The New Barbarians

"If our civilization is allowed to collapse, it will not be replaced by a progressive utopia. It will be replaced by chaos and barbarism," writes

Konstantin Kisin

on The Free Press. It should be very simple to distinguish Hamas's tactics from Israel's, but somehow is not. Why is that?

The Day the Delusions Died

Young people - the main drivers of a 21c progressivism that will go to the mat over dead-naming but can whistle past murdered babies - want what young people have always wanted: to walk into adulthood with a sense of power and belonging, to be admired.

They will attach themselves to any popular cause, oblivious to history or facts. I asked Yael Bar tur this morning, "Has 'Israel for Dummies' been written yet?" Many times, she said. And yet we still see this.

I've experienced what Yoseph Hadadd has: You ask activists to justify their positions and they go silent, or scream in your face, sor ay, "We know where you live." I cringed for the NZ student; she knew so little. And yet her benightedness is an absolute feeder to real danger.

Any entity can create the sticky-paper to gather an army. As Kisin writes, quoting Thomas Sowell, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” Most college students are morons. I certainly was.

But what of the ostensible grown-ups in the room?

I was appalled last week at the NYT et al, at their disgraceful coverage of the "hospital" bombing in Gaza. I do not understand how any news organization, which for 10 days has been reporting on the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel, would be like, "Oh hey, a press release from Hamas saying Israel did it. Let's run it!"

As a journalist, if I had done something this shameful, I would take myself to the wilderness for 40 days to think about what I helped put in motion. Maybe I'd realize I was actually a PR flak. Or maybe I would ask for forgiveness and pledge to do better. Are we hearing this?

Kisen expresses hope that Oct. 7 was a turning point. "The truth is that we have indulged in magical thinking for too long," he writes. I see this magical thinking also as a dereliction of duty, and ask again, what have we done to our children that they see slaughter as justice?

Beyond, perhaps, some embarrassment, there will almost assuredly be no consequence for the New Zealand student who knows nothing about Palestine. Maybe someone asked her to man the recruitment table; maybe she is just garden variety naive. One can hope.

And though I find it morally abhorrent to see a young woman in NYC tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli children, it's a good bet that next year she'll be onto the next cause, one whose barbarism costs her nothing at all.

cross-posted at the Twitter machine, follow @nancyromm