+-+p07_81105369.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">On August 10, 2011, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin carries two pieces of archaeological trophies he discovered during diving near an archeological excavation of an ancient Greek port on the Taman Peninsula. <nobr>(AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Druzhinin)</nobr></span> </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">For Russians<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/opinion/keller-putins-children.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all"> liberty</a> has always been problematic. Their few attempts to embrace it have not worked out too well, and as a result most Russians tend to equate liberty with license and anarchy. Such is the tragic burden of Russia’s history. In the end the people have always turned to the strong hand of the authoritarian state to provide for them. Putin has taken full advantage of this. <a href="http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/khrushcheva45/English">Nina Khrushcheva</a>, great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, and professor of international affairs at New York’s New School, writes that Russians continue to see themselves not as independent self-governing citizens <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120110062203/http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/08/the_decembrists?page=full" target="_blank">but as subjects</a> subordinate to the state. “For many Russians, if not most, the authority figure embodies the powers that control everything that matters in life; they support him, regardless of the policies that he implements, because there is no possibility of doing otherwise.” And Russia in the 2010s faces a truly terrifying prospect: rampant alcoholism, declining life expectancies, social breakdown, and demographic catastrophe as she engages in what <a href="http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/drunken-nation-russia%E2%80%99s-depopulation-bomb">Nicholas Eberstadt</a> calls “an ethnic self-cleansing.” (See Eberstadt’s reports on Russia’s demographic crisis <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNDUwOTdkZjYtYzQ5My00OWFjLTkyNWEtNjliYjJmMDhjNzNl">here</a> and <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYjcyOGRiMWMtNDFjMC00MzM4LWI0Y2ItNzBkMDEzOTMyZmFl">here</a>. See <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNGIxMzI3YjQtZTViNy00ZjU4LWJhMDEtMmEzOTEyMzk0MGM5&hl=en_US">Seth Mandel’s article</a> on Putin’s rise to power in the December 2011 issue of <em>Commentary</em>.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In such circumstances of social and demographic breakdown, Putin can even be seen as a heroic leader struggling to keep his nation together in the only way he knows how. For all his <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/29/putin-russia-car-boot-sale">authoritarian impulses</a>, Putin is no Stalin. Mass terror is not on his agenda. Putin’s genius, according to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-genius-of-vladimir-putin/2011/09/26/gIQAcSXF0K_story.html">Colonel Ralph Peters</a>, is to understand the limits of the authoritarian state and keep it out of private life. Allow people autonomy to live their lives in the private sphere and they’re less likely to cause trouble in the political sphere. “He saw that an authoritarian state that stops at the front door is not only tolerable but also more efficient.” With <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/12/05/the-iron-fist-in-russia-shows-early-signs-of-rust/">no apparent alternatives</a> on the horizon, Vladimir Putin will <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/29/putin_and_the_boo_boys?page=full">continue to enjoy</a> at least<a href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/why-occupy-wall-street-hasnt-hit-russia/447191.html"> the acquiescence</a> of Russia’s long-suffering people <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/15/the_condomnation_of_vladimir_putin?page=full">to his rule</a> as their <em>de facto</em> tsar. Putin’s Russia, based on Russian nationalism, Russian Orthodox faith, eroticized consumerism, crony capitalism, and the <a href="http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/22/the-costs-of-putins-cult-of-personality/">personality cult</a> of the great leader, is a return not to the Soviet Union, but to <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMzM1YWVmMTMtYjhkNS00YTczLTk4YjItNWI1NjlhMWE5MTA4&hl=en_US">Tsarist Russia</a>. Using bluff and bluster to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/01/putin-prepares-russian-empire">re-assert Russia’s role</a> on the world stage, despite its <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111211093940/http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/12/11/in-decline-putin-s-russia-is-on-its-way-to-global-irrelevance.html" target="_blank">diminished circumstances</a>, Putin has leveraged his image as an action hero to reinvent himself as a tsar for the twenty-first century. Whether <a href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/my-gloomy-dinner-with-putin/447910.html">he can guide</a> Russia <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/opinion/the-lessons-of-fallen-giants.html">out of its malaise</a> and transform her, much like his hero Peter the Great, into a modern nation up to the challenges of the twenty-first century remains to be seen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><strong>Postscript December 31, 2011.</strong> The mass demonstrations by young educated middle-class protesters in Moscow against Putin’s autocratic regime this past month, could be the harbinger of genuine democratic change in Russia. A new generation, free of the ghosts of the Soviet past, seems willing to challenge the Great Leader and take up the fight for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is too soon to tell of course whether they will succeed and lead Russia to a new and better future, or whether they will tragically fail like Russia’s ill-fated reformers of the past. See these articles by Julia Ioffe (<a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/08/the_decembrists?page=full">here</a>, <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/15/the_condomnation_of_vladimir_putin?page=full">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/28/the_end_of_putin?page=full">here</a>), <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/07/putin_is_already_dead?page=full">Leon Aron</a>, and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/opinion/keller-putins-children.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all">Bill Keller</a> for an optimistic view.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b>Update January 9, 2017:</b> Five years after writing this post, Putin</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">’s grip on power is stronger than ever. While crushing opposition at home, Putin now challenges the American-led liberal-democratic world order with his military interventions in Ukraine and Syria, and his probable cyberwarfare against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">. Gratuitously insulted on more than one occasion by the weak and incompetent Barack Obama, Putin, in <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443347/obama-foreign-policy-ignores-human-nature-time-tested-truths" target="_blank">Victor Davis Hanson</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia";"><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443347/obama-foreign-policy-ignores-human-nature-time-tested-truths" target="_blank">’s</a></span><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> words, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“is guided by his desire to recapture the glories of the Soviet Union, not just its Stalinist authoritarianism or geographical expanse. He also seeks to restore the respect that long ago greeted Russian diplomats, generals, and leaders when sent abroad as proud emissaries of a world-class power.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Much of Putin</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">’s popular support rests on the desire of the Russian people to likewise regain the respect</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> they once had as citizens of a superpower. One example: Liza, a stylish 24-year-old Siberian-born corporate lawyer, <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/12/putin-generation-russia-soviet-union/" target="_blank">told Julia Ioffe</a> how she had been humiliated when she studied in London. People there often made fun of Russian women, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“mocking them as mail-order brides.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Liza recalled that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“it was offensive to the point of tears, to sit there and hear outsiders making fun of us.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Young Russians like Liza, of the post-Soviet generation born after 1991, the </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Putin generation</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” as Julia Ioffe calls them, have given up on democratic political change. They have either enthusiastically embraced Putin</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">’s populist nationalist, crony capitalist, and neo-tsarist autocracy, or resigned themselves to accepting it as the least bad of any possible alternatives. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Their desire for staid normalcy,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Ioffe writes in the <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/12/putin-generation-russia-soviet-union/" target="_blank">December 2016 issue</a> of <i>National Geographic</i>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> intact families, reliable, if unsatisfying, jobs </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">— is their response to what they lacked in the Nineties and found in the Putin era.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” The Putin generation is likewise nostalgic for the supposed order and stability of the Soviet Union while largely ignorant of its cruelty and repression.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“On the long list of fields in which Russians have traditionally excelled,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” <a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/06/14/the-greatness-of-russia/" target="_blank">writes Kirk Bennett</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“conspicuous by its absence is the area of good governance.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” Putin</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">’s regime follows the historical Russian pattern of corrupt, autocratic governance. And it provides further evidence that deeply rooted political cultures are very difficult to transform. <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/why-putins-russia-will-be-keeping-quiet-about-1917/" target="_blank">Owen Matthews</a> writes that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Putin</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">’s Russia in many ways resembles the kind of country that the White Guard would have built had they, not the Reds, won the Russian Civil War. . . . Putin has restored Holy Russia: a society where ruler and church are united, where dissent is treason and where secret police watch for the slightest flicker of discontent.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">” While this may be something of an improvement on the communist Soviet Union, the Russian people, who have contributed much to the development of science and culture, deserve better.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">So for the moment at least, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2017/01/how_vladimir_putin_engineered_russia_s_return_to_global_power.html" target="_blank">Putin has restored Russia</a> to quasi-superpower status. He won the civil war in Syria for his ally Bashar al-Assad, reducing the city of Aleppo to rubble in the process. Putin has also shown that he is quite capable of exploiting partisan polarization in the United States to knock his major geopolitical rival down a peg. The Russian people have so far proved willing to support </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Putin</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">’s</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> aggressive and expansionist foreign policy, even at the cost of increasing economic hardship and political repression at home. The Russian people, like their Great Leader, have made it clear that for the time being they value their nation</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">’s military sway and geopolitical standing over and above their economic prosperity, cultural creativity, or political liberty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan</span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-44032420835195168352011-10-03T22:48:00.079-04:002017-06-05T12:03:21.381-04:00Another Victory for the Good Guys<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-spnJ5Jt_xuo/ToaLvW7cEnI/AAAAAAAAAiI/uiZc7VSP4kc/s1600/anwar+al-awlaki+-+anwar-al-awlaki-killed-a-primer-on-yemen-al-qaeda-chief_img.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-spnJ5Jt_xuo/ToaLvW7cEnI/AAAAAAAAAiI/uiZc7VSP4kc/s640/anwar+al-awlaki+-+anwar-al-awlaki-killed-a-primer-on-yemen-al-qaeda-chief_img.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.archive.org/details/AwlakiToUsa">But America thought that it could threaten the lives of others, kill and invade, occupy and plunder, and conspire without bearing the consequences of its actions. 9/11 was the answer of the millions of people who suffer from American aggression, and since then, America has not been safe.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.archive.org/details/AwlakiToUsa">Americans need to stop looking at themselves from their own lens, but look at themselves from the lens of the world. They will then see the ugly face of America. America is not despised only by Muslims, but by many millions of people around the world, and in America itself.</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.archive.org/details/AwlakiToUsa">—Anwar al-Awlaki, “Message to the American People,” March 18, 2010.</a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This is a day to celebrate. Anwar al-Awlaki, the most dangerous Al Qaeda leader after Osama bin Laden (even more dangerous according to my congressman, <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/64796.html">Peter King</a>), is now a martyr in paradise surrounded by 72 virgins courtesy of a <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/30/world/africa/yemen-radical-cleric/">CIA predator drone</a>. I do hope the good imam is suitably grateful to the nation he so despised and whose citizenship he tarnished, for enabling him to finally achieve, and none too soon, the martyrdom he so desired.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">All credit to President Obama and his national security team: Secretary of Defense and former CIA Director Leon Panetta; current CIA Director and former commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petraeus; Admiral Michael Mullen, outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; and all of the men and women of the military and intelligence services. Whatever his mishandling of the economy and his humiliating diplomacy of apology for American greatness, President Obama has successfully built on the Bush administration’s strategy and methods in fighting the war on radical Islamic jihadism, the war against <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/10/01/obama-warrior-or-assassin/">“Those Who Must Not Be Named.”</a> The president who came into office pledging to reverse and repudiate George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror, shut down the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, put an end to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques">enhanced interrogation</a> and prosecute those CIA officers who used it, and try terrorist masterminds like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian courts, has done none of this much to the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daphne-eviatar/in-wake-of-awlakis-death_b_989488.html">chagrin of the left</a>. Instead the Obama administration has prosecuted the war in Afghanistan and expanded the use of predator drones and Special Forces for the targeted killing of our jihadist enemies. The result has been the elimination of bin Laden and Awlaki, Al Qaeda’s two most dangerous leaders, truly important victories in the war against the Jihad.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Anwar al-Awlaki, the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/279256/anwar-al-awlaki-s-american-journey-clifford-d-may">American-born son</a> of Yemeni parents, a man with feet in both worlds, was the ideal propagandist for the Jihad. From his base in Yemen as a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Awlaki used his intimate understanding of America, its culture and technology, to reach out to vulnerable American and British Muslim young men and turn them into jihadis. With the modern technology of the Internet, Awlaki recorded sermons in both English and Arabic which he posted to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4F4168BB3E315DF5">YouTube</a>, spreading his hateful interpretation of Islam far and wide. Modern technology is indeed a two-edged sword. Like other demagogues Awlaki was a charismatic orator who, whether in person or through his recordings, held his listeners spellbound. This was his true power. Awlaki was not an organizer or a warrior in the field like Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri. He was a storyteller and a mythmaker. Journalist J. M. Berger, publisher of <a href="http://www.intelwire.com/">INTELWIRE.com,</a> has studied Awlaki and other American jihadis in depth. <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/09/30/Anwar_al_Awlaki_dead_but_not_forgotten?page=full">Berger writes</a> that “Awlaki took traditional Islamic sources and breathed life into them, transforming religious texts into gripping and emotional stories, often with substantial embellishment. He tailored his idiom and analogy to Western language and culture, but his most important skill was the ability to transform often skeletal sources into gripping tales.” Among those who fell under <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/world/09awlaki.html?pagewanted=all">Awlaki’s spell</a> was U. S. Army Major <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120287913">Nidal Malik Hasan</a> who killed thirteen people at Fort Hood, Texas, Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, and the Nigerian underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab. Awlaki also had some involvement, as yet unclear, with several of the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/anwar-al-awlakis-links-to-the-september-11-hijackers/244796/?single_page=true">9/11 hijackers</a>. There’s no question that this imam was a bad actor who for years played a major role in advancing the Jihad.</span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">To fully understand <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/279439/after-al-awlaki-interview">Awlaki’s importance</a> to the Jihad and why taking him out is a major victory, you have to listen to his sermons—well at least excerpts from them. Listening to Awlaki is akin to reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mein Kampf</i>, a painful but necessary step to understanding who this enemy really is, what he really wants, and why there can be nothing between him and us but the sword.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In the clip <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI2xUK9pMwE">posted above</a> Awlaki explains that Islam does not mean peace: it means submission. A true Muslim submits to the will of Allah in all things without question. A man may not understand the sharia, it may at times seem irrational and make no sense. Nonetheless a true Muslim accepts this and submits. So just as Abraham submitted to God’s command to sacrifice Ishmael (in the Koran’s version—Isaac in the Bible’s version) so Muslims must be prepared to obey God’s command without question, even to becoming a suicide bomber. This in a nutshell is the heart of the jihadist worldwiew which must be defeated. Such unquestioning submission and obedience is anathema to Americans and Jacksonians, dedicated as we are to liberty. We believe that God expects us to use our own independent judgment and exercise free will as we engage His word in confronting the challenges of life; a tradition that goes back to the first British Protestant Dissenter settlers which is encoded in our cultural DNA. The enemy we are dealing with rejects free will, surrendering it along with his moral sense to theocratic tyrants. In the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4oC6skVqW0&feature=grec_index">clip below</a> Awlaki discusses how Islam was spread by the sword.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">On November 8, 2010, Awlaki released a <a href="http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/34073773">twenty-three minute video</a> of a sermon in Arabic with the grandiose title, “That You Must Make It Clear to the People and Not Conceal It.” What Awlaki did make clear, without any attempt to conceal it, was his view of the Jihad as a world historical struggle between good and evil. Awlaki related the story of Umm Umar, an Australian Muslim woman who moved to Yemen to raise her children as proper sharia compliant Muslims free from the contaminating influence of the West. Umm Umar was a true heroine of Islam who gave up a comfortable modern life in Australia for the sake of her faith. This, Awlaki claimed, was in stark contrast to many Muslim women “who run behind the joys of this world, seeking husbands who will take them from Muslim lands to the West, to live it up in this fleeting and deviating world.” Then the Yemeni government, at the behest of its American masters, arrested and tortured Umm Umar, a woman who wanted nothing more than to live a virtuous Muslim life with her children. Going beyond what they were ordered to do, the Yemeni authorities became “more tyrannical than the tyrant, more Christian than the crusader, and more Jewish than the Jew.” They interrogated the heroic Umm Umar for six hours in a standing position, hoping to find some information that would win them favor in the eyes of America. Umm Umar pleaded with her interrogators that they should be helping her, a virtuous Muslim woman, not torturing her in service to the infidels, but to no avail. Whatever the truth of this story—and Awlaki no doubt embellishes the truth to add to the drama of the story and the power of his message—the lesson he draws is clear. The only path open to Muslims who want to preserve the purity of their faith and the virtue of their women is to fight America, “Hezboshaitan—the Party of Satan,” to the death.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Don’t consult with anyone in killing Americans. Fighting Satan does not need any religious verdict, consultation, or prayer for guidance in decision making. They are the “Party of Satan.” Fighting them is the obligation of the time. We have reached the stage where its “either us or them.” We are two opposites which can never coexist. They seek something which can never come to be unless we are annihilated. It’s a decisive battle. It’s the battle of Moses and Pharaoh. It’s the battle of truth and falsehood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Awlaki tells a powerful tale in which he makes his ultimate goals as clear as can be. There can be no coexistence between liberty loving people in the West or anywhere else, and those who support the Jihad. What we seek, what Awlaki says can never be unless he and his ilk are annihilated, is a world in which all people, and that includes the people of the Muslim world, are free to enjoy the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Awlaki and his followers are telling you who they are and what they seek: a world where there is no liberty, only submission. They and their hateful ideology must be defeated and destroyed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Awlaki was killed in a <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/30/world/africa/yemen-radical-cleric/">joint U. S. military-intelligence operation</a>. It does the heart good to see the different service branches working together in a common mission instead of sniping at each other’s backs. While the military helped target Awlaki, the predator drone that blew him off the face of the earth was operated by CIA agents from a base in Yemen, with backup provided by manned American military aircraft. Predator drones are in fact the technological counterparts to Army Special Forces and Navy SEALS: targeted weapons for surgical strikes that take out the bad guys with minimum loss of American life and a minimum of collateral damage. This is the Jacksonian way of war, ruthless and effective. Jacksonians believe in using all of America’s advantages in technology and the professionalism of her soldiers to defeat the enemy and compel him to surrender or die. Nation building does not enter into the equation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki was a <a href="http://blog.chron.com/texassparkle/2011/10/killing-anwar-al-awlaki-was-right/#loopBegin">righteous act</a>, whatever <a href="http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/30/awlaki_6/singleton/">Glenn Greenwald</a> on the appeasement left or <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-ron-paul-anwar-awlaki-20110930,0,1545350.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher">Ron Paul</a> on the isolationist right might think. By making war on the people of the United States, <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/10/01/obama-warrior-or-assassin/">Sheikh Awlaki forfeited</a> the <a href="http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/03/anwar-al-awlaki-what-we-learned-from-his-killing/">constitutional rights</a> and protections of American citizenship. Slowly but surely and inexorably the fighting men and women of Jacksonian America are taking Al Qaeda apart piece by piece and crushing its infrastructure. But this is not enough. It is the <a href="http://spectator.org/archives/2011/10/03/the-war-on-terror-drones-on">jihadist ideology</a> of Islamic supremacy, which inspires young men without any other purpose or prospects in life to seek martyrdom in pursuit of a new Islamic caliphate (and 72 virgins), that above all else must be defeated and destroyed. J. M. Berger in an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5d6Goql_GM">interview with Heather Childers</a> on Fox News, raises the concern that Awlaki may prove “larger than death” and that his malevolent influence will live on via the Internet. Well, as <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hM2ZiOTQ4YWItMmU1MC00NGZlLTlhZDEtM2I2MzJiOGNiOWVj&hl=en_US">Colonel Ralph Peters</a> is fond of <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYzJlZWY2ODUtZDk5My00ZDg0LTgwZDgtYTk5Njg2YTIzMjg3&hl=en_US">saying</a>, “better a dead martyr than a living inspiration.” Jacksonian America’s attitude toward the bad actors of the world goes something like this: you leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone. But if you threaten or attack us then God help you, for we will pound you into the dust. This is a lesson that Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Anwar al-Awlaki have now learned.</span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-42688904254274716742011-09-20T01:32:00.045-04:002017-06-05T12:15:14.499-04:00Sarah Palin’s Declaration of War on Crony Capitalism<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hZiXzKErcPY/Tnf6Sf4fVSI/AAAAAAAAAhs/w65NPgrNtRs/s1600/sarah+palin+-+indianola%252C+iowa%252C+sept+3%252C+2011+%255B3+35+percent+size+auto+correct%255D+Sarah-Palin-Tea-Party-of-America-in-Indianola-Iowa-1216.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hZiXzKErcPY/Tnf6Sf4fVSI/AAAAAAAAAhs/w65NPgrNtRs/s640/sarah+palin+-+indianola%252C+iowa%252C+sept+3%252C+2011+%255B3+35+percent+size+auto+correct%255D+Sarah-Palin-Tea-Party-of-America-in-Indianola-Iowa-1216.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Sarah Palin speaking at the Tea Party of America Rally, Indianola, Iowa, September 3, 2011</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">On September 3, 2011, at Indianola, Iowa, former Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska <a href="http://hillbuzz.org/2011/09/04/full-text-of-governor-sarah-palins-indianola-iowa-speech-on-september-3rd-2011/">issued a declaration of war</a> on crony capitalism. At this point it’s unlikely that Palin will throw her hat into the 2012 Republican presidential race. <a href="http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2011/09/perry-vs-palin-the-big-events.html">Dan Riehl</a> and <a href="http://theothermccain.com/2011/09/04/palins-pressure-on-perry/">Robert Stacy McCain</a> (“The Other McCain”), however, have suggested that Palin might still jump in if she decides that Rick Perry isn’t up to carrying the Jacksonian conservative banner. Palin, like Michele Bachmann, may actually believe that <a href="http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2011/09/perry-vs-palin-the-big-events.html">Perry</a> is <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/09/03/palin_sends_shot_across_gop_fields_bow_in_fiery_iowa_speech__111202.html">part of the problem</a> of crony capitalism. I happen to like Perry, who is a strong Jacksonian in his own right with a solid record of achievement as governor of Texas. But whatever the fate of her presidential ambitions, Palin has shown once again that she is the most powerful and charismatic champion for Jacksonian America and its traditional conservative values of liberty and opportunity on the stump today.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Elite liberal progressives love to dismiss Palin as an ignorant hick who lacks the intellectual firepower of a true leader like . . . Barack Obama. Yet it is <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/chrystia-freeland/2011/10/14/wall-street-protesters-challenge-reagan-revolution/">Palin who has articulated</a> more forcefully and effectively than any other public figure the danger that most threatens American liberty today: <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/chrystia-freeland/2011/12/29/in-2011-the-revolution-was-tweeted/">crony capitalism</a>. This is the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/us/10iht-currents10.html?_r=1" target="_blank">unholy collusion</a> between the elites of big government, big business, and big finance, who enrich and empower themselves at the expense of America’s broad middle class. Crony capitalism can also be a step on the road to socialism. Palin delivered this message in a true <a href="http://www.sarahpac.com/posts/governor-palins-speech-at-the-restoring-america-tea-party-of-america-rally-in-indianola-iowa-video-and-transcript">firebrand of a speech</a> at the “Restoring America” Tea Party of America Rally. Here is the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8R7fgyK6wE" target="_blank">video</a>. (Also <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj0HfidTXlY" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl5lhZKgobM" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/09/03/palin_on_crony_capitalist_politicians_im_not_for_sale.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Jacksonian America has long seen crony capitalism, also called <a href="http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/189741-cain-sounds-anti-wall-street">corporatism</a>, as a grave threat to both economic and political liberty. As <a href="http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/24657.html">Lexington Green</a> (Michael J. Lotus) at Chicago Boyz points out, the acts of King George III and the British Parliament in the 1760s and 1770s were essentially an attempt to impose a London-based crony capitalist economic monopoly on the American colonies. Both <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/chrystia-freeland/2011/10/14/wall-street-protesters-challenge-reagan-revolution/">left</a> and right are wrong in seeing big government and big business as enemies rather than <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/us/10iht-currents10.html?_r=1" target="_blank">natural collaborators</a>. The blue model progressive regulatory state, Green argues, was captured long ago by the industries it was supposed to regulate. “The government has turned into an amalgamation of iron triangles—regulators, legislators (or actually their staffs) and industries that are regulated. These work in tandem to their mutual advantage at the expense of the taxpayer and of truly entrepreneurial and innovative businesses.” Andrew Jackson himself offered the classic statement on the dangers of crony capitalism in his <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYjllZTNjYTAtNTg4My00ODYyLWEzZTMtZGYxNjA4ZGNjMmE4&hl=en_US">Bank Veto Message</a> of July 1832:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Old Hickory was <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/populism-american-style">not a demagogue</a> out to confiscate the property of the Bank’s wealthy shareholders and redistribute it. Like the Founding Fathers, Jackson accepted that natural inequality—that people had differing talents and abilities and would achieve different outcomes in life—was part of human nature. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/douthat-missing-the-populist-moment.html?src=recg">Jacksonian populism</a>, unlike its European counterparts, was never about <a href="http://spectator.org/archives/2011/10/07/andrew-jackson-tea-party-presi#commentcontainer">despoiling the haves</a> and giving to the have nots. But Jackson was absolutely opposed to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">artificial inequality</i>; or as we would say today, to the government using its power to pick winners and losers in the economy and in life. Jackson understood that American democracy rested on an independent, prosperous middle class. Government’s proper role was to provide the framework of law and security necessary for ordered liberty, enabling American families of modest means the opportunity to pursue happiness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><o:p><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Historian Daniel Walker Howe <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZjYzNWZkNTYtMjNjMi00OGNkLTk1ZjgtNGMyMjE4MGM2ODM3&hl=en_US">recently wrote</a> that “Jacksonian Democracy was not the precursor of FDR and the New Deal, but of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement.” In this central passage from Palin’s Iowa address one can hear the voice of Old Hickory coming through loud and clear:</span></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Yeah, the permanent political class–they’re doing just fine. Ever notice how so many of them arrive in Washington, D.C. of modest means and then miraculously throughout the years they end up becoming very, very wealthy? Well, it’s because they derive power and their wealth from their access to our money–to taxpayer dollars. They use it to bail out their friends on Wall Street and their corporate cronies, and to reward campaign contributors, and to buy votes via earmarks. There is so much waste. And there is a name for this: It’s called corporate crony capitalism. This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. No, this is the capitalism of connections and government bailouts and handouts, of waste and influence peddling and corporate welfare. This is the crony capitalism that destroyed Europe’s economies. It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest–to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners–the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70% of the jobs in America, it’s you who own these small businesses, you’re the economic engine, but you don’t grease the wheels of government power.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Palin has <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204323904577040373463191222.html#printMode">long butted heads</a> with crony capitalists. As governor of Alaska she took on Big Oil and their corrupt lackeys—the good ol’ boys—in Alaska’s government. And she paid the price in being slandered by those whose power she challenged. This, Palin warned, is the danger faced by the Tea Party and other reformers: those who would challenge the entrenched power of the regulatory state-industrial complex will be demonized by its allies in the media as ignorant and dangerous know-nothings, yahoos, and even racists. But calling on those mythopoetic themes of patriotism and American history beloved by Jacksonians, Palin urged Tea Partiers not to lose heart. They followed in the grand and noble tradition of the Sons of Liberty, the Abolitionists, and the Civil Rights Movement. The Tea Party was nothing less than an awakening of the American spirit of liberty, brought about by ordinary Americans: “it’s you who grow our food; you run our small businesses; you teach our children; you fight our wars. We are always proud of America. We love our country in good times and in bad, and we never apologize for America.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/chrystia-freeland/2011/09/20/modern-capitalism-isnt-working-for-the-middle-class/">hollowing out of the middle class</a>—the Jacksonian folk community that Sarah Palin champions—is at the root of America’s current social and political malaise. Re-inventing the American dream, the dream of <a href="http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1655597350001/free-enterprise-and-income-inequality" target="_blank">economic opportunity</a>, independence and dignity for Americans of modest means, the dream which led the first British Dissenter colonists to cross the Atlantic in the seventeenth century, is the greatest challenge facing the nation in the twenty-first century. <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/can-the-middle-class-be-saved/8600/2/">Don Peck</a>, writing in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Atlantic</i>, observes that the rise of the super elite and the decline of the middle class “is a natural outcome of widening markets and technological revolution, which are creating much bigger winners much faster than ever before—a result that’s not even close to being fully played out, and one reinforced strongly by the political influence that great wealth brings.” The hollowing out of the middle class enables the rise of crony capitalism which leads to a further decline of middle-class prospects. The middle decades of the twentieth century—the heyday of the blue social model—were very good to the middle class. This can be attributed to strong economic growth, more people getting more and better education, limited competition abroad, and perhaps, though conservatives would dispute this, a more <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/19/michael-tomasky-obama-out-to-expose-gop-s-class-warfare-sham.html">progressive tax policy</a>. These factors no longer prevail. As Peck describes it:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Economists now posit that the middle class is no longer needed to keep the global economy going. That America and the rest of global capitalist world are heading toward what economist Ajay Kapur and his colleagues at Citigroup are calling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNWQyN2I1YjYtZTJjNy00ZWU3LWEwNDEtMGVhZDVjNzEwZDZm&hl=en_US">plutonomy</a></i>, the Siamese twin of crony capitalism. In a plutonomy, Kapur and his associates wrote in 2005 “economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few.” In effect, American society has divided into the rich—the top 1 percent of households who now drive the economy—and the rest. Plutonomies, which often arise during periods of rapid economic transformation and modernization, are driven by “Disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, capitalist-</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">friendly cooperative governments, an international dimension of immigrants and overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation, the rule of law, and patenting inventions.” The wealthy, the well-educated, and the well-connected are usually in the best position to exploit the new complex modes of technology, business organization, and economic opportunity. Middle-class producers and consumers, who have a <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/09/29/new-world-order-its-worse-than-you-think/">harder time adapting</a> to these new economic realities, become increasingly irrelevant to economic growth and development, and are thrown under the bus. For better or worse the Citigroup analysts argure, “The earth is being held up by the muscular arms of its entrepreneur-plutocrats, like it, or not.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Sixteenth-century Spain of the conquistadors was a plutonomy, as was the Netherlands in its seventeenth-century golden age. The United States went through a period of plutonomy from the Gilded Age through the Roaring Twenties. The Jacksonian Populist movement of the 1890s and its champion, William Jennings Bryan, challenged the plutonomy and crony capitalists of the Gilded Age, ushering in reform of the new industrial order. The Jacksonian Tea Party movement of the 2010s and its champion, Sarah Palin, challenge the plutonomy and crony capitalists of today. Will the Tea Party likewise be the harbinger for reform of the new order of global capitalism and high technology, reining in plutonomy and restoring the American dream for the twenty-first century?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Sarah Palin <a href="http://realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/05/sarah_palin_tells_mark_levin_i_am_not_running.html">may never</a> <a href="http://www.marklevinshow.com/Article.asp?id=2303165&spid=32364">run for president</a>. But she has sounded the Jacksonian clarion call to preserve liberty from the threat of <a href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150295067853435">crony capitalism</a> and plutonomy, which, more than socialism, is the real danger America faces today. And she will remain an inspirational and indispensible leader for Jacksonian America as it fights to <a href="http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/is-america-an-exceptional-nation-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/">preserve American exceptionalism</a>, the dream of a nation of independent, self-governing small property owners, subservient to none, devoted to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.</span></span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-2008826651264316952011-09-17T01:54:00.048-04:002017-06-05T12:16:05.619-04:00How Obama’s “Gentry Presidency” Undermines American Exceptionalism<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">The always insightful <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/002445-the-crisis-gentry-presidency">Joel Kotkin</a> has written a piece on the crisis of Barack Obama’s “gentry presidency.” This is Kotkin’s term for the progressive blue model of politics and society and the technocratic elite at its head. Obama, Kotkin argues, has governed largely as the creature of the progressive leaning financial elites of Wall Street and their allies in high technology, real estate, the media, and academia. The whole thrust of the Obama administration has been to promote policies that benefit these blue model elites in both the private and public sector at the expense of the Jacksonian middle class. This is why Obama has not focused on job creation for his first two years in office. His policies, especially the focus on green technology, health care reform, and bailing out Wall Street, have not promoted and have often hindered middle-class entrepreneurship and small business development. But the Jacksonian middle class was never this president’s base. After all, these were the people he denounced as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/obama-no-surprise-that-ha_b_96188.html">bitter clingers</a> when he thought he was <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTxXUufI3jA">off the record</a> at that San Francisco fund raiser in 2008. President Obama’s base lies instead “with the rising power of the post-industrial castes,” the new upper class that <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZTQyZDQzNWQtNDZiMi00MTYzLTgwMGItZTAxNzc3MmIyZGM0&hl=en_US">David Brooks</a> called the bobos, “who have largely continued to flourish even through the current economic maelstrom.” Indeed</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">the major winners of the Obama years have been the big nonprofits, venture capitalists and, most obviously, the financial aristocracy. These have all benefited from the Ben Bernanke-Timothy Geithner—previously the Bernanke-Henry Paulson—policy of cheap money and near zero-interest rates, which have depressed the savings of the middle classes but served as a major boon to Wall Street. This has benefited mostly the wealthiest 1 percent, which owns some 40 percent of equities and 60 percent of financial securities.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; line-height: 115%;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">This may come as news to many conservatives who insist that Obama is engaged in a campaign of demonization of Wall Street, business, and upper-income earners in his quest to transform America into a European-style social democracy. Progressive commentators, on the other hand, have become downright hysterical in accusing “their” president of betraying the hope that they placed in him, throwing the middle class under the bus in <a href="http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=historys_missed_moment">service to Wall Street’s plutocrats</a>. Kotkin goes on:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">These developments, as Marxists might put it, reflect the fundamental contradictions of gentry liberalism. Essentially, gentry liberalism reflects the coalescing interests among the financial, technological and academic upper strata. For these people, the Great Recession was brief and ended long ago. All depend heavily on high stock prices to maintain their wealth. Their interest in the overall U.S. economy—particularly the Main Street grass roots—has become ever more tenuous with their increasing ability to shift assets to East Asia and other developing country hot spots.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">These prerogatives have been neatly protected under Obama. In the past, administrations let corporate scofflaws, like the savings and loan companies, collapse. Some were sent to jail.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">But this time, the Wall Street elites have been allowed to skate through their own self-created crisis with astounding agility. Not only have they stayed out of the slammer, but they have been enjoying the best of times.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/8343/1/">Chrystia Freeland</a> has written of how this new elite of plutocrats and technocrats feels an ever lessening sense of common destiny with the Jacksonian middle-class majority of Americans. The plutocrats in particular—the hedge fund managers, high tech entrepreneurs, and media celebrities—feel a closer kinship with their counterparts in Europe and Asia than they do with their less successful countrymen. Freeland characterizes these new elites as “hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition—and many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward those of us who didn’t succeed so spectacularly.” As for the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/can-the-middle-class-be-saved/8600/">middle class</a>, the view from on high was best expressed by the Taiwanese-born CFO of an American Internet company <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/8343/5/">who told Freeland</a> that Americans simply did not produce enough value to justify the standard of living they had come to expect. “So if you’re going to demand 10 times the paycheck, you need to deliver 10 times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe people in the middle class need to decide to take a pay cut.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Such attitudes, should they become more widely disseminated in the public discourse, would certainly shift some of the Tea Party’s anger at big government toward <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/chrystia-freeland/2011/10/14/wall-street-protesters-challenge-reagan-revolution/">big business</a>. Indeed Kotkin has written that the rise of the new global elite is generating a new global class war of which the August riots in London may be the harbinger. The Tea Party and similar <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/douthat-missing-the-populist-moment.html?src=recg">right-wing populist</a> movements in Europe, <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/002380-the-uk-riots-and-the-coming-global-class-war">Kotkin argues</a>, grew “in large part out of the conviction that the power structure, corporate and government, work together to screw the broad middle class. Left-wing militancy also has a class twist, with progressives increasingly alienated by the gentry politics of the Obama Administration.” Jacksonians have historically feared <a href="http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/24657.html">crony capitalism</a>, collusion between big government, big business, and big finance. This is true of Andrew Jackson’s <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNmJiNzM0MjYtZWJhOC00Y2EzLWI2MjEtMzkyNjkyODBkYzUx&hl=en_US">Bank War</a> in the 1830s and of the Tea Party’s condemnation of Wall Street bailouts today. Sarah Palin, in tones reminiscent of Jackson’s 1832 <a href="http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3636">Bank Veto Message</a>, on September 3 in Iowa <a href="http://www.sarahpac.com/posts/governor-palins-speech-at-the-restoring-america-tea-party-of-america-rally-in-indianola-iowa-video-and-transcript">issued a powerful warning</a> of the threat posed by crony capitalism to the health and survival of the middle class and of American democracy. Kotkin, likewise, offers this warning of the continuing power of class conflict in human affairs that conservatives ignore at their peril:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Many conservatives here, as well as abroad, reject the huge role of class. To them, wealth and poverty still reflect levels of virtue—and societal barriers to upward mobility, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>just a mild inhibitor. But modern society cannot run according to the individualist credo of Ayn Rand; economic systems, to be credible and socially sustainable, must deliver results to the vast majority of citizens. If capitalism cannot do that expect more outbreaks of violence and greater levels of political alienation—not only in Britain but across most of the world’s leading countries, including the U.S.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">In reality there is no contradiction between Obama’s gentry politics and his larger goal of transforming America into a European-style social democracy. Europe’s social democracies are controlled by the same elite of technocrats and plutocrats that Obama champions. Just think of <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNmU1ZGYyYTItYWI4MC00YjI4LTg5MmItMjgxZWVmYTk3MmNj&hl=en_US">Dominique Strauss-Kahn</a>: financier, socialist, and womanizer. Obama’s policies are promoting a form of crony capitalism or <a href="http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/189741-cain-sounds-anti-wall-street">coporatism</a> where the government picks winners and losers in the private sector, which is a stepping stone to some form of, if not socialism, then a much larger role for government domination in the economy and civil society than Americans are historically accustomed to. From this perspective then Obama’s rhetorical assault on millionaires, billionaires, and corporate jet owners, calling on them to pay their fair share of taxes, is just smoke and mirrors meant to disguise his real policy agenda from progressive true believers and the American public.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Barack Obama <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576532623176115558.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#printMode">does not believe</a> in <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/281416/america-abroad-exceptional-brsince-1776-marion-smith">American exceptionalism</a>. So it should not be a surprise that the gentry policies of his presidency have undermined the basis of American exceptionalism: independent small property ownership. “Overall,” Kotkin concludes in what I find his most disturbing passage,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">gentry rule has fostered a sense throughout the American public of national decline and diminishing personal expectations. Small property ownership, the key to a democratic capitalist society, is fraying. Wall Street’s Morgan Stanley, for example, having helped create the housing crisis, now talks boldly of a “rentership” society.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">This would extend the dominion of Wall Street and large landowners, like feudal lords, over the last redoubts of small property owners.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">It would also mark a disastrous reversal of four hundred years of American history. American exceptionalism began in seventeenth-century <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hN2NiMzRlNTMtYjM4YS00ZDY3LTlhZjEtMjE1YjJjNDBkNTI3&hl=en_US">Virginia and New England</a> with the dream of independent small property ownership—of patriarchal landed power—by families of modest means. The richness of the land in the New World allowed such modest households to produce surplus harvests for their own material profit and benefit. This in turn gave them the economic resources for a degree of social assertion and political power unimaginable in hierarchical England. These families of modest means with their freehold farms created British North America’s society of independent households, bound together in strong self-governing communities, which became the basis of American democracy and the American middle class. The nature of small property ownership <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYzgwMTRmNDYtMzhlMi00ZDEyLTg4YjMtNmZhZDBjMjNjODhh&hl=en">changed over the course</a> of American history—the Jacksonian homesteader on his farm became the Jacksonian home owner in his suburb—but the dream of independence through property ownership remained. Small property ownership is the bedrock of liberty and the heart of American exceptionalism. It would be a historical tragedy should the independent property-owning American be reduced by twenty-first-century globalization and “gentry liberalism” to the bondage from which his ancestors came to the New World to escape.</span><br />
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-51300999162411025082011-07-18T21:10:00.047-04:002017-06-05T12:17:00.055-04:00Bill Maher: Comic High Priest of Liberal Progressive Contempt for Jacksonian America<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><a href="http://www.billmaher.com/">Bill Maher</a>, the acid-tongued comic and political commentator, has emerged as the downscale H. L. Mencken of the Baby Boom generation: the high priest of the liberal progressive obsessive paranoia and contempt for all things Jacksonian. In this video from the July 15 episode of HBO <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Real Time with Bill Maher</i>, the eponymous host launches yet another vicious tirade against Jacksonian America, cheered on by his panel of progressive worthies, including, sadly, financial journalist <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/chrystia-freeland/">Chrystia Freeland</a> whose work I respect. Maher focuses his comic ire—surprise!—on the two women who best embody Jacksonian America, its populist culture, politics, and values: Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. You can also find the video<a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/dear-bill-maher-critics-should-stop-calling-you-sexist-when-you-stop-calling-the-tea-party-racist/"> here</a>, <a href="http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes/index.html#/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes/0/220-episode/video/clip-new-rule-skirting-the-issue.html/eNpVz89Kw0AQx3FCoFBfwcvvJgWFJuBlwYPNqYJFWl9g2wzdsZNs3J1Yc9QnN+k-7G0Yhs+XuSlSl-r0c-LFJfnn2kqnvCl8rfStd17K8+rNbmlhKxonyejWtuobsd2ThpZGP5MVBaZosCQreOeKsGd1mLEIXq2jYPDSSofs8R75NMtQCDcGC9pj2QrhAasdB+V6C3WEeYw9+5vEExsGVi-semCrI0sNR18OR6cpz6cGh2cMPq6am0Oz7pvh2Iz-mzw0YRCdDdRr1ZrKPyYxXyE=">here</a>, and <a href="http://gawker.com/5821930/bill-maher-targets-michele-bachmann-sarah-palin-in-on+air-tirade">here</a>.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.hbo.com/video/video.html/?autoplay=true&vid=1195031&filter=real-time-with-bill-maher&view=null" title="July 15, 2011 Clip: New Rule - Skirting the Issue">July 15, 2011 Clip: New Rule - Skirting the Issue</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I must admit that I used to watch Maher in his ABC <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Politically Incorrect</i> incarnation from 1997 to 2002. He seemed funnier and more engaging back then. Perhaps he was embittered after ABC fired him for a lack of patriotism; after 9/11 he opined that Mohammed Atta and Al-Qaeda’s suicide jihadists showed more courage than Jacksonian America’s fighting men and women in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Afghanistan</place></country-region>. Since then on his HBO show his act has degenerated into mean-spirtied obnoxiousness, and snide elite contempt.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Like Mencken in the 1920s, Maher since 1993 has built his career on satirizing Jacksonians, the people he too calls “boobus americanus,” and denigrating everything they hold dear.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Like most elite liberal progressives, Maher goes ballistic when he beholds the rise to positions of power and leadership of two women he dismisses as white trash religious fanatics who are as dumb as doornails. As <a href="http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes/index.html#/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes/0/220-episode/article/new-rules.html/">Maher put it</a> with his usual comic eloquence:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Now I’m not saying that sexism doesn’t exist and isn’t real, but we can’t throw around the word “sexist” just to stop people like me from pointing out that Michele Bachmann, now running second for the Republican presidential nomination, isn’t [sic] a dangerous nincompoop. And when I point out that Sarah Palin is a vainglorious braggart, a liar, a whiner, a professional victim, a scold, a know-it-all, a chiseler, a bully who sells patriotism like a pimp, and the leader of a strange family of inbred weirdos straight out of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hills Have Eyes</i>, that’s not sexist. I’m saying it because it’s true, not because it’s true of a woman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Maher then takes on his favorite hobby horse, the Christian faith, calling it the font of bigotry and all things rotten and evil in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>. “In <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>, you’re allowed to justify almost any kind of bigotry, sexism or intolerance if you source it to God’s <span style="font-family: "georgia";">‘</span>big book of bad ideas.<span style="font-family: "georgia";">’</span>” Maher cuts to the heart of why elite liberal progressives have such venomous hostility toward Jacksonian America. Jacksonian leaders like Palin and Bachmann, and the people who support them, are evil, crazy, and stupid. Jacksonian patriotism and Jacksonian evangelical faith are just covers for hustling, wackiness, and bigotry. No <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bien-pensant</i> (right thinking, lockstep) avant-garde progressive takes things like patriotism and faith seriously. So they can only be a con game, a conspiracy, or a species of insanity. And people who do take them seriously are either dupes, knaves, or wackos. Even worse, they breed dysfunctional white trash families with more than a hint of illicit sexuality: Casey Anthony anyone? Maher, like most liberal progressives, believes that the roughly 60% to 70% of Americans who are Jacksonian in their culture, traditional conservative values, and way of life, simply lack the brain power and capacity for self-government. They need progressive mandarins to tell them how to live their lives, to avoid being caught in the snares of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc. etc. Is it any wonder then that Jacksonians of the heartland, who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> take faith, family, and patriotism <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">very</i> seriously, have nothing but contempt of their own for Maher and his ilk.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">To say that Bill Maher does not connect with conservative populist Jacksonian America is an understatement. Nor does he understand the Jacksonian style of leadership as embodied by Palin and Bachmann. Such elite contempt for and underestimation of Jacksonian leaders is nothing new. In 1828 Andrew Jackson was denounced as an ignorant, dumbass ruffian by his political opponents. They even called him <a href="http://loc.harpweek.com/LCPoliticalCartoons/IndexDisplayCartoonLarge.asp?SourceIndex=People&IndexText=Jackson%2C+Andrew&UniqueID=10&Year=1833">“Andrew Jackass,”</a> which is why the donkey became the symbol of the Democratic Party.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Andrew Jackass</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Jacksonians believe that intelligence and leadership derive from character, instinct, intuition, decisiveness, and common sense, rather than from academic Ivy League credentials or technocratic analytical abilities. A president needs intellectuals among his advisors, but he (or she) needs above all to be a decision maker who can assimilate conflicting strands of advice and information and make a policy decision based on his or her larger vision of where <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> should be going. (Jennifer Rubin wrote a perceptive article on <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/why-jews-hate-palin/">“Why Jews Hate Palin,”</a> which looks at this issue.) Just as Barack Obama is the model of the liberal progressive technocratic style of leadership, so Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are models of the conservative populist Jacksonian style of leadership.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia";">Maher’s tirade has earned him the applause of liberal pundits. <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hLVNZWjB0WjRzMVk/edit" target="_blank">Jason Easley</a>, writing on the PoliticusUSA blog, exclaimed that Maher got it just right. Palin and Bachmann are nothing more than empty vessels with sexually attractive packaging who spew a never ending stream conservative Christian talking points on family values and trickle-down economics, all meant to fool women into returning to a condition of barefoot pregnancy and submission to men. Here, in Easley’s words, is the true evil of Palin, Bachmann, and all the Mama Grizzlies:</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are disliked because they sell bad ideas. They are reviled because they are arrogant and ignorant. They are deemed repulsive because they are undoing the progress that their own gender has made. These two are walking talking commercials for the religious right’s belief in the subjugation of women. They are sending a horrible message to girls and women that your looks will always count more than your ideas, and that you can only be what a man tells you to be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Easley’s tirade, like Maher’s, betrays an astounding depth of ignorance of Jacksonian America and its commitment to liberty, honor, faith, family, and patriotism. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">And they fail to comprehend the extent to which Palin and Bachmann have become symbols of empowerment for conservative women. Both women are redefining feminism in the image of the <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZDE1ZTQ1ZDctMDE5My00ZTVkLTg0MWItMzcwY2QwOWUxMzc3&hl=en_US">Jacksonian frontierswoman</a>, updated for modern <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>, whose strength of character and heroic endurance built the nation. <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/11/saint-sarah.html">Conservative Christian women</a> see Palin and Bachmann as leaders who eloquently articulate and <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/ruth-rosen/tea-party-and-new-right-wing-christian-feminism">confirm their traditional values</a> in opposition to liberal elite feminists. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Governor</i> Palin and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Congresswoman</i> Bachmann have also become role models for living one’s life in a way that joins those conservative traditional values with active engagement and success in the modern world. Their message to women is certainly not “that you can only be what a man tells you to be.” When you put it all together Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are the face of modern Jacksonian populist nationalism, following in the footsteps of Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan. Both women bring together potent symbols of feminine sexual power, motherhood, professional achievement, and legislative and executive authority. Which is why they drive progressive critics like Bill Maher into paroxysms of rage.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For Maher, Easley, and the whole progressive elite, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann embody all their stereotypes of white trash America, its boorishness and tackiness, wrapped up in one package. Both women ooze trailer trash sexuality and fundamentalist brimstone. They are the leaders of the <a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/46608/">White Trash Nation</a> rising up in rebellion against the bonds of a politically correct nanny state, aiming their moose hunting rifles at everything liberal progressives hold dear. Palin, even more than Bachmann, is a mere cliché in the progressive mind: a badly dressed hillbilly with a screeching voice, a roughneck husband, and a slutty teen mom daughter, and no knowledge of the complex world outside of Wasilla, Alaska. For an avant-garde sophisticate like Bill Maher to have to live in a country filled with such ignorant hicks, who also have the right to vote and choose leaders who support their values and interests, is an outrage to the cynically hip. The very popularity of Bill Maher and his show and his caricatures of Palin, Bachmann, and their supporters in elite liberal circles reveals again the true extent of the cultural divide that separates these elites from populist Jacksonian America.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan</span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-64931471398142808382011-07-04T14:51:00.213-04:002017-06-05T12:20:28.089-04:00Independence Day 2011: Life, Liberty, and the Meaning of American Exceptionalism<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pxMuItijykU/ThEcY_6FNKI/AAAAAAAAAY8/yOFmAfh-Nig/s1600/Declaration+of+Independence%252C+John+Trumbull%252C+wikimedia+commons+-+Declaration_independence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="420" i="" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pxMuItijykU/ThEcY_6FNKI/AAAAAAAAAY8/yOFmAfh-Nig/s640/Declaration+of+Independence%252C+John+Trumbull%252C+wikimedia+commons+-+Declaration_independence.jpg" true="" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><em><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYTU0MzcyOTEtNmE2Ny00ZWQzLTk2MTktZDllNDA1NzA5ZWMw&hl=en_US">Declaration of Independence</a></em>, by John Trumbull, 1818. <a href="http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/rotunda/declaration_independence.cfm">Architect of the Capitol</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumbull's_Declaration_of_Independence">Wikimedia Commons</a>.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Today we celebrate the two hundred and thirty-fifth anniversary of the birth of our nation, the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">United States of America</place></country-region>, the most exceptional nation mankind has ever created. This year the <a href="http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/aea/cfm/doc.cfm?id=L17760703jasecond&mode=popupsm&pop=L17760703jasecond_3">great anniversary festival</a> (as <a href="http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/aea/cfm/doc.cfm?id=L17760703jasecond&archive=&hi=&mode=&noimages=&numrecs=&query=&queryid=&rec=&start=1&tag">John Adams</a> called it<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[1]</strong></span>) comes tinged with sadness for me, as it is the first time I will commemorate it without my beloved mother, whose earthly journey came to an end in May. Mother departed this life full of years, honor, wisdom, and love. She made me who I am and I will love her always. But life does go on and so does the work of studying, teaching, and writing <country-region w:st="on">America</country-region>’s history and securing <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>’s future.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Americans today tend to take <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> for granted. We have forgotten the tremendous effort, the blood and sacrifice of lives and property, that was needed to secure American liberty and create an independent republic. We have forgotten what a miracle America is. George Washington, for one, saw the hand of God at work in the course of the American Revolution. He declared in his farewell orders to the Continental Army in 1783, that it was <a href="http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-washington?specfile=/texts/english/washington/fitzpatrick/search/gw.o2w&act=surround&offset=33913621&tag=Writings+of+Washington,+Vol.+27:+FAREWELL+ORDERS+TO+THE+ARMIES+OF+THE+UNITED+STATES&query=farewell+orders&id=gw270250">“little short of a standing miracle”</a> that the <country-region w:st="on">United States</country-region> had won the War of Independence against the mighty <place w:st="on">British empire</place>.<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[2]</strong></span> Now, on July 4, 2011, the Marist Poll tells us that 42% of their respondents were <a href="http://maristpoll.marist.edu/71-independence-day-dummy-seventeen-seventy-when/">unsure in what year</a> independence was declared, and 26% were <a href="http://maristpoll.marist.edu/72-don%E2%80%99t-know-much-about-history/">unsure which nation</a> the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">United States</place></country-region> declared its independence from! To say this is very disturbing is an understatement. Were the sacrifices and heroism of the Revolutionary generation and those that followed, whose lives were dedicated to building an exceptional nation committed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, all for nought?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">So this Independence Day is a good time to reflect on the origins and meanings of American exceptionalism and the American Dream, and the struggles of those who fought to make the dream a reality. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">American exceptionalism refers to <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">America</country-region></place>’s unique culture of democratic self-government and liberty, rugged individualism, and stubborn, feisty independence. Its motto is “Don’t tread on me.”</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia";">The late sociologist <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=812lbix0oH4C&dq=seymour+martin+lipset+american+exceptionalism&q=%22american+creed+can+be+described%22#v=snippet&q=%22american%20creed%20can%20be%20described%22&f=false">Seymour Martin Lipset</a> defined the American Creed in five terms: liberty, egalitarianism—which in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> means equality of opportunity and respect, but not equality of outcomes—individualism (rugged of course), populism, and laissez-faire economics. To this list should be added the rule of law and justice for all. “The revolutionary ideology” <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=812lbix0oH4C&dq=seymour+martin+lipset+american+exceptionalism&q=eighteenth+and+nineteenth-century+meanings#v=snippet&q=eighteenth%20and%20nineteenth-century%20meanings&f=false">Lipset wrote</a>, “which became the American Creed is liberalism in its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century meanings, as distinct from conservative Toryism, statist communitarianism, mercantilism, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">noblesse oblige</i> dominant in monarchical, state-church-formed cultures.” This American Creed, in synthesis and creative tension with the nation’s strong religious sensibility and the Jacksonian code of honor, military pride, and nationalism (with its distinct blood-and-soil element), forms the core of American exceptionalism.<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong>[3]</strong></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><a href="http://hnn.us/articles/140288.html">Jim Cullen</a>, who teaches history at <state w:st="on">New York</state>’s <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Ethical</placename> <placename w:st="on">Culture</placename> <placename w:st="on">Fieldston</placename> <placetype w:st="on">School</placetype></place>, points out that a distinctive Anglo-American culture with a unique American Dream was born long before Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Its first seeds were planted at <city w:st="on">Jamestown</city>, <state w:st="on">Virginia</state>, in 1607, and <city w:st="on">Plymouth</city> and <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Boston</city>, <state w:st="on">Massachusetts</state></place> in 1620 and 1630. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">“What happened in the 1770s and 1780s” <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=6xiYiybkE8kC&dq=samuel+huntington+who+are+we&q=protestant+values+moralism#v=snippet&q=protestant%20values%20moralism&f=false">Samuel Huntington</a> writes, “was rooted in and a product of the Anglo-American Protestant society and culture that had developed over the intervening one and a half centuries.” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Colonial <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>, as it developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was a society of independent householders bound together in strong communities, which developed habits and institutions of self-government. Religious pluralism, a voluntaristic self-help ethic, a relatively high standard of living, and a belief in individual aspiration to upward mobility, what Alexis de Tocqueville would later call <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch1_17.htm">“the charm of anticipated success,”</a> also defined the society of <place w:st="on">British North America, making it the freest and most prosperous on earth</place>.<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[4]</strong></span> Jefferson may have invented the term “pursuit of happiness,” but he was merely giving a name to what had long been the driving force in <place w:st="on">British North America</place>’s society of independent, self-governing householders.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">THE CULTURAL ORIGINS OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM: BRITISH DISSENTING PROTESTANTISM</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">It’s no doubt ironic to point out on Independence Day what should be self-evident: that American exceptionalism has its <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOWRkYTEwYmMtZmQ0NS00NGFhLWExZjEtZmRlODIxMDljMzRh&hl=en_US">roots in British exceptionalism</a>. American culture began as British Protestant culture stripped of the restraints hierarchy and aristocracy. <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">America</span></place></country-region><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> derived its ideas and institutions of liberty, representative self-government and the rule of law, the right to be secure in one’s property, and freedom of religion and conscience from the mother country, a tradition going back to the Magna Carta. More specifically it was the culture of British Dissenting Protestantism—Puritans, Presbyterians, Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, and many others—that shaped American exceptionalism. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">British Dissenting Protestantism encouraged habits of independent and critical thinking. It challenged both religious and secular authority—the authority of bishops and kings. Dissenters, most famously the Puritans of New England, developed autonomous self-governing religious congregations, which prepared them to develop habits and institutions of self-government. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">“Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit.” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=0z4GAQAAIAAJ&dq=edward+john+payne+burke+select+works&q=religion+principle+energy#v=snippet&q=religion%20principle%20energy&f=false">Edmund Burke</a> clearly understood the revolutionary nature of dissenting Protestantism when he spoke these words. Dissenting Protestantism, Burke insisted, was a creed built on liberty. In his famous speech to Parliament on March 22, 1775 calling for reconciliation between <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Britain</place></country-region> and the colonies, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=0z4GAQAAIAAJ&dq=edward+john+payne+select+works+of+edmund+burke&q=protestantism+protestant#v=snippet&q=protestantism%20protestant&f=false">Burke proclaimed</a> that “the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">northern provinces</place></state>.” </span>Dissenting Protestantism, with its spirit of liberty, encouraged ideas of natural rights and human dignity. The mass of common men came to be seen as more than beasts of burden. Instead they could become free men and women with the right to aspire to a better life. British Protestant dissenters had the right traditions for a people who would create societies centered on liberty. They were fully convinced that they could determine what the Bible meant and how to apply its message in the conduct of their lives.</span></span></span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[5]</strong></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia";">One cannot emphasize enough how important it was for <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>’s future development, that its original colonial societies were founded by British Protestant settlers. As <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=6xiYiybkE8kC&dq=samuel+huntington+who+are+we&q=protestant+values+moralism#v=snippet&q=protestant%20values%20moralism&f=false">Samuel Huntington explained</a>:</span><country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">America</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">’s core culture has been and, at the moment, is still primarily the culture of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century settlers who founded American society. The central elements of that culture can be defined in a variety of ways but include the Christian religion, Protestant values and moralism, a work ethic, the English language, British traditions of law, justice, and the limits of government power, and a legacy of European art, literature, philosophy, and music. Out of this culture the settlers developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the American Creed, with its principles of liberty, equality, individualism, representative government, and private property. Subsequent generations of immigrants were assimilated into the culture of the founding settlers and contributed to and modified it. But they did not change it fundamentally. This is because, at least until the late twentieth century, it was Anglo-Protestant culture and the political liberties and economic opportunities it produced that attracted them to <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>.<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><strong>[6]</strong></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">This <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=6xiYiybkE8kC&dq=samuel+huntington+who+are+we&q=america%27s+core+culture#v=snippet&q=america's%20core%20culture&f=false">core Anglo-Protestant culture</a> and its ideals, outlined by <city w:st="on">Huntington</city>, as modified and leavened by Irish and Southern and Eastern European Catholic immigrants, and Eastern European Jewish immigrants, remained the basis of <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>’s national identity until the Aquarian counterculture in the 1960s challenged its very legitimacy. In the eyes of the Aquarian liberals who after 1968 gained control of the Democratic Party, the dominant Anglo-Protestant culture was irredeemably racist, sexist, and homophobic. Jacksonian America, of course, in opposition to the counterculture continues to champion the Anglo-Protestant culture of <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">America</country-region></place>’s founding.</span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[7]</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">THE ABUNDANT LAND: THE DREAM OF ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE FOR FAMILIES OF MODEST MEANS</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IKNEpJaqiJM/ThyDjTbgKXI/AAAAAAAAAcs/FcWJj3vIoqw/s1600/North+Carolina+Emigrants%252C+Poor+White+Folks+-+James+Henry+Beard+%255B2nd+copy+reduced%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="442" m="" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IKNEpJaqiJM/ThyDjTbgKXI/AAAAAAAAAcs/FcWJj3vIoqw/s640/North+Carolina+Emigrants%252C+Poor+White+Folks+-+James+Henry+Beard+%255B2nd+copy+reduced%255D.jpg" true="" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><em>North Carolina Emigrants: Poor White Folk</em>, by James Henry Beard, 1845. A Jacksonian yeoman family of modest means heads west in search of the American dream of land ownership and the dignity of economic independence. Cincinnati Art Museum.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The vast abundance of fertile land in <place w:st="on">North America</place> was of decisive importance in the emergence of American exceptionalism. The land provided the material basis for the liberty, independence, and self-government of the British dissenters who settled in the <place w:st="on">New World</place>. Most American colonists would own their own land, not work in thrall to a hated overlord. Historian <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hN2NiMzRlNTMtYjM4YS00ZDY3LTlhZjEtMjE1YjJjNDBkNTI3&hl=en_US">Daniel Richter</a> locates the origins of <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>’s householder society in a “downsized, sweat-of-the-brow version of the dream of patriarchal landed power” for men of small or modest means. The richness of the land allowed such modest households to produce surplus harvests for their own material profit and benefit. This in turn gave them the economic resources for a degree of social assertion and political power unimaginable in hierarchical <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">England</place></country-region>. While perhaps two percent of English householders owned enough property to vote for members of Parliament, in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> something like fifty percent of householders owned sufficient property to take part in their colony’s politics. Many of the <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYzA0Nzc3NmYtNTgwZC00YzBmLWJkNWMtYWVmY2U1MDRkODc2&hl=en_US">settlers of <place w:st="on">New England</place></a> in particular were urban artisans who abandoned city life for rural life in the original “back to the land” movement.</span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[8]</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Captain John Smith was the son of a yeoman who made a career as an adventurer. He’s best remembered today as the leader who saved the Jamestown colony from starvation and collapse in 1607, and the hero saved from death by the Indian princess <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=sxQSAAAAYAAJ&dq=john+smith+generall+historie+of+virginia&q=pocahontas+daughter+intreaty#v=snippet&q=pocahontas%20daughter%20intreaty&f=false">Pocahontas</a>. Smith was also a propagandist for English colonization. At the very beginning of <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>’s colonial experience, Smith understood the role of the land as a liberating force, which could create a freer and more just society. As one of his last works, Smith wrote a pamphlet to advise John Winthrop and the Puritan settlers of <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Massachusetts</state></place> on how to build a successful colony. Looking back at over more than a decade of <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Virginia</place></state>’s experience, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ymF5AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA93&dq=john+smith+meannesse+of+the+word+Fish&hl=en&ei=bK4jTsKWFIb50gG3w525Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false">Smith suggested</a> that the Puritans base the economy of their colony on a vital and renewable resource like fish rather than a luxury cash crop like tobacco. “Therefore (honorable and worthy countrymen) let not the meannesse of the word Fish distaste you, for it will afford as good gold as the mines of Guiana or Potassie, with lesse hazard and charge, and more certain facilitie.” Smith also urged the colonists to give each man and family a stake in the enterprise through private ownership of land. Smith also believed that merchants, not aristocrats, needed to plan the colony. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=pKRAAAAAYAAJ&dq=john+smith+works&q=impose+too+much+upon+commonalty#v=snippet&q=impose%20too%20much%20upon%20commonalty&f=false">Smith advised</a> the colonists:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">to make your plantations so neere and great as you can; for many hands make light worke, whereas yet your small parties can doe nothing availeable; nor stand too much upon the letting, setting, or selling those wild Countries, nor impose too much upon the commonality either by your maggazines [supply ships or stores] which commonly eat out all poor mens labours; nor any other too hard imposition for present gain; but let every man so it bee by order allotted to him, plant freely without limitations so much as hee can, bee it by the halfes or otherwayes . . . . or as you finde hee hath extraordinarily deserved, by it selfe to him and his heires for ever.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Smith realized that <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> was a new world that offered opportunities for the hard-pressed farmers and laborers—men of modest means—to escape their burdens and become masters of their own lives. The hope of opportunity, of achieving freedom and mastery in one’s life, was the dream that would lure men from the Old Word to the New. Individual colonists would take the initiative to build new lives and societies. “In doing so, a servant that will labour within foure or five yeares may live as well there [America] as his master did here [England]: for there there is so much land lie waste, it were a madnesse in a man at the first to buy, or hire, or pay any thing more than an acknowledgement to whom it shall be due; and hee is double mad that will leave his friends, meanes, and freedom in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">England</i>, to be worse there than here.” Colonization made no sense without the lure of liberty and prosperity. Why risk your life in an unknown wilderness if your lot in life would be no better than it was in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">England? Freedom was the key to the creation of successful colonies—freedom of land ownership and economic enterprise and freedom of self-government. “Therefore let all men have as much freedome in reason as may be, and true dealing; for it is the greatest comfort you can give them, where the very name of servitude will breed much ill bloud, and become odious to God and man.” Make freedom the law and ethos of your colony and “doubtlesse God will blesse you, and quickly triple and multiply your numbers.”</place></country-region></span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[9]</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">So in both <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=II9lh-Z-GY0C&dq=daniel+richter+before+the+revolution&q=achieved+patriarchal+landed+dreams#v=snippet&q=achieved%20patriarchal%20landed%20dreams&f=false">New England</a> and <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=II9lh-Z-GY0C&dq=daniel+richter+before+the+revolution&q=small+means+sought+land#v=snippet&q=small%20means%20sought%20land&f=false">Virginia</a></place></state> “men of small means achieved their patriarchal landed dreams, while living modest Protestant lives that amassed few other kinds of riches in this world.” This hard-won liberation from medieval servitude to the landed aristocracy of the Old World brought the dignity of independence and the emergence of that new man, the American, whose ambition would become over time as expansive as the New World landscape. Thus was born the <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYzgwMTRmNDYtMzhlMi00ZDEyLTg4YjMtNmZhZDBjMjNjODhh&hl=en">first Jacksonian American Dream</a> of owning one’s own farm, which in the twentieth century would become the <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/02/the-death-of-the-american-dream-i/">second Jacksonian American Dream</a> of <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/03/the-death-of-the-american-dream-ii/">suburban homeownership</a>.</span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[10]</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Of course the patriarchal dreams of the middling British dissenters were fulfilled at the expense of the land’s original inhabitants. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">“The Indian,” as historian <a href="http://books.google.com/books?ei=-FEjTsORMKKp0AH1tpHJAw&ct=result&id=AK_7SM_QX4kC&dq=gary+nash+red+white+and+black&q=little+contribute">Gary Nash</a> put it, “it was understood, had little to contribute to the goals of English colonization and was therefore regarded merely as an obstacle.” </span>Protestant faith and the quest for land came together to provide religious, economic, and political justifications for the <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMGU4MzY0MGEtODIwNS00YjRiLWEzOWQtNjU5ODBiZjIxMzU2&hl=en_US">expulsion</a>, and sometimes the genocide, of the Indians. “Our first worke is expulsion of the Salvages to gaine the free range of the countrey for encrease of Cattle, swine &c which will more then restore us,” wrote Virginia’s governor <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNDZiZGFiODAtY2U1OC00NTE2LTg5YjUtYTQzZWRjYzRhZDdi&hl=en_US">Sir Francis Wyatt</a> in the wake of the great Indian war of 1622, “for it is infinitely better to have no heathen among us, who at best were but as thornes in our sides, then to be at peace and league with them.” Wyatt in <state w:st="on">Virginia</state>, like John Winthrop in <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Massachusetts</place></state>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=II9lh-Z-GY0C&dq=daniel+richter+before+the+revolution&q=small+means+sought+land#v=snippet&q=small%20means%20sought%20land&f=false">invoked Biblical injunctions</a> calling on the Israelites to drive the <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNDI2MDE5NWYtMGQ1NS00NzQ3LWJkMWUtMzMyYzY0ZTU3YTUx&hl=en_US">Canaanites</a> out of the land. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony and one of the Pilgrim Fathers, took an especially grisly delight in the destruction by fire of the Pequot village of Mystic, Connecticut, during the <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOTAzYTU0ZTctMWQwOS00MjI4LWIyN2UtODEzYWJlMGViODRk&hl=en_US">war of 1637</a>. Though many of those burned to death were women and children, Bradford saw this as <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=tnMa1-t128gC&dq=william+bradford+of+plymouth+plantation&q=scaped+fire#v=snippet&q=scaped%20fire&f=false">God’s just punishment</a> of a malicious enemy:</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Those that scaped the fire were slain with the sword, some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived that they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Captain John Underwood, who along with Captain John Mason, led the Massachusetts militia against the Pequot, gave a graphic eyewitness account of the slaughter of over four hundred men, women, and children accomplished within the space of half an hour. Explaining his use of merciless cruelty to defeat the enemy, Underwood, rather than pleading military necessity, claimed the sanction of the Old Testament. Like <place w:st="on">Bradford</place>, Underwood insisted that his men were doing God’s will. Comparing the Pequot War to King David’s holy wars against the enemies of <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Israel</place></country-region>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=iE4TAAAAYAAJ&dq=john+mason+a+brief+history&q=why+should+you+be+furious#v=snippet&q=why%20should%20you%20be%20furious&f=false">Underwood wrote</a>:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Mercy did they deserve for their valor, could we have had opportunity to have bestowed it. Many were burnt in the fort, both men, women, and children. Others forced out, and came in troops to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Indians</i>, twenty and thirty at a time, which our soldiers received and entertained with the point of the sword. Down fell men, women, and children; those that scaped us, fell into the hands of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Indians</i> that were in the rear of us. It is reported by themselves, that there were about four hundred souls in this fort, and not above five of them escaped out of our hands. Great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of young soldiers that never had been in war, to see so many souls lie gasping on the ground, so thick, in some places, that you could hardly pass along. It may be demanded, Why should you be so furious? (as some have said). Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But I would refer you to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">David’s</i> war. When a people is grown to such a height of blood, and sin against God and man, and all confederates in the action, there he hath no respect to persons, but harrows them, and saws them, and puts them to the sword, and the most terriblest death that may be. Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. Sometimes the case alters; but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">In the nineteenth century Jacksonian Americans would likewise see themselves as <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/the_new_israel_and_the_old.html">Israelites</a> engaged in the holy work of winning the land from the Native American Canaanites. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">While fighting the Seminoles in <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Florida</place></state> in 1818, <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNGUzZDdkYWYtNDYyYy00OTM5LWE0MWMtZmFjOGU0ZjZhNTIz&hl=en_US">Andrew Jackson</a> declared that <a href="http://books.google.com/books?ei=1LsdTuC0BIfTgQen_5zRCQ&ct=result&id=3ekMAAAAIAAJ&dq=bassett+correspondence+of+andrew+jackson&q=iseralites">his soldiers</a> were “like the Iseralites of old in the wilderness.” <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?ei=1LsdTuC0BIfTgQen_5zRCQ&ct=result&id=3ekMAAAAIAAJ&dq=bassett+correspondence+of+andrew+jackson&q=exciters">Jackson</a></place><a href="http://books.google.com/books?ei=1LsdTuC0BIfTgQen_5zRCQ&ct=result&id=3ekMAAAAIAAJ&dq=bassett+correspondence+of+andrew+jackson&q=exciters"></a></city><a href="http://books.google.com/books?ei=1LsdTuC0BIfTgQen_5zRCQ&ct=result&id=3ekMAAAAIAAJ&dq=bassett+correspondence+of+andrew+jackson&q=exciters"> believed</a> his army acted as “the hand of heaven . . . pointed against the exciters of this war,” on a mission to scatter the enemy “over the whole face of the Earth.”<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[11]</strong></span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EOGe2yQo_30/Vg64YasoDLI/AAAAAAAACxA/GgcqmtVarW8/s1600/trail%2Bof%2Btears%252C%2Brobert%2Blindneux%2B-%2BslnGV.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="413" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EOGe2yQo_30/Vg64YasoDLI/AAAAAAAACxA/GgcqmtVarW8/s640/trail%2Bof%2Btears%252C%2Brobert%2Blindneux%2B-%2BslnGV.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"><em>Trail of Tears </em>by Robert Lindneux. The dark side of American exceptionalism. The ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee by the U.S. Army, 1838. Woolaroc Museum.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The pages of history are filled with tales of winners and losers: those individuals and nations who succeeded in the quest for survival and prosperity, and those who got thrown under the bus. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">James Mooney, a pioneer ethnologist at the turn of the twentieth century, wrote of Andrew Jackson’s policy of <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=PQeUqTeBQWIC&dq=james+mooney+myths+of+the+cherokee&q=grief+pathos#v=snippet&q=grief%20pathos&f=false">Indian removal</a>: “The history of this Cherokee removal of 1838 . . . may well exceed in grief and pathos any other passage in American history.” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">The hard truth that we often try to avoid is that the Indians paid the ultimate price for the American pursuit of happiness. </span><country-region style="font-family: Georgia;" w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> as a land of opportunity for settlers of modest means would not have been possible without the expropriation of the native inhabitants. The rise of </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNzljMmYyNWItZmQ3Yi00OTBhLTg3ZTQtYzI3MDMyODc0MjZj&hl=en_US" style="font-family: Georgia;">romantic nationalism and states’ rights</a><span style="font-family: "georgia";">—the determination of </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYTA5NGNmNTQtNDUxYy00NGY5LWE5MWMtMWFiMGJhNTgwNTBh&hl=en_US" style="font-family: Georgia;">Georgia</a><span style="font-family: "georgia";">, for instance, to assert its sovereignty over Cherokee lands—intensified the push for Indian removal that led to the horrors of the </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYjZjMjgxYWUtOWQyMC00MWM4LWIyMTUtZDkxOTBkOWIyYWYz&hl=en_US" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cherokee Trail of Tears</a><span style="font-family: "georgia";">.</span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[12]</strong></span><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> </span><place style="font-family: Georgia;" w:st="on"><city w:st="on"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Jackson</span></city></place><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> understood this and he understood that his Indian removal policy expressed the democratic will of the American people. As he told Congress in his <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/compilationofmes02unit#page/520/mode/1up">Second Annual Message</a> in 1830:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and Philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. . . . Nor is there anything in this which, upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race, is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the conditions in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><strong>[13]</strong></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Jackson</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">’s sorrow over the fate of the Indians may have been contrived and hypocritical (though <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMTc1Zjk2OTctMzY3Mi00MjE2LTk0NzEtODU2MjIxODU4NTYw&hl=en_US">some historians argue</a> that it was genuine). His words show that in 1830 white supremacy was taken for granted. Yet m</span>ost Americans, then and now, would endorse <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Jackson</place></city>’s analysis without reservation. Gustaf Unonius, a Swedish immigrant and Episcopal minister who settled in <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Waukesha County</city>, <state w:st="on">Wisconsin</state></place> in 1841, wrote with deep insight into the<a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZDc2ZDlkMjQtNDQ5NC00YWUzLWE2ZDQtNDA3M2VhNzE1ZjM0&hl=en_US"> behavior and worldview</a> of the Jacksonian pioneers and the <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=NGpWAAAAMAAJ&dq=gustaf+unonius&q=brave+seasoned+enterprising">contradictions </a>of the Jacksonian American character when it came to the Indians:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">The frontiers are often settled by a peculiar kind of people who nourish inwardly a mortal hatred of the red man. . . . They have been characterized, strikingly enough, by the statement that they have two kinds of conscience, one for whites, another for Indians. They are people whose behavior in their relations with their own race, whose kindliness—yes, whose often meticulous obedience to the commandments of religion—would entitle them to respect and esteem in any ordered community. For them, however, the red man’s rights and privileges, his possessions, and his life weigh no more than down on the scales, and they consider any injustice toward the Indians justifiable and permissible. Brave, seasoned, and enterprising, faithful, honest, benevolent, and hospitable toward a white stranger, they lack in their hearts all kindly feeling, all compassion for nature’s wild children <span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">and have not the least notion that they also should be treated with friendliness and loving-kindness</span>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Unonius presents here a powerful example of what anthropologists consider a central paradox of human nature: the connection between <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNGMwYjExZjAtYjIwOS00YmE3LWJhY2UtZGY2M2ZmMTNkZTFh&hl=en_US">violence and sociality</a>. Human nature is tribal and people divide the world into “us” and “them”; and while the boundaries of what constitutes “us” and “them” changes over time, “them” are by definition the enemy who must be defeated. Socialbility, kindness, and empathy are reserved exclusively for those who are within the group. Those outside the group are treated as less than human. Conflict and violence between groups (such as Jacksonian America and the Indians) actually <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/science/02warfare.html">fosters social cooperation</a>, altruism, and even self-sacrifice within the group or tribe. Those groups that are more cohesive and organized are in a better position to defend their existence and triumph over less cohesive enemies. The Jacksonian America described by Unonius was one example of a society driven by these imperatives of human nature. This i</span>s another way of saying that Jacksonian America in the nineteenth century was a <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZmMxMzM1NGMtMGMyMy00MDQxLTkzOGEtZjM3NjkxZjU3MzQ4&hl=en_US"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Herrenvolk</i> democracy</a>: an egalitarian white society of small producer farmers and artisans<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">—householders of modest means—</span>that excluded nonwhites. And that Jacksonians, then and now, make a sharp distinction between those who are inside the folk community and accorded its honor and protection, and those who are part of the dark world outside.</span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[14]</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I bring all of this up to make the point that there was, as Unonius understood, a dark side to American exceptionalism. The triumph of the American Revolution and its empowerment of the average white American of modest means was a disaster for the American Indian. The story of liberty and independence that we celebrate every July 4 was in fact the beginning of the end for the native Americans. Thirty years ago the late historian <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMzA5ZDFhOTktYmZjMC00NjM3LTk0YTMtNTg3MzFmY2E1ZTJl&hl=en_US">Page Smith</a> wrote that “The story of the whites and Indians is the story of the relationship of democracy to original sin. . . . The Indian issue was the issue of the democracy” It was not the elite liberal reformers of New England or the patrician aristocrats of <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">New York</place></state> who pressed for the ethnic cleansing of the Indians. It was the populist Jacksonian Democrats, hard-working, sturdy, God-fearing yeoman farmers—the salt-of-the-earth Americans who then and now make this country work—who demanded that the red man be swept aside so they could <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOGJiYzgyYWItM2E0My00ZWUwLWFhOGYtMGQ1MjNiMzM4MzMx&hl=en_US">take his lands</a> to build new farms and create new wealth. Such new farms and wealth would provide the economic base for the liberty and independence of white families of modest means. The American Indian paid the price for American exceptionalism and the American Dream.</span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[15]</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">But we must remember that the Indians were not helpless victims; they fought tooth and nail against the British dissenter settlers and their independent American descendants for control of <place w:st="on">North America</place>. Indians gave as good as they got. The Americans won, in the end, because they had technology, social and political organization, and most important perhaps, demographics, on their side. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Historian <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hU1hULW9sRFY2dXM/edit" target="_blank">Walter McDougall</a> concludes that:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">English colonists did not come to <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> intent on killing, enslaving, or for the most part converting or consorting with the Indians at all. They just wanted them out of the way, and thanks to their microbes, technology, organization, and agriculture they swiftly displaced the indigenous people in what amounted to a Darwinian contest for an ecological niche. There is simply no plausible “what if” scenario for a successful Indian defense of the continent once Europeans determined to make their colonies stick.<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><strong>[16]</strong></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The truth is that most nations came into being through long histories of invasion, conquest, bloodshed, exploitation, persecution, and dispossession. Most don’t give it a second thought today. America was the only nation born with a commitment to the highest ideals of liberty, justice, and human dignity, and which has struggled for over two hundred years to actualize those high ideals, however imperfectly, in its civil society. The tragedy of the Indians made possible the creation of the greatest concentration of economic and human potential in history, institutionalized in a democratic republic, and embodied in a culture devoted to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">United States</place></country-region> <em>has</em> contributed more to the sum total of human happiness and liberty than any other nation in history. <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>’s sins are those shared by all nations. Her ideals and triumphs are uniquely her own.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">THE BLESSINGS OF GEOGRAPHY: THE TWO OCEANS, THE ABSENCE OF HOSTILE POWERS, AND THE BECKONING FRONTIER</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">American liberty is the gift of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The absence of hostile powers and imperial predators in the New World, the product of its separation from the Old World by the two oceans, was of prime importance for the development of American exceptionalism. <place w:st="on">North America</place> had no empires with professional warrior aristocracies capable of reducing communities of independent householders into submission and servitude. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">America</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> had no need for standing armies or military elites. </span>Therefore there was no need for <place w:st="on">British North America</place>’s increasingly rugged individualists to surrender their independence to a strong, intrusive, overbearing state, in the dog-eat-dog struggle for survival and supremacy. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">This was even more true after the defeat of <country-region w:st="on">France</country-region>, the only power with the capacity to threaten the British colonies, and its expulsion from <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Canada</place></country-region> in 1763. </span>When King George III and his ministers tried to impose a much tighter level centralized control over the colonies from <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">London</place></city> after 1763, they unleashed the American Revolution. Frontier warfare with the Indians was savage, but the Indians’ tribal societies never had a chance of defeating and stopping the ever more numerous Anglo-American settlers with their advanced technologies and political organization. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">There was no need to train a special class of professional warriors to deal with the Indians. Those men who knew how to use guns would be able to organize themselves into voluntary militias (a concept institutionalized in the Second Amendment). </span>There were just no external threats strong enough to compel Americans to abandon their rugged individualist way of life. As the American colonists did not have to contend with the law of the jungle, they had the freedom to build societies based on the rule of law, where liberty and the pursuit of happiness became the defining cultural traits.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The lack of predatory powers in the New World and its geographical separation by two oceans from the Old World, made <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">America</country-region></place> unique and exceptional. It could permit liberty to flourish to an extent unthinkable in a nation surrounded by immemorial tribal enemies waiting to devour it. Both the lack of formidable enemies among the natives as well as geographical separation provided by the oceans were not the work of the British dissenters who settled <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">America</country-region></place>. It was the gift of <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Providence</place></city>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">In addition, the western frontier provided a safety valve and outlet for those dissatisfied with the social and political status quo. The government would not have the responsibility of keeping the resentful and discontented in their place. This was <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=mdx1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=frederick+jackson+turner+the+significance+of+the+frontier&hl=en&ei=sEgWTo_HAqjW0QHrm50z&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">Frederick Jackson Turner’s</a> famous <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNDEwYzg2NTUtNTg4Mi00ZGQ3LTk0ZWMtZTkyNWI5M2VjZWZl&hl=en_US">frontier thesis</a>, first <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZjk1ZDhiODUtMDM1Mi00NTRkLWIxNWEtZmY1YmFmYWJlNmY3&hl=en_US">proposed in 1893</a>, and which <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOThkZGNkYTctN2Y0OC00YWU5LTliODctYmFhMWYzMDExMWI4&hl=en_US">fell out of favor</a> with liberal <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMGMzMjY2YjItY2M5ZC00Mzg4LWE2OGUtNWY3NTg1YzBjMTkx&hl=en_US">progressive</a> historians <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMDIyNTQyODEtZDZmZS00YjkzLWI2YjMtNmJkYjAyOWU5YWQ5&hl=en_US">many years ago</a>. Again there was no need for an oppressive state because there was relatively little danger that those who were resentful of their position in the world would pose a threat to <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZTI4YmM0NWQtZTdmZi00NzMyLWJmOGYtMGMzNTk4MTBkODZl&hl=en_US">political or social stability</a>. Potential rebels (such as the young Andrew Jackson in 1788) went west to seek their fortunes.<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[17]</strong></span> Many pioneers failed and lost everything, including their lives, while others succeeded, achieving at least “a modest competence” for their efforts. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/quakerfortyniner000313mbp#page/n112/mode/1up">Charles Pancoast</a>, a young New Jersey-born Quaker who went west in 1840 to establish himself as a pharmacist in <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Missouri</place></state>, wrote that “I never sought a great fortune, but was anxious to secure a competency.” Looking back on six years of failure to keep a number of drug stores and business ventures financially solvent, moving from town to town in search of new opportunities, <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/quakerfortyniner000313mbp#page/n150/mode/1up">Pancoast observed</a>:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">My ruling desire had always been to find a fixed location where I might spend a lifetime of rest; but now this desire was again thwarted, and I realized the I was only a Splinter cast off from God’s Creation by some Centrifugal Force, and doomed to wander until some attractive Gravitation should fix me to a point on the Earth.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Pancoast spoke for many young men in Jacksonian America whose pursuits of happiness<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">—</span>quests for modest success—were neither certain nor secure and whose lives took them in many unexpected directions. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">In 1849 Pancoast’s pursuit of happiness would lead him to take part in the greatest adventure of the day, the California Gold Rush. </span></span>It was an article of faith for Jacksonian Americans that every man could be the master of his destiny provided he was willing to risk everything for a chance at success on the beckoning frontier.</span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><strong>[18]</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To be continued.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">NOTES</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">1. John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, L. H. Butterfield, ed., <place w:st="on"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Adams</i></place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Family Correspondence</i>, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), <a href="http://www.masshist.org/publications/apde/portia.php?id=AFC02d016">pp. 29-31</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">2. George Washington, Farewell Orders to the Army of the <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">United States</country-region></place>, November 2, 1783, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources</i> (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1931-1944), <a href="http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-washington?specfile=/texts/english/washington/fitzpatrick/search/gw.o2w&act=surround&offset=33913621&tag=Writings+of+Washington,+Vol.+27:+FAREWELL+ORDERS+TO+THE+ARMIES+OF+THE+UNITED+STATES&query=farewell+orders&id=gw270250">Vol. 27, p. 223</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">3. <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Seymour</city></place> Martin Lipset, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword</i> (<state w:st="on">New York</state>: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=812lbix0oH4C&dq=seymour+martin+lipset+american+exceptionalism&q=%22american+creed+can+be+described%22#v=snippet&q=%22american%20creed%20can%20be%20described%22&f=false">pp. 19</a>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=812lbix0oH4C&dq=seymour+martin+lipset+american+exceptionalism&q=eighteenth+and+nineteenth-century+meanings#v=snippet&q=eighteenth%20and%20nineteenth-century%20meanings&f=false">31</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">4. Jim Cullen, “The Declaration of Independence and the American Dream,” History News Network, June 29, 2011, </span><a href="http://hnn.us/articles/140288.html"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-small;">http://hnn.us/articles/140288.html</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; Samuel Huntington, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who Are We? The Challenges to <country-region w:st="on">America</country-region>’s National Identity</i> (<state w:st="on">New York</state>: Simon and Schuster, 2004), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=6xiYiybkE8kC&dq=samuel+huntington+who+are+we&q=protestant+values+moralism#v=snippet&q=protestant%20values%20moralism&f=false">p. 40</a>; Alexis de Tocqueville, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Democracy in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region></i>, Henry Reeve, tr., revised by Franics Bowen, corrected and edited by Phillips Bradley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=inSGAAAAMAAJ&q=charm+anticipated+success#v=snippet&q=charm%20anticipated%20success&f=false">Vol. 2, p. 71</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">5. Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru, “An Exceptional Debate: The Obama Administration’s Assault on American Identity,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">National Review</i>, March 8, 2010, <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOWRkYTEwYmMtZmQ0NS00NGFhLWExZjEtZmRlODIxMDljMzRh&hl=en_US">pp. 31-38</a>; Edmund Burke, “Speech on Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775,” <em>Burke: Select Works</em>, E. J. Payne, ed. (3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=0z4GAQAAIAAJ&dq=edward+john+payne+burke+select+works&q=religion+principle+energy#v=snippet&q=religion%20principle%20energy&f=false">Vol. 1, pp. 180-181</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">6. <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Huntington</city></place>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who Are We?</i>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=6xiYiybkE8kC&dq=samuel+huntington+who+are+we&q=protestant+values+moralism#v=snippet&q=protestant%20values%20moralism&f=false">pp. 40-41</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">7. <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Huntington</city></place>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=6xiYiybkE8kC&dq=samuel+huntington+who+are+we&q=america%27s+core+culture#v=snippet&q=america's%20core%20culture&f=false">Who Are We?</a></i>, pp. 17-18, 38-41, 59-62, 141-145, 171-177, 183, 316.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">8. Daniel Richter, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts</i> (<city w:st="on">Cambridge</city>, <state w:st="on">Mass.</state>: Harvard University Press, 2011), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=II9lh-Z-GY0C&dq=daniel+richter+before+the+revolution&q=modest+small+meanes#v=snippet&q=modest%20small%20meanes&f=false">p. 187</a>; T. H. Breen and Stephen Foster, “Moving to the New World: The Character of Early <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Massachusetts</place></state> Immigration,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">William and Mary Quarterly</i>, Third Series, Vol. 30, No. 2 (April 1973), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYzA0Nzc3NmYtNTgwZC00YzBmLWJkNWMtYWVmY2U1MDRkODc2&hl=en_US">p. 216</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">9. John Smith, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles</i> (2 vols. Glasgow, UK: James MacLehose and Sons, 1907), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=sxQSAAAAYAAJ&dq=john+smith+generall+historie+of+virginia&q=pocahontas+daughter+intreaty#v=snippet&q=pocahontas%20daughter%20intreaty&f=false">Vol. 1, p. 101</a>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ymF5AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA93&dq=john+smith+meannesse+of+the+word+Fish&hl=en&ei=bK4jTsKWFIb50gG3w525Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false">Vol. 2, p. 93</a>; Smith, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Advertisements for the unexperienced Planters of New England, or any-where</i>, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Works, 1608-1631</i>, Edward Arber, ed. (Westminster, UK: Archibald Constable and Co., 1895), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=pKRAAAAAYAAJ&dq=john+smith+works&q=impose+too+much+upon+commonalty#v=snippet&q=impose%20too%20much%20upon%20commonalty&f=false">Vol. 2, pp. 947-948</a>; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Jamestown Project</i> (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=lIp7_e8KMJ0C&dq=karen+kupperman+jamestown+project&q=analysis+virginia%27s+record#v=snippet&q=analysis%20virginia's%20record&f=false">pp. 325-327</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">10. Richter, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Before the Revolution</i>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=II9lh-Z-GY0C&dq=daniel+richter+before+the+revolution&q=achieved+patriarchal+landed+dreams#v=snippet&q=achieved%20patriarchal%20landed%20dreams&f=false">pp. 194</a>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=II9lh-Z-GY0C&dq=daniel+richter+before+the+revolution&q=small+means+sought+land#v=snippet&q=small%20means%20sought%20land&f=false">201</a>; Walter Russell Mead, “American Dreams, American Resentments,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Interest</i>, Vol. 6, No. 3 (January/February 2011), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYzgwMTRmNDYtMzhlMi00ZDEyLTg4YjMtNmZhZDBjMjNjODhh&hl=en">pp. 16-21</a>; Mead, “The Death of the American Dream I,” Via Meadia, American Interest Online, June 2, 2011, </span><a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/02/the-death-of-the-american-dream-i/"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-small;">http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/02/the-death-of-the-american-dream-i/</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; Mead, “The Death of the American Dream II.” Via Meadia, American Interest Online, June 3, 2011, </span><a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/03/the-death-of-the-american-dream-ii/"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-small;">http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/03/the-death-of-the-american-dream-ii/</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">11. Gary B. Nash, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Red, White and Black: The Peoples of Early <country-region w:st="on">America</country-region></i> (<city w:st="on">Englewood</city> Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?ei=-FEjTsORMKKp0AH1tpHJAw&ct=result&id=AK_7SM_QX4kC&dq=gary+nash+red+white+and+black&q=little+contribute"><span style="font-size: x-small;">p. 67</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; <span style="font-family: "georgia";">Gary B. Nash, “The Image of the Indian in the Southern Colonial Mind,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">William and Mary Quarterly</i>, Third Series, Vol. 29, No. 2 (April 1972), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZDRmN2NjNmItYWMwZi00NDEzLTgwZjQtMjcxNzgxYmJkOTRk&hl=en_US">pp. 197-230</a>;</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Alden T. Vaughan, “‘Expulsion of the Salvages’: English Policy and the Virginia Massacre of 1622,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">William and Mary Quarterly</i>, Third Series, Vol. 35, No. 1 (January 1978), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMGU4MzY0MGEtODIwNS00YjRiLWEzOWQtNjU5ODBiZjIxMzU2&hl=en_US">pp. 57-84</a>; </span>“Letter of Sir Francis Wyatt, Governor of <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Virginia</state></place>, 1621-1626,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">William and Mary Quarterly</i>, Second Series, Vol. 6, No. 2 (April 1926), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNDZiZGFiODAtY2U1OC00NTE2LTg5YjUtYTQzZWRjYzRhZDdi&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">p. 118</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Ronald Dale Karr, “‘Why Should You Be So Furious?’: The Violence of the Pequot War,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of American History</i>, Vol. 85, No. 3 (December 1998), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOTAzYTU0ZTctMWQwOS00MjI4LWIyN2UtODEzYWJlMGViODRk&hl=en_US">pp. 876-909</a>;</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">William Bradford, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647</i>, Samuel Eliot Morison, ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOTIwMDQ2ZmQtZGNkNC00Mjg0LTllNzgtZWQ4YTJiOWJkZjI3&hl=en_US">p. 296</a>; <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">John Underhill, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newes from America</i>, Paul Royster, ed. (1638; Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Electronic Texts in American Studies, 2007), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOTQzZWRhMDMtNjk5NC00MTBiLTgwYTAtZGQ1YmI4YWExNjlk&hl=en_US">pp. 35-36</a>; John Mason, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Brief History of the Pequot War</i>, Paul Royster ed. (1736; Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Electronic Texts in American Studies, 2007), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOGY2MGVkNDQtOTE1ZC00ZmJkLWJiMjEtZjllOWEwNjI2NzY3&hl=en_US">pp. 6-9</a>; </span></span>Richter, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Before the Revolution</i>, </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=II9lh-Z-GY0C&dq=daniel+richter+before+the+revolution&q=did+not+consider+violence#v=snippet&q=did%20not%20consider%20violence&f=false"><span style="font-size: x-small;">pp. 165-166</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">, </span><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=II9lh-Z-GY0C&dq=daniel+richter+before+the+revolution&q=small+means+sought+land#v=snippet&q=small%20means%20sought%20land&f=false"><span style="font-size: x-small;">201</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Alfred A. Cave, “Canaanites in a Promised Land: The American Indian and the Providential Theory of Empire,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Indian Quarterly</i>, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Autumn 1988), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNDI2MDE5NWYtMGQ1NS00NzQ3LWJkMWUtMzMyYzY0ZTU3YTUx&hl=en_US&pli=1">pp. 277-297</a>; </span>Walter Russell Mead, “The New <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Israel</place></country-region> and the Old: Why Gentile Americans Back the Jewish State,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Foreign Affairs</i>, Vol. 87, No. 4 (July/August 2008), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMWUxNDAzODItOTIxMy00ZTZhLTgwOWItZTA5MDllODNiOWYz&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">pp. 28-46</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; Andrew Jackson to Rachel Jackson, April 20, 1818, John Spencer Bassett, ed., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Correspondence of Andrew Jackson</i>, Vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1927), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNGUzZDdkYWYtNDYyYy00OTM5LWE0MWMtZmFjOGU0ZjZhNTIz&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">p. 360</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">12. James Mooney, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Myths of the Cherokee</i>, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=PQeUqTeBQWIC&dq=james+mooney+myths+of+the+cherokee&q=grief+pathos#v=snippet&q=grief%20pathos&f=false">p. 130</a>; William G. McLoughlin, “<country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Georgia</place></country-region>’s Role in Instigating Compulsory Indian Removal,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Georgia Historical Quarterly</i>, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Winter 1986), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNzljMmYyNWItZmQ3Yi00OTBhLTg3ZTQtYzI3MDMyODc0MjZj&hl=en_US">pp. 605-632</a>; Michael Morris, “Georgia and the Conversation Over Indian Removal,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Georgia Historical Quarterly</i>, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Winter 2007), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYTA5NGNmNTQtNDUxYy00NGY5LWE5MWMtMWFiMGJhNTgwNTBh&hl=en_US">pp. 403-423</a>; Ronald N. Satz, “The Cherokee Trail of Tears: A Sesquicentennial Perspective,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Georgia Historical Quarterly</i>, Vol. 73, No. 3, Special Issue Commemorating the Sesquicentennial of Cherokee Removal, 1838-1839 (Fall 1989), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYjZjMjgxYWUtOWQyMC00MWM4LWIyMTUtZDkxOTBkOWIyYWYz&hl=en_US">pp. 431-466</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">13. Andrew Jackson, Second Annual Message to Congress, James D. Richardson, ed., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1907</i>, Vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1908), <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/compilationofmes02unit#page/520/mode/1up">pp. 520-521</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">14. F. P. Prucha, “Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy: A Reassessment,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of American History</i>, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Decmeber 1969), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMTc1Zjk2OTctMzY3Mi00MjE2LTk0NzEtODU2MjIxODU4NTYw&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">pp. 527-539</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; Gustaf Unonius, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Pioneer in <place w:st="on">Northwest America</place>, 1841-1858: The Memoirs of Gustaf Unonius</i>, Jonas Oscar Blacklund, tr., Nils William Ollson, ed., Vol. 1 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1950), </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZDc2ZDlkMjQtNDQ5NC00YWUzLWE2ZDQtNDA3M2VhNzE1ZjM0&hl=en_US">p. 370</a></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">; <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Bruce M. Knauft, “Violence and Sociality in Human Evolution,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Current Anthropology</i>, Vol. 32, No. 4 (August-October 1991), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNGMwYjExZjAtYjIwOS00YmE3LWJhY2UtZGY2M2ZmMTNkZTFh&hl=en_US">pp. 391-428</a>; Nicholas Wade, “Sign of an Advancing Society?: An Organized War Effort,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i>, August 2, 2011, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/science/02warfare.html">p. D4</a>; Charles Stanish and Abigail Levine, “War and Early State Formation in the Northern Titicaca Basin, Peru.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America</i>, Early Edition, <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hODk5ZDgwMzYtOTJhZC00YTQ3LTgxMDQtOTZjZDk4NjI1ZDA0&hl=en_US">July 25, 2011</a>; </span>Kenneth P. Vickery, “‘Herrenvolk’ Democracy and Egalitarianism in South Africa and the U.S. South,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Comparative Studies in Society and History</i>, Vol. 16, No. 3 (June 1974), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZmMxMzM1NGMtMGMyMy00MDQxLTkzOGEtZjM3NjkxZjU3MzQ4&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">pp. 309-328</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; Walter Russell Mead, “The Jacksonian Tradition in American Foreign Policy.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">National Interest</i>, No. 58 (Winter 1999/2000), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZmU2ZTg0OTktYTRlNC00NzA2LThlOWItYzg5ODU4NTViYTE0&hl=en"><span style="font-size: x-small;">p. 14</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">15. Page Smith, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Nation Comes of Age: A People’s History of the Ante-Bellum Years</i> (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMzA5ZDFhOTktYmZjMC00NjM3LTk0YTMtNTg3MzFmY2E1ZTJl&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">p. 107</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; David A. Nichols, “Land, Republicanism, and Indians: Power and Policy in Early National Georgia, 1780-1825,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Georgia Historical Quarterly</i>, Vol. 85, No 2. (Summer 2001), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOGJiYzgyYWItM2E0My00ZWUwLWFhOGYtMGQ1MjNiMzM4MzMx&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">pp. 199-226</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">John Mack Faragher, “‘More Motley than Mackinaw’: From Ethnic Mixing to Ethnic Cleansing on the Frontier of the Lower Missouri, 1783-1833,” in Andrew R. L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750-1830</i> (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYWNiZDU0MGItN2FjNy00MGYzLWEyNjQtMjMzZWU3YzU0NWM3&hl=en_US">pp. 304-326</a>.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: x-small;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">16. Walter A. McDougall, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828</i> (<place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">New York</state></place>: HarperCollins, 2004), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hU1hULW9sRFY2dXM/edit" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">p. 40</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Along these same lines, a commenter named Neville on Walter Russell Mead’s Via Meadia blog, finds similarities between America’s current difficulties with the Arab world and the conflict with the native Americans: “Our ancestors never found a way of dealing with native American cultures that lived up to their own ideals, and as a result the bulk of whatever those cultures may have had to offer did not survive. Many Americans today are taught to despise their ancestors for that reason, but it is not clear that our generation will prove able in the end to find superior answers.” <span style="color: #990000;"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110910215355/http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/07/31/french-secularism-dies-in-the-middle-east/#comment-28112" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20110910215355/http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/07/31/french-secularism-dies-in-the-middle-east/#comment-28112</a>.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">17. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893</i> (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894), </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=j0oLAAAAIAAJ&dq=significance%20of%20the%20frontier%20in%20american%20history%20report%20of%20the%20american%20historical%20association&pg=PA199#v=onepage&q=significance%20of%20the%20frontier%20in%20american%20history%20report%20of%20the%20american%20historical%20association&f=false">pp.<span style="font-size: x-small;"> 199-22</span>7</a></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">; Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, “A Meaning for Turner’s Frontier: Part I: Democracy in the Old Northwest; Part II: The Southwest Frontier and <place w:st="on">New England</place>,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Political Science Quarterly</i>, Vol. 69, No. 3 (September 1954), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNDEwYzg2NTUtNTg4Mi00ZGQ3LTk0ZWMtZTkyNWI5M2VjZWZl&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">pp. 321-353</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">, No. 4 (December 1954), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZTI4YmM0NWQtZTdmZi00NzMyLWJmOGYtMGMzNTk4MTBkODZl&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">pp. 565-602</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; Martin Ridge, “The Life of an Idea: The Significance of Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Montana: The Magazine of Western History</i>, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter 1991), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZjk1ZDhiODUtMDM1Mi00NTRkLWIxNWEtZmY1YmFmYWJlNmY3&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">pp. 2-13</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; Ridge, “Turner the Historian: A Long Shadow,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of the Early Republic</i>, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer 1993), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOThkZGNkYTctN2Y0OC00YWU5LTliODctYmFhMWYzMDExMWI4&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">pp. 133-144</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">; <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Patricia Nelson Limerick, “Turnerians All: The Dream of a Helpful History in an Intelligible World,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Historical Review</i>, Vol. 100, No. 3 (June 1995), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMGMzMjY2YjItY2M5ZC00Mzg4LWE2OGUtNWY3NTg1YzBjMTkx&hl=en_US">pp. 697-716</a>; </span>John Lauritz Larson, “Grasping for the Significance of the Turner Legacy: An Afterword,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of the Early Republic</i>, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer 1993), </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMDIyNTQyODEtZDZmZS00YjkzLWI2YjMtNmJkYjAyOWU5YWQ5&hl=en_US"><span style="font-size: x-small;">pp. 241-249</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">18. Charles Edward Pancoast, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Quaker Forty-Niner: The Adventures of Charles Edward Pancoast on the American Frontier</i>, Anna Paschall Hannum, ed., Foreword by John Bach McMaster (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1930), pp. <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/quakerfortyniner000313mbp#page/n112/mode/1up">85</a>, <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/quakerfortyniner000313mbp#page/n150/mode/1up">123</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-47362209220779341872011-03-16T21:23:00.065-04:002017-06-05T16:27:11.179-04:00Margaret Thatcher on the Failure of Socialism, November 22, 1990<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">This is a brief video excerpt from Margaret Thatcher’s last speech in Parliament as <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Britain</place></country-region>’s prime minister. Thatcher, who served as prime minister from 1979 to 1990, was known as The Iron Lady for her unflinching resolve to defend liberty and defeat communism abroad and socialism at home. Together with her friend and ally Ronald Reagan, Thatcher restored free market capitalism and dismantled a large chunk of <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Britain</place></country-region>’s social democracy—its blue model. This set the stage for <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Britain</place></country-region>’s <a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/295347-1">economic revival</a>, transforming the old Mother Country from the shabby, worn out, <a href="http://www.berlinski.com/?q=node/95">post-imperial basket case</a> of the 1970s, to the dynamic, wealth creating, though perhaps too multicultural, “Cool Britannia” of Tony Blair and his successors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Here is a <a href="http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108256">transcript</a> of the of the speech, parts of which are included on the video. And here is a link to a <a href="http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110916">video of the full speech</a> at the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website, and at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF_GXMxa-mE" target="_blank">YouTube</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">In the excerpt shown in the video, Thatcher takes on two Labour MPs who charge her with transferring resources from the poor to the rich, thus making the poor poorer. She responded, in classic Thatcher fashion, by accusing her opposition of wanting to keep the poor poorer so long as the rich didn’t get richer—the essence of socialism:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">People on all levels of income are better off than they were in 1979. The hon. Gentleman is saying that he would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That way one will never create the wealth for better social services, as we have. What a policy. Yes, he would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That is the Liberal policy. . . .</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">I think that the hon. Gentleman knows that I have the same contempt for his socialist policies as the people of east <place w:st="on">Europe</place>, who have experienced them, have for theirs. I think that I must have hit the right nail on the head when I pointed out that the logic of those policies is that they would rather the poor were poorer. Once they start to talk about the gap, they would rather that the gap were that—<i>[indicating]</i>—down here, not this—<i>[indicating]</i>—but—<i>[indicating</i>.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">]</i> So long as the gap is smaller, they would rather have the poor poorer. One does not create wealth and opportunity that way. One does not create a property-owning democracy that way. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Debates in <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Britain</country-region></place>’s House of Commons have always been much more in your face, substantive, and colorful than the sound bite dribble that’s been the common fare of the U. S. Congress in recent years. Mrs. Thatcher was the undisputed mistress of the parliamentary style. In this The Iron Lady was quite worthy of her great Tory predecessors, <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/198cdapm.asp?nopager=1">Disraeli</a> and Churchill. Indeed, she qualifies as a leader in the Jacksonian mold. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">As the daughter of a small businessman (a grocer) Thatcher had a clear understanding of the importance of entrepreneurialism in creating wealth and promoting liberty. And she knew that socialism was a dead end. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Thatcher conveyed this message to the soon-to-be Soviet leader <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/20/the_long_lame_afterlife_of_mikhail_gorbachev?page=full">Mikhail Gorbachev</a>, when she first met him in December 1984. The interchange, pieced together from various sources by <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=w3_L4qsMx8QC&pg=PA282&dq=thatcher+don%27t+be+silly+mr+gorbachev&hl=en&ei=8r-CTd-FLaOz0QHh8LC_CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=thatcher%20don't%20be%20silly%20mr%20gorbachev&f=false">Claire Berlinski</a> in her biography of Thatcher, went something like this:</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Gorbachev told Thatcher it was time to end the Cold War.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Thatcher told Gorbachev it was time to end communism.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Gorbachev told Thatcher that communism was superior to capitalism.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">“Don’t be silly Mr. Gorbachev. You can barely feed your own citizens.”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">“To the contrary, Mrs. Thatcher! Our people live <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">joyfully</i>.”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">“Oh do they? Then why do so many of them want to leave? And why do you prevent them from leaving?”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After the meeting, <a href="http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105592">Thatcher famously said</a> of Gorbachev, “We can do business together.” But while they could do business together, Thatcher had let Gorbachev know that there could be no moral equivalence between democracy and communism, which was still an evil empire. A<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">nd this, Berlinski argues in her biography, gets to the heart of Thatcher’s greatness as a leader: her moral imagination, a quality she <a href="http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1480&theme=home&loc=b">shared with Reagan</a>. While Thatcher certainly wanted to promote the economic well-being of her people, what really mattered were the <a href="http://www.mmisi.org/ir/33_02/saylor.pdf">moral values</a>—individual liberty, responsibility, <a href="http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105691">the rule of law</a>, and self-reliance—that made <a href="http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103336">economic prosperity possible</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thatcher’s determination to bring down the British welfare state and her unflinching moral commitment to advance liberty, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?ei=Pe2CTYmdGMSZ0QGi-PnjCA&ct=result&id=KdANwTBnZzYC&dq=margaret+thatcher+downing+street+years&q=traditional+virtues+which+enable+people">strengthen traditional moral values</a>, and unleash the entrepreneurial energy of the British people to allow them to create prosperity and pursue happiness, put her at odds with the upper-class elite types who dominated the Tory Party leadership. Thatcher was in fact the only American-style conservative leader that contemporary Britain or Europe has produced, and she was repudiated by her party for it. Thatcher’s principled and charismatic style of leadership, like Reagan’s, is sorely needed today. Tony Blair, though he was from the Labour Party, was a principled champion of liberty and capitalism in Thatcher’s mold. From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think David Cameron, the new Tory prime minister, with his aristocratic background and upbringing (he’s a fifth cousin of Queen Elizabeth), is about to launch a revival of Thatcherism in his party.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan</span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-78144278348918341282011-03-13T22:50:00.025-04:002017-06-05T16:28:13.553-04:00Thaddeus Russell, “Renegade” Historian: Drunkards, Freeloaders, Rioters, and Prostitutes Were the True Pioneers of American Liberty<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Every once in a while an intellectual rebel stirs up controversy in the staid halls of Academe by challenging politically correct interpretations of history. <a href="http://www.thaddeusrussell.com/">Thaddeus Russell</a>, Columbia University Ph.D., formerly a professor at <placename w:st="on">Barnard</placename> <placetype w:st="on">College</placetype> who now teaches <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Occidental</placename> <placetype w:st="on">College</placetype></place>, is just such a renegade. His, shall we say, unconventional teaching and writing on American history earned him the name <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thaddeus-russell/fired-teaching-american-history_b_767172.html">“Bad Thad”</a> from his students, as well as the displeasure of the senior faculty at Columbia and Barnard. Russell recently published his controversial ideas about the critical role of social renegades<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">—drunkards, prostitutes, tavern owners, slackers, pirates, rioters, and many others—</span>in advancing American liberty in a book called, naturally enough, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=MeBFzDmECGoC&dq=thaddeus+russell+renegade+history+of+the+united+states&source=gbs_navlinks_s">A Renegade History of the United States</a></i>. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The Founding Fathers, in Russell’s version of history, were far from the champions of liberty that Americans have always made them out to be. </span>I’ve posted here a <a href="http://youtu.be/xpelVE7trK0">video</a> of Russell discussing his ideas with John Stossel on the <a href="http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4580002/did-renegades-play-as-big-a-role-in-history-as-founding-fathers/">Fox Business Network</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Russell does have a point, though he pushes it way too far. The Founding Fathers were primarily interested in political liberty and the protection of property rights. Men like George Washington, John Adams, and the rest, were generally conservative in their social outlook. They wanted to preserve the self-governing civil society of independent householders that already existed in British North America, while releasing it from Britain<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">’s</span> shackles of monarchy and aristocracy. So their first priority was to establish viable institutions for an independent, self-governing republic. But the Founders, as Russell rightly points out, were elitists who wanted to maintain an orderly society in which elite men of property and education would serve as fathers of the people, restrain popular passions, and govern the republic on the people’s behalf. Most of the Founders (Jefferson was an exception) were not prepared for the upsurge of populist energy, popular assertiveness, and social mobility unleashed by the Revolution. And they were certainly not countercultural radicals. (Lately, as I told my class, I’ve tried to imagine how George Washington would react to watching a Lady Gaga video.) Christian morality, the Founders firmly believed, was the essential bedrock of a self-governing republic. Securing the liberty of social outcasts to flout the Protestant work ethic and pursue unconventional lifestyles was definitely not on their agenda.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Here is another <a href="http://reason.tv/video/show/historian-thadeuss-russell-on">video</a> of Russell discussing his ideas, this time with Ted Balaker on Reason.tv.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hQUVLIg_ltk?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="640"></iframe>Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-58105609431152417752011-03-06T02:34:00.104-05:002017-08-01T10:39:00.771-04:00Two Tributes to Andrew Jackson as the Embodiment of the American Spirit<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span> <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/--3qXUeLLRks/TXM4M4vzMBI/AAAAAAAAAUU/FTet1PT2QQM/s1600/andrew+jackson+-+jacques+amans+historic+new+orleans+collection+getimage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" l6="true" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/--3qXUeLLRks/TXM4M4vzMBI/AAAAAAAAAUU/FTet1PT2QQM/s400/andrew+jackson+-+jacques+amans+historic+new+orleans+collection+getimage.jpg" width="398" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The Lion in Winter. Andrew Jackson in 1840, by Jacques Amans.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?lr=&id=VhUOAAAAIAAJ&dq=editions%3AHARVARD32044024325672&q=raleigh+and+puritans+planted#v=snippet&q=raleigh%20and%20puritans%20planted&f=false">Respecting the character of Andrew Jackson and his influence, there will still be differences of opinion. One fact, however, has been established: during the last thirty years of his life, he was the idol of the American people. His faults, whatever they were, were such as a majority of the American citizens of the last generation could easily forgive. His virtues, whatever they were, were such as a majority of American citizens of the last generation could warmly admire. It is this fact which renders him historically interesting. Columbus had sailed; Raleigh and the Puritans had planted; Franklin had lived; Washington fought; Jefferson written; fifty years of democratic government had passed; free schools, a free press, a voluntary church had done what they could to instruct the people; the population of the country had been quadrupled and its resources increased ten fold; and the result of all was, that the people of the United States had arrived at the capacity of honoring Andrew Jackson before all other living men.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?lr=&id=VhUOAAAAIAAJ&dq=editions%3AHARVARD32044024325672&q=raleigh+and+puritans+planted#v=snippet&q=raleigh%20and%20puritans%20planted&f=false">—James Parton, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Life of Andrew Jackson</i>, 1860.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Andrew Jackson, more than any other individual, embodied the American spirit in all of its strengths, weaknesses, and contradictions. In life and in death, <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Jackson</place></city> was a controversial figure. To his supporters in the Democratic Party, <city w:st="on">Jackson</city> (like <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state>) was Cincinnatus. They celebrated their Hero as the knight-errant of the frontier, tribune of the people, and the champion of democracy. But to the political opposition—supporters of Henry Clay and the Whig Party—<city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Jackson</place></city> was Caesar, “King Andrew the First,” who abused executive authority and trampled the Constitution under foot.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Old <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Hickory</place></city> was a true American original whose life exemplified the values and culture of Jacksonian America. He rose from a childhood of poverty and deprivation to achieve renown as a military chieftain and the supreme political leader of his generation. And <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Jackson</place></city> achieved all this through the force of his personality. As historians <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=QKUFGSPDjeoC&dq=the+dominion+of+war&q=freedom+and+violence+intertwined#v=snippet&q=freedom%20and%20violence%20intertwined&f=false">Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton</a> write: “His was a brutish world in which freedom and violence were so inextricably intertwined that those who prospered did so less by virtue of their social connections . . . than because they were tough enough to strike at potential enemies before they could land the first blow.” <city w:st="on">Jackson</city> thus made his reputation as a skilled practitioner of the art of violent confrontation: first by fighting duels with his <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Tennessee</place></state> rivals, later by defending American liberty and advancing American empire in wars with the Indians and the British. <city w:st="on">Liberty</city>, as <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Jackson</place></city> understood it, meant personal autonomy and the freedom of local interests from federal interference. This was the liberty of white male patriarchs, like Jackson, to lead their families and be masters of their domains. Jacksonian men were first and foremost the protectors of women, children, and the community. As he moved from the local to the national arena, Jackson developed a passionate belief in the unity of the American nation that could not be compromised by sectionalism. A strong union, he believed, was needed to preserve America’s hard won liberty. Building a North American empire through ethnic cleansing of the Indians, in which <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Jackson</place></city> played a central role, allowed white Jacksonian men to see themselves as a band of brothers united in the defense of liberty. Unfortunately, Jacksonian nationalism also forged a racially exclusive definition of who was an American and who was entitled to enjoy the blessings of liberty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">James Parton, <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Jackson</place></city>’s first major biographer, understood why Old Hickory embodied the American character better than any other figure. Unlike their European forebears, Americans did not passively accept what fate and circumstance handed out. The Jacksonian code of honor valued courage above all else, viewing life as a struggle against those hostile forces conspiring to grind a man down into the dust. On the early American frontier those forces could be savage Indians, perfidious Britons, the capriciousness of nature, or treacherous eastern elites. Yet the Jacksonian American, like Jackson himself, conquered all enemies and surmounted all obstacles, to emerge triumphant as the <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/andrewjacksonsym002452mbp#page/n195/mode/1up">master of his destiny</a>. As <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=bWYFAAAAQAAJ&dq=james+parton+life+of+andrew+jackson&q=could+fail+in+any+thing+seriously+undertaken+by+him#v=snippet&q=could%20fail%20in%20any%20thing%20seriously%20undertaken%20by%20him&f=false">Parton put it</a>, “not only had [Jackson] no such word as <i>fail</i>, but no belief, not the slightest, that he could fail in any thing seriously undertaken by him. And he never did.” Of course not all Jacksonians met success and triumph in their lives; many pioneers on the frontier fell victim to those forces lined up against them. But they did go down fighting. Jackson’s life story was the ideal to which those Americans who shared Jacksonian culture and values looked up to and tried to emulate.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><em>Death of General Andrew Jackson</em>, by James S. Baillie, 1845. "Oh, do not cry. Be good children, and we will all meet in heaven."</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Jackson’s death in June 1845 was marked by an outpouring of oratory and writings that celebrated and tried to make sense of what his life meant for a democratic <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">The Hero, who had been born in poverty on the frontier and achieved greatness on the battlefield, died in his bed surrounded by family in an atmosphere of romantic sentimentalism typical of mid-nineteenth-century America. His <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=bWYFAAAAQAAJ&dq=james+parton+life+of+andrew+jackson&q=Be+good+children%2C+and+we+will+all+meet+in+heaven#v=snippet&q=Be%20good%20children%2C%20and%20we%20will%20all%20meet%20in%20heaven&f=false">reported last words</a> were: “What is the matter with my dear children? Have I alarmed you? Oh, do not cry. Be good children, and we will all meet in heaven.” General Sam Houston, <city w:st="on">Jackson</city>’s protégé and surrogate son, who had achieved greatness as the founding father of <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Texas</place></state>, hurried to reach his beloved mentor’s deathbed to see him one last time. But when <city w:st="on">Houston</city> arrived at <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Jackson</place></city>’s Hermitage, he learned that Old Hickory had passed on three hours earlier. Taking his young son Sam Jr. in his arms and lifting him up, <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/revenabiographyo011647mbp#page/n399/mode/1up"><city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Houston</place></city> said</a> “My son, try to remember that you have looked upon the face of Andrew Jackson.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Funeral commemorations for the Old Hero were held in cities and towns across the nation. <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMWIxNWUwZjUtYTY5Ni00MDFmLWE5ZjctZTMyZjM4NDg0MThi&hl=en"><city w:st="on">New York City</city>’s</a> ceremony was the most elaborate of all, befitting its status as <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">America</country-region></place>’s premier metropolis. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Eulogizing Jackson to the people of Richmond, Virginia, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=2PQEAAAAYAAJ&dq=monument+to+the+memory+of+andrew+jackson&q=imbodiment+of+the+true+spirit#v=onepage&q=born%20a%20simple%20citizen&f=false">Andrew Stevenson</a> emphasized triumph over adversity as the great theme of Old Hickory’s life. Stevenson saw the hand of destiny at work in <city w:st="on">Jackson</city>’s life: “Born a simple citizen, of poor but respectable parents,” <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Jackson</city></place> achieved greatness “by no other means than the energy of his own character, and being, as he seems to have been, the favourite of nature and Heaven!” Divine providence was helped along by <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Jackson</city></place>’s own indomitable will. “Severe discipline and poverty, inured him, in early life, to great hardship and industry, and it has been justly said of him that he seems to have been an orphan from the plough to the presidency.” Stevenson concluded that <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Jackson</city></place> must “be regarded as the architect of his own fortunes!” <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Jackson</city></place>’s life could be seen as the archetype for the ordinary American, who without formal education, social polish, or inherited wealth, and through his efforts and will power, became a hero in the drama of his own journey through life. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">Strength of will and character are more important than the circumstances of one’s birth. This idea, which still resonates among Americans today, especially among conservatives, has Jacksonian origins. </span>Or as <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=bWYFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA680&vq=could+fail+in+any+thing+seriously+undertaken+by+him&dq=james+parton+life+of+andrew+jackson&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q=supremely%20admires%20in%20man&f=false">Parton concluded</a>, <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Jackson</city></place>’s life revealed, “what man supremely admires in man is manhood.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Walt Whitman, the great poet of Jacksonian America and a native of <place w:st="on">Long Island</place> (he was born just up the road from where I teach), gave poetic voice to this Jacksonian vision of a democratic and <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=FGDfs9AMY1cC&dq=walt+whitman+leaves+of+grass&q=manly+self-hood#v=snippet&q=manly%20self-hood&f=false">heroic manhood</a>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">O the joy a manly self-hood!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The two pieces presented here get to the heart of why Jackson was so important to the American people as a man and a symbol. The first, by Herman Melville, is an excerpt from <em>Moby Dick</em> published in 1851, six years after Jackson’s death. The second is an excerpt from a eulogy by Washington McCartney, a Pennsylvania lawyer and judge, delivered in commemoration of Jackson’s death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Melville understood that Americans in the years after the Revolution had made an important discovery: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God is a democrat</i>. Americans in a democratic age demanded a democratic hero—a hero whose manhood had been forged in the crucible of democratic nation building. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=qsDm5hjMcBsC&dq=lucy+hughes+hallett+heroes&q=hero+role+model#v=snippet&q=hero%20role%20model&f=false">Lucy Hughes-Hallett</a>, in her study of hero worship in western civilization, notes: “a hero is not a role model. On the contrary, it is the essence of a hero to be unique and therefore inimitable.” George Washington, America’s first hero, fit Hughes-Hallett’s description. He was neither a democrat nor a man of the people, always maintaining a quasi-aristocratic distance from his countrymen. Americans would revere Washington as the Father of the Country, but they could not see themselves in him. In contrast, as Washington McCartney told his listeners, Americans could, and did, see their own image in Old Hickory. Throughout his career Andrew <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Jackson</place></city> was called “The Hero” and he did achieve a unique stature of heroic greatness in among his countrymen. But, far from being inimitable, <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Jackson</city></place> was seen as the average American writ large. The qualities that made <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Jackson</city></place> great were precisely those that the average American could find in himself. Andrew Jackson’s life and career marked the democratization of the heroic ideal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Mel2Mob.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=26&division=div1">Knights and Squires: Herman Melville’s Tribute to Andrew Jackson and the Spirit of Democracy</a></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">But were the coming narrative to reveal, in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">’</span>s fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valor in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">’</span>s arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just spirit of equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Source: Herman Melville, <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Moby-Dick, or, The Whale</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">, </span>Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent, eds. (New York: Hendricks House, 1952), </span><a href="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Mel2Mob.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=26&division=div1"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Chapter 26 “Knights and Squires,” pp. 113-114.</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=BXgEAAAAYAAJ&dq=monument+to+the+memory+of+andrew+jackson&q=head+of+the+great+movement+of+the+age+#v=snippet&q=head%20of%20the%20great%20movement%20of%20the%20age&f=false">Symbol for an Age: <state w:st="on">Washington</state> McCartney’s Eulogy on the Death of Andrew Jackson, Delivered at <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Easton</city>, <state w:st="on">Pennsylvania</state></place>, June 28, 1845</a></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">What <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> Andrew Jackson, and what did he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i>, that he should receive such honours while living, and when dead, should gather a nation round his tomb? What <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> he? He was the imbodiment of the true spirit of the nation in which he lived. What did he do? He put himself at the head of the great movement of the age in which he lived. This was what he was, and this was what he did. For this, a nation admired him while living, and for this, a nation pays him those cypress honours in which we this day join. Let it be our theme to show that Andrew Jackson did imbody the true spirit of his nation, that he did put himself at the head of the great movement of his age, and that because he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> this, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i> this, he received, and yet receives, the admiration and the honour of his countrymen. Around this theme, we might cluster the thrilling scenes of his military life, the prominent actions of his political, and the praiseworthy deeds of his domestic life. For all these enter into the description of what he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i>, and what he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">We have said that Andrew Jackson imbodied the ruling spirit of his country, and entered heart and soul into the great movement of his age. Run the eye across the history of the world. You observe that there are certain cycles, or ages, or periods of time, which have their peculiar spirit, their ruling passion, their great characterizing, distinctive movments. He, who imbodies in its greatest fullness, the spirit of such an age, and enters with most earnestness into its movements, receives the admiration of his contemporaries. They bestow their honours upon him while living, and when dead, they embalm his memory, and inurn him in their warmest affections. And why? because they see in him their own image. Because, in him is concentrated the spirit that has burned in their own bosom. Because, in him exists, in bodily form, in living flesh and blood, the spirit that gives them life and motion. The spirit of God descended upon the Saviour of the world in the form of a dove. The spirit of an age sometimes descends to future generations in the form of a man. An individual sometimes appears who becomes the dove-like incorporation of the spirit, that moves through vast masses of men. The admiration merited by him, and bestowed upon him, is in proportion to the nature, extent, and intensity, of that Spirit which finds its fulness of existence in him. The Redeemer of man, when upon the earth, was the imbodiment of the pure spirit that moves and directs all humanity in its regenerated life. Beside him, all approaches towards the imbodiment of the pure, life-giving spirit of the race, have been local, partial, imperfect. But in proportion as an individual concentrates within himself, the spirit which works through masses of men, and which moves, and should move them through the greatest cycle of time, in that proportion, he becomes entitled to their admiration and praise. William Tell, the spirit of <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Switzerland</place></country-region>’s liberty existed in its fulness. <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Switzerland</place></country-region> gazed—admired—roused itself at the twang of his bow, and still honours the hero. Luther was the typing out, in human form, of a spirit that circulated all over <place w:st="on">Europe</place>. When the nations saw their image in him, they admired the man. <place w:st="on">Europe</place> did him reverence. Nations gathered around him. <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Washington</state></place> was the typing out, in living flesh and blood, of that burning spirit of liberty, that pervaded three millions of freemen. In him, it existed as in its dove-like imbodiment. Hamilton and Jefferson, became each the type and image of his party. Thousands saw in them the fulness of their own ideal of political perfection. Therefore Hamilton and Jefferson were admired. But why add to the muster-roll of names, to verify the truth, so widely felt, that he who gains the admiration of a nation, must be the type, the image, the imbodied spirit of the nation. The historical heavens are full of stars—but one star differeth from another star in glory. One shines brighter than its fellows, because it has more of the matter of light within it. But all who shine as the stars of history, derive their brightness from the degree of perfection in which they imbody the spirit the pervades vast aggregations of men. Because his countrymen saw their image and spirit in Andrew Jackson, they bestowed their honour and admiration upon him. Begin then, at the lowest grade of those who receive the praise of their fellow-men. Fill up the catalogue of stars. Go from the dimmest to the brightest. Advance from the village hero, upwards, and upwards, and upwards, till you arrive at the impersonation of all human perfection. Where, on such a list, would you inscribe the name,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">ANDREW JACKSON.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The position of his name upon the list of honour, will depend upon the degree of perfection in which he was the image of his fellow-republicans.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Source: Benjamin M. Dusenbery, ed., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monument to the Memory of General Andrew Jackson: Containing Twenty-five Eulogies and Sermons Delivered On Occasion of His Death</i> (Philadelphia: Walker and Gillis, 1846), <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=BXgEAAAAYAAJ&dq=monument+to+the+memory+of+andrew+jackson&q=head+of+the+great+movement+of+the+age+#v=snippet&q=head%20of%20the%20great%20movement%20of%20the%20age&f=false">pp. 281-282</a>.</span></span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-48950757621073449692011-02-27T22:55:00.131-05:002017-08-01T10:40:39.889-04:00“Zenga Zenga”: Mad Dog Gaddafi and the Hip-Hop Theme Song of the Libyan Uprising<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(Music: Noy Alooshe. Lyrics: Muammar al-Gaddafi.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4PWin8UMkr0/TZCaF6VGDxI/AAAAAAAAAVc/-2D5FbL6_ew/s1600/libya%252C+vandalized+mural+of+gaddafi+in+benghazi+-+20110302_LIBYA-slide-Q2L2-jumbo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" r6="true" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4PWin8UMkr0/TZCaF6VGDxI/AAAAAAAAAVc/-2D5FbL6_ew/s640/libya%252C+vandalized+mural+of+gaddafi+in+benghazi+-+20110302_LIBYA-slide-Q2L2-jumbo.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Downfall of a tyrant? A poster of Muammar al-Gaddafi is desecrated in Benghazi. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times.</span></td></tr>
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<em><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Kz0NAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=%22the%20account%20i%20have%20given%22&f=false" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">The account I have given . . . shews how the abuse of authority, by causing the</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">misery of individuals, becomes eventually destructive to the power of a state; and what we may safely venture to predict, will soon prove, that the ruin of a nation sooner or later recoils on those who have been the cause of it, and that the errors or crimes of those who govern cannot fail of their punishment, even from the very misery and wretchedness of those whom they have governed.</span></a></em><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Kz0NAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=%22the%20account%20i%20have%20given%22&f=false" target="_blank">—Constantin-François Chassebœuf, comte de Volney, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Travels in <country-region w:st="on">Egypt</country-region> and <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Syria</country-region></place>, in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785</i>.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;"></span>T<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">he Mad Dog of the <place w:st="on">Middle East</place> (as Ronald Reagan called him) may finally be meeting his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Götterdämmerung</i>. That the world put up with the antics of Muammar al-Gaddafi, the psychopath masquerading as a buffoon, for forty-two years, says much about the <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/03/03/the-mead-list-worlds-top-ten-gaddafi-toads/">sordid workings</a> of international power politics. Leaving aside the horrors he perpetrated on his own people, Gaddafi has more American blood on his hands than anyone other than Osama bin Laden. But since Gaddafi sat on a pool of oil, the rest of the world, including the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">United States</place></country-region> after 2003, was willing enough to do business with him. In September 2009, Gaddafi stood at the podium of the <a href="http://freedomeden.blogspot.com/2009/09/gaddafis-speech-quotes.html">United Nations General Assembly</a>, honoring that august body with one of the most incoherent and downright weird speeches it ever had to suffer through.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">The people of <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Libya, though,</place></country-region> never benefitted from their nation’s vast reserves of oil. Instead, Gaddafi, and his equally vile children, used the wealth provided by oil to live lives of gross debauchery and finance armies of terrorists worldwide. One son, the grandiloquently named <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saif_al-Islam_Muammar_Al-Gaddafi">Saif al-Islam</a> (Sword of Islam), presenting himself as the westernized face of the regime, <a href="http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/02/saif_al_islams_fall_from_grace">bought himself a Ph.D. </a>from the London School of Economics. In return for his degree, </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Saif donated £1.5 million to support the work of the LSE’s Centre for the Study of Global Governance on civil society organizations in <place w:st="on">North Africa</place>. Even <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/27/nick-cohen-arab-middle-east-conflict">British academia</a>, it seems, was willing to play along with the Gaddafi family’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/world/middleeast/07qaddafi.html?ref=daviddkirkpatrick&pagewanted=all">theater of the absurd</a> if the payoff was right.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Now, as Gaddafi goes down in flames, pledging to take as much of his country as he can down with him, his own words have been turned into the <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4035148,00.html">theme song</a> of the rebellion. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">Noy Alooshe, an Israeli musician of Tunisian heritage, took the phrase “<em>zenga zenga</em>” from a rambling, gibberish-filled, 75 minute speech delivered by Gaddafi on Tuesday February 22, and set it to a hip-hop vibe. <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/201122216458913596.html#">Gaddafi</a>, dressed in brown robes and a turban, spoke from what appeared to be the residence damaged in the 1986 bombing raid ordered by Ronald Reagan. <a href="http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=210038&utm_source=Pulseem&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Jpost_Newsletter_27/02">Alooshe</a> overlaid the video with footage of a scantily-clad woman dancing to Gaddafi’s trance music riff. The video, posted on YouTube, has <a href="http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/israel-online/2011/feb/27/zenga-goes-viral-libya-qaddafi-gaddafi-israel/#">gone viral</a> throughout the Arab world and has captured the spirit of the Libyan uprising. The irony of an Israeli artist creating the theme song for an Arab fight for liberty is something we should all ponder. Here is the video.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">You know a tyrant’s days are numbered when the people who had lived in absolute fear of his wrath can turn around and assault him with mockery. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">The speech itself was classic Gaddafi. The self-styled “Leader and Guide of the Revolution,” proclaimed his defiance of those who sought his downfall, blaming the uprising on everyone from Al Qaeda to American agents drugging Libyan youth with LSD-spiked Nescaf<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">é</span>. More ominously, he threatened to unleash his security forces on all rebels, declaring that “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">when I do, everything will burn.” Rambling on, <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/02/22/gaddafis-speech-decoding-a-tyrant%E2%80%99s-words/">Gaddafi issued a call</a> to his people: “Come out of your homes, those who love Muammar Gaddafi. Women, men, girls, boys, those who side with Muammar Gaddafi and the revolution. . . . As from tomorrow, no, as from tonight, actually, people in Libyan cities and towns . . . chase [the protesters], arrest them, hand them over to the security [forces].”</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Noy Alooshe</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“Gaddafi's speech had all the makings of a hit,” </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4035148,00.html">Noy Alooshe says</a> regarding his idea to turn the tyrant’s words into a song. “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Repeating the words ‘Zenga zenga’, his unique outfit, lifting his arms up in triumph like he’s at a party—I just added some club music to it and thought it would be a funny joke.”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The words <em>zenga zenga</em> mean alley by alley in Libyan Arabic. The excerpt that Alooshe set to music was </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/middleeast/28youtube.html?_r=1&hp"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gaddafi’s vow</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> to hunt down protesters</span> <span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">and <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x558347">clean <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Libya</place></country-region></a> “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">inch by inch (<em>shiber shiber</em>), house by house (<em>beyt beyt</em>), room by room (<em>dar dar</em>), alley by alley (<em>zenga zenga</em>).” These lines are followed by Gaddafi’s cry: “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><em>ela amam tawra</em> (forward, revolution) / <em>dakkat sat al amal</em> (it’s the moment of action) / <em>bssura bssura</em> (hurry up hurry up).”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">This is no empty threat. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Gaddafi’s capacity for sheer ruthlessness must never be underestimated. In this he is much like Saddam Hussein. <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Egypt</place></country-region>’s Hosni Mubarak, autocratic and corrupt as he was, could never have contemplated mass genocide against his people. </span>Gaddafi can, and he may yet rally enough of his regime’s power base, especially in the paramilitary security forces, to suppress the uprising through <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/02/the_most_ruthless_usually_triumph_109087.html">maxim force</a>. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Another factor which will shape the outcome of the Libyan uprising is the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/world/africa/02tribes.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=maghraha&st=cse">tribal structure</a> of Libyan society. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-r-barber/libya-gaddafi_b_828424.html">Benjamin Barber</a> of Rutgers University, who until February 22 served on the governing board of the Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation (Walter Russell Mead dubbed Barber one of the world’s <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/03/03/the-mead-list-worlds-top-ten-gaddafi-toads/">“Top Ten Gaddafi Toads”</a>), writes that Libya is made up of 160 tribes divided among the three provinces of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan. Muammar al-Gaddafi is not just another dictator: he is a tribal chieftain, the head of the <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2057204,00.html">Qadhadhfa tribe of Sert</a>, which along with its allied clans, historically dominated <place w:st="on">Tripolitania</place>. Gaddafi can draw on the tribal loyalties of these clans, which make up the core of his military, in his war against the insurgents. The uprising’s base of support, aside from modern urban professionals, is with the tribes of Cyrenaica, which were in rebellion against <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Tripoli</place></city> forty and eighty years ago. In these circumstances victory for the uprising will depend on the ability of its leaders to reach out to the Gaddafi-allied tribes of <place w:st="on">Tripolitania</place>, and convince them to <a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/03/04/Libyas-tribes-turning-against-Gadhafi/UPI-57601299253508/">switch sides</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Libya’s fighters for freedom also <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/03/us-libya-protests-idUSTRE71G0A620110303">need support</a> from the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/04/gaddafi-libya-revolt-arab-league">international community</a> (yes, I see the dark humor in that) and the United States in the form of supplies and weapons and the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya. They need to change the balance of forces if they are to triumph over the tyrant. But they neither need, nor want, American or other foreign boots on the ground. The Libyan people need to be the owners of their fight for freedom.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Gaddafi in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and female bodyguards.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That a tyrant’s arrogant boast could be transformed into an anthem of liberty, is a hopeful sign that the people of Libya, and other Arab peoples now challenging their authoritarian governments, can find their way to democracy. The people of the Arab world, it seems, are not immune to the claims of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; nor are the Arab peoples doomed by their history, <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,749537,00.html">blood-soaked as it is</a>, to inevitably fall into the clutches of a new set of <a href="http://www.arabist.net/blog/2011/2/26/haenni-and-tammam-on-jan25-and-religion.html">Islamist</a> tyrants. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Should the uprising against Gaddafi succeed, it would bring to an end <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/25/the_end_of_the_arab_dream">sixty disastrous years</a> of Arab experiments with totalitarian utopias; hopefully to be replaced by responsible governments that don’t brutalize their own people or threaten their neighbors, and are focused less on ideology and more on social development. The great challenge now facing the Arab world is not to rush into American-style democracy, but to create <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022506229.html">legitimate politcal orders</a> on the ruins of tyranny, rooted in their own governing traditions. Such political orders would combine institutions of local government, for which, historian <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=209770">Bernard Lewis</a> says, there is a tradition in the Arab world, with consensual and effective central governments.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Yet, as <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/01/is_democracy_viable_109065.html">Professor Thomas Sowell</a> cautions, “the fact that Egyptians or others in the <place w:st="on">Middle East</place> and elsewhere want freedom does not mean that they are ready for freedom. . . . Freedom and democracy cannot be simply conferred on anyone. Both have preconditions, and even nations that are free and democratic today took centuries to get there.” <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Likewise, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/04/AR2011030402322.html">Michael Scheuer</a>, the former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, insists that Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and assorted Islamists, will succeed in hijacking the post-uprising Arab regimes from the nascent democrats because they have the organization, infrastructure, and ruthlessness to do so. That the people of <country-region w:st="on">Libya</country-region>, <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Egypt</country-region></place>, and other Arab nations are culturally predisposed to favor Sharia law over democratic forms of governance will also work to the Islamists’ advantage. Scheuer concludes that bin Laden and his cohorts correctly assume that the secular pro-democracy protesters, who use Facebook and Twitter, are but “a thin veneer across a deeply pious Arab world. They are confident that these revolts are not about democratic change but about who, in societies where peaceful transfers of power are rare, will fill the vacuum left by the dictators and consolidate power.” To assume, as many Westerners do, that power in the Arab world after the uprising will come from anything other than the barrel of a gun, is naïve in the extreme. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Medieval historian and conservative writer <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/deluge_552977.html?nopager=1">Charlotte Allen</a>, who spent much of the summer of 2010 in <country-region w:st="on">Tunisia</country-region> and <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Egypt</place></country-region>, agrees with Scheuer’s analysis. Exploring sections of <state w:st="on">Tunis</state> and <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Cairo</place></city> away from the elite cosmopolitan enclaves (and where tourists rarely venture), Allen found “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">societies that were obstinately Islamic in the face of efforts by leaders with vast state-police apparatuses at their disposal to shove them into secular modernity.” Ordinary Tunisians and Egyptians, far from yearning for the liberty and secular democracy that we in the West enjoy, are more committed than ever to maintaining Islamic norms for society and governance that are not democratic.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Other observers find more cause for optimism, and even hope. Yes, the political culture of the Arab world to date has been toxic, the habits and institutions of self-government <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Walter-Rodgers/2011/0303/As-Arab-strongmen-exit-will-democracy-really-take-root">have never taken root</a>, jihadism has run rampant, and liberty has been an unwelcome guest. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">That no democratic leaders of the moral stature of Václav Havel or <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/opinion/27friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion">Nelson Mandela</a>—mature, civilized men who, like <a href="http://www.luxlibertas.com/is-there-an-arab-george-washington/">George Washington</a>, could be trusted to exercise power with restraint—have yet emerged in the Arab world is cause for great concern.<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span></span>But <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/ajami-vs-wieseltier.html">cultures</a>, like individuals, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/opinion/04brooks.html?_r=1">can evolve and change</a> for the better. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/opinion/27ajami.html?pagewanted=all">Professor Fouad Ajami</a>, one of the wisest students of Arab history, having long given up on the Arab peoples’ prospects for <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMGQzYjU2MzctYTE1NC00YmNiLTk5OGEtMzcwNjM3NzMzNGQw&hl=en">joining the modern world</a>, finds signs of just such a change in the revolutions of 2011: “For decades, Arabs walked and cowered in fear. Now they seem eager to take freedom’s ride. Wisely, they are paying no heed to those who wish to speak to them of liberty’s risks.” The Arabs, Ajami insists, have risen up to transform shame into liberty.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Libyan opposition fighters man a checkpoint on the edge of Adjabiya. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Sadly, the <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/07/why_we_cant_rule_out_an_egyptian_reign_of_terror?page=full">wisdom of history</a> tells us that revolutions begin in hope and joy but end in bloodshed, cynicism and despair; the <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/27/un-american-revolutions.html">American Revolution</a> being the great exception of course. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">“O pleasant exercise of hope and joy! / For great were the auxiliars which then stood / Upon our side, we who were strong in love; / Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven.” So <a href="http://books.google.com/books?dq=wordsworth+to+be+young+was+very+heaven&q=bliss+was+it+in+that+dawn+to+be+alive&pg=PA208&id=LGc4AAAAYAAJ#v=snippet&q=bliss%20was%20it%20in%20that%20dawn%20to%20be%20alive&f=false">Wordsworth exclaimed</a> in those ecstatic early days of the French Revolution, before the heads started to roll off the guillotine. But even with all of history’s bitter lessons in mind<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">, </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_people">three hundred million</a> people, heirs to one of the world’s great civilizations, cannot simply be written off as <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/9534/arab-revolt">unfit for liberty</a>. <a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/306021-1" target="_blank">Former President</a> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304192704577406612351805018.html?mod=rss_opinion_main" target="_blank">George W. Bush</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/03/AR2011030304239.html" target="_blank">understood this</a>. <span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">“</span>Eventually,” Bush proclaimed in the poetic words of his <a href="http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/4463">Second Inaugural Address</a>, “the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery. <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Liberty</place></city> will come to those who love it.” <span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Where Bush erred was in assuming that Jacksonian America’s brave fighting men and women could do the job that the Iraqis needed to do themselves. Or, as <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/ajami-vs-wieseltier.html">Andrew Sullivan</a> put it, “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">that freedom is only freedom when you have won it on your own.” </span></span>Those of us who believe that liberty is <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=MBJLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA20&dq=george+bancroft+popular+voice+is+all+powerful&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SBLMT_fiIKTX0QH05KSTAQ&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">God’s gift</a> to all men and women, and who believe that if history does have a purpose it is in the continuing quest for and <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=iLdMzbv2IDQC&dq=richard+hofstadter&q=toward+the+goal+of+liberty#v=snippet&q=toward%20the%20goal%20of%20liberty&f=false" target="_blank">advancement of liberty</a>, can do no less than Professor Ajami to support and encourage the Arab peoples in what will be a <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/05/18/george-w-bush-and-the-freedom-agenda/" target="_blank">long and difficult</a> struggle.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Noy Alooshe admits to some concern that should Gaddafi hang on to power, one of his odious sons might try to come after him. Nonetheless, he confides that it is “also very exciting to be making waves in the Arab world as an Israeli.” </span>Among the many (largely positive) responses to his <a href="http://www.isrealli.org/exclusive-interview-with-noy-alooshe-creator-of-viral-qaddafi-video/">Revolution Anthem</a> that Alooshe received from all over the Arab world via Twitter and Facebook, was one from a presumed member of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/middleeast/28youtube.html?_r=2&hp">Libyan opposition</a>. It said that when the Gaddafi regime is no more, “We will dance to ‘Zenga-Zenga’ in the square.” So, just maybe, Alooshe’s song offers the tantalizing possibility that young Arabs and Jews can transcend the burden of their tragic history and find common ground in the quest for liberty and the mythopoetic vision of music.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">P.S. For the <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4034077,00.html">“realists”</a> among you, who would say that I’ve given myself over to <a href="http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/lesson-from-the-arab-uprising-dont-be-realistic">idealistic</a> flights of fancy, I leave you with a quote from <a href="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefLett.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=248&division=div1">Thomas Jefferson</a>: “My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter than the gloom of despair.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan</span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-3370502760160861972011-02-14T21:35:00.033-05:002017-08-01T10:42:50.943-04:00“The American people are no longer on the defensive”: Ronald Reagan’s Statement of Traditional Jacksonian Values at CPAC, 1985<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><a href="http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1985/30185f.htm" target="_blank">“So, let us go forth with good cheer and stout hearts—happy warriors out to seize back a country and a world to freedom.”</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Throughout the course of his political career, Ronald Reagan was a firm champion of the traditional values of Jacksonian America. These included an unapologetic nationalism, veneration of the symbols of American patriotism, belief in limited government and rugged individualism, traditional religious faith, and a belief in the greatness and goodness of the American people and <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>’s exceptional role in history as the champion of liberty in the world. These ideas defined Reagan’s conservatism and they were a major source of his ability to connect with the aspirations of the American people.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/du_dA7wP688?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="640"></iframe><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Reagan had two overarching objectives when he took office as president in 1981. First, he wanted to dismantle the blue social model (the progressive welfare state) and unleash the entrepreneurial dynamism of the American economy. And just as important, Reagan wanted roll back the Aquarian social and cultural revolution of the 1960s and restore the primacy of traditional Jacksonian culture in American life. Reagan feared that the unrelenting assault on Jacksonian America by the Aquarian counterculture was undermining the American people’s belief in themselves and in their nation. He stated this quite eloquently at the <a href="http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1985/30185f.htm" target="_blank">Conservative Political Action Conference </a>on March 1, 1985.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">The new conservatives made anew the connection between economic justice and economic growth. Growth in the economy would not only create jobs and paychecks, they said; it would enhance familial stability and encourage a healthy optimism about the future. Lower those tax rates, they said, and let the economy become the engine of our dreams. Pull back regulations, and encourage free and open competition. Let the men and women of the marketplace decide what they want.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">But along with that, perhaps the greatest triumph of modern conservatism has been to stop allowing the left to put the average American on the moral defensive. By average American I mean the good, decent, rambunctious, and creative people who raise the families, go to church, and help out when the local library holds a fundraiser; people who have a stake in the community because they are the community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">These people had held true to certain beliefs and principles that for 20 years the intelligentsia were telling us were hopelessly out of date, utterly trite, and reactionary. You want prayer in the schools? How primitive, they said. You oppose abortion? How oppressive, how antimodern. The normal was portrayed as eccentric, and only the abnormal was worthy of emulation. The irreverent was celebrated, but only irreverence about certain things: irreverence toward, say, organized religion, yes; irreverence toward establishment liberalism, not too much of that. They celebrated their courage in taking on safe targets and patted each other on the back for slinging stones at a confused Goliath, who was too demoralized and really too good to fight back.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">But now one simply senses it. The American people are no longer on the defensive. I believe the conservative movement deserves some credit for this. You spoke for the permanent against the merely prevalent, and ultimately you prevailed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Reagan gloried in his role as knight-errant of the Jacksonian folk community, much as Andrew Jackson had in his day. It also drove his liberal progressive opponents into fits of outrage. Reagan could express, in coherent and powerful language, the resentment of Jacksonian populist conservatives toward their liberal elite antagonists. For much of the twentieth century Jacksonian America had been on the defensive; its culture of patriotism and faith mocked as reactionary, its people derisively condemned as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">boobus americanus</i>. The humiliation of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 drove conservative Christians into political exile, perpetuating an image of Jacksonians as eccentric primitives. Reagan gave focus and leadership to the Jacksonian revival which responded forcefully to the excesses of the Aquarian counterculture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">However, despite Reagan’s presidency, indeed because of it, the Aquarian counterculture was here to stay. The Aquarian lifestyle could only take root and flourish in a society of mass abundance. People engaged in the struggle for bare survival could not afford to follow their bliss. Ironically, it was Reagan’s own economic policies, by unleashing the animal spirits of capitalism and creating wealth on an unprecedented scale, which enabled Aquarian values to be incorporated into mainstream <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>. The Reagan years saw the birth of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brooks-bobos.html" target="_blank">bohemian bourgeois</a>, or “bobo”—<a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZTQyZDQzNWQtNDZiMi00MTYzLTgwMGItZTAxNzc3MmIyZGM0/edit" target="_blank">David Brooks’s term</a>—the newest incarnation of the technocratic elite which combined an aggressive meritocratic work ethic with an Aquarian style and hedonism. There would be no return to the 1950s in the 1980s. Jacksonian America, too, was to a certain extent, “aquarianized.” As <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hQ3BZVkVzR3VPR2M/edit" target="_blank">Brink Lindsey</a> writes:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Capitalism’s vigor was restored, and the radical assault on middle-class values was repulsed. But contrary to the hopes of the New Right’s traditionalist partisans, shoring up the institutions of mass affluence did not, and could not, bring back the old cultural certainties. Instead, a reinvigorated capitalism brought with it a blooming, buzzing economic and cultural ferment that bore scant resemblance to any nostalgic vision of the good old days. Here then was conservatism’s curious accomplishment: it made the world safe for the secular, hedonistic values of Aquarius.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">(Lindsey, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture</i> [<place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">New York</state></place>: Collins, 2007], <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-5-JeCa2Z7hQ3BZVkVzR3VPR2M/edit" target="_blank">p. 229.</a>)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">This raises a question which perplexed the Founding Fathers. Can those traditional American values which create abundance<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 12pt;">—</span>Jacksonian values, of hard work, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and a strong sense of national identity<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 12pt;">—</span>survive the very abundance they create? Does the American people’s pursuit of happiness sow the seeds of their destruction should happiness ever be found?</span><br />
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-24735507212592639032011-02-09T11:59:00.054-05:002017-08-01T10:45:39.965-04:00Straight Talk from Chris Christie on Public Sector Sacrifice<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EZBTvoJ5SHU/TVM8H08P8hI/AAAAAAAAASY/pEcgCIhz130/s1600/chris+christie+-+town+hall+meeting+jan+26+-+20110126MiddletownTH111.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" h5="true" height="353" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EZBTvoJ5SHU/TVM8H08P8hI/AAAAAAAAASY/pEcgCIhz130/s640/chris+christie+-+town+hall+meeting+jan+26+-+20110126MiddletownTH111.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">New Jersey Governor Chris Christie confronts defenders of the blue model at a Town Hall Meeting, January 26.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.redbankgreen.com/2011/01/christie-the-partys-over.html">“I am sorry I’m the guy who’s got to be here when the party’s over.”</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Below is a video from a <a href="http://www.app.com/article/20110203/NJNEWS/110128116/1002/NJSPORTS/Christie-keeps-town-hall-meetings-interesting-?odyssey=nav%7Chead">town hall meeting</a> held on January 26 by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie at VFW Post 2179 in <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Middletown</city>, <state w:st="on">NJ</state></place>. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Christie spoke about the need to cut public sector salaries and benefits to bring them in line with those in the private sector.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Governor Christie, more than most politicians, <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYjRlNDM0NmYtNzA4Zi00NGMyLWJlNTktYWIyN2FmYWI2OTE0&hl=en">understands just how serious</a> the crisis of the blue social model really is, and has spoken out on it without pulling any punches or sugar coating it for the public. He has tried to find workable policies to phase out the blue model in the public sector and bring it to as soft a landing as possible. Inevitably he has faced fierce opposition from the public sector employee unions and Democrats in the state legislature. Christie recently accused the legislature of <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704858404576134253653146990.html">paying lip service</a> to his proposals for rolling back public sector pensions and civil service reform but taking no action on them. “They've done nothing on this issue,” he said. “It is nothing but two-page press releases with bullet points. That’s not how you fix the big things in New Jersey.” Perhaps it does take a man of <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Christie’s considerable size and stature to overwhelm those who would defend the blue model to the death.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,47,0" height="412" id="flashObj" width="486"><param name="movie" value="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="flashVars" value="videoId=763052194001&playerID=51920168001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAACEcotwk~,gYcGnPAbE5DRD2F-d4EW6eHYmGU1d3p5&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" /><param name="base" value="http://admin.brightcove.com" /><param name="seamlesstabbing" value="false" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="swLiveConnect" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=763052194001&playerID=51920168001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAACEcotwk~,gYcGnPAbE5DRD2F-d4EW6eHYmGU1d3p5&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" swLiveConnect="true" allowScriptAccess="always" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed></object></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">At the January 26 town hall meeting, Christie took on the delicate issue of cutting pensions and health care benefits for the police force. <a href="http://www.app.com/article/20110203/NJNEWS/110128116/1002/NJSPORTS/Christie-keeps-town-hall-meetings-interesting-?odyssey=nav%7Chead">Summing up the dilemma</a> facing the blue states, Christie said “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Other politicians made you promises they couldn’t keep.” The governor then challenged the crowd, <a href="http://www.redbankgreen.com/2011/01/christie-the-partys-over.html">asking</a> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">“Why are you mad at me? Because I’m the one who’s telling you the truth. The numbers are the numbers. I’m trying to fix it. I am sorry I’m the guy who’s got to be here when the party’s over.” While Christie has had some heated confrontations with teachers and their union at previous town hall meetings, many of which are posted on YouTube, the governor now had to spell out the facts of economic life to <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">New Jersey</place></state>’s men and women in blue. When state corrections officer Sean Kelly, sounding more than a bit pissed off, asked how he was expected to pay for one-third of his health insurance premiums, the governor <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/video-christie-explains-police-officer-why-hell-have-pay-more-health-insurance_537449.html">responded</a> with typical Christie bluntness:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Kelly: With a 2% cap on a raise per year, how am I going to afford $8,000 to pay for medical benefits?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Christie: You’re not. You’re not gonna afford it. What’s gonna to happen is you’re gonna have to make choices among medical plans. And have more choices than just 3 choices which you have now, and only the Cadillac plan. You’re going to have to make choices, like everybody else is making choices in this economy. [...]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">A whole bunch of politicians who came before me on the local level and the state level made you promises that they couldn’t keep. And they knew they couldn’t keep them when they made them. So, I understand you being angry. But I suggest to you, respectfully, don’t be angry at the first guy who told you the truth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Not satisfied with Christie’s answer, Kelly went on: “I received a 2% increase in my salary 2 weeks ago, and my medical benefits started to come out. Do you know how much my check went up Sir? $4. How am I supposed to live with that?” Christie then elaborated on his previous points:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Here’s the difference. You’re getting a paycheck. And there are 9% of the people in the state of <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">New Jersey</place></state> who are not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">And if their property taxes continue to go up to continue pay for higher and higher salaries in the public sector, they’ll lose their homes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">And so, I have to tell you, I understand your frustration about not getting a higher raise. But you go around this room and talk to people who are in the private sector who haven't gotten raises for years, if they’ve been able to keep their job at all. This is the economic reality we live in now. I wish it was different, but it isn’t.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Christie went on to warn Kelly and the audience</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> “If the public sector unions continue to be resistant to wanting to be part of the exchange, they're going to lose jobs. They're losing them already.” In a dire forecast of things to come, <city w:st="on">Camden</city>, the city with <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">New Jersey</place></state>’s highest crime rate, laid off 45 percent of its police force in January, when city and police union officials were unable to agree on pension and benefit cuts. None of this impressed the thirty-nine-year-old Kelly, an eight-year veteran of the force, who left the meeting with the governor saying, “I appreciate his honesty. His proposals just don't fit into reality.”</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Governor Christie was telling Officer Kelly that this is the new reality. Public sector employees, including police officers, are going to have to work harder and produce more for less money, fewer benefits, and less job security, just as their private sector counterparts have been doing for the past thirty years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jacksonian populists, including Tea Party supporters, have called for extensive cuts in public sector spending to bring down state and federal debt. But while Jacksonians have no problems with teachers or bureaucratic paper pushers making sacrifices for the public good, they resist imposing austerity on policemen, firefighters, and emergency personnel. Jacksonians venerate police officers and firefighters as the domestic equivalent of the armed forces—men and women who put their lives on the line to protect the folk community. Those who made the ultimate sacrifice on 9/11 have already earned a place in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>’s pantheon of sacred heroes. Jacksonians make up the bulk of the state and municipal uniformed personnel, just as they do in the military. It will be a tough sell for Christie to convince the Jacksonian public that the police should sacrifice even more.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Since taking office last year, Chris Christie has been telling the people of <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">New Jersey</state></place> some hard truths that all Americans need to hear. <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> is indeed a land of affluence and abundance. But that abundance cannot be taken for granted. The creation wealth involves continual hard work, struggle, and effort; the work, struggle and effort of millions of Americans pursuing happiness in a free market and a free society. The government, Christie was reminding his audience, cannot guarantee your success in that pursuit. Nor can the government create wealth. It can only redistribute the wealth already created by individual Americans in the private sector. <a href="http://sweetness-light.com/archive/dean-it-is-govts-job-to-redistribute">Howard Dean</a>, staunch liberal progressive defender of the blue model, may argue that the government’s <span style="font-family: "georgia";"><em>raison d’être</em></span> is to redistribute wealth: that “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">the purpose of government is to make sure that capitalism works for everybody, not just for the people who can run roughshod as they often do in Washington by throwing<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 12pt;">—</span>and as the Chamber [of Commerce] has<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 12pt;">—</span>by throwing money around.” But in reality the government can’t ensure that capitalism works for everyone. No system or society devised by human beings can work equally well for all its members. In a free society there will be winners and losers, from billionaire plutocrats to minimum-wage burger flippers, and ideally with a large self-sufficient middle class in between. Government can only provide the structure of laws, policies, and institutions that enable individuals to pursue happiness and create wealth on their own in freedom and in security of life and property. Policemen like Sean Kelly make their contribution to society by providing that security.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Christie also reminded the audience that it is the wealth created in the private sector that funds the public sector. The struggling taxpayers of New Jersey and the forty-nine other states, can no longer bear the burden of funding a public sector that has grown too big and too dysfunctional; that demands too much from the taxpayers and returns too little. So let’s hope that Chris Christie becomes a model for other governors, who can work to find creative solutions to avert a disaster in public finance, and give the American people the well-functioning and responsive public sector they need and deserve.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan</span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-72286368205821023332011-01-18T22:46:00.164-05:002017-08-01T10:46:58.984-04:00“The fair nymphs of this isle are in wonderful tribulation”: A British Officer Celebrates Gang Rape on Staten Island in 1776<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TTuY-Z40ggI/AAAAAAAAARc/hQTr2tdPAfg/s1600/perspective+view+of+a+british+encampment+c+1777-1780++getimage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="433" s5="true" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TTuY-Z40ggI/AAAAAAAAARc/hQTr2tdPAfg/s640/perspective+view+of+a+british+encampment+c+1777-1780++getimage.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://dl.lib.brown.edu/catalog/catalog.php?PHPSESSID=de252d3b2b19d799603f1914f173aec3&verb=search&task=run&keywords1=perspective+view+of+an+encampment&operand1=AND&field1=ti_all&output=record"><em>A Perspective View of an Encampment for a British Regiment</em>, ca. 1777</a>. Note the presence of women in the camp.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">During the American Revolution, as in all wars past and present, women found themselves at risk of rape and gang rape by the occupying armies. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=zYkVSL_x0BAC&dq=francis+rawdon">Francis, Lord Rawdon</a> (1754-1826) was a twenty-two-year-old captain in the 5th Foot (infantry) Regiment under the command of <a href="http://usm.maine.edu/maps/web-document/3/3/sub-/hugh-percy-1742-1817-nobleman-and-cartographically-literate-soldier">General Hugh, Earl Percy</a>. A few weeks before the Battle of Long Island, he wrote a letter to his uncle, the Earl of Huntingdon, where he treated the gang rape of American women by British soldiers on Staten Island as a joke. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Rawdon made it seem that his life in the British army’s <place w:st="on">Staten Island</place> encampment had many of the <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=zYkVSL_x0BAC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=rawdon+fair+nymphs+of+this+isle&source=bl&ots=X2di6_E_xw&sig=R9N7Ji3dJIfk1nDROYVFZ279a7w&hl=en&ei=z-M1TfOFHsH7lwfM8KCcCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CDAQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=rawdon%20fair%20nymphs%20of%20this%20isle&f=false">same pleasures and amenities</a> as his uncle’s life back home.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Rawdon-Hastings,_1st_Marquess_of_Hastings">Francis, Lord Rawdon, </a>who would later become Earl of Moira (in 1793) and Marquess of Hastings (in 1816), was the scion of an old Anglo-Irish family that traced its roots back to the Norman Conquest in the eleventh century. He was born “with the proverbial sliver spoon in his mouth” at Moira in <placetype w:st="on">County</placetype> <placename w:st="on">Down</placename>, growing up there and in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Dublin</place></city>. Rawdon enjoyed a youth of wealth and privilege, immersed in the hedonistic culture of the eighteenth-century British aristocracy; a culture of drinking, gambling, ostentatious display, and sexual escapades that American revolutionaries would come to see as the epitome of corruption. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">Georgian England was notorious for its <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=wdOiNVveUoQC&dq=london%27s+sinful+secret&source=gbs_navlinks_s">sexual underworld,</a> and Rawdon was far from the most dissolute member of his class. That honor probably belonged to <a href="http://www.controverscial.com/Sir%20Francis%20Dashwood.htm">Sir Francis Dashwood,</a> a notorious libertine who founded the infamous <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Hellfire-Club-of-Sir-Francis-Dashwood">Hellfire Club</a> at Medmenham Abbey. Medmenham was the <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Playboy</placename> <placetype w:st="on">Mansion</placetype></place> of the eighteenth century, where Dashwood hosted parties devoted to binge drinking and sexual orgies; wine was served to the aristocratic worthies by a <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=U8NVt2ax7mgC&dq=freedom+just+around+the+corner&q=staff+of+nude+girls#v=snippet&q=staff%20of%20nude%20girls&f=false">staff of nude girls.</a> Even Benjamin Franklin paid the occasional visit to Medmenham. From 1762 to 1763, Dashwood served as Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer (imagine Hugh Hefner as secretary of the treasury), just as the conflict over colonial taxation was getting started. While Rawdon may not have gone to Medmenham, he did internalize this aristocratic ethic which looked upon non-aristocratic women, including colonial American women, as legitimate targets for sexual exploitation and conquest.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TTijQ0cZVKI/AAAAAAAAARU/BqidWtG9jhk/s1600/francis+lord+rawdon+%255Bof+fair+nymphs+fame%255D+-+nypl+digital+gallery+index+%255Bb+%2526+c+adjusted%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" s5="true" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TTijQ0cZVKI/AAAAAAAAARU/BqidWtG9jhk/s640/francis+lord+rawdon+%255Bof+fair+nymphs+fame%255D+-+nypl+digital+gallery+index+%255Bb+%2526+c+adjusted%255D.jpg" width="368" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=597123&imageID=1244285&word=Hastings%2C%20Francis%20Rawdon-Hastings%2C%20Marquess%20of%2C%201754-1826&s=3&notword=&d=&c=&f=2&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&total=11&num=0&imgs=20&pNum=&pos=2">Francis, Lord Rawdon</a>, as an officer during the American Revolution.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rawdon, following a traditional path for young noblemen, decided to make a career in the military. After an education at Harrow and Oxford, where he became friends with Banastre Tarleton, the future scourge of the Carolina backcountry, and going on The Grand Tour of Europe with his uncle, Rawdon bought a commission for ₤200 as an ensign in the 15th Foot Regiment. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">In 1773 he was promoted to lieutenant in the 5th Foot Regiment and in 1774 he was posted to the British occupying force in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Boston</place></city>. Rawdon got his first taste of action at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, where his bravery in taking command of his company after his captain was killed, earned him the praise of his superiors and a promotion to captain. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=kfAxAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA348&lpg=PA348&dq=lord+rawdon+has+this+day+stamped+his+fame+for+life&source=bl&ots=mLaGFq94Wx&sig=PuOJA3MV8C55Zh8afN3ER-AcG9g&hl=en&ei=4ldATfvyBoKr8Aas2viEBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=lord%20rawdon%20has%20this%20day%20stamped%20his%20fame%20for%20life&f=false">General John Burgoyne commented</a> that “Lord Rawdon has this day stamped his fame for life.” Rawdon was then taken under the wing of General Sir Henry Clinton, who made the young officer an aide-de-camp. Rawdon appreciated <city w:st="on"><a href="http://www.carolana.com/SC/Revolution/british_army_francis_rawdon.html">Clinton</a></city><a href="http://www.carolana.com/SC/Revolution/british_army_francis_rawdon.html">’s mentoring</a>, writing to his uncle that “<city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Clinton</place></city> gives me lessons on the art of war, and I am truly happy at receiving instructions from one whom I regard as a thorough master of his profession.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Other officers also marked Rawdon as a young man to watch. Captain William Glanville Evelyn of the 4th Foot <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">(“The King’s Own”) </span>Regiment, a thirty-four-year-old veteran of the Seven Years’ War who had fought at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, thought that <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/memoirlettersofc00eveluoft#page/82/mode/1up">cultivating Rawdon</a> could help his own career. Writing to his father in <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Ireland</country-region></place>, Evelyn said that “Lord Rawdon . . . is very much distinguished here as a most promising young man in the military line, and I am flattered to think I hold some place in his good opinion.” Evelyn urged his father, a clergyman, to use his acquaintance with Rawdon’s parents, Lord and Lady Moira, to put in a good word for him with their son. This was how the system of patronage operated in aristocratic eighteenth-century <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Britain</place></country-region>; the system that Americans were now fighting to cast off.</span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zTwxlshovio/TWMIP7Tse2I/AAAAAAAAATg/DAFVtUUN6QM/s1600/william+glanville+evelyn%252C+self-portrait+%255B2+cropped%255D+%25282+quick+fix%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" j6="true" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zTwxlshovio/TWMIP7Tse2I/AAAAAAAAATg/DAFVtUUN6QM/s400/william+glanville+evelyn%252C+self-portrait+%255B2+cropped%255D+%25282+quick+fix%2529.jpg" width="287" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/memoirlettersofc00eveluoft#page/n7/mode/2up">Captain William Glanville Evelyn</a>, friend of Rawdon.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Captain Evelyn was a model British career soldier—an officer and a gentleman with a strong sense of honor and duty. Yet after the devastating losses the British army suffered at <place w:st="on">Bunker Hill</place>, <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/memoirlettersofc00eveluoft#page/65/mode/1up">Evelyn concluded</a> that the Americans “are the most dangerous enemies we have to encounter,” and could not be trifled with. If the British government and people “mean to continue as masters of this country, they will lay aside that false humanity toward these wretches which has hitherto been so destructive to us.” In words that his friend Rawdon would later echo, Evelyn asserted that public opinion in Britain “must lay aside the notion that hurting America is ruining Great Britain, and they must permit us to restore to them the dominion of the country by laying it waste, and almost extirpating the present rebellious race, and upon no other terms will they ever possess it in peace.” To win the war, Britain had to be utterly ruthless with her rebellious colonists, much as she had been with Irish rebels in the <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMDY2YWIzNjAtOWU3Ny00Y2Y5LTg1OGItNjM5MWQ5NjMyNWY4&hl=en">sixteenth</a> and seventeenth centuries.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VGKMZgjjgRc/TV2WnBw6LsI/AAAAAAAAATQ/obh_uzXZ240/s1600/Views+of+the+Narrows+between+Long+Island+and+Staten+Island+with+British+Fleet+1776+-+Archibald+Robertson+-+Spencer+Collection+NYPL+Digital+Gallery+%255B3+b+%2526+c+adjusted%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="393" j6="true" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VGKMZgjjgRc/TV2WnBw6LsI/AAAAAAAAATQ/obh_uzXZ240/s640/Views+of+the+Narrows+between+Long+Island+and+Staten+Island+with+British+Fleet+1776+-+Archibald+Robertson+-+Spencer+Collection+NYPL+Digital+Gallery+%255B3+b+%2526+c+adjusted%255D.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><em><a href="http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=1916949&imageID=ps_spn_319&word=narrows&s=1&notword=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&total=160&num=40&imgs=20&pNum=&pos=42">A View of the Narrows between Long Island and Staten Island, with Our Fleet at Anchor and Lord Howe Coming In</a></em>. Drawing by Captain Lieutenant Archibald Robertson, Royal Engineers, 1776.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The British army and navy under the command of General Sir William Howe and Admiral Richard, Viscount Howe, assembled on Staten Island in the summer of 1776 in preparation for its assault on <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">New York City</place></city>. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">Rawdon believed it was one of the finest military forces ever to take the field, made up of “healthy and spirited” men itching to give the upstart rebels a drubbing. The Scots Highland regiments had their own score to settle with the rebels, whose privateers had captured some Highland troop transports on the high seas: “the rest are all arrived, and are so enraged against the Yankees for some insults offered to their captive comrades that I think the first corps of psalm-singers who come in the way of their broad swords will be in a very awkward situation.” Rawdon had no doubt that when his disciplined professional soldiers engaged the American amateurs in battle, “the consequence will be fatal to the rebels. An army composed as theirs is cannot bear the frown of adversity.” In a macabre bit of humor, Rawdon gleefully anticipated sending the severed heads of defeated rebels to his grandmother to adorn her chapel.</span></span> <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TTuhdz6OLhI/AAAAAAAAARk/wyWn1pqkXhE/s1600/View+of+the+Attack+against+Fort+Washington+and+Rebel+Redoubts+Nov+16%252C+1776+-+Thomas+Daives+%255B2+b+%2526+c+adjusted%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="449" s5="true" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TTuhdz6OLhI/AAAAAAAAARk/wyWn1pqkXhE/s640/View+of+the+Attack+against+Fort+Washington+and+Rebel+Redoubts+Nov+16%252C+1776+-+Thomas+Daives+%255B2+b+%2526+c+adjusted%255D.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><em><a href="http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=118263&imageID=54209&word=attack%20on%20fort%20washington&s=1&notword=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&total=2&num=0&imgs=20&pNum=&pos=2">A View of the Attack against Fort Washington, and Rebel Redoubts, near New York on the 16th of November, 1776</a></em>. Drawing by Captain Thomas Davies, Royal Artillery.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Rawdon’s contempt for the American forces his men were about to face turned out to be fully justified by the events of the late summer and autumn of 1776. The British campaign for New York became a string of unmitigated disasters for Washington’s Continental Army, culminating in the surrender of Fort Washington in upper Manhattan (today’s Washington Heights), and the confinement of 2,837 American <a href="http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2008/5/2008_5_54.shtml">prisoners of war</a> in <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Oreq1YztDcQC&dq=david+hackett+fischer+washington%27s+crossing&q=cruel+captivity+in+the+prison+hulks#v=snippet&q=cruel%20captivity%20in%20the%20prison%20hulks&f=false">hellish prison hulks</a> in New York Harbor. The limitations of an army of raw volunteers, committed to liberty but resistant to discipline, when confronting a professional army of order, were clearly revealed. George Washington would spend the rest of the Revolutionary War trying to turn his men into a disciplined force, <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">capable of fighting the British army and its Hessian mercenaries on something like equal terms, </span>while not sacrificing their commitment to liberty.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The fall of <place w:st="on"><placetype w:st="on">Fort</placetype> <placename w:st="on">Washington</placename></place> confirmed Rawdon’s low opinion of the Americans and their lack of martial prowess. Indeed he was convinced that the war was all but over. “You see my dear sir,” he explained to a friend back home, “that I have not been mistaken in my judgement of this people. The southern people will no more fight than the Yankees. The fact is that their army is broken all to pieces, and the spirits of their leaders and their abettors is also broken. However, I think one may venture to pronounce that it is <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">well nigh over with them</span>. All their strongholds are in the hands of his Majesty’s troops.” Rawdon would have had even more reason to gloat, had he known that <a href="http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=WasFi06.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=174&division=div1">George Washington himself,</a> “wearied almost to death with the retrograde Motions of things,” feared that the glorious cause was lost. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Captain William Glanville Evelyn, unlike his friend Rawdon, had come to respect the fighting prowess of the Americans, and their commitment to their cause of liberty. Evelyn also believed in the cause in which he was fighting, the cause of king and empire, and advocated doing whatever it took to win it. Yet regarding his own future, <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/memoirlettersofc00eveluoft#page/60/mode/1up">Evelyn admitted</a> that “I cannot be without uneasiness . . . at being subject to the chance of war.” Sadly, the fortunes of war would turn against Evelyn in the <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">New York</state></place> campaign. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=lyjjEsqlqo0C&dq=john+ferling+almost+a+miracle&q=nineteen+days+of+wracking+pain#v=snippet&q=nineteen%20days%20of%20wracking%20pain&f=false">He would die</a>, after nineteen days of excruciating pain, from wounds he received at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pell's_Point">Battle of Pell’s Point</a> in the <place w:st="on">Bronx</place>, in November 1776. Perhaps he died believing, as most of the British army believed, that victory was at hand and his sacrifice had not been in vain.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">(Francis, Lord Rawdon to Robert Auchmuty, November 25, 1776, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., <i>The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants</i> [New York: Harper & Row, 1967], p. 497.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Rawdon was an early <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Y8clK994H0QC&dq=william+dwyer+the+day+is+ours&q=what+a+calamity+war+is#v=snippet&q=what%20a%20calamity%20war%20is&f=false">advocate</a> of a policy of <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hZjFmOGU5ZmUtM2JiNi00NmI0LWFlMWEtMzFlZmIzM2YwODFj&hl=en">terrorism</a> by the British army<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">—<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Oreq1YztDcQC&dq=washington%27s+crossing&q=so+pillage+became+rape#v=snippet&q=so%20pillage%20became%20rape&f=false">plunder, pillage and rape</a>—</span>as psychological warfare against the civilian population of New York and New Jersey. On September 23, 1776, he wrote to his uncle: “We should (whenever we get further into the country) give free liberty to the soldiers to ravage at will, that these infatuated wretches may feel what a calamity war is.” These methods of spreading terror would be used to great effect by Banastre Tarleton in the South. Hessian Lieutenant <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=sKwFAAAAMAAJ&q=perpetrate+daily+the+grossest#v=snippet&q=perpetrate%20daily%20the%20grossest&f=false">Johann von Krafft</a>, observing the devastating results of Rawdon’s methods, wrote that “The English soldiers, especially those of Lord Rawdon’s Corps, perpetrate the grossest highway-robberies and even kill.” <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Krafft even witnessed Rawdon’s men turning on their own Hessian allies, a sign of tensions brewing between the British and Hessian soldiers that would undermine the British war effort. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">“One night” Krafft recorded in his journal, “some English soldiers attacked a Hessian Grenadier Sergeant with their bayonets, wounded him in many places, robbed him of everything and left him lying on the spot, where he soon after died. Innumerable like incidents occur, even in the day-time.” <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">And Krafft’s fellow Hessians were no slouches when it came to terrorism. On “a bitterly cold Sunday in December, 1776,” <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=JcAVAAAAYAAJ&dq=amanda+jones+a+psychic+autobiography&q=flaying+a+live+cow+for+meat#v=snippet&q=flaying%20a%20live%20cow%20for%20meat&f=false">John Mott</a>, a New Jersey Quaker, was forced to defend his family with fire tongs when drunken Hessian marauders broke down his door. Another time, Mott fired his weapon “with intent to kill, upon a Hessian soldier, who was flaying a live cow for meat, after a manner known to exist among his countrymen.” These incidents led Mott to join the Continental Army, receiving a lieutenant’s commission “from <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state>’s ‘own hand,’” and set about organizing a company of badly needed recruits.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">This is the context in which we should understand Rawdon’s attitude toward rape: assaulting and terrorizing women, using them for the soldiers’ pleasure, showing that their men could not protect them, would, Rawdon believed, break the civilian population’s will to resist. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=K1fUIvGHATcC&pg=PA202&dq=we+despise+these+poor+innocent+sufferers+in+this+brutal+crime&hl=en&ei=Ow1BTZDiJ4GB8ga46NzrBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CE4Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">Mary Beth Norton</a> has suggested that British soldiers, angry that the Continental Army’s escape from New York had prolonged the war, vented their frustration by raping American women. Rape of civilian women not only served the men’s sexual needs, it was also a useful weapon in Rawdon’s arsenal of war. Rawdon’s terrorist methods, however, sabotaged the stated objectives of General Howe and Admiral Howe, which were to pacify the colonies, maintain order, and grant amnesty to those Americans who took an oath of loyalty to the king. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">General Howe issued orders on several occasions <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=m60FAAAAMAAJ&dq=kemble+papers&q=plundering#v=snippet&q=plundering&f=false">prohibiting plundering</a> by soldiers on pain of execution. But Howe’s orders had little effect. As Colonel Stephen Kemble, Howe’s deputy adjutant general, admitted, “his Lordship will not be able to restrain the Troops from Plundering the Country.” </span>The Howe brothers preferred making peace and facilitating reconciliation to fighting a war. Instead, the wave of atrocities unleashed by Rawdon and like minded officers, pushed the people of New Jersey firmly into the Patriot camp.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TUONOZtlbnI/AAAAAAAAARw/p8sQhWMLKLk/s1600/british+grenadier+and+a+country+girl+c+1760+-+Seymour+Lucas+1890+%255B2+auto+correct%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" s5="true" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TUONOZtlbnI/AAAAAAAAARw/p8sQhWMLKLk/s400/british+grenadier+and+a+country+girl+c+1760+-+Seymour+Lucas+1890+%255B2+auto+correct%255D.jpg" width="314" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://dl.lib.brown.edu/catalog/catalog.php?verb=render&id=1168005484796875">British Grenadier and a Country Girl, c. 1760.</a> </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Rape, and the fear of rape, made the Revolutionary War a uniquely harrowing ordeal for American women. While men who bore arms had at least a chance of fighting back, women and girls were at the mercy of the advancing and retreating armies. This was especially true for lower- and middle-class women, including the wives and daughters of farmers and small property owners, who lacked high social standing. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=dcWDVCrPuWwC&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=rape+of+ladies+strictly+taboo&source=bl&ots=1AmG2Fwt1i&sig=JcB2qsFZQ0jbgzRoMKxQx--71WA&hl=en&ei=updlTY-JKoL_8Aa0ifnqBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=rape%20of%20ladies%20strictly%20taboo&f=false">Sexual assault on elite women</a> (“ladies”) was usually prohibited. </span>Like soldiers throughout history, Rawdon looked on women who lived under his army’s occupation as <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=uY4TWMfXsQwC&pg=PT41&dq=rawdon+fair+nymphs+of+this+isle&hl=en&ei=B9w1TauVHYGs8AbjkOmFCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=rawdon%20fair%20nymphs%20of%20this%20isle&f=false">spoils of war</a>. He crudely assumed that the <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">fresh faced American girls, despite protests to the contrary, enjoyed the unwanted attentions of lusty British soldiers</span>. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">“The fair nymphs of this isle are in wonderful tribulation,” Rawdon proclaimed, “as the fresh meat our men have got here has made them as riotous as satyrs.” Should a young woman innocently step into the bushes to pluck a rose, she ran “the most imminent risk of being ravished.” American women were “so little accustomed to these vigorous methods that they don’t bear them with the proper resignation.” In Rawdon’s view, American women were too provincial and unsophisticated to realize that they were spoils of war, and should be thankful for the erotic gifts that the British army was bestowing on them. One ungrateful American girl had the impudence to complain to Rawdon’s commander, Lord Percy, “of her being deflowered, as she said, by some grenadiers.” When Percy asked the young woman how she knew her attackers were grenadiers, since it was dark when the gang rape took place, she exclaimed, “Oh, good God, they could be nothing else, and if your Lordship will examine I am sure you will find it so.” At least one American girl earned Rawdon’s praise: she was sophisticated enough to enjoy being gang raped by seven soldiers, and to despise those girls who would complain about it. More likely this girl was terrified, but holding on to her dignity, she would not give Rawdon the satisfaction of seeing her vulnerable and humiliated. Almost as an aside, Rawdon noted that courts-martial were held every day in an attempt by the British army to rein in such activities and maintain discipline and the rule of law.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">No doubt <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Rawdon enjoyed having a laugh at the expense of women unable to defend themselves from sexual assault by his men. But</span> for the women who were the army’s victims, rape was no laughing matter. It was a source of shame and humiliation to be kept hidden from public view. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">In peacetime, and even more so in wartime, shame, and the sexual double standard which blamed the woman for her allowing herself to be raped, led many women to cover up their victimization. This was what <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=SpmAAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA14&dq=we+despise+these+poor+innocent+sufferers+in+this+brutal+crime&hl=en&ei=CyBBTcqqEcH38AbJ9Kz1AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=we%20despise%20these%20poor%20innocent%20sufferers%20in%20this%20brutal%20crime&f=false">Robert Lawrence</a> of <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Princeton</city>, <state w:st="on">New Jersey</state></place> believed. Lawrence, an <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Y8clK994H0QC&dq=the+day+is+ours&q=eighty-four-year-old#v=snippet&q=eighty-four-year-old&f=false">eighty-four-year-old</a> retired lawyer who wrote a first hand account of the devastation produced by Rawdon’s terrorist tactics in Princeton and its environs, found rape to be by far the worst atrocity perpetrated by the enemy:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">The Damages Done by these Plunderings and Desolations must amout very high and Occasion much Trouble to the Sufferers. Yet they are Vastly short of Another Horrid Outrage that I had not yet mentioned. I mean the Ravishing of Women (Which by a Great Defect in Human Nature that is against both Justice and Reason) We Despise these poor Innocent Sufferers in this Brutal Crime Even as long as they live. In time of Peace to avoid so miserable and lasting Reproach I am of the Opinien That many honest virtuous women have suffered in this Manner and kept it Secret for fear of making their lives misserable and so many of those Capital Crimes escape Punishment. In time of War When those Unnatural Miscreants are sure of Geting of with Impunity <i>they </i>commit them <i>the </i>more frequently.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Lawrence</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=SpmAAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA15&dq=pretended+to+a+young+woman+that+they+were+searching+for+rebels&hl=en&ei=YPI8Tai9EYiq8Abp37zpCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=pretended%20to%20a%20young%20woman%20that%20they%20were%20searching%20for%20rebels&f=false">related an incident</a> that he had direct knowledge of that took place in Penn’s Neck, two miles from <place w:st="on">Princeton</place>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Another Tretcherous Villany: There was two of Genl Hows light Horsemen Quartered at Pensneck, about two miles from Princetown, Who Pretended to a Young Woman That they was Searching for Rebels, and had been Informed that some of them were Secreeted in the Barn and desired her to go with them and Show them the most Secret Places there, and She (Knowing that no body was there) to convince them, Went to the Barn with them to show them that no body was there. And when they had got her there, one of them Laid hold on her Strangled her to Prevent her crying out while the other Villain Ravisht her, and when he had done, he Strangled her Again While the Other Brute Repeated the horrid crime Upon her again. She is a Farmers Daughter but her name, with her Fathers, must be kept Secreet to Avoid the Reproach above Mentioned.</span></div>
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<city w:st="on"><place w:st="on"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Lawrence</span></place></city><span style="font-family: "georgia";">’s anger and outrage at this atrocity and others comes through clearly in his narrative. Such behavior was the norm for European armies in wartime but was unprecedented in the experience of Americans. Even Indians, <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Lawrence</place></city> declared, were more civilized in these matters than British soldiers. “This is far Worse in this Respect then an Indian War for I Never heard nor read of their Ravishing of Women Notwithstanding their cruelty to their captives.” <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Indians might <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=smlMom9uQ4oC&dq=jane+mccrea&q=holding+the+bloody+scalp#v=snippet&q=holding%20the%20bloody%20scalp&f=false">scalp and murder</a> a white woman whom they took captive, like <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=w4c-AAAAYAAJ&dq=james+austin+holden+influence+of+death+of+jane+mccrea&q=one+of+the+chiefs+either+tomahawked#v=snippet&q=one%20of%20the%20chiefs%20either%20tomahawked&f=false">Jane McCrea</a>, or, as in the case of <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=UCUTAAAAYAAJ&q=it+was+my+happy+lot+to+be+accepted+for+adoption#v=snippet&q=it%20was%20my%20happy%20lot%20to%20be%20accepted%20for%20adoption&f=false">Mary Jemison</a>, they might adopt a female captive into their tribe and family. But, as <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Lawrence</place></city> pointed out, Indians did not generally inflict gratuitous rapes on their prisoners. </span><city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Lawrence</place></city> sadly concluded that the cruel realities of war would prevent these victimized women from ever receiving justice. “In the above mentioned case These Death deserveing men as well as many others that are guilty of the like Crimes Escape with Impunity as I before Observed.”</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">John Vanderlyn, <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Death_of_Jane_McCrea_John_Vanderlyn_1804.jpeg">The Death of Jane McCrea</a></em>. "I Never heard nor read of their Ravishing of Women."</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The incidents <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Lawrence</place></city> described were not unique. They were part of a larger pattern of sexual assault and terrorism perpetrated by the British army on women throughout <state w:st="on">New York</state> and <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">New Jersey</place></state>. Alexander McWhorter, a clergyman in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Newark</place></city>, documented a <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=HJA-AAAAYAAJ&q=three+women+were+most+horridly+ravished#v=snippet&q=three%20women%20were%20most%20horridly%20ravished&f=false">series of rapes </a>committed not only by common soldiers, but by officers too:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Three women were most horridly ravished by them, one of them an old woman near seventy years of age, whom they abused in a manner beyond description, another of them was a woman considerably advanced in her pregnancy, and the third was a young girl. Various others were assaulted by them, who, by the favorable interpositions of <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Providence</place></city>, were preserved, that they did not accomplish upon them their base designs. Yea, not only common soldiers, but officers, even British officers, four or five, sometimes more sometimes less in a gang, went about the town by night, entering into houses and openly inquiring for women.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">It’s unlikely that soldiers would attack an elderly woman, or a woman who was pregnant, for their sexual gratification. This was a display of power intended to impress upon the civilian population its helplessness in the face of <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Britain</place></country-region>’s men of war. The king’s soldiers and officers could attack and terrorize American women with impunity and neither their fathers, nor their husbands, nor General Washington and his ragtag army, could do anything to stop them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">If Rawdon thought that atrocities against the lives and property of civilians, and sexual terrorism, would break the will of Americans to fight for liberty, he was sadly mistaken. In fact the opposite happened. The end result of the British army’s encouragement of plunder, pillage, and rape was to strengthen the Patriot cause. When <state w:st="on">Washington</state> wanted to rally his men to defend <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Philadelphia</place></city> against General Howe’s invasion force, <a href="http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=WasFi09.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=168&division=div1">he reminded them</a> of the enemy’s abuse of their countrywomen: “Now then is the time for our most strenuous exertions. One bold stroke will free the land from rapine, devastations and burnings, and female innocence from brutal lust and violence.”</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Emanuel Leutze, <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_by_Emanuel_Leutze,_MMA-NYC,_1851.jpg">Washington Crossing the Delaware</a></em>. "One bold stroke will free the land from rapine, devastations and burnings, and female innocence from brutal lust and violence."</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><em><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOGY2OGEzOTItZTg2Ni00MDcwLTkwMjMtOTAwMjRlOTkxYTEx&hl=en_US">Francis, Lord Rawdon to Francis Hastings, tenth Earl of Huntingdon</a></em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: large;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOGY2OGEzOTItZTg2Ni00MDcwLTkwMjMtOTAwMjRlOTkxYTEx&hl=en_US">Staten Island, near <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">New York</place></state>, August 5, 1776</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">We are just arrived here, my dearest Lord, after a very pleasant passage. Your letter of April 4 met me as soon as I set foot on shore. The company my letter from <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Virginia</state></place> found you in is certainly the pleasantest in the world. Though I have neither a yellow damask drawing-room nor Constantia cape, I cultivate the acquaintance in a tent with <place w:st="on">Madeira</place>, and <i>after all</i> there is but little difference.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The fair nymphs of this isle are in wonderful tribulation, as the fresh meat our men have got here has made them as riotous as satyrs. A girl cannot step into the bushes to pluck a rose without running the most imminent risk of being ravished, and they are so little accustomed to these vigorous methods that they don’t bear them with the proper resignation, and of consequence we have most entertaining courts-martial every day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">To the southward they behaved much better in these cases, if I may judge from a woman who having been forced by seven of our men, [came] to make a complaint to me “not of their usage,” she said; “No, thank God, she despised that,” but of their having taken an old prayer book for which she had a particular affection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">A girl on this island made a complaint the other day to Lord Percy of her being deflowered, as she said, by some grenadiers. Lord Percy asked her how she knew them to be grenadiers, as it happened in the dark. “Oh, good God,” cried she, “they could be nothing else, and if your Lordship will examine I am sure you will find it so.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">All the English troops are encamped, or in cantonment, upon this island, as healthy and spirited a body of men as ever took the field. Several transports with Highlanders have been taken by the rebel privateers; the rest are all arrived, and are so enraged against the Yankees for some insults offered to their captive comrades that I think the first corps of psalm-singers who come in the way of their broad swords will be in a very awkward situation. Should my grandmother want any cherubins to adorn a new chapel, I dare say the Highlander would supply them with the heads of the elect for that purpose at a cheap rate; but my grandmother will probably change sides when she hears that the Hessians sing hymns as loud as the Yankees, though it must be owned they have not the godly twang through the nose which distinguishes the faithful.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Some of the Hessians are arrived and long much to have a brush with the rebels, of whom they have a most despicable opinion. They are good troops but in point of men nothing equal to ours.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Some of the Guards are arrived, but not yet landed. Everybody seems to have formed a most favourable opinion of them. The desire they have shown to come upon service has pleased the line exceedingly and it will be their own faults if they do not keep this tide of applause in their favour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I imagine that we shall very soon come to action, and I do not doubt but the consequence will be fatal to the rebels. An army composed as theirs is cannot bear the frown of adversity. General Carlton’s successes in <place w:st="on"><country-region w:st="on">Canada</country-region></place> have dispirited them exceedingly: their situation is critical, with his victorious army in their rear whilst they have such a force as ours in front. They have mustered all their troops to meet us and have entrenched themselves every where, but they will not be trifling obstacles that will stop a body of men so keen for service as ours are. I speak always with due submission to the goddess Nemesis, but I think she owes the Americans a <i>croc-en-jambe</i>, and when she pays it, I flatter myself she will do it effectually. Every measure, indeed, which can ensure success seems to have been taken on our side, and though I do not by any means deny the powerful influence of your deity, Fortune,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>upon all human affairs, I think there are certain precautions which have wonderful efficacy in deciding the event of every undertaking.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I am still with General Clinton. . . .</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Source: Great Britain Historical Manuscripts Commission, <em>Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Reginald Rawdon Hastings</em>, Francis Bickley, ed., Vol. 3 (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1934), <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOGY2OGEzOTItZTg2Ni00MDcwLTkwMjMtOTAwMjRlOTkxYTEx&hl=en_US">pp. 179-180</a>; Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., <i>The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants</i> (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 423-425.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Image sources (numbered from top): 1 & 6, Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Brown</placename> <placetype w:st="on">University</placetype> <placename w:st="on">Library</placename> <placetype w:st="on">Center</placetype></place> for Digital Initiatives; 2, 4, & 5, New York Public Library Digital Gallery; 3, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Memoir and Letters of Captain W. Glanville Evelyn, of the 4th Regiment (“King’s Own,”) from <place w:st="on">North America</place>, 1774-1776</i>, G. D. Scull, ed., frontpiece, Internet Archive; 7 & 8, Wikimedia Commons.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Revisions: February 19, 2011</span></b></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-27544742003138829922011-01-16T17:20:00.069-05:002017-08-01T10:48:23.817-04:00President Obama Rises to the Occasion in Tucson<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TTTlFX5omYI/AAAAAAAAARE/3ZamFdU9Ij4/s1600/obama+tucson+memorial+service+-+OBAMA-TUCSON.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="420" n4="true" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TTTlFX5omYI/AAAAAAAAARE/3ZamFdU9Ij4/s640/obama+tucson+memorial+service+-+OBAMA-TUCSON.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">President Obama addresses the Together We Thrive Memorial Service in Tucson, Wednesday January 12, 2011.</span></td></tr>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/12/remarks-president-barack-obama-memorial-service-victims-shooting-tucson">“Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, ‘When I looked for light, then came darkness.’ Bad things happen, and we have to guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.”</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Kudos to President Obama for delivering the speech the nation needed to hear at the Together We Thrive Memorial Service for the victims of Jared Loughner in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Tucson</place></city> this past Wednesday. The speech, which <a href="http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/obama-in-arizona/">Ross Douthat</a> rightly calls the best of his presidency, was praised by liberals and <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/01/obama_tucson_speech_reactions.html">conservatives</a> alike (aside from <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_011311/content/01125106.guest.html">Rush Limbaugh</a>). With this speech, the president fulfilled his most important ceremonial function as the embodiment and voice of the nation. Here is the video and the <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/12/remarks-president-barack-obama-memorial-service-victims-shooting-tucson">transcript</a> of the speech.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">In <city w:st="on">Tucson</city>, the president spoke as the leader of all the people of the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">United States</place></country-region>, not just of the Democratic Party or his liberal progressive base. In parliamentary democracies, such as Great Britain, the mythic ceremonial position of head of state and the pragmatic political position of head of government are separated: the prime minister serves as the partisan head of government, pushing to implement his party’s policies, while the queen performs the ceremonial role of head of state, the symbol and voice for the entire nation. The President of the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">United States</place></country-region>, in contrast, combines both these roles in his office. He is both leader of his party and the high priest and symbolic focal point of the nation’s civil religion of American exceptionalism. The president has to find the balance between championing the liberal or conservative agenda and giving voice to the highest hopes and aspirations of the nation. Few presidents have been able to really pull this off. In the modern era, FDR and Ronald Reagan were by far the most successful. Both men were great communicators who knew how to touch the souls of their countrymen, always evoking in plain language and vivid imagery, why <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> is an exceptional nation, while governing as fierce champions of their respective partisan agendas.</span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Until now President Obama has largely failed in the mythic ceremonial duties of the presidency. Many Americans, not only liberal progressives, cast their votes for Barack Obama in 2008 because he spoke as if he could heal the wounds the nation had suffered since 9/11. In his <a href="http://www.barackobama.com/2004/07/27/keynote_address_at_the_2004_de.php">keynote speech</a> at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama spoke of transcending <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>’s divisions, political and otherwise, and moving forward as one people.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">’</span>s not a liberal <country-region w:st="on">America</country-region> and a conservative <country-region w:st="on">America</country-region> - there<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">’</span>s the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">United States of America</place></country-region>. There<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">’</span>s not a black <country-region w:st="on">America</country-region> and white <country-region w:st="on">America</country-region> and Latino <country-region w:st="on">America</country-region> and Asian America; there<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">’</span>s the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">United States of America</place></country-region>. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into <placename w:st="on">Red</placename> <placetype w:st="on">States</placetype> and <placename w:st="on">Blue</placename> <placetype w:st="on">States</placetype>; <placename w:st="on">Red</placename> <placetype w:st="on">States</placetype> for Republicans, <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Blue</placename> <placetype w:st="on">States</placetype></place> for Democrats. But I<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">’</span>ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">’</span>t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Iraq</place></country-region> and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">United States of America</place></country-region>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is an eloquent statement of American exceptionalism. This was the Barack Obama many Americans believed could turn hope and change into a reality. But it was not to be. As president, Obama has not lived up to the promise of his rhetoric. He governed from day one as a hard partisan of the liberal left, unable to rise above partisanship to embrace his mythic ceremonial role as the voice of the nation. Granted this is much harder to do given the omnipresent media frenzy of the twenty-first century. To make matters worse, Obama, unlike FDR, feels no connection to Jacksonian America and its traditional populist culture of honor and nationalism, which provides much of the mythopoetic grammar and imagery for the president<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">’s sacred and symbolic function.</span> Ronald Reagan, who was very much a product of Jacksonian America, had the advantage here. Reagan was able to act as a partisan of the conservative agenda and rise above it at the same time. Reagan successfully served as the symbolic voice of the nation and high priest of American exceptionalism, despite a media onslaught from the left every bit as vicious as the onslaught Obama has had to face from the right. And though Reagan didn’t have talk radio, Fox News, and the conservative blogs to support him, he went above the heads of his political and media opponents to appeal directly to the American people. Reagan gave voice to the highest aspirations of the nation, painted a vision of morning in America, while also working to enact conservative policies. Here Obama has fallen short.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">On Wednesday, the nation finally got to see the Barack Obama it had been waiting for; the president acting as high priest of Americanism finally emerged. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Speaking of Gabrielle Giffords, Christina Taylor Green, and the other victims of Jared Lee Loughner’s madness, and those who risked or sacrificed their lives to help them, Obama touched on classic Jacksonian themes of honor.</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, all around us, just waiting to be summoned—as it was on Saturday morning. Their actions, their selflessness poses a challenge to each of us. It raises a question of what, beyond prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward. How can we honor the fallen? How can we be true to their memory?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">I found Barack Obama’s speech to be broadly complementary to Sarah Palin’s message released earlier the same day, which I discussed in the <a href="http://newjacksonianblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/mama-grizzly-strikes-back.html">previous post.</a> The president expressed many of the same themes of finding strength and meaning in tragedy that Mrs. Palin did. And he put some distance between himself and those on the left who were maliciously using the tragedy to libel their political opponents. “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized—at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do—it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.” The president went on to add that we need not be defined by our political differences: “And I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">That’s all true as far as it goes. But it should not obscure the other truth that for all that does unite us, Americans are also a divided people, and always have been. We’re divided along lines of class, culture, ideology, religion, economics and a whole range of interest-group issues. In 1776, Americans were divided into Patriots, <a href="http://www.hnn.us/articles/134163.html">Loyalists,</a> and fence sitters, who then fought a bloody communal war for eight long years. In 1783, the victorious Patriots drove the defeated <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hODMxOTAyY2UtZWMzNi00ODUzLTkzMWQtZDVmMTYzNTRhY2Vj&hl=en">Loyalists</a> into <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hMDY2ZGIzNzgtNTQ0OS00MWUyLWE3ZjMtNjZkZTg5M2Q2YzMw&hl=en">exile,</a> while the fence sitters claimed to have been Patriots all along. Ever since the Revolution, American politics has been a vicious blood sport; it is the arena in which the conflicting views of what the nation should be are fought out, and in time, when a consensus is reached (on some issues), policies are devised and laws are passed. Our many interest groups also serve to check and balance each other, as James Madison anticipated in <a href="http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=8">Federalist No. 10.</a> The most important division in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> today is the social, cultural and ideological divide between the liberal, progressive, secular, elite, cosmopolitan, “blue social model” America of Barack Obama, which traces its lineage, through the Wilsonian tradition, back to <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/01/24/the-birth-of-the-blues/">Puritan New England</a> (and Puritan Old England); and the conservative, traditional, religious, populist, nationalist, Jacksonian America of Sarah Palin, which traces its origins back to the Scots-Irish culture of the frontier, and beyond that to the Ulster Plantation and the Anglo-Scottish Borders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">This chasm between progressive <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> and Jacksonian America, as <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703791904576076373704758778.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion#printMode">Dan Henninger</a> pointed out, “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">goes back a long way, it is deep, and it will never be bridged.” <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/beyond-tea-party">Lee Harris</a> adds that </span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">“the real split in the American psyche . . . is essentially a cultural divide. On the one side are those Americans for whom nothing can be more sacred than honor, patriotism, and God, and who get goose-bumps at the very mention of these words. On the other side are those who instinctively cringe at what they regard as the shameless display of such manipulative emotionalism.” Americans disagree sharply over the meanings of patriotism, religion, and traditional moral values in American life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Just as important, as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/opinion/14krugman.html?src=me&ref=general">Paul Krugman</a> argues, is a fundamental disagreement between liberals and conservatives over the proper role of government in American life. “Today’s G.O.P. sees much of what the modern federal government does as illegitimate; today’s Democratic Party does not.” <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/not-angry-enough/8340/#">James Bennet</a> adds that “The party of <place w:st="on">Roosevelt</place> believes government can and should be a force for good. The party of Reagan thinks that, apart from national defense, government mostly gets in the way.” </span>Liberal progressives believe that the welfare state—the blue model—manifests society’s moral obligation to compel the successful to pay for a safety net for those who are struggling. Jacksonian conservatives believe that such an obligation is an unwarranted assault on their liberty<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">—that is if it’s a safety net for the undeserving poor. Jacksonians do, however, believe in a safety net for the working and middle classes who’ve worked hard, played by the rules, and have been productive. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=diN-wxjnaAsC&dq=walter+russell+mead+special+providence&q=taking+jacksonian+money+and+giving+it+to+others#v=snippet&q=taking%20jacksonian%20money%20and%20giving%20it%20to%20others&f=false">Walter Russell Mead</a> writes that throughout American history, “Jacksonians . . . were less concerned that the government was spending money than that it was taking Jacksonian money and giving it to others.” Jacksonians are opposed to government programs set up to redistribute wealth. But, as <a href="http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/after-the-wave">Henry Olsen</a> put it, “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">They value programs that can protect them against losing everything they have, and also those that can help their children achieve more than they ever had.”</span> Krugman, in an unusual display of wisdom, advises that “the real challenge we face is not how to resolve our differences—something that won’t happen any time soon—but how to keep the expression of those differences within bounds.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">This is what President Obama was telling the nation in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Tucson</place></city>. The president helped bring us together in mourning over the victims of a terrible tragedy. He articulated some of the noblest aspirations of the American people. He reminded us that <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> is a great nation; great enough to withstand a madman’s lethal outburst with its core values of decency and morality intact. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">The president also had another objective. Like Bill Clinton after the <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Oklahoma City</place></city> bombing in 1995, Obama, by bringing the nation together in mourning, hoped to <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/01/rethinking-obamas-political-performance-tucson">revive his political fortunes</a> in time for the next election. Since the Democratic Party’s “shellacking” in the November midterm elections, Obama has made some moves toward the center, much to the chagrin of the liberal progressive base. <a href="http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/the-orphaned-left/">Dick Morris,</a> the master triangulator himself, believes that Obama’s Tucson speech, more than anything else, signals a genuine shift by his administration to the center. The president, to save himself, appears willing to throw the now orphaned left under the bus. If Obama can triangulate in 2011 as <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Clinton did</place></city> in 1995, find some common ground with Republicans in Congress, and reclaim the president’s mantle as the symbolic embodiment of the nation, he may well ensure his re-election in 2012.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">I have not been a supporter of Barack Obama in his political role as head of government. I don’t like his policies and the direction in which he has been trying to take this nation—toward a European-style social democracy. In this I believe he must be opposed. But I can support him in his mythic ceremonial role as head of state and voice of the nation. I find Obama Derangement Syndrome just as repugnant as Bush Derangement Syndrome or Palin Derangement Syndrome. So </span>I sincerely hope Obama’s call for more civility in our political discourse is not a call for <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_011711/content/01125111.guest.html">censorship;</a> a veiled attempt to <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_011311/content/01125108.guest.html">silence </a>those voices—conservative voices—that are determined to block the liberal progressive agenda. I prefer to believe that the president’s words at the <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Tucson</place></city> memorial service were genuine and sincere.</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">We should be civil because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American Dream to future generations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Final revisions: February 19, 2011.</span></b></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-66276623018186908392011-01-12T19:27:00.051-05:002017-08-01T10:50:37.685-04:00Mama Grizzly Strikes Back<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/americas-enduring-strength/487510653434">“Our exceptional nation, so vibrant with ideas and the passionate exchange and debate of ideas, is a light to the rest of the world. Congresswoman Giffords and her constituents were exercising their right to exchange ideas that day, to celebrate our Republic’s core values and peacefully assemble to petition our government. It’s inexcusable and incomprehensible why a single evil man took the lives of peaceful citizens that day.”</a></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Having kept her silence for several days, Sarah Palin has finally responded to the outrageous charges made by many voices on the left, that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">she</i> is responsible for the tragedy in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Tucson</place></city>. Presented by Palin as an address to the nation, it was an eloquent assertion of American exceptionalism, the values and wisdom of the American people, and the strength of the democratic process. In contrast to the petty vindictiveness and over the top hysteria of her critics, Palin comes across as a stateswoman, a worthy heir to Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan. Here is the video she posted on Facebook, where you can also find the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/americas-enduring-strength/487510653434">text</a> of her statement.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">While most of her statement celebrated <country-region w:st="on">America</country-region>’s enduring values and expressed sorrow and condolences for the victims and their families, Palin reserved her harshest words for those who used the <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Tucson</place></city> massacre as a pretext to demonize their political opponents. “After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event.” Partisan rhetoric can become quite heated during an election campaign. That’s the way it’s always been in American politics, going all the way back to George Washington’s second administration. One might not like the outcome of an election, “But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The liberal pundits who’ve led the charge against Palin, and Jacksonian conservatives in general, are too numerous keep count of. There’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss">Paul Krugman</a> of course, and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/09/us-shooting-republicans-giffords-loughner">Michael Tomasky</a> of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Democracy Journal</i> in the <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">UK</place></country-region> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardian</i>. <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/01/09/2011-01-09_palin_put_a_target_on_her_she_should_have_known_the_dangers.html">Michael Daly</a> in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Daily News</i> declared that “Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ blood is on Sarah Palin’s hands,” because of a Palin-sponsored campaign ad that used a crosshairs image to target Gifford’s district. But I’m particularly disappointed in Andrew Sullivan, whose work I’ve always enjoyed and admired. In the aftermath of 9/11, he wrote a <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOGJlYTE4YTItOTBkNi00Zjc0LThlNjAtZmExODliODJjZjY0&hl=en">brilliant essay</a> on why the war on terror is really a religious war. Tragically, he has now descended into the wilder realms of Palin Derangement Syndrome. Sullivan was especially outraged at Palin’s use of the term “blood libel.” In overheated language, <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/palins-test.html">Sullivan accuses Palin</a> of “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">equating critics of extreme rhetoric of being the equivalent of Nazis or medieval anti-Semites.” </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">He goes on: “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">We know this much right now: Palin does not possess the self-awareness, responsibility or composure to respond to crises like this with grace. This message<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 12pt;">—</span>even at a time of national crisis<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 12pt;">—</span>was a base-rousing rallying cry, perpetuating her own victimhood and alleged bloodthirstiness of her opponents.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">This was not what Sarah Palin was doing. She was standing up for the honor of all Jacksonian conservatives, as well as her own, by not letting the outrageous accusations of Sullivan et al., go unanswered. She was standing up for Gabrielle Giffords, Christina Taylor Green, and the other victims of Jared Lee Loughner by not letting them become pawns in an ideological vendetta. She was ensuring that responsibility for this crime would not be diverted from where it belonged: with the deranged psychopath, Jared Lee Loughner, who needed no political incitement to commit his dastardly deeds. She was standing up for the honor of the American people and <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>’s exceptional culture and institutions of liberty.</span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Yet Sullivan’s own claims to righteousness ring false. </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Much of his recent commentary has been devoted to the demonization of Sarah Palin, and indeed of all Jacksonian conservatives as purveyors of hatred, xenophobia, and violence. If that’s not a blood libel, I don’t know what is. <span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Alan Dershowitz is no conservative and certainly not a political supporter of Sarah Palin. But he does know something about Jewish history. In a statement <a href="http://biggovernment.com/publius/2011/01/12/exclusive-alan-dershowitz-defends-sarah-palins-use-of-term-blood-libel/">Dershowitz</a> defended Palin’s use of the word “blood libel.” Though the blood libel originated as a false accusation against the Jewish people, the concept has taken on a broader meaning. “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim.” I’m sure Dershowitz’s clarification will not change Andrew Sullivan’s mind, or those of other liberal progressive pundits, as to Palin’s culpability in these tragic events.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703791904576076373704758778.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion#printMode">Daniel Henninger,</a> writing in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wall Street Journal</i>, finds a core assumption of the liberal progressive worldview in these attempts to link the <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Tucson</place></city> massacre to conservatives, the Tea Party, and Sarah Palin. For progressives, they are all part of the same dark reactionary force that seeks to return <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> to its racist, sexist, homophobic, violence filled past. “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The divide between this strain of the American left and its conservative opponents is about more than politics and policy. It goes back a long way, it is deep, and it will never be bridged. It is cultural, and it explains more than anything the ‘intensity’ that exists now between these two competing camps.” Henninger traces the source of this progressive narrative to historian <a href="http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html#_ftn1">Richard Hofsatdter’s</a> classic 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” </span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Jacksonian conservatives in this reading are not just mistaken in their politics and policy prescriptions; they are products of a psychological disorder. “</span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">By this mental geography,” Henninger observes, “the John Birch Society and the tea party are cut from the same backwoods cloth.” This is the lens through which Andrew Sullivan, Paul Krugman, et al. look at Jacksonian America. And what they see is their worst nightmare of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">boobus americanus</i> run amok.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Let’s not kid ourselves. Nothing Palin could have said—except perhaps a confession that she instructed Jared Lee Loughner to pick up his gun and shoot—would have satisfied Sullivan or any critics of the liberal progressive persuasion. For these critics, Jacksonian conservative politics are by definition illegitimate, a product of Hofstadter’s paranoid style. Any articulation of Jacksonian ideas and perspectives is thus hate speech and incitement to violence. For ultimately what liberal progressive elites object to most is the persistence of Jacksonian America and its traditional values of rugged individualism, God, flag, honor, and country. Sarah Palin, as the public figure who currently embodies Jacksonian America, will always drive progressive pundits into paroxysms of rage. <a href="http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/the-perils-of-palin/">Dick Morris</a> believes that Palin would have been better served by simply condemning the killings and denouncing violence in our society, while not responding directly to her critics attacks. By letting herself become an anti-liberal battering ram, Palin is coming down to her critics’ level. Like President Obama, Governor Palin, as a stateswoman, needs to stay above the worst of mudslinging and let her allies and supporters in the conservative media do her fighting for her. Morris does have a point. But still there are times, and I believe this was one of them, when the level of the accusations hurled against her are so toxic and so malicious, that Palin herself has to personally refute them.</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Though they are on opposite sides of the political aisle, Sarah Palin and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords have much in common. Giffords’s district in <state w:st="on">Arizona</state> has a rich Jacksonian frontier heritage, much like Palin’s <state w:st="on">Alaska</state>; it includes <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Tombstone</place></city> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral">O.K. Corral</a> where the <a href="http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/earp/earphome.html">famous 1881 gunfight</a> took place. Giffords herself is a “Blue Dog” Jacksonian Democrat. Before entering politics she was a small business owner and she is a strong supporter of Second Amendment gun rights. Even though she opposed <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Arizona</place></state>’s controversial anti-illegal immigration law, Giffords has stood up against the Justice Department’s attempts to interfere in her state’s affairs. Both Palin and Giffords are married to very Jacksonian men who appreciate strong women: Todd Palin, the “first dude” of <state w:st="on">Alaska</state>, and Mark Kelly, an astronaut, a “top gun” graduate of the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point on my native <place w:st="on">Long Island</place>, who is scheduled to command the final space shuttle mission. As I’ve learned more about Gabrielle Giffords in the aftermath of this tragedy, I’ve come to admire her greatly. I sincerely hope and pray that she beats the odds and recovers fully from her injuries and resumes her place in Congress.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://donaldhtaylorjr.blogspot.com/2011/01/politics-of-illegitimacy.html">Donald Taylor,</a> a professor of public policy at <placename w:st="on">Duke</placename> <placetype w:st="on">University</placetype>, and a liberal, believes that the <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Tucson</place></city> tragedy makes it imperative for both sides to stop the politics of demonization.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">I think the essence of the progressive/liberal hubris is that we think we are smarter than everyone else. Instead of listening, and then trying to be persuasive and make the case, we are tempted to construct a defense mechanism that says that if you don<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">’</span>t quickly adopt my view it is just because you don’t understand. If only the country was filled with those as smart as me. . . .</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">I think the essence of the conservative hubris is the belief that conservatives are more moral/noble/patriotic than others. They are tempted to write off those who disagree with them as being unworthy of <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region> because they think we don<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">’</span>t love it enough. If only the country was filled with those as good as me. . . .</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">At their heart, both sources of hubris say that people with different views are illegitimate in one way or another. Someone who is illegitimate is not worth talking to, respecting, listening to, understanding, or even debating reasonably. Certainly not worthy of compromising with to solve the huge problems facing our nation.</span></blockquote>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">But those of us who value civil discourse, who can engage in political and ideological combat without demonizing our opponents, still recognizing them as human beings and Americans, can take heart from Sarah Palin’s message:</span><br />
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<country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">America</span></place></country-region><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;"> must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week. We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy. We will come out of this stronger and more united in our desire to peacefully engage in the great debates of our time, to respectfully embrace our differences in a positive manner, and to unite in the knowledge that, though our ideas may be different, we must all strive for a better future for our country. May God bless <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">America</place></country-region>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">© 2011 Michael Kaplan</span><br />
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973777219773432971.post-32808308585790088352011-01-02T21:34:00.204-05:002017-08-01T10:51:58.750-04:00A Votary to Love: George Washington on the Affairs of the Heart<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by Michael Kaplan</span> <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TSD6bPXrd3I/AAAAAAAAAQk/EeSkzI3VDcg/s1600/The+Washington+Family+-+Edward+Savage%252C+1789-96+%255B2+b+%2526c+adjusted%255D+-+Washington%252527s_family.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="467" n4="true" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TSD6bPXrd3I/AAAAAAAAAQk/EeSkzI3VDcg/s640/The+Washington+Family+-+Edward+Savage%252C+1789-96+%255B2+b+%2526c+adjusted%255D+-+Washington%252527s_family.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Pater Patriae as Paterfamilias.<em> The Washington Family</em>. Edward Savage, ca. 1789-1796.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=WasFi02.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=186&division=div1">Tis true, I profess myself a Votary to Love—I acknowledge that a Lady is in the Case—and further I confess, that this Lady is known to you.—Yes Madam, as well as she is to one, who is too sensible of her Charms to deny the Power, whose Influence he feels and must ever Submit to.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=WasFi02.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=186&division=div1">—George Washington to Sally Fairfax, September 12, 1758</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The Father of the Country a votary to love? Who would have thought it! This is George Washington we’re talking about, the man who defined <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gravitas</i>. More a monument than a flesh and blood man, Washington exercised such ironclad discipline and self-control that he never betrayed a hint of emotion in public. To imagine <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> as anything other than formal and correct was just not possible. In 1858 <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=v20RAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA43&dq=hawthorne+washington+made+a+stately+bow&hl=en&ei=VSohTeONH4us8Abw-pXsBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false">Nathaniel Hawthorne,</a> incredulous at the thought of sculptor Hiram Powers portraying <state w:st="on">Washington</state> the nude, exclaimed: “What would he do with <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state>, the most decorous and respectable personage that ever went ceremoniously through the realities of life? Did anybody ever see <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> nude? It is inconceivable. He had no nakedness, but I imagine he was born with his clothes on, and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">In truth <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> was a volatile and passionate man, especially in his youth. As he matured and worked his way up through the hierarchical society of Virginia’s planter elite, Washington learned to keep his passions in check and his words few and to the point. Yet as his <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYTZlODhlNjgtZmY5NS00OWI3LWE3OGYtOWFkOThmN2ZlZjBj&hl=en">cryptic correspondence</a> with Sally Fairfax reveals, beneath the façade of Cincinnatus the <a href="http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/web/20090908-George-Washington-Love-Letter-Martha-Dandridge-Custis-Sally-Fairfax-Virginia-Mount-Vernon-Fort-Belvoir-High-Society.shtml">flames of passion</a> burned.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.virginialiving.com/articles/the-lady-of-belvoir/">Sarah “Sally” Cary Fairfax</a> (1730-1811) </span>was something like the Kim Kardashian of her day: <a href="http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2009/01/sally-cary-fairfax.html">a grande belle</a> (a rich party girl we would now say) who, with her posse of three younger sisters, stood at the center of high society in colonial <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Williamsburg</place></city>. But of course this must be understood in an eighteenth-century context of elegance, sophistication, and restraint, rather than in the context of twenty-first-century vulgarity and hedonism. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Actually, this overstates the contrast. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Male</i> Virginians, both of the planter elite and the lower sorts, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Wnc3V5m9kqgC&dq=ron+chernow+washington&q=licentious+culture#v=snippet&q=licentious%20culture&f=false">participated in a culture</a> of drinking, <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hYjAxMGEzNzktMDcwYi00OWI1LWJiZTktOWQ0ZDk4ZGYzZTMz&hl=en">gambling,</a> parties, and whoring that could be as licentious as anything in the celebrity culture of the twenty-first century. <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> was exceptional in his rejection of the hedonistic values of his society. Elite women, though, were excluded from the raunchier side of life in colonial <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Virginia</state></place>. They took part only in the more elegant and sophisticated of social events. The sexual double standard held firm for the Virginia elite. This is important for understanding why the relationship between Sally Cary Fairfax and George Washington never went beyond unrequited sexual and romantic tension.</span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">The <city w:st="on">Cary</city> sisters were the daughters of Colonel Wilson Cary (1703-1772), a leader of the House of Burgesses (colonial Virginia’s representative assembly) and one of the wealthiest planters in <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Virginia</state></place>. Sally grew up in luxury at the <city w:st="on">Cary</city> estate, Ceelys, on the James River near <city w:st="on">Newport News</city>, and in the <city w:st="on">Cary</city> townhouse in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Williamsburg</place></city>. The Carys, who ranked among the First Families of Virginia, were also a junior branch of the British aristocracy; Colonel Cary <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=0rAEAAAAYAAJ&dq=wilson+cary+sally+cary&q=cary+wears+the+same+coat+of+arms#v=snippet&q=cary%20wears%20the%20same%20coat%20of%20arms&f=false">bore the same coat of arms</a> as Lord Hunsden in <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">England</place></country-region>. The <city w:st="on">Fairfax</city> family of northern <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Virginia</state></place>, into which Sally would marry, was likewise connected to the British peerage. One of Sally’s more illustrious relatives in British history was Sir Robert Cary, Earl of Monmouth and cousin of Queen Elizabeth, who won fame as Lord Warden of the <state w:st="on">Marches</state> on the border between <country-region w:st="on">England</country-region> and <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Scotland</place></country-region> in the 1590s. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=lU8LAAAAYAAJ&dq=memoirs+of+robert+cary+g+h+powell&source=gbs_navlinks_s">Sir Robert wrote a memoir</a> describing his efforts to suppress the infamous <a href="http://www.borderreivers.co.uk/">Border Reivers</a> who kept the Borders in a <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=PMrllzFVCokC&dq=the+steel+bonnets&q=in+the+%27nineties+border+history#v=snippet&q=in%20the%20'nineties%20border%20history&f=false">constant state of violence.</a> The clannish and turbulent culture of the Anglo-Scottish Borders would be transplanted to Northern Ireland in the seventeenth century and</span></span></div>
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to the American backcountry in the eighteenth century, where it would take shape as Jacksonian America.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TSLKl_vGqtI/AAAAAAAAAQo/RAEkje7zJqs/s1600/sally+fairfax+-+Sally_Fairfax.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" n4="true" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TSLKl_vGqtI/AAAAAAAAAQo/RAEkje7zJqs/s400/sally+fairfax+-+Sally_Fairfax.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Sally Cary Fairfax, around the time she met George Washington.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">But the Anglo-Scottish Borders, and even the <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Virginia</place></state> backcountry, were far away from Sally Cary’s world. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Sally was afforded all the advantages that her wealth and social station could provide. Colonel Cary, who owned one of <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Virginia</place></state>’s largest libraries, made sure that all four of his daughters were well educated. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">Sally was fluent in French, kept up with world affairs, and was well versed in music, art, literature, and dance. She also excelled in the feminine arts of charm and seduction: Sally was a coquette who loved wrapping <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Virginia</place></state>’s most eligible men around her little finger. Sally and her sisters would make the rounds of <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Williamsburg</place></city>’s fanciest balls when the House of Burgesses was in session, enjoying lavish dinners, dancing, and sophisticated conversation with Virginia’s movers and shakers. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=tEm5nNoOIPMC&pg=PA6&dq=wilson+cary+sally+cary&hl=en&ei=us8jTfm5PMO78gbl6sSbDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=wilson%20cary%20sally%20cary&f=false">Returning home</a> from one such ball during King George’s War, one of the wars for empire between <country-region w:st="on">England</country-region> and <country-region w:st="on"><place w:st="on">France</place></country-region>, Sally’s carriage was stopped by a sentry who <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=0rAEAAAAYAAJ&dq=wilson+cary+sally+cary&q=sally+cary%27s+established+belleship#v=snippet&q=sally%20cary's%20established%20belleship&f=false">demanded the watchword</a> of the night. Her coachman not knowing what to say, Sally stamped her foot and said “But I am Miss Sally Cary!” Upon hearing her declaration the soldier said “pass.” The officer of the watch, being one of Sally’s many admirers, had made her name the password!</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">As historian <a href="http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/web/20090908-George-Washington-Love-Letter-Martha-Dandridge-Custis-Sally-Fairfax-Virginia-Mount-Vernon-Fort-Belvoir-High-Society.shtml">Thomas Fleming</a> comments, “The Carys enjoyed the pursuit of happiness long before it became the object of a new nation’s aspirations.” <span style="font-family: "georgia";">The one known portrait of Sally (above) <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=sImIx4Fl_C0C&dq=wilson+cary+sally+cary&q=dark-haired+young+woman#v=snippet&q=dark-haired%20young%20woman&f=false">Fleming notes</a>, “reveals a slim, dark-haired young woman most people would call handsome rather than beautiful. But the narrow face is striking nonetheless: the deep-set dark eyes emanate a subtly mocking intelligence; the nose is strong and the mouth, firm and confident. Her waist is narrow and her bosom ample.” It would be easy, as Fleming says, to imagine Sally “as the leader of some lively revels.” In short, Sally Cary embodied all of the beauty, wealth, power, and sophistication of Viriginia’s planter elite; the world that the young George Washington was determined to enter.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">At the age of eighteen, Sally Cary married George William Fairfax, son of Colonel William Fairfax, master of the Belvoir estate on the <place w:st="on">Potomac River</place>. The colonel’s cousin, Thomas Fairfax, the sixth Baron Fairfax, was the largest landowner in northern <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Virginia</place></state>, laying claim to a <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Wnc3V5m9kqgC&dq=ron+chernow+washington&q=duchy+of+five+million+acres#v=snippet&q=duchy%20of%20five%20million%20acres&f=false">domain of five million acres,</a> much of it in the unexplored lands of the west. Colonel Fairfax, a widower, was Lord Fairfax’s American land agent. The marriage of Sally Cary and George William Fairfax was a merger of two great <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Virginia</place></state> dynasties. Love had little to do with it. It was soon after her arrival at Belvoir that Sally Fairfax met a young protégé of the <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Fairfax</place></city> family, sixteen-year-old George Washington.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Biographer <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Wnc3V5m9kqgC&dq=ron+chernow+washington&q=swagger+and+panache+of+his+early+days#v=snippet&q=swagger%20and%20panache%20of%20his%20early%20days&f=false">Ron Chernow</a> observes that our iconic images of <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Washington</state></place> come from Gilbert Stuart’s portraits of the 1790s “when the swagger and panache of his early days had faded.” They fail to convey the charisma of his youth and middle age, leaving us with a very misleading impression of who George Washington really was. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">(<city w:st="on">Chernow</city>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Washington: A Life</i> [<state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">New York</place></state>: Penguin Press, 2010], p. 746.) <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The museum at <state w:st="on">Mount Vernon</state> has constructed several figures of the young <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> based on forensic and historical evidence. The <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> they reveal leaves no doubt why a Sally Cary Fairfax or a Martha Dandridge Custis could fall for him. He was, in the words of Martha’s biographer <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/01/AR2009020102023_pf.html">Patricia Brady,</a> “a hunk.”</span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">The George Washington who Sally and Martha fell in love with.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">But the sixteen-year-old George was also an awkward country bumpkin in serious need of a makeover. George’s older half-brother <city w:st="on">Lawrence</city> <state w:st="on">Washington</state> (who was married to the colonel’s daughter Anne Fairfax), the <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Fairfax</place></city> family, and especially Sally Fairfax, were determined to give him some polish and sophistication. That George was over six feet tall, a natural athlete, and an excellent horseman, made the task much easier. The young Washington was also committed to the gospel of self-improvement; he had a ferocious work ethic (more like that of Puritan New England than the Virginia gentry) and was determined to do whatever it took to advance himself up the ladder of Virginia society. So Lawrence and Colonel Fairfax took charge of promoting George’s career, first as a surveyor, later as a soldier; George William Fairfax took George under his wing as a friend and social companion; and Sally Fairfax devoted herself to initiating George in the finer points of social intercourse with the fair sex.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Here is a video I found on YouTube of scenes from the 1984 television miniseries, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">George Washington</i>. Jaclyn Smith and Barry Bostwick do an outstanding job bringing the relationship of Sally Fairfax and George Washington to life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1isoB4-RCUo?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param>
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<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1isoB4-RCUo?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Even in youth George Washington had the presence of a natural leader. Or at least he did once he overcame the awkwardness and self-consciousness of his teenage years. Sally Fairfax played a crucial part in this transformation. <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Washington</span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> could never be considered handsome—not in the pretty boy sense we think of today. His face was pockmarked from a bout with smallpox and his teeth were rotting away; his nose and eye sockets were too large as were his hips, hands, and feet. Yet the whole was much more than the sum of its parts. <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> was an excellent dancer and his movements were graceful and fluid. As he matured and gained confidence as a military leader and plantation master, <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington’s presence</place></state> would seem <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=lsPztgGkYYgC&dq=founding+brothers+by+joseph+ellis&q=conveyed+sheer+majesty#v=snippet&q=conveyed%20sheer%20majesty&f=false">nothing less than majestic.</a> <state w:st="on">Washington</state> was always fastidious about his appearance, and whether dressed in his military uniform or in elegant high fashion, he would immediately dominate whatever room he was in. (Andrew Jackson was much like <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> in this.) Describing <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Washington</state></place> when he assumed command of the Continental Army in 1775, Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">He seems to be one of those illustrious heroes whom providence raises up once in three or four hundred years to save a nation from ruin. If you do not know his person, perhaps you will be pleased to hear that he has so much martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to be a general or a soldier from among ten thousand people. There is not a king in <place w:st="on">Europe</place> that would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">(Benjamin Rush to Thomas Ruston, October 29, 1775, L. H. Butterfield, ed., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Letters of Benjamin Rush</i> [Princeton: <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Princeton</placename> <placetype w:st="on">University</placetype></place> Press, 1951], Vol. I, p. 92.)</span><br />
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<place w:st="on"><state w:st="on"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Washington</span></state></place><span style="font-family: "georgia";">’s charisma would have its effect on women. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=aNyqlIu8TwQC&dq=lydia+minturn+post&q=womanly+admiration+of+a+noble+exterior#v=snippet&q=womanly%20admiration%20of%20a%20noble%20exterior&f=false">Lydia Minturn Post</a>, a prominent <state w:st="on">New York</state> lady, on meeting <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Washington</state></place> during the dark days of November 1776, when the patriot cause seemed on the verge of collapse, wrote, “I will confess a womanly admiration of a noble exterior. <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington’s influence and authority must be enhanced by his gallant bearing and commanding figure, as he sits [on] his proud steed.” <span style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=_BiqdpZ9hlcC&pg=PA224&lpg=PA224&dq=martha+dangerfield+bland+now+let+me+speak+of+our+noble&source=bl&ots=LYLCGygKGZ&sig=xCuoRuL5RD9i9AU2rSJpPkFZwyA&hl=en&ei=89A8TenyOYWdlgezuayhBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=martha%20dangerfield%20bland%20now%20let%20me%20speak%20of%20our%20noble&f=false">Martha Dangerfield Bland</a>, the twenty-five-year-old wife of Colonel Theodorick Bland of <state w:st="on">Virginia</state>, likewise fell under <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state>’s spell. Writing to her sister-in-law Fanny Randolph from the Continental Army’s <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Morristown</city></place> encampment in May 1777, Mrs. Bland described enjoyable afternoon parties on horseback with the commander in chief and his aides. “Now let me speak of <em>our</em> noble and agreeable commander (for he commands both sexes, one by his excellent skill in military matters, the other by his ability, politeness, and attention).” She noted the companionate relationship between George and Martha Washington, who had joined the general at the camp. “His worthy lady seems to be in perfect felicity, while she is by the side of her ‘Old Man,’ as she calls him.” On these outings, <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> could let his guard down and his flirtatious charm with attractive young women—the charm he honed with Sally Fairfax twenty-five years earlier—would emerge. “But I had forgot my subject, almost, this is our riding party, generally at which time General Washington throws off the Hero and takes on the chatty agreeable companion. He can be downright impudent sometimes, such impudence, Fanny, as you and I like, and really, I have wished for you often.”</span></place></state></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TTtHy4_mN0I/AAAAAAAAARY/FVY3_-mcK4A/s1600/George+Washington+at+Princeton+-+Charles+Willson+Peale+1779+-+31_00002+%255B2+b+%2526+c+adjusted%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" s5="true" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_uvm6ducznVM/TTtHy4_mN0I/AAAAAAAAARY/FVY3_-mcK4A/s1600/George+Washington+at+Princeton+-+Charles+Willson+Peale+1779+-+31_00002+%255B2+b+%2526+c+adjusted%255D.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Charles Willson Peale, <em>Washington at Princeton</em>, 1779. The charismatic commander in chief who sustained the Glorious Cause by inspiring his countrymen, and charming his countrywomen.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">A close friendship developed between George Washington and Sally Fairfax as she embarked on the project of turning the young bumpkin into a polished gentleman. <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state>’s education was sorely lacking. His formal schooling had been ended by his father’s death when he was eleven, leaving <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> the least educated of the major Founders. Drawing on her extensive library, Sally introduced George to history, literature, poetry, and drama, of which Joseph Addison’s play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1229&Itemid=27">Cato,</a></i> would have by far the most lasting impact on him. Based on <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Minor*.html">Plutarch</a> and first published in 1713, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cato</i> was the most popular English drama of the <a href="http://www.ayn-rand.info/cth--884-Cato_and_Enlightenment_Mind.aspx">eighteenth century.</a> The tragic tale of how the Roman senator Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger (95-46 <span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 9pt;">BC</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia";">) sacrificed his life in a doomed attempt to save the <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Roman</placename> <placename w:st="on">Republic</placename></place> from the dictatorial ambitions of Julius Caesar, <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1229&chapter=9090&layout=html&Itemid=27">shaped</a> the <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNjU2ODY5YjYtN2M1Ni00ZjY5LWFhZTMtZjFjZjEzMjhiYmJk&hl=en">Revolutionary generation’s</a> understanding of honor, virtue, and the need to defend liberty by standing up to tyranny. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cato</i> would be <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Washington</state></place>’s favorite play and moral touchstone throughout his public life. He most notably staged a performance at <place w:st="on"><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hNWYyMzM1MmEtZGFmMS00YWM1LWFhYmUtYzliMDY4ZGE3OTg3&hl=en">Valley Forge</a></place> to bolster the morale of the <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-5-JeCa2Z7hOTA5OWMyYjktYmNmMS00MjY2LWFiOWMtMmIzMzg5ZjRjYjBm&hl=en">Continental Army’s</a> officers and common soldiers. <span style="font-family: "georgia";">Washington</span></span></div>
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deliberately crafted a <a href="http://www.mountvernon.org/files/Washington,_Cato,%20and%20the%20Catonic%20Image.pdf">Catonic image,</a> the image of a selfless patriot who put the public’s welfare above his own self-interest, which was the classical republican definition of virtue. By giving the young, impressionable <place w:st="on"><state w:st="on">Washington</state></place> his first immersion in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cato</i>, Sally Fairfax planted the seed that would become Cincinnatus, the man who could be trusted with power.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">But long before these hints of future greatness came to fruition, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cato</i> fired <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state>’s romantic imagination. One of the play’s themes was the forbidden love between Cato’s daughter Marcia and the Numidian prince <place w:st="on">Juba</place>. Sally would stage amateur theatrical performances at Belvoir with George taking on the role of <place w:st="on">Juba</place> and herself playing Marcia. The roles were tailor made for them and could be a metaphor for their own relationship. <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1229&chapter=9106&layout=html&Itemid=27">Act I, Scene V,</a> had special resonance for <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state>. Here<span style="font-family: "georgia";"> <place w:st="on">Juba</place> proclaims his love for Marcia, declaring “At sight of thee my heart shakes off its sorrows; / I feel a dawn of joy break in upon me, / And for a while forget the approach of Caesar.” (I, v, 3-5) Marcia, however, will have none of it. She does indeed love <place w:st="on">Juba</place>, but Cato has forbidden her to marry a non-Roman provincial. Marcia’s first loyalty will always be to her father and to <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Rome</place></city>. <place w:st="on">Juba</place>, she insists, must put aside his romantic yearnings and focus on the battle to come. “My prayers and wishes always shall attend / The friends of <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Rome</place></city>, the glorious cause of virtue, / And men approved of by the gods and Cato.” (I, v, 15-17) Sadly, <place w:st="on">Juba</place> concedes that there are greater issues at stake than their personal desire and happiness:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;"> Thy reproofs are just,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">Thou virtuous maid; I’ll hasten to my troops,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">And fire their languid souls with Cato’s virtue.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">If e’er I lead them to the field, when all</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">The war shall stand ranged in its just array,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">And dreadful pomp; then will I think on thee!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">O lovely maid, then will I think on thee!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">And, in the shock of charging hosts, remember</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">What glorious deeds should grace the man who hopes</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 10pt;">For Marcia’s love. (I, v, 24-33)</span></div>
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<state w:st="on"><place w:st="on"><span style="font-family: "georgia";">Washington</span></place></state><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> was falling in love with Sally Fairfax, but like Marcia, she could never be his. She was married to his friend, a member of the family whose patronage he needed to advance in the world. It didn’t help matters that Sally enjoyed having George under her spell. The tall, charismatic <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> was a true contrast to Will Fairfax, a diminutive, fastidious, and dour man, who did not exude much passion, and was more a courtier than a leader. But like <place w:st="on">Juba</place>, George would ultimately place duty ahead of desire. When <city w:st="on">Lawrence</city> <state w:st="on">Washington</state> died of tuberculosis in 1751, Sally supported George’s decision to take up his late half-brother’s commission as an officer in the <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Virginia</place></state> militia. <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> settled upon a military career as the path to fortune and renown. This was also a message he absorbed from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cato</i>. Twenty-five years later, when he assumed command of the Continental Army, <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> phrased his acceptance to the Continental Congress in words straight out of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cato</i>, pledging himself to serve <a href="http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=WasFi03.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=194&division=div1">“the glorious Cause.”</a></span></div>
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Michael Kaplanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16321643737829504881noreply@blogger.com1