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The anti-Coulter campaign, and the place of Jews in America
Laurium writes:
The Ann Coulter troubles are spreading. Apparently if one believes that “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me,” then one is an anti-Semite and believes in genocide of the Jews. At least according to the ADL, the Wiesenthal Center and the National Jewish Defense Council and “organized Jewry,” as the LA Times calls them. This is from the LA Times:
Earlier this week, Coulter went on “The Big Idea,” a talk show aired on CNBC, the cable channel devoted to business news. Its host, Donny Deutsch, is a preternaturally affable businessman who invites successful people on to talk about how they turn their ideas into money. Coulter was there to describe how she had—in our vulgar commercial argot—“branded” herself. At one point, Deutsch asked her what an ideal country would be like, and she replied that it would be one in which everyone was “a Christian.” Deutsch, who happens to be Jewish, protested that Coulter was advocating his people’s elimination. She responded that she simply hoped to see Jews “perfected” through conversion to Christianity.
The National Jewish Democratic Council weighed in with a petition asking other broadcast news organizations not to give Coulter a forum. “While Ann Coulter has freedom of speech, news outlets should exercise their freedom to use better judgment,” said council Executive Director Ira N. Forman. “Just as media outlets don’t invite those who believe that Martians walk the Earth to frequently comment on science stories, it’s time they stop inviting Ann Coulter to comment on politics.” (Sadly, too many Americans now believe the only way to confront offensive or dangerous speech is to silence it.)
Rabbi Marvin Heir, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that Coulter’s “remarks that Jews needed to be perfected and America would be better off if everyone was Christian are deeply offensive and have been the classic language of anti-Semites throughout the millennia. She may have been a guest on CNBC’s “Big Idea,” but what she invoked is the oldest “Bigoted Idea,” and she should apologize.” (Good luck on that one, rabbi.)
Perhaps the best response came from the Anti-Defamation League, which called Coulter’s comments “outrageous, offensive and a throwback to the centuries-old teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism. The notion that Jews are religiously inferior or imperfect because they do not accept Christian beliefs was the basis for 2,000 years of church-based anti-Semitism. While she is entitled to her beliefs, using mainstream media to espouse the idea that Judaism needs to be replaced with Christianity and that each individual Jew is somehow deficient and needs to be “perfected” is rank Christian supersessionism and has been rejected by the Catholic Church and the vast majority of mainstream Christian denominations. Clearly, Ann Coulter needs a wake-up call about the power of words to injure others and fuel hatred. She needs an education, too, about the roots of anti-Semitism.”
I sense a desire by “organized Jewry” to persuade Christian Americans that traditional, commonplace Christian beliefs are fundamentally against the idea of America, much like what CAIR preaches, to make evangelizing wrong. And I fear it is gaining traction.
How should one respond to this growing movement? Affirm that if evangelism and the truth claims of Christianity be anti-Semitism, that every Christian should be proud to be an anti-Semite.? Or should we discount their beliefs as merely extremist beliefs (“Judaists,” a la “Islamists” perhaps?) and comfort ourselves knowing that right-thinking moderate Jews do not agree, but are just silent, perhaps out of fear of their extremist leaders? Should we just be silent and hope it goes away? Or should we insist that regular everyday Jews stand up and condemn the Wiesenthal Center, the ADL and the Council and announce that their silent acquiescence is approval (as we do with the Muslims).
I hesitate to ignore it, since it seems to be a continuing thrust of the ADL and (what the author calls) “organized Jewry,” particularly in view of the ADL’s statements last year together with Reform leaders regarding evangelical Christians and their threat not just to Jews but to the idea of America. I fear that the longer we remain silent, the deeper these ideas will be entrenched until our children will believe in the fundamental unfairness of any religious truth claims and the fundamental evil of evangelism.
I do not want evangelizing, either for Christianity or for traditional American culture, to be replaced with self-policing ethnoreligious groups each defending their social status and boundaries: a Kehilla for Jews, an Umma for Muslims, castes for the Hindus, and … what … for Christians, exactly?
LA replies:
I will say this in defense of the Jewish groups attacking Coulter. While, as I said in a previous entry, I find nothing wrong in her remarks in and of themselves, the fact is that this is not the sort of thing we are accustomed to hearing in public society. In the non-denominational public square of America, people avoid making the kind of outright religious comparisons Coulter made: “My religion is better than your religion.” I learned in Sixth Grade that one does not do that. So it’s understandable that the Jewish groups were shocked and scandalized. The correct response to the attack on Coulter is to explain the meaning of her statement and show that she is not trying to force anything on Jews and is not threatening them in any way, but is stating a basic Christian belief, without which there would be no Christianity—that it is Christ who makes man complete. At the same time, it must be added that given her egotistical trashy persona and the utter absence in her previous writings of anything remotely religious or Christian (she identified herself as a Christian in her chapters on Darwinism in “Godless,” but that had no content other than that she believes in some kind of supreme being, which Deists also believe in), she’s the last person to be making these kinds of charged claims about Christianity and Judaism. One could certainly argue that provocative statements about the “incompleteness” of Jews do not belong in a secular public affairs program, being spoken by a half-naked publicity hound.
At the same time, there is, as Laurium points out, a gathering movement on the left to treat serious Christianity as a public enemy, and the Jewish organizations have been a part of that, and this needs to be resisted.
- end of initial entry -
Terry Morris writes:
You wrote: “One could certainly argue that provocative statements about the “incompleteness” of Jews do not belong in a secular public affairs program, being spoken by a half-naked publicity hound.”
I agree with this statement absolutely. She is all of the above, and therefore strikes me as a less than credible advocate for conservatism as well as Christianity. I remember when some “conservatives” were calling for President Bush to nominate her to take a seat on the Supreme Court. What’s wrong with people?
Maureen C. writes:
Ann Coulter was talking about the Christian belief that Jews failed to accept the perfection of their own tradition in the person of Christ. Donny Duetch’s ignorant, smallbrow interpretation of Ann’s remark as meaning that she was saying Jews were imperfect was pathetic. He practically jumped out of his chair in excitement at being able to construe Ann’s words “we just want Jews to be perfect” as anti-Semitic. Duetch clearly had no understanding of the dogmas of either Christianity or Judaism, but he sure knew a potential scandal when he saw one. Ironically, he spent much of the show trying to get Ann to say that she wrote her columns to create scandals and not to present her true views. It was clearly a case of Donny’s lesser mind seeking to project his own commercial motivations on Ann. Ann conducted herself honorably against a dishonorable interviewer. Ann did not present herself as a spokesman for Christianity—she spoke her views.
Steven Warshawsky writes:
I have posted some thoughts on this brouhaha on American Thinker here.
I think this incident provides an important opportunity for reflection on the political relationship between Jews and Christians in this country, and on what it means to be a tiny minority in a much larger society.
My own view is that contemporary Jews do not want to face the reality of their precarious existence in the world. The Holocaust inflicted a profound existential crisis on the Jewish people. They know, even if they do not admit openly, that their very existence remains an open question in a hostile world. They believe they can avoid this hostility in the future through a combination of assimilation, i.e., becoming less distinctly Jewish, and also by adopting and promoting “universalist” political doctrines that promise to erase the racial and ethnic and religious differences that have resulted in such hatred and violence towards Jews in the past. I’m not saying this is a conscious policy. But I do think these are unconscious “coping mechanisms” that explain much about Jewish life in the United States since World War Two.
Comments like Coulter’s remind Jews that they still live in a Christian dominated society. This frightens many of them. They react with such vehemence to Coulter’s profession of her faith because they see in this minor, harmless act the basis for future pogroms and gas chambers. Jews with this paranoid mindset truly see Coulter as an anti-Semite who will gladly march them off to the killing fields.
This is what I find so sad from a human perspective, and infuriating from a political perspective. In my opinion, too many Jews fail to recognize that just because the Nazis arose from a Christian country, not all Christians are proto-Nazis. The American Christian community, from the founding of this country, has treated the Jews extremely well. I am truly grateful for this, because I know enough about history and human nature to realize it did not have to be this way.
Jeff in England writes:
What a ridiculous waste of time these attacks on Coulter are. There is real anti-Semitism around and yet people are focusing on the harmless (and logical) remarks of Ann Coulter. Makes the people criticising Coulter feel superior I guess. She said nothing wrong.
As a Jew, I’m fed up with these infantile attacks on people like Coulter (whose cynical remarks about the World Trade Centre women were far more worthy of criticism), who simply feel their religion is superior to other religions. I would hope she does or she is wasting her time for sure.
Certainly Jews feel their religion is superior as well. There is nothing wrong with that as long as they don’t advocate hurting or persecuting people of other religions. People are entitled to feel their religion is superior. End of story.
LA writes:
In his American Thinker article, Mr. Warshawsky writes:
“As a Jew, I recognize, with painful humility, that the existence of my person, my people, lies at the mercy of the larger, stronger peoples in whose midst we live.”
I respectfully say to Mr. Warshawsky that I think this is overdone and wrong. It’s one thing to recognize that you belong to an ethno-religious minority in this country. It’s another to speak of yourself as being at the “mercy” of the majority, meaning that in the absence of their “mercy,” they would dispossess or kill you, which further implies that the majority currently or remotely has any such thoughts or intentions toward you. I’m sure that’s not what you intended, but the way it’s written it’s pretty insulting. You’re speaking as though you were living in Russia where at any moment the Tsar might suddenly turn against you and launch a pogrom, so you’ve got to keep scraping and bowing and hoping for the best.
In my view, this is not the right way for a Jew to think about America and about his place in it.
What is the right way? You’re an American. Period. As George Washington said in his letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, you are not here at the sufferance of the majority, you are full citizens participating in the country as much as anyone else.
But in writing about the majority the way you have done, you suggest that you see them as a separate people from yourself, that you do not feel yourself as a part of the same people with them.
I don’t know when this happened among American Jews. I sure was not aware of it when I was growing up. Jews were a part of America, they did not have this overdeveloped consciousness of themselves as separate from the rest of America. This seemed to happen sometime after the Sixties. In most cases, this has taken the form of hypertrophied suspicion of the white Christian majority. But in Steven’s case, it’s gone in the opposite direction, taking the form of an attitude of “painful humility” toward the majority. Either way it’s a problem. How can you feel yourself a fellow American of people toward whom you feel painful humility?
(Note: I responded harshly to George R.’s comments about Jews in the previous thread on Coulter. Here he makes a much more reasonable and fairminded statement, so maybe I misunderstood him earlier.)
George R. writes:
“I don’t know when this happened among American Jews. I was sure not aware of it when I was growing up. Jews were a part of America, they did not have this overdeveloped consciousness of themselves as separate from the rest of America. This seemed to happen sometime after the Sixties.”
It happened at the same time whites all around the West, for reasons that are still mysterious, lost all confidence in themselves and lost the ability to act as a cultural/political group.
When whites lost the ability to act as the governing majority, it lead directly to all sorts of minorities treating white Americans as dirt, with whites unwilling to respond. In order for Jews to assimilate into white America, whites need to act as the Leit-Kultur, and establish clearly what is and is not acceptable in a white dominated America.
After giving this some thought to the issue of Jews, here is what I think happens with Jews that causes so much unnecessary aggravation between white Christians and Jews.
1) Jews have very high mean IQs, higher on average than white Americans.
2) Jews are verbally adroit, which makes them successful at politics.
3) Jews are good at making money because of their high IQ.
4) Jew lean strongly left.
As a result of these four characteristics, a portion of the Jewish leadership is in a position to push left wing policies that are detrimental to white America, and ultimately suicidally detrimental to Jewish Americans if these left policies are carried through. (The leadership is not the only reason left wing policies are being pushed, but they do contribute, to some extent, to the problem.)
Meanwhile, ordinary Jews who aren’t involved in politics and have no animosity to whites wonder why people keep complaining about Jews.
My opinion is that the solution to this problem is for white Americans to act like the governing majority again and make clear to ordinary Jews that undermining the majority white culture cannot be tolerated. Once it is clear what America is and is not, I think most Jewish Americans would accept this reality as they have in the past in the US and in other European countries that have been friendly to Jews such as the Low Countries and Britain.
As a side note, as a WASP, I would be willing to accept Jews in America as legitimate equals to whites in a way I do not for high IQ Asians, because:
1) non-Orthodox Jews genetically are either white or mostly white and will get whiter due to high levels of intermarriage, though of course, the original Jews were not white.
2) I don’t believe that ordinary Jews for the most part have any conscious malice towards white Christian Americans, I just think the some Jewish leaders are causing problems, whereas groups like La Raza and the NAACP are clearly pushing policies that reflect the desires of their constituents.
Anyway, if Washington, who owned slaves, thought Jews could coexist as equal citizens with white Christian Americans, then that is good enough for me.
LA replies:
I agree very much with George’s point that the key to the breakdown was the majority’s loss of confidence in itself as the governing majority who more or less set the rules for the whole society. Once that happened, all the minorities began asserting themselves in self-centered aggressive ways harmful to America. To paraphrase and reverse the order of Yeats’s famous line from “The Second Coming”:
The center stopped holding, and things fell apart.
As I’ve said many times, the only way for America to be restored is for the center to recover itself and start holding again, for the majority to start acting like the majority again.
Jason writes:
As a nice Jewish boy I do not take the least offense at what Coulter said. I have read many versions of the Bible, one of the Gospels is specifically written for Jews who wish to convert. However, no where does the New Testament state that we need to be forced converted or killed. In fact, this particular Christian country (the United States) is one of the few places we as Jews can still live as Jews, without fear.
What I do find offensive is the outright seditious nature of many of my own people on an almost daily basis. They go after Coulter and Pat Robertson, but make nice with CAIR and MPAC. The claim that so called “radical Christianity” wants to hurt us, but say little to nothing about a so called religious faith that states over and over again that we are not even worthy of dhimmi status, just to be killed on sight. Finally, I take great offense that the organizations who exist almost solely now to assist Muslims actually captured trying to kill us, predominantly Jewish groups like the ACLU take them on as clients, at no charge.
The suicidal tendencies of my own people never cease to amaze me I am sorry to say.
Steven Warshawsky writes:
Yes, my words were strong, but I think they are well-founded.
I can’t think of another group of people whose very existence remains in doubt, because large numbers of other people want to exterminate them. [LA replies: But their existence is not in doubt in America, and we’re talking here about America, not about the rest of the world.] The “Jewish Question” asks, ultimately, whether Jews should be allowed to live in our world. People are still asking it. Not just crackpots living in the mountains somewhere. But heads of state and leaders of major religions. There is no equivalent “Christian Question” or “Muslim Question” or “Black Question.”
The history of Nazi Germany is highly instructive, in my opinion. In the decades leading up to the Holocaust, the Jewish population of Germany was, in many respects, similar to the Jewish population in the United States today: largely secular, very successful in business and the professions and the arts, with proud military service during the First World War, and, perhaps most surprisingly, perceiving themselves as “good and patriotic Germans.” It didn’t matter. Within a few years, almost every one of them was expelled and/or murdered. I highly recommend Michael Blumenthal’s brilliant and moving book, The Invisible Wall, regarding the tragic failure of Germans Jews to integrate successfully into their country (Blumenthal calls it an “unrequited love affair”).
LA misunderstands my argument (perhaps it could have been clearer) if he thinks I am suggesting that the American Christian community harbors similarly murderous intentions towards the Jews. They don’t. That’s the whole point. The United States is a special nation. For which Jews ought to have the greatest love, and gratitude. Most do, but many liberals Jews do not understand that by attacking this country’s historical and cultural foundations, including Christianity, they are undermining the very structures that have kept them safe for so many years. I cannot understand why LA feels insulted by my comments.
I consider myself thoroughly American. I imagine almost all Jews do. I do not perceive myself as “separate” from the larger society. Certainly not in any important ways. Personally, I am as assimilated as it is possible for a non-Christian to be. Which is to say that there are limits to my ability to share in what I consider to be mainstream American life. For example, while I defend the right of the Christian majority to have prayers at important public events (for reasons which do not have to be debated here), when such prayers are offered I can only sit there in respectful silence. I do not, and cannot, share in the religious beliefs and feelings that they express. At the same time, I absolutely do not believe it is appropriate for the Christian majority to be required to give my religion “equal time” on the stage, so to speak. If the Christian majority chooses to do so out of the decency and generosity of its heart, then I applaud that choice. But it is their choice to make.
As any conservative or traditionalist should understand, “religious tolerance” per se is not what defines the religious character of this country. We do not believe that “all religions are equal” or that a nation’s dominant religion makes no difference to the kind of political, economic, and social order it enjoys. The dominant religion in our country is Christianity (in various forms). I certainly do not want to see Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism or any other religion (including atheism) placed at the same level in this country as Christianity. Christianity is inextricably intertwined with the wonderful society we have created. But Jews are not Christians. Granted, the “gap” between Christians and Jews in this country is not as large, for obvious reasons, as the gap between whites and blacks. But the majority-minority dynamic remains.
Frankly, I was a little surprised by the tone of LA’s comments. For a traditionalist, who argues that the American nation is defined by its unique history and people and culture—which is overwhelmingly Christian—to suggest that there are no differences between Christian and Jewish Americans strikes me as, well, peculiar. Moreover, I am troubled by the suggestion that I have transgressed some moral or political code by raising this issue openly. LA appears to be accusing me of disloyalty towards our nation (towards whom exactly?) by acknowledging that there, indeed, are differences between Christians and Jews. He implies I have shown a lack of goodwill by suggesting that I see the Christian majority as somehow “separate” from myself. I don’t, at least not in the way that LA apparently believes. Nevertheless, of course there are differences between Christians and Jews! Just travel around the country and look. Does LA believe that Christians do not see Jews as “separate” from themselves? Surely he knows they do. We are allies in this country, as close as any two peoples can be. But we are not the same.
As for the painful humility I referred to in my piece, that was meant in a larger historical perspective. Yet also from the perspective of someone who believes that the nation of Israel will be annihilated in my lifetime, for the crime of being a Jewish state. Am I being melodramatic? I certainly hope so. But World War Two and the Holocaust taught me that humanity can be plunged into darkness even at the height of modern civilization. And 9/11 taught me that anything is possible when it comes to Islamic hate and terrorism.
In my opinion, any Jew who does not feel the tragic reality of the precarious existence of our people is in denial. Such denial may be helpful psychologically. However, the problem, from a political perspective, is that this denial allows far too many Jews in this country to take the United States, and the Christian majority, for granted, and, further, to pursue an ideological and political agenda that is affirmatively weakening this country.
My own feelings towards the United States are ones of the deepest and fiercest pride and patriotism. But also gratitude. There is nothing wrong with feeling gratitude towards the country, and the people, who have treated Jews with more decency and generosity than all others.
LA replies:
I appreciate Steven Warshawky’s overall comments but need to respond to a few points.
“Frankly, I was a little surprised by the tone of LA’s comments. For a traditionalist, who argues that the American nation is defined by its unique history and people and culture—which is overwhelmingly Christian—to suggest that there are no differences between Christian and Jewish Americans strikes me as, well, peculiar.”
I realize there are complexities in what I was saying to Mr. W. that need to be unpacked.
We have to distinguish between two things here. I agree with Mr. W.—and I’ve said many times—that there is a majority people/culture in this country and that minorities need to accept it as the majority culture. And of course Jews, insofar as they are Jews, are different from Christians. They are a cultural/religious/ethnic minority, and this will inevitably produce a certain amount of discomfort for them. There is no way to do away entirely with that discomfort without destroying the majority culture, which in turn undoes the country itself, which of course has been the liberal/neoconservative project over the last generation. The proper attitude for Jews, therefore, is that they need to defer to the majority culture/religion; to accept its existence, and not to be offended by it. Jews did that up to the Sixties. For example, when I was a child, and we had Christmas carols in school, I never dreamed of being offended by them. I loved those songs, without being a Christian. Even my ten-years-older sister, who was more liberal and more confrontational with the majority culture than I, loved Christmas carols. So somehow a Jewish family that went to synagogue was not offended or threatened by Christmas songs but enjoyed them. If that’s possible, it’s possible for Jews to accept and not resent the majority culture, while still maintaining their Jewishness.
At the same time, there are differences and I’m not denying them.
Also, as I’ve written, since Christianity is central to the West, a non-Christian is limited in the extent to which he can give a full account of and defense of the West—not fatally limited, but limited to a certain degree. Liberalism tries to overcome this problem by defining the West as secular modernity, thus making Christians and Jews equal as spokesmen of the West. But that is a suicidal mistake for the West.
So, in the religious and perhaps civilizational and ethnic sense, Jews are less than 100 percent participants and articulators of America and Western civilization. This not a crippling disability and can be mediated by what I and Mr. W. have been talking about—the minority’s deference and loyalty to the majority.
But the fact of being a cultural/ethnic minority and thus not a full participant in every aspect of the majority culture, is distinct from the fact of being an American, a citizen. In the daily public life of America, Christianity is not being aggressively asserted or being asserted at all. In the civic sphere, insofar as Jews are Americans and citizens, they are fully Americans and citizens. That full membership in the civic dimension of American society was what President Washington was talking about in his letter to the Newport congregation. At the same time, Washington did not take into account the ethno-religious-cultural dimension of the mainstream American society, in which many Jews are not, and don’t want to be, full participants.
Mr. W. continues:
“Moreover, I am troubled by the suggestion that I have transgressed some moral or political code by raising this issue openly. LA appears to be accusing me of disloyalty towards our nation (towards whom exactly?) by acknowledging that there, indeed, are differences between Christians and Jews. He implies I have shown a lack of goodwill by suggesting that I see the Christian majority as somehow “separate” from myself. I don’t, at least not in the way that LA apparently believes. ”
As I’ve just shown, of course there are differences between Christian and Jews, and I did not say that Mr. W. had done anything objectionable by suggesting the existence of differences. What I found objectionable in Mr. W.’s comment was the way he spoke of those differences: that he feels “painful humility” before the majority and that he and his fellow Jews are at the “mercy” of the majority. “Painful humility” suggests much larger differences than the kind we’ve been speaking of here. And the “mercy” comment, as I explained, implies that in the absence of some special mercy on their part, American Christians are a threat to Jews. And that is wrong and insulting, though, as I also said, I didn’t think that was Mr. W.’s intention. Jews have never been persecuted in America, as they have been elsewhere. There has never been a pogrom in America, other than the black riot in Crown Heights in 1992. One Jew was lynched in a famous incident in Georgia in the early 20th century. Jews’ existence is not threatened in America, as it is elsewhere. The worst Jews have ever faced in America were social exclusions, being kept out of some all-gentile clubs, hotels, law firms etc. And even such minor exclusions largely ceased to exist in the 1950s, i.e., before the ascendancy of modern liberalism. (And, as I wrote in my article, “Liberalism: The Real Cause of Today’s Anti-Semitism,”, modern liberalism by “tolerating” everything has unleashed far more anti-Semitism in America than has ever been seen before in this country.)
“Nevertheless, of course there are differences between Christians and Jews! Just travel around the country and look. Does LA believe that Christians do not see Jews as “separate” from themselves? Surely he knows they do. We are allies in this country, as close as any two peoples can be. But we are not the same.”
As a personal observation, it’s my experience that many white gentile Americans are so un-ethnic conscious that they have no idea who a Jew is just from looking at him or dealing socially with him. Jews often seem to be far more conscious of the Jewish-Gentile differences than most Christians are, which is natural given that they are the minority. I am constantly amazed by Christians who are not aware that this celebrity or that actor or that writer or that politician is a Jew, when the person’s Jewishness is obvious to me from his name or appearance.
I’m not saying that gentiles are not aware of Jews as different from themselves; I’m just saying that this phenomenon is sometimes exaggerated by Jews.
In sum, the answer is for Jews and Christians to exist together on the basis of their commonality as Americans, and where differences exist, the minority needs to defer to the majority, and the majority needs to tolerate the minority.
Finally, I feel what Steven says about the ever-present threat hanging over Israel and the Jews. But often, as we see now in Israel, the Jews themselves seem to be the ones who deny the reality of this threat and are rushing toward suicide, supporting a government which seems to have learned nothing from one disastrous “peace” agreement after another.
Paul Henri writes:
I reject the notion that because Ann is not a pious Christian, her ideas are suspect. My experience is that my most pious family members are awful human beings. They never miss Mass. This has led me to conclude that the more pious a person, the more suspect he is as a fine human being. Sure there are exceptions, outside of my family, that I am aware of. But, in my experience, the rule remains.
She said nothing inappropriate. What she should have emphasized is that Jewish people have been victimized because of the things she said.
LA writes:
It’s not that she’s not pious. No one is doing an inquiry into her religious life such as it may be. It’s that everything about her is the deliberate, flagrant opposite of any religous sense—her vulgarity, her egotism, and so on. She’s been in the public eye for a good number of years now. What has she ever said that was of a religious nature or that showed an interest in religion? Yet the first time she brings up her supposed concern about Christianity, it’s to say the Jews are “incomplete” because they’re not Christian. That’s why the whole thing doesn’t feel kosher—even though, as I said, the things she actually said in the interview were not objectionable. It was the context, the person from whom these statements were coming, which were problematic and which justified to some extent the complaints from the Jewish organizations.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 13, 2007 02:13 PM | Send
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