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When is religion indistinguishable from politics? When is politics indistinguishable from religion? An article in the Daily Mail describes an environmentalist who believes that his Green Views are indistinguishable from traditional religious beliefs. Tim Nicholson argued that his dismissal from a government position was tantamount to religious persecution.
If he wins he could be entitled to an unlimited compensation payout.
Mr Nicholson was dismissed from his job as head of sustainability at Grainger, the UK’s biggest residential landlord, which manages 27,000 properties worth £3billion.
He claims he was unfairly made redundant in July 2008, after two years’ service, for criticising senior management … His criticisms included accusations that executives failed to live up to their own green policies to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, including driving ‘the most polluting cars on the road’.
The Equality and Employment (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 were brought in to stop employees being sacked on the grounds of their religion.
But after lobbying by secular groups, philosophical beliefs were also included. To qualify for protection, a philosophical belief must be ‘genuinely held’, be about a ‘weighty and substantial aspect of human life’, and have ‘seriousness, cohesion and importance and be ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society’. …
However, Andrea Williams, of the Christian Legal Centre, condemned the ruling. … ‘Christians are being discriminated against for holding orthodox views that have been protected in law over many centuries … in Britain. We have 45 cases where Christians have found themselves discriminated against.’
These include several highprofile cases involving the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Former registrar Lilian Ladele is challenging the tribunal’s ruling in support of Islington Council’s decision to discipline her for refusing to carry out civil partnerships on the grounds of her Christian beliefs.
What is the difference between a Christian who refuses to carry out an abortion on the basis of a religious belief and an environmentalist who refuses to follow management on the basis of his adherence to Gaia? What is the difference between either of these and a Muslim who believes his fundamental duty is to the Ummah and not the United States of America? And can a multicultural country so constituted survive? Or will it dissolve into Balkanized enclaves? The Christian Science Monitor argues that blasphemy laws now being pushed by the United Nations will effectively shut down free speech. There may come a time when you can’t even raise this subject for discussion.
the Organization of the Islamic Council. Under the leadership of Pakistan, the 57-nation OIC wants to give the religious antidefamation idea legal teeth by making it part of an international convention, or legally binding treaty. Members of the UN Human Rights Council are passionately debating that idea in Geneva this week.
The United States under Barack Obama recently joined the UNHRC, maligned for years as the mouthpiece for countries that are themselves flagrant human rights abusers. A “new” council formed in 2006. President Obama’s hope is that as an engaged member, the US can further reform – and its own interests. This case will test his theory.
Lincoln believed that a country could not remain simultaneously divided and united. The presupposition was that there was an overarching and shared set of values to which everyone owed a primary duty.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
Can there be such a thing as treason in a multicultural society or is that so yesterday? If so, Lincoln was wrong: a house divided against itself can stand. In a heap about an inch high perhaps, but maybe that’s cool. And cool in the end may best describe a house with no walls. Maybe Cole Porter got it right after all. Anything goes.
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I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
I think we can substitute the word “socialist” for “slave” above.
Is Mr. Nicholson admitting that his environmentalism is a religion, and not science?
ricld @ 3
No.
The British government is.
Google: Sudden Jihad Syndrome.
Eye opening.
Cheers
Nobody wants to say it, so I will. This is another case of SJS (Sudden Jihad Syndrome). The first in a while, but remember the shooter at LAX, the Washington snipers, the attack on U.S. troops in Kuwait. This guy attacked U.S. troops preparing to ship out to the Middle East. He is being celebrated tonight by the Ummah.
Here’s a curious development: some news reports are now stating that the shooter is not dead, but in stable condition in the hospital. It will be interesting if this pans out.
The SJS POS is alive, according to Fox.
And can a multicultural country so constituted survive? Or will it dissolve into Balkanized enclaves?
In this era of what might be called the global cafeteria culture (i.e. where there’s such a dizzying array of cultural outlets one can pick and choose from, that the very notion of a cultural mainstream is looking increasingly quaint), even Balkanized enclaves may be thinking too big.
How much time we have before the the trajectory of brown stuff will meet the air circulation device?
Iran tested advanced nuclear warhead design – secret report
The PC cluelessness that appears to have ignored “Major” Hassan’s obvious loyalty and security warning signs reminds me of how openly communist sympathies were ignored in the first years of the cold war.
Outspoken communists like Philby, Burgess, and Maclean, had their transparently compromised backgrounds completely ignored, and were given positions in the most important parts of the intelligence services. (Philby was head of station in Washington when he was exposed, and was on his way to the top of MI6).
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Lincoln was right; he was no doubt familiar with the history of the Byzantines: insecure borders, immigration of people hostile to the culture, internal civil conflicts… sounds erily familiar.
“Another possible explanation for the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire is the permanent settlement of Anatolia by the Seljuks, a Turkish people between the 11th – 13th century… a period of civil war in the late eleventh century enabled the Turks to make huge inroads into Byzantine territory…Although the three competent Komnenian emperors, especially Manuel I Komnenos (r.1143-1180), may have had the power to expel the outnumbered Seljuks, several factors combined to ensure that they never did so… The result was a weakening of the Byzantine defenses in the region, which when combined with insufficient resources and incompetent leadership lead to the complete loss of all the empire’s Asian territory to the Turks by c.1400.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Byzantine_Empire
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/05/the-nakba-may-29-1453.html
At what point does the right to religious freedom impede other unalienable rights?And should there be the limits on religious freedom? What rights should supersede the others when there are conflicts?
Our religious freedom rights were based on the Judeo/Christian religion as a model. When there is a religion like Islam which is not only a religion, but an aggressive political philosophy as well as a conquering military strategy, our constitutional concepts get tripped up if not clearly clarified.
In the past when faced with Mormon polygamy, America was not afraid to clarify which rights took precedence. Now with Islam, too many of our politically correct leaders are afraid to define which rights supersede Sharia. Without clarity and a common belief in the original intent of our shared constitutional rights, our future sure looks like “divided we fall”.
Hasan can probably look forward to being named czar of the Afghanistan pullout.
Twobyfour @ 9 linked to an article claiming the Iranians have developed a two point implosion device. A quick look at Wikipedia indicates that two point implosion devices are used for extremely small nukes, e.g. suitcase nukes. It’s not a technology one would use with a ballistic missile. So let us assume the Iranians have deliberately leaked out that they are actively developing nuclear weapons specifically designed for use by terrorists. It defies my understanding as to why the Iranians would pursue this strategy. Are they actually asking the Israelis to whack them? At the very least, the Israelis would subject the Iranians to economic castration as well as take out their least hardened nuclear weapons sites. I assume the Iranians have devised some sort of Br’er Rabbit/tar-baby strategy. How do the Iranians benefit by having the Israelis whack them?
W: “Lincoln believed that a country could not remain simultaneously divided and united. The presupposition was that there was an overarching and shared set of values to which everyone owed a primary duty.”
Our values are summed up in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution. Like the Cross is to Dracula, these values are to both the Marxists and the Islamists. It’s not that hard to link these to anti-American forces; they both must have arbitrary law – law of the elite, by the elite, for the elite – law which gives the elite (Marxist or Islamist) unalienable rights to the property, liberty and life of the individual.
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/
It was an illuminating moment this afternoon when Shep was interviewing Senator Hutchinson. They both knew the name of the shooter, but were most reluctant to share it with the audience. Microcosm of our elites’ squeamishness with the war?
Unsk, 12: “At what point does the right to religious freedom impede other unalienable rights?And should there be the limits on religious freedom?”
Religious freedom ends when it becomes a threat to the life, liberty or property of the individual; when religion violates our Declaration of Independence.
Neither the totalitarian Marxist or Islamist religions have freedom to operate under our first amendment; they are un-Declarational.
HERE’S THE TEST
1. In 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by:
a. Superman
b. Jay Leno
c. Harry Potter
d. A Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40
2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by :
a. Olga Corbett
b. Sitting Bull
c. Arnold Schwarzenegger
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
3. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by:
a. Lost Norwegians
b. Elvis
c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
d . Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
4. During the 1980′s a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by:
a. John Dillinger
b. The King of Sweden
c. The Boy Scouts
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
5. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by:
a. A pizza delivery boy
b. Pee Wee Herman
c. Geraldo Rivera
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair
by:
a. The Smurfs
b. Davey Jones
c. The Little Mermaid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens , and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by:
a. Captain Kidd
b. Charles Lindberg
c. Mother Teresa
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
8. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:
a. Scooby Doo
b. The Tooth Fairy
c. The Sundance Kid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
9. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:
a. Richard Simmons
b. Grandma Moses
c. Michael Jordan
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
10. In 1998, the US embassiesin Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:
a. Mr. Rogers
b. Hillary Clinton, to distract attention from Wild Bill’s women problems
c. The World Wrestling Federation
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by:
a. Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd
b. The Supreme Court of Florida
c. Mr. Bean
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
12. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against:
a. Enron
b. The Lutheran Church
c. The NFL
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by:
a. Bonnie and Clyde
b. Captain Kangaroo
c. Billy Graham
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
No, I really don’t see a pattern here to justify profiling, do
you Ft. Hood?
Eggplant@14 asks:
How do the Iranians benefit by having the Israelis whack them?
You ask this question about a group of people that as far as I can ascertain has the highest percentage of suicide “warriors” in history? Rhetorical question, right?
Of course that might just coax the 13th imam up out of that well …
The religion of peace strikes again.
The problem is that Anything does not Go. If you are tolerant of the intolerant then there is no reason to believe that the intolerant will be tolerant of you. In Cole Porter’s fantasia the chorus dances with the Navy secure in the knowledge that the military is there to protect them and that even if the Admiral is a bluenose the troops like a good time. I will recklessly hazard a guess that none of that applied to Major Hassan. He was not there to protect the dancing girls of America.
eggplant/14, Kremlin wants $300/bbl oil to break the west and its reserve currency U$D, and Kremlin owns Achmadinejad. Did he not run to Moscow for a full three days during the crisis point of the recent election riots? That wasn’t to feed the Gorky pigeons.
Eggplant/14
Suitcases or tactical nuke projectiles…
Put 6-10 of them on the missile tip, with different target coordinates (not sure they are that far) and you can have a dense localized coverage of a relatively confined area. 5-6 missiles could cover the whole Israel.
re #18, Right Wing Realist.
You da Man!
So can you imagine if the President actually condemned the Islamic shooter as a “hate crime”?
The shooter is alive…. Time to send him pig lard presents…
Eggplant/14; if Israel whacks the Iranian facilities, then the hyper-legalistic facade the Kremlin displays when workable will churn the history of the great regional oil war as “western aggression”. Good enough to turn Europe and once turned, forever turned, in the digital age.
Israel whacking Iran would be a cost/benefit calculation for Kremlin chess players, who don’t get replaced every time an election goes topsy, nor hauled before TV john Kerry or TV patrick Leahy for the public ritual humiliation, but can pick a specialty at age 25 and work it secretly and safely for 50 years.
And let’s not forget Naveed Haq, the guy who shot up the Jewish Community Center here a couple of years ago (and don’t you know it’s completely unrelated to SJS because, as luck would have it, he might be nuts) Thus a second trial began a couple of weeks ago to determine whether or not we can send him to prison with a clean conscience
~ “In the days after he killed one woman and wounded five others at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, Naveed Haq telephoned his mother from jail and proclaimed, “You should be proud of me. I’m a martyr now. I’m going to go to heaven,” according to a recording played Wednesday during his trial.” ~
http://tinyurl.com/y9n299v
I have an IDEA
Spam for the Shooter….
We need to get 100,000 people to send SPAM Cans to the shooter…
Just wait until the NUKES.
Islamist NUKES.
Jihadi NUKES.
NOT GOOD.
@29. Pork Rinds for Allah,
That’s a waste of good survival food though. lol
“Grant me the serenity to ignore the trolls,
the courage to debate with honest opponents,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
The perp was shot by a female police officer. Score one for the West.
31. PA Cat:
“The perp was shot by a female police officer.”
OH snap! Especially considering:
“A co-worker at Walter Reed said Hasan would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers, which became an issue during Christmas season when employees often took group photos. Co-workers would find a solo photo of Hasan and post it on the bulletin board without his permission.”
HA!
Rumors are flying – this AP story (sources speaking anonymously of course) claims the feds were watching Hasan for the past six months and had been seeking a warrant to seize his computer –
~ “At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.” ~
http://tinyurl.com/yeb5tf9
I’m confused. If an officer is under suspicion of enemy sympathies, does the Army just look the other way?
At least he will be tried under the UCMJ, so it shouldn’t take nearly as long to execute.
penetrated by a female. Oy. trouble he has NOW, he tinks!
#18:
My source indicated that Sirhan Sirhan was a Lebanese Christian.
It is believed that his motive was one similar to Oswald, that is according to non-conspiracy theories, that he was mainly wanting to draw attention to himself by being a “big man” and doing the terrible thing he did.
As long as we’re talking conspiracies, today is the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, aka Guy Fawkes Night in the UK.
Guy Fawkes Night (or “bonfire night”), held on 5 November in the United Kingdom and some parts of the Commonwealth, is a commemoration of the plot, during which an effigy of Fawkes is burned, often accompanied by a fireworks display. The word “guy”, meaning “man” or “person”, is derived from his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes
I wonder if Major Hasan shaved his body hair before hunting infidels. Did he leave a video tape? I reckon it’s going to be a real interesting trial.
Western tolerance is based on individual Free Will and a God above all. Whereever those ideas run up against anything else we get war.
In answer to Wretchard’s question, yes an open society can survive against islam. It has to recognize that it is an open society and that it is arrayed against islam and that islam’s goal is the subjugation or destruction of any open society. Any behavior by the open society that does not recognize those facts is self destructive. The problem is the facts are not generally consistent with an open society.
In order to deal with this seeming inconsistency, the open society requires itself to be fortified with what made it strong in the beginning; the intellectual muscle and sinew that enabled it to grow and thrive. We have, in the west, allowed the Gramiscians and the fascists to gnaw at out roots so that we now doubt our bona fides. We must MUST reclaim them. They enable our resistance.
That should be “under suspicion of having enemy sympathies” – what happened to the edit function? (I’m getting one for PA Cat’s comment instead!?!)
#40 marymcl
I think it may have something to do with the timing of successive posts– if several people post in quick succession before the edit function times out for a previous comment, the later posters seem to get redirected to the older post.
herb/39
Fascism as such died at the end of WWII. Nazism not so. We now have mainly Gramsciscuity combined with Tranzism.
Back in the day, and maybe still, there was a program in the nuclear Navy that constantly observed the behavior of all the sailors involved in that part of the fleet. It was designed to keep the creeps out of the scary parts of the system. It may be time to lay that on our islamic ‘brethren’. Particularly those in the armed services.
#40
FWIW, I just got invited to edit twobyfour’s comment at #42.
RFK was shot by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, who was born to a Christian family in Jerusalem and later converted to Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist. Otherwise, very true, RWR.
@43. herb
That would be profiling. See post #18. You’d rather get caught screwing the pooch than profiling.
I wonder whether we as a society kept saying “it’s OK” even when it really wasn’t OK. So a guy like Hasan follows the breadcrumbs without apparent consequence. Political correctness denies him any real negative feedback until one day the breadcrumbs lead him over the edge and society comes at him like Gangbusters. The negative feedback comes all at once all in the shape of the SWAT team.
Even after the Fort Hood incident polite society may still be sort of sending the message “it’s OK” by dancing around the jihad issue. This disincentivizes the Muslims who hate what Hasan did by making them invisible men. Society has built a kind of closet for peaceable Muslims to go an hide in. If any of them wanted to come out and call Hasan an SOB they’d be like little kids looking around them in a haunted wood surrounded by thousands of glowing wolf eyes.
I sometimes wonder whether half the guys who decide to go and become jihadis aren’t carried along three quarters of the way by polite approval and reflexive anti-Americanism until all some imam has to do was pick them up and carry them across the finish line. While it’s true Hasan crossed the line all on his own it may be because he had the guts to put some of the toxic points some people only talk about into action. The things he espoused are old hat. You can get any edgy radical to say them. It was the action that was new.
2X4:
Its late here and I hope your #42 was facetious, but IMHO fascism is alive and well in a host of mid-eastern capitals, Caracas, Buenos Aires and Bogota, as well as certain portions of the District of Columbia. The idea is that the state is the ultimate source of wisdom and good for the polity.
Rock @ 46
yup.
Good grief! I’ll probably have nightmares tonight.
I’m still wondering why the other two perps’ names weren’t released?
This whole story is WHACK.
33. marymcl:
“I’m confused. If an officer is under suspicion of enemy sympathies, does the Army just look the other way?”
Mary, I wonder if the new administration has fundamentally changed the way the military deals with ‘delicate’ issues regarding Islamists. Hmm.
W @ 47
I think that denies the islams their humanity in that we make allowances for their belief. As Ma Richards said in an other context: “He cain’t hep it, he was born that way”. (can’t do the east Texas nasal whang in text) Well he needed retraining.
More broadly, I think you speak of the inevitable result of following the koran. Im sure there are parts that espouse peace, etc., but there are extensive parts that arent very hospitable to not-islam. The history of the movement is not one of a peaceable kingdom. Barnett’s map of conflict between the developed and undeveloped worlds is more the conflict between the dear old islam and the house of war.
I have to get up in the morning.
Bless all in this place.
It seems significant he does not put Muslim on the Officer Record Brief form where it asks for religion. It says No pref. That might indicate an effort at being covert. It will be interesting to see what comes out in the Army Court.
Although, it could just be a simple case of someone being triggered by orders to Iraq…Na.
Listened to Ann Compton, Sherry Preston and other ABC dolts reporting on this. They were astonished he was a.. let’s see it starts with an “m”; A MAJOR…I was screaming at the radio..”What else was he that starts with an “M”, a marmoset, a mucous membrane, a macaroni salad …? What was that word?
How in God’s name if this freak was publicly stating jihadist sympathies was he allowed to counsel returning warriors for PTSD? It would be like Jane Fonda working at the USO. What kind of crap is this?
if he was triggered offsite by a handler, it could have been a handler who wanted to swamp the news, on the eve of the big healthcare (aka “end capitalism”) bill tomorrow, of the fifty thousand tea partiers who showed up on the mall at noon today. If a handler, the handler’s bosses would have this weapon, and there’s a critical battle going on right now. Not saying the DNC would be the handler, saying that there is this thing called converging interests.
One of the things that make the whole mess unpalatable is this:
The local Imam here came out and said that he was afraid of reprisals on Muslims because of this. Holy Koran Smoke! Project much? IMO, the local Imam has a much too inflated opinion of himself and his congregants. Really, who cares? Go Jihad on us and we will gladly settle your biscuits but until then just crawl back in your mosque or hole or whatever.
And I agree. Why the heck had the US Army not seen this one coming? Are we that far down the PC road?
@53. trangbang68
Everything you said! SERIOUSLY!
“He was disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues, according to the source, who worked with him at the time.”
He was trying to turn our returning military men he was counseling to Islam. Isn’t that extra special? One can only guess at what he was telling these traumatized men who had killed or witnessed the killing of his Muslim ‘brothers’.
Ed Driscoll keeps posting updates but I have to get some sleep.
I’ll have to catch up on PJM and this story tomorrow.
18/right wing realist
If there’s a best comment contest next year this gets my vote. Terrific stuff and well done.
Walt Erickson
Ragnar/55; if something happens to the guy before he talks, then i’d say yep we’re that far down the road. Jeez Ruby knocked over Oswald in the Dallas Police Dep’t Headquarters.
No herb, I was not being that facetious…
The term fascism has been misused to such a degree that it almost lost it’s original meaning. One of the transformations that it went through was to be successfully framed as a right wing ideology, by leftist. But that is not true, fascism and nazism were leftist ideologies. They weren’t opposite to socialism/communism on the left-right dimension, they were rather shifted laterally, in respect to each other (somewhat similar to differences between Crips and Bloods). All of them are forms of oppressive statism (almost an oxymoron–statism is always oppressive, it is just a matter of degree in specific incarnations). Once this is clear and widely acknowledged, it may not be so easy to fool young, impressionable souls to buy leftist pablum line hook and sinker.
John Bell Hood, strapped to his horse
His wooden leg askew
Atop a hill, in front of course
Surveyed the line of blue
The heat haze shimmered on the land
The blue line turned to ghosts
And in its place now close at hand
Came screaming Muslim hosts
Their green flags snapping in the breeze
Arms glinting in the sun
Bell’s Texans gave a gentle squeeze
On triggers, one by one
The Muslims staggered then they fell
Bell cried the colors front
And with a roar the rebel yell
Sent every Texas grunt
To racing down the scrub laced hill
Flags snapping in the wind
Determined not to stop until
The Muslim host was pinned
Upon their shining bayonets
And driven from the field
Back to their sand and minarets
Or death if they’d not yield
The shimmered air turned hot and dry
Bell sheathed his bloody sword
A good day’s work he heard men cry
Bell quietly said For’ard
His men slung arms and formed in ranks
Their duty rightly done
Then marched all day with nation’s thanks
Into the setting sun
@47 wretchard
~ “I sometimes wonder whether half the guys who decide to go and become jihadis aren’t carried along three quarters of the way by polite approval and reflexive anti-Americanism until all some imam has to do was pick them up and carry them across the finish line.” ~
I think that’s a very astute assessment. One thing I’ve observed in Muslims I’ve known and worked with is a kind of tension between singlemindedness on the one hand and lack of inner conviction on the other. It’s a hard quality to describe and it’s the polar opposite of everything that, to me at least, is essentially American. (By which I mean the inner certainty we have of our rights as individuals being ‘inalienable’, which is something we just absorb growing up and is in our bones.) My experience has been that Muslims can be irritatingly dogmatic and pushy about their religious identity, but at the same time they don’t seem all that comfortable in their own spiritual skin or anchored to anything like faith as I understand it. There’s something almost robotic about it all. The encounter with the West and its intellectual tradition of doubt (which has tempered and fortified the faith of Christians and Jews IMO) ought to be a liberating experience but when they encounter polite PC-motivated approval of Islamic pathology then what else can they do but turn whatever doubts they have inward upon themselves? I don’t mean this as an excuse for what they do, but I wonder sometimes if these young suicide bombers and SJS shooters aren’t deeply depressed rather than politically or religiously motivated.
walt, that blows my mind –do a serch on [ company aitch ] online in full, confederate infantryman Sam Watkin’s diary of fighting under the commandof John Bell Hood.
(here, in homage to your vivid images, is a snip from Chesterton’s “Lepanto”:)
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,–
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces–four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
DH and I were listening to the radio (KSFO) on the way to the symphony tonight (Dido — and her lament was magnificent, re-aligned my molecules), and when KSFO played the beginning of the tape of the president’s newscast about Fort Hood, we were both amazed. How can a person be so utterly devoid of empathy?
47/RF. It’s a creeping mold afflicting our society. An insidious apathy. I’m hoping PC becomes un-PC soon.
54/Buddy — I’m starting to think like you. That’s good, right?
Buddy — Sam Watkins’ diary played an important part in the documentary The Civil War. I will take your advice and take a look at his diary, Civil War buff that I am. I full remember the first time I saw the Matthew Brady photograph of Hood’s men lying dead in rows alongside a fence near the Dunker Church at Antietam. Searing even now, what must those photos have invoked in 1862 to a populace that never saw the dark side of valor.
On a trip to Spain some years ago I visited the Escorial and saw the wooden cross Don Juan carried on his flagship Real at the battle of Lepanto, in my mind the most crucial battle between civilizations that ever was. Had the west lost the history of Europe would have been much different.
Thank you for the poem. To even be mentioned in the same breath as Chesterton is sacrilege, but I thank you for your kind words.
Walt
That part’s highly confusing. The last reports I heard said the other two were released. I’m assuming that’s because they’re no longer suspects, just people who somehow got caught up in the mess.
So, anything not entirely predictable about this yet? Muslim shooter, lots of warnign signs, MSM reluctant to mention the M-word, CAIR immediately says “don’t blame us”, local Imam does standard “pity the poor Muslims who live in fear of their violent American neighbors” schtick, President Featherweight gives lousy, inapropriate off-prompter remarks. Pretty much according to script.
programmer asked:
“You ask this question about a group of people that as far as I can ascertain has the highest percentage of suicide “warriors” in history? Rhetorical question, right?”
No, not rhetorical. The mullahs use suicide “warriors” as pawns towards their political agendas. The mullahs themselves are cynically rational and anything but suicidal.
twobyfour said:
“Suitcases or tactical nuke projectiles…
Put 6-10 of them on the missile tip, with different target coordinates (not sure they are that far) and you can have a dense localized coverage of a relatively confined area.”
That would be an inefficient use of plutonium. It would make more sense to use thermonuclear weapons.
buddy larsen said:
“Kremlin wants $300/bbl oil to break the west and its reserve currency U$D, and Kremlin owns Achmadinejad. Did he not run to Moscow for a full three days during the crisis point of the recent election riots?”
The Russians may own Achmynutjob and are certainly pursuing their own selfish agenda. However Achmynutjob’s political power flows from the mullahs. If the mullahs thought Achmynutjob was pursuing a policy of national suicide at the bequest of the Russians then the mullahs would surely remove him from power.
There must be a deeper strategy here with regard to baiting Israel with nuclear terrorism but I have no clue what it is.
Syl/63; no ma’m, i think that’s not good –it’s HELL in here
walt/64; you don’t have his time-burnished lustre but you DO handle the language in the ‘same breath’ –
jmh/65; ‘Pretty much according to script’ and as the scripts pile up they get heavier and heavier –
eggplant/66; but Iran exports oil too –so there’s a big concurrance. and as far as commiting national suicide –the mullahs are a state within a state (as all dictatorships with secret or ideological police, as you know). The proximate threat isn’t Israel, it’s their own bodyguard standing outside the office with that suddenly strange look on his face. War with Israel moves that proximate threat much farther away from the mullah’s personal selves. –that’s imho o course –rank it is, too –
!
The thing about incidents like this is not that it happened but that it happened where it couldn’t be ignored. It didn’t occur in some far away battlefield; or to Third World citizens in a muddy no-account village. It didn’t happen in the Middle East, because it’s easy to say people are crazy there. The problem is that it occured in the USA. It’s a small incident “on the bloody borders of Islam” — a border which runs right through Islam itself. Between Sunni and Shia; Sunni and Sunni, Shia and Shia. The events in Fort Hood are a drop in the regular toll of life in places like Kashmir, Afghanistan or even Iran.
The real damage that this incident caused was to the fiction that these things don’t exist. Because despite the steady toll in far away places, nobody really believes a monster is real until he comes and sits down at your child’s birthday party and starts eating your daughter. Then it becomes real. And then the first reaction is isn’t surprise at the monster, who after all is only doing what monsters do. It’s one of anger at those who we’ve trusted; who’ve reassured us that the monster doesn’t exist. Who in fact hid away all of its tracks. What were they doing? On whose side are they on?
The enemy can always be faced. It’s your friends you’ve got to watch out for. So here’s the question: does Hollywood do a movie on it? Does it become part of the national debate? Is it a discussable subject after all? Or do we just walk away with the idea that it couldn’t have happened because we’ve been told it’s impossible, or worse, that it’s all our fault?
What political correctness does is debase the coin of discourse. It drives all honest argument underground. We begin to assume that all discussions are conducted in code. Political correctness doesn’t make us trust each other; it creates presumption that lying is universal.
communication is an energy field –a weather front –a storm front –and if it’s mixed real and artificial, then as a body it will be ALL artificial. plus the real is bound by nature, the artificial is unbounded, and lacking physical substance in either case, artificial can always make itself bigger than real, no matter how big real is. that’s why the lie made it into the Ten Commandments, for god’s sake.
anyho, wretchard –re your book –this is in today’s WSJ-
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703740004574513463106012106.html
How to Write a Great Novel
From writing in the bathroom (Junot Díaz) to dressing in character (Nicholson Baker), 11 top authors share their methods for getting the story on the page
(nite all–alPATTERICO ON the emerging media narrative on Fort Hood.
editor won’t hold still for edits –sorry–here:
http://patterico.com/2009/11/05/coverage-of-the-fort-hood-shooting-hot-air-vs-the-l-a-times/
(re w’s #68)
Buddy, if you are still up: I just got home.
Update me on things please.
Are you positive only one shooter? No sign of help, directly or otherwise? Passing strange if so.
Report Pvt Larsen, report.
YOU YANKS ARE ALL INSANE
Its called you “REAP WHAT YOU SOWE”
What are you doing in IRAQ and AFghanistan, why has Obama sent BLACK WATER/Xe into Pakistan as they have been caught red handed in Rawalpindi carrying explosives.
Also why are all the AMERICANS jumping up and down because 12 of there own have died.
You all jumped up and down on 9/11? I am not saying it was right on both occasions what I am saying is, you only BLAME, BITCH and MOAN when its your own and its a bloody FACT.
Lets now look at at what the US Marines have been doing in Iraq, KILLING INDESCRIMINATEY, MURDERING and them US Marines RAPED school children and they got caught.
And all you RED KNECKS are just swearing and cursing MOSLEMS, I give RESPECT to muslims, they haven’t gone labelling all YANKS as Terrorists who incidently have , INVADED, OCCUPIED, RAPED , and MURDERED a whole load of civillians which is “THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH SO HELP ME GOD”
Also worth mentioning, the CIA are in the SHIT in Italy and have been given Jail sentences for RENDITION, you yanks are really bloody DEMOCRATIC.
Stop killing Moslems around the world and they won’t KILL YOU.
#16 Konyok
I was pleased that Shepard Smith and Senator Hutchison were careful about releasing the name of the shooter.
It was obvious that they were trying to verify the information they had. Of all the facts to get wrong….
PC had nothing to do with it.
AD
ps.. just saw the Doctor’s post above..
LOL Here we Go Again !!!
NOW HEAR THIS! TROLL ABATEMENT PROCEDURES SHOULD NOW BE IMPLEMENTED. MOST ESPECIALLY CONCERNING COMMENT NUMBER SEVENTY TWO.
FIRST EXAMPLE (HERE) OF THE INEVITABLE JUSTIFICATION FOR HOOD ATTACK. MONITOR ALL THREADS FOR SIMILAR BUT SHOULD NOT, REPEAT NOT, REPLY. IMPORTANT WE SEE HOW FREQUENTLY THE LINE IS REPEATED BUT WITHOUT ENCOURAGEMENT FROM US.
CONTINUE NORMAL DISCUSSION LIKE POTENTIAL DISRUPTORS DO NOT EXIST. CAM ON NHIEU LAM.
Get ready for the legacy media to go full-bore on “discrimination and hate crimes against Muslims” makes them do terrible things.
I worked at Virginia Tech (yeah, it’s where this perp graduated from — “multicultural massacres are us”) during the on-campus massacre a few years ago. In the days following the student murders, I listened to faculty admonishing everyone how we had to be careful not to entertain anti-Asian feelings because the shooter was Korean. It was all topped off by a colleague loosing his composure and yelling at me that George Bush was more evil than the VT shooter. Nothing the Left says astonishes me anymore.
CONTINUE NORMAL DISCUSSION LIKE POTENTIAL DISRUPTORS DO NOT EXIST.
Like silent flatulence at a Vivaldi concert.
Salt Lick you are getting the idea!
Fellows, I just gotta get some sleep. ‘Twas a strenuous PM shift today.
Keep up the good work everybody.
Dave@77
Morning shift just settling in on the East Coast. Go get some zzzz’s.
Consider, if this scenario as we now know it was a published work of fiction. How would this be reviewed (if at all, I know…) on the pages of the NYT Book Review? Near-psychotic right-wing fantasy and speculation? Of a piece with the ‘Left Behind’ series? No doubt.
I look forward to Wretchard’s analysis of the tortured way that the media ignores the elephant in the room regarding these tragic events. I also wonder how well our President slept last night. I wonder if his last thought before slipping into dreamland was of healthcare.
No doubt.
Army Major Played Role in Presidential Transition
Incredibly, it appears that Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan, the alleged shooter in the massacre that resulted in at least 12 dead and 31 wounded at Fort Hood today, served on the Homeland Security Policy Institute’s presidential transition task force between April 2008 and January 2009 when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the nation’s 44th president.
ht – Bob
My most simple statement to the World:
Beliefs Matter.
Your mission is to work out which beliefs are right.
To do that, you will need to discriminate.
Discrimination is the highest attribute of humanity.
To be human, you must discriminate.
If rational, great. If probabalistic, even better, as this is a more elevated form of discrimination. Thirdly, there is exepectation, where the consequences are factored in. Finally, there is utility theory – so what?
So what, multiculturism?
ADE
Come on, Americans.
A class action is called for here.
ADE
More bad news. Zelaya: US brokered pact for Honduras fails
The Chaveztista thug refused to submit his list of names for the unity cabinet and ran out the clock. Now his enablers will refuse to recognize the November 29th elections. He has been a uniter not a divider in that it appears that a broad spectrum from the right to the left within Honduras are lining up together in opposition to him and in defense of legality.
Murder of infidels in built into Islam’s canon. It is as much a part of Islam as rolled oats in granola.
Islam is the greatest institutionalized evil inflicted upon humankind since the beginning of history. 20th century Communism killed faster because of better technology but even Stalin and Mao would have to admit they were acting out of bounds.
Not every person who professes Islam is a murderer in waiting. I suspect that most know very little about how Muhammad actually got his “religion” started. For those who do and still profess Islam – watch out.
We must make sure Major Hasan receives an H1N1 shot.
“Or do we just walk away with the idea that it couldn’t have happened because we’ve been told it’s impossible, or worse, that it’s all our fault?”
Bingo, Richard. The Left wants to paralyze us into inaction, and they do so by constantly harping that whatever provocation has occurred, it’s never bad enough to make violence an acceptable response. Remember Dukakis’ refusal to justify violent action in the hypothetical question about what should happen to someone who raped and murdered his wife. The Left are true physical cowards who would roll over for any actual threat of any sort. They willfully refuse to “see” the existence of any such threats because to actually acknowledge that existence would be to accept the fact that something needs to be done to protect society from them.
They’re too afraid to do anything in response to the world’s bullies, and they don’t want anyone else to respond because then they would be shown up as the cravens they are. The lefties will be bitchy, rude, insulting, demeaning and dismissive, right up to the point where they’re going to get physically hurt. Then they back down because they have no courage in their convictions. All they want is to use something that appears to work as a means of preventing someone else from addressing the problem.
It’s disgusting–as are the members of the Left–but it’s their primary tactic. Become aware of it and you’ll be amazed at how often they resort to it.
I wonder if anyone has data on how many avowed, open, virulent Nazis we had in the U.S military in WWII?
I recall hearing that a security guard managed to get some of the Nazis on trial after the war some drugs with which to suicide, but that is about it as far as I know.
Also, if this guy was as vocal in his beliefs as has been reported, why did the “separation of church and state” people not protect us in this case?
Dear Dr Asshole..
you stated: Stop killing Moslems around the world and they won’t KILL YOU.
Do you recall that in 1783 Moslems ATTACKED us and declared us to be dhimmis?
Do you recall that it was moslems that caused America to form a navy?
Do you not remember the Philadelphia or the Betsey?
If moslems would stop murdering around the globe we would not have to fight you…
Remember those peaceful moslems of the ottoman empire?
do you remember how many Armenians they murdered?
Dr Asshole…
Maybe we need to kill your Black Rock?
Dang you’d think as autumn sets in there wouldn’t still be flies buzzing around but I see one still is. You think he’d be happy hovering around that open two holer known as the Middle East. I guess not.
The US Military has been a volunteer force since 1973. When you are enlisted you swear an oath of office. It precludes any and all commitments (….I swear to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies both foreign and domestic..)
I remember a couple of instances of personnel in the regulars and the Guard whining about being deployed to the sandbox, and getting kicked out. You can’t tolerate oath breakers or those who say they will break their oath. It has become evident that Muslims have a problem with keeping oaths of any type.
When an officer especially, starts whining about being deployed it is time to kick his ass out.
Of course the Congress is full of oath breakers that keep getting re-elected.
Seems the British Labor Party was pretty much run by the soviets for 30 years. According to the UK Mail Online.
Just how deep the tentacles of communism reached into the heart of British government has now been revealed with the emergence of an extraordinary diary by Anatoly Chernyaev, the Soviet Union’s contact man with the West at the icy height of the Cold War.
Meticulously detailed and written by hand on lined notepaper, the diary has come to light in the U.S. National Security Archive.
Eggplant said: “It defies my understanding as to why the Iranians would pursue this strategy. Are they actually asking the Israelis to whack them?”
Except what if it wasn’t Iran who leaked this intel, but someone else? Not CIA or Shin Bet, whose governments will do anything to avoid another war, only exposing them to further, possibly crippling, liabilities.
What if the service that leaked it is… the SVR? After all, it wouldn’t take much more armed conflict to divert our assets well, well away from CONUS…
We love you PRfA, but remember – fire discipline, please. Focus. Thanks, dude.
D/71; sorry, sir –sandman had come got me sir. won’t happen again SIR!
M/92; nicely said, agree all sentiments & points –
92
OK
Dr. Jihad: “Stop killing Moslems around the world and they won’t KILL YOU.”
Then I suppose we should just ignore what happened at the World Trade Center in 1993 and on September 11, 2001. Those two events (the actual historical record) break your rule; in fact those two events establish a different rule which invalidates your rule:
Stop killing non-Muslims around the world and we won’t kill you.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5435311044755464205&hl=en#
I will appologise to no one for this comment, not to some of the “BC regulars”, and particularly not to Dr. Jihad – choke on it – ban me. I am a partisan of the American Revolution – an eternal struggle “against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Thomas Jefferson
The difference between Christianity and Islams is one of tyranny and liberty. The Christian abstention from doing things is his liberty; to force him to act is slavery. The Muslim’s cause is tyranny; to force the infidels to live under the Ummah’s law.
The Environmentalist is a different case. He believes in a “positive right” to a particular place of employment. He want’s the Christian’s right to abstain from actions (pollution) but also force his employers to pay him a salary (without performing the work they have asked him to do) and to force the management to comply with his will. This seems unreasonable, but consider how you would react if the management had demanded sexual favors from the employee as part of their job. Clearly there are some things society has ruled out of bounds.
The problem with the Environmentalist though is that he is trying to use one legal system to create a legal right that the polity would not agree with. He’s free to create any religious beliefs he wants, but he shouldn’t be free to make those beliefs binding law on others.
No. The very idea behind the separation of Church and State is the realization by our Founders that no Church can be allowed to make law without creating a religious war. The only way to make law (which is enforced by lethal force requiring the citizen comply) can be through the democratic process. The evil is radical Islam and Environmentalism is that they seek to make an end run around the democratic process.
Yeah, as Glenn Reynolds says “Nice incentive system you’ve there.”
Proof positive of what a POS the current CiC is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fNN_ETf50o
Takes him 2 minutes to get around to announcing that twelve soldiers under his command have been murdered on a stateside Army base. More important to give himself a pat on the back and hold a campaign-style event giving shout-outs to supporters rather than come to the podium and act like the President to deliver sober news to the nation of a tragic turn of events that cost the lives of United States servicemen. Unfreaking believable.
SR/95: http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/87952/
Eggplant asks, How do the Iranians benefit by having the Israelis whack them?
As I see it, the Iranians do not think that Israel can do it, not physically, not economically, not politically. The effort would kill Israel. They assume Israel will not or can not launch an unprovoked nuclear attack against Iran.
Do you think that is wrong?
So, Iran is 100% free to build nuclear weapons in the plain light of day, and as soon as they are ready, maybe three or four enhanced fission devices, use them on Israel. Who is going to *avenge* them? Nobody.
It’s quite simple, really.
The only preventer is the MAD question of whether Iran could survive what might be an Israeli *second* strike, after the Iranian nuclear first strike.
Have a nice day.
68) wretchard -
“but that it happened where it couldn’t be ignored.”
Wait a couple of weeks.
VDH has a good column on this:
http://tinyurl.com/yktp8u3
Most Americans just want to be left alone to go about their day to day activities. Being Americans, however, when they see something that can be improved, they improve it,… and then try to make a profit on that improvement. This leads to countless inventions and innovations that improve daily life for everyone in the world because of American ingenuity and capitalism. And because of market forces, no one is forced to buy American products or goods. If it is a good product or idea, it prospers. If not, it gradually disappears from view. Freedom of choice is good. However, there seems to be large numbers of idealogues, world wide, who do not want others to make the choice of dealing with American goods and/or ideas. They will kill and destroy in an attempt to prevent this exercise in free market of goods and ideas. Then, they, and their enablers, have the temerity to blame Americans for forcing them to do evil in order to save everyone from …. freedom of choice?
Jesus weeps!
But does no one notice a peculiar thing from yesterday?
According to Major Garret (FNC), Ft. Hood massacre occured at 1:30 pm, but Mr. Obama was not informed (or was not aware of it) until 5:30-ish.
What was so important CinC could not be reached during the four hour period? I know he was trying to avoid the demonstration on Capitol steps (he delayed visiting Capitol for one day), but a whole 4 hr there was no Commander-in-Chief? Is that believable, or FNC got it wrong?
Part of the problem is that if anyone in the Army had connected the dots and decided that Hasan should be discharged for the good of the service, groups like ACLU and CAIR and probably a bunch of pro bono lawyers would have jumped in and sued the Army’s ass off… and likely would have won in court. For all we know, someone DID connect the dots but the Army decided it was a fight they couldn’t win.
This is part of the fundamental unseriousness that has gripped the liberal left and as it has grown, increasingly the general society. The 1990s fight about women in combat was part of this—other than the Pentagon, no one in the political or civilian sphere seemed to care a bit about the combat efficiency of the armed forces, it was all about “rights” in an organization that was all volunteers, no one forced into it against their will.
We now see this unseriousness everywhere—global warming activists who want to destroy teh economy for no good (i.e., proven or even likely) reason, ditto health care “reform”, and a zillion other issues, big and small.
There are plenty of people on the right who do this, too, tho the left has the most egregious cases. And much of it is bipartisan or across the whole spectrum: using ineffective words to “send a message” which message is clearly that words are all that will be used, case in point.
Truly the children have taken over the school, the lunatics are running the asylum.
We simply have lost teh capacity to deal with reality, esp unpleasant reality. Maybe teh post-Cold War era should be called “The Age of Fantasy”?
I would like to think at some point the pendulum swings back, but I’m wondering if it will, or atleast if it will in time to let us save ourselves as a nation and society.
Ever notice how liberal ideology and Islamic ideology often cover for each other and seek the same ends?
At the root of the poltical correctness which everywhere squashes any mention of Arab names, or any mention of Islamic extremism, or Islamic terrorism (ie., see the recent Larry King interview where Dr. Phil, and Shoshana lambaste a military officer for suggesting this Ft. Hood crime may be the result of Islamic ideology: http://www.breitbart.tv/veteran-on-ft-hood-need-to-take-a-giant-step-back-from-all-the-psychobabble/comment-page-1/#comment-3400071 seems to be an alliance between the two.
A fine example would be the literal alliance between Venezuela (Marxist/leftist dictator) and Iran (Islamic tyranny). Both camps share similar disdain for Israel, Jews, Christianity, capitalism, the West…etc., and both seem to have similar aims for government.
Q: Why does our own administration pussyfoot and pander to Iran, while making quick and strong action against Honduras for expelling a leftist who would-be dictator? Why does our own administration press against Israel, siding with Islamist sympathy and rationale? What is the reason behind the hush hush, when it comes to identifying Islam as the root cause of violence in our own land (see Larry King link above and post #18)?
Islam and the Left, an unholy alliance!
Marty, 103: “groups like ACLU and CAIR and probably a bunch of pro bono lawyers would have jumped in and sued the Army’s ass off… and likely would have won in court.”
This is what happens when elitists within a society (Supreme Court) place secular law (often arbitrary elitist law – not law from “We the People”, i.e.: the majority) above sacred human rights. Our God-given rights to life, liberty and private property trump any law – let me say that again – any law – which destroys those sacred individual rights. The Declaration of Independence must assert it’s self over all perversions of the Constitution which would destroy our sacred individual rights.
“Law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” Thomas Jefferson
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln
The question is: what happens next? Considering that many of the powers that be are concerned that this incident will be socially “divisive,” I
predict, assuming the gunman survives:
1. He will never face a court martial.
2. That won’t happen because it will be “conceded” that he is criminally insane. The government will make and few and feeble efforts to contest or verify such claims.
3. He will be institutionalized in a mental hospital.
4. A few years later (certainly after November, 2012) it will quietly be decided that he is now “cured,” and he will be released.
5. He will relocate to another country.
I hope I’m wrong.
Incidents like this and the Media’s refusal (Shep Smith on Fox refused on the air to name the man or his religion out of “fear of offending someone” in his words) to say clearly this was ANOTHER case of Muslim Jihad by “assimilated Muslim” creates a “British National Party.”
The BNP exists in Britain BECAUSE of Multiculturalism. And PC. Both being massive lies about the reality of people, and both demonstrably false.
Who stands for the Native Majority? No one save folks like the BNP.
I am reading Grant’s Memoirs. In it he defends his brief membership in the American Party prior to the Civil War. Saying that the native majority deserves preferential treatment to those abroad, and that limits to immigration should be enacted. Though he cites his opposition to secret oaths and anti-Catholic feeling as reasons for his quick break from the Party.
This from one of the most mild, “un-political” Presidents of the 19th Century.
What this incident, others like it, and the massive lies by the Media about how “peaceful” Muslims are, how it does not represent the majority of Muslims, and the load of pap predictably to come from the Muslim-raised President in defense of Islam is our own version of the BNP.
It will not come slowly, either, but all at once, like a thunderstorm turning into a tornado on the prairie. Likely in response to some massive atrocity killing millions of Americans (likely nuclear) carried out by Muslims, and excused and groveled to by a Media and a President who reflexively defend PC rather than the people.
Survival can prompt many ugly things. Lincoln to ensure the nation survived abolished Habeus Corpus and interned those intent on treason. Things Grant heartily approved of. It is early going yet in his memoirs, but the amount of Confederate support in Southern Illinois and Ohio, not to mention Kentucky and Missouri, and the armed incursions there by Confederate forces early in the war astonished me.
I think we are headed for our own Civil War, between a PC/Multicultural bound elite that prefers defeat and surrender to giving them up (as they are the keys to their holding power) and the people determined not to be slaughtered or enslaved and willing to fight if ANYONE would lead them.
And their leader will not be IMHO a US Grant or Lincoln. Rahter, our own version of Nick Griffin. Because that is all that is left.
O/T, with permission requested, from the last thread.
SR,
I applaud your efforts to make trolling into a didactic exercise, however when it uses almost half of a thread, well the people begin to go to their Blackberry’s or otherwise change their focus.
Lastly I would not only repeat what I stated about the coherency but return didactic thrust with didactic parry.
“Marxism is a philosophical farrago”.
H.B. Acton, “ The Illusion of the Epoch: Marxism-Leninism as a Philosophical Creed”
http://tinyurl.com/yjweltw
Many, many other examples exist on critiques of Marxism.
@106. Tcobb: The question is: what happens next?
Answer: Send him to Gitmo to join his brothers down there.
And their leader will not be IMHO a US Grant or Lincoln. Rahter, our own version of Nick Griffin. Because that is all that is left.
All democratic struggles, whether in secular society or in a religious context, are between the region +/- 2 sigma from the mean and the tails. In other words, it’s a battle that the ordinary Joe — or Mehmet as the case may be — must wage to preserve daily life against the brilliant kooks on the right hand tail of the distribution and the moron kooks on the left hand tail. It’s between the people who are content to wait for Jesus — or the 13th imam — and those who for reasons of their own, think they are the Messiah — or Mahdi — himself.
One of the reasons political correctness is so damaging is that it shuts everybody up. It creates inaction, and therefore prevents the implementation of small, relatively painless corrections until a huge head of steam is built up; like a boiler at 2,000 psi, just waiting to blow. It constipates every politician; turns public discourse into codespeak, creates a climate of suspicion, enables fruitcakes and in general turns the whole friggin political arena into a funny farm.
Then you get your Nick Griffin, if we’re lucky, because Griffin doesn’t seem any too talented. If we’re unlucky we’ll get a handsome, smooth talking, spellbinding visionary who will build a new information superhighway, restore prosperity and create an invincible army. People used to ask: how could the German people be so stupid as to elect Adolf Hitler? Easy. He emerged from the bitter street battles with the Left, from the humiliation of what was once the strongest country in central Europe.
Both the extreme left and right are creatures of crisis. What may be different about America is three things: a federal structure in a vast country; a strong grassroots tradition and the 2nd Amendment. Blackshirts are going to have a harder time breaking windows everywhere except in the “gun free” zones. Each for its own reasons wants a showdown. Most people, they just want to sleep in a little longer on Saturday and maybe have a barbecue in the backyard. What I really dislike about the powertrip guys is they won’t even leave a bitty guy alone. Now that is low-down.
NBC Chicago’s Robert George has an article titled “Obama’s Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting” in which he says:
Asking who should have advised Barack Obama to appear sympathetic and measured is asking the wrong question. The right question is why didn’t it occur naturally to Barack Obama to act in the right way? It is moments like this which measure a President because it catches him off guard and sheds light on his true unscripted self. A crisis is almost by definition an unexpected moment, when a person has to make snap decisions with only brief consultation with advisers, if any are available. We must all step up to the plate in our lives. The uniform, demeanor and facial expression helps set the stage. But in the end it’s whether you hit the ball or not that matters.
@106 TCobb
I agree – horrible and reprehensible as his actions were, once he gets lawyered up the insanity defense comes out and when you put that together with the culture of denial we live in, it’s practically a no-brainer. Clearly the armed forces aren’t immune to PC idiocy, either, and that predates this administration. I don’t like to dump on Bush but he really caved in to politics and set the tone with that ‘religion of peace’ nonsense right on the heels of 9/11.
wretchard hit on something when he mused about the West’s enabling environment that coddles these guys toward the point of no return. Instead of challenging Islam, we apologize for things we haven’t even done and we turn a blind eye to what Islam encourages its adherents to do, no matter how awful. And everything in the Muslims’ religion and upbringing assures them all this is both righteous and inevitable.
I’ve known hundreds of Muslims as coworkers and patients and for the most part they seem like ordinary decent people. But many of them, especially the ones who resist assimilation (and in my admittedly limited experience there are many more of the latter – and in fact most, no matter how superficially westernized, seem to resist to some degree) have a quality about them that seems as alien as if they’d come from Mars and I’m convinced that Islam itself is at the heart of it. I tried to describe it @61 above – it’s both shallow and intense and it’s inimical to freedom. So when a Muslim gets caught, so to speak, between Islamic values and Western ones and resolves the inner tension by killing a bunch of people, the idea of “not guilty by reason of mental defect or insanity” fits like a glove because at some fundamental level, that’s what pure Islam amounts to and it’s practically impossible to tell the difference.
Wretchard – the appropriate response didn’t occur to Obama because he’s not “one of us” – I’m not talking about his birth certificate, just the fact he didn’t grow up here. In that sense he’s truly not American
I’m usually just a reader of this site and rarely post. I do want to add re: the Fort Hood massacre that this is not the first time SJS has manifested itself with the U.S. Army. I seem to recall that a soldier who was a recent convert to the “religion of peace” murdered several of his officers with a grenade prior to the last Iraq invasion. I believe it was an airborne unit- don’t know what happened to him. Has anyone noticed if the media has mentioned this in relation to Fort Hood? I won’t hold my breath…
Habu, 108,
Thanks for the reference on Marxism. I plan on reading it from start to finish.
Marxism is tantamount to a death-oriented, individual-destroying religion; the Soviet dissidents were in a position to know best.
“The religious aspects of socialism may explain the extraordinary attraction of socialist doctrines and their capacity to inflame individuals and to inspire popular movements. It is precisely these aspects of socialism which cannot be explained when socialism is regarded as a political or economic category. Socialism’s pretensions to be a universal world view comprising and explaining everything also make it akin to religion. A characteristic of religion is socialism’s view of history not as a chaotic phenomenon but as an entity that has a goal, a meaning and a justification. In other words, both socialism and religion view history teleologically. Bulgakov draws our attention to numerous and far-reaching analogies between socialism and Judaic apocalyptics and eschatology. Finally, socialism’s hostility toward traditional religion hardly contradicts this judgment–it may simply be a matter of animosity between rival religions.” Igor Shafarevich
“It is certainly true that socialism is hostile to religion. But is it possible to understand it as a consequence of atheism? Hardly, at least if we understand atheism as it is usually defined: as the loss of religious feeling. It is not clear just how such a negative concept can become the stimulus for an active attitude toward the world or how it can be the source of the infectiousness of socialist doctrines. Furthermore, socialism’s attitude toward religion does not at all resemble the indifferent and skeptical position of someone who has lost interest in religion. The term “atheism” is inappropriate for the description of people in the grip of socialist doctrines. It would be more correct to speak here not of “atheists” but of “God-haters,” not of “atheism” but of “theophobia.” Such, certainly, is the passionately hostile attitude of socialism toward religion. Thus, while socialism is certainly connected with the loss of religious feeling, it can hardly be reduced to it. The place formerly occupied by religion does not remain vacant; a new lodger appeared.” Igor Shafarevich
“We have arrived at this view of socialism in attempting to account for the contradictions evident in the phenomenon at first glance. And now, looking back, we feel confident that our approach indeed accounts for many of socialism’s peculiarities. Understanding socialism as one of the manifestations of the allure of death explains its hostility toward individuality, its desire to destroy those forces which support and strengthen human personality: religion, culture, family, individual property. It is consistent with the tendency to reduce man to the level of a cog in the state mechanism.” Igor Shafarevich
http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
Marty,
Respectfully, I disagree. The military is not bound by normal anti-discrimination laws- i.e. gays in the military. I believe these things happen because too many military officers are thinking politically when they should be thinking stategically.
The Muslim religion should be marginalized until they reform or die out. You cannot be too fussy over “good” or “bad” Muslims otherwise the good ones will not have a reason to encourage the bad ones to stop making their lives hell. Effective immediately we should deny any Muslims assylum, visas, immigration, etc. Make it hurt without actually going to war with Islam directly. Let them fix their own mess, just provide the impetus.
Me, 114: Marxism is tantamount to a death-oriented, individual-destroying religion.
Sounds like another religion we’ve heard of. Man, what natural anti-American allies we have before us – one atheist and one religious – both require arbitrary law – both the enemies of man’s sacred rights to private property, liberty and life – usually in that order.
As I watched 0′s shoutout performance, I could only surmise he was thinking “43 military personnel down, just 2 million more to go.”
W wrote above of Baraq’s speech to the Indians. Somebody else has written about the tendency of the pathological narcissist being unable to empathize. Plain as the nose on your face. This kids getting easier to read than a book. In fact I suspect his actions and words will be a matter of record before he acts or speaks.
Somebody needs to start a clock from the last press availability – not those Potemkin village displays at the beginning of the regime (John has a question about the tax on beer — John?), but a real one. Gibbeles is ok but he aint the real thing.
Marymcl@112,
“horrible and reprehensible as his actions were, once he gets lawyered up the insanity defense comes out and when you put that together with the culture of denial we live in, it’s practically a no-brainer.”
Could such a defense set precedent for declaring all Muslims inherently insane?
Wretchard –
Just to be clear, I don’t think the problem is PC and Multiculturalism, though I agree overall with much of your assessment. Rather, the problem is the elites. The elites don’t promulgate PC and Multiculturalism “just because” but do so because it DOES SHUT UP the average guy who says “this is nonsense.”
PC and Multiculturalism are merely the symptoms of a diseased Elite.
Grant argued that rather than a Republican President in 1856, a “moderate” Democrat could “calm” the South and allow passions to cool, preventing secession and War. Which is why he says he did not support the Republican then. He also blamed extensively Secretary of War Floyd for dispersing the Army and Navy to where it could not concentrate and stop secessionist movements, and was vulnerable to being picked off, also the stores of ammunition and other war material moved to the South from the North during Buchanon’s final months in office. Grant argued that the War was NOT inevitable (any more than the Mexican-American War was inevitable) and that only stupid politicians created both.
On that I disagree — the forces of power being too strong to prevent an open outbreak of War. Which is exactly what I think we will get. Not a super-highway slick utopian builder, but rather a “I am on your side” populist who clearly defines the enemies (and they are indeed, the spoils/cultural/economic enemies) of the White Majority population. He is likely to be an Andrew Jackson, angry, vengeful, punishing, and promoting explicitly spoils politics for the majority because it is indeed a powerful political course. The modern day Cherokee of course will get it in the neck.
Indeed the Cherokee-Muslim parallel is fairly obvious. A group of Cherokees, including White “converts” made war upon both the White settlers and Anglicized Cherokee in “terrorist” mode that would be familiar to the Taliban and AQ. A White majority finally fed up and wanting them “dealt with” by permanent removal. An Eastern elite hostile to the Western populist majority and romanticizing the enemy, with no good solution for everyone just the final counting of the winners and losers.
A constant drip-drip-drip Jihad by Muslims inside America is bound to produce a Jackson who will do what his base wants. Removal of Muslims (the political end game to all of this). Just as the real Jackson removed the Cherokee, only a small portion of whom were active in the Red Stick Wars.
As a side note on PC run amok.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmUxZjljMzcxZWU1YWY4MmM1YzVjYWUxOWYyYTZmOTM=
“”Overseas, you are ready for it. But here, you can’t even defend yourself,” said Jerry Richard, a Fort Hood solider who was nearby when Major Nidal Hasan went on his shooting rampage.
What do the Pentagon bureaucrats have to say about that? If soliders on this base had been allowed to carry the weapons they use overseas, the service weapons they train with, Hasan would have been able to shoot perhaps one or two people, not 41. (As of this writing, 13 are dead, 28 wounded.)
“It’s a tragedy to lose soldiers overseas and even more horrifying when they come under fire at an Army base on U.S. soil,” said President Obama.
Indeed. How ironic: Survive Iraq or Afghanistan then get picked off like a game bird in a bland, institutional “Soldier Readiness Center” in Texas.
Soldiers in other countries are allowed to carry arms on base and even when they are off-duty. In Israel, for instance, soldiers are issued a rifle and then . . . it’s theirs. One sees slender 18-year-old girls, traveling from base, home to the suburbs for Shabbat dinner, still slung with a massive M-16 rifle almost as big as they are. The prevelance of arms doesn’t mean the country experiences the kind of random mass murders seen in the United States. It means that the few times someone has gone crazy with a gun in a city street, he was taken down fast by bystanders.
But not American soldiers. When asked if ordinary soldiers nearby had been carrying their service weapons, Fort Hood spokesman Lt. Gen Robert Cone said piously, “We do not carry weapons. This is our home.” Defense is out-sourced to military police, or even — oh the indignity! — to civilian policemen.”
President Barack Obama said Friday the entire nation is grieving for those slain at Fort Hood, and he urged people not to jump to conclusions while law enforcement officers investigate the shootings.
Oh my, we mustn’t “jump to conclusions.” We are expected, of course, to jump to knee-jerk PC defenses of the shooter.
His aides, meanwhile, worked to make way for Obama to attend a still unscheduled memorial service for those slain at the nation’s largest military post.
I hope he does, and I hope he is resoundingly booed, as he ought to be.
SpeakEasy, you’re on to something here. When you have a standing army during times of peace (a good idea I think) one of the problems you face is the officer corps during the transition from Peace to War. Peacetime promotions are based on not screwing up, meeting the bureaucratic expectations (which include expectations for performance in drills and exercises, but those are theoretical expectations).
In war, you have to shoulder aside good ol’ Maj. General Formfiller in favor of promoting Col. Missionfocus, even though Missionfocus is a little abrasive and maybe even embarrassing to the polite folks back home. Not just for the frontline units, but the whole infrastructure. We never did that. After 9/11, we never transitioned from Peace to War. Didn’t make the mental shift.
Like Mary, I don’t like to dump on George W. Bush either, but I thought (and am even more convinced now) that it was a mistake when he did not seek a DOW in the aftermath of 9/11.
Whiskey: It was Creeks Bubba, Red sticks who wanted to go back to the old ways. The Cherokee were allied with Jackson during that war.
See Moccasin bend Alabama, battle of.
——————————————
The boy is now in the AO of Afstan this don’t make me feel confident in his dealings with the afstanians.
When I was on active duty it occurred to me that most people have the completely wrong idea about military installations. To the public they are teeming with people who are armed to the teeth and hard wired to super secret information systems. The reality is that access to weapons is very tightly controlled. In fact I do remember thinking “If anything happens how long would it take to get a gun?” On a ship there are firearms in the armory with the Gunners Mates and the Supply Officer has a sidearm. In port the Petty Officer of the watch wears a pistol, almost certainly unloaded. As far as access to information goes, most people are chained to their jobs and only learn what is happening after everyone else in the world. During Desert I in 1993 we watched CNN at the Naval Intel Center Suitland MD to find out if any Iraqi missiles had landed.
whiskey,
Regarding Sam Grant, “one of the most mild, “un-political” Presidents” seems a fair evaluation. What I remember from his memoirs was the lyrical beauty of his description of Mexico and his principled opposition to the Mexican war. Last year the NY Historical Society had a wonderful exhibition on Grant and Lee that included their student artwork from West Point.
We may avoid being eaten by demagogues. The next Sam Grant or Abe Lincoln, or to be fair to the Democrats Harry Truman or Jack Kennedy, possessed of both partisan zeal and love of country, awareness of larger threats in the world and respect for the individual citizen, a capacity to act and faith in the Constitution, may be with us in the Club.
wretchard,
how could the German people be so stupid as to elect Adolf Hitler?
One consequence of the coarsening of public discourse engaged in by extremists is that it lowers expectations. Everyone who fell under Hitler’s spell stated that the first thing that struck them was how mild mannered and reasonable he was. By screaming that all conservatives beginning with the entertainer Rush Limbaugh are really knuckle dragging monsters with blood dripping from their teeth they leave the door open for a real revolutionary to slip by. They expended enough energy in their panic to demonize Sarah Palin and can fight off the efforts of a Huckabee to slip in conservatism under the cover of populism and religion, if only because of his odd name. The risk is that someone who is really extreme and not intending to defend individual liberties will use the formula, be female or religious or quasi socialist populist, to gather support. Mussolini started on the “Left” and changed his allies but not his goals. The threat to democracy may come from someone who starts on the Left and then gathers support for a populist nationalist crusade, uniting poor whites and blacks against “the other.” Fortunately John Edwards imploded but the next smooth talking wannabe demagogue is out there.
#60 Walt
Bloody well done. If our country is to be saved, we will need the strength of the South. Not in the service of slavery, as the Liberals would claim; but rather in service to the Republic. I am reminded of former Confederate Cavalry General Joseph Wheeler who commanded US forces at Las Guasimas, San Juan Hill, the siege of Santiago, and later in the Phillipines.
#62 Buddy Larson
aptly quoted. It is telling that the three times that the West has defeated the tide of Islam, it has been on our own territory responding to their aggression. And each time, it has been the “establishment” of their day who would have yielded rather than fight.
At Poitiers, Charles Martel over-rode his weak king, and made a stand. At Lepanto, the leaders of Europe turned their backs to the coming storm; except for Don John. [see the other verses, especially the first] At Vienna, if Jan Sobieski of Poland had not come to their aid when all of Europe had abandoned them, Europe would have fallen.
The tide is in full flow against us. Our leaders would have us yield; in a vain attempt to preserve their own positions and wealth. Our back is to the wall on multiple fronts. Where is our “Hammer”, our Don John, our “Lion of Lechistan”? If the banner is raised, people will follow. The leaders in Europe and in America would destroy all banners.
#66 Eggplant
Agreed about the inefficient use of plutonium you mentioned. If they are going for SADM’s, there is no indication beyond belief in unicorns that they are all bound for Israel. Iran has primarily used proxies in its attacks against the West. Buraq’s grovelling notwithstanding, they have micturated all over us at every opportunity. There is neither love nor respect there. Dealing realistically with capabilities, not projections of their intent, and noting that we cannot keep shiploads of drugs from crossing our borders at will, let along an oversized suitcase; we are as likely a target as Israel. With this administration in power, we will take multiple hits and not retaliate if they can prevent retaliation. Eventually, they will not be able to prevent it. Quite a while ago, I concluded that the “Three Conjectures” will inevitably come into play and there is nothing much that we can do to prevent it.
#86 RWE
It has been pretty much accepted that Goering’s poison capsule was brought in by a Pvt. named Herbert Lee Stivers on the guard force who was set up in a ‘honey pot’ trap by a German woman. He confessed at age 78. He was not a Nazi sympathizer, but rather a 19 year old male who was thinking with the wrong part of his anatomy.
I don’t think we had a problem with Nazi sympathizers in our armed forces, as the German-American Bund was squashed right smartly at the outbreak of the war and the mood of the American public would have allowed my dad’s generation to deal with them summarily. Of course, despite racially based suspicions, we had no problems at all with Japanese-Americans who were trying to prove themselves. In the 1940′s being PC mandated love of this country, not being its mortal enemy as it does today.
#99 Josh
Agreed. MAD and any deterrent strategy has to be based on both sides operating on the same logic. Different cultures have different logics and goals. MAD does not work on Iran because they have different priorities. To be made to work, we have to find a disincentive that operates in their cultural mindset. The only ones that would be likely to work would be barred by our elites.
#102 always right
From what I have heard, Buraq Hussein was notified immediately and was not out of contact. It was his deliberate choice not to react until he did, and it was the choice of the White House to make light of it by the way he did that “shout out to” speech. There is criticism even in a New York Times ["the official Paper of Treason"] blog and conjecture that he was ill served by his staff and speechwriters. He had time to review the speech before it went on the TOTUS, the choice to do it that way rests on him.
#106 Tcobb
Your postulate is better than 50% likely. And the sequalae of such will not be pleasant. Given the background that they have found [online postings, reprimands for proselytizing Islam to patients, witnessed statements, and giving away Korans and his furniture to his neighbors before the attack; it will take some major and extremely blatant command influence for them to do it. Not that they won’t.
Subotai Bahadur
The only “context” that I saw MSM focusing on was “the spate of violent incidents by military personnel over recent years,” and nothing about this guy’s specific possible motivations. No mentions at all about Islam-inspired violence by military personnel of that persuasion.
Steven King wrote a series of loosely-related horror novels (all turned into flicks and TV series) based around “Castle Rock, Maine.” One of the characteristics of poor, beleagured little Castle Rock was that the adults pretended not to see the evil around them, while the kids were attuned to it. The difference in real life is that us adults see what’s going on, but the children who lead us prefer denial.
Wretchard writes:
One of the reasons political correctness is so damaging is that it shuts everybody up. It creates inaction, and therefore prevents the implementation of small, relatively painless corrections until a huge head of steam is built up; like a boiler at 2,000 psi, just waiting to blow. It constipates every politician; turns public discourse into codespeak, creates a climate of suspicion, enables fruitcakes and in general turns the whole friggin political arena into a funny farm.
True–but I think what you describe here are merely the symptoms of the underlying disease. PC inverts reason. The conclusions come first, the facts that support it are derived from the conclusions.
In other words, their facts aren’t really facts at all. Remember the phrase “fake but accurate?” There you have it.
Human beings, despite their failings, do have a logical streak in them. I think that’s really at the core of what Wretchard describes. When everyone tells you that the Sun rises in the West rather than the East, you tend to have doubts about your own sanity. But at some point, the “Narrative” simply breaks down and the natural impulse is to shatter it. When you realize that the intellectual power of the village aristocrat isn’t any better than that of the village idiot or his moral qualities any better than the village whore, people quit pretending.
2000 psi–at what pressure does the social boiler blow? This is a question that I believe will be answered fairly soon.
We have developed a metro sexual society so imbued with political correctness we now not only fail to recognize a threat but actually place laws on our books so that if the threat is recognized they get special protections.
I realize that all analogies are false but this is akin to feeding a terminal cancer the nutrients necessary to aid its growth, and in each and every case it is the left, the Democratic Party that is in the vanguard of protecting our sworn enemies. People who have said time and again they hate us and want to kill us. This is insanity.
Our intelligence and police are prohibited from profiling; keeping statistics on what various demographics are doing where. They are prohibited in hundreds of ways from interdicting evil and protecting the honest citizen.
This I say without reservation. Be they “good” or “bad” islams they must be deported. The quran demands they kill infidels and that would be a huge majority of the US population. Interdict this, remove the cancer. Declare islam not a religion but a philosophy and remove that cover they receive. Make them uncomfortable in this country instead of what so many do now and that is to curry favor to show how “understanding” and “tolerant” we are. I am not tolerant in the least of an antithetical philosophy that wants me in chains or dead.
In our wars afar give no quarter. Nuke Iran. Nuke Afghanistan. Will they hate us more? Will the Quran have a new verse added exempting “The Great Satin” from relentless attack? I think not. Kill hundreds of millions and send them a message that will also be heard by the Hugo Chavez’s and Valerie Putin’s of the world.
If we do not, sheer demographic breeding will reduce the USA to a Muslim country within our grandchildren’s lifetime.
I know many of you have an aversion to killing. Get over it. Read history, the Quran or the Bible or any other source. It is always simply a palliative, not a curative, for there is no such thing. But to sit around endlessly debating whether islam will cut our throats or nuke us is absurd, for we know with absolute certitude that islam is out to kill us.
Habu,
Valerie Putin
Now that image frightens me.
Habu,
I don’t think it is right to wish for the death of hundreds of millions of people or to hope for mass deportations. But it is precisely for that reason that it is important to restore a rational process that prosecutes the guilty and protects the innocent. When you think about it there is little to choose from between a system of political correctness which treats everyone, regardless of guilt, as innocent and one that treats everyone, regardless of innocence, as guilty. Both have the same net outcome: the goats have no incentive to separate themselves from the sheep.
Political correctness is lynch mob mentality in another guise. The eventual effects are the same. Group innocence flips to group guilt. Eventually anyway. It just delays the lynching until everyone can be hanged. So everything tootles along in a kind of fake normalcy with everyone smiling fakely at everyone else with gritted teeth until the desired and long awaited Der Tag comes along and then it is open season. The beast gets turned loose and look out below.
Now it is precisely because we must avoid nuking this place and that place in response to a nuke in this American city or that American city that a legitimate war on terror must be fought. That UN rapporteur who thinks using Predators is a violation of international law has everything backwards. If you don’t get them terrorists the day will come when it won’t be Predators but B1s and B2s that will be in action. It’s like the national security equivalent of the subprime crisis. Keep kicking the can down the road until you kick it over a precipice and then follow after it. It’s crazy.
What the subprime crisis — and the deficit spending of today — has convinced me of is that many politicians have absolutely no regard for long term consequences. they couldn’t care less. What matters is now. Ahora. En este momento. What happens tomorrow is none of their concern. Sayonara buddy. Been nice knowing you. You’d think it impossible, but we just saw it happen to the economy. Now we think: but surely the politicians can’t be crazy enough to set up a powderkeg that blow up in our faces. I wouldn’t bet on it.
But I think the real enemy — in the sense of the most important enemy — isn’t a bunch of flea-bitten jihadis sitting in a cave somewhere. It’s Western civilization’s craziness. We are setting our hair on fire and putting it out with a hammer.
Ralph Peters, at least, has the stones to call it for what it is.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fort_hood_xjP9yGrJN7gl7zdsJ31vnJ
The evidence that this was, pure and simple, a terrorist attack is already overwhelming. The tap dancing to come by the MSM and the politicos and, saddest of all, the Army brass would be hilarious if it wasn’t all so tragic and shameful.
The low rumbling sound I’m starting to sense is beginning to sound an awful lot like another shoe dropping.
@120 geoffgo
The precedent being set is that all jihadis acting individually have a get-out-of-jail free card.
Re my #132. “But I think the real enemy — in the sense of the most important enemy — isn’t a bunch of flea-bitten jihadis sitting in a cave somewhere. It’s Western civilization’s craziness. We are setting our hair on fire and putting it out with a hammer.”
Fort Hood Suspect May Have Suffered From ‘Compassion Fatigue,’ Experts Say
What are they going to do, give him a medal? There’s an argument to be made that Hasan in some sense understands the game better than we do. He was supposed to do it. The signals all around him told him so. He hears the secret cheering squad the way a dog hears a dog whistle. We just didn’t hear it because the range of our hearing isn’t as good.
@106 TCobb
I wouldn’t worry. If this IslamoNut is like every other IslamoNut, he can’t wait to not only admit, but brag about his crimes in court. And how do they find him insane, when he based his crime upon an actual reading of his religious texts? That would be the equivalent of finding the religion insane.
Too bad the State of Texas couldn’t get a hold of him. I hear they execute assholes like him.
Wretchard: Indeed, the question is how long will we tolerate our own crazy people.
I hope the system will self correct, and at least shove the left against the side of the hallway wall so normal people can control the country again. If not I dread der tag.
High unemployment and random violence could lead to a “snapping moment”, and the Overmountain men will go all Jacksonian on the left.
@Doug 79
Holy my gosh!!
Although this doesn’t appear to be a nexus with the Obama transition team, the project seems to have started up in April ’08, it does suggest that Major Hasan is connected and not merely an anonymous peon.
The meme that has taken hold is that Major Hasan was upset about being deployed to a combat theater. I just can’t understand why. There is zero chance that an army psychiatrist would go out on patrol, weapon in hand. Zero. It even seems unlikely to me that he would be deployed in theater. Maybe Germany or Italy to counsel returning soldiers – I just don’t know whether we deploy such assets to the war zone.
But, if Major Hasan was slated to go, he had little reason to fear for his own safety and no reason to worry that he would find himself in combat with fellow muslims.
Indeed, if he was a contributor to the Homeland Security Policy Institute study, thus a member of the policy study elite, he would be GLAD for the opportunity to go to Iraq especially, but also Afghanistan, to document the *crimes,* given his opposition to U.S. policies in the war on terror.
An Arabic speaking muslim U.S. Army psychiatrist with access to civilian victims and in liason with various NGO activists? Bingo! His ticket to hero status with the left.
Why did THIS guy go on a rampage?
I can only conclude that in his loneliness and distress he sought paradise as a shaheed.
Another interesting question:
Did President Obama know the name when he made his remarks?
That Nidal Malik Hassan went on a killing spree is inherently embarrassing to President Barack Hussein Obama.
I can understand his reluctance to plunge into this mess …
“This guy was counseling people coming back from war and there is something called secondary traumatization, where the therapist gets traumatized from hearing all the terrible things that have happened to the people they counsel,” Kerner told FoxNews.com.
Oh. My. Lord.
Victimology taken to its logical and farcical extreme. Perhaps I can put in for disability claims from reading “All Quiet on the Western Front” or watching too many Bergman films. And really, how could anyone watch a performance of “King Lear” and not act out? Secondary traumatization and all that, you know.
Dr. Kerner has just given us what we’ve always wanted. A permanent, readily available excuse for anything at all. It reminds me of the SouthPark episode when Cartman learns the joys — and license — of pretending to have Tourettes. Except I have more respect for Cartman than for the good Doctor.
#136 Mike Giles
I wouldn’t worry. If this IslamoNut is like every other IslamoNut, he can’t wait to not only admit, but brag about his crimes in court. And how do they find him insane, when he based his crime upon an actual reading of his religious texts? That would be the equivalent of finding the religion insane.
Sir–you have summed up all of the reasons why the Guardians of the Narrative will do everything in their power to make sure he NEVER testifies in court.
Wretchard:
Politicians kick it down the road because they know that nobody but nobody will hold them accountable. look at the disasters we have witnessed over the past 20 years. Have any of the culprits been snatched up? (Other than George Bush, but everybody hated him anyway) We dont have a society where a person who was in charge of a disaster takes a pistol and a bottle into the library. The only people who have enough shame about them to resign in disgrace are Republicans who are caught with their pants down. (Ted Stevens didnt quit because it wasnt sex and he got off because the USA cheated)
DC is infested with people who are professional governors. Its not just the elected, its their permanent staffs. Its the civil service, particularly the supergrades. Its the lobbyists who have to be there because everything depends on congressional or administrative grace. They make the monster run and I dont know how to get rid of them, or hold them accountable. If we elected a whole new congress and third of a Senate it would be the SOS within three years. Somethings got to give.
I am late to the thread so please excuse my impertinence. The term I have heard thrown around is “sudden jihadi” syndrome. Sounds about right to me. This guy griped about the prejudice against Islam. Well he sure set that right. Some people have thin skin and do not cope well with the school yard bullies of the world, yet, until a 500 pound man who is harassed for being a fat pig stands up and slaughters all the skinny people around him it is clear to me that the government sponsored molly coddling promotes the likelihood of such incidents.
Finally, Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist, mind you a domestic one, this guy was lone Jihadi. Clutching his guns and Koran, but was he a terrorist? Did he attack the United States military or civilians? It doesn’t matter. How long will this POS burden our taxes breathing good air? Oh well. Let’s bring some more over. That ought to make them understand us.
Given how thin Hasan’s file was, he had stayed at Walter Reed for years during a war when everyone was getting shifted around and deployed and he had little advanced training on his record, and given his documented disciplining for unprofessional conduct, most unusual for an officer to have in his file, it is clear that he was not promotable and therefore was unlikely to last until he got a pension. It surprises me that he made it as far as Major (O-4.) The Army was clearly eager to get rid of him but his connection to the transition team shows that he had what law enforcement officers call a “Rabbi” (pun intended here) so my guess is instead of pressing him to resign “For the good of the service” they shifted him off to Texas, telling him it was a “Get well tour.” It would be nice if the contents of his address book giving his contacts in DC and email records came to light but I suspect that they are being scrubbed.
even more OT:
Analysis: For Clinton, tough talk but few results
Question: is this writer the same Robert Burns who worked for the New York Times during the war in 2003?
It’s a remarkable analysis in any case, very diplomatically doesn’t *quite* say that Hillary is a bum … but almost. Does sound like she was set up by Obama to fail, overworked with difficult missions no sane person would address in one trip.
Daily News has a profile on Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who took Hasan down and is in stable condition after taking three bullets herself
(h/t Hot Air via Glenn Reynolds)
http://tinyurl.com/yhl4r77
@141 Tcobb, 136 Mike Giles
It won’t matter if he does. See #28 above
Josh,
According to the wiki the NYT writer is John Burns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Burns
No idea if they are related.
The question of whether America can continue half free and half slave is today, with our now single global economy on which all are dependent and to which all must assimilate or die, a subset of the question of whether the world can continue half free and half slave.
In any case, I think Lincoln is right; and in the long run, the rants against neocon fantasies will have to be re-evaluated. But that still seems a long way off and one wonders how dark the night will get.
The craziness of America and the West – its gnosticism, or Utopian political religions that refuse to acknowledge our fallen reality – was well diagnosed by Eric Voegelin in the early 1950s. And even then he thought the time was near when the Gnostic fantasy had to be destroyed, once and for all, or the West would collapse.
This is not the first time a Muslim has attacked his military comrade, not the first time Muslim Americans have attacked unarmed civilians. Think it is time to do something about Muslims in this country.
Subotai #127:
What I was getting at was that in WWII – and in the Cold War for that matter – being of the same philosophy as the enemy would have been utterly unacceptable. In the very unlikely event that such an individual made it through basic training I have litte doubt that soon after getting to his unit there would have been a tragic weapons accident and that would have been that.
Wretchard #110: Bigotry, such as old fashioned Jim Crowism in the South, served the same purpose as PC: to shut down thought. This was not all negative, since certain people are not capable of making the right choices as to behavior – or are simply too lazy to do so. Bigotry served as a shorthand method of keeping the lazy and the stupid within bounds – “Be Like Us, Not Like Them.” It had to go through some tortured reasoning to handle the obvious contradictions it encountered – e.g., hardworking blacks and white redneck worthless bums. And those most like to embrace and defend bigotry were those who benefited from it most – politicians and white redneck bums.
PC seeks to do much the same thing, but in reverse – “Don’t Be Judgemental. All Lifestyles Are Equally Valid.” So it is a shorthand way of avoiding how to explain the need for judgement and the existence of not only shades of gray but absolutes.
The irony is that today PC begats bigotry and vice versa.
Wrechard @ 132 “But I think the real enemy — in the sense of the most important enemy — isn’t a bunch of flea-bitten jihadis sitting in a cave somewhere. It’s Western civilization’s craziness.”
I’m not sure if we can be called a civilization any more, if by “civilization” you mean a sense of cultural continuity arising from the past and extending through the present into the future. Robert Pogue Harrison explores the theme more fully in his “The Dominion of the Dead”–civilizations, cultures, begin and are sustained by the sacral spaces of our interred ancestors; moreover, there is a deeply intuited identity between the dead and the unborn of our future. (Joseph Bottum has explored this theme as well.) To say that our elites have no sense of Chesterton’s “democracy of the dead” is rather the understatement; more to the point, it means that they have no sense of the future, either.
That a mad profligacy would result comes as no surprise, but what really seems uncanny is the resulting lack of fear. I think that’s the reason why this generation has been so absorbed by the thought of future environmental catastrophes–it’s simply an effort to **feel** a future that their solipsism has put forever beyond their grasp. Despite the histrionics, it is play-acting, something to pass the time between womb and tomb. When the wall of water rises above Numenor they will count it a relief.
Kim Munley is one damn good sign we are worth saving and one damn good reason for all the rest of us to not ever give up.
hey buddy – (ahem..) same picture AND a news article that’s not afraid to call her a hero @146
MM/154; well, i WASN’T taking a nap, if that’s what you’re thinking
What I’m really scared of, especially after watching the self-flagellating clips on TV talk shows, is that the elite are finally on the road to giving the Openly Ridiculous Order. Hasan created a terrible dilemma for the politically correct. If they recognize his existence their whole house collapses; and rather than bend slightly and allow for the fact that America might just be facing an enemy, they’ve doubled down. It’s incredible, but a lot of them are upping the ante on a patently ludicrous proposition. ‘Hasan was just too compassionate. Hasan was just another victim of George Bush’s failed policy’.
And the net result of this, if the PC clowns can get away with their campaign of inversion they will practically ensure two things happen simultaneously. A: they will make any rational inquiry into traitors in the military impossible and B: they will put all Muslims, however patriotic, however brave under a cloud of suspicion from which they can never emerge. It will be like affirmative action in its worst sense all over again. Rather than promote integration it will promote fractionalization. If America doesn’t have a Muslim problem now it soon will — courtesy of political correctness.
But there’s worse.
Eventually you will have situations in which people who are actually not trusted may be put in formal positions of authority simply because they can’t be questioned. This when the Openly Ridiculous Order situation comes in. When an elite starts to issue lunatic directives a certain something snaps. They lose legitimacy. People obey, but they do not comply. In other words, they start to obey only when the bosses are around. The moment the super leaves the room, they all start to laugh at him.
The really perverse thing about political correctness isn’t that they give you slops to eat; it’s that they give you slops to eat and expect you to smile and ask for seconds. The entire exercise is pointless except as an exercise and confirmation of power over you.
Societies don’t last long when their leaders become ridiculous. It’s a dangerous moment. In many ways the damage that Hasan created in Fort Hood, bad though it was, will be as nothing to the cannons he’s untied that are now rolling unsecured around the deck.
More bad news – one of the murdered GIs was pregnant
http://tinyurl.com/ya7jya4
w/156; “we pretend to work, the state pretends to pay us” –famous underground motto in USSR.
yes, laughing at the boss is a certain end result of PA, but what about when it ain’t funny? What about when your government, in order to pay back constituency identity-groups, creates an ex-Constitutional ‘czar’ executive action front, and introduces the radical gay agenda into the elementary schools through an office called “School Safety”? THEN you quit laughing at the super, and begin to devise a counter action.
A few interesting tidbits. Walter Reed is in lockdown, the staff was instructed not to talk to anyone (even FBI), except military investigators. Linky.
“But there’s worse.”
More than you know. When trust is lost, those that placed their faith in the Rule of Law become radicalized.
Purely as a measure of self-defense, people who shouldn’t do so begin taking matters into their own hands.
Speakeasy @ 115
Maybe, but in the ascendancy of Barack Obama and Eric Holder, if you were Army brass would you bet your career on it?
LOTM @ 126
“Fortunately John Edwards imploded but the next smooth talking wannabe demagogue is out there.”
Huh?? he’s in the White House, right now.
LOTM @ 144
Here in Chicago they can be Rabbis or Chinamen… or “my juice”
Your related observation is a big part of what I was trying to get at @ 103, except at that time I hadn’t heard anything about past problems at Walter Reed, etc.
Habu, Wretchard:
I have to disagree with you Wretchard… the idea of mass casualty/deportation will inevitably become a necessity. I would also offer that our craziness can only be corrected by demonstration of those very methods. The poisoned elites, the several generations of entitlement addicted tax eaters and Islam as a whole cannot begin to reform themselves. Much as Lincoln, Grant and Sherman did, or LeMay later, they will have to be melted to remove the salvageable from the dross. They will not spontaneously find a Luther to lead them in a Reformation, especially if there are “outlanders” to focus their energies on instead.
Got many thoughts racing around my mind and am trying to get them in logical order.
For the moment though: Wretch mentioned a seeming inability of politicians to think of the future. This is nothing new.
Sam Steiger (R-AZ) told me on more than one occasion that in Congress 90 days was long-term strategy and 6 months was the unforseeable future.
I myself observed this when working for USDA for a while. They had SPAM; Strategic Planning and Management Reports. Strategy started with 30 days and never exceeded 90.
This is inherent in all political systems I would say. We have to learn how to play it to our advantage.
W @ 155:
I cant decide if this is richly ironic or ironically rich.
Alinsky’s rule number 4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules” — all religions and cultures are equal
Alinsky’s rule number 5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon” — PC carried forward as Wretchard’s scenario
Alinsky’s rule number 11. “If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside” – - islam is a religion of peace and means us no harm.
Is it that they are turning the thing on its head? Are their actions making themselves illegitimate thru following their own PC rules? My head is beginning to hurt. Again.
#111
“NBC Chicago’s Robert George has an article titled “Obama’s Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting” in which he says: instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.” Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms.”
Obama’s behavior is not surprising at all.
It’s not a case of ‘bad’ handlers.
It’s about Obama’s priorities, it’s about what he values.
Clearly, he…just…doesn’t…care.
A Jewish carpenter once wisely observed that, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” As that applies to soldiers… Obama hasn’t a clue and, in that obtuseness, he reveals his unfitness for the Presidency.
The soul of the man is plainly revealed, for any with eyes to see.
And he’s by no means alone, he’s simply the one most plainly visible.
Obama says don’t jump to conclusions…
CNN) — President Obama said that female policewoman at Fort Hood, “acted stupidly” in shooting Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
“I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role religion played,” Obama said Wednesday night while taking questions after a White House news conference.
Fort Hood authorities dropped murder charges against Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, Friday night.
Obama defended Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan on Thursday night, while admitting that he may be “a little biased,” because Hasan is a fellow Muslim.
“But I think it’s fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry; No. 2, that the Fort Hood police acted stupidly in shooting somebody when there was already proof that they were in uniform; and, No. 3 … that there’s a long history in this country of crusader-infidels taunting and shooting Muslims disproportionately.”
“We don’t know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts,” Obama said in a Rose Garden statement otherwise devoted to the economy.
“What we do know is that there are families, friends and an entire nation grieving right now for the valiant men and women who came under attack yesterday,” the president said.
—
Ft. Hood Investigators Focus on Motive
Portrait Emerges of Religious Man Upset About Deployment
A wild multiple shooting today in Orlando. Dr. Robin Kerner will soon be explaining the mechanical engineering concept known as ”copy-cat killing” to us.
I agree with the good doctor’s notion of ”compassion fatigue. Also, all killers have mothers so mothers cause murder.
doug/166; i want a law passed that every article on a murderer be preceded by an paragraph listing the victims
wretchard@132,
I hope some of Habu’s post was hyperbole, but I agree completely with his last paragraph.
I don’t wish for the deaths of hundreds, thousands or millions but I feel it’s probably going to happen. Better the casualties be on the leftists/Jihadists side than our side.
155. wretchard
Second paragraph, last sentence,
“If America doesn’t have a Muslim problem now it soon will — courtesy of political correctness”
Close.
America already has a Muslim problem but political correctness isn’t the reason. It’s what they believe, their philosophy. Dhimmitude or death, take your pick.
The “good” Muslims in the USA say NOTHING, but they hold to their bosom islam, an ideology of murder. The “bad” muslims are simply waiting for the right place and time to move against soft targets and then scale up to harder ones.
No muslim in this country should hold any position of authority, no security clearance, nothing. Let them clean latrines at our prisons where they are already heavily recruiting PhD quality criminals.
As far as killing hundreds of thousands? So far islam is not getting the picture, their focus is totally on defeating the “Great Satan” Why allow, what moral code defines allowing your sworn enemy who is attacking you in your own country, flying airplanes into your buildings that shelter innocent civilians, the outline of trading more attacks for nothing? They attacked us and have since this country was formed. Killing is the currency they understand. Power is the one thing you cannot fake, and we have the power. We lack the will. So until we merge our power with our will we will continue to be overtaken by islam. Kill them.
Subotai – I am in complete agreement that if the country is to saved the South will save it. Religion and language are the glues that hold a society together, and in much of the United States religion has disappeared, and the English language is undr assault. It has seemed to me that the only region prepared to defend Christianity is the South. My part of the country will defend the country, but too many believe one religion is as good as, and pretty much the same as, any other, and thus would probably not consider an assault on Christianity as an assault on them. Incidentally, Subotai Bahadur is an interesting non de plume, in that one of the greatest threats to Western civilization came at the hands of Genghis Khan’s greatest general, Subotai Bahadur. Of course it may not be a nom de plume at all, you may be a direct descendant, in which case your DNA will be sorely needed when the s*h*t*f.
Walt Erickson
We’ll look back on these days and wonder at the options we had. This is the time to put out. This is the time to get assertive, while assertive means something short of lethal force. Its the time to put all the outrage and anger into electing sane officials. If you’re unemployed, maybe it’s blessing in disguise because it provides the time to get out and do something. If you’re employed then maybe write a check to some sane political candidate you know will make a difference. The system though wheezy still responds somewhat to the helm.
And if the worst comes despite the efforts of men of goodwill, then que sera sera. At least there’ll be no regrets. No what ifs. I think we’re still lucky because we can hear the dinosaur honking before he comes stomping round the bend. There’s time still. Time enough at least to try.
Those of us who have kids know the next generation is counting on us to do all in our power to keep that dinosaur from rounding the corner. It’s daddy’s duty, if ever he had a duty, to give it the old college try.
They who cast illusions seem to be incapable of understanding what the consequences will be when those illusions are broken and shown to be –illusions.
Much depends upon how much the spell put a cost upon those to whom it was cast. Shall it be a slap upon the wrist–or the penalty that Vlad the Impaler insisted upon?
We live in interesting times.
Buddy insists the country will be saved by Shrimp Gumbo.
Killing.
On the night of 24–25 February 1945, 174 B-29s destroyed around one square mile (3 km²) of the city of Tokyo killing over 100,000 people. That did not stop their fanaticism. It took the atom bomb, dropped to save an invasion with estimates of 1 million dead and wounded.
Killing a few hundred thousand islams is a fitting, proportional, and situation altering response. Or perhaps the status quo is adequate?
167. mariner
I assure you nothing I have written is hyperbole. It does in fact follow history.
We as a nation have lost our guts, a nation of predominantly girly men whose biggest nightmare is not having the proper collective PC mindset.
I have fought on three continents, studied philosophy and war and some things never change. Sometimes you must kill the enemy in great numbers, especially when they are attempting to acquire weapons that will do the same to you.
Not hyperbole, reality. Face it.
I would submit to you Habu, that the optimum strategy is killing the members of the ruling classes and their families. The ruling class doesn’t mind having 100,000 “peasants” killed, but when it comes to THEM, the rulers and their high functionaries, courage fades away and all they can think about is maintaining their own hides and their own privileges when they think they might be on the wrong side of a tactical nuke or a 16-inch gun.
“Can there be such a thing as treason in a multicultural society or is that so yesterday?”
A good number of my liberal friends have indeed questioned the very concept of treason.
Walt, were you referring to when the defecation encounters the oscillation?