Yesterday, April 24, 2015 was the 100th anniversary of the day the (Muslim) Turks started to massacre the (Christian) Armenians.

This is from History.com:

Most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the [start of the] massacre. …

On April 24, 1915, the Armenian genocide began. That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. After that, ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped naked and forced to walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. People who stopped to rest were shot.

At the same time, the Young Turks created a “Special Organization”, which in turn organized “killing squads” or “butcher battalions” to carry out, as one officer put it, “the liquidation of the Christian elements”. These killing squads were often made up of murderers and other ex-convicts. They drowned people in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive. In short order, the Turkish countryside was littered with Armenian corpses.

Records show that during this “Turkification” campaign government squads also kidnapped children, converted them to Islam and gave them to Turkish families. In some places, they raped women and forced them to join Turkish “harems” or serve as slaves. Muslim families moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property.

In 1922, when the genocide was over, there were just 388,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire.

That is to say the territory that had been the Ottoman Empire – defeated by the allies in the FirstWorld War, and subsequently broken up and terminated. 

“Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.”

We quote the words  of Aurora Mardiganian.  The documentary film Auction of Souls (1919), from which this still is taken, was partly based on her memoir, Ravished Armenia. She described being raped and thrown into a harem (which agrees with Islam’s rules of war). She managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified. 

Starving Armenian children being teased with a piece of bread by a Turkish official during the Armenian genocide, 1915

circa 1915: The bodies of Armenian children who were massacred in Turkey during the First World War. (Photo by Armin T. Wegner/Getty Images)

The much respected magazine, National Geographic, carries in its latest issue an article on atheism. It is titled: The World’s Newest Major Religion: No Religion.

The author is Gabe Bullard. He writes:

There have long been predictions that religion would fade from relevancy as the world modernizes, but all the recent surveys are finding that it’s happening startlingly fast. France will have a majority secular population soon. So will the Netherlands and New Zealand. The United Kingdom and Australia will soon lose Christian majorities. Religion is rapidly becoming less important than it’s ever been, even to people who live in countries where faith has affected everything from rulers to borders to architecture.

But nones [those who are affiliated with none of the religions] aren’t inheriting the Earth just yet. In many parts of the world — sub-Saharan Africa in particular — religion is growing so fast that nones’ share of the global population will actually shrink in 25 years as the world turns into what one researcher has described as “the secularizing West and the rapidly growing rest.” (The other highly secular part of the world is China, where the Cultural Revolution tamped down religion for decades, while in some former Communist countries, religion is on the increase.)

Yes. And devout Muslims are pouring into Europe by the million: an extraordinary event that will entirely change the character of Europe, but which Gabe Bullard does not seem to have noticed.

And even in the secularizing West, the rash of “religious freedom bills” — which essentially decriminalize discrimination — are the latest front in a faith-tinged culture war in the United States that shows no signs of abetting anytime soon.

Within the ranks of the unaffiliated, divisions run deep. Some are avowed atheists. Others are agnostic. And many more simply don’t care to state a preference. Organized around skepticism toward organizations and united by a common belief that they do not believe, nones as a group are just as internally complex as many religions. And as with religions, these internal contradictions could keep new followers away.

These are not “divisions”. There never was a solid phalanx of non-believers that could split apart. These are different opinions. That is all.

“Keep followers away”? “Followers” who want a cut-and-dried non-believing ideology that they can accept holus-bolus as the religious accept the doctrines of their faiths? Absurd!

If the world is at a religious precipice, then we’ve been moving slowly toward it for decades. Fifty years ago, Time [magazine] asked in a famous headline, “Is God Dead?” The magazine wondered whether religion was relevant to modern life in the post-atomic age when communism was spreading and science was explaining more about our natural world than ever before.

We’re still asking the same question. But the response isn’t limited to yes or no. A chunk of the population born after the article was printed may respond to the provocative question with, “God who?” In Europe and North America, the unaffiliated tend to be several years younger than the population average. And 11 percent of Americans born after 1970 were raised in secular homes.

Scientific advancement isn’t just making people question God, it’s also connecting those who question. It’s easy to find atheist and agnostic discussion groups online, even if you come from a religious family or community. And anyone who wants the companionship that might otherwise come from church can attend a secular Sunday Assembly or one of a plethora of Meetups for humanists, atheists, agnostics, or skeptics.

The groups behind the web forums and meetings do more than give skeptics witty rejoinders for religious relatives who pressure them to go to church — they let budding agnostics know they aren’t alone.

But it’s not easy to unite people around not believing in something.

It’s also totally unnecessary.

“Organizing atheists is like herding cats,” says Stephanie Guttormson, the operations director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, which is merging with the Center for Inquiry. “But lots of cats have found their way into the ‘meowry’.”

Guttormson says the goal of her group is to organize itself out of existence. They want to normalize atheism to a point where it’s so common that atheists no longer need a group to tell them it’s okay not to believe, or to defend their morals in the face of religious lawmakers.

But it’s not there yet.

Why does anyone need a group to tell them that it’s okay not to believe in something they don’t believe in? But we accept that there are such people, and so agree that the group should “organize itself out of existence”.

The article then goes on to discuss who the atheists are in terms of race (fewer blacks than whites, it says), the sexes (fewer women than men, and the predominance of white men a manifestation of “privilege”).

Of course no one can possibly count the atheists of the world. We get Third World commenters on our Facebook page who tell us that they have to keep their atheism secret for fear of persecution and even death.

Gabe Bullard calls the distribution he alleges a “problem” of “diversity”.  His article is right up to date with its fashionable lingo.

To do him justice, he does quote one atheist – Mandisa Thomas, a black woman – saying that “the demographics of nones don’t accurately reflect the number and diversity of nonbelievers; it just shows who is comfortable enough to say they don’t believe out loud.” And:  “There are many more people of color, there are many more women who identify as atheist.” And: “There are many people who attend church who are still atheists.”

The cheeriest part of his article is this:

Compared to past campaign seasons, religion is taking a backseat in this year’s U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump is not outwardly religious (and his attraction of evangelical voters has raised questions about the longevity and the motives of the religious right).

But then he goes on:

Hillary Clinton has said “advertising about faith doesn’t come naturally to me”. And Bernie Sanders is “not actively involved” in a religion. … Aside from Ted Cruz, the leading candidates just aren’t up for talking about religion.

Apparently he does not recognize that Leftism is a religion. It is THE secular religion. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are both devotees of it. Bernie Sanders could be fairly called a high priest of it. They are as piously Leftist as Ted Cruz is Dominionist.

Bullard ends on a jocular note:

For all the work secular groups do to promote acceptance of nonbelievers, perhaps nothing will be as effective as apathy plus time. As the secular millennials grow up and have children of their own, the only Sunday morning tradition they may pass down is one everyone in the world can agree on: brunch.

We hope so.

What have atheists said about the article?

Atheist Jerry Coyne writes at his website:

National Geographic publishes article on atheism and secularism, but descends into Authoritarian Leftism and slanders against Harris and Dawkins

Well, it’s time to cancel your subscription to National Geographic — if you still have one. For a while it’s been turning into a religiously-infused tabloid rather than the educational nature/anthropology magazine that I loved of yore. In several posts I’ve documented its increasing tendency to coddle religion … and it’s only going to get worse since the magazine was taken over by Rupert Murdoch.

Now the magazine has hit its lowest point yet, polevaulting the shark in a new piece by journalist Gabe Bullard, The World’s Newest Religion: No Religion. While starting off as a decent bit of reportage about the rise of nonbelief and secularism, it suddenly descends into slander and clickbait, highlighting the “privilege” of nonbelief, the dominance of atheism by white males, and accusations that the “leaders” of atheism (whom they name) are misogynists.

And there is a comment made at Patheos which we like, although we very seldom agree with its Leftist atheists on anything except atheism itself.

The comment is made by Terry Firma. (He goes on, however, to say what he likes about the National Geographic article.)

He writes:

I wonder if any serious major publication would refer to people who don’t play sports as athletes, but that is essentially what NatGeo is doing here. Atheism is no more a religion than off is a TV channel, than being bald is a hairstyle, and than not-collecting-stamps is a hobby. People who assert that atheism is a religion either haven’t given it much thought or are trying to get a rise out of atheists.

Nicely said.

Today, Monday, April 18, 2016, the Boston marathon is being run.

Recalling the bombings at the April 19, 2013 marathon in the way the atrocity needs to be recalled, here’s Sam Westrop writing at Breitbart:

As Boston prepares for the 2016 marathon, memorials have been organized across the city. Three years later, however, have the authorities really learned anything from the horrors of the bombings?

Judging by the support for Muslim Brotherhood institutions in Massachusetts offered by politicians, law enforcement, and journalists, it would seem not.

Three years ago, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lay wounded, hiding from police in the city of Watertown, a leafy suburb of Boston. On April 15, he and his brother, Tamerlan, had bombed the Boston marathon, murdering three and injuring hundreds. Over the next few days, Dzhokhar would kill MIT police officer Sean Collier, take a hostage, wound police officers in a firefight, and run over his dying brother.

By April 19, the injured Dzhokhar awaited his inevitable capture, bleeding in a Watertown backyard. As law enforcement closed in, Dzhokhar scribbled text on the walls of the boat where he hid.

For a terrorist who had just murdered in the name of Islam, some might expect his parting message to be a litany of Quranic verse. But the writings on the wall of the Watertown boat mostly comprised quotes from Islamist political tracts, written by the Islamist luminaries of the 20th century – Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami ideologues such as Sayid Qutb, Hassan Al Banna, Fathi Yakan, and Abul A’la Maududi.

Dzhokhar’s justification for his killings came from the writings of Islamist movements who today control American Islam – Islamist groups who have, on the last few decades, found favor with America’s political and media elite.

Radical mosques such as the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) remain a magnet for politicians, city officials, and journalists who want to express their love of American Muslims. Most recently, Boston Police Commissioner William Evans spoke at the mosque,declaring: “We’re all Muslims deep down. We all yearn for peace.”

This same mosque was founded by a prominent Al Qaeda operative; its trustees have included the included the Hitler-supporting spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood; and, just in October, the mosque hosted an event with two preachers who advocate that Muslim men can acquire sex slaves and should be allowed to beat their wives.

Over the past few decades, in fact, twelve congregants, supporters, staff and donors of the ISB have been imprisoned, deported, killed or are on the run – all in relation to terrorist activity. This list includes the Boston bombers, Al Qaeda operatives Tarek Mehanna and Aafia Siddqui; Lashkar-i-Taiba fundraiser Hafiz Masood; and the prominent Islamic State official, Ahmad Abousamra.

Most importantly, the ISB teaches the very texts that Dzhokhar scribbled across the Watertown boat. These teachings are of a Muslim Brotherhood educational program known as “Tarbiya”. The ideological link could not be clearer. Dzhokhar left written confirmation — blood and ink that explained his actions.

The authorities, however, refuse to consider what terrorists themselves proclaim. Because to accept that Islamist ideology lead to Islamist violence would be to acknowledge that the self-proclaimed guardians of American Islam pose a serious threat to the security of the United States. It would be to acknowledge that America has fundamentally misunderstood Islam itself.

Rather than tackle radical Islamism, however, law enforcement and politicians instead attend peace rallies, interfaith dialogue dinners, and other feel-good events with the Islamists themselves, who are adept at expressing peace and love by day and inciting hatred against Jews and the West at night.

In 2015, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz further illustrated this government delusion when, astoundingly, she said of the Boston bombings: “There was nothing about this crime that was Islam associated.”

When pressed on the Tsarnaev’s Islamic invocations, Ortiz went so far as to define herself what makes a real Muslim, stating that the Tsarnaev’s ideology was “a skewed view of the religion of Islam. That is not what Islam is all about”.

Government officials and Islamists currently share something in common: they both believe they have the better right to define “true Islam” than ordinary Muslims themselves.

So three years since the marathon bombings, Massachusetts officials have not just failed to understand the threat; they refuse to accept that ideology plays any part at all.

The distinct refusal to acknowledge the ideological underpinning is rarely found elsewhere. Can you imagine a government official responding to neo-Nazi violence by attending a brunch with the Ku Klux Klan? …

Such is the strength of the “Islam is Peace” mantra, that, for politicians and law enforcement, the radicalization process is not hard to understand, but it does seem difficult to accept. Unless law enforcement and government start to examine and counteract the ideological Islamist network that has imposed its rule over much of American Islam, there will only be more bombings, more shootings, and more stabbings.

When will they learn?

 

Yesterday, Thursday April 13, 2016, a documentary film was shown on British TV, titled What British Muslims Really Think.

What it revealed about Muslims in Britain was so subversive of Authorized British Opinion that there had to be some special reason why it was allowed to be shown at all.

There was. It was the work of one of the last men in Britain from whom such a daring act of mutiny could be expected: Trevor Phillips, who for years headed the Equalities and Human Rights Commission [EHRC], an institution or fortress founded to monitor and enforce, throughout the land, full compliance with the First Commandment of post-war Europe: “Though shalt not be racist.“

As head of the EHRC, Trevor Phillips commissioned, in 1997, a report on the attitudes of the British public towards Muslims. Though titled Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, it was commonly called The Runnymede Report. It made the word “Islamophobia” known and held in awe by the morally intimidated public.

From then on, Phillips was tacitly understood to be the knight whose personal errand it was to defend Islam against all criticism.

He above all would unhesitatingly be given media opportunities to speak about Islam.  And last night he did. If what he had to say astonished the nation, it wasn’t because the brow-beaten Britons didn’t know in general the undercover story that his film revealed, but because it was Mr. Phillips revealing it.

To readers of Breitbart, there would have been less surprise. There Raheem Kassam wrote four days before the film was shown:

The former head of Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Trevor Phillips, has admitted he “got almost everything wrong” on Muslim immigration in a damning new report on integration, segregation, and how the followers of Islam are creating “nations within nations” in the West.

Phillips, a former elected member of the Labour Party who served as the Chairman of the EHRC from 2003-2012 will present What British Muslims Really Think on Channel 4 on Wednesday. An ICM poll released to the Times ahead of the broadcast reveals:  …

Writing in the Times on the issue, Phillips admits: “Liberal opinion in Britain has, for more than two decades, maintained that most Muslims are just like everyone else… Britain desperately wants to think of its Muslims as versions of the Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain, or the cheeky-chappie athlete Mo Farah. But thanks to the most detailed and comprehensive survey of British Muslim opinion yet conducted, we now know that just isn’t how it is.”

Phillips commissioned “the Runnymede report” into Britain and Islamophobia in 1997 which, according to both Phillips himself and academics across the country, popularised the phrase which has now become synonymous with any criticism – legitimate or not – of Islam or Muslims. …

Phillips says his new data shows “a chasm” opening between Muslims and non-Muslims on fundamental issues such as marriage, relations between men and women, schooling, freedom of expression and even the validity of violence in defence of religion. He notes … that “the gaps between Muslim and non-Muslim youngsters are nearly as large as those between their elders”. …

“Twenty years ago… I published the report titled Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, we thought that the real risk of the arrival of new communities was discrimination against Muslims … [and] 1996 incidents showed that there was plenty of it around. But we got almost everything else wrong.”

His comments will come as a blow to those who continue to attack elements in British society who are concerned about Muslim immigration and integration, and in fact may even go some way to shoring up comments made by U.S. Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz seeking to slow down or pause the rate of Muslim immigration into the West.

We estimated that the Muslim population of the UK would be approaching 2 [million] by 2020. We underestimated by nearly a million. We predicted that the most lethal threat to Muslims would come from racial attacks and social exclusion. We completely failed to foresee the urban conflicts of 2001 that ravaged our northern cities. And of course we didn’t dream of 9/11 and the atrocities in Madrid, Paris, Istanbul, Brussels and London. For a long time, I too thought that Europe’s Muslims would become like previous waves of migrants, gradually abandoning their ancestral ways, wearing their religious and cultural baggage lightly, and gradually blending into Britain’s diverse identity landscape. I should have known better.

And Mr. Phillips even acknowledges that the mass sexual grooming and rape scandals that are plaguing heavily Muslim populated towns across Britain are because of Muslim – not ‘Asian’ – men. …

The media had been too afraid to call the sex-slavers, rapists, and pimps “Muslims”, but did not scruple to risk offending citizens of oriental descent in general.

Phillips comments: “Some of my journalist friends imagine that, with time, the Muslims will grow out of it. They won’t.”

And indeed he lays the blame at the feet of the liberal, metropolitan elite, media classes:

Oddly, the biggest obstacles we now face in addressing the growth of this nation-within-a-nation are not created by British Muslims themselves. Many of our (distinctly un-diverse) elite political and media classes simply refuse to acknowledge the truth. Any undesirable behaviours are attributed to poverty and alienation. Backing for violent extremism must be the fault of the Americans. Oppression of women is a cultural trait that will fade with time, nothing to do with the true face of Islam. Even when confronted with the growing pile of evidence to the contrary, and the angst of the liberal minority of British Muslims, clever, important people still cling to the patronising certainty that British Muslims will, over time, come to see that “our” ways are better.

Recent studies other than Mr. Phillips’s have shown that, far from time being on the side of integration, the younger the Muslim, the more likely he is to hold hard-line views.

In terms of solutions, Mr. Phillips opines on “halting the growth of sharia courts and placing them under regulation”, ensuring that school governance never falls into the hands of a single-minority group, “ensuring mosques that receive a steady flow of funds from foreign governments such as Saudi Arabia, however disguised, are forced to reduce their dependency on Wahhabi patronage”, and an end to the “silence-for-votes” understanding between local politicians and Muslim leaders …

These are not solutions of course. Solutions would be: rendering militant Islam impotent, and keeping the Muslim population small. But the measures required to do this are not the sort that contemporary Britain is likely to take.

What was the reaction to Trevor Phillips’s revelation – or confession – in general? How will the government respond? We wait to know.

We do know how one journalist responded. Katie Hopkins writes candidly at the MailOnline:

I sat down to watch What British Muslims Really Think with my best multicultural head on.

I cleared my mind of all preconceptions; grubby Rochdale cabbies passing white girls round for sex like a fried chicken bargain bucket, Imams beating kids into devotion, and the truly indoctrinated, blowing up Brussels to get 72 virgins in paradise. …

But, much as it pains me to say it, I have been right all along. British Muslims are not part of some rich tapestry of urban life. It’s a myth, dreamed up by the BBC, and perpetuated by the Islington elite. 

It is them and us. And THEY have no wish to be anything like US. 

The reason Muslims enjoy our country is because it is tolerant. Not the bits where we are tolerant of each other, you understand. Not the fact we respect your right to be Jewish or utterly ungodly. Or our warm embrace of those who identify as straight, gay, lesbian or as gender-fluid as a snail.

No. They enjoy our country because we are tolerant of their right to be as as prejudiced against Jews and as homophobic as they please. 

Fifty-two percent disagree homosexuality should be legalised. Even more oppose gay marriage. Years of British acceptance, now rolled back under a Neanderthal rock because the Koran has come to town. And no one appears to have the moral fibre to point out the hypocrisy of it all; Islamic Societies are proliferating across every University campus, the same safe spaces where any view not militantly pro-LGBTQ is rightly petitioned into silence. Catholic bakers in Ireland are persecuted if they don’t wish to bake a cake celebrating gay marriage, the law demanding their compliance.

But UK Muslims – they can be as homophobic as they choose.

… Having watched what British Muslims think of women, I am relieved my daughters were in bed. I have already written to their schools asking for my children to be exempt from any further trips to the local mosque. I stand against any segregation of my girls from boys.

But Muslim girls are not afforded such liberty, considered to be fortunate to be educated from the back of the room in subjects deemed appropriate for their uses – like cooking and sewing.

Where are the strident feminists fighting for the rights of Muslim girls; their genitals mutilated yet defended as a cultural thing and forced into marriages with ugly uncles? 

Unbelievably, one in three British Muslims support the right of a man to have up to four wives. And that’s young Muslims as well. 18-24 year olds are utterly backwards in their thinking – defended by progressives and liberals.  Why would women share husbands like a field full of flighty deer, waiting for one mangey rutting stag to mount them with his measly Muslim member? 

One Muslim woman describes it as a privilege.

Well I’ve been there, and it didn’t make me feel special.

My first husband – allegedly a Catholic – thought he would try the polygamy thing, informally, with busty women up and down the country. We had a feisty divorce but I kept my children.

If I were a Muslim, British Sharia courts would have taken my children from me by now at the advent of my second marriage, tying my hands and crushing my heart. 

Sitting there on my sofa, listening to women say there is no such thing as rape within Muslim marriage, my pelvic floor is in spasm in disgust. 39% of British Muslims – men and women – say a woman should always obey her husband.

Extend this thinking a little further and you end up with a women in utter subservience, hidden from the world, shrouded in a burqa. For many this submission undoubtedly extends to a good beating.

From there it’s only a short sandal-footed shuffle into Sharia Law where women’s evidence is worth half of that of a man’s, and only two in three British Muslims think stoning a woman to death for being raped is wrong. 

UK Muslims can be as sexist and violent as they choose.

Imagining this new breed of Muslims want to assimilate into our country is farcical. There is no integration. They do not want to assimilate into our increasingly secular ways. 

They want to practise a more radical form of Islam, taught by Wahhabi Imams, living under Sharia law, rejecting homosexuality, promoting the subservience of women, supporting jihad.

We’ve left that sentence as it is because we like the whole article. But we were tempted to cut out “a more radical form of”. Islam is Sharia law, and subjugating women, and fighting, or supporting others who fight, the jihad. And she knows it:

Multiculturalists are determined to distance Muslims from Islamic extremism, imagining it to be the acts of the alienated few.

But the reason we so seldom hear Imams and leaders in the Muslim Community speaking out against terrorists is that in truth, many are right behind them.

Twenty-five percent had sympathy for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris; 20% have sympathy for the 7/7 suicide bombers. Over 100,000 Muslims in the UK have sympathy for terrorist acts. Many support a future attack on the very country which showed them tolerance, allowed them to practise their particular brand of hate, and gave them a home. 

I have heard what Muslims really think and it is clear multiculturalism has never existed.

Through no fault of our inclusive culture, it is them and us. And British Muslims expect us to change our ways to fit in with them.

Right. And successive British governments, and all the governments of western Europe, and even to some extent the government of the United States, also expect us to change our ways to fit in with them.

And at every general election, majorities vote for that government policy. Anyone who opposes it is labelled “far-right”, “neo-Nazi”, “racist” by the media and the intellectual elites.

Trevor Phillips deserves our gratitude – and Katie Hopkins our admiration – for daring to tell the truth.

Trevor Phillips

Being skeptical by nature, principle, and habit, we don’t look for conspiracy theories, much preferring the “cock-up theory” of history and politics.

But when it comes to what happened last January to two US boats and their crews in the Persian Gulf – their capture by the Iranian enemy – our suspicions are aroused by a very strong smell of rat.

Here’s why.

Ari Lieberman sums up what is known and unknown about the episode, writing at Front Page:

On January 12, at approximately 9:23 a.m., a pair American navy riverine command boats or RCBs, set sail south from Kuwait to Bahrain, headquarters of the U.S. 5 Fleet.

At 2:10 p.m., the navy received a report that the RCBs had been intercepted by the Iranians. At 2:45 p.m., the military reported that all communication with the RCB flotilla was severed.

At 6:15 p.m., the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Anzio received a communication from the Iranians that the sailors were being detained. Coincidentally, their detention coincided with Obama’s scheduled State of the Union Address, which predictably, made absolutely no mention of the event.

The Pentagon claimed that the RCBs strayed into Iranian territorial waters as a result of a “navigation error” and thereafter, one of the RCBs experienced engine trouble. They were then greeted by a pair of Iranian speed boats. Photos and video of the incident released by the Iranians show that the Iranian boats were armed with nothing more than forward-mounted Russian 14.5mm DShK machine guns of Korean War vintage.

At gunpoint, the Iranians transferred the boats and their crew to Farsi Island where they maintain a military base.

The boats and crew members were released some 16 hours later. … The Iranians thoroughly inspected the RCBs. Two satellite phone sim cards were stolen by the Iranians and the Pentagon has not divulged what, if any, information they contained.

The groveling John Kerry thanked his Iranian counterpart profusely for releasing the illegally detained sailors.

Aside from these bare facts, the Pentagon has not released any new information concerning the embarrassing incident, a humiliation unparalleled in modern U. S. naval history. …

Troubling questions remain unanswered.

First, how did an experienced naval crew, equipped with sophisticated navigational equipment and traveling a well-charted, straight forward path, encounter a “navigational error” that led them into the territorial waters of an extremely hostile entity? In the absence of additional information, the Pentagon’s explanation makes absolutely no sense. There has been speculation that the Iranians employed a device that spoofed  or tricked the RCB’s on-board GPS devices with fake signals, leading the sailors into believing that they were on a correct course when they had in fact, substantially deviated. If the Iranians had in fact employed such a device, it would not have been the first time. In 2011, they reportedly misdirected a U.S. drone operating in Afghanistan by hacking into its GPS. The drone and all of its technology fell into Iranian hands relatively intact. The Pentagon has not issued any comment on this theory and notably, has not issued any denial of this troublesome scenario.

Second, and even more troubling, is how did 10 American sailors surrender their heavily armed  and armored RCBs to a vastly inferior Iranian force without firing a single shot?

Why weren’t readily available military assets immediately deployed and dispatched after the military was notified of the hostile encounter?

Who gave the commander the order to surrender and was the decision to surrender influenced by political considerations, notably Obama’s State of the Union Address?

While the Pentagon continues to remain mute on these and other crucial issues surrounding the seizure of the RCBs, the Iranians have been extremely talkative, missing no opportunity to humiliate the “Great Satan”.

The list of outrages includes the following:

The sailors were forced to kneel at gunpoint with their hands interlocked behind their heads. The display was videotaped.

The commander was forced to apologize and acknowledge his “navigational error” and the graciousness of his Iranian captors on Iranian TV.

The Iranians re-enacted the surrender spectacle during one of their annual “Death to America” demonstrations.

The sailors were subjected to rather intense interrogation. Iranian TV aired footage purporting to show an American sailor crying. A female sailor endured further humiliation and was forced into Sharia compliance by being made to wear a head covering.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, publicly issued the Iranians responsible for capturing the RCB sailors with “medals of conquest”.

Approximately two weeks after the sailors were freed, Iran released footage of one its drones shadowing the U.S. aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman … on the very day the sailors were captured. A U.S. Navy spokesman called the flyover “abnormal and unprofessional”.

As noted, two satellite phone sim cards, likely containing classified information, were stolen by the Iranians. In mid-March, naval commander Gen. Ali Razmjou of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards announced that Iran had retrieved thousands of pages of information from laptops, GPS devices and maps used by U.S. Navy sailors.

It is likely that we have not heard the last from the Iranians on this humiliating saga. In fact, Razmjou said that the IRG will publish a book about the incident.

The Iranian bombast stands in marked contrast to the Pentagon’s almost docile stance. The reasons for the Pentagon’s silence are not hard to fathom. Something happened in the Arabian Gulf on January 12 that if revealed, would likely cause considerable embarrassment to the Obama administration. …

Obama will continue to order the Pentagon to obfuscate and remain silent on the circumstances surrounding the seizure of U.S. personnel in the Arabian Gulf, because it will likely embarrass the administration and add to further congressional calls to toughen sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The order to the “experienced naval crew” to “surrender their heavily armed and armored RCBs to a vastly inferior Iranian force without firing a single shot”, MUST  have come down the line from the highest authority.

We have frequently argued that Obama wants Iran to become a nuclear armed power, which is why he went to such great lengths, making every possible concession, to get his dubious “deal” agreed with the Iranian regime. Furthermore, Obama has shown consistently that he loves Islam, holding it in far higher esteem than the country he was so improbably elected to lead.

Looked at in the light of those suppositions, the incident of the captured RCBs can be seen as highly congenial to Obama’s agenda. So did Obama have anything personally to do with its occurrence?

Even if the story of the Iranian trick is true – their amazingly expert use of some technological marvel, the modern equivalent of the Sirens who lured Odysseus into their clutches  – it does not explain why nothing was done immediately to recover the boats and the crews. Nothing, that is, other than Secretary of State John Kerry getting down on his knees and begging the Ayatollahs to return them. Which he did – though the groveling was called “diplomacy”, for the “success” of which Kerry expressed personal pride.

So how was it done? Why was it done? Was there a secret agreement between the White House and the Dark Tower to have it happen? If so, when was it brewed?

Thing is, the only beneficiary of it is the Islamic regime of Iran. So was the boost to the prestige of those evil men allowed for want of any other choice, or was it planned and intended?

Did the incident come about regrettably because of a series of cock-ups? Or was there a conspiracy over which the conspirers are crowing, one side openly, the other side secretly?

The fact that those questions can plausibly be asked, must cause American patriots to shudder.

Brussels wants more Muslim immigrants!

The Express – asking in its headline “Is he mad? –  reports:

Dimitris Avramopoulos urged EU nations to open up their borders to more migrants despite the current chaos, which has seen millions of migrants force their way across Europe.

Who’s he? He is the EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship. His office is in Brussels, the capital of the European Union.

He knows about the recent acts of mass murder carried out by Muslim immigrants in that city.

But Dimitris Avramopoulos doesn’t give a damn.   

Brussels is devising plans to take in MORE people. …

The document – know as a communication – shockingly points out that the EU wants to carve out more legal pathways for migrants to encourage them to come to Europe.

It states:

European countries will continue to stand steadfast in meeting their legal and moral commitment to those who need protection from war and persecution.”

And there’s more evidence of Europe’s lust for martyrdom from the MailOnline, which reports:

Male Norwegian politician raped by asylum seeker says he feels guilty that his attacker will now be deported because the man might suffer back in Somalia.

The Norwegian politician, Karsten Nordal Hauken, was raped by a Somali asylum seeker. The rapist was convicted and deported after serving his sentence.

Nordal Hauken writes that he feels sorry for his attacker.

Karsten Nordal Hauken was raped in his home and the perpetrator was subsequently caught and jailed for 4.5 years. However, when Nordal Hauken found out that the man was to be deported back to Somalia after serving his time, he reveals he felt guilt that the man would possibly face hardship in his old country.

Nordal Hauken describes himself as a “young Socialist Left Party member, feminist and anti-racist”.  

The politician reveals that he struggled to come to terms with being a heterosexual male rape victim, and subsequently self-medicated with alcohol and cannabis.

“I am a heterosexual man who was raped by a Somalian asylum seeker,” Nordal Hauken writes for NRK [the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company]. “My life fell into ruin, but now I feel guilty about him being sent out of the country.”

He reveals how he was called up by the prison shortly before the perpetrator was to be deported to Somalia, having served 4.5 years in prison for the rape.

‘I felt relief and happiness that he would be gone forever. I felt the Norwegian State had taken responsibility to carry out the ultimate revenge, like an angry father confronting it’s child’s attacker. But I also had a strong feeling of guilt and responsibility. I was the reason that he would not be in Norway anymore, but rather sent to a dark uncertain future in Somalia. I see him mostly like a product of an unfair world, a product of an upbringing marked by war and despair.

Not as an adult individual responsible for his own actions.

It is not hard to find explanation for why Europe is dying.

It is killing itself out of bureaucratic lunacy institutionalized in the EU, and nauseating sentimentality – both of which it mistakes for moral obligation so compelling as to be worth dying for.

(Hat-tip for the Mail link to our Facebook commenter John Bobbitt)

England is Islam’s top brothel in Europe.

Janet Levy, writing at American Thinker, reviews a book about the very young English girls – perhaps as many as a million – who were made the sex slaves of Muslim men, and how the British authorities did nothing whatever to stop the Muslim slavers, and even protected them from exposure and punishment.

For the past few decades, British authorities have been caught up in the pervasive meme of multiculturalism – the falsehood that all cultures are equal and that to believe otherwise is to commit the worst modern day offense – to be “racist”.

Under this fallacy, the British government in 2001 introduced a series of restrictive speech codes that criminalized criticism of Islam, followed by a Racial and Religious Hatred Bill imposing fines and even imprisonment for speech that “incited hatred against a person for their religious or racial background”.  …

In this context and political climate, with racism conflated with religion – one specific religion – it is easy to see how government and public service employees would fear professional and legal repercussions (up to seven years in prison) merely for speaking up about criminal behavior by Muslims who justify their actions citing the Koran. In this way, teachers, police, child care workers, government officials and others have been silent about the growing menace of Muslim gangs who sexually groom and exploit children in the UK.

In his riveting book, Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal (World Encounter Institute/New English Review Press, 2016. 328 pp., $17.20) author Peter McLoughlin explains how multiculturalism-inspired political correctness along with its companion, willful blindness concerning Islamic doctrine, has jeopardized the safety and well-being of children. McLoughlin posits that, since 1988, this nationwide sexploitation has resulted in the shattering of lives of between 100,000 to 1 million girls. The author documents how the fear of being deemed racist and facing criminal charges, dismissal or even threats of violence, has led to suppression of information and a stunning lack of intervention on behalf of young victims. In essence, an extensive, insidious operation that targets children for sexual grooming and enslavement has been covered up because of political correctness and fear of Muslim retribution.

The book’s title comes from former UK Home Secretary, Jack Straw, who saw Muslim perpetrators viewing non-Muslim British victims as “easy meat.” Indeed, some Muslim sex-gang groomers actually blame the girls, some as young as 11 years old, for being purposely alluring and sexually advanced to corrupt Muslims

In his research on Muslim groomers, McLoughlin uncovered an unusual distinction between them and non-Muslim pedophiles. Non-Muslim pedophiles are typically lone adults who groom children for sex in reclusive secrecy, worry about being prosecuted by law enforcement, meet accusations with defensive denial and worry about being discovered, shamed, and criticized by friends or relatives. Muslim perpetrators, however, work in gangs, see nothing wrong with their shariah-sanctioned activities, receive collusive support from their communities and feel they are above the law. During his investigations, McLoughlin found not one case of non-Muslim men grooming Muslim girls, although 95% of men in Britain are non-Muslims.

News coverage of the crimes has been mostly obfuscated by a complicit media that characterizes the overwhelmingly Muslim perpetrators as generic “Asians.” According to McLoughlin’s research, limited press coverage by mainly self-censoring journalists and lenient, if any, criminal charges have enabled the gangs to act with relative impunity since 1988.

The author describes how Muslim flesh-peddlers operate as part of a well-organized extensive network of taxi drivers, shop and restaurant owners, and security guards. Girls, mainly between the ages of 11 and 14, the majority from state-run children’s homes, are ensnared while traveling from school to home, at shopping malls, restaurants, bus stations and similar public venues. They are enticed with flattery, feigned friendship, gifts, alcohol and drugs. Alarmingly, a footnote in the book references a quotation from a city outreach worker with the Children’s Society who states, “every girl living in a children’s home in the city of Birmingham is being sexually exploited”. …

McLoughlin does a good job of portraying the frustration and desperation of victim’s families who have sought help to no avail for well over a decade from local councils, law enforcement, child care professionals and journalists. Remarkably, for the most part, UK authorities have failed to warn parents that young girls are at risk or to recommend extra supervision and vigilance. No organized programs to educate girls and parents exist and authorities have largely refused interviews with the media on the topic. Teachers and school administrators have failed to secure the school perimeter to stop sex grooming gangs from lying in wait for girls outside of school premises.

The author reports that police routinely dismiss parents’ concerns and have failed to set up surveillance operations at strategically significant locations. Police have even arrested parents for trying to save their children. In one such case, fathers, who were able to track down their daughters and tried to rescue them were arrested by police. In fact, McLoughlin discloses that law enforcement officers have actually returned wayward girls to their pimps.

McLoughlin reveals that local authorities – social workers, teachers’ unions, educational organizations and childcare agencies – have made no effort to intervene or draw public attention to the pervasive threat. He submits that feared charges of racism preclude their mandated responsibility for the protection of children.

In fact, the author reports how major teachers’ unions are behind an organization – Unite Against Fascism – that blocks the publicizing of the sex grooming gang phenomenon and its Muslim community participation.

In 2008, a taxpayer-funded national education film, My Dangerous Loverboy, commissioned by the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre, was produced ostensibly to warn and educate girls about generic sex grooming gangs. But no mention was made of Muslim involvement or the victims’ young ages. According to McLoughlin, the film has been difficult to obtain and has not been shown to the intended audience: girls, parents, social workers, police officers, school nurses, doctors, teachers, youth workers, sexual health practitioners. My own extensive, month-long efforts to locate a copy were unproductive and met with denials of the crimes’ Muslim connection.

In Easy Meat, McLoughlin laments the very limited prosecution of Muslim sex grooming and pimping crimes. In the rare instances of successful criminal litigation, typical sentences are minimal and usually partially served, if at all, despite existing sentencing guidelines. Gang members have been known to assert Muslim supremacy, make accusations of Muslim victimhood and racism, and threaten retaliation against the girls and their families. Some have clearly cited religious motivations for their crimes in court.

Astonishingly, few victims receive any special protection during the trials. Protection of defendants’ rights supersedes that of victims, even with child victims. The 1989 Children’s Act, a statute requiring the child’s welfare be the court’s paramount consideration, doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference in the proceedings and outcome. More distressing is the fact that the greater the Muslim population density in an area, the lower the conviction rate.

The backdrop for sexual grooming and enslavement of children lies in Islamic doctrines outlined by McLoughlin. He reviews the pervasive slave-taking history of Islam from the 7th century, as well as Islamic doctrine from the Koran citing Islam’s view of non-Muslims, its treatment of women and sexual slaves, and the permissibility of sex with children by Mohammed’s example with his nine-year-old third wife, Aisha.

McLoughlin explains how sex as rape has historically been used as a weapon of war to assert Islamic supremacy. Islamic doctrine encourages the rape and enslavement of non-Muslims, even with married infidel women as a legal and moral enterprise.

Further, the required first and foremost allegiance to the Umma, or Muslim community, and the inbred obligation of enmity toward non-Muslims facilitates the pimping of non-Muslim girls and hinders any attempts at exposing its criminality and eventual prosecution. Sexual slavery has historically been used as a religious weapon to advance the domination of Islam.

In Easy Meat, McLoughlin details how the sexploitation and enslavement of girls, once viewed as a great evil in Western society, has become a pervasive, routine, and almost pedestrian part of everyday life in the UK.

On this issue, the courageous author effectively deals with the contention that Western civilization is fighting for its very existence in a clash between civilization and barbarism.

His book serves as a grave warning for other countries as they consider increased levels of Muslim immigration.

Yes, “a clash between civilization and barbarism” – not “a clash of civilizations”.

Islamic terrorism has worked all too well. Europe is terrified of Islam.

The terror is not a “phobia” – which is to say, it is not irrational – but a very rational, and utterly cowardly, reaction to the rise of a savage enemy; vicious men who will perpetrate any cruelty, at any moment, anywhere, against the people who feed, house, educate and heal them, knowing that they can do so with impunity.

Far from having to pay any price, the perpetrators will most probably profit from their crimes. They will be given more concessions – such as permission to extend ever further the reach of their own oppressive laws.

Although the West is militarily, technologically, economically, and intellectually far stronger than Islam, every Western country is submitting to that primitive enemy.

It’s an unbearable but undeniable fact: the West is terrified of Islam.

Of course both Trump and Cruz followers want passionately for the Left to be defeated in November 2016. But the defeat of Hillary and the Democratic Party, though it would be enormously satisfying to both factions, would not be enough for Trump voters. They want more. And that “more” is  revenge.

So we deduce from watching them and listening to them through the media.

We understand feelingly why that might be. The harm Obama and his gang have done to America and the world will take decades to repair, maybe even centuries. Europe will probably never recover from the Islamic invasion unleashed upon it by the devastating policies of the Obama regime towards Islam and the Middle East.

Whereas Cruz voters may be content with an election victory, Trump voters will also want Hillary in prison for a long stretch; Islam crushed; and, in as short a time as possible, Obama condemned by “history”.

Those who share that ache for revenge, will understand why all the reasons that anti-Trump conservatives pour out for not supporting Trump, fall on deaf ears.  

Michael Dansen writes at Truth Revolt:

Donald Trump is … a healthy antibody reaction to Obamaism … In a country that does not historically gravitate towards extremism at the highest levels of political office, he may be the medicine we need in order to even things out. Yes, the treatment may be harsh, but the patient is very sick.

In the words of the late, great Andrew Breitbart, if someone calls you a racist or a bigot, “Walk towards that fire.” A Trump presidency will prove that you can say things that are unflattering – but sometimes true – about preferred victim groups and the world will not come to an end. We will not re-introduce slavery. We will not become The Third Reich. We will not legalize rape. We will not make birth control illegal. There will be no reconstitution of Jim Crow. Those days are gone and good riddance.

The Right needs to learn to bring a knife, at the very least, to a knife fight. George W. Bush, who had this CRAZY notion that a country should use its military to kill its enemies, was destroyed over Iraq because he didn’t want to “lower himself” by responding to his critics. When called a “misleader” [read: “liar”] by the DNC in a July 2003 television ad over prewar intel, Karl Rove decided not to bring up the fact that WMD stockpiles actually were uncovered in Iraq.

Trump is always on offense and he’s a tougher target. Over-the-top Democrat attacks on Trump only help his cause. They’re having the same effect as protestors crashing Trump rallies – they make more people sympathetic to his campaign.

The Right also needs to push back against the Left’s specious income inequality arguments and their demonization of the wealthy. Democrats have been offering free stuff from rich people for 50 years. Not surprisingly, this is seductive and appealing. Rich people pay the OVERWHELMING majority of taxes in this country, but Dems still demand that they need to pay their “fair share”. Trump can be counted on to question and reject their premises – which is a major reason that progressives loathe the man with the white hot heat of a thousand suns.

As for Trump’s promised, controversial wall:

First, it is not a 2,000 mile wall. It will be built in certain sections which are the sites most common for illegal ingress.

Second, the U.S. has levers to elevate the Mexican government’s thinking on the subject of who pays for what – namely, foreign aid and impounding remittances.

Third, it’s a sordid situation indeed that Mexico City provides instructions to their citizens on how to subvert U.S. law, offers their consulates in the U.S. to help carry this out, and then calls us racists for noticing this. That Trump is controversial for being against de facto indentured servitude that’s incompatible with the melting pot ideal is the real controversy.

To opponents who hold to the “we are a nation of immigrants” school of thought: there is no limiting principle to that line of thinking and it is essentially an open borders argument. The idea that anybody who can physically get here deserves to remain here is absurd – even more so as we continue to build up the welfare state. We need more citizens who are contributing to the tax rolls, not who are net takers from them. America has traditionally gone through periods of opening the borders up through controlled, legal immigration from overseas and going through periods of assimilation and “insularity”.

We also had a common culture that was at first at least suspecting of the Dutch, Anglicans [sic] [he may mean Anglophones – ed], Germans, Catholics, the Irish, Italians, Jews, Greeks, etc. This was healthy as it winnowed the field of those who had what it took to be full-fledged American citizens and those who couldn’t quite hack it.

We’re not in unqualified agreement with that last paragraph. But we firmly agree with what he says next:

Do we have the right to prevent Muslims from entering our country after spasms of Islam-inspired terrorism? Yes.

He is implying that there is a sound reason to exclude Muslims. But his next point is that immigrants can be excluded for no sound reasons – even on whim only.

We also can prevent Congregationalists, left-handed people, towheads, Andorrans, etc. if that is the national course upon which we decide.

Because –

Immigration here is a privilege, not a right.

And so it is. It is the prerogative of the nation state to choose whom it will accept into its protection.

He returns to the Muslim question:

It will be a relief when we have a leader who does not say, after yet another Islamist atrocity, “First thing: get me to a mosque. I need to hug a Muslim and pronounce upon Koranic interpretations. The most important thing right now is not attending to our security concerns; it is stopping the bigoted, xenophobic, murderous impulse that lies just under the surface of our society!” …

And then he goes on to the Communist question (incidentally reminding us that from the start of the Cold War, Communists were denied immigration, or even a visitor’s visa to tour or study in the US).

For those who complain that there are some unsavory characters in Trump’s base, keep in mind that they may be scary but the left’s unsavory characters – in the media, academia, and the entertainment industry – are the inheritors of an ideology that has killed, according to The Black Book of Communism, 100 million people.

The outgoing president is also one of those unsavory inheritors. The electorate could not have made a worse choice other than an outright supporter of Islamic jihad … Oh, wait! …

Muslims march in Germany, chanting “With Allah’s help we will conquer you!”

Watch the Third World marching in – and on – a demoralized First World:

Blatant hypocrisy is on full display, along with the menace. The law they are equal under is German law. But they want to replace it with sharia, under which women and non-Muslims are not treated equally with Muslim men.

In an article on the suicide of Europe, containing much we agree with, the excellent and erudite Victor Davis Hanson writes at the National Review:

Like atheism, childlessness reflects the assumption that ego-driven rationalism and satisfaction of the appetites are all there is and all that there ever will be.

And it is that point in particular that we want to discuss.

But first – the important points he makes:

Because of what Europe has become, it now has few viable choices in dealing with radical Islamic terrorism. Its dilemma is a warning to Americans that we should turn away from a similar path of national suicide. 

After suffering serial terrorist attacks from foreign nationals and immigrants, a normal nation-state would be expected to make extraordinary efforts to close its borders and redefine its foreign policy in order to protect its national interests.

But a France or a Belgium is not quite a sovereign nation any more, and thus does not have complete control over its national destiny or foreign relations. As part of the European Union, France and Belgium have, for all practical purposes, placed their own security in the hands of an obdurate Angela Merkel’s Germany, which is hellbent on allowing without audit millions of disenchanted young Middle Eastern males into its territory, with subsequent rights of passage into any other member of the European Union that they wish. The 21st-century “German problem” is apparently not that of an economic powerhouse and military brute warring on its neighbors, but that of an economic powerhouse that uses its wealth and arrogant sense of social superiority to bully its neighbors into accepting its bankrupt immigration policies and green ideology.

The immigration policies of France and Belgium are unfortunately also de facto those of Greece. And a petulant and poor Greece, licking its wounds over its European Union brawl with northern-European banks, either cannot or will not control entrance into its territory — Europe’s window on the Middle East. No European country can take the security measures necessary for its own national needs, without either violating or ignoring EU mandates. That the latest terrorist murders struck near the very heart of the EU in Brussels is emblematic of the Union’s dilemma.

As far as America is concerned, a fossilized EU should remind us of our original and vanishing system of federalism, in which states were once given some constitutional room to craft laws and protocols to reflect regional needs — and to ensure regional and democratic input with checks and balances on statism through their representatives in Congress. Yet the ever-growing federal government — with its increasingly anti-democratic, politically correct, and mostly unaccountable bureaucracies — threatens to do to Americans exactly what the EU has done to Europeans. We already see how the capricious erosion of federal immigration law has brought chaos to the borderlands of the American Southwest. It is a scary thing for a federal power arbitrarily to render its own inviolable laws null and void — and then watch the concrete consequences of such lawlessness fall on others, who have been deprived of recourse to constitutional protections of their own existential interests.

Europe’s immigration policy is a disaster … Europeans — for a variety of 20th-century historical and cultural reasons — often are either ignorant of who they are or terrified about expressing their identities in any concrete and positive fashion. The result is that Europe cannot impose on a would-be newcomer any notion that consensual government is superior to the anarchy and theocracy of the Middle East, that having individual rights trumps being subjects of a dictator, that personal freedom is a better choice than statist tyranny, that protection of private property is a key to economic growth whereas law by fiat is not, and that independent judiciaries do not run like Sharia courts. It most certainly cannot ask of immigrants upon arrival that they either follow the laws of a society that originally made Europe attractive to them, or return home to live under a system that they apparently rejected.

All good so far. Then:

I omit for obvious reasons that few present-day Europeans believe that Christianity is much different from Islam, and apparently thus assume that terrorists might just as well be Christians.

But he hasn’t omitted it, has he? A bitter regret has stepped quietly into the article and lingers by the door – a regret that Europe has (broadly speaking) abandoned its religion.

He goes on, cogently again:

… In Europe, immigrants are political tools of the Left. The rapid influx of vast numbers of unassimilated, uneducated, poor, and often illegal newcomers may violate every rule of successful immigration policy. Yet the onrush does serve the purposes of the statist, who demagogues for an instantaneous equality of result. Bloc voters, constituents of bigger government, needy recipients of state largesse, and perennial whiners about inequality are all fodder for European multicultural leftists, who always seek arguments for more of themselves. …

Which is the case in America too. As he says:

The same phenomenon is with us in the United States … [where] importing the poor and the uneducated expands the Democratic constituency. …

The Western therapeutic mindset, which maintains that impoverished immigrants should instantly have what their hosts have always had, trumps the tragic view: that it is risky, dangerous, and sometimes unwise to leave one’s home for a completely alien world, in which sacrifice and self-reliance alone can make the gamble worthwhile — usually for a second generation not yet born.

Demography is Europe’s bane. One engine of unchecked immigration has been the need for more bodies to do the sorts of tasks that Europeans feel are no longer becoming of Europeans. …

Again that is also true of America.

But more curious is the reason why Europe is shrinking — the classic and primary symptom of a civilization in rapid decline.

Europeans are not having children for lots of reasons. A static and fossilized economy without much growth gives little hope to a 20-something European that he or she can get a good job, buy a home, have three children, and provide for those offspring lives with unlimited choices. Instead, the young European bides his time, satisfying his appetites, as a perpetual adolescent who lives in his parents’ flat, seeks to milk the system, and waits for someone to die at the tribal government bureau. After a lost decade, one hopes to hook up with some like soul in her or his late thirties.

And –

The last eight years in the U.S. have seen an acceleration of the Europeanization of America’s youth.

Socialism … insidiously takes responsibility away from the individual and transfers it to the anonymous, but well-funded, state. … Why seek children and the honor of raising and protecting them when the state can provide all without the bother and direct expense? Why have a family or invest for the future, when the state promises a pleasant and politically correct old-age home?

Without a Second Amendment or much of a defense budget, Europeans not only divert capital to enervating social programs, but also have sacrificed any confidence in muscular self-protection, individual or collective.

Even postmodern nations remain collections of individuals. A state that will not or cannot protect its own interests is simply a reflection of millions of dead souls that do not believe in risking anything to ensure that they are safe — including their own persons and those of their family. Finally, Europe is Petronius’s Croton. It does not believe in any transcendence as reified by children or religion. If there is nothing but the here and now, then why invest one’s energy in children who live on after one dies? Like atheism, childlessness reflects the assumption that ego-driven rationalism and satisfaction of the appetites are all there is and all that there ever will be.

Europe’s perfect storm is upon us. A shrinking, statist, and agnostic society that does not believe in transcendence, either familial or religious, is now in a war with near neighbors of a very different sort. In the Middle East, the fundamentalists are growing in numbers, and they most certainly do believe that their own lives are nothing in comparison to the Phoenix-like resurrection of their Caliphate and the sensual pleasures in the hereafter that will reward their martial sacrifices in the here and now. Of all the many reasons why immigrants to Europe so often dislike their generous hosts, the simplest may be because they so easily can.

… It would take another St. Jerome (“All were born in captivity and siege, and do not desire the liberty they never knew. Who could believe this?”) to chronicle the Western tragedy.

As a general rule, whatever Europe is now doing, we should do the opposite — for our very survival in an increasingly scary world.

So, an article saying much that needs to be said.

But we come back to this: Europe “does not believe in any transcendence as reified by children or religion. If there is nothing but the here and now, then why invest one’s energy in children who live on after one dies? Like atheism, childlessness reflects the assumption that ego-driven rationalism and satisfaction of the appetites are all there is and all that there ever will be.” And: ” A shrinking, statist, and agnostic society that does not believe in transcendence, either familial or religious, is now in a war with near neighbors of a very different sort.”

His argument is that Europeans now do not think, or feel, or believe that there is any larger purpose to be served than the achievement of their own private personal ambitions and pleasures; no goals beyond their own individual lives worth putting their energies into. Previous generations believed they had a posterity in their children, the continuation of their families; and/or in the immortality of their nation; and/or in a spiritual afterlife.

And that is true. They did.

Then their nations were taken away from them, blended into a monstrous political entity called the European Union. What Frenchman, or Italian, or Englishman will ever say: “Breathes there a man with soul so dead/ Who never to himself has said/ This is mine own, my native … European Union”?

And what of their losing the desire for descendants? That’s harder to explain. In addition to the fading away of marriage, the dread of the expense of children, the shrinking from the emotional risk of entering into the responsibilities of relationships, there is a much larger source of discouragement; what one might call a cosmic despair: our knowledge of global doom. By “global doom” I don’t mean “global warming”, but the certainty that this world in which we exist and act, will one day itself cease to exist. It may be only in about 3 billion years that the final doom will come upon it, but go it will, for sure.

Whether or not those explanations are the right ones – perhaps among many others  – it is a fact that Europeans are not having enough children to ensure the survival of their nations, even if they were to take back national sovereignty from the bureaucratic dictatorship of the EU.

This means they are discarding the future, as individuals and as a bridging generation between their nation’s yesterday and tomorrow. And because they have no future to work or build for – what have they to defend? So when another culture, a savage culture that arose and remains in the ignorant Dark Ages and knows nothing of the physical destiny of this planet, invades their continent, and increases with many children, and believes that making war ensures their endless and dominant continuation on earth and immortal happiness after death, there is nothing effective standing in its way. No one to bar the gates. No one to fight back. The imaginary spokesman of the dying European culture with no stake in the future says, “Come in, if you want to. Take what you want. Do as you will. I won’t be around much longer to know or care what happens here.” (“A shrinking, statist, and agnostic society that does not believe in transcendence, either familial or religious, is now in a war with near neighbors of a very different sort.”)

Hanson suggests that the Europeans’ discarding of the future, and consequent abandonment of the greatest civilization the human race has ever attained, is not only tragic – which it is – but also immoral. He implies this by adding to the causes – familial, national – that kept European Man going for centuries, the cause of religion. He plainly considers it a highly desirable thing that human beings should believe that their time on earth is not the whole of their existence. He believes in an afterlife as formulated in Christian doctrine. The quality of that afterlife for each individual may depend on how the individual Christian behaves in his earthly life. Hoping for heaven, he will be good according to the precepts of his faith. (Now that is true of Catholics, whose church allows that good works as well as “the grace of God” can bring one to heaven. But many Protestant sects, most notably Calvinists and Lutherans, teach that only God decides your eternal destination, and he does that even before you are born, so what you do can make not a jot of difference to the iron ruling. The only encouragement such churches offer the faithful is that if you live dutifully, obedient to the commandments of your God, you will be perceived as a person destined for heaven, and thus perceived, you may live in hope.)

One way or another, Christianity – Hanson seems to assume – helped Europeans be strong in defense of their inheritance, prolific in procreation to ensure their posterity, and above all continent in their appetites for the hope of heaven.

And that may very well have been true. But we deny that lack of religious belief now is a cause of the self-inflicted doom of Europe. It seems plain to us that lack of interest in this life  – beyond personal attainment and pleasure – is at work.

Atheism does not assume that “ego-driven rationalism and satisfaction of the appetites are all there is and all that there ever will be”. Some atheists might assume it, but there is nothing about atheism that logically involves any such assumption.

Atheists are more likely to strive harder in this life to know, to achieve, to build, to love and hate, defend and attack, as well as to think and enjoy, than those who believe that their final, greater, and possibly happier destiny is in another world. Atheists who learn and build are very likely to want descendants to continue their discoveries, further their achievements, and add to their works, since only those they beget and what they bequeath will survive their death.

By that reasoning, atheism could have been the salvation of Europe. We might propose that far from the loss of Christianity dooming the European nations, it is the legacy of Christianity as self-abasement, non-resistance to evil, the choice of self-sacrifice, and the love of martyrdom that has primed Europeans through their inherited moral culture to let this death happen to them. And if that is so, what we are seeing is the logical end of Christian history in the age of science.

But as the Christian religion peters out in disbelief, its acolytes perish unresisting at the hands of other – passionate – believers. 

Now if only Muslims could be persuaded to abandon their faith, their belief that they must conquer and subdue all others and gain an afterlife in paradise …  what then? Europeans might still be dying out, but at least not in agony and  terror.