Tolerate the intolerant – or be punished for intolerance?

It just doesn’t make sense, does it? It is illogical.

What does make sense, what is logical is this:

If you tolerate intolerance, you have abandoned tolerance.

Only if you are intolerant of intolerance are you tolerant.

Islam is intolerant. It is therefore not to be tolerated.

But that logic could put you under arrest if the European Union gets its way with its new tolerance decree.

The EU, which is led by mentally challenged pinko nonentities, wants the indigenous peoples of Europe – who have a post-Enlightenment tradition of tolerance (at least in theory, which didn’t stretch all the way to the Jews) – to tolerate the intolerance of the Muslims who are  colonizing their continent.

This is how they work it out. If the Muslims go into the public square anywhere in Europe and display banners calling for the end of democracy (“Democracy Go To Hell” ), or the replacement of the law which protects difference of opinion with sharia law that doesn’t – insists in fact that only one opinion, the ignorant cruel Muslim one, be allowed – then their display of intolerance must be tolerated. If they shout that Christians and Jews (the offspring of apes and pigs in their holy writ) must be slaughtered, you must not shout back at them, or argue with them however politely, or write a reasoned article that they’re promoting intolerance and incitement to insurrection and murder, because if you do you are guilty of intolerance. What’s more, you should be punished for it. Why? Because you would be interfering with the Muslims’ right to free speech.

Perhaps you find it hard to believe that the leaders of the EU could really be as dumb as that?

Well, here’s the evidence.

It comes from an essay by Soeren Kern published by the Gatestone Institute, titled Proposal to Monitor “Intolerant” Citizens. 

While European leaders are busy expressing public indignation over reports of American espionage operations in the European Union, the European Parliament is quietly considering a proposal that calls for the direct surveillance of any EU citizen suspected of being “intolerant.”

Critics say the measure – which seeks to force the national governments of all 28 EU member states to establish “special administrative units” to monitor any individual or group expressing views that the self-appointed guardians of European multiculturalism deem to be “intolerant” – represents an unparalleled threat to free speech in a Europe where citizens are already regularly punished for expressing the “wrong” opinions, especially about Islam.

The proposed European Framework National Statute for the Promotion of Tolerance was recently presented to members of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, the only directly-elected body of the European Union.

It all began with good people having the best of intentions – as mischief and downright evil so often do begin.

The policy proposal was drafted by the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR), a non-governmental organization established in Paris in 2008 by the former president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, and the president of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor.

The ECTR – which describes itself as a “tolerance watchdog” that “prepares practical recommendations to governments and international organizations on improving inter-religious and inter-ethnic relations on the continent” – includes on its board more than a dozen prominent European politicians, including former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar.

Aznar is very unlike most European leaders, being intelligent and genuinely tolerant.

The ECTR first presented its proposal for a Europe-wide Law on Tolerance to the European Parliament in November 2008 as part of the European Week of Tolerance that marked the 70th anniversary of the Kristallnacht, a night of anti-Semitic violence that began the Jewish Holocaust in Germany.

After five years of lobbying in Europe’s halls of power, the ECTR proposal appears to be making headway, as evidenced by the European Parliament’s recent decision to give the group a prominent 45-minute time slot to present its proposal to the Civil Liberties committee on September 17.

Also known as the “Model Statute for Tolerance,” the ECTR’s proposal was presented as part of the EU’s ongoing work towards a new “Equal Treatment Directive” (ETD) that would vastly expand the scope of discrimination to all sectors of life in both the public and private spheres.

Poking into private spheres? So it soon became a pernicious thing, in time for its chance of being accepted by the EU’s Parliament. Though that acceptance would not in itself be too dangerous, as the EU Parliament is an impotent organization that merely rubber stamps laws sent to it by the European Commission. (It serves the purpose of making the EU look democratic – which it is not – because its members are elected with extreme indifference in the various member countries.) But it’s at the top of a slippery slope.

Critics of the ETD, currently being negotiated within the Council of the European Union, say the directive seeks to establish an ill-conceived concept of “equal treatment” as a horizontal principle governing the relationships between all and everyone, thus interfering with the right of self-determination of all citizens.

According to European Dignity Watch, a civil rights watchdog based in Brussels,

The principles of freedom of contract and the freedom to live according to one’s personal moral views are in danger of being superseded by a newly developed concept of ‘equality.’ It would undermine freedom and self-determination for all Europeans and subject the private life of citizens to legal uncertainty and the control of bureaucrats. It is about governmental control of social behavior of citizens. These tendencies begin to give the impression of long-passed totalitarian ideas and constitute an unprecedented attack on citizens’ rights.

… The ECTR document is so audacious in scope, while at the same time so vague in defining its terminology, that critics say the proposal, if implemented, would open a Pandora’s Box of abuse, thereby effectively shutting down the right to free speech in Europe..

It is plain from the defining of terms that idiots took over.

According to Section 1 (d), for example, the term “tolerance” is broadly defined as “respect for and acceptance of the expression, preservation and development of the distinct identity of a group.” Section 2 (d) states that the purpose of the statute is to “condemn all manifestations of intolerance based on bias, bigotry and prejudice.”

That is not what “tolerance” means at all. To tolerate something means you put up with it. You bear with it. You don’t like it, but you are not going to take action against it. You don’t have to respect it to be tolerant of it – in fact the word implies that you don’t respect it any more than you like it. It certainly doesn’t mean that you have to try to preserve it. Obviously, you would happy to see it go. The less it’s expressed the better, and if it’s developed any further you will find it ever harder to tolerate. What you tolerate can be anything from your room-mate smoking to a baby crying all night in an airplane to a bad singer insisting on singing … to a group with a “distinct identity”. The distinct group would be the easiest thing on that list to tolerate – unless they’re a group that is trying to overthrow your laws and kill you.

And as for “intolerance based on bias, bigotry and prejudice”, what they seem to imply is that intolerance can only arise out of emotional distaste. It could never be reasonable. And how the source of anyone’s intolerance could be ascertained is hard to imagine.

In fact, if the precedents set in European courts over the last few years are examples of what the ETD is thinking of, no reasons would be accepted for what they choose to call intolerance. It will always be ascribed to “bias, bigotry and prejudice”.   Because …

An explanatory note to Section 2 states: “Religious intolerance is understood to cover Islamophobia”

“Cover” Islamophobia? It is specifically designed to criminalize “Islamophobia” …

but it provides no definition at all of “Islamophobia,” a term invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1990s.

If taken to its logical conclusion, Section 2 would presumably ban all critical scrutiny of Islam and Islamic Sharia law, a key objective of Muslim activist groups for more than two decades.

Yes, that’s what it’s all about. The document, in fact, shows every sign of having been written under the close supervision of Muslims. That’s why it is now likely to be accepted by any official body of the EU.

The document also declares that “tolerance must be practiced not only by governmental bodies but equally by individuals”.

There’s tolerance for you!

Section 3 (iv) elaborates on this: “Guarantee of tolerance must be understood not only as a vertical relationship (government-to-individuals) but also as a horizontal relationship (group-to-group and person-to-person). … “

Notice how government is thought of as being above the people. And that it is okay for it to regulate relations between individuals.

Section 5 (a) states: “Tolerance (as defined in Section 1(d)) must be guaranteed to any group, whether it has long-standing societal roots or it is recently formed, especially as a result of migration from abroad.”

The group from abroad that wants the enforcement of this menacing nonsense is intolerant Islam itself.

Section 6 states: “It goes without saying that enactment of a Statute for the Promotion of Tolerance does not suffice by itself. There must be a mechanism in place ensuring that the Statute does not remain on paper and is actually implemented in the world of reality.”

In other words, sniff out “bias, bigotry and prejudice”, and punish it.

“Members of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups are entitled to a special protection, additional to the general protection that has to be provided by the Government to every person within the State. … The special protection afforded to members of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups may imply a preferential treatment. Strictly speaking, this preferential treatment goes beyond mere respect and acceptance lying at the root of tolerance.”

Interpretation: It’s not enough that you may not hate Islam; you must LOVE Islam. Or else.  

One clause prescribes the indoctrination of children in schools at all levels from the elementary grades to the universities. And children who offend will not escape punishment:

Section 7 (b) states that “Juveniles convicted of committing crimes listed in paragraph (a) will be required to undergo a rehabilitation program designed to instill in them a culture of tolerance.”

What will happen to you if you fail to love Islam?

Paragraph 7 (e) states that “victims of crimes listed in paragraph (a) will have a legal standing to bring a case against the perpetrators, as well as a right to redress.”

You won’t only have to pay a fine to the state, you will also have to pay any Muslim who claims you offended him.

Paragraph 7 (f) states that “free legal aid will be offered to victims of crimes listed in paragraph (a), irrespective of qualification in terms of impecuniosity.”

So he, on the other hand, regardless of how rich he is, will have all his expenses paid for by the state – that is to say by you,  the tax-paying citizen.

The media must conform to the code of permitted speech, and each government must set up “a mass media complaints commission”  to “supervise” the program content of  even “privately owned mass media”.

Soeren Kern aptly comments:

The document, if adopted by the European Parliament in its current form, would … establish a right to a freedom from hurt feelings at the expense of the freedom of speech and expression.

Of course any group formed round an opinion is by its very existence forever challenging everyone else. Whether it is a political party, a religion, or merely a school of thought on any subject whatsoever, it is not in agreement with all those who do not hold its opinion. So everyone can be offended all the time.

The entire population of Europe could be crying out in perpetual rage for unendurably hurt feelings.

Or – more likely, since most Europeans have become skulking cowards – a great silence could descend on the continent, as everyone fears to utter a word. Europeans will go about with their heads bowed in case a look at a neighbor cuts him to the bone. They might all put on burkas – men as well as women – so that no piece of them rouses indignation in another’s bosom. They could all decide that it’s safer to become Muslims. Then they’ll abolish the law forbidding intolerance, so Sunnis can be as intolerant as they like of Shi-ites, and Shi-ites of Sunnis – and they can all work together to persecute the Jews.

As the terrorist Bill Ayers promotes a book in which he urges Americans to be “moral people”, one of his victims goes on Fox News to denounce his hypocrisy.

These aptly ironic comments come from an article by Daniel Greenfield at Front Page:

It’s crazy. You’re in a terrorist organization that goes to war with America, you bomb some places and write a book titled “Public Enemy”.

And then for some crazy reason, you’re depicted as a public enemy.

Poor Bill Ayers. I hope he can clear up this terrible misunderstanding before his next bombing.

Speaking from the well-heeled confines of the University of Chicago’s International House …, Bill Ayers said he was “amazed” to see himself on TV “cast as some kind of public enemy” with close ties to Barack Obama during one of the 2008 election’s biggest controversies.

At the event meant to promote his new book Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident, Ayers slammed the “opportunistic media” and the “eager campaign staffs of the right, the middle, and even the moderate left” for resurrecting the Weather Underground, a radical far-left group Ayers co-founded which bombed government property and banks throughout the 1970s.

“Bernadine and I had hosted the initial fundraiser for Obama and uncharacteristically donated a little money to his campaign,” said Ayers, reading an excerpt. “We lived a few blocks apart and sat on a couple nonprofit boards together. So what? Who could have predicted it would blow up like this?”

Sure. I bet if Timothy McVeigh had hosted a fundraiser for Mitt Romney, the media wouldn’t have even noticed.

Ayers said his new book is ultimately not about the election but rather about “teaching and parenting” and living a life that “doesn’t make a mockery of your values.” He urged his audience to “try to be good citizens, try to be moral people.”

Unfortunately all of Bill Ayers’ tips on how to be a good person involve nitroglycerine so they’re not that much use to the layman.

Ayers’ wife Bernadine Dohrn was also at the event, with Ayers introducing her as his “partner in crime,” adding, to laughter from the audience, “she hates it when I say that. It’s a metaphor.”

So when he was trying to kill people, it was, like a metaphor, man.

Bill Ayers doesn’t know what a metaphor is, but he’s reasonably handy with a bomb. Sadly that qualifies you to be a professor in academia these days.

What sort of people were those in the audience who found Bernadine Dohrn’s all-too-real criminality funny, we wonder. She and her husband should have been charged with treason and executed, but she, charged with lesser crimes, was fined a paltry sum, and he escaped punishment altogether on technicalities. She too is a professor. Insane persons with authority to make appointments in the universities apparently regard murderous terrorists as ideal instructors, guides, and models for the young.

“Be you ever so high, the law is above you,” said the English judge Lord Denning (quoting Thomas Fuller, the 17th century historian). That has been the case in England since the Magna Carta was  signed by King John in 1215. The idea crossed the Atlantic as an unquestionable and undoubtable principle, and was not doubted or questioned by the Founders of the United States.

But President Obama defies it – while paying lip-service to it.

This is from Phyllis Schlafly’s column at Townhall:

The Democrats are chanting that Republicans must fully fund Obamacare because it is the law of the land, passed by Congress, signed by the president and upheld by the Supreme Court. Therefore, they say, it must be obeyed and can’t be altered by Republicans who want to defund it.

That argument is both wrong and hypocritical. Any federal law can be changed, repealed, amended or defunded by our legislative branch of government, Congress.

The Republican House wants to deal with the controversial huge “continuing resolution” [CR] bill in separate pieces, giving the OK to worthwhile federal spending purposes while leaving others (like Obamacare) without funds. Obama refuses to negotiate and demands a “clean” (blank-check) bill; his position is all or nothing-at-all.

Actually, the Supreme Court decision did not give a “clean” upholding of Obamacare. The Court effectively rewrote the law by allowing states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, and other pieces of Obamacare are still being litigated in federal courts, such as the mandate that employer-required insurance must include objectionable abortifacient drugs.

Obama’s hypocrisy about the issue of considering Obamacare in pieces is obvious from the many times he has unilaterally messed with other matters that are clearly the law of the land. He has frequently refused to enforce other laws of the land he doesn’t like, and he pretends to legislate laws that Congress declined to pass.

Welfare reform is truly the law of the land; it was passed by Congress in 1996 and signed by President Clinton to “end welfare as we know it”. But in violation of the law’s explicit language, Obama unilaterally carved out (in effect, repealed) the “work” (or training for work) requirement for persons receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

Obama’s use of waivers from various laws of the land is notorious. He has given waivers from the No Child Left Behind law of the land to more than half of the states.

Obama has even picked pieces out of Obamacare. He gave a one-year deferral of its insurance employer mandate to large employers, and he exempted Congress and government staff from the requirement on individuals to buy compulsory insurance or pay a significant penalty.

Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, admits that a federal law of the land prohibits the federal government from interfering with or dictating public school curriculum. But Obama used carrot-and-stick tactics to bribe or threaten a majority of states to adopt Common Core, and Duncan pretends it is OK for the feds to require states to be aligned with federally approved Common Core standards and Common Core tests, which will effectively dictate school curriculum.

Obama has repeatedly taken away from other branches of government powers that are specifically granted in the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution makes an undiluted grant of power to Congress “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.” Obama is trying to co-opt that power for himself by demanding that Congress pass “Fast Track,” an enormous unconstitutional shift that would give Obama the authority to write our trade treaties in secret and then let Congress vote on them under rules that limit Congress’s power to debate or amend them, all within in a short preset time period. …

The Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power of the purse in the Origination Clause in Article I. But Obamacare’s taxing and spending sections actually originated in the Senate, a maneuver not yet ruled on by the Supreme Court.

The Constitution starts with the powerful words, “All legislative powers” are vested in Congress, consisting of a Senate and House. Paying no attention to the Constitution, Obama has done his own legislating.

Congress declined to pass the Dream Act, but Obama is legislating it anyway through regulations. In defiance of the law of the land, Obama has allowed millions of aliens to stay and work illegally in the United States.

Congress declined to pass Cap and Trade, but Obama is legislating it anyway through regulations. His regulations are designed to bankrupt coal plants, skyrocket our electricity costs so we can’t “keep our homes on 72 degrees,” and spend our tax dollars to subsidize inefficient, costly solar and wind energy.

In April 2012, nine state Attorneys General issued a Memo listing 21 violations of law by the Obama administration, and now we have so many more examples. Obama is the one who doesn’t obey the law of the land.

To be religious, to believe in a creator god or divine being of any description, is not intellectually respectable.

Far from deserving respect, religions deserve scorn. And worse. The histories of most of them warrant intense abhorrence.

What prompts us now to utter such blunt, unqualified, hard assertions on this “sensitive” subject? This report, which tells how Muslims are trying to make the whole world a reason-free zone.

We quote from the website of Jonathan Turley:

The effort by Muslim countries to curtail free speech in the name of their religion continues. While the Obama Administration has sought to appease these countries in developing an international blasphemy standard, this case shows how even the more modern Islamic countries (as well as Western countries) are finding blasphemy to be a useful vehicle to control speech and silence critics.

The latest attack comes from Qatar which has proposed a ban that would allow for the prosecution of people in other countries. That’s right, our allies are creating laws to allow them to prosecute people for insulting religion outside their own countries.

The use of the term “defamation” is a new twist to satisfy Western sensibilities and make it sound like this is a recognized form of legal action. However, it is the old blasphemy law in a new and more menacing form. The law would actually be broader than blasphemy which already exists on the books of many Muslim countries. This law would allow for the prosecution of people for all forms of defamation. Derision or denigration of religions and prophets will be considered crimes.

The selling point of the new law was explained by Ebrahim Mousa Al Hitmi, the Qatari justice ministry assistant undersecretary for legal affairs,“The main feature of the draft is that it gives every state the right to put on trial those who abuse and hold in contempt religions even if they are outside the country.”

However this “legal expert” assured people that there is no danger at all to free speech because insulting religion is not protected speech:

The law does not interfere in any way with the freedom of opinion and expression which is well protected and guaranteed. All penal laws in Arab countries criminalize defamation of religions but there are no specific sanctions when an abuser is outside the country. Therefore, the main goal of this law is to deter all forms of defamation of religions and give each country that ratifies it the right to file lawsuits against those who offend religions, even if they are not residents.

See how simple it is? You first declare denigrating religion as outside of the scope of permitted speech and then when you prosecute people for writing or speaking about religion it is by definition not a question of free speech.

These laws reflect an inherent insecurity among religious extremists running these countries that free speech represents a serious threat to orthodoxy. It is not enough that they prosecute and even execute people for apostasy. They are determined to cut off alternative views being spoken about religion on the Internet or in other countries. …

There can be no compromise between free speech and blasphemy. These nations stand against the most basic right of all men and women to speak freely and worship (or not worship) as their values dictate.

Of course the Muslims mean that only their own religion must not be criticized. They will continue to “defame” all other religions – and atheism – and obey their own doctrinal commandment to convert, subdue, or kill non-Muslims whenever they can.

And it may be impractical for them to enforce this decision outside their own areas of jurisdiction. But Europe is already complying with it. The Obama administration is sympathetic to it. And some US judges have already decided cases in accordance with sharia law, and a supreme court judge has argued in favor of doing so.

Those who hold the conviction that all ideas – including and especially religious ideas – should be continually and forever examined in the the light of reason, beware!

And stand your ground.

(Hat-tip for the report, our reader Frank)

How likely is it that the son of Prince William, born yesterday, will one day be King?

And of what?

Of  a “United Kingdom” or “Great Britain”?

An actual union of England and Scotland under one monarch happened when James VI of Scotland succeeded Queen Elizabeth I and was crowned in England as James I, king of both kingdoms.  But it was only with the Act of Union 1707 that the terms “United Kingdom” and “Great Britain” became official names: “One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain”.

Now the United Kingdom of Great Britain (and Northern Ireland) is breaking up by the will of Scottish nationalists.

And poor old Britain can no longer realistically be called great.

We like the constitutional monarchy of Britain, regardless of the personalities of the monarchs. It has meant that the nation functions like a republic, but under a non-controversial – because essentially powerless – figurehead.

So we think it a sad fact that by the time Queen Elizabeth II has been succeeded by Charles and Charles by William and William is due to be succeeded by his son, Britain will in all probability be a Muslim-majority country.

As Parliament is sovereign, an elected Muslim majority could vote to abolish the monarchy.

How likely is it that Muslims would do that? Very likely. Unless, of course, the monarchy becomes Muslim – a development which, we gather, Prince Charles would not be averse to. He has said that rather than take the traditional coronation oath that he would be “Defender of the Faith” (Protestant Christianity), he would rather promise to be “Defender of Faith”.

Any old faith? Well, maybe but not quite, because … he has shown a partiality for Islam. See here and here.

Prince Charles in Muslim garb

This is from the Commentator by Vincent Cooper:

Between 2004 and 2008, the Muslim population of the UK grew at an annual rate of 6.7 percent, making Muslims 4 percent of the population in 2008. Extrapolating from those figures would mean that the Muslim population in 2020 would be 8 percent, 15 percent in 2030, 28 percent in 2040 and finally, in 2050, the Muslim population of the UK would exceed 50 percent of the total population.

Contrast those Muslim birth rates with the non-replacement birth rates of native Europeans, the so called deathbed demography of Europe. For a society to remain the same size, the average female has to have 2.1 children (total fertility rate). For some time now, all European countries, including Britain, have been well below that rate.

Of course, unforeseen events might change what now looks like an unstoppable slide into the horrible darkness of Islam. Civil war, for instance. Or a sudden awakening of the British people to their peril, a steeling of their present political leaders’ backbones, and action taken now while there may just be time to save the nation.

How likely is that? In our skeptical eyes, not very.

It should not need to be said, but – no, not all American blacks think that George Zimmerman should have been found guilty of killing Trayvon Martin.

Our interest is always in what a person thinks and says, not in his or her race or color. But President Obama (we think we must be having a bad dream every time we write those two words!), Attorney General Eric Holder, their sycophants in the media, and the Left in general have made George Zimmerman’s trial for second-degree murder (or failing that, manslaughter), and his acquittal, a race issue. And the media are presenting the story as though the man’s acquittal – on solid grounds, in a case that should never have brought to court anyway – has been taken as an outrageous miscarriage of justice by Black America as a solid whole (as if there were or could be such a thing).

But here are the opinions (some slightly shortened by us) of several black conservatives, members of the Project 21* black leadership network, who dissent from that opinion:

Horace Cooper – co-chairman of Project 21, is a former law professor and former congressional leadership staff member:

While I’m thrilled with this outcome, it should never have come to this. This case should never have been brought forward. The grand jury should never have been bypassed and Judge Nelson should never have allowed this case to get this far. There’s a reason the investigating officer refused to support an arrest, there’s a reason the state’s attorney refused to prosecute and there’s a reason the grand jury was bypassed. There was no substantial evidence corroborating the state’s case and a whole heck of evidence supporting Mr. Zimmerman. The rush to arrest and indict Zimmerman merely to appease the media or race-based interest groups not only jeopardized Mr. Zimmerman’s rights and liberty, but the precedent suggests that all of our rights could be infringed.

Darryn “Dutch” Martin –  a member of Project 21 and a former member of the American diplomatic corps:

… It needs to be understood that the case against George Zimmerman for the death of Trayvon Martin was not supposed to be about race. It was always about self-defense. Zimmerman’s defense team proved this and the jury concurred. Justice has been served. …

Lisa Fritsch – a member of Project 21, tea party activist, author and talk radio host:

Despite a not guilty verdict, we must remember that George Zimmerman is not truly free. This trial will forever remain in his mind for his remaining days. Our hope should be that this trial and verdict will unite the Florida community and this country and be a healing testimony to what happens when we think the worst of one another first. In this case, it felt as if our very country were on trial for racial prejudice. The not guilty verdict should make us reflect on what it means to give the benefit of the doubt before judging harshly and deciding one’s actions are racially motivated. The final question for every community is how we can protect our youth from a system of violence and a lifestyle that nearly guarantees they will find trouble. Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s family and more urban Americans will hopefully use this case and verdict as an opportunity to correct that system.

Hughey Newsome – a Project 21 member, financial expert and the Washington representative for the Move-On-Up.Org black political organization:

Everything about the verdict can be wrapped up by considering the post-verdict comments of Zimmerman attorney Mark O’Mara. While many may feel that O’Mara’s comment about charges not being filed against Zimmerman if Zimmerman were black may seem insensitive … his subsequent comments about the need for a civil rights discussion in regards to African-American males are timely despite his feeling it is irrelevant to this case. Those saying the value placed on an African-American male is diminished in today’s society must now ask themselves, if this is believed to be true, what is causing this phenomenon? So many in the media and entertainment industries seem to profit off perpetuating the image of the African-American male as violent and sexual animals, but this is then ignored in order to complain about overt racism that is mostly marginalized in today’s society. This gets us no closer to solving the problem at hand.

Emery McClendon  – a Project 21 member and tea party activist:

We must stop looking at issues from a racial context and stand together as one America …  To use a familiar phrase these days, let’s not stay ‘stuck on stupid’ and move on to heal our land. We have so much to be thankful for. For too long, people such as the NAACP’s Ben Jealous and Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have spoke out in hate and ignorance and found placement in the media. It’s time to stop the madness. We must turn the tide. If we put as much time into restoring our Constitution as we did into the Zimmerman trial, America would be a better place for all of us.”

*From the same source:

Project 21 was formed in 1992 when the riots following the verdict in the Rodney King case revealed a need to highlight the diversity of opinion within the black community. For over 20 years, the volunteer members of the Project 21 black leadership network have provided conservative and free-market perspectives that, until that time, were largely unknown or ignored by the establishment media.

This video is the shorter version of an anti-jihad film titled The Third Jihad, made by a loyal American who is himself a Muslim, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser.

The Commissioner of the New York Police Department, Ray Kelly, appears in it. It was shown to the officers of the NYPD.

Watch it, and see if you think anything in it is untrue. See if you think its content should not be widely known, and known to police officers in a city where thousands have been killed, maimed, widowed and orphaned by Muslim terrorists.

Its showing to the New York police so annoyed Muslims who support terrorism, and their ignorant or stupid or wicked allies, that in coalition as the Shoulder-to-Shoulder Campaign they worked to get the New York City Council to pass bills “stopping the abuses of the NYPD”. The New York City Council obliged. It is heavily leftist, remember: out of 51 members, 46 are Democrats.

What these bills actually do is hamper the ability of the NYPD to fight crime effectively and weaken it as a counter-terrorist force.

But the Mayor of New York – yes, that same Mayor Bloomberg whom we have derided for wanting to treat the citizens as children (for instance by forbidding them to buy sodas in a certain large cup size) – has declared that he will veto the bills.

For this we praise him. The bad news is that his veto may not suffice to quash them.

For details of this lamentable story, we quote from an article by Ryan Mauro at Front Page:

The Shoulder-to-Shoulder Campaign, an interfaith coalition allied with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), is praising the passage of two bills by the New York City Council aimed at stopping the alleged abuses of the NYPD. Mayor Bloomberg says he will veto the bills, even though they passed with enough support to override [the veto].

The passed bills, the End Discriminatory Profiling Bill and NYPD Oversight Bill, outraged Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The latter bill requires the overseeing of the NYPD by an independent Inspector-General.

The former opens the door for the NYPD to be sued in state court for policies that disproportionately affect certain ages, genders, sexual orientations or housing statuses.

Mayor Bloomberg considers the bills to be a matter of “life and death” vows to “not give up for one minute.”

“The bill would allow virtually everyone in New York City to sue the Police Department and individual police officers over the entire range of law enforcement functions they perform,” [Police Commissioner] Kelly explained.

He said the result will be skyrocketing liability costs, the unnecessary use of resources and an overall decrease in effectiveness.

When asked about the so-called problem of NYPD racial profiling, Bloomberg dismissively said, “Nobody racially profiles.”

He made perhaps the most politically-incorrect statement of his career in defense of the NYPD:

They just keep saying, ‘Oh it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be, but it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murder. In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. … The numbers clearly show that the stops are generally proportionate with suspect’s descriptions.

Well said, Mr Mayor!

The bills were aggressively supported by the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), joined by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU has often allied itself with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network that CAIR and ISNA belong to.

CAIR’s chapter in New York is among its more radical ones.

Are some branches of this terrorist-supporting organization less “radical” than others? Are there some who do not like jihad or the method of terrorism? Who do not collect funds to send to the Middle East to aid active terrorists?

Former CAIR-NY director Cyrus McGoldrick has sent out tweets with anti-law enforcement rhetoric and support for Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the destruction of Israel.

CAIR-NY board president Zead Ramadan refused to condemn Hamas in December 2011 and has portrayed American Muslims as a brutally-repressed minority on Iranian state TV. Another board member, Lamis Deek, has praised Hamas, supports the elimination of Israel and claims that the NYPD has a secret alliance with Israel to target Muslims.

And the New York City Council believes him? Apparently, yes.

Deek also supported the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt as a blow to American “imperialism.”

The Shoulder-to-Shoulder Campaign, an interfaith political coalition that includes ISNA as a member, celebrated the bills’ passage. ISNA is so proud of its work in putting together the coalition that it highlighted it as a crowning achievement when it met with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan in May.

What ignorant or stupid or wicked organizations have joined in this conspiracy?

Among the Campaign’s members are these:

American Baptist Churches USA

The Episcopal Church

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The Presbyterian Church (USA)

The United Church of Christ

No surprises there. But also:

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs

The Jewish Theological Seminary of America

You may recognize the members of these last two organizations in any crowd. They will be the people going about without noses, which they’ve cut off to spite their faces.

We who counted ourselves luckier than the general run of humankind because we live in the United States of America are no longer standing on firm ground but on shifting sands.

What accustomed ways, what assumptions on which we’ve always relied, what expectations we’ve long held, what values we’ve taken for granted, are not being interrogated anew?

Customs, values, standards, principles – the elements that cement civilization – are being let go, one after another, at ever increasing pace as we are moved away from liberty into serfdom.

Have you relied on custom? On long accepted moral norms? On the probity of public servants? On high standards of medical practice? On the intellectual openness of universities? On the integrity of scientists? On the solidity of old established institutions? On common values of decency, civility, and honesty?

You, we, can do so no longer. The wrecking crew is out. The fundamental transformation of America is underway.

Immense progress in science and technology will not help us because all invention will come under the ever-expanding control of the government and its ideological army of wreckers.

Over what part of our lives, even the most intimate, is government not taking control?

Our freedom of speech has been qualified by political correctness. Certain words are taboo, and it is widely accepted that they ought to be, on the grounds that some might take offense if they hear them.

In almost everything we commonly do, in almost every sphere of normal activity, we find ourselves in a state of uncertainty. So multitudinous are the regulations continually heaped upon us by government that we could be unknowingly breaking the law every hour of every day, in our businesses, our professions, our leisure, our shopping, our travel, or while simply breathing inside our own homes. The hand of government is on our thermostats. Its scolding tongue lashes us if we use more water than it deems necessary to our survival. It tells us what we ought to eat and drink; what we must do with our garbage; what we may not carry on a plane; what we may not move from one state to another. If we unintentionally break an obscure business regulation, we can be raided by an armed SWAT team and heavily fined. If we gather people together at regular intervals in our home to share a common interest we can be sentenced to a term in prison. (The example our link leads to concerns a bible-studying group. We would hate to attend it ourselves, but we defend the freedom of everybody.)

Do not expect the money you earn, save, or invest to keep its value. Our currency is being continually debased. We cannot even be sure that our cash will be safe in a bank. It’s all too possible that government will summarily confiscate it. What happened recently to private deposits in Cyprus banks could happen here – a blatant act of government theft:

According to in-house memos now circulating, the DHS has issued orders to banks across America which announce to them that “under the Patriot Act” the DHS has the absolute right to seize, without any warrant whatsoever, any and all customer bank accounts, to make “periodic and unannounced” visits to any bank to open and inspect the contents of “selected safe deposit boxes”.

We can  no longer rely on our title deeds to protect our property tenure. On the grounds of “eminent domain” any real estate, including your own home, can be snatched away by government and handed over to someone else who wants to change its use for his own benefit. In the case of land, the government can declare it subject to environmental laws that make it impossible for its owners to use it as they choose.

Government agencies which many or even most considered irreproachably honorable (if also terrifyingly powerful) – such as and chiefly the Internal Revenue Service  – have turned out to be rotten with corruption.

We are surveyed by government all the time. We have come to expect that we cannot make a phone-call 0r send an email that government doesn’t know we made or sent. And government can look at what we said in them at any time it chooses. Under “Obamacare” we cannot have an ingrowing toenail, a terminal disease, a deformity, an embarrassing whatever that untold numbers of persons will not be informed about.

In the matter of our health and “Obamacare”, we do not know how we will pay for medical consultations and treatment in future; what insurance we may have, at what price, or what it will cover.

The political principles on which the Republic was founded are no longer the bedrock of the American nation.

The values our civilization was built on – which are not in any religion but in pre-Christian classical antiquity and the Enlightenment – are no longer esteemed. Worse, they are despised, mocked, and discarded.

Mark Steyn, recognizing the rot, writes of a recent momentous day in the decay of America – June 26, 2013:

First thing in the morning, Gregory Roseman, Deputy Director of Acquisitions (whatever that means), became the second IRS official to take the Fifth Amendment, after he was questioned about awarding the largest contract in IRS history, totaling some half a billion dollars, to his close friend Braulio Castillo, who qualified under a federal “set aside” program favoring disadvantaged groups — in this case, disabled veterans. For the purposes of federal contracting, Mr. Castillo is a “disabled veteran” because he twisted his ankle during a football game at the U.S. Military Academy prep school 27 years ago. How he overcame this crippling disability to win a half-billion-dollar IRS contract is the heartwarming stuff of an inspiring Lifetime TV movie. …

The so-called comprehensive immigration reform is so comprehensive it includes special deals for Nevada casinos and the recategorization of the Alaskan fish-processing industry as a “cultural exchange” program, because the more leaping salmon we have the harder it is for Mexicans to get across the Bering Strait. While we’re bringing millions of Undocumented-Americans “out of the shadows,” why don’t we try bringing Washington’s decadent and diseased law-making out of the shadows?

Just when you thought the day couldn’t get any more momentous, the Supreme Court weighed in on same-sex marriage. When less advanced societies wish to introduce gay marriage, the people’s elected representatives assemble in parliament and pass a law. That’s how they did it in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, etc. But one shudders to contemplate what would result were the legislative class to attempt “comprehensive marriage reform,” complete with tax breaks for Maine lobstermen’s au pairs and the hiring of 20,000 new IRS agents to verify business expenses for page boys from disparate-impact groups. So instead it fell to five out of nine judges, which means it fell to Anthony Kennedy, because he’s the guy who swings both ways. Thus, Supreme Intergalactic Emperor Anthony gets to decide the issue for 300 million people.

As Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben so famously says in every remake, with great power comes great responsibility. Having assumed the power to redefine a societal institution that predates the United States by thousands of years, Emperor Tony the All-Wise had the responsibility at least to work up the semblance of a legal argument. Instead, he struck down the Defense of Marriage Act on the grounds that those responsible for it were motivated by an “improper animus” against a “politically unpopular group” they wished to “disparage,” “demean,” and “humiliate” as “unworthy.”

What stump-toothed knuckle-dragging inbred swamp-dwellers from which hellish Bible Belt redoubt would do such a thing? Well, fortunately, we have their names on the record: The DOMA legislators who were driven by their need to “harm” gay people include notorious homophobe Democrats Chuck Schumer, Pat Leahy, Harry Reid, Joe Biden, and the virulent anti-gay hater who signed it into law, Bill Clinton. …

In his dissent, Justice Scalia wrote that “to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions.” Indeed. With this judgment, America’s constitutional court demeans and humiliates only its own. …

As I say, just another day in the life of the republic: a corrupt bureaucracy dispensing federal gravy to favored clients; a pseudo-legislature passing bills unread by the people’s representatives and uncomprehended by the men who claim to have written them; and a co-regency of jurists torturing an 18th-century document in order to justify what other countries are at least honest enough to recognize as an unprecedented novelty. Whether or not, per Scalia, we should “condemn” the United States Constitution, it might be time to put the poor wee thing out of its misery.

Hayek warned us that an over-mighty state would put us on “the road to serfdom”. Well, we’ve arrived. We’ve passed the sign at the side of the road saying “Welcome to Serfdom” and we are now in Serfdom itself. It is built on a quagmire of erroneous theory. Serfs may console themselves with an illusion of security, but serfs are not secure; they exist at the whim of their masters.

By the time Islam takes over and imposes sharia law over the whole of North America, we’ll hardly notice any difference.

*

Afterword: One of our readers and commenters, Roger, laments the drop in standards of personal presentation among his professional colleagues with this description. (Please note we make no judgments of a person by his taste or appearance. We quote this comment because it conveys how some American citizens feel they have strayed into an alien world.)

Yes, our society is changing. I attended a construction “kick-off” meeting yesterday, at which all of the construction “professionals” were present as well as the major trades. This project is for the renovation of a very high end residence, if I mentioned the Client’s name many of you would know the person. The Architect wore an ill fitting suit that looked like it had been piled into a corner of the utility room for weeks, bare feet and flip-flops (on a construction site!) The project manager wore a loose undershirt of the type colloquially known I believe, as a “wife beater”. His entire upper body was covered in multicolored tattoos depicting what seemed to be scenes from robot wars featuring children’s Saturday morning cartoon characters. The representative of one of the mechanical trades wore a patched and worn out dungaree overall and sported a bone through his nose. [They all] wore various metal items in different parts of their faces; earrings, nose rings, lip rings, etc. None seemed in the least bit surprised at the attire of the others. I admit my concentration suffered as I wondered when it was exactly that I had been abducted and brought to this planet, and when the hell could I go home.

Today the Supreme Court has overturned the Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, on the grounds that it violates the rights of gay couples by denying them government benefits.

Will the legalization of same-sex marriage rescue the institution itself from obsolescence, or hasten its terminal decline?

The decline is a fact.

From Pew research, December 2011:

Barely half of all adults in the United States — a record low — are currently married, and the median age at first marriage has never been higher for brides (26.5 years) and grooms (28.7), according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census data.

In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married; today just 51% are. If current trends continue, the share of adults who are currently married will drop to below half within a few years. Other adult living arrangements—including cohabitation, single-person households and single parenthood—have all grown more prevalent in recent decades.

The Pew Research analysis also finds that the number of new marriages in the U.S. declined by 5% between 2009 and 2010, a sharp one-year drop that may or may not be related to the sour economy. …

Public attitudes about the institution of marriage are mixed. Nearly four-in-ten Americans say marriage is becoming obsolete, according to a Pew Research survey in 2010.  Yet the same survey found that most people who have never married (61%) would like to do so someday. …

The decline is particularly dramatic among the less educated.

From the Population Reference Bureau, September 2010:

Marriage rates have dropped among all major racial/ethnic groups and for both men and women. However, there are substantial differences in marriage trends by level of education. CPS data show that those with only a high school diploma (or less) have experienced a steep decline in marriage during the past decade. In contrast, marriage rates have held fairly steady for those with at least a bachelor’s degree.

Forty percent of all births are now to unwed mothers:

From The Atlantic, March 18, 2013:

58 percent of first births in lower-middle-class households are now to unmarried women. Meanwhile, two in five of all births are to unwed mothers, an all-time high, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Marriage has changed. Once upon a time, the typical marriage … involved special roles for the husband and wife. He would work. She would stay home. It was an efficient arrangement where opposites attracted. Men who wanted to be executives would marry women who wanted to be housewives. And, since almost half of women had no independent earnings 40 years ago, there were a lot of women who just wanted to work at home and raise a family.

Several factors mussed up this traditional union. Today women expect to work much, much more than they used to – and they do. They make up the majority of new college graduates and their labor participation rate has soared over 60 percent. Since 1950, hours of work by married women have increased by roughly a factor of three …

Now that women are better educated, with greater control over both their fertility and their earnings, modern marriage has changed from an arrangement where men marry for a housewife to a “hedonic” model where both partners can be the breadwinner. …

Think of marriage like any other contract or investment. It’s most likely to happen when the gains are big. So we should expect marriages among low-income Americans to decline if women perceive declining gains from hitching themselves to the men around them.

That’s precisely what we’ve seen…

Low-skill men have had a rough two generations. The evaporation of manufacturing work has gutted their main source of employment, while globalization has held down their wages. Marriage has declined the most among men whose wages have declined the most. …

It is relatively easier to raise a child and keep up a home with modern household innovations. The connection between Lunchables, detergent and marriage rates is not often made. But perhaps it should be. The development of time-saving technologies – cheap prepared foods, cheap clothes, machines to wash, dry, and vacuum – has not only encouraged more women to seek work, but also made it relatively easier for single parents to raise a child. Put starkly, technology makes it cheaper and easier than ever to be single.

While marriage becomes less attractive, divorce remains popular.

From McKinley Irvin family law blog:

Around 50 percent of marriages in the United States end in divorce. The number is similarly high in many other developed nations.

When you break that down by number of marriages [in the US]:

• 41 percent of first marriages end in divorce.
• 60 percent of second marriages end in divorce.
• 73 percent of third marriages end in divorce.

Nearly three quarters of all African-American children are born to unwed mothers.

From NBC News November 7, 2010:

Seventy-two percent of black babies are born to unmarried mothers today, according to government statistics.  …

The black community’s 72 percent rate eclipses that of most other groups: 17 percent of Asians, 29 percent of whites, 53 percent of Hispanics and 66 percent of Native Americans were born to unwed mothers in 2008, the most recent year for which government figures are available. The rate for the overall U.S. population was 41 percent.

Ideally, we would like to see the institution of marriage as a union between one man and one woman – historically, customarily, and generally for the purpose of raising children – to continue. Conservatives should – and many do – strive to preserve it. And we hold to the view that it affords (of course not invariably) the best circumstances for children to be well provided for, educated, kept in good health, and launched into adult life.

Marriage is not always – or even very often in our experience – an easy relationship. But a marriage needs to be endured when it cannot be enjoyed at least until children born into it reach young  adulthood.

Our inclination is to be for the survival of traditional marriage. But it seems to us to be a lost cause.

The very fact that a union which cannot possibly produce children because it joins two people of the same gender is now called “marriage”  is a clear proof that the ancient institution is not just fading but over and done with.

If the only requirement for a marriage to be sanctioned by the state is the wish of the contracting parties to enter into it, then not only individuals of the same sex, but groups of both (or various) sexes should be able to marry. Expect the legalization of polygamy in America and other Western countries in the not too distant future.

What will marriage then mean? Nothing really. It will give certain legal benefits to the parties, but other than that? Any different from just living together? Will it engage exceptional loyalties, devotion, duty, pertinacity, the sharing of responsibilities and rewards more than if the parties cohabited without the ceremony and documentation of marriage?  Could do. Possibly. Sometimes. Maybe as often as old marriage did? No, probably not.

Of course, if Islam conquers the West the fun will be over anyway. Sure, men will be able to have more than one wife each and as many concubines as they like. Men will be able to divorce their wives with the greatest of ease, and keep their children. But women will be married off, perhaps when they’re still pre-pubescent children themselves, to older men, and will not easily be able to divorce their husbands. Men will only be doing their religious duty if they beat their wives. Adulterers – the  females at least – will be stoned to death. Homosexuals will be executed.

So women, men, and all others – gather ye rosebuds while ye may.