The Inception of ISIS

Good point.

Rod Dreher burns his conservative card, annoints his forehead with its ashes

When ISIS Ran the American South

There are only a few plausible explanations for this bizarre attempt to out-Obama Barack Obama in morally equating the behavior of ISIS today with Western, particularly U. S. Western historical events, the least charitable being that what they say about black men is true and that Dreher simply could not accomplish his goal directly, on his knees.

However the more likely is also the more pragmatic. Because of the dismal sales of his last book about his sister, Dreher's current Dante book was born out of wedlock, with neither advance nor even publicity tour; the secrecy surrounding the publisher even suggesting Dreher himself may be among the investors foisting it on the unsuspecting public this year.

Accordingly, so as not to end up eating cat food in his twilight years, its author desperately needs every living creature on God's green earth which (unlike his family) doesn't already loathe and despise him to be primed and available to purchase whatever he happens to discharge in life from here on out, a population which logically includes every politically and sexually progressive mammal left of Ted Cruz, but in particular his employer TAC's target audience, the devout NPR listener and contributor.

The clue that Dreher has finally jettisoned any conservative testicular fragment still undescended to become an overt, eager NPR flack is the uniquely shameful blog post linked above itself, because it doesn't just casually reiterate Obama's shameful "high horse" rhetoric in passing but instead dives headlong into one of NPR's signature and most virulent themes: that only progressives born elsewhere or correctly schooled by them are keeping the U. S. South from imminently collapsing into its congenital norm, brutal racist savagery, why, yes, exactly like that practiced by ISIS right now.

But, miraculously if one is to believe it, such historical tragedies occurred nowhere else in America. This is the specific DNA signature of both the NPR meme and Dreher's self- and place-loathing embrace of it.

And of course it enables Ray Dreher, Jr. to take one more passive-aggressive smack at his father, Ray Dreher, Sr., an active, formative citizen of the "ISIS" South that Dreher urinates on about, without the risk that the frail old man still might have the strength to pop him one for such temerity.

Sadly, such is the risk, Mr. Dreher, Sr., when your son escapes, effeminate, resentful, and consumed with lifetime passive-aggressive revenge on you and yours in his heart. Surely you and your land deserve better. At least you still have the memory of Ruthie, the one good and undeformed child you managed to raise, the woman whose life's work as a dedicated teacher of children, unlike the narcissistic pursuits of her more notorious brother, represented the true moral values of the American South

If you don't believe me, read the whole thing.

Berkeley students dislike Israel, don't mind ISIS

Amazing but not surprising.



Ami Horowitz: I have always thought that there was no connection between intellect and wisdom. To put this theory to the test, I headed out to the University of California, Berkeley.

Students at Berkeley clearly have a lot of intellect; it is one of the most prestigious and selective universities in the country. But do they have wisdom? I went to the bucolic campus armed with a flag that represents the greatest evil known today, ISIS. If these are our best and brightest then we should all be afraid, very afraid.

The shocking video above unfortunately proves once and for all that there is in fact no connection between intellect and wisdom.

How Obama will degrade ISIS

"ISIS, you mean, shameful poopyhead peckerwoods, stop it! You just stop it right now! No Arab mother could be proud of her boys doing what you're doing. You're disgraceful. No, you're beyond disgraceful. You're horrible, just horrible! I'm not only ashamed to be talking to you, I'm ashamed to be talking about you. You're contemptible! Shameful! Disgraceful!"

Pretty degrading, if you ask me. Especially the "poopyhead peckerwoods". That's gotta sting.

Is Rod Dreher the last honest conservative?

Surly asks of her Prophet,

Are you the last honest conservative?

His leftist commenters today overwhelmingly seem to think so for his bravely taking on a Megyn Kelly broadcast probing whether George Bush was not in fact right all along about leaving Iraq too soon.

Dreher doesn't deny he was ferociously for the Iraq war himself when he was taking NRO's checks and that was the popular thing to do, before subsequently being against it when the political weathervane swung around one-eighty and threatened to clock him in the head. And because Rod lives in TAC CEO Wick Allison's Obamacon lap these days, Barack's has now become Dreher's master's voice as well.

But we don't have to drop back through too many conservative posts on cooking and American Girl dolls to find the honest conservative shaking his booty on the right side of his stage this time, swaggering fashionably tough on ISIS, albeit using liberal Christian foils as his ostrich feather dancing fans in doing so.

When we finally wade through the typical obfuscating clutter there we find ourselves face to face with the honest conservative: loudly exhorting everyone while strategically committed to nothing at all himself. By all means, somebody should do something about ISIS. He's just not sure it would be prudent to advocate it should be him, or rather, the service men and women of his country acting on his behalf. Better to blog from behind.

Someone should stop those ISIS field trip bullies from pulling Rod's pants down, but we can't possibly expect the honest conservative himself to be the one to do the stopping, can we? Grownups! Grownups! Listen to Rod's cries of calculated, reader-maximizing ambivalence and quit stepping over him in indifference!

Protect this honest conservative Rod Dreher from ever having to take a stand - on anything.

Welcome aboard, Senator Paul.

Jen Rubin has a bit of fun with Rand Paul with his foreign policy reality issues and recent abrupt about-face. Excerpt:

His transformation does, however, show rather definitively that there is no real struggle in the GOP between isolationists and hawks. Rather there was Rand Paul vs. everybody else; now he’s apparently thrown in the towel. Or does he lack any true convictions, a criticism leveled at Hillary Clinton, who blows with the wind depending upon the political fashions of the day? As a former State Department official critical of the administration put it, “More and more he reminds me of another senator who had little foreign policy experience and thought he could be and should be president: Obama.”

If Paul is serious about this transformation, it is important to carry through on his newfound desire to obliterate the Islamic State, which he now recognizes is a threat to the United States. Would he reverse course and now support droning Americans who have joined up with the Islamic State? Maybe we do need a robust National Security Agency program to detect plots against the homeland. Maybe we should be using military trials at Guantanamo Bay and not risk bringing terrorists to the homeland for trial and incarceration with the regular prison population. Maybe we need a new secretary of defense, rather than Chuck Hagel, whom Paul voted to confirm. Paul’s about-face also raises the question as to what his beef with Clinton now is. Before she was too hawkish. Maybe now — like fellow Republicans — Paul will acknowledge that she was insufficiently persuasive in urging the president to take a tougher stance against Syria.

I would support a Rand Paul bid for President if he just said four words: "My dad was wrong."

I don't know what you are if you can't sign this

The Iraq Rescue petition is another one worth signing. The ISIS/ISIL maniacs are far more powerful and determined than Hamas and possibly more evil (although if you read the Hamas charter there isn't much difference in their belief system, just their location and competence.)

Here is part of the petition which you can read on the page. If you really need to.

We, the undersigned, are Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. We are conservatives, liberals, and moderates. We represent various religious traditions and shades of belief. None of us glorifies war or underestimates the risks entailed by the use of military force. Where non-military means of resolving disputes and protecting human rights are available, we always and strongly favor those means. However, the evidence is overwhelming that such means will not be capable of protecting the victims of the genocide already unfolding at the hands of ISIS/ISIL. That is why Iraq’s Chaldean Patriarch Sako has requested military intervention.

Therefore we call upon the United States and the international community to do everything necessary to empower local forces fighting ISIS/ISIL in Iraq to protect their people. No options that are consistent with the principles of just war doctrine should be off the table. We further believe that the United States’ goal must be more comprehensive than simply clamping a short-term lid on the boiling violence that is threatening so many innocents in ISIS/ISIL’s path. Nothing short of the destruction of ISIS/ISIL as a fighting force will provide long-term protection of victims.

There are 12,260 signers so far. Who would object to signing it? You have serious conservative thinkers like Robert P. George and Ben Carson signing along with serious liberals such as Martin Peretz and Susannah Heschel.

I guess if you like genocide and want to sit around and watch it happen you shouldn't sign this.

Not going to happen

Catholic Culture reports the pleading of the Prelate of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq, Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako. Excerpt:

The same is true with regard to the Muslim community, whose statements about the barbaric acts in the name of their religion practiced against the life, dignity and freedom of Christians were not according to our expectation, knowing that Christians have contributed and fought for this country, living in partnership with their Muslim brothers alongside the Islamic civilization.

Religious fundamentalism is still growing in its power and force, creating tragedies, and making us wonder when the Islamic religious scholars and the Muslim intellectuals will critically examine this dangerous phenomenon and eradicate it by educating a true religious consciousness and spreading a genuine culture of accepting the other as brother and as an equal citizen with full rights.

I applaud the Prelate for his appeal, but there is a big problem. "[A]ccepting the other as brother and as an equal citizen with full rights" is not an Islamic teaching. "The Other" in an Islamic society is at best a dhimmi, not an equal anywhere in society including in a court of law. True, having this status might be reasonably considered better than having an unprotected status whereby you can be killed—dhimmi literally means protected. And that makes sense since they have to pay protection money to keep this status.

But the Prelate is asking the Muslim community to go against the traditional interpretation of the Koran 3:110: "You are the best nation produced [as an example] for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in Allah. If only the People of the Scripture had believed, it would have been better for them. Among them are believers, but most of them are defiantly disobedient." Traditionally, this has been coupled with the belief that Christians and Jews must be humiliated and not given full status due to their "unbelief". Here's a good primer on this topic.

So in order for the Muslim community to take the Patriarch's words and follow them, Islam will have to be first changed, or you can say "reformed" if you want. Like that will make it any easier. It will have to be admitted that Mohammed was wrong. Yeah, good luck with that.

I myself see little chance of that and NO CHANCE of that while the Islamists are in the strong horse position and decorating airfields with the heads of their conquered foes. Many individual Muslims have come to see that their religion is wrong in the practice of dhimmitude and the subjugation of those with other religions. But ironically, it doesn't help Islam to reform when these individuals convert to Christianity.

What more can the "sage" Putin teach us?

What a bad idea it was to get rid of the Czar, maybe? After all, look how that turned out, John McCain.

Phoning in from infinity and beyond somewhere from within his fortress of solitude in the verdant suburbs of St. Francisville, LA,



Rod Dreher turns a question from Ishaan Tharoor (formerly of Barsoom, now writing at the Washington Post) into a statement of fact:

Putin Told Us So

while with trademark Dreher fecklessness retaining Tharoor as his mouthpiece to avoid direct attribution.

So, what more can the "sage" Putin teach us? Well, for one thing, if you want the nicest spot for your Benedict Option in Ukraine or wherever, you should just take it. That's how a strong, pre-Enlightenment Slavic leader runs a masculine organization with a masculine church, right? Well, not directly, of course, no more than using your own words in a blog post. You need a cut-out, either a Tharoor from Barsoom or patriotic separatists you can arm with BUK surface-to-air missiles to make your point at 30,000 feet.

Or am I missing something from today's lesson?

Let's dig a little deeper.

Commenter Chris 1 writes  

According to Tharoor, this is exactly what Vladimir Putin warned about in his New York Times op-ed last September advising the West not to engage in airstrikes against Syria to help the rebels.

Did I miss something? When and where did the West engage in airstrikes to help the Syrian rebels?

Dreher responds:

[NFR: On September 10, 2013, Obama went on national television and said the United States would conduct a "military strike" against Syria to punish it for using chemical weapons. He got significant pushback from the public and from some in Congress over this, and stood down. Click the link and read the speech; Obama plainly wanted to bomb Syria, and asked the public to support him. -- RD]

I think I see now. Obama wanted to draw a red line in the sand as CINC, but then demurred and didn't, and now Putin has told us so about what would happen if he had, but actually didn't.

Even Rachel Maddow-loving commenter Jack Shifflett throws up in his mouth a little bit at Dreher's reflexive prevarication:

I’ll also note that President Obama, for whatever reason(s), did in fact call off last year’s proposed airstrikes, and that he has all along resisted arming the Syrian rebels; and yet here ISIS is anyway. I think the president made the right call–that is, he followed Mr. Putin’s (and Rachel Maddow’s) advice–but in what way did that make the slightest difference about this particular threat?

If you go back and read the entire Putin editorial in question, you’ll see that, as a paean to international law, it’s an astonishing exercise in hypocrisy and disingenuousness. I concede that even a blind pig can find an acorn now and then, but why are you so determined to laud this particular blind pig’s vision?

So, in the end, what was the correct decision?

Leaving the raising of the children almost entirely in the hands of Mrs. Dreher while Rod splits his time reading Dante, chasing the latest food morsel, and sleeping off the effects of Ambien, depression, fanboi worship of strong, masculine, dominating men, mono, or whatever this week's story happens to be, of course.