July 20, 2012

The Prestige of Ignorance

David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale and a prominent neocon, has a new book: America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats). In a sniffy review in the Chronicle of Higher Education, UCLA history professor Russell Jacoby writes, summarizing Gelernter:
What [Gelernter] does try to explain is how intellectuals gave "an explosive left hook" to the old elite universities. There was a time when those elite schools were run by a benign establishment, generally white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who saw their role as civilizing and uplifting. But the WASP's were knocked out by what Gelernter calls PORGI's, "post-religious, globalist intellectuals," who took over and indoctrinated the students. Armed with empty leftist theories, the PORGI's transformed students into PORGI Airheads. The Airheads follow orders "as faithfully and thoughtfully as a bucket carries water." 
Gelernter highlights the role of American Jews as "carbon 14," a way to trace the enormous cultural change and its consequences in higher education. Up through the 60s, the WASP establishment excluded Jews from elite universities.

Obviously, the word "excluded" is a massive overstatement. It's more accurate to say that the Ivy League used affirmative action for gentiles, less at Penn, more at Yale. Quotas holding back Jews at Yale, for example, were eliminated in the mid-1960s.

My late friend Jim Chapin, scion of an artsy old money WASP family (folk singer Harry Chapin was his brother, jazz drummer Jim Chapin their father), was a history professor at Yale at the time. Jim was a nice lefty, long Vice-Chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America. He noted a dramatic change in the intellectual acuity, aggressiveness, and leftism between the class that entered Yale in 1964 (into which George W. Bush had barely slipped) and the class that entered in 1966. (Bush, by the way, found the change in campus atmosphere alienating.)

Think of it as Jewish Liberation on the campuses. Jacoby summarizes Gelertner:
But by 1970, Jews had pushed their way into student bodies, faculties, and administrations.

In reality, the tipping point was considerably earlier than 1970, which suggests that the student radicalism of 1968 was a heavily Jewish phenomenon. Here's famous Sixties radical Mark Rudd's 2005 talk Why Were There So Many Jews in SDS? (Or, The Ordeal of Civility)

This was true even in Paris, where the most prominent student radical of Sixty-Eight was Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

I suspect, as well, that Israel's victory in the Six Days War of 1967 had wide psychological and political ramifications, giving confidence and energy to Jews both on the left and right. (For example, it can be argued that modern Jewish foreign policy neoconservatism originated in a plot cooked up by Richard Nixon and and his chief domestic adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan to exploit New York Jewish intellectuals' enthusiasm for Israel's 1967 victory by binding Israel and America much more closely together, in the hopes that newfound American Jewish enthusiasm for the Jewish state's military would spill over to the warm feelings toward the American military.)

Jacoby continues with his summary of Gelernter's argument:
The consequences? Again, easy. Jews are both leftist and aggressive. "Naturally, we would expect that an increasing Jewish presence at top colleges" would imprint the schools with those qualities. "And this is just what happened." Colleges and universities became more leftist as well as more "thrusting" and "belligerent." 
Gelernter is Jewish, and it is not likely that a non-Jew would airily argue that obnoxious leftist Jews have taken over elite higher education. '

This seems to be a growing tendency: to boast about how many people are intimidated into silence and to whine about the few who aren't. It doesn't seem terribly becoming to me, but, then, what do I know?
But Gelernter does so with enthusiasm untempered by facts. Aside from quoting Jewish neoconservatives such as Norman Podhoretz as sources, Gelernter does not offer a single example of what he is writing about. Who are these belligerent leftist Jewish professors? Anthony Grafton? Steven Pinker? Richard Posner? Martha Nussbaum? Perhaps Alan Dershowitz?

I'm fascinated by how much pride contemporary mainstream intellectuals take in claiming to be ignorant. Russell Jacoby is a 67-year-old professor of history at UCLA, yet he tries to sound like an ignoramus about the events of his own lifetime. Moreover, the many commenters on this site for academics almost uniformly ignore Gelertner's argument.

118 comments:

Truth said...

Hey Steve, you forgot to write an article on the anti-white racist in Aurora, Co.

DaveinHackensack said...

"Hey Steve, you forgot to write an article on the anti-white racist in Aurora, Co."

David Gerlenter didn't: "The Wrong Moment for Political Agitation".

Simon in London said...

It does sound like more elite US Jews want to talk about Jewish dominance, but most elite Jews definitely don't want them to.
Still, I feel that a paradigm shift may be occurring.

Anonymous said...

Who are these belligerent leftist Jewish professors? Anthony Grafton? Steven Pinker? Richard Posner? Martha Nussbaum? Perhaps Alan Dershowitz?


Russell Jacoby?

Anonymous said...

I hope someone will point out to Mr. Jacoby that Martha Nussbaum isn't Jewish.

helene edwards said...

Yeah, Jacoby's dishonest. For example, why not Martha Nussbaum? After all, she's an avowed spreader of Rawlsianism.

bjdubbs said...

Martha Craven Nussbaum is full WASP (just look at her jawline. Find me one Jewish woman with a jawline like that). She took the name of her first husband.

Anonymous said...

On the other hand, the fact that a Main Line WASP like Martha decided to keep her first husband's name (and indeed to convert to Judaism) says something about the shifts in cultural power.

Whiskey said...

Steve, you're wrong on so many levels here. The 1968'ers were mostly non-Jewish, there was a thing in WWII that pretty much eliminated them from most of Europe. You might have heard about it. NO Jews to speak of, particularly in Germany (for obvious reasons) in and among the the leaders many of whom became leading SPD folks. Joschka Fischer is far more important than Cohn-Bendit, last I heard the latter held no high appointive office in anything other than the usual Green shakedown.

Which explanation is simpler, more robust, and likelier to be true?

That "evil Jews" somehow brainwashed the world save Muslims shouting out verses of the Koran, or that broad changes in TECHNOLOGY (Television, radio, particularly FM) and disposable income (poor people don't agitate at College for nebulous social change/justice)?

Moreover Nixon's surge to Israel was a result of massive SOVIET influence over: Egypt (until 1972), Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen. America did not have many friends in the area who would be reliably dependent, weak enough to be managed, but strong enough to be useful. With a robust intelligence service not prone to Soviet penetration.

After all, Jews are not very numerous in America, and Obama has shown no serious price will be paid even with that voting bloc by being overtly hostile to Israel. Nixon (who did not like Jews much, or WASPs, or pretty much anyone) did not win by Jewish votes, which went as always to Democrats (and were and are numerically unimportant). Meanwhile Israel was the natural partner for the US as it was for France and Britain during Suez. If you want to project power there, it is pretty much the only reliable and capable partner around.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Reading the Rudd essay, it sounds like someone blew too much dope in the 60's. Tangential, self-absorbed, not understanding the abstract ideas of others...

Whiskey said...

I don't see where there is Jewish dominance of the University System. After all, being Jewish in and of itself makes one a target, as in UCI. Or most other universities and colleges which are pro-Muslim, pro-gay, pro-leftist. Jews lack numbers for dominance, and power through force of arms.

The only way minorities get their way over majorities throughout history is proven superiority through force of arms: Alexander, Caesar, the Janissary levies, the British Empire, America in the Philippines.

Meanwhile the amount of money that say, Bill Gates donates, staggers the imagination. As does the considerable Saudi money donated throughout universities, like Columbia and Harvard.

Again, which makes more sense, a small group of Jews uses mind-control rays on masses of College students who have reliably hated Israel, loved Palestinians, and Islam since the mid-1960s (I guess the mind control rays there failed)? Or Television and FM radio connect radicalized, middle class and upper class kids seeking further radical displays for sex/mating, by showing what the "correct" way is to succeed in that department while being freed from material want by parental support in turn driven by sustained Western affluence?

It is not like the West goes nuts, reliably, whenever there is a sustained amount of increase in wealth over twenty years, to the point where large numbers of young Westerners don't have to worry about family formation and earning livings. Oh no, certainly not with the Transcendentalist.

Indeed you could argue Sixties radicalism was as much fueled by Cold War annihilation fears of total nuclear War as anything else, and consistent with the peace movement of the 1930's that prevented any rational response to Hitler when it was cheap and easy (and also Stalin, too in the 1920's).

Anonymous said...

porgi and mess

lowly said...

"Gelernter, in German, means “learned one.” While many immigrants have tended to change their last name in order to conform to the language and social life of their new country, the Gelernters, since 1581, when the name was first established, have never changed their name, irrespective to where they have lived. The Gelernters are regarded as being one of four oldest surviving Jewish Ashkenazi families existing today."

"The meaning of Jacoby is "he who supplants"."

I'll go with the learned one over the supplanter.

Anonymous said...

black thugs are 'teens'.

so call Jewish radicals 'geeks'.

Anonymous said...

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/jew-be-not-proud/

Nanonymous said...

I hope someone will point out to Mr. Jacoby that Martha Nussbaum isn't Jewish

Which definition of "Jewish"? :-) She did convert to Judaism.

Anonymous said...

"Moreover, the many commenters on this site for academics almost uniformly ignore Gelertner's argument."

Ah, but they do illustrate Gelertner's point nicely.

Commenter Smisson, sensing the opportunity to plough salt into the ground of his Conservative enemies, posts two awkward paragraphs.

Commenter t-Paine calls him for 'clunkiness' (but declines to provides analysis of such clear howlers as subject-object confusion in a sentence, perhaps thinking this would be superfluous on an academic blog)

Commenter Smisson is unapologetic; defends his writing style and aggressively questions Commenter t_paine's credibility and credentials.

Commenter Smisson's colleagues rush to his defence with further suggestions that Commenter t-Paine must be some kind of retarded country boy.

Argument over. See? Modern academics in action.

Gilbert Pinfold.

Anonymous said...

When a Jewish professor assures you that Jewish professors are not belligerent or leftist - always, always believe him.

Anonymous said...

Nussbaum converted to Judaism and then complained about anti-semitism at Harvard.

Anonymous said...

Plenty of people do not perceive the world as you do, they are not deliberately putting their heads in the sand. What's obviously true to you is not to them. Can you handle that?

Anonymous said...

"Hey Steve, you forgot to write an article on the anti-white racist in Aurora, Co."

David Gerlenter didn't: "The Wrong Moment for Political Agitation".

I disagree with Gelernter's point there. The disgusting level of violence, sadism and nihilism in Hollywood-produced entertainment is sure to have real-world effects.

Truth said...

"I disagree with Gelernter's point there. The disgusting level of violence, sadism and nihilism in Hollywood-produced entertainment is sure to have real-world effects."

Even on black folks?

Anonymous said...

My explanation would be with the precarious existence of Israel Jews did not feel going all in on an Asian war, that mostly enriched none Jewish militarists, was the best militarist strategy. They were right the Yom Kippur war in 73 nearly destroyed Israel. One Jewish American that did not see the logic behind Vietnam was Daniel Ellsberg. But guess what, they were right Vietnam was stupid on all levels, and history proved them right.

Anonymous said...

RE:Martha Nussbaum,

"Nussbaum's interest in Judaism has continued and deepened: on August 16, 2008 she became a bat mitzvah in a service at Temple K. A. M. Isaiah Israel in Chicago's Hyde Park, chanting from the Parasha Va-etchanan and the Haftarah Nahamu, and delivering a D'var Torah about the connection between genuine, non-narcissistic consolation and the pursuit of global justice.[5]"

(via WIKIPEDIA)

Syon

Anonymous said...

I disagree with Gelernter's point there. The disgusting level of violence, sadism and nihilism in Hollywood-produced entertainment is sure to have real-world effects.

You mean Corrupting the Children (TM).

I have to agree because so many parents are using, or at least passively allowing, Hollywood culture to educate and socialize their children. And these parents are the first to become censorship Nazis when (surprise) they find out their kids are getting the wrong message from TV, movies, music, and the Internet.

How many of these parents send the "right" message to their kids, i.e. the one they want their kids to hear, rather than calling for Whitehousian censorship?

Anonymous said...

Nussbaum converted to Judaism and then complained about anti-semitism at Harvard.


The fact that converting to Judaism does not magically make you a Semite was lost on her.

Conatus said...

Gerlernter in Commentary wrote "How the Intellectuals Took Over" way back in 1997. This new book sounds like a reprise and fleshing out of that essay. Gerlernter lost some fingers to the Unabomber. Derbyshire talked about the essay once. I think he liked it. Gerlernter seems like an Occamite(the razor kind) and not an obfuscator.

http://web.archive.org/web/19980423180121/commentarymagazine.com/9703/gelernter.html



Also Roots of Radicalism by Rothman and Lichter does a pretty good job of discussing the Jewish takeover of the academic world.

http://www.amazon.com/Roots-Radicalism-Jews-Christians-Left/dp/156000889X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342834904&sr=1-2&keywords=roots+of+radicalism

Anonymous said...

Find me one Jewish woman with a jawline like that..Nan Kempner.

Kylie said...

"Hey Steve, you forgot to write an article on the anti-white racist in Aurora, Co."

That's OK. Obama has already issued a statement saying his sympathy goes out to the families of the victims who looked like they could be his sons or daughters. He also said that if he had a son, that son would not look like the suspected shooter, who instead looks like a typical white person clinging bitterly to guns and religion.

Anonymous said...

Gelernter's point re: lack of biblical inspired moral compass is a good one. Yet there is still a religion, it is PC and we worship at the altar that Hollywood puts in our living rooms - the TV.

anony-mouse said...

1/ Why does everyone assume that the commenters at the Chronicle of Higher Education's website are themselves academics (instead of more likely wannabes)?

2/ In "the Wrong Moment for Political Agitation" Gelertner states that there's nothing more violent than King Lear.

How about Titus Andronicus?

3/ Why the surprise at Martha Nussbaum's dedication? Is there anyone more dedicated than a convert (to anything)?

Anonymous said...

Truth, it gets even better. The 25-year old white mother of two little kids was abandoned by her (white) boyfriend when the shooting started. He dropped one of his own kids to run out of the theater and didn't come back until the coast was clear.

http://news.yahoo.com/couple-colo-theater-shooting-escape-baby-toddler-tow-162024554--abc-news-topstories.html

Luckily, she was saved by... a 19-year old black teenager named Jarrell! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/jarell-brooks-aurora-hero_n_1690579.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1416613,b=facebook

Take that, Steve-o-sphere!

Anonymous said...

Hey, Steve I just wonder why you're not discussing the Col Shooting like every other blog in the USA - even though we have no facts.

I'm disappointed. I know I could go to a million other blogs to get fact free speculation but I get upset when everyone doesn't do the same thing or discusses anything other then the top news story.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Noam Chomsky was a Junior Fellow at Harvard in the 1950s. I think he diagnoses the situation accurately:


"By the time I got to Harvard in the early 1950s there was still very detectable anti-Semitism. It wasn't that they beat you up on the way to school or something, but other ways, kind of WASP-ish anti-Semitism. There were very few Jewish professors on the faculty at that time. There was beginning to be a scattering of them, but still very few. This was the tail end of a long time of WASP-ish anti-Semitism at the elite institutions."

"Jews were barely tolerated in Harvard; they weren't part of the cultural life. One reason MIT became so great was that Jewish intellectuals couldn't get jobs elsewhere."

"It's extremely easy to be sucked into the dominant culture. It's very appealing. And the people don't look like bad people. You don't want to sit there and insult them. You try to be friends, and you are. You begin to conform, to adapt, to smooth off the harsher edges. Education at a place like Harvard is in fact largely geared to that, to a remarkable extent. I was a graduate student there. There was an organization called the Society of Fellows, which is a research outfit that selects a couple of people from all fields over the year. It was a remarkable opportunity to work. You had all the facilities of Harvard available and basically no responsibilities. Your only responsibilities were to show up for a dinner every Monday night which was sort of modelled on the Oxford-Cambridge high table. You spent the evening at the dinner with a couple of senior faculty members and other distinguished people. The purpose of that was basically socialization. You had to learn how to drink port and how to have polite conversations without talking about serious topics, but of course indicating that you could talk about serious topics if you were so vulgar as to actually do it. There's a whole set of mannerisms. In those days you had to learn how to wear British clothes. That was the appropriate affectation."


So the entrenched people were unlikely to be Jewish but there were more Jewish students by the 50s. And the culture was still WASPy.

Anonym said...

Like Jacoby, I also really do wonder who in academia Gelernter is talking about. I am disappointed Sailer does not address this point, and resorts to ad hominem (he says Jacoby is pretending to be ignorant -- like everyone knows). But I'm with Jacoby; I don't know either.

Anonymous said...

Seriously? Jews completely dominate the Ivy League as thoroughly as WASPs dominated it previously.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!!!

Mr. Anon said...

""Up through the 60s, the WASP establishment excluded Jews from elite universities.""

Obviously, the word "excluded" is a massive overstatement."

No, it's a downright lie.

Aaron in Israel said...

I thought it was an OK book review. I haven't read Gelerntner's book, but I've read some of this stuff by him before, probably in the Weekly Standard. Reviewing Gelerntner this way is kind of like reviewing Justin Bieber and complaining that his music is shallow and juvenile. In other words, it's more a review of the genre than of a work which belongs to a certain genre. Gelerntner's genre is the story-rant, and he's the one of the most enthusiastic practitioners of it in neocondom.

Everything Jacoby says about the story-rant is true, and Gelerntner is one of the worst story-ranters (or best, depending how you look at it). No specifics, just a story constructed for the sake of some ideology from selected events that could have yielded infinitely many stories serving all possible ideologies. I could see how a historian might react to Gelerntner like a poet would react to Rod McKuen.

The objection here seems to be that Jacoby didn't engage the topic itself as much as the book. It's like saying that the reviewer of Justin Bieber songs about tween love didn't write his own article on what tween love is really like. And love really is an interesting topic, like American Jews. But I don't blame an intellectual historian for declining to write the real story of the intellectuals and the left (Jews and all!) in a short book review. Especially when that historian has written about intellectuals and the culture war, in his own books.

Speaking of which, if you want to see whether Jacoby is being willfully ignorant, wouldn't his own books on the subject be the place to look? Instead of a review of some ideological neocon rant?

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

Plenty of people do not perceive the world as you do, they are not deliberately putting their heads in the sand. What's obviously true to you is not to them. Can you handle that?"

Plenty of people do not want YOU to percieve the world as you might do, but for them telling you it is otherwise. Can you handle that?

eah said...

'dismantling', 'ushering in'

Regarding power, influence, control, etc, it seems Jews have never been "excluded" fron banking, and you know what they say about that...

Sovereign nations 'borrowing' money, enslaving generation after generation.

Yeah. Why is that exactly?

Good question.

Hey Steve, you forgot...

Obnoxious jerk.

Bob Arctor said...

"Plenty of people do not perceive the world as you do, they are not deliberately putting their heads in the sand. What's obviously true to you is not to them. Can you handle that? "

Well apparently you can't, as your odd, meaningless and peevish little comment proves.

jody said...

right, but it still doesn't explain how the same phenomenon occured in european run universities all around the world all roughly at the same time.

make no mistake, politically active jewish people are openly hostile to europeans. they are A problem. but certainly, they are not THE problem. the problem is clearly that something changed in europeans after 1950.

plenty of places where we look and find few jewish intellectuals, we find the same sweeping anti-european, pro cultural marxism becoming the dominant ideology.

this transformation is certainly more about intellectual liberalism among europeans than it is about ashkenazi jewish usurpers. who, again, i'm definitely not trying to downplay. but the real fault lies with the europeans in charge of everything between 1950 and 1990. slowly and steadily they basically just surrendered their conservative opinions and perspectives, on all issues, whether there were jewish agents around or not.

near pathological preoccupation with whether or not any particular thing in life, aspect of daily living, organization, endeavour, law, statute, or social structure is "fair" or not has consumed europeans.

instead of equal opportunity, the mantra has become, equal outcome. and if there is not equal outcome, create new law to change results towards equal outcome. keep adding laws, rules, and restrictions until desired level of equal outcome is achieved.

negative results of any change are simply ignored. even basic, staring you in the face stuff, like, turning your country into a muslim colony where the muslims are clearly raping your women on purpose, is dismissed as not even happening. it wouldn't be "fair" to notice that.

Anonymous said...

Even on black folks?"

Yes, but to an even greater extent. Then again, films aren't necessarily a "cause" for Chicago gunfire...

ATBOTL said...

If David Gelertner says it, is it still an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory?

Luke Lea said...

"So I say again: the Jews are the senior nation of the Western world. Judaism is the most important intellectual development in Western history. The best ideas we have come straight from Judaism."

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/jew-be-not-proud

I must say I agree with him. Certainly the Hebraic concept of God (with a capital G) is the single most influential idea in Western intellectual history, from which the idea of human equality is derived. The importance of political freedom and social justice, including equality under the law, are straight out of the Old Testament. And Christianity itself of course is just a Jewish sect in the mainstream Pharisaic tradition. Protestantism was an Hebraic phenomenon no doubt, as was the capitalist revolution it engendered. Max Weber got that right.

stari_momak said...

"Certainly the Hebraic concept of God (with a capital G) is the single most influential idea in Western intellectual history, from which the idea of human equality is derived"

I'd say that the single most important idea in Western Civ is Logos. Logos is quite different than the capricious god of the Old Testament.

Anonymous said...

"Protestantism was an Hebraic phenomenon no doubt, as was the capitalist revolution it engendered. Max Weber got that right"

Protestantism was a Northwestern European phenomenon. Martin Luther didn't like jews very much.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully Gelertner will send Ted Kazinski a free copy. He's got all the time in the world to read it.

Anonymous said...

Indeed you could argue Sixties radicalism was as much fueled by Cold War annihilation fears of total nuclear War as anything else, and consistent with the peace movement of the 1930's that prevented any rational response to Hitler when it was cheap and easy (and also Stalin, too in the 1920's).

Ah yes, of course. Those nativist isolationists of the 30s like Lindbergh were just like the 60s radicals! It all makes sense now!

Anonymous said...

Find me one Jewish woman with a jawline like that..Nan Kempner.

Per wikipedia...
Nan Kempner, notable quotes:

The only plastic I want is plastic surgery!

Anonymous said...

I must say I agree with him. Certainly the Hebraic concept of God (with a capital G) is the single most influential idea in Western intellectual history, from which the idea of human equality is derived.
In the old testament Yahweh doesn't care about human equality. He only wants to enrich a certain tribe and make life miserable for everyone else.....

When in the new testament it is declared that Yahweh had a conversion and became a univeralist (but maybe not completely), its not even clear why this is a good thing...The idea that humans exist on some kind of flat ontological plane disconnected from the animal world is, to my mind, just plane wrong.
And about the whole monotheism thing, its less sensible than polytheism...Things come in multiples. If superbeings exist, why would there be only one?
OTO monotheism does make sense in a Scotch-Irish context. Drawing sharp distinctions between heretics and believers is part and parcel of what it means to be Scotch-Irish. The consequent ideological unity gives them great strength. However, in the present era Yahweh may have outlived his usefulness. His favoured tribe has discovered some new ideas to replace him with and dividing the world into believers and heretics is still very much what it's all about.

Frank said...

" The ultimate origin of Judaism / Hebraism is the slave religion of pharaonic Ancient Egypt, at best on the periphery of the Western World."

No it wasn't. The ultimate origin of the Jews was Sumeria, which was also the ultimate origin of civilization.

Auntie Analogue said...

Jewss' 1950's minority presence in faculties and student bodies doesn't mean that the ideas of Jewish radicals weren't hot topics of the day. All the way back to Emma Goldman and Trotsky stretches Jewish political radicalism; Jews were big in CPUSA and its press, and in the earliest union organizing; then came Jewish New Dealers (think of FDR's creatures Morgenthau and Frankfurter only as the tip of that iceberg); and by the 1950's Herbert Marcuse was guru-in-chief for the hippest undergrads - Rudd, Hoffmann, all the young Sixties' radicals had marinated in Marcuse. It's arguable that Marcuse was the animating spirit in all the student radicals' university takeovers - and in the face of this crude, arrogant assault the thin vestigial crust of old WASP's simply wilted, not least because their own progeny were by then getting down with Dylan, going gutter macho with Mailer, eschewing the patrician veneer for hipster cred.

In 'The Long March' Roger Kimball gives a solid account of the radical Left - often spearheaded by Jews - penetration and takeover of just about every Humanities department, which fertilized and incubated the millions of pod people of multiculturalism, feminism, internationalism, and quite a few other isms and memes and what have you.

Gelerntner's thesis is chiefly spot on: at the least, Jews were powerful and often radical influences in the academy, and went a long way to shaping the generation that's today;s university faculty and administrators - the ones who impose all those, I daresay, radical speech codes.

ATBOTL said...

"Anonymous said...
Such is the state of intellectual debate in modern America - one Jew (Jacoby) discussing the American educational system (and the place of Jews within it) with another Jew (Gelernter).

No goys need apply.


Gelernter is Jewish, and it is not likely that a non-Jew would airily argue that obnoxious leftist Jews have taken over elite higher education.

Yeah. Why is that exactly?"

When I turn on NPR, it's often an interview by a Jew of a Jewish author who just wrote a book about Jews. Sometimes you may have a an interview by a Jew of a Jewish author who wrote a book about another Jewish writer who wrote about Jews.

Gentile said...

It's a shame the resident anti-semites here have such a pitiable understanding of their own culture. Here's what Friedrich Nietzsche had to say on the Jewish question way back in the 1870s.

"Incidentally, the whole problem of the JEWS exists only in nation states, for here their energy and higher intelligence, their accumulated capital of spirit and will, gathered from generation to generation through a long schooling in suffering, must become so preponderant as to arouse mass envy and hatred. In almost all contemporary nations, therefore-in direct proportion to the degree to which they act up nationalistically- the literary obscenity is spreading of leading the Jews to slaughter (!) as scapegoats of every conceivable public and internal misfortune. As soon as it is no longer a matter of preserving nations, but of producing the strongest possible European mixed race, the Jew is just as useful and desirable an ingredient as any other national element. Unpleasant, even dangerous, qualities can be found in every nation and every individual: it is cruel to demand that the Jew be an exception. In him, these qualities may even be dangerous and revolting to an unusual degree; and perhaps the young stock-exchange Jew is altogether the most disgusting invention of mankind. In spite of that, I should like to know how much one must forgive a people in a total accounting when they have had the most painful history of all peoples, not without the fault of all of us, and when one owes to them the noblest man (Christ), the purest sage (Spinoza), the most powerful book, and the most effective moral law in the world. Moreover, in the darkest times of the Middle Ages, when the Asiatic cloud masses had gathered heavily over Europe, it was Jewish free-thinkers, scholars and physicians who clung to the banner of enlightenment and spiritual independence in the face of the harshest personal pressures and defended Europe against Asia. We owe it to their exertions, not least of all, that a more natural, more rational, and certainly unmythical explanation of the world was eventually able to triumph again, and that the bond of culture which now links us with the enlightenment of Greco-Roman antiquity remains unbroken. If Christianity has done everything to reorientalize the Occident, Judaism has helped significantly to occidentalize it again and again: in a certain sense this means as much as making Europe's task and history a continuation of the Greek." Human, All-Too-Human "The European man and the abolition of nations"

Simon in London said...

anon:
"Just give it some thought. Don't be like those flag-waving neocons that look down on Islam as foreign congo-savagery while failing to see the identical origins of Christianity and Judaism."

My thinking:

1. God as a God of Laws rather than purely arbitrary commands seems to me to be immanent in old-Testament Judaism. When God tells Noah there will not be another flood, he appears to be self-binding. Islam abandoned the concept of God as God of Laws, and thus any hope of a comprehensible universe, while Christianity carried it forward.

2. The concept of a single (deist?) Creator can be found in Greek and Roman thinking, apparently without any Jewish influence. Ovid, not an esoteric philosopher, talks about a 'Natural Force of a Higher Kind' creating the world at the start of Metamorphoses. This was not a 'popular' concept though, the people had the traditional pantheon and their household gods.

3. I get the impression that the popular Jewish God universalised through Christianity was thus a vector for the popularisation of philosophical monotheism in the Greco-Roman world.

Anonymous said...

Kingsley Amis, when asked if he was an anti-Semite, gave a cryptic reply along the following lines: 'I don't know. I sometimes find myself watching the credits on television and saying to myself "ah, there's another one..."'

Gilbert P.

Anonymous said...

It's a shame the resident anti-semites here have such a pitiable understanding of their own culture. Here's what Friedrich Nietzsche had to say on the Jewish question way back in the 1870s.

Yeah, and Heidegger was a Nazi. So what?

Anonymous said...

I get the impression that the popular Jewish God universalised through Christianity was thus a vector for the popularisation of philosophical monotheism in the Greco-Roman world.

Christianity and the New Testament may have been lifted entirely from the Buddhism and the Buddhist scriptures:

http://www.jesusisbuddha.com/

"The 27 books of the New Testament, as known, constitute the fundamental holy scripture of Christianity. Without the four Gospels according to Matthew, to Mark, to Luke and to John, Christianity is virtually null and void.

Recent epoch-making discoveries of old Sanskrit manuscripts in Central Asia and Kashmir provide decisive proof that the four Greek Gospels have been translated directly from the Sanskrit. A careful comparison, word by word, sentence by sentence, shows that the Christian Gospels are Pirate-copies of the Buddhist Gospels (combined, of course, with words from the OT). God's word, therefore, is originally Buddha's word.

Comparison reveals that there is no person, no event, no locality mentioned in the four Christian Gospels not already present in the Buddhist Gospels that are, for sure, far earlier in time than their Christian copies."

Ray Sawhill said...

Seconding Conatus' recommendation of Lichter and Rothman's "Roots of Radicalism." I found it very persuasive. One point they make: many of the radical followers were Protestant. They often grew up in father-led families, and they often had to break with their families to become radicals. Once the student movement was over, they were left with nothing. By contrast, most of the radical student leaders were Jewish. They generally grew up in mother-led families, and their families often approved of their radical adventures. Many of them did quite well for themselves once their radical years were behind them.

Anonymous said...

the identical origins of Christianity and Judaism

This is an interesting post on the topic:

http://conswede.blogspot.com/2007/05/jewish-god-anti-semitism-and-oedipus.html

"Christianity is a Jewish invention. Jesus was a Jew, St. Paul was a Jew, etc. Their monotheistic God was exported around the world. Before this the Romans had their Gods, the Greeks theirs, and the Germanic people theirs. With the spread of Christianity their national Gods, having the same ethnicity as themselves, was replaced by a foreign God.

Going back to my description of civilizational evolution--simple tribes, polytheism, monotheism--where does it seem to lead? As religion evolves, God(s) become less and less personal and more and more abstract. The polytheistic Gods were more personal, with more human flaws. And you were able to oppose them or ignore them--there were always other ones. Monotheism made the single God more distant as well as perfect (so how could he be opposed?). Follow this development in the tangent direction and you will end with a God that has lost all personal characteristics and become fully abstract--a mechanical God. A hierarchy of principles, with the principle of goodness at the top. Leading to a society where people adore mechanical saints such as the United Nation or International Law, which they consider unopposable.

Adding to this the background of having imported a foreign God, and denounced your former national Gods, is there any surprise that this undermines nationalism and leads to universalism? Let's also add the Christian traits of weakness, meekness and goodness, and we have a self-sacrificial universalism, which at the point when it has fully evolved into a "mechanical God", becomes directly suicidal.

I once said that I am a godless theist. That's diametrically different from being an atheist. My Gods have been stolen from me and I miss them. From one perspective Christianity is the most devastating anti-theistic movement there ever was. There's no other movement that has denied the existence of so many Gods and killed them. Islam, someone would say, but when Islam entered the stage, the job had already been done by Christianity. Christianity paved the way for Islam, and is still doing so.

So are we surprised that the most devastating anti-theistic movement in the history of mankind organically growed into a godless secular society of mechanical principles? Looking at it from such a perspective I'm not.

As I said before about empire and slave morality: a novel concept helps us seeing things in a new perspective. From this new position we can reuse the novel concept again and again and come to yet more insights. I find the concept of foreign God very interesting and useful. But for the Jews this God is not foreign, it's their good old national God."

Anonymous said...

Revilo Oliver viewed Christianity as a Judaized form of Zoroastrim with a touch of Buddhism.

Silver said...

this transformation is certainly more about intellectual liberalism among europeans than it is about ashkenazi jewish usurpers. who, again, i'm definitely not trying to downplay. but the real fault lies with the europeans in charge of everything between 1950 and 1990. slowly and steadily they basically just surrendered their conservative opinions and perspectives, on all issues, whether there were jewish agents around or not.

The key is they caved in on race. Once they caved in on race everything else had to go because it couldn't be defended against the charge of "that's racist!" So obvious in hindsight.

As for why they caved in on race, there are multiple, non-mutually exclusive answers. But this is secondary. The key is that they caved, not why.

As someone who still residually fears the racial right, it's difficult to admit this, and I didn't see it as it was occurring, but it's true. It's all too true.

fnn said...

right, but it still doesn't explain how the same phenomenon occured in european run universities all around the world all roughly at the same time.

Moldbug wrote a typically long essay about this-but he blames the Protestants:
(...)
First, I believe anti-Americanism is best described as an epiphenomenon of Universalism. The single most significant fact about the world today is that sixty-two years ago it was conquered by a military alliance whose leader was the United States, and whose creed of battle was this nontheistic adaptation of New England mainline Protestantism. I don't think it's a coincidence that the European ruling class holds essentially the same perspectives that were held at Harvard in 1945. The US Army did not shoot all the professors in Europe and replace them with Yankee carpetbaggers, but the prestige of conquest is such that it might as well have.

It makes sense to view anti-Americanism as a postwar phenomenon, because it's hard to find anything in Europe's prewar political scene that corresponds to it. Before WWII, a European who found American influences pernicious was most likely a man of the Right, generally either an anti-Wilsonian aristocrat or a Bonapartist nationalist demagogue. After the war, and especially since the rise of the postwar-educated generation of 1968, European anti-Americanism has been overwhelmingly on the Left. Considering the animosity between these factions, it's hard to find any continuity between them.

(...)

Elric's Politiburo said...

" Truth said...

Hey Steve, you forgot to write an article on the anti-white racist in Aurora, Co."

Yes! Because white violence is such a common phenomena. I mean, not a day goes by that I don't read about some random white gangbanger blowing away 6 of his homies in some stupid drug related crime gone wrong, taking the lives of an innocent black middle class couple who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And lets include how these white flashmobs, black bear hunting, etc are threatening to tear apart race relations in the US by targeting innocent black victims.

Derb was right, given how common these things like the Colorado shootings are you should basicallly just avoid large gatherings of whites unless you have no other choice.

Anonymous said...

" My Gods have been stolen from me and I miss them."

Any God in particular? Maybe they weren't fit to survive.

Anonymous said...

"http://www.jesusisbuddha.com/"

I found the material here impenetrable.

Good God, I mean god, if they are trying to disabuse the masses of their ignorance, they could at least make the material more accessible.

You don't mention what faith, if any, in which you were raised. Are you a Buddhist?

Ex-Christians often make these kinds of arguments, christianity is derivative of other faiths, the holidays were stolen from the pagans - basically Christianity in never original or authentic.

Believe what you will, but from my perspective it always comes across as religious leapfrogging. I'm too unique to share the faith of the proles I grew up with.

Truly,
Luke warm Catholic

Anonymous said...

When I turn on NPR, it's often an interview by a Jew of a Jewish author who just wrote a book about Jews. Sometimes you may have a an interview by a Jew of a Jewish author who wrote a book about another Jewish writer who wrote about Jews.

And yet they can't seem to find an audience for this stuff in the "free" market of ideas - instead, it has to be subsidized by taxes stolen from all of those poor stoopid mouth-breathing shkotzim troglodytes.

fondatori said...

Jacoby's review is evidence of why conservatives don't think lefty intellectuals are worthwhile listening to: its stupid. Its a pure appeal to prejudice on the part of its readers (for those who have not tried to read it he mentions both the Scopes Monkey Trial and Sarah Palin, which those of us on the right of course think are the two most important things in American history). I mean conservatives do not agree with everything lefty intellectuals think, what a bunch of bigots, right!

How bad are conservatives? Well 'fair minded acamdemics' can't even find anything good, like thoughtfulness or openness' about them. Studies have been consulted, authority has spoken!

gumkins said...

Some groups are favored over others. Human sentiments work in a strange way. Call it the GOLDEN RETRIEVER SYNDROME.

Remember the movie INDEPENDENCE DAY? Terrible stuff, which I only caught a few minutes on TV. There is one scene where a city is getting blown up and it seems maybe over a million people are getting killed... BUT the camera focuses on the dog; and for the viewer, the dog is all that matters. So, even though the city is getting blown up all around, the golden retriever finds safe haven and manages to survive... and so we go 'uhhhhhh' and feel good. (If anything, we derive great fun from the rest of the violence. Violence that kills millions: cool. Violence that might kill the dog: bad.)

In terms of hogging our sympathies, Jews are like the golden retriever in that movie. As long as Jews live and thrive, that's all that matters. We care soooooo much about them--indeed even more than for ourselves. As for all the other people--even those being wronged by Jews--, they don't matter.

Why did we care so much about the dog but not about the victims in the city in INDEPENDENCE DAY? Because of the way the scene was framed/shot and the way our emotions were focused on certain characters(and even dog)over all else.
Well, who controls the media? The media get to decide which group is the special golden retriever for which we should invest all our sympathies.

ben tillman said...

make no mistake, politically active jewish people are openly hostile to europeans. they are A problem. but certainly, they are not THE problem. the problem is clearly that something changed in europeans after 1950.

What happened circa 1950 that might explain this?

It was the widescale employment of a technological innovation that revolutionized the business of propaganda and indoctrination. That technological innovation was television, a technology that was monopolized for decades by the group you seek to exculpate.

Anonymous said...

Christianity and the New Testament may have been lifted entirely from the Buddhism and the Buddhist scriptures: http://www.jesusisbuddha.com/

...according to one author's lol-worthy numerological analyses, e.g.,

To repeat: The names of major divinities are pure fabrications made up so that their numerical values equal natural ratios of geometry. The observation not only applies to the Greek canon of gematria. It is also found in Hebrew names. I think that my numerical analysis has suggested that...

Truth said...

"That's OK. Obama has already issued a statement saying his sympathy..."

Hey, that's pretty good, Kylie. I think I've been a tremendous influence on you in the past 5 years.

Truth said...

"Truth, it gets even..."

This couple was front and center on the Albuquerque Journal front page today, strangely, no mention of Jerell...

better.http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2012/07/21/news/new-mexicans-describe-gunshot-after-gunshot-during-movie-rampage.html

PS: Whiskey, you have always been a little confused about the meaning of "Beta." That, my son, is a beta.

Anonymous said...

leon litwack is a professor of american history. i don't know what his ethnicity is, but he teaches entry-level american history and the entire course is basically how america's history is steeped in sin at every turn. most readers have probably never heard of him but he writes history textbooks used across the country. so one guy can have a lot of influence that way. and i'm sure there are dozens of very smart professors just like him that are not common names but are very influential within their respective spheres.

Truth said...

"That's OK. Obama has already issued a statement saying his sympathy..."

Hey, that's pretty good, Kylie. I think I've been a tremendous influence on you in the past 5 years.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you're wrong on so many levels here. The 1968'ers were mostly non-Jewish, there was a thing in WWII that pretty much eliminated them from most of Europe. You might have heard about it. NO Jews to speak of, particularly in Germany (for obvious reasons) in and among the the leaders many of whom became leading SPD folks. Joschka Fischer is far more important than Cohn-Bendit, last I heard the latter held no high appointive office in anything other than the usual Green shakedown.

Describing it as jewish also fails to explain how so many 68er ended up opposing Israel. RAF would have hardly gotten their training from palestine terrorists if 68' was a jewish event.

Anonymous said...

"And yet they can't seem to find an audience for this stuff in the "free" market of ideas - instead, it has to be subsidized by taxes stolen from all of those poor stoopid mouth-breathing shkotzim troglodytes."

Yes, NPR fundraising is aimed at ripping off the dumb goyim. *rolleyes*

Sometimes this site is depressing.

Trannie's necklace said...

"That's OK. Obama has already issued a statement saying his sympathy..."


Waiting for him to say, if he had a son, he'd look just like James...

Skooldya said...

"Truth said...

Hey Steve, you forgot to write an article on the anti-white racist in Aurora, Co."


- Yes, at that Batman showing. Alot of racist whitefacing of ethnic characters goes on in Hollywood. I heard that Batman must be black because he can't go out at night without robin...

Anonymous said...

It's a shame the resident anti-semites here have such a pitiable understanding of their own culture. Here's what Friedrich Nietzsche had to say on the Jewish question way back in the 1870s.


"Incidentally, the whole problem of the JEWS exists only in nation states, for here their energy and higher intelligence, their accumulated capital of spirit and will, gathered from generation to generation through a long schooling in suffering, must become so preponderant as to arouse mass envy and hatred."


So, you're saying that we must destroy nation-states to keep Jews happy? We seem to be moving along briskly with that project.

Anonymous said...

To paraphrase Nietzsche himself, "There is no pre-established harmony between the furtherance of Jewish interests and the well-being of mankind".

Ordering the entire world in answer to the question "What's best for the Jews" is not likely to benefit anybody in the long term - not even Jews.

Truth said...

"Derb was right, given how common these things like the Colorado shootings are you should basicallly just avoid large gatherings of whites unless you have no other choice."

Well if a bunch of white folks had listened to the Derb, they'd still be alive. White folks, I have advice for you:

Only hang around with Asians.

Anonymous said...

"Only hang around with Asians."

Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others[1] in two separate attacks, approximately two hours apart, before committing suicide. - Wikipedia on Virginia Tech shootings.

There's nowhere safe.

Anonymous said...

MR. SAILER,

PLEASE REVIEW DAVID FRUM'S NOVEL, "PATRIOTS". Would love to get your take. your the best.

Anonymous said...

i love how they call the shooter racist cause doesn't like to listen to rap music in bars. i would love to know what his "racially charged" comment was. Let me guess, "i don't like racist".

Anonymous said...

is the book worth buying or is Kevin Macdonald already done the subject more honestly than Gelenter?

He is interesting to me. I heard him on German TV being skeptical of the internet which I liked (not for leftist reasons of fearing extremism but for fear of societal effects).

Positive sight: I don't know if the book was featured on NPR but when I called the Evanston B and N to see if they had it the clerk said several people had called about it that day (which made thing maybe some Northwestern students or professors read isteve like me which i like to think is true).

was it on NPR? the clerk asked me if it was b/c of all the calls they got I told em' i heard about it on a blog I read. Oddly the closest store that had it was all the way up in Millwauke maybe they're hiding it for touching the jewish question.

-Scottish Jew

p.s. great example of the prestige of ignorance, Arianna Huffington writing a book called "Third world America" that mentions immigration 2 times.

Anonymous said...

I am very disappointed that Gelenter who I thought was sophisticated would write for the fast-food-esque "Corner" at NRO. Smart people should have no reason not to totally look down on the Corner now that the Derb is gone. It's for people who considered Kathyrn Jean Lopez an intellectual.

Anonymous said...

i am 21 and all I know about Martha Nussbaum is I heard on the Freaknomics podcast about GNP and she said Finland was the best country in the world except they had to change one thing in her view to become: let in lots of poor africans to make global happiness more equal. It was incredible how obvious the follow up was (i.e. but then finland wouldn't be the best anymore it would become the US and restrict its welfare as solidarity was lost and crime grew).

can someone give more background on her?

is she supposed to be a"conservative" academic-esque like Pinker?

-Scottish Jew

Anonymous said...

Gelernter is Jewish, and it is not likely that a non-Jew would airily argue that obnoxious leftist Jews have taken over elite higher education.
it's done wonders for Kevin MacDonald's career.

Anonymous said...

as a half jew/wasp, i am surprised by Gelenter's willingness to even mention the jewish influence (Rich Lowry and the NRO boys must be upset if they find out). That takes courage. To put a mainstream book out that mentions that is a big step. we should applaud both Gelenter and Jacoby for even touching this. We must have two standards an our neck of the woods online standard we're the NRO bullshit is justly bashed and another we're we applaud imperfect progress in the mainstream. I the Mary Maitlin's of the world (or the guy who runs Encounter books, Kimball), the people who run conservative book imprints are realizing maybe that only so many hick jug heads will pay 39 99 to get the 11th Glenn Beck/Sean Hannity ghost written book that only talks about PC stuff like taxes and cap n trade. Eventually people will get tired of the flag-wavers and want more. everyone knows jews are the new wasps and have had a main role in the rise of PC as a national religion (i'm not antisemitic and identify as jewish). the problem is that if serious books like this were to start coming out in place of the flag waving Hannity type books idiots like Bill Maher and Chelsea Handler might start demonizing the authors and trying to ruin them.I hate Chelsea Handler she and the whole E! channel it's like a 24 hour miscegenation campaign watch her marry 50 cent or have his kid or something and be on people magazine. I feel bad fpor WHISKEY. he's a jew that means well. actual lying jewish power doesn't mean wanting to hurt jews. BUt whiskey is right in that millions of non-jews especially young women have totally imbibed the PC (jewish esque) mindset (the obsession with racism, PC religion imp lace of any real morals). We have to admit that race is fantanitaning, and people call others racist attracts viewers.

Anonymous said...

@ATBOTL from 7/21/12 12:41 AM:

Reminds me of the aptly-named Terri Gross, upon whose NPR 'show' I would occasionally stumble on long commutes. I played a game with myself to see how many of the Specialest People she managed to stuff into two interview segments (hint: it was always a high proportion).

Anonymous said...

steve, check out the new FX show "Totally Biased". it's annoying like Russel Brand (always talking about racism), one of the promos is a stupid "Buchanan is racist" joke. plz tear it down so i don't have to watch outta curiosity.

btw, "Sons of Anarchy" is real good except for its creators super PC politics (Sutter). you should write about the second season and the totally unrealistic plot twist in which SUttter imagines that the Chamber of Commerce is somehow anti-cheap mexican labour in Cali and run by white nationalists (henry rollins and adam ark in) it's as mockable as the plot to "the girl with the dragon tattoo" (nazi's run sweden).

one last thing: i think women's suffrage is a big part of the story of the decline of the west (look how brainwashed most girls are today by PC). will voters ever have to take tests to vote do you think (i,e, hows the prime minister of England?, etc.)?
and what do you make of the Henrick Hertzberg mission not just to get rid of the electoral college but to kinda bring a european parlimetary system to the US (a loyal opposition, the elected do what they want during term, more than 2 major parties)? any chance for that? any chance for a 3rd party in the US? a National Front party in the US?

Anonymous said...

one last blog post request of Mr. Sailer:

1. could you rank the best sites/blogs/columns you read regularly? (i.e. for me i'd list drudge, alt-right, v-dare, isteve, etc.)

2. and a column on whether to focus on the SAT or ACT? and what majors to consider for college? I'm 21. please!

Bantam said...

leon litwack is a professor of american history. i don't know what his ethnicity is, but he teaches entry-level american history and the entire course is basically how america's history is steeped in sin at every turn.
Anonymous @ 11:38AM

This brand new app may prove useful.

Anyway, every time you read a piece eviscerating the country in which the author has somehow managed to climb to, or near the top, you seldom can go wrong by ascribing him/her that ethnicity.

For instance, Emma Goldman and Helen Suzman happened to be Litvaks, though Howard Zinn is not.

Hunsdon said...

Truth said: This couple was front and center on the Albuquerque Journal front page today, strangely, no mention of Jerell...

Hunsdon replied: An Albequerque paper, writing about folks from New Mexico? Wow. I wonder if the Mumbai papers are focusing on any Indians who happened to be at the show.

And bruva, you are appreciated. I look forward to albertosaurus's posts more, but among the "Steve's gang" commentors, I do look forward to yours. Probably as much as Whiskey's, and you know that beating on Whiskey is what gives my life purpose.

ben tillman said...

leon litwack is a professor of american history. i don't know what his ethnicity is

Litwack is a Jewish name, as Jewish as it gets. It's a Polish "Ashkenazi" name. Perhaps, as a result of intermarriage, there are now some Litwacks who do not identify as Jewish, but that's not a realistic possibility for a man of Leon's age.

The better-known Litwacks include Kat Dennings (she changed her name), who describes herself as "a billion percent Jewish", and Harry Litwack, who played for Eddie Gottlieb's all-Jewish Philadelphia Sphas in the 1930s and later was the head basketball coach at Temple for 26 years.

Try google images for "people named litwack".

Taking them in order, we have Kenneth (doctor who attended a synagogue in Newport Beach), Leon (a Jewish historian classed with Herbert Aptheker, Eric Foner, et al., according to a book by Mark K. Bauman), Harry (see above), Alix (a member of Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation since she was seven), Maury (deputy director of federal affairs for the Orthodox Union's Institute for Public Affairs), and Katherine ("a billion percent Jewish").

Anonymous said...

...according to one author's lol-worthy numerological analyses, e.g.,

Numerical analysis is only one part of his analysis and argument. Christian Lindtner is a Sanskrit scholar and knows Greek, Hebrew. His work also involves language analysis and translation.

Kylie said...

"Hey, that's pretty good, Kylie. I think I've been a tremendous influence on you in the past 5 years."

Another entry in the "You didn't build that" catalog, eh?

Obama really was not talking to me about you when he said, “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life."

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the aptly-named Terri Gross, upon whose NPR 'show' I would occasionally stumble on long commutes. I played a game with myself to see how many of the Specialest People she managed to stuff into two interview segments (hint: it was always a high proportion).

What do you have against 'Fresh Air', Terry Gross's 'show' (why the quotes, by the way - what constitutes a show for you, dancing girls?) It's probably the most consistently interesting interview show around. She interviews culture-makers - authors, actors, directors, musicians - and a lot of them (maybe 45%?) happen to be Jewish. So what? A lot of Jews are involved in these areas.

Silver said...

Follow this development in the tangent direction and you will end with a God that has lost all personal characteristics and become fully abstract--a mechanical God. A hierarchy of principles, with the principle of goodness at the top. Leading to a society where people adore mechanical saints such as the United Nation or International Law, which they consider unopposable.

Adding to this the background of having imported a foreign God, and denounced your former national Gods, is there any surprise that this undermines nationalism and leads to universalism? Let's also add the Christian traits of weakness, meekness and goodness, and we have a self-sacrificial universalism, which at the point when it has fully evolved into a "mechanical God", becomes directly suicidal.


This is pretty good, if a little over-the-top towards the end. But it can't be the sole explanation. There is always the safety/strength in numbers drive to consider, which, like monotheism, leads to univeralization, which in turn helps lead to universalism.

DaveinHackensack said...

"Some groups are favored over others. Human sentiments work in a strange way. Call it the GOLDEN RETRIEVER SYNDROME.

Remember the movie INDEPENDENCE DAY? Terrible stuff, which I only caught a few minutes on TV. There is one scene where a city is getting blown up and it seems maybe over a million people are getting killed... BUT the camera focuses on the dog; and for the viewer, the dog is all that matters."


That dog was a yellow Lab, not a golden retriever. And for the viewer in that scene, the dog isn't all that matters; his owners (mother & son) matter too.

Independence Day was an interesting movie from a diversity perspective: directed by a German, who co-wrote the script with his American Jewish/Filipino producer, it had three male leads joining forces to save the world -- a brave WASP president who climbs into the cockpit of a fighter to lead the big attack, a brash African American pilot who improvises how to fly the alien spaceship carrying the virus, and a Jewish American computer engineer who creates the killer virus and goes a long for the ride.

DaveinHackensack said...

"Only hang around with Asians."

Truth,

Looks like there's a second person of interest in the Colorado shooting, and he's an Asian.

CJ said...

"Jacoby's review is evidence of why conservatives don't think lefty intellectuals are worthwhile listening to: its stupid. Its a pure appeal to prejudice on the part of its readers..."

Agreed. OTOH I've read a bunch of stuff by Gelernter and found something interesting virtually every time. I especially liked his book 1939: The Lost World of the Fair. I think he was already a very bright and sensible guy whose mind was concentrated by the Unabomber's attack. "Neocon" seems a very reductionist term to use to describe him.

dondrum said...

2 things come together:

1. these people are not as smart as they like to make us believe;

2. their perceived power causes them to be cynical, which of course proves point 1.

David Davenport said...

Soem say that Buddhism grew out of the cult of Apollo, which Alexander's conquests brought to India.

The orginal pagan cult of Apollo may have been rather Buddhist -- cultivation of calm, detachment from emotions, and so on.


Greco-Buddhist art
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...

Greco-Buddhist art is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between the Classical Greek culture and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 1000 years in Central Asia, between the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE, and the Islamic conquests of the 7th century CE. Greco-Buddhist art is characterized by the strong idealistic realism and sensuous description and of Hellenistic art and the first representations of the Buddha in human form, which have helped define the artistic (and particularly, sculptural) canon for Buddhist art throughout the Asian continent up to the present. It is also a strong example of cultural syncretism between eastern and western traditions.

The origins of Greco-Buddhist art are to be found in the Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian kingdom (250 BCE- 130 BCE), located in today’s Afghanistan, from which Hellenistic culture radiated into the Indian subcontinent with the establishment of the Indo-Greek kingdom (180 BCE-10 BCE). Under the Indo-Greeks and then the Kushans, the interaction of Greek and Buddhist culture flourished in the area of Gandhara, in today’s northern Pakistan, before spreading further into India, influencing the art of Mathura, and then the Hindu art of the Gupta empire, which was to extend to the rest of South-East Asia. The influence of Greco-Buddhist art also spread northward towards Central Asia, strongly affecting the art of the Tarim Basin, and ultimately the arts of China, Korea, and Japan.

...

Simon in London said...

Truth:
"Well if a bunch of white folks had listened to the Derb, they'd still be alive. White folks, I have advice for you:

Only hang around with Asians."

I expect you're at least 50% white, possibly 75%. Maybe they should hang around with you. :p

Truth said...

"as a half jew/wasp...I hate Chelsea Handler she and the whole E! channel it's like a 24 hour miscegenation campaign..."

Well, luckily mommie and daddie were big Chelsea Handler fans.

TGGP said...

Mencius Moldbug has pushed the same line as Whiskey about universities lopsidedly favoring the Palestinians over the Israelis. As I pointed out to MM, the data doesn't support that view.

Truth said...

"
I expect you're at least 50% white, possibly 75%. Maybe they should hang around with you. :p"

You would be wrong, and wronger.

Svigor said...

make no mistake, politically active jewish people are openly hostile to europeans. they are A problem. but certainly, they are not THE problem. the problem is clearly that something changed in europeans after 1950.

This is like the nature-nurture vs. cultural determinism thing. The cultural determinists frame the debate as if it's between the moderates (themselves) and the genetic determinists, but that's actually an inversion of the truth. Similarly, the Jewish supremacists frame the debate as if it's between the moderates (radical philo-semites) and the fanatics, but that's an inversion of the truth; the philo-semites reject any Jewish causes and point the finger exclusively at YT, while the "anti-Semites" accept multiple causes. There's an element of projection in both cases. The cultural determinists project their determinism onto the nature-nurture crowd, while the philo-semites project their absolutism vis-a-vis Jews onto the "anti-Semites."

plenty of places where we look and find few jewish intellectuals, we find the same sweeping anti-european, pro cultural marxism becoming the dominant ideology.

Yes and no. The immigration disaster is the worst where the Jews hold the most sway, and attenuated where they hold less power. Even leftist loony bins like Scandinavia are far behind the States in the destroy yourself sweepstakes.

this transformation is certainly more about intellectual liberalism among europeans than it is about ashkenazi jewish usurpers. who, again, i'm definitely not trying to downplay. but the real fault lies with the europeans in charge of everything between 1950 and 1990. slowly and steadily they basically just surrendered their conservative opinions and perspectives, on all issues, whether there were jewish agents around or not.

If your leaders sell you out, there are still questions to be answered. Like, who bought them out? Who aided and abetted their crime? Usually, when someone sells you out, someone's buying. Jews have been the vanguard for the coverup, that's for sure. The media serves as the guy who keeps the morphine drip steady while organ harvesters clean out the cavity.

Svigor said...

near pathological preoccupation with whether or not any particular thing in life, aspect of daily living, organization, endeavour, law, statute, or social structure is "fair" or not has consumed europeans.

For me, you're now wandering into more interesting areas of discussion. I mean, regardless of how much blame we assign to Jews (ANTI-SEMITISM!!!), it's obvious to me that Israel is the thin edge of the wedge on this area of discussion; Israel and Jews get a pass for racism, xenophobia, majority supremacy, and immigration control, so we should use them for cover. So it's not like the tribe's name isn't going to come up constantly. What with Israel being a "western democracy" and all.

"So I say again: the Jews are the senior nation of the Western world. Judaism is the most important intellectual development in Western history. The best ideas we have come straight from Judaism."

Judaism cribbed pretty much everything from the Persians. Christianity did the same thing, but with the Greeks.

Martin Luther didn't like jews very much.

Unsurprisingly, Luther started out a philo-Semite in the cloister, then he turned into an "ANTI-SEMITE!!!" after getting out and seeing the world.

"I must say I agree with him. Certainly the Hebraic concept of God (with a capital G) is the single most influential idea in Western intellectual history, from which the idea of human equality is derived."
In the old testament Yahweh doesn't care about human equality. He only wants to enrich a certain tribe and make life miserable for everyone else.....


The idea that the OT is about equality is risible. The opposite is true; it's the world's first great work of ethnocentrism.

And about the whole monotheism thing, its less sensible than polytheism

I think monotheism (or rather, henotheism) makes more sense. One people, one God, none of this divided loyalty stuff.

The consequent ideological unity gives them great strength.

Precisely.

Svigor said...

Gumkins 7/21/12 9:40 AM

Well said.

Anonymous said...

"Steve, you're wrong on so many levels here. The 1968'ers were mostly non-Jewish, there was a thing in WWII that pretty much eliminated them from most of Europe. You might have heard about it. NO Jews to speak of, particularly in Germany (for obvious reasons) in and among the the leaders many of whom became leading SPD folks. Joschka Fischer is far more important than Cohn-Bendit, last I heard the latter held no high appointive office in anything other than the usual Green shakedown."

Steve is talking more about America and France, Cohn-Bendit still got influence in French politics.

Anonymous said...

"Steve, you're wrong on so many levels here. The 1968'ers were mostly non-Jewish, there was a thing in WWII that pretty much eliminated them from most of Europe. You might have heard about it. NO Jews to speak of, particularly in Germany (for obvious reasons) in and among the the leaders many of whom became leading SPD folks. Joschka Fischer is far more important than Cohn-Bendit, last I heard the latter held no high appointive office in anything other than the usual Green shakedown."

Steve is talking about America and France, Cohn-Bendit still is influential in French politics like many other jews (Bernard-Henri Levy, Alain Finkelkrault, Jacques Attali, DSK, Pierre Moscovici,...)

Anonymous said...

leon litwack is a professor of american history. i don't know what his ethnicity is, but he teaches entry-level american history and the entire course is basically how america's history is steeped in sin at every turn.

LOL I had that guy for American History 7B. For Professor Litwack, it's ALWAYS 1968. A real dinosaur. Some of the younger, hipper TAs in the department laugh at him behind his back.

ogunsiron said...

I'm not totally sure how it is in contemporary Germany, but France is pretty much like the USA :
The media and the entertainment biz is basically wall to wall jewish.
In the case of France, while the ashkenazi are very visible, it's the sephardi jews from north-africa who take up all the public space.

I imagine that a lot of those jews were still living in the north-african colonies during WWII so that the holocaust didn't affect them directly.

Puet said...

""So I say again: the Jews are the senior nation of the Western world. Judaism is the most important intellectual development in Western history. The best ideas we have come straight from Judaism.""

"Judaism cribbed pretty much everything from the Persians. Christianity did the same thing, but with the Greeks."


- Actually the Scots-Irish cribbed it from the Sumerians. Abraham was from Ur. And Christianity cribbed it from them.