Islam -- the verdict.

Are Islamic teachings inherently violent? Yes. Can Islam be reformed? No. Can Islam be reconciled with our way of life? No. Is there such as thing as a moderate Islam? No. Can we continue to allow Muslims to settle in our countries? No.

These few sentences contain all the information about Islam that you will ever need to know. It is still useful to know more about the way your enemy thinks and how to exploit his weak points, yet there is no point in spending too much time on studying the failed Islamic culture.

Does the word “Islam” conjure up images of Nobel Prize winners, great universities, innovative surgical techniques, moving choral works, vibrant art, enlightened civil government, an elevated status for women, or simple rationality?

Of course not. Rather, after more than 13 centuries of Islam, its defining images are of carnage, degradation of females, lex talonis, theocracy, irrationality, hatred of infidels, and strong appeal to losers, malcontents, fanatics, and haters of growth, color, and life itself. If there is such a thing as Islamic innovation, it is in the fields of gaining entry to aircraft with weapons or explosives and designing and planting roadside mines. Whatever decency is in Islamic society lives in the shadow of obscurantism.

Westerners welcome or tolerate the emigration of Muslims to our lands. In this manner, they engineer the destruction of their way of life.

"Fjordman — The First Five Years." By Fjordman, Gates of Vienna, 2/20/10.

So “yesterday.”

The Hungarian city of Pécs, an important Christian center since the 4th century, had its churches turned into mosques, its schools into madrassas, its laws into sharia and its citizens into corpses, slaves, dhimmis or exiles during its 140-year occupation by the Turks.

"From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 13 (3): Harpo, Gekko, Barko, Sarko." By Takuan Seiyo, Brussels Journal, 2/17/10.

Where Is the American Media?

H/t: Ace of Spades. His title, too.

Grocery Czar.

Commentary on blogs is often insightful and clever. Seablogger at Fresh Bilge had written on the Dems’ still wanting to force through Obamacare.

“Phil from San Fran”:

It deliberately misleading to refer to health care in the United States as “a system.” External to Medicare and Medicaid, it is not a system, and for a nation this populated and diverse, it should never be one.

Later:

Permit me to amplify upon my previous declaration.

I’m just back from one of my local grocery stores, my favorite. I needed orange juice, broccoli, salad greens, carrots, and a sandwich. I was confident all those things would be there, and they were. Think about how many people behind the scenes were instrumental in getting that stuff out of the ground and into that store (which also, to my amazement, happened to have heirloom tomatoes from Mexico). This miracle plays out in a million ways and places in this countr, without the auspices of a grocery czar overseeing a “grocery system.” And please don’t try to tell me FOOD is somehow less essential to human existence than health care.

“JamesD”:

Phil, please, don’t give the left new ideas.

On comments generally, in the Dark Ages pre-internet, newspapers subjected readers to a highly “moderated” feedback process. Now every article is open to comments by anybody. E.g., on the issues of British elections and immigration, see the great comments on Lord Tebbit’s articles on the Telegraph.co.uk: "It's time to close the door. Britain must move towards a policy of zero net immigration."

Seablogger is a decent fellow, btw, with an observant mind and soothing writing style. Highly recommended.

Betrayed is right.

Paul Craig Roberts clarifies the implications of the New Economy,^[1] the one that has replaced the one most of us in some way or another still assume is operating as it did in the last half of the last century.

In the post-WWII economy, what the politicians and bankers did or failed to do either fueled the great engine of American productivity or failed to do it serious damage. However, the accumulated effect of huge numbers of illegal immigrants taking the jobs of Americans, illegal immigrant burdens on welfare and criminal justice agencies, massive entitlement programs, deteriorated education, affirmative action, off-shoring, out-sourcing, foreign war costs, foreign energy costs and adamant refusal to develop domestic oil and nuclear energy sources, the second highest corporate income taxes in the world, and the relentless drag on productive people engineered day in and day out by a Democrat Party captive of the far left -- and a clueless bunch of spineless Republicans -- has in this day and at this hour given us the New Economy with its perverse dynamics.

“Stimulus” money, to the extent it isn’t a payoff to leftist constituencies, stimulates little. What productive economic activity it stimulates is in the factories of China, which lends the money to the U.S. government to enable it to spend “stimulus” money in the first place. Spending on Chinese goods is spending that does not create jobs at home.

High levels of consumer debt reduces private investment capital that might otherwise be invested for non-political purposes. The banks have no one to lend to because consumers are too burdened by debt to borrow for new ventures.

As Mr. Roberts notes, “Policymakers who are banking on stimulus programs are thinking in terms of an economy that no longer exists.”

While this situation is the new reality, our Democrat president and Congress made crazed interference with health care economy their highest priority -- after devising insane spending schemes and pushing cap and kill measures, the latter rooted in corrupt science. Not one of the foregoing is remotely related to any kind of policies designed to revive the American economy. Is the U.S. corporate tax structure as much of a repellant force as the (artificially) low Chinese wage levels are an attractant? Well, one no-kidding-we’re-really-serious-about-this-jobs-thing initiative would be to test the effect of lower corporate taxes. Taxes get talked about a lot by the Democrats but so far as I know, no single politician is suggesting this be done. Apparently it’s considered an option for lunatics.

In 1941, if the present crew of Democrats had been running things -- even with 90 days warning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor -- Job Numero Uno would have been a feverish drive to triple the size of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Roberts is right when he says Americans are unrepresented and betrayed. We are betrayed by an economy whose structure seems to have been devised by an occupying power, and unrepresented by a leadership class that has precisely

• zero idea of what the true nature of our problems is,
  
• zero appreciation for the danger of excessive governmental power,
• zero appreciation for what it was that made the United States such an economic force, and
  
• zero concern for the welfare of the majority of its citizens.

Let the interests of illegal immigrants be threatened, however, and it will be Defcon IV. Yesterday.

But let the interests of the majority of citizens be threatened -- not to mention citizenship itself -- well, then it’s just nap time.

Notes
^[1] "America—A Country of Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs." By Paul Craig Roberts, VDARE, 2/15/10.