From The New Yorker (via Daniel Larison)
Asked about what else he was doing while on the East Coast, [Indiana governor Mitch Daniels] said he was going to Washington to accept an award from the Arab American Institute. “I happen to be one,” he said—an Arab American, that is. His paternal grandparents immigrated from Syria. Somehow I hadn’t registered that aspect of Daniels’s background before. I guess it makes Daniels even less likely to traffic in the kind of disgusting, racially-tinged, Muslim-baiting, xenophobic hate-mongering that some of his “brethren” (and sistren) have flirted with. ~Hendrik Hertzberg
The funny thing is that neither Hendrik Hertzberg nor all the editors and copy editors and fact checkers at The New Yorker noticed that Hertzberg's frothing-at-the-mouth rage about "hate-mongering" is funny.
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Ethnic group 2nd most into politics:
Levant Christians
Why is this?
In Australia the Levant Christians are equally interested in pursuing politics.
"Ethnic group 2nd most into politics:
Levant Christians
Why is this?"
Beats working for a living?
Levantine Christians are known for their wheeling/dealing proclivities. Lots of them in trading, finance, and politics.
If there is one group of people who are totally commited to brotherly love with all the world's races and religions its the Arabs.
It's well known that Jewish neoconservatives in the media and politics have been the main driving force behind the growing distrust of Arabs and Muslims. There's also the immense role that Jewish money plays in pushing Democrats and, more especially, Republicans to take super hawkish foreign policy positions. The Herztbergs really need to take credit where credit is due.
Well to be fair to the New Yorker, can't we say that all White Gentiles are are a bunch of racist, two-bit, xenophobes? Heck, I'm surprised that group of White Gentiles, who look down on everyone, can make their way from the trailer park to the voting booth, given how dumb and backward they all are.
We have a lot of Lebanese/Syrians in our area, who mostly came around 1890-1930. They're good people, but they definitely have the wheeler-dealer about them. My daddy talked about one of them, a childhood friend of his, who has done quite well for himself: "Old L___ could buy the whole town three times over, but he'd happier than a pig in shit just haggling over a crate of oranges."
Obama's friend (now convicted) Tony Rezko is also a Syrian Christian, a real cross-cultural go-getting hustler.
Levant Christians do tend to be different from your regular camel trader. My father tells me a one or two families he knew who were well integrated into a small New England town early in the 20th century. Although they are more likely to be into trading/politics than the average European American, they do not eschew the honest trades like some other groups.
Levant Christians are well represented on the billionaires list.
Remember this compilation? http://racehist.blogspot.com/2009/10/2009-forbes-400-by-ethnic-origins.html
43 Steve Jobs [half-Syrian]
123 Richard Rainwater [half-Lebanese]
236 Joseph Jamail [Lebanese]
296 Manuel Moroun [Lebanese]
347 Thomas Barrack [Lebanese]
Considering they are a fraction of a percent of this country, there numbers are good.
Greeks can claim 6 people and are not even 1% of this country so they also seem to have some wheeling/dealing knack.
Hendrik Hertzberg's "Talk of the Town" columns in The New Yorker reads like Christian Lander's blog. Swept clean of any whiff of parody. Pick an issue, any issue, then think Articulate, Righteous, Upper East Side SWPL. Presto! You already know what Hertzberg has written on that subject.
We have a lot of Lebanese/Syrians in our area, who mostly came around 1890-1930. They're good people, but they definitely have the wheeler-dealer about them
Don't you get the impression that they're irredeemably given to boastfulness though? I've known plenty in my life (and could tell you with a straight face that "some of my best friends are..") and I really can't think of a single one I wouldn't describe as boastful, always bragging about something (a) he owns (b) has done or (c) someone he knows.
I remember hearing somewhere that a lot of Levantine Christian Arabs have European admixture from the crusades, since many of the crusaders married local Christians, hence why their Arab ancestry is non-obvious (such as in the case of Mitch Daniels). Is this true, or is it a load of hogwash?
It's funny? To us, maybe, but he really means it. At first I thought this was satire, but I read the whole thing, and he's serious. How out of touch can you be?
Hendrik Hertzberg, like many other writers for the New Yorker, lives on the Upper West Side, not the Upper East Side. The Upper East Side is more old-money and conservative. The Upper West Side is the real epicenter of the Hertzberg's politics
Silver:
I have that impression in general of all people from West Asia/South Asia.
If there is one group of people who are totally commited to brotherly love with all the world's races and religions its the Arabs.
Lol, well said. Anyone who thinks Arabs are even remotely PC needs to take a second look at Saudi Arabia. Their whole economy seems to be about using oil money to enslave south Asian immigrants. And sequester a few western experts in ghettos, of course.
How many of these "frothing at the mouth against racism and racial exploitation" types in our chattering class target Saudi Arabia for her sins? Or Israel, for that matter? "American" "anti-racism" is clearly just a mis-labeled strain of racism.
On January 22, 2009, Forbes named Hertzberg one of the "25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media", placing him at number seventeen.
Never heard of him before seeing this. Writes luck a smug know-it-all.
Ethnic group 2nd most into politics: Levant Christians Why is this? In Australia the Levant Christians are equally interested in pursuing politics.
It seems to be an oriental [as opposed to occidental] proclivity - especially the desire to use the host nation's political system to set up rent-extraction schemes.
The most obvious example would be Carlos Slim, who extracts rent on every phone call made in the nation of Mexico [thereby making him the world's wealthiest man].
But another really interesting example is Manuel "Matty" Moroun, who owns the Ambassador Bridge, connecting Detroit with Windsor, Ontario: There is certainly no more classic rent-extraction scheme than demanding a toll to cross a waterway.
And if you were paying attention to your television commercials this political season, then you might have noticed an advertising campaign which Moroun has mounted to defeat any Congressional attempt to introduce competition in the crossing.
I guess there are two points to be made here:
1) The Jewish obsession with rent-extraction scheming might not be so much "Phariseeical" or "Talmudic" as it is oriental in nature, and
2) This idea that Dubya was promoting, back circa 2003, when trying to justify the Iraq invasion - that "all men yearn for freedom" - is simply nuts.
To the contrary, almost all men, at almost all points in recorded history, have either yearned to subjugate & enslave their neighbors, or [and I know this sounds counterintuitive] have yearned to be subjugated & enslaved by their neighbors.
Our Anglo-Saxon "Marquis of Queensbury" tradition, of tying our own hands behind our backs in public affairs [to include both business dealings & political governance], is a really grotesque historical abnormality, and, increasingly, I am becoming convinced that the oriental mind recognized our vulnerability from Day One.
Along those lines, I should repeat an observation which I made a while back here at iSteve: Our founding fathers made the implicit assumption that the populace of our nation would be fundamentally antinomian in philosophy, and, as a result, our nation has absolutely no safeguards in place to protect her against a determined effort by the legalists to destroy her [not that it would be even theoretically possible to defend a free society against a legalist assault launched from within].
Oh, don't beat around the bush Hendrik. Go ahead and toss in the word R word too. Or would that be too much?
Glad to see good decent upright people at the New Yorker with hearts overflowing with the milk of human kindness are setting the example for hate-mongerers everwhere.
at the New Yorker.
Man that guy needs to relax or he's going to give himself a heart condition.
So how is Mitch Daniels on the national question?
I've known plenty in my life (and could tell you with a straight face that "some of my best friends are..") and I really can't think of a single one I wouldn't describe as boastful, always bragging about something (a) he owns (b) has done or (c) someone he knows.
But Jews are exactly the same way, so perhaps the dogged, relentless, almost virulent self-promotion is an oriental attribute [essentially foreign to the occidental personality]?
What anonymous calls self-domestication is just the age-old practice whereby the ruling elites treat the peasant masses like domestic animals. It is not "self" in the sense of the conquered/ subjugated people domesticating themselves. All the "selection" is done by the over group. This is a major factor in civilization and in fact may account for the greater docility of East Asians compared to northern Europeans, who have been "domesticated" for far fewer generations on average.
Hendrik Hertzberg is Jewish.
From the New Yorker:
"My name is indeed Jewish (the Hertzberg part, not the Hendrik). My father’s parents were Jewish, so I guess he was too, though he was a pretty militant atheist. My mother was a Quaker from a long line of Congregationalists."
Some of the most fanatical, witch-smelling, heretic-burning religious fundamentalists seem to be atheist Jews. Ironic, innit?
Hertzberg is the reason I stopped subscribing to the New Yorker two years ago.
The man's an ass, and that's being generous.
We have a lot of Lebanese/Syrians in our area, who mostly came around 1890-1930. They're good people, but they definitely have the wheeler-dealer about them
Don't you get the impression that they're irredeemably given to boastfulness though? I've known plenty in my life (and could tell you with a straight face that "some of my best friends are..") and I really can't think of a single one I wouldn't describe as boastful, always bragging about something (a) he owns (b) has done or (c) someone he knows.
I'd say there's definitely a bit of all three in the ones I've known. My friend who is from Lebanon copped to it. He says it's the Phoenician trader legacy.
The families of the lebanese I grew up with started out selling dry goods to plantation workers, running tamale stands, and bootlegging whiskey.
Re: Muslim-baiting:
His Middle Eastern forefatehrs were Christians. Just a few years ago the word "Beirut" was used as shorthand for extreme, near-apocalyptic sectarian violence. I guess the Balkans have finally eclipsed it in the early 90s for that purpose.
But really, what in Daniels' background would make him friendlier to Islam than the average American politician?
Is Rick Hertzberg an idiot? Has he missed all of those Lebanese Christian-Muslim wars? Was he doing drugs while they were in the news? Does he not read newspapers?
"43 Steve Jobs [half-Syrian]"
I was surprised to learn that Jobs's father was a Muslim.
Around '91 or so Hertzberg wrote a good editorial in TNR about how badly reasoned Roe v. Wade was. It's a kick to show it to blue state women and watch them froth at the mouth.
"I remember hearing somewhere that a lot of Levantine Christian Arabs have European admixture from the crusades..."
I don't know about any Crusader admixture, but they do seem lighter to me than their neighbors. There is a small African admixture in most Arabs. It's strongest in Yemenis and Egyptians, but you can see some degree of it almost anywhere Arabic is spoken. Levantine Christians seem like an exception.
When Steve posted a link to those composite pics of young women's faces, he said that the Swedish girl was the one who looked most extremely European. What group looks most extremely Middle Eastern? I would say Armenians. No noticeable African OR Euro admixture. Their neighbors the Georgians seem to have a little bit of a European admixture in them, as do the Turks.
Another pre-emptive strike.
That NYT certainly likes to case aspersions ...
I know those Jewish neoCons are anti-Islam but does it not occur to anyone that 1400 years of conflict with Muslims has something to do with how the rest of us feel?
Hendrik Hertzberg - all the bile and spite of James Howard Kunstler but without the charm.
It has always seemed to me that many of the traits commonly attributed to Jews are just as prevalent amongst Lebanese and Armenian Christians.
@Georgia Resident, I think what you say about the crusader component in the ancestry of Levantine Christians is correct. I am acquainted with a number of Lebanese and Palestinian Christians whose names and physical appearances (fair-skinned, black-haired, hazel-eyed) suggest at least some Frankish descent.
"I remember hearing somewhere that a lot of Levantine Christian Arabs have European admixture from the crusades"
Their Arabness is admixture from the Arab conquests as well. They're not really Arab-Arabs. They're Pheonicians with little bits of admixture from all the various conquerors down the ages.
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"The Jewish obsession with rent-extraction scheming might not be so much "Phariseeical" or "Talmudic" as it is oriental in nature, and"
All the tribes from that part of the world have similar *feel* to me.
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"Our Anglo-Saxon "Marquis of Queensbury" tradition, of tying our own hands behind our backs in public affairs [to include both business dealings & political governance], is a really grotesque historical abnormality, and, increasingly, I am becoming convinced that the oriental mind recognized our vulnerability from Day One."
The grotesque historical abnormality and weakness that led to Greece, Alexander and Rome rampaging across most of the ancient world and the collective european empires who went a stage further and took over the ENTIRE PLANET (apart from the n/asians) while simultaneously engaged in constant massive wars with each other - that weakness?
It's like blue anemones and red anemones fighting over some coral. The blue anemones evolved traits that made them immensely strong in EXTERNAL competition but the same traits gave them a weakness to INTERNAL competition. The reds are strong on INTERNAL competition but suck at EXTERNAL. The blue anemones roll over the reds and take their terriotory but some of the reds survived inside the now blue terriotory and found by accident that they had a massive advantage as long as they stick to fighting INTERNALLY and eat the blues out from the inside.
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"not that it would be even theoretically possible to defend a free society against a legalist assault launched from within"
Well if the supreme court members were directly elected for life that would have squashed a lot of what's happened since WWII but otherwise yes, white societies become rich because they are less clannish but that only works if clannish outsiders are kept out. Sooner or later they'll find a weakness and mess everything up.
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"Disgusting, racially-tinged, Muslim-baiting, xenophobic hate-mongering"
Hertzberg must be referring to all those Hollywood types who keep making movies featuring Arabs as the bad guys.
Denmark convicted a journalist and head of the Danish Free Speech Society of saying in private (it was overheard) remarks condemning Muslim violence against women and child abuse.
He was fined and sentenced to Prison.
So yes, most of the elite cannot WAIT to surrender to Islam. Europe has already surrendered. Denmark was the most resistant, and it has just collapsed. So there is no where for people to run to anymore. The Brown Berets/Aztlan people are fond of telling Whites to "go back to Europe, you're racist!" but there is no Europe to go back to, only Saudi Arabia with snow.
Since you asked: Mitch Daniels is an open borders corporate establishment Republican.
"It's well known that jewish neoconservatives in the media and politics have been the main driving force behind the growing distrust of arabs and muslims.."
If that were true we'd have profiling. I don't think they are all that interested in Americans thinking about islam and islamic terrorism along ethnic, tribal, and religious lines.
how syrian is mitch daniels? there's no other groups in his ancestry? or is he like barely syrian?
"But Jews are exactly the same way, so perhaps the dogged, relentless, almost virulent self-promotion is an oriental attribute [essentially foreign to the occidental personality]?"
LOL. I see you are entirely unaware of what kind of reputation Americans had in Europe starting in the early 19th century.
I am acquainted with a number of Lebanese and Palestinian Christians whose names and physical appearances (fair-skinned, black-haired, hazel-eyed) suggest at least some Frankish descent.
Or maybe Levantine Arabs don't look the way you expect Arabs are supposed to look.
It's not all the same here from Mecca to Aleppo.
"all the bile and spite of James Howard Kunstler but without the charm.'
I did like his book Geography of Nowhere. His description of Disney World is hilarious.
white societies become rich because they are less clannish but that only works if clannish outsiders are kept out.
Exactly - we make a huge mistake when we assume that everyone [or even anyone] else suffers from the same "Marquis of Queensbury"/"All men yearn for freedom" naivete & gullibility that we do.
For the record, "Hertzberg" is not a "Jewish name", it is rather a German name. The only authentically Ashkenazi Jewish surnames are (Cohen/Cohn) and (Levy/Levi). Most of the other names that pass as Jewish are usually just combinations of German words. For a German, it is amusing how often in the United States names that are so utterly German are described as "Jewish". How often are surnames like "Washington" and "Jefferson" described as African-American names?
"Exactly - we make a huge mistake when we assume that everyone [or even anyone] else suffers from the same "Marquis of Queensbury"/"All men yearn for freedom" naivete & gullibility that we do."
Yes. I think that's it. We're odd, and thinking everyone else is the same as us makes us blind.
>Levant Christians do tend to be different from your regular camel trader.
Hilaire Belloc thought the Crusades failed because the Franks failed to support the 'Colts' or sons of Franks and Greek refugees from the Turks. No doubt some Christian arabs are descendents of the 'colts': half medeival French, half Asia Minor Greek.
Why scare quotes for 'colts'? Because Hilaire Belloc thought it was an ethnic slur, and old Hilaire wasn't fussy.
Yes. I think that's it. We're odd, and thinking everyone else is the same as us makes us blind.
Right - Freudian projection is, or ought to be, a double-edged sword: Just as it is a mistake to assume in others your own baser instincts, so too is it a mistake to assume that they share the nobler aspects of your character.
BTW, all of this stuff was just tautologically obvious to our ancestors - e.g. Lewis & Clark made it clear that some of the injun tribes they encountered were amongst the nicest people on the face of the earth, whilst other injun tribes would slit a man's throat just for the fun of it - and so it's a real testament to the work of Gramsci & the Frankfurt School that the general public has swallowed this poison of political correctness & multiculturalism which makes it impossible for them to speak sensibly [or even to speak at all] about these things.
[Which I guess is why we're all here at iSteve...]
For the record, "Hertzberg" is not a "Jewish name", it is rather a German name. The only authentically Ashkenazi Jewish surnames are (Cohen/Cohn) and (Levy/Levi). Most of the other names that pass as Jewish are usually just combinations of German words. For a German, it is amusing how often in the United States names that are so utterly German are described as "Jewish". How often are surnames like "Washington" and "Jefferson" described as African-American names?
That may be true but, for the record, Hertzberg disagrees with you. He insists his name is Jewish:
QUESTION FROM ROLAND: What religious orientation are you Hendrik? Your name sounds Jewish, but don’t want to assume and offend.
HENDRIK HERTZBERG: Why should there be any question of offending? My name is indeed Jewish (the Hertzberg part, not the Hendrik). My father’s parents were Jewish, so I guess he was too, though he was a pretty militant atheist. My mother was a Quaker from a long line of Congregationalists.
I've noticed that about half of all part-Jews tend to be well-balanced and reasonable people. The other half tend to be dogmatic PC fanatics to an exceptional degree. There is no in-between. Wise and Hertzberg are perhaps examples of what happens when white gentile SWPLism meets chosenness and where the two tendencies pathologically synergize rather than cancel each other out.
You can practically feel the spittle on your face when reading Mr. Hertzberg.
"Anonymous said...
""all the bile and spite of James Howard Kunstler but without the charm.""
I did like his book Geography of Nowhere. His description of Disney World is hilarious."
I like a lot of what Kunstler writes, especially about modern architecture and the creeping, awful, ugly, boxy sameness of it, and about the hollow woo-hoo, big-foam-finger-waving triumphalism of our bankrupt culture.
But he clearly hates just about everyone who isn't in his little clique, especially white southerners. Ironic, given that they are more likely to weather the "World Made by Hand" scenario he posits as our inevitable future than are his liberal urban-survivalist pals.
Also his whole The-End-is-Nigh schtick wears a little thin after a dozen years or so.
I should add that Kunstler has been a vocal and hostile critic of the financial sector too.
I was under the impression that Hertzberg was the editor of Harpers. I must have him confused with some other insufferable jerk.
Oh yes - here it is - that would be Lewis Lapham
The funny thing to me is that Larison lets Hertzberg's remark pass, uh, unremarked. Indeed his comments seem to indicate a sort of tacit agreement -- Larison is saying 'you see, Daniels is a good guy because he is Arab-American and not a demagogue (but shame on you Hertzberg for not distinguishing Arab Christians from Arab Muslims).'
Every commentator has his own pet causes, but its pretty sad that the Magazine founded by Take and Buchanan, one devoted to 'coming home, America', should become sort of a mirror image of the neocons -- obsessed with foreign policy, small ethnic groups in regions far away, and not particularly caring about actual Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
We complain about Pakistan having known about and hid Osama all these yrs, but Israel government not only orchestrated the Lavon Affair but later rewarded those involved with medals.
And the CIC recruited and provided safe transit for Klaus Barbie.
And Jewish Power in America protected and gave cover to Jewish communist spies(as poor saintly victim of 'McCarthyism')
Oh yes - here it is - that would be Lewis Lapham
Unfair.
"'Oh yes - here it is - that would be Lewis Lapham'
Unfair."
Unfair to whom? Lewis Lapham? I wouldn't worry too much about that. He's the one who saw nothing unfair about publishing his criticism of the speeches at the GOP Convention in 2004 days before the event even took place.
Lewis Doesn't Play Fair
If you're protesting the unfairness of being compared to Lewis Lapham, then by all means, carry on.
Since only his father is Jewish, Hertzberg is, sorry, not a Jew.
"Since only his father is Jewish, Hertzberg is, sorry, not a Jew."
Right... and since only Obama's father is Black, and not his mother, Obama is not Black, and does not identify as Black, or anti-white at all.
Gimme a break.
btw who is the clueless guy who keeps on bringing up an orient/occident distinction? Have you never encountered italians, spanish, greeks, and portuguese? Plus the irish.
Like was said up in the postings, projection is a strange thing...
Or maybe Levantine Arabs don't look the way you expect Arabs are supposed to look.
It's not all the same here from Mecca to Aleppo.
True. Then again, some Palestinians I've seen on TV -- Hamas members, I think -- were basically mulattos. What's their story? If their origin is non-levantine wouldn't that be something worth raising in response to Palestinian nationalism?
And that was just Whiskey getting slow service at a falafel restaurant.
You can't even hit an essentially stationary target. Fucking sad.
Claims about crusader ancestry are probably wrong. Within south asia we see genetic evidence of the Ancient North Indians, but since that's found even among south indian tribals who don't speak indo-aryan languages, it's probably not the aryans but dravidians. There's a smaller quantity of a more european derived variant particularly in the north and among brahmins, which may be from the aryans. But there's very little genetic input from muslim conquerors (despite claims among the muslims of the region of persian/turkish ancestry). Nor did the Normans have much genetic input in England. They were a tiny elite drowned out by the ocean of indigenous folks. Similarly, in Turkey there's little asian Turkish ancestry, they're mostly just Anatolian. The crusaders weren't even resident very long.
TGGP: Claims about crusader ancestry are probably wrong.
Is that really correct? I'd always had the impression that e.g. the Maronite Catholics had some direct ancestral ties to portions of the Crusader-derived population, which was one reason France always took such a strong interest in some of the Levantine groups. Unlike the unrecorded events in ancient South Asia, I'd think there'd be a great deal of written evidence about the ancestries of these various Mid East groups, so presumably the regional specialists should know one way or the other.
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