Jewish self-delusion

Sigmund Freud was Jewish and so were many of his patients. And Freud documented lots of ways in which people deceived themselves. His book "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" is still a great read.

It seems that Jews have not changed much since Freud's day, because the delusions in the article reproduced below are quite florid. They appear, in fact to have been even too florid for the Jewish publication (Cleveland Jewish News) in which they appeared, as they have now been taken down.

The author is right in one way. The great majority of Jews are frantic Leftists and so is Obama. So if Jewish values are what most Jews currently believe, the author is right.

The idea that Obama is a friend of Israel, however, is the delusion. It requires very selective memory in view of Obama's ill-mannered snubbing of Netanyahu and his constant pressure on Israel for endless concessions to the Arabs

President a friend of Israel, reflects Jewish values

By HARRIS SENTURIA



Published: Thursday, June 17, 2010 12:06 PM EDT

President Barack Obama is "good for the Jews" not only because he counts individual Jews among his closest advisers (including David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel), but also because he is an unprecedented standard-bearer for values that we hold most dear.

President Obama's Supreme Court nominations lead us further toward the ideal of an open, mobile, and inclusive society. For the current opening, he could have calculated that having two Jewish members of the Court (Clinton appointees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer) is more than enough or that two women (Ginsburg and Obama appointee Sonia Sotomayor) are plenty. Instead, he selected Elena Kagan, an eminently qualified, pragmatically progressive consensus builder.

Moreover, his domestic priorities give voice to Jewish values. This president has been intensely supportive of scientific integrity and research. His efforts will extend healthcare to millions. We support women's equality, and the first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

We are fortunate that our country's steadfast commitment to Israel's security does not depend on which party holds the White House. While it is commendable that the CJN solicits a variety of views, support for Israel should not be cast as Democrat against Republican. We are all in this together.

President Obama is a proven friend of Israel. He stood in Cairo and announced forcefully that the bond between the United States and Israel is "unbreakable." Following the Gaza flotilla incident, the Obama administration alone refused to buy the propaganda that a pro-Hamas group intent on violent confrontation had somehow become the spiritual descendants of Gandhi. Instead, the administration successfully used diplomatic engagement to protect Israel's interests.

As The Jerusalem Post reported, following the incident Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren "praised the Obama administration for being sympathetic to Israel's situation." The American Jewish Committee wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in "admiration for the U.S. diplomatic effort, under your direction, to restrain those governments that have sought punitive actions against Israel" and thanked her "once again for the Administration's commitment to the . U.S.-Israel alliance."

At home, Barack Obama is one of the greatest champions against intolerance and exclusion that this country has ever seen. Abroad, he stands with Israel - even when he stands alone. He embodies and shares Jewish values and aspirations, and we are right to support him.

Harris Senturia of Shaker Heights is a member of the Cleveland Chapter of the National Jewish Democratic Council. This column reflects his own opinions and not necessarily those of any organizations

SOURCE

Some of the things that Mr Senturia screens out

In a letter to President Obama this week, 87 Senators urged the president to support Israel's right to self-defense against the threats of terrorism from Hamas and Hezbollah and a nuclear-bound Iran that has repeatedly pledged to wipe Israel off the map. In another time, such counsel would be redundant. For most of Israel's 60-year existence, the Jewish state has been able to count on the stalwart support of its American ally against the many enemies arrayed against it. As Arab states launched wars with exterminationist intent, and as the international community undermined Israel through the agency of the United Nations, America alone stood in Israel's corner.

Under President Obama, however, such support for an embattled friend is no longer automatic. As Iran races virtually unimpeded toward a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration scolds Israel for daring to build new houses in its capital of Jerusalem. While Hamas, aided by Turkish jihadists, arms for a new war against Israel, the White House demands that Israel exercise a suicidal restraint.

As Israel becomes ever more isolated, the Obama administration continues to reach out to its enemies in the Arab and Muslim world. In their new pamphlet, David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin trace the deterioration of the U.S.-Israeli relationship under President Obama, now at its lowest point in three decades. And they show that by emboldening Israel's enemies, the administration is sowing the seeds of a new conflict, one will that could make it complicit in a new and devastating war against Israel. As a result of President Obama's wrongheaded policies, Israel's security - and America's - is increasingly imperiled.

SOURCE

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McCarthyism nonsense

The McCarthyism nonsense constantly spouted by the Left has always been amusing. It's colossal historical revisionism along the same lines as their claim that the socialist Hitler was a Rightist. They blame Senator Joe McCarthy for the Hollywood blacklist, the prosecution of Alger Hiss etc. Yet none of that had anything to do with McCarthy. It did all happen but it was the work of HUAC -- the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was headed by a DEMOCRAT, Edward J. Hart.

Have you ever before heard of Edward J. Hart? Even I had to look up his name. You haven't heard of him or his embarrassing political identity because his deeds are routinely blamed on the Senator. Moreover, what Joe McCarthy suspected and investigated was PERFECTLY CORRECT. See below:

Liberals have been embarrassing themselves for decades with this McCarthy business. Point out an unsavory association, and they squeal like stuck pigs about the scourge of McCarthyism. In the mind of the liberal, Senator McCarthy was a deranged conservative finding imaginary communists under every rock and creating the fiction of the Red Menace. Note: they have the same attitude today about radical Islam.

Beck has been a favorite target of ignorant liberals who spit "McCarthyism" the same way they do "racism". Beck's fact-based exposes on communists in the Obama administration drives the left to use what they consider among the most vile of invectives.

Appallingly, too many conservative commentators share the left's abysmal dumbness about the truth regarding the late Senator.

Liberals, evidently, have not yet been brought up to speed on the Venona project and other new information. Obama refers to McCarthyism as "cowardice" in Dreams. McCarthy didn't vote "present" on matters of national security.

In 1995 the CIA released decoded Soviet communiqu‚s known as the Venona cables which turned out to be most revealing. After decades of liberals savaging the reputation of Senator Joseph McCarthy, almost no one other than authors Ann Coulter and M. Stanton Evans are talking about the Venona discoveries which vindicate McCarthy.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, enormous amounts of data became available, including the Venona papers: coded messages from the KGB and other communist intelligence agencies about communist agents in the United States (Evans, M. Stanton. Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies).

We also know now that CPUSA was a faithful creature of the Soviet Union. "Far from being mere indigenous radicals working for peace and social justice, as sometimes argued, the party and its members were subservient tools of Moscow-and those who weren't subversive didn't stay very long as members." (Evans, Pg. 20):

From a composite of all these data, it's evident the Soviet/Communist operation in the United States, as elsewhere, was vast, sophisticated, and effective, nowhere more so than in seeking positions of official influence. The Red networks reached into virtually every important aspect of the US government, up to very high levels, the State Department notably included. All of which was obviously congruent with the warnings of McCarthy and others who sounded the alarm about such matters in the late 1940s and early '50s. There was in fact an immense conspiracy afoot, there were secret Communists burrowing in the woodwork, and these Communists were, in case after case, devoted agents of the Soviet Union. (Evans, Pg. 21).

That would be the CPUSA of Frank Marshall Davis. And the same CPUSA that was openly enthusiastic about Barack Obama. On January 31, 2009, Sam Webb of CPUSA gave a speech extolling the blessings of the Obama presidency and denouncing capitalism, which according to Webb, exists to oppress blacks. Liberals and communists have no sense of irony. Webb also called upon his fellow travelers to support the Obama administration and called for a New New Deal which looked remarkably like Obama's current agenda. Candidate Obama met with and was subsequently endorsed by the Chicago New Party and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Liberals to this day don't understand that McCarthy's sole mission was to uncover Soviet operatives working in government positions, not put insipid movie actors out of work. In fact, being blacklisted in Hollywood became a badge of honor. For all of their bleating about "McCarthyism", the left never has understood that McCarthy was a senator and their jeremiad should be directed toward the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

As is the nature of liberals, the introduction of facts changes nothing. They are entirely shame-proof. Conservatives who are offering up faux indignance about McCarthy's moral courage are the ones who ought to be shamefaced.

SOURCE

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The Left's New Enemy: "Empire"

by Daniel Pipes

We know what Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao wanted (state control of everything) and how they achieved this goal (brutal totalitarianism); but what do their successors today want and how do they hope to achieve it? It's a curiously un-examined subject.

Ernest Sternberg of the University at Buffalo offers answers in an eye-opening article in a recent issue of Orbis, "Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For." His begins by sketching out what the contemporary far Left (as opposed to the "decent Left") opposes and what it wants.

What the Left opposes: The prime enemy is something called Empire (no definite article needed), a supposed global monolith that dominates, exploits, and oppresses the world. Sternberg summarizes the Left's all-embracing indictment of Empire:

people live in poverty, food is contaminated, products are artificial, wasteful consumption is compelled, indigenous groups are dispossessed, and nature itself is subverted. Invasive species run rampant, glaciers melt, and seasons are thrown out of kilter, threatening world catastrophe.

Empire achieves this by means of "economic liberalism, militarism, multinational corporations, corporate media, and technologies of surveillance." Because capitalism causes millions of deaths that a non-capitalism system would eliminate, it also is guilty of mass-murder.

The United States, of course, is the Great Satan, accused of hoarding disproportionate resources. Its military oppresses the poor so its corporations can exploit them. Its government promotes the pretend-danger of terrorism to aggress abroad and repress at home.

And Israel is the Little Satan, serving as Empire's sinister ally - or maybe the Jewish state is really the master? From World Social Forum meetings in Brazil to the United Nations anti-racism conference in Durban and from mainline churches to NGOs, Zionism is represented as absolute evil. Why Israel? Beyond not-so-subtle antisemitism, it alone of Western countries lives under a barrage of constant threats, which in turn compel it to engage in constant wars. "Stripped of all context," Sternberg notes, "Israel's actions fit the needed image of aggressor."

To fight Empire's superior resources, the Left needs to ally with anyone else opposing it - notably Islamists. Islamist goals contradict the Left's, but no matter; so long as Islamists help fight Empire, they have a valued place in the coalition.

What the Left seeks: One catchword is authenticity: Empire's artificiality makes indigenous culture analogous to endangered species. Culture should be indigenous, organic, and sheltered from Empire's crass commercialism (e.g., Hollywood), its bogus rationalism, and its false concepts of freedom.

A second catchword is democracy: The Left rejects the distant and formalistic structure of a mature republic and instead celebrates grassroots, non-hegemonic democracy that offers a more direct voice. The democratic process, Sternberg explains, " will proceed through meetings freed from the manipulative reins of law, procedure, precedent, and hierarchy." These high-flying words, however, disguise a recipe for despotism; those laws, procedures, precedents, and hierarchy serve a very real purpose.

A third is sustainability. To integrate economies into the earth's ecosystem, the new order "will run on alternative energy, organic farming, local food markets, and closed-loop recyclable industry, if any industry is needed. People will travel on public transit, or ride cars that tread lightly on the earth, or even better, ride bicycles. They will occupy green buildings constructed of local materials and inhabit cities growing organically within bioregions. Life will be liberated from carbon emanations. It will be a permanent, placid way of life."

Socialism definitely forms part of this picture but economics no longer dominates, as once it did. The new leftist goal is more complex than mere anti-capitalism, constituting an entire way of life. Sternberg dubs this movement world purificationism, but I prefer left-fascism.

He then asks the vital question: Will the Left's latest incarnation once again turn totalitarian? He finds it too early to answer definitely but points to several "totalitarian warning signs," including the dehumanizing of enemies and accusations of mass murder. He warns of an inflection point when left-fascists "stand true to their cataclysmic rhetoric and strap on suicide belts or take up arms to become martyrs." In other words, the dangers are real and present.

So much for those fashionable theories of two decades ago, trumpeted as the Berlin Wall fell, about the end of ideology. The Left retrenched after the fall of Leninism and now threatens humanity with a new version of its anti-Western, anti-rational, anti-liberty, anti-individualist ideology.

SOURCE

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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