Shaphan

In praise of... discrimination

[The third in an occasional series championing unpopular causes.  Previous subjects have been Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ariel Sharon.]

The misconceived Equality Act 2006 is indicative of a prevailing belief among the ruling classes and in much of the country that discrimination per se is an "evil" (AC Grayling) that must be stamped out.  According to Charlie Falconer:

The view about discrimination [that it must be banned] is one that's been taken by the country as a whole. [Today programme]

By the whole country?  When did we take that view?  If I'd been asked, I'd have favoured greater discrimination.  Here are some definitions and etymologies:

dis·crim·i·nate

–verb (used without object)  1. to make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing on the basis of the group, class, or category to which the person or thing belongs rather than according to actual merit; show partiality:  The new law discriminates against foreigners.  He discriminates in favor of his relatives.  2. to note or observe a difference; distinguish accurately:  to discriminate between things.  –verb (used with object)  3. to make or constitute a distinction in or between; differentiate:  a mark that discriminates the original from the copy.  4. to note or distinguish as different:  He can discriminate minute variations in tone.  –adjective  5. marked by discrimination; making or evidencing nice distinctions:  discriminate people; discriminate judgments. 

[Origin: 1620–30; < L discriminatus separated, ptp. of discriminare. See discriminant, -ate1] 

[Dictionary.com Unabridged]

The first definition informs the Act's understanding of 'discrimination'.  But note its examplary phrases - they imply that it's unmerited to distinguish between nationals and non-nationals, and between one's family and non-family-members: yet, a political, moral and social collapse would ensue if those distinctions were not drawn, at least some of time.  Anyhow, here's more on the etymology:

dis·crim·i·nant    

–noun Mathematics.  a relatively simple expression that determines some of the properties, as the nature of the roots, of a given equation or function.

[Origin: 1830–40; < L discriminant- (s. of discriminans) separating, prp. of discriminare to divide up, separate, v. deriv. of discrimen, s. discrimin- separating line, distinction, equiv. to discri-, var. s. of discernere (see discern) + -men n. suffix; see -ant]

Discernment and discrimination are exactly the qualities required of legislators in a well-functioning democracy.  But, unfortunately, our parliamentarians have been brainwashed to believe, and would brainwash the country into believing, that discrimination, in all its forms, must be eradicated from British behaviour, even at the expense of common-sense.

Proponents of the Act try to cast this as a religion vs secularism conflict.  The (shockingly unphilosophically minded) AC Grayling has written several articles in this vein.  For example, his latest diatribe begins thusly:

Emboldened by its victory over the government in the matter of keeping faith schools discriminatory and exclusive, the Roman Catholic church in England is now again flexing its biceps to preserve its tradition of discrimination and prejudice against gay people.  Just as active in keeping its own paedophile priests safe from the law, it is determined to secure exemptions from anti-discrimination legislation too.  Evidently, Roman Catholicism thinks of itself as above the law.  Of course it would: it is obedient not to earthly law, but to a higher law: its own convenience, its own mentally and morally corrupt ways. [Guardian]

Instead of focusing on the needs of the infants put up for adoption, or of the gay and lesbian B&B owners who don't want to invite straights into their house, thank you very much (and for whom nobody speaks up, because the gay NGOs have lobbied for this law), Grayling attacks the messenger, the Catholic Church, of which he's obviously not a fan.  But the church's argument is about children, earthly beings, not about higher laws, and Grayling ignores that.  His ideology, on the other hand, extols a higher law, 'anti-discrimination', to be superimposed indiscriminately upon us earthly beings, whose rights and needs are to be trampled by the heavy boots of its fanaticism. 

(In case the reader wonders - no, I am not a Catholic nor call myself Christian.  If I were to become a Catholic, I hope I would be sufficiently discriminating and discerning to become a sedevacantist, which would then mean I'd be excommunicated, which would sort of defeat the object of it, so I won't.  But, increasingly with age, I tend to agree with its ethical stances on such things as this legislation, IVF and embryonic stem cell research.)   

Supporters of the Act argue: discrimination laws should be applied indiscriminately; gays are like blacks, women and the disabled, and they should be similarly protected from discrimination; it would be wrong to stop a straight black couple from adopting a child on the grounds that they were black, and gay couples should have equal rights as black couples.  But this is a categorical error.  The black couple, who for whatever reason are unable to conceive a natural child, entered into their relationship with the hope of the gift of a child - Nature sometimes gives, sometimes not - whereas the gay couple never could have conceived of a natural child.  The black couple do not have a right to a child but do have a relationship within which it is conceivable that the conception of an infant could have taken place - the gay couple, also, have no right to a child, but, additionally, their relationship always precluded the possibility of natural children.

I'm not an absolutist on this - many gay couples would be far better parents of adoptees than many straight couples I've known in my time - but the needs of the infant should be the main criterion for the adoption agency.  Ceteris paribus, it may well be that agency's consciencious judgement that an infant put up for adoption would be better off in a home in which it is conceivable that it could have been conceived, rather than in one in which it is inconceivable that it could have been conceived.  That agency's judgement would be criminalized under this law and that's wrong.

Adoption agents should discriminate in favour of infants, even if that upsets the sensibilities of some adults.  Being discriminating, not treating everything as if it was the same thing, recognizing differences, celebrating differences, allowing differences even if we don't like them - I only wish I were more discriminating and discerning than I actually am.

Treason and Plot?

[On the news-ticker on the BBC news website, it reads: "Reports say that nine US soldiers have died in violence in Iraq.  More soon."  Which about sums it up.]

Is the Bush administration manipulating the timing of Saddam Hussein's trial so as to help the GOP hold on to Congress?  So reckons Tom Englehardt, writing in The Nation (November Surprise?).  The trial-judge's verdict has been delayed until November 5th, and the mid-term elections are just two days later.  Englehardt was tipped off to this possibility by a law professor called Scott Horton, who has worked in Baghdad.  In correspondence with Englehardt, Horton wrote:

"For sure.  That November 5 date is designed to show some progress in Iraq.  This is the last full news-cycle day in the US before the elections.  It'll be Monday.  And the American public will see Saddam condemned to death and see it as a positive thing.

"When you look at polling figures," Horton said," there have been three significant spike points.  One was the date on which Saddam was captured.  The second was the purple fingers election.  The third was Zarqawi being killed.  Based on those three, it's easy to project that they will get a mild bump out of this.

Could this explain why Bush and Rove are reportedly so confident about the outcome of the mid-terms, despite the pundits and polls?   

The phrase 'sentenced to death' always makes me laugh - we are all sentenced to death.  Killing someone before they're due is murder, whether it be judicially sanctioned or not.  It does not help that Saddam is not even getting a fair trial.  The proceedings are a showbiz production, a psyop operation, aimed at the US electorate and it'll probably be effective.

I'm reminded that the American political system is deeply Lockean and that John Locke's theory of government was founded on murder.

POLITICAL POWER, then, I take to be a RIGHT of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the common-wealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good. [Chapter 1, Sec 3, Second Treatise]

The unnecessary phrase, 'with penalties of death', fundamentally ties-in the practice of judicial homicide, i.e. murder, with the nature of political power.  Locke's political vision still permeates US political thinking, and this, IMO, partly accounts for the survival of judicial homicide in the American legal system.  It's not just a Republican thing; when Clinton ran for president, he had executed a prisoner in Arkansas to bolster his law and order credentials.  Rhetorical question - is it as easy for Bush and Rove to manipulate the minds of the American people as it is for Kim Jong Il to control those of the North Koreans?

Dworkin, Kant and Humbug

[Previous entries: Dworkin's nonsense on stilts;  Letter to the Guardian;  Dworkin nonsense;  Not Dworkin to me]  [His name is a boon for headline writers]

Two months ago, I started trying to wring a correction out of the Guardian, after one of their occasional columnists, Ronald Dworkin, claimed that Jeremy Bentham had viewed the 'whole idea of human rights' as "nonsense upon stilts".  (Dworkin is the Bentham professor of jurisprudence at UCL.)  For weeks, the Corrections office blanked me.  Last week I tried again, this time threatening Ian Mayes that, if I still got no reply, I'd write to the editor, the external ombudsman, the Scott trustees and UCL. 

Two days later, Mayes' assistant wrote back to me with Dworkin's reply.  Dworkin wrote thus:

I said that Bentham condemned human rights as nonsense on stilts because I was criticizing Simon Jenkins in the Sunday Times who said, "Bentham was correct. There are no fundamental human rights. The concept, said the great utilitarian, is 'nonsense on stilts'." Your reader objects, to me and therefore to Jenkins, that Bentham spoke of natural rights not human rights. But your reader is making the mistake of conflating words and ideas. Both phrases refer to the same idea. He is guilty of another confusion in saying that human rights did not exist when Bentham wrote. He must mean that the term "human rights" was not in general use then, which is a different matter. If human rights exist now, they have existed for as long as there have been human beings, or at least human beings in political society. He makes a different claim about utilitarianism. Whether human rights exist or not is a matter of the ontology of value not value-free ontology. If Bentham's utilitarianism is correct then there cannot be rights and, as he said, particularly not natural or human rights. If Bentham's utilitarianism is wrong, his "nonsense" claim must be wrong, for reasons Kant pointed out.

Under the fold, I've included the full text of my reply to Dworkin.  It was a poor reply, which missed the mark.  I tried to answer each of the points he raised, but It was the wrong strategy, and the Guardian found in his favour.  But this was my response to his last sentence, in which he had cited Kant.

If Bentham's utilitarianism is wrong, his "nonsense" claim must be wrong, for reasons Kant pointed out.

Would Professor Dworkin please provide a citation for this?  When I first read this sentence, it seemed decisively impressive. But then I remembered that Bentham's Anarchical Fallacies, wherein he wrote of inalienable rights as 'nonsense upon stilts', was not, to my limited knowledge, published until around the year of his death, 1832. And Immanuel Kant died in 1804.  So, how could Kant have pointed out the falsity of Bentham's 'nonsense' claim?  This would therefore appear to be another of RD's anachronistic attributions, but I'd appreciate a citation if one exists. (And if RD is in touch with a medium who's in contact with dead philosophers who will share their thoughts on things post their mortem, could you ask him to ask the medium to ask Thomas Hobbes what he thinks of the United States, especially from its civil war to the present day - thanks.)

I doubt I'll hear back from Dworkin, so if anyone reading this knows their Kant or Bentham, could you please tell me where Kant addressed Bentham's utilitarianism and natural rights?  Is Dworkin right, or is he making it up as he goes along, trying to sound impressive but, like the rest of us, full of **it?

Mayes' assistant wrote back the next day.

Your questions and comments deal with matters of opinion and interpretation which are outside the remit of the Readers' editor. We have passed Professor Dworkin's reply to you, and although we cannot speak for him, he is unlikely to want to continue the debate. May I suggest you send a short, and as succinct as possible (300 words), letter for publication for consideration by the Letters editor ([email protected]). Otherwise, there is nothing to stop you writing to Professor Dworkin at University College London. I'm sorry we cannot help further

best wishes Helen

That reply left me livid, partly because it signalled my failure.  I've lost much confidence in the Guardian reader's editor as a neutral arbiter.   I might try emailing Dworkin to see if I can get the Kant citation off him.  Whatever, this episode has left me unsatisfied.

Not Dworkin to me

I'm disappointed to report that I've heard nothing back from Ian Mayes, the readers' editor of the Guardian.  I have to assume that Professor Ronald Dworkin is unhappy about my complaint.  Fair enough, though I'm not impressed by his lack of willingness to either correct me or correct himself; that doesn't seem scholarly to me.  But I also suspect there's resistance within the Guardian itself to having the eminent professor eat his words.  I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't a couple of his ex-Oxford students among the paper's senior staff - perhaps they interpret my complaint as an attack on Dworkin's philosophy and reputation and, by extension, on their own beliefs about the world, so that it becomes an attack on them as well.  On that, they may have me bang to rights.  Here again are the offending sentences:

Simon Jenkins, in the Sunday Times, recently declared his enthusiasm for the 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham who said that all that matters is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and that the whole idea of human rights is therefore "nonsense upon stilts".  But Europe, led by Britain, rejected Bentham's utilitarianism after the second world war when it established the European human rights convention.

It was the first sentence I complained about (see previous posts).  But the second one wasn't much better.  For instance, did Britain reject utilitarianisn after WW2?  No, I'd say, on the contrary;  the NHS and welfare state owe some of their DNA to Bentham.  And consider David Cameron's recent speech on increasing society's happiness-quotient by replacing GDP with GWB (general well-being).  Or Polly Toynbee's article today on the LSE academic Richard Layard, whom she calls "a great man and a serious economic thinker", about the politics of happiness.  (It's amazing that Bentham isn't mentioned once in it, nor in Cameron's happiness-speech.)  Back to Dworkin's second sentence.  He's implying that, as Britain rejected utilitarianism long ago, Bentham's critique of rights isn't worth considering.  He's saying, in effect, move along, folks, nothing to see here.

Some years ago I bought a secondhand copy of Dworkin's Taking Rights Seriously.  (I'm not a student of legal philosophy but it had good reviews on the back and I have a critical interest in Americanist ideology.)  It seemed to me that, in order to take rights seriously, one must first examine their foundations, to find out how sound they are.  To do that, one has to take seriously critiques of inalienable rights, including Bentham's.  And, to me, Dworkin failed to do that.  So I didn't take his book seriously.

And I've since discovered that other, better qualified than I, people have noticed that Dworkin does not fairly present the views of his philosphical opponents.  For example, Brian Leiter, of the Leiter Reports group blog, has written critically of Dworkin for some years [here].  He writes of "the exasperation so many of us feel at [Dworkin's] inability to engage honestly with his opponents."

What Professor Dworkin didn't understand when he agreed to write for the Guardian was that the paper's editorial policy demanded a higher standard of accuracy than he was used to in the academic world.

Dworkin nonsense

I'm not sure why but I'm still trying to get the Guardian to publish a correction about Jeremy Bentham.  (For previous entries, see here and here.)  Soon after sending the last email, I got a reply from Ian Mayes to say he'd been away, didn't know why it hadn't been dealt with, and he'd chase it up.  I wrote back:

On reflection, while I still stand by the second point, conventional wisdom has it that everything Bentham thought, wrote and said was predicated on the 'greatest happiness principle' (even when the evidence, such as the 'nonsense on stilts' essay, suggests otherwise).  So Dworkin will reject that criticism, and I am willing to let it go.  The first point, however, is more clear-cut, and I'd be surprised if he disputed it.  If he does, please allow me a reponse. Then, I'd leave it up to you, or to whomever, to adjudicate.

That was ten days ago.  Since then, nothing.  So this morning I gave it another go.

I'm still waiting for Ronald Dworkin's misstatement about Jeremy Bentham to be corrected.  Why the delay?

Bentham did not say that the whole idea of 'human rights' was nonsense upon stilts.  'Natural rights' and 'human rights' are related but the terms refer to different ideas.  The latter is normally understood to mean the regime of rights codified in the Universal Declaration of HR and its successors, including the European Convention.  Throughout his column, Dworkin was using 'human rights' in this modern sense. As Bentham died in 1832, it's not right to say he had a view on 'human rights'.

I'd appreciate a reply before too long.

The plaintive 'before too long' indicates that I'm losing the will to live over this.

Letter to the Guardian II

In lieu of having anything interesting to say, here's the latest installment of my attempt to get a correction (of Dworkin on Bentham on rights) printed in the Guardian.  I got no reply to my original email, so re-sent it today with the following message:

Dear Readers' Editor

I sent the email below eight days ago, and am re-sending it, in case it was not seen, as I've heard nothing back nor seen any correction published.  I still think the two issues I raised are valid.  Assuming that my email was read:  had the writer been one of your journalists, I'm thinking that a correction/clarification might have appeared by now.  Which is to say, not having heard from you, I suspect that the writer being the Bentham professor at UCL might have complicated the matter.  If so, that would be understandable, but surely it would make the need for a correction, of some sort, even greater (as readers might reasonably expect an accurate representation of Bentham's thought from someone writing in the Guardian as the Bentham professor of law)?

I'm looking forward to a reply, to which I claim an inalienable right.  (In it, please don't tell me I was the only one to raise this issue.  Please tell me I was just one of many readers who contacted you.)

Yours,

I'm sort of enjoying this, except for the lack of a response. If I still get no reply, then it's on to the ombudsman!  And I'm tempted to contact the Dean of Laws at UCL - because, by awarding Ronald Dworkin the Bentham professorship, its most prestigious Chair, UCL has betrayed its own "spiritual father".

Letter to the Guardian

As anticipated yesterday, I emailed the Guardian today about Dworkin on Bentham on rights.

Dear Guardian

Ronald Dworkin's most recent column, on Wednesday, May 24, contained two errors that have not yet been corrected, but which should not be left to stand.  He wrote:

[T]he 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham [..] said that all that matters is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and that the whole idea of human rights is therefore "nonsense upon stilts".

The final phrase contains both problems.  First, Bentham's critique was of late-18th-century natural rights, not mid-20th-century human rights as set out in the UDHR in the 1940s.  Although the two are conceptually and historically linked, they are nevertheless distinct.  So Bentham did not criticise human rights as 'nonsense on stilts', as they did not yet exist.

Second, Dworkin's use of the word 'therefore' is wrong.  Bentham's Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights is not dependent upon his 'greatest happiness' principle.  It's not a utilitarian argument against natural rights (whatever that might be); it's simply a rather entertaining and insightful philosophical rant against the ideology of natural rights. It stands (or falls) alone from utilitarianism.

I am aware of the irony, if that's the word, of Dworkin being Bentham professor of jurisprudence, UCL.  I am looking forward to seeing his errors being corrected in next week's Guardian.

Yours sincerely,

We'll see...

Dworkin's nonsense on stilts

Renowned legal theorist Ronald Dworkin (© Dan Brown) writes an occasional column for the Guardian.  His renown in my household (ie with me and the cat) comes from his irrational hostility to Jeremy Bentham's body of work.  That this man is now the Bentham professor of jurisprudence at University College, London, is an affront to British intellectual history.  Bentham would be a-spinning in his grave, were it not that his corpse was preserved, and is mounted, in a glass case in the self-same college, UCL, where Dworkin now professes to teach.

The issue here is Bentham's critique of natural rights as 'nonsense on stilts'.  Bentham was spot on, of course, but such an insight can be existentially threatening to American minds, such as Dworkin's, whose republic was founded on the belief that human beings possess innate rights;  it's a central tenet of the Americanist civil religion.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Self-evidently, Jefferson was delusional - all humans are created unequally and they possess no rights other than those their society gives them.  But Americans are indoctrinated from birth to believe otherwise, and Americanist missionaries, such as Dworkin, are determined that the rest of us believe as they do.

Dworkin's most recent missive was, predictably, a defence of the UK's human rights legislation.  He ended with a dig at Simon Jenkins, who'd written a piece on human rights that had started promisingly but had ended in a confused heap.  Dworkin wrote:

Simon Jenkins, in the Sunday Times, recently declared his enthusiasm for the 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham who said that all that matters is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and that the whole idea of human rights is therefore "nonsense upon stilts".  But Europe, led by Britain, rejected Bentham's utilitarianism after the second world war when it established the European human rights convention.

This is dishonest, deceptive nonsense, especially the word 'therefore'.  Jenkins was not, as Dworkin implies, extolling the 'greatest happiness' principle.  Further, the 18th-century concept of natural rights, and the mid-20th-century notion of human rights, are different, so Bentham had no opinion on 'human rights', as they had not yet been formulated.  (The two are linked, historically and conceptually, but they are distinct.)  Also, Bentham's Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights is not dependent at all on his 'greatest happiness principle' - that Bentham was wrong about utilitarianism is irrelevant to the validity or otherwise of his polemic against the ideology of inalienable rights.  A Bentham professor of jurisprudence who misrepresents Bentham for political purposes - what was UCL thinking?

It's been three days since the Guardian published Dworkin's column, and each day I've read the Corrections and Clarifications column waiting for the correction to appear.  If it doesn't appear tomorrow, I'll email them.   But whom are they more likely to believe on Bentham, me or the eponymous professor?

The Euston (anti-hu)Manifesto

I was not going to write about the blog-inspired Euston Manifesto but note that it's gaining some public traction, which depresses the hell out of me - political luvvies such as John Lloyd, Paul Berman and Michael Walzer are coming out in its support.  I once considered myself a liberal lefty, like them, so it feels weird now believing that the ideology espoused by the authors of the Euston Manifesto is delusional and dangerous, but I do.  The phrase, 'longest suicide-note in history' springs to mind, with the associated idea of it being a dying croak of a moribund worldview, and, were it so, I would pity these poor people's cognitive confusion.  Unfortunately, their beliefs are neither marginal nor, as they claim, "under-represented" - on the contrary, they are the mainstream beliefs of the ruling class, who continue to lead us into disaster.  Tony Blair, David Cameron, Ming Campbell, and any and all of their successors, Chirac, Sarkozy, Merkel, Barroso, Mandelson, Rice, Kerry, Obama, McCain, Bush, etc., etc., could all affirm the manifesto's core beliefs.  Their fellow-travellers pump out their propaganda relentlessly through the print and broadcast (and now web-based) media, and in the schools and universities, all most of which they effectively control.  But their beliefs, which are the prevailing hegemony in the West, are at odds with reality and in conflict with human nature and reason.  I wish I smelled the whiff of revolution in the air. 

The Euston Manifesto is an intoxicating brew of humanism, Americanist liberalism and Zionism, a concoction dangerous to the young and vulnerable, which the human species still is. Just when the world requires post-humanist, post-liberalist and post-Zionist responses to its current troubles, some of which have been caused by the implementation of humanism, liberalism and Zionism, the Eustonites can only offer up more of the same.  I want to mention three areas where I radically disagree with the manifesto.

Human rights
I am pro-humans and pro-civil liberties, and therefore I am anti-human rights.  The writers of the manifesto allege that opponents of human-rights ideology are cultural relativists, whereas I oppose human-rights ideology because it endangers all human cultures, including our own.  Where human-rights ideology advances, civil liberties and cultural pluralism retreat.  Human rights is a pernicious doctrine, fallaciously reasoned, and its adherents are like brainwashed cultists, believing that their credo is universally true and that all the world should join their cult or be demonized, invaded or killed.  (I used to be a human-rights cultist but have since deprogrammed myself.)  The manifesto says that the so-called Universal Declaration should be binding on everyone - if that's not fascistic and totalitarian I don't know what is.  The whole sorry, violent, virulent doctrine should be consigned to history's wastebin before it kills us all.

The UN
1. Following from the above, the UN must disentangle its core and valid business - diplomacy and humanitarianism - from the ideological baggage of human rights, and jettison the latter completely.  Otherwise, it becomes more and more perceived as the enemy of free humanity.  It was no surprise when Zarqawi blew up the UN HQ in Baghdad - whatever its self-perception, the UN is not a neutral agency, but it should endeavour to become so.

2. Britain and the US contravened the will of the security council by invading Iraq - both should lose their veto for at least five years.  Britain and the US set up the UN - of all nations, they, we, should follow the agreed rules and accept the penalty for breaking our contract with the other nations.

3. The Euston Manifesto lauds the outrageous 'responsibility to protect' doctrine, which is now official UN policy thanks to the Americans, the British and their, our, mind-warped allies.  The doctrine eviscerates the notion of national sovereignty - whoever controls the security council will decide whose sovereignty is valid and whose is not.  It's a recipe for chaos and for the collapse of international structures such as the UN.

Zionism, etc.
The authors and supporters of the manifesto might accept the designations 'Zionist left' or 'liberal Zionists', for the themes of Zionism, Israel/Palestine and what they term anti-semitism pervade their document.  No statements of principle about the two Koreas, or Kashmir, but there's one on the 'two-state solution'.  Zionism is the elephant in the corner of this manifesto, which needs to be metaphorically shot, beheaded, stuffed and mounted on the wall above the fireplace.

Labels. Semiotics. Floating signifiers. I am pro-Jewish, pro-Arab, pro-Muslim and pro-Christian, and therefore I am anti-Zionist.  Zionism, in my book, is the antithesis of Judaism, and its fruit, which they call Israel, is the living embodiment of anti-semitism.  Real Jews, whose reputation is unfairly tarred by the Zionist pretenders, wait patiently for the coming of the Messiah.  They have kept to the covenant with G-d, and they are the true people of Israel.  The Zionists, on the other hand, lost patience with G-d, exile and persecution and took matters into their own hands.  As if they were the Messiah, they called the Jews out of exile and back to the Holy Land and many followed, their minds addled by the traumas they had undergone in Europe.  They exiled the Palestinians from their lands, which the real Messiah would not do.  They blasphemously gave their secular state a holy name, Israel, which only adds divine insult to the injury of breaking the covenant.  They label their critics anti-Semites, yet the people who suffer most from the follies of Zionism are the Arabs in the region and the true Jews, both of whom have greater claim to be Semites than do the Zionists.

Enough already.  The manifesto must be opposed by all true democrats.