Blaming America First

I'm all for attacking Rudy Giuliani's approach to foreign policy, but I'm not sure I'm ready to join David Klinghoffer in the view that the problem with Giuliani is his failure to recognize that abortion and gay marriage are what's going to let the terrorists destroy America:

In the run-up to this tragedy, was he out banging the drum for a tough anti-Babylonian stance, sponsoring a “Babylo-Fascist Awareness Week” a-la-David Horowitz? No. On the contrary, he was accused of treason by the war party among his fellow Jews. He warned that, in the context of Israel’s corrupt moral culture, it was useless to resist Babylon. [...]

If you are not a believer, it should still be possible to appreciate the accumulated wisdom of three thousand years as found in the pages of Scripture; men who faced outside enemies far more dangerous than Islamic terror, concluded that the real peril came from within.

I appreciate the effort to put a sense of perspective around the Islamoscaryboogiefascist menace, but this particular branch of the blame America first crowd doesn't really make very much sense. I mean, surely there are more Godless countries out there than the United States; how come the Lord wasn't inflicting his wrath on idolatrous Denmark?

Comments

Denmark doesn't fit into God's plan. Sheesh, don't you know anything Matt? God's plan involves America and Israel. Denmark will go to the devil in good time. Forgetaboutit.

Posted by rapier | November 1, 2007 7:40 PM

Oh come on. Church attendance here is 2% of the population a week. We're a very god fearing people.

Posted by Mike in Denmark | November 1, 2007 7:50 PM

This is not the first time Mr. Klingoffer has written so offensively. Something is deeply wrong with his worldview. To wit, this piece, in which among other things he raises the possibility that God chose to inflict the Holocaust on the Jews as punishment for Jewish sins. A subsequent exchange appears here.

Posted by pahawa | November 1, 2007 7:53 PM

Holy delirium, Batman! This guy has a good pusher...

Posted by Sirkowski | November 1, 2007 7:56 PM

Man, does that excerpt make absolutely no sense in the context of Matt's intro to it.

Could I click the link and probably have the lack of sense resolved? Yeah. But that would require me to read Klinghoffer's screed, and life is way, waaaaay the hell too short for that.

A little more context, please, Matt.

Posted by urbino | November 1, 2007 9:45 PM

I suppose now that Falwell's dead, someone has to pick up the torch of pinning 9/11 on homosexuals and abortionists. This Klinghoffer fellow is crazy enough to think that even nonbelievers must respect his rather obvious, transcendent sanity.

"If you are not a believer, it should still be possible to appreciate the accumulated wisdom of three thousand years as found in the pages of Scripture; men who faced outside enemies far more dangerous than Islamic terror, concluded that the real peril came from within."

Nonsense. Scripture is written once, and so it remains for all time. It accumulates no wisdom whatsoever.

Posted by Jalmari | November 1, 2007 9:46 PM

rapier is correct. From the Lord's perspective, Denmark is the kid who lives down the street who runs a whorehouse out of his parents' basement: deplorable, but not His concern. America is the beloved eldest son who took the car out for a spin without asking. If coldcocking us with a 2x4 seems like an unduly harsh punishment, it bears remembering the the Lord loves us, and He has Plans for us, and He's not about to let us throw our future away (like Denmark has).

Posted by Quarterican | November 1, 2007 9:46 PM

He's not about to let us throw our future away

Really? 'Cause the last 6 years feels like that's exactly what he's about to do.

Posted by urbino | November 1, 2007 9:59 PM

Urbino: Klinghoffer is referring to the prophet Jeremiah and his activities before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

Posted by James Kabala | November 1, 2007 10:21 PM

Ahhh. Thank you! I was having the devil of a time trying to figure out how Giuliani could be the antecedent of that Jewish "he."

BTW, regarding this:

men who faced outside enemies far more dangerous than Islamic terror, concluded that the real peril came from within.

One need not go to scripture for examples. America's founders reached the same conclusion. Klinghoffer's party seems not to agree with them.

Posted by urbino | November 1, 2007 10:27 PM

Not only does Scripture not accumulate wisdom, it loses it since it's been rewritten a thousand times by people with agendas.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 1, 2007 11:35 PM

rapier is so right! We must have gone to the same prayermeeting. God has a huge room in heaven in the center of which is a lifesized map of america, and he assembles all the angels every day for consultation about what to do with the masturbators, sodomists and preverts that are walking the streets of the new Jerusalem. While the lifesized map of Denmark dates for 1810, and is in the heavenly basement, along with the scraps of paper containing all that pussy stuff about loving your neighbor that the Son liked to spout. We love the son and all, but he just never was the god his daddy was.

Posted by roger | November 1, 2007 11:41 PM

Scripture is written once, and so it remains for all time.

Not only does Scripture not accumulate wisdom, it loses it since it's been rewritten a thousand times...

Can you guys take this offline and let us know when you reach a number you agree on? Thanks.

Posted by urbino | November 1, 2007 11:44 PM

Denmark has already been punished by being small. Had it resisted the temptation of faggotry, its empire today would still be mighty -- just as Britain was mighty until its lads started all that public-school hanky-panky, and as America was mighty until man-on-man tomfoolery in Haight-Ashbury led us to lose Vietnam. Denmark was laid low far earlier by all those gay Vikings raping Irish monks.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 2, 2007 12:19 AM

Erik the Dreamy and Gayowulf, for example.

Posted by urbino | November 2, 2007 12:39 AM

It's always pretty amusing listening to crazy people denounce the (contrasting) craziness of other crazy people...

How can I really criticize them?---They're all correct!

Posted by RKU | November 2, 2007 12:57 AM

I think we danes have fooled the Lord by building a shitload of churches in the 11th and 12th century and had a ball during the reformation. Subsequently we have just eased away from our black protestant ways without anybody noticing.

God has bad humint. He relies far to much on aerial recon.

It's the only possible explanation.

/Limagolf

Posted by Limagolf | November 2, 2007 4:22 AM

Erik the Dreamy and Gayowulf, for example.

Not to mention the Norman Conquest. And frequent raiding parties to the Isle of Man.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 2, 2007 6:52 AM

How is the Bible "three thousand years of accumulated wisdom"? It was written 2000+ years ago and has scarcely been updated since. Where's the accumulation?

Posted by Bill | November 2, 2007 7:37 AM

Actually, although I doubt I agree with Klinghoffer on any domestic issue for which there is a contraversy, he is probably right that in the long run the U.S. faces more danger from domestic matters than foreign ones.

While he might point to abortion and Gay Marraige, I would be more likely to point to restrictions on civil liberties, and attacks on our system of checks and balances. But what Klinghoffer gets right (although he may pass over it quickly so as not to offend his National Review patrons) is that for centuries Islam has been weakening in relation to the west, so to make the threat from Islam out to be the equivalent of World War III is loony.

The idea that the Bible, rather than the development of societies from the Bible represents 3000 years of accumulated learning is of course nonsense as well.

Posted by Lon | November 2, 2007 9:31 AM

Lord unleashed His wrath upon Kopenhagen in the form of British bombardment ca. 1800. More recently His wrath is more on the economic side: the highest VAT in Europe, something like 25%. Extreme levels of sin require extreme measures of punishment.

The beaty of tax as punishment is that the suffering is universal rather than concentrated on several buildings or even a city.

If this is the favorite form of punishment, other ones are used only when the favorite one is not available, e.g. right after tax cuts, with no legislative chance for a tax increase.

Posted by piotr | November 2, 2007 9:43 AM

I think Klinghoffer must be in a bad mood because D'Sousa beat him to the punch with the book length version of this and grabbed up the wing-nut welfare slot, to get his paycheck he'll need to find another angle.

Posted by eric k | November 2, 2007 12:58 PM

WOW.

He gets it completely backward. The focus on internal morality distracted them from the kinds of reforms which might have actually helped them.

God was testing the Jews but he wasn't testing their faith or loyalty. He was testing their intelligence - he was testing to see how many times it would take getting their asses kicked until they finally grew up stopped wasting their time on dumbass phony prophets who wouldn't know god if he kicked them in the nuts and took responsibility for their own situation. It took 2 wars and the Roman enslavement of 1/3 of Israel before they finally put godless apocalyptic fools like Isaiah behind them and started actually thinking about their religion.

Posted by LIBARBARIAN | November 2, 2007 1:38 PM

Sure we pay 25% vat, have a 62% marginal tax on high incomes and 180% tax on cars - but we have the lowest gini index in the world, get alot of service for our money and have one of Europe's best economies. The minimum wage is 19$ so even at 50% taxation our lowest wage earners are making substantially more than your lowest wage earners. We don't have many super-rich people however, so by American standards we're a country of middle class - but I don't think that's a bad thing.
The second largest party in the country is actually running an anti-tax cut campaign in the current election campaign and polling at around 25% with even further left parties getting around 13%.
So it is actually possible to have immense levels of taxation without revolt as long as people feel they get their money's worth. And with free health care, free schools and universities, maternity leave for both parents, high unemployment benefits, nursing homes and home care for the elderly and the disabled, complete coverage of the extra costs if you have a handicapped child and so forth most Danes accept the high taxes.

Posted by Mike in Denmark | November 2, 2007 9:15 PM

Not to mention the Norman Conquest. And frequent raiding parties to the Isle of Man.

Ho-HO, squire! A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat, if you know what I mean.

Posted by urbino | November 3, 2007 12:59 AM

"It was written 2000+ years ago and has scarcely been updated since."

It's been "updated" continuously and made more wrong every time. OTOH, one could possibly claim that some of the earlier stuff has been translated better in the intervening centuries. However, that's not the stuff the laity get fed.

They get fed "King James" and the "New Age" Bible.

Which is about as relevant to the real religious texts as a Disney movie is to "The Passion" (not that "The Passion" had any reality to it, either.)

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 3, 2007 2:29 AM