LIBERALS ARE REWRITING AMERICA’S HISTORY TO CREATE AN IGNORANT ELECTORATE

LIBERALS ARE REWRITING AMERICA’S HISTORY TO CREATE AN IGNORANT ELECTORATE

by David L. Goetsch

Liberals are rewriting America’s history to create a past that does not exist and to eradicate the one the does. Their goal is to create an indoctrinated electorate that is ignorant of its own past and, as a result, easily led into a questionable future. Liberals like President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Hillary Clinton live in a fantasyland of their own making. My colleague, Jim Guirard, a Washington, D. C. based attorney and long-time Chief of Staff to former Senator Russell Long, calls this leftwing fantasyland the “OPRAH Land Plantation (Obama-Pelosi-Reid-And-Hillary Land.” In this fantasyland, society can be made perfect—as Liberals define perfect—if only we spend enough government money on it. But liberals face an interesting problem in trying to shape America’s future in their own image. That problem is America’s past.

The reader has probably heard the maxim that the best guide to the future is the past. We usually interpret this to mean that knowing the past will help us avoid repeating errors as we move into the future, but it can also mean being guided by what was done right in the past. The past is precursor to the future and herein, as they say, is the rub. There is nothing in America’s past that supports where liberals are trying to take our country in the future. In fact, just the opposite is true. Our Founders had a vision for America that runs counter to the vision of today’s liberals in all respects. It was a vision of self-government by free people who were willing to govern themselves so that government did not have to. It was a vision of personal responsibility, individual liberty, free markets, and limited government. This is why liberals are rewriting history. None of these things comport with the left’s agenda of big government, burdensome regulations, entitlement, statism, and lifelong dependence.

The Founders sacrificed dearly to establish a nation based on their vision. Their founding principles—personal responsibility, individual liberty, free markets, and limited government—are difficult to square with the future today’s liberals envision for America: big government; liberties that are increasingly infringed on by burdensome, unnecessary regulations; a society of entitled finger-pointers who refuse to accept responsibility for themselves or their actions and who think they are owed a living; a permanent underclass that is completely dependent on the government; high taxes; and a statist/socialist economy.

Students who learn the truth about America’s history—the truth about the Founders’ vision—are better prepared to judge the viability of the liberal agenda that is now the accepted norm in education from Kindergarten through college. This is why liberals fear well-informed students and, in turn, a well-informed electorate. Americans who know the truth about our nation’s past are well-armed to ask some inconvenient questions of liberal politicians who are trying to take our country in the wrong direction. 

So how do liberals like Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and Clinton handle the threat of an informed electorate?

Writing or The Washington Times of July 21, 2014, Opinion Editor David A. Keene answered this question: “The Founder’s grand experiment is being put at risk by liberal progressive ideologues intent upon creating a citizenry ignorant of its real history, but indoctrinated to hate its country, its history and those who founded it. Enemies of free government have always understood this simple truth (that informed people are harder to fool) and have tried to recast history to lead the next generation to believe as they do. They know they can shape the policies of today and tomorrow by creating a past of their own.”

Creating a false history and substituting it for true history is precisely what liberals have been doing since the 1960s. Their efforts include:

 1) Distorting America’s history to create a past that does not exist, 

2) Indoctrinating naïve public school and college students to hate what is best about America,

 3) Portraying the Founders and other great Americans as villains, 

4) Ignoring great Americans who cannot be cast as villains but whose lives and contributions do not comport with liberal orthodoxy, and 

5) Exploiting the ignorance they have created by using public schools and colleges to indoctrinate rather than educate. Collectively, these strategies are allowing liberals to take America down a path that leads to the destruction of everything our Founders envisioned and sacrificed to establish.

The on-going success of the great experiment our Founders began even before July 4, 1776 depends on an informed, thinking electorate made up of people who love our country and share the basic values of those who founded it. Young men and women do not go down to their local recruiting office and sign up to defend a nation they hate, and hate is precisely the emotion liberals want to instill in American school children and college students concerning our country. In the words of David Keene, what liberals teach school children about America is “a dark view of a nation built on aggressive racist imperialism, theft, and genocide,” and they intend to “drive those who do not agree from the public square, or at least from the classroom.” Unfortunately, with the help of such organizations as the National Education Association, College Board, and teachers’ unions they have achieved a disturbing level of progress.

The College Board establishes standards for college admissions, which means it indirectly dictates what high schools must teach. How? One of the measures of a successful high school is the percentage of its graduates who go on to college and which colleges they go to. Fail to teach what the College Board recommends and your students are less likely to be admitted to the more prestigious colleges and universities. Hence, the College Board has enormous influence over the curriculums of public schools. Not surprisingly, the College Board is a leading advocate for the left’s nefarious agenda.

The College Board no longer recommends teaching history courses that include the Founders, the principles upon which our country was founded, or the values that led our Founders to break away from the smothering grasp of Great Britain and establish self-government. The framework provided to high schools by the College Board represents a gross distortion of America’s history and a purposefully negative view of our founding principles. Several of our more prominent Founders are not even mentioned in the framework, yet public school decision makers blindly accept and implement the framework. The College Board’s framework is one of the most influential factors in establishing high school curriculums. It is also the framework textbook publishers consult in developing textbooks.

Although a small percentage of American students still receive a solid education in Christian schools and home-schools, the majority are being indoctrinated in public schools by leftist elites who hate America and believe our Founders were nothing but a bunch of patriarchal tyrants and racist bigots. One problem with this kind of thinking—among many problems—is that if these leftist elites on the College Board, in Congress, and in the White House had been around in 1776, America would still be a British colony that had expanded no farther than the east coast. These anti-American elites on the left are the same intellectual hypocrites who call terrorism “workplace violence” and who pander to violent terrorists who are determined to bring America down. If the terrorists who want to destroy America were smart they would simply sit back and bide their time. Give it a few more years and liberals in the Democratic Party will do their dirty work for them.

The Most Insidious Line In The State Of The Union Address?

The Most Insidious Line In The State Of The Union Address?

by George Leef

President Obama’s penultimate SOTU was notable for its audacity in demanding an even more expansive role for the federal government. Although trust in government has plummeted during his relentlessly statist administration, the president wants Americans to rally behind his belief that more federal mandates and spending will “turn the page” and make the country great.

I would like to single out one especially wrong-headed idea – that Congress should amend the Fair Labor Standards Act, requiring employers to pay many workers more.

Obama supports increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. In his speech, he argued for it this way: “And to everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, go try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest-working people in America a raise.”

There is much to be said against raising the minimum wage, or even having such a law at all.

No business has an unlimited fountain of money, so trade-offs are inevitable. If some workers must be paid more by political mandate, then firms will respond in ways that make others worse off. As George Mason University economics professor Donald Boudreaux wrote in an open letter to the president, “Because the policy you propose would price many workers out of jobs, that policy would indeed change these workers’ incomes: it would drop them to $0.”

The truth is that the minimum wage increase would cause many low-wage workers to lose their current jobs and have trouble ever finding another one. More people will never land their first job because they’re unable to produce enough value to earn the mandated wage.

Pretending that their supposedly compassionate programs have no adverse effects is a well-worn part of the political playbook,  Barack Obama can look you straight in the eye and say that everyone gains from following him on the minimum wage. Just as he asserted that passage of the “Affordable Care Act” would help millions and hurt nobody.

But what I want to focus on is the way Obama made his pitch: It’s hard to support a family on less than $15,000 per year, therefore politicians should give them a raise.

Those seven words illuminate the appeal of minimum wage laws to “progressives.” They build support in the minds of voters for their true goal – getting them to think of the government as a source of free benefits.

In the days before the minimum wage, everyone understood that if you wanted a better standard of living, getting it was up to you.  This worked just fine until Big Government figured out it could buy votes buy granting you free stuff.

If you worked for yourself (in agriculture, perhaps), improving your lot in life depended on finding more efficient ways of producing. If you worked for someone else, you could raise your skill level to make yourself more valuable, then bargain for a wage increase, or else take your labor elsewhere.

Americans knew that if they wanted more, earning it was their responsibility. Most accomplished that through industry and ingenuity.

The cancerous effect of minimum wage laws is to cause people to look instead to politics as a way of fulfilling their desires. Want a raise? Vote for the right politicians and they’ll give it to you.

With government in the “free stuff” business, campaigns start revolving around who can promise the most to the various groups clamoring for benefits. Rather than working and cooperating with others to solve their problems, people increasingly waste their energy on political wrangling.

Want free medical care? Vote for the right politicians and they will make sure you’ll be cared for.

Want guaranteed retirement income? Vote for the right politicians and they’ll mandate a program for that.

Want education or training for your children? Vote for the right politicians and they’ll create entitlements to serve you.

Progressives don’t want a society of independent, self-reliant, forward-thinking individuals. They want subservient people who look upward to government, beseeching the rulers for sustenance and favors. Minimum wage laws help engender that mindset.

Writing in Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw the impact of Nanny State laws and regulations, which turn the people into “nothing but a flock of timid and industrious animals, with the government as its shepherd.”

Indeed so, except that many of the animals are no longer industrious.

A Convention of States is convened when 34 state legislatures pass resolutions

The Jefferson Statement

The Constitution’s Framers foresaw a day when the federal government would exceed and abuse its enumerated powers, thus placing our liberty at risk. George Mason was instrumental in fashioning a mechanism by which "we the people" could defend our freedom—the ultimate check on federal power contained in Article V of the Constitution.

Article V provides the states with the opportunity to propose constitutional amendments through a process called a Convention of States. This process is controlled by the states from beginning to end on all substantive matters.

A Convention of States is convened when 34 state legislatures pass resolutions (applications) on an agreed topic or set of topics. The Convention is limited to considering amendments on these specified topics.

While some have expressed fears that a Convention of States might be misused or improperly controlled by Congress, it is our considered judgment that the checks and balances in the Constitution are more than sufficient to ensure the integrity of the process.

The Convention of States mechanism is safe, and it is the only constitutionally effective means available to do what is so essential for our nation—restoring robust federalism with genuine checks on the power of the federal government.

We share the Founders’ conviction that proper decision-making structures are essential to preserve liberty. We believe that the problems facing our nation require several structural limitations on the exercise of federal power. While fiscal restraints are essential, we believe the most effective course is to pursue reasonable limitations, fully in line with the vision of our Founders, on the federal government.

Accordingly, I endorse the Convention of States Project, which calls for an Article V Convention for "the sole purpose of proposing amendments that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress."

Will West defend itself from its multicultural flaws or suffer the real and certain consequences?

Will West defend itself from its multicultural flaws?

By Walter E. Williams

Leftists and progressives believe that the United States should become more like Europe. They praise Europe’s massive welfare state, socialized medicine and stifling economic regulation and accept its unwillingness to defend itself against barbarism. I wonder whether America’s leftists and progressives want to import some of Europe’s barbaric extremism associated with its Muslim population.

Several European countries have what are called “no-go zones.” No-go zones function as microstates governed by Shariah. The host countries’ authorities have lost control over these areas. In some cases, they are unable to provide even police, firefighting and ambulance services.

In France, no-go zones are officially called Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones. There are estimated to be more than 750 such zones in France. According to The Washington Times, “France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, some of whom talk openly of ruling the country one day and casting aside Western legal systems for harsh, Islam-based Shariah law.”

France is by no means by itself.
Sweden has some of the most liberal immigration laws in Europe. Malmo is Sweden’s third-largest city, with a population over 300,000, of which 25 percent is Muslims who have created large no-go zones. Fire and emergency workers refuse to enter Malmo’s mostly Muslim Rosengaard district without police escort. Gothenburg is Sweden’s second-largest city. In Angered, one of the city’s districts, Muslim youths pelt police cars with Molotov cocktails and have destroyed more than 15. They use green lasers to temporarily blind police officers by pointing them at their eyes.

The Gatestone Institute reports that an Islamist group called Muslims Against Crusades has launched an ambitious campaign to turn 12 British cities into independent Islamic states, including Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and what the group calls “Londonistan.” The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves ruled by Shariah and operate entirely outside British jurisprudence. Several years ago, The Telegraph reported: “Islamic extremists have created ‘no-go’ areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter. ... People of a different race or faith face physical attack if they live or work in communities dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.”

No-go zones have also emerged in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. The basic question is: Does the Western world have the power to control its countries? In terms of capacity, as opposed to will, the answer is a clear yes. Western lack of will is a result of our having been paralyzed by the doctrine of multiculturalism. Diversity worship and multiculturalism have currency and are cause for celebration among our elite. Multiculturalists teach that cultural values are morally equivalent, such as those of Islam and the West. To suggest that Western values are superior to others would win one opprobrium by the know-it-all elite. Western values are indeed superior to all others because they hold the individual as supreme. Though Western values are superior to all others, one need not be a Westerner to hold Western values.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared that in Germany, multiculturalism has “utterly failed.” Both Australia’s ex-prime minister John Howard and Spain’s ex-prime minister Jose Maria Aznar reached the same conclusion about multiculturalism in their countries. British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that multiculturalism is fostering extremist ideology and directly contributing to homegrown Islamic terrorism. UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said the United Kingdom’s push for multiculturalism has not united Britons but pushed them apart. It has allowed for Islam to emerge despite Britain’s Judeo-Christian culture. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the roots of violent Islamism are not “superficial but deep” and can be found “in the extremist minority that now, in every European city, preach hatred of the West and our way of life.” I wonder whether America’s leftists and progressives see multiculturalism as a success or failure.

Having the right FOCUS is how to watch the POTUS speak tonight

Having the right FOCUS is how to watch the POTUS speak tonight

Focus on the following facts while the president is speaking.  It will give you clarity and the ability to not get caught up in the rhetoric and see the substance in relief of this focus:

•         We already have a debt of $18 Trillion dollars and don't need more......
•        The economy is not robust: 2% growth is half of what economist call robust which is 4% growth.  Compare that to China that has a GDP growth of 9%.
•        Raising $60 Billion in taxes to pay for anything is stupid in the face of conservative estimates the government knowingly wastes $42 Billion a year (likely more)
•         The Tax Code is 16,000 pages long.  It cannot be revised.  It can only be thrown out and rewritten.
•      The Non Affordable Care Act is not going to just cost the average person $95 a year.  The actual number is the "penalty" will be 1% of gross income.  For a family with $100,000 income that will be $1,000.

Listening with a focus will enable you to see the ideology of the speaker showing through without waiting for the talking heads to tell you what you should think!

Something to think about while you listen to the POTUS State of the Union Speech

What to do about taxes?

Tomorrow night, the nation will hear another speech by the President advocating for more redistribution of wealth.  He will cloak this in the name of taxing those that can pay and giving the middle class a "raise".  This will undoubtedly be a attractive to the populist vote (progressive) while being a nonstarter for conservatives.  It will be more division and class warfare.  Exactly what the President wants to put on the table for the 2016 Election cycle.

Being a student of Federal Taxes for over 30 years, it is become relatively obvious to many that the tax codes are and have been used for more that 50 years to manipulate public policy without much notice of the voting public.  Tax something and the money will flow "from and to...." what the politicians wish.  This is deceitful and simply wrong.

The most courageous thing the Congress can do is take the Tax Code and make it politically neutral and off limits to politicians and lobbyist.  How, you might say? 

Throw out the complete tax code and replace it with a simple tax.  There have been many proposed and none adopted.  Why? Because it takes away a useful tool from the political class, that's why.

It is widely known that having a tax system (tiered of otherwise) where everyone pays some tax will create more revenue that the progressive 16,000 page tax system we have today.  It takes away the divisiveness that is tearing the country apart (one the politicians actually benefit from).  Equally, it allows the government to get rid of the IRS and its draconian behaviors.  This alone will save billions of dollars for the government and likely more for the private sector.

So, as you listen to the State of the Union speech and the GOP Nembutal, keep the above in mind.  Ask yourself the question "Will this really solve the problem and bring the country together at the same time?"

The time is now, not later.  We cannot afford to wait.

Why We’re Losing to Radical Islam

Why We’re Losing to Radical Islam

Newt Gingrich

The United States has been at war with radical Islamist terrorism for at least 35 years, starting with the November 1979 Iranian seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and taking of 52 American hostages. President Jimmy Carter , in his State of the Union address two months later, declared the American captives “innocent victims of terrorism.”

For the next two decades, radical Islamist terrorism grew more powerful and more sophisticated. On Sept. 11, 2001, a remarkably sophisticated effort by Islamist terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans in New York City, Washington, D.C., and western Pennsylvania.

In response to the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, President George W. Bush told a joint session of Congress: “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

We have clearly failed to meet that goal. After more than 13 years of war, with thousands of Americans dead, tens of thousands of Americans wounded, and several trillion dollars spent, the U.S. and its allies are losing the war with radical Islamism. The terrorists of Islamic State are ravaging Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram is widening its bloody swath through Nigeria, al Qaeda and its affiliates are killing with impunity in Somalia, Yemen and beyond, and the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan. The killings in Paris at Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher supermarket are only the most recent evidence of the widening menace of radical Islamism.

Confronted with the atrocities in Paris, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told his people on Jan. 10 that they were at war: “It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity.”

Yet France, like the U.S. government, doesn’t have a strategy for victory in this war. Ad hoc responses to attacks have failed to stop the growing threat.

We remain vulnerable to a catastrophic attack (or series of smaller attacks) that would have dark and profound consequences for the American people and for freedom around the world.

The U.S. and its allies must now design a strategy to match a global movement of radical Islamists who sincerely want to destroy Western civilization.

Congress should lead the way, first by convening hearings that outline the scale and nature of the threat. Additional hearings should seek advice from a wide range of experts on strategies to defeat radical Islamists.

Understanding the global threat, outlining strategies that might lead to its defeat, identifying the laws and systems that need to be changed to implement those strategies—all are complex problems that will require months to sort out. But the American people will rise to the challenge if they are given the facts about the real dangers we face.

Here is an outline of the sequence of topics that Congress should investigate:

1. The current strength and growth rate of radical Islamists around the world. We need a detailed sense of the total picture. The scale of the threat from this nihilistic global movement, I suspect, will be stunning.

2. The country-by-country danger. Americans simply don’t realize how dire the situation is in specific areas. Boko Haram has killed thousands more people in Nigeria alone than Ebola has in all of Africa, according to data compiled by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Centers for Disease Control. One or more hearings should focus on each center of radical Islamism, including Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

3. The role of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group is vital to the global radical Islamist movement, yet so little understood by Washington elites that it deserves its own set of hearings.

4. The primary sources of radical Islamist funding, especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran.

5. The Arab countries—including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria—that have successfully contained and minimized radical Islamists. We must learn how this was accomplished and what aspects should be replicated.

6. Radicalization in mosques and on social media. How are young Muslims being drawn into terrorism? What can be done to counter a seductive message that has reached deep into Europe and the U.S. and inspired jihadists by the thousands to travel to the Middle East for terrorist training that can be exported back home?

7. The Islamist cyberthreat. The hacking of the U.S. Central Command’s social-media accounts this week apparently didn’t inflict serious damage, but the episode was evidence of a new front in the fight against terrorism.

Once congressional hearings have outlined the scale of the challenge, it is essential to turn to the sources of our enemies’ strategic thinking and doctrine. Doing so will be controversial, but it is vital to understand the motivations and assumptions of the radical Islamist movement.

On Feb. 22, 1946, U.S. attaché to Moscow George Kennan sent what became known as the “Long Telegram.” In 8,000 words, he outlined the nature of Soviet Union communism with clarity and force. His analysis shaped much of the American transition to a policy of containing the Soviet Union. It is a tragedy, if not a scandal, that nearly 14 years after 9/11, we are still in need of an equivalent “Long Telegram” about the nature of radical Islamism.

The terrorists are immersed in Islamic history and doctrine. It is extraordinary that the political correctness of Western elites has discouraged the study of what inspires those who dream of slaughtering us. Congress should hold hearings on the historic patterns, doctrines and principles that drive the radical Islamists. No doubt these facts will make some of our elites uncomfortable. They should. We must understand the deep roots of Islamist beliefs, like the practice of beheading, if we are going to combat them.

Finally, having held hearings on the enemy and its thinking, Congress must hold hearings on strategies for achieving victory.

Once the hearings are complete, preferably this year, Congress should form a commission of the wisest witnesses it heard and charge them with designing a national strategy for winning the global war against radical Islamists. If the current administration doesn’t embrace the strategy, then it can become part of the 2016 presidential campaign: Who wants to get America on offense, with a coherent and intelligible strategy, against those who would destroy us?

Muslims NOT the most radical?

Muslims NOT the most radical?

The most radical are right here on the pages Social Media pages; mostly liberal Atheist.  They go to any extent to harass and disparage anyone that dares to have a point of view different than theirs.  This, in a Nation founded on Freedom and Liberty.  So far, few have resorted much violence (we can exclude Ferguson for the moment).  We can only hope this remains so.  One view is that extreme-radical-liberal Atheist hide in the shadows waiting to verbally harass others and to wait on others to file lawsuits that fit their agenda.  I will be proven right by the end of the day.  

The volume of hate posts will boggle your mind.

Understanding the War between two Worlds: Islam Among Us

A War Between Two Worlds

By George Friedman

The murders of cartoonists who made fun of Islam and of Jews shopping for their Sabbath meals by Islamists in Paris last week have galvanized the world. A galvanized world is always dangerous. Galvanized people can do careless things. It is in the extreme and emotion-laden moments that distance and coolness are most required. I am tempted to howl in rage. It is not my place to do so. My job is to try to dissect the event, place it in context and try to understand what has happened and why. From that, after the rage cools, plans for action can be made. Rage has its place, but actions must be taken with discipline and thought.

I have found that in thinking about things geopolitically, I can cool my own rage and find, if not meaning, at least explanation for events such as these. As it happens, my new book will be published on Jan. 27. Titled Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, it is about the unfolding failure of the great European experiment, the European Union, and the resurgence of European nationalism. It discusses the re-emerging borderlands and flashpoints of Europe and raises the possibility that Europe's attempt to abolish conflict will fail. I mention this book because one chapter is on the Mediterranean borderland and the very old conflict between Islam and Christianity. Obviously this is a matter I have given some thought to, and I will draw on Flashpoints to begin making sense of the murderers and murdered, when I think of things in this way.

Let me begin by quoting from that chapter:

We've spoken of borderlands, and how they are both linked and divided. Here is a border sea, differing in many ways but sharing the basic characteristic of the borderland. Proximity separates as much as it divides. It facilitates trade, but also war. For Europe this is another frontier both familiar and profoundly alien.

Islam invaded Europe twice from the Mediterranean — first in Iberia, the second time in southeastern Europe, as well as nibbling at Sicily and elsewhere. Christianity invaded Islam multiple times, the first time in the Crusades and in the battle to expel the Muslims from Iberia. Then it forced the Turks back from central Europe. The Christians finally crossed the Mediterranean in the 19th century, taking control of large parts of North Africa. Each of these two religions wanted to dominate the other. Each seemed close to its goal. Neither was successful. What remains true is that Islam and Christianity were obsessed with each other from the first encounter. Like Rome and Egypt they traded with each other and made war on each other.

Christians and Muslims have been bitter enemies, battling for control of Iberia. Yet, lest we forget, they also have been allies: In the 16th century, Ottoman Turkey and Venice allied to control the Mediterranean. No single phrase can summarize the relationship between the two save perhaps this: It is rare that two religions might be so obsessed with each other and at the same time so ambivalent. This is an explosive mixture.

Migration, Multiculturalism and Ghettoization

The current crisis has its origins in the collapse of European hegemony over North Africa after World War II and the Europeans' need for cheap labor. As a result of the way in which they ended their imperial relations, they were bound to allow the migration of Muslims into Europe, and the permeable borders of the European Union enabled them to settle where they chose. The Muslims, for their part, did not come to join in a cultural transformation. They came for work, and money, and for the simplest reasons. The Europeans' appetite for cheap labor and the Muslims' appetite for work combined to generate a massive movement of populations.

The matter was complicated by the fact that Europe was no longer simply Christian. Christianity had lost its hegemonic control over European culture over the previous centuries and had been joined, if not replaced, by a new doctrine of secularism. 

Secularism drew a radical distinction between public and private life, in which religion, in any traditional sense, was relegated to the private sphere with no hold over public life. There are many charms in secularism, in particular the freedom to believe what you will in private. But secularism also poses a public problem. There are those whose beliefs are so different from others' beliefs that finding common ground in the public space is impossible. And then there are those for whom the very distinction between private and public is either meaningless or unacceptable. The complex contrivances of secularism have their charm, but not everyone is charmed.

Europe solved the problem with the weakening of Christianity that made the ancient battles between Christian factions meaningless. But they had invited in people who not only did not share the core doctrines of secularism, they rejected them. What Christianity had come to see as progress away from sectarian conflict, Muslims (and some Christians) may see as simply decadence, a weakening of faith and the loss of conviction.

There is here a question of what we mean when we speak of things like Christianity, Islam and secularism. There are more than a billion Christians and more than a billion Muslims and uncountable secularists who mix all things. It is difficult to decide what you mean when you say any of these words and easy to claim that anyone else's meaning is (or is not) the right one. There is a built-in indeterminacy in our use of language that allows us to shift responsibility for actions in Paris away from a religion to a minor strand in a religion, or to the actions of only those who pulled the trigger. This is the universal problem of secularism, which eschews stereotyping. It leaves unclear who is to be held responsible for what. By devolving all responsibility on the individual, secularism tends to absolve nations and religions from responsibility.

This is not necessarily wrong, but it creates a tremendous practical problem. If no one but the gunmen and their immediate supporters are responsible for the action, and all others who share their faith are guiltless, you have made a defensible moral judgment. But as a practical matter, you have paralyzed your ability to defend yourselves. It is impossible to defend against random violence and impermissible to impose collective responsibility. As Europe has been for so long, its moral complexity has posed for it a problem it cannot easily solve. Not all Muslims — not even most Muslims — are responsible for this. But all who committed these acts were Muslims claiming to speak for Muslims. One might say this is a Muslim problem and then hold the Muslims responsible for solving it. But what happens if they don't? And so the moral debate spins endlessly.

This dilemma is compounded by Europe's hidden secret: The Europeans do not see Muslims from North Africa or Turkey as Europeans, nor do they intend to allow them to be Europeans. The European solution to their isolation is the concept of multiculturalism — on the surface a most liberal notion, and in practice, a movement for both cultural fragmentation and ghettoization. But behind this there is another problem, and it is also geopolitical. I say in Flashpoints that:

Multiculturalism and the entire immigrant enterprise faced another challenge. Europe was crowded. Unlike the United States, it didn't have the room to incorporate millions of immigrants — certainly not on a permanent basis. Even with population numbers slowly declining, the increase in population, particularly in the more populous countries, was difficult to manage. The doctrine of multiculturalism naturally encouraged a degree of separatism. Culture implies a desire to live with your own people. Given the economic status of immigrants the world over, the inevitable exclusion that is perhaps unintentionally incorporated in multiculturalism and the desire of like to live with like, the Muslims found themselves living in extraordinarily crowded and squalid conditions. All around Paris there are high-rise apartment buildings housing and separating Muslims from the French, who live elsewhere.

These killings have nothing to do with poverty, of course. Newly arrived immigrants are always poor. That's why they immigrate. And until they learn the language and customs of their new homes, they are always ghettoized and alien. It is the next generation that flows into the dominant culture. But the dirty secret of multiculturalism was that its consequence was to perpetuate Muslim isolation. And it was not the intention of Muslims to become Europeans, even if they could. They came to make money, not become French. The shallowness of the European postwar values system thereby becomes the horror show that occurred in Paris last week. 

The Role of Ideology

But while the Europeans have particular issues with Islam, and have had them for more than 1,000 years, there is a more generalizable problem. Christianity has been sapped of its evangelical zeal and no longer uses the sword to kill and convert its enemies. At least parts of Islam retain that zeal. And saying that not all Muslims share this vision does not solve the problem. Enough Muslims share that fervency to endanger the lives of those they despise, and this tendency toward violence cannot be tolerated by either their Western targets or by Muslims who refuse to subscribe to a jihadist ideology. And there is no way to distinguish those who might kill from those who won't. The Muslim community might be able to make this distinction, but a 25-year-old European or American policeman cannot. And the Muslims either can't or won't police themselves. Therefore, we are left in a state of war. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called this a war on radical Islam. If only they wore uniforms or bore distinctive birthmarks, then fighting only the radical Islamists would not be a problem. But Valls' distinctions notwithstanding, the world can either accept periodic attacks, or see the entire Muslim community as a potential threat until proven otherwise. These are terrible choices, but history is filled with them. Calling for a war on radical Islamists is like calling for war on the followers of Jean-Paul Sartre. Exactly what do they look like?

The European inability to come to terms with the reality it has created for itself in this and other matters does not preclude the realization that wars involving troops are occurring in many Muslim countries. The situation is complex, and morality is merely another weapon for proving the other guilty and oneself guiltless. The geopolitical dimensions of Islam's relationship with Europe, or India, or Thailand, or the United States, do not yield to moralizing.

Something must be done. I don't know what needs to be done, but I suspect I know what is coming. First, if it is true that Islam is merely responding to crimes against it, those crimes are not new and certainly didn't originate in the creation of Israel, the invasion of Iraq or recent events. This has been going on far longer than that. For instance, the Assassins were a secret Islamic order to make war on individuals they saw as Muslim heretics. There is nothing new in what is going on, and it will not end if peace comes to Iraq, Muslims occupy Kashmir or Israel is destroyed. Nor is secularism about to sweep the Islamic world. The Arab Spring was a Western fantasy that the collapse of communism in 1989 was repeating itself in the Islamic world with the same results. There are certainly Muslim liberals and secularists. However, they do not control events — no single group does — and it is the events, not the theory, that shape our lives.

Europe's sense of nation is rooted in shared history, language, ethnicity and yes, in Christianity or its heir, secularism. Europe has no concept of the nation except for these things, and Muslims share in none of them. It is difficult to imagine another outcome save for another round of ghettoization and deportation. This is repulsive to the European sensibility now, but certainly not alien to European history. Unable to distinguish radical Muslims from other Muslims, Europe will increasingly and unintentionally move in this direction.

Paradoxically, this will be exactly what the radical Muslims want because it will strengthen their position in the Islamic world in general, and North Africa and Turkey in particular. But the alternative to not strengthening the radical Islamists is living with the threat of death if they are offended. And that is not going to be endured in Europe.

Perhaps a magic device will be found that will enable us to read the minds of people to determine what their ideology actually is. But given the offense many in the West have taken to governments reading emails, I doubt that they would allow this, particularly a few months from now when the murders and murderers are forgotten, and Europeans will convince themselves that the security apparatus is simply trying to oppress everyone. And of course, never minimize the oppressive potential of security forces.

The United States is different in this sense. It is an artificial regime, not a natural one. It was invented by our founders on certain principles and is open to anyone who embraces those principles. Europe's nationalism is romantic, naturalistic. It depends on bonds that stretch back through time and cannot be easily broken. But the idea of shared principles other than their own is offensive to the religious everywhere, and at this moment in history, this aversion is most commonly present among Muslims. This is a truth that must be faced.

The Mediterranean borderland was a place of conflict well before Christianity and Islam existed. It will remain a place of conflict even if both lose their vigorous love of their own beliefs. It is an illusion to believe that conflicts rooted in geography can be abolished. It is also a mistake to be so philosophical as to disengage from the human fear of being killed at your desk for your ideas. We are entering a place that has no solutions. Such a place does have decisions, and all of the choices will be bad. What has to be done will be done, and those who refused to make choices will see themselves as more moral than those who did.

There is a war, and like all wars, this one is very different from the last in the way it is prosecuted. But it is war nonetheless, and denying that is denying the obvious.

Liberals’ use of black people for own agenda, part II

Liberals’ use of black people for own agenda, part II

 By Walter E. Williams
Last week I focused on the ways liberals use blacks in pursuit of their leftist agenda, plus their demeaning attitudes toward black people. Most demeaning are their double standards. It was recently reported that Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the House majority whip, spoke at a 2002 gathering hosted by white supremacist leaders when he was a Louisiana state representative. Some are calling on Scalise to step down or for House Speaker John Boehner to fire him. There’s no claim that Scalise made racist statements.

Hardly anyone blinks an eye at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s racist statements, such as: “White folks was in the caves while we (blacks) was building empires. ... We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was. ... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.”

Sharpton again: “So (if) some cracker come and tell you ‘Well, my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,’ you better hold your pocket. That ain’t nothing to be proud of. That means their forefathers was crooks.” Sharpton also offered, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

Despite such racism, President Barack Obama has made Sharpton his go-to guy on matters of race. But not to worry. Obama himself spent 20 years listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-Semitic and racist sermons. The news media and intellectual elite don’t condemn Sharpton or Obama, because they have two standards of behavior: one for whites and a lower one for blacks.

The news media’s narrative about the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, is that a white cop shot and killed an unarmed black man who was holding his hands up. Their New York City narrative is that a white cop used a chokehold that killed a black man. The news media people and their liberal allies know the facts, but they need to promote the appearance of injustice to keep black people in a state of grievance.

During grand jury testimony about the Ferguson incident, seven black witnesses testified that Michael Brown was charging the policeman when he was shot. The autopsies, performed by three sets of forensic experts, including one representing Brown’s family, confirmed Officer Darren Wilson’s version of the event. The news media’s narrative of Eric Garner’s death in New York is that he died because a chokehold had stopped his breathing. He actually died later, in an ambulance, where his heart stopped while being taken to a hospital. The chokehold was instrumental in triggering Garner’s pre-existing health problems of acute and chronic bronchial asthma, obesity and heart disease, but he was not choked to death as claimed by the media. Both Brown and Garner would be alive today if they had not resisted arrest. But pointing that out would not serve the purpose of keeping blacks in a perpetual state of grievance.

I’m old enough to remember the racist lynching mentality of yesteryear. Regardless of the evidence, if a white woman merely accused a black man of raping her, the man was all but dead. Emmett Till, a Chicago teenager visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, during the summer of 1955, was accused of flirting with a white woman. Klansmen took him to a barn. They beat him and gouged out one of his eyes. Then they shot him in the head and tossed his body in the Tallahatchie River.

The New York Times published the street name on which Officer Wilson lived. Had the frenzied mob caught up with him, regardless of evidence, he might have suffered the same fate as Till.

Multiethnic societies are inherently unstable, and how we handle matters of race is contributing to that instability. Decent Americans should see the dangers posed by America’s race hustlers, who are stacking up piles of combustible racial kindling, ready for a racial arsonist to set it ablaze.

The news media and intellectual elite ... have two standards of behavior: one for whites and a lower one for blacks.

Once more with feeling: Gas tax?

Once more with feeling: Gas tax?

by Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON — For 32 years I’ve been advocating a major tax on petroleum. I’ve got as much chance this time around as did Don Quixote with windmills. But I shall tilt my lance once more.

The only time you can even think of proposing a gas tax increase is when oil prices are at rock bottom. When I last suggested the idea six years ago, oil was selling at $40 a barrel. It eventually rose back to $110. It’s now around $48. Correspondingly, the price at the pump has fallen in the last three months by more than a dollar to about $2.20 per gallon.

As a result, some in Congress are talking about a 10- or 20-cent hike in the federal tax to use for infrastructure spending. Right idea, wrong policy. The hike should not be 10 cents but $1. And the proceeds should not be spent by, or even entrusted to, the government. They should be immediately and entirely returned to the consumer by means of a cut in the Social Security tax.

The average American buys about 12 gallons of gas a week. Washington would be soaking him for $12 in extra taxes. Washington should therefore simultaneously reduce everyone’s FICA tax by $12 a week. Thus the average driver is left harmless. He receives a $12 per week FICA bonus that he can spend on gasoline if he wants – or anything else. If he chooses to drive less, it puts money in his pocket. (The unemployed would have the $12 added to their unemployment insurance; the elderly, added to their Social Security check.) The point of the $1 gas tax increase is not to feed the maw of a government raking in $3 trillion a year. The point is exclusively to alter incentives – to reduce the disincentive for work (the Social Security tax) and to increase the disincentive to consume gasoline.

It’s win-win. Employment taxes are a drag on job creation. Reducing them not only promotes growth but advances fairness, FICA being a regressive tax that hits the middle and working classes far more than the rich.

As for oil, we remain the world champion consumer. We burn more than 20 percent of global output, almost twice as much as the next nearest gas guzzler, China.

A $1 gas tax increase would constrain oil consumption in two ways. In the short run, by curbing driving. In the long run, by altering car-buying habits. A return to gas-guzzling land yachts occurs every time gasoline prices plunge. A high gas tax encourages demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Constrained U.S. consumption – combined with already huge increases in U.S. production – would continue to apply enormous downward pressure on oil prices.

A tax is the best way to improve fuel efficiency. Today we do it through rigid regulations, the so-called CAFE standards imposed on carmakers. They are forced to manufacture acres of unsellable cars in order to meet an arbitrary, bureaucratic “fleet” gas-consumption average.

This is nuts. If you simply set a higher price point for gasoline, buyers will do the sorting on their own, choosing fuel efficiency just as they do when the world price is high. The beauty of the tax – as a substitute for a high world price – is that the incentive for fuel efficiency remains, but the extra money collected at the pump goes right back into the U.S. economy (and to the citizenry through the revenue-neutral FICA rebate) instead of being shipped overseas to Russia, Venezuela, Iran and other unsavories.

Which is a geopolitical coup. Cheap oil is the most effective and efficient instrument known to man for weakening these oil-dependent miscreants.

And finally, lower consumption reduces pollution and greenhouse gases. The reduction of traditional pollutants, though relatively minor, is an undeniable gain. And even for global warming skeptics, there’s no reason not to welcome a benign measure that induces prudential reductions in CO2 emissions.

The unexpected and unpredicted collapse of oil prices gives us a unique opportunity to maintain our good luck through a simple, revenueneutral measure to help prevent the perennial price spikes that follow the fool’s paradise of ultra-cheap oil.

We’ve blown this chance at least three times since the 1980s. As former French Foreign Minister Jean Francois-Poncet said a quarter-century ago, “It’s hard to take seriously that a nation has deep problems if they can be fixed with a 50-cent-a-gallon” – 90 cents in today’s money – “gasoline tax.” Let’s not blow it again.

Muslims have a problem:

Muslims have a problem:

The Shoe Bomber was a Muslim
The Beltway Snipers were Muslims
The Fort Hood Shooter was a Muslim
The underwear Bomber was a Muslim
The U-S.S. Cole Bombers were Muslims
The Madrid Train Bombers were Muslims
The Bafi Nightclub Bombers were Muslims
The London Subway Bombers were Muslims
The Moscow Theatre Attackers were Muslims
The Boston Marathon Bombers were Muslims
The Pan-Am flight #93 Bombers were Muslims
The Air France Entebbe Hijackers were Muslims
The Iranian Embassy Takeover, was by Muslims
The Beirut U.S. Embassy bombers were Muslims
The Libyan U.S. Embassy Attack was by Musiims
The Buenos Aires Suicide Bombers were Muslims
The Israeli Olympic Team Attackers were Muslims
The Kenyan U.S, Embassy Bombers were Muslims
The Saudi, Khobar Towers Bombers were Muslims
The Beirut Marine Barracks bombers were Muslims
The Besian Russian School Attackers were Muslims
The first World Trade Center Bombers were Muslims
The Bombay & Mumbai India Attackers were Muslims
The Achille Lauro Cruise Ship Hijackers were Muslims
The September 11th 2001 Airline Hijackers were Muslims'

Think about it...

Buddhists living with Hindus = No Problem
Hindus living with Christians = No Problem
Hindus living with Jews = No Problem
Christians living with Shintos = No Problem
Shintos living with Confucians = No Problem
Confusians living with Baha'is = No Problem
Baha'is living with Jews = No Problem
Jews living with Atheists = No Problem
Atheists living with Buddhists = No Problem
Buddhists living with Sikhs = No Problem
Sikhs living with Hindus = No Problem
Hindus living with Baha'is = No Problem
Baha'is living with Christians = No Problem
Christians living with Jews = No Problem
Jews living with Buddhists = No Problem
Buddhists living with Shintos = No Problem
Shintos living with Atheists = No Problem
Atheists living with Confucians = No Problem
Confusians living with Hindus = No Problem

Muslims living with Hindus = Problem
Muslims living with Buddhists = Problem
Muslims living with Christians = Problem
Muslims living with Jews = Problem
Muslims living with Sikhs = Problem
Muslims living with Baha'is = Problem
Muslims living with Shintos = Problem
Muslims living with Atheists = Problem
MUSLIMS LIVING WITH MUSLIMS = BIG PROBLEM

The Real Islamic Threat - Not what you are being told

The Real Islamic Threat - Not what you are being told

 Two weeks after terrorists killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other Americans in Benghazi in September 2012, Barack Obama announced to the UN, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."
The Religion of Peace™ took his advice Wednesday in Paris, as jihadis killed 12 people for daring to "slander the prophet of Islam."

Two of the victims were police officers (one of whom was wounded and then executed), and 10 were journalists (including the editor-in-chief) for the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which was firebombed in 2011 for printing cartoons of Muhammad. Charlie Hebdo recovered from that terrorism and published a few more cartoons skewering Muhammad and, more recently, the Islamic State. ISIL filled the terror vacuum in the Middle East after Obama claimed victory against al-Qaida ahead of his 2012 re-election bid.

Three masked men perpetrated the well-planned attack with Kalashnikov rifles and other small arms -- perhaps either a rocket or grenade launcher. They reportedly knocked on office doors asking by name for individuals who had created certain offensive cartoons. In a clip aired on French television, the attackers were recorded shouting, "We have killed Charlie Hebdo. We have avenged the Prophet Mohammad."

The jihadis escaped after the attack -- quite a different ending from most such killing sprees. One turned himself in to police; the other two are still at large.

The men told the journalist they forced into the building that they were from al-Qaida. Meanwhile, ISIL supporters praised the attack.

Not surprisingly, however, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest initially declined to call it terrorism: "[T]his is an act of violence that we certainly do condemn. And, you know, if based on this investigation it turns out to be an act of terrorism then we would condemn that in the strongest possible terms, too." He also once again referred to Islam as a "Religion of Peace™."

And the White House issued a statement condemning the attacks while not mentioning the words Islam, Muslim or jihad.

Former DNC Chief Howard Dean flat out denied Islam's culpability: "I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists. They're about as Muslim as I am. I mean, they have no respect for anybody else's life. That's not what the Koran says. ... I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it's a cult."

Meanwhile, numerous media outlets cowered in fear, refusing to show the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, blurring them out if images were shown at all. By contrast, the Associated Press and other outlets had no problem showing the "piss Christ" "art" some years ago.
Not cowering, however, was cartoonist and Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, who was killed Wednesday. In 2012, he said, "I prefer to die standing than living on my knees."

The Obama administration clearly would rather kneel, or at least bow. Yes, Secretary of State John Kerry declared the murdered French journalists "martyrs for liberty," and said we "wield something that is far more powerful" than the weapons the jihadis used. But, again, it was his boss who said, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

Ironically, in 2012, Obama was condemning an obscure Internet video defaming Muhammad, which his administration blamed ahead of the 2012 presidential election for the al-Qaida attack on Benghazi. Obama's campaign was built on having defeated al-Qaida. And not only did he criticize free speech, U.S. taxpayers footed the bill for ads in Pakistan condemning the video.

Not only will Obama not stand for such "slander," but he has been regularly releasing terrorist leaders from Gitmo, who historically just return to their deadly trade.
While there was much media handwringing about freedom of speech after North Korea compelled Sony to censor a satirical movie, the real threats to free speech are Islamist terrorists. For example, instead of firing off a nasty letter to the editor, the Paris jihadis brutally murdered Charlie Hebdo employees.

Also noteworthy is that the police who initially responded to the attack were, incredibly, unarmed and quickly fled. Indeed, given all the videos that were shot of this attack, it's too bad that Paris is a gun free zone -- instead of shooting videos, someone could have been returning fire.

Furthermore, the French have allowed this Islamist menace to fester in their country for years. In fact, one of the men was a known and convicted terrorist. Now they are paying the price, and make no mistake, this menace is also festering in our homeland. Islamists, like Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 14 people (including an unborn child) and wounded 30 others at Fort Hood, will continue to strike with increasing frequency. See also the attacks in Boston, Australia and Canada.


While the media refers to these deadly assaults as "lone wolf attacks," there are no such thing. Nor is there a "homegrown" Western threat. All these actors are part of an ideological Islamist web that is not Western. (Anyone for terrorist profiling?)