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Entry: The American Con Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/the_american_con#28754 Post contents: Ron Lewenberg, I have read your post several times, now, and can't make heads or tails of it. At first, I thought you were accusing Chris Moore of being an anti-semite, an Israel-hater, and as a result a traitor(?), which seems to be an enormous jump in logic. Are you regurgitating cliff notes from the AIPAC meeting that is ongoing in Washington as we speak? I will assume that you mean what you are saying when you accuse Chris of being a traitor. I certainly don't like anti-semites, but I'm willing to grant that an anti-semite who was willing to die for the US on the field of battle could be a patriot. Did it ever occur to you that probably every European writer before John Milton, including Shakespeare, could fairly be characterized as an anti-semite? Would you be willing to grant that the fact that Shakespeare wrote a series of plays glorifying English history that are unrivaled in the annals of literature perhaps might allow Shakespeare to be an English patriot, in spite of his virulent anti-semitism? Your comment that love of Israel is required of Chris to qualify as a patriot gave me quite a laugh as well. But then your post utterly confuses, when you include the following incomprehensible sentence: "The irony is that Scott McConnell should be given a pass by you. The guy is theologically anti-Israel to the point or(sic) religious and historical revisionism in viewing Mary and Jesus as Palestinians." Despite the fact that Chris was actually criticizing Scott McConnell, you credit him as giving the guy a pass. After this I think I kind of follow you --you are saying with condemnation that McConnell isanti-Israel, which in your book is a crime nothing short of being unpatriotic. Then, you write this monstrosity: "Regarding American Jews, my sniveling leftist brethren were more anti-war than any other group." Here I can't figure out if you are yourself a dash anti-semitic, calling American Jews "my sniveling leftist brethren" or calling Chris Moore a leftist brethren-- if it is the latter, you perhaps know that brethren is actually the plural, so unless all of us are included here, this sentence is grammatically in error. Given the education of most of the posters here, I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you are calling Jews "sniveling leftist brethren," thereby identifying yourself as a right-wing anti-semite and thus not a patriot (by your own definition of the word). Am I correct? Finally, anyone who has actually been to Israel knows, that if it isn't a fascist state, it is a virulently exclusionary, ethno-centric state. I don't have to bore you with an account of my Israeli tour guide's colorful descriptions of Jerusalem's native inhabitants. Suffice it to say that if I, a Christian, wanted to emigrate to Israel, despite the fact that my country gives that country almost 4 billion a year, I would be forbid from doing so on account of my religion and ethnicity. What other Western Democracy excludes people on such a basis? I'll grant you that Israel has some democratic characteristics, but Israel is at base a nation based on birthright (interestingly the name of the program which sponsors young American jews to visit the state), not equality and liberty for all of the people, which are the tenets of modern Western democracy. Sent at: 2009 01 08