How the West Was Lost

A local government in Australia refuses to build a Jewish synagogue. Why? Because it poses too much of a “security risk”. Translation: Because it might make some Muslims mad, and when Muslims get mad they often get violent. Still worse: If you’re seen as criticizing Islam, it makes you a racist, and that charge (however false) seems worse than enduring violence, at least to some.

“The decision is unprecedented,” Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, head of Bondi’s local Jewish community, told news.com.au. “Its implications are enormous. It basically implies that no Jewish organisation should be allowed to exist in residential areas. It stands to stifle Jewish existence and activity in Sydney and indeed, by creating a precedent, the whole of Australia, and by extension rewarding terrorism.”

According to NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff, the “ill-conceived judgment represents a dangerous precedent” because it incentivizes Muslim extremists to double-down on their targeting of Jews.

Not that they needed any incentives or encouragement. Regardless of what governments and politicians do, it’s the people of the Western world losing the fight against Islamic terrorism. It’s not because they won’t stand up to Islam, so much as they refuse to stand up for individual rights, separation of church and state, and freedom of peaceful religions to worship on private property. In our politically correct fear to challenge or criticize Islam, we surrender the equal and supreme right of all to be free from the violence of terrorizing bullies.

Bullies are not strong. They are destroyers, at heart. They stand for nothing. They only live to tear down and ultimately destroy others. The greatest “kryptonite” against a bully is moral authority. Moral authority means the convincing assertion of the view, “You have no right to harm me. You’re weak, bad, stupid and wrong. I will strike back against you with ten times the force, or whatever it takes to keep you from harming me.”

Bullies can sense when their victims believe this, or when they don’t. In the Western world — meaning all the nations where individual rights have been the norm more than the exception, including Australia — people refuse to rally around their own right to exist. They’re terrified that asserting their right to exist will hurt the feelings of some Muslim who will, in turn, open fire on them. Even worse, others are terrified that they will look mean or unkind in the eyes of their friends or peers, who internally fear the same.

Freedom is diminishing, and no military victories can save us from that until or unless we’re willing to save ourselves. Until we believe we have a right to exist, we will remain morally and physically impotent at standing up to the most lethal bullies we’ve seen since Hitler’s gang of similarly anti-Jewish thugs.

Australia’s refusal to build a new synagogue because it’s a “security risk” ought to be the call to action for anyone who loves freedom and liberty. It has nothing whatsoever to do with religion, and everything to do with the right to exist. It’s baffling and disheartening to watch the West give up its freedom to the demands of militant savages storming the free world in the name of faith.