Churchill's description of Mohammedanism

This description below by a young Winston Churchill of the Muslim faith and its deleterious effect on any society it infects is simply devastating. Churchill knows from the perspective of an historian what the world has gotten, and can expect to get, -- there is simply no other way to put it -- from this deeply flawed and perverse faith. The prophet Mohammed was an aggressive thug. His sources of income and power were violent and treacherous assaults on the caravans plying the trade routes between the east and west near Medina and Mecca in Arabia. Mohammed led raids against these caravans and in the end was simply one of many pirates preying on traders trying to make an honest living moving goods between trading areas. The Barbary pirates who preyed on ships in the trading sea lanes of the Mediterranean until routed and destroyed by Thomas Jefferson in the early 19th century operated in the tradition of Mohammed. Suddenly this pirate hears voices from Allah, is reformed, and ready to lead followers to the promised land? Color me skeptical. Even after his "revelations" from Allah, Mohammed instructed and led his followers in what we would today describe as terrorist attacks designed to eliminate those who disagreed with his vision of power and control. Nothing with respect to this intolerant and militant religion has changed in the 1500 years since Mohammed's death. It is a religion premised on intolerance, slavery and violence. It's hard to find anything redeeming in its legacy despite 1.2 billion followers worldwide.

Here's how Churchill described Mohammedism:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property-either as a child, a wife, or a concubine-must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proseltyzing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science-the science against which it had vainly struggled-the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

Since Churchill made these observations in the early part of the 20th century has anything changed to make them less accurate? It seems not. We are living with a failed religion and nothing any of our political leaders can do or say will change this unfortunate truth. As long as Mohammed's followers believe that their faith is the only path to God, as long as they believe women are less than men, as long as they believe that those who do not follow Mohammed are infidels and subject to persecution and dhiminitude, there is no way western civilization can come to terms with this rogue religion. The sooner political leaders understand this reality and take steps to marginalize and minimize the effects of the Muslim faith in our society, the better off we will all be and the more likely it will be that we will survive as a civilization.

Jonah goldberg and free speech

Every now and then I read a columnist and say to myself, "Boy, he/she really nailed it". That's how I feel about Jonah Golberg's column, "Free Speech Disorder" about the recent two free speech cases decided by SCOTUS. Both cases to some extent attack the horrible decision in the McCain-Feingold law which essentially bans all electioneering by groups 30 days before an election, the time when it most matters. This bill was/is so egregiously anti free speech and therefore anti democracy, it's inconceiveable that it ever passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by a Republican President. You may recall when Bush signed the bill he did so by holding his nose anticipating SCOTUS would bail everyone out. But this was before Roberts and Alito and lo and behold the measure became law. Can you imagine outlawing political speech against a candidate during the time frame when voters are actually engaged in decision making. I believe, like many, that this bill doomed John McCain's presidential hopes since it's inconceiveable that a supporter of this law is anything other than an elitest (read: liberal) opposed to the give and take of free speech about issues and candidates. The bill has been referred to as simply an incumbents' reelection measure, and indeed that is what it is. Goldberg explains all this is the clearest of terms and that is why I give him the "Nail it" award of the week. You can find his column below. or by clicking on the headline box on the top of this page:


(Free) Speech Disorder
By Jonah Goldberg
Monday, July 2, 2007
There are few areas where I think common sense is more sorely lacking than in our public debates over free speech, and there's no better proof than two recent Supreme Court decisions.

But before we go there, let me state plainly where I'm coming from. First and foremost: The more overtly political the speech is, the more protected it must be. The First Amendment was not intended to protect pornographers, strippers or the subsidies of avant-garde artistes who think the state should help defray the costs of homoerotica and sacrilegious art. This isn't to say that "artistic" expression doesn't deserve some protection, but come on. Our free-speech rights were enshrined in the Constitution to guarantee private citizens - rich and poor alike - the right to criticize government without fear of retribution.

Now, there are commonsense exceptions to this principle. Not only can the state ban screaming "fire!" in a crowded movie theater, it can ban screaming "Vote for Cheney in '08!" in a theater, too (or, more properly, it can help theater owners enforce their bans on such behavior).

A better example of an exception would be schools. Students can't say whatever they want in school, whenever they want to say it, because schools are special institutions designed to create citizens out of the malleable clay of youth. Children aren't grown-ups, which is one of the reasons why we call them "children."

Making citizens requires a little benign tyranny, as any teacher (or parent) will tell you. If this weren't obvious, after-school detention would be treated like imprisonment and homework like involuntary servitude.

For a long time, we concluded the best way to protect political speech was to defend other forms of expression - commercial, artistic and just plain wacky - so as to make sure that our core right to political speech was kept safe. Like establishing outposts in hostile territory, we safeguarded the outer boundaries of acceptable expression to keep the more important home fire of political speech burning freely. That's why in the 1960s and 1970s, all sorts of stuff - pornography, strip clubs, etc, - was deregulated by the Supreme Court on the grounds that this was legitimate "expression" of some sort.

Also, in 1969, the Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines, that students don't "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

This always struck me as preposterous. Of course students shed some of their rights at the schoolhouse gate. That's the whole idea behind the concept of in loco parentis. Teachers and administrators get to act like your parents while you're at school. And parents are not required to respect the constitutional rights of their kids. Tell me, do hall-pass requirements restrict the First Amendment right of free assembly? Don't many of the same people who claim that you have free-speech rights in public schools also insist that you don't have the right to pray in them?

Still, such buffoonery would be pardonable if the grand bargain of defending marginal speech so as to better fortify the protective cocoon around sacrosanct political speech were still in effect. But that bargain fell apart almost from the get-go. At the same moment we were letting our freak flags fly when it came to unimportant speech, we started turning the screws on political speech. After Watergate, campaign finance laws started restricting what independent political groups could say and when they could say it, culminating in the McCain-Feingold law that barred "outside" criticism of politicians when it would matter most - i.e., around an election.

And that's why we live in a world where cutting NEA grants is called censorship, a student's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" sign is hailed as vital political speech, and a group of citizens asking fellow citizens to petition their elected representatives to change their minds is supposedly guilty of illegal speech.

That is until this week. In one case, the Supreme Court ruled that a student attending a mandatory school event can be disciplined by the school's principal for holding up a sign saying "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," and in another it ruled that a pro-life group can, in fact, urge citizens to contact their senators even if one of the senators happens to be running for re-election. Staggeringly, these were close and controversial calls.

Many self-described liberals and reformers think it should be the other way around. Teenage students should have unfettered free-speech rights, while grown-up citizens should stay quiet, like good little boys and girls. Thank goodness at least five Supreme Court justices disagreed.




Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online.

The art and value of grandparenting

Living in Southern California Helen and I are about 3,000 miles from our grandchildren, Crawford, 7, and Schuyler, 4, who live in New York City. From our standpoint this circumstance is not optimal, but as they say, it is what it is. Fortunately our son works hard to see that we get visits with them on a home and away basis and our daughter-in-law and her family are always welcoming on our visits to their family weekend home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

In this new role I think back often on my own grandparents, three of whom I knew pretty well and one, my mother's father, who died while she was in college, I never met. He was a successful lawyer in Nashua, New Hampshire. I probably saw more of my paternal grandmother than the others, mostly because she lived the longest, I think about 90 years, and because she always presided over The Trail's End Farm in South Lynboro, New Hampshire, where my family (brother, mother, father) spent one month of every year, driving to and from the farm from our home in Central Florida, long before something called interstates, The trip one way was a three days journey with overnight stops in North Carolina and Maryland. I think our family must have made that round trip at least 15 consecutive years. I remember those three grandparents fondly, how they were revered by my parents, and how that caring and respect rubbed off on my brother and me and all our cousins. My paternal grandfather was a large, physically imposing man who used to take my brother and me to the local swimming lake in Florida (there was a non-swimming lake near by, too) and while we swam he would take out his whittling knife and meticulously obliterate the naughty words carved on the dock by the town houligans. I was eight in 1943 when he died of a heart attack pruning a fruit tree in his back yard in Florida. I remember being, at least momentarily, quite afraid when he died. Here we were in the middle of a terrible war against three horrible enemies, Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, and this important person in our family's life was suddenly no more. It was also the first time I experienced the death of a close family member. My maternal grandmother, Nana, I remember for all the wonderful meals she loved to prepare for me (and the others) and how, since we only saw her once a year in the summertime, she could never get over how fast I always seemed to her to be growing taller. One summer when I was working at my first serious job at my paternal grandfather's manufacturing plant in NashuaI, I spent two months with her. I think I was about 16 at the time. She liked me and I liked her, even after two months together, just the two of us. I always sensed she loved me with no reservations, and that was a nice feeling.

Grandparenting is all about one generation enjoying another generation without the impediments of serious parenting responsibilities. That's not to say grandparents don't or can't play a direct role raising the next generation. They certainly can, and sometimes have to out of necessity, but most of the time the grandparent's role is not the day in, day out one of constant disciplining, training and tutoring that conscientious parents provide. Rather it's more like providing assurance that there is stability in the world and that there is such a thing as unqualified love that connects all generations. That seems to me to be a particularly important role in these times when often both parents work long hours in high powered jobs which means some surrogate parenting by nannies. I like being a grandparent but I do wish those two jewels weren't 3,000 miles away.

SCOTUS Seattle school diversity decision

Lots of discussion in the newspapers and Sunday TV talk shows today on the Supreme Court decision which held that it was unconstitutional for state school bureaucrats to employ race as a factor to determine which school a student attends. This was a typically bizarre example of race politics and quotas engendered by affirmative action creating absurd real life hardship on a family. The facts are a kindergarten five year old was denied the right to attend a school one mile from her home and required to attend a school 10 miles away because the racial "balance" or quota, so dictated. Bureaucrats decided based, upon the number of blacks and whites and Asians in a given school, that this little girl's family had to have her transported ten miles away because there weren't enough whites there to create the diversity deemed essential to creating an optimal learning environment unproved by any scientific studies that I am aware of. Wow! Good decision SCOTUS, I say. There are several aspects of this case that strike me as ridiculous. First, the basis for the bureaucrats decision, the liberal goddess "diversity", is supposed to be essential for blacks to make progress educationally. How then do we account for the fact that Howard University and other all black educational institutions produce well educated and productive black members of society year in year out without diversity? Second, as I understand it at most colleges blacks choose to live together in racially exclusive dorms and belong to racially exclusive clubs and societies sponsored by the universities. Third, what if the school the five year old was required to attend was demonstably inferior in standards of teaching, etc., to the one one mile away, which was unremarked upon in the decision but is often the case. Her parents are thus forced to endorse her attendance at a school that will not provide the equivalent learning environment of the school one mile away. Social engineering is thus depriving this child of a better educational foundation. The real issue here is not the diversity of the student body but the excellence of the teaching at a given school and the learning experience of the students. Until this issue is addressed, the social engineers and discrimination industry entrepreneurs will encounter resistence to their dream world of diversity as the answer to racial inequality. To his credit Mayor Bloomberg in New York has actually begun a program that addresses this very issue. I'll talk about his program shortly through the eyes of our daughter Lydia, in the Bloomberg program as we speak.