Rational Disagreement

Rep. Ilhan Omar keeps talking about Israel having undue influence in American politics, and people keep ripping her for it, calling her anti-Semitic.
I don’t like it.  Name-calling is a silencing tactic of the Left.  Whether you are branded as a homophobe, sexist, denier or anti-Semitic doesn’t matter: they’re all variations on “hater” and the Left won’t listen to haters, no matter what they have to say.  People on the Right should not use that tactic. We should be able to defend our position with logic and reason.
Anti-Semitic means prejudiced against Jews. One need not harbor religious prejudice to ask why it’s in the best interest of the United States to support a nation, whether it’s Vatican City, Somalia, or Israel.  The best foreign policy advice was given by Washington and Jefferson – honest friendship and commerce with all, entangling alliances with none.  Religion shouldn’t enter into it at all, on either side, for or against.
I’m not saying Rep. Omar is right that Israel has too much influence on American foreign policy.  But I am saying she’s not wrong to ask whether it does, and calling her names to silence her is an indication that the name-callers don’t think they can defend our Israel policy in an honest debate.  That’s the most troubling aspect of all.

On the one hand, I don’t disagree – there are grounds for criticizing Israeli foreign policy. Not as many as Big Left would have you think, but sure.

On the other hand, that doesn’t detract from the nasty antisemitism problem the Democrat party has.

16 thoughts on “Rational Disagreement

  1. Some bring up about all of the news coverage she’s getting. Will it help her? I was listening to Mark Levine last night…. maybe she will be just seen as the female Louis Farrakhan. He’s hardly looked at as a virtuous leader! And Corbyn in the UK? He gets flak for this. It was largely underplayed in his rise to power.

    I am a supporter of Israel, I don’t see her statements as excessively bad as say, the kind of statements Farrakhan has made which I believe are outright foul and certainly unacceptable.

    I’m not Jewish, even this issue has a lot of divisions in how the American Jewish community seems to see it. I thought I read columnist Tom Friedman, originally from St. Louis Park somewhat defends Omar.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/opinion/israel-ilhan-omar.html

    But Friedman’s is just one view. It’s an interesting debate, I can not feel the offense as say if it was my own ethnicity being attacked.

    Just my humble opinions.

  2. People on the Right should not use that tactic. We should be able to defend our position with logic and reason.
    Yes, use Twitter and instagram for that!
    That was a joke. And anyways, what political movement ever won because its opponents were destroyed by its logic and reason?

  3. The fact that there is division on the Left and not universal condemnation of these anti-semitic remarks, even Pelosi believes she didnt know “what her words meant” which I call massive bullshit on, show how left the party has really gone.

    https://www.lmtonline.com/news/article/Democratic-divide-over-Omar-s-remarks-tests-13668736.php

    People on the Right should not use that tactic. We should be able to defend our position with logic and reason.

    Have you tried to debate a leftist since Trump was elected Joe? We have to fight dirty to even get our point across, I dont even really debate anymore, its not worth it.

  4. My evergreen thesis on Israel & Zionism.
    Zionism dates to Europe in the late 19th century. It’s proximate cause was not Jews deciding that they wanted a chunk of Arab land. It’s proximate cause was growing nationalism among the nations & provinces of Europe. These wanted to eject their Jewish populations because they were not assimilable. The philosophy of pre WW2 nationalism is not easy for modern readers to understand (yes, even in the “age of Trump”), but it was assumed that there was a national spirit that was the true spirit of the individuals who made up that nation. That spirit was expressed culturally, chiefly by language, but also by a common history, literature, arts, dietary habits, etc. Jews could not partake of the vitally important national spirit, and detracted from it (“polluted” was the word used by the anti-Semites). You could not be a nation with a substantial Jewish population. Between the wars, this problem was called “The Jewish Question.”
    There is no parallel between the situation of Jews in Europe and other minority populations. There has never been a “Muslim Question,” a “Homosexual Question,” or an “Armenian Question.”
    The viciousness and obsessive nature of the Holocaust is also difficult for the modern reader to understand. In the parts of Europe controlled by the Nazis, having a single great grandparent who was Jewish was enough to send you to the camps or be shot outright. There were many examples of Nazis executing Catholics who had a single great grandparent who had converted from Judaism a century earlier. The reason that the Nazis were able to destroy Jewish populations, root and branch, was because the nations they operated in had disowned them. The Estonian government, for example, worked to protect ethnic Estonians from the persecution of the Nazis, but not Estonians who were ethnic Jews. In Denmark, under Nazi occupation, the Danish government still worked to protect its Jewish citizens. The ethnic Danes considered danish Jews to be their countrymen and protected tham at a personal level. Over 90% of Danish Jews survived the Nazi occupation.
    View the attempts to delegitimize the Jewish state, and the belief that nations can and will protect their Jewish populations, in the light of this history.

  5. MP
    I like to remind people that the Jerusalem of the Muslim world prior to the 20th century and the advent of Zionism was accurately described in this bleak passage:

    “we pressed on toward the goal of our crusade, renowned Jerusalem. The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became. There could not have been more fragments of stone strewn broadcast over this part of the world, if every ten square feet of the land had been occupied by a separate and distinct stonecutter’s establishment for an age. There was hardly a tree or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem. The only difference between the roads and the surrounding country, perhaps, is that there are rather more rocks in the roads than in the surrounding country.
    ……..
    It seems to me that all the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem. Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently—the eternal “bucksheesh.” To see the numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased humanity that throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might suppose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the waters of Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here.”

    Twain, Mark. The Innocents Abroad (Circa 1869).

  6. From davidduke.com: Dr Duke & Eric Striker: By Defiance to Z.O.G. Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress!
    https://davidduke.com/thursday190131-4/
    “Today Dr. Duke and Eric Striker of the Public Space had the kind of fun and informative show we have come to expect from our Thunder and Lightning Thor’s Day broadcasts. In particular, they heaped praise on Ilhan Omar (D-New Somalia) for being the one person in Congress willing to notice AIPAC and the “dual” loyalty of many (((members of Congress))).”

  7. Hey, she is being called an anti-semite the way some people in the past, are called racists… in the past or present, it is almost assumed so if one is a Republican with Democrats. I personally don’t like what she stands for, I think she’s a bit of an embarrassment but I do get the name-calling bit, it’d be difficult to call her that name for me. Maybe it’s true…now, I get the initial post with name-calling…because that is where the discourse is in our country, Neener-etthics, as a debate. Personally, turnabout is fair play I suppose and it’s not just Republicans who are using this word. A number of Democrats have also come out strongly against what she has said. Just my opinion, maybe it is fair to say, but I will refrain from it.

  8. “A number of Democrats have also come out strongly against what she has said.”
    And the censure motion against her was so defanged that she herself voted for it. You can read what the censure motion has become, it not only does not mention her by name or office, it only names anti-Semitic actions that can (in their minds) be linked to the right, and not the left, and equates anti-Semitism with any historically disadvantaged group.
    Omar accused American citizens of having dual loyalty. The Democrat party is now okay with that.

  9. I suppose that if you have a person in the most “oppressed” group, say, black muslim female immigrants, and your political philosophy says that these people should have an outsized share in policy making, it is inevitable that your policies will reflect the beliefs of a very small number of Americans.
    The increasingly irrational basis of the Democrat party will eventually lead to its doom. Eventually.

  10. “I suppose that if you have a person in the most “oppressed” group, say, black muslim female immigrants, and your political philosophy says that these people should have an outsized share in policy making, it is inevitable that your policies will reflect the beliefs of a very small number of Americans.” – Mammuthus Primigenius

    Well, it might get you on the cover of the Rolling Stone.

  11. It’s not just the Democrat party but Minnesota itself is getting a bit of a black eye imho with all of the reporting on Ilhan Omar. Does that bother anyone else?

    “Assyrian Warns Americans to Visit Ilhan Omar’s District: You Won’t Think It’s America”
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/06/assyrian-warns-americans-ilhan-omar-district/

    And of course, a lot of these articles imho, are wrong, misleading or exaggerate. There was also a kerfuffle I saw about a week ago, about a claim of Minneapolis having “no-go” zones. This could be a topic to follow up on. I don’t know if one place in Omar’s district is so bad, you’d think you were in another country, in an Islamic country. I’ve never been actually inside that Riverside plaza area. Maybe if one place fit this description that would be it. I have been near there.

  12. MP does a great explanation of why it’s so obnoxious to say that someone has dual loyalties. Historically–I’d argue going back to the Middle Ages–homogeniety was conflated with nationhood, and hence to say that someone had “dual loyalties” was to suggest they formed part of the fifth column, or a “stab in the back” at the interests of their neighbors. Homeschoolers in Europe are dealing with the same problem right now, for what it’s worth–Germany suggests they form a “parallel society” that poses a risk in arguing to ban the practice.

    And quite frankly, one would at least hope that a Muslim would figure out that trying to legitimize the “dual loyalties” argument could work out really badly, their cultural habits being quite different from the majority culture, but apparently Omar et al are counting on always being on the winning side of these arguments.

  13. Yes, that’s really salvaging Obama… that really is probably pushing it too far. I had heard a little bit of this but to call him a murderer? That’s really extremist stuff there. Sheesh

  14. The wag in me wants to joke that blatant anti-semitism won’t get her censured, but speaking out against Dear (former) Leader will. If it happens, you read it from me first. :^)

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