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Nancy Pelosi thinks the reason why questions about the Ground Zero mosque are following her around is because it’s been “all ginned up” and she has called for an investigation into who is funding those raising the questions. Pelosi’s remarks provide an insight into a world in which nothing happens unless it is bought and paid for. Since these are the rules the denizens of that universe have lived by, they cannot conceive of a world that does not run on pure corruption.
In the world they live in, everything has a price. Whenever anything is observed to happen, the question is always “who sent you”?
The Ground Zero mosque issue serves two functions, both of which are important. The first is to raise the question of how accountable the administration and the cultural elites are to the sensibilities of the country; and the second is to draw attention to the particular interests that are driving this issue.
The important thing to remember is that Pelosi’s call for an investigation into those opposed to building of the mosque are geared towards preventing any further discussion on the subject, not expanding it. Since the administration and its allies control vast prosecutorial resources and powers of publicity, an investigation of the Ground Zero mosque’s backers and those opposed will certainly focus on the opposition. The backers will be given a free ride.
The proximate cause of Pelosi’s pique was the fact that questions about the mosque were following her around like a bad penny. Like monarchs of a former era who wished to be freed from questioning gnats, she may have spoken aloud “will no one rid me of this turbulent” questioner? What in former times led to Murder in the Cathedral now leads to Investigations About the Mosque. And at Ground Zero too. If it sounds too crazy, maybe it is. That’s the theory of Charles Krauthammer, anyway, who thinks that the speaker is simply having a bad day.
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Krauthammer may be in error, however. The speaker may be crazy, but she rose to her present state by being “crazy like a fox.” Underneath the wild mask the elements of rational calculation are still there and her goals are to:
- distract attention from the funding of the mosque;
- change the subject to the funding of the questioners.
The good news for critics is that they appear to have hit upon an issue which, for reasons that are not entirely clear, Obama, Pelosi and Bloomberg feel compelled to defend, if not reluctantly then at least with a measure of desperation. It is almost as if their fists are in a monkey trap.
Those who are opposed to the mosque should take the cue to pour on the coal. So far as I can tell the hostility they feel toward the politicians who have advanced and continue to defend this affront are entirely spontaneous. An increasing number of people don’t need to be paid to feel antipathy towards the likes of Pelosi. They’ll do it for free.
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Hey, Nancy, come January 2011 there’ll be plenty of investigations. That you can count on. You’ll be just another Representative then, in the Minority, and no one will be paying attention to your blatherings. Chances are good that you will be the subject of one of those said investigations. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving person. Question is will you resign after the election once it become apparent that you are a former Speaker of the House and pariah even in your own party.
Nancy Pelosi would kill and cook children for cannibal votes. If it is a an idea that weakens American Society she is in the forefront. Has she asked where the hell these Muslims are getting $100 million dollars? If there is any Muslim on earth that thinks the Cordoba project will build bridges to America I will show you the village idiot. Speaking of village idiots, Nancy go home your village misses you.
We Marxists always investigate the impudent middle class; those State-damned rednecks and cowboys who cling to God, liberty, life and guns (self-defense). Who are they to believe in self-evident truth? Who are they to believe in unalienable God-given individual rights – especially a right to the fruit of their own labor? Comrades, when will the little serfs realize that their labored-for property belongs to us, and their other so-called rights come from us as well? It is we, the Philosopher Kings (Pigs of Animal Farm), who provide them with their pitiful reversible rights to speak, write, assemble and own property, etc. We Manifesto-thumpers will cling to our government guns, and once we rid the “little people” of theirs, they’ll once and for all be food for our table. Let the investigations begin.
I suspect that Pelosi’s problem is that she’s been dealing with politics and Astroturf for so long, she doesn’t even consider the possibility that there are people out there with opinions of their own.
As has happened so often in the past two years, Gov. Palin has nationalized issues, acting as a lightning rod, thereby allowing mere epigones to venture out into the storm to take a position. Her remarks on ‘death panels’ crystalized that issue, just as her comments on the GZM focused attention on the mosque. Obama, as usual, loses in his match up with Palin. Lacks cojones, I guess.
Americans may not want her for president. But they owe her a lot.
Tarnsman…
It’s a rare Speaker who can tolerate the descent.
Most pull the parachute.
She’s already 70+…
If she hadn’t already been re-animated… imagine what Pelosi would look like!
She has a future modeling masks… and standing for wax sculptures.
Her image would be restricted to the Madame Tussauds Political R wing — not suitable for children under the age of 35.
The first clue we got was in late spring/summer 2009. Questions about ObamaCare at townhall meetings, Tax Day / Tea Party demonstrations from concerned citizens, all chalked up as ‘paid operatives’ from opposition (evil Republicans and their Wall Street buddies).
THEY just couldn’t understand regular folks don’t think Dems/Obama agenda ‘wonderful gifts’ to the public (and their talking points of ‘all those projects had been paid for, it is FREE.’).
Echo chamber aptly described the circle they immerse themselves in. Anybody else with a different view must be illogical and ‘extreme’.
“…and I being the generous soul I am, I go with lunacy.” Krauthammer at his best. I wish we had many more like him. F
I take it for granted that the administration and the ‘cultural elites’ do not consider themselves accountable to the sensibilities of the country. The evidence of that is too abundant and obvious to discuss here. Which brings the question; which particular interests driving this issue do bring them to account, and how big is their smoke? It should be relatively easy to discover names and amounts now, while these fools are still publicly and proudly advocating the wrong side, seemingly not too concerned about hiding anything yet.
Nancy Pelosi’s comments would be overlooked if not outright laughable if it weren’t for the fact that she is the de facto governess of the United States. She has stated that she is in a position to force legislation, the governed are too ignorant to accept as being in their best interests. She decides what is best for America and it would be a small joke but that a bunch of radical throwbacks in San Francisco could so easily terrorize a nation. What next?
Can you imagine being MARRIED to her?
Krauthammer is not in error, and Pelosi is not crazy like a fox. Otherwise, she would not have also begun to walk back her comment by demanding to know who is funding the mosque as well. She is simply the epitome of self aggrandizement and myopia that defines American progressives. For sound thinking Americans, Pelosi’s (and Obama’s and the progressives’) unsound thinking is simply incomprehensible, and therefore nuts. It is no more complicated than that.
Very good, wretchard – and CK.
I just cannot really grok Pelosi on this, can’t she see that her question does *not* deflect an answering, “Does this mean you are in favor of it?” which is a simple transform of, “Does this mean you are not against it?” These are both “beating your wife” monkey-trap kinds of questions.
Is she crazy like a fox?
I dunno, was Hitler crazy like a fox because he understood the utility of the Big Lie? Nothing Pelosi is for is functional. If you inspect this carefully, it means she is not delusional, in which case she would get something right now and then. Her instincts are to go with whatever is guaranteed to not work. This is a syndrome of sorts, that I have encountered before. If you always do stuff that fails utterly, you are never accused of falling short. You always answer with a Big Lie. Hey, see how that came around? Godwin’s Law, eat my dust.
The Washington Post reports that an increasing number of people believe President Obama is a Muslim.
The Washington Post states the President’s religion as if it were a “fact” that is plainly known to it yet strangely inaccessible to a growing number of people. It attributes this divergence to what can only be described as gullibility or ignorance, the product of “Internet-spread rumors and falsehoods since before he began his presidential campaign, and the poll indicates that those rumors have gained currency since Obama took office.”
Another way to put it is that the relative credibility of the Washington Post vis-a-vis these “Internet-spread rumors and falsehoods” has declined. Many of those who were formerly convinced by the Washington Post’s ‘facts’ are no longer convinced by those same ‘facts’.
Note to self: there is a government “faith adviser”. But the problem is likely to be faith in Obama himself. Once the electorate catches Obama lying, it’s only one more step to believing he is lying about his religion too. The voters do an a posteriori on his claims. Does he claim thus? The electorate revisits that belief in the context of his observed actions. Hence the President’s defense of the Mosque, coming on a long string of paeans to Islam was bound to raise questions about his deepest belief.
Unlike the Washington Post I do not believe there is any definite way to ascertain a person’s true state of belief except through his external actions. There is no file in Washington that contains the last word on a person’s inner state. We often do not know it ourselves and as we all know it is subject to change over time. People convert between atheism and Christianity and Islam and whatever else with perceptible frequency.
Ultimately handsome is as handsome does. In the present context what should worry the Washington Post is that the rising belief in Obama’s Muslimness is a proxy for his perceived believability and patriotism. In politics it is what people believe that determines whether you are elected or not.
Pelosi is a loon. It is just senile dementia. She is not even sure if the issue is mosque, health carre, or Joe Biden’s hair plugs and she is second in line to the White House. Meanwhile this whole brouhaha serves one very important purpose. It keeps discussions of the economy off the front pages. A discussion of mosques will keep his base fired up while a discussion of the economy hurts Obama with everybody.
I have now come to the unequivocal conclusion that Nancy Pelosi is in fact a lizard.
Imam Feisal Rauf published an article in the Washington Post on March 13, 2008.
It’s one of an ongoing series; they are readily available in the WaPo archives. This particular article extolled the virtues of working Sharia law into British law.
Best line:
“Sharia law is unequivocally clear that Muslims who live as minorities in non-Muslim majority communities are required to abide by the law of the land.”
Move from minority to majority status, and the imperative to abide by the law of the land goes away, leaving…Sharia. How convenient.
“Moderate.” But the whole article is worth reading to know the man’s mind.
CB
One does not have to be a Muslim to shamelessly pander to Muslims – only a clueless “progressive” looking to curry favor with Muslim voters at home and Muslim leaders abroad.
Wretchard hit the nail as usual. The fact that Pelosi thinks there is money and organization behind the opposition to the Mosque tells us more about Pelosi than anything else. Pelosi’s main job in life is getting people to believe things. In her world, no-one believes anything unless money was spent to make it happen. Therefore, if someone believes something, it must be caused by money.
I’m generally not too concerned with the Mosque in general, but I have noticed two things.
1) How many Muslims actually live in Manhatten, and need a place to worship? Is it enough to fill a small church, let alone a $100 million Mosque? If hardly any muslims live there, what is the purpose of the Mosque?
2) Do Muslims really spend that kind of money on Mosques in the US? How much money did the next most expensive mosque in the US cost? If not more than $10 million, then why do they want to build this incredibly expensive building?
The answers to both of those questions get to the uneasiness of the American public. The answers point to the idea that the Mosque is really a war memorial, not a place to worship God. Of course, that’s just a guess, but its a reasonable guess given the circumstances.
Pelosi really needs to get a grip. Maybe she’ll have time for that after the election.
What are they calling the mosque in Arabic? My guess is “Shrine of the 19 Martyrs”
That’s just our Nancy
Nothing fancy
Just Pelosi
Being cozy
With the guys
Who want the prize
Of pushing sticks into our eyes
That’s what she does
The is and was
Of all Dem Libs
From Robert Gibbs
Up to the One
Who’s having fun
Just knowing he’s a one and done
I don’t know that Obama is a Muslim, if he is, he doesn’t seem a very good one. But I think if I’m asked, I’ll say that he is one, just out of a reflexive perversity to his own. I think that WaPo article even suggests such a thing, vaguely. Obama wants to be exotic, we’ll attribute exoticisms to him.
Maybe all that stops him is an inability to grow a good beard, or his affections for beer and cigarettes. And maybe Michelle’s disinclination to hide her light under a burqa.
Pelosi’s a pig.
Next topic: OIF is over. Man that started a long time ago. I remember I was at a basketball game with my brother when W announced we were going in. I’m glad that most of them are coming home and feel bad for the families of those left behind. To say “thank you” sounds empty, like I’m coming up short. Our dudes are truly badass and I wouldn’t trade one of em for the city of San Francisco. God Bless you all brave warriors, welcome home.
Mosque of the Red Death.
The NYT has a similar piece to the Washington Post’s also bemoaning the gullibility of Americans who learn about the President Obama from magazines at the supermarket checkout.
This is only part of the problem. Human beings assign their degree of belief based on an average of many factors often called their “gut feel”. The NYT might call it “bigotry”. But while it is not always accurate, human perceptions are the best measures we have for determining the truth of nonquantifiable things. It’s called the wisdom of crowds, or the market. Google captures it in Pagerank. It is seldom completely bereft of information when it is widespread. Something is driving it.
The NYT and the WaPo should stop attributing it to irrationality or the result of supermarket tabloids or anonymous bloggers it can’t even name in any quantity. How can these marginal sources of information overturn the magisterial pronouncements of the NYT and the WaPo? How can it supersede the assurances of the Keith Olbermanns and Chris Matthews’ of the world?
Only if the tabloid/blogger hypothesis explains observations that the MSM theory of Obama is unable to explain. Ultimately the rising number of people believing Obama is a Muslim is a reflection the declining ability of the MSM model to explain Obama. They say, “he is a Christian” and yet many people, rightly or wrongly, do not see how it explains his behavior. Eventually you run into cognitive problems. The NYT can say, “this is a dog”. But if people hear the object of description consistently meowing then some sort of doubt is bound to arise.
What is the solution? I think the MSM model of Obama either is bound to change or the President changes his behavior in such a way that it conforms to the MSM model. At the risk of using the wrong metaphor, either the mountain goes to Mohammed or Mohammed goes to the mountain. If for example, the President were to say, “while I acknowledge the legal right of the Mosque to be built anywhere a permit is granted, I shall do my best to persuade its backers that it’s a bad idea” then it’s likely that fewer people will see him as a Muslim.
His latest statement is that he has “no regrets” about jumping into the debate. If you watch the video at the link you’ll see there’s no context to the lack of regrets. Even after a direct question his attitude toward the Mosque is still ambiguous. And it is this ambiguity that drives the ambiguity toward the man himself
James. According to one seemingly reliable study, as of 2001 there were an estimated 600,000 Muslims in NYC in over 100 mosques. What alteration in population and places of worship since than has been hard to catalog by all accounts. It’s “political issue” statistics.
James, in Manhattan alone there are 30 mosques. Little noticed was that after the Cordoba complex was granted to build that another mosque right by put in an application.
Note: there are no Wal-Marts in all of New York. Wal-Mart has tried at least twice to my knowledge in trying to set up for business in New York City. They even bought a property in Queens once, but got shot down in zoning.
New York City, and Manhattan in particular, are very selective about their neighbors and very controlling about what you can do with property should you be fool enough to buy it in New York City. The cool kids get what they want.
They want a mosque at Ground Zero. They’re not just okay with it, they WANT it.
They’ll fight Wal-Mart to the death if they moved in anywhere.
That’s the cultural reality, a one minute venture into the funhouse mind of a liberal.
@Josh,
Check this out:
More evidence that Obama is a Muslim
Obozo does not have to be a ‘good’ Muslim in order to be a dangerous one.
The fact that Pelosi, Obozo, and the rest of the dhimmicrats refuse to face is that ANY mosque has the potential, and in fact the likelihood, of becoming a focus of jihadism and a source of subversive propaganda (taqiyya). That is simply because jihadism (and no, I do not mean “internal struggle”) and taqiyya are central and indispensible tenets of Islam.
If the 9-11 mosque in the US were to be built, it too would become a pilgrimage and recruitment center for jihadis.
While the tranzi-progressive/pro-jihadi NYC bureaucrats, politicians, and media pundits are doing everything they can to smooth the way for this mosque (and being very self-righteous about their reasons for this), they are creating every possible obstacle to the rebuilding of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was destroyed in the 9-11 attack when the South Tower fell on it.
Rebuild St. Nicholas CHURCH at Ground Zero, not a mosque
The parish still has an active congregation but no building; they have been meeting to worship in Brooklyn. Now, many of us Orthodox Christians, working pretty much independently by word of mouth among friends and parishoners, have finally succeeded in getting some news media attention to this matter.
I’d like to ask all Americans supporting St. Nicholas Church to call, write, or better yet, GO AND VISIT the offices of their US Representative and US Senators. You will probably just get to talk to a staffer, but the staffer will pass this information along. It makes a BIG difference if you take the trouble to write a personal letter or show up in person.
Everyone, please, pass the information along to everybody else you know who might be interested. Put it on Facebook, repost it on your own blog, email it to your friends and relatives, whatever else you can think of. We need to get something done while the issue is still in the public eye.
Thanks!
Ephesians 6:10-16 (New International Version)
The Armor of God
10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Oh I agree she’s trying to change the subject and attract attention, but don’t give her too much credit…
She’s too stupid to understand that most people won’t buy into her shell game because really, they’re pissed. As you say, spontaneously.
And by asserting that someone’s buying them off, she’s doubled down on her stupidity, and tripled their anger, because now she’s questioned their intelligence, questioned their independence, and questioned their integrity.
There’s no MSM to lay a smokescreen for her on this one, as she’s taken a shot directly at The People.
Big frickin’ oops.
“The answers to both of those questions get to the uneasiness of the American public. The answers point to the idea that the Mosque is really a war memorial, not a place to worship God. Of course, that’s just a guess, but its a reasonable guess given the circumstances.”
War memorial! That’s it a nutshell!
It’s more than a reasonable guess, it’s a very catchy description. I intend to use it at every opportunity. Thanks for the wordsmithing.
Projection, projection, projection. Barely a day goes by when the Dem’s don’t accuse the Repub’s of engaging in what the Dem’s specialize in.
I love to repeat one of my favorite quotes from Freud, “Every exaggeration carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.”
You all know the story of the frog and the scorpion. The scorpion can’t help but sting the frog even if it leads to its own drowning because some things are not matters of logic, they are matters of character.
Bow to the Saudi rulers; declare that the most beautiful sound is that of being called to morning prayer; deliver an address that exaggerates the Islamic contribution to America; make an entirely unnecessary and unprovoked speech implying that you favor the building of the Cordoba Mosque. All these things are illogical but stem from the reflexes that emanate from character. What the pro forma religious affiliation might be misses the point. Ask what the deep character is.
This mosque must be stopped. It is the point of the spear of a cancer in our society. Its purpose is not worship alone. It is a symbol, as many have noted, of conquest from a culture that is built on conquest and uses symbolism as one of its major tools.
I wish I could believe that Americans are really waking up, but until I hear it personally from the dozens of “progressives” I have to deal with at the University and the Medical School and the place where I worship, I’ll remain a skeptic on this one.
We are all talking to each other on BC and may be falsely deluding ourselves that we are persuading others to open their eyes and ears and see what we recognize as obvious.
At times like this I contemplate the millions who chose not to leave Europe in the mid-1930′s because they couldn’t see what was coming.
Here is how to handle the mosque issue to our advantage and clobber the snot out of all enemies foreign and domestic. This one does not have to be fully implemented to work. Just promoting and advocating it will do most of what neeeds to be done.
The muslims get to build their mosque AFTER they pay in full for the restoration
of St Nicholas Orthodox Church and AFTER said restoration is complete. Not before.
They have to put the full inflated amount into a trust at an American independent accounting and audit firm. Preferably one that is Jewish owned. (Well, wouldja believe Israeli, no less?)
Once the job is most satisfactorily completed, the imman and his cohorts have to
publicly turn the payment over to the contractor PLUS donate any change/interim interest earned to the church itself. (Talk about playing Santa Claus to St Nicholas!) Then they can go apply for their own building permit.
Making them pay Jews to compensate Christians for Muslim aggression will severely damage, if not destroy, the credibility of those muslims directly involved. The side
effects will do various and sundry things to weaken the hand of Wahabis and other
radicals everywhere. This has the potential of weakening enemy capabilities
worldwide.
And I say again: The whole thing does not have to be actually implemented to work.
(Were it fully implemented, we might be in position to receive their unconditional surrender.) Just getting the idea publicized and advocated will work a few wonders.
The bad guys will be outraged but that is nothing new. They might even manage to
attempt or even carry out some kind of attack and claim that it is in retaliation for our impudence. BUT THEY WILL BE UNABLE TO UNDO THE DAMAGE TO THEIR CRITICAL IMAGE. And that is the key element. This will give them Wretchard’s “NO” in a
manner they cannot avoid.
1389: You got all this? Everybody else: Please do whatever you can to contact
your Congressman/Senator/anybody else who can shout it from the rooftops not to mention minarets. Please help guys. I think we got us an opportunity.
Thanks.
What is the true model that explains the observed behavior of politicians? There’s the MSM model, but it is failing. As things develop one cannot help but build up a hypothesis which appears to conform to the facts. The alternative hypothesis to the media’s is not necessarily true, nor is it necessarily adequate. For example, with respect to Anthropogenic Global Warming, I’m not sure what the true model looks like, if there is a significant trend at all or even what the coefficients are. About all I’m sure of, because I can see the strings and wires hanging off them, is that the University of East Anglia model isn’t it.
In the same way, about all I am almost sure of now is that the MSM model of the current administration’s behavior and motivations is wrong. Of the “true” model I can only conjecture, and I suspect that each of us has a similar conjectural model which we update all the time, depending on the new developments.
The interesting thing about the polls showing an increasing belief in the President’s “Muslim religion” is that it indicates that the MSM story, while still potent, is significantly weakening. To use the Star Trek metaphor, the shields are failing. At some point, I think it will be shields down.
What is not clear is what alternative model the public is moving toward. I think “Muslim” is a first order approximation for something else. What that “else” is can range from the perception that there’s been a huge capture of the castle by foreign elements to the more direct explanation that the Left is finally reaping what it has sown over the last 5 decades.
There was a time when I would have guessed the new model would have been tolerably close to the old one. The same framework modified to account for aberrant behavior or really bad actors. But my guess is that something else is happening. The public is starting to lose faith not only in the old MSM explanation of the way things work, but they are starting to think the MSM itself is a purveyor of lies. When that happens there is a tendency to embrace the contrary. If the MSM cries wolf, then the reflex is to laugh even if the wolf happens to truly be present. This is a consequence of a total loss of credibility.
Up to a point the MSM could compensate by shouting louder, pulling the old tricks with more frequency. But I think the credibility card is getting maxed out. When that happens the new model the public embraces might well be nonlinear in its relation to the old one. So my take on the polls and the mosque incidents is that it is potentially much more serious to the powers that be than it seems. It’s not just about the mosque. It’s about the possibility that soon the shields will be down.
The other thing that is starting to bother me is that some actors appear to be behaving against their best interest. It’s like they are not fully in control. This is behind Charles Krauthammer’s puzzlement. He calls it “lunacy”, but the same inexplicable behavior can also be accounted for by external influences. The disturbing possibility is there that some kind of unseen context is framing events. But it’s just a possibility. We need more information. And maybe we’ll get it either to confirm or discount. That’s one of the things that happens when the shields go down.
“Unlike the Washington Post I do not believe there is any definite way to ascertain a person’s true state of belief except through his external actions.”
What if he slips and confesses he’s a Muslim to George Stephanopoulos in a network interview? (Stephanopoulos had to remind him that he poses as a Christian.) Does that count?
http://tinyurl.com/479ekj
“consistently meowing”, heh.
I’d say he’s sympathetic. After part of childhood spent in a Muslim country and while in college befriending/rooming with a Pakistani and then spending time in Pakistan. The sympathy,combined with an attraction to dictators and ambivalence to individual liberty– well no wonder the family doesn’t celebrate Christmas.
What does Hillary think? I think she’s responsible for sending the Imam/emissary on his collection mission. Her globalbalony and totalitarian insticts are a bad combo.
What have we come to as a nation that this pinch faced old shrew has any say in anything of import? Washington, Jefferson and Adams would be apologizing to King George if they saw the sorry place we’ve come to in 200 plus years.
re: shields down..
What are the odds of the opposition being prepared and well-enough organized to replace this corrupt order with something better? Is there any evidence the ‘pubs have a back-room plan ready to unfold? Or the TeaParty folks presuming they complete a hostile take-over?
Perhaps disestablishing everything focused on domestic affairs in DC by some date certain? Given a mandate, what (policy, services, law, regulation) could they NOT choose to devolve to local governments by simply writing single page laws?
The Kiwis attempted something similar (de-nationalization) with some success last century, but the pendulum is swinging back today.
The answers point to the idea that the Mosque is really a war memorial, not a place to worship God.
Bingo and then some. Historiphobes like Speaker Pelosi do not care that in the earlier Muslim conquests of Christian turf, a Big Box mosque was soon plonked down in a commanding position where the kuffars once worshipped their inferior deities.
Examples: Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Great Mosque in Cordoba (note the coincidence!).
No matter how sweetly the disingenuous ‘moderate’ murmerings of New Cordoba’s sponsors fall on politicians’ ears, its size (Big Box) and location (9/11 Ground Zero) are simply the latest ostentatious gesture, to the whole world, of intent by Muslims to claim dominance in New York City.
And sorry, Mr. President and Ms. Speaker, this is not an issue of freedom of religion. Under Sharia, there’s no difference beween religious and political motivation and intent – witness the extremist preachings at Finsbury Mosque, and the common use of mosques as indoctrination and weapons storage centers. Freedom of religion is well enough served by the dozen or so mosques already erected in New York. A thirteen-story Megabox is better suited as a ceremonial – and an activist – assertion of political power. Its sponsors care not a whit for the family ‘sensibilities’ of dead hijackees and New Yorkers – they only want those families and frightened New Yorkers to extend one-way sensitivity to acquiesce in the Cordoba project.
w @ 35: What is the true model that explains the observed behavior of politicians?
…
What is not clear is what alternative model the public is moving toward.
…
The other thing that is starting to bother me is that some actors appear to be behaving against their best interest.
…
You sure ask a lot of questions!
Politicians are just people. I know you, and most, especially hereabouts on BC, look for rationality in people’s actions, rationality in terms of the real world. I don’t. People have their scripts, which they don’t particularly understand. A good script is mostly rational, but the actor may not really comprehend the rationality. Just how this all comes about – is complex. People are often self-destructive, it’s hardly rare. Politicians can be self-destructive, and destructive of the larger enterprise of which they are players. This should not be shocking. There are imperatives of leadership, of public life. People – politicians – will desire to stay on top, at the cost of their honor, their families, and the nation. Power corrupts, etc.
The public, is another matter. I’m afraid the (American) public is under all sorts of socioeconomic pressures, and it not at its best. And in Pelosi, Reid, and Obambus, we have some of the stupidest, most blindly partisan, unobjective, dogmatic players in this nation’s history. The MSM has gone into some kind of horrible perverted meltdown, totally partisan, smug beyond anything possible in the twentieth century.
Look around and take notes, this is more than likely how a great empire falls. But a great empire takes a lot of falling, so it may yet catch itself and ratchet back up, and at least it’s liable to ratchet down slowly over another generation or so. Barring (un)expected military/nuclear events.
Nancy Pelosi is living in a reality bubble. She simply cannot understand an environment where people do not agree with her viewpoint. She will have time to correct her views after the 2010 elections.
@35. wretchard
“it indicates that the MSM story, while still potent, is significantly weakening. To use the Star Trek metaphor, the shields are failing. At some point, I think it will be shields down.”
I think we can all agree that it is the internet and bloggers like wretchard that are destroying the MSM/Pelosi monopoly on the narrative, or to put it differently, they are losing control of the present which gives them control of the past and hence the control of the future.
Obama now has the mechanisms in place to wrest emergency control over the internet. Just like the looming deadline of Iran’s nuclear capacity, there is a looming deadline of Obama being able to exercise that internet control in order to restore the MSM narrative.
I fear that Pelosi, Reid and Obama are starting to feel cornered, and they may strike back very soon. All they need is the right crisis. Could Iran fill the bill?
Why can’t we take a page from the liberal playbook on this issue. Boycott New York until they reverse this decision on the GZM. Refuse to visit New York. Refuse to do business with any company based in or any product produced in New York.
I think they have waited too long for the right crisis to save them. The time to take over the internet and shut down talk radio was right after inauguration day when everyone was stoned on the hopium.
Now the shields are just to weak to take that blow. Instead of giving them time for repairs they might just end up with a catastrophic hull breach that destroys the whole ship and gives us a big heaping pile of non-linear change.
I hope I didn’t take that metaphor too far into the Delta quadrant…
Until now, I thought the claims that Obama is a Muslim were Looney Tunes. But then last night the thought just popped into my head that maybe that’s what this whole GZM is about.
The rational part of me still says “that’s ridiculous.” What I think the thought indicates, however, is that Obama’s actions and attitude — which have been devoid of respect and love for America and its traditions ever since he appeared on the radar in 2007 — support the thesis. It’s like when you are assembling a puzzle, fingering the pieces on the table and matching them against the vacancies, and suddenly you find the one that fits.
Remember when Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose were going on and on about how we didn’t really know who Obama was? Holy Crap.
IMHO, Nancy is Senile, or getting close. She is showing all the symptoms.
LaChat, Nancy is unopposed By John Dennis and is pretty sure to win, although I was unable to find a recent poll.
No, I expect Fancy Nancy to retire once she loses her Speaker of the House in January. Maybe not, but it’s almost a given that somebody gets blamed for the results of November and she is a high profile target.
I think Dirty Harry will lose. Navada, like New Mexico and Utah is a modern day city state. I say that because most of the population, capital, government, etc, is in 1 or 2 cities, with the rest of the state being mostly gophers, lizards and outhouses.
Lost Wages (Greater Las Vegas SMSA) has almost 2/3′ds of the population of Nevada. So it controls Nevada.
I worked there for about 2 years and still have friends. Some life long Democrats and they say Dirty Harry is dead, toast, belly up. Polls show a dead heat against a not so sharp candidate, so we will see.
Wretchard says: The proximate cause of Pelosi’s pique was the fact that questions about the mosque were following her around like a bad penny.
There’s also the possibility that she’s using the GZM debate to distract attention from her Treasure Island grab:
“SAN FRANCISCO — The deal has been signed to transfer man-made Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay from the Navy to San Francisco.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mayor Gavin Newsom and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus signed the transfer agreement on Tuesday. In includes a section of neighboring Yerba Buena Island.
Payments to the Navy could rise to $105 million, funded by private companies and revenue from developing the former Navy base into a model 21st century neighborhood.”
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15814766?nclick_check=1
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/08/18/pelosi-and-the-treasure-island-land-grab/
Round up the usual suspects.
A friend who was a big Obama Supporter in 2008 blew his stack when Obama came out backing it. I thought, “That wasn’t the feather, it was more like tower one.”
Again, “A Man for all Seasons” hits something:
“Until I know the ground of your objection, I can only guess your spiritual standing, too.”
“If you’re willing to guess at that, my Lord, it should be small matter to guess my objection.”
Wretchard makes some very salient points about the JKM. (JournoKlan Media)
The NYT and WaPo being the Grand Wizard and head Kleagle for the imposition and enforcement of the “right” way to think about things, and conspiring in a secret society to keep hidden any facts that would soil the narrative. The CEO of the NBC family propaganda farm, making it clear that “we don’t need any negative facts coming out of THIS machine”, making all of their network’s work instantly more understandable, in a frothing, Keith Olbermann/Chris Matthews sort of way.
To suggest that the propagandized, JournoKlan “stylings” about Obama’s religious bone fides are to be taken as anything other than a furtherance of the conspiracy to prop up this administration…is laughable.
First, his mother saw religion as a curiosity. Studying it was akin to studying at an archeological dig site. His absent father was probably an atheist as well. His paternal grandfather converted, he was originally a Roman Catholic and became a Muslim.
Obama’s stepfather, Mr. Soetoro, was a Muslim. When Obama was living in Jakarta, he studied the Koran.
He did not, at any time in his youth, become exposed to or attached to any Christian teachings or studies involving the Bible. The only known formal religious training or teaching in his youth, involved the Koran. Nowhere, in any of his own writings on his history, or that of anyone else, is it suggested that he was exposed to any sustained Christian upbringing.
While he has distanced himself from his Muslim ties, while speaking on the campaign trail, he made a slip regarding the visiting of “all 57 states”. Clearly, nobody in the history of Presidential campaigns has ever, to anyone’s knowledge, made such an odd mixup. But to some, the number is not simply silly. The number of “states” of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, happens …coincidentally…to number exactly 57 in common reference.
After he arrived in Chicago, he needed to obtain “street cred” and had to pick a place where blacks were congregating in large numbers on a regular basis. He was told he had to pick a church, this was the best way.
The church he chose, was “Christian” only in that it was not Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. This church feted and lionized Farrakhan. But, it advanced a rather fiery and frothing Black Liberation Theology, a sort of melange of Marxism and black nationalism. The “Christianity” part was never really the draw. This church was a tool in the shaping of the political animal, not in the molding of any sort of religious grounding.
When Obama bristles at the notion that he is a “Muslim”, it’s probably not without some tether to reality. He uses religion for political expediency, not for moral guidance.
When he is speaking with Muslims, his ties to and history with the Koran are used for legitimacy and credibility. When those ties prove inconvenient, they disappear and he has his JournoKlan henchmen provide cover.
One suspects that the need to hide transcripts and documents has more to do with what would be placed in the boxes for nationality, religion, birthplace. Not because what was contained within was true, necessarily. But, more probably, that what was contained within them was used for purposes to gain advantages. A “foreign” student, with a “foreign” passport, might get accepted as an “exchange” student rather than have to meet stricter entrance standards, competing within the rules of “fair competition” with “domestic” applicants.
To suggest that Obama has no Muslim “ties”, is to bury the truth of it. To suggest that he is a practicing Muslim, is most probably overstating the case by quite a bit.
In this particular instance, he is probably his mother’s son. A leftist who views religion with a bit of distance, curiosity and amusement….and he pulls out of his history with it, whatever might garner him some political advantage.
“The Washington Post states the President’s religion as if it were a “fact” that is plainly known to it yet strangely inaccessible to a growing number of people. It attributes this divergence to what can only be described as gullibility or ignorance…”
I feel more and more like I’m living in George Orwell’s Oceania where each day the “Ministry of Truth” regurgitates today’s set of government lies. The “Ministry of Truth” knows the truth, not the ordinary man. The “Ministry of Truth” knows the truth; don’t believe what you read outside of our control, and for the sake of Big Brother, don’t believe your lying eyes.
“Even the names of the four ministries by which we are governed exhibits a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts; the ministry of peace concerns its self with war; the ministry of truth with lies; the ministry of love with torture: and the ministry of plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink…” George Orwell – 1984
I’m likin’ the Cordoba Mosque issue because it’s shining the light into the dark corners that the MSM has deliberately chosen to ignore. And we’re seeing things that we were told are not supposed to exist.
Pelosi mouthed her investigative threats in at least two interviews. The one I saw was outdoors, and she was not wearing a red dress. Pelosi is either telling Americans they’re stupid and need to be lead around by the nose, or that the power of the State will be brought down on anybody who disagrees with the Democrat agenda. It’s probably both.
I recently saw a post (at American Thinker if memory serves) that compared Obama’s publicly stated/official position on perhaps as many as 20 issues related to Sharia Islam with those of declared jihadists. The consistency match was 100%. Walks like a duck, Quacks like a duck.
There is much more to be had from the Cordoba Mosque. According the mosque developers there will be at least 6 floors of office space. Information sourced at Gates of Vienna says that office space will be used for a “Sharia Compliant” project. Yea, right. These so called “moderate” muslims can gaze out the window at the work of their heroes while they discuss ways to stuff Saudi money into the pockets of City, State and Federal officials to pass sharia compliant laws and regulations.
sharia islam = enemy of Liberty.
sharia islam = enemy of Civilization.
We can only hope that the politicos get pressed on if they have any objection to the Sharia Compliant aspect of the mosque. We need you on this one Sarah Palin!
Investigate This!
“We Remember”
By the victim’s survivors.
Keep America Safe
Most powerful and effective response to this lunacy.
(not to mention incredibly moving)
Spread it far and wide.
Personally, it’s been years since anything written or filmed took me back this powerfully.
Other good info @ the site also.
Full Screen Viewing Recommended
I have been saying for some time that I think Obama will announce that he is a Muslim sometime after leaving office. That is entirely a “gut feeling” as Wretchard writes up there, but I believe it to be true, and have for about a year.
Does that mean he is Muslim now? Maybe, but not necessarily. It just means that he is ripe fallow to become one at some point at least (if not already), and I geninely beleive he would feel more at home as a Muslim than not. He is cetainly no Christian, by any stretch. His presence in Wright’s church was entirely about politics, not faith.
He is not one of us.
Who could image that Daniel Pipe’s “Conspiracy” would be used as a manual for governance? And by Americans? The Democrats have aped the habits of their Arabian masters thoroughly–soon I expect them to be adopting the Protocols as a party platform.
From the comments section of this thread at FR that discusses a piece of yesterday’s Michael Savage show in which a caller says O “never learned how to land the plane”
……………
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old rancher, who’s hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man.. Eventually the topic got around to Obama and his role as our president.
The old rancher said, ‘Well, ya know, Obama is a ‘Post Turtle”..
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him, what a ‘post turtle’ was.
The old rancher said, ‘When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a ‘post turtle’.
The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor’s face so he continued to explain. ‘You know he didn’t get up there by himself, he doesn’t belong up there, he doesn’t know what to do while he’s up there, he’s elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put him up there to begin with’.
I think the Ground Zero Mosque is a terrific idea. It’s planning for the future when the GZM can be turned into an museum of exhibits on an extinct faith; New York’s counterpart to Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia. Let them finish it. Then take it from them.
@4. Dishman
Alternately, she knows it’s real grass roots, but wants to advance the propaganda meme that the opposition is in the employ of shadowy extreme-right-wing financial interests.
Stepanoupolis corrects Obama’s
“my muslim faith” comment.
—
—
cfbleachers
Wretchard makes some very salient points about the JKM. (JournoKlan Media)
The NYT and WaPo being the Grand Wizard and head Kleagle for the imposition and enforcement of the “right” way to think about things, and conspiring in a secret society to keep hidden any facts that would soil the narrative. The CEO of the NBC family propaganda farm, making it clear that “we don’t need any negative facts coming out of THIS machine”, making all of their network’s work instantly more understandable, in a frothing, Keith Olbermann/Chris Matthews sort of way.
To suggest that the propagandized, JournoKlan “stylings” about Obama’s religious bone fides are to be taken as anything other than a furtherance of the conspiracy to prop up this administration…is laughable.
(Part of excellent comment pasted to get past the “I don’t like naked links” filter)
cfbleachers: Re religion mixology, The following source says Lolo Soetoro of Javanese descent:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=528
That means a Hindu/Buddhist background.
Meme Tax . . . House Speaker Nancy Polosi has introduced an amendment to the Cap & Trade Legislation that along with CO2 we should tax memes, as being seriously infectious and detrimental to the Political Environment.
From the videos here are three things I got:
1. San Fran Nan has brain damage from too much Botox. She belongs in the produce department with the rest of the vegetables.
2. San Fran Nan thinks she is a goddess and can make veiled threats of investigation against opponents – why not? She has never been sanctioned.
3. The GZM project probably is just stalled not completely buried. Muslims have learned to wage war for extended periods of time. I say, don’t let the Mosque be build and don’t let your guard down.
Wretchard: I used to have a friend who was a Hungarian hedge trader. The fund he ran was a few centi-million, iirc. He lived around the corner, but after we had some 500 year floods — although our properties were still 8 feet above high water, he panicked. He divorced his wife and ran home to Hungary.
He was always so afraid of America, so many things and types of people could be harmful! His Doctorate was from Hungary in Mathematics, his dissertation in statistical risk management.
Jim Rodgers, Soros’ old partner packed up his family and moved into sphere China in 2007 or so. He was considering the future of his heirs.
Yes, in the past 30 years the hedge fund masters have made billions trading country versus country, analyzing risk. But at some point they lack common sense. America has a whole lot of common sense. We will survive the 500 year floods. China, for various very long term cultural reasons, does NOT have the level of common sense Americans have. Our ground is 8 foot higher, and we do not panic in the face of emergency.
But men, even Hungarian super geniuses, have limits. They do panic when the reality of risk rises towards their doors. They are, I think, far more likely to panic. And much more likely the MORE funds they have under management.
So, yes, I do suspect Soros is panicking.
A few years ago the UCBerkeley student newspaper published an interview with linguistics prof George Lakoff, who had recently announced the launch of the Rockbridge Institute. He described the new liberal think tank as offering “its expertise and research on a nonpartisan basis to help progressives understand how best to get their messages across.”
Nope, no blind spot there…
At several points in the interview, Lakoff offered an analysis of Conservative political successes based on some vast network of wealthy patrons who are inexplicably able to provide unlimited funding to a sprawl of Conservative political think tanks AND the entire constellation of conservative TALK RADIO stations and personalities. He never gave a single sentence’s acknowledgment of the free-enterprise basis of commercial radio accruing its revenues by selling advertising, which system is in its turn driven by the popularity of programs and “On-air” personalities.
These pathetickers cannot conceive that their understanding of the way the world works might not be entirely accurate.
(Lakoff seems to have successfully sold himself to the Progressives so that he is now frequently quoted in mainstream articles. It’s worth scanning the linked article to get a sense of how this guy views the world.)
“I have been saying for some time that I think Obama will announce that he is a Muslim sometime after leaving office.”
Andrew X, I share the same gut feeling. And I think it will be staged to look very regal and serene, with the whole family docilely following in a stately, moving ceremony. Is he a Muslim now? Eh, close enough. I think Muslims recognize him as one of their own – he probably made the profession of faith as a boy, which would have sealed his fate. We might think he’s not a very good Muslim, what with his fondness for booze and maybe other proscribed items, but “good” is a relative term in Islam. Advancing Islam makes one a good Muslim; Obama’s “sins” are easily forgiven in exchange for his heroic efforts in advancing THE cause. This is a religion that sanctifies lying to the enemy, after all.
The staged ceremony we talk about will be propaganda, but they will keep up the story that it’s a “conversion” to bamboozle and demoralize the infidels.
What Obama himself thinks about his religious status is probably shifting and unsolid. I suspect that, as he thinks of himself politically as a “citizen of the world”, he believes he can get away with the same nebulous gimmick when it comes to religion. He floats above the earthbound strictures of religion that the “little people” toil under, and probably envies Prince Charles, who came up with the idea of “Defender of Faiths” for his future title. Obama probably sees himself in a similar way, and he’ll probably use some such claptrap to convince the rather redoubtable Michelle to go along with the public performance. “Oh, honey, that’s not going to apply to US!” will be his spiel. And why not? Isn’t that the way things are in Saudi Arabia, where the people at the top (where Obama sees himself permanently ensconced) do as they please?
Fiddler:
Every time Limbaugh mentions Lakoff’s name, he follows it with,
‘Rhymes with…‘
Limbaugh and Elton John will be surprised to learn they didn’t earn their millions.
—
The Beginning of the End of the Ground Zero Mosque
A column in a leading Arabic-language daily should lead even liberals to throw in the towel…
“I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime. At the same time, there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district….The last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery….[T]he battle against the 11 September terrorists is a Muslim battle…and this battle still is ablaze in more than 20 Muslim countries. Some Muslims will consider that building a mosque on this site immortalizes and commemorates what was done by the terrorists who committed their crime in the name of Islam. I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a symbol or a worship place that tomorrow might become a place about which the terrorists and their Muslim followers boast, and which will become a shrine for Islam haters whose aim is to turn the public opinion against Islam.”
bvw @ 62
From Daniel Pipes article at FrontPage Magazine.
Interviews with dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia, despite being listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school, Strada Asisia, where he attended 1st through 3rd grades. At the time, the school most likely registered children based on the religion of their fathers, said [Israella Pareira] Darmawan, Obama’s former [1st-grade] teacher. Because Soetoro was a Muslim, Obama was listed as a Muslim, she said.
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=29425
I stand by my analysis that Obama probably treats religion as a prop much more than as a lifetime proposition.
Darn it, Wretchard – I was just about to start work on a very original email “punditry” on this topic when you go ahead and nail it.
Oh well – I’ll proceed with the punditry; it just won’t be quite as original.
re #70 above: ditto to the many excellent comments on this thread
Wretchard: “That’s one of the things that happens when the shields go down.”
bvw: “I do suspect Soros is panicking.”
The economy is in a Wile E. Coyote phase, momentarily suspended in mid-air. The full faith and credit of the U.S. government is currently employed in keeping Wile E. in the air, i.e., keeping the too-big-to-fail banks from failing. When Wile E. finally stops pedaling air and plummets, the shields will be fully down. The U.S. taxpayers will realize that they are the ones who have to pay the debt “their” government ran up. And it’s a big honkin’ debt. And a lot of people (Hello, Nancy and Barney!) got rich directly or indirectly on that borrowed money.
Here’s a Bloomberg article from yesterday, “U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don’t Even Know It,” Laurence Kotlikoff
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html
It’s interesting to revisit the NYT regarding Obama’s Muslim heritage, written at a time when the primaries were still in full swing and Hillary had some NYT support. The memory hole has not engulfed this opinion piece yet:
“President Apostate?”
By EDWARD N. LUTTWAK
Published: May 12, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/opinion/12luttwak.html
“In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith.
“As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant. . . .”
Read the rest.
One unexplored avenue of thought on this subject is the answer to the question: “Why do liberals have such a fascination with Islam, that they do not share with Christianity?”.
Many have pointed out the outward differences between liberalism and Islam, especially in the status of Women. But below the surface, there is a broad philosophical parallel between the two faiths.
Liberalism is really built on the following diagram:
Government Money from Taxes
- – - – - || – - – -
- – - – - \/ – - – -
An institution that provides something
- – - – - /\ – - – -
- – - – - || – - – -
People who need something to live:
The institution could be anything – a school, a doctor, a car dealer. The point is that institutions live and provide services at the behest of government who keeps the institution alive through tax dollars. People who receive the good or service go to these institutions and receive what they need.
Liberals believe in the above diagram because it is built on love. Individuals aren’t looking for the best deal, they just receive what is fair. The institutions aren’t looking for a profit (greed) they just provide for the people out of love and caring.
But on a deeper level, Liberals like the above diagram because it provides predictable order. Risk and chaos are removed from life. That is good and just (Social Justice).
The above ideas are sold as new and modern, but they are really nothing more than old fashioned tribalism brought to the modern age – and expanded in scope so that the tribe is the whole country, or eventually the whole world. Since Islam is the religion closest to the tribal world, it shares the predictability and serenity of the liberal faith. Its particulars are different, but once Islam has been allowed to win, and the conservative world has been vanquished, then liberalism and Islam will work out their particular differences to create the serene predictable world each desires.
Compare this vision with the conservative vision:
Institution #1
- – -/\- – -
- – -||- – -
- Person #1
- – -/\- – -
- – -||- – -
Work to Make Money -or-
-Government
For the conservatives, institutions live and die based on the willingness of customers to give them money. In some cases, the government gives poor people money to participate in the process – but the government does not direct the institutions. Each individual wants the best at the best price, each institution wants to make the most money. To the liberals, this order of things is based on greed and should be abolished, even if it means getting together with Islam.
Lastly, despite protests from various “People of God”, the second diagram is consistent with Christian philosophy. It accepts the centrality of free will, rather than power, in the order of society. It also accepts that free will is a gift from God, and can be used to sin, which necessarily creates a chaotic world.
For this reason, liberalism can never come to terms with Christian thought – except to destroy it. The beliefs are diametrically opposed. There is no squaring the circle.
cfbleachers @ 69:
Yes, Lolo was a Muslim, but his longterm family background — and I do not know how many or few generations — was not Mulsim. It was most likely — according to the linguist’s article I linked — Hindu/Buudhist. Less likely Fujian, or even Japanese. If *I* had to guess I would guess that Lolo is of Japanese descent on the basis of a hunch.
Putting that hunch to words, it is that Lolo married someone from outside the culture of where he lived, and from Hawaii. Many from the Pacific Rim perceive Hawaii as almost a part of Japan.
Again, I should like to warn against personalizing this. The behavior and beliefs Obama and Pelosi are typical of the Left.
There is absolutely nothing that they do that cannot be found in any college campus, large Union meeting or gathering of Leftist political activists or strategists. Nothing. If anything, believe it or not, their rhetoric is actually turned down a bit from other, more shrouded venues.
Let us not imagine that all this is due to “craziness” on the part of Pelosi, that her behavior is somehow aberrant so far as the rest the Democrats go. She is a perfect manifestation of the Establi9shment Left and the Democrat Party–so is Obama. Should they go hurling off the earth tomorrow never to return, the problem of the Left would still be very much with us. In fact, if were so foolish as to think that it is merely a problem of personalities and individuals, the problem would be even worse.
The real question here: Why are they so open about it now. Is it arrogance or do they have something up their sleeves? Why do they continually not show the slightest fear of the American people whatsoever?
OK, That is not the only real question. The other one: How do we rid ourselves of these traitorous and corrupt vipers?
Wretchard,
I’m waiting for Sara Palin or some other Republican notable politician like Senator Cornyn (R-TX) to show up to the September 11th Ground Zero protests against the Muslim Victory Mosque, and propose a “Ground Zero Historic Battlefield” initiative that would Federalize and take over zoning of Ground Zero from NY City government, then rezone the Cordoba initiative out of existance.
This is possible because the enabling legislation for a National Historic Battlefields can designated with varying zones of influence and of specified effects, one of which could include “offense to the survivors.”
Religious facilities, for example, could be put in the same “zone of effect” category of relative undesirability as a porn store, with previously existing religious facilities being grandfathered in, including a replacement of those destroyed in the attack such as the Greek Orthodox Church at Ground Zero that NY City regulators nixed the rebuilding of.
That sort of clause is secularly neutral on its face but just happens to exclude the Cordoba Initiative, Ground Zero Muslim Victory, Mosque.
Doing that over the heads of Obama, Pelosi, the Mainstream Media and the NY City Cultural Left would be a cultural/political monkey trap on crystal meth.
Re #35 (wretchard)
“What is the true model that explains the observed behavior of politicians?”
IMHO, the best explanation is that they are America hating Statists. “Statist” is not really a controversial term to lay on them. It’s simply more honest than “Progressive” or “Liberal”, but doesn’t carry all the baggage of “Marxist”, “Leftist”, “Socialist”, etc. As for the America hating part – the reality of America is an obstacle to their fantasy utopias. They may (very) occasionally wrap themselves in American symbols, claim their “dissent is the highest form of patriotism”, etc.; but in the end THEIR patriotism is in pursuit of a fantasy utopia, not a truly better America as that concept would be understood by any rational being.
—————————————————————————————————————
“…but they [majority of Americans] are starting to think the MSM itself is a purveyor of lies. When that happens there is a tendency to embrace the contrary. If the MSM cries wolf, then the reflex is to laugh even if the wolf happens to truly be present.”
The broken clock phenomenon (still correct twice a day) – a reminder that we must always keep an open mind. Yes, the America hating Statist is FUNDAMENTALLY dishonest, but if for no other reason than the law of averages, the intended dishonesty may occasionally be accurate.
——————————————————————————————————————
“The other thing that is starting to bother me is that some actors appear to be behaving against their best interest.”
They have well and truly drunk the Kool Aid of their fantasy utopian visions ; or as Krauthammer says, “lunacy”.
What is the solution? I think the MSM model of Obama either is bound to change or the President changes his behavior in such a way that it conforms to the MSM model. At the risk of using the wrong metaphor, either the mountain goes to Mohammed or Mohammed goes to the mountain.
Well, there is, of course, a third outcome: they just go on as before; they just keep lying. This has always worked in the past. Why should it fail now? Have enough of us been roused or disillusioned for this to change? Perhaps, but one must understand that we have reached the point where American Jews on the Left are “defending” this outrage, and defending to to the point were they are actually returning awards from Jewish organizations opposing the GZM–quite huffily too. We have one of the nation’s most promenet Jewish politicians actually leading the GZM through the labyrinth of New York politics.
Remember that they do not have to last forever, they just have to last long enough to destroy the nation. The bald fact that this controversy even exists is damaging enough. Lying a little longer hardly matter at all so far as grasping the real prize goes. Besides, more lies will no doubt garner a Pulitzer or two. Screenplays valorizing those courageous Muslims and their patriotic steadfastness in the face of nativist bigotry are no doubt already in the works, I should imagine.
On another matter, has anyone ever before heard a Speaker threaten investigations like this? I have not and that is regardless of the issue.
This is the sort of thing one hears out of a Politburo. Chilling times. Just because Pelosi is clownish and ham-fisted does not mean that someone down the pike will not be more adroit at such a tactic. One thing that is not being dealt with here is the fact that even if the issue was funded by Pelosi’s political opponets why would that require an “investigation”. Here Herr Soros comes to mind. In fact, little of the “public opinion” on the Left is from some “grass roots”; nearly all of it is manufactured by “backers”.
It is hard to take: the speaker of the house threatening investigation against those who hold that building a mosque at the site of a major Islamic assault against the USA–and the site of the greatest attack against civilians in our history–requires congressional “investigation”. Pure eveil and insanity.
Truly, our nation is at the threshold of self-destruction
Mongoose, To paraphrase Jesus, maybe the left we will always have with us, but if as you speculate Pelosi and Obama went “hurling off the earth, never to return”, I could live with that.
@ 35. wretchard
I have no doubt that there is much behind-the-scenes pressure going on. Some of it might be carrot (“we can use our influence with major companies to secure lucrative speaking engagements for you”), and some of it might be stick (“There are a lot of enraged, violent Muslims who know where you live, where members of your family live, and where your kids go to school”)
Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh found out how effective the stick is. Outspoken critics of Islam have to live under 24-hour guard. Outspoken high-profile opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque may be at risk for harassment if not worse.
James #73
Since we’re tackling the motivation issue I’ll jump into the ring.
As I enter my dotage the world is ever more making sense to me only when I can diagram the moral foundation or ‘essence of being’ of people, or groups of people who behave similarly.
I know people are complicated and batman and the other shrinks can call me for my naivete but the moral universe of the Left/Progressives is the size of a pea:
Moral = anything that enhances my status, self-esteem, pleasure
Not Moral = everything that can negatively affect my enhancement of status, self-esteem, pleasure
This is the only way I can get my head around why a Bloomberg or a Pelosi would shill for such an obvious manifestation of sharia triumphalism as the Cordoba mosque, and attack as stupid and manipulated anybody who disagrees.
“I am tolerant. I am a good person” trumps every other possible consequence.
I think my self-esteem theory is consistent with your model where the goal of “social justice” is paramount.
What I have trouble understanding is why intelligent people:
1. Will not consider any possible consequences beyond the generality (tolerance) or even whether or not the stated objective can be satisfied.
2. Dismiss out of hand even monumental levels of human suffering incurred in the promotion of the “greater good.” FDR prolonged the depression. The Great Society destroyed urban black families. The USSR was still a good idea even while Stalin was saying “execute 5,000″ as casually as ordering vodka.
It’s way beyond the scope of this little tome but I’m convinced that the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only possible, basis for a peaceful human society.
There are so many ways that the statists and their allies undermine the country that it’s not easy to keep a scorecard.
600,000 Muslims in NYC? I suspect not. Muslim groups like to inflate the numbers to increase a sense of inevitability and political influence, e.g. to lobby for school days off for Muslim holy days, etc. (The teacher union won’t object to that.)
Until 20 years ago, Christian Arabs outnumbered Muslim Arabs in the US, Christians having fled from their Muslim neighbors, especially in Palestine and Lebanon.
But indeed the Muslim population is growing. What happened? Refugee resettlement and Kennedy-led-Republican-abetted immigration policy.
Regarding current UN refugee quotas, of the 19 countries which have formal refugees quota’s under UN agreements all are from Europe, North America and Australasia, with the United States, Canada and Australia taking a large percentage of refugees. There are no wealthy Asian or Middle Eastern countries with official refugee quotas and a number haven’t even signed up to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.
It’s so nice of us to help out and to grow the numbers of voters who will vote for more change of the same kind. The state government refugee resettlement office in my fair state is only too happy to bring in some more folks and sign them up for county support, with support from federal sources. It’s a big industry:
“Refugee assistance”
“The refugee resettlement program coordinates services to assist refugees in making the transition to life in the United States. These services include resettlement and placement, cash and medical assistance, and employment and social services.
(Ah, yes, the cash assistance.)
“Refugees are people who have had to flee their country of origin and are unable to return because of a well-founded fear of persecution. There are millions of refugees today in camps under the protection of the United Nations. When no other options exist, the United States, as well as most Western nations, provides refugees an opportunity for permanent resettlement. Most refugees resettled over the last two decades have been Southeast Asians, but more recently the population has become more diverse with people from countries in strife, such as Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, Iraq and the former Soviet Union.”
(i.e., we used to resettle Hmong and Vietnamese, but now we specialize in refugees from Islamic states such as Somalia.)
“Refugee social services are provided entirely through federal funding from several sources. Federal grants are awarded based on the percentage of refugees that resettled in the state over the three previous fiscal years.”
The state in this and innumerable other instances acts in the place of the churches, claiming to pool resources in support of compassionate concern for victims. But in doing so it weakens, deliberately, the churches. Socialism requires a post-Christian church environment. An increase in the number of Muslims provides statists with a counterweight to those uppity majority Christians.
As always, follow the money. You’re paying for the entire operation, one way or another. And you’re paying for votes for a certain party, also. Demography is history. Illegal immigration from Mexico provides the numbers the Democrats need. Legal refugee resettlement from Muslim countries provide an ideological counterweight to those pesky Christians and conservatives.
And Mongoose is quite right, that the behavior and beliefs Obama and Pelosi are typical of the Left, and that “there is absolutely nothing that they do that cannot be found in any college campus, large Union meeting or gathering of Leftist political activists or strategists. Nothing.”
But the leftists are in their own thought-world, reminding me of Chaucer’s Pardoner, who was so contemptuous of his fellow pilgrims that he told them how he fleeces dupes by selling them relics and indulgences, tells the pilgrims the story he always tells to dupes, and then proceeds to try to sell indulgences to the pilgrims. Only Chaucer’s Host keeps his head and tells the Pardoner he’d geld him, if the Pardoner had any cojones to geld, that is.
The statists have their own indulgences and relics scam going.
@40
With regard to mosques as symbols of triumph, I am reminded that in those parts of the Carpathian Basin that were conquered by the Ottoman turks about 500 years ago, there were many churches converted into mosques, and many new mosques and minarets built.
The mosques would typically have an Ottoman crescent placed prominently on the highest point of the structure. After the west reconquered Hungary (the Hungarians, but with the full weight of the Hapsburgs and other westerners) these crescents were left in place, but a cross was affixed on top of each.
And @65,
I find it amusing that your Hungarian friend left the US because of flooding. Hungary has had catastrophic flooding in the Tisza and Danube watersheds lately.
Geez, I think that there is no mystery here with Pelosi and so many of these dems. They have nothing up the sleeve; but they certainly think that they do. They believe that they are smarter than the average American, and by sheer force of will, by ‘laying down the law’ with the proper tone of voice conveying to us their super-intelligence, we’ll all fall in line and shut our yaps.
Pelosi et al actually believe that the fact that they are in these positions of great power, VOTED IN to these positions no less, by the slobs they were destined to rule, proves how much more brilliant they are than the rest of us. (After all, they WON. They have a MANDATE.)
They really believe they’ve EARNED all of this.
The years of affirmative action and voter apathy are how they really got there, but they can’t and won’t ever see that.
They are post turtles, but turtles who believe that they got themselves up on top of that post, and that they truly belong up on that post.
They are that stupid, yes.
I fear that BHO is only a figurehead . . . the prow of a mighty machine of distruction . . . The Won, is only a small tumor in the metastasized cancer that has attacked the very foundations of freedom. It makes no difference that we the people focus our hate, or fear, or focus of our radioactive vision, upon him. For he is not the source of the disease, for he is only a node that risen to visibility. He is a distraction, a very, very good distraction. He is not the commander of this war in which we are the enemy. All warfare is based on deception . . . and a most complete deception have we the people been fed, the kool-aid, the emotional poision. The emotional/irrational fear of status quo breed the full bore swing to the emotional/irrational hope of change. So has the pendelum swung. The masses now rise and the pendelum will be stayed and rationality shall be brought forth as the moderating of oil upon the water. Hate comes forth, be the Democrat or Republican, a new and fresh wind is now blowing across the country and the firm grasp on the foundations come again. Anger at the enemy has the machine squirming as the hand of the masses does throttle the breath of tyrany. We of the moral rightous shall win this protracted battle, for the tyrant is of limited time and we the people have this great advantage to our favor. Yes, the figurehead shall go down in history, an independent history of his own, and his name shall be spat forth with disgust, unlike any before him.
@83
Re my Hungarian friend — flooding was just part of it. My bigger point is that AMERICA was scary to him in a way that he was unable to get past. I suspect Soros (and Obama too) are of the same mindset. Why so many ‘vacations’? Psychic dissonance.
My friend, who I miss, because he was very smart with a subtle mind and good to talk with, ended up being very very homesick. The two major floods were both between a 100 year and 500 year flood, according to Army Corp flood maps. One hit and then a year and half later the other hit. They were just enough to make his fear of America, the big concept, and his homesickness, unbearable.
His wife, she stayed here with the kids. She likes it here, but travels back for a few months a year. She is also a doctorate in math from a Hungarian school. But she’s a set-theorist or something like that.
America’s ideals and society are VERY SCARY to a certain sort of people. That’s a big point.
We can all help educate Pelosi by sending a brief, hand written and individually stamped note stating that you, as a private citizen, have an objection to building a mosque on that property (or not as you see fit). Would it blow her mind to realize individuals exist?
Peter #81
While your motivation theory of liberalism is probably true, I can’t see why it would provide a synergy with Islam and Sharia, but not Christianity. I wrote the broader philosophical argument to attempt to answer that question.
As far as the disconnect between suffering and liberalism, you can think of it this way:
Liberals have a broad vision of the functioning of society. The vision is good because they thought it up, and it is proclaimed good. They sell that vision base on how great it will be if they get it. When they get the vision, and lots of suffering, it doesn’t matter. The vision remains and is still good by itself.
Great philosophical systems have a life-cycle. They can last any number of generations. For progressiveness, the life-cycle went like this:
1) Great philosophers invent it (1880 – 1930). Jane Adams, Herbert Croley, John Dewey.
2) Wiley politicians grab the philosophy and stick it to the people during a crisis. FDR, Johnson. The politicians know how to sell the philosophy, but may not believe it all that much themselves. Its just a path to power.
3) 1 or 2 generations pass and politicians wedded to the philosophy continue to get elected via the sale of the philosophy. Eventually, these politicians start to believe their own sales pitch. It must be true because people vote for it and society seems to function – at least a little.
4) Another generation goes by and the politicians completely believe the sales pitch, but can’t remember the assumptions or ideas behind the philosophy. They continue to pass legislation loosely based on the philosophy, but that’s just because vested interests want the system to continue for their own benefit. Example: How many officials at the teacher’s union really understand Dewey progressive education? Probably very few – they just want the money to continue.
5) Another philosophy comes along with great visionaries, and the entrenched interests are shocked when they find they have no foundation to base their own arguments.
We are now at #5, and Wretchard is trying to figure out the next phase. It looks like things could improve a lot due to the general incompetence of the old guard. But things could spin out of control too. Place your bets lady’s and Gentlemen.
#35 Wretchard, #78 Mongoose
This Ground Zero Islamist Victory Mosque “monkey trap” reminds me nothing so much as of a really successful con man who reached the end of a long term successful Ponzi scheme before he was ready to leave. Or after he has _con_vinced himself it can go on forever (and he can keep his high level social status, See Bernard Madoff).
The name of this con is “Diversity.”
And if the old game of rigged by the Left regulatory/judical/Pop Media system to get a despised minority some “Right” the Left really wants as both a cultural trophy of their superiority and as actual power over the mass of Americans who are in total opposition to it, fails in NY City Ground Zero. Then the con they have based their power in is threatened everywhere else by the successful example.
Hence the Pelosi doubling down, monkey trap, craziness before the election.
We have reached the “Borrow from Peter to pay Paul” stage of the Diversity con and Pelosi, the MSM, Obama et al are pounding the table to try and push the con through just one more time.
Their collective problem is that the “Diversity Card” is being refused for lack of credit and they must either pay the bill or go to debtors prison that is the political wilderness.
Re. Wretchard: “The good news for critics is that they appear to have hit upon an issue which, for reasons that are not entirely clear, Obama, Pelosi and Bloomberg feel compelled to defend, if not reluctantly then at least with a measure of desperation. It is almost as if their fists are in a monkey trap.” The phenomena you identified exists since even before 93 bombing. The only actors’ names changed. Elite wants Islam, although I still cannot figure out the reason. Oil money alone doesn’t explain this (to me). They seem to want a controlling ideology. WHY?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/obamas_point_of_no_return.html
grrr@90 “Elite wants Islam, although I still cannot figure out the reason.”
The left is using islam as yet another cudgel against America.
It is another opportunity to silence debate through the use of ‘racism’ and ‘islamophobia’.
They are taking perverse pleasure in trying to use ‘tolerance’ of the ‘other’ religion as a way to smack down the ‘Christianists’ and lessen the perceived hold of Christianity over America and American government. In the long run they see themselves turning muslims into pure secularists, as socialism finally enlightens the practicioners of the superstition that is religion.
Much as they’ve been able to do with Christianity.
Much as they’ve been able to weaken the family in America.
And this is certainly part of the attempt to destroy nationalism in America as well, to kill any sense of pride in being an American.
This is who they are.
Look at obama, pelosi, and their ilk.
They put on a show of being religious, but it’s simply to play to the rubes.
And they hate America, hate the thought that they’re ‘Americans’, and continuously work toward a transnationalist system ala the UN, using any tool they can to accomplish the ‘change’ that they seek in their ‘transformation’ of America.
#14 Wretcherd,
Obama IS A Muslim. If you are born a Muslim, you stay a Muslim. Islam is like the Hotel California, you can check out but you can never leave.
A born Muslim that denounces Islam doesn’t stop being a Muslim, they just become an apostate Muslim.
Now the MSM either doesn’t know that or won’t accept it. I’m think the latter. They are unable to conceptualize not having any choice in the matter. That is as ignorant as the Mullahs who cannot conceptualize having the choice of rejecting Islam.
So who is correct? Right now 1 out of 4, although that ratio is changing. As more people learn about Islam, it will flip and eventually we will have 4 out of 5 that understand the Obomination is an apostate Muslim. The MSM will never face that fact.
Remember the FOX reporter and cameraman that were captured by Islamic terrorists ( I know, a redundancy)? They converted to Islam and were set free. Next time they are caught, it is straight to the chopping block. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and it’s off with their head.
I have posted URL’s to the Shiria Law about this subject several times. It is cut and dried with no room for debate. The MSM is just flat out wrong.
The point they are stumbling over is it just doesn’t matter what they think. It doesn’t matter what the Obomination thinks.
What matters is what ol’ Mo the child molester (PBUH) thought. Mo says ‘no’. That is what counts. Mo made the choice and that is that.
90. grrr
“Elite wants Islam, although I still cannot figure out the reason”
In my veiw it is because both are top-down totalitarian systems; Communism is a cult masquerading as a political system and Islam is a political system dressed up as a religion. Both demand the same thing; submission (Islam at least has the forthrightness to say it out loud). Submit, or suffer the consequences, Stalin and the Mohammed would probably have gotten along just fine (although I have never heard that Stalin was a child-molestor). Piles of corpes along the way? Economic catastrophe? Starvation? Just a small price to be paid to reach “perfection”
The Lefties think they are the smartest people to have ever lived, they are willing to use Islam as foot-soldiers in their crusade against Western Civilization with the idea of “dealing with” them later. They are certain that they can outsmart a bunch of religious nuts. They both have a current common enemy and both are willing to use the other to bring that enemy down (think Churchill and Stalin ca 1941). If the West falls the resulting bloodbath between the Statists and the Islamic Zealots will by cataclysmic.
China, being largely outside the orbit of both, will profit the most, ending up like the USA at the end of WW2. I would not be suprised to find that there is a branch of the Chinese black-ops bunch that are fomenting exactly that scenario.
grrr 90,
The Marxist Left is allied with the Islamo-Fascist Left because both are controlling (totalitarian) political systems of law and government. The wealthy self-serving Marxist who sits on the top of his/her Animal Farm heap has more in common with the wealthy self-serving Imam who sits on top of his harem and Islamic parish. The tops of each pyramid seek cordial and mutually beneficial relationship with the other tops, not with the “little people” upon whom they all sit. George Orwell said as much in his book “1984.”
“Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure; the same worship of a semi-Divine leader; the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare. It follows that the three super-states not only cannot conquer one another, but would gain no advantage by doing so. On the contrary, so long as they remain in conflict they prop one another up like three sheaves of corn… The war therefore… is merely an imposture… For though it is unreal it is not meaningless; it eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War it will be seen is now a purely internal affair… In our own day we are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects; and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.” George Orwell – 1984
I believe we are witnessing the emergence of three superstates as Orwell predicted. Marxist East Asia will be led by China. Marxist Eurasia will be conquered by Islam and re-named Ummah. Under the “One World Government” plan the United States is to become a Marxist Oceania – if only the Declaration of Independence can be swept under the rug and the Constitution rendered into arbitrary law through a “living document” strategy.
Marxism is Left. Fascism is Left. Islamo-Fascism is Left.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODJfwa9XKZQ
90. grr
You shouldn’t assume the “Elite wants Islam…”
Both Islam and the Elite hate America. Therefore they may sometimes appear to be acting in concert when it’s simply a manifestation of their mutual, but unrelated hatred for America.
The Elite is conflicted because they are supposed to be in favor of secularism, women’s rights, gay rights, etc. On the other hand, they can’t quite bring themselves to completely diss any movement that is anti-American.
This may be the first time in recorded history that a piece of sun-dried turkey flesh has successfully posed as Speaker of the House.
The only justification that imposter has for threatening to investigate those who oppose the GZW is her vile bullying temperament. It is nothing but sheer venomous abuse of the privileges she enjoys as an elected representative. How many times now has this festering ulcer of a person demonstrated that “Freedom of Speech” means nothing to her?
She and her fellows are Lepers wrapped in Wolf skins hoping to look less like Lepers. They long ago stripped their souls of any recognizable shred of humanity.
Nancy Pelosi: The Last of the D’Allessandros
Pelosi is the last remaining D’Allesandro of any consequence. This was a long-standing, corrupt Maryland political dynasty. Nancy grew up watching her father, grandfather, and assorted uncles go about their corrupt version of governance with no sense of guilt and a strong sense of entitlement. Corrupt political dynasties are only one degree removed from Mob families, and are just as feral in their outlook. Nancy Pelosi has retained that feral demeanor, and knows no other way to behave. She’s not senile or crazy, she’s just locked into the mentality of an alley cat. It’s all she’s ever known.
Wretchard said:
>What is not clear is what alternative model the public is moving toward. I
>think “Muslim” is a first order approximation for something else. What that “else”
>is can range from the perception that there’s been a huge capture of the castle by
>foreign elements to the more direct explanation that the Left is finally reaping
>what it has sown over the last 5 decades.
The reasoning process for this 1/4 of the pubic — who believe Obama is a Muslim — is fairly simple: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
If Obama;
1) Looks Islamic,
2) Takes Islamic extremist positions and,
3) Sneers at ordinary Americans like an Islamic extremist,
he’s a Muslim. QED
This public conclusion is not irrational and shows a much greater problem for Obama and the Democrats.
The issue the American people are wrestling with is that Obama is simply expressing the opinions, and enacting the policies, of the standard-issue leftist Democrats who are the clear majority of the party’s elites, activist base and major contributors. I.e., the Democratic party has gone Islamist class anti-American and the American people are starting to realize it.
If you can’t tell the Political Brand difference between an Islamist and Obama. Then thinking “Obama is Muslim” is the memetic “brand labeling” for Americans who are now rationalizing their complete rejection of Obama and everything he stands for.
Right now that that “Muslim labeling” conection is limited to Obama.
It won’t stay that way.
Expressing that Islamist class Anti-Americanism is extremely important issue for the Democratic Party activist base and their big money contributors. They really really want an Anti-American symbol to replace the World Trade Center. That is why nothing has gone up in NY City since 9/11/2001 to replace the WTC buildings, and why there is room for an Islamist civic sacrilege.
Now, for short term power reasons, — campaign contributions from Leftist moneybags — first House Speaker Pelosi, and now Senator Feingold (D-WI), are working to make the “Obama is a Muslim” brand the Democratic Party one via their supporting the Ground Zero Islamist Victory Mosque.
This will show up in the Nov 2010 and Nov 2012 election returns.
Feingold’s actions on the mosque are teaching the American public that the difference between a principled Democratic Senator and one willing to do anything to get reelected (See Senate Majority KLeader Harry Reid) is that the principled one will tell you about his political anti-Americanism before he is elected.
James #88
Christianity and Judaism are an immediate, existential threat to the philosophical underpinnings of Progressivism because they establish that:
1. The Creator of the universe has revealed immutable rules of proper human behavior that no amount of reason can replace.
2. The individual human being is the singularly most important element of Creation.
Islam is a top down ideology that regulates every conceivable aspect of the daily life of every individual, and every detail of the cultural expressions of the group. Progressives can only dream of that kind of control (and they do).
The only logical reasons for the Left to ally with Islam are either because they think they would be able to transfer their status by declaring themselves muslim, or because they think they would be immunized from dhimmitude. Both are foolish. Islam annihilates every culture it dominates.
I think Mongoose is right; don’t personalize this phenomenon or limit this to Buraq, Nancy or Harry.
There are millions of Americans that believe the inverse of TWANLOC- Those who are no longer our countrymen- if I got that right Subatai. They have a deranged psychotic desire/hatred to no longer be associated with those who believe in Judeo/Christian religous and – Classically Liberal beliefs like freedom, liberty, property, patriotism, capitalism, gun ownership, individualism, and most of all- American Exceptualism.
It’s almost like a overly socially conscious hipster who is deathly afraid to be seen with a serially uncool nerd at a hip party.
Putting an “ism” behind some label to describe them just doesn’t adequately do the job. In short they detest, hate and are afraid of Middle America. Destroying Middle America is almost like a subconscious goal; they opt to do it without even thinking.
However, don’t lump all those who voted for Obama in this group. Many people who view themselves as fashionable, and not really into politics got swept up in the fashionable allure of the Obama Campaign. You must separate the deranged Hard Left from the merely Liberal or independent . The true liberal isn’t a hater, is well meaning and has just been deceived by the massive decades long disinformation campaign of the Left.
The key to isolating and destroying the TWANLOC is to expose the cruel, destructive insanity of the Hard Left and make them so radioactively unfashionable that the weak air-headed hipster types won’t dare to associate with them anymore. Clueless and tin-eared Buraq, Nancy and Harry have really helped the process along; they are great figureheads to heap ridicule and scorn upon. That trio can’t help stepping in it on a regular basis. The press can’t hide their foolishness anymore.
A constant drum beat of mercilous, comedic ridicule will crack their ridiculous facade of arrogance and bring them down.
Peter Boston 100: “The individual human being is the singularly most important element of Creation.”
The individual is the most important element of creation because all are equally made in the image of God – all are of infinite value – none are “more equal than others.” If man is made in the image of God then, since God lives, man has a sacred unalienable right to life and self-defense. If man is made in the image of God then, since God is free, man is born free with a sacred unalienable right to liberty. If man is made in the image of God then, since God is the Great Creator, man has a sacred unalienable right to his own creativity – an unalienable right to the fruit of his own labor – an unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.
If man is made in the image of God then the Declaration of Independence is true. If man is made only in the image of an animal (or pond scum) then the Communist Manifesto is true.
“We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man.” John Adams
http://www.liberty1.org/thoughts.htm
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/adamss.html
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0100.htm
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Thomas Jefferson
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand… You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Wretchard,
Here is how the rest of Democrats are earning the “Obama is a Muslim” brand label with the American public.
They are engaged in the same tyrannical religious intolerance of Christians as Islamists. One in the name of homophobic Muslim Sharia and the other in the name of Homophilic “tolerance.”
August 19, 2010
Ground Zero on the Tolerance Issue
By Debra Saunders
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/08/19/ground_zero_on_the_tolerance_issue_106810.html
(Much snipage)
What you’re seeing is the culture-war equivalent of “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Quoth House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some.”
Translation: This issue is poison for Democrats.
And: “I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded.” That’s Bay Area tolerance for you — a well-placed Democratic politician wants an investigation into the funding of conservative dissenters.
Consider the track record of San Francisco.
In 1993, the board of supervisors ousted a Christian minister from the Human Rights Commission because he said the Bible says homosexuality is a sin.
In 2002, San Francisco Superior Court judges voted to ban judges from being members of the Boy Scouts because of the Scouts’ refusal to admit gays.
City Hall has leaned on Catholic Charities to renounce church doctrine in order to receive city funds to care for the sick.
The above stories aren’t about private citizens trying to shame an individual or a congregation into changing course. They are about using the government as a club to muzzle certain views.
So it’s more than ironic to watch the same folks who jump all over devout Christians now rush to Muslims’ defense. This isn’t about the left being more tolerant, as much as it is about the left disdaining the right.
Imagine if the Mormon Church tried to set up shop next to San Francisco’s City Hall. But then, you can’t.
I’d look less at Obama’s step father’s Islam and more at the Unitarianism on his mothers side of the family. The espoused tolerance that is no tolerance at all is endemic in Unitarian congregations. The whole Ramadan dinner is very Unitarian. They celebrate the holidays of all religions and believe in none
she’s just locked into the mentality of an alley cat
Try coyote, if you want an image of feral nastiness; coyotes will attack humans (have been known to kill campers and hikers) as well as other animals. Alley cats don’t, particularly if they were once someone’s pet and just discarded.
Anyway, Pelosi is one reason why people from her home town are known as Baltimorons. She’s always reminded me of that other Baltimore-bred social climber who flirted with the Nazis– Wallis Warfield Simpson, aka the Duchess of Windsor.
Shintoism, Hitlerism, Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism,Leftism, Islamism are all anti-religions.
Each feature man is over God. Such is obvious on its face with anti-religions that feature oppressive personality cults. Such despotism is even more oppressive than traditional monarchies because you don’t even have the clergy to restrain brutality.
The political terms Left and Right came from the Revolutionary French Legislature. The politicians self-aggregated with the traditionalists seating themselves to the extreme right of the Chair. The extreme radicals wanted to be as far away as possible from them. ( if for no other reason than to not be heard casually ) Essentially, the Right has been forever associated with ‘reactionary’ and unreformed political policies. ( That the American Colonies engaged in reactionary tendencies in their revolution has been set aside by historians. )
Shintoism, like Pharaonic Egypt, lifts the Emperor to living god-hood. He also has quite a personality cult going, too. But it’s a reactionary state. It would be equal to Louis the XIV’s monarchy except none of the Christian monarchs ever claimed to BE God.
Islamism is almost identical to Shintoism, NOT Nazism. They both seem to have crudely, the same age: over 1,000 years old. For both Heaven is a Garden. For both War IS worship. For both, dying in battle wipes away all blemishes and advances one in the afterlife/next life. For both, battle suicide is promoted at the highest State and religious levels — it even spreads benefits to the rest of one’s kin.
I could go on and on.
The key thing is that the effective rules of religious life and society are flexibly open to interpretation by the clerics at the behest of the politicians. Islam’s koran is not even written in a modern script, the arabic used is older than Beowulf. So, what constituted the true ‘scripture’ has broken down into at least four major schools and many schisms. Not withstanding the claims of mohammed, his successors are constantly tweaking the immutable faith to suit their desire.
This is but a continuation of what mo did when he was around. He spun the faith everyday to suit his brigand operations. He flip-flopped more often than JFK.
ANY ‘faith’ that flexible is an anti-religion. Man holds primacy even as muslims sling around the notion that they are merely following allah. Of its fruits you must know it. Constant appeals to murder, suppress, enslave, lie, trick and oppress are entirely mortal, conflict gambits and cannot be ascribed to a non-corporeal God.
So islam is an anti-religion of a reactionary character in the manner of Shintoism.
——
I’m constantly puzzled as to why Islamo-Fascism is any term of art. The twins are islam and shintoism. If you parse their structure, belief and injunctions: they are twins.
Shintoism died in Tokyo Bay. Today’s Shintoism is a mere toothless shadow. Its primary tenants have been ripped away by military failure. It proved unnecessary to kill every Japanese citizen not withstanding the wartime bravado and extreme fanaticism.
This “next phase” is happening now because before the Obama-era, the Hard Left, with the brief exception of the Hilarycare years, has never really governed out in the open. Behind the scenes yes, but hidden in the shadows. Up to now, the Hard Left in essence had an obscured track record. They could hide behind wonderful sounding promises and ambiguous meaning. Now there is this dangerous obscene traitorous track record that is slowly coming into view. And many of those who unwittingly bought into their lies are getting a severe gut wrenching case of buyer’s remorse. They know now they have been taken for a ride by a con artist extraordinaire, and they are pissed.
103 Mountain Girl…
You’ve nailed it.
THAT’S the line of inquiry that should be advanced.
BTW, when you’ve NEVER attended a Christian service yet spent years getting a Wahhabbi instruction in arabic what is going to be your default answer under pressure: 57 states or 50 states?
The Resident wouldn’t know hardly how to handle himself in a Christian congregation. Lecturing the assembled does not count.
I do believe this was the church that Mrs Durham attended:
http://www.eastshoreunitarian.org/staff.htm
This particular church, back then, permitted other clerics to use its facilities for a modest fee.
Her favorite advanced a Liberation Theology with Communistic politics folded into a pan-theocratic stew. It was real cutting edge. It must have really appealed to her supremacist impulses.
Such emotions flowed during her workday: she ran the cashiers like a Drill Instructor.
That her troopers were all female and smart and not paid so well also put a real burr up her backside. She was a hyper-feminist, before the term arose.
Sound like its time to do a 50 year deep background check on Frau Pelosi, and publish the results on the internet.
…And let’s start with the network of corrupt influences behind the San Francisco Bay Treasure Island Land grab..
We’ve just passed a tipping point. Rather amazing to see what one feels like in real life.
We can all feel it, can’t we?
#107 Unsk
And many of those who unwittingly bought into their lies are getting a severe gut wrenching case of buyer’s remorse.
Telling little detail: even the Boston papers have noted that the Martha’s Vineyard crowd is much less excited this year about Teh Won’s visit:
“One barometer of the plunge in excitement has been the sale of Obama-themed T-shirts, which designers had been banking on after the craze of last year. Clothing labeled with the president’s name sold by the thousands, helping to salvage a tough economic year for the island.
But this year’s T-shirt sales are much less brisk, merchants say.
“Last year, Obama gave you goose bumps, but I don’t think you’re going to see that this year,’’ said Alex McCluskey, co-owner of the Locker Room, who sold more than 4,000 “I vacationed with Obama’’ T-shirts last year. But so far this year, he said, his hot item is T-shirts of former President Bush asking, “Miss me yet?’”
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/08/18/vineyard_buzzes_less_for_obamas_second_visit/
You ask why “they” show no fear or do not realize the anger that is indeed boiling up. It is simple, my friends. They have no where else to go, no other cards to play. As the smoke from distant fires get closer, they give orders to the Praetorian guard to hold off the rabble while they adjust their make up for the coming executions. After all these years of hating and scheming and plotting to maintain their rightful place as the true rulers of Rome, they have burnt their bridges and sacrificed their legions in the battle. The end is near. The barbarians will be decimated in battle, surely….
By the way, speaking of “investigating,” I had mentioned in a previous thread the whole unexplored business of Pelosi sending Jim McDermott (D-WA) as an envoy to FARC. She and a number of her Democrat cohorts seemed to have been (still are?) enamored with narco-guerillas, and appeared determined to undermine the legitimate government of Colombia.
What was that all about?
Just saying. Just asking.
36. ahem
I think some of us make a serious mistake if we put too much emphasis on trying to establish Barack-X’s muslim faith by by refering to his muslim putative father, and his putative grandfather, or putative adoptive father.”Dad” was supposedly an atheist, and never present in Barack’s early life, and Hussein Obama even less none not at all present. As for Lolo Soetoro, we do not really know what their relationsip may have been. These “gentlemen” may have had an influence or none at all. But there ware plent other places in 1980′s America where a young Black man could be infected with islam. Particularly around universities where Barack-X was intent on seeking out the most radical leftists, and establishing his own Black bona fides. The important question is whether he seems to behave like a muslim, and speak like one, particularly in his freudian slips.
“33. batman
Projection, projection, projection.”
Mr. Obama appears to me to be a man whose deepest convictions must remain hidden. Personally, I believe he is a Dialectical Materialist. That’s not something he can publically own up to and expect to survive politically. He, like many of his co-religionists, must use a more prosaic flag of convenience, which I believe is what Rev. Wright’s Church was for him.
He has not backed his claims of faith with credible words and deeds that confirm it. Naturally as his religious claims become incredible folks are going to fill the void with their own speculations based on their reading of the best available evidence.
Was one of the options on the survey one of the following: Marxist, Socialist, Communist, Dialectical Materialist? Probably not.
@81 PB: For the record, Peter, your views and mine have a high level of congruency.
The science is settled, “obviously”.
…-
“White House says Obama is Christian, prays daily”
(AP) – 3 hours ago
“WASHINGTON — The White House says President Barack Obama is a Christian who prays daily.
White House spokesman Bill Burton made the remark Thursday,…”.
“Burton told reporters aboard Air Force One that most Americans care more about the economy and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, he says, are “not reading a lot of news about what religion the president is.”
Burton said: “The president is obviously a Christian. He prays every day.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gdquopPVEaWa9clWIrF1MWc4jsIQD9HMN4HO0
Rush Limbaugh talked about this slip up by obama in a talk he had with George Stephenopolous a year or two back. Obama talks about “My Muslim Faith” and George Stephanopoulos prompts him to correct his statement.
Obama: “My Muslim Faith”
The context for the statement was that Obama first accused the McCain of accusing Obama of being a Moslem. Then Stephenopolous walked him back from that charge by pointing out that it wasn’t true. Then Stephenopolous contradicted Obama two or three more times. It was clear that obama had lost control of the conversation.
These sorts of things slip out.
Here is Gibbs inadvertently confessing that Obama is not born in the USA.
Gibbs 8.12.09 Daily Press Briefing (Youtube)
Once again, it just looks like a slip up.
“… I can’t tell you why somebody believes, despite all preponderance of the
evidence, that the president was born umm … in uh … uh … is born here and
not somewhere else …
103. NC Mountain Girl
I’d look less at Obama’s step father’s Islam and more at the Unitarianism on his mothers side of the family. The espoused tolerance that is no tolerance at all is endemic in Unitarian congregations. The whole Ramadan dinner is very Unitarian. They celebrate the holidays of all religions and believe in none
…………
Herman Melville began his epic Novel “Moby Dick” with the words “Call Me Ishmael”. After he published the novel in 1851, he began to attend a Unitarian church in Brooklyn.
As many as five presidents were unitarians including adams and (and it could be fairly argued –Jefferson–though he wasn’t a church going man.)
Today, the Unitarians have pretty much gone to seed. They are far more polytheistic polyamorous than even the liberal side of the episcopalians. Its clear the Unitarians never had an inner moral compass. Rather their moral center was a reflection of the society around them. So when the society went bad–the unitarians went bad too.
Peter Boston, #100: Christianity and Judaism are an immediate, existential threat to the philosophical underpinnings of Progressivism because they establish that:
1. The Creator of the universe has revealed immutable rules of proper human behavior that no amount of reason can replace.
2. The individual human being is the singularly most important element of Creation.
You left out #3: There is no perfection to be had in this life – no perfect safety, no perfect justice (social or otherwise), etc. – only in the hereafter.
Here, too, Islam is on the same page as “progressivism”, as it holds shari’a to be the only perfect societal form the world has ever known or ever will know. Of course, the only thing Islam has to back up its claim is that shari’a was invented by the infallible Allah, and so by definition it must also be infallible.
91. Tom Holsinger
Obama …who speaks to strangers more clearly than to his own.”
…….
In part this is a legacy of Columbia University. Columibia adopted the radical chic of the 60′s. Obama’s church had an agenda that looked like it could easily have been written by a couple of the leftist departments at columbia. There just was no distinguishable difference. The school of political science at Columbia was where Obama got his BA. political science is a nomenclatura language to begin with. That is the language is adopted to learn the party line. A Poly Sci MA or PHD will get one to the top of a government bureacracy but rarely into politics. (Obama shifted to a law degree.) Columbia University raised the language of political science to a new level by giving it a point of view that is not american. That is, Columbia takes the point of view of the foreigner so as to introduce them sovereignly to America.
Poly Sci at Columbia is an out of body experience.
That was Obama’s formative experience imho because so often the language that he speaks is outside of himself.
We will know about the guy himself only with time. but it will all come out — slowly at first.
wrethcard wrote:
Of the “true” model I can only conjecture, and I suspect that each of us has a similar conjectural model which we update all the time, depending on the new developments.
As usual, your remarks are thought-provoking without sliding into over-simplication, conspiracy theory, or the like.
I, like everyone else, have my conjectures about the motives behind the morives on our political elite. And while I’m sure there are people who simply live to besmirch something others hold dear, I’m also sure that those who patronize us so mercilessly can be perfectly sincere in believing they have the country’s best interest at heart. (As one wily old priest said to me, Sincerity or the lack of it was never the problem.)
I’m blessed or cursed, take it as you will, with a theological education, though I am neither religious nor pious. I hasten to say, neither am I a “spiritual” man, as most who make the first statement go on to claim. My bedtime reading is Karl Barth.
But enough of the vertical pronoun.
BC commenters have often remarked that our elite is running a religion under the color of secularism. I think they’re right. They’ve also noticed that for all we give exaggerated service to “Freedom of Religion,” some religions are freer than others. We have lately seen the President, no less, defend the freedom to practice Islam in a sensitive spot in Manhattan, while sneering at those who practice Christian religion in the heartland. Freest of all, though, is the religion that claims not to be a religion, secularism; as Flannery O’Connor puts it in Haze Motes’ preaching, the Church Without Christ, where redemption is unnecessary.
A further irony is this: For all that we congratulate ourselves on the separation of Church and State, it has never actually been the case in the United States. From 1620 on, we have lived in the Puritan belief that faith is no faith unless it finds expression in behavior; private behavior (see ahem, # 36 above) or public (political morality). The underlying belief in the latter case is this: if we elect and follow virtuous leaders, God favors our cause.
There are plenty of strong reasons why this notion takes hold among us. Remember that among those who stepped off the Mayflower in 1620 there was not a single ordained clergyman, and the leaders they did have had a different job. Their job was not to preach but to govern, and to do so under very harsh circumstances. We honor them still, and well we should. They did govern partly by invoking God’s help, as who with a shred of wisdom would not?
This is not merely the sophomoric criticism of a Mark Twain, who points out that both saides in war pray to the same God; not even the more sophisticated view of an Abraham Lincoln, who found it possible that both he and Jefferson Davis could be enacting a plan of God whose meaning might not be revealed until they were both a hundred years gone. This belief lies at deeper level than either.
Whether we know it consciously or not, whether we consider ourselves “religious” or not, even if we deny it explicitly, as atheists do (always with moralistic reasoning), we cannot exist without a subliminal understanding that God is with us. If any proof of this is needed simply consider how confidently and vehemently even God-deniers express opinions about what God ought to be, and about how God hates those who identify their silly personal notions with His.
If this holds any water so far, then by reason of our Puritan heritage, Americans are uniquely ill-equipped to separate politics from some notion of salvation, whether that be an explicitly desired political outcome, or something subtler. Secularism shares this problem with all the rest of American religion. Indeed it confines itself more narrowly than theistic religion, because the only possible salvation for it is salvation in the here and now, the immanent domain. No eschatological escape valve is open to it.
By the way, Puritanism shares this limitation with Islam, which is what makes them both so dangerous. (Arthur Schopenhauer was the first to point this out.) For if the only salvation is political and temporal, then no sacrifice of [others’!] lives is too much, to bring it about. This alone accounts for the political irrationality and the worse-than-existential dread we hear in the voices of Pelosi, Reid, and their scores of predecessors when they contemplate defeat of their social engineering schemes. They are not just confronting a political defeat; they are looking into an abyss which cannot be named in any vocabulary available to them.
Now while we’re talking about the limitations imposed by vocabulary, it bears saying that a theological vocabulary undoubtedly has its limits too. But in a certain (Barthian) sense of the word, there is no theology in any of the above; it’s all about human potential, human action, human competetitions, human good and human evil. Not a kilderkin of God’s Grace in a carload.
That takes us back to a remark you made weeks ago, while discussing the elation one feels, not at being shot at and missed, but at learning one need not kill a man one though one did have to kill. They key sentence had to do with prayers of thanks, tempered by the knowledge that one would have killed all the same if circumstances required. Spoken, if I may say so, like a Christian.
If this hold any water, then perhaps one of our needs (while still governing and being governed) is the need of Grace. Thinking into that a ways, one finds it entails a shift of perspective, from ever so eloquent political rhetoric and every so clever historical analogies to this (if you’ll forgive a hokey-sounding peroration): the key to the present never was in the past, nor in ourselves, but in a Judge whose promise of mercy we may hope to claim in His own time. This is an eschatological, not a political Hope. But as long as we lack the ability to distinguish Hope from hope, we and our fellows remain susceptible to the Obamas of the world. God help us.
No true Christian would cover the symbols of Christ when speaking at a Catholic university.
As for the left and their infatuation with Islam, it is quite simple. They are envious and wish to emulate their betters. The lifestyle of the Saudi princes is one to which they aspire. The people of America must be brought low so that they can establish their “caliphate” here.
Hence, the GZM must go forward, if only to demoralize the bitter clingers.
Islam is not a religion, it is an empire disguised as a religion. An empire that has been aggressively pursuing world conquest for more than a millenium; and thanks to petro dollars has come closer than ever to its goals.
If I were artistically skilled, and a cartoonist, I would draw a picture. In that picture would be two Indians, standing next to a Union soldier, with a fort being constructed in the background. One Indian would be saying to the other, “Nothing to worry about, he says it’s just a ‘cultural center’”.
The GZM is nothing more than an outpost of Imperial Islam, intended to aggrandize their victories, demoralize their enemies, and to provide a base for further conquest. That our politicians cannot see this is a testament to their stupidity, except that it isn’t, and while we might wish it to be true, they aren’t stupid. Instead, it is a monument to their mendacity as they pursue their agenda, the destruction of our nation and the freedom and liberty it represents.
They must be stopped.
Korval #124: May I immodestly suggest #34 above? Just might work you know.
Peloski thinks she’s found the new super fuel, the super fuel of cognitive dissonance. After all, those this corrupt can only hear and speak and seek those as much compromised by corruption as they are. That’s why she runs lustily into the arms of a Bashir Assad, or an imam rauf. It’s the new decadence, or decadense, take you choice.
Korval writes: “. . . aggrandize their victories, demoralize their enemies, and to provide a base for further conquest.”
al-Qaida = “the base”
…the old dried up crone.
Peter Boston 100: “The individual human being is the singularly most important element of Creation.”
The individual is the most important element of creation because all are equally made in the image of God – all are of infinite value – none are “more equal than others.” If man is made in the image of God then, since God lives, man has a sacred unalienable right to life and self-defense. If man is made in the image of God then, since God is free, man is born free with a sacred unalienable right to liberty. If man is made in the image of God then, since God is the Great Creator, man has a sacred unalienable right to his own creativity – an unalienable right to the fruit of his own labor – an unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.
If man is made in the image of God then the Declaration of Independence is true. If man is made only in the image of an animal (or pond scum) then the Communist Manifesto is true.
“We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man.” John Adams
http://www.liberty1.org/thoughts.htm
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/adamss.html
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0100.htm
“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand… You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
I think poster ‘1389′ @ 28 is someone I may have corresponded with at one point or knows someone with whom I did talk. If he is indeed an Orthodox priest in the public square then God bless him.
I did meet the pro-Serbian activist Julia Gorin in LA once many moons ago and watched her argue with a man who happened to be Jewish but who was arguing loudly for the Albanian Kosovar and Bosniak cause against the evil Serbs. Some folks never learn who their real friends are and who still has a soft spot for the banderisti (Yuschenko), Croatian Ustashe, and Latvian SS veterans. In the end, the Jewish members of the pro-Israel lobby cannot stay in bed with anti-Russia lobby members who are willing to promote any nationalist, no matter how obnoxious, as long as they are Prometheans opposed to Moscow. Plus the whole visa free travel thing between Russia and Israel makes a mockery of the U.S. keeping Jackson Vanik on the books…
To answer a question posed at an earlier thread, no I don’t believe ‘Rurik’ and I have ever met, but he was getting warmer in terms of guessing my background. Posting under my real name at Belmont Club however is not likely to be good for my career, particularly in these dark times where Google is starting to adopt more and more of a god complex regarding its own infallibility and suggesting that everyone who has ever been smeared on Google should legally change their names rather than force the gods of Palo Alto to comply with libel laws.
I must say what brought me back to Belmont Club to comment on this is how the ignorance at best and contempt at worst St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church is getting in all of this controversy. But then again, who has cared all that much about protecting the rights of Orthodox Christians around the world since Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown and shot? The Orthodox Christians of the Middle East have largely been ethnically cleansed – first by the Turks (Symrna was a Greek center for 3,000 years – from Homeric times until the 1920s) and more recently by the PLO in Lebanon and Islamists in Iraq. They have also in the last twenty years had their livelihoods weakened or made impossible by Israeli barriers and restrictions despite being among Israel-Palestine’s most productive and law abiding citizens.
Certainly even modern Russia can only push its trading partner Turkey so far. Ankara still won’t let the Ecumenical Patriarch recruit new priests and his congregation has shrank to a few hundred faithful old people, though Vatican reporter Sandro Magister thinks there are thousands of hidden Orthodox across Anatolia, once the cradle of the Faith to whom St. Paul addressed the bulk of his epistles.
If I were in Manhattan on 9/11/2010 I certainly would be tempted to join the throngs protesting the Ground Zero mosque with a sign reading, “End the Occupation – Free Constantinople!” These folks can dish it out but they cannot take it back. In the end, I think the cultural elitny are going to have to beat a retreat before the narodni with their pitchforks. And if St. Nicholas can be rebuilt finally, then a small blessing will come out of this.
“The truth of thy deeds
hath revealed thee to thy flock as a canon of faith,
an icon of meekness,
and a teacher of abstinence;
for this cause thou hast achieved the heights by humility,
riches by poverty,
O Father and Hierarch Nicholas,
intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.”
No, I’m not an Orthodox priest. In fact, I’m female, and not located in California, but in South Carolina at the moment. Thanks for your support!
Stormrider writes: “. . . since God is free, man is born free with a sacred unalienable right to liberty.”
Good post.
So many people have no idea of the meaning of “inalienable.” It means “not capable of being transferred to another.” One cannot, for example, if liberty is an inalienable right, set aside one’s liberty to sign on as a slave. Post-modernism, however, does not privilege any rights other than personal preference. It’s not surprising to me that S&M bondage gets so much press, since it seems to be an indication of people’s desire to set aside their freedom, and other inalienable rights. If someone has an inalienable right to freedom, the person has the responsibility to maintain the mechanisms that preserve that freedom. But post-modern liberalism is a flight from responsibility.
Islam, as far as I can tell, does not have a theology that can assert and defend inalienable rights. The only right one has is as a member of the ummah, within which one has the right to follow sharia.
Re. Mr. X: maybe Israel can launch a flotilla to support Christians and Jews in Turkey. That there are so few makes the Christian and Jew plight more poignant.
#99, MTB- “the Democratic party has gone Islamist class anti-American and the American people are starting to realize it.”
[...]
“Expressing that Islamist class Anti-Americanism is extremely important issue for the Democratic Party activist base and their big money contributors. They really really want an Anti-American symbol to replace the World Trade Center. That is why nothing has gone up in NY City since 9/11/2001 to replace the WTC buildings, and why there is room for an Islamist civic sacrilege.”
This perhaps explains why, the Greek Orthodox church destroyed on 9/11 has not obtained a permit from the labyrinthine city of New York to rebuild on it’s original site.
A permit (needed) to rebuild on it’s original site?
This may further explain, as well. the ruse behind the “…it’s not a mosque, it’s a community center”, “…it’s not Cordoba House, it’s Park 54, i.e. to do the end run round the zoning rules of NYC for the district.
extraordinary thread. #106 blert, I’ve often thought of imperial Japan as compared with Islam. All the hallmarks are there, as you’ve listed them, in both anti-religions.
When Pelosi and her crowd say that opposition to their positions is ginned up or astro-turfed or whatever, the lesson is far deeper than just that they “don’t get it.”
The real lesson is that all THEIR side’s demonstrations and letter/email campaigns etc. ARE funded and organized and manipulated. They do not believe that ANY such actions can be spontaneous, or opinions be honestly held without having been implanted by some master-manipulater.
Which takes us back to all the lefty demonstrations etc of the last 40 years (since the somewhat more honest days of the real Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam), and whether any of them ever signfied any true public groundswell, notwithstanding how the media and the organizers tried (and often succeeded) in convincing people otherwise.
And how many laws, programs, policies have grown out of THAT?