The CAIR Bears

My January 12 post The New Kids in Town (http://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-new-kids-in-town.html), had the most hits of any of my blog posts ever, which tells me I was on to something.  In that post, I argued that the New Left had dropped all pretenses and had ceased using euphemisms and sleight of hand to advance their positions.  They were bold and blatant, putting their embrace of such positions as “any time anywhere” abortions, an open border, hostility toward the 2^nd Amendment, Islamism and advocation for straight up socialism on the table.

It turns out that I underestimated the hard turn that the New Left was taking.

Over the last couple of decades, the Democratic party decided that one of its core constituencies was no longer useful to them—white working class America.  Over time, the Democratic party paid less and less attention to the white working class.   In 2016, the New Left went a step further and actually turned openly hostile to it.  Barack Obama derided them as “bitterly clinging” to their guns and religion and suggested they were racist.  Hillary labeled them as Deplorables during her campaign and that statement probably cost her the election.

But now, the New Left has turned on another loyal constituent group--- Jewish Americans.  Jews have been pretty loyal to the Democratic party.  Democrats can usually count on 80% of the Jewish vote year in and year out, and count on some big donors like Lloyd Blankfein.  But the New Left has taken a big step.

I saw the BDS movement growing.  I saw the failure of Democrats to reject anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan (Bill Clinton appeared on stage with him at Aretha Franklin’s funeral).   I saw posters on the bulletin board at a local college with blatant and shocking anti-Semitic messages on them.  And in November, Marc Lamont Hill was fired from CNN for using language suggesting that Israel should be eliminated. Airbnb was sued for discriminating against Israel in the disputed West Bank settlements.

All the warning signs were there.

Finally, a couple of months ago, I sent this email to a liberal Jewish friend of mine:

“You may not realize this yet but  they just aren't that into you anymore.   You are no longer in the club.  The New Left has a hot new girlfriend.  Her name is Rashida.  So you might as well pull up a bar stool next to us Deplorables.”

But nothing really prepared me for what happened last week.  

What has happened is nothing short of a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party by the Sisters of Cerebus—Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.  And they are backed by none other than Linda Sarsour.  Linda Sarsour has been boasting that she influenced the House measure to condemn hatred.  Of this, I have no doubt.  Sarsour to Tlaib and Omar is like William F. Buckley was to Reagan.   Sarsour now has two seats in Congress via proxy.

Omar had unleashed a number of anti-Semitic statements since she took office, with language that is unmistakably anti-Semitic, not simply anti-Israeli, accusing Jewish Americans of having dual loyalties.  It was stunning to see the Democrats twist themselves into pretzels to defend and rationalize her.  James Clayburn said Omar’s experience was more painful than the descendants of Holocaust victims.   Nancy Pelosi claimed that she “did not believe she understood the full weight of her words.”  Rep. Jan Schakowsky wrote off Omar’s tropes because “she is from a different culture.”  The same crowd that hears dog whistles at every turn can’t seem to hear the foghorn blast of anti-Semitism.

Of course, Omar and her sidekick, Tlaib blamed the dust-up on a desire to squelch debate on policy toward Israel and the reflexive defense of Islamophobia. 

And in the end, Democrats could not bring themselves to condemn Omar, and instead opted for an all-inclusive condemnation of hate of several different kinds, including Islamophobia.

Just like that, Omar managed to turn a call for her removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee to a watered down resolution against all forms of hate.  Democrats turned Omar from perpetrator to a member of the victim class.   We can now expect to see the two CAIR Bears- Omar and Tlaib to raise the Islamophobic defense frequently to blunt criticism.

To defeat that defense, we need to distinguish between an Islamic and Islamism.

Writer Martin Amis put it very succinctly in his recent collection of essays, The Rub of Time,  in response to the question: Are you an Islamophobe?

“No, of course not.  What I am is an Islamismophobe.  Or better say an anti-Islamist, because a “phobia” is an irrational fear, and there is nothing irrational about fearing people who say they want to kill you….Anti-Islamism is not like anti-Semitism.  There is an empirical reason for it.”

Omar and Tlaib must be judged based on statements and actions that will determine whether they are Islamic or Islamist.  And that distinction is critical.

Based on their statements, their associations (Linda Sarsour), and the individuals that sing their praises (Hamas-linked CAIR, David Duke and Louis Farrakhan), the evidence is pointing to the latter.

If you were revulsed by the white supremacists in Charlottesville , wait until you get a load of the Islamist supremacists in the halls of Congress.