First, did you know that various people tried to warn Europeans about HITLER? I know, I'm as surprised as you are. But apparently they did, but the British didn't listen (they didn't listen about Auschwitz, either, but never mind that). And there were ALSO people who warned about Communism and the Domino Effect! And no one listened to them... you know, besides that whole Cold War thing. Oh, and the Domino Effect totally happened, right?
Luckily, Rabbi Lapin is at least smart enough to point out that "what is happening now is on the same scale as the examples I cite above". Give the man a hand (or a finger, if you're a cheap Jew).
a serious war is being waged against a group of Americans. I am certain that if we lose this war, the consequences for American civilization will be dire.
"We", huh? Informative.
Phase one of this war I describe is a propaganda blitzkrieg that is eerily reminiscent of how effectively the Goebbels propaganda machine softened up the German people for what was to come.
Got that? Effective propaganda now equals Goebbels. Godwin aside, answer me this- exactly what do you call you shilling for the Darwin-hating Coral Ridge ministries and their wacko movies, "Rabbi"?
There is no better term than propaganda blitzkrieg to describe what has been unleashed against Christian conservatives recently.
Was this guy hiding under a rock for the past few years? Marriage amendment, anyone? How about Terri Schiavo? Doesn't ring a bell, huh? Maybe you and Abramoff were too busy fleecing Indians. It's understandable.
Consider the long list of anti-Christian books that have been published in recent months. Here are just a few samples of more than 30 similar titles, all from mainstream publishers:
"American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America""The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us"
"The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason"
"Piety & Politics: The Right-wing Assault on Religious Freedom"
"Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism"
"Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America"
"Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right"
What is truly alarming is that there are more of these books for sale at your local large book store warning against the perils of fervent Christianity than those warning against the perils of fervent Islam. Does anyone seriously think America is more seriously jeopardized by Christian conservatives than by Islamic zealots? I fear that many Americans believe just that in the same way that many pre-World War II Westerners considered Churchill a bigger threat than Hitler.
Some may say that today's proliferation of anti-Christian print propaganda is nothing to become worried about. To them I ask two questions:
First, would you be so sanguine if the target of this loathsome library were Jewish? Just try changing the titles in some of the books I mention above to reflect anti-Semitism instead of rampant anti-Christianism and you'll see what I mean.
Hey Rabbi, a lot of the targets of the Conservative movement ARE Jews. Secular Jews. And some of their rhetoric sometimes DOES cross the line into antisemitism. Where are you then? Oh, that's right, you're appeasing the right, even when they're beating up on Jews (Seattle rabbi), and then blaming the whole thing on seculars. Because they're the ones sending him hate mail, I'm sure.
Second, major movements that changed the way Americans felt and acted came about through books, often only one book. Think of Rachel Carson's 1962 error-filled "Silent Spring" that resulted in the pointless banning of the insecticide DDT and many unnecessary deaths. Other books that caused upheavals in our nation were Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," many of Ayn Rand's books and of course "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Yeah, all those books sucked! Banning DDT, keeping fingers out of our sausage and humanizing black people- and don't get me started on all the evils of Ayn Rand. Damn you, American literacy!
No, I would advise you not to underestimate the power of books to alter the behavior of the American public, and I fear for an America influenced to detest Christianity by this hate-filled catalog.
I see you've never read Ann Coulter. Bitchy titles aside, I'm pretty sure none of the liberal books you mentioned advocate killing liberals- and while I'd never argue that this guy is at all representative of conservatives, I will note I haven't heard of any liberal counterparts. Besides, rabbi, not to put too fine a point on it, but you guys are the ones with the guns (and the troops, don't forget). The only way our books can hurt you is if we launch them out of catapults, possibly after infecting them with malaria we caught because we banned DDT.
It is not just books but popular entertainment also that beams the most lurid anti-Christian propaganda into the hearts and minds of viewers.
Left. Behind. Video Game. Moron.
One need only think of who the real targets of the recent hit movie "Borat" are. The brilliant Jewish moviemaker Sacha Baron Cohen, as his title character, using borderline dishonest wiles, lures some innocent but unsophisticated country folk, obviously Christians, to join him in his outrageously anti-Semitic antics. Cohen then triumphantly claims to have exposed anti-Semitism. In fact, he has revealed nothing other than the latent anti-Christianism of America's social, economic and academic secular elites.
From what I understand, Borat ridiculed idiots, not Christians (the arguable exception being his visit to a weird-ass church. Then again, I really don't think any of these Benny Hinn wannabes need any defending from anyone. If they feel threatened, they can always just hide in their misbegotten-money-forts).
The war is against those who regard the Bible to be God's revelation to humanity and the Ten Commandments to be His set of rules for all time. Phase one in this war is to make Christianity, well, sort of socially unacceptable. Something only foolish, poor and ugly people could turn to.
You must have been on crack when that one atheist tried to change the pledge of Allegiance. Talk about acceptable smearing (and incidentally, Rav Danny-boy, all this Christian-bashing doesn't seem to be affecting the fact that atheists are the least-electable candidates for President). Funny, huh?
Lapin wraps up this idiocy by pointing out that sometimes ad campaigns are effective- Drunk Driving and Smoking, for instance. Lest anyone wonder what his position on the latter is, he tosses out this gem:
Tyranny comes when citizens are seduced into trading freedom for the promise of safety and security.
No word on whether Lapin will be fighting for your right to drive drunk sometime soon.
Lastly:
Considerably more intellectual energy is being pumped into the propaganda campaign against Christianity than was ever delivered to the anti-smoking or anti-drunk-driving campaigns. Fervent zealots of secularism are flinging themselves into this anti-Christian war with enormous fanaticism.If they succeed, Christianity will be driven underground, and its benign influence on the character of America will be lost. In its place we shall see a sinister secularism that menaces Bible believers of all faiths. Once the voice of the Bible has been silenced, the war on Western Civilization can begin and we shall see a long night of barbarism descend on the West.
Without a vibrant and vital Christianity, America is doomed, and without America, the West is doomed.
I bet a lot of Deist Founding Fathers would have had a bone to pick with you over this, Rabbi. Of course, they also wouldn't have allowed you into most of the colonies, either. Then again, I'm sure you would have defended that, too: "Look, guys, Mr. Stuyvesant doesn't have anything against us, all right? It's just that our giant noses offend him. To be fair, we are kind of sucking up more than our share of the Gentiles' air. They were here first, after all."
Speaking of spending intellectual energy on wars against things, Dinesh D'Souza has decided he hates porn. See, radical Muslims don't like porn, and they perceive Americans as being pro-porn. Now, Dinesh is at least honest enough to note that
I don’t think American culture as a whole is guilty of the charge of moral depravity. But there is a segment of our culture that is perverse and pornographic, and perhaps this part of American culture is the one that foreigners see. Wrongly, they identify one face of America with the whole of America. When they protest what they see as the glamorization of pornography and vice, however, it’s hard to deny that they have a point.
Hey, let's try replacing "porn and vice" with warmongering and imperialism. I bet they aren't fond of that, either. Of course, if liberals ever brought this up, you'd accuse them of capitulating to terrorists. Since when do we let Al Qaeda determine what our values should be, Dinesh?
Dinesh's anti-porn rant is related to his new book, which claims,
the terrorism behind 9/11 and other tragedies was caused by “a decadent and depraved American culture that angers and repulses other societies,” especially Muslims. This cultural movement is fostered by the American cultural left and its allies in Congress, the liberal media, Hollywood and the academic community. D’Souza writes, “In order to defeat the Islamic radicals abroad, we must defeat the enemy at home.”
So... stop American porn, and we stop the Taliban? How does that work, exactly? If anything, we should make more porn, and ship it over there to them to shock, horrify, demoralize and confuse them. After all, isn't that what we did in Guantanamo?
Pornography has become big business in the United States. You no longer have to go places to find it; it now finds you. Once confined to “dirty old men” and seedy areas of town, pornography has now penetrated the hotel room and home. The Internet and cell phone have made pornography accessible everywhere, all the time.
Hey, you know what else has become big business? Government corruption and political cronyism. But hey, that's the price we pay to live in a lobbyist and favoritism-choked democracy, right? Besides, if you're against bribes, you're probably a Commie.
The spread of porn is not surprising, and neither is its popularity. It is not the appeal of sex, but the appeal of voyeurism. After all, the actors in porn films seek to gratify not themselves but the viewer. The spectator finds himself in an unnatural position of being witness to a sexual act which is conducted fully for his benefit. It’s hard to deny that there is something degrading in the continuous exposure to increasingly hard-core pornography.
Um... why would that be, exactly? If being self-centered or pampered is unnatural, then you should be campaigning against health spas and casinos with High Roller suites- apparently complimentary massages are degrading (someone tell Abramoff!)
In a manner that the older generation of Americans finds scandalous, porn has become socially acceptable and lost its moral stigma.
Nothing like stereotyping everybody over 40, eh Dinesh?
A good example of this cultural cache is that today a porn star like Jenna Jameson appears on billboards and on the cover of magazines like Vanity Fair.
As opposed to a shameless numskull l like Bill Frist trying to exploit his medical credentials to increase his standing on political issues he knows nothing about, and continuing to be supported by his party? Or, you know, that whole Tom DeLay thing? Scooter Libby? No?
The liberal defense of obscenity and pornography began many decades ago as a defense of great works of literature and of free speech. It began as a defense of books like James Joyce’s Ulysses, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover. But now some liberal advocates insist that all forms of sexual explicitness are equally deserving of legal protection and that no restriction of obscenity or pornography should be allowed.
...Groups like the ACLU have taken the approach that pornography rights, like the rights of accused criminals, are best protected at their outermost extreme. This means is that the more foul the obscenity, the harder liberals must fight to allow it. By protecting expression at its farthest reach, these activists believe they are fully securing the free speech rights of the rest of us.
I suppose that's a fair assessment, but I don't see what's wrong with the game-plan here.
...It is a long way, for instance, from James Joyce to a loathsome character like Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine.
Yeah, one has a cool accent and beard and weird Diaspora issues, and the other's in a wheelchair. And gets chicks.
There would seem to be an obvious distinction between fighting to include James Joyce in a high school library and insisting that the same library maintain its subscription to Hustler.
Man, I've been going to all the wrong libraries. Oh wait, that's just happening in Dinesh's dirty, sexy mind.
For the ACLU, however, the two causes are part of the same free speech crusade. In a sense, the ACLU considers the campaign for Hustler a more worthy cause because if Hustler is permitted, anything is permitted, and therefore free speech has been more vigorously defended.
Worthiness might be the wrong word here. Fighting to keep the definition of protected speech as broad as possible doesn't mean you have to have a hard-on for Nazis or Snuff films (or both).
In recent years, leading liberals have gone from defending Flynt as a despicable man who nevertheless has First Amendment rights, to defending Flynt as a delightful man who is valiantly fighting against the forces of darkness and repression. “What I find refreshing about Larry Flynt is that he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a scumbag,” Frank Rich writes in the New York Times. “At least Flynt’s honest about what he’s doing.”See, again, calling someone a scumbag usually indicates you DON'T find them delightful.
If we confine ourselves to liberal culture and its apologists, my Muslim interlocutors would seem to have a justified complaint. The liberal defense of pornography is even more perverted than the pornography itself.
Maybe one day Dinesh will explain why porn is actually harmful.
Hey, Dinesh is on TV right now!
"If we show the terrorists some more of Red America, they won't think we're nothing but T&A and Fear Factor."
That's right, Dinesh. Because there's nothing the terrorists will like more than televangelists. I've got a good feeling about this one.
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