Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Sunday, September 27, 2015

"Refugee" Disaster: President Obama, You Built This; You Own This.

Sorry for the long delay in posting. Life and other frivolous matters keep getting in the way of serious blogging.

I have been playing around with my dogs and my old cars--and even added another one to the collection (1973 Mustang Mach 1) which is causing some grief. The previous owner, it turns out, was a very clever, perhaps a bit too clever, shade tree mechanic. I am finding lots of "non-standard" parts, home-made, in fact. It seems, for example, he rebuilt the Hurst shifter in his backyard with whatever spare bolts and pieces of metal he had laying about. The transmission itself also shows signs of excessive "cleverness," as does the four barrel carburetor and the clutch. The front suspension is shot, and the . . . well, never mind, I will cut to the chase, the Diplowife is not happy.

So, naturally, the unhappiness resulting from an ill-thought-out purchase leads to thinking about the ravages of Progressivism we see on our TV and computer screens daily. I was struck yesterday by reports out of Germany (here and here, for example) that authorities seek to downplay the growing violent criminality introduced into German communities by the recent influx of "Syrian refugees," who, of course, are neither Syrian nor refugees.

Wow! Who woulda thunk problems would result from putting into the heart of Europe hundreds-of-thousands of young men who follow a creed, i.e., Islam, that advocates hate, conquest, enslavement, and death for non-believers, and considers women less worthy than goats? The response of German authorities to Muslim violence? Warn German women not to provoke their new neighbors by going about with too much skin exposed.

As I noted well over two years ago, the fantasies of modern Liberals/Progressives can and will get you killed,
The examples are endless. From the liberal refusal to allow us to become energy independent, the liberal refusal to see what Islam does everywhere it takes root, and the liberals' seemingly endless assault on the family, everywhere we look we see the death and destruction that modern liberalism brings to our shores and promotes overseas.
To speak out on this is to risk being labeled a racist and hate-monger. To fail to speak out, however, means being complicit to some of the greatest crimes on the planet: the crimes of the liberals.
Some time back, I also wrote that we can now see what a post-USA, post-Western world looks like. The ancient "Muslim Murder Machine," after some 1400 years, has gotten a new lease on life as a result of weakness and self-defeat in the West. The Muslim Murder Machine is on the march, and marching into the West, what's left of it. While we argue about how many "refugees" we should take, whether and how to vet them, and the need to show compassion and tolerance, the Muslim world laughs at us and willingly assists in our suicide.

As I also wrote over three years ago (here), "we are not at war, just under attack." This so-called "refugee crisis" is merely another and very clever manifestation of Islam's ceaseless war against the West.

As though all this were not bad enough, another Diplomad prediction is coming true (see also here and here). President Obama's bizarre handling of the original Syrian crisis--remember "red lines" and poison gas?--has left a huge opening for Russia to reassert itself. Putin's Russia, a country many times weaker than the USA, has become the "go-to" power in the Middle East. As predicted, Russia has moved to save its Assad ally, AND--Oh, the cleverness!--to wage war against ISIS in the name of protecting Christianity! Yes, Russia, Shia Iran's greatest ally, can portray itself as defender of Christendom. Even Israel's pro-USA, tough-as-nails PM makes the now obligatory pilgrimage to Moscow to call on Czar Vlad. Israel cannot rely on the pajama boys running Washington, and must make accommodations with the growing presence and power of Russia.

Here's another Diplomad prediction. Eastern Europe will turn to the protection of Russia. If this Muslim invasion continues, and especially if it continues to be encouraged by the West, Russia will, again, become the Great Protector of the Slavs.

For my faithful seven or eight readers, of course, none of my predictions is earthshaking. All of you could and probably did make the same ones. Anybody with any sense could see this stuff coming. Obama, Clinton, and Kerry (with notable assists from Merkel and Cameron) built and own this.

The disasters now sweeping our world were not inevitable, and all were quite preventable.

80 comments:

  1. The questions facing us are:
    1. Can we fix this? If so, how?
    2. If not, can we contain the damage?
    3. How do we make sure that Obama and his gang are held fully accountable for their folly?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am really speechless at the inanity I see happening around the circles of the ruling elites these days. If I, an amateur history enthusiast could see disaster, what about all those trained seals in Western governments and their propaganda organs?

    Merkel says: Send more and what happens?

    As much as I don't like the option, I think we should give anti-Putanism a rest for a while to make common cause in the battle for civilization. And we should reassess our historical views. The Reconquista and Crusades were GOOD THINGS. We need them again.

    Sissi and the King of Jordan will be allies (and relieved)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Replies
    1. Pretty close . . . but my is red


      Delete
    2. Does your have the horn embedded in the steering wheel?

      Delete
  4. Liberals don't solve problems, they enlarge them until they are unsustainable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Extremely good point, Millie.

      Delete
    2. For many leftists, breakdown of society and the state is the desired outcome, not an unintended result of policies and actions. This process of destroying the state and culture was described as the Cloward-Piven strategy for social welfare, and originally outlined by Karl Marx as an inevitable result of dissatisfied workers rising up and destroying the current capitalist system to be inevitably be replaced by a communist utopia with nobody but the state owning anything. Unfortunately for Marx and other committed communists, the rising living standard enabled by the flow-on effects of capitalism meant that the was never to be wholesale uprisings in the Western World, but that has certainly not stopped so many of them attempting to make the proletariat so unhappy with their lot that Revolution becomes inevitable.

      Unfortunately some of us know that the current system is unsustainable, and the longer it goes, and the more that the lazy, the inept, the unlucky and the criminal rely on handouts by the government stealing money from the wealthy to give to the less-wealthy, the worse the problem is becoming. USA is $18 trillion in debt, and with unfunded liabilities in the hundreds of trillions and is almost never going to pay this off and soon may be unable to even pay the interest on this debt. Even now we have people demanding welfare money claiming that they deserve payback, since 'I paid my taxes' in the past, not realising that the government was spending these taxes faster than it was gathering them in those past times. Retirees on fixed incomes (who planned for their future and put aside their own money) will then pay for the massive mismanagement as the US currency may go into hyper-inflation to devalue the US debt to something manageable.

      Delete
    3. Way back in the 4th century B.C., Aristotle noted that there comes a time in the life of a "politeia" (rule by the many) that the poor majority realize they can use their political power to vote the property of the better-off few into their own pockets. They then degenerate in to a "demokrateia" (I think the etymology of our English "democracy" is plain).

      Delete
  5. The migrants amount to a flash mob of people formerly resident in refugee camps adjacent to Syria and various other loci. The responsible party for generating this flash mob is Angela Merkel along with several supporting players. Obama et al own the ISIS disaster.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The ISIS disaster which gives cover to the "refugee" disaster.

      Delete
    2. Much as I find it difficult to trust an old KaGeBenik, the little I heard of Putin's UN speech strikes me as rather reasonable. Our American courtship of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Syrian rebellion has been one disaster after another; and for anyone who has been awake, probably the best reason why Shrillary Shrooooooo needs to stay home and bake cookies (is she can't go to jail).

      Also, the whole Islamic explosion from the 1970's to the present ought to warn us that culture matters--and this comes from someone whose own family blends Far East and West; and that the economic determinism that has informed our discourse about all things political, military, adn humanitarian, has served us very poorly. A full belly does not necessarily quench a culturally determined fire in the belly.

      Delete
    3. That's almost exactly what I was thinking. Why is *Putin* the guy making the most sense here?
      I just have a difficult time really getting angry about Putin. He's a domestic abuser, definitely. But he only annexed Crimea after Kiev decided to run roughshod over the voting rights of all russians in Ukraine. Yanukovych might've been corrupt, but he was run out of office, not voted out. Kiev protesters seemed to know they'd never win the presidency against the russian voting bloc, so they simply seized power.
      I'm not unsympathetic to the Kiev peeps, but the following schism is a pretty straightforward result of those actions.
      As ugly as the annexation and continuing intervention is on Putin's part, what would we suggest russia do? Ignore the problem on their border where the votes of russian speakers are being completely ignored?

      Obama's really a similar brute in this encounter... yeah... an unknowing, indifferent brute, but a belligerent nonetheless. He likes what the Kiev folks say, so like any idiot, he's going to back them regardless of how they got there or their probability of success.

      Just my opinion... if the OSCE hadn't declare Yanukovych's victories to be reasonably fair, I'd be much more sympathetic.

      - reader #1482

      Delete
    4. Putin is making the most sense because he lies well.

      Davod

      Delete
  6. I hope that someday I'll be able to read a news story about Our President without muttering vile obscenities under my breath ... or shouting them at my computer screen.

    That hasn't happened yet, though, and I doubt that it ever will until February 2017 at the earliest.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There's many stories regarding Obama I can read with equanimity, even relief. They all involve him playing golf and doing not much else.

      Delete
  7. Not to disagree with anything you have written, Dip, but I think it is possible Russian involvement in Syria is not entirely a bad thing. It will cost them, it will bleed them, and ultimately it will demonstrate to the world (and especially their potential allies) that they are not very smart and not invincible. Think Afghanistan 1979. Similar to what Kissinger said about the Iran/Iraq war, my regret is that Russian involvement ever has to come to an end.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree and I also think Iran may be getting itself into a quagmire, as well. I fear, however, that Europe is doomed.

      Delete
    2. I don't think Iran is stepping into a quagmire, not even a pile of poop. They're not 'restrained' by the likes of our liberal second guessers. They're going to pulverize all sunni populations between the Gulf and the Mediterranean and any additional ethnic groups that get in their way. These aren't 'half measure' people, and they're not averse to sending hordes of children into minefields.
      Iran has a terrible economy, but it far exceeds the financial backing of ISIS and all the other sunni groups in their way, and there's no internal dissent that could stop Iran from executing with everything they've got.
      It's theirs for the taking, and they're already helping themselves to it.

      - reader #1482

      Delete
    3. Correct, reader #1428. That is the difference between the "West" and much of the rest of the world. Do you think Putin cares about public opinion if he directs crushing attacks against Syrian rebels? Does he care about photos of dismembered children caused by artillery attacks? No. Do the mad mullahs care about the "oh-so-concerned" Western intelligentsia's feelings about flattening rebel strongholds with carpet bombing or gas attacks? No.

      Delete
    4. And interestingly here's Putin's speech at the UN today saying to Obama: Learn The Lessons Of Soviet History, "Social Experiments For Export" Do Not Work. Well, he knows the costs and the outcome so I wonder what's his real game?

      Delete
    5. The irony is---was Putin wrong? OK, we replace Assad. Then what? This has been the conundrum I've wrestled with since all this started a few years ago. Assad is a b*astard-but he's a secular b*astard.

      As far as some sort of coalition of Syrian moderates, I fear that ship has sailed. Literally, in the general direction of Europe. That's if it ever really existed.

      Now we watch Europe flushing itself down the toilet in acts of appeasement to invaders that we didn't even see in 1940.

      It's enough to keep my hunkered down, watching episodes of Burn Notice and ignoring the news.

      Delete
  8. We could do it... 750,000 troops, a $150B dollars ante, a huge shift in our domestic economy and drawing our overall forces predominantly down to only one theater, we could stabilize from the mediterranean to the gulf. After 50-75 years of hard work, huge sacrifices from our armed forces, and huge sacrifices from our people at home, the region would be livable.
    Expensive in lives and dollars.
    Instead, we'll keep shopping, watching the slaughter, fencing off the area a bit and hoping it doesn't come to our shores. It's kinda like the Roman games, only via youtube and CNN. Gives people something to talk about.

    - reader #1482

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not so much the Roman games as Byzantium futzing around during the original rise of "islam" - buying off the abassids, weakening spain and italy so much that islam glommed great chunks of western europe...

      And this time no Charles Martel or Charlemagne, and England is no longer separated by sea and independent of europe.

      Delete
    2. With all due respect, 1482, I'm not very enthusiastic about investing my sons' lives in making the Middle East safe for SSM, abortion, and embittered feminism. That's what the next American intervention will be all about.

      Delete
    3. .... sadly, I agree with you Kepha... the above is predicated upon actually having a reason and purpose to doing this, and that's not going to happen with our completely fractured society.
      We don't do things internationally for the good of others anymore, we do them for bankrupt ideologies. As pope fancypants just pointed out recently, we can only serve people, not ideologies.... he must've missed the talking points suggested by the latin american dictators.

      - reader #1482

      Delete
    4. #1482; The pope got the memo all right. It was from his Argentine 'dictator', third way Juan Peron. Of course Peron-ism led to economic disaster as all such leftist schemes inevitably do. But it didn't work because the wrong people were in charge or perhaps it was the USA conspiring with wreckers, hoarders, yadda, yadda...

      How this pope got there and why Benedict XVI renounced the papacy will be a question for a long time.

      Delete
  9. Well, damn ... you didn't buy something from my dear Dad's estate, did you? He was a shade-tree mech par excellence, but some of his work-around solutions ... well, his solution to starting up the pickup that was the second or third-tier vehicle was ... obscure. I am fairly certain that the procedure for getting the darned thing to turn over involved the sacrifice of a small chicken on the engine block, and dancing widdershins three times around the vehicle ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was wondering about the feathers on the engine bloc . . .

      Delete
  10. Mustangs kind of declined after 1968 especially in performance. It wasn't until the early 80's they started making a comeback.
    Putin's going to have a say in the European "migrant" problem, you notice they are not packing the roads to Russia. I bet you if the EU relaxes the sanctions over the Ukraine the Migrant problem will magically ease up.
    James the Lesser

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We do not see the "migrants" packing the roads to Africa either. Gee I wonder why? After all, much of Africa is (mis-)ruled by leftists so why wouldn't people flock to those paradises?

      Delete
    2. Paradise is always just an edict away for leftists. Just ask them, they are as we speak caring about us and all of humanity in their own special way.

      Delete
    3. Of course the migrants are going to Western Europe. It is like the answer Willie Sutton gave about robbing banks.

      Delete
  11. Immigrants bring their poisonous culture and impair the existing culture. Southern California, for example. Bad public schools, hospitals bleeding money for dialysis patients from Mexico and points south.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Dale Carnegie the Obama way:
    "How to lose friends and alienate people"
    Hopeychangey!

    ReplyDelete
  13. I LOVE this blog.

    Clearly you don't just have a "faithful 7 or 8 readers" (good joke, though). Please keep doing it…

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't have a "faithful 7 or 8 readers"? OMG! It is down to four or five, again?

      Thanks.

      Delete
    2. Mr. Mad,
      Sometimes you are a hard taskmaster! Fear not, 9 or 10 is definitely in the cards, word has spread about you hither and yes, yon.
      James the Lesser

      Delete
    3. I've declare myself as reader #1482, and that was a while ago... I'll bet it's at least 1484 by now..

      -- reader #1482

      Delete
  14. Today they bake, tomorrow they brew
    Then all humanity in shariah and death they plan to stew
    For still far too few understand the devious game
    And fewer still will say it aloud, that simply Islam is the evil's name!

    ReplyDelete
  15. If I understand things correctly, Merkel is supposedly inviting the "refugees" to her country out of simple kindness and sympathy for people in difficult circumstances.

    I simply cannot believe this. She's an astute woman, and there has to be a bigger game, but I can't fathom what it might be. What is she hoping to achieve at the strategic geopolitical level by her actions that appear to be suicidal stupidity?

    I'd appreciate it if Mr Diplomad or anybody else would provide some insight into this conundrum.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe "Brunhilde" Merkel is locked into a Wagnerian worldview.

      It seems to be an occasional "occupational hazard" for German "leaders".

      "Götterdämmerung", (with nukes, etc.), anyone?

      Delete
    2. I think she sees them as workers and the Turks have been OK although not really integrated. These people are coming for welfare, not work. They have few skills aside from bombs.

      Delete
    3. I disagree that the Turks have been OK in Germany. They are not really integrated because IIUC it is darn near impossible for them to become "real" German citizens. That's a big problem because you have a segment of your pop which will always be second-class.

      Delete
    4. But Merkal is also saying that all EU countries should take their share.

      Davod

      Delete
    5. The demographics of the EU are probably why Michael K is correct. The welfare state is unsustainable without more young workers added all the time. The migrants / invaders do not have the skills and work ethic of the aging Germans which will mean the economic boost expected probably won't happen.

      The newcomers are gonna be disappointed at some point when the spigot of 'other people's money' runs dry. It won't be pretty as the newcomers are not the docile subjects the EU is used to.

      Delete
  16. Re: what is Merkel hoping to achieve.

    I read somewhere online that she is vying for the top UN position when Bai Moon (sp) steps down next year... hence the "compassion" to "refugees".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Put her and O in thunderdome. Two pols enter, one secretary general leaves.

      Delete
  17. Homemaker here, I watch and read the news - the regional leaders around Syria/Iraq have been meeting with the US for years, reports surface they are concerned. Even the King of Jordan made some comment a while back in an interview with an American journalist that Jordan is having to rethink it's policies and that was after a visit with Obama. Months of news of leaders meeting with Putin, meeting with Lavrov, meeting with the head of the Russian military and then today Putin unveils all this at the UN, no less. The press is stunned in recent days - how did this happen? Even worse, the WH is stunned too...

    Obama, McCain, and neocon "experts" are still stuck on hunting for elusive "Syrian moderates". Sure, Russia has its own agenda and interests, but truly the biggest power vacuum Obama created is not in the ME - it's the global leadership spot America used to occupy. I wrote a post on my blog last week, "Birds of a feather and the "Polish plan" - kind of sums it up: http://libertybellediaries.com/2015/09/22/birds-of-a-feather-and-the-polish-plan/

    ReplyDelete
  18. I was just in Britain with friends who live there. I get the sense that many middle class Britons are self segregating into south east England where property values are getting crazy. My friend mention that I would "not see a brown face unless it was a doctor from the local hospital." I didn't. The streets were filled with typical English faces from the 1950s and lots of young mothers with prams. No Muslim head scarves.

    Interesting. London is busy and rich but the rest of the country is in trouble. My friend said everybody in England wants to retire to the southeast.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My friend said everybody in England wants to retire to the southeast.

      And Yogi Berra said nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded.

      --

      Some European countries have more intense variation in income levels than does the United States. I think you see that when you have a national metropolis which combines the role of political, financial, and cultural capital all in one. You have this in Britain, France, and Spain, not in the U.S. or Germany or Italy.

      In Britain, 12 of the 15 coarse regions have income levels between 71% and 89% of the national mean, which would be unremarkable variation in this country given the number of units. Two of the regions (East and South East) have income levels of 92% and 109% of national means. The thing is, about a quarter of the population of those regions lives in the densely settled portions of the Home Counties, which is to say they are in effect suburbs of London. The Greater London regions has income levels 70% above national means. I'll wager the means for the East and South East are elevated because of suburban dwellers in Surrey and Hertfordshire, &c, and that your really looking at the London conurbation (20% of the country) v. the rest, with the West Country and Scotland the best of the rest and Wales and Ulster trailing. The ratio of those working to those not (among those between 15 and 65) varies between 2.13 (Northeast) to 3.67 (West Country), with the national mean at 2.77.

      The regional distinctions are not novel. I'm remembering PBS documentaries produced in 1986 harping on it. We can check the stats, but I doubt things are any worse than they were. (The whole country is more affluent, of course).

      Delete
    2. My friends are in Sussex and property there is astronomical. It's an hour from London. Look. They live in a 300 year old house and the house next door sold last year for 2 million pounds.

      Delete
  19. "Warn German women not to provoke their new neighbors by going outside with too much skin exposed." Better idea: Warn German women not to go out without extra speed loaders for their .45.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Speedloaders?? Hahaha... You've just proven that you actually *are* an Old Man!!! :-)

      I shoot a variety of combat pistol matches and because I'm an old guy too I use a revolver with speeloaders.

      Finally succumbed and bought a semiauto 9mm afew months ago, but I can't shoot the damn thing at all well.

      Delete
    2. I bought a Colt 45 1911 model and I shoot it much better than my Beretta which I gave to my son. He already has my black powder guns and loved the Beretta. The last time I had fired a 45 Colt 1911 I was ten years old.

      Delete
    3. In my experience, revolvers are a lot easier to shoot accurately than a semi-auto. In my very blue state, we are limited on the number of rounds in a magazine, so the advantage of a semi-auto is reduced.

      That said, I keep a .40cal S&W by the bedside as my home defense weapon. Its accuracy goes to hell beyond 20 ft.. but in my apartment, the perp is likely going to be a lot closer than that.

      Delete
  20. This cannot and will not end well. Over a hundred years of incessant vile and insidious progressive lies and propaganda have accomplished the demise of Western Man and Western Civilization. The barbarians are through the gate and the savages are among us. We have become Elio.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Old Man: Perfect...the stock, immediate response in most western countries now to situations like this where Muslims are flowing in is "Whatever you do, don't incite them or offend them." Yankee Golf Bravo Sierra Mike...

    DiploMad, speaking of unexpected mods to your vehicle, I've learned with TR8 that Lucas electrics are bad enough, but when a previous owner decides to do some mods and "corrections" (and doesn't leave documentation), things get really sporting.

    Then again, when you put your right foot down and unleash that V8, all's right in the world...

    ReplyDelete
  22. Japan: "We're going to donate $1.5 BILLION to help resolve this syrian 'refugee' crisis."
    me: "Wait.. how many of them are you going to take in?"
    Japan: "What are you talking about, we're *rich* not *STUPID*."

    - reader #1482

    ReplyDelete
  23. heh.. just saw this:
    http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2011/0127/Are-you-smarter-than-a-US-diplomat-Take-our-Foreign-Service-Exam/US-History

    - reader #1482

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. apparently that's what our media thinks the foreign service does... politically motivated trivia?
      "what would ya say, ya do here?"

      Delete
  24. Diplomad, This question is slightly off topic and, considering the latest developments in the Middle-East, Hillary Clinton's e-mails could even be seen as frivolous. Only 400 Top Secret, Secret, Confidential and NOFORN in 12,000 e-mails? Does 400 seem a little low for the Secretary of State?

    Davod

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dip, how many late Friday dumps will be required for the number to get to something close to realistic.

      Delete
    2. Number just changed.
      They are slowly leaking more and more.

      leaperman

      Delete
  25. It looks like the GOP-E really really want Jeb Bush. That's all we need... Fricking dynasty.
    http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2015/10/01/day-1-operation-cold-anger-begins/#more-106728


    leaperman

    ReplyDelete
  26. Winged Hussars defending Vienna, again?

    ReplyDelete
  27. Two things have been at work and serving us poorly in recent Middle Eastern policy.

    The first, I regret to say, is the democratic peace theory, first promulgated by Immanuel Kant in the late 18th century, which held that if you could replace monarchs with republics, Europe would be a lot more peaceful, since citizens would not vote to have their sons butchered in war. It seemed to have been born out in Europe after WWII as well; since we saw that democracies didn't seem to go to war with each other.

    Such a scenario was eminently sensible to Kant, the son of Pietistically-inclined Lutherans and many others formed by the Christian tradition (and no doubt to Jews, too). But how it would translate in an Islam-informed political-cultural milieu is another matter.

    The other problem is that the Democratic Party, desirous of getting on the good side of "the wave of the future" (as America so eminently failed to do with the Communists immediately following WWII), started an ill-informed and utterly disastrous courtship of the Muslim Brotherhood and supposed "moderates" in the Syrian civil war. Yet this flew in the face of Islamic ideologues' declared hatred of the West not just for colonialism, but also for things that we just happen to be--including being respectful towards women, allowing Jews to vote, and remaining skeptical towards Muhammad's claim to be a prophet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Islamic democracy. To liberals with no faith in anything, all religions appear to be 'just the same'. So if Christianity can manage democracy, then Islam should be able to too. If Judaism can manage democracy, then Islam should be able to too. If Hinduism can manage demo... My picture should be clear at this point.
      To an atheist, all religions are just dogmas and cults, any feature or limitation of one must be shared by all the others.

      - reader #1482

      Delete
    2. Frankly, #1482, I believe that the idea that "any feature or limitation of one must be shared with all the others" (and, I presume you are leaving out Evolutionary Materialism, Secular Humanism, Objectivism, or whatever) is precisely the mindset that continues to mislead our dealings with the Islamic world.

      A good part of how our own system of limited government, checks and balances, etc. was worked out by European Reformed believers back in the 1500's and 1600's, largely because they felt that unchecked power in one that can sin (all of us, except Jesus Christ) is "an accursed power" (Samuel Rutherford, _Lex Rex_, 1644). It was the Reformation's deep suspicion of fallen human nature, not the so-called enlightenment's sunny assessment of the same, that led to belief in the political supremacy of law over monarch and Britain's decision to seek safety in numbers (the Parliamentary system).

      Islam, in contrast, denies the doctrine of original sin. It believes firmly that somehow there will be a "rightly guided Caliph", and hence must condemn itself to futile rounds of mutual recrimination and conspiracy mongering.

      Delete
    3. Yeah, I suspect that a 50-75 year successful occupation of the middle east would result in a dramatic reduction in Islam. It's not just incompatible with other religions and cultures in the world, it's also incompatible with itself. I'm guessing that an extended peace would shatter it.

      Just reading again about the foundations of modern liberal nations (not the 'left' meaning of 'liberal') makes me sad for today and our apparent increasing reliance on 'executive order' and 'judicial fiat'. But Christians aren't promised a democracy, they're promised a burden. :)

      - reader #1482

      Delete
    4. Ok... I think my thoughts on this congealed just a bit. Nihilist lefties don't like criticism of Islam and disparage it as 'Islamophobia' precisely because of this. Because it suggests that not all religions 'are the same'. That's the real threat to the Liberal... they're already rejecting religions without thinking... to suggest that they're "not all just a scam" is a threat to their entire view of the world.

      - reader #1482

      Delete
  28. Uh oh... Obama whipped out his 'Q' word... yup.. quagmire..
    Mr. Obama, how are you going to turn Syria into a quagmire for Russia?
    I think he somehow believes that 'quagmires' are forces of nature and grass roots opposition. He must think the Viet Cong was homegrown and self-funded, and that the mujahideen drove Russia out of Afghanistan without the backing of the anti-Soviet superpower.
    I would cite Iraq, except that we defeated an insurgency there that happened to be backed by nobody bigger than minor regional powers. Of course, until Obama sold out our sacrifice there.

    No Mr. Obama... if you want Syria to become a quagmire for Russia, you are going to have to MAKE it one....

    - reader #1482

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That supposes it isn't just empty words meant for domestic consumption. The folks that still treat his statements as credible aren't going to be able to tell the difference in any time frame he cares about.

      Anti-Democrat

      Delete
  29. Replies
    1. It takes only one leader to stand with his people and say NO to make the other EU elites take to their fainting sofas.

      Delete
  30. h/t to Belmont Club for the link:
    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/syria-civil-war-213242

    Another liberal mugged by reality...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wretchard's take:

      http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2015/10/16/hofs-mea-culpa/#more-45340

      Delete