August 8, 2011

Cliff Notes moments.

The Left is the enemy of God, believers, and liberty. They despise the United States and everything we stand for. For the Left, we are the focus of evil in the modern world, and we must be destroyed.
Robert McClain comment on "Raging At The Dying Of Their Light." By Clarice Feldman, American Thinker, 8/7/11.

inthisdimension comment on the same article:
Two very serious "races," if you will, exist in the world today. The first is between freedom & liberty on one side, and the liberal elite (Baby Boomer Progs in America, those in Europe spoiled by America paying their defense bills for 60 years), on the other. Short form: Boomer Progs v. Freedom. The second is the competition between post-Enlightenment peoples and Islam. In both cases we have binary choices. No "Third Way" exists.

5 comments:

Zenster said...

inthisdimension: Two very serious "races," if you will, exist in the world today. The first is between freedom & liberty on one side, and the liberal elite (Baby Boomer Progs in America, those in Europe spoiled by America paying their defense bills for 60 years) on the other. [emphasis added]

I welcome all outside ideas as to exactly why America did, in fact, foot Europe's defense bill for so long.

One ostensible reason was to assure that ― as with, for instance, Saudi Arabia ― through de facto adoption of American military technology, Europe remained wholly on the side which opposed Soviet Communism.

While this alone is sufficient explanation, it certainly does not address the unintended consequences of giving post-world war Socialist-leaning European leaders a huge budget gap which could be diverted into all sorts of welfare-state initiatives whose eventual end result was breeding up a form of Communism Lite™ and setting the stage for that massive centralization of government otherwise known as the EUSSR.

Short form: Boomer Progs v. Freedom.

I would normally resent such an implication if it weren't so true. Sadly, today's progressive causes are so entirely contrary to their original Classical Liberal roots that they, literally, have nothing in common.

The Orwellian nature of modern Liberalism is so alien to its earlier configuration whereby it is no surprise that tactics lifted straight from 1984 ― supposed "Antifascists" using overt fascist strategies ― are the norm for this "through-the looking-glass" inverted reality mindset.

The second is the competition between post-Enlightenment peoples and Islam.

That this situation can even be framed as any sort of "competition" speaks volumes. Islam is entirely unable to compete with Western civilization save to the extent that modern cultures so unexpectedly tolerate this intolerable and barbaric creed. The mere inability to separate church and state should be sufficient to disqualify Islam from any role on the world stage.

Instead, we are treated to the insanity of various major nuclear powers appeasing and kowtowing to a sworn enemy that could be vaporized over the course of an extended lunch break.

In both cases we have binary choices. No "Third Way" exists.

Yet, somehow, even this most basic assessment manages to elude Western political leadership. They seek to negotiate with a foe whose terms are entirely non-negotiable. They show deference when such courtesy is held in utter contempt. They pose and posture when only the most blunt force form of physical trauma garners the least iota of respect.

Islam, entirely on its own, is a binary proposition. It is an all or nothing situation. One cannot have a "little bit" of shari'a law, just as a woman cannot be a "little bit" pregnant.

What Muslims everywhere do not seem to realize, and rather more alarmingly neither do any Islamic persons of prominence show the least indication of even slightly understanding, is how Islam's binary nature presents it with a granite wall towards which the ummah is speeding at supersonic velocities.

There can be no happy ending for Islam. Even were it to obtain global ascendancy, its own internecine quarrels would doom Islam to intramural nuclear war at some future point.

Far more importantly is that even were Europe and America to surrender, there is absolutely no guarantee that Russia, China, India or Japan would ever cede their sovereignty to Islam. Each of them has the ability to field adequate quantities of nuclear weapons so as to assure the most unhappy of endings for Islam.

The inability for Islam's clerical aristocracy to admit, much less concede, such a fact bodes especially unwell for this world's Muslim population.

This is why I continue to predict a Muslim holocaust and all current indicators do exactly nothing to lessen my own surety regarding this dire outcome.

Col. B. Bunny said...

I don't see the payoff from supposedly keeping European armies supplied with US technology. Every little bit helps, of course, but were those armies that big a market able to balance the accounts where we spent large sums to maintain bases?

Forward bases would be my choice. Clearly Ramstein AFB and its hospitals were important to anything we did in Iraq (or might do elsewhere in the Middle East).

Even after 1990, there was a need to keep things as they were just to be sure the Sovs really were done. Twenty years later that's pretty thin justification.

Even before 1990, the Europeans got away with letting Sam pay the lion's share. They knew we were committed to go the course in the Cold War and they played us by not paying their share. That did indeed allow them to ramp up their welfare programs.

The US too easily assumed that it was our job to police everything. There's the aberrant Clinton to factor into the Bosnia, Kosovo adventure but it was instructive, possibly, for what it revealed about our strong impulse to intervene and save everyone. Libya was a pure, unambiguous example of that. Well, maybe not. There's the aberrant Obama to consider.

Back to Europe, there's also the factor of the US's ever increasing love affair with statism. The Europeans' diversion of possible military spending in social welfare schemes just didn't bother our political class (either side of the Reagan era, that is).

Col. B. Bunny said...

The failure to put Muslims in their place counts as one of the most disgraceful periods in the history of the West. The West's faith in international organizations and self determination, plus it's supposed horror at its colonial past. One could ask horrors compared to what horrors in the past of the colonized themselves? But this question was verboten from Aug. 9, 1945, until this very hour.

Every waking moment of every day of my existence I try to understand this pathetic desire of Westerners to foul their own nests and tolerate outrages from people who are clearly out inferiors.

I'm not a believing Christian but one thing does resonate with me rather ominously these days, and that is that we've edged into practices that must surely tempt God to visit a terrible judgment on us. A less breathless formulation might simply be that if you insist on abandoning common sense and the wisdom of your ancestors for generations don't expect there to be a pretty result.

Baron Boddissey aptly described Islam as the perfect closed system. Like Thatcher's witticism about socialism running out of other people's money, so Islam eventually runs out of other peoples cultures as to which they can play parasite. The 20th century deal these most backward and unlovely people a fantastic hand with oil revenue so several nothingburger societies filled up with a lot of jumped up camel jockeys who got to strut on the world stage with precisely no achievements of their own to speak of. The hostility of Islam to scientific inquiry is well known.

Should Muslims succeed in bullshitting their way into dominance over the West -- still an absolutely absurd idea -- they would indeed fall victim to their own internecine quarrels and there would be no more Western or advanced cultures to steal from. Certainly the Chinese and Russians can be as weak and stupid as we are (though Russian is slated to be Muslim majority in this century).

Bottom line, I believe that Muslims will inevitably overplay their hand and be the insufferable pricks that they are. Western patience is wearing thin, too, I reckon, though heaven knows you can rush these things. As we've discussed the military advantages of the Muslims inside the West are not at all what they assume them to be.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. The Muslim problem can be solved in 30 days or less by people who reject the idea of suicide. As Marcus Aurelius said, "Within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape, if thou wilt return to thy principles and the worship of reason."

Both are a remote possibility just now, but a man can dream can't he?

Zenster said...

Col. B. Bunny: The Muslim problem can be solved in 30 days or less by people who reject the idea of suicide.

I would first like to spend 300 days subjecting Islam's uppermost clerical, political, scholastic and financial echelons to some serious attrition.

Should that fail to "get the mule's attention", then a simple program of massively disproportionate retaliation should commence. No squeals of protest about "collective punishment", please. Islamic terrorism and dhimmitude are collective punishment personified.

Effective Western retaliation would see each 9-11, Bali, Beslan, London or Madrid reciprocated with the removal of a major Muslim metropolis from the map. No nuclear weapons are needed. There are fuel air bombs capable of simulating low-yield atomic weapons without any radioactive fallout.

The net result being sought is to instill sufficient doubt, uncertainty and fear in the ummah such that their love of death is overwhelmed by the complete disappearance of entire families, bloodlines and clans across several generations.

Measurable change will be attained when ― upon hearing of the latest jihadist atrocity ― chronically nervous Muslims rush down to the nearest mosque and slit the throat of its terror-preaching imam.

Muslims must be made to understand that the price tag for jihad is so stratospheric that it poses an existential threat to Islam's continued presence on earth.

It is a fool's errand for the West to police Islam. Muslims can only be laughing hysterically up their sleeves at our febrile efforts to contain terrorism. Only Muslims truly know who and who are not the jihadists. It is not our obligation to fastidiously winnow out all terrorists from within the ummah. Let Islam clean its own house or take the very real risk that Westerners will simply throw the ostensibly moderate Muslim baby out with the jihadist bathwater.

Col. B. Bunny said...

There was a marvelous American black man I linked to several months back. I'll call him Charles. His Youtube peroration was just amazing. He expressed dismay at the failure of America to take on the Muslims. Best line was something like, "If you can get crazy, I can get crazier." The person who posted it took it down (but I fortunately recorded it). Charles was the essence of how Western men should behave toward the Muslim threat. The antithesis of every metrosexual freshman sociology major you see populating our political class.

The world has put up with Islam for way too long. One author maintains that the Soviets finally made progress (but did not defeat) the Finns in The Winter War when they just decided that it was ridiculous that such a small country was handing them their head on a platter. Be that as it may, when the Sovs mounted a serious offensive, the war turned in their favor.

Our difficulties with Islam are not new. The Sovs enslaved our servicemen who ended up in their jurisdiction and who were POWs of the N. Koreans. They shot down surveillance aircraft in international waters, they shot MAJ Nicholson down like a rabid dog and prevented his sergeant from rendering first aid, they violated wartime agreements, and they enthusiastically sponsored Islamic terrorism. They did all this without ANY kind of a response from the U.S. They got away with it all, just as the Muslims do today, and they do indeed laugh up their sleeves at us, as they should.

If Charles were running our foreign policy, which is to say, if we had a real man as president and as SoS, we'd conduct a punishing raid on some Iranian naval bases or Revolutionary Guard HQ, barracks, or parade EVERY time an IED is detonated in Iraq or Afghanistan. Why Iran's exterior supply of gasoline wasn't turned off years ago is a mystery to me. And why it's been able to get away with a nuclear program is simply incomprehensible. Ditto, Pakistan.

Saudi Arabia finances 80% of the mosques in the U.S. and won't even let Christians into Mecca let alone allow churches there. Christians are persecuted everywhere in the Muslim world. And jerkwater imams in Bangladesh issue fatwas against Westerners in their OWN countries who dare to speak the truth about Islam. We don't need to carpet bomb his immediate neighborhood. All we need to do is offer $50,000 and a U.S. passport to anyone who delivers the head of any fatwa-issuing imam on our "little list." End of fatwa problem. A variant of The Foreign Missions Act v-a-v the Muslim world would be salutary. You'll recall that was law that authorized tit for tat measures here for depredations of foriegn govts inflicted on our own diplomats.

Alas, my wish list of appropriate corrective and educational activities for Muslims will never find its way onto Obama's to do list. The West has a long way to go before it will shake off this suicidal weakness.