Obama and the Progressive Agenda- A Wounded Tiger?

My friend ShrinkWrapped has a brilliant post up. In it he poses the idea that Multiculturalism and Anthropogenic Global Warning have sustained enough damage in recent events to set them on a course for the oblivion they so richly deserve. He is so accurate about so much that I hesitated to bring up the one big problem I see in his theory. I finally posted a comment that outlines what I see as a terrible unmentioned, terrifying danger arising from this apparent victory for good sense. Here is my comment with some edits and expansion:

Multiculturalism is to nations as the self-esteem movement is to individuals. Unless we can reclaim the principal that only people who work hard, take care of themselves, contribute something of value to society and produce something that other people will pay for, deserve to have a "decent" living and hold their heads up in society, we will never accept that the cultures that value and foster that kind of individual more effectively are, simply put, better cultures.

As to the difficulty of next few years, I see terrible danger. Fascist totalitarianism is the time-honored response of ideologies that have no other chance of success. President Obama fired the opening salvo of a campaign against free thought and speech last Sunday. It was a not so thinly veiled as a reference to ipods etc.. but clearly implied that ungoverned thought, opinion and the speed of information were problematic. In forcing the health care bill through congress he has already proven more than capable of imposing his will over the outcry of the majority. He is surrounded by people who welcome crises and turmoil as opportunities to "change" things...

In my opinion, the worst aspect of this is that there is no organized opposition. The mainstream of the Republican party, for their own reasons, are complicit with the Democrats. The corporate world will be delighted to have legions of docile, socialist drones penned up in cubicles in all the nation's offices like so many veal calves fattening in their boxes. They work a little, complain a lot and their paychecks are ample enough to bleed off and aggregate big corporate bonuses and social entitlements for the vast army of indolent voters that will continue to vote for their unearned privileges in increasing numbers. The cubicle dwellers work too hard and clear too little profit from their labor to outbreed the welfare voting block, so the power shift is on.

The corporations have it made. Every cubicle dweller is one less potential competitive entrepreneur and, anyway, they have been pronounced too big to fail by the party of the welfare bloc. The Tea Party thing is a start but there is no true leadership structure. It is a big tent and a magnet for nut jobs. The danger that one person can fatally damage the movement with one bad gaffe is huge. Leadership must be developed, entrenched and schooled and that takes time.

The Beast is strong in both parties and they are tough and ruthless. They see the folks in the cubicles and the people who make their own way in life waking up to the fact that they are caught in the pincer between the corporate oligarchs and the entitlement class. They have been wounded because the poor economy has made us think about the weight of the bonuses and free goodies we pay for. They are afraid and in pain- a wounded tiger- a whole zoo full of wounded tigers.

There are some good Republicans and even one or two good Democrats but they need to have some faith in the electorate- some where to go for support. If the real independents, the entrepreneurs, producers and creators, do not come to understand the peril before this November's elections and if they only have run-of-the-mill Republicans and Democrats to vote for, I fear that this will not end well.

A Jew Who Says Merry Christmas

Note:

This will be the third time I have edited and posted this little essay. I feel the need to change it a little every year but this one is changed a bit more than usual. I am posting it before Thanksgiving this year and you'll have to read it to find out why:

A Jew for "Merry Christmas"

I am a Jew and I have to tell you, no one is going to discourage me from celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. No, I am not loosing my Jewish identity; on the contrary, I am very sure that it is stronger than ever.

I grew up in an observant Jewish home ( I am observant still) in which we greeted Christmas with a mixture of fascination, respect and a little irritation. At some point I became fond of expressing my ambivalence by quoting Jackie Mason, who once said:

“I don’t understand something about Christmas; maybe you can explain this to me? Why is it that this time of year you Christian people bring all of the trees inside the house and take all the lights and put them outside”

That line, for many years summed up the bemusement that I affected about the whole public Christmas celebration.

My feelings were mixed for a variety of reasons. My Dad had a retail store so the weeks leading up to Christmas were always a time of tension and brutally long hours of work. The traffic on the roads, crowds in the stores, and the saturation of television (especially in those pre- cable times) and radio airwaves with Christmas programs and music were overwhelming. I found the frenzy mentally punishing, the free-floating goodwill unsettling and the talk about Jesus (in whose divinity I was not supposed to believe) uncomfortable.

It left me very glad to have it over on December 26th.

And I was always just a little unsure of how to respond when some well meaning person would wish me a Merry Christmas. I was often caught between wanting to thank him noncomittaly, try to summon a convincing Merry Christmas in return or to say,” Thanks Very much but I don’t celebrate Christmas and then have to deal with the uncomfortable silence or explanations and apologies.

I am ashamed to admit it today but I was, at first, pleased when I saw, over the years, the ACLU and Multi-culti types pushing “Merry Christmas” out of the vocabulary of cultural discourse in favor of the more generic “Happy Holidays”.

I’ve grownup, though, and I’ve grown into a new perspective on this whole question and, today, when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, I have a new response. It’s really simple-

I stop what I am doing

I don’t have any hesitation or second thoughts.

I wish them a great big “Merry Christmas” in return.

I would like to encourage all my fellow Jews to join me in this. Here’s why:

I have come to see quite clearly that even if there are politically correct, multi-cultural, morally relativistic, post modern progressive busybodies who would like us to believe that our Christian friends’ and Neighbors’ spontaneous Christmas wishes are somehow injurious to us and our culture, they are nothing of the kind. A sincere “Merry Christmas is more American and better for the republic and her people than the blandest, most guarded “Happy Holidays”

You see, the U.S. was founded by Christians. Not just any Christians. The early colonists were both devout and independent. They were fervent Protestants whose purpose in coming here was to leave the Kings, Priests, state religions and archaic laws of the Old World behind.

Even if some of them were supersessionists and dogmatic, they were also egalitarian and self-reliant. They came here to build a country where every man could read scripture for himself and be his own priest- where he could be free to elect political leadership that he could follow gladly. Ultimately, that experiment gave rise to the constitution and form of government we have today. At over two hundred years old, it is still the one in the entire world that best honors the individual and guarantees most rights to any individual who accepts the constitutional responsibilities of a citizen.

It was those fiercely independent Protestants who set the tone for the nation in which we now live. Their fierce spiritual presumption of the liberty of the human soul is, still today, the great central mast that lifts the canopy of democracy and holds it above us as a sanctuary from the despotism and effete decay that afflicts most of the rest of the world.

Crystallized in the constitution, the devotion of deeply religious people and spiritually awakened souls like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams are what have made it the highest standard of self rule and freedom in the history of the human race.

Among all their other unique achievements the fact that they decided that there could be no Official Religion in a country that aimed not just at physical or intellectual freedom shows that they understood that full human freedom means spiritual freedom too- Freedom of Religion.

To honor their genius fully we have to understand that Freedom of Religion must never be allowed to be a mandate for Freedom from Religion. As a Jew, I am exquisitely aware that freedom to practice my form of religion exists in this country because of those Christians and their vision of what a Christian country should stand for.

This uniquely Christian openness is why America has become the destination of choice for any one wishing to escape repression or lack of opportunity elsewhere in the world. That's why Jews have gravitated here for two hundred years. But we all (Christians, Jews, Muslims and Atheists) are in danger of forgetting how this all works and I think this whole “anti-Merry Christmas” thing is a symptom of that amnesia.

Fortunately, though, Jews do have a collective memory of stories if we just listen to them. My grandfather told me stories about life in turn-of-the(last)–century Eastern Europe so I have some idea of what he escaped by coming here. And its not just that he was not in Zhitomir, his Ukrainian home town, thirty years after he left for America, when the Waffen SS slaughtered thirty six thousand Jews there in one day! That is a gift indeed but it is in and of the past. No, it is the gift of equality and the opportunity to prosper that still lives on. It is that continuing gift that sustains the American dream and should call upon our constant love and loyalty.

The United States of America, as conceived by her Protestant founders, has been a miracle and a blessing to the entire human race. It has been especially important to the Jewish people.

We Jews are barely over one percent of the population here. We (a lot of us anyway) take pride in our contribution to America’s dynamism. We point with satisfaction to the fact that the founding fathers of this country were inspired and informed by our holy book which they called The Old Testament. Many of them read it in the original Hebrew, something few of us “modern” Jews can do.

But why do I need to explain this? Why don’t we all understand the centrality of the Protestant ethic to the goodness of America? Partly, it’s because of a lack in the educational program. But it’s also because our media, whose responsibility it should be to make us aware of the important ideas, events and issues has other agendas. Our “Mainstream” media is often found to be doing just the opposite.

In the media, America is assailed daily for her imperfections; and if not assailed, then damned by the faintest of praise. The media emphasizes the imperfections instead of the achievements- the discords not the harmony.

Historical revisionism has been used by the joyless progressives, secular humanists and multiculturalists to sap the joy and meaning out of Thanksgiving and the goodwill out of Christmas.

It has even come to pass that our President goes abroad and cannot seem to visit another country without some pathetic apology for America’s past- as if there is any country on earth whose history is so pristine that they are in a position to judge.

I am only one Jew- not a Rabbi and not a spokesman for a community organization, just a simple Jew. Nevertheless, I would like to call on all Jews, indeed, all Christians, Muslims and whoever else will standup with me and celebrate the blessing that The United States of America is to us and to the human family. Let us bow our heads together this Thanksgiving and resolve that instead of fretting about how saying “Merry Christmas” might make us an overly Christian country, we will thank our own, private God that we live in this country where “Happy Thanksgiving” and “Merry Christmas” mean what they mean here.

We need to loosen up and get a perspective on this “Merry Christmas” thing. It is not the people who say “Merry Christmas” and mean it that we need to be discouraging in America at this time. It is the people who find something wrong and suspect in the energy, enthusiasm and good-will that animates that “Merry Christmas” that we need to discourage.

We must side with our fellow Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom are warm-hearted friends with morals and ethics or we will have become unwitting dupes to heartless enemies with no moral compass who think they can rationalize almost anything and undermine our great civilization with reasonable sounding, non-judgmental sophistry. Do you need a moment to think about that?

By saying “Merry Christmas” in public we are not necessarily agreeing that Jesus was the son of God, we are just acknowledging that some very good people believe it. When we say it, that does not constitute accepting Jesus as our personal savior; it does show his followers that we see them as fellow countrymen, friends and brothers-in-arms in the defense of the highest ideals of our civil society and Judeo-Christian culture. What is the problem with that?

The first four words of this essay “I am a Jew”, are exactly the words that Daniel Pearl was forced to say on camera just before he was pinned down and his head was sawn off. I'd like you to try a little thought experiment simulating a better world here- Pretend that the next sentence that I write followed that first one and I had no need for the rest of the explanation in between...

"Have a Merry Christmas"

The Lessons of Mumbai- Too Long for a Bumper Sticker

The rage and frustration I feel as the full dimensions of the Mumbai attacks become clear is dangerous. I was walking through a supermarket parking lot when I saw this bumper sticker.

This was even worse than those imbecilic "coexist" stickers with all of the religious symbols. It took me a while to figure out why. There are so many levels on which this message is ignorant and dangerous that I had to sort them all out. First and most obvious is the fact that it is an obvious slap at “God Bless America”. But, no, that wasn’t the cause for the rage- I’m used to seeing that kind of fuzzy ignorance that passes for political thinking.
I live, after all, in Newton, MA- a very liberal community- so fatuous drivel like this generally just irritates but doesn’t enrage me. So why, suddenly, did I find it difficult to contain my revulsion? The tide of rage I felt was all but overwhelming.

Well, for one thing, I had just read a report on the Rediff India Abroad web site about the particularly cruel and deliberate attention with which the Mumbai terrorists tortured and disfigured the Israeli and Jewish victims of the massacre. An extended quote is instructive:

Doctors…, said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatized. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

Now, listen, I am married to an operating room nurse. I am all too familiar with the ability of medical professionals to compartmentalize, neutralize and discuss in a cool and detached way, things that make mere writers like myself flinch and even retch. The very idea that this hardened physician could not bring himself to contemplate what he had seen struck me to my very core. I found myself, temporarily, without a way forward.
Seeing that bumper sticker put me on a knife-edge between despair and rage. I stood there and stared at the car with my heart pounding. I don’t know what I would have done had the owner of the car walked up at that point.
“No Exceptions”?

What does that mean? Does it mean they would call down God’s blessing on the stinking swine who apparently did their reconnaissance in the Chabad House by posing as travelers and accepting the food, hospitality and blessings of the Rabbi and his family while they plotted their torture and death?

Does it mean that they can see no moral or spiritual difference between the Rabbi who welcomed and served them with an open heart and the filthy, lying murderers who rewarded his kindness by killing his wife before him and letting him suffer her death, tenderly wrapping her body in his prayer shawl, before murdering him?

Don’t get me wrong; I will admit that I knew, even in my turmoil and anguish at that moment, that the owner of that car would not be in favor of any of those things and would, probably think me very unkind to associate him with them.

I know very well that most of the people who have those bumper stickers have put them there because they were moved only by an urge to get in the face of people with “God Bless America” bumper stickers. I’ll admit, too, that I am very much in the God Bless America camp myself. I believe that America is a blessed country. I count among my friends and family a number of people who gave up everything they had and the lives that they had lived for many decades in order to come here and be free.

There is the lovely seventy-year-old lady and her husband who came here ten years ago from Russia along with their daughter and her husband. They still don’t speak much English but recently she proudly showed me around her neat little apartment and paused for a long moment at the end of the tour with a wistful smile on her face, clasped her hands together, looked at me and said with a gusty sigh, “God Bless America”! Having seen the former Soviet Union in depth and first hand, I know exactly what she means.

The reason we have a political battle about immigration in the first place is that anyone in their right mind would rather be here than in any other country on earth. And what country on earth is more free and open? I don’t understand the people who live here and are so alienated, embarrassed by our power and sulky that they feel they can’t let “God Bless America” stand as a sentiment without making a public display of distancing themselves from it.

Is it just moral blindness, and spiteful disenfranchisement that moves them to miss the important point that America, while not perfect, is by far the finest, most democratic, most humane and least Imperial “greatest power in the world” that has ever existed?

America, after all, has come forward over the last one hundred years and, with the help and support of the rest of the western powers, saved civilization from two militarized totalitarian movements that threatened to immerse the world in their respective fascist nightmares.
Now, even as we engage yet another murderous totalitarian threat with our traditional allies severely compromised by infiltration and the degenerate influence of moral relativism and multiculturalism, here is a person who thinks it more important to express their petty snit with America than to consider the implications of their stance. I have to wonder how can anyone think it possible that the ideal of multiculturalism that is (even if accidentally) conveyed by this bumper sticker is not deeply immoral- and self-destructive to the point of being suicidal?

There have been a number of times when I have not even known how to start thinking and writing about the utter horror of the actual events and conditions of our world. At those times, I will turn to the blogs of those I admire most. Robert Avrech who blogs at Seraphic Secret is one of my great comforts at those times. He has a huge range of moods and subjects but, whether he is writing about horror or Hollywood, Robert brings a wisdom and sensibility that has the power to help restore strength and faith.

So after wandering home from the parking lot I fired up my computer and found Robert quoting that same article that had stopped me in my tracks. Then at the end he added this- quoting from the brilliant Melanie Phillips:

Phillips comments:
The atrocities demonstrated with crystal clarity what the Islamist war is all about — and the western commentaries didn't understand because it simply refuses to acknowledge, even now, what that war actually is. It does not arise from particular grievances. It is not rooted in "despair" over Palestine. It is not a reaction to the war in Iraq. It is a war waged in the name of Islam against America, Britain, Hindus, Jews and all who refuse to submit to Islamic conquest.
What of the terrorists' treatment of their Jewish targets? Phillips writes:
They went to some lengths in addition to single out a centre for observant Jews. Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife Rivka were murdered not because of Palestine but simply because they were Jews. That is because hatred of Jews as Jews is fundamental to the Islamists' hatred of the west — and of Israel.

Oh, how exactly!
I would like to presume to add some detail to Phillip’s “things Mumbai makes obvious”:
1. Islamist rage is not our fault. It is endemic to their culture. It has no regard for humanity, sex, age or innocence.

2. If you are not one of them it will seek you out and get you no matter how nice you are to it.

3. Even if you are one of them, once they kill all those who are not, they will find a reason that you are not quite one of them.

4. If you are not the strongest and the quickest and the most ruthless, you are eventually doomed.

The lessons we must learn and make sure we teach to the morally weak like the guy with that bumper sticker are:
1. If you have power over them today, use it now – tomorrow it may be too late.

2. Even if you kill someone who is innocent, as much as that disturbs you, you may take comfort in the certainty that they will die a less painful death than you and your family will if they get their hands on you.

3. The “hostages” of Mumbai had not absorbed the lesson of 9/11. The captives that were taken, tortured disfigured and murdered in Mumbai were no less doomed than the passengers on the airliners on 9/11. They allowed themselves to be taken and abused by captors who did not want anything from them but to use them as instruments of terror. Only the brave passengers of flight 93 understood and acted on this. Let no westerner ever rationalize ignorance of this from this day forward. If the Munich slaughter seemed to you acceptable, if flight 103 did not convince you, if you were able to harden your heart to the fates of Robert Dean Stethem and Leon Klinghoffer, and 9/11 failed to impress you and Madrid and Beslan and all of the theatrical, internet promoted, beheadings could not reach you, surely this atrocity cannot be denied.

4. We have seen in the Western Mass Media’s unwillingness to widely distribute the telling and ghastly details of the torture and murder in Mumbai, their dehumanization of Jews, Israeli, Americans and all other victims of the attack. and their studied avoidance of connecting the violence to Islam or Muslims that the blindness of our friend with the bumper sticker is reinforced by the very cultural institution that should be providing us with warnings and dependable information about the threat.
The Mainstream Media will not inform you, you cannot rely on them for full information; so you need to inform yourself. Do not allow yourself to be soothed and co-opted.

There is but this warning to add:
When (and unless we wake up and do something, it is not a question of “if”) you are attacked, you are going to have to fight as hard as you can, for as long as you can if you want to have any hope of surviving. We have seen what they do to captives so you must never leave yourself at their mercy- they have none. Remember that they are cowards. Suicide, no matter how many innocent people you take with you is a sign of weakness. They are so afraid of the impotence and ineffectuality of their culture and their pathetic individual enslavement to the honor/shame drama of that culture that they are willing to sacrifice themselves (and you!) to avoid the shame. They will murder you gladly rather than admit that they do not have the moral fiber to see how purile and ineffectual their society is. They are willing to accept their own deaths so you must assume they will gladly give you yours. The only defense is in strength and persistence. As Churchill said, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never- in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

I propose a different slogan- even if it’s a little too long for a bumper sticker- “God already blessed the whole world- God gave us America- too bad so many of us make exceptions of ourselves.”

UPDATE:
I have condensed the message of this post- I might have been more direct just writing this:

The Ultimate Lesson of Mumbai- Save the Last Clip for Yourself and Your Family

The “hostages” of Mumbai had not absorbed the lesson of 9/11. The captives that were taken, tortured disfigured and murdered in Mumbai were no less doomed than the passengers on the airliners on 9/11. They allowed themselves to be taken and abused by captors who did not want anything from them but to use them as instruments of terror. Only the brave passengers of flight 93 understood and acted on this. Let no westerner ever rationalize ignorance of this from this day forward...

....When (unless we wake up and do something, it is not a question of “if”) you are attacked, you are going to have to fight as hard as you can, for as long as you can if you want to have any hope of surviving. We have seen what they do to captives so you must never leave yourself at their mercy- they have none....

Obama's Campaign and The Real Meaning of The Che Guevara Flag

Some of the things you learn about the people who attach themselves to political campaigns are more revealing and interesting than the candidates, what they say and how the media covers them. Last week's Che Guevara flag eruption was a case in point.

Usually, I don’t have the time and energy but I got involved in a comment trail about it on a post at Solomonia a few days ago. When I do get sucked into these things its always because something grabs my attention about one of the responders and I sense that I might learn something about some larger issue.

For those of you who don't know the background, that post had to do with the backwash from a Fox video report in which a Cuban flag adorned with a picture of Che Guevara was shown hanging prominently in an Obama campaign office in Houston.

Somewhat after the dust settled on the Solomonia post and its comments the Obama campaign posted this on its web site:

"This is a volunteer office that is not in any way controlled by the Obama campaign. We were disappointed to see this picture because it is both offensive to many Cuban-Americans -- and because it does not reflect Senator Obama’s views. Barack Obama has been very clear in putting forward a Cuba policy that is based on one principle: freedom for the Cuban people."

But one of Obama’s supporters (no doubt another volunteer) had already joined in the fray at Solomonia. The very first comment on the thread (how did she find it so quickly?) was from an ardent but only marginally coherent Obama supporter writing under the name of Susan (LAST NAME OMITTED AS A COURTESY). I have no idea who she is but it reads like undergraduate stuff; you can actually read it out loud and hear where “Omygawd”, “like” and “duh” fit in. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were one of the legions of “young people” who have decided that we need change and Obama is the guy to bring it on. She wrote (Parenthesis added by me):

“... (Oh my gawd,) This is because this is an office (that is, like) paid for by supporters. It is (sooo totally) not an official headquarter office Also, Che Guevara is viewed as an icon for (y’know) Socialist ideology that opposes the oppression of colonialism and capitalism (WhatEver!). This flag represents a symbol of change against the oppression these systems create. (Yo,) It does not say Obama is going to (like) turn the USA into a communist country. (duh!).”

A bit of a donnybrook ensued. I couldn’t help joining in. For a while I felt a little ashamed- I mean, this Susan was obviously very easy prey and there was already the beginning of a pack after her when I arrived on the scene. As things devolved, though, it turns out that I discovered another piece of the puzzle about how well meaning people who consider themselves liberal wind up getting themselves and everyone around them into very awkward positions. My last comment on this post was pretty long and although I suggest that you read the whole thread, I know that there is only so much time to read things and I am glad you are here reading here- so, to make things easier, I am reprinting that last comment of mine here with a few minor edits (I never polish comments as much as I should):

Susan, you are clearly out of your depth in trying to think about these things. I’d like to help out but hardly know where to start. You really write as if there is a progressive leftist shouting into one ear and a confused liberal simpering into the other and you, poor Susan, are trying to put both of their thoughts (loose choice of words) into the computer. Only once in a while does the real Susan get a word in edgewise. If you would just stop contradicting yourself from one sentence to the next you might sound as though you actually had a mind of your own.
I mean, look, here’s an excerpt- read it as you would a play and you’ll see what I mean-

LIBERAL:
I am not saying I find Guevara's tactics to be logical or practiceable (sic). Quite the contrary.

PROGRESSIVE:
What I am defending is the reality that Guevara fought for. Oppression is far from dead.

LIBERAL:
His approach is dead wrong. Socialism is dead wrong. Communism is dead wrong.

SUSAN:
I don't know what is right. ? I am obviously not a good candidate to run a country or reform the world.

PROGRESSIVE:
I do believe that there are very real deficiencies to colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, etc.

LIBERAL:
I believe that Castro's dictatorship (not communism) is far worse than the issues here in the US.

PROGRESSIVE:
However, I have a problem with the fact that anyone who doesn't fit into a white, middle class image is profiled and often underprivileged for their skin color or their class or their accent. They lack resources and opportunity that so easily come to anyone that is white.

LIBERAL:
This is why I support Obama because I believe that he pushes for a better, diverse US that "maybe" will unite us as a country and quit segregating us based on our skin color.

PROGRESSIVE
I believe the world hates us because we are racist and ethnocentric (me being a part of the problem with all of you.) I think there is a big possibility of Obama changing this image in the right way (consciousness raising rather than through a violent revolution.)

WHEW, it must be exhausting to be you!

Given your inability to keep from contradicting yourself in successive sentences, this might be asking a lot but I think you need to take a deep breath and think about why you are running from pillar to post about this. I think you are wild with enthusiasm for Obama. Like the confused liberal, leftist, progressive participants in presidential lemming runs of the past (McCarthy, McGovern, Carter, Dean), you are getting hyped up over an almost unknown candidate for purely emotional reasons. You cathect your angst and anomie into the campaign and, if you are ever challenged, you try to justify it with a grab bag of ideas and concepts that pop into your mind. You might want to check with all of the voices in your head, including your own, about why. Let’s look at your only line in the little play above:

“I don't know what is right. ? I am obviously not a good candidate to run a country or reform the world.”

That forlorn little question mark says it all. I’ll say this for you; you are honest up to a point. But then you get back on the flip flop of voices. Here’s the best example:

“I believe the world hates us because we are racist and ethnocentric (me being a part of the problem with all of you.) I think there is a big possibility of Obama changing this image in the right way (consciousness raising rather than through a violent revolution.)”

Earth to Susan! Aside from the fact that this is the least racist, least ethnocentric, most open country on earth, and ignoring the inconvenient fact that a very large number of those people who you say hate us so much (especially those “pobres de la tierra” you referenced in your first comment) want to come here to live, there is another big problem with your premise. Let me ask you, what, precisely, is it about Obama that makes you so sure that electing him president will immediately change our image in the world? He hasn’t really talked much about his ideas and beliefs. He certainly had not been specific until that point, about his policy goals. So, what do you have to base your single minded loyalty and dedication upon?

I am wondering, if you told your other voices to shut up for a moment, whether you would not just find that you just want Obama because you think it would be (totally) cool to have a black president. Well, you see, Susan, I think having a black president would be cool too but I don’t think that using that as our preeminent criterion is a good way to approach selecting the person who will be the most powerful human being on earth. Besides, wanting him to be president because he is black is just as racist as not wanting him to be president because he is black.

So, you see, this is what this discussion is about. What we are doing is evaluating the man, his organization and the kinds of workers and enthusiasm he attracts. It may be that the Che flag is an artifact of a peripheral group of “unsupervised” yahoos, but his response to it matters, as does the flack that “followers” like you throw up. So, when you equivocate on whether is it all right to use a communist thug as an iconic symbol of “change” and opposition (sounds a little like “resistance” to me) while enjoying the protection of this great country, you are giving every appearance of using code words that communists, confused lefty liberals like yourself and socialists will respond to while still trying to maintain “plausible deniability”. It is way too great a stretch. You become a kind of cartoon image of yourself. You complain that we are stereotyping you- but we don’t have to stereotype you- you have done a very good job of that yourself.

Consider, please, that you are not just, as you say, “not a good candidate to run a country or reform the world.”, You may not be a good candidate to vote for someone to run a country; let alone reform the world. You really haven’t done a particularly good job of even writing about it.

Yes, well, looking back on it, I am tempted to feel a little bad about that last paragraph, that I may have put that more unkindly than I needed to. But then I think about the fact that so much of Obama’s momentum is coming from the notion that we need change above all other things, change divorced from discussion of the consequences or means. Not that I think that Obama is anything remotely like the kind of murdering thug that Che was or Castro is, its clear he is not anything of the kind. On the contrary, he seems like a nice, upstanding person. That makes him and his followers all the more dangerous.

Stateist Communism is a monstrosity. But the creeping socialism (and the accompanying moral relativism and multiculturalism) of the liberal left is cruel and disillusioning in its own way. It robs people of their self-esteem and self-reliance, it stultifies enterprise and ambition, and, worst of all, it is the single fastest way to weaken and demoralize our resistance to Caliphate Islamism.

The quixotic, demented, anti-logical dueling contradictions I identified in Susan’s rant, combined with that craving for change is the very kind abandonment of reason brought Che and Castro to power in Cuba, Hitler in Germany and Lenin in Russia. The swelling ranks of impressionable young people and immature older people who, like this hapless Susan, seem capable of believing the most outrageous calumny about their own country while, at the same time, remaining blind to far more egregious short comings on the part of almost any other country (other than Israel, of course) is ominous in its own right.

It is unsettling that the Obama campaign, notably through his wife Michelle Obama, is pandering to and encouraging the ecstatic urge for change in a recent speech (HT Sister Toldjah) Mrs. Obama said in a recent speech at UCLA, “Barack is the only man who can “heal” this nation and “fix our souls””

My reading of history tells me that when a government undertakes to “fix” peoples souls, as nice as that sounds, it will ultimately mean that if you don’t care to have your soul fixed in that particular way, they are going to wind up doing something very unpleasant (maybe even fatal)to your property, your freedoms and, your life.

As Jeff Jacoby wrote in the Boston Globe:

With Che at his side, Castro toppled Fulgencio Batista in January 1959. "As soon as they had seized power," notes "The Black Book of Communism," a magisterial survey of communist crime in the 20th century, "they began to conduct mass executions inside the two main prisons, La Cabana and Santa Clara." As chief prosecutor of the new regime, Che oversaw the bloodbath, ordering hundreds of executions in the first months of 1959. Those he killed, "The Black Book" records, included "former comrades-in-arms who refused to abandon their democratic beliefs."

Like totalitarians of every stripe, Che didn't scruple at the death of innocents. "Quit the dallying!" he ordered Jose Vilasuso, a conscientious government lawyer who was seeking evidence against several prisoners. "Your job is a very simple one. Judicial evidence is an archaic and secondary bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! We execute from evolutionary conviction."

Che fixed their souls all right- by setting them free from their bodies. This is the thanks that naïve change-seekers can expect from true revolutionaries like Che to whom they find themselves romantically drawn. Let me be clear, I think that Barack and Michelle Obama are more like Susan than they are like Fidel and Che. They are essentially good people who are either too emotionally involved in their desire to advance their joint career through the false promise of socialism or so convinced that they have "a mission" that they find it possible to ignore the moral and intellectual bankruptcy and cultural danger of their ideology.

And then there are the nameless, faceless campaign functionaries, flaks and Public Relations experts- let’s look in detail at what they published as the Obama campaign’s official statement on the Che flags. It has become axiomatic in political campaigns that it is a big mistake, especially in primary elections, to give too accurate a picture of who you are and what you believe in. This statement is a masterpiece of obfuscation and hypocrisy.

The first thing I notice is that it never actually mentions the name "Che Guevara". This is a sure sign that there is something indirect and manipulative going on. We are in for a "Marketing Momnet".

It begins with a reasonably forthright first sentence: “This is a volunteer office that is not in any way controlled by the Obama campaign” a valid disclaimer. Any organization that is growing and changing as rapidly as the Obama campaign has got to have a few loose cannons. There is no way that the core leadership can keep a watch on everything.

The next sentence is not so direct. It is a loosely joined succession of phrases. These phrases, owing to the looseness of the connections, clack and bump against each other leaving us to wonder wha the real bond is between them. I am going to have to take it one fragment at a time.

The first phrase is “We were disappointed to see this picture” My initial reaction is that I find it shocking that all they can muster is “disappointment”. Knowing who Che Guevara was, what he stood for and the bloody murder he committed, if I were Barack Obama I might have felt something more like outrage or horror- but that is just me. How disappointed are they? What kind of disappointment is it?

The next two phrases are even more shocking. “…because it is both offensive to many Cuban-Americans-- and Americans of all backgrounds” So, we see where the word “disappointment “ comes from, it has nothing to do with being repelled by Che’s bloody record or dismayed by his totalitarian association. No, it is nothing so moral and judgmental. They are disappointed because it offensive to Cuban-Americans and others.

Incredibly, they are far more concerned about the “offence” caused than they are about the meaning of the flag as a symbol. Unspoken here, but clearly identifiable are two senses in which the Obama campaign apparently considers giving offense more notable and worse than the moral implications of his presence in the volunteer office. First, of all it giving offense to identifiable voting blocs (Cuban-Americans vote!) is politically counter-productive. When, as the Obama campaign seems to, you believe (we know Mrs. Obama does) that you have the power to “heal” and “save”, engaging in honest and direct debate that might drive votes away is a sin against your sacred (however mistaken) mission.

The other reason “the offense” is a greater concern for them than the substance of the matter is that in the multicultural, morally relative world of the left and the Democrats it is a greater sin to be “insensitive” to the feelings of revolutionaries and malcontents than it is to ignore and enable injustice and even murder.

They go on to say that it the flag does not reflect Obama's views and that "Barack Obama has been very clear in putting forward a Cuba policy that is based on one principle: freedom for the Cuban people" It's funny how bland and non-committal that “freedom for the Cuban people” sounds. What does that mean exactly? To me, it has the same ring of ominous irony of, say, calling a repressive Communist totalitarian state “The People’s Republic of Whateverstan”.

It doesn’t specify what kind of freedom they’re talking about. Presumably, they are trying to be sufficiently general to avoid offending anyone else. Incredibly, this champion of change for America, this campaign that wishes to sell us on wholesale change for America (the nation that needs change the least of all the countries of the world) comes up short on suggesting any particular change for Cuba (an internationally acknowledged economic and social basket case). Cuba needs more of what we have here – in a hurry. Democracy and free markets would be a huge improvement for that country. Does the Obama campaign suggest any thing like that? No, he certainly would not want to offend the people who put him into this fix with that banner of Che, and they are not so much in favor of democracy or free markets. The whole thing is weasely, multicultural, morally relativistic and marketing oriented- not at all statesmanlike.

Edmund Burke warned us about this three hundred years ago. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” From this one instance, it looks to me that Obama is very much in favor of doing nothing about evil. He can’t bring himself to call it “evil”. As I said above he seems like a very nice and pleasant man. If all the evil in the world were done only by evil people, though, things would be a lot less complicated than they are.

The real danger that the tone and direction of the Obama candidacy brings home to me is that once “Change” becomes the ultimate goal, the strongest, most ruthless candidate of change will often look like the best one and the well-intentioned, emotionally labile dummies of the liberal left (as the example of Susan shows) will be powerless to see what he is up to- let alone stop him. That blood thirsty criminal is not Barack Obama but he might well be hanging a Che Guevara flag up in a "volunteer" office somewhere and waiting for his chance. So, Mr Obama's people have not really addressed the key flag issue at all. They have only given us a flaccid denial of approval- not a categorical condemnation and that makes the Che flag a rather large red flag for me.

I seem to feel that hot breath on the back of my neck again…

Celebrate Diversity! Even if it Kills You

A friend has sent me a link to Andrew Bostom’s Blog with the story on the reinstatement of Major Stephen Coughlin’s reinstatement. Bostom includes a link to Coughlin’s seminal and compendious Thesis on Jihad- all 329 pages of it!

I have to confess, I don’t have the will power, or the spare time to read it all now; but I’ve dipped into it enough to see that this is a very important document. Of course, I flipped directly to the last chapter (this is why I never enjoyed reading mysteries). I was charmed to see that the title of that “pay-off” chapter “Disarmed in the War of Ideas” is very similar to a my phrase “Unilateral Cultural Disarmament”. I’ll be reading and ransacking this one for a very long time.

Colleague Lazar at Augean Stables has a very good initial pass at it here.

I won’t spoil all the fun for you “grinders” who will read it cover to cover and in order but I have to point out this elegant and telling observation from page 230. Coughlin is writing about how the Caliphate threat in continuing to sneak up on us.

“Under the Current Approach, this entire line of inquiry has been effectively shut
down by objections that do not extend beyond surface assertions that “Islam does not
stand for this” or “there are a thousand different interpretations of Islamic law” (so what’s
the point in looking?).”

Has anyone here not read Mark Steyn’s America Alone? (If not, you can just scroll down a little and click on the Amazon book icon for it on the left hand margin of this screen to order) I was immediately taken by how similar the above sentence is to one of the quotes that I remember best from Steyn’s book.

“…contemporary multiculturalism absolves one from knowing anything about other cultures as long as one feels warm and fluffy toward them. After all, if it's grossly judgmental to say one culture's better than another, why bother learning about the differences? "Celebrate diversity" with a uniformity of ignorance.”

And its not just celebrating diversity. It is the imbecilic prejudice against their own culture that come along with it that is more astounding and perilous. Both of these quotes point directly at the Achilles Heel of civilization. This is the very same mechanism by which people who call themselves feminists delude themselves that abstract concepts like “the glass ceiling in Corporate America” should be a greater concern for western women than the savage brutalization of women under Shari’a law. It is embodied too in the morally bankrupt blindness that calls Israel an apartheid pariah and attempts to degrade her ability to survive in the face of regimes that really do practice apartheid and murder.

This is yet another example of how Multiculturalism is actually a very subtle but corrosive form of racism. No liberal or progressive would be caught dead saying that “All those (choose one: Black people, Asians, Indians, etc…) look alike to me. So why is it ok to say that, "It makes no difference what they think or do, we love all those other cultures without discrimination, even though we can't really tell one from another and we will only criticize ours?"

It is a relatively new idea, fostered by historical revisionists, that the ascendance of Western Civilization was a product of colonialism, imperialism and cultural xenophobia. It’s a guilty reaction in which only the coddled, directionless, morally deficient grandchildren of real achievers and visionaries can afford to indulge. Their lives, rendered too safe and too comfortable, spend all of their time and energy finding fault with the system that has given them those comforts and that protection while, at the same time, they remain too lazy, self-absorbed and spiritually flaccid to even notice the faults that doomed the other less-successful cultures that western civilization superceded; much less contemplate the threats posed by the rising challenge of Caliphate Islam.

Indian Guilt and the American View of Islam Part II

There is not a square acre of habitable land on the face of the earth that has not been inhabited by an earlier human population than the one that lives on it today. When the white man came to “The New World” he was not, as some (Lawrence’s “highbrows”) would have it, invading a pair of continents that had been under the stewardship of a single people, living peacefully and in harmony with nature for thousands of years. He was stepping onto a perpetual battlefield where the inhabitants had arrived in successive waves of occupation, conquered and re-conquered each other, committed repeated savagery upon each other and permanently changed the character of the environment. Human sacrifice, slavery and constant low-intensity warfare were universal across both North and South America before the Europeans arrived. The Europeans who trickled in for the first three hundred years and then poured in in immense numbers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to escape religious persecution, political domination and limited economic prospects in their home countries. They came here and founded the greatest experiment in liberty, prosperity and self-government ever seen on earth. Without their descendants and The United States of America, the national socialist and communist monsters of the twentieth century could not have been defeated and would have dominated the earth. You can, as I do, feel compassion and even nostalgia for the American Indians but you can only lament their replacement as the dominant culture in the Americas if you believe that life on earth would be better had they not been conquered.

Did I say “conquer”? Yes, I know that the word “conquer” is out of fashion these days. It makes most people very uncomfortable because it is redolent of violence, greed, slavery and colonialism. In this post colonial age The West has a very guilty conscience about all of that and its not that we don’t deserve it. Conquest is a messy and spontaneous process and it gets exceedingly ugly at times. Conquest by force is bloody, and even conquest by cultural conversion can look very harsh. The fact remains, to paraphrase D.H. Lawrence, when cultures that are as different as Western Civilization and the American Indians meet, one must prove fatal to the other.

We in The West try very hard to keep from thinking about conquering anything. Some of us are even ashamed that our culture is so successful and powerful that most of the conquest we do these days is of the non-violent, social and cultural kind. There are any number of leftists who speak of western “cultural hegemony” as if it were a bad thing. They bemoan the loss of native cultures and the metastasization of Hollywood product around the globe while ignoring that fact that the reason why it is happening is that our culture is dominant for good reasons- it offers better protection for the less powerful and it provides better economic opportunity than any other. It is fine for leftists and progressives to bemoan the spread of democracy and capitalism but precious few of them would want to live under any of the alternatives. It is, still, a conquer or be conquered world but we are so used to having our own way and becoming dominant wherever in the world we happen to be that we have forgotten how hard the fight for survival can be and how quickly it can turn desperate. We really need to keep reminding ourselves that just because we no longer have the urge to conquer that no one else does.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali arrived in Europe along with the current wave of Immigrants from Islamic countries but she arrived not as an economic refugee trying to find a way to survive but as a refugee of conscience and belief. Most of the refugees from the failed economies of the Islamic world have not come with her open-minded intent to learn western ways.

Ironically, the guilt and loss of confidence in The West has allowed the Islamic immigrants in Europe to begin the process of degrading European culture. By shear weight of numbers and inert recalcitrance they have been insisting that their traditional and legal practices be accepted by their new home countries even when they are counter to existing law. In an attempt to pacify and integrate their new citizens Germany, Belgium, France, Britain and others have been allowing more and more exceptions in their legal and social fabric, exceptions that will make those countries more like the poverty stricken and depressed countries from which the immigrants fled and less like the productive, welcoming democracies they thought they were moving to. Europe, typified by the French, has been arrogant and complacent enough to believe that what they imagine to be the grandeur of their culture would turn all of their Muslim immigrants into Western European citizens. Now their streets and Metros are plagued by chaos and violence.

In Holland, Hirsi Ali found the Dutch (who have been as conscientiously open-minded and egalitarian as any other country in Europe) to be under siege as well. They have suffered two traumatic assassinations. One was the murder of the prominent politician, Pim Fortyun. The other was of the well-known film-maker Theo van Gogh who was the director and producer of “Submission” the film, written by Hirsi Ali. Submission, only ten minutes long, touched on one of the great vulnerabilities of Islam in the modern world- the repression of and discrimination against women.

No more volatile subject exists for Muslims. The subjugation of Muslim women and their possible liberation by continued contact with The West is the one subject, other than the dignity of The Prophet himself that is absolutely guaranteed to roil Caliphate Muslims to unreasoning savagery.

Hirsi Ali, under threat of death herself has since taken refuge in the United States and recently published a wonderful autobiography, Infidel. Reading Infidel, I am vividly reminded of the lesson I learned in that lecture hall almost forty years ago. In the first two chapters of her book it becomes clear that this extraordinary woman grew up in a family that, in the span of two generations was dislocated from its nomadic tribal roots and thrust into the turbulence that occurs when ancient cultures come into contact with the modern world. The clarity with which she describes the drama of the conflicts that arise when t simple culture that is specifically adapted to meet the demands of a narrow band of ecological and social conditions is confronted by radical changes in both the natural and social environment is striking.

Her father’s father was, she tells us, a feared nomadic raider and petty feudal lord. His name was Magan and was known by the title: The Protector of all He Conquered. As ironic as that name may sound to us, it speaks volumes about the world in which her parents grew up. That title is a holographic representation of Caliphate society. It can be used as an entry point into a more complete understanding of the nature of the proto-feudal strain of Islam that has interbred with modern fascist movements and evolved into a monster. His “might” made Magan “right”, for the people he conquered, it was a matter of good luck that he protected them. The title does not even imply that he was just or fair- only that he kept them under his protection kept them from the additional trauma of being conquered by others. Conquering and being conquered is the story of the human race and whether the conquest is violent or cultural, we ignore this at our own risk.

This brings us back to Lawrence’s idea that. “The Indian way of consciousness is different from and fatal to our way of consciousness. Our way of consciousness is different from and fatal to the Indian. The two ways, the two streams are never to be united. They are not even to be reconciled.” If the two ways of consciousness are fatal to the other, then it must be obvious that there is a contest for survival going on whether the contestants wish this to be the case or not.

So, now we are ready to answer the question, posed above, “Has the western conquest of the Americas has made the world a better place? Is it lamentable?”

The left finds a way to lament. They claim to see no difference between the moral authority of the American experiment (even as they are sheltered under its protective mantle) as compared with Caliphatist Islam. Moral imbeciles like Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and a host of others promote relativistic absurdities that equate the actions of America and Israel to those of al Qeada and Ahmadinejad and find ways to excuse the violence of those thugs and bullies.. Their arguments are based on that same fulsome emotion, dressed up to look like real discourse.

They do this by establishing certain constructs of “received knowledge” that they try to convince us cannot be challenged. This un challengability is an emotional barrier to free speech and intellectually honest debate. When you ignore the emotional prohibition they are challenged with ease and found to be nothing more than emotional absurdities.

Multiculturalism is chief among these absurdities. Originally conceived as an expression of the bland but laudable liberal impulse to “honor differences” and acknowledge the diversity of cultural influences, multiculturalism has become an overbearing burden to never offend or even “judge” the views and behaviors of other cultures. If rejecting the moral relativism of Multiculturalism seems “insensitive” to us today it is because we have been badgered into buying the premise that all cultures are equally deserving and good. This is absurd.
People like Hirsi Ali, for instance, who have lived in some of these other cultures, know how absurd it is. Hrisi Ali knows first hand the horror of being a woman in Somalia and Saudia Arabia. I have used this quote before but it bears repeating here.

“This is gender inequality: an inequality most obscene, expressed through acts such as mutilation, beatings, rape and murder--and almost all this aggression is justified in the name of culture and creed. Atrocities committed against girls and women in the most intimate setting of all: in the home; by dad or mom; by a brother or a sister; by a husband or his mother. The sort of persecution I talk about is one in which the religious leaders, the politicians, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers, all share the staunch belief that girls--that women--are born of a lesser god.”

So why can’t we stand up as a civilization for women everywhere? Why do the feminists in The West prefer to quibble about salary differentials in the upper echelons of corporate leadership to campaigning to end the rape, torture and murder of Islamic women? Can they really be that morally blind? Is multiculturalism such an important idea that we have to sacrifice our moral souls and another generation of women and children? Why?

Part of it is that we are genuinely touched by the pathos of cultures like those of the American Indian which we have defeated and incorporated into our own. This melancholy reluctance to effect any change in the culture of others is illogical and misguided. It is driven by the guilt that we can’t stand to talk about, acknowledge or even think about. The guilt of knowing that our great standard of living humiliates other people who don’t live as well is the silly, racist core of the multiculturalist urge. We dearly want to be able to tell them that they are not really humiliated so they won’t be angry with us anymore but we know that this is a lie. In doing so we perform the worst act of humiliation of all, we let them off the hook. In not helping to them to see their position truly, we commit a much worse act of racism- we admit that we don’t think they are up to meeting the truth head on.

We have bought into multiculturalism because we no longer have the fortitude, the honesty or the intelligence to look someone in the eye and tell them, “Look, you are humiliated because you do not have the culture or political leaders or the education to be otherwise. You really need to stop making such a big deal about feeling humiliated. Why not try some of these simple steps toward civilization instead:
1. Specifically outlaw honor killing
2. Stop beating your wife and/or kids.
3. Send your kids to a decent school where they won’t waste their time memorizing an entire “holy book” to the exclusion of learning critical thinking skills and studying arithmetic, science and geography.
4. Forget using Israel, Jews and America as the excuse for being a looser.
5. Understand that your leader (fill in one: Ahmadinejad, Assad, Kadafy, Mubarak, Abdullah etc…) is a tyrant of the worst sort and is actually working hard to keep you ignorant and filled with rage, that’s how your feudal system works.
6. For God’s sake stop thinking of anyone who believes (or doesn’t believe in him) in him (God that is) in a different way than you do as less than human. That only makes you feel worse when you see that those “unbelievers” live better than you do.
If you take care of all that, there would be no need for you to feel humiliated anymore.”

David Yeagley, a Comanche Indian is one who poignantly understands the culture clash from the inside. His work is proof that the valiant Indian traditions of his culture can, if victimhood is refused and intellectual honesty is applied, be part of a modern western world view. Yeagley has written at length about the comparison between the Indian and the Palestinian Arab world. His writing offers the Arabs hope for dignity if they will only drop their humiliation speeches and stop pretending that they are better than the rest of the world. They would be much better off if they learned to follow his lead into the twenty-first century. Yeagley writes,

“Arabs weren’t even in Palestine until the mid-7th century AD, over a thousand years later, after Palestine’s 1,300-year Jewish history. Arabs later living in Palestine never developed themselves or the land, but remained nomadic and quasi-primitive during their 1,200-year stay.
Then a stronger people modern Jews who’d been expelled from their homes in Europe and in Arab countries came in and conquered (without annihilating) the Palestinian Arabs.
As a Comanche Indian, I’m sensitive to this history. I believe the conqueror has a right to what he has conquered. No one owns the land. Only he who is strong enough to possess it will control it and the people living on it. That’s the law of war…,”

He also quotes Theodore Roosevelt:

“Teddy Roosevelt once said, "Let sentimentalists say what they will, the man who puts the soil to use must of right dispossess the man who does not, or the world will come to a standstill." (W. T. Hagan, Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indians, 1997). In the end his final telling comment echoes out theme of culture succession, “The land developers, the agrarians, have become stronger than the hunters.”

When D.H. Lawrence wrote “The common, healthy, vulgar white usually feels a certain native dislike of those drumming aboriginals.” He was expressing, albeit in a dated and innocent way, the view that when you live in a world that has more than one culture, there are often “others” who are “unsuited” for life in that culture. At the border lines between cultures the differences as so much more apparent We can’t admit to that feeling anymore- we are too sophisticated and sensitive, too multicultural. But we have to understand that Western Civilization is (at least for the time being) the dominant culture and we have to turn that coarse dislike and revulsion into a realization that the reasons that we find those people either dislikable or adorable come out of the same basic elitism. If we are to treat them as true equals we need to level with them and tell them that the reason for their humiliation is in their culture and their leadership. We also have to take the prudent steps to protect ourselves.

We do need to protect ourselves. We may be blinded to the danger because we are so sure of our safety and our ability to manage social change. We are so confident that we have created a culture that is immune to relapse into tyranny and intolerance that we have felt free to indulge multiculturalism. This is not the case for the other side however. They are not multicultural. The Caliphate Muslims can see the fatal nature of the confrontation so much more clearly because they are the ones who are threatened most immediately by it. Since the end of World War II the influx of oil money, the amazing revolution in globe-shrinking communication technology and the creation and phenomenal success of Israel right on their door step have combined to expose the Arab world to Western culture in a way threatens every dark secret abuse and humiliation. When communication was primitive and Israel was not turning fetid swamps and arid desert into fertile farmland using Arab labor right next door the Arab "leaders" could deny to themselves and hide from their people how lame and infantile they are. Without the artificially maintained veneer of rage and "humiliation speak" that they have paid so dearly to foster, the Arab leadership would be exposed, alone in the spotlight, as the incompetent, despotic ignorant rabble that they are. The Arab Street we hear so much about is the tool of the Arab leadership. They know only too well that the rage, anti-Semitism, anti-American and humiliation idiocy that the drill into their followers is their only screen against being so exposed.

Meanwhile, under the influence of multiculturalism the Left looks at the Palestinians and, as Lawrence might have said, “…performs the mental trick, and fools themselves and others into believing that the “head scarfed”, Kalashnikov toting darling is nearer to the true ideal gods than we are.” That, of course, is mind numbing nonsense- “fatal to our way of consciousness” as Lawrence had it. But to the left it is irresistible; it is full of guilt, pity and bathos – “fulsome emotion”. If The West will commit suicide – the unwillingness to give up both the ugly side and the maudlin of that racism will surely will be the weapon.

One of the two cultures, Islam or The West, must conquer the other and if the end of the conquest is to be humane, there must be a clear winner. Someone has to admit they have been conquered. At the end of the Indian wars there were many moments of despair, bitterness and regret which still haunt America. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe gave voice to the Indian defeat in a speech that is both dignified and noble:
"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

It took several generations and much bloodshed to force that speech out of an Indian. It took another one hundred and forty years for an intelligent and realistic spokesman like Yeagley to put into words the brutal truth that will allow him and his people to go forward as full citizens of the new world of which they are now a full part.If we cannot get the Arab world to make that same transition peacefully, we will have to reduce them by force the way we did with Chief Joseph.

We have to ask ourselves how dedicated we are to this struggle, how hard are we willing to fight to insure that our children do not have to live through a (not yet inevitable) slide into a new dark age- for an ascendant world-wide Caliphate would bring on a very dark age indeed. Anyone who doubts that need only see how the Shia and Sunni are savaging each other for dominance in Iraq. How willing are we to fight for freedom and do we have the courage to see what is required of us - and to do it.

If we cannot find a way to free ourslelves from the dogma of the left and drop multiculturalism so that we can fight with our whole minds, media, hearts and intellects we will have to continue to fight with tanks and bombs. Ultimately, we have to find both the intelligence and mental agility for the cultural approach and the will and strength for the forceful one. If we do not start soon then we might as well avoid the apocalyptic rush and start shopping for turbans and bhurkas now.

Update, Friend Eric Odessit posted this article which has a very promising resemblance to what a an Arab equivalent to Cheif Joseph's speech. It is dignified, realistic and forward-looking.