"Whom the gods
destroy, they first make mad."
– Euripides, 5th
Century B.C. Greek tragedian
No, we are not all descending into madness. Just our political leaders, our news
media, our schools, and assorted loose human cannons who are plumbing the
depths of insanity and institutional irrationality to see when their and our
craniums crack. And they seem to want
the rest of us to go berserk and take up residence with them in their loony bin
where we can all tiptoe through
the tulips and have huggy-bear sessions with our killers. They are mad, and they wish to make us mad. Insanity
is the new norm.
The America Heritage Medical
Dictionary defines insanity
(or madness) as:
1. Persistent mental
disorder or derangement. Not in scientific use.
2. Unsoundness of
mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain
a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health
facility.
3. In most criminal
jurisdictions, a degree of mental malfunctioning considered to be sufficient to
relieve the accused of legal responsibility for the act committed.
In a sane world, men would not, for
example, protest the right of Israel or any other sovereign nation to defend
itself against attacks by its neighbors or by terrorist groups like Hamas. Instead,
they would urge the Israeli government to wipe out its enemies and uproot them,
or at least spray Hamas with a root-killing chemical (shall we call it
"DDT" – Deter Deranged Terrorism?) and leave their former subjects
and human shields to fend for themselves.
Another mark of madness is the spectacle of
Jews opposing Israel's existence and blaming Jews for anti-Semitism, and even
accusing them of racism. Daniel Greenfield, in his August 8th
FrontPage article, "J
Street Accuses Jews of Racism, Blames Jews for Anti-Semitism," noted
another form of madness:
After Hamas violated yet another ceasefire, anti-Israel group J Street stepped up to do what it
does best. Attack
Jews and Israel.
Jeremy Ben Ami [a spokesman for J Street] then launched into a pitch for
letting Hamas smuggle as many weapons as it wants “Occupation, Blockade,
Frustration, etc…), accused Israel of racism, warned Israel to “heed to the
advice of its friends in the White House and the State Department and at a
minimum should show them the respect that the country’s closest ally deserves."
Then Jeremy Ben Ami claimed that the conflict was promoting anti-Semitism
and ranted about “growth and extent of hatred of the other, intolerance and
outright racism in our own Jewish community.”
For example, one would have thought that
the virulent anti-Semitism
that as a rule in the past expressed itself Nazi-style in murders, fire-bombings,
attacking Jews, and in loud and noisy demonstrations against Jews and Israel was
a disease that had been eradicated or at least suppressed, like polio or
malaria. There was a time when, if one was an anti-Semite, one kept it to
oneself. There was a time when it was at the risk of social embarrassment and
even ostracism to blurt it out. Now tens of thousands of people are flaunting
it, boasting of it, spitting out their venom under the pretence of
"freedom of speech." It is a
form of Kristallnacht,
practiced by Muslims and their allies on the Left in demonstrations and by
roving mobs. Douglas Murray, in his August 13th Gatestone Institute
article "Are
'Integrated Muslims' Integrated?" writes:
The Gaza War has
produced flagrantly anti-Semitic protests, attacks on Jews and the burning down
of Jewish buildings. Those protests have come as a surprise to parts of the
European public – nowhere more so than in Germany, where a hatred thought to
have been disgraced for all time has found its way back onto European streets
under a new guise….
Most noticeable was
that the protests across Western European cities have overwhelmingly been led
by Muslims — not Islamists — just normal, "integrated" Muslims, who
stay at home when any other war occurs. (Where were their protests against
Qatar for funding Hamas?)
Where were they? Whatever advances the
imposition of an Islamic caliphate is justified, even when it's a violent
imposition, and not a candidate for protest. It's nothing to shout about, not
an opportune time to carry signs that say, "Islam will dominate" and
"Kill those who insult the Prophet." The Koran permits latitude of discretionary protesting. To wit, one of
many, many instances:
Sura 8:38-42 (Keep fighting
them until they stop persecuting believers and until Islam is established. If
they stop fighting then stop. Now, a fifth of all the booty belongs to God and
His leader.)
"Say to the unbelievers, if (now) they desist (from unbelief), their
past would be forgiven them, but if they persist, the punishment of those
before them is already (a matter of warning for them)." And fight them on
until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and
faith in God altogether and everywhere. But if they cease, verily God doth see
all that they do.
[YA: "If they cease from fighting and from the persecution of truth, God
judges them by their actions and their motives, and would not wish that they
should be harassed with further hostility."]
There are 164 such
verses in the Koran, each as
bloody minded as the next.
And what is the policy of the mad men who
know what a global Islamic "world order" would entail, which is
slaughter, rapine, destruction, and legalized looting? To submit peacefully and
without prejudice to Islam, for otherwise there would be "violence."
Notwithstanding the mountains of data and
evidence about the fundamental means and ends of Islam and Islamic terrorist
organizations such as Hamas, our political culture is poisoned with the
Kantian/Hegelian imperative that the West must, in the name of
"peace," negotiate and tolerate our executioners. These urgent supplications
have come from such demonstrable fools and professional altruists, and gadflies
for "peace" such as Jimmy Carter, former U.S. president, and Mary Robinson,
former president of Ireland in their
Foreign Policy article , "How
to Fix it," of August 4th :
This tragedy
results from the deliberate obstruction of a promising move toward peace in the
region, when a reconciliation agreement among the Palestinian factions was announced
in April. This was a major concession by Hamas, in opening Gaza to joint
control under a technocratic government that did not include any Hamas members.
The new government also pledged to adopt the three basic principles demanded by
the Middle East Quartet comprised of the United Nations, the United States, the
European Union, and Russia: nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and adherence
to past agreements. Tragically, Israel rejected this opportunity for peace and
has succeeded in preventing the new government's deployment in Gaza….
There is no humane or legal justification for
the way the Israeli Defense Forces are conducting this war. Israeli bombs,
missiles, and artillery have pulverized large parts of Gaza, including
thousands of homes, schools, and hospitals….
There is never an
excuse for deliberate attacks on civilians in conflict. These are war crimes. This
is true for both sides. Hamas's indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians
is equally unacceptable. However, three Israeli civilians have been killed by
Palestinian rockets, while an overwhelming majority of the 1,600 Palestinians
killed have been civilians, including more than 330 children. The need for
international judicial proceedings to investigate and end these violations of
international law should be taken very seriously.
According to Carter and Robinson, Israel is
guilty by the fact that regardless of Israel being attacked by Hamas, and its
rockets deliberately pointed at Israeli citizens, hoping to inflict as many
deaths as possible, especially of Israeli children, it had no right to
retaliate with all the force it could muster, and regardless of Hamas's using
Palestinians as human shields, including men, women and children, Israel is
more guilty than Hamas because more Palestinians died than did Israelis. This is
topsy-turvy thinking, if can be called thinking at all. It is lunacy. It defies
reason, logic, and all measures of morality. Carter and Robinson must know down
deep – or perhaps they don’t, and that is a measure of their insanity – that if
Israel meets all of Hamas's demands, it would be signing its own death warrant.
Andrew McCarthy, in his PJ Media article of August 6th, "Carter
and Robinson: The Hamas Jihad's Useful Idiots," noted that:
Carter and Robinson
are desperate to derive or otherwise manufacture Hamas’s purported agreement to
the Quartet conditions because Hamas has made quite clear that it will never
actually agree to renounce the jihad and accept Israel’s right to exist. The
authors would cut Hamas slack on this score because, they say, the organization
cannot be expected to “cooperate in its own demise.”
Even by loathsome
Carter-Robinson standards, the assertion is breathtaking. The operating
assumption of their op-ed is that Israel must cooperate in its own demise
by ceasing to defend itself and abandoning the blockades absent which Hamas
would quickly acquire even more deadly mass-destruction weapons. Furthermore,
Hamas’ raison d’être is the annihilation of Israel by terrorist jihad;
so by the authors’ reasoning, it could never be expected to agree to
non-violent coexistence with a Jewish state since that would amount to the
demise of Hamas.Without the demise of Hamas, there is no chance for peace in
the Middle East. It will require tuning out terror’s useful idiots.
In
his FrontPage article of August 6th, "Jimmy
Carter: The Only Way to Fix Gaza is by Giving Hamas Everything It Wants,"
Daniel Greenfield notes that:
Carter skips over that by claiming that peace will only come from a
PLO-Hamas agreement (what’s more likely to bring peace than a unity agreement
between two terror groups?) and urges a lifting of the blockade and replacing
Egyptian and Israeli border monitoring with the UN.
“The international community’s initial goal should be the full
restoration of the free movement of people and goods to and from Gaza through
Israel, Egypt, and the sea. Concurrently, the United States and EU should
recognize that Hamas is not just a military but also a political force. Hamas
cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise. Only by
recognizing its legitimacy as a political actor — one that represents a
substantial portion of the Palestinian people — can the West begin to provide
the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons.”
Carter presumes that Hamas wants to lay down its weapons. There is no
evidence of that whatsoever. Hamas is an acronym for “Islamic Resistance
Movement”. The goal of terrorist groups is to take power, not put down their
weapons. Hamas deals with dissent by shooting dissenters.
Hamas, if Israel is
foolish enough to empower it with concessions, means to commit genocide, just as
the "Islamic State or ISIS is committed to the genocide of the Yazidis, by
kidnapping Yazidi women and girls for rape and sex slavery. An unsigned Catholic Online article of August 14th,
"300
Kurds kidnapped for rape: The Islamic state plans to breed out the blonde
Iraqis," reports:
There are fears that the 300 Yazidi women who have been kidnapped by
militants from the Islamic State last week will be used to bear children in
order to break up the ancient community's bloodline….
Referencing the kidnapping of the Yazidi women, Adnan Kochar, chairman of
the Kurdish Cultural Center in London told MailOnline:
"The Kurds and Yazidis are originally Aryans. But because the Yazidis are
such a closed community they have retained a fairer complexion, blonder hair
and blue eyes. They don't marry non-Yazidis. Kochar continued: "ISIS have
taken around 300 women from Sinjar to give to jihadists to marry and make
pregnant to have a Muslim child. If they can't kill all Yazidis, they will try
to smash the blond
bloodline."
This story was also carried by the Daily
Mail and other sites. Well, there's Islam's
tolerance and absence of racism for you.
Meanwhile, in Europe and other places, anti-Semitism
is raising its ancient and ugly head. Here is a photo
gallery of the cities in which anti-Israel (and anti-Semitic)
"protests" took place, with the Gaza War, which Hamas was losing,
being the excuse to vent one's hatred. Or madness.
The U.S. has seen its share of anti-Semitic
and anti-Israel demonstrations. But the Metropolitan Opera has committed the
most outrageous and contemptible expression of anti-Semitism by going ahead
with the production of an "opera" that decidedly blames Jews for
their murders. Surely this is a sign of troubling derangement. The opera is The Death of Klinghoffer. The New York
Post reported on June 16th in its article, "Metropolitan
Opera romanticizes one NYer’s murder":
In 1985, New Yorker
Leon Klinghoffer, 69, and his wife Marilyn took a cruise to celebrate their
36th wedding anniversary. Leon never came back: Four members of the Palestine
Liberation Front hijacked the Achille Lauro, shot him in the head and threw him
overboard in his wheelchair.
Starting in
October, The Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Center plans to show a mockery of
this brutal murder — the long-dormant “The Death of Klinghoffer.” The title
gives away the show’s agenda: Klinghoffer didn’t “die”: This World War II vet
was murdered by terrorists.
The show has widely
been denounced as anti-Semitic and sympathetic to the hijackers. Performances
planned in Boston and elsewhere were cancelled shortly after 9/11. If it wasn’t
then, what makes it acceptable now for Lincoln Center to glorify the murderers
of a disabled New Yorker?....
The Metropolitan
Opera receives local, state and federal funding. Will taxpayer funds support
anti-Semitism? What is the artistic value in celebrating the murder of
innocents?
The Met cancelled its lucrative simulcast of
the show which would have reached perhaps thousands of paying subscribers in the U.S. and across the world when it was broadcast in
local theaters. Fox News, in its June 24th article, "Met
Opera stands behind decision to cancel 'Klinghoffer' simulcast amid
anti-Semitic concerns," reported the cancellation of the
simulcast and revealed the depraved state of its general manager, Peter Gelb.
If the opera is not anti-Semitic, it is in the worse possible taste. The
cancellation of the simulcast was a reaction to the severe criticism the opera received.
The Metropolitan
Opera is standing firm in its decision to cancel plans for a global simulcast
to cinemas of John Adams' "The Death of Klinghoffer" despite
receiving criticism for shifting their plans once concerns rose that the show
could stir anti-Semitic sentiments.
The Met's press
director, Peter Clark, acknowledged the criticism when reached by FOX411, but
said there are no plans to reconsider the decision, despite the harsh reactions
[from those accusing the opera's critics of censorship].
"I'm convinced
that the opera is not anti-Semitic," Peter Gelb said. "But I've also
become convinced that there is genuine concern in the international Jewish
community that the live transmission of 'The Death of Klinghoffer' would be
inappropriate at this time of rising anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe…."
Jewish advocacy
groups immediately lauded the move to cancel the simulcast.
The ADL praised the decision, noting that "while the opera
itself is not anti-Semitic, there is a concern the opera could be used in
foreign countries as a means to stir up anti-Israel sentiments or as a vehicle
to promote anti-Semitism."
Put
another way, staging The Death of
Klinghoffer is tantamount to staging an opera, complete with atonal singing
and music and an absurdist script, about
the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman during the Ferguson,
Missouri riots over the shooting of Michael Brown, a thug, by a city police
officer. It, too, would also be elevating criminality and unreason to a high
art, and celebrating insanity.
The
gods are not destroying us and Western civilization. We are destroying
ourselves and it.
"No, we are not all descending into madness. Just our political leaders, our news media, our schools, and assorted loose human cannons who are plumbing the depths of insanity and institutional irrationality to see when their and our craniums crack. And they seem to want the rest of us to go berserk and take up residence with them in their loony bin where we can all tiptoe through the tulips and have huggy-bear sessions with our killers. They are mad, and they wish to make us mad. Insanity is the new norm. "
ReplyDeleteFinally some one has said it! This IS insanity writ large. But this self-destructive irrationality extends far beyond foreign policy issues. It applies to the entire range of social, economic and political theater that today masquerades as our "culture". We are transforming our great civilization, once dedicated to truth, enlightenment and progress, into a lowly snake rapidly devouring its own tail.
Stop giving others the benefit of the doubt. There's nothing to doubt here. Identify madness for what it is and call out anyone and everyone who attempts to take cover behind their deranged philosophy which is being foisted on the rest of us as the Emperor's New Ideology. As Ayn Rand so clearly stated, the common denominator here is the destruction of the good for being the good and all that is required to defeat this impotent force is for us to stand up, proclaim that the good IS good, and refuse to yield our ground. Recommit yourself to this ideological battle. it is not guns that are required, but rational minds united with integrity of spirit.