I know Brooks was supposed to be the NYT’s token conservative pre-Douthat, but I’m trying to think of a conservative political position of his and I’m drawing a blank. He was pretty much on board with the Obama project, no?

I guess to the extent that he has a kid serving in the military (albeit, the Israeli military) that marks him as a bit more culturally conservative than, say, Chomsky, but that’s not saying much.

You keep pretending like modern America, which you have been criticizing for more than a decade, is a country worth defending. It’s not–it is a force for evil across the world. It sided with Albanian Moslem terrorists against a Christian state. It spent immense blood and treasure protecting the right of Iraqis to have a Tehran-affiliated government. This month, 78 senators voted to fund jihadists trying to overthrow a secular government that posed no threat to the United States and was a force for stability for four decades. Our State Department is concerned more with homosexual rights in Uganda and Russia than any reasonable conception of the Good.

Brooks’s kid isn’t fighting against Americans, or against American interests.

There are great numbers of wealthy, educated, potentially influential gentile American men who are by nature conservatives, and who you’d “want in your foxhole.” There are many more of them than there are Jews in a similar position. Why are you not complaining that they choose to spend their time doing whatever it is that they do instead of fighting to restore an America worthy of the name? The answer to that suggests something not so good about you, Steve.

Btw, Rahm Emanuel’s wife isn’t Jewish. Given this site’s recent obsession with the Emanuel’s Jewish ethno-centrism ,that’s quite a glaring contradiction.

http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/why-not-simple-mazal-tov.html

He might have bought into the liberal kool-aid that race doesn’t exist, so really all that matters is that the wife *converts* to Judaism. But i highly doubt that. Look how dark his skin is. He knows that being Jewish means a lot more than Judaism.

Maybe Rahm isn’t as much of a jewish ehtno-nationalist as you claim he is.

Furthermore, we all have dual loyalties–for example, to Christianity and to the state, to our political ideologies and to countrymen who often do not share them, to an ethnic group (say, white Americans) and to a broader conception of citizenship, to local interests and to national interests. You show me a person who is loyal to one thing only, and I’ll show you a fool.

These loyalties, by their nature, sometimes coincide in terms of the actions they demand. Sometimes they conflict. Sometimes, it is not clear.

When these loyalties conflict, it can be a problem. But the loyalty to Israel and the loyalty to America does not conflict because Israel does nothing bad to America. If Israel ceased to exist tomorrow, no benefits would come to America. The $3 billion in annual aid would be wasted on providing free sex change surgeries to indigent trannies. The Moslem world would pose the same problem it did yesterday.

As a Jew, yes, I am loyal to Israel because it is the nation of the Jews, and I am loyal to my people. I am also loyal to America because it is, despite the wayward turn it has taken over the last several decades, it is composed of people whose welfare I care about because I have to live next to them and I’d rather they do well and because I am grateful for the unprecedented tolerance they have shown my people. These loyalties don’t conflict. They’re parallel.

As has been discussed many times on this site, Ashkenazi Jews get the majority of their DNA from female European converts 1500-2000 years ago. There are many blond, blue-eyed Jews. There are half-Jews in modern America, products of intermarriage, who are more Zionist and Jewish ethno-nationalist than “purer” Jews. Race and ethnicity exist and they matter, but they’re not everything, except to a Nazi.

I’m a bit surprised that Brooks visits Israel every year and that his son would join the IDF. He seemed more assimilated than the sorts of Jews who visit Israel often and have close family members in the IDF. Brooks’s wife is gentile as well and thus his son is half-gentile yet apparently identifies strongly enough with Israel to go off and join the IDF.

Whiskey? Is that you?

If American Evangelicals start eschewing US military service in favor of stints in the IDF, that would be an interesting inflection point.

There is no glaring contradiction. I don’t think Emanuel regards himself as any less pro-Jewish or pro-Israel because he has a shiksa wife.

‘Ethnic Extremist Leaves U.S. to Fight in Middle Eastern Tribal War’

Not ISIS.

Rotfl.

Can you explain why serving in the army of America’s closest ally in the world by some measures (like UN votes), using weapons provided by the US Government, in wars that Congress approves funding for by 99% to 1% margins, is in the slightest bit disloyal?

I just see this as a fun thing for a jewish kids to do for a year or two, and perhaps meet an attractive high IQ mate while they’re there.

You’re not going to be able to join the US military for that short a time. Plus there is no IRR risk, where you get called back years after you left and get sent to take sides in Muslim v Muslim civil wars.

Can you also explain why you find this more objectionable that Mitt Romney spending the Vietnam War trying to convert Frenchmen to Mormonism? Or was that disloyal too?

In this context, I have to say that UK Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, has very consciously made a a big effort to identify firstly and most foremost with Britain, and has basically buried any ethno nationalism he might have had. I don’t know if this is because the UK is less tolerant of ethno nationalism than the USA, or that the largely secular Miliband family never were really into ethno nationalism.

train their the objects -> train the objects

tend not to be more angry -> tend to be more angry

Miliband’s father was a hard-core Marxist, as was his mother, who was an anti-Israel activist.

But Miliband identifies first and foremost with Britain? Sure, if your idea of Britain is hordes of Pakistani taxi drivers raping English girls. That’s the Britain Miliband and Cameron identify with. Miliband doesn’t identify as Jewish in any meaningful way. That doesn’t mean he identifies as British in any meaningful way either. Miliband’s and his mother’s identification with Marxist ideology over ethni-nationalism is just that, not a sign of any identification with Britain.

Why am I loyal to America? Because it is loyal to me. Is there anywhere else in the World that is a better place to live? If you cross out small European countries like Switzerland, no. What does America have going for it? Richest Country in World. Most powerful country in the World. Bill of Rights. Rule of Law. Low corruption rates, high tax compliance (most countries can’t collect income tax), Best universities in the world. Biggest and best corporations (and most powerful and richest) corporations in the world. Lowest prices in the world on consumer goods. Deep water ports (anyone ever look and see how pathetic any Black Sea port is), best freight rail system in the world. Zero bona fide military threats. Our poorest people are obese. We have sex, drugs, and rock and roll … what does Islam have? Good luck to them. Our economy is doing much better than Europe (look at the dollar / euro exchange rate). Japan … nuff said.

And national news that consist of nothing burgers.

I want to be on the winning side of history. Nothing promotes loyalty like winning.

hmmm…..So maybe liberals are more loyal after all,except they tend to show loyalty to the worst aspects of America, while neo cons are loyal to the technocratic elite the world over, but indifferent towards everyone else. Going back as far as Nixon going to china and Reagan’s amnesty..nothing new here. Neocons see more people = more growth, regardless of national origin.

In this context, I have to say that UK Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, has very consciously made a a big effort to identify firstly and most foremost with Britain, and has basically buried any ethno nationalism he might have had. I don’t know if this is because the UK is less tolerant of ethno nationalism than the USA, or that the largely secular Miliband family never were really into ethno nationalism.

His father was an unrepentant Stalinist and his grandfather was a Polish Jewish Bolshevik who betrayed Poland during the Battle of Warsaw and fled with his tail between his legs.

Tell me, would you be eager to remind people of that legacy?

For comparison, imagine a prominent American or his relative serving in the UK’s military. No problem, right? But imagine he’s involved in fighting the IRA… Hmm, could be a problem. Also if he is helping to reconquer the Falklands/Malvinas. And what if he’s helping to spy on the US?

Those are issues that arise with the US’s (other?…) closest ally.

the loyalty to Israel and the loyalty to America does not conflict because Israel does nothing bad to America.

What if it does something bad to a friend of America’s? Also, “Israel does nothing bad” is childish, dumbed-down speech.

If Israel ceased to exist tomorrow, no benefits would come to America.

Non sequitur. And hysterical. Questioning dual loyalties has nothing to do with Israel’s ability to exist.

It’s worth noting that the original neocons were repelled by *actually existing* Israeli society in the middle decades of the twentieth century. In those days their support for Israel was pretty abstract. Here’s Franklin Foer writing a few years ago in the New Republic:

[Irving Kristol's] interest in religion had nothing to do with the recent triumph of Zionism. Israel’s socialistic ethos alienated Kristol. “Truth to tell,” he later recalled, “I found Israeli society, on the whole, quite exasperating.” He was not alone. In 1951, he received a copy of a letter from a Columbia student named Norman Podhoretz. This missive had circulated to Kristol by way of Cohen [editor of Commentary], who had received a copy from its original recipient, Lionel Trilling. The letter was an account of Podhoretz’s first visit to Israel. “I felt more at home in Athens!” he told Trilling. “They are, despite their really extraordinary accomplishments, a very unattractive people, the Israelis. They’re gratuitously surly and boorish…. They are too arrogant and too anxious to become a real honest-to-goodness New York of the East.” On the basis of Podhoretz’s chilly response to the Jewish state, Kristol recruited him to write for Commentary.

Judging by Brooks’s yearly sojourns to Tel Aviv, Jewish Americans feel increasingly at home in modern Israel. It’s a significant development.

Can you explain why serving in the army of America’s closest ally in the world by some measures (like UN votes), using weapons provided by the US Government, in wars that Congress approves funding for by 99% to 1% margins, is in the slightest bit disloyal?

When your country is at war and is having a hard time recruiting quality people to fight it, then it looks pretty bad when those who are able and willing to fight do so for a foreign nation. Keep in mind we are talking about joining the IDF while Americans are in the field dying. It would be a much easier sell for your position if America were at peace.

I think one could also make civic arguments akin to what they used to do about public schools. Catholics were condemned as being un-American for not attending public schools. And today home schoolers are condemned for removing from the public schools some of the brighter students, whose presence could help the less fortunate students left behind.

Likewise, high IQ Jewish kids, especially college grads, would be highly desirable for officer candidates to help lead our forces. To actually get high IQ personal with the physical skills to be soldiers would be a huge benefit for our military. It would also be beneficial for the Jewish kids to be able to meet fellow Americans who come from different walks of life that they might not otherwise ever encounter. You form close working relationships in the military, and it might help Jewish kids understand the very diverse citizens of this nation.

Further, having Jewish college grads in our military, especially if they come from wealthy families, would be a huge control against the government sending our troops needlessly into harm’s way . And that goes for all wealthy kids, not just Jews.

I just see this as a fun thing for a jewish kids to do for a year or two, and perhaps meet an attractive high IQ mate while they’re there.

You’re not going to be able to join the US military for that short a time. Plus there is no IRR risk, where you get called back years after you left and get sent to take sides in Muslim v Muslim civil wars.

You can sign a 2 year active duty contract. Of course you are correct about the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) commitment. Personally I was on a 2 year active duty contract followed by 6 years on the IRR. The IRR is just a database and you do not train, attend meetings or anything during this time. In cases of national emergency, you can be called back to active duty while you are on the IRR. And a few people got burned during the neocon’s Iraq Attack. But for most people like me those 6 years just came and went with no muss, no fuss, and no bother. In fact, I don’t think anyone has really ever been called back from IRR except for our recent neocon’s wars. But I could be wrong.

Maybe if we had more sons and daughters of neocons in the IRR, we wouldn’t get into situations where we’d be required to use them.

HBD is interesting to me and I’m not a Nazi.
it’s interesting stuff and discussing it doesn’t make you an antisemite or whatever. If you want only pro-Israel commentary go to WND or NRO

In all honesty, Ed Miliband more or less publicly denounced the open borders mass immigration policy of Blair/Brown , both of whom I believe are Christians of mostly Celtic ancestry.
Yes, I know that Miliband’s denunciation was motivated by electoral considerations more than anything – likely, if there was no political comeback to it, he would he continued tacit support for it, by nevertheless, he denounced it all the same.

high IQ Jewish kids, especially college grads, would be highly desirable for officer candidates to help lead our forces. To actually get high IQ personal with the physical skills to be soldiers would be a huge benefit for our military. It would also be beneficial for the Jewish kids to be able to meet fellow Americans who come from different walks of life that they might not otherwise ever encounter. You form close working relationships in the military, and it might help Jewish kids understand the very diverse citizens of this nation.

LOL, from the same Foer article I quoted above:

After [Irving Kristol's] highly mythologized Arguing the World years at City College—where his alcove in the cafeteria contained other soon-to-be-famous anti-communist intellectuals—the army drafted him into a unit filled with “thugs or near-thugs from places like Cicero (Al Capone’s old base).” His fellow soldiers were “inclined to loot, to rape, and to shoot prisoners of war.” Observing these animal instincts up close deeply disturbed Kristol. “My wartime experience,” he wrote, “did have the effect of dispelling any remnants of anti-authority sentiments (always weak, I now think) that were cluttering up my mind.” Within a decade, he began writing laudatory essays about the virtue of conformity.

“Animal instincts”: what does that remind me of?

Very early in life [Kramer] had picked up the knowledge that the Italians and the Irish were animals. The Italians were pigs, and the Irish were mules or goats.

I think it’s definitely true that Rahm considers himself an uncompromising Jewish nationalist, but how to square this with his gentile (blonde) wife? Is he not aware of the fact that his kids are only half jewish, genetically; and that if his kids make the same decision as he did to marry out, then his grandchildren will only be 1/4 jewish?

Rahm seems content with his wife and children being religiously Jewish, their genes being wholly irrelevant. But this is hardly the hard-line jewish ethno-nationalist worldview that is often attributed to him on this website; and it makes him a moderate in comparison to Israel’s immigration and fertility policies.

[…] Source: Steve Sailer […]

But, as Plato might have said, Washington turned out to have been more or less “carving nature at the joints,” so his social constructions have endured better than, say, the British Commonwealth or the United Arab Republic.

That only seems natural to say because of highly contingent historical events, especially the Union victory in the Civil War (death toll: 600,000-700,000). If the Confederacy had won, we would all be observing how stupid it was to put northerners and southerners together in a single country.

Thanks for the detail on IRR and minimum active duty commitment.

My understanding is that it was more than just a few got called up during Iraq from IRR, and a lot of them were in their 30′s and 5+ years out.

Also, isn’t it pretty hard to join up only for two active years, requiring some special skills or otherwise being an extra desirable candidate?

Whatever the case, you can’t dispute that the US Military does not offer the same chance to take an exciting year off to go shoot guns that the IDF does.

When your country is at war and is having a hard time recruiting quality people to fight it

The military has not had real recruiting problems since the economy crashed in ’08. Anyway, if not joining the US military is disloyal during times of war, why does it matter what else you’re doing? Why is spending a year in the IDF worse than a year in Mom’s basement playing call of duty?

[Rahm Emanuel] might have bought into the liberal kool-aid that race doesn’t exist

Nope. He knows damn well. As frequently mentioned on this blog, Chicago is trying to play the same long game as NYC/DC: ridding itself, seemingly organically, of the demographic Old Maid.

Check out Rahm talking about who will benefit from his newly established immigrant outreach department.

A conspicuous omission there. I assume the clumsy phrasing “Central and Latin America” was contrived with deliberate aforethought in order make the list appear more complete and spontaneous (i.e. so the absence of that one particular continent would be less blatant).

I would like to see our society engage in more social construction to get naturally conservative Jews like the Brookses to be more loyal to their fellow American citizens and less loyal to their foreign co-ethnics.

The funny thing is that the idea that American Jews and Israelis are “co-ethnics” in any meaningful way is becoming increasingly tenuous. They may share a common fear of persecution at the hands of gentiles (which for the American Jew is mostly groundless) but that is about it. Just as Italian-Americans often have trouble relating to Italians who stayed in the old country, or African-Americans find actual African countries incredibly foreign, as time passes the cultural gulf between American Jews and Israelis is getting steadily wider.

But nobody fears nepotistic vengeance by people named Easterbrook

Well actually, if you told me two brothers named Easterbrook were a sportwriter/New Republic columnist and a federal judge in Chicago, I’d assume they are jewish.

I would like to see our society engage in more social construction to get naturally conservative Jews like the Brookses to be more loyal to their fellow American citizens and less loyal to their foreign co-ethnics.

You’re looking at it wrong. The average white American’s very strong positive feelings toward Israel is because they see their fellow whites surrounded by hostile barbarians. Israel is our honorary 51st state. So what if they aren’t formal citizens (like Puerto Ricans and Samoans.)

Polite society likes to pretend conservatives like Israel because of some rapture fantasy. And maybe that’s true for a few of them. But what percentage of white conservatives actually believe in the whole 666/rapture/Armageddon stuff? 15%? Maybe 25% in the rural south?

I am also loyal to America because […] it is composed of people whose welfare I care about because I have to live next to them

This sounds like “I am loyal to my family because I have to see them at family get-togethers”. Furthermore, you don’t have to live next to them. If things don’t work out with America you can always move to Israel.

Why would anyone expect Jewish people to be conservative when it is not their culture, their mores, etc. that conservatives aim to conserve? Instead we should expect them to push pluralism and inclusiveness so they can fully benefit from intercourse with the larger society.

Serious question are there more USA Jews serving in the IDF than in the USA military? I remember reading a Forward article that reported that the number of Jewish members in the military was very low.

Ah, but the Telegraph blog suggested this week that Ed is going to play the race card. Myself, I doubt it; too many Muslim votes to be lost.

Let us not forget, however, that Labour indulged in a little mild anti-semitism when Michael Howard was Tory leader. Ah, that Blair, eh? What a wag.

Harold: You beat me to it. The line “because I have to live next to them” is pretty thin gruel out of which to construct loyalty.

And when these The Muslim Male Yuts come back to the US they can enthusiastically vote The Historic Native Born White American Majority very rapidly into a racial minority on Nov 6 2015…The Blessings of Diversity!!!!!

Brooks accepts some honorary degree and makes a speech. Everyone laughs at the fact that Jews ignore the rules of the Accela Quite Car. Brooks reflects on how pleasant it is to be in Israel among people just like him. I agree with him, and would much prefer an Accela car for WASPs who respect rules. I might even take a country set aside for people who want to follow a basic set of rules and respect the common interest.

Two Americans Among 13 IDF Soldiers Killed in Gaza

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/383250/two-americans-among-13-idf-soldiers-killed-gaza-molly-wharton

2 of 13, isn’t that like 13%. I wonder if you can generalize that to the Golani Brigade as a whole.

Wikipedia says 66 soldiers died in all services so that would be 2 of 66 or 3% American nationals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_conflict

New England Patriots Owner Sends Letter To Parents Of Soldier Killed In Gaza

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mrloganrhoades/new-england-patriots-owner-sends-letter-to-parents-of-soldie#3ttpxot

Another bit of mortality data, a Thai greenhouse worker was killed in Israel by Gazan mortar fire. How was the Thai ‘worker’ left to tend the vegetables during an artillery barrage? It also shows that the Israeli economy is heavily dependent on alien labor for essential services. 6 civilians died inside the western civilization line of the Gaza war, so that would be 1/6 or 16% of the casualties were foreign. The US nationals in the Israeli military but Thai nationals manning the economy indicates that the warrior Kibbutz-nicks of past Israeli glory are gone replaced by foreign dilatants and adventurers.

Sirens sound in Ben Gurion Airport, Holon, Rishon LeZion

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4548695,00.html

” was a good mayor of New York because he feels a lot of loyalty toward New Yorkers.”

The signature monument the ‘freedom’ tower is ridiculous and took a decade to build, rather than the 6 months to 1 year that was required. His inability to get the snow plowed which crippled the city for a week. The media would never call an Ashkenazi billionaire incompetent but if he were somebody else they would have. Mostly he bought labor peace by signing increasingly lavish contracts boosting the incomes of already retired individuals, following in the footsteps of lesser IQ Whites that ran California into a pension disaster.

New York pays more police in retirement than to patrol our streets

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=9170#.VCQCaPldVs1

“Serious question are there more USA Jews serving in the IDF than in the USA military? I remember reading a Forward article that reported that the number of Jewish members in the military was very low.”

Just some googling, (and there is probably newer info than this) but I found it:

http://forward.com/articles/116674/officer-s-death-highlights-dearth-of-jews-in-the/

Sklaver’s choice to enlist in the armed forces was one that few young American Jews make. According to Department of Defense statistics, just 4,677 of 1.4 million currently in the active military identify themselves as Jewish. The actual number is higher, experts say, because many state no religious preference.

There are 10,000 to 14,000 Jews in the active military, said Admiral Harold Robinson, a Reform rabbi and director of the Jewish Welfare Board’s Jewish Chaplains Council. Most “just don’t make an issue of their being Jewish,” he said. “You’re living with 120 other people who know everything about you. Being Jewish can be one more source of pressure or conflict. It’s much better than it was 30 or 40 years ago, but we still have all kinds of incidents where young people act out.”

Jewish chaplains say that most conflicts are rooted in ignorance. “Some kid from Alabama says, ‘Jesus loves you; you ought to come to chapel services with us,’” Robinson said. “It’s not commonplace, but is part of the reason that Jews tend to be cautious about their identification. The military is like high school on steroids. Being Jewish doesn’t help you fit in.”

I don’t know, I really don’t blame Jewish guys for wanting to serve in the IDF over the U.S. military. Is it really all that surprising, after all these years in which America was argued to be a “propositional” nation by neocons and liberals alike, that it really garners no loyalty and feelings of patriotism from many of its subjects?

I’d also imagine that IDF soldiers are more motivated by an authentic sense of patriotism, ethnic pride, or even religious mysticism than you’re average E-1 Private or 2nd LT in the U.S. army. Though this is anecdotal, my older brother was commissioned right after college in 2005, and did two tours in Iraq, but I don’t think a single iota of your-grandfather’s-style-patriotism motivated him the entire time. He did it because it was a good career move, he just generally enjoyed being a soldier, and it paid for his college education. Today he’s a fairly Milquetoast libertarian out in Denver who calls me racist for speaking out against immigration.

So I don’t really blame young American Jews for running off to join the IDF, but in terms of evidence that the American elite see’s this country as nothing more than one big bazaar that elicits no real loyalty, that’s pretty damning.

Honestly, if you’re say, a gentile White American or English guy, fighting for Assad would make more ideological sense than serving the royal marines of 82nd Airbonre. In Syria, you’d at least be fighting for a force genuinely battling Islamic extremism, and not fighting for you’re “nation” that enthusiastically crusades for your people’s dispossession.

I don’t know the authenticity of this video, but maybe it portends a coming trend for western men:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYB4P5s7oTI

“high IQ Jewish kids, especially college grads, would be highly desirable for officer candidates to help lead our forces. ”

Pat Tillman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman

A smart well connected individual like Brooks would not send his kid to be commanded by the guy that was in charge of Tillman’s unit. It has nothing to do with religion.

What exactly impels someone to convert to Judaism in these marriages? I mean to me it would be a dealbreaker.

It’s just hard to imagine that David Brooks or Rahm Emanuel is such a prize that someone decides to convert to snag him.

Does it work the other way? With people marrying female Jews? Has anyone ever heard of a marriage like this where the man converts?

OT: Wonderful example of Who Whom

Female news presenter calls men stupid and no one cares…

Would guess that the IDF doesn’t allow just anybody to enlist, any more than Harvard allows just anybody to enroll. There are very good “Straussian” reasons for the IDF to accept the service of the son of David Brooks, no matter the kid’s competence.

Is there any indication that Brooks understands those reasons?

last time some one told us to get out of middle east and we ignored it they sent two jetplanes to NY, etc. i cant wait to see what they send this time…

the loyalty to Israel and the loyalty to America does not conflict because Israel does nothing bad to America.

Yes, Israel DOES do bad things to America. I suppose there’s no need to re-hash the USS Liberty attack, but every day, in every way, entities loyal to Israel and having dual citizenship in the US and Israel, do intentional harm to America. The dominance of the central bank by Israelis OPENLY masquerading as Americans is prima facie intentional harm, and horrifying, if one steps back and takes an unconditioned, un-media-scrubbed look at what, in any other circumstance, would be a purely absurd notion.

If Israel ceased to exist tomorrow, no benefits would come to America.

Lessee here … the potential to stabilize, even “normalize” relations with all other ME nations? No benefit? A stanching of the firehose bleeding of American wealth into Israeli hands? No benefit? A national ability to reject the authority — finally — external “sovereign” theocratic states?

In reading these comments, what has horrified me the most is the ugly head of zionism, raised to protest vigorously that allegiance to Israel is NOT disloyalty to America.

Deport every (current) American citizen who claims to be an Israeli. Revoke their citizenship and passports. Get them out, and keep them out!

I was working on my PhD at Johns Hopkins twenty years ago when Bloomberg was a member and later chairman of the Board of Trustees. You could tell when the board was meeting because his big helicopter was sitting on the lawn. I was thinking of him when Steve Sailer repeated his suggestion a couple days ago that someone should try to get more rich Jews interested in big-time college football instead of promoting Israel. Bloomberg’s donations to Johns Hopkins, which plays Division 3 football, were summed up last year at $1.1 billion. As observed by Steve above, the man is very loyal to the things he’s loyal to, and I’m glad he is on Johns Hopkins’ side.

The U.S. government, empowered by the U.S. Supreme Court, officially says it’s LEGAL to discriminate against my children in schooling, employment, etc., just because their skin color is white. Why in the world should they be loyal to such a racist government that opposes them? Of course, I’d prefer my children to fight for Israel, Israel is their motherland, and unlike the U.S. doesn’t sanction discrimination against them.

lol i knew this article would cause steve’s jew commenters to chimp when i read it last night

Lot writes”””””Can you explain why serving in the army of America’s closest ally in the world by some measures (like UN votes), using weapons provided by the US Government, in wars that Congress approves funding for by 99% to 1% margins, is in the slightest bit disloyal?”””

How about measured by actually fighting along side the US? I can’t remember a single time when Israel and the US were actually military allies in a war. I can remember Britain, Dutch, Australians, French, etc, even Syria and Saudi Arabia but not Israel.

As to getting weapons from the US government, that is a burden not an ally. Even to the point at several times of Israel getting weapons and supplies which were earmarked for US troops on the front lines.

So, no, Israel is not the US closest ally, its the US closest leach who would abandon the US in a heartbeat if Israel thought it was to their advantage.

Lot:

You’re looking at it wrong. The average white American’s very strong positive feelings toward Israel is because they see their fellow whites surrounded by hostile barbarians.

The same could can be said for Whites in South Africa, yet they receive no sympathy from White Anglo Americans.

Israel is our honorary 51st state. So what if they aren’t formal citizens .

It’s one-sided loyalty, dear boy. The Israelis don’t give a damn about the USA.

Lot:

Whatever the case, you can’t dispute that the US Military does not offer the same chance to take an exciting year off to go shoot guns that the IDF does.

Military service to one’s country is about more than having a good time firing guns. If you were a real conservative, you would understand that.Brooks’ son is a traitor.

Lot:

The military has not had real recruiting problems since the economy crashed in ’08. Anyway, if not joining the US military is disloyal during times of war, why does it matter what else you’re doing? Why is spending a year in the IDF worse than a year in Mom’s basement playing call of duty?

Because he has revealed the true nature of his loyalties. He loves Israel more than he loves America.

Anon:

Rahm seems content with his wife and children being religiously Jewish, their genes being wholly irrelevant. But this is hardly the hard-line jewish ethno-nationalist worldview that is often attributed to him on this website; and it makes him a moderate in comparison to Israel’s immigration and fertility policies.

Rahm is actually quite in line with Israel’s “big tent” racial policies. Israel uses the Nuremberg definition of Jewishness; anyone with one Jewish grandparent can immigrate to Israel.

Lot:

Can you also explain why you find this more objectionable that Mitt Romney spending the Vietnam War trying to convert Frenchmen to Mormonism? Or was that disloyal too?

If Mitt Romney was a rabid Francophile and signed-up for the French foreign legion during the Vietnam War, that would have signaled his disloyalty.

Matt:

I’m a bit surprised that Brooks visits Israel every year and that his son would join the IDF. He seemed more assimilated than the sorts of Jews who visit Israel often and have close family members in the IDF. Brooks’s wife is gentile as well and thus his son is half-gentile yet apparently identifies strongly enough with Israel to go off and join the IDF.

Many Gentile spouses of Jews identify quite strongly with Judaism, and many half-Jewish children of such marriages are strongly Jewish in terms of their personal identity. For example, a childhood friend of mine was half-Italian (mother) half Jewish (father). The mother totally submerged her Italian background and the son, despite looking very Italian, always described himself as Jewish.

Anon

Furthermore, we all have dual loyalties–for example, to Christianity and to the state, to our political ideologies and to countrymen who often do not share them, to an ethnic group (say, white Americans) and to a broader conception of citizenship, to local interests and to national interests. You show me a person who is loyal to one thing only, and I’ll show you a fool.

Brooks’ son does not have dual loyalties; he is loyal to Israel. America is just the hotel where he stays.

Anon:

As a Jew, yes, I am loyal to Israel because it is the nation of the Jews, and I am loyal to my people.

Thou has said it. Jews are your people and Israel is the nation of your people. Therefore, you are loyal to Israel, not America.

Anon:

I am also loyal to America because it is, despite the wayward turn it has taken over the last several decades, it is composed of people whose welfare I care about because I have to live next to them and I’d rather they do well and because I am grateful for the unprecedented tolerance they have shown my people. These loyalties don’t conflict. They’re parallel.

And if they did conflict, we know that you would side with Israel.

Anon:

Btw, Rahm Emanuel’s wife isn’t Jewish. Given this site’s recent obsession with the Emanuel’s Jewish ethno-centrism ,that’s quite a glaring contradiction.

No, it’s not. Rahm quite rightly believes that his children will think of themselves as Jews.

Brooks’s kid isn’t fighting against Americans, or against American interests.

He doesn’t care about America or American interests.

You keep pretending like modern America, which you have been criticizing for more than a decade, is a country worth defending.

Love how your feelings for America are so contingent in nature….

You’d think Sailer had proposed loyalty oaths and imprisonment. Why so touchy? Is it not all revealing that Brooks’ son is in the IDF? Is it too much to ask Jews like Brooks and Bloomberg to seek for the US that which seems perfectly normal in Israel–secure borders, sane immigration laws and real enforcement?

“In all honesty, Ed Miliband more or less publicly denounced the open borders mass immigration policy of Blair/Brown , both of whom I believe are Christians of mostly Celtic ancestry.”

Ed and his brother were both Labour MPs and cabinet members during the Blair/Brown years. Did they object to open borders then? I doubt it. In fact, I’d wager they were enthusiastically supportive of them.

“as time passes the cultural gulf between American Jews and Israelis is getting steadily wider.”

Yes and no. It’s true of American Jews descended fron the pre-1923 immigration, and of the “old-line” Israelis of similar vintage. But the demographies of American and Israeli Jews both are not at all what they were a generation ago. In the US community we have (a) a million immigrants from the former USSR, who often have close relatives among the million who took a left turn at Vienna and headed to Israel, (b) orthodox Jews, who by now all have family and friends who have made Aliyah, and most of all (c) the 500,000 Israeli emigres to the US. It is, in fact this last group which accounts for 95% of Americans in the IDF; we’re talking about kids who are following family tradition, doing what their moms and dads did at their age, and what their cousins in Israel are doing. David Brooks’ son is thus atypical of Americans in the IDF (though admittedly, another one like him got killed in the recently-concluded Gaza operation).

I’ve quoted these pronouncements before, but they seem quite on point here:

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.”
“This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.”
“But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.”
“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian- Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic.”
“The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Address to the Knights of Columbus
New York City- October 12th, 1915

Please note that TR is addressing the Knights of Columbus; one cannot imagine a modern politician of similar stature addressing, say, AIPAC in similar terms…..

“We should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birth-place or origin.

“But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn’t doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”

Americans joining the IDF, and not the American armed forces, are loyal to Israel, and not America.

Kissinger had always been very concerned during his younger days about the possibility of accusations of dual loyalties, and that he resolved to overcome them by … not having dual loyalties, by just being loyal to the United States. And to his own fabulous career, of course, but back in the post-WWII era, loyalty to Americans in general tended to help you in your career.

But team Hasbara has already set you straight, Steve. Just as it’s perfectly patriotic for an American Jew to sign up for the IDF (and not the American armed forces), it would have been perfectly patriotic for Kissinger to work for Israel. Or, heck, for the Soviet Union. It’s not like we were in a war with the USSR at any point. And we were allied with the Soviets in WWII. Israel’s never fought a war with us.

Via Mondoweiss, figure for various religious groups in the US armed forces:

You’d expect there to be 21,000 or so Episcopalians in uniform. There are only 9,600. You’d expect 33,000+ Presbyterians. There are 13,000. Lutherans, you’d expect 58,000. There are 35,000. Methodists? 83,000 expected. 44,000 in fact. Jews: 16,000 would be predicted by the CUNY percentage—there are 3,973 Jews in the military. I – See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2006/08/the_true_defini#sthash.BDTZEXhI.dpuf

And here’s a figure on US-born Jews serving in the IDF:

Today, the Jewish state has one of the largest number of Americans serving in its military, with roughly 1,000 Americans who did not grow up there serving, said Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokeswoman Lt. Libby Weiss.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/23/1-000-americans-are-serving-in-the-israeli-army-and-they-aren-t-alone.html

So, 3,973 American Jews serve in the US armed forces, vs roughly 1,000 in the IDF.

Serious question are there more USA Jews serving in the IDF than in the USA military? I remember reading a Forward article that reported that the number of Jewish members in the military was very low.

I’d very much like to know, too. I know three things:

1. Jewish participation in America’s armed forces is extremely low. Practically non-existent.
2. We have a small but growing list of American Jews in the gov’t-media complex who either are serving, or have served in the Israeli armed forces.
3. We have a whole Hasbara hit time resident here at iSteve, but none of them has offered a single elite Jewish member of the gov’t-media complex currently serving in the American armed forces.
4. Jews love to brag when they think it makes them look good.

My educated guess is, yes, there are more American Jews serving in the Israeli armed forces than in the American armed forces. At least, in the elite gov’t-media complex circles. Which says a lot.

There goes another of your Last In, First Approved comments again, Sy.

“My impression from reading between the lines in Kissinger’s immense memoir of 1973-74, Years of Upheaval, is that Kissinger had always been very concerned during his younger days about the possibility of accusations of dual loyalties, and that he resolved to overcome them by … not having dual loyalties, by just being loyal to the United States.”

Caspar Weinberger is another example – I don’t know if he consciously decided to overcome any sense of dual loyalty, or if he just instinctively felt himself to be an American. Weinberger has been a vehement critic of the periodic efforts to release Jonathan Pollard.

Via Mondoweiss, figure for various religious groups in the US armed forces:

You’d expect there to be 21,000 or so Episcopalians in uniform. There are only 9,600. You’d expect 33,000+ Presbyterians. There are 13,000. Lutherans, you’d expect 58,000. There are 35,000. Methodists? 83,000 expected. 44,000 in fact. Jews: 16,000 would be predicted by the CUNY percentage—there are 3,973 Jews in the military. I – See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2006/08/the_true_defini#sthash.BDTZEXhI.dpuf

And here’s a figure on US-born Jews serving in the IDF:

Today, the Jewish state has one of the largest number of Americans serving in its military, with roughly 1,000 Americans who did not grow up there serving, said Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokeswoman Lt. Libby Weiss.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/23/1-000-americans-are-serving-in-the-israeli-army-and-they-aren-t-alone.html

So, 3,973 American Jews serve in the US armed forces, vs roughly 1,000 in the IDF.

I think what you’re asking is for people who would ordinarily have no tribal loyalty to us and have tribal loyalties to other tribes is for them to ditch their DNA and be loyal to their birth certificate and geography.

The better idea is for our own people to start thinking of themselves as a tribe and start being tribally loyal to ourselves.

Why should we ask anyone else to start doing the same suicidal things to themselves that we’re doing to ourselves, and in large part many of these anyone elses are asking us to keep on doing to ourselves while they don’t do to themselves?

This is why citizenism is only useful as a transitory ideology but not a good long term project. Because citizenism depends on the transient accidents of geography and pieces of paper.

“Lot says:

Israel is our honorary 51st state.”

Who says so? You? I don’t consider Israel to be a 51st state. I would sooner consider Australians or Canadians as countrymen, as they speak the same language and, as far as I know, have never tried to sink one of our naval vessels. Nor have they hired spies in our government and then tried to get them released from their prison terms.

“So what if they aren’t formal citizens (like Puerto Ricans and Samoans.)”

I don’t consider them to be Americans either, nor do I consider those places to be a “51st state”.

And if anyone is curious as to how the abomination that is “dual citizenship” became possible in the USA:

Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), is a major United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that citizens of the United States may not be deprived of their citizenship involuntarily.[1][2] The U.S. government had attempted to revoke the citizenship of Beys Afroyim, a Polish-born man, because he had cast a vote in an Israeli election after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen. The Supreme Court decided that Afroyim’s right to retain his citizenship was guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In so doing, the Court overruled one of its own precedents, Perez v. Brownell (1958), in which it had upheld loss of citizenship under similar circumstances less than a decade earlier.

The Afroyim decision opened the way for a wider acceptance of dual (or multiple) citizenship in United States law.[3] The Bancroft Treaties—a series of agreements between the United States and other nations which had sought to limit dual citizenship following naturalization—were eventually abandoned after the Carter administration concluded that Afroyim and other Supreme Court decisions had rendered them unenforceable.

The impact of Afroyim v. Rusk was narrowed by a later case, Rogers v. Bellei (1971), in which the Court determined that the Fourteenth Amendment safeguarded citizenship only when a person was born or naturalized in the United States, and that Congress retained authority to regulate the citizenship status of a person who was born outside the United States to an American parent. However, the specific law at issue in Rogers v. Bellei—a requirement for a minimum period of U.S. residence that Bellei had failed to satisfy—was repealed by Congress in 1978. As a consequence of revised policies adopted in 1990 by the United States Department of State, it is now (in the words of one expert) “virtually impossible to lose American citizenship without formally and expressly renouncing it.”[4]

And here’s the fellow at the heart of the case:

Beys Afroyim (born Ephraim Bernstein, 1893?–1984) was an artist known as an active communist who also worked for the communist party but later became more active for zionism and moved to Israel.[33] Various sources state that he was born in either 1893[32][34][35] or 1898,[36] and either in Poland generally,[35] specifically in the Polish town of Ryki,[32][34] or in Riga, Latvia[36] (then part of the Russian Empire). In 1912, Afroyim immigrated to the United States, and on June 14, 1926, he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen.[36][37] He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as the National Academy of Design in New York City, and he was commissioned to paint portraits of George Bernard Shaw, Theodore Dreiser, and Arnold Schoenberg.[32] In 1949, Afroyim left the United States and settled in Israel, together with his wife and former student Soshana (an Austrian artist).[32]

In 1960, following the breakdown of his marriage, Afroyim decided to return to the United States,[38] but the State Department refused to renew his U.S. passport, ruling that because Afroyim had voted in the 1951 Israeli legislative election, he had lost his citizenship under the provisions of the Nationality Act of 1940.[39] A letter certifying Afroyim’s loss of citizenship was issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on January 13, 1961.[36]

The concept of dual citizenship, which previously had been strongly opposed by the U.S. government, has become more accepted in the years since Afroyim.[3] In 1980, the administration of President Jimmy Carter concluded that the Bancroft Treaties—a series of bilateral agreements, formulated between 1868 and 1937, which provided for automatic loss of citizenship upon foreign naturalization of a U.S. citizen—were no longer enforceable, due in part to Afroyim, and gave notice terminating these treaties.[86] In 1990, the State Department adopted new guidelines for evaluating potential loss-of-citizenship cases,[87] under which the government now assumes in almost all situations that Americans do not in fact intend to give up their citizenship unless they explicitly indicate to U.S. officials that this is their intention.[88] As explained by Peter J. Spiro, “In the long run, Afroyim’s vision of an absolute right to retain citizenship has been largely, if quietly, vindicated. As a matter of practice, it is now virtually impossible to lose American citizenship without formally and expressly renouncing it.”[4]

Yep, America suffered a major blow to her national integrity because a Communist Zionist wanted to be able to flit back and forth between Staten Island and Israel:

After his Supreme Court victory, Afroyim divided his time between West Brighton (Staten Island, New York) and the Israeli city of Safed until his death on May 19, 1984, in West Brighton.[92][93]

It would be nice if they made it easier to develop a sense of loyalty. Obama is the commander-in-chief (officially anyway) so if one is in the military they’re in Obama’s army, or under the wrecker Bush, or the sleazy Clintons. Not much to be loyal to there, especially as they themselves don’t seem particularly loyal to us. Loyalty to mah fellow Americans is to whom nowadays? The aborigines across the street, just lately moved in from across the border? The hijab wearers one increasingly sees? There’s not much of a feeling of solidarity there either way. Patriotism is apparently for the small fry; the political class, the supposed leaders, obviously have none otherwise they wouldn’t have been busy selling out the country by turning it into something resembling a Middle Eastern flea market.

Slightly OT

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-24/coming-to-your-town-change

“The village of Bloomingburg, New York, is pondering drastic action to prevent immigration: Rather than allow a developer to build 400 townhomes to house Hasidic families, it is considering dissolving the village and having it absorbed by a larger neighboring community, which will dilute the Hasidic vote and hopefully allow it to keep the town from turning into the next Ramapo.”

Ramapo

http://nymag.com/news/features/east-ramapo-hasidim-2013-4/index4.html

“Even the mildest meetings of the Ramapo
School Board—ones when no board members call one another moral degenerates, when no references are made to Treblinka—contain a fascinating tableau: At a meeting in March, soon after Young-Mercer and the second remaining secular board members had resigned, seven yarmulked men looked down from the dais at a crowd of angry students and parents, most of them black and Hispanic. “

“I would like to see our society engage in more social construction to get naturally conservative Jews like the Brookses to be more loyal to their fellow American citizens and less loyal to their foreign co-ethnics.”

Why he may be conservative in the way he runs his own life (as indeed many liberals are), I don’t know of any meaningful sense in which Brooks can be described as politically conservative. He occupies the “conservative” billet at the Times and on NPR which means that he is……..a liberal. There is probably little or nothing that distinguishes his views from any number of wealthy liberal Democratic party supporters in San Francisco or New York.

“anon says

When these loyalties conflict, it can be a problem. But the loyalty to Israel and the loyalty to America does not conflict because Israel does nothing bad to America.”

You mean other than spy on us and, probably, blackmail some of our politicians? Yeah, nothing bad. Besides, it is not so much a question of Israel exerting influence on America directly, but of american Jews exerting influence on its behalf.

“If Israel ceased to exist tomorrow, no benefits would come to America. The $3 billion in annual aid would be wasted on providing free sex change surgeries to indigent trannies.”

That’s a neat argument – hey, it’s ONLY 3 billion dollars, and you just would have wasted it anyway. Tell me, if somebody only steals three dollars off of you, do you feel as if you had not been robbed? Do you routinely throw dollar bills on the street because – after all – its only a dollar. Or fives for that matter? Nothing but tens and twenties in your wallet?

“The Moslem world would pose the same problem it did yesterday.”

It would pose no real problem to us today, if we would stop screwing around in their countries.

“Lot says:

Can you explain why serving in the army of America’s closest ally in the world by some measures (like UN votes),……”

Not our best ally in the world by other measures (like spying on us and firing on our warships).

And as far as UN votes go, how many UN votes concern Israel, or middle-east questions generally? Yes, I’m sure that Israel can be relied upon to support our votes in the UN in support of Israel.

Brooks’s kid isn’t fighting against Americans, or against American interests.

He is in fact fighting against American interests.

Our interest in the Middle East is one simple thing: easy access to cheap oil. There is nothing else. American support for the Israeli conquest of Palestine inflames hatred against us in every single Muslim country because the majority of the Palestinian victims are Muslim and Palestine contains important Muslim monuments. At this point in time, the Israeli faction which actively seeks to inflame Muslim hatred is actually driving Israeli policy both from within Israel and in the Jewish diaspora.

Muslims recognize Jews as a rival: both are groups which pursue a group strategy to gain power. With no limits of conquest designed into their respective religions, the goal becomes global domination. Of course, Muslims have essentially no power in the global power structure (the West and China/Japan), so supporting them would not threaten our hegemony.

[Irving Kristol's] interest in religion had nothing to do with the recent triumph of Zionism. Israel’s socialistic ethos alienated Kristol. “Truth to tell,” he later recalled, “I found Israeli society, on the whole, quite exasperating.” He was not alone. In 1951, he received a copy of a letter from a Columbia student named Norman Podhoretz. This missive had circulated to Kristol by way of Cohen [editor of Commentary], who had received a copy from its original recipient, Lionel Trilling. The letter was an account of Podhoretz’s first visit to Israel. “I felt more at home in Athens!” he told Trilling. “They are, despite their really extraordinary accomplishments, a very unattractive people, the Israelis. They’re gratuitously surly and boorish…. They are too arrogant and too anxious to become a real honest-to-goodness New York of the East.” On the basis of Podhoretz’s chilly response to the Jewish state, Kristol recruited him to write for Commentary.

The Turning point for Podhoretz (and for many other Jewish elites in the USA) seems to have been the 1967 Six-Day War:

Alterman points to the year 1967 as the turning point:
“Peretz [Mart Peretz of NEW REPUBLIC fame]and [heiress] Farnsworth married in June 1967 — coincidentally, the same month that the Six Day War transformed not only the Middle East but also American liberalism and American Jewry. For the left, the war’s legacy became a point of painful contention — as many liberals and leftists increasingly viewed Israel as having traded its David status for a new role as an oppressive, occupying Goliath. For many American Jews, however, most of whom previously kept their emotional distance from Israel, the emotional commitment to Israel became so central that it came to define their ethnic, even religious, identities. For Marty Peretz, who had been supporting various New Left causes, these two competing phenomena came to a head in September of that year when a “New Politics” convention that he largely funded collapsed amid a storm of acrimonious accusation, much of it inspired by arguments over Israel.”
Lots of people love a winner. Similarly, Israel is never mentioned in long-time Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz’s second autobiography until p. 323, when the 1967 war is won by Israel.

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/06/eric-alterman-on-marty-peretz.html

By dint of grandparents being born in Ireland, I could plausibly claim Irish citizenship and so serve in their army. As my wife’s parents were born in Belfast, both of our sons could as well. I’ve been there, it’s a nice place. I also happen to live in the zip code that ethnically is the most Irish in all of the US(it was also arguably visited by more death on 9/11 than any community, since it is largely cops, firemen and Wall Street employees). In fact the Irish government has been very helpful to our community after Hurricane Sandy. And as it happens a friend and neighbor had an Irish cousin who joined the US Navy and became a fighter pilot. My father in law became a US citizen by joining the US Army without ever having been to the US until he was hired by NYPD. In each case (and many like them for Ireland and elsewhere) these guys wanted to be American. Sadly we now give it away.

Yet I could never imagine joining the Irish army because we’re American. Frankly given the absolute indifference the last 2 presidents have shown to respecting the safety of military service members with insane rules of engagement and crazy Middle East wars right now I would discourage my sons from volunteering to join the military nor applying to a service academy. but I would not stop them. But as an American joining the armed forces of another country is unthinkable.

More proof Brooks is a strange duck. May be when Dad is inventing “Bobos” is suburbia instead of raising his children they seek male role models elsewhere.

Look at it this way. Join the IDF: defend Israel. Join the US armed forces (other than the Coast Guard): defend South Korea, Japan and Latvia, get into the middle of tribal conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria (and counting), catch Ebola in Liberia. Like iSteve and most of his readers, I think what our soldiers are being made to do is a scandal. But until we fix that problem, let’s go easy on David Brooks’ boy, all right?

Well, Steve, there was one group you had not yet offended, but with this post, you’ve finally gotten around to them.

Cat lovers.

Exactly

Our host said: Brooks’ wife not only converted but changed her first name from Jane to Sarah.

Hunsdon said: That’s kind of creepy.

>>> Israel uses the Nuremberg definition of Jewishness; anyone with one Jewish grandparent can immigrate to Israel

If it’s good enough for Ireland, it’s good enough for us.

Oh, and:

Harold>>>> This sounds like “I am loyal to my family because I have to see them at family get-togethers”. Furthermore, you don’t have to live next to them. If things don’t work out with America you can always move to Israel.

Sounds a lot like the White Nationalist dream of establishing their own little country somewhere in Northern Idaho…. after running away from America’s problems.

The point you make is a valid one. But things are even more complex than you make them out to be. Israel’s done less harm to America than most most members of the General Assembly have done (or would like to do), but occasionally we get these situations like the Liberty incident or Jonathan Pollard.

Every Adminstration since Reagan, it seems, has an official who, when asked about Pollard, shakes his head and says something like “if only I could tell you how much damages he did, you’d know why he’s still in the slammer.” If he’s released when eligible for parole next year, it won’t bother me one-tenth as much as Scotland’s release of Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi did. But will bother me – at least until we’re told the whole story.

No two nations’ interests are parallel.

I don’t know about Italians. I would say that the distance between Koreans and Korean-Americans is closing at warp speed.

Check out SAT 2 Asiatic language scores vs European language scores. We are seeing the end of America as a totalitarian assimilationist nation. It had a good run, time to move forward.

So then Bathhouse Barry is a very loyal boy indeed: he’s loyal to those who actively hate white people, hate men, and hate people with normal sexuality. In fact, Bathhouse Barry actively hates the United States except in its role as welfare tit to the turd-world, and he wants to bring the turd-world inside the US as a way of attacking those he truly hates: white males with normal sexuality.

I’m glad theses people are showing their true face.

I’m glad they are showing their true colors.

Be Thankful.

Besides its the Kissinger’s of the world and the shaming that led to this. Shaming someone doesn’t change their soul, it just makes them hide it.

I like the truth, and I like seeing who people really are.

P.S.–Why does everyone bend over backwards to profess their love for Kissinger? Isn’t he deepthroat? Nixon didn’t like him and ignored everything he said. My loyalties lay with Nixon, not Kissinger.

OT: from the WWT frontlines: All the best women used to be men. Highest paid female CEO used to be a man, baby!

Well, for one, I find a Christian society that is civil to Jews, like America had for its first 180 years or so, to be much more pleasant to live in than the liberal society today.

It’s perfectly in line with Israel’s policies, which accept quarter-Jews and half-Jews from the Soviet Union and seeks to make them feel Israeli (even if the religious establishment will question their Jewishness). The point is basically to have more non-Arabs.

Everybody feels loyalties, but conservatives tend to be more motivated than liberals by loyalty or team spirit.

That seems to be a widespread belief, in fact Jonathan Haidt repeats it in “the Righteous Mind” which I’m reading at present. And yet like most bits of conventional wisdom it’s not really true. The difference between conservatives and liberals is not how inclined they are towards loyalty, but who they feel loyal towards. To be an American conservative is to be loyal towards America, to be an American liberal is to be disloyal with regards to America, or at best ambivalent towards it.

American liberals display a very high degree of in-group loyalty, but towards their own particular ethnic groups rather than towards America.

“As a Jew, yes, I am loyal to Israel because it is the nation of the Jews, and I am loyal to my people.”

You gave away the whole game there, boobie. All of your subsequent claims to having any loyalty to MY country (America) seem pretty specious after that little admission.

Buddy, if you think I care whether you think I’m loyal or not, you’re dead wrong. As I said, if you don’t have any conflicting loyalties, you’re a moron.

And define loyalty to America, please.

So that’s why Holder is stepping down?

My favorite example is Paul Samuelson. During the great Nafta and Gatt debates he misrepresented the implications of liberalizing trade with low-wage countries like China by saying, for example, that protective tariffs had never caused a nation’s wages to rise (when the issue was whether such tariffs could keep them from falling). Now it is in fact true that free trade with countries like China has the potential to make everyone better off even in a rich country. The catch is that in order for it to do so you have to invoke the principle of compensation, which has always been an integral part of free trade theory: the losers must be compensated out of the gains of the winners.

Samuelson did not mention this fact, however, knowing full well that the kind of compensation required when a country like China’s comparative advantage lay in its over-abundance of one of the factors of production, namely, low-wage workers, while America’s lay in an over-abundance of capital resources. In other words, it was clear that the losers, American labor, would have to be compensated out of the rising income of the winners, meaning those whose rising incomes would derive from their possession of capital, including human capital in the form of well-educated persons of superior intelligence.

The majority of Samuelson’s co-ethnics belonged to that latter group, as did practically everone he knew in the circles in which he moved. Had that not been the case it is doubtful he would have misrepresented the implications of Nafta and Gatt the way he did. He had no loyalty to the American people and now, two decades latter, the consequences are plain to see.

I might add that Paul Krugman, who also lobbied hard for Nafta and Gatt, is guilty of the same disloyalty. He put the welfare of his own class and poor people in China before that of the vast majority of his fellow citizens, even though a more honest presentation of the theory of trade pointed to a way that everyone could in fact benefit through radical tax reform.

One of the ironies is that this dishonesty may undermine free trade in the long-run as it gradually becomes clearer and clearer that our China trade is contributing in a major way to the ruin of the middle-two thirds of the American population.

Rahm Emanuel’s wife isn’t Jewish. Given this site’s recent obsession with the Emanuel’s Jewish ethno-centrism ,that’s quite a glaring contradiction.

Maybe Rahm isn’t as much of a jewish ehtno-nationalist as you claim he is.

Or perhaps Jewish ethnocentrism is not and has never been as focused on mere genes as some people say it is. Jewish identity is composed partly of blood and partly of ideology. A person can be of tenuous Jewish ancestry and still be 100% Jewish as long as they are totally committed to the ideology. Brooks’ son, for example.

Jewish history doesn’t exactly favor the idea that they would put the interests of their host society (especially a Western, Christian one) ahead of their own tribal interests. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, but much of that may be due to disagreement over what’s better for Jews.

–Your very lukewarm “loyalty” to the country you live in is exactly the problem that Sailer is highlighting.

Seems like you want the Jewish equivalent of the Knights of Columbus. The Knights spent a great deal of effort to encourage patriotism and American loyalty among the various ethnicities that emigrated to the United States in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Knights altered their structure, expanding on the original insurance/fraternity system adding a Patriotic degree in 1903 to encourage assimilation.

I know Brooks was supposed to be the NYT’s token conservative pre-Douthat

Which, considering that Brooks is a registered Democrat and acknowledged “progressive”, helps to explain why the NYT regards everyone to Brooks’ right as a “conservative extremist”.

Israel does no harm to the US!?! I suggest you do a quick look-up of USS Liberty and Michael Pollard. Israel has engaged in a massive covert and overt attempt to subvert the US political process and polity in furtherance of its own ends. These are often contrary to US interests in the Middle East. Tt this point, current US Mideast policy is best characterized as the apparently random adoption of activities which only cohere insofar as they have spread death, destruction, and chaos everywhere in the region except Israel. This is of no advantage to anyone but seems to be promoted by coteries in this country and Israel who feel that it is somehow to Israel’s advantage. If you want to know who they are, just wait for the next significant attempt to publicly call Israel to account for the various war crimes and atrocities it has regularly been committing against its neighbors. Then watch for the usual slew of lobbying acti9vities, petitions, etc., and see wgho is behind them.

That quote from Irving Krystol about his war experience deserves closer attention. Here it is in greater context:

“Well, it turned out that, as a provincial from New York, I knew nothing about the American common man and even less about the army as an institution. Again and again, and to my surprise, I found reasons to think better of the army and less well of my fellow enlisted men. It is true that, since I was inducted in Chicago, my regiment was heavily populated by thugs or near-thugs from places like Cicero (Al Capone’s old base), so my impressions may have been extreme.”

And here again:

“My wartime experience in Germany, however, did have the effect of dispelling any remnants of antiauthority sentiments (always weak, I now think) that were cluttering up my mind. My fellow soldiers were too easily inclined to loot, to rape, and to shoot prisoners of war. Only army vigilance kept them in check.

My question: what was his unit and what documentary evidence is there that the soldiers in it “were too easily inclined to loot, to rape, and to shoot prisoners of war.” I would like to see that fleshed out because, frankly, I doubt the truth of it. I’ve never heard of such behavior on the Western front but maybe I don’t know my WWII history well enough.

As far as I can tell Brooks’ value has been limited to two observations, which, while interesting, haven’t amounted to anything. First was his “bobo” book, which tried to out baby-boomers for fusing social leftism with extreme consumerism. Second was his article about 10 years ago noting that Ivy college students were terrified of making judgments.

Really good post.

I’d just like to second the notion that Brooks and son would be super loyal to America if being loyal and patriotic to America were cool in general amongst high status people – Jews or Gentiles. The problem is that overt displays of old-fashioned strongly loyal patriotism is now associated with low-status rednecks and ‘Muricans is now a meme of mocking satire.

Sports is one way to displace and substitute for these impulses, but it’s not enough because of the ratio between participants and spectators. It provides no outlet for genuinely-involved action (as opposed to super-fans on the sidelines) except for the tiniest fraction of dedicated and elite athletes. Military service, on the other hand, provides real opportunities for active expressions of loyalty for a very wide swath of the population.

Finding someone else’s war to fight in (hardly a rare event for Americans – es.g. Hemingway, Abraham Lincoln Brigade) is a lot easier than changing the social consensus on what it is high-status to signal you believe.

I worked with a guy who converted to Judaism to marry a woman (who worked at the same place). A fairly bright guy, had an MBA from Northwestern. I asked him about it when we were on the road together once. He wasn’t that religious and he said Judaism had less stuff he needed to believe in.

The bigger problem is Jewish loyalty to other Jews and a Jewish agenda, not Jewish loyalty to Israel. Many Jewish progs and Leftists who have done immense harm to the U.S. are anti-Zionists.

One of the ironies of American Ashkenazis’ (both liberal and conservative) lack of loyalty to the American people is that it may undermine American popular support for the state of Israel in the coming decades. When Euro-Americans, and especially those of Protestant descent, become a minority in their own country, while Latinos, East Asians, and African Americans become the majority, the electoral base of that support will be diminished.

This is but one more example of what Irving Krystol (yes, that same Irving Krystol) called “the political stupidity of the Jews.” Or as Marty Peretz put it: Jews seem to be good at everything except governance. Maybe (in fact probably) this is a consequence of their lack of experience through the ages, but it supports my hypothesis that even highly intelligent Jews, when it comes to politics, can be more foolish and naive that the general public. Witness Marx’s fantasy of the withering away of the state! Somebody needs to save them from themselves.

For more, see the book “The Fatal Embrace”

Shorter Steve Sailer:

“We should embarrass reactionary, chauvinist cretins like David Brooks, not into refraining from being reactionary, chauvinist cretins, but into being reactionary, chauvinist cretins for our team.”

My question: what was his unit and what documentary evidence is there that the soldiers in it “were too easily inclined to loot, to rape, and to shoot prisoners of war.” I would like to see that fleshed out because, frankly, I doubt the truth of it. I’ve never heard of such behavior on the Western front but maybe I don’t know my WWII history well enough.

Well, obviously such things happened with greater frequency on the Eastern Front, but Allied troops did commit those kinds of acts from time to time:

The British:
Many rapes were committed under the effects of alcohol or post-traumatic stress, but some cases of premeditated attacks, like the attempted rape of two local girls at gunpoint by two soldiers in the village of Oyle, near Nienburg, which ended in the death of one of the women when, whether intentionally or not, one of the soldiers discharged his gun, hitting her in the neck, as well as the reported assault on three German women in the town of Neustadt am Rübenberge.[59] On a single day in mid-April 1945, three women in Neustadt were raped by British soldiers. A senior British Army chaplain following the troops reported that there was a ‘good deal of rape going on’. He then added that “those who suffer [rape] have probably deserved it.’[60]

US:

In Taken by Force, J. Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany to be 11,040.

US:
According to Alice Kaplan, an American historian of France and chair of the Department of French at Yale University, the U.S. military tolerated rape of French women less than that of German women. She argued that the number of rapes is well documented and is less than that of some other armies during that era, writing that “Nine hundred and four American soldiers were tried for rape in Europe, and even if the actual numbers were much higher, they do not compare with a terrible legacy of World War II-era rapes” committed, for example, by the Japanese in Nanking, by Germans in the German-occupied areas, by the French in Italy and by the Soviet soldiers across Eastern Europe and Germany.[15] J. Robert Lilly, Regents professor of sociology and criminology at Northern Kentucky University, reported in Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe in World War II his estimate that 14,000 rapes were committed by U.S. soldiers in France, Germany and the United Kingdom between 1942 and 1945.[16][17] More specifically, Lilly estimated that U.S. servicemen committed around 3,500 rapes in France between June 1944 and the end of the war.[14]

The French:

French troops took part in the invasion of Germany, and France was assigned an occupation zone in Germany. According to Perry Biddiscombe the French for instance committed “385 rapes in the Constance area; 600 in Bruchsal; and 500 in Freudenstadt.”[61] The soldiers of France indulged in an orgy of rape in the Höfingen District near Leonberg.[62]

According to Norman Naimark, French Moroccan troops matched the behavior of Soviet troops when it came to rape, in particular in the early occupation of Baden and Württemberg.[63]

Of course, this pales besides the Soviet record:

A wave of rapes and sexual violence occurred in Central Europe in 1944–45, as the Western Allies and the Red Army fought their way into the Third Reich.[5] On the territory of the Nazi Germany, it began on 21 October 1944 when troops of the Red Army crossed the bridge over the Angerapp creek (marking the border) and committed the Nemmersdorf massacre before they were beaten back a few hours later.

The majority of the assaults were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers ranged up to 2 million.[1][6][7][8][9] In many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times.[10] At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports,[7] with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath.[11] Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000.[3][12] Antony Beevor describes it as the “greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history”, and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone.[13]

Natalya Gesse states that Russian soldiers raped German females from eight to eighty years old. Russian women were not spared either.[14][15][16] In contrast, a Russian war veteran Vsevolod Olimpiev recalled, “The Soviet soldiers’ relations with the German population where it had stayed may be called indifferent and neutral. Nobody, at least from our Regiment, harassed or touched them. Moreover, when we came across an obviously starving German family with kids we would share our food with them with no unnecessary words.”[17]

When Yugoslav politician Milovan Djilas complained about rapes in Yugoslavia, Stalin reportedly stated that he should “understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle.”[18] On another occasion, when told that Red Army soldiers sexually maltreated German refugees, he reportedly said: “We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative.”[19]

However, an order issued on January 19, 1945 and signed by Stalin said,

Officers and men of the Red Army! We are entering the country of the enemy… the remaining population in the liberated areas, regardless of whether they’re German, Czech, or Polish, should not be subjected to violence. The perpetrators will be punished according to the laws of war. In the liberated territories, sexual relations with females are not allowed. Perpetrators of violence and rape will be shot.[20]

Historian Norman Naimark writes that after the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians were usually punished to some degree, ranging from arrest to execution.[21] However, the rapes continued until the winter of 1947–48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined Soviet troops to strictly guarded posts and camps,[22] separating them from the residential population in the Soviet zone of Germany.

Luke Lea,
For all intents and purposes the entirety of the US economics establishment were fully in favor for ‘free trade with China’, and argued very, very hard for it. Anyone who raised objections was routinely dismissed as an ‘economically illiterate fool’ who could not grasp the basics of of Adam Smith’s or David Ricardo’s theorizing on the subject, thus, their opinions were not worth a damn. Of course, the political class did exactly as the entire economics establishment told them to do.
To single out Samuelson or Krugman as being especially egregious is not quite fair.

I know you never will, but you really should read Colin Woodard’s AMERICAN NATIONS. If you do, you’d understand why “the American side” doesn’t exist, never did, and never will. Thus, you’re wrong about the whole picture. Although your insight about loyalties is thought-provoking, it leads nowhere as long as you stick to the incorrect premise that there is a core America.

Left-liberal guys ARE loyal. They are just loyal to a different set of principles than you are.

Check out SAT 2 Asiatic language scores vs European language scores. We are seeing the end of America as a totalitarian assimilationist nation.

In other words, the end of America. Rather hope that you enjoy the prospect of living in a polyglot boardinghouse, dear boy.

It had a good run, time to move forward.

More like time to move backward, dear boy.

“Further, I’m very glad in retrospect that
Henry Kissinger was on our side, the United States of America,
rather than on the side of the Soviet Union or of Israel.”

The neocons say that they’re fighting Islam and Russia on your behalf too, Steve. And that you should be glad that they’re on your side in those conflicts. You don’t believe them. Why? Probably because you’re older and more suspicious of others’ motives than you were during the Cold War. People like Kissinger flight the Cold War in order to make the rape of Russia possible again, in order to repeat the 1917 – 1937 experience there. And they finally succeeded at this in the 1990s. However, throughout the Cold War they were telling guys like you that they were doing it for your sake, in the same way that they’re telling the current generation of Americans that they’re fighting Islam and Putin for America’s sake. And most Americans have bought this. Actually, conservative, patriotic, Americans have been fooled by this more than liberal ones.

The funny thing with you Steve is that you haven’t applied your middle-aged skepticism of these guys’ motives onto the past, onto the period when you were more gullible. You still see guys like Kissinger the way you saw them then.

Interesting that Steve brought up Chomsky as a contrast with Kissinger, Chomsky has been one of the major people on the Far Left trying to have Kissinger tried for “war crimes” for doing things like you know caring about American interests above those of leftist guerrillas half a world away. Chomsky is incensed that Kissinger didn’t try to use his power to stop Indonesia from invading a neighboring island that was under Portuguese rule and then turned Communist, this all the while Chomsky was the equivalent of a Holocaust Denier for the Cambodian Genocide that killed over 25 percent of Cambodia’s population. However that was OK because Chomsky believed the Khmer Rogue were a bunch of peaceful, anarchic hippies, he also had similar delusions of Idi Amin and Slobodan Milosevic, true leapfrogging loyalties: I care more about Anti-American and Anti-Western fanatics than I care about the West and America.

I will. And I do, kind of already. California is 100x better than Indiana. English mono-lingualism is dreary. And don’t call me boy. Who do you think you are?,

Of course, dear boy, if you find America so disagreeable, you could always go to Korea and live among your Asiatic brethren….

Like iSteve and most of his readers, I think what our soldiers are being made to do is a scandal. But until we fix that problem, let’s go easy on David Brooks’ boy, all right?

I don’t think we are going hard on Brook’s boy, at least I am not. I am more angry with Brooks. You are quite correct that American soldiers are not really defending America anymore, and what they are being made to do is a scandal. But to a large extent it is Brooks and his cohorts, Jew and Gentile, that cheerlead America into these crazy policies. So we are criticizing Brooks because if he is going to push these crazy interventions, then one would expect his kid to serve too, especially given his kid is obviously ready, willing and able to pick up a rifle. And if more kids of Brooks and the other cheerleaders were serving, maybe they wouldn’t be quite so enthusiastic about defending borders other than ours.

>>> Israel uses the Nuremberg definition of Jewishness; anyone with one Jewish grandparent can immigrate to Israel

If it’s good enough for Ireland, it’s good enough for us.

From an American standpoint, not the most salutary of examples. The so-called Irish-Americans were the first of the “hyphenates,” and they have wrought a good deal of mischief over the decades: Fenian raids on Canada (1866-1871), acts of pro-German subversion during WWI, supporting IRA terrorists, etc.

Steve Brooks son serving in the IDF is a good thing. Its like Joe Kennedy Jr. flying for the RAF in 1940.

Serving in the IDF is a rejection of trans national globalism Islam a religion of peace, gkobal warming all that stuff.

Israel is both an American ally and an incubator of traditional ethnic nationalism. If it dissapears what’s left? Modern UK, paki raping White working class girls? Putins mini me USSR? Brooksson is likely to tell his dad the stuff hebelieves in isbunk.

Sorry typs gotta run dialysis soon can’t post behind firewall.

> maybe I don’t know my WWII history well enough

At least you have an open mind

J. Robert Lilly, Regents professor of sociology and criminology at Northern Kentucky University, reported in Taken by Force: Rape and American GIs in Europe in World War II his estimate that 14,000 rapes were committed by U.S. soldiers in France, Germany and the United Kingdom between 1942 and 1945. More specifically, Lilly estimated that U.S. servicemen committed around 3,500 rapes in France between June 1944 and the end of the war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_liberation_of_France

J. Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany to be 11,040.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany

For other crimes, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes#World_War_II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II

What did the average American get from the second rape of Russia? Nothing that I’ve noticed. And he won’t get anything from the third one either if the neocons ever manage to overthrow Putin or install their own guy after Putin dies. Just enormous expenditures on the two cold wars and the accompanying proxy hot wars.

Same for the Middle Eastern wars plus terrorism. Not even cheap oil. ‘Cause it’s not about oil. But millions of patriotic Americans and Westerners in general have been convinced that the new Cold War with Russia and the Middle Eastern wars are being fought for their sake, that they have vital interests in them.

Thanks for the detail on IRR and minimum active duty commitment.

My understanding is that it was more than just a few got called up during Iraq from IRR, and a lot of them were in their 30′s and 5+ years out.

Also, isn’t it pretty hard to join up only for two active years, requiring some special skills or otherwise being an extra desirable candidate?

The original enlistment contract is an 8 year one, split between active and reserve portions. You are correct that it is harder to get a 2 year active enlistment. When I served only the army offered it, and you had to score well on the ASVAB and join an MOS like the infantry, which I did. Most people in all branches end up signing a 4 year active /4 year inactive contract, while some get a 3 year active/5 year inactive deal.

I was in prior to Iraq 2003. So at that time the IRR was considered safe. So too was the national guard. During my 6 years of IRR, I transferred into a national guard unit while in school to pick up some free money. The guard at that time was just like it was depicted in the Stallone film First Blood. After graduating, I transferred back to the IRR to finish my 6 year inactive commitment. My time in the guard counted as part of that inactive commitment. Today, you’d be crazy to do that because the national guard was called up as often as the active army to serve in Iraq.

Iraq 2003 changed the way people will look at the IRR and the national guard.

His kids are half-Jewish genetically. Obviously therefore it’s not a case of “genes being wholly irrelevant”. I imagine his kids are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish, just as Brooks’s son is. In fact this speaks to the relevance of genes. Those on the periphery i.e. those less genetically Jewish, such as those who are half-Jewish, than “purer” Jews at the core of the Jewish tribe, identify strongly enough with the Jewish identify to do things like serve in the IDF.

I think better descriptors are “externally focused” and “internally focused”. Liberals aren’t just low on loyalty, they are oriented more or less completely around the self, which explains a lot of their behavior.

Of course, these days mainstream conservatives (pseudo-conservatives) aren’t very much different. Their focus is frequently muddled and they seem to exist at some midway point between external and internal focus–just look at their often sordid personal lives and ladder climbing behavior.

I like the changes that are happening in America. I like America. I especially like California.
I like Korea too. I travel often enough between the two so don’t feel a great longing to move there.

Don’t call me boy and don’t linkfest me to death. I don’t read your massiive copy and paste stuff either.
If you love creativity in white people so much, show some creativity in your thinking too.

More rewarding than fighting in the Spanish Civil War.

The page you linked to says Amy Rule (Rahm Emanuel’s wife) is Jewish, and so are their kids. Rule converted to Judaism. Here’s an account from the Oct. 29, 2011, Chicago Sun Times:

Rule easily fit in with Emanuel’s White House friends, holding her own when she joined him at their informal Wednesday night group sessions.

It was during this period that Rule, raised Episcopalian, studied for and converted to Judaism. Embracing Emanuel’s religion was a process she took “extremely seriously,” one of her friends said. “She took it on totally.”

The late Rabbi William Frankel married Rule and Emanuel on June 5, 1994, at the South Shore Cultural Center — the same lakefront venue where Barack and Michelle Obama held their wedding reception on Oct. 3, 1992. Axelrod signed their Ketubah, a Jewish marriage contract.

“The U.S. government, empowered by the U.S. Supreme Court, officially says it’s LEGAL to discriminate against my children in schooling, employment, etc.”

A court that is interestingly overrepresented by jews (compared to their overall numbers), likewise you will no doubt find many jews being behind the intellectual foundations of affirmative action, diversity and all those leftist ideals.

It was during this period that Rule, raised Episcopalian, studied for and converted to Judaism. Embracing Emanuel’s religion was a process she took “extremely seriously,” one of her friends said. “She took it on totally.”

I’ve read this kind of thing before. There is always that whiff of cultishness about it, even moreso than you normally see with overenthusiastic converts.

I worked with a guy who converted to Judaism to marry a woman (who worked at the same place). A fairly bright guy, had an MBA from Northwestern. I asked him about it when we were on the road together once. He wasn’t that religious and he said Judaism had less stuff he needed to believe in.

In many cases, it means believing in nothing at all, at least in religious terms. Some of my cousins are atheists, and their participation in Jewish religious practices (Passover, etc) is entirely patriotic in nature.

I worked with a guy who converted to Judaism to marry a woman (who worked at the same place). A fairly bright guy, had an MBA from Northwestern. I asked him about it when we were on the road together once. He wasn’t that religious and he said Judaism had less stuff he needed to believe in.

In many cases, it means believing in nothing at all, at least in religious terms. Some of my cousins are atheists, and their participation in Jewish religious practices (Passover, etc) is entirely patriotic in nature.

Unlike Anon, most iSteve commenters are more loyal to their fellow American citizens than their co-ethnics. That explains the concern evinced by so many here about the tragic killing of our fellow American Michael Brown.

And check out the allied behavior in general at Monte Casino with particular attention to the large number of rapes and murders committed by French Colonial Senegalese troops. These were openly encouraged by the French commander who instead of ending his career before a firing squad wound up commanding NATO forces in Europe. The German retreat up the Italian peninsula was a masterly campaign. The Germans out-generaled and out-fought the allies until the end of this epic struggle and in general behaved more like professional soldiers than did their foes. I suspect the frustration of the allies at their inability to outmaneuver or outfight the Germans played a role in the misbehavior of the allied troops.

The share of the population of Israel who are coded non-Arab and non-Jewish is 4.2%. Again, the Law of Return is quite precise in defining who counts as a Jew and explicit that those registered as Jews must meet the definition. Family members of Jews are admitted to Israel, but they are not, per the statute to be registered as Jews unless they have a Jewish mother or have converted.

A crusade for trade restrictions is a perfect waste of time and effort. Trade restrictions are an instrument of rent-seeking and not much else.

Raul’s wife isn’t Jewish but his son gets a bar mitzvah? Is the son from Rahm’s wife or from some other woman?

Incidentally, race/ethnicity is one area that gets studiously glossed over in accounts of rape committed on on the Western Front in WWII. Here’s a typical account involving US troops:

But her analysis is hardly more flattering to the French, whose often shaky accusations, as she sees them, reflected their own need to project the humiliations of occupation onto a racial “other.” (“We have no more soldiers here, just a few Negroes who terrorize the neighborhood,” one civilian remarked in April 1945.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/books/rape-by-american-soldiers-in-world-war-ii-france.html?pagewanted=all

Continental sources are a bit less squeamish:

According to Norman Naimark, French Moroccan troops matched the behavior of Soviet troops when it came to rape, in particular in the early occupation of Baden and Württemberg.[63]

Background
Goumiers were colonial irregular troops forming the “Goums Marocains”, which were approximately company-sized units rather loosely grouped in “Tabors” (battalions) and Groups (regiments). Three of these units ( the 1st, 3rd, 4th Groupements de Tabors) served in the FEC along with the four regular divisions: the 1st Free French Division, the 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division, the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division and the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division. The French: Goums Marocains were commanded by General Augustin Guillaume.

On May 14, 1944, the Goumiers travelled over seemingly impassable terrain in the Aurunci Mountains, outflanked the German defence in the adjacent Liri valley, materially assisting British XIII Corps to break the Gustav Line and advance to the next Wehrmacht prepared defensive position, the Hitler Line.

General Alphonse Juin allegedly declared before the battle, “For fifty hours you will be the absolute masters of what you will find beyond the enemy. Nobody will punish you for what you will do, nobody will ask you about what you will get up to.”[2]

Mass rape
Monte Cassino was captured by the Allies on May 18, 1944. The next night, thousands of Goumiers and other colonial troops scoured the slopes of the hills surrounding the town and the villages of Ciociaria (in South Latium). Over 60,000 women, ranging in age from 11 to 86, suffered from violence, when village after village came under control of the Goumiers. Civilian men who tried to protect their wives and daughters were murdered. The number of men killed has been estimated at 800.[3]

The mayor of Esperia, a comune in the Province of Frosinone, reported that in his town, 700 women out of 2,500 inhabitants were raped resulting in many deaths. According to some sources, a total of more than 7,000 civilians, including children, were raped by Goumiers.[4]

Expecting loyalty from Chomsky is like expecting loyalty from your cat.

I take it you do not harbor cats. They are very attached to their territories and their caretakers.

Unlike Anon, most iSteve commenters are more loyal to their fellow American citizens than their co-ethnics. That explains the concern evinced by so many here about the tragic killing of our fellow American Michael Brown.

Nice try at sarcasm, but in fact the iSteve commenters were not the ones showing favoritism to their co-ethnics. It was Ferguson’s black community which totally disregarded the evidence surrounding this case and put ethnic tribalism ahead of their fellow American citizens whose businesses were looted. Their one concern was for their tribe, evidence and officer Wilson be damned.

Since his wife converted, does that make her a real Jew? Landsmen and women around the country will be happy to throw the “not Jewish since Mom isn’t” in the face of his kids.
How far back does one go, to assure that there wasn’t a gentile in the bloodline to detract from the purity?

Unlike Anon, most iSteve commenters are more loyal to their fellow American citizens than their co-ethnics. That explains the concern evinced by so many here about the tragic killing of our fellow American Michael Brown.

Citizenism does not entail condoning lawless behavior, dear boy. I have no qualms about seeing the law enforced in my own country. Had Michael Brown been White and the officer Black, my feelings in the case would have been exactly the same. Of course, the same cannot be said for the MSM….

“Ed Miliband more or less publicly denounced the open borders mass immigration policy of Blair/Brown”

That’s just politics. No one, even on the far left, thinks he’ll do anything to cut immigration. The far-left view is that such speeches are ‘reinforcing the racist narrative where immigrants are seen as problems etc’ or ‘pandering to racism’.

Our host said: Brooks’ wife not only converted but changed her first name from Jane to Sarah.

Hunsdon said: That’s kind of creepy.

It’s also kind of sad, because Brooks divorced “Sarah” last year, or at least separated from her (the details are a little vague, but the Washington Post is standing by their reporting of their split): http://gawker.com/david-brooks-may-not-have-gotten-divorced-after-all-1555282728

Poor woman: by all accounts she was, as the Germans say, päpstlicher als der Papst (as it were) after her conversion, setting up a ritual mikvah bathing circle in Georgetown, outdoing her husband’s family in observances and scrupulous adherence to Jewish law, and otherwise having the fervor of a convert.

How’d that work out for her?

Expecting loyalty from Chomsky is like expecting loyalty from your cat.

I take it you do not harbor cats. They are very attached to their territories and their caretakers.

MMM, as someone who has owned his fair share of both cats and dogs over the years, the observation seems pretty apt.Indeed, two observations of my own come to mind:

1. I’m quite confident that my dog (a rescue dog, half-chow and half lab) would risk his life to save mine. I’m not nearly so confident about my ginger cat.

2. If I were confronted with the option of having either my cat or my dog grow to an enormous size (say, the size of a bengal tiger in the case of the cat, the proportions of a grizzly bear in the case of my dog), I would unhesitatingly pick my dog.I would feel quite safe around my dog if he were grizzly bear sized. If my cat, on the other hand, were the size of a tiger….that would be terrifying.

I like the changes that are happening in America.

Which is another way of saying that you don’t like America, dear boy.

I like America.

Yet you want to see it change beyond all recognition….

I especially like California.

Ah, the word “like” again. So lukewarm.In my case, California is my home. My feelings for her go far beyond something as frigid as “like.”

I like Korea too. I travel often enough between the two so don’t feel a great longing to move there.

Why not? Fewer Americans. More people like you.

Don’t call me boy

I can’t help it, dear boy. Your comments are so….juvenile.

and don’t linkfest me to death.

Merely trying to educate you….

I don’t read your massiive copy and paste stuff either.

But it’s for your own good….

If you love creativity in white people so much, show some creativity in your thinking too.

I’m afraid that I am more of an attendant to greatness, dear boy. If one cannot be creative, one can, at least, spread wide the creativity of others.

True, Jews are over-represented among leftists. But, despite the fact that some leftist Jews support reverse discrimination, most Jews, even Jews who are registered Democrats, oppose it, though they vote for the Donkey Party. You’ll also find Jews behind the intellectual foundations to OPPOSE reverse discrimination. There are lots of intellectual Jews on the Right. It’s not Jews per se, but leftists of every race, religion, and ethnicity who support reverse discrimination. And, the U.S. Supreme Court has six Gentiles. But you’re skirting my point: the U.S. is NOT an ethnostate, it’s a state formed on the basis of a political ideal, and that political ideal of individual liberty has been perverted and betrayed. So, please explain why someone who is being subject to discrimination sanctioned by a government should be loyal to that discriminatory government? I wouldn’t blame U.S. citizens of any European ethnicity for being more loyal to their European homeland than to the anti-white U.S. government, and I certainly won’t blame people of Hebrew ethnicity for being more loyal to Israel than to the U.S. government.

If Brooks was merely motivated by aspirations to “high status”, why would he be a neocon rather than an outright liberal?

Furthermore, what is “high status” is not some impartial thing imposed by the cosmos or something. What is considered “high status” is determined by people, people who are “high status” themselves and who have influence over the shaping of a culture’s definition of “high status”. And it turns out that Brooks and people like him and his co-ethnics have a preponderant influence over what is considered “high status”.

Leave poor Chomsky alone!

The guy is really an old time Marxist, and, while there’s a whole lot of bad about that, there’s a lot of good when it comes to displaying some better perspective on many issues.

He’s not all gung-ho on Identity politics the way today’s so-called progressives are. He’s a very severe critic of Israel. He sees the banker/elite types, and the military forces and mentalities they consort with, as the real problem. I find his arguments interesting and far less involved in pure smear attacks than in the vast majority of political commentary. He’s clear enough that he can be found out.

It’s a bit strange, but I find a lot more to agree with in Chomsky, and in someone who is supposed in the larger world to be a polar opposite, Pat Buchanan, than I do in “mainstream” pundits.

Even Chomsky’s position on race and IQ is a fairly honest and nuanced one. As I recollect, he basically thinks that such issues shouldn’t be pursued by scientists because they could come to conclusions that would encourage racism. But, unlike virtually all other lefties who talk about this, he doesn’t swear up and down that scientists already “know” that there can’t be any connection between race and IQ, or that IQ isn’t real, or isn’t based on genetics, or that race isn’t real. One gets the strong sense that he wishes people wouldn’t pursue the race/IQ issue precisely because he believes there’s a real possibility that the connection exists.

And check out the allied behavior in general at Monte Casino with particular attention to the large number of rapes and murders committed by French Colonial Senegalese troops.

Already done.

The German retreat up the Italian peninsula was a masterly campaign. The Germans out-generaled and out-fought the allies until the end of this epic struggle and in general behaved more like professional soldiers than did their foes.

Let’s not get overly sentimental about the Germans in WWII. Their record is stained with countless atrocities:

Stalingrad, USSR (German air raid: 23 Aug 1942): 40 000
Edwin Hoyt, 199 Days: the battle for Stalingrad (1993): 40,000 civilians k. in German air raid.
Anthony Beevor, Stalingrad: the fateful Siege: 1942-1943: 40,000
Richard Overy, Russia’s War (1997): same

http://necrometrics.com/battles.htm#SgradAR

Babi Yar, near Kiev, USSR (massacre of Jews by Germans: Sept. 1941): 33 000
PBS Nova: 34,000
Gilbert: 33,771 k. in 3 days
Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War: 33,771 according to German records
Michael Hamm, Kiev: 33,000 (29-30 Sept.)
Richard Overy, Russia’s War (1997): >30,000 (29-30 Sept.)
US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Historical Atlas of the Holocaust: 33,000 in first two days

http://necrometrics.com/battles.htm#SgradAR

Rumbula Forest, outside Riga, Latvia (massacre of Jews by Germans: Nov-Dec 1941): 27 000
PBS Nova: 27,000 victims
Historical Atlas of the Holocaust: 28,000 k. in 1st wave, Nov-Dec.

http://necrometrics.com/battles.htm#SgradAR

Leningrad, USSR (urban siege: 8 Sept. 1941-27 Jan. 1944) 641 000
David Glantz, The Siege of Leningrad 1941-44: 900 Days of Terror: 641,000 Soviet civilians died in siege; one million dead in siege and evacuation.
Richard Overy, Russia’s War (1997): a million civilians unaccounted for. Officially 632,253 died in siege.

http://necrometrics.com/battles.htm#SgradAR

Warsaw, Poland (urban uprising: 1 Aug.-2 Oct. 1944): 200 000 [make link]
Gilbert, History of the Twentieth Century: 200,000 Poles, mostly civilians
Spartacus: 18,000 insurgents + 150,000 civilians k. [http://necrometrics.com/battles.htm#SgradAR

The brutal treatment of Soviet POWs:

It is estimated that at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody, out of 5.7 million. This figure represents a total of 57% of all Soviet POWs and may be contrasted with only 8,300 out of 231,000 British and U.S. prisoners, or 3.6%. Some estimates range as high as 5 million dead, including those killed immediately after surrendering (an indeterminate, although certainly very large number).[6][7] About 5% of the Soviet prisoners who died were of Jewish ethnicity.[8]

The most deaths took place between June 1941 and January 1942, when the Germans killed an estimated 2.8 million Soviet POWs primarily through starvation,[9] exposure, and summary execution, in what has been called, along with the Rwandan Genocide, an instance of “the most concentrated mass killing in human history (…) eclipsing the most exterminatory months of the Jewish Holocaust”.[10] By September 1941, the mortality rate among Soviet POWs was in the order of 1% per day.[7] According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), by the winter of 1941, “starvation and disease resulted in mass death of unimaginable proportions”.[11] This deliberate starvation, leading many desperate prisoners to resort to acts of cannibalism,[10] was Nazi policy in spite of food being available,[12] in accordance to the Hunger Plan developed by the Reich Minister of Food Herbert Backe.[13] For the Germans, Soviet POWs were expendable: they consumed calories needed by others and, unlike Western POWs, were considered to be subhuman.[14]

And that’s without even getting into the Death Camps….

By all means, never forget the…

There goes another of your Last In, First Approved comments again, Sy.

Clean living?

I’ve never heard of such behavior on the Western front but maybe I don’t know my WWII history well enough.

Can’t vouch for it, but here’s something:

http://archive.org/stream/LoompanicsGoldenRecords/Golden_Records_djvu.txt

As the batfle of the Bulge took shape, many soldiers
found their attitudes becoming more mercenary than
patriotic and decided to go for the gusto. By the time
Benny was bantering with Ingrid Bergman in front of
wolf-whistling GIs at the rear, American troops were
busy looting the German city of Jena where the famous
Zeiss company made the best cameras in the world.
While Patton’s tanks ran out of gas fighting at the Sieg-
fiied line, US soldiers had clogged the entire Champs-
Elysees in Paris, turning the famous boulevard into a
veritable bazaar of stolen and looted clothing, food, cig-
arettes — and as much gasoline as you wanted. One
thousand gallons of gasoline were stolen every day in
Paris alone. A year after the war, $10,000 worth of
army goods were still being stolen every day from a
single Quartermaster’s Depot in Ludwigsburg .

Even before the massive German counter offensive
that began slaughtering American GIs in great swipes of
artillery (companies in the Huertgen were taking 70%
losses) there were already 15,000 soldiers who had gone
over the hump. They had deserted in the face of the
enemy and couldn’t care less. To support themselves
they lived off the fat of the land, ripping off the Army.

In France and Belgium, bands of American deserters hi-
jacked trains and carted away boxcars of suppUes. They
posed as officers, gained access to airfields and stole silk
parachutes (worth quite a lot as material for ladies’
dresses) by the truckload. They stole and sold jeeps,
tanks, halftracks… one group in France managed to steal
a whole train fiill of soap and cigarettes. Another group
of bandits in the French zone of Germany ripped off a
train of 13 wagons and a locomotive, drove it to the
American sector where it was loaded with potatoes
before driving it back to the French sector. And in
Naples, a U.S. Liberty ship and its cargo disappeared
from the harbor only a few days after arriving from
America.

By war’s end a thick, tan-colored directory of
“Continental AWOLs” listed as many as 50,000 men,
each with a string of asterisks beside his name to show
how many months he had been gone. These were not
guys who had gotten drunk one night and lost their
regiment; they weren’t soldiers missing in action. These
were guys who had decided to take their chances as
fugitives in war-torn Europe. More than two divisions
of soldiers were AWOL on the continent and support-
ing themselves by crime.

But the deserters represented something greater than
two divisions — if one considers who did the deserting.
Officers and rear echelon troops had little reason to run
away — their life was pretty good. Even a hundred
miles from the front officers were quaffing beer in
Clervaux (a “recreation center” in Luxemburg) and en-
listed men were chasing the local girls, going fishing,
going to the movies. They had little reason to desert. It
was the combat soldiers, the business end of a division,
who went AWOL.

Israel is both an American ally and an incubator of traditional ethnic nationalism. If it dissapears what’s left?

yes truly who will stand up for ethnic nationalism but for the Jews lol

oh whiskey never change

I can’t help it, dear boy. Your comments are so….juvenile.

==========

LOL. Yes, it’s true. I attribute this partly to my looks. I’m 50+ but could pass for 40. So I get talked to like that. I’ve always looked about 10-15 years younger than actual age.

Let me be more precise. It’s not a changing America, it’s a changed America that is still changing. It’s the changed America, ie, the America that has changed that I like.

And who can’t love California? It’s spectacular in everyway. It’s sad that whites are fleeing it.
But no one is forcing them to leave.

As a side note, Jane Hughes Brookes and Mrs. Rahm, while probably not followers of Christ in any way in their youth, are apostates who have publicly renounced Jesus Christ- I hope their hubbies are worth it.

Here’s IHR quoting mainstream historians on the Soviet POW question:

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/Teplyakov.html

A major reason for this was the unusual nature of the war on the eastern front, particularly during the first year — June 1941-June 1942 — when vastly greater numbers of prisoners fell into German hands than could possibly be accommodated adequately. However, and as Russian journalist Teplyakov explains in the following article, much of the blame for the terrible fate of the Soviet soldiers in German captivity was due to the inflexibly cruel policy of Soviet dictator Stalin.

During the war, the Germans made repeated attempts through neutral countries and the International Committee of the Red Cross to reach mutual agreement on the treatment of prisoners by Germany and the USSR. As British historian Robert Conquest explains in his book Stalin: Breaker of Nations, the Soviets adamantly refused to cooperate:

“When the Germans approached the Soviets, through Sweden, to negotiate observance of the provisions of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, Stalin refused. The Soviet soldiers in German hands were thus unprotected even in theory. Millions of them died in captivity, through malnutrition or maltreatment. If Stalin had adhered to the convention (to which the USSR had not been a party) would the Germans have behaved better? To judge by their treatment of other ‘Slav submen’ POWs (like the Poles, even surrendering after the [1944] Warsaw Rising), the answer seems to be yes. (Stalin’s own behavior to [Polish] prisoners captured by the Red Army had already been demonstrated at Katyn and elsewhere [where they were shot].”

Another historian, Nikolai Tolstoy, affirms in The Secret Betrayal:

“Hitler himself urged Red Cross inspection of [German] camps [holding Soviet prisoners of war]. But an appeal to Stalin for prisoners’ postal services received a reply that clinched the matter: ‘There are no Soviet prisoners of war. The Soviet soldier fights on till death. If he chooses to become a prisoner, he is automatically excluded from the Russian community. We are not interested in a postal service only for Germans’.”

Given this situation, the German leaders resolved to treat Soviet prisoners no better than the Soviet leaders were treating the German soldiers they held. As can be imagined, Soviet treatment of German prisoners was harsh. Of an estimated three million German soldiers who fell into Soviet hands, more than two million perished in captivity. Of the 91,000 German troops captured in the Battle of Stalingrad, fewer than 6,000 ever returned to Germany.

Steve Brooks son serving in the IDF is a good thing. Its like Joe Kennedy Jr. flying for the RAF in 1940.

Except that it’s not…..

Serving in the IDF is a rejection of trans national globalism Islam a religion of peace, gkobal warming all that stuff.

Global warming, too huh?

Israel is both an American ally and an incubator of traditional ethnic nationalism.

Well, an incubator of ethnic nationalism within Israel. Definitely not in the US or Europe.

But many more than 4% are coded as Jewish despite being only one-quarter or one-half Jewish, as per the law of return. Many would not have identified as Jewish until it became advantageous to do so as it offered a first world refuge from 90s Russia.

LOL. Yes, it’s true. I attribute this partly to my looks. I’m 50+ but could pass for 40. So I get talked to like that. I’ve always looked about 10-15 years younger than actual age.

MMM, you seem to operate under the misapprehension that we can see you, dear boy. No, it’s the quality of your posts. They have a certain twelve year old odor…

Let me be more precise. It’s not a changing America, it’s a changed America that is still changing. It’s the changed America, ie, the America that has changed that I like.

which is to say the America that is no longer America…

And who can’t love California?

People who are not Californians?

It’s spectacular in everyway.

And we differ once again, dear boy. I do not love California for its beauties; I love California because it is my home.

It’s sad that whites are fleeing it.

Well, not sad for you dear boy. Now you don’t have to be around White people with their evil Euclidean logic….

But no one is forcing them to leave.

Such naivete…..

Can’t vouch for it, but here’s something:

MMM, looks more like nothing to me.

“dialysis soon ”

Enjoy.

Our host said: Brooks’ wife not only converted but changed her first name from Jane to Sarah.

Hunsdon said: That’s kind of creepy.

Not really. Jane is not a Biblical name, whereas Sarah is.

Conversion frequently entails some degree of change in nomenclature.Cf Malcolm X , who became El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz after he embraced normative Islam. If memory serves, didn’t Catholic converts have to, at least at one time, adopt the name of a Saint as their own?Assuming, of course, that their original name was not shared with a Saint.

FWIW, Bill Kristol’s son joined the U.S. Marines.

Why does Bryan Caplan remind me of Jordan Belfort?

The amazing thing about Belfort is he rationalized everything he did as helping out the underdog, the little guy. It was about ‘outsiders’ like him taking on the privileged establishment. He saw himself as helping the schmucks–his loser friends–break into Wall Street too. Never mind he had no respect for rules and ethics. He knew himself to be a crook but, at the same time, felt entirely justified in what he did because he saw his enterprise as being for the ‘regular guy’ who should also have a stake in the system.

I see the same thing in Caplan. Sure, he talks about principles, higher values, helping out humanity around the world. But if he really cares so much about humanity, why doesn’t he go to some poor country and build water wells for them?
By any practical measure, his stupid ‘libertarian’ ideas will help no one but one particular group economically and politically.

And I don’t wanna buy his pen.

Read the statute. To be defined as a Jew, you have to have a Jewish mother or convert to Judaism (and to be valid in Israel, I believe that requires a conversion to Orthodoxy). There is a franchise for first and second degree relatives of Jews to immigrate, but the statute specifies that only people who meet the definition of Jew are to be registered as Jews. It’s there in black letters. (And, while we are at it, the Soviet-origin population in toto amounts to only 20% of the non-Arab population of Israel. The notion that there is consequential demographic padding going on in Israel is not true).

The incredible centrality of Jews and Jewish issues and Isreal seems to be getting more and more pronounced. Why is this tiny group of people dominating everything – I concede the average IQ is higher but still, it’s really weird.

America used to draw it’s leaders from the military (The US military)…now days the ruling class is drawn from a little clique of elite Jews and a few of their chums.

America should get back to drawing more of its political class from its military. Military experience of course isn’t everything, but at least it can show a track record of organizational competence and basic loyalty.

What a despicable bunch of pissants you all are. Crystalline exhibition of “who-whom” in action, and you’re each thrilled with your witty repartee.

To the Jews: “This is how those fond of abstract reasoning can destroy the ethical foundations of a society without anyone’s noticing it. They throw up for debate that which no one before ever thought about debating. They take the collective visceral code that has bound parents to grandchildren from time immemorial, in every culture known to man, and make of it a topic for fashionable intellectual chatter.”

Bill Kristol’s son was a Marine Corps captain (infantry, not JAG or anything) and served a tour of duty in Afghanistan. But how many members of the gentile elite join the military?

The confirmation name does not appear on legal documents. And everyone forgets it but your family of origin. What’s odd is that the Hebrew equivalent of “Jane” is “Yochana”, which can be Anglicized to “Johanna”. “Sarah” is a different name entirely.

I got bad news for you Syon. Maybe you should go back to the long copy and paste form.
You aren’t managing these short replies very well.

You can’t read between the lines and have no ability to see another’s mental world. Copy and paste, copy and paste. Shields up!

Definitely Moroccan. I’d heard about these rapes in Italy by “allied” soldiers for years but not until I saw the movie Two Women did I realise they were non-Europeans, though I probably should’ve guessed it. The movie was made by left wing hero Vittorio de Sica and Sophia Loren won virtually every best actress award from Cannes to the Oscars. But that was in 1960. Back then mass rapes during WW2 by the Red Army would’ve been much more sensitive and thus less likely to be talked about by lefties than those committed by non-whites fighting for a capitalist allied country.

Again, no. There is only one definition of Jew, and it applies in all circumstances. The law currently allows 1st and 2d degree relatives of Jews to immigrate to Israel. These people are not defined as Jews under Israeli law unless they convert. Native Jews who have converted to Christianity are also not Jews under Israeli law and can only immigrate to Israel as 1st or 2d degree relations of Jews.

Let Proverbs explain the phenomenon:
“As a dog returns to his vomit, so the fool returns to his folly.”

Proverbs 26:11

William Kristol is well-connected but not elite. He presides over a magazine with a small staff which subsists in the philanthropic sector.

If we’re objective, I think we have to acknowledge that there’s some tribalism on both sides of the Ferguson situation. Yes, many blacks, egged on by the MSM, ignored Brown’s bad behavior at the convenience store and assumed that he was wrongfully gunned down. But it’s also true that many whites assume that Wilson had a legitimate reason to shoot Brown, when the truth is that none of us knows exactly what happened there. You don’t think tribalism plays some part there?

Congratulations Steve, did you hit a nerve buy questioning the loyalty of Jews! This is a time-honored question and tradition. But I will digress. I am very close to a number of recent immigrants from a myriad places such as Iraq, Mexico, and San Salvador. (Yes, most of them are illegal.) They love the United States because, as they say. “I feel safe …!” A comment by one of them opened by eyes: “What I love about the United States is that everyone is subject to the penalty of law in this country. If you speed or drink-while-driving, you pay the price. It doesn’t matter who you are. In my country, you can kill someone and pay the police $300 and everything goes away.” Can we meet these expectations … or, are we starting to resemble the evil from which they were fleeing?

Opposes or “opposes”? I recall Kristol denouncing the anti-immigrant wing as “yahoos”. And back in 2012 he was very soft on Barry’s immigration manuevers:

KRISTOL: I think its a sensible policy. I think it would be much better if that were the law of the land, and I think the president’s pushing the edges of prosecutorial discretion in saying we’re not going to enforce a law in order to leave these people in the country. But I think it’s the right thing to do, actually.

And back in 2006 he said this:

The American people are worried about immigration. In a Pew Survey released last week, 52 percent of Americans saw immigration as a burden, while 41 percent said it strengthened the country; 53 percent support sending illegals home, while 40 percent endorsed a path to citizenship. Given the hoopla about illegal immigration, this division is in fact surprisingly close. In any case, it means GOP senators and congressmen–and presidents–have plenty of room to show leadership and to resist demagoguery. Most Republican officeholders know that the political–and moral–cost of turning the GOP into an anti-immigration, Know Nothing party would be very great. It could easily dash Republican hopes of becoming a long-term governing party. How many Republicans will have the courage to stand up and prevent the yahoos from driving the party off a cliff?

Sound like a hawk on immigration to you? Mickey Kaus would not let this guy out of his sight and neither do I. Kristol is an oily one.

I am very close to a number of recent immigrants from a myriad places such as Iraq, Mexico, and San Salvador. (Yes, most of them are illegal.) They love the United States because, as they say. “I feel safe …!” A comment by one of them opened by eyes: “What I love about the United States is that everyone is subject to the penalty of law in this country

Except, of course, law-breaking illegals like them.

And I admire Kristol for not being both an Invade the World and an Invite the World guy.

Since when? Lawrence Auster: Kristol’s repulsive arrogance on illegal immigration

“The incredible centrality of Jews and Jewish issues and Isreal seems to be getting more and more pronounced. Why is this tiny group of people dominating everything – I concede the average IQ is higher but still, it’s really weird.

America used to draw it’s leaders from the military (The US military)…now days the ruling class is drawn from a little clique of elite Jews and a few of their chums.

America should get back to drawing more of its political class from its military. Military experience of course isn’t everything, but at least it can show a track record of organizational competence and basic loyalt”

I think a lot of it has to do with the financialization of the US economy. I am old enough to remember the 70′s at least and things used to be different. Jews have alway been famous for being intelligent, and over represented in field like Medicine, Law, and the Sciences (though it sure seems to me that younger Jews have abandoned the Sciences and technical fields).

They did quite well financially. But no where near the freakish money they make now. No one made this kind of concentrated money for most of American history. Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but this seems unprecedented, even compared to the Gilded Age and Robber Barons.

My personal take on it, is that a lot of it is due to having such a concentration of Jews in New York, the home of Wall Steet. If you want to network and get into a field with mega compensation, or get financing for your dumb ass internet company (serious money stage with going public), this is the best place to network.

And as far the rest of it goes? Well politics goes where the money is. If the people who are going to in the end pay for your speaking fees when you leave office, finance your campaigns, and not savage you in the press when you are in office or running for it, then you better give them what they want.

Those talking head gigs, book advances, and Carlisle Group positions just don’t come if you don’t play ball.

But as an outsider to this whole thing, it sure seems to me the whole thing is precarious. There are new immigrant groups in numbers comparable to Jews. Some even more clannish and ethnocentric. Some of them even have potential cards to play (Chinese ethnics and dealing with China) that might be very potent in years to come.

They aren’t consulting with me before they do things, but like I said as an outsider it sure seems to me it is a house of cards. There are some new kids in town that think the same way: white collar or nothing, and team up to win. It is easy for me to imagine a situation where Indians and Chinese increase massively in numbers on Wall Street and in the medical profession. Not like there would be barrier to entry, but a lot of competition for too few gigs.

I can’t see the Chinese ever being a big noise in law. Indians on the other hand…

Syon,

I agree with you on some things and disagree with others, but can you please cut down on the dear boy creepiness? It’s weird in me out.

The confirmation name does not appear on legal documents. And everyone forgets it but your family of origin.

That’s interesting. I know a Chinese guy who converted to Roman Catholicism. His English name had been Clive (after Clive Owen, I think) but after converting he used his confirmation name (David) as his legal name.

What’s odd is that the Hebrew equivalent of “Jane” is “Yochana”, which can be Anglicized to “Johanna”.

Or Joan/Joanna.

“Sarah” is a different name entirely.

Does Yochana appear in the Bible, though? I don’t think that it does. Perhaps she wanted to have a name that was actually in the Bible, and merely Hebraic.

Having visited Israel, including the Golan, Judea and Samaria, I really appreciate the IDF soldiers. Really good young people who protected us from thugs on several occasions. So David Brooks’ son went to the Middle East to fight for the good guys. Good for him. And for all of us.

Most Beltway mags and think tanks and policy people in general are funded by “philanthropy”.

America used to draw it’s leaders from the military (The US military)…

Bit of an exaggeration. Some of the top figures in American political life have been drawn from the military (Washington, Grant, Eisenhower) but many more have either had no military service (FDR, Wilson, Jefferson, JQ Adams, etc) or only served briefly, their careers being built more on their civilian accomplishments (Nixon, LBJ, Lincoln, etc).

“As to getting weapons from the US government, that is a burden not an ally. Even to the point at several times of Israel getting weapons and supplies which were earmarked for US troops on the front lines.”

And even to the point of *selling* them (jet aircraft I’m thinking of particularly) to our not-friends the Chinese. –Even over the protests of the President.

The confirmation name does not appear on legal documents. And everyone forgets it but your family of origin.

That’s interesting. I know a Chinese guy who converted to Roman Catholicism. His English name had been Clive (after Clive Owen, I think) but after converting he used his confirmation name (David) as his legal name.

What’s odd is that the Hebrew equivalent of “Jane” is “Yochana”, which can be Anglicized to “Johanna”.

Or Joan/Joanna.

“Sarah” is a different name entirely.

Does Yochana appear in the Bible, though? I don’t think that it does. Perhaps she wanted to have a name that was not merely Hebraic but was actually in the Bible.

I believe an American citizen who joins a foreign military should lose citizenship. Immediately and permanently, for him and his minor children.

I also do not believe in dual citizenship. We should have a public database of dual citizens who are government employees or contractors.
Dual citizenship equals dual loyalty at best. For some dual citizens, dual loyalty would be an improvement.