Woodrow Wilson apparently was typical of many intellectuals who think that, somehow, their thought processes comprehend ultimate truth. They see nothing unusual about pontificating about their personal opinions about reality and prescribing their notions -- the inventions of their mind -- for the behavior of others as some kind of laws of absolute truth.

Woodrow Wilson's real blooper was his concept of "self-determination" that has since plagued the earth. Alone with himself in his study he got the thought that all groups have the right to "self-determination," the right to form their own government, irrespective of the fact that they may be residing in areas with established governments with prior rights.

Undoubtedly, one of the underlying assumptions that Wilson must have had was the uniform nobility of mankind, in the image of himself, of course. For if all men are noble and supposedly act nobly, then all groups are alike in wanting, seeking, and deserving the things that Wilson prized -- truth, justice, freedom, self-government, etc'. If so, it would be wrong to deny those "rights" to such fine people and, therefore, whatever powers ruled over them would just have to behave decently, give up their own rights and wishes for their own self-determination and give way to the latest round of such claimants.

Wilson probably shaped his view from conditions in Europe at the time of World War I, in which the borders of established nations encompassed various ethnic groups striving for their own national expression and chafing under rulers who were of different ethnicity and religion and who often behaved unjustly -- but usually no more unjustly than those who challenged them. No doubt, this condition was not ideal and led to instability. Generalizing from these conditions that seemed to have contributed to the outbreak of World War I, Wilson created his view of the natural right of all ethnic groups to "self-determination."

What may have seemed to be the "self-evident" assumptions that led Wilson to his form his concepts turned not to be so realistic after all. Obviously, if Wilson operated from such idealistic assumptions about humanity, he was far off the mark. Real human beings, as opposed to the imaginary kind, come in a variety of moral levels. There are many ethnic groups that are characterized by extreme anti-social traits -- brutality, avariciousness, and even murderous impulses. When these unwholesome traits abound in some ethnic groups, these groups do not shirk from expressing their brutal tendencies to destroy and rob others to achieve their own selfish desires, which they would call "their right to self-determination," courtesy of Wilson.

Since at any given moment the world is already divided into regions with preexisting national boundaries and with governments that exercise legitimate rights, to confer such a natural right to "self-determination" for sub-groups, minorities, under such conditions is to immediately pit the rights and interests of preexisting groups against the alleged rights of the would-be usurpers, with no guarantee that the usurpers have any greater moral claim to their so called "determination" than the current holders. Nor is there any guarantee that the challengers are only serving the interests of the external enemies of the challenged rulers.

What Wilson dreamed up actually provides the rationale for the legitimacy of a Basque Nation in Spain, four Kurdistans in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, as well as a "free Black State of Alabama," and a "Hispanola" in the Southwest United States -- the latter encompassing "the occupied lands" that were "robbed" by the US from Mexico. All may claim the right to "self-determination" in the name of real and imagined grievances or simply because of unjust extraneous interests aimed at destroying the host.

To the everlasting sorrow of the world, one bad dream that Wilson's concepts spawned came true, showing how ill-considered was Wilson's obsession. It happened 50 years ago in Czechoslovakia when a German minority demanded "self-determination" and the right to join Germany. This insurgency was promoted by none other than Adolph Hitler in order to expand the German-Nazi State. He used the Wilsonian rhetoric to plunge Europe into World War II with a resulting 50,000,000 dead. It was triggered by the devilish Hitler who used the tool of "self-determination" given to him courtesy of Wilson's invention.

Today, there is no more skilled practitioner of Wilson's conceptions than imperialistic Islam. The Muslim religion proclaims its right from G-d to continually expand the Islamic realm at the expense of neighbors. Wilson's "self-determination" is the answer to Muslim prayer since it is a tool for Islam's jihad in its open and clandestine wars of expansion against its neighbors. As Charles Krauthammer observed a number of years ago, Islamic nations are characteristically at war against the nations that border them. Observing this trend led one historian to conclude in his book, The Clash of Civilizations, that such a potential for clash existed between Islam and the West.

Wilson had managed to saddle the world with his invention of the "universal right" he had made up, drawn from his own tendencies toward utopian thinking. While, no doubt, there may be situations where conditions do call for the kind of thing that Wilson imagined, it cannot be automatic or necessarily assumed to be moral. If one looks around the world, the major forces pressing for the expression of such utopian Wilsonian conceptions are powerful, ruthless imperialist national powers. These ruthless national powers give themselves the right to usurp the lands of others which they see as a "moral right" and understand Wilson's regrettable concept as a tool to make their aggression legitimate.

William Safire in his column in the NY Times recently observed that "self-determination" is a powerful force in these days when close-up television can portray human suffering. But Safire failed to mention that this shows why actions taken in the name of "self-determination" are often phony today. For with the capacity of governments to choke the television screens with manufactured, invented incidents (like the Nazis did in Czechoslovakia) or merely to show partial truths. Who lately has seen the pictures of the many atrocities of the Muslims in Bosnia and in Kosovo against the Serbs? Those will only be shown later when it suits the interested party in war. The point is that emotional claims to "self-determination" are often generated artificially by the engines of selected communication of the powerful to suit their agendas.

It is not an accident that leftist Israelis (and leftists everywhere) are drawn to Wilson's concepts. It fully meets with their secular, utopian universalism. As "true believers" in their man-centered secular religion -- and it is a religion as fanatic as the worst -- such universalists crave the guidance of "absolutes." They take no guidance from the religions of man -- certainly not from Judaism -- but they yet need substance to feed their need for "true belief," seeking it in the work of their hands, especially in the inventions created from the ruminations of college professors like Wilson.

Such universalists, having seized upon a universal absolute, will literally kill in the name of these "pets." Ill defined concepts that have become slogans for them -- "equality," "democracy, "fraternity," "civil rights," "human rights," and "self-determination" -- inhabit their holy Mount Olympus. For any examination of these "slogans" will reveal that each is complex indeed and subject to many qualifications -- qualifications often not regarded by the practicing universalists. These people would as likely to guarantee the right of a Hitler to come to power through democracy (as he did) as a Lincoln.

The secular universalists cannot see their absolutes as merely tools for the good life but not its guarantors since tools, like dynamite, may be wielded for good or evil. In Israel, we find the irresistible penchant of the leftists to follow their "slogans" -- like moths drawn to the flame -- toward the destruction of the Jewish state through "self-determination" given to the declared Arab enemy. (Would any Arab ever allow such things for Jews? To ask the question is to answer it.)

Universalists eagerly sacrifice their own and their children's lives to such Molechs, their G-d's of absolute value. Their fanaticism in pursuit of euphonious slogans is their Achilles heel. For through these obsessions they become susceptible to the manipulation of not only their own demagogues but also that of the enemy. These slogans are wielded with gusto by the numerous tyrannies of "people's republics" and brutal self-determining ethnic leaders that pollute the world and regularly find the support of leftist idealists. The liberal reporters of the New York Times once found their ideals in the Communism of the Russians and Chinese that gave their people their "gulags" and today's Israeli liberals find it in the words of Arafat who will give death to Israelis.

The born yesterday Jewish utopian universalists have rejected the past of the Jewish people. Instead of finding the national rights of the Jewish people of Israel inherent in the historic heritage of the Jewish people and its continuous interaction with their land -- not to mention its recognition by the League of Nations -- these anti-Jewish, Jewish universalists chose to make their claim for Israel on the basis of the universalist concept of self-determination." In doing so, these leftists necessarily gave a similar right to the bulk of newly arrived Arabs to the land ,who also demanded "self-determination."

The utopian leftists, mesmerized by their secular religion of idealism, failed to even take note that the latest of the self-determinists were determined by the divine right of their religion to annul those rights for the Jewish people. While the Arabs, hardly utopians, reserved the right to "self-determination" for themselves, they deny similar rights to anyone else within what they regard as an inviolate Islamic realm. The hypocritical Arabs do not recognize any one else's "natural right" to self-determination on what they proclaim as their own turf since they believe that G-d gives only them that right.

The overrighteous leftists of Israel, hell bent on self-destruction in the name of their half-baked universal religion and its precept of "self-determination," having raised themselves on their own petard, are now in danger of plunging themselves and the Jewish nation to earth since that insubstantial fuel will not support or protect the existence of the Jewish State.

The latest expression of the Wilsonian obsession has now come from the European Union, the nations that participated in the murder of Jews 50 years ago. The European Union, including Germany, now proclaim the "natural right" of the Arabs to steal the lands of Israel in the name of the "self-determination" that exists only for Arabs, the way the Germans of Czechoslovakia were allowed to do for the benefit of Hitler.

Wilson's obsessions have for too long been given free reign, it has been observed that after World War II the allied nations of Europe expelled their German nationals from their countries to Germany, many who had lived outside of Germany for a century, to forever prevent another rerun of the "self-determination" stunt that Germany had pulled. It was undertaken as a legitimate act by the allied nations to safeguard future peace and clearly revealed the fraud that was "self-determination." That sensible precaution would seem to have its application today for the Arab minorities who have proven that they are unable to live in peace with Israel in the Israeli territories.

It is important that this Wilsonian obsession of "self-determination" -- which is not natural at all, or not any more natural than the self-protection of those attacked at its behest -- be exposed for the half-baked concept it is. It is a formula for never-ending war on the planet and it easily lends itself to service as a tool for cruel aggression. We see this mindless tool now in action once again in the Middle East applied to the Arab enemies of Israel, as the Arabs attempt to wield this sword to destroy Israel with the help of Israeli leftists who are mesmerized by the gleam of the pseudo-absolutist values they crave and must follow to their death, their own included.

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