Tag Archives: history

Muslims announce they’re leaving France – “Not worth conquering”

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In truth, the Muslims have not announced they are leaving France. But you couldn’t blame them if they did.

France is rocked by mostly peaceful protests these days. Numerous stores, schools, office buildings, cars, trash cans, and other things that will burn, have been burned.

The culprits, er, I mean the mostly peaceful protestors, are mostly bored college and high school kids, as is typical in France. A requirement for graduation since the 60s has been to burn a trash can. Post-graduate degrees require that you burn a car.

It’s the tame, modern equivalent to that age that France looks back upon fondly: The Reign of Terror. Americans shoot off fireworks to commemorate the War of Independence; the French burn government buildings to commemorate the storming of the Bastille.

The putative reason for the protests is as predictable as the identity of the protestors. As always, they want more money and less work – free stuff.

That’s not the way they say it, of course. The signs they carry don’t say “MORE FREE STUFF.” The signs instead protest the government’s attempt to limit the welfare state.

That limit is long overdue. France has run budget deficits far beyond the 3% allowed by the EU, due largely to a sprawling welfare state and the burden of an extravagant government pension program. They began spending even more during Covid, and never stopped, even after Covid stopped. The government has proposed very modest reductions in the rate of growth of that spending.

In view of the fiscal troubles of France, the market refuses to buy its bond debt unless they continue to raise the interest rates on the bonds, which adds yet more to the debt. It’s a vicious cycle.

Tax rates could be raised, but the rates are already punitive. In any event, there aren’t enough rich people that taxing them even more would make much difference in the fiscal woes of France. “Tax the rich” is more a slogan for the left’s hatred for people who are willing to work, rather than a way to balance the budget.

Printing more money is not the answer. France uses the Euro, not French currency.

Even if it still used the French franc, and could print more of them, the paper money of a society is not its wealth. The paper money is merely a reflector of that wealth so that society can function without a barter system. Printed dollars allow you to go to the grocery store without carrying gold bars or pieces of your house on your back to barter for your food.

Doubling the paper money does not double the wealth. Rather, it halves the value of the paper.

As for the true wealth of France, it’s not increasing fast enough to pay for the never-ending free stuff that the kids demand. It might even be declining. France is a laggard in computer technology, its work ethic stinks (at least in the large cities), it’s not a player in AI, it lacks Switzerland’s pharmaceutical industry, and it’s not the financial powerhouse that London used to be and New York City still is.

Most of this is known to the leftist leaders, apart from these naïve, spoiled college kids indoctrinated by their loony professors.

While they hide behind the promise of more free stuff, what the leftist leaders really want is to destroy nations. They’ve learned that they cannot gain power over a healthy nation – it never happens – but only over a crumbled one. Once in power, they insist that they will fix things (after having destroyed them) but what they really do is to loot what’s left.

We saw that in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe, Cuba, and, more recently, Venezuela. In fact, we’ve seen that everywhere – everywhere! – that socialism has been tried.

The way to produce prosperity in an economy is to incentivize people to produce prosperity. People produce prosperity in the form of products and services; governments take it away in the form of taxes.

As for the mostly peaceful protests in France, I suspect that the coming cold weather will douse the fires in the heart of the cities and in the bellies of the protestors. The protests will not kill France.

But inflation might.

Back to the Muslims. Some of the protests include Muslims among the college kids and professional agitators. After all, Muslims are not immune to this sport, and many of them have an abundance of grievances against their adopted home.

But Muslims are not more than a fraction of the protestors. There could be zero Muslims in France, and they’d still have these protests. France has always had this streak of violent leftism, and always will.

Some of you have asked about my recent trip to Tuscany, the latest of many months that I’ve spent in Europe over the years. My answer is, it was grand. As always, the Italian countryside was beautiful, the food was great, the people were disorganized, and Rome was chaotic, dirty and magnificent.

Is it OK to hate Muslims?

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Hating people who are different from us is human. We were naturally selected in favor of it. People who didn’t hate people in the other tribe – and kill or run from them – often wound up in their stew pot. Their gene-bearing gametes wound up in the stew pot with them, rather than in their potential offspring who might have continued the lineage.

Those stew pots of human flesh in the stone age have largely been replaced by the “melting pot” of humanity in American immigration. Civilization has corralled our instinctive traits to some degree. Killing or running from new customers is bad for business.

But hating people who are different from us is one of the human traits most resistant to corralling. Until the last one or two generations, it was socially acceptable to wildly and publicly hate Black people. It has also been socially acceptable to publicly hate the Irish or the Italians or the Jews or the East Asians.

I’m glad to report that this is no longer true. If you don’t believe me, see how many cocktail parties you get invited to after having a racial tirade.

However, there seems to be an exception with regard to the Muslims. It’s socially acceptable to hate them, even in the relatively public (but safely anonymous) context of the internet.

 A few days ago, I published a piece suggesting that Europe has a Muslim problem but it’s a mistake to blame the Muslims for everything. The ones to blame for European problems of welfare, poor defense, a decline in manufacturing, and technological lagging is [drum roll] the Europeans.

I got a lot of hate mail suggesting that I should indeed blame the Muslims.

This socially acceptable hatred of Muslims, I’m told, is because their religion is inferior to most others. It is, I’m told, a religion of violence. Islam has always been that way, I’m told. Here are some examples from the Quran:

  • They killed all the woman and children of one town, except about 400 who were abducted and forced to marry their abductors.1
  • They celebrated the rape, murder and 12-part dismemberment of a woman.2
  • They put an entire town to the sword.3
  • Their God instructed them to “utterly destroy” seven nations, leaving “not a single thing that breathes.” 4
  • Another tribe is completely annihilated as an Godly act of vengeance.5

Oops. Those are not from the Quran. They are from the Old Testament. (Cites are given at the end of this article.)

Indeed, as respected scholar (and affirmed atheist with whom I usually disagree on religious matters) Richard Dawkins put it:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

But Christianity has outgrown its terrible twos, you say, and Islam has not. Most of the atrocities of Christianity are long ago (notwithstanding an occasional one or three) while the atrocities of Islam are ongoing.

Fair point. But that does not say that Christianity is a religion of peace while Islam is not. It says that violent Christianity has evolved over the millennia to become relatively peaceful, while Islam has evolved less. (The teaching of Christ undoubtedly has something to do with this, but I would argue that Jews as well are mostly – or especially – nonviolent.)

In short, the real distinction in violence between religions is not due to different foundational doctrines. Both Islam and Judeo-Christianity have plenty of violence in their scripture. The distinction is, rather, that the civilizations of Islam and the civilizations of Christianity are much different. Billions of Muslims exist in relatively primitive civilizations. Billions of Christians, in contrast, exist in relatively advanced civilizations.

Violence tends to be incompatible with civilization. In the advanced civilizations where Christianity is practiced, the violence in scripture is played down, while in primitive Muslim societies it is not.

When Christianity was practiced in impoverished and primitive societies, it, too, was often violent. Remember the Spanish Inquisition and Salem witch trials? How about Joan of Arc?

I’m not a theologian, but it’s worth noting that I’m in the company of some pretty good ones. Before you dismiss me as naive, be aware that on my side are Pope Leo XIV, all his modern predecessors, nearly all the Cardinals and Bishops, and most Protestant leaders.

Now let’s consider what this means for Muslims, the West, Muslim immigration, and how we treat the Muslims who are here.

For one, we’ve gone too far, too fast with Muslim immigration. For that matter, we’ve gone too far, too fast with Latin American immigration. In both cases, they come from civilizations less advanced than our own, and they have a lot to learn about nonviolence and other civilized things. Let’s slow down or even put a hold on this immigration. (That said, I’m in favor of immigration by individuals from more advanced societies. Albert Einstein is a good example.)

As for how we treat the Muslims who are here, it’s important to recognize that the great majority are honest, hard-working and nonviolent. The Muslims are largely following the patterns of other immigrant groups like the Irish, Italians and Jews. Within three generations, they’re like the rest of us. Before then, the second generation (the children of the immigrants) tends to be less law-abiding than the rest of us.

Like anyone else, law-abiding Muslims deserve our respect, our politeness, our tolerance and our love. If you want to party with me, let’s not denigrate them as a group or blame the great majority for the actions of a small minority.

1Judges 21 2Judges 19 3Judges 1:25 4Deuteronomy 20:16 5Samuel 15

Muslims are the least of Europe’s problems

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Europe has problems. The economy is moribund. Taxes are high but insufficient to pay for an addictive and ever-growing welfare state which leaves defense budgets so underfunded and reliant on America that Europe is vulnerable to a military invasion.

Europe’s infrastructure is crumbling. They lag America and East Asia in critical technology, especially computer and AI tech. They made a bad bet on alternative energy. Their birthrate is far below the replacement rate.

Rather than confronting these problems directly, the Europeans blame others, specifically the Muslim immigrants from Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon and Jordan.

The invasion to worry about, goes the typical European narrative, is not from the east, but from the south. It’s not Russian or Chinese armies of millions they should fear, says the narrative, but Muslim families of six.

It’s understandable that the non-Muslim 94% of Europe blames the Muslim 6%. It’s always tempting to blame another person for your problems, especially if that person has another skin color, another religion, another language, and another mode of attire. It’s human nature.

Before they had the Muslims, the Germans blamed the French, the French blamed the English, the English blamed the Scots, the Catholic Irish blamed the Protestant Irish, the Basques blamed the Spanish, Denmark blamed Sweden, and everybody blamed the Jews.

Americans have joined in this anti-Muslim crusade. After all, Europeans are the ancestors of most Americans and look like most Americans. Muslims aren’t and don’t.

Besides, if Americans were to blame Europeans for their self-inflicted problems, that hits too close to home – especially when America itself seems to be on the same road with regard to problems such as the welfare state. It’s easier for Americans to blame Somalian fraud for the malignant welfare budget of America – and Europe – than to blame America itself, even if the actual Somalian fraud is only a tiny fraction of the overall welfare budget.

(By the way, give the Somalians some credit for entrepreneurialism. Can anyone doubt that the Italian, Irish and Jewish immigrants would have done the same thing in their time if given the chance by idiots like Minnesota’s Governor Walz?)

Ah, you say, with an attempt to change the subject, Islam is a religion of war and Judeo-Christianity are religions of peace. Therefore, Europe should be reserved for peaceful Europeans and America should be reserved for peaceful Americans (but not native ones). In other words, America and Europe should be reserved for Christians and a few Jews.

To that I say: Have you read the Old Testament lately to see what this so-called religion of peace says about war? They seemed to be engaged in war all the time.

Indeed, this Judeo-Christian “religion of peace” produced two millennia of war within itself over the narcissism of small differences like whether we should eat meat on Fridays.

War is not a religious thing. It’s a species thing. Humans do it, and always have. Jews, Christians, Muslims, and before that pagans and earth worshipers, commit war. You name it, we’ve fought over it. Don’t tell me that Islam uniquely is a religion of war.

Nor are Muslims less law-abiding than other immigrant groups. The first generation of Muslim immigrants – the immigrants themselves – tend to be very law-abiding, more so than native-born Americans. In part, this is because they fear being deported upon conviction of a crime.

The law-abiding status of Muslims declines in the second generation after immigration. They tend to be much more criminal. It’s theorized that this is because they are as American as you or I, insofar as citizenship goes. Thus, they can be punished for a crime, but the punishment cannot include being deported. Once the deterrent of deportation is removed, they’re more criminal.

In addition, they are ostracized and discriminated against, and therefore live in poor immigrant communities with limited upward mobility. Frustration brews in them in a way that didn’t in their parents, who were just happy to be here, wanted to fit in, and were afraid of being deported.

I was skeptical about this rationale for second-generation crime among immigrants until I read the studies.  It turns out that this was the pattern of the Germans who immigrated to the Midwest in the 19th century. It was the pattern of the Scandinavians who immigrated to the upper Midwest and the pattern of the Irish who immigrated to New England later in that century. It was the pattern of the Italians who came to New York City early in the 20th century and started Little Italy. It was even the pattern of the Jews. In each case, the initial immigrants were very law-abiding, and their children were not.

The only exception was among the East Asians who came in the late 20th century. They tended to be law-abiding in both the first and second generations, due, apparently, to strong community and cultural connections.

By the time of the third generation, all groups of immigrants are essentially assimilated and match the crime rate of Americans at large (except the Asians, who continue to lag in criminality).

Muslims follow the same pattern; the criminality of third-generation Muslims matches the criminality of third-generation Irish, fifth-generation Italians, fourth-generation Greeks, and so on. By the time they reach the third generation, they all cheat, lie and steal, and occasionally rape, assault and murder, to pretty much the same degree as the rest of us.

(Although off the subject a bit, it bears mentioning that the pattern is the same among Latin Americans. The first generation is very law-abiding, the second generation is much less so, and the third generation matches that of the rest of us.)

None of this is intended to suggest that Europe has no Muslim problem. It does. So does America. A good case can be made that in both continents the immigration by Muslims has been too many and too fast. The same is true of Latin Americans.

But the Muslim problem of both continents is typical of the problem of assimilating an immigrant group, and it is likely to resolve over time. As in America many times in the past, the immigrants – this time Muslim – may ultimately be our salvation and resurrection. 

In the meantime, blaming Muslims for the self-inflicted problems of Europe and America has the effect of ignoring the real source of those problems.

The real source of those problems is that the European descendants of the greatest civilization in history, the Roman Empire, now piss on the ruins. Europeans and, increasingly, Americans have been taken in by populist socialism. We need to reject the promises of freebies, and make good on the promises of merit and investment.

Since we’re talking about Muslims, and economics, it’s worth considering what the great religions have to say on the subject of socialism. While casual feel-gooders might have you believe that spirituality is at war with economics, it was David who said, “When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.”

Jesus proclaimed, “The laborer is worthy of his wages.”

Muhammed said, “No one ever ate a meal better than that which he earned with his own hands.”

The Buddha praised, “by energetic striving, gathered by the strength of their arm, earned by the sweat of their brow, a righteous wealth righteously gained.”

Milton Freidman couldn’t have said it better.

Democrats crying “affordability” is like an arsonist calling the fire department

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The party of compassion and intellectualism, according to them, is selling two things this election season. One, they hate Trump, and they want you to.

Forget that Trump stopped illegal immigration and deported millions of Biden’s illegals.

Forget that Trump emasculated Iran and re-masculated America’s would-be trannies.

Forget that Trump called out overpriced woke colleges for their hiring, admissions, grading and testing on the basis of skin color.

Forget all that. Just remember that Trump’s hair, adjectives and vanity make you feel . . . well, deranged. Your derangement is his fault.

Remember only that. And to vote early and often.

The second thing the Democrats are selling is “affordability.” If you vote for them, they tell you, they’ll make stuff more affordable.

The Democrats are light on the details here, for good reason.

For example, the Democrats could, but don’t, say that they’ll lower the price of gasoline.

The Democrats don’t say that because, for two generations now, they’ve argued that the price of gas in the U.S. is already too low (and indeed it’s still lower than anywhere else in the developed world). If gasoline cost more, they argue, we’d use less of it and – voila! – the climate would be Goldilocks. Never too hot, never too cold.

Forget that the Democratic Republic of California enjoys extremely high gasoline prices, and we nonetheless have cold winters and hot summers the way we always have. Maybe the climate Giai hasn’t gotten the memo. And neither have carbon-spewing China or India.

Forget, too, that the average price of gasoline during the Trump administration is less than the average price of gasoline during the Biden administration. As for Jimmy Carter’s administration, let’s not even go there.

In talking about this “affordability” issue, Democrats could also say, but don’t, that they’ll lower the cost of housing.

The Democrats don’t say that because for many years, they’ve enacted rules and regulations to do the opposite. They favor unionized contractors, even – or especially – when the housing is government-subsidized “affordable” housing. They favor burdensome building codes that display omnipotence more than making buildings safe.

The Democrats also don’t say that because they don’t like the outcome of their own experiment. They know that the cost of building a house in their stronghold of California with its crushing land-use regulations and unionized workforce is almost triple the cost of building the same house in free-market – and Republican – Texas.

In California, it seems that a construction worker is required to be either a member of a union or a citizen of somewhere in Latin America.

How about the affordability of college? Under Democrat administrations, the tuition at the nation’s universities has skyrocketed, due largely to the availability of government student loans which the Democrats turn into gifts.

These universities are mostly controlled by a bunch of group-think Democrats who seem to delight in free-speech inquiry if, and only if, they agree with it, and delight in free market economics if, and only if, it benefits them. 

Maybe the Democrats would address the unaffordability of college in the same way they always have. They’d make more student loans-cum-gifts. The outcome of that approach would be the same as always. Their collaborative Democrats at the universities would be grateful, because they could thereby raise tuition some more.

Except they’d still give in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.

Many Democrats think socialism leads to affordability. The elders of Eastern Europe would beg to differ. What socialism leads to is not affordability, but scarcity. Meat in Soviet-occupied Poland cost pennies a pound, but you literally had to wait in line for hours to get it. Talk to a person who lived through socialism in Poland (which, significantly, is now booming under a free market economy).

How about the cost of electricity? Democrats have long proposed to make electricity cheap by simply mandating that.

But price controls don’t work because they destroy incentives for production. What they could do instead is increase the production of electricity by means of nuclear energy. But “nuclear” is still a dirty word in much of Democrat-land. Better to put windmills in the DC mall and solar panels on the Washington Monument.

The only energy source the Democrats like is the scarce kind, which serves their plan to return us to the utopia of the Stone Age.

With no real plan to lower costs in order to increase affordability, Democrats advocate what they’ve always advocated – higher wages. They propose to double the federal minimum wage, for example.

Why not triple it? Why not increase it to $100,000 an hour? If the Democrats seriously think that higher wage costs can be imposed without producing higher prices, then let’s go whole hog!

Why not hand out free money, the way they did in Covid times?

Ah, the organizations that used to be called the “news media” tell us to forget all that and forget the consequences of all that. Let’s not be too specific. Let’s not be specific at all – what is this, a racist merit-based test or something?

Instead, remember only the bad hair, bad adjectives and bad vanity of the guy – that guy! – who is not on the ballot.

The next President will be a white male Democrat

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This isn’t real

Conventional wisdom is that J.D. Vance will be elected President in 2028. I think not.

Vance has a lot going for him – he’s smart, accomplished, well-educated, in the public eye, and will be heir to MAGA.

That last point, however, is two-edged. Yes, he will be associated with Trump. But yes, he will be associated with Trump. There’s a lot of Trump fatigue out there even among people who voted for him three times, as I did. 

The last time a sitting Vice President was elected to the Presidency was when we elected George H.W. Bush. But that was when Ronald Reagan was a very successful and popular President. When it comes to popularity, Mr. Vance, your boss is no Ronald Reagan.

Vance seems unwilling or unable to apply any balm to soothe this Trump fatigue, much less the strong topical anesthesia that is indicated. He always seems angry and a little xenophobic. I won’t go so far as to say he’s racist – after all, he’s married to an Indian (whom he publicly says he wants to convert to Christianity) – but . . .   

Speaking of xenophobia, what’s with the beard? My phone tells me at a glance which century it is. You’d think Vance could get a Russian oligarch to buy him a phone.

Vance will get some competition from my favorite, Marco Rubio, but Rubio will bow out well before the Republican convention.

The reason Rubio will lose is that he’s Hispanic. On the Republican side, sadly, there are enough voters who simply will not vote for a non-white candidate, even if he’s a dedicated anti-communist, anti-Castro, Republican son of legal Cuban immigrants.

The media won’t help Rubio, even though – or perhaps because – he’s Hispanic. The media will acknowledge that he’s Hispanic, but not a “real” Hispanic since he’s Cuban and since he’s a Republican. They’ll paint him as a betrayer of his race, since in their racist view all minorities are required to be Democrats rather than independent thinkers. They will see him much the way they see Justice Clarence Thomas – as an Uncle Tom.

Ironically, Rubio’s odds would be much better as a Democrat because then he wouldn’t be painted as an Uncle Tom. But then, of course, he’d have to be a Democrat and that’s much worse.

Vance will also get a little competition from Nikki Haley, another candidate I like. But hop in your pickup and drive the backroads of Texas to see how enthusiastic they are about electing a woman as President whose parents are Ajit Singh Randhawa and Raj Kaur Randhaw from Punjab, India.

Or just take it from me: they aren’t.

So, Vance will be the Republican nominee. Who will be the Democrat nominee?

It won’t be Kamala. Even though she seems to be leading in the Democrat polls, a good part of her lead is her name recognition. She did run for President last time and received some 75 million votes. She is also the only credible Black(-ish) candidate, which ensures a few million votes.

But she’s a two-time loser. And both times, she ran a poor campaign. Her support is probably about as high as it will ever be, and that’s not very high.

Moreover, there’s an element of Kamala fatigue – by Kamala. I think she doesn’t want the job badly enough to put in the work that’s necessary to be hired.

That leaves some Democrat white guys. It won’t be Buttigieg. Even the Democrats aren’t ready for a gay man. Besides, being gay is no longer fashionable. To the average American, it’s a little like being trans – it’s sooo 2024.

That leaves the governors. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is disqualified because he doesn’t hate Jews enough. In fact, he is one!!! (Do the Democrats know?)

The women governors are pretty much all women, and the Democrats have already done that twice. Can they really say with their self-congratulatory zeal, “Third woman Presidential candidate! This is another first – the first time that there’s been a third!”

There’s the governor in Illinois who has lost 80 pounds by taking the new fat pills. That’s nice, but does he still have an appetite for the job?

The only one left is Gavin Newsom, complete with his cursed hair issues and cursed State of California. He’s reasonably bright, good-looking, and well-known.

Newsom says he’s dyslexic, which is a good excuse for any gaffes and might even get him some sympathy votes. It’s only right that we elect a President with disabilities. We already had one who was comatose. (Someday we’ll signal our virtue by electing one who is autistic.)

Think how edgy the Dems will feel in nominating a sentient white guy. They haven’t done that in over 20 years. And Dems are nothing if not edgy.

And so, the race will be Vance vs. Newsom or, if you prefer, J.D. vs. Gavin (sounds like an election for frat president).

I’ll be voting for Vance, but the winner will be Newsom. For Vance, the MAGA baggage is a lift too heavy and a bridge too far. It worked for Trump, but Trump is sui generis. I’m glad. 

Trump offers to pay the taxpayers with money from the taxpayers

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The unique “Midterm Convention” by the Republicans in Dallas this week featured the faithful filling an arena (mostly, but there were quite a few empty seats) to hear the faith (mostly, but a Democrat Senator, too, spoke by video).

I’ve voted Republican since Ronald Reagan, including three times for Donald Trump. I didn’t think I would learn anything by watching the spectacle, and I didn’t think it would be amusing entertainment, so I didn’t watch.

But I did hear that President Trump promised to pay each adult citizen $5,000 if the Republicans hold both houses of Congress in November. I have two thoughts on this.

First, the odds that he’ll ever pay the $5,000 are approximately zero. The Republicans are sure to lose the House, and stand a good chance of losing the Senate as well. Even on the slim chance that they hold both, the $5,000 payments would require an act of Congress. The odds that Congress would go along are approximately, well, zero.

The odds that the Republicans will hold both houses of Congress, and Congress will go along with the $5,000 payments, are, if my math still serves, approximately zero times approximately zero, which is well nigh . . . zero.

So, don’t spend the money yet.

My second thought is that this money amounting to something over $1,000,000,000 has to come from somewhere. Oh, you say, it just gets printed.

But didn’t we learn for the umpteenth time during the Biden administration that money that “just gets printed” still comes from somewhere? Didn’t we learn that it comes from us, through inflated prices?

If that were not the case, then why make the payments only $5,000? Couldn’t we all be rich by letting the government simply print and mail to each of us $5,000,000?

Heck, why stop there? Let’s all be as rich as Elon Musk by having the government print and mail to each of us, say, a trillion dollars.

Okay, I said I have two thoughts on the matter, but actually I have three. Trump thinks we’re stupid.

Why do Democrat Jews vote for Democrat Jew-haters?

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It’s a puzzle. It’s a conundrum. To use Winston Churchill’s quote about the WWII Soviets, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Why do Jews vote for Democrats?

Okay, I can understand why they vote against certain Republicans. For example, notwithstanding his defense of Israel, Donald Trump sometimes comes across as . . . well, let’s just say he does not come across as Albert Einstein.

A culture such as the Jews might find Trump’s social media postings and his in-person “weave” a bit off-putting. This off-putting is apparently not offset in their minds by his support for Israel.

But Trump is not the only Republican rejected by the Jews. The Jews as a group have never voted for any Republican Presidential candidate.

Never.

Was Eisenhower too dumb? This was the general in charge of Allied Forces in Europe, the bold genius who helped mastermind D-Day, and the good soldier who opened the concentration camps.

What about Richard Nixon? A man is not called “tricky” because he’s stupid. Nixon was clearly smarter than LBJ or Harry Truman.

How about Ronald Reagan? All he did was win the Cold War.

Reagan’s vice president who succeeded him, George H.W. Bush, was one of the most accomplished men in DC at that time.

The son of Bush senior, namely George W, was at least as smart as the men he ran against, Al Gore and John Kerry.

Was Mitt Romney who made zillions on Wall Street dumb? I should be so dumb.

Even Donald Trump was clearly smarter than his opponent the last two times.

The Jews voted against all of them, and every other Republican Presidential candidate. Why?

I have a theory.

Jews coming to America were much different than the ones here today. Jewish immigrants were more like the Irish or the Italian immigrants. They suffered discrimination for their ethnicity and religion (Catholicism in the case of the Italians and most of the Irish). All had heavy foreign accents that served to identify them, and the first language of the Italians and Jews was not even English.

They naturally voted for the political party that held itself out as just like them – working-class folk. The Democrats were the party that did not control the country clubs that refused to admit them.

The Irish and Italian immigrants assimilated within two generations, as most immigrants do. For example, I say I’m Scottish but the truth is that I have just one grandparent from Scotland. The rest came from here and there. Likewise, most of the Irish and Italian immigrants married outside their ethnicity and even their faith.

Today, there is no Irish vote or Italian vote, because there’s no longer a discrete Irish culture or Italian culture in America. Getting drunk on St Patrick’s Day doesn’t count, and Columbus Day has been cancelled.

But there’s still a Jewish vote, because there’s still a discrete Jewish culture. That culture is the reason that the Jews survived for thousands of years as a minority ethnic group with a distinctive non-Christian religion despite enormous pressures.

The Jews’ survival skills were forged in the furnace of Europe and, before that, the Middle East. There, they learned not to blend in because they weren’t allowed to.  They learned not to marry outside their faith because nobody outside their faith would marry them.

The Jews made a virtue of this terrible discrimination and periodic pogroms. Being ostracized from mainstream culture drove them into an observance and even obsession over their own distinctive culture, religion and traditions.

You have your Christmas, they said, but we have our Hannukah.  You have your New Year, but we have our Rosh Hashanah. You have your Easter, but we have our Passover.

And you have your Republicans, but we have our Democrats. In short, Jews vote for Democrats because it’s tradition.

Most traditions are good. There’s a Darwinian aspect to them; bad habits die out and never rise to the level of a tradition. In the context of Jewish culture and religion, tradition has been a very good thing, a sine qua non of these extraordinary and vulnerable people who comprise only 0.2% of the world’s population.

But I submit that the Jewish tradition of voting for Democrats is now unhealthy for them and us.

The Torah is full of traditions that may have been right for their time but are not right for the present. No longer is it appropriate for Jews to push goats off cliffs, decapitate calves, or light bonfires on mountain peaks.

Or vote blindly for barbarians who seek to destroy them. Even Tevye compromised tradition to save his people.

Cambridge has blood on their hands

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By now, you know the story. A man named Jason Arday was hired by Cambridge to be its “youngest Black* professor.”

Cambridge hired Arday in the wake of the George Floyd death, a tragic death that had as much impact on Great Britain as on Minnesota. What we learned from the George Floyd episode was not that we should treat or incarcerate mentally disturbed, substance-abusing criminals. No, that lesson was too much for those Days of Wokeness.

What we learned instead was that anytime a person dies in police custody, the police must have murdered him – if he was Black.

Just as rebels holler “To the barricades,” the DEI advocates hollered, “To the reparations!”

The reparations were not to take the form of putting the likes of George Floyd into in an expensive institution for treatment, rehabilitation and, if necessary, punishment. The reparations were instead to take the form of putting a person who the DEI advocates view as someone just like George Floyd (to the DEI advocates, they all look the same) into a professorship at Cambridge. Call it the George Floyd Chair.

It didn’t matter whether the Black person was ever a victim of slavery or if his ancestors ever were. What mattered was that the person was Black.

And so, it was no problem that the George Floyd Chair was filled with Jason Arday, even though his parents immigrated to London from Ghana and there is no evidence that he or any ancestor suffered slavery (if they did, it was the Black-on-Black kind).

Arday was a piece of work. Outside the classroom, he bragged that he once ran 600 miles in 6 days. As if that was not enough, he once ran 30 marathons – a 26-mile race – in 33 days. In his spare time, he said, he raised $6 million dollars for charity in the span of a few weeks.

He said he barely spoke until he was 11. He suffered two brain tumors.

Inside the classroom, he was touted as brilliant. Any claims to the contrary were dismissed as “racist.”

Yes, there was much ado about the phenom named Jason Arday. It turned out to be much ado about nothing. I was all lies.

There were no brain tumors. He spoke at the usual age. He apparently ran no marathons, much less 30 in 33 days. The $6 million he single-handedly raised for charity in a short time was actually raised over a long period of time by a charity group he was loosely affiliated with.

The thing that did him in, however, was not his superhuman fabulism. It was his academic fraud. It was discovered that his PhD thesis contained over 100 instances of plagiarism. Some of the plagiarism was page upon page of exact copying.

The initial reaction by Cambridge was of course, “More racism! By racist critics!” Arday himself literally called the police when journalists sent him emails asking for his comment. (The police belatedly dismissed his complaint.)

Despite the stonewalling by both Cambridge and Arday, his plagiarism was too stark to be ignored. Whole pages were cut and pasted, including the grammatical errors. Cambridge finally announced that it was undertaking an investigation.

Arday resigned from his prestigious and tenured position later that day. Cambridge must find another Black man for the George Floyd Chair.

Yesterday, this story went from amusing to bemusing. Arday was found dead in London. Police say there is no evidence of foul play. That’s police talk for suicide. Although I condemn Arday’s fraud and his attacks on critics who sought to point it out, part of me feels bad for him and his family.

Here’s who I don’t feel bad for: Cambridge.  

It is often observed that affirmative action may feel good to the advocates, but it does no favors to the beneficiaries. The beneficiary is put into a position they’re not ready for, a position where they are bound to fail. Indeed, the failure rate for affirmative action Black students is significantly higher than for ordinary white students.

Lies are compounded by more lies. Soon, a little resume exaggeration balloons into “I ran 30 marathons in 33 days!” Soon, the Black person is no longer a person, he’s just Black. 

Cambridge is not full of dummies. The fabulism claimed by Arday was a red flag, and the plagiarism must have been an open secret. Cambridge didn’t care, for they had their Black.

Cambridge’s charges of “racism!” against accomplished academics who raised good faith questions was a coverup, and one that potentially damaged those academics.

All this was for Cambridge to feel good about itself, to fill the George Floyd Chair.

Cambridge, you have blood on your hands.

*Most Black people want an upper case “B” and so that’s what I give them. It costs me nothing. Most white people want a lower case “w” and so that’s what I give them. That, too, costs me nothing. As for the whole ridiculous controversy, I have bigger fish to fry.

DSA is the best thing to happen to the GOP since Jimmy Carter

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Jimmy Carter the peanut farmer was great, OK?

His 4 years of ineptitude gave us 12 years of Republican rule in the form of Ronald Reagan and his successor, George H. W. Bush. (It would have been at least 16 years, if not for Ross Perot taking many of Bush’s votes to be re-elected in 1992.) And arguably, that 12 years of GOP rule produced another 8 years of GOP rule through the prodigal son, George W. Bush.

I love Jimmy Carter. (I hate Ross Perot.)

There is a chance we’ll see something similar in the midterms this fall. The Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, has been winning Democratic primaries. It turns out that Democrats love socialists.

Or they think they do. Democrats’ support for the idea of socialism is quite different from their support for socialism itself. For example:

One of the DSA policies in its platform is to abolish prisons. That’s right, convicted murderers and rapists would go free. But only 27% of Democrats support that policy. (You have to wonder what those 27% are smoking, but, still, that’s only a little more than one in four.)

Another DSA platform position is to abolish the U.S. military. If China invades, we’ll rely on guys with shotguns. (Oops, we’ll have taken away everyone’s gun, too.) Democrats in general disfavor that policy by about a two to one margin.

Another DSA position is to grant amnesty to all illegal immigrants. Democrats actually favor this policy by a plurality(!) but still only 44% favor it.

Here, it gets interesting. Another DSA platform is to abolish the Presidency and the Supreme Court, replacing both with arms of Congress. Only 30% of Democrats agree with this proposal.

While we’re abolishing sacrosanct branches of government established by the Constitution, DSA would also abolish the Senate. The problem with the Senate, they say, is that it serves as a check on pure democracy. Even the Democrats mostly oppose this abolition.

In short, the DSA would make us a lot like the Soviet Union (which failed, by the way), the Eastern Europe Soviet client states (ditto), Cuba (which will soon fail), and North Korea (ditto). It’s been tried many times, and the absence of checks and balances always results not in democracy, but tyranny. Assigning a word like “fair” to such a system will not make it work. It’s a trap.

DSA should have kept its trap shut about its trap. It should have just said, “We’re socialists, isn’t that wonderful?” Instead, they told us what it means to be a socialist. It’s not wonderful; it’s idiocy.

The media, of course, will try to hide the DSA platform because Orange Man Bad. They will not be successful, however. The DSA is quite proud of it, and intends to promote it.

Between now and the midterms in November, the American people will discover this platform. I anticipate they will soundly reject it.

Of course, the wild President is a wild card. He might find a way to prove me wrong. Or right.

Half the socialists in Denver wear COVID masks

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This news item falls into the categories of both funny and weird – categories that are getting a lot of traction these days.

In Denver, the socialists met to party and celebrate, and to party some more, after their chosen socialist candidate beat the Democrat in the Democratic primary last month. It wasn’t even close.

By the way, the Democrats still have primaries for their non-Presidential candidates, apparently, but the winners are generally socialists, not Democrats. (Ah, but maybe I’m splitting hairs.)

The old Democrat who lost this primary has represented Denver in the U.S. House of Representatives for 30 years after succeeding the Democrat who had represented Denver for the preceding 24 years. In fact, the current one was elected before her socialist opponent was born.

I’m no fan of the old Democrat, but does Denver really want to be represented in Congress by a socialist child? Yes, they evidently do.

At the party/celebration/party, a good time was had by all. It was the most people in downtown Denver since the Broncos won the Superbowl, and I’m not excluding the dreadful Rockies games.

Yes, a good time was had by all. Except the 50% of the attendees who wore COVID masks. That’s right, about half of the hundreds of attendees at this socialist party wore COVID masks. A photo posted on X by one of the organizers appears above. The photo-posting organizer bragged;

“Packed house, line out the door, big things are happening!”

Then, he and the attendees were mocked mercilessly on-line for wearing COVID masks to a party – five years after COVID has passed. And so, he deleted the post. Next, we’ll learn that the masks were passed out at the door by the socialist hosts. I’m not sure whether that makes the whole episode better or worse.

COVID aside, this gives some insight into the mentality of the socialists of Denver. They believe the world is a very dangerous place. They’ll invent danger if none is present. And they want to be seen as doing something about this invented danger. Maybe this is unique to Colorado where pot has long been legal, but I think it’s deeper than that.  

I suppose they could see danger in Vladimir Putin who invaded a separate nation. Or the Gazans who raped, beheaded and took hostage hundreds of Israelis. Or marijuana, the legalization of which is now recognized as a huge mistake by the medical establishment which treats victims of this mistake. Or the communists who killed 100 million people within the lifetimes of their parents and grandparents.

Well, perhaps the reference to communists hit a little close to home. The reference to pot did, too.

In any event, I’m guessing that the masks did not interfere too much with the socialists drinking the Kool-Aid. These people are funny, weird and high – and dangerous.