Yeah, perhaps. But for some reason everything I say sure gets under your incredibly thin skin. I’m wondering if Ephraim or Ben David took your responses to them seriously. Do they qualify for your standard of cyber-scholarship? Doesn’t silence, according to you, imply agreement? Yes, it’s all starting to make sense.

And regarding Latin, etymology, etc… Blah blah blah. It’s just your standard way of saying “I’m too smart to put up with you having an opinion that I still, for some reason, feel challenged to reject. Failing that I will reject the messenger.” Same response I’ve always heard.

Shavua Tov and hope you find some time during the week to look up from all those books and grace your inferiors with your world-reknown intellect. (Despite wasting five comments disputing my religious identity before revealing that you didn’t even understand the concept of circumcision).

I’ve just promised CK not to respond to you in kind. You’re not important or relevant enough for anybody on here to actually want to kill you. Now do yourself a favour and grace a blog with your commenting skills the average contributor to which does not own or have read any books.

Your entire comment is an exercise in self-contradiction.

At least the deficiencies that contribute to the bad maneuvering that reifies the Vatican’s shitty P.R. appear to also be embraced by its defenders. When it comes to making yourself look like an ass, you’re in good company, Froylein. Ideologically speaking, of course. You do not know the difference between intelligent discourse and sophistry (“intellectual discourse”). Who, but a massive poseur, speaks like this? Feel free to revel in your pomposity and to expound upon matters that no one here has stated have made your “opinions” on the matter (if you even have any of your own) seem any more sensible. Feel free to continue mistaking the false pride you feel in keeping high intellectual company with the pride that comes from being able to tolerate or engage disagreement, or from making compelling arguments.

Oh, and feel free to keep responding to things that you say, in your characteristic way, that there is no reason for you to respond to. Feel free to keep saying it’s a waste of your time to respond to something, and then responding to it. Feel free to say you’re going to provide a citation or source for some idea (defensible or outlandish) and then never provide it. Feel free to keep proving to everyone what a pathetic poseur you must be. Feel free to keep showing how much more important image is to you than substance.

Well now! Does that give you enough of a reason to want to kill me? Exposing you like this? Poseur.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” And apparently no one can make you feel superior to them without massive amounts of self-deception. I seriously have never read anyone as delusional in cyberspace that went to such lenths to make sure others took them so seriously. It’s really a Lewis Carroll novel caliber of ridiculous.

Oh, and Ephraim and Ben-David: This is the reason Europe’s going down the tubes. Froylein may be too much of a snobby European to see it. But that’s just an illustration of the exact problem in different terms. It’s also why she refuses to recognize the larger implications you see in your disagreements with her, but she doesn’t.

Once again, you make as many easily contested little points in each of these two remaining comments as you claim I did. But if I don’t keep my comments short and sweet, you will get confused, indignant and petulant (which is exactly the point I’m making). Listen, you blog here. My interest in, every now and then, posting comments in response to what you write, isn’t merely to insult you. It isn’t merely to make you feel less important than you somehow feel you should NEVER, EVER be made to feel. It’s because I actually might have a different, but legitimate, perspective on something you might have said. On something you, G-d forbid, might have missed.

Now, most people who write don’t have a problem with that. They appreciate debate, they appreciate being challenged. They appreciate that the purpose of intelligent discourse isn’t to arbitrarily determine who has more authoritative standing in ever more and more academic fields under the sun. If you don’t, fine. Put a disclaimer with each post or something. But you can’t seriously pretend that these petty, and yes, often entirely irrelevant (and sometimes flat-out wrong) points you are making above would really do the same job more effectively, can you? I mean, at some point, doesn’t it come down to a different game than the one you think you’re playing? I ask this in all honesty because, although I try to do a good job distinguishing between I’m joking around, making a personal observation, and otherwise, I admit that it is downright impossible for me to know when (and if) you are doing the same.

Alas. These are the many mysteries and unanswered questions left cluttered about by someone for whom politeness is a one-way street and who doesn’t realize that her obsessive-compulsive interest in insignificant and unexplained linguistic and theological details shouldn’t count against her after rattling off and revealing in post after post that she doesn’t know what a bris is. — Despite wanting to use that as an attempt to make a ridiculous point against someone else.

Ephraim, Ben-David: Like I said, when someone is more interested in not feeling insulted and saving face, they are not interested in a substantive discussion so much as a tea party of the sort that monarchs love so. Just don’t be surprised when the emperor is shown to be wearing no clothes.

But what do I know? I shudder at the authority of ego of Jewlicious’ very own Torquemada. My circumcised foreskin just reels its way forward, as if to ask for a legitimate (second!) bris that otherwise just might never have occurred. At least, it might never have occured in the mind of someone who didn’t even know it can’t be performed TWICE!

Now getting back to Tom, who actually has some intelligent points to make and doesn’t mistake his point of view and preference for equally applied standards of civility for a one-sided infallability (oh, I must mean a secular kind here! Dear Heavens.):

First off, fiscal conservatism is one thing. A cynical, politically motivated counter-revolutionary rejection of mainstream Keynesian economics – by the same group that wasn’t fiscally conservative when the Keynesian approach wasn’t necessary, is hardly acting on principles that conform to established norms. Keynesian economics was not a liberal, welfare-state effort to upset some long-held conservative principle. In fact, Adam Smith might have even written something in support of it.

And although a provincial New England delegation might have protested it, the first amendment established a secular government. If you want Christian principles governing the land, there’s a long-standing tradition in Europe (which we fled) for you to embrace. If you want to be so conservative as to reach back in history beyond the signing of the first amendment, then gather the votes and change the damn thing. Good luck with that. My assumption, however, is that even American conservatives can appreciate the venerable Constitution and Bill of Rights as a conservative enough starting point. Perhaps I assume wrong, though.

Railing against the miniscule proportion of any bill that would go to the NEA, etc. is fine. Just don’t pretend it’s any more relevant than the miniscule proportion of the federal budget that goes to say, foreign aid for instance. It’s picking straws at that point. But if that’s all your side has, no biggie.

And I’m not sure if you mean to make a serious point regarding Hobbes at this point or not. The fact is, if you want to rouse the sympathies of a bunch of nationalists with anti-libertarian sympathies, by all means, try to keep filling your once much-bigger tent with their hot air before it collapses further. But don’t kid yourself into thinking that your populist embrace of these rabble-rousers makes you any more conservative than the leaders of the French Revolution. It doesn’t.

If “jihad” is equalled to a “holy war”, there isn’t any. Religion is used to stimulate aggression in terrorist supporters and henchmen, but if you look at the string pullers, their motivations are personal / economic ones. Islam is a proselytizing religion, therefore efforts to adapt their surroundings to their religious “needs” are not surprising, but authorities over here have repeatedly made it a point that immigrants need not only tolerate but accept the norms and values that are “ours”. Still, in Yugoslavia, Albania etc. we’ve had Islam at our doorstep for a while. Due to the Crusades, the cultural influence of Islam on Europe triggered by cultural exchange between soldiers was vast. There are lots of Muslims in Germany that came here from Kazakhstan. Yet, I’ve never seen any of those rallying against Israel or heard any of them voicing anti-Semitic sentiments. Curiously enough, it appears that most aggressors stem from countries with low literacy rates but not necessarily a low HDI.

So what about Oriana Fallaci (nihil nisi bene de mortuis, so I’ll give her credits for her journalistic achievements) and BB (who, BTW, opposes any kind of slaughtering including kosher one)?
What about Peter Scholl-Latour?

As long as they’re reasonable, the state should protect their right to voice their criticism.

Who defines “reasonable”? The State? If so, then again, this is just a matter of caprice. If the government can define what is “reasonable” and what is not, we are in trouble.

I have no problem if an individual Muslim, who is offended by Wilders or whomever, decides to bring a libel or defamation suit against him. That’s what the courts are for. The legislative or the executive branches of government should have no right to impose what they think is “reasonable” based on political considerations, no matter what they are.

there is no general jihad.

That depends on how you define “jihad”. I think the trend to reshape European society by gaining acceptance of such things as plural marriage, or self-censorship out of an exaggerated fear of offending Muslim sensibilites is definitely a part of the “soft jihad”. Everywhere people muzzle themselves out of fear of Muslim reaction. This eventually becomes a habit, and foreign and detrimental customs become part and parcel of society. Nobody fears Jews and Christians in this way. You only need one Theo van Gogh to get people to shut up out of fear of their lives…..sorry, out of “politeness”.

Jews might learn something from this. Apparently, if you kill people you don’t like, the ones that are left alive learn to fear and respect you.

Oh, yeah, what about Oriana Fallaci? And Brigitte Bardot?

Ephraim, there also / were are caricatures portraying Jews as money-grubbing, and there indeed were Jewish bankers back when, but that doesn’t make those caricatures any less despicable.

I do agree that the reaction to the caricatures in the Muslim world was extreme, and it reflected what nobody had doubted (as far as I can tell), namely that Islam is in dire need of something comparable to the Enlightment to be on eye-level with Westerners in matters of discourse. The reactions to a statement, which was quoted out of the context, itself being a quotation from a medieval source, made by Benedict XVI, provoked similar reactions as I’m sure you recall.

Now, I think there’s a difference between being provocative and possibly offensive yet stating the truth or getting insulting through lies; generalisations might qualify as lies. (That is what the courts in the Netherlands are going to establish in Wilders’ case, yet he has chosen to adopt a victimology that insinuates he was already suffering from the verdict, and as far as I could find, there hasn’t even a restraining order been issued.) It would also be an unfair assessment to claim the wrongdoings of, e.g. the Rubashkins or those tznius forces attacking women were reflective of the entire Orthodox movement even if their actions might find a higher degree of approval among that group.

Should a state’s legislative be able to interfere with possible demagoguery? It might be a case-to-case matter (case as in country), but there should definitely be the possibility for either side to appeal to a state’s judiciary. There are plenty of severe critics of Islam and Islamism over here. As long as they’re reasonable, the state should protect their right to voice their criticism. The state should, however, not act as an enabler to non-democratic views.

We do have issues with Muslim immigrants in Europe, but despite the popularity of that claim, there is no general jihad. And attempts at polarizing between Muslims and non-Muslims won’t solve those issues. If anything, we need to show that moderate Muslims that are respectful of Westerns norms and values are welcome and thus strengthen their positions against those of the extremists instead of pushing them into the extremists’ corner.
And the problems aren’t just political / religious extremism, but also crime in general, but not every immigrant is a criminal.

Agree with them or not, Congressional Republicans are raising substantive concerns with the bill, and that puts a faux conservative like Sullivan on the spot.