Daily Archives: July 13, 2017

Human-rights activist Seyran Ates, left, chats with colleagues ahead of Friday prayers during the opening of the Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque in June 2017. Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Sheikh Atef Asker, head of Egypts Al Azhar mosque and university often referred to as the foremost Sunni institution worldwide said that the Berlin mosque does not follow the true path of Islamic methodology.

Allah, peace be upon him, has ordered us to have the prayer led by a man and not a woman. It's not about being strict or not, it's about following an order, Sheikh Asker told NBC News.

Meanwhile, Egypts Dar al-Ifta al-Masriyyah, a state-run Islamic institution assigned to issue religious edicts, also

While only a few worshippers attended Friday prayers on the official media day, Ates said that the interest from liberal Muslims in her mosque has been significant" and that it has welcomed 20 to 30 regular followers, including several recently arrived refugees.

We also have refugees approach us, who say that many of the traditional mosques here are too conservative, too radical, too orthodox, Ates said, referring to the recent influx of nearly a million refugees from Muslim countries such as Syria and Iraq into Germany.

She said that the mosque and the work of her group is sending a signal in the fight against Islamist terror.

Coincidentally, her institution is only a few blocks away from

To show that "Islam is peaceful" and that many Muslims are open to change, Mohammad Moshiri, an Iranian writer and poet, joined the Friday prayers.

"We should not surrender our religion to fundamentalists," said the 60-year-old Moshiri, who also works as an integration representative in Berlin. "Seyran Ates is very courageous, we need to support her."

The taboo-breaking mosque will stay open despite the death threats and strong criticism, Ates vowed. It is now cooperating with local schools and plans to offer Quran and Arabic language classes in the future.

Our vision, our dream is to one day have our own building with rooms for Sunnis, Alawites, Shiites and Sufis, and one room where they then can all come together for religious encounters, Ates said, naming four sects of Islam.

But there should also be a place for inter-religious dialogue that would even invite people who do not believe in God, she said.

The rest is here:

Berlin's First 'Liberal Mosque' and Its Female Leader Fight for 'Modern' Islam Despite Threats - NBCNews.com

Craig Kelly spoke ahead of a meeting of state and federal energy ministers to discuss the clean energy target (CET) proposed in the Finkel review. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Renewable energy will kill people this winter, Craig Kelly, the chair of the Coalitions backbench environment and energy committee has claimed.

Kelly, a Liberal backbencher, said the deaths would be caused by people not being able to afford to heat their homes in winter. He blamed rising fuel costs on the governments renewable energy target.

People will die, he told ABC radio on Thursday.

Kelly, MP for Hughes in New South Wales, cited recent reports that one-in-four Australian households this winter will be frightened to turn on the heater due to high power prices. He also said the World Health Organisation has made it clear that winter mortality rates increase if people cant afford to heat their homes.

Most of that research, however, was done in Europe, where winters can be much colder. Some work done in Australia by the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare found that at least some of the excess deaths in winter in Australia were caused by heating.

There are $3bn this year being paid in subsidies for renewable energy, that pushes up the price of electricity to the consumer, Kelly said.

That claim, however, is contradicted by the Abbott governments Warburton review of the renewable energy target which found the scheme was putting downward pressure on prices.

And it contradicts the conclusion of most industry groups, the Finkel review and many other reports finding the key driver of high power prices is policy uncertainty, which is driving down investment in new generation and allowing expensive gas-fired power plants to dominate the market.

Labors energy spokesman, Mark Butler, accused Kelly of scaremongering.

This is another appalling intervention, not just by a backbencher, but by the chair of the Coalitions energy policy committee.

Butler conceded households and businesses are facing high power and gas bills, but he put that down to policy paralysis at the national level.

Kellys comments come ahead of a meeting of state and federal energy ministers in Brisbane on Friday to discuss recommendations for change from the chief scientist, Prof Alan Finkel.

Every state in the national electricity market has either expressly stated their support, or hinted at their support, for the clean energy target (CET) proposed in the Finkel review but the federal minister for energy and the environment, Josh Frydenberg, has said the government will not support the CET at Fridays meeting.

Victoria and South Australia have said that if the federal government doesnt provide leadership, the states might go ahead and try to implement the CET without them.

Modelling shows the CET would put significant downward pressure on the price of electricity, specifically by introducing a lot of cheap renewable electricity, along with enough storage.

Go here to read the rest:

Liberal MP says people will die of cold because renewable energy drives up fuel prices - The Guardian

In the final few weeks of the last Liberal Democrat leadership race, there was a sudden outbreak of unease in the partys upper echelons about their incoming leader, Tim Farron.Their worries? That Norman Lamb, his opponent, had been too soft on Farrons voting record on equality issues and on reproductive rights, and that their soon-to-be leader would be cruelly exposed on that front during an election campaign.

Now the same worries are gripping the party as they elect a replacement for Tim Farron. Senior Liberal Democrats and party activists are concerned both at the lack of a contest Vince Cable is running unopposed and at the candidate.

Driving their fears about the former is that not having a proper contest means that the post-mortem about the 2017 election result is being neglected. There is a lively debate even about whether or not the 2017 election was a good night or a bad one for the Liberal Democrats. On the good night side, the party gained 12 seats, and got within shouting distance in a further five. But on the bad night side, others point out that the party lost votes even on its dismal 2015 showing. It is in third place in 15 of the 57 seats it held in 2010, and fourth in a further six. (It came fifth in Bradford West, but that result was partly because the Liberal Democrat former MP, David Ward, ran as an independent, coming third.)

Those who believe it was a bad night are further divided over why it was a bad night. Some solely blame Farron for what one candidate describes as a fucking catastrophe, while others believe that the wider context of the election. One of the anti-Farronistas puts it like this: We had a problem where no one wanted to give him a hard time on the God-bothering [in the leadership race], but obviously Labour and the Conservatives had no such qualms, so instead of dealing with it internally our election campaign became a theology seminar.

They say that Farron hurt the party badly with its longstanding LGBT vote and that the conversation about sin crowded out their message, and alienated possible Labour converts.You clearly had at this election a lot of people who did not want to vote for Corbyn or May, one Liberal Democrat says, We should have been the natural home for them, but Tim turned them off, and because we looked like a wasted vote, we got smashed everywhere.

Some believe that the problem was not Farron, but timing. The partys anti-Brexit message, they believe, will grow in its appeal but the consequences of Britains Out vote are not yet keenly felt and the reality of Labours commitment to a harder exit from the European Union has not yet made itself felt among Remain-supporting voters.

But for another group, the problem is that first-past-the-post means that Remainers will never be able to desert Labour in sufficient numbers to benefit the Liberal Democrats. They believe the party needs a complete rethink of its approach. We still seem to have this attitude of if we wait in the middle, they will come to us, one says.

There are also growing concerns about Cable himself. My colleague Anooshs interview with him made headlines because of his comment that Theresa Mays citizens of nowhere speech channelled Adolf Hitlers Mein Kampf, but his remark that race and gender isnt an issue any more is the one that has left party members feeling irritable, particularly because many members were excited about the possibility of electing their first woman leader.

Also alarming senior Liberal Democrats are what some see as his excessive candour. Yesterday, Cable told journalists that Britains Brexit vote was primarily driven by elderly voters worried about Turks coming to their villages and people outside first-tier cities.

I agree with him, one said, But how are we going to win Yeovil without elderly voters? What seats are we going to gain in cities? Labour has a lock on those now.It just feels like hes going for voters who will never support us. I think were making a terrible mistake.

Not all are of that view. I think were in the brilliant position where we have four people who could have made a great leader, and Vince is one, says one former Liberal Democrat MP.Now if you look at the Tories, they cant find anyone better than Theresa May.

Read more from the original source:

We're making a terrible mistake: why Liberal Democrats are starting to worry - New Statesman

The federal ethics and lobbying commissioners are being asked to investigate whether a lobby firm for high-tech companies that is led by a former Liberal aide broke the rules by offering access to decision makers in exchange for a $10,000 yearly fee.

NDP MP Nathan Cullen has asked the federal Ethics Commissioner to investigate, while advocacy group Democracy Watch has written to both the Ethics Commissioner and the Lobbying Commissioner.

Canadians will certainly be suspicious that this organization was created soon after the Liberals were elected, that it is made up of many well-connected Liberal insiders and donors, and that it offers exclusive and preferential access to Liberal government agencies and senior staff of at least one cabinet minister, Mr. Cullen wrote in his letter to the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner on Wednesday. This relationship undoubtedly warrants further investigation.

Related: Lobby group asked to stop offering access to Ottawa in exchange for $10,000

The complaints focus on a membership pitch circulated by the Council of Canadian Innovators, an industry group that was created in late 2015 to lobby on behalf of Canadian high-tech firms. Three of the councils four full-time staff are former Liberal aides, either federally or in Ontario.

The council sent a letter to clean-tech firms stating that among the things their chief executives would receive in exchange for a $10,000-a-year membership fee was participation in monthly meetings with Environment Minister Catherine McKennas chief of staff. The pitch also promised access to internal planning discussions regarding the federal governments $950-million Innovation Clusters program.

A spokesperson for Ms. McKenna said on Tuesday that the groups pitch was neither accurate nor appropriate and added that the chief of staff, Marlo Raynolds, had met the group only three times since October. The council said this week that it changed the wording of the document last month so that it promises regular rather than monthly meetings with Ms. McKennas chief of staff.

On Wednesday, the minister's office said Mr. Raynolds has written to the lobbying commissioner as well to ask for a review of the matter. Mr. Raynolds has also written to the ethics commissioner to "clarify the record."

The council says its request for an annual membership fee in exchange for government relations work is no different than those of other industry groups that meet regularly with public servants and political staff.

The council is led by Benjamin Bergen, who was an executive assistant to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland when she was in opposition. Mr. Bergen described himself as Ms. Freelands 2015 campaign manager in a 2016 version of his rsum. However, this week he said he was not the official campaign manager and was more of a co-campaign manager. He said the official campaign manager was Dana OBorn, who is now the councils director of policy.

The Council of Canadian Innovators always has and always will abide by all federal and provincial accountability and transparency legislation when engaging in its advocacy work, Mr. Bergen said in a statement on Wednesday.

In just over one year, the CEOs, who are proud Canadians, have engaged with government officials and politicians from across the political spectrum to make meaningful contributions to Canadas economic development, health, public safety, environmental and other important areas of public policy.

Since its formation, the council has had broad access to top public servants and political aides across the federal government.

The federal lobbyist registry shows the council has had 203 meetings with federal officials since it was formed, including 13 meetings with Global Affairs Canada, where Ms. Freeland first served as trade minister and then Foreign Affairs Minister. None of those meetings involved Ms. Freeland directly or her political staff.

The Democracy Watch letter asks the lobbying commissioner to investigate whether the interactions with Ms. Freelands department constitute a breach of the Lobbyist Code of Conduct. The code states that a lobbyist shall not lobby a public-office holder with whom they have a relationship that could reasonably be seen to create a sense of obligation. The code also states that lobbyists must refrain for five years from lobbying people for whom they have engaged in political activities that could create a sense of obligation.

Neither Mr. Bergen nor Ms. OBorn were registered lobbyists when they worked on Ms. Freelands 2015 campaign, but the council said they will not lobby the minister for five years. Democracy Watch says the five-year ban should also apply to Ms. Freelands department, but is asking the commissioner to make a determination on that point.

Elections Canada records show Ms. Freeland paid Mr. Bergen $1,176.26 in 2015 campaign expenses for ground transportation. The candidate also paid Ms. OBorn $79.10 for personal grooming and $33.90 for clothing.

Follow Bill Curry on Twitter: @curryb

Read more here:

Federal commissioners asked to probe Liberal-connected firm's cash-for-access pitch - The Globe and Mail

Factionalism is alive and well in the Liberal Party.

But the factions themselves are fractured almost beyond identification.

The Liberal Party's factions have historically been identified as "wets" and "dries", or "moderates" and "conservatives".

Some MPs and grassroots members embrace the label "conservative" with all the passion of their UK equivalents.

The moderates are less likely to use their label, but more often call themselves "pragmatic" or "progressive".

Malcolm Turnbull sought to use a speech in London this week to map out where he sits and how he sees the Liberal Party.

However, the leaked paragraphs of the speech offered a blunt point out of context (for the newspapers which received the handout) and became quickly caught up in the quagmire that is the Turnbull-Abbott leadership cold war.

Turnbull was trying to say the party can have its differences of opinion on things like social policy and how far to go on economic and budget reform.

But the party comes together, as founder Sir Robert Menzies said, under the name "Liberal ... because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea."

He noted Abbott had spoken about the "sensible centre".

But the former prime minister failed to demonstrate it in practice.

Voters reacted sharply to Abbott's "knights and dames" decision and the harsh measures in the 2014 budget.

And while his decision to roll out a plebiscite on same-sex marriage is now popular after being embraced by Turnbull, it was initially seen as a way of kicking the issue down the road and giving political cover for social conservatives to argue against the law change.

Coalition MPs are now more likely to factionalise around regional and state interests, or issues such as climate change, than ideology.

Queensland members routinely meet when parliament is sitting to talk about taking a united view on certain issues and even projects that require funding.

South Australian members have the ear of the prime minister via Christopher Pyne, who as defence industry minister has a multi-billion-dollar bucket of money to throw around and has been staunch in arguing to protect steel jobs.

Turnbull has used SA's energy crisis as a political weapon in his bid to cobble together a climate policy by another name - aimed at pushing down power prices, making energy more reliable while cutting emissions.

There are also groupings around personalities, with Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Treasurer Scott Morrison enjoying a certain level of popular support but not enough to swing the leadership at this point.

While some Liberals delight in working the numbers within the party and seeking to seize the advantage, others are happy to get on with the daily drudge of electorate work - seeking pragmatic answers to voters' concerns.

Some party veterans like Tasmania's Eric Abetz are adamant it needs the two "rails".

"The Liberal Party is and has always been a train running on small-l liberal and conservative tracks - unless both are tended to the whole train will derail," he says.

Without giving space for economic dries and social conservatives, voters will go elsewhere - and they are.

Pauline Hanson's One Nation and Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives are capitalising on the rise of the small-l liberals championed by Turnbull.

Labor is the beneficiary of this, not only because voters see a divided Liberal Party but One Nation preferences have tended to naturally split evenly between Labor and the Liberals.

Unfortunately for Turnbull, who has trailed in the polls since September last year, he's about to see another public outbreak of factionalism.

The NSW division's party futures convention towards the end of July will debate changing the rules governing the way candidates and party officials are elected.

Abbott and junior minister Angus Taylor lead a group seeking greater democracy, to whittle away at the power of the party organisation's moderate elite.

Turnbull wants change, but not in the way Abbott is proposing and the final outcome will be a compromise of which direction to take to greater democratisation.

The prime minister will be hoping the party can unify around the final result, but that hope may be undermined by a fraction too much faction.

See the original post here:

Turnbull prays for broad Liberal church - NEWS.com.au

When I saw the email in my inbox with the header Tucker Carlson Tonight Request on Monday, I immediatelyhad a strong feeling what itwas about. Earlier that day,Rush Limbaugh had been rantingon his show aboutmy Salonpiece lambastingconservatives for playing dumb about the unsubtle white nationalism of President Donald Trumpsspeech last week in Poland.

Sureenough, the producer was asking me to speak about the Presidents speech in Poland last week, and his trip abroad overall, which she [meaning me] has shared some thoughts on.

Oh god, I thought, Carlson wants me on his show to play the part of the liberal ditz,to be dished up as a hate object foran elderly audience ready to believe my brain has been addled by my gender and my liberal arts education. Worse, he wanted me to do so in service of mainstreamingan argument that was once the province ofwhite supremacist websites, but hasridden the Trump train straight into more respectable discourse: The idea that Western people and their civilization should be, by rights, treated as superior to all other people on earth.

That Trump was engaging in white nationalist rhetoric is an observation that hardly needs to be relitigated here, as writers likeJamelle Bouie of SlateandPeter Beinartof the Atlantichave laid out the case.Suffice it to say that the idea that Western civilization isunder threat from dark-skinned people from former coloniesis a popular obsession on white nationalist blogs and withTrumps close adviser Steve Bannon. Plus theresthe unpleasantness that erupted less than a century ago when Germans got it in their head that Aryan people and European culture faced a similar threat.

These associations make it difficult for Trumps supporters in the media to make a direct case for his argumentswithout sounding like a bunch of ignorant racists.Instead, pro-Trump pundits use the bank shot strategy: Rather than defending Trumpsideas directly, theyfocus on demonizinghis critics by invokingright-wing caricatures of liberals.

The message to the audience is simple: You hate those smug liberals, and those liberals disagreewith Trumps message so you must agree with Trump!

As Tobin Smith, who was a Fox News pundit for 14 years,recently wroteabout the channel, Just like pro-wrestling, the panel opinion programs are carefully staged and choreographed by Fox producers so the viewers home team (in WWE language the Baby Face) always wins over the Heel aka the poor pathetic libtard.

So I understood right away that on Carlsons show I would be slotted forthe libtard role, a hate object presentedto Fox viewers so they dont even realize that theyre nodding along to argumentsthat used to be the province of neo-Nazis and other hate groups.

The pre-existing stereotype I was likely to be slotted into wasnt hard to guess at, either: The liberal bimbo. Fox viewerslovethe idea that the main result of feminism was that a bunch of dumbgirls were awarded educations and jobs that they simply arent smart enough to handle, being female, and that liberal politics induces in women anunfortunate navet.

If that seems like an exaggeration, I welcome readers to look intoCarlsons obsession with Teen Vogue columnist Lauren Duca, whose sharp political writing he routinely tries to dismiss by arguing that she should stick towriting about clothes and makeup. Also, Limbaughs earlier segment about me was all about painting me as a liberal bimbo, by claiming Im younger than I actually am and insisting that kids these days dont get a proper education.

It is tempting, of course, to believe that Im savvy enough to somehow break through all this cultural baggage and communicate my message effectively to Fox viewers. But Im not actually dumb, no matter how much conservative pundits portray me that way. I know thatIm no match for the Fox News machine and anyone who thinks they are is deluded.

TV is a visual medium and Fox openly encourages its viewers to make snap judgments about the liberal guests before theyve even had a chance to open their mouths. Even if I did cover up my tattoos and wear conservative makeup, I would read, onscreen, more as Brooklyn hipster than as the beauty queen-turned-housewife that is the Fox News ideal. Even if I was an unparalleled genius at verbal communication, my message has no way of cracking through that hardened shell of hate built up against women who look and act like me.

All of which means the only purpose that could be served by my appearance on Carlsons show was to become a conduit for a truly repulsive mission, that being the mainstreaming of white nationalist politics with the message, The best way to put this bitch in her place is to uncritically accept everything Trump says.

I dont want to be party to that. Carlson, unsurprisingly,ran with the segment anyway hey, its not like he was going to cover the revelations about Donald Trump Jr.s apparent collusion with a Russian agents but without a disobedient woman for his audience to hate, the segment was less effective than it could have been.

I would also encourage other liberal pundits to boycott Fox News in just this way. Yes, appearing in that arena of hate can help raise your brand profile, and of course that matters in this competitive media environment. But youre not getting your message out. Youre just being used as a convenient mechanism to deliver ever more extreme right-wing messages. Depriving Fox News of its punching bags is a small step toward restoring some sanity to our deranged media landscape, but one that could reduce the networks propagandistic power.

Excerpt from:

Why I Declined To Be Tucker Carlson's Liberal Feminist Punching Bag - The National Memo (blog)

"I wish no one cared what celebrities think about the situation in Israel," actress Mayim Bialik wrote in 2014.

Bialik, who plays Amy Farrah Fowler on the hit sitcom "The Big Bang Theory," may be out of luck. She's a big celebrity, and the Israel-Palestine issue is a contentious one.

And the self-proclaimed chatterbox, who actually can't speak right now a doctor-ordered voice break due to long-term strain on her vocal cords didn't hold back when HuffPost Canada asked her opinions via email.

The observant Jew calls herself both a proud Zionist, which means that she supports the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state, and a proud liberal.

She told HuffPost Canada that her family lives in the Israeli settlements, which are civilian communities in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

The United Nations Security Council has called the settlements illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, but Bialik tells HuffPost she'll leave the last word to the people who live there.

"I do not get to decide unless I choose to move to Israel where I think people should and shouldn't live," she said.

"I know there is complexity to the situation with settlements and I don't always understand or ever understand [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu, but I respectfully insist that Israel has a right to exist and that peace and coexistence is a main goal of mine as a liberal Zionist Jew."

The mom of two spoke out a few months ago on her website, GrokNation, in response to an interview with Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, in which Sarsour disagreed with the idea that Zionism and feminism could co-exist.

"You either stand up for the rights of all women, including Palestinians, or none," Sarsour said.

Bialik wrote that she was both a Zionist and a feminist, and that the former movement encompasses a wide variety of perspectives on both the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the settlements.

"Accusing Zionism of being incompatible with feminism is exceptionally short-sighted," she wrote. It smarts of a broad-stroke bias against the entire Jewish people for the violations that occur in a state that was founded on the principles of Zionism."

She also doesn't like the use of the word "occupation" to describe Israel's control over the Palestinian territories, which include the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, and calling it "inflammatory."

"[It] paints a not entirely accurate picture especially for people who don't know anything about Israel or the matzav [situation] much like calling Israel an apartheid state," she told HuffPost.

The UN Security Council, General Assembly and the International Court of Justice consider Israel to be the occupying power in the territories.

Story continues below video

Bialik courted controversy in 2014 when she donated money to send bulletproof vests to Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

Before her imposed talking break, Bialik also recently filmed a funny commercial for Israeli company SodaStream.

The company was targeted by a boycott campaign because one of its factories was in a West Bank settlement. The factory has since been moved.

But while Bialik may seem an unabashed champion of Israel, she has reflected in the past on her own conclusions.

In the same 2014 piece for Kveller, she wrote that watching the Mel Gibson movie "Braveheart" led her to ask some pointed questions, including whether the people who hate her for being Jewish because she supports Israel's right to exist are anti-Semitic.

"Is the freedom that William Wallace fought and died for 1,000 years ago in Scotland the same freedom that the Palestinian people fight for?" she wrote. "And is that freedom the same as the freedom for Israeli citizens to live without rockets falling on you and without your neighbors rallying actively for you to be pushed into the sea simply because you exist as a Jew?"

Follow this link:

Mayim Bialik Calls Herself A Proud Zionist And A Proud Liberal - Huffington Post Canada

Jill Filipovic is a feminist, writer, and attorney.

On Wednesday, we learned that Filipovic is also a eugenicist.

It's a quite remarkable tweet. For a start, consider Filipovic's utter, unrestrained belief in her cause. That tweet isn't just a suggestion, it's an order: at the margins, having children makes you a bad person.

But sidelining the moral argument for a second, Filipovic's claim is also remarkable for its idiocy.

After all, the premise of Filipovic's argument that Earth cannot co-exist with a growing human population rests on the Guardian article that her tweet links to. That article references researchers who have listed all the things that produce carbon emissions.

But here's the thing. The correlation between planetary health and human population is not nearly as simple as Filipovic presents. New technologies have expanded access to food, housing, medicine, and energy supplies. On the energy front, the dual rise of solar power and fracking-based extraction offers sustainability for global energy needs. And the use of less-polluting, less-resource-intensive technologies defines the digital age.

Yes, we need to protect the environment, but we humans and the Earth can co-exist.

There's another logical issue here: growing populations in the developing world will inevitably, and vastly, offset any reduction in birth rates in the United States.

For the sake of argument, however, let us assume that Americans did listen to Filipovic and stopped having as many kids. In turn, let us assume that our population growth declined and from its already record low rate of 0.7 percent to a negative figure that caused the population to shrink.

We would have a big problem.

With an aging population and shrinking pool of younger citizens, we would face increasingly intractable problems in providing for our elders. It's not a terribly controversial notion to admit that younger, productive workers are needed to pay for the tax system that sustains our elders.

At best, Filipovic's proposal would lead to massive tax hikes on workers and declining standards of care. This would inevitably reduce private sector investment and productivity, growing debt, and a restraining influence on the economy. Put simply, we would live less-wealthy, less-happy lives.

Nevertheless, Filipovic's contention reaches far deeper than that of simple planetary concerns. It seems clear that the writer also has some pathological dislike for the process of producing children. We can assess this by scrolling down Filipovic's Twitter feed.

On Tuesday, linking to an article on the same theme, Filipovic tweeted out, "there's nothing more obnoxious than a gender reveal party." The author of that piece explains why she resents gender reveal parties. It's because those parties imprison female identity to producing offspring. And because "... gender-reveal parties don't actually reveal gender - they reveal anatomy. Gender is a wholly different thing, inextricably tied to the social constructs around it."

Sure it is.

Science aside, it's clear that Filipovic and her movement believe that having children is, to some degree, immoral. Filipovic does not tell us the number of children that can be morally justified, but she may well support a one-child policy. But more than that, in Filipovic world, the choice to become pregnant is an immoral offense against both female identity and the planet.

Filipovic's order against pregnancy might not be backed up for coercive threat, but it's still very unpleasant.

See the article here:

Liberal columnist Jill Filipovic says having lots of kids is immoral - Washington Examiner

By Jason Willick By Jason Willick July 12 at 12:21 PM

Jason Willick is a staff writer at The American Interest.

Its anyones guess whether the latest round of Russia revelations will flame out or bring the administration toppling to the ground. But either way, the drama is only one act in an ongoing cycle of outrages involving Trump and Russia that will, one way or another, come to an end. That is not true of the controversy over the Presidents remarks in Warsaw last week, which exposed a crucial contest over ideas that will continue to influence our politics until long after this administration has left office. And the responses from Trumps liberal critics were revealing and dangerous.

The speech a call to arms for a Western civilization ostensibly menaced by decadence and bloat from within and hostile powers from without was received across the center-left as a thinly veiled apologia for white nationalism.Trump did everything but cite Pepe the Frog,tweeted the Atlantics Peter Beinart.Trumps speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto,read a Vox headline. According the New Republics Jeet Heer, Trumps alt-right speechredefined the West in nativist terms.

Thus, the intelligentsia is now flirting with an intellectually indefensible linguistic coup: Characterizing any appeal to the coherence or distinctiveness of Western civilization as evidence of white nationalist sympathies. Such a shift, if accepted, would so expand the scope of the term alt-right that it would lose its meaning. Its genuinely ugly ideas would continue to fester, but we would lose the rhetorical tools to identify and repudiate themas distinct from legitimate admiration for the Western tradition. To use a favorite term of the resistance, the alt-right would become normalized.

[Trumps visit to Poland was a study in breaking norms]

There is no shortage of fair criticism of Trumps speech: For example, that he shouldnt have delivered it in Poland because of Warsaws recent authoritarian tilt; that his criticism of Russia should have been more pointed; or that he would have better served Americas interests by sounding a more Wilsonian tone when it came to promoting democracy around the world. And, yes, Trump has proven himself a clever manipulator of white identity politics during his short political career, so it is understandable that critics would scrutinize his remarks for any hint of bigotry.But by identifying Western civilization itself with white nationalism, the center-left is unwittingly empowering its enemies and imperiling its values.

How did progressive intellectuals get themselves into this mess? The confusion comes in part from loose language: in particular, a conflation of liberalism and the West.Liberalismis an ideology defined by, among other things, freedom of religion, the rule of law, private property, popular sovereignty and equal dignity of all people.The Westis the geographically delimited area where those values were first realized on a large scale during and after the European Enlightenment.

So to appeal to the West in highlighting the importance of liberal values, as Trump did, is not to suggest that those values are the exclusive property of whites or Christians. Rather, it is to accurately recognize that the seeds of these values were forged in the context of the Wests wars, religions and classical inheritances hundreds of years ago. Since then, they have spread far beyond their geographic place of birth and have won tremendous prestige across the world.

What is at stake now is whether Americans will surrender the idea of the West to liberalisms enemies on the alt-right that is, whether we will allow people who deny the equal citizenship of women and minorities and Jews to lay claim to the legacy of Western civilization. This would amount to a major and potentially suicidal concession, because the alt-right not in the opportunistically watered-down sense of immigration skeptic, or social conservative, but in the sense of genuine white male political supremacism is anti-Western. It is hostile to the once-radical ideals of pluralism and self-governance and individual rights that were developed during the Western Enlightenment and its offshoots. It represents an attack on, not a defense of, of the Wests greatest achievements.

[On his trip abroad, Trump left American values behind]

As any alt-rightist will be quick to point out, many Enlightenment philosophers were racist by current standards. (Have you evenreadwhat Voltaire said about the Jews?) But this is a non-sequitur: The Enlightenment is today remembered and celebrated not for the flaws of its principals but for laying the intellectual foundations that have allowed todays conception of liberalism to develop and prosper.

AsDimitri Halikiaspointed out on Twitter, there is a strange convergence between the extreme left and the extreme right when it comes to understanding the West. The campus left (hey, hey, ho, ho,Western Civ has got to go)rejects Western Civilizationbecauseit is racist. The alt-right, meanwhile, accepts Western civilizationonly insofaras it is racist they fashion themselves defenders of the West, but reject the ideas of equality and human dignity that are the Wests principal achievements. But both, crucially, deny the connection between the West and the liberal tradition.

To critics, one of the most offending lines in Trumps speech was his remark that the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Trump clearly intended this to refer to the threat from Islamic extremism and, presumably, the politically correct liberals who he believes are enabling it. But there is another threat to the Wests survival in the form of a far-right politics that would replace liberalism and the rule of law with tribalism and white ethnic patronage.

The best defense we have against this threat is the Western liberal tradition. But by trying to turn the West into a slur, Trumps critics are disarming. Perhaps the presidents dire warning wasnt so exaggerated, after all.

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The alt-right is an attack on Western values. Liberals shouldn't ... - Washington Post