Doormat Christianity

At some point, Western Christians came to believe that the entirety of their faith rested exclusively in those passive values -- particularly forgiveness and non-judgmentalism for the other, and introspection and accountability for oneself. These now manifest as blanket “tolerance” and self-guilt. Whereas Christ tolerated sinners but did not tolerate sin -- always calling on sinners to “repent,” and invoking the torments of hell more than any other biblical figure -- today most Western Christians believe they must tolerate (or “celebrate”) both sinner and sin. The latter, thanks to entrenched moral and cultural relativism, no longer even exists.

Such is the “Doormat Christianity©” that those who despise traditional Christianity embrace: Becoming the “useful idiot.” ...

For the record, yes, Christ served and washed his disciples’ feet and preached mercy and compassion -- but that was hardly the sole or even primary purpose of his mission. He offered an entire worldview founded on theological assertions of eternal significance. When people erred by profaning the temple, he did not “turn the other cheek” (let alone wash their feet) -- he whipped and cast them out. When he himself was slapped, Jesus did not offer the other cheek but rather challenged his abuser (John 18:23). He praised a Roman centurion without calling on him to resign from one of history’s most brutal militaries (Matt. 8: 5–13). In short, he did not call on his followers to be doormats -- but to be “wise as serpents.”

Why do Bible-thumpers everywhere fail to remember these Christian positions that at least balance out those on tolerance and forgiveness? Because they were born and bred on Doormat Christianity, an oxymoronic caricature developed to orchestrate Western civilization’s own suicide, including at the hands of jihad.

Read the whole thing.

Mark Steyn: "A Fatwa of One's Own"

From the National Post, December 5th of 2002.  As relevant today as it was then.

To be honest, I felt mildly envious when I saw Zulf M Khalfan's letter on Tuesday. Mr Khalfan, of Nepean, Ontario, was responding to David Frum's defence of Isioma Daniel, the Nigerian journalist now in hiding after remarking that the Prophet Muhammad would have been happy to take the winner of Miss World for his wife. Mr Khalfan replied that, as Muhammad's wives are accorded "an honourable status," it was obviously grossly objectionable to suggest that a woman who "exposed herself" - by wearing make-up and a bikini - would be an appropriate spouse for the Prophet.

Fair comment. But then: "Mr Frum has to understand that it is Muslims who determine what is objectionable to their religion, not he dictating it to them," added Mr Khalfan. "And since he cites Salman Rushdie, he should know by now the fatal consequences resulting from ignoring this fact."

Can you believe it? For most of the last fifteen months, while I've been here playing The National Post's Mister Islamophobe, that milquetoast Frum has been sitting in the White House, presumably cranking out all the President's dopey "Islam is peace" speeches. He's back in the Post for barely a fortnight and already he's got his own fatwa? Thanks a bunch, you ingrate Nepean Islamists! Where did I go right?

Well, Mr Khalfan has now "clarified" his original letter on the page opposite. He doesn't want to kill David Frum. He just wants David to be aware of how easy it is to provoke other people into killing him.

When Isioma Daniel asserted that Muhammad would have taken Miss World as his wife, she was correct to the extent that the Prophet seems to have had an eye for the ladies. But that wasn't really her point. Her point was more basic, and it was this: Hey, lighten up, Muslims!

Muslims responded by going nuts, rampaging through the streets, pulling Christian women and children from cars and burning them to the cheers of the mob. By the end of it all, the dead numbered 500. So no, Miss Daniel, Muslims won't lighten up, but they'll light you up, if they ever catch up with you. (I'm in favour of Izzy offering the poor gal a job at the Post, by the way.)

These days, we're all citing Salman Rushdie, but at the time - February 14th 1989 - most of us didn't appreciate the significance of the event. It marked the first time the Ayatollah Khomeini had claimed explicitly extra-territorial authority. Why he chose an obscure and for most of us unreadable English novel for his expeditionary foray is unclear, but the results must have heartened him tremendously.

Rushdie had not set out to offend Muslims: None of the London reviewers found anything controversial in the book. When British Muslims and their co-religionists around the world burnt copies of The Satanic Verses in the streets, BBC arts bores - including our own Michael Ignatieff - held innumerable discussions on the awful "symbolism" of this assault on "ideas." But it wasn't symbolic at all: they burned the book because nothing else was to hand. If his wife or kid had swung by, they'd have gladly burned them instead. Overseas, they made do with translators and publishers. Rushdie's precious lit crit crowd mostly opposed the fatwa on the grounds of artistic expression rather than as a broader defence of western liberties.

In the Fifties and Sixties, Nasserism attempted to import Soviet socialism to the Middle East: it never really took. A generation later, the Ayatollah came up with a better wheeze: export Islamism to a culturally defeatist West. Everything that has become pathetically familiar to us since September 11th was present in the Rushdie affair:

First, the silence of the "moderate Muslims": a few Islamic scholars pointed out that the Ayatollah had no authority to issue the fatwa; they quickly shut up when the consequences of not doing so became apparent.

Second, the squeamishness of the establishment: Rushdie was infuriated when the Archbishop of Canterbury lapsed into root-cause mode. "I well understand the devout Muslims' reaction, wounded by what they hold most dear and would themselves die for," said His Grace. Rushdie replied tersely: "There is only one person around here who is in any danger of dying."

Roy Hattersley, the Labour Party's deputy leader, attempted to split the difference by arguing that, while he of course supported freedom of speech, perhaps "in the interests of race relations" it would be better not to bring out a paperback edition. He was in favour of artistic freedom, but only in hard covers - and certainly, when it comes to soft spines, Lord Hattersley knows whereof he speaks.

His colleague, Gerald Kaufman, attacked critics of British Muslims: "What I cannot accept is the implication that it is somehow anti-democratic and un-British for Mr Rushdie's writings to be the object of criticism on religious, as distinct from literary, grounds." Mr Kaufman said this a few days after large numbers of British Muslims had marched through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed. In the last few months, several readers have e-mailed me with their memories of those marches. One man in Bradford remembers asking a West Yorkshire police officer why "Muslim community leaders" weren't being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer said they'd been told to play it cool. The cries for blood got more raucous. My correspondent asked his question again. The police officer told him to "F**k off, or I'll arrest you."

And, most important of all, the Rushdie affair should have taught us that there's nothing to negotiate. Mohammed Siddiqui wrote to The Independent from a Yorkshire mosque to endorse the fatwa by citing Sura 5 verses 33-34:

The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Apostle, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land, is execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land. That is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the hereafter. Except for those who repent before they fall into your power. In that case know that God is oft-forgiving, most merciful.

Rushdie seems to have got the wrong end of the stick on this. He suddenly turned up on a Muslim radio station in West London one night and told his interviewer he'd converted to Islam. Marvelous religion, couldn't be happier, praise be to Allah and all that. The Ayatollah said terrific, now you won't suffer such heavy punishment in the hereafter. But we're still gonna kill you.

Some of us drew from the Rushdie affair a different lesson than Mr Khalfan: As bad as the fatwa was, the inability of the establishment to defend coherently Western values was worse. All those British Muslims who called openly for Rushdie's death are still around, more powerful and with more followers.

Mr Khalfan is being disingenuous. When was the last time a mob of Jews or Christians or Buddhists tore children from cars and burned them to death? A while back, I saw Terrence McNally's ghastly Broadway jerk-off, Corpus Christi, in which a gay Jesus rhapsodizes about the joys of anal intercourse with Judas. The play was an abomination, and deserves all the abuse discriminating theatregoers can heap upon it. But oddly enough, I didn't feel an urge to slaughter perfect strangers, to ram a schoolbus, drag the little moppets from it, douse them in gasoline, and get my matchbook out.

When Mr Khalfan says that irresponsible journalists "risk provoking individuals who cannot control their spiritual emotions and cause the death of innocent people," he's being far more objectionable about Muslims than me, Frum and that Nigerian woman rolled into one; he's being more imperialist than any old-school Colonial Officer: He's saying Muslims are wogs, savages, they know no better, what do you expect? You've gotta be careful around them, the slightest thing could set 'em off. Might be a novel, might be a beauty contest.

Sorry, it's not a good enough answer. If that Nigerian mob are really no more than "pious Muslims," then pious Muslims should be ashamed. Pious Muslims can follow the murder-inciters of Bradford, the suicide-bombers of the West Bank and the depraved killers of northern Nigeria on their descent into barbarism. Or they can wake up and save their religion. Mr Khalfan's sophistry won't cut it.

Roger Simon: "Does It Matter Which Crazy Sent the Bombs?"

Even if Brennan was misspelled, Occam's razor is beginning to spell "HOAX" correctly. But by and for whom? Here as well we don't know, but again followers of William of Ockham would tend to point you toward the left wing -- a single leftie nutcase or some Antifa types, perhaps. After all, cui bono? With Kavanaugh and the caravan, things were not looking good for the Democrats. The subject had to be changed before it was too late and the blue wave turned red. So far, however, it's not working.

No wonder the reliably left-leaning Chuck Todd is suddenly pointing toward Russia, not some MAGA-hatted redneck with a Confederate flag tattooed on his chest, as the perpetrator. It's a dead giveaway. He's probably hoping for the Russians now. Because if it goes as it's currently looking, it's bad news for his team.

But back to my opening paragraph. In a rational world, this does not matter. Certainly whoever is responsible for this heinous activity should be taken off the streets for life as soon possible for the protection of the public. But their identity and motivation mean very little ultimately. Quite simply, whatever "side" they're on or think they're on -- they're nuts.

In a giant country like ours, simple math tells us there always will be a percentage of truly aberrant individuals on all sides ready to act out. The politically correct thing to say is we should "cool our jets." But, in truth, even if the rhetoric dies down, even if Schumer and Pelosi find it in their hearts to forgive Donald Trump (not likely) or Donald promises to throw away his iPhone, forego Twitter, and invite Rosie O'Donnell to have her wedding free of charge at Mar-a-Lago, it will not change. Such disturbed people will always exist. The Unabomber pre-dated all the contemporary online noise. There's no way around this behavior unless we start controlling our DNA, not an appealing prospect, except perhaps to the late Margaret Sanger.

In a very odd way, this whole event is not news. It's a sideshow.

Read the whole thing.

Mark Steyn recounts the history of Saudi Arabia

Andrew Klavan, Prager U on "Fake News"

Jazz Shaw: "How do we define who’s “meddling” in elections?"

This is a question we’ve addressed here before, but recent events make it more applicable than ever. A 44-year-old Russian woman named Elena Khusyaynova has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. ...

Okay. That all sounds good so far. But what did she actually do? Saying that she attempted to “sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions” is still a bit on the vague side. ...

Her responsibilities included:

• Paying expenditures for activists
• Purchasing advertisements on social media platforms
• Registration of domain names
• Purchasing proxy servers
• Promoting news postings on social networks

So they were attempting to blend in with American political activists and basically fire up the crowd, probably creating or promoting fake news. But there’s no mention of making campaign contributions (which is illegal for foreigners to do), tampering with voting machines or anything else that would qualify for a violation of most of the laws we usually associate with campaign rules. She’s pretty much doing all the same things American political activists do on a daily basis, aside from not being a citizen of the United States... The closest the Justice Department comes to specifying anything which sounds like criminal conduct is to say that she attempted to, “defraud the United States by impeding the lawful functions of government agencies in administering relevant federal requirements.” I’m not even sure what that means.

But:

But don’t people do these things all the time if they are interested in political activism? And I don’t just mean Americans or in this case the sneaky Russians. Just this morning, during the six o’clock hour, CNN did a glowing review of a singer and actor named Troye Sivan. It turns out that Troye is a big favorite of Taylor Swift and some other famous people I don’t follow on Twitter. And he’s out there joining in with Taylor to push people to register to vote and, quite specifically to #RESIST Trump and support some Democrats. He’s been quite clear which side he’s on, describing his reaction to the GOP victories in the 2016 elections by saying, “I’ve been pretty heartbroken about the whole thing and I don’t even live here.”

It’s the “I don’t even live here” part you should pay attention to. Sivan is a native of South Africa and a citizen of Australia. He lives in Los Angeles now, but he’s not a citizen. So by taking this message forward, not only on television but to his considerable army of social media followers, isn’t Troye Sivan “meddling in our election” too? Or doesn’t it count if you’re supporting the Democrats? And let’s be clear, I could run down a sizable list of non-citizen celebrities who are doing the same.

and what about Americans who blog or post about foreign leaders?

Civility threatened

More Warren Indian Stuff

Elizabeth Warren's Indian Blood stolen by Mosquito

Jobs not Mobs

Kevin Williamson: "The Blackface Party"

Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal, Beto O’Rourke — what’s up with all the ethnic play-acting? Isn’t cultural appropriation supposed to be a bad thing among progressives? Isn’t blackface (and brownface) supposed to be an unforgivable sin?

If a fraternity at a big state university had made the kind of mockery of Native Americans that Senator Warren has, it would be kicked off campus — and no pleas about a vague and mysterious “Cherokee princess” way back in the lost ages of the family history would save them.

Senator Warren is the main offender of the moment, a significantly-whiter-than-the-average-white-woman white woman who has for years been masquerading as a Native American, telling transparent bumfodder stories about how her parents had to elope because her mother was part Cherokee and part Delaware, an obvious attempt to claim some of that victimhood juice secondhand. She allowed herself to be advertised as a woman of color by Harvard, happy in the coincidence that “her major professional advances — to the University of Pennsylvania and then to Harvard — came after she began formally identifying as Native American, a distant descendant of Cherokee and Delaware tribes,” as the Boston Globe put it.

Warren, previously a mostly obscure academic and an author of dopey self-help books — The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan — needed a little extra kick to stand out from the crowd of sanctimonious white ladies who rest like a dollop of low-fat sour cream atop the nation’s educational institutions. And so she went all in on her fictitious Indian ancestry: You’ll remember the recipe for “Pow-Wow Chow” and other “Indian” dishes plagiarized from the New York Times....

Identity politics is generally goofy and often trivial, but this is no trivial thing: The Cherokee Nation is a separate sovereign nation, with the rights and dignity that implies. It deserves to be treated with respect, not used as a prop by an ambitious low-rent hustler from Oklahoma.

White people did some pretty rotten things to the Indians over the years. But making them take Elizabeth Warren on top of it? That’s just mean....

But Senator Warren has not dug into Cherokee history, language, or culture. She simply used the fiction of her Cherokee identity to get something she wanted — a little political leg up on the rest of the sanctimonious white ladies. That’s cheap, vulgar, and wrong — and the Cherokee are right to be annoyed by it. And if Texas Democrats really want a Hispanic name on the ballot to put up against Senator Cruz, then they might consider — here’s a radical thought! — nominating someone of Hispanic heritage as their candidate. As for Rachel Dolezal — my best guess is that being Rachel Dolezal is its own punishment.

Ann Coulter: "FAKE NEWS AUTOPSY"

How CNN lied to make Trump look like a racist. 

I present CNN's Ana Cabrera.

On Sunday night, Cabrera launched a premeditated, vicious, racist lie about President Trump, then proceeded to discuss the false story with a black guest, primed to analyze the fake news.

We'll slow down the replay in order to follow the ball, so you can see every handoff in the creation of fake news.

A few weeks ago, when Judge Brett Kavanaugh was facing 30-year-old, completely uncorroborated accusations of sexual assault based on recovered memories in order to block his Supreme Court appointment, Trump said, "It's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of."

This statement was quoted by numerous news outlets, including CNN: "Trump says it's 'a very scary time for young men in America,'" Jeremy Diamond, Oct. 2.

Cabrera rewrote the president's quote, telling CNN viewers that Trump had said: "WHITE men have a lot to fear right now."

How did "white" get slipped in there?

If this were merely a mistake, there are lots of words in the English language that might have been inserted instead of "white." Why not "radial tire"? Why not "hangnail"? Why not the words "virtuoso" or "champagne"?

Dictionaries are heavy with all of the words that might have been inserted if this were an accident. How could the word "white" inadvertently get slipped into a Trump quote?




CNN intentionally told an ugly lie about the most incendiary issue roiling the nation: race. It wasn't a lie about Trump's position on tax policy, North Korea or school vouchers. The network deliberately pushed a racism narrative calculated to incite racial hatred that could get someone killed.

Like a professional jewel thief swiping a Cartier watch so deftly that the guard doesn't notice, Cabrera launched the lie during a segment that began: "People are talking about a string of recent incidents with racial undertones."

"People are talking about" is how opinion journalism masquerades as news. What topics aren't "people talking about"?

People are talking about CNN head Jeff Zucker's split from his wife after 21 years.

People are talking about Chris Cuomo's behavior at the CNN Christmas party.

People are talking about how Ana Cabrera got her job.

Cabrera then presented two stories about white people falsely accusing black people of doing things they hadn't done -- which was ironic, inasmuch as Cabrera was about to falsely accuse Trump of doing something he hadn't done.

After a brief word from a black guest, professor Marc Lamont Hill, who said our world is "still shot through with white supremacy," Cabrera told the lie about Trump:

"President Trump and his son, Don Jr., said this week, white men have a lot to fear right now."

(His son said no such thing either.)

Cabrera then ran a clip of "Saturday Night Live" comedian Michael Che's "take" on the nonexistent quote, in which he injected race into the president's remarks, calling Trump a "white dude."

Che: "Come on. Old, rich white dude telling us it's a scary time in America? That is pure comedy."

(The absence of a punchline was covered with, "That is pure comedy," meaning, "Please laugh now!")

At this point in the program, the lie about Trump transformed into actual presidential policy. Cabrera asked Hill, "Why do you think that is Trump's strategy?"

Hill went off on the fictional Trump quote, talking about the president's "racial tribalism." Again, this was about a Trump statement that had absolutely nothing to do with race -- until CNN made it so.

"It stokes white fear," Hill continued, "saying that it's a scary time to be a white man because you get accused of something that you didn't do" -- as CNN was accusing Trump of something he didn't do.

Goebbels would be proud!

If this were an error, it would have been quickly corrected before the first commercial break. It was not corrected because it's not a mistake; it's a political strategy. CNN invents fake news to push an ugly narrative about the president's "racial tribalism."

That's why an entire news segment was prepared around the fake quote, with an invited guest asked to comment on something Trump never said.

Poverty in the U.S. Was Plummeting—Until Lyndon Johnson Declared War On It

During the 20 years before the War on Poverty was funded, the portion of the nation living in poverty had dropped to 14.7% from 32.1%. Since 1966, the first year with a significant increase in antipoverty spending, the poverty rate reported by the Census Bureau has been virtually unchanged…

Simple math shows how poor people get trapped in poverty:

The potential sum of welfare benefits can reach $47,894 annually for single-parent households and $41,237 for two-parent households. Welfare benefits will be available to some households earning as much as $74,880 annually… A single mom has the most resources available to her family when she works full time at a wage of $8.25 to $12 an hour. Disturbingly, taking a pay increase to $18 an hour can leave her with about one-third fewer total resources (net income and government benefits). In order to make work “pay” again, she would need an hourly wage of $38 to mitigate the impact of lost benefits and higher taxes.

Victor Davis Hanson: They almost destroyed Kavanough without a shred of evidence.

We recently came within a few hours of establishing a dangerous precedent that the hallowed U.S. Senate could destroy a nominee for high government service on hearsay reports of assault 36 years in his past, without requiring a shred of physical evidence, without a single witness, without one collaborating testimony, without a sole detail of where and when and how the alleged crime took place. Instead, a sympathetic media redefined right thinking and empathy as believability and, with it, credibility. The resulting fact-free “credibility,” of course, then equated to Kavanaugh’s guilt and the frenzied psychodramas to follow.

The Senate just about established a precedent that the motive of the accuser should not be questioned because it was a priori noble, at least if the ideology and sex of the accuser fit predetermined approved categories. In the most disturbing downturn of the entire Kavanaugh circus, the media and Senate Democrats lauded Christine Blasey Ford as courageous and brave for at first sending an anonymous letter with all sorts of unsubstantiated charges and quite misleading accusations—as if that act was any more ethical than at least coming forward to try to pursue her efforts to destroy Brett Kavanaugh.

Liberal fascism, sexism, and the Ruling Class on full display.

They always overplay their hand.

Victor Davis Hanson: "Who and What Threaten the Constitution?"

From American Greatness:

In general, free societies more often become unfree with a whimper, not a bang—and usually due to self-righteous pious movements that always claim the higher moral ground, and justify their extreme means by their self-sacrificing struggle for supposedly noble ends of social justice, equality, and fairness.

Media darlings, not media ogres, receive a veritable free pass to ignore constitutional norms. Champions of bipartisan consensus, “the people,” and the power of big government to do the “right” thing and advance social justice are the more dangerous to watch, not those championing the rights of the individual, and small and less intrusive government. Hillary Clinton, with a $1 billion war chest, a court media, and an array of highly paid pros, not the fly-by-night, improvised Trump campaign, was the expression of big media, big politics, big government, and big money eager to have one of their compliant own in the White House.

Philip II and his idea of Greek ecumenicalism, followed by his son Alexander and his “brotherhood of man,” ended the free Greek polis. The “healer” and consensus builder Augustus did away with the Roman Republic. Hitler claimed he was the good kind of socialist and only wished total power to redress the injustices of Versailles, and, besides, he was an environmentalist, vegetarian, non-smoker, animal lover, and opera buff to boot. Lenin promised an end to czarist oppression and asked only enough force to bring fairness for the little guy. Mao Zedong claimed he only wished to have the clout to end foreign contamination, landed oppression, and Mandarism and selflessly would do it all for the proverbial people. All of these revolutionaries believed in violating past norms of accepted lawful custom and practice to “save” the country.

Today’s most destructive totalitarians in Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Venezuela are adored by a toady press and are said to do their all for “the people.” Such revolutionaries do not oppose the power of the permanent administrative state, but seek to weaponize and collude with it.

The point is not that Trump is a saint, or that Obama, for example, a sinner. Rather, when the media become unctuous and complicit with those whom they are supposed to audit and cross-examine, then politicians and political movements—especially those voicing utopian bromides—grow ever more emboldened, empowered and occasionally quite dangerous. No mainstream media talking head has yet declared Trump a “God” or praised his pant creases. For all Trump’s bluster and ego, he has not reacted in kind promising, as some sort of deity, to reduce the planet’s temperature and lower its seas.

Try a thought experiment. What if Donald Trump tomorrow was caught ordering Attorney General Jeff Sessions to monitor the electronic footprints of Associated Press reporters, or to surveille CNN’s Jim Acosta and his grandparents?

What if Trump had just jailed a videomaker on trumped up charges of violating parole for making a left-wing internet video that he found an obstacle to his fabricated government version of a disaster overseas?

What exactly would the New York Times do if it were found out that George Soros and the Steyer brothers were being hounded by a right-wing version of Lois Lerner and a politicized ring at the IRS?

What would our media—92 percent negative in its current coverage of Trump—say if the Trump FBI, Justice Department, and CIA, were collectively actively working with the Trump 2020 campaign to monitor (as in the notion of “insurance”) rumors that a Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, or Elizabeth Warren was allegedly colluding with the Iranians, Chinese, or other foreign nationals to alter the upcoming election—or so they would allege?

Read the whole thing.

'Halloween' Billboard Hijacked to Target Maxine Waters

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) wants the mob to hunt down the anti-progressives in restaurants and gas stations. Hillary Clinton claims that her party can only be civil when back in power. Former Attorney General Eric Holder talks of kicking his opponents.

Babylon Bee: "Mafia Requests To No Longer Be Called 'The Mob' Because Of Negative Association With Political Activists"

Babylon Bee: "Media Congratulates Meghan Markle On Meaningless Blob Of Tissue Developing In Her Womb"

Senate DNA one-upmanship

An 11-year-old's proof of the existence of God.