John C. Wright's Blog, page 150
October 26, 2011
Sharia and Secularism
One of my few readers with a real human name, Sean Brooks, asks this riddle:
Problem: how do we suppress jihadism in the US without also doing violence to Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms? And attempts to do so will at once meet accusations the Muslims are being persecuted for their "religion."
My answer is that there is no answer
The Jihadist threat is perfectly, perhaps diabolically, suited to attack the West at the very spot where the West is weakest: our lack of an established religion. Due to the violence of the Reformation and Counter-reformation, the Enlightenment political theory called for a truce in the religious wars, and a cure for the corruptions of the national and established churches, by removing government power from church matters. Each community henceforth was to worship in its own way.
Unexpectedly, the atomistic individualism of the Modern Age ruled that communal worship was kaput: religion henceforth would be a matter of private belief and practice, like your taste in music. Neither your neighbors nor your family had any legitimate concern in your form of worship.
Unfortunately, the Communists and Nazis taught the Islamics during and after WWII the basic principles of cell warfare and political agitation and revolution. But he Jihadi have one advantage the atheist Nazis and Commies never had: their political party is treated, due to a legal fiction, as a church rather than as a political party.
The Enlightenment theory has no way to categorize Sharia-law theocrats. We cannot simply say 'Islam is a political party, like communism, bent on world conquest and the destruction of Western civilization, and therefore should be fought using Cold War style counterespionage techniques' for they are obviously a religion, worshiping Allah by means of killing women. Nor can we say, 'Islam is a religion, like Mormonism, and is peaceful and perfectly compatible with Enlightenment notions of separation of Church and State' for Islam obviously reject separation of church and state.
The plan of hoping Islam will change and suddenly stop being a theocratic faith and adopt for no reason the Christian belief that separates Caesar from Pope is worse than delusional — it is literally insane, like a man who believes spaceships hidden in a comet will carry his soul to paradise after suicide. Islam has always been theocratic and Christianity, with the sole exception of Cromwell the Protector, has never been.
There is no solution within the framework of modern assumptions about the role of law and faith. This is a cultural war and a religious war, to be fought entirely on a spiritual and psychological plane. The physical soldiering is either neutral or counterproductive: behold the expulsion of Christians from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The First Amendment, if it is interpreted to cover members of a Sharia-law political party bent on using violent means to overthrow the Constitution, directly hinders the prosecution of the War against the Terror Masters.
Only Christianity can defeat Islam. The main enemy of Christianity these days is Secularism. Islam is weak, and would have no power at all, were not the Secularists aiding, abetting, feeding, encouraging and protecting them, and giving or selling to them the means, both psychological and technological, to reach us, live and move among us, and take advantage of our laws and customs to destroy us.
The First Amendment was meant for Christians and Jews, men of different denominations but one tradition. We can live together in peace, tolerating our difference of opinion regarding matters of faith and morals. The Secularists and Mohammedans cannot live among us in peace. Our laws and traditions forbid us to make that discrimination or judgment between the two. We are required by our laws to nourish and encourage our enemies who have vowed our destruction to destroy us.
If the First Amendment is weakened in any way, the Secularists will use the excuse to persecute in pursuit of exterminating the Catholic Church primarily, and the other communions as convenient. Behold the effort to abolish Catholic adoption agencies because Catholics will not assist sodomites to become foster parents for orphans. The Sodomy Marriage movement is not directed at allowing sexually deviant people to live together with survivor's benefits. It is primarily directed against the cultural norms, and eventually to give a legal excuse to force the Church into the same position in the public mind as the KKK: a despised organization of racists. These things are being done while the protection of the First Amendment is in place: can you imagine what would be done if it were suspended? The Pope would be placed on a terrorist watch list.
I can imagine no way to avoid the danger from the alliance of Secularists and Mohammedans. Protecting the First Amendment aids the Sharia-law faction to destroy the Church; abridging the First Amendment aids the Secularists to destroy the Church. Our hope cannot be in things of this world.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
October 25, 2011
Klavan and Codename V
mock and the most easy to hate. I am happy Andrew Klavan shares some
part of my distaste and umbrage for this film. He writes in part:
Some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been wearing the Guy Fawkes mask from the film V for Vendetta.
I think this is appropriate. I have not read the graphic novel on
which the movie is based and make no comment on it, but the film itself,
which wears the mask of a liberating screed, is in fact one of the
most purely fascist
American films ever made. It is a despicable apologia for murderous
violence against free institutions, and presents a pitifully unrealistic
rationalization for some of the most oppressive ideas currently in
vogue.
Like all leftist art, V for Vendetta achieves
its occasionally powerful effects by re-writing reality to fit the
upside-down progressive imagination. For instance, the film suggests
Christianity lies at the heart of political oppression. But in
Realworld, no matter what you might like to believe, the simple fact is
that Christianity has been in on the ground floor of every truly free
society on earth since the fall of Rome. (The one arguable exception is
Israel — go figure.) The film depicts the west’s war with
Islamo-fascism as an Orwellian mix of racist propaganda and eternal
mock-warfare. That in itself is an Orwellian lie. Whatever its merits
as a religious philosophy, Islam has produced violent and oppressive
states since its beginning — and was oppressive even in its cultural
heyday, now almost nine centuries ago. It’s difficult to imagine any
genuine vision of a free world that does not include the suppression of
Islam’s violent extremists.
The film’s central gay character extols
the beauty of the Koran, the followers of which would endorse his
murder — yet he is murdered by Christians who, in life, might condemn
his practices but would also preach his loving acceptance as a fellow
sinner. The same supposedly enlightened character also rhapsodizes on
the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, whose sado-masochistic photos of
leather-clad men could easily have illustrated the sexual imaginations
of the brownshirts who facilitated Hitler’s rise to power.
Quote of the Day
I go to confession with the same sins over and over
again. It’s depressing. It makes me miserable. And mad. And, at times, I
think I should give up this whole Catholic thing and just live however
I want to live.
But a priest once told me: “At least you’re not coming in here with a
whole new batch of sins!” It made me laugh. So while I hate my
weaknesses, I also laugh about them. I laugh about my pride that tells
me I’m stronger than sin. And I get back into that confessional line.
Sin isn’t funny, but the human condition is. You can laugh or cry about
it. I usually do both.
Currency Inflation as Fraud
“Does inflation count as fraud and theft?”
The elements of fraud are: (1) A false representation of a matter of
fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations,
or by concealment of what should have been disclosed— (2) that deceives
and is intended to deceive another so (3) that he relies upon it (4)
to his legal injury.
In the case of an inflated currency, the concealed fact is the
diminution of value transferred from creditor to debtor or to the state
patron; the deception is that the diminution is deliberate, not caused
by some impersonal Keynesian mechanism of the market, nor by the greed
of business, but by and only by the tireless printing presses of the
state; any creditor who uses the currency rather than gold or barter a
fortiori relies on the currency to store value; the injury is the
transfer, without the consent of the creditor, of his value or
purchasing power to the debtor or to the state patron.
Dechristianization
The significant paragraphs:
For instance, at the time of Lebanese independence from France in
1946 the majority of Lebanese were Christians. Today less than 30% of
Lebanese are Christians. In Turkey, the Christian population has
dwindled from 2 million at the end of World War I to less than 100,000
today. In Syria, at the time of independence Christians made up nearly
half of the population. Today 4% of Syrians are Christian. In Jordan
half a century ago 18% of the population was Christian. Today 2% of
Jordanians are Christian.
Christians are prohibited from practicing Christianity in Saudi
Arabia. In Pakistan, the Christian population is being systematically
destroyed by regime-supported Islamic groups. Church burnings, forced
conversions, rape, murder, kidnap and legal persecution of Pakistani
Christians has become a daily occurrence.
Sadly for the Christians of the Islamic world, their cause is not
being championed either by Western governments or by Western
Christians. Rather than condition French support for the Syrian
opposition on its leaders’ commitment to religious freedom for all in a
post-Assad Syria, the French Foreign Ministry reacted with anger to
Rai’s warning of what is liable to befall Syria’s Christians in the
event President Bashar Assad and his regime are overthrown. The Foreign
Ministry published a statement claiming it was “surprised and
disappointed,” by Rai’s statement.
The Obama administration was even less sympathetic. [...] Rai’s
visit to the US was supposed to begin with a visit to Washington and
meetings with senior administration officials including President
Barack Obama. Yet, following his statement in Paris, the administration
cancelled all of its scheduled meetings with him. That is, rather than
consider the dangers that Rai warned about and use US influence to
increase the power of Christians and Kurds and other minorities in any
post- Assad Syrian government, the Obama administration decided to
blackball Rai for pointing out the dangers.
Aside from Evangelical Protestants, most Western churches are
similarly uninterested in defending the rights of their co-religionists
in the Islamic world. [...]
As for the Vatican, in the five years since Pope Benedict XVI laid
down the gauntlet at his speech in Regensburg and challenged the
Muslim world to act with reason and tolerance it its dealing with other
religions, the Vatican has abandoned this principled stand. A true
discourse of equals has been replaced by supplication to Islam in the
name of ecumenical understanding. Last year Benedict hosted a Synod on
Christians in the Middle East that made no mention of the persecution
of Christians by Islamic and populist forces and regimes. Instead,
Israel was singled out for criticism.
The Vatican’s outreach has extended to Iran where it sent a
representative to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s faux counter terror conference.
As Giulio Meotti wrote this week in Ynet, whereas all the EU
ambassadors walked out of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denying speech at the
UN’s second Durban conference in Geneva in 2009, the Vatican’s
ambassador remained in his seat.
Humanity Amendment
You maybe will not see this in the mainstream news, but at least
one state in our union is preparing to overturn Roe v Wade in a fashion
which, if I read the opinion correctly, leaves no legal room to reimpose
it.
I cannot restrain my joy. This is the first time since I have started
following politics when it seems as if Conservative principles and the
Culture of Life have a strong wind of public opinion in their sails. A
generation born and raised with the prenatal genocide called Abortion as
a part of their background, and bombarded without ceasing from a tender
age with propaganda both subtle and blatant to made the abomination
seem normal and mainstream — for some reason, even among the young, the
grisly and paramount Eucharist of the death cult of Moloch called
abortion is losing support.
Amendment 26 – The Mississippi Personhood Amendment– is a citizens
initiative to amend the Mississippi Constitution to define personhood as
beginning at fertilization. Its purpose is to protect all life,
including the life of the unborn. http://personhoodmississippi.com/amendment-26/what-it-says.aspx
Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Mississippi:
SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of the state of Mississippi
is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Section 33.
Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution,
“The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the
moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.”
This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for
implementation.
October 17, 2011
The Watchtowers of Atlantis Tremble
What if he had told a few jokes and smiled a few smiles? The world
would have let him kill far more than he killed, and to this day we
would be using some less judgmental word than ‘genocide’ to describe the
horror.
We are accustomed to viewing evil, the pure, desperate, hellish evil
that kills countless innocents and corrupts whatever it touches, as
something angry and vile and violent. An angry man is easy to spot.
But most evil is more subtle, more seductive, and comes along as gentle as a sheep.
I had occasion to hear speak in public a writer whom I admire if not
adore. The man is witty and wise, genial and gentle, and has the knack
to raise a laugh. And what a charming accent! With merely a word or a
lift of his eyebrow, he can raise a smile from an audience, or a robust
laugh, or bring a tear to the eye. I have never met anyone more
likable.
And he is a man without God, who takes a very practical view of euthanasia.
The admirable writer has lent his considerable publicity and charm
and all the goodwill all his years of hard work to advance the cause of
murder and suicide. Through documentary and public speaking, he leads
his considerable mass of loving and loyal fans to regard as normal the
horror of asking doctors to slay their patients, and to regard as
abnormal the respect for human life Western civilization once nourished.
Alfred the Harper
rousing ballad concerning the English king Alfred the Great’s
infilitration of the Danish camp disguised as a poor minstrel. The
same material is treated at greater length in Book III of G.K.
Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse (1911).
Daily Russian Anime
Maksimov of Melnitsa Animation Studio.
What is Poverty?
Here is an article by Theodore Dalrymple, which says so perfectly what I would say on the matter, if only my command of the
language and my experience of life were equal to his, that I have no qualm about quoting the whole matter, and then grunting. ‘What he said.’
Reproduced here for the purposes of commentary under the Fair Use doctrine. The copyright inheres in the original owners.
What is Poverty?Theodore Dalrymple
What do we mean by poverty? Not what Dickens or Blake or Mayhew
meant. Today, no one seriously expects to go hungry in England or to
live without running water or medical care or even TV. Poverty has been
redefined in industrial countries, so that anyone at the lower end of
the income distribution is poor ex officio, as it were—poor by
virtue of having less than the rich. And of course by this logic, the
only way of eliminating poverty is by an egalitarian redistribution of
wealth—even if the society as a whole were to become poorer as a result.
Such redistribution was the goal of the welfare state. But it has not
eliminated poverty, despite the vast sums expended, and despite the
fact that the poor are now substantially richer—indeed are not, by
traditional standards, poor at all. As long as the rich exist, so must
the poor, as we now define them.
Certainly they are in squalor—a far more accurate description of
their condition than poverty—despite a threefold increase in per-capita
income, including that of the poor, since the end of the last war. Why
they should be in this condition requires an explanation—and to call
that condition poverty, using a word more appropriate to Mayhew’s London
than to today’s reality, prevents us from grasping how fundamentally
the lot of “the poor” has changed since then. The poor we shall always
have with us, no doubt: but today they are not poor in the traditional
way.
The English poor live shorter and less healthy lives than their more
prosperous compatriots. Even if you didn’t know the statistics, their
comparative ill health would be obvious on the most casual observation
of rich and slum areas, just as Victorian observers noted that the poor
were on average a head shorter than the rich, due to generations of
inferior nourishment and hard living conditions. But the reasons for
today’s difference in health are not economic. It is by no means the
case that the poor can’t afford medicine or a nourishing diet; nor do
they live in overcrowded houses lacking proper sanitation, as in
Mayhew’s time, or work 14 backbreaking hours a day in the foul air of
mines or mills. Epidemiologists estimate that the higher rate of
cigarette consumption among the poor accounts for half the difference in
life expectancy between the richest and poorest classes in England—and
to smoke that much takes money.
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