I'm back.
Much has happened in the world since I began my blogging hiatus. I herein proffer a few of my sarcastic, cynical, and utterly worthless opinions about recent events -- and in other ways generally prove my failure to live the Christianity I profess -- but hey, cynicism, sarcasm, and ridicule are more fun to read than preaching any day, right?
So here we go....
Judge Samuel "Dred" Alito was voted onto the Supreme Star Chamber, 58-42, creating the first prospect in 20 years for changing that institution from a rubber stamp for every leftist social engineering scheme to come down the pike into something more closely resembling the constitutional court our (mysogynistic, imperialist, slave-owning dead white male) founders intended. This leftist blogger, deploying the left's word of choice, has it right:
Yes, you are. Fair and squarely. And if you don't like it, just lie back, think of George Galloway, and pretend you're somewhere else. Like France.
I'm real sorry for this next one, Lord (and please be with them pygmies down in Borneo), but you did inspire Joshua Chapter Ten as well as the beatitudes. It seems that some obscure Dutch alt-rag published some cartoons that a) depicted the Prophet Mohammed (shiite be upon him) and b) were not especially complementary in doing so. Here is my favorite:
The whole collection can be found
here.
Not content that the published cartoons would stir up enough trouble, several Danish imams embellished the offense with a few cartoons of their own:
They're a bit hard to see, I grant. The right-most depicts a dog doing the leftist word to a muslim bent over in prayer.
The cockroachistani reaction was predictable:
They are, quite simply, proving that everything I have thought and said about them over the years, in conversation, email postings, and in this blog is true: muslims, especially of the Salafi variety*, are an implacably and irrationally hostile enemy who can
never be appeased by soft words or conciliatory gestures. I think liberal commentator Juan Williams had it right on Fox the other night: any religion that would react this way to a bunch of cartoons is showing itself to be pretty weak, morally and intellectually. In my book, however, islam jumped the shark morally when ol' MoHo (vomit fill his shoes) consummated his "marriage" to six-year-old Aisha. His religion's moral bankruptcy didn't stop the conquest of the Hijaz, Palestine, or Syria however. It didn't stop the sacking of Alexandria and the destruction of Greek Egyptian civilization; it didn't stop the conquest of Berber Africa and al Andalus; it didn't stop the conquest of France -- Charles Martel did that with cold steel and little mercy. It didn't stop the rape of Constantinople when that city fell and it didn't stop the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans after Kosovo. It didn't stop the muslim march up the Don -- the Cossaks did that with frightening viciousness and admirable efficiency. It didn't stop the muslim march up the Adriatic -- cannon and battering rams did that at Lepanto. It didn't stop the muslim hordes outside the walls of Vienna -- Austrian artillery and Croat light troops made that happen. While we're on the subject, why not ask some Croatians what they think of their muslim brethren in Bosnia. They've fought them for centuries. Their country is crescent shaped to conform to the "Voiena Krajina," the "Military Border" that their Austrian masters forced them to live in because they formed an effective barrier between the advancing Turks and the Austro-Hungarian interior. Their centuries of "low intensity conflict" with the islamic menace made them the best light troops in Europe, adept at jobs we'd give special forces today. I don't know what Serbo-Croatian for "kill them all, let God sort them out" is, but I suspect you'd hear it often over there, even today.
In short, We can sneer at the "primitives" all we want, and make invidious comparisons to "fundamentalists" or the "Christian Right." Moral superiority is cheap and carries little weight in the affairs of men and of nations. We can dismiss this latest violence as just some amusing Third World phenomenon. We can show patronizing tolerance for islamic monstrousness of the sort we saw in France last December and are seeing on the "muslim street" this week, but this superciliousness will not stop one suicide bomber, one IED, one beheading of a female aid worker, one 757 flown into a skyscraper, much less anything worse. One thousand five hundred years ago, when islam was triumphant everywhere and truly did represent the advance of civilization (however unenlightened that civilization would appear to our delicate sensibilities today), ancestors of today's EUniki were huddling inside their thatched hovels and painting themselves blue. The cultural distance between then and now is not as great as it seems (and is not far at all within Salafi islam). It might take only the actions of a few determined enemies to take our decadent, overweight, morally unconcerned culture back to where it was then. What, after all, do muslims they care about the world economy? It certainly hasn't benefited them. The world's muslim population has doubled since 1980, but its share of world trade (even counting oil) has dropped by two-thirds. Destruction of the world's economic edifice could only benefit Salafi islam and makes its promises relatively more appealing to the disenfranchised. We are facing an ideological movement that regards a new Dark Age as a feature, not a bug. If only a few states can be started down the road to collapse, then other weak ones will follow and, before we know it, an entire population of the EU can be sent back to the caves to dye themselves with woad and pay their muslim overlords an appropriate head tax. And there are those within the West who would gladly help bring this about. We see many in our streets protesting the war. We see others who would unwittingly aid the process, like the editorial boards of
CNN and the
NYT, who deplored dislay of the cartoons out of "repsect for islam (no: out of cringing fear) and the pinstripers in the
State Dept. who called for "tolerance and respect" (read: surrender).
That is why the kinds of programs we are trying to institute in Afghanistan and Iraq are the only really moral, yes--Christian, solutions. We have a moral obligation to show that relative prosperity and self-sufficiency are preferable options to tyranny and terror. Do I think it will work in the long run? I'm pretty cynical, but I believe we must try. I fear partial success will lead to retreat and complacency at home, followed by some thing or things much worse than 9/11, after which the US will go Joshua Chapter Ten** on islam's arse and slaughter millions who should die in their beds after fulfilling lives, not as a result of violence, however righteous and necessary it may be. The alternative to this would be retreat followed by surrender followed by Burkhas on beachgoers at Lake Martin (renamed Lake Muhammar) and millions of woad-dyed Eurodhimmis.
Salafi Beachwear
The Joint Chiefs of Staff offered a better lesson in how to handle offensive cartoons after Tom Toles of the WaPo published this execrable exploitation of soldiers' suffering:
The joint chiefs responded:
We were extremely disappointed to see the Jan. 29 editorial cartoon by Tom Toles.
Using the likeness of a service member who has lost his arms and legs in war as the central theme of a cartoon was beyond tasteless. Editorial cartoons are often designed to exaggerate issues, and The Post is obviously free to address any topic, including the state of readiness of the armed forces. However, The Post and Mr. Toles have done a disservice to readers and to The Post's reputation by using such a callous depiction of those who volunteered to defend this nation and, as a result, suffered traumatic and life-altering wounds.
Those who visit wounded veterans in hospitals have found lives profoundly changed by pain and loss. They also have found brave men and women with a sense of purpose and selfless commitment that causes battle-hardened warriors to pause.
While The Post and some of its readers may not agree with the war or its conduct, these men and women and their families are owed the decency of not having a cartoon make light of their tremendous physical sacrifices.
As the joint chiefs, we rarely put our hand to one letter, but we cannot let this reprehensible cartoon go unanswered.
PETER PACE
General, U.S. Marine Corps
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
EDMUND P. GIAMBASTIANI JR.
Admiral, U.S. Navy
Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
MICHAEL W. HAGEE
General, U.S. Marine Corps
Commandant of the Marine Corps
PETER J. SCHOOMAKER
General, U.S. Army
Chief of Staff
MICHAEL G. MULLEN
Admiral, U.S. Navy
Chief of Naval Operations
T. MICHAEL MOSELEY
General, U.S. Air Force
Chief of Staff
If the chiefs had chosen an islamic-type response, the result would have been a small diameter bomb through Tom Toles' office window. They could thus have done civilization a favor, but they chose the high road instead. Note to Abdullah, Muhammar, Akhmed, et al: this is how such protests should be conducted.
Meanwhile, the left and the Democrats have been screaming for weeks now that the Bushitler Administration's "illegal" wiretapping of this nation's enemies represented the greatest threat to human liberty since Shrub had Paul Wellstone assassinated. This story is just too stupid to be worthy of comment, except to again point out that there are those within the West who would gladly hasten its demise.
One of the last heroines of a great age passed this week. She still stood for civil rights even after it devolved into today's universal scramble for handouts and "entitlements." A noble lady, above the fray. She will be missed.
Of course, our friends the Democrats couldn't resist the temptation to turn
her funeral into a political circus. America's Worst President, Jimmuh Cawtuh, said New Orleans levy breaks and Gulf tidal surge proved that the Kings' quest for racial justice hadn't ended. Yep: Bush conjured up the storm with secret military technology and then dynamited the levies just to pick on black folks. Oh, and J Edgar Hoover (in Jack Kennedy's Administration) wiretapped the Kings, just like Bushitler wiretaps every African-American in the country today. Then Rev Joseph Lowery stood up and proclaimed that World War IV was a conspriracy to kill dark-skinned people overseas while stealing medical insurance money from dark-skinned people over here. (To their credit, Dr. IzIz and his wife, Madame Robespierre, behaved themselves.) Like their muslim brethren, the Democrats and
SCUMists in general jumped the moral shark long ago. That doesn't mean they won't obtain power again, however. In fact, it somewhat improves their chances of doing so.
In local news, five rural churches were set on fire last week and four more were burned this week here in Alabama.
The MSM, of course, is not touching the thought of "hate crime" with a ten foot pole. It can't be a hate crime because the churches torched claimed mostly white congregations. One must be on the short list of Officially Approved Oppressed Minorities to be the victim of a hate crime. Persecuting Christians is okay, apparently.
Update: Several of the congregations were predominantly black, several white, so race was not a motive one way or the other, it seems.
Yes, folks: Rape, death, riots, arson, pillage, perfidy, murder, and bad cartoons. Ahhhh, it's good to be back!
Monk
