...just by watching old movies

'You can observe a lot just by watching', so said baseball great Yogi Berra. Or at least so he is supposed to have said; it may be an apocryphal saying like many of those attributed to him, but it comes in handy as a quote once in a while.
And I've found you can 'observe a lot just by watching' old movies.

I keep wondering when our Political Correctness commissars will ban old movies; they are subversive of our current PC New Order. Thank goodness they haven't censored the old movies -- yet, although I notice Turner Classic Movies is now sneaking in a number of newer movies, to my chagrin.

But like 'Jeff', the correspondent in this interesting exchange over at VFR, I watch the old movies with a sense of sadness and poignancy now. Watching them only emphasizes what we have given away, and what might be irretrievably lost. It's reassuring (but rather cold comfort) to know that others, like 'Jeff', feel the same way I do.
I encounter a lot of younger people, 20-somethings or younger, who absolutely believe that the B.P.C. (before Political Correctness) era was a benighted time, in which everybody was a conformist, repressed, uptight, racist, sexist, homophobic, square. This is the impression they get from their 'history' classes, in which any era of American history before the 1960s is painted in very grim tones. And this is reinforced by many of the modern Hollywood movies, in which the 1950s, for example, is shown as the era of 'witch-hunters' like Joe McCarthy.

So many of those who were not alive in the time of Vanished America have a very distorted picture of what life was like then. If I refer them to old movies from earlier times, suddenly these people become arch-skeptics and say that 'those old movies glossed over the bad stuff.' Yes, in some cases, they did; but even allowing for that, they depict an America in which there was more unity, more homogeneity, more of a consensus on right and wrong. They show an era in which people lived simpler, calmer, more down-to-earth lives. In the America of that era, there was less stress, fewer harried, angry people. Kids could and did play freely out in the streets of their neighborhoods, and often did have the freedom of their town. I remember walking a good distance to Saturday afternoon movies, with no worry about safety. I remember playing outdoors until long after dark, on the long spring and summer evenings. I remember trick-or-treating without adults present to watch over us, without any incident ever occurring.

I remember that we kids could attend any movie without any fear of it having explicit content; or obscene language. If there was more 'mature' content, as in crime movies, it was understated usually, and some of the more adult dialogue simply went over our heads; kids truly were childlike then, unlike today's world, in which kids have heard every obscene word and know about every sexual reality under the sun at an early age. Kids today are much more worldly-wise and jaded than they were in my relatively innocent childhood.

Watching the old movies now is more of a mixed pleasure; it's impossible not to feel a sense of great loss over the world that existed then, and sometimes I want to speak to the people on the screen and warn them of the world that was awaiting them in the future, and tell them to turn back, don't let it happen. I want to tell them to hold on to America, to their heritage; I want to tell them to be proud of their history and their way of life, and to refuse to let anyone steal that pride and that confidence.
Along about the 60s, when the guilt merchants set up shop in America, people began to be bombarded with the idea that America of the past was something to be ashamed of; something that needed fixing if not outright replacing. And that insidious point-of-view began to be visible even in our entertainment, as movies began to appear with what we would now recognize as a 'post-modern' point of view; in these movies there were no heroes. Everything was in a shade of grey; there were no moral absolutes or even any firm moral grounding; everything was relative, and even the 'good guy' was shown to be conflicted or amoral or ambiguous or corrupted. And while it's true that there are no perfect people, and that life does have considerable shades of grey, it is not true that everybody is equally corrupt or that there are no rights and wrongs.

Some of the doubting younger people of my acquaintance insist that there was always just as much crime, evil, and perversion in the old days as there is now; they insist that 'it was just hidden better back then; everybody was just as bad but they were hypocrites.'

I disagree; yes, there was undoubtedly always evil and sin and crime in this world, because it's part of human nature, but I see it as more widespread now because people are less held in check by religious belief and by plain old fear of 'what the neighbors would say'.

What some call 'hypocrisy' really describes the upholding of moral standards even while realizing that no one is perfect. People still acknowledged the standards and paid homage to them, which at least had the good effect of making others think twice about transgressing, or about advertising their sins as people brazenly do nowadays.
But as time went on, in the 60s and 70s, many movies promoted a jaundiced view of traditional America. Think of a movie like 'Easy Rider' from 1969 in which the people of South Louisiana are depicted as ignorant rednecks who kill Jack Nicholson's character just because they hate 'hippies'. This is a malicious caricature of mainstream Southern America. To my knowledge no American townsfolk killed strangers because of their long hair or drug use. Or think of 'Midnight Cowboy' in that same era: the two protagonists are a homosexual (or bisexual) prostitute and a thieving homeless man, yet they are portrayed glowingly, while John McGiver's Bible-thumping pervert character might represent the stereotyped 'Christian hypocrisy.'

The trend of movies increasingly focusing on the seamy, ugly, corrupt side of life while denigrating all that is decent and honest is what keeps me away from modern Hollywood movies. Apart from seeing movies (unwillingly) during plane flights, I haven't seen a modern movie since the Lord of the Rings movies a few years ago. And I think I'm not missing a thing.

But I love to revisit the past through the old movies from the pre-PC era; my favorite era is between the silent movies and the 1950s. After that, things started changing for the worse; chalk it up to the influence of the Left in Hollywood, I suppose.
And being a lifelong Anglophile, even before I fully knew of my considerable English ancestry, I loved the old British movies, especially the Ealing comedies, and movies of that era. I also enjoy the movies about the days of the Empire, as anyone who has looked at my profile here will see; I love Gunga Din and The Four Feathers.
The movies depicting Britain's past eras of greatness make us wonder what happened to the British people? Why did they succumb to leftism and PC and why are they now submitting to the Moslems and other Third-World people who have invaded England?

The English people always seemed to embody cool confidence and stoicism and efficiency and mastery, sprezzatura, to use a highfalutin' Italian word. And yes I know that is merely one side of the English people; they are complex, but there is no hint, as we look at Britain of the past, to foreshadow their present humbled state. There is nothing to give us a clue that they would one day be subject to half-civilized people from the other side of the world. I know that there was always a class divide in Britian, and that the English image embodied mostly the upper class, but the lower classes of the past seemed not quite as degraded as the 'chavs' of today.
And America's image too is changed. Think of the image of America in those old movies: Americans were always depicted as self-confident, independent, somewhat brash, jaunty, able, resourceful people. Think of phrases like 'American know-how'.

And what's happened to us? We now declare to the whole world that we 'can't' control our borders; we can't deport anyone. We can't seem to subdue the warring factions in Iraq.

We can't control the chaos within our country, especially in our cities, which are increasingly becoming lawless.
The easy answer to why and how this happened is 'leftism' -- but what on earth made us vulnerable to leftism?Why did we fall for it? And why can't we throw it off before it destroys us and all of Western civilization?
These are questions which have no easy answers.

But as I ponder them, and begin to despair for my country, it's an escape to be able to turn to those old movies, and remember us as we used to be, in a better and healthier time.

Immigration and Americanization

In this article, which also appeared a couple of months ago at the SANE website in a slightly different form, the writer, David Romero, takes on a couple of the ubiquitous myths about Hispanic immigration and the position of American-born Hispanics in the debate.
He also states, straightforwardly at the beginning, the theme that I keep returning to on this blog: the basically Anglo-Saxon roots of our American culture and heritage.



'

Will America remain American – with roots, culture, and language reaching back to Anglo Saxon Europe -- when millions of legal Mexican Americans and illegal Mexican immigrants want to be and remain Mexican? With midterm elections now over, this question will more than likely continue to escape America's attention as the nation's ruling elite simply pick up where they left off on illegal immigration. In other words, the sterile debates will continue unabated on border enforcement, amnesty, guest worker proposals, and so on.

But the question or its variant will be scrupulously avoided, since the raising of it would entail breaking a taboo of the new politics of silence as touching race and culture and thereby risk arousing the indignation of the public arbiters of what is acceptable political speech. Yet, race and culture has everything to do with the unity and character of a nation. America is great in many things, but its continued greatness depends on its citizens being Americans undivided in their allegiance to America. ''

In writing this piece, he is challenging a couple of the pervasive myths, which keep cropping up in the discussion on immigration: one, the idea that 'America is a nation of immigrants' and that, by implication, America does not have a distinct culture, but is just a patched-together crazyquilt of multiculturalism. And secondly, the Politically Correct piety that American-born Hispanics and legal Hispanic immigrants 'are just as against illegal immigration and amnesty as everybody else.' Evidently he perceives what I perceive: the divided or ambiguous allegiances of many Latinos in this country.
As far as I'm concerned, the persistent myth that they monolithically oppose illegal immigration is not supported by any concrete evidence, and Romero, in this piece, cites some evidence favoring his assertion.

Shortly after 9/11, when America’s moral clarity and patriotism were visibly high, the Pew Hispanic Center reported that only 21% of Mexican American citizens considered themselves first and foremost as American; 54% considered themselves first and foremost as Mexican, while 24% indicated they were Hispanic or Latino. That only one out of five Mexican American citizens think of themselves first and foremost as American is shocking enough to be the final argument closing off any further debate about rewarding illegal aliens with amnesty or pathways to citizenship.''

The story of their supposed opposition to amnesty and illegal immigration is motivated, probably, by the same impulse that impels otherwise sensible people to say 'but of course, most Muslims are moderates, and they are peace-loving people.' It's just the need to be fair and nice; the desire to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, in hopes that your niceness will buy their goodwill, and make your assertion come true thereby.

But just as most Moslems are not necessarily moderates (how can we know? Their religion encourages deception of the infidel, and how do we know they are not deceiving us by feigning friendliness?), the fact that you know a nice Mexican-American who opposes illegal immigration does not mean that the majority feel the same.

There have been other polls, besides the ones cited by Romero, that showed considerable sympathy among American-born Hispanics towards illegals. I think that as the Hispanic presence in America grows (and grow it will) there will be stronger ethnic identification among many of the younger Latinos who were born in America, and there will be a tendency to identify more emphatically with the more militant illegals and recent arrivals. This phenomenon has been seen in Europe, with the second and even third-generation Moslem immigrant generations becoming more ethnically identified and religiously/politically militant.

And if the conflict grows in America between old-stock Americans or 'Anglos' as the Hispanics term all of us, we will see some choosing up of sides among American-born Latinos. I'm a believer that blood is thicker than water, and that when push comes to shove, the country will become polarized even more along ethnic lines. That's just human nature.
There will be some American-born Latinos who may choose the American side, but I think there will be a strong pull towards identifying with their kin. Look at American-born Hispanics like Linda Chavez, (only half-Hispanic, by the way), Bill Richardson (another half-Hispanic) and countless others, many of whom take a pro-illegal stance and identify with their 'gente', or who front various pro-illegal organizations. Yet people still insist that the majority of Hispanic-Americans (the hyphenated name says something) are more American than Hispanic.

The article is very much worth reading; Romero concludes with this warning

For a race and culture which carved out a nation unequaled in Western civilization, the choice is clear. The United States remains either a distinct nation or it becomes what it never was or what it was never meant to be: a universal nation, an open society. In effect, a non-nation.''

Wal-Mart conservatives

There is a particular breed of 'conservative' whose main claim to conservatism is their penny-pinching proclivities. For these 'conservatives', the only thing they are truly interested in conserving is their bank accounts. This, unfortunately, contributes to the popular stereotype of conservatives or Republicans as money-grubbers and Scrooges, who will jump over a dollar to save a nickel.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not profligate with money; I like a bargain as much as the next, provided the 'bargain' does not come with a hidden price tag, or concealed costs. And I like value for my money; just saving a buck (or even a matter of cents) doesn't do much for me if I am getting shoddy merchandise for my money. That's being pennywise and pound-foolish. If I buy a cheap item and have to repair it or replace it before I get my money's worth, it was no bargain.

I've found that to make many 'conservatives' (or more accurately, Republicans) spitting mad, all you have to do is to disparage Wal-Mart.

When I first learned that Wal-Mart is a religion to many on the 'right', I was truly baffled. I mean, the 'low, low prices' are understandably attractive to many people, but why do some on the right defend Wal-Mart with more passion than they would defend their mother or their country or their flag or their religion? Notice, the next time you visit one of those 'conservative' mega-forums or blogs: any story which is critical of Wal-Mart is sure to draw scores of impassioned and angry responses. Why?

My best guess is that they are on fire for Wal-Mart mostly because 'the liberals' supposedly hate Wally-World. And if the 'liberals' hate it, then by golly, it's as sacred as the American flag. To be anti-Wal-Mart is to bring into question one's conservative credentials. If you don't love Wal-Mart, you don't love America, or free enterprise.

I haven't been a Rush Limbaugh listener in recent times, but I suspect he is a Wal-Mart zealot. Anything 'the liberals' criticize, he defends, in the most vociferous terms. That's what being a 'conservative' is all about, apparently, to Rush and his most devoted listeners. The liberals say white, you say black. It's simple; anyone can catch on. The liberals hate SUVs. so Republicans are supposed to angrily defend SUVs. See? Easy, right?

I admit to having bought Wal-Mart merchandise; I'm not so doctrinaire that I shun the place altogether. The main reason I avoid shopping there is that the things I have bought there were badly-made Chinese stuff, and on principle, I'd rather buy American-made. That's becoming harder and harder to do, though, as this country manufactures fewer and fewer things, and we become ridiculously, almost obscenely dependent on China and other third-world sources for our goods. And the fact is, very few of the things they make compare to American-made goods, at least in the days when America produced real quality merchandise. I like things which are made well, reliable, made to last. I don't like cheap tat that has to be thrown away a week or a month from now, and replaced. I don't like the disposable, throw-away society that we've become. I'd gladly pay a little more for the things that matter, like quality clothes and appliances. Maybe for some things, disposable is fine, but for many things, quality is more important than price.

And I would also prefer to support American companies, though that's becoming less possible all the time.

But I am considering boycotting Wal-Mart, when I read, in this Chronicles Magazine article, about Wal-Mart's habit of supporting leftist, subversive organizations:

According to the Capital Research Center, the corporate side of the Walton empire shoveled nearly $750,000 to leftists in 2004, compared with $2,500 to ''conservatives.'' None of this, of course, shows up on the foundation’s website. Among the recipients were the NAACP ($60,850), AARP ($3,750), the Izaak Walton League ($2,250), LULAC ($12,000), the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation ($10,000), and Planned Parenthood ($2,500). The biggest recipient of Wal-Mart money? The National Council of La Raza, at a cool $630,000.

La Raza (''The Race'') is the radical ''Latino'' organization that is aiding and abetting, by supporting illegal immigration, the Mexican reconquista of the American Southwest. La Raza is uprooting English as the national language, plowing under American history and heroes, and planting Mexican-''Latino'' culture, like so much maize, in the fertile ground of American public schools.'

I'm also aware that Wal-Mart has employed illegals, or used contractors who employed illegals. In any case, they do not have the interests of local communities or of America at heart. They are the epitome of the conscienceless globalist corporation, and that philosophy is behind the real threat to America, via open borders, outsourcing, multiculturalism, and all the rest.

So Wal-Mart is akin to McDonald's: It is the apotheosis of everything wrong with America. Entering the maw of a Wal-Mart is creepy. Any normal person over the age of 40 viscerally feels, as the cornucopia of junk and tatterdemalion illegal immigrants who shop there deluge his eyes, that something is horribly wrong beneath the garish consumerism and materialism. Well, something is wrong. The company knows no loyalty.''

That sums up my visceral feelings very well. I like the phrase, 'cornucopia of junk'. I think it characterizes much of our 'culture' these days: we've got a surfeit, a glut of many things, choices galore -- but most of it junk, worthless.

And if the hidden cost of those bargains includes supporting illegal immigration and the Reconquista, along with other leftist causes, saving those few pennies or dollars is more expensive than our country can afford.

Wal-Mart's vision is not what America should be. And the 'cornucopia of junk' may well be the 'mess of pottage' we are getting in exchange for our American birthright.

America's enemies never sleep

Lou Dobbs on CNN today ran a report on the problems faced by the cities across America who are passing legislation to crack down on illegal immigration.
Cities like Hazleton, Pennsylvania, Farmers Branch, Texas, and Escondido, California are feeling the financial and social strain of dealing with the huge influx of illegals, and their budgets are severely burdened. But now they have to deal with very costly legal battles, as a result of the lawsuits brought by a phalanx of leftist groups.

TUCKER: The three groups most active in challenging the cities laws are the ACLU, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The combined assets of those groups, $270 million, with undisclosed pro bono legal help available for member law firms.

And while the towns have to answer to taxpayers, those groups have to answer to donors who usually remain anonymous. And there is a financial incentive for these groups to challenge the laws. Win or lose, their legal fees are usually included in the settlement.

RICHARD SAMP, WASHINGTON LEGAL FOUNDATION: They threaten that a lawsuit involving the city of Hazleton, that they would bankrupt us, thinking that we would roll over and back off. And we really don't have a choice.''

Add the costs of all this litigation to the other costs of illegal (and legal) immigration, and the total is something staggering. As the CNN report implies, the situation of the cities vs. these deep-pockets leftist groups and foundations is a David-and-Goliath battle, and the cities are little David. These subversive groups seem to have almost limitless resources at their disposal, and the cities have limited funds, which ultimately come from taxpayers. Yet as Dobbs points out, the Goliath leftist groups have corporate funds, monies probably from leftist foundations like Soros' groups, along with -- you guessed it: federal funding. Taxpayers' money.

There is something so profoundly sinister and wrong about these activist, pro-illegal groups bullying the duly elected officials of these cities, and threatening to bankrupt them if they do not overturn their local laws and submit to being swamped by illegals. This is just wrong in so many ways. What happens to the rights of the citizens of these towns and cities? They have elected representatives and local legislation which reflects their will. Yet the ACLU and MALDEF and the rest can come along with threats and ultimatums: 'do as we tell you, or we will bankrupt you.' So there's the dilemma: do what the illegals and their dictatorial enablers demand, and you will be bankrupted by the costs associated with a huge influx of illegals. Or fail to obey them and their unlawful demands, and you will be bankrupted by fighting them in court. Either way, these cities lose.

And we lose: America loses.
Who gains by this? The illegals and their bullying enablers, and the crooked businessmen who profit from the illegals' presence: slumlords, unscrupulous employers looking for bargain-basement cheap labor, the Democrats who will now have a new 'client base' and victim group/voting bloc.

But the rest of us lose, big time. I meet so many Americans who are still in the ostrich stage with the immigration crisis. They openly admit that they avert their eyes; they don't want to be bothered with something that they feel is not within their power to change. 'I can't do anything about it, so I'd rather not think about it; why get frustrated if I can't change anything?'

This is what I hear from people.
It sounds as if many Americans have essentially given up on the whole idea of America. After all, if the government's power derives from the people, from the will of the majority, we should be involved. If we abdicate our responsibility as citizens to inform ourselves, to make our views and our will known, to communicate among ourselves as to the issues that concern our country's well-being, then we have in fact given up on the whole American idea. We have, if we give in to that passive thinking, given the bullies and the elitists and the illegals free rein to do as they will. The people that are the most motivated will prevail, and I see the illegals and those who profit from them in some way as being zealous and determined, while too many Americans are resigned and in denial.

I think Lou Dobbs, almost single-handedly in our mainstream media, is awakening a number of people to the urgency of our situation. I give him considerable credit, but there are too few like him.

And then there's the blogosphere; there are many bloggers sounding the alarm.
I like to think of the blogger as the modern analogue to the pamphleteers and writers of political tracts, often anonymously or pseudonymously written by the original American patriots in colonial times. Remember, there was no monolithic 'mainstream media' to distort and dominate and shape the political issues of the day, so broadsides and pamphlets were passed around, and had a great effect. Political bloggers are working in that tradition, I like to think.

There are urgent issues facing America, and we can't count on the MSM to cover these things adequately; we need to establish more democratic political dialogue in our country, and stop relying on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to inform us and educate us. We've got to wake up the sleepers, as Paul Revere, Samuel Prescott, and William Dawes did back in 1775; some people don't want to be woken out of their slumber, but it's time.

There are moments in life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking is an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.'' - Oriana Fallaci

Fox News and the Saudi connection

Via Family Security Matters, we learn from Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media that the Saudi investor Bin Talal has exercised some influence at Fox News:

The Saudi Prince and Fox News

At the annual meeting of News Corporation, parent of Fox News, chairman Rupert Murdoch confirmed that a call from a Saudi Prince had resulted in a change in how the Fox News Channel covered the Muslim riots in France in 2005. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a significant investor in News Corporation, told Murdoch he objected to highlighting the Muslim role in the riots.''

This story, about Bin Talal's influencing Fox News' coverage of the 2005 French riots, has been floating around for the past year or so. Now Kincaid confirms it.

Murdoch told me that the call from the Saudi Prince resulted in an investigation that resulted in the change of coverage. At the time, however, Claire Cozens of the Guardian reported that Alwaleed had claimed that the coverage was changed very quickly.''

Remember that Fox News is the preferred news channel for many rather unwary 'conservatives' and Republicans. Many believe Fox to be the 'only' honest news channel, especially with its 'fair and balanced' slogan. But only the extreme leftishness of the other news channels makes Fox seem more 'conservative.'

In truth, it's more middle of the road, at least as our network news goes; but Fox is as politically correct as the others where any of the more controversial issues are concerned. However Fox generally emphasizes the Iraq war, and follows the Bush administration line more than the other channels, and thus has pretenses to being conservative.

When I blogged about the recent Fox News Special 'Obsession', which dealt with the Islamic threat, I mentioned my perception that it was excessively careful in being critical of Islam. There was a palpably PC effort to distinguish between the 'few' Moslems who are involved in terrorism and the 'majority' of law-abiding Moslems.

At the time my thought was that the Bin Talal surely must have had an influence on this PC priggishness. Or maybe the Fox News people simply censor themselves pre-emptively, without their Saudi masters having to pick up the phone and lay down the law to them.

Such is Western culture now; dhimmitude is becoming so ingrained, especially where our media and political leaders are concerned, that PC enforcers and Saudi shareholders aren't even needed to crack the whip or make threats; everybody seems to automatically toe the line. It's internalized now.

Two views on the 'end of multiculturalism'

Europe's tolerance finds its limit
Peter Goodspeed, National Post (Canada)

Peter Goodspeed asserts that Europe may finally be at the end of its tolerance, and he traces this change to the killing of Theo Van Gogh in 2004 by a Moslem fanatic.

The savagery of the killing triggered revulsion across Europe. Today, the continent is attempting to cope with increasingly bitter racial and religious squabbles and is riven with doubts about its future.

Decades of open-door immigration policies have transformed Europe through the arrival of several million immigrants, mostly Muslims, from North Africa, Turkey and Southwest Asia.

But as the region became one of the most multicultural regions on Earth, its people have gradually turned against the policies that made it this way.''

As the ultraliberal Netherlands considers changes that would insist on assimilation for the many Moslems who live there, so-called 'far right' parties like the Freedom Party in the Netherlands are even calling for a stop to immigration, and bans on building new Moslem religious schools and mosques.

As other countries like France and the UK consider some measures to encourage assimilation, the usual suspects in the multicultural establishment begin to squeal like stuck pigs:

The mounting campaign against multiculturalism by politicians, pundits and the press, in Britain and across Europe, is neither innocent nor innocuous," said Ambalavaner Sivanandan, director of Britain's Institute of Race Relations.

"It is a prelude to a policy that deems there is one dominant culture, one unique set of values, one nativist loyalty -- a policy of assimilation."'

Obviously someone named Ambalavaner Sivanandan can hardly be thought to be an unbiased voice in this debate; of course, not being of British origin, he predictably sees 'nativism' as threatening. But such is the multiculti establishment in the UK and in our country; we in America have Hispanic officials in high places whose objectivity on our immigration issues is in some doubt. It's an easy guess that these people are in such positions for the express purpose of promoting 'diversity' and multiculturalism at the expense of the majority. This is true in Europe as it is here in America.

Overall, the article isn't entirely unsympathetic to the 'nativist' perspective, although the writer typically resorts to condemnatory language as he alludes to 'anger and fear.'

And the emphasis seems to be on the idea of assimilation as the answer to the clashes between the old-stock Europeans and the Third-World transplants. However this seems to presuppose that the immigrants are both capable of and willing to assimilate. I see little evidence that either of those suppositions are true.

Islam, by its nature, seeks to dominate and subjugate. We hear that Orwellian phrase 'Islam is a religion of peace' often, even now that the phrase has become a laughingstock. But the fact is Islam does not 'mean peace,' it means submission, as many of us are now aware.
And you can bet that it is not the Moslems who intend to do the submitting.

And could a society made up of somewhat assimilated Moslems and the descendants of Christendom ever be a harmonious society? More importantly, would such a society bear much resemblance to the original European society? Islam, by its very intolerance and intransigence tends to suppress competing cultures.

Goodspeed's article, whatever its shortcomings in discussing this issue, is infinitely more sensible than the related rant
from our old 'friend' Ralph Peters, over at the New York Post.

Peters, who has bounced back and forth from being a fire-breathing proponent of an all-out war in Iraq to being a PC prig denouncing 'Islamophobia and hate' on the part of Americans, is now back in his anti-Western mode in this piece. Peters sees the same phenomenon that Goodspeed describes: the reawakening of populism and nativism in Europe, but he sees it with a jaundiced eye.

Like most neocons, Peters has a rabid hatred of Europe, particularly France. (I am still nonplussed by this out-of-control Francophobia on the part of many 'conservatives.' Look, our forefathers may not have loved the French but they never expressed anything like the raging hate-the-Frogs nonsense that Peters and his ilk spew.)

At any rate, Peters, oddly decrying the predictions of a coming 'Eurabia', insists in his usual dogmatic fashion that it won't happen. But he is not pleased about that fact; instead he seems downright angry that a Eurabia is not in the cards. He said in previous articles that he would be on the sidelines cheering the burning of France by Moslem 'youths. So now, to his great displeasure, it seems that the Europeans are showing some resistance to their subjugation, as the article I linked above indicates. Peters, were he a true conservative of any stripe whatsoever, ought to be cheering the stirrings of national self-assertion in Europe. But no; he reacts like so:

'

The endangered species isn't the "peace loving" European lolling in his or her welfare state, but the continent's Muslims immigrants - and their multi-generation descendents - who were foolish enough to imagine that Europeans would share their toys.

In fact, Muslims are hardly welcome to pick up the trash on Europe's playgrounds.

Don't let Europe's current round of playing pacifist dress-up fool you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebrenica.

THE historical patterns are clear: When Europeans feel sufficiently threatened - even when the threat's concocted nonsense - they don't just react, they over-react with stunning ferocity. One of their more-humane (and frequently employed) techniques has been ethnic cleansing.

And Europeans won't even need to re-write "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" with an Islamist theme - real Muslims zealots provide Europe's bigots with all the propaganda they need. Al Qaeda and its wannabe fans are the worst thing that could have happened to Europe's Muslims. Europe hasn't broken free of its historical addictions - we're going to see Europe's history reprised on meth.'

So Ralphie is positively frothing at the prospect of a European reaction against the Moslem onslaught. Apparently he is ticked that he can't sit in his easy chair on this side of the Pond and enjoy the spectacle of Paris burning, and the sight of a Crescent flag flying over Eurabia.

Ralphie even brings up the expulsion of the Huguenots in his diatribes against France. Well, as a descendant of some of those Huguenots, including the Coligny family, I don't feel an ounce of animosity against the present-day French for what was done hundreds of years ago. What gives Peters the right to be outraged on my behalf? He also seems to think the Huguenots were some kind of foreigners in France. There is no analogy to Moslems, none, whatsoever.

Peters is one confusing guy; one day, he is exhorting all-out war, no holds barred, against the Iraqi insurgents, and inveighing against the PC-footing around that our military is required to do there. Now, he seems to think the Europeans are far worse villains and 'racists' than the Moslems, with their constant acts of terror.

Hey Ralph, if the Europeans are so 'racist' and so intolerant, why are there millions of Moslems and assorted non-Europeans all over Europe, and why do they wield such power there? In my book, if Europe had been so 'bigoted' and hateful they would surely never have let millions of people from a foreign and hostile culture into their countries, and handed them so many privileges and advantages.

Ralph Peters, it seems to me, is the one who is bigoted, but against Europeans; he apparently has some kind of love/hate fixation on Moslems. But make no mistake: his real animus is directed at Europe.

And he obviously shares the left-liberal view that any expression of nativism is evil and hateful, and deserving of opprobrium.

His article also seems to be a kind of swipe against Mark Steyn and his happy-face doomsaying about Europe. Steyn seems to be fatalistically predicting an Islamic Europe,and he is blase and almost smug about it. Peters, while not naming Steyn, seems to be saying that the reports of Europe's death are greatly exaggerated -- and he's mad as hell about it. He wants to see Europe go under.

Frighteningly, he is not alone; there are a lot of 'neocons' who glory in vilifying Europe, and who would gladly raise a glass of champagne if Europe went Islamic tomorrow.

I don't get this. Regardless of our differences with Europe, how can any conservative, especially a Christian, revel in the idea of an Islamic Europe? Such a world would be a much darker, more ominous, more threatening world than we have now.

It is very much in our interest to want Europe preserved.
And the fact is, as Europe goes, so go we. Our nemesis might prove to be Mexico first, but Islam is a secondary threat. We are in the same boat as our European cousins, and we do have common interests.

We might one day hope that a reawakened Europe would make common cause with us, but it's a foolish and vain hope that we can reform Islam or befriend them. They are our enemies, and they know it, even if we refuse to recognize it.

We need to start recognizing that those who wish ill fortune on Europe, like Peters and the other neocons, are not real conservatives, and we should stop characterizing them as such.
They are simply right-liberals, who are willing to spread their liberal ideas by military means.

Or it may be that they are simply Gramscians in 'conservative' guise. But if so, they are not fooling as many people these days.

On family, kin, and nation

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it.'
- George Moore

Having just returned home from my Thanksgiving visit with the family, I've been reflecting on what family means in the larger context of the world.

We live in a time in which family is probably more devalued than at any time in our nation's existence. It may be that in the past, home and family were idealized to a degree; nowadays, at least in our popular culture and in common wisdom, many people have become cynics about family and home. How often do we hear people disparaging their families, referring to them as 'dysfunctional'? Or airing their family's dirty laundry in public, describing the horrible childhood they supposedly had with uncaring parents, or alcoholism, and all the rest?

Certainly I don't doubt that there are truly appalling families out there; the newspapers and TV talk shows serve up a steady diet of stories of horrible abuse of various kinds. And I encounter more people, especially younger people, who think that home and family are archaic concepts; I've heard more than a few young people say that their friends or coworkers are their family, and that they feel estranged from their blood kin. This is probably more true of urban people. We live in a time of weakened bonds and diminishing social ties. Many of us live rootless, mobile lives, shifting from place to place because of career or simply personal whim. The pervasive liberal idea that family and origin are limiting concepts, and that people should be 'free' to define themselves outside the racial, national, kinship, and gender categories, is a corrosive idea in our day.

But we live in a time in which many people, seeing the flaws and imperfections in their own families, declare them 'dysfunctional' and not worthy of the loyalty and duty people used to feel towards kin.

My family is probably a typical American family in many ways. And many of the trends I see in my family reflect what is going on in America generally: for instance, many, if not most, of the younger generation are shunning marriage, or postponing it until after the age of 30. Many of the younger folks are overeducated; 'perpetual students', still taking college courses or pursuing graduate degrees long past what used to be marriageable age. And when they finally complete their studies, they are saddled with huge debts as they launch careers. This is a further disincentive to marry and reproduce.
So there are few babies and little ones in our larger family circle. I do have one cousin who has fathered 11 children, but he is the exception. Most have small families, by contrast to my grandparents, who had 13 children on my father's side, and 8 children on my mothers.
So we are dwindling away, and fewer of the younger people bother to keep up the extended family ties that were so central to the older generations. Coming to the family reunions and to family holiday celebrations is not a priority with the younger generations.
Every other day, it seems, we read articles about the low birth rates of Americans, and the 'need' for mass immigration to replenish our population. Hence our current tidal wave of immigration, and people increasingly believe that mass immigration is 'necessary.'

In a society where children are encouraged to remain adolescents until they are long past that stage of life, many of the younger folks are still kids at age 25-30. Emotionally and behaviorally they are more like 18-year-olds. And there is an epidemic of these young adults moving back home to Mama and Daddy. I see it everywhere, not just in my family.
In this respect, the generation gap increases: we have younger generations who are often reluctant to step into adults' size shoes and go out into the world, and we have older folks who enable this perpetually adolescent behavior by their overindulgence. Too often the younger folks don't want to 'put away childish things', and the parents fail to encourage them to do so.

So generationally there are big differences within my family circle; we have the 'Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and their children and grandchildren. Probably at no time in America's history have the generations been so disparate; we simply view the world and ourselves differently.

This is reflected in our views on politics and world events, feelings can run very high as we find ourselves on opposite sides of some of the burning issues of the day. Many people in my family are very politically-minded, and very strong in their beliefs (like yours truly) and when we disagree, heated exchanges happen. During my Thanksgiving visit I very nearly had words with a close family member, but we each drew back and held our tongues.
But what keeps the differences in check is that we as a family are bound together by shared origins, shared sentiments around home and kin, and shared memories. And a shared loyalty.

This past summer, at our family reunion, we all met as the descendants of my great-grandparents, whose pictures were prominently displayed in a place of honor. As I looked around, I saw a varied group of people but we were united by a common bond of descent, heritage, and memory. We are also united by being, with very few exceptions, a group of believing Christians, as generations of our ancestors were.

And we are fortunate (or blessed, shall I say) that we know our ancestry and origins for many generations back; we are bound by a common pride in the accomplishments of our forefathers, by their struggles, and by their common everyday heroism in prevailing during difficult times, and doing so without compromising the family honor and decency.
And in knowing our ancestors and their doings, we have a stronger sense of who we are.
There is a sense of wholeness in seeing ourselves in our ancestors and our living kin; a recognition, and a certainty of where we belong in this world. There is a sense of our mutual acceptance of who we are, warts and all. We have our 'black sheep' and prodigals in the family, but that's not who we are.

In our family we know each others' weaknesses and faults and sins; we have our skeletons in the closet, like each and every family does, but we are a forgiving family ultimately. And though we don't always agree, we stick together in trials and difficulties. We are fiercely loyal to one another. So it should be in a healthy nation, with a sense of itself.

The nation is, after all, just the family writ large -- or it should be. Our nation began as a group of united people with a common origin.

But in this day and age we are, as a nation and people, just like many individuals, too quick to air our national dirty laundry, and to revisit past wrongs and mistakes and sins of our national family. As a result we have become uncomfortable with who we are, and doubtful about our worthiness, and about whether we deserve our comforts and successes.

Our collective voice in the 'media' and popular culture is too focused on labeling our national family 'dysfunctional', in finding fault and condemning, in harping on past failings. Thus our national family members no longer feel the loyalty and the pride and the sense of commonality that holds a family together. We are on the way to becoming an atomized, rootless, alienated people, with no past, few lasting bonds, and a diminishing sense of who we are -- or worse yet, a false sense of who we are. We are too quick to be self-critical and self-castigating, too quick to denigrate our forefathers for their flaws.

All of these things weaken us as a nation, just as these things weaken the family.
And the tendency to avoid adult responsibilities and behavior is also reflected in a country in which many people neglect their civic duties, and prefer to hole up in their own homes with their toys and diversions and games, willfully oblivious to the fact that the country is in dire distress. They prefer not to deal with it, and busy themselves with possessions and sense-pleasures.

Is there any hope of restoring our common national family? As we become outnumbered by millions of immigrants, legal and illegal, and their progeny, we will either reassert ourselves, reclaim our national confidence --- or we will become another lost colony, like the Roanoke colony whose fate is unknown and unrecorded. Maybe they were absorbed into the local Indian population, just as our descendants may vanish into a multicultural 'America.' Or we will become as today's Indians, small groups isolated within a larger, foreign society.
My hope is that we will rediscover our commonality and kinship, and realize that we will have to unite against the threats we face. When our backs are to the wall, I hope we will find that strength and determination that enabled our forefathers to dominate this continent.
There are, despite our flaws, many strong families within our country; as long as this is true, there is hope for our nation, our larger family.

Just as I see strength in my own family, despite our differences and our flaws, I see the same potential in my fellow Americans, who are, after all, my extended family.

Time for a reawakening of our spirit, and for a real family reunion.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm on my way to spend Thanksgiving with kin and loved ones, and before I head out, I just wanted to wish everyone out there a Happy Thanksgiving, with good food and good company. See you after the holiday.

I'll leave you with the words of an old Thanksgiving hymn many of us remember from our childhood:

        We gather together
 to ask the Lord's blessing;
 he chastens and hastens
 his will to make known. 
 The wicked oppressing
 now cease from distressing. 
 Sing praises to his name,
 he forgets not his own.

       Beside us to guide us,
 our God with us joining,
 ordaining, maintaining
 his kingdom divine;
 so from the beginning
 the fight we were winning;
 thou, Lord, wast at our side,
 all glory be thine!

       We all do extol thee,
 thou Leader triumphant,
 and pray that thou still
 our defender wilt be. 
 Let thy congregation
 escape tribulation;
 thy name be ever praised! 
 O Lord, make us free!

'That at one time and with one voice...'

The words of Plymouth governor William Bradford, in 1623:

Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience; now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all Pilgrims, with your wives and little ones, do gather at the meeting house, on the hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November the 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three, and the third year since Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to the pastor and render thanksgiving to Almighty God for all His blessings."

This was the first observance of anything like our modern Thanksgiving holiday. However,
the first Federal Proclamation of a Thanksgiving observance, from 1777, is shown in the copy of the document above.
The words of the proclamation, issued by the Continental Congress, are below:

'Forasmuch as it is the indispensible duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God, to acknowledge with gratitude their obligations to him for benefits received, and to implore such further blessings as they stand in need of, And it having pleased him in his abundant mercy, not only to continue to us the immeasurable bounties of his common providence, but also to smile upon us in the prosecution of a just and necessary war, for the defence and establishment of our unalienable rights and liberties. Particularly in that he hath been pleased in so great a measure, to prosper the means used for the support of our troops, and to crown our arms with most signal success.

It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive powers of these United States, to set apart THURSDAY, the eighteenth day of December next, for SOLEMN THANKSGIVING and PRAISE. That at one time and with one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their DIVINE BENEFACTOR, and that together with their sincere acknowledgements and offerings, they may join the penitent confession of their sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor, and their humble and earnest supplications that it may please God through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance. That it may please him graciously to afford his blessing on the governments of these states respectively, and prosper the PUBLIC COUNCIL of the whole. To inspire our Commanders, both by Land and Sea, and all under them, with that Wisdom and Fortitude which may render them fit Instruments, under the Providence of Almighty GOD, to secure for these United States, the greatest of all human Blessings, INDEPENDENCE and PEACE: That it may please him, to prosper the Trade and Manufactures of the People, and the Labor of the Husbandman, that our Land may yield its Increase: To take Schools and Seminaries of Education, so necessary for cultivating the Principles of true Liberty, Virtue and Piety, under his nurturing Hand; and to prosper the Means of Religion, for the promotion and enlargement of that Kingdom, which consisteth "in Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost.
And it is further recommended, That servile Labor, and such Recreation, as, though at other Times innocent, may be unbecoming the Purpose of this Appointment, be omitted on so solemn an Occasion.''

[And below the signatures of Henry Laurens and others, the document ends with this prayer:]
God Save the United States of America!

From beginning to end, the proclamation is full of references to God, which is what we might expect from a God-fearing nation, united in their Christian faith.
And united they were: notice the phrase, which I put in italics, 'That at one time and with one voice, the people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts...'

The people, united in their faith, were much stronger, and freer, I would say, than we are today, in our fractured and fragmented America, with a multitude of religious sects and faiths, with a disparate collection of people united only by inhabiting the same continent. In earlier times, we not only spoke the same language in the literal sense, but figuratively we spoke from a common cultural experience and collective folk-memory.
'

Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.'

I know that that phrase, from Psalm 133, was well-known to earlier generations of Americans.

The document shown above was written more than a century and a half after the first proclamation by Governor Bradford of Plymouth, yet judging by the wording and the sentiments of the 1777 document, the Americans as a nation then seemed still to be a Christian people. And yes, there are those who will argue and argue that the Founding Fathers were all Deists, Rosicrucians, or unbelievers. If so, they did a very convincing imitation of being God-fearing Christians.
And neither were they hostile to the expression of Christian belief, if they were not believers.
Fast forward, however, to 2006.
The only mention of God in this year's Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation is this short passage:

So on Thanksgiving Day, we gather with loved ones and we lift our hearts toward heaven in humility and gratitude.'

The word 'heaven' is the only allusion to God, and that, an oblique one.
The Bush loyalists are already defending this absence of God's name in the Proclamation. 'The Bush-bashing media want to make him look bad.' 'The media hate Bush'. Or this old cliche is hauled out to defend him: 'He's the President of all the people, not just Christians!' 'We're a diverse country now, and we have to include the Muslims, the Hindus, the Jewish Americans, the Wiccans, the Zoroastrians, and the Sikhs and the Buddhists.'

Such is the state of a diverse America; we cannot express our thanks to our God too freely for fear of offending, and being declared 'insensitive' and intolerant.

And so the America that we grew up in vanishes, bit by bit.
Just for a comparison, by the way, in 2001, President Bush mentioned God by name 6 times, and mentions 'One greater than ourselves' once.


So what will our Thanksgiving Proclamation look like 5 years from now? Will we even be allowed a reference to Heaven, or is that too Christian and not inclusive enough? Come to think of it, Heaven is not an all-inclusive place; some will be excluded and that's just too politically incorrect, isn't it?

How soon before we hear the mention of Allah in our Thanksgiving Proclamation? Or shall we just mention some impersonal 'Force', in New Age/Star Wars style?

I suppose our giving of thanks to Almighty God will become strictly a private thing, to be confined only to church services and private family gatherings.

My Puritan/Pilgrim ancestors, and my French Huguenot ancestors came to this land for the express purpose of worshiping God freely and without hindrance.
How sad that their descendants are now living in a society in which mentions of God are becoming unacceptable.
And how sad that the unity we once possessed, coming from a common heritage and culture, is now a thing of the past, and that by design, not by accident.

But as long as we here in the fragmented America of 2006 still possess the right to thank God openly, I do so.
And to echo the words of the 1777 Proclamation,

God Save the United States of America!

Lookout Mountain: Battle Above the Clouds

Above is a picture, from an old postcard, of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee.
Lookout Mountain has a historical significance because of a battle which happened there in 1863.
This source describes the unusual characteristics of that site:

The mountain is known for a unique weather phenomenon. Sometimes, after a clear dawn, a layer of fog descends toward the valley below, stopping about halfway down the peak. This inverted fog has been written about since the first whites visited the area sometime before 1735. It was on a fateful day, November 24, 1863, that this weather anomaly set in, creating the most poetic name for any battle in the American Civil War, The Battle Above the Clouds.'

The Battle of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, occurred on November 23-24, 1863. According to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the battle was little more than a skirmish. He said

The Battle of Lookout Mountain is one of the romances of the war. There was no such battle and no action even worthy to be called a battle on Lookout Mountain. It is all poetry."

But it was part of the larger Battles for Chattanooga, which took place over several days, Nov. 23-25. The Battle for Chattanooga, according to this site, was the deciding battle of the Civil War.
CSA President Jefferson Davis said:

Chattanooga was the key to the situation, and its loss was terrible to the Confederacy. Our only comfort was, that the people at Washington did not know what to do with it."

According to the Army of the Cumberland website, from which the above quote is cited,

The battle for Chattanooga was the turning point in the Civil War because it opened the doorway to the Union forces for invasion into the deep South at the last moment for making possible the capture of Atlanta in time to influence the 1864 congressional and presidential elections.'

For those of us with Confederate ancestry and heritage, this represents a sad turning point. I know there are many Northerners who feel very strongly that the South had no right to secede, that they were fighting for the evil of slavery, and that they were essentially treasonous for seceding and fighting for their cause. I won't attempt to debate that in this short blog entry, although I think the South has a case.
But for me, the Battle of Lookout Mountain, the 'Battle Above the Clouds', has a meaning which is not tied in with the issues of the war, but a personal and poignant meaning: I know it's the place where my great-great-grandfather fell in battle.

I've never been to Lookout Mountain, but it looks like a beautiful place. The descriptions of the strange weather phenomena, and of the eerie beauty as the fog descends from the mountain downward conjure up an unworldly atmosphere in my mind. I hope to visit there one day, and to pay homage to the memory of my great-great-grandfather.

These are the somber thoughts of this Thanksgiving Eve for me.
As we give thanks, we ought also to keep in mind the great sacrifices of our forefathers, and give thanks for their bravery and selflessness. Of course we just observed Veterans Day, but our thankfulness and remembrance of our forefathers and their deeds should not be confined to specific days.
Each day is appropriate to remember and to be grateful.

More on the Six Imams

Yesterday in my post 'Set-up?' I said that Doug 'Ibrahim' Hooper's arrogant mug would be up on TV deploring the Islamophobia of US Airways and the passengers who complained about the Moslem 'imams' and their attention-getting behavior.
Just like clockwork, Dougie Hooper is making the rounds, and here he is, in an especially obnoxious exchange with MSNBC's reporterette, Contessa Brewer. (BTW, Contessa: what kind of name is that? Yes, it's Italian for 'countess' but it makes as much sense as being named Princess or Queen. Whatever. You are a dimwit dhimmi, regardless of what your name is).
Anyway, the fluff-brained Contessa compares the prayin' Imams to Rosa Parks, that symbol of the Civil Rights struggle. Incredible, but still, predictable, given the MSM's obvious biases and the low intelligence quotients of their employees.
I keep looking for signs of hope among our people in America and in the West, but the 'old media' depresses me, with their lack of connection with reality, history, and plain old common sense.
Let's hope that we can bypass all the idiocy and propaganda put out by our dhimmi, PC media and spread the truth via the blogosphere and good old word-of-mouth.
If we can't do that, we had better start bowing to Mecca.

Fjordman Vs. Steyn

The inimitable Fjordman has another essay on Islam and the West.

Obviously I am an admirer of Fjordman's thoughtful pieces, although I notice that when I link his pieces here, I draw no comments on them. Still I find them worth reading. His latest is called Why the Future May Not Belong to Islam
and in it, he addresses Mark Steyn's book of cheerful doomsaying, 'America Alone.'
Fjordman, bless him, is not ready to write the West off, as Steyn seems to be doing.

Canadian writer Mark Steyn [whose mother is Flemish] thinks ''The future belongs to Islam.'' The main reason for this, according to him, is demography, with massive population growth in Islamic countries and low birth rates in infidel nations.
[...]
Critics would claim that Mr. Steyn isn't contributing to maintaining Western willpower by suggesting that we've already lost.
[...]The best way to deal with the Islamic world is to have as little to do with it as possible. We should completely stop Muslim immigration. This could be done in indirect ways, such as banning immigration from nations known to be engaged in terrorism. All Muslim non-citizens in the West should be removed. We should also change our laws to ensure that Muslim citizens who advocate sharia, preach Jihad, the inequality of ''infidels'' etc should have their citizenship revoked and be deported back to their country of origin.

We need to create an environment where the practice of Islam is made difficult.
[...][David] Selborne believes that many people are underestimating the strength of Islam. Perhaps, but some observers, including Mark Steyn and Mr. Selborne himself, may be overestimating it. They overlook the fact that Islam has many weaknesses, too. Don't underestimate your enemy. Muslims should be credited for making clever use of our weaknesses, but this ''we're all doomed and have already lost'' theme is overblown.

We should implement a policy of containment of the Islamic world. I'm not saying that containment is all that we will ever need to do, but it is the very minimum that is acceptable.
[...]We should restrain their ability to hurt us physically. We can't prevent it completely, but we should limit it as much as possible. ''

[Emphasis mine above].

Bravo to Fjordman for stating this all-too obvious truth: we need to quarantine Islam, We need to contain it. We need to confine them to their own benighted corners of the world. The more contact we have with them, the greater the risk of damage and harm to us. The more contact with Islam, the more Moslems we allow to live among us, the greater the likelihood of more terror attacks, more deaths of our citizens. The continued presence of Islam among us means, at best, a continued loss of liberty, as we allow ourselves to be subjected to greater intrusions such as increased domestic surveillance (which can also, fortuitously, be used against American citizens), greater intrusion on our persons, as the ridiculous and PC-riddled searches at the airport, and the loss of our former rights, such as the right to express our majority Christian religion freely. We are now becoming resigned, it seems, to having to eliminate more and more symbols of our faith from the public square lest we 'offend' any Mohammedans, while they seem to have carte blanche to foist Ramadan and other Moslem observances into our public space. Our public schools are now openly teaching Moslem culture and religion to our younger children in the name of 'tolerance' and 'diversity' while the word 'Christmas' is banned, and while Christmas carols are forbidden.

Containing Islam should absolutely be a no-brainer, but oddly, this suggestion is almost never mentioned in any public discussion on Islam and terrorism. Why? Why? Is there some unwritten rule that this idea is off the table, never to be mentioned or hinted at? Have we become so beaten down by PC that we have trained ourselves never to even think such thoughts?
Many 'conservatives' talk an aggressive game when it comes to the 'War on Terror'; they are fire-breathers when it comes to fighting in Iraq but here in America, on our own turf, (or what once was our own turf) we have to bow and scrape and be PC and avoid offending. What is that about? It's like going out to hunt down criminals far from home, leaving your doors unlocked, your windows open, and posting a sign that you won't prosecute trespassers.

Mark Steyn is such a tough-talker on Iraq, and he writes entertaining columns but he also is averse to using the word 'deport' or 'repatriate' in his joke-fests on Islam and 'Eurabia.' Heck, he never even mentions the 'I' word: immigration.
He appears to have more antipathy toward the French than toward Moslem terrorists. He seems to treat the idea of 'Eurabia' as a running joke, while essentially preaching doom and destruction. The West is doomed, doomed, he tells us, and there is no solution except outbreeding the Moslems (though he doesn't seem to think it possible) or reforming Islam and/or teaching our Moslem immigrants to appreciate our values so that they can keep the democracy fires burning when we Westerners are extinct. That, according to Steyn, is the best we can hope for. And he is downright cavalier about it.

I, for one, find his flippant attitude about the death of the West to be odd and a bit creepy.
Give me Oriana Fallaci; she obviously cared very much about the West; there was passion and fire anguish and anger in her words. She 'raged against the dying of the light,' God bless her. Steyn does no such thing; it's all joke fodder for him, material for his stand-up comedy routine: 'take my civilization -- please!'

Fjordman, with his reserved Scandinavian style, is no match for Fallaci in ardor and toughness, but you get the definite impression that he wants the West to survive, and that he has thought about solutions to the urgent question of our survival.

I know that Steyn is an idol and a darling of many on the 'right' these days, and I may be goring somebody's ox by criticizing him, but at this juncture in our history we need something more than just a court jester to make us laugh at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. We need thinkers, people with real ideas on how we can defeat the Islamic threat and save the West for our progeny. I, for one, am not ready to concede defeat. And I get the impression that Fjordman is not, either.

Let's contain Islam while there is still time. It's later than we think.

Thanks to whom?

As Thanksgiving time rolls around, we can expect the now-familiar attacks on our history and our traditions. And this story comes from (surprise, surprise!) liberal California:

I won't excerpt the article because it is an AP article, but the story has to do with a third-grade teacher, Bill Morgan, who is teaching a 'lesson' on Thanksgiving in which he, dressed in a 'Pilgrim hat' made of construction paper, comes in and snatches his little pupils' belongings, saying that he is 'discovering' their stuff. A rather ham-handed attempt at teaching the kids about the supposed avarice and greed of the evil, pillaging Pilgrims, I suppose. But no one ever accused liberal/leftists of subtlety or delicacy.

Much of the article is the usual dismal complaining about insensitivity; we all know the drill.
If things continue along our present track, with each segment of society presenting their grievances and demands, the traditional holiday of Thanksgiving will be whittled down to nothing; it will be some kind of neutral, neutered observance in which only the most saccharine Political Correctness, with the wise, noble, generous Indians paternalistically helping the inept Pilgrims, will be allowed to be depicted.

More and more, even the most important aspect of Thanksgiving, the setting aside of a day to give thanks to the Almighty, will be bowdlerized. It might offend the Moslems, the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Zoroastrians, the Wiccans, the Shintoists, and the Bokononists.
One way this offensive aspect of Thanksgiving is dealt with is, increasingly, to have the Pilgrims giving thanks not to God, but to the noble Indians, for giving them handouts so they could survive.

And here, in this article from the Rocky Mountain News, this article tells us that today's immigrants and refugees are just like our Pilgrim forefathers:

They fled persecution, they came across the ocean, they are refugees, and they shared a Thanksgiving meal with members of their host nation, just as the Pilgrims did with the Indians.''

Wow; imagine that. Today's economic migrants and refugees are just like the Pilgrims. Yes, I know some will say that this is just a nice heart-warming article, and that I am being a curmudgeon, but there is little parallel between the hardy English settlers who came to a wilderness, landing in what is now Massachusetts during the bleak late autumn/early winter. Knowing that they were strictly on their own, thousands of miles from all they knew and held dear, they were NOT taken care of by a paternalistic government, as today's immigrants are; they were not supported by refugee programs, given food, housing, and access to social services the minute they land on these shores.Our Pilgrim forefathers had a long, difficult, arduous ocean voyage with few comforts; they did not have a nice airplane flight that deposited them on these shores within hours. They did not get food stamps, EBT cards, and refugee payments on arrival. Contrary to today's propaganda, the Pilgrims were not helpless as babes when they landed here, dependent on the benevolent Indians. They were not coddled by the Indians as today's immigrants and refugees are coddled and fussed over. They had to build this country from the ground up, and they did so, at great cost in terms of work and toil and human suffering.
To liken today's economic migrants to the Pilgrims, who came here for spiritual freedom, is to diminish what they accomplished.

I truly abhor the way that every traditional American holiday like this is now used by our Marxist media as a pretext for more multicultural, 'I'd like to teach the world to sing' propaganda. Please, can't we just observe our time-honored holidays as we've always done without all the politicizing and propagandizing?

Way to go, liberals and multiculturists. I give this to them: they never rest. They toil away 24/7 to undermine our traditions and our history.

Set-up?

In this incident involving the six 'Muslim scholars' who were removed from a US Airways flight out of Minneapolis-St. Paul, all the usual accusations are made. One of the 'imams' claims that they were 'unfairly targeted' (as usual). Prejudice! discrimination!

And right on cue, US Airways makes apologetic noises like so:

'We are always concerned when passengers are inconvenienced and especially concerned when a situation occurs that causes customers to feel their dignity was compromised," the statement said. "We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind and will continue to exhaust our internal investigation until we know the facts of this case and can provide answers for the employees and customers involved in this incident.'

And also right on cue, enter CAIR and all their minions.
(Where's the ACLU? Aren't they supposed to leap to the defense of the victimized imams at this point?)
This is hardly an original observation on my part, but I smell set-up. I think incidents like this are planned: the Moslem 'victims' probably did behave weirdly for the purpose of arousing suspicion and complaints. When the plan works and they get sufficiently 'discriminated against', then the incident hits the media, the cries of prejudice and Islamophobia are heard , CAIR shifts into gear, and we the American people are sat down for another lecture on how we have to learn more about the Religion of Peace and can't we all just get along?

Shahin expressed frustration that -- despite extensive efforts by him and other Muslim leaders since even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- so many Americans know so little about Islam.

"If up to now they don't know about prayers, this is a real problem," he said. '

Note: Shahin is apparently connected with a 'charity' group linked to Hamas.

Nevertheless, we will get 'educated' and preached to about tolerance and understanding and US Airways will vow to be more sensitive to their Moslem customers, and Ibrahim Hooper will be up on TV, making the rounds.

Now, you people in Minnesota, aren't you ashamed of overreacting? Maybe sensitivity classes would be in order.

And maybe we will all be more reluctant to report any such weird behavior next time for fear it turns out to be just a silly misunderstanding again.


Or maybe I am just being cynical, and this was just Islamophobia.

Whatever the real story is, Lawrence Auster is right in pointing out that we will go on having incidents like this.

Such incidents will continue to recur, FOREVER, so long as a significant Muslim population continues to reside in our country.

Maybe the cumulative effect of a number of incidents like this is to get us somewhat jaded about it, and then one day the incident will be for real.

Guard the Borders Blogburst 11/20/06

By Heidi at Euphoric Reality

Last week, two Muslim leaders in Boston were arrested for immigration fraud - illegally filing fraudulent visa documents and obtaining religious workers' visas. The arrests were the culmination of a multi-year investigation in Boston and New York:

The ICE agents arrested Hannan Wednesday along with 32 other people in eight states and the District of Columbia in connection with an alleged nationwide scheme to help many foreigners, mostly from Pakistan, immigrate and remain in the U.S. by filing false applications for religious workers' visas. Most of those taken into custody did not have religious training or experience to qualify for the visas, and held secular jobs here in the U.S., such as working at gas stations and factories or driving trucks, according to the ICE. Others were religious workers but had used fraudulent identity documents to get their visas, the agency said.

The agency claims the petitioners of the visas took substantial cash fees from the foreigners for the false paperwork filed on their behalf.

Despite the fact that the imams were not arrested precipitously, but only after a multi-year investigation, they have an excuse ready:

"All it is is a minor administrative technicality error" in his immigration paperwork, said Vilal Kaleem, associate director of the American Muslim Society's Boston chapter. "It's completely disgraceful in the manner they dealt with it," he said of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
[...]
Kaleem said Hannan was driving his family to an immigration office for an interview for the green-card proceedings on Wednesday when the federal agents arrested him. Hannan's son and daughter were crying following the arrest, Kaleem said.

So, so sad. My heart breaks.

Meanwhile, the Muslim community in Boston is doing what Muslims do best: seething.

Muslim leaders in the Boston area expressed outrage yesterday over the arrest and jailing of two senior clerics..."It's just so flabbergasting the way they would do this" ..."This seems to be a direct attack at our religion and community"..."it is deeply humiliating when a man of such high religious status in our community is treated as a criminal in front of the world"..."Why do you just arrest some respected members of the community and haul them away?"..."People are attached to the imam. They will be very upset. Everyone loves him."

Oddly enough, it is apparently not humiliating for "a man of such high religious status" to act as a criminal. Because though our government rarely enforces it, it is still technically illegal to break our immigration laws. Unfortunately, when it comes to our immigration law, this will likely turn into the following scenario: They broke the law. They got arrested for breaking the law, but now it's the government's fault for enforcing the law.

The Muslim American Society provides contact information to their community so that they can demand a "safe and speedy return" and to demand "fair, speedy, and respectable treatment" of the imams. I'll provide the contact info here for you should you prefer to register thanks that our laws are actually being enforced:

The MAS provides contact information, so folks can insist on "fair, speedy and respectable" treatment of the imams.

Senator Edward Kennedy (617)565 3170
Request to speak to Tom Cohan, (ext. 119)

Senator John Kerry (617) 565-8519
Request to speak to Carmen Velazquez

Yeah, I know - fat lot of good it will do to contact those two Senators, but if you've got nothing better to do, have at it.

At a time when Muslim immigration to America is at an all-time high, even more are sneaking into the country illegally than ever before. In July, Homeland Security discovered that more than one-third of religious workers visas were obtained using fraudulent means, and the fraud was particularly rampant among Muslims.

The probe found a particularly high fraud rate among applicants from countries the government deemed to pose a security risk, such as Egypt, Algeria, Pakistan, Syria and Iraq, the report found.
[...]
Some immigration watchdogs say that the program should be seriously curtailed because, even in cases where the applications are legitimate, the visas could bring radical clerics into the country.

Last year, for example, the FBI arrested three Pakistani men associated with a mosque in Lodi, California. All had entered on religious-worker visas. Two were accused of ties to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan before coming to the United States, and the third, an imam, allegedly delivered sermons endorsing violence against non-Muslims before he came to America.

This is only one more reason among many why our immigration enforcement is the front line of our national defense. The two issues are inextricably intertwined. To remain lax in immigration enforcement is to invite infiltration and attack. This is why all those whose first act on American soil is a criminal one MUST be deported, no matter their ethnicity or nationality. Our immigration laws have to be strictly enforced if we are to have any hope of future security.

---

This has been a production of the Guard the Borders Blogburst. It was started by Euphoric Reality, and serves to keep immigration issues in the forefront of our minds as we're going about our daily lives and continuing to fight the war on terror. If you are concerned with the trend of illegal immigration facing our country, join our Blogburst! Just send an email with your blog name and url to admin at guardtheborders dot com.

Comments

It shouldn't be necessary to say this, but say it I must, apparently.
This blog has been blessedly free, so far, from frothing-at-the-mouth liberals and ethnic partisans who cannot bear any opinions which differ from the established liberal truths.
But nothing lasts forever; it seems I'm drawing flak now, based on my 'More heresy' post, which I half expected would bring the PC zealots out of the woodwork.
So here it is, once more, for the dull of understanding: I don't tolerate incivility, name-calling, ad-hominems, race-baiting, or personal attacks. Grown-up people do not resort to these things.
I also don't tolerate vulgarity, profanity, and obscenity.
I have only deleted one post since this blog has existed, but I will delete such posts without warning and I will ban the IP of offenders.
I appreciate all those who make civil, reasoned comments. Disagree with me if you must, but do so in a logical, reasoned, mature, civilized way, not by frenzied tirades or insulting my Americanness and my moral character and my intelligence.
Maybe that stuff flies over at Democrats Underground or other such dark corners of the 'Net, but it doesn't fly here.
And so I'm drawing flak; but that just means I'm over my target.

'Migra Watch' madness

Here's the latest insanity from San Antonio:

Radio station homes in on immigrant audience

German Vazquez parked in front of a convenience store and jumped down from his Dodge Ram 3500 truck, smiling and eager to meet Salina Chavez Salazar.
Vazquez, a fence installer, routinely listens to San Antonio radio station KSAH-AM while at work.
[...]
The station, known as Norteno720 for the northern Mexican music it airs, has found a thoroughly modern niche on the ever-crowded radio dial, catering to first-generation immigrants, undocumented workers and prospective employers like Vazquez who would hire them. It's the No. 1 AM music station not just in San Antonio but in the region.'

The article goes on to note that the station is called 'La Estacion de la raza', that's 'The Station of The Race' to you and me. Of course no station with an English name like that, catering to the white race, would ever be allowed, but that's life in Mexamerica.

Note this laughable passage:

[Tom] Castro says people shouldn't fear this trend [immigration]. Immigrants, he said, cause the economy to grow.

"They revitalize neighborhoods that have been run down," Castro said. "They start businesses." '

That last line, about immigrants 'revitalizing neighborhoods' is priceless. It's apparently the latest spin from the open borders crowd; I've come across it a lot lately. Just ask some people in L.A. how much Mexican immigrants have 'revitalized' their city, or many other Southern California locales. Or ask the folks in Farmers Branch about the 'revitalization' the mojados have carried out there.
The fact that the illegals and their accomplices have to resort to such transparent lies is telling.
But the story goes on. Get this:


'

KSAH provides the usual news and weather updates. But it also airs "Migra Watch," where listeners give eyewitness alerts on Border Patrol activities.
[...]
After the May 1 marches across the nation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted high-profile raids. That scared listeners, and for a time they were afraid to go to Hispanic retail centers. Advertisers were nervous, Castro admitted, and his staff earned their pay keeping some from canceling contracts. None did, but it was a stressful summer.

In July, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission brought along immigration agents on a raid of Ritmo Latino, a popular live-band dance hall that promoted its acts through Norteno720.

Immigration lawyer Gerry Gonzales hosts the KSAH Saturday morning legal advice hour. That celebrity drew to him some of the 30 undocumented people arrested at Ritmo Latino.'

Note that many of the people who are involved in aiding the illegals seem to be American-born Hispanics, not immigrants themselves. Now what was that story about how American-born Hispanics oppose illegal immigration just like we do?

Towards the end of the article, we learn that of the companies advertising for illegal labor, one fourth are non-Hispanic, one quarter are 'Mexican-American' owned, and apparently half are 'immigrant-owned.'

This supports my belief that many of those vaunted 'immigrant businesses' which the GOP loves to brag about are hiring their fellow immigrants; they do not provide jobs to American labor. Every Hispanic-owned business I know tends to hire only their own, and you are unlikely to hear a word of English spoken. The supposed economic stimulation of all these new immigrant entrepreneurs is of benefit only to the Hispanic community. These businesses all cater to their own people, mainly. The very need for these businesses is due to the illegal invasion. And since the businesses cater to an immigrant clientele, of course it's to their advantage to support more immigration. Immigration feeds on itself.

But the real outrage is the 'Migra Watch', the open subversion of law and order in our country, done openly via the public airwaves. How does the FCC allow this? Is there not some law or agency which would restrict this kind of thing?

Of course, given that our government was recently found to be giving Mexico a heads-up as to the border locations of the Minutemen, we are dreaming if we think that the government will do anything to stop this rogue radio station from thwarting the Border Patrol and ICE.

It doesn't take a Nostradamus to predict that nothing will be done to stop the 'Migra Watch'; the authorities will turn a blind eye, as they always do when the lawbreakers are the most favored ethnic group in America. Our President has given these people and their lawlessness his blessing and his encouragement.

More heresy

If there is one issue which underlies our present twin crises of the illegal invasion and the Islamic menace, it is that elephant in the living room, the phobia that dares not speak its name: race.

I'm all too mindful of the need to tread carefully here. I think of myself as relatively free of the PC shackles, but even I tend to pull my punches when approaching this subject, so deep is the conditioning in our society, where race is concerned. And I wonder if some of my readers might not shy away when I write on this subject.
But be that as it may, I'm fully convinced that our deep inhibitions on this issue are hindering us from both acknowledging the threats we face and most importantly, from taking the necessary actions to deal with the crisis.

When I say that race underlies our crises, it should be obvious in what sense this is true, but in case it's not, here's the nub of it.: were it not for our 'complexes' concerning race, we would not have an ongoing invasion from Latin America, nor would we have an Islamic fifth column in our country. Think about it: if our enemy within were Canadians or Frenchmen, absurd as that idea sounds, we would have no qualms about routing them, chasing them from our country. When was the last time anybody got chastised by the PC police for Francophobic remarks or for bashing Canucks? But we cannot speak too bluntly about our enemies within. They know that they have a trump card to use against us: the old race card. Newcomers to the United States know this from the git-go; we have illegals newly arrived from points south, using the race card to defend their illicit presence here. Racismo. And the Islamic fifth column are quick to use the race card and to sic the ACLU on us, like the Latino invaders.

The accusation of 'racism' is a weapon that immobilizes us. It's like those old science-fiction movies we watched as kids, wherein the invading aliens have a paralyzing ray that they use to freeze the hapless earthlings in their tracks, rendering them helpless. And what's worst about it is: we armed them with that weapon. We handed it to them. We keep on handing it to them. We lack the will to neutralize it. We could neutralize that weapon, and save ourselves, by shedding the fear of being called 'racist.' We could simply refuse to play that game anymore. What's the worst that could happen if we did so? What could they do? Just shout 'racism' even more?
Yet we run from that weapon, and they know it. And they use it for all its worth.

To go back to the roots of all this insanity, we might look back at that dreadful 1965 Immigration Act, the Hart-Celler Act, which was the immediate cause of the present Third-Worldizing of America. That was only the proximate cause, however. Looking at that Act in context, let's remember that in 1965, America was in the throes of a national spasm of guilt over slavery and Jim Crow. During this fateful era, PC began to rear its unattractive head. The average American was bombarded with guilt about our past sins and the sins of our 'bigoted' ancestors. To this day, the bombardment has not stopped, and shows no signs of stopping. I think some of us are past fed up with it; speaking for myself, I think it began to have a reverse effect on me about 10 or 15 years ago. I think the sheer excess of all this guilt is beginning to harden some Americans who once were more susceptible.
Still, on and on the guilt train goes, with no sign of slowing down.

But back in 1965, it made many of us feel good about ourselves to try to rectify what our ancestors had done -- even though we are not responsible for what past generations did or did not do. So we were willing to try to put things right, in hopes that it could all be forgotten, and bygones would be bygones.
In this context, the 1965 Immigration Act seemed part of that mood of making amends. After all, we Americans had been so narrow-minded as to allow only compatible countries to send us immigrants, and we demanded that the newcomers be productive and of good character and health. Imagine the bigotry of that. So in a fit of generosity, we were willing to allow people from non-Western countries to enter in great numbers. Ted Kennedy, who was a force behind the bill, assured us that it would not change the existing character of America:

(O)ur cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same ... Secondly the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, S. 500 will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia.''

That was the lie of the century.( How about that, Teddy? You knew it was a whopping lie, and you've never yet admitted it.)

But that 1965 Immigration Act was the beginning of the end of traditional America, the first step towards the Third-Worldizing of America, and the demographic warfare on old-stock Americans and our majority culture.
Most of us, including myself, didn't really notice the effects for a while. Like most of my age group, the baby-boomers, I was always an avid traveler and student of the strange and exotic. What could be wrong with bringing more colorful and varied people and cultures to America? I really thought little about it, like many people, until I started to notice that the numbers of exotic immigrants was accelerating, partly through 'chain migration' and later via illegal immigration. It was as though it happened overnight in many places: I went to sleep in a familiar American city, and woke up in a Third World country. And while ethnic restaurants and grocery stores add variety and all, the other effects of the demographic change were not so pleasant: the transforming of many formerly livable neighborhoods into squalid, litter-strewn slums, and then the presence of many people with sullen stares, who seemed to resent me and mine, and who refused to learn our ways or our language.
Gradually my tolerant, welcoming attitude became wary, and then indignant. I know that lots of others feel just as I do, but they feel free to admit it only in private, and when they know that I share their misgivings about what is happening to our country. We all know that there is a price to be paid, socially, and career-wise, for expressing un-PC thoughts.

And the events of 9/11 were a splash of cold water in the face; I had never thought much about the presence of so many Moslems in our country, and suddenly I was aware of the threat they posed. Yet we were all being assured that the Moslems in our country were just like our immigrant ancestors, and that 'Islam means peace.' Yeah, right. And events since then have only borne out my misgivings.

But still, our 'leaders' go merrily along, welcoming mass immigration from the Islamic world, despite the terror plots thwarted and the subsequent acts of violence by Moslems in our country. And despite the much-vaunted 'War on Terror.' Meanwhile, we are all supposed to
'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil'. And oh, by the way, celebrate diversity!

And what was behind that 1965 Immigration Act, that gift which keeps on giving? Was it just an effort to show our lack of bigotry? Just a way to provide cheap labor for the corporate interests? Those things play a part in it, I'm sure. But I think there is a bigger plan, and it's operative in the entire Western world, as we see parallel events in all Western countries. Our 'leaders' evidently have a plan to integrate the world, so to speak. Just as in America we had forced integration in the 60s, we now have forced integration of the West. We simply can't have mostly white countries, with superior living conditions. Just as back in the 60s it was thought to be a great injustice that there were mostly white schools, with nicer conditions or better test scores. The answer was thought to be busing, transporting children miles away so that they could mix together and those white students didn't get 'superior treatment.' So now we have 'busing' on an international scale, so to speak. We have de facto open borders, letting in as many Latinos who can cross the finish line, and we have 'refugee resettlement' agreements via the U.N., pledging to welcome tens of thousands of refugees from mostly stone-age countries. And we have good ol' legal immigration, with 1.3 million and counting each year. All from 'diverse' countries.

Another side benefit, as our leaders see it, is that they are dealing with that stubborn Third World poverty. Since redistributing the wealth has not accomplished the task of bringing the Third World up to our level, let's just redistribute the poverty; that'll work! So now, we have millions of impoverished immigrants, dropped like foundlings on our doorstep, so that we are compelled to take care of them.

The ultimate aim, it seems, is to blend us all together, thus erasing all distinctions of race, economic level, and culture, and ultimately, religion. There seems to be a delusional belief that even the Moslems, whose religion commands them to subjugate or kill the infidel, can be thrown into the multicultural blender, and become part of this amorphous everything-but-the-kitchen-sink congeries of peoples. I think the globalists and the utopian lefties have formed some kind of symbiotic relationship, and are working together, perhaps with the loony left as dupes, to create this Brave New World.

Even the religious establishment is on the One World bandwagon; many of them are foolish disciples of ecumenicism, and think we can all cuddle up with the Moslems since 'we all worship the same God', or so they say. We hear our President and Condi Rice pushing this line often, whenever they have to go and make obeisance before some Moslem group.

I think there is a deranged view that we can just blend everybody together and thus erase all divisions and differences. And as long as bread and circuses in the form of hedonism and distractions are present, MTV and cheap consumer goods, they will have a docile, malleable mass of people, and there will be engineered 'equality'. The corporate class has more consumers buying their goods, and the formerly poor have their piece of the pie, and all's right with the world. Economic, social, and racial equality, delivered to your door.
Poor old Thomas Jefferson; if he could have envisioned how they would pervert his words 'all men are created equal', I think he would have refrained from writing those fateful words.

So whoever hit on the idea of making us all phobic of 'racism', it was a stroke of perverse genius. We are all so unhinged on the subject of race that we sit helpless to change this future that seems to be rushing towards us like a freight train. I sometimes feel we have passed the point of no return; the die may be cast, in the form of the demographic trends. We, old-stock Americans that is, are to be outnumbered in a generation or less. And we are weakened by the fact that we are divided amongst ourselves; there is a substantial minority (or maybe it's a majority) of people who think that a Brazilianization of America would be just fine; no problem. This shows how successful the subverters of America have been.

As long as we feel compelled to be silent and passive, compelled to yield to those of other races even when they pose a threat to us, we have little hope of extricating ourselves.
That's the dilemma we face.