Sheer Stupidity

Yesterday James Von Braun, a white Anglo-Saxon presumably Christian elderly man espousing far right Neo-Nazi views shot and killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. So according to Wall Street Journal columnist and conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel, this tragedy is the fault of……. Muslims? She argues that somehow before 9/11 nobody would have commited such an act against Jews? Hadn’t she ever heard of the American Nazi Party or the KKK? (H/T: Andrew Sullivan).

Much is being made by Muslims and their many defenders on the left–and the ignoramus “conservatives” at Hot Air (who lecture us that hate has no ideological bounds, which I already learned not from those clueless ones, but from Sarah Palin e-mails wishing me cancer)–that the shooter of several people (one now dead) at the U.S. Holocaust Museum is not a Muslim but a White guy, James W. Von Brunn, who is a neo-Nazi.

But that is a distinction without a difference. In fact, it is because of Muslims–who are the biggest contributor to the worldwide rise in anti-Semitism to Holocaust-eve levels–that neo-Nazis feel comfortable–far more comfortable!–manifesting their views about Jews. Until 9/11 and our resulting new tolerance for Islam, the neo-Nazi types were marginalized and howling at the wind. We know who has been targeting Jewish museums and centers affiliated with Jews in recent years. And it hasn’t been, in general, 89-year-old White guys.

Mr. Von Brunn has been on this planet for 89 years, and he didn’t feel comfortable shooting up a Holocaust museum until now–this new era of “tolerance,” in which we must tolerate the most extremist Muslim behaviors and sentiments. It’s, in general, not 89-year-old White guys telling people at churches worldwide and in religious schools that the Jews are the devil incarnate, a filthy tribe, the sons of pigs and monkeys, subhuman, etc.

No, it’s guys with names like Mohammed and Ahmed on our own American streets who make Mr. Von Brunn far more at ease in 2009 than he was even in 1999 to attack places associated with the Jews. They created the comfort zone for James W. Brunn to engage in today’s shooting.

Schussel isn’t the only one trying to ridiculously exploit this atrocity to try and demonize the left. Fellow postrationalist Glenn Beck has also tried to twist this incident into some kind of indictment of the left and example of the right being persecuted. To be fair there are no doubt likely those on the left who are equally shameless in exploiting this incident to make this an indictment of all of those on the right. Do we really have to live in a society where everything is utilized as a political opportunity to further ones ideological agenda? Two words to all those who do just that: lay off!