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Josh at work Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is also a graduate student at the University of Kansas, completing a doctorate in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not modeling species distributions or battling creationists, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.

The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.

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« Jenna Jameson outstrips Ben Stein | Main | More Pesach goodness »

David Klinghoffer: Self-hating Jew, or Hitler sympathizer?

Category: CreationismCulture Wars
Posted on: April 21, 2008 12:05 AM, by Josh Rosenau

On Saturday night, we celebrated the first night of Passover. It's a day on which Jews have, since time immemorial, celebrated out freedom, and greater freedom to come. The seder is a profound and moving ceremony, and its form connects us through the generations, back to the ancestors who laid the groundwork for modern Jewish religion and culture.

It is especially disturbing, then that Disco. Inst.'s David Klinghoffer emerged from whatever dank cesspool he lives in, and on the day before Passover, announced:

Hitler understood something about Judaism that even many Jews today don’t grasp.
Now, it isn't clear what it is that Hitler is supposed to realize, nor is it clear why Klinghoffer thought this supposed insight needed to be vented on the eve of Passover. It seems to have something to do with Expelled, and something to do with Passover, and apparently something else to do with excusing Christians from their role in the Holocaust. It honestly isn't clear, any more than it's clear what Klinghoffer and Stein think Darwin had to do with Hitler. Apparently Hitler talks about "struggle for existence" and such. Unlike, say, Thomas Malthus (Chapter 3).

It would be a mitzvah if Ben Stein and David Klinghoffer would STFU, just for the next 7 days. They can go back to smearing our ancestors and our traditions and can return to trivializing the deaths of 6 million Jews (and 6 million others) after Passover ends. But for a few days, is it too much to hope that they show a little respect?

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#1

It honestly isn't clear, any more than it's clear what Klinghoffer and Stein think Darwin had to do with Hitler. Apparently Hitler talks about "struggle for existence" and such. Unlike, say, Thomas Malthus

Or Alfred Lord Tennyson (1850):

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

...

Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law–
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed–

Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.

Posted by: John S. Wilkins | April 21, 2008 1:39 AM

#2

Hear, hear, Josh. It is patently insensitive, trivializing, and offensive to lay responsibility for the Holocaust at the feet of biologists.

Posted by: Farb | April 21, 2008 3:12 PM

#3

Self hating Jew, or Hitler sympathizer?

How about imbecil?

Posted by: Joel | April 26, 2008 12:13 PM

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