Sunday, September 24, 2006

Jews and the Democrats

The American Thinker enumerates reasons for the Jewish community to be concerned at the direction the Democrats are taking. Seven Democratic reps voted against House resolution 921 "Condemning the recent attacks against the State of Israel, holding terrorists and their state-sponsors accountable for such attacks, supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and for other purposes...". The lone Republican holdout, Ron Paul, is an isolationist apparently mostly concerned with restricting American foreign aid dollars. Anti-semitic voices in the democratic party may be a minority, but they are vocal, and seem to be mostly supported by the blog-based 'net-roots' gaining increasing sway over DP politics.
A nice turn of phrase:
Lifestyles of the Lear Jet Liberals

Sunday, September 17, 2006

The Real Outrage

A careful reading of the Pope's speech reveals that his insult to Moslems has been radically misunderstood. In fact the heart of his argument is this:
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions.
To paraphrase: if the West wants to be able to talk to irrational Moslem fundamentalists, its going to have to embrace its own irrational Christian fundamentalists to do so.

It seems to me that this is a good deal more insulting than his choice to introduce the discussion by quoting a couple of lines from a debate between a 14th century Byzantine emperor and a Persian nobleman.