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NBC is reporting that Vice President Pence was "roundly criticized" Monday for "appearing" at a campaign rally in Michigan at which a Messianic rabbi invoked the name of Jesus in his prayer.
NBC then dives into the deep end with a theology lesson---a lesson that appears to throw gas, not water on the reported "firestorm."
Be informed.
The firestorm.
NBC News says VP Pence was "roundly criticized" for appearing at a campaign rally at which a "'Messianic rabbi' invoked Jesus, in mourning the deaths of 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh."
They say, "Pence, who has often proclaimed himself to be a born-again evangelical Christian, invited Rabbi Loren Jacobs to the stage at a rally in Waterford Township in a suburb of Detroit, for Lena Epstein, a Republican candidate for the open congressional seat in Michigan's 11th District."
NBC emphasizes that "Messianic Judaism, which believes that Jesus is the messiah and considers the New Testament to be authentic, is not recognized as Jewish by any mainstream Jewish movement in the United States, or by the Chief Rabbinate, the supreme spiritual authority for Judaism in Israel."
Rabbi Jacobs is the founder and senior rabbi of Congregation Shema Yisrael in Bloomfield Hills. It is indeed a Messianic congregation and he did invoke the "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, God, and Father of my Lord and Savior Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah, and my God and Father too."
NBC explains that "Yeshua"---derived from the Greek spelling that eventually became "Jesus" in English---is the name by which many Messianic Jews refer to Jesus.
And the peacock channel further explains that the Messianic Jews believe that "Jesus the Messiah was eternally pre-existent and is co-equal with God the Father."
This is the video of his prayer.
Vice President Pence had heard the rabbi pray backstage, and thought it would be good to have him share the prayer on stage, so he invited him to the podium.
Firestorm.
People immediately began excoriating Pence for being "insensitive"---calling it a "deliberate insult."
Orli Matlow tweeted: "Mike Pence's rabbi= Fake Jews."
Rafael Shimunov tweeted, "In response to antisemitic white nationalist attack, Vice President Pence opens campaign event with a Christian Rabbi."
And it got worse.
The candidate for whom Pence was campaigning, Lena Epstein, defended Pence saying it was she who invited the rabbi to the event, not Vice President Pence.
Yesterday, she put out a press release which said in part, "My family's history as Jews and my commitment to my Jewish faith are beyond question. I'm a proud lifelong 4th generation member---former board member---of Temple Beth El."
There's more, but she concluded with this: "I am proud of my faith and look forward to serving as the only Jewish Republican woman in Congress."
She also told the press, "Any media or political competitor who is attacking me or Vice President Pence is guilty of nothing short of religious intolerance and should be ashamed."
The press and the Left are guilty of religious intolerance, but they're not ashamed because tolerance and intolerance is a tool in their arsenal.
There is no tolerance for those who sincerely hold biblical beliefs that conflict with secular progressive ideologies; Whether it concerns the sanctity of life, human sexuality, marriage...or Jewishness.
The cold calculated culture of outrage.
With the rise of this new "intolerance," the Left is exemplifying what leftist leader Henry Adams described as "Politics: the systematic organization of hatreds."
Cultural outrage did not happen spontaneously, or overnight...or as a result of Donald Trump being elected president.
It happened through the course of several generations.
Herbert Marcuse was an immigrant from Germany who taught at a number of US universities. Marcuse was a member of the Marxist-influenced Frankfurt School, which wanted to deconstruct Western Capitalism. Though he opposed Fascism, Marcuse believed that industrialized capitalist democracies of the mid-20th century were themselves repressive.
He became one of the leading gurus of the New Left, the angry, sometimes violent 1960s radicals who were the forerunners to the current "progressive" power elite.
Obama's friend, Bill Ayers, who founded the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group, became known for bombing federal buildings. Ayers later became a university professor.
Marcuse intellectually birthed people like Angelia Davis, Michael Lerner, the SDS, and a host of others who gave birth to phrases and concepts like "politics of meaning"---a phrase Hillary Clinton often used in the 1990s and has again used recently.
Barack Obama's worldview was shaped by the teaching of Marcuse, Saul Alinsky and his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Marcuse's students are found across the landscape of American culture today---especially in American public schools and universities, and in American politics.
By 2015, the so-called "progressive Left" was fully aware that cultural Marxism had taken hold, with a complicit President Obama, a dutiful press and an uninformed public.
In fact, it was during this time that the Left actually became concerned that the monster they had created, may turn on those who gave it birth because they were not far enough to the Left.
Establishment Democrats are currently dealing with that problem.
At that time, Fred Bauer wrote an excellent article describing what was happening. His article was titled, "The Left And Discriminating Tolerance".
Bauer explained how Marcuse's then 50-year-old essay, "Repressive Tolerance," levies a radical attack on the conventions of liberal democratic civilization.
He described the main thrust of this Repressive Tolerance like this:
"The whole of society shapes what is politically possible for each of us, so any discussion of politics must attend to society as a whole," he says.
Group think.
However, Marcuse saw society as completely corrupted. More sin and corruption seemed to be his answer.
In his 1955 book titled, "Eros and Civilization," he considered the breaking of all sexual norms to be a key component of toppling the Western status quo.
Woodstock would follow.
He taught a kind of social or moral inversion: The fact that society is so radically unequal means that we should be intolerant and repressive in the name of tolerance and liberty.
He rejected what he termed "indiscriminate tolerance"---a tolerance that accepts all viewpoints---in favor of "liberating tolerance" or "discriminating tolerance."
In essence, he put it this way:
"Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left."
During the Bush era, the Left said: "Dissent is patriotic." During the Obama era, the same Left said: "Dissent is caused by some unhealthy motivation like racism."
Now, during the Trump era, "Dissent is Patriotic." But dissent has become rage and violence from the Left.
Marcuse's case for "repression" has given us our current culture---at least the culture of those on the Left.
His repression applies to thought, conscience, speech, and science---in the name of right ideas, and it has persuaded powerful people and organizations within our culture today.
Prominent leaders, therefore, call for "impeachment" of President Trump, because it's the right thing to do---not because he has committed any crime. They call for criminal prosecution, even imprisonment for those who even question anthropogenic "climate change."
Anyone who dissents from some prevailing orthodoxy of the Left is to be assailed, mobbed, driven from restaurants, confronted, shouted down, kicked out of office---or even targeted by government agencies.
Bakers who decline to celebrate homosexual "marriage" are driven out of business by demonstrators in front of their store and targeted by government agencies for discrimination or even hate crimes.
Pence has been attacked because he had the wrong kind of Jew at the podium. Yesterday, when President Trump visited Pittsburgh to pay his respects, mobs shouted at him and held signs that read "It's Your Fault. Words Matter."
We have departed from our founding tradition of tolerance as taught by 17th century Puritan Roger Williams who taught tolerance out of a respect for human limitations and a recognition of inherent individual dignity.
Today, the culture is led not by those who are motivated to create a more perfect union, but by those who are committed to deconstructing the greatest nation in the history of the world.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Prayerful.