For season 2 of the 13 Weeks Radical Reading Regimen, each weekday morning I juxtapose excerpts from my book readings with a selection of the previous day’s headlines and noteworthy excerpts. Then I’ll strive to make fresh connections between the events of the day and the bigger picture of history and humanity’s place in the universe.

In yesterday’s round-up of links and readings, I sought to emphasize an oft-suppressed, disturbing fact that explains a lot about American culture today: Malcolm X, the figure who most influences “black leaders” and activists today, was an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who preached that Jews run the media and manipulate civil rights organizations to the detriment of blacks. (Critical Race Theory founder Derrick Bell, Barack Obama’s mentor at Harvard Law, argued the same thing in his book Afrolantica Legacies which I blogged through chapter-by-chapter last spring.) I argued that this fact should be understood in light of the levels of antisemitism today — 29% of the black population in this country hates Jews, 14% higher than the general population.

Going along with a hatred of the Jewish people is also a rejection of the Jewish concept of God and thus the sacredness of life.

A few other statistics of note, first on out-of-wedlock births:

While 28 percent of white women gave birth out of wedlock in 2007, nearly 72 percent of black women and more than 51 percent of Latinas did.

Next on the racial disparity regarding abortion:

Among white women, there were 138 abortions for every 1,000 births. Among black women, the number rises to a dizzying 501 abortions. Hispanic women account for 25% of all US abortions, though Hispanics make up just 16% of the population.

While a majority of whites call for Anthony Weiner to drop out of the New York mayor’s race given his continued sexting, the numbers flip for blacks:

Black voters say Weiner should keep campaigning by a margin of 53 – 42 percent, while white voters want him to drop out by a margin of 64 – 25 percent.

This destruction of the black family in which parents are divided and women treated like objects has its historical precedence. See the excerpts from the beginning of The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass below. How is today different? Now the culprits are primarily free black men abandoning the black girls they seduce and impregnate to abortion and the welfare state. Before the Civil War it was white men raping their black slaves and then disposing of their biracial children through selling them.

Which is more disturbing: a past where men sold their own unwanted sons and daughters or a present where both parents choose to kill them in the womb?

Monday Dawn Book Reading:

Quote of Note from Robert Spencer: “The view that Islam is a correction of the false teachings of Christianity about Jesus is mainstream in Islam.” – pg. 97 of Not Peace but a Sword

Quote of Note From Yasser Arafat: “I am a revolutionary. I have dedicated my whole life to the Palestinian cause and the destruction of Israel. I will not change or compromise. I will not agree with anything that recognizes Israel as a state. Never.” pg. 92 of Red Horizons by Ion Mihai Pacepa

Monday Morning News Round Up:

Lead PJM Stories From Monday:

J. Christian Adams: Yes, the RNC Really DID Support Federal Oversight of State Elections

Michael Ledeen: The Metaphysics of Jailbreaks

Nicholas Ballasy: Intelligence Chairman: U.S. Fighting Cyber War ‘Every Day’

Rodrigo Sermeno: Climate Change Drama on the Hill as Lawmakers Tackle Emissions, ‘Alarmists’

Ed Driscoll: Breathe Deep, the Spenglerian Doom

“Spengler’s Ominous Prophecy” is explored in depth in a read-the-whole-thing essay by Robert W. Merry in theNational Interest. Originally published at the start of the year, Power Line linked to Merry’s article on Sunday, and it’s definitely worth revisiting. ”A question haunts America: Is it in decline on the world scene?” Merry writes, before noting that “an analysis of Western decline must lead to Oswald Spengler.”

Spengler’s The Decline of the West was published in 1918; but Spengler* wrote it assuming that Germany would win World War I, and thus rule over of an increasingly exhausted and nihilistic Europe. Well, he got it half right — and when Germany lost the war, the title and thesis of his book was taken as a prophetic, and it became hugely influential in his native country. Spengler lived in the era that was post-Nietzsche and the rest of the 19th century “bearded God killers,” as religious scholar Martin E. Marty memorably dubbed them, but died in 1936, before seeing World War II, and the Allies’ victory over National Socialism, followed by their Cold War struggle against International Socialism. (Or as the EU has taken to calling World War II, in a phrase that would likely cause both Spengler and George Orwell to roll their eyes, the “European Civil War.”)

Bryan Preston: Obama: I Delayed the Employer Mandate Because I Could. What Are You Gonna Do About it?

Andrew Klavan: The Sad Fate of Democrat Women

It’s always a little galling (not to mention hilarious) for those of us on the right to reflect that the Democratic Party — the party of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and family-destroying social programs — the party of Detroit, New Orleans, Newark, and Baltimore — the party that facilitates a black abortion rate that would bring a smile to the face of Planned Parenthood’s genocidally racist founder — has somehow managed to sell itself to African Americans as the friend of black people!

But it’s beginning to be equally galling (and equally comic) to reflect that the Democrats have also contrived to present themselves as the party of women.

This is the party whose most powerful senator left his probable mistress to drown after a car accident; the party whose most popular living president is a serial philanderer and accused rapist; the party whose most prominent woman rose to that prominence by virtue of her stand-by-your-man loyalty to a louse; and now the party of Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer, two men who have humiliated their wives with truly creepy behavior and yet seek to continue their political careers regardless.

PJ Lifestyle Featured on PJ Home Page:

Paula Bolyard: Stay-at-Home Moms: Will Your Kids Judge You for Choosing Them Over a Career?

Robert Spencer: Why It May Be Easy For Huma Abedin To Stand By Her Man

As hard as it may be to believe, this is not a fabrication of venomous “Islamophobes.” The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that,

The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a wali. All scholars agree on this point–there is no disagreement from any of them. […] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.

Right around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti activist and politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality:

Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam.…While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not–she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that’s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.

If Huma Abedin is indeed a “practicing Muslim,” then there is no reason to think that she doesn’t believe in the Qur’an’s allowances for polygamy and sex slavery (for men only, that is), and thus it could well be that her husband’s appalling behavior simply doesn’t appall her. She may accept the idea that a husband of a Muslim wife may well have a wandering eye, and go on the prowl for other women, and even perhaps marry one or more of those other women while remaining married to her.

New at PJ Lifestyle:

Rhonda Robinson: The Key to Setting Your Family Free From Deprivation Dieting

Paula Bolyard: How Common Core is Coming to Homeschoolers

Philip K. Howard from Prager University: The Case Against Public Sector Unions in 5 Minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxe34WqKcT4

Also Around the Web Monday:

Via Drudge:

New York Post: Bill and Hillary Clinton are ‘livid’ at comparisons to Weiner’s sexcapades and Huma’s forgiveness

“The Clintons are pissed off that Weiner’s campaign is saying that Huma is just like Hillary,’’ said the source. “How dare they compare Huma with Hillary? Hillary was the first lady. Hillary was a senator. She was secretary of state.”

A longtime Hillary aide and Clinton friend, Abedin’s surprisingly unequivocal support of her husband after his bombshell admission Tuesday that he engaged in salacious online sexting well after he resigned in disgrace from Congress in 2011 left the Clintons stunned, continued the source.

“Hillary didn’t know Huma would do this whole stand-by-your-man routine, and that’s one of the reasons the Clintons are distancing themselves from all this nonsense,’’ the source said.

…

Worried about the potential impact on Hillary’s likely run for president in 2016, the political power couple has begun aggressively distancing itself from the crippled mayoral contender, according to sources.

AP: Angelina Jolie Speaks Out Against Rape in War

“When I started down the road, making this film, I thought only of telling a story and doing my best to try to give a voice to survivors,” she said. “But today I am here not only as a director, but as a campaigner, and a part of a global effort that is growing every day.”

Japan is no stranger to sexual violence at war. The country still has problems fully coming to terms with what its militarist government did to hundreds of thousands of Asian women before and during World War II – by forcing many of them to become “comfort women” and provide sex to Japanese soldiers. The issue remains a major diplomatic problem between Japan and South Korea. Jolie did not comment on the “comfort women” issue.

At Mediaite:

Rep. Peter King Blasts Rand Paul For ‘Apologizing For America’: ‘Fringes’ Will ‘Destroy’ GOP

Congressman Peter King appeared on CNN’sState of the Union on Sunday morning and warned that Senator Rand Paul’s “isolationist streak” will destroy the GOP in much the same way the anti-war movement crippled the Democrats in the 1970s and 80s.

“To me the overriding concern here has to be national defense, national security, and not be apologizing for America,” King said. “When you have Rand Paul actually comparing [Edward] Snowden to Martin Luther King, Jr., or Henry David Thoreau, this is madness. This is the anti-war left wing Democrats of the 1960s that nominated George McGovern and destroyed their party for almost twenty years. I don’t want that happening to our party.”

At Breitbart.Com:

Paul Begala: Modern GOP ‘Neanderthals Fighting With Cro-Magnons’

“Republicans have become more ideologically conservative, they’ve moved farther from the mainstream, and they’re more fractured, Usually when you become more extreme — more left in my party, more right in the Republicans’ — you at least get some cohesion. Here you have a much more conservative party than 20 years ago and a much more fractured party. The Neanderthals are fighting with Cro-Magnons, the neoliths hate the paleoliths. It’s great. I love it as a Democrat.”

At CNN:

150 child prostitution arrests

In a major crackdown on child prostitution, the FBI announced Monday that 150 arrests have been made in Operation Cross Country, and 105 children have been rescued nationwide.

Pope Francis on gays: `Who am I to judge?’

Pope Francis said Monday that he will not “judge” gays and lesbians – including gay priests – signaling a shift from his predecessor and offering another sign that the new pope is committed to changing the church’s approach to historically marginalized groups.

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis said in a wide-ranging news conference aboard the papal plane.

Though he was answering a question about the so-called “gay lobby” at the Vatican, the pope seemed to signal a change in tone, if not in teaching, in the church’s stance towards gays and lesbians more generally.

10 ex-‘Idol’ contestants sue, alleging racism

At The Huffington Post:

Rush Limbaugh Says Huma Abedin Is Muslim, Powerless, So Anthony Weiner Can ‘Get Away With Anything’

“Huma Abedin, Mrs. Anthony Weiner, Mrs. Huma Weiner, she is Hillary Clinton’s number one aide,” Limbaugh said at the time, according to ThinkProgress. “And Huma’s mother is best friends with the new first lady of Egypt, the wife of the new Muslim Brotherhood guy, Morsi. That’s really all you need to know.”

At the Daily Mail:

Indian woman, 24, forcibly married and gang-raped as ‘honor’ punishment after her brother eloped with village girl

The panchayat, or village council, reportedly forced the woman to marry after her brother had eloped with her husband-to-be’s sister on February 15 this year.

The panchayat, which was convened around ten days after they ran away, demanded the enforced marriage. Besides this, it also asked the woman’s parents to pay Rs 75,000 as compensation to her new in-laws.

Is the McDonald’s McDouble the ‘cheapest, most nutritious and bountiful food that has ever existed in human history?

In terms of ‘the cheapest, most nutritious and bountiful food that has ever existed in human history,’ the golden arches of McDonald’s probably isn’t the first thing to pop into your mind.

But they should – according to a New York Post columnist and an economics blogger, anyway.

Post columnist Kyle Smith made a pretty compelling case for the McDonald’s Mcdouble’s giving diners the most bang for their nutritional buck.

….

At 390 calories, 23 grams of protein, 7-percent of the daily value of fiber, 20-percent of daily calcium and 19 grams of fat – with a typical price tag of about a buck – the McDouble, its advocates argue, is the most price-efficient food ‘that has ever existed in human history.

‘For the average poor person, it isn’t a great option to take a trip to the farmers market to puzzle over esoteric lefty-foodie codes. (Is sustainable better than organic? What if I have to choose between fair trade and cruelty-free?) Produce may seem cheap to environmentally aware blond moms who spend $300 on their highlights every month, but if your object is to fill your belly, it is hugely expensive per calorie,’ Smith writes.

EXCLUSIVE: Weiner’s mistress reveals the secrets of their affair, his fetish for high heel shoes, their daily dirty phone calls and how she found his online pseudonym Carlos Danger ‘creepy’

In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, Sydney unashamedly lifts the lid on Weiner’s depraved and bizarre sexual fantasies, and how he sighed: ‘Oh baby, I want to suck your toes’, while demanding photos of her feet in high heel shoes.

And Sydney’s account of their intimate sexual liaisons will no doubt add further pressure on Weiner to drop out of the mayoral race, for the sake of his dignity, his wife’s dignity – and indeed, the dignity of the office he is running for.

The man she claims she once put up on a pedestal, she now brands as a ‘narcissist’, adding: ‘I don’t think he’s an ethical man. I don’t think he’s an honest man or a trustworthy man. I certainly don’t think he should be the mayor of New York City.

‘He would say all sorts of things, and wanted me wearing high heels and nothing else,’ claims Sydney.

How the ‘World’s Hottest Pornstar’ found God at the XXXChurch which campaigns to get sex workers to see the light

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1fmDSfQTnI

Beginning shooting porn almost the second she became 18, Ruiz made her first start in X-rated hardcore movies, shooting up to three sex scenes a day, being paid around $900 for each movie.

Her career took off. In 2006, she came in second place on ‘Jenna’s American Sex Star’, a reality TV show hosted by porn legend Jenna Jameson.

In 2010, Maxim magazine named her one of the top 12 hottest porn stars in the world.

On filming her first scene, Ruiz said, ‘I felt so loved that day because I was put in hair and makeup. I was told I was beautiful. I was going to be a star.’

However, Ruiz was introduced to the seedy and desperate side of the porn industry very soon afterwards as producers made her work relentlessly and dressed her up to look extremely young.

‘I already looked like I was 12,’ said Ruiz. ‘It’s disgusting how they can portray you as a little girl. It’s complete perversion.’

Via Memeorandum:

Maureen Dowd: Time to Hard-Delete Carlos Danger

WHEN you puzzle over why the elegant Huma Abedin is propping up the eel-like Anthony Weiner, you must remember one thing: Huma was raised in Saudi Arabia, where women are treated worse by men than anywhere else on the planet.

…

Americans keep moving the marker of acceptable behavior, partly as a reflection of the coarsening of society and partly as a public acknowledgment that many pols with complicated personal lives have been good public servants.

Now, defining deviancy downward, Señor and Señora Danger are using the Clinton playbook.

The difference is, there’s nothing in Weiner’s public life that is redeeming. In 12 years in Congress, he managed to get only one minor bill passed, on behalf of a donor, and he doesn’t work well with people. He knows how to be loud on cable and wave his Zorro sword in our faces.

National Review Editorial: Mitch Daniels Was Right

Governor Daniels’s illiterate critics notwithstanding, it was not an act of censorship – there was no talk of banning publication of the bestselling book, only of declining to use it in school curricula. From kindergarten through graduate school, American education is a sewer of left-wing ideology, and Zinn’s work is an especially ripe excretion. Governor Daniels’s office was right to bring attention to it — shoring up the integrity of public institutions is part of what governors are there for.

At Slate:

Matthew Yglesias: The Cult of Homeownership Promotes Disastrous Politics

David Weigel: Trying to Tolerate The Newsroom, Week Three

Daniel Politi: Medical Marijuana Advocates Become Unlikely Opponents to Pot Legalization Efforts

At Acculturated:

Ryan Duffy: Is Anthony Weiner a Psychopath?

He is a narcissist. Narcissists have overinflated feelings of self-importance and entitlement, lack an ability to be empathic, and often feel the normal rules of society don’t apply to them, because they are so special and unique. Not surprisingly, they are some of the worst people to be in relationships with. Wiener is definitely a narcissist and having at least a snippet of this trait is probably a prerequisite for politics. But did his feelings of grandiosity actually motivate his amazingly erratic behavior?
He is a psychopath. Psychopaths are individuals who lack remorse/empathy, are impulsive, have difficulty controlling their behavior, are manipulative, and are antisocial. The term is evocative and usually brings to our mind images of serial killers like Ted Bundy or a cinematic version Hannibal Lecter. But psychopaths can function in society, and this is likely the best description of Weiner. Glancing at the frequently used checklist to diagnose psychopathy, it’s striking how well these traits fit him.

Mark Tapson: Haunting Melissa: Ghost-Story-in-an-App

Melissa Langsam Braunstein: What Happened to Jessica Simpson?

Emily Esfahani Smith: Hugo and the Importance of Purpose in Kids

The theme of this movie is especially important to think about today. From research in psychology, we know that having a sense of purpose is absolutely indispensable to human well-being, especially for children. Unfortunately, as the Stanford-based psychological researcher William Damon has found in his research, many children do not have a strong sense of purpose, of what gives their life meaning. Damon thinks that not having a sense of purpose is leading to rising suicide and depression rates among the youth. According to the American College Health Association, for instance, in 2011 about 30 percent of undergraduates reported being so depressed that “they could hardly function”.

There are many benefits to having a strong sense of purpose as a child. In several studies of over a thousand young people, Damon found that when young people purpose their purpose, they experience more positive emotions, are more optimistic, and are able to buffer themselves more strongly against depression and anxiety. As adults, they report feeling more meaning in their lives, having stronger relationships, and experiencing more success at work.

First Things:

Matthew J. Franck: Reza Aslan Misrepresents His Scholarly Credentials

None of these degrees is in history, so Aslan’s repeated claims that he has “a Ph.D. in the history of religions” and that he is “a historian” are false. Nor is “professor of religions” what he does “for a living.” He is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside, where his terminal MFA in fiction from Iowa is his relevant academic credential. It appears he has taught some courses on Islam in the past, and he may do so now, moonlighting from his creative writing duties at Riverside. Aslan has been a busy popular writer, and he is certainly a tireless self-promoter, but he is nowhere known in the academic world as a scholar of the history of religion. And a scholarly historian of early Christianity? Nope.

What about that Ph.D.? As already noted, it was in sociology. I have his dissertation in front of me. It is a 140-page work titled “Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework.” If Aslan’s Ph.D. is the basis of a claim to scholarly credentials, he could plausibly claim to be an expert on social movements in twentieth-century Islam. He cannot plausibly claim, as he did to Lauren Green, that he is a “historian,” or is a “professor of religions” “for a living.”

Monday Night Book Reading:

I started the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass last night and was fascinated to learn that the great abolitionist orator and escaped slave was biracial, his father a white man and most likely his master:

This excerpt from page 17 is heartbreaking. The biracial slaves fathered by the slave master would often be resented and more poorly treated by the slave master’s wife, a permanent reminder of her husband’s infidelities with slave girls. The solution to avoid being a father who must watch a white son whipping his biracial half-brother? Sell your own child.

“…I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.” — Frederick Douglass

I’ll have more explorations of the differences between the Frederick Douglass Republican and the Malcolm X Postmodern Radical Democrat in the coming weeks as I return yet again to the ideological fights over race…