`To Judge, Or Not To Judge` ~ Weiner Opts for the Later

Pragerism

“Most of the problems with our culture can be summed up in one phrase: ‘Who are you to say?’” ~ Dennis Prager.

(This comes via a h/t to Libertarian Republican) I thought this exchange between Weiner and a fellow Jew (who was very wise in his summation), but Wiener’s relativism comes screaming through. Let’s deal with this self-refuting statement first, and then let CARM jump in on the ethics wagon. The question becomes, if looking at Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s famous maxim, “If there is no God, all things are permissible,”

“If there IS a God, are all things still permissible?”

Even the right to walk the streets without consequences for one’s actions? This aside, let us unpack a bit the challenge with three mock conversations from, Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air, and is taken from a larger paper incorporating a wide variety of sources on this:

First Person: “You shouldn’t force your morality on me.”

Second Person: “Why not?”

First Person: “Because I don’t believe in forcing morality.”

Second Person: “If you don’t believe in it, then by all means, don’t do it. Especially don’t force that moral view of yours on me.”


First Person: “You shouldn’t push your morality on me.”

Second Person: “I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that statement. Do you mean I have no right to an opinion?”

First Person: “You have a right to you’re opinion, but you have no right to force it on anyone.”

Second Person: “Is that your opinion?”

First Person: “Yes.”

Second Person: “Then why are you forcing it on me?”

First Person: “But your saying your view is right.”

Second Person: “Am I wrong?”

First Person: “Yes.”

Second Person: “Then your saying only your view is right, which is the very thing you objected to me saying.”


First Person:You shouldn’t push your morality on me.”

Second Person: “Correct me if I’m misunderstanding you here, but it sounds to me like your telling me I’m wrong.”

First Person: “You are.”

Second Person: “Well, you seem to be saying my personal moral view shouldn’t apply to other people, but that sounds suspiciously like you are applying your moral view to me.  Why are you forcing your morality on me?”

Self-Defeating

  • “Most of the problems with our culture can be summed up in one phrase: ‘Who are you to say?’” ~ Dennis Prager.  So lets unpack this phrase and see how it is self-refuting, or as Tom Morris[1] put it, self-deleting. When someone says, “Who are you to say?” answer with, “Who are you to say ‘Who are you to say’?” [2]

This person is challenging your right to correct another, yet she is correcting you.  Your response to her amounts to “Who are you to correct my correction, if correcting in itself is wrong?” or “If I don’t have the right to challenge your view, then why do you have the right to challenge mine?”  Her objection is self-refuting; you’re just pointing it out.

The “Who are you to say?” challenge fails on another account.  Taken at face value, the question challenges one’s authority to judge another’s conduct.  It says, in effect, “What authorizes you to make a rule for others?  Are you in charge?”  This challenge miscasts my position.  I don’t expect others to obey me simply because I say so.  I’m appealing to reason, not asserting my authority.  It’s one thing to force beliefs; it’s quite another to state those beliefs and make an appeal for them.

The “Who are you to say?” complaint is a cheap shot.  At best it’s self-defeating.  It’s an attempt to challenge the legitimacy of your moral judgments, but the statement itself implies a moral judgment.  At worst, it legitimizes anarchy.[3]


[1] Tom Morris, Philosophy for Dummies (IDG Books; 1999), p. 46
[2] Francis Beckwith & Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Planted in Mid-Air (Baker Books; 1998), p. 144-146.
[3] Via SCRIBD

Defining Relativism ~ Dr. Beckwith

Dennis Prager, quite a few years ago, points out quite well that what the Left wants is NOT to be judged, in contradistinction to a ethical norm in human behavior:

  • Personal responsibility means you could be judged guilty.

  • We never want to be judged guilty.
  • So we must stop people who make such judgments.
  • We stop them by calling them judgmental.

He continues

We have substituted normal and sick for good and evil, and that, again, means no personal responsibility. How can you be held responsible if you did what you did because you are sick?…. There is no one standard to which all people are accountable any more. And that’s what Race-Gender-Class does. It subverts responsibility.

CARM rightly makes the point that — especially those who believe in the Bible (as Wiener seemingly professes in the above video)

…Without a standard of morality, there is no way to judge what is good or bad. Atheists, for example, might decry what is the behavior of God in the Old Testament when he orders the destruction of people groups. But, by what standard does any atheist have to judge what is morally correct? At best, an atheist would only have the ability to express an opinion since he cannot offer any objective standard of morality.

Religious people can appeal to a higher power from which they can ascertain what is good and bad…. God does and he has communicated his standard of righteousness. This communication is found in the Bible. Take the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20. We see a codification of moral standards. We are told not to lie, not to commit adultery, not to covet, etc.  These are standards given to us by God and though there are other cultures that don’t believe in the biblical God, they might have similar moral codes.  But, for the Christian the Bible is the supreme authority that judges what is moral.

We can only judge what is moral if we have a standard given to us by God, not some standard that is based on emotion, opinion, or the changing morals of society.  Even though atheists, agnostics, Muslims, and non-Christians might not approve of standards found in the Scriptures, we Christians believe that the Bible is the revealed and inspired Word of God and that within its pages are the moral standards by which we are to model our behavior. Therefore, the right to we have to judge what is moral comes from God as is revealed in his Word….

So Wiener’s summation in this back-and-forth show most of all his lack of deep thought on the important issue of public morality… and the consequences of violating it. Becoming a laughing stock!

Even Gay Patriot couldn’t pass this example of narcissism up!

It shows one of life’s classic moral confrontations.

  • The normal person (“normal” just meaning, “takes for granted that there are norms of personal behavior”) expresses a viewpoint like: There are norms; you are aware that you violated them when you repeatedly betrayed and humiliated your wife with your deviance, right? I’m not judging you, you can go home and have a good life, but you really don’t belong in the public eye. Have a nice life, but please stop bothering us here in the public square.
  • While the malignant narcissist expresses a viewpoint like: How DARE you tell me that I don’t belong in the public eye, being adored (e.g., voted for – and given power)?! You small person, you coward, you ignoramus, you self-appointed judge, you [insert names of choice]!

Hat tip, Michelle Malkin.

And Moonbat makes the point that some are attacking Obama’s positions just like they did Bush’s, but the difference this time is the media is ignoring it. Hmmmm… “naw, this isn’t more proof of a media bias” — says lemming:

Anthony Weiner Getting His Eschatology Mixed Up Between Christians and His Wife`s

A Revealing Hour in Harlem With Anthony Weiner (h/t, HotAir)

When one supporter invited Weiner and more than a dozen members of the media into his apartment, the candidate noted the Israeli flag the man had displayed in his living room.

“Are you Israeli?” Weiner asked.

No, the man answered, explaining that he is a Christian who believes in the central role Israel would play in paving the way for the second coming of Jesus Christ.

“Got it,” Weiner said. But don’t you also believe that we have to be wiped out before the Messiah can return?”

“No,” the man replied.

“OK, we’re cool,” Weiner said. “Thank you for inviting us into your home.”

A couple more door-knocks later and Weiner finally called it a day.

No, Christians believe Christ is coming back to stop Israel from being destroyed. But the saving power is stored in a Person beyond human power (God). In other words, Christians can not speed along or make God tarry, it — the providential nature of His involvement with history — is in His time-table, not ours.

However, I do wish to note, that while I post videos showing the failure of Anthony Weiner, really a life lived without Christ – prideful and bowing to human nature, he does seem to mixed up on his eschatology, and this is an important point.

You see, Huma, his wife, is intimately involved through her mother and father with the Muslim Brotherhood. Which calls for the destruction of Israel… right now… without a savior. Here for instance is a small bit about her mother, Anthony Weiner’s mother-in-law, the one standing next to Hillary Clinton below — standing to her left, our right:

Bedfellows

…Saleha Abedin is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and to supporters of violent jihad. Among other things, she directs an organization – the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child. The IICWC, through its parent entity (the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief), is a component of the Union for Good (also known as the Union of Good), another formally designated terrorist organization. The Union for Good is led by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the notorious Muslim Brotherhood jurist who has issued fatwas calling for the killing of American military and support personnel in Iraq as well as suicide bombings in Israel. (As detailed here, the Obama White House recently hosted Qaradawi’s principal deputy, Sheikh Abdulla bin Bayyah, who also endorsed the fatwa calling for the killing of U.S. troops and personnel in Iraq.)

Like Sheikh Qaradawi, who helped write the charter for the IICWC, Saleha Abedin is an influential sharia activist who has, for example, published a book called Women in Islam that claims man-made laws enslave women. It reportedly provides sharia justifications for such practices as female-genital mutilation, the death penalty for apostates from Islam, the legal subordination of women, and the participation of women in violent jihad.

…read more…

So, the reality is that Weiner is married to someone who knows all too well who wants to destroy Israel. In fact, most conservative Christians would fight family and friends of Weiner’s to protect it.

Weinergate More Important Than You Know!

While the above is funny, there is a more serious side to this story… this comes from Libertarian Republican posting on it, I add more from the AIM.org article it comes from.

Let me say that I am personally glad Weinergate has entered into the 2.0 phase. It ruins any further political aspirations of power Weiner may have fancied himself advancing towards… which limit somewhat the ability of our nations enemies to infiltrate our institutions in this politically correct meleeafter, that is, this term for the Marxist, and yes, racist Obama.

“If God is ‘dead,’ somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Heffner” ~ Malcolm Muggeridge.

The press is complicit in this with worship of the political left:

Here is the AIM article:

…Sorry to interrupt the Best Enabler of a Sociopath Award ceremony but, to recap, Ms. Abedin worked for many years at a journal that promotes Islamic-supremacist ideology that was founded by a top al-Qaeda financier, Abdullah Omar Naseef. Naseef ran the Rabita Trust, a formally designated foreign terrorist organization under American law. Ms. Abedin and Naseef overlapped at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA) for at least seven years. Throughout that time (1996–2003), Ms. Abdein worked for Hillary Clinton in various capacities.

Ms. Abedin’s late father, Dr. Zyed Abedin, was recruited by Naseef to run the JMMA in Saudi Arabia. The journal was operated under the management of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a virulently anti-Semitic and sharia-supremacist organization. When Dr. Abedin died, editorial control of the journal passed to his wife, Dr. Saleha Mahmood Abedin — Huma’s mother.

Huma`s Sweet Mum

Huma’s Pakistani-born mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, PhD, is an associate professor of sociology at Dar Al-Hekma College in Jeddah. Huma Abedin. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Abedin began working for Hillary Clinton as a White House intern in 1996 and now serves as the Secretary of State’s aide and “body woman.” In the October 25, 2010 issue of TIME, Huma Abedin was featured as a rising political star in our “40 Under 40” special. At the time, Abedin named AnthonyWeiner.com as her go-to political blog.


Saleha Abedin is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and to supporters of violent jihad. Among other things, she directs an organization – the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child. The IICWC, through its parent entity (the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief), is a component of the Union for Good (also known as the Union of Good), another formally designated terrorist organization. The Union for Good is led by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the notorious Muslim Brotherhood jurist who has issued fatwas calling for the killing of American military and support personnel in Iraq as well as suicide bombings in Israel. (As detailed here, the Obama White House recently hosted Qaradawi’s principal deputy, Sheikh Abdulla bin Bayyah, who also endorsed the fatwa calling for the killing of U.S. troops and personnel in Iraq.)

Like Sheikh Qaradawi, who helped write the charter for the IICWC, Saleha Abedin is an influential sharia activist who has, for example, published a book called Women in Islam that claims man-made laws enslave women. It reportedly provides sharia justifications for such practices as female-genital mutilation, the death penalty for apostates from Islam, the legal subordination of women, and the participation of women in violent jihad. Dr. Abedin has nevertheless been hailed in the progressive press as a “leading voice on women’s rights in the Muslim world” (to quote Foreign Policy). What they never quite get around to telling you is that this means “women’s rights” in the repressive sharia context.

Back to daughter Huma. In the late mid to late Nineties, while she was an intern at the Clinton White House and an assistant editor at JMMA, Ms. Abedin was a member of the executive board of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at George Washington University, heading its “Social Committee.” The MSA, which has a vast network of chapters at universities across North America, is the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s infrastructure in the United States. Obviously, not every Muslim student who joins the MSA graduates to the Brotherhood — many join for the same social and networking reasons that cause college students in general to join campus organizations. But the MSA does have an indoctrination program, which Sam Tadros describes as a lengthy process of study and service that leads to Brotherhood membership — a process “designed to ensure with absolute certainty that there is conformity to the movement’s ideology and a clear adherence to its leadership’s authority.” The MSA gave birth to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Islamist organization in the U.S. Indeed the MSA and ISNA consider themselves the same organization. Because of its support for Hamas (a designated terrorist organization that is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch), ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, in which several Hamas operatives were convicted of providing the terrorist organization with lavish financing.

…WOW… read more…

Steve Emerson fills in blanks that just make your jaw drop!

….A little more background: At the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, Ms. Abedin [Huma’s Mom] was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. The journal was the Institute’s main product. It promotes the fundamentalist version of sharia championed by the Muslim Brotherhood, by Abdullah Omar Naseef, and by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi. Ms. Abedin was assistant editor from 1996 through 2008 — from the time she began working as an intern in the Clinton White House, until the time shortly before she took her current position as Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.

The Institute was founded by Naseef in the late 1970s. He is a hugely influential Saudi who was then the vice president of the King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia. Naseef recruited an academic colleague, Zyed Abedin — Ms. Abedin’s late father — to be the journal’s managing editor.

Zyed Abedin thus moved his family to Saudi Arabia from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Ms. Abedin was about two at the time. Her mother, Dr. Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is also an academic and worked for the journal from its inception. She would eventually take the journal over after her husband died in 1993. She remains its editor to this day. Huma Abedin’s brother Hassan, another academic, is an associate editor at the journal.

Not long after the journal started, Naseef became the secretary general of the Muslim World League. As the Washington Post has noted, the MWL was launched by Muslim Brotherhood activists with the financial backing of the Saudi royal family. It is often referred to as a charity, but it is really a global propagation enterprise — exporting the Brotherhood’s virulently anti-Western brand of Islamist ideology throughout the world, very much including in the United States.

There are few positions in Muslim Brotherhood circles more critical than secretary general of the Muslim World League. In fact, one of the MWL’s founders was Sa’id Ramadan, the right-hand and son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s legendary founder. The MWL is part of the foundation of the grand jihad — what the Brotherhood also calls its “civilization jihad” against the West.

Nevertheless, the MWL has a long history of deep involvement in violent jihad as well. It was under the auspices of the MWL that, in 1988, Naseef created a charity called the Rabita Trust. To direct the Rabita Trust, Naseef selected Wael Hamza Jalaidan. Jalaidan is not just a member of al-Qaeda. He was a close associate of Osama bin Laden’s and actually helped establish the al Qaeda terror network.

According to Osama bin Laden himself, the Muslim World League was one of al-Qaeda’s three top funding sources. Consequently, after 9/11, Naseef’s Rabita Trust was formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law. So were branches of the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and the International Islamic Relief Organization, two other Saudi-backed “charities” spawned by the MWL.

Throughout the time that he ran the MWL and the Rabita Trust, Naseef kept his hand in at the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, where the Abedin family continued to run his journal. In fact, Naseef continued to be listed on the masthead as a member of the “advisory editorial board” at the IMMA’s journal until 2003.

We might hazard a guess as to why his name suddenly disappeared after that: Naseef’s involvement in funding al Qaeda was so notorious that, in 2004, he was named as a defendant in the civil case brought by victims of the 9/11 atrocities. (In 2010, a federal court dropped him from the suit — not because he was found uninvolved, but because a judge reasoned the American court lacked personal jurisdiction over him.)

So to summarize, Ms. Abedin had a very lengthy affiliation with an institute founded by a top figure at the nexus between Saudi terror funding, Brotherhood ideology, and al Qaeda’s jihad against the United States. Even if the only pertinent information we had was her personal tie to Naseef, that would be extraordinarily disturbing. But as the five House members pointed out, there is much more.

…lots more to read!…

Thank You C-SPAN for airing this, and a friend who had been on top of this info a while ago.

A presentation of new information concerning Muslim Brotherhood influence operations inside and aimed at the Obama administration and their impact on U.S. policy. The briefing will include additional revelations concerning Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Ever since five Members of Congress — Representatives Michele Bachmann (MN) Louie Gohmert (TX), Trent Franks (AZ), Lynn Montgomery (GA) and Tom Rooney (FL) — were attacked by their colleague, Rep. Keith Ellison (MN), for asking the Inspectors General of federal departments to investigate evidence of Muslim Brotherhood influence operations within the U.S. government, there has been much heat and relatively little light on the subject. The group that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has dubbed “the National Security Five” has been subjected to character assassination, had its motives and integrity impugned and been ridiculed for acting irresponsibly, without any basis for its request to the IGs. In fact, it has been the five legislators’ critics of both parties who have failed to do their homework. Fortunately one of the Nation’s most knowledgeable and respected authorities regarding the Muslim Brotherhood’s “civilization jihad” – former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy – has done his due diligence. In successive articles at National Review Online and PJMedia, Mr. McCarthy has explored some of the evidence that individuals with ties to the Brotherhood are working inside or advising the Obama administration. He shares — and, with his characteristic rigor, further validates — the concerns expressed by Mrs. Bachmann et al. that American policy may be influenced by such officials, advisors and “liaisons” to the Muslim-American community. (Huma’s father pictured)

The Wall Street Journal asks a while back, “So who is Huma Abedin?” And really, she has DIRECT ties to Al Qaeda. And National Review states plainly that:

America’s enemies are Islamic supremacists: Muslims adherent to a totalitarian interpretation of Islam who, like Soviet Communists, seek to impose their ideology throughout the world, very much including the United States.

While England Slept is a 1938 non-fiction book written by Winston Churchill. It highlighted the United Kingdom’s lack of military preparation to face the threat of Nazi Germany’s expansion. Similarly, even leftists have drawn their attention to the problem’s of a weak post-911 America (see: While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era). And it is, it is time to WAKE UP!

Walid Shoebat points out the following:

Once again, the facts about Huma Abedin are these:

  1. She is a devout Muslim.
  2. She grew up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
  3. Her parents were placed in charge of an Institute founded by al-Qaeda financier Abdullah Omar Naseef.
  4. She served on the Board of that Institute for over a decade and with Naseef for a few of those years.
  5. Her mother is one of 63 leaders in the Muslim Sisterhood.
  6. No one has produced her Form 86.
  7. She is seeking to become the first lady of the city that was hit on 9/11 by the group her one-time boss funded (and she’s right on track).

Huma’s defenders will only acknowledge bullet items 1 and 2. Instead of acknowledging any of the other facts, they smear those who point to them.