Who Lost Europe?
Wes Riddle
Geert Wilders, Chairman of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, recently addressed immigration and the cultural crisis in Europe at a symposium sponsored by the Hudson Institute in New York. His thesis was that Muslims were taking over Europe and were on their way to Pretoria, USA. Obviously the Dutchman had his hand out for some American moral support and private donations. As if we would, or should feel sadly responsible somehow, he said “In a generation or two, the U.S. will ask itself: who lost Europe?” To my way of thinking the answer to the question, if we even ask it, is easy: Europe will have been lost by the Europeans if it is lost. Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.
On balance it is probably encouraging as Wilders tells us that an Alliance of European patriots has formed to resist so-called Islamization of Europe. That said one might wish it to resist socialism, or secular humanism, or laziness, and all sorts of other cultural ills that afflict Europe. His remarks at length shed more light on Europe than on Islam. Even if immigrants are acting like settlers and don’t care much to assimilate, his remarks still shed more light on Europe than on Islam. If Muslim immigrants have more kids than Europeans, one could as easily say Europeans have few kids and millions more abortions than do Muslims living in their parallel communities. The fact does not mean there is a conspiracy, even if European elites have weak knees facing the cultural implications as a threat. The reality that demographic weight of Muslims will result increasingly in a feeling of political intimidation on the part of the majority doesn’t mean that headscarves were designed to make real Europeans feel uncomfortable.
There are a total of 54 million Muslims now living in Europe, and 25 percent of the population in Europe is projected to be Muslim by the year 2020. In England, sharia courts are now officially recognized as part of the British legal system. One may wonder who would let millions of Muslims settle in European countries and then become citizens, and what idiot would let them set up a dual legal system? Answer: Europe will be lost by Europeans and also by Brits (the latter hate to be called Europeans) if it is lost. The saddest part about Wilders’ bemoaning the obvious is that he seems oblivious to the fact that forces killing Europe are similar if not identical to those destroying the United States. The Hispanicization of the American southwest is a case in point, and even if that is not as sinister (real or perceived) as the Islamization of major U.S. cities, the phenomenon represents the same ineffectual, impotent, and unwilling nature of modern democratic societies to defend their preexisting cultural identities or to separate their polities from mere residents coming in to work. It tells us more about the condition and moral fiber of Americans than it does about Islam or Hispanics avenging for the Mexican-American War.
The same social democrats in Europe, who steal from Peter to pay Paul with high taxes in order to fund their nanny states, concede freedom everyday to ensure “domestic security” to behave irresponsibly. Then they blame Islam, rather than their own foolish immigration policies, failure to enforce the law, or the gross debasement of their moral character. They love democracy if it doesn't mean holding their lawmakers accountable, or altering the sanguine consensus they have about human nature and the unreality of sin. That kind of self-governance would be a lot of work, and anyway they aren't sure what they're supposed to believe beyond the nothing they’ve proved so far. All things being equal, nothing is worth to die for, or live for either. Europeans these days don’t have the slightest idea what their high culture is, or what it takes to maintain Western freedom.
Meanwhile, the United States (if we weren’t talking about it already) frightfully acknowledges words like “eternal vigilance” while cheating the very concept—having ceased to govern itself according to the strictures of its Constitution. The Supreme Court even quotes international law to explain what the Founders must have meant. Yes we no longer think clearly, or even chronologically. All things being equal, truth and error are more or less the same. Pontius Pilot asked, what is truth? We may as well add, “and who is to say it’s better?”
Truth is that migrations and technology are tearing up social and cultural fabrics globally, though not necessarily equally. With somewhat less sympathy, I would argue that a similar process is changing the face of Islam both where it enters and where it currently resides. The liberalizing influences changing the Arab world for good and for ill are hard to miss if you travel there. It is hard therefore to say just who shall be the proverbial last man standing—or indeed, whom he shall resemble most. Perhaps it is one of many false dichotomies. It will probably be some unfortunate hybrid and evolutionary result of inevitable Darwinian natural selection. Mention Intelligent Design and you begin to discover how little intellectual freedom there is anymore, and how the West possesses its own intellectual nightmare to rival that of the imams. In a generation or two the world may not even bother to ask itself, who lost America? The answer will be self-evident, even if our rights and sovereignty no longer are.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Obama – the Anti-Reagan
Obama – the Anti-Reagan
By Lynn Woolley
January 10, 2009
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” --Ronald Reagan, first inaugural address, January 20, 1981
“But at this particular moment, only government can provide the short term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe.” --Barack Obama, George Mason University, January 8, 2009
On November 4th of last year, the American people embarked on a great experiment. They made a decision to embrace “change” embodied in the person of a young, charismatic, but ultimately inexperienced leader who intends to take the country down an opposite path from where Reagan took us.
Barack Obama, placing his full faith in the power of government intervention and deficit spending, is thus the Anti-Reagan, casting off the policies that directly led to the economic boom of the 1990’s that lasted up until the sub-prime crisis hit late last year.
Obama likes to talk about “the fierce urgency of now” – but few remember that Reagan used a similar quote: “the temporary convenience of the present.” Again, Obama and Reagan are polar opposites. Obama says “now” is what matters; Reagan says future generations matter as well.
We’re now living in one of those future generations that Mr. Reagan talked about 28 years ago. And things have rocked along pretty well – until government in its zeal to provide home ownership to those who couldn’t afford to buy houses stepped in and forced the issue. In the current crisis, there is little doubt that government IS the problem.
Reagan knew that. When he took office, the American people were sick and tired of the “national malaise,” the “misery index,” and the “stagflation” of the Jimmy Carter years. The inflation rate was 11.83 percent. Unemployment was 7.5 percent. Like Obama, Reagan proposed change. His idea was to stimulate the economy with large, across-the-board tax cuts. The new president identified the problem and laid out his plans in his inaugural address:
“For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.
You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow.”
Simply put, Reagan’s solution was to spend less; Obama’s is to spend more.
Reagan cut spending on non-military programs, lowered income tax rates, and brought the country out of the Carter recession. He created 16 million jobs, brought inflation under control and fashioned a sustained period of economic prosperity.
Reaganomics has stood the test of time with Nobel laureates like Milton Friedman and Robert A. Mundell recognizing what a boon it was to all Americans – and to the world. Obamanomics on the other hand is rooted in collectivism, which, so far in history, has never worked.
Both methods cannot be right. Either Reagan’s policies based on the theories of Arthur Laffer – or Obama’s which are based on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes – will prove to be the correct course. What has got us into the current mess is that we have spent too much – both as a nation and as individuals. Obama will now attempt to solve the problem by spending more. That’s just the opposite of what Reagan would do.
Lynn Woolley is a talk show host heard on KVCE 1160 in Dallas-Fort Worth from 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. His email address is lynn@belogical.com.
By Lynn Woolley
January 10, 2009
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” --Ronald Reagan, first inaugural address, January 20, 1981
“But at this particular moment, only government can provide the short term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe.” --Barack Obama, George Mason University, January 8, 2009
On November 4th of last year, the American people embarked on a great experiment. They made a decision to embrace “change” embodied in the person of a young, charismatic, but ultimately inexperienced leader who intends to take the country down an opposite path from where Reagan took us.
Barack Obama, placing his full faith in the power of government intervention and deficit spending, is thus the Anti-Reagan, casting off the policies that directly led to the economic boom of the 1990’s that lasted up until the sub-prime crisis hit late last year.
Obama likes to talk about “the fierce urgency of now” – but few remember that Reagan used a similar quote: “the temporary convenience of the present.” Again, Obama and Reagan are polar opposites. Obama says “now” is what matters; Reagan says future generations matter as well.
We’re now living in one of those future generations that Mr. Reagan talked about 28 years ago. And things have rocked along pretty well – until government in its zeal to provide home ownership to those who couldn’t afford to buy houses stepped in and forced the issue. In the current crisis, there is little doubt that government IS the problem.
Reagan knew that. When he took office, the American people were sick and tired of the “national malaise,” the “misery index,” and the “stagflation” of the Jimmy Carter years. The inflation rate was 11.83 percent. Unemployment was 7.5 percent. Like Obama, Reagan proposed change. His idea was to stimulate the economy with large, across-the-board tax cuts. The new president identified the problem and laid out his plans in his inaugural address:
“For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.
You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow.”
Simply put, Reagan’s solution was to spend less; Obama’s is to spend more.
Reagan cut spending on non-military programs, lowered income tax rates, and brought the country out of the Carter recession. He created 16 million jobs, brought inflation under control and fashioned a sustained period of economic prosperity.
Reaganomics has stood the test of time with Nobel laureates like Milton Friedman and Robert A. Mundell recognizing what a boon it was to all Americans – and to the world. Obamanomics on the other hand is rooted in collectivism, which, so far in history, has never worked.
Both methods cannot be right. Either Reagan’s policies based on the theories of Arthur Laffer – or Obama’s which are based on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes – will prove to be the correct course. What has got us into the current mess is that we have spent too much – both as a nation and as individuals. Obama will now attempt to solve the problem by spending more. That’s just the opposite of what Reagan would do.
Lynn Woolley is a talk show host heard on KVCE 1160 in Dallas-Fort Worth from 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. His email address is lynn@belogical.com.
Wes Riddle’s Horse Sense #380
MLK: What’s in the Day?
Wes Riddle
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. was born January 15, 1929. He was assassinated in 1968. “MLK Day” as it were, is celebrated the third Monday in January close to the time of his birthday. One may ask how such a short life should warrant a federal holiday. Martin Luther King, Jr. never was elected to public office. His life was controversial while he lived it. Moreover, his memory is skewed given that FBI files were sealed under court order until 2027. These records were not accessible to lawmakers, who voted for his holiday in 1983. The measure nevertheless passed with bipartisan support and by large margin before Ronald Reagan signed it into law.
Martin Luther King, Jr. still evokes an ecstatic memory from his admirers, and the man has become something of an icon too. That is to say, the representation of high ideals and idealism is separate and distinct from his actual biography. Of course the same can be said of many others, including Lincoln and Jefferson. Great men are often given a public pass on their blemishes and shortcomings. Historians are or ought to be a bit more circumspect.
The reason for the Day, and celebrating the life of MLK involves the issue of race. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work was important in achieving a Second Reconstruction so-called, i.e., the end of segregation and the application of rights past state laws based upon the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Martin Luther King, Jr. attended segregated public schools in Georgia. After that he went to Morehouse College in Atlanta and then to Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. At Crozer he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class. He then proceeded to Boston University where he earned his Ph. D. in 1955 and met his wife Coretta Scott. They would have two sons and two daughters together.
After educational and professional preparations, King launched himself into the pastorate first in Montgomery, Alabama and then in his native Atlanta, Georgia. At the same time he dedicated himself to political activism throughout the South, in order to end “Jim Crow” discriminatory statutes. As a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) he led the Montgomery bus boycott lasting 382 days. This led to a Supreme Court decision ending bus segregation. During the days of the boycott, King was arrested and subjected to personal abuse, and his home was bombed.
In 1957 he was elected to head the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, from which he provided new leadership for the burgeoning civil rights movement. King employed the teachings and techniques of Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi. His enduring success is largely attributable, however, to skilful adaptation of widely accepted American values, including the rule of law—albeit, through aggressive non-violence; as well as strong appeal to common spiritual beliefs, especially in the South, about God and the moral worth and dignity of man, and to Christian values of forbearance and brotherly love. His historicism was Lincolnesque and so helpful, in that he emphasized the text of the Declaration of Independence, characterizing that document as a promissory note as yet unfulfilled. Thus he appealed to American patriotism, while strongly criticizing social norms regarding race.
In the eleven year period from 1957 to 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled more than six million miles, gave over twenty-five hundred speeches, wrote five books and numerous articles, consistently preaching against racial hatred and injustice. His activity is largely credited with changing the conscience of America on the subject of race. In 1963 he directed a peaceful march on Washington, D.C. of 250,000 people and delivered perhaps his finest address, “I Have a Dream” from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In 1965 he led 30,000 people on a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, where he demanded that black people be allowed to vote without unfair restrictions. The speech televised to a national audience, as well as the Selma march and various protests he orchestrated, stirred general unrest in the South and American cities, leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In 1964 he became the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, turning over that considerable cash prize to the furtherance of civil rights. The iconic ideal he articulated at the Lincoln Memorial is still one of the highest domestic hopes in the land. It has come to define what we mean by a just equality. Speaking of his four little children, he said “I have a dream that … one day” they “will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Wes Riddle
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. was born January 15, 1929. He was assassinated in 1968. “MLK Day” as it were, is celebrated the third Monday in January close to the time of his birthday. One may ask how such a short life should warrant a federal holiday. Martin Luther King, Jr. never was elected to public office. His life was controversial while he lived it. Moreover, his memory is skewed given that FBI files were sealed under court order until 2027. These records were not accessible to lawmakers, who voted for his holiday in 1983. The measure nevertheless passed with bipartisan support and by large margin before Ronald Reagan signed it into law.
Martin Luther King, Jr. still evokes an ecstatic memory from his admirers, and the man has become something of an icon too. That is to say, the representation of high ideals and idealism is separate and distinct from his actual biography. Of course the same can be said of many others, including Lincoln and Jefferson. Great men are often given a public pass on their blemishes and shortcomings. Historians are or ought to be a bit more circumspect.
The reason for the Day, and celebrating the life of MLK involves the issue of race. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work was important in achieving a Second Reconstruction so-called, i.e., the end of segregation and the application of rights past state laws based upon the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Martin Luther King, Jr. attended segregated public schools in Georgia. After that he went to Morehouse College in Atlanta and then to Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. At Crozer he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class. He then proceeded to Boston University where he earned his Ph. D. in 1955 and met his wife Coretta Scott. They would have two sons and two daughters together.
After educational and professional preparations, King launched himself into the pastorate first in Montgomery, Alabama and then in his native Atlanta, Georgia. At the same time he dedicated himself to political activism throughout the South, in order to end “Jim Crow” discriminatory statutes. As a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) he led the Montgomery bus boycott lasting 382 days. This led to a Supreme Court decision ending bus segregation. During the days of the boycott, King was arrested and subjected to personal abuse, and his home was bombed.
In 1957 he was elected to head the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, from which he provided new leadership for the burgeoning civil rights movement. King employed the teachings and techniques of Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi. His enduring success is largely attributable, however, to skilful adaptation of widely accepted American values, including the rule of law—albeit, through aggressive non-violence; as well as strong appeal to common spiritual beliefs, especially in the South, about God and the moral worth and dignity of man, and to Christian values of forbearance and brotherly love. His historicism was Lincolnesque and so helpful, in that he emphasized the text of the Declaration of Independence, characterizing that document as a promissory note as yet unfulfilled. Thus he appealed to American patriotism, while strongly criticizing social norms regarding race.
In the eleven year period from 1957 to 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled more than six million miles, gave over twenty-five hundred speeches, wrote five books and numerous articles, consistently preaching against racial hatred and injustice. His activity is largely credited with changing the conscience of America on the subject of race. In 1963 he directed a peaceful march on Washington, D.C. of 250,000 people and delivered perhaps his finest address, “I Have a Dream” from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In 1965 he led 30,000 people on a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, where he demanded that black people be allowed to vote without unfair restrictions. The speech televised to a national audience, as well as the Selma march and various protests he orchestrated, stirred general unrest in the South and American cities, leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In 1964 he became the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, turning over that considerable cash prize to the furtherance of civil rights. The iconic ideal he articulated at the Lincoln Memorial is still one of the highest domestic hopes in the land. It has come to define what we mean by a just equality. Speaking of his four little children, he said “I have a dream that … one day” they “will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
