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| Violent protest at UC Berkeley campus yesterday (NPR) |
The media fueled opposition then is just as it is now. Even
though the two cases are far from identical, they have in common a liberal media
bias that reflects the values of only half the country. And yet they treat
those values as sacred.
If one were to use only the mainstream media as their source
for news, one would think the entire country is in an uproar about what the
President is doing - united in opposition to the President and his polices. Images of protests are all over the media. As are
interviews of the people that are protesting.
That is clearly not the case. Were that true, Trump would have been crushed in an unprecedented landslide instead of being elected. The truth is that half the country actually supports what he is doing. The country is as divided now as it was during the Viet Nam War. And that has generated what happened yesterday at that hotbed of radicalism, the University of California at Berkeley.
It was 1968 all over again as what began as a peaceful
protest turned ugly. Violence and vandalism prevailed. What precipitated that
protest? A scheduled speech at the university by the new chairman of Brietbart
News, Milo Yiannopoulos. The protest succeeded. The speech was canceled!
I don’t know much about this guy, however I am not a fan - based
on some of the things I heard coming out of his mouth. But how I or anybody else
feels about him is beside the point. This is about protecting free speech. Just
as the ACLU protected the free speech of neo-Nazis in Skokie back in the 80s, so
too should free speech be protected here. (Although I have not heard the ACLU
weighing in on it this time).
Those mostly young student protesters didn’t care about free
speech. They only cared about their values being overturned. They firmly
believe that if one does not subscribe to their values, they are un-American. Which makes religious people un-American.
That these two value systems clash is an
understatement these days. When religious values challenge what they believe to
be American liberal values, they go ballistic. The values they hold dear are
those that were set by a President whose agenda was biased in favor of an
egalitarian agenda intolerant of a religious point of view. So that
when the agendas of both clashed, the ex President favored egalitarianism over
religion. Progressives see religion as a superstition with values that are anathema
to them.
These Berkeley students see egalitarianism as the essential American ethic. The chance that the progress made in that area over the last 8
years will be overturned makes them see red. When they look at Trump - who has been
strident about restoring the America of the past with all the intolerance they
believe it suggests - their anger becomes unhinged. On the UC Berkeley that anger was transformed into violent protest.
But resorting to violence to assure liberal gains are not overturned is not democracy. It is fascism when you try and force your political views on everyone. They will not be
deterred until they get their way by whatever means necessary – believing that
their egalitarian ends justify their violent means. They will never tolerate eroding all those gains by a conservative
agenda which they have been misled to believe is racist, bigoted, sexist, misogynistic,
war mongering, and supportive of oppressive regimes like Israel. (Which is why
there have been so many anti Israel protests in some universities.)
Now it is true that not all liberals feel this way. Some are
very religious. As there are Conservatives that are not all that religious. But
I believe it is fair to say that the two sides more or less break down that way.
Unfortunately a lot of well meaning people are easily
influenced by the media spin on all of this.
Which brings me back to Trump’s executive order. The reaction to that is
split.
On the one hand -it is difficult to watch a young Muslim
mother running for her life, children in hand, looking for refuge in any
country that will take her. It is difficult to watch a parentless young Syrian child
covered with blood after his village was just demolished by indiscriminate
bombing. It is difficult to see wave after wave of immigrants (totaling in the hundreds
of thousands if not more) marching out of their country towards an unknown
destiny. It is difficult to see a little boy lying dead on the shores of a country
his refugee parents tried to get into. And
then hearing the President close this country’s doors to them. If that is all
that is focused upon by the media how can anyone not feel compassion for the
refugees and outrage against the President?
On the other hand - those images are only half the story…
and the only ones being focused upon. The other half of the story is being
ignored. The entire world is facing unprecedented danger from a religion that
spawned the greatest attack against the free world since Hitler’s Germany. That
fact is practically denied by politicians refusing to recognize Islam’s part in
all of this. They keep saying that these
terrorists do not represent Islam. As do many Muslim clerics that are seen as
moderate. The real Muslims – they say - reject the ideology of the terrorists as
not a legitimate form of Islam.
That is simply untrue. There are too many Imams preaching
exactly that kind of Islamist theology. Starting with Iran’s Shiite leader, Ayatollah
Khomeini - and his successor and current supreme leader, Ayatolah Khameini. (Sunnis
have their own versions of this. Like the Wahhabi sect of Islam practiced in Saudi
Arabia where the 9/11 terrorists came from.)
One does not have to think very hard to be reminded of the
fallout of the radical versions of Islam. The images of severed heads, the
carnage in San Bernardino, Orlando, Fort Hood,Turkey Paris, Brussles… All of
which were committed or inspired by a stream of Islam that is radical. It
exists and identifies as Islam claiming to be the only legitimate version of
it!
No other religion in modern times has spawned so many murderous
martyrs as Islam has. Religious fervor as a motivator is far more dangerous
than other ideologies since they believe they are doing it for God and do not
fear death. Sometimes even embracing it!
It is for that reason that half the country actually
supports what Trump did. He has kept the promises he made to the people that voted for him. They are not bigots. They are citizens of the United States that
have a different point of view and want to see their families protected. And
they are grateful for that executive order.
