Democracy in Egypt
Everyone is ecstatic that a brutal dictator has fallen in Egypt. The word you hear over and over again is "Democracy!" "Democracy!" "Democracy!" All is going to be sunshine and roses from now on. Sorry, I don’t buy it. 2011 in Egypt is not 1776 America. There may be some Egyptians that have a concept of self rule that includes a respect for natural rights but they are not a majority, not by a long shot. Most Egyptians are fine with killing people who commit adultery or abandon Islam. That men and women should be separated. (I’m sure the burka can’t be far behind) They think cutting off the hands of thieves is appropriate and honor killings are moral. These are not tolerant people who have an innate sense of justice, fairness or proportion. When the democracy, or mob rule, of Egypt results in a fundamentalist Islamic regime as it did in Iran or, more recently, as a result of the "democratic" process in Gaza, I, for one, will not be surprised. But according to what the Obama administration has been saying, they will be.
The fact is this. Islam is a brutal political and religious ideology that is the antithesis of a tolerant, moral society that respects the natural rights of men and women, their lives, their liberties, their property and their ability to pursue happiness as they see fit. Any nation in which Islam is the majority religion and allows a purely democratic process will subjugate its people through the implementation of sharia law and the people will accept it. Islam means "submission" for a reason. Islam teaches people to be slaves and believes that it is right and proper to use force in the application of its ideology. For fourteen hundred years the people of the Middle East have be cultured to accept the brutality of Islam as God’s will and two weeks of protest by a few "westernized" Arabs is not going to change that. Democracy only works if a respect for natural rights is given greater authority than that of a majority vote.
It is time we opened our eyes and moved beyond political correctness and multiculturalism. Not all societies are equal, some are better than others. Can we really equate a society that appoints women to positions of power, secretary of state for example, and one that forces women to cover themselves head to toe and stones them if they are seen in public with a man who’s not a relative? Can we equate a society that is squeamish about the death penalty for the most heinous crimes, believing that putting criminals "to sleep" may be cruel and unusual punishment with a society that beheads people with dull knives and cuts the hands off of thieves? Can we equate a society where economic freedom and the freedom of travel is exercised by all to a society in which women aren’t even allowed to drive or go to school? Can we really equate a society that coddles its children too much to one that believes it is acceptable to strap bombs on them and blow them up? Western societies may not be perfect but if I had my choice, I’d much rather live in one of them than under the sanguine system of sharia. My guess is, you would too.
So after three weeks of our current administration muddling along, sending conflicting messages and generally showing the total ineptness in foreign policy that has been their hallmark, what should our relationship be with Islamic nations? Since the end of World War I we have made one bad decision after another in relation to middle eastern nations and have painted ourselves into a corner. We have allowed ourselves two obvious choices in our current world. We can support a despot who may be "secular" to a degree, and who allows us to buy some friendship. That does nothing but create resentment toward us, a nation that is supposed to be standing for liberty and human rights. The other option is to keep our hands off and let the people decide, even if it results in terrorist, anti-American organizations like Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood taking control, creating even more rogue nations that aid and abet criminals and murderers. This is because we don’t understand the Islamic world or the Islamic religion. Islam is not like Christianity or Judaism, its god is not like YHVH or Jesus. The god of Islam believes that it is just fine to spread his "way" at the point of a sword and it has been that way since the beginning with Mohammed. The god of Islam does not love all people, infidels are not worthy of respect or even life. The god of Islam does not allow for freedom of action, conscience or variation, or so his followers appear to believe through their barbaric repression of any such activity.
If we are looking for equivalency, then Islam is closest to communism. It is a malevolent political ideology that brings misery, slavery, destruction and death wherever it establishes itself. I believe our policy toward Islam should be one of containment, just like we did with communism in the last century. Islamists need to be marginalized and the only way that is going to happen is if we stop buying the only resource that gives them power, oil. Islamic countries, without the help of western technology, would produce nothing of value just as communist countries produce nothing of value. If the "infidels" pulled out of Islamic countries, in a few years they wouldn’t even be able to get their oil out of the ground. If we developed our own resources, we could be independent of their oil and the wealth they use to spread their ideology and terrorism would dry up. This would give us the freedom of action we need to support uprisings like the one in Iran recently, in which the people involved actually have a rudimentary understanding of liberty and natural rights. We need to support efforts, particularly in Europe, to maintain historical western culture, efforts they are finally beginning to make as they have awakened to the threat. At home, we must get over our imposed cultural sensitivity, political correctness and our fascination with multiculturalism and take Muslim leadership at its word when it says that it wants America sharia compliant and that the flag of Islam will fly over the White House. We should take that threat no less seriously than Khruschev’s threat to "bury" us. That means severe restriction on travel from Islamic countries, the deportation of any imam that preaches anti-western hate, the removal of Islamic organizations from prisons and the prohibition of Muslims from our military.
Harsh, yes. But it is time we took a longer view of history. The communists understood this. Major military confrontation was unlikely to yield positive results so infiltration was the preferred method. Unfortunately, they have been very successful. By practically taking over education and media in this country communists/progressives/statists have done more to advance their cause and accomplish the weakening of our society, economy and military effectiveness than anything the old Soviet Union was able to do. But it took generations to accomplish. A larger and larger portion of the American population is finally opening their eyes to this destructive threat. In Europe, it has taken thirty or forty years for Islam to gain the power it has by abusing free institutions and exploiting the self-loathing encouraged in western countries by the multiculturalists. Most Muslims in Europe don’t believe in assimilation and by Europe’s accommodation of this lack of a desire to incorporate, succeeding generations of Muslims have become even more radical and fundamental than their parents. Now there are large enclaves of Islamic radicals all over Europe with their own sharia courts, their loud and violent protests are tolerated, and their ability to abuse free societies makes them much more effective terrorists.
Several European countries are starting to awaken. They have seen the threat to their culture and their way of life, they have seen that their extreme tolerance has excused Muslim intolerance to a degree that they are now living in fear. No one who lives in fear can live free. An individual or nation whose action is dictated by the reaction of the "Arab street"or the threat of terrorism has already become a slave of Islam, an infidel whose usefulness at the moment is the only thing that precludes his death. However, just as Europe is moving in the opposite direction we are fiscally, so we, particularly under the current administration, are becoming more accommodating toward Islamic extremism, not less. When the head of national intelligence doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand the violent nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, we are in trouble. When we refuse to question radicals in our military like the Fort Hood murderer for fear of being labeled racist or intolerant, we are in deep trouble. When we refuse to profile at airports because CAIR might issue a negative press release, it puts us all in danger. When we tolerate Islamic leaders that preach hate and the violent overthrow of our own government in the name of free speech and tolerance, we are signing our own death warrant.
We are only free to the degree we, as a society, value that freedom. If we expect to remain free we cannot continue to tolerate violent ideologies that would reduce us to slavery. If a Soviet army had attempted to invade to impose their ideology upon us by force, would we have opened the gates and surrendered? Of course not. We would have used every means at our disposal to repel them and preserve our liberty. Fifty years ago we understood the titanic struggle we were engaged in. Whether it was a communist with a gun or one with a book, a communist was a communist and every one of them had the same goal, the destruction of America and the subjugation of the world under communist rule. Islam is no different. Whether a Muslim appears with a bomb, a gun or a Koran, his goal is the same. The destruction of western culture and the imposition of sharia law on the world. There may be a few Muslims who appreciate the freedom of the West, who just want to pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan, give to charity, have no aim beyond living according to the dictates of their conscience and don’t believe in using force and violence to advance their beliefs. However, the majority of the Muslims in the world fall into two other categories. There are the minority who are willing, in the present, to use violence to achieve the spread of Islam in the world, following the savage example of their "esteemed" founder, Mohammed. Then there are the majority who, while not currently taking up arms, provide moral support to those who do and if they should ever find themselves in a situation in which they are the majority or Islam has become the de facto political ideology of the land in which they live would heartily embrace the malicious imposition of sharia and the violent subjugation of infidels.
There may be such a thing as a peaceful and moderate Muslim but there is no such a thing as peaceful and moderate Islam, and there has not been since its inception. There is only one way that is going to change and it is going to take a long time, generations, in fact. There must be a growing number of individuals in Islamic countries that learn to appreciate the value of life and liberty, of freedom of conscience, of fundamental natural human rights. Just as Christianity evolved out of the brutality of the Inquisition (although Christianity was not founded as a violent political ideology), Islam must undergo a fundamental change. I believe some of the protesters in Egypt and those in Iran a few years ago have undergone this transformation but they are far from a majority. Even so, they need to be supported. If we ever expect a stable and peaceful world, the desire to coexist cannot be one sided. Freedom of conscience and action and a respect for the life and liberty of your fellow man must be the rule for all. The threat of those who do not appreciate those values to those that do must be taken very seriously. Freedom for ourselves and our posterity is worth fighting for and it is time we realized we are, in reality, in a war for world domination. That is the objective of Islam and they have been pursuing it for fourteen hundred years. They came close to defeating the West once, catching them unprepared. With hundreds of billions of petrodollars at their disposal, they are making a concentrated effort once again. The question is, will we join with those in Europe who have finally realized the grave nature of the struggle and engage in not just a military struggle but in the battle of ideas in which we believe in and support the value of freedom and liberty for all men and women? Or will we continue to deny reality until it, quite literally, blows up in our face?
The fact is this. Islam is a brutal political and religious ideology that is the antithesis of a tolerant, moral society that respects the natural rights of men and women, their lives, their liberties, their property and their ability to pursue happiness as they see fit. Any nation in which Islam is the majority religion and allows a purely democratic process will subjugate its people through the implementation of sharia law and the people will accept it. Islam means "submission" for a reason. Islam teaches people to be slaves and believes that it is right and proper to use force in the application of its ideology. For fourteen hundred years the people of the Middle East have be cultured to accept the brutality of Islam as God’s will and two weeks of protest by a few "westernized" Arabs is not going to change that. Democracy only works if a respect for natural rights is given greater authority than that of a majority vote.
It is time we opened our eyes and moved beyond political correctness and multiculturalism. Not all societies are equal, some are better than others. Can we really equate a society that appoints women to positions of power, secretary of state for example, and one that forces women to cover themselves head to toe and stones them if they are seen in public with a man who’s not a relative? Can we equate a society that is squeamish about the death penalty for the most heinous crimes, believing that putting criminals "to sleep" may be cruel and unusual punishment with a society that beheads people with dull knives and cuts the hands off of thieves? Can we equate a society where economic freedom and the freedom of travel is exercised by all to a society in which women aren’t even allowed to drive or go to school? Can we really equate a society that coddles its children too much to one that believes it is acceptable to strap bombs on them and blow them up? Western societies may not be perfect but if I had my choice, I’d much rather live in one of them than under the sanguine system of sharia. My guess is, you would too.
So after three weeks of our current administration muddling along, sending conflicting messages and generally showing the total ineptness in foreign policy that has been their hallmark, what should our relationship be with Islamic nations? Since the end of World War I we have made one bad decision after another in relation to middle eastern nations and have painted ourselves into a corner. We have allowed ourselves two obvious choices in our current world. We can support a despot who may be "secular" to a degree, and who allows us to buy some friendship. That does nothing but create resentment toward us, a nation that is supposed to be standing for liberty and human rights. The other option is to keep our hands off and let the people decide, even if it results in terrorist, anti-American organizations like Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood taking control, creating even more rogue nations that aid and abet criminals and murderers. This is because we don’t understand the Islamic world or the Islamic religion. Islam is not like Christianity or Judaism, its god is not like YHVH or Jesus. The god of Islam believes that it is just fine to spread his "way" at the point of a sword and it has been that way since the beginning with Mohammed. The god of Islam does not love all people, infidels are not worthy of respect or even life. The god of Islam does not allow for freedom of action, conscience or variation, or so his followers appear to believe through their barbaric repression of any such activity.
If we are looking for equivalency, then Islam is closest to communism. It is a malevolent political ideology that brings misery, slavery, destruction and death wherever it establishes itself. I believe our policy toward Islam should be one of containment, just like we did with communism in the last century. Islamists need to be marginalized and the only way that is going to happen is if we stop buying the only resource that gives them power, oil. Islamic countries, without the help of western technology, would produce nothing of value just as communist countries produce nothing of value. If the "infidels" pulled out of Islamic countries, in a few years they wouldn’t even be able to get their oil out of the ground. If we developed our own resources, we could be independent of their oil and the wealth they use to spread their ideology and terrorism would dry up. This would give us the freedom of action we need to support uprisings like the one in Iran recently, in which the people involved actually have a rudimentary understanding of liberty and natural rights. We need to support efforts, particularly in Europe, to maintain historical western culture, efforts they are finally beginning to make as they have awakened to the threat. At home, we must get over our imposed cultural sensitivity, political correctness and our fascination with multiculturalism and take Muslim leadership at its word when it says that it wants America sharia compliant and that the flag of Islam will fly over the White House. We should take that threat no less seriously than Khruschev’s threat to "bury" us. That means severe restriction on travel from Islamic countries, the deportation of any imam that preaches anti-western hate, the removal of Islamic organizations from prisons and the prohibition of Muslims from our military.
Harsh, yes. But it is time we took a longer view of history. The communists understood this. Major military confrontation was unlikely to yield positive results so infiltration was the preferred method. Unfortunately, they have been very successful. By practically taking over education and media in this country communists/progressives/statists have done more to advance their cause and accomplish the weakening of our society, economy and military effectiveness than anything the old Soviet Union was able to do. But it took generations to accomplish. A larger and larger portion of the American population is finally opening their eyes to this destructive threat. In Europe, it has taken thirty or forty years for Islam to gain the power it has by abusing free institutions and exploiting the self-loathing encouraged in western countries by the multiculturalists. Most Muslims in Europe don’t believe in assimilation and by Europe’s accommodation of this lack of a desire to incorporate, succeeding generations of Muslims have become even more radical and fundamental than their parents. Now there are large enclaves of Islamic radicals all over Europe with their own sharia courts, their loud and violent protests are tolerated, and their ability to abuse free societies makes them much more effective terrorists.
Several European countries are starting to awaken. They have seen the threat to their culture and their way of life, they have seen that their extreme tolerance has excused Muslim intolerance to a degree that they are now living in fear. No one who lives in fear can live free. An individual or nation whose action is dictated by the reaction of the "Arab street"or the threat of terrorism has already become a slave of Islam, an infidel whose usefulness at the moment is the only thing that precludes his death. However, just as Europe is moving in the opposite direction we are fiscally, so we, particularly under the current administration, are becoming more accommodating toward Islamic extremism, not less. When the head of national intelligence doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand the violent nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, we are in trouble. When we refuse to question radicals in our military like the Fort Hood murderer for fear of being labeled racist or intolerant, we are in deep trouble. When we refuse to profile at airports because CAIR might issue a negative press release, it puts us all in danger. When we tolerate Islamic leaders that preach hate and the violent overthrow of our own government in the name of free speech and tolerance, we are signing our own death warrant.
We are only free to the degree we, as a society, value that freedom. If we expect to remain free we cannot continue to tolerate violent ideologies that would reduce us to slavery. If a Soviet army had attempted to invade to impose their ideology upon us by force, would we have opened the gates and surrendered? Of course not. We would have used every means at our disposal to repel them and preserve our liberty. Fifty years ago we understood the titanic struggle we were engaged in. Whether it was a communist with a gun or one with a book, a communist was a communist and every one of them had the same goal, the destruction of America and the subjugation of the world under communist rule. Islam is no different. Whether a Muslim appears with a bomb, a gun or a Koran, his goal is the same. The destruction of western culture and the imposition of sharia law on the world. There may be a few Muslims who appreciate the freedom of the West, who just want to pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan, give to charity, have no aim beyond living according to the dictates of their conscience and don’t believe in using force and violence to advance their beliefs. However, the majority of the Muslims in the world fall into two other categories. There are the minority who are willing, in the present, to use violence to achieve the spread of Islam in the world, following the savage example of their "esteemed" founder, Mohammed. Then there are the majority who, while not currently taking up arms, provide moral support to those who do and if they should ever find themselves in a situation in which they are the majority or Islam has become the de facto political ideology of the land in which they live would heartily embrace the malicious imposition of sharia and the violent subjugation of infidels.
There may be such a thing as a peaceful and moderate Muslim but there is no such a thing as peaceful and moderate Islam, and there has not been since its inception. There is only one way that is going to change and it is going to take a long time, generations, in fact. There must be a growing number of individuals in Islamic countries that learn to appreciate the value of life and liberty, of freedom of conscience, of fundamental natural human rights. Just as Christianity evolved out of the brutality of the Inquisition (although Christianity was not founded as a violent political ideology), Islam must undergo a fundamental change. I believe some of the protesters in Egypt and those in Iran a few years ago have undergone this transformation but they are far from a majority. Even so, they need to be supported. If we ever expect a stable and peaceful world, the desire to coexist cannot be one sided. Freedom of conscience and action and a respect for the life and liberty of your fellow man must be the rule for all. The threat of those who do not appreciate those values to those that do must be taken very seriously. Freedom for ourselves and our posterity is worth fighting for and it is time we realized we are, in reality, in a war for world domination. That is the objective of Islam and they have been pursuing it for fourteen hundred years. They came close to defeating the West once, catching them unprepared. With hundreds of billions of petrodollars at their disposal, they are making a concentrated effort once again. The question is, will we join with those in Europe who have finally realized the grave nature of the struggle and engage in not just a military struggle but in the battle of ideas in which we believe in and support the value of freedom and liberty for all men and women? Or will we continue to deny reality until it, quite literally, blows up in our face?
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