Bernie Sanders supporters don’t believe in God or America

By: Daniel Greenfield

What is inside the soul of a Bernie Sanders supporter?

As the socialist senator from Vermont becomes a serious candidate for the nomination, even if he never gets there, it’s important to investigate what is fueling this radical transformation of the Democrats.

A new Pew survey provides us with some valuable insights into what makes Sanders supporters tick.

The Sanders base is irreligious, whether agnostic, atheistic, or unaffiliated with any major religion.

While Sanders is, like Karl Marx, of Jewish ancestry, he has never been a practicing Jew. Instead, he has spent the bulk of his career aligning with anti-Semitic figures. His deputy press secretary had accused the “American Jewish community” of treason. He regularly campaigns with racists like John Cusack who tweeted an anti-Semitic Nazi meme. Bernie doesn’t like Jews, and Jews don’t like Bernie.

A Siena College poll showed that Jews in New York were the group least likely to support Sanders. The national numbers are better for Bernie, but even in the Pew survey, Jews are one of two religious groups that are least likely to support Sanders. The other anti-Bernie group are black Protestants.

Jews and black Protestants may like Bernie less than other religious groups, but they’re not outliers.

Bernie performs poorly with every major religious group with the exception of Hispanic Catholics. Catholics, of all backgrounds, are the religious denomination likeliest to support him. But even Hispanic Catholics are more likely to back Biden than Bernie. Where Bernie shines is in the unaffiliated category.

Like Warren, he gets the most support from unaffiliated voters who have no religious identity.

While 75% of Democrats believe that belief in God isn’t necessary to be a good a person, among Warren supporters that number rises to 93%, and hits 85% among Sanders supporters.

These developments were reflected in an earlier Pew survey which found that a majority of white Democrats were no longer Christian. While only 47% of white Democrats call themselves Christians, 10% are members of other faiths, and 42% have no religion. Sanders and Warren rely largely on the support of these white voters. While Sanders brings in a sizable Hispanic contingent, Warren does not. That’s why her supporters tend to poll as being even more extremely irreligious and hostile to religious values.

The fundamental cultural gap is equally pronounced when it comes to America.

MAGA, President Trump’s famous election slogan, is not widely shared among Democrats. Only 10% of Democrats believe that America is the greatest country in the world. That’s one reason why MAGA touches such a chord of fury among Democrats. Its premise of national greatness is foreign to them.

But 60% of Democrats do agree that America is, if not the greatest, among the greatest countries. That’s a reasonably neutral position. It’s one that even most non-Americans would agree with.

Bernie Sanders supporters however are firmly in the anti-MAGA camp. 30% of Democrats believe that other countries are better than America. Among Warren supporters, it’s 43%.

Among Sanders backers, the number is 51%. A majority.

Only a majority of Sanders supporters reject the idea that America is the greatest or among the greatest nations in the world.

Democrats split over whether America should have the world’s most powerful military. But the split still narrowly favors those who say that we should maintain military supremacy. Among Warren supporters however, 65% are okay with another country becoming as militarily powerful as the United States.

And, among Sanders supporters, 59%, also a solid majority, accept that idea.

That rejection of America’s greatness also translates directly into a rejection of border security. While Democrats split over whether illegal immigration is a problem, with a majority narrowly rejecting the idea, 64% of Sanders and Warren supporters believe that illegal immigration really isn’t a problem.

What’s behind the distaste that Sanders and Warren supporters have for American exceptionalism?

American exceptionalism is based on the idea that freedom allows us to pursue our dreams, and fulfill our destinies. As the freest nation, we were formed by the meritocratic power of human potential.

Socialism however assumes that people are unable to make their way without government help.

A narrow majority of Democrats reject the idea that people can get ahead if they try hard enough. But among Sanders and Warren supporters, 64% and 71% respectively, don’t believe hard work matters.

Socialists don’t believe in America because they don’t believe in the power of human freedom. And they don’t believe in human freedom because they don’t believe in people.

They don’t believe in God, America, or the individual. They only believe in government.

What that really means is that they don’t believe that we derive our sense of purpose internally or from a higher power, but from the higher power of government. Government is the force that gives us meaning. The collective and the government shape each other in a cyclical quest for utopia.

We have spent a great deal of time looking at what lefties believe in, not what they don’t believe in. But the unbelief in the ancient verities that give our lives strength and meaning are the holes in the fabric. Radical politics fill the holes in the fabric. But the radical politics emerge because the holes are there.

The rise of Bernie Sanders represents not only the ascension of radical politics, but of these holes.

If Sanders becomes the nominee of his occasional party, then the 2020 election will become a collision between two factions in national life, one that believes in our nation’s greatness and one that does not.

Call it the MAGA vs anti-MAGA election.

2020 will determine whether a national faction that doesn’t believe in God or America or one that does will shape the fabric of our national life. The anti-MAGAs can’t make America great because they don’t believe that America is or ought to be great. Nor do they believe that people are capable of doing anything except demanding freebies from the government. Or receiving them from the government.

This would be true of any Democrat able to crawl through the gauntlet of Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, the Sierra Club, the Human Rights Campaign, the Democracy Alliance, Black Lives Matter, the Brennan Center, Moms Demand Action, Emily’s List, and the multitude of other party gatekeepers.

But it’s particularly true of Bernie Sanders who emerged from the narrower tunnel of the DSA, Jacobin, and truly radical gatekeepers who view the Soviet Union as an ambitious, but imperfect experiment.

If Bernie Sanders becomes the nominee, the MAGAs will face the ultimate anti-MAGAs.

In 2016, Trump benefited from running as an anti-establishment candidate against an establishment politician. There were some who flocked to him because they genuinely opposed socialism and supported freedom. But others just opposed the establishment, without caring about the issues.

If Bernie Sanders becomes the nominee, then 2020 will no longer be about a clash between the establishment and the anti-establishment, whose final battle is being fought with impeachment. Instead, 2020 will be a referendum, not on the establishment, but on the future of America.

Two anti-establishment candidates, one who believes in God, country and freedom, and one who hates all three, will face off in one election to determine the future of the United States of America.

(FrontPageMag)

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

By: Amir Taheri

Whatever one might think of Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, one thing is certain: had things gone differently in Iran 40 years ago, he might have become a writer of penny-dreadfuls with provincial themes. Rouhani’s talent for fiction writing is demonstrated by the way he has reinvented himself over the decades.

In 1977, when the first rumbles of revolution roared in Iran, he was a student, going by the name of Hassan Fereidun, in England, seeking a degree in textile design.

A few months later, he re-named himself Rouhani, meaning spiritual or clerical. Fereidun was a Persian nationalistic name and would not do for a man plotting to cast himself as a champion of faith.

He then spent a few weeks of holidays taking classes in Shiite theology. In the meantime, he grew a beard and cast off Western clothes, thus creating a persona soon aggrandized by the claim which he minted that he was the first to grant Khomeini the title of Imam. Rouhani claims that he did so when addressing a memorial service for Khomeini’s son Mostafa, who had passed away in Iraq. There is, of course, no evidence that Rouhani was even present at the service which, incidentally was reported complete with a photo in the daily Kayhan.

In his memoirs, Rouhani recalls his first meeting with Khomeini, in exile in a Paris suburb. Rouhani claims that the ayatollah gave him 10,000 tomans (around $1,500 in those days) and asked him to return to England and organize students against the Shah.

In the chaos that followed the Shah’s flight from Iran, anyone could have jumped on the revolutionary bandwagon, and Rouhani was among the first to do so. The victorious revolution did not find enough personnel to fill the tens of thousands of jobs left vacant by the previous regime, and he had little difficulty in getting himself elected member of the Islamic Majlis (ersatz parliament), nudging his way towards the top table.

The new “Hojat al-Islam” [title of respect given to a Shi’ite cleric and meaning “Proof of Islam”. Ed.] became one of the most radical champions of the revolution, calling for the dissolution of the national army and stopping payments to civilian and military pensioners who had served the Shah. Having found out that the new regime had to depend on its security services, the newly minted Hojat al-Islam attached himself to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a liaison between the military and business circles.

During the brief spell of Hashemi Rafsanjani as a “strongman” who tried to cool revolutionary ardor, Rouhani recast himself as a “pro-reform” moderate. As an aide to Rafsanjani, he took part in secret negotiations with emissaries that US President Ronald Reagan had sent to Tehran along with a top agent from Mossad, the Israeli secret service.

By the 1990s, in Western policy circles, Rouhani had acquired the reputation of “a man with whom we can work”.

In the meantime, conscious of the fact that Iranians are suckers for real or fake academic titles, to enhance his persona, Rouhani enrolled in a British college in Glasgow to obtain a PhD in Islamic law. Thus, in a few years’ time, he was able to rebrand himself as Dr. Hassan Rouhani, the “moderate reformist with Western education.”

Two French foreign ministers from opposing political parties, Alain Juppé and Hubert Védrine, claimed that they had identified Rouhani as a rising star in Rafsanjani’s entourage. They thought that Rouhani would be one of the men who would eventually lead the Khomeinist revolution into its “Thermidor” or period of normalization. That view later found an even more passionate adept in Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary in Tony Blair’s British cabinet.

However, Rouhani’s career plan hit a diversion when Rafsanjani propelled another of his acolytes, Hojat al-Islam Muhammad Khatami, into the presidential slot. The diversion was prolonged when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad succeeded Khatami, indicating the slow end of Rafsanjani’s influence. During those agonizing years, Rouhani managed to avoid being recycled out of the power system by rendering services to all factions.

The plan worked and rival factions saw Rouhani as their second choice in the wake of the 2009 popular revolts and Ahmadinejad’s eventual break with the “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Though Khamenei had decided to make a deal with the Obama administration, he did not want the credit to go to Ahmadinejad who had, by then, publicly snubbed him. Rouhani had no difficulty singing from the new hymn-sheet in the form of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that gave the regime access to some frozen assets and gained it a measure of international respectability.

As talented as Lon Chaney, the classical Hollywood actor known as “Man of A Thousand Faces” because he played numerous different roles, Rouhani is now getting ready to play a new role as “leader of transition” from a rigid regime to a “normal” Third-World style outfit, mixing repression at home with good behavior abroad.

To enhance his theological credentials needed to promote himself to the rank of ayatollah, the Hojat al-Islam has launched his theological course, once a week on Thursdays, with over 100 “students”, and receiving handsome stipends. In one version of the scenario, Rouhani would combine the positions of president and “Supreme Guide”. In another version, he would have the Constitution amended and the position of “Supreme Guide” abolished, with himself as President and head of state.

Rouhani’s message, peddled by cronies including Foreign Minister Muhammad-Javad Zarif, is that the internal opposition and foreign powers worried about Iran should be patient and help “moderates” re-orient the storm-stricken ship of the regime towards calmer waters.

Is Rouhani the man for all seasons as his apologists claim? Is he the man who opposed the killing of over 1,500 protesters in three days? Is he the “moderate” who knew nothing about the tripling of petrol prices and the shooting down of the Ukrainian passenger jet?

Will Rouhani’s scenario, for easing Khamenei off his pedestal, work?

I doubt it. Rouhani may be a talented man of a thousand faces, but 40 years of experience has shown that every one of those faces turned out to be a mask.

  (Gatestone Institute)

Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.

This article was originally published by Asharq al-Awsat and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.

By: Khaled Abu Toameh

Arab citizens of Israel, who number nearly two million, are up in arms about US President Donald Trump’s plan for Middle East peace, which proposes including some of their communities in a future Palestinian state. Since the unveiling of the plan, thousands of Arabs have been demonstrating to express their rejection of the idea of placing them under the sovereignty of a Palestinian state.

Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan proposes land swaps that could include both populated and unpopulated areas. It suggests that the so-called Triangle area in Israel, consisting of several Arab communities “which largely self-identify as Palestinian, become part of the State of Palestine.” The plan points out that the Arab communities “were originally designated to fall under Jordanian control during the negotiations of the Armistice Line of 1949, but ultimately were retained by Israel for military reasons that have since been mitigated.”

Why are the 250,000 Arab Israelis living in the Triangle area strongly opposed to the idea of becoming part of a Palestinian state?

The main reason Arabs in Israel are afraid of becoming Palestinian citizens is because they know that the Palestinian state will be anything but democratic. Many Arab citizens of Israel see how Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip are subject to human rights violations on a daily basis.

In Israel, Arab citizens participate in the general elections and have their own representatives in the Knesset. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Palestinians have been deprived of free and fair elections since January 2006.

The continued power struggle between the PA and Hamas has denied Palestinians the right to vote for new members of their parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). In addition, Palestinians have been denied the right to vote for a new president since January 2005, when Mahmoud Abbas was elected for a four-year term of office. Last month, Abbas entered the 16th year of the same term.

In light of the ongoing dispute between the PA and Hamas, the prospects of holding new presidential or parliamentary elections remain zero.

While Palestinians have not had a functioning parliament since 2007, when Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip after overthrowing Abbas’s PA regime, Israel’s Arab citizens continue to run in elections for the Knesset. The current Knesset has 14 Arab parliamentarians.

Apart from the issue of elections, though, Arab citizens of Israel are mainly worried about having to live in a Palestinian state that suppresses public freedoms, including freedom of speech and the media.

Hardly a day passes without the Arab citizens of Israel hearing about the harsh conditions the Palestinians face under the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian journalists, human rights activists, political activists and university students are targeted by the PA and Hamas on a regular basis.

That is what Israel’s Arab citizens are afraid of.

A recent report by the West Bank-based Committee of the Families of Political Prisoners revealed that the PA security forces have arrested dozens of university students in the past few months because of their political activities. The report documented at least 619 violations against university students by the PA security forces in the past two years.

Arab students who are citizens of Israel, meanwhile, are free to hold protests on campuses there without having to worry about being arrested or summoned for interrogation. Last week, for example, Arab students at Tel Aviv University demonstrated against the Trump plan, chanting “Palestine is Arab, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”

Palestinian Arab university students, however, who are not citizens of Israel, and who live in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, can only envy the Arab Israeli students who are free to hold political activities on campus. Another recently published report revealed that several students arrested by the PA security forces have been brutally tortured. Most of the arrests took place at An-Najah University, the largest university in the West Bank city of Nablus, according to the report.

Palestinian students living in the Gaza Strip under Hamas, where virtually everyone is Arab and not a citizen of Israel, have fared no better. Hamas security forces have been regularly raiding university campuses and arresting students and teachers because of their political activities. One of the campuses that has been frequently targeted by Hamas is Al-Azhar University in Gaza City. In November 2019, Hamas security forces also raided Palestine University in the northern Gaza Strip and arrested several students who were preparing to hold a political rally on campus.

While in Israel, Arab citizens are free to criticize the Israeli government and leaders, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who speak out against the PA or Hamas often find themselves behind bars.

In the West Bank, for example, a professor who dares to criticize Abbas could find himself in detention for several days. Professor Abdel Sattar Qassem, an outspoken critic of Abbas, was accused in 2016 of “insulting” Abbas and held in detention for several days. Palestinian journalist Majdoleen Hassouneh was also accused of “insulting” Abbas on Facebook.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas has arrested hundreds of its political opponents in the past few years. Even Palestinian comedians who make sarcastic remarks about Hamas have become regular targets of Hamas’s crackdown on freedom of speech. Recently, Hamas security forces arrested comedian Adel Mashoukhi after he posted a video on social media mocking the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip.

It is no wonder, then, that Israel’s Arab citizens are extremely concerned about the prospect of living under a Palestinian state controlled by the PA and Hamas under some potential land transfer. These Arab citizens of Israel know that once they become citizens of a Palestinian state, they will meet the same fate of the Palestinians living under the PA and Hamas. Some of the leaders of the Arab community in Israel are even calling the idea of having to live under a Palestinian state as a “nightmare that cannot be implemented.”

The Arab citizens of Israel need real leaders who properly represent them in the Knesset and build — not destroy — bridges with Jews. Let the protests on the streets of Arab Israeli communities against becoming part of a Palestinian state serve as a fair warning to Israeli Arab leaders: stand by your people, or get out of the way.

            (Gatestone Institute)

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

By: Rabbi Avi Shafran

For some of us, double-edged swords don’t come more dangerous than the prospect of a Jewish president. The accomplishment would be heartening in a way, and would say much about America. But the reality of a Jewish person sitting in the White House would not please people infected with the derangement we call anti-Semitism. And we have more than enough of that as is, thank you.

To be sure, unless the current Commander-in-Chief is removed from office (not likely) or the Electoral College is abolished (less likely), the race for the Democratic candidacy will probably prove to be only a contest to determine who will be defeated by President Trump in November.

Still, it is noteworthy – and fear-worthy, for the above-mentioned some of us – that, back in the 1950s, two currently viable viers for the highest office in the land celebrated bar mitzvahs.

Both are ex-mayors: Senator Bernie Sanders, of Burlington, Vermont; and Michael Bloomberg, of New York. The former is a populist progressive backed by a strong grass-roots movement; the latter, a savvy, successful businessman backed by an impressive record and the willingness to spend a billion dollars of his own money on his campaign.

And both are touting their tribal credentials, to appeal to Jewish voters.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in synagogues in my life,” Mr. Bloomberg told a packed Jewish venue in Miami last week, “but my parents taught me that Judaism is more than just going to shul. It is about living our values… and it’s about revering the miracle that is the state of Israel, which – for their generation – was a dream fulfilled before their very eyes.”

In oblique criticism of Senator Sanders’ democratic socialism, he joked that “I know I’m not the only Jewish candidate running for president. But I am the only one who doesn’t want to turn America into a kibbutz.”

Continuing his bombing of Bernie, who has indicated he might withhold military aid from Israel if it didn’t better address humanitarian needs of Gazans, Mr. Bloomberg pledged to “never impose conditions on our military aid [to Israel], including missile defense – no matter who is Prime Minister.”

And, of course, after speaking at length about recent acts of violent anti-Semitism, he attacked Mr. Trump, associating him obliquely, and unfairly, with “racist groups” that “spread hate.”

“A world in which a president traffics in conspiracy theories,” he went on to declare, “is a world in which Jews are not safe.”

For its part, the Sanders campaign rolled out its own Jewy video last week, which began with a clip of the senator, at a J Street gathering last year, proclaiming that “I’m very proud to be Jewish, and look forward to becoming the first Jewish president in the history of this country.”

At that gathering, Mr. Sanders declared: “If there is any people on Earth who understands the dangers of racism and white nationalism, it is certainly the Jewish people.” And, in his own swipe at the president, he added: “And if there is any people on earth who should do everything humanly possible to fight against Trump’s efforts to try to divide us up… and bring people together around a common and progressive agenda, it is the Jewish people.”

And, although he accuses the current Israeli government of unfairness to Palestinians, he calls himself “somebody who is 100 percent pro-Israel.”

Fighting anti-Semitism and declaring support for Israel may please many Jewish political palates, and, b”H, remain pretty much de rigueur positions for any serious presidential candidate.

But office contenders seeking Jewish votes these days would be wise to not ignore American Jewry’s Orthodox segment. It may be a fraction of the country’s Jewish population (around 10%, it’s estimated) but it is a fraction that, according to sociologist Steven M. Cohen, has more than quintupled over the past two generations, and stands, b’ezras Hashem, to continue its growth.

According to the Pew Research Center, more than a quarter of American Jews 17 years of age or younger are Orthodox. Public policy experts Eric Cohen and Aylana Meisel have estimated that, by 2050, the American Jewish community will be majority Orthodox.

We Orthodox, like most other Jews, are greatly concerned about Israel’s security and about rising anti-Semitism. But, in addition to those issues, a major item on our political agenda is education.

We believe in school choice – that parents are the best arbiters of what schools their children should attend, and should not be financially penalized for not choosing public schools. And we consider it critically important that government involvement in determining the content of curricula in private schools be minimal.

Senator Sanders is officially on what we consider the wrong side of both those issues. Mr. Bloomberg, while he has long been a proponent of educational choice with regard to things like public charter schools, hasn’t taken a public position on either of our own educational concerns.

It’s not too late for him to do so, of course, and, as someone who fundamentally understands the importance of educational options, he might come to see the sense and fairness in our positions.

From a political perspective, it would be wise.

More important, though, from a Jewish perspective, it would be right.

(This article was originally published in HaModia)