Today is, as you’re surely aware, the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that sparked America’s involvement in World War II.
I’m not sure what to say. I’m tempted to write something nostalgic about the kind of America (I grew up in its backwash, and so remember it a little) that could unify in the face of aggression and dig in for the long haul, making sacrifices for the sake of victory—and justice. Errors were made of course. No one is proud of the internment of the American Japanese. And yet even that demonstrates the differences between that America and ours. Instead of assuming the mantle of victimhood, the Nisei grimly set about proving their loyalty beyond all doubt—a profoundly American response that secured for them an honored place in our society forever.
In contrast, I find on Robert J. Avrech’s Seraphic Secret blog a report that shocks and shames me. It’s not an apples to apples thing—he’s talking about Norway, not the United States. But Norway is my second favorite country, and one of the countries our political leadership looks to today as a model. Norway, like the U.S., is no longer the country it was when it was attacked in the 1940s.
Avrech posts this video from Norwegian TV (it’s subtitled).
He quotes an Israeli blogger with an interest in Norway, who notes:
After a police report in Oslo said that Muslims were raping Norwegian women out of a religious conviction that this was the proper thing to do, a stormy public debate erupted, reports Bello, and “the government ministers, most of them avowed anti-Semites, claimed that the report and its publication serve Israel and its policy of occupation.”
Norway’s justice minister defended the police report but also said that “Israel must be glad to hear about it.”
Do you comprehend the breathtaking Orwellianism here? “If we talk about the one thing these rapists have in common, we’ll look like Nazis. Therefore, to distance ourselves from the Nazis, we’ll find a way to scapegoat the Israelis.”
I don’t know whether I’m more sad or more angry.
In other bad Norwegian news, actor Harry Morgan (whom you probably remember as Col. Potter on M*A*S*H) has died at 96. He was of Norwegian descent, and his real name was Harry Bratsburg.
The Norway that comes up with this is no more your Norway than the Norway that sacrificed thralls to Odin. I can’t tell you what to feel, but you deserve none of the shame.
Now I remember something I originally intended to include. I wanted to include Walker Percy’s line, in The Thanatos Syndrome: “It’s the sentimental ones who always end up gassing Jews.”