Kathianne
01-22-2015, 12:37 AM
Right now, anti-Catholocism seems to be on the wan, but it's not always been so. Here are some articles by a black man, that happens to be Catholic:
JANUARY 21, 2015 4:00 AM
The Abolition of Private Life (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/396798/abolition-private-life-kevin-d-williamson)
They’re coming for your Denver omelet. By Kevin D. Williamson (http://www.nationalreview.com/author/kevin-d-williamson)
One of the remarkable aspects of the recent spate of infantile left-wing protests that caught Jim Geraghty’s attention (http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot) is that they are directed at private life and private spaces rather than at public institutions and public affairs. One expects protests at city hall; in New York, we even endured theunseemly spectacle (http://observer.com/2014/12/city-council-members-block-traffic-to-protest-eric-garner-decision/) of one of those shut-down-traffic protests conducted by the city council itself, as though its members did not do enough to inconvenience the residents of that city. Protests in front of the police station or the (hideously fascist-looking (http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/130130035540-federal-reserve-building-monster.jpg)) Federal Reserve building are part of the normal course of affairs in a democratic republic with free speech and a strong tradition of lively discourse.
But the profoundly stupid “black brunch” protests, during which racial-grievance entrepreneurs disrupted meals at places that seemed to them offensively Caucasian (“white spaces”) are a different species of undertaking.And a poorly informed one, at that: In New York City, protesters invaded the Pershing Square Café across the street from Grand Central Terminal, which is one of the more diverse spots in heavily segregated Manhattan, catering as it does to commuting 53-year-old lawyers from Fairfield County, who check any number of different demographic boxes.
The message these protests send is that there is no private space — and, therefore, no private life — so far as this particular rabble is concerned. It’s the familiar Trotsky conundrum: You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.
That the people at brunch have no real direct connection to the events motivating the protesters is beside the point. They were targeted on racial grounds: These were detestable “white spaces,” and the people there were to be punished for being white — even if they were not, in fact, white, their presence in “white spaces” makes them guilty by association. That the protesters were themselves largely white goes without saying: Protests of this sort are a prestige performance for stupid white college kids, mainly. If you want to see a genuinely “white space,” a protest is your best bet.
While it is the case that the phrase “religious extremism” is of limited use (because it matters a great deal (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395882/folly-fundamentalism-kevin-d-williamson) which religion is under discussion), the politics of religious extremist movements ranging from al-Qaeda to the sundry Ayn Rand cults have in common that apostates are always punished with far greater severity than are mere infidels. It is one thing never to have seen the light, but to have seen it and rejected it is unforgivable. (One of the great debates among sharia scholars from the earliest days of Islam to the present is: How many days should an apostate be imprisoned before he is put to death? There’s less debate about putting them to death.) That dynamic makes it inevitable that well-meaning progressives are frequently on the receiving end of outrage from their more puritanical co-religionists.
...
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395882/folly-fundamentalism-kevin-d-williamsonJANUARY 7, 2015 1:15 PM
The Folly of ‘Fundamentalism’ (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395882/folly-fundamentalism-kevin-d-williamson)
When it comes to “religious extremism,” religion matters. By Kevin D. Williamson (http://www.nationalreview.com/author/kevin-d-williamson)
A few months ago, a nice and well-meaning lady handed me a stack of Christian literature, including a pamphlet authored by the despicable anti-Catholic/anti-Semite Jack Chick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_T._Chick). I am a Catholic, but I do not think she really meant anything sour by it, and the pamphlet in question was daft and illiterate but free from the most obvious sort of hate-mongering associated with Chick and his work. I thought for a minute about talking to her about what she was handing out, but decided against it. I’ve spent enough time around fundamentalist boobs and their choose-your-own-adventure theologies to appreciate that it is a waste of time.
One thing that did not occur to me: shooting her in the face.
As the slaughter at the offices ofCharlie Hebdo in Paris reminds us, the phrase “religious extremism” is useless in that it is almost entirely devoid of content. It matters — and it matters a great deal — which religion is under consideration. The world does not have much of a problem with Quaker extremism, Mormon extremism, African Methodist Episcopal extremist, Reform Jewish extremism, Zen Buddhist extremism, Southern Baptist extremism, etc. We’ve seen, over the past few decades, scattered paroxysms of Hindu extremism and Sikh extremism (India), Buddhist violence (Burma), quasi-Christian cult violence (Uganda, Sudan), etc., but the big show in terms of violent extremism is the never-ending circus of jihad.
Juan Cole, in a particularly dopey moment (http://www.salon.com/2008/09/09/palin_fundamentalist/), compared Sarah Palin, of all people, to the sort of people who just carried out a mass murder in Paris. “The values of [John McCain’s] handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers,” he wrote. “What’s the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.”
Lipstick and 3,000 corpses in lower Manhattan, hundreds of thousands more around the world, and a dozen new ones in a Paris magazine office.
Cole goes on to castigate Palin for her anti-abortion views — views which are not, in fact, all that common in the Islamic world, which is relatively indulgent of abortion — and because she sometimes asked people to pray that good things should happen for the people of Alaska. Thomas Jefferson, skeptic though he was, would not have been scandalized by any of this, but a great many backward Muslim fundamentalists would — if not by Palin’s opinions then by the fact that a woman should be allowed to share them, forcefully and publicly.
...
JANUARY 21, 2015 4:00 AM
The Abolition of Private Life (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/396798/abolition-private-life-kevin-d-williamson)
They’re coming for your Denver omelet. By Kevin D. Williamson (http://www.nationalreview.com/author/kevin-d-williamson)
One of the remarkable aspects of the recent spate of infantile left-wing protests that caught Jim Geraghty’s attention (http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot) is that they are directed at private life and private spaces rather than at public institutions and public affairs. One expects protests at city hall; in New York, we even endured theunseemly spectacle (http://observer.com/2014/12/city-council-members-block-traffic-to-protest-eric-garner-decision/) of one of those shut-down-traffic protests conducted by the city council itself, as though its members did not do enough to inconvenience the residents of that city. Protests in front of the police station or the (hideously fascist-looking (http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/130130035540-federal-reserve-building-monster.jpg)) Federal Reserve building are part of the normal course of affairs in a democratic republic with free speech and a strong tradition of lively discourse.
But the profoundly stupid “black brunch” protests, during which racial-grievance entrepreneurs disrupted meals at places that seemed to them offensively Caucasian (“white spaces”) are a different species of undertaking.And a poorly informed one, at that: In New York City, protesters invaded the Pershing Square Café across the street from Grand Central Terminal, which is one of the more diverse spots in heavily segregated Manhattan, catering as it does to commuting 53-year-old lawyers from Fairfield County, who check any number of different demographic boxes.
The message these protests send is that there is no private space — and, therefore, no private life — so far as this particular rabble is concerned. It’s the familiar Trotsky conundrum: You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.
That the people at brunch have no real direct connection to the events motivating the protesters is beside the point. They were targeted on racial grounds: These were detestable “white spaces,” and the people there were to be punished for being white — even if they were not, in fact, white, their presence in “white spaces” makes them guilty by association. That the protesters were themselves largely white goes without saying: Protests of this sort are a prestige performance for stupid white college kids, mainly. If you want to see a genuinely “white space,” a protest is your best bet.
While it is the case that the phrase “religious extremism” is of limited use (because it matters a great deal (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395882/folly-fundamentalism-kevin-d-williamson) which religion is under discussion), the politics of religious extremist movements ranging from al-Qaeda to the sundry Ayn Rand cults have in common that apostates are always punished with far greater severity than are mere infidels. It is one thing never to have seen the light, but to have seen it and rejected it is unforgivable. (One of the great debates among sharia scholars from the earliest days of Islam to the present is: How many days should an apostate be imprisoned before he is put to death? There’s less debate about putting them to death.) That dynamic makes it inevitable that well-meaning progressives are frequently on the receiving end of outrage from their more puritanical co-religionists.
...
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395882/folly-fundamentalism-kevin-d-williamsonJANUARY 7, 2015 1:15 PM
The Folly of ‘Fundamentalism’ (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395882/folly-fundamentalism-kevin-d-williamson)
When it comes to “religious extremism,” religion matters. By Kevin D. Williamson (http://www.nationalreview.com/author/kevin-d-williamson)
A few months ago, a nice and well-meaning lady handed me a stack of Christian literature, including a pamphlet authored by the despicable anti-Catholic/anti-Semite Jack Chick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_T._Chick). I am a Catholic, but I do not think she really meant anything sour by it, and the pamphlet in question was daft and illiterate but free from the most obvious sort of hate-mongering associated with Chick and his work. I thought for a minute about talking to her about what she was handing out, but decided against it. I’ve spent enough time around fundamentalist boobs and their choose-your-own-adventure theologies to appreciate that it is a waste of time.
One thing that did not occur to me: shooting her in the face.
As the slaughter at the offices ofCharlie Hebdo in Paris reminds us, the phrase “religious extremism” is useless in that it is almost entirely devoid of content. It matters — and it matters a great deal — which religion is under consideration. The world does not have much of a problem with Quaker extremism, Mormon extremism, African Methodist Episcopal extremist, Reform Jewish extremism, Zen Buddhist extremism, Southern Baptist extremism, etc. We’ve seen, over the past few decades, scattered paroxysms of Hindu extremism and Sikh extremism (India), Buddhist violence (Burma), quasi-Christian cult violence (Uganda, Sudan), etc., but the big show in terms of violent extremism is the never-ending circus of jihad.
Juan Cole, in a particularly dopey moment (http://www.salon.com/2008/09/09/palin_fundamentalist/), compared Sarah Palin, of all people, to the sort of people who just carried out a mass murder in Paris. “The values of [John McCain’s] handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers,” he wrote. “What’s the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.”
Lipstick and 3,000 corpses in lower Manhattan, hundreds of thousands more around the world, and a dozen new ones in a Paris magazine office.
Cole goes on to castigate Palin for her anti-abortion views — views which are not, in fact, all that common in the Islamic world, which is relatively indulgent of abortion — and because she sometimes asked people to pray that good things should happen for the people of Alaska. Thomas Jefferson, skeptic though he was, would not have been scandalized by any of this, but a great many backward Muslim fundamentalists would — if not by Palin’s opinions then by the fact that a woman should be allowed to share them, forcefully and publicly.
...