Plural Marriage is Waiting in the Wings

Flashback.

Stanley Kurtz, from 2005:

ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2005, the 46-year-old Victor de Bruijn and his 31-year-old wife of eight years, Bianca, presented themselves to a notary public in the small Dutch border town of Roosendaal. And they brought a friend. Dressed in wedding clothes, Victor and Bianca de Bruijn were formally united with a bridally bedecked Mirjam Geven, a recently divorced 35-year-old whom they'd met several years previously through an Internet chatroom. As the notary validated a samenlevingscontract, or "cohabitation contract," the three exchanged rings, held a wedding feast, and departed for their honeymoon.

When Mirjam Geven first met Victor and Bianca de Bruijn, she was married. Yet after several meetings between Mirjam, her then-husband, and the De Bruijns, Mirjam left her spouse and moved in with Victor and Bianca. The threesome bought a bigger bed, while Mirjam and her husband divorced. Although neither Mirjam nor Bianca had had a prior relationship with a woman, each had believed for years that she was bisexual. Victor, who describes himself as "100 percent heterosexual," attributes the trio's success to his wives' bisexuality, which he says has the effect of preventing jealousy.

The De Bruijns' triple union caused a sensation in the Netherlands, drawing coverage from television, radio, and the press. With TV cameras and reporters crowding in, the wedding celebration turned into something of a media circus. Halfway through the festivities, the trio had to appoint one of their guests as a press liaison. The local paper ran several stories on the triple marriage, one devoted entirely to the media madhouse.

News of the Dutch three-way wedding filtered into the United States through a September 26 report by Paul Belien, on his Brussels Journal website. The story spread through the conservative side of the Internet like wildfire, raising a chorus of "I told you so's" from bloggers who'd long warned of a slippery slope from gay marriage to polygamy.

Meanwhile, gay marriage advocates scrambled to put out the fire. M.V. Lee Badgett, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and research director of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, told a sympathetic website, "This [Brussels Journal] article is ridiculous. Don't be fooled--Dutch law does not allow polygamy." Badgett suggested that Paul Belien had deliberately mistranslated the Dutch word for "cohabitation contract" as "civil union," or even "marriage," so as to leave the false impression that the triple union had more legal weight than it did. Prominent gay-marriage advocate Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, offered up a detailed legal account of Dutch cohabitation contracts, treating them as a matter of minor significance, in no way comparable to state-recognized registered partnerships.

In short, while the Dutch triple wedding set the conservative blogosphere ablaze with warnings, same-sex marriage advocates dismissed the story as a silly stunt with absolutely no implications for the gay marriage debate. And how did America's mainstream media adjudicate the radically different responses of same-sex marriage advocates and opponents to events in the Netherlands? By ignoring the entire affair.

Yet there is a story here. And it's bigger than even those chortling conservative websites claim. While Victor, Bianca, and Mirjam are joined by a private cohabitation contract rather than a state-registered partnership or a full-fledged marriage, their union has already made serious legal, political, and cultural waves in the Netherlands. To observers on both sides of the Dutch gay marriage debate, the De Bruijns' triple wedding is an unmistakable step down the road to legalized group marriage.

More important, the De Bruijn wedding reveals a heretofore hidden dimension of the gay marriage phenomenon. The De Bruijns' triple marriage is a bisexual marriage. And, increasingly, bisexuality is emerging as a reason why legalized gay marriage is likely to result in legalized group marriage. If every sexual orientation has a right to construct its own form of marriage, then more changes are surely due. For what gay marriage is to homosexuality, group marriage is to bisexuality. The De Bruijn trio is the tip-off to the fact that a connection between bisexuality and the drive for multipartner marriage has been developing for some time.

Photo Credit: "The Polygamists - FLDS: An exclusive look inside the FLDS."

And from the comments at Christianity Today:

Big deal. Sticking a reproductive organ into an excretory canal will never constitute grounds for biblical marriage. Also, it's not over, yet. This will be appealed to the SC where it will be a 5 to 4 decision against homosexual marriage. If not, there is no logical reason to prevent plural marriage or any other arrangement. This federal judge must be a crackhead.

RELATED: From Dale Carpenter, "A Maximalist Decision, Raising the Stakes" (via Memeorandum).

WikiLeaks: Criminal Enterprise

From Marc Thiessen, at Washington Post, "WikiLeaks Must be Stopped":

Let's be clear: WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise. Its reason for existence is to obtain classified national security information and disseminate it as widely as possible -- including to the United States' enemies. These actions are likely a violation of the Espionage Act, and they arguably constitute material support for terrorism. The Web site must be shut down and prevented from releasing more documents -- and its leadership brought to justice. WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, proudly claims to have exposed more classified information than all the rest of the world press combined. He recently told the New Yorker he understands that innocent people may be hurt by his disclosures ("collateral damage" he called them) and that WikiLeaks might get "blood on our hands."

With his unprecedented release of more than 76,000 secret documents last week, he may have achieved this. The Post found that the documents exposed at least one U.S. intelligence operative and identified about 100 Afghan informants -- often including the names of their villages and family members. A Taliban spokesman said the group is scouring the WikiLeaks Web site for information to find and "punish" these informers.

Beyond getting people killed, WikiLeaks' actions make it less likely that Afghans and foreign intelligence services (whose reports WikiLeaks also exposed) will cooperate with the United States in the future. And, as former CIA director Mike Hayden has pointed out, the disclosures are a gift to adversary intelligence services, and they will place a chill on intelligence sharing within the United States government. The harm to our national security is immeasurable and irreparable.

RTWT.

Interesting discussion (FWIW), from Charli Carpenter, "Wikileaks and 'War Crimes'."

Cameras in the Supreme Court

Making the case at Reason:

HAT TIP: Glenn Reynolds.

Most Americans Want ObamaCare Changed or Repealed

At Fox News, "Most Voters Unhappy with Health Care Law":

Few American voters like the new health care law — and most want it changed or repealed.

In addition, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday, almost twice as many voters think changes in the law "go too far" as think they "don't go far enough."

Nearly half of voters — 45 percent — think the changes go too far, while 25 percent think the changes don't go far enough. Some 16 percent think the law includes the right amount of change.

Just 15 percent of voters like the new health care law and think it should be implemented as is. Most don't like the law in its current form: 42 percent think it needs to be changed, and another 36 percent would repeal it all together.

The full article and questionnaire at the link.

Palin Talks Tough

On Hannity's:

Hezbollah Ambush of IDF Troops at Lebanon Border

YNET has the story, "IDF: Journalists were tipped off."

Journalists and photographers were briefed in advance of the intention to ambush IDF troops and were therefore present at the site of Tuesday's deadly clash between Israeli and Lebanese forces, IDF officials charge.

The lethal skirmish ensued after IDF forces performing routine operations in a border-area enclave came under Lebanese fire. The Israeli troops fired back, killing three Lebanese soldiers and a local journalist.

The killed correspondent, Assaf Abu Rahal, worked for Hezbollah-affiliated Beirut daily al-Akhbar.

Another journalist, Ali Shuaib from Hezbollah's al-Manar station, was wounded in the incident and was taken to hospital for treatment.

IDF officials raised questions about the presence of journalists and even broadcast trucks at the scene even before the clash ensued, charging this further reinforces suspicions that the incident was a well-planned Lebanese ambush.

But see the detailed report from Melanie Phillips, "Here we go again...":

About the strategic significance of these events and their possibly momentous consequences for the region and world peace, the western public is today -- thanks to the uselessness and worse of the mainstream media -- almost wholly ignorant.

Phillips cites Yossef Bodansky, "Clash on Israel-Lebanon Border Holds Potential for Strategic Escalation."

But you don't get the full story at FDL, naturally: "IDF Tree Removal Kills Three in Lebanon."

Rule 5 Preview: Katy Perry at Esquire

Gettin' ready for the weekend!

Nihad Awad, Executive Director of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Attacks Pamela Geller on 'O'Reilly Factor'

Nihad Awad is an outspoken supporter of Hamas and an unindicted co-conspirator in the FBI's Holy Land investigation. In a frankly bizarre appearance on last night's O'Reilly show, Awad smeared Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs as blaspheming Islam:

And Pamela responds:

I am perplexed not only by CAIR's presence on legit media, but by the absence of their true identity. O'Reilly has them on quasi-regularly and never identifies them as co-conspirators in the largest Hamas (also Muslim Brotherhood) terror funding trial in US history. The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated in its own words, according to a captured internal document released during that same trial, to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within, and sabotaging its miserable house...so that Allah's religious is made victorious over other religions."

CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR's executive director) were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East.

CAIR is not only an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department. Also, CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror, and CAIR's cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements.

Pamela made a short appearance last night, but as is usually the case, it didn't seem like she had enough time to make her case. Interesting, either way:

Modern Leftism and the Courts

Update to my earlier entry, "'Gender No Longer Forms An Essential Part of Marriage'."

Be sure to compare Judge Bork's comments at the link above to John Hinderaker, "Today's Proposition 8 Decision" (via Memeorandum):

Conservatives have long said that the day would come when liberal judges declare the Constitution unconstitutional. That happened today, when a gay federal judge in San Francisco, relying on the opinions of mostly-gay "expert" witnesses, ruled that an amendment to the California constitution, which was adopted in perfectly proper fashion by a substantial majority of voters, is "unconstitutional." In this context, unconstitutional means "unpopular with me and my friends."

As a legal matter, Judge Walker's decision is a bad joke. It will be appealed, of course, but the outcome of the appeal will be determined by politics, not law. I think it is safe to assume that anyone nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democratic President is explicitly or implicitly committed to the proposition that gay marriage is a constitutional right. If you think that is bizarre, stop voting for Democratic politicians.

And again, idiot Scotty smears rather than engage substance, "Former Time Blog of the Year Apparently Unaware That Federal State Entails Multiple Constitutions."

Kristallnacht in New York?

On November 10, 1938, the Gestapo, the SS and various Nazi Youth and other brown-shirt militias launched a massive pogrom against Jews in Germany. The "Night of the Broken Glass," the attacks resulted in nearly 100 Jews murdered and tens of thousands rounded up and shipped to concentration camps. Kristallnacht is widely considered the initial stage of the Nazi regime's "final solution" to the Jewish problem.

It would seem pretty evident to any reasonable person in America today that the country's treatment of Muslim Americans doesn't even remotely resemble the persecution of Jews during the interwar period of German history, and then into WWII and the Holocaust. But if we've learned anything about the political left in the last few years (if not sooner) it's that the one political gambit that continues to pay off for Democrats and radicals is the claim of "discrimination." We're fortunately seeing some very successful pushback against the left's incessant claims of racism, but it's going to take continued efforts to beat back the lies and slanders that form the central discourses on the left-wing today.

My latest case in point is Andrew Sprung's entry,"Kristallnacht in New York?"

Sprung points to the New York Times' coverage yesterday, highlighting the passage suggesting that opponents "aggressively scrutinize" donors to the Cordoba Project. The highlighted section also quotes Dan Senor, who said there'd be "a real stigma associated with this project." Senor published one of the more thoughtful essays on the whole debate at yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "An Open Letter on the Ground Zero Mosque."

Your stated goal of interfaith and cross-cultural understanding is a good one-one that we all share and have devoted considerable energy to furthering. It may well be that this goal would be furthered still by the building and operation of Cordoba House. However, while we will continue to stand with you and your right to proceed with this project, we see no reason why it must necessarily be located so close to the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

I hardly see how such concerns warrant vicious comparison to Gestapo anti-Semitic pograms in the 1930s, but that's where we are with today's radical left. Everything's about racism, discrimination, homophobia, hate speech, etc. Unreal. But one more example of a refusal of anti-conservatives to look at the issues dispassionately, and discuss things reasonably.

RELATED: At National Review, "Not at Ground Zero," via Memeorandum.

'Gender No Longer Forms An Essential Part of Marriage'

Folks are reacting to that line at the ruling.

AoSHQ is especially good. And Jeff Goldstein responds:

... this ruling does nothing more than enshrine the notion that what has always been the definition for marriage can no longer be the definition for marriage, because defining marriage as it has always been defined is discriminatory against those who wish it was defined in a way more to their liking, and in a way that changes what it is and has always been into something it never was nor ever has been. But be that as it may.

I've tired of writing about this, frankly. I'm not so much in the business of seeking to deprive people rights --- contrived rights, be that as it may as well --- and I'm to the point where the only legitimate solution I see would be a federalist one, to let the voters in their own states decide how they want to define marriage. The courts will not reflect the people on this, and the law will be tweaked to extend the right to marry to a faction that's not interested in the traditional bases of that institution. I'm reminded of Robert Bork's comments on the larger implications:

What we are seeing in modern liberalism is the ultimate triumph of the New Left of the 1960s - the New Left that collapsed as a unified political movement and splintered into a multitude of intense, single-issue groups. We now have, to name but a few, radical feminists, black extremists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, activist homosexual groups, multiculturalists, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many more. In a real sense, however, the New Left did not collapse. Each of its splinters pursues a leftist agenda, but there is no publicly announced overarching philosophy that enables people to see easily that the separate groups and causes add up to a general radical left philosophy. The groups support one another and come together easily on many issues. In that sense, the splintering of the New Left made it less visible and therefore more powerful, its goals more attainable, than ever before.

In their final stages, radical egalitarianism becomes tyranny and radical individualism descends into hedonism. These translate as bread and circuses. Government grows larger and more intrusive in order to direct the distribution of goods and services in an ever more equal fashion, while people are diverted, led to believe that their freedoms are increasing, by a great variety of entertainments featuring violence and sex ...

NYT has a story up now (FWIW), "Court Rejects Same-Sex Marriage Ban in California" (via Memeorandum).

U.S. District Court Strikes Down California's Proposition 8

Via Doug Mataconis:

Added, at Los Angeles Times, "Judge strikes down Prop. 8, allows gay marriage in California." And at Legal Insurrection, "Fed Judge Finds Calif. Prop. 8 Unconstitutional":

Today, Chief Judge Vaugh Walker of the Northern District of California issued his ruling in the case holding that Prop. 8 violates the U.S. Constitution.

Here is the Judge's conclusion:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that oppositesex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Throughout the opinion, the Judge goes into great detail regarding trial testimony and justifications for Prop. 8. The Judge then holds, in essence, that the justifications are irrational and have no legitimate societal basis.

The Judge even designated a section of the opinion "Credibility Determinations." Many commentators think the Judge was trying to insulate the opinion from appeal since appeals courts do not normally overturn credibility determinations, since only the trial judge observed the witness.

In this case, the Judge seems to be trying too hard to insulate the opinion, and I doubt that on such a momentus finding of a new constitutional right for same sex marriage that an appeals court, much less the U.S. Supreme Court, will care much about the credibility of witnesses as a basis for a legal ruling.

Everyone expects this case to end up on the U.S. Supreme Court, which should test what Elena Kagan meant when she said, under oath, that there is no constitutional right to gay marriage.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger - Proposition 8 Unconstitutional

Stumbling All Over Academic Freedom

From Dennis Byrne, at the Chicago Tribune:

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently allowed itself to be bullied by an anonymous student into firing a faculty member. All because the course content "offended" the student.

It's time to send those school officials responsible for the firing to a remedial course on the meaning of academic freedom and the idea of a university. If not that, then it's time to do some housecleaning to restore academic rigor to the state's blue chip public university.

This could happen in today's university environment only if the sensibilities that were offended were liberal ones. In this case, the sensibilities were on the side of stamping out views inconsonant with homosexual dictates.

Here. Here.

RTWT.

I've got some personal experience with folks trying to "stamp out" that which they can't rebut, so I'll be following this one. Byrne suggests that once the media glare winds down, the university may well give the permanent boot to Professor Kenneth Howell.

E.D. Kain Joins Balloon Juice: 'Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself'

Hey, that didn't take long. E.D. Kain's found his bone (e.g., "True/Slant Shuts Down — Charles Johnson, E.D. Kain Looking for New Digital Media Bones to Suck Dry").

Turns out the lying freak-blogger's joined John Cole's Balloon Juice, and the title of his post is fully apropos: "Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself." And hey, there's a song for that:

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate ...

Folks might not get my meaning, but those reading my blog for awhile will recall the E.D. Kain's a man of ZERO principle who sold his soul to the reigning zeitgeist of the leftist blogosphere. The secret that shall never be revealed at Balloon Juice is that E.D. Kain once published an up-and-coming neocon blog portal called Neo-Constant. Beaman's interview with British neocon Douglas Murray was first published there. Later though, folks like Beaman never did find out what happened to Neo-Constant, since E.D. Kain decided to close up shop without so much as a final thank to all of those who contributed there. I have written about this a number of times. I'm bothered not so much that E.D. Kain's an immature prima donna without a shred of principle, but that in his new blogging life he turned himself into a lackey of Charles Johnson and Andrew Sullivan. Totally lame. And after I started published some hot and heavy reports on this, E.D. Kain launched a campaign of workplace intimidation to get me to STFU. It went around for a while, getting to the point where E.D. had the gall to appeal to Christian ethics for me to stop. Right. No skin off my back though. It's yet another example of the evil I uncover so much around here. I'm all for self-interest, and if that was E.D.'s motivation for switching sides I'd have no problem. But when one then mounts unhinged Blitzkrieg assaults against the very icons of the former movement that rattles some sensibilities. It's thus fitting for E.D. to have staked his next double-crossing claim at Balloon Juice. John Cole's got a reputation of the same sort, although I can't vouch for it personally. I'll just leave it up to Cole's own words for folks to get an idea of the kind of digs slime-blogger E.D. Kain now claims as his own. See John Cole, "Let’s Be Blunt":

Go fuck yourself. To death.

I am tired of being patient with you nannies and your stupid self-serving rules and your slippery slopes and your bullshit and your need to be tough on crime and your earnest concerns about society. Mind your own business, get your own house in order, stop fucking interns and little boys and cheating on your wives and on your taxes and being found dead wearing two wetsuits with a dildo shoved up your ass. Just mind your own damned business, and let people do what they must to deal with their own screwed up lives, and let people handle their pain the best way they can.

I am sick of the bullshit. Life is hard for most people out there, and damned near impossible for people in chronic pain. Quit making it worse, you allegedly compassionate sons-of-bitches.

And that diatribe is all over some lady who committed suicide because authorities were gonna cut off her "medicinal" marijuana. Perhaps John Cole should take a couple of tokes himself --- calm down there buddy, sheesh. I'd have to check the archives, but it's a good bet that John Cole's pro-assisted suicide anyway, so perhaps the lady saved people time, no offense and God rest her soul. That said, it's a bit much to blame Bush/Cheney, dontcha think:

Robin Prosser is dead, and George Bush doesn’t even know or probably care who she is, but his government had a hand in her passing ... I didn’t think that was too much to ask until I realized what Bush and Cheney and their allies in Congress have done to this country. It is beyond time for them to grab their bibles and get the fuck out of the way.

And this begs the question: With that pedigree, why did E.D. sign on, unless it's just about fulfilling another lie?

John alluded to me as a ‘sane conservative’ and I’m sure plenty of people would take issue with both descriptors, but I’ll take what I can get. I look forward to stirring the pot around here a bit with my perfectly lucid advocacy of free markets, limited government and fiscal discipline. You may also find that I’m anti-war, anti-torture, anti-stupid-arguments-against-building-mosques, and anti-death-penalty. Indeed, I’m pro-life across the board though I have little interest in immersing myself in the endless culture war debates.

I also have very little interest in bashing other conservatives or, for that matter, liberals. Bashing has very limited utility. And others are better at it in any case.

E.D. Kain is a sane conservative the way that Andrew Sullivan is a sane conservative, which is to say not so much. The lead post at Balloon Juice right now is E.D.'s entry, "No Newt is good Newt." Click through and read it. So much for "no interest in bashing other conservatives"?

I don't like him, in any case. And I'm not going to pull punches or play nice. This is the blogosphere we're talking about ... know what I'm saying?

President Obama's Birthday

Obambi's 49 today. We should be nice, right? Perhaps. Although some folks want August 4th to be a national holiday. I can do without that. Maybe I'll take a holiday from posting Photoshops, although that photo with Rangel below is the real thing. And I'm no fan of Alex Jones (9/11 trutherism is not cool), but you gotta give the guy props at the clip for the creepy Obama overtones to the global conspiracy he's concocted.

Meanwhile, more on the conspiracy thing, from Keith Koffler at Politico, "Don't Celebrate President Obama's Birthday":

Today is President Barack Obama’s 49th birthday, which the president seems to think is an unhappy day. He has taken to lamenting his fading youth and graying hair, showing all the signs of a midlife crisis — minus the red Corvette. But unfortunately for the rest of us, his supporters are busy making Aug. 4 a sad day for the country by trying to turn the occasion into a kind of national celebration.

In an effort to drum up enthusiasm — and increase membership — the political operatives who run Organizing for America, an activist group devoted to the president, are set to stage hundreds of birthday parties around the country, giving Obama’s day of birth the feel of a holiday.

OFA members are being urged to bake birthday cakes, photograph them and send the image to OFA’s website for its blog. A letter from first lady Michelle Obama, posted on the Democratic National Committee website, directs people to the OFA site, where they can sign a “birthday card” for the president.

We don’t, as a country, generally celebrate our politicians’ birthdays. Except for those chosen few — like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

Other nations, founded on nationalism, religion or rigid ideologies, reaffirm their existence by glorifying rulers they believe embody these notions. They have constructed palaces to celebrate them during their lifetimes and embalm them in mausoleums to maintain their presence after death

But the United States is built on enduring democratic principles and ideas. Our leaders don’t represent us as the greatest nationalist or the exemplar of an ideology. Our Constitution limits the power of presidents and lawmakers. They are not symbols of the nation but temporary custodians of our freedoms. Power ultimately resides with the people.

The birthday parties are just the latest manifestation of a kind of worshipfulness that surrounds this president. His image and slogans are everywhere, emblazoned on shirts, hats, posters, walls, bumper stickers and even — uniquely for a sitting present — a few street signs.

More at the link.

The Washington Post is spreading the word, dontcha know? "Obama's birthday bash seen as a way to reengage his base."

Righteous & Wrong

Malise Ruthven takes on Paul Berman, at New York Review:

The Flight of the Intellectuals
by Paul Berman
Melville House, 299 pp., $26.00

Nomad: From Islam to America
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Free Press, 277 pp., $27.00

Terror and Liberalism
by Paul Berman
Norton, 220 pp., $13.95 (paper)

Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents
by Ian Buruma
Princeton University Press, 132 pp., $19.95

Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name
by Timothy Garton Ash
Yale University Press, 464 pp., $35.00 (to be published in September)

**********

At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, stands an exhibit that is for some more unsettling than the replicas of the Warsaw Ghetto or the canisters of Zyklon B gas used at Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next to blown-up photographs of emaciated corpses from the death camps there is a picture of the grand mufti of Palestine, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, reviewing an honor guard of the Muslim division of the Waffen SS that fought the Serbs and antifascist partisans. The display includes a cable to Hajj Amin from Heinrich Himmler, dated November 2, 1943: “The National Socialist Party has inscribed on its flag ‘the extermination of world Jewry.’ Our party sympathizes with the fight of the Arabs, especially the Arabs of Palestine, against the foreign Jew.” There is also a quote from a broadcast the mufti gave over Berlin radio on March 1, 1944: “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This is the command of God, history and religion.”

As the Israeli historian Tom Segev suggests, “the visitor is left to conclude that there is much in common between the Nazis’ plan to destroy the Jews and the Arabs’ enmity to Israel.” Paul Berman’s new book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, makes the connection even more explicit. Although defeated in Europe, the virus of Nazism is, in his view, vigorously present in the Arab-Islamic world, with Hajj Amin the primary source of this infection. Instead of being tried as a war criminal, Hajj Amin was allowed to leave France in 1946, after escaping from Germany via Switzerland. A trial, Berman suggests, might have “sparked a little self-reflection about the confusions and self-contradictions within Islam” on matters Jewish, comparable to the postwar “self-reflections” that took place inside the Roman Catholic Church.

Hajj Amin received a hero’s welcome on his arrival in Egypt, where he renewed his connections with Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, whom he had previously supplied with funds from Nazi Germany and ideas for SS-type military formations. The Brotherhood proved fertile soil for the Nazi bacillus. As a result of Hajj Amin’s return, Berman concludes, “the Arab zone ended up as the only region in the entire planet in which a criminal on the fascist side of the war, and a major ideologue, to boot, returned home in glory, instead of in disgrace.”

Planet Berman evidently excludes India, where Subhas Chandra Bose, who broadcast anti-British propaganda for the Nazis before creating the Indian National Army to fight with the Japanese, is now honored in the pantheon of national heroes in Delhi’s Red Fort. It also excludes Finland, where Gustaf Mannerheim, commander of the Finnish forces that fought with the Germans against the Soviets and volunteered recruits for the Waffen SS, was elected by parliament to serve as the country’s president from 1944 to 1946. In 2005 he and his predecessor, Risto Ryti, who served a ten-year prison sentence for allying Finland with Nazi Germany, were voted the country’s top two national heroes in a survey by the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Berman, however, is not to be bothered by inconvenient truths that might arrest the flow of his rhetoric. His vision is crassly ideological: facts that might interfere with his argument—such as al-Banna’s stated belief that Nazi racial theories were incompatible with Islam, as well as other complicating factors—are liable to be discarded or ignored.

The thrust of his book lies in its title—a homage to La Trahison des clercs (1927), Julien Benda’s attack on the intellectual corruption of his contemporaries. In his famous essay Benda lamented the demise of philosophical universalism, accusing his peers of abandoning Enlightenment ideals in favor of nationalist particularisms and partisan ideologies. Published before Martin Heidegger joined the Nazis, and long before Jean-Paul Sartre “bit his tongue” about Stalin’s horrors to avoid discouraging the French working class, the book had a prophetic ring and is justly regarded as a manifesto for intellectual integrity. However, as his title suggests, Berman is less concerned with the betrayals or corruption of the intellectuals he excoriates than with what he claims to be their moral cowardice. One aspect of this is their “refusal to discuss or even acknowledge the Nazi influence that has turned out to be so weirdly venomous and enduring in the history of the Islamist movement.”

The charge is disturbing, but not without foundation. France and Belgium have seen an increase in anti-Semitic episodes, most of them laid at the door of Muslim immigrants or their descendants. Muslim polemics in Europe—reflecting the anti-Israeli rhetoric of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah as well as traditional fulminations against Jews derived from the Koran and prophetic traditions—have long mixed anti-Semitic tropes derived from European sources in a toxic mix of diatribes.

The most egregious example is a reference to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—a notorious tsarist forgery adopted and circulated by the Nazis—in the charter of Hamas, the Islamist movement now controlling Gaza. Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading ideologue who was executed by Nasser in 1966, was an outspoken anti-Semite, with views as extreme as Hitler’s, an issue that Berman addressed with considerable insight in Terror and Liberalism (2003). As Berman sees it, the poison of European anti-Semitism was subsumed in the broader eddies of Muslim totalitarianisms—Nasserist, Baathist, and Islamist. The atrocities these movements inflicted on Muslim societies (in Iraq, Sudan, and Algeria) turned out to have been “fully as horrible as the fascism and Stalinism of Europe” with victims numbered in millions. Instead of facing reality, Western politicians and intellectuals have engaged in “ideological systems of denial.” The wake-up call came on September 11. The War on Terror that followed

was an event in the twentieth-century mode. It was the clash of ideologies. It was the war between liberalism and the apocalyptic and phantasmagorical movements that have risen up against liberal civilization ever since the calamities of the First World War.

The Flight of the Intellectuals elaborates on the theme of an embattled liberal civilization facing a totalitarian or fascist onslaught. Where Terror and Liberalism took a broad-brush approach toward the modern appeasers—heirs to the “useful idiots” on left and right who defended or ignored the dangers of Nazi and Communist totalitarianism—The Flight points an accusing finger at two particular writers—Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash—whom Berman regards as exemplifying liberal intellectual pusillanimity. The book—originally published as a lengthy article in The New Republic—tries to perform a detailed autopsy on Buruma’s New York Times profile of Hassan al-Banna’s Swiss-born grandson, Tariq Ramadan, whose work I have reviewed in these pages

Not sure what to think. I'm with Berman on his earlier book, Terror and Liberalism, and I'm not one to play up the Islam/Nazi tie-in too much. Not only that, Ruthven's no appeaser. He sees Islam as a "religion of victory," but deals at a level of sophistication that we don't get in blog debates too often. Yet this is the New York Review, and that's pretty much a strike against, so what can you do?. RTWT. I'm thinking about this one a bit more.

Liberal Piety and the Memory of 9/11

Scotty Lemieux is too predictable on the news from New York: "Landmark Preservation Commission To Bigots Who Despise Principles of American Constitutionalism: Drop Dead."

And I don't call folks like him "liberals" (they're radical leftists), but Dorothy Rabinowitz nails it anyway:

Americans may have lacked for much in the course of their history, but never instruction in social values. The question today is whether Americans of any era have ever confronted the bombardment of hectoring and sermonizing now directed at those whose views are deemed insufficiently enlightened—an offense regularly followed by accusations that the offenders have violated the most sacred principles of our democracy.

It doesn't take a lot to become the target of such a charge. There is no mistaking the beliefs on display in these accusations, most recently in regard to the mosque about to be erected 600 feet from Ground Zero. Which is that without the civilizing dictates of their superiors in government, ordinary Americans are lost to reason and decency. They are the kind of people who—as a recent presidential candidate put it—cling to their guns and their religion ....

Long discussion of Mayor Michael Bloomberg (hardly a commie like Lemieux, but a fellow traveler in hopeless political correctness nevertheless), and then:

In the plan for an Islamic center and mosque some 15 stories high to be built near Ground Zero, the full force of politically correct piety is on display along with the usual unyielding assault on all dissenters. The project has aroused intense opposition from New Yorkers and Americans across the country. It has also elicited remarkable streams of oratory from New York's political leaders, including Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

"What are we all about if not religious freedom?" a fiery Mr. Cuomo asked early in this drama. Mr. Cuomo, running for governor, has since had less to say.

The same cannot be said for Mr. Bloomberg, who has gone on to deliver regular meditations on the need to support the mosque, and on the iniquity of its opponents. In the course of a speech at Dartmouth on July 16 he raised the matter unasked, and held forth on his contempt for those who opposed the project and even wanted to investigate the funding: "I just think it's the most outrageous thing anybody could suggest." Ground Zero is a "very appropriate place'' for a mosque, the mayor announced, because it "tells the world" that in America, we have freedom of religion for everybody.

Here was an idea we have been hearing more and more of lately—the need to show the world America's devotion to democracy and justice, also cited by the administration as a reason to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City. Who is it, we can only wonder, that requires these proofs? What occasions these regular brayings on the need to show the world the United States is a free nation?

It's unlikely that the preachments now directed at opponents of the project by Mayor Bloomberg and others will persuade that opposition. Those fighting the building recognize full well the deliberate obtuseness of Mr. Bloomberg's exhortations, and those of Mr. Cuomo and others: the resort to pious battle cries, the claim that antagonists of the plan stand against religious freedom. They note, especially, the refusal to confront the obvious question posed by this proposed center towering over the ruins of 9/11.

It is a question most ordinary Americans, as usual, have no trouble defining. Namely, how is it that the planners, who have presented this effort as a grand design for the advancement of healing and interfaith understanding, have refused all consideration of the impact such a center will have near Ground Zero? Why have they insisted, despite intense resistance, on making the center an assertive presence in this place of haunted memory? It is an insistence that calls to mind the Flying Imams, whose ostentatious prayers—apparently designed to call attention to themselves on a U.S. Airways flight to Phoenix in November 2006—ended in a lawsuit. The imams sued. The airlines paid.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser—devout Muslim, physician, former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy—says there is every reason to investigate the center's funding under the circumstances. Of the mosque so near the site of the 9/11 attacks, he notes "It will certainly be seen as a victory for political Islam."

The center may be built where planned. But it will not go easy or without consequence to the politicians intent on jamming the project down the public throat, in the name of principle. Liberal piety may have met its match in the raw memory of 9/11, and in citizens who have come to know pure demagoguery when they hear it. They have had, of late, plenty of practice.

This should be a ragin' discussion all day, for example, at the far-left Salon, "Michael Bloomberg delivers stirring defense of mosque" (and the links at Memeorandum). Sigh. Those "enlightened" leftists. What would we do without them?

NewsBusted — Oliver Stone: 'Jewish-Dominated Media' Prevents Hitler from Being Portrayed 'In Context'

How Tracking Cookies Work (How to Control Your Privacy Online)

Fascinating piece at WSJ, "On the Web's Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only":

You may not know a company called [x+1] Inc., but it may well know a lot about you.

From a single click on a web site, [x+1] correctly identified Carrie Isaac as a young Colorado Springs parent who lives on about $50,000 a year, shops at Wal-Mart and rents kids' videos. The company deduced that Paul Boulifard, a Nashville architect, is childless, likes to travel and buys used cars. And [x+1] determined that Thomas Burney, a Colorado building contractor, is a skier with a college degree and looks like he has good credit.

The company didn't get every detail correct. But its ability to make snap assessments of individuals is accurate enough that Capital One Financial Corp. uses [x+1]'s calculations to instantly decide which credit cards to show first-time visitors to its website.

In short: Websites are gaining the ability to decide whether or not you'd be a good customer, before you tell them a single thing about yourself.

The technology reaches beyond the personalization familiar on sites like Amazon.com, which uses its own in-house data on its customers to show them new items they might like.

By contrast, firms like [x+1] tap into vast databases of people's online behavior—mainly gathered surreptitiously by tracking technologies that have become ubiquitous on websites across the Internet. They don't have people's names, but cross-reference that data with records of home ownership, family income, marital status and favorite restaurants, among other things. Then, using statistical analysis, they start to make assumptions about the proclivities of individual Web surfers.

"We never don't know anything about someone," says John Nardone, [x+1]'s chief executive.

Capital One says it doesn't use the full array of [x+1]'s targeting technology, and it doesn't prevent people from applying for any card they want. "While we suggest products that we believe will be of interest to our visitors, we do not limit their ability to easily explore all products available," spokeswoman Pam Girardo says ....

Its technology works like this: A visitor lands on Capital One's credit-card page, and [x+1] instantly scans the information passed between the person's computer and the web page, which can be thousands of lines of code containing details on the user's computer. [x+1] also uses a new service from Digital Envoy Inc. that can determine the ZIP code where that computer is physically located. For some clients (but not Capital One), [x+1] also taps additional databases of web-browsing history.

Armed with its data, [x+1] taps consumer researcher Nielsen Co. to assign the visitor to one of 66 demographic groups.

In a fifth of a second, [x+1] says it can access and analyze thousands of pieces of information about a single user. It quickly scans for similar types of Capital One customers to make an educated guess about which credit cards to show the visitor.

And check the interactive page, "How to Control Your Privacy Online."

'State of Fear'

It's interesting to see how leftists and immigration activists view the law. Background on this documentary here. Longtime readers will see some familiar images, for example, the effigy of Sheriff Joe Arpaio: