"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Me, I believe hatred of the Jews is just old sin--part of the mysterious "shadow tradition" that pursues the Church through history as the spirit of antichrist plies his trade. It is a sin very close to the heart of Satan--if that black negating void can be called a heart.
To which a reader comments:Anti-semitism is the fingerprint of Satan.
The "shadow tradition" emerges in the accompanying comment thread.
Nothing shadowy, though, about the sentiments expressed by these Hamas supporters cheering the latest round of terror attacks on Israel.
There are those in America and Europe who would do nothing to stem Islamist terror, whose response to psychotic death-cultists who wish to kill our children consists of apology and appeasement. Their message: The Jews are to blame. They have it coming. The US is to blame. We have it coming.
If you've seen The Best Years of Our Lives, you remember the scene in the soda fountain when the veteran sailor who lost both hands in the war gets into it with another customer, an America-Firster of the Charles Lindbergh school, who says the war was misguided.
Customer: You got plenty of guts. It's terrible when you see a guy like you that had to sacrifice himself - and for what?
Homer: And for what? I don't getcha Mister?
Customer: ...We let ourselves get sold down the river. We were pushed into war.
Homer: Sure, by the Japs and the Nazis so we had...
Customer: No, the Germans and the Japs had nothing against us. They just wanted to fight the Limies and the Reds. And they would have whipped 'em too if we didn't get deceived into it by a bunch of radicals in Washington.
Homer: What are you talkin' about?
Customer: We fought the wrong people, that's all. (Pointing at his newspaper, with headlines: "SENATOR WARNS OF NEW WAR") Just read the facts, my friend. Find out for yourself why you had to lose your hands. And then go out and do something about it. (Source: www.filmsite.org)
Which is where Dana Andrews, the veteran pilot turned soda jerk, jumps the counter and gives the nativist spokesman for "plain, old-fashioned Americanism" a well-deserved sock in the mouth.
As Saddam readies biological weapons for use by the Palestinians, we again hear the refrains heard in the 1930s, when Oxonians debated the merits of fighting for king and country while the Axis grew in strength; when the smart set largely ignored – or considered self-induced – the plight of the Jews, and favored concessions to fascism in the name of peace. From the inimitable Michael Kelly.
In 1942 George Orwell wrote this, in Partisan Review, of Great Britain's pacifists:
"Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.' "
England's pacifists howled, but Orwell's logic was implacable. The Nazis wished the British to not fight. If the British did not fight, the Nazis would conquer Britain. The British pacifists also wished the British to not fight. The British pacifists, therefore, were on the side of a Nazi victory over Britain. They were objectively pro-Fascist.
An essentially identical logic obtains now. Organized terrorist groups have attacked America. These groups wish the Americans to not fight. The American pacifists wish the Americans to not fight. If the Americans do not fight, the terrorists will attack America again. And now we know such attacks can kill many thousands of Americans. The American pacifists, therefore, are on the side of future mass murders of Americans. They are objectively pro-terrorist.
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