Posted on 08/28/2007 4:16:45 AM PDT by Clive
There comes a point at which diminishing returns on most issues begin to go negative.
Such a point in denouncing Islamist terrorism and equally the Muslim majority's silence against this menace was reached sometime ago.
As Islamist terrorism, however despicable, became mundane occurrence in the daily news cycle, the deafening silence of Muslims -- except for lonely voices of feeble opposition -- has given credence to growing numbers of non-Muslims that Islam is as much a religion of peace as the Klanmen's politics is an expression of multiculturalism.
But there is another side to this abject reality. The Muslim majority's silence is greatly compounded by the appeasement mentality in the West of the mainstream liberal-left media, politicians trolling for ethnic votes and bureaucrats running public institutions.
An evidence of this comes from Scotland. Theodore Dalrymple, a retired physician and prolific writer, in New York's City Journal reports:
"In an effort to ensure that no Muslim doctors ever again try to bomb Glasgow Airport, bureaucrats at Glasgow's public hospitals have decreed that henceforth no staff may eat lunch at their desks or in their offices during the holy month of Ramadan, so that fasting Muslims shall not be offended by the sight or smell of their food. Vending machines will also disappear from the premises during that period."
It is as if more diversity training for public officials, more accommodation of demands made by fundamentalist Muslims, greater willingness to self-flagellate for sins long past of western colonialism, more policing of what might be politically incorrect speech and writing about Islamists or Saudi Arabia's official cult (Wahhabism) of bigotry masquerading as a world religion, will somehow mysteriously translate into taming suicide-bombers and their masters to reciprocate kindly to the liberal-left sensibilities of people in the West.
Dalrymple observes stories such as the one from Scotland tell us something about how civilizations commit suicide -- they "collapse not because the barbarians are so strong, but because they themselves are so morally enfeebled."
What do barbarians do? Kill indiscriminately as in the recent Aug. 14 massacre in northern Iraq reported by the New York Post with the headline "Savages Kill 175 in Iraq Bombings."
Four trucks were exploded west of Mosul -- Iraq's third largest city in the Kurdish north -- in an area predominantly inhabited by Yazidis, a people practising pre-Islamic faith. The toll of dead and wounded among this poor dwindling minority living at the edge of the Iraqi society far exceeds the numbers first reported.
This savagery is the work of al-Qaida associates preparing more predictable bombings ahead of the mid-September report in Washington to be given by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
There is now a pattern in al-Qaida bombings arranged to influence American public opinion during key moments in public policy debates and general elections.
But the liberal-left media, such as the New York Times, remains fixated with faulting the Bush administration for the savagery of Islamists while providing oxygen to apologists of terror spinning their endless refrain of "root cause" being oil and Israel for violence originating in the Middle East.
How morally enfeebled, as Dalrymple opines, is the West? Imagine the uproar denouncing any suggestion that the mainstream liberal-left media, in appearance at least, is treasonously on side with the newest enemies of freedom and democracy.
Salim Mansur ping
But the liberal-left media, such as the New York Times, remains fixated with faulting the Bush administration for the savagery of Islamists while providing oxygen to apologists of terror spinning their endless refrain of “root cause” being oil and Israel for violence originating in the Middle East.
They are treasonous. Perhaps we should not be surprised. Our schools, and sometimes our Churches, teach that capitalism and money are wrong. Then we describe ourselves as capitalists. We teach the evils of European colonialism. We teach that non-European societies were and are without flaws. After our schools, especially college, why should anyone be patriotic to America? Journalists are college educated in departments that are liberal and anti-American. Why should they be patriotic Americans?
“Dalrymple observes stories such as the one from Scotland tell us something about how civilizations commit suicide — they “collapse not because the barbarians are so strong, but because they themselves are so morally enfeebled.””
“This guy gets it.”
He does, but then also I’m wondering when the West will of a sudden realize this War on Terror is a Religious war. We may not be at Religious War with Islam, but they are with us, therefore we are in defense of our existence whether the Secular Left, virtually controlling the direction of how we approach this war by control of communications medium, desires to recognize the fact or not.
It is far past time to ignore those whom ignore the declaration of war against the West and confront and defeat the Muslims efforts as has been done multiple times throughout a thousand years of history. “It’s Deja Vu all over again”.
Confront and defeat. That includes the enablers supplying the Islamic Jihadists with their means of destruction.
“In an effort to ensure that no Muslim doctors ever again try to bomb Glasgow Airport, bureaucrats at Glasgow’s public hospitals have decreed that henceforth no staff may eat lunch at their desks or in their offices during the holy month of Ramadan, so that fasting Muslims shall not be offended by the sight or smell of their food. Vending machines will also disappear from the premises during that period.
un freakin believable ....first tax payer funded foot baths? and now THIS how long is this moronic pc b.s. going to continue?
appeasement appears to be working though....
ann coulter sets us straight ...
Only Spain remains a nation of women. As long as Spain exists, it will not outlive the shame of its gutless capitulation to terrorist bombings in 2004. It is worse than Sweden’s neutrality toward Hitler.
OK, so we have a huge treasonous cabal in the USA, and in fact members of that cabal have siezed control of one of the two major political parties. They are supporting policies that will destory the country, including capitulation to terrorists, amnesty for Mexican invadors, allowing felons and illegals to vote, and a host of other bad ideas.
Now what? Does anyone really think that Fred or Rudy or Duncan can really make a dent in what we are talking about?
Anyone watch CNN or MS-NBC? They are blatent tools of propaganda. We just lost the AG. It reminds me of jackals hunting down the weakest member of a herd of antelope. Who will they turn on next?
We have not come up with an effective strategy to save the Republic. Things are much worse than when I joined FR 9 long years ago. Activism, marching, contributing, writing, calling, voting... sadly we’re stuck living with these traitors, still.
We’re stuck sharing the nation with millions of socialists who are shameless in wanting to redistribute wealth. Who, really, is succeeding? Did we end funding of PBS? Or cut out the Educaiton Department? Or reduce the absolute size of FedGov?
No! Todays papers have stories like this one, and like the guy who went to jail (six months) for violating zoning laws. (He fixed a fence without a permit).
We are all sheeple now. Get used to it.
Now what?
Insanity.
Every healthy civilization has as it’s heart a moral engine, a belief that it represents the good, that it has a right and a duty to expand and impose its will. Our civilization’s heart started to go bad a very long time ago and has resisted all attempts so far to repair or replace it.
This might well be an acutely self-limiting problem. Much of what they say they want to do to share the wealth will do more to destroy the wealth. And that might not be all that bad for them. The liberal mindset is that you if you can’t bring about equality by raising those at the low end of the spectrum them you bring down those at the top. Even if it makes the lower end dwellers no better off than before it makes the liberal feel better that the high end is not doing as well as they could.
There will come a point when those who are capable of producing the wealth will simply stop doing so because they get to enjoy so little of it. And when that happens then those on the low end who had been enjoying the fruits of the labor of the high end producers will be right back where they started.
It’s said that a rising tide lifts all boats. That’s true, but only of those boats that are capable of floating. The ones with holes in their hulls still won’t float, just fill with water as the tide rises.
Constitutional government died long ago in this country. Witness this item, it explains how unconstitutional actions in the past are used as precedent to justify more unconstitutional actions today. Regardless of how you may feel about medicinal marijuana the federal government has no actual constitutional right to say what a person may or may not grow on his own property. This power has been assumed at the national level because we have not stood up for our rights under the constitution.
Harebrained Pot and Wheat Decisions
by James Bovard
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court, acting again like a gang that smoked too much bad weed, ruled that the federal government has the right to prohibit people from growing marijuana for medicinal purposes. The Court relied on an interpretation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause that basically gave the feds unlimited control over any activity that Congress or federal agencies sought to influence.
Justice Clarence Thomas had an eloquent dissent in which he laid out the absurdity of the majority’s position:
Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything – and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.... By holding that Congress may regulate activity that is neither interstate nor commerce under the Interstate Commerce Clause, the Court abandons any attempt to enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power.
The Court’s majority based its decision on the 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn. This is one of the most misunderstood landmark cases of the last century. Confusion about farm policy resulted in undermining everyone’s freedom.
The Franklin Roosevelt administration had created a separate legal class of citizens – wheat farmers – and had minimized their freedom in order to boost wheat prices. In Wickard, the Supreme Court, for one of the first times, went hip-deep into the new administrative-law regimes spun out of the 1930s. The justices basically made fools of themselves through their complete lack of understanding of the federal policies that led to the de facto takeover of every wheat farm.
Farm policy and the Court
From 1933 on, Roosevelt used every means possible to drive up crop prices. But by promising to pay farmers far more than the market value of their crops, Roosevelt’s New Deal encouraged farmers to produce far more than could be sold at government-controlled prices. Politicians encouraged farmers to overproduce and then cited crop surpluses as proof of the need for political control of agriculture.
Beginning in 1938, the Agriculture Department dictated how many acres of wheat each of America’s 1.5 million wheat farmers could produce. Government administrators were so concerned about maintaining a stranglehold on the wheat supply that they would seize the title to a farmer’s entire wheat harvest if he planted a single acre of wheat more than federal farm bureaucrats permitted.
When the farm policy was challenged by an Indiana farmer, the Roosevelt administration launched a full-court attack, declaring in its brief to the Supreme Court that it must have a free hand to “suppress ... a public evil.” Yet the wheat surpluses that the Roosevelt administration labeled an evil were largely generated by politicians’ promises to pay farmers far more than their crops could bring on an open market.
In its decision, the Court observed,
The wheat industry has been a problem industry for some years. Largely as a result of increased foreign production and import restrictions, annual exports of wheat and flour from the United States during the ten-year period ending in 1940 averaged less than 10 per cent of total production, while during the 1920’s they averaged more than 25 per cent. The decline in the export trade has left a large surplus in production which in connection with an abnormally large supply of wheat and other grains in recent years caused congestion in a number of markets....
However, the Court failed to mention that the Roosevelt administration had intentionally sabotaged and minimized wheat exports in order to isolate American farmers from world market prices and to give politicians unlimited control over domestic prices.
Federal agricultural policy drove domestic wheat prices to almost triple the level of world market prices in 1941; it is not surprising if few foreigners wanted to buy American wheat at exorbitant prices.
Nobel laureate economist Theodore W. Schultz denounced New Deal farm programs for “putting a ‘Chinese Wall’ around our export farmers.” In 1935 Roosevelt even bragged about his administration’s destruction of farm exports:
Now, with export surpluses no longer pressing down on the farmers’ welfare, with fairer prices, farmers really have a chance for the first time in this generation to benefit from improved methods.
The Roosevelt administration first murdered the wheat exports and then threw itself on the Court’s mercy on the grounds that wheat farmers were orphans.
The Court further noted in Wickard,
It is of the essence of regulation that it lays a restraining hand on the self-interest of the regulated and that advantages from the regulation commonly fall to others....
... It is hardly lack of due process for the government to regulate that which it subsidizes.
The Court concluded that the government was justified even in restricting “the amount of wheat ... to which one may forestall resort to the market by producing for his own needs.” According to the Court, the government’s intent to benefit some wheat farmers gave government officials the authority to absolutely control all wheat farmers – even those who were not selling their wheat.
The notion that the government was entitled to regulate that which it subsidizes basically permits Congress, the president, and federal bureaucrats to seize control of whatever they throw money at.
The effects of Wickard
The Supreme Court’s 1942 decision in Wickard sanctified federal controls. In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower took office and appointed Ezra Taft Benson as agriculture secretary. Benson wanted to return farming to the free market but Congress refused, instead setting price supports at roughly double world prices and imposing mandatory production controls on wheat and corn farmers.
In 1955 and 1956, the USDA arrested or sued more than 1,500 farmers for growing more wheat than was permitted. Stanley Yankus, a farmer in Michigan who grew wheat illegally to feed his chickens, told the House Agriculture Committee in 1959,
I am not fighting for the right to grow wheat. I am fighting for the right to own property. If I am forbidden the use of my land, then I do not own it. How can you congressmen justify the laws which have destroyed my means of making a living?
But since Congress was still in the business of taking care of farmers, farmers had to be prohibited from using their own property as they wished.
In 1963, wheat farmers voted in a national referendum on whether to continue mandatory federal controls over wheat production. At the time, farm programs were being fiercely criticized. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman promulgated a “loyalty oath,” requiring all farmers elected to USDA local committees to swear “to support all government farm programs.” A USDA committee in South Dakota used tax dollars to set up a miniature railroad exhibit at the state fair, showing a sidetrack with a railroad wreck and two signs that read, “Do not let Farm Program opponents sidetrack you onto a dead end,” and “Free Enterprise Wrecked This Train.”
USDA employees told farmers that the election issue was simple: “Two-dollar wheat [a bushel] versus one-dollar wheat.” The USDA blanketed farmers with more than 5 million copies of seven different pamphlets urging them to vote in favor of it. Federal workers even “high-pressured banks into buying newspaper ads plugging for a yes vote.” Despite the government’s high-handed pressure, wheat farmers rejected continued mandatory government controls.
However, an array of subsidy programs continued. Farmers believed that they could enjoy the benefits without the controls. A decade later, the federal government imposed an embargo on wheat exports, disrupting what farmers believed was their birthright to world markets. In 1980, President Carter embargoed wheat sales to the Soviets.
The history of farm programs illustrates how every subsidy creates a power vacuum – a vacuum that will eventually be filled by bureaucratic or political ambition. To assume that subsidies do not subvert liberty is to believe that politicians do not like power. It is only a question of time until some politician or some bureaucrat finds it in his interest to exercise the power latent in the subsidy. The politicians and bureaucrats come to feel that the money they dole out is their own – and try to exercise the management rights inherent in public property that they have long since denied to the owners of private property. As soon as a tax dollar enters the Treasury, it becomes political-bureaucratic property, to be used as politicians and bureaucrats please. Subsidies entail politicians’ taking the citizen’s paycheck and then using it to buy his submission.
Moreover, with the recent Supreme Court medical marijuana decision, this doctrine is stretched to even further extremes. As a result of a horrible legal decision issued more than 60 years ago, the federal Leviathan is able to continue expanding its controls over the lives of the American people.
January 19, 2006
ction today.
Thanks for posting that.
Yes, it’s very sad. FDR’s horrible destruction of the Republic appears irrevsible.
Yes! As someone else pointed out on this thread the book “Suicide of Reason” is an amazing thesis on this very topic.
To paraphrase Lee Harris:
The left has set about deconstructing patriotism, inhereted religion, traditions, codes of honor, belief in God, heroism and every other habit or belief that might encourage one to sacrafice for a greater good. Instead we are all encouraged to think only of our instant happiness and long life.
This becomes a serious problem when you share a planet with people who hate you and are raising their kids (of whom there are many more) to think that dying in a suicide blast is the ultimate personal success.
For the West to prevail we must not only out-smart the Muslim terrorists but we also must find a way to defend our civilization against more ravages of the cultural leftists. This is actually the harder task, at this point. (Though, as Harris points out that could change quickly).
We have analysis which is excellent. We have no plans, leaders or momentum towards fixing this.
I watched Christiane Anampor’s “God’s Warriors” and wished that she had found Christians who had 1/10th the zeal of the Muslims. The last time we faced and defeated the hordes it was behind flags with the Cross on them, by men who deeply believed in God, Country and Honor.
I’m not sure a technocratic, divided, socialist society can create the warriors we need to win. Today most of the best of Army comes from the part of the USA that Christian scoffs at. Small town, Bible believing patriots. What if the left succeeds in making Omaha, Nebraska and Petosky, Michigan more like ‘sophisticated’ New York City and San Francisco. Will people die to support Hillary’s Presidency and for Universal Health Care?
And they winning, sadly. Omaha is getting more like San Francisco, and not vice versa.
Now what?
Very well put! I had never really looked at it that way, but it sure make sense. Thanks!
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