Gavin McInnes recounts a conversation I had with him in the lobby of The Breakers during Restoration Weekend a couple of weeks ago. “Stuck in the Past,” by Gavin McInnes, November 22:
I just flew back from Restoration Weekend in Palm Beach, and boy are my arms tired of the old narrative. I was on a panel with James O”Keefe and Sonnie Johnson called “Changing the Narrative,” and we all talked about how dangerous it is for the GOP to remain stuck in the past.
The speakers at this conference bore impressive pedigrees and included Ann Coulter, Ted Cruz, Pamela Gellar [sic], Dr. Benjamin Carson, Bill Whittle, Robert Spencer, and conference founder David Horowitz. Just as New York City is an island of lunacy surrounded by hundreds of miles of reality, walking around The Breakers Palm Beach Hotel felt like a wee bit of sanity in a world gone mad.
While trying to register, I strolled by Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer, who was sitting in the lobby checking his email. After a brief introduction, I asked some totally predictable questions like, “Do you ever think of quitting?” and “Do you have bulletproof windows?”
“If I stopped doing what I do, I wouldn’t suddenly become immortal,” he replied.
I told him of a recent revelation where I realized it’s not a choice between “Do they hate us because they”re inbred?” or “Do they hate us because of Israel?”
It’s both. They hate us because they”re inbred and also because of Israel.
He disagreed and said it was neither. “It’s because the book says to kill us and they think God wrote the book.” We then talked about seemingly random attacks on Vancouver and Glasgow and how little our foreign policy in Israel has to do with terrorism in the Philippines right now. The conversation ended with both of us agreeing that nobody kills more Muslims than Muslims do….