The left's interesting view of rights

They believe they have the right to do anything they want to anyone they want, while no one else has any rights whatsoever.

I’ve been a bit under the weather this week thanks to the fact that my allergies are damnable and the pollen count in my general area is currently insane. So, a lot has happened since I last wrote, foremost among them being Israel’s retaliation for Iran’s genocidal drone and rocket assault last week.

I’m always reluctant to pass judgment on military and security issues because it simply isn’t my area of expertise and there are many people, such as Jonathan Spyer, who are far more qualified to do so than I.

I’ll say only that my instinctual reaction is that the retaliation was a bit weak. Since I favor using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, however, I may not be the sober-minded type to consult at such moments.

In any case, Israel’s security establishment, composed of men with immense knowledge and experience, thought this was the right move. Of course, Oct. 7 didn’t exactly fill me with confidence in their judgment, but we haven’t got much choice except to hope they’ve learned their lesson.

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I have inexplicably received another email from the antisemitic, pro-terrorist organization DAWN, this time on the Iran strike. It was rather telling.

The email quoted DAWN’s executive director Sarah Leah Whitson, a pro-Hamas hardline Palestinian nationalist. Before her tenure with DAWN, Whitson rather impressively succeeded in transforming the NGO Human Rights Watch into a pro-Hamas, hardline Palestinian nationalist organization.

She reacted to the strike by saying, “The US should avoid further entrapment in Israel’s efforts to drag U.S. military forces into a broader war with Iran.”

“Israel’s decision to attack Iran tonight despite pleas from its primary backers, the U.S. and Germany, not to escalate the conflict in the region is a clear indicator of how irresponsible and unaccountable the Israeli government is,” she ranted.

Obviously, there’s a lot to unpack here, such as the fact that it packs more lies and slanders into two sentences than one would have thought possible.

More important, however, is that it appears oblivious to how self-evidently racist it is. Charges that the Jews are trying to drag the US into war go back at least to the 1930s. At that time, isolationist groups and individuals like Charles Lindbergh spewed antisemitic conspiracy theories in an attempt to stop the US from resisting the Nazi regime that many of the isolationists openly supported.

The basic claim of malicious Jewish manipulation and power, of course, is much older than that and the horrendous results of it hardly need to be reiterated here.

What is remarkable is that Whitson, who is ostensibly an intelligent and educated person, appears not to be smart or knowledgeable enough to know that she is vomiting up classic antisemitic stereotypes. One imagines that, if she were, she might have attempted at least a modicum of obfuscation.

There is a darker possibility, of course, which is that Whitson knows exactly what she’s doing and doesn’t particularly care. If so, it tells you all you need to know about the remarkable impunity that progressive antisemites enjoy today, as well as the degree to which they are very well aware of it and willing to wield it as a weapon against the Jews.

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This impunity may, however, be ending. This week, Columbia University was hit by an orgy of Muslim and progressive antisemitism in the form of pro-Hamas mob events and actually took action against them. Remarkably, the NYPD did so as well, arresting many of the fifth columnists.

The real test, however, will be punishment. Namely, whether the students involved will be expelled, charged, and sentenced to prison time.

If they are, of course, the fifth columnists will erupt into oceans of tears. They are already claiming that their rights have been violated and if they are sentenced, the din will become unbearable. Let’s hope the authorities stay the course and enforce the law this time.

The fifth columnists’ epic blubbering, however, does point to something important, which is that the left in general has an interesting view of rights.

I was reminded of this by a very funny article in the New York Times (I don’t link to systemically racist publications) in which a suspended Columbia fifth columnist lamented that he is facing eviction from university grounds, “which would mean finding housing that would accept his emotional support rabbit.”

I admit that I had to be peeled off the floor after I read that. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the mentality of these people. This student is literally saying: Jews can’t complain about me wanting to kill them, but I can’t live without my emotional support rabbit. This doesn’t just defy parody, it exterminates it.

However, there is a deadly serious side to this. It demonstrates that leftists believe they have the right to do anything they want to anyone they want, while no one else has any rights whatsoever. If the fifth column and its allies want to kill you, that’s their right and no one has the right to stop or punish them.

Needless to say, this isn’t just morally absurd, it’s a direct threat to American society. No society can permit a group of people to behave as if it’s beyond good and evil with no accountability whatsoever. At least, not if that society wants to survive.

Ominously, it seems that the fifth columnists are well aware of this. There’s a reason they’ve started shouting “Death to America.” They intend to kill America and they believe America has no right to stop them. If for no other reason, their impunity must be ended immediately.

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On a last note regarding Iran, my column this week dealt with the question of why so many progressive leftists support the Islamic Republic.

I believe it is the result of a political mythology developed in the 1960s by intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and bequeathed to today’s progressives by that era’s New Left.

The mythology essentially holds that the U.S. is a rapacious imperial power run by a “U.S.-Nazi alliance” that can only be overcome by penitence and “de-Nazification.” Obviously, this is insane, but it remains powerful and potent on the left.

As a result of this, the left essentially sees Iran—which is, for all intents and purposes, a genuinely Nazi state—as doing nothing more than “resisting” the “U.S.-Nazi alliance.” Thus, anything and everything Iran does can be justified and no one has the right to resist it.

Read it all here.