who is “the new left” & what unites them around hatred of Israel?

The new left?

The “new left” has passed the statue of liberty some time ago – they can hardly remember all the twists and turns to get back there. They are seeing some glimpses of a new statue in the far east – perhaps many of them … and come to think of it, why just one statue when everyone can pick the one they like most … and upon arrival in that furthest eastern mytopia, if none quite struck their fancy the iLikeness™ chain will grantee satisfaction (for a season).

The new(er) manifestation

With no limit to east or left, the veneer peels off every few years, with increasing regularity … and severity. The potential shapes & slogans of the “newest lady liberty” are legion & the most recent version of it, at least for some, is draped with Hamas colours & “river to sea” slogans.

Only through exposing the roots of this worldview (see also Neo-Marxism) and calling it what it is, can we start to understand and effectively respond to it. More work is needed by cultural leaders to crystallize this ideology (or theology) into, into something like a manifesto or anti-manifesto to clarify & expose the the origins & aims of this deceptive social contagion, in a way that wider leadership (including political) can more effectively engage with & counter it.

Social contagion is an ubiquitous process by which information, such as attitudes, emotions, or behaviors, are rapidly spread throughout a group from one member to others without rational thought and reason.

Excepts below from: Why the left united around hatred of Israel

The willingness of the left to unite around the cause of preventing the suffering of Hamas and the Palestinians as a result of their decision to launch a brutal war is due to the pervasive influence of what, for lack of a better term, we call “woke ideology.” Without a generation of young liberals being indoctrinated in the toxic ideas behind critical race theory and intersectionality, which falsely identifies Jews and Israel as “white oppressors” and likens the Palestinian war to destroy the Jewish state to the American civil-rights movement, none of this would have happened.

Something curious has happened in American politics in the last six months. Liberal activist groups on a host of disparate topics ranging from the economy, labor-union organizing, homelessness and housing shortages, “anti-racism,” climate change and support for illegal immigrants have suddenly all been speaking with one voice on an issue totally unrelated to their primary purposes.

They are demanding an immediate end to the war on Hamas that Israel has been waging in the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian terrorist group launched a barbaric attack on 22 Jewish communities and the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

As the Times noted, the left-wing outrage against U.S. support for Israel wasn’t a subsequent reaction to lies about Israeli “genocide” in Gaza since it began in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks and well before the Israel Defense Forces began its counter-offensive.

Nor should we buy the excuse that the anti-Israel fervor is a justified abhorrence for an out-of-control Israeli military campaign or an astoundingly high number of casualties such as had not been seen in a recent war. On the contrary, the Israel-Hamas war is dwarfed by other recent conflicts that took place in Syria or Sudan. And the number of victims is not to be compared to actual genocides such as those that are ongoing in the Congo or the Chinese campaign against Muslim Uyghurs, in which it is estimated that more than a million people have been put into concentration camps.

The Marxist roots of wokeism also help explain why left-wingers who claim to be against every conceivable kind of prejudice have not only aligned themselves with a vicious and tyrannical hate group like Hamas but also find themselves indifferent to actually supportive of a surge in antisemitism that has blighted American life in the past six months. Despite the persistent attraction of the Jewish left to socialism, Marxist dialectic has, from its origins, viewed Judaism and Jews with suspicion and hostility. The stubborn refusal of Jews to bend to others’ will or simply disappear contradicts the Marxist belief that the homogenization of mankind is part of achieving the dubious goals of its ideology.

And it is the appeal of intersectionality—the false belief that all allegedly oppressed people are part of the same struggle—that has created the ludicrous meme of “Queers for Palestine.”

ny times applauds how pixar targets your children with first gay lead character

Leftist thinking says this “culture war” has been won, LGBT is out and proud as a global concept, supported & championed by leading institutions etc.

…well, it’s not over yet.

The Times concludes with the following “libertarian” statement … “all religions”, as if all religions celebrate this.

[Pixar] obviously recognize that their audience, or potential audience, includes the L.G.B.T.Q. community, just as it includes people of all genders, races, ethnicities, religions and so on.”

New York Times – May 24, 2020

Here, however is a bit of a “fact check”.

…so no, “all religions” don’t welcome this so much. About half of the global population does not agree with this “enlightened” and “progressive” view. And if you want to try assert that Christianity “welcomes” this, the people are welcomed, loved even, but the action is not. If you are wondering about the numbers in those shrinking “liberal churches” that disagree with this, consider that some portions in the “Mixed” group does not approve of this either.

This is not that numbers determine truth, but if there was a global vote on this, pro-LGBT legislation would fail. Democracy surely has it’s limits – just look at the reactions after Trump became president. Full acceptance of the will of the people? Not so much.

“Greg, the film’s lead character, has a secret he’s keeping from his parents, but with help from his dog, he learns he’s got nothing [sic] to hide.” – Disney/Pixar

“We’ll get you through your children!”

These words were shouted to Norman Podhoretz in 1958 by beat poet and pioneer gay activist Allen Ginsberg at the end of an unsuccessful summit. According to Daniel Oppenheimer in his book Exit Right, “A decade later (1968) that threat would prove one of the fulcrums around which Podhoretz would execute his hard pivot to the right.”

Ginsberg’s words have proven true. Leftists and LGBTQ activists and their allies have waged an effective ideological war on our children, proclaiming that gay is good, that biological sex is changeable, and that heterosexual unions are really no different than homosexual unions.

Excerpt posted on AskDrBrown, May 27, 2020 by Michael L. Brown

was miley cyrus a believer?

Let this be a warning to all who thinks falling away is impossible if we open the door to or play games with sin.

When people that love God hear of the exploits of Miley Cyrus the natural inclination is likely disgust towards her & the entertainment media she represents. Correctly so. I have not personally seen, nor want to see what she did, but I also noticed the words of her dad:

He acknowledged there is “no doubt” that his family is being ruined by Satan.

It occurred to me that given that we, now alive in Him (Yeshua), were loved while we were yet in sin – let’s at least say a prayer for conviction for Miley. If her dad said that, I don’t know that it could have been spoken as a counterfeit. We should help carry the burdens other have – we must be a praying people!

Surely people have been delivered out of equally or more hellish bondage than she finds herself in. God doesn’t need her as a witness of His love and power of deliverance, but may she indeed be granted repentance & give glory to Him once she is delivered from the chains & the pit.

Miley Cyrus tweeted: “You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, all the things that matter for evolution) weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in stars. So forget Jesus. Stars died so you can live.” She later deleted the tweet that stirred up much strife among her fans. Cyrus regularly attended church as a young girl and even took to wearing a purity ring as a sign of her Christian faith. In 2008, Cyrus, an already very wealthy 15-year-old told Fox News in an interview that it is her faith that keeps her “grounded” and admitted her desire to follow Jesus. “Live like Christ and He’ll live in you, and that’s what I want to do,” she said. Just a few years after her father Billy Ray Cyrus, popular country music singer, said in an interview with GQ Magazine that he regretted having her in the “Hannah Montana Show” and also admitted to having made serious errors as parent. Billy Ray confessed that the entire family got baptized and were cautious of the temptations within the entertainment industry before to going to Los Angeles. ”Somewhere along this journey, both mine and Miley’s faith has been shaken,” he said. “That saddens me the most.” He acknowledged there is “no doubt” that his family is being ruined by Satan.

big bang theory expiry date!? how much does the “horizon problem” undermine “big bang cosmology”? – 04min

Preface: If you think this is fringe personal opinion only, skip to the Scientific American article on this exact topic quoted below.

Did you know the “Big Bang” has some scientifically recognized problems in terms of things that don’t fit observed phenomena & actual measurements? Enter the “Horizon Problem”. But wait! …the “Inflation Model” was supposed to rescue it all – then again, isn’t that just a theory? (an increasingly feeble one at that – see below) …almost like “scientific faith” or hope? But science deals with facts only. Ok, well, many scientific models are not proven yet. Guess they should then be ignored then in any practical sense? Does it work out that way in practice? Nope. Scientific politics is apparently a relatively new branch in the discipline, sadly. Imagine questioning the Big Bang in “respectable” conversation. Try asking the next person that you talk to on the big bang topic for his/her option on the Inflation Model – since it’s really a required part of the whole theory!

The audio outlines the topic in brief & also touches on the idea that the speed of light has changed – as some scientific models seemingly require that it should have – otherwise prediction numbers also don’t crunch as they ‘should’.

Scientific American Magazine – April 2011
The Inflation Debate – Is the theory at the heart of modern cosmology deeply flawed?
By Paul J. Steinhardt

DEFLATING COSMOLOGY?
Cosmologists are reconsidering whether the universe really went through an intense growth spurt (yellowish region) shortly after the big bang.

In Brief

– Cosmic inflation is so widely accepted that it is often taken as established fact.
– The idea is that the geometry and uniformity of the cosmos were established during an intense early growth spurt.
– But some of the theory’s creators, including the author, are having second thoughts. As the original theory has developed, cracks have appeared in its logical foundations.
– Highly improbable conditions are required to start inflation. Worse, inflation goes on eternally, producing infinitely many outcomes, so the theory makes no firm observational predictions.
– Scientists debate among (and within) themselves whether these troubles are teething pains or signs of a deeper rot. Various proposals are circulating for ways to fix inflation or replace it.

Thirty years ago Alan H. Guth, then a struggling physics postdoc at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, gave a series of seminars in which he introduced “inflation” into the lexicon of cosmology. The term refers to a brief burst of hyperaccelerated expansion that, he argued, may have occurred during the first instants after the big bang. One of these seminars took place at Harvard University, where I myself was a postdoc. I was immediately captivated by the idea, and I have been thinking about it almost every day since. Many of my colleagues working in astrophysics, gravitational physics and particle physics have been similarly engrossed. To this day the development and testing of the inflationary theory of the universe is one of the most active and successful areas of scientific investigation.

Its raison d’être is to fill a gap in the original big bang theory. The basic idea of the big bang is that the universe has been slowly expanding and cooling ever since it began some 13.7 billion years ago. This process of expansion and cooling explains many of the detailed features of the universe seen today, but with a catch: the universe had to start off with certain properties. For instance, it had to be extremely uniform, with only extremely tiny variations in the distribution of matter and energy. Also, the universe had to be geometrically flat, meaning that curves and warps in the fabric of space did not bend the paths of light rays and moving objects. Source: Scientific American

Wikipedia explains it as follows:

The horizon problem is a problem with the standard cosmological model of the Big Bang which was identified in the late 1960s, primarily by Charles Misner. It points out that different regions of the universe have not “contacted” each other because of the great distances between them, but nevertheless they have the same temperature and other physical properties. This should not be possible, given that the transfer of information (or energy, heat, etc.) can occur, at most, at the speed of light. The horizon problem may have been answered by inflationary theory, and is one of the reasons for that theory’s formation. Source: Wikipedia

The article continues…

…two galaxies in question cannot have shared any sort of information; they are not in “causal contact”. One would expect, then, that their physical properties would be different, and more generally, that the universe as a whole would have varying properties in different areas. Contrary to this expectation, the universe is in fact extremely isotropic, which also implies homogeneity. The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), which fills the universe, is almost precisely the same temperature everywhere in the sky, about 2.728 +/- 0.004 K. The differences in temperature are so slight that it has only recently become possible to develop instruments capable of making the required measurements. This presents a serious problem; if the universe had started with even slightly different temperatures in different areas, then there would simply be no way it could have evened itself out to a common temperature by this point in time.

The magnitude of this problem is quite large. According to the Big Bang model, as the density of the universe dropped while it expanded, it eventually reached a point where photons in the “mix” of particles were no longer immediately impacting matter; they “decoupled” from the plasma and spread out into the universe as a burst of light. This is thought to have occurred about 300,000 years after the Big Bang. The volume of any possible information exchange at that time was 900,000 light years across, using the speed of light and the rate of expansion of space in the early universe. Instead, the entire sky has the same temperature, a volume 1088 times larger.

Line of Fire Radio – Dr. Brown Interviews Young Earth Creation Scholar Dr. Jonathan Sarfati. Listen to full audio here.

Big bang illustrations: (questionable)

the pope the world loves! – 11min

The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you. (John 15:19 NLT)

…so what does it tell us if the world really loves the new pope?

Line of Fire Radio – 09.23.13 Reflections on the Pope’s Recent Comments and the Role of the Church in Society. Listen to full audio here.

the quandary of atheist grief! – 04min

When we’re debating truth claims of the Christian worldview, some concepts can be valiantly defended by the atheist side in a clinical way – in a way that doesn’t have to be intimately related to, at that point. Typically, the nihilistic implications are shied away from … but it comes closer to reality with a bang sometimes –

When you’re the atheist needing to provide comfort to close friend grieving over a family member – then, like in this case, you may realize that “the life of an atheist is a tad bleak”. You can’t say “she’s in a better place” of “you’re in my prayers”. As it turns out, you’re left with nothing meaningful to say…

Note that the trite treatment of prayer in the article is an inditement of the institutionalized, empty version of what much of the western world calls christianity (removed from Christ). The christianity that is characterized by church attendance vs church embodiment i.e. “the true body of Christ in the earth” won’t “fake it”. They won’t leave the world thinking that intersession is empty commitment, because it won’t be. The world isn’t foolish as far as knowing a fake. Followers of Jesus / Yeshua, should step up & be who they say they are or admit to being no more than “fair weather christian counterfeits”.

Audio below outlines this all in brief.

AlbertMohler.com – The Briefing 09-25-13. Listen to full audio here.

Grieving as an atheist: a surprising dilemma

I can’t remember the exact moment I became an atheist. There was no epiphany moment. I simply moved away from religion gradually until the binds fell apart completely (those binds being agnosticism, which got tossed once I realized I was simply prolonging the inevitable). But since I became an atheist, I wouldn’t say it made any drastic changes in my life – until my best friend called me one day to tell me her mother passed away.

Although we live in different parts of the country (me in New York, she in Oklahoma), we still call each other weekly. But on that particular day the usual familiarity of speaking over the phone was eclipsed by the suddenness of tragedy. I couldn’t give a sympathetic hug or offer a shoulder to cry on. All I could offer were my condolences … which were what exactly?

“I’m sorry for your loss” felt too impersonal. That’s what you say to acquaintances, not best friends. “I’m here for you”, I told her, which still didn’t feel like enough.

I felt like I should have been saying the usual things: “God is with her now”, “She’s now in heaven” or “You’re in my prayers”. These phrases sound better because these are the phrases we’re used to saying. “She’s in a better place” provides a sense of hope and optimism. “You’re in my prayers” shows caring and understanding. But that day, as I stood there on the phone struggling to think of the right things to say, I realized I couldn’t say those phrases anymore. I couldn’t tell her I was praying for her because I wasn’t. I couldn’t tell her I thought her mother was in “a better place” because to me that place was a hollow grave.

I started to realize that the life of an atheist was a tad bleak. The more I spoke, the darker the conversation became. As I drawled on about how “there was nothing you could have done” and “it is what it is”, I started to feel like a black hole. When did atheism transform me into Daria?

But even if I were still a Christian and had the privilege to pepper my condolences with hopeful phrases of heaven and angels, those phrases might sound better, and sure they provide immediate reassurance (which is what they’re designed to do), but the phrases themselves are empty. When people say they’re praying for you, how often are they really? But saying “I’m praying for you” sounds nice, regardless if there’s any truth to it or not. We’re conditioned to say these phrases whenever we’re confronted with a tragedy, but we put little thought or effort into why we say them.

Last year Kim Kardashian was criticized for tweeting that she was “praying for everyone in Israel” in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. The critics lashed out, accusing the Kardashian of supporting Israel in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Kim later added a new tweet saying that she was “praying for everyone in Palestine and across the world!” But amidst the mud-slinging, no one thought to realize how empty a phrase “I’m praying for ______” is, how little weight it has in being anything of significance. It’s merely a crutch, a thing we say to show that a) we’re aware of a tragedy, and b) we’re sorry for whoever died in said tragedy. The amount of people who actually make it to step 2 (physically praying) is a mystery.

To some readers, all of this might sound irrelevant. Religiously-charged phrases serve a single purpose: to provide comfort, reassurance. They help people make sense of tragedies they don’t understand. They make people feel good. They provide a sense of hope when people feel like they have none. So what hope do I have as an atheist? Am I doomed to go through life telling friends and family that, no, your grandma is dead for good. There has to be a better way.

During my second phone call to my best friend, I decided I would let her do the majority of the talking. After all, this wasn’t about me, it was about my friend, and I realized the best thing I could do for her was to simply be there for her and be a supportive listener. I told her she could call me any time she wanted, even if it was 4am, even if she just wanted to bawl in my ear. Even though I wasn’t armed with an arsenal of hopeful and optimistic phrases to make her feel better with, I realized that simply being a caring and understanding friend was more important. And isn’t that what really matters? – The Guardian

how the west really lost God – 45min

How did the West lose God? This reverse “new atheist” argument is made in a compelling new book that features family cohesion & stability as a driving force / enabler in a way not considered much before. Consider the more commonplace “fatherless home”, in the same vein, and how that has also been shown as a reliable indicator for children growing up with an atheist or agnostic worldview.

Listen to the interview for a good overview of the book.

AlbertMohler.com, Thinking in Public – How Does Secularization Really Happen? A Conversation with Mary Eberstadt. Listen to full audio here.

the water grave of baptism – dead to sin – 09min

Is “being dead to sin” properly explained from the pulpit these days? Further illustration in the audio below.

… have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. (Romans 6:3, 4 NLT)

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curing the human condition – impossible if not diagnosed – 28min

Listening to Ravi speak is often a treat for me. When you listen & get to what happened in a classic eureka “moment of truth” in the life of a very wealthy, but embittered divorced man, you may know what I mean. It’s not a matter of just telling a story, it’s really having the true life tales to tell through encounters with people over many years … and then being able to share those encounters in an engaging way. 🙂

Let My People Think on OnePlace.com – OnePlace.com – What Answer for the Wicked Human Heart, Part 1. Listen to full audio here & Part 2 here.

plainly : who does jerusalem belong to? – 45min

This should be a simple question. It should have a simple answer. Why all the permanent commotion about the fraction of a fraction of real estate – Jerusalem, in Israel. Israel is small. Yet, the nations burden themselves with Jerusalem. So then – is the following true?

On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it. (Zechariah 12:3 ESV)

Yes! It’s true and even the “powerful America” cannot lift this stone – cannot move it. Will they hurt themselves in the process of being burdened by this? Yes again – they probably already have. Even apart from, but also including 9/11, God’s blessing is departing from the federation that is the United States of America. The hope remains, ironically in disunity with the prevailing federal direction – by the White House, Obama etc.

The audio below is a discussion about the saddest day of the year for observant Jews – the day that they mourn the destruction of the second temple. Would you be surprised that Jews are routinely denied passage onto the Temple Mount while tourists & others go on undeterred & unquestioned. Amazing? I think so.

Who does Jerusalem belong to?!

Israel National Radio – Temple Talk – Mourning and Gladness in the Month of Av. Listen to full audio here.