Mark Steyn comments on some of the politically correct lunacy involved in the case of Nidal Hasan the US Army psychiatrist who nearly four years ago opened fire at Fort Hood while standing on a table and screaming “Allahu akbar!” — killing 13 soldiers and wounding dozens more. Steyn writes: 

Most Americans think he’s nuts. He thinks Americans are nuts. It’s a closer call than you’d think. In the immediate aftermath of his attack the US media following their iron-clad rule that “Allahu akbar” is Arabic for “Nothing to see here” did their best to pass off Major Hasan as the first-known victim of pre-Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder….

General George W. Casey Jr. the Army’s chief of staff was at pains to assure us that it could have been a whole lot worse: “What happened atFortHoodwas a tragedy but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty.” And you can’t get much more diverse than letting your military personnel pick which side of the war they want to be on….

This case is about as clear a demonstration as there can be of political correctness in action. While the US government termed this “workplace violence” and the media chalked it up to “stress” Hasan — a Jihadi madman whose US Army business card read “Soldier of Allah” — stated in open court “I am the shooter” identifying the murder weapon as his and proudly averring that he is a traitor to America. And who are we to believe? Not Hasan because that would do the unthinkable: make diversity a casualty.

Steyn concludes by comparing this case to another recent one of notoriety:

Unlike the Zimmerman trial Major Hasan’s has not excited the attention of the media. Yet it is far more symbolic of the State of America than the Trayvon Martin case…. The response to Nidal Hasan helps explain why in Afghanistanand elsewhere this war is being lost — because  it cannot be won if[r1]  increasingly it cannot even be acknowledged.

One might think that out-of-control political correctness of this sort makes for an easy target of ridicule yet has no practical relevance to us. But along comes federal judge Shira Scheindlin’s ruling just two weeks ago in the Floyd case striking down theNew York City police department’s “stop-and-frisk” policy and appointing a monitor to oversee the NYPD’s policing practices. Her opinion is a classic of the PC genre which writes the Manhattan Institute’s Heather MacDonald “may … signal the end of the freedom from fear thatNew York’s most vulnerable residents have enjoyed for two decades.”

New Yorkhas by far the lowest crime rates of any major American city its murder rate having plunged 72 percent in the 1990s and another 36 percent between 2001 and 2012. In 2011 the percentage ofNew York Cityteens carrying guns was at its lowest point ever and far lower than in any other major American city. Might that help explain whyNew York’s teen homicide rate is four times lower than that ofChicago’s?

New York’s unprecedented level of safety is directly related to the NYPD’s policies which include sophisticated crime-data analysis and proactive policing which most prominently means officers’ ability to stop and question individuals engaged in suspicious behavior and if need be search them. Needless to say the primary beneficiaries of the steep drop in crimes of all sorts due to these policies have been the residents of the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods who are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic.

But welcome to political correct theatrics now playing in a neighborhood near you or perhaps your very own. Just as the fear of offending Muslims means grannies from Iowa must be questioned by airport security people at precisely the same rate as are swarthy six-foot Yemeni males the victorious plaintiffs in Floyd argued that police stops must reflect the overall racial percentages of local residents rather than of local criminals.

Thus a poster boy of racist policing in Judge Scheindlin’s opinion was Officer Edgar Gonzalez whose beat is the high-crime area of FortGreene in Brooklyn’s 88th Precinct. In one three-month period he conducted 134 stops 128 of which involved black or Hispanic subjects. But writes Ms. MacDonald that stop ratio made perfect sense given two facts: that during the same three-month period Fort Greene experienced a spate of violent crime all of whose perpetrators had been described by victims as black or Hispanic; and that in the 88^th precinct blacks and Hispanics commit nearly 99 percent of all violent crime and over 93 percent of all crime. She adds the important caveat that race should not be “the primary determinant of who gets stopped — and there is no indication that it is. Thousands of blacks and Hispanics live inFortGreene; Gonzalez stopped only a small proportion of them basing his stops on their behavior and local crime information.”

But no matter. As MacDonald writes Scheindlin “points out that Gonzalez’s racial stop rate ‘far exceeds the percentage of blacks and Hispanics in the local population (60 percent).’ In other words though whites and Asians commit less than 1 percent of violent crime in the 88th Precinct and less than 6 percent of all crime they should make up 40 percent of all stops — to match their representation in the local population.” MacDonald also notes the irony that the NYPD’s stop rate for blacks is actually lower and the stop rate for whites higher than their representation among known violent offenders.

Pending the appeal of her decision to a federal appeals court the hopelessly blinkered views of one Jewish liberal will place all New Yorkers’ security in jeopardy but most of all that of its black and Hispanic citizens those whom she professes to be most concerned about. We can only hope matters won’t reach the point that to borrow Steyn’s words about the war on terror the war on crime here at home will be “lost — because it cannot be won if[r2]  increasingly it cannot even be acknowledged.”  

LEFT BEHIND OK I admit it: I’m a journalist. (Painful but at least I’m not a member of Congress). And that means I make mistakes.

And indeed I made several mistakes in my piece the other week on my East Bronxtour. I wrote mistakenly that Rav Zeidel Epstein’s parents sent him from the Bronx to learn in Grodno– but this obscures the amazing truth of the matter as recounted in his Hebrew biography entitled L’ovdo B’leivov Sholeim.

Avrohom Yaakov Epstein was born after his parents Reb Yitzchok Aryeh and Chasha Yehudis who had lost nine of their ten children traveled to Oshmina to seek a brachah from the famed po’el yeshu’os of Lita Rav Mordche’le Slonimer. He blessed them to bear a son with the stipulation that three conditions to be observed until the child reached the age of six: that he be called Zeidel be clothed entirely in garments of white linen and that he remain at home.

Due to the dire circumstances in Europe when Zeidel was 10 his father emigrated to America with the Epsteins’ daughter and when World War I ended his mother sought to join him there obtaining visas for herself and her beloved only son. By then however young Zeidel was already learning in Rav Shimon Shkop’s yeshiva inGrodno where his mother now lived. Although it pained him immensely after consulting with Rav Shimon he told his mother he could not leave the yeshiva for spiritually barren indeed perilous America.

Zeidel’s mother could not make peace with the thought of leaving her ben yachid’l behind; she implored Rav Shimon and traveled to Vilna to implore Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky as well but to no avail. And so one night after leaving an emotional goodbye letter on his mother’s table Zeidel climbed out the window of their home and made his way to the Mirrer Yeshiva armed with a letter of introduction from Rav Shimon to the mashgiach Rav Yeruchem Levovitz. At a time when most young people would have given anything for the chance to emigrate to the goldeneh medina Zeidel’s unshakeable determination to hold fast to the eitz chaim of Torah created a huge kiddush Hashem in Grodno garnering admiring coverage in the local general and secular Jewish press.

His mother eventually arrived in Mir too and it was only Rav Yeruchem’s soothing words that finally found their way into her heart. Zeidel later returned to Grodno and only in 1938 at age 30 did he see his parents again in America.

And it was only after reading this story that I learned too that Rav Zeidel’s fourth yahrtzeit is this week on Elul  21.