To our readers 12
Please read the three posts below together as if they were one.
They are all about “THE GREAT RESET” and its consequences.
And please follow the links.
To our readers 87
Please read the following three posts (above) together as if they were one.
They are all about “THE GREAT RESET” and its consequences.
And please follow the links.
Four hundred years of servitude? 79
The Left is obsessed with race.
Its batwinged theorists, huddled together in their black tower amidst their sulfurous stench, decree that we all are – each and every one of us is – characterized by what race we derive from.
Nothing else about you matters a jot. Your personality, your achievements, your aspirations, your ideas, your talents, your actions – bah!
Achtung! Are you white or not white?
You are to be judged according to the answer to that question.
You are white? You are wrong and bad. You are black? – ah! …
The leading propaganda organ of the American Far Left, the New York Times, has embarked on a project to re-write the whole history of America as the story of blacks enslaved by whites.
They call it PROJECT 1619. You can learn all about it here (if you have two hours and twelve minutes to spare, and are a masochist, or gifted with extraordinary patience, or cursed with insomnia).
The essence of the fiction is that America was founded on injustice from the moment the first slave ship arrived on its shores in August 1619, and continues to be unjust and intolerable.
The deep purpose is to convince the population that President Trump personifies this persistent injustice and must urgently be toppled from power.
However, it’s evil contention is easily and deftly dismissed by Newt Gingrich in this video clip, starting at the 1.32 minute mark:
(Hat-tip to our commenter Jeanne)
Breaking the spell 98
We very seldom quote from a Leftist atheist site.
Today we do.
At Patheos, Shem the Penman writes in praise of Daniel Dennett. (You can find the whole thing here.)
We won’t discuss his contention that Dennett writes better on atheism than Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris, all of whom he apparently despises (although all of them were to some degree, or at least for a certain time, on the Left). We have given our opinion of their writings elsewhere. (See eg. our reviews of some of their books under Pages in our margin.)
It is something he says that Dennett says that we choose to examine.
He writes:
It may not be as popular on nonbeliever reading lists, or as packed with quotable quips about religion as God Is Not Great or The God Delusion, but Daniel Dennett’s 2006 book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon gives us a scheme for a scientific study of religion: how it developed and what it means to society today. Even on my first reading of it, I recall being impressed with Dennett’s thoroughness and seriousness in his task, which was much more subtle and empathetic than the standard demolition of religion delivered by cheap polemicists like Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins.
Such a study is important, Dennett knows, because religion represents a significant investment by believers in time, effort, and resources. Whether we think religion is a good thing or not, we have to come up with some sort of explanation for its development and survival throughout human history. In Darwinian terms, it has to justify its cost at every step of its evolution. …
Nowadays, the custodians of religion have come up with ways to ensure its survival that represent defense mechanisms for the meme complex. The first is the “spell” Dennett refers to in the title: the admonition against examining religion the same way we’d examine other human phenomena like sexuality or language. But there’s a more significant way that religion perpetuates itself in our era, and that’s through the belief-in-belief. In other words, whether people believe in the deities and tenets of their religion, they profess belief that the belief in them is a good idea. Religion perpetuates itself not by the belief it inspires, but by the behavior it motivates. Professing religious belief, in particular, is a behavior that significantly contributes to the perpetuation of the meme complex of religion.
This is the feature of Dennett’s thought that distinguishes him from a critic of religion such as Dawkins: while Dawkins focuses on the literal beliefs of religious people, Dennett points out that from the meme’s-eye-view, there’s no difference between a Muslim who prays five times a day because he truly believes in Allah and the truth of the Koran, and a Muslim who prays five times a day because that’s what Muslims do. …
There is a difference. The difference is as stated – that the one truly believes and the other merely conforms. And it is a fairly significant difference, because there is a better chance that the conformer can be dissuaded from his conformity than that the believer can be dissuaded from his belief.
In sum, what Dennett is saying (according to the writer) is that religions continue through the ages because they become conventional in this or that society.
True, and not a revelation.
In most societies, throughout the Third World, the notion that ideas can and should be critically examined did not arise. Only the West was taught this marvelous and simple exercise; first very early in its history, by Socrates in the 4th century BCE, and then, after hundreds of years of dogmatic Christian tyranny, by the Enlightenment thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries CE.
With the Enlightenment, religion in the West began to die. To quote from our own Articles of Reason: Many a belief can survive persecution, but not critical examination.
It did not happen that everyone who was told to reason became a rationalist. For many who preferred to feel rather than to think, religion was replaced by Romanticism. But almost everyone came to accept what Science revealed and what its child, Technology, put to use. Almost everyone, that is to say, who was taught some science and whose lives were transformed by technology; those who were TOLD about those ideas, who experienced their effects.
Sure, there are still millions in the West – mainly in America – who learn some science, use technology, and nevertheless continue to believe that their religion is true. But their number is dwindling.
Religion must be argued against. Especially, now, Islam must be argued against. Argument is the best weapon in our arsenal to use against Islam – without excluding any others – precisely because so many Muslims pray five times a day for no better reason than that “that’s what Muslims do”.
That is why Muslims fear critical examination, so much so that they are trying to get it banned by law in Western countries, and by the UN, where they have a bullying majority.
We quote a few passages from the essay Tell them listed in our margin under Pages.
Why do millions of Americans “think” that economic equality is morally desirable? …
Why do millions of university students in America admire intellectuals who hate America, such as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and make an icon out of the sadistic mass-murderer Che Guevara?
Why? Because they’ve been told to. They’ve been told that good people do and “think” these things. They want to be good. They believe what they’ve been taught. …
Now millions of conservatives are waking up and are asking, how did this happen? It happened because people patiently, energetically, persistently planned it and made it happen.
What can we do about it, they ask themselves and each other.
What they have to do about it is change the minds of the believers. First they must be sure that they want the free republic the founders established; that they want to maintain free markets; that they don’t want a welfare state; that they do want to preserve national defenses; that they want indoctrination in the schools to stop; that they want to forbid the application of foreign law; that they do not want to go on funding an institution – the UN – that consistently works against their interests. Then they must decide that their political philosophy is right, uniquely right, and must be implemented at any and all costs. Then they must start teaching it. With energy, persistence, patience and fiery enthusiasm. It will take time. But that is the only way. Teach, preach, argue, use every method that works. …
How badly does the conservative right want to win [and hold on to] power in America? How important is it to them that they should?
If it is important, tell the voters, tell the children that the free market is the only means of creating general prosperity, and why. Tell them that central planning of an economy cannot work, and why. Tell them why competition is good for everyone, producers and consumers alike.
Tell them what profit is and why it is essential for ensuring abundance.
Tell them that only where people are free can there be discovery and innovation, improvement in everyone’s daily life, better technology, the advance of civilization. Explain why. Show them the proofs of history.
Tell them the truth about life in the Third World. Not politically correct sentimental drivel, but the actual awful facts about life in most other countries.
Tell them why impartial judgment is the only means to justice; why all sane adult citizens must be treated equally by the law; why people must be judged by their actions, not their intentions or feelings.
Tell them why government should be kept small and its powers limited. Tell them what the essential tasks of government are: protection of the nation, of the individual, of liberty, of the rule of law itself. And why governments should not be allowed more power and money than it needs to fulfill its few essential functions.
Shout down the shouters.
Tell Muslims what is wrong with their creed and why American secularism is better. Don’t allow them … to shut out criticism of their absurd and savage beliefs.
Tolerate only the tolerant and tolerable.
It will take time. Start now. … Tell them.
Hamas, Abbas, PLO – good-bye to all that? 335
Yet another badly needed change has been accomplished byPresident Trump, one that will change political alignments and actions all over the world – for the better.
DebkaFile reports:
The White House has decided to quietly withdraw from all its ties with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas.
DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources report that the Trump administration has resolved to scrap all ties with the Palestinian leadership in retaliation for its campaign against US President Donald Trump and his Jerusalem policy. Several warnings to Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) of what was in store if he did not desist from castigating the US president fell on death ears.
Last week, two Arab crown princes, Saudi [Crown Prince] Muhammed bin Salman and UAE Sheikh Muhammed bin Zayed, summoned Abbas to their capitals and urged him strongly to back away from his attacks on President Trump. He got the same advice from the ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Al Thani, who conferred with Washington on the subject – all to no avail. The Trump administration has therefore set out an eight-point program of sanctions, which is first revealed here:
- The Israeli-Palestinian peace plan under preparation in Washington will not be submitted to Ramallah – only to Israel and the relevant Arab governments.
- US-Palestinian interaction is to be suspended – not just at the senior levels but in day-to-day interchanges. The administration has notified Palestinian and other Arab parties to stop addressing queries on political and economic matters to the US consulate in Jerusalem, because they will not receive answers. The status of the PLO office in Washington will be reevaluated with a view to shutting it down.
- Palestinian officials will no longer be invited to Washington by the US government, including the State Department and Department of Treasury.
- Above all, they will not be welcome at the White House or the National Security Council where US Middle East policy is designed. Senior US officials congratulated the senior Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat, who also holds the PA’s American portfolio, on his recovery from illness, at the same time warning him that he would no longer be received at the White House. [That’s witty – ed.]
- The Trump administration will not make any public announcement of the cutoff of financial aid to the Palestinians. Since the funds are mostly earmarked for specific economic projects, each allocation will simply be held back on the pretext of the need for a “reappraisal”.
- The US will halt its contributions to the UN Work and Relief Organization, an estimated one billion dollars per annum.
- The US administration moreover intervened with the governments of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar with a request that they freeze or slow their economic aid to the Palestinian Authority.
- According DEBKAfile’s sources, Palestinian officials in Ramallah were devastated by news of the sudden cutoff of the main sources of the PA’s revenue. Even the Qatar ruler, whom Abbas visited last week as a last resort to save the PA from economic meltdown, refused to release any more funding.
(Hat-tip Cogito)
How Trump deals with an insolent Saudi prince 8
Judging by this, President Trump will have no difficulty conducting US relations with foreign powers:
The poppy Ezra Levant is wearing is the British symbol of mourning for their soldiers who died in the two World Wars, commemorated today, November 11.
(Hat-tip for the video to our reader and commenter Cassandra)
Hail the Hillary! 2
To enlarge on the post immediately below:
Let’s take a look at Hillary’s America. How it will be. Just a glimpse, an outline. A rough guide to the Hillarian Tomorrow.
It doesn’t matter what Hillary says she will do. She is a liar. What we have to look at is the agenda of the Left. That tells us what she will do.
These are the objectives. They will not all come about at once, most will take time. But she will have time. Once she has power, she will not relinquish it. Hillary-ism will be entrenched. Her successors will be as she is. The age of the Hillarys looms ahead.
Republicans who say they will do nothing to stop her coming to power, or will even vote for her because they despise Donald Trump, speak of “the Republican brand”. They think they can endure 4 or 8 years of Hillary’s presidency, and then one of their noble breed will replace her and implement what they believe to be true Republicanism. That will not happen. Hillary will not allow it to happen. Hillary and Hillary-ists will be in to stay. There may not even be any more elections. Or if there are, the candidates will all be on the Left. In 2020 you will be able to choose from a list of Democrats. After that, the reigning Hillary alone will choose her politburo.
The Left wants to destroy Republicanism. Anything said in defense of Republican ideas – individual freedom, America-the-melting-pot, small government, low taxes, strong military, free market, secure borders – will be called “hate speech”. And the First Amendment will be amended to except “hate speech” – shortly before the Constitution is discarded altogether as an outdated and immoral document.
To come to specifics:
Education. The schools will raise the generations to be Social Justice Warriors on the right side of history. Everyone will go to a university. The universities will groom the Hillarians of the future. The students will chose their own courses. No one will ever fail.
Health. There will be a full national health service, with the state as single payer. Private insurance and private medical practice will not be permitted. Indeed, private medical practice will be criminalized. What treatment you may have will be decided by committees – appointed by the Hillarys – according to your age and your actual and potential usefulness to the community.
Money. Starting with much higher taxes and total confiscation of all assets on death, there will be a transformation of the economy until all money will belong to the state. You will receive an income judged to be sufficient to supply your needs, as defined by the state. The Left argues that it now no longer needs the signals that a market economy provided; it is possible to computerize demand and so adjust supply centrally. No one (except the Hillary in power and her aides) will be allowed to “hoard” money (what used to be called saving). You will have no extra money to use for developing your own ideas. Innovation will be ended. Pursuing real science will be impossible because …
Global warming will be the only “science”, and the threat of it will be held over your head as a perpetual terror – the equivalent of Christian Hell – so you will do whatever the Hillarys say you must do to “cut down your carbon footprint”.
Energy will be provided by wind, sun and seawaves only. It will be intermittent and extremely expensive. Such pocket money as the state will allow you will not be sufficient to provide you with warmth in winter or coolness in summer. But you will not, in any case, have your own home to heat or cool.
Agenda 21 will be fully implemented. You will occupy a unit of measured space deemed by the Hillarys to be adequate for your needs. You will be allowed to ride a bicycle, but not own a car. You will have to depend on public transport. But you will not have to travel far to your work – which will be assigned to you. Your living quarters will be conveniently close. Moving out of your district will require a permit.
There will be no more police. Only the Community Watch. Its business will be to enforce conformity.
The people in charge will be chosen not for their qualifications but for their ethnicity and gender. White men have been privileged for too long. It is time they were demoted and given only the most menial jobs.
There will no longer be a principle of equality before the law. The idea of objective judgment will be abandoned. Evidence will not be considered important. Judges will judge according to their feelings about a defendant’s “narrative”. If he/she/other belongs to a class or race that has been subordinate in the past to white male domination, he/she/other will not be held culpable for what used to be called crimes.
Reproduction will be licensed. If you fall pregnant without a license to reproduce, your embryo will be aborted. Many will be sterilized, because the world population needs to be reduced to save the planet. If you are allowed to have a child, a committee will decide its sex. It can change its sex to anything it wants once it is old enough to choose. It will be taken from you as soon as it can walk and talk, to be brought up by the community.
The country will have completely open borders. The Hillary will work with like-minded leaders of other countries towards a borderless world. World government is the ultimate objective. Then the whole world will be run on the lines outlined here for America. Certain states (Israel) will be wiped off the map.
The only change to this regime will come about when the Muslim Brotherhood takes over. They could simply buy America from this first Hillary in the near future. But they are more likely to wait for a few generations until world government is established. Then the law will be sharia universally. A description of what life will be like under sharia is not needed. The model is already in place as the caliphate of ISIS.
Stop bringing them in 7
Ann Coulter is a creationist and for that we laugh at her. But she is also witty, and uses her wit to expose political follies. For that we laugh with her.
She writes:
In the 14 years since Muslims killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11, this country has admitted another 1.5 million Muslims. So we’re xenophobic, bigoted racists if we don’t make it 2 million? Three million? When will we have enough? How many murdered Americans is an acceptable number before we can shut off the spigot of Muslim immigration?
The amazing thing is that no one (except the American people) wants any pause in Muslim immigration – even after more than a dozen Muslim terrorist attacks on our soil in the last 15 years.
House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he will refuse to consider cuts to Muslim immigration, saying, “That’s not who we are”.
Republicans are … furious with Trump for suggesting we take a break from importing Muslims.
The hysterical demand for never-ending Third World immigration has gone beyond the rich’s need for cheap servants and the Democrats’ need for voters. It’s a mass psychosis. …
We don’t owe citizens of other countries anything. … They owe us. America runs around saving other countries from tsunamis, earthquakes, pirates, disease, starvation, warlords, dictators, Nazis, communists – then their citizens show up full of grievances, as if we owe them.
Angry Muslims have been popping up all over TV to denounce Trump and complain about anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S. …
Given the devastation caused by only two Muslims in San Bernardino, eight Muslims in Paris, two at the Boston Marathon, one at a Chattanooga military recruitment center, one at Fort Hood, 19 on 9/11, etc. etc. – it’s really irrelevant whether “most” Muslim immigrants are peaceful little lambs. It doesn’t take a lot of them to create havoc.
I don’t know why we need any.
While it’s fantastic news that most Muslim immigrants aren’t terrorists, as Samuel Johnson said, “A horse who can count to 10 is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.”
The relevance is dubious, but we like what Dr. Johnson said.
We want remarkable Americans, not immigrants whose selling point is: “hasn’t blown anything up yet”. What’s the upside of admitting 250,000 poor, culturally backward, non-English-speaking Muslims every year? When are we allowed to talk about what’s good for America?
San Bernardino shooter Syed Farouk’s mother described his father – the original immigrant – this way: “My husband is mentally ill and is on medication but is also an alcoholic and drinks with the medicine.” Fantastic. So glad we got him. …
The senior Farouk didn’t come here to work in some highly complex technical field, like nuclear physics or cell extraction biology. He’s a truck driver. So one American lost his job as a truck driver and 14 Americans lost their lives because of Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act.
How else have the 1.5 million Muslims admitted since 9/11 made our country better? Their massive welfare use? Overburdening our schools and hospitals? The machete attacks? The clitorectomies? The honor killings? The occasional terrorist attack?
Currently, there are more than a thousand active investigations of ISIS in all 50 states. Here’s an idea: Instead of paying for an ever-expanding federal workforce to track, wiretap and investigate immigrants with possible terrorist sympathies, let’s stop bringing them in!