I'm not one to brag, but I gave up my by-invitation front row seat because I'm a serious Jew, and the Sabbath is what has kept the Jews, more so even than the Jews have kept the Sabbath.
(SIGH)
(SIGH)
Having said that, and having watched the whole debate, I must admit that it made me say the words I never thought I would hear myself say: I am glad I didn't spend the night with Mark Steyn!!!!!
(CAVEAT: To be clear-only that night!)
But for serious and not for joking, I'm not sure my blood pressure could have withstood the entire evening in real time. I was screaming out loud watching it so much so much so that I was the recipient of multiple awkward glares and eye rolls from my own little nuclear family.
Starting from the beginning because it's a very good place to start:
The resolution was just plain lazy and stupid.
The Lazarus poem is utter crap, and it's not even crap that is legendary Canadian crap. It specifically pertains to America, and as Kathy Shaidle consistently reminds us, crappy poetry does not good immigration policy make.
I've been putting off writing up my thoughts because I'm still so disturbed about the smugness of the "pro" side of the debate. ( I even did several loads of laundry, cleaned for Passover and cleaned the kitchen to avoid actually doing this.)
I don't think I can handle watching it another time, so I'll just offer some thoughts based on notes I made while struggling through it last night and earlier today.
First of all, it is clear that the political left wants us to believe that the greatest threat to our democracy is not the ideology and adherents, or individuals who belong to a religion that clearly states that it wants to kill us but rather that the danger is that our democracy will collapse BECAUSE we do not want them to come in and kill us. You get that?
If we don't let these belligerent masses in to kill us, THEY WIN.
Just like Prime Minister Trudeau insists-when you kill your enemies, they win.
They have all these euphemisms for the terrorists, Simon Schama went to great pains to describe the jihadis as "salafists". All those "salafists" are the threat! What an idiot. It's clear that he has never read the Koran. These leftists also peddle the lie that most of the "migrants" want a peaceful life, just like we have in the West. But that is not actually true, because their idea of freedom is not the same as ours.
For most of them, "freedom" = the freedom to live under sharia law and sharia law cannot exist alongside the norms of Western Judeo-Christian culture (a concept that made Schama break out in hives pratcially screeching 'I'm a Jew, I'm a Jew'-and I would seriously love to hear him scream that out in Gaza City or Islamabad, or Mecca. It didn't work very well for Daniel Pearl). Sharia only wants first place and to dominate. It doesn't play second fiddle.
Mark Steyn asked the questions that no leftist is willing to answer: exactly what parts of Somali, Afghani or Iraqi "culture" should we, in the West, be so thrilled about incorporating into our society? Polygamy? Female genital mutilation? Attitudes toward gays? Attitudes toward free speech and assembly? Treating women like property and chattel?
Exactly what is so great about their culture that we should want to incorporate in our free lives?
CRICKETS.
The most outrageous part of the whole evening was how when Mark Steyn quoted perfectly sound facts about the rape of children by Muslim migrants in Europe, Louise Arbour-a woman who made a lot of noise about rape as a war crime in Africa, and her disgusting partner-in-crime Schama-got a big laugh from the audience when they alternately accused Steyn and Farage as having obsessions about sex and how amusing it was that Steyn and Farage are "new found" (I think that she meant 'born-again' but we are supposed to forgive her because QUEBEC). They even used the despicable term 'fulminating'-my what a big word for such stupid folks.
But that's what leftists do when confronted by facts-they try to kill the messenger, laugh it off, and pretend that it's not a real problem. HA HA HA CHILD RAPE! YOU ARE THE SEX FIEND FOR MENTIONING IT!
But that's what leftists do when confronted by facts-they try to kill the messenger, laugh it off, and pretend that it's not a real problem. HA HA HA CHILD RAPE! YOU ARE THE SEX FIEND FOR MENTIONING IT!
What a pair of disgusting, smug, evil humans they are.
Around the 40 minute Mark, and after 'confessing' that unlike the Muslim migrants, he wasn't into sex with 3-year old girls, Mark Steyn let them have it, pointing out that raping children is not funny, and that a lot of women were going to be 'yearning to breathe' free after the "culture" of the sick, misogynistic Islamic world takes root in the West. The Steyn-Farage team said "shame on you", but you cannot shame the shameless.
You know what, Ms. Arbour? Not that you care, but it's pretty hard to "breathe free" when, as a female, you are shoved into a head to toe black body bag. And it's hard to talk about these issues when your head is being separated from your neck or you are being stabbed to death, like Theo Van Gough found out.
Steyn pointed out that having the sun on one's skin, while female is a crime in Islamic cultures.
But that matters not to the smug political left. Facts are irrelevant.
Mr. Schama, who quite literally pranced around the stage during his presentation like a crippled diversity consultant on ecstasy, waving his hands madly while blabbering on about "Salafists", was particularly concerned at 47:36 that we not slander the Muslim religion.
Thanks for making your position clear, you idiot, pandering dhimmi.
Ms. Arbour said the real danger is "over securitizing" our countries. Yeah. That's the real problem. She made some comment about "blowing it up", out of proportion. Yup, we are definitely going to get blown up, but not 'out of proportion'-merely out of the stratosphere.
History repeats itself, but the spastic, imbecilic prancer Schama would not be able to comprehend that we on the right see parallels of the left pooh-poohing the infiltration of communists into the West, just as they pooh-pooh the infiltration of jihadists into our midst.
We will believe our own lying eyes (and the Venona documents, etc..) and NOT you, thank you very much.
We will believe our own lying eyes (and the Venona documents, etc..) and NOT you, thank you very much.
Farage made several attempts to decry the parallel sharia court system that exists in the UK, but of course the "pro" side couldn't really care less about that.
The left wants us to believe that the "con" prejudice against migrants is exactly the same as the prejudice against other waves of immigrants. And actually, that's probably the point at which one can cease having a conversation about the issue if one wishes to remain sane. Because anyone who thinks that Catholic and Jewish migrants can be legitimately compared to Muslim migrants needs their heads examined. It's the most odious of comparisons-typical of the left and they never hit rock-bottom.
These waves of migrations are not the same in any way, shape or form.
Similarly, anyone who thinks that the Muslim terrorists are "American" or "Canadian" or "French" or "Belgium", just because they hold a passport (like Ms. Arbour and Mr. Schama) is also in denial of the facts and has no interest in, or concept of what shared cultural values really mean, or any real intellectual understanding of or interest in the facts of sharia.
Schama talked about his 'naively humanistic optimism', and that is also what separates panty-waist liberal utopians from us believers in facts and reality. His "naive humanistic optimism' is not applicable to those who openly espouse an all-encompassing, tyrannical system of human behaviour that is sharia.
He is just as much of a danger to the West as the belligerent masses that he wishes to impose upon us.
These leftists refuse to accept that there is no reciprocal "naively humanistic optimism' FROM Islam TOWARD the West. There is no parallel movement, no parallel appreciation of our culture, no interest in such a thing and there never will be such a philosophical, religious or intellectual reciprocity.
It is not that our culture is, as Ms. Arbour put it, insufficiently confident that we cannot "handle" waves of migrants. It is that we are insufficiently confident to declare our cultural and yes, moral superiority to backwater, misogynistic Islamic cultures. But most important to her is that we "signal" (I believe she used that exact word) our virtue and supine position to our Islamic overlords.
Rather than declare that proudly, the "pro" side would prefer that we continue to debase ourselves, prostrate ourselves and spout useless twaddle about the "majority" of migrants wanting the same wonderful, safe, beautiful and plentiful lives that we enjoy in the West. That is simply not the case. That's an impossible fact for Ms. Merkel, Arbour, Mr. Schama et all to digest.
The other noteworthy part of the proceedings was how clear it was that nobody except those on the political right side of the spectrum cares a whit about the genocide of Christians in the Middle East. That is truly shameful. The left continues to invert and pervert history, insisting that that the Muslims are the "new" Jews.
Sadly, the jihadist Muslims in all their incarnations (and all the various names of all of their organizations) are the new Nazis of our time, they are the real inheritors of Nazi nihilism, Nazi antisemitism and Nazi Socialism. They are the real "neo" Nazis that the left likes to shriek about.
The Christians of the Middle East (what's left of them that is) are most comparable to the Jews. That's painful for the left to admit, so it won't.
And frankly, in case these disgusting imbeciles haven't noticed, the Jews never went around beheading and blowing up and shooting their hospitable hosts in the New World. Facts, schmacts.
Thankfully, we Jews have Israel and the IDF, so we don't have to rely on anyone else to protect us.
But who is there for the Christians of the Middle East? Nobody and most assuredly, not Ms. Arbour or Mr. Schama.
Revolting leftsists like this team also always want to move the goalposts-in this debate, trying to redefine what a refugee is. Disgusting.
Steyn and Farange made a formidable impact on the audience according to the voting results and quite frankly, that's the only reason for optimism that I can find.
The event demonstrated that with smug, evil, 'intellectually superior', reality-challenged leftists and their accompanying obsessive, sinister, incessant dhiimmi virtue-signalling at the helm of public policy in most of the West, it's going to get a lot worse before anything ever gets better.
Do watch the whole thing, and see what you think.
I'm utterly exhausted.
Exit thoughts:
-Mark Steyn and Nigel Farage were not just intellectually, but also sartorially superior to the leftists.
-Memo to self: investigate rain check policy on spending night with Mark Steyn.
*waves*
*composes self*
