The persistent challenge for a writer, of non-fiction, fiction or journalism, is the ability to persuade himself that, more often than not, he is right and the rest of the world is wrong. This resolve is especially vital during this climate that is so roundly political. People all over seem to be in such a bad mood.
I bring this up because somebody out there in Internet-land took exception to what I wrote about President Bush, when Bush remarked: "God bless the people of Iraq, and God bless America." I protested on two counts. First, that (Irving Berlin) benediction has always been reserved for America only? like Mom and apple pie. Second, the people of Iraq pray not to God, but to Allah. (From historian Bat Yeor, as reported by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post: "For the Arabs, President Bush's quotations from the Bible and allusions to the Judeo-Christian roots of America, is anathema.")
Apparently, my words offended a certain "faith"-based and "peace-loving" website. (Amazing how nasty some do-gooders get when you demur.) In denouncing my point of view, this website lashed out vigorously and informed its readers that: one, there is no such thing as absolute good and bad; two, all humanity are one big (happy?) family. We are all related.
Let the record show that I emphatically dissent.
There is good. There is bad. Blurring the lines between the two is what's got us into this fine mess. As I write this, our color-coded terror alert is up to near-top level, flights are being diverted, restricted or cancelled outright, and some commercial airplanes are being escorted by fighter jets. (Happy New Year!)
Wait a minute. Late word has it that our terror barometer has been downsized a notch. So this is how we live in America, and even around the world, as life-support patients who must have their temperatures tested by the hour. In other words, how sick are we today, or rather, how badly do they want to kill us today? Quick, get the thermometer! Is their urge to kill us on low, medium or high?
This, we call "the new normal," meaning, stay worried, stay scared, for we don't know where the next 9/11 may be coming from; from air, land or sea, from the air we breathe, from the water we drink, from the food we eat. What's brought us to this fix? Partly, the dithering of our academic utopians, who see no evil, hear no evil, though, sometimes, they do speak evil.
Chaos happens when clarity is replaced by professorial mumbo jumbo. There are a million examples of absolute good and bad. I'll get the reckoning started as follows: Green traffic lights are good, red is bad; Einstein good, Hitler bad; liberty good, tyranny bad; wealth good, poverty bad; paycheck good, taxes bad; Sinatra good, Springsteen bad? See how easy this is?
To put it another way, a Swedish art exhibit that glorifies suicide bombing is bad, very bad; the Israeli ambassador, Zvi Maz'el, who smashed the exhibit is good, very good. He is a hero. No equivocation can obscure the fact that even art can be villainous when it turns killers into heroes, even in the name, and under the guise, of freedom of expression.
Good and bad, however, are terms we ascribe to humans. So there is another dimension that is beyond us, or rather beneath, and here we're talking about animals, especially those who've been stricken with jihad rabies, such at the beast who committed that massacre on Bus 19 in Jerusalem a few days back. He, and the millions of jihadists who sent him, do not qualify as good or bad, for they do not qualify as human. They are creatures, far beneath humanity, like the skunk, the rat and the snake, and that's as absolute as it gets. The snake takes its orders, to poison, from instinct and heredity. So it goes with these sub-humans, and that, too, is absolute.
Yet, from their tenured perches, our elites keep reminding us that everything is relative; there are no absolutes.
But when the Gestapo selected us for left or for right, that was absolute! One direction led to the work camps, the other straight to death. Ambiguity was costly then, as it is now. Our scholars even urge us to "understand" the enemy; root cause. Absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco foresaw our topsy-turvy age, wherein "to understand is to justify." (British MP Jenny Tonge on her support for Palestinian Arab terrorism: "I can understand.")
Here's the paradox: Those of us who live in freedom are imprisoned for our own safety, and for reasons of political correctness, we dare not name the enemy, though it is not Jews or Christians who keep us trapped and trembling; bolting our doors and hiding under the covers. Cries of "kill the infidel" do not come from our synagogues or churches.
You blame Israel for installing checkpoints and building a fence? Here's a bulletin. Every metal detector at every airport is a checkpoint and a fence. Every screening device at your theater, amusement park, ball park, apartment building, supermarket, is a checkpoint and a fence. We're surrounded by walls and fences, the least of it in Israel. The next time you get body-scanned for carrying a toothpick onto an ocean liner, that is apartheid!
If it is true that we are all related, then, in the words of that famous movie mogul, include me out!
I am not related to Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. I am not related to men who send off children to kill and die to achieve paradise with 72 dark-eyed virgins. I am not related to mothers who proudly send off their sons with explosive-belts for the glory of jihad. I am not related to young men who cheer each time a bomb goes off on a Jerusalem school bus, and I am not related to the boys who come out of their own rat holes to dance atop our Black Hawks Down. I am not related to Yasser Arafat, who got rich from the business of terrorism, and I am not related to his wife Suha, who suffers for her people from the Champs Elysees at $100,000 a month.
I am not related to ex-Israeli Dror Feiler and his Swedish sweetheart Gunilla Skold Feiler whose "art" celebrated the murder of 21 Israelis in Haifa last year.
I am an island. You are an island. We are an island. We did not make that choice. They imposed it on us.
I bring this up because somebody out there in Internet-land took exception to what I wrote about President Bush, when Bush remarked: "God bless the people of Iraq, and God bless America." I protested on two counts. First, that (Irving Berlin) benediction has always been reserved for America only? like Mom and apple pie. Second, the people of Iraq pray not to God, but to Allah. (From historian Bat Yeor, as reported by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post: "For the Arabs, President Bush's quotations from the Bible and allusions to the Judeo-Christian roots of America, is anathema.")
Apparently, my words offended a certain "faith"-based and "peace-loving" website. (Amazing how nasty some do-gooders get when you demur.) In denouncing my point of view, this website lashed out vigorously and informed its readers that: one, there is no such thing as absolute good and bad; two, all humanity are one big (happy?) family. We are all related.
Let the record show that I emphatically dissent.
There is good. There is bad. Blurring the lines between the two is what's got us into this fine mess. As I write this, our color-coded terror alert is up to near-top level, flights are being diverted, restricted or cancelled outright, and some commercial airplanes are being escorted by fighter jets. (Happy New Year!)
Wait a minute. Late word has it that our terror barometer has been downsized a notch. So this is how we live in America, and even around the world, as life-support patients who must have their temperatures tested by the hour. In other words, how sick are we today, or rather, how badly do they want to kill us today? Quick, get the thermometer! Is their urge to kill us on low, medium or high?
This, we call "the new normal," meaning, stay worried, stay scared, for we don't know where the next 9/11 may be coming from; from air, land or sea, from the air we breathe, from the water we drink, from the food we eat. What's brought us to this fix? Partly, the dithering of our academic utopians, who see no evil, hear no evil, though, sometimes, they do speak evil.
Chaos happens when clarity is replaced by professorial mumbo jumbo. There are a million examples of absolute good and bad. I'll get the reckoning started as follows: Green traffic lights are good, red is bad; Einstein good, Hitler bad; liberty good, tyranny bad; wealth good, poverty bad; paycheck good, taxes bad; Sinatra good, Springsteen bad? See how easy this is?
To put it another way, a Swedish art exhibit that glorifies suicide bombing is bad, very bad; the Israeli ambassador, Zvi Maz'el, who smashed the exhibit is good, very good. He is a hero. No equivocation can obscure the fact that even art can be villainous when it turns killers into heroes, even in the name, and under the guise, of freedom of expression.
Good and bad, however, are terms we ascribe to humans. So there is another dimension that is beyond us, or rather beneath, and here we're talking about animals, especially those who've been stricken with jihad rabies, such at the beast who committed that massacre on Bus 19 in Jerusalem a few days back. He, and the millions of jihadists who sent him, do not qualify as good or bad, for they do not qualify as human. They are creatures, far beneath humanity, like the skunk, the rat and the snake, and that's as absolute as it gets. The snake takes its orders, to poison, from instinct and heredity. So it goes with these sub-humans, and that, too, is absolute.
Yet, from their tenured perches, our elites keep reminding us that everything is relative; there are no absolutes.
But when the Gestapo selected us for left or for right, that was absolute! One direction led to the work camps, the other straight to death. Ambiguity was costly then, as it is now. Our scholars even urge us to "understand" the enemy; root cause. Absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco foresaw our topsy-turvy age, wherein "to understand is to justify." (British MP Jenny Tonge on her support for Palestinian Arab terrorism: "I can understand.")
Here's the paradox: Those of us who live in freedom are imprisoned for our own safety, and for reasons of political correctness, we dare not name the enemy, though it is not Jews or Christians who keep us trapped and trembling; bolting our doors and hiding under the covers. Cries of "kill the infidel" do not come from our synagogues or churches.
You blame Israel for installing checkpoints and building a fence? Here's a bulletin. Every metal detector at every airport is a checkpoint and a fence. Every screening device at your theater, amusement park, ball park, apartment building, supermarket, is a checkpoint and a fence. We're surrounded by walls and fences, the least of it in Israel. The next time you get body-scanned for carrying a toothpick onto an ocean liner, that is apartheid!
If it is true that we are all related, then, in the words of that famous movie mogul, include me out!
I am not related to Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. I am not related to men who send off children to kill and die to achieve paradise with 72 dark-eyed virgins. I am not related to mothers who proudly send off their sons with explosive-belts for the glory of jihad. I am not related to young men who cheer each time a bomb goes off on a Jerusalem school bus, and I am not related to the boys who come out of their own rat holes to dance atop our Black Hawks Down. I am not related to Yasser Arafat, who got rich from the business of terrorism, and I am not related to his wife Suha, who suffers for her people from the Champs Elysees at $100,000 a month.
I am not related to ex-Israeli Dror Feiler and his Swedish sweetheart Gunilla Skold Feiler whose "art" celebrated the murder of 21 Israelis in Haifa last year.
I am an island. You are an island. We are an island. We did not make that choice. They imposed it on us.