Semsem
07-07-2004, 09:47 AM
The New York Sun; Jul 6, 2004; Editorial & Opinion
Senator Kerry’s Europe Rabbi Aryeh Spero explains why French cowardice is un-American
Rabbi Spero is a radio talk show host on “Talking Sense with Rabbi Aryeh Spero” and president of Caucus for America.
On April 23, a 14-year old boy wearing a yarmulka came out of the Ourq subway station in Paris and was attacked by two Muslims.
While yelling at him “dirty Jew,” they knocked him down, beat him on the head, and broke his nose. The boy begged for help from the French passers-by — fellow citizens — but they simply walked away, did nothing.
Earlier this year, at the University Medical School of Saint-Antoine in Paris, four young Muslim men entered a lecture hall yelling “Death to the Jews.” They confronted a Jewish student and beat him to a pulp and, like vultures, picked his valuables and robbed him.
The lecturing professor said nothing while watching the attack and the entire class of French students remained silent while the thugs simply departed without a care. This, too, happened within the last few months.
The purpose of relating these stories is not to expose French anti-Semitism and the predatory mindset of French Muslims against Jews. It is to show how the French have become indifferent in their own society to brutality and unwilling to stop it.
No wonder, then, the French will neither support nor sacrifice to fight Islamic terrorism in Iraq, and Afghanistan when in even their own county,with incidents only feet away,they lack the moral courage to stop brutality.
Yet Senator Kerry, the Democrats, and the establishment press exhort us first to obtain permission from the French if a war against terrorism is to be deemed legitimate.
The indifference and cowardice that is displayed almost weekly by Frenchmen in their own streets is but a micro version of what they are proposing on a macro (global) level.
Although many nations are part of the coalition of the willing in our fight against terrorism, in the mind of Mr. Kerry and leading liberal opinion-makers, absent specific French endorsement, American enterprises lack not only legitimacy but also morality.
The danger inherent in the liberal aspiration is that they will remake America in the French image. If successful in reshaping our thinking and policies, Mr. Kerry and friends will have made us more like the French: indifferent, immoral, and cowardly. He will have succeeded in denuding us of that which makes us American: engagement, honor, heroism.
Though what has transpired on French streets reveals the mindset behind their foreign policy, the opposite is equally true. That is to say,the unwillingness these last two years by President Chirac to stand against world terrorism has taught his people how they should react on their Parisian streets when witnessing local Islamic brutality: Do nothing. A “leader” communicates by example.
What else can explain how in the spring in Paris, a 12-year-old Jewish girl coming out of Hebrew school was attacked by two men who, in public, held her down and slashed her, carving a swastika into her face with a boxcutter? They, too, walked away unchallenged. By now, they have observed the cowardice and indifference of French foreign policy.
While the John Kerrys of the world intone the routine “I’m uncomfortable” when hearing of such incidents, it still does not shake their belief that the French are still the standard-bearers of what constitutes “moral” foreign policy.
Even in New York City, liberal Jews who are “worried” by such incidents remain vocal in their demand that we need the French if what we do is to be assigned credence. Somehow, they don’t grasp the connection between how what is allowed in Paris is a corollary of France’s anti-war policy.
Obviously, the mores and mindset that allow the former produces the latter. Underneath the French lip service that is “concerned” by homegrown Islamic Jew-hatred and worldwide jihadist terrorism is an attitudinal reality that is willing to accept and live with it.
What is it that blinds American liberals to French sins? For East Coast liberals, appearing sophisticated, nuanced, worldly, and circulating among the charmant is all-important. In their mind, France and much of Europe represent this; America does not.
They identify with Parisians more than Virginians. To them, most Americans are cowboys, rednecks, unenlightened, parochial, simply not chic. In front of their European friends, they are embarrassed by Americanism and its ways.When with their co-thinkers in America, each tries to show the other how “continental” they truly are.
In their desire to appear to themselves and others as “worldly,” they ape France. It is an emotional need that seems to override almost everything else, including the common sense and historic dictates of what is necessary for domestic security and national defense. Truly, it is nothing less than insecurity, immaturity, a complex.
We, however, who value the defense of our country, must not allow their personal need to appear “European” stand in the way of what is best for America. Preparing the best soufflé is not a diploma for morality, courage, principle.
In the spring, in Germany, a law was passed allowing people to eat and carouse naked on benches in many public parks. Mr. Kerry and East Coast liberals repeatedly disparaged President Bush’s war on terrorism since the Germans did not give it their blessing.
Without question, there is a connection between immorality and indifference. A society that finds little distinction between those who wear clothes and those who parade without garb, between that which is obscene and that which is decent, has lost its capacity to differentiate between right and wrong, the sacred and degenerate, between good and evil. Indifference sets in when distinctions are blurred.
A society cannot be roused to fight a specific thing when nothing is outcast. Ultimately, everything is “allowed its place.” That is the definition of decadence.
Indeed, much of Europe has degenerated into decadence, trying to pass off self-indulgence as liberty. We saw that earlier in the century, during the Weimar Republic.
Yet liberals want America to take its cue from Germany as to what is right or wrong. For limp American liberals, indifference is a virtue if Europe declares it so.
History and psychology have shown that soon, as a salve, indifference to evil becomes endorsement of it. Refusal to do what is right leads to a need to despise what is right.
The idolization among liberals of the mores of Europeans is nothing new. For decades they have berated the American people for “not following the European example.”
Mr. Kerry is one of America’s loudest proponents of Europhilism. In fact, when asked by reporters to describe his wife, the former Mrs.Teresa Heinz of Pennsylvania, he gushed forth the best compliment his worldview could offer: “She’s so European.”
Senator Kerry’s Europe Rabbi Aryeh Spero explains why French cowardice is un-American
Rabbi Spero is a radio talk show host on “Talking Sense with Rabbi Aryeh Spero” and president of Caucus for America.
On April 23, a 14-year old boy wearing a yarmulka came out of the Ourq subway station in Paris and was attacked by two Muslims.
While yelling at him “dirty Jew,” they knocked him down, beat him on the head, and broke his nose. The boy begged for help from the French passers-by — fellow citizens — but they simply walked away, did nothing.
Earlier this year, at the University Medical School of Saint-Antoine in Paris, four young Muslim men entered a lecture hall yelling “Death to the Jews.” They confronted a Jewish student and beat him to a pulp and, like vultures, picked his valuables and robbed him.
The lecturing professor said nothing while watching the attack and the entire class of French students remained silent while the thugs simply departed without a care. This, too, happened within the last few months.
The purpose of relating these stories is not to expose French anti-Semitism and the predatory mindset of French Muslims against Jews. It is to show how the French have become indifferent in their own society to brutality and unwilling to stop it.
No wonder, then, the French will neither support nor sacrifice to fight Islamic terrorism in Iraq, and Afghanistan when in even their own county,with incidents only feet away,they lack the moral courage to stop brutality.
Yet Senator Kerry, the Democrats, and the establishment press exhort us first to obtain permission from the French if a war against terrorism is to be deemed legitimate.
The indifference and cowardice that is displayed almost weekly by Frenchmen in their own streets is but a micro version of what they are proposing on a macro (global) level.
Although many nations are part of the coalition of the willing in our fight against terrorism, in the mind of Mr. Kerry and leading liberal opinion-makers, absent specific French endorsement, American enterprises lack not only legitimacy but also morality.
The danger inherent in the liberal aspiration is that they will remake America in the French image. If successful in reshaping our thinking and policies, Mr. Kerry and friends will have made us more like the French: indifferent, immoral, and cowardly. He will have succeeded in denuding us of that which makes us American: engagement, honor, heroism.
Though what has transpired on French streets reveals the mindset behind their foreign policy, the opposite is equally true. That is to say,the unwillingness these last two years by President Chirac to stand against world terrorism has taught his people how they should react on their Parisian streets when witnessing local Islamic brutality: Do nothing. A “leader” communicates by example.
What else can explain how in the spring in Paris, a 12-year-old Jewish girl coming out of Hebrew school was attacked by two men who, in public, held her down and slashed her, carving a swastika into her face with a boxcutter? They, too, walked away unchallenged. By now, they have observed the cowardice and indifference of French foreign policy.
While the John Kerrys of the world intone the routine “I’m uncomfortable” when hearing of such incidents, it still does not shake their belief that the French are still the standard-bearers of what constitutes “moral” foreign policy.
Even in New York City, liberal Jews who are “worried” by such incidents remain vocal in their demand that we need the French if what we do is to be assigned credence. Somehow, they don’t grasp the connection between how what is allowed in Paris is a corollary of France’s anti-war policy.
Obviously, the mores and mindset that allow the former produces the latter. Underneath the French lip service that is “concerned” by homegrown Islamic Jew-hatred and worldwide jihadist terrorism is an attitudinal reality that is willing to accept and live with it.
What is it that blinds American liberals to French sins? For East Coast liberals, appearing sophisticated, nuanced, worldly, and circulating among the charmant is all-important. In their mind, France and much of Europe represent this; America does not.
They identify with Parisians more than Virginians. To them, most Americans are cowboys, rednecks, unenlightened, parochial, simply not chic. In front of their European friends, they are embarrassed by Americanism and its ways.When with their co-thinkers in America, each tries to show the other how “continental” they truly are.
In their desire to appear to themselves and others as “worldly,” they ape France. It is an emotional need that seems to override almost everything else, including the common sense and historic dictates of what is necessary for domestic security and national defense. Truly, it is nothing less than insecurity, immaturity, a complex.
We, however, who value the defense of our country, must not allow their personal need to appear “European” stand in the way of what is best for America. Preparing the best soufflé is not a diploma for morality, courage, principle.
In the spring, in Germany, a law was passed allowing people to eat and carouse naked on benches in many public parks. Mr. Kerry and East Coast liberals repeatedly disparaged President Bush’s war on terrorism since the Germans did not give it their blessing.
Without question, there is a connection between immorality and indifference. A society that finds little distinction between those who wear clothes and those who parade without garb, between that which is obscene and that which is decent, has lost its capacity to differentiate between right and wrong, the sacred and degenerate, between good and evil. Indifference sets in when distinctions are blurred.
A society cannot be roused to fight a specific thing when nothing is outcast. Ultimately, everything is “allowed its place.” That is the definition of decadence.
Indeed, much of Europe has degenerated into decadence, trying to pass off self-indulgence as liberty. We saw that earlier in the century, during the Weimar Republic.
Yet liberals want America to take its cue from Germany as to what is right or wrong. For limp American liberals, indifference is a virtue if Europe declares it so.
History and psychology have shown that soon, as a salve, indifference to evil becomes endorsement of it. Refusal to do what is right leads to a need to despise what is right.
The idolization among liberals of the mores of Europeans is nothing new. For decades they have berated the American people for “not following the European example.”
Mr. Kerry is one of America’s loudest proponents of Europhilism. In fact, when asked by reporters to describe his wife, the former Mrs.Teresa Heinz of Pennsylvania, he gushed forth the best compliment his worldview could offer: “She’s so European.”