What Exactly Was Controversial About Cruz’s Post-Brussels Remarks?

Loading

37930-ostrich

The post-Brussels bombing is following a familiar script. Ace excerpts this piece from Douglas Murray at The Spectator:

The only thing he misses is that we in the west have become just aces at staging tastefully subdued funerary memorials. We do like our candles and flowers.

Well at least we all know the form by now. This morning Islamist suicide-bombers struck one of the few European capitals they haven’t previously hit in a mass-casualty terrorist attack.

The standard response now goes as follows. First the body parts of innocent people are flung across airport check-ins or underground trains. Briefly there is some shock. On social media the sentimentalists await the arrival of this atrocity’s cutesy hashtag or motif and hope it will tide them over until the piano man arrives at the scene of the attack to sing ‘Imagine there’s no countries’. Meantime someone will hopefully have said something which a lot of people can condemn as ‘inappropriate’.

I see that the Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson was this morning’s Twitter miscreant, foolish enough to say in the wake of the Brussels attack that the EU might not make us very safe. One may agree or disagree with this sentiment, but Ms Pearson should have known that the only acceptable thing to do after a suicide bomber detonates beside the European Commission is to acclaim the Commission as one of the few entities able to keep us safe.

Murray goes on to capture the phases that follow. To quickly summarize:

We will shortly move to the next phase, which is to find a good news story amid the rubble. Anything will do, but best of all is a Muslim good news story.

Soon we will move to the next phase, during which broadcast media will ask questions that address no major points.

Meanwhile other people will change the subject over to the question of Belgium’s unacceptably interventionist foreign policy. Others will get onto Israel-Palestine.

Meanwhile Twitter will reprise some version of the post-Sydney ‘I’ll ride with you’ meme (based on a fib)

This is how it goes in Europe now. Everything barely worth saying will be said endlessly. And the only things that are worth saying won’t be said. (And in the US – BB) 

And there is one more step, the Twitter anti-anti backlash. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy takes us to Cruz’s comments:

There is apparently consternation in the usual places — including CAIR, it should go without saying —​ regarding remarks by Ted Cruz in the aftermath of the jihadist attack in Brussels, in which at least 30 were killed and 180 wounded. Senator Cruz (on whose national-security advisory team I serve) argued, “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”

Makes perfect sense, right? Wrong. The Nation’s George Zornick does a good job of capturing the mindset of the Radical Left:

Within hours of the terror attacks in Brussels, Senator Ted Cruz sent out a press release that declared, “The days of the United States voluntarily surrendering to the enemy to show how progressive and enlightened we are at an end.”

The Texas senator and presidential candidate called for more security on the southern border and said the United States needs to “halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence.” He also advanced a radical idea: “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”

Cruz’s campaign did not reply to immediate requests for clarification, but this proposal raises several questions: What powers would Cruz grant law enforcement that it doesn’t already have? How does one identify what is, and is not, a Muslim neighborhood? What does it mean to “secure” the area? Would non-Muslims in that area also be subject to law enforcement surveillance and unspecified “securing”? How are these law-enforcement actions constitutionally permissible “before” there is any radicalization present?

I’m not going to rebut all of Zornick’s arguments, but let’s skip to the final paragraph (emphasis mine):

Another Cruz adviser, Clare Lopez, declared in a recent radio interview that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the federal government. “Brotherhood affiliates and associates and those connected to it are the go-to advisers, if not appointees, for the top levels of national security in our government, in this administration for sure, but going back many decades, really, is the program of this Brotherhood,” she claimed in remarks flagged by Right Wing Watch. She added that Senator Joseph McCarthy “was spot-on in just about everything he said about the levels of infiltration” in the 1950s, which echoes Gaffney’s belief that the House Un-American Activities Committee should be reinstated.

Actually, McCArthy was right. And so is Gaffney. Back to the NRO piece:

In the Obama years, there has been a shift away from post-9/11 prevention-first counterterrorism, which relied on our police, federal law-enforcement and domestic-security agents to gather intelligence about potential threats in the Muslim communities where Islamic supremacism is endorsed —​ meaning, of course, with cooperation from non-supremacist Muslims living in those communities who are just as threatened as the rest of us are. The Obama Left and its Islamist allies (who are ideologically sympathetic to the jihadists’ sharia-promotion agenda, while assuring us they oppose the violent methods), have moved us back to a pre-9/11 paradigm that regards terrorism as a law-enforcement problem to be managed —​ meaning, for the most part, that law enforcement engages only after attacks (or, at least, when a concrete threat of attack has been discovered —​ by which point, it is often too late).

What Senator Cruz is correctly arguing is that we have to recognize the reality of what the threat is and where it comes from, and we have to stick with prevention-oriented, intelligence-based counterterrorism methods that work. We have had some domestic terrorist attacks in the U.S. as the threat has intensified during Obama’s presidency. Yet, we have not suffered the spate of attacks they have had (and will continue having) in Europe. The main reasons for the difference are that (a) we have not had as much mass immigration of an assimilation-resistant population, and (b) our police and local governments have not ceded de facto jurisdiction over communities to Muslim activists who would turn them into anti-American enclaves. Obama policies have put us on the trajectory to repeat Europe’s self-destruction. Cruz is saying we have to defend ourselves —​ and that we are worth defending.

Simply put, if we don’t want these festering pools of radicalization in our borders we should learn from what the Radical Left considers to be our “betters” over in Europe. While lefties might romanticize the notion of ethnic/racial ghettos where poverty is rampant and local police are afraid to tread, they’re not healthy for any society. To steal a line from Mark Steyn, when you mix a gallon of ice cream with a gallon of horse manure, the end result tastes very little ice ice cream and mostly like manure. As Europe is finding out, it takes a lot less than a 50% mixture to produce that result. The sad irony is that for all that the Radical Left in America claims to care about women and the LGBQwerty community, the neighborhoods that they envision will be the most unsafe places for women or gays to venture.

For closing comments I’ll take you back to Murray’s post:

But perhaps we do learn some things. Albeit silently. A decade ago, after every attack, the pundits used to point to places where mass immigration, integration and open borders were meant to have worked. After London people said ‘What can we learn from France’. After Paris they said ‘What can we learn from the Swedish model.’ Nobody cites Sweden anymore. In fact nobody looks to anyone else’s model anymore. Because all of the ‘models’ failed. So here we are – stuck with a problem our politicians have given us and to which they have no answers. Perhaps all this pointless chatter is just what people do to distract themselves before they have to face up to that fact

Follow Brother Bob on Twitter and Facebook

Cross posted at Brother Bob’s Blog

Image at the top of the post appears via The People’s Cube

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
19 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

All western governments that have a muslim population should immediately put those populations on notice, ‘help us identify and root out any and all terrorists in your midst, or we will send all of you back to your country of origin!’

Why we continue to harbor these animals is beyond comprehension.

Nothing he said was controversial, The muslim neighborhoods deserve police protection, a place to safely report any activities they find suspicious.To have the report investigated. To be able to run a business and prosper. Businesses that are exist before they move there not have to shutter their doors due to not being run by a muslim.
Its no shock the administration is having a kitten the way they view the police.
Cruz should spend his second day in office cleaning out the serpents imbedded in the government.
“The days of the United States voluntarily surrendering to the enemy to show how progressive and enlightened we are at an end.” I like that.

Be sympathetic?
http://louderwithcrowder.com/muslim-migrants-attack-60-minutes-trying-to-

@bwax:
Maybe they harbor them because that is what the Bible commands us to do,
To treat them like we treat ourselves

@John: or maybe it is because our own Constitution says that we are all have rights and they we do not discriminate by religion

This administration was all about political rhetoric from the beginning. The down sizing in Afghanistan, pulling troops from Iraq, the “Arab Spring”, releasing dangerous prisoners from GITMO, the open borders, the treaty with Iran, forcing the retirement of senior military officers, relying upon Moslems at the highest levels in our government and continuing to refuse to acknowledge that radical Muslims are at war with us.

@John: That is not what the constitution says.

@Randy: The liberals always try to guilt us with the bible and misquote the constitution or do magnificent acrobatic twisting so it says what they want it to say. The federal government has very limited powers, the States powers are innumerable. That way if the state in which you live makes laws that offend you you can move. How terribly far we have allowed this country to go adrift.

Can John give is chapter and verse where it says we must harbor these people?
Can John give us an amendment from bill of rights or direct quote from constitution about discrimination?

Yes, but Post McCarthy and HUAC (which was not his and often he gets blamed for what they did), the left after taking up spy lattimores appelation of mccarthyism, removed all the laws accross the country forbidding communism and other such things and removing our legal ability to act on them… the last law was removed a few years ago, and few if any noticed… Good luck getting those back to act.,

Nothing. If you’re a rightard neo nazi fascist.

@kitt:
sure Kitt BUT a suggestion before asking someone to show you something you think does not exist, save yourself the embarassment and google it yourself
from the New Revised Standard
Exodus 12:49 and Leviticus 24:22 – “There shall be one law for the native and for the alien who resides among you.”
Exodus 22:21 – Moses gives God’s law: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien; for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”
Leviticus 19:9-10 and 23:22 – Moses gives God’s law: “You shall not strip your vineyards bare…leave them for the poor and the alien.”
Leviticus 19:33-34 and 24:22 – When the alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
Numbers 35 and Joshua 20 – The Lord instructs Moses to give cities of refuge to the Levites so that when the Israelites must flee into Canaan they may have cities of refuge given to them.
Deuteronomy 10:18-19 – “For the Lord your God…loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Is that enough? Perhaps you might like to use the King James and post what is said there about immigrants
If you really want to get your socks knocked off read in the Bible where it OK’s causing an abortion if one of your sex slaves get’s knocked up by someone else

@john: We live under the New testament, we are not Jews but Christians, if using the Old testament as a guide post, one of your examples is perfect “There shall be one law for the native and for the alien who resides among you.” So if our neighborhoods are patrolled to insure our ability to walk the streets in safety what is so controversial about patrolling their neighborhoods? Or are you suggesting we adopt Shariah laws?
How long shall we support the strangers,
2 Thessalonians 3:10, “For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.”

John,
I find it funny that your choices of verses belies your complete ignorance of the history of the region, how the Jews came to live there at all and what battles were fought.
How those battles ended and who was ORDERED to be wiped out utterly.
Who was then allowed to live amongst the early Jews.

Take the people who worshiped Baal, as an example.
The God of the Jews didn’t tell his people to live with them in harmony.
He ordered them to wipe them out.
After all, they performed child sacrifices by sliding babies down the mouth (chute) of their god Baal into his furnace of a belly.
Not a good neighbor.
They had to go.

What you are doing is applying verses about individuals as though they apply to entire cultures.
They don’t.

Check out Ruth and her mother.
They LEFT their old ways and became as Jews, even respecting the system of workfare the Jews set up for widows and orphans.
When fields were harvested in Israel the Jews left a remnant of grain unharvested at the edges for widows and orphans to come along and gather for themselves.
Because they respected the ways of the Jews they were welcomed.

Sounds a bit like ASSIMILATION, huh.

@john:

except that is the old testament and christians have moved beyond that into the covenant of christ, which is why they dont follow those lines, have changed liturgy to reflect not following it, and no longer sacrifice animals or live by the law.

if your going to make a point at least know the thing your using to make your point, otherwise, you may find people sniggering and not paying attention to the point which may be valid while the example wasnt,.

Covenants.

Innocence, in Eden, before sin (knowlege of good and evil)

The Noahic covenant, symbol the rainbow, god will not wipe out life as a way to deal with people of free will

Abrahamic covenant, blessings to the line of abraham

Law, Moses and the Israelites, Mosaic covenant – under this, god kind of said, you want the rules and law, you got it. and so NO ONE under the mosaic law went to heaven as no man was sufficient to live by it, not even david, gods most beloved, as he cheated with bathsheba… the point of the law was to show that people cant live up to LAW

and the one we live under now
Grace, the convenant Jesus, New Covenant – Generally, Christians believe that the New Covenant was instituted at the Last Supper as part of the Eucharist, which in the Gospel of John includes the New Commandment. Christians see Jesus as the mediator of this New Covenant, and that his blood, shed at his crucifixion is the required blood of the covenant: as with all covenants between God and man described in the Bible, the New Covenant is considered “a bond in blood sovereignly administered by God.”

under The Christ, being perfect, and following things that are impossible for living beings, god shows understanding through his son who experienced being alive, and what hell was like, and all the temptatoins, and so, forgives us our sins from living. this is not to say that there is no judgment, there is, but the judgment is tempered by The Christs understanding of living.

of course, if you want to make fun of scriptures of any long lasting faith, its easy… you just mix 5 parts of ignorance, 1 part of cut and paste, and 3 parts of blind assertion.. and voila, your a hit among the ignorants…

and athiests dont get why the religious dont listen to them when they cant even get the most fundemental basics of arguing against something they at best skim, at worst, copy other idiots ideas without knowlege…

@kitt: John is not bright enough to understand your post.

@Randy: John may not have the understanding required, perhaps he is “educated” beyond the capability. Liberals think they are so clever, but when they find they are wrong, they melt down, name calling.
I can just do it for him, I am an islamaphobic bigot, get over it.

@kitt: Do you remember that liberal environmentalist who went to live with the Alaskan bears? They guy who took his girl friend? The bears allowed him to rub faces and sleep with them until they got hungry. The bears ate both the liberal and his girl friend and didn’t even burp! That is what it is going to be as we allow the Islamic radicals to immigrate to the US and other western countries.

@Randy: I would like them to stay in the paradise they have created, save the christian sects from genocide.
Oh Islam the religion of peace, why is it the countries with the highest population of muslims are such hell holes, unless they have a heavy handed despot to reign over them.