Identity politics and the death of the individual.

Nothing speaks more profoundly to the crisis of character than the phrase, ‘I identify as…’. In the past, individuals were. ‘I am a builder.’ ‘I am a mother.’ ‘I am a Jew.’ There was a confidence, a certainty, to their sense of identity, and to their declaration of it. ‘I am.’ Today, individuals identify as something. ‘I identify as working class.’ ‘I identify as non-binary.’ Or, in the notorious case of Rachel Dolezal, the American white woman who effectively blacked-up as she rose up the ranks of the NAACP, ‘I identify as black’. The rise of the i-word in our definition of ourselves, the ascendancy of what is called ‘self-identification’, is one of the most notable developments of the 21st century so far. It speaks to a shift from being to passing through; from a clear sense of presence in the world to a feeling of transience; from identities that were rooted to identities that are tentative, insecure, questionable.

Those words ‘I identify as’ – whether they’re being uttered by Caitlyn Jenner as she unveils her newfound womanhood or by an eco-friendly New York Times writer who says ‘I identify as a mammal’ – feel strikingly contingent. They speak to changeability. The undertone is ‘I identify as such-and-such for now’. Indeed, these highly personalised ‘identifications as’ something sometimes come with an acknowledgment that the identification could change in time, and change dramatically. A gender non-binary writer tells us that he/she ‘identifies as both genders’, but then says: ‘I do not know… whom I will identify as in the future.’ The Daily Mail recently reported on the case of a trans activist who identifies as a different thing on a daily basis. One day he/she is Layla, who wears ‘a dress and heels to work’; the next he/she is Layton – ‘a man who dons baggy jeans and workmen boots’. ‘I am’ doesn’t work here, because the very basis of his/her being can change in the space of hours.

http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/the-crisis-of-character#.VoQFSTYvhnk

Open Letter to President Obama about Christmas Bells Falling Silent in the Middle East

Dear President Obama,

in your recent  statement on persecuted Christians at Christmas you stated:

In some areas of the Middle East where church bells have rung for centuries on Christmas Day, this year they will be silent; this silence bears tragic witness to the brutal atrocities committed against these communities by ISIL. 

When you say that ‘church bells have rung for centuries’ you are not speaking the truth.  Bells have rung in Syria and Iraq for not much more than a hundred years, at most.

As determined by Islamic law, church bells did not sound throughout the middle East for more than a thousand years from the 7th century conquests until modern times (except under the Crusaders).  This was due to the conditions set by the Pact of the Caliph Umar, by which Christians of Syria surrendered to Islamic conquest in the 7th century AD.  In this pact the Christians agreed that “We will not sound the bells in our churches.”  Churches in regions controlled by Muslims used semantrons (also calls nakos) instead of the forbidden church bells.  Examples of these are still visible in Jerusalem to this day, e.g. see here.

http://blog.markdurie.com/2015/12/open-letter-to-president-obama-about.html

COUNTER-JIHAD: WE'RE ABOUT TRUTH, NOT HATE

On December 2, 2015, two Muslim terrorists massacred fourteen Americans at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California. On December 6, President Obama delivered an Oval Office address. In it, he said, "We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam … It is the responsibility of all Americans to reject discrimination." Many listeners were disappointed that Obama focused so much passion on lecturing Americans.

Media reported that hostility against Muslims increased after the San Bernardino attack. Public figures including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, filmmaker Michael Moore, and Wheaton college professor Larycia Hawkins insisted that Muslims must be protected against the bigotry, stereotyping, and violence of non-Muslim Americans.

President Obama, Zuckerberg, Moore, and Hawkins are acting on their own bigotry. In hostility and ignorance, they stereotype all Americans (except Muslims, of course) as an inherently ignorant lynch mob. That's not who we Americans are. If Americans had been hearing from their leaders what they need to hear – a passionate defense of Western Civilization and a ringing condemnation of jihad – average Americans would not feel that they themselves must take on both rhetorical tasks. Americans, as YouTube curmudgeon Pat Condell pointed out, are trying to fill a leadership vacuum and to speak and hear unspoken truths.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261187/counter-jihad-were-about-truth-not-hate-danusha-v-goska

Anyone Using The Phrase ‘Islam Is A Religion Of Peace’ Needs To Read This by Mark Durie

Days after the ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in San Bernardino, President Obama’s address to the nation concerning the threat of ISIS missed the mark. In fact, President Obama seemed at times to be more concerned with Americans ostracizing Muslim communities through “suspicion and hate,” than he was with protecting innocent American civilians from murder in the name of radical Islam.

It is high time for western political leaders to stop responding to terrorism by naming Islam as ‘the religion of peace’. It is time to have a hard conversation about Islam.

The West is in the throes of acute cognitive dissonance over Islam, whose brands are at war with each other. On the one hand we are told that Islam is the Religion of Peace. On the other hand we are confronted with an unending sequence of acts of terror committed in the name of the faith.

There is a depressing connection between the two brands: the louder one brand becomes, the more the volume is turned up on the other.

http://journal.ijreview.com/2015/12/251190-islam-religion-peace-came-politicians-need-stop-saying/

Dhimmitude and Trump

Although this journalist has not been a fan of Donald Trump, the man’s latest idea of barring the entry of Muslims into America hit a bull’s eye.  The hysterical reaction by Americans of many stripes is evidence of that, but also of a terrifying reality: the growing triumph of dhimmitude in the United States.

This word was invented by scholar Bat Ye’or, a European Jew born and raised in Egypt who now lives in Switzerland and is an expert on Islam’s history of governing non-Muslims, Jews and Christians in particular.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/dhimmitude_and_trump.html

Trump’s Muslim Immigration Ban Should Touch Off a Badly Needed Discussion

Donald Trump’s rhetorical excesses aside, he has a way of pushing us into important debates, particularly on immigration. He has done it again with his bracing proposal to force “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

 I have no idea what Mr. Trump knows about either immigration law or Islam. But it should be obvious to any objective person that Muslim immigration to the West is a vexing challenge.

 Some Muslims come to the United States to practice their religion peacefully, and assimilate into the Western tradition of tolerance of other people’s liberties, including religious liberty — a tradition alien to the theocratic societies in which they grew up. Others come here to champion sharia, Islam’s authoritarian societal framework and legal code, resisting assimilation into our pluralistic society.

Since we want to both honor religious liberty and preserve the Constitution that enshrines and protects it, we have a dilemma.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428201/donald-trump-muslim-immigration-policy-discussion

Progressive "Lists" and Gun Ownership: Another Bit of Weirdness

Listening to the radio last night, I heard a very earnest progressive commentator talk about "sensible gun control." The number one item on his list was, of course, the mental health issue. Keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, but of course! I have dealt with that before, and you can go HERE to read my pearls of wisdom on the fallacy of that approach. This little excerpt from that piece sums it up pretty well, in my humble opinion,

If you think the science of global climate whatever is up in the air, wait until you delve into the looney world of mental health. The mental health profession is full of quack "therapists" and quack theories; few things there are settled science; and that profession is as subject to the vagaries of the winds and tides of fashion and politics as any other. Let us not forget the uses of psychiatry in the dead and unlamented Soviet bloc. Even, however, without going back to the USSR, I would point out that my father was a psychiatrist, and in his old Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals (DSM) homosexuality was listed as a disorder, "a sociopathic personality disturbance" to be precise. It was a disorder or mental disturbance until it just wasn't--you can read the account of how that change happened here. 

Would then those persons treated for homosexuality, and have that on their medical records, be denied their second amendment rights? This, in turn, leads to the raising of many other questions: What standards would be used to determine mental illness for the purpose of gun denial? Who would make those standards? How would authorities running a background check gain access to those medical records? How would we redefine the ancient notion of patient-doctor confidentiality? How would those mental health sessions be flagged in the Great Database? How would one prevent that information from leaking and from being used for political or blackmail purposes? How would this not dissuade people who need some help from getting it? I am sure you can think of dozens more questions.

 http://www.thediplomad.com/2015/12/progressive-lists-and-gun-ownership.html?m=1