Netanyahu Brother-in-Law Calls Obama Anti-Semite

I find it interesting that Republicans (who usually skew more to the right) in this country (US) have to own the darkest parts of 20th century history with comparisons to National Socialists and the Third Reich. Interesting because, among other things, Republicans have almost unanimously been historically supportive of the state of Isreal. Now the brother-in-law "of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is claiming that "there is an anti-Semitic president in America,". Hagi Ben-Artzi stated...

"As a politician, who ran for presidency, he had to hide it, but from time to time, it bursts out from inside," Ben-Artzi said. Netanyahu's office quickly issued a statement saying he "totally disagrees" with the charge from his wife's brother. The charges come in the wake of what many are calling a crisis in U.S.-Israel relations stemming from Israel's announcement -- during a visit to the country by Vice President Joe Biden -- that it would build new housing units in East Jerusalem. The United States responded aggressively to the announcement, calling it an "insult" and pressing the Israelis to change course."

Lost in all of this is the feel-goody sentiment is the fact that the left often acts like it has has cornered the market on tolerance and are too cool by half when it comes to playing nice-nice with minorities. However Isreal's position in the Middle East as a minority surrounded by numerous hostile neighbors somehow doesnt warrant "favored" minority status with this administration. None of this suprises me since Nazism was a phenomenon of the Left and we have the most left-wing presidency in this country since FDR.

TRIVIA QUESTION: For all of you "free-thinkers" out there. Who was the German atheist that first coined the term "anti-Semite"? I can hear it now. B-b-b-but are you sure it wasnt an AGNOSTIC?!

The perils of covering religion and politicians

The local newspaper here carried a good article by Edward Wasserman with the above title. Being someone whose very first blogging experience was through MittRomney.com, I found it quite interesting. (You can access Mitt Romney's Free and Strong America by clicking on the icon on the left margin). Here are some of the more relevant quotes from the article by Wasserman...

"...... a thoughtful presentation I heard last week at an academic ethics conference. Titled, “Getting Religion Right,” it was about the news media’s sins in the coverage of politicians’ religion. The chief focus of the authors, students from Brigham Young University, was on the media’s treatment of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon, tipped as a likely 2012 presidential contender.

The students found that one-third of the coverage of Romney’s 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination concerned his Mormonism. Much of that included questions about such long-repudiated practices as polygamy. (Mainstream Christians, they said, were unlikely to face similar questioning about, say, the immaculate conception.)

This handling, they argued, reflected wider problems with the media’s approach to religion and politicians. Their recommendations: Don’t report on religious doctrine. Don’t force candidates to speak for their faiths. Treat candidates equally. Respect the way religions see themselves and give religious leaders their say. And provide voters with the information they need to make informed choices."

Romney is not a perfect candidate. His recent endorsement of John McCain in the Arizona US Senate race is one recent example where I disagree with the man. (The Phoenix Police Dept, BTW, endorsed McCain's republican rival in the primary, JD Hayworth, Link) However, in spite of any shortcomings by Romney, I think he would be the best candidate for the Republican nomination to run against Obama in 2012. Romney has forgotten more about capitalism and macro-economics than Biden and Obama could ever learn if they studied the subject for the rest of their lives and in these difficult financial times, we here in the US need the leadership of a man like Mitt Romney.

Wasserman's goes on to state in his article.....

"If you believe in religious diversity, and tolerate—even welcome—the reality that our society is home to a multiplicity of religions, cults and gumball creeds, then perhaps the other side of the diversity coin is to ask the people who claim inspiration from them to submit to serious, hopefully fair-minded, scrutiny about what their beliefs might mean to the people who are asked to anoint them as leaders.

Some of that scrutiny might be mindless, uninformed, mean-spirited. That’s deplorable. But the alternative is a level of ignorance that’s even more unacceptable."

I agree in principle, however I doubt that the media can contain itself insofar as it's coverage of Romney without being "mindless, mean-spirited and uninformed". The left controls the media in the US and look for scrutinity of Romney, particularly his religion to ramp up significantly, especially if he wins some of the early primaries. Just sayin'.

TRIVIA QUESTION: What is Mitt Romney's real first name?

UPDATE: A new poll out now has Romney tied with Obama Link

Proving my point for me

While discussing the differences between left and right on the political spectrum, one item that was near and dear to the hearts of fascists everywhere has come up for discussion in today's news in this country (US), the nanny-state preoccupation with public health and the holistic. It seems that a New York assemblyman from Brooklyn, Felix Ortiz (D), has "introduced legislation to eliminate the use of salt "in any form" in preparing food in every restaurant in the state".

"Under Ortiz's proposal, a customer's only chance for a taste-bud sensation would be once the meal actually arrives at the table. Then, the diner could heap out the sodium aplenty -- but only then. "This legislation will give customers the option to add salt after the meal has been prepared for them," the bill reads....But he defended the piece of social engineering, suggesting that people in this state consume far more than the 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day that they need. "The fact is, [salt use] brings some ramifications regarding heart disease" and other health problems, Ortiz said, adding that "if this legislation gets passed, we'll save close to $32 billion in" public health care costs."

Nutrition "is not a private matter" urges a Hitler Youth manual titled Health Through Proper Eating. I'm sure many of you know that Hitler and Himmler were an avowed vegetarians. Rudolf Hess was an advocate for holistic medicine. "Dachau had greenhouses where medicinal plants were grown. Some of the experiments done on prisoners tested herbal remedies" and the most virulent anti-smoking crusaders in the world up until that time were the Nazis. Professor Robert Proctor of Penn State University when interviewed about his book The Nazi War on Cancer stated that ""Do we look at history differently when we learn that Nazi leaders opposed tobacco, or that Nazi health officials worried about asbestos-induced lung cancer? I think we do," writes Proctor, who teaches the history of science at Pennsylvania State University. "We learn that Nazism was a more subtle phenomenon than we commonly imagine, more seductive, more plausible. We learn that the barriers which separate 'us' from 'them' are not as high as some would like to imagine." Peirrelemieux.org writes.. "(Professor) Proctor takes care to distance himself from libertarians who would see fascism's invisible fist in today's repression of smoking: "My intention," he writes, "is not to argue that today's antitobacco efforts have fascist roots, or that public health measures are in principle totalitarian -- as some libertarians seem to want us to believe" (p. 277). This is just logic: if F (fascism) implies P (public health), it does not follow that P implies F. Of course." Link

Once again, it seems that the ideals to the right of the political spectrum translate to greater freedoms for individuals than those on the left.

(The above poster translates to ""Health, child protection, fighting poverty, aiding travellers, community, helping mothers: These are the tasks of the National Socialist People's Charity. Become a member!")

Rethinking the Political Spectrum

Based on recent blog entries, there would appear to be some discrepanacies insofar as what constitutes left-wing or right-wing ideologies. One way to get the ball rolling on this discussion would be a very basic question. Would the readership here be in agreement that Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy would appear to the left of the political spectrum? Likewise, for the most part, could Ronald Reagan rest over to the right side? The term Fascism has come up for discussion and the meaning of the word has become so muddled over the years that author George Orwell (1984) once wrote "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desireable' ".

I found an article which , although not complete, begins to explain my understanding as to what makes up left or right wing ideologies.

"Indirectly yet powerfully, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is responsible for the classic political spectrum commonly used to show the relationships between schools of political thought and the systems they engender. This is what happened:


Adolf Hitler's National Socialist movement was, as the name clearly says, a party of the left. While not explicitly Marxist-Leninist, National Socialism accepted the essentials of that worldview while adding Germanic racial supremacism to the mix. This is not the place to lay this out in detail, but it is part of the historical record. Jonah Goldberg's (pictured above and whose archive is accessible via a link on the right margin) Liberal Fascism includes the best recent treatment of the subject. Thus it was not astonishing that in 1939 Hitler and Stalin found ample common interests to establish an alliance, nor did it astonish that Communist Party members in the West almost unanimously took up support for Nazi Germany. The alliance simply recognized the ideological kinship between the two.


Then in 1941, Hitler turned on his fellow socialist and invaded the Soviet Union. How was Stalin to explain or rationalize this turnabout? What ideological signboard could he put around Hitler's neck that would make sense in the Soviet political context? Certainly Stalin could not let it appear he had been duped by a fellow socialist, nor could he allow Hitler to give socialism a bad name. The solution was to label the bad guys, Hitler and the Nazis, as polar opposites of the good guys, Stalin and the Communists. Fascism - a leftist, socialist doctrine - was abruptly and absurdly labeled a phenomenon of the extreme right.


From 1941 onward into the postwar era, Soviet propaganda, diplomacy, and scholarship consistently depicted Nazism as a right-wing phenomenon, communism on the left, with the Western powers arrayed on a vague spectrum somewhere in between. Western academics and journalists fell into the same practice, often but not always because of their own leftist sympathies. Few bothered to contest the analysis and assumptions that underlay the new model, and it was a convenient way to depict and describe political camps. Thus the classic political spectrum of the 20th century became second nature to everyone, not just to communists."

Again, this is just a starting point to discuss the topic for now. Feel free to post your thoughts on the way you define ideologies in the comment box along with why you define terms as such.

The Pink Swastika part II

Proposing the theory that early members of the National Socialist Party in 1930's Germany skewed disproportionately homosexual amongst it's leadership for discussion in this forum has turned out to be quite interesting to say the least. Especially interesting have been the unfounded personal attacks in which my sexual preference is questioned. Ginx hasnt sounded this bright since he inquired if I might be better off dragging someone of another color from my pick-up. It's especially interesting in light of the fact that I am involved in a bi-racial marraige and I doubt that anyone who knows me would say that I'm homophobic or a racist. What I can do is divorce myself from the emotion swirling around an issue and examine the facts and make a determination based on evidence, not political correctness.

Apparently some in this forum have issues with the credibility of the book entitled The Pink Swastika that I mentioned in a previous thread. In order to move the discussion along, let's set Pink Swastika aside for a moment and examine other evidence pertinent to the discussion. First and foremost would being be the writings of one William L. Shirer (pictured above). Having worked with the likes of "James Thurber, Elliot Paul, Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Isadora Duncan, Ezra Pound and...Gertrude Stein" would give nearly anyone instant credibility as a writer. Also, having been stationed in Berlin beginning in 1934 as the Nazis first rose to power along with Vienna during the time of the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria, he had a front row seat for the events that he described in his writings which became the benchmark work on the subject of Hitler's Germany titled, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Having completed such a highly referenced and footnoted tome (over 1,200 pages), Shirer won "the 1960 National Book Award and a special Sidney Hillman Foundation award in 1961, (and) his intimate involvement with Hitler’s Germany made him a foremost U.S. authority on the Nazi era and his expertise led to several decades of writing and lecturing".

Shirer wrote the following in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich...

""Most people don't realize that male homosexuality does not always lean to the effeminate. Historically, male homosexuality was much more often associated with hyper-masculine warrior cults which were usually very brutal and very politically aggressive. The most recent example was in Germany. Hitler's initial power base when he launched the Nazi Party was a private homosexual military force organized and trained by a notorious pederast named Gerhard Rossbach. Rossbach's homosexual partner Ernst Roehm, who was also Hitler's partner in forming and building the Nazi Party, converted the "gay" Rossbachbund into the dreaded SA Brownshirts."

Now what axe could Shirer possibly have had to grind in this case? I think that if there was any doubt as to the veracity of Shirer's claims, they would have debunked his writings by now, but apparently, no one has. (Yes, I tried typing the words [William L. Shirer debunked] into a common search engine and nothing meaningful came up).

Another source I would like to quote is Walter C. Langer, a psychoanalyst for the OSS, (forerunner of the CIA) who was asked to analyze Hitler and the early Nazi leadership and he wrote the following...

"The belief that Hitler is homosexual has probably developed (a) from the fact that he does show so many feminine characteristics, and (b) from the fact that there were so many homosexuals in the Party during the early days and many continue to occupy important positions. It does seem that Hitler feels much more at ease with homosexuals than with normal persons, but this may be due to the fact that they are all fundamentally social outcasts and consequently have a community of interests which tends to make them think and feel more or less alike. In this connection it is interesting to note that homosexuals, too, frequently regard themselves as a special form of creation or as chosen ones whose destiny it is to initiate a new order."

Again, I highly doubt that Langer, in the interests of providing his bosses and his country with the most accurate assessment of the actual situation inside of the leadership of the Third Reich, would want to put out any misleading information. I don't think that he had an axe to grind or a dog in this fight and merely reported to the best of his ability.

Let me head off a potential objection that goes something like this. "The American government wished to discredit the Nazi leadership by portraying them as disproportionately homosexual". I looked, but I didn't see any type of reports that allege a similar smear campaign against Hirohito or Mussolini. If that were the case, you could establish a pattern and thus conclude that they were at least be consistent in their approach, but that isnt the case here.

I'm open to discussing the matter, but please come armed with facts. Not meaningless personal attacks that don't lead to intelligent discourse on the subject.

The Pink Swastika

Has anyone ever heard of this book? I got into a discussion on another blog and I thought I would post some of the claims that were made over here for discussion. First, let me provide a link for an article by Brian Fischer which brings up the following points.

• "Ludwig Lenz worked at the Sex Research Institute in Berlin, which was destroyed by Hitler's Brown Shirts in 1933 likely because its records, including 40,000 confessions from members of the Nazi Party, would have exposed the sexual perversions of Nazi leadership. Lenz said that "not ten percent of the men who, in 1933, took the fate of Germany into their hands, were sexually normal."
  
  
• "In fact, the Nazi Party began in a gay bar in Munich, and Ernst Roehm, Hitler's right hand in the early days of Nazism, was well-known for his taste in young boys. William Shirer says in his definitive "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," not only that Roehm was "important in the rise of Hitler," but also "like so many of the early Nazis, (he was) a homosexual."
  
  
• "Hitler's Brown Shirts, the dreaded SA, better known as "Storm Troopers," were the creation of another homosexual, Gerhard Rossbach, and Storm Troopers were almost exclusively homosexual. They also, sadly, comprised most of the leadership of the Hitler Youth, resulting in frequent instances of sexual molestation."
  
  
• "In his book, "The Pink Swastika," Lively exposes a secret homosexual activists don't want you to know about Nazi Germany: that although the Nazis did persecute homosexuals, the homosexuals the Nazis persecuted were almost exclusively the effeminate members of the gay community in Germany, and that much of the mistreatment was administered by masculine homosexuals who despised effeminacy in all its forms. "

Of course these are only a few of the more interesting quotes from the cited article and there are other contained within it as well. I'm not going to state outright that everything cited by the author is 100% true because I would like to discuss this topic with an open mind. I'll ask the first question and inquire if any of the above quotations from Fischer have been proven to be unfounded. Feel free to state your opinions on the matter here as there seems to be no shortage of this type of material available on the internet.

A day with Dr Peter Lillback

On Sunday I had the pleasure of attending a lecture and afterward, a sermon by Dr Peter Lillback. Dr Lillback is the president of the The Providence Forum. You can read his full bio here. For the morning's lecture, Dr Lillback spoke on the 1,200 page tome that he wrote in 2006 entitled George Washington's Sacred Fire. If you are a history buff as well as someone who is interested in religion (as many of you who frequent this site are) this book might interest you. It completely dismantles the idea that Washington was in any way a deist and confirms that he was in fact a Bible believing Christian. A couple of the more interesting points brought up by Dr Lillback were...

• Many of the historians who critiqued Washington's writings in the past were themselves Biblically illiterate. Washington would often times weave numerous Bible references together in one letter, however, unless you actually knew the Bible, you probably wouldnt pick up on it.
  
  
• There are absolutely no known references in which Washington said he was a deist. Lillback was given access to over 270 of Washington's writings and in none of them did he declare anthing remotely resembling deism.

It all added up to a very interesting lecture. A question to any of you out there who might know. What was George Washington's favorite Bible verse? He quoted it far more than any other.