“In the modern world the intelligence of public opinion is the one indispensable condition of social progress.” –Charles William Eliot, 1834-1926
Ben Hubbard of the New York Times writes of the Islamic State, or ISIS, that “…the group is offering reliable, if harsh, security; providing jobs in decimated economics; and providing a rare sense of order in a region overwhelmed by conflict.” This summary of ISIS and their good deeds sounds eerily similar (and just as disgusting) to the accolades bestowed upon Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party before — and even after — the Second World War and the Holocaust. Hubbard uses the example of a nameless labourer from Raqqa who had “earned good money painting their offices,” who opined of ISIS and their implementation of Sharia law that, “As a way of life, people got used to it.” But the human spirit can adapt to, and even survive, the most trying of circumstances, as evidenced by Jewish survivors of Nazi extermination camps. Or, as the old Yiddish proverb reminds us, “Having no choice is also a choice.”
Leave it to a New York Times reporter to find the smallest measure of good in an entity as shamelessly and overtly nefarious as ISIS and the cruelty they have loosed upon the civilian populations of Syria and Iraq. I remember an openly hostile Muslim in attendance at a conference on Islamic jihad in Grapevine, Texas years ago suggesting to Robert Spencer that “the Prophet Mohammed did a lot of good things.” To which Mr. Spencer immediately replied, “Yes, and Hitler built the Autobahn.” But, tragically, Ben Hubbard’s lummoxic optimism is the measure of the intelligence (or perhaps its absence) of public opinion in our present age.
Tony Judt, in his book Postwar, observes that immediately following World War II, “Few Europeans in that time, well-informed or otherwise, anticipated the scale of change that was about to break upon them.” The ravages of war had “induced in many a skeptical pessimism.” Under the dark shadow of this pessimism they had no idea of how quickly they would recover (much of it thanks to American dollars and goodwill) from the destruction of yet a second world war in less than fifty years. Conversely, this is the same Europe which, “in the years preceding World War One,” as an “optimistic continent,” could not foresee the swift obliteration of the promising future they naively envisioned for themselves.
And this is where, in my opinion, Western democracies are situated today: We have translated into an imprudently and naively “optimistic continent.” We are moving backward instead of forward. Why else would we even consider allowing “returning jihadists” back into our midst without addressing their crimes committed in the name of Islam? Britain’s outgoing Foreign Minister William Hague told the BBC in an interview back in November 2014 that these poor Muslim extremists “just need help because they will have been through an extremely traumatic period.” Apparently the extremely traumatic experiences of their victims have, in the interests of social progress, become irrelevant to Mr. Hague and the British ruling class. How else to explain Mr. Hague’s disjointed morality and his government’s injudicious policy for returning religious psychopaths? Not to be outdone, Canada served up Omar Khadr the same hospitality by releasing him into the public domain. Welcome to Canada, eh.
In July of this year certain of our Muslim population will be observing Al Quds Day in Toronto. Apparently it’s also in the interest of “social progress” that patriotic Canadians should view this “celebration” as no more than an innocuous outpouring of support for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This is the “spiritual leader” of Iran, whom many Israeli Jews surely remember for his 2001 declaration: “It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region.” In 2010, to reassure his faithful that his anti-Jewish hatred has not been by any means abated over the years, he tweeted, “Israel is a hideous entity in the Middle East which will undoubtedly be annihilated.” My question is, Why does this present Canadian government allow Al Quds Day—a solemnization of the dreams and visions of this genocidal Muslim madman from Iran—to be celebrated anywhere in Canada?
This past Wednesday I contacted the office of Daryl Kramp, Member of Parliament for Prince Edward-Hastings and Chair of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, regarding this issue. His secretary promised she would forward my concerns to Mr. Kramp, but as of today (four days later), I have received no reply. One would think that a member of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government — a government that has promised to stand with Israel through thick and thin — particularly Canada’s Chair of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, would be, at least, recognizably alarmed about members of Canada’s Muslim communities celebrating the life of an Iranian anti-Jewish bigot whose obsession with the annihilation of the State of Israel has not exactly been kept a state secret. Personally, as a Canadian and as a friend of many loyal and patriotic Jewish Canadians, I cannot see how the celebration of Al Quds Day in downtown Toronto (an affront to all Canadians) can be dismissed by PM Harper’s Conservative government (and Daryl Kramp in particular) as harmless political activism and not a threat to national security.
Our sufferance of Islamic religious fervour, fervour so obviously foreign to our cultural traditions, should be regarded as a prime example of our public intelligence. And if our accommodation of violent religious lunatics and the opening of doors to returning ISIS jihadists is any kind of indicator of the measure of this intelligence, then I must say that Western democracies are today found wanting. We are not exhibiting social progress but rather social disintegration. Our ostentatious fidelity to political correctness (a fidelity borne of the fear of how elitist Western journalists publicly excoriate the prudent of this world) is no different than the heedlessness that ushered in first Kristallnacht, and afterward Bergen-Belsen and Babi Yar. We refuse to acknowledge this grim regression, which is not public intelligence at all but rather a blundering stupidity.
Adrian says
The whole world is going banana
Am not surprised to see such comment and adoration been bestowed on a (anti human, anti civilisation, anti everything good) cult like Issi.
These are the same individuals that will condemned people that are fighting for true freedom.
Angemon says
What a buffoon. “Security” and”jobs”? “Order”? Tell it to the Yazidi.
Mirren10 says
Indeed, he is a buffoon. And possibly an incipiently traitorous one, as well.
He is no student of history, either.
Despotic dictatorships, have, throughout the ages, offered bread and circuses. The IS is different only in its religious aspect.
But idiots like Hubbard carefully ignore that, and instead present us with the inanities quoted by Michael Devolin.
Creatures like Hubbard are carefully preparing the way for a Western acceptance of the IS, just as the quislings of 1936-39 tried to present Nazi Germany in a beneficent light, whilst carefully sidestepping, minimising, or whitewashing the atrocities and evil. Hopefully they will fail, just as the quislings of 1936-39 did.
Angemon says
Mirren10 posted:
“Creatures like Hubbard are carefully preparing the way for a Western acceptance of the IS, just as the quislings of 1936-39 tried to present Nazi Germany in a beneficent light, whilst carefully sidestepping, minimising, or whitewashing the atrocities and evil. Hopefully they will fail, just as the quislings of 1936-39 did.”
True, Mirren – at the end of the day what he’s doing amounts to legitimazing to the islamic state. “Yes, they came and pillaged, raped and killed, but they’re offering jobs and giving security”.
abad says
You are half right.
Hubbard is a student of Howard Zinn history AKA “A People’s History of the United States” type.
While on the subject of academics I was reading the latest issue from my first alma mater, it seems my former political science professor, as excellent teacher as he was, made some choice statements about Islam and ISL that would make Muslims proud.
On the positive side, considering my undergraduate and graduate years in university, I was not one to be swayed into liberal thinking.
Stardusty Psyche says
Here is the whole article
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/world/middleeast/offering-services-isis-ensconces-itself-in-seized-territories.html?_r=0
“the group is offering reliable, if harsh, security; providing jobs in decimated economics; and providing a rare sense of order in a region overwhelmed by conflict.”
…certainly sounds preposterous in isolation.
But, if you read the whole article it is pretty frank about the reality under IS.
IS is just that, Islamic, and a State. They are in fact going about the business of running a state, providing services, jobs, and and structuring an economy…all in a bizarre Orwellian fascistic totalitarian order of murder, conquest, slavery, and brainwashing children to become brutal killers.
boakai ngombu says
all in a bizarre Orwellian fascistic totalitarian order of murder, conquest, slavery, and brainwashing children to become brutal killers…
who will mindlessly attempt to please the malicious and belligerent allah god of islam (unknowable; the best of all deceivers) in such damnable fashion.
Angemon says
Stardusty Psyche posted:
“But, if you read the whole article it is pretty frank about the reality under IS.”
And after all is said and done, what he is doing is apologizing for them.
abad says
As in 1979 Iran? Yet ISL’s state is not tenured yet act as if they are.
Westman says
Employment from an entity that gets its wealth from murdererous theft and its entertainment from rape is not a recipe for economic stability.
Just like the Nazis it will ultimstely be stopped by a world effort when its parasitic expansion causes serious Western and oil-rich Eastern economic decline.
Currently, the “leaders” of the West work mostly for re-election, the news seems to be an extended version of People Magazine, and any mention of Jihad is denied its relationship to Islamic Ideology or considered too far away for concern.
The 5 most dangerous words about cancer apply equally to Militant Islam: “Maybe it will go away”.
Perhaps Ben Hubbard doesn’t realize that Militant Jihad is coming for his soul and his paycheck.
mortimer says
Ben Hubbard is unable to perceive theocratic fascism when he sees it. Political Islam is based on slavery, extortion and piracy. Political Islam is literally a kleptocracy.
cs says
He is a hipster, what to expect?
mortimer says
Ben Hubbard of the New York Times is as willfully blind as those who visited Stalin’s Potemkin village and failed to detect the Ukrainian Genocide! As willfully blind as those who visited Theresienstadt concentration camp and saw no Holocaust.
He is the latest in a long line of NYT journalist who praise America’s enemies for the smallest details, while ignoring the big picture of atrocities, misogyny, persecution, enslavement and barbarity.
Of what use is a journalist who can’t see the forest for the trees?
RonaldB says
I think there are three points to be made.
When there is complete anarchy, the first need of a person is security and physical maintenance. The ISIS created chaos and destruction, but since it didn’t totally eradicate the people in its area, it eventually set up a social structure. Like good Islamists, they will erase the memory of the relatively stable life before ISIS, and make propaganda about how ISIS raised their standard of living. Islam is much like Big Brother.
In the Middle East, the natural form of government is a somewhat secular dictatorship, where a despot forcibly suppresses the expression of political Islam. The benefits of a despot are the ability to leave, the ability of non-Muslims as well as Muslims to live in safety (as long as they’re not political) , and the ability of a Muslim to not observe religious requirements (although not to openly apostatize).
I think Elliot was referring to the intelligence of the electorate, rather than of public officials. One of the disadvantages of a representative government is that if the electorate is deficient, the officials will be deficient. This is why the efforts to dilute the US culture with loads of non-compatible immigrants is so insidious.
The US long ago gave in to rampaging Iranians. When the Iranian revolution was taking place, Iranian students were demonstrating and rioting in the US. Instead of deporting them immediately back to Iran, or the nearest island, we instead refused sanctuary to the Shah, who had been our ally for decades. President Carter was a first-class disgrace to the US and to the Presidency.
pdxnag says
This reminds me of the difference between free market capitalism where private persons exchange goods and services as compared to an economic system where persons who control the reins of “government” use it to command and control all commerce (and thereby all people). A command and control economy can seem alluring, to some. The latest US example is where people are promised that they will all have health insurance (whether they need it or not) if only they would comply with the government command that they buy it from a discrete set of “approved” providers at astronomical prices. The strong hand of dictatorship is comforting, to some, sort of, but only if you comply (or you personally benefit) – and only if you fully abandon any notion of individual liberty and freedom.
Mirren10 says
”The strong hand of dictatorship is comforting, to some, sort of, but only if you comply (or you personally benefit) – and only if you fully abandon any notion of individual liberty and freedom.”
A neat summing up of why the left and islam are such comfy bedfellows. I would only add that the Left in general *loves* the idea of power, and the ability to order other people around, and some people prefer a dictatorship (whether political or political/religious) to the uncomfortable business of thinking for themselves, and taking responsibility for their own choices and actions.
Lia Wissing says
What the left doesn’t see is that under islam they won’t be the ones giving the orders.
Alan Fontana says
Well put ! Inside every liberal is a little dictator !
Riche says
How does ISIS provode ecomomic securitu? Is a gamg of murderers and slave traders
PRCS says
As it remains a democracy, still, will knowledgeable, patriotic Canadians be protesting–en masse–at Toronto’s “al-Quds” event?
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
In the modern world the intelligence of public opinion is the one indispensable condition of social progress.
–Charles William Eliot, 1834-1926
From Walter Duranty to Ben Hubbard, a trip so short you don’t even have to leave the New York Times building.
By “intelligence of public opinion” Eliot is talking about content as much as what’s done with the content. Here in Hubbard’s piece, he does double backflip inverted gainers to lay a Marxian interpretation on the New Caliphate so convoluted it’d make a Supreme Court justice salivate in jealousy.
But, also, is the *lack* of information in Hubbard’s piece. While framing Abu Bakr’s operation in a window of political economics, he fails to even ask how they got to be in such dire economic straits in the first place. Without oil, Moslem economies are all sag instead of a propped up sag.
The content of any mainstream piece done around Moslems is always carefully clipped, shaven, buffed up and administered quick cosmetic surgery. But Hubbard maybe is taking living the lie too far, even for the NYT. For example, what did economic deprivation have to do with kidnapping a few thousand women as sex slaves? Even the awful Karl Marx never addressed that aspect of the human condition.
spot on says
But Hubbard maybe is taking living the lie too far, even for the NYT. For example, what did economic deprivation have to do with kidnapping a few thousand women as sex slaves? Even the awful Karl Marx never addressed that aspect of the human condition.
The editors of the NYT and others have taken leave of any semblance of rationality. Since lots of people pay to read this stuff, I assume that a lot of people must take them serious. The whole world seems to be on the edge of irrationality these days. Even the Pope has joined with Al Gore in supporting global warming (which does not even exist) and he is condemning anyone that makes guns, knives, or any weapons for self defense. Obviously Muslims who would kill the Pope and us have no such inhibitions. Why are so many making decisions and judgements favoring Muslims when all Muslims want to do is kill anyone in their way of their goal of domination. This is “head in the sand” irrationality brought to a new level.
Our politicians aren’t much better. I realize that Donald Trump did not side with Pamela and I fault him for that. However, no one is going to shut him up and he has increased his worth by 9 $Billion since he went flat broke in the 80’s. Maybe he can add some sanity to our political dialog.
miriamrove says
Where do these people come from? Do they think we are all a bunch of f…idiots? m
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
Where do these people come from?
Mainly they come from the Ivy League, or one of its satellites. I searched for Ben Hubbard and couldn’t get his academic credentials, but you can bet that he comes from a place where the didactic is deliciously counterintuitive in an unreal way, that way being an erudite, palatable, marketable, and even ostensibly rebellious, fact avoidance.
Don’t wanna be unnecessarily negative and turn anybody off. Moslems are so negative that serious analysis gets turned off anytime they are publicly discussed.
miriamrove says
Don’t wanna be unnecessarily negative and turn anybody off. Moslems are so negative that serious analysis gets turned off anytime they are publicly discussed.
HI APF! Not sure about negative, but the most insecure people I have ever came across and I was born and raised one. The take everything so personal specially their religion. The second you try to convince them that most of their ills and short comings are from their so called religion of peace, they go on the offensive. Jews are generally the first escape goat, America second, Europe third. m
Cecilia Ellis says
“. . . but you can bet that he comes from a place where the didactic is deliciously counterintuitive in an unreal way . . .”
– Your internet quest to locate the academic background of Ben Hubbard may not have been successful, but the interest you sparked, in so doing, was. As you peaked my curiosity, I attempted a similar pursuit. While there seems to be little available, I was able to find that Hubbard graduated from a Masters Program (no further information available), in 2008, at the University of California, Berkeley. He also attended (probably graduated with an undergraduate degree in history – unspecified area) at Northwestern University. So, there is nothing to suggest anything other than the probability you proposed regarding his academic background.
“that way being an erudite, palatable, marketable, and even ostensibly rebellious, fact avoidance.”
– Impressive acuity!
Shmooviyet says
UC Berkeley and Northwestern… two nests of the worst types of prog PC-ness.
Goes far in explaining his attitude and employment at NYT.
Jaladhi says
Political correctness will be our down fall when we can’t and won’t tell the truth about Islam and don’t call evil as evil but try to sugar coat it and find some good in it as the NYTimes reporters do all the time. A journalist who won’t tell the truth is not a journalist at all – this fits most of NYTimes reporters well!!
somehistory says
A group ruled over by a strong man who uses torture and death as weapons, will build a *loyalty* of sorts among those over whom he rules. They don’t want to be tortured, they don’t want to die, and hope that when the boss is in a good mood, they’ll reap some benefits from his tyranny.
He may not directly steal, and may no longer torture or kill…he has his minions do it. The group looks upon him as a stable source of *order.*
Much like an abusive father does to scared little children.
But, it certainly doesn’t make it right, nor just, nor something to be praised as providing a stable economy, or security. No one can be secure as long as a despot…a murderer…rules. Even he can’t be totally secure….he has to depend on the fear he has engendered holding off any strong contenders for his position. Much like in the world of animals, the alpha has to remain strong….and he can’t do that as he ages. The despot must continue to torture and kill even as his rule ages.
The guy who wrote of the *positive* in isis is not really thinking ahead to when he might totally lose his.
KelZat says
The left is dragging us down the path to the same kinds of horrors we’ve seen in the past. Liberalism is a disease.
Carlos Danger says
Perhaps ISIS will also be able to make the trains run on time.
Old Mother Hubbard is a complete and total tool.
It’s hard to believe that people actually pay to read his nonsense.
Alan Fontana says
People focus on what a wonderful world it will be when we all get along, and respect each other, and there are no guns – but they steadfastly refuse to follow the historical realities following an idealistic path to this end.
Put simply, good people like to have happy uplifting thoughts, and not dwell on the lessons of the Austrian ‘Anschluss’ with Germany, or the steady realignment of muslims under ISIS. They don’t want to think about the actual result of banning private gun ownership, shown time and again by history.
Jobs for ISIS? Of course, this will solve everything, along with encounter groups and Tupperware parties and church socials.
abad says
The New York Times is the most liberal newspaper in the world and everyone knows it. Therefore I am not surprised at this “blunder.”
Uncle Vladdi says
Liberal racists surely love them they “noble savages,” don’t they?
😉
alyn21 says
Leftists have always made excuses for totalitarian regimes. The did the same thing with Communism and Nazism as well.
They only hate democracies ie American, Israel, Canada etc.
Nothing new here except for a new generation of idiots who are writing the same crap as was done in the 30s, 40s,50s,60s etc etc.
Stardusty Psyche says
Hi alyn21
“Leftists… only hate democracies ie American, Israel, Canada etc.”
Crackpot stupidity
Angemon says
Stardusty Psyche posted:
“Crackpot stupidity”
That’s a really good description of the democracy-hating left and of its enablers.