Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish Articles at DanielGreenfield.org

Tonight begins the celebration of the Jewish holiday of Purim commemorating a historical incident of little relevance to the present day, involving a plot to exterminate the Jewish people. It is one of those holidays, that like most Jewish holidays, is inconvenient for liberal clergy because it involves violence and nationalism. And unlike Chanukah, on Purim, the Jews did not wait around to be massacred for a decade or two before they fought back, instead they carried out a preemptive strike. During the winter, liberal pundits occasionally write horrified articles about the origins of Chanukah in a violent rebellion and a civil war between nationalists and internationalists, a handful of narrow-minded fanatics who wanted to keep their rituals and customs and were willing to die for it-- and the enlightened elites in the capital who were on the board the imperial train and eager to reeducate the barbarians in the settlements out of their beliefs. Purim summons up fewer of these ar...

What we think the talking heads are talking about when they condemn racism, misogyny or some other form of bigotry is entirely detached from what they are actually talking about. If you are reading this, the odds are that you define racism as an expression of racial bigotry. That is the formal definition, but it is as meaningful to the actual use of the terminology as reaching for a Latin dictionary or trying to make sense of the vocabulary of the Picts. That definition has long been as outdated as the steam engine. To the progressive left, and by that I mean the people who actually write the policies, set the agenda and control the national dialogue, racism is not about race, misogyny is not about gender and anti-semitism is not about ethnicity or religion. They are forms of reactionary behavior and thinking. Remember that definition because it's important. It is why asking questions like, "What about liberal misogyny?" is as useless as asking Nazis why their lea...

Between the modern and the post-modern worlds, peace negotiations took on the fevered air of senseless enthusiasm that was once the sole preserve of wars. Once upon a time it was treasonous to oppose wars, now it is virtually mandatory to do so. Today it is treasonous to oppose peace processes, no matter how ill-founded, how senseless and how pointless they might be. The treason is no longer toward a country, but toward an ideal. What ideal is it that the peace process represents? The ideal that we are all basically alike, that we might speak different languages, wave different flags and have differently shaped borders, but that we are all basically alike. We all want peace and wars only happen when our jingoistic leaders mislead us into a conflict. Peace happens when ordinary people of goodwill under the leadership of a few enlightened peacemongers get together and realize how much they have in common and that any disputes they have can be settled over some coffee or tea. No myt...

What does a Koran cost? You can get a full color one for the Kindle for only 99 cents, just don't expect it to feature any pictures of old Mo. If you want to go deluxe, you can get a hardcover edition that runs three different translations side by side for around 40 bucks. But if you want to be more practical about it, the price of a Koran is the lives of six American soldiers. That butcher's bill doesn't count the soldiers who burned the Korans, who despite following procedure will be penalized on orders of the White House which thinks that punishing American soldiers will somehow satisfy the Koran fueled bloodlust of men who aren't satisfied with their corpses. The nature of the marketplace of human affairs is that a thing is worth what we will pay for it. Once upon a time Americans decided to pay any price for freedom. The price was high, but they got what they paid for... at least for a season or two. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were w...

Modern political warfare is a battlefield in which small battles give way to the larger conflict for national rule and succession. In feudal times such conflicts might be settled with a coalition of lords aligned one way or another. In the modern colonial territories between the Atlantic and the Pacific, populated by a fragmented collection of states, races, religions and classes, the coalitions are assembled out of those groups. Each side struggles to amass a winning coalition by showing as many groups as it can that it is on their side. In this environment political wars over policy come down to battles in which both sides position their approach as beneficial to as many of those groups as it can. That is why candidates pitch ethanol in Iowa, the auto industry in Michigan and moon colonies in Florida. It is also why Democrats inevitably roll out an election strategy based on their rainbow coalition of peoples supposedly advantaged by their policies. This strategy works because ...

Only one candidate will restore Amerabia and the Koran  ( Source: Debbie Schlussel )  THE IRAN WAR MYTH In 2007, Israeli Air Force jets crossed into Syria and destroyed an Iranian-backed nuclear reactor. The operation had the backing of the United States and employed intelligence derived from an Iranian defector. There was no regional war afterward. Not even an exchange of fire at the Israeli-Syrian border. In 1981, Israel struck deep inside Iraq, destroying Saddam’s Osirak reactor. The attack was universally condemned at the United Nations and even by Israel’s allies. Had Saddam used it as the basis for a war, Israel would have had no international support at all. But again no war followed. Today, Iran and opponents of any attack on its nuclear program hold up the specter of a regional war that will drag in the United States, devastate the region and drive up oil prices. This is the only card in their deck until the mullahs have their own bomb, and it’s an effectiv...