Looking ahead
The increasingly strident debate over important issues long too sensitive to discuss suggests we are entering into a new period of fundamental, perhaps revolutionary change. How it will end is hard to predict. But it safe to say the old consensus is over.
The Archbishop of Canterbury proposes that Sharia law be partly recognized in Britain. There are immediate calls for his resignation. At the DOD Hesher Islam's criticisms that Major Stephen Coughlin is a "Christian zealot with a pen" sparks Coughlin's resignation. But he is reinstated very soon afterward following a counter-reaction. The Berekeley Council and Code Pink decide to oust a Marine recruiting station from the City. The Battle of Berekeley begins. Robert Gates accuses European NATO allies of welshing on their commitments in Afghanistan. He is criticized and asked to apologize by European officials. Undaunted, he plunges on.
Everywhere there is fraction and realignment. The final rites over the 1990s were pronounced by Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton and her snarling sidekick, Bill. On the Republican side, Fred Thompson cast himself as the standard bearer of the Reagan Coalition and soon exited the race. Cries of dismay are being heard everywhere. But on the whole these conflicts may be hopeful signs.
The clashes mean that on the most basic level certain issues are being met head on. The Battle of Berkeley will re-examine who Won the 1960s, but more importantly, whether the counterculture can opt out of defending America. Rowan Williams, Hesher Islam and Stepehen Coughlin are the center of an increasingly open debate about whether Islam is an ordinary religion or a conquering ideology. Robert Gates in drawing a line in sand over Afghanistan is fighting the Battle of Berkeley internationally.
These events are probably only the foretaste of more to come. The world that existed before midnight on December 31, 2000 has ended. The smug conviction that the West was at the end of history; that the EU was destined to dominate the continent; that the Y2K bug was the greatest thing, next to Global Warming, that society had to fear; that multiculturalism was the wave of the future -- all these and more -- burst with same finality as the rockets in the sky on that festive fin de siecle evening. But every end is a beginning. The question is: the beginning of what?
posted by wretchardthecat at 2/10/2008 04:38:00 PM
46 Comments:
Fiat justicia ruat coelum
A spade IS a spade, dammit, and the dam of Political Correctness is leaking as more and more seers of politically incorrect truths find out they are not alone in noticing the severe deficiencies in the Emperor's wardrobe.
The Alberta Human Rights Commission and the mentality that produced it threaten us all.
Time to stand.
Due to demographic changes in Europe with the increase in Muslim populations, perhaps it is beginning to dawn on the leadership that if they don't make a stand now to defend their culture, they may not have much of a culture left in 10 or 15 years time.
I have a great deal of hope and perhaps see some evidence that a new yeoman class is rising in the suburbs and countryside of the civilized world. They have yet to demonstrate that they will fight to the death for their freedom. Maybe that's only because they haven't had to yet.
Agreed, Cannoneer No. 4, our brave new world's Politically Correct Emperor is in the middle of a major "wardrobe malfunction".
"the dam of Political Correctness is leaking as more and more seers of politically incorrect truths
Although conventional wisdom sees Barack Obama as the future, I think he represents the past, even if he becomes President. He'll take the Fifth on every one of the key controversies the world struggles with today. Not because he's stupid but because his constituency won't let him face the issues.
They've elected him to make it all go away. Wave the wand. Show his face and work his magic. That's why most of his speeches are conjury. He'll try manfully to do it. And if anyone can work roll back history with spells, he's the man. But the last phrase Barack Obama will ever utter is the only phrase that matters: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
That's precisely what he's being elected to avoid. And good luck to him. It's the time for hard decisions. A time to choose.
What we are more likely to hear from Barack -- because that's what his constituency wants to hear -- are words along the lines of "we are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe. My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep." Sleep they did. But they woke to a nightmare.
I don't think we'll have a world war, but neither do I believe we will have a "nice quiet sleep."
...and a stitch in time may no longer save nine.
Newt Gingrich was on Fox last week. He characterized McCain as a Rockefeller or Dewey republicans. I think this is correct. Both were undermined by the conservatives in their party. Neither became president. Newt said this as a warning to McCain not to be contemptuous of conservatives because he needed their foot soldiers to win. And in the least he needed them to not actively work to undermine him.
(McCain's show at CPAC last week suggested that he was listening to Newt.)
However, this time I think the democrats candidates are both unelectable. But on this I could very well be wrong. The USA is changing rapidly. I heard recently that so far 14 million people had voted in the democratic primaries and only 9 million had voted in the republican primaries. There are still fewer republicans than democratic registered voters. But the difference isn't that great. The reason for much of the gap is the lack of enthusiasm for republican candidates.
The positions that McCain has taken in the past have the kind of odor to republicans that democratic candidate would have to democrats who took positions in favor of staying in Iraq or against abortion or against homosexuality.
what does it mean to be a Rockefeller or Dewey republican? in this context it means that McCain will continue to allow the advance of the NAU. I believe him when he promises to build a real border with Mexico and kick out 2 million criminal aliens. He has also pointedly refrained from talking about the disposition of 10-20 more illegals. His history suggests that likely he will try to legalize them at some point. He might not succeed. But every year the anglo american population becomes politically feebler. So I'm not sure it matters. Likely this is the way Juan Hernandezfigures it.
Do no put your hope in princes and kings etc.
I'm not so optimistic in the short run with all the changes occuring in the world as outlined in this post. History often takes a turn in the direction of the worst case scenario. We are fighting a long and asymmetrical war, and who's to say that we are not heading for a form of asymmetrical nuclear or biological war? Who's to say China will remain neutral in the long run?
I believe we'll prevail in the long run, like our founding fathers, as long as we treasure our God-given life and liberty - as long as we remain the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Sacrifice has been the price of American freedom from the beginning - it will be no different this time.
...the dam of Political Correctness is leaking as more and more...
Here's another one, published in an up-to-now staunchly leftist magazine in Denmark. It gets more startling as it goes along. Apparently it lists a total of 95 theses, a number some people with a knowledge of earlier Northern European religious dissent may recognize.
Two front war
I think Wrechard has described Barack Hussein Obama pretty well. The only thing I would add to it would be to second the thoughts of others I have read regarding his political opportunism. This is not a man who is consumed by a yearning for the truth. Truth is not important to him. What matters to him is very simple: advancing his own career. He is sublimely ambitious.
It's scary that much of what comes out of his mouth when he is before gatherings of eager young faces are vapid platitudes. He says a lot of nothing, and his campaign style is remarkably like Jimmy Carter's in 1976. He will drop a hint of a definite position - a small morsel - every now and then. To really know him entails a lot of time and work, which most people are not willing to do. You put together significant pieces of the puzzle by assembling a lot of these morsels with his voting record, the church and pastor he associates with, and the policy advisers in his stable (and who pays a few of them). Then, you fill in the gaps with reasonable assumptions to complete the mosaic.
I agree that his vision encompasses parts of the past. I don't see him as with a solid grasp of the present or future. But, Obama is not alone. The current administration, as exhibited by Gordon England at DoD, and his superiors above him, have also chosen to not look at what is staring us in the face.
We must become a society that really believes that truth is a defense, when free speech is attacked by the enemies of liberty and civilization. If you speak the truth, you should only fear a lapse into cowardice when you are attacked for speaking the truth. I believe the only thing the PC crowd currently has in its favor is naked power. It does not have the truth and the truth eventually wins out.
Wretchard -- of course we are looking at war. A big war. A war that kills likely a couple hundred million at least.
We see: nuclear proliferation, unchecked. Because the technology is old, so too ballistic missiles, and without a great deal of political will (absent in Bill Clinton in 1996 when he could still stop Pakistan from going nuclear, the US in both parties today with Iran) there won't be anything done to stop proliferators.
Pakistan and North Korea BOTH have nuclear weapons. If they can make them anyone can. And Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Oman, UAE, and Kuwait have all announced nuclear programs.
What this means is that every failed Muslim state with nuclear weapons can destroy Western cities because of some triviality. Reuter's "Gay Mohammed" or some other web page. Sooner or later it will happen.
Because (you are 100% correct, Obama is return to the past) we in the West won't confront the hard, costly and ugly actions needed to head off proliferation, we will pay later. In dead Western cities.
At that point, the only solution is simply to wipe out the proliferators. ALL OF THEM. People will do what they have to in order to survive.
All the more uglier since it's entirely avoidable.
I was working for some people a few weeks ago, and as usual chatted about all kinds of things. They had been on vacation in the Caribbean recently, met a couple from Denmark. He was a dentist, she was a businessperson, some kind of high tech.
They wanted to emigrate to Canada, or somewhere, because 'the Moslems were taking over'.
This was out of the blue. I read blogs such as this, and am aware of the changes. Again and again, in conversation, unbidden, some reference to the dramatic changes wrought by the Muslim influx in Europe comes up.
These things aren't discussed in polite company (says something about me I suppose). But people are making life changing decisions because of them.
May we live in interesting times.
Derek
Be nice if those people in Europe who are fed up with their Muslims would stand there and fight for their beliefs, rather than immigrating to Canada, Australia or America.
Oh well, I suppose it does work to make us stronger for when we *do* have to face up to the mess they left behind.
*
never mind political correctness... if you're the obit guy at the kabul star... what the hell do you do with this?
*
NahnCee said...
Be nice if those people in Europe who are fed up with their Muslims would stand there and fight for their beliefs, rather than immigrating to Canada, Australia or America
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That doesn't happen in the USA either. White flight happens everywhere. California shifted over to being majority non white not just because of the influx of illegals but also because of the exit of whites from the state.
The public schools in inside the beltway suburbs of Washington DC are now majority non white. Within ten years the inside the beltway suburban population of washington dc will turn majority non white. Neighborhoods hit a tipping point of around 30% non white and and then within the space of two-three years or so all the whites leave except 10-15%.
That's what happens when people elect governments that don't support them. That's what happens when the very structure of the language that people speak make it immoral for them to resist incursions of outsiders.
Its not just denmark that people are bailing out of. Its also Holland. there I've read the exit of the dutch is even higher.
When North America goes down, where are you going to bail out to? Yet, we still allow people to come in here, day after day. It's history in the making, mostly off the headline news.
I'm sick of it. I've seen even Idaho go to hell.
Conspiracy theory # 123456789
Could it be possible that the looney tunes Archbishop of Cant is actually on to something? By turning the other cheek he has surfaced an issue before it becomes too damaging to fix without a whole lot of violence?
Ratzinger couldn't do that.
So far-fetched, it must be true.
ADE
But a Snitch in Time will make the News at Nine!
This beautiful lady's life sums up what went wrong, but she apparently doesn't see it that way, somehow conflating ethnicity w/culture and education, which she has in abundance, and the modern "ethnics" are robbed of.
Hillary Boots Campaign Manager Then and now.
Patti cares deeply about immigration, an issue she's brought to the fore in this campaign.
"It's very personal for me,"
she says.
"As a community and as a culture, we provide so much richness to this country."
---
No, your dad's generation did, and those offspring educated in Catholic Schools do.
Today's illiterate gang-bangers nurtured and perverted in public multicultibilingual hellholes bring social upheaval, cultural destruction and economic poverty to this country.
"What we are more likely to hear from Barack -- because that's what his constituency wants to hear -- "
---
Ahh, but if we heard it from someone alien to such sensibilities, it would not have such a ring of authenticity.
The Apple did not fall far from his Hippy Mom's blossoms.
Its not just denmark that people are bailing out of. Its also Holland. there I've read the exit of the dutch is even higher.
The French are fleeing to England.
And the English are fleeing to Canada / America / Australia.
But you're right. It's not just Denmark.
The world improves proportionately with the departure from this earth of every person old enough to have a memory of the 1960s. The drug addled, mush brained thinking that has created this modern world is proving out as incapable of making the world perfect as everything that preceded it. What more graphic image do you need than screeching 60 year old harridans trying to look and act 17 again?
Perhaps history will mark the final crash and burn of the Clinton pseudo dynasty as the end of the 60s. It cannot happen soon enough, even with the specter of the more vacuous Obama lalaland looming on the horizon.
I would be a lot more optimistic about the future if today's college students were as agitated about college enforced speech and behavior codes as they were the draft.
It's scary that much of what comes out of his mouth when he is before gatherings of eager young faces are vapid platitudes.
I have to disagree here. Young people yearning for something to believe in is nothing new. Neither is the politician who uses soaring rhetoric to inspire. Both are neutral phenomena -- to be used for good or evil.
It matters much whether the soaring rhetoric is consistent* or revolutionary, inclusive or exclusive, moral or tribal. I'm of the opinion that the consistent-moral-inclusive platitude -- vapid or no -- is far less scary than the other kinds.
* Logically consistent with the small "c" constitution of a state and its history.
It sure would be nice to say that we have the stirrings of our own “Great Awakening”, but I am not sure that is the case.
Winston Churchill said that the threat of death focuses the mind. The Sunnis in Iraq have had their minds focused much more than we have. And I don’t think that collectively we are there yet.
What Samuel Johnson really said, according to Boswell, was, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
Churchill said death was a velvety blackness. Or maybe a soft smooth velvety blackness.
-------
Why do the dying never cry?
It's good to know the world will be improved with my passing. I always said I would accomplish something.
Or maybe it was a soft cool velvety blackness.
Those that can't remember the sixties are doomed to die a death of futility.
When Churchill was asked about reincarnation, he replied he didn't know, but didn't want to come back as a coolie.
from Catholic online--
There are, then, two ultimate images for death. Winston Churchill is reported to have once said that he believed death only means “entering upon some velvety cool blackness.” Christians, however, believe, as the first preface for Masses for the dead says, that in death “life is changed, not ended.” For believers, therefore, the image of death is not that of darkness but of dawn and an entrance upon an unimaginable and divinely bestowed fulfillment.
Hemingway had his hero Robert Jordan say, it's a drink of cool water. And then, a little later, he had him say, it's just nothing.
Hemingway had himself say, it's an old whore.
By trying to soothe his followers with rhetoric and obfuscate the real threats Obama is attempting to do in the 21st century what Bill Clinton did successfully (as a politician measures success) in the 20th century. Unfortunately for Obama many, maybe even most, people can see we are in a war now. Both are highly articulate men. The interesting thing is that Hillary has proven to be a poorer student of her husband.
The interesting thing is that Hillary has proven to be a poorer student of her husband.
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Hillary could still get lucky. Its likely the case that Obama's rhetoric makes 0 sense to asians and hispanics from any country or race. In states where this demographic has been important so far: Nevada and California--Hillary has won.
Recently I casually helped someone recover a deleted email. "Oh you can do that!". "Yes," I said, "it's just information and you can always bring information back from the dead if its stored." And it occurred to me as I said those words that the difference between the 19th century conception of death ("Can these dry bones return?") and the 21st is how much more comfortable we are with the reality of information. People who lived a hundred years ago thought in terms of mechanics, in whose terms the "return of dry bones" seemed so improbable. But we are all familiar with the concept of rescuing an information from a deletions folder.
I think if we were ever to repreach the standard Christian doctrine in images more suitable to the present day, the clearest way to think of the issue death is to consider whether "we are ever forgotten" or whether in some real way, we persist either in some memory or implicitly, in the foundations of the future. But either way, supposing the information is saved, it can be recovered or rather, moved into focus.
But this raises the question of whether we are information worth retaining. Maybe the whole purpose of consciousness is to lead our lives in such a way that we are not spam, not junk mail; that our lives are somehow meaningful information worth retaining.
It was an idle thought that came in that brief exchange about the emails. And however the case may be, it maybe worthwhile to live as we could make a difference; that our message should be worth the keeping.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 02/11/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
"it sucks that iraqi’s have more patriotism for a country that has turned to complete shit more than the people in america who drink starbucks everyday."
Cpl Rock!
Says he wants to get back and have some starbucks coffee:
"I love it when those people serve me!"
---
Nancy calls Surge a FAILURE!
If Harry Reid is a Douche, what will Cpl Rock call Nancy?
i spent my christmas holidays covered in ash from the mortar fire and the IED’s, sleeping under a dirty rug i found in the house. everyone was sleeping way to close for comfort just to stay warm. anyways. a family was there and they obviously didnt want us there. atleast at first. the daughters were very sick so our corpsman treated them. they didnt have electricity so we got them a generator for power, they were cold so we got them gas heaters, we got them food and water and then we gave them $500. by the end of the week long visit with them we were drinking tea with them. when we left we cleaned their house better than it was when we got there. i even have pictures with the family. they told us that they liked marines and they would help us as much as they could and they gave us some information on the insurgents in the area. we ended up catching a HUGE target down the road from there house because of it."
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Fred: We must become a society that really believes that truth is a defense
While your analysis of Obama is spot on, this one single observation carries forward an increasingly important message.
For quite some time I maintained that Islam was of greater danger than PC thought. With the actions of Rowan Williams and others like him, I have been forced to reconsider that position. Multiculturalists are not just acting as a force multiplier for Islam, they are actively assuming an even greater role as the vanguard of attack against the West. This primary function brings us back to the central point.
In an American court of law, truth has ALWAYS been the best defense. Ayn Rand might put this same concept as A=A. ANYONE who seeks to erode the primacy of truth must be regarded as the very worst sort of enemy. Only this sort of Orwellian dismantling of philosophic reality can possibly achieve the real objectives of multiculturalism. Far too much of the PC agenda cannot withstand proper scrutiny without first having perspective and the fundamental properties of intellectual perception mangled beyond recognition.
And so an American voting public can be swayed by someone who elucidates only the barest glimmer of an agenda. Even as facts on the ground point towards a reality that is entirely contrary to Obama's calls for change and a brighter future. Being any part of those who would reward Louis Farrakhan is regression to the anti-Semitism of World War II and has no place in civilized society.
Whiskey_199: At that point, the only solution is simply to wipe out the proliferators. ALL OF THEM.
This has long been one of the few functional deterrents to terrorism that I've seen suggested alongside my own candidates. Simply inform Pakistan, North Korea, Syria, Iran et al that a single terrorist nuclear attack on American soil results in all of them disappearing from the face of this earth.
It's long past tea to make Islam and its accomplices scramble to reverse the immense damage they have done to our world's stability. Those who have labored so hard to sow insecurity must be made to feel the same in spades.
The same goes for Islam. It must be told to clean its own house under penalty of extermination. Muslims must begin purging their own ranks of jihadists or understand that Islam will no longer exist in any recognizable form.
All the more uglier since it's entirely avoidable.
While it is easy to blame Western inaction for upping the butcher's bill so needlessly, one must always remember that without Islam's incessant predation upon the West none of this would be necessary. It is the ugliness of Islam itself that drives all of the other insanity. We hardly can be to blame for being required to use extreme measures against a cult that only responds to exceptional force. That is their choosing and from all indications Islam wouldn't have it any other way.
So be it.
Peter: The world improves proportionately with the departure from this earth of every person old enough to have a memory of the 1960s.
Piss off, you vile git. Not all Baby Boomers hate America.
Wretchard: Maybe the whole purpose of consciousness is to lead our lives in such a way that we are not spam, not junk mail; that our lives are somehow meaningful information worth retaining.
Precisely, whether that "meaningful" aspect be found in art, music, invention, literature, scientific discovery or a victorious battle plan, all of them are information that history will often retain.
Perhaps a further sign of things to come:
thanks to Bill Gertz and Claudia Rosett, Hesham Islam will leave his post next month. Now if we can somehow convince the sluggish powers that be to investigate CAIR and other :Muslim Civil Rights" groups, we might just hang on to our country.
Good news indeed.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=56110
Wretchard,
Your musings sound a lot like Donne's famous meditation #17
" all mankind is of one author5 and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language6; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice7; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves8 again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another9 "
I read today that Hesher Islam is now being forced to resign from the Department of Defense, allegedly because of 'holes in his resume' and the wrong sort of Muslim Brotherhood connections (sorry, can't immediately find the link).
What's disturbing about this, apart from what we already knew, was a reference to his having been a close adviser to the Deputy Secretary of Defense for 'a long time', sat in on classified briefings, all the things one really does not want to hear about someone working right at the top of the Department of Defense.
"Although conventional wisdom sees Barack Obama as the future, I think he represents the past, even if he becomes President. He'll take the Fifth on every one of the key controversies the world struggles with today. Not because he's stupid but because his constituency won't let him face the issues."
Yes, indeed. To illustrate your point, have you seen this news video of an Obama campaign office? Prominently displayed is a Cuban flag emblazoned with Che Guevara's fascist face.
Thank you for your post, pst314.
This definitely needs to be shared around.
I love it. Barak Hussein Obama declines to place an American Flag on his lapel, with mealy-mouthed excuses about how it might be misinterpreted. But his supporters openly celebrate the Marxist murderer Che Guevara.
Thank God for people's unguarded moments, so we get glimpses of truth they may not have wanted us to think about.
In a world of possiblities I look to see what variations can be constructed. A lynchpin in one posits the possibility that rather than Islam expanding throughout the four corners, it is that by our flight we are in fact being herded.
Firelight and Drambuie will do that.
Europe in the house of war
Europe may not have war, but it already has violence: its political authorities cringe and scurry and evade and lie in the face of actual or threatened violence by its Muslim communities. If its duly-constituted governments abandon their monopoly of violence to self-appointed religious leaders, the likelihood is that a river of blood will flow, just as Powell warned in 1968.
Wretchard: Maybe the whole purpose of consciousness is to lead our lives in such a way that we are not spam, not junk mail; that our lives are somehow meaningful information worth retaining.
Zenster said...Precisely, whether that "meaningful" aspect be found in art, music, invention, literature, scientific discovery or a victorious battle plan, all of them are information that history will often retain.
Blogger Dash said...
Wretchard,
Your musings sound a lot like Donne's famous meditation #17
" all mankind is of one author5 and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language6; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice7; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves8 again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another9 "
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this is an old question.
it was one of the central questions of the reformation. Are we saved by faith (in Jesus) plus good works as the catholics believed. Or are we saved by Faith (in Jesus) alone sola fide--as the protestants believed.
You guys views are more jewish-which is all good works--because there is no eternal life--as postulated in the New Testament.
These days paleontologists tend to be godless or rather believe in the god of Chance. but genetists views tend to be much more theistic because they are daily decoding a language.
btw i don't think its such a good idea to be cremated.
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