The Boston Globe is afraid of The Donald's cheering crowds

I read a fair bit of Leftist media, even some far-Leftist stuff.  Unlike Leftists, I don't live in fear of having my beliefs knocked out of their orbit by some awkward fact.  So I can do that.  Facts are what I go by -- pace Mr Gradgrind. And one of my regular reads is The Boston Globe from the Massachusetts heartland of liberalism.

So I was amused to see a letter from a Jewish lady in the "Globe" under the heading "Donald Trump’s cheering crowds stoke fear of a witch hunt".  The letter is below.  I have some comments at the foot of it.

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AS THE daughter of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, I shudder at Donald Trump’s remarks about Muslims (“Raising rhetoric, Trump calls for ban on Muslim travel to the US,” Page A1, Dec. 8). His latest call to deny entry to the United States for all Muslims and to require Muslims here, even US citizens, to be on a national registry is over the top. What is even more distressing is the applause he gets at rallies for these proposals.

My parents, who escaped from Germany just in time, urged me to always keep my passport current. “You never know when things turn against Jews and you’ll have to leave this country,” they stressed. “A witch hunt, like happened to us in Germany, can erupt at any time, against any group.”

I thought they were paranoid. But I don’t think this anymore. Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and the cheers he gets for it eerily sound like the kind of 21st-century demagogue my parents warned me about. I am frightened even though I am not Muslim.

I just checked that my passport is up to date, and my husband’s too. I hope we won’t have to use them. My children probably think I am paranoid. I know otherwise.

Miriam Stein, Arlington

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The Donald has clearly not won Miriam's stony heart. But what else is new? Fully 78% of the Jewish vote went to Obama in 2008 and The Donald is the anti-Obama. Why their G-d made Jews so stupid politically, I will never know. The diaspora Jews almost all think the Left are their friends! Even after a socialist incinerated 6 million of them! Even Karl Marx despised Jews and he was a Jew himself!

And have Jews forgotten how harshly Russian Communists treated Soviet Jews?  Do they not know why most Russian Jews live in Israel these days -- to the extent that there are some streets in Israel where the shop signs are just as likely to be in Cyrillic as in Hebrew?  Hashem gave his chosen people many great gifts but basic political awareness seems to have been denied to most of them

And it is precisely that mental muddle that lies at the heart of Miriam's possibly genuine fears.  She can't distinguish between a socialist who incinerated train-loads of Jews for ideological reasons and a practical politician who wishes no harm to either Jews or Muslims but simply wishes to keep out of his country a group who include known hostiles.  Poor Miriam!  Miriam is a klutz -- JR

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Sen. Sessions: ‘It’s Appropriate to Begin to Discuss’ Muslim Immigrants, and Trump ‘Has Forced That Discussion’

Commenting on Donald Trump’s proposal to halt immigration into the United States by Muslims until a safe vetting system can be established, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said the real estate mogul was “treading on dangerous ground” because of religious freedom issues, but added that in this dangerous time it is proper to discuss the topic and Trump “has forced that discussion.”

On Breitbart News’ SiriusXM radio show on Thursday, host Stephen Bannon asked Sen. Sessions about Trump’s idea and the controversy it has sparked.

Sessions, who supports a secure border policy and strong national defense, said, “Well, he’s treading on dangerous ground because Americans are so deeply committed to freedom of religion. That is a major part of who we are.”

“But, at the same time, we’re in an age that’s very dangerous and we’re seeing more and more persons enter and a lot of them have done terrorist acts and a lot of them believe it’s commanded by their religion,” said Sessions.

“Their faith commands them to do these things,” he said. “They’re not committing suicide on the assumption that this is the end. They’re doing it because they believe that their faith will reward them for doing it.

“So I think it’s appropriate to begin to discuss this, and he has forced that discussion,” said the senator.  “We may even have a discussion about it in Judiciary Committee today.”

“But, you know, it’s time for us to think this through and the classical, internal American religious principles I don’t think apply providing constitutional protections to persons not citizens who want to come here.”

“They’re not in the United States and they’re not entitled to the constitutional protections of the United States,” he said. “But as a principle, we want to be not condemnatory of other people’s religion.

“And there are millions of wonderful, decent, good Muslims, hundreds of millions worldwide, and so we’ve got to be really careful that we don't cross that line, and I guess Mr. Trump has caused us all to think about it more concretely,” said Senator Sessions.

Jeff Sessions, 68, is in his fourth term as the junior senator from Alabama. Prior to entering Congress, Sessions served as the 44th attorney general of Alabama. He also served as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve (1973-1986). He is married and has three children.

SOURCE

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An Establishment Unhinged

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration "until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on," Donald Trump this week ignited a firestorm of historic proportions.

As all the old hate words — xenophobe, racist, bigot — have lost their electric charge from overuse, and Trump was being called a fascist demagogue and compared to Hitler and Mussolini.

The establishment seemed to have become unhinged.

Why the hysteria? Comes the reply: Trump's call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration tramples all over "American values" and everything we stand for, including the Constitution.

But is this really true?

The Constitution protects freedom of religion for U.S. citizens. But citizens of foreign lands have no constitutional right to migrate. And federal law gives a president broad powers in deciding who comes and who does not, especially in wartime.

In 1924, Congress restricted immigration from Asia, reduced the numbers coming from southern and Central Europe, and produced a 40-year moratorium on most immigration into the United States.

Its authors and President Coolidge wanted ours to remain a nation whose primary religious and ethnic ties were to Europe, not Africa or Asia.

Under FDR, Truman and JFK, this was the law of the land. Did this represent 40 years of fascism?

Why might Trump want a moratorium on Muslim immigration?

Reason one: terrorism. The 9/11 terrorists were Muslim, as were the shoe and underwear bombers on those planes, the Fort Hood shooter, the Times Square bomber and the San Bernardino killers.

And as San Bernardino showed again, Islamist terrorists are exploiting our liberal immigration policies to come here and kill us. Thus, a pause, a timeout on immigration from Muslim countries, until we fix the problem, would seem to be simple common sense.

Second, Muslims are clearly more susceptible to the siren call of terrorism, and more likely to be radicalized on the Internet and in mosques than are Christians at church or Jews at synagogue.

Which is why we monitor mosques more closely than cathedrals.

Third, according to Harvard's late Samuel Huntington, a "clash of civilizations" is coming between the West and the Islamic world. Other scholars somberly concur. But if such a conflict is in the cards, how many more millions of devout Muslims do we want inside the gates?

Set aside al-Qaida, ISIS and their sympathizers. Among the 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide are untold millions of followers of the Prophet who pray for the coming of a day when sharia is universal and the infidels, i.e., everyone else, are either converted or subjugated.

In nations where Muslims are already huge majorities, where are the Jews? Where have all the Christians gone?

With ethnic and sectarian wars raging in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria and Somalia, why would we bring into our own country people from all sides of these murderous conflicts?

Many European nations — Germans, French, Swedes, Brits — appear to regret having thrown open their doors to immigrants and refugees from the Islamic world, who have now formed unassimilated clusters and enclaves inside their countries.

Ought we not explore why, before we continue down this road?

In some countries of the Muslim world, Americans who embrace "Hollywood values" regarding abortion, adultery and homosexuality, can get their heads chopped off as quickly as converts to Christianity.

In what Muslim countries does Earl Warren's interpretation of the First Amendment — about any and all religious presence being banned in public schools and all religions being treated equally — apply?

When is the next "Crusade for Christ" coming to Saudi Arabia?

Japan has no immigration from the Muslim world, nor does Israel, which declares itself a Jewish state. Are they also fascistic?

President Obama and the guilt-besotted West often bawl their apologies for the horrors of the Crusades that liberated Jerusalem.

Anyone heard Muslim rulers lately apologizing for Saladin, who butchered Christians to take Jerusalem back, or for Suleiman the Magnificent, who conquered the Christian Balkans rampaging through Hungary all the way to the gates of Vienna?

Trump's surge this week, in the teeth of universal denunciation, suggests that a large slice of America agrees with his indictment — that our political-media establishment is dumb as a box of rocks and leading us down a path to national suicide.

SOURCE

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Realism from Israel



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Is Slavery Really Gone?

Wednesday marked the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery. Barack Obama observed the occasion, saying, “A hundred and fifty years proved the cure to be necessary but not sufficient. Progress proved halting, too often deferred. Newly freed slaves may have been liberated by the letter of the law, but their daily lives told another tale.” He’s right that systemic oppression has often been a part of America — indeed, the human experience. He called slavery “our nation’s original sin” and described all the ways the struggle against it has unfolded over the years. It should go without saying that slavery was (and is) a vile institution.

What Obama failed to mention, however, is his own party’s long history of guilt on the matter. The Democrats' “Great Society” has done nothing but run up trillions in debt to continue poverty. As Mark Alexander wrote on the 50th anniversary of that travesty, “The human tragedy of LBJ’s soul-crushing ‘welfare’ programs is incalculable. A rapidly growing permanent underclass, one utterly dependent on the state for its day-to-day existence, now constitutes the Great Society.” By design, Democrats benefit politically from that dependence and permanent racial grievance. Also by design, the first black president has only made race relations worse.

Ironically, Obama also noted that former slaves “couldn’t protect themselves or their families from indignity or from violence.” That would be thanks in part to gun control. And that terrible circumstance remains today on Democrats' urban poverty plantations, where gangs often rule the streets and the law-abiding are subject to severe gun restrictions to go along with high crime. Gun control began as a racist proposition, and it effectively remains one.

While our nation has sometimes fallen short of its own ideals (we are human, after all), rather than perpetually fomenting racial discontent we should remember that Liberty is colorblind and strive to achieve it in every arena.

SOURCE

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