The Left's Inability to Confront Evil

RealClearPolitics ^ | August 08, 2006 | By Dennis Prager

[.cnI redruM]

On July 28, 2006, a Muslim entered the building of the Seattle Jewish Federation and shot every Jew he saw, murdering one woman and wounding five others.

On the same day, Mel Gibson was arrested on DUI charges and while intoxicated let loose with anti-Semitic invective at the Jewish police officer who arrested him.

Question: Which story has most troubled the Left?

The answer is known to any American who can hear or read.

So, the real question is: Why? Why has the shooting and murder of Jews elicited less angst from the Left than the anti-Semitic statements made by Mel Gibson when drunk?

The answers are very troubling. As Time magazine said about global warming (but never about Islamic terror), "Be worried, very worried."

We should be worried about this: The liberal world fears -- and much of it loathes -- fundamentalist Christians considerably more than it does fundamentalist Muslims.

This is as true of most Jewish liberals -- even though conservative Christians are Israel's and the Jews' most loyal supporters and even though Nazi-like anti-Semitism permeates much of the Muslim world -- as it is of most other liberals, certainly including the mainstream media.

That is why Jewish writer Zev Chafets wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "On the same day Gibson got into trouble in Malibu, a fellow named Naveed Afzal Haq brought a pistol to the Jewish Federation office in Seattle and shot six women, killing one. Two days later, this personal jihad -- one of the most gory anti-Jewish crimes in American history -- got second billing on the ADL website, under "Mel Gibson's Apology for Tirade 'Insufficient.' " (For the record, the ADL later announced it had accepted Mel Gibson's apology.)

This is one more example of the greatest flaw of contemporary liberalism -- its inability to recognize and confront the greatest evils. Since the 1960s, when liberalism became indistinguishable from the Left -- e.g., when New York Times positions became indistinguishable from those of The Nation -- liberals tended to attack opponents of evil far more than those who actually committed evil. The Left (around the world) was far more antagonistic to Ronald Reagan than to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, and far more disturbed by anti-Communism than by Communism.

So, too, today. For example, with few exceptions (the liberal columnist Thomas Friedman being one of the most notable) one only hears conservatives use the term "Islamo-fascism." Nearly the entire academic world that discusses the issue is far more concerned with the threat of "Islamophobia" than of Islamo-fascism. Liberal and left-wing anger is largely reserved for conservatives and especially conservative Christians, while analogous antipathy about Islamic groups with genocidal designs on Israel or America is largely to be found on the Right.

The liberal doctrine on fundamentalist American Christians is that they are the moral equivalent of fundamentalist Muslims and constitute a similar threat to our republic. As bestselling author Karen Armstrong said to Bill Moyers on PBS, "Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States."

Regarded by the liberal media as perhaps the greatest living historian and commentator on religion, Karen Armstrong does not even see the Muslim fundamentalist support for murder of innocents as a distinguishing feature. According to Armstrong, "Christian fundamentalists in the United States have committed fewer acts of terror than the others for two main reasons: they live in a more peaceful society . . . [and they] believe that the democratic federal government of the United States will collapse without their needing to take action: God will see to it" [beliefnet.com].

The antipathy toward Christian fundamentalists and conservatives is why Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic statements trouble the Left more than Naveed Haq and the genocidal anti-Semitism permeating the Muslim world. And what is it about those Christians that most disturbs the Left? That they talk in terms of good and evil and believe the former must fight the latter, precisely the area of the Left's greatest weakness.

[Jim Verdolini]

"If you cannot confront evil when it has said it seeks to hunt you down and kill you, I don't know what will force such"

When the religion of peace is at their front door with a bullet for dad and a burka for mom.

[Billthedrill]

The left is perfectly capable of recognizing evil, but only within the strict terms of ideology. Christian fundamentalism fits that ideology; Muslim fundamentalism does not.

I can think of no more perfect example of this than the formal Communist party line on Hitler - he was a fellow traveler, even a fellow socialist, right up through the ending of the Non-Aggression Pact (a title of supreme cynicism as the Polish can testify), at which point his evil was recognizable because it fit the ideology.

This sort of intentional myopia isn't true of everyone on the left, of course. Nor is it restricted to the left - there are many equally ideology-bound on the right - paging Pat Buchanan - who simply refuse to recognize evil when it fails to fit the mold. Minds may be constrained withn such molds but the real world isn't.

[DungeonMaster]

The Left's Inability to Confront Evil

A house divided cannot stand. How can evil confront evil?

[ShadowAce]

...who simply refuse to recognize evil when it fails to fit the mold.

I think you've hit on it here. Their viewpoint is "define Evil, and everything outside of that is Good," where the proper viewpoint should be "Define Good, and everything outside of that is Evil."

[Jim Verdolini]

“The left is more preoccupied with fundamentalist Christians because they perceive them as capable of directly influencing our government and our laws.”

I disagree. I think it is more a case of the left feeling they can influence both those fundamentalist Christians and our laws while they know they have no influence at all over Islamofascists and they also fear the rascals more than a little.

Do they stand there and whine till they are blue at the wall that is Islam or do they whine at Christians and have an effect?

“Its influence doesn't (yet) reach into our public school classrooms or our courthouses, so it is not perceived as a danger to constitutional liberties”

Again a bit off…My local public school establishes prayer rooms for Islamic students each year around exam time. This sort of action would result in immediate legal action of the room was established for Christians.

They do not fight those folk because they work from the idea of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. The Muslim community is making inroads on American values and the left likes that.

[Bonaparte]

It's not that they fail to confront evil. It's that they fail to stop embracing it.

[Moonman62]

The left cannot confront evil because it refuses to admit that it exists.

There you go.

[Salem]

---

AMERICA AT WAR
At Salem the Soldier's Homepage ~
Honored member of FReeper Leapfrog's "Enemy of Islam" list.
Islam, a Religion of Peace®? Some links...  by backhoe
Translated Pre-War IRAQ Documents  by jveritas
Mohammed, The Mad Poet Quoted....  by PsyOp
One FReeper On The Line  by SNOWFLAKE
The Clash of Ideologies - A Review

"It's time we recognized the nature of the conflict. It's total war and we are all involved. Nobody on our side is exempted because of age, gender, or handicap. The Islamofacists have stolen childhood from the world." [FReeper Retief]

[BlueDragon]

The "left" refuses to see the evil that is radical Islam. They prefer to blame it all upon ourselves, or better yet, George Bush.

That way, they think they may have some hope in dealing with the evil, thus limiting it's effects.

It is a form of denial. Denial that there are those, even now among us, whom seek our death or destruction. They can't deal with the thought of that! For to do so, means to crawl out of the bubble of their materialistic philosphy which comforts them, since here in the U.S. we truly ARE still the 'land of plenty' --- "everything will be ok, nothing can really touch me, I'll never personally suffer, there is no god to answer too, either" etc....

These sort stand at Democratic Party info booths at the local street fair/farmers' market, and ask, "have you seen Al Gore's movie?"

Like I can really do something about our nearby star's output?

WTF?????

---------over----------

[GMMAC]

Commies literally carpet-bombed
PING!

[Salem]

Right!  

[Seeing More Clearly Now]

"Maybe having a few Hezbollah missiles lobbed into downtown Santa Monica would help him wake the f' up...maybe."

4 posted on 08/08/2006 4:57:29 AM PDT by .cnI redruM (Those who don't fight evil condemn those who do.)

Nick Berg's dad was not awakened.

[razorback-bert]

Karen Armstrong


With an undergraduate degree in literature from Oxford University, she began teaching 19th and 20th century literature at the University of London and worked on a PhD. Three years later, her dissertation was rejected.

http://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm?author_number=423


I meet a new traveler everyday.

Wonder why her dissertation was rejected.

[.cnI redruM]

It seems he could sleep through WWIII.

[kellynch]

I know people who refer to the war on terror as the "war on terror." They don't believe we are at war. I just lurked over at DU, and they don't seem to understand the seriousness of what is happening over in the UK.

Or, perhaps I should say that they don't WANT to understand the seriousness of what is happening over in the UK.

[PsyOp]

So, the real question is: Why? Why has the shooting and murder of Jews elicited less angst from the Left than the anti-Semitic statements made by Mel Gibson when drunk?

The answer is obvious, isn't it? Mel made them do it. It's all Mels fault! [/sarcasm]

[stands2reason]

Well put.

[stands2reason]

The people who say that the left will come around when we get attacked again are wishful thinkers. Never ever underestimate denial. They'll just assume the attack was created by the Republicans to "reign with fear" and to justify a police state.

Half of America could be burning and to them that would just show the lengths the Republicans will go to to keep (or gain) power.