Sunday, April 30, 2006

Against Those Who Attack Us

There are and have been those who would destroy the USA and, more importantly, what remains of Western Civilization. If you do not believe me, then study history and learn from it (So you are not condemned to repeat it).

Some centuries ago there was a group of persons known as “Cathari” who built a short term culture on the beliefs that the physical world was evil, sex was wrong, property should be taken from others for the common good (Defining that last term and making recruitment a lot easier). If they would have succeeded, then the growth of the human race stopped, the forces then developing towards technology and democracy killed and all the other benefits of our civilization prevented. Although their “philosophy” did have some good points, robbery and murder AND the potential of the destructions-of-civilization greatly outweighed any such positive positions.

In France they made great headway. But, when confronted with a local and defensive crusade, they hid themselves among others (Many who had benefited from the Cathari robberies) when besieged in the city of Beziers. The leader of the crusaders there was in a moral dilemma as he was unsure of the results of his to-be-successful assault on that town and his inability to recognize, by language/dress, those who were his and civilization's enemies. He asked an expert on morality and was told, “Tues-les tous. Dieu reconntdea les sein” (“Kill them all. God will know who belongs to Him”).

The lessons to be learned from this piece of history are:
1.That we in the West have gone past that kind of theology for decision making
(For better or worse as theology does present a good basis for morality and civilization in other areas);
2.The same and ancient use of deadly force is, every day and throughout the world, used by Muslims to justify terrorist bombings and such horrid acts as occurred on “9/11”; And,
3.That terrorists hiding among those who protect them are liable for destruction even if that means some “collateral damage” by reason of death and injury to
those who do not expel them from their homes and towns who may, as is the teaching of the Koran and Hadith (The sayings of Mohammed), be performing a “religious duty” in protecting such thugs.

I think that there is (On the part of anyone who understands both history and current affairs) that organized or disorganized Islam has been at war with us and attacking all other (And superior) cultures for 1400-years AND that most Muslims support those attacks (Remember the dancing on Arab streets on arrival of the news of “9/11”?) as such has been commanded by Allah. This presents us with a major conflict of forces (Like the totally materialistic forces of Communist China and Secular Europe VS. the rest of the world) for which the only solution may be the destruction one side or another.

Again looking to history, we find the “Roman Solution” (Rome then being a republic), using “Mecca” as the symbol of Islam, and we should declare, again-and-again, “Mecca delenda est” (“Mecca must be destroyed”).

To that we should add the Crusaders' (Who waited some hundreds of years before counter attacking the aggressive forces of Islam and, although they lost the Holy Land, freed most of Europe from the slavery which is Islam), cry of “Deus vult! (“God wills it!”).

If Communist China does not again follow the examples of past history and destroy itself as a nation, we may have to look at such principles and positions for it---And, the other Secular Humanists who infest and are attacking the real basis of civilization as did the Cathari.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Save $ On Book On Islam

THE ARTICLE BELOW SUMMARIZES THE NOTED BOOK. THEREFORE, IF YOU CANNOT GET IT FROM A PUBLIC LIBRARY, AT LEAST DIGEST, UNDERSTAND AND APPLY THE LESSONS GIVEN BELOW.


E-mail Author
Author Archive
Send to a Friend
Print Version

April 28, 2006, 6:24 a.m.
Not for the Feint of Heart
Robert Spencer asks the hard questions about Islam...and answers them.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), by Robert Spencer (Regnery, 233 pp., $19.95)

It is often said that in order to keep polite company polite, we must refrain from speaking of religion and politics. Yet, the two are not equals in the hierarchy of politesse. Political debate may be unwelcome in many settings, but no one clears the room by observing that the great totalitarian evils of the 20th century, Communism and fascism, were directly responsible for incalculable carnage.


Not so when it comes to religion — or, at least, one particular religion. The past three decades have borne witness to a rising, global tide of terrorist atrocities, wrought by Muslims who proclaim without apology — indeed, with animating pride — that their actions are compelled by Islam. Nonetheless, the quickest ticket to oblivion on PC's pariah express is to suggest that the root cause of Islamic terrorism might be, well, Islam.

That the possibility is utterable at all today owes exclusively to the sheer audacity of Muslim legions, who have rioted globally, on cue, based on what even their exhausted defenders must now concede are trifles (newspaper cartoons and a tall tale of Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay leap to mind). But the largest obstacle to any examination of creed — larger even than a growing alphabet soup of Muslim interest groups — has been the same Western elites who are the prime targets of jihadist ire. In the most notable instance, President Bush absolved Islam of any culpability even as fires raged at the remains of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And, although attacks before and after that date have been numerous and widespread, it has become nearly as much an oratorical staple as "My fellow Americans" for U.S. politicians to begin any discussion of our signal national security challenge with the observation that Islam is a "religion of peace" — a religion that has surely been perverted, "hijacked," and otherwise misconstrued by terrorists.

No more, insists Robert Spencer, the intrepid author and analyst behind the Jihad Watch website. Spencer's theory is as logical as it is controversial: when the single common thread that runs through virtually all of the international terrorism of the modern era is that its perpetrators are Muslims, and when the jihadists themselves tell us that their religion is the force that drives them, we should seriously consider the probability that Islam is a causative agent, even the principal causative agent, of their terrorist actions. This he undertakes to do in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)..

One might once have assumed it inarguable that an ideological battle cannot be fought with complete inattention to ideology. But that has been the case with the war on terror, and Spencer's mission is to rectify that with a simple, user-friendly volume that walks the reader through elementary facts about Islam — its tenets, its scriptures, and its history, including most prominently the Koran and the life and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed. It is a tutorial shorn of wishful thinking.

While Spencer does not declare that anyone adhering to Islam is a terrorist waiting to happen, he clearly believes it is a perilous belief system. Make no mistake: This is a disturbing account. And most disturbing is that the truly arresting passages are not the author's contentions and deductions. They are the actual words of Islamic scripture and the accounts of several revered events in Islamic tradition.

The story by which Islam achieves hegemony over much the world and the loyalty of millions of worshippers, very nearly extending its dominion throughout Europe, is a story of military conquest. Mohammed, deemed the final Messenger of Allah — superseding the prophets of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a group in which Muslims include Jesus — was a warrior, in addition to wearing the hats of poet, philosopher, and economist, among others.

The Koran, Spencer argues, does not teach tolerance and peace. At best, he explains, there are isolated sections which urge Muslims to leave unbelievers alone in their errant ways, and which counsel that forced conversion is forbidden. But these must be considered in context with other verses, such as those directing that Mohammed "make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them," and that the faithful "slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them," and so on.

What are we to make of the seeming contradiction? Obviously, self-professed moderate Muslims point often to the benign passages, while terrorists echo the belligerent ones. Who is right? Spencer vigorously contends that the militants have the better of the argument. The Koran, which is not arranged chronologically but according to the length of its chapters (or "suras"), is theologically divided between Mohammed's Meccan and Medinan periods. The former, from the early part of the Prophet's ministry when he was calling inhabitants of Mecca to Islam, are the soothing, poetic verses. The latter, written in Medina after Mohammed was ousted from Mecca, are the more bellicose. The Medinan scriptures come later in time and, sensibly, overrule their predecessors.

This is bracing in at least two ways. First, even if there were a logical counterargument to this (and let us pray that someone comes up with a compelling one soon), it underscores the seeming impossibility of proving wrong those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam. When they claim justification in their religion for merciless attacks and other brutalities (such as beheadings), they are not imagining it out of thin air — it's right there in black-and-white. The reformers may try gamely to minimize or reinterpret, but they cannot make the words go away.

Second, those words are taken to be the words of God Himself. The Koran is not like the books of the Old and New Testaments. It is not thought to be "inspired," to be related through intermediaries whose assumed human gloss opens up possibilities of reinterpretation or correction. Muslims believe the Koran contains the unvarnished teachings of Allah, dictated directly to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel. This renders all the more challenging (to put it mildly) the burden of discrediting terrorist operatives who claim to be doing precisely what they have been divinely instructed to do — and doing it in the service of jihad, the "striving" which, Spencer explains, is a bedrock obligation of all Muslims.

Islam, Spencer elaborates, aims at nothing less than total domination — first, unrivalled supremacy in any territory that is (or was at any time) under its sway, and, ultimately, spreading throughout the world — whether by persuasion or by sheer force. The bleak choices presented to non-believers in the Muslim lands are to accept Islam (and its attendant social system, which is particularly oppressive of women); to live the grim life of dhimmitude by submitting to the authority of the Islamic state (permitted to practice other religions under tight regulations and only if the jizya, or poll-tax on non-Muslims, is paid); or to die. The bleak future for non-believers in the rest of the world is a state of war until they are subdued, as — beginning in the seventh century — were the Byzantine Empire, Persia and the Christian strongholds of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

Consistent with the "Politically Incorrect" model, Spencer spends much of his time deconstructing "PC Myths." These involve not only the sugar-coated conventional wisdom about Muslim doctrine but also what he sees as the cognate project to revise Islamic history.

The "Golden Age" of Islam, for example, is, according to the author, a gross exaggeration. He does not deny that there were grand achievements under caliphates that ruled various places from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries, and Muslims themselves, he acknowledges, were responsible for important advances in mathematics and, to a lesser extent, medicine. Nonetheless, Spencer counters that many of the epoch's achievements either occurred despite Islam (particularly in the areas of literature, art, and music) or are better understood as the accomplishments (especially in science and architecture) of better educated peoples whom Muslims conquered.

Islamic culture, for Spencer, thwarted great possibilities. Muslim philosophers were singularly responsible for preserving and explicating the work of Aristotle — but over time, these philosophers were read primarily in the West, because waves of anti-intellectualism and a conceit that rote study of the Koran was sufficient education overtook the Islamic world. Medical advance was stymied because of traditions that forbade or discouraged dissections and artistic representations of the human body. Spencer does credit Islam with causing the Renaissance and the discovery of the New World — but only indirectly. The conquest of Constantinople caused Europeans (like Columbus) to seek new trade routes to the East and hastened the flight of Greek intellectuals to Western Europe.

A final "Myth" Spencer endeavors to explode is the legacy of the Crusades. While not gainsaying Christian excesses and brutality, the story, he asserts, is far from one-sided. It is just that, consistent with today's victimology leitmotif, only one side gets told anymore.

The comprehensive narrative, Spencer insists, stretches back for 450 years before the supposed eleventh century start of the Crusades — back to the conquest of Jerusalem in 638. "The sword spread Islam" and ultimately repressed the formerly predominant non-Muslim populations that are tiny minorities in what are now Islamic countries. The Crusades, Spencer relates, were largely defensive struggles to protect threatened Christians. He does not dispute that the political agenda of recapturing what had been eastern Christendom loomed large, but he does contend that the legends of forced conversions, insatiable looting, and mindless atrocities are largely overblown.

This is not a book for the feint of heart. Nonetheless, it is well done and extremely important. Much of current American policy hinges on the notions that there is a vibrant moderate Islam and that it must simply be possessed of the intellectual firepower necessary to put the lie to the militants. These are the premises behind the ambitious projects to democratize the Middle East, to establish a Palestinian state that will peacefully coexist with its Israeli neighbor, and to win the vast majority of the world's billion-plus Muslims over to our side in the War on Terror.

They are, however, premises that are more the product of assumption than critical thought. In this highly accessible, well-researched, quick-paced read, Robert Spencer dares to bring that critical thought to the equation. The result is not a promising landscape, but it's a landscape we must understand. You really can't fight an ideological battle without grappling with the ideology.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Pope Patrick---A Book Review

De Rosa, Peter
Pope Patrick
Doubleday & Co.; New York; 1997

This book caused be to laugh out loud---Something I seldom do. It also gave me nightmares AND I am NOT prone to such! You may get others' impressions of this book on line or through major public library catalog systems. However, here is my take on it.

A very low ranking (Cardinal Deacon) member of the College of Cardinals, a “pure Irishman”, is elected Pope as the other Cardinals cannot agree on any candidate. In his one year, Christmas to Christmas, reign he imposes (Or, inflicts) real Christianity on the Church and the World.

There are many who will NOT like this book. Professional Catholics (NOT Catholic professionals), especially the higher clergy and their ultra-right supporters will recoil at the clear showing of every pimple and wart on the Earthly Body of the Church and the cancers within it. American “liberals” will not like it as it exposes the same for our nation in terms of amoral and immoral life styles, while American politicians will flinch at their portrayal and businessmen at their very Unchristian greed and arrogance. Professional Englishmen will hate the painted picture of their leaders and of their horrid mistreatment of the Irish. Europeans will snicker at all of the above---Until their venality and emptiness is clearly exposed by this author using Italians as examples of the “European mindset”.

Most of all, Muslims will hate this work as it so clearly exposes the hatefulness, rigidity and worship-of-death inherent in the “Mullah mentality” through the fictional interview with the head of a fundamentalist Islamic empire and the last chapters of this book, which were the part thereof which gave me unusual nightmares. (I will let you read this entire book, if you dare, to understand that last statement!)

What can be learned from this book?
1.That the Church is in great need of change and redemption; But, it has always
been so as it is a institution begun by The Christ but administered by we, very weak, human beings.
2.That the USA and Western Civilization has lost track of ethics, morality, honesty and the true, God-centered. Reason for our existence.
3.That European culture is no longer the fortress of Western Civilization; But, is so centered on each individual's search for immediate gratification as to make it a cesspool rather than the glorious idea it once was.
4.Every Muslim and Islam itself may, at any time, revert to the most horrid interpretation of Mohammed's teachings and may not be trusted to value death more than humanity, sharia (Islamic law) rather than justice and the worship of an unpredictable, anti-human and cruel Allah rather than a merciful, yet just, God.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Historical Wisdom RE: War

I have often touted the maxim, "Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it!" However, history is not just facts (eg Names, dates, places) but is also the lessons that people have left to us as our legacy---If we will attend to those words.

As to War, I offer the following two examples and lessons.

From Vegetius, a fourth century Roman:
"Qui desiderat pacem, paeparet bellum.
"Let him who desires peace prepare for war."

And, from the USA's own and respected philosopher, John Stuart Mill:
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral
and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. The person
who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his
own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made
and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

The first quote is most certainly in the Roman style: Short, compact and expecting the reader
to understand history and humanity.

The second also relies on the understanding of unwritten concepts, all too neglected in this degenerate age, of "duty", "honor" and "the common good".

The problem with most "liberals" (ie Most journalists, most professors and too many others) is that they do not understand or learn from history and most certainly do not understand humanity and the concepts upon with Mr. Mill based his statement.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Thought, Word & Deed As Prophesy

The three “kings” who came to Bethlehem and worshiped the new born Christ were likely out of Persia (Now a degenerate, Mohammedan, Iran) and heirs to a rich culture which produced the concept of an eternal war between good and evil and, perhaps, more importantly, the true ancestors of the real knighthood of nobly thinking, speaking and acting warriors.

In fact, the motto of those ancient Persian knights was: “The thought well thought; The word well spoken; The deed well done”.

Could it be that those ancients were, in their own way, prophets as to the coming of the Christ? Could it be that the Thought of God, as to our salvation, the Word spoken of by John and the actions of Jesus, as well done as any in the history of the World are the glorious reflections of that precept out of Persia?

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Jurisdiction Of USA, Immigrants & Their Children

Illegal immigrants have avoided the full jurisdiction of the United States by their unauthorized entry into this nation. Those persons who remain here after their visas have expired or are otherwise in violation of such visas are also outside of that jurisdiction.

THEREFORE, the children of such persons as born in the United States after such illegal entry or violations are NOT entitled to the privilege of citizenship in accordance with the Constitution Of The United States.

THEREFORE, any such child may be challenged as to voting in the USA or obtaining a US passport or any other right of citizenship in this nation.

Those persons/parents are, themselves, not eligible for any protections (Except, perhaps, against “cruel and unusual punishment”) under our Constitution and may be detained as long as is necessary and expelled from the USA upon any finding of illegal entry or violation of visa.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Do I Hate Muslims ?

Do I hate Muslims? Heavens, NO! I care for them so much that I would send those of them who commit horrid crimes in the name of Islam out of this world and to the Judgement of God before they commit more such sins against humanity.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Immigrants: Order, Law & Justice

The USA is, as are most basically civilized nations (Please see below) is built as a pyramid, that most stable of structures, of justice, law and order. Justice, being the highest of such values or forces is at the top and is the hardest to reach. Law provides the framework so justice may be sought and, if possible, that high goal achieved. Law is impossible to obtain except on the base and basis of an ordered society.

If we erode the underlying layers of order and law, then justice will collapse and slide into the chaos of injustice. Today's “liberals” are lazy! They wish to achieve a just society without working first to build the stable structure described above. They fail to realize that their “justice” for some is injustice for those who rely on all three building blocks of society. Their “justice”, by offering “open borders” and “amnesty” to illegal immigrants, is an unjust taking away of rights and privileges earned, through hard labor and patience, by legal immigrants and the children of such. It is a typical “something for nothing”, “free lunch”, delusion common to the unthinking, knee-jerk reaction, liberals. [You will find that the most emphatic of opponents to open borders and amnesty are those recent and most excellent immigrants who obtained visas and came here in an orderly manner and in obedience to our laws.]

If anyone wishes real justice for all in this nation, then let immigrants enter here in an orderly manner and in obedience to our democratically passed laws. The USA is a nation based on the contributions of LEGAL immigrants and their descendants.

(The USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand and like nations have some chance of reaching that golden goal of justice as they still, with difficulty, maintain their basic structures of order and law. Saudi Arabia has order and law but no justice; A situation shared where the Islamic codes prevail. Such nations as the Sudan and Mexico have no basis in order or enforceable laws and have criminal gangs ruling in portions of their nations.. The present day Iraq is attempting to establish, at the least order and laws and may, if severe Islamic law is avoided, be able to reach for justice.)