Jun 22 2012

Yerushalmi at National Review Online

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Despite its firing of John Derbyshire and stated practice not to feature the writings of white supremacists, the National Review is now featuring David Yerushalmi, Pam Geller’s buddy, who thinks we should make it illegal to be Muslim in America and that we should return to a time when only white male landowners voted.

Charles Johnson has a post about it, including a link to a copy of a Yerushalmi article that he has tried to scrub from the internet because of its blatantly racist content. He makes the “scientific” case that blacks are “the most murderous of peoples” and that we should return to the time when they didn’t have the right to vote:

There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote. You might not agree or like the idea but this country’s founders, otherwise held in the highest esteem for their understanding of human nature and its affect on political society, certainly took it seriously. Why is that? Were they so flawed in their political reckonings that they manhandled the most important aspect of a free society – the vote? If the vote counts for so much in a free and liberal democracy as we “know” it today, why did they limit the vote so dramatically?

Yerushalmi is absolutely nuts.

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28 comments

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1

slc1

June 22, 2012 at 11:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

I wonder what Mr. Yerushalmi, who is, apparently, an orthodox Jew, would say if it were proposed that only Caucasian Christian males be allowed to vote?
2

matty1

June 22, 2012 at 11:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote.

Several reasons I should think, off the top of my head.

1. It was against their personal economic interests, many of them relied on slavery and couverture to keep them comfortable.

2. They did not want their revolution to be seem as too radical in case they were dragged down in turn.

3. Like everyone else the American founders were limited by the society they came from and would have found modern concepts of equality hard to even understand.
3

mrbongo

June 22, 2012 at 11:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Ed said “David Yerushalmi … who thinks we should make it illegal to be Muslim in America and that we should return to a time when only white male landowners voted.”

Not to defend Yerushalmi, but wow, Ed has really descended into hysterics here.

Also Ed, when are you going to make a correction for your Johny Bontas error last year? Remember that hilarious case that is now know to have been made up. No laws suit, police say it didn’t happen, FBI won’t even open a file…..
4

raven

June 22, 2012 at 11:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

who thinks we should make it illegal to be Muslim in America and that we should return to a time when only white male landowners voted.

Why stop there.

Why not go back to the time not so long ago when Jews like Geller and Yerushalmi were forbidden from voting, owning property in many places, forced to live in ghettos, and frequently massacred in pograms.

The good old days weren’t really good at all. The average US lifespan a century ago was 47 years.
5

mrbongo

June 22, 2012 at 11:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

speaking of past mistakes – remember when Ed claimed Pakistan was different because the majority of people were … hhahahaaa!! “peaceful sufis” – that was literally the day before they murdered the minority affairs ministers and then let his murder off while the bar members threw flowers on him – what was the minster’s crime you may ask? he simply wanted the country’s blasphemy laws repealed because they were being used to put innocent women like Asia Bibi (a person who Ed refuses to even mention) on death row.

You see, Ed is a hypocrite, he will blog on and on about some nobody here in the U.S., but utterly ignore a women on death row in Pakistan for freedom of religion and freedom of speech. What a hero he must be! He usually automatically deletes any posts that include Asia Bibi – he hates her that much. What a pathetic blog Ed when you don’t have the courage to stand up for the real issues, just snipe and small fish.
6

raven

June 22, 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

h ttp://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/david-yerushalmi.

In 2007, David Yerushalmi urged the United States to declare “WAR AGAINST ISLAM and all Muslim faithful.” When that didn’t happen, he did his best to start one himself.

Yerushalmi practices what he calls “lawfare”— a multi-platform attack on Muslims’ freedom, staged by pushing anti-Shariah bills in state legislatures and filing aggressive lawsuits against supposed enemies of free expression and America’s “Judeo-Christian” heritage.

So far, he’s been disturbingly successful. At least three states have passed laws based on his model “American Laws for American Courts” legislation, created for the explicit purpose of outlawing Islamic Shariah law. More states will consider it this year. In addition to serving as general counsel to Frank Gaffney’s (see profile above) paranoiac anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, he’s represented Pam Geller’s Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and the Koran-burning Florida pastor Terry Jones.

Yerushalmi began his campaign in 2006 by founding the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), an anti-Muslim organization devoted to promoting his theory that Islam is inherently seditious and Shariah, or Islamic religious law, is a “criminal conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government.” He equates Shariah with Islamic radicalism so totally that he advocates criminalizing virtually any personal practice compliant with Shariah — in his view, only a Muslim who fully breaks with the customs of Shariah can be considered socially tolerable. Ideally, he would outlaw Islam and deport its adherents altogether.

Muslims aren’t the only group with whom he has a bone to pick. Yerushalmi, an Orthodox Jew, also rails against liberal Jews and the “progressive elites” he says they influence. He’s described blacks as “the most murderous of peoples” and reportedly once called for undocumented immigrants to be placed in “special criminal camps,” detained for three years, and then deported.

Yerushalmi seems to be an equal opportunity hater.

He hates Moslems and wants an all out war against them. I can see how a war between 2 billion xians and 1.4 billion Moslems might not be too popular though.

He hates liberal Jews, progressive elites, blacks, and illegal immigrants.

Well, at least I fall into several categories on his To Hate list. Which isn’t that big a deal. His To Hate list seems to be the vast majority of the world’s population.
7

slc1

June 22, 2012 at 12:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Re mrbongo @ #3

Apparently, fucken asshole mrbongo doesn’t even have the man’s name right. Its Johnny Bonta.
8

jamessweet

June 22, 2012 at 12:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Were they so flawed in their political reckonings that they manhandled the most important aspect of a free society – the vote?

Wow, that’s the easiest question I’ve heard in a long time!
9

d cwilson

June 22, 2012 at 12:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

who thinks we should make it illegal to be Muslim in America

Nice to know that while republicans are pushing absurd conspiracy theories about how Pres. Obama is supposedly planning to get rid of the 2nd Amendment*, their fellow travelers are openly calling to get rid of the 1st.

*Their primary proof of the conspiracy, is fact that Obama has done nothing at all to curtail gun rights
10

Michael Heath

June 22, 2012 at 12:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

I always found William F. Buckley to be even more of a twit than George Will, another twit. I also do not understand why so many liberals respected WFB while acknowledging their disagreements with him. Specifically due to his inability to make logically sound sufficiently framed arguments. The word poser always comes to mind when confronted with him in old TV clips.
11

abb3w

June 22, 2012 at 12:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@5, mrbongo:

remember when

Actually, no. Google’s also not helping; search of both ScienceBlogs and FreethoughtBlogs comes up negative prior to today for the phrase “peaceful sufis”. Searching freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches for (Pakistan sufis) turns up you making a similar allegation back at the beginning of March and a mention of a Sufi-influenced band by another commenter, but nothing like such remarks from Ed. It sounds an awful lot like the time you admitted to being arrested for raping a dead sheep in Rawlins, Wyoming.

[Citation Needed].
12

slc1

June 22, 2012 at 12:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Re mrbongo @ #3

A Google search fails to turn up any information that Mr. Bonta’s claim was fraudulent. Would mrbong care to supply a link to a reputable source of this information?
13

Budbear

June 22, 2012 at 12:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

I guess they call him mrbongo because he’s obviously been hit on the head numerous times.
14

subbie

June 22, 2012 at 12:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

How silly of all those liberal sciencey types to not realize that actual science fully supports right wing racist stereotypes. And it’s not hateful because science says it’s true.
15

Area Man

June 22, 2012 at 12:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote.

Yes, they had a reason. They didn’t do it just for the heck of it, they actually did have a deliberate purpose for restricting the franchise only to people like themselves. It’s not a very good reason, but it is, indeed, a reason.

Also people, DNFTT.
16

DaveL

June 22, 2012 at 12:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

I am a member of a demographic group that is responsible for the majority of crime, the vast majority of violent crime, and virtually all sex crimes. Would Yerushalmi agree that people from my demographic group should be denied the right to vote?

In case you haven’t guessed, the demographic group I’m referring to is “men”.
17

uncephalized

June 22, 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Whoa, Ed, what’s going on with the site formatting? It’s all crazy and ugly-looking right now…
18

W. Kevin Vicklund

June 22, 2012 at 12:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Here’s what Ed wrote about the Johnny Bonta situation:

Someone sent me this appalling story of a Native American family attacked by a group of skinheads in Nevada and how the police handled the situation. It’s too long to relate here completely, but if the facts are correct there needs to be a major lawsuit against the sheriff’s department for neglecting the medical needs of someone they arrested — and quite possibly for false arrest as well. Read the whole thing but prepare to be sickened.

Shocking, isn’t it?

It should be noted that many searches no longer work for ScienceBlogs. But by my l33t skillz, I bring you the post mrbongo is referring to. Here is what Ed said:

Here’s one other aspect of this ridiculous controversy over the Islamic center in Manhattan that I’ve mentioned once but deserves broader recognition: The man behind this project is a Sufi, which is considered a heresy by the Islamic radicals in Al Qaeda. Fareed Zakaria pointed this out on his show recently.

Last month, Islamic radicals in Pakistan blew up a Sufi shrine in Pakistan, the latest in a long line of attacks on Sufi sites around the world. Sufis are as much an enemy of Al Qaeda as America is.

Note that, contrary to mrbongo’s assertions, Ed never claimed that Sufis were peaceful, merely that they were the enemy of Al Qaeda.

The claim of peacefulness was made by someone else that Ed quoted. When the innaccuracy of the peacefulness of Sufis was brought up, here’s what Ed said in response:

The criticisms above from Dr. Furnish are, in fact, perfectly fair. They’re a bit sneering, of course, but given that the post he was responding to was equally sneering I can hardly point to that as a defect. As a matter of substance, he is correct that Zakaria was seriously oversimplifying the reality of Sufis in the portion that I quoted from him. But I suspect that we actually agree on more here than we disagree on. The point of this post, as someone else pointed out above, is that the Muslim world itself is not at all monolithic and it’s certainly no surprise that this is true of the Sufi elements in Islam as well. And it remains true that the fundamentalists of Al Qaeda generally consider Sufism to be heretical. On those points, I think Dr. Furnish would agree with me. His post at HNN is certainly worth reading and I intend to put up a post on its own pointing to that article so that we may all learn from it.

Posted by: Ed Brayton | August 31, 2010 12:23 AM

Comment 37, archived by the Wayback Machine

Also note that the minority affairs minister wasn’t murdered until March 2011.
19

Michael Heath

June 22, 2012 at 12:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

It should be noted that Ed’s blog posts at Scienceblogs.com were temporarily not available several days ago but now are, but not the comment posts, just Ed’s blog posts. It also appears that they censored Ed as well since I can’t find via Google any of his blog posts with the word fuck in the blog post body.

National Geographic does a disservice to human knowledge. There’s a large treasure trove of citations to useful information in those comment posts no longer available to the public.
20

W. Kevin Vicklund

June 22, 2012 at 1:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Note that I have a detailed fisking of mrbongo’s claims in moderation at a 12:56 timestamp.
21

imrryr

June 22, 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

mrbongo could use an avatar, might I suggest a picture of a crying baby?
22

W. Kevin Vicklund

June 22, 2012 at 1:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Ed talking about Asia Bibi

Pakistan has arrested a doctor on suspicion of blasphemy for — get this — throwing away a business card. How? Why? Because the person who gave him the business card had the name Muhammad and he was therefore defiling the prophet Muhammad by throwing the card away.

The case began Friday when Muhammad Faizan, a pharmaceutical company representative, visited Valiyani’s clinic and handed out his business card. He said when the doctor threw the card away, Faizan went to police and filed a complaint that noted his name was the same as the prophet’s.

Shah said police were investigating whether Valiyani should be charged with blasphemy.

And remember, these are the allegedly good guys helping us fight against the radical Muslims. The only difference is that Pakistan puts dozens of people to death every year for blasphemy after giving them a fake trial, while the Taliban didn’t bother with the fake trials.

The blasphemy law has been widely criticized by human rights groups following the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death last month for insulting Islam. Critics say the law should be amended or repealed because it is often used to settle grudges, persecute minorities and fan religious extremism.

No, those things are extraneous. Even if this law was not used to settle grudges or persecute minorities, it would still be barbaric and fascist.

So far, every claim mrbongo has made this thread is at best a gross distortion.
23

W. Kevin Vicklund

June 22, 2012 at 1:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

More Ed on Asia Bibi:

Pakistan provides a perfect example of what happens when you combine church and state:

Christian Today reports that in Pakistan on Sunday, a court in Punjab province sentenced a Christian woman to death for blasphemy. It also imposed a fine equivalent to two and a half years’ wages. In previous blasphemy cases, the death sentence has not been carried out and this may amount instead to a life sentence. Defendant Asia Bibi, a farm worker in the village of Ittanwali, got into a heated religious discussion with Muslim fellow farm workers. When they tried to convince Bibi to accept Islam, Bibi told them that Jesus had died for mankind’s sins and asked what Muhammad had done for them. Apparently the Muslim women, offended by Bibi’s remarks, began to beat her while others locked her in a room and abused her and her children. Local Muslim leaders then pressured prosecutors to file charges against Bibi.

…

Sucks to be mrbongo.
24

matty1

June 22, 2012 at 2:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

I assume the peaceful Sufi’s bit is a reference to this post in which Ed quoted someone called Fareed Zakaria who argued that Sufi’s are as much ‘the enemy’ to Jihadi extremists as non Muslims are and tend towards tolerance.

I can’t get into the comments now but I do remember that someone smart (not Mrbongo) pointed out that this was oversimplified and there are both violent and peaceful groups within the Sufi movement. Ed’s response was not to ignore this but to reply to it urging everyone to read the commenters linked article on the diversity of Islamic views for more information.
25

thisisaturingtest

June 22, 2012 at 3:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

If the vote counts for so much in a free and liberal democracy as we “know” it today, why did they limit the vote so dramatically?

matty1, @#2, got it, I think, with this:

3. Like everyone else the American founders were limited by the society they came from and would have found modern concepts of equality hard to even understand.

Exactly right- they were realists dealing with, and in, a cultural norm and context that not only would never have countenanced such a thing- it would never have even considered it. What’s (kind of) funny is that Yerushalmi answered his own question, when he said “as we “know” it today”- but, since he’s thinking in a vacuum devoid of context, although he apparently sees the context, he must ignore it in favor of vacuity.
26

Chris from Europe

June 22, 2012 at 4:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

that actual science fully supports right wing racist stereotypes

Put up or shut up.
27

sidhe3141

June 22, 2012 at 8:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Chris from Europe (#26):

Put up or shut up.

Sarcasm. Probably. I hope.
28

Chris from Europe

June 23, 2012 at 6:28 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@sidhe3141
Okay, while re-reading the comment, the last sentence convinced me.