Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Save the Jews, the Christians – Civilization?
I caught the tail end of two Wall Street Journal journalists talking about the recent attacks on Jews in New York, and since WSJ is behind a paywall, I cannot find the segment. But what I heard burned into my memory. One said that this is a “mirror of what is going on in European cities, and has been for some time.” They stated the Jews are the canary in the coal mine, a cliche that has been echoed over and over to deaf ears. This has religious implications, but they said the “resurgence of antisemitism is a symptom that society as a whole is breaking down,” and concluded with “when that happens on a large scale, people choose camps, and a peaceful, cohesive society erodes and falls apart and all you are left with are warring camps.”
Is that what we are witnessing, in New York and elsewhere, when moral boundaries are removed? I’m not just speaking of the decline in church attendance, in Jews becoming more secular, but in the overall protections and safety nets that we once relied on. When we had boundaries, we relied on law enforcement, respect for property, differences of opinion, lifestyles, and it went both ways, instead of hurling hate speech and condemning one idea over another. We respected boundaries, which also included protecting children from overly sexual content. Law enforcement is now spat upon, doused with water, and shouted at with vulgarity. Wearing a MAGA hat in public can get you tossed out of a restaurant or pummeled, because of political differences. We now have something called gender fluidity.
Petty crimes such as theft, drug possession, and home invasions, are now considered low priority with no consequences. More states are following lockstep, the predicted outcome of legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes. Drugged up, more brazen attacks – we’re witnessing an erosion of civilization, not like a drip, drip that eventually carves out a solid rock over decades, but a powerful wave that erodes swiftly and mercilessly.
The attack on our embassy in Iraq and the recent attacks on Jews in New York and Christians in Texas are similar. Deaths and injuries over different ideologies – the camps are filling up. Have the ancient hatreds in the Middle East changed that much? Will they ever change? It’s hard to show interest in trivial headlines when the canary is gasping for air.
We all care about the climate, the environment, the poor, those fleeing war, the sick. We do what we can, but to ignore the most basic rights of those walking down a street or taking their children to church or daycare, and then march for climate change or women’s rights is just absurd. There is a disconnect on the most basic levels.
If anything, we have all the more reason to seek the wisdom of those in our communities who are uplifting body, mind, and spirit – our local clergy and volunteers, and to immerse ourselves in reading the wisdom of the prophets and saints. These are our armor for a time such as this. It is a time to be a light in the darkness, without which hope evaporates into thin air. Your thoughts?
Published in General
The Jews are the Conscience of Humanity. You will know when humanity is truly doomed-when the last Jew is gone. These are my own words, and my own idea.
Your post is excellent, and it’s all true. The Left destroys everything it touches. Most Jews in this country are Leftists, and they are in favor of the destruction of their own culture, and everyone else’s too.
In the case of New York, you had the black-Jewish split back in the fall of 1968 with the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school district battle that brought out a ton of antisemitism and racial hostility. That came during the John Lindsay Administration, and flared up again with the 1991 Crown Heights riots during the David Dinkins Administration, and now has re-emerged during the Bill de Blasio Administration.
As some sort of amazing coincidence, the three most progressive mayors the city’s had since World War II have been John Lindsay, David Dinkins and Bill de Blasio. It’s a pattern that their supporters and people in the media can try to ignore, but the reality is progressive mayors believe in ‘root causes’ of crime, and also believe those causes can be fixed by relaxing law enforcement and punishment against the perps, and each time, the perps have to prove the progressive mayors wrong.
Lindsey and Dinkins at least had the advantage of having been in office prior to Giuliani (and Bloomberg), which gave them more leeway to alibi about the sources of the problems and their inability to solve the problems. The current mayor (and governor) can’t do that, but both have been working with other Democrats over the past seven years to make it tougher for any future mayors to use the same strategy as Giulaini to solve the problem. The result has been things like the bail leniency law, which allowed one of the female attackers to assault three Jewish women in Crown Heights, after being freed on a PR bond from a previous assault.
Voters in New York can stop this by not electing a Bill de Blasio clone in 2021, and not re-electing others who supported things like the bail reform bill and other laws relaxing crime enforcment. The question is whether or not they’ll do it, or if they’ll just vote for the candidate who’s angriest at Donald Trump, if he’s still president in 2021.
I don’t consider home invasion a petty crime. Someone invades my home, one of us will end up dead.
We have been through this before. Soon protecting yourself, your property, your home, your family will be a criminal offense.
Isn’t it already?
Like in England . . .
This story in The Atlantic recently echoes what I describe – here is an excerpt:
“When Jews feel it is safer for them to go “underground” as Jews, something is terribly wrong—wrong for them and, even more so, wrong for the society in which they live. Jews have taken and are taking anti-Semitism very seriously. Non-Jews must do the same.
You must do so, not solely for the sake of the well-being of your Jewish neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens. (Though that would be laudable.) You must do so for the sake of the well-being of the societies in which you live. No healthy democracy can afford to tolerate anti-Semitism in its midst. It is one of the long-term signs of rot in that democracy.“
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/after-monsey-will-jews-go-underground/604219/
It is worth reading.
Not in Tennessee.
Not in Ohio. Unfortunately, our home invasion happened when no one was at home. That’s been pretty much the model in our neighborhood. That and a lack of arrests.
It is just not Jews. I know a bunch of whites and conservatives that are going as underground as possible to keep from being canceled or beat up. Very few of my Trump fans will wear MAGA stuff just for that reason.
These are weird times. The words “diversity” and “tolerance” are used by people who demand ideological uniformity, income equality and who seek to cut away every part of the society that cannot be made to conform. The American outlook of having nothing to fear from difference or disagreement so long as we shared a common loyalty to founding principles is being replaced by a state of fear in which the protection of the tribe is all there is.
Hitler once said this: “Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish, like circumcision.”
Hatred of Jews is really based on this. Moses received the 10 Commandments from G-d so, in a sense, the Jews brought conscience into the world. Hatred of Jews is really hatred of G-d, hatred of the insistence on living by G-d’s laws instead of by brute force and bloodlust. Like the OP says, Jews are the canaries in the coal mine and Christians are now being exposed to the same toxic air. Islam and the radical Left are no less anti-Christian than anti-Jew and this is bringing Christians and Jews together.
Do you have the names and/or credentials of those two WSJ journalists? Is there a reason I should pay much attention to the musings of two anonymous newspaper scribblers?
New York and California are in the bag, then Illinois, Colorado, what others? I don’t know but we have to fight at all levels because that’s the way it works.
They were on TV, and I’m not sure what station, but they were guests on a talk show. It was a serious discussion and much concern. I saw the end of the show but I wished I’d seen the whole thing.
I tend to agree with those journalists. The secularization of western society, the progressive’s influence on cultural values, the lack of real education of our history, the subversive cynicism that is now taught, and even the Islamic immigration (more in Europe than the US) has created what we have now, and yes I think Jews are the canary in the mine because they can be identified easily and represent a tradition. A post-Christian western society is dystopian world.
Sounds like The Journal Editorial Report with Paul Gigot on Fox News. You might follow the link and see if you can find the past episode.
When you say “they can be identified easily”, it is chilling and reminds me of what happened in Europe seventy years ago. Now people are hiding their faith (yarmulkes, Star of David and crosses, even political hats). You are right – the fabric of what our freedom is founded on and was fought for, is being shredded and submerged. Further, history is not being taught.